Maybe one autumn day Danny and I will be on a lazy drive down Route 66 through central Illinois and bend our retired curiosity toward exit 91 off Interstate 72 to revisit that blue door house on Cherokee we walked through for just shy of two years. We'll press our fingertips just barely against the window pane of that early 30s time in our lives when our kids were young and we were young and how we used that roof sometimes like an umbrella and other times like a canopy, and how we danced inside those living room walls and made serious life decisions in that basement. Those kinds of decisions that are funny to us, thinking back on them, because we will have learned by then that the only truly serious decisions we ever made in our lives were the ones when we decided together what really matters, and how anyway, those came easiest.
No matter how far we reach past this blue door, neither of us will be able to quite recall how we spent those last night hours in that house, or what all we stuffed into those boxes or threw into garbage bags beneath the twilight buzz of dim fluorescence. We won't remember which picture frames we took off the walls and wrapped like sacred gifts because at some point along the way, I won't know when, the pictures will be taken off some other wall of some other house and placed inside some other box, never to make it out. Sometimes funny things like that happen, and we don't miss any of those things because we've forgotten they are gone, or if we do long for one thing or another, it is only because we remember how much we miss the person wrapped around its memory.
So whether it is one far day or just tomorrow, driving away from this blue door, if we remember very little except that we lived in this house together, built our family and wondered where life would take us, I can say I won't mind which memories stay inside these walls or which frames get lost forever, so long as, by God's grace, what really matters drives away, back home, with me.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Handwriting
Writing is an interesting artifact, a friend of fact or enemy of denial; itself its own alibi. I found such an artifact today while packing - my first notebook from the beginning of this year. This watermarked worn 99 cent notebook gave itself bare as my mildest tenor of hope to approach empty lines with a nervous pen and say something true. As I began to write in January, I recognized the distance of my own handwriting.
Right now, amidst our life shaking itself upside down and into cardboard boxes, my mind has been categorizing thoughts into very long and largely useless itemized to-do lists - quite a dull spoon for the creative prime. So I've interchanged today's spoon with yesterday's knife.
I shyly dusted off this notebook and began to read, and in doing so I began to understand that we are never as far or as close to the past as we perceive; our distance from who we were or thoughts we once had is as far as the forgotten voice buried in a distant drawer or as near to our memory as the very last page. Especially when it speaks the solitude of our own hand, writing.
January 15, 2011
Layover in St. Louis
Back in the airport and it feels like coming back to an old familiar house - maybe not the one I grew up in but one I frequented often, enough to get a pitter-patter of excitement to visit, an uncertain smell, but a smell nonetheless, the abstract dark blue carpet pattern paving miles of airport walkways, as if it wants to be noticed but just can't be, a disguise of millions of footprints, travelers whose destination is not this place here, a medium of in-between. But the airport walls stand, glass and pleather seats, ready to be used, over and over again by strangers of short distances and long miles.
I feel in my bones a sense of connectedness to the disconnect, the detachment of wanting to be but being ignored, bad-looking flooring and garbage cans and overpriced commodities that have no earthly business costing quadruple their actual worth. But they all try to fit into the context, serve a purpose. A pointless t-shirt: "St. Louis Loves Me." Really? A city that doesn't know your voice, has never heard you cry or recognize that birthmark hidden beneath the nape of your neck; not one footprint on its river shore, a murmur of thought of its history - tensions racial enough to rip a hole in a child's American dream. Why would St. Louis love you? Ah, because you came, drank overpriced coffee, one sugar two creams on the steps of its outer windows, waiting to hitch your kite to the next ride out, far away and never back again. You can't even see the arch from your aerial hover. Not when you refuse to look any way but up, up, up to a heaven you wonder exists, falling closer to its cloudy wings than the ground below that holds you.
January 17, 2011
In Pittsburgh, 1:00pm
A good plain notebook is roomy, gives you the space of walking through an airport the wrong way with still enough room on either side of you for the oncoming travelers clamoring toward the footsteps you just left behind. I want to bulldoze, skate across, spin, spew, spit fire, take a big long metal detector to the hardened ground and find nothing below, throw rocks, chuck stones, lay down and roll away, feel the flat landscape, create foothills and mountains with their earth then sit amongst them and cry, laugh, dream with thoughts of them and get lost in their scent and imagine how I would feel if they were not there. You cannot do that without space that gives you permission to build.
January 18, 2011
I can't get enough, reading what I've written, wishing it could be enough. Reading Stephen King's "On Writing" and he demands 2000 words a day, prolific reading, and a no-less-than six days a week of writing, and that's only if you're a beginner. I already feel inadequate. When you see an unfocused dot that appears to be floating like a feather speck across a country river, you can follow it down with your eyes but can never get further than the rock bed. Maybe the dot I see are periods. Ends of sentences I can't finish. Winter seems buried in my lungs, and I can't cough it out.
