Soft

I lost someone close to me this week. 

Not lost in they've died but lost in the "well, that was an unforgivable betrayal of my trust" kind of way. 

I've been through so many relationship implosions over the years that it took a little while for this one to hit me. I did all the automatic stuff that I do--blocked them from my phone and social media, put away the things they've given me until I'm less emotional, activated my support group. I thought to myself "Well, that was unexpected" and went on with my day. 

We all know where this is going. 

That evening, after I held it together all day I tried to pickle myself in bourbon (it takes less now than it used to). I got into a horrible fight with David. I cried at a bus stop. I self-harmed in a more intentional way and screamed with grief and sobbed for hours. I've said it before, but going through life with big feelings is a constant fight.

Friday night I lost that fight.

* * *

My favorite Mary Oliver poem is only four lines long. 

"The Uses of Sorrow"

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift. 

* * * 

I have fallen a little in love with most of the people I have met and liked over the years. 

What can I say? I have a lot of feelings, sloppy boundaries, and a soft heart. 

Each time someone lets me down in a big way I tell myself that this is it. This is the time that I'm going to put up taller walls, keep people at an arm's length, stop calling that one friend who never wants to hang out. 

Then the next time I meet someone with the same obscure interest, the same favorite book, hell, just someone who looks cute and smiles at me I lose myself all over again. 

I am grateful to have such a loving, supportive partner in David. Every time I get excited about some new friend (or, frankly, crush) he's patient and kind. He gently reminds me that not everyone in the world is worth my time. I laugh and say "Yeah, but this person is."

He throws up metaphorical hands and I let myself be disappointed all over again. 

* * *

I am a walking trope: 

The person who walks around with ohmygodsomuchlovetogive and who gives it to all the wrong people and ohgodsomeonejustloveme. 

Kind of. 

I'm also the person who left her divorce with the determination to keep a soft heart and I've worked really fucking hard to keep it that way. I'm also a person who believes that the more love you let into your life, the more your love grows and reflects in the world. More than that, I believe--no, I know that loving people, even the ones who do not deserve it, has made me a better person.  

So what the fuck am I supposed to do? 

* * *

It isn't until Monday morning that I can really even begin to contemplate my most recent box full of darkness. 

I spend much of the weekend in an emotional and actual hangover, tinged with just a delightful soupçon of self-recrimination and disgust. I manage to pull myself out of it long enough to spend some time with friends on Saturday and go to church on Sunday, but I make sure to make myself feel worse at every opportunity (saddest shoutout to people who use food as punishment, too).

There isn't anything special about Monday. I went outside and felt the ground under my feet and the sun on my face. I went to the park and walked the gravel paths. I observed the mallards, finally home for summer, as they fed and played. I saw a cardinal--a bird that always reminds me of David--and took a short video of its song with him later. 

The whole time I carried that box of darkness with me and thought about how fucking fragile we all are. How stupid and frustrating and maddening we can be when we're hurt and want to hurt someone else. And then I did what I always do, what I hope I will always continue to do. 

I reminded my heart to stay soft and went home.

David

David and I have been dating for almost 18 months and making crispy tofu still eludes me. 

It's maddening. 

His current shifts have him working until late--8:00 or 8:30PM and I take a lot of pride in having something delicious on the table when he comes home. Eggplant parmesan, homemade root vegetable pot pie, stuffed squash and mashed potatoes--anything that gives me something to do in the evenings and makes it so he has something to look forward to after a long shift on a snowy evening. 

Tonight I've been trying to make a crispy tofu stir fry and the tofu turns out fine, I guess. But it's not what I wanted for him. 

It upsets me more than it should. 

* * *

When I'm feeling truthful, I'll admit I knew something was wrong in my last relationship. 

Of course I did. There were so many indications that my ex and I didn't belong together, that we weren't really compatible. I briefly thought about calling off our wedding about a month before it happened, but I felt like I was too far into it. 

I wasn't brave enough to admit that we were failing. 

I lived on comfort food during the years with my ex. Hotdish, pasta carbonara, anything that was a simple carb. Anything that was both comforting and that I didn't actually care how it turned out. 

Just thinking about my diet now makes me shudder and realize two things. 

I was deeply in love. 

I was profoundly unhappy. 

* * *

"Jesus, it's hot in here."

"Yeah, the air-conditioner has never been very good. Do you need anything?"

"Water?"

He gets out of bed and heads toward the kitchen. Before he gets there he doubles back and puts on a record.

"I think you'll like this."

He turns on an artist from his hometown--someone I've never heard before. I space out for much of the record in the way you do when you're happy and in love and in the moment. 

Then there's a lyric that catches me. It's funny how that happens, isn't it? 

I got a tenderhearted lover who does me good.

He's a little rough around the edges but don't let that fool you.

This is the most content I've been in years. 

***

I've been hesitant to write too much about David. 

I wrote a lot about the ex and our relationship and I'm superstitious. I haven't wanted to jinx what I have. 

I've also spent a lot of time thinking about my marriage vs. my relationship with David. 

I'm not going to do yet another post-mortem of my marriage. My ex doesn't deserve that kind of thought. What I will say is that I feel like I have a partner in everything. I have someone who has my back and who loves me, even on our worst days. This is the most loved, supported, and . . .  I don't know, seen I've ever felt. 

I think a lot about that song he played me when we first started dating.

Never gonna be perfect, but I'm still gonna try. 

Closest thing I'll ever get is you by my side. 

We've been through such a ridiculous, maddening, infuriating year. Between COVID and layoffs and elections, I feel like there's so much that could have--should have gone wrong in a relatively new relationship. And we're still together. I'm still deeply in love and profoundly happy. 

I still give a shit about how the tofu turns out. 

Just Dance

"What I really want to do is take her somewhere like The Cardinal, where no one is in on the joke, and have everyone in the bar wonder 'Is she trying to harmonize with the other person and they just aren't getting there?'"

"Kels, how much alcohol would it take to get you to do karaoke?"

It's late summer and we're siting around a picnic table in South Minneapolis. I don't know why or how, but the conversation has turned to how much I love to sing and how bad I am at it. The teasing is sweet and good-natured, and while I'm exhausted and have had a string of bad weeks, I'm inclined to take it rather than dish back.

"It's a Catch-22. The amount of alcohol required for me to be that brave is greater than the amount of alcohol that would cause me to pass out."

"So it's never going to happen?"

"Never."

From across the table I can hear someone mutter "Thank God."

***

"THIS IS MY JAM!" I grab Maggie's hand and drag her to the dance floor. 

I don't leave, except to get a glass of water, for the next three hours. 

Somewhere between playing air-guitar to Don't Stop Believing and rapping all of California Love a friend from college I haven't seen in years bursts out laughing. "Who the hell are you and what have you done with our friend, Kelly?"

I just smile and shake it for him.

***

Recently, while attempting to convince me to do karaoke, a friend described me as "a self-serious, attention-adverse introvert." 

It is, I'll admit (grudgingly) an apt description. 

I despise being the center of attention in large groups of people (or small groups of people where I don't know anyone.) I am deeply, painfully shy and have a hard time thinking about what to say to people I don't know. 

It's not a character flaw, it's just the way I am.

As a result, I've cultivated interests and hobbies that don't require, you know, anything remotely close to being the center of attention (distance running, reading, snarky muttered observations) or help me create a little psychic distance between myself and other people (first-person memoir, the occasional cosplaying (OMFGOD, I need an excuse to do Amaterasu from The Wicked + The Divine, like, now)). 

Karaoke does not fall into either of those categories. 

***

"Kelly Prosen! Dance Floor Rock Star!"

The bride has an open chair next to hear and the band has taken a break so I take the opportunity to catch up. I shrug.

"They played my jam."

"Which one?"

"Billie Jean." 

"Yeah, that's a great song."

