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hope abides, charlie brown
October 19, 2004
see the world
So, I took a few days off from writing, quite unintentionally. The weekend capped a week of bringing me back down to earth from the high I’ve been on for the last few weeks. Some things fell away this weekend, and I know that’s a good thing, because the hopes I placed in them were false. Sunday night, I sat down at the computer, but for the first time in weeks, I was too mired in disappointment and disillusionment, and nothing happened.
Yesterday, I tried again at work, and all I got was a sober, dry recounting of my past three days, as if you cared. The key word, perhaps, is sober. After work, I had a few hours before my 8:00 basketball game, so I hopped over to the pub, notebook and camera in hand.
You learn fear. You learn to walk your step. You sacrifice your innocence for experience. You think that that is what will make you a better writer, but you’re wrong. Clarity is what makes you a better writer, clear thinking. You have all that, in your first face – Bono.A while back, I printed that quote out on a label and stuck it on the inside of a shiny new notebook that I bought in my renewed quest to regain my own clarity. Lately, that quest has found success, enabled a bit, no doubt, by the oft-mentioned and oft'ner-consumed beer. Beer has become the training wheels for my writing - when I drink a bit, I recover the certainty and clarity of my youth, as well as the ability to let the words flow, unhindered by thoughts of where they might end up or what they might sound like.
After the long silence that began in law school, writing has become a compulsion lately, which makes me both overjoyed and overanxious. I feel like I could do nothing but write all day long. I've been totally electrified in the times when I realize that someone's actually been checking in and reading this stuff and feeling something from it.
With that, naturally, comes the fear, that if I don't write for a day or two, that I'll lose my momentum, that this reawakening of my self-awareness, and of my abilities, will flutter and fade. There's the fear that if it doesn't stay fresh and interesting and entertaining, that it will be pointless, that people won't connect with it. The fear is so much like the fear an addict feels, of losing the comfort/security/high that the substance of their addiction gives them, that it’s become inextricably intertwined with the way I feel about drinking lately. That fear runs even deeper, though - it's a fear of losing hope.
I keep coming back to that word, hope. When I was younger, hope was less important, because potential and faith were enough. As a child, as a teenager, as a twenty-something, the potential in myself and the world around me still had time to become real. Those potential energies hadn’t yet failed (and I had not failed them) enough times in my life for me to discern the patterns and probabilities that are involved in hopes and dreams being realized. Faith had yet to be diminished by experience.
Love was still out there, inevitable, just a matter of time and fate, a destiny I was sure was mine. I had faith that I would find some miraculous way to overcome my fears and insecurities, and my foolish pursuit of dreams that were not mine, to become the person I believed I was born to be, doing the things I truly believed I was born to do.
I’m not old, I’m not over. But I am now aware of those patterns, the probabilities, the myriad and numerous factors and forces that must align and converge to make certain things occur. I’m aware of the consequences of my own mistakes, and more damning, of my own laxity in determination and discipline to this point in my life. I’m aware of the contradictions in my life that still must be sorted out.
So, hope becomes increasingly important. Everyone puts either their faith or their hope in something, something that makes or they believe will make him or her feel connected to this life, like they are some valuable working part of the universe. But so many of those things fail. I believe in love, but I know that relationships come and go, and that there is no guarantee of finding real, true, lasting love in one's life. The permanence and connection of friendships are things that are proven and appreciated over time, and I have plenty of friendships that are long since proven. Much of my sense of meaning and self-worth comes from the fact that I have the friends that I do – I know no better measure of approval then that. But even the best friend can't always be there, and I know that there needs to be something generated in myself that lends meaning, something unique that I can contribute to the mix.
Right now, writing is the most reliable hope I have in my life for meaning and purpose and happiness, and lately, it's a source of hope in which I feel I have the greatest control. I know that soon, I'll have to take the training wheels off and let beer return to a more occasional role. I need to accept that there will be short time spans where nothing happens, and just have faith that things will turn around again. And for anyone reading this, or who's anjoyed checking this site out from time to time, I ask for your faith, too - there'll be more stuff, and it won't always be the icky gloomy stuff, either...
