Pears

So the other night, I was watching a movie with a bunch of boys, when my mom called to tell me my grandmother was in the hospital. I definitely panicked when I heard the news. My grandma is the immortal one, in my opinion. She has more energy than most people I know who are thirty years younger than her, and she's always running around, cooking things, baking, sewing quilts and hangings, researching family history, organizing things... she's just this little white-haired tornado that zips all over the place, almost non-stop. To hear that she was down, and sick, just didn't seem right. And I panicked even more when I thought about the last time a family member fell ill. I was in Cornwall with the youth group when my parent's phoned to tell me my uncle Bob was sick. They didn't tell me he had actually died until I got back home and they could tell me in person. Knowing then that my family is apt to withhold that kind of information until I either can see them in person, or it is a better time and place to not needlessly cause me grief (i.e. not late at night JUST after I had got back to Kitchener) The thought occurred to me at that point that I had no idea really whether or not my grandmother was actually alive.
"I need comfort! I need solace before I react!" I thought to myself. "I need... PEARS."
My grandma sent me to school last week with two cans of homemade pears. I am certain this is one of the most sought-after substances on earth. More than gold or oil, the canned pears my grandma makes are VERY good. I felt bad breaking into them but I wanted to taste a taste I have tasted since I was a baby. I went back and watched the movie to get my mind off things, and had more pears.

I was a snotty ten year old. I was arguably the snottiest ten-year old you would have ever met. I was also highly impressionable. Tell me to jump, and I would jump. And I had yucky friends back then, which makes a highly impressionable ten-year old very yucky too. I was angry one weekend because I couldn't go to a sleepover at some random acquaintance's house, and instead, had to stay with the grand'rents. And I definitely took it out on my grandma, and blamed them for not letting me go.

I remember that at one moment, she said, "That makes me very sad."

And I instantly regretted it. Strangely enough, that memory still gets me writhing in guilt thinking about it. Writing this down almost physically hurts. And it's been ten years since that happened, and I still remember it. I know she doesn't remember it, she remembers when I learned Sweet Bye and Bye (an EXTREMELY difficult song for a 10-11 year old to learn) just so I could surprise her (and learning the song was partly motivated by this idea that if I learned it to surprise her, it could undo what I had done before) or she remembers the concerts I've played, or times visiting and having lunch. I've contemplated going to confession with this, but the beauty of the sacrament is the spirit of repentance, and I know I'm forgiven, but it still gets me, even now.

A well-wishing friend: "Get over it! It's okay!"
Jessie: "Okay! I promise I will!"
A well-wishing friend: "Promise?"
Jessie: "Yes..."
A well-wishing friend: "Can I have some pears?"
Jessie: "Just this one time, this is one of the most sought-after substances on earth."
A well-wishing friend: "You got it. So, which well-wishing friend am I?"
Jessie: "I don't know. It doesn't matter. I'm just glad I have you."
A well-wishing friend: "Aww, isn't that sweet..."

Okay. For the record, my grandmother IS alive. This is good. A small mistake has an incredible potential behind it to transform into something incredibly good, and powerful almost beyond comprehension. If guilt was a secondary (not so far as a tertiary) motivator in learning such an advanced song for the sole purpose of surprising my grandmother, I probably wouldn't have ever challenged myself in piano, which caused me to grow exponentially in that field. (It was both a blessing and a curse. I blame Sweet Bye and Bye's technical demands for making me a better pianist, but I sacrificed time in following the curriculum to do my piano exams. It was at that point, and at the point when I joined YouthBuilders, that I lost incredible amounts of time in getting all of my requirements for piano, but it was worth it, in the end. But anyway...) A small mistake can grow into something incredibly good. It's shocking how good it can be, and it's goodness can reach beyond us, and have positive consequences beyond our knowledge or reach.

I really hope what I say is true.

Missing

Very suddenly this week, I've been confronted with a number of huge considerations. And considerations of this caliber are not often what I trouble myself with. I realized that I do not worry about the things that other people worry about. The other day, I had a midterm. Rachel Neumeister came to my class so she sat in on my midterm. I didn't study for it at all; I had no time to, and I had bought the textbook ONLY that week. But I just took the test. Afterward, my friend David Bui was sitting in the lobby, his little laptop on his lap and his legs dangling, very much distraught over the entire thing, which had already left my mind. Is this okay? Should I be worried? If I'm five minutes late for a class, I don't try to run to class. I already know I'm late. For some reason, it just doesn't raise my stress level.

I feel like I'm missing something. This is what raises my stress level.

My breath stops, and my chest tightens, tighter, tighter, I can't breathe, and tears race to my eyes and my face turns hot, and I wonder, "What's missing? What's going on? Why can't I find it? Where are you!?"

That has happened twice now. Once in my room, once in my car. I even pulled over to the side of the road, and later, was happy enough to forget it had happened, and forget that something is lost.

And the important ones around me are worrying about my future - where my certainty is the hugest blessing that I possess, and I cling to it forcefully. I don't know what I'd do with myself if I were to lose that one.

I found myself with an opportunity to live somewhere new, and a life-time career direction presented to me within two days of each other. When I asked a very close friend about these, those paled in comparison to a different concern he had: I need to write.

