Come to Be

What I want to write about is the day after Christmas. I feel like the day after Christmas has always plagued me with a sense of disappointment and disillusionment that fairly boots all the joy of the Christmas season clear out the door. As a kid (and, let’s face it, as an adult too) I can remember constantly feeling, on that most dread day, that Christmas had not been enough. There weren’t enough presents, not enough merriment, there was just not enough time for all the cookie-baking, carol singing, present wrapping, and everything else that was supposed to make this “the most wonderful time of the year.” Every year, it is easy to feel like I didn’t get enough Christmas.

I guess this is not a surprising state of affairs for a culture in which every experience is touted as a pinnacle, a higher peak than the last. But I think what is surprising to me is that I often get the same sense spiritually. I think this has been the first year that I have plunged into the church year and found what a leap into darkness this first season is. Advent, after all, is proclaimed as a coming light to people currently walking in darkness. But this season which begins in darkness is supposed to grow ever brighter until suddenly, blindingly, Christ, the self-proclaimed light of the world, enters the picture in the form of a vulnerable God, a weak baby that puts to shame all my high-minded expectations of myself.

This is how it was preached to me this Christmas Eve at a large, Texan, Methodist church. The preacher was telling a story about how he and his brother used to go every year to visit his Grandmother’s house, and, most particularly his Grandmother’s swimming pool. It was just a cement hole in the backyard that had filled, over the years, with rain water and leaves and branches and all manner of scummy, slimy things that lurked in murky waters. The point of the games was to play near the water, without actually falling in, which would obviously result in death. So, as you might expect from a story like this, one day this boy had fallen into the pool and was thrashing around, expecting doom any moment when the college kid who lived next door saw what was happening and jumped the intervening fence to come and rescue him, pull him out, clap him on the back a couple times and absently ask, are you okay? before striding back over the fence.

You know the metaphor, if you’ve grown up around churches. I can’t tell you how many times I heard variations on the same story. I was in peril and Jesus dragged me out by the scruff of my neck and slapped me on the shore to dry off. Hooray. The light has come into the darkness and blinded all those whose pupils did not dilate quickly enough and left them dazed, seeing fuzzy patterns on the undersides of their eyelids. No wonder the day after Christmas looks so bleak. We expected a downdraft of glitter on the breeze, the strumming of harps that would indicate that the Great Miracle where Everything becomes Different had finally, finally come. But no, this year is just as bleak as the last.

But what I assert is that Christmas is not like the sudden appearance of someone coming to pull you out of a swimming pool. I much prefer Dante’s immortal lines:

“In the middle of the road of my life
I awoke in the dark wood
where the true way was wholly lost”

I acknowledge the darkness of the woods, and the lostness of my condition. I acknowledge the fragility and weakness that comes with my humanity, the ease with which the very essence of my life can be undone, and the wickedness within me that I have come to know through the terrifying intimacy of a long acquaintance. It is very dark, in this wood, in this world, but my experience has taught me, at least as far as my own story is concerned, that God’s way of salvation is not to pluck us out of the darkness, out of the confusion, and set us on a high hilltop from which we can never be moved. It seems to me more like when Christmas happens (and never forget, Christmas can happen at any time of the year) suddenly—zap!—someone is there in the darkness with you.

I also acknowledge mystery, my dears, and so this may be all I can say. I do not know the ways of God, the shapes he makes as he moves through the darkness of a dark wood. Is she there to comfort, to shield? Is he there to guide? Will she take you down an ever darker road, the road of perils, for reasons unknown? Will he travel close at your side or on a distant but parallel path so that you can just barely follow his adjacent movements through the trees? I don’t know how to answer these questions and at this point I am not ever all that sure of the validity of the question. When does the one being led really understand the leadership of the one showing the way? If I knew the terrain, I would not have come to find myself so lost.

Well, then. The one thing I know, the one truth that is very large if we allow it to be, is the truth of presence. God, who was once only very far away has come very close; God has come to be. With us. So perhaps on the day after Christmas it seems as if nothing has changed because on the first brush, this change seems like such a small one. But my hope is that it is a small change like changing the angle of trajectory is a small change. It’s only in traveling the course that any real difference can be discerned.

I could not believe in a God who pulls me out of all my problems, dusts me off, and sends me on my way, because I’ve never seen that happen. But perhaps I could place my hope in a God who zaps himself into my darkness, who leads me in the way mysterious, destination unknown, but who is, at the end of the day, there.

I could, perhaps, believe in the God who has come to be.

Peace for the New Year,
S.

Sugar Rush

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear! Yes, I know, I know. It's been since November (early November) since I last posted. Ouch. You have no idea, you will never know how many times during the week I think to myself, especially in this Advent season. You have no idea of the lofty goals I sent for beautiful, meditative reflections for each(!) week(!) of the Advent season. Unfortunately, as you can see, that has not been the case. I don't really know what to say. Although there have been no recent catastrophes (in my life at least) things, on the whole, have been fairly stressful. Work, family stuff, and a busy social life all keep me far away from the inner quiet that I try to return to each Advent season. This year, I have been working on being more self-reflective, more present to myself and my internal state of being. Unfortunately, that has not been terribly conducive to posting lengthy monologues for all the web-net to see. And again, alas, today will not be the day that this gets accomplished. But I have two other offerings for you, besides stating that I am determined to get at least one quality post up before Christmas.

Although the limitations of technology prevent me from being able to let everyone taste my recent creations, I can at least offer these lovely pictures of some of the things that have been consuming my time:







May I introduce Cranberry Pecan Bars, Hazelnut Tea Cookies, and Cashew Toffee? Nice to make your acquaintance! These little gems have been my joy and crown this holiday season. I am a rabid traditionalist at Christmastime in particular, so when I get home with the fam it's going to be nothing but the classics: sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies topped with a Hershey's kiss, and maybe a batch of chocolate cheesecake bars. But because I have an opportunity to be traditional once I go home, while I'm here in Buffalo I have the freedom to be wildly experimental, particularly because here I can feed people so many more cookies than my constantly dieting family would ever have permitted. And, voila! Batches of beautiful, terrifying boiling sugar start appearing on every burner of the stove.

Terrifying, you say? But why terrifying? That seems like something of an overstatement, but those of you who have ever done any sort of candymaking know where I'm coming from. I myself was permanently scarred by a batch of...something I was trying to make in middle school with my best friend Traci when something went terribly wrong. I'll spare you the gory details, but somehow all that was left when the dust settled was a sheet of wax paper covered in crystallized, non-carmelized sugar blobs which somebody was going to have to eat. We're Irish dammit, which means we will never waste food, no matter how wretched or cavity inducing.

But even in the sensible, adult world of well-equipped candy production, the field is rife with danger, there's the worry about burning or about undercooking, flame control, rate of water loss, and hello! can we imagine what even a drop of 300 degree melted sugar would do if you got it on your skin. It's what my great love and mentor Alton Brown refers to as "culinary napalm." Needless to say, there is much to fear in this brave new world of candy making.

But, feeling adventurous, I decided to jump in with both feet, trying not one, but two different sugar melting recipes for the consumption of my dearest friends and colleagues. These were both made on the same night, and let me tell you, tension in the kitchen was high. First gasp! there was not, as I had assumed, any light corn syrup in the house! Then, the panic of substitution--will honey change the flavor? Adding the cranberries, which immediately clumped in the middle of the pan as they cooled the sugar in the immediate surroundings before everything melted again.

And the toffee, oh toffee should only be attempted by those with nerves of steel! After a brief stir, you actually remove your spoon from the pan and keep an eagle eye on the thermometer as the the temperature climbs higher and higher, agonizingly slowly while the color of your mixture goes from buttery gold to taupe, to pale brown, to a rich caramelly color but by this point you've bit your fingernails down to stubs, knowing that only a few measly degrees stand between you and burnt sugar madness while the climb of the temperature slows to a crawl, 296, 297 and you're ready to rip the whole thing of the burner, sure that you smell charring in the air but you force your hand away from the dial as beads of sweat run down your forehead, 298, 299 and time seems to stand still as every ounce of your willpower is poured into waiting for that last degree, trusting that sweet, grandmotherly Paula Deen is not leading you into rack and ruin, willing yourself to holding on as the caramel darkens that one last shade...300! You kill the flame but now it's the clock your racing as you add salt, vanilla, and thick meaty cashews you've been toasting in the oven and stir frantically to get everything combined before the sticky mess is forever welded to your sauce pan--but no, it's out now, it's on the cookie sheet and cooling innocuously, the residual heat slowly melting the pieces of fine Belgian chocolate you casually scattered over the top as though to say, "What, this old thing? Why it's the easiest thing in the world to make!"

