A Picture of Quiet

The house is quiet.  My roommate is out of town, so her room is dark, the spinning chairs empty—or at least they would be, except she uses one of them to hold things like laundry between dryer and drawer, or books that she’s reviewing.  The other chair is overflowing with so many cushions and blankets that I’m a bit amazed that she can fit in there, too, regardless of how small she may be.

The kitchen is quiet, too.  There are a few dishes in the sink I haven’t gotten to yet, and I’m not sure that I will today.  Stranger things have happened, I suppose.  I also need to refill the sugar bowl.  I’m more likely to do that, especially if I make myself a cuppa this afternoon.  The floor is slightly sticky in places from where I overflowed water and lemon juice the other day, trying to descale the tea kettle.

Since both windows are open in the living room, it’s not quite as quiet.  The rush of cars on the street, the faint buzz of someone mowing their lawn, the distant hum of an airplane overhead, all are made welcome in this space.  Still, the noises make themselves at home in the concept of quiet.  The sunshine has moved away from the books on the back of the sofa and now shines on the covers of the books that wait on the arm of my reading chair.  A small gray and white cat sits in the corner of that red chair, glancing up every time I go by. 

My bedroom is the least quiet, but I still wouldn’t call it loud.  The pattering of my fingers on the keys is nothing that would disturb anyone.  The music that plays from behind my word processor shifts from cool saxophones to deep-voiced storytellers to Hotel California.  Perched over a tealight, the wax cubes I got for my birthday melt silently into puddles and let off the scents of oakmoss, yuzu, and ambitious plots.  I take a quick break to google ‘yuzu’: a Japanese citrus fruit.  Condensation beads on the side of my water bottle.  My hair is almost dry.  I have one entry in my journal already on the page I use to track my writing, and it’s only one o’clock. 

Madeleine L'Engle's Mrs. Whatsit declares that wild nights are her glory.  Quiet days are mine.  In the quiet, my books hold their stories in wait for me, while I spin my own across a white screen.  In the quiet, I am at home.

All I Ever Wanted

I just got back from “vacation” this week.  (I’ll explain the quotation marks in a minute.)  It was one of those just-because things: I had wanted to go and visit my friend in Boston sometime this summer, and it just so happened to work out the best that I come and see her right after her job ended and bring her back to our hometown so she could spend some time with her family.  I also took the opportunity to run up and see my sister and—equally as important—meet my niece-cat and nephew-cat.  So it was a week of visits, board games, lots of driving, and me finding ways to entertain myself while my hosts were busy.  For some reason, I find it hard to call this a vacation.

It fits the definition—“an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling” (which Google tells me is from the OED).  I was away from home, and I was at my leisure most of the time.  But when I think of vacation, I think of glamorous, exciting places—white sandy beaches or gleaming snowy slopes, or else cobblestone streets and ancient monuments and people walking by speaking other languages.  I think of it as a time to move out of what I know of the world and get a different perspective.  The amount of time I sat in my sister’s house, doing exactly what I would have done in my own, seems to serve as a disqualifier.

But “leisure” in the above definition only touches lightly on something that I think every good vacation needs: rest.  Yes, it is good to go new places and learn new things, but what good does it really do to leave the daily grind only to beat yourself into a frenzy trying to get from place to place?  My mind may not have been particularly expanded by this past week, but my spirit felt the benefit of it.  I had time to have a good long talk with my sister, to sit with a purring cat in my lap, to sing through musicals with my friend, to write and to sleep in and to read.  In short, I could do precisely what I wanted to do, and that was truly a delight to me.

Maybe my next vacation will be an education to me, and maybe it won’t.  Either way, no matter how ‘lame’ it may seem to have spent so much of my vacation in my pajamas, I was very glad to have it.  And if I get the chance to have another restful week like this, I will definitely take it.

I'm Too Tired to Come Up with a Catchy Title

I am finding a new intimacy with weariness.

Sorry, I just had to be poetic for a minute.  But seriously.  I’m tired.

