25-50-75: Day 15

A million pardons for the hiatus, lovely reader(s).  I had a hellacious week last week that included an overview session about Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts--check this out for more info. about what I saw and the guy I heard: Shanahan On Literacy.

For those of you who don't know, I am passionately committed to my job.  So much so that I don't even like to think of it as a job.  It's a calling.  That may sound strange, but there is simply no other word for it.  This is the work I am meant to do in the world.  To teach students to think critically, write coherently, and above all to believe that their individual voice matters, well, the fact that I get paid to do all of that is really just icing on a decadently rich and rewarding cake.

25

That being said, the time I am putting in in the bookroom is hampering the 25 portion of this challenge.  My upper body and legs are stronger without question--hauling books around and moving them from top to bottom shelves, packing and moving boxes weighing anywhere from 3-40 pounds, that's strength training if ever I've done it, but I miss sweating pushing myself to my limit at the gym, so I am trying to work out a schedule that will make that more possible.  The good news is the book room is almost done, and when it is complete, I promise to post pictures so you can revel in the magical wonderland that is the newly organized space.  I should have taken before pictures, but the afters will just have to do.

The good thing about this challenge, though, is that I am being more conscious of what I put in to and how I treat my body.  From my time in the sun at the pool to the way I eat, I'm trying to be more aware and in the moment.  At the pool, I lay and read for much of the time, but I try to take ten minutes out of every hour to watch the clouds, listen to the water lapping, breathe in the chlorinated air, giggle along with the littlest kids who find every new splash to be a revelation.  And when it comes to food, I am realizing more and more that when I eat fast food--and yes, I have fallen off that wagon--I not only feel badly about my choice to eat it, but I also feel physically bad.  So, tonights dinner of a spring mix salad with almonds, peas, cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, and an olive oil/white wine vinegar dressing is the kind of thing I am going to work to include in my diet.  I like to eat healthily, I jut always take the time. But, if I'm not going to care for my body, no one else will, and I want to love myself enough to be good to myself, so here's to me trying.

50

I gave up on the Arsonist's Guide to Homes in New England.  If I can't care about your main character in the first 100 pages, I'm not ever going to care about him, so your book can suck it.  (For other revelatory things that make main characters detestable, check out this great list from novelist Chuck Wendig: 25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character)

Luckily, the book I picked up after the Arsonist's debacle kept me riveted: Carolyn Jessop's Escape is a 400+ page recounting of her escape, at the age of 34, from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community in which she was raised.  When she left she had eight children and had been married to a man 30 years her senior for seventeen years.  The book never felt long, never felt like it needed to be edited, it was harrowing and shocking and honestly disgusting in some places.  I just cannot believe that in people can confuse loving God with polygamy, child abuse--physical and sexual--and complete and total domination of women through a patriarchal power structure built around large families that seek to keep women pregnant and silent at all times.  One of the most sickening notions was that of perfect obedience in which a wife will earn favor with God if she completely submits to her husband's will in all ways, even when he is being abusive, neglectful, or psychotic.

The older I get, the more I understand the nature of submission.  Not in the sense that I want to turn my life over to a man, but I believe the Biblical teaching that a wife submits to her husband so long as he loves her to the point of being willing to lay down his life for her.  That's the section of the verse that gets left out when people start talking about male dominance and the Bible.  I am as feminist as they come, but this verse--to me--is about mutual sacrifice and true partnership.  I don't know too many couples that exhibit these behaviors because they are damn hard to comply with.  Isn't our first instinct one of self-preservation?  Why would we lay down our lives for someone else, even someone we love, if it meant losing ourselves?  And why would we give up our position and allow someone else's choices to speak for us if it means silencing our perspective?  But I don't think that's what God calls us to do.  I think we're supposed to try as hard as we can to love one another as fully as we can, to create a union made from perfect love that is forgiving, patient, helpful, and unconditional.  It is not easy.  It means bending when everything in us says to just go ahead and break under the pressure, but if two people really love one another--and I mean ANY TWO PEOPLE, gay, straight, lesbian, what have you--then I believe they should work towards that perfect love all the days of their lives.

Clearly, in the case of Carolyn Jessop--and in the case of my marriage and many others like me--there comes a point when bending is no longer possible.  There are obstacles that cannot be overcome no matter how desperately we may want to hang on.  In Jessop's case, leaving the FLDS meant abandoning the only life she had ever known, renouncing her faith that had instilled in her the belief that she was chosen among God's people to live the principle of plural marriage, and to begin again in a world she knew very little about.  Imagine trying to navigate social services when your only access to money was through the cash your husband gave you when he felt like it.  Yikes.

