Make Good Art.

-Neil Gaiman

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Best Of

I love Year In Review lists.

Over the course of the past day I've enthusiastically devoured "Best of 2013" lists for books, gaffes, quotes, music, film, tech, women, longform journalism, and trips, just to name a few.

Combined with my weird excitement over holidays that require us to be introspective, I really anticipated writing this post to be, well, easy. A few quick looks at blog stats, some meditation on my personal journal, and I'd have a few Zen sentences to drop in here before heading off to put on a short dress and dance with my friends until midnight.

How come these things never work out the way you want them to?

Part of it, I suspect, is because 2013 was (and here my flashy vocabulary is failing me).

2013 was the biggest emotional clusterfuck of my life.

I met my favorite author and discovered my nana had breast cancer and biked a 150 miles across the state of Minnesota. I had great sex and terrible sex and wondered if I was going to be single for forever and hoped that I wouldn't have to settle down any time soon. I traveled to St. Louis and D.C. and spent more than my usual amount of time thinking about freedom and self-determination. I went to weddings for the people I love most in the world. I danced to "Call Your Girlfriend" and "Get Lucky" more times than I can count, argued about whether or not "Blurred Lines" is rapey. I argued about women in science and listened to jazz in the oldest jazz club in the United States. I drank scotch in my apartment and argued about modern feminism.I argued a lot. I smoked cigars next to a fire in Northern Minnesota and looked at the stars and talked about the impossibility of our own existence. I fell for someone. I fell out with someone.  I changed jobs, changed cities, changed directions.

As I said, an emotional clusterfuck.

For as cliched and ridiculous as it sounds, I learned so much over the past year about myself and my relationships and my mental health. I think about how I when I toast the coming of the new year tonight, I will be a profoundly, deeply different woman than the one who rang in last New Year with a panic attack.

I am a different, better person than I was a year ago.

The problem, of course, is that all of those revelations turned out to be far more personal than I had intended. And the prospect of writing about them here is just  . . . too much. For the time being, they're best left in my journal and in my head, percolating for 2014.

That said, the one revelation I'm all right talking about is this: I am surrounded by some of the smartest, kindest, most loving people in the world.  Chances are strong that if you're reading this, I know you extremely well. Because of that, let me break the fourth wall for a moment and say, simply,

Thank you.

In a thousand small ways over the past year, you have changed and saved my life. There really aren't words for the kind of love and support I've received, and it would take less of a hack than I am to talk about my gratitude and love.

So instead just trust that in some small way, your love and friendship is reflected on my personal "Best of 2013" list.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Heart

How's your heart today?

It's supposed to be an innocuous question. A quick query dropped into a work day before someone sends me a poem that he anticipates will make my heart explode. It's innocuous because I've been blathering on about the book I've been reading lately and how intense it's been. Reading the book feels simultaneously like having someone run a cheese grater over your heart and presenting you with a bowl of the result and getting a hug from a good friend who is suddenly in your life after living abroad for two years.

Anyway, the question hits me with all the force of a car accident. It's casually devastating in a way I won't be able to articulate for a few days at least.

***

My have (a) friend(s) who tell(s) me I'm a reactive person.

It's not (I think, I hope) a value judgement. It's merely a statement of fact. You react more to things than other people.

I heard it most recently and in not so many words on Sunday. I was sitting on my running partner's couch, wrapped up in a fluffy blanket and reading Love Minus Eighty.

And just sobbing. 

In the kitchen one of my friends (graciously making me dinner while I had a breakdown on his couch) said: "I think Kel's book is making her cry."

The immediate reply was "I don't think that's entirely unusual."

***

I do not understand my male friends.

They are often the ones who call me reactive, who tease me about how I responded to Much Ado About Nothing or who ask about my mood before they send me a poem by Auden or who pull a puzzled face when I'm bawling on the couch over a novel. 

I live in the Upper Midwest, the goddamn capital of emotionally reserved men, so I suppose it shouldn't come as such a surprise to me that the majority of the men in my life are bemused when I do some exuberant thing.

