Friday, January 7, 2011

Essay on Everything (3)


[find your bearings. hang up your coat. stay for a little while.]

In your respective city far away from the place you were raised, you are a floating point. A dot amongst thousands of other dots working very hard to grab on and hold on. That's how I've felt lately. Like a little dot. A little point that keeps trying and trying but, like an archaic computer game, keeps getting deflected off of walls.

This is all that they see. A little dot with not enough management experience to take the 90k a year job they hung out before me for three months like a carrot. And after three months of interviews they turned me away with the flick of their wrist.

A little dot who is not pretty enough, or thin enough, is not enough.

After a while it starts to get to you. Each morning you wake up and run your hands up and down your body. I'm sure I have dimensions. I can feel them. But I must be wrong. They know better than I do. Little by little, I lose my dimension and my orientation. The space that I take up begins to diminish. I start to bounce around off of walls.


I'm a total heathen, with very little interest in thinking, researching, even discussing or the idea of God. I'd rather discuss books, or the weather, or anything really, with the exception of sports teams. Such little dialog I've had with 'God' that I know, should by some great trick it turns out he's been there all along, I'll show up at the finish line and he'll be there with his great Book and he'll look at me and say, "And who are you?" And then, after a  pause- "I'm sorry, but I just can't place you."


Despite this, when one is a bouncing little dot, or feels, at any rate, that they have been reduced to this, one does begin to question what the point of it it all is.




***
At first the soft, deep powder of the backyard was bearable on bare feet, a refreshing sting, but the packed-down crust of the driveway was torture. We exploded back in through the door and dashed back to the stove where we hopped back and forth from leg to leg, laughing a sort of crying laugh. Just as the blood was beginning to drain away from our feet, Teal's husband Mark, a solid Bostonian with a heavy New England Accent and tattoos running up his arm, decided to have another lap. The rest of them soon followed. Everyone but me. I have frostbite scars. I'm Chicken Shit. However you want to spell it out.  I stayed put.


They returned howling.

  

***

You are so much more than a little point. You are a long ribbon of color and light. You have been here for a while now, and you will keep going like this, unwinding and unwinding. The trick is to be find the people and the occasions who can recognize this. (And get rid of the rest.)



***

Listen, I know what you're thinking. But there is a difference in those who think that life is built for our pleasure and convenience and joy, and those who know that with any sort of joy there is equal parts suffering. Everyone in that beautiful house on that perfect night was familiar, some intimately so, with wrecking tragedy. The kind that saves us from melting into the delusion that everything in life is clean and pretty, or that we are entitled. To anything. The pieces of that tragedy have been lodged inside my body ever since, keeping me wildly alert, hyper-questioning and unwilling to accept anything at face value. 

So when I start to think about it, this is the only conclusion I can draw:


That the whole of life is a mystery. A hard, complicated mystery.

But if nights like this are the height of what the whole world can provide, in my lifetime- if this is all I ever get in terms of answers regarding purpose and intention and fulfillment- then I'll settle for that. I'll settle for that gratefully.

8 comments:

mona said...

"You are a long ribbon of color and light."

That was so good it gave me chills.

Anonymous said...

I have felt this way as well. Two years (TWO YEARS) of job hunting, for me, was enough to make me want to dig a hole. And climb into it. And live in it.

Six years later, I've left that job that I loved for so long. But it didn't fit right any more. But I don't feel like a dot. I feel free. Thankful. Wondering what's next but not worrying. I'm too old to worry!

adventurekate said...

This is real life, beautifully written.

Cassandra said...

This is awesome. So often I have no idea how to communicate my thoughts (I'm kind-of a dude, or just a cavewoman, in that way) but you really put into words what you wanted to say, and I relate to almost all of it! This is my last semester and I am burnt out even before it begins. I just want OUT. And I sort of want a design job but I also sort of don't. I sort of don't know how to choose and I'm a little freaked.

(scottish accent ON now) I love ya, I 'always 'ave. Nothin' can change that and you are NEVER just a dot.

MUAH!
Cass


P.S. Are you back in Seattle now? I have something to send you and I have it addressed to Anna's house.

P.P.S. Keeping in mind that you'd rather discuss books than God:

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1. Sort of an "Essay on Everything." Infinite questioning from one of the most powerful, rich, and wise man to ever to walk the earth, King Solomon of Israel.I haven't finished the whole book yet but I love it so far.

1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

...

Cassandra said...

This is so well said. Especially before the "interview" post! They both go very well together. So often I have no idea how to communicate my thoughts (I'm kind-of a dude, or just a cavewoman, in that way) but you really put into words what you wanted to say, and I relate to every word.

I love ya, I 'always 'ave. Nothin' can change that and you are NEVER just a dot.

MUAH!
Cass

P.S. Keeping in mind that you'd rather discuss books than God:

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1. REALLY interesting! Sort of an "Essay on Everything" written by one of the most powerful, rich, and wise man to ever to walk the earth, King Solomon of Israel.I haven't finished the whole book yet but I love it so far.

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises...

Teal Emlyn said...

Lina, love, you are exceptional. Your words are deeply evocative, echoing the experience of my heart more perfectly and poignantly than I could have ever imagined.

And I think now Marc understands why I find winter, even and especially in Vermont, so romantic.

That said, we're never letting you barefoot in the snow again, crazy lady!

Teal Emlyn said...

Lina, love, you are exceptional. Your words are deeply evocative, echoing the experience of my heart more perfectly and poignantly than I could have ever imagined.

And I think now Marc understands why I find winter, even and especially in Vermont, so romantic.

That said, we're never letting you barefoot in the snow again, crazy lady!

Teal Emlyn said...

Lina, love, you are exceptional. Your words are deeply evocative, echoing the experience of my heart more perfectly and poignantly than I could have ever imagined.

And I think now Marc understands why I find winter, even and especially in Vermont, so romantic.

That said, we're never letting you barefoot in the snow again, crazy lady!