Shoulder blades against the freshly cut grass.
Swearing at the sky. Sharp breath.
Air that still smells like summer.
Flip flops stained green despite my dad's neat label on the mower,
warning to check your shoes.
And thinking how beautiful this is, despite the overwhelming sadness and confusion that occasionally overcomes my existence.
The small dance party held yesterday, that mostly involved hopping around singing
Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself".
How a new book feels. Or a hot mug of tea.
And the way a person smiles when you acknowledge them.
It's validating.
Maybe there is this insatiable need to not be just another stupid human.
Reading Bird By Bird. Anne Lamott is a genius. She makes me want to start writing and then never stop.
"I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.
Throughout my childhood I believed that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about.
It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head.
I read more than other kids; I luxuriated in books. Books were my refuge. I sat in corners with my little finger hooked over my bottom lip, reading, in a trance, lost in places and times to which books took me."
And she tells me that she wants to find her god.
She believes in the existence of something greater than herself but can't quite put a finger on it.
I like this friend, with her crazy red hair, huge blue eyes and flowing dresses. She's tall, and rail thin, with a foreign accent. We go to the same school, or at least we will when I start in a couple months. She's different than me, though.
She shrugs off bad grades, and dances around.
Thinks I'm decidedly masochistic for liking NaNoWriMo.
Conversations with her have sparked thoughts, tiny embers in my mind.
About what it means to see God in a sunset, or a song, or even a smile.
That God is not an entity that belongs exclusively to the pretty people, or the people that have things together. He's just as real to the toothless lady pushing a shopping cart of her meager belongings around the streets of Chicago. The nerds, the geeks, the hippies, anarchists, beatniks, and people losing their minds in asylum. You know the expression warts and all? Well that's the way he sees us, and that's the way we are to see others. I can believe in a God like that.
He calls us to the fringe. And here is something I've found.
Life is so beautiful out on the fringe.
Also, Tunafish leaves some of the best comments I've ever read.
Actually, all of you do.
Tuna is a cool kid.
ReplyDeleteI like this post a lot. The stuff about God. It sounds a lot like the things they try to expose us to at my school. But in a simpler way.
I love Anne Lamott. I haven't read that book, only traveling mercies. I love our propensity to read the same people while being forever apart. I also love the word propensity.
Peace to you. And quiet joy.
Where the grass is green when cut. Where grass is actually cut. Where grass actually is. Sometimes I skip a year before revisiting that blessed scent. So often we fool ourselves into wanting to be nothing when we can't accept that we, being who we are, are still loved and wanted and cherished, never forgotten. Either we drown ourselves in music or find ourselves in it. Same thing with people. I have a friend. She moved another country away this summer and doesn't know I know. She's more beautiful than I remember and prettier than I care to imagine. She was my inspiration but never my hope. Hope never disappears. But when God lets you see hope in someone, when he shows you hope in someone, you get too attached and think of them as an angel and they haunt your dreams and desires in the countless and fragile hours. Jesus should be our hope.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you but please don't say that, I'll have to write even better now =P jk. I only really get to write well here. School is too constricting and music has always been written better. But that's no excuse
This is a really great post. I honestly like the way you write.
ReplyDeletewww.modernworld4.blogspot.com