Never Forget

We say "Never Forget," but what do we mean? Sometimes I would like to forget what I saw on those television screens 12 years ago.

I'm okay with forgetting the terror, the collapsing buildings and crashing planes, the sense of helplessness and bewilderment and panic.

I wish I could forget what it's like to live in a world where such a literally evil act is even plausible.

I am glad that in the dozen years since 9/11 we have been safe and comfortable enough that the horrors of that day have dulled in our minds.

Let other people hold onto anger, or dwell on thoughts of revenge. There are some things I am fine with putting behind me for good, setting down to never pick up again.

The year before the Towers fell we read a poem in my English class, and I haven't been able to escape it since. You may know it yourself: in it, a man beholds a crumbled ruin in the middle of a desert, all that remains of a once-great civilization, and upon its base he reads this warning...

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

This poem is so tantalizing because what Ozymandias (and his creator, Percy Bysshe Shelley) offers us is the promise that time will one day erase everything, including our pain.

But I hope I don't forget what it's like to know no strangers. No "you" and "me," just an overwhelming sense of being in this together.

I hope I don't forget the ones who ran toward disaster. The ones who stayed, who fought, who helped, who struggled, who risked, who sacrificed. The very best in humanity brought out into the open in reaction to its very worst.

I hope I never forget the people we lost that day.

I hope I'll continue to remember the ones who knew them best and mourn them still.

And I know I won't forget the thing I'd been doodling in my notebook that September morning in Mrs. Stager's Spanish class when the teacher from next door strode into the room and made the announcement that changed everything.

It was a heart.

In some distant future where New York City is just a ruin, where history is memory and memory is lost, that is the thing I hope - I know - whoever is left will still hold onto.

Love.

It's Okay

I'm tired of feeling like I have to roll over and play dead, or stay silent and allow myself to be pummeled, though I suppose that fits in well with "turn the other cheek."

I'm tired of defending and analyzing and picking apart.

I'm tired of this idea that faith is stupid, that despair is the only rational response to life and the universe.

You know what? It's okay.

 IT'S OKAY TO BELIEVE.

I do. I believe.

I don't have proof. I may not even have reasons you'd find good enough.

 But I believe. I believe. I BELIEVE!

I believe.

 

Countdown

Just finished Summer Reading, now it's on to the next big project. And no... I'm not talking about the library's 10 year anniversary. I'm talking about the far more important event happening this October: my fourth annual 13 Days of Halloween!

COUNTINGDOWNTO.COM

Tried to make a snazzy countdown clock, but the site I used wanted me to pay to do fun Halloweenish colors, so this one is boring instead. But it gets the point across. Only 68 days!

Hobbit Event Pics

This is not a proper blog post. I'm trying to transfer photos to another computer and my connection isn't allowing me to attach them to email (lame!), and I left my thumb drive at work. This is the best solution I could come up with. I will probably take it down when my need is gone.

For now, enjoy a few photos from the Hobbit event I had at the library a couple weeks ago...

Call Out

In about four and a half hours I'll be picking up the phone and calling work to tell them I'm not coming in. Between now and then I'll think up the excuse; it has to be a tad more elaborate than "I'm sick," because I do intend to work my shift the day after tomorrow. I didn't come to this decision lightly. I don't enjoy screwing other people over, and would certainly never do so just because I didn't feel like working. No... this is about balance and perspective. I've been seriously lacking both in the last eight months. It's a late start, but I'd like to try gaining some back.

I took the Target job to help pay off my debts. It was never supposed to be my main job. It was never supposed to be Important with a capital "I." I do need the money, and I still do. I'm significantly better off than I was eight months ago, but I still have a ways to go, and I made my summer plans (Charleston this weekend, St Louis 3 weeks from now, etc.) with the knowledge that I'd have that Target income to help pay those costs back. But somehow work has come to dominate my life, and that has never been the goal. Ever. It's one thing to work hard and pay back debts; it's another thing to allow your life to be consumed by stress to the point that you literally don't have a life anymore. Just work and sleep and driving to and from, and some television or reading slipped in between.

