Odelia here with Percolations #92.
“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
So said Jean Valjean in Les Misérables — this is now the one line I remember from the entire novel.
Putting aside for a moment the constant morbid wondering in the back of my mind (“How do I know when I’m dead?”), I’d like to spend some time listing out reasons I like being alive.
These past weeks I’ve been in a stuck-in-the-mud, complaining, whiny mood. Life situations, an untimely cold, frustrations over things I wish I could change, and changes I’ve made that I wish I could unchange…yeah. I could wallow in temper-tantrum mood until I drop from exhaustion, grab a quick nap, then go at it with renewed passion.
Not healthy, eh?
Somewhere in the midst of redundant thoughts, frenzied preparation for teaching in the upcoming school year, and begging people to buy or take stuff from my room, I sent the same question to a couple of friends, hoping for some inspiration for putting my brain on a new wavelength.
I asked them: “What are some questions you wished people asked you more often?”
A girl whose mind I love interacting with responded with this as one such question: “What do I like about being alive?”
I laughed and told her I’d have to steal this question and use it for therapeutic purposes later in the week.
Which…is now. :)
***
What do I like about being alive?
I like seeing someone’s eyes come alive during conversation.
I like the sense of strength I feel when I accomplish something I thought I couldn’t, and when I ask for help in doing something I actually couldn’t.
I like earning scars that tell stories worth telling.
I like the satisfaction that comes with knowing I’ve given my all to something I care about, whether or not it “works out” at the end.
I like going barefoot over rocks, grass, and sand.
I like those moments when my heart and mind are grounded and quiet.
I like what it feels like when I look up from a project and shake my head at the clock, grinning like a child who’d been hiding in the candy store all night.
I like exchanging glances where nothing and everything is said.
I like watching someone I like doing what they love, and sensing how thoroughly alive they are in that moment.
I like the feel of sunlight, and snowflakes on my tongue and eyelashes.
I like exchanging unexpected genuine smiles.
I like the feel of neurological laughter inside my mind as electric nerve impulses within synapses accidentally bump into each other whenever something weirdly hilarious or nerdy comes into my consciousness.
I like the shimmer of moonlight on the surface of a quiet lake.
I like the euphoria of coming across a stream after a long, thirsty hike.
I like the thrill of fear that zaps through my veins when I look down from atop a cliff.
I like strong handshakes that communicate trust and goodwill between two individuals.
I like the shiver that comes over my finger or foot as I pull out a thorn or splinter.
I like the relief that floods me when I reach up and discover a handhold is much better than I’d dared to hope (both in life and in climbing).
I like the unintentional(?) winks of babies when they smile.
I like being in silence with a friend and sensing peace, love, and acceptance in that quiet space.
I like biting into a perfect egg tart still warm from the oven.
I like unexpected moments with strangers, like the odd conversations in parking lots or driveways about the randomest collection of topics.
I like fire.
I like wrestling with ideas, with God, and with Rags.
I like lying back and watching the sun set, the skies darken, stars appear one by one; then cat nap for a few hours; then wake gently and watch the same stars slip away as the sun rises.
I like going to bed exhausted.
I like waking up from sleep.
I like being free to choose death in any situation — and knowing I don’t have to.
I like being alive.
***
That’s not all, of course. But I’d say that’s a good start to a list I intend to build on for the rest of my life.
Now, your turn. :)
Odelia
Quote for the week
This week’s word: “Apolytus”
From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.
apolytus
n. the moment you realize you are changing as a person, finally outgrowing your old problems like a reptile shedding its skin, already able to twist back around and chuckle at this weirdly antiquated caricature of yourself that will soon come off completely.
(From apolysis, the stage of molting when an invertebrate’s shell begins to separate from the skin beneath it + adultus, sacrificed. Pronounced “ah-pahl-i-tuhs.”)
*** I stumble forward, losing balance. Looking back, I steal a glance - A cracked shell sits in silence, A picture of me in the was sense. Can't walk straight yet, new feet; About to dance to a new beat; Hands trembling from excitement; Exultation an understatement. ***
Snapshots of life
Even leaves can die gracefully and beautifully.