I adore brainy, cerebral guys, so I suppose it shouldn't come as such as surprise to me that the majority of the men in my life are bemused when I burst into tears during every episode of season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

It doesn't fucking matter. 

Every single time one of my male friends expresses bewilderment over an emotional reaction to something I end up open-mouthed. 

Lord, I know how this sounds. Like I'm trying to write a romantic comedy. But the older I get and the more men come into and out of my life the more I wonder: 

Do men all have the emotional capacity of Peter Pan? 

***

My favorite book of poetry isn't Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver. It's not Ballistics by Billy Collins or The Duino Elegies by Rilke. My favorite book of poetry is Good Poems for Hard Times as edited by Garrison Keillor. 

I love the book for a lot of reasons. The poems collected in it are fabulous. They actually make you feel better when you're down. My mom discovered it once while riding in my car and made marginalia on a few of the poems that delights me when I stumble across it. I had it signed after a particularly wonderful night seeing A Prairie Home Companion (and one of my favorite bands!) for my birthday with two people I love very much. 

The thing that I love most about it is G.K.'s introduction. I know, I know. What a weird thing to love, but I do. It's full of bits that I carry around inside of me and call to mind when I'm upset. My favorite bit though is a question that has little to do with what poetry should be or how poetry can change your life. It's a casual aside in a long paragraph and asks only: 

How often in the past week did anyone offer you something from the heart?

***

For years I thought that what I wanted, what I needed in a partner was someone a little cool. A little distant. Someone who didn't quite have as many emotions. That's how relationships are supposed to work, right? You're supposed to make up for the deficiencies in one another. If I insist--and I do--upon being so reactive I need someone who isn't going to be. 

Fuck that. 

I'm a heart-on-my-sleeve kind of a girl. I don't know how to be any other way. I don't want to be any other way. I want to go star-gazing and shout with delight when I catch a shooting star. I want to be so moved by a concert that when I wake up the next day I've lost my voice and hurt all over from dancing so hard. 

More than that, I'm the kind of girl who regularly offers something from the heart. My default setting is that if you've made it in under my defenses, I'm going to love you. Inconveniently, stupidly, (disturbingly?), completely. I'm going to offer you a thousand microscopic pieces of my heart in words and songs and books. In late night conversations about God and cross-country road trips. 

And . . . I'm finally ready to admit it. That kind of life isn't one for someone with the emotional capacity of Peter Pan. I don't need someone's heart to explode during Wagon Wheel or to stop breathing while watching Shakespeare. But I need someone who is going to understand why those things happen to me without looking so damn confused. 

I need someone who won't have to ask how's your heart today


Monday, December 9, 2013

Love, Love, Love

For the majority of my life I thought ee cummings was a hack.

I'm not, you know, proud of it, but I did. I've always belonged to the school of "poetry isn't something you should have to torture a confession out of" and cummings, from the time I first read him as a child (which was probably my first mistake) seemed like someone less interested in telling a story and more interested in being clever.

Until recently.  Until Kerry sent me a reading of May I Feel, Said He.

Woah. Good Poetry.

***

"The issue is the lexical gap." 

In almost any other circumstance I would instantly be embarrassed by the fact that this sentence came tumbling out of my mouth. But it's late, I'm among friends, and we've been up and talking for hours. There's a pause in the conversation and someone interjects:

"Have you thought at all about the Greek?"

There's are a lot of things I love about having friends who are theologians. For the record, there are a lot of things I love about having friends with esoteric interests. But theologians are nice because they have access to Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew.

And because they like to drink scotch and talk into the wee hours of the morning. 

This is one of those conversations. As a former theologian and generally sort of curious person, I can sit up and talk academic theology for hours. As someone who spends a not insignificant part of her life wishing she could believe in God in some capacity, I can sit up all night and talk about the soul's desire for union with the Divine, about the emotional parts of faith, about knowing in your gut that there is a God who loves you.

Anyway, the conversation has been winding on for hours, there's been a fair amount of yelling (me, of course), some pounding on the table to make a point, and at times five-minute long breakdowns into laughter. This is precisely the kind of evening I love, the kind of socializing where I feel most at home and most like myself.

