Annabelle.

Today is my grandmother's birthday.

I miss you, Grandma Annie.

Sometimes I still sneak over to your old hutch, in the corner of our entryway.  I open up the cupboard doors, and take a gentle, deep inhale.  Mom has lovingly left your favorite potpourri crouched in the corner of the cupboard for the past nineteen years.

It still smells just like you.   When I close my eyes and breathe it in, I can just faintly see the corners of your stunning smile in my mind.

Your birthday, this 28th of August, is perched ever-so-faintly on the edge of Summer, in the outstretched arms of Fall.

When I think of my memories of you, they look like Autumn and fog.  I feel your warmth when the pumpkin spiced candles are lit, and the smell of rain lingers on the still-heavy Summer air outside.

Some days I get frustrated, because I was so young when you died.  I don't really have many memories to hold tightly to in these moments of overwhelming sentimentality.

I remember the cookies you used to make me and Kailey and Kelsey.  I remember taking naps on your couch. I watched Dumbo on your tiny, old-fashioned television.

I remember the red coloring book and the basket of crayons in the cabinet under the TV.

I remember sitting on the floor of your empty apartment after you died.

I would go there for years after.  Mom would free me from my schoolwork, and I would rush to play outside.  Sometimes, in quiet moments, I would walk over to the little house you lived in, attached to our garage.  I would open the creaky door.  Inside, mostly empty.  A few items remained in the cupboards in your kitchen.  A table here, sometimes a leftover couch there, from when mom was re-decorating and re-arranging our own living room. 

I'd sit there, on the floor, and soak up the scent and the heaviness.  Even when I was just a little child.

One time I found a spider in your bathtub, and I was so angry that another living thing dared to invade your home and call it theirs.  I ran the water, watching it drown with a solemnity only a child can pervade.

Do you remember how when I was a tiny child, I would gather flowers for you and toddle over to your house on extremely shaky legs and reach out my grubby, chubby little hands full of weeds and dandelions for you?

You always took them.  You always put them in a vase.  You always kissed me.

You were so sick.  Your body racked with so much pain. So much cancerous poison.

You loved us all so much.

The only picture with you that I have is one of you cradling me in your weak arms when I was a very little baby.

Happy Birthday, Grandma.

If you were still alive today, things would be so different.

Sometimes I wonder how your heart would beat, if you were alive to see your family now.

There are so many different directions all of our lives have taken, just like any normal family experiences.

In some ways, I wonder if it's better that you're not around.  Selfishly, I desperately wish that you were.

It swells and expands with the most intensity around holidays, and on your birthday- and I just wish you were still here so we could honor you in person.  I wish that I was climbing into my car now, headed home from my workday, excited to sit at a full table, all of our family gathered around with candles lit and dinner simmering on the stove.  I can see you sitting next to my mother, laughing with such mirth at something my father said, reaching out to grab the hand of my Aunt Missy- arms and eyes always outstretched for my Aunt Lynn, waiting in anticipation for the impending arrival of your only son.

My sisters and my cousins smile in the light of your warmth, your glow, your angelic atmosphere.  As we each make our way to your side, for a hug. For a kiss.  For a forehead-to-forehead blessing.  A reminder of the love Jesus has for us, and the sacrifice He's made for us, alive in the love and sacrifices that you made daily in your time here on earth.

Those individuals who are fully grown and still have grandparents around that are deeply involved in their lives don't understand how truly lucky they are.

I know it's selfish to wish for your presence again on this uncertain earth, when you are so at home and at such final peace in the arms of our Savior in Heaven.  I'm sorry I wish for it constantly. 

Just know that, while they may not celebrate birthdays in Heaven anymore, we're still celebrating your birthday at home today.  We miss you.  We love you. 

Thank you for watching over our family. 

Thank you for the constant struggle and sacrifice which was the short, unfair span of your life. 

You never complained.  Never faltered.  You shot praise up to our Lord and King at the beginning and end of every day.  You created a legacy lasting long and healthy in our family. You have 4 grand-daughter namesakes, and 2 great-granddaughter namesakes as yet, and more will come, I promise.

Thank you for teaching our mothers how to set beautiful tables, and for teaching our mothers how to cook such warm, nourishing meals.  Thank you for loving our fathers into the family as your own sons.  Thank you for teaching our parents about sacrifice.

They've taught your lessons to us, in turn, and someday, when the rest of us have our own chance, those lessons will trickle down into our own homes and families as well.

I know that you're alive up there, and healthy.  Young, and beautiful.  You have all of the expanse of eternity to make breathtaking bouquets with all of the wildflowers in Heaven, and I know that brings your soul so much joy.  Just know that you have given all of us that much joy, too, by allowing us to be born and created into your family.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

I'm always missing you.

