ponderings

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald]
brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat,
and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmelade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.'

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled
streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that
trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns
on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'

WE WON!!!

Just returned home after watching one of the most exciting sporting contests I've ever seen. George Mason, the little engine that could, knocked off one of the most talented and intimidating teams in the country. The last 10-15 minutes of the game were agonizing, as I was just sure Rudy Gay was going to come alive and start unleashing some UConn fury. Connecticut did play well, but in the end they came up short.
My vantage point for much of the second half was in between the arms, legs, and hot bodies of 31 college students who packed a house next to campus. I was sitting on a couch in the middle of the room, and any time anything happened, they would start cheering and gang tackling each other. I got plowed in the kidney once, but overall it was a lot of fun. As soon as it was over (really over, not just regulation), most of them ran outside and jumped into vehicles, loading far too many bright minds into the cabin of a minivan, taking off down the street to celebrate with the rest of Fairfax County. Fireworks were going off next door. Hundreds of people were out in their yards, cup in hand, toasting the good cheer of this unbelievable day.

I don't know how we won. There is not a single legitimate source that picked Mason to have a realistic chance. This is every bit as good as Rudy, Hoosiers, and Remember the Titans all in one. How can we not but remember this for a long time?

Well we already have plans for a big party next Saturday: showing the game on a large screen projector and serving tons of great food. Students, success, and food, all with the ever-present reminder that hope lives in the hearts of those who choose to see beyond circumstances --sounds like a place I want to be.

Congrats Mason. You make me proud that I didn't go to JMU.

therapy

Well it's taken a year, but I've officially hit the wall. SLAM, BANG!!! Straight into it. In the past seven days, I've had more junk thrown at me than I've been able to handle, and today I finally realized that it's taking a literal toll on my body. My head hurts. My stomach's sick. My bowels are irritable. My feet aren't covered. My loins . . . . well, things just aren't good. I feel like I'm sitting in a dust bowl, waiting for the rain to come and make things muddy, unsure of whether I'd rather have the dust or the mud. It's not very fun.

I am however, consulting my favorite childhood psychiatrist, and our first session was incredibly theraputic. Who knew the world could be so great at 5?

Life's too short not to smile, even if your teeth are crooked.

circle . . . slide . . . circle

Once upon a time I received a beautiful leather-bound journal as a birthday gift, and I remember spending the next couple of months trying to decide what to write in it. I have been a writer/journaler for the past several years, but for some reason, I just couldn't take the first step and start writing in this thing. It was too nice. I didn't want to smudge the pages. I didn't want to write something "almost workable" down, when what I really wanted was the finished product. I told my dad about it and said, "I would write poetry in here if i knew it was going to be good." To that he replied, "It will never be good if you don't write it somewhere."

And I say all that to illuminate a certain reticence I feel in trying to explain the unexplainable whirlwind of emotion and activity I've found myself in through the past weeks. I want to write it, I want to get it all out in front of me. But I'm scared it won't look like it needs to be, like it really was. I'm afraid to sit down and write for an hour and still not be at the place where I can say, "Yes, I have it. It's all right here. I understand it and I see how it fits in the big picture of God's design." In fact, I think such a proposition is just plain silly, and it's asking too much from my mind and fingers in the short breath since everything ended. In my mind, it hasn't ended at all. It's still going, and will continue to go indefinitely. I don't know where it's headed or what I will be when it finally arrives.

But I need to write. I need to form words and expressions. I need to open the trunk and hang the clothes out in the summer sun so they can one day be wearable. I know it will look like madness at times, and there might even be a smudge or two, but how can we see the beautiful if we're always looking for the ugly? Why bother fall in love with the rose if we're afraid of the thorn? My dad was right: it will never be good if it isn' at least something.

Mind swimming in circles tonight. A little slide to the left or right, then another circle. Maybe tomorrow I'll have something new to say. Hmmmm . . . . . where did I put that journal anyway?

Go Mason!!!

Just want to send best wishes to George Mason's basketball team as they head to the Sweet 16. I don't know how far they'll make it, but taking down Michigan State and North Carolina in the same weekend is a pretty big feat. I think they'll win vs. Wichita State and either lose to Connecticut or win vs. Washington. They have a home court advantage and it seems like their defense is hard to figure out. They will have a lot of momentum heading into Friday night, but who knows how all these newcomers will handle the big stage.

Whatever happens, Congrats Mason. You make me proud to be a fan.

stuck in the middle

Well last night was a bit disasterous, as I was continually reminded how random and unpredictable life can be, especially when you need it to be otherwise. I could spend this post venting about the 12 things that did not go how I needed them to go, but I will save you the fury and just say it was a tough day.

Part of it centered around what happened during rush hour. There are more than 1,000,000 people who live in this county, and yesterday two of them decided to crash their cars into each other in one of the busiest intersections around. Cars were backed up for miles in all directions, and the city was virtually gridlocked. I was stuck on the left of a three lane road, in between a Mercury and a median, and I sat there for a LONG time, wondering what would happen if I just simply didn't go to the place I needed to be.

Now I'm sure the drivers in the accident felt horrible about all of this (I would), and I'm sure the other disgruntled commuters could equally measure out some level of empathy. But it's amazing how little you think about those things when you're going through them. Honestly, I didn't care how much damage had been done (to the cars or their passengers), and I wasn't too concerned about the needs of countless people around me (all who obviously needed to be somewhere). I was so driven and focused on my need to do something, that it anesthetized me to those who were just as bummed and bored as I was, even lifting in me a compulsion to offer better radio programming for those stuck in traffic. I would have given anything to be like Jim Carey as Bruce Nolan, parting my hands and splitting the sea of cars so I could drive unreasonably fast and go where I had set out to go. But alas, my hands are normal, and (in the tradition of Once Upon a Potty) we sat, and sat, and sat some more, and the sun fell lower in the sky, and our destinations stayed far away.

I don't know if we will get to drive in Heaven. Conventional wisdom says that golden streets are not entirely appropriate for drag racing. I honestly wouldn't even care if they gave me a second-class form of transportation (cart and buggy or three-humped camel). The thing I would truly love though, the thing that would mean the most to me, would be to see the horizon and always be able to go there, to see the next destination and be unhindered in my approach. We wouldn't have to go fast, and we could enjoy every step of the journey. Oh, but to keep moving . . . onward, forward, ahead, closer . . . ever reaching, straining, dreaming for the day ahead. Maybe there's something to be said for the traffic jams in this life, and the patience they engender, and the humility they require, but I can't say I won't miss them if one day they're gone. There's just too much ahead to stay where I've been.