Spread the word: Submit to LCH by Friday!
Tell all your friends! Invite all the filmmakers and nonprofit professionals you know! The last day to submit is Friday! Join our Facebook event for more information and updated reminders about the deadline.
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Spread the word: Submit to LCH by Friday! lightscamerahelp:
Tell all your friends! Invite all the filmmakers and nonprofit professionals you know! The last day to submit is Friday! Join our Facebook event for more information and updated reminders about the deadline.
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my first love….errrr…car… tomorrow, i’ll see my first love for the last time. the one who held my hand for the first time. the one who guided me through relationships. the one who took me to coffee shops in the morning to wake up, in the afternoon to work, in the evening to converse. the one whom i sat with for countless nights, discontent as a teenager in the dimly lit streets of the suburbs. the one who carried me to safety from the storms. the one who would sit with me on new years eve when there was no one else. the one who let my hair feel the wind and my shouts ring through the freeway air. the one who heard so many tough conversations and never left. the one who carried me away from loneliness. the one who became my home when i didn’t know where else it could be. the one who gave me freedom and an identity. the one who helped me learn what community really means. the one who held all of my stuff as i moved. and moved. and moved. and moved. and moved. and moved. my consistency.
adventure in the midst of bore. joy in the midst of depression. grace as i learned to love. sharing my joys and laughter and fears and tears and excitement.
last tuesday, this one was hurt by an accident completely out of my control. i wasn’t hurt, thankfully, and this car collision didn’t look like that big of an event. but, as cliche as it sounds, i didn’t know how much this one meant to me until it was gone. when i got the call on yesterday that that was it, my car had been totaled, i went into business mode and started figuring out what actions i needed to take, what the insurance would take care of, what forms i needed to fill out, blahblahblahblahblah. then, thankfully in the midst of the most loving, caring, honest, gracious group of women i know, it hit me, accompanied by a whole load of tears. i loved this car. i didn’t know how much of my self was tied up in this big pile of metal. it had been a huge part of who i was. and yeah, it’s just a car. i know. i’ll get a new one. i know. i’m lucky in that. but there was something about all that i had experienced with this car and all that i had grown with this car. it was just being taken away from me. i’d always expected it to keep going until finally it couldn’t go anymore. then i would get to say a proper goodbye. but someone else decided that it was time. that i couldn’t have it anymore. that it’s damage would cost more than its worth. i wanted to tell bob at the repair shop that it was worth more than he knew. more than he could write me an insurance check for. but really, what would that do? nothing. it was gone. tomorrow i will go pick up the pieces of my life that i had left behind in it and say goodbye.
i’m sure this is just the next step in growing up. seems like i’ve left behind nearly everything else that defined me in my youth: houses, cities, places, clothes, guitars, old friends, singledom. a part of me knows that it’s time. time for me to move on and move into the next breath of my life. but it almost feels too soon.
so maybe i’m over-dramatizing this. and given, i’m still processing. but different things are different big-ness to different people and i’m not gonna be ashamed for spending a night bawling in the arms of the one i love about my pronounced-dead car. i care about this thing. so dammit, i’m gonna be as upset as i need to be and you can’t tell me that it’s not valid. it is. i am. this is what i feel. don’t tell me not to cry. to calm it down. not to be so extreme. to be reasonable. i am an emotional creature.
and because music helps me process, i will now go make a sentimental car playlist, full of cheese and beach boys songs. but the one that comes to mind first is by a family favorite, nanci griffith, called “ford econoline”: a song about a woman who finds freedom through this ford econoline. so i’ll allow these last lyrics to rush over me and speak truth and hope to me. and though i don’t hope i get a coupe deville, i know that once i get my next car, i’ll sing these lines about me and my lovely little honda:
“she drives a coupe deville but her heart rides still in that ford econoline.”
my first love….errrr…car…
tomorrow, i’ll see my first love for the last time. the one who held my hand for the first time. the one who guided me through relationships. the one who took me to coffee shops in the morning to wake up, in the afternoon to work, in the evening to converse. the one whom i sat with for countless nights, discontent as a teenager in the dimly lit streets of the suburbs. the one who carried me to safety from the storms. the one who would sit with me on new years eve when there was no one else. the one who let my hair feel the wind and my shouts ring through the freeway air. the one who heard so many tough conversations and never left. the one who carried me away from loneliness. the one who became my home when i didn’t know where else it could be. the one who gave me freedom and an identity. the one who helped me learn what community really means. the one who held all of my stuff as i moved. and moved. and moved. and moved. and moved. and moved. my consistency.
adventure in the midst of bore. joy in the midst of depression. grace as i learned to love. sharing my joys and laughter and fears and tears and excitement.