Happy Birthday.

Hugs.

"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it.  Or you kill yourself.  Or you stop looking in mirrors." - Tennessee Williams.

Sometimes you just miss someone.

It sort of takes over your whole body.

Your arms are sore.  It's like they remember what it feels like to be wrapped around that person, and they ache because they're empty.

Your head feels heavy.  There is no tight chest-space for it to be squeezed against in big, encompassing hugs. No trunk-like shoulder to rest it on in moments of quiet exhaustion.

Hugs are the most beautiful invention of physicality that human beings share.

Sometimes when you are a hopeless cuddler, you just need a hug to make the world a little less loud.

Rarely does that special hug come your way right when you need it.

Every now and then, it does.  I can remember a few specific moments in my life where hugs have literally shown up in the exact moment I needed them to, and changed life as I knew it from that point forward.

More often than not, though, you end up pacing the floor of your room back and forth, staring at old pictures and pulling at the sore muscles in your neck, wishing for a pair of hands to work out the knots that you work tirelessly to re-create time and time again, without meaning to.

You rub your eyes.  You refuse to sleep.

There's books on your bedside table- you're tired of reading someone else's words.

Sometimes I take a look at my own life and I realize how hopeless I am.  I complain all of the time.  I wish for things I don't have.  I waste so much effort and breath talking about how hard my own life is- and how tired my own body feels, and how restless my own mind gets at night.

How can I ever expect to love and serve someone else before myself?

I am so overwhelmingly selfish.

I complain constantly.

Contentment is a constant struggle.

How did I end up like this?

Why is it so hard to be comfortable and content with your own life?

Why is greed such an all-consuming temptation?

All of these questions just make me hug my pillow tighter, wishing for one of those hugs with all of my might- until I start to pray out my wishes, fears, temptations and lost battles.

Sometimes I talk to you through my prayers.  Sometimes I talk to my grandmother.  Sometimes I just lay here, asking God a million-and-one questions, all-the-while apologizing repeatedly for being so discontent with not knowing any of the answers.

I know several people in my life who would tell me this is a control problem that I have.

I know that they are all right.

Where do control problems come from? Where do they go?

How can I stop my head from spinning around and around like a merry-go-round?

I just want to get out of the psycho circus for awhile.  So I lay my head down on my pillow and I let my tired eyes drift off into a white sort of slumber.

Tomorrow brings new possibilities of joy.  Tonight I dream of my favorite embraces.

"God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts." -Sylvia Plath.

Finished Business

Music is powerful, yeah?

I tend to be most impacted by music and people.  Whenever I meet especially life-altering people, I have a tendency to immortalize them forever in my conscious and in my heart by creating mixed tapes or playlists that breathe their lives into music form.

I have a ridiculous history of doing this with past loves.

It's a very intimate experience, I think, creating a mix for someone who means a lot to you.  The intimacy which goes into hand-picking a selection of songs tied to memories with this person, or tied inexplicably to this person's character, is very powerful.  I feel that it creates a lot of vulnerability. 

Somehow, with all of these mixes that I've made over the years for a myriad of different reasons, I found that I've been able to capture the essence of these humans strikingly well, in my opinion.

It's similar to treating people like movies.  If this person was a movie, what would the soundtrack to their life be, if I was the one directing their movie?

Even though the circumstances surrounding your relationship with and to each other may change dramatically, and even though the pedestals you placed them ever-so-carefully upon may crumble for whatever reason, these people are still alive to you exactly as they were in the moment you made that playlist, every single time you listen.

That is magical.

That is powerful.

Sometimes, that can be dangerous as well as painful.

I experienced some of that spark and burn this morning on my way to work.  Sometimes when this happens, you just have to write a letter. Sometimes that letter can feel like closure- and at other times, that letter can just simply say "I'm sorry."

This is my letter today.  no background on the where or the why- I'm choosing to share this personal letter publicly, and therefore I don't feel the need to explain myself.

Your understanding is deeply appreciated.

I still run to you in my dreams.

I still run to you even when I'm not dreaming.

Despite the large amount of days that have passed since those moments we shared, I still remember how everything felt like magic with you.

With the numerous days, a tidal wave of change has brought closure to what happened, and new feelings for something and someone else, along with a newfound respect and appreciation for what took place between us, and the way it's been finished, completed- neatly folded into a box and delicately placed somewhere in the attic of our souls. It's over.  No hard feelings.  No more push and pull.

Even still, sometimes.... Sometimes, I escape to the quiet solitude of my car, and I hit the "play" button on a playlist of songs that represent so many experiences you and I shared. I sink below the surface, lost in the ocean of my memories with you, and I find myself wishing somehow that you and I... Whatever we were, whatever we had.... I wish it still had a pulse.