Phew, I get tired just reliving the whole experience. But it helped me to understand the whole Bungee-jumping, jumping out of airplanes phenomena. What a rush! Of course, next time the stakes won't be so high, now that I'm a seasoned veteran, which means I've got to find something new, something even more terrifyingly risky to stick my chefly neck out on...oh, and everything did turn out deliciously, thanks for asking.

But, of course, I understand if victuals are not what you came here looking for. After all, this is, by and large, not written to be a food blog, even if those are what I spend all my time reading. Okay, well if you came here looking for food for the soul, the best I can offer is some warmed up leftovers like this, or maybe this if you're in the mood for some Marian devotion (and, let's face it, who isn't?).

And soon. That's all I can say now is soon. I hope that the beautiful, nourishing words are given to me soon, that space to reflect and be refreshed is soon given to me. And if that is the case then, I promise, I will pass some along to you!

Little Deaths

This may sound ever so slightly macabre, but I've been thinking a lot lately about death. Don't worry, I have good reasons for it. Not so much the celebration of Halloween, which I wrote about in my last post. That holiday I view more as the ultimate postmodern celebration of our limitless potential to create and live out of alternate selves, anyway. But, the nearby holidays of All Souls Day, and in Hispanic cultures, Dia de los Muertos, started the ball rolling on this one. This was the first year that All Souls Day was really brought to my attention through the church I attend here. The music chosen for that morning was the most beautiful requiem mass, composed by someone called Gabriel Faure, about whom I know nothing, but I suspect Dan knows a whole lot, so you could ask him if you really wanted to know. They also had a reading of something called a necrology, which is just a list of all the names of people from the church who have died since last All Souls Day. I didn't know any of the people named, but it was a time to remember people in my own life who have died. And then this Sunday we again had a very somber tone in a sermon talking about the passage in Matthew about the narrow way, how difficult it is to follow Jesus, how demanding, how so much is expected of us. And also we directed our attention for a while to the needs of the world, war and hunger and human cruelty.

The way I see it, this is all very timely because fall to me is a season of many little deaths. Even if it's only the death of the beautiful weather that we'd enjoyed all week, the last gasp of summer that we awoke to find so abruptly extinguished on Saturday (!!!) morning. Each leaf is dying for another winter, the grass is dying, the flowers in our front yard are dying. The summer season is dying, more slowly and gently than I expected, but it passes nonetheless. I don't really think of winter as a time of death, but more as a time of rest, a long nap where the world dreams white dreams, a time of quiet and reflection and hopefully building strength. It's hard, though, to give up summer. It's hard to give up the leaves and the warm days and the busy calendars. But I feel like the most important thing to do is to become at home with the change. I think that's why fall is gradual, why things go slowly, bit by bit. Alicia and I were talking recently about how we need to learn to be at home with the cold, at home with winter, to not resist it with the way that we talk or think about it. It's a neutral thing, really, winter is. Even a good thing. And we'll make it through so much better if every puff of icy wind doesn't make us grumble about the wretchedness of life.

That's a thing that seldom gets mentioned when we speak of all these little deaths. A death can, in fact, be a good thing. It could be the death of a part of yourself that was holding you back, that didn't belong to the truest version of yourself. It could be the death of a terrible season of your life, allowing you to be reborn into something new. It could be the stripping away of something which you clung to which is no longer necessary to your life. Little deaths.

So here are my reflection questions for fall: What is dying in my life right now? What do I need to let go of, whether with joy or with regret? And what could I lay aside for a winter rest, knowing that I can take it up again in another season?

Spooktacular!

Okay, now I know this is belated, but HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Contrary to rumors floating around out there, this is not my first Halloween, though the celebration did kind of fade into oblivion for a while, due to my very Evangelical upbringing. But this Halloween was special somehow, I was just so excited to celebrate. Then again, I am always excited to celebrate everything. But this Halloween had pretty much everything a girl could ask for. I decorated home and office with creepy fake spider webs and little ghosties and a cardboard chandelier decorated with skulls and pumpkins and tombstones and the newest edition to our house, a very cute gargoyle who I have named Victor (10 points if you can guess why!). I also got to carve my very own pumpkin, during our first ever Art Night (more details about that in a future post, I hope). But basically I spent three hours working on this masterpiece of a pumpkin and I am so proud. I made this design which is supposed to look like gothic, twisted sort of stained glass windows, and then on the other side I carved this deranged raven-bird creature. The windows aren't really carved through, I just took off the top layer of the pumpkin and the light kind of glows though the pumpkins walls in this eerie way. It's great and I hope to be able to post pictures soon.

Also, for Halloween I got to dress up in a homemade costume. I was a gypsy, which was fun, but easily confusing as I also kind of looked like a pirate chick. This effect was enhanced by the fact that I was wearing enough eye-liner to be mistaken for Johnny Depp's sister. If only. But I love costumes and I loved that everybody else had costumes too. So creative! We had Princess Leia, Mary Poppins, a Marine, a suicide bomber (very un-PC, but what can I say?) a reindeer, Clark Kent, a hippie...man, it just goes on. And this motley cast of characters was all assembled at Becca's house for a Halloween party!!! I guess at this age, being past the era of trick-or-treating (sadly) a party is pretty much the best way to spend Halloween. And this was my favorite kind of party: not too many people, lots of friendly faces and one very hysterical conversation about the origins of tapioca. The only thing that was missing was trick-or-treaters, but my impression was that that isn't really something that's done here on the good ol' west side. Oh well. All in all, a practically perfect Halloween!

S.

P.S.--Oh, and I almost forgot, happy Feast of All Souls!

Stuff I Like

Okay, here is the latest installment in "S. attempts to be grateful--Beautiful Things Edition:"

--The changing leaves. Barrage of gorgeousness, and today I get to drive for an hour and a half, by myself, marinating in beauty.

--Getting to see crew teams on a little snatch of the Niagara river on the way from being able to get a flat tire replaced for free! Thank you warranty!

--My omelette this morning--I used spinach, so it is sunny yellow, orange from the carrots, green from the spinach, and red from the hot sauce. Beautiful and tasty!

--Flamenco dancing. Live. In person. Good seats. Amazing music. Unbelievable dancing. OMG, I think the entire course of my life has just shifted. When you next hear from me, I will have exchanged a quiet, Buffalonian office existence for a gypsy camp, a billowing skirt, and a pair of clicky shoes.

And this. Discovered via another website of which I am fond, godspy.com, such a witty, funny, accurate read. Like reading my life story, in embarrassing vividness. I just had to share with all of my pea-coat wearing, facebook member, Onion reading, unpaid internship working white friends! Enjoy!

Okay, now I am off to a wedding, to freeze my booty off in a dress that is completely seasonally inappropriate, but unfortunately one of the only wedding appropriate pieces of attire in my entire wardrobe. No, believe me, it is, I've thought long and hard about this.

But I promise that, soon and very soon, you will get some long, thoughtful, meaty post. Actually, it will be about dancing, I can almost guarantee, considering that's just about all I think about. Yes, still the only thing I think about. Okay then.

Toodles!
S.

Antidote

Greetings, faithful folk who read this blog...

I don't have much of interest to say today, unfortunately. Generally these days I feel like a bathtub that's had the stopper pulled out and am watching all of my energy swirl away down the drain. But I am trying to start something new and I hope if I make mention of it in such a public forum it will be that much closer to becoming a reality. I want to become more aware of what is around me, particularly of all the good that is in the world that I see everyday and want to move even deeper into not just noticing, but fully embracing and appreciating what is around me. So I want to start asking myself the question, "What is the most beautiful thing you saw all day?" Maybe it was a bright red leaf on the sidewalk, or a feather or a smiling face. But whatever it was, I just want to have noticed it that day. So, for starters, yesterday was a tie because I saw, over a fence, the mossy roof of a little gazebo that had a beautiful wrought iron ridgepole on top. And I also got to see the sun setting over the lake yesterday and the sky was a deep color of pink and the water was blue and the behind me was my favorite color of deep blue...take my word for it, describing sunsets is not my strong suit, but this one was stellar.

Today it was the fake cobwebs that I put all around the railing of our balcony to decorate for Halloween! I love decorating and I love holidays and these cobwebs took me back to happy memories of our Halloween party in Australia. Maybe this year I'll even whip up another batch of those poop brownies that we enjoyed!!

Who knows, in the future I might even try to incorporate a little photography into the exercise. If only I weren't so averse to my current camera...oh well. What about you? What is the most beautiful thing you've seen today?

S.

Love Poems, of a sort

Now, after neglecting you after a full month, I will post twice in one day. The reason is this: after feeling crappy and tired all day yesterday, today I felt even MORE crappy and tired, and so decided to stay home from work. Who knows when spare time like this will come upon me again? I figure I better make the most of it.

