In Which My Car Is Marginalized

As I pulled out in front of the semi, I realized it was coming on very quickly, not just 60 mph, and for a millisecond I thought I should get into the far lane, but he beat me to it.

"That's fine," I said to my carpooling sister. "Now I don't need to accelerate quickly (I think I need to add some oil to my car)."

The semi flew past and got over in front of me. He was carrying a giant Thing. What it was I do not know, but it was a very big Something... somewhat conical shaped and looked like it was solid iron. This constituted a wide load, and there was a corresponding pickup truck carrying the "wide load" banner.

"What is that?" I said to my carpooling sister. "It looks like a giant... um... I don't know." I thought of the noses of rocket ships and submarines but doubted the idea.

Feeling slightly sheepish for pulling out when I did, I moseyed along behind the Giant Thing and his bodyguard. Lots of traffic passed us, and I observed that the wide load wasn't keeping right-ish in the slightest. I smiled amiably at the driver's confidence. Traffic had to jolly well hug the leftish side of the highway to go around. I even saw a regular semi lean left as it passed.

Finally, as we approached a red light, I decided I was done cruising behind these guys, and swung into the empty left lane. Then a strange thing happened. The escort pickup truck chose that particular moment to get partway into the left lane in front of me!

"Okay...?" I said with a bemused titter. The light turned green and the pickup truck returned to his spot in the right lane.

"Oh," I said, "I guess he didn't want me passing while we're at a light." Still in the left lane, I pressed my foot to the accelerator. Only for the pickup truck to get in front of me again!

"Dude!" I said, in amused frustration. "I saw other people passing earlier!....sheesh Fine!" So I got back into the right lane, and so did the pickup truck.

I was going to make a right turn in a mile anyway (to get a car wash), so no big deal to be forced to stay in the right lane, eh? As I shrugged this thought to my sister, several cars passed me and the pickup truck and the Big Thing. "Seriously!?" I sneered.

I turned to V. "He's mad at me for pulling out in front of him! That's the only explanation I can think of! Do you think he'd seriously do that?"

We drove on, and I said, "It's like an animal!... they are strange animals!"

A bit later I said, "when we get next to him, please give him a long stare... and tell me if he's looking at us and looking mad!" (I was kind of afraid to make eye contact, myself).

We got to the light where I was going to turn right. Traffic slowed as it approached the red light, and I wasn't quite to the turn lane yet, so I waited, not wanting to do the slightest thing to offend those delicate temperaments in front of me. A big pickup truck barreled past me on the right shoulder. "Hey!" I exclaimed. A car behind me did the same thing. Now, pretty much at the turn lane, I moved over. And, like a strangely predictable mother bear, that escort truck moved over to block me! I stopped (for the traffic was stopped and now that he was blocking, I had to stop.) I laid on the horn for a halfway satisfying BJEEEP. He ignored me, did not budge.

"Now that he's so close to the other truck, maybe you can get by," V said.

"Uhh, yeah I don't want to mess to closely with him." Somehow I didn't doubt that he'd feel free to ram me if I insisted. And then somehow it would turn out it was my fault because this was a big government Something and because I'd displayed such poor driving skills earlier, it was the escort's duty to make sure I didn't get another chance to pull in front of the big truck. Maybe if they'd hit me there would've been a ginormous explosion.

Intimidation is a funny thing. If I forced my way past that guy, I somehow wouldn't have been one bit surprised if he like riddled my car with a machine gun. or just leaned over and smushed us. Just by insistingly pulling in front of me, I believed he Meant Business. Except-- I did have the nerve from a somewhat safe distance to bleat my horn at him.

When the light turned green, for a moment I thought the pickup truck was going to leave his Wide Load and turn right, in front of me, just to prolong the punishment! But he eased on through the stoplight, and I was free to continue on my way to get the car wash. That took about ten minutes, so back on the highway I didn't encounter those people again. I'm glad I happened to be stopping off, or it would have been a strange trip home, submissively crawling behind the Big Thing the whole way.

V said, "Maybe it was the semi driver, not the pickup driver, who's mad at you. And he radioed back to the pickup driver."

