WordArt

21 things

Alanis Morissette came up with this list in her album, Under Rug Swept. I actually really like it. I’ve never really been very good at coming up with lists about things like what I want in a lover. It was always just cheesy stuff like, ‘cute, good sense of humor, Christian…’ and of course the word lover was never allowed to title my list. But upon listening to this song, and really getting to like it, I think that her list really resonates with me. I compiled it into a number list to make it a little more my organizational style and cut out the repetitious chorus stuff, for any of you who know the song and are tempted to call me out on poor quoting.

So, I choose this too, as well as some of her other sentiments about wanting things in a lover. Enjoy…

21 Things I Want in a Lover—Alanis Morissette

1. Do you derive joy when someone else succeeds?
2. Do you not play dirty when engaged in competition?
3. Do you have a big intellectual capacity, but know that it alone does not equate to wisdom?
4. Do you see everything as an illusion?
5. But enjoy it even though you are not of it?
6. Are you both masculine and feminine?
7. Politically aware?
8. And don't believe in capital punishment?
9. Do you derive joy from diving in and seeing that loving someone can actually feel like freedom?
10. Are you funny?
11. à la self-deprecating?
12. Like adventure?
13. And have many formed opinions?
14. Are you uninhibited in bed?
15. More than three times a week?
16. Up for being experimental?
17. Are you athletic?
18. Are you thriving in a job that helps your brother?
19. Are you not addicted?
20. Are you curious?
21. And communicative?

these are 21 things that I want in a lover
not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer
I figure I can describe it since I have a choice in the matter
these are 21 things I choose to choose in a lover

I'm in no hurry I could wait forever
I'm in no rush cuz I like being solo
there are no worries and certainly no pressure
in the meantime I'll live like there's no tomorrow

Flushing. I feel myself sliding down this spiraling, swirling, sickening chute, down into dark places that make me uncomfortable, that I am scared to go. I fall through the plumbing of the fall out of my choices, of my character, of my life, and land in a pool of sewage, speechless and in tears. This is no place for God. This is no place for something as beautiful as Love, as strongly cleansing as Love, as rich and healing as Love. But He insists on meeting me here. I want to get up, I want to clean up, I want to climb out, take a breather, rinse off. I’ll come back later, I’ll work through this then, when I’m a little stronger, when I’ve learned a little more, when I’m a little more supported.

God will not stop me from running out. God will not insist that I am in no state to be leaving the underground. God will not grab me firmly by the arm and say, if you climb out that pothole you’re out for good. He will ask me to stay, to let Him clean me rightly, but He will not force me. I am uncomfortable and unwilling. So, covered in the filthy waste of my sin, I emerge to restore order to my mucked up world. I am sludging infectious slime around the streets, my odor permeating the home that I return to for some cover up perfume and a breath mint. I drip muck in the halls at school, my stench follows me to work, and as I pull myself close to people in relationships, or physically intimate substitutes there for, I gain no clarity or strength or purity. I only spread the filth around. It’s on the paper I turned in, it’s on my timecard, punched away, it’s on the body that made mine feel so much better when I closed my eyes and let the edges fade.

And for all that I’m leaving behind, you’d think I was getting somewhere. But this slime is growing, regenerating—It’s coming from me. I filled that whole sewer with the nasty shit inside me. I am fucking disgusting.

Something beautiful calls. Despite my despair, I want so badly to believe that this sirenous symphony is calling me. I follow the gentle whisper to a place deep within me where I hate to go. There in the inner breeding pools of my sinful sludge stands my Lord and Savior with a shovel and soap. “Let’s take it out of you. You can’t take yourself out of it, but I can take it out of you. Be here, be in this, don’t deny it, don’t run, just be here, with Me, in this dark, reeking, hideous place inside of you. Let’s clean out this part of My home piece by piece.”

And so He works in me for hours that feel like years and sometimes years that feel like hours. He scoops up some hurt that’s rotted here and become resentment. He scoops up insecurities that have fermented and grown between us. He picks up wrong decisions that I won’t let go of, and begs me to let him make them right. He scrubs out judgments and pride that have stained my soul like tar stains in an old smoker’s house.

The detox is grueling. I’m not complaining; it’s only necessary. As we purge my insides, there is a deep sense of pain and loss and sorrow and regret. Like scrubbing away dead tissue and infection from a deep wound, there is a pain to taking away what can’t be there for things to become healthy again. As we remove some things, other things shift and become uncomfortable—sickening even. We find things that I had forgotten to hate in myself, and we find hate that He wants to take out of me for good.

