Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

One Christian's non-prostelytizing,

no-desire-to-covert-change-or-fix

journey toward a wholeness in (and of) faith

Moving?

Or not.  I posted here over a month ago that I'd be "moving" my blog - several of you contacted me saying you were interested, and one even asked why I was moving.  I think it was because I felt the need to start over or something - like I'd posted too many whiny, complainy blog posts about my ex, and it's just embarrassing later to have spilled your guts in a really bitchy way.

But.  I've still not started a new blog.  Well, I have - sort of.  I'm blogging for an online sustainable business community - and getting paid (which means I'm officially a writer now, no? :-P) - but nothing personal.  And, I've decided that what I'm needing is not a new blog, but actually no blog.  There are a few reasons for this.  One is that I simply don't have time to do this right now.  Two is that I never go back and read anything I write so having "the process" down in black and white isn't really of any use to me (no, I've never regretted not taking documentation during special events).  Three, I've been doing a lot of research and reading (not to mention my own experience) that says that RELATIONSHIPS are what we need the most - and the close, intimate relationships I desire/need (and, I would argue, we all need) are simply not facilitated by spilling one's life out over a blog.  Four, I don't want my life spilled out all over the internet.  1) It creates a false sense of intimacy - people don't have to do any "work" or spend any real face-to-face time with me to get to KNOW me if I just plaster everything all over the internet for God knows who to access.  2) My "processing" - which would be the reason I was thinking of starting a new blog chronicling The Journey post-college - is not really done on a blog, but in journals, and, as I've alluded to , in relationships.  Five, I'm paranoid about the copyright issues that come from bloggong.  No, I've not looked into it, but that's obviously because I'm not that dedicated a blogger.  Six, the reason I got a blog in the first place was actually because everyone said I "should" be doing that, since I'm a writer and all.  But, my vocation as a writer has been more and more clearly and sharply defined over these last months, and I just don't think blogging really fits into that picture.  It feels manic and energy-consuming to try to gather large followers (I've never been very popular and my self-esteen is just too sensitive to (losing in) that kind of competition); that's not why I write.  Of, course, I don't write "just for me", either - that's called diary-ing, and...I'm a WRITER, thank you.

Sooooo, all that said, I'm keeping this blog, I'm just not going to be using much, if at all.  I'm still following some of you though. :-)

Moving

Now that I'm about one month shy of a college graduation, and some interesting things are starting develop, I've had this idea that this is a time in my life to sort of be starting over.

So, I'm probably going to be starting a new blog soon.  Anyone interested in knowing where I'm going, message me, leave a comment or, if you've got my e-mail addy, let me know that way.