I saw something once online where someone called themselves not an early bird or a night owl but “some kind of permanently exhausted pigeon.”  It seems apt enough to me.  Today I woke up at five, as I always do on Mondays so I can go meet the truck deliveries for the restaurant.  I don’t mind working early in the morning—it leaves my afternoons and evenings free, which suits me just fine.  But those very early shifts are a drag, and this morning was one of the worst.  Even as I drove into work, I was dreaming about the nap I would take this afternoon.  And that nap, which was supposed to take only half an hour, stretched almost into two.

Today’s an atypical day in that respect.  Usually I don’t nap, unless one counts five minutes of closing my eyes over a book in the afternoon.  And I don’t usually feel the weight of exhaustion behind my eyes and in my limbs the way I did today.  But tiredness is a familiar feeling.  I realized several years ago that my go-to conversation starter is “Man, I’m tired.”  I think I did that because not only is it often true for me, but it’s true for most other people as well.

What is it about adulthood that wears us out so much?  For me, I know that part of it is a failure to manage my own sleep well enough.  I have an alarm on my phone that tells me when I should go to bed, but I rarely follow it.  Usually by the time it goes off, I’m not as tired as I was in the afternoon (thanks, circadian rhythms).  Even if my body is ready to let go, my mind still clings to its to-do list, the stories it wanted to explore and the tasks it wanted to accomplish.  Sleep does not weigh as heavy in the balance as all that—though as I get older and more tired, it’s growing in significance.  And while I know that there are other factors that add to my fatigue, diet, exercise, and hormonal patterns being among them, I’ve never taken the time to really look into them.  I am not a good custodian of my own body.

There is just so much I want to do.  There are so many books to read and shows to watch and things to learn.  I want to learn sign language and Korean, and I want to finish War and Peace before it’s due back at the library (unlikely—this is one book I will have to renew), and I want to find a good agent for my novel, and I want to get new music for the children’s choir, and I want to write haiku and read manga and whittle down my list of shows to watch and ponder the existence of love in the world and plan out my vacation.  And, oh yeah, I should probably eat something and shower tonight.  Who has time for sleep?

The problem would seem to be that my mind has far greater reserves of energy than my body does.  But as I grow more intimate with fatigue, I recognize that I wear down mentally and emotionally as well as physically.  As an introvert, I have to ration out my socializing—any week that has more than two social engagements in it makes me tired just to look at it in my calendar.  It’s a tricky business, though, with various considerations to rule in—meeting up at home with one of my friends, for example, takes very little out of me, but attending a church event sometimes takes days of mental preparation, and heaven forbid someone invites me to a party.  So managing my schedule is a delicate business, and sometimes the social anxiety weighs in the balance.  Imagine having to explain to someone that, however much I may love them, I can’t spend too much time in their company because their presence exhausts me.  How do I say it without offending them?

Still, I’m realizing that I’m better off now than I was ten years ago.  Though my body is not quite as resilient as it was (I definitely won’t claim to be aged yet, but I definitely notice a difference!), I am more aware of what makes me tired and what doesn’t.  In finding a new intimacy with weariness, I also have found a new intimacy with myself.

Here is my conclusion: life is exhausting.  The key to managing that is finding what gives you rest—physically, emotionally, and mentally—and doing that.  That’s harder than you might think, because trust me, the world has a lot of advice on how to do it.  Supplements and medicines, meditation, apps and wearable technology, habits to take up and habits to avoid—the list goes on and on.  But in the end, you have to find what works for you, and stick to it.

It’s an ongoing process, because I fully expect to be as different at thirty-eight as I am now from my eighteen-year-old self.  But I’m learning.  And in one respect, in the matter of my confidence that I know what is right for me, I am sure that the world will not wear me down.  I will follow my own advice, and sleep better for it. 

Our Lady, Burning: A Response to the Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral

A fire has broken out at the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  The roof structure, built in the 13th century and called 'the forest', is lost, and the spire has fallen.  I've been following live updates on CNN with a heavy heart, and I wanted to share my thoughts on this sad event.

Our Lady, Burning

She is many things, and one.
Every eye that rests on her tranquil face
brings something new,
someone loved.
I bring frosted glass and opaque eyes,
age-softened hands and an abrupt laugh
and a faith I never felt
but which has a claim on me nevertheless.
I also bring a source of story and song,
a familiar edifice against a sunset of dreams,
glinting glass roses and stony whispering air
and the bells, bells, bells.
Ours.  Always she is 'ours'
and yet unclaimed, unpossessed.

