Nothing is ever lost to us as long as we remember it

The days have rolled into a lull. And I am more than okay with this, mostly because I know that this lull will not last. In a matter of weeks I will be back into the routine that I have known and grown to love, a routine that has been mine for nearly four years. It will be the last of this routine for me. Graduation looms on my horizon, and I'm at the point now where I don't know how I feel about it. We've been in this long-distance relationship for a while now, I'm nervous about how well we will be acquainted when we finally meet. I'm excited, though, and I've been waiting and looking ahead this whole time. I know I'll be ready to leave. There may be a pull in my heart towards this place and these years, but there will be no desire to stay.
In every season of my life, I have been as eager to leave when it was over as my heart has been melded to everything associated with it while I was there.

I've never had any trouble attaching myself to people, places, and times. If ever there was any struggle, it was simply in the expressing of such felt attachments. If I could, I would send out a big I LOVE YOU to every soul and moment that so touched my life while I was in its presence. I love you for being gracious in allowing me to be near. In allowing me to sit on your green lawn and cry on your pillowcases under your windowsills. I love you for cooking for me and letting me sleep on your couch and ride with you. I love you for showing me what I didn't know and exposing me to something greater. I love you for holding my hand and paying for my dinner. I love you for laughing with me and at me, and for playing the music for that time of my life. I love you because you know what I don't and see what I don't, and because you love what I'm learning to love. I love you for your smiles and your precious faces. For your innocence and your experience.

My life is Jello. Sitting and waiting in the bowl. Patiently to gel

It's a haiku.

You know when you're at a weird point in your life when things could go amazingly well or oh-no-oh-gosh badly,if everything happened exactly the way you wanted it to, then you would be on a smooth path, or if things didn't go the way you wanted them to, then your life would suck, and you're sitting on the sidelines of such happenings that you have no control over trying to make it all go the way it's supposed to even though you know that it's not doing anything to influence the happenings?

Just curious.

I'm waiting to sign a lease for the first time ever. I'm waiting on hours for a new experimental-ish job. I'm waiting for acceptance into a summer course that I hopefully will pass. I'm waiting to see if my tires will last. And I'm waiting. But the last thing I want to do is be passive. Waiting, by definition, is a passive verb, but I don't want to be so just because that is what I find myself doing a lot. At the end of my life, I want to feel the ache of spent muscles in my legs instead of a broken back from the load of meaningless crap I sat and collected while others traveled by.

I want to map a world of you.

There has always been and will always be that question of whether or not we can go back. Memories beg for our attention, and our feet refuse. In our innocence, we are so certain that long ago was our best. We yearn for things to be the way they were, but those ways have left us, and they're never coming back. We long for what's behind, ignoring what's ahead. Why do we wish for what was known and gone when the unknown will always be there for us? The past has left. Though tomorrow is not a promise, the unknown is guaranteed to never leave us. At least that companionship is something we can always count on.

"I feel the distance of the journey yet walked, even though a few steps of it have been taken...just a few. Still, along the way, Heaven has dropped a few articles in my backpack of a heart- Polaroids of faces I've met on my travels, confetti from former celebrations, dust from different corners of the globe, laughter kept in jars from loved ones, prayers on paper, ashes from deep grieving and loss, cages too small to live in any further...unresolved questions that lounge around like loose change at the bottom of my bag. And as I rummage through it all, I am thankful...curious...continually humbled...forever a student on this earth. I am still so stubborn, so impatient, so young... and yet so grateful for the chance to continue learning on this journey...I am standing on tip toe to see what else God's got up His divine sleeve, what else will find it's way into my backpack along the way..." -Joy Williams

So inexperienced, yet sometimes I feel so old. Sometimes I wonder if I lived in Eden whether or not my eyes would be as acquainted as they are with all these things. I know I was never meant to know the grief and pain I have known, and I can only imagine what true innocence is.

But.

My yearning for better life has stretched me. My journeys through these uncharted territories have met me with you. I have found my love in your face that is stained with the bruises of your own stories. I have found my place in your hand as we jump over the hurdles and fall down on the other side. I have seen myself reflected in your eyes too. And knowing that I can call you and hear you say the same things makes my weak arms and feeble knees think that maybe they can go a little longer.

And hearing you laugh revives my heart and my tired head. Thanks for being with me. Thanks for being my friends.

I miss you, my farewell friend

I logged into Myspace this morning, which is something I haven't done in a long time. I found on my profile a picture collage that I forgot was there. As I stared at each one that went by, I found myself once again missing something: my past, or more specifically, my senior year into my freshman year. And then I'm wowed when I remember that I'm a junior. And even that title is about to run out with only 19 days of school left.