I am the Bus

   This morning, I had errands.  I have never missed the car I gave up nearly 4 years ago for a move to the West Coast, not even when the two errands I have to run will take half my day, and not even when that day is planned as a "me day".  Most of them are, and most of the time, I end up feeling so guilty about making my life all about me that I abort Mission Relaxation for Mission Power Through, getting astonishing heaps of almost nothing done.
   I had to take three buses to get home via the vet's office after my first errand - a drop-off at a United Methodist Church of allegedly earthquake-relief kits my church small group had pieced together after the leveling of Haiti and before our days each became 1.26 seconds shorter.  I was thinking about how this was not enough, not yet excepting that life could be meaningful even if I didn't single-handedly alleviate the world of all of its problems, not yet believing - really - that the world already has a savior, not yet frustrated that my bus was allegedly five minutes late.  It was not that I was in a hurry.  It was that I was still glued to the pages of a friend's copy of Ann Lamott's books even though I'd had to shove it hurriedly into my purse after nearly missing the stop in front of the United Methodist church and I wanted to get back to it.  Even though, just recently, my church's congregation had also lost a thirty-seven year old to cancer and Lamott's writing had tossed that back-burnered pot of God-doesn't-take-care-of-us anger into a rolling boil.
  I was mumbling to myself, maybe to God, out of that churning as I boarded the 7-minute late bus to take me into downtown, thirty-minutes out of my way, to switch buses to get back on track for the vet's office.  My high-maintenance cat, who might as well have been a perpetual two-year-old without language, needed a special prescription diet, which meant a trip to the vet's office at least once a month.  Since he was currently staying with my pastors, I could only guess how fast he was through my wallet.
   Five blocks and five paragraphs later - after the initial debate of whether or not to "fling her child off a mountain" (let him hang-glide for his seventh birthday) - I heard an amplified version of my mumbling.  Some woman was sitting on the bus stop bench, hurling spit, insults and her fists at the sky.  The overly friendly bus driver asked the freshly-boarded passenger about the woman, and probably not just to make conversation.
   "Oh-ho," the man jingled like Santa Claus himself (nevermind how much he looked the part), "it's a real shame about those schitzophrenics.  Golly, I can't even imagine hearing voices and not knowing what's real.  It's just so sad."  The driver shook her head slowly in agreement and muttered something I couldn't hear.  I went back to reading my book.
   Before I'd have liked and before I knew whether or not Ms. Lamott was indeed going to toss her child off a mountain, I was downtown and I had to get off.  I couldn't read while walking - my "practices" had only ended in bruised noses and broken glasses - so I emerged into the rip and scream of urban life.  The precious sun (this was Seattle after all) was muted by a haze from a group of pregnant womens' cigarette smoke and my own thoughts muted by shouts of newspaper sellers, shoe shiners, and the occasional "schizophrenic."  The three blocks to the next bus were all I could take of city and I entered through my next bus' doors like they were the pearly gates.
    My dad had, on my family's first visit to Seattle, referred to his bus trip to the baseball game as an "urban experience"; this next bus trip served as a rather visceral reminder.  Heroine needles, a large lump of a black man sprawled out across the back row of the bus, a clingy reek of hangover.  I tried to read, tried to soothe the anger pot, letting out some steam in slow, somewhat metallic mumbles. 
   And then, a computerized voice zig-zagged from behind.  I'd never liked it when I had just done something embarrassing, something it was all I wanted to do to hide, and it instead turned heads, but this was an involuntary reaction.  I couldn't begin to guess what sort of thing had produced such eerie, mechanized speech and I had to see.  My eyes passed completely over it the first time, it was so not in my frame of reference: a marshmellow-cheeked man with a wandering eye and dented skull was holding a half-stethoscope tube up to his throat and flubbering his lips.  It didn't match up in my head.  I heard the computer voice again and darted my gaze around as if to catch it in the net of my vision.  Finally, I matched the sound with the movement of this ragged-y man's mumble-y mouth.
   My stop was fast approaching.  I attempted several inconspicuous neck-cranes before I got off, only to receive some increasingly disapproving glowers to Machine Voice's conversation partner, a slice of dark skin and hair tangle.  I was out of the city, and I was not out of the city.
   On the next bus, I tried to pick my book up again, but there were now too many voices clawing around.  The schizophrenic's rant, Ann Lamott's inner wrestlings (she did not hurl him off that hulk of a hill), the machine-aided ether-worldly, and now, this constant sandpaper grumble which I initially mixed up with my own boiling.  But it was much too gruff, and much too slop-like, to be my own.  Too mushy to interpret, I roved my eyes around, searching again for the source.  A soiled splotchy green coat hunched below an enlarged sock again the bus window, a constant fog stream against the window giving the clue that not only did there exist person inside or underneath or buried within, but that said person was the culprit of flooding the bus with unintelligible words.
   Every passing second I thought he would stop.  But not even when the poor elderly lady with the poorly dyed hair turned and shushed him did he quit, not even when two other passengers looked at each other (and then at me as if to invite me in) and laughed out loud did he even acknowledge that anyone else was present with him in his own sloshy, splotchy, soft world.  At some point I didn't note, he'd left and the two laughers conversed briefly.  Something about it being rough not knowing what's what, something about sadness and schizophrenia, something about laughter and then laughter.
   Ever since then, I have always wondered how anyone knew these people were schizophrenic.  I've got a dear friend whose symptoms, at least when they are described to me, call up "schizo" in my mind, but they're treating him - rather aggressively - for bi-polar disorder.  Hearing voices, hallucinating, paranoia, all that.  More than that, though, does being angry or mumbling to yourself (even if it's constant) automatically pin you as schizophrenic?  Maybe people are just angry; I've heard it said - or read it written - that it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.  And really - at least for me and my own voices - it's sometimes much easier to talk to myself than it is to talk to God.