Quiddity

Quiddity: it's my new favorite word.

{ quid-di-ty: (noun) whatever makes something the type that it is: essence }

The Quiddity of Life

Coffee shop voices: the hum of the espresso machine, the chime of coffee mugs, murmers of conversations- drown out the sound of my typing. Cracks climb the creamy wall and my mind climbs out the window into the sunshine and lull of Berkeley in the early afternoon. Thoughts leave my fingers and find completion within a word, a sentence, a paragraph.

Leaving the House:

"Are you ready yet?" keys rattle at my door, an expectant face behind them.

"It's not 1:15," I reply under an avalanche of shoes.

"No, really, it's time to go!" Urgency

"No, really, it's not!" Found the shoes.

"I'm in the ca-aaar." door slams as he drags out his words. He likes to be early.

7:55 AM: Quiet. Gray sky, gray cement. Hushed and sleepy faces. Gray carpet, gray desk. Soft thumps of textbooks on desks. Coffee mugs raised as pillars on each desktop. Voices barely raised. People barely awake.

By the Kitchen Counter: It's one of my favorite places- leaning against the cool edge, my body eased awake by the ice of the tile floor and the steam curling from the battered Little Mermaid mug in my hands. Standing by it, confirming my belief that folding melted chocolate into pretty much anything is one of the most wonderful things in the world. Wiping it down, clean and silky once the remnants of 3 sleepytime teas are gone.

Maps:

"It's easy. I looked at the map," Malcolm looks at me, waiting for a response.

"That's nice."

"Ok, so," his hand waves aimlessly out the window, sunglasses cover his eyes as he coolly explains a massive web of directions. "Didn't you look at the map- see, the roads converge like this, see" he bumps my arm and makes a weird fish-like shape with his hands. No. I don't see.

"No, I didn't look at the map." I hate maps.

"How did you not look at a map? Didn't you get directions? How did you get the directions??" To describe his tone as shocked is an understatement. Apparently, looking at maps is as normal an activity for him as, say, eating.

"I got them from google maps. Like I always do."

"Right, you looked at a map!"

"No. I looked at the written directions next to the map." I win. Or not. He sighed loudly, I'm sure ashamed at my ineptness when it came to maps.

Books: Stacks and stacks and stacks. On the bed, under the bed, by the bed. Textbooks dishelved across two shelves. Everything else arranged by color. Pages wrinkly from water- summers spent by the pool and the ocean; fairytale after fairytale bound with childhood magic; battered second-hand Shakespeare, smudged with late Friday night scribbles and chocolate; black mysteries tinged on the edges from coffee- they couldn't be put down, no matter how late. So many stories helping to make mine.

Night: Microwave beeps. The milk is foaming and bubbly. "What did he say?" I shout from the kitchen, peering through to the tv. 4 of us occupying 2 couches along with pillows and blankets and cats. "Did they really just do that? Really?"

"SHHHH." Dad doesn't like commentary. Clattering: Malcolm finds the ice cream. "SHHHH" from the rest of us. Somehow he has managed to reach the decibel of "elephant herd" while getting his dessert. He's gifted. 10:00 pm. Dad pronounces it midnight. Some retreat to sleep. Me? Balanced book and mug and cat on my lap. Only 100 more pages. Empty mug now on the window sill, Big Dipper twinkling behind it. The silence of sleep. Glow of lamplight. Page turns. Outside reaches a hazy color only achieved at 11. Goodnight.

{ quid-di-ty: (noun) whatever makes something the type that it is: essence }

The Good I've Got

Sunday night I set my alarm for 5:20. 5:20. Usually any alarm set before 6 means I get to do something exciting, such as going to the airport. But today it meant I was going to the gym. Black- deep, dark, thick- was the first thing I saw. The next thing was Malcolm’s face telling me he was going back to bed instead of suffering along with me at the gym. Just as a little background: I've never been to a gym before. Most the stuff in there looks pretty similar to what I imagine the Spanish Inquisition may have used- and all I’ve ever seen of treadmills are the YouTube videos of people falling off of them. At 5:30 in the morning, I was pretty sure that was destined to be me. I got through it without incident, however, and 2 hours later I was in the car arguing with Malcolm over whether or not it was a viable option to listen to Pink before 8 am. I (barely) made it through U.S. History, escaped to Sweetie Pies for café au lait, and made it back in time to find a spot in the madhouse known as the NVC parking lot before Theatre 100. Lunch break. Homework. Read. Email. Class. Home. Breathe.

