Life is a bowl of cherries

I finished a book this afternoon - What Is The What - while listening to old man music like Bob Dylan and Tom Waits. I sound like such an old woman.

I cried reading the last few chapters, which really didn't surprise me because I've found many things recently to have such emotional hold over me that I shyly release myself in the determined and full-hearted moment. I became misty watching Sex in the City last night. I teared up watching Jon and Kate + Eight this morning. And this afternoon I turned into a small, flowing creek for Valentino Achak Deng and his words produced by dear Dave Eggers. Turning the final page and soaking in the final few words, an even greater sadness took hold of me. To be honest, this too did not really surprise me, as finishing a book is always a little depressing - you find yourself so deep within it, so engrossed, so consumed by the mold of the characters and the binding of the pages that you can easily forget there is life outside the story that you have to go back to eventually. In my old woman state and ridiculous sensitivity, I did not really want to get back to anything of my own.

After a big sigh, I grabbed a bowl of cherries and my laptop. I turned up the volume for Bobby D., then I thumbed to the doggy eared pages I had so recently read and typed up my favorite lines... the Whats of What Is The What.

But we're no longer rain, I said, we're no longer seeds. We're men. Now we can stand and decide. This is our first chance to chose our own unknown. I'm so proud of everything we've done, my brothers, and if we're fortunate enough to fly and land in a new place, we must continue. As impossible as it sounds, we must keep walking. And yes, there has been suffering, but now there will be grace. There has been pain but now there will be serenity. No one has been tried as we have been tried, and now this is our reward, whether it be heaven or something less than that.

This journey was an act of reckless faith.

In my own reality, it's Memorial Day, a day where folks across the city and country are given a day off to remember we are a nation still in war before they kick up their heels and barbecue in the park with friends.

In my own reality, I am curled up in white linen and staring out my window towards the park, wishing again and again I had more friends to embrace and parade with on this blank canvas of a Monday. I'm left clutching at my comforter, in all its irony, wanting to strangle it until somehow the people I desire draw closer and the ones I detest slink away. I wonder if this approach has ever worked for anyone... do I even have a chance?

This is part of my journey of reckless faith; this is my chapter of absenteeism, hugged by empty pages. This is something I've got to march through like a little Lost Girl, which is exactly what I am, even though I'm simultaneously so very very old. After a history of mild tribulation I made it to the promise land, where one goes to get beat up a bit more before heaven. Ah, sweet and succulent Samsara! How good you are to me! -Engulfing me in flames of loneliness until I'm burnt, dead, and ready for the Truth, a real holy land.

I don't want my readers to be confused - I am not putting myself on par with the real Lost Boys and Girls. My life has been nothing but peaches and sunshine compared to Valentino Achak Deng's. Blame my overt emotions and wild empathy to find the deep rooted parallels of our very opposite lives, but it's also like the book said,

Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.

The process of being young is indeed troublesome. Like so many, I abandoned the life I once knew with a grand escape route and I planted myself in new dirt. It's true that I am no longer a seed, but it would be entirely inacurate to call myself grown. I may carry the wisdom of my ancestors, and I may have been raised to speak dogmatically and unnecessarily proud, but it is striking how little and raw I can still feel.

Why have so many of my friends sharply turned away from me?
- It's happened 5 times in 2 years, without knowing or just cause.

Why have grown men played childish games with my heart?
- It's happened too many times to count, leaving me with little but stone where my love should be.

Why do people ignore my calls? Why am I a receiver of pain, but never the receiver of an apology? Why is it so hard to maintain and keep a steady happiness here? Why am I a backbone for so many others - a sponge for their struggles - yet still so disposable?

Why is a sense of family so hard to recreate?

Fierce independence is said to be a virtue, but it feels like a million pounds upon my shoulders and shackled to my ankles. I feel like I was born to do more than exist like this and struggle like this and so merely 'hang in there' like this. I feel like I've survived my past for more than this. But where is my reward? Where is my heaven? Or is this the "something less than that"?

It's not that I'm negative or ungrateful. Disregard my previous posts and gripes and tramping word-vomit ventilation. I am blessed. I am extremely privileged. In brief, escaping, collapsible moments of time, I am sometimes overjoyed. Yet still, more often and moreover, I am a little Lost Girl, just typing to keep the sound of my mantra in tact - my march in motion. Perhaps someday...

Until then, I'm going to nessle in white linen. I'm going to scowell out my window from time to time and hope that you will forgive me. I'm going to dive deep into the secrets of my mind where all that wisdom of my ansectors lays, and eventually my reckless faith with reach its reward. If hundreds of little Lost Boys can do it...

then my life is just a bowl of cherries, and I'm onto another book.