Pop Culture is Coming to Get Me

Pop culture is coming to get me. I finally gave in to reading Stephanie Meyer's popular teen romance lit about a girl and her vampire because I was tired of not having anything smart and heavily opinionated to say whenever one of my co-workers, friends, or c-train acquaintances started gushing about the latest plot twist. When I sheepishly bought book 2 in HMV after finishing book 1 in less than 2 days, the store clerk asked me if it was for me or for a friend. I said it was for my teen sister Sam, rolled my eyes, and joined the store clerk in cheerfully abusing the series' weak points. Yeah, it was soooo for me. Who knew that New Moon and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban would hold some of the answers to my greatest spiritual desert to date?

...I didn't understand why, but the nebulous threat the men presented drew me toward them. It was a senseless impulse, but I hadn't felt any kind of impulse in so long...I followed it.

Something unfamiliar beat through my veins. Adrenaline, I realized, long absent from my system, drumming my pulse faster and fighting against the lack of sensation. It was strange- why the adrenaline when there was no fear? It was almost as if it were an echo of the last time I'd stood like this, on a dark street in Port Angeles with strangers.

I saw no reason for fear. I couldn't imagine anything in the world that there was left to be afraid of, not physically at least. One of the few advantages of losing everything.

I was half-way across the street when Jess caught up to me and grabbed my arm.

"Bella! You can't go in a bar!" she hissed.

"I'm not going in," I said absently, shaking her hand off. "I just want to see something..."

"Are you crazy?" she whispered. "Are you suicidal?"

That question caught my attention, and my eyes focused on her.

"No, I'm not," my voice sounded defensive, but it was true. I wasn't suicidal. Even in the beginning, when death unquestionably would have been a relief, I didn't consider it. I owed too much to Charlie. I felt too responsible for Renee. I had to think of them.

And I'd made a promise not to do anything stupid or reckless. For all those reasons, I was still breathing.

Remembering that promise, I felt a twinge of guilt, but what I was doing right now didn't really count. It wasn't like I was taking a blade to my wrists.

Jess's eyes were round, her mouth hung open. Her question about suicide had been rhetorical, I realized too late.

"Go eat," I encouraged her, waving toward the fast food. I didn't like the way she looked at me. "I'll catch up in a minute."

I turned away from her, back to the men who were watching us with amused, curious eyes.

"Bella, stop this right now!"

My muscles locked into place, froze me where I stood. Because it wasn't Jessica's voice that rebuked me now. It was a furious voice, a beautiful voice- soft like velvet even though it was irate.

It was his voice- I was exceptionally careful not to think his name-

and I was surprised that the sound of it did not knock me to my

knees, did not curl me into the pavement in a torture of loss. But

there was no pain, none at all. In the instant that I heard his voice,

everything was very clear. Like my head had suddenly surfaced

out of some dark pool. I was more aware of everything- sight,

sound, the feel of the cold air blowing sharply against my face,

the smells coming from the open bar door.

I looked around myself in shock.

"Go back to Jessica," the lovely voice ordered, still angry. "You

promised- nothing stupid."

I was alone. Jessica stood a few feet from me, staring at me

with frightened eyes. Against the wall, the strangers watched,

confused, wondering what I was doing, standing there motionless

in the middle of the street.

I shook my head, trying to understand. I knew he wasn't there,

and yet, he felt improbably close, close for the first time since...

since the end. The anger in his voice was concern, the same

anger that was once very familiar- something I hadn't heard in

what felt like a lifetime.

"Keep your promise," the voice was slipping away, as if the

volume was being turned down on a radio.

I began to suspect that I was having some kind of hallucination.

Triggered, no doubt, by the memory- the deja vu, the strange

familiarity of the situation.

I ran through the possibilities quickly in my head.

Option one: I was crazy. That was the layman's term for people

who heard voices in their heads.

Possible.

Option two: My subconscious mind was giving me what it thought

I wanted. This was wish fulfillment- a momentary relief from pain

by embracing the incorrect idea that he cared whether I lived or

died. Projecting what he would have said if A) he were here, and

B) he would be in any way bothered by something bad happening

to me.

Probable.

I could see no option three, so I hoped it was the second option

and this was just my sub-conscious running amuck, rather than

something I would need to be hospitalized for.