So there's a girl I see in my head, maybe the one I'm trying to discover, she's got something to say. She's foul-mouthed and hilarious in certain honest moments. She lives beneath layers and sleeps with the truth but is awake with the mundane - smiles enough, laughs enough, exchanges pleasantries enough with just enough of the just right people. Her eyes stay above water, the rest of her - below. I don't know what she is capable of, what her motives are, or who she really is, but she's starting to nag.
Right now, amidst our life shaking itself upside down and into cardboard boxes, my mind has been categorizing thoughts into very long and largely useless itemized to-do lists - quite a dull spoon for the creative prime. So I've interchanged today's spoon with yesterday's knife.
I shyly dusted off this notebook and began to read, and in doing so I began to understand that we are never as far or as close to the past as we perceive; our distance from who we were or thoughts we once had is as far as the forgotten voice buried in a distant drawer or as near to our memory as the very last page. Especially when it speaks the solitude of our own hand, writing.
January 15, 2011
Layover in St. Louis
Back in the airport and it feels like coming back to an old familiar house - maybe not the one I grew up in but one I frequented often, enough to get a pitter-patter of excitement to visit, an uncertain smell, but a smell nonetheless, the abstract dark blue carpet pattern paving miles of airport walkways, as if it wants to be noticed but just can't be, a disguise of millions of footprints, travelers whose destination is not this place here, a medium of in-between. But the airport walls stand, glass and pleather seats, ready to be used, over and over again by strangers of short distances and long miles.
I feel in my bones a sense of connectedness to the disconnect, the detachment of wanting to be but being ignored, bad-looking flooring and garbage cans and overpriced commodities that have no earthly business costing quadruple their actual worth. But they all try to fit into the context, serve a purpose. A pointless t-shirt: "St. Louis Loves Me." Really? A city that doesn't know your voice, has never heard you cry or recognize that birthmark hidden beneath the nape of your neck; not one footprint on its river shore, a murmur of thought of its history - tensions racial enough to rip a hole in a child's American dream. Why would St. Louis love you? Ah, because you came, drank overpriced coffee, one sugar two creams on the steps of its outer windows, waiting to hitch your kite to the next ride out, far away and never back again. You can't even see the arch from your aerial hover. Not when you refuse to look any way but up, up, up to a heaven you wonder exists, falling closer to its cloudy wings than the ground below that holds you.
January 17, 2011
In Pittsburgh, 1:00pm
A good plain notebook is roomy, gives you the space of walking through an airport the wrong way with still enough room on either side of you for the oncoming travelers clamoring toward the footsteps you just left behind. I want to bulldoze, skate across, spin, spew, spit fire, take a big long metal detector to the hardened ground and find nothing below, throw rocks, chuck stones, lay down and roll away, feel the flat landscape, create foothills and mountains with their earth then sit amongst them and cry, laugh, dream with thoughts of them and get lost in their scent and imagine how I would feel if they were not there. You cannot do that without space that gives you permission to build.
January 18, 2011
I can't get enough, reading what I've written, wishing it could be enough. Reading Stephen King's "On Writing" and he demands 2000 words a day, prolific reading, and a no-less-than six days a week of writing, and that's only if you're a beginner. I already feel inadequate. When you see an unfocused dot that appears to be floating like a feather speck across a country river, you can follow it down with your eyes but can never get further than the rock bed. Maybe the dot I see are periods. Ends of sentences I can't finish. Winter seems buried in my lungs, and I can't cough it out.
So there's a girl I see in my head, maybe the one I'm trying to discover, she's got something to say. She's foul-mouthed and hilarious in certain honest moments. She lives beneath layers and sleeps with the truth but is awake with the mundane - smiles enough, laughs enough, exchanges pleasantries enough with just enough of the just right people. Her eyes stay above water, the rest of her - below. I don't know what she is capable of, what her motives are, or who she really is, but she's starting to nag.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Give Words Away
Every hour alive we spend with them,
the never shutting up friend
or at least since the crack, bump, fizz
when our infant synapses
sparked a billion miracle connections of language
our primal need for expression
the hour when one garbled sound began spinning
infinite galactic combinations
like an inner universe gone wild
the thinking creativity of a child
unique and innumerable as December snowstorms in Detroit. Detroit has worthy children and is worthy of snow, and worthy of this poem, and worthy of a home, you know. As worthy as the breath you just took from the air
don't let it stay there
take what you need then give it back as a word for someone else to hear.
But in any snowstorm in any place
no one snowflake tastes the same
because they fall from different mothers and encode different DNA
and each has a purpose and destination and cries out a different name. Yes, even yours.
Every hour we're alive we hear them
echoing in our silence or screaming or mulling
or concocting the next joke we want to crack, this is gonna be a good one
but we never get our chance
because the conversation we were about to enter has abruptly moved
stood us up and cut us off to another subject room. This one, darker.
