I’ve been feeling a bit lately like my life is one part Love, Actually and one part The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel-Pie Society. Obviously, if you don’t know what I’m talking about on that second one, you must hasten to the nearest library or bookstore and get it right this very second. Easily one of my favorite books in the history of books. Guernsey is a book written in letters by various characters inhabiting the island of Guernsey. It’s not so much a war story as it is a story in finding community and love in all its different forms.
I’m reminded of Guernsey, because I’ve been emailing with several friends I’ve met through blogging, and it’s been a wonderful experience. We’ve talked love, academics, family, books, work. When writing to them, even though it’s through email, which has the tendency to feel a little less personal, I find that it still gives me the same warm glow of longhand letter writing. This could be, though, because the three people I’ve been emailing with are more or less sticklers in being grammatically correct in their writing, just as I am. I really hate text-talk. I loathe it, actually. If it were a treasured glass goblet, say, I’d find all the pleasure in the world of lifting it over my head and shattering it on the floor into tiny little pieces, then I would bury it as far under the ground as I could manage so that it would never be heard from again. Of course, text-talk is all well and good through actual text messaging, and the occasional tweet when there is just absolutely no way you will make 140 characters without it. Even then, however, it bothers me, because I’m just a grammatical snob like that, I guess.
Anyways, I got off topic. My life has felt like Love, Actually lately, because of well, the Tin Roof Kyle thing, for one, but also in dealing with the varying degrees and different types of love. I haven’t so much been dealing with romantic love as I have friend, family, and spiritual love, all of which I feel as though I’ve been dealing with quite badly. I’m not a lover by nature. I tend to be hesitant of people, or if they’re particularly annoying I just want them to leave me alone so I can go back to my reading or writing or daydreaming contemplating. Very rarely do I come across a person that I just click with, a person who makes it so easy to talk to and just be in their presence without it feeling awkward. I can count on one hand the number of people I can just sit around with and not feel like I have to come up with something to say now or it’s going to get weird. I’m not saying this is their fault or my fault, it really just takes hanging out with some people more frequently before a relationship starts to feel comfortable and relaxed, but I really value the people whose friendships you don’t really have to try for, whose friendships just come naturally.
I’ve wondered at times why I can’t have friends closer to home like the ones I have across the country, across the world even. How nice it would be to find people like them just down the street or the next town over. But, then I thought, God brought these particular people into my life for a reason, and even though I can’t sail to an island on a whim to see them all at the same time and write a beautiful story about our relationships and friendships, I love our emails and our stories and that we’re getting to know each other better. Last night, I thought how interesting it would be to know what was going on in their lives as I lay in bed trying to sleep. I thought it would make an interesting book, and like Guernsey, it would be formatted in letters between these people, and there would be one central character who was talking to them all. It would be the greatest vignette since Love, Actually!
And, then, I fell asleep, which always seems to be the way when I’m dreaming up the next greatest American novel. But, alas, I like knowing their are characters out there who deal with similar things, and to know you can go back to those stories whenever you want to gain perspective and advice is comforting. To find that in a movie is nice, but to find it in a book is better for me. There’s so much more detail to be gleaned, that’s why I am known to just randomly pull a favorite novel from my bookshelf and, well, kiss it. I know, it sounds odd, but books are one of the greatest loves of my life, and if that means being a little off center to the rest of society, well, then, so be it.