botched sonnet

We spill our guts, but casually, (and not really)

the way women just know how to do

easy as breathing, at once meaningless and vital

threading the freeway in the afternoon sun,

gorge on words with an old, rusty lexicon

so familiar it's frightening.

---

This song reminds me of you,

about whom I strung under 10 words

together today, moving on

to new schemes, over lunch. And it didn't sting.

So easy it was frightening: you are now story:

short story.

We played it over and again

on Santa Monica Blvd, no less. It did not fit us,

but we liked it,

I liked it,

the way it sounded sad.

why Tolstoy is the man

'What happiness and peace of mind would be mind if I only could say now, "Lord have mercy upon me!..." But who would I be talking to? Either some indeterminate, inaccessible power, which I cannot have any contact with and cannot even put into words, the great All or Nothing,' he said to himself, 'or else that God sewn up in a little bag like Marie's icon? No. Nothing is certain, nothing but the nothingness of all that we can understand, and the splendor of something we can't understand, but we know to be infinitely important.'

-War and Peace

in its dangerous marquees, even fake sitars....

Bon Iver's Re: Stacks is an amazing song. I've never listened to the words before tonight. They are much more powerful than I ever guessed. I always thought they were referring to, as I've posted above, dangerous marquees and fake sitars.

The real lyrics are epically cooler. In fact, quite amazing. One of my favorite poems I've read for a long time.

This my excavation and today is kumran

Everything that happens is from now on

This is pouring rain

This is paralyzed

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time

It's hard to find it when you knew it

When your money's gone

And you're drunk as hell

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load

In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load

In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace

The fountain in the front yard is rusted out

All my love was down

In a frozen ground

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed

And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss

Whatever could it be

That has brought me to this loss?

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load

In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load

In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization

It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

Your love will be

Safe with me

*Lots of the references are to poker--I didn't pick that up at first...

*Also, the first reference to Kumran (the day they found the Dead Sea Scrolls) is explained by this quote by the songwriter:

When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit.

stay with it.

Poetry is just images

in some ways it is empty.

But the window--

the white lights' reflection

strung against the mountain line

cut across the sky--

exists, and speaks so eloquently

exactly what I've been wanting to tell you

all along.

for everything you learn, there's something you must let go of

I saw The Swell Season on Thursday. I have to say-- the most incredible concert ever. Pretty sure it tops everything else--even Good Charlotte.

...okay, I've obviously kidding. I wish I were kidding about having seen Good Charlotte, but sadly I'm only kidding about that GC show being near the top of my list. Truthfully, and more seriously, this show topped Bela Fleck at Spreckels and Jon Brion at Largo. And yes, that's a bold claim.

The old Frames' stuff was my favorite part of the whole night...there's something so incredible about their lyrics, something so cool and subversively spiritual. I like that kind of lyricism the best, because when the spirituality is a little bit buried underneath something, oddly, it always seems like there's more there. That's when the important parts come through: redemption, creative love, creation, and humility.

When he introduced "Backbroke," and explained that it was about finding peace in the midst of hellish situations, Glen Hansard prefaced the song by claiming,

"I'm not a spiritual person, really, but this song describes the feeling of an old Irish song, 'Dancing at the Feet of my Lord', which I think is the most beautiful title for any song ever written, and the most beautiful description of peace I've ever heard."

Before he started the song, he said rather quietly, away from his mic, "so...here," and gestured sheepishly up toward the ceiling with his free hand. The look of his face was pretty indescribable, the most humble I've seen anybody look in a long time. There was more worship in that action that in 95% of the 'worship' I've seen. And, for better or for worse, I've seen plenty of people gettin' their worship on, if you know what I mean. I was a camp counselor, for goodness sake.

Listen to "Red Cord" and "People Get Ready"and "Backbroke" and you'll know what I mean. I think, anyway. I hope you do.

And then listen to everything else, too, please.

seeing visions, dreaming dreams

Three short reflections on Narrative

1. I end up teaching narrative every year, it seems. You know, Freytag’s pyramid, what we all expect out of a story? It's always kind of hard for me to teach, because we have to know that a clear, cohesive plot structure exists, that’s good. But the genius is not found in following the plot structure. The genius is found in those who break, abuse, dismiss, reject the traditional. Just like good grammar, scansion of poetry, 5 paragraph essay structure. You have to learn it, then you have to learn how to go past it. You have to understand it so you can use it as a tool, not as law. It's hard to explain the ambiguity to 7th graders.

2. For quite some time now, I’ve had an eventual dream about running a program which teaches writing to battered/underpriviledged women. To some, it may sound ridiculous: why would women with so much physical need even care about a skill like writing? To me, though, writing is sanity. It is also power, and extremely empowering. Even in the most desperate, hurtful and potentially scarring situations, I write. This is the thing that matters about writing: The story is one you are telling, you are the creator, and the way you see things, they way you tell them, is in your control. To give this gift to women who, their whole life, have been told they have nothing to say--to give them voice--this would be amazing.

3. My pastor read an excerpt from a Donald Miller book on Sunday about the story that we live out. The point was that when we feel we have no control over what choices we make, we reach for the story which looks the most convenient, or the easiest, or the most comfortable, even if it is a story of self-harm and brokenness.

