Three weeks ago I moved to Chicago. The following are some selections from my recorded thoughts, feelings and deeds.
5-17-09
“…drove to Chicago, in a van, with my friends…”
I actually did not listen to any Sufjan on my way to Chicago, nor did I drive a van. I did however drive with friends, or behind them anyway. C and A, in their little Jetta, toted a trailer packed with my furniture. They barely let me pay for their gas and didn’t even stay long enough to let me by them dinner. They stayed just long enough to heft all my heaviest stuff up the windy back stairs and into my new bedroom.
I unpacked everything except kitchen stuff that night then watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with A…It felt good to wake up in the morning and be surrounded by my own things, an island of comfort in this alien ocean.
…I want to be diligent in proactively engaging in things that I velieve or want to have become foundational elements of my life: contemplation, exercise, writing, reltionships (with people and the earth).
Now is the time to act…
5-18-09
…I made waffles for breakfast and French pressed coffee. A and I went out so I could get a library card and bank account. The LC was acquired without a hitch. The first bank we went to offers a free 4-piece Pyrex set upon opening an account. I eyed the box and felt excited at the prospect of storing it away in my closet. Unfortunately they require and IL drivers license, something I neither own nor plan on obtaining. So, on to WaMu where less than a week ago I’d closed my account. There Damir, my “personal banker” accepted me for who I am, KY drivers license and all…
…I took out the trash and proceeded to walk to Lake Michigan. The clear sky had clouded over and wind entered the city…I wandered around the sandy lake shore, picking up perfect skipping stones that were swallowed quickly by short aggressive waves instead of skipping across the surface. So many seagulls, and people—walking dogs or kids or partners or alone.
5-19-09
…I walked to the lake again this evening, trying an alternative route. The neighborhood is beginning to feel more familiar now, the streets woven with such precision. The day could not have been more beautiful. I sat at the lake watching people, reading the bible, jotting down observations…On the way back I stopped at a used bookstore I’d notice on the way called “Armadillo’s Pillow.” It smelled of incense and was dimly lit with wonderful nooks and narrow halls formed by tall shelves of books. I bought two postcards and “73 Poems” by e.e. cummings.
5-20-09
Well, today was Isaac’s due date and he has yet to make an appearance. A. is watching Lord of the Rings and I am wasting time doing God-knows-what on my computer…
5-21-09
Omnivore’s Dilemma. See previous post.
5-22-09
A. wasn’t feeling well yesterday so she spent most of it on the couch. I divided my
time between the computer, books (Ramayana and The Omnivore’s Dilemma), walking and talking on the phone…Intermittently through the day A. would feel like she was having contractions. Every noise from our neighbors—with my window open they sound as if we’re sharing a room—woke me with the thought that Anne was going into labor. No such luck.
5-23-09
“Sometimes I wish I was somebody else; sometimes I wish I had more to give; sometimes I wish I was better than this; oh, Honey, let me sing to you…”
Oh Joe Purdy, I hear you and you can sing for me any day.
…This would be the day I go downtown. My first time venturing outside the neighborhood alone. I don’t even want to estimate how many times I visited the bathroom that morning. My body’s stress responses are predominantly physical…I can’t deny that I was nervous. It was a pleasant anxiety though, I gave it space as partner to excitement. A new adventure. A chance to prove myself to myself. A change of scene. A long awaited reunion with a dear friend.
I walked to the Loyola station and climbed to the wrong platform twice—thankfully making it to the southbound side without missing my train.
From my corner seat I could observe everyone in the car and noticed a young man with glasses and a bright green shirt noticing me. I tried to arrange my face and body to look composed; “I belong here.” In my mind it finally struck home, “My God, I’m here, I’m really doing this!”
I exited at Lake, underground, taking note that the walls by the stairs had tiles indicating what street you’d surface at. I headed left at Randolph and climbed the stairs to the chaos of downtown State St. Towering sky scrapers, packs of people, signs that stretched from a building’s head down to its waist. I walked in the wrong direction for blocks, just past the river before I checked my map and realized I wasn’t heading toward Millennium Park.
