In common

In common

We file in, early, wearing jeans and sneakers or heels and silk, depending on the mood. Row by row by row, we look the same: tired. Glad to be here, or not, depending on the mood. Waiting. Friends. We stand to sing and pretend to be in "that place," or we are in "that place," depending on the day. The carpet under our feet is blue; the pews are soft and white; the pages are numbered for quick reference. We sit after we sing, and listen to the pastor in the suit, or we pretend to listen, depending on the mood. After an hour we blink and lean back against the benches and talk to each other, and then we leave. We do not often say it; it doesn't need to be said; but we are secure in the knowledge that

we have nothing in common with

the habit here, on the other hand: we arrive late, wearing jeans and sneakers or heels and silk, depending on the mood. Row by row by row, we look the same: tired. Glad to be here, or not, depending on the mood. Waiting. Friends. We kneel to pray and pretend to be in the presence, or we are in the presence, depending on the day. The floor under our feet is pine; the pews are warm oak; the leaflets give page numbers for quick reference. We sit or we kneel after we sing, and listen to the rector in the robes, or we pretend to listen, depending on the mood. After an hour we blink and lean back against the benches and talk to each other, and then we leave. We do not usually say it; it doesn't need to be said; but we are secure in the knowledge that

we have nothing in common with

the pattern here--to arrive exactly on time, wearing jeans and sneakers or heels and silk, depending on the mood. Row by row by row, we look the same: tired. Glad to be here, or not, depending on the mood. Waiting. Friends. We kneel to pray and appear to be devout, or we are devout, depending on the day. The floor under our feet is stone; the pews are hard and cool; the page numbers are announced for quick reference. We kneel after we sing, and listen to the priest in the robes, or we pretend to listen, depending on the mood. After an hour we blink and lean back against the benches and talk to each other, and then we leave. We do not like to say it; it doesn't need to be said; but we are secure in the knowledge that

we have nothing in common with

nothing in common

--except this one thing, this small thing, I suppose we could all admit; but there are too many differences, after all, because here it is biscuits
and here crackers
and here white bread--
here Welch's
and here punch
and here wine--
here we intinct
and here we break loaves
and here we are fed.

No, see the differences, stacked up overwhelmingly high... It is wishful thinking, it must be just fretful hoping, far too far-fetched to even imagine that we have

everything

in common

after all.

Celebration and release

Celebration and release

A last-minute decision to go, after all, even though the prospect had not sparked any enthusiasm when I'd first got the call. But last-minute impulses sometimes shanghai good sense, especially when final papers have just been handed in, final exams have just been written, and some sort of celebration looks necessary--or unavoidable.

I'll come. What time will you be there?

A finished shift and a very late hour when we finally shut the door on uniform and protocol; a black sky cloaks the parking lot, where the streetlights have burned out. Inside the awakened car the automatic light is tinny and strange after the warm store's golden-tope glow, but I am glad to be free, and gladder to be on my way somewhere after such a day. We speed together, me and the car, down the deserted highway with the windows down, music unnecessary.

A rush of people, noise, action spilling out of doorways when the street is reached; why is it that the holiday mood was somehow gladder in the breezy car? But confidence comes from appearances and, for now, an effort of will is all it takes to find it as I march down the street. boom Inside it is a different world and I am unprepared; I do not come here much and never at this hour. Inside there is a cyclone of motion and a crush of bodies and sound disappears into noise. Where are the people I've come to find--these people, ummm their names, not sure of their names--they said they'd be here though?

I'll come, but what time--?

A renewed effort of will keeps confidence high. It wouldn't matter if they were not here; not any more. But they are here, somewhere just past the queue by the bar, crammed around a tiny table which is seemingly being crushed by a circling, swaying mass of people trying to navigate narrow floors leading to the alcohol. There is somehow room for one more. Will they remember my name? (Cursed impulses). They do remember, but they are halfway into a better place by now and they will not remember in an hour.

Oh, I'm so glad you came...

Noise.

A continuation of splendid forced confidence and the appearance of a brown bottle help matters, somewhat, although I am still cursing impulses. Who accepts invitations of near-strangers on the recommendation of a slightly-unreliable mutual friend--who is not even here? Only idiots. This is not my scene, I feel, although the noise configures and reconfigures itself into music thrumming at the back of my head, and inside the thrumming there is a sort of release. For a second I am glad again; the papers, the exams, are gone, and the air in here is on fire.

An impulse of a different kind sends most of my neighbours around the crowded table outside to hang off lamp-posts, giggle and smoke for a while, leaving an awkward silence behind them. But my friend has actually arrived. Things must be looking up: I find myself a clear drink with a green fruit in it and controversial, intellectual discussions have already begun between the remaining few at the table. It's already been two hours. Or has it been an hour? Or ten minutes?

Thrum.

A remembrance has occurred, reminding me that brown and clear are not on good terms, but it is too late. Blurring generally. The discussion is suddenly overwhelming, and it is surging up and over the table like fighting gargoyles two feet away from me, and I can't focus on it. My head aches; I put my hand on it, or my head in my hand, or both, together, and I know now that it is over, I have to go, even less is it my scene than I thought, and I have already broken rules. Where are my feet? Under the chair, presumably. I reattach them as best I can and stand up to leave. Goodbye. He is mortified: the only conclusion he can see is that the heated discussion has been offensive, that it has made my face this shade of white.