I suppose to a couple of bored but tense drivers, maneuvering the US highway system with a huge and heavy load, I was one of those blights of bad drivers, who they wholeheartedly wish they could just wipe out. Well, I like to tell myself they had a really good explanation for not letting my car pass. But I think I can now understand how road rage comes about! I felt so infuriated that for one silly miscalculation, that guy was taking it in his own hands to make me pay.

I guess too, in a small way, I understand more what it feels like to be discriminated against.

Living in the Season

I stayed awake, flitting from hope to hope,

thinking there was still something to find on earth, a completion of the day.

Then I realized I had sowed little to be expecting a harvest.

I had wandered the fields looking for something to eat

when it was planting time.

I bought the things I needed, but I did not put them to use;

I ate food that was meant for tomorrow.

I sat up all night trying to find an end to the day, but found it not

and the new day took no pity on me.

I hated what was near and wanted what I could not have.

I loathed my memory of throwing words to the wind.

My eyes grew dry, but I did not wash them.

I stored up an inheritance

which would benefit the living, not the dead--

and I pondered what I would find when death found me.

But in the end I knew this--

a woman rises up in the morning because it is a new day

and the sunrise demands it.

But she only relinquishes the day

when she remembers that the answer is to fear God.

There's no completion on earth.

It is best to let go of a moment as readily as you've taken it in your hand.

The moments don't even know themselves.

But God knows every moment

and it is He who established

a time to wake and a time to sleep.

New Day

(softly

slowly

slowly, still)

You wander like a shadow left by

leaves upon the wind

you drink the air that many haven't found.

There you are reminding yourself that

logic isn't always just

There you are, you carry gentleness

to the sinners and condemned

they don't know why you're there

but something's changed

like midnight brings new day.

New day.

Sunrise coming.

Clouds are breaking

Hardship we are overcoming

In your love ourselves forgetting

New day.

Three times I did deny you

when you called, when you knocked,

when you lay halfway dead

but you did not deny the ones who came to you

You'd choose the least, the meek, the fool--

my pride you can't abide

you may not keep track of unpaid dues

but you are drawn to fools

You show them a new day

Midnight brings new day.

New day.

Will you look at me and see a fool

will you take me, love me, as your own

will you walk with me

talk with me

always?

Can I copy you-

be like you-

-emulate your gentle way-

walk like you

talk like you

follow you right into

the new day?

Sunrise coming. Clouds are breaking.

sunrise coming. clouds are breaking.

.....

Garnished empty flasks; the bread of life.

I don't know much about the band Within Temptation, but listening to a cd today I relished the celtic-metal sound. There's such range between the choral heights and the heavy strummed chords on the electric bass. Some metal music I think of as dirty silver and black and red, but this I'd say is more of a midnight blue with touches of silver and brown. It lures the senses with the aura of magic and mystery. Simply, painfully, lovely voice contrasted with the subterranean growl of metal music.

There seem to be cultures of artists that recreate something that never was--a dark lacey celtic/gothic society, as if there was a time in the middle ages when gods swept shadows over the earth and the Lord of the Rings really happened and the air had a darkly satisfying chivalry cloaked in mists and witchcraft. Everything was sadly perfect. Hearts could speak across miles. Bleeding hearts, moonlight. Violins strain to say the truth that they are only subjects, not gods, nor spirits. The cry in the dark is worshipful of something unknown. You get the picture--from the same fantasy come vampire romances, slow dances with suppressed evil.

Today I listened to the cd and didn't think through the above (til now as I described it), but simply enjoyed the sounds; sound waves that are tall, deep, and wide. Frankly beautiful. I went about my business folding laundry and picking up on some words now and then. I felt a leaning towards overcast-Sunday-afternoon feeling, the feeling of searching, reaching, embracing for something astoundingly meaningful. This happens sometimes when I forget myself and try to lean on music (of any kind) instead of just enjoying it.

So I say I know very little about the band I was listening to, but what I observed was this. Musicians singing little folk ditties... or opera with an enormous pyrotechnic metal choir...are not only looking for satisfaction, but sharing that search. The music seems to promise satisfaction, but it's not the singer that's really satisfied, nor the audience. Even the music is never truly satisfied--no people can truly, completely, satisfy a song. But in the attempt, people stretch and grow. The harder they search, the deeper twists the pain that says just one melody away is the one big--very very very big--beautiful--answer to the emptiness exposed by unbridled fantasy.

