So there is one of you especially (especial
special, to me)
who has been trying for years ( many of you have been working toward this goal) to remember
that
I am ridiculous, don't take it personally.
and I heard you might tie a string around your finger so you will always remember... maybe I should just get you a promise ring: I promise I have always been and will always be at least a little ridiculous.
Ironically when I received the call about this your most recent disappointment (i.e.:that I am not on facebook anymore, that I didn't let you know personally [which I meant to do] and that you have lost the new and good way to stay connected with me) the caller proclaimed that I have to change the outgoing message on my voicemail, which sounds quite professional and serious, and when she hears it she is a little afraid to leave a ridiculous message... at which I began to giggle uproariously.
So even though I have often been insulted by the application of the descriptor, and though it has been used as an insult before, it has not hurt as badly lately because I know I can be ridiculous
and every day I am a little less afraid to be, and hope you will be less and less angry with me for being so.
So I'll leave you with this, a very ridiculous thing that is happening to me lately:
Leeann Womack (isn't that an amazing last name?!) and Taylor Swift (again, the last name slays me every time!?) have been naming things I wish they weren't so apt to name.
I accidentally quoted Ms. Womack in class the other day and we all laughed our asses off:
one of the pastors said he wanted me to embrace my freedoms and I told him it was hard and that whenever I hear the little bit of that song that says, "never settle for the path of least resistance..." I worry a little bit. So I thought you might like this little reminder that there is a lot of ridiculous in me...
I'm not so embarrassed, especially since we have recently been into corny poetry because it is a little like us: prone to overdramatize and underexplain; tempted to settle for generalization and common images that can be boring, if you try to take them too seriously.
And as for Ms. Swift, I received a voicemail recently about a song with my name in it and though the caller and I were a little sheepish about having heard the song, we have in fact heard it. So here is the part that is important and not so ridiculous that we are afraid to admit it: "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind and we both cried."
Its part of the story, and I suppose I like how silly it all sounds when she sings it because the alternative is to give it way more weight than it ought to have, which is to say, let it scare me more than it ought to.
and I love the way it doesn't lay direct blame on either party. It sort of lets the birds out of their cages. And that is always good--even if it is sad and funny and ridiculous--you just have to try not to be annoyed initially, that is all.
I know you aren't ridiculous enough to look for the song without a little prompting, and that you may not at all ever want to hear it, much less see it but I think its um, well, really trueish. So I found this little video which may help
I just thought it might help.
Lastly: I'm off the facebook for a while because it just got to be too much exposure. I serve a large congregation in a small town posing as a big city and I am not able to make sense of the way facebook holds together all the disparate pieces of my life. So I'll be back on facebook just as soon as I can. Until then I'll be here, dear.
If you made it to this last bit of the post, your eyes haven't rolled right out of your head, and you are in dire need of some quality poetics to cleanse your palette (phew!) here is a piece from the book my abuelitos gave to me for my 30th. It is a series of shorts about a man and his little friend, who is more a friend than donkey, but you will only see this if you get to know him.
The book is named for the two characters Platero y Yo by Juan Ramon Jimenez and because it was written in Spanish a good English translation will retain all the charming quirkiness of the original poetry behind the prose.
XLIII: Friendship
We get along well. I let him go wherever he likes, and he always carries me wherever I want.
Platero knows that, when we arrive at the pine of La Corona, I like to go up to its trunk and caress it, and to look at the sky through its enormous, bright top; he knows I'm delighted by the little path that leads past bushes to the Old Fountain; that I enjoy watching the river from the hill of pines, whose high-perched little forest is reminiscent of classical sites. When I doze off, securely seated on him, my awakening always opens out onto some such charming view.
I treat Platero as if he were a child. If the road becomes rocky and is a little hard on him, I dismount to relieve him. I kiss him, I play tricks on him, I get him furious... He understands perfectly that I love him, and he doesn't hold a grudge. He's so much like me, and so different from everyone else, that I've come to believe he dreams my own dreams.
Platero has submitted to me like a passionate adolescent girl. He protests at nothing. I know that I spell happiness for him. He even shuns donkeys and men...
If I stop worrying that these two friends are doomed to enmeshment, or that there is some kind of unhealthy anthropomorphic tendency on the human's part, I can see that there is a great beauty in remembering the great difference in the way we treat a friend when we come to respect him.
It is difficult, always difficult, to remember that some friends are really human and that to be human is to be ridiculous, but deserving of respect nonetheless. Which is why some of us prefer to befriend a beast, or a tree, a simpler time or a simpler poem. I do hope you will remember to be what you are, human, and that you will remember I am human
but I also hope you won't give up on me, and that my humanness won't enrage you, and that if I am at times the adolescent girl, you will know that in that moment you spell my happiness, and that I would gladly shun men and donkeys, and facebook, if there was a hope it would make me into be a better friend.
special, to me)
who has been trying for years ( many of you have been working toward this goal) to remember
that
I am ridiculous, don't take it personally.
and I heard you might tie a string around your finger so you will always remember... maybe I should just get you a promise ring: I promise I have always been and will always be at least a little ridiculous.
