A Minimalist Would Just Call This Untitled, But I Am Not A Minimalist So There You Have It

Ernest Hemingway wrote, “The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only 1/8th of it being above water.”  I think the unlucky passengers of the HMS Titanic could point out a few cracks in the dignity of their cold-blooded killer, but you’ve got to appreciate Hemingway’s lucid grasp of minimalism and modernism.

(You can’t help but think if the man’s parents had sent him to camp as a kid, maybe he would have turned out as a contented stock broker or something. Anyway.)

I both admire and dislike minimalism because in that style, all childish color and flair have been stripped away. It’s like being a grown-up and holding a cup of black coffee and only allowing a sharp exhale through your nose instead of laughing.

I’ve seen icebergs before, and their very alien nature (I’m a Georgian born & raised, yee haw, whatever) makes me uncomfortably awed. It just sits there in the water, like a single hummed note, and its very deadness makes me self-conscious of my fragile and flippant mortality. Have you ever been scuba-diving before? It’s like all of nature sending me a message–this is not your habitat, little mammal, go home. Minimalism feels like that to me. So very stark and bare and beautiful–a place I can tour and take pictures, but never my home.

Spirit Animals

I’m currently reading All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. It’s a good book, if you’ve got the stomach for 661 pages of politics. I don’t but I’m captivated anyway.

For the .3333 of my followers who have read the book, I’m going to share which character is my spirit animal. His name is Adam Stanton and all he ever wanted was to be good, and life has cast him aside. Without coming across as a self-righteous, bitter hermit, I identify strongly with Adam. I’m recognized for my intellect but still find myself alone in a cluttered room banging away at the piano. All I’ve truly ever desired is to leave the world a better place than I’ve found it, but things haven’t worked. Friends walk away. Rejection letters emails find their way into my box. I feel like I’m trying to kick my way through a trampoline. Like Adam, I find in my life a few, precious constants–people and places that are my home wherever I am. But the older I get, the more disappointed I am in human nature. I feel trapped in the endless death throes of my own optimism. Meanwhile, my passions and goals lead me constantly towards people I need but do not respect, and I long for a place where I’ll be appreciated and able to fulfill my purpose without being taken advantage of.

 

Standoff

Hello, old friend. Do you ever get that feeling like it’s raining outside and right at that 45-degree range where if you don’t let the ghosts out to play then they’ll pout inside you? Microsoft Word and I are at a standoff right now. I always lose the staring contest to that blinking black line and I just can’t make it move.

I’m not brave enough to attempt anything significant right now, like that novel ideal that’s been bouncing around for a couple years. But blogging never hurt anyone, right? It’s a start. Maybe one day I’ll quit being a pretentious slave to the angst of writing and actually get something done.

When I Am Who I Am

the windows are down. the music is up. the moms in minvans are frowning but we’re going to the river and it’s summer and nothing can stop us.

the night is cold. the table is too small. our eight legs tangle under the table as coffee and c.s. lewis spill into the air. we’re brilliant and classy and nothing can stop us.

the white ball bounces. back and forth and back and forth. it’s my Beijing of dusty skies and engrish prayers. the Spirit is there and moving and nothing can stop us.

the sand is cool. the grey sea is waking. a boy in a bandana stands from his wheelchair and leads us in song. he’s dying, but together we’re alive and eternal and nothing can stop us.

 

 

 

Cliffhangers

The question of the day is: Can you rise to the top without compromising your virtues?

As an optimist and a follower of Jesus, I have to believe that it’s possible. I have to. All of my actions are based on the chance that it’s possible.My father has proven this to me. He was born and raised in a tiny Mississippi town during the height of the racial tension there. “The top” for that time and place looked like inheriting his father’s business, marrying a nice girl, and giving his mother some grandchildren. But he didn’t stop there. Through hard work–so, I believe, without compromising his values–he came to Atlanta and built his own successful business. While he was at it, he beat his Southern accent and the closed-mindedness of his hometown–of which today he retains not a trace.

So even though Lance and Tiger and the Kardashians and every household-name politician arrived by selling themselves away, people like my dad have shown me that the straight and narrow path can–every once in a while–lead to the top.

Bang Bang

“What is this?”

“Look. I touch this little part–right here–and then he dies.”

“How long does that take?”

(bang)

“He’s already dead.”

 

In 2013 the line between pointing fingers and pointing guns has blurred so far. We’ve got these magic instakill sticks and we don’t know what to do with them. Make them go away!  Children are dying. Close down the stores and lock down the doors. Children are dying.

But once things are brought into the world, they have a way of lingering. Some gun stores will never close. Sometimes all our regulations leave the only weapons in the hands of the criminal. What are we going to do?

 

Santa Strikes Again

There are some days when I really love my school.