"When I was living in China, whenever a group of three or more Americans walked into a bar they would play one of two songs. The Jay-Z song that was popular at that point in time or Billie Jean." I smile. "While we were dancing Kristin told me that she can't hear that song without thinking about me, in China, dancing every time I heard it, and that it always makes her happy."

Jessie laughs. "I can see where imagining you dancing would make someone pretty happy." 

***

My phone starts buzzing in my pocket. It's one of my dinner guests, asking me to bring them up. I pull it out, assure them I will be down momentarily, and realize I have a text message from about forty minutes earlier. 

"Most. Epic. Pocket. Dial. Ever. I can only assume that was your American Idol audition. Don't listen to the critics, kid. Go with your heart." 

I check my recent call log, think for a moment, get a full body blush going, and start looking for a piece of furniture to hide under. The only people I will sing in front of are people who knew me at the tail end of my emo/punk stage (or earlier), people who are, at this point, pretty much required to love me. 

Aside from that, I sing exclusively when no when else can hear me: in the shower, in my car, in the kitchen. 

When I tell Michelle (two weeks later, still blushing) about the pocket dial she laughs so hard she ends up with milkshake up her nose. 

"Oh, c'mon." I beg. "I mean, maybe it's possible I didn't sound that bad."

"Honey, have you heard yourself? And with someone who doesn't know you that well? This falls under the category of 'Change your name and move to Saigon.'" 

I put my head in my hands. 

***

"This music blows." 

"Yeah. I agree." 

My older brother and I are sitting around a campfire at a family reunion. We're listening to something neither of us likes. Most of the family is around the corner playing Jarts or putting their kids to bed. My younger brother comes and flops down on the grass next to us. 

"Man, someone needs to change the radio." He grouses. 

My mother comes by and inquires what we're up to, why we're not playing games or swimming or whatever. After a moment's pause she asks, "Do you guys want to have a dance party?" 

My brother bolts out of his chair and runs for his ipod. "What should we listen to?" 

"MJ!"

"Michael!"

"Michael Jackson!"

The four of us have an impromptu Michael Jackson dance party. In the middle of the Northern Wisconsin woods. 

I love my family.

***

I feel hands on my hips and hear a voice in my ear. 

"I like the groove of your walk, your talk, your dress." 

I spin around, stand up on tiptoes, and wrap my arms around his neck, and give him a big kiss out of sheer exuberance. 

"Careful, honey. You're going to make my boyfriend jealous." 

"THIS IS MY JAM!"

"Didn't you say that about Billie Jean? And You Shook Me All Night Long? And Only Girl in the World? And . . ."

I stick my tongue out at him. "Are you going to stand there talking, or are you going to dance with me?"

He laughs. "I'm going to go get a drink and watch you dance, girl. I don't get a chance to see you like this very often." 

I smile. "I'm like this exclusively when I can dance." 

"I like it." He gives me a twirl and pulls me in to whisper one last thing in my ear.

"You knock me off of my feet." 

Gimme Sympathy

"And the lyrics go: "So whiskey won't you come and take my troubles, 'cause I can't seem to do it anymore.""

I stop singing and look expectantly at Jessie, who's holding the guitar. We're with the gang, on our annual Labor Day cabin weekend. There are people playing Hammerschlagen across the way, a few people have wandered off to bed, and a few of us are sitting around the the fire, singing.

Jess look at me, amused. "I haven't heard of it, but Kel, I want you to know that almost the entire time, you were singing the same note there." She pauses and smiles the sweetest smile I can imagine. "I don't know if it was the right note, but it was the same one."

We pause for a moment and then burst out laughing.

***

"Kel?"

"Hang on, I need to leave the room for a second." My satin party dress makes a slight whispering noise as I slip out.

"Hey, what's up?"

"We have your birthday present!" 

I start laughing. "From half a country away?" 

"Yeah, are you ready?" 

"Of course!"

After a few moments, someone notices that that I'm no longer at my own party. When they find me, I've kicked off my high heels and am sitting cross-legged on the bed, in my party dress, crying softly and listening while my friends sing me I'll Fly Away, a song I love, and a song they learned specifically for my birthday. 

The guy who's walked into the room gently rubs my back, hands me a tissue, and quietly leaves. 

***

"How much have you guys had to drink?"

Mom and I look at one another and burst out laughing. We're in the kitchen, listening to Motown, drinking wine, and singing along to my Motown playlist when my father walks in.

I love hearing my mother sing. 

My mother's childhood was full of Sunday dinners that ended in complex harmonies. Her mother possessed perfect pitch, a trait that missed both of us, but when Mom and I are together (especially if we're in the kitchen) we're usually singing. It's been this way for my whole life. When I think about my childhood, any memory is almost inevitably accompanied by the opening chords of Springsteen's Rosalita or Aretha Franklin hitting the high note on Share Your Love with Me.

I grew up in a house full of music, even if we weren't the ones making it. 

***

There's a nine second video on my phone that makes me so happy I could spit. 

I took it last week. I went to my running partner's house for a mid-week party. He was at the piano, taking requests, and I asked for my song of the moment, Metric's Gimme Sympathy.  It's one of those songs, like Skinny Love or Wagon Wheel that just, gets me, right in that spot behind your sternum where music hits you sometimes. It's a song I have to hear to the end, that I will belt out with abandon while I'm cooking or driving or in the shower, it makes me smile so hard my cheeks hurt when I hear it unexpectedly. 

The video is of my running partner, whose voice I love, singing a bit of the chorus. Right after I filmed it (specifically so that I could watch it when I was having a rotten day) he paused and said: "Kel, come here and help me out. I don't really remember the lyrics." 

I pulled a chair up to the piano and we sang it together. 

***

I love to sing. 

How could I not, after growing up in the house I did? Of course I turned out this way.

If I am alone, I'm singing to myself. I sing while I'm cooking, while I'm cleaning the house, while I'm walking to and from my bus stop, while I'm texting with friends, I sing at my desk while I'm working. 

I sing constantly. 

The problem, of course, is that I can't carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. My sense of rhythm is so bad that I don't clap along at concerts because I am invariably half a beat behind. I sound awful and I know it. I've known it for most of my life and I've just adapted. I only sing when I'm alone. The second I see another person walking down the street toward me I clam up. When there are other people over helping me cook, I play instrumental jazz so I won't be tempted. I would rather set myself on fire than do karaoke. 

***

Some years ago, a couple friends of mine started learning songs for my birthday.

It's the birthday tradition I look forward to most every year. They kept it up even when they moved across country and it means the world to me. Most of my friends are musicians, either vocalists, music teachers, or simply gifted with the innate ability to pick up an instrument and follow along on a song, so I've started to ask more of them to learn something for my birthday.

The reason I love this, particularly, as a birthday gift is because the songs they learn are my favorites, and they learn them with the intention of singing together. The friends who started this tradition, the friends who I impose on every year are people who have known me for most of my adult life. They've either managed to get enough wine into me to convince me to sing along, caught me in the kitchen, or been the recipients of enough inadvertent pocket dials that they know how rotten I sound and that I'll usually be dragging the beat.

They don't care.

That's not quite right. They're talented musicians and they take a great deal of pleasure in sounding, you know, good. It's more that they love me and the know how happy it makes me to do something I love without a shred of self-consciousness. Or, as my running partner frequently tells me:

"I love singing with you. You've gotten to the point where you stopped giving a damn how you sound and it's refreshing."

I don't know that the friends who do this for me understand the enormity of the gift they give me every year. It's the sort of gift that requires a tremendous "thank you" but I've never been able to find the words to describe what it means to me.

Instead I just sent along my song requests for this year.

I can't wait.

Beauty #14 CHVRCHES

I’m wearing my Holly Golightly sunglasses into the office, carrying a blueberry smoothie in one hand and a huge glass of iced coffee in the other.

I nod to my assistant, drop my beverages on my desk, and head to the bathroom. Removing my sunglasses, I assess the damage.

I’ve got to stop wearing waterproof mascara to First Avenue.

***

I suffer amnesia when it comes to shows.