Today she is on the pyre.

There is a silence across the river
that I can hear across the ocean.
I can see the tears falling
from eyes that cannot look away.
The smoke that shrouds the city of lights--
I can taste it.
I was but one set of shuffling footsteps,
one child searching her shadows,
and yet I am a part of her,
and as her forest falls
and her prayers are drowned by alarms,
I, too, grieve.

But the hand raised against her--
be it careless fate or cruel faithlessness--
will not change her,
for hymns will rise higher than the smoke.
Though we mourn--oh, how we mourn!--
voices are already lifting in hope,
saying words such as 'rebuild' and 'faith'
and 'together.'
Our lady's face remains tranquil,
for she is many things still, and still one.
To lose part of the many does not diminish her,
and love burns more fiercely than any flame.

Labor of Love

This weekend was kind of a big deal.  For about six years now, I have been working on one single enormous project: my novel series of four books, titled (for now) Release, Renewal, Revelation, and Relief.  That is over now, as I finally finished writing the last book on Saturday. 

Pause for effect.

It’s a bewildering thing.  I’m proud of my work—while it needs polishing, I know that it is strong, especially the ending.  And yet, I feel a little hollow.  At first, I thought it was grief for the story that has lingered at the back of my mind for half a decade, or else for those characters who didn’t make it to that strong ending.  But that’s the thing about books—whatever may happen, the story never really ends, and a character still is, even after death.  Both remain rooted in the present—you just have to turn the pages back to find them again.  I should be glad that they are all now real for more than just me.

Ay, there’s the rub.  To give this story and these characters substance in the real world cost me a bit.  I used to be able to dive into their world in my mind, to test and try on plots, to taste their words in my mouth.  It used to be an escape for me, somewhere I could go to be someone else for a while.  Now, however, that door is closed.  The story is on paper, all its possibilities solidified, and there’s no way in anymore except by the words on the page.  And while I have other stories into which I can flee, this one has been my chosen destination for so long.  I will miss spending time there.

Still, I’m glad that I did it.  The hours of work, the years of thought—I don’t regret a minute.  These characters have given me so much, and I owed it to them.  Now even if they go no further, still they are in the world.  They are real.  And I could not ask for more than that.

Anticipation

I am a member of a young church.  This particular congregation has been meeting for only about a dozen years, and only now do we have a church building under construction.  I drive by the work site every day on my way home from work, and today they were putting the roof on the tower.  I was very excited to see it, particularly since the work has been on hold the past week or so due to bad weather.  

Our pastor was talking on Sunday about how he is getting used to the new tour guide role he takes on, showing people around the work-in-progress.  As I was thinking about the possibility of stopping for a tour today, I thought about what a strange tour it would be.  With most buildings, what is notable about them is the things that have happened inside, the history they have witnessed and the beauty that has been put into them.  But in this case, the points of interest are future events—here is where we will hold worship, here is where the children will meet for Sunday school, here is where we will store fourteen different crockpots before a church picnic.

It’s an odd difference, but also exciting.  Anything is possible, and that is physically visible now in the unpainted walls and the unfinished floors.  The whole building is a blank canvas onto which our community will be able to make our mark.

It’s also an excellent metaphor for faith.  It’s not the looking back that matters in religion, but looking forward to what good is to come, be it in this life or the next.  What we need to focus on is the future—what can be built and what can be changed for the better.  I can only hope that we can hold on to that thought once the building is no longer unfinished.

True Horror

I’ve never been much of a fan of horror.  I tend to avoid scary movies and spooky books, because I never could understand why someone would choose to terrify themselves.  I’ve never enjoyed the feeling of wide-awake dread, that breathless waiting for something to leap out of the darkness, the trembling weakness that comes through the body in anticipation of violence.  Maybe some people do like those sensations, and if so, great.  More for them.

