Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Coming Home

Sunday night after church I was slightly distraught after a small confrontation with my best friend. Nothing permanent, just something we need to work on. I found myself not wanting to return home and, instead, drove across the road to my old dance school. The lights were on and the door open so I ventured inside.

The studio is in the sanctuary of an old episcopal church. Enormous cathedral ceilings, stained glass windows, and ancient wood floors which gave me blisters in my feet hundreds of times. Everything was exactly the same as I had left it. The floor was still splintery, Dance Teacher had hauled out the enormous old Christmas tree and set it up right in front of the mirrors, the far light was still slightly dim, even the posters advertising Avon make-up, used Irish dance wigs, out grown shoes, and dog grooming were still on the bulletin board. In a circle on the middle of the floor was my friends, some of their mothers, and Dance Teacher. I felt like I had come home. I tried to quietly sneak toward the office to say hello to Dance Teacher's Mother but one girl had already stood and shouted my name.

"Kite." Everyone shouted it after her and ran over to greet me.

I had never been the best dancer. I had never really been a good dancer, but I was missed for my sheer presence. I was a favorite of girls and mums alike and I remain unsure why. I was the eldest in the class and possibly the most passionate. I loved dance. I miss dancing every week and spending hours in that ancient church pulling splinters out of my callouses. I miss that time I spent in a place that still feels so much more like home, even than my own house.

How is that possible?

Life is defined by coming home.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Waiting

I am home for the holiday season. I miss my friends.

Text message 11 am this morning:
Friend (who was in a wedding today):Hey, Kite, I have a story to tell you later. You'll love it.


It is now late evening. How long are weddings supposed to last? I hate suspense.



Life is defined by waiting.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Ideas

3 Bad things about me

1. I am very touch oriented. When I speak to people, I like to be close to them and put my hand on their arm or shoulder. This makes people feel uncomfortable many times.
2. I am very easily distracted. This hinders me from learning when I am distracted from studying, it also keeps me from developing close friendships because I am too distracted by new people to meet, and it keeps me from growing stronger in faith when I am distracted by things outside of my values.
3. I am quite vain. I've posted before that I do realize I am beautiful and well liked, sometimes I show it and I shouldn't.

3 Good things about me

1. I smile a lot. I am a very joyful person.
2. I really value friendship. When I can conjure enough patience to culture a true friendship, that relationship means everything to me.
3. I like to think.

This last point brings me to something that I've noticed lately. While culturing a friendship with Unconventional Boy, we love to discuss things. Theology, politics, ideas, tattoos... Everything. He always seems amazed at what I say which always surprises me. Some of what I say is slightly outlandish. "I love your ideas." he's told me many times, "Never stop sharing them with me."

I'm not an expert on anything. I never got good grades in school. I'm no Super-Christian who knows everything about God. But I like to talk about it. Unconventional Boy has been through four years of Bible college and he says I amaze him with my insight. I presented a theory at lunch yesterday and another friend who is a teacher of Hebrew working on his doctorate turned to Unconventional Boy and stated, "Every time this girl opens her mouth, wisdom pours out."

I have never gotten this before. No one has ever really appreciated my ideas. In highschool I used to debate with the teacher and a few classmates about political and economical issues. There were a few reasons for this 1) the more I argued the more class time I took up and the less we had to actually accomplish 2)I was the only democrat in the class, I had to take a stand on something 3) everyone else thought in a box. Dare I say, usually no one took my strange ideas seriously and I often just shrugged them off as impractical.

Unconventional and I had a serious discussion about a relevant issue the other day. We ended on a philosophical high and, when a similar topic came up the following afternoon with a different group, I presented the same points I had with Unconventional. A few of them laughed at me. What I had suggested was not impossible, simply unheard of.

The questions I raise are these: Why were my ideas laughed at when they were not impossible? Why are we as Christians, as Americans, as human beings so defined by convention? Why have my ideas never been valued? And why do Unconventional Boy and our small group of curly haired college senior friends see what others do not?

V for Vendetta is probable my favorite movie in existence. It is so symbolic. An idea cannot be killed, it cannot be kissed, you cannot hang onto an idea, or love an idea, or stop an idea.

Life is defined by ideas.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Losing

I'm not extreme, but I do have a feminist streak in me. I am an independent woman. I pick up my own silverware that falls on the floor, I work hard at everything I do, I don't let my friends do things for me, I open my own doors.

Best Friend (and most other guys I've been in contact with) have always given up on trying after a while. I can usually pull out the independent speech and totally have my own way.

