Sunday, November 01, 2009
"...and i said, 'oh-you should have seen me, a couple a years ago'..."
Monday, October 26, 2009
"...these are the songs that we sing..."
Imagine this:
It’s an unseasonably hot day. That would be the first thing you notice. Next would be that since the sun went down, the bugs have backed off of your epidermis and made for whatever hell-hole they originate from. You’re grateful for that reprieve.
It’s been a long day, but not necessarily a rough day. You’re nearing the edge of tired that your body confirms as a day well spent. Meaning, in briefer terms, you got everything done.
You’re sitting towards the back of a crowded room, enjoying the people around you in that collected silence that anticipates who will take the floor next. You breathe in it because you can. Its headiness is bracketed by one word: family.
An old man gets up in front of all the tables, taking his time and grasping the microphone with his right hand. After a short introduction and a longer pause, he raises his arms, “I’d like you to know that we’re responsible for starting this clan,” he says loudly. “And we couldn’t be prouder.”
From where I sat on Friday night, bookended by my cousins, I saw something unfold that I would have never thought possible: I saw legacy. And I saw it begin.
It’s hard to say how it feels to watch one brother claim a someone as his own and now I call her sister. There is less to express how it feels when the second goes and does the same. From where I sat watching my grandfather on Friday night, I didn’t need the words. I just needed to be there. And enjoy the moment.
Bigger Brother is married. He has extended his hand and had it accepted. And here we are, on the other side of Saturday.
The family I have always known, the one that included Soccer Mom, SuperHero Dad, Biggest Brother, Bigger Brother, Little Brother and me, has grown by three in the last four years. Take that in. I now have two sisters and a nephew all wrapped up in the mix.
This is how we increase ourselves. By taking others in.
In love’s thunder show this weekend, I was tipped over by the embrace of sacrifice and what it means to give. In loving and doing we are getting and giving all at the same time.
I was touched, again this weekend, by what it means to give of oneself. I’ve seen wedding after wedding lately and they eventually all leave me with one thing: there’s a lot of sacrifice in love. There’s a lot of dying in living.
It’s a lesson learned inch by inch.
You take thankfulness where you can get it. You also get it sometimes where you least expect it. I am thankful for the legacy that made me. And that had never sounded quite as right as just now when I wrote it.
And so, in the offering of hands and acceptance—to Jimmy and Audrey.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
"...if you could see me, whoever i am..."
Monday, October 05, 2009
"peer over the edge- can you see me?"
Lauren said something the other day that gave me pause. Moving her hands and canvassing the neighborhoods that make up the little-seen infrastructure of Clemson, she said, “I create towards the basics.”
She was talking about her artwork—a talent about Lauren that I admire and often don’t comprehend. About how she thinks of a painting or a pot or a photograph.
But here I was stuck on one thing: the basics.
I went to Clemson this weekend for a wedding and a stolen four days of ‘girl time’ with the women who have carried and blessed me over the last four years. And everyday, while we walked and talked, I felt a little deeper in. (Or filled a little deeper in.)
There was something really special about those walks. I’ll say that first.
When you’re a place like Clemson, the world feels really small. There’s hardly a moment on any given day that you feel nameless, lost in a crowd. It’s a town of friends. That’s the best way to describe it. (The cynic in me leans towards the phrase ‘fish-bowl life,’ but you get the idea.)
There’s an up and a down side to that mentality—as there is with all things. When nothing is unfamiliar, it lends itself to complacency and inaction. A person (me, namely) can get really caught up in the feeling of home.
A good friend once pointed out that all animated children’s films these days revolve the journey home. We’re teaching our children something in all of this. Or maybe, we’re yearning for something that we wish to leave to them.
More on that in a minute.
When Lauren said basics, my mind reeled. As this season of my life continues to unfold, I realize how complicated life has become in a very short amount of time. Getting from point A to point B is a cacophony of engines, stoplights, power cords, phone calls and swiping transactions. My time should only be worth the dollar amount attached to each hour.
The funny thing is, I don’t get paid much anymore. My hours are worth how I can spend them fruitfully and not monetarily. I can’t buy into buying because I have no means to do so.
It limits how far out you can go. That’s for sure.
But it also makes you wonder: what happened to the basics? There was a time I still remember where nothing much mattered outside of food on the table and a place to lay my head. Now, my e-mail comes to my cell phone. What does that say about me?
Maybe it’s growing up. And, to the complicated-ness of life, that one things claims a lot of its repercussions. Meaning: as you grow, responsibility breeds complication. But I get the feeling that’s not all of it. We’re breeding complication out of complication—not just out of responsibility.
Have we all gotten so disconnected from each other that we’re encouraging our own children to find ‘home?’ A blanket statement, I know and a harsh one, but it still gives me pause.
Honestly, what are ‘the basics’ now? I’ll hang apostrophes there because I feel like they’ve become insubstantial. It’s not just food and water and shelter anymore—man needs a grid to survive. Needs a series of interconnected products and numbers that can be accessed at any given moment in order to proceed.
Talk about mass complication.
You might see me wander down this thought road more and more over the coming weeks, because it’s becoming a subject that dominates my mind.
In a country where we are raised to believe that anything is possible and everything not only is but should be available, there seems to be a real disconnect between the basic reality of life and the projected reality of everything else. (It’s in question whether those two things are even mutually specific anymore or not.)
How complicated have we become? I wonder. How superficially complicated.
At this present moment, in my room in a city that nurses summer and fights winter, I offer no solutions, just an observation.
An observation for your Monday night.