Navy Blue and Other Things

Sometimes, well, often, I wonder what God is doing. I find myself in these places that I, on the one hand, feel peace about, but on the other hand, wonder at their purpose. The past year and half most of my prayers have contained, "God, what are you doing?"

Truthfully, I still don't know, and perhaps, I never will. Or, when I do, it won't matter anyway, because it will have all happened already. But, the past two weeks, have been nothing short of surprising. And I keep thinking about that Monday I sat in my friend, Jessica's, office and she said, "This must be Whitney's month of redemption." I smirked and dismissed it a little at first, still surprised by the sudden flood of old people into my life. People who I had long since turned into yearbooks and nostalgia, salted sometimes with bitterness. They came in this slow line. A phone call. A text message. A visit. And suddenly I was wide-awake again.

I often think about the fates. I imagine them not as Greek or Roman women, devastatingly beautiful and in white robes, but as old southern women. With their hair both askew and perfectly in place. I imagine them laughing flippantly as they sip ice tea and weave and spin and snip on the front porch of the world, neither here nor there. And occasionally, I imagine that the stop and really think about someone, question their whole existence. I imagine they stop and choke on the bitterness of the tea and want to leave all those piles of string behind and go and imbibe and play and live. One of them drops their end of the string and whispers, "Let them figure it out. It's all death and tragedy in the end. Maybe if we leave it alone they'll all finally find their way out and if not, it can't be any worse than we've made it." And it gets silent on that front porch, except the sounds of frogs, crickets, and cicadas. Then they remember that they have no more choice than the people whose strings they're weaving and spinning and snipping.

I had a dream a few nights ago. I came home one day and my landlord had started painting my apartment navy blue. Can you imagine? And each room was partially painted and no one was there and I was furious. I yelled and my landlord and promptly moved out next more. I woke up feeling refreshed because mostly in my dreams I'm passive and scared (stop laughing, you women of fate). And so I looked up what navy blue meant in dreams and found out what my landlord was trying to paint on my walls was conformity. Was fear and negativity. I guess I am finally moving out of that place.

I still don't know what it all means. The people coming back and the moving out in my dreams. I can say that though my dishwasher is currently broken and my house is a mess, I'm settling into a happier place. The old questions are coming back, but truthfully, I missed them. I missed getting all a-fluttered because of them and the injustice, because they reminded me I was alive and that was important. The questions were better company than any episode of HIMYM because they were real.

But, I guess knowing or not knowing has never really been the problem. Navy blue and holding still has been.

101.

I clearly missed the pinnacle of the 100th blog. I did not notice until I came to post this, my 101st blog.

I am finding myself mostly in a place that is strange. A place that is just unfamiliar enough that I haven't yet learned the language for it. I grasp in the air, like it's around me, but I don't have the eyes to see it yet. Instead, I find myself newly obsessed with words. Words that describe anything I can hold onto for a moment. Poems, passages from books. I read them over and over again like they will make more sense of this foreign land I find myself in.

And they don't. At least, not exactly. They make sense. They hit my heart in a spot that is still easy for most things to find. I burst into tears of joy or I laugh with some sort of unnerving sadness I can't explain. Because I am not sad. I'm just a little amiss, skewed. Like an l and an i written too closely together to form an out of place u. It's not wrong; it's just not right either.

I am drawn here, to my blog, infrequently these days. I find silence and solitude perhaps too natural a place of understanding sometimes and other times I am out living too much life to make sense of it. But, when I do, it is almost always because of this feeling.

Tonight, the only thing that makes sense is a good story. Like The History of Love or Harry Potter. Maybe Girl Meets God in a certain light and Anne Lamott for a light snack.

So, tell me a story. But, make it good. It's doesn't have to be correct, but it's got to be true.