But that's wrong. And I know it's wrong.  And I'm sorry.

I've been a little fragile lately- if I may take the time to explain myself.

Full of emotion at the revelation of deep, unforeseen feeling towards something else, something beautiful and good....  Something much, much better than you and I.

And also, I am full of shame.

Because you are a human being. I am a human being. And I cannot keep trying to control the way I feel toward you.  I definitely cannot keep trying to control the way you feel toward me. I'm sorry that I ever thought I could try.

Not to mention I know full well that it is certainly and finally over.  Which, if I can be totally honest, is a good thing. It wasn't healthy.  It may have been organic, but it wasn't actually healthy.  We learned.  We grew.  God knows we shouted- I shouted.

And then we tore.  We ripped.  It came down in glittering shambles around us- and that was it.

But the vulnerability was real, and it was raw, and I cannot thank you enough for that.

You have no earthly idea what that meant to me- how it changed me.

How I'm still recovering and adapting. 

How this heart has been disfiguring and untangling itself from you, and how even though sometimes the reality of you and I never moving forward still makes me catch my breath and falter ever-so-slightly, I wake up each day thankful for the fact that we never will move forward.

I wake up thankful for the whole experience.

Thankful for your respect, though I'm not sure I deserve it.

Thankful for the faith you've always had in me.

Thankful for the openness of mind and heart you've always gifted to me.

Thankful for your sympathy, your sliding, your hugs, your hand and how it rested on my knee in a quiet moment of encouragement, your godforsaken pride and your damnable, unforgettable confidence.

Also, the walls you let down around me.  I feel so honored by that.

Above all, I'm thankful for your silence, because that was the most gentle method for leading me into the truth that you could have ever used- even though I hated it at the time.

So maybe I'll start returning the respect and the faith.

Maybe I'll stop listening to those songs for awhile.

I used to think, many months ago, that you and I would always be unfinished business.

That's not true.  The books have been settled, the transactions complete- the business is finished.

Thank God for that, right?

If I could leave a few words to you to guide you forward as lights along the way, I would leave these words, because they represent exactly what it is you taught to me- and I'd like to think I did somewhat of the same for you.

I'm not saying that we were soul mates- mostly because I can't honestly say that without bursting out into a loud, clap of laughter. Let's get real, here. But these words about soul mates smack me in the face everytime I read them, because I just picture your face... And I'm thankful for that, too.

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.  A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a true soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.  A soul mate's purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in... and make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life."
-Elizabeth Gilbert

Thanks for filling that role for awhile, whatever the title is.

See you around sometime, maybe.

Breath.

Sometimes it just feels like you can't even breathe.

Sometimes you find yourself sitting in your underwear on your bed, and you've pushed all the covers off.

The fan is blowing cool air toward you and your legs have goosebumps but you're too stubborn to get up and pull the blankets back on top of the mattress.

So you just lay there. Arms folded underneath your head, legs tucked as close to the center of your body as possible.  You stare at the grey-blue wall. And even though your chest is rising and falling with the miracle of breath, and with every inhale and exhale your heart beats steadily onward- all you can think to your quiet, fragile self is, "I can't even breathe."

Home alone this week.

I'm finding out I'm much worse at being alone than I thought I was.  I don't like being in this large, empty house by myself. All my childhood and early pre-adolescent daydreams of "FINALLY BEING ALONE" have died.

I don't look forward to the opportunity to have the house to myself.  I wish I could fill it right now with the laughter of the people I love.  I wish I could curl up next to _____ and fall asleep safe.

It's 10:19pm and I'm exhausted.  I wanted to be asleep by now.  I was almost asleep when I was downstairs on the couch, watching the latter half of Freedom Writers on TV, after spending a good amount of time cleaning the kitchen, watering the plants, and taking the garbage out.  (Who says the Little Woman can't take care of herself?)

I thought to myself, "Sweet peaches, it's only 9:30.  If I go to bed now, I can sleep for almost 9 hours before I have to wake up!"

As soon as I laid down in my big, empty white bed, I knew I had to write.

I went back and forth.  "Sleep.  Sleep is more important.  You can write tomorrow."

"I've been in a funk for days.  If I don't write, sleep won't matter.  I'll still be forlorn tomorrow."

"Why don't you let tomorrow handle tomorrow and just go to bed?"

"I can't.  I owe it to the art.  I have to write.  I have to."

So of course I turned over and pulled my laptop into my lap and now here I am.

Forlorn, quiet, alone and exhausted.