5-24-09
Isaac’s second due date is today. We’ll see if that’s anything he puts much stock in…
D and A continue to delight me, a little more each time I see them and I am touched by their inclusiveness. D, ever ready to instruct me on the city; it’s layout, history, politics. He shared with me too, on the same walk back from dinner at the Viceroy and Mango Lassis at the Sweets & Snacks café, about his travels in India and Nepal. It was kind of a funny conversation to have walking down the sidewalks lined with shops displaying sparkling saris, a video store with a poster of Shah Rukh Khan in the window and side walks teeming with Indians. He warned me about how you don’t have to worry much about your safety, but you do have to watch you money as they will try every angle in attempting to cheat and hustle you.
5-24-09
This is the first day that I have really felt down-hearted. The realization that I will not be returning to KY is settling in. I’m sad fore what’s been left behind: dear friends, a lovely town, a job that I knew and was good at—where I contributed—places to go and a place to come home to…
I like to believe that I can be a valuable contributing human even without a work schedule, but I’m beginning to doubt it. My over-inflated sense of self-determination and intrinsic, driven, goodness is losing air. Maybe that’s a good thing. I think I was beginning to develop a cockyness that overlaid some still rooted insecurity…
5-25-09
Isaac was born tonight around 8:30 p.m. It’s nearly 11 p.m. now and I am waiting for word that A’s parents are on their way here to the apt. Funny how it worked, the moment we took our eyes off the pot it boiled. Most of A’s labor took place in her sister’s car on the way down from WI to her hospital in Evanston, IL. I wonder what our lives will be like now? I wonder what A is feeling?
5-27-09
In the hospital with A and Is. A. has been such a natural, coaxing him to eat, comforting his cries; it’s lovely to see. Now she is trying to doze a bit as Is sleeps between my legs on this little cot where I spent the night.
5-28-09
First full day with Is at home, scrambled eggs and black bean soup, my wonderful outing with Az, our unexpected rendezvous on the el, perusing the life aquatic at John G. Shedd Aquarium, chill'n at JPUSA. I took the train a few stops in the wrong direction…I had a lot of fun today, hopefully I’ll learn to be helpful soon.
5-29-09
K.U. called me tonight. I thought it was an adventurous move on her part and told her so. I also said I hope she doesn’t have any false expectations about my coolness just because I’m Adam’s sister. I don’t mind that I said it, but it’s a bit sad that I think that way.
Had a wonderful chat with A’s mom L today. She told me the story of her life as a young woman in Long Island, New York, contemplating convent life; to a happily married mother of six (with 12 grandkids!) in OskKosh, Wisconsin.
5-31-09
Reclining on the couch, reading while cradling Is, a moment of awareness met me. I took note of the light streaming through the tall windows that I had laboriously cleaned earlier in the afternoon, the way the trees that loomed outside and the shade’s A’s mom had sewed broke it into scattered beams that played in the embroidered flowers on my shirt, he bared skin of my chest where the shirt’s neck had shifted, Is’ five small fingers clasping one of mine. I heard the pounding bass from our upstairs neighbor’s music, dulled only slightly by the floorboards and accompanied by his off-key crooning. Their noise annoys A—who I hop is successfully napping—but it amuses and delights me. Here we all are, separate but together, sharing our lives; albeit unintentionally.
6-1-09
…It was hard for A. to see her mom go, “I wish my mom would just move in!”
“Are you scared now that it’s just us?” I asked.
“A little,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“It is scary.”
We were sitting side by side on the couch, silent for a while. I don’t remember what was said, but a moment later we’d found something to laugh about.
I’ve drifted in and out of wakefulness—gone to the bathroom, eaten ½ a banana, even knocked timidly on A’s door—since 6 a.m. It’s ten to 7 now and I am sitting up in my bed, covers on, lights off.