Writing this reminded me of something I wrote over a decade ago. My friend Robert had a short film project for a class, and he wanted to revisit the Peanuts gang as adults, at Charlie Brown's wedding to the little red-haired girl. Snoopy, since I know you'll wonder, had been shot down over Iraq in the Gulf War and was MIA. Heading down the aisle, Charlie has a panic attack and bolts for the exit...
Charlie Brown sighed. The clouds moved across the sky. He heard the soft crunch of footsteps on the grass, coming his way. The hem of a blue dress drifted into view above him, followed by the dour face of Lucy. She paused just long enough to make him feel self-conscious before she spoke the inevitable words.
"That was stupid, Charlie Brown."
"Do you remember, Lucy? Do you remember when there weren't so many different colors? I mean, when the color blue wasn't so darn complicated?"
"Yup. It's finally happened. I can see the marbles rolling out of that big fat head right now. Good grief, is this going to be one of those scenes from 'thirtysomething'? You shouldn't really even have those until you're fortysomething, you know."
Charlie Brown didn't blink. She stared down into those beady eyes. Then, with a sigh, she sat down.
"All right, Charlie Brown. The Doctor Is In." Charlie looked over at her and blinked. Then he turned towards the sky again.
"It's been happening a lot lately. I'm going along, and all of a sudden I have a flashback. The grass is green, and it's all the same shade of green. The sky is blue, and it's all blue. And Snoopy is alive, and he's not just a beagle, he's one of us, one of the gang. But this sky has at least six different shades of blue in it, and this grass is at least three different shades of green and seven different shades of brown. It's not the same world Lucy, but I can't remember when it changed. And when I was in there, walking down the aisle, I was trying to remember the grass, and the sky, and Snoopy, and I couldn't! I just couldn't."
Lucy stared blankly into the grass for a moment. It did seem sort of patchy. She closed her eyes and slowly laid back, feeling the grass crush beneath her, feeling the sun's warmth spilling and soaking across the front of her dress. She opened her eyes and there was the sky above her, in all its Technicolor splendor.
"The world never changed, Charlie Brown. We got smarter. Instead of seeing the world, we started seeing all the things in it. We tried to get more out of the world, but that meant we started seeing all the flaws, too. Life for kids is just something to do, something to experience. Now it's like it's something we're up against. I have those flashbacks, too."
Charlie looked over at her. "Really?"
"Yeah. It's kind of scary. It's like I'm walking away from home, and every time I look back, my house gets harder and harder to see." She paused, and Charlie could hear her swallow, like she was pushing something back down. Then she sat up.
"I thought I would do this as a favor to you on your wedding day, but I guess it would be a favor to me, too."
Lucy unzipped the small duffel bag she had carried out with her, and reached inside. Charlie Brown sat up, too, and watched as she pulled out a weathered old leather football. He looked up at her, and a comfortably familiar discomforting grin grew across her face.
"For old time's sake?" she said slyly.
The fear and uncertainty that had filled him for so long was slowly pushed aside and then trampled by a determination he hadn't felt in years. He stood up, and paced off a distance, then turned to face her as a matador faces the waiting bull. Lucy tossed her hair back behind her neck as she carefully positioned the football in the grass. Then, a thought crossed her mind, and she raised the football to him in a toast.
"To simpler times and primary colors, Charlie Brown!"
He nodded to her, allowing only that slight lapse in concentration. He scuffed his tuxedo shoes into the grass, tensed his body, and sprang forward, arms driving, legs pumping, his face afire with primal determination, the drives of fight or flight aroused once more, the wide-eyed glower of the dark hunter, spear raised, charging the snarling prey....
"AUGHHHHHHHH!"
His body prescribed a glorious arc through the air, and he felt like a dancer being lifted with perfect form and smoothness, the air rushing in his ears as he reached the apex of the leap, his feet rising above him, the ground moving up to meet his back with a resounding thud. The air rushed out of his lungs, his back grew slightly numb, colors danced before his eyes like a thousand lava lamps on acid.
Charlie Brown sighed again, but this time he smiled.
Posted by Rob at October 19, 2004 07:11 PM
Comments
I like this one :)
Posted by: Sheila at October 26, 2004 12:00 PM