perhaps

One of my friends once told me that I viewed everything as if it were a piece of art, and that I tend to modify things so that they fit into my vision of what that piece of art should be.

"For instance," he said, "after we came back from the beach today and it was raining softly and peaceful and warm, you swapped the upbeat music for something slow and pensive. 'Because it's just that kind of afternoon,' you said."

I don't know really know how I was supposed to take it.  Maybe as nothing--just something he had observed after years of witnessing the way I paired soundtracks to the weather to what mood I decided to be in that day.  Maybe as an insult against my overly Romantic (dare I say it?) cheesiness.  But I took it as a compliment. One of the greatest compliments I've ever received, actually.

And I guess it really is true.  Because alas, it's raining again. Softly. And I've chosen Iron and Wine as my background, mint tea as my poison, the futon next to my window as my location, and Augustine's Confessions as my activity.  Every few minutes, the sound of the raindrops landing scattered on the sidewalk simply thrills me.  Because everything is exactly how it should be.  Every sense completely satisfied to my liking.  What else would anyone do on a rainy evening?

This tendency to form motion and mood around the general atmosphere of The Moment may not always serve me, however.  If you've talked to me at all in the last few weeks, you've probably witnessed a version of Denise who is much less composed, much less fun, much more whiny, and much more prone to tears.

And not really any closer to getting into medical school than before.

Which is, after all, where she should be.

The problem is, you see, that my idea of should doesn't always match up with everyone else's idea of should.

A doctor should love people in general and care about strangers. And have a background in learning about the value of the human person.  And should love the idea of caring about the patient more than the disease, hoping that one day she'll be able to do just that.  And should be driven so much by passion that nothing she could imagine could possibly slow her down.  Except, perhaps, what an admissions committee might tell her a doctor should be.  That might catch her off guard.

A doctor should have an impeccable science GPA. And score a 35 on the MCAT. And just love science. And find joy in General Chemistry.  And really love a laboratory atmosphere.  And shows leadership. And goes to office hours to talk to chemistry researchers about life.  And have spent time in the hospitals all over the globe.  Oh but she should also be unique in some way--different from the all of the other hundreds of Jesus-loving, service-oriented, over-achieving, science-minded Pre-Med majors at the University of Notre Dame.

So how do I make my idea of should fit into theirs?

I haven't really figured that out yet.

But I guess I should remember that it is January the 29th.  And I live in Northern Indiana, near Lake Michigan.  And it should be 2 degrees and icy outside.

Instead, there's a 56 degree breeze blowing in that earthy smell of rain--a perfect compliment to mint tea, Iron and Wine, and Augustine.  That's my piece of art that is today.  And it really should not be. But I'm so glad that it is.

ya esta?

there's a last time for everything

So it was about that time when we stopped and looked around at the newly-greened grass and jagged rocks and golden-hour tinted orange-brown buildings and wondered why we traveled so much during the semester.  Why did we ever want to be anywhere but right here?

"I don't know," my friend said, trying to justify our restless behavior. "I talked to people who didn't travel as much as we did, and they said that Toledo got kind of boring.  I guess you just run out of things to do here."

We half-smiled at the concept and realized right then, during our last week of calling this place home, that it really, truly, dearly had been home.  In every sense of the word. 

Lately, I've been obsessed with the aspect of the Eucharist being exactly what it is because it's ordinary. Boring. Bread and wine.  And I've been trying to find that--that same supernatural essence--in everything else I call ordinary.  This semester it's been difficult.  Nothing that has happened this semester deserves the title "ordinary."  It was that concept, that idea of Toledo being boring and routine with nothing really to do that made me realize I had picked the perfect place to spend the past three and a half months without even knowing what I was choosing.  I guess it just kind of found me.

Ordinarily, there was a crazy man who rolled his own cigarettes and sang to himself outside the Church beside my school.
Ordinarily, there was an alarm hidden somewhere inside my closet that rang every night at 11:30pm.
Ordinarily, there was an old man who sat with me as I waited for my English student right as the sun set on Monday evenings and never smiled back.
Ordinarily, there was a faceless, rough-voiced man who frequented the bar outside my bedroom window.

