Headed West

I'm headed West with a catcher in the rye, a book thief, a velveteen rabbit, a bird, a bear named Grugsly, and a ring on my left hand.

I'm walking long and tired to get there, and I've spent more than a couple of nights staring into the night sky waiting for the sun to shine on the "there" I've been walking to because that is all going West is:

It's that dream that's on the other side of here. It's what settlers were frying in their pans over camp fires and the flame that they danced around and the stars they stared at. It made wagons' wheels turn, drew maps, and wrote stories.

The West is where people who can't sleep go, the ones who lie awake staring at their fans. It's the place where wandering feet wander to.

Some call it Colorado, or Spain, or Prague. Some call it Auburn or Kiesal or Overall. Some call it New York or California or Italy.

I'm not sure yet what I'll call my West because I'm still walking long and hard looking to find it. But what I do know is that those who go looking for it tell good stories,  learn something about the world and themselves, their regrets are shadowed by their joys, and they sleep well.

For now, it's Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. It's still and quiet and cool. It blows through my open windows and rustles the curtains. It gives me time to sit in my chair, to place words side by side until I've written a story which in itself is wonderful because it's been so hard to find time to write this past year.

Right now, my West is something restful and quiet and far away from everything familiar. But in that space, my writing has come back to me, I've gotten reacquainted with humming, and I feel I could run outside for miles and miles.

My room overlooks a pretty green yard. Iris, the cat, watches me and keeps her distance most of the time. I've found her weakness in belly scratches and I'll give the conclusion of that fact when the summer ends. My space at the magazine is spacey and the windows are nice. People are friendly and try very hard to say all of my name. Work feels more like something I do naturally than something I have to study to do or try to do. But mostly, my drive to work is in the middle of nowhere and I get to forget everything in those 18 minutes driving and enjoy my 6 hours while there.

In my mind, the West was always depicted as something vast, something that stretches for miles, but since being here, and after an 18 hour drive to Burlington, I know that's not true. Sometimes it's a person, sometimes it's a chair, and sometimes it's a lake. Sometimes it's just a tiny thought, or a food you wanted to try, or a prayer you wanted to say or a sentence you wanted to write. Sometimes it's loving someone, doing something that scares you, or trying something you've never done before.

And like I said a long, long, long time ago when I first went to Auburn, "if you do what you've always done, you'll be who you always were". And what's the fun in that?

"In Sickness and In Health"

The irony of working in places like hospitals and clinics is that as you attempt to make people better and healthier, you end up getting sick. I've been more sick over three months than I've been in the past 5-6 years. only Irony would find this amusing.

I won’t complain too much, however, because as I am momentarily married to my bed, I have all the time in the world- or until Tuesday- to write. Joy. 

I have a whole other blog post I wrote during a lunch break last week  on the burnt-out-career- housewife, but that takes too much thought, and in my current delicate condition, I’m feeling much more sentimental and emotional. That could be the cough medicine, steroids, and antibiotics talking, but I’m sure that being sick always makes me feel mushy.

Why would being sick make me feel mushy? Because being sick takes one to a very vulnerable place. I don’t know what it is. When we’re healthy, we: go to work, eat lunch, have a coffee break, work, work, work, go home, clean or do dishes, make dinner, Facebook, check e-mail, neglect twitter altogether if you’re me,  do whatever things we do normally, and then go to bed.

I forget how much I need other people when I'm feeling well. Oh, but when I'm sick,  I'm reminded of  how much I long to be taken care of, to have someone make me soup, for someone to rub my achy, tired back, and push my kind of gross sick day hair from my face, and laugh with ( or at) me when I get weird from taking a good ole trail mix of medicines...which leads to incidents of knocking over CVS Christmas decorations, and then proceeding to be very ungraceful and clumsy in my effort to cleaning them up...(this flaw of trail mix medicine is also it's strength is that you really  don't care about the people watching or your purse hanging over your head, or the awkward position it takes to gather sparkly Santa wands...)

All I want on sick days is to be taken care of. I care very little for anything else. All I want is company, and to snuggle up, and to know that someone cares. Someone really cares; because only the people who really love you would cuddle next to a sick, coughing person, or not laugh at you when you’re being overly emotional…because it happens (I've cried three times today. Once over getting a shot in the bottom, once sitting in the waiting room after the shot in the bottom, and once in the car because shot in the bottom added a new achy place). And so you know, I'm one of those people who shudders at the thought of crying in public, so you can only imagine my attempt to use my long hair as a wall between me and everyone else in the waiting room as I tried not to cry. Fail.

