Complex Commonality

"...it's better than doing it in Vegas..." "...then he handed me the banana, and I threw it at him..." "...literally, everybody was puking at the same time. Literally..." "...it's just hard now because my home doesn't feel like home anymore. My parents split up and now strangers live in the house I grew up in..." "...oh, man, seriously? You need to call her and apologize. Right now..." "...yeah, they met at a logging competition. What is a logging competition anyway?" "...I went skydiving yesterday!"

This succession of statements is an example of snippets of conversations I hear every day - riding the bus, walking across campus, at work, studying downtown... It is interesting to me how many lives converge under the umbrella of necessity, but how separate everyone's life really is. People are funny. Hearing passing comments like this makes me wonder from what context those statements stemmed.

How can people's lives be so intricate, so complicated, so interweaving and yet so separate? This is not the first time I have experienced this sentiment, and I know I am not the only one who has. Maybe this is idea of being alone together is why humans desire so bad to connect - to something, to someone.

Everyone's world is so real to them, so important - but somehow things seem to lose significance if they do not directly affect me in some way. Sometimes (I probably should venture to say most times) it's even hard to connect emotionally to things that do directly affect me. It's easier to look at them from a self-proclaimed distance, to push them away so I don't have to deal with them - to avoid getting hurt or facing that looming inevitable situation I don't want to face.

In the meantime, since I first heard the fragments of those conversations, people's lives have been moving on, their issues, big or small, significant or insignificant, have been resolved, or made worse, maybe they have completely new issues now, or perhaps they haven't dealt with them at all...maybe they have detached themselves from the situation, or maybe they have come to see the crushing reality of facing the inevitable. I wonder... did the guy call and apologize? Did the girl realize there is more to life than throwing bananas at people? Or did she come to the conclusion that the banana needed to be thrown? I will never know, and I will stop wondering about it soon, because the things in my life will soon regain my full attention.

Crowded Solitude

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand to the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies -- all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. "
-Aldous Huxley, "The Doors of Perception"

I read this quote today and felt it coincided with a few thoughts that have recently been filtering through my head. Sometimes I feel detached. Disconnected. Maybe it is because I am dealing with new experiences lately, or maybe because I am in semi-fresh surroundings, probably both. Maybe neither. Maybe I'm just trying to pin a cause to my wandering thoughts and feelings. Whatever it is has put me in a reflective mood, especially at night when the events of the day are over and I have nothing to do but think about them. Through this time, though, it has become clear to me that things on this earth are so ephemeral, so trivial. It is when I feel like this that I realize God is the only one I can really latch onto, and connect. He holds on.

On the heels of this observation, I want to share something I wrote a while ago. It is rather melancholy and somewhat poetic, which is a little unlike me - it is definitely new territory.

Today my day was black and white. I looked desperately for color, but couldn't find it. The sun was shining, but it only made things visible, it did not make them glow with golden warmth. The trees were not green, their blossoms not snowy white and blushing pink. The purple hair on the girl who sits across from me on the bus every morning; the girl with the red backpack; the guy with the orange mo-hawk, the interior of the bus itself with its neon seats; all these images met my eyes today devoid of all color. I saw them in black and white and shades of gray, with only the memory of the vibrancy that used to fill those images. Even though the memory of color was there, it was as if the color had never existed at all. The sky was clear, but it was only that - clear. I was chilled today - but it was warm outside. I am not bitter, and I am not depressed. My day was just black and white today. Everything seemed empty, ghost-like, hollow. I wonder how long it will take to paint the color back in.

Third Party Endorsements Are A Good Thing

Jack Johnson released a new album on February 5th. First of all, it's good. Secondly, it's nothing extremely out of the ordinary for him, but in my opinion, it's just more good, solid Jack. For those who are critical of his lack of evolution in style, I say, why do you like him in the first place? Because it's Jack. If he sounded different, it wouldn't be Jack. This CD incorporates a slight variation of sound, while remaining classic. It's a little reminiscent of the Curious George soundtrack, which was definitely a different feel than his previous three albums. It's neat to hear some of his songs that are obviously about his wife, or his kids. My favorite songs on the CD so far are: "Monsoon" and "Hope." I also like "Sleep Through the Static" (the title song) and "Adrift." The song "Angel" is very sweet (as in awww, he wrote that for his wife) and right now I feel like I identify with the song "All At Once." Oh, and "Losing Keys" is a great song. With a song title like that, how can you not want to listen to it?