I appreciate the series my pastor is preaching on Ecclesiastes. So far he has observed these things about Ecclesiastes. 1) The search for ultimate significance is real. 2) The things we generally do in that search are usually not bad (eating chocolate, coaching little league, parenting children), they are just empty-- of the final answers to life's questions. 3) Death is the test of this. You're going to die: whatever you accomplish, whatever you enjoy, doesn't stop death, and what you do dies with you--at best your children and grandchildren remember.

Someone on the radio, speaking on Ecclesiastes, listed the names of some people from 100, 50, 10 years ago who were extremely famous in their time. The names already meant nothing to me, and presumably nothing to most other listeners. If you live for your own legacy, futility will overtake you sooner or later and you'll experience bouts of terror at your insignificance.

Yet the sum of Ecclesiastes is not to reject good things in life. It is good to enjoy your life, but you'll find significance in fearing God and following His commandments. This is where a sense of home-and-dinner-on-the-table comes.

Using "Where the Wild Things Are" as a parable for Ecclesiastes, the pastor asked us to spend the week thinking, "What is my rumpus?" (Rumpus=hyperactive boy galumphing around with a bunch of tame monsters without mother telling him not to). Chances are we're not looking for meaning in bad things. Just in empty things.

Many dear people with longing hearts are afraid to believe in such a mighty God. The musical cry for meaning is its own evangelism. Am I the only one who feels so alone? Let me test the people around with an invocation of wildly lonely feelings. Do you feel it? can you fight it? Does meaningless keep you awake at night and asleep in the morning, or do you deafen yourself to the silence by self-discipline? Loneliness-- a silent religion. The emptiness, first feared, then explored, and never understood, becomes a vast deity to worship, news to spread. Perhaps in keeping with Nietzsche, 'When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!'"

Empty, meaningless is everything under the sun--meaningless is a world that was never created but simply happened. Meaningless is an earth whose geometric center of a great empty universe is probably an illusion--as each human is caught midway between east and west horizons. Meaningless is everything if indeed there is no master.

But to humble oneself before Supreme authority--to be obedient to a good and fierce Father, to love and admire the Keeper of life, to love created things through the lens of admiration of the Creator----vanquishes the fear of the yawing black depth that is ... meaninglessness. You really don't need to be remembered on earth. The eternal Father remembers you. To the one who finds emptiness in the void, I say look not in the void and you will not find such emptiness. Fear God, follow His commands. The puzzle of life doesn't just fall into place when you do this, no! but neither need you fear the conundrum when you already know who wins in the end.

Leaf journal, musical journeys

Often I stop and look at a beautiful leaf, and then I pick it up and put it in whatever book I have handy. So far I haven't arranged a good way to preserve them, but I keep some of them with me until they fall apart. Last fall I picked up a couple leaves from my running route. One was simply beautiful. Another was not exciting--small, oval, and speckly, with a story. I call it my interruption leaf, because I was walking with my roommate's mom, and we were praying together. In the middle of her prayer I stopped walked and backed up a few steps and said, "oh, that leaf looked metallic somehow, it was so beautiful!" We found the leaf and I realized it only looked metallic because of the lighting and the speckles. I felt very ashamed and wicked, so I kept the leaf as a reminder that I can't always "go ride bikes". The leaf is still in the binder cover I slipped it into, cracked and almost completely brown.

Leaves seem to mark various occasions, so I will paste them into a large multimedia journal and write the synopsis of the occasion.

Location and sensory experience have a powerful connection. There's no way to draw a picture of this, but when I return to a place, I remember the music I listened to and the conversations I had. Today I walked out on a pier on Lake Michigan, which brought to surface memories of some poignant walk-n-talks. Once at night, and I got my first glimpse of the dazzling Chicago skyline by night. Another time I made a spur-of-the-moment visit to a friend because I was passing by Chicago, and for that afternoon we were really good friends. Sometimes we are not so conversational. Life gives moments, not always hours, and rarely lifetimes.

One little stretch of an unremarkable highway should be the same as other stretches, but somehow my brain recognizes the geographic location, and I'll remember belting out Downhere songs last time I drove past that light pole, or exit, or patch of trees.