But I’m learning that there are many different kinds of horror, because there are many different kinds of fear.  Danger comes in all shapes and sizes, particularly now in our safe, apparently civilized world.  And some fears, while less striking than the bloody-thing-jumping-out-of-the-shadows kind, are more real and more familiar to me.

This is on my mind because I am currently reading through my Christmas books, one of which was a gift from my roommate.  She knows that I love “Welcome to Night Vale”, the creepy-wonderful podcast by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink.  Night Vale, by the way, is a very mild kind of creepy—I wouldn’t even class it as horror, myself, more bizarre humor with a side of sharp satire.  But Joseph Fink also has a book out now unrelated to Night Vale called Alice Isn’t Dead, which is the book that my roommate found and the story that inspired this post.  It is about a woman who, after seeing her dead wife staring at her from a news report, drops everything and goes off to search for her in an eighteen-wheeler.  On the road, in the places where many people pass and no one stays, Keisha finds something that can truly be called horrible.  Allow me to share the passage that made me want to write this afternoon.

At around four in the morning she heard haphazard, arrhythmic clapping.  Adrenaline seized through her, but she stood and with shaking legs left her bedroom.  She crept down the stairs.  Slap slap came the sound.  There was a flickering in her living room.  Slap slap.  The TV was on and muted, showing a local weather-woman describing a hurricane that would never come anywhere near the area Keisha lived.  Against this weather report, Keisha saw a blurred reflection.  A strange bent shape, swinging loosely back and forth.  Slap slap.  She smelled tilled earth, and she smelled her own sweat, and she smelled cleaning chemicals and the sharp funk of a gas station bathroom. 

“WOOP,” the shape said.  “WOOOOOP.”  Slap slap.  Slap slap. 

She leaned around the living room door with as little of herself visible as possible.  A Thistle Man, not the one she had first met, and not the one she had followed to the town, and not the one from her neighbors’ deck, but another one still.  He was bent horribly backward, like his spine was broken, and he was loosely swinging his arms back and forth in a circle so that they slapped his chest and back.  Slap slap.  Slap.  He gurgled.  “WOOOP!” he shouted.  “WOOOOOOOOOP!”  (Fink, 91-92)

First of all, I have to say how beautifully this is written, even this strange and disturbing description.  Well done, Mr. Fink.  And what talent he has with the detail, revealing the creature slowly, its strangeness coming one chilling element at a time.  But that isn’t what brought me to the keyboard.  I am here, as ever, to figure out what is going on in my head: in this case, why this image will not leave my head.  It is not particularly scary.  Small spoiler: this weird monster does nothing any more dangerous than this.  Keisha runs back to her bedroom, and he doesn’t follow, and the next day he is gone.  And yet it is frightening to me.  Out of all the terrible things that these Thistle Men do in the book, this is the image that keeps coming back, the monster entertaining itself in a darkened house.

To me, this is horror on a deeper level, and one that I can appreciate.  Anyone can jump out of a dark shadow and scare someone—I’ve done it myself, more than once.  There is no artistry in that.  But that slapping, swinging monster is chilling on a deeper level because there is a mystery to him.  We don’t know why he is doing this.  It’s never explained, at least not at the point in the book I’ve reached so far.  I don’t think it will be explained, either; it is just a strangeness, something included to make clear just how not human these creatures are.  And that is the kind of horror that this book is built upon—the mystery, and the unexplained, and the things that are very not human, and yet very real and very clever and very dangerous.  Fink reaches into the dark corners of the world with this story, dragging out grimy things like what you find in the sink drain or that corner behind the stove that never gets cleaned.  He brings those things to light, where they do not belong, and it is terrifying.

This book, and books like it, are an exploration of the darkness that lives in the world.  We like to pretend we don’t have the dark, but it is there, like those apps you can’t uninstall from your phone.  There is darkness in the world, and there is darkness in every human soul, and try as we might, we can’t always know what is hiding there.  That is why strange stories like these are scary, but also why it is important.  Because every story about things hiding in the dark needs someone who goes after them, who asks questions, who tries to find out what they are and how to defeat them.  We need to be able to look into the shadows, despite the horror they raise, and accept the realities that live there.  True horror stories are practice for looking into the dark and dealing with what is there, and something tells me that we will need that practice.