In case of 2007: April and May

I get the feeling I’ll look back on this and either remember how and not why, or why, but not how.

*****

Circumstantial evidence:

1. I am wearing a pair of his socks.
2. The movie is stopped somewhere in the middle.
3. I have no idea if it’s rainy or sunny.
4. The fridge is empty.
5. My earrings have disappeared.
6. My fingerprints. Everywhere.
7. The corpse, still warm, in the middle of the living room floor.

Yep. I think there’s enough to convict me.

*****

One line slashed down from his collarbone to his hips and ribs materialized around it. His frame bled and grew, budded into shoulders, deepened into almond colored skin. I watched with fascination as Eric blossomed beneath my gaze. He seemed to me to be a man of clay. Ash and bronze and pyrite.

The earth moved beneath me and beside me on the living room floor. He yawned once, curled himself around my body, and kissed the small of my back.

I ate Cheerios (witnessed his birth.)

In case of 2007

Today, while I was tidying up my room in anticipation of Jans coming tomorrow (!), I found an old spiral-bound notebook. As most of my notebooks like this one tend to become commonplace books – that is, full of everything from writing to doodles to class notes and phone numbers – I was intrigued to discover that this particular book contains a pretty accurate reading of my entire life from the year 2007.

2007 was an eventful year. It started with an incredible secret fling (as I was rebounding from my breakup with Bobby), moved from there into our mad and manic production of Flutter, took an unexpected twist in my romance with Eric, dipped low into a lovely, languid summer in the Pinery with Jes, then wrapped up with my last hectic semester of college at LAFSC in Hollywood.

Plus, add in there my sweet friendship with Jeremy McDaniel, visits from Tyger and Margie, a whole crammed month at Act One, and the perfect marriage I found in Kevin, Katherine, and Rian.

2007 was maybe the best year ever.

And so, for the next few entries, I’ll be posting some long lost essays and scrawlings I found in the 2007 notebook this morning. I know they won’t mean as much to anybody as they mean to me, but I thought you might like to come with me on this trip to the not-so-distant (but distant enough) past.

Enjoy.

In case of THINGS THAT ARE STILL TRUE

July.3.2007
For the beauty of the earth

There is so much grace in the world. It’s so funny to me how we are always given enough grace. Always.

I say that it’s funny because I think life is generally comedic. Even when it’s sad, there’s an element of humor, of joy, of promised restoration. Even when you feel so low. Even when you don’t know if a situation will end well. Even then.

I went to a wedding on Friday. Beth described the evening as “romantic,” which just happened to be the perfect adjective. We all stood on the front lawn, bare legs and shoulders, toes eased out of uncomfortable shoes. It was one of those firefly evenings, in spite of California.  The suspense of gold champagne in glasses, hovering between mouths and fingertips. The elderly and middle aged (their eternal moments still shining, but stuck in some previous era) gravitated toward the house, sat indoors on the antique furniture, discussed, I don't know.  Politics, maybe. Maybe marriage. I’d like to give them credit, knowing they were once us and that someday we’ll be them.

But we were not them on Friday. Almost everyone under the age of thirty draped themselves on the front porch, cotton and silk dresses flowing down from one stair to the next.  It was like -- I don't know -- a declaration to the world that we were standing on the brink, the edge, perched and ready for our chance, but still indulgent, enjoying one another while we could. Laughing.  The wonder was not then and will not be lost on us, not for years.

Even a wedding, which some might think is the end of being reckless, is heroic, epochal! How could anyone be so brave to love so deeply? How could anyone sit on the steps in the waning sun and laugh when we have lost wallets and keys, minutes and hours, built and burned bridges, inflicted and felt wounds? And some of us have lost friends. And some of us have lost faith. And some of us know that the house we’re sitting on will deteriorate, succumb to entropy, and that so many circumstances are, even now, not kind and not warm and not forgiving. How dare we dance, loop arms around waists, lick chocolate frosting off our fingers?

Why was I sent a quiet friend to sit with me, unjudging, when I have been so wrong? Why was I even allowed to hold the hand of someone I hurt so deeply?

Grace. Only grace.
There is so much grace in the world.