NaBloPoMo 7: Attractive

Drafter's Note: One eye is nearly shut from exhaustion, so if this doesn't make sense... Try closing one eye and read it again. And NaBloPoMo has become a personal bet with myself--what date number will be the first without a post?! We shall see...


Some friends and I know a lovely older man, who is--really, there's not a better word than lovely. But a couple times when we've hung out with him, he's brought his son, who we now refer to as Joe Schmo's Problematically Attractive Son (names have been changed to safeguard the less attractive). Addressing first things first, it's Problematic because he's married. We're sure his wife is completely lovely, and we have no wishes to cause fracture with their union, so we keep the word in his title to remind ourselves that he's off limits.

My favorite element of our history with Problematically Attractive is the second time I spent time with him, along with a friend of mine who, to be fair, was a little circumspect of how attractive he really was. I could see it in her eyes: "Sure, Chandra. Poor Chandra. Her opinions have been skewed by too many New Englanders overly swaddled in Reny's woolens." We had dinner, the group of us, and at some point Problematically Attractive excused himself, and as he did Jill leaned over, keeping her wine glass between her mouth and our unsuspecting guests, and mumbled something to the tune of, "Holy SHIT. You weren't kidding."

And to understand this you have to understand what attraction really means. A man can be handsome, can be muscular and perfectly shaped and a downright Greek god... But might be an idiot, or a jerk, or disinterested, or boring. What makes Problematically Attractive problematically attractive isn't his face or his body. (This isn't to speak ill of either--both are perfectly nice. Better than nice.) What puts the attractive in Problematically Attractive is how he listens.

I know. You think I missed a crucial day in Being a Modern Woman class. But just hold tight for a second.

You are making small talk, just shooting the crap over appetizers, making conversation, and if someone interrupted you or changed the subject you would barely notice--even you don't care that much. But gradually, without affectation or guile, the man across the table is stopping what he's doing, leaning across, asking follow-up questions and following them up with, "I never thought of that!" and "That is so interesting." Every statement you make is the most fascinating thing he's heard all night, maybe all week. He is engrossed--more importantly, it's you who is engrossing. You find yourself agreeing with him: You're right, this IS fascinating. Thank you for noticing. It's about time someone did. Everyone else at the table disappears because the only thing there is any room for is the utter mind-blowing interestingness of your words. Food goes cold. Other guests feel left out. And you regret nothing.

There is absolute, gut-wrenching power in the art of listening well. I can't overstate how selflessly well Problematically Attractive listened, and how that's all he did. He didn't compliment me or use code words, he didn't pull out my chair or bring me flowers. And, no exaggeration, I still remember that night years later. Have I met more physically pretty men since? Probably. But all of them pale in comparison and are now long-since forgotten.

I write all that as a tip to the fellas out there. I loathe generalizations, especially gender-based ones, so I won't make any claims about how this is how all women tick. And I'm not suggesting you fake it, because that's easier to spot than you think. But if your aim is to be appealing, romantically or otherwise, just be engrossed. Put away your phone. Don't people-watch. Do your best to back-burner the mental grocery list, that actor's name you can't quite snag. Just stare into the person's face and listen to them. Gather every trace of information you can find and retain it. Be someone else's Problematically (or, better yet, Uncomplicatedly) Attractive.

You can do it, pretty face or no. Just listen.

NaBloPoMo 6: What I Loved About Today

So my job is great, but my job is hard. I typically just talk about the fun stuff, but that's not to say that it isn't work. Running a show is physically hard--setting up and tearing down a 200-square-foot booth from scratch, being on your feet all day, running around getting other stuff done; it's emotionally hard, being "on" (think Price Is Right Showgirl, but I'm expected to have intimate familiarity with your personal state and district struggles and mandates, and how our books dovetail into them--actual comment today: "So you haven't actually used this in a classroom yourself?!") all day, managing customer and author crises, and keeping up on regular work email to boot. I don't say that to earn pity or anything--on the whole, I'm very blessed with my job. But I'm mostly setting the stage before this list, so you see it in context.