And in my head is a road map. Red highlighter shows my routes to Michigan and Illinois, yet the highlighter has ridiculous amounts of metadata that's invisible to the naked eye; it is simple... known. It's known that this spidery shape represents a community of brothers and sisters in Christ. It's known that on this or that trip I sang myself hoarse; on that route I exhorted my friend to get away from her dangerous boyfriend, as a terrible slush storm slowed our progress homeward; this route draws memory of a beautiful pattern of clouds that seemed to alternate yellowish and bright-bluish.

And people can be colors. I know one person who is the color blue. Doesn't look blue. Just as the same identity. And today I realized I can't arbitrarily make blue my color, even though I like it enough to wear it regularly. So I bought a more suiting color.

A road trip of three hours is short. It's only a couple of cds. Only a couple of good full length conversations (complete with dozens of snapshot diversions). I could drive and drive; only, if every occupant in the car is blissfully asleep, I sometimes get jealous and ease the car onto the rumble strips.

This weekend has been a Robert Fulghum weekend. "It makes me happy to see there is a Robert Fulghum book in your bathroom," I said to my roommate at her new apartment. Last winter my "Everything I Know I Learned in Kindergarten" lived in the bathroom. When I got home from my road trip, what should be lying conspicuously on my laptop but yet another Robert Fulghum book, a gift from my sister who knows I like his writing? (How I would love to converse with that man.)

Life tends to flock.

"Don't Blame The Mirror" a book. And my stream of conscious follow-up.

"Have you ever noticed that it's often the women who shop the most fiercely who make the worst errors?"

"There could be so much loneliness in going back to an era your friends have all left."

For a laugh I picked up a book on appearance/beauty from 1967. The perspective is middle class, strongly opinionated, sometimes hilarious (the main author was a TV show host). The late 60's are easy to relate to--some current trends were just beginning; the 50's were over. Although we no longer have women wearing hair rollers in public, the 60's already had string bikinis for women to gossip about. Etc.

The thing is, there are some true gems of wisdom that the authors probably didn't even intend. Because I am addicted to finding practical application for advice, I can't help generalizing some of the ideas. The first quote continues, "The people who have to drive a hard bargain, who have to look in every store, and have to try on everything--they're the ones who get alligator shoes with the mismarkings, the bag with the flaw in it." This is kind of what I've been learning about relationships. That kind of analytical-perfection-idealism is a really killjoy, dreamkiller. I know. I'll always analyze things, I'm sure, but I'm learning to keep my mouth shut when I'm about to squash spontaneity with an irrelevant look at "the other hand".

The second quote is from a chapter on plastic surgery. She's all for it if it's for professional reasons. But she doesn't think just anybody should get it. "...When I'm alone I have to admit that I take my hands and I push up the lines around the mouth and under the eyes to see how I look. But I realize when I do this that I am looking at a face from the past and I don't really want to go back there. There could be so much loneliness in going back to an era your friends have all left."

Sometimes I wish I'd gone through college differently. Been more honest with my dreams. Been more ambitious rather than grade-conscious. Sought out mentorship from my professors, instead of always showing them what I already knew. But I had a great college experience; I wouldn't trade the phases of learning I went through. I wouldn't trade the dating experience I had. Unless I have a specific reason to continue education, I can't hang on to that world. If I wish I'd been a more humble learner then, the answer is to be a more humble learner in my current situation.

"The thing I worry about though is the sexual drive that makes some women go about changing their features. If she thinks she will suddenly become attractive to a man and be the sex symbol of the neighborhood just because her nostrils have been shortened, I think this is a woman who needs psychiatry more than plastic surgery..."

"...And the indiscriminate desire to re-create the past through plastic surgery is something that worries me because a personality change does go on and must go on through all the phases of a woman's life. And if through surgery her appearance gets out of step with her personality, I think she's going to have emotional trouble..."

"...But there is a very distinct warning I must sound. There are people who seek under the guise of plastic surgery a new social, marital, economic, professional, or sexual rebirth. ...If [her] bad nose is turned into an excellent nose, yet [s]he remains unfulfilled, [s]he has just been cheated of [her] single most satisfactory excuse for [her] personal failure."