I forget, every damn time, what it feels like to hear a band play your favorite song. I fail to recollect how amazing a good bass line feels when it’s thudding in your chest. I disregard or downplay the sheer visceral pleasure in being closely packed in with other people, all sharing the same experience.

The amnesia is a blessing in disguise, I think. It keeps me going back.

***

I didn’t think I could be surprised by live shows.

It’s not that I’m not moved by, impressed with, or enjoy live shows. It’s that after fifteen years of attending everything from punk shows to jazz clubs, I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which a band could surprise me.

For someone so smart, I can be a real dummy.

A few days ago, Nick texted to ask if I wanted to use an extra ticket to the CHVRCHES show at First Avenue.  I tried for tickets when they went on sale, but the show sold out super quickly and I’ve been bummed by the prospect of missing it.

The show was sort of an unusual one for me to want to attend, as I avoid anything that even remotely smells like electronic music. Unsurprising, I suppose, considering my favorite bands tend toward banjos and complex harmonies.

Regardless, when Nick offered the ticket, I jumped at it.

One of the themes that keeps coming up in my writing is the slipperiness of describing attending a show. It’s hard to nail down because it’s such a confluence of physical sensations and emotional responses.

CHVRCHES was like that, except moreso. I didn’t expect to love the show as much as I did, to dance so hard I woke up with inexplicable bruises this morning. I never anticipated hugging Nick in a sheer overflow of emotion over hearing the lyrics: finally/we agree/no place for promises here.

I didn’t think the experience would keep me awake into the early hours, and leave me with dark circles under my eyes this morning.

I’m glad it did.

Lessons Will be Repeated Until Learned

"The problem is that you want all your relationships to be forever."

Michelle and I are having our weekly check-in. We're at our favorite pho restaurant, and I'm grateful for the spiciness of the jalapenos and Sriracha. They give me a plausible reason for my streaming eyes. 

She gives me that significant best friend look. "Honey, the only person you're allowed to count on forever is me. And that's only because I don't trust you not to poach my life events for your memoir." 

I laugh and start crying again. I'm in what women's magazines call your "mourning period," that really dreadful part of any splitting up when you realize holy shit, I'm never going to see this person again. And, you know, you fall apart. 

And it's fucking awful. 

True to form, I'm having my meltdown about seven months after the fact. It's the reason I spent the last five days in my apartment with the doors closed. I had confided in the people I was going to confide in, aired all the emotional shit, and then tucked in with my emotional reset button and didn't see people again until I felt like I wouldn't be blowing my nose every two minutes.

That's not to say when I emerged I was super-sociable.

***

I've spent most of my weekend with my nose in a book 

I set reading goals. Normally it's simply a number of books that I'd like to read in the course of the year. This year, in addition to wanting to read fifty books I am trying to read significantly more nonfiction than the single book by David Sedaris that I read last year (I don't even know if he counts as nonfiction anymore). I've already made that goal with River of Doubt and The Code Book (both of which I enjoyed tremendously). 

When I say I spent most of the weekend with my nose in a book I mean I spent most of the weekend with my nose in a nonfiction book. I took it to a friend's 30th birthday party (before you get all judgey, it was at a roller rink and I don't rollerskate) and read it while everyone was roller-skating. I spent most of this morning making marginalia and laughing out loud.

The book is Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis. A more correct title would probably be Against Monogamy or Against Teenage Conceptions of Love as an Adult but despite the titular deficiencies, it's been an enjoyable read. 

After getting about a third of the way through I was tempted to ask the person who suggested what the fuck he was thinking. I had to pause and wonder if perhaps I was being baited. I'm a self-professed lover of love and precisely the wrong audience for a polemic against it. 

But, baited or no, I kept reading it in little five to ten page chunks. And this weekend it sucked me in. 

I believe firmly that books can rip you apart and build you into a new, better person. I just also happen to believe that the books that do so tend to be fiction. I have a list (of course I have a list) of books that unmade me and forced me to look at the unsavory bits alongside the good parts and come to terms with the whole complete mess (list available upon request, but regular readers could probably guess at least a few). So my reaction to Against Love is remarkable, because I don't typically react this way to nonfiction.

I don't think that Against Love is quite going to be one of those books that remakes me. But it's a book that reads like a conversation with Michelle. It grabbed me and asked if the way that I've always considered something that seems so basic (love and relationships) was the right way. 

It's been enough of a smack upside the head to keep me absorbed all weekend. 

***

In October of last year a band I love came out with a new album. 

The first single off the album, "Shake," was the perfect song for that period in my life. In many ways, it persists as the perfect song for this period in my life.  

I am not good at just being in the present moment. Whether it's a function of anxiety or modernity or simply my personality, I have a tendency to think a week, a month, twenty years in the future. It's a character trait that makes it hard to settle down into relationships, be they romantic or otherwise. 

I am, as a result of a lot of factors, a difficult person to get to know. As a result, when I finally do make new friends or start dating someone (and actually let them in under the enormous, silly defenses I've erected) I want it to be forever. It seems stupid to be to invest all the emotional energy in someone who's only going to be around for a few months or a few years. There's no possible way that I can get anything worthwhile from someone who isn't going to be in my life forever.

It's a stupid, silly way to think about relationships. The one that ended last fall and that I'm finally dealing with now has years worth of memories attached to it that (even if they're making me kind of weepy these days) I wouldn't sacrifice for anything. I regret that it ended, I regret the way that it ended, but to say that I'm not a better, different person as a result of it would be foolish.

It's the lesson Michelle tries to impart to me over our steaming bowls, it's the lesson Against Love, it's the lesson of The Head & The Heart song, and it's the lesson I feel I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to learn.

Things don't have to be forever to be valuable. 

Beauty #12

I've got a lot of thoughts surrounding the fleeting nature of jazz and how much it relates to my style of dating. 

I don't feel like writing any of them.

Suffice it to say, there are very few singers who can make heartbreak beautiful (Patsy Cline and Bon Iver are at the top of my list).

And Billie Holiday. Jesus. No one, but no one, sings about heartbreak like Billie Holiday. 

I love Billie Holiday because she can simultaneously indulge my need to feel like hell and (somehow) make me appreciate whatever relationship has just ended for what it was worth. 

And, what the hell, one more. 

Beauty #10

One of the happiest moments of my adult life was when a friend took me to hear live jazz at the Bohemian Caverns. It was about a week before my birthday, I had flown into D.C. specifically to geek out on American History as a birthday present to myself. After arriving mid-morning I spent most of the day standing in front of The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and wandering around various monuments and thinking about history. The evening was a total surprise--I had asked to be taken to do something I wouldn't find on my own. I didn't find out where we were going until we were there, and I barely had enough time to jump up and down before we were in and seated and listening to jazz.

I don't think I breathed the entire night. 

I love jazz. I love jazz like I love history and poetry and Doctor Who. My older brother introduced me to Thelonious Monk while I was in college and it was the start of one of the great aesthetic loves of my life. Throughout the years my brother has sent me Charles Mingus and John Coltrane albums. We've sipped Scotch and listened to free jazz.

My favorite jazz musician is Miles Davis. Undoubtedly. It's a little predictable, I know, but Miles is the one who reliably pulls at my heart, whose music I turn on after a long day or a bad day or when I'm just feeling kind of quiet and introspective. 

There was a great story on NPR about Miles Davis's concert at The New York Philharmonic in '64. If you haven't heard it, you should go take a listen. That concert resulted in two of my favorite jazz records of all time, and a version of "Stella by Starlight" that is unimaginably good. 

It's one of a very few jazz recordings that can do what the show at the Bohemian Caverns did. It makes me stop breathing, stop thinking, stop doing anything but listening to the music. Every time I hear it I can't help but think of that night in Bohemian Caverns--and revel (however briefly) in good music's ability to take you outside of yourself. 

Beauty #7

The first time I heard the Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings I was on a date.

