A Story Without A Moral

Today I finally discovered my purpose for running track.

I’m not particularly fond of layovers, so when I discovered that my flight from Denver to Los Angeles left a mere 20 minutes after my flight from Amarillo to Denver was scheduled to arrive, I spent my departure morning in happiness. Everything in life seemed worthy of celebration: grass, chicken pot pies, blue jeans.

          My elation only increased when I noticed my flight to Denver was filled by approximately 34 SWAT team members-in-training, all of whom appeared to be around my age. (For the purpose of this story, I am leaving out the terrible horrible part of saying goodbye to my mom and my dad at the airport. So, for writing purposes, I am elated at this point in the plot…though mainly because of my short layover…the SWAT team wasn’t nearly as interesting as it sounds).

         Soon, however, my elation turned to paranoia, as the captain of my flight seemed determined to remain on the ground in Amarillo. I began to sweat, erasing any chance I had of attracting the camouflaged man beside me. Time seemed to have the speed and consistency of toothpaste.

Twenty minutes later, my plane took off.

An hour later, my plane landed.

Ten minutes later, I walked onto the Denver terminal with a guitar and an Osprey backpack.

The Los Angeles flight had already been erased from the monitor.

I walked in circles, desperate, realizing my flight left in three minutes. And then, just before I decided to curse my pilot and SWAT team members and short layovers, I heard a cold voice on the intercom:

Flight 786 to Los Angeles passengers Alexis Allison and (Insert Name) have exactly one minute to get to Gate C30. If they do not arrive in one minute, their boarding passes will be given to those waiting in standby.

Well.

I ran.

So there I was, sprinting through the Denver airport with my guitar and a 30-lb Osprey backpack full of textbooks, knowing I had only a minute to run past twenty gates and an entire food court.

Somewhere near an Italian food station, I saw another woman running and knew it must’ve been Insert Name. I caught up to her and yelled, “LA?!” in her direction, and suddenly we were partners in this race against time and Murphy’s Law. 

I saw a pink cylinder hurtle through my peripheral vision, and I realized I had flung my Nalgene at an unsuspecting man. It hit the ground and skittered several yards, so I yelled “I don’t CARE” to no one, then noticed that the woman running next to me had turned around to nab the Nalgene. I screamed “leave it!” and kept running, which probably shows what kind of person I really am.

I ran until I saw a flight attendant in blue waving at me and pointing, and I heard some boy or other in line for another flight shout, “you can make it!”

I rounded the corner and fell onto the ground in front of a flight guard who was closing the door to my flight, before I remembered that my boarding pass was at the bottom of my 30 lb backpack. Curse.

I flung my guitar aside, narrowly missing Insert Name, who had caught up to us with my Nalgene in hand. I suppose we both got what we deserved, because she had her boarding pass in the other hand and the guard let her through. Then he closed the door in my face.

I got down on my knees and pleaded. I might have kissed his shoe. After much groveling on my part, he decided I wasn’t an unauthorized hippie fugitive with a guitar and let me in.

My arms were shaking so badly I almost dropped my guitar on the head of a girl with braids. I saw her eyes open wide, and then I felt hands around me and someone yell “catch it!” although really there was no way I would have allowed my guitar to hit something as hard as a human head. A man’s face filled up my vision, the face of a flight attendant who said sternly and disapprovingly, “next time you check that guitar.”

“Yes sir.”

         I felt like an elephant that had been tranquilized. I could tell people were afraid of me, and annoyed, and nervous I might drop my guitar on them. I staggered in the aisle, dropping my Nalgene once again, before drooping into a seat next to a cool grandma in a seafoam green v-neck. I waited for my body to stop shaking.

         And then:
         I laughed and laughed and laughed, thankful that the roar of the plane drowned the sound of my laughter. 
         Honey roasted peanuts and the middle seat never tasted so good.

When in Writer's Lego

What I Do To Keep From Writing (because sometimes it is just oh-so-hard to do):

Well, I Googled myself. I put a Dr. Seuss quote on facebook to see how many people I could get to like my status. I fixed myself a bowl of cereal. I searched a thesaurus for synonyms of the word, “problem,” as in, I am having a botheration, dilemma, pickle, quandary, vexation with writing. And I wrote out my actions of the past few minutes.

Because, being a writer is like getting dumped. You spend your days alone, in the same shirt you wore yesterday, sitting and thinking about how life could be different. Sometimes you cry.

There is a special kind of resistance that comes with writing. It is mysterious and foreign, although some scientists attempt to explain this phenomenon using the jargon “writer’s block.” Well. I was never one for playing with blocks as a child. They are much too square, sort of like people who don’t like cereal. Legos? Yes. Blocks? Absolutely not.

And therefore I have decided to hang those scientists’ jargon and reclaim this resistance as “Writer’s Lego.” Writer’s Lego is unique in that, while it can be often frustrating and painful, it can produce something far greater than any amateur author could imagine. Because the thing is, life (and writing…and anything worthwhile, really) is not meant to be comfortable or easy. Infomercials only make us think so.

Truth be told, when you find a purpose that is bigger than yourself and those infomercials, you will be confronted with resistance. And, in response to this resistance, you can either cower in the corner of doubt and insecurity with a marshmallow kabob or you can fight, knowing that, the greater the resistance, the more important and good your purpose is. Life (and writing…and anything worthwhile, really) is worthy to be fought for. Just ask a writer.

A Map in the Closet

I was wading through the personality of my mother’s closet when I saw the map. It was folded gently, set aside amidst a pile of books and pajamas. My gaze lingered there, as I’m sure my mother’s gaze has done many a time, so I unfolded the map with my eyes and turned away. I knew what I would find chartered on its leaves.

A land.

A foreign, distant, ancient, mysterious land.

China.

I rummaged a while more, no longer focused on the task at hand (finding a flannel), thinking. Some day, soon, I will seep into that distant land, and my mother will be in this closet. She will sweep her fingertips across cotton, silk, denim, but somehow they will find their way to the map. She will pick it up and stare, and it will stare back at her. And her fingers will touch, with her heart and eyes and prayers, a black dot on the map where I might be at that very moment. She may pause, and listen, in the silence of that dot and that closet, and then resume her day of green scrubs and drowsy needles and people in need of Healing. The moment will have passed, and the map will simply remain a map, folded gently amidst a pile of books and pajamas.

And I will be 7099 miles away, and I will know that I am loved.

Let the adventure begin.

“That thou canst not stir a flower

Without troubling of a star”

- Francis Thompson