While

For my creative writing class, we had to write a letter poem. I wrote mine to my adopted grandpa last Tuesday. If you've been keeping up with my blog (and you've known me for the past year or so), you'll know that he's been really sick for a while.

He passed away this morning.

So, Mr. Everett: this one's for you.

After While, Crocodile

Hey old man.

Been a while.

Five months?

Something like that.

It's my fault, I know - 

I promised I'd come back, never did.

I should have.

I'm sorry.

I don't know why I didn't -

You said I could come over whenever.

Maybe it's the thought of seeing you,

Sitting in that chair by the sliding door,

Your feeble frame under all those tubes - 

A shade of a hero,

The skeleton with the shaking hands

Who clasped me to him

While I worried that he would break.

It hurts, you know?

To see you that way, I mean.

You didn't used to be that way.

I heard you're in the hospital,

But that's about it - 

Nothing more than that,

No other details.

You could be dead.

Is that morbid?

I don't think so -

It's a logical possibility:

An eighty-seven-year-old man with breathing issues and heart issues and stress issues and a nagging wife and grief and war and experience and battle and fear and scars and baggage that I cannot begin to imagine would certainly start to shut down eventually.

I don't know how I can find out though.

I'm scared to go to the 911 house and find it empty

With no trace of you left in it.

Where are you, my friend?

How are you, my grandpa?

When will we get to share a Reese cup again

Or sit by your table with apples and Coke

And talk about us and God and change and secrets and gossip and health and fear and death and life?

When will I get to hug your frail body one more time,

Kiss that thin cheek that holds ragged breaths

And say, "Thank you for your service,

Thank you for your love,

Thank you for your time"?

Will I ever?

If not, that's OK.

You're my brother, remember?

We'll hang out again sometime.

Until then, though:

See you later, alligator.

Need

My creative writing prof told us to draw a map of somewhere that was important to us and write about it. Here's what I came up with.

~

I need peace.

This day has gone totally south, and I just need a minute. But there isn't a place on this whole damn campus to be alone. I really don't feel like wearing the happy facade today.

I start walking. Where is a piano? I need a piano. Can't afford a practice room. All the classrooms in the chapel are taken.

Wait.

I remember.

I head for the SSC, past Rinnova, up the stairs, threading my way through the cheerful masses, keeping my eyes on the ground so I don't have to speak to any of them.

On my way down the hallway through the double doors, I stop at the bulletin board across from Mr. C's office. How many times, in how many different ways have I come to this board? The elation of seeing your name - your very own name - next to Lady Pernelle, Sarah Goode, chorus, cook #3.

The trudge in your step but "congratulations" on your lips because you were an idiot and went with other people to see the results. And you wait until you're in the shower to kneel in the hot of your tears that are not selfish disappointment but terror at not having somewhere to fit this year.

As I slip through the door and down the hidden stairs, I remember coming here in another moment of terror, when I realized that I had fallen short again, been found not good enough again. I sat in the empty hallway downstairs with a journal in my backpack and Thomas Newman in my ears, trying to make myself believe the lie that I was not defined by my shortcomings.

The wonder in khakis and hiking boots saw me then, coming out of the room between the dressing rooms where he worked well into the night on his costumes, his masterpieces.

It's not the same without him.

If you keep going down that hall, lined with the pictures of the past that beam like postcards in an album, you get to the crowded room dotted with round light bulbs. It's in this room that I've been bruised, bedazzled, doused in grey hair color, burned with curling irons, streaked with old age, and dressed in both custom-tailored sparkles and a dirt-streaked sack.

Turn right out of the stench of burning hair and cheap hairspray and you're in the room of a thousand worlds, where a thousand characters have taken breath from the costumes hanging from the ceiling, the portraits of strangers glaring from the walls, the ancient books rescued from the garbage because someone saw their cracked bindings and faded names and said "perfect."

Out the right side and to the left is the alcove where I hid from the farce two years ago, crammed under the stairs with Fahrenheit 451. I've rocketed down these stairs at break-neck speed, in a floor-length lavender dress and high heels, trailing endless bobby pins and layers of crinoline, fighting to be street-clothed again before twenty others girls piled into the tiny dressing rooms, begging to be unzipped, unpinned, set free from lace and hatpins and pantyhose.