So what I have to say now is this: two of my dearest friends in all the world just got married the weekend before last, to each other, which I guess is good, in the grand scheme of things. This meant that I got to see a whole bunch of the people I love dearly, but they are gone now, so I am sad. But it also meant that I poured blood, sweat, and many tears into a poem that they asked me to write for their ceremony (the folks getting married, that is) and I wish to share the fruit of my labors with all of you, since now that it is safely written down and read and printed in the bulletin, I feel sufficiently detached to be sort of proud of it. So here you go:

The Ocean and The Dream: A Poem in Two Parts

1. Jeremy

How long does it take
to know that I will always love you?
How can I explain what I am sure of?
It is like knowing
that I will always want to come sit
under the same ribbon-hung tree every day.
To be quiet with her
and write wise thoughts in my book.
It is no philosopher’s certainty, of course.
No, it is much finer than that.

It is seeing the sky
from the bottom of the ocean,
being humbled by my fragility
beneath the weight of all that water
knowing down here that forever
means so little, when I am the one
who says it.

But constancy, my dear,
is not about moving oceans
or whispering sweet nothings
that float to the surface like bubbles
and break your heart when they burst
and are empty.
I have a better promise for you.

I promise that when our two trees grow,
they will bend towards each other
as surely as leaves seek light
branches will entwine with branches
and the deep roots of our lives
will clasp each other
and go still deeper.


2. Alicia

I could almost believe
that we heard the voice
of the road through our sleep,
like the bird song of a siren.
And each of us was lifted
and carried and placed
by the fluid, compelling arms of the night,
so that our thousand mile journey
was made without even breaking
the smooth undulations of sleep-breathing.
And even in that dream,
the landscape had changed,
but I was not amazed.
Wasn’t I set here by chance?
Didn’t stars and planets align
and simply make it so?

But we are not Dante’s children,
waking and lost in the woods.
Remember the day we chose the path?
More than that, remember ourselves as two travelers
who found that at every divergence,
we didn’t want to say goodbye.

And by and by I realized,
the road beneath my feet
was asking me a question:
Who is the one who can paint every flaw
in bright, violent colors
and frame that picture, and still say, “beautiful.”
I answer this question with one of my own:
“How could I have chosen anyone else?”


And, since I can never seem to offer a piece of my own work without also offering some of someone else's which I esteem to be better, here is a gorgeous, blush-worthy poem from the fantastic Pablo Neruda. If I were you, I would make sure to read it sitting down on some soft surface, surrounded by a heaping pile of cushions, as this piece has been known to produce swooning, particularly if you read the original Spanish version, out loud. Ay, Pablo!

Things forgotten, things remembered

Merciful heavens! Sometimes things just slip away from me to the extent that a whole month can pass (gasp! The first of October! It's actually been more than a month!) in which I post nothing on the ol' blog. For shame. Shame, shame, shame! I have no way to atone for this, so therefore, I will simply press on.

The first update I bring to the table today is that I missed Rosh Hashannah. Completely and utterly missed it. Did I not mark it's appearance on my office calendar with joy, considering that's the only way I knew when it was coming? Did I not practically count down the days until it was going to be here? I even thought of it on Monday morning and said to myself, starting this evening, it will be Rosh Hashannah. And then from sundown on Monday to sundown on Tuesday, thought of it not at all. Lamentable day!

Here is the backstory. I have been interested for the past six months or so in starting some casual observance of Jewish holidays. It makes sense to me because I clearly need some better way of connecting with the bible besides reading it, which basically never happens. And it makes sense to me that in the same way that the church calendar guides us into the life of Christ through marking time, so the Jewish calendar guides us into the story of God and God's people Israel by intentionally drawing our minds to the contemplation of certain parts of the story.

So, as far as I understand it, Rosh Hashannah is the new year of the Jewish calendar, the birthday of the world. On Rosh Hashannah you are supposed to hear the blowing of the shofar, which, I am told, symbolizes the breaking open and building up that is supposed to happen to a repentant person. Because, I think it's ten days after Rosh Hashannah, one is supposed to observe Yom Kippur, which is the day in which one's fate is set for the next year. So the time in between is supposed to be about repentance and making amends to those wronged in the past year. Repentance is hardly something I excel at, or could even claim to understand, so this would probably be a good discipline to undertake.

Unfortunately, what actually happened for me on Rosh Hashannah this year is that I spent most of the day feeling sick, and sleepy, and sorry for myself that I had such a crappy, boring job, irritated at the gray, rainy weather, and irritated at others for contributing to the fact that my job is crappy. What a way to start a new year!

But here is one of the things I love about these church calendars--these things operate so independently of me and what I'm feeling. I am glad that even in the midst of the thousand tiny deaths that constitute fall, we could be reminded of the birth of the whole world and the renewal of creation. And even when I'm feeling sick and crappy and stuck in the old ways of my tired old life, God could still be doing something new.

This is why I want to incorporate the Jewish calendar into my life--because it's another thing that has the potential of taking me out of myself, of guiding my reflections somewhere they wouldn't go of their own accord, and because, quite simply, I think they are beautiful, and I am always attracted to beauty.

So, L'Shana Tova, friends, here is to a sweet new year and here is to remembering to celebrate what we value!

S.

Crutches

I was raised to hate the saints.

Okay, okay, maybe hate is too strong a word. In fact, it is almost certainly too strong a word. But it does make a catchy opener, right? Really it is more accurate to say that I was never taught to love the saints, I was taught to think of them as a distraction, something that weak people used because they weren't really committed to God. Saints were idolatrous, I mean, just look at all that art connected with them. So many pictures. Man's futile attempt (gendered language being part and parcel of the diatribe) to bring the infinite down to a knowable level. Which is wrong! And wicked! And really, really naughty!

The same thing, in essence, was said about all non-spontaneous prayer. If it wasn't "from the heart," the immediate, extempore outflow of that moment's emotions and response to God, it was phony, insincere. Rote. The product of Dead Faith. This would include, in practice at least, if not in theology, even the Lord's Prayer and the Creeds. The most important thing, in both of these cases, is my personal, direct connection with the divine, my individual response, my emotional engagement.

But what happens when the connection is severed? When emotions are deadened? When I can't bring myself to have any response at all? I think a part of the culture which produced devotion to saints and reliance on liturgical prayer was perhaps one of greater humility than our own. It was a culture of largely unlettered people, more farmers than poets. Perhaps they felt incapable of barging in on the Most High, unannounced and without decorum. Perhaps it wasn't (isn't?) wrong to feel that way. While we recognize God-drawn-near in the incarnation of Christ, we must also keep in mind God-mysterious, God-beyond-speaking, Holy-Holy-Holy God. When we view God in this way, doesn't it seem right that spontaneous words should seem to rough? That we ourselves should feel somewhat inadequate to approach, knowing ourselves as we do and knowing only the thousandth part of what the incandescence of God requires.

But this is not really my point. I was often taught to think of saints and liturgy as something for weak people, for those not brave enough to face God, not faithful enough to speak their own thoughts to Her.

But now, I know, I am weak.

Not only not brave enough to face God, but often caught running in the opposite direction. I imagine burly brothers and sisters, both living and passed, catching hold of me as I try to scoot out the back-door of faith and turning me, pressing me back in the proper direction, and then pushing me even further with their prayers when my stubborn, terrified feet refuse to go even one step farther. When my own faith is weak or dormant, the prayers of the saints keep drawing me toward the dread throne. They lower me like a dying invalid through a roof, knowing intimately the nature of my disease and its cure.

They are mentors, wise voices still speaking to the Bride, urging her to remember old lessons. Francis chatters amiably to birds and wolves and speaks a very current message about the urgent need for creation care. Thomas unwillingly goes to India and challenges us with the intrepid faithfulness of a doubter. Mary quietly sings her song about a God who fills the hungry with good things and calls us to have compassion on the poor who have always looked to her for aid.

These days, I find myself having a similar reliance on liturgical prayers. Too often, I have nothing to say to God or I am too unbalanced, only complaining or thinking exclusively of my own little problems to the neglect of my local and global community. When the spontaneous outflow is stopped through hardness of heart, the words are a gift. The kyrie reminds me of my constant need for mercy. The Lord's prayer humbles me with every pounding phrase, to be brought to ask for another kingdom besides mine, to ask for pardon, to be put on the same level as my enemies. The prayers from the Book are beautiful, from liturgies are beautiful, and I am attracted to beauty when nothing else moves me. To say, I am angry, I am in pain, I am confused, but here are these words, and I can say them because of their sound, their feel in my mouth, their look on the page. They comfort me. To say, there is so much I cannot do, so much to this life of faith of which I feel incapable, but, these words. I can say them. Even without feeling, even without belief, I can bring myself to say these words and to believe, in this moment, that saying is enough.

