love

In the beginning there was the Word… and for months I have felt called to read the Word at the beginning of my day… like it says in the Lord’s Prayer: Give us this day our daily bread… one of my favorite friends has suggested to me, more than once, that you’ve to ask for His nourishment daily, and that He will give you exactly what you need to endure that day–not one bit more or less.

I thought, I’ve read inspirational books in the mornings–that’s kind of the same thing, and it doesn’t work for me. Like I’m some kind of exception.

Last night I set my alarm for seven a.m. I took only those pills I’m prescribed to take–no Benadryl, no Tylenol PM, no Nyquil… nothing but what I should take. I slept well enough. I had dreams about fear looking back at love rather than forward… of vegetables… of social gatherings.

When the alarm went off, I debated resetting it… I debated snoozing past the time I’d allotted myself (forty-five minutes). But at a quarter before eight, I realized I could read my Bible in the comfort of my bed… and so I did. And when I opened it to some random page, which admittedly has never worked for me before, the words I made you, and I will care jumped out at me. I’d looked at this page before. I’d colored I will care in blue.

And so these are the Words that spoke to me:

What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, ‘Stop you’re doing it wrong!” Does the pot exclaim ‘How clumsy can you be?’

How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father, ‘Why was I born?’ or if it said to its mother, ‘Why did you make me this way?'”

Isaiah 45:9-10

Do you give me orders about the work of my hands?”

Isaiah 45:11

Again I am reminded of how much an insult my words have been to Him. How much more esteemed I’ve held my opinion of myself rather than His of me. The difference this morning was that I didn’t feel guilty or ashamed of this, as I’d done yesterday and the day before and the day before… This morning I felt like a child corrected… and LOVED.

I read that page and the next and the next… and then I was struck by this:

Rather I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.”

Isaiah 48:10

People keep telling me my lenses are askew…

Sunday, I snapped one of the lenses out of my glasses, yall. Doing one of those Bible studies. All the ways He tries to get my attention. All the ways He strives to correct me. All the ways He loves me… would that I could know the sensations of comfort and love I had this morning ALL the time.

Think of all the things you would’ve missed….

One. The Star Wars saga — sans episode the ninth. Playing hooky with your direct supervisor and coworkers to watch episode the first. Also this:

Conversation with my five-year-old nephew:

Me: But those stories are written by the best storyteller ever born (Shakespeare)!

Him: Not Star Wars.

— June 25, 2014 / Panera Bread at The Woodlands Mall with family

Two. The Miracle on Ice! THAT FANTASTIC MOVIE Disney made later, memorializing the glorious feat of those Olympians. Watching that with your mother. All the times you’ve enjoyed it since. That soundtrack you were playing the day you hydroplaned on the interstate going seventy-five miles an hour and the miracle that everyone managed to get out of your crazy way and when Phineas Boba Fett (your beloved Acura RSX) stopped spinning and bouncing off guard rails, God put your car back in the lane you’d occupied before the world tilted and had Phinny facing the right way. You were listening to the Miracle soundtrack when that happened.

Three. Pac-Man. Taking turns, playing with your brothers first thing in the morning before school. Also Super Mario Brothers… the countless hours you spent playing this with your younger brother.

Four. MTV. The summer of eighty-three when you made friends, and yall would call each other to announce Duran Duran’s Reflex video was being shown. Years later… all the games you played while watching videos with your hallmates in the basement smoking recreation room of PEO Hall at Cotteyland.

Five. Metallica. That one time your hallmates got you headbanging to Enter Sandman at the Rocking K in Pittsburgh, Kansas.

Six. Calvin and Hobbes. Also Brian Kessinger’s mash-up artistry of the comic with Star Wars characters.

Seven. Neil Patrick Harris as Barney in How I Met Your Mother. And since we’re talking stupid comedy… the entire cast of The Big Bang Theory.

Eight. Peyton Manning. Also baby brother Eli. Two Superbowl-winning Giants. Pun (and sarcasm) intended.

Nine. Angelina Jolie in Playing by Heart. You LOVE her in that movie. You love EVERYONE in that movie. That movie is perfection.