I told A I would take Is in the morning, but now I am wondering, what’s the protocol for that? Do I just go in there and risk waking her if she’s already asleep? Do I wait until he’s awake, knowing that at that point he’s probably ready to feed? Acts that come so naturally to a mother, I am having to slowly learn. One thing to definitely work on is asking more specific questions.
6-2-09
Digital media is delighting me today. This morning/afternoon I watched the recently made Bollywood film, “Paheli”…I’m not often moved to distraction by stories these days, it takes more (or perhaps it’s a matter of timing and theme?) to captivate me. “Paheli,” with Shah Rukh, Rani, accomplished it. I find myself hungry for something that I don’t know the taste of. Feelings like this beg the question; is it better to side step stories that stir yearning and restlessness, or is it better to embrace them; to follow them like clues to the heart of the universe (or at least, to my own heart)?
Just as I scrawled that question mark, the Bowerbird’s singer (the other digital media that I’m currently delighting in) crooned, “well, I don’t know.”
Walking home from the market, arms laden with a purse and two bags of groceries, I was not afraid to smile in the face of strangers. After I did, I felt even better.
Outside, it is cool and cloudy. A. decided to wait for a nicer day to go out with Is, but I had the excuse of groceries to escape the confines of the apt. Amazing how simply walking through a door can feel like unfurling shining wings.
6-3-09
…Is. had an appointment for a DNA/Paternity test this afternoon. Holding him while A. still slept, I thought how this test dispels the cozy illusion that Is. is all A’s and that everything is as it should be.
6-5-09
I need to get over my cell phone fixation. The proclivity I have towards obsession surfaces in the most random and useless areas…
What I want has been much on my mind today, and I don’t mean just in a wireless provider. I’ve let my mind look to the future and consider what it is I’m working toward and hoping for. The images I conjure fork in vastly divergent paths. Laying on the couch in the quiet of the morning when A. is sleeping in heard bed and Is, in my arms, I read “Ominvores…” and conjure up the dream of pastoral living; growing vegetables and having chickens for eggs and maybe even a cow for milk. I’d live in a house with extra rooms so I could be open to visitors—people who need a change of scene, writers, friends, family—
…In the book there is a brief allusion to Chilean child labor and my mind transported me to the scene, a witness (for peace? a journalist? an advocate?). Someone who travels and writes trying to frame my vision in words, to plant an image in minds and light a fire in hearts. Then, the sound of Is’ breathing, the warm weight of his body in repose on my chest, reminds me that the latter is not a lifestyle in which a day like this would be a likely experience, and I am liking this day…
I imagined myself in the activists life—maybe I could foster infants when on a furlough of sorts. I imagined getting the call, having just returned home to my husband (where’d he come from?) after a mission: “Amy,” the voice on the other line would say, “we have a baby, will you be available to take him?”
I say I will have to talk to my husband, feeling the pit--that will steadily grow throughout the day--begin forming in my stomach. No time seems like the right time to bring it up. Finally, at dinner, I lay it on the table.
“____ called today,” I say, shifting food around my plate with a loosely held utensil.
He’s sitting across from me, the room is light, we’ve just grown quiet after talking about something, I don’t know what.
“She says they have a baby that needs placement,” I continue.
He sighs and looks away, I stop speaking and wait.
“I feel like I hardly know you Amy, you’re always buried in something. I don’t know if you married me because you wanted a husband or an extra pair of hands.”
I’m holding on to the first part of what he said, turning it over in my head.
“Sometimes I feel like I hardly know you too. It seems like there’s this certain place a person comes to in relationships, or in most things really. Like a wall. And you either give up there—walk away or just stay stuck in a kind of suspension—or you dive in and discover this other life below the depths. I’ve never dove. I don’t think I know how to. I’m not sure I would even be able to.”
“Amy,” he says, rising from the table, “you tend to have a knack for getting what you want. When you decide what that is, let me know.”
He is tired of my abstractions. As he walks away I consider asking, “So, what about the baby?” but decide that now is not the time.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The high cost of cheap produce...
"...I started to see the golden kernels everywhere, ground into the mud by tires and boots, floating in the puddles of rainwater, pancaked on the steel mills..."
