The End ?

I had been so excited to write this last post, and for weeks before the 11th rolled around I knew exactly what I wanted to say. Upon it actually rolling around, I had no idea what to say and I made my last post and let it lie: I can't leave it that way forever.

It does not feel like it has been a year. Sitting here now it feels like a month ago that I started this and over the months I've grown so attached and so in love with this project that I hate to let it go. It feels wrong to stop.

The deepest things that I wondered if I would ever reveal on here, I did not. I was not as honest as I wondered if I would be, but still more honest than I expected, and this served me well. I hoped that in being honest about myself, other people would be encouraged to be honest with themselves, and if they found some connection with what I said, would find the strength to be honest to others in return. My hope was most definitely realized.

I wondered how people would react: I feared that I would be shot down and rejected. That never happened. I found companionship in my struggles, and that was unexpected. I found that people connected with what I said: enough to follow this project to the end.

The thing that stands out to me the most in the end is the enormous loyalty that people showed. I did not expect anyone to follow this project for a full year. I did not expect new friends to go back and read everything and continue following along. I did not expect people to notice that I had not posted and encourage me to do so. I did not expect people to miss this project when I let it go for weeks on end. I did not expect people to value it enough to be sad for it to end or want to celebrate it as an accomplishment. In the end, it is not the response to my honesty that stands out the most: I think I knew what the good result of that would be. But the interest of others, of acquaintances and friends, to continually value this project because it comes from me and because they value me was shocking. And humbling. I am not a good friend: not the way others are to me. It was the loyalty and the true friendship that was shown to me that I was not expecting: those are things that I never expect to be shown.

Thank you to everyone who showed me loyalty and friendship. I am completely floored that you would find me worthy of such things, and the value you've made me feel calls me to a higher standard. You have shown me a level of friendship that was not apart of me, and I am very glad that my year of honesty revealed that to me.

I am more than honored by a friend, Brendon Perkins, who has found such value in A Study In Honesty to not want the project to die. He has started A Study In Peace to continue the journey and I encourage everyone to follow along with it. Thank you Brendon, the value you've made me feel takes my breath away.

I'll be going back and finishing this for awhile: there are posts that were never written and holes that do need to be filled. But a love for writing developed through this and I don't think I can stop here. A new kind of project will be evolving soon: 400 Years of Silence will pick up where this has left off and it will be of a much different focus.

A year of honesty complete.

The End ?

The Spruce Goose

She was twenty years old when she fell in love with a plane.



She slid out of the back of her friends’ car, pulling her dress down as she scrunched out from behind the passenger seat. It was only 7pm but already it was a dark night with crisp cold air. She had never been to the Evergreen Aviation Museum before, and they were all there for a forties themed swing dance. The large stone statue of a pilot before the entryway was surrounded by young, fancy, giddy women posing and taking pictures. The pilot looked serious and out of place amongst the giggling frenzy and she found much humor at his discomfort in the moment. As the others hurried to the door she fell behind and looked up at his face: she found it both ironic and fitting that he should be here to greet her. He reminded her of a young man she used to know and he held an air of grandeur dressed in uniform with a helmet under his arm. She greeted him more appropriately with distance and silence, because she knew him well, and his passion for his trade beckoned her to follow the others inside.

They all walked into the hanger together, and with all of them young and pretty, she felt just like a youthful women from the forties: sophisticated, bright, and beautiful. They walked past the flags into the presence of history and she felt the weight of the character she embodied drifting heavily down upon her. Planes encompassing years of war, cultures, and countries surrounded her and she walked with black heels clicking smartly and pencil skirt keeping her straight. And that’s when she looked up.

The large wing of the Spruce Goose hung above her and everything began to take on an incredulous clarity. Her heels clicking slowly on the white hanger floor as she followed the wing deeper into the hanger. Her laughter that came out unsteady with disbelief. She had never seen anything so huge. She had never felt so small. She had never been so in awe. And standing beneath one of the wonders of the world and only being able to take in pieces of it in sweeping glances, she suddenly felt quite beautiful: like a young bright woman of the forties with hair swooped up in sophistication, with straight modest dress communicating class, and with bright lips both innocent and smart ready to live the right way.

She walked beneath the enormous wing of the Spruce Goose, and stood dwarfed by its hull, and she fell in love. It was giving off rays from its time and she was soaking them in. They made her into Rosie the Riveter, out for a night of fun with a live band and swing music, ready to dance with a boogie woogie bugle boy. So she did: she danced under its enormous tail, and laughed, and looked at all the company of planes and cars and was very much enamored by this new large love. This wonder of the modern world. This impossible feat. This embodiment of a miracle.



She was nineteen years old when she decided she would never love a pilot again, and she was twenty years old when she fell in love with a plane instead.

12/11/11

Ode to the blank spaces.

There are copious amounts of blank entries in this thing, and I have felt the need to fill them all. To fill them all with myself, my experiences, things I never said but should have, things I want to say but have no more room for. I have felt as though I was failing this project, and I tried to go back and fill them with Sticky Notes, only to discover that I had sticky noted important days in which I had other things to say. But I have decided to let the blank spaces speak for themselves. They are days that I was too exhausted, to busy, to happy, to sad, to busy living life to get on the internet and write. I am okay with the blank spaces, because they speak louder than my words.

12/10/11

Control...and being Out Of it.

You know you're a woman when a sentimental cat video can make you cry
and when you go to sleep at 5am and are insatiably happy all the next day while you slog around.
I have had to learn that my emotions are not me.
More so than the average women
they can help or they can hinder,
but no matter how out of control and extreme they are,
which they are,
I am just fine.

12/9/11

I don't want to.

It takes a long time to change when you don't want to.

When an animal is wary of something it will slink forward to check it out, but it will only get so close. Its past experiences have taught it to fear. There comes a moment when it freezes and you know it will either run away or cautiously proceed forward. I am frozen. I am realizing that what I have been wary of has become safe, at least safer, and I am not sure I want it to be. It's here frozen that I realize what a precarious tightrope I've been teetering on, and how much more precarious it would be to cautiously proceed forward.

It's taken me a long time to change, because I don't want to.

I'm looking forward to catching up on Chuck.

12/8/11

Simon & Garfunkel

When I was sixteen I woke up early in Rhode Island and danced to Simon & Garfunkel in the early morning light before anyone else was awake. I listened to them a lot that summer. Their sound and words still make me just as happy.

12/7/11

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

There are scenes and songs from this show that have not only made me who I am, but apply so strongly to my life that remnants of them still echo in my mind when I think back on things that have happened to me. Songs about not wanting to go, scenes about not wanting to forget: those remnants have found a solid form to me again and it was like a tidal wave knocking me onto my back and spinning me around. Buffy will always mean the world to me. She's who I try to be when I need to be protective or ready for a fight, whose leadership I try to emulate when my moral grit starts to wear down, whose selfless devotion to friendship has taught me how to approach others, and whose experiences and reactions encourage me to heal. I grew up with those characters and learned a lot about who I want to be from them: and I still am.

12/6/11