A Road Less Travelled

A while ago I wrote a post about telling vomit stories, but in the post I mentioned how I was annoyed that everything in my life seems to revolve around being single as if my marital status was a strange, bright sun. I think I’ve got a bead on why I’m in this orbit. Simply put, in my eyes being single is a negative and not a positive. And I don’t mean in terms of good thing versus bad thing. I mean plus thing versus minus thing.

If you are married then you’re married. If you’re single then you’re not married. In my head I don’t think of myself as ’single’. I think of myself as ‘not married’. As soon as I figured this out (or rather had it pointed out) then it made perfect sense why my world revolves around this fact. It is easy to build your life around what you are not. If you see yourself primarily in terms of what you are not then that’s what you build your life around.

I think very comparatively. I am a outgoing person, an extrovert, for better or worse I am a people person. So I tend to think of myself in terms of other people. The first time I started thinking I might be good at writing is when I, in all charity, noticed I was better than someone else. Most of my gifts and abilities involve communication and other people. Well, the bulk of the other people around me are married. They are first Christians and then they are married. We have the first thing in common, but as soon as I get to the very next thing there is difference between us. I am in a serious minority and I know it. All of my siblings are married, most of my friends are married. I have a few single friends, but I think one of the first ties forged with each of these friends is the hope that we could all be single together. My social circle revolves around married people and families.

I recently read a book called Quest For the High Places by Natalie Nyquist. Actually I read it twice. It was a very helpful book and I would recommend it. What might have been the most helpful thought was actually almost a throw away sentence. The sentence went something like “It is very hard to be single in a married world.” This was the first time I’d noticed how very married my world is. I am surrounded by married people who want other people to be happy like they are. I walk in a world that values marriage and assumes that most people will get married. It is the next step in my life according to all I’ve read, seen, heard, thought. I haven’t taken that step yet so I can’t join the majority elite. I am less in this world I live in. Being single doesn’t mean I am something; it means I’m not.

And it doesn’t help that I really want to get married. I mean, it easy to blow off feeling excluded if you don’t really care. It’s not that big of a deal to be denied entrance into the Cod Liver Oil Every Day Club. It might actually be something of a relief. But I want to get married. I want to join all the people who are normal in our circle. I want to stop being a ‘not’.

I think at this point the thing I need to change is my assumptions. There’s really not much I can do about getting married right now and I need to change something. But assumptions are a royal pain in uncomfortable places to change because they’re not anything you think; they’re things you assume without thinking. But I might be able to shift myself away to a new sun if I start seeing single as plus and not a minus. I mean, it’s not as if I like being stuck in this orbit. I would love to get a place where I can tell vomit stories without it having anything to do with being married or not. It’s certainly nice to have a goal.

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…no one will be surprised to learn that I do not have the gift of prophecying the future.

Melissa said, “They‘ll be back…about March, I’d say.”

I said, “No, I’m pretty sure they’re staying in Tennessee.”

There are certain times when I don’t mind being wrong.

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 Ever since Christmas I have been trying to be very responsible in choosing my craft projects. I knew I needed to finish up some ufo’s (Isn’t knitting language great? For the uninitiated UFO stands for UnFinished Object), and start working on birthday presents for the year so I could get them out of the way and have plenty of time to make Christmas presents. All very logical and responsible.

Sadly, logical and responsible are not my natural keyphrases when it comes to my crafts. Perhaps because it is the one area of my life where I don’t have to be logical and responsible. (This is part of the reason I finally realized that a home business relating to crafts is not for me. It sounded like such a natural fit for a long time–so logical even–but crafts don’t mix well with deadlines and obligations for me.) I think the only reason it works so well to make gifts for people is because I find patterns that make me go, “Ooooh, that’s the coolest thing! I want to make one! Who do I know that would want one of these?”

I have forced myself to impose some order on my crafts in the past, but this is only the result of ending up with half a dozen tiny orange baskets, several doilies, unfinished sets of coasters and the like, all of which were fun and exciting to make and things I would never actually use, and didn’t know anyone I could palm them off on…. er, that is to say, gift them to.

However, after a month and half of responsible knitting my wild side has broken out again. I couldn’t help myself. I have cast on and begun knitting a lizard scarf. I don’t think it’s actually supposed to be a lizard, but that’s what it looks like to me. A scarf that looks like a furry lizard. Isn’t that ghastly? And so much fun! Next week I will desperately search for a use for a furry lizard scarf. For now I merely knit in happiness.

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Reasonable or not, one has certain expectations about how the world works. One generally expects that if one puts something in a cupboard, it will be there when they come back. The exceptions are those who believe that it’s existence is a mere statistical probability, and those who live with children, who generally expect that things put away in the cupboard will turn up in the bathtub, under someone’s bed, or years later in the garage. Or, as another example, I often expect that when I close my bedroom door, it will stay closed until someone opens it again. Notice, I don’t even assume that I will be the one to open it. I acknowledge that  some child, particularly a certain one-year old who’s starting to figure out doorknobs, might barge in after I’ve closed the door. I merely expect that it will stay closed until someone opens it.