For the rest of us, often our marriages end because the two people involved weren't ever able to be honest with one another, because we grow apart, because what we need and what the other person can give us are so far apart that we may as well be living on separate planets.  But this book, Escape, made me think deeply about what it means to love someone, what it means to love God, and what it means to love myself.  I never renounced my faith, but I had some years when believing was hard for me.  My mother's cancer took that faith and ran it through every wringer you can imagine.  And I never like the treatment of women in the Bible.  But I found my way back to a faith that works for me, one that is accepting and honest and full of love.  And I've come out of my divorce with the belief that no matter how hard it may be to fall in love again, I'm committed to doing it because I deserve to be happy and to share my life with someone.

But first, I gotta love me. So here's to that.

Let Go

When I was in high school, I was pretty.  I didn't know it then.  I look at pictures of myself from that time and think, man, I had a good figure, great hair, but I thought I was overweight and strange looking.  That my hair was too big, too blonde, my hips too wide, body too...developed.  The girls who were sought after played sports, had flat chests and wore size two jeans. I was bookish, curvy, and a size twelve.  I wasn't big, I just felt that way--conspicuous--like all eyes were on me.

And, because I was self-conscious, I didn't date much.  I also thought most boys my own age were stupid--which admittedly, may of them were--I'd been reading since I was three and made it through the entire College Prep List by the time I graduated simply because I wanted to prove I could.  That wasn't sexy or alluring, it was just weird.  I had friends, I even had a couple of odd relationships that you might call boyfriend-girlfriend, one junior and one senior year.  They each ended tragically--the former when he paid $5 to enter a building I was in watching a friends band play just so he could break up with me, the latter about three weeks after I had sex with him (my first time) so he could take someone else to prom.  Winners, those guys.

In retrospect, and I can only say this in retrospect, I was probably a lot to handle.  Emotional, clingy, desperate to be loved.  But still, they were pretty dickish, right?

And I had male friends.  Lots of them.  I was the girl they all wanted to talk to about their relationships, the one they told their problems to, problems with parents and teachers, friends and girlfriends.  And, when we were at parties, after a couple of drinks (almost always them, not me), they wanted to kiss me.  To tell me how pretty I was, how they wished they could meet a girl like me, how they would so date me if it weren't for some girl whose name ended in an 'i' or an 'ee' or a 'y'.  And I, emotional, clingy, desperate to be loved, let them kiss me, kissed them back, always thinking on Monday morning they'd see me at school, remember our fumbling liplock from Saturday night and know, in that hazy moment in the SVHS hallway, that I was the one they really wanted.

But, as these stories always go, that didn't happen.  Instead, there was awkward avoidance (theirs) and hurt sulking (mine) that had to smell like sulphur on a hot day, the slow smoking pain of adolescent rejection rising like so much smoke off the burnt orange carpet.

That feeling of rejection, of being someone's secret, of not being good enough to like in public has haunted me for twenty years.  I've felt less than, humiliated, unwanted, and plain old shitty about myself for so long that now, at an age when I finally feel ready to embark on a real relationship, I'm scared to death that I'll wreck it because I can't quiet that fifteen year old girl in my head who says not to trust, that it's too good to be true, that--come Monday--none of this will matter.  But in my heart, I know it does matter.  That love can exist, that something good can be true, I know it can, I just need to let myself live in that knowledge.

So, I need to let go of that voice.  I need to let go of that girl.

Here's hoping I can.

Light

First day of holiday break.  Shopping/errands, laundry, "Crimes & Misdemeanors" on HBO, Charlie Rose w/Angelina Jolie, some new Caramel Chai tea, gave the dog a bath, now watching "You've Got Mail."

I love this movie for so many reasons.

1. It's New York, and though I don't think I could ever live in that city, it is incredible and I have been itching, itching, itching to revisit it for a very long time.  I especially want to go here: The Strand

2.  It's about bookstores, and people who love books, and smart people who love to talk about books.

3.  It's about falling in love with someone whose heart and mind speak to you on a level you didn't know existed.

4.  But most of all, it's about hope.  That everything will get better, that life can be beautifully rich and lovely and full of warm sweet tenderness and I love this movie because I want all of that.  All all all of that.

So, happy holidays, all.  Here's to light in 2012.