With that Royals song playing on repeat in my head, "We will never be royals, it don't run in our blood..."*

Sometimes it seems silly, but with all that's going on in the world, all I can really wrap my head around are the tiny, insignificant things.

The way I get really pensive when I'm tired.

The smell plants give off when hose water showers their petals and leaves.

The way Ryan Gosling looks in a vintage silk suit.

The word "shishigashira" to describe a Japanese maple tree.

The unfathomable depth and unpredictability of the wantonness of the human heart.

Why on earth Chuck Palahniuk thinks writing a sequel to Fight Club will be a good idea.

How it is that they make Frosty's look so damn good on Wendy's TV ads.

How much I would rather be camping than lying in my own bed right now.

How certain people in your life make it easier to breathe again, and how you wish you could just be sitting with them over coffee, or tucked inside their car, both sets of feet on the dashboard, or mindlessly perusing the shelves of the local bookstores, talking with them and being silent with them and sharing in multiple heartaches just by allowing yourself to be fragile with them, because they've allowed themselves to be fragile with you.

What are goosebumps?

Why and how and for what purpose it is that sometimes you can literally feel someone hugging you, even though they've been miles and miles away for a long time.

How many more days until I can see you again?

"We don't care, we're not caught up in your love affair."*

Sometimes I really hate how much better I am at writing than speaking my words in communication with other people.

10:44pm.  My eyes are sore.

I think knowing I'm the only living thing in this house gives me insomnia.

Where's that mysterious memory-mind-hug phenomenon when you need it?

"It's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near-escapes. So I take pleasure in the details.  You know.  A quarter pounder with cheese, those are good.  The sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle... And I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights, and I ride my own melt." **

Where are my favorite pair of eyes?

10:56 PM.










*Royals- Lorde
** Reality Bites

Big.

I just keep thinking about this line, in the new Superman movie.  It keeps on replaying over and over and over in my head.

"The world's too big, mom."

That's what today feels like, lovers.  The world feels too big.  No amount of mountainous drives lined with evergreen trees and back-splashed with golden fields will make it any smaller.

 I spent my day giving my time to other people- people who really needed my time much, much more than I did.  This time looked like wrapping dishes and glasses in newspaper and putting them into boxes and placing the taped, marked boxes in neat piles by the door, waiting to be loaded onto a large U-Haul truck.  This time looked like delivering food for those familial few who were there to help as we were. This time looked like smiling and hugging beautiful little children, whose lives and rooms were currently being shifted and rearranged and packed up into more neat and tidy boxed piles while they giggled and spun in many noisy, glittering directions.

This time looked like getting strikingly lost with Nat as we made an hour-long coffee-and-packing-tape run to Fred Meyers in the middle of the afternoon,  in a small town at the base of a very large mountain which neither of us were any good at navigating. (That specific time involved a lot of exhausted-by-the-weight-of-life sighs and frustrated expletives, often followed by a short outburst of overwhelmed, hysterical laughter.) This time looked like sun-dusted crop-fields, very old farmhouses, and very windy roads.  It looked quiet.  My eyes swept over the wild countryside, and I silently wondered to myself how best to take care of my friend who's so busy with the important task of tending to her own priceless loved ones in a time of unforeseen need.  For once, I didn't have any words.

Clark Kent is right.  Sometimes the world is just too big.

On the hour-long drive home, I thought a lot about that line.

Do you know what I used to do whenever the world felt too big?  I had a coping mechanism for days like these, once.

I used to park my car on a knoll right above the ocean, roll down all the windows and open my sunroof.  I would lean forward in my seat, fold my arms in front of me and rest my chin on my steering wheel.  Watching the pelicans and the surf scoters flying, diving, floating on the restless waves, and the harbor seals cresting with their faces on the surface of the water didn't make the world seem smaller and myself seem larger, though.

Sitting by the ocean is never going to make you feel big.

But it made the world seem less impending under the mighty force of the waves.  I felt like whatever the world had to throw at me couldn't be matched by the vast power of the seas. It made the ocean feel bigger than the world, and that was comforting.

There is no ocean here, lovers.

There are mountains like the one I traveled today, and there are valleys like the one I currently dwell in.

There are rivers, like the one half-a-mile from my house- and there are fields, like the ones I drive past everyday on my way to work.

All of them are stunning in their own right.  The heron's nest on the top of the telephone pole in the field a block past my backyard.  The waning light cast onto the mountain by the setting sun turns it a purplish sort of pale pink.  The scent of the surrounding hay fields on a balmy Summer night, while I ride my penny board down the streets of my neighborhood.

Though they are beautiful, they only make the world seem bigger.  My eyes can't rest on one thing- -and they move from sight to sight at an increasingly rapid pace until the patterns of contrasting light and color make my head hurt. I feel puny.  Insignificant, tiny, helpless, waif-like and weak.

