truth love.

At coffee on Saturday, my roommate and I spent a good portion of the conversation delving into various online horoscopes. Believe them or not, horoscopes entertain. They speak to the vanity of human nature and a constant desire to understand the un-understandable. There's a writer that puts a weekly version on his site, and it's always off the wall interesting, especially for aquarians. His writing and thought processes are worth reading, even if you're entirely opposed to exposing yourself to such nonsense. Saturday's did not disappoint, and not only did it offer thought, but I was given an assignment as well. Toward the end, there were explanations of some of the various types of love defined in culture: agape, eros, etc. The aquarians assignment was to thoughtfully come up with three other types of love that play out in your life.

I love projects.

The only definition I've come up with thus far is rooted in raw honesty.

I've never been one of those people that does a good job gushing about feelings aloud. That involves way too much exposure. Voicing this stuff inevitably means that delusional hopes will be scoffed at by the people in my life that are rooted in reality. "Him? Riiiight, Meredith. There's not chance...He's way out of your realm of possibility". That's the fear, anyway. So the trend that began early was to keep it in. The tall funny friend I had a crush on my senior year believed that's all I wanted to be. This all blew up when a friend told him that I LIKED him. Oh my goodness. I hadn't ever told her that I liked him, but women know, I guess. And she liked him too, and this is beginning to sound a lot like a chapter from The Baby Sitter's Club. I considered this person that spilled my secret like a full glass of milk (we'll call her Stacy as she was the Baby Sitter's Club flirt) a friend. I actually considered her a good friend, and had it not been for my real friend, I wouldn't have ever known about the spilled milk. The real friend (we'll call her Dawn as she was principled) knew because the Logan of the whole scenario came to her and asked if I liked him; My real friend refuted this, and then she came to me, knowing all of this would be difficult for me to hear, and she told me anyway. This was my first lesson in this kind of love.

The above all sounded silly as I was typing it, but in high school it wasn't really silly at all. It was weighty and hurtful, and the lesson, though mostly in my subconscious, was to look for that character trait as it's something valuable and worth investing in.

I remember sitting outside in a plastic chair last year on a Monday, across from another Dawn I'm ever thankful for. Ten years later, and actual adulthood can still resemble the same childhood read. She sat across from me and told me information that was incredibly difficult to hear relating to a friend I couldn't help but have feelings for, and moments later, I felt like someone had thrown a jug of milk into my gut. The honesty of this friend is the thing, the very thing, I appreciate about her the most.

Last Friday over margaritas and mexican food, I gushed over our handsome server, someone I had engaged with flirtatiously a week or so prior. I had been told he may work there, and I didn't fully believe, so there we went, marching like girly troops scouting out the territory. It turns out the information I had been given was correct, our assignment was not followed out in vain, and I my innate sense of direction plopped us unknowingly at one of his tables. My dinner date observed, and because this honesty makes up her character, said somewhere toward the end of the meal, "can I make an observation?" Oh, how that sentence makes me nervous. "Yes," I cowered and said. "Well, you know how you told me the thing you didn't really like about the last one, how he flirted with everyone? Well, I just feel inclined to bring light to this one's innate flirtatiousness." Though I was aware of this, I preferred the idyllic bubble I'd been able to place around most of my logic throughout the course of our dinner, which was just fine, a harmlessly fun place to reside for an hour or so. Her shared raw and honest observation brought me back down to the ground, to the gutters, where I prefer to spend the rest of my time. She wasn't saying not to flirt, but to be careful when investing myself in his behavior, as it's likely bestowed upon the masses. Flirt, yes. Just be aware of what it is you're flirting with.

This love that continues to play itself out in my life is what I will call sincere. It can line itself up along the agapes and eros and the others too. It's raw honesty is rooted in a sincere desire for the best to come from truth shared, not withstanding difficulty, for the recipient. It has nothing to do with immediacy, or ease, and this is part of what makes it beautiful, and ever welcome.

backwards.

