Works of Love--Love Builds Up

There is nothing, nothing at all, that cannot be done or said in such a way that it becomes upbuilding, but whatever it is, if it is upbuilding, then love is present. Thus the admonition, just where love itself admits the difficulty of giving a specific rule, says, "Do everything for upbuilding," It could just as well have said, "do everything in love," and it would have said the very same thing. One person can do exactly the opposite of what another person does, but if each one does the opposite--in love--the opposite becomes upbuilding. There is no word in the language that in itself is upbuilding, and there is no word in the language that cannot be said in an upbuilding way and become upbuilding if love is present. Thus it is so very far from being the case that the upbuilding would be something that is an excellence of a few gifted individuals, similar to brains, literary talent, beauty, and the like (alas, this is just an unloving and divisive error!) that on the contrary is the very opposite--every human being by his life, by his conduct, by his behavior in everyday affairs, by his associate with his peers, by his words, his remarks, should and could build up and would do it if love were really present in him. Kierkegaard, 212

Just earlier today, I asked myself if there were any new ways to describe sunsets. Yes, I really asked myself this question. I know, I know. Too much poetry.

So now I'm reading Christian Wiman, (who is coming to the SPU residency in March! hooray!) and I find this, which is so good, and fresh, and exactly what I could not make my little brain do while looking out my window:

I remember that. And I remember seeing,
Past Abilene, the sun come plunging down
In front of us and spatter back in the sky.
It was like no sunset we'd ever seen.
Thick light dripped and puddled on the far
Horizon, yellow smeared and flecked with red
Like a broken yolk that had begun
To grow. There was a moment when the sky,
Ground, and the air between were all one color,
My family's faces, too, glowing, fading...
Then everything was gone and we were driving
In the darkness toward whatever edge the day
Had fallen from, whtaever space it now
Was falling into. - The Long Home

some notes on music

Over The Rhine played the El Rey this Sunday! So good.

During the show, Linford gave quite a bit of background on the songs. Not just what inspired them, but exactly how they developed. It was encouraging to hear their process: certain songs took years to complete, while others came in just a few minutes.

Well, I don't know if encouraging is the right word there...I don't know the word. It's such a mystery why some songs/poems just tug at your sleeve, asking to be recorded, while others ramble around inside you for years, always too ornery to be captured with words and written down. I guess it's good to know that's a universal issue for writers; it gives a feeling of solidarity.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite Over the Rhine songs, and this one, according the Linford, "wrote itself," so to speak. Have a listen:

Latter Days (oh please don't watch the video, it's so silly. Just listen.)

P.S. Oh! Oh! The Milk Carton Kids opened the show. How to describe them...Um, if a movie was to be made about my life, I would choose them for the credits/exit music. If that does not entice you, then you should also know that their music is ALL FREE off their website, and they sound like Simon & Garfunkel, if those guys had been listening to Bon Iver while they were writing stuff. Do with that what you will...

and feel a moment's space

Aye, while your common men
Lay telegraphs, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine
And dust the faulty carpets of the world
For kings to walk on, or our president,
The poet suddenly will catch them up
With his voice like a thunder,--'This is soul,
This is life, this word is being said in heaven,
Here's God down on us! what are you about?'
How all those workers start amid their work,
Look round, look up, and feel, a moment's space
That carpet-dusting, though a pretty trade,
Is not the imperative labor after all.

E.B.B., Aurora Leigh

It's been a weird day so far, writing-wise. I'm exhausted from a long weekend: two shifts at Jones, two back-to-back princess parties. (I was Rapunzel this time, and we had some very skeptical four-year-olds...one even made an attempt to expose me as a fraud by yanking forcefully at my blond braid, and yelling, "it's a wig!" requiring me to think on me feet and remind her that the lock of brown hair she'd exposed was the piece the witch cut right before kidnapping me. I put a little scratch of sob into my voice and sighed, "oh, I don't like to talk about it." That left her awed and saddened. Or at the very least, it shut her up.)

All that to say, I slept in this morning, and now I'm trying to get going, and I got an email from a fellow student suggesting doing writing imitations. One of the poets suggested was Plath, not surprisingly. And so I decided to try reading some poems online, when I came across this comment stream. Plath didn't even write this poem, I think it's Christina Rossetti...but the two top comments made me laugh so hard.