Those little, neutral, ordinary things that made Toledo less of a vacation and more of a home.  There weren't bad, nor were they necessarily good, but they feel the same way a really old scar feels, slightly raised and comfortable and part of you.  And I'm sad to let them go. 

I'm thankful to have studied in a place where there's less to do.  It left me with more room to just be.  And that's all anyone really wants, anyway. 

Fro-yo after Fi-lo

Here in Spain, it is always sunny. 

So sunny that my friend from Madrid doesn't own an umbrella and doesn't really know how to work one.

So sunny that my philosophy professor comes into the classroom wearing sunglasses and complaining that he wouldn't mind a more subtle, a more gentle cloudy day every once in a while.

So sunny that I feel an accute dissonance when listening to Christmas songs that summon down the snow.

So sunny that here in Spain, on days where I choose to sleep with my heavy shutters open, I am woken abruptly by the sunrise. 

After nights where I have a good long chat with a friend and laugh a little with my host family over dinner and finish reading the poetry of Fray Luis and say my Night Prayer and fall asleep early

The sun rises

After nights where I try my hardest to do my homework, but simply can't get anything done becuase I only wish I were somewhere else, with someone else

The sun rises

After nights where I can't really tell you what happened because I don't really remember, and all I know is that I feel guilty and wish the night had gone differently

The sun rises

Here in Spain, it is always, always sunny, and no one deserves it.

And that is the Sacred.

vignettes

I've never had an appreciation for modern Catholic architecture. 

This year I entered the incomplete Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and felt mature and fresh at the same time.  I let rainbow lights dance on my cheeks.  I was inside of something being born. Age-old poliphonies forced their way out of high definition speakers.  An usher told me I couldn't take pictures, not in this part of the Church. I should also be quiet, she indicated with a finger pressed to her stern lips. This section was reserved for prayer.

Of all the Cathedrals I've visited in Spain.  With their Gothic flamengero architecture and vaulted ceilings and smells of incense.  With their relics of saints and holy statues and representations of wealthy bishops.  With their choir lofts that maintained traditional social structure by cutting the church in half and preventing the poor from seeing the sagrada forma.  Not one has told me to put away my camera.  Or to stop talking.  Or to pray.

I smiled at the usher, absolutely delighted.  And kneeled down to say an Our Father in perfect, sacred silence. 

And that is how you spell hope.

-----

I've never seen Notre Dame football slip into the number one position.  I've never seen Touchdown Jesus sneak his way onto the cover of Sports Illustrated.  And I feel guilty, or fake sometimes, knowing that as much as that means to me right now, it does not mean as much as that girl beside me whose blue and gold blood had been passed down from her grandfathers on both sides.  But her smile and her tears and the feeling of knowing I made somehow made the right decision three years ago is enough, isn't it?

-----

I've never received advice from Little Sister before.  I've never been more satisfied with a piece of advice.  I've never been laughed at for thinking too much.  I've never been so humbled by simplicity, not from her.   I've never been more thankful for the age of 16. 

----

I've never had a turkey-less Thanksgiving.  I should would be flying home right now, with crazy Asians and half-Italians waiting with open arms.  With nine different kinds of pie to bake.  With guitar duets to learn and four-part harmonies to write.  With family pictures to secretely dread, but actually kind of look forward to.  With anticipation for that magical thing that happens when cinnamon is mixed with pumpkin.  With a million kisses and hugs from twenty different people. 


Until now. 

(but I think I'll be ok)

Green Saddened by Grey

I saw Van Gogh paintings for the first time the other day.  I mean really, really saw them.  I peered as as closely as I could, looking like a fool while the tip of my nose nearly touched the crests of the textured brushstokes.  I saw the excitement and pride in the boldness of The Yellow House and the celebration of life in Sunflowers.  Van Gogh's favorite color is yellow too, and used it as an expression of utter happiness.

Relatively speaking, there isn't much yellow in Van Gogh's paintings.