I’m not sure how I got here, but I’m weak, empty, exhausted. I would not trade this journey for a thousand good days. Anyone would like to be the God who gets to give you high-fives and tell you He loves you in warm fuzzy ways. But the God worth following is the one that will wait for you in the most unfit places and lead you through them. The God that will shovel your shit and make you be there for it, all the while loving you beyond all understanding.

God is good. Unceasingly. Praise Him.

I don’t have much to say these days, but I can say enough to tell you why…

When I began writing, my good friend and mentor, Teal, told me that often it is difficult to write when we feel good, because we are busy feeling good, and don’t think to write. When we are feeling bad or going through unpleasant times, we come back inside of ourselves to reflect on our pain or conflict, and there we find words that become the art that we share.

I would like to be the kind of person who can express the good days and the bad days; I see the beauty in both. But maybe on the good days, we share the beauty during the experience, with the people we are sure can validate our positivity-- and then on bad days, the beauty is in the process, by which we find the words that are worth sharing. I never want to share my sadness, just the beautiful real that I experience in it.

But right now, I just want to keep living the pure, sweet, simple, pleasant life--while it lasts. Thanks to those of you who share that part. The rest of you will have more to experience when this time has ended…

Distraction, destruction, detachment, disengagement, deviation, desertion, death.

I am hyper-aware of this point in relationship. I watch myself grow. I revel in my own honesty, my realness, my likedness in this state. It is still new, slightly unbelievable. I enjoy it, I believe briefly that life could be full of this healthy, honest, enjoyable type of engagement from here on out.

But in the back of my mind there has been a list of questions. Questions I am in fact not too good to ask, but too guilty. These questions assume a want in you. They assume a need for your approval, for your like, for your desire. I catch myself as these questions surface, I call them a silly part of my past and I wait for them to be argued out of existence by my logical filtering squad.

These doubts are not part of the dream. These questions not a piece of the quest. So they have no place, but buried. Do you find me attractive, pretty, or did you ever? It’s insignificant, he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter, never will. Do you think I’m cheap, shallow, a product of my culture, do you judge me like the rest of them? Don’t think that, he’s not judgmental, be more confident, don’t fear judgment unless you’re guilty. Are you just playing along, letting me be stoked to be with you, letting me feel close, but really having that feeling in the back of your mind that you have to end it sometime soon? This is your anxious past, this is the part of you that is only allowed to be disappointed in yourself and no one else.

I celebrate my reality, and then recoil into non-existence. If you acted hurt, or confused, that might have added the touch of drama to have made it all worth it, so keep that in mind. Suddenly, I will be colder, harder to get a hold of, less sensitive, less subject to my own whims and emotionally initiated activity. I will circulate the idea of your feelings, but in the end decide that you are relieved.

I lived this dreaded life five-years-ago. And someone taught me to believe the reasons why the questions were silly, but still to ask them if I couldn’t believe myself. He taught me to remember that relationships are more than about me, not so that I would feel guilty and selfish, but so that I would remember that the risk runs both ways. To another, I am a risk worth taking, just as they are to me.

Don’t just settle for being loved, love’s everywhere. Your parents love you, and I know you wouldn’t date them… when he told me to embrace the idea that my soul could actually have another half in this world, in this life. That would be nice.

Anymore, it is not about romantic relationship, it’s not about marriage and soul-mates in the eighties-movie-deeply-staring-into-your-eyes-and-i-knew kind of way. It’s about my never ending homesickness, my discomfort on this planet. I asked God why I always felt this discomfort like blue jeans made of sand paper. It isn’t unbearable, but it sure as hell isn’t comfortable. But even then, there was a peace to it, that even alone on this planet I would have a dream to keep me moving forward in joy.

And as I accept my solitude: my need for God only and no home, no family, no lover; I encounter these people, like places where my soul does feel at home. One is the blue jeans minus the sand paper, one is that china team shirt that is too soft not to be important, one is my nest, one is my sunbathed deck on the Mediterranean coast, one is my studio in Frisco.

So I trust God, but not myself. What if I accept that my soul can be comforted, rested, embraced, nourished, in a way that includes relationship with other people? Then I feel better, happier, healthier—nervous God will take it away, some brilliant lesson of His, of course. Afraid that I will love having a home so much I will forget to be engaged in life. Terrified that I will forget that heaven isn’t here.

And in the quiet of this late night, God calms my soul. He asks me to enjoy the home. We know I may never own a house, a new car. The nice things may stay at my childhood home that I abandoned as I left my mother and father and married my dream. The Great Giver asks me to put on the comfy jeans and soft tee, to sleep in my nest, absorb the sun’s energy on the deck, let art revive me in the studio. He loves me so much. He gives me homey places, though he has taught me not to need or expect them. He loves me so very much.