Ten. Riggs and Murtaugh. Mostly Riggs, actually. But he wouldn’t be the same without his partner. Mel Gibson on the big screen. Clayne Crawford on the small one. How many times have you let those characters, those men entertain you?

Eleven. Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, a film released the year of your older brother’s death, the year after you lost Adam. How many days did you escape into that story? How many times have you reveled in the glory of its craftiness that. That movie’s perfection, too.

Twelve. If you’d taken your life before December twenty-fourth of ‘two, you never would have known you could forgive your older brother.

Thirteen. If you’d taken your life before March twenty-sixth of ‘two, you never would have known that thing they call chemistry between two lovers was real and not some myth, some plot device conjured by some storyteller centuries before. You never would’ve heard a man call you, in your American Eagle rugby T-shirt and Gap boot cut jeans and your battered brown Doc Marten boots, gorgeous. You wouldn’t’ve known that you could feel contentment.

Fourteen. This is Us and Life Itself. Probably the best stories ever put on screen, big or small.

Fifteen. Jessica Chastain in Lawless. WOW. Ain’t that just like you, to believe your own damned legend. She was SO SO good in that movie. And as Celia in The Help.

Sixteen. The Lord of the Rings. All those movie marathons. The director’s cut, boxed set your younger brother gave you for Christmas one year. The peace it gave you when you felt so, so lost.

Seventeen. Elvis Presley. That voice. The hope If I Can Dream gives you. The joy of the JXL Radio Edit Remix of A Little Less Conversation. Windows down in Phineas on Gosling Road on a clear spring day… or blasting down the interstate.

Eighteen. Zoe Saldana. Simon Pegg. Karl Urban. Chris Pine. J.J. Abram’s reboot of Star Trek. Watching that in the theaters with Keli. Beating your in-theater record of most-times-viewed. All that AWESOME dialogue.

Nineteen. Aaron Rodgers launching a football a hundred yards in the air AND A hundred yards downfield into the end zone and Richard Rodgers catches it with NO time left in the game to beat NFC rival Detroit Lions.

Twenty. Sara Bareilles’ Breathe Again. What kind of heart doesn’t look back?

Twenty-One. Chris Pratt. Bradley Cooper. Vin Diesel. Dave Bautista. Karen Gillan. And, yes, Zoe Saldana. Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, you CAN enjoy something that is sheer ridiculousness.

Twenty-Two. Anthony Ervin. Dude wins the splash and dash in the Olympics at nineteen and goes back to win it again sixteen years later. You watched that… granted you saw it in the living room of your parents’ house. You watched it, and stood, gleefully, on that terrazzo floor, amazed that this man who by most accounts was past his prime could swim that length without taking one breath in the water. Splash and dash, indeed. His time at the Sydney Olympics was twenty one point nine eight. He beat that in Rio by fifty-eight hundredths. His thirty-five-year-old self beat his nineteen-year-old self. Read that as many times as you need.

Twenty-Three. Michael Phelps, Klete Keller, Ryan Lochte and Peter Vanderkaay BEAT Ian Thorpe and his goons to reclaim the four by two hundred free relay title at the Athens Olympics. You watched this in your San Antonio apartment, jumping up and down on that teak Storehouse Furniture cocktail table you’ve got in storage. You can’t bear to part with the thing because it’s got such a happy memory for you.

Twenty-Four. Jonny Lang. Your older brother went with you to see him perform with Beth Hart in Houston. That was a good day.

Twenty-Five. Von Miller. Aggie football. All those games.

Twenty-Six. One Fine Day. Watching that with your parents and brother over the holidays. Every time you watch that movie, it brings you pleasure. Every time you watch it, you think this life isn’t quite so shitty as it seems.

Twenty-Seven. Christmases at the cabin. That last one… when you weren’t hating your brother… that last one that was a sort of miracle. A respite just before the shit hit the fan.

Twenty-Eight. Summers at the monastery. That last one… when you were sitting with your great uncle on the lawn toward the road, where the big old tree used to be. The words he spoke… if only you could remember them. But they were good and true, and he believed so well of you.

Twenty-Nine. Stevie Ray Vaughan. Cold Shot. Pride and Joy. Look at Little Sister.

