A Very Long and True Sentence.

"All that each person is, and experiences, and shall ever experience, in body and in mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had precedent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath, and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defence, the enormous assaults of the universe."

~James Agee

In other news, I crashed my bike again last night but got away with only an acre of immensely stinging road-rash and a pumpkin-sized bruise. (bah!) Everything hurts, but not in a for-12-weeks way. Also I need to write a response paper. Also the semester is almost over and how did that happen? Also things are still as tough as always (maybe recently a bit tougher) and I still need prayers.

The more often you say "doom" the less it sounds like a word.

So, maybe it is the weather or the season or the sleep deprivation, or the fact that many people are dying these days, but I've been suffering with a mundane but sticky case of existential horror. I was hauling a half-dozen water-logged barrels of dead leaves to the curb, and thought, "gee, why can't leaves be more durable? How come the tree needs to lose them and regrow them every year, and I have to rake them up every year? Inefficient! Grr."

Then in meeting, whenever I closed my eyes I was filled with images of everyone I love eventually dying, and their precious bodies turning to dust. And then I looked around the meeting room, and saw everybody there turning to dust. And then I watched a documentary about the 80's club scene in New York, and almost everyone featured in the movie was dead from some combination of drugs and AIDS. And then I was in my 100-student strong psychology class, and realized, "in less than 80 years, everyone in this room will be dead." Then I went home and read some bible out loud to my walls, including the part where God is solidly cursing Adam "you are dirt, and to the dirt you shall return." And I thought, what a waste. And then I realized that it's not exactly a waste, since all these someday-to-be-dead people are loving, reproducing, producing, etc, but then I thought well, what extravagance then. Imagine buying a new car each morning, driving it to work and back, and then sending it off that evening to the junkyard to be scrapped for metal for a new car. Imagine a whole new set of people every generation.

But I figure if God can afford it, then that's cool.

"We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand."
Jennie Jerome Churchill

ETA: I sound like a total materialist in this post and I don't necessarily mean that, but I haven't got any coherent information about the afterlife, so I'm just talking about the here and now and the dying part. I also mean this post in sort of a "woah" sense rather than a doom sense. Doom. Doom Doom.

Speaking of doom,

I am sitting here shuddering at the Monday before me. I'm much luckier than most, I don't have to face Mondays until lunchtime. But still. It always seems like you are going to go into work and find that the world has fallen down over the weekend. Eek!

Enough whining. I did have a very good weekend. Friday night I went to my friend Holly's house and we cooked a pseudo-thanksgiving dinner, and it was delicious. So was the company and conversation. On Saturday I went out and had lunch and a movie with another friend, and then window-shopped and toddled around the Square not doing much of anything until it was time for my hair-cut. It was kind of an expensive hair-cut, but it should last a while, and I like it. Then Jeff came home and there was much rejoicing. His mom is doing much better but still has a long road of recovery and enforced rest ahead. On Sunday we went to Fresh Pond meeting and were pleasantly suprised to see some of our friends were visiting there, too. It was a strange meeting for me, with a lot of fearful thoughts about death and decay that I was unable to banish, but I came out of it with a job: to read the whole bible to myself, out loud. This should be interesting. Perhaps I will be released from it before I get to Leviticus. Eek again. Then we biked back to Cambridge in the freezing rain, which was equal parts exhilarating and unpleasant, and Jeff went to business meeting while I went to bed. Bad Quaker!

Oh, Monday. Why must you have so much week ahead of you?

less doom

more cooking. I just found this blog and I am charmed and itching to make something:

http://seriouslygood.kdweeks.com/index.html

it is a little heavy on the meat for a grass and cheese eater like me, but I still really like it.

Also, more laughing. This little dude had my sides aching with sympathy. I love him!

my gosh

This blogging comes in spurts, doesn't it?

I'm on a couch with Jeff's pug. Jeff's mom is in the hospital, and so he's taken off or Texas to be with his family. As of the last report, things are improving, but still serious. Pray, please.

The pug is very happy for any company. He's here, sharing my lap with the iBook, dribbling on my arm and the keyboard in turns.

Last night Jeff and I went to the apple store to get a new computer that would better serve his burgeoning design and layout skillz. That means I get to inherit the old laptop, on an installment plan, even. Once this mac-baby is mine I will be so cool I won't even know myself. Ah, sweet consumerism.

(I kid, I kid. Even my computer will be second-hand. My shoes leak! I ride my bike everywhere? What do you want from me?! :) )

I've been thinking a lot about paralysis. There are times when I cannot rouse myself to do a single thing. There are other times, only marginally better, when I can only rouse myself to put on the outside trappings of life, and stumble through the day, week, month, waiting for something else to start, for some spout of energy to get me through. I coast, for shameful amounts of time. I hibernate, if only internally. I cocoon, but without any promise of metamorphosis. Sometimes I feel like I'm parked on the side of the freeway in the driving rain, watching cars shoot by, unsure if I can make it back into a lane, unsure of my courage to try, unsure if my car would even start if I tried. I hate freeways, and I can't drive, but it's a good metaphor.

