2006-12-26
in our places
I want to be here forever, suspended in time.
I�ve said this before, and I mean it again.
As I was driving home the other night, I was bursting with joy. �I AM SO HAPPY.� I yelled to the steering wheel a few times, the sound slightly altered a little by the gargantuan smile on my face. I love it when you can hear a smile in a voice.
Here�s the thing. I can bear to be away from these people, so long as I know they are right over there, within physical reach if I so wanted.
So long as they remain near and accessible.
It�s like I can�t deceive myself, like the light that�s on while you are trying to sleep and you try to trick yourself into slumber but your eyelids won�t let you doze off because they can sense it.
So long as Petie is right over there. Oh gosh. Julian is in his house right now, living and breathing just a few blocks away, which is good. And Adam, Ben, Michael� and Lizz is only a bend down the highway.
Family is different. I know they will always be there- it�s like this notion so certainly and deeply embedded in my mind that I could never think them ephemeral, these people in this house. Friends are different, they are relatively distant from my daily home life yet so close within me. They can�t go. I can�t go. But I�m gonna, soon enough.
I wrote this almost a year ago, and it reminds me how I felt and mimics some present feelings. Knowing my writings so well, this brings me back a wonderful sense of satisfaction, one that washes over me and has lately been revived from memory.
We sit at his table. We sit in our places. I think that people are really habitual, even in minimal ways. We like parking in certain spaces, or brushing our teeth in a certain direction (we are supposed to brush in circular motion, but I think many just go up and down). We even put on shirts in a certain way. Julian puts on his shirts in this weird, sloppy motion where he puts the edges of the garment against his arms that reach upward. He wiggles a little and sways his arms. His head is lost in the fabric and he looks like a creature for a moment there, and the shirt falls down.
These �certains� provide just that in our lives- certainty. There are only so many things we can control, sometimes it seems. So perhaps our spaces at that round table give us comfort.
It has a tablecloth on it. I appreciate that tablecloths are symmetrical. This one is wonderfully so. It has sunflowers. I like that sunflowers lean toward the sun. I find myself doing the same sometimes. I came home from lunch the other day and the sun was shining in my kitchen window. I just stood there for a few minutes and basked in it.
The wallpaper in the kitchen (Julian�s kitchen, not mine) is also symmetrical. It features daisies. The flowers are connected to a common vine. It crawls upward, up to the ceiling. And we sit there, surrounded by these symmetrical flowers. We sit in our places.
Come All Ye Faithful. We sang it in church last night at midnight mass. Faith is pretty peculiar. It�s not as fickle as most other emotions- it seems more resolute, with its steadfast and gracious trust and blindness. How can people be so sure of what they believe in? I believe in so many things, all the love and hope I can possess for those I hold dear, and even for people that I don�t. But I admittedly sometimes waver. Last night, however, I wholeheartedly celebrated the birth of Christ. Even being increasingly skeptical of the existence of God, I can appreciate and celebrate the birth of such a joyous and loving figure in the history of humanity. Christmas is beautiful, with all the carols and bright lights and the way it makes me feel when I wake up that morning and it�s like �yusss.� Come All Ye Faithful. I came, I saw, I enjoyed, and I have my faith. In me, in you.
I know I can�t stay. I know there are many more adventures to come at school, many things to discover within myself. My feelings about it are really conflicted. I�ll do what I can with what I have, though. I do have some time, and it will have to be enough to fully enjoy not the symmetrical flower patterns, but all that they entail, and so on. Merry Christmas and joy to the world, and the time that we have together.
leesah-likes at 11:39 p.m.