This obviously makes me think of my dad. He already is an excellent writer and thinker; he already knows all about the structure and the power of narrative, the kind on paper. But I don’t think he understands or ever understood the power of narrative as a shaping tool for life. I think, when he found himself in the hospital, discouraged and disappointed with his job and his life, sick in his body and his soul, he had reached the end of the narrative he knew how to live. And even when he came back home to heal, he saw nothing except more of the same: years of loneliness and sadness, stretching out into oblivion. He saw no better story, and so he fell into a story of illness and pain. A pattern of inflicting that pain on the people closest to him. A different story than he had ever lived before, something none of us saw coming, but the one which seemed to fit. And now, he lives that story, I must say, very well.

When I realize this, of course I become angry first, angry the he was not creative, spiritual or resourceful enough to grasp other options, But then, I wonder, perhaps it is not a solo endeavor, this creation of story. Perhaps we are responsible for one another’s story, for participation, for providing vision. Perhaps that’s as good as any an expression of what it means to follow Christ—isn’t that what Christ provided on earth? A new way to approach enemies, riches, pleasure, death…life in general—a new version of the story of humanity?

I want to give vision to Dad’s story, I want to write it all down for him, present it, make it easy to step out of what he’s become and into something whole and beautiful. But even as I write, I know that I will never be able to craft his life into anything—he’s got to do that himself. As impossible as it feels, I can only attempt to keep being a participant who brings reminder of Love, Grace, and Purpose.

Besides, it’s easy to bemoan the loss of vision in the people around us—it’s hard to focus on our own narrative. It’s hard when I love my job, and yet know I promised myself an adventure this very next year, which all of a sudden seems to be tugging at my hem, saying, remember me? Remember how you swore you’d go back to school? Move to a brand new city? Well?

And I realize I don’t know how to live a perfect story, but maybe that's okay. I think about Freitag’s pyramid, and my 7^th graders gasping at the end of Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day", referring to their neatly drawn pyramids, pencils ready for the resolution, mouths gaping, confused that the loose ends were not neatly tied up. We have expectations for how stories should go.

But it's a more powerful story with the ending this way, I hear myself explain to the class. The imperfection in the story- This is what brings the theme, and the meaning, to the story. And I wonder if I believe what I'm teaching.

angelica

There's a strange man bent over the garden

headphones in, world blocked out,

planting perennials one by one,

counting the money somebody will pay

for the services he can provide.

He bobs his head to the music,

bored with the dirt and the color and

the smell of the grass.

Angelica loved this garden.

That was the first thing she said

after she said we were beautiful

and lovely, and she would be happy to

have us at her tenants.

Angelica is a weed of a woman

tall enough to appear unbalanced

on tiny legs, her black hair flying

she speaks English cautiously, with

hums and sighs punctuating,

filling the space when she searches for words.

She used to bring out her gardening stool

in the afternoons, kneel, face stern

speak with the dirt.

The sort of relationship seldom seen:

a language without words, total peace.

no need to search for the correct tense

everything already understood.

And really, for an apartment lawn

everything was shockingly alive

we always said so when we saw her

and she just smiled.

This morning, Manny and I agree:

when people are depressed,

they don't see what they have

even all the beautiful things growing

right around them, in the spring.

But we must not take it

so personally. It is a disease.

She has lost, he says,

30 pounds. I picture

what would be left of her,

in a hospital bed. I tell him

that the garden does not look the same.

more nice music.

I actually try hard soooo hard not to post lyrics. It seems like a waste of time, plus, if I posted all the lyrics I wanted to, that's all this blog would be, because I'm constantly hearing strains of stuff and loving them in that 'ahhhhhhsooogooood' heartachy kind of way.

Anyway, this is different for some reason. This is a really good song for a birthday, and I love the way she sings the first line.

Sorry I was cruel, I was protecting myself

Drifting along with my swords out, flying

Tattering my own sails, and I tattered yours, too

Took you and wrapped you around me like a spell.

Oh, how the night drags on, oh

but I think I see a pink light and the coming of dawn

Oh, how the night drags on, oh

but in the fading of the constellations I am growing strong

In the fading of the constellations, I am growing strong.

In the fading of the constellations, I am growing strong.

Laura Veirs, Pink Light

While we're on the subject of heartachy-good music: Lauridsen: Lux Æterna. Whenever I need total peace, this is what I listen to. The pieces are very similar to what we sang in my college choir. It's very fun to listen to something beautiful and know exactly how difficult it is to achieve that sound. It always makes me miss singing. Incredibly beautiful music.

nice music.

Need a lift? Listen to Kick-drum Heart, off The Avett Brothers' new CD. Makes me really happy.

Heck, just listen to the whole record. It's pretty lovely, I think.

estelle

She petitioned deliverance

begged God under the table

dared him to take she and the baby

or leave them and her life would be

His. The two on their knees

crouched beneath the wood slab

the kitchen floor cold, the planes--

low outside the window--hummed

and passed.

And so she left off her wayward life

took up the ways of the spirit

took her six children and heathen husband

(smoking out back). They packed up

to follow pillars and clouds.