If you stand at the top of those stairs and look back down, it looks like the gateway to a dungeon: fluorescent-white light on the landing as the stairs curve and descend to nowhere.

Samantha blacked out on those stairs.

A true professional waits to pass out until AFTER they've delivered their lines.

I am honorary, but not professional. I swallowed a wad of gum and wrenched my dainty gloves from the waistband of my too-big skirt seconds before the curtain rose. I got the end of a parasol tangled in the lace of my dress dead-center-stage. I always broke character when l'Imposter shouted "GLORY HALLELUJAH!" and darted across the stage in handcuffs with a very grumpy constable in tow. I dropped a cigarette during the opening scene.

But still I belong here.

I fit here.

I always have.

I fit when Kelly took me to the makeup room and washed grey hairspray out of my tangled hair, working it into the crawling braid that I always wished she would teach me how to do.

I fit when I put my feet in a chair with Daniel's, my baby socks looking so small next to his huge black pilgrim shoes, and talked to him about nothing for the hour between his four lines in Act I and my three in Act II.

I fit when I took my dashed hopes of starring and learned to fly instead.

I fit when the witches and their accusers sneaked behind the theatre and danced to a drum-beat ringtone until the minister chased us back inside.

I fit even when I realized that character shoes and running on carpet don't mix and busted my knee all to hell, with one witness muttering "Hey, be careful there" without turning his head.

I shut myself in the movement studio with the old battered upright, finally away from the hoards that I don't understand and can't stand to be around. In an hour I have to be upstairs to sweep the stage and haul scenery down from the ceiling for Act I Scene I.

Another circus begins. Another hell week is upon us.

My time to do homework, socialize, sleep, wash clothes, eat will be seriously curtailed. But I can't wait. And I will miss it when it's over. So I will soak up every single minute that I have left.

It's where I belong. I'd be nuts not to.

<

When I was little my parents would put us down for naps almost every day. Especially on Sundays - after we got home from church, we would be herded upstairs into our pajamas and forced to lie down for an hour. It didn't matter if we slept or not, but we had to stay in our beds.

To me it meant "punishment." Even into my teen years, I couldn't take joy in falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon. My mouth always tasted weird when I got up, and I couldn't shake that sluggish feeling for the rest of the day. Even now, I only "hunker down for a mid-day respite" (my dad can never just say "take a nap") if I'm sick or working third shift in the summer.

Today I couldn't wait to get out of my Shakespeare class, change into my flannel pajama pants, and crawl under the covers, if only for half an hour.

I always get really excited to take naps now, which gets me so pumped up that I can't go to sleep - it takes a good ten minutes before I've calmed down enough to think about shutting down my brain and just being still for a while. But when I do finally get to that silent point, it takes a bomb to wake me up.

This afternoon I analyzed the process of going to sleep, the steps that got me from wide awake to comatose.

First I had to get comfortable. I plumped up the two pillows (the top one has flannel sheets now) and pulled the four blankets up over my shoulders. And because it's winter and I don't use nearly as much lotion as I should, I spent a good two minutes trying to scratch all the itches that were hidden underneath two long-sleeved shirts (most of which, of course, were in the middle of my back where my arms don't reach). I finally snuggled down and closed my eyes, which burned from staying up too late last night (and contacts) and were disappointingly un-soothed by the act of closing them.

I assumed the sleeping position that I've had since I was an infant: bent at the waist like a <, legs straight down, one hand under my pillow, the other curled loosely and touching my forehead. I consciously shove everything out of my head - assignments, plans to grab dinner before rehearsal, things to do before graduation, letters that I should be writing, projects WAY far down the road that I should be starting but don't have time to, praying for a snow day, wondering whether it would be worth my time to do laundry now or get up early tomorrow and do it (or bank on a snow day and brave the elements to the laundry room while everybody is still in bed). Because I need this. I need to sleep. Last night I stayed up way later than I anticipated and still had to get up early for work - if I hope to be any good to anyone later, I need this nap.

I remember catching myself as I fell down the "falling asleep" slope. There's always a point where I breathe deeper than I do when I'm awake, and that deepest sigh that reaches down somewhere in the bottom of my chest and relaxes my whole body is the signal: "I'm almost asleep."

