Happy

Sometimes, there's this click. You could be walking on the street, listening to your iPod, sitting on the sofa. You could be in Europe, in a swamp. You could be far or near. There's this click, and it's the sound of things falling into place in your heart, the sound of happiness entering the room. It's when the feelings of sadness lift. You're left smiling for no reason and you can't believe that, in the trillions of moments in your lifetime, you have ever been happier. The seas part, the birds sing and it's all magical, like your childhood's imaginary landscapes. I don't get it a lot.
But when you walk into the room, you make everything click.

I miss you.

GRRRRRRRROWL

The newest in baby fashion.

In/Out of Touch

I pick you up in Midtown Atlanta by rolling up to your corner and yelling a catcall out the window. We laugh about how it feels like you're a call girl and I'm the sleazy/lonely John. I remember thinking how strange it is to have you sitting in the seat next to me, mainly because we haven't talked much in a few years and perhaps deep down don't really know each other that well. I make you decide where we'll go eat, and you do so immediately. I love this, because no one ever wants to be the decisive one.

We catch up about life and loves. I eat a salad and try to think myself thin, you talk about all the madness of being in a big city and living young and crazy. When it's my turn to tell stories, I realize that they're so tinged with being old that I'm a little embarrassed. And I realize immediately after, probably when the waiter asks to see my I.D. for that rum&coke, that I'm not really old physically but somewhere deep in the heart or soul. Or I've gotten older in my head, and it only makes me wish harder to be young and wild again.

***

We make plans to meet at my favorite breakfast hangout in Atlanta, and when I get there I see that it's closed so I pout in my car while I wait for you to arrive. In the empty parking lot, I begin to remember you more clearly. Times we sang together, what you drove, laughs, deeper talks. I remember that once I had put my arm around you and said, "This guy is great." It was a warm memory, which are the best.

You get there late, which I remember as being typical so I chuckle slightly. You look dramatically different: your hair is long, down to your shoulders, and you've gained a little weight. You seem scruffier than I imagine, but I imagine singing praise & worship songs with you in front of hundreds at church. I cringe slightly and wonder if I'm very different to your eyes. We laugh a little, hug once. I say that we should walk down the road to a nearby restaurant and you love the idea because it seems so European to you, the novelty of walking. I don't know how to respond to that, so I just smile.

It's not as polished as it was before, so our friendship takes some time to get used to. When your girlfriend meets up with us, she asks a lot of questions and I like that because I can respond to concrete things. You make me repeat the funny parts of our conversation from before, and it's just a little embarrassing because I don't feel very funny. But I do repeat them, and she does laugh. You give me a CD of your music, our common connection, when I say goodbye. I like the CD and listen to it on the way home. You were right: the second song isn't very good.

***

When the phone rings, I don't expect it to be you. I had called you that morning, thinking maybe we could meet up later on in the day; as the day wore on I forgot that I had called you. You begin the conversation with shared jokes, doing funny voices. I laughed, because those voices were some of my favorite things about you. You are great at those voices. But the voices fade, and you get very serious when I ask you about your life right now. You're teaching English to non-natives, and not sure that you like it too much. I laugh, because we have more in common than ever now. I wait for a funny story about "the crazy things they say," but you can't really think of one. I try to tell my favorite one but I'm not sure if it is funny to you. I secretly begin to hope you'll do one of the voices again.

You ask if I'm going to church at the same place as four years ago. I try to shrug the question off quickly and get back to the voices, to work, to your degree, to anything else. This is not part of that shared common ground anymore, and I know that you know it. I wrench the steering wheel from your grasp and, by asking how your Spanish host family is, accidentally turn the topic into the miscarriages of your Spanish friend. I grimace, and decide it's not the best idea to meet up with you later today. I don't say this. When I'm about to hang up, you tell me that the Lord lays me on your mind, and when He does, you pray for me fervently. Or something to that effect. I thank you and hang up. The phone clicks, and I listen to the dialtone. I wonder how the world can stretch two people so far apart that you can physically feel the words and emotions between you go taut, vibrate for a moment, and snap, hurtling back to their points of origin.

