It took seven hours and nearly 400 miles to make it down from college to single-family home with albums and albums and albums of songs in between. Near the end of this journey, the ocean opened up to the right of us: so deep, so wide, and threatening to blind every inch of shadow we’d accumulated with the sunset it was reflecting.
The Rent soundtrack asked me how I planned on measuring my year. Now, I don’t much like saying that musicals are right about much anything – I mean, how could anyone tell someone dancing around in heavy make-up that they’re right? – but the Rent people were on to something. The stats, in cups of coffee, hugs, baked goods consumed, walks taken, laughs exhaled, friends made, and sheer amounts of love encountered, show increases all around. I am better because I was worse. A nett increase, whether or not I’ve decreased (which is to say, because He is always increasing), and I’m still on my way. That’s all that matters.
I’ll leave you with a poem by one of my favorite poets (not that I often read poetry, simply because I forget to) because I read him out loud in my kitchen the day before I left to a group of beautiful people and the memory that comes with the words is really what makes words so extraordinary. I’d read tongue twisters right before, and decided that the wordplay – molding, holding, weighing, and kneading these words that some say make us human – is really all that keeps me in class somedays. It’s clever. And it makes me smile.
