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..."