Unlike his contemporaries, Van Gogh had difficulty painting images from his imagination and instead preferred being outside with an easel and a newly-invented paint tube and painting exactly what was there in front of him. I used to think his paintings looked cartoonish and unreal, almost like child's play.  I never understood why he stood out as great next to painters like Grandjean, for instance, who painted scenes of 19th century Paris in such detail it were as if digital photography existed during that time period.  That, to me,  was skill.  That was reproducing exactly what came before his eyes. Paintings as meticulous as this, however, were not exactly what Van Gogh saw, felt, smelt, and tasted. Van Gogh painted the floppiness of the grass, the fragility of the flower, the invisible wind.  He painted the passage of time, not an artificially frozen scene.  What is more true of a human experience than that?

Toward the end of his life, Van Gogh painted scenes of the French countryside--almost one every single day.  He could taste it in those last few years more than ever before: that transience of living that one comes to realize most, I think, right before death. There is little yellow used in these paintings.  The countryside was where, Van Gogh believed, man was most in touch with the loneliness, solidarity, and tragedy of a human person.  It was also here that he believed man could find his strength.

I struggle fiercely with the concept of finding strength in loneliness, probably because I hate the feeling so much.  In thoughts and in conversations, I've tried to convince myself and others that there is not an essential tragedy to living because we will always be given the tools we need to achieve a small kind of happiness that may not satisfy, but gives us a hope great enough to overcome loneliness of being in a world our souls were not made for.  The restlessness of humanity is one that brings joy and nothing else. 

But I think I may have been taking optimism too far.  I think I may have been wrong.

Thomas Merton says, “The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.” 

Peace in loneliness.

We cannot cling.  I cannot cling.  I have to have faith in something other than the physical comfort of an embrace because it is not here, truly, that I will find comfort.  I cannot freeze that moment, and neither will its memory be enough to sustain me through the rest of my cold and lonely days which will inevitably come.  Now is a better time than any to remember this: here, in Spain, where I am so completely aware of the loneliness that comes with the passage of time although there are no changing leaves to remind me.  There is a reality to loneliness incomparable to the touch of warm hand, and I'm blindly fumbling to feel it.  This is the tragedy of living.

"Not in countries far away do we discover what the Lord is asking of us; he directs us within ourselves, within our hearts, for he has put what he asks of us inside us." --Saint Caesarius of Arles

I want to be cohesive

Cities are usually referred to using a feminine pronoun, and I think that's appropriate.  Toledo is no exception.

"It's interesting that the most beautiful view of the city, in my opinion, is from the outside looking in."
"There's gotta be a metaphor in there somewhere."

I run through her almost everyday.  The side streets are charming and the way the road follows the land and doesn't battle it and the buildings...oh those buildings.  But I was raised in an ex-orchard and there was neither pared nor muro holding me in so it's only after I graze that city wall with the tips of my fingernails and trade the cobblestone for the sand and smell that enigmatic sweet-smelling tree and climb upward and upward and soar over that river Tajo and hit those prehistoric rocks and look back upon the way the rising sun hits her cheeks that my breath truly gets drawn out from inside of me. 

It's a pity she doesn't know. Sometimes--usually--people don't even know. Women don't even know. And that's a problem.

This past weekend, I watched the film Beasts of the Southern Wild as a sort of happy accident I stumbled upon with my travel companion.  It was one of the only films in English being shown at a theatre in Den Haag, the capital of the Netherlands, and our souls were craving the first movie in months we could watch having the advantage of our native tongue. 

But I got much, much more out of this movie than a simple English fix. 

The main character is Hushpuppy--a little girl living in a forgotten community cut off from the rest of Southern United States by a protective levee.  Hushpuppy is all that a woman should be, packaged in a calloused bundle of resistance to a negligent father with questionable motives and the threat of the destruction of her home with a single forceful storm.  Her strength is not in the bullets her father aims at the storm clouds.  It is not in her stiff jaw.  It is not in those tiny biceps her father makes her flex to prove herself.  It is not in her loud battle cries of frustrated dominion. 

It is in every breath she holds so she can listen attentively to the heartbeat of each creature sitting next to her.  It is in the way she looks into the eyes what she is most afraid of and stands her ground but softens her gaze.  And listens to his heart beat. And includes him as part of herself.  And watches as he bows down and walks away. 

It is in gentleness and love and courage that feminity finds her strength.  This is the art, the poetry, the beauty of being a woman.  And this beauty should not just be from the outside looking in. 

la alma de las gitanas

I think I'm a gypsy. 

