When There is Nothing to Hear

Soundtrack by Seabear.

You've seen (and I hope listened to) the soundtracks I've linked for nearly every post. It looks like that thing above, the blue underlined word Soundtrack.

Why must we always have something playing, speaking, thinking? Why do we feel wrong when there's not anything to hear?

My Sunday School teacher asked us this on an off-topic tangent and I didn't get to answer. Luckily, I have a blog. :P Here's my belief.

It's because we're afriad of non-existence.

Music is powerful. It brings out joy, suffering, and worship. We see this through the excellent music of Christian musicians, such as Alanna Story and Audrey Assad.

Expressing ourselves - words - thinking - it all proves we exist. By keeping our minds stocked with sounds, images, and talking, we feel like we won't be lost.

Imagine nothingness. Imagine silence. The majority of people, when asked to react to these states, reply that they would add something, anything, to comfort themselves.

We fear the end of our consciousness, our existence. When faced with infinity, we can't bear it. It makes us nausous. Because we know that we have no power in the void.

But our God lives in infinity.

And our intimacy with Him can begin there. Closing out all else, we find ourselves on a ledge over an extensive depth. We shudder. We fear.

In this moment, God can teach us to have peace by trusting in Him. We can know we are safe because we know He exists and His existence is not erasable in infinity like ours is.

When there is nothing to hear, He will come to speak. This is called meditation. Do not try so desperately to fill your head with noise, thinking it is the only proof you are safe.

Being still and knowing He is God is difficult. Usually, I end up chanting "quiet, quiet, quiet" in my head for five minutes, ineffectively. However, it is a crucial ability to obtain. Practice.

In secret, in the quiet place, in the stillness, You are there.

Our Own Myths, which taste like sour gummy worms

Soundtrack by Paul Macefiled (Love this song!!!)

I remember as a child, toddling around with spoons of Fruity Pebbles, my brother and I made up magic. The red fruity flakes, if you eat them, you fall in love with the first thing you see. We probably swiped this from an Aladdin episode (remember the TV series?) or some other show we watched.

We spent breakfast "falling in love" with items around the room.

Right now, I'm actually in love with a food processor I lost, and imagining the Oreos and vanilla ice cream I used to whip up on slow afternoons.

I also remember a necklace I got from Bingo at the nursing home my dad ran. The charm was the size of my palm, I thought it was too big. It was just from another time. An oval turquoise stone encircled by braided metal on a chain.

It transported me to the Land of the Black Sand, where I was an acrobatic "street rat", which I definitely stole from Aladdin.

I've traded in my curls and 101 Dalmatians pants but I still find myself with a palmful of myths. The most abundant of these are Happy Token myths.

Happy tokens are little things you find that make that moment special. For instance, coins run flat by a train are happy tokens, as is a piece of hair (or any other thing) in the shape of a heart, or a splatter of paint that looks like a little girl with duck hair, you know, that old cutesy haircut a lot of Precious Moments girls have, or if there are an usual number of blue/pink gummy worms in the box.

Which means, you can make a wish.

David and my favorite little legend is, if you find an eyelash on your true love, you can make a wish, and blow, it will come true.

Do you have one? Something that feels special that you stumble upon in life? Leave me a comment so I can join in on the happiness.

Ode to Big Bob

Soundrack for this post provided by Regina Spektor.

Surviving cruelty is no small feat, even for a human.  When left for dead after being hit by a great impact.  When stuck with hot metal.  When one's life is saved by the severing of a body part.  Loss.  No man could fight a wince at the mention of such circumstances.

Big Bob, a Russian blue cat, was hit by a car, shot, and left on the waste side of the highway.  Brought to the Humane Society by the hands of a cat-advocacy volunteers, Big Bob was discovered to have suffered a gunshot wound, broken leg, and was positive for FIV, a feline form of HIV.

This cat, who, to me seems to have the presence of Bob Dylan, his life was saved by an amputation and he hopes to be (find a) home for Christmas.

I was struck by this feline news story because of the misfortune as well as the fact that I owned a cat that looked exactly like Big Bob.  Russian Blues tend to favor each other in appearance.  His name was Olly.  I haven't seen him since we moved to my grandma's house (near a Long John Silvers.)

Big Bob makes me wonder if cats hope.  I've always believed that animals live from one moment to the next with little memory of anything happening before, only the essentials like: that four-year-old pulls my tail or I prefer to drink running water from the faucet.

Is the future a concept that cats perceive? If so, are they hopeful or hopeless?

Animals, I believe, know the Creator.  It's funny that animals, without the higher functions of humans, know Who created them yet we are ignorant enough not to.  Maybe they simply trust.  They don't need to hope, they only trust.

Maybe they know their live for what they are.  And no matter what good or bad happens, they know that it will end the exact way it should.

Think about that.

Big Bob impresses me.  He will not be as freely friendly as he was, having been hurt that way.  And he must live life as a three-legged cat named "bob" which seems more cruel than it needs it to be.  But, will he - can he - despair over his future? Or, does he not even need to think about it?

Donations for Big Bob can be made in person at the shelter, 7929 N. Michigan Rd. Indianapolis, IN, online at IndyHumane.org, or by calling 317-872-5650 extension 125.

My Dancing Heels will Feel the Love

(Soundtrack: "Darling I Do" by Lucy Schwartz and Landon Pigg.)
December 9th on my calendar has a highlighter trim.  It marks fourteen months since the night David sang "Heaven's Light" and I kissed him at his front door.  The first sweet kiss of my life, but not the last.