I am profoundly grateful for saints and I am profoundly grateful for prayers and I am profoundly grateful for the renewal of mind that allows me to embrace them both.

At Last

Okay, so a little later than I anticipated, and a little rougher than I would have liked to put before my public, but here is another poem. Not terribly representative of where I am right now, as I wrote it back in early June, but as I look over my notebook, by far the best piece of recent work. So, that's that.

Where You Find Me

What if you were the old apple tree
the high grass
the moon in summer
the rocking chair
rain on the roof?

What would I be then?
Surely not the same old seagull
that child lost in the mall
a broken egg on the kitchen floor
the battered woman with broken teeth.

If we could get there,
to that place where
you were the stained glass picture
and I was the stub of a summertime candle
lighting you up from behind--
O, I know it!
There, everything would change.

Beauty Goes Underground

Today, I come bearing gifts. And because this is not the sort of area where one can give actual gifts, I come bearing virtual gifts. First of all, in my continued waste of my existence trolling around the web, I have discovered what I think could be my new gem. It's godspy.com, a very promising looking Catholic site that I have enjoyed poking around on for the last couple lunch hours. And in so doing, I stumbled across this article.

Restless

Hmmmm...it was brought to my attention recently that it has been a while since I last posted on here. I was a little dubious, but then I logged on and I think my eyes bugged out when I saw the date of my last post. Not that I have a spotless record for communications of any sort. I think the thing was that it just seemed like it had been no time at all. Things have really picked up and filled up since I started working, not surprisingly. The days pass so quickly.

Mostly these days, I must confess, I am tired. I am tired at every level. My body feels disconnected from my spirit. My mind is hiding from itself. This is not a new theme for me. But, it is nonetheless true. I think that I may be in the midst of another little slump; again, not a new theme for me. What is new is trying not to be shocked and appalled that I cannot constantly be Little Mary Sunshine, to accept this as part of the journey that is chronic, rather than episodic, depression. I want to be able to commit to take care of myself in all the ways that I can: to get enough sleep, to eat well, to exercise, to be quiet and journal and spend lots of time dancing (my free therapy). It's just hard. It's hard to be disciplined when your spirit feels unwell. It's hard to be accountable to people when you have a hard time trusting. It's hard to keep reaching out through the dark and to keep believing that, eventually, something will be there, reaching back to you.

Next time, I'd like to try to leave you with another poem. The last one is still in revision. It's a good goal to set.

Be well, readers. Be good to yourselves. Care for your souls.

S.

Trust Your Art

I am quite tickled by how well this post follows from the one which preceded it. That doesn't usually happen. But one of the things I am thinking about lately is how difficult it is, for me at least, to trust myself as an artist.

An artist? *shudder* I don't even like to use the word. How pretentious! How could I possibly be a for real life artist. I'm not actually good at anything. Look at Caravaggio. Look at Martha Graham. Look at Billy Collins. Now those people are artists. They are talented.

But what can I do? I love to paint. I live to dance. And I love to write as well. This problem came crashing down on me recently when A. and I decided to spend an afternoon painting out in the sun in our backyard. It was lovely. She chose watercolors and I chose tempera (not my medium of choice, but all we had in the house)and a huge sheet of paper. I wanted to experiment with trying to stay within one color family. I used mostly greens and blues with a little indigo and one shot of strategically placed red. I painted for maybe an hour. It was great fun. I enjoyed mixing the colors. I used ferns and leaves to make prints. But at the end of the day, I still looked at my painting and said to myself, "Wow, that really sucks." It is so hard, at the end of the day, not to judge success by the outcome and not to judge the outcome by comparing it to the greatest masters of art that ever lived. Why do I do this to myself? It is critical for me to remeber that the point of my painting is not to be Caravaggio or Picasso or Turner. The point of my painting is to have painted. To express myself. To do something that I love.

And I have to believe this even more than most because this is a message I want to bring to other people, as I was talking about in my last post. I want other people to be empowered to express themselves through art without fear of judgement or threat of comparison, even if they're doing it to themselves. How can I preach what I'm not practicing?

Now, it is important for me to note here that I in no way mean to say that I am equal to Caravaggio. I am not going to say that I am a good painter, no matter how much I enjoy it. I still believe that there are standards, no matter how fluid their definitions may be and that something can show technical skill or the lack of it. All I am saying is that lack of skill shouldn't keep you from doing something for your own pleasure and taking some pride in what you do.

The reason that I am thinking of this today is that I have had the delight of getting to go to my new dance space, the parish hall at Westminster Presbyterian. It is the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in the past two months. Maybe longer. It is huge and has great accoustics and feels very private. Getting to go there is like a trip to Disneyworld for me every time because that is where I really get to dance.

Now, most of my friends, and even some of the people who barely know me, understand that I like to dance. But what I don't think anyone really understands is the degree to which I love dancing. I think about dancing or actually do a little dancing probably every hour of the day. I make up choreographies in my head when I'm day dreaming. I listen to all music in terms of its dance potential. Dancing is all that I want to talk about with other people. You people have no idea how much babble I spare you from. And right now is an incredibly exciting time for me in my dance journey. I've just recently discovered amazing new music. And then there's floorwork, something that I've been wanting for weeks to explore, which is finally starting to click for me. By this I mean, changing levels, going from standing straight to crouching to kneeling to lying on the floor, all kinds of stuff that's really hard to transition into and out of smoothly. And thanks to an incredibly low-brow, incredibly wonderful dance show on TV, I've recently discovered the entirely new-to-me genres of lyrical hip hop and contemporary dance. I don't even have words to tell you how exciting that is. It's like...not like learning a new language, but like learning for the first time that there are words for your emotions, which you'd never been able to express to anyone before. Or like learning how, instead of just saying "I'm sad," you could say, "I'm mourning" or "I'm heartbroken" and it would mean two different things. It's like discovering that besides just being beautiful and fun, I can speak with dance, I can tell stories, I can express and process emotions, even if I'm all by myself. Sigh. It's unspeakably wonderful.

But today, after being in my happy place doing one of the things I love most in the world, I left feeling kind of blue. Why? Because my popping isn't crisp enough, my lines are in shambles, my balance is a joke, and if I don't have a partner to do the foxtrot with, am I really doing a foxtrot? Now I should mention at this juncture that I have been dancing for approximately thirteen years but I have taken approximately three classes in my life, two when I was six and one when I was sixteen. All I've ever really done is start dancing to a Steven Curtis Chapman song in my living room one day when I was 11 and I haven't stopped since (which is actually its own great story, but one for another day). But the upshot of this is that I have no idea where I fall on the spectrum of technical "goodness." And it doesn't help that I've never seen myself dance, primarily due to the fact that I've never had a space with mirrors. So I don't even know if my lines are a mess because I've never seen my lines. Part of me knows that this is due largely to the fact that I really have never sought such spaces because I have certain illusions about myself as a dancer that I don't want to shatter. But at the same time, I think I can recognize that I dance much better than I paint. It's tricky here because I'm just good enough to know that I could be better, whereas with painting I doubt how much better I could possibly get.

So what does it all mean? Do I suck, or am I an undiscovered genius? But at the end of the day, maybe those are the wrong questions to ask. Must everything be polarized into stardom or shame? Here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to recognize that I fall somewhere in the middle and keep dancing and keep loving dance. And recognize that I fall somewhere towards the bottom and still keep painting. And, who knows? maybe I'll even recognize that I've hit a wall in my own ability to coach myself as a dancer and go out and get some of that technical skill from somebody who really knows what they're doing. Not that I'll ever be Martha Graham or anything...

S.

On Work and the Future

You probably won't believe me when I say this, but I have been racking my brains for days trying to think of what I wanted to say next on here. I have many thought-trains that I am currently interested in, but as I was saying to some friends the other day, that is not sufficient qualification for them to be forever enshrined in print (even if it is more like the far more transitory html). What I realized, though, is that those of you who actively follow the chronicle of my life are overdue for a here-is-the-very-mundane-details-that-form-the-context-of-my-life-and-stories sort of update. Not the most thrilling or thought-provoking, but the people have a right to know.

So here's the skinny on the job sitch: I am working for a non-profit organization that serves runaway and homeless youth. What my job is mostly about is establishing different sites in the city where youth in crisis (defined as anything from being locked out or lost to being molested, abused, or homeless) can go and make a call and get picked up by a volunteer and taken to the shelter. My job is to fit the pieces together. So I am in charge of scheduling tabling events at festivals and school visits so that youth know about the availability of these services. I am responsible (at least partially) for recruiting and training sites so that employees know the protocol when someone comes in. And I am in charge of recruiting and training the volunteers to know how to respond to and transport youth in crisis. So, that's at least the next year of my life.

