In the beginning, man was a hero.

He stared deeply into her eyes, her beautiful blue eyes. They were the sea to him, and the sky, the endless sky. Across the street a grandmother of six sparkling toddlers was mugged. She screamed for help. He told her she was beautiful, that she made him feel alive, that he was happy now that she was in his life. The grandmother lay in her own blood as the teenage miscreant made off with her purse. He kissed her goodnight. He whispered above the echoing groans, "Darling, I waited my whole life to meet you. You gave me a reason to exist. I'll never leave. Darling, without you, I'm nothing at all." Three lives sputtered, three lives stalled, three lives ended. God looked down from heaven and rain began to fall.

Cold and confused

Atop my bed are blankets piled so high that when I pull them back and set my feet on them, the blood rushes to my head. That's how much I hate the cold. I dearly look forward to Hawaii. 6 days and counting. And so much to do between now and then. I really don't entirely know why I feel so important when my schedule is full. Really I think the important people are the ones who don't HAVE to do anything. I'm not complaining though, as I still have had time for friends. I've seen a number, and there's been wonderful phone calls with more.

***

I saw National Treasure tonight, with my dad. It was entirely entertaining, yet vapid. The most profound thought I garnered was when Ben Gates kisses Dr. Chase in the crypt. He pauses as they explore the crypt, pulls Dr. Chase to him, kisses her and continues on his way. I thought, oh so profoundly, "I think I'll do that someday." What I meant was that I want to have a romantic sidekick along on my adventures. Now, the thought occurs that I really don't. See, Ben and the doc got married. That means they live together. That means their lives are so intertwined that if he wants to go to Boston, he has to tell her. I don't want to have to tell anyone before I go to Boston. I don't want to have to ask anyone if my plans are going to ruin theirs. So I'll sacrifice the kissing and the committed companionship so that I can have the independence. It'd be romantic to have the girl along for the ride, but then it'd be epic to have only friends. National Treasure is romantic; Beowulf is epic.

Oh, and to illustrate the conflicted mass of cells in my mind: I don't want to have to tell anyone before I go to Boston, but I desperately want someone to call when they notice I'm gone.

Miracle Drug

A child once said, "When you stop opening presents on Christmas and just listen, love is what you'll hear."
Yes, it's a merry Christmas after all. The decorations didn't do it; the ads didn't either; but Christmas is not something passive, that's done to you. Christmas is a reminder to do something. In itself, Christmas won't do any good, but it can spur us to it's namesake, Jesus. It was my choice to ignore the gifts and listen to the love in my house and my choice to remember Jesus. And when I did, the bad didn't seem so bad. It seems Christmas is a typical medicine: it only works if you choose to take it. And when you take it, it works.

Goodbye Christmas, you were nice

It's that time of the year, Christmas I mean, but I'm not nearly ready yet. I feel as if I've just awoken for a test, ten minutes late. Now I sit before the essay questions with two erasers on my pencil and a mind that won't snap out of it. No, no... that's not it. Its more that it seems as though the days forbode Christmas cheer tomorrow, but small clues abound that it's all a farce and tomorrow we'll wake up to discover the date is really January 9th. See, there's Christmas decorations everywhere; Santas abound; "Happy Holidays" is the new "How are you" and at every glance there's an ad for Christmas. But in the mall today I saw a boy's shirt, on a chubby, young kid who couldn't find his mother, and it startled me. It said "You don't know me." The boy glared when I stared too long; "And don't try to figure me out," he seemed to say. His shirt was characteristic of the "seasonal" dress. Other than employees, I didn't see anyone dressing Christmasey. Everyone stayed in their stereotypical dress: thugs in Fubu, miniskirts in Uggs, dads in alma mater sweatshirts, and a gender-confused pre-teen bore a shirt that said, "Pretend I'm not here." Real Christmasey. The shops and TV and radio are all decked in Christmas, but the people, the ones who don't stand to profit from Christmas, are stuck in January. They still battle the same problems they do every day: this year Christmas hasn't made the shit go away. The diseases of the world have built a resistance to the Christmas antibiotic. There'll be no reprieve from the sickness any more, no chance to catch our breath, no time to enjoy the season, no snow, no cheer, no hope. Christmas has lost its touch: don't count on the cancer to regress this year. It's time to find a stonger medicine.