Here's the phenomenon--I'm just truckin' along, feeling pretty confident in my ability to compose a two-page paper, when I pause to re-read and realize I've unwittingly used the words "inspired" and "facets" about 5 times each. Ugh. Ugugugh.

digging

sometimes my shovel nudges old bone
brittle remnant, probably just
some unmourned chicken.
I dust it off,

sing a short hymn
for the long-departed, and keep digging.

we'll break through around noon,
I announce to Dad, who is planting inpatients
in the far corner of the garden,
he coughs in approval.

to keep my strength up,
I picture orchid gardens,
fresh chapattis, rainstorms.
things I know I'll find

I practice the clattering way
my grandfather slides sound
slick of his tongue
in the kitchen after dinner.
(I hardly hear words in it, to me
just a broken necklace of seed beads
bouncing off floorboards).

I've learned one line.
I try it out, tossing
tu kasa aahe?
across the garden.

but Dad's stubborn English
boomerangs back:
fine, thank you.

when I ask if should maybe
angle a little to the left, he grins,
but doesn't answer.
He walks over
snaps the brittle wishbone
with his mud-crusted thumbs,
explains again:

Los Angeles used to be ranchland.

I know all about where we are now.
that is not why I am digging.

Grace is the monarch,
bruised wings,
fallen and fluttering
in road among other leaves.


Grace when I see it
and swerve.

Grace as it wings back
behind my eyes in the evening:
struggling life, brave enough
to keep flapping.

I'm virtually pooped...

I finally signed up for Map My Run. I've been obsessive about Gmap Pedometer, so I thought I'd try keeping track of all my routes.

Not two minutes after I finished figuring out how to enter my paltry 2.5 mile Lacy Park jog, the system congratulated me on burning 500 calories. When I examined my workout map, I found not only had I lapped the park from 8-9, but I'd mysteriously been playing basketball from 5am-6am.

I like virtual me! She's a real go-getter.

okay, I was joking when I said I should buy myself a pair of "writer shoes."

but I just found these... and they are pretty cute.

The beginning of wisdom

The clock reads 2:13, but it’s been that way for several minutes. I’d say about five. I am seven. I am swinging my legs so my Keds just skim the freshly waxed floor. My long hair, wrapped in braids around my head like no other girl in the second grade, strains against the bobby pins my mom stuck in this morning.

The bobby pins prick through my epidermis, a word that Cindy taught me today during recess by shouting that mine was showing, causing me to clutch at my pant’s zipper, my t-shirt, make sure everything was covered. My epidermis, or skin, as she finally explained after I, nearly in tears, begged her to, tingles with the all-dayness of those pins. I will get to take them out in exactly, wait...exactly 27 minutes. Or perhaps never at all, because time is not moving. An eternity of metallic aching in the space around my eyeballs.

We’ve just arrived at the auditorium. I was the line leader, a position that I do, indeed, enjoy, just quite to the extent Mrs. Pasco imagines. She always bestows the title as if it is something edible, something to be pinned to the fridge. It’s just walking. But I do a good job.

More importantly, we’re still stuck in 2:13. The chairs are hard, perhaps a little harder than they were when 2:13 started. I am sitting in the front row. Because I am an A+ student and often the line leader, I glue my eyes to the stage, hold my legs rigid, and look entranced. This is an extremely safe way to daydream, because grown-ups love to feel they have entranced small children. I have friends who take a less-subtle approach to daydreaming, turning heads and fidgeting, and I’ve learned plenty from watching them. A stiff neck is a small price to pay for freedom of the mind.

I'm thinking about time and the clock. One or both have clearly broken.

When we finally, if ever, escape 2:13, we’re going to see Grandpa in Sacramento. We’ll walk to Gunther’s, the only ice-cream shop in the world where they put real gumballs, gobs of them, into their candy-pink ice-cream. Jenny and I will spit them back out in little cups so we can count them up and see who won. Then we’ll go to the Nut Tree, where they sell iced gingerbread cookies in the shape of rainbows, painted with impossibly smooth icing, the kind that cracks and crumbles when you bite it. The gift shop has rocks for sale, the quartz and the purple one I can never pronounce, and my favorite, the one that looks like a normal rock on one side but, upon being flipped over, becomes a whole universe of spikes and shining crystals.

Then it finally ticks. 2:14.

Alright then. Time is moving.

But then I think about it: that black hole of 2:13 passed, which means every minute will keep passing, whether it is as boring as a end-of-the-day assembly or as euphoric as the first crunch of rainbow gingerbread. The whole trip will pass. All those minutes will just keep disappearing, the way the water from our hose keeps disappearing into the grass, even after Dad has forgotten about it and left it running.