It wasn't just any date, it was a top-over-tea-kettle kind of a date. A swoony, feelalittlelightheadedwhenhehelpsyououtofthecar kind of date. I had asked him to accompany me to the chamber orchestra and then out for a martini. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to keep my palms from sweating, to say nothing of being able to pay any attention to the concert whatsoever. But he was a chamber music fan and I figured that the concert would keep him engrossed enough that I could spend the evening staring at him (he was just gorgeous) with impunity.

Like I said, top-over-tea-kettle.

Imagine my shock when, forty minutes after the orchestra had taken the stage, I tried to explode into applause only to realize that he had both of my hands in his. I had little recollection of reaching for him, even less of apparently holding my breath throughout the concert, and absolutely none of starting to cry and borrowing his handkerchief.

Five years later the guy is gone, but (and thanks to the SPCO) I can still hear the concert from that night. Despite not having a greek god of a man's hands to hold during it, I find that certain passages from it can still leave me holding my breath.

Beauty #6

I'm limping up the stairs to my apartment.

In the course of the past four hours I've been crushed, stepped on, kicked in the head, and gotten into a shoving match with a 200+ pound guy with a shaved head. I've wrecked a pair of jeans, lost my favorite pair of leather cuffs, and accumulated an impressive collection of sore spots that will definitely turn ugly shades of black and blue by morning. 

I can't remember the last time I felt this happy.

***

I have a beastly temper. 

It doesn't take much to trigger it either. Or rather, it wouldn't take much to trigger it if it weren't under such tight control. I keep it coiled up inside of me in a box that makes the Pandorica look like a dollar store lockbox. 

It's the reality of being an adult, is it not? You assess your personality for assets and liabilities. You amplify your assets and make every attempt to limit your liabilities and square them away as best as possible. Over the years I've learned to deal with my liabilities (depression, anxiety, a hair-trigger temper) pretty productively (usually by channeling them into some sort of grueling endurance event). And it works. It works really, really well for the depression and anxiety. The anger is another issue. I find that after a hard run or long uphill bike ride it's not that I'm not angry. It's that I'm too tired to care. 

So the anger is always there, just below the surface, even though most people wouldn't guess its existence. 

***

Tonight found me in a ton of smudgey black makeup and knee high boots congenially kicking the shit out of a bunch of people (predominately dudes) that I'd never met. 

Have I mentioned that I love punks? 

I cut my teeth on post-hardcore, post-punk bands. I was in my first mosh pit at fourteen and have been in so many that I've lost count. As I've grown older and my musical tastes have diversified, I've been to fewer punk shows, but I still love the wacky sense of community in a good pit. There's angry dancing and elbows and intense physical pain. There's getting kicked in the head by a crowd-surfer. There's shoving matches that look like they might break out into actual fights until the crowd swirls again and people move away from one another. There's also the knowledge that if you slip and fall, someone will be there to pick you up. There's the ability to reach out and grab someone around the waist when the crowd behind you is pushing too hard. There are the hugs that happen when your favorite song comes on and you're standing next to an equally sweaty, beer-drenched person who also happens to love the same song. 

Have I mentioned that I love mosh pits?

There's an elegance and a beauty to the ebb and flow of the people dancing and ricocheting off one another. I can never throw myself into a pit without thinking about Dylan Thomas:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

My adult life is unbelievably buttoned-up. It's tailored dresses and briefcases. Budgets and bills. Meeting someone who doesn't necessarily want to stay up until 4am talking existentialism and Michel Foucault and Waiting for Godot but who you can take home and introduce to your family. Adulthood is about learning to quiet anger and frustration, finding ways to accept them as part of your daily existence and ignore them until they go away.

Punk shows aren't like that.

They're a place where you get to be furious and frustrated, where anger isn't a liability, but an asset. You can rage against all the things that piss you off about your life and the world around you without having to turn the volume down. Your anger can be let out of its box and people either won't notice or won't care.

No, it's note quite that they won't care. It's that they'll understand.

It's amazing how once you get the space just let it all out that rage gets transformed into something else--a kind of crazy exuberance, a strange, mad joy that doesn't just belong to you but to the entire pit, the whole show. You're still raging against the dying of the light, but about halfway through the show it also becomes a celebration that you've experienced any light at all.  

Beauty #1

When I was getting a degree in Jesus, I chose the most esoteric branch of theology I could uncover.

I went into graduate school knowing that I had one intense theological question. I wanted to understand grace, how we were redeemed, why it had to happen through the crucifixion of a Palestinian Jew.

I also knew that I wanted to be a poet (rereading some of those old poems is embarrassing. Roundly I think switching to narcissistic, unproductive self-probing was a better move). I knew that while I loved (and continue to love) encountering new ideas, using bits of my brain that hadn't had a workout in awhile, I also loved simply being moved by the beauty of something.

During my first Theological Aesthetics class the professor started the course by playing Mary Oliver reading Mary Oliver. He followed it when some of Glen Goldberg's performance of The Goldberg Variations.

I was smitten.

One of the underlying tenets of Theological Aesthetics is that we come from Beauty. We talked extensively about what it meant when we said that God was Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. How Beauty and beauty interact in the world. The role that grace plays in our lives. We also listened to a lot of incredible music (I heard Faure's Requiem mass there for the first time) read some astounding poetry, and looked at heart-meltingly good art.

I loved that class. If I could have simply done a degree in Aesthetics and ignored the whole "I'm not terribly sure about this Jesus-died-for-my-sins" thing I would probably still be a Catholic. They're discussions I miss having, little bits of Roman Catholicism that still catch my eye heart now and again.

One of the times I miss Theological Aesthetics the most is during Lent. It sounds crazy, I know, but have you ever been to a really good service on a Catholic High Holy Day? Ash Wednesday, Tenebrae services, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday are all magnificent when they're done well. So today when I was scrolling through a social media feed and I saw a fellow theologian's comment that every day during Lent he was going to try to post something beautiful (because we come from Beauty), I sat back and my chair and thought "Huh. That's an idea worth stealing."

Because regardless of my feelings about J.C. specifically or God generally, I do believe that we come from Beauty. We live in a universe that is improbable, complex, and stunningly, breath-takingly beautiful. I don't know about everyone else, but I have a tendency to get a little caught up in thebusislatei'vegottagogroceryshoppingwherearethetpsreports that I can forget about it. So (hopefully) once a day during Lent (I can't help it. I feel an upwelling of religiosity this time of year) I'm going to be posting something I find beautiful.

I admit some trepidation in doing this. First because the things I'm sharing are, well, it's hard to explain. The best I can do is that they're not things that are close to my heart. They are my heart. Opening up is always a scary, free-fall-y thing for me. This time it feels particularly intense.

There's also the worry that you'll have a Loss of the Creature experience and won't get what I'm saying. I suppose that's okay. The goal is not to convert everyone to the Cult of Heart-Exploding Reactions to Things but merely to say "these are some things I find beautiful."

I hope you do too.

***

My love for Ryan Adams knows no bounds. 

I debated for awhile about how I should start this series off. I have well documented love affairs with all sorts of things: poetry, space, particle physics, the outdoors.

In the end, music won out. Of course it did. Music and fiction/poetry are the art I consume most often. Of those, music is the one that can impact my mood quickly and profoundly. The wrong song at the start of the day and I'm in a rotten mood for the duration. I'm unable to shake off the feelings it gives me like I can shake off a poem that reminds me of my ex or a book that kept me up the night before. 

So, Ryan Adams. 

Admittedly, part of me loves him because he has such a ridiculous Rock n' Roll past. He's what I think of when I think of a rockstar. He writes these songs with lyrics that just destroy me. He has an album for whatever mood I'm in. 

Usually when songs hit me in the guts, when they become songs that I know I'll listen to endlessly on repeat it's because of the lyrics (I can't help it. I always wanted to be a poet). I like well-arranged songs, and I like interesting melodies, and I'm a total sucker for complex harmonies, but it's the lyrics that usually rope me in. 

