SOLS: And you said it so much better...

At last she posts! I've really enjoyed these extracurricular projects we've been doing--I've learned cool stuff...But I haven't succesfully prioritized the blogging part of the assignment (or I've too succesfully procrastinated it). Sufficient motivation has finally come, however, in the form of the Slice of Life Story challenge. The idea is to force yourself past all those incessently handy excuses and write. Just a slice. Every day for a month. While my slices may not always pertain to our topic-at-hand, I thought this would be a good place to post (mostly because it means killing two or three birds with one stone--I participate in the challenge, finally join Amanda in the commonroom, get in some writing practice, get a break from the nagging, etc.). So, although I'm a few days late, here goes: a slice of my life today--

What a week! WHAT a WEEK! I mean, really, this week! It's the sort we've all had, I'm sure, where your whole soul seems like it's on the line. The kind where you forget all the comfortable patterns that take the threat out of the day, where you don't know moment from moment whether you'll have the self-control not to cry, or hit things, or hide under a desk, or drop your backpack in the hallway and keep walking away forever without it, without thinking about it, without ever turning around, and you'll just go straight-straight-straight, through rivers, over highways, up that mountain that sits on the edge of your world like the ropes of a boxing ring--keeping you in this stinking, sweating, place where you can't open your eyes without being hit in the face--and you'll get to the top of the mountain like the bear in the song and you'll find out he didn't go to see what he could see, he went to not see anything anymore, ever again, he went to disolve there on the peak into the sky and be cold and indifferent and vast and untouchable.

You know, one of those. And last night I thought, with what little pride remained to me, that I had at least expressed with some eloquence just how I felt when I wrote in my journal, "I'm tired. Tired of living. Tired of myself. Tired of being what I am--mundanely, grotesquely human. Seeing the divine all around me, thinking I feel the promise of potential within me, and consistently betraying all of that--everything I worship--by existing as I am."

And then, of course, as I did my readings before class this morning, a line from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark" caught all of my emotions and thoughts with more precision and subtlety than I ever could:

"Life is but a sad possession to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder, it might be happiness. Were I stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself, methinks I am of all mortals most fit to die."

Tragic, melodramatic, Romantic, and, oddly enough, just what I needed. I read something by Ursula K. LeGuin once about words being the bridges that minds or spirits use to span the abysses of existence and meet together. This morning--alone, emotionally ungaurded and spiritually bereft--I found for a moment, through Hawthorne's words, solid ground under my feet, an encouraging grip-and-release of my hand, recognition in a sea of strangers. I found everything I needed, not to restore my hope in the future, but to give me strength for the moment. The sunshine, fresh-cold wind, and my favorite class were enough to do the rest, and life, terrifying as it is, no longer looks like a bad penny.