subtitles (i wrote this during night class)

you are your best thing (toni morrison, beloved)

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we create ourselves. How, in the scramble to produce a tangible product for others to marvel at, to seemingly make our lives worthwhile, it becomes easy - even mindless to neglect the work that sits patiently in the corner, begun long ago and now forgotten. That quiet, expectant, hesitant work is ourselves, caught up and downtrodden in the "hustle" that life: full-speed-ahead seems to require these days. How it might even be vital to the continuation of that worldly-oriented hustle that we remember to take the time to cultivate ourselves in the context of only our selves. And, a more frightening thought: to what extent would our very identity be jeopardized if the ability to work towards personal wholeness was taken away or our willpower diminished? The danger in that makes the work we do in and for only ourselves seem all the more important.

change (thomas pynchon, vineland)
As I've recently been moving through a season of significant transition and change (an excuse, however poor, for my prolonged absence from writing for things other than classes), I've seen my - our - capacity for change. And yet simultaneously, another realization dawns that very little need stay the same for one to remain human. In fact, it is often recommended, even prescribed that people do as butterflies do: experience metamorphosis - in a less literal sense than when the word is used in reference to butterflies, of course. That when transitioning from one season of life to the next (and there will be a next), the person changes with the season. My personal hero, Liz Gilbert once responded to the accusation that she'd changed with an adamant "I HOPE so!" I hope that someday transitions are that easy for me to stomach. It's a damn good thing we have grace.

grace (don delillo, white noise)
Where is grace? It's from other people, and from letting other people bestow it. Grace enters in in the quiet spaces between hurt and healing. It is the result of the restless waiting which is proceeded by longing and followed by soft relief. And yet, it is not promised. It is not easy to be so fearlessly attentive to pain.

I crave a hard-fought, hard-won relationship with my community. I don't want easy or flowing or the kind of connection that you fall blindly into without a second thought. The beautiful and the ridiculous are almost always merged. We remain clumsily human, and the world is not square. There are bubbles in our speech and ripples in our connections, and there is grace for all of it. Grace is not a blanket of comfort, at least it shouldn't be. Grace is an invitation for pain to come and sit on the stoop, clutch a glass of ice-cold lemonade in it's spindly grip. "Take a load off," Grace says. Pain exhales. It doesn't make the hurt go away, but at least the pain is present and felt and seen.

And that, I believe is the most important thing required to cultivate those difficult, grace-full relationships. The "me too" that often follows the admittance of pain. The vulnerability that proves that we are in need of each other.

Let me repeat that.

We are in need of each other. And we are in need of grace. The fundamental center of the most heartbreaking, soul-wrecking, beautiful, glowing, necessary relationships.

"Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.

Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness."

-Brene Brown

when it falls apart (nicole krauss, the history of love)
I speak from personal experience: much of life is dealing with loss. We're lucky to have things so lovely and so close that, when they fall away, it feels as if the sky is shattering. I've struggled with the concept of seasonal people. The notion that perhaps not everyone is meant to stay around forever, or even for very long. That, instead of lifelong companionship, many of your loves will take their leave, seemingly at the most inconvenient time(s). The undeniable isolation of human beings makes it even more emotionally devastating when we connect and then separate again, like iridescent oil from water. And this is often heartbreaking, even numbing. To suspect that life as it is in this happy moment may disappear in the next.

You want some sort of certainty that you can hold in your hands. Some tangible, traceable "yes, it will be okay. If not now, eventually." The frustration, the anxiety comes when you realize that this is out of your control. But maybe it's better that way? When it falls apart, there are mantras and motivational posters. "This stuff builds character." "It's just a bad day, not a bad life." But even those seem half-hearted, irresolute, and at times, patronizing. Do you mean to say that I just have to wait? I am not a patient person.

But there is small certainty in the existence of our friends, Grace and Pain. The most striking, undeniable pair, like such lost lovers. It's certainly a task to seek out and find the places where loss and beauty coincide, but those spaces will be where you thrive.

this is all so weird (kurt vonnegut, breakfast of champions)
(And so is this post. Thx for making it this far.)
The oddity of human existence. Truly, do you ever just think about how you think? Do you know that you do not know? Do you ever grip the steering wheel, going 70 in a 55 and wonder what would happen if you pushed it just. a little. further. Have you been/are you quite broken enough yet to wonder if any of this is really worth it after all?

Now you're living.

So much of what we do, say, and experience hinges on coincidence. And that gives the tiny moments blended into the Big Mess a little more value, I think. That any of this might not have happened, because it only happened by chance. Or did it?

finally (george saunders, tenth of december)
Read something difficult. Start with Nietzsche or Freud or Marx, or Pynchon or Morrison or DeLillo. My favorite mind in the English department at my university recently said, "If literature teaches us anything, it is to be kinder to one another." Every Monday evening, I sit in a small, windowless room and allow all of my preconceived ideas about the world and it's humanoid inhabitants to be absolutely obliterated and then slowly reconstructed by way of books. (Isn't that the best way to do most things? By way of books?) My night class goes from 6-10pm and is consistently, relentlessly true. It wouldn't be learning if I already knew/agreed with every single thing to come out of the professor's mouth (and I don't). And yet I leave the room each Monday night and I feel just...right. I've decided that however cliche the motivational poster that reads "this stuff builds character" may be, it really is the most difficult things that make us.

And that's why we need grace, to give and receive it as a kind of communion. To experience the darkness so that we might know light, and then to turn and see each others' faces in the glow of the promise of things yet to come. As much as we are in need of each other, we're actually part of each other. We go through our own Things and do our own independent work, yes. But it is in each other that we are found, and that is how we create who we are.