How is the job itself? It's very hard to say, considering I've only worked there for a grand total of five days. I think a lot of the trouble right now is the inevitable bumps and troubles that come along with being in a new place, like the fact that I feel absurd for never knowing where stuff is or who needs to sign what or who has the authorization to do what. But, overall, I'm excited about the prospects, most of all about the prospects of working for an organization that I can believe in, doing something that's going to use my gifts. It's super-cool, what I've been looking for for years now. Inevitably I can lose sight of the opportunity I have and what the impact of what I'm doing will be, say around 3:30 in the afternoon when times seems to slow down to a crawl. But that would be true, at least as far as I can tell, no matter where I ended up working. And besides, it's nothing half a Snickers bar couldn't fix.

So that's the bread and butter of my days. I have to say, the one thing that takes some getting used to is not having essentially unlimited free time, except on the weekends, of course. Now I wonder why I'm in the middle of two theology books, a novel, and about 3 different volumes of poetry and wondering why I'm not getting anywhere in any of them and the reason is that all of a sudden, most of my time is being spent at work, doing things that other people want me to do. It's very strange. You can laugh all you want, as my mom did, and say "Welcome to my world, kid." But it's just different. I don't even think it's bad yet.

All this has given me plenty of food for thought regarding what I ultimately want to end up doing. I think the new American dream is work that is so enjoyable it doesn't even feel like we're working, but is still lucrative enough to pay all the bills and buy a nice steak every Sunday. Maybe that's just me. I feel, tho, that I need some kind of ultimate goal in terms of Career I Really Want to Have Someday to help guide my present actions, because otherwise I feel so lost in the wide world that all of my actions seem without intent, lost in an unguided universe.

So here it is, kids, the Grand Plan, or at least the Grand Plan as I formulated it while I was taking a shower yesterday. Ultimately, I want to buy a very old, very beautiful church building that is up for sale because its congregation is too small to support it. I want to renovate it and turn it into a Spirituality and Arts Center where people from all sorts of faith traditions can come and connect with God through the arts. And I mean all of them: drama, painting, ceramics, mixed media and the whole kaboodle of visual arts, music, writing, and of course dancing. I want there to also be a heavy focus on community formation, a group of people with whom to ask questions that are really tough, a group of people to trust. I am trying to figure out right now if this all would require me to take some sort of pastoral role, which could be weird, depending on how you define pastoral. Also, I think I will need some sort of degree in theology and arts and counseling...cause those sorts of degrees pretty much grow on trees nowadays. So, to work, I say! to earn exorbitant amounts of money with which to pay for all of these degrees so I can do what it is that I really want to do...maybe. Unless this isn't it at all. Sheesh, I need to start taking longer showers.

S.

Poet Emerging

So, here I am, still in Buffalo, still enjoying life. But still not working. I'm a little bit miffed, but I'm pretty sure that it's at least partially my fault, so I must not rail against the universe, but quietly accept my fate. I'm frustrated because after a YEAR of what was essentially unemployment, tho a busy unemployment, I am SO ready to start contributing to the world again. To have full days, even fuller than they currently are.

But, in the interim, I have been making this place with my lovelies into my home too, which is harder than it sounds. Carving out little corners for myself is very necessary for me, because I find that if I'm not being careful, it is easy to think of this as their place in which I am simply a guest with no right to shelf space or closet space or anything else. This is not actually the case, so as I shove my way into nooks and crannies, I am asserting the fact that I pay rent too and I belong here! Not to give the impression in any sense that I feel unwanted. They want me to do this too, it's just a process of changing my thinking.

In addition to this, I have been spending lots of time discovering new passions (like opera and gardening), or rediscovering those things which I have always been passionate about, but had let go of while at home, like dancing and most notably poetry. Suddenly, it seems to be everywhere, whether it's in the greater amount of time I have to spend with Mary Oliver and Glenn Freeman and this beautiful post by one of my most favoritest bloggers. So, as a consequence, I've been writing more poetry than I have since graduation. I think this is a good thing.

Thankfully, it's been more about remembering the rhythms and disciplines that I was taught in college than starting over from scratch. The recollection of daily discipline, the blank page which has never terrified me, cups of coffee and words, unruly words that dare me to master them. Pushing myself beyond the first thing that I could say, the obvious, beyond that to the second thing, and the third until I am startled by the sense that I am making with fresh words. The production of massive amounts of shitty first drafts and cobbled together verses which will never see the light if I can help it. But feeling capable, for the first time in a long time. Feeling worthy of the craft in a way that I never felt at home. Remembering that even when the work is profoundly unworthy, there is something beyond it, something that needs to be written towards instead of just arrived at in one fell swoop. And remembering the teeth-grinding, painstaking, eye-jabbing, endless process of editing. Yes, whether or not that one comma goes in really will make all the difference.

It is good. It is profoundly good to be pushing myself to rediscover my voice, to allow myself to admit to an aptitude. I AM a writer, dammit!!! Maybe an inconstant and poor one, but that is a real part of who I am!!! In that spirit, I end by repeating this gorgeous snippet of verse from Hafiz, and then offer one of my own recent pieces. I almost hate to put them beside each other because there is absolutely no comparison, but then, I guess that's part of the daring that I am trying to own.

"A poet is someone
who can pour light
into a cup
then raise it to nourish
your beautiful, parched, holy mouth."

-Hafiz

* * *

Visitation

When the Holy Spirit comes in a South Texas summer,
She takes the form of a tall, white egret
standing, watching, waiting in the Baptizing River
her yellow eyes at once warning you away and
daring you to come wash.

The water here could be fire again,
if the bird wills it to be.
The slimy rocks, the muddy ripples,
she sings a croaking song over them
to let you know—-these are for you.

No sparkling fountains, no golden dust.
Just a sun-cracked mud bank,
the skimming, benediction hands of
the willow tree
and the harsh, holy eye of the egret,
piercing your hands and side,
turning the water red as you go under
and rise a saint.

Get out of the car and kiss the ground...

We made it!!! All the way to Buffalo!!! I'm still alive!!!! Everyone in my family is still alive!!! The existence of God is vindicated!!!!

No, but seriously, it was sometimes a close call for one or the other members of my family. We all love each other very much, I just think we do it better at a distance.

A few notes that have been piling up in the old brainpan and beg to be spilled into cyberspace:
Before I close the Houston chapter of my life, I would just like to reveal one monumental and life changing encounter that I had there. It was called Geopalooza and it took place at the Museum of Natural Science, which is probably my favorite place in all Houston. It was a glorious exhibit of geodes, crystals, fossils, agates, moon rocks, petrified wood, and phosphorescent minerals!!! Yay!! For those of you who haven't heard, I am a little bit of a geek when it comes to geology. And so there it was, a whole exhibit that seemed to be tailor made for me. Because, not only was it chock full of rocks, but it was also chock full of puns. For example, the whole premise was that the exhibit was a "rock greatest hits anthology" and so throughout the exhibit they were playing "rock music." Including, notably, Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven." Oh, so glorious. It was just deeply affirming that there are other folks out there who are happy to be as dorky as I am when it comes to this stuff.

Other notable occurences would be the cross country road trip that I took with my family. I actually really enjoyed myself for the most part. I am so predisposed to enjoy road trips, though. I love all the goofy little games that we play like hangman and sensosketch and telling stories and listening to books on tape. And it didn't hurt that the scenery lived up to expectations--yay Smokey Mountains and yay Tennesse. And, surprisingly, my mom is really flexible when it comes to route and driving schedule, so we ended up taking a few little detours to see the sights, which I thought was really cool. The picture above is from a place called Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, where we had all kinds of adventures to finally end up on a secret little nook of a precipice, which was probably the most beautiful view we saw on the whole trip. Strangely enough, road trips make me like America more. I think it's because just living in places like Houston and Omaha, you could get the idea that the country is hideously ugly, which is just not so. West Virginia and Tennessee are very redeeming for our great nation.

I don't think I'll share stories from the road because those stories are sacred to the road and to those who made the journey. I will, however, say that the song "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" by Cher has earned itself a special and eternal place in my heart, and if you've never heard the song you should go out right now and have a listen and forever after, when you hear it, think of me.

And now, Buffalo! What shiny new adventures await me here? I don't know, but today I feel optomistic. The sun is shining and the wind is blowing and James Taylor is singing and the air feels free. Sometimes you don't realize you've been living in a cage until you make your way out. And with that, I will bid you adieu for the day and devote myself to enjoying the breeze...