My reaction was hardly sane though- I was grateful. The sound

of his voice was something that I'd feared I was losing, and so,

more than anything else, I felt overwhelming gratitude that my

subconscious had held onto that sound better than my conscious

one had.

-Stephanie Meyer's (2006) New Moon, pp. 109-113.

"Concentrating hard on your happy memory?"

"Oh- yeah-" said Harry, quickly forcing his thoughts back to that

first broom ride. "Expecto patrono- no patronum, -sorry- expecto

patronum, expecto patronum-" Something whooshed suddenly

out of the end of his wand; it looked like a wisp of silvery gas.

"Did you see that?" said Harry excitedly. "Something happened!"

"Very good," said Lupin, smiling, "Right then- ready to try it on a

Dementor?"

"Yes," said Harry, gripping his wand very tightly, and moving into

the middle of the deserted classroom. He tried to keep his mind

on flying, but something else kept intruding...any second now, he

might hear his mother again...but he shouldn't think that, or he

would hear her again, and he didn't want to...did he?

-J. K. Rowling's (1999) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,

pp. 176-177.

I wish I could say that I loved God with the kind of passion Bella

had for Edward. One so deep, so entwined in my nature that

when God is distanced I feel like I have a hole ripped in my chest

and I'm compelled to try to hold myself together, even though I

know I'm fine physically. God is a much more worthy object of

obsession than any man, no matter how good-looking and

velvety-voice endowed. Maybe my grief is not so great because

my rift was not as sudden. Mine was a slow disappearance, like

a tiny leak in my car's engine coolant compartment that adds up

to a collective loss over time, catching me by surprise one day

with an unfamiliar lighted symbol on my dash.

Nevertheless, like both Bella and Harry's characters, I understand

the craving to hear the missing Voice, even if it comes packaged

in anger or pain. The anger and pain indicate, at least, that He

still cares about what I do, about what happens to me. Because

even pissed off, it's still the most beautiful Voice in the world.

And it feels like it's been such a long time since I've heard it in

any tone at all.

My Voice yelled at me about a parking fine I had decided to

allow to go unpaid because a co-worker had advised me it

could be done with no lasting repercussions beyond angry

letters from the company I had offended. It started off with, "Pay

the fine." I was so surprised to hear that Voice tell me anything

clear, that I momentarily sat stunned in my car where I was

waiting for the light to turn green so I could start speeding past

all the slow people to get to wherever it was that I wanted to get

to that day. And then, out of habit, and anger, and longing, and

curiosity, I started arguing. "I don't want to. I don't need to. I

don't have money for that- I need to pay for medical bills,

groceries, rent, and donate to starving children in Africa and

Haiti. They don't deserve my money even if I had it- they charge

way more than what those gravel pits of space are worth."

The Voice argued back with things like, "Render unto Ceasar

what is Ceasar's," "Thou shalt not steal," "Let your conscience

be clear," "Only the wicked fear punishment," "You don't know

the future- maybe they can track your accounts," "You're using

the Justification defense mechanism because you know you

should have paid for the parking in the first place before you

ended up with the tickets and all their late fees," and finally,

"Faye, if you were to die in a car crash today because of your

terrible driving, could you really look me in the face and claim

that not paying this ticket was the right, blameless, just thing to

do?" Then I was reminded of a U B David and I'll B Jonathan

diagram that illustrates how sin creates a chasm between

ourselves and God. I ground my teeth, swearing. Because

He had me caught. "Don't do that- you're wrecking your

teeth," the Voice added. Suddenly I knew how to get coverage

for the teeth guard I'd been agonizing over since my dentist

told me it was crucial in November. Weird.