That didn't happen with this one. 

The first time I heard "New York, New York" it was the version off of the Gold album, which is very different from this version. It's a rock song, and a damn good one. I liked it instantly, but was completely enamored with the rest of the album, so I let it pass. 

Then I heard this version. 

And it just . . . hit me. The combination of the piano and Ryan's voice and the obvious emotion he feels singing it blew me out of the water. When he sings the lyric "I'm still amazed I didn't lose it/on the roof of the place/when I was drunk and I was thinking of you" I feel like he's writing about every breakup/unrequited crush I've ever had. I loved this version from the opening bars of the song.

Music is funny like that.

Ryan Adams is funny like that.

This song is funny like that. 

Note: Start the video at 1:34

I Know Teddy Roosevelt is Dead

I've got a little case of winter madness settling in.

Don't get me wrong. I love winter. I love running through snowfall and the squeak your running shoes makes on the snow. I love sledding. I can handle ice-fishing. I love sweaters and Christmas getting cozy with the people you love over mulled wine and hot soup.

I love all of those things. It's part of the reason I haven't given the Upper Midwest the finger and packed my bags for somewhere a little more moderate.

But these days I spend a lot of time looking at flights to warm weather destinations. I can't stop thinking about last summer at the cabin(s). Of long lazy afternoons floating in an inner tube off the pier. Of the way raspberries taste when they off the bush and warm from the sun. Of long walks in the woods when the trillium blossoms. If I don't get into a canoe and on a lake in the next two weeks I think I might lose my mind.

Like I said, a little case of winter madness.

***

I've been thinking about trying online dating again. 

I love being single. I love coming home to a quiet house and being able to do exactly what I want with my weekends. Not having to share my bed is the best thing in the world. I don't have to worry about keeping someone else awake when I'm up with a book. 

But I spend a lot of time planning ideal dates. Long drives out to the middle of nowhere to see a meteor shower. Morel hunting if spring ever comes. Sneaking out of bed early on a Saturday morning to surprise someone with coffee and scones.

Like I said, thinking about trying online dating again. 

***

Over the weekend, I surprised the gang by being able to sing along with a country song. 

It was sort of unusual that commercial radio was even on. Normally we're a MPR/Pandora crowd, but for whatever reason it was. It was on a country station because, well, who knows? All five of us had grown up in the rural midwest, and while we're all a touch uppity about our music, we must have a certain fondness for commercial country music. 

I'd been reasonably quiet for most of the morning. My running partner and I had gone out together for the first time in seven weeks and came home to homemade caramel rolls and coffee. We were collaboratively doing the crossword puzzle and cursing Will Shortz. It was a fine morning. 

Anyway, this song comes on the radio and I immediately blurt out "I love this song!" One of my friends turns and just looks at me. I know what she's going to say before she says it.

"You're the last person I would have thought would like country music."

She's right, of course. I do probably give off that impression (have you ever been in a room when I'm talking about my love for Miles Davis?) But I can also sing along with every Dixie Chicks song ever written. Radio stations like this were a huge part of where I grew up. I have a certain fondness for them as a result. 

But it's more than that (isn't it always?). It's that I genuinely like the idea of throwing a backapack into the back of someone's car (Let's get real, I live in the city. No one owns a truck.) and going somewhere without cell phone reception for a weekend. I want someone to take me on a (non ice-fishing) fishing date. 

I love the city. I will never live anywhere with fewer than 600,000 people again. But there's a small part of me that still loves the idea of being in the middle of nowhere. Waking up to birdsong and wind in the trees instead of the goddamn Bix truck making a delivery to the restaurant across the street.  

***

The men in my life are hot right now. 

I don't mean they're more good-looking than normal. I certainly don't mean that they're overheating (ha!). I mean that they are extremely pissed. 

At me.

This is not an unusual turn of events for me. I am hyper-competitive and a total trash talker. I am extremely talented at stupid things, like cornhole, and can be unbearable when I win.

Of course, my backyard looks like Winterfell right now, so we're not talking about me being good at cornhole.

I received a barrage of angry messages after my last post about literary everymen and the complicated relationship I have with my father. And I'm talking angry.

You intentionally misrepresented an entire male generation for laughs. 
Could you paint with a broader brush, Kel?
This is the worst post you've ever written.
You're the most emotional person I know. You're uniquely badly-equipped to talk about men's emotions. 
Teddy Roosevelt is dead, Kel. Get the fuck over it. 

Yikes.

At the end of two days of furious invective (to which I am, apparently, overreacting because I'm emotional) I consider taking the post down and making a blanket apology to everyone carrying XY chromosomes. 

***

If I could be anywhere in time and space right now, it would be an indeterminate July weekend, at the cabin. 

I want to wake up slowly with endless cups of coffee on the porch, watching the birds on the lake. I want to go for a long bike ride through the woods and work up a good sweat that I rinse off by jumping off the pier and spending hours in the lake. I want to drift off in the hammock reading a book and spend the evening lying on the end of the pier watching the stars come out. At the end of the weekend I want to come back to the city and walk along the Mississippi, catch a late movie, argue about books, eat Ethiopian food, revel in the fact that I can do all of these things, that I can be both of these people. 

I want someone to do them with me. 

Listen, I know Theodore Roosevelt is dead. I also know that he was a once-in-a-generation man (let's gloss right over the fact that we've had a couple generations since he died without another man like him and maybe we're due). But the point that I was trying to articulate last week, the point that seems to have the guys in my life furious with me is that I don't think that it's asking too much to want a nerd who loves the outdoors, an outdoors man who realizes that, occasionally, it's all right to spend a sunny day reading in the hammock instead of tromping through the woods. 

And whether it's a case of winter madness or just plain lonliness or who the fuck knows, it seems really important to find someone right now, when the weather is frigid and awful so that by the time the snow finally melts I'll be ready to ask him to take me fishin' in the dark.

Music

I don't listen to podcasts.

I want to be a podcaster. Really and truly, I do. There are tons of podcasts which I do enjoy listening to, from Savage Love to the Infinite Monkey Cage to This American Life.  I click through websites and think "Huh, that's interesting" or "I've always wanted to know more about that" or "I'm driving through Wisconsin, I'll need something to occupy my mind."

I download SO many podcasts.

***

Before I go any further I need to make a confession. 

There's a mixtape that goes with this blog post. 

Rather, there's a playlist on Spotify, the paltry 21st Century version of the mixtape (it's under my name, cleverly called "Mixtape.") There's a folder in Dropbox. An actual playlist for this post is a thing that exists. And while listening to it while reading this post certainly isn't mandatory I'd suggest that you do, dear reader. 

Because when I was thinking about this post and about music and what I was going to say, I thought about the songs I wanted you to hear. 

Yes, you.

Because I have something I want to tell you. Maybe it's "This is the sound of settling." It could be "Help, I'm alive." It's possible that it's "You ain't a beauty, but yeah, you're all right."  Regardless of what it is precisely, there's something I want to say to you.

And because no one has tape players anymore, I did the best I could. 

Got it queued up? 

Good.

***

That isn't a photo of my high school year book.

Those are the inside covers of my high school/early college journal.

Almost without exception those are song lyrics. There are a few quotes from things I read that stuck with me during my adolescence (looking back, ohmygod how insufferable was I? What seventeen year old reads Lolita?), but 90% of them are song lyrics. The back covers look the same. It is intentionally blurry because I had some extraordinarily embarrassing taste in music in high school (I suppose, so does everyone, but it's really pretty emo in there). 

And in case you're thinking "Oh, Kel, who cares. Everyone was like that in high school." Here's one from my most recent journal. 

Those lyrics in my high school journal, the lyrics that still make it into my current journals, are as much about the music (which I can hear in my head immediately when I read the lyrics) as about the lyrics. Sure, an over-wrought, desperately in need of therapy, sixteen year old version of me found a lot of comfort in The Smiths lyrics, but she also simply loved the music because it expressed something she couldn't figure out how to talk about herself. 