Anyway, I am always convinced that I just need someone to be there. The shot in the bottom and crying in the waiting room would have been significantly better, and I even suspect funny. And how I love funny. 

I’ve never thought too much about, “in sickness and in health,” at weddings, but I was thinking about it today. I was thinking, “dag gummit, I’m going to be sick in the future, and I’m going to want to be taken care of.” And I feel so sorry for the people who were promised “in sickness and in health,” but the person promising it didn’t really mean it. They kind of meant it, but not really. I also feel bad for the people who are loved less as they get older, and wrinkly, and their hair turns gray, because the truth is, that isn’t love at all. They are loved less because the people who promised to love them, in fact, loved themselves more.

 I’m very new to what love is, but I know it isn’t selfish. I know it’s sacrificing. And I also know that it make snotty tissues, and hacking up lungs, and crying over aching hips not so bad. 

I think we spend too much time romanticizing the idea of love. We associate it with dancing, and laughing, and roses, and youtube proposals (as a blog I read earlier mentioned), and youth, and health. I think we forget that we’re people who have tiring jobs and schedules, and who age with time, and who get old…really old, and sick. I think we associate romantic gestures like face held kisses, and dates with candles, and walks late at night, and being completely uncomplicated altogether as being the epitome of love moments. Right? Those are the moments that we assume will make us feel the most warm, and lovey…because maybe we’re taught to think that happiness revolves around everything being good, and in order, and just as it is "supposed to be."

 I’m realizing that it is in the messy moments that you love the most. When someone is hurting, or has had a bad day, or is sick, that very vulnerable part of their heart is exposed. The door is cracked for you to walk in and to love them…and I think we feel it more then. I think taking care of someone removes the selfish thought that you did a good job of doing your hair, or setting up the perfect date, or any kind of you at all; there is only the person you are caring for, the unselfish want to love them and care for them better. And this is, dear reader, is what love is all about. If you can't promise to sacrifice the "you" for "us", you shouldn't promise love at all.  

In the quiet of the bathroom, on a cold floor, or in a tissue ladened bed, or  when you need help changing out of third-day clothes,  you realize that that familiar face loves you, not because you are all put together, or you look very attractive that day, but because they love you.

I’m sure that couples who have special dates, and “perfect” long walks, and a great story altogether love one another, but I’m recently convinced that the ones who get up at 4:00 in the morning to take care of the other, and who clean dirty soup dishes, and who know how to be unselfish in caring for the other, love each other much.

So here’s to sick days, and being reminded that we should all learn how to love each other much. Because what’s a great love story without stuffy noses, achy backs, and sick day hair? What's a great love story with selflessness?

Welcome Hamsters

I live in an older white house on the south side of the city; creaking floors and recalcitrant doors are common. It's a charming house, with hard wood floors, and white walls and beams, and my favorite, a claw-foot tub. It's the kind of house that yawns and stretches throughout the day as the sun rises and the afternoon air becomes warm, sometimes humid, and when the air begins to cool, it settles. I have four windows- grouped into pairs- that take up almost two walls in my room. My room is never without sunlight, but I wouldn't dare cover them with thick curtains. The house was in some kind of disarray according to my two new roommates, but as the week has progressed, I feel we have cleaned and organized to the point that the house that they once knew is becoming that house, again.

My house is next to an elementary school. Or in other words, my house is next to a giant, brick alarm clock. This school is the reason why my street becomes a river of cars every afternoon, Monday-Friday, from approximately 3:00-3:30 PM. At the first of last week, I learned this truth, and after collecting a very rude note left on my windshield when forced to park alongside the road where I sat in  a stalemate, I learned that "that" neighbor was to be avoided and that the southern hospitality of Monroeville need not be assumed here in Birmingham. However, I was almost exited to have such  a rude handwritten note left on my car, and so I actually kept it to put in my journal.

Birmingham is: a city on hills, a city on wheels, a city of trees, and a big grid of streets and avenues (I've come to think of circles and drives as no-man's land between North and South).  Birmingham is also a coffee cup that never empties. People drink coffee here like everyone's car must be drinking gas to get up the hills (not me though, I'm getting 35 mph in my Tucson on average). I had one of the best iced vanilla lattes that I've ever had at Urban Standard (and a honey cream cheese topped blueberry muffin). Though, I missed the cozy and warm feel of Overall Company dearly. I just don't think Overall can be beat. So if you're still in the Auburn area, make the most of that place, and those squashy couches and perfect playlists.