Ironically when I received the call about this your most recent disappointment (i.e.:that I am not on facebook anymore, that I didn't let you know personally [which I meant to do] and that you have lost the new and good way to stay connected with me) the caller proclaimed that I have to change the outgoing message on my voicemail, which sounds quite professional and serious, and when she hears it she is a little afraid to leave a ridiculous message... at which I began to giggle uproariously.
So even though I have often been insulted by the application of the descriptor, and though it has been used as an insult before, it has not hurt as badly lately because I know I can be ridiculous
and every day I am a little less afraid to be, and hope you will be less and less angry with me for being so.
So I'll leave you with this, a very ridiculous thing that is happening to me lately:
Leeann Womack (isn't that an amazing last name?!) and Taylor Swift (again, the last name slays me every time!?) have been naming things I wish they weren't so apt to name.
I accidentally quoted Ms. Womack in class the other day and we all laughed our asses off:
one of the pastors said he wanted me to embrace my freedoms and I told him it was hard and that whenever I hear the little bit of that song that says, "never settle for the path of least resistance..." I worry a little bit. So I thought you might like this little reminder that there is a lot of ridiculous in me...
I'm not so embarrassed, especially since we have recently been into corny poetry because it is a little like us: prone to overdramatize and underexplain; tempted to settle for generalization and common images that can be boring, if you try to take them too seriously.
And as for Ms. Swift, I received a voicemail recently about a song with my name in it and though the caller and I were a little sheepish about having heard the song, we have in fact heard it. So here is the part that is important and not so ridiculous that we are afraid to admit it: "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind and we both cried."
Its part of the story, and I suppose I like how silly it all sounds when she sings it because the alternative is to give it way more weight than it ought to have, which is to say, let it scare me more than it ought to.
and I love the way it doesn't lay direct blame on either party. It sort of lets the birds out of their cages. And that is always good--even if it is sad and funny and ridiculous--you just have to try not to be annoyed initially, that is all.
I know you aren't ridiculous enough to look for the song without a little prompting, and that you may not at all ever want to hear it, much less see it but I think its um, well, really trueish. So I found this little video which may help
I just thought it might help.
Lastly: I'm off the facebook for a while because it just got to be too much exposure. I serve a large congregation in a small town posing as a big city and I am not able to make sense of the way facebook holds together all the disparate pieces of my life. So I'll be back on facebook just as soon as I can. Until then I'll be here, dear.
If you made it to this last bit of the post, your eyes haven't rolled right out of your head, and you are in dire need of some quality poetics to cleanse your palette (phew!) here is a piece from the book my abuelitos gave to me for my 30th. It is a series of shorts about a man and his little friend, who is more a friend than donkey, but you will only see this if you get to know him.
The book is named for the two characters Platero y Yo by Juan Ramon Jimenez and because it was written in Spanish a good English translation will retain all the charming quirkiness of the original poetry behind the prose.
XLIII: Friendship
We get along well. I let him go wherever he likes, and he always carries me wherever I want.
Platero knows that, when we arrive at the pine of La Corona, I like to go up to its trunk and caress it, and to look at the sky through its enormous, bright top; he knows I'm delighted by the little path that leads past bushes to the Old Fountain; that I enjoy watching the river from the hill of pines, whose high-perched little forest is reminiscent of classical sites. When I doze off, securely seated on him, my awakening always opens out onto some such charming view.
I treat Platero as if he were a child. If the road becomes rocky and is a little hard on him, I dismount to relieve him. I kiss him, I play tricks on him, I get him furious... He understands perfectly that I love him, and he doesn't hold a grudge. He's so much like me, and so different from everyone else, that I've come to believe he dreams my own dreams.
Platero has submitted to me like a passionate adolescent girl. He protests at nothing. I know that I spell happiness for him. He even shuns donkeys and men...
If I stop worrying that these two friends are doomed to enmeshment, or that there is some kind of unhealthy anthropomorphic tendency on the human's part, I can see that there is a great beauty in remembering the great difference in the way we treat a friend when we come to respect him.
It is difficult, always difficult, to remember that some friends are really human and that to be human is to be ridiculous, but deserving of respect nonetheless. Which is why some of us prefer to befriend a beast, or a tree, a simpler time or a simpler poem. I do hope you will remember to be what you are, human, and that you will remember I am human
but I also hope you won't give up on me, and that my humanness won't enrage you, and that if I am at times the adolescent girl, you will know that in that moment you spell my happiness, and that I would gladly shun men and donkeys, and facebook, if there was a hope it would make me into be a better friend.
I love you, and you can be as beautifully ridiculous as you think necessary to make yourself completely, perfectly, and incandescently happy. It's that very ridiculousness that sets you apart from the masses and makes you beautiful. If all of the flowers wanted to look like grass then where would all the beauty be?
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