The trip, then the year, and then I’ll move over to the big side of the schoolyard, the side where we’re all scared to go but where I sometimes go to wait for Jenny. And then the rest of life. It will all go about as fast, or as slow, as this very assembly, and I’ll spend much of it being line leader and sitting rigidly in hard chairs, looking like I’m interested and waiting for the clock to move me to the next minute.

There is clapping around me. I realize my teacher is digging me with her eyes, and my little hands come together, too, to thank the nice man on stage.

And when I look at the clock again, it’s 2:30, and it’s time to go.

world without end

She bought herself a rosary ring

for a dollar at the mission, planned

to learn the incantations,

let them overtake her,

slip it on to

conjure up the coolness of adobe walls,

the comfort of the circadian,

of completion.

At home, his shoulders

rolled it when she held him

or he’d twirl it

like a roulette wheel,

the scratch of

cheap metal stinging the soft

flesh folds of her fingers.

She’d laugh, and tell him

to start praying.

an experiment--I need your help!

Mark Doty (whose collection, Fire to Fire, is changing my life right now) says:

If you write a poem with the aid of a thesaurus, you will almost inevitably look like a person wearing clothing chosen by someone else. I am not sure that poet should even own one of the damn things.

I used one thesaurus aided word in the below snippet. Can you find it? I'm super curious about the conspicuousity (<-- should be a word, sounds less conspicuous than conspicuousness) of thesaurus-inspired verbiage.

Post your guess as a comment. C'mon...it'll be fun... :-)

An overdue conversation

"You shake your head. I scowl,
laugh, our voices mingle, swirl,
dizzy with proximity, relieved
to bounce around the others'
predicable tonality, to mingle
in such familiar vibrations, modulations.
Pitches pause, hitching with joy at
our squabbles, sighs, even our
silence."

ohmansogood...

STARLIGHT

My father stands in the warm evening
on the porch of my first house.
I am four years old and growing tired.
I see his head among the stars,
the glow of his cigarette, redder
than the summer moon riding
low over the old neighborhood. We
are alone, and he asks me if I am happy.
"Are you happy?'' I cannot answer.
I do not really understand the word,
and the voice, my father's voice, is not
his voice, but somehow thick and choked,
a voice I have not heard before, but
heard often since. He bends and passes
a thumb beneath each of my eyes.
The cigarette is gone, but I can smell
the tiredness than hangs on his breath.
He has found nothing, and he smiles
and holds my head with both his hands.
Then he lifts me to his shoulder,
and now I too am among the stars,
as tall as he. Are you happy? I say.
He nods in answer, Yes! oh yes! oh yes!
And in that new voice he says nothing,
holding my head tight against his head,
his eyes closed up against the starlight,
as though those tiny blinking eyes
of light might find a tall, gaunt child
holding his child against the promises
of autumn, until the boy slept
never to waken in that world again.

Philip Levine

(Okay, sir. You can go ahead and be Poet Laureate.)

it was never merely chalk or cheese...

Especially in the incandescent decade of 1900–1910, he wrote everywhere and anywhere—and about anything: “The Advantages of Having One Leg,” “A Piece of Chalk,” “What I Found in My Pocket,” “On Gargoyles,” “Cheese.” These 1,000-word bijoux he would scribble in cabs, public houses, upon shirt cuffs, the backs of play bills.

It was never merely chalk or cheese, though. In Chesterton’s hands, even the most pedestrian subject grew wings. “There is,” Chesterton assured readers at the beginning of an essay on Kipling, “no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject.” In “The Unthinkable Theory of Professor Green,” an astronomer delivers a lecture on his exciting discovery of a new planet. Only gradually do we realize that this marvelous new world with all its wonders is what we’ve already seen but somehow never known: Earth. What Chesterton called the “mere excitement of existence” countermanded boredom. “It is dull as ditch-water,” you say. But think about it: “Is ditch-water dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.”

G.K. Chesteron: master of rejuvenation

WWTD?

Checking the mail has become a bigger deal lately. It's an exciting little trip.

I checked the mail today, feeling rather old and sad for myself and my excitement, and got a flyer advertising a book study to help "put faith back into your busy life and arrange your life for spiritual transformation."

But I'm not busy. That was what hit me on the long walk back from the mail. I have nothing going on this evening, no one expecting dinner, no tense board meeting to attend. No game night. No essays to grade. I'm not wrung out from wrangling the joy of writing into 130 hormonal, hot, sticky 7th graders.

