I like to write letters to people who will never read them; letters I know I’ll never send, usually to “past-tense” people. Not deceased, necessarily, but long gone from my life. The letters don’t even mean anything, really; not many are angry or forgiving or seeking of any kind of closure. I just like to write letters. They’re scattered everywhere: a box in my closet, half-filled notebooks on my bookshelf, word documents on my computer. Little stashes hidden where maybe someday someone will find them and know that I at least had something to say to someone, anyway.
When I was a little girl, I would write letters on helium balloons from the county fair or a birthday party, then let them fly away. I imagined God blowing it to some “meant-to-be” destination, in a way similar to when I would blow dust motes across the sections of golden light that streamed through the windows when the sun set. Only, I imagined God had more control over the balloon than I had over my dust mote; I never could stick the landing properly. I thought for sure that God meticulously piloted those balloons; that He influenced the weather and treetops and houses to guide them where they were supposed to go. Like pinball.
Everything happens for a reason. There are no coincidences. Everything works out for the good of those who love Him.
Right?
For having a mind that so adamantly demands pure, unadulterated reason, I am surprised I hadn’t questioned these things until recently. Ideally, I would like to avoid this progressive cynicism (both in experience and admission), but I feel that belief without question only makes me naïve. And denying any doubts only makes me a liar.
At one time in the past year, I thought, “I am doing well. I love God and I am moving forward. He will open and close doors and guide me wherever He wants me to go.” Upon deeper introspection, I was reminded of my childhood Balloon Theory; I was reminded of pinball.
It can’t be that simple.
I played pinball in the arcade at Pizza Street when I was ten. I was good at it; I held the high score on many occasions. It was no easy machine, either. Two of the buttons were sticky, but I figured out exactly when to start pushing them, how many times and the way they felt right before their most forceful hits. I saw the ball coming. I pushed the buttons in just the right way. I got the ball where I wanted it.
This can’t be how the Higher Power guides us, can it? God is not playing pinball. Even including sinful detours and mistakes, there has to be more to it; more than just moving forward with a love for God and going wherever circumstances propel, believing that they all act as His hand.
It can’t be that simple.
There is no free will in pinball. Not for the ball, at least. No choices, no resolve, no goals, no living mind sparkling with thoughts of its own.
So not pinball, then. Chess? God has a plan, makes a move; if we make a move to hinder Him, He plans around it and moves accordingly. Both free will and divine omnipotence. But two mere humans can play at chess, trying their best to defeat one another. Dear Lord, check mate?
It can’t be that simple.
I am too tired for fundamental questions. I am too tired and my feet are too cold. My toes are purple, when I take my socks off long enough to look.
I have to have all the answers.
You say words to pray, right? Or think them at least? You thank God for your blessings, then ask for this or that, for wisdom or strength or energy or clarity, or ask them for someone else. A thank-you card and a wish list. Dear Grandma, thanks for the money, please send more.
It can’t be that simple.
No, it isn’t. I know it isn’t. But no matter how extensive my analysis, I can’t ever be right. Who am I to timidly raise my hand in answer to any of this? I don’t know.
It can’t be that simple.
It isn’t.
Then what’s the rest?
I don’t know.
And I should know. I have this infuriating, destitute feeling that I should know and I just don’t.
Prove that what you believe is true.
I can’t.
I can’t. I can’t and I can’t and I don’t I don’t I just don’t know. I have claimed these beliefs as my own. I hold them; I have tried for years to live my life by them. Shouldn’t I be able to provide undeniable evidence for this concept around which my entire being has been shaped?
In every other aspect of my life, I don’t trust anything without solid proof. I am a skeptic, very much to a fault. The concept of “faith” in any capacity is completely contradictory to my every other thought process. And yet, I have stuck with this one—in theory, at least—as long as I can remember. I’ve believed it, as much as I can possibly conceive believing in anything. And I still do. But…why? What cold, falsifiable evidence can I give to explain that all of this is true?
Am I Judas if I wonder now?
I’m not the first to think of this, I know. Everyone scrabbles for some soul-level meaning and God or something to treat as god. Of course I’m not the only one. I’m a single voice in the angry majority. I’ve just joined the clamor, desperately declaring the intellectual plight of the middle-class white girl.
Who cares?
I admit I do. If there were picket lines for this, I think I’d be in them, but right now all I have is to deliberate. And end up exactly where I was before.
Why bother?
We’re squandering our potential right now, but there are better ways we could be doing it. We could at least enjoy it, if this is what’s going to happen, and we might as well do it together. Procrastinate, laugh too hard at jokes that aren’t funny just because you haven’t laughed in a while and you feel like maybe you should; like you might lose the ability if you don’t practice. Come squander with me. We’re doing it anyway—I see both of us—we might as well serve as one another’s buffer for the guilt and emptiness. The laziness. You know, that feeling you get when you feel so lost you don’t know what to do so you just don’t do anything, maybe for a long time.
I'm so tired.