The Book of Love

There is a song by The Magnetic Fields called "The Book of Love," that Peter Gabriel covered (I know, there's humor in the original, Gabriel's is more of a ballad).  And every time I hear the Gabriel version (and I mean EVERY time)--brings me to tears.  There is something in it that grips my heart and pulls it up into my throat until I am gulping back sobs that want to take over my whole body.


The first time I heard it, and the time tonight that prompted this post, was in the film "Shall We Dance" with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Lopez.  I have a thing for Sarandon--ever since Bull Durham I have wanted to, in one way or another, be her--and I secretly love Lopez, too.  I think she is simply beautiful, and I believe her in films.  Is she the greatest actress?  Well, she's certainly no Sarandon, but there's something likable about her.  And so, I watch this movie whenever I see it is on, and the song slays me again and again.


The thing is, every time I hear this song, I imagine someone saying these words to me or--better yet--proposing while this song plays.  I know, I know.  Silly.  But, see, I never had a real romantic proposal.  I love my ex-husband, he is a good man, a wonderful friend, but we both played at marriage like two kids who felt like it was what grown ups did; neither of us really knew what that meant.  So, the proposal wasn't thought out or romantic at all, it just sort of happened.  And I didn't think I minded at the time because I'd convinced myself I didn't need or want some elaborate thing, but honestly, I did.  


I do.


So, silly as it may sound, I want every damn thing in this song.  Someone to love me like this.  It may be a long time before I have that, but I believe I will someday because I deserve it.  


We all do.

Church

I'm getting ready to head out to church this morning for the first time in, I think, about two months.  I have listened to the sermons online or on the radio each week, but I haven't been able to go.  In part, my reluctance has been because I hate sitting there alone, and in part it's because I have had some crises of faith over the last six months.

The being alone part...well...when I was growing up, even if my dad had been out playing with the band the night before and reeked of cigarette smoke and booze, even if his eyes were blood shot and he hadn't had more than three hours of sleep, my mom hauled his ass out of bed and made him go to church with us. It was a family affair.  And the two churches we went to in Salina--First Christian and Belmont--were both the churches my grandparents went to, Grandma Olive (dad's mom) to the former, Nanny and Grandad (mom's folks) to the latter.  So, I associate church with family.

Or, when we moved and went to Falun Lutheran, it was for family but also for me.  I loved the husband and wife pastors there, her sermons were always relevant and made me think God was listening to and watching me.  I knew when I was there in that small country church that I wasn't alone.

But, in this big building, I feel alone a lot of the time.  I don't know many of my fellow congregants, and I joined by myself a few months after my divorce became final last year because I knew I needed a place to feel safe and I knew I needed to be in a space each week where God and I could find each other more readily than we do in the car, in the shower, in my classroom, at the grocery store (all places I pray).

My crises of faith over the last few months left me breathless.  I kept wondering how I could feel God so strongly and then events that I thought He had set in motion could fall so wildly apart.  Now I see that all the falling apart was steps along the road to His plan and I have to trust Him completely if I am to navigate the world in any meaningful way.

So, today, to church I go.  I'm announcing our fall play, The Laramie Project, and asking the congregation to support this message of hope in a difficult time.  It occurs to me that while I'm doing so, I'm also asking God to give me back my hope, to see me through the rest of my life, to help me practice love in the face of moments and obstacles that threaten to break me.

As long as I have faith, as long as I believe, I know I will be okay.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:18-19)

I Love My Job

I love my job.  I work with kids all day long that remind me what it means to be youthful, hopeful, excited about the future, full of the wonder and total joy that possibility breeds in the human heart.

Today I got to tour the C-SPAN Campaing 2012 bus that stopped at our school so that our amazing Student Council kids could interview them.

Later in the morning, a former student sent me this image from Pinterest that reminded her of me--it's spot on and I loved that she sent it.

Another stopped by to hug me in the middle of a class.

After school I learned another former student just became the newest intern at the Art Institute of Boston gallery--I couldn't be more proud of her if I was paid to be.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

I know, every single day, that the job I do touches lives and makes a difference.  But, not just for them.  Being a teacher helps me to be a better me.

If it weren't for my job, it would be pretty easy for me to turn inward, get dark, and focus only on the things that scare me in my life, but I am a teacher, and I see every day what positivity, joy, laughter, and yep--love--can do when applied in daily practice to the lives of people learning who they are.