And then, after fifteen minutes of fighting with my covers, pulling my hunting socks tight on my feet, taking care of all the itches, slinging my hair over the pillow and out of my face, and plumping my pillow one last time - I'm gone.

A hard, dead sleep that ends too soon when my phone buzzes under my head.

Time to get up.

The circus goes on.

Direction

Every now and then I wake up to a dream. It's never the same one - the theme is the same but the framework is always different - and I never jolt out of bed in a cold sweat or a screaming fit. But the dreams have become so real that I can't see the thing in real life without my hair standing on end and my breath catching in my chest.

Black dogs.

Wolves.

Grinning around evil daggers in their red mouths.

Angry eyes.

Lean, mangy bodies moving with terrifying confidence, vicious accuracy.

The dreams started when I was in high school. They all begin the same: a school gathering, standing in my kitchen, doing some mundane task, a normal day. The most recent one opened with me going to the garage to let my dogs inside.

I saw more than just my dogs though. There were more, maybe four or five. Their faces were so different from my cheerful, mousy labs.

While I had to get Sasha and Casey inside, I had to keep the wolves out.

That's the other thing: they're always going after something or someone that I love. It's the toss-up, that choice between saving and fleeing.

In previous dreams I usually stood by and woke up when they got inside, got too close. But the last time was different. One of the wolves scrambled up the steps and burst through the laundry room door. I grabbed it and threw it back outside.

It was the first time that I took action, that I did something to not only prevent the beast from invading my house - as I had in all the dreams before - but also to get it out when it did break through.

My uncle - the doctor one - told me that dreams do mean something. Not the ones where you're chasing Goldfish through a swimming pool of Jell-O dressed like a ninja chicken, but the realistic ones, the ones that could be reenacted in real life. I wish I could interpret dreams. I wish I knew whether or not I could discount the one I had in a hotel in Rhode Island, when I looked at my new husband and thought, "He will cheat on me." I wish I knew whether the boy would come after me when he saw me through the storm door and not wait to be pursued by me. I wish I knew what the wolves meant. In "Harry Potter," black dogs meant death, but I've been having these dreams for years and have lived to tell about it. I thought it was something related to the "wolves in sheep's clothing" idea, and my most recent dream represents my efforts to keep my wolf at arm's length instead of playing the game, suffering through the hypocritical meetings, putting a smile on my face while my dead eyes give away my lie. My personality is such that I search for reasons in everything, and I put this reason to it because I can't stand to leave it open-ended, unlabeled, unanswered.

Maybe that's the answer. I don't have the dreams very often, but since I've put this label to it, I haven't had them at all. I still can't hear wolves howl without something stopping in my chest, Halloween still sets me on edge when it falls under a full moon, and I'm having a really hard time getting through the Hound of Baskerville episode of "Sherlock."

But for now, at least the dreams have stopped.

They may start up again, but for the present I have a story to put to them, a chance to say "this is what this means, it's not as scary if you look at it like this."

And that is some small comfort as I lay huddled under the covers, begging the howling demons to go away.

Lunch

For a creative writing class I had to sit in a public place and write observations for an hour before turning it into, as my prof so annoyingly left it, "something." 

Here is "something." 

An Exercise in Discomfort

or

An Introvert in Public

I feel like a spy.

Agent Ginger 21.

On recon with special orders from the Commander to collect as much data as possible for a report due Wednesday.

"How to Make Writing Assignments a Little More Exciting. Volume A."

Most of my observations are auditory (I can't look around and write at the same time, who do you think I am?). The girl at the next table doesn't want to work with so-and-so on a project "for lots of reasons." The nurse across from her is whining because she doesn't have the Powerpoints she needs (seriously, you've been on campus for a week - what kind of Powerpoints do you need already?). The nasally voice by the door "doesn't, like, know how to handle life sometimes, but is glad [her friend] understands."

The female voice dominate the room. Probably because they're the most high-pitched.

(Piercing.)

Except for that baseball player over there rumbling underneath all of it with his grating monotone.

Oh. Not a baseball player. I actually know him - he was in my small group (an introvert's hell) freshman year.

A shining testament to those who graduate looking exactly like their freshman ID.

How much you want to bet that girl's on the phone with a guy, asking him to come study with her? She's got all the tell-tale signs: the giggle, the wispy voice, the-

Oh. Not a guy. Maybe she just sounds naturally flirty all the time.