So we deposit our uncashed joke for the next time
hoping we'll gain interest from the punchline
but we'll never get to deliver it out loud
because never in our lives will we come across the same lewd inappropriate crowd
ever again. Sometimes,
you know when you've missed your chance and you promise yourself to never miss it again, but the chance won't come
Because the person is gone or
the timings all wrong
or what you should have written has instead written you
the mappings of a different life
and what you shoulda said is where you never arrived.
at least, not yet.
We spend every in between space filled by them
they, dragging us to the cliffs of our fears
and some push us to fall while others call us, running us back to the false safety of our locked and buried tomb
the one six feet below our confidence saying "you're too late" or "it's too soon"
or "stop" or "stay back" or "let it go" or every great once in a while encouraging us: "get back out there, it's just snow. Don't stay inside, hiding from your own two hands, just because you're trembling scared doesn't mean that you can't -- it's just snow keeping you from going exactly where you need to go, so, dig yourself out of this darkness and go. Just try."
Then after we tell ourselves "just try" we stop ourselves dead when we ask ourselves why.
Every hour we are filled by this:
the consciousness of our own running thoughts
running into our own running dreams
running into our doubts and into beliefs
these our smashing talk intersections of soft silhouette streams
and trickling what-if creeks and
contradictory rushing still rivers and
cliff jumping waterfalls powering steamboats of our Big Ideas
aortic engine poetry spinning verses into wheels and
treading self-condemnation and murky mental reservations
and brilliant flashes taking underwater pictures of absolutely nothing
and long shots of hope to recreate what we see, our mind's eye
into art or expressions of half-truths and whole lies
or whole truth half-disguised
as bad jokes or that moment of vulnerable exchange when we try with our eyes
or with our vulgarity or the silent shield of our pride
to coax others to reassure us "I understand what you mean" or "tell me more" or
"I had no idea you felt the same way" or "don't give up hope" or "just try." To hear the words: "just try" is what we chase after. We go such a long way for such a short answer.
Even right now you're comparing my words to the unstoppable judgment of your own, "she's an average poet," or "she's got a point" or even "I could have said it better had I known...that I could be a poet too" and even in your most sedated state of meditative mind
when you're in the seventh hour of your sixteen hour drive
to feel the air of a far place you've never seen or must return to because you saw it, years ago, in your dreams
or when you're in full swing conversation and different words spill from your lips than the ones bottled up in your self-talk head
when you say "sure I will!" but you're actually thinking "why am I saying yes?
just to avoid disapproval from her?"
while she who asks you says "okay, great!" even though she's thinking "sucka, I hooked you again!"
We are a living compilation
of unending unrecorded chatterbox music, staccato struck notes and pianissimo emotions
and here's the inescapable prize we each win
we get to listen to ourselves over and over and over again
talking ourselves into and out of our dreams and backwards and forwards from what we're trying to say even when we don't do what we know we can or don't say what we mean.
We get to listen to the voice saying go
telling us to open the heavy door and pick up today's snow
melt our costume like cold snowflakes on our tongue
face up to the sun
letting out what's in and letting down what's up and breaking through what our walls won't let us shut up or shout into breathless air
from way up there
something's calling your name, beckoning you to speak the music you write and express the punctuation in your brain because every thought ends with a question and every statement starts with a comma, every blank space has an answer and every answer rights a wrong or writes a book or finishes an argument or begins a debate or becomes a song
the one you sing to yourself at the top of your shower lungs when there's no one around or the one that lulls you to sleep when your whole world crashes down.
But here's what we must do. Each one of us. To listen to our soft streams, our trickling thoughts and our voice and our ideas
then give them an outlet to be expressed and shared
maybe just upon paper or sung into the air
or between spaces between backroom confession walls or inside the ear shot distance of a 2AM long distance phone call
to a lover, or a friend, or a daughter, or a father or to that person you never told
what they really mean to you
so you quick use every courageous muscle you can
before you talk yourself into missing your chance.
Let's do this. Speak what's inside out
to live as honestly as we think and share who we are
finding for ourselves a way around
from the depths of our buried inner tomb
keys from our heart to the thoughts locked in that room, you know the one
whether bursting with love or cowering with fear
if we listen closely enough we'll hear
our name being called
those snowflakes of our winter doubts
encouraging us from outside these walls,
saying, "Come out"
and saying,
"Just try."
Because what's within us will within remain
unless we speak ourselves out loud
and give our words away.
the never shutting up friend
or at least since the crack, bump, fizz
when our infant synapses
sparked a billion miracle connections of language
our primal need for expression
the hour when one garbled sound began spinning
infinite galactic combinations
like an inner universe gone wild
the thinking creativity of a child
unique and innumerable as December snowstorms in Detroit. Detroit has worthy children and is worthy of snow, and worthy of this poem, and worthy of a home, you know. As worthy as the breath you just took from the air
don't let it stay there
take what you need then give it back as a word for someone else to hear.
But in any snowstorm in any place
no one snowflake tastes the same
because they fall from different mothers and encode different DNA
and each has a purpose and destination and cries out a different name. Yes, even yours.