UAB's hospitals and centers are a hamster maze. As an intern, I'm clearly the hamster. I will be that person looking at a map desperately trying to figure out how to navigate the genius that is the second floor bridge system between hospitals. However, it is only genius when you understand it, so not only am I a hamster, I'm a stupid hamster that can't find the cheese to save my life...yet.

Orientation in a nutshell: "what have I done to myself?"

No joke, I'm pretty sure I told that to the people who called Monday afternoon.

"Hey Martha Lee Anne, how did it go?"
long pause as I tried to use my squishy brain, "what have I done to myself?"

No worries though, following the reassuring session with old interns, I realized we all start off as stupid hamsters and end up as Registered Dietitians. I'm sure that even Darwin would find that kind of transformation impossible, but I'm telling you, it happens.

Students at UAB are fancy pantsy. There's a constant stampede of high heeled shoes through the school of health profession's doors each morning as interns are being oriented. The sharpness of those black pencil skirts and patent leather shoes make me reassess my sweet dresses and belts and flats. However, I realize that after 8 hours of standing, I will still be standing, and they will be crawling, and so, I happily sip my morning coffee and ignore the allure of those four inch heels.

I ended the week at a small place called Rojo that serves Latin and American food just off of Highland Ave. I found the cluttered things on the walls interesting and the tangles of colored lights outside on the patio charming, and strangely, relaxing against the quiet of the dark park across the street. I had arugula chicken tacos with pineapple salsa and they were everything a taco should be; at least, in my opinion. We ended up meandering over to Parkside where I had a coffee stout and I tried out my x-ray vision powers to see through two fur trees in an attempt to watch the musicians play, but it seems I don't have x-ray vision, unfortunately. I liked it there. I liked watching the people there: the break dancers, the acoustic players, and my friend Hillary laugh.

Saturday, I spent all day with Alex watching movies and documentaries at the Sidewalk Film Festival. We saw: Pride & Joy, The Most Fun I Ever Had With My Pants On, Muscle Shoals, and Animals. They were all good, but Muscle Shoals was definitely the best documentary and Animals was so weird that I loved it (of course). After watching Pride & Joy (A documentary on southern farming, food, and cooking) I think the food trucks selling friend chicken tenders, catfish, shrimp, and wings at the Jazz Festival a block or two from the Alabama Theatre made bank.

Sunday, I washed dishes, tidied my new room, looked at the things that need to be hung on the walls and let them stay on the floor. I probably worked on this blog that I'm just now finishing about three weeks later.. but I still think of my roommate's words in relation to navigating Birmingham, "the grid is life."

She's right, it only takes knowing the grid to know Birmingham, but I still think Birmingham should have a sign that says, "welcome hamsters."

Writing a Beautiful Story

Last Thursday, I drove three hours from my hometown to Santa Rosa Beach to visit my oldest brother, sister-in-law, and their two children. Driving down mostly back roads in the rain, I listened to two podcast by Donald Miller, writer of Blue Like Jazz, Through Painted Deserts, and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Maybe he's written more, but those are the three that I am most familiar with, though I haven't read Through Painted Deserts yet.

The two podcast were "Love Turns the Light On" and "Telling a Great Love Story," and yes, he talked about "mooshy" things, BUT he mostly talked about writing a beautiful story with your life, a better story (also the central theme in A  Million Miles in a Thousand Years).

I've typed up the first 15 minutes of the first podcast. Take note: you can't hear his tone of voice, but he's incredibly sarcastic and funny.


"I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. There aren't a lot of people who are talking about the importance of purity. In Portland- where I live- it's a pretty Godless city...purity is kind of laughed at which is really incredible to me because what I do for a living is write stories. And if you don't have purity in a story -and not like sexual purity- but like defined boundaries in the context of a story, it gets really muddled.

 Like, if you go to a movie, and you're not exactly sure of what the protagonist wants or who the enemy is, you just get really bored. Right? It's totally true. The next time you get bored in a movie, ask yourself a couple of questions. What did the protagonist want? My guess is you won't know. you're like 'that's why this movie sucks.' And then, like who is the enemy? 'I can't...it might have been the guy with the hat...but I can't...' so when there's not like clear stuff, stuff going on in a story, the story gets really muddled. And it's not just true for stories, it's true for life.