It's heaven. It's also really heavy, as in, the non-busyness of my life tends to make my pretty crazy sometimes.

I planned for this time, financially. I'm getting a ton of writing done. I'm loving the slow pace of things and the freedom. But what I didn't plan for was the emotional tension, the way I'd miss the rush. Our society encourages and celebrates (and subversively idolizes) the rush. Magazine articles, advertisements, everyday conversations, blogposts, facebook statuses, small talk...references to glorified craziness are everywhere. Laments, moans, admonitions of busyness all thinly disguise Puritanical pride at our over-doing. And they all make me feel guilty in my rest.

Who better than Thoreau to channel in defense of my new lifestyle? I feel much better. :o)

"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality."

"He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate."

"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."

A whole book of found poems...I'm in good company! Who knew you could publish books of them? Annie Dillard, that's who. But then, I hear she's a pretty smart lady, generally.

earplugs & manna

Last weekend, I took a road trip in the strictest sense: packed-in car, spontaneous sing-alongs (yes, Part of Your World made an appearance, and yes, it was magical), that dizzy relief of solid ground after hours of rolling over flat roads.

Our route was a good one: Santa Cruz to Pescadero, San Franscisco to Marin Headlands, Saucalito to Sonoma.

That last night we stayed in a motel in Sonoma, which seemed totally swanky after two days of hosteling. Especially since I spent most of our night at the Marin Headlands hostel huddled in a top bunk on a sweatshirt-thick mattress, serenaded by intermittent, maraca-like snores. I think I may have, at one point, prayed that God cut off that woman's air supply.

So we loved that motel. Especially that hot tub, in which we spent a good hour, sipping fizzy wine and admiring Sonoma's star-stitched quilt of a sky.

After some failed attempts to name constellations, our hot-tub conversation turned to the charmed nature of our trip.

A kind grace just wove through it: walking out of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk just as a zealous cop had walked toward our expired meter; stumbling into Saints Peter and Paul church to join the Saturday night mass in reciting The Lord's Prayer; the ipod shuffling up Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence as we crested the mist-cloaked cliffs of PCH; and perhaps most miraculous of all, me remembering there would be a bin of free earplugs at the hostel desk (this just minutes after I'd prayed for that snorer's spontaneous suffocation).

I've always been obsessed with the story of manna. The Israelite people prayed for food, and were given only daily bread, falling from the sky in the form of manna. If they tried to keep any extra, it all rotted. They had to learn to live with the expectancy that grace would provide.

A really great trip brings about that same kind of awareness. Jars of Clay describes it as the faith of an empty hand. This was that kind of trip. The kind that helped me realize I've got to stop letting empty spots in my life shoot an ice-wave of panic down my spine. I want my lack to bring release, excitement, and wonder, instead of fear. I want faith enough to wait with expectancy for grace. I will not be able to horde it. But I want to receive it, palms up.

losing my mind, finding some poems & a lighthouse.

This was going to be such a day of productivity.

The plan was to hit up Point Vincent Lighthouse Starbucks, soak up the ocean view while cranking out a few annotations. But that would have required a computer and several books, and as Amy finished the hour-long drive and pulled into the Starbucks lot, I discovered I'd left my book-bag in my car, parked at her apartment where we'd met that morning. I'd shown up with nothing but a 3/5" notepad with a otter sketched on the cover.

My first thought was locate a copy of the next book on my reading list: The Divine Comedy. As it turns out, Dante isn't sold at most bookstores. After several phone calls failed, I tried Mike's Independent Book Shoppe. In answer to my polite request, Mike replied, "oh, we're fresh out, sold the last one yesterday." Which seemed either unnecessarily sarcastic, or a little bizarre. I gave up.

After five minutes of stewing into my Chai latte, I got over my absentmindedness and gave myself some new homework: "Found Poems" from New York Times articles.

If you're unfamiliar with the process, it's simple: pull any words, in any order, out of a piece (novel, essay, newspaper article). And have fun doing it.

I don't feel like I wrote these, but they do make me laugh. Seriously, try it sometime. It's fun to poeticize headlines.

Jobs Steps Down at Apple, Saying He Can’t Meet Duties

From the near dead to its current, unmatched
fiery and mercurial
passed into legend

whose insistent view
so dominated
his genius
his risk-taking
his tenacity
his own judgement and
perfectionism and gut

Health issues hang
over a decision

Perhaps the greatest ever
every phone call
every time, he's a part

funny how you feel about
a stranger.