last tuesday, this one was hurt by an accident completely out of my control. i wasn’t hurt, thankfully, and this car collision didn’t look like that big of an event. but, as cliche as it sounds, i didn’t know how much this one meant to me until it was gone. when i got the call on yesterday that that was it, my car had been totaled, i went into business mode and started figuring out what actions i needed to take, what the insurance would take care of, what forms i needed to fill out, blahblahblahblahblah. then, thankfully in the midst of the most loving, caring, honest, gracious group of women i know, it hit me, accompanied by a whole load of tears. i loved this car. i didn’t know how much of my self was tied up in this big pile of metal. it had been a huge part of who i was. and yeah, it’s just a car. i know. i’ll get a new one. i know. i’m lucky in that. but there was something about all that i had experienced with this car and all that i had grown with this car. it was just being taken away from me. i’d always expected it to keep going until finally it couldn’t go anymore. then i would get to say a proper goodbye. but someone else decided that it was time. that i couldn’t have it anymore. that it’s damage would cost more than its worth. i wanted to tell bob at the repair shop that it was worth more than he knew. more than he could write me an insurance check for. but really, what would that do? nothing. it was gone. tomorrow i will go pick up the pieces of my life that i had left behind in it and say goodbye.
i’m sure this is just the next step in growing up. seems like i’ve left behind nearly everything else that defined me in my youth: houses, cities, places, clothes, guitars, old friends, singledom. a part of me knows that it’s time. time for me to move on and move into the next breath of my life. but it almost feels too soon.
so maybe i’m over-dramatizing this. and given, i’m still processing. but different things are different big-ness to different people and i’m not gonna be ashamed for spending a night bawling in the arms of the one i love about my pronounced-dead car. i care about this thing. so dammit, i’m gonna be as upset as i need to be and you can’t tell me that it’s not valid. it is. i am. this is what i feel. don’t tell me not to cry. to calm it down. not to be so extreme. to be reasonable. i am an emotional creature.
and because music helps me process, i will now go make a sentimental car playlist, full of cheese and beach boys songs. but the one that comes to mind first is by a family favorite, nanci griffith, called “ford econoline”: a song about a woman who finds freedom through this ford econoline. so i’ll allow these last lyrics to rush over me and speak truth and hope to me. and though i don’t hope i get a coupe deville, i know that once i get my next car, i’ll sing these lines about me and my lovely little honda:
“she drives a coupe deville but her heart rides still in that ford econoline.”
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“It’s amazing how peacefully we can set our stage when we call on all our hands. They’ve got the grip we’ve been missing.”
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“we women have lived too much with closure: ‘if he notices me, if i marry him, if i get into college, if i get this work accepted, if i get that job’ - there always seems to loom the possibility of something being over, settled, sweepingg clear the way for contentment. this is the delusion of a passive life. when the hope for closure is abandoned, whine there is an end to fantasy, adventure for women will begin. endings - the kind austen tacked onto her novels - are for romance or for daydreams, but not for life. one hands in the long worked on manuscript only to find that another struggle begins. one gets a job to find new worries previous unimagined. one achieves fame only to discover its profound price. somehow men have known this, but women rarely, i at all. but with the coming of age can come such knowledge. sometimes, as with woolf, or anne sexton, or others we have all dow, it can lead to the trough of despair and to the sense of life as without value, or at least of oneself as without the necessary courage or desire. but most often, particularly with the support of other women, the coming of age portends all the freedoms men have always known and women never - mostly the freedom from fulfilling the needs of others and from being a female impersonator.”
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“and i said to him, are there answers to all of this?
and he said, the answer is in a story and the story is being told
and i said, but there’s so much pain
and he answered, pain will happen
and i said, will i ever find meaning?
and he said, you will find meaning where you give meaning
the answer is in a story and the story is unfolding
the question is not where but how
the question is never finished or exhausted
and the question’s in the asking not the answer
the answer’s in the breathing of the question
in the love of holding onto what was never whispered, never seen
but what we dreamed of in the morning
then forgot while venus crept around the nighttime of our sleeping
the answer is in the living not the knowing
the answer’s in the telling of the story
in the half-forgotten memory and all unfinished stories
the answer’s in the showing time of senses
the answer’s in the question, in the learning
in the faded page of writing
in the letters sent to lovers
in the paying for the other
the answer is the generous, is the truthing
the absolutely truthful anger
and forgiving is the giving of what you don’t deserve
it’s what is served because you’re hungry
even though you may not know it
the answer is in the living and the dying
in the trying for redemption on an empty hill of crosses
it’s the shoring up of hope and the gathering of losses
it’s the looking for companions in the hills and in the glens
it’s the waking up and walking up and starting up again
the answer’s in the living and the trying
and i said to the wise man, what is the answer to all of this?
he said, the answer is in the story and the story is just unfolding.”