I mean when things, when you don't know what you want or what you stand for, life gets really muddled. And when you really don't know who the enemy is, life gets really muddled. Like when you can't tell who the bad guys are, life doesn't make very much sense, right. Or when you think the bad guys are the good guys, all of that, it just doesn't work.

When I figured this out, I was having coffee with a friend- kind of a hipster guy who spends several hours picking an outfit that makes it look like he doesn't care..haaha, you  know what I mean? ....So, I'm having coffee with my friend, and he kind of blah, blah talking, 'well, you know life is meaningless' and then just keeps going. And I used to hear that  (you could put that on the state flag of Oregon -life is meaningless- and people would just kind of buy it, because that's jut how people kind of think...and that's fine, we've all heard that phrase a million times).

 But I've been studying stories, and I realized 'wait a second, life is not actually meaningless.' If you went to a movie, and the movie was meaningless, and you walked out of the movie, you would say  'you know, that movie was meaningless,' what you wouldn't say is 'all movies are meaningless.' That's just not true. Some movies are really great and exciting, and some movies are just kind of dumb. So when my friend said 'life is meaningless,' I did a very rude thing. I said,

'well, what if life is not meaningless, what if just your life is meaningless...'

so we're not friends anymore.

But it was, it really was kind of a moment when I realized, wait a second, you can make life very meaningful. You can actually have the experience of a very  meaningful life, if you have some very healthy boundaries, if you're a protagonist who knows what they want.

(He goes on to talk about producers who come to him and ask if they can make a movie based off of his nonfiction book, Blue Like Jazz) . They come to town, they sit around my living room, and they say the book would be about you, only you work in a factory. And I'm like, okay, well I never actually worked in a factory. Do you know what I mean? And you could work really hard and work through the conflict to get....but they were just lying. So I was like, let's just make a movie a lie, let's just lie...

So I raise my hand and I'm like, 'well, what's wrong with my real life.'
 and Steve says, 'well Don, you know in screen writing you take certain liberties and make ideas and make things very clean so that audience can understand.'
And the other screenwriter- Ben- looked at Steve and said, 'what Steve is trying to say, Don, is that your real life is too boring to be turned into a movie. You know, we have to change some things.'

And so, I actually thought to myself, 'what if I changed those things in my actual life? I mean, what if like, the stuff that makes up a good story, what if I actually just did that and saw what happened?' Do you know what I mean?

What if like you're sitting in the theater that is your mind- right now- what if you're sitting in the theater of your mind, and you're watching your life happen out of your eye balls, and you're saying to yourself, 'this movie sucks.' Or 'this movie is boring.' What could you do? What could you do to change that, and it turns out that there are actually a lot of things that you can do.

For instance, you can take enormous risks. You can. If you take enormous risk, meaning there's a possibility that you could fail or look like an idiot, your life will get more exciting. Now, it may be a tragedy, and that's unfortunate, but it will get more exciting. Uh, you have to take risks in stories, right?  And the other this is that the protagonist has to want something that is extremely clear. If you don't want something that is clear, like if you wake up in the morning  and you don't know what you want, you are in a boring story. I promise. If you wake up in the morning, and you don't know what you want, you're in the theater of your mind watching a story that makes no sense. OR- here's one- if you want something, but the thing that you want is really stupid, your story makes no sense, well it makes sense, people are just checking out.

So, let me tell you a story, and I'll just make this up. Act one, right. The movie comes on and you see this guy, and he's a young guy. He works in a grocery store, and he flips through this magazine at the grocery store and he sees an advertisement for the new Volvo Station Wagon. And he thinks, 'wow, I want that.' Well,  now we have stuff of story because we have a protagonist that wants something. Now the other thing that has to happen in the story is conflict.

The more conflict, the better the story. Did you know that? The more painful your life is, the more meaningful your life becomes. Doesn't that suck? It's absolutely true. It's absolutely true. How many of you can testify? Seriously, 'I am in an extreme amount of pain, and my life is meaningful, and I hate it.' But, they kind of go hand-in-hand.