7 August 2006 Because sometimes it is nice to remember out loud.

I love my life.

It’s just really good. Full of intensely beautiful moments. I am overwhelmed at God’s grace even more for blessing me with such moments so frequently.

Tonight I spent time with Evan. Our friendship has been immediate and honest. We understand, we can be silent together. We dream, and we share the sadness of having to wait to reach our dreams. We have some kind of cool freedom.

Tonight, I drove down to Evan’s new place. I met Ray and Forest who are his very cool new roommates and old friends. They are positive. It seems like the healthiest situation I have ever heard of Evan being in. I love it for him. We chatted with Forest for a little bit, enjoyed the company, the ease of a good fit. I toured the house. There was so much positive energy, I could tell Evan was really excited about it. It was so cool. Then we decided to go get some coffee and hang out where we could talk and share stories.

We swung by am/pm, got coffee. It was funny, it was easy, comfortable, free. We drove down to the circle and walked through an ally and up the almost empty street. We observed everything and mentioned whatever seemed coolest or best or different or whatever we cared about. I like this brick ally. That light is so ally orange. I love these old houses, so much better than new ones. The fountain’s different. Let’s not walk by them. Wow, this is beautiful. What a cool tree.

So we land at Chapman university. An absolutely beautiful campus. Evan is undecided on beauty and aesthetics and relativity thereto pertaining. I will educate him when I have made my decision on the matter, because this will be my retirement philosophy project. We walk at a fair distance from each other, down a sidewalk path, around a grassy courtyard between prominent seeming halls. And there is a tree, almost spherical in it’s attempts at reaching light. Heavy and rough, it’s low trunk top makes it an easy climb. So Evan and I take the challenge and find our places in the tree. I am cold and uneasy balancing with so much caffeine and so little rest. Evan is strong and confident in his actions. The tree is his jungle gym, a vacation spot from real challenges. We stand and sit and climb and sip our coffee. Evan smokes couple of cigarettes over the next couple of hours. We sit and talk, and Evan tells me his stories. This is part of the deal. The predetermined plan, which we can never come up with or stick to. He has lots of good stories, about life and medication and about his secret life as a mad scientist’s apprentice. He sounds brilliant and he is excited and dreaming out loud in the language of research chemistry and physics. I am of course aroused. No, but really I am amazed and engaged and charmed and thrilled at this side of Evan I have not really seen.

I don’t know Evan that well, and somehow we have skipped years by understanding. Somehow.

We sit in the tree for a long time. The sprinklers run for what seems like forever. We hope they will turn on below us—stranding us and improving our night’s story. I have lost a shoe and we drop our coffee cups as we finish with them. Eventually we are cold—I am cold and Evan has to pee. We continue our walk through the campus. Briefly peering through hall doorways that janitorial crews have left unlocked without knowing the kinds of strangers that would be looming about.

We appreciate the architecture to each other. We realize how much more our education would mean to us if it came in such a beautiful package. Evan hopes that those who get it, appreciate it. There is art everywhere. Sculptures and dedicated buildings and placards on everything. The schools emblem is so prominent it is probably imprinted on the toilet paper.

We continue to wander, find Evan a bush, Check out the law building, at what is now about two-fifteen am. We know it’s late but don’t say a thing. I don’t ask what time it is. He is the one who has to be up early, so he can call it a night when he wants. I didn’t want it to end. No way.

We walked back, close enough that I could feel his warmness in the distance between our arms. We noticed antique shops, and shared our liking of full veranda patio decks. I am glad that Evan appreciates them the way that I do and the way that he does as a constructor.

We find the truck and drive back and cherish all of the moments. They are so real. So very real and so special. We get back to the house and we talk about being tired and late and Evan should not still be up. But we could sit there all night. The two hours left of it. We get out and I side hug Evan because we have predetermined this as acceptable, I made sure of it when we said hello. And he tells me that we can hug for real and he is incredibly strong and his construction muscles lose there subtlety with the closeness. We express gladness about our time. We want to do it again. I will call him. I tell him it will be next week. He says, yes, he’d like it to be soon. He works a lot, but he’s flexible, so I should call whenever I’m free.

I seem to be getting a lot of that lately. I guess that’s okay. Just don’t ever make me choose. Let the choices make themselves before I even have to be involved.

And still, I love my life. It is so easy. It is so free. I have known pain and God graciously ended it before I gave up. I know this will not be the last pain. I thank God for this season of pure grace. Of pure love. Of pure giving in relationships like I am experiencing in most real way in this season of my life.