Make It, Make Your Way Home

When I was in college, I bought the soundtrack to My So-Called Life.  This song, Juliana Hatfield's "Make It Home," was on it, and it is without a doubt one of the most heartbreaking pieces of music I have ever heard.  Every time I hear its opening strains and then her faint hum before that voice kicks in, the one that manages to be both raspy and girlish, my vision clouds and the world goes blurry, not from tears so much as from a want to believe that we will all find the home she sings about.

I read recently that, when you find true love, it is like coming home.  I imagine it's like entering a house you've never seen but somehow, it's yours.  You belong there.  All the furniture conforms to your body, the bed supports you, the water temperature is always perfect in bath or shower, the sunlight splays across the floor in that way you like that is so singularly yours.  The bookshelves are filled with your dearest loves, the artwork on the walls was made just for you, and no matter what you're hungry for, you can find it in that space because it is where you were meant to be.

Each time I hear this song, I say a little prayer for all of us looking for true love or trying to make our way to the ones we have already found, that we will, before too long, make it home.

Hmm..mmm..mmm...
Mmm..mmm...
Mmm..mmm...
Mmm.....

Deepening night, think on a time
All was bright
Here in this dark place, I see in your face
All is not right

Make it, make your way home
Better than the last
Break it, break the alone
Take a second chance

Open a window, let in the snow
Cold is all I know
Go to the fire, stir it around
There's a warmer place for you to go

So, make it, make your way home
Better than you have
Break it, break the alone
Leave it in the past

Oh, look and you'll find it
Someone wants to love you
Look and you'll find it
Someone wants to love you

Wake it, wake your dream
One forgotten me
Sleepin' deep inside o' you
Heavenly peace

The Rising

Denis Leary called this song the greatest artistic contribution Bruce Springsteen has made, and I am inclined to agree.

While the events of 9/11/2001 were the inspiration for the song, the message that we can join hands and use our collective love and spirit to rise above whatever fear or sadness we are living in is one that fills me with a profound sense of hope.    I believe that the psychic pain many of us are experiencing today is the beginning of a greater healing.  While our minds fill beatific blue skies them with planes and people bent on rewriting the story of us, I think we can take control of the narrative and become the writer rather than the written.

I pray today for all of us, that we may find love that buoys us above our current circumstances.  Love that sets us soaring through a cloudless sky towards a future of unlimited joy.  Love that reminds us no amount of pain is insurmountable.  Love that wants us to be fulfilled and happy.  Love that seeks to give us the strength to rise, again and again, until all our fears are behind us and we are surrounded by the cool blue light of peace for ourselves and for our world.  And I pray that those I love know my heart holds them in a steady, safe place, and that together we are sheltered from the storm.

I pray, as Bono does, to be a harbor in the tempest for those of you seeking light, and I pray to be that same harbor for myself.  It is time to rise.

Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la

There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light

La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la

I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of my line

Sky of blackness and sorrow ( a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness ( a dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear ( a dream of life)
Sky of memory and shadow ( a dream of life)
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

La,la, la,la,la,la, la,la,la

Gifts

A man once told me he could walk into any store and come out with twelve things that would be perfect gifts for me.  He was right.  Every gift, every word he ever sent my way resonated deep in that place that lets you know you've been seen, known for who you truly are.

Sadly, he's not giving me gifts anymore, and while the gifts themselves aren't things I'll miss, I'll miss his impulse to give me things.  That burning need in him to show me how he feels, to give me something tangible, something to hold in my hands, to thumb through, to admire on the wall--things that would make me think of him even in his absence.  I will miss him showing me how well he knows me, how much he loves me.  And I'll miss it most of all because I know he still wants to do those things for me, he still feels that way about me, but he isn't in a place where he feels he can or should.

I do not think we are at the end of our story with one another.  I really don't.  I've been praying and trying to figure out why this now, why this way, I have been asking God what to do, how to handle this situation, and after every prayer, another sign comes along to suggest that I shouldn't be in too big a hurry to let all of this go.  A song will come on the radio, the kind of song you never hear on the radio, and it will be one he and I shared.  I read a novel this morning, and in it a young woman gives a young man a gift that I gave him once.  These are just two of nearly a dozen little hints that I should let my belief in love guide me through this and stop believing that what is happening now is the end of all that we are to one another.

Would some people find this kind of thinking naive?  Certainly.  But I don't care.  My life is for me to live, and I will not have the way I feel regulated by the way others would react to this situation.  I know what I know, and I know how I feel, and at the end of the day, I sleep with and wake to myself, no one else.

