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email: noreia@planet-save.com.

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body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by bodyPUNKS!

body jewelry by BodyPUNKS!

 

are most people uncomfortable with living in a state of questioning?

i met a girl through letters, kind of. two years ago. we bonded because we were both questioning. it was a windy season, a season for melancholy guitar music with deep-voiced singers, for swapping cassette compilations and watching the stars under crisp nights. i walked around campus with her tapes in my five-dollar Walgreens cassette player with no rewind button, listening to music from Final Fantasy or the lamenting tones of Rufus Wainwright and Jason Wade.

we went to a coffee shop i'd never been in and the words poured out, unblockable, as we absently stared out the window or studied the old, brown map of the world on the wall and wondered at the number of individual lives on this planet. we laughed at the poor people around us, trying to enjoy a peaceful cup of coffee, having to put up with our crazy philosophical discussions and exclamations of, "i know!" and "exactly!" we fed off of each other's questions and frustrations. it felt like water, like soothing night, like rugged deep and human. as a friend just commented about us in an instant message, "man, good, crazy things come when the two of you are put together."

i don't know exactly what triggered the end of that phase of life. there are things i could mention. the day she walked up and said, "guess what happened? i went to church with my mom yesterday and i talked to all those people i used to judge as hypocritical and fundamentalist and judgmental, and we really connected. i realized that we're all human, we're all trying, and i decided to give my life to Christ."

i didn't know what to feel, then, in my dark clothing and the shadows under my eyes. i was happy for her. i am happy for her now, with her really nice job playing guitar and singing in church every week. i am happy she's been accepted to a great Christian college, that her dad, an agnostic for years, has started to go to church, is calling himself a Christian. i'm happy that she still questions, but never God, never Christianity. never shaken, right? from what i see.

she is liked by everyone. she is so sweet. she sincerely loves Jesus as if he were her best friend. and i don't miss that time, not in the way that i know you can miss things, with tears always leaking and that aching, that cave in your chest. i am not bitter.

i'm just wondering why i always come back to the questions. the real ones, the deep ones that threaten to strip away all labels, all the security of belonging to a group-ideology, all commonly accepted answers. why i feel more real in that than in any attempt at "accepting" what's right without feeling it first, finding it in my gut, wading through it and growing into it.

are most people more happy in the comfort of answers?

"World is all backward . . . People base their lives on convenient recollections and are considered sane. People who look too hard for truth are considered crazy. Did you know that most of the people in history whose books have lasted more than a few centuries have been either thrown into jail or murdered by angry mobs? All the prophets, the great philosopthers, the disciples, people like Joan of Arc, great novelists . . ." -- Lani Garver, What Happened to Lani Garver, by Carol Plum-Ucci.

i'm not saying my friend has settled for comfortable solutions. i just don't know her as well, don't know what's really in her head most of the time. but thinking about that time in our lives of swapping cassettes and autumn leaves and so many questions, and comparing it to now, makes me wonder about myself and why i feel most alive when searching, when trying to force my eyes open a little bit wider to the world.

i wouldn't trade it.

Posted by: noreia at 23:22 | link | comments (3) |