Last June on its third day, my mom was driving me to the airport to fly to Seattle. I was planning to run a marathon, which would be followed up by some life lived out in the other Washington. Before the both of us was an abundance of unknown. I didn't know if I would finish twenty-six miles, or even what my cousin that was picking me up from the airport looked like. My mom wasn't sure the next time she would see me, and with her crazy worrying tendencies, if I would even live through the marathon; I had been cautioned on multiple occasions of the possibility of death from such distances. If there's even a minute possibility of disaster, I have been warned by my mother. Driving over a bridge, for example, means I could end up in the water with no way to roll my electric windows down. Naturally, she purchased for me a pressurized window breaker so I don't really have to worry about this disaster scenario any longer.

About ten minutes into the drive, she gets kind of serious and begins the sentence, "No matter where you are next year, there's just one thing I am going to ask you to do."

Based on the kinds of things she worries about, I really had no idea where the rest of the request would lead.

Then she started to cry. I was at a loss.

"Please just promise me that you will come back to go to your high school reunion."

Whaaa?

I had to hold back the childlike giggles.

Like so many mothers and daughters, we're almost always not on the same page. It has taken us a loooong time to learn how to actually communicate without getting angry at each other. Most of my early twenties, no matter what she said to me or how she said it, I heard, "hey there not good enough daughter. I wish you were completely different and more like me." My reaction to what I was hearing from her was enveloped in all things harsh and hateful, and though we've broken the cycle and do a much better job of not misinterpreting what the other is trying to say nowadays, I don't foresee us ever getting to the same page. This is one of the reasons there was so much weight and emotion within her request. In moments like that, when my definitively selfless mother who carried me in her womb and birthed me without any drugs and paid too much for my barely used college education and still calls to see if I need anything from the store...It's best of me to respond with compassion, and try try try to see her request through her eyes instead of mine.

Almost a year has passed since that conversation, which means it is the year of the reunion. I had managed to put the possibility out of my mind until the patriot act-esque wonders of Facebook brought reunion inquiries to the forefront of my computer screen. And so the thread began...

"Does anyone know if there's a plan for our reunion?"

"I think it's the job of the class officers."

"It's a little late to begin planning an event of that caliber. You better get in contact with your class officers soon."

"I think our class officers were Meredith, Shaya and Julie."

I waited it out as long as I could. I read what was being said, and in true procrastinator fashion, I didn't engage until I was called by name. I was the class president but I truly had no knowledge that reunion planning responsibility was part of the deal. I just wanted a little more recognition and accolades by my name. I officially relinquished responsibility to an eager classmate, and am left to not plan, which I excel at, and also, to sit with my mother's request.

If it were up to me and my soap box, I wouldn't go. I would tout Facebook's way of keeping us all up to date, and the fact that I already know more about former classmates than I would prefer. I would stand tall and exclaim that I have done a decent job of keeping in touch with those I wanted to, and that the rest aren't of much concern. I would refer to Romy and Michelle's high school reunion and think of disaster scenarios and depressing possibilities that would bring me down. These are all the things I would do if I didn't have a selfless mother, requesting a very simple thing from me.

This, I think, is why we have mothers and why were aren't just grown in laboratories and thrown into the mess to fend for ourselves. I was the class president, and whether or not that meant much to me, I represented something. My class was small, my school was small, and my town was in proportion to both of those things. Many of my classmates were the same through all thirteen years. My absence wouldn't be easily overlooked, and I would be viewed in the very light my mother wants me to avoid. This small world I speak of is a very big deal to her; She has invested much of herself in it over the years. Her request is saturated with a pride for the community she doesn't want me to be ashamed of.

She has cried mom wolf on so many occasions that I hesitate to listen. Most recently it was at the possibility of a stranger jumping in my car through its open window. Twenty-eight, and I am humbled by the fact that sometimes she still does know best, and in this case, she's round-about reminding me that it's best to avoid brat behavior.

tulip bloom.

There's this character that lives in my apartment building. He's a strange combination of Martha Stewart and Mell Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory. His tulips are treated as if each bud coming out of the ground possesses a personality and a soul, while every human personality he comes in contact with is suspect. I have been cautioned to not visit any Al Qaeda sights on the internet, and also, to choose sidewalk over grass so as to not squash an overlooked bud.

