| 9/2/00 Damien came to visit me. He jumped up on my windowsill and we looked at each other's pictorial documents of our summer. He had been in Papua New Guinea and I had gone to Ohio for a week. His pictures were better. Although it had been months since Damien and I had hung out, he acted as if we had spoken just yesterday. He does that a lot. He and our friend Joe will get in a major brawl and the next day Damien will show up at his house and pretend like it never happened. I hate that about him. I store the past in my mind like grandmothers store junk in the attic. I want to know all about his summer and I was thinking of prying the details out of him while he rested on my window. But somehow I knew if he had something to say he would tell me. Damien's mission trips are a touchy topic and not taken lightly. I ditched my Friday night plans since I had an unexpected visitor. Everybody understood since its a rare occasion that anybody that lives outside a 30-mile radius of Houghton would actually choose to visit. The sun had just set, the stars had budded from a navy canvas. The night was ripe for the picking. We chose the woods. It seems a more fitting place for Damien. His head almost touches the ceiling inside my room but he is right at home amongst the tall and skinny trees. Carrying a tiny flashlight, marshmallows and Philadelphia Cheesecake Bars, we found a perfect spot to make a fire. Several other students around us had the same idea and their voices echoed all around us. We made a few marshmallow torches and finished an entire box of cheesecake bars. I winced knowing that tommorow my hips would show evidence and Damien would be as skinny as ever. He had lost even more weight the past few months. He told me food in New Guinea was pretty bad. Cheesecake bars are where its at. We confessed to each other our sins, alarmed by each other's actions and supportive of our desires to change. We watched the flames lick the wood until it was satisfied and layed itself down to rest. On the walk back to the dorm the little flashlight died and the world went dark. We laughed at ourselves as our eyes tried to compensate the lack of depth perception. I asked permission to hang onto his arm and he gave it to me and we nagivated the forest. 9/15/00 Today I bit into a peach and tasted fall. Bryan called and asked how the weather was. Cool and sunny, perfectly drinkable. Open mouth, insert autumn. I feel as if I don't fill my cup with it to the top, it will evaporate away overnight. The sun is so bright today that it makes the sky look like it was shaded with blue colored pencil instead of marker. It's deceiving because its's so cold that even my plants shiver by the window. My new favorite dwelling place is the library. The little basement is full of theological minds printed on parched paper. Titles and texts in Latin and German, I open them up just to smell them. 10/4/00 The last days of Fall snuck up on me. Just as I do every summer, I feel like I've missed out on something. Damien drives us into the town of Naples and through the closed windows I can smell the fermented grapes. "Dame, we missed the grape festival." "Aw, man." he groans with genuine disappointment. We missed it last year too, and vowed we'd make it this time. He pulled the car into the side street that led us right into Grimes Glen. "Jenn, tonight we feast." Curious, I followed him to the creek and he handed me a plastic bin. He plunged right into the water while I took my time, testing the water with a sandaled toe and then shaking it off like a kitten at a faucet. Damien became a hunter. He lifted a large rock and waited for the murkiness to clear away. I watched as he calmly stuck his hand in the water and retrieved a large crayfish. I had never seen one before up close and personal and I tensed up immediately. Damien instructed me to hold out the bin and I stretched it out as far as my arms could reach. The crayfish landed inside with a thud and shook like a fish out of water. I looked down at his beady little eyes and slimy body and eased up on my grip. He was cute, and suddenly in my care. I named him Bob. The next one was Alice. When Damien caught her I was pleased that Bob would have a companion. I felt like a little girl playing God with her toy dolls. When Alice landed and overcame the initial shock, Bob approached her and then ripped off her left claw. She fought back with her right by grabbing his tail in her trenches but he ripped out that claw too. In utter disbelief, I grabbed a twig and shoved Bob into a corner. Alice retreated to the opposite side and curled herself up. Damien continued to toss more and more into the bin and as each newcomer gained its footing, the others would surround it, ready to mutilate. I watched the battlefield I held in my arms with sadness. CLaws covered the floor of the bin. The clawless remained in corners hoping nothing would harm them further. Damien saw my saddened eyes. "I had no idea crayfishes were like this." "Its life, Jenn." His tone laughed at my naivete. I held the bin on my lap on the way home. At a stoplight we pulled up behind a new gold Taurus. On the bumper was a sticker that read, "Christians: Can't live with them, can't feed them to the lions." My stomach turned at the hatred. I didn't even know the man in the gold Taurus and he didn't know me, but I felt like in his own way he was coming after me with open claws. I stared at my minature coliseum, a new veil lifted from my eyes. I felt like Neo in The Matrix after he swallowed the red pill and saw what the world REALLY looked like. Solomon said, "With much knowledge comes much sorrow." I say, With much understanding comes much capacity to be hurt. Today I increased a little in wisdom. I gained a little understanding about the ugliness that lies within us. The hate that we harbor and cultivate, the viciousness we cut each other up with. And I wonder, if I could feel hurt by witnessing crustacean violence, then how much more is God hurt by us every second? If the more we know, the more we know sorrow, then God, the All-knowing, must be devastated. |
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