You Just Can't Show Me

Ultimately the only thing that can make you happy is a choice to be. I believe this. The world could be over. Or your world--you could be afraid to return to school, could be struck with two deaths in one transitory year, could keep getting bloody noses and accidentally muss up your white hankie permanently....but you can understand Good and shake it all off. You can shrug--no, MORE than shrug--you can lace up your sneakers and go jogging down the lake path. I believe this. But, I also believe sometimes it's very very hard.

Maybe it's just watching that episode of Boy Meets World where Cory gives Topanga his jean jacket and remembering first seeing it in your suburban Chicago bedroom, on your bed that you had to climb, and turning off the TV to run over the lines of your speech for the next morning's competition. High school speech is magic, but is it? Who really cares? You say it was so good for you, but who cares? What's actually Good anyway? I repeat: Who cares about any of it? And no matter how decadent the caramel salt latte, how cushy the employment benefits, how absolutely perfect the Arizona heat in January is--there's still unhappiness if you can't make THE choice. I believe this.

But that's why, although we are not entitled to it, we are sent angels in the form of a friendly stranger offering positivity about your writing, about Life. In the form of the poor depressed folk singer who, despite his forever unhappiness, has given me dozens of reasons to be happy--two being "Goodnight Rose" and "Desire," which remind me of walking through Kyoto at night, up the steps of the art school. I asked the noodle shop for a knife. My Japanese wasn't good enough. I ripped open the avocado with my fingernails.

And although we might not be deserving of these angels because we have been such horribly sad, dysfunctional little maggots, they come to us, and although they cannot make us happy, they can remind us to try.

You know me. You know my way.
You just can't show me, but, God, I'm praying.
That you'll find me, and that you'll see me,
and that you run and never tire.
Desire. Desire.