Gratitude: Part V - Love

Today is the day that we come together and give thanks for what we have. And the thing that I have in abundance - the thing that political strife and economic turmoil and absolute tragedy can't take away - is love. Just that. Just love. And I am grateful beyond measure for love.

For the love of my family...whom I have grown closer to and come to appreciate more than I ever have in my life. I cherish them and see them, as with fresh eyes, for the immense blessing that they are. They are the cornerstones that keep me grounded, that support me, that I always, always come back to.

For the love of my friends...whom I have relied on for strength and comfort and peace in the past nine months. You have been the eyes reading my thoughts and the ears hearing my words and the arms that have gone around me when there was simply nothing to say. You have shown me the meaning of true friendship - in the worst of circumstances - you have risen to the occasion to humble me with your love.

For the love of my work...which has given me constancy during turbulence. I don't like to say too much about my job on the blog, but I will say that the company has embraced me and helped me hold it together when my whole life was flying apart. I get to do what I love, and I get to do it with people I love. On Tuesday, the Big Boss was in the ATown office, and he hugged me and said, "I'm so thankful for you." And I am thankful for a job where I am loved.

For the love of words...how they have sustained me through the darkest times. Even when I thought I was speechless, struck dumb by the wholly unexpected tragedy, I found words. And unleashed, those black marks against white inked out all that was seizing my heart and mind. Words, words, words. I thank God for the blessing of words, my friends when I am in need. How I love words...in some ways, I had almost forgotten.

For the love of God...no, really. For the Peace that Passes All Understanding, for a faith that has given me a Rock upon which to stand, for prayers that have been heard, for the comfort that has been given.

For the love of love...for the recognition that love is what is healing me. Love is what is keeping me from falling apart, what keeps me from being afraid of the dark. Love is what I can offer to my sister, to the rest of my family. Love is the only thing that I can give back to those friends who have been there for me. Love can be given in words, expressed to those who need it. Love is the embodiment of the God who loves me.

Thank you, Love.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Gratitude: Part IV - Life & Death

This year, death shredded our lives into tiny pieces. Death, when it happens so close to you, when you touch it with your very hand, causes a fracture. And ironically, it's this fault line created by death that defines the life that goes on. For us, there is only before Ronnie died and after. Soon, we will mark a year since his passing, one layer of bedrock laid. And shortly after that, we'll welcome a new life into our family. But even as new life joins us, there's no way to erase the strata of pain, sorrow, loss and absence that have fossilized since his death.

But there is a way to see that alongside death, there are signs of life worth noting. There is the way the family banded together and is stronger for it, from the strength that comes from carrying one another through this. There is friendship - the arms reaching out from near and far to carry me through this when I needed more than I even knew. From afar, through emails and phone calls and blog comments and cards and prayers, my friends reached out to me and staunched the bleeding. There is humanity - the unbelievable generosity of the human spirit...the kindness that arises from tragedy. The unification of strangers by the realities of the human condition - death is something we all face. I'll never forget the 14-year-old boy, a son of one of the lunchroom workers at Anna and Ronnie's school, who came to the visitation and stood in line with his mother in his shirt and tie and called me "m'am" and told me he'd like to give me a hug because I looked like I needed one. And that's the kind of thing - no matter how painful death is - that makes this life one to be grateful for.

Gratitude: Part III - Oneness

Right now is marking the longest I've been single since I was 19. Somewhere along the way, after my first "serious" boyfriend in college, I became a serial dater. I flowed from one relationship to the next without taking a pause to breathe. A decade of continuous relationshipping - ten years in which I grew and changed but didn't have a lot of time to myself.

I know I complain about it. I worry over it. I self-deprecate endlessly about it. My oneness. And while it's true that I have to live with it, that I have to find out that, yes, one is the loneliest number, it's taught me a lot about myself. I mean, when it's just me, myself and I, the pickings are slim.