Every hour we're alive we hear them
echoing in our silence or screaming or mulling
or concocting the next joke we want to crack, this is gonna be a good one
but we never get our chance
because the conversation we were about to enter has abruptly moved
stood us up and cut us off to another subject room. This one, darker.
So we deposit our uncashed joke for the next time
hoping we'll gain interest from the punchline
but we'll never get to deliver it out loud
because never in our lives will we come across the same lewd inappropriate crowd
ever again. Sometimes,
you know when you've missed your chance and you promise yourself to never miss it again, but the chance won't come
Because the person is gone or
the timings all wrong
or what you should have written has instead written you
the mappings of a different life
and what you shoulda said is where you never arrived.
at least, not yet.
We spend every in between space filled by them
they, dragging us to the cliffs of our fears
and some push us to fall while others call us, running us back to the false safety of our locked and buried tomb
the one six feet below our confidence saying "you're too late" or "it's too soon"
or "stop" or "stay back" or "let it go" or every great once in a while encouraging us: "get back out there, it's just snow. Don't stay inside, hiding from your own two hands, just because you're trembling scared doesn't mean that you can't -- it's just snow keeping you from going exactly where you need to go, so, dig yourself out of this darkness and go. Just try."
Then after we tell ourselves "just try" we stop ourselves dead when we ask ourselves why.
Every hour we are filled by this:
the consciousness of our own running thoughts
running into our own running dreams
running into our doubts and into beliefs
these our smashing talk intersections of soft silhouette streams
and trickling what-if creeks and
contradictory rushing still rivers and
cliff jumping waterfalls powering steamboats of our Big Ideas
aortic engine poetry spinning verses into wheels and
treading self-condemnation and murky mental reservations
and brilliant flashes taking underwater pictures of absolutely nothing
and long shots of hope to recreate what we see, our mind's eye
into art or expressions of half-truths and whole lies
or whole truth half-disguised
as bad jokes or that moment of vulnerable exchange when we try with our eyes
or with our vulgarity or the silent shield of our pride
to coax others to reassure us "I understand what you mean" or "tell me more" or
"I had no idea you felt the same way" or "don't give up hope" or "just try." To hear the words: "just try" is what we chase after. We go such a long way for such a short answer.
Even right now you're comparing my words to the unstoppable judgment of your own, "she's an average poet," or "she's got a point" or even "I could have said it better had I known...that I could be a poet too" and even in your most sedated state of meditative mind
when you're in the seventh hour of your sixteen hour drive
to feel the air of a far place you've never seen or must return to because you saw it, years ago, in your dreams
or when you're in full swing conversation and different words spill from your lips than the ones bottled up in your self-talk head
when you say "sure I will!" but you're actually thinking "why am I saying yes?
just to avoid disapproval from her?"
while she who asks you says "okay, great!" even though she's thinking "sucka, I hooked you again!"
We are a living compilation
of unending unrecorded chatterbox music, staccato struck notes and pianissimo emotions
and here's the inescapable prize we each win
we get to listen to ourselves over and over and over again
talking ourselves into and out of our dreams and backwards and forwards from what we're trying to say even when we don't do what we know we can or don't say what we mean.
We get to listen to the voice saying go
telling us to open the heavy door and pick up today's snow
melt our costume like cold snowflakes on our tongue
face up to the sun
letting out what's in and letting down what's up and breaking through what our walls won't let us shut up or shout into breathless air
from way up there
something's calling your name, beckoning you to speak the music you write and express the punctuation in your brain because every thought ends with a question and every statement starts with a comma, every blank space has an answer and every answer rights a wrong or writes a book or finishes an argument or begins a debate or becomes a song
the one you sing to yourself at the top of your shower lungs when there's no one around or the one that lulls you to sleep when your whole world crashes down.
But here's what we must do. Each one of us. To listen to our soft streams, our trickling thoughts and our voice and our ideas
then give them an outlet to be expressed and shared
maybe just upon paper or sung into the air
or between spaces between backroom confession walls or inside the ear shot distance of a 2AM long distance phone call
to a lover, or a friend, or a daughter, or a father or to that person you never told
what they really mean to you
so you quick use every courageous muscle you can
before you talk yourself into missing your chance.
Let's do this. Speak what's inside out
to live as honestly as we think and share who we are
finding for ourselves a way around
from the depths of our buried inner tomb
keys from our heart to the thoughts locked in that room, you know the one
whether bursting with love or cowering with fear
if we listen closely enough we'll hear
our name being called
those snowflakes of our winter doubts
encouraging us from outside these walls,
saying, "Come out"
and saying,
"Just try."
Because what's within us will within remain
unless we speak ourselves out loud
and give our words away.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Speak For Yourself
I dreamt that I trudged on, reading the wrong book. Finally I asked it why it would not speak to me. It told me, "There comes a time when you must speak for yourself." Then I closed the book to write my own.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Now, You Know
I wrote.
Thinking for what felt like years, he said, "I don't get it."
"Ah," I agreed. "Now, you know how I feel."