Recently we've strayed away from having dates, real dates, when we go somewhere, do something special.  Like married folk, I guess, we've fallen into a routine: pick up a Little Ceasar's pizza, go home, watch a movie, kiss, hold, David plays and we sing, dance, and just hang out.

But today David asked me what I'd like to do for our next month-a-versary.  My eyes swept over the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.  "Why don't we eat at Panera Bread?" was my first suggestion.

Then, I felt the warm sensation, the desire to dance, melt over me.

We dance every so often on our regular days together and I wanted it to be more special, befitting the celebration of fourteen months.  I wanted to go on more dates.  To do special things together like we used to.

Baking an apple  Picnicking at our fountain.  Leaving encouraging notes at the library.  The Terrible Movie Marathon.  Finding the best smelling candle at Hallmark Gift Shop.  Our air hockey match.  (Which I lost, but not for lack of spirit.)

In my Facebook notes I have plans for dates never done.  Spend a day in the park, pretending to be an elderly couple, costumes and everything.  Make caramel corn.  Play on a swing set in the moonlight.  Yell funny things from the top of tall buildings.

What hinders the special time couples spend together? Is it only becoming complacent? Does time sap away our enthusiasm for such things? It seems that time wears down the greatest delights in life.  Going on dates and making love become things for which a couple must learn to make time.

Bill Cosby says in Cosbyology: Essays and Observations from the Doctor of Comedy that there are certain loving acts you do for your loved one at the beginning of the relationship that somewhere along the way you stop doing.  It's not because you don't want to do it, he says.  Or because you can't do it.  You just don't anymore.

Maybe this isn't bad.  Maybe it's just life.  However, David and I are young.  Our relationship is a fledgling.  And I am greedy.  For my fourteenth months spent with David, I want to dance and I want it to be special.

So.  We're going to drive to random places, find a nice floor, envelope one other, and dance to music he murmurs in my ear.  And I'll sing back... when I'm not kissing him.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.  You make me happy when skies are gray.  You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.  They won't take my sunshine away."

Surprise Paper Bag

Lately, my mirror looks different.  That is, of course, because I look different.  I feel different and differently.

It's cheesy, but I'll say it.  I am that brave, after all.  And certainly that much of a softie.  I began metamorphosing about 15 months ago.

I saw a boyish bright face through the window of a car pulling up to me.  Amid the shadow and light polka dots provided by the overhanging tree.  On the way to a movie theatre out of town, out of the places I usually found myself.

But that's just it.  The places I were, I couldn't find myself.  I was a paper bag marked Surprise! stapled, taped, on the shelf of a 25 cent store.  Marked girl with a lackadaisical ribbon, but even that was debatable.  What's it cost to break inside? What would I find? Would I be a cheap squirt gun or a dolly with lopsided eyes?

Shy he found beautiful and loneliness and hiddeness, too.  Disney couldn't write a sweeter love story nor Austen one more true.  Our first date he held me, he held me the first day of my life.  And kissed my hair, his kisses kitty cat soft.  His lips warm as sugar cream pie.

The little girl in daddy's T-shirt and boys jeans stood gazing at the Surprise paper bag.  A yo-yo, a paddle ball, a penny whistle she'd lose in the sandbox.  What was she? And the sad part: she didn't know and she was twenty-one.

She'd been kissed but she never kissed, been caught but never caught, raised but never raised, told but she never told, loved, maybe, but never loved.

"Me either, me either."

Glow-in-the-dark stars.

"You're beautiful and I love you."

Pearl studded hair bow.

"You're you and I want to be with you."

Gold foil glittering glue

"It's all in there and I want to be in there, too."

And a pinwheel made of spoons.

I pulled out something new little by little and stashed the rest away, there's time to wait while I play with these few things.  I write stories at bedtime, drink cherry soda in the meantime, and learn not to hold it in when I want to kiss him.

When No Words Come

Those difficult moments of emotion.  No one doubts the power, science, and genius of words except in these moments. We stumble foolishly.  "I'm confused, just so confused."  We say the same thing over and over.  And never say anything at all.  Mean slips through our fingers.

When our throats clog.  When our tongue capsizes.  When our vocal cords go taunt and all sounds are snuffed out.

In those times we often find that holding hands, touching a shoulder or a cheek, kissing a brow, brushing noses provide salvation.  It saves us where words have failed us.

Those times are difficult for a writer.  What do we say when we know there's nothing we can say?

This is why eulogies are so taxing.  And why we are painfully helpless when trying to explain why we love our beloved.  This is why all new mothers can do cry.

Aghh! Excruciating!

As writers, we feel compelled to pin these glorious moments to the page, because they are life and we have committed ourselves to capturing life.  What can we do, though, to capture such incomprehensible moments? Each writer much face this; we can't just shelve the subject.  It's an additional Everest to the Everest of surviving wordless moments.

There are only so many ways of saying your characters as speechless.  That they've reached a moment when living feels like suffocating.  The reader can plainly see that you are the speechless one.  Sometimes readers can be merciless.

We fiction writers must learn from our poet brothers.  They've been endeavoring to do this for centuries.  And many succeed.  (Show-offs.)

Study poetry.  Learn to capture the emotions for which we have no words by manipulating image and sounds, rhythm! Work the words, dig in as with clay, with feeling.  Shout! Drive! Never think big enough.  Go for the superlative.  Awesome, in no small words.  Grip! Clench, you! Write until your veins burst in splendor like beating wings.

When you've written until it hurts, you may have succeeded.