Is it possible for me to say "it figures" When it comes to change? Is it possible for me to just take it as it comes? Maybe it's a sign of maturity. Or maybe it's a sign of fatigue.
Either way, I'm tired. I'm sick of work...but whatever. I'll just keep plugging through. Because some day it'll change.
My mother is pregnant. Merry Christmas! Who knows what this is going to mean for life? A complete change once again? For sure. Life is never going to be the same again. But then again, it never is the same, is it? Things change every day. Why should this be any different?
I'm happy for my mother. I really am....although I wonder if she's happy for herself? This seems to point a finger of direction for my life, where before I was questioning what I would be doing with my life in a few months more time. Staying here? Moving back to Provo? Now I know. I can't forsee myself moving. I can't imagine myself somewhere else. Not when life is beginning again here.
But not my life. Where is my life? I need a life. I want to start my life anew as well. Some day maybe it'll happen. For now, I move minute to minute, thought to thought.

Three Men

Time has been staring me in the face lately. Maybe not time so much as age.

The other day at work, this old man came up to me while I was pacing around the jewelry counter on the lookout for any unsuspecting customers that I could pounce on (haha) and just started talking. He told me that he had been married for 43 years, and that this was his first Christmas that he would be spending all by himself. He said that he had had a girlfriend, but he just couldn't love her. Couldn't commit. "After all, how could [he] ever love anyone else after 43 years of marriage?" He asked. I had no response. He said he was spoiling himself this eyar, because of it. He bought himself a watch and a wallet. He then gave me some advice. He said, "Find someone. Find someone and give them everything you have. It's not worth anything if you keep it all for yourself." How could he know?? How could he know how alone I am right now? How could he possibly know that though I am home for Christmas for the first time in a few years, I have no one to spend the holiday with--no one to give my everything to. How could he know that is one of the greatest longings of my heart?

There's another man at work--but this one a coworker, not a customer--that I've been meaning to write about for some time. His name is Robert. When I first started talking to Robert, he told me that he dreams in poetry. He said he dreams something, and this string of words just comes out when he wakes up. And he remembers it. He recites it to me sometimes. Or did. Robert is Dying. Cancer has spread through all of his body. It's only a matter of time, now...and not much of it. I encouraged him to write this poetry down. Preserve him. I told him the poetry was a gift and that he should preserve it for his family. Then I found out his oldest son also died of cancer. Poetry really is Robert's gift. He dreams of the eternities. He dreams of a renewal of the soul.

Before he worked for Macy's in his retirement years, Robert was a business man. I asked him how that was throughout his life, and he said that he never thought about things. It just was what it was. He didn't take the time to look deeper. After his son's death he decided that he neded to. That he must. And that's when he found his poetry. That's when he found depth in life...and sadly came to a realization that so many areas of it--his marriage, his profession, etc--were lacking it completely.

I'm not really sure that I have a good excuse about why I didn't write about Rober sooner...except that I haven't really known exactly what to say. He is the man who dreams of poetry. Poetry that has more meaning to him and his spirituality than he ever got from any book or man. He feels these dreams as if they are real. And so he believes them. And they are beautiful. And they are good. And I hope that God looks after him. I know he will. And I know that in Heaven, he'll dream of poetry more.

My next door neighbor is dying of cancer, also. Pancriatic. It's only a matter of a couple of weeks for him, too. It's sad. He's a bitter old man. Ornery. He and his wife live in the second half of our duplex. I don't know what to say to him. With Robert, it's easy to know that he'll be okay. He's filled with that inner strength and resolve. With Frank? It seems like he just doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know what to think. Doesn't know what to feel. He is a man who is weakened by the thing that he has always counted on. A man who is stripped of what he knows and loves and feels to be real. A man whose one power--one surity--one constant is now gone. And he's scared.

I think of these three men: A man of Heart. A man of Mind. A man of Body. And I see reality. I see the bones of mankind. The hopes. The fears. The strenght. The resolve. The memories of life as it once was, always has been and never will be again. I think of these three men and I'm not sure how to feel. I'm not sure what to think.

It's the middle of the night right now. I'm sitting alone in my room....thinking. Searching. Where do I fit in? Where is my place with these men? WHere is my place in this world.

I feel open. Like a door in my mind and in my heart has been flung open and I'm standing on the threshhold...my face turned toward the light and I'm searching....searching....but the picture hasn't flipped. I'm still looking at myself in the search. I have yet to find. I have yet to see the target of my searching. I have yet to find my mark.

I want to know what it is I'm searching for. I want to know so that I can pursue it with my whole life. Is it love? Is it education? Or is it just the never ending trail toward finding happiness? I really can't be sure....
...I really want to be sure....
...I really want to know.

The Phantom of the Opera

How completely different would we view The Phantom of the Opera if instead of the phantom being a large, imposing man with seductive prowess he was instead Christine's alter-ego. Picture it. She's singing into her mirror "Look at your face in the mirror--I am here inside" and for once Christine realizes that the person who has been causing these mysterious happenings around the opera house is her. The person who duals Raul in the graveyard is actually Christine herself--posessed by a power that she, because of her other weaker personality--is unable to override. Because of some abuse in her childhood or some other tragedy (the death of her father, perhaps?) she becomes the phantom. One part in the play she sings "I am the mask you wear" (when she is taken to the dungeon for the first time)...she wear that mask--the guise of Christine so that she can operate in the real world--but the source of her genius is the derangement of her mind. The whole show, then, becomes a struggle of self--rather than good against evil. It isn't until Raul says that he would do anything for her--and attempts to prove it (or perhaps that is also one of her mad dreams?) that she finally is able to let go of the phantom inside her and she is free to be the mask that she has shown to the world--however incommplete that makes her, and however painful the death/distruction/disappearance of the phantom will be.

Is that the lesson of the Phantom of the Opera? Or is it really just two really attractive (who cares about a little bit of face distortion, anyway? Have you SEEN me in the morning??) guys with amazing voices going after the same non-commital girl? Bad boy vs. good girl dillema?

Perhaps we all have a bit of the Phantom in our own minds....