I marvel at human personalities that follow anticipated life patterns, those that purchase shampoo before the bottle is actually empty, and homeowners in general. I met an engineer this week and congratulated him. "Thanks, I think," was his response. His life's asset, from this wanderers perspective, is stability in all kinds of forms. This wanderers is freedom.

Sometimes I wonder if I will wake up someday so completely aware of the level to which I have been ruining my life all these commitment free years that I will only be able to breath at the level of a heavy smoker. Engineers make me wonder this, and attorneys too.

Heavy smoking neighbors like Mr. Tulip reassure me, unbeknownst to them, that in fact I won't ever wake up barely breathing; There's value in my asset, he subconsciously says to me while telling me audibly and exhaustively about the bamboo fence he's putting up to keep the neighbor dogs from barking.

As I breathe in and out in my lease-free apartment, homemade granola cooling on the stove, I think about those bulbs that have been under the muck and frost with the worms and grub, making bloom progress in ways we haven't been able to see. And though most have seen the first tulips of spring, when they finally break through again after winter's end, it's as if we're seeing them for the first time all over. This kind of bloom is forever worth waiting for.

inspiring misdirection.

I've referenced this go tactic I tend to live by. It involves, well, going. Places.

This activity brings me to life. And it doesn't have to be elaborate. Last year, a friend had to take a cup of coffee to his girlfriend at work. It was a few miles away. I was excited to go. Genuinely excited.

I have an uncanny ability to walk away from the familiar for something foreign without much fear. There's usually a lot of unexpected to deal with once I arrive, but the getting there is emotionally quite easy.

Last night I went to a synagogue. I hadn't ever been to a synagogue before. Yann Martel, the author of a brilliant book, was speaking there. Going somewhere I've never been before to hear an author I admire speak does something real for me. It quenches a thirst rooted in dehydration.

It turns out he was brilliant, not surprisingly. And before stumbling upon writing, he was pretty aimless. He came from education, a travel-filled childhood, and academic parents. After finishing an undergraduate in philosophy and being "unsatisfied" with academia, he both washed dishes and worked as a security guard. He found writing to be that thing that consistently satisfied. And he wrote a lot of bad stuff before Life of Pi. Eventually he embraced it, lived on little, and wrote.

My years seem to be inching me closer and closer to this reality. I find the professional realm of reality to be quite unsatisfying. I have no interest in selling anything to anyone else. I have interests and hobbies, but when I place my interests up against the pressure of using using them to make a living, they lose their allure. Writing my own commentary on life is a natural reaction I have to living, and it never lacks satisfaction. I write a lot of bad stuff with no intention to stop. I already live on very little. That's another natural reaction I have to life.

Today I went somewhere else. I got away. And I am sitting in front of a new window typing this out with the knowledge that the people I run into are all strangers; Their daily landscape is completely different than mine, and they have no choice but to share theirs' with a stranger today. Later I will have lunch with an old friend, the woman who coincidently told me I should read Life of Pi, the book that took me to me the synagogue last night, a night that will help solidify the idea that occupational misdirection isn't a flaw for someone that finds more satisfaction in writing life commentary than anything else.

It's also a plus that occupational misdirection lends itself to the going, the other thing that brings me upmost satisfaction. Keep going, and keep writing, and keep being inspired by thoughtful well spoken writers that have themselves kept going, and kept writing.

rain stuff.

I am sitting at a bar looking out the window at the rain drops screaming from the sky, splattering the ground, while others trickle down the glass slowly in front of me, as if with ease and care. Those falling from the sky seem like they can't get to the ground fast enough, while drops on the window seem to have no agenda at all.

There's been a dialogue about my life lately and the decisions I am making, as well as those I am not. There are phases of my life where decisions embody the chaos of the falling rain. I can be impulsive, itching to go as if the ground beneath my feet will disappear if I remain standing there one second more. There's beauty in this; The rain droplets pouring out of the sky end up falling on the water that's accumulated, and it's a dance-filled sight. I am a believer of life as a dance filled sight.