That feeling of being fat on the inside. Like my soul has been sleeping through the flu, half-roused only briefly for some inconsistent feeding; a “filler”, as if my thoughts were Mac & Cheese from the box. It squats in my brain or my heart or wherever the soul supposedly dwells and makes no use of itself—the dazed, bloated, phlegmatic soul.
I am too tired to think up anything nutritious to feed it. I try, but only end up with a few pretzel-thoughts, an apple-thought maybe, a thought like raisins or that fake whole-grain toast. A bit better, but ultimately nothing more than negligent snacks. Not enough to keep a soul in ideal health.
Am I a pest to feed?
I can’t deny that sometimes you are. I never asked for the responsibility of caring for you. When did the Balloon Theory stop being enough? When did you make me crazy, obsessing incessantly about who what when where why?
I wrote a prayer
On a rubber red balloon,
Then sent it up to God
On a hazy afternoon.
I found it the next morning,
It was caught up in a tree.
I thought, “If I don’t hear from Him,
Then He won’t hear from me.
But I’ve never been good at keeping up the silent treatment for long. He keeps hearing from me. Broken, chaotic communication, but desperately desired nonetheless. Because I need it, this faith that so often makes no logical sense. And I will remain in dogged pursuit of what it might have that I don't, because I know it can’t be that simple.
.
I'd tell them, you know, if they wanted to know. I'd tell them all sorts of things.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
A Brief Portrait of the Narrator as a Young Girl
I didn’t really start thinking, intentionally, anyway, until I was around fifteen. It’s not that I didn’t think at all, or didn’t have some kind of insight. I just hadn’t really applied it to anything yet.
I was eating French fries when my grandma died. I'd been in the hospital for hours, just waiting, but of course she slipped away in the few minutes it took me to get Steak n' Shake to-go. I came into her room and she was so skinny that for a second I thought the slight bumps of her legs were wrinkles in the sheets. It hadn't struck me just how frail she was until after she passed. I was around fifteen.
I had just grown out of my cargo-pants-only phase and that day I was wearing jeans for the first time. Scratchy, trendy, hip-hugging denim. They were so tight and stiff, big thick seams pulling and pushing on me. I tried not to pull at them too much as I sat on the floor in the hospital corridor, listening to my mother, aunt, and grandpa discuss my grandmother's remains. I didn't know how I felt about their varying opinions regarding whether to donate her body to science. What is truly irreverent to the deceased, and how does that change (or does it at all?) if potential discoveries in medicine hang in the balance? I knew that her heart had been the subject of three experimental operations, and in years past I'd heard the doctors say how her brain was a unique Alzheimer's case study. But the thought of her being all hollowed out—her insides not being hers anymore—made me feel as if I shouldn't stand for it.
I was confused and I wanted very badly to draw my own ethical, logical conclusion (even though I of course had no say in the matter), but all I could really think about were those damn jeans.
Before that age, my mind had wandered aimlessly through tangled thickets of concept and experience, picking such an exquisite bouquet from some sweet things that grew there while the more thorny things scratched at my legs at times, or caught in my hair.
I had only a vague sense of guilt for a little childhood mischief or ignorance. I was barely self-aware and it was blissful.
So I think that’s why it’s only recently that I’ve realized: we were perfect, you and I. We just didn’t know it yet. We thought—-because we were told-—that we were bad little girls; irreverent, scandalous. Though, the way I remember it, we didn’t really mind except for when we were being scolded. It never stopped us from clinging to opposite fire escapes, giggling together through Boy Scout walkie talkies, pilfered from older brother’s dresser drawer, or sneaking around the sanctuary to brush our little hands across the quilted wall-hanging. There was glitter on it, and sequins, and it sparkled as our nimble fingers traced the burning bush and the Hebrew inscription just above the hem. How could they expect us not to touch it? It sparkled and we were little girls.
The sequins would cast light on the ceiling sometimes, and the reflection of the wavy pattern in which they were sewn made me feel as if I was underwater. I loved that feeling.
Grandpa had a swimming pool in the back yard, and as a child I spent most summer afternoons there. It was so blue and clear and clean--it even smelled clean and I liked the way the scent of chlorine would linger in my hair all day, if Mom didn't make me shower right after a swim. I loved the feeling of myself in the water; it was suspension, the only time I felt graceful. Like I was covered in cool glass, the old-fashioned kind—the hand-blown glass with ripples and dimples that they show you on field trips in second grade—but better because it was so pure and bright. Nothing makes a little girl feel beautiful like being covered in things that glint in the sunlight, and nothing made me feel beautiful like watching my limbs glide under that liquid crystal. They were distorted though, and strange, so it was easy to pretend I was no longer human. I was something else; anything else. I'd be Something Else for a while, then run inside to be a little girl again, dripping water on the carpet and getting chocolate everywhere after Grandpa gave me Butterfingers.
I would paint rainbows on my face as a little girl, too, or paint my entire body all different colors. Mom tried to scold me but laughed instead. As I aged my childhood inclination toward coloring my very person grew into a fascination with bright hair dyes. Blues and greens and pinks; they made me feel like magic, an ever-present rainbow to toss in the sunlight and release a thousand shining strands of color into the wind.
