Days of Promise

On days like today, I feel like I have so much life in my body. That what I am capable of doing is endless, that my future is bright and promising. I run in the rain just to run, and today, time is my captive. It won't always be this way, but it was, at least for today.

Momma Kelly

I stood up on the Cullen auditorium stage among the other seniors participating in TCSIT. I had watched this ceremony every year for 5 years, but now, I was a part of it. I stood five feet above the audience, looking out into them under the bright yellow lights. In the front section, I saw Momma Kelly.

She took me under her wing my 7th grade year and gave me the main role in group acting. I was the only 7th grader in the group. I did duet acting that year as well. The next year, I did four events, the most she would allow any student to do. Group acting, bible improv, duets, and prose. 2nd, 1st, 3rd, and 1st respectively. That was it, my middle school TCSIT career. And yet, it means so much more. We practiced before school, during school, after school. Christine Pinson came in to help us our seventh grade year. I felt important. I felt like an actor. I felt special. Then, she was Mrs. Cawyer, master of the Academic Meet. We won her two 1st place trophies.

Now, she's Momma Kelly. I go to her house every Sunday. The relationship has changed from teacher student to almost mother son. She loves our grade, she loves me. So, when I was in trouble this year with my duet (not caring much about it, yet still wanting to succeed), we went to her. But instead of getting help on our duet, we found that she was in need of help with her group acting. So we came in, as former students, and helped them win 2nd place.

I stood on the stage, looking at her, and she was crying. Crying. Maybe she saw little Ben Weaver on the stage, who couldn't make his voice go low enough to play the part of Wolf for group acting, but he tried anyway. Maybe she saw 8th grade Ben Weaver, winning first in prose and bible improv. Maybe she saw freshman Ben Weaver, wearing a shower cap as part of an initiation into the high school youth group. Maybe she saw senior Ben Weaver, about to go to college and leave behind those Sunday DGroups, those TCSIT competitions, that life. Maybe she saw all of them at once.

She cried, but smiled at the same time. She reached out her hand, as if to say "I'm so proud of you" with a gesture. I didn't know how to respond (because I was on stage), so I smiled sheepishly and slightly waved. But I wanted to do something else. I wanted to stay on the stage and bow, bow to her, because the actor that I am began with her. The reason I go to TCSIT is because of her. She was the reason that Academic Meet was, well, was.

A quick picture afterward, accompanied with tears, then she walked one way, and I walked another. Symbolic, if one were looking for it. Nevertheless, that day, I said goodbye to one of the most prominent events in my life. I learned that, through it, I gained one of the most important people in my life. It's sad, but it won't be forever.

"Adaptation" and Love

I sit in this cushy chair in an empty house. This is the first time I've ever stayed at home by myself. It's strange. When I come home, people are supposed to be here. Evidence of them is here, but they themselves are not. I am tempted to turn on the tv, play some music, do anything to distract me from the truth that I am alone.

I know why single people get pets and lonely people get married.

I just watched "Adaptation," and I don't know what to make of it. I enjoy Charlie Kaufman's films, because I can feel how much effort he put into them. Kaufman seems to find a story and include the ugliness of life, if to tell that things happen, people do things that aren't respectable, but they are still people. He writes about life, even though his films are so fantastic and impossible, and the audience looks past the unbelievable to discover the truths that he knows of, and writes about.

So much was said during the film. There were so many points he made, that I can't begin to remember them all. Is it better to have so many things to say that matter, or only one?

I have just learned that I can hear my thoughts. That has never happened before.

I'm growing my hair out, possibly because I have never been allowed before. That's what I feel is going to be my reason for doing many things in the future. It's as if my parents trained me, yet are still poking me to do this, poking me to do that. If they would only stop poking me, they might see that I will probably stay loyal to the upbringing I was given. But they just keep jabbing their fingers into my side until I wake up each morning feeling slightly nauseated. I only wake up feeling that way at home, around them. When my mind knows that they are far away, that I have room to chose if I want to take a step, and not be judged by them, then I can sleep easy and wake refreshed.

"Adaptation" taught me something. Donald, Charlie's brother (who doesn't really exist), is the goofball, the extrovert, the care-free one. Charlie tells Donald that in high school, he watched as Donald flirted with a girl he was in love with, but was then made fun of when he walked away. Charlie doesn't think that Donald knows, but he does, and Charlie is dumbfounded. How could you have known that she doesn't like you, yet still be in love with her, asks Charlie. Because, Donald says, "I loved [her], Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even [she] didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want."

I can love whoever I want. Can I love someone without them loving me back? Doesn't that make me live in a world that doesn't exist? I guess one would have to ask, why, then, do you love them? Do you love them for who they are? Do you love them because they love you? Do you love them because you enjoy loving them?

I believe the only right way to love someone is to love them for who they are. Love them for who they are, but not just who they are at the moment; love someone for the person inside that never fades away.

This means that I can love Andy, even though we haven't spoken in several weeks. I can love her while she makes new friends, creates a new life, and becomes less like the girl I knew in high school. As much as that saddens me, I can still love her, because I know the girl that squints her eyes and shows her teeth when she laughs. I know the girl that will do things because she feels like it, even though it might not be socially acceptable, or for that matter legal. I know the girl with many shortcomings, because she isn't perfect. She is always right, except when she isn't, and then it's not a big deal. I know the girl that I fear I don't know anymore, but that's okay, because I will always know who she truly is. And that's who I love.

I can love Jake, because I know that he truly cares about other people, and that's never going to change; I can love Amanda because I know that her ebullient spirit is used to make others feel special; I can love Drew because I know that he loves people, plain and simple. I can love people for who they are, and I suspect I can do this because I'm finally finding out who I am myself.

Ahh, I feel empty of anything deep, but it's a good kind of empty. It's like I had something corrosive, something unpleasant inside me, and now I've gotten it out, and I feel healthy. One should routinely sit down in an empty house and pour out the deep thoughts he/she is thinking. Because if something stays inside to long, one ceases to grow, ceases to learn, and that's when life begins to cease. This pouring out of thoughts is the pruning of the life I've been given. I have just learned that I can hear my thoughts-I feel as though I am living because of it.

Library

I am sitting in a library with a book resting in my lap, computer at my hands, 150 miles from home. It's like I've time traveled. I am sitting where I will be sitting in the future, but I'm not supposed to be sitting here now. I am in college, but I am in high school. I am free, but I am still bound. Two more months, two more months.

Musings During Church II

It seems to me that nobody in this town
knows who they want to be.
So we coagulate here, in this city,
so we can scab over the truth
that nobody is anybody,
and we are fine with that.
But, what if,
the trees, the buildings, the cars, the people
are all not questions, but mirrors,
reflecting my identity, or lack there of.

. . .

It is soothing, at least, to know
that I don't know who I am.