And then there are those other times, those slower paces. The drops that aren't slowly sliding down the pane have come to a complete halt. The lesson to me is the value that's there, in the stillness. The dialogue that's been present in my life as of late revolves around this end of the extremes, and the drops that have stopped falling. Those drops equate failure, some say. They're equivalent to anxiety and timidity. And this is a tempting notion to believe if you see the world in a black and white fundamentalist sort of way. This is not the lens through which I view the world, and from my current seat, the drops in a fixed position on the pane-less window in front of me are creating a one of a kind spectrum that resembles clear stars in a clear sky. And it's these seasons, the ones lived at a slower pace, where things become, appropriately, exceptionally clear. This opens the world to a much more honest canvas, where decisions can be made with intention, and less haste.

Last evening the music was on and the windows were open, letting the red curtains blow in the breeze. Our apartment had a wonderful feel; life was present, as well as thought and conversation. My roommate needed to shift things, though, as she needed to study for a test the following day. "Mind if I turn off the music?," she asked. "Of course not," I responded. And then the mood shifted. I began to put things in their place. My shoes made their way to my closet, where they go but haven't been for some time. I painted my nails orange, something I have been meaning to do for a string of days. I read.

After studying, she apologized for cutting off the music so suddenly, as if there was something to apologize for. This was funny to me, and also kind. "I should have eased us into silence, instead of switching from one extreme to another," she said. I told her she didn't need to feel anything but good about cutting the sound. I put some things away, and got other things straitened out. I also like the silence as much as the noise. Stillness is as good of a thing as movement. Both have their place. This is the lesson gaining clarity.

musical moves.

Different season's of life tend toward different soundtracks. South Korea is littered with Bon Iver. Alexi Murdoch traveled with me through DC's buses, trains and streets. These albums, lyrics, and instruments take me back to places I've left. They bring up to the surface my varying states of mind.

While in DC, my most recent excursion, I was most often the odd one out. I remember eating at Black Salt, a fancy sort of fish market, and being put on the spot with the big question from one of the lunch guests. They were just getting to know me, literally, and asked me what I wanted out of life. In between bites of the most delicious burger I have ever had, I answered quite sincerely to be happy. The guest in front of me laughed. This laugh, sourced from confusion and an inability to relate, was the reaction I got more often than not. To her credit, the lady posing the question encouraged me. But her encouragement didn't litter my time there.

Confusion and an inability to relate were much more prevalent, and this norm left me confused too, and doubtful of all the things I had begun to believe, or believe I believed. All the sudden, I wasn't so sure.

This is not the healthiest state of mind. Alexi Murdoch's voice reminds that this troubled state was real; His lyrics and instruments were the like mindedness I was lacking.

Returning to Tulsa wasn't the remedy I was hoping for. I seek more. I want different landscapes, frames of mind, and fresh challenges. The soundtracks remind me that I am not always immediately ready for those things. My life right now is about rebuilding, and it's funny how things tend to just work out.

There is a newness to this season even if my zip code is nearly identical to the one before the last. In the future when I am looking back, the soundtrack I think of, whatever it turns out to be, will remind me of the peaceful stability that's characterizing life these days.

speaking of peaceful stability...

some days.

Sometimes, the whole of my day is begging for a good cry. I don't really know that's what going on for most of it. I go about my business busying myself with this and that and other things.

Conversations happen. People talk. I talk. People listen. I listen. I stir, busy myself, nap, stir some more.

These kinds of days, the cry-worthy ones, it's easiest to believe the worst about things. People aren't good. People disappoint. Hope leads to bad things. It's not something to foster. The snow is never going to end. I am in the wrong city. There are wrong decisions in life. I am making them. Stuff that's usually light weighs so much.

Dishes help. Taking a pan covered in muck. Letting it soak so the bubbles and water permeate the grease. Seeing the film begin to soften. Returning with intention. The sound of running water, the sound of the brush against the iron of a pan, the sight of suds growing, seeing their brightness break through the grime. Rinsing, watching the water run across a clean surface as the tears that have been needing to fall all day long finally do. Remembering that people are kind, snow melts, I am right where I should be, placing the dripping iron pan on the rack to dry.