I saw the smiles of myself and all those around me. I seemed happy then. Content. Now, I certainly didn't feel that way at the time. If I were to stare long enough I would remember that I was sick in that picture. I was worrying about a test in that one. And in that one I was very mad at my sister. If I stared long enough to remember the circumstances. But most of the time, all I see is happy. And most of the time, that's all I remember.

The thing is, I used to always do this. Look back. Look back and miss. The natural answer is, of course, "well time goes by fast, better soak it all up, live and love in the present, don't think ahead too much, don't miss what's in front of you." Yes, yes, all true. But I used to always do this. And I haven't in a long time. I haven't in a long time really contemplated and pondered my past and the people I knew and what I gained at that time and why it's important to me now. Am I moving too fast? I can argue that I'm not. I have thoroughly enjoyed every age and season of my life so far, and I think the fact that I have such fond and vivid memories of those ages proves it. But why is there still that feeling of loss?

I know that people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, but is the ache of missing those people and times supposed to be there? Is that how we're supposed to remember them? Is that ache the proof we're left with to show us that it really did happen and we really did know them? I always wonder. I wonder if when I get to heaven all these questions will be answered. That would be nice.

Questions are good. I fully support them. But I really just want to soak up the sun in my skin and the laughter in my ears and the flowers in my nose and the blue sky in my eyes, and coffee on my tongue. I want to absorb you, all my friends, and let you love me. Freedom. No hiding.

Like riding a bike!

In that one never forgets. Supposedly.

I haven't worked at Beans & Cream in over two years. And I haven't filled in for someone at Beans & Cream in well over one year. Yet when I returned to fill in for two nights this week, I found that though there have been a few changes in the business over the past two years, I slipped quite easily back into my routine.

And I'm not gonna lie. I miss it. I quit because I didn't enjoy giving up my nightly study hours. It wasn't like my gpa suffered, B average was pretty good for my freshman year, I thought. I had been considering it for a month or two prior to my final decision. What finalized it for me was sitting in the cafeteria in early November sitting next to Melis and across the coffee girl.

Coffee girl: I need to go to Walmart. Y'all wanna come?

Me and Melis: Sure.

Coffee girl: other stuff I don't remember ... and let's get a movie YOU GUYS WANNA WATCH A MOVIE?!?!?! *eyes darting back and forth between the two of us like she does when she gets excited*

Melis: says nothing and shrugs

Me: I can't. I have to work. (I never understood why I have to constantly remind people of my routines, especially since this particular one had been set for about a year.)

Coffee girl: *eyes fall and huge sigh and turns to Melis* I'm so sick of her having this job.

Yeah. I was too.

But the truth is that when I return to that routine, I remember everything from that time in my life. Graduating high school. My first car wreck. My awkward but wonderful and memorable eighteenth summer. My freshman year of college. My sister's apartment. My first car. My tiny dorm. The smell of the coffee and the supply closet. Washing the coffee pots. Wiping down the espresso machine. refilling the sugar. The scrapes of the chairs as I sweep. And I miss it. I miss all the things I used to think about when I was there by myself. I miss the way it would wear me out each night. I miss the leftover stale donuts. And how my hands would always feel cold from all the water from all the dishes I'd wash and all the surfaces I had to wipe down.

It was truly my job. And I knew it well. And it knew me. I obviously didn't forget it. And it obviously hasn't forgotten me. Like riding a bike.

I should be writing papers instead...

I'm wide awake now thanks to the energy of my favorite redheaded person with whom I traipsed through Walmart while she claimed to be sleepy, but managed to find excitement with nearly every item at her eye level in the store. I do not know if that is an entirely grammatical sentence.

So instead of writing a five page paper on Shakespeare's sonnet 14 or my memoir for nonfiction writing, I'm here. I have no thoughts except that I am feeling rather accomplished. I've done all my homework for tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday. So yay me!

I was labeled a liberal last night. I don't know who was the originator of the pairing of that term with my name. And then when we were trying to make the film we were told to "do what your shirt says." What does that mean? How do you do liberal things while playing Clue? At least I wasn't the "slob" or the "blonde."

So the definition of "veracity:"
"We see into our memories in much the way that we see across the floor of a sunbaked desert: everything we conjure, every object, creature, or event we perceive in there, is distorted, before it reaches us, by mirages created by subjectivity, time and distance. . . The best the a would-be nonfiction writer can do is use imperfect language to invoke imperfectly remembered events based on imperfect perceptions."

SO in creating a memoir, or memory in words, the facts aren't just so. Unless one has a journal they keep all the time and photographs. Oh hey! I do! But still, memories are subjective, selective, and clouded by time. But it's my memory. And even if it isn't true, I'm being faithful to the spirit of my memory. Because it is mine. My memory, my perspective, my viewpoint.

I still haven't decided what memory I'm going to write about. I'm thinking a conversation I had with my granddaddy at dusk on May 27, 2000, on a patio swing, just the two of us. A walk to get the paper. One sentence I'll never forget.