Thinking for what felt like years, he said, "I don't get it."
"Ah," I agreed. "Now, you know how I feel."
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Driftwood
i never met a
driftwood poem
i haven't seen.
how can you
straight brow numb clasp not break, just a little
when fibers float your eyes along
way, this way drift, tepid,
toward riverbank scenes moon drippings
crackling wilderness
moss mapped trails...
exhilarating risk, faint nature
hunting you in lonesome
scamper
cold
firelight, ash, quiet. smoke,
in a wet night.
one light log on a long river.
reflecting,
luring, places you've never been
through you
a million uncrawled poems
yet a word
is all you dream.
driftwood poem
i haven't seen.
how can you
straight brow numb clasp not break, just a little
when fibers float your eyes along
way, this way drift, tepid,
toward riverbank scenes moon drippings
crackling wilderness
moss mapped trails...
exhilarating risk, faint nature
hunting you in lonesome
scamper
cold
firelight, ash, quiet. smoke,
in a wet night.
one light log on a long river.
reflecting,
luring, places you've never been
through you
a million uncrawled poems
yet a word
is all you dream.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
What Art Is
Art is knowing that there is more than what is there in front of you. A basic element, it is not an ability but a subtlety; not a course rope capturing the bull, but kicking ordinary dust in a morning parking lot and knowing that in a time and place you almost were, something was captured beneath you. You dig with art to find out what it is. And almost always, if you plunge deep enough, there is a hidden limb below. Whether it reaches for you or you reach for it - it is you who has been captured. And somehow, the person kicking away the afternoon dust is not the same person who kicked it that morning.
Art is the risk of self-immersion into dimensions of form, thought, light, and expression. Art is our inner shadow, that, no matter how still or forgotten, has light cast upon it from our deepest places. We breathe art even if its hem does not unravel until we are too old or it is too late to throw it on to canvas or clay or stage or photograph or paper. But if we are breathing, art is too. Art is never too late.
Art is the moment when we risk feeling stupid, when we dip even the smallest cup past our cool surface and bring scalding water to our lips, or our hands, or our bellies, and then describe in some outward way how it makes us feel. Art does not heal, it exposes, and the rest of life mends what is left broken or breaks what once was fixed. Pouring salt or sugar or bandages or just letting God's air mix with our blood to close what we cannot by ourselves heal - that is the rest of this life.
Art is not the miracle, it is our attempt to explain how it happened, or why it happened, or how a cup of coffee and a conversation can mean nothing one day and then everything the next.
Art is the broken megaphone whispering "I am not perfect" and inside its echo is you.
Art is not explained well. Not to us as adults, or when we were kids, or to our kids, or even to the elderly now who graph memories like Picasso as they talk to themselves and are never told, "That is art." That we can kick dust for those who cannot kick dust themselves yet find both them and us below - that is art. The lesser of art is telling them what you found; the greater of art is them discovering what you have said.
Art is the silence of looking out the window and noticing the world, then rising up to experience it.
Art is for the sideways, for the back of the school theater room or the kids who wear elementary splattered smocks and whose clay teacup always turned out so much better than mine. We learn fast and we learn early: "Art is not for me." So we go a long and different route. But at some point in our lives we turn enough sideways and highways and back alleyways ourselves that we notice a different kind of shadow following us, an inner kind that casts opposite from the laws we know, yet subtly we know - it is there. So we pick up a pen or a camera or an instrument, a thought or a chisel or a phone, and then try to explain what we mean.
Art is the risk of self-immersion into dimensions of form, thought, light, and expression. Art is our inner shadow, that, no matter how still or forgotten, has light cast upon it from our deepest places. We breathe art even if its hem does not unravel until we are too old or it is too late to throw it on to canvas or clay or stage or photograph or paper. But if we are breathing, art is too. Art is never too late.
Art is the moment when we risk feeling stupid, when we dip even the smallest cup past our cool surface and bring scalding water to our lips, or our hands, or our bellies, and then describe in some outward way how it makes us feel. Art does not heal, it exposes, and the rest of life mends what is left broken or breaks what once was fixed. Pouring salt or sugar or bandages or just letting God's air mix with our blood to close what we cannot by ourselves heal - that is the rest of this life.
Art is not the miracle, it is our attempt to explain how it happened, or why it happened, or how a cup of coffee and a conversation can mean nothing one day and then everything the next.
Art is the broken megaphone whispering "I am not perfect" and inside its echo is you.
Art is not explained well. Not to us as adults, or when we were kids, or to our kids, or even to the elderly now who graph memories like Picasso as they talk to themselves and are never told, "That is art." That we can kick dust for those who cannot kick dust themselves yet find both them and us below - that is art. The lesser of art is telling them what you found; the greater of art is them discovering what you have said.
Art is the silence of looking out the window and noticing the world, then rising up to experience it.
