Serenity & Angels

You'll see it in curlicue font, embossed and floral and tacked to a wall or inside a greeting card: 

"Grant me the serenity..."

Surrender to so many things outside my control, they are legion. I cannot control what people think of me, or how they plan on engaging with me. If someone wishes me harm, it's unknowable. It's surrender not to those things but to the fact that you'll lose your mind if you worry, obsess, or try to change them.

"To accept the things I cannot change..."

It's a clever little saying, nice internal rhythm. I cannot take back the fact of my birth. It's irrevocable. All I have now is the prospect of indeterminate years remaining. I cannot change harm I've done, I can't truly make amends. Pain never goes away. This knowledge feels so heavy. So dense. I have always been so prone to shame, often for no discernible reason. 

"Courage to change the things I can..."

I know I'm not a coward. I've been tested enough to know that. There are different kinds of situations and they require different kinds of courage. But to change what I know, or what I've known, is something other than scary: it's fundamental. Courage is what you do when you're afraid. 

"And the wisdom to know the difference."

Maybe it's a matter of scale. The bigger the thing, the less likely you can change it. It's easier to push a squirrel than an elephant, but then again squirrels are super fast. But the elephant could kill you. The squirrel could, too, if it were rabid. So, there's always risk and danger. It seems unfair. 

In the final scene of Angels in America by Tony Kushner, the characters are sitting around the statue of Bethesda in Central Park. It's January 1990. The Berlin Wall has fallen. The characters, sounding more like pundits than living people, wonder aloud what all of this means. The excitement, the uncertainty of Russia's future and the future of the former Soviet bloc. 

Looking back on the scene, reading it now, I realize they also discuss Israel and Palestine. The hope for true Palestinian sovereignty.

It's been 34 years.

Prior, ostensibly the protagonist, has been living with AIDS for five years by the final scene of the play. 

"We won't die secret deaths anymore," he says of people like him who, throughout the 80s did exactly that, died tucked away in corners. We're all capable of secret deaths, not all of us are marginalized but we're all more than willing to hide what's killing us. 

As the other characters ramble in the background about the bright, end-of-history future, Prior turns to the audience:

"You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.

And I bless you: More Life.

The Great Work Begins."

I used to think that Prior simply meant this literally: more life. More time added to your stay here on Earth. More corporeal existence. But that's not a blessing. It's not extraordinary. The Catholic Church certainly wouldn't recognize it as a miracle.

So, maybe he means life in the figurative sense. Whether you live 25 years or 95, there's less pain, less suffering, more love. Maybe that's what Prior means all those years ago, looking with eager eyes toward the 1990s. We live in such a different space, now. 

But life should still be full, and maybe part of that is knowing the difference between what you can and cannot do. 

Spring

My uncle disappeared on March 5, 2002. He had stormed out of his parents house following a heated confrontation with my grandfather which had almost become physical. He took a vacuum hose from the garage, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and drove off. He probably only had to drive 15 minutes to an isolated spot on a backroad overlooking the Lockwood Folly River. There, he placed pictures of his children on the floorboard. He ran the vacuum hose from the exhaust into the driver's side window and sealed up the openings. He turned the ignition and waited. He wasn't found until two weeks later. 

I haven't thought about the specific details in a long time. My hand is shaking just a little bit as I write this into my phone. This was all 22 years ago. My uncle's two children, Daniel and Hannah, were very young at the time. Daniel died a few days after Christmas 2003 of an infection from a lost tooth. Hannah has her own family now. My Aunt Sherri, my uncle was separated from her at the time, I think, remains a quiet but haunted woman. Still, she's remarried and seems happy enough.

When I think of spring, I think of my uncle. As the years have passed, March has become particularly full of memories of suicide, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation. These anniversaries aren't always observed by my consciousness but my body certainly feels them. I notice this more this year as I work to overcome my lifelong denial of my own emotions. I don't think I'll ever be an open book but I can at least see myself being willing to read a few select pages aloud, at least to certain people.

None of this really connects in the way that good writing should. These paragraphs are disconnected. But spring, beautiful as it can be in North Carolina, carries a darkness and a foreshadowing. In some memories I'm more passive than active, working to embody stability and normalcy. In other memories, I'm the catalyst and carrier of suffering. 

I joked with my wife recently that if one lives long enough, every day of the calendar becomes a potential trigger. The year is littered with land mines and forgotten hazards. How do you navigate that? Certainly, you don't navigate it alone. You don't walk through it without someone to keep watch by your side.

No one on this planet chose to be born. No one was given a chance to opt out. Certainly, no one was given control over the circumstances into which they were born: yet we are expected to be grateful for the opportunity. A mere 70 years followed by a return to nothing. It would be easy to convince ourselves that none of it "matters." To the indifferent universe? No, I suppose it doesn't. But, as José Saramago wrote:

"The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality."

18 Februaries

February is a strange word. I've always tried to pronounce it just how it looks: Feberrary. Now put it in plural: Februaries. Time to look at Etymonline:

February was the last month of the ancient Roman calendar (pre-450 B.C.E.) and was named for the Roman feasts of purification, which were held on the ides (13th) of the month. The word itself comes from the "Latin februarius mensis "month of purification," from februare "to purify," from februa "purifications, expiatory rites" (plural of februum "means of purification, expiatory offerings")."

February is the month of my father's birthday and my brother's birthday. Both of them are, like me, Aquarius -- but that's where the similarities end. 

It's also the month in which, long ago in 2007, I got married. I was 22. I was very young. Looking back now it's hard to believe I was ever that young or that brave. I took no notice of the advice or worries of anyone else as my fiancée and I planned on taking care of the formalities at the courthouse in downtown Charlotte -- the city where I was born. I don't regret the decision to get married or any of the other decisions that accompanied it.