But all that said, things I loved about today:
- I loved that first customer. I was a little overeager and scared her off a little, but it's been a long six months since I've run a booth, and I loved hearing my cadence come back so easily, inescapably tinged with a trace of adopted Southern accent: "C'n I help you find something in pa-ticular, or are you just browsing? ... Nope, browse away, totally fine! Let me know if y'need anything."
- I loved the one burst of true busy-ness we had today, a rush of customers surrounding my popular author (dressed up as Doctor Who, complete with sonic screwdriver and shouts of "I suspect you are a dalek!"), that feeling of being the prettiest girl at the ball as other vendors glare from their peaceful corners.
- I loved the quiet chunks of the day while teachers were busy in their sessions, laughing over private jokes with Rebecca, sustaining ourselves with coffee and potato chips.
- I loved catching up with my author-friend, checking in and trading jokes and laughing at my typo and--most importantly--receiving a pound of O'Henry's Pumpkin Spice coffee fresh from Birmingham.
- I loved counting down the minutes in the last hour, the frustration as the organizers waited until five past the hour to close the hall, the frenzy of packing up and escape.
- I loved today's fellas--Oscar at the hotel bar, Paul at the restaurant--being friendly, funny, attentive, chatty, borderline flirty. Makes an exhausted girl feel pretty and worthwhile. Tips for everyone.
- I loved the crazy-good water pressure in this shower. Standing with eyes screnched shut, letting it pound away the ache and tired and wash it all down the drain.
- I loved dinner, hunching over our table in this restaurant we discovered three years ago, sighing over fried green tomatoes, wedge salads, shrimp & grits, apple bread pudding. Comfort food being its much-needed comfort at the end of this day, laughing and people-watching and taking a breather.
- I loved getting lost on our way home, barreling down 40 East, mesmerized by food fullness and a quiet jazz piano on the radio, corrected at last by the ever-helpful iPhone.
- I loved flopping out on the bed to write instead of turning on the TV, a near-automatic impulse now.
- I love knowing that this whole routine will unroll again tomorrow. My feet ache and I am a little more tired just thinking about it--tired but happy, too.

NaBloPoMo 5: Same Kind of Crazy

I've forgotten what I was going to say now.
There at dinner, half-hearing familiar stories
and their reactions, reading the body language of the man
across the room before he took to his knee, before the applause--
it was clear then,
chiseled and carved and perfect.
It was going to be something about how we're
all different kinds of crazy,
and how all we're really looking for
is someone to share, to be the same kind with us,
to nod their head and welcome
what we thought would exclude.
There would be something about how
I try to use better words to say the same things--
smarter words, taller words, words that need etymologies to explain them--
when your smaller words work just fine.

I wanted to fit those words I'd found for you into
the rhythm and rhyme I used to long for.
But in looking for form I've lost function,
and the carved words have melted and loosened
so that now they are only hard lumps, word-lengthed ghosts.
Picking them up and turning them over to fit into lines
only presses the edges away more, and so I drop them
into the glass, hearing the comforting clink,
smelling the cold, waiting
for you to come to the table
and share one more glass of crazy with me.

NaBloPoMo 4: The Wherefore

I should just call this The Why, because that's what I mean to write about, but ever since I learned that little bit of knowledge, like breaking a code long-kept secret, I've loved it. "Where is the for of it?" my brain rhythmically snaps, though I'm surprised tonight to find that's really its etymological basis (and you have to love the c. 1200 spelling, hwarfore). I can clearly picture Mrs. Maisano caricaturing Juliet, clarifying that her question is one of philosophy, not geography.

But that's not what this post is about. I was thinking earlier today about what I would write, seeing as my day was remarkably similar to yesterday's. Which got me thinking, this isn't a diary or a new report. Which got me thinking, what is it?

A lot of people have a blog for a specific thing: their thoughts on food or make-up or home design or parenting or basket-weaving or Benedict Cumberbatch. But this... I don't have a specific plan for this blog of mine, other than to give me more drive, more accountability, more feedback for my writing--whether that ends up being driven by my spirituality, my given emotional state, a triggered childhood memory, or, say, Benedict Cumberbatch.

I'm caught by this, even as I write it out, because in some things I am a finite kind of girl--I like the precision that numbers and organization brings to things, and glancing at the stats of this blog, 107 posts in 39 months isn't impressive to me. Less impressive still is that it hasn't been all upward trajectory, each month with more posts than the last. I'm quick to discredit myself further--how many of those posts were forced, between Slice of Life and Essay a Day and now NaBloPoMo?

But the philosophy speaks louder than the geography once again. No craftwork, nothing that deals in creativity and polishing, can be added together in a spreadsheet. I do more, I do better, because of this little landing page out there in the interwebs. and whether ten thousand people read it or just me (and I do--more than I'd care to share) I will do more and better still. Not in a perfect positive curve, but in the fits and breaks and re-starts that have always characterized my writing, and my anything-else-good.


Closing note: I'm not really an R&J fan--it's the teen rom-com of Shakespearean tragedies--but you can't stop the poetry...

JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? 
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

ROMEO [Aside.] 
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

JULIET 
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

ROMEO 
                          I take thee at thy word.
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo. 

NaBloPoMo 3: Nothing Day

It's a day where I don't have much to say for myself at its close. It's been a nothing day--a purposeful, I'm-on-vacation-so-yes-I-am-eating-Doritos-for-lunch, shoeless (would-have-been-braless-if-I-weren't-in-someone-else's-house), stay-inside-and-snuggle-with-the-pit-bull kind of day. I watched a movie and two thirds of a TV season. My major accomplishment for the day was feeding the dog and cat. Unless you count getting out of bed which, considering the sort of day, should really be acknowledged.