S.

The Strangest Dream

So, even though I am not yet in Buffalo I just had to post again because I had the craziest dream last night. I had this dream and I was riding this bus into this town. Actually, I think the town was Buffalo, symbolically, of course. You know like where you understand in your dream that it's Buffalo, but it bears no resemblance to the actual Buffalo. It was actually more like heaven, the way everybody was all together like that. Anyway, I was pulling up, and on the bus, and waiting for me outside were like all the friends I've ever had. And I mean everybody, friends from college, friends from high school, friends from elementary school. And I saw that everyone had come out to meet me and I was so happy, like this joyful feeling just spreading all through me. And then as I pulled up, everyone started walking away and disappearing. And it was like I was following around groups of people and trying to get everyone together and everyone just kept walking away.

So, what does that MEAN?

But, the craziest part was, Jeff was there waiting at the bus stop and he had this huge, bright, bright blue, mohawk!!! Now tell me that isn't a deeply meaningful dream. Also, before I got on this bus, I was dreaming I was all by myself dancing my ass off, all jumping around on this really cushy mat thing and I was doing an awesome job, you know, kicks, spins, flips, the works. It felt so good! I miss dancing. It's only been like 10 days, but it feels like ages. Maybe when I get to Buffalo. But for now I'm still...still in Pittsburgh.

Goodnight all,
S.

Update

Just for those of you keeping score, we've made it through most of the road trip. We've stopped for a bit less than a week in Pittsburgh to visit with my mom's family. More on that later. It's been interesting. But everyone made it this far alive and some of us even managed to enjoy ourselves. But we're not in Buffalo yet...

But really the reason I wanted to post was because like four of you called me over two days and I haven't had the bittiest bit of a chance to call you back and won't for a while. Please don't feel rejected. I'll call when I can.

S.

Correction

In the last entry, there was a little bit of a misprint. I just wanted to say that the Sheltie puppy is my plan for an apartment friendly dog to get sometime in the near future because I think it would actually be small enough to live happily in an apartment. If I was actually getting the ranch, I would want a golden retriever puppy, which is my favorite kind of dog, but not very apartment friendly.

Just wanted to clarify. It was really bothering me that I put down the wrong dog.

S.

P.S.-Leaving tomorrow for Buffalo. If you hear disturbing reports about a girl who was incarcerated for chopping her mother up and leaving the pieces throughout the Smokey Mountains, you'll know why. Too bad I don't look good in orange.

Decisions are Messy

Can it be true that I haven’t posted since the ballet? Oh, shameful, shameful. To tell you the truth, I post here often, in my head, anyway. No, seriously, I often think of things to write about, form lovely phrases in my head, make insightful and witty comments. The only problem is that I very seldom seem to actually put pen to paper as it were. Alas, alas. And wouldn’t you know that whenever I do manage to get around to writing stuff down, I can’t remember a blessed word that I meant to put down. Ah, the wicked mistress of writing. I am truly cursed.

But I digress. There is so much on a day to day basis that I would like to share that I think I am choked by the volume. I would love to talk about my reclamation of devotional life through the Book of Common Prayer, my acquisition of my very first honest-to-goodness icon and learning by doing, my contemplations on the gleaning of spiritual wisdom from many sources, particularly Judaism these days, or even just my anguished struggle over the additions I have just made to our landscaping and my fight to keep my tender little plants alive in this ridiculously stifling Texas heat. But generally what I find necessary is to just try to keep everyone on the same page as to my geographic vagaries and daily activities, as in this phase of my life these seem to be in constant flux. So, here is the bread and butter of my life at the moment.

Biggest news is, I am taking the plunge and moving up to Buffalo. I have realized of late how many of my decisions may look wildly spontaneous to folks on the outside when in reality they are carefully considered for months before I make up my mind, but I don’t really include anyone in the deliberations, so then when I just come out with the decision, it looks like I just randomly, on the spot, chose to do this. Not so. And this is the case with the big move. I have been thinking about doing this, really, in a whimsical way, ever since graduation, knowing that I have a big community of friends up there. But now that I have secured for myself a job up there, the decision is final. The job that I’ll be doing is with our good friends at Americorps, namely an organization called Compass House which is a resource for homeless and runaway youth. So it makes me very happy to have the prospect of meaningful work and work that I think would actually challenge me. And I’m very, very happy to be back with some college peeps again, which is honestly a huge factor in my decision. I have realized more and more and more and more in the past few months how very much I need a community around me. Not a transient community, not a community of people I admire who refuse to connect with me, not any of this Lone Ranger, American rugged individualism bullshit, just people: people who I love a whole lot and who I hope to be able to believe love me too. People who are actually willing to take care of me the same way I am willing to take care of them. People who can talk about problems and real issues and honest emotions and who aren’t just hiding from each other. I need it, I need it like oxygen, and I’m not going to continue to cheat myself out of it to pursue some kind of ascetic ideal or misguided notion of the will of God.

All the same, I have to admit to having some mixed feelings, still!, about going up to Buffalo. For one thing, I begin to wonder if it might have been a mistake to invite my family to drive up with me. My family, oh, they’re lovely people, but they have this bad habit of saying, “We’ll do this for you because we love you, but don’t expect us to be happy about it, and please don’t object when we bitch about it for hours on end, till you’re ready to beat your brains out just to escape the crushing guilt of forcing us to do what we volunteered for out of love for you.” (In case you haven’t picked up on it, things have been a tad bit tense around the old homestead these days.)

I love road trips and I’m excited because I’ve planned our route through what looks like some really beautiful country that I’ve never been through before. I think my sister is excited about this, especially as she has just recently gotten her license (yay her!) and is finally able to help out with the driving. My mom, unfortunately, hates to drive and can only seem to talk about how long the trip is going to be. And God help me, I will pack her in the trunk if it gets to be too much over the three days we’ll be traveling.

And then there is the fact that, in spite of everything, part of me wants to be in Houston. Part of me is wondering like crazy why I ever felt like it was the will of God for me to come back and be with my family when this whole time it has seemed like the worst idea ever conceived. Was I just wrong? Was God wrong? Did God know it was going to suck and be pretty much pointless and still tell me to do it anyway? I don’t know if I’ll ever find out. But it is hard to get away from a lingering sense of failure, that I felt like I was asked to do something that I was simply unable to fulfill. And the reason that I was unable to fulfill it was because of my own fragility, something that I have an almost Spartan distaste for. So I can’t help but feel like I’m leaving with a sense of regret for duties left undone, for commissions unfulfilled. And I don’t even know where I went wrong.

Then there is the unavoidable sense of frustration that comes from being in such a weird place in my life which is so continually confusing and uncertain and not knowing where I’ll be in the future and feeling so far away from achieving the kind of life I want to build for myself. A great part of me just wants to get a Sheltie puppy, buy a ranch with lots of land around it, and marry some guy just for the sake of being able to settle down in my own place and stay there. The same great part wants to pack up every piece of everything I’ve accumulated in the last 23 years and take it all out of my mother’s house so I know that I won’t ever, ever be coming back except as a visitor. And yet even in the midst of the frustration, I know that the same circumstances that are causing the frustration now are going to be the ones that the lack of which will cause me frustration in the future. The uncertainty, the mystery, the sense of infinite possibility. I’m sure my future self would feel tied down by house and hub and just want to run away for the romantic instability of not knowing where I’ll be in six months. Well, I say screw you future self, because I think this really sucks!

This is the other reason that I don’t post more frequently, to give you all plenty of time to read the previous post before I burden you with another one. And because apparently there is so much unspoken bile in my life that I am reluctant to spill on strangers. Ah, screw it. I trust myself to the great, wide anonymity of the internet! At least now, you can’t complain that you’re not in the know.

Indescribable

I just wanted to let you all know that this past Friday, I got to go to the ballet! Yes, the ballet. Perhaps you are not as excited about this as I am, but you must understand, I love the ballet. Love. With deep, everlasting passion. I would go to every ballet that came down the pike if I could. As it was, this one was an extra special bonus because it was FREE! In Houston, we have this place called Miller Outdoor Theatre, which basically does only free shows for the edification of the good people of Houston. So we can just show up and watch the ballet for nothing. And, as such, they were the best seats I have ever had for the ballet.

Furthermore, in case you were wondering, you are right, Madame Butterfly was first an opera before it ever became a ballet. But I guess this fellow, artistic director, I should say, named Stanton Welch decided to take Puccini's score and choreograph to it for this ballet.

