The Lovely Bones

10 Beautiful Things

9. Dry Leaves

There are no leaves in Arizona. There are stubby green things that yellow and fall off in a carpet of crackling wildfire-risk, but there are no leaves.

I think if everything in the world died and I was the only one left, I would miss leaves the most. On vacation to the East Coast in autumn, the trees were orange and red and yellow as if on fire. Then when the leaves fell, people walked on them. A leaf would become brown and wrinkled, desiccated, and shoes would crunch it into the pavement. Once it wasn't bright and golden, it was worthless. All the life was gone from it. There is nothing pretty about death.

And yet there are monuments to the dead. Great bronze statues immortalizing those who have gone before, who have done something that no one else did. Names, carved in neat lines into metal and stone. That is death, too. So why don't we shy away from it?

I remember freshman year of high school, the buses would stop at two schools. At the second, I sat in my seat staring out the window. All the trees along the side of the bus pick up lane shed their tiny green stubs at the same time. The gutters clogged with little bits of yellow from the flowers-that-aren't, to be swept away over the weekend. Then the dead things would fall again and the cycle repeated itself.

When there was wind, it picked up the leaves. They danced in eddies, sometimes falling, sometimes drifting away, somewhere else, somewhere not here. Even though they were dead, they went places. The world picked them up again.

Then in other places, where the trees dropped their leaves in great piles to wade through. Those leaves barely moved in the slightest breeze. A lot of those leaves are never picked up. They grow brown with age and disintegrate slowly until the winter snows cover them. When the snow clears again, they are gone. All things dead get buried eventually. No one remembers the leaves of the last autumn, only this one.

I think dry leaves are beautiful, strange as that may seem to those who acquaint beauty with glamour and makeup. But leaves on a tree are pretty, things to be smiled at and admired from afar. Dry leaves are ground beneath the soles of hundreds of shoes. Dry leaves are buried by snow and dry up in the sunshine. They become uninteresting and flat, slivers of the past trampled beneath the present. But they are broken up and become dirt and ash and fertilizer. We walk on dry leaves. We breathe them in. All the time we sweep them away into neat piles, we are creating order out of chaos. Life from the bones.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it” (The Lovely Bones 320).

A Certain Slant of Light

10 Beautiful Things

10. Light.

I wake up to the blinds pulled shut and a dark, dark room. If I peer closely, I can see the outline of books against the far wall, and the faintest reflection on my computer screen. I wake in darkness, thin and fragile. The only light I see slips through cracks in the blinds, which are white and horizontal.

The light enters there. Morning sunshine is golden white, purer than the purest metal. Those fey strips of brightness are strangely lovely against the dark. They are neon letters written in a dead language, still alive and vibrant but unreadable. Someday perhaps I will understand what they say. Then, I know, I will have lived.

Slants of light decorate this strange Earth. In a prison cell in Somalia, the morning sun creeps through gritty bars. And a prisoner wakes in the darkness to watch the light. He doesn't know why it's so fascinating. The Sun has risen for millions of years, has cast all manner of rays on objects near and far, alive and dead. Yet this slant of light is special because it is his slant of light. The beautiful thing is not that the Sun is shining, but that the Sun is shining on these bars, in this place, on him. It is the loveliest thing he's ever seen. It is as delicate as hope.

Enter now the pink-bedecked bedroom of a five-year-old girl. Unicorns prance in wild lines across the walls, obscured by shadow. Her nightlight burnt out, plunging the room into darkness. And so she wakes with tentative blinks, wondering why there is no light to guide her, only the sunshine leaking beneath her floral curtains. It scares her. Her heart beats faster in an well-known rhythm. An ancient dance. Even as her mind registers fear, her eyes soak in the light. She doesn't know why it calls to her. It is a siren's song, these strips of piercing gold against the velvet dark.

Somewhere deep in the snowy mountains of Northern Europe, a thin woman wakes up late. She pushes up from the hard bed, resigned to the work ahead of her. Then she stops, her gaze caught on the sunshine creeping between boards in the wall. It is an ugly house she has, but it serves her well enough. Winters are spent hunched around a fire until only embers remain. Summers are spent chopping wood with callused hands. There is no time to waste staring at a trick of the light. But the way it shines carves pretty patterns on the wall, reminding her of all the things she dreamt of, until her dreams died beneath the weight of life. She is reminded of that weight every day. She never thought about her dreams until now, remembering what it feels like to plan and imagine a life beyond the constant cold and ache from work. The light stirs the shadows in her heart.

Light, that light, the light that throws away the dark of reality and reveals the truth nonetheless. Because that which is true is not always real. And from a little girl waking in a pink room to a prisoner watching the bars of his cells, they all feel the brush of light through the cobwebbed shadows.

A stir of brightness, a certain slant of light.

"Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone" (A Certain Slant of Light).

Cherry Blossom Extract

I am constantly amazed by the progression of life. How one day, we are all best friends and then the next day a new routine sets in and we are no longer anything at all besides strangers passing at night.

It is also very curious how everyone loves each other but no one really likes one another.