I have no ocean here- and I began to grow anxious without the scent of the sea constantly on the air.

Softly, I whispered to myself this afternoon as I traveled homeward to my valley and my maple trees and my wide neighborhood streets, desperately toying with the idea of instead driving all the way to the beach for the 3rd weekend in a row, just to get my fix- just to feel healed one more time- Hannah, this has got to stop. 

Suddenly the world felt like it was breaking in two. I took a long, shaky breath- and on the exhale I shot up one equally shaky prayer,  God, forgive me. 

I no longer have the ocean- and I must learn to be okay with that.

I have to stop needing the ocean at some point.  It's been almost one year since I moved home- and I need to move forward with my life.

The ocean can't fix my problems- it can't fix me the way I want it to.

The world is too big, lovers.

Maybe instead of trying to make it small again, I should just let it be big.

Maybe instead of making the ocean bigger than the world, I should just stop trying to alter sizes and implications altogether.

Maybe I should just remember that I'm not the one who's in control, here. And maybe I should remember how blessed I feel by the opportunity to help others like I did today- and maybe God can teach me how to help other people more often, because otherwise I grow selfish and anxious and reliant on an earthly element which cannot heal me no matter how desperately I want it to.

So the world is too big for me.  God is much bigger than the world. 

Sometimes, we can't keep our hearts from hurting, but maybe what we don't understand is that our hearts were made for hurting.  Our compassion makes us strong- our sorrows change our direction. Our Savior breaks our hearts for what breaks His heart- and that makes us precious to the Great Creator who sent His one son to die in order to save the world because He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. 

Flighty Little Birds, Jagged Around the Edges

I have this candle that smells like one of my most favorite people in the world.

I'm not sure how it's possible that this came to be.  One day, about a month ago, I was milling around Sesame and Lilies, the home decor store I used to work at when I lived in Cannon Beach, and I picked up a large candle in a grey, hobnail jar. I brought it to my nose.  I wondered for a moment what "Ambergrass" was supposed to smell like, and then I took a whiff.

Instantly, familiarity washed over me.  I knew that scent very well.  It smelled like wishes, right before they are granted.  It was the same smell that used to follow me around while grocery shopping, or riding in that car.  It smelled like being held in a warm, tight hug.  It smelled mildly like peaches, but earthier than that.  It was the same smell that accompanied the voice which soundtracked my Summer, to quote that crazy-good Boys Like Girls song from 4 years ago.

I don't know if I bought the candle because the smell reminded me of this person, or if I bought the candle because the familiarity of the smell was comforting- but somehow, it ended up coming home with me that day.

And right now it's perched next to me, lit.  One small beam of light to combat a world of darkness.

Lovers,  sometimes we forget how precious life is.

Sometimes, we forget that death is a constant and inescapable part of our lives.

One of my dearest friends, Natalie Trust, writes about this very topic in her blog.  It's titled, "Death's Waiting Room," and you can read it here. Please do so.

Lovers, there is a story behind all of this to share- but it is not mine to tell.  And so I will not tell it today. But I will write a few vague sentences- even if just for the sake of personal catharsis.

There are many thoughts in my brain that do not align in a logical pattern.  Mostly they are whirring around like flighty little birds, jagged around the edges.  They are afraid to settle in one place for too long, because they might become stagnant.  They might become flightless, and by loosing their wings, they might grow even more scarred.

Memory, that rose-tinted creature, flies from one branch to another restlessly bringing up images and nostalgia with every fluttered movement- Fact, that cold-hearted mistress screeches from the tops of her tiny little lungs unforgivable curses as she flies in endless circles- Hope, that bedraggled white dove, coos softly in the midst of the squalor.  Often her voice is overpowered- but it is still present. Her patient heart is still beating steadily.

What do you do when someone you've always known as a permanent fixture in your life suddenly becomes frighteningly temporary?

All I have floating around in my brain are words- and words are so blatantly empty today.

Words have the power to break people- and yet, rarely do they actually possess the power to bring comfort.  Where is the comfort to be found in a violently angry murderess that lives and grows within our very bloodstreams?  Where is the hope to be found in a pungent blackness that devours from the inside out?

My words are muted, today.  My arms are tired from wrestling with angels, like Jacob in the book of Genesis.

My heart is heavy. This small hammock of tragedy in which I sit today is cradling me so carefully, so effortlessly.  I wonder if I could just lie back and let it carry me, how far would we travel together?

It's strange, watching your beloveds go through the motions of realizing they might loose someone beloved to them. It makes that person, while still a familiar, cherished, loved and more-than-welcomed part of your own life, all that more special and precious to you.

