My Very Own Demolition Derby

This morning I put in a good chunk of time editing—as I often do when my cupboards are getting bare and the landlord is sure to be peering in my bathroom window looking for his money—and noticed the sunlight flooding through the kitchen blinds onto the hardwood floor, which of course got my mind wandering and wondering. Why wouldn't it, right? I started thinking about this time last year, which I spent on the other side of the world and wondered if it could be exactly a year ago today that I was soaking in the stillness of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem. So I went to my room to get last year’s journal and did a little searching. I was close. It was a year ago yesterday.

That day the light filtered through the tall, reaching branches of the Garden . . . the birds chirped happily and endlessly as if they too knew how sacred a place it was and just couldn’t keep it to themselves . . . the colorful group from Mozambique sent out hushed, soothing melodies . . . and my own heart beat more powerfully than before. All are imprinted in my mind, feelings and images with few words.

What I felt, not what I saw, changed me. It brought a reality to what I’ve always known and seemed to solidify the spiritual ground beneath me. I’d forgotten until reading my journal this morning, but that day my challenge to myself was to come home a better woman. Lucky for me that happened, but in all honesty, I don’t think it took much work on my part. It was a natural result of the experiences I had. I came home sanded and polished shiny and beautiful. The pinnacle of something great, right? But not for long. I was actually at the perfect point in life to be broken down and then crushed to smithereens.

Reflecting on who I am today, I don’t feel like a better woman than a year ago. I’m rougher and perhaps less tolerant of annoying people and often out of tune and a little off balance. I might even admit I’m back to being a blob of indecipherable artwork. Guh. Definitely not refined. Is this what my life has amounted to? Yes and no. Here’s where it all made sense to me just a little minute ago. At the beginning of this year my world was stripped down, and I was left to rebuild from the ground up. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. (And now that it's happened, I can very well see it happening again.) So I'm not the masterpiece of last year anymore, BUT—here’s the kicker—I haven’t digressed like I first was convinced of when I reread that journal entry. Okay maybe I've digressed a titch in certain areas, but I’m just in a new state of life that I’m working to sort through and organize and figure out. I’m on my way to becoming something even more, even better than before, but I still have a lot of work ahead of me. Now I see that the only way for me to progress was to not just be broken down but completely demolished. Personally I think it would've been more fun to host a demolition derby and let all of you have a free shot at me. Vroom, vroom, vroom . . . Wouldn't you agree? Maybe next time.

So how do we not remain a purposeless blob of clay? Simple. Implement what we’ve learned from being smashed to smithereens. Simply put but not simply done. That might mean digging through all those blissfully painful memories to make sure we really learned what we were supposed to learn. If we don’t slow down enough to mourn our losses and analyze those defeats, changes, and trials we've survived AND change for the better, we will digress.

So maybe it’s time for all of us to do a little self-reflecting. Maybe you're stuck. Maybe you've been on the brink of rebuilding your life but gave up because you couldn’t see an end in sight. . . . and it seemed easier and safer to blend in with the dirt. Well alls I gots to say is this life ain’t over till it’s over and you best be cowboyin' up. There’s much, much more in store for you. And then before you know it, it'll be time for your next demolition derby, just like me. Maybe you and I can coordinate and plan a joint derby together. Yeah, I like that idea.

The day in the life of a person with a corded cell phone.

Wake up. Turn your phone on, which died during the night. Start to listen to your two new voice mail messages, but the phone shuts off before the first message finishes. Plug the phone in, turn the phone back on, and listen to the rest of the messages. Let the phone charge. Pack your belongings for school, tossing your phone charger into your backpack for on-campus phone use.

Get on the bus. See your brother drive through the roundabout in front of your bus! Pull out your cell phone to call him because you’re so excited, and realize your phone will probably die right when he says hello. Remember you brought your handy-dandy phone charger. Scan the inner perimeter of the bus in search of an outlet. None. Call brother anyway because it is worth the risk. (Going a month without a battery has taught you to talk fast.)

That crazy thing called love.

It’s 10:15 a.m. I’m sitting on my bed editing Wilfried Decoo’s book on writing language-teaching textbooks while half listening to the conversations floating through my walls. “Em, where’s your purse?” My roommate Kate’s sister and brother-in-law spent the night en route to Disneyland, and the two of them are now in the kitchen and up and down the stairs gathering their belongings before heading to the airport.

Those words, “Em, where’s your purse?” communicated much to me, but mostly I got the feeling that this man is taking care of his wife. To most of you that makes sense and is an everyday phenomenon, but to me that is extraordinary. I’ve never been a part of that world, and to this day it’s hard for me to fathom a man loving me enough to help me gather my belongings. Why should he care? Because I am important to him and it makes him happy to take care of me? Because he loves me? Or maybe, he doesn’t want to be late to the airport and is hurrying me along. Okay, that sounds more realistic to me. I just can’t comprehend the whole love thing, but it sounds really, really nice.

Still

Eyes see outward and eyes see in. Close your eyelids for a moment. Go to where the warm breeze blows and the sun scorches just like you like it. Go back in time to re-enjoy that sliver of a moment that vanished before you could taste it. Go anywhere. See, it's easy. Now turn on your own happy, free-flowing music mix, and close your eyes. Keep 'em closed while you begin to sway and dance. You feel the music, don't you? You feel the motion of the notes and the meaning in the words, just as music hopes you would. Deeper than any open-eyed experience could allow you. As I savor the notes individually, time lingers and stills. I'm making art with my body.


Photo by Helen Levitt, 1940.

Lisa Hannigan just may be my true love.

This is my most beautiful artistic/musical discovery by far. Well, I actually can't take the credit. A friend introduced me to Lisa Hannigan the morning before she came to Salt Lake, just two days ago. So I went to her free concert at the Graywhale a block west of campus. I fell in love before hearing her live, and then fell harder seeing her in person and talking with her afterwards. The thing that sets her apart to me is the creativity that encompasses her lyrics, fashion, music, and music videos. Seeing her and listening to her makes me restless to create. See if this video does the same for you.