Unoriginal? Absolutely. Still true?

Hell yes.  

***

You know that John Waters quote? The one about books? 

Of course you do. Everyone does.

I feel that way about music. 

Let me back up. 

I listen to music more than I do anything else during the course of the week. 

I'm serious. There are 10,080 minutes in a week. I spend (on average) 2,700 of those minutes asleep (too few), 3,000 at work (too many), 600 reading, 450 commuting, and 210-300 working out. 

I spend a minimum of 5,000 minutes a week listening to music. 

I fall asleep to jazz. My alarm is The Current. I commute to 60s Motown. When I'm stuck on a project at work I crank The Rolling Stones.  My Spotify profile has mixes as varied as "Angry Girl Music" to "California Dreamin'" to "Banjos!" I cried when I found out Pete Seeger died this week. 

Music was a huge part of my upbringing. My parents love live shows, regardless of whether it's the Lake Wobegon band or blues in Arkansas or jazz in Chicago. My brothers and I own terabytes of music and are constantly asking one another "Have you heard the new Steeldrivers album?" "Do you like Alice Coltrane or do you really prefer John?" "What was the last show you saw live?" The worst thing any of us can say about a city we've lived in or traveled to was "The music scene sucked."

A little snobby and short-sighted? Absolutely. But as a result, I'm conversant in everything from punk to 60s Motown to the differences between Dixieland and Bop. 

It's a trade-off I'm willing to make. 

***

I download podcasts with the best possible intentions. 

To put it in the dorkiest way imaginable, I always want to be learning something. In my constant quest to be Kelly 2.0, I want very little time that is not actively devoted to making myself a better person in some capacity. Podcasts always seem like an excellent way to multitask, an opportunity to clean the kitchen and learn something about theoretical physics. 

I try to listen to them. I really do. And I can get into them for a day or a week or a couple months. But inevitably while listening to one I'll get distracted by something a host or a guest says. I'll think of how  a joke reminds me of an ex and I'll start humming Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart." I'll hear a story of how friendship changes you and I'll remember how two people I adore learned "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver for my birthday and forever changed the song's meaning for me. Without thinking about it I'll shut off whatever podcast I've turned on and open up whatever music app is closest at hand. 

Because the truth is that regardless of whatever smart things Ira Glass and Brian Cox are saying, they don't get me in quite the same way as hearing Paul McCartney sing "Blackbird." And as much as I'd like to believe that I'm a radically different person at 29 than I was at 16 (someone who cares more about facts than feelings), the truth is that I still have feelings I don't know how to express. I haven't quite figured out how to say "I love you" or "I miss you" without a mixtape. And while I want to understand theoretical physics and gun violence in inner-city schools, a bigger part of me wants to sort out how to talk to people about the feeling I have for them.

Koo-koo-ka-choo.

Rock Me

I am completely, annoyingly, breath-stoppingly in love.

Every sweet song that comes on the radio is about me. Rather than walk through my neighborhood in the gathering dusk, I dance. I skip. I sing. Twice in the past week you could have driven down Marshall at around 7:40 and seen me pirouetting, for Christ's sake. I'm so frustratingly gooey and ridiculous that there are soberer, quiet moments where I think:

Oh my god. I hate myself.  

I can't help it. I haven't felt like this in ages.

***

I wake up sometime in the middle of the night. I'm cuddled up on the couch, wrapped in a cottony, fluffy blanket. There's a woodstove at my feet and the sound of rain on the roof. The entire room is lit by twinkly white lights and candles. I am warm. I am happy. I am loved. 

I've woken up to the sound of a cello, a guitar, and a three part harmony on one of my favorite songs. I sing along (quietly enough that I don't disturb the delicate balance of the other voices) and smile to myself. 

Wagon Wheel was my introduction to bluegrass. It's the song that inevitably is played whenever my musical friends get together. It's a song I can remember hearing for the first time with the kind of crystalline clarity that makes me suspect it's actually a false memory. It's a song that I have to hear to the end whenever it's started. It's the song I sing in the shower and we sang on my 25th birthday sitting on the floor of my shitty, mouse-infested graduate school apartment. 

Yikes. I suddenly realize how gross that floor was and by extension, how  gross sitting on it was. 

When I was attending a Benedictine college I heard a lot of chatter about the values of hospitality and community. I did not realize how deeply those values would impact my life until full of risotto and wine and conversation, I would stay up late having marathon conversations about God and Love and Truth and Children. Conversations where things that had influenced my life abstractly as a theologian (Faith, Love, Charity) were brought to bear on the life I was living and the decisions I was making about community, kindness, and sustainability. 

Somehow everything was always proceeded or followed by music. Huge, angry intellectual sparring matches devolved into harmonies and melodies. Hurt feelings were soothed away by familiar choruses and even if we didn't all believe in an afterlife, we sure as hell loved to sing about it.

And always (usually at my request) came Wagon Wheel. It's been such a part of my life that I can remember each of the specific instances in which we sang it as a group and why those days were important and what they meant in my developing adulthood. I smile when I think about the future times we'll sing it and wonder what those occasions will mean and how they will shape me the way all those past late nights have. I can't help but feel like the song has wormed its way into my DNA. That, should I ever actually have kids, loving it will be passed down through the generations until a 100 years from now some descendant of mine will be around a campfire asking "Hey, does anyone know that old song . . ."

***

The past ten years of my adult life have been a series of experiments on how to (and please forgive the douchiness of what I'm about to say) live authentically. I've learned how community grows organically and what I can do to help that community thrive (Pro tip: live nearby). I've failed in building that community and authenticity in some places (the North Country) but have laid down deep roots in others (who knew that Stearns, Hennepin, and Ramsey counties could all occupy the same space in my heart? Jesus, who knew that I would fall in love with Stearns County?). Growing up has been a process of deciding that I want to live a life where community, charity, patience, and kindness are not just things I think about on holidays or when someone shows me some small example of them, but are things that I want to influence my daily life and work. 

And before I sound too ohmygodi'mtotallyselfactualized here, I need to say that these things are really difficult for me. They're well, virtues I guess, that I don't have. At all. Anyone who has had the misfortune to drive with me through a traffic jam or catch me when I'm late can attest to how quickly I lose my cool. I'm not particularly good at being attentive to the present, when I'm tired or hungry I have a razor-sharp tongue, and nine times out of ten I would love to tell community to just sod off already. 

***

I am completely, annoyingly, breath-stoppingly in love.

I'm so in love that it makes me giddy.

Have I mentioned that I'm so in love that it makes me completely fucking annoying? 

God help the entire world when I actually fall in love with someone rather than something.

For the time being, I'm somewhat chagrined to admit that what I'm in love with is the life that I am slowly, agonizingly building for myself. A life where special occasions are where frustration and kindness, community and solitude, silence and harmonies all co-exist.

So rock me, momma like a wagon wheel. 

Alone Awake

And still I know that love is never free.

It bows your head and bends your knees. 

-Dessa 

I'm never more grateful to be with someone than on Sundays.

Sunday is my favorite day of the week, the day that I guard fiercely. The week is for work and errands. Friday is for opening the pressure valve in whatever way. Saturday is for crossing things off the to-do list. Sunday is for doing nothing. It's for long, relaxing bike rides. It's for lazy Sunday brunches, coffee with the paper on the porch, lounging in your pajamas.

And being with someone on a Sunday? Well, it's a bit like that old song, isn't it?

This Sunday is both different and not different. This past week was emotionally vampiric and the weekend was wonderful and exhausting. I traveled over the weekend, as I've done most weekends lately. I saw a movie that was deeply satisfying on a level I didn't realize until much later. There was a live concert that has left my voice scratchy. There were irritations too, the inability to find an apartment, the lack of sleep for three nights running, but those were mild. And now they're being quietly soothed away.