I often lament the depth with which I feel things when it's sadness or pain. But it's that depth that gives me something to balance against when the good comes along. Like a see-saw, what goes down must come up. So I'm learning to think of this all relatively...that the oneness and all its trimmings - the loneliness, the awkwardness, the grumpiness, the sadness - give me such a strong perspective on being single that when I finally find a match (assuming there's one out there?) it'll be something spectacular. Or so I tell myself.

But for now, I'm thankful for my oneness. That in myself, I've finally found someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Gratitude: Part II - Calm

"I just got lost. Every river that I tried to cross. Ever door I ever tried was locked. Oh, I'm just waiting till the shine wears off." --Coldplay, "Lost!"

I was a stranger in my own mind, divided between the thoughts that made sense and the thoughts that interfered with all reason and rationale. The interlopers stung me, numbed the parts of my brain I needed and activated other parts so dark and murky that I was lost.

But I have once again befriended reason and become acquainted with rationale. Those parts of my brain that slumbered have shaken off their lethargy and began to glow again. There is light; there is hope.

Beyond just feeling better, I am filled with calm. This past week, I was in a situation that should have had me shaking in my shoes, but instead, I felt utterly peaceful and unmoved. As though I had reached a different mental plateau, one from which it was easy to look down and see the insignificance of what was below and look ahead and see all that was before me and embrace it. Rather than falling off a cliff, I am reaching for higher ground with full confidence that my feet will find the right footing.

Rather than pleading for the storm to be calmed, I am the calm in the storm.

Gratitude: Part I - Belonging

For so long, I felt like a ship adrift, having untied my moorings and sailed into different waters. Though I found a harbor, it was difficult to drop anchor. It seemed that I would throw it over the side, only to find it weightless and futile. An anchor with no gravity. A ship with no way to hold.

I stubbornly stayed in the harbor though, convinced that I had followed the right currents, that I had read the map correctly, that I had found the waters where I could finally fold up my sails and put my weary soul to rest.

And while I had one myopic eye to the telescope looking into the distant future and trying to spot that solid ground that I longed for, slowly but surely my anchor gained gravity. Ounce by ounce, it grew heavier. One by one, those whose names I knew become those I knew. The husks of acquaintance were stripped away to reveal the meat of friendship.

On Friday, I passed through the Atlanta office on my way back home. Two women came surging from one of the hallways and one said, "I told her I heard your voice!" This welcome, this recognition of me, was a reminder that I am home in more ways that I even acknowledge. There are a multitude of places I can consider myself among friends (including here), and I think of those places and faces and I am astounded; I am overwhelmed by their surprising numbers - more than I would've guessed at first thought - and I am touched by the depth of feeling for this motley crew of people I've collected. Without realizing it, my skeleton crew has evolved into a tour de force.

My anchor has grown heavy but my heart has grown light. So I throw gravity overboard, and climb down to the solid ground where I belong.

Adopting a New State of Being

gratitude: the state of being grateful; warm and friendly feeling toward a benefactor; kindness awakened by a favor received; thankfulness.

Gratitude, I think, is a natural response, a genuine feeling that springs up without effort in the wake of a gesture of kindness. Thankfulness - or Thanksgiving, if you will - is more intentional. It's a deliberate pause to express the gratitude you feel. For most of us, that's by the words "thank you" - the Pavlovian utterance dictated by the good manners instilled in us by our parents. Someone gives you something, and a little voice in your head prompts, "What do you say?'

Gratitude comes quickly and easily when a gift, a compliment or a favor are exchanged. It's omnipresent alongside selflessness. And miracles. And good times.

But what about the difficult times? The times in life that not only fail to provoke gratitude, they ignite the counter emotions of resentment, anger and frustration. In these times, the absence of gratitude make it nearly impossible to be thankful. Without the automatic response, the active response is forgotten. Without the inspiration of warm, benevolent feelings, how can one conjure up the energy to express them? And what would they be for?