I realized today just how sacred every breath is.

Sacred. 

Every breath.

Human life is the most priceless thing on this planet, my own best friend reminded me today.  How careless of me to have forgotten.

Through it all, I continue to ask my Heavenly Father where He is in all of this.

Father, God.  Where are you?

I know your sovereignty.  I know your omniscience.  I just don't have the Kingdom eyes to see your plan; I am made of bone and sinew and my weak heart is full of doubt and I lack understanding.

Still, Lord- I stand.  Just as all of those around me and all of those involved and all of those grieving alongside each other tonight are standing.  In the light and hope of our God and Savior- knowing that He is also standing for us.  Knowing that He is not absent, or removed, or uncaring, unfeeling.

Knowing that He is full of healing, and mercy and miracles and undying love for each one of His earthly children, and that His heart is also breaking under the extreme weight of this recent news.

How blessed are we.

To have a Savior who's heart breaks over the tragedies which befall His prized children. To know that not only does He have all control of the situation, but He also understands and comprehends exactly how these tragedies make us feel.

He is breath-taking, and we are all made in His image.  When I envision the face which this tragedy belongs to, I see the beautiful Imago Dei bursting forth from those grace-filled features, clothed in dignity and righteousness.

So tonight, the tears may fall.

But the Almighty is still good.

This grief-laden hammock is comfortable, but it is not permanent.

Tomorrow is a new day, and for those of us who live to see the morning light- there will be so many moments in which to give thanks throughout the day.  Don't let the opportunity to thank God for the sacredness of breath pass you by.

I love you.  I love you.  I love you.

"With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels."

This post is for my dear friend, Allen.

Happy Birthday, kindred soul.  I know I promised this to you eons ago- I sincerely hope I do it justice, since we've both talked it up enough by now for it to potentially move mountains and siphon rivers, end world hunger and... Make a lot of soap.

I also hope it beats the 1984 collectible Star Wars plastic cup I bought you last year. (I think it was '84.  I have a horrible memory for these things.)

Love you so much.  Here's to many more years of mind-blowing scripts and the conversations they spark for hours on end.  And also, many more years of Beatles lyrics trivia.  "No-one, i think, is in my tree, I mean, it must be high or low- that is, you can't, you know, tune in- but it's alright, that is, I think it's not too bad."



Over a year ago, now, Allen introduced me to my very first encounter with the pop culture enigma, Fight Club.

Amused, he sat across the room from me on the opposite couch, beside a gurgling tank which housed two oversexed box turtles, and he watched my eyes grow wide, glued to the screen, and my hands as they tightly clenched the pillow I was holding- I was alive with wonder and inspiration.  He just sat there, privy to my creative undoing and he smiled, knowing full well that someday I would come to alternately loving him and hating him for introducing me to this cosmic and earth-shattering film.

Never had I ever seen anything before quite like this brutally, chemically, forcefully poignant revelation on the human psyche and its' electric thirst to escape the jaded fatigue within which we inevitably find ourselves situated.

I.

Was.

UN-EARTHED.

And paralyzingly impacted.  I wanted to scream so loudly- and I wanted to write one-million words that started with the same letter.  I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep.  I wanted to launch headfirst into the Ocean and keep swimming until the adrenaline wore off.

From that moment on, I knew something very crucial had happened there that night.  I became aware. I'm not sure I can really describe it in any other way.

From the introduction of Marla Singer,  "Marla, you big tourist.... The little scratch on the roof of your mouth  that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it, but you can't."

to the ultimation of the sync between Tyler Durden and the insomniac Jack, I had reached an uncharted island of awareness.  I had plateaued into a heightened sense of clarity; and yet, instead of catapulting me in a peaceful, Ghandi-like state, that same heightened breed of clarity only fostered a deep unsettling and frustration within my tense frame. I was as un-Ghandi-like as Attila the Hun.

I was frustrated because I knew that it had changed me.  But I didn't know how it had changed me. And because of that,  I knew that I wouldn't be getting any sleep that night, and I really hate loosing sleep over anything.

"If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."

"I don't want to die without any scars."

These three sentences alone could take me days to unpack. I think the thing I love most about Fight Club is that every time I re-watch it, or re-read the book, all-too-familiar lines will pop out of the background like tiny, machine-gun pellets, wounding and changing me in a different way than they did before. It's like every time I watch it, I'm experiencing it again for the very first time.

I wouldn't want to die without any scars, either- and I think the scariest thing about this movie and how much it moved me, was the way I found myself identifying with the characters. I mean, there's so much truth to Tyler Durden's arrogant, jaded cynicism, isn't there?