Cheney Says He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria in ’07

But I was a lone voice guarding
the secrecy of internal deliberation
hampered by communication
tough interrogation
the suffocation
technique:
relish the criticism.

Long struggle with heart
the eventual invasion.

The epilogue:
A prolonged dream, vivid.
And Italian Villa. He
paces stone paths
for coffee and newspapers.

Around the Corner, Inadvertent Galleries

life has become
peppered with things
they lie in wait
buoyed by more
anonymous, unsung
especially in summer
a narrow sliver
right in front of you
an encounter of the
conceptual kind

something like enormous
shoes on shelves
traveling among the elements
a greatly magnified glass mosaic

you turn a corner
it happens twice

invert the spacial experience
an immense blow up
of a small portion

the statue of liberty
has a 35-foot waist

nothing amazes
like reality.

New Numbers, and Geography, for Gay Couples

A decade is a long time.
Cultural training classes
met by stoney stares.
Social stigma starting
to ease,
attitudes softening,
stand up and be
counted.

So much for San Francisco.
Couples dispersed
farther afield.
Enclaves, safe-havens,
the upstarts on the list:
Pleasant Ridge.
The tip of Cape Cod.

These days he lives openly,
Mr. Hooper smiles impishly,
an island of tolerance
in a sea of outlet malls.

prewriting

Joseph Yap, the boy

with the square head and

arms that seem to have been stretched

to an abnormally long, noodley shape

slouches

farther down, if that were possible

until I worry he will slither out

around the bottom of his

attached desk and escape

in the form of a puddle.

But no, Joseph perseveres,

letting neither accent

nor posture,

stop him from

shooting down my bright

assertion that

everyone has a story to tell.

I no story. Everything is so bored.

Lucky for him, I

have an affinity for students

like this, with the courage

to speak a language strange

enough still to wrangle tongues,

offend soft pallets

with its arcs and sailing curves

and renegade conjugations.

I tell him: think. When were you

last in big trouble?

He thinks, because I’ve told him to.

His eyes grow big, and flicker.

I burn down a house.

He brings the whole class

into nervous howls with this.

We wish he'd master past tense.

Wow, I stammer, straight-faced.

Was everyone okay? Emphasis

on was.

Oh, yeah. Sure. It was more just...little

fire. Everyone okay. I get in big trouble,

though.

Well, yeah.

You've got

your story, sir. He smirks.

He picks up

his pencil and strikes paper,

blessedly silent, sending out only

little flint-like scratches.

He bristles

with the warmth of it, the story

that has stayed so long inside of him

leaping out onto the page.

Soloist, Good Friday.

In the front of the wooden pews, she shot

our souls clean through. Whose eyelids

swam with tears, reflected ebony.

Her soul,

see-through, a shade.

Hilltop injustice

she remembered for all of us,

what all of us had, have, done. It was

welling up inside her. Clawing out.

We were drowned in it, in the waves,

rocked in them, lost. I prayed, prayed

oh, to stay swathed

in spirit and so sure, steeped in

existence of Love that we did not feel

our skin, or need it anymore.

We grew roots, we grew wrinkles,

we rose and we died.

back-to-life shopping

Not to make too much of it, but for twenty-two years, and that would be since the age of four, I have gone "back to school." I distinctly remember leaving kindergarden preview day...the sun through the dusty windows, the fresh masking-tape marks on the carpets, the easel sides brimming with pungent acrylic sets. I skipped the entire way home, absolutely bursting out of my freshly-scrubbed skin.

The first day, I wore a hand-me-down plaid dress, but this wasn't just any hand-me-down. This was my mom's first day of school dress, pressed and wrapped to survive the years in her hope chest. The patent-leather belt had to be abandoned to accommodate my chub, but otherwise, I could have been Linda Sue starting school in 1953. Our kitchen wall exhibits snaps of the three Lee ladies on our respective first days, all sporting the plaid ensemble. First day outfits were always a big deal. After kindergarden we, thankfully, got to buy our own.

As I grew, negotiations for style and fit and length turned shopping trips into blood-baths. My mom shaking her head, lips tight, proclaiming my outfits inappropriate for a classy young woman. She always won those battles, but I fought my hardest, knowing that those first-day outfits were not just clothes, but somehow a bigger announcement of who I'd become over the summer, and who I'd be that year.