The narrow road.

She was a holiness preacher,

and her oldest daughter always made dinner

so she could rest after the long days spent

standing on corners to offer up warnings.

One air raid, one knee-jerk into prayer,

one terrible wager on the freezing kitchen floor.

Then there are no more questions?

Then God speaks each morning,

gives blanket permission?

Her certainty- in her voice when she proclaimed

my eternal salvation in dire straits.

Me, at age 9, petrified

gripping the iron railing of her hospital bed.

Her certainty- she carried it even into death

powdered and shaking and slurring her 'a's

the way all French woman do.

till we have faces

Often my teacher would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you mean; that's the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

so stinkin' cute

I got an email from a former ELD student. It was a very sweet note, and besides including the precious line: I miss you and you are my teacher (friend) forever, she also used the most amazing, intricate emoticons I have ever seen.

I have to share a few:

~o(︶︿︶)o~

~\(≧▽≦)/~

O(∩_∩)O

╮(╯_╰)╭

how cute!

tightrope

What you see is the trick,

the breath-taking feat.

I have earned this name--

steady, well balanced.

stayed even-handed

swaying never.

Never be silent.

Never stay alone. Always invite

man, or grace, or god.

Never alone, not for one instant

or the wind grows too strong.

a million things snapping and burning

When I walk outside, I see the moon. It is a pumpkin orange. Spooky pretty, and you can barely smell the smoke in the air. The ash on my car looks like light snow. All apparitions of peace.

I have to talk it through in my head: the moon does not always look like this, it is not always this color. And this is not peace, this is a million things snapping and burning.

I’ve been watching the expressions of people on the streets. Inevitably they are looking at the clouds of smoke. It’s the same-ness of their faces, despite age or race or station, that strikes me. The same look, as if they are seeing God in those clouds. It’s awe, and it’s so interesting that awe looks the same on everybody.

The clouds look Biblical and that makes me sad. When I close my eyes at night and try to think of God, the first thing is the pillar of glowing smoke rising over my mountains. It could easily destroy and displace all of us. I don’t want that to be what I see. It just is.

In the morning I’m like a cat—arching everything about me, skiddish, whimpering and complaining. I am staying with my parents; I left my window open up in Sierra Madre and breathed the smoke all night, and it gave me a fever of 102. I’m better now, just an old-woman cough left over.

I snap about 10 times, at everyone, before I apologize. I get this way when things are out of my control. We can’t see the sun because of the smoke, and nobody, not the weatherman, not the news anchors who enthusiastically interview evacuee after evacuee, can tell us when it will change.

But by afternoon we don’t even look up, it’s just a sort of hot fog that goes unnoticed. At school, everyone is hanging up bulletin boards and talking about summer and not one person mentions the fires, so I don’t either, because it seems too obvious, like stating the day of the week.

And at night Dad says he really wants to get better, in a voice that sounds like his old voice, almost crying. I immediately believe him, with my whole heart, which makes everyone, but mostly me, immediately angry.

That’s when I walk outside and look at the moon, which is pumpkin orange. Glitter Halloween greeting-card orange. And the smoke makes me a little sleepy and everything is so still. And I have to talk through in my head, actually speak to myself. This is not the moon. This is not the sky.

fascinating...

Last night I dreamed that I was doing really intense crunches. I was showing off for a room full of people, like an exercise class. Everyone else stopped just to watch me crunch.  I was really impressive, and even my dream self was secretly amazed at her strength and speed. 

This morning, my abs hurt. Could I have actually been exercising in my sleep? If so, how can I repeat this phenomenon nightly? 

a very happy atmosphere, a bay window

The Star News did a profile of my town. The only source quoted is the local real estate agent. I don't think it went through any edits. It makes for some jarring reading. But I've found that sometimes technically awkward things can be strangely lovely. The foremost example of this is title an eld student gave his essay about divorce: "A View of My Father's Back." 

Anyway, this writer and this real estate agent have no such excuse, but still, I love this goofy sentence about the Sierra Madre Elementary school:

"There is a waiting list of people from Pasadena wanting to transfer. 'They want in,' she said. 'It has a very happy atmosphere, with a bay window.'" 

That bay window seems to be the reason for the happiness, or equally important to the happiness, and I guess, if you want to get nit-picky, the window belongs not the to school building but to the happiness. 

But either way, it's rather poetic. 

It's like a real life I'm not Stiller! 

aria

tissue paper squares, yellow-gold 

stacked in slices

pasted to the grainyblack sky

and the moon

overhanging, wise

the warmth of kitchen walls

of major thirds,

this unnamed time

sing to it,

an aria pure

spun, spinning

speak nothing

what we've said before 

we've said wrong

sing instead

sing only of the yellow squares. 

what must be heard

is all there. 

evolution

The last day of yearbook camp I told the TC editors that I'd make a coffee run. I was in no particular hurry when I walked into starbucks. I held the door for a woman who was walking behind me. It was one of those behind-the-back door-holds, so as to say, come on in, you'll be right behind me in line. As I walked in, I stepped about one foot out of my bee-line to the counter to toss something in the trash. 

