I'm So Heavy (Heavy in Your Arms)

This song tears me up.  So so so so good.

It Is Time It Were Time

I have been feeling pretty low the last few days, trying to focus on what is good but still, inevitably, beaten back by the sadness of being alone this time of year.  Fitzgerald wasn't wrong when he wrote, "[S]o we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  It is so easy to live there, in the past, when things weren't--most likely--better than they are now, but from this vantage point, they seemed to be.

Just as Jay and Daisy have glorified, idealized, and fetishized the love they once shared, during the holidays it is easy to slip into patterns that celebrate the good in the past without acknowledging what led to the present.

I don't want to dwell on how I got here.  It is not a new story or a particularly interesting one, but today, I am trying to live not in Fitzgerald's world, but in Paul Celan's.  He wrote:

It is time the stone made an effort to flower.

Time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

In an effort to honor his words, to look forward rather than back, to be hopeful rather than hurt, here's what I did today.  I can't seem to get the sideways ones turned around...maybe in the morning.

Thankful

Sometimes, I forget the myriad things for which I should be thankful.  Then the world slows, I breathe in and out more slowly, I look up, and there they are, smiling brightly, letting me notice them anew with the same joy and beauty that was always there, even when I couldn't see it for awhile.

I Believe

I awoke with a cold on my day off. The universe, I think, is suggesting that maybe this year, I need to be alone for the holidays. Unless this nastiness goes away, I'll be giving thanks in my bed strewn with Emily Dickinson poems and biographies. Because, when you're sick, there's nothing more appropriate than the life story of a reclusive woman who may never have known real love.

Even if she didn't experience it, Emily seems to have believed in it which I greatly appreciate. I believe in it, too, especially given the incredible way my dissolve turned out. I dislike the word divorce, it is cold and clinical and angry and that's not what happened to me. The man I was married to is kind, funny, smart, and a wonderful friend, but our hopes and dreams turned out to be incompatible. That doesn't mean there isn't love there any longer, we are trying to be and stay friends. There may be more love here than most people would realize: we loved each other enough to say, "go be happy," knowing that that happiness would, eventually, be with someone else.

Some of my adorable students have started suggesting they could 'hook [me] up' with their single fathers, uncles, older brothers, etc. One offer even came with the incentive that the young lady's father had 'just got his new teeth.' Be still my beating heart. Seriously, though, I believe real love exists. I believe in it as I believe in the sun coming up each day, the pull of the moon on the sea, the perfect joy in a child's surprised laughter. I've seen it when my brother looks at his beautiful wife and when my father, after 25 years of marriage, tells my mother how much he loves her.

This Thanksgiving, I'm praying we all get to find that same peace, joy, and happiness someday, and I'm praying we all have the patience to wait for it.

To that end, this is the song that woke me on my shuffling ipod alarm clock this morning. Enjoy.

Til Kingdom Come