Bright- not the soft buttery light bright, but a hot, white blaze- rivaled with my alarm this morning. Today I don’t have to go to class. Today is an everything day. Homework-clean-errands-read-write-everything day.

Wednesday: Monday’s twin.

Thursday: another Everything day.

Friday: Happy-Weekend(!) day.

In the great scheme of things, most of my time is filled with pretty normal stuff: classes, homework, essays, conversations, losing paperwork, driving, novels, writing. Mundane.

Is it really, though- mundane? I’m not so sure I want to confine life under the constrains of those powerful 7 letters. As soon as any day-in-day-out becomes labeled ‘mundane’ it tends to remain there. And before I know it, whole slices of time are lost in the whirlpool of ‘everyday life’ and forgotten. Gone, with only the thrilling left to occupy. And when the thrilling becomes dull? Time is rushed- rushed for the next big thing, rushed to finish what doesn’t seem to count anymore, rushed and gone. Never to be seen again.

I haven't decided if then I should seek the extraordinary in the ordinary, or merely take joy in the mundane things. Maybe both. Either way, I never want today- or any day for that matter- to remain just another day.

Mondays, then- instead of treadmills and driving to school and wasting away in History class- hold the beauty of a black sky and the stillness before the world wakes up; bring the laughter that comes when Malcolm gives me his logic for driving around with a dead black rose on our dash; inspire thankfulness for the means to go to school.

" 'You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other' " (Perelandra)

* http://hannah-tomorrowisamondaymorning.blogspot.com/p/1000.html *

Life at the Moment

{2 of the crazy people living in my house right now}

I am thankful for cream + sugar+ egg yolks+ cornstarch because together they make custard.

And there's nothing more wonderful than watching melted chocolate ravenously engulf silky cream custard as they slowly become one rich and wonderful entity.

I am thankful for leftovers. For the 4 leftover shortbread pieces that give mom and me an excuse to brew tea and sit down and watch E.R. We haven't done that in awhile.

I am thankful for laundry. For a washer and dryer that function as they are supposed to. For the assurance my clothing will not be swimming in a soupy mess of un-drained water when I go to dry it.

On the other hand I am thankful for the washing machine that never drained. Because though it left me with soggy clothes and $1.50 less, it also left me with a happy memory of being doubled over with laughter- if it weren't for nebulous laundry rooms and equipment, laundry parties would be so much less fun.

I am thankful for having to figure out how to share a gas tank with my little brother. I'm glad I have a little brother to share it with.

I am thankful for gray mornings with pearly light.

I am thankful for the very last cup of black coffee. For every drop of bittersweet and warm. For the line of my favorite mugs on my windowsill that represent night hours spent writing and lazy mornings spent doing nothing much.

I am thankful for friends that live far away and for spontaneous Skypes.

I am thankful for friends that live 5 min. away who have a mutual love of strawberries and awkward symbols and who are not-so-great at Rock Band but rock "Walking on Sunshine" like we composed it.

I am thankful for the 5 crazy boys { My 2 little brothers and 3 who think they are }who have practically lived here the past 2 weeks, drinking all the coffee and taking up all the couch space and filling all the silence.

I am thankful to be rooted and grounded in the Solid Rock, and so to be able to offer thanks.

Tonight I thought a lot about tomatoes. Tomatoes.

I was making the salad tonight, pretty much like any other night. First of all, let me just make it clear how happy I am 'salad' no longer means iceberg lettuce,watery tomatoes and weird croutons drowning in honey mustard just to make it taste. Other than that, there's nothing much exciting about making salad. There I was, cutting up cherry tomatoes and musing over what generally disagreeable things they were. To start, the tomato plants harbor the mother of all Godzilla-like spiders. This alone is enough to persuade me to relinquish tomatoes. And then they taste weird. In spite of all these detractors, God could have made every single tomato the same shade of red.

Really.

If you stop to think about it, there's no reason for tomatoes to be anything other than red. There's no reason for them to have color at all. But as I cut them up and tossed them on the salad, I couldn't help but thank God for color. For the tiny jewels bleeding saffron and the ruby-red half moons cresting over the tops of the romaine leafs, for the sunset coloring that pervaded a dingy cutting board, making it beautiful.

I'm still wondering why I thought so much about a fruit I don't even like.

"Count your blessings" goes the old saying.

Some days blessings are brilliant neon signs in the middle of your life. Most days, though, they're brilliant and tiny tomatoes causing me to give thanks.