I was challenged last night.

Walking out of the student center with a good friend, we both opened our own doors at approximately the same time. Usually this would be ignored, or the guy would say something lame like, "I'm supposed to get the door." and I would give my comeback.

But this particular friend kept on walking at my side. "You know, Kite," he said offhandedly, "My dad says that when I'm with a girl and I don't get the door for her it makes her feel like a whore. And I don't want you to feel like whore so if we're going to be friends, I get the doors."

I had no response. I didn't feel that the independent speech would really fly.



Life is defined by losing to a good competitor.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Friendship

This is sort of a follow-up which I don't suppose I intend to do very much however, this is definitely an appropriate time for such events.

Last night Unconventional Boy stole me away from campus, and Roommate, and homework, and studying for finals to take me to the viaduct. We took the long way, stopping to drive through neighborhoods with lots of Christmas lights and admire the nice houses and festive atmosphere. We never stopped talking. It was truly some of the best conversation and discussion that I have ever had.

He drove me underneath the viaduct then took me to the top where we dangled our legs over the side of the wall and looked down, down, down to the incredible gorge below us. What a feat of architecture!!! It was all stone. Now they make viaducts out of steel and cables but this one is nearly a hundred years old and a hundred years ago they sure knew how to build them. It could probably last another thousand years.

Need I say, I had one of the best times.

Later, after we had returned to campus and parted ways he contacted me.

"Kite, I'm pissed." he said. "I go out and have a great time hanging out with a friend and everyone wants to know what's going on."

I suppose this goes along with my last post about why I don't have to be sensitive to everyone else's feelings when I form friendships. Both Unconventional Boy and I have decided that society (our society at least) does not accept simple friendship. When a girl and a boy hang out the obvious next step to most people is marriage.

As soon as I returned to the room last night Roommate practically jumped on me. "So....do you think he likes you?" she demanded.

How would I know!? Why would I care!?

Why is nothing simple anymore? Everything in our world has become so complicated. We want a friendship. Simply two people who enjoy the same things, agree and disagree, and want to spend time together without pressure from each other or the people around us. Why has this become unacceptable?

Life is defined by simple, innocent friendships.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Drama

My friend, Unconventional Boy, wants to take me to the viaduct.



I told Roommate this.



"Kite, you can't do that." she said.



"Why?" I asked, confused as to why she wouldn't want me to go. Did she know some dark and ugly secret about Unconventional Boy that I did not? Did he have a history of pickpocketing wallets? Was he a rapist? Did he like to throw girls off from viaducts?



"Kite," she said, turning around to face me, "Perky Girl Downstairs really really likes Unconventional Boy. She would be really upset if he took you to the viaduct.



What has this to do with me?



Should every interaction I have with others be completely sensitive to the odd person who may have feelings for them? Somehow I think not. I've never motivated like this in the past. Best Friend always has a girlfriend but that does not stop me from stealing him away from her whenever I am around. I know for a fact that Blondie really really really likes Friend Boy, however, that has not kept him from being my Friend Boy and spending large amounts of time with him because he is my friend.



Does any of this matter anyway? I sort of laugh at it all, knowing the people who I have managed to irritate just by being a friend.



I'm looking foreward to seeing the viaduct.

Sometimes life is defined by drama.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Rough Morning

Since I've been at college, I have become increasingly more and more thankful for text and picture messaging. It has really become my first method of communication to Best Friend. It makes me a little bit sad because we used to speak face to face every day and I miss that quite a lot. But when I am far away I can be satisfied with hours of text conversation.

Two nights ago I sent him a picture of my newly pierced ear to ask him what he thought. I had pierced the tab where my ear attaches to my head and I thought it was pretty fun. I was actually really excited over it.

He didn't like it.

"Kite," he said, " I like you without them. I don't want you to change."

"I haven't changed." I told him. "I just think they're fun."

He didn't tell me outright that he didn't like them, I suppose. But he has a way of being disappointed that always wrecks havoc on my soul. I promised him that I would only do one more because that's as many as I had planned. Besides, the asymmetry would be completely thrown off if i had left it the way it was.

It's amazing what we will do for a friend. Or at least what I will do. I know better than to do something stupid, but I certainly am influenced by their needs and wants.

Thus, this morning I completed my final act of rebellion involving a needle. I pierced my cartilage. I hadn't done anything to my cartilage before and it immediately began to spew blood all over the place the moment I removed the needle. I realized in the moment of this gorey mess that my phone was vibrating and I had just missed a call from Friend Boy telling me that I was late for a very important meeting involving paperwork.