-Micheal Pollan at an Iowa grain elevator (from The Omnivore's Dilemma)
As I read this, an image returned to me. Hands and knees in the dirt and patchy grass of the Farmer's Market lot, fingers picking up each individual kernel that had spilled to the ground. I was helping S, a local farmer, and T, the wiry brown-skinned boy with eyes like the ocean who was interning with her, run ears of corn through a hand-cranked machine that freed them of their kernels. Following this, T and I winnowed the grain, pouring pounds of it from one shining silver pot to another, letting the chaff be blown off by the wind. More often than not the machine delivered patchy ears with a majority of the kernels still clinging. T and I would kneel by the trough, coaxing the kernels off by rubbing our fingers against the roots fixed to the ear like tooth in gum. We'd carefully pick up whatever had been flung off target by the spinning wheel, going so far as to brush our hands over the surface of the earth to reveal any that had jumped behind a sprig of grass or been covered in a thin layer of wind blown dirt. As far as we were able, we accounted for every kernel. Nothing was wasted.
I was simply following S. and T's lead. My first inclination was to let what had fallen lie. First, it's dirty (how quickly we forget that it's from dirt that all food rises!). Second, taking the time and trouble for such a small thing seemed pointless--we had stacks yet to go through! I had a commodity view of corn. A supermarket shopper's presumption that whatever was needed, or wanted, would arrive before I did and be neatly presented for my consumption; whatever I wanted, whenever (for the 24-hour Wal-mart shopper) I wanted it. S and T had an entirely different paradigm. Having been with this corn from seed time to harvest, it was not just a product to them, it was the tangible manifestation of work, energy, life. It was a representation of their time and talent, as well as a sources of income; food in a starving world, money in a poor man's house. Golden kernels of corn where, for these farmers, not unlike nuggets of pure gold to a miner.
How quickly excess quickly begets waste.
Pollan quotes Friar Sahagun in his writing regarding the Aztecs:
"If they saw grains of maize scattered on the ground, they quickly gathered them up saying, 'Our Sustenance suffereth, it lieth weeping. If we should not gather it up, it would accuse us before our Lord. It would say, "Oh, our Lord, this vassal picked me not up when I lay scattered upon the ground, Punish him!" or perhaps we should starve.'"
-Micheal Pollan at an Iowa grain elevator (from The Omnivore's Dilemma)
As I read this, an image returned to me. Hands and knees in the dirt and patchy grass of the Farmer's Market lot, fingers picking up each individual kernel that had spilled to the ground. I was helping S, a local farmer, and T, the wiry brown-skinned boy with eyes like the ocean who was interning with her, run ears of corn through a hand-cranked machine that freed them of their kernels. Following this, T and I winnowed the grain, pouring pounds of it from one shining silver pot to another, letting the chaff be blown off by the wind. More often than not the machine delivered patchy ears with a majority of the kernels still clinging. T and I would kneel by the trough, coaxing the kernels off by rubbing our fingers against the roots fixed to the ear like tooth in gum. We'd carefully pick up whatever had been flung off target by the spinning wheel, going so far as to brush our hands over the surface of the earth to reveal any that had jumped behind a sprig of grass or been covered in a thin layer of wind blown dirt. As far as we were able, we accounted for every kernel. Nothing was wasted.
I was simply following S. and T's lead. My first inclination was to let what had fallen lie. First, it's dirty (how quickly we forget that it's from dirt that all food rises!). Second, taking the time and trouble for such a small thing seemed pointless--we had stacks yet to go through! I had a commodity view of corn. A supermarket shopper's presumption that whatever was needed, or wanted, would arrive before I did and be neatly presented for my consumption; whatever I wanted, whenever (for the 24-hour Wal-mart shopper) I wanted it. S and T had an entirely different paradigm. Having been with this corn from seed time to harvest, it was not just a product to them, it was the tangible manifestation of work, energy, life. It was a representation of their time and talent, as well as a sources of income; food in a starving world, money in a poor man's house. Golden kernels of corn where, for these farmers, not unlike nuggets of pure gold to a miner.