Tomorrow I have a hobbit program at the library. I get stressed sometimes with my library job, but I really do enjoy it. It's rewarding. It's fun. When I take the time and put in the energy to the do the job properly, it's really special. And let me tell you now what I was planning to do. I was planning on staying up the next few hours finishing cutting out the circles for my hobbit-door craft I have planned, then getting about two hours of sleep, then waking up and going in to work my scheduled shift at Target from 4am to 12:30pm, then driving straight to the library for my shift at 2pm, and scrambling to set up the room, make copies, gather supplies, etc, etc, for my event at 3pm. And this was an event that when I planned it ages ago I thought, "This is going to be so much fun." But no. Not if you do it that way. On 2 hours of sleep and after 8 hours of physically demanding labor... no.

This is it. Hobbits are helping me get my priorities straight. If I lose the job because of it, fine. I'll survive. I'll pay off my debts a lot slower, and not get to move out as quickly as I'd like, but I'll make it work. I want to be able to enjoy tomorrow. I want to make it special. I don't care about shelf heights and peg hooks. I do care about kids and stories. And I do care about my emotional health and mental well-being... both of which are threatening to take a nose dive if I don't get a little balance (and a bit of a vacation!) soon.

So there's my justification. Now pardon me while I go cut out some hobbit doors...

Happiness

Happiness is a little white house. It has a smattering of rooms, wide open with high ceilings and many, many windows, all of them shutterless and curtainless to let in the light. It has a wide green lawn out back. There's a gazebo in one corner, and a tiny little garden tucked into another, with a couple benches and a fountain shaped like a woman pouring an urn into a pond. She looks so peaceful, this woman. Happiness is the sunlight streaming down on the little white house, pouring in those huge wide windows. A house full of light. There are old wooden floors and fireplaces and murals painted on the walls. There are doors and doors - some of them real, some of them false, some of them locked, some opening to more rooms, with more wide windows and always - always - light. Happiness is a glassed in porch out back and flowers lining the pavement leading to the front door of the perfect little white house. Happiness is this house filled with people, all laughing and smiling, hugging, talking, eating, dancing, together and alive and - again, like the house - so open and full of light.

It was Christy and Ryan Miller's wedding today. They had it at the Reid House in Matthews. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the wedding that much (it was lovely, but I was there more to serve than to experience as a guest) but I fell hard, "head over heels" if you will, for that house. It's the kind of house you'd want to grow up in and grow old in. One day I want a house like that.

Family

You know what? I love my family, and I'm grateful for them, and all that stuff you're supposed to say (and that on many other days I truly mean), but today I just have to be honest...

My family can be such assholes.

I've been out of the house for literally 12 hours today, running from work to meeting to other meeting and back to work, with about 40 things on my to-do list, and the literal second thing my father says to me after I walk through the door is, "Are you going to watch TV with us tonight, or do we have to watch one of the other shows?" Literally. Not even in the house thirty seconds. He says hello and then he's guilt-tripping me about watching shows with them. I ask them to save three shows to watch with me: Castle, Good Wife, and Call the Midwives. Good Wife is finished for the season, and he's saving the three or four Castles for later in the summer, so it's not like me not watching with them is keeping them from this huge plethora of viewing they could otherwise be doing. What the fuck!? Asshole.

Then I go upstairs and go to the bathroom. Not to be gross, but it's a sit-down kind of thing. I've been gone 12 hours and only been to the bathroom twice, both of those quick trips. Bowel movements are just a fact of human biology after 12 hours.  I've been in the bathroom not two minutes when Wesley arrives home, and I hear him in the hall downstairs muttering to Mom: "Oh, of course she's in the bathroom. She should just move all her stuff in and live there." Fuck you, Wes. I can't help it if I arrive home five minutes before you every night. I also can't help it that the other day when I made you miss your shower I had just come home from working for 6 hours and had one hour in which to shower, change, and head out again to go to my other job. And I didn't feel bad for you at all because you'd kicked me out of the bathroom the night before to get a shower. Why do you need a shower in the morning after taking one that night? Are your sheets seriously that dirty? So yeah, fuck you too. Asshole.

Mom is the only one not on my asshole radar tonight, but by sitting there quietly and not doing anything she's kind of an asshole enabler. Maybe I'm an asshole too. Maybe it's a family thing. I don't fucking care. I just want them to leave me the fuck alone.