I paid the [swear-word] ticket. It actually took me a few days,

because I discovered I had run out of cheques, so I had to use

a free sample one my bank had sent me for my VISA. I put it in

a nice Christmas card that said something about peace to the

world. I couldn't bring myself to write them any personal words

of graciousness or repentance, and my mother's Voice helpfully

kicked in and reminded me that If you can't say anything nice,

don't say anything at all. Besides, like the deuce there's

anything kind you can say to a collections department that won't

be taken as either sarcasm or a bribe by the workers there. That's

like sending a Thank-you card to Revenue Canada. It's a sure

way to get yourself audited. In any case, I sent my cheque in the

conveniently labelled and pre-postage paid envelope the Parking

Company had sent me along with the last threatening letter. The

envelope had gotten a little stained from laying on the floor of my

rather dirty car for so many weeks, and I confess I felt some

satisfaction imagining them grimacing as they touched it to

retrieve their payment. That was the most passive-aggressive

method I could think of for conveying a barb along with my olive

branch. I felt God frown. I hoped it was the sort of frown parents

make at their children to discourage inappropriate behaviour,

while the parent is secretly laughing. I suppose in the parable

of the Vineyard Owner's two sons, I'm the grouchy son who

initially refuses to go work when told, but eventually gets up to go

do as asked, probably kicking rocks irritably as he walks but

compelled forward by a greater desire to make his good, loving

father happy. I think I should be concerned about how much

pride I feel in that image of myself. Would I delight in a teen who

consistently whines every time I ask her to do something useful?

I doubt it. I would probably yell at her to "Grow up," then pass out

that eternally grating piece of sage wisdom, "Sometimes we have

to do things we don't want to do. That's life." By which we mean,

of course, Grown-up life. Ohhhhhh.

[Swear-word again]. Seriously, God? That's the whole point of

the riding my bike in the miserable rain for 10 days, paying the

parking ticket, taking that stupid last course at Ambrose that I

hated and nearly failed, and going roller-blading with Dan as I

promised? Because I have to be a Grown-up now? No! I

refuse. I'm going to remain a little boy who never does anything

but play games and have fun and never grows up! Where's

Wendy? I need her to tell me and the other lost boys a story about

how I defeated Hook with Tinkerbell's fairy dust so I can go to

sleep and be rested up for my pretend fight with the Natives

tomorrow.

"That's a lie. You're perfectly capable of making a decision. Stop

holding onto lies, Faye!" The Voice of my friend Lisa, interrupting

my tirade about not knowing what to do about counselling with

Jackie Stinton, Christian Registered Psychotherapist. She says it

again, to make sure I'm listening, "Faye, stop holding onto lies!"

Yes! I know this game. When a teacher repeats some thing, it

means it's going to be on the test and you have to know it. Okay,

paying attention. Shit, she said "lies". Plural. What other

delusions am I holding on to?

Scary Closet

Hey, God. It’s been over a year since I tried meeting you here. Maybe that’s just as well- I no longer have an audience I feel obligated to edit my words for. Though now that I’m here, I don’t know what to say. My thoughts used to feel so complete, tightly controlled, flowing together, cohesive when I wrote. Now all I can get out are broken fragments that don’t even make sense to me. Ironic, when contrasted with all the praise I get at work for my detailed but succinct call documentation. I can see the themes and connections in hundreds of others’ stories and distill them into a maximum three-paragraph-long call card that any reader can understand. So why does it take me ten minutes of staring at the floor, swallowing repeatedly, and conscious self-reminders to breathe to answer a standard question in counseling like, “What relationships do you have right now that can help support you through this?” ? It shouldn’t be that hard- I know the answer. It’s not even a discouraging answer; I am very blessed in my attachment network.

Dan described September with me as being “very busy”. He felt like I was constantly pulling him here, there, and to the next place to meet people, get things done, and do things. He expressed relief that I had slowed down lately. Snort. I told him I’m probably busier now that I was in September; I’ve just stopped dragging him with me to everything. Such a strange contradiction, to be so busy, so kinetic on the outside, yet feel so deathly quiet on the inside. It’s not a stillness in the sense of tranquility, balance, or peace; I just feel frozen. I’m poised with my hand on the door knob of a precariously packed closet that has far too many secret boxes. Conveniently compartmentalized and stuffed away “for later,” each box waits eagerly for the slightest crack in pressure to spring loose in an avalanche that will bury me. It’s the kind of B-grade horror movie you want to throw stale pop-corn at: “Don’t go in there, you fool! It’ll get you!!!” But the door knob has such a magnetic pull to my iron hand; the headlights of that truck are so hypnotically mesmerizing to my dilated eyes. I don’t believe in fate. I do believe in Freudian slips and subconscious desires. Sometimes I also believe in providence.