Yes, yes, yes, yes and Yes

Thank you.

But no thanks, you don't have to sing.

On Peachtree and 10th

via flickr

This past weekend I drove up to Atlanta and spent time with good friend Jerritt for a few days. The 3.5 hour trip up the interstate went pretty smoothly with the exception of a new appearance by my old friend Car Sickness; apparently I can now get dramatically ill from driving for a long period of time. Oh how my body hates me! Thinking to delay the inevitable return to Valdosta and the carsick seat, the 24-hour jaunt turned into a full-fledged weekend supertrip; so compelling it was that January drove up from Valdosta to join in on the party.

Ever since the summer that I lived there and interned at a non-profit organization, I've always thought Atlanta has the best of everything. It just seems big enough to enjoy all the city comforts (traffic, public transport) but not outta control chaotic like New York (people dressed as elves, filthy everything). So of course my sugarplum visions of Atlanta were solidified this weekend as I reconnected with old friends that I hadn't seen or talked to in years and enjoyed the familiar rush of city life, the beating heart of a living metropolis. That, and tried not to get into a traffic accident on tricksy Atlanta roads.

This is Your Life (Are You Who You Wanna Be?)

Today I went to the Swamp near my house (no, for real) with January. We walked the docks to get to the tower, and at the top I divulged the Top Secret secrets of the latest Harry Potter at January's insistence. At one point, I stopped talking about the muggles and wizards and looked out on the miles of marsh, stretching into a horizon of clouds and sunny day. The wind picked up a tiny bit; I remained silent for just a second more to capture the moment. That moment and all the other contented moments that are like it are, unfortunately, so rare.

Earlier that day I had nearly ransacked my little room searching for something to wear to church. I wound up with a pair of pants whose top button had popped off and a shirt that, two years ago, was horrendously huge on me. And no, it wasn't that big on me this morning. For the 80,000th time in the past month I noticed my ballooning midsection, and paused a moment. I pulled at my stomach, I pinched parts in the mirror, and I remained horrified at the sight and the feeling. I remained silent for just a second more because, unlike those above, these moments come much more often and leave a much deeper mark.

Sometimes when you stop and take stock of your life, when you notice where you're standing figuratively/literally/emotionally/psychologically in that very moment, you can't think of anywhere better. Sometimes the wind hits you just right or the sun is shining, or you're happy with a friend, and sometimes it's just the opposite; the words can't come to express your shame or your sadness, and the nastiest voices in the world are all in the room with you, alone.

Home, 2005

Who could have imagined this scene? My mother asleep on the couch, the Baby lying two feet away on his make-shift pallet, and my father nodding off and reading the paper simultaneously. Cue the Spanish lullaby CD playing in the background.

Let's just say I was kind of picturing a different scenario on returning home for the first time in six months.

A Short Guide To Milk

NO

YES

Except for the highly unfortunate aftertaste (is that horse manure?) in the SoyMilk, Very Vanilla will always beat out normal milk.

Oh, Say Can You See

The plane ride home was uneventful, although I was slightly afraid that the girl next to me was going to either cough up her lung or die (or both). She continually apologized for the 8-hour cough, and I said "Don't worry. But really, are you okay?" because at that point I was afraid she was going to pass the bubonic plague on to me.

I've been in New York for a few days now eating my way through the City and spending a lot of fun time with Travis. We went to the see the new Margaret Cho movie Assassin last night, and it was hilarious. I really like the fact that she will say positively anything with no fear. At the risk of sounding cliche, she's really what we need in the current political climate of America.

Speaking of home, it has been weird being back, but mainly because I've been out the U.S. loop for so long. Sure, I read the celebrity news daily (Britney! Pregnant! Kirstie Alley!) but I've really missed a lot of the real domestic news, and it makes me more than just a little upset to see what has been happening in this country while I've been gone. The country was divided in two by the last elections, and politically speaking, everyone seems so angry. What up?