A few lyrics that immediately stuck out to me:

"I wanna take the preconceived out from underneath your feet." (All At Once)

"Show me that there's more than the meantime" (Monsoon)

"I've been losing lots of keys lately, I don't know what that means, but maybe I'd be better off with things that can't be locked at all." (Losing Keys)

"There's still so many things I want to say to you, but go on..." (Go On)

"When will these ideas really be my own?" (Adrift)

"Your voice is your own I can't protect it" (Adrift)

You all should listen to his new CD, "Sleep Through the Static." It also was recorded using only solar energy, just so you know...an interesting fact, I thought.

Mixed Emotions: On Anticipating the Future

"Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nin

The promises of the future charm me, yet once I am enticed by them, I hear them snicker at me behind their veils that promise success and contentment. I want to change and grow, I want to stay the same. I am excited, I am scared. I am elated, I am terrified. I think I can't handle it, I know that I can. The thing I despise most about this whole process of change is the switching of emotions that happens daily, hourly, almost moment by moment. It is on the front of my mind, it is at the back of my mind, it is on the bottom of my mind, it is on the top of my mind. It's on the side, in the corner, in the middle, over, under...it is always on my mind. No matter what else flows through the matter of my brain, that is always there, always there, always there. Like a constant drip, like the sun - always rising, like the memory of a loved one gone, like the promise of something better, it is annoying, refreshing, lonely and hopeful. It is all these things separately, all at once. And so I will always be learning to adapt to the ever looming prospect of...change. It is always there, nerve-racking at first but almost always worth it in the end - for there is always something new to learn. Most of the lessons life gives are age-old, and worth the process it takes to learn them, even if they hurt.

Some Thoughts to Clear My Head

I like to think of myself as an "early adopter." This means that I am in the 13% of the population who catches onto things soon after the 2 1/2% of the population, the "innovators", make it appealing. I like others to test the water first, then I step in soon after I see they don't immediately retract. Not often do I fall into the 68% of the population, the majority, who follows suit because "everyone else is doing it." Sometimes I do find myself in the 16% or so of the population deemed the "laggards", who wait around to catch onto something until I really cannot think of a reason not to. This puts me either on the front end or the tail end of things most of the time and I don't know what that means - or if it reflects on me a certain way - it's just an analysis of how I operate. All this to say, when it comes to blogs, I most certainly fall into the laggard category.

I have never been against blogs, like I was against myspace or facebook before I caved (I was also a "laggard" in that instance). I guess the idea of a personal blog just scared me, because I feel that up until now, my rantings like this have been confined to my journal and visited by my eyes only. While it is a release to write things out in my journal, there is something even more freeing about posting my thoughts, knowing others will read them. There is something beautiful about exposition, transparency.

The thing that spurred the sudden birth of this blog of mine, was a phone call I received earlier this evening. My mom called to tell me that my grandma's cancer has spread from her kidney to her bones. My grandma has been fighting cancer on and off for the majority of her life. Her most recent diagnosis was a tumor in her kidney. The doctors said they could remove her kidney, but that would lower her kidney function from its current 50% to about half of that. (I think around 30%.) She had a CT scan, to determine how far the cancer had spread in her kidney. That's when they discovered that it had spread to her bones. Even after my family's extensive experience with many different forms of cancer, it still feels foreign to talk about. I don't know much about bone cancer, or how it's treated, but I know it involves chemotherapy. In my mind, bone cancer sounds much worse than any kind of organ cancer. Bones can't be removed, and that scares me. I don't want my grandma to have to go through chemotherapy, because she has survived seven different forms of cancer already! She has been through chemotherapy, radiation and surgeries multiple times. Isn't seven times enough? Does there really have to be an eighth?

When my mom relayed this news to me over the phone tonight, my reaction surprised me. I cried. I cried hard. My mom didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to say. Sometimes there is nothing to say. Then my mom said "I'll let you talk to grandma" and before I could respond, I heard my precious Grandma Ruth's voice on the other end of the phone, reassuring me that everything would be OK. "God has given me peace, Karen, and it's not time to give up hope," she said.

The thing that hurts the most for me tonight is that I could not be there with my family as they were dealing with this news. I could not give my grandma a hug and spend time in her company as she faces the looming prospect of a major surgery followed by dialysis and chemotherapy. I could not help fix dinner and do the dishes, do the practical things I longed to do to help in any way I could. All I could do is pray, so that is what I did.

In my moments of prayer, two verses came to my mind. One from Exodus 14:14 which I read today. It says "The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still." Also the verse that says "Be still, and know that I am God." When we have no human control over a situation, how comforting it is to know that we have a God who is fighting for us.