So, he want the Volvo, and he realizes, 'it's going to take me three years of working at this grocery store to get the down payment on this Volvo. So the whole movie is him overcoming the conflict of like mopping vomit off  aisle four, right. And after three years, he goes to the dealership, he makes a down payment, and he drives off the car lot in the Volvo. Are you crying at the end of this movie? Just be straight with me. Are you saying to yourself, 'Man, if he can have the Volvo, maybe I can have the Volvo.' No. That movie sucks. It really does. That is a crappy movie. you're literally, an hour an a half in, you're going, 'is this really what this movie is about? He wants a Volvo?'

But we live these stories. These are the stories that we actually live. And then we go, 'life is awful.' No, life is fine, your story is awful. Life is fine, I promise you. It is great. Look around at the mountains, I mean there's a setting that God has made on this planet for you to tell un-freaking-believable stories. You get up tomorrow morning, and you watch the sun rise, and you tell me God did  not design you to live an unbelievable life.

Here's the problem. He gives you the pen, that's what sucks.
He says, 'you write it' or 'lets write it together' is really what He's saying. Lets write it together. I mean, God is a really good Dad, right? So, He's like the dad who gets out the big piece of butcher paper, and gets the crayons out, and He just says, 'what do you want to draw? Like what do you want to do with your life. What do you wanna draw? If you could do anything, what would you want to do?' But He's a good dad, so He doesn't mean like, anything you want- you know what I mean?-

Like conversations with God are like this (they used to be like this):

Don: God, what would thy have me thou do with my life?
God: I'm not an Englishman, I'm not Shakespeare....please don't talk to me that way because you people are creeping me out.
Don: God what does thou want me to do with thy life hither to you?
God: Don, what do you want to do?
Don: God I only want to please you, I am your servant, what would you have...
God. No, no, no, Don. I'm serious. Like, what do you want to do?
Don: No, no, no, God, I only want to please...
God: Like I heard you, for the third time. What do you want to do? Like I put in your heart the ability to desire, so what do you want?
Don: Are you serious?
God: I am dead serious. What do you want to do? Let's do something together.
Don: God, I want to be a photographer at Mardi Gras.
God: No.
Don: You said anything.
God:  I meant, like, you know what I mean, not that. No, hat's immoral  and I know...
Don: It's not immoral, it's just pictu..
God: "I know what you're going to take pictures of. You can't fool me. No. Please, no. I will beat you on the side of the head if you ask me again.

So there's morality, right? There's morality, there's guidelines, there's discipline, there's wisdom. Psychologist talking about in raising healthy children, you have to give the child what is called "shared agency." So you both have power. God gives you some power, He guides you. And there are times, don't get me wrong, when He has a specific Will for you. They're usually kind of seasonal.

Like, 'I want you to do this,' and you feel these things. 'I want you to go do this thing for me.' They're seasonal. But I don't believe God- for most people- has this specific thing that controls their entire life. Now, biblically, we do see some examples of God having a specific Will for a specific person, so we need to create some caveats here. I just want to make sure you're not left out.

 If, biblically, if your donkey talks to you, God has a specific plan for your life. Or, let's just broad categorize this, any household pet, animal, God has a specific plan for your life. If you are a virgin, and you are pregnant, God has a specific plan for your life. You need to see a therapist, and then maybe cool things will happen. But do you see what I'm saying.

And you know what, it's scary. I understand why people want God to have a specific plan for them and not want to take responsibility for the agency that He has given them to live something really beautiful. Because if you do it, if you do take the pen and write a story with God, it's extremely scary. It's so scary, because what if you screw up? I mean, if you screw up and it's His plan, you can go, 'hey, it's His plan...wasn't my plan.'

People will come up to me and say, 'I just believe that God has a very specific plan for my life, and I don't believe that I can just take the pen and say I'm going to write something very beautiful based on what I know about God and my relationship... He has a specific plan'. And I just go:

'Well, what are you doing then?'
'Well I'm waiting....'
'Like for what? What are you waiting for, and  what are you doing while you wait?'
'Well, I'm shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond right now.'

So, God's plan for you, His specific plan for you, is to wait, and shop at Bed, Bath, and Beyond while you're waiting because God must be really stupid or a really bad story teller, right? No.

I think He has something for us. I think it comes out of the desires of your heart. I think He has a wonderful story for you."


If I can find a way to post them on the blog, I will, and you can listen to them for yourself if you'd like. I'm inspired. I'm motivated. I want a really, really beautiful story. And the originally muddled vision I had for this blog just got clear.

So let the writing begin.