I think it takes a certain lack of self-awareness to feel like magic. Even writing the phrase seems ridiculous to me now, from a more cynical perspective. I don't see my mind as a thicket so much anymore. Now it feels more like clipped hedges, a manicured lawn being constantly and meticulously treated for weeds or moles or anything else spontaneous or unplanned.
I remember the thicket fondly, though; it was a place I wanted to be. A happily disheveled little girl in a creek-splashed dress; twigs, dandelion fluff, bits of leaves and some of those crawling blue flowers you see in springtime making nests in the tangles of my hair. Wildflowers everywhere, entwined in the bramble. It was warm, too, and quiet; a peaceful sort of chaos.
.
I was eating French fries when my grandma died. I'd been in the hospital for hours, just waiting, but of course she slipped away in the few minutes it took me to get Steak n' Shake to-go. I came into her room and she was so skinny that for a second I thought the slight bumps of her legs were wrinkles in the sheets. It hadn't struck me just how frail she was until after she passed. I was around fifteen.
I had just grown out of my cargo-pants-only phase and that day I was wearing jeans for the first time. Scratchy, trendy, hip-hugging denim. They were so tight and stiff, big thick seams pulling and pushing on me. I tried not to pull at them too much as I sat on the floor in the hospital corridor, listening to my mother, aunt, and grandpa discuss my grandmother's remains. I didn't know how I felt about their varying opinions regarding whether to donate her body to science. What is truly irreverent to the deceased, and how does that change (or does it at all?) if potential discoveries in medicine hang in the balance? I knew that her heart had been the subject of three experimental operations, and in years past I'd heard the doctors say how her brain was a unique Alzheimer's case study. But the thought of her being all hollowed out—her insides not being hers anymore—made me feel as if I shouldn't stand for it.
I was confused and I wanted very badly to draw my own ethical, logical conclusion (even though I of course had no say in the matter), but all I could really think about were those damn jeans.
Before that age, my mind had wandered aimlessly through tangled thickets of concept and experience, picking such an exquisite bouquet from some sweet things that grew there while the more thorny things scratched at my legs at times, or caught in my hair.
I had only a vague sense of guilt for a little childhood mischief or ignorance. I was barely self-aware and it was blissful.
So I think that’s why it’s only recently that I’ve realized: we were perfect, you and I. We just didn’t know it yet. We thought—-because we were told-—that we were bad little girls; irreverent, scandalous. Though, the way I remember it, we didn’t really mind except for when we were being scolded. It never stopped us from clinging to opposite fire escapes, giggling together through Boy Scout walkie talkies, pilfered from older brother’s dresser drawer, or sneaking around the sanctuary to brush our little hands across the quilted wall-hanging. There was glitter on it, and sequins, and it sparkled as our nimble fingers traced the burning bush and the Hebrew inscription just above the hem. How could they expect us not to touch it? It sparkled and we were little girls.
The sequins would cast light on the ceiling sometimes, and the reflection of the wavy pattern in which they were sewn made me feel as if I was underwater. I loved that feeling.
Grandpa had a swimming pool in the back yard, and as a child I spent most summer afternoons there. It was so blue and clear and clean--it even smelled clean and I liked the way the scent of chlorine would linger in my hair all day, if Mom didn't make me shower right after a swim. I loved the feeling of myself in the water; it was suspension, the only time I felt graceful. Like I was covered in cool glass, the old-fashioned kind—the hand-blown glass with ripples and dimples that they show you on field trips in second grade—but better because it was so pure and bright. Nothing makes a little girl feel beautiful like being covered in things that glint in the sunlight, and nothing made me feel beautiful like watching my limbs glide under that liquid crystal. They were distorted though, and strange, so it was easy to pretend I was no longer human. I was something else; anything else. I'd be Something Else for a while, then run inside to be a little girl again, dripping water on the carpet and getting chocolate everywhere after Grandpa gave me Butterfingers.
I would paint rainbows on my face as a little girl, too, or paint my entire body all different colors. Mom tried to scold me but laughed instead. As I aged my childhood inclination toward coloring my very person grew into a fascination with bright hair dyes. Blues and greens and pinks; they made me feel like magic, an ever-present rainbow to toss in the sunlight and release a thousand shining strands of color into the wind.
I think it takes a certain lack of self-awareness to feel like magic. Even writing the phrase seems ridiculous to me now, from a more cynical perspective. I don't see my mind as a thicket so much anymore. Now it feels more like clipped hedges, a manicured lawn being constantly and meticulously treated for weeds or moles or anything else spontaneous or unplanned.
I remember the thicket fondly, though; it was a place I wanted to be. A happily disheveled little girl in a creek-splashed dress; twigs, dandelion fluff, bits of leaves and some of those crawling blue flowers you see in springtime making nests in the tangles of my hair. Wildflowers everywhere, entwined in the bramble. It was warm, too, and quiet; a peaceful sort of chaos.
.
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