Fast-forward to Christy-fresh-from-college. Handed the keys to my own classroom, I spent these early fall days pulling down crusty old bulletin boards, adorning the walls with freshly pulled butcher paper, hand-cutting speech bubble posters for the parts of speech, crafting calendars with the days' plan. Chopping up days into hours, and hours into sections, and then waiting for that structure to come to life with students. While I waited, I shopped.

A good friend picked out pinched, pointy-toed heels for my first-day outfit. I thought I looked a little witch-like, but she deemed them perfect. "You need to look a little bit scary," she explained. "You're far too nice in normal shoes." I got through that first day and wobbled home to spend the afternoon and evening soaking the blisters off my feet. I had no regrets. I had stood tall, been slightly scary but simultaneously stylish. Everything would be alright.

I'm a very contextual person. When I transfered from high school to junior high, I bought some loud, bright, pattern-happy dresses because I considered them "junior high-ish." I soon realized that I didn't need to dress like Ms. Frizzle in order to teach 7th graders. I donated most of those clothes to goodwill. Still, it helped me to have some costumes to help convince myself that I could fit that new part I'd been cast.

Now, I'm not officially off the hook. I'm still in school, it just happens to be a low-residency program this time around, and I'm back to being a student. So I've had my "first day" at our residency in Santa Fe. I even picked out a 'first-day' scarf (as a nod to the fact that I am now in a low-res school, I figured an accessory was enough.)

But now it's almost September, and people are asking, in a sweet, conspiratorial tone, if I'm ready to go back to school. I say I'm not going. Then I feel guilty as soon as it's said, like I'm a deserter. And I panic: what if this is all wrong? Teaching fulfilled the performer part of me, the people-pleaser part of me. Even more significantly, it was an easy answer to the ever-present question: "What do you do?" Which, if I'm honest, I have to admit that I always hear as, "Who are you?"

I've daydreamed about "being a writer," since, well, as long as I remember. But facing that life is a totally different thing. It brings up the same kind of fear of failure, resistance, and pressure that teaching always brought. I guess because it brings along me. I haven't changed; I have the same worries and hang-ups as a writer that I had as a teacher. I also have the same strengths, the same drive and determination. I just tend to forget that in the rush of change.

Perhaps I need a talisman of some kind, a costume for this "back to life" season. An accessory, an entire outfit. Maybe some good shoes. See, I believe in the power of good teaching shoes. It doesn't matter if they batter your feet a little bit--the important thing is that they lift up your whole self and make you stand tall.

Good writing shoes...is there such a thing? It's quite nice writing barefoot, but I think I want some new shoes anyway, just to let my feet know that we've got a new direction.

GRACE

Tonight I am a willful prodigal

slurping the pig slop with

relish, deliberate. Beautifully brazen.

tonight my tongue rests,

all dialogue impressed under

my colorful re-tellings, silencing even,

my bent toward prattled repentance.

Tonight I will sleep well

as I used to sleep, in God’s Palm.

Nobody told me about this loophole, I’ve just

always known: it is open, regardless.

A mountainous flesh-space

to jump up and down on, slightly squishy.

The crevice between the thumb and the

soft underside is my preference.

There are many of us here, but I will find

a quiet spot

I will settle in, unseen by the ones who have

all of the answers.

A Stupid Faith

( I think I've been reading too much Eliot. This is a piece I might take to SPU's workshop. Any thoughts are welcome, all 3 of you blog-readers. )

May 21st, 2011

Well, that dream bled out

with a tick of the clock, to

a soundtrack of maniacal snickers

and stifled sighs of secret relief.

Cementing a place among

our litany of

crack-job prophet jokes.

What now? A man’s shout

at the timid believer clutching his red suitcase

tears through the dank

Times Square Air.

Out of the rain, in the red booth.

I blow on my miso soup

Creating stippled cosmos, a swirling galaxy of perforated

Tofu. With the wind of my lungs, on the surface

I bequeath life, and feel my whole living self sink the red seat,

across from a man I love,

who is sipping green tea and staring at the rain.

I take his flesh-and-blood hand, to feel it,

And watch the news play on the TV screen.

Where is your God now? A jeerer

calls, probably not meaning

to echo anything.

Everyone’s thrilled

at faith’s fall. Yes, it was a stupid

faith

Still this man

packed a change of clothes,

chewed his cereal, caressed it, one precious last use of jaws predestined

to vanish soon.