I wore my track shirt to band last night, the one that says: "Don't do your best, do better than your best." If I was on the football turf with people that instead of trumpets and flutes wore spikes and throw discus, no one would have said anything. They understand the notion. Such is the world of track and field - numbers on scoreboards where milliseconds really do matter (at least in the sprints).

I kept getting comments from the band kids though. Not that they don't strive to do better than their best, but we aren't graded in any real way. We only have four categories to fluctuate in between and band is more of a team than I would consider track.

The comments I kept getting last night where along the lines of, "If you do better than your best, you have to do even better than that the next time and it will keep going and going! You'll never win!"

Exactly.

That is exactly how you win.

It was so easy to fall into routine at my shadowing. I would come in right when they opened and put my stuff down, talk about music and the differences between it and entertainment and what one I was truly working for. Then we'd lapse into a comfortable silence. Then, twenty hours later I'm not part of that routine anymore and it feels...fast as if I've gotten another grey hair or a wrinkle. I like both though, they make me feel distinguished.

Pride and Prejudice

Today I shadowed a lady at the International Student Center at a university. I met two girls from Kuwait. In the lobby while we waited, an Asian guy walks in. He stands around for a while, watching the sports broadcast on television. It was a soccer match between the PRK and AUS.

Then one of the girls looks over at him and asks, "PRK? What's that stand for?"

And everyone in the lobby sort of shrugs. I want to tell her it stands for the People's Republic of Korea, but then it would seem like I'd been eavesdropping. So I don't say anything.

The girl's sister says, "You're Korean, aren't you? Which do you support?"

It took me a moment to realize she meant, North or South Korea? And the guy replied, "South."

The girl said, "Of course."

And suddenly on the television, the camera pans out over the crowd. A big sign is displayed by one of the fans that reads, "Kim Jong-il thinks I'm at work". No one in the lobby says anything. I guess there wasn't any need.

Through the Trees

Most of my days for a couple years now have been pretty similar. I try to run daily and incorporate at least the smallest music into my life. I’ve lived in the same house for as long as I can remember. Right now, I’m in limbo between my junior year and my senior year. We’re getting a new band director and I’m drum major. The people I know, they’ve been with my for years.

Second semester junior year, so just a little bit ago, I did Fusion Indoor Percussion. I experienced a little taste of something outside of my home town.

I fell in love with music again.

It’s weird because I’m always writing about running or music it seems. That is what I’m made of though. Those are the things that have brought me to today and I like to say this a lot even though it is kind of silly: “Music has saved me in a lot of ways.” Running has given me something to strive for but let me tell you something, the first time I ever stood on that drum major podium, I cried. I’m more open about this now. I can hear my voice telling anyone who can listen and then I laugh, like it was a hilarious moment. It wasn’t but I look at that memory fondly. What I always forget to add is that one of the reasons I cried was because of the kindness that strangers showed me. I didn’t conduct in front of my marching band the first time - I got to conduct in front of a camp of other drum majors. All they said were words of encouragement.

I think that if you were to separate my life into categories and instead of chronological order, simply through them in a pot of frequencies, I would have spent most of my life with the schools I attended. There is a point where music and running over laps. Once a month each semester, twice a school year. Life gets hectic and I feel like I live in my car or at least, on the pavement of my high school. Not under blistering sun or anything but to face sunsets and sun rises. To sit with my music coming from headphones or my thoughts to fill voids.

And you know, I’ve changed.

Something is happening to me and I don’t know what.

No scratch that, I certainly know what is happening to me. Life is.

I just got back from a run. My feet are sore in weird spots and sweat is drying at the nape of my neck. The run wasn’t the fastest or farthest I have ever gone but it was a good one nonetheless. I thought about things. I haven’t really thought deeply like that in a while - it was refreshing as if all the dust blew away in the wind and now all that is left is a shiny lacquer finish.

Tomorrow morning, I leave for the United States Military Academy Summer Leaders Seminar. It is a week long experience for those competitive in a nomination and appointment to the academy to not only take the physical but to get a taste of what life as a cadet is.

I’m scared.

As in, I’ve never been more scared in my life for the safety of my future. It seems like tomorrow is the end of something and the birth of a completely new experience that I’m not ready for.

I think I’ll be okay and eventually I’ll be far past it but it just seems like everything is going to change.

I hate to steal Sara’s thunder but last night, I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It was incredible and it got me thinking. As I was running, trying to find a direction in my life, does it really matter? As long as I’ve got friends, I don’t think it does. I think it’s important for an individual to be happy and to look around as what they’ve already got.

No matter where I go in life, I think if we get to choose our heaven, mine would be the place behind my high school. After the neighborhood and past the cactus is a place made up of brush that turns green during the monsoons and yellow for the rest of the year. The trial is carved out of ATV tracks long before I ever discovered it. It is peaceful. It is also the closest I’ve ever come to that elusive ‘perfect run’.

Through the Trees - David Tolk

PS Sorry for taking so long to blog. I’ll have to double post this summer. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say anyway.

Handmaid's Tale

You sit there and you think about all the pieces that went missing. Like strings, the parts of the past connect back. Raise one hand and a million are caught on the delicate hairs of your arm. Spider's web.

