“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. … The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet…A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes.”
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden
My name is Carissa McKinney, and I’m originally from Walhalla, SC
I became a sister at 8, an age difference which caused a weird fusion of older child/only child qualities. I developed a deep imagination, which I loved as a kid. As I got older, though, my imagination became less of an escape and more of a rabbit hole of “what if.” Fear lived there.
Fear, Shame, and Guilt danced a ring around most days of my adolescent and teenage years, especially summers when I had too much time to spend only thinking. I started to fear letting my mind wander anymore. I feared having thoughts of my own, speaking my mind, being myself, questioning anything because what if I drifted away from the beliefs (read: security, identity) I held so dearly. I was ashamed because I thought that fear made me weak, an embarrassment, and it was fear of what people might think or fear of what answers I might find outside that kept me tumbling in the cycle. I was paralyzed.
“Glory” is about an end and a beginning. An end to being paralyzed by fear/shame/guilt and a beginning to living in wonder. Those Three still like to join hands around my fire every now and then, of course—ties take time to fully unwind—but now it’s a lot easier to turn them away.
My “Glory” experience happened a long time ago, but I guess I didn’t fully realize it until I read East of Eden for the first time recently. The main character falls in love with a putrid, evil woman, but since love is blind he only sees the good in her. To him, this “good” in her is everything he’s never experienced: passion, knowledge, love, fulfillment.
I saw my story in that part of the book, aside from the person I loved being evil. I loved someone with a curious and introspective mind who saw the world completely differently than what my simple path of life had or would ever offer. He was everything I’d never experienced. His home was an escape from my sometimes emotionally turbulent home. He showed me what it meant to think critically and deeply and to see outside of the mindsets and perspectives we grow up with as children in the South. I still feel like a wide-eyed child, completely awe-struck and intrigued by everything new I learn about the world. “Glory” is kind of a way of life now.
Joytality 