I'm an experimenter, and sometimes I wish I lived in the city so I could do crazy things with my hair and people wouldn't worry that I was having an identity crisis. But I can't deny that sometimes I've imagined that a change to my appearance would give me a new chance at life. To lose weight, to get a new wardrobe. In fact, it is sometimes true that external changes can effect life changes, if the change makes you less self-conscious. But if the change makes you less yourself, more self-conscious, then you're in trouble. I am gradually phasing in a new wardrobe as well as making other changes in my life. The reason is that I have decided to take steps toward being a responsible adult. So many of my choices are colored by just a few passing words of a dominant relative or friend. So I'm in the belated process of figuring out what I like, where I want to go, what I want to create.

Told a dear friend of mine-- "It's like a sort of selfishness. But not a selfishness that puts yourself above others--but... puts yourself above yourself." Very sensical in my head...but perhaps requires some defining. What I mean in the second phrase, is that you're getting off your arse in order to be more fully you... in order to participate more fully in what life brings.

Sometimes it's helped me in life to accept who I am ...as I am. But there's a downfall if that goes too far. Because... frankly... you can't NOT be you. In other words, your everyday choices do affect who you are. If you read all the time, you're one who reads all the time. And what you read will affect who you are. If you mimic somebody, it's still you because you're the one mimicking. If you decide to go to a coffee shop once a week, that becomes part of who you are--and, even after you stop, may be a nuance in your personality.

People rise out of terrible circumstances saying "this is not me! I am more than my past, I am more than my abusive parent, I am more than my own bad habits!" But in mediocre circumstances, it's easier to just stay put. "This probably is me. And how dare I be dissatisfied with who I am? Others have it much worse. This is me, I need to accept that this is and will be me. If I have this or that selfish urge, I might as well follow it because that's me. And others need to accept me the way I am."

I do think people need to accept each other. But not so much "the way they are" as "for who they are." And in regards to one's own past, there's a difference between accepting what was (which is good to do), and accepting the effects of that past on the future. Progress is marked by acceptance despite any number of failures, plus an optimism that will always keep trying, will keep exploring, keep trusting in God's goodness and ability to change you from the inside out.

I have quite a list of things I've failed to do. But nibble by nibble, I'm throwing away the trash, tuning into my very own dreams, and gradually, by the grace of God, changing bad personality habits. One thing I have to bear in mind, being so analytical, is that it's more efficient to do something inefficiently, than to not do something at all because you're so busy figuring out the most efficient way!

The most amazing feature of grace is patience. The patience of God. The patience of people. I would not be so patient with myself. God is great.

Another Revisiting Session

This evening I went and walked around the yard of the place I moved out of 17 years ago, with the owner not home. I didn't go in the barn, though, just peeked in. The owner as much as said I could come any time, but I was hoping he'd be home so I could go in the barn and maybe even the house.

I oohed and ahed over different trees that are slightly more rugged now but mostly the same... and a dip in the ground that I suspect is the remains of a garden I dug... because my idea of digging a garden was to jump on the shovel to cut out squares of sod, then pick up those squares of sod and stack them to the side. There also may be a nest of marbles in that spot.

Some part of me even imagines that somewhere in the house is still a little matchbox police car that plays a siren when you press the wheels. Because in our last few months there, I lost track of that car, which was by far the coolest matchbox car we had. And I latched onto the idea that, certainly when we moved, it would turn up because all the furniture would be pulled away from the walls, etc. But I wasn't home when the final move was made.

I would really really love to walk around inside the barn. I don't have to, though. By walking around the yard, and barely peeking in the barn door, I am assured that my memories of the barn are sound. They are so whole, that it's almost as good as if I actually did get to go in there.
It's just unbelievable to me that our minds can store such vivid realities into memory. The entire property could have been, say, burned to the ground. And there my memory would be, uncertain, but there. But it just so happens to be there, almost exactly like it used to be, and so my memory is verified.

I left a gushy note in the owner's mailbox thanking him for making the place beautiful again, briefly cataloging my walk around the yard. Because there are certain ideals I hold regarding community and human interaction, and one part of that embracing Narrative as a natural part of communication. The mother in me says "even if it weirds people out, there are less detectable, but more long-term, good effects."