Understatement of the Year

"Lynne Spears' book about parenting has been delayed indefinitely, her publisher said Wednesday." -AP

An Elegy

I wax elegiac today in memory of a brave and inspiring soul. As he makes his way through the arched trees and into the calm and peaceful valley of the afterworld, I reflect on the way he has touched my life.

My sophomore year of college brought change and heartache. I began the year with a new boyfriend. I moved into an on-campus apartment with a few friends, or so I thought, and I had a class with a sworn enemy. Okay, not really, but Tiffany and I were not friends in High School, and while I knew our paths would cross as English Majors, I still wasn't prepared to see her so soon. The class was was an English core in Fiction, reading it and writing it. I hardly remember what we read because I was engrossed in the writing. At the helm, the soon-to-be-Doctor Professor Scott Odom. He was a father and a Ph.D. student, a writer of published and unpublished works. He loved his students with a passion that is rarely seen amongst the professors and teachers in our lives. He helped us write, encouraged us to have our writing read by others, and apparently, had cancer. We never knew.

He is gone. With him he takes the stories, the tears, the elation and frustration of hundreds of writers. The confidence and trust placed with him will follow him to his early grave, and for this, I mourn. He was a wonderful man, a talented writer, and a positive soul. He worked so diligently each day, something i can't say I would have the courage to do were I struggling with his disease.

He was in my life for a mere semester, but he affected some of the changes that would affect me forever. I started my novel in his class. I read it to him in his office. I sent copies of it home with students and peers for their parents to read. I emailed it to my entire family and heard their feedback. i have never been so open with my art. And you know what else? Tiffany and I talked, she shared with me the troubles she faced, and I gave her mine. We made s'mores over the burner in her dorm stove as she listened to my problems with my roomates, and we became lifelong friends. I became a lifelong writer. i believed in myself and my ability.

I suppose my sadness comes from my own failure to communicate this to him. He was young; I guess I assumed I had all the time in the world to gather my stories, write them, have them published, and present him with a copy and a note of thanks. That time, like Dr. Odom, has passed. I am sorry.

Bittersweet

Ah growing up...

Why is it so difficult to say goodbye?

It sit at my computer in my cubicle at my new job, surrounded by the sounds of progress and professionalism. I type away at a project descripion, reveling in the information about groundwater and wells, the headphones digging into my ears, and the first strains of a familiar song enter my brain. It is a song by Death Cab for Cutie. I close my eyes and lean my head back and let me thoughts drift where they will. I am in college, freshman year, in the dorm room of a friend. He takes a cd from a case and places it in his computer's disc drive. The music begins and, almost instinctively we both fall at ease, sinking into uncomfortably hard chairs. It is my junior year. The Los Angeles sky threatens rain, my favorite weather condition. I pull my iPod from the depths of my bookbag, setting it to rest atop Complete Works of Shakespeare. The sounds of Death Cab enter my headphones, forming the perfect musical companion to grey, cloudy skies. I trudge uphill, across campus, toward home. The campus has been decorated for Christmas, one of the lovely things about attending a Catholic University. It is so beautiful it almost hurts. The chapel, its large, circular window surrounded by a lighted wreath, forms a foreboding shilouette against the contemptous sky. I pass a large Christmas tree, its ornaments shining and glimmering in the last light of dusk. I make the familiar turn past the building we called Gotham, three stories of stylized concrete and glass, steaming in the cool damp. I pass the residence of the Jesuits and reach my favorite vista. i gaze across the sea, take a deep breath of the cool, stormy air, and watch the threatening sky swirl and stir. I walk into my dorm complex, full of light and laughter. It is similar to an apartment complex, the kind kids like me could never afford. the center artium glows with orange light and the fountain plays and teases the light. Up one flight of stairs, across slate hallways, and into my door, emblazoned with holiday greetings. the warmth hits me, and the familiar sounds flood my ears. I pause Death Cab, and greet my roomate and best friend. I was not in the place where I was born and raised, but I was happy, content, accomplished; I was home.

