re·​fram·ing, 2

I really enjoyed that one-inch picture frame exercise. I'm here to do it again.

---

I've constructed a frame, this time made of an unwound paperclip - its edges are not perfectly parallel and the ends overlap, but the picture through them is clear:

A heather gray couch sits against a cream-colored wall, a lavender hue tinting the shadows from the window pane behind me. I catch the corner of a gold-framed, navy blue painting on the upper-left. Maybe it's Starry Night - one can only hope. A boy, half-Lebanese with a trim beard, sits on the couch staring brightly back at me with a wide, closed-mouth smile, head tipped back slightly and eyes squinting. It's a face that says "I've been holding this "unimpressed/lazy smile" for so long, waiting for you to take this picture, that it's turned into a real smile." So his eyes have squinted even tighter; they're hardly visible but the energy flows out like sound through a speaker. He may crack up any second now but hasn't yet. A laptop rests on his out-of-frame legs, which are probably wearing some flannel shorts in a blue & green plaid. Or maybe jeans. It's quite adorable, this face of his that asks me, "this is a video isn't it?" - this gaze that swirls with newness and familiarity, the point where you've taken road trips together and made a midnight hospital run after a bout of food poisoning, but you're still so fascinated by the way he pours his cereal or plays Aerosmith in the car. The face comes from someone who enjoys being observed, someone who knows most of who they are and invites your input on the rest. This lavender, cream, golden hour drips with honey and cinnamon, dusting the frame until it starts pilling. The pills keep developing. They bubble up like marinara in a saucepot, more and more, covering the image with pills until it sinks back into the carpet & I am left with just an unwound paperclip. Fidgeted with and dropped in passing.

"You need a witness to your life." - Scenes from a Marriage

3/4's from a 4/3

Influenced by a wild empath who shall remain named: Jenny Slate

---

I'm walking. A slow walk, like those old couples. They say nothing at all, a unit merged by time, a bouquet bound with twine then petrified beyond separation. I bet they have to give themselves triple the time to get places. I'm walking and smiling, not a proud parent smile or a bashful virgin smile or a concert celebration smile. The corners of my mouth are taught but not tight. Like the ends of a hammock, curved up because it's a beautiful day for a bit of outside time. I'm walking and smiling and feeling, like my whole self is made of dark silk, purple and navy blue. A mummy gliding forward, the wind making fluttering dents in my loose bindings. Don't worry, the light inside is too warm to feel sad. I'm walking and smiling and feeling and observing. They probably think I'm always like this - isn't that interesting how we think what we see is what always is? I see life and I want to weave through it like that whistle-controlled killer dart in Guardians of the Galaxy.

---

I'm waltzing in my mind. It's the only signature that feels right today. I'm spent, proud, and a bit hungry. It's a combination I don’t dislike, not at all. It might take some repetition, but I think once it's in my body, I will feel like the melted layer of wax in a lit candle. I'm waltzing in my mind and driving home slowly. I'm driving home from dance, 5 miles under the limit, hitting every red light thank goodness. I hope the drivers behind me are also having a silky afternoon, content coasting along this lazy river. I'm waltzing in my mind and driving home slowly and singing. Singing well, I think. "I talked to my mom about you, she thinks you sound wonderful. I talked to my mom about you, I tell her you are." I cry at that bit every time. I'm waltzing in my mind and driving home slowly and singing and not thinking. My mind is no more than songs. It doesn't need to be. The tumbleweeds will wait while I spend some days soaking in October like biscotti.

in·​teg·​ri·​ty

I remember sitting at an Irish pub along the Chicago River early last fall, sipping a canned cider with my then-roommate Jessica. She shared her fierce (and completely achieved/surpassed) ambitions for upcoming year, while I remarked about how goal-setting is not my forte (it honestly plays out in my life as a pianissimo, the book frequently recommended but never read). She shared about an exercise a friend had recently shared with her, through which she had been better able to set long-term goals: a value sort of sorts (no pun intended, but pun absolutely cherished). She walked me through the exercise, which involved me creating a list of values and whittling it down to one. Once one was identified as the most important, she asked, "what's even more important than that?". I was confused by this labeling of my presumed top-tier value as the penultimate, and even further confused when she asked the same question again--and then again, pushing me higher and higher towards what I hold at my internal peak - my personal masthead, my character crest.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that my core value is integrity.

Beautiful! And yet I find that in a world as gray as ours ("compared to what?") it is nearly impossible to be sure of how consistently you're acting with integrity. C.S. Lewis says "Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching" (which Oprah has since copped). It's cute how we think we can boil down integrity to "doing the right thing" - this is something my friends and I love discussing (along with What is God? How do you react when students crush on you? Why are some conservatives so selfish? and Dating sucks, huh?). Now, obviously myriad approaches can be taken when deciding how to exist in a group. From Freudianism, which one emblazoned source described as the belief that "man is an imbecile creature whom government must somehow protect from society and even from himself," to traditional Christian/Catholic adherence to rules/scriptures, to more karmic New Age principles deriving from Hinduism and Buddhism, to Progressive Christian ideologies like those of Richard Rohr. One may also choose from among Virtue Ethics, Consequentialist Ethics, or Deontological Ethics, basing decisions on "What do I value?", "Is it good?", or "Is it right?", respectively. The spaces between and beyond these approaches are boundless, teeming like schools of fish, with nuanced interpretations and amalgamations of structured and unstructured ethical systems, but the point is [hopefully] made. I write this only as a reminder that it matters why we do what we do. Our core value serves as a backbone, a home plate or nightlight for us to return to when we're dazed or downtrodden. When I lose my sense of self, I would love to have a clear light to follow back to my sense of self. I picture the green light from Great Gatsby, both alluring and grounding. I don't know what my green light looks like just yet--even if I can currently title it "integrity"--so my job is to continue solidifying and focusing in on it so I can weather storms more difficult and gray than the occasional breakup. I also write this to say, "it's super interesting identifying your core value - you should try it out sometime, reader."