Like when I sneak a glimpse of my senile history teacher, belly protruding appropriately under a Santa suit, placing candy canes inside the shoes that line the hallway. This year we adopted the Dutch St. Nicholas tradition–if you’re not familiar with it, Google was invented for a reason–Half accidentally and half from greed, I left both shoes in the hall instead of the required single, so when I returned for them, one of my Sperry’s held a switch. An actual stick switch. I found that a much more useful gift than the peppermint as the five year old inside me began switching my friends.

Another thing I love about my school is Christmas White Elephants. Especially ones with 114 people involved in less than 45 minutes. Now the hallway is sprinkled with YuGiOh cards and my peers can be seen carrying a Simpsons ChiaPet or XXL Batman boxers. Step one to improved self-esteem: superhero panties. It’s obviously the most wonderful time of the year.

House of (Business) Cards

If my life were a A.A. Milne novel (which I desperately wish it were), this weekend’s chapter title would be In Which My Friend Tries To Sucker Me Into a Ponzi Scheme.
Actually, A.A Milne would never write that. I just love the way she starts her chapters with “In Which.”

But this weekend was the annual Gingerbread-house-of-cards. My dreams of two-story picket-fence perfection for my gingerbread people always crumble at the end. But it’s a tasty mess.

As the privileged (and really grateful, don’t worry) child of two yuppies, I’m realizing that I probably shouldn’t have arrived at legal adulthood without holding a job. So, now that my tenure in organized sports is over, I’m looking for employment. Enter Friend A. Let’s call her Stacy. She had the perfect job for me, and her manager was going to give me a special interview “because I was a friend of Stacy’s and she recommended you so highly.” It was perfect!

There was one small hitch in the plan. Nobody–neither Stacy nor her manager–would tell me what the company was or did. 

A long conversation with my parents (and Google) later, I discovered that this company was nothing more than a pyramid scheme designed to target students. The web was overflowing with horror stories written by kids who had been taken advantage of. And Stacy, all of a sudden, wasn’t answering my calls. My concern for her soon grew into a slightly less noble sentiment as I realized she wasn’t the victim, but one of the lower-level perpetrators. That realization took longer than I’m proud of.

The older I get, the more often I find myself wrong when I assume the best of people or situations. I was raised on stories, and in stories, the bad guys are ugly, obvious, and always get humiliated in the end. It turns out that the bad guys are slick, convincing, and rarely get caught. I keep telling myself IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE IT’S PROBABLY NOT, gosh, why can’t you just remember that– but hey, everyone loves a good story right?

 

2.0

Yesterday, the appointment arrived for my booster shot of Americana. For the first time in my carefully accumulated 18 years of living, I went Christmas Tree shopping. That’s right. I put on my big girl pants and my daddy’s letter jacket and trekked into the winter wonderland of Big John’s Tree Farm. Mannheim Steamroller was playing, and rows and rows of green conical  giants awaited us. I spotted some flames behind a plywood fence and approached one of the workers–who was, unfortunately, non-elven.

“What are you cooking?”

“Just fire.”

“Just fire.”

“Helps with the ambiance.”

“It’s 60 degrees.”

“Yup.”

We wandered through the forest, poking and prodding and gazing starry-eyed. At last, we arrived in front of the biggest and most expensive tree there.

“Here,” said John the worker guy, who wasn’t big at all, “our Noble Firs are known for their strong scent.”

I held a fistful of the soft green prickles to my nose. All I could smell was smoke–and french fries.Then I remembered that I was in fact standing in a parking lot next to a fast food joint.

Welcome to America.

I found out afterwards that the reason the trees at Big John’s were clipart-perfect was because they shave the branches down to fit a mold. Lush, evenly-spaced branches, huggable girth. That’s the American way. What Nature intended…2.0

Thirty minutes later, Dad and I strapped a perfectly respectable Frasier fir to the top of the Lexus and drove away, filled with Christmas spirit.

The Refrain

FIrst, thanks so much to the people who were generous enough to like my last post, since it was utter garbage.

Secondly, today I’d like to explore the idea of buzz. You know, THE buzz. It seems to me that my life is nothing more than buzz.

In a Don Delillo-ish sense, the buzz comes from the subtle staticky HTML screech of the screens in our lives. Buzz, says the internet. New terrorist plots nyan cat. Buzz.

Or when Calculus morphs into the dream sequence from Oklahoma. Letters and numbers and f(x) and f(x) and effects. Buzz.

Next, I feel it in my body as I sit gasping on the chloriny tile. Buzz, say my arms. A mile is too far to swim. Buzz.

On monday mornings, we chant the Bible, all five hundred of us. The voices of the tired. Buzz.

The scrambling my of thoughts you’re when me near. nothing much how bout you beat beat beat buzz.

All the neurons misbehaving as the medication’s fading but I’m so alive now

Buzz