Being lonely (young, & restless)

I am sorry I do not write very often. I think of things to write, but then - it takes a lot to shape those thoughts, and I get overwhelmed with schoolwork, dishes, watching the trees, talking with my roommates...everyday life. But now I have so much schoolwork to do (finals are fast approaching), that I cannot fathom doing anything but writing to you.

I am a lonely person. This is not an attempt to be pitied. I enjoy loneliness - I have made it an everyday study. I like going to coffee shops and diners by myself. Movie theaters. I like getting lost in places alone. Every time I get to a new city I spend hours (sometimes days) wandering through unknown streets until it feels like...it's mine (note: this has been done in NY at 3 am...not exactly comfortable, especially in winter, but I can say I have sat at a cafe table in center of the city, in the dark, without once seeing a car... I also know a good place to fall asleep in Penn Station...)

Though Boston is a small city, it has provided me with a new place to travel through every year - its spiraling, paved cow paths offer what every lonely wanderer desires (no certain direction). It has been a hard place to love though. Not instinctively - the buildings still make me feel like I'm a part of something very old and new all at once; there is a certain belovedness in their motley make-up (strangely beautiful, especially from a bridge over the Charles) - but its indifference has been difficult to get used to. Boston is cold and other - entirely different from where I grew up in California. And I often feel so other in it. 

Ha ha - I know, I have obviously been writing too many college English essays when I describe myself as "other." Unfortunately, though, I am no better than any other cliche. Boston, because of its otherness, has been able to make me more of myself - you are forced to bloom as something when your surroundings are so dissimilar. 

I think all new places do this to a person (...make them bloom...ha ha). Or maybe I only want to believe that; I cling to traveling like lichen to a rock (I love terrible similes...get over it). I want to go everywhere - I think I think I will be able to discover myself in foreignness. Of course, in reality, it is never quite so romantic. It is painful to begin somewhere new. It is harrowing being entirely unknown. And, maybe, at times, it is only running away. I do not know. But I have been blessed with people I cherish everywhere I've gone - they have made me who I am, though I may not ever see or speak to them again. There is a sort of profound satisfaction in finding places and people you love, and have loved you, in unfamiliar hamlets.

We are all lonely really - throughout our lives the one person we spend the most time with is ourself (yes, let's be Modern. Of course with a capital M). Everything leaves and changes - I clearly have no idea what this means in my very obvious 21 years. But it seems that what makes us most is loss. 

(Sorry if I'm being pretentious/gloomy/ridiculous...it's in my make-up...ha ha...and I've been reading A LOT of modernist novels for class...I'll make sure to dig into some Vonnegut  for perspective over break...)

You've been young or you are young - I feel like it means to know nothing and want everything. Or perhaps it is only to know so little of everything. There is some deep resistence "to settle," to not give up our idealism, but the shape of the desire lacks definition, or realism, or only includes a false, entirely negative one. I am guessing it will become neither, but a combination of the dreams and the everyday - maybe a little like the assorted Boston landscape.


(I'm listening to Tracy Chapman...90s retro chick. Also been into the Corin Tucker Band lately.)

Let's be profound: Love & identity

(Hey friends. This the blog I wrote for Create. But I will promptly write another, seeing as I have not written in a very long time.)

I am a Christian. Unfortunately, I don’t even know what that word means most of the time. Even while living in a “Christian” community, it is hard for me to understand Christ in myself, especially when that understanding varies so drastically in everyone I meet. There is an obvious and necessary divide between the messiah and his followers, but it is very hard not to be defined by the people who share my faith.

This is not a very new dilemma – it is one we all struggle with, whether we are Christians or not - the question of identity. How can we belong to different stereotypes within our culture (the Christian, the writer, the black dancer, the feminist, the gay male, etc.) without being tied to their connotations (the Christian is Republican and hates gay people, the writer is angsty and dreamy, the black dancer is really good at hip hop, the feminist hates men and never shaves her legs, the gay male loves shopping and tweezering his eyebrows)? And how do you understand your sense of self if you are also the connotation (if you are, for instance, a very doubtful and self-destructive writer, or a feminist who doesn’t shave her legs)?

I do not know the answer – I do not know who I am. And most of the time I don’t know who God is either. I know the sense I have of him there – I know how profound certain moments feel, the something beneath the leaves as they change color – the beauty beneath the beauty, so to speak. Those revelations are beautiful and unguarded, but they can also be rare, and difficult to share with each other.

I want to love God and love people - two very simple things. But they are never simple in reality, are they? And I often find that believing in God often undermines my ability to simply love and be present with the people I'm with. It becomes complicated. Our ideas of God do not always peacefully coexist. Sometimes it is an idea that says loving God means loving in a certain way, means preaching, going to church on Sunday, becoming a missionary in Africa, etc. None of these are necessarily bad things, and I might partake in all of them eventually, but God's beauty is not solely that. It is everyday - not glorious, or dream-like, not necessarily visionary, or even exalted - but simple, and often hard. Hugging your friends. Reading books. Making food for people. Writing. (ha ha...Okay, now I'm just talking about me....). Crying. Doing dishes. Worrying about money. Walking... Talking (ha ha).  


You get the idea - you live it too. We are most often blessed with ordinary lives. I'm just trying to figure out how to be myself ( very young and quite idealistic), but also real, and genuine; aware of (and willing to experience) pain, in order to understand God.  And become (at least, a little...) less foolish.

How am I both with and apart from you? What is it, in the most mediocre moments (eyes raising on the bus, two knees pressing together, a conversation in the cold), that seems to connect us? I want to believe in something that weaves us together somehow, that destroys the stereotypes, the lack of genuinity – a sincere respect and love that exists within and outside of ourselves, and allows us to truly care for each other. I just don't always know what that looks like. Or even how to believe in it.