No, it's nothing you said, no, I just have to go.

I'm sorry.

An awkward exit through throngs, noise, bottles, and outside there is air and it smells good. I find my waiting car in the parking lot. Tonight I am an escaping convict. This car must mean celebration and release: the tires work together to speed me away and the noise has disappeared, is gone as if it never was. Inside the air was on fire, but outside evening rain has washed the sparks out of the atmosphere, leaving only clouds and stars and spring, breathing together. And the road and the wind are still and again the only music I need.

Not static, either

Not static, either

Alternatives, Lord—
what of them?
Why do you not make
just one
option reasonable?
Why are there many,
Cloaked in grand clothing,
Wrapped in oratory,
Or wise old dusty tomes—?
Give you me
Choices, even after
I’ve chosen—?
Alternatives, after
I've spoken?

Not benign

Not benign

Language is not benign.

Someone said this once; I do not know who it was. It is true though. Words have a mysterious power. Words are swords and spades and magic and bread and wine and constructive or destructive, and we use and misuse them all the time. And sometimes words are perfectly useless in helping people to understand one another.

To use a little recently and reluctantly-acquired information about communication-- nonverbal communication transmits approximately 55 per cent of meaning, while verbal communication actually transmits a weak 7 per cent. When we speak how often do we actually mean what we say, entirely, and how often does the tilt of our heads or the expressions on our faces while we are speaking undermine our words anyway?

We don't know how to communicate with each other. King Lear's Edgar ends the play with his exhortation--"The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say," reminding his friends what disaster can come of spoken deceit and miscommunication.

No ablo; je ne parle pas; I do not speak. Or rather, I cannot speak--there is a piece of tape across my mouth and it filters every word that squeaks past my teeth, and when I move my hands in a certain way I artlessly, unknowingly, erase what I've said, stroke by stroke.

Perhaps this is why the meaning of a well-executed dance sometimes strikes us to our very core; wordless motions, uncorrupted by damaging speech, striking a perfect balance between art and communication. And music is sometimes the best communicator of all.

How are we to speak, when our modes of communication are so flawed and confused? And how are we to listen? Why do we never say what we exactly mean to say, or hear what we are meant to hear? Misunderstanding is a global disease: misunderstanding, miscommunication, probably accounts for every intercultural or interpersonal conflict the world over and throughout history. If everyone perfectly understood one another, what would change in this old world?

Bright chains

Bright chains

Nostalgia, wrapped 'round with a hint of burnt caffeine and stale library books, follows me all the way out the door into the fresh (cold) spring air and to my car, where I put my head against the wheel and let the miserable end-of-term feeling soak into me.

Oh, it's happened again, I've forgotten how to "do" summer. Every year I forget and it's impossible for at least a few weeks to find balance again.

I love you and hate you, bleak tired University, trimmed in repulsive orange and bearing, still, the atmosphere of rebellion and fire that empowered you forty years ago, that continues to empower.

The last few weeks are always the hardest and most wonderful. They are terribly hard--we sit in labs for hours upon hours and work on group projects, laughing at jokes that are not funny and smuggling coffee into the room, to not drink it after all and work, after all, and lose ourselves in our working. We all wander around the halls like ghosts: we have no colour and no focus and our heads are filled with smoke and mirrors. When we go home, each of us to our own white screen and stacks of paper, we lose ourselves in worry of the most frantic, productive kind--churning out assignments, essays, take-home exams until our skin turns papery too and our eyes turn red.

"You know you have to stop for the night when it's 4:30 a.m. and your words are out of order grammatically," she pointed out to me today, as we gingerly sipped Italian soda (gross) after a last class and just before an exam. "I have to stop at 2:30 these days," D. said, and I agreed. Beyond 2:30 it's simply unfathomable that one is awake at all, let alone working on a thesis...

"I had a little breakdown today," she added, and D. and I understood. When the papers had piled up last week until I'd had to wade through them to reach the fridge and find something alcoholic inside of it, I'd felt the same. We all do, at some point.

These last weeks are the hardest weeks, when we are forced to be better than we are at everything, on less energy than we've had all year.

But they are also the most wonderful. We suddenly find that everything we've learned about and talked about so endlessly, passionately in class can culminate in our final work--everything we know can be strung together, sentence to sentence, in bright chains of significance bound up into essays and handed in, crisp and neat.

And we find that we've made real friends, again, in classes worth attending only because of each other. Even though we didn't think it was possible we've made more friends. After we go out, once, and reminisce, some of us likely won't see each other again except in passing, but friends we are and we know it, and we have those classes to thank for it.

Nostalgia, the worried wisp of caffeine, the library's tattered ghost dogging my car down the road, will hover at my back for a few days and then disappear. She'll be gone as soon as the last exam is written and the summer is begun in earnest, gone like the frost on a blossom as soon as the sun comes out and blazes it away.