As I'm not writing a dissertation or teaching high school students theology, I don't have much to contribute to those bits of the conversation, but eventually things turn to my life and work. I touch on how fulfilling work has been and how much I like where I'm living. We get into writing for awhile and I confess that I feel stuck. I've been doing a lot of writing about Love, and I feel like I'm starting the repeat myself. The issue is, of course, that the writing I want to do about Love isn't necessarily about ohmygodILOVEYOU love. I mean, yeah, I'm single and really fucking angsty about it, so a fair amount is pretty emo, but there are people and things I love and want to write about, but language is failing me. Hence the lexical gap. And the suggestion to look to the Greek. The conversation doesn't linger here too long, we're almost instantly on C.S. Lewis's book The Four Loves, and then to his friendship with Tolkien and then to books we covet. 

But the thought of the Greek keeps me up even after I've ushered everyone out into the snowy evening and ensured that they have means of getting home. 

Yes. I am exactly the kind of person who is kept up at night by lexical gaps and Ancient Greek.

***

I seem to have accidentally memorized the poem [i carry your heart with me (i carry it in)]

I have, over the course of a few years, attempted to memorize a few poems. They feel very much like prayers and come to me in much the same fashion. When I'm foundering on at work, the first lines of Sonnet XXIX come to mind. When I'm upset about a relationship, I repeat Mary Oliver's "The Uses of Sorrow" to myself under my breath. When I'm frustrated by how the world is GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL and shouting about how the Boomers have just bitched everything for us, I recall the line "Love someone who does not deserve it" from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." 

Memorizing this poem by ee cummings came as a surprise. 

Shortly after Kerry sent me "May I Feel, Said He" I was helping some friends choose readings for their wedding. As a former poet and poetry enthusiast, I was pulling up a number of love poems. The poems, however, didn't feel much like the couple, so I bookmarked a few of them to enjoy later. But the cummings, for whatever reason, has stuck in my head like the hook from a great pop song. 

i carry your heart with me. (i carry it in my heart)

Over the past weeks I've wanted to use that line more times than I can count. The problem, of course, is that [i carry your heart (i carry it in)] is a LOVE poem. It's a poem you would read at someone's wedding. It's the kind of poem I can imagine tumbling out of my mouth after a long evening in with someone I'm dating (I'm more fun than this makes me sound, I promise.)

But I can't stop thinking about the poem. And I nearly recite the line over the phone as a good friend tells me about a gut-wrenching breakup. I think about it when someone else tells me about a family member diagnosed with a terminal illness. I actually write it in a card I'm sending to a friend going through a rough spot before thinking it might be a little overblown and rewriting the whole damn thing.  

***

Lexical gaps annoy the hell out of me.

Of course they do. I write for a living. I emote for a hobby. I've been told that I feel things more deeply than most people. So I need to know that there are words to express whatever the hell it is that I'm feeling. 

The lexical gap for love annoys me more than most. I need a word that means "We're related and I care about you, so I will always buy you remote controlled robots for Christmas and if you're ever in jail I'll come bail you out." I need another that means "I will spend an entire Sunday helping you Keratin treatment your hair and watching Game of Thrones (probably giving myself cancer in the process). " I need another one that means "Every time I think about you I want you here, now, so we can [censored] and then spend the rest of the night talking about modern literature and feminism and cracking up over terrible puns." 

But I don't have any of those words. I've got a big, ridiculous lexical gap that I can't fill. And as much as I would like those words, as much as I not-so-secretly want to employ the Ancient Greek, it isn't coming back into vogue any time soon. So instead I find myself repeating the simple truth behind all these kinds of love.

I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart.

Turns out cummings wasn't as much of a hack as I thought. 

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Idiot

The alarm beeps and brings me around breathy, edgy, and completely furious.

It's a Monday morning and I've spent what feels like the entire night dreaming, well, one of those dreams.  It starts the way those dreams always start  ohbabyI'msosorryIwassuchanidiot. It (d)evolves the way those dreams always do and when the alarm rousts me I swear I can still feel his lips and teeth on my skin and I desperately wish there was enough time to go for an extremely fast, frigid, five mile run.