This is what writing is. It is the mountain-mover, the world-shifter. It is literature that is the conduit for conducting an orchestra of changing thoughts, shifting ideas, and holy revolution. It is the sword and it must be wielded. The formula for saving the world was always a written one, and the world operates on stories. All of them conspiring, hoping, and praying for resolution. Please let it be comic, not tragic, for the whole world hinges on the hope of a happy ending. The power a simple story can possess is frightening. Stories can be immortal, and they can infect the mind, and possess a nation. And they are very, very hard to quell, and nearly impossible to silence. Books can be burnt, and words go up in smoke, but a good story worth telling is very hard to forget. Donald Miller wrote his latest entry on the Universal Morality, which I was writing essays about in school last year. All stories are classic, and are conspiring for the right ending, and all of the world's morality is built upon this. Let good triumph and evil be vanquished. Let the lover's remain united. Let there be happily ever after. All of our lives are praying desperately for the conclusion, for the journey, for the new story to come to town and our lives to be overthrown. And we're praying for a right conclusion, a comedy, and never, never, never a tragedy.

What a story is to me, is that I've been writing stories since I could pick up pencils. It's a solace in a lonely world, and an exciting and forceful drive to life. It takes over, and literally possesses me when I write, transforming vague ideas into crystal, vibrant, clear, and deafening. My mind narrates my world, and I imagine different stories, different scenarios, and future scenarios, imaginary stories, everything. I look at books, and stop reading and imagine a better story than the words flooding the pages.

But most importantly, and desperately, for me, is that in a world where too often, in the heat of the moment, my words are lost, I cannot open my mouth, and my tongue is trapped and I cannot speak of word of coherent eloquence to try and reverse the tragedy. When later I regret deeply, and think of a million words to scream and say in a time where it is too late... and if I ever get another chance, my eloquence is still snatched from me. And I cannot talk. I cannot, as hard as I try, allow myself to make coherent sense, to scream why this is WRONG, and to say what must be said. Writing is always clear, always more eloquent than I can ever be, and always says what must be said at the right time, with awesome force. Whatever it is that possesses me to write so... is the best weapon I wield.

I just need a story to write. I just need to be ABLE to write, and write well. I pray it comes soon.

Usually I'm awkward, but sometimes other people are more awkward than me. :D

Yesterday was the strangest class I had ever experienced. It was Psych of Death and Dying, which in itself is a very strange course to sign up for, but this time, a combination of events made it very weird.

Last week, after class had ended, this random guy had come up to me and said, "I really liked the things you said in class. Would you like to have coffee sometime?"

OOOHHH.

(To be honest, this year, the number of guys who have asked me out is a staggering number compared to the rest of my life. I kind of sound conceited here, but to my knowledge, seven people have expressed "liking me" this year. Four out of those seven asked me out. I don't understand it. I'm really awkward. I say things that are accidentally misinterpreted as sexual innuendos, without meaning them to be, all the time, and I usually say the wrong things way too loud in a quiet room on a regular basis. I'm not trying to give off the impression like I'm "on the prowl". I don't shave my legs, and wear the same pair of jeans for two weeks at a time sometimes. I don't brush my hair. My only theory for this, is that I must be releasing PHEROMONES. Maybe I should stop wearing deodorant, but I figured that would only intensify the PHEROMONES. Maybe I should switch from Dove to Old Spice, but then would that make me release male-like PHEROMONES, that would attract girls to me? I'm not a lesbian, so that would make things even more awkward.)

I'm always up for a hot drink and a good discussion though. So we agreed to meet before class yesterday. I didn't end up getting any form of coffee or tea. The guy just kept on talking, and (this sounds mean) wouldn't shut up. He just kept on talking so I couldn't get in a word to stand up and order a cup of tea. So my patience was tested that way. He also asked me the strangest questions. Things like, "Do you like cats?" And, "What was your favorite teacher in high school?" came up in the conversation. (What the heck? Who asks these questions?) so the "good discussion" part was lost on me.

We went to class, and two of my friends from the University, Donne Marshall and David Bui, were in that class with me, so I sat with them. They invited me to a "kegger" this Friday. I felt kind of cool. But this cat guy, he didn't sit with us, but instead sat about ten feet away, directly across from me, and stared at me for the entirety of the class. Donne noticed and pointed it out to me, to which I replied, "I know..." During the class break, he came up, and stood over us. He waved, and then didn't say anything for a good thirty seconds, and then he finally said, "Do you know where there's an outlet that I can plug my laptop into?" We said no, and then he left.

The second half of the class was a documentary from the 1970's, on a VHS tape... about death. The opening credits had footage of a guy cleaning a dead person's hand. Things like that are just plain uncomfortable, but the movie continued to be an hour and a half all about death, death in different cultures, what rotting bodies look like, footage of cremations, different kinds of caskets you can purchase, funerals... they had this funeral from this obscure place in Thailand, where the funeral itself took five days, and they sacrificed cows (and killed them right there by bashing them on the head!) and like, by the end of the fifth day, the dead person was rotting away, and their body was swollen, and discolored and had flies landing on it. I don't know how to politely comprehend this! The worst was footage of a full-fledged autopsy. They had a naked dead man on a table (yes, I saw my first naked man now... and it was dead, and from the 70's, on a VHS tape in university with the weird cat guy. Naked men suck.) But then they CUT HIM OPEN! And took things out! And like, were taking things out of his nostrils! And sewing him up! Then they had footage of his funeral! I can never look at a dead person the same again!

So death is ruined for me. Apparently, my mother had gone to school at Fanshawe for a year to be a mortician. She couldn't afford to do another year, so she never went into that profession, and instead, is the manager of Zellers. I am so freaking thankful. "Take your kids to work" day would have been traumatic.