Before I could swerve back, the woman quickened her pace and stepped in line, ahead of me. Her foot twitched a little, a sure sign she'd just wrestled with the age-old question: be on time or stop for coffee? Her id had won, most likely by arguing that over-priced sugar drizzled into some probably-burned coffee isn't just a lovely treat, but is essential to survival. 

I know well this war; my swollen neurons have waged it against me many a-morning. 

You'd think I'd have had some empathy, but this cutting in line irked me. My door-holding body language had been abundantly clear. So as I walked over, I stepped firmly in front of her. No words were exchanged. Not even a locking of the eyes. I straightened my shoulders. There. I was in the technical right. Lines are lines. 

I basked in the technical right as I chatted leisurely with the barista and then rattled off a laundry list of drink orders. A Venti this, some Macchaito that, make this one a skinny and this one sweetened, yes room in the Americano, but just a teensy bit...it went on an embarrassingly long time. I was now standing so I could see the cutter's profile, and I watched it fall with each new"-ano" and "-aito". 

I finished. In a defeated voice she ordered her grande mocha. She glared at me and stalked to the bar, where she crossed her arms and stared down the lone barista. I yawned and picked up a copy of Times.

Five minutes later, my coffee tray ready to go, I noticed her again. She was still waiting. I felt sort of sorry.  Apologizing, however, seemed pointless and unsafe. She looked fully capable of throwing the precious mocha in my face. 

It's weird, but she stuck in my head all day. I wonder if she did make it to work on time. I wonder if I ruined her day, and if I ever look like her in the mornings--as desperate and angry. I have no idea why I didn't just let her cut in line. It really didn't matter. I was just in the same mode she was. It's a weird mode, really. It does feel like a desperate push for survival. And that's ludicrous. How did we all got to a place where we feel this primal pull of necessity for five dollar coffee?

The Elmwood Chronicles: Part 1

We arrived at Elmwood house after a long and harrowing drive up the 169 from Mankato to Minneapolis. What we were doing in Mankato is another story for another post, which I just might tell later, but the point is, we were very tired when we reached 1 Elmwood. The innkeeper had phoned earlier to let me know she wouldn’t be around, but she had left an envelope with our names and the key in a mailbox outside.

As we neared the Elmwood, we glimpsed one austere tower rising out of a shroud of bushes. It wasn’t quite how any of us had envisioned.

A month ago, perusing websites from my green couch, Jenny and Mo sandwiched beside me, it had looked so cute and charming, billing itself as “quaint and comfortable,” and promising, “a parlor filled with afternoon sun and a living room fully furnished with classical sofas, antique decorations, a baby grand piano…” It sounded great. Just to be cautious, we had looked up reviews. One woman complained of scratchy towels. We can handle that, we said to each other. It looked perfect for our one-night stopover in Minneapolis.

Elmwood seemed to have lost something in the virtual to actual translation. We tilted our heads up to the topmost gable of the foreboding Victorian mansion. The whole thing was shingled in a thick brown color…the shade a chocolate bar turns when forgotten in the back of the cupboard. That was all we could see through the 20 ft. blocks of shrubbery.

Beyond the bushes, a saggy, graying porch swing sat on the grass lawn. It swayed ever so slightly, a tiny creaking nose coming from the rusty springs. We crossed a porch which jutted out like a pier, fished through the mailbox for our key, opened the double glass doors, and stepped out of the drizzling late-afternoon.

Inside, we climbed a winding stairwell with a stained-glass window letting ing yellow-blue, sickly light. On the third floor, a post-it with the names “Linda, Jenny and Krista” was stuck to our door. Mo ripped it down quickly and crumpled it up. No one needs to know our names, she muttered. I felt suddenly thankful for the typo, as if it gave me a little edge on things.

We had a two-room suite. Next to my bed was a statue of a butler holding a tray. He looked angry. He came up to my lower waist. He followed my unpacking progress with his beady little eyes. The room was not one to invite lingering; in short, it did not scream “quaint and comfortable.” We headed down to explore the “sun-drenched” parlor.

Against the dark paneled walls hung the head of an unfortunate elephant and rhinoceros . Between them was giant, dusty chandelier. A built-in bookcase housed cozy titles like “Ghost Story”, “Valley of the Dolls”, “A year with Edgar”, and “Sybil.” A life-sized, black metal statue of a woman in a tight dress with a lampshade for a head was posed next to a dormer window.

Dinner? Jenny suggested. We scurried out to our car.

After eating at a diner, we explored a park next to one of the lakes. The sun had already set, but we basked in the glowy early evening sky mirrored by the water. After about 5 minutes, Mo noted that she thought, maybe, a man had been watching us. Mo can be quite dramatic about these things. I didn’t even bother turning around. Well we are beautiful, I said to her, laughing, but he’s probably just looking at the beautiful lake.

A moment later, Jenny tugged my sleeve in the direction of a nervous, twitchy man. He was definitely, for sure, not looking at the lake. He was looking at us, watching as we frolicked innocently in the twilight.

I shouted almost involuntarily, in my angriest teacher tone: Time to Go!