You must picture this in your mind.

A small touseled girl with short, soaking wet hair standing in a tile bathroom wrapped in a towel. Blood is streaming from the top of her ear ebbing continuously from a practical pinprick and running all the way down the left side of her face and neck. An earring is stuck halfway into the newly created hole to try and keep her from bleeding out through this tiny hole stuck in her ear and she realizes that the paperwork she needs for the meeting she is now twenty minutes late for is in the middle drawer of her desk. The middle drawer is somehow jammed from the inside. She has not been able to open it for a while now.

I dressed in a whirlwind practically running to the meeting to explain the jammed drawer to my advisor and hoping he will sort of be understanding. Friend Boy met me at the door and laughed. Half an hour late, dried blood all over my ear and some still on my neck, an old wife beater worn under a jacket, jeans with holes in the knees, flip flops (it's freezing outside), and my hair still wet, partially frozen, and sticking up in places.

"Rough morning?" he asked me. I laughed.



Life is defined by rough mornings.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Forgiveness

A while ago, Roommate had a friend staying with her in our room.

I was not a huge fan of this arrangement because Roommate’s stuff is usually all over the floor and it was only harder to maneuver with a sleeping bag also taking up the limited walking space. The friend also kept Roommate awake extra late, keeping me awake extra late. I cannot function on fewer than eight hours of sleep. The friend was also always in the room even when Roommate was not. This seriously cut down on my precious time to myself. Time to do yoga, accomplish homework, take naps. I figured that it was only three days and I could just suck it up and be inconvenienced. Life is not all about me.

After this girl had been living in my room for two days it was my turn to clean the suite bathroom part of this chore involves vacuuming all four square feet of our hallway. It takes less than a minute. Obviously, it was too long for this girl to have to listen to the vacuum cleaner. She got off the bed and shut the door. All in all, this would not have been a bad thing except she managed to firmly clamp one of my fingers in the door. I yelled, but she didn’t hear me over the slight din of the vacuum cleaner. When I was finally released, my nail base was bleeding and it had already begun to bruise.

The girl apologized briefly and proceeded to shut and lock the door to my dorm room. I stood in the hallway completely dumbfounded with my finger burning and throbbing and bleeding and the door to my own room locked in front of me. Not even Roommate locks me out of my room.

I seethed. What right did she have to be in my room in the first place? She did not live there. She did not belong there. She was impatient. Why would she keep trying to shut the door when it obviously did not want to shut? Why couldn’t she have given me thirty seconds to vacuum the freakin’ hallway!? And here I was bleeding at her hands, and I could not even go into my room to get a band-aid because she had locked me out of my own room!

It’s been six or seven weeks since that happened. My nail was bruised but it wasn’t a big deal. I got over it, forgave the girl, she went home, it was over. It was silly.

Yesterday, I laughed. My fingernail fell off. Painful, raw nerve endings are now covered by a gauzy bandage over the end of my finger. I thought about renewing my anger, but what good would it do anyone? Being angry again will not put my fingernail back on. My nail will grow back whether I am angry or not. It will still hurt.

Anger doesn’t help us.

Life is defined by forgiveness.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

You

I do not believe that I am ugly.

Many young women of my acquaintance seem to think this. Roommate’s constant complaining about how hideous she looks ring in my ears. Now while Roommate is no stunning gemstone of utter beauty, she is very pretty. It seems to me that the girls in my dorm are always in front of a mirror with disgruntled, often disgusted looks splayed across their faces. I usually do not understand.


I have good reason to believe I am not ugly. First off Best Friend consistently tells me I am beautiful. And he is not allowed to lie to me. It is the first rule of our friendship. Secondly, my other friends tell me. And while it is true that they are technically not violating any rules, oaths,
or sacred trusts by lying to me, I highly doubt that so many would tell me the same lie. Thirdly, I have had random guys in the mall stop to tell me how lovely I am or how intense my eyes are. Why would they lie to me? They have no reason to flatter me as they will probably never see me ever again.



Of course, I have many days when I do not feel beautiful. I have many days when I do not act beautiful. I probably even have days when I do not look beautiful.