Why can't I return there? Christmas reminds me of the freedom usually associated with the holiday. School would let out, finals finished, papers submitted. How did college pass so quickly? Why didn't I stop and enjoy it more often. I tried to. I would stop, like the night described aboved, and try to breathe it all in and save every feeling. But I knew, even then, that I couldn't. I sensed my own mortality, the mortality of the moment, even then. I can't say whether it tainted the experience or made it more beautiful and telling. Now I work in a job where much is expected of me. I write for the good of the earth if not the good of my soul. I will work on Christmas eve and the day after Christmas, New Year's Eve and my birthday. I will spend the majority of my time here. I leave, and my head is full of ideas and themes from the proposals I have written and not the justice involved in public policy creation or Richard III's motives behind killing his nephews. Life is different, yes, but better, worse? I don't want to make that distinction. Things are always better, things are always worse, things are just different. What is consuming my mind now is the knowledge that each progressive era had its place in my life but each one has ended. There is no going back.

Dreams

Do you ever find yourself thinking about something that had happened recently only to discover that you had dreamed this event? After recent conversations about this, and my proclamation that people, in particular, can appear in dreams as symbols of a feeling, I had one of a series of unsettling and serene dreams.

I stopped being friends with one of my life's closest friends over four years ago. I have thought the situation over many times and become complacent with the realization that I had done the right thing. She wounded me in ways that I had not known were possible, wounded my idea of self-worth, my beliefs on friendship and love, and my relationship with my favorite institution to complain about (really, more than the government): the church. Despite the pain, the anger, and the disappointment I have felt toward her, I have had a series of dreams in which we are friends again. The dreams are serene and feel quite wonderful. We are happy; we laugh and talk and I miss her in my waking hours. Or do I?

I first associated these dreams with guilt. I know that I am quick to remove offensive particles of humanity from my life. People, unlike things, I discard quickly. I sum them up, and, once judged, I expel them from my sight. This is strange considering my habit of saving everything else: ticket stubs, birthday cards, anything to preserve my precious memories. So when I started to have dreams of this person I attributed it to guilt in expelling her so quickly. She had, after all, approached me in an email and asked if we could be friends again. She had also said that she did not regret what she had said to me in our "final conversation." her mistake. I decided against contacting her if she could not apologize. The dreams continued. They were never confrontational, only happy, joyous. Then she called me. Hearing her voice on the message sent a chill down my spine. I don't handle confrontation well. I avoid these moments. However, because of my dreams, I called her. I decided I was more comfortable with email, and we sent a series of messages back and forth. All they taught me was that she was (still) exactly who I thought she was. I felt silly for wasting time and thought over our interactions. the emails dwindled away and I felt healed.

Then I had another dream. Last night. This morning I felt slightly lost, tinges of pain washing over the farthest reaches of my memory. Was it because of her? Do I miss her? I don't think I do. I know, in the present, coherent moments that she is not a person that enriches or enhances my life. Hell, she's not even nice. So I thought about it today and this is the sad conclusion I came to: I miss having a best friend. I have one, and she is amazing, but we are distanced by many miles and some strange circumstances. In part, her boyfriend across the globe has caused friction between us, especially since I am not one to lie when asked for my opinion, and only honesty spills from my lips, if I am required to give any other answer, it is silence. It's not all his fault of course, or hers, I know that my relationship with my significant other, as it grows and blossoms every day into something stronger, more beautiful, also forms a sort of roadblock in communication with anyone else. I am used up, loved and spoken for, and expressed, until I have very little, or nothing, left to say. And yet I am fulfilled and refreshed by his love and want to scream it until my lungs burst and can't (for fear of being annoying). He tells me that I am his best friend and he should be mine. He is so much more than a best friend, and the designation of best friend, in my mind, is a girlfriend.

So, if you are still reading this and you find yourself wondering over dreams starring characters from your past. Rest assured that their meanings will become clear, whether you like it or not.