Don't Blink

“Do you think this is cute?”

My friend held up a miniature angel baked in orange clay. The angel was praying or smiling or doing something incredibly angelic. It was adorable. And yet…

“Have you seen Doctor Who?”, I asked.

“Argh!,” she exclaimed. “You ruined it.”

She quickly dropped the angel back on the table with the rest of the knick knacks and discarded home goods from our church’s furniture giveaway event. We do it twice a year for new international students who need things for their dorm rooms and apartments that make it feel a little more like home.

If you haven’t seen Doctor Who, our whole exchange would make no sense to you, but if you are a Doctor Who fan, than you know. You know about the weeping angels: stone statues that come to life when you look away, that move when you’re not looking at them and turn to stone when you are.

If they touch you, you die. If they touch you, they steal the years of your life and you die. So in the Doctor Who universe there is only one rule when you see a weeping angel: Don’t blink.

Don’t blink.

---

It was my first job, the summer of 2004, and I was standing at the cash registers at Borders Books in Mission Viejo. I had a crush on a guy. One of those annoying ones. The kind that sneak up on you when you are ladling out potato soup because his eyes make you forget your middle name and this isn’t the time to begin forgetting who you are. 

I liked him a lot. I worked the café and he worked the book floor, and whenever he walked by we would make ridiculous faces at one another.

Like, ridiculous. True story: I used to be charmed by the level of humor I guy could twist his face into.

And one day, when we both looked extra nice for no reason at all, this boy stood next to me at the registers and touched my arm and asked me to go to Disneyland with him. I said “Yes!” because that’s what you say when you have a crush on a boy whose eyes turn your knees to Jello.

The day he asked me I was helping out with the registers at the front of the store, my insides all muddled with that uncontrollable feeling you get when life surprises you, shocking and wonderful.

Like static electricity.

I looked up from where I stood and saw him stacking books, peering at me in that way, like this was the beginning. Like it meant something. And I couldn’t handle someone staring into my eyes longer than a glance just because he wanted to understand them. So, I did what anyone who doesn’t know how to stand still would do in that situation.

I blinked.

---

I thought about this on Friday night. About blinking.

About how I sat at a dinner table with friends a couple weeks ago and said to the person in front of me without an ounce of humor in my voice, “I’m a rolling stone.”

Like Bob Dylan’s song, I am a rolling stone. The chorus goes like this:

How does it feel, ah how does it feel?

To be on your own, with no direction home

Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

I’ll tell you how it feels. At first, it feels safe and wonderful like the very best thing in the world, but the more you roll, the less you are able to feel. Because there is a cost to passing through and moving on.

There is a cost every time a connection is cut or lost or slips through the cracks.

So, we adapt and cut our roots and strip ourselves of the moss we once carried. Leaving becomes easier. The new normal. It becomes a way of life.

The problem is that there will come a time when our stones won’t be able to roll anymore. They will settle, and we will have little beyond the memory of the adventures that we’ve had on-the-go to comfort ourselves at night.

Because rolling stones don’t travel with others unless you’re in the middle of a rock slide.

And ever since that night. when I said aloud what I always new deep down, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a stone that rolls or a stone that builds.

What it means to stay and let myself be seen instead of blinking.

---

I’ve got this day dream that I was born in the Midwest and grew up in a small town where everyone knows my name.

I’m 17 or 18, and I’ve just spent a day exploring with my friends in the nearest forest or field or swamp, we’re not picky. We just like being outside.

We lay on blankets on truck beds and eat pre-packaged sandwiches and talk about our life and dreams and plans, about how we’re going to leave this town and never come back. That this world won’t know what hit it when we’re free.

The sun starts to set and we make our way to a friend’s house, where our neighbors and friends are all starting to gather. A twang or two fills the air as the local music folk start up their guitars and banjos.

Someone is BBQing. There are biscuits and sweat tea and string lights and this quiet roar of conversation, littered with laughter that is the product of time and comfort.

We are welcomed into the fold of mingling voices with open arms, and they quickly close the gaps around us if we had always been there.

The stars are bright.

This is my daydream. There are no spotlights, or awards or crowds chanting my name. Just the resounding knowledge that during my time on this earth I built something. I was known.

That I knew others.

I knew how to read the flick of someone’s eyebrow like a good book. Or the twist of a grin like a note on a music sheet.

And there’s this feeling I have in the core of my chest that a stone that builds and a stone that rolls are both looking for the same thing in different places.

---

“You are my greatest adventure,” says the dad from the movie The Incredibles. He’s a super hero who has fought epic battles, but he looks into his child’s eyes and says:

"You are my greatest adventure."

I'm beginning to suspect that the reason we thirst for adventure is because our relationships don’t satisfy. They only go so deep.

That if we stopped and tried to read the lines of someone’s face like a road map, we would discover the buried treasure that we so anxiously seek. 

That my most memorable moments are the quiet ones at coffee shop tables and balconies and on the mud-colored couch in my living room hearing my friend talk about the boy who makes her stomach butterfly.

That being seen is no small thing.

This weekend one of my good friends came over and we did what we always do when we make plans to get together and watch television. We talked. We talked about life and asked questions and wondered aloud and laughed and ate homemade chocolate croissants.

We didn’t go anywhere special and we didn’t see the stars and we didn’t drive with the windows open down a long and windy road.

Who says we didn’t have an adventure?

Who says that taking the time to learn why your friend’s nose crinkles when she talks about playing music in front of the world doesn’t fill your life with as much light as the stars?

The trick is to keep your eyes open. The trick is to take Doctor Who's advice:

Don't blink.