So, for what it's worth, Merry Christmas.

Monday

Last Monday, the 13th of December, about 9pm, Christmas music was forever ruined. It began with insomnia. I had slept fine between 6 and 7 that night, but when I went to bed at 8 I merely got tangled up in my blankets. So I was wide awake at 8:55 when a friend called, "Will you walk over to the president's house with me?" Every year, on the night before finals, the president opens his house for Christmas carols and cookies. Students gather for two hours, singing endless choruses of all the yuletide favorites. Seeing as I wasn't sleeping anyway, I consented. And now Christmas music is ruined.

We walked and talked with frostbitten breath until we reached the president's welcoming porch. Leah pushed open the door and I followed. A blast of Christmas cheer nearly toppled me back out the door. The room was fireside toasty and smelled like pines and cider. Every face was a beloved friend and every friend smiled back at me. They sang some carol at the top of their lungs, but I was too shocked to join them. A sensation I cannot justly describe so overwhelmed me that I'm sure I looked the idiot in my stupor. All I comprehended were three words: I finally belong.

Later in the week, amidst the stress of papers and tests and presents and goodbyes, a popular Christmas song came up on my playlist. I'm not sure which it was, but I could not stand it. It carried no power, no romance, no excitement. It was just a simple song, sung quaintly off key. I turned on U2 and forgot the carol instantly.

Reflecting later I decided I really had nothing against Christmas songs. Rather, I was just done with them. I've reached the climax; there's no possibility of any Christmas song ever comparing or exceeding those many carols that night. The emotions cannot be matched. It's as if every carol leading up to that night was a sign beside the path, enticing me further, each suggesting a greater joy; now that I've arrived at the glorious joy, I'll not consider the way again.

What I love about being home

An entire Star of Jasmine, inside my house!
A bored beta fish.
The neighbor's annoying dog.
My king size bed.
Adam's peanut butter, on demand.

I finally decided what annoys me about being at home: my family is always looking to the future, so much so that they never enjoy the present. I'm tired of planning to be happy when I can be happy right now.

Remind me to tell you about last Monday.

To you and your kin

From my window on Whitworth I spy: six friends huddled against the wind around a storebought birthday cake with twenty candles. One holds the cake, one shields it with a piece of plastic, one fiddles with the matches. The three others laugh at the antics, and make their own: a hug, a push, a dance. Happy Birthday to you, but blow out the candles before the wind can, and then race with us inside... it's raining. And they laugh.

When I see a circle of friends, I am flooded by an emotion that feels like nostalgia but isn't. I've never been in the circle. I wonder what it's like. I've constantly been the guy trudging past circles with my hands in my pockets. I feign apathy: who cares what happens in their stupid cliches? They only circle up because they're so immature and insecure. Oh to be like them. And then maybe I'd belong? Maybe then I wouldn't be lonely anymore? Nah. They probably aren't happy either. I hope they aren't. But they were happy tonight. At least I hope so. And why not? Can't any utopian ideal be achieved? Can't anyone be truly secure? Can't there be one place the guard can be dropped, where we are happy with no qualifications? And before we die? I hope so. Happy birthday happy people, oh happy, happy people.

It all comes back to me, now?

The stories of my childhood make me laugh, and they hurt too. On one of those stupid half-cloudy days in south Seattle, just outside my sister's room, my cousins zipped me up in a sleeping bag. By the time I got out, flustered, pissed, arms flailing like a retard's run, they had the suitcase waiting. I'd never been locked in a suitcase before. And I wonder if the pain is because the small suitcase cramped me, or because they conceieved of my torture at all.

Lovely scented lies.

The rampant obsession of every college student these days is, dare I say it, love. Friends visit, friends ask, friends wonder, friends call, with but one aim: to discover love. What is love? they ask. I don't think anyone is all that eager to find it; only they wish to know it when they see it. Or rather, perhaps they search its shape like a soldier his enemy; to know it even by sillouette or shadow, they think, will make them safe.