But our first February was in 2006. Eighteen years ago. There's a photo of us on Valentine's Day. I must have set up my digital camera (flash turned on) somewhere in the kitchen of the small apartment I shared with another guy. My future wife and I are standing in the "living room." I'm wearing a brown leather jacket and looking down at her, my hands framing her face (or at least that's how I remember it). Her hair is permed, she's white as ever but especially so with the glare of the flash. My hair is curly and chaotic and I'm a bit overweight. She's as much a nixie as ever. 

By that same day a year later, my hair was close cropped and I'd lost some weight. I'll never forget, two days later on the day we got married, just how stunned I was when I saw her for the first time in the dress she'd be wearing. It was like meeting someone all over again. 

Her dad had to help me with my necktie because I didn't yet know how to tie one. His world is now completely different, too. So many things are. Of course, my son wouldn't be born for another four years and then some. 

Februaries have sped past. The bizarre confluence of cold and warm weather, bronchitis, allergies, and the last depths of winter. Valentine's Day and our anniversary melt into one another, forming a sort of bridge between themselves. It's an uncanny month: neither spring nor winter. I've run two marathons in February, our son was diagnosed with autism during February and my wife with kidney disease. I spent hours and hours in the cold at the Greyhound Station during February. 

But I've also come back to February again and again, to the 16th. To her.

Turning

Another year is ending. According to one colonial-era source, indigenous people in the coastal region of North Carolina counted their age by the number of winters they'd seen. 

I was born during winter, so this would be my 38th that we're in right now. I think. I'm actually not sure.

Of course, our calendar is entirely arbitrary. It's just an attempt at making sense out of something senseless (time). A calendar, a dictionary, a clock, all of these things are attempts at imposing order on chaos.

But, for people whose cultures inherited the Roman system of time, it will soon be 2024. For Muslims, we're in 1445 AH. 

Without imposing systems of meaning, I think we'd go mad. This is largely because we have the luxury of time to worry about meaning and order. No longer are many of us bound to the desperation of survival that our ancestors faced.

In a miniature attempt at imposing order, many people will stay awake tonight until midnight to see the new year. This observation might soothe the existential anguish that seems to be increasing among Americans. 

We'll turn out the lights and go to bed. We'll wake up to the same life. Soon enough, this new year will feel just as heavy as the old, but we'll sit where we always do. We'll be with one another.

Remains the Same

11 years, 3 months, and 28 days since my last entry. 

There's no use enumerating all the changes, legion though they may be.

What has remained the same is the woman sitting next to me on this bed as she writes in her journal. 

There is a boy who still has a very elementary sense of wonder. 

We still live in the same city. 

There are still books, still music, still the relative fact of my youth - such as it is.

None of these things were ever guaranteed. 

I'll be 39 in less than a month. 

That is not guaranteed. 

But I'm still here.

Back? to Normal

I haven't published since June 15 which is unsurprising considering that the apartment building caught fire on June 27.

That's right my devoted reader(s), the apartment building in which I lived caught fire.  Dashing through choking, blinding smoke while bear-hugging my infant son was not something I could have foreseen.  Still, that was almost a month ago and, after living out of a hotel for a week and then moving all of our undamaged goods, well, I think life is settling out again; though we had a flash flood in the parking lot at our new apartment and our cars were both water damaged for awhile.

So really, there is no normal simply because there is no way to average out the collected experience of each human life.  There is no normal, not because Angus said so (though he was right there, too) but because even though we hold so much in common we still experience life so differently, even from our neighbors and those closest to us.

In a little more than a month I begin graduate school at East Carolina.  I'll be working on this. 

Is that normal?  It probably is for me. 

I'm not saying anything new here and, to be sure, I don't think I've ever used this blog to break open new philosophical possibilities. Most of us can parrot (not to diminish our belief, though) that everyone is different.  It's a sort of existential libertarianism that's incredibly common in our American life and, I would hope, to life worldwide.

For me the apartment fire was red letter.  For State Farm it's just another claim to be dealt with quickly.  For people living nearby it was rubberneck worthy.  For my extended family is was likely even more frightening than it was for me and, for billions of others, it was a non-event.

What's universal (though not necessarily normal) is that everything and nothing can be both small and large.  People can hold things in common and apart.  Our lives intersect with other lives and with everything and yet we live apart.  Most of this normalcy requires no work and exists simply by virtue of our being.

But that's normal, I suppose, and I'll slip back into that until something else dislodges me.

Twenty Seven

We spent the day wandering the city.

Oliver fell asleep on my chest as Becky tried on clothes at The Limited.

Men discretely (so they thought) ogled my wife as we walked through the mall.

We ate at Panera.  Becky feasted on her usual.  Her currently red hair blew across her face in the parking lot.  Oliver's hair stood on end in the stiff breeze.

Our hands touched and our shoulders touched, my eyes consistently sought hers or those of our son.  Familiarity outside - even though we were surrounded by everything else.

She was born twenty seven years ago.  Her parents were frightened teenagers or even smaller, even more afraid, being where they were and so far away from home.

Oliver made eyes at people, watched people, all from the safety of our arms.

He won't say "mama" when Becky is around but only when he thinks that she's left the room or the apartment.  Becky has been lucky enough to catch him a few times when his back has been turned.

The young woman at Sephora apologized over and over for the fact that the story did not have birthday gifts in stock; her words were self-devouring shoelaces.

Even though we've been together for some time now I am still capable of gazing at her when she suspects nothing - her green eyes hiding out behind the rounded vogue of her eyeglasses.

Everything that's close is beautiful.

I wrote in each of the books I bought for her.  Gift notes of my hopes.  They are various promises - all of them waiting for her acknowledgement and her eyes.

Happy birthday, Becky.