So, I'm not ready to let go yet.  I'm not ready to say this deep, honest, passionate, easy connection between the two of us is over.  I'm not going to pursue it, I'm not going to will it into anything other than what it is right now--which admittedly isn't much--but I do not believe in a world where people who love each other as we do don't end up together.  It may not be today, it may not be next year, but I believe in the power of what we have, and I believe that when the time is right, we will have it again.  Until then, we live our own lives, and I pray we come back to one another sooner rather than later.  But above all, I have discovered that even when things don't go as planned, even when you are hurt and betrayed and feel the world crashing in on you, if there is real love at the center of what is happening, that love is still worth believing in, and learning that I still believe is the greatest gift anyone could give me.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness isn't something you have to earn, it's not something you can work for, it's not a commodity to be traded or exchanged.  Forgiveness is what we give when we truly love ourselves and one another.

If I truly love you, no matter how much you hurt me, I must forgive your missteps and painful actions, because love isn't limited to the nice things we do for on another, it's not just about the ways we build each other up and cheer each other on.  Love, real love, is about radical acceptance.  It means saying, "yes, you are flawed, yes, you hurt me, and yes, you should feel remorse, but I accept you for who you are, for what you need, for your weaknesses as much as your strengths, for your shortcomings as much as for your successes, and I forgive you because to hold back forgiveness would mean denying myself the right to love you."

When we love our neighbors as ourselves--and we should all love ourselves enough to forgive our own failings--then we simply have to love those who wrong us.  If we cannot extend that pure hand of forgiveness, then the love we believed we felt was never real, it was just an illusion of what we thought love had to be.

Real love sees and accepts everything.  Real love forgives.  This does not mean you should be a doormat for those who have hurt you, and it doesn't mean accepting violence or neglect.  But, when the human beings we love turn out to be simply human, flawed and capable of failure, our own humanity must surface so that we can heal and continue to love because that is, after all, why we are here. 

There is nothing more important.

Neruda

Sonnet XVII, Pablo Neruda

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or where from,
I love you simply, without complexities or pride;
I love you in this way, not knowing any other way of loving
but this, in which neither I nor you exist
so close that your hand on my breast is mine,
so close that your eyes close when I sleep.

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.

Broken English & Chaos Theory

It's horrifyingly hot today so, after church, Z and I rented some movies and became complete couch potatoes for the afternoon.  


The first movie, Broken English, is a Parker Posey film about a woman who feels like she "must be doing something horribly wrong" when it comes to love, but she just can't figure out what it is.  Eventually, she ends up in Paris where an older man says to her:  Most people are together just so they are not alone. But some people want magic. I think you are one of those people.  She asks if there is anything wrong with wanting magic and he tells her no, but it just doesn't happen all the time.  


I loved this movie because that same man, who is barely on screen at all, tells her she needs to love herself before anyone else can love her.  I'd urge the screenwriter to add that, until the person you love loves him or herself, they're never going to be available to you the way you need them to be.


The second film, Chaos Theory, may be one of the best movies I've seen in the last year.  The soundtrack is mostly a guy named Alex Dezen and The Damnwells, names I assure you I'll be looking up on itunes very soon, and it's shot in the Pacific Northwest which allows for some simply stunning shots.  The heart of the story revolves around a man--played by Ryan Reynolds--who has devoted his life to making lists, being efficient, and planning for all conceivable outcomes only to experience a small disruption to his routine that has large repercussions.


I may watch it again before returning it to the video store--yes, I still go to one of those.  I have a Netflix account, I get HBO, and I've been known to frequent those RedBox stands, but there is something so lovely about yards and yards of films waiting to be plucked off the shelf and discovered or revisited.  I like knowing that, seemingly by chance, I may stumble across exactly what I need at any given moment just by choosing the right box from the shelf, bringing it home, and giving it my full attention.  There's probably a metaphor for love in there somewhere, but I can't begin to even think about those rows of shelves, so for now let's stick to movies.


Chaos Theory featured a speech that I loved with a line in it that I wish everyone could live by.  For now, I'm going to try to.


...it turns out that are few things more chaotic than the beat of a human heart. It's beating up, slowing down. Pretty face, flirty stares. It's always changing on what's happening to ourselves out there. It's an erratic son of a bitch. But underneath all of that bump-da-bump mess, there is in fact a pattern, the truth, and it's love. Most important thing about love is that we choose to give it, and we choose to receive it. Making it the least random act in the entire universe. It transcends blood, it transcends betrayal and all the dirt and makes us human.