Look Up

I want to be a part of the world around me.

This evening, instead of getting ahead with homework, Beth and I walked to Chapman Park by her house. We read for a while in the grass -- she's borrowing my copy of Perks and I'm reading The Great Gatsby for school -- with background music of a group of kids playing baseball in the field. I got a little distracted; I wanted to climb trees but I didn't have any shoes, and I started watching the kids playing baseball. They hit a softball with a plastic bat, wearing high tops and going barefoot, a few boys but mostly girls, of all different ages -- and all of a sudden I just wanted to play so damn bad.

Beth was amused, watching me inch closer and closer to the field but getting nervous; I didn't know how to play, or who to ask, and I didn't want them thinking I was trying to be cool or funny or intimidating or anything. But finally I just couldn't take it and I asked the catcher, "can I play with you guys?" and although she wasn't sure about what position would best suit me, she pointed me in the direction of a shortstop-ish position, which I was content with.

We only played for about 10 or 15 minutes together -- almost all the girls were sisters, and their British dad had to take them home -- he would say, "five more minutes!" and five minutes later he would say, "four more minutes!". The girls had beautiful names like Isobel and Imogen and Clementine ("you can just call me Clemmy") and they didn't forget mine once and while we were waiting to hit I talked to the oldest one about going to high school next year. And I hit the ball not very far but managed to run all the way to second base, barefoot on the dusty field.

I'm not leading up to a life changing event -- we said goodnight, and it was nice to meet you, and I probably won't see them again -- but I'm just glad I worked up the courage to ask a few kids to play.

Because tonight, I became a part of the world around me.

posted by Allison Francis @ 8:57 PM 1 comments

"I wonder if I'll ever meet a underclassmen and just click with them. I hope so. That sort of happened with Allison this year at camp. But she's two years younger. So -- no -- that is the same." (What?)
--Lauren, 2002

I spent the last hour and a half or so typing up 10 pages of Lauren's diary, (in preparation for her show in June) from early childhood to her sophomore year. Funny ... it's so striking how pain always exists in our lives by taking different forms and inhabiting different bodies. Same with love.

You can love how your favorite shirt feels across your shoulders and love the way a song moves your insides to affect your outside and you can come to love a person so intensely that everything else in the universe disappears. Love, love, love, isn't it the often root of our deepest pain? What force, action, noun, and verb is so great that we are willing to lose ourselves and be cut down and experience merciless pain? There's no way to articulate why love is worth it. In spite of everything, there is love, and that's enough.

It's not that love isn't enough to ease pain, save a life, or change the world. It's just that love wasn't meant to be a band-aid or a medicine; instead we are to build our lives and beings around love because throughout uncertainty it will lead us to the greatest good.

It's been a very long day and now I want to get through the next two weeks all right.



"Let me die the moment my love dies.
Let me not outlive my own capacity to love.
Let me die still loving, and so, never die."

posted by Allison Francis @ 11:54 PM 2 comments

Today while driving, I got stuck in front of the railroad tracks in Northeast, waiting for a very long freight train to pass. Well, that's sort of a lie. I'd seen it from the previous intersection and chose to wait, instead of going a different way. I immediately figured on writing about it.



I remembered this day -- on the way down to the dock, we got stuck waiting for a train on the very same tracks. I remember it so clearly. Me, Lauren, Tai, Alex, and Miko, listening to "The Only Living Boy in New York" ... bobbing heads, genuine smiles, and harmonies, and I distinctly recall thinking, wow, I hope this train keeps us waiting here forever.

And although I thoroughly appreciated the several minutes we felt stranded under the bridge that summer afternoon, of course the train eventually ended; the moment had to come to an end.

Everyone talks about time like it's such a crazy bitch, when really it's the only thing that ever makes sense. But isn't it insane that time is infinite and nonexistent in the same instant? And that although it can never really stop, it seems we never have enough?

I'm not really going anywhere with this. The past two and a half months have seemed to fly by; then again I feel as if this weight on our backs has always been with us, even though that doesn't make sense, either.

All there is to do is live. Because this beauty and pain may be everything we'll ever have.
And right now I'm just trying to see that possibility in the sweetest light possible.

posted by Allison Francis @ 9:16 PM 2 comments