I'm really bad at those types of observations. Once I tried to guess who was coming down the hallway without looking, just by listening to the way their shoes sounded on the floor. I failed miserably.

Maybe I wasn't meant to be a spy. Maybe I was cut out to be...something that didn't rely so heavily on my not-power of observation.

(Your inner monologue is too loud to be a spy anyway - spies are supposed to be objective.)

Student Bethanie Denise.

At the Hive.

With orders from the prof to write about what I observe in one place for an hour.

"How to Make Homework Sound Less Like an Adventure and More Like Work Again. Volume A."

I feel so awkward. Not because my chair is rickety or my back is facing a window (I hate that), but the purposeful crawling into other conversations, when I'm introverted and hermit-ish by nature. (Not to mention STARVING.) I'm not the only person sitting alone - the girl across from me is so into her computer screen that a moose wouldn't budge her - but I'm the only one who sat here to deliberately creep on people.

Even if that weren't the point, I would feel stupid. I won't look up from my notebook because I'm positive someone is watching me in harsh judgment. I would put my headphones in and listen to some type of music, but that would mean not being able to listen to what everybody else is saying. Plus I always get self-conscious about my breathing - I start concentrating on it to make sure I"m not breathing too loud or to a beat, and I get so wrapped up in it that I don't focus on my work.

And I get light-headed. Which isn't really helpful to anyone.

Maybe I'm too intolerant to be a good writer. It requires a lot of "being out" around people, and I avoid that whenever I can help it. Stop crunching your ice, sit still in your chair, please blow your nose, enough of the clicking, quit whining to him- Oh my HEAVENS, will you CEASE the ice-crunching. And you've been packing your stuff for ten minutes - what could you have possibly unloaded from that little bag?

To tell the truth, I almost went back to my room when my prof assigned us this exercise. But I had packages to get from the post office. And I wanted coffee. So I parked here instead.

I'm still starving. I didn't get lunch today - probably the same situation with the girl who's changing her schedule because she "can't live like this anymore" - but thank God for my RA and her six-pound bag of gummie bears that she chose to mail to me.

Hello, lunch.

In communications we talked about "noise" - anything that prevents people from communicating - that can come from the sender or receiver of the message, the environment, whatever.

My empty stomach is definitely creating receiver-based noise - how can I observe when I'm hungry?

Four pages written. That's more than enough observation for one awkward sitting.

I'm going to find a sandwich.

Strength

This has been in the works for a while but I finally got around to blogging about it, when it came up tonight over dinner to a dear friend. I wrote about it back when the whole "Duck Dynasty" controversy went down last month, and I'm pretty sure I've written similar things about it before.

It seems that you're only allowed to say what you believe if you aren't a Christian. Or white. If you have any sort of diversity whatsoever, we'll give you all kinds of scholarships to come make our schools more diverse and stand back while you have your say about what you feel is important. But the minute a white Christian speaks openly about something he or she believes, he's called terrible names and dubbed "judgmental" (or, my personal favorite, "ignorant").

The worst part about being a Christ-follower today is the awkward positive you can't avoid. You have to read your Bible and pray and serve meals at your church and participate in the annual Christmas pageant (checked that off the list this year), but you have to make sure it's not in the name of legalism, for the "look at what a good Christian I am, I leave tracts for waitresses" effect. If you're under 30, you have to love youth ministry, play an instrument (preferably something acoustic), and be more focused on "a relationship, not a religion." You see that your world isn't right, maybe even on a small personal scale; but you pull on a smile, listen to Gungor, and chant lyrics that you may not understand but everybody else in the congregation sings them with such passion; besides, when the band swells, you know that you're supposed to put your hands up.

But if you get any ideas about criticizing the culture around you, looking at something and saying "that's wrong" or saying something negative about this new hip version of Christianity, you can just keep it to yourself, you closed-hearted, narrow-minded, intolerant pig - how dare you impose your beliefs on the rest of us.