Give this a listen
This week, I’ve been watching a handful of documentaries, trying to pick out a couple of the best ones to add as required assignments (watching, analyzing, responding to) within the high school AP Lang course I’m coaxing into existence. The one below is one of the more highly specific and geeky ones that’s interesting enough it’s now in my “maybe later” list, but long (and somewhat boring) enough to make me hesitate.
On that note, feel free to send me your favourite documentaries or biographical movies — I’m still on the lookout for top-quality video essays and visual stories! Thanks in advance. ;)
Random thoughts
I’m being increasing fascinated and infatuated with street farms and urban farming. Having grown up on a ten-acre hobby farm for most of my childhood, the love of dirt beneath my fingernails and the taste of sun-kissed fruits and vegetables would never leave me — yet I want to bring this closer to people who simply cannot move to the country, for reasons innumerable. That’s why things like Stapelbäddens Trädgård bring me so much joy, and why the only book I’ve bought new this year is Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier by Michael Ableman. I’m excited to see how this growing passion of mine would intersect with my forays into architecture and restoration of old technologies and tools.
People-watching and talking to strangers have made my life so much richer than if I’d spent my days only enclosed within my own world, within my own mind. I came across this beautifully-written reflection earlier this week: “21 observations from people watching”.
I have too many books I’ve never read. Going through that stack at night these days. Many of those are “glad to have read once, not gonna read again” type of books, which isn’t a complaint and which is actually a decent compliment to the authors — some books I simply don’t finish and drop off at the thriftstore.
My dad is away for the weekend, and it nearly brings me to tears how many little things he’s done to make things easier for us while he’s away. An email outlining what and how to manage various things on the property that’s usually his job. Kitchen knives that have been sharpened. I appreciate that so much. :)
We’d be having some “city friends” over at our place for three full days. Today’s program just ended a couple hours ago. A lot of work, especially for my mom. It’s yet another reminder to me how blessed I am to have called this place home for the past three years, and how big of a difference just a thirty minute drive can make in one’s environment and indeed, one’s conception of the world.
After documentaries, I’d be diving into comics and anime films for my AP Lang course, and then into music, sound engineering, and maybe (!) LISP — exploring how arguments and messages are formed and communicated through different art forms helps so much to understand just what is possible with words, what pacing is, how to paint pictures with description and narrative, why you can’t help putting a frame around even the most openminded stance you’re trying to take on any given issue…yeah. Things like that. Can you tell I have a lot to do, and that I’d be having so much fun with it?! (Besides all the screen time…uggg.) I’m literally creating the course as I teach it too, which probably isn’t the best approach — but nothing I could do about that now. Most people recommend more time to prep and more experience in teaching before pulling off a stunt like creating a full-year course from scratch with a run-up of only two weeks. But hey, I’ve co-taught a course I’ve never taken, and now I’m creating/teaching a subject I am at least familiar with…it’s not that impossible, really.
And on that note, given on how much I need to write and focus on creating this course, there’s a good chance some of those essays and “lesson notes” would end up as a Percolations issue. (At least y’all don’t need to pay for them or do any homework, haha!) Despite the lingering disappointment of the delay in my own school studies, I now clearly see pulling that off alongside this was a pie-in-the-sky that’d have flipped over and flattened me altogether. Oh dear. I must maintain a 3-D brain, even if it feels empty at times…
I’ve been keeping a list of things that wake up a part of me deep inside, like a tingle or small spark of fire that electrifies me, often unexpected. It’s interesting to look back on that list — or lists, there are several and some have never been written down — and notice patterns, intersections, and layers connecting them. Something like the creation of a song, the sketching of a path in four-dimension, a signal trying to break through the noise of all my pretentious and shallow desires. I could sense an urge to change things up for myself in several big ways, which is not easy to do without ruffling feathers right and left. “It is what it is,” as a wise friend of mine would say. Even ruffled feathers can be preened back to perfection in time. It’d probably be fine. Just the external aftermath of “apolyptus,” I guess, the discomfort you feel when your world no longer fits what you have already become — a different “you” so to speak — and thus decisions you make can seem cold and heartless because certain things just don’t mean that much to you anymore. Some people pick up and save the old discarded shells. It’s usually not the same creature who used to be inside of it, though.