No, really. 

Never in my life has a description of a cultural group stirred my insides strangely with it's familiarity so that I just wanted to scream, "Yes--they get it. That's exactly it. That's exactly me." 



Florencia: a gypsy woman on the steps of the Cathedral of Salamanca

Robbers, mystics, pests, sinners--words commonly associated with gypsies thanks to the Hunchback of Notre Dame or really any typical street scene in Europe.  Here's what you may not realize about gypsies:

1.  A gypsy is by definition someone who is not home.  There is no Gypsyland.  They're Romanian by origin, but when they live in Romania, they're called Romanians.  And when a Romanian moves to a different country and dresses in a specific way and lives in community with other Romanians who also live and dress and speak and sing in that manner, he or she is called a gypsy.  An anak na layas, if you will.

2.  Loyalty is incredibly important in a gypsy community.  Foreigners in a strange land must band together against oppression, and infidelity, in any shape or form, is unacceptable and not tolerated. Cervantes in his novella La Gitanilla writes of gypsy loyalty, "Nosotros guardamos inviolablemente la ley de la amistad..." Roughly, "We keep the inviolable law of friendship."  If that's not demonstrating an appreciation for the treasure that is relationship, I don't know what is.

3.  The greatest value of a gypsy moral system is virginity.  For women and men alike.

4.  They dance flamenco better than any native Spaniard.  Why?  Because the flamenco is a dance inspired by pain.  I would say that being separated from your homeland for security reasons and having no place to really call your home is reason enough to know pain.  And the weight of poverty and oppression wouldn't help, either.

5.  Also, the way they sing is remarkable.  Filled with expression, vocal skill, and passion.  Always accompanied by a furrowed brow, pleading eyes, and an outstretched hand--desperately reaching for something to hold on to. 

6.  The gypsy will not compromise tradition for anything.  They have the ability to resist and preserve through changing times, none of which have been easy.  (More poorly-translated Cervantes: "For us, harsh weather is a breeze, snow, our refreshment, the rain, our baths, thunder, our music...") Their culture has barely changed since the middle ages.  Gypsies had no regard for honra during the Spanish Middle Ages: that reputation seeking non-value that dictated the lives of hidalgos and lower nobles.  They knew where they stood in society, and it did not matter.  It is for this reason, perhaps, that they will always be known as beggars, because if one cannot assimilate into the social aspect of a community (which they consistently refuse to do) one simply cannot assimilate into it's economy.  Their ability to support themselves is then reduced to clandestine affairs and contraband business.  The gypsy would rather starve, depending on either the good nature or carelessness of others.  He would rather be at the bottom of a Spanish social ladder in a posture of apparent humility than let go of some part of himself, a culture of which he is almost foolishly proud.

The thing is, I think I have a lot of gypsy in me. I like taking a train to Grindelwald, Switzerland and wandering uphill for an entire day, panting and seeing spots and not quite sure where I'm going,  and waking up to things like this:

which I may have done last weekend; bonjour, Switzerland

 

I have the hardest time staying in one place for a long period of time.  I've been compared to a shark, moving out of necessity to breathe and live, and that metaphor has repeatedly resounded as true throughout these past few months.  But here's something else I may share with the gypsies: pride.  Do I wander more to learn about the strange, or do I want the strange to learn more about me?  I've been told, by different people at different times, that I am the same Denise in every situation.  That I come off as confident and sure of myself.  That it takes me a long time to let others affect me.  And, although they may or may not have been meant as compliments, I've taken these comments to be times in which others have helped me to realize a fundamental flaw in myself.  How principled can I be before I'm just close-minded?  How confident can I be before I'm just stubborn?  It is because pride that the gypsy meets the economic downfall.  It is because of pride that I constantly fall down.

 

 I have got to allow things like this:

 

"These mountains are..."
"Hand-carved"
"Exactly."

 and this...


"contemplaría más atadeceres"

 

and especially this...

 

I'm not talking about the mountains or even the lake
 

...not just stun me, impress me, or make me smile, but change me.  Because I too am hand-carved, and I'm being whittled away at every day.

 

 

Consider this my furrowed brow, pleading eyes, and outstretched hand.