First Bottle

Mitch and I were lucky enough to get time with John and Christa over the Thanksgiving holiday. They, of course, gnashed their teeth and flailed their arms for several days, as any sane person would in their situation. Not only did we subject them to our extended families in Indianapolis and several mountain-tons of food, we took advantage of their cheap labor for the bottling stage in our recent home-brewing antics.







Cheers to John and Christa.

Every, Every Minute?

I've been thinking about Thorton Wilder's "Our Town" recently. I saw it for the first time freshman year at Whitworth. I went because my freshman-year-crush had an extra ticket. He went because his that-year-crush was acting in it.

The first act depicts average American daily life in the early twentieth century. We watched the characters mime chores. The Stage Manager (a narrator-type role) commented on the scene. He said that it was only one in a thousand people -- or maybe one in a hundred thousand -- that ever did anything interesting in life. Everybody else only had three things happen to them: they were born, they got married, and they died.

The second act depicted two of the characters' love and marriage. The first act was so boring, and the second one looked to be no better. I would have walked out except my crush was sitting next to me, and he would have walked out except his crush was on stage getting married in 1913 rural regalia. (Hell is other people.)

The third act took place in a cemetery. The female character had died and come to join the ranks of characters sitting over their grave stones. She revisits scenes from her past, not heeding the warnings from the other dead characters, and experiences painful nostalgia.

In the last scene, after the mourners have buried my crush's crush, she says, "Good-by, good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

"Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?"

That phrase has kept with me like a gong resonance -- every, every minute. The intensity of leaves sometimes gets me. I get stressed that I'm missing life: holy shit, I am not paying enough attention.

And lately I've caught myself not paying attention. I get to live with my friends, have friends next door, up the street. We have a patio. I'm growing vegetables in pots. There's coffee and beer. Books, magazines, TV shows. Bike rides. Yoga class. Pizza. And I can't quite absorb it all.

I'm stuck visiting stuff that's already happened, thinking about how I'll miss these folks when we move -- when we succumb, eventually, to the diaspora of American youth to suburbia -- and formulating unlikely future situations when I can have something like this again. I'm missing it.

Are you a member of the Turtle Club?

The last line to yesterday's post is a bit of a lie. I do know a bit of how to avoid a prescribed life, but I have lost confidence that these changes against the norm can be accomplished.

1: Get a job you like. -- The relentless grind of working at the same thing for even twenty hours a week leaves it hard to imagine that some occupation will be tolerable in thirty years. And yet I feel like society's expectation is just to do it anyway... you're in debt, after all, so buck it up and live for two days of the week.

This very summer, I asked the novelist William Styron in a Chinese restaurant how many people on the whole planet had what we had, which was lives worth living. Between the two of us, we came up with seventeen percent. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Timequake

2: Even more, do something you're passionate about. -- My idealogical diet in middle school was a steady stream of "Dream big" and "You can do anything you put your mind to." Since then I have had rounds of experiences telling me what I cannot do -- internships I have not gotten, job applications I've submitted with no responses, boys who have not liked me (Crazy, right? What the hell.), an emotional stability that turns out was mostly circumstantial, you get the idea. So getting passionate about anything, and moreover, trying to act on that passion seems like a short road to more disappointment.

But I have people in my life that are more durable than me. Rachel wants to (and does) write and submit scripts. For her senior project she co-wrote and acted in a full-length play. Tyson plans on starting a pub ministry that caters to folks who'd rather hang out in bars than in church. Lindsay has worked her ass off to get into the PeaceCorps and has these crazy ideas about volunteering. Also, her brother (her own brother!) said she was the most genuinely loving person he's ever met. Jay is going to grad school next year for classical guitar. Stu is working night shift for an animation studio. The folks in the Squalrus Art Collective are pulling together to support each others' endeavors in music, art, and writing. John is studying to become a Pastor in a denomination he actually cares about. Christa works with kids (is lead teaching!). Mitch is working at an alternative high school that's working to help juniors and seniors graduate. The staff works education around relationship -- the theory being you only learn from someone you care about. And Mitch cares about trying to buck the cycle of poverty.

As jaded as I am about the motivational-poster version of "doing something you're passionate about," there is nothing cheap or flighty about the efforts made by these folks.

3: Live in community: My Dad told me on the phone the other day that I'd probably lose contact with people from college. We all grew up in different places, and we don't have any place of commonality except for Whitworth, from which we are dispersing. Normal adult American behavior is to move where there are jobs or family. It's to live in the suburbs in a house with a mortgage. Eventually, your circle is made up of your children's friends' parents. Standard procedure is to have pleasant acquaintances from whom you can keep your flaws, struggles, and general personal details. The people you spend time with mirror your social station -- marital status, children's age group, occupation, political beliefs, income.

It would be different to not lose touch. To live with friends even once you're married, in an apartment complex, in a commune. To have relationships like the women have with each other on Sex and the City: being transparent and real and occasionally assholes together even when your circumstances or opinions differ.

Get close to people in ways that are not already sketched out and named for you: spouse, co-worker, parent, friend, affair.

There was a little old man at the Y who was telling me about his daughter. She was sailing down the whole coast of North and South America! This man knew several language and had traveled all over the world. I was thoroughly bored listening to him.

Because even if you do the most awesome things in your life, the people you tell stories to, unless they experienced it with you, won't care.

(And also I'm hoping that this post will encourage you to have this different kind of community with me.)

Welcome to Riverside West

There's a gentleman who lives alone above John and Christa; his name is Steve. He's a bit heavy, from what I've heard, and has an oxygen tank. This summer when Mitch and I would sit outside on the patio with our late neighbors, Eric and Emmy, (little oil lamps on stands and Emmy smoking and drinking wine) we'd hear Steve's alarm clock yammering away at eight p.m. and again at ten. Wake up, Steve!

Christa and John say they can hear when Steve is peeing. The sound comes down through the pipes in the walls.

Carrie and Julie picked Christa and me up one night for yoga class. Our apartments' living-room walls that face Riverside Ave are a set of windows and sliding glass doors. With the lights on, the rooms blaze apparent to viewers on the street.

Julie, bless her heart, was driving, and as we pulled away she said she had seen the upstairs neighbor hanging out in his panties.