The creeper really did look extremely guilty: he gave a start, looked right at me, and then slouched away up the hill, his blue polo shirt disappearing into the dusk. True, Mo was at the height of her theatrics, but we didn’t protest when she insisted that we walk in circles so he wouldn’t know how to follow us. We dutifully skittered all over the park for about two minutes then leapt into our bright red-rental car.

I’m getting down, she cried and dove face first into the back-seat. Her stage-whisper, now muffled by the sweaters she had buried her face in, continued: That way he won’t know there are three of us in here; we’ll confuse him! Jenny, you too!”

Jenny buckled down into jackknife position.

What do I do? As the driver, I couldn’t really duck. A phantom hand from the backseat shoved a white and yellow beach hat in my general direction. I grabbed it, placed it low down onto my head, and stole away into the night.

We drove for quite some time, the voice from the back insisting that we could not make a beeline for the Elmwood in case we were being followed.

Well, I said, the scare wearing off, that jogger is staring at us too, and he’s hot, so maybe it’s just that we’re really, abnormally, attractive.

And you’re still wearing a beach hat, Jenny observed, still slightly hunched down in her seat.

This broke us, and we were laughing as we turned onto Elmwood Drive. There was a man, in a blue polo shirt, on a bike, right outside the driveway to the Elmwood. The laughed stopped. I squealed to a halt in the middle of the road.

And then we looked closer, and noticed that this man was young, nice-looking and smiling at a little blond haired girl on a tiny bike beside him.

Shaking, and still clad in my brilliant beach hat-disguise, I pulled a U into the steep driveway of the Elmwood house and sent the car screeching back to the street, right behind the girl and her father.

The girl turned around, her eyes amazingly wide. Her father rode ahead, leaving her alone in the wash of my headlights. Her little foot slipped off the pedal. She looked back again, right at me. We locked eyes. I started to smile, but before I could she let out eagle-ish caw of pure terror, lept forward on her seat, and peddled frantically.

I looked at Jenny and Mo in confusion. The creep-ie had become the creep-er. We exploded into laugher, much harder and louder than usual. My heart had honestly frozen at the sight of that second blue polo shirt. It felt necessary to laugh.

Besides, we still had to walk into that house.

Through the veil of bushes, past the grey swing which still swayed mysteriously, up the front steps. The porch ceiling had seemed to lower during dinner and in the darkness it hung just inches from our head. We fished out our key, opened up the heavy glass door and felt for the light. I was praying the headless black lamp-woman would not be the one to light our steps up the stairwell.

My wish was granted, technically: a glowing globe on the stair rail appeared and illuminated a life-sized statue of lady justice, blindfolded and with the scales balanced carefully in her hand. We had somehow overlooked her in our earlier explorations. We sprinted the stairs, straight to our room on the third floor.

Mo shoved the door closed, dragged a suitcase in front of it, and let out a long sigh. I was about to follow suit, but just as my sigh escaped my lips, it morphed into an involuntary shout. A wizened, waist high silhouette loomed dark against the rainy windowpane.

frivolity

I guess if you didn't know me & had to judge me from the contents of this blog, you'd assume that all I do is write, sniffle about writing, read other people's writing, and sit around insipidly, thinking about how I'd rather be writing. 

I mean, it's a writing blog, so that's fair...but still. I do other things. This is a frivolous entry. It has nothing to do with writing. It is about boys and clothes (and dolls, too, inadvertently. very girly!)  

1. Having to do with boys:

                   

In Chicago, we were "forced" to take shelter from a thunderstorm in the American Girl Place. This bookshelf cracked me up. The brand of books is called "A Smart Girl's Guide To..." All sorts of great topics, like managing money, friendships and manners. Yet which one was flying off the shelves? Look closely! I suppose, at any age, boys remain a baffling species. 

2. Having to do with clothes:

This Free People blazer is waaay too expensive. But I really want it and I just tried it on and it fit like a dream and I am quickly finding ways to justify how I need something like this very, very much. And I am a very good saleswomen, especially when the customer happens to be me.

metawriting

I just realized how lazy I am when it comes to writing things down. I haven't really written anything, even just a simple story, in such a long time. I always forget what hard work it is.  (Poems are different, I seldom if ever actually work on poetry. Labored poetry is hardly worth it, I think, mine anyway, when I work too much on it, always comes off heavy-handed. Perhaps I'll change my mind on that, but I don't think so.)

Anyway, I really wanted to write down a particular event from the vacation I just took with my mom & sister. I didn't just journal it, I really tried to write it like I'd like it to sound, like a story, and it took an hour but felt like several hours, and I'm actually tired. I might be extra tired because of jet-lag, etc, but I know it's mostly writing-tired. Like head-tired. Also, so much of what I write just sounds so incredibly different than how it sounded in my head. And not a good different. I know that's natural, and I don't beat myself up for it, but it's very disconcerting anyway. It's hard to admit that I've very very rusty at that kind of writing (telling stories). I'd like for it to always come so naturally the first time. 

I had a writing teacher in college who encouraged "meta-writing"...writing about writing, which is actually sometimes a really good idea, if only because it makes you feel a little more sane. So that's what this is. 

ps. I'll post that story on here and a few more from the trip soon...it was a great week in Mankato, Minneapolis and Chicago. Great pictures, too. :) 

dressing room

I am learning things from poetry books.

