remind me of me

My most striking visual memory of attending a birthday as a child is formed from a photograph stowed safely in the large burgundy album stowed away in the bottom drawer of my mother’s dresser. In the photo I wear a baby blue and white sweat pant suit and sit atop a fiberglass ankleosaurus. Also riding the ankleosaurus are Keith, Lisa and Joy. At the time Keith was my best friend and I had secretly decided that I would marry him. Lisa, with her blonde ringlets and considerable novelty (Keith spent a great deal more time with me burying ladybugs in dirt piles, and wrestling his cat, Missy, out of his second story window) was my chief competitor. Joy, Lisa’s little sister, was a relatively unimportant part of the social hierarchy. We are not all smiling. Someone looks away distractedly. Another frowns because of an earlier event, or perhaps because they are sliding off of the dinosaur. My memory is not sure which expression should be assigned to which face. But I believe myself to be smiling. I can’t remember anything about this party. I can’t even begin to guess where the event was held.

This image popped into my head when I attended my cousin Jesse’s belated fourth birthday party on Saturday. I decided, yesterday, that children’s birthday parties are terrible. Preschool children don’t care about the cake, the food, each other or even the gifts. The party is for the parents who sit around distractedly talking to each other about the children they watch weaving in and out of the molded plastic play gyms.

do not merely listen, a dialogue

I once was told that the Hebrew verb 'to listen' implied far more than a quiet admiration and a drinking in of words. To listen was to obey. If no action followed from the gentle stream of words falling on the tiniest bones of the body there was no listen.

"Do not merely listen to the word, and so decieve yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word and does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediatly forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does."

I have looked:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ."

But I forget. I don't even intend to listen if all of this (see above) is required, if I must relinquish my desires. Shit.

I immediately forget the one who knows every mark of my body. I hold an epistolary of love every morning and sometimes spill my cereal on it, its goldleaf powders away I read its words so often. But I forget that I am beloved.

Then I catch a glimpse of you as I stand in the bus park at the LRT station. The woman on the bench quakes beside her grocery bags. The streetlights have just come on and the sky at the horizon is the brilliant blue of a half dark evening, a hue that fades to as black as the leafless trees that reach towards the overhead curve of the atmposphere in the shadows of the streetlights. This is beauty.

I have forgotten (how) to be beautiful. I listen just a little less these days it seems, only to forget my face just a little more.

still a little bit of your song in my ear, still a little bit of your words I long to hear

A moment of truly alive crept into my day -– today I managed to be so distracted by cheerful daydreams and first-rate music that I missed two LRT stations (one where I can catch a bus that will deliver me approximately one street light and twenty-seven steps from my front door and a second a fifteen minute walk from my back gate, past the newly flooded ice at Churchill Square and a fabulous smelling bakery in Chinatown).

You may wonder why I do not consider this event bothersome, why I am touting missed train stops as the most life-affirming event in my recent recollection. But is it not reassuring to realize that you can become distracted, that the timely completion of tasks is not the totality of your being, that a handsome smile and just the right piece of music can lift you out of your carefully orchestrated day?

the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these

After descending the stilled side of the escalator closed for preventative maintainance, I seated myself on one of the seafoam green tiled cubes in the Univerity LRT station. I glanced over to see a girl of about seven - dressed, herself, in a seafoam turtleneck, her dark hair curled slightly from the rain and pulled back with a orange hair barette - lifting the reciever of the pay phone, dialing numbers, waiting.

I watched as, after a moment of contemplation, a student waiting for the train removed her headphones from her ears, walked over to the payphone oppisite the seafoam clad child and picked up the reciever.

"hello, did you call for me?"

the small girl giggled. the larger girl asked if the smaller girl had had a nice day.

"yes"

after a few moments and a short conversation the student took a few steps away from the phone. The little girl dialed again. The less little girl returned to the phone engaging with the child once again. The child walked away from the phone to whisper to her grandfather, pointing at the student. The child then darted across the platform to the student showing her her tiny hand.

"see my nail is ripped"

"who painted your nails for you?"

"my mommy. see it's ripped"

she then darted back to her grandfather. the clairview train arrived. both girls boarded the train, but in separate cars.

i'm going to write a story

"aiming at beauty produces, at best, the attractive" northrop frye

post script

We love. Will we stop? I doubt it. Unconditional love seems to be an impulse. The strongest loves seem to be out of our control. Love, of course I will love. I will often love in spite of my better judgment, without a sensible basis.

Why worry whether we will be what we want. How could we forget. Forget what we know.

I’d rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery.

A talented songwriter once said “we know who we should love, but we’re never certain how.” Sometimes it seems that I have forgotten how to love. Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend as I was driving her home. She said that she didn’t know if she had it in her to love romantically again; she thinks that she can love as a friend, even love unconditionally, but somehow romance has lost its appeal and become an impossibility. When she said that she could love unconditionally I didn’t believe her.

We pulled up to her house. It barely stands and is on the slate for demolition. But my friend and her room mate, both painters by trade, have been using Bejamin Moore’s off-tints to spruce the place up. The have painted the kitchen avacado and gold (Ralph Lauren), the bathroom purple. The job is far from perfect and permanent objects are shadowed by white. As I sat on the bed they talked about what to paint next, who owed what for paint and groceries, when they had a break in schedules (an appointment was scrawled on the bathroom mirror).

This friend is probably the person unrelated to me I have loved the longest. I have known her since her sister was in a stroller. We built forts and bathed worms together. I don’t love her well enough. But as I saw her interact with her roommate I saw that she loves very well and I want to learn from her.

Tonight I was uncertain how to love. But some part of me remembered a pattern. Not the part that wishes to be loved in return. Not the part that considers consequences. Not the part that will sometimes dangle a hand by my side hoping that it will be held. I have learned love without knowing how.