Art is for the sideways, for the back of the school theater room or the kids who wear elementary splattered smocks and whose clay teacup always turned out so much better than mine. We learn fast and we learn early: "Art is not for me." So we go a long and different route. But at some point in our lives we turn enough sideways and highways and back alleyways ourselves that we notice a different kind of shadow following us, an inner kind that casts opposite from the laws we know, yet subtly we know - it is there. So we pick up a pen or a camera or an instrument, a thought or a chisel or a phone, and then try to explain what we mean.
Monday, July 11, 2011
From the Victim to the Viewers
Driving, I write lyrics into the air, steer beats into my wheels. Thinking about the hundreds of thousands of socially displaced pre-teens and teenagers who suffer silent punishment against the brutal peer and cultural measurement of what is acceptably normal, my heart breaks. Some are shunned at home, some are loved at home, but what has been tragically proven is that bullying can kill, and at the very least, torment.
While I was driving last Tuesday, railroad tracks chased after me in parallel desperation, waiting for me to CRASH into this mental intersection, this common crossroad where invisible kids everywhere, in every school, walk the same gravel steel train lines alone. And for many years, in many different ways, they ask us to help them. They ask us to save them, not just watch them, as they slowly, then suddenly, disappear.
take a grass blade
and slice straight down my spine
any way you cut me up I don't fit right, anywhere
walking gravel rusted steel train lines
walking gravel rusted steel train life
stone throw miles and thread bare broken wings
can't see a thing but two buried hands
that have forgotten how to reach you
with your back to me
don't know how to ask or beg you back my life
mute memory tells me lie and knife fight for my peace
to not die, in silence
bet you didn't know you're on my mind
bet you didn't know i'd need you to survive
could you spare a drink of your time, I'm burnt completely dry
deliver me Sunday mercy, here's your chance to save a life
or does your cross not cross mine
won't you get on the train
won't you get on the train
i'll forgive you all of your hate
if you'll forgive me mine
teach me how to ask, just this time
I know how far I am
I know how far I am from where you are
I'm closer than you think, I'm not too far, gone
walking gravel rusted steel train lines
I'm walking gravel rusted steel train life
While I was driving last Tuesday, railroad tracks chased after me in parallel desperation, waiting for me to CRASH into this mental intersection, this common crossroad where invisible kids everywhere, in every school, walk the same gravel steel train lines alone. And for many years, in many different ways, they ask us to help them. They ask us to save them, not just watch them, as they slowly, then suddenly, disappear.
take a grass blade
and slice straight down my spine
any way you cut me up I don't fit right, anywhere
walking gravel rusted steel train lines
walking gravel rusted steel train life
stone throw miles and thread bare broken wings
can't see a thing but two buried hands
that have forgotten how to reach you
with your back to me
don't know how to ask or beg you back my life
mute memory tells me lie and knife fight for my peace
to not die, in silence
bet you didn't know you're on my mind
bet you didn't know i'd need you to survive
could you spare a drink of your time, I'm burnt completely dry
deliver me Sunday mercy, here's your chance to save a life
or does your cross not cross mine
won't you get on the train
won't you get on the train
i'll forgive you all of your hate
if you'll forgive me mine
teach me how to ask, just this time
I know how far I am
I know how far I am from where you are
I'm closer than you think, I'm not too far, gone
walking gravel rusted steel train lines
I'm walking gravel rusted steel train life
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Ode #2 to Jack Johnson: Weather Girl
Ain't nothing else for me to do but wait
Salty stormy pale moon rain ain't going away
Least not any time soon
Forecast calls gloom
Thousand beautiful spoons til one fork came along
Who went so right, who went so wrong
It's not all there, but it's not all gone
Remember those two turtles by the sea
You said they were just like you and me
You said, "Come live with me and be my shell
We'll live life full and live it well
Play by the sea, just you and me
I'll be your weather girl
Cause if we're together
No matter what falls from the sky I'll call for sun"
Ain't nothing else for me to do but wait
For you to call in a different fate
Forecast sun instead of rain
Bright noon love instead of pain
Let's change what could have been to what still could be
Change dry land back to our dreams
Won't you come out of your shell
I'll love you full and love you well
Come back and be
My weather girl
Play by the sea, just you and me
Salty stormy pale moon rain ain't going away
Least not any time soon
Forecast calls gloom
Thousand beautiful spoons til one fork came along
Who went so right, who went so wrong
It's not all there, but it's not all gone
Remember those two turtles by the sea
You said they were just like you and me
You said, "Come live with me and be my shell
We'll live life full and live it well
Play by the sea, just you and me
I'll be your weather girl
Cause if we're together
No matter what falls from the sky I'll call for sun"
Ain't nothing else for me to do but wait
For you to call in a different fate
Forecast sun instead of rain
Bright noon love instead of pain
Let's change what could have been to what still could be
Change dry land back to our dreams
Won't you come out of your shell
I'll love you full and love you well
Come back and be
My weather girl
Play by the sea, just you and me
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Life Observation #4
I observed life and it observed me back. strangely,
neither of us could discern the act from the audience,
or if what we saw was the finger of our own hypocrisy
pointing back at me.
neither of us could discern the act from the audience,
or if what we saw was the finger of our own hypocrisy
pointing back at me.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Playing with Plastic
Yesterday, Joey's plastic train officially chugged itself out of life. Today, Addy's plastic talking dollhouse - drained. "It doesn't work, Mommy," Joey affirms, holding up a tiny vacuum cleaner that, for seven short days, plugged into its dollhouse outlet to make a four second whirring sound. The same one Joey makes on rainy afternoons when an airplane whizzes across his imagination.
