Tower of Babel

I suppose it is a play to my own version of the classic “mid-twenties existential crisis” that I have been listening almost exclusively  to Leonard Cohen this week. It might be the slow eternal sadness of his voice or the perpetual searching in his words, but somehow each song sits like a brick on the path I seem to be traveling on. Or maybe, each song sits like bricks stacked crooked upon all the other crooked bricks and the other songs that reach this part of me, on a shakey upward stretch with a goal to have its top reach the heavens.

Most of it, is the private construction of a place to hide. It is funny, to me, the things I keep private. The reasons I keep them private. Everyone thinks I have this strength that requires no outside help. Even the ones that help me think it is just a passing phase… a seasonal sadness… a stumble in a confident stride. Temporary. “She will be fine,” they say, “She’s Ashley Tippin. She’s always fine.” And then further, “She’s better off.” And though it is true the things that cause trip-ups and skinned knees do pass, and I may be better off, and I am still Ashley Tippin, and I will always be fine, the strength is all in the walls of my private, internal Tower of Babel.

And when I send out the S.O.S. to the people who have seen my tower, know that I exist in it, I wish they would stop thinking I was this strong. Because sometimes I’m not.

Now I dance on the stairwells inside this Tower of Babel I have made and the walls grow ever weaker. It, by God’s grace and wrath, or the sheer force of my thundering feet, will soon crumbled to the ground. All the common people and this common language we share will be disjointed and spread to the ends of the earth.

I just pray that I will always have these songs. I pray that I will always have the thick, syrupy affections of these songs. I pray that this, the only language I can understand in the rubble of a broken building, will remain one when the tower crumbles at the pit of my stomach.

“When you’re not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you’ve sinned.”

Square Pegs

I don’t think it comes as much surprise to the people around me that I, not only consider myself to be a square peg, but I am completely comfortable not fitting into many of the world’s holes. It has been pointed out, and I have lived my own life long enough to know that my general inability to function on a plane that is even in the same universe as most people poses some issues for my life. I also recognize and have become quite comfortable knowing that I am the cause of some of these stumbling blocks and speed bumps as a direct result of some of the personality traits I have been blessed with. And yes, I consider myself to be completely and utterly blessed to be adorned with a personality that will never be anything that anyone understands, including me.

And Jesus, does it ever keep things exciting.

So tonight, when the walls felt like they were bowing in under the weight of the heavy rain-filled sky, I called my Home. My father’s gentle wisdom, once again I was seeking. And what wisdom he has. I don’t know if it is that he is a square peg so much as it is that he raised one, but he said it with plainness and sincerity to a degree that surpasses insight to me. And what he said, I know to be true, but by experience.

“Any relationship you have will have rough edges, but I am one to believe that nothing moves forward without rough edges.”

The resonance is deafening. Everything he said, all that he knows about me and life and the world and what I will be like in this life and this world. I am an incomplete project, no denial about that, but I am a project that will remain with rough edges because I want to move forward. I am designed to move forward, and like a square peg on a table top, a little push is always necessary to get me rolling.

Love is never, ever a liar.