Dreaming about men from your past is awful.

Dreaming about men from your past and waking up edgy to a Monday morning is worse.

Dreaming about men from your past and waking up edgy to a Monday morning alone is the absolute, unequivocal ohmygodthefucking worst. It's a punishment of Dante-esque proportions and I slam out of the house entirely pissed.

***

"This may be a bigger picture question, but why do you need to say anything?"

Carliene pauses and adds "That's a social worker AND friend question." 

Social workers, it turns out, make excellent friends. 

I said it last winter, after Carliene and Krista came up and took care of me when I was incapable of taking care of myself. I think it again, nearly a year later while Carliene and I are in the midst of a long walk. Not the best at navigating relationships in any capacity, I am in the process of attempting to ford the goddamn Rubicon of relationships. I'm no Caesar (not even a lesser), and need to bounce some of what I've been thinking off of someone who is . . . better at emotions? Isn't quite so myopic when it comes to another person's perceptions? Just isn't me?

"I'm better." 

She doesn't say anything, so I plow ahead. "I am better because of what happened. In a significant, measurable way. But I don't know how to say something like that without sounding like I'm a bunny boiler."

"Have you considered not saying anything?"

"I can't. I've become a blurter. If I don't say something it'll accidentally come tumbling out anyway."

"That's pretty unfortunate."

"Don't I know it."

***

My heart is an idiot. 

This is the thought my rational brain will have when it checks back in. For the moment, God alone knows where it went.  I'm on the floor, rocking back and forth screaming into a pillow. There's an Adele album on the radio (I never claimed originality) and even if my face wasn't covered with a pillow, I'd have a hard time breathing.

In a few years, I'll be in a therapist's office, pointing to this exact moment as the moment when I gave up. When I decided that everything was "a whole lot of nothing worth losing or getting back." But that'll be years from now. For the time being I'm screaming into the pillow and trying not to make myself sick.  The truth is, I'm howling over something I should just ohmygodbeoveralready

Someone I loved married someone else. 

That's it. 

And let's be clear. He was, objectively, not good for me. We had a deeply unhealthy relationship, and at the end, I didn't even like him very much. But despite not liking him some small part of me still loved him. Very much. And that small part of me (the part I would like to abandon mid-blizzard on the prairie) maybe-always-just-a-little-bit hoped that he'd show up some day and say "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry. I was such an idiot." 

Let's get real. My heart or lizard brain or whatever took over driving during that period of my life was unfathomably stupid. Because every single damn warning sign was there. Peter Pan Syndrome. Indecisiveness. Snobbish taste in books and music. An inability to just return a phone call or text. Aloofness. A million other giant, red-flashing "ACHTUNG" signs. 

But (have I mentioned that my heart is an idiot?) all it took was one smile. One smart comment about a book I was reading. One self-deprecating remark about being so scrawny and I fell inconveniently, irrationally, unwisely in love. 

Idiot.

***

At almost 30 I fall in love a lot less easily than I did in my early 20s. 

It's inevitable, I suppose. You go through bad breakups and not so bad breakups, and you learn how to recognize the reasons why something won't work (emotionally stunted, lives on another continent, gay) and figure out how you're going to isolate all those stupid, swoopy stomach feelings and move on. You learn how to put your guard up. 

Your heart becomes somewhat less of an idiot. 

Until it isn't.

Until someone walks into your life, slips in under your guard, and maybe they don't quite turn your world upside down, but they turn your perception of yourself upside down. Suddenly you're no longer the girl who specializes in unhealthy relationships who is now a little bit crazy because of them, but someone else entirely. Someone who is funny and smart and just a tiny bit desirable. And in the midst of your life feeling very How Stella Got Her Groove Back you think to yourself. "This is a mistake. I'm going to get hurt." 

And you do. You do get hurt because that's what happens. But somehow this time you can walk out of it not saying "My heart is an idiot" but "I am better. In significant, measurable ways."

Hopefully without sounding like a bunny boiler.