The past year has been one of the most difficult of my life. Full of mental turmoil. Loneliness. Fear. Sorrow. I have fought my own demons. I have battled my own grief - all-consuming, heartbreaking grief - and I have borne the grief of others. I have lost love; I have lost loved ones. As calendar turned to November, I confess, I felt that Thanksgiving was going to be quite the ironic exercise. Thanks, but no thanks.

But the truth is - in spite of all I've lost and all I've endured - I have so many more blessings than I could ever imagine. For all of the things that are absent, there are so many more that are present in abundance.

Each day this week, I will be offering reflections on those blessings. I hope that by listening to that little voice and prompting myself to say "thank you," I'll inspire an ongoing state of gratitude, an acknowledgment of the reasons I have to be thankful.

Beginnings and Endings

Tonight, I had an after-work drink with The Professor. I think it can best be categorized as a "Happy Thanksgiving, sorry we weren't a love match" drink. And the funny thing is, that was probably the best conversation we've had. We ended up talking about nothing special, but we walked down the sidewalk, arm in arm, and laughing against the bite of the November cold that neither one of us was dressed for. Perhaps this is just the end of the beginning and the beginning of something better.

***
I met up with a friend last night...beyond a friend, really. Someone who's been part of my life for many, many years in both person and spirit. It seemed as though we had found an ending some seven years ago when we fell incommunicado. But instead, I find that our story goes on, somehow the words still writing themselves despite the silence. It was just the end of an era. A new one has begun, seemingly right where we left off the last sentence.

****
The fall was unexpectedly beautiful this year. Everyone said that with the drought, it would be less vibrant. Instead, the landscape shimmered with deep ruby reds and luminescent yellows and fiery oranges. The air cooled and crisped; it all seemed so refreshing. The color somehow alive and hopeful. But the leaves have since dried and fallen to the ground, swirled across the browning lawns, and whispering in the wind. These scuttling voices are cold and sad and lonely. And so autumn dies, and winter begins.

***
The year is dying. And so much dies with it. For just a few more short weeks, I'll be able to say that Ronnie was alive this year...and then we'll begin another year. One that he never lived to see. Between now and then are the holidays, and I'm beginning to experience The Tiny Tim Syndrome...seeing that empty chair alongside The Ghost of Christmas Future. Only, we won't wake up. We won't get to beg the Ghost to take us back and fix it. It is broken. And it is over.

This is the beginning of the end of this year. This is the beginning of the holiday season and the end of the grace period where things seemed to be easier. This is the beginning of another wave of grief and the end of the calm before the storm. This is the beginning of the Advent and the advent of a sorrow we cannot hope to overcome.

May this be the beginning of the Peace that Passes All Understanding and an end to the despair that clings to everything.

Extra Credit: Giving the Professor His Due

Friday night, The Professor and I ate pizza and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which I do not recommend unless you want to endure four very uncomfortable penis shots).

And afterward, we moved into the "We Need to Talk" portion of the evening.

What it boils down to is that me and The Professor want this all to work. We want this - whatever it may be categorized as - to blossom into a raltionship. Not for the right reasons, mind you. We both selfishly want it to work so that we don't each have to go back to square one alone. As we talked, I realized that some of The Professor's "whens" were hopeful ones - a relationship version of The Little Engine That Could. Perhaps determination and encouragement would help us up the hill and around the bend to the place where we were partners in a bridge tournament at the family reunion.

But in the end, it's just not there. The IT. The mysterious, unnameable, intangible IT that makes the world go round. I like him and he likes me. And there's some chemistry. But it's so easily smothered in the tangled tendrils of what's left of his relationship with The Ex and the inescapable cloud of grief that seems to have recollected overhead in earnest with the holidays approaching. Neither one of us seem capable of getting past our own boundaries to fan the flames of whatever might be there, and so there's this gaping chasm between what we're trying to pretend is happening and what's really there. But to his credit, he was all kindness and understanding.

I left his house Friday night disheartened. We certainly left on good terms, and I think we'll continue seeing each other in a friendly sort of way with very little expectations of the future. But for the moment, I listened to "Let it be Me" on the way home and let the tears come and hoped for when I find It.