Creeeeak goes the door knob. FWOOOOP-PLOP-PLOP-PLOP-PLOP-PLOP-THUD goes the precariously packed closet stuff onto my head. Siiiiigh, goes the fool lying on the floor, “Well, now that I’m here…” I peruse the jumbled mass of once-organized items heaped nearest my buried head.

Aha. My unfinished scarf, the loose strings almost as tangled and convoluted as I’d left them back in the summer. Driving home from Lac Ste. Anne with Jen. I have just finished ten grueling days of bike-riding and “free-camping” through the most miserable rain and contrary winds I have ever subjected myself to, a week of emotionally intense interpersonal therapy training in Edmonton, and half a week of spiritually and emotionally confusing tent-city grunge living at the native Catholic pilgrimage site of Lac Ste. Anne. Jen wants to know how I feel about the whole thing. It’s a good thing Jen’s life is more confusing than mine. She takes it rather well when I give her the most honest summary I can come up with: “God, you dragged me through ten days of mud-sodden bike-riding over enormous gravel-roaded hills and “free-camping” through the most miserable rain and contrary winds I have ever experienced, dragged up all my old insecurities about having what it takes for counseling for another week after that, and then gave me half a week of forlorn tent-city wanderings and unanswered hopes in physical healing from diabetes so you can show me that I need to ask for help from other people more often?! I already knew that at home! Screw you, I’m never going on another pilgrimage again!” Some of the loose strings have gotten tangled around something else. I trace the knot with my finger, looking for a way to set the captive object free.

Shiny. The captive is a broken necklace. So many beautiful elements, but the chain links are weak and prone to separating when I pull too hard on the smooth stones that I find so comforting to rub with my thumb. I don’t have the tools or the patience to keep putting it back together. It needs to be made into something new. But that is another daunting task- one I haven’t built enough motivation or creativity to launch, so it too was put aside in the closet. Polished natural stone has always been my preference over the ostentatious glamour of cut gems. There’s more mystery in the depth of natural stone’s weight and swirling patterns of compression, an enigma only ever partially revealed by carving cross-sections. One of the beads is more of an oblong orb. Unwieldy and heavy, I actually don’t like it very much in its present shape. I’m tempted to smash it, to see new, sharper shapes and discover more hidden cross-sections. But I also worry about destroying it in my haste. Light gleams on some of the beads, and I gaze again at each one: so many memories strung together by the common theme of a relationship. Laying on a quilt in the summer, asking God why the hell he would finally reveal a man capable of being my match…when that man is an animist and therefore off limits for me. God told me to go forward anyway- the man’s faith wasn’t exactly what it appeared, and I could invite him “further up and deeper in”. Staring out the window at white winter, watching with horror a vision of myself, Dan, and God dancing together. Dan doesn’t see God; Dan keeps turning his back on God, trying to dance with me alone. I feel so awkward excluding God when God has greater claim on my affections and adventures, but I don’t know how to pull Dan back and make him see the Friendly Giant in the room who is so obvious to me. I give in and offer both hands to Dan alone, feeling God’s hurt the moment I do so. Walking through Nose Hill Park in the spring, hand in hand with Dan. I tentatively ask if he feels anything has changed in his spiritual life over the last year. Relief floods my heart when he responds that he now sees God as more personal, rather than just a great other. Walking through Nose Hill Park in the fall, hand in hand with Dan again. He reveals his fears about marriage in light of his parents’ unexpected divorce, and also his concerns about my condescending attitude towards his faith. Dan also wants me to explain why it upsets me that Dan is amused by his room-mate’s poster of two scantily-clan lesbians locked in an intimate embrace. Driving alone in my car on the Deerfoot, which is slick with ice and half-melted snow. Dan is in BC, visiting friends for a week. The time apart made two things very clear to me: first, I feel like a moon without a planet to orbit when he’s gone. Second, even when Dan’s around, I still feel like a dead, useless rock. Where is the sun that both earth and its moon should be orbiting? I’m driving too fast again, driving while crying again, and I mentally reprimand myself for always leaving these sorts of reflections for solitary car rides on the highway. I picture myself allowing my car to swerve just a touch too close to the snow piled along the curve of the road preceding a very solid-looking concrete overpass. Nope. Considered that last winter too, and I still can’t do it. I can’t hurt my family that way. Dang. Too much force on the knot- the necklace snaps in two and I swivel my head around to see where the second piece has fallen.

