Finding home

I rarely ever hear songs by The Afters, but I happened to hear one this week that struck me as kind of up my alley. I don't actually remember much of what the song sounded like, but I looked up the lyrics when I got home because I was pretty sure that the words intrigued me. Either that, or I'd heard them totally wrong. But no, I'd heard them right.

"The World's got me tied on a string/Wanderlust has overcome me/Like Lewis and Clark I'll dream/There's a million different ways to go/Only God can know where I will call my home."

I actually have no idea what the point of this song is. I sort of get the impression that perhaps they wanted a few filler songs for a CD and just decided this one was good enough. Not that I dislike it, but I literally have no idea what the point of it is. It's called "Love Lead Me On" and the entirety of the chorus goes as follows: "Love lead me on/Where no one else has gone/Faith keep me strong/Love lead me on."

It also rambles about finding home, and love, and picture perfect sunsets, so I'm pretty sure it's just a feel-good song about finding home, but I mostly liked the lines about wanderlust and Lewis and Clark. One of my friends and I used to play Lewis and Clark (I'm pretty sure I was Lewis) and we were masterful waterfall jumpers. It was pretty swell.

I have a friend who is going to school to be a guidance counselor, and he's already pretty good at it. We'll be having a conversation and suddenly I'll realize that I'm just rambling about all sorts of stuff I normally wouldn't. It's rather unsettling, actually. That being said, I was talking about traveling the other day, and he asked me, "Do you get antsy if you stay in one place for too long?"

I had no idea what to tell him. I don't even remember the last time I stayed in one place for a long time. At least one weekend a month I'm somewhere else--anywhere else! And it's not that I don't love my family, or my home (because I love both, very much), but I'm just always doing other things on the weekends. It was odd for me to take a step back and look at myself the way others must see me. I know there are some people who think I'm out and about too much, that I should be home more.

But... I am pretty tight with my family. We eat two meals a day together, we discuss anything and everything whenever we have spare minutes, we travel places together when we get the chance, I ask my parents for advice about most things (even crazy-sounding things, so they can talk me out of it), and my siblings and I are incredibly close.

So, does my traveling a lot mean I'm escaping from something? Because I can't think of what I'd be running from, or what I'd be trying to run toward. My home is just that: Home. I wouldn't want to think I'm out trying to find another place to belong. I'm just out to find that perfect sunset, to play Lewis and Clark and make discoveries worth discussing at the dinner table.

I like to think of it like T. S. Eliot always said: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Rhymes with "wholly unfortunate"

I used to write poem-ly things when I was young. Once, I even took a poetry class. Unfortunately my poems were, in a word, terrible, and the poetry class didn't help even one iota. The whole "tree/Calvary/died for me" rhyming scheme worked well for the first 12 or so years of my life, and after that, I sort of latched onto the simple "rewind/mind/God is kind" type stuff that seemed like such brilliance.

But I just have no talent for poetry. Every time I look back on poems I considered to be so incredible or deep, I sort of want to burn them (which isn't unusual, I pretty much want to burn everything I've ever written). But sometimes I make myself try to write poetry, just to see if I've inadvertently gotten hit in the head with a poetry-laden 2x4. So far, just so you know, it hasn't happened. When I try to write poetry these days I just feel like being lazy and doing what every other modern poet does, which is to say, write completely random words.

Let me try a poem that would get a modern poet published in a magazine.

Tortilla Chips dreams
Frozen Vegetables drama
Wrinkled Paper fear
Antique Watch far from youth

Pretty much, that's what I see when I read poetry written in the past hundred years or so. What is wrong with at least attempting to put in cool-sounding lines, like things about "time yet for a hundred indecisions, and time for a hundred visions and revisions," sort of Thomas Stearns style? Not that T. S. Eliot bothered to rhyme much, but at least he had a natural cadence to his work, and at least some of his stuff rhymed, and at least he didn't write abstractly about plutonium and proms and sowing seeds of anger. When I look at modern poetry I realize that there's usually something to decipher (unlike my beautiful poem above, so seriously, don't bother trying to find a deep meaning between my tortilla chips and fear), but if I wanted to decipher something, I'd work on Hebrew, or do a logic puzzle, or try to read my dad's handwriting or something. There is no good reason for having to spend forever trying to figure out poetry.

Poetry is supposed to touch a chord inside of you. Reach something you didn't know you had. It's supposed to make you itch to say words or your own, jumbled masses of thoughts, strung together like music. But these days? You're counting blessings if the words are even masses of jumbledness, and finding things strung together is somewhat hopeless.