Change of Scene

Friends, I'm starting to really hate my template. Please offer suggestions of places to get a new one...that's lovelier. But it must work with NEW Blogger. I'm not going back to "classic." Yelch.

Midnight Miscellany

* I am on Facebook, the seventh time-suckage wonder of the world. This has led to the good, the bad, and the ugly: reunited with a long-silent friend who lives in the ATown; found Chad D., love of my 15-year-old life; and a guy I went to high school with wearing a cowboy hat and a very curly blonde wig, making him just about the ugliest girl I've ever seen.

* Tomorrow is the Come-to-Jesus Part 2: Status Redux. I'll be heading to his house with pizza and indigestion following work tomorrow. Stay tuned.

* Yesterday, my client sent my boss a note about what a great writer I am. I mean, I know it's Writing for The Man, but still, it warms my heart.

* Dillon now says my whole name - although he finds the "l" a bit tricky. But I'll take "Ashey" anyday - even when it's followed by the demand, "Socks off!"

* I am getting the ball rolling with my own volunteer group. I'm both nervous and excited. It's thrilling to think that it could work and be great, and terrifying to think I will be a singles volunteer group with a single volunteer - me.

* The weekend will be partially devoted to a Thanksgiving party with friends - and partly to finishing Breaking Dawn.

* Good night.

Cannonball

During the very long conversation between me and The Professor, I tried to articulate the impact of the last nine months. I spoke about it in the collective - this is what happened to us - or relative to Anna - this is what happened to her. Somewhere in my ramblings, he interrupted me. "But what about you? You lost someone, too, right?"

And as odd as it sounds, the way it seems like that permeates everything I do, somewhere along the way stopped thinking of it as something that happened to me. Me, singular. I stopped acknowledging that Ronnie's death caused a grief that was all my own. Even though he was Anna's husband, even though we have carried each other through as a family, there is a place where I stand alone with reality. And it felt like a cannonball ripped through my chest.

Like a stubborn child, I've been pushing and pushing and pushing against the knowledge of what happened to me, trying to pretend that it was outside of me. That it happened to Anna. At some point, I tried to cut grief off at the knees. I staunched the wound by accepting the truth of the matter and soldiered on - and yet, somehow I was still bleeding.

It wasn't really The Professor's fault - this sharp reminder of death and absence. But I couldn't seem to stop the few tears that trickled down my face, try as I might. I struggled against them; I didn't want him to see me cry. And why not? I usually cry without embarrassment or hesitation if I'm so moved. But this was different. Because the pain came from a place that I knew he couldn't understand. Suddenly I realized that The Professor had the misfortune of being the first person who's come into my life after Ronnie's death...the first person who has tried to get close to me since then. I didn't know until that moment how very changed I am by that grave reservoir of sadness. Like a physical mark, there's a scar inside me. It's made me different from who I was before; it's an ever-present tint to the world.

I'm not suggesting that I'm set apart from humanity now because of this tragedy; this was merely the first awareness of it. The first recognition that the emotional injury is still there - there's still recovery to be done, time and space required to lighten that tint, and heal that ragged, raw edge where the cannonball passed through.

My Mom, My Champion

"So I talked to The Professor on the way home from work today," I say. "And I felt kind of bad. He had a really terrible day - his car battery died, and he had to wait 20 minutes for roadside to come and give him a jump...he was almost late to his class, and he wasn't prepared. He sounded pretty miserable."

"Good," Mom says.

"Mom!"

"What? He's an idiot. He deserves a bad day."

Me, The Professor and The Come to Jesus

Some of you have been inquiring about the status of The Professor, considering my mention of a less-than-stellar date with Mississippi and his absence from the tags on posts about the Coldplay concert. The former can be attributed to my determination to keep my options open - I just got back in the saddle, so it seems awfully soon to be narrowing down the field of play. The second can be attributed to my need to keep Coldplay untainted by my flailing dating life.