Sometimes my whole life is like this, with only my close relationships spared. Work, school, daily eating/walking/breathing/doing can all pass in a blur, and the only time I feel anchored and present is when I am engaging one-on-one. I'm trying to branch out in my Quakerism, trying not to be a Quaker-In-A-Can, but I freeze at the thought of the expectations any group involvement might require of me. It's not that I fear committee work or community involvement per se, it just seems like I'd be adding a new group of people to let down, and there are times (too many times) that I can't avoid that letting-down. When it is just me and a friend, interacting, talking, sharing a beer, knitting scarves, I can be true, I can be real, I can be present, and sometimes I can even be on time.

The mantra my therapist sent me off with last week was "it's okay to make mistakes", and I am really struggling with that one. It is okay to put too much baking powder in the muffins. It is okay to put a red facecloth with the white sheets. It's alright if you overdraw your bank account by $3.58. But there are so many possible mistakes.

My mother quoted my grandfather: "Once is a mistake, Twice is stupidity." I guess my mind has always translated that as "if you can see ahead, if you have experience, and you still screw up, The End." Add to that a fear of outrunning one's guide, of assuming anything, of 'writing checks your ass can't cash' . . .

I know I am babbling, but sometimes it feels as if that's the best blogging for me. I'm so afraid most of the time. There are mistakes, and there are consequences for those mistakes. Hearts, minds, fortunes, lives, souls, happiness, futures . . . so much hangs in the balance. I could be careful, or I could be a coward, I'm never sure.

Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Say to those with anxious heart,
"Take courage, fear not.
Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you."
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
Then the lame will leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy.
For waters will break forth in the wilderness
And streams in the Arabah.
The scorched land will become a pool
And the thirsty ground springs of water;
In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
A highway will be there, a roadway,
And it will be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean will not travel on it,
But it will be for him who walks that way,
And fools will not wander on it.
No lion will be there,
Nor will any vicious beast go up on it;
These will not be found there.
But the redeemed will walk there,
And the ransomed of the LORD will return
And come with joyful shouting to Zion,
With everlasting joy upon their heads.
They will find gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Isaiah 35:3-10

Okay, nifty!

So, this is just a Meme, but it's a pretty good one. I wasn't tagged, I just grabbed it off another blog because it appealed to me:

1. Grab the nearest book. If you are currently reading something, that'll be fine too.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet I know that is what you were thinking!

6. Tag 5 people

Here is mine:

"And so, late last week, on the advice of his professors, he had packed up and left St. Louis. They had advised him to go home and look for a job that would not tax his moral sensibilities and maybe next fall he could resume his studies. They told him if he could learn not to be quite so hard on himself and on the rest of humanity, if he could learn to relax, then he would be free to develop into one of the most brilliant ministers that the seminary had yet produced. They said they'd pray for him"

--from Grand Opening by John Hassler

I've spent this week having conversations about seminaries (no, I'm not thinking of going!) and ministries, and praying, and being able to deal with jobs, and being hard on oneself. I am reading this random novel I bought at a book sale for 25 cents, and I haven't even decided if it is any good yet, but this snippet is pretty interesting, given all that.

As far as tagging people goes, that always feels wierd to me, (is it the chain-letter thing, or the popularity contest thing?) so I'll just say, do it if you want to, and let me know where to find the results.

Blogless in Cambridge

School and work have conspired with volunteering and exhaustion to just about kill every ounce of blogger-urge I once posessed. Every now and again, I'll have a thought creep in and I'll start mentally composing a blog post. This often happens, uh, in meeting for worship, when a message will stir but not rise up, or rises up, but the room is already too full of words. But I don't follow through, and the idea or message passes. This may be for the best, anyway.

Things were tough here in Amanda-land for a while, emotionally and mentally, but most of the bits seem to be sticking back together. I think maybe the anticipation of spilling my guts in a weekly therapy session has also curbed some of the confessional impulses I used to indulge in with the blog.

The best thing I have going on these days is volunteering with a healthcare for the homeless program at a veteran's shelter. My responsibilities are minor--I'm mostly just cleaning up the occasional bit of pee and taking vital signs, and filling basins for the weekly foot-clinic soaks, but on a selfish level, it feels like a tangible step towards medical school, and on a deeper level, it's humbling and grounding to work with these men who have given so much and gotten so little in return. For the most part there is only occasional bitterness, and disproportionate gratitude for the little services we can offer. Here's a bandaid, here's some antifungal powder, here's some socks. Have a cough-drop. Almost every single man I've come across there has a powerful sense of humour, and the friendships that seem to exist between most of them are fully of lightness and in-jokes. I feel strange whenever I try to write about it, because the homeless are so consistently sentimentalized, and there's a lot at the shelter that is bleak and painful. At first, I was a little embarassed to make conversation with the clients. (that's most of the reason I'm there: to set up the clinic and then stay with the men and talk to them while they soak their feet) It's gotten easier as I get to know the regulars, and the things we have in common, like halloween, can lead to fascinating stories of pranks and costumes past. Other subjects can get sticky in ways you never expected. When they find out that I want to be a doctor, there are lots of jokes about me getting rich and forgetting them. If I mention off hand that it's cold outside, I can be sobered by tales of being homeless in January and losing toes to frostbite. These moments, where the distance between us is underlined (namely, my relative privilege, youth, opportunity and wealth) are generally brief, but leave me sheepish and speechless.

But I always feel human and connected at the clinic. When struggling with depression, or even just the esoteric demands of homework, those feelings can sometimes be in short supply. I am glad I'm getting to do this.

I guess that's all for now.