Sunday, May 31, 2009

--"I just smile once in a while cause I don't want the lines on my face." Brandi Carlile, "Fall Apart Again"

Tomorrow, when the calendar turns from May to June and my next credit card payment comes due, I will transfer funds and pay my bill. This will leave me with less than ten dollars to my name for the entire month of June and part of July. It seems a strange decision—to pay a credit card bill instead of buying food—but when push comes to shove, I’d rather risk going hungry than know I have to deal with a credit card company. God can feed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, but I doubt even The Great Almighty can make credit card companies gracious and understanding. So I will drain my bank account and live on faith.

Today, however, I rearranged my room. When you can’t buy new stuff, move the old stuff around! No pictures, yet, though, because it’s not entirely clean. I’ve still got homeless items scattered all over both beds, and finding a home for them requires more energy than I’m interested in giving tonight, considering, once again, it’s past my bed time. My entire day was spent on this project. I was productive. In fact, I was productive enough that I even washed out the bathroom garbage can, which obviously had never been washed. By tomorrow afternoon, my room should be finished and I’m left wondering what I’ll do when there’s nothing left to do. For a little while, I’m sure, I’ll sit in my room and enjoy the change and the cleanliness of it, maybe even read a little (there’s a lot to catch up on and plenty of time for it), but that will get old. And then what? Well, I guess I’ll clean the bathroom and not just the bathroom garbage can.

I also entered a photo contest, today. Just a monthly photo thing. I have yet to have anything come of such contests, but it’s from a reputable source, so I’m giving it a shot.

I enjoyed the space of my room today. I did no movie watching, didn’t watch any tv, only went outside once to empty garbage, didn’t spent time with anyone, and didn’t talk to anyone over the phone (well, except Apple-Care for a little computer glitch). On my computer desktop is a picture of my friends Hannah and Sarah which I took in April when I went back home for Hannah’s wedding. I think, each time I look at this picture, that one of these days it would be nice to call Sarah and to hear her wonderful voice over the phone. But I have yet to do so, because each time it crosses my mind I realize I’ll probably cry, and I want to believe I’ll be a little more mentally stable one of these days, and so I wait. And I don’t call anybody at all.

Nonetheless, today I would mark as better than yesterday. It was fairly peaceful. It was productive. And I’m feeling not quite so apprehensive. Look me up in a week, of course, and I might feel entirely different.

In an email from my dear spiritual director, Jo, back home, she told me to watch for unexpected blessings. Sometimes, unexpected blessings come in the tiniest ways. Today my blessing was the simple discovery of a song: “Fall Apart Again.” I have, in fact, heard this song many, many times. It is by Seattle-based artist Brandi Carlile, and it is mixed in among a list of songs of hers on my iTunes. But today is the first time I really listened to it, and I discovered it was rather wonderfully written. The song made me smile, especially these two dry-humored and witty lines, the first one being, “I just smile once in a while cause I don’t want the lines on my face.” I’m amused by these words, because I have hit the age where ever so slightly, my skin seems to be a little less elastic and I’m finding that the first lines on my face to no longer disappear so invisibly are from smiling, and I recall a conversation with Marilyn just over a week ago about wrinkles and my note to her that I like them. They tell a story. The second line I particularly enjoy is, “I think the world of myself, but the world doesn’t think much of me.” I don’t have a profound explanation for this one. I just think it’s funny. There’s an entire story in those fourteen words. I laughed at this song, because I could imagine Marilyn, in her unsympathetic manner, reciting the whole thing to me, tongue-in-cheek at points, and not so much in others. In fact, these lines, “I don't want to hear you say that you miss yesterday. If you don't like what you see, that means nothing to me,” I think she’s actually said to me, maybe in a few different words, and if not to me then certainly somebody else. This irritates me about Marilyn—that lack of sympathy—but it’s also one of the reasons I love her, and one of the things about her that makes me smile. A paradox, I know, but love is just that way. It’s what makes friendships so three-dimensional and so worthwhile.

So today comes to a close. Three days down, a lot more to go. I’m not one of those people that counts down every day. I like the element of surprise. My room is a new room and I’m pleased with the new space. Today, I received an email from my professor Ellen Marmon to have lunch tomorrow. She knows my past week has been a little rough. I told her I would love to, but I’m out of money for such things and she offered to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if I wanted it. Who can say no to a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich offered by a professor? Surely nothing could be better than that. And I’m very much looking forward to it.