The story, in case you are not familiar with it, is as follows: Cio-Cio San, aka Madame Butterfly, is a young girl who was forced to become a geisha after her father commited ritual suicide. She meets Lieutenant Pinkerton, who is an official of the United States Army and is stationed in Nagasaki. They fall in love, and agree to marry, in spite of the fact that Pinkerton has a sweetheart to whom he is engaged waiting for him in the States. Butterfly converts to Christianity so that she can worship the same God as her husband. Butterfly's family interrupts the marriage ritual and disowns her because she renounced the faith of her family. They leave in a huff and Pinkerton comforts his weeping wife. And, as the synopsis puts it: "she gradually surrenders her innocence and they lie down beneath the stars." Racy. End of Act One.

In the second act, it is 10 years later, Butterfly is living in destitution in Nagasaki. Pinkerton has left her and gone back to the States and married his sweetheart Kate, although Butterfly doesn't know it. Another officer from the States brings her a letter from Pinkerton, the contents of which she can't read and he can't bear to relate to her, so he just doesn't tell her the bad news. He asks her what she would do if Pinkerton never returns. She is horrified by the idea and triumphantly shows the officer her son as proof of Pinkerton's inevitable return. She dreams of him coming back to take her and her son to a wonderful new life in America. Pinkerton returns to Nagasaki with his wife and visits the home of Butterfly, hoping to find her away and quietly convince her only servant to turn over her son to he and his American wife. Pinkerton can't bear the memories evoked by being back in her home, so he flees, just as Butterfly arrives. Kate convinces her to turn over her son to be raised as an American. After losing Pinkerton once and for all, Butterfly has no more resistance; she gives Kate her son and they leave. Desperate with grief and utterly hopeless, Butterfly turns to the only avenue available to her, and kills herself with the same sword that her father used. Pinkerton returns just in time to cradle her dying body in his arms as she breathes her last. (Hey, what do you want, it is based on an opera.)

Wow, I didn't mean for that synopsis to take up so much space. Anyway, I thought it was a pretty decent story, and in watching the ballet, I was just amazed at the way dance communicates. The different movements can portray so many different things, anger, grief, lust, timidity, mirth, it can all be writ large without anyone having to utter a word. It was also really interesting to try to understand a medium which baffles me, music, through one which I understand a little more, dance. It was interesting to watch how the choreography matched and intensified the emotion created by the music.

Oh, another thing that I have to mention is the INCREDIBLE scenery that was used in the ballet. One of the most amazing parts was the very first scene of the ballet, which is supposed to portray Butterfly dreaming of her future. It showed the dancer behind a huge screen which covered the entire stage and was painted with these huge, white, splashy flowers with deep blue centers. Through this you could see the dancer and four people who held these giant wings, like 25 ft. long, made of some kind of diaphanous fabric, and they were all coordinating the movement of the wings. Anyway, it was awesome.

But what none of that conveys, what I am struggling to get across, is the feeling of sitting in that audience, watching them dance. The thing that first comes to mind when I think about the ballet is perfection. It makes me ache inside, to see the way they dance, the perfect and impossible lines they make with their bodies, the effortless way that one dancer can leap and be caught and spun by another, the feather-light way they move through the air. The raw emotion that is displayed in a pas de deux. Oh, and this incredibly beautiful scene where Butterfly is waiting up all night for the return of Pinkerton and it showed her and her servant behind two screens, lighted from behind. It was referential, I think, to a style of Japanese theater, but it was incredible to see the sharpness of the lines and the variety of shapes they made, using just their bodies and a fan.

I don't know. Four years of studying writing, and I am absolutely at a loss to describe what it was like. Well, maybe not absolutely. It's not like I've been working on this for a month. Anyway, I've done a crap job trying to convey what it was like, but suffice it to say it was wonderful, and I love the ballet, and you should love the ballet too, and if you ever get a chance, you should go. Go now, in fact. The blog will still be here when you get back.

S.

Bone Deep Weary

I am...tired. And, unfortunately, I hate being tired. I feel guilty for being tired. I don't deserve to be tired. Other people can be tired. Other people with important jobs, doing important things for the world, taking care of other people, those people can be tired. Not me.

Of course, I don't mean the same old "I never get enough sleep" kind of weariness. No, this is a very different sort. I think this kind of tiredness come from the rhetoric of the sort that you can find in the last paragraph. I am tired because I can't rest. Because I feel guilty for resting. Resting means that I must be lazy, means that I have no more value, since, inexplicably, somewhere along the line, value got all tied up with dollar signs and one of my least favorite words, "productivity." So I feel like I have a constant low-grade fever of chattering voices that keeps me from resting.

"What will you do when you can't afford gas for your car? Why don't you make better use of your time? You should read more poetry, write more poetry, create more art, spend more time outside, the house should be cleaner, you should put more effort into studying. Just think, you'll never have this much time at your disposal again. And what have you done? Wasted it! Absolutely shameful! You'll never get anywhere with so little discipline. Not that anything you could do really matters anyway. Who gives a damn about all the books you've read! Reading books won't pay for grad school, now will it?"

And on, and on, and on...

It makes me angry, because once again, I think this past season was supposed to be one of rest for me. I was SUPPOSED to not do anything, to take it easy, to not work or even play too hard, to take a sabbatical before starting on the next phase of my life. It went well for about two weeks, when I first got back from L'Abri and busied myself, or not, doing whatever I wanted to do and hang what anybody else had to say about it. Then somehow the voices of self-doubt and guilt returned and I haven't had a minute's peace since, even when I do have many minute's which could have been peaceful.

And now, once again, this season is drawing to a close and I am full of regret, that I couldn't relax, that I couldn't explore my creative side more just because I wanted to instead of out of a hounding sense of obligation, that I am ending this season once again tired and God only knows when I'll have another chance like this one to step back and rest.

So back to basics again: Where do I find worth if it's not in what I've accomplished or produced? How can I truly enter into rest, not just cease from activity, when the opportunity arises? How can I silence all those wicked voices that are constantly telling me that whatever I'm doing, it isn't right, and it isn't good enough?

I can't give up, because I feel like I'll just keep returning to this place of non-productivity and guilt until the lesson finally sinks in. So I'm off, to do laundry and go grocery shopping with as much abandon and satisfaction as I can muster, and to try with might and main to convince myself that IT IS ENOUGH!

Creative Me

Suffice it to say, I have a very lucky sister. You'll have to forgive the long blog silence, but you have to understand, I have been very busy working on this:







Kind of an art piece/collage/mixed media coolness, a gift for her 16th birthday festivities which took place this past weekend. Had to photograph it in pieces so you could see the detail. I photographed it from left to right, so hopefully you can use your imagination about how the pieces fit together. And I also made this:



How about this cake? So, here's a question: Do you think anyone would pay to have a cake like this for a birthday, anniversary, or holiday instead of one from a grocery store? Do you think someone could support themselves making cakes, muffins, breads, cupcakes and the like instead of working some desk job? Not a plan for the immediate future, but maybe someday...?

Seriously, I am going to post a long, thoughtful post soon, very soon. Super-soon. Just you wait.

S.

A New Direction

Okay, okay, enough of the siliness already. I can tell by the enormous influx of feedback I have recieved that nobody was as amused by the whole latte incident as I was. This is not surprising, as I really could have predicted that from the beginning. So, by way of atonement, I have continued in my never-ending quest to bring YOU a better blog, note the tweaking at right. I think every single one of those pages, in retrospect, is run by a woman (with the exception of the Prince, I think). Oh well. If anybody knows any supremely awesome web pages that are run by men, pass them along and maybe they'll make their way into the hall of greatness. Maybe not, since I'm so obviously biased, but never give up hope, I always say.

Anyway, in a schizophrenic sweeping of the pendulum from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other, my offering today is extremely serious. It's a piece of creative work that I did while at L'Abri, probably the most satisfying piece I've written since leaving college, so I like it, even if it's not necessarily "good." It's a little stream-of-conscious a la Faulkner, tho it's not a comparison I would take any farther than that. It's from the perspective of the Gerasene Demoniac, a tale which you can find in Mark 5 and Luke 8, if you are of the Bible-thumping persuasion. Hope you enjoy.