There it is. And there’s the thing that went THUD when it hit my head. It’s a bottle of LIFE juice. I grasp the partially empty bottle with mingled irritation and admiration. It is a tall, slender bottle with a trendy, simple label; reminiscent of all the elegance of red wine, without the glass material for the bottle or the disappointing dry, bitter taste that so inappropriately accompanies a liquid so richly coloured. Marketed as a wonder drink for healing, LIFE juice contains nearly all the most anti-carcinogenic ingredients touted by the research Nolan has delved into. Once you get past the mild sea-weed taste, the juice has a fairly enjoyable mixed berries flavour. The only draw-back is that the bottle is too tall to fit vertically, or even diagonally, into any refrigerator I’ve ever encountered. And it’s not helping the one person we most wanted it to. It’s such a dark red, I note idly, still holding the bottle. Red like blood, like pretty packaging used for parcels at Christmas, like grape juice served in little plastic shot glasses at Evangelical church Communion services, like my sleep-deprived eyes, like the powerful chemo drug they’re injecting into my mother’s veins to slow the cancer down. Slow, but not stop, the doctors said. Lieomyosarcoma. A rapidly reproducing cancer that spreads through muscles not controlled by conscious thought- i.e. lungs, the digestive tract, the abdomen, kidneys, etc. Rare, it affects less than 1% of all cancer patients. There are no documented cases of survival. Christian friends from church and beyond keep telling us she is going to live anyway, Jesus will heal her, keep praying, they’re praying. My conscious prayers mainly consist of simple things: “Please God, let her keep down a ½ cup of fruit smoothie today. I put the LIFE juice in it! She hasn’t had anything but a few sips of ginger-ale stay down for three days…” These prayers are answered with “yes” and “no” about equally as often. Well, maybe 50% is pretty good. I mean, maybe people who don’t have this much prayer are only successful keeping telescopic quantities of food down 20% of the time. Seriously, God, what the hell is this? I know you’re capable of better than random chance. Why are you willing to fix the stupid, unnecessary odometer on my car for me even when I don’t speak to you for weeks, but you won’t heal my warm, kind, faithful, loving mother when everyone we know is praying for her?! Priorities!!! Death isn’t the end. She’d be happy in heaven. She could see the Tree of Life where Jono made tick marks for his height and Jesus’ so he could finally find out for sure which is shorter. If mom dies, the last shreds of Chasey’s faith in a just or good God will be annihilated. Nolan’s probably right- this is totally going to be an Elijah + God versus the 450 Baal prophets + 400 Asherah prophets. When mom gets better miraculously, Chasey, maybe Tachae and Jeana, and who knows all else will see the glory and love of God and be changed. How long can I continue working full-time in the helping services while also trying to provide relief care for my mother every other evening and successfully focus on my on-line counseling course starting in the new year before my empathy pool dries up into a puddle? I wonder if anyone ever goes swimming in the River of Life the way the native people go swimming in the blessed holy waters of Lac Ste. Anne. I hope so. I don’t enjoy skating much and if there are any rivers of life left in my soul, they’ve frozen solid like the ones on Mars. I push the bottle aside.

Another shiny glint. Ah, a lighter for camping. Probably one of the ones drowned on my pilgrimage. I wonder if it still lights. Click. Ouch. Damn it, why does anyone ever use those things? Well, now I know it still works... Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation (Hebrews 11:1-2). I still believe you’re good, God. I see you in who my mother is, in her loving care for others despite her own suffering. But I don’t understand what you’re doing, and I’m having a hard time taking Valerie’s commission to praise you for the health our mother still has. In some ways, I feel like going to pre-bereavement counseling demonstrates despair. I know you’re capable of healing my mother if you want to. But I also know from personal experience that sometimes you choose not to heal, and sometimes people we want to believe mis-prophesy, and I need to be prepared if you’re planning to take the heart out of our family. I need to know if there's enough lighter fluid left for that potential darkness.