It's a bit after 9:00 and we've just gone to bed. I'm wiped out from the weekend. He recognizes that while I came home happy today, my feathers were a little ruffled from too little sleep and too much socializing. I'm also just a touch nervous about what's coming down the pike for us. Whatever we're doing, we both know that it has an expiration date. We knew it when we met for that first game of Scrabble.

 Neither of us could possibly care less.

So we've set the alarms and have crawled into bed. It's hothothot, that sticky, damp, late summer heat that makes me glad I've recently cut off all my hair and anxious to move back north. It's too warm to sleep curled together, but he's reading to me from a historical fiction novel and slowly twining my curls around his fingers.  I make a tiny, quiet noise that's somewhere between longing and contentment and somewhere in my drowsy mind I think Iamtooyoungtoappreciatethismoment. And I am right. But for now, his voice reading quietly and his fingers in my hair are the last thing I know until the alarm beeps at 8:00 am.

'Cause I didn't come to play it safe.

I came to win or lose with you.

-Dessa 

What do you give up?

I can't stop asking myself that question lately. I ask it when deciding between a ten mile road race and a duathalon in September. I ask it when packing my suitcase, thinking about the lovely cool weather I'm leaving here in North Country.

I ask t it while I'm standing in the middle of a crowd at First Avenue, watching as one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite musicians takes the stage and brings the house down.

I wanted part of this essay to be about that show. And what it was like to see an artist I admire in a venue and a city I love, with people I treasure. And I think I could have written it, if I had not trusted the intervening 48 hours to help me solidify my thoughts on it. But the more I try to write about it, the more I am frustrated by the slipperiness of words and experience. 

I am a different person after the show.

It's sounds rather grandiose. Like you should automatically dismiss everything that comes before and after because the person writing is obviously the hysterical type, and cannot be trusted to give an accurate account of what happened. She's the worst kind of unreliable narrator.

Fuck off.

It is the purpose of good art, good writing, is it not? To squirm its way subtly into our heads and hearts. To hit us across the face with a two-by-four and change how we look at something. To quietly devastate us and leave us trembling and moved and profoundly, deeply different.

But there's no sword without an edge

And I sleep uneasily when you're not in my bed. 

-Dessa

What do you give up?

I ask it while watching my friends fall in love, thinking to myself what dreams, ambition, ideals are you giving up to be with this person? Are they worth it?

And do you ever really know?

I only live alone awake,

'Cause every night, yeah, you pass through. 

-Dessa

How can it be 8 am already?

It's the first thing that pops into my mind as I reach blindly for the alarm, quietly cursing and brushing my long hair our of my eyes. It's just there, under the fictionalized account of Thomas Cromwell's life that I fell asleep reading, which is just beyond the pillow I fell asleep wrapped around. I'm a little groggy, the result of an OTC sleeping pill and nearly twelve hours of deep sleep. But when I stumble out of bed, I'm smiling. As I'm getting ready for work I try to decide what possible significance July 1st can have that dropped me out of bed in such a good mood. It's the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg? No, that's not it. One week until I meet Neil Gaiman? Possibly,  but there's a lot going on between now and then. My impending trip to St. Louis? No, I've still got to pack and travel, that seems impossibly far off.

Fully dressed and humming an Etta James song to myself, I grab my keys and my work bag and head out the door. Whatever pleasant dream or memory was there in the moments before I woke up this morning, I'm in a good mood on a Monday. I'm not about to give that up.

Misery

I'm sitting, head on the kitchen table, Dinah Washington on the radio, glass of Bushmills next to my hand when it hits me. I was in almost this exact same position three years ago. Well, sort of. Three years ago I was still reeling from a terrible breakup, the kind that you snap out of a few months later and wonder when you decided to Sinead O'Connor your hair and how you managed to get so fat. Then you look at the Patsy Cline albums, empty takeout containers, and Sam Houston bottles and think to yourself, "Ah yes. Hence the haircut and five pounds."

If Patsy Cline and Sam Houston are my breakup sedatives of choice, Bushmills and Dinah Washington are my form of self-flagellation. They're my symptoms not only of unrequited love (and if you've heard Dinah sing "Misery" you'll understand how appropriate they are) but of the irritation I have with myself when I'm, you know, acting like a melodramatic less aggravating Ophelia.

And I am acting like a melodramatic, only marginally less aggravating Ophelia. But not entirely for the reason you would expect.

The problem, of course, is a guy. Rather, the problem is two guys. The first adds the slightly unexpected twist.

I am by no stretch a modest or a humble person. I regularly subject my friends to pronouncements varying in their ability to grate on one's nerves from "I'm wonderful" to "God sent me into your life to make sure that you're less of a sanctimonious bastard." For the most part they, being relatively more humble and modest, take these comments in stride with few snide remarks to put me in my place.

Full disclosures and mighty pronouncements of my wonderfulness aside, my ego hits its own bumps. When someone asks me out knowing these things in advance my first response is usually somewhere along the lines of "Are you sure you don't want to think this through? I mean, you know I'm in therapy, right? And that I snort when I laugh? And that I will talk obsessively about Shakespeare or the Cassini mission or how sea turtles have a compass in their heads that records the latitude and longitude of their birth beach so they can make the migration home when they reach sexual maturity? And I sleep with my mouth open. All right. I mean, if you're sure." I'm incapable of making eye-contact with handsome men, much less stringing two syllables together. I don't necessarily understand when someone is flirting with me or when they're just being kind or a good conversationalist. This, I suspect, is why I have a bit of a thing for alpha males, but that's a whole different blog post.

This all, of course, came to a head recently when someone with whom I'm, shall we say, friendly intimated that he'd like to be on more than friendly terms. Like an idiot, I was caught by surprise. Didn't see all of the signs that were glaringly obvious to the rest of the world. Just kept on goofing around and being mildly flirtatious and generally acting like the interpersonal relationship ditz I seem to be. Then there's this thing and I don't know what to do about it.

I'm flummoxed for a couple different reasons. The first because I didn't see it coming down the tracks. The second and perhaps more important is the reality that this guy and I should be perfect together. He's bright. He's well-read. He's good-looking and likes Carl Sagan and Downton Abbey. I always have fun when we're together. I look forward to seeing him in the way I look forward to seeing all my friends.

That's what has me feeling like a prize bitch. I have no reason to not be attracted to this guy. There's no reason not to start dating him. Except there's this feeling. Maybe lack of a feeling is a better way to put it. We're missing something and I can't quite put my finger on it. And without it, whatever the hell it is, things just feel sort of flat. Fulfilling in a general sort of way, but not what I'm looking for out of my next relationship.

*Dramatic orchestral swell*

Enter guy two. (Of course.)

On the surface, he's disgustingly similar to the first gentleman. He's cracks me up. He's well-read. He can use palimpsest in a sentence. The difference is that something about him makes my stomach drop and my heart get palpitate-y. And I have no fucking clue what it is. And of course, in the great karmic payback for screwing over person one with all of my "Oh-thanks-but-I-only-like-you-as-a-friendly-acquaintance" he is for oh-so-many-reasons out of my reach.

There's a Dessa song that I love that she played at her show on Friday night. It hit home for a lot of reasons, but there's a line in it that I adore: I'm not trying to be sainted/I don't need to be good/I'm just trying to stay blameless. When I heard the song and that line on Friday night, I inadvertently put my head in my hands and laughed, which was precisely the wrong emotion for that song, that time.

I'm used to stumbling into my relationships without any premeditation whatsoever. For the first time, I find myself thinking about them, obsessing over them, worrying about them. I've tried so hard to transfer the feelings I have for the second person to the first, afterall, they're so similar that it should be simple, shouldn't it?

Of course it's not. As I'm continuing to get accustomed to this whole "You're a human. You're supposed to feel this way!" thing (which is exhausting and possibly overrated, by the way) I'm realizing that feelings aren't transferable. That attraction won't just go away because you're willing your brain to make it so.