 This however is not a reasonable expectation when the door  ceases to be attached to the door frame. Remember how I just got the light in my room fixed a few weeks ago? Remember how I joked that now my door would probably break again? Well, here we go again…

 It is time to remaster the art of leaning the door at that perfect angle  which maximizes privacy and noise blockage, yet maintains sufficient distance at the base for stability. Sadly, this is not a skill which is generally deemed resume worthy. I could write up quite an impressive byline on my ability to handle detached doors. (Generally I recommend counseling for them—oh, wait, wrong kind of detached…) I’ve even navigated my way around the leaning-in-place door while holding a toddler, a water bottle and a palm pilot at the same time.

  Now the critical may point out that since my light has always been functioning while my door was broken, I’ve never had to navigate this obstacle in the dark. To them I say “Bah” and point out that they are grossly overestimating my ability to remember to use the wall switch instead of the switch on the light when I leave the room…

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Death is a very frightening thing. We have no idea what is on the other side, what’s waiting for us, what’ll happen when we stop breathing and moving. The far side is terrifying. I should say, apart from Jesus and what He’s said the other side is terrifying and all that. But that’s the kicker. The only way to live and die without fear is to trust Jesus.

I watched Reign Over Me because one of my sisters and one of my brothers said it was excellent. It was. It was an excellent portrayal of grief and sorrow where there is no Jesus to trust. The movie is about a man, Alan, who has no one to talk to who bumps into his college roommate, Charlie, who lost his entire family in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It’s four years later and Charlie still hasn’t begun to mourn. He has persuaded himself he doesn’t remember anything about his wife and daughters. But Alan wants to help him.

In a strange way it’s a buddy movie, the best sort of buddy movie. Alan and Charlie want the best for each other in their own way. Some of the most enjoyable moments are when they are just hanging out together listening to music, riding around the city, watching funny movies. But hanging in the background of Charlie’s life is what he’s lost. He can’t forget, he can’t move one, he doesn’t want to remember. He’s stuck in this loop, this horrible cycle, this tearing grief in a world with no God.

I was told that this was an atheistic look at grief, but I was not ready for the complete lack of God in the movie. Charlie wasn’t even angry at God for what He’d done. The question never came up. Stuff happens and you adjust or you don’t. God is not part of the equation; He’s not even in the math book. And that is why Charlie’s life is tragic. His suffering is pointless, meaningless. He has nothing to hang any hope on other than his friends and they let him down.

Because I was already feeling down and contemplative thinking about death without Jesus I thought I’d watch One Last Thing, a movie about a sixteen year old boy, Dylan, dying of brain cancer. He seems very cool with dying. He jokes about it, he talks about it, he stares it in the face and doesn’t flinch. But underneath he is angry and terrified. I would be scared too if I were him in his world.

The movie gives three options for life after death- your soul ends and you rot underground, you get to go to a loosely defined ‘better place’, and or you get reincarnated. Those are not good options. If I had to choose of course I would choose a ‘better place’, but the movie doesn’t actually make any decisions about what happens to Dylan. The question is left open.

These two movies together left me deeply sad. This is life in world where God is not. This is life and death and mourning with no hope or meaning. I’ve seen it up close and I can tell you it really is as bad as all that. But at the same time this is art doing what it’s supposed to. The movies asked questions and showed world views. They made me think and feel someone else’s world. And the movies, though not made by Christians, did what Christian art should do which is to point me to Jesus and to remind me why His way is the best possible way to live.

I give Reign Over Me four out of four stars. It was fantastic in composition, heart breaking in story, and outstanding in acting.

I give One Last Thing three out of four stars. It was a good story, but I felt like it got distracted from sometimes and wandered off. They made the characters real like people, but sometimes that meant that at times they were just annoying. Authentic to be sure, but this is the movies, my boy.

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I had an odd thought the other day. I am twenty-two now. That means that I am older than any of my siblings were when they got married. The question “Why?” wandered into my head then, but I chased it out with a fly swatter.

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Okay, I have no clue how to spell the real word for it, but the brand name is Oscillo. It’s a flu remedy, and I’m now totally sold on it.

The back story: I tend to catch every bug that comes along, and often pretty badly. Apparently I have a wimpy immune system. There’s a really nasty flu going around–I’ve heard it’s practically shut down entire cities, so it’s not just a local thing either–highlights of which include high fever, exhaustion, and aches and pains.