The tablecloth,
Sinks in the washer,
Under the weight of water,
and soap, and dirty socks.

Seriously, people get paid for that?

Thomas Stearns would have cried

I don’t know why I keep sharing all this stuff from my journals, since they’re supposed to be top secret, keep out or else, and all that. But apparently I don’t write as much private stuff in my journals as 10-year-olds are wont to do. Plus, I’m still dwelling on them, and blogs are supposed to be about things we’re pondering, so I figured I might as well spring for it.

First, I’m not completely insane, I promise. However, I do sometimes do odd things. For instance, in a journal that I kept about three or so years ago, I decided to do a rather insane thing. My first entry has a portion that goes as follows:

“Well, I’ve finally started my new diary. Just for background information (for 47 years from now, if the Lord doesn’t come, or tribulation saints (hi!) if He does) I’m __ years old. I lead a rather uneventful life and can’t write in straight lines… and absolutely NO handwriting skills. Good luck, oh ye tribulation saints. Go find a Bible or something—way more profitable and way easier to read!

“So, _______ conference comes up soon, and no doubt these pages will be full to the brim of “guess what?” stories. I seem to always collect stories at conferences, like flies to honey, or something. Not that I’m honey, or stories are flies, but it was just the best analogy I could think of. By the way, I can’t spell, not even if my life were hanging on the chance. So, my tribulation saints: beware. And as I said, Bible is always better. But if you do insist, I shall keep writing.

“That gives me an idea. You know how Anne Frank did that annoying “Dear Kitty” thing? Well, for this insufferably long journal, I can do a “Dear Tribulation Saint.” I doubt that’s been done too many times before. And if it has, well, so what. We’re all just excited about the Lord’s coming.”

So apparently I decided to keep a journal dedicated entirely to a random tribulation saint. We often talk in our house about how we hope the trib saints get to our house before the government, because then they can get our many Bibles. Clearly this has influenced me to consider that they might take off with my journals as reading material.

So, I carried forth for several months, starting each journal entry with a “Dear Tribulation Saint,” or, if I were feeling rather blasé, I’d just say “Tribulation Saint:” and carry forth. But one day, I had a rather startling thought.

“Friend,

“I just realized something. What if you’re not a tribulation saint? What if *gasp* you’re an evil dictator who has scoured the homes of known believers for information on meeting places and stuff? AHHH!!!! Get away from my diary!

“Anyhow, if the (hopefully large) chance that you’re a Saint, and/or still reading this, I shall endeavor to tell you about my day.”

Then, one September 11^th, I got pensive about that.

“Before I get too far I just want to say, September 11 already? I know that you, as a tribulated person, have all sorts of crazy stuff in your world, but September 11 was pretty crazy for me.”

I just couldn’t believe that I would even vaguely compare our little problems to Tribulation-sized problems. Clearly I have no sense of fair comparisons.

While going tangenty one day, I made this observation to my friend TS,

“Anyhow, that got a little off-topic from my subject, but that’s OK, because 1) this is a diary and I can say pretty much whatever I want, and b) if you’re really a tribulation saint, then I’m in Heaven and the rules of writing don’t even apply any more.”

I’m not sure why I thought that the rules of writing would cease to apply once I got a Heavenly-type promotion, but maybe my old self knew something it hasn’t bothered to share with the current me.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!

“Oh wait, do you have happy anything days there in the tribulation? That would kind of stink, not having happy anything days. I mean, I guess you have joy in the Lord and all that, but that would just kind of stink.”

Actually, I think the most amusing part of my whole thing was that I eventually shortened my saint’s title from “Tribulation Saint” to “TS.” It took me a little while to realize that T. S. Eliot has such initials, so I started calling my Tribulation Saint TS, Thomas, or just Eliot. And sometimes Thomas. It vaguely weireded me out to realize that writing my journal to a man didn’t seem odd, because I’d been subconsciously writing it to a male the whole time.

Which should be weirder, but when I think of tribulation saints, I mostly think of men, for some reason. Silly, I know, because women and children would be the most likely to grab journals from someone’s room (the men would be in the basement stocking up on pliers and flathead screwdrivers) and so it goes to follow that a woman or childly person would end up with my journal.

But, it’s all foolishness anyhow, because if I manage to remain on earth for very long, I intend to burn most (code word: all) of my journals anyhow. So, Tribulation Saint, don’t bother looking for those journals. Go help your mom raid our pantry. Also in the basement, by the way, so just follow the menfolk, and you’ll do fine.