I gave the house six new triple A tries last week. Today, all six officially failed the test of even mediocre sale price quality. On the other hand, Joey's Duracell's have charged and chugged for almost a year. What to do with these lifeless plastic patients scattered in my basement? Instinct nearly jumped me up, running to grab my surgical screwdriver and a fistful of those powercharged tubes from the closet stockpile, then race back downstairs and, with confident craftsmanship - unscrew, remove, replace, and rescrew talking, moving life back into my children's toy universe.
Instead, I felt a peculiar pause. Next, a draw towards my phone (our computer is with Danny in Chicago), and a blip of inspiration to write.
When Joey wants to play with his train set, we dump out over fifty various sized track, train, and accessory pieces. Between the three of us and Dude, we each entrust, more or less, the same unimpressive engineering capability. The only reason I wind up as architect is because my fingers have 30 years of dexterity built into them. Joey - two. Addy - nearly four. One day, at the vertex of generations, we will interchange abilities, and both of them will race ahead as I run, maybe speed walk in tears, behind. We can't catch those moving, transparent years of change, fastidious as we may try, when life suddenly glimmers in a place your memory doesn't remember. One day they won't remember needing me because they won't. At least, not to assemble a train track.
So after a tense twenty minute experiment of confused construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, I typically wind up searching desperately for just one more of those curvy pieces to connect that small, I-almost-got-it gap (usually found upstairs under the couch, shirking its duties with an assortment of other temporarily misplaced items).
Once I extract the final puzzle piece from its hiding place and snap it into the maze - whala! Joey can get at it. He will proceed to place the train on the track then will pick up a plastic lever that he can push or pull an inch either way, appointing himself pleasant dictator of the train's directional fate. Other than a few rearrangements of accessories (trees, railroad crossing signs, etc.), Joey remains idle, observing from the side as battery lungs puff Chinese plastic up and around and through - over, and over, and over again. The train moves. He sits. Writing now, I realize how strange it is to watch a child watch plastic play for him.
Addy is sitting on her knees, low to the ground, perfecting her tiny, colorful plastic dollhouse people. "They are having an outdoor party," she informs me quietly without looking up. I hadn't asked her a question. But she could feel me thinking behind her, mesmerized by her long attention and focus. Maybe she wanted to reassure me by her unprompted response that she was just fine, mom. That batteries whirring four seconds of sound would not affect her in the least. She was letting me know that I can fix something that feels "off" just by writing. She has an amazing gift of intuition, something she is teaching me to attune; the faint low sound of our mind creating thought only when we listen. So I do, writing what I know I should.
Our house is full of plastic. I know we will buy and continue, with true gratitude, to receive battery operated plastic toys. Big and small. Inexpensive to wildly exorbitant. I don't feel a tugging judgment of disdain against these toys or a need to replace them with sticks and rocks and various sized pasta. In fact, I find them almost comforting these days, visual reminders after we put the kids to bed, all four of us exhausted, that, yes indeed, we do have kids. Here's the mess to prove it. But what inspired me to write versus replacing all those dead batteries today is that I know how much life churns and bursts and stirs inside my children, inside of me. We have hands to move, legs to run and jump, voices to create boisterous sounds of chugging trains and whirring vacuums and every other noisy jarbled undecipherable expression of our imaginations that swings us from jungle vines and throws outdoor parties indoors. God gave us these gifts - our children, of course, and all that life sizzling within them, within ourselves. And while some days I feel drained and ready to flip my switch to off, it is God's blessings, namely, my love for my kids, their love for me, that teaches me just how irreplaceable they are, how irreplaceable today is.
Joey returns to me after wandering around in aimless agenda, still holding the tiny plastic vacuum. "Mommy, it doesn't work," he reminds me again. I ask him to hand it to me. I crouch down on the ground with him like a magician about to reveal her trick. Addy leaves her outdoor party, curious.
"Watch this kids."
Then, charging my own inner battery, the one I sometimes think is too tired to work, I start to make a loud funny whirring sound, creating fast moving little vacuum lines in the basement carpet. Laughing, I see their eyes light up. That sparkling little light of joy inside of them that flashes excitedly when they are reminded that they, too, have magical powers that can animate toys to life, fly planes with their imaginations, and make plastic vacuums come alive the very moment they do.