We are irrationally afraid of love. Admit it. You'd far rather know a person hates you than have to wonder and postulate about their love. It's not sure; it's risky; it hurts when you're wrong. Every time I come near to love, I recoil; I run. Love is far too fickle to be trusted; therefore it must be avoided at all costs. Now there are obviously different forms of love, each to be treated as distinct. One need not run from agape, or "charity" as the British call it. Agape is wholesale, impersonal, unconditional, safe. Storge is generally safe too: the sort of love your grandparents have for you, or that friend you've known twenty-three years; it's a faithful, aged love; just like we do not doubt the integrity of a castle that has stood for a millenia, so we do not doubt a love of decades.

As children, these two loves are all we experience; agape from the church and teachers, storge from our parents and surrogate aunts. As children, we trust love. We venture into the world, eyes wondering, arms outstretched and are promptly slapped. Stunned, we run to our parents, to the safe people we know, who hug us and hold us and tell us, "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." We are to give it another chance, they tell us; we're still young. And so we are slapped again and again, every time told to give it another shot. "Better to have loved..." We grow to hate the word for the pain it connotates. We remember the days before we risked love out there and consider returning to the safe loves we've known. Too late though; the damage is permanent: we realize upon returning that we can no longer trust the safe loves: we realize it is they who have sent us again and again to this intolerable pain. We are alienated and isolated; we withdraw into ourselves and will to never love or be loved again.

In our pain all distinctions of love are rain-streaked windows. We forget the difference of agape and storge from the dangerous loves; phileo and eros. Phileo is friendly, "brotherly" love. It is the love between mere friends and companions. It is not the love of bosom friends; that is aged; that is storge. Phileo is dangerous because it is poignant and yet it is the love we least expect to be recinded. When it is broken we are perhaps more shocked than with eros, as we know eros is a risk; phileo we believe we can trust. Eros is romantic and erotic love. It is the love that develops between lovers as they experience each others' bodies and idiosyncrasies. It is not lust. It is the most dangerous of the loves because it demands us to completely sacrifice for the benefit of our lover. This love corrupted produces stalkers and evil ex-lovers. As Vanilla Sky reminds us, "Your body makes a promise." To break the promise is a deathblow.

Now, as children we are accustomed to agape and storge; as adventurers we are slapped by phileo and eros. It begins in grammar school when our "best friend" plays kickball instead of joining us on the monkey bars. And then again when the neighbor can't play baseball; some "girl is coming over." As we begin to discover the joys of gender we begin to experiment. Notes passed, friends as liasons, "Do you like me too?", kisses behind bushes with our friends watching, and then the inevitable, "I think we need to break up." We are crushed. We made a promise. They promised us. They lied.

As we lose our trust in the dangerous loves, as a result of pain after pain, we grow insecure with any vestige of them. With all our hearts we want to believe they like us, maybe even love us, but our reason refuses to admit that they might. And when the girl smiles or the boy drops by we laugh it off, "Oh it's nothing serious," and count the days till they hurt us. During the encounters, we brace ourselves with shields and armor -- a brilliant smile, a witicism, an insult "You're so dumb!" to say, "Don't get too close, I might just have meant that," a cold shoulder once in a while, a "deep" conversation to test the waters, anything really, except for us, the real us. And so perhaps they do fall in love, they do find phileo and eros in our company. Inevitably though, the facade must crumble and the real us be discovered. And the real us is not who they found love with, so they leave. We are crushed again. We resolve to rebuild the facade, and stronger this time. We are lost in our illusions. We decide no one knows us, nor could possibly love us, and so we withdraw and hide amongst our fears, and resolve never to be had again.

Too often we get our wish. We are never had again. We are never loved again. We are hermits beside Walden, wondering why we risked love, wondering what love is, and what it was when we had it, and wondering why we cannot find it again. And so we fall in love with ourselves, or with nature, and worship some ideal of what love could be. And there, in our hermitages, alone and unloved, we die.