I’ve had some beef with the constraints of time for a while now, and age for that matter. and our love, for that matter.
1.1 Observation:
Last Thursday I was riding the MAX home from downtown Portland, losing myself in thought and near-sleep, and generally feeling pretty shitty. There was a large woman hogging the seat next to me, squawking loudly with another woman (her mother?) about boring things. The younger woman’s child-son was with them, staring out the window of the train and dangling his feet below chair. He was cute. As I dozed or dazed off in the dark subway tunnel, this happened (like it does every day):
On the MAX from Jennabee and Vimeo.
Before I could even react, the little boy next to me looked back from the window where his eyes had been glued and said “whoa.” His mother looked down at him, surprised, with a silly look on her face and said “What?” She had missed it, they all had…they were talking too loudly.
“Yeah man,” I said to him quickly “whoa.” And he smiled.
Every day my breath is almost taken away and my eyes well up with tears from this unlikely moment of pure and severe experience. That explosion of light and quiet. It’s like birth. Or sex. Or church. I always feel silly afterwards, embarrassed…like birth, or sex, or church. And that little boy is the first person I have ever seen notice it.
1.2 Hypothesis:
I sort of hate the way time works. It has always seemed like a cruel joke to me that we can recall each detail of the past, which we have no control over, but that we cannot see what may come in the future, though our every decision affects it. This powerlessness has left me rather depressed with the grim prospects for our tries at truly empathizing with one another.
Why is it that all of my closest friends are my age; look a lot like me; act a lot like me?
As a true believer in human goodness, I think that if we were able to fully grasp the effects of our decisions across time and space, our actions, and our world, would be much more true. Or pure. Or what have you. As a true believer in human connection, I know that I would really love you, if I could see all of you.
I’ve been looking for ways to look into your eyes and find myself able love their bright spots for the way they evolved from your baby blue, to the way they will one day dim into a yellowed grey. Trying recognize your vice as the innocent childish habit it evolved from, and the messy recovery you will one day have from it. I want to really see you, you know, so we can be friends.
Someone once told me that they thought heaven was this single moment where you were able to see EVERYTHING across all of time.
With everything laid out it front of you–every cause and effect since and until all of time–you
u n d e r s t o o d,
and you loved it all.
I literally said whoa when the max came out of the tunnel. The light refocusing. That was intense. (BTW, goodbye Sunset TC & Washington Park).
I think I felt excited about “heaven” for the first time. everything? all of time? YES PLEASE!
I’m so glad you’re back where the wireless internet roams free and you are unbound, because now I can bask in…this. I don’t want this stupid internship, I just want to come back to Azusa and feel inspired.
I think it may have been on the MAX, I was thinking about the time that you told me that sometimes it is difficult for you to believe in love. It was a long time ago, in the age of confusing love choices our first semester in the garden.
But when I was on the MAX I was thinking how I could never, ever believe you. You love so much Jenna, I think you are made of it. So that said. I believe you when you say that you would love everyone who reads this, or doesn’t, for that matter.
Man, you humble me every time I look into your face. And I will venture to say, as I have alluded to time and again, I think that looking into a face is like understanding all of time. If you really look at it.
I love the wait, the drone, of the tunnel. It feels like slumber awakenings, or an underwater eclipse. Whoa, then the green — that growing life force — is remarkable and I really needed to see it, today, with your words.
P.S.I love you too
fuck yeah! what you have to say here is totally awesome. i agree with laura that love exists and you embody its spirit. it sounds like you’ve been on a spiritual journey lately. also, maybe a good reason to talk more about silly things is that i noticed the coming-out-of-the-tunnel thing too.
i was thinking more about the blue. what is the blue? i saw it in new york too. also, maybe our friendships are connected (or we are friends with similar entities) to the fact that nos fijamos de la luz (we notice the light).
Jenna,
I loved it when you linked your being able to really SEE the object of your love with Tralfamadore.
Vonnegut really got his writing claws into a concept there.
Did I ever tell you about the time when I had a very, very (much too very) brief conversation with him?
I will try to remember to tell you.
(But of course, if we were both Tralfamadorians, you would already know about it … and I would know that you know.)
Things are always soo much better for me in a Vonnegutian world.
So it goes.