Yesterday I started to feel just a bit like I was coming down with something. I waffled over actually taking the Oscillo, because it’s pretty expensive per dose, so I didn’t want to take it unless I was really getting sick. On the flip side, it’s not really effective unless you catch the symptoms really early… Since we got it on sale it was a little under two dollars per dose and finally I put the pertinent question to myself, “Would I pay two dollars to avoid getting the flu right now?” The answer was along the lines of, “Well, duh” and I took the Oscillo and a three hour (or so) nap.

This morning I felt okay, except maybe a little tired. Well, that and I started to feel overheated. In our kitchen (without the oven being on). In February. We never did find the thermometer, but I’m pretty sure that still constitutes an official high fever.

However, I continued to feel very perky for someone with a (debatabley high) fever and theoretical exhaustion. I was low energy all day, but I don’t usually have energy reserves to fall back on when I’m sick. Today I had to remind myself that I had a ghastly flu as I was emptying the trash, and decided to go sit down instead of pushing through. Now, maybe someone who actually got the whole nasty version of the flu will post and tell me this can’t possibly be what I had, but for the time being I’m pretty sure it’s just all due that that amazing osciloniuminiumymxyptlk…um, yeah… that oscillo stuff.

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Land of a Thousand Kings is a role playing game that’s still in progress by Ben Leman. In the game you play yourself. You walk through a door and find yourself in the Land of a Thousand Kings where you have adventures and then you come back. It’s similar to The Chronicles of Narnia. The nifty thing is that you the character get your stats by the other players sharing real life memories of you. The five Attributes are Strong, Kind, Brave, Sharp, Beautiful. You go around the table and on your turn you say a real live memory of one of the other players and what Attribute it goes with. And then that player gets a point in that Attribute. Your Attributes are what you will use in the game to get dice during conflicts. Also, during conflict the players have an opportunity to share a real life memory that has something to do with the conflict to get a die that they can assign to which ever side they please.

Last Friday I played Land of a Thousand Kings with Raquel, a friend of ours and that friend’s ten-year-old sister. The ten-year-old, Julia, had been up too late several nights running and has no experience with anything fairy tale like or fantastical and not a lot of experience with fiction. So she was insanely giggly and completely beyond her frame of reference. Her sister, Jana, was also pretty tired and about five months pregnant. Jana’s only role playing experience is play testing my brother Seth’s work in progress A Flower For Mara which is a combination role playing game and improvisational play. That left my friend Raquel, who has some role playing experience, but all indie games, and me. I’d played Land of a thousand kings twice and Raquel’s played once. And it worked. It worked very well.

Because I had the most experience role playing in general and with Land of a Thousand Kings in particular I was GateKeeper. I was having a really hard time explaining the game to Julia because I’d only met her that night, she wasn’t at her best and we have just about nothing in common. So I dropped any sort of rules that were at all long term and just went with what we needed to play that night. And when I read over the play test rules I decided to totally drop Preparedness because it just looked like it would add complicated without adding any niftyness.

The memory sharing at the beginning went very well. It was a little tricky because Raquel and I had only met Julia that evening and so didn’t have many memories of her and she didn’t have any of us. But I tend to think that passing at this point is tantamount to cheating and since I really wanted her to have fun I knew she needed points. So we just got creative.

I sent Jana and Julia off together to someplace with castles and horse drawn chariots. I sent Raquel by herself because the other time she’d played she’d been with someone else and hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to step up and do stuff. Strangely, Raquel’s first time playing she’d been put with her older sister and now it was Julia’s first time playing and she got placed with her older sister. They had similar issues of the older sister automatically taking charge.

Neither of the stories were very deep or introspective. I had done absolutely no prep, which was cool, and was just shooting from my hip. Jana and Julia had to negotiate with the Castle King to let the Pyramid King pave the road that lay between their kingdoms. Whenever the Pyramid people ride the road the dust flies up and gets in their eyes which is very painful. But the Castle King didn’t want them to pave the road with their gold stones because his wife said that it wouldn’t match her dress and then she would be mad at him and wouldn’t give him his breakfast. Jana in particular was very good at sucking up to the Queen. Raquel was asked by the Water King, a fisherman sort of king, to free his kingdom of the Great Marlin that had been eating all their fish. So she had to go find the Great Marlin and then help him lead his children someplace away from the Water Kingdom.

Land of a Thousand Kings felt very similar to a party game. The point, at least when we played it, wasn’t to tell an intricate story full of character development, plot twists and angst, but to enjoy spending time with each other through the game. I’d wanted to play this game with some of my friends because it brings out memories that don’t usually come up in everyday conversation, but that are important to people. I feel like I know a bit more about Jana and certainly about Julia because of the game. That was what I wanted from it and it worked exactly how I wanted. And that was only playing with half the rules.

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a winter gale wafts
through dead branches crowded
with blossoms of snow

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a few words
a splash of ink–
blood from my heart

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