Listen, I get it. I understand that Christians have a sour history among the nations. I was a history major (briefly), I know how ugly footprints have been left all over the past few centuries in the name of religion. But this trendy-but-tolerant version of Christianity can't be what was originally intended. Look at the most influential men in the Bible, who were most effective when they ignored the popular and (God forbid) politically-correct rules of the day. Something tells me that Christ Himself wasn't exactly worried about His social standing when He rampaged through the market being held in His Father's house. The pillars of our faith - Noah, Abraham, David, Paul, Peter - were not trend-followers. People thought Noah was nuts; Paul went upstream in a waterfall of Jewish legalism and hypocrisy; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego literally stood for what they knew was right and almost died for it. 

Where I live, we don't have people hunting us down to throw us to fight lions before audiences anymore, yet somehow we are just as afraid to bring up our beliefs because it's not trendy or comfortable.

Since when did "love your neighbor" become "don't openly disagree with anybody ever"? We've become so focused on making up for our overly-conservative, prejudiced ancestors that we can't speak up when we're offended anymore. And in an effort to further stifle our dissatisfaction and disgust, we glaze everything over so we don't get offended so easily by what goes on around us.

SIN IS SIN. Last I checked, my God doesn't whitewash that. He doesn't judge me directly for the sins that I commit (yes: I'm a child of God and I still sin), which means that I shouldn't judge others for what they do either - I haven't been given that type of authority and, frankly, wouldn't want it even if I did have it. But it doesn't change the fact that my Isa hates sin. If He didn't, He wouldn't have promised to destroy the mastermind and all his followeres with fire; He would have let them off with a slap on the wrist and a villa in Cuba. He wouldn't have provided His children with a way to present ourselves to Him without our sin being visible if He didn't really mind that we did bad things. Evil is rampant in our world, and just because it's not popular to do so doesn't mean that we shouldn't point it out and acknowledge that it's wrong. I'm not saying to foist our beliefs onto someone else, but to play the tolerance card until you're deadened to the reality of sin is even worse - that is a crime against your own beliefs.

And if you break your loyalty to your beliefs, with whom will you remain loyal?

Nothing

What is "self?"

You hear so much about this word "self," yet no one really bothers to define it. There are lots of extensions and variations. You can be a "self-made millionaire" or a bum because you have no "self-respect." You can do something out of "self-interest," or because you're "selfish;" or you could go the other way and be totally "selfless." Young girls are "self-conscious" and some subject themselves to "self-harm" or "self-abuse." We point out "selves" that belong to us - "ourselves, myself" - and those that don't - "yourselves" or "themselves" (that one always strikes me as funny, like, "Hey, look at them selves over yonder"). Some things are "self-sustaining," while other are "self-destructing."

And all of these concepts and words stem from this one ambiguous idea of "self" and create all these other ambiguous ideas that no one seems to define but everybody seems to understand? But how? They don't make sense, and they certainly don't make the others any clearer.

Humans say "self-made" in a way that really can't be used the way "self-sustaining" is - it is possible independently maintain a certain level of functionality, but nowhere in the history of anything has something literally self-made its own being out of nothing. Self-respect is good, and so is self-interest, but too much of either and you could lean toward selfish, which is bad. But adding "ish" to "self" doesn't have the same effect as it does on "fat" or "green": "That man is fat-ish (meaning "leaning toward fat but not really there yet), that book is greenish" ("almost green but not quite, more like a green-yellow mix).

How can one really be "almost self"?

But "selfish" is still bad, like "self-conscious," when all that really means is "aware of one's self." Yet it is linked to self-abuse and self-harm, which I think sounds about as scary as "selfless," which should mean "a total loss of self." But it's even more scary if you view the "self" in "selfless" physically like you would "self abuse" - it literally means "you have misplaced your physical body."

That's another layer to the mess: is "self" physical or theoretical? Take "self-interest," for example. Let's say John was offered a piece of cake but was severely allergic to cake, but he loved cake more than anything else in the world. If John were to "act in his own self-interest," the results would be drastically different if his interest was in his physical self or his metaphysical self. If he acted in metaphysical interest and ate the cake, he would have on brief moment of mental euphoria before his physical interest choked on the cake and died. But if he acted in physical interest, he would crush his metaphysical hopes of cake but at least live long enough to get a cheese ball instead. When he resisted the urge and said he was "proud of himself," that could then mean that he was proud of the stamina possessed by his overall being or that he was pleased with his physical appearance, which really has nothing to do with the overall anecdote and succeeds in losing the reader.

Further proof that my mind need not be "on" after midnight.