When I started coming to college here I believe I suffered something along the lines of culture shock. I have always given and received compliments freely. If I find someone attractive, funny, likeable-I tell them so. On this small campus girls only give compliments to girls. I do not know if the male class gives each other compliments, but they do not give them to girls. The other day I realized the full intensity of this social quirk. I was sitting in one of the men’s residence halls watching a football game with Friend Boy when I realized that Friend Boy was wearing a green shirt and green looked very nice on him. I told him this fact. I received an interesting look from Stand-in Big Brother who was sitting in the chair next to mine. Friend Boy seemed to think nothing of it but I instantly asked myself if I had been too forward. In years and societies past I would have never thought twice about complimenting a guy on his shirt but I hadn’t heard of such things happening here.



Later that evening when I was getting ready to leave for my own dorm, room, bed, when Stand-in Big Brother stopped me. “Kite,” he said, “do you like Friend Boy?”


Granted, I may spend a lot of time with Friend Boy but 90% of the time it is in a large group of people in places like the graveyard or Taco Bell’s parking lot. This is hardly an intimate setting for coddling a newfound romance. If I truly liked Friend Boy wouldn’t there be other hints aside
from my complimenting his shirt? No one would have a problem with expressing admiration of a car, a piece of furniture, someone else’s water bottle, the arrangement of someone’s room; however if a personal compliment is given it is received in a completely unintended way. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I have always appreciated the openness I have had with the world. The inhabitants of the northeastern United States have the reputation of being lightly cold and uncaring and I have found this to be true, but I have also found that my generation is less so than the adults of my world. If I think a boy is good-looking, I have always told him so and have often received the same favor in return. I miss this openness and wish that it was accepted in this little circle of loving, Christian people. It is discouraging when a simple compliment is thrown askew and taken the wrong way by someone who I am quite close with and should know me better than to make an assumption.


The concept of greeting one another with a holy kiss has been discarded in the Christian community due to our culture. When I was in high school, it was my goal to spread joy to the world. I was captain of the cheer team and employed my girls to help me do this. I began by creating a close-knit group of girls who loved each other and supported each other in and out of practice. When the team went through tough times we still loved and supported one another. I started giving each of them a word of encouragement, a hug, and a kiss on the cheek before they left practice each day.

The kisses took off.


Before very long, my cheerleaders filled the hallways of my high school with innocent little cheek kisses and kind words. It stayed mostly among the girls, but once in a while it was even acceptable for a boy to receive a kiss on the cheek. A hug was always accepted.



This epidemic of kindness and affection did wonders for lightening the mood around me. I saw the effect on a person’s face before and after I had thrown my arms around them and pressed my lips briefly against their cheek. They smiled. They laughed.


The average human being likes feeling good about themselves. They like receiving compliments, being hugged, even being innocently kissed on the cheek. These are usually seen as good things. My question to my society now is why has it been turned around? Why are these things so obsolete that they are misunderstood when they do occur?

How you feel about yourself should not depend on the opinions of mortal human beings. You are who you are and that's just how it is. You may as well like it because you can't change it. However, it is nice to receive that kind word, the admiring glance, the gentle affection. It's reassuring.



Life is defined by you.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Fact and Opinion

12 Facts

1. I have always wanted to be Peter Pan when I grow up.

2. I regret not taking enough dance classes.

3. I wish I could hip hop better.

4. There is no such thing as a hip hop dancing Peter Pan

5. My first kiss was nice but a little on the lame end.

6. I call my best friend Punk more often than I use his name.

7. None of my own piercings have become infected.

8. I have a strange and fabulous love of red hair.

9. Sometimes I wish I was like Peter Parker. That I could just be bitten by a mutant spider and wake up with outrageous muscles and a sense of rhythm (I’d trade the spidey powers for that).
What do you know—instant hip hop dancer!!!!

10. I haven’t stopped using my Old Spice body wash even though it’s been making my dry skin worse.

11. Corsets are viciously uncomfortable.

12. I am not indestructible, but sometimes I pretend I am.



12 Opinions

1. Boys named Peter are obviously superior.

2. Growing up is overrated, why bother?

3. My mobile phone is my sustainer of life and happiness.

4. Friend Boy is a punk for flicking my very sensitive, newly pierced ear while we’re outside in the cold.

5. It is better to smell like a clean boy than a dirty girl.

6. Popcorn is delicious.

7. Dance is the most intense fun ever.

8. Kissing someone in a parking lot at five am or in the middle of the road on an autumn afternoon is better quality kissing than in a basement at night after a round of video games and pizza.

9. Corsets are not worth the pain they inflict.

10. Best Friend should text me.

11. Doing dangerous things would be much less fun if I were indestructible.

12. The rain dance Raquel and I created is the greatest and most effective rain dance ever formulated.



Life is defined by facts and opinions.