He agreed to the cameras

believed the way few believe, told the crew,

I am blessed, I am, indeed.

If I were God,

I would have broken my silence

broken down at

the sad, naive hope of

such easy escape.

I cool my soup, watch the worlds spin.

A tiny world that can

begin and end, in time.

I wonder how God loves

him, all of us,

in our existence

in our stupidity.

Roman Candle #2

(thanks, Jack Kerouac, for putting things stupidly well.)

Do I have to wear

dark glasses, do I have to sneer

at everyone who doesn't love

the things I love: the Wayfarers

and I, do we all have to be one throng

leaning forward to our next

crazy venture

under the stars? Do I have to catch

every reference? Can I live

a sweet, solitary life

where I don't always burn,burn,burn: only

occasionally? I know They won't

call it genius, but I also know

I'm called (yes, GodAlmighty

Splitter-of-Destiny, he told me) to

live a steady glow.

The week, backwards...

Last night, lit white lights, we lounged poolside, tipping white-wine and playing catch-phrase. I looked around at some of my favorite co-workers and thought to myself, man, this is picturesquely wonderful. And then I realized, I'd thought that just the day before at dinner with my family as we choke-laughed about the rules we followed growing up (and let me tell you, it's pretty fun to be able to laugh with your mom and sister about that). Wednesday evening, we (Joseph and I) devoured sinfully good bread pudding with burbon sauce after a long, lovely ramble through Hearst Castle. Tuesday we camped, feasting on gloriously charred hobo meals and a marshmallow-smeared yam before snuggling down in our tent at San Simeon. Sunday, I hosted a picnic in the park (complete with badminton hijinks, obviously) followed by a fairly intense game of six-person Scrabble. Saturday, poetry-college crafting with a dear college friend, then a walk to the monastery while dissecting lenten discipline, boys (all of them) and the creative process. I am blessed tremendously in this Sabbath. It is a gathering time.

drafts

It's not that I've stopped writing, or even stopped using this blog. It's just that right now, everything is in draft status. I count 53 consecutive drafts since "Sweet Potato."

That stat makes it pretty clear: my resolve to share my writing got trampled under the craziness of life. A full-time job, a new (fantastic) relationship, great friends, wonderful but hurting family, a church worth investing in, more creative outlets than I can, well, let myself out in. (?)

...See, sentences like that are responsible for all these drafts. I write a line like that, gag a little, promise I'll go back and tinker with it, and then forget all about the entire piece. I've been pretty disciplined with so many other things: teaching, grading, doctor's appointments w/ my Dad, evening running and cooking,...writing is the thing that gets shoved aside.

But that has to change. I'm taking a leave of absence from work and going back to school for an MFA in creative writing. I've been planning and saving for an opportunity like this since I started my credential classes. And this is the year: everything, from my pink slip being rescinded just yesterday, to my leave of absence letter going through with the board, has worked out perfectly. I have a little saved up, and I've made it into a program I'm really excited about.

Of course I'm nervous. I worry I've lost all hint of voice in my aforementioned lovely chaos; I haven't written a poem, really, in months; and my identity has become so rooted in my job that I wonder if I'll ever be able to relax and not need to be seen as "Ms. Lee."

But I can't stay with a job simply because it gives me an identity. It's so important to live honestly. And for me, right now, it would be dishonest not to take this year to write.

The discipline piece is the toughest for me. See, even this sad little whine-of-an-essay floated into draft status yesterday as I wandered into my room and started pushing furniture around, creating a "writing space" for myself. I spent the morning dreaming of thrift-shopping for a vintage tea station and painting a wall with chalkboard paint. It's so easy to neglect work in the pursuit of the romantic idea of "being a writer."

...I picked this up out of "drafts" on Monday, read it over, and cringed. But this little draft exists only to point out I've got to stop drafting. So the irony of it staying a draft is just too much.

On a happier note, I found a wellspring of hope and inspiration in this Ted-Talk sent to me by a dear friend. It's pretty much perfect, expresses all the reasons I want to write and teach writing, and I'm super tempted to simply delete my paltry thoughts and copy the transcript. But I'll let my draft live, and share hers as well:

http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter.html

And immediately after listening, I wrote three poems of my own, which I hope soon to polish out of draft status and post up here.

sweet potato

I like songs that tell half-stories. This is one of those songs. The specifics still leave space for your own story. It is so charming, and it sends out a clearer mood than message. Listen to it, and if you are like me, you will like it and listen to it several times, and make up characters for it.

