Dear Yale

Yale has asked for two hundred and fifty words, and this is keeping me up at night.

A 250-word love letter to Yale that I will never send:

Yale,

Everything I think to write to you sounds absurd in my head. The notion of admission at this point is ludicrous. What, me? Since when did I have the audacity to think myself special? Doesn’t the world know yet that I have not grown up? I keep thinking that one morning I will wake up and suddenly things will click; that I will prefer soup to nachos, that I will stop ingesting coffee at such an alarming rate, that I will rise at five o’clock every morning for a five-mile run, that I will start making grocery lists and going to the dry cleaner’s. I’m waiting for my future to become the technicolor present. I am in a fabulous law school, and lo! I study like a maniac, because this time around I actually know what I want. Come the end of first semester I surprise myself, but not my parents or professors, by acing all of my exams. My family declares that they are proud of me, my mentors prophesy that I will make a smashing scholar of the law, and I manage to dress fashionably the entire time. Nutmeg has a favorite perch (on the windowsill, overlooking the street) in my charmingly adorned, yet small, apartment near campus. I drink tea and read the paper every morning, and have not given up novels despite the raging pace of studies. My yoga practice is flourishing, and I’ve finished the manuscript of my first novel.

I promise this is all possible, Yale. For you, I would become the girl I could be. If you asked.

Love,

Muppie

The wisdom of fools.

I’ve been neglecting my writing. Last week, I had the excuse of a midterm. This week, I am ashamed to say that my only reason for staying away was an inability to think about anything other than Jane Austen.

You see, I am jealous of Fanny Price.

Fanny has the good sense that no one around her seems to. At eighteen, she has the forbearance to consistently refuse the man pushed on her from all sides: her rich, benefactor uncle, the cousin she is in love with, her friends, her parents, and all her acquaintance together. He has been a libertine in the past; he tells her he has changed. She is the only one to not believe him, is cast out and called a fool. In the end, he runs away with her married cousin and vindicates her refusal.

It’s possible that I am Fanny’s opposite. I believe the things that people tell me, have faith in everyone’s ability to change (hey, I’m a convert – if not me, who?), and let optimism conquer reason without putting up much of a fight.

These would be admirable qualities indeed – in a world of people who spoke only the truth, changed all the things they intended to, and lived up to expectations. Sadly, this is not the case; disappointment abounds, and it is often mine.

I know many people who are not like this. My brother, for example. He is good and wise, and it seems that he was always so. He is purposeful and deliberate. People more than twice his age seek his advice. Whenever anyone meets the two of us, or hears me talk about him, that person always assumes he is the elder sibling. Always. The reverse is true. It is also true that I am often a fool – so the mistake is understandable.

I once found myself in a situation that was truly pitiful. I fell for a man who (surprise!) said he had changed, and talked about his ability to refine and improve himself a great deal. I was impressed by the commitment to improvement he was always chattering on about. What undaunted struggle! What courage!

What blindness.

My family dutifully raised their objections, as did my friends. All and every one. And I, the loyal lover, defended my man to the last. I defended my own flawed reasoning with logical dances I can’t hope to reinvent. My elaborate maneuverings of love were so impressive and impromptu that when family recounts them for me now, I’m aghast. Really? I said that? Idiot.

A funny thing happened amidst these objections. I noticed that I was unhappy in love.

It would be so great if this didn’t feel so mournful…

Unhappy in love is an unfortunate combination, and is fraught with danger. The danger is that one will say to oneself, I don’t care. I’d rather be with him than without, no matter how miserable I am. Perhaps even more perilous is the suggestion, It will get better. He’ll change. We’ll learn to get along.

I’m not sure why, or how, but remarkably and miraculously, neither of these tempting thoughts won out. I got out. I got out fast, and reflected later on all of the building evidence of my own unhappiness that I did not see at the time. The mounting pile in the corner that suggested, oh so massively, that the man I loved was not actually the one I was involved with, but an elaborate invention we had both spun out of hope and breath and forgiveness. It was so clear in retrospect.

Foresight? We’re fresh out. Try the hindsight store next door; bitterness is on sale, and self-loathing is half off.

I’m seven years older and a good deal more experienced in relationships than Fanny, so what gives? Why does her presence of mind elude me in all the most important ways, in all the most important moments?