***

there is no time before them, before dark, before pain. maybe someone else knows of it. i don’t know. they hit, they cut, my hands, they take them. my hands, they beat me. my hands, they take up rocks, my hands, they beat me, i bruise, they laugh, are laughing. my hands, they take them, my hands. tombs, yes, tombs, yes, living tombs, loving tombs, yes dead, yes beyond dead, yes worse than dead. oh, please be dead. end. dead.

my hands, they tear and cut, my hands, my body, all cut, all bleeding, all bruising. rocks, shackles, cutting skin. i tear. half-speaking, others come. they bind, only touch is ruthless, touching, end, come for the end, yes, please. it is not for us, but for them, the chains, shackles, ropes, stones, spikes; binding us. no matter. they break them all and i bleed. i bleed again, broken ropes, broken chains, broken wrists. blood, rocks, dust, blood.

many days. many, many days. why so many? where the end? god, let me end. end me. they will never end.

who is it? who comes? they know him, oh god, what is he? what is what, is light, is he? the end? they, we, stagger me to him. we will kill. he will tear, will cut, will break, they will end him and consume me forever. oh god. not you. not my hands.

he speaks. oh god, a light explodes inside, pain in, pain out, everywhere. chest breaking, back breaking, breath breaking. end me, end me, end me. they have me tightly, will never leave, not for you, Light, not for you will they end. end me. gasp and chuckle, stones, dust, sky, where is the sky? breath in, breath out, breath out, breath out, what is breathing? not my breath, i am closing, broken, they crush my heart with heavy, with the weight on them of you.

the ground is beating me when they are done. eyes open, there are his feet. dust, eyes, feet, dust, where is my breathing? my chest opens huge for the air to come back, it rushes out again until i am flattened. in and out, in and out hugely at his feet. i must send him away, must speak, must get past them. my words are theirs, theirs, mine, theirs. same question. same hate.

“What have you to do with me?”

you, Light, i see you, they see you and you are not with us, you are not of us. you, Light, run, take shelter from this darkness, why is Life in the place of death? why is Bread here with the only, only hunger? you, doppelganger, you must go, we are not of each other. Light has nothing to do with darkness and, what, oh wretched, oh god, what do you know of this pain?

“I beg you. Do not torment me.”

do not, oh yes, do not crush as a light must crush darkness. you, i see you, they saw you coming. you will wipe us all away, will brush away, fall away from you, from life, from light. I see it coming by your hand, the ending, a new, a deep, a deeper darkness. abyss is for us. oh god, please. oh Light, please. no more.

he asks my name. i used to have one. they took it, my name, they took my name. my name is Demoniac. their name is Legion. oh god, there are so many.

they speak, are speaking, speak through me. my voice is theirs. they want my life forever, host to parasite. we go, are going, all going to abyss.

my hands outstretched. please, Light. please, mercy.

suddenly, rushing. suddenly, light. wind rushing past as a thousand spirits not my own are leaving, departing, please, forever. rushing wind of spirits flying past and through. light, wind, sky, sweet grass, sweet sun, oh god. rushing wind of two thousand pigs running past, carrying my darkness. pigs, carrying my darkness into the sea. it’s a joke? my darkness destroyed, and yet i live? oh, Light. Wonder.

When I saw your face, I remembered beauty. They would not let me raise my eyes, but you sent them away and I could behold. You gave me clothes. You fed me. Then I could sit at your feet as a man and not as a wilderness. Inside, all was quiet. Where there had been a hundred voices, now I could hear only my own and yours. A stream of people came to marvel, to shudder, and finally to beg for your departure. But me you have never left since that day. Oh breath, oh life, how much you, Light, Christ, God, how much you have done for me! I am still sitting at your feet, listening to the fresh-water sound of your voice, gazing at a face brighter than the sun-glare off desert sand, a face like a son of man.

When I finally saw your face, I remembered my name.

Promises, Promises

So, as I promised, here it be. I know that you have all been deeply coveting, but the best that I can offer is a couple photographs. I had to get one from each side so you can see that there are four distinct colors. A kind of brick red and golden wheat color, and then a pea green and burnt brown. Something like that. Note also the little coffee bean design inside. The roses, of course, are from one of my beaus.

Funny Bone

A funny thing happened to me today. Well, first of all I went to the arts festival with my wee sister, and we looked at carved things and glass things and painted things and weird things and more cheesy "charming-flower-strewn-corners-somewhere-in-France" photographs than I hope to ever see again. But that part of the day was quite lovely. And then, the funny thing happened.

My mom apparently went to the house of one of her church friends and was admiring her collection of "latte mugs" which are apparently those large, shallow mugs that I would use as a cereal bowl, but some civilized people apparently use exclusively for latte drinking. Anyway, she admired them so much that this friend went out and bought her a set of the mugs. I was helping her unwrap them today and noticed that in this case a "set" meant five, which is really an ususual number for any kind of serving dishes, which just about always come in round numbers. And I asked my mom why five, and she said, offhandedly, that her friend had figured that when Heather and I got married, and there would be one for each of us. Yes, that's right, one for me and my hub, Heather and her hub, and my mom. All happily sipping lattes together.

It may be important to note that I don't think the generous friend is question has ever even met me. But, as I reflected on this purchase, it really tickled my funny bone. Someone has actually purchased something for my future husband, and has in fact entrusted it to my care the way you hand something to a friend who's going to run into a mutual friend at Starbucks later. And drink lattes. From very large mugs. No one has ever gone so far in assuming that I am going to get married as to actually buy something for the lucky man.

So, as far as a dowry goes, that's it, to the best of my knowledge, that's the total package. I just want all the single men out there to know that, if you should be so fortunate as to win my hand in marriage, you get not only this choicest of wifeys, but also, a very large mug out of which lattes can be drunk.

So, that settles it. I have wavered back and forth on this marriage question for many a year, but now that the latte mug has come into the picture, there can no longer be any question of what I will do. I obviously must get married. A mug so singular as this one can only be used as was specified by my generous benefactor. And believe me friends, it is singular. Four years of studying writing at the college level and words fail me. I have decided to post a picture at the first available opportunity because this latte mug is too precious to sully with my weak words. So I will leave you to dream longingly and covetously of my glorious latte mug until then.

Sweet Dreams,
S.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

Sometimes I have this funny little lapse of judgement in which I think that everyone knows exactly as much about what's going on in my life as I do, despite geographical distance, and my failure to actually indicate to anyone what is going on. But, most of you are not telepathic, so I will have to fill you in the old-fashioned way.

So.

I must inform you that I have joined the French Foreign Legion, which is what all us love-lorn, waifish folk who have come to the end of their ropes do. Soon I will set out for the baking sands of farthest Arabia, crossing them with a slow camel and a heavy heart, to help my comrades hold down the fort against invading Moors.

No, that's not actually true. But seriously, would you be surprised at this point if that's where I was? I swear, for the last year, not even I can tell where I will turn up next. An Arabian desert is merely a drop in the bucket to a tumbling tumbleweed like myself. BUT, if you had known anything about the Legion, you would have known that the chauvinist bastards don't accept women, and so would have quickly seen through my ruse. In actuality, I am back at the old homestead in Houston, living my quiet civilian life and trying to understand this complicated little monkey I call my life.

I have been trying most recently to untangle all that has happened in my past two months at L'Abri. Mostably, I don't know. Which makes the perennial question of "So, did you get what you needed out of your time?" question really obnoxious. The time seemed to pass by in a whisper and a nod, and mostly I feel that I progressed greatly in places that I didn't really anticipate progress, and seemed to have changed very little in the ways in which I wanted to change. The greatest annoucement, the most earthshaking change that took me two months to arrive at is that I am going to move away from Houston. Yes, believe it or not, it took me a full two months to arrive at a decision that just about anyone who had a 15 minute conversation with me could probably have advised. In fact, it seems so obvious to me now that it is unbelievable that it took so much time to arrive at it. But really, I guess if that's what it took to get me there, that's what I needed.

I think another thing that was kind of an unexpected theme was my learning to try new things. Another issue that seems pretty darn simple, but it has always been a struggle for me. Being afraid that I'll do badly has actually kept me from doing lots of things that I've wanted to try. But I have had to put myself out there so many times in the past couple months, I feel like I've had no choice but to accept the possibility that I'll do badly or look foolish when I first try something, but that's part and parcel of learning something and all that anyone can expect.

On the other hand, I don't for the life of me know where I stand on this whole God issue. Seriously, clueless. Don't even ask me, I'll just get mad and spit in your eye. In your eye! All I know is that I'm still very much in the God camp, with the strangest, most dubious relationship that anybody in the God camp has ever had, ever. I suppose I more or less have all of my intellectual ducks in a row (yes, they're intellectual, and they're ducks. They have PhD's.) but, at the end of the day, what does that mean? What good is it if you have intellectual peace and no emotional change?

But as for now, it's a blustery afternoon in Houston and I'm once again scrambling around for a job, any job please, without a lot of optimism. Houston looks like a good place to find a job, seeing as how every freaking store has a Now Hiring sign. Don't be fooled. None of those places actually want to hire anyone. It's an elaborate trick, or at least that's been my experience. Besides, who would want to live in Houston? Houston is a hole.

So I'm just going to listen to Queen and eat quiche. It's a q day.

S.