Lover

This post is more about life than writing, but part of writing is life.

I've been reading Eat Pray Love. I've made it through Italy, I've made it through India, and our dear Liz has just arrived in Bali. I cheated a bit and saw the movie a few nights ago with another friend who has finished the book. I say cheated, but it's really only made me more excited to keep reading.

No, I am not trying to be the next Elizabeth Gilbert nor will I ever try. I am not her, cannot be her, and do not want to be her. I want to be me. But her story, her wit, and her insight are both touching and enlightening and has me thinking even deeper about myself and my own plans than I have been in months. It's time to evaluate ME.

Where am I? Let's begin by defining me in the way she first did. With nouns. I am a newlywed. I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am a college graduate. I work in an office.

That wasn't so hard. But that's not me. That's WHAT I am, not WHO I am. That part is much more elusive.

Let's start with my job. I like to think of the movie (and book) Stardust here. When Yvaine tells Tristan that there are shopboys and there are boys who work in shops for the time being, and that he is not a shopboy. I work in an office; I am not an office worker. It's a temporary moment in my life. It is not my career. It is not my calling. But it is what I need to do for the moment. (Always in the moment.) Where do I want to go? Where am I going? I don't know yet.

Now for my school. I am a college graduate, but a graduate of a two-year college. This brings instant disdain and disappointment from so many. What most don't realize is that I graduated with five degrees. In some ways, I have more education than many four-year graduates. I was fascinated by so much that I couldn't stop my hunger for knowledge. So I learned. Then my last semester came in May and I was tired. Tired in the way that the circus elephant tries to escape the circus. I am the elephant. School is the circus. I'd been tamed for too long and needed the wild. I'd never been in the wild before. I was swooped up into the circus at a very young age. Could I make it in the wild? I don't know. I'm still finding out.

Here's the funny thing. The thing that confuses almost everyone. I like the wild better than the circus. I've done my time in the circus and if I ever long for it again, then I will run back as fast as my elephant legs can take me. So many people sit through the circus day after day, performing the same tricks over and over, because the tamed audience of society tells them that's where they should be. The audience doesn't like the wild; they only like it when the wild is contained. I am tired of being contained. For a few years it suited me quite well. Gave me a thirst for the untainted oceans, a desire for the deepset forests on the fringes of the city the audience will not leave. The problem lies therein that the thirst and desire I acquired is supposed to be focused on what can be seen and discovered from within my tamed city. Perhaps the temptation was too heady, too deliciously alluring, but society's taming made me untamed. I'm on the run. And the audience is frightened. Can she make it? Will she make it? Why won't she just come back where it's safe and easy and controlled? We created this for her. We built this for her. She has a place here. Why is she running from it? Why is she running to a place that may forever reject her?

This leads into the nouns of being a sister and daughter. Those two nouns require responsibility, and lots of it. Most of that responsibility is welcome, part of the joys of having and being a part of a family. Yet that family develops certain expectations. Those expectations are in place because they only want the best for you, but when you realize their "best" and your "best" are not the same, it gets complicated. And back into the circus we go. I have moments of missing the circus. Memories of applause and good trainers. But then the lights dim, the audience goes home, and I see the stale peanuts being fed and rejected to the floor. I smell the stench of the lies of illusion. The trainers have become snappish and insistant; it's absurd to ever believe even for a moment that perhaps the animal knows more or could know more than its master. Oh the circus. Never what it seems.

So who to disappoint? Your family or yourself? And how do you learn to be happy with your decision regardless? You need you. You'll always need you. You'll always have you. You cannot go anywhere without you. So who must be content first? You. Out of compassion and respect we want to make the others close to us happy with us as well. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it does not. But where is your control in another person's mind? Maybe they're another elephant, blinded by the beautiful lights of the circus and the promises of fame. Maybe they're the audience, certain that you are in the best place you could be. Maybe they're the trainer, delighting in control. You can only be and have to be you.

Now to being a newlywed. A wife. A loaded word in a battle of modern feminism. A wife should have her career. She should stand up to her husband. She should be his equal, if not better. She should be superwoman. This elephant never believed any of that. If the audience cheers for this and boos for tradition, then so be it. But this elephant is the wife that wants to look up to her husband. The wife who supports her husband when he both needs and wants it. The wife who cooks, cleans, and takes pride in her home. The wife who respects the corporate cog, but chooses her happiness in the garden. This elephant obviously never listened well to her audience and trainers.

Instead she found a husband more supportive and loving than any of her trainers and audiences. He never saw the lights. He never saw the illusions. He saw the elephant, trapped in a ring, both brave and frightened, and looking for the courage to run. He stole the key and opened the gates.

Ahhh....happiness.

So why is this post titled "Lover"?

Because we should all be lovers. We needn't be lovers in terms of sex. A lover is someone who is passionate, full of aching desire to wrap themselves in life, in history, in the moment.

I want to see China and stand on the Great Wall, becoming a lover to the stone and the wind and the ancient voices of longing.

I want to see Japan and clap my hands before a Shinto shrine, becoming a lover to the spirits and the sacred hearts of nature.

I want to see Wales and run through the rolling hills, becoming a lover to the clouds and the grass and the worn streets of ancestors.

