“Always Trust Magic,
where purpose and happenstance seem to intersect.”
~ Amy Krouse Rosenthal
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There’s a great article about S. E. Hinton who wrote the book “The Outsiders.” She was 15, looking for a reflection of the world she inhabited and not finding it. She wrote a book. And it was a  bestseller, made into a movie. I saw the movie, never read the book. I wonder now how I might’ve related. Today what I love in the article was this passage:

” ‘I was born without the need-to-belong gene, the gene that says you have to be in a little group to feel secure,’ <she said> Which is maybe just another way of saying that she was a natural born writer — human enough to feel for others, yet sufficiently comfortable with solitude to get the pages down. Her characters, by contrast, embody and implicitly understand the contradictory wages of group identity, its sorrowful stain and addictive comforts.”

Without a need-to-belong gene. Comfortable with solitude. Empathy. hmmm

I moved 3-4 yrs. on average growing up. Not a military brat, so none of the consistency of a base or like experience with others built-in. I never had a crowd of friends anywhere I lived, but almost immediately I connected with a best friend. Sometimes several. I connected with people. Everyone I invited came to my 8th grade slumber party, even the popular girls. And it was a huge success. Those two facts a huge amazement to me. I remember that feeling.

In 10th grade I moved to Houston. My high school was brand new. Built in the middle of Texas plain, nothing around it. Built small enough to draw the district so students were all white. A fact I learned later in the civics class where we explored moral questions. (think of that juxtaposition) One of the classes I assume got the school the distinction of being a model of academics. Got it written up in Parade magazine & other periodicals. But on the ground, it was like any other school.

There were identifiable groups. The popular crowd (mostly lived in big houses; the girls and boys shining, outgoing.) The bikers. The outsiders (the girls adventurous, rumored loose). The surfers (the loners & dreamers with long hair, individuals).

I realize now I made choices. I had invitations into all of them. Dates with popular boys. Overnights and hang-outs with the outsiders. I loved riding bikes, but I found it outside school. I never surfed but they were ultimately my peeps.

Last Saturday I went to a ‘style’ show presented by a master seamstress (with a degree from Parsons, no less) that wasn’t as much about style as design, patterns, luscious fabrics with luscious hand (vintage kimono silks!), craftsmanship in construction that took my breath away with desire. Everything I love. The gal sitting beside me in the tiny room leaned over at one point, said ‘you should volunteer to model.’ We shared asides like old friends from then on. For the entire hour I wondered where I’d met her, she looked so familiar. Afterwards I learned she felt the same way.

Once outside, I wasn’t ready to go home alone and work. I caved to my days-long craving for salmon and popped into the casual place where I know the food is good, got a salmon sandwich.  The fries were thinner than skinny straws, piled high, and cold. I asked the young gal at the counter if I might get hot ones. In minutes she was back. ‘You gotta have ‘em hot,’ she said. ‘Mine are usually cold since I’m working when I get to them.’ They were so good, I picked at the cold pile when the hot fries were gone. With delight, discovered the crispy ones good as chips. On the way out I called to the young gal, ‘I know the secret of cold fries.’ She came over, and we did a high five to the secret.

The next night at a Hawaiian music concert, I acknowledged a comment by the gal next to me regarding a singer’s range. I don’t even know how it happened, but seconds later we were discussing language in song & sharing Hawaii love. Her eyes sparked at the mention of the title of my book. Another secret writer.

In high school, groups were where we learned to create community, and live as a member of community. Where we learned how to act and/or shut up if we wanted to belong. Where lines were drawn for us. Where we learned to bend to the pressures of the group. It starts earlier, but this is where we come into our own in community.

For the loners, like me, we got it from our families and broader society. I wish I’d been one of the strong ones who took their individuality and wore it like a badge. But I was the natural born writer with too much empathy, keen sense of observation, and artistic way of being in/with the world that I never understood why I was OK.

Looking back at the road I traveled to here, I’ve always had community, even friends. Some for a time, some a season, some still there after 22 yrs., some in brief moments. Even during those painful five years of near isolation in Florida. My community in that time was nature and the Divine some call God’s realm and I call the Universe.

But what happened this week. . .the connections, the sense of finding the exquisite point of connection in a shared experience. . .that’s what community is about. For all of us. From there we carry if forward with all the layers.

These days I fight getting contracted with each blow to society (our community) Congress delivers. Each blow stunning in its absoluteness for groups of people, the environment, the commonalities we share. We need Hope to keep going ’cause we’re human, and Hope is fuel for humans. Our communities sustain us.

So, the questions become, do any of us have a no-need-to-belong gene? How do we realize there’s limitation in belonging to this group or that with exclusion to others, that our community is everywhere? How do we move forward and preserve our humanity to others? Even for a moment, how do we trust magic?

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .your answers to those questions I’m asking?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’m in that plane up there. The Full of Me traveling over magical lands.

Image: detail from the painting ‘The Road to the Zobanian Consulate’ (2001) by George Lowe

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