Thirty. Primroses on street corners. How many times have you spotted those on desolate days? Lucille put those on your antique icebox for a reason.

Thirty-One. Blueberry muffins. Oh the comfort they provide. The scent of them in the oven, the flavor of them melting in your mouth.

Thirty-Two. Coca-Cola. Dr. Pepper. Peace Tea Green Tea. Such GOOD refreshment.

Thirty-Three. Chicken spaghetti. Best comfort food ever. Such a pain in the ass to make, but oh, the result is extraordinary.

Thirty-Four. Macaroni and cheese. The kind mom makes. She means so well. She wants the best for you. Funny how she makes this — or her chicken noodle soup, for that matter — when you’re feeling especially down and out. She sees you. She might not always know how to love you well, but she does love. She does her best.

Thirty-Five. Blue Bell Ice Cream. Coffee and Dutch Chocolate and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough…

Thirty-Six. LONDON!!! All that history!!!

Thirty-Seven. Munich! All that beauty! The giant chestnut trees EVERYWHERE.

Thirty-Eight. Barcelona!! All that fun!! And the glory of Gaudi’s cathedral!

Thirty-Nine. All the effort Carmen’s making for you to help you get stronger. She LOVES you. Has thought well of you from the moment you met her at your brother’s house. She’s a GOOD friend to have.

Forty. Serena. There’s a reason Lisa asked you to help her with her class. There’s a reason Landon was there. There’s a reason God crossed your paths. She benefits from your friendship… SO many do.

Forty-One. Ranunculus. That day you were at that River Oaks flower shop, and that dude asked you what he thought of the tacky and over-priced arrangement he was going to get his girl. You suggested the radiant with charms ranunculus that cost a FRACTION of that bouquet, and he bought it. He chose to go the simpler route. Sometimes your ideas are GOLD. Sometimes you CAN convince people of their worth.

Forty-Two. Literature: The Language of Flowers; Landline; Eleanor and Park; The Fault in Our Stars; The Time Traveler’s Wife; Lovers and Dreamers. Think of all the characters you’ve yet to meet.

Forty-Three. Steel Magnolias. Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.

Forty-Four. The generosity others have shown you recently.

Forty-Five. The hug your youngest cousin gave you after being too much in a crowd, too stimulated by all the things, too unable to please your younger brother. Your cousin didn’t say anything. He just smiled at you and wrapped his arms around you and held on tight in a great bear hug that lasted I-don’t-know-how-long. It was long enough to make an impression. It was long enough to bring you some semblance of peace… even if that peace was short-lived.

Forty-Six. You went zip-lining. You who is afraid of heights and falling and hurting yourself. You went zip-lining. And when you suffered a panic attack at the thought of crossing the suspension bridge, another cousin — the middle brother of the aforementioned cousin — helped you across each of those planks to the other tower, and though you’d struggled with zip-lining to the first one, you did the second one perfectly.

Forty-Seven. Splendor with friends and the kids at school.

Forty-Eight. Settlers of Catan with the bartenders at Pappadeaux’s.

Forty-Nine. Watching Green Bay lose to the Panthers in Charlotte. That was not a good day… but girl, you lucked into going to that game.

Fifty. Your niece. Your nephew.

So I’ve been trying for two decades to write a book. A love story. The cheesy shit most chicks write because, well, that’s what most chicks read. And underneath all the sarcasm and crassness and occasional tomboyishness, I happen to be a sucker for that cheesy shit.

I am soft. I blame this on my father. My mother says I’m just like him. When I was younger and having trouble making friends, my father would often suggest to me that I emulate my mother. Oh, how easy my world would be if that were possible. Every time he said that, my heart would break a little because I could never be like her. Always, always, I was told of how I should be… by my parents, my peers, my educators and employers. I am a four-letter word.

Anyway, at the time this post was written, the past few days I’d been tanking… badly. This particular day I woke up, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed and sleep all day. It was a good day for it, after all. Rainy and gloomy. But I had bills to pay and whatnot …

And Five Hundred Days of Summer came out in wide release that day. I’d been waiting for this movie for months. I’d thought I might see it a dozen times. It is just that good. The best movie to come out that year.

