The Life of M

There are some places where hope permeates the air so thickly that you can stick your tongue out and taste it like ice cream or snowflakes. Screw New Years and baby’s births; these places are more real, more gritty, more life-like, and for some reason make me go crazy with daydreams and hope.

1. High School Graduations: there is all of this possibility. The world is yours to be conquered. Likewise, the subsequent summer before college is also blissfully ignorant of the impending doom of real life.

2. Lazy summer nights and crisp fall days: there has to be something in the air that gets you high. As soon as the temperature hits that magic spot, I walk around sniffing like an idiot, trying to snort the air to achieve maximum bliss. It makes me want to do crazy things.

3. Laundromats: I can’t quite explain it. Maybe I’m more of a scent-oriented person than I had previously assumed. But let’s go with this theory: haven’t you ever heard that by putting a colicky baby on a dryer it calms them down? I’m not sure what that’s all about it, but maybe I’m the colicky baby. Or, maybe movies have given me a false sense of expectation when it comes to doing my laundry.

4. Cars: I love speed and wind and power and control and everything that goes into driving. I love that you can get in them and go. Anywhere. You could even drive into the ocean, but that wouldn’t be very productive. You can take friends, make memories, find love. Cars are everything.

5. Early Mornings: God, do I hate waking up early. I hate the actual exhuming of my consciousness from slumber, but the being up early, I really do love. Particularly, the time when no one else in their right mind would be up. Everything is clear. 

6. Writing: when my fingers hit the keys, or my hand crawls achingly across the page, I feel like I’m making magic happen. Wherever, whenever I write, that place becomes a place where magic was made. In a car, on a porch, very rarely at a desk, in the storage pantry of a bakery in downtown Victoria, often on the floor.

7. At Church: I’m not one of these people that likes to make big showy declarations of their religion. I suppose that’s not a good thing, like I’m ashamed. But I’m not. For me, being Catholic and going to church is about peace. Outside, there are scores of people that will tell me I’m wrong, point out fallacies, and just be mean in general. But inside, there’s peace. And quiet. Possibilities are everywhere. God has my plan already written. He’s made magic just by creating my life. I don’t have to do a single thing except be at church. I go there, and the rest will follow. I have absolutely zero insight where my life might go, but with my whole life ahead of me, hope is endless and happiness is always the end result. 

Where do you find hope?