And while this kind of day does not do much for the writing juices and their flowing, it does something necessary for the soul. Not that today was uplifting or meaningful, but that I spent a whole day--from waking up until now--not thinking about the stresses and worries and questions that have pinged around my brain for months. This is, I'm quite sure, a first. And while I could certainly have been more productive, I don't feel like today was wasted--I feel, in fact, like it was necessary. That while it was a stunning fall day, a walk would have had ben trolling my brain for things to ponder. And instead, I spent it just breathing, just getting wrapped up in invented stories, wrapped in a blanket, sandwiched between the couch and the remarkable dead-weight of a sleeping dog.

The day is ended, and I have little to show for it unless you count rest. Which I do. I feel rested in a way that I haven't in ages. That cannot be time time wasted.

And just to be sure, I'm doing it again tomorrow.

NaBloPoMo 2: Under the Wire, Already

It was 16 hours ago that I told Facebook I would blog, and now I'm 11 minutes from midnight--thank God for the time change and the time zone.

But there's something about this that I love: using the last scrape of the day--after breakfasts and church services, after games and movies and phone calls with grieving friends, after snuggling into blankets with a pit bull, that the last but of my day goes to finding the right words for each part, fitting them into sentences, finding them homes in paragraph tenements.

Such small revelations today, but peppered through like yeast in dough:
- that even a couple years ago, I would have sat in this morning's service as an outsider, casting down judgment, shaking my head in mock compassion. And instead I found myself latching onto the common grounds, the places where we meet--focusing on the joinings and not the cracks and gaps in between.
- that grief is a stage of love, another step in its dance, and while there is not enjoying grief it is not only a privilege but also a testament to the strength of a love. "Speak of your lost love in the present tense," the woman at the pulpit says, "because it is." And, similarly, where we have ceased to mourn? Where the vacancy is less noticeable each passim month? Equally indicative--it's not a sign of problematic grief, but only of a shallower love than others.

It is the end of the day. Time for rest, for that last stage before everything is made new again, and before the clock is reset on this challenge I have set for myself. Tick tock. Tick tock.

NaBloPoMo 1: No More Strangers

Drafter's Note: Another month, another daily writing challenge! (I might officially be insane.) Welcome, National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) visitors. :)

I walked into a house last night, following a friend I'm visiting as she steps in to greet her friends. There is every reason in the world for me to feel awkward, uncomfortable, strange in standing.

"Thank you for Chandra," he says later in prayer, pronouncing my name better than people who've known me for years. "She walked in and was family."

What a crazy thing our faith is, that it makes strangers family. Not after introductions, not after a quick analysis of our standing, not after a Bible quiz or a prayer-off*. It does not--cannot--make sense. It is based on something from outside of this world, and the words of this world will inevitably fail to capture it. In this living room, curled up with coffee and crying and raising my hand in praise, I should be the most awkward houseguest in the history of houses or guests. And instead I am family.

We hug at the end of the night--people whose names I'm still uncertain of--and go on our ways. Maybe I'll see them again before I leave, maybe not. But one of the thousand beauties of this faith is that I am theirs and they are mine, even if the next time we meet is on the other side of this life.

A few weeks ago. A visiting pastor talked about the calling of a Matthew, a man we have no cultural comparison to--Mark's best effort was a drug dealer out behind the middle school, but one who the law approved of. And it is to this man--not the well-put-together, not the rule-abiders--that Jesus comes. And there are no expectations, no analyses, no Bible quizzes or prayer-offs. The truth is so good I jot it down in my notebook: "Jesus didn't say, 'Behave, and then maybe you can belong.' He went to the most despised, the most broken, and He said, 'Come. Belong. Follow. And as you do you'll see, slowly, that even your life can change, can be new.'"

This is the Jesus I love, the Jesus who restores me and gives me exactly what I need, even when it scalds and scars. Like His own love, like His relationship with the world, there is no escape from pain, from disappointment, from feeling failure. But He shepherds. He saves. He walks step by step, breath by breath, as close as I let Him be. I can crowd my life with every other thing, but He is the only thing that tells me I am okay, I am safe, I belong, I am family.

There are no more strangers in this faith--only family we haven't met yet.

(A quick note: this feeling of family is not just for those within the Christian faith. We are called, without disclaimer or release, to shamelessly love everyone else with no thought of ourselves. In this we--I--miserably fail, everyday. If you have been hurt by a member of this faith that should only know how to love, I can only say that I am so sorry, and pray that you will find that was a failing of the person, of that church, but never, never, never Jesus.)


* I'd like to say that's a thing I made up. While it is, I am also certain that somewhere, it's a thing. I'm so sorry for the rules we make up to leave others out.