Music and Lyrics

I wake to the sound of the trailer door slamming heavily against the iced-over parking lot. The truck cab rocks slightly as my father moves around inside the trailer, checking on the sleds or something. I peep out from where I’m curled under a couple coats and find dawn winds whipping in savory oranges and bleary pinks over a battered dune. I can hear them sandblasting the boardwalk that leads to the beach and breakwall and begin to catch their restlessness. I check my cell phone out of habit, knowing full well we’re miles away from any chance of signal. The only thing it’s good for now is keeping time. 8:17. A snowmobile roars to life, and I hurry to slip into my coat and boots, knowing that miles of untouched trails wait, protected from the lake’s ferocity by thick layers of Northern Michigan forest.

Lights twinkle gently on frosted trees in our yard as I write this, and my mother is humming in the kitchen as she fixes up our Christmas leftovers into her legendary pea soup, green like dune grass and so thick your spoon’ll stand up in it. I’m caught somewhere between playing uke and editing photos, but my head is three hundred miles away and high on diesel fumes. I want to be home with a vengeance, you know? Nothing like going deaf on a frozen trail in the middle of nowhere at 107 mph to let you know you’re back where you belong.

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Black and White World

Snow … I could be home anyplace where I wake up to four inches of icy purity.

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Around A Square

What started as a contest has suddenly morphed into a rich moment of affection and edification, and my eyes close as my heart opens. Something unfolds from the inside and blossoms under my skin, soaking up the sweetness of careful affirmation, all the more welcome because it had gone un-missed for so long. The tight lines that locked our eyes and edged our interaction are knocked aside by the thoughtful kindesses that bubble out of us, brimming. It’s sharing and confessing and rebelling and embracing and laughing at once, and the echoes leave pretty prints on the insides of my eyes.

I was eating dinner the other night with a few awesome people, when something happened that bugged me. Somebody sassed somebody else, then followed it up with a quick, apologetic “but I love ya.” The sentiment was sincere, but was not properly communicated by the words he used to convey it. He did not mean Love.

A language major really helps me understand the different ways that people tie concepts to sounds. The problem with these ties, though, is that they require that everyone agree on exactly what concept is bound to which word. And humans, as we all know, are contrary creatures that have a history of simply flouting the agreements that hinder them. Love, in the case of contemporary American English, verbalized way too often. That is, spoken to too many people in too many different situations, and thus weakened, and is also too often used in its verb form. Rather than to tell someone that we have Love for them, we toss around “love” to talk about objects we want and trends we like. Something is only merely mediocre when we “don’t love it.”

[Tangent: This, econ friends, is part of the reason why I just can’t get down with that whole anarchy thing. We can’t even reach “willing solidarity” in the matter of grammar – in fact, I’m firmly of the mind that it is precisely the “free, voluntary, direct” use of the English language that has been at the root of today’s moral and ethical train wreck. So I’m skeptical about the propensity of 300 million rational, self-interested agents to achieve anything resembling a society, let alone a harmonious one. (I’m open to discussion on this one … I need more opportunities to thrash out my ideas.]

This concept got driven home again at Unite last night.  I don’t often feel the impulse to attend, being Catholic, but I went along with a friend and had a great time – especially because the speaker talked about Love and Justice … and emphasized Love. God is Love, he told us, and everything else is an attribute. Love defines God, and just describes Him. And Christianity is the only religion in the world that centers on Love; remove Love, he told us, and you’ve done away with Christianity.What a way to redefine a word. I want to challenge you the same way I plan to challenge myself: next time you say the word “love,” think of God. Think of True Love, of its source and its definition. Mean it.

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