Every day something is left behind. Even if it's just skin cells, or a chance of excitement, or an opportunity missed. Then the chances one takes leaves others unchosen, and those are webs, too. Until your skin droops and eyes grow weary and mind numb. Until you grow old and there is no part of you not weighed down by the sheer number of strings. All the choices and chances, conscious or otherwise, make a person old. Everyone grows old. That's why I don't believe in vampires. Vampires couldn't exist because they don't grow old, meaning they have no webs to weigh them down.

Then the web grows closer the tighter you shut your lips. The words gather up, build there, where no one can see. People walk around with secrets on their tongues like bittersweet candy. Some love it; love the thought that they know things no one else does. Some hate it, and spill the words on the ground like a wave of knowledge and gossip and secrets. The words sink in there. The earth eats them and where they encounter human skin, people eat them too. We live on words.

That's why censorship never works. People want to know. People always want to know, whether it's something damning or liberating or superfluous. Every bit of info is hoarded or discarded like bits of nuts packed away for winter. Only the best stick, because only the best weave their webs around us. We can't help what we hear. And what we hear draws strings, more strings. We want those strings, though they make us older and cynical or hurt. Because occasionally, the strings are pure. They hum a pleasant tune, a familiar song, in our ears when we think of them. While censorship saves us from the hard things, it keeps us from the good. So much nonsense to sift through, but it's all worth it to find one gorgeous golden strand and wrap it close around ourselves.

I couldn't live without speaking. Being able to speak and write make me more important than someone who cannot communicate, because I can contribute and we are judged by what we give and do. No vegetable was ever great. No procrastinator, no slacker, because the great ones always communicate the ideas and thoughts that strike us as great. The golden threads or the black ones, the pure that hum and hum in our minds or the evil ones that squeeze us tight. They affect us, the two, which is why we have beloved leaders and hated tyrants. They wrap webs around us of their making and our own.

Handmaid's Tale for Offred, who found a voice even when the web around her dragged her down. We live by what we do with what we've got.

The Great Gatsby

It's cliche and old-fashioned and unpopular but I really do love America. I think it's the one place where I could be a tattoo artist and chef and diplomat and no one would think twice. We're sort of made of those kinds of dreams; the ones that don't necessarily fit right. The ones that take sorting out and sometimes at the end they still don't fit, like chewed-on puzzle pieces shoved into place. But it's the ability to keep shoving, keep on going, that makes us different. It's the idea that if we shove hard enough, for long enough, someday those pieces will fall into place. No matter the pieces, the shape or size or vastness, they all will find a way to make a picture, a picture so wide and beautiful only we can see it--we, the individual--because it was always our dream to begin with no matter what outside forces mutilate it, no matter how it changes and withers over time, since in the end it was always originally our American Dream. And it always will be.

I think the things they should write on gravestones aren't dates or "Beloved" or "Father" but dreams. So when a stranger walks by the grave, they will stop to read each inscription and the person will mean as much to them as some distant relative who visits once a year. So that the person, whether they got their precious dream or not, will be remembered not for achievements but for intentions.

Which begs the question: what would your inscription read?

I believe in two American Dreams. I believe in the popular dream and the personal dream. The popular dream being what everyone thinks they should want: children, a good job, a nice car. The personal dream being a motorcycle, a silly tattoo, a one-night stand, a sailboat, a calm day, to survive a flood, to kiss a girl, to buy a mule and sell the house. The small goals that build and build, when taken individually mean little, but when stuck together with cement hope equates a skyscraper: a person.

Then we live and day by day the cement erodes from wind and rain and voices too loud and voices that won't speak anymore. Sometimes a tree crashes down and the building falls. Sometimes there are few cloudy days, sometimes there are nothing but cloudy days and the distant winter hope of a sun that never quite appears. For some, the dream is in every ray of sunshine, horded away and cherished. For others there is no such thing as sunlight.

What is my dream? I know it. I do. It lurks in me, behind every thought and word. It's there, right there in my chest where my soul is. It's in my eyes, but it never reaches my lips. If someone asked me what I want in life I'll say, "To live" because that's as far as I can define it. To live in a way no other has--that's a given. But to live in a way that at my deathbed I will not say "I did all I could" but I will say "Damn it, one more hour so I can finish this chapter." That's a life well lived.

I pray to the gods of dice that I get a decent roll. But I know if I don't I'll just roll again and again, even if I'm that one-hundred-billionth chance that never gets beyond a pair of ones. I know it because that's a part of my dream too. I will fail again and again and I will always try again, because it's my dream to try again and succeed. Everyone great has failed and tried again. More cement between the bricks, I say.

So when someone asks me what my dream is, "To live" is all they're getting, and maybe I'll point to my chest and say, "The soul wants what the soul wants".

I chose The Great Gatsby for Daisy. She's a ditz who fell out of love and in with money because she was too preoccupied reaching her dream to realize exactly what it was. Not money, or power, but Gatz. That moment when they realize they've given up the thing they want the most is terrible and poignant because it's true. True things always hurt and heal the most.