It wasn't so easy in actuality to separate "The Scientist" and The Professor, since our journey to, enjoyment of, and return from the concert put us together for a solid eight-hour stint. We managed to avoid the heavy stuff until the return trip...but there was no denying it was time for a talk - for each of us to lay out our case for Defining the Status.

He kicked it off by lamenting my distant demeanor and his inability to crack through my shell.

I countered with the well-known fact that three out of the past five weekends, he's spent with his ex-girlfriend (if you count the weekends bookending the entire week she visited). And on that latest jaunt into the past relationship, he attended a Halloween party dressed as an angel - to counter her devil costume. Score one point for me.

But he persisted and explained (as best he could) the tangled and undefined nature of the broken-up-but-friends-not-dating-but-special-relationship situation. If you can deconstruct that one for me, I'll give you a dollar.

And then I explained that this crazy web he's weaving doesn't make me want to let my guard down. Score another point for me.

Then we moved into the P-phase of the discussion in which he used the word "priorities" a lot. I mean. A. Lot. As in, he would really like to be a higher one of mine. (Please, see counter argument numero uno in which I cite his involvement with The Ex.) We went tit for tat for a bit, with him shooting out needs like Han Solo's blaster gun and me deflecting them at every turn with my light sabre.

By that time, we had circled one another quite exhaustingly in a verbal endgame, and we were rolling into the driveway. This provoked a round of conversation in which there existed in his tone a subtle note of disdain for my current living situation that was tempered with (excessive) praise for the closeness of my family and punctuated with The Declaration of Independence: "I just want to make sure you know that I'm dating you and not your family."

In that moment, at 1:30 a.m., hoarse and overwrought from three hours of screaming and the hour of verbal sparring, I felt approximately one quart of acid dump into my stomach, a gallon of ice water pour through my veins, and experienced instantaneous paralysis.

At which, The Professor knew he'd stepped in It. He tried to retract, backtrack, strike the previous statement from the record. Especially after I said, "My family...is non-negotiable."

In the end, it was time to get out of the car, weary, bewildered and bleary-eyed...to bid him adieu on good terms for having bought such amazing seats, and to take his arguments to the jury room with me.

So far, the jury seems to be voting in my favor, pondering holding The Professor in contempt of court, and finding him guilty of being unsuitable for long-term dating. If said verdict is returned...what will the punishment be? Life...in the Friend Zone.

Coldplay: A History, Next Chapter

Fifty yards away from the stage, you can see Chris Martin life-sized...like when he runs out on stage during the first encore to pound on the keyboard, the jumbo-tron showing the piano hammers tripping against the strings, and he croons the opening line of "Politik." Or when he raises his arms during "Violet Hill," outlined against the backscreen, holding his guitar aloft over his head.

And then there is the acoustic version of "The Scientist" from this odd little side stage up in the first balcony. Or "Fix You" when the lights go down and the whole stage is blue. Or the piano version of "Hardest Part" that makes you hear the song for the very first time.

But oddly, the best part isn't when you can see Chris Martin. It's when he's obscured totally...when, during "Lovers in Japan," blowers in the overhead light racks shoot out thousands and thousands of little paper butterflies. In an instant, the air is filled with tiny fluttering wings. The band plays, Chris Martin jumps around and sings, and happiness rains down on whispering wings.

_____
Life In Technicolor
Violet Hill
Clocks
In My Place
Speed Of Sound
Cemeteries Of London
Chinese Sleep Chant
42
Fix You
Strawberry Swing
God Put A Smile Upon Your Face (techno version)
Talk (techno version)
The Hardest Part (piano - Chris. dedicated to Jennifer Hudson)
Postcards From Far Away (piano instrumental)
Viva La Vida
Lost!
The Scientist (acoustic)
Death Will Never Conquer (acoustic - Will singing)
Viva La Vida (remix interlude)
------
Politik
Lovers In Japan
Death And All His Friends
-------
Yellow
The Escapist (outro)

Coldplay: A Personal History

"Spies" - First year of grad school. The tiny bedroom in the Abbott's Run apartments. Listening to Parachutes while getting ready for Clyde's class. Dragging out of bed to head downtown to the little brick office on Princess. "Spies come out of the water..." always makes me think of the light through that second floor window, the view of the dumpster, Kim Shable's patio, and the first slight easing of that summer's torrid heat when October arrived.