This is what I was thinking as I was walking to the post office today. Why wasn’t I just born wise? What is the purpose of all this fumbling towards sense? Couldn’t I have been more like Abdullah? I would have been spared a good deal of false starts and heartaches.

Then I thought: Because I’m a writer. Because I’m a writer, I was born a well-meaning, good-hearted, foolish girl. Because I’m a writer, I have some comic foibles that entertain more than myself. Because I’m a writer, there is a path to wisdom. If it had been easy, there would have been no story to tell. There would have been no point in speaking. If I were all alone, the Buddha on the mountaintop (to steal from Reality Bites), there would be no one up there to relate to me, and no benefit to all my wisdom. Because I’m down here mucking it out, I get to tell stories that are also, on occasion, lessons. It is a peerless joy, purpose. I can say, Here is point A: silliness. If you want to get to point B, which is marginally less foolish, I have recently discovered the secret to doing so, and it is X.

Actually, it is Islam, but that’s a little tangential.

My current suggestion is to read Mansfield Park. It is an incomparable study on patience, modesty, and the will of God making things turn out all right in the end. It still shocks me. Every time! It all turns out all right. Sometimes we just have to ride out the rough wave of sticktoitidness. Definitely holding to your principles is key. Holding to your romanticism, or your faith in the fancy promises of others…not always a great idea.

I know. I read it in a novel once.

 

Come crashing down.

The inevitable end of Atonement has come crashing down on my lonesome little twin bed in Brighton.

I always experience the end of books this way. Or at least the end of beloved novels. The bulk, the bulge of their momentum gathers behind me as I read helplessly on, wanting to savor the delicious details one by one, but unable to stop myself from cramming them into my head pagefulls at a time. I binge on prose. I love it, and then it ends. And I am, frankly, bereft. I grieve the loss of my looking glass into the lives of beloved characters, people I feel that I have come to know and love. People whose most intimate, solitary moments I have witnessed. They are gone, and I will miss them. I will miss their lives unfolding. I will miss looking in.

I have the sensation of a wave building especially with tragedies. Especially with tragic love stories. I want to slosh around in that moment of declaration, when the lovers are young and beautiful and full of the possibility of loving each other…I don’t want to leave. Yet the narrative moves on; it must, and I must.

The crash of separation comes down hard on me (harder, I imagine, than on others – but of course this is impossible to know), a dedicated optimist, and I remember, every time, body-surfing on Nantucket when I was about ten. It was a grey, overcast day, not very warm but not raining, and I insisted on swimming. Ten-year-olds do. The waves were huge, making foam a permanent presence on the surface of the ocean to about fifty feet out or so. Everything was grey – grey-brown beach, grey-light sky, deep grey water. And then there was me, in some horrible black-and-fluorescent swirly suit. Trying to take part in it. This one wave came that dragged me the length of its curling, pummeling the breath out of me underwater, flipping me senseless. I came up at some benign depth, but immediately was slapped down by another curl of water. And so on, until I rolled up on the grey beach, breathless, having had my fill.

This is what tragedies are to me. It’s all fun and games, however foreboding, until the letdown comes…and then I just get beat to a pulp until the end. It won’t stop; I’m already steeped way in there, a helpless observer of my own weepy fate. I suppose the end is merciful, in its way. Really I couldn’t bear to go on.

I don’t think I could write such a story. Not now; not while I inevitably cast myself as the spirited heroine (for who would cast themselves as Briony, the unwitting Iago of her own story?) . Not while she and I share the barely caged heart of a twentysomething single woman. Not while my life is to be lived, my husband, God willing, to be married, my children, God willing, to be born and raised. I couldn’t do it. It’s too ruthless. I would feel like I was cutting myself, or downing too many pills. A story decades away, in a different country, whose heroine doesn’t even remotely resemble me in appearance, inclination, or manner, is still too close to my own fragile reality. It’s that simple; to me, it is not just a story…a great one can be almost a prayer that I will ardently wish to live out.

I don’t think I’ve grown completely out of that childlike fascination with stories. I am still able to lose sense of my separateness from the page. Perhaps there is some missing developmental link there; more than one person in my life has delicately hinted to me that I lack some sagacity. I daresay they’re right; still, I’m reluctant to let go of that complete entrance into another world.

Will I forever be this girl?

[note: I really am unable to keep these posts from being appallingly personal. Perhaps I'll learn with time - until then I hope these aren't too bare to bear. So to speak.]