I want to have an affair with life. A sordid tabloid affair full of raunchy tales of standing in the rain, falling into leaves, grieving with the moon, walking with the spirits, believing in the unseen, and finding a home in it all.

To want is human, but to desire is divine. We want this car and that purse, this job and that degree, this diamond set in that platinum. We want tangibility. We want to drive that car, wear that purse, bring home the paycheck from that job, frame the paper proclaiming that degree, and dangle our hand in the light to show off the bling of that ring. We want. I want. You want. We're human. We want. But what do we desire? We desire love, contentment, purpose, resolution, excitement, understanding. You cannot touch any of those things just as you shouldn't. The things that mean the most should never be something you can touch. I desired the love of a husband, and while I can touch my husband, his love for me is untouchable. I can feel it, experience it, see glimpses of it, but never reach out and touch it. I want to write a book. But I desire more the companionship of my characters. They guide me, teach me, tease me, love me, hate me, and are me in many ways. The publishing on printed paper is the human want to become tangible. All the quiet moments knowing I am never alone is the desire.

I want to have my affair with life, but I desire more the joy and fulfillment I know are waiting for me. I want to stand on the Great Wall, but I desire to feel the history. I want to stand at a Shinto shrine, but I desire to listen to the spirits. I want to dance on Welsh soil, but I desire to meet my ancestors who are me. To want is human. To desire is to reach within ourselves, beyond ourselves, and towards the neverending thread linking it all.

But to chase this desire, to choose the untamed wild is a human and conscious decision. We are both free of ourselves and trapped within ourselves. The circus traps us, the wild tempts us, and somehow we have to learn to exist within them both. Somehow, we have to put on the show the circus requires, yet not conform ourselves in the process. Somehow, we have to run naked and clean of society into the wild, yet not fall into delirium. Somehow we have to find our divinity, nature's divinity, and the divinity we cannot contemplate, all while keeping a toe on the ground in our affair with life. Somehow...we have to be.

Yours Truly,
Mrs. C

Questions

What do you do when you have one story filling you, yet you know you are not yet ready to pen it? And you have another that has been with you even longer, and know that it's simpler, less complicated, and that in your inexperience you should work on it first. Yet the one you should work on is quiet, never actually leaving you, but sitting on the sidelines nevertheless. And the one you know you are unprepared for, the one you know is a task bigger than even your imagination can grasp is the one screaming in your thoughts? What then?

Yours Truly,
Mrs. C

Inspiration, Part 2

At last, part two of my post on inspiration. I've been thinking on this one and the answers just don't come quite as easily to me as the music answers did. (Suppose I'm more musically inclined.) Yet here are a few things that came to mind.


MOVIES:
Finding Neverland -- A very sad film in many ways, but there is one precise moment that has always been very striking to me. It's near the beginning of the film and Mrs. Barrie has once again been disapproving of Mr. Barrie. The camera pans back and we see two doors, one to Mr. Barrie's room and one to Mrs. Barrie's room. Mrs. Barrie opens her door first and we see the typical furnishings of the time period peek out from our little window into her world. Just a second later Mr. Barrie opens his door and the most fantastical world lies within. It's not in what you have, it's in your perception of it. He chose to believe in magic and so magic believed in him. These few seconds of the entire film summarizes so much of its meaning.

Sweeney Todd -- I don't have a poetic description of this film and why I love it, I only know that I do. I love the artistry, the characters, the music, the costumes, the story, and every moment beginning to end. Despite so much death, it always fills me with great energy. Perhaps the energy of the dead? "Food" for thought. (haha)

Brick -- This is much less well-known than the prior two films. I was sitting in an art of film class in college, being introduced to all sorts of new films and reacquainting myself with old favorites. Then the final week came. We'd taken our exams, there was nothing left to "study" and yet the school wanted us there one last week. What to do? Why not take a poll of movies to watch, pick one, and use what we'd learned while watching it. Someone suggested "Brick" and all but about three of my classmates hadn't the slightest idea what they were talking about. My teacher hadn't even heard of it. Yet it sounded promising and artsy and she promised to find a copy and bring it for us. I'm so glad she did. This film is difficult to describe, but incredible to watch. It's a mystery/detective film, based in high school with drugs, murder, gangs, love, and misunderstandings. That paints such a negative picture and encourages one to think of an overly bloody or overly campy flick. Both are wrong. It's rare I see such pure artistry in film and while yes, it is high school, "Brick" is nothing of what you'd expect. Watch it. Please.

BOOKS:
Ella Enchannted -- A favorite since childhood. Why? Perhaps because I have so much of Ella in me.

Pride & Prejudice -- I read this in the fourth grade with a dictionary by my side and loved every moment of it. To this day Jane Austen is a favorite author and while her list of works was cut tragically short by her early death, each one is precious. Mansfield Park is another dear favorite.


The Alchemist -- Or really anything by Paulo Coelho. As an author he is probably the one that moves the most. He does not write stories you read through in a rush, he writes stories you want to contemplate for days and weeks to come. Yet it's a calming contemplation. Even his daily blog is calming and enlightening. The man is a spirit on earth who exists on a whole other plane above that which the rest of us does.




There's certainly more than just three entries in each of those categories, but those are some of the most important to me. Now that I've conquered the search for my inspirations, it's time to conquer the next step: meeting my characters for more than just face value. Wish me luck.


Yours Truly,
Mrs. C