Things like: remove all pronouns.

Squish together astonished words, make those words blush

no thesaurus--know them heartfully or not at all.

Things like: paradox is the root of good words.

       (what stronger proof is there for resurrection?)

Things like: this decision to sound wise suddenly

the attempt, this new jangling anti-rhyme,

the smirks behind opaque pages behind opaque eyes

behind the nod of 'yes, oh yes'

     fits like the low-cut dress

     my mother stamped her foot against

     in buzzing neon dressing rooms

     years ago. 

short lexicon for a tuesday eve.

a word I like lately: 

reframe (as in, I've cleared my head, I've gained perspective and it's causing me to reframe.)

two words I will never like, ever, ever:

massage, used in any way expect the real way. (as in, well, let's just give this idea a little more time, massage it a little.) 

pagination (as in, his MLA pagination was just all wrong.)

like good bone

I found this line tonight, quite randomly. It absolutely needed to be read by me right now. Reading this tonight was grace. The way the second line will bounce through my mind is grace.

Heart breaks but mends

like good bone.

It's the vain will

wants to have been wounded deeper

burned by the cold moon to cinder. 

-Denise Levertov, from "Relearning the Alphabet"

utterly humbled by mystery

(a part of NPR's series "this I believe.")06

I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers this may sound almost pagan. But I don’t think so. My very belief and experience of a loving and endlessly creative God has led me to trust in both.

I’ve had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world. This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything.

Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity. “Hints and guesses,” as T.S. Eliot would say. I often spend the season of Lent in a hermitage, where I live alone for the whole 40 days. The more I am alone with the Alone, the more I surrender to ambivalence, to happy contradictions and seeming inconsistencies in myself and almost everything else, including God. Paradoxes don’t scare me anymore.

When I was young, I couldn’t tolerate such ambiguity. My education had trained me to have a lust for answers and explanations. Now, at age 63, it’s all quite different. I no longer believe this is a quid pro quo universe — I’ve counseled too many prisoners, worked with too many failed marriages, faced my own dilemmas too many times and been loved gratuitously after too many failures.

Whenever I think there’s a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say “only” or “always,” someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like “principles of uncertainty” and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of “faith”! How strange that the very word “faith” has come to mean its exact opposite.

People who have really met the Holy are always humble. It’s the people who don’t know who usually pretend that they do. People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind. It is a litmus test for authentic God experience, and is — quite sadly — absent from much of our religious conversation today. My belief and comfort is in the depths of Mystery, which should be the very task of religion.

Richard Rohr is founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M. He took his Franciscan vows in 1961, and was ordained as a priest in 1970. Rohr is a frequent speaker and writer on issues of community building, peace and justice.

summer

Just now, at 10:15 am, I am finishing up my cup of fresh-press coffee. I am nibbling the last bit of a juicy white peach which I purchased last night from the farmer's market three blocks from my apartment. I am reading a very funny story. I am not listening to anything, just the murmbling of the fridge (which happens to be stocked with all of my absolute favorite Trader Joe's goodies) and the stuffy mountainy summer air. 

In three days I will hop on a plane to visit a lovely friend in Seattle. Until then, my pressing and urgent plans include putting the final layer of paint on my green desk, hitting up the beach one more time, baking some pear-bran muffins, and finishing "Seymour: An Introduction." 

I love summer. I'm thinking maybe I was designed for summer...I do summer very well. :)

doowah

Compounding matters, and by matters I mean it being the last day of my job and me sitting in my very warm apartment surrounded by teenage literature I picked up at used bookstores and curriculum I wrote and funny little gifts from students, is the fact that I've had a fictional R&B ballad stuck in my head for the past week. 

By fictional, I mean that it has no words and is not a real song. It's just a mystery tune; a loop running over and over again in my head like the beginning of a DVD. It sounds pretty much like, "Dum dum duh DAH da dum, Dadada, Dadadah, Duahhawah (repeat)." Slow and steady with a shuffle beat, it rolls around my brain at the most inopportune times, making everything incredibly cheesy.

It's rather like the time I got the NBC morning news theme lodged in my head for a week.  When that happened, everything took on this superfluous importance and I had a constant urge to straighten my collar and speak directly. 

is to come

You 

taught me this,

so you ought to

understand it:

I've already stood

upon eternity

climbed up

onto the highest piece

of the staircase

and watched

down below

every single stacked minute

before/behind

fade grey and fall

away.

and that, that's living.

it was and is

(and is to come)

and ever will be. 

snicker

So funny.  

deep breathing

Song for today: Jesus, etc. (off Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). Stolen from a great cloudy day playlist. 

(How you know you've been teaching english too long: you wonder if there is an MLA format for citing songs, and you feel slightly guilty for not investigating.)

Story for today: In the breakfast line at staff meeting, a co-worker insinuated, quite seriously, that I'm a jerk for not also having the yearbook reprinted in braille.

Hmm. 

fully

we expect from ourselves, constantly,

immortality. we're not able to be aware 

of the shortness of things, so our waking days

are spent in spinning circles. we know

in our head all the true things: we will die,

we will not remember all the throbbing

paper-cut injustices at the end of things.

we will love, and those moments

will burn and sweep and cleanse away

in smoky fire, everything.

everything else. even the moon.

this is a poem composed while leaning against

the kitchen sink

in the moonlight through the window slats

at 11:29 on a Friday.