Sia-Sweet Potato

She cooks you sweet potato, you don't like aubergine
She knows to boil the kettle when you hum bars from Grease
She senses you are lonely but still she can't be sure
And so she stands and waits, stands anticipating your thoughts

How can she become the psychic that she longs to be to understand you
How can she become the psychic that she longs to be to understand you

He brushes thoroughly
He know she likes fresh breath
He rushes to the station
He waits atop the steps
He's brought with him a Mars bar
She will not buy Nestle
And later he'll perform
A love-lorn serenade, a trade

How can he become the psychic that he longs to be to understand you
How can he become the psychic that he longs to be to understand you

So give her information to help her fill the holes
Give an ounce of power so he does not feel controlled
Help her to acknowledge the pain that you are in
Give to him a glimpse of that beneath your skin

Now my inner dialogue is heaving with detest
I am a martyr and a victim and I need to be caressed
I hate that you negate me, I'm a ghost at beck and call
I'm failing and placating, I berate myself for staying

I'm a fool
I'm a fool

He greets the stranger meekly, a thing that she accepts
She sees him waiting often with chocolate on the steps
He senses she is lonely, she's glad they finally met
They take each other's hands, walk into the sunset

Do you like sweet potato?

poetry 101

In the evenings,

my neighbor and I nod

checking in on the state of ourselves, we inquire

and respond robotically,

he does not sound fine, and neither

am I, but it doesn't matter.

It's understood that there is no room for

more. Our insincerity hangs there, as

we fish for our keys

and then we shut our doors on it,

leaving it to dissipate in the warm butter circle of

streetlight.

My mother's hair curls out in two

even tuffs that are

perfectly symmetrical, when she talks

she looks like she could begin

flying, any moment, with a slight wiggle

of the ear.

My first poetry teacher talked of

the power of suspended images,

sans narrative. Day one he instructed us

on the end of the need for a story.

The next night he broke both his feet

at the Cat and Fiddle

stepping hard on a stair he thought

he saw. (He was wrong.)

He was

replaced.

Now I can't get it out of my head:

our tragic small talk, the streetlight circle,

the wings behind her ears.

All poetry.

It's distracting. I try not to

think about it, though. And I watch carefully for

staircases.

polish

these words are unpolished

like the way I feel

about you, not

mulled through yet

tumbling, though, heavy

through the day they will whir

and knock against other words,

until I return home

exhausted and sore

from the clunking concepts

on spin cycle

inside me

(it's always like this, especially

mornings)

and sift through

in search of something

smooth.

wholly.

Sun, morning, spills

Yolk of the world, breaking

over me, sizzling.

The bare bulb behind the stove

softening the whiteness of dawn.

God, I hide my face

from your Holiness. I know.

Besides, I've received

all the guidelines, drawn neat,

and I fall outside.

So I watch Your mountains

tinge pink and green and white

and writhe at

my independent wretchedness.

Isn't this, too

(coffee-soaked confessional of a morning)

Holiness?

No, I'm not boasting of it

What then, shall we sin more?

No, I am just

thankful for

grace and the mountain's graciousness

abounding.

full&complete

On what should be beautiful days of rest, like this Saturday morning, I find my mind moves at its fastest. Is anyone else like this? The first real spot of peace, and I'm off in a million directions: clubs I could start at work, poems I ought to write, books I ought to re-read, friends I can't believe I lost touch with, goals and accolades which I ought to eventually work for, places I should move, letters I've got to write. Mind you, I'm not working on anything this morning, I am simply dreaming, reading a book and drinking coffee. So it's not a productive musing. It's chaotic and guilt-inducing. And mostly, annoying.

A few Januaries back, I resolved to pause for a full and complete stop at every single stop sign. (I live in a town with no traffic lights, so the resolution was sure to be tested.) It was not only tested, as most resolutions are, it fell completely by the wayside (as most resolutions do) and the result of that was a horribly wasted day last spring, slogging through the slowest online traffic school in the history of the World Wide Web.

The goal of my failed resolution was to give myself the reminder to stop. Just stop, even if only for two seconds of the day. The hope was that this habit would work its way into other areas of my life.

I'm invoking the spirit of that failed resolution this morning, to give myself permission to just roll back and feel that pure moment of suspension before I continue racing forward--sip my third cup of coffee, (oh right, my resolution to give up caffiene? failed.) look up at the mountains, and be alright with a full and complete stop.