Then I know. Here Jesus is - our spiritual charger - inside my basement, inside my words - His grace recharging me, recharging us all with the one irreplaceable, unending, unfailing power source - His love. It is what moves us, lifts us, charges us, and provides us with all that we are and all that we have. And in unexpected and sometimes funny ways, by His love He performs everyday miracles, great and small.
Today's miracle? He stopped me to play, paused me to write, then used lifeless plastic toys to move me.
I gave the house six new triple A tries last week. Today, all six officially failed the test of even mediocre sale price quality. On the other hand, Joey's Duracell's have charged and chugged for almost a year. What to do with these lifeless plastic patients scattered in my basement? Instinct nearly jumped me up, running to grab my surgical screwdriver and a fistful of those powercharged tubes from the closet stockpile, then race back downstairs and, with confident craftsmanship - unscrew, remove, replace, and rescrew talking, moving life back into my children's toy universe.
Instead, I felt a peculiar pause. Next, a draw towards my phone (our computer is with Danny in Chicago), and a blip of inspiration to write.
When Joey wants to play with his train set, we dump out over fifty various sized track, train, and accessory pieces. Between the three of us and Dude, we each entrust, more or less, the same unimpressive engineering capability. The only reason I wind up as architect is because my fingers have 30 years of dexterity built into them. Joey - two. Addy - nearly four. One day, at the vertex of generations, we will interchange abilities, and both of them will race ahead as I run, maybe speed walk in tears, behind. We can't catch those moving, transparent years of change, fastidious as we may try, when life suddenly glimmers in a place your memory doesn't remember. One day they won't remember needing me because they won't. At least, not to assemble a train track.
So after a tense twenty minute experiment of confused construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, I typically wind up searching desperately for just one more of those curvy pieces to connect that small, I-almost-got-it gap (usually found upstairs under the couch, shirking its duties with an assortment of other temporarily misplaced items).
Once I extract the final puzzle piece from its hiding place and snap it into the maze - whala! Joey can get at it. He will proceed to place the train on the track then will pick up a plastic lever that he can push or pull an inch either way, appointing himself pleasant dictator of the train's directional fate. Other than a few rearrangements of accessories (trees, railroad crossing signs, etc.), Joey remains idle, observing from the side as battery lungs puff Chinese plastic up and around and through - over, and over, and over again. The train moves. He sits. Writing now, I realize how strange it is to watch a child watch plastic play for him.
Addy is sitting on her knees, low to the ground, perfecting her tiny, colorful plastic dollhouse people. "They are having an outdoor party," she informs me quietly without looking up. I hadn't asked her a question. But she could feel me thinking behind her, mesmerized by her long attention and focus. Maybe she wanted to reassure me by her unprompted response that she was just fine, mom. That batteries whirring four seconds of sound would not affect her in the least. She was letting me know that I can fix something that feels "off" just by writing. She has an amazing gift of intuition, something she is teaching me to attune; the faint low sound of our mind creating thought only when we listen. So I do, writing what I know I should.
Our house is full of plastic. I know we will buy and continue, with true gratitude, to receive battery operated plastic toys. Big and small. Inexpensive to wildly exorbitant. I don't feel a tugging judgment of disdain against these toys or a need to replace them with sticks and rocks and various sized pasta. In fact, I find them almost comforting these days, visual reminders after we put the kids to bed, all four of us exhausted, that, yes indeed, we do have kids. Here's the mess to prove it. But what inspired me to write versus replacing all those dead batteries today is that I know how much life churns and bursts and stirs inside my children, inside of me. We have hands to move, legs to run and jump, voices to create boisterous sounds of chugging trains and whirring vacuums and every other noisy jarbled undecipherable expression of our imaginations that swings us from jungle vines and throws outdoor parties indoors. God gave us these gifts - our children, of course, and all that life sizzling within them, within ourselves. And while some days I feel drained and ready to flip my switch to off, it is God's blessings, namely, my love for my kids, their love for me, that teaches me just how irreplaceable they are, how irreplaceable today is.
Joey returns to me after wandering around in aimless agenda, still holding the tiny plastic vacuum. "Mommy, it doesn't work," he reminds me again. I ask him to hand it to me. I crouch down on the ground with him like a magician about to reveal her trick. Addy leaves her outdoor party, curious.
"Watch this kids."
Then, charging my own inner battery, the one I sometimes think is too tired to work, I start to make a loud funny whirring sound, creating fast moving little vacuum lines in the basement carpet. Laughing, I see their eyes light up. That sparkling little light of joy inside of them that flashes excitedly when they are reminded that they, too, have magical powers that can animate toys to life, fly planes with their imaginations, and make plastic vacuums come alive the very moment they do.
Then I know. Here Jesus is - our spiritual charger - inside my basement, inside my words - His grace recharging me, recharging us all with the one irreplaceable, unending, unfailing power source - His love. It is what moves us, lifts us, charges us, and provides us with all that we are and all that we have. And in unexpected and sometimes funny ways, by His love He performs everyday miracles, great and small.
Today's miracle? He stopped me to play, paused me to write, then used lifeless plastic toys to move me.
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