I think, more these days that I ever have

that we will wake up laughing.

but it will be quiet laughter:

the way we laugh when we learn something

we should have known before

but have only just discovered, fully. 

Burnt Norton

Oh, please, please read this.  I am re-reading Four Quartets and just like every time I have read them they are so much more important to me than most everything else I've ever read (except for a few things, of course).  

V. 

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

    The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

reaching out

It is taking all my will-power to resist running out to apply for a retail job, or book some sort of long, extended trip, or move somewhere foreign...something to make myself feel busy, some action which will fill things up so I don't have to actually think about what the next step really should be. Blank space terrifies me. 

I've always loved Henry Nouwen, and I've always especially loved his book Reaching Out. The first section of the book teaches that we must learn to acknowledge and come to understand our universal loneliness.  We must discover that it is not our task to exorcise this loneliness but rather to embrace it, understand it, listen to it, and allow God to transform it into a beautiful, life-affirming, necessary solitude. If we never complete this process, we can never heal or be whole because we will just continue clinging to others and seeing situations, relationships and religion as a sort of life-preserving floaty device to keep us distracted from the achy loneliness that is being human.  Once we understand our loneliness as necessary solitude, then we can truly reach out in love, instead of groping in desperation. 

In the book Nouwen quotes Rilke's "live the question" passage, and then comments:

This (living the questions) is a very difficult task, because in our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening to the questions.  A lonely person has no inner time nor inner rest to wait and listen.  He wants answers and wants them here and now.  But in solitude we can pay attention to our inner self.  This has nothing to do with egocentrism or unhealthy introspection because, in the words of Rilke, "what is going on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love." In solitude we can become present to ourselves. There we can live, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh says, "like a child or a saint in the immediacy of here and now." There we can also be present to others by reaching out to them, not greedy for attention and affection but offering our own selves to help build a community of love. Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible. 

Pretty cool theory, if a bit depressing at the onslaught. But I'd always hoped to be able to love these ideas abstractly. Like, oh, yes, in theory that is the way to live.  I didn't really ever envision a time in my life where I was so literally forced to live with questions and acknowledge the truth to these ideas. To confront loneliness, to learn to live with it, and to begin (hopefully) to transform it into peace and the ability to reach out. 

twitter's top tweeter

Well, it's certainly an interesting time to be alive, I'll say that much.  

For example, it's odd that we've welcomed the verb "tweeted" into our vocabulary with so little resistance. It's a stupid, stupid word. Sure, people still are a little sheepish when they actually say this word, but they are becoming less and less so. Soon it will just be normal.  This article uses the verb an inordinate amount of times.  This article is perhaps the most annoying thing I have ever read in my entire life.  

philosophy

He called me cold-hearted

when I tried to explain it

panted it out as we shucked down the mountain

eyes cast down towards the roots of things

the roots jutting out, growing over the snowy pathways,

ready to turn us on our heads.

I said I was 

an existentialist, because really,

what else can we be?

Besides, he had asked me.

He called me cold-hearted

before I could finish.

(I did not much care what he called me

or how he saw me).

Besides, I knew for a fact that my heart

would never grow cold

or even lukewarm, no.

I will never be that lucky. 

woahAwkward

Honestly, at work lately, I've come to prefer chatting with a student to chatting with an adult. Students are less awkward.  Or, no, it's not that.  They're just more honest about their awkwardness.  

When they are awkward, they recognize it and do what all normal 14 year olds innately do in this situation: swirl all facial muscles in close to their nose and yell (much louder than necessary), "woahAwkward!" 

I like this kind of honesty and transparency.  It's just so much cooler than eyebrow shifts and such (the grown-ups' equivalent).

fluency

I do not know peace. 

It is a foreign tongue

burnt into me.  Heartstrings

which should have snapped in half by now

strum instead, a piecemeal harmony. 

Pentecost comes Sunday, they say.

Crazy people in those crazy buildings

lay sweaty hands on mottled foreheads

stipulate the need for someday-deliverance.

Does it have to be on a screen, projected?

Larger than life, 'oh god, heal, heal, heal me.'

Shaking down the sky

with exhibition, exhortation?

No.  Give me a different name for this.

Or rather, leave it nameless:

it is the type of thing that passes

understanding, explanation. 

The lexicon of my heart slated

to read fluently a joy

which, by all scientific means, 

will never be translated. 

Up!

I wish that Jenny hadn't pointed out that Greg Laswell sounds French in the humming part of "Comes and Goes (in Waves)." It's making it harder to get inspiration out of one of my favorite "get some quick-indie-inspiration" songs.  But it's also making me laugh, and laughter is just as precious as inspiration, perhaps moreso. 

Speaking of inspiration, I love this article from the LA Times.  Of course I love Pixar, and of course I'm excited just to see the movie. But read this part especially, it's so cool:

Before "Up" became a movie, it was just a single image: a grouchy old man with balloons. 