Nobody wants to die unscathed. Wound us.  Change us.  Hurt us.  Knock us off our feet.  Make us feel alive again.

It's disgusting, and despicable, the way that self-destruction is deified in this story.  It's horrific, but it's intriguing all the same.  I felt like vomiting.  I didn't dare take my eyes off the screen for one, single moment. I couldn't move. I didn't want to move.

"A generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is the answer we really need."

Fight Club is no friend of the female sex.  I can't tell you how many times I felt like I should be bitterly (and righteously) offended by its blatant sexism.  And yet, you read the statement above and you can't help but think:  "Yeah.  Where did all the fathers go?" For me, this aspect of the movie was like, inception, dude.  I didn't realize I felt that way until I saw the movie, and then I realized this seed of dissension and turbulence had been planted there long, long ago. I was only beginning to unravel the threads of discord and chaos.  The movie was far from over.

"Fight club wasn't about winning or losing.  It wasn't about words.  The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like at a Pentecostal church. When the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered."

Is it terrible that I wanted to feel that?  Even if only for a moment.  The sheer brutality took me by force.  It all seemed so glamorously instinctual- I mean, it was overwhelmingly Hollywoodized, I knew that- but I didn't feel like Hollywood was lying to me, either.  I kind of felt this nirvana-esque ambiguity to it.

The primal idea of fighting to feel one's own worth.  Not prove one's worth, no.  Fight Club never was a competition.  It wasn't a sport.  These guys were self-healing their lifelong traumas.  The era of prescription drugs was over.  Self- medication had taken over in it's basest form.

"I got right in everyone's hostile little face.  Yes, these are bruises from fighting. I'm comfortable with them.  I am enlightened."

See what I mean?  And for a moment, a dangerously scandalous moment, I toyed over whether or not I wanted that, too.  Enlightenment.  Gosh, that's so enticing, isn't it?  I almost believed it.  I stand before you today, in full admittance and bearing no shame in the fact, that I almost believed it was possible.  That Fight Club in itself was a probable answer to a lot of society's problems.

Is that possible?

"Ancient peoples found their clothes got cleaner if they washed them at a certain spot in the river.  Why? Because, human sacrifices were once made on the hills above this river.  Year after year, bodies burnt.  Rain fell.  Water seeped through the wood ashes to become lye.  The lye combined with the melted fat of the bodies, till a thick white soapy discharge crept into the river.   The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes.  Like the first monkeys shot into space. Without sacrificing, without death, we would have nothing."

.... And then, ladies and gentlemen: the chemical burn scene.

"The pain you're feeling is premature enlightenment.  This is the greatest moment of your life and you're off somewhere, missing it.  Shut up.  Our fathers were our models for God.  And, if our fathers bailed, what does that tell us about God? Listen to me.  You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you, he never wanted you.  In all probability, He hates you.  This is not the worst thing that can happen... We are God's unwanted children, with no special place and no special attention, and so be it.  You can go to the sink and run water over your hand.  Look at me.  Or you can use vinegar to neutralize the burn, but first you have to give up.  First, you have to know that someday, you are going. to. die.  Until you know that, you will be useless."

Now, I don't for one second believe the above statement.  I'm sorry, I know disclaimers can sometimes ruin really good writing, but I feel like I have to make the distinction here.  I don't believe that God hates anyone.
I don't believe that God sees anyone of us as "unwanted."

Regardless of my disclaimer, this is pretty brilliant writing in and of itself, I have to say.  It's all in the way the sentences are built.  Ground-up.  The good, old-fashioned way. First you start with an idea, and then you build off that with an example- followed by a consideration, and then you unpack the consideration and build another level of seemingly persuasive credibility.  And then you finish with a slam-bam power-packed sentence that really leaves the witness reeling in a world of cyanide and spirituality.  This is a fiction writer's porn-like demographic. This is a literary ultimatum.

I've probably watched this chemical burn scene about 6 times in my life, and each time I get chills.  Still, after all this time, I'm not really sure I can explain why I get these chills.

"We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place.  We have no great war, or great depression.  The great war is a spiritual war.  The great depression is our lives.  We were raised by television to believe that we'd be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars- but we won't.  And we're learning that fact.  And we're very, very pissed off. We are the quiet young men who listen until it's time to decide."

I think, deep down, in the very core of every human being, is a tiny little facet of radicalism.  We as a human race are born to revolutionize.  That's what we've been doing since the dawn of time, right?  Fire, the wheel, electricity, plumbing,submarines, rocket launches, nuclear war, cloning devices. We organize to revolutionize.   We revolutionize to radicalize.  It's been abused, and easily so. I'm not encouraging it.  I'm just revealing it.