So I went to work to collect my check and get a cup of hot cocoa because that always makes me feel better, and then I went to the banks to transfer money so that I could pay those bills, and then I went back to work to get a jug of water because while hot chocolate makes me feel better mentally, physically it makes me hot — yes, I know — and jittery. And then I went to the movie.

There’s a scene in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character’s sister is telling him that maybe when he looks back on his relationship, he should look not only on what was good about it but also on what was bad about it.

Do people really think this doesn’t happen?

One of the guys I’d dated – the one I’d liked the most — suggested, basically, that I’d colored my memories with emotion and that made those memories different for me than for him.

Okay. Fine. I can see how one might think that. It makes sense.

I can remember that he emailed me on St. Patrick’s Day. That I hadn’t been looking. I’d gotten up at ten or so, played spades on the computer for a while and gone to work. That it was a glorious day, the first glorious day we’d had in some time. That work went well for a change, that a group of coworkers and I went to Friday’s afterward and chatted and drank for an hour or so. That I took the long way home. That I’d checked my email accounts (all three of them, the last of which was one I’d not checked in several weeks), and there in the last, sent that day, was his letter.

Yall, it was a damned fine letter. I’ve a thing for guys who can communicate well.

I remember telling him, later, of this coincidence. He told me that he’d considered writing me the week before but had decided against it. I’d asked him if he had written me on the tenth and I’d replied on the seventeenth, if he would’ve replied to my email. He’d said no.

After a fight with the clothes in my closet because I could no longer fit in most of them, I showed up at his apartment and he’d had a lone, long-stem rose waiting for me. Because I’d been late, he’d said. That was the first time I’d ever gotten flowers from a guy who was not a relative, and it couldn’t have been a better occasion.

That the first time he kissed me was horrible, so much so that I worried over it for hours afterward. That the second time was awesome, so much so that I was wound up for hours afterward.

I remember him taking me to first Friday at the Blue Star Art Complex in the King William’s District of San Antonio. I’d never been. He led me up a narrow flight of stairs, my hand in his. I asked where we were going. An elderly woman on her way down looked at me, smiled, pointed and said, Up. Indeed. I was going up. It was marvelous. I don’t think I’ve been that happy since.

Bolting from his apartment because I didn’t want to, couldn’t let him see me cry. I made it to the Phillips Sixty-Six gas station across the street to the attendant who sold me a carton of Marlboro Lights and a Bic lighter to halfway between the station’s door and the driver’s side of my truck before I broke. Right there on the concrete hunched next to the rocks that were the station’s shell for all the world to see. I ended up cruising Loop 1604 — twice – chain-smoking and crying until I couldn’t anymore. I don’t think I’ve been that miserable since.

I remember the way he’d smile at me. The way he said my name when he was happy with me. The way he said it when he wasn’t. The way he smelled. To this day, yall. If I catch a whiff of Ralph Lauren’s Romance for Men, I am flooded by sadness and longing.

I remember everything. Everything. And that is how it should be.

A friend of mine asked me a few days before I’d originally posted this why I’d not finished my book. I’d told her that I can’t pretend everybody gets to have happy. That it makes me sad to try to write it. And then I saw this movie and was reminded of how much I love fate and coincidence and how much I should believe in them. I remembered how much I used to do so and that I missed doing that.

I’d made myself focus more on the bad things about love. I’d let it become a four-letter word.

Originally published July thirty-first, ‘nine.

I managed to go through high school and college, studying English, without ever having to read any of Jane Austen’s or Charlotte Bronte’s works.

Can you imagine this? I’m certain there are dozens of other classical authors revered by educators of all sorts which are considered to be necessary to the literary world, which they would be appalled to know I’d not read.

Do you know what made me want to read Pride and Prejudice? The trailer for the Knightley/MacFayden version of the tale. Actually, a particular quote from the film, spoken by Mr. Darcy to Ms. Bennett after having professed, to his chagrin, his interest in marriage to her. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your circumstances?