As visually striking as the image might be, it wasn't clear how it and the senior citizen inside the floating house fit into a larger story, which explains why "Up" took so long to make it to the screen.

"In the very first draft . . . he just wanted to join his wife up in the sky," Docter said. "It was almost a kind of strange suicide mission or something. And obviously that's [a problem]."

Added Peterson: "Originally, he was not going anywhere. He was just going into the sky, because he had always associated his wife with birds."

That didn't sound like a Pixar movie -- it sounded like a film out of the surrealism movement. So Docter, Peterson and Rivera tried to figure out what they were really trying to communicate in their movie. "We hadn't flushed it out. We didn't really know what was going to happen or who he was going to meet," Rivera said.

This idea: a hovering, potentially great, potentially really weird image, is something that I just think is so important to know about.   I'm so glad that they decided to tell this part of the story. Living with the weirdness of creativity, taking risks and steps and not being afraid to give something time to develop--this is such an important thing.  It's not really just a description of creating art.  I think it kind of works as a description of creating a full life.  

full story: ( http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-up10-2009may10,0,2075358.story)

"Splitter of majesty"

This is one of my all-time favorites.  I've posted it before, but it floated back into my mind today.  

Hymn-Jack Kerouac

"and when you showed me brooklyn bridge 
in the morning, ah god...
and the people were slippin on ice in the street
twice, twice
two different people came over, goin to work 
so earnest and tryful, clutching their pitiful morning daily news 
slip on the ice and fall 
both inside five minutes 
and i cried, i cried 
that's when you taught me, tears
ah god, in the morning, ah thee 
and me leaning on the lamppost wiping eyes
eyes, nobody's know i'd cry 
or woulda cared anyway 
but oh, i saw my father 
and my grandfather's mother
and the long lines of chairs 
and tear sitters and dead
ah me, i knew god
you had better plans than that 
so whatever plan you have for me 
splitter of majesty 
make it short, brief, make it snappy 
bring me home to the eternal mother 
today, at your service anyway 
and until..."

phosphorescence

1. Last Friday I went to the Getty.  You can’t really go to an art museum and not see a couple pictures of Jesus. It happened to be Good Friday—a good day to spend a little time contemplating religious artwork. 

Wandering through the Medieval section, I was stuck by an altar screen's depiction of the stigmata. In the tableaux, a shocked looking saint stooped slightly towards the ground while above him an angel who looked like she/he had a severe neck crick fired greenish-yellow beams out of his/her hands.  These beams streamed down into the saint’s palms, feet, and general heart area.  It was obviously a surprise, this holy gift.  Going off the galvanized look on the saint’s face and the rather triumphant look on the angel’s, a unchurched youth might judge the scene as commemorating the conception of lazar tag.     

2. Saturday evening, I switched the television to Charlton Heston’s The Ten Commandments. I’ve never seen it, but remembered my friend Savay telling me that watching this movie is his Easter tradition.  I thought this was an odd statement coming from a Buddist, so I asked what he liked about it. ‘It’s so nice and religious,” he explained.

I was curious what “religious” meant to him and also (let’s be honest) lured in by Charlton Heston’s greasy, spray-tan muscles. About five minutes later, the angel of death appeared on-screen. He/she was most impressively portrayed in Technicolor: a green, animated, five-pronged glowing glob, dribbling horrifically down in the night sky.  I watched as people screamed and children died.  The only ones saved were the ones who had smeared blood above their doors.   

  

3. We can’t see holiness.  And we can’t seem to understand it. But we don’t let this stop us from trying. Trying to make it fit into our world; to make it make sense; to make it visible.  

This morning, Easter morning, we baptized. Baptism is another attempt to visualize the intangible.  It’s the metaphor of metaphors—it’s taking the most prosaic part of our day (washing) and turning it into the most holy.  It’s a symbol of the thing we fear most (death), immediately reversed.      

Today, we baptized the young and the old, in Chinese, in Armenian, in English.  The pastors trooped into the font wearing t-shirts and boardshorts; the baptizes wore long, flowing white robes, which added an odd, anachronistic vibe to the already mysterious ritual.  

The smallest of the candidates was a boy of 7 who assured us he “wasn’t doing this because everyone else was doing it." Right before he was dipped, his foot slipped on his oversized white robe and he lost his balance. The pastor grasped him, steadied him, muttered some beautiful age-old language, and dunked his shaggy little head under the water. He buoyed back up, a sudden, goofy, stunned grin on his face. The pastor patted him and sent him on his way up the stairs, but he tripped again.  He lurched towards the exit.  He nearly went back under, resorted to doggy paddling for a few paces, and finally righted himself to make a shaky exit, the grin still on his face.   

__________________

And the most mysterious part to me, the part that strikes me: despite the greedy, corrupt, masochistic churches of the middle ages, despite the zealous Hollywood portrayals of the 1950s, despite the way we mess it up and mangle it and bash it into the ground and squeeze it for profit, we still can’t laugh off the idea of spirit.  We still want to paint it, to make movies about it, to write it down. We still want it.  And, if we are very young or perhaps just wise enough- despite that we’ve tried to exploit it, sell it, Technicolor it, and paint it phosphorescent green--it still knocks us sideways.