Miraclemaxxing

listened to one good song and saw god not clickbait

The other night at work, a friend said to me, “I want to try and be kinder,” The other morning, Mindy said, “My New Year’s resolution is to do a little less of some and a little more of other things,”

I wrote a list of what I want and on it is to think before I speak. I’d also like to say, “Can you repeat that?” more instead of laughing and agreeing when I don’t hear what someone says to me. The list goes on, “be more graceful, smoke less, drink less, witness a miracle and remember it and tell everybody,”

I found an old journal entry where I’d written, “If god comes back, I’d better have a tape recorder with me,” I can’t define what the miracle will be, but I want to be ready. I want to know it when I see it, like pornography, but different and better and hopefully fully clothed and family friendly.

On the way home from work I listen to a song and think how one line in it is better than anything I’ll ever write, probably. I think how every time I hear a good song, it’s like a blue ribbon prize for just for being alive, and maybe that is something that a miracle could be.

The other day I saw a photo from a while ago, when all I did was think in terms of magic and fate and how it made me very unhappy. Reading too much Carl Jung has that affect, generally. Reading too much into anything, I think. But that’s what it is to be young and in love, and there’s a lot to love about a lot of things. “The world is big and we are in it,” as I said all the time back then. I made an effort to call everything a miracle and to make sure everybody knew. Perhaps I thought that doing so would be like opening the door to a god I didn’t know, but who I wanted very badly to love me, so that I could be the miracle that I was seeking.

“Be the miracle you wish to see in the world,” Isn’t that the saying? And anyways, if it feels good, it is a miracle to me. I suppose that miracles are a matter of perception. Perspective. One of the two. Like one time, slow dancing with a man in his bedroom. Lou Reed playing, me ignoring that I found a condom wrapper in his trash and swaying there like we were in love and like we wanted the same things, and that what he said when he talked in his sleep was the truth. Like the day at Discovery Park when all the forsythia were in bloom. And thank god for all the good times, because there were a lot of bad ones too.

Breaking up for good and the next day meeting someone new.

The solstice, walking up the hill and then standing on the balcony. It was a miracle then, to laugh and smile and sit cross legged on the bed with Maddy in her room, saying things like, “I might love him,” and “He might love me,”

Breaking up with him, too.

And in a broader sense, how all the planes touch down on asphalt, except that one time with the geese. The miracle of being on the tarmac for too long compared to an emergency landing on the Hudson, it counts, I think.

The holidays will have you considering these types of things. Christmas carols are sometimes very dark, if you’re really listening. But I suppose the statistics are that miracles happen more when it’s cold out or when it gets dark out very early. Or it is easier to notice them, at least. Because all my life, it seemed like the will of some otherworldly being that the flowers all bloom at the same time in the spring. God knows how many miracles I missed from stopping too long at the flower beds in the neighbors’ yards.

Thinking about it in numbers, at least: “miracles happen all the time to everybody.” I wrote that down sometime last year, and if I read it back on the wrong day, I cringe and feel naive. But thinking about it, really, a bug I’ve never seen before landed on the ceiling just now and that could be something, I think.

I read a good book, a great book, and a bad one, and all those things mean something, too. My nose is not running today, like it was yesterday evening. So where does that leave us? Must be up, if we’re going by gambling rules. I write down something like, “God is on my side when a really good song comes on the radio,” and think of that celebrity, I can’t remember which one, who said the plane won’t go down as long as Britney Spears is playing.

And perhaps, then, miracles are just a matter of taste. Like, you listen to Red House Painters, too? That’s fate. The miracle of Mindy ordering a drink and me saying, “Make that two!” Or the same tattoo in the same place on two people with the same name. (Which is a true story, I swear). Seeing someone you know in a city neither of you have ever been to. Like, “Heyyyy, fancy seeing you here!” but it’s another continent and the city you’re in is actually pretty huge.

The miracle of being seen and not feared, being seen and not changed. The miracle of messing up and knowing they forgive you. How many times I have said the wrong thing and how many times I have said exactly the right one, even if it was accidentally.

Small offerings. Cigarettes at stoplights. A slice of focaccia and cheese. A rubber stamp Katie mailed to me. Banana bread on the counter in the morning from Mindy. Wool socks and work boots in the entry way. Waking up before the alarm, and being right on time, and being late but everyone else is just as late as you. Every time I didn’t trip and didn’t lose. The miracle of getting to be better every day, the miracle that time provides for people to forgive me and for me forgiving everyone else, forgiving myself, too.