"Clocks" - I used to travel between Wilmywood and Charlottesville, VA to see Mike when he was in grad school at UVA. The five-hour drive was pretty brutal - an endless stretch of asphalt with very little to look at until you got on I-64 in Richmond and headed into the foothill country toward the college town. I can remember Sunday afternoons, getting on the I-64/I-95 interchange with the windows down and the piano unfolding into the sinking sun, the wind whipping my hair. "Home, home, where I wanted to go..." and wondering exactly where "home" was anymore.

"Fix You" - "And the tears come streaming down your face when you lose something you cannot replace." I sobbed relentlessly over these words as I turned out of the drive at Grace Street for the last time. I was losing something - Wilmywood, my first (real) apartment, my hard-won independence. I let go and jumped into the unknown, letting the tears come, letting "the lights guide [me] home."

"42" - The first time I heard this song, it gave me chills. "Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head. And since I fell for that spell, I am living there as well." What an apt description of the last eight months in the aftermath of Ronnie's death...the retreat into my head where the dead live, where it's the safest and most excruciating place to me. Inside my head, I'm insulated and tortured by all that's there.

And tomorrow, I'll add another memory to my list...

Making the Band: A Dream Starring Pen, M & Kim

Here's the dream I had last night:

Me and Pen drove cross-country to L.A. to stay with M. But the impetus for our trip was that Kim Shable was leading a high school band in a very important _______ (competition? parade? after-school special?). And for the very important _______, Kim had arranged for Eminem to make a cameo, possibly performing (although this part is sort of fuzzy) some Michael Jackson material.

Me and Pen plotted our course on the map, and all I remember is that there was a discussion about whether or not the wisest route would include Montana or New Mexico, but definitely Arizona.

When we got there, Pen magically knew her way around the big city of L.A., owing mostly to the fact that she and J.Lo. have been planning to move there because the real estate is so cheap.

Once we picked up M, we were heading to the practice field where Kim was leading her stellar band through its paces. She became greatly vexed when I showed up wearing these very hooker-esque cork heels and flirting with Eminem. She warned me against matching up with Marshall Mathers, saying "Don't do it - you know he'll be no good for you."

And then she rescinded her offer to let me ride with her to the very important _______. That was okay though. Because I decided to drive myself - on a riding lawn mower.

The moral of the story is that if you eat too much steak one night, you might find yourself riding a John Deere through the streets of L.A. wearing hooker heels and having to call Pen to use her magical GPS powers to come pick you up at a McDonald's when the mower breaks down. Or at least, that's what happened to me.

One Date, Under God

On Friday night, I went out for drinks with a guy. Let's call him Mississippi. I've known Mississippi for more than a year, but it seems that all that time, he's been harboring the hope of going out on a date with me. It took a lot of back and forth and canceled plans, but we finally made it out to a bar post-work on Friday.

I had a nice glass of pinot grigio, and he was working on a Makers and ginger. We talked about mutual friends, about the happening of life. And then we started talking about the election. It's kind of hard not to - the elections, the local ones at least, indirectly affect his job, so it's to be expected that he'd want to chat about the tickets.

But then we headed out on the patio for Mississippi to smoke. Another little red flag waving in the wind. And then suddenly, a few puffs in, and he's talking about religion and how people who believe in God are rather silly. "If it goes well, it's a miracle. And if doesn't, it's a curse." That's followed by an in-depth description of the utter ridiculousness of believing in God. And then he said, "I'm going to come right out and say it - I'm pretty much an atheist."

Silence.

"Um, yeah," I laughed that Nervous Laugh in Response to Weird Situations. "I'm...not."

And so, as Daisy says, it always comes back to Jesus.