I love this line. I love how it cuts. I love how the word choice — the sharpness of the K and the X and the CT sounds, the bite of it, the hiss of the soft C and the S and even the F — contributes to the sentiment expressed. There’s such disdain there. Such frustration, not just in that sentiment, nor its language, but in the delivery of it, as well. It’s a fantastic line. Marvelous, really. And it, more than any other, sums up Mr. Darcy quite well.

I hunted up that bit of script while at work one day, so eager was I to see the film, to know the story. I printed out the page or two of dialogue I’d found, and, after work, taken it in to Macaroni Grill with me to study while I had dinner.

Actually, I did more than study it. I took my red and blue crayons and diagrammed the whole of those sentences — Darcy’s in blue, Bennett’s in red — on the butcher paper that covered my table’s cloth.

This version of the film interested me enough that I purchased a cheap Barnes and Noble classics version of P and P and read it, painstakingly and begrudgingly for the most part, cover to cover.

While I can concede that Ms. Austen can construct some fantastic prose, her propensity for girlish, frivolous detail is pretty annoying.

I am not a fan.

And then the cinematic world introduced me to Becoming Jane a couple of years later.

And oh, how my heart broke for her.

Every time I’ve watched this movie I’ve stood firmly in the knowledge that she was right to refuse Mr. Wisley, and she was right to turn back, to go home rather than run away with Mr. Lefroy. But the first few times I watched her departures from him, first from his uncle’s residence and later on the morning of her elopement after she’d discovered the letter from his family, I bawled. Quietly, of course, but still …

And every time, I’ve been gung ho against the notion that she should marry Wisley because he is, as her father had said, a booby.

It must be age. My birthday, at the time I’d written this post, was less than twelve weeks away, and I was abhorring that particular milestone. It was far, far too close to forty for my comfort. It has to be age. There’s no other reason for it. But on that particular morning, as I watched the story unfold, I began to think Wisley wasn’t so bad. Wealthy, tall, decent voice …

Oh, god. I think I’m going to be sick. This shift in my opinion of him is not good at all. It wasn’t THAT long ago that I was mocking his character.

I hate watching this movie. It crushes my spirit every time. And yet, I feel compelled to torment myself with it. So typical of a woman, right?

I’m blaming this on Jane Eyre.

I saw the trailer for it a couple of weeks before having written this post, and it got me thinking about these women, factual or fictional, who are deprived of lives of love and passion.

I’ve not read Jane Eyre. I was tempted to watch the BBC production of it a while back but talked myself out of it. Probably because Mr. Rochester sounds like an idiot.

Do you think that because I am poor, obscure, plain and little that I am soulless and heartless?

If there were a line that could convince me to see this film that would be it, but it doesn’t compel me nearly as well as Mr. Darcy’s line did. Mostly because it’s spoken to Mr. Rochester, and I just told you what I think of him.

My father says I’m a whole lot more sentimental than I let on, than I am comfortable with, and this is true to an extent. But sentiment hasn’t ever really done me much good so I see no point in showing off that bit of my character.

The point of all this is that I feel sorry for these women, these Janes who live so much of their lives without the thing they most desire for themselves.

I read Wikipedia’s synopsis of Jane Eyre, and I know she gets her guy in the end — after Mr. Rochester’s wife burns the house down and kills herself and blinds her husband and whatnot. This would be the other reason why I can’t bring myself to read it … way too much tragedy for my tastes.

Oh. Crap. Maybe you’ve not read it.

Every time I saw the trailer for this film it would bring to mind memories of Becoming Jane, which of course would have me itching to watch it again.

Again.

And every time I watch it I go to sleep sad and sentimental.

Again.

Bronte, by the way, married and became pregnant but died before giving birth. She was thirty-nine. Austen received a proposal from a wealthy but pathetic man which she accepted, then refused the following day. She never married. She died at forty-two.

And here, these two women wrote all these stories that are so well-loved by so many though I cannot say that I am one of that many, but still … I can respect others’ appreciation for their works … at least they’ve left the world these.

I have given nothing but a couple of chapters to my friends because unlike these women, I cannot seem to find the courage to write about love when I find it so lacking in my own life.

And this is how I shall end my day.

Again.

Originally published January twelfth, ‘eleven.