I just think it stands to reason that there's a switch within all of us that can be radically flipped over one thing or another in our lives.  Maybe in unconventional ways, maybe it doesn't have to be political radicalism, or religious radicalism.  It could be the radical decision to quit social networking.  You could refuse to be a part of the United Postal System. You could stop eating gluten.

"Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten."

Warped- but you get it, don't you?  It's about taking things for granted. Shouldn't every breakfast be the best meal we've ever eaten, just because we're alive? Shouldn't life continue upwards and forwards in a nebulous reach for the expansive, elusive future?

And then, Fight Club begins to spiral out of control.

Vandalism becomes rampant.  The commissioner's held under threat of castration, "The people you're after are everyone you depend on. We do your laundry, cook your food and serve you dinner.  We guard you while you sleep. We drive your ambulances. Do not fuck with us."

Jack almost kills the Angel Face character in hand-to-hand-combat.

"I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to save it's species.  I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I'd never see.  I felt like destroying something beautiful."

And even though I knew it was all going horribly, horribly wrong- I hated myself for finding such a terrestrial sort of poetry about it all. That cliche, about finding "beauty in the breakdown?"

  That is Fight Club.  It's a beautiful, disgusting, unforgettable, poignant, violently unforgivable breakdown.

It's a revolutionary idea which could never be accomplished in a pure manner- because man would inevitably screw it up every single time.

It's like world peace- the most desirable and beautiful concept in the entire existence of humanity, but as long as man is in control, we will never, ever, EVER attain world peace. It's impossible. We cannot handle such purity. We will stain it.  Our fingers are smudged with tar and asphalt.

It's a  conundrum.

"This does not belong to us.  We are not the leaders. We are not special.  We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.  We are all part of the same compost heap."

And then, after a confrontation, a struggle, a diffusion and an acrid argument between Marla and Jack, several very large explosions and one ringing gunshot later- it's all over.

The credits roll.

Tyler and Jack are one and the same.  The clues are written all over the story-line.

And how do you feel?

How did I feel?

To be totally honest, I'm still trying to figure out how Fight Club makes me feel.  I'm still contemplating and discovering new facets and eccentricities of the psychological warfare this movie has brought to my life.

I think it's abundantly extremist.  I think Tyler Durden is the ultimation of a very lonely, very entitled and unhappy man's cry for help in all the wrong places.

Do I think Jack was a victim of temporary insanity?

No.

I don't for one second believe that Jack was a victim of mental instability.  I don't think Jack was a victim of a consumer, materialistic society by-producing spoiled, angry children in mass quantities like a meat packaging plant, or the Apple Inc. factory.

I think Jack was human.  I think Jack was weak.  He was the tiny, frail match that ignited a spark- and Tyler was a tank of gasoline thrown in to keep the fire burning.

I think the movie in some aspects is ridiculous and overdone.  I sometimes think to myself as I watch it, "Chuck Palahniuk was trying too hard to make a point."

At other times, I wring my hands over the fact that I don't have the same grappling hold on the English language that Chuck P. has.  And I do honestly think that Fight Club has defined an entire generation of misfit, IKEA-addicted nobodies who are dead tired of all the endless drudgery which the middle working-class has to offer.

I don't doubt that for a moment.

What does this movie mean to me?

Everything.   This movie and this book and this entire franchise means everything.  It's a reminder of who not to be, and how to strive for excellence all at once.

It's the single, solitary, most revealing and challenging fictional movie I've ever watched on a deeply personal level.

I'm not sure if that means I have an entire host of demons that I struggle with that I wasn't even aware of, or if it just means I share a sympathetic bond with writers and people like Chuck P.

I understand their messages.  I get where they're coming from.  I validate their disaffection and disillusionment. Their frailty is compacted within their social martyrdom. I can respect that.

And I owe all of this dogma and life criterion to Allen Barber.  Who knew from the very beginning that I was the kind of soul who would love this movie, and how it changes people. He could sense the Fight-Club-Lovin' Vibes all over me.

So he gave me a gift that day.

A gift that, occasionally, can actually be a pretty big curse, too, but a gift which, altogether I couldn't imagine my life without.

So thank you, Allen.  Here it is, 11:24 PM on 6/19/2013.  Just moments before your 25th birthday.

I hope this year is a blessing for you, dear friend.

Happiest of birthdays.

May the force be with you, you rebel-alliance-tattoo-bearing-friend-of-mine, you.

(funny note, I almost wrote, "may the odds be ever in your favor," just because.  I really have no idea why.  I just thought you might appreciate the fact that apparently I'm starting to quote The Hunger Games for no valid reason. Mmmkay. Night-night.)