The hardest realization (aside from feelings are stupid, men are stupid, and my brain is stupid) is that there are going to be moments in my life--not just my love life, but my life--where I want to be blameless, but am completely, utterly, finally to blame. And there's not a goddamn thing to be done about it.

Tonight, listening to Dinah and mulling over how there's nothing to for it, a small part of me can't help but wish for the easier days of Patsy Cline and a clearly wronged party. Tonight, the lyrics to "Misery" seem to be cutting both ways.

But I'm fighting a battle that can't be won.
'Cause you're on my mind more than you oughta be.
Thoughts of you should bring joy.
But they only bring misery. 

I get up to make a cup of tea and when I sit down again the song is nearly over. I hit the back button. Sing it again, Dinah.

All the Redemption I Can Offer

My soul is lost, my friend.
Now tell me how I begin again?
-Bruce Springsteen, My City of Ruins

I'm driving too fast for the conditions in the North Country. 

It's that weather that we have here from October until December. When the precipitation is not really rain or even freezing rain and it's not really snow either. It's just a cold, heavy, wet mess. 

Anyway, I'm driving too fast for whatever this weather is. I've gotten into the car when I'm upset, something my daddy told me never to do. I've been listening to Springsteen's My City of Ruins on repeat for the past ten minutes. Driving too fast. In bad weather. Down twisty hilly roads. While I'm upset. 

Before I got into the car my father called me. My grandmother's best friend, a woman I've known for literally my entire life, passed away. Gram, he tells me, is upset but this was not entirely unexpected. 

Death is sneaky. 

Death is particularly sneaky when you're used to squishing down your emotions, used to avoiding them until they come out in OCD symptoms or insomnia or sleepwalking. When we get off the phone, I tell myself I'm alright. That while I have known this person for many years, while she was  like a second grandmother to me, that I'm not sad. We haven't seen one another in a long, long time. I'll be fine.

I keep repeating this mantra to myself while I get into the car and go see friends. While I'm waiting to check out at the grocery store, I realize that I may have left the stove on. That my house may be burning down as I'm standing there. 

You know the rest. I have a slightly delayed anxiety response to negative stimulus. This is what I tell myself as I walk through the weather and get into my car. It's just an anxiety response. Everything is fine. I do some deep breathing and calm down. 

I have, for whatever reason, a deep desire to listen to My City of Ruins, so I pull it up on my phone and pull out of the parking lot. And as I'm driving down the twisty, dark roads through the weather, the bottom falls out. 

It falls out in a weird way. Or maybe, not so weird. I start thinking about raspberries. This woman, my surrogate grandmother, had an amazing raspberry patch. Every summer for years I went into that patch and ate as many raspberries as I could. It was something she always remembered, and she always brought them out to the cabin when we were there. She always brought them for me, the same way she always made me this special Czech cookie I loved. And I realized that not only did I love this woman, but she loved me back. And I'm never going to hear her funny laugh, or have her beat me at Scrabble, or get a birthday card in the mail or a bookmark that she's made by hand again. 

I'm never going to eat raspberries out of her raspberry patch again. 

I start crying right as the road gets particularly dark and twisty. I make it, somehow, to my destination without incident and manage to pull myself together in the car before I head into the house. I make it through the evening, laugh a little bit, watch election results come in, am overjoyed when we defeat the constitutional amendments and reelect President Obama. I say goodnight and go back out to my car and immediately feel guilty for feeling joyful when this person I love has died. I let myself forget for a little while that she's gone and that I'll never see her again.

Death is sneaky.

***
You can hide 'neath your covers
and study your pain.
Make crosses for your lovers
throw roses in the rain. 
Waste your summer prayin' in vain
for a savior to rise from these streets.
-Bruce Springsteen "Thunder Road."

I'm standing in the nosebleeds of the Xcel Center in Minneapolis. I'm a little sweaty from dancing, my eyes are on the massive, hi-def monitor hanging from the ceiling, my hands are in the air, and I'm swaying from side to side. I'm sure from the back I look like a worshiper in a Mega Church. 

I'm in the Xcel Center but I'm also waxing the top of my father's Bronco. I'm back at the cabin running around in the sunshine. I'm helping my father haul wood in the backyard of my childhood home, or lugging tiles down to the basement of my grandmother's old house, or I'm in the kitchen at the cabin, and all the people I love are still gathered around the table playing Scrabble and there's a bowl of raspberries just for me on the hutch.

Don't worry. I haven't gone all new agey on you, and the Xcel Center is not playing host to Mega Church services on Sunday mornings. I'm attending a Springsteen concert, my first, and I'm hearing my favorite song of his live for the very first time.

It's like a religious experience.

Springsteen is in my earliest memories. My father has listened to and loved him since the 70s. My mother loves him as well. My younger brother and I regularly argue about his best songs. My cousins have seen him live. His Greatest Hits albums is the one that I always put on the radio when I'm spending time with my father and our conversation begins to fade. When I hear say, The River, I inadvertently hold my breath. I silence everyone else in the room or the car. I have to hear the song all the way through to the end or I feel like I'm missing something. Springsteen is in my heart and he's in our familial DNA. Even for the members of the family who don't like him, he's a shared part of our life together.

Listening to Springsteen reminds me of my family in the most visceral way possible. It reminds me of all the times Daddy came to pick me up in Central Minnesota and we listened to him on the trip home. His music reminds me of summers at the cabin, when all the people I loved in the world were still alive. His music reminds me of the time my parents called me at 2:00 am after one of his concerts elated by what they had experienced.

But the memories aren't all good ones. I can't listen to Springsteen without thinking about driving to Minneapolis with a good friend after a soul-crushing breakup. I can't hear him without thinking of all the times I've let my parents down, all the casual hurts my family has inflicted on one another throughout our lives together.

It's this whole mess of memories that comes flooding over me when I hear the opening bars of my favorite Springsteen song, Thunder Road. It's this song that gets me acting like I'm a worshiper in a Mega Church, and before I realize it, I'm crying. Like an idiot. I'm standing in front of literally hundreds of other people swaying to a song, singing along, and crying so hard I'm afraid I'm going to give myself the hiccups.

Listening to that song, hearing it live, makes me miss my parents and my brothers and wish that they were with me. It makes me so utterly, pathetically, absurdly, profoundly grateful for the opportunity to be alive and in this place at this moment. It makes me think about all of the people I have loved and who have passed throughout my life. It makes me think of how all the people I love will die someday. How I'll die someday.

And I feel everything. Happiness, gratitude, anger, loneliness, sadness, joy, I feel everything.

And it's wonderful. And horrible. It feels like walking around with my insides turned out, or with a bad burn that hurts to touch. Somewhere in the middle of all of this feeling, I hear the line that makes me love Thunder Road, the line that makes me love Springsteen, really:

Well, I'm no hero, that's understood. 

All the redemption, I can offer, girl,

is beneath this dirty hood.   

In the moment, the line takes on a kind of spiritual significance. This is it, all of these emotions, all of this feeling, this is redemption. Or at least, it's all the redemption that I can count on here, now. I will never eat raspberries with my grandmother's best friend again, just like I will never hear my maternal grandmother play the piano or listen to my grandfather tell my father he should vote Democrat. But I'll continue to go to the cabin and see my family. We'll continue to hurt and love and support one another. All of this feeling, all of these emotions are with me now. And I'm not losing them again.

It's all complicated and painful and joyous in a way I had never anticipated. In this moment, I am confident that no redemption ever promised to me by a confident priest would be any better than this, now.

The concert closes with my younger brother's favorite song and I'm tempted to call him or pay my parents back for their 2:00 am phone call so many years ago. Instead I pull on my winter jacket and wait on the corner, eagerly anticipating my best friend's arrival. When she does pull up, I get into the car equally pleased to see her, riding high off of the evening, and feeling anxious about the snow. After awhile I pause and think about my gram's best friend again. About raspberries. This time though, instead of feeling guilty about getting caught up in my own thoughts and emotions, I smile.

Life, it seems, is rather sneaky too.