I can't help but wonder if I would be sitting in a lawn chair on a moderate July evening--thank God for this first evening where it's been under eighty degrees before eleven o'clock--had things been different. Would I be home taking care of Derek? Would I be preparing to return to WU in the fall? So many things happened so quickly. I know there's no use wondering where I would have been.
There's no reason for me to explain that one.
There's no reason for me to explain that one.
A few weeks ago, sitting around the kitchen table with some of the wonderful women of Waynesburg, we talked about the phrase, "When God closes a door, he opens a window." We said that it didn't make sense. A window?! It's something that I've been really struggling with: people telling me that something good will come from all of the bad. I've taken it so personally, getting upset because I felt like people were telling me that the bad thing happened just so that something better could come from it.
I'm suddenly realizing that's not how it works.
Shit happens. As cliche as it sounds, it is the truest thing I know, aside from a list of other cliche phrases like, "Change is the only constant." But life has fluxes and winding roads, and sometimes you have to pass through some dark alleys to get to the ice cream shop. Sometimes, you have to work through grief to get to wherever the road is leading, be it Seattle or Phoenix.
A year ago, if someone asked me where I would be today, I would say, "At home, taking care of Derek, getting ready to go into my last semester at WU." Clearly, I am as far from that as possible because our plans don't matter.
I really like the idea of God being outside of time. Sure, I have a hard time really grasping it, what, being in-time and all, but I think that knowing that there's someone out there who's got it together and knows what's up is the only real comfort when we don't know how to handle all that we've been given. I keep finding myself saying "This past year," and I've been saying that for months. I'm usually referring to since Derek died, but it hasn't been a year yet. I think I'm too busy pulling on the emergency break, trying to get my life into reverse, that the whole process feels slower. Days pass, one after the next, but as a whole, it's like this big glob of calendar months, and if it really has to flip to August, please, please be 2011.
When I think about "the past year," particularly since February, I'm reminded of how aware I have been of others' struggles. I'm not the only one who has lost a lot this year. During my whole "if things had been different" contemplation, I started wondering what it would be like if Martin hadn't lost his job, if a place where I put my trust, my loyalty, and my dedication hadn't completely turned on most everyone that I cared about there, if the magazine that I wanted to see succeed hadn't been unjustly discontinued due to illogical closed-mindedness and a greater want for money than cultural progress. Phew, it just keeps going. Anyways, a lot of people have been hurt by change.
Ever since I heard that Martin was denied tenure, all that I wanted to do was take it back. I wanted to protect everyone from all of the hateful vibes and sour feelings. I think one of the biggest realizations with that, was learning that even if we could have taken it back, there was still the initial blow, and that was enough such that things would never be the same.
But God's been opening windows like crazy.
Back inside, I sit on the couch for a nightly routine of Sleepytime tea and Frasier. Really getting in the spirit, I use Kim's Seattle mug (my favorite with the thumb-grip is in the wash), and I laugh at my own life, thinking about how in three weeks, I will be in Seattle. Who'd have guessed?
Without air conditioning, it's been pretty hot. We open the windows at night in hopes of it cooling off a bit. As much as I love this place, it's time to leave. I imagine myself literally crawling through a window in search of the next door. I've got a long drive ahead of me.
But the windows are open, and the breeze is not so bad.
Note: In some way, this was indirectly inspired by Wendell Berry's series of "Window Poems," which is why I have included this excerpt:
15.
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree's renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
How often the man of the window
has studied its motley trunk,
the out-starting of its branches,
its smooth crotches,
its revelations of whiteness,
hoping to see beyond his glances,
the distorting geometry
of preconception and habit,
to know it beyond words.
All he has learned of it
does not add up to it.
There is a bird who nests in it
in the summer and seems to sing of it--
the quick lights among its leaves
--better than he can.
It is not by his imagining
its whiteness comes.
The world is greater than its words.
To speak of it the mind must bend.
From Openings, 1968
I'm suddenly realizing that's not how it works.
Shit happens. As cliche as it sounds, it is the truest thing I know, aside from a list of other cliche phrases like, "Change is the only constant." But life has fluxes and winding roads, and sometimes you have to pass through some dark alleys to get to the ice cream shop. Sometimes, you have to work through grief to get to wherever the road is leading, be it Seattle or Phoenix.
A year ago, if someone asked me where I would be today, I would say, "At home, taking care of Derek, getting ready to go into my last semester at WU." Clearly, I am as far from that as possible because our plans don't matter.
I really like the idea of God being outside of time. Sure, I have a hard time really grasping it, what, being in-time and all, but I think that knowing that there's someone out there who's got it together and knows what's up is the only real comfort when we don't know how to handle all that we've been given. I keep finding myself saying "This past year," and I've been saying that for months. I'm usually referring to since Derek died, but it hasn't been a year yet. I think I'm too busy pulling on the emergency break, trying to get my life into reverse, that the whole process feels slower. Days pass, one after the next, but as a whole, it's like this big glob of calendar months, and if it really has to flip to August, please, please be 2011.
When I think about "the past year," particularly since February, I'm reminded of how aware I have been of others' struggles. I'm not the only one who has lost a lot this year. During my whole "if things had been different" contemplation, I started wondering what it would be like if Martin hadn't lost his job, if a place where I put my trust, my loyalty, and my dedication hadn't completely turned on most everyone that I cared about there, if the magazine that I wanted to see succeed hadn't been unjustly discontinued due to illogical closed-mindedness and a greater want for money than cultural progress. Phew, it just keeps going. Anyways, a lot of people have been hurt by change.
Ever since I heard that Martin was denied tenure, all that I wanted to do was take it back. I wanted to protect everyone from all of the hateful vibes and sour feelings. I think one of the biggest realizations with that, was learning that even if we could have taken it back, there was still the initial blow, and that was enough such that things would never be the same.
But God's been opening windows like crazy.
Back inside, I sit on the couch for a nightly routine of Sleepytime tea and Frasier. Really getting in the spirit, I use Kim's Seattle mug (my favorite with the thumb-grip is in the wash), and I laugh at my own life, thinking about how in three weeks, I will be in Seattle. Who'd have guessed?
Without air conditioning, it's been pretty hot. We open the windows at night in hopes of it cooling off a bit. As much as I love this place, it's time to leave. I imagine myself literally crawling through a window in search of the next door. I've got a long drive ahead of me.
But the windows are open, and the breeze is not so bad.
Note: In some way, this was indirectly inspired by Wendell Berry's series of "Window Poems," which is why I have included this excerpt:
15.
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree's renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
How often the man of the window
has studied its motley trunk,
the out-starting of its branches,
its smooth crotches,
its revelations of whiteness,
hoping to see beyond his glances,
the distorting geometry
of preconception and habit,
to know it beyond words.
All he has learned of it
does not add up to it.
There is a bird who nests in it
in the summer and seems to sing of it--
the quick lights among its leaves
--better than he can.
It is not by his imagining
its whiteness comes.
The world is greater than its words.
To speak of it the mind must bend.
From Openings, 1968
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