How quickly excess quickly begets waste.
Pollan quotes Friar Sahagun in his writing regarding the Aztecs:
"If they saw grains of maize scattered on the ground, they quickly gathered them up saying, 'Our Sustenance suffereth, it lieth weeping. If we should not gather it up, it would accuse us before our Lord. It would say, "Oh, our Lord, this vassal picked me not up when I lay scattered upon the ground, Punish him!" or perhaps we should starve.'"
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Forgiveness
The child makes many a mistake,
But the mother forgives them all.
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
If the child throws a temper tantrum
And pulls and pushes his mother,
She does not move away from him
Nor pull and push in return.
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
My mind is trapped in depression;
How can I free my mind without your name?
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
Bless me with a loving heart and a peaceful mind,
And draw me into full absorption in you.
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
-Kabir
But the mother forgives them all.
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
If the child throws a temper tantrum
And pulls and pushes his mother,
She does not move away from him
Nor pull and push in return.
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
My mind is trapped in depression;
How can I free my mind without your name?
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
Bless me with a loving heart and a peaceful mind,
And draw me into full absorption in you.
I am your child, your wayward child,
Lord, won't you forgive my sins?
-Kabir
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Darlin', come be close, and be rested...
When you’re in love the reasoning behind your affection can be difficult to ascertain—the love supersedes what is commonly considered logical or within the realms of accepted reality. I guess I’m in love with Jesus.
On Good Friday, I went to mass with A. I left feeling a bit dejected and guilty. My mind had spent most of the time wandering and halfway through the two hour service I noticed my antsy feet were jiggling the pew in front of me. I was not embracing the mystery. It was not long ago that I felt a thrill at the symbolism, sanctity and unity that infused traditional services. Now I only felt impatience. Can it be that I’ve killed my ability to be receptive to this mode of spiritual connection?
My schedule has been completely askew this week, set on the shelf waiting for Monday and the promise of a more normal work-week. The result has been a perpetual struggle with anxiety and irritability. Thursday night I was on the edge of despair. Friday morning I rallied, but my response to the service acted as a catalyst for a decline in morale. Saturday I slept deep and late into the morning; running errands in a mental fog and returning just in time to leave for an Easter/Birthday cook-out.
After that I felt pressed for time to do laundry and get a good run in before going to HR to cover the night shift. I couldn’t find my keys and was feeling agitated and rushed when J called. I overrode my usual inclination to ignore incoming calls and answered. It was good to catch up with my wise, mystic, silly friend. He said some things about faith that made me wish I’d been recording our conversation. It was something about the need for an apocalyptic, eschatological faith—as crazy as it sounds, he said, we need a Christianity that embraces the idea of a kind of Utopian future—we need hope. In the moment I didn’t fully agree or believe, at the same time though, something clicked. I was raised, if only a little.
This morning I went to St. Thomas with no expectations. In truth, I went anticipating the discomfort of insincere recitation as I participated in worship. I went with the expectation of being unmoved. I was drifting until the gospel when Andy’s reading of John 20:1-8—Mary’s lament at the empty tomb of Jesus—captured me. It was her despair at the perceived loss of her believed that pierced through my apathy. Not only was he dead, now even his body was absent and she had nothing left to hold on to. I grieved with her.
Without recounting every detail of my thought process, there came a point in my sparse notes that I scratched, “Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how long will you put up with me?” Mary mourned at an empty tomb. I avert my eyes like someone avoiding the sigh of what they are afraid of (will it turn out that no one is there?). Both of us focused on an absence, ignoring the presence that asks of her, “Why do you weep?” of me, “why do you ignore?” Communion was a blessed reunion and the song that accompanied it contained a verse, “How I love him,” that I sang with the heart of a grateful lover; changing my vocabulary from “I doubt,” to “I wonder.”
On Good Friday, I went to mass with A. I left feeling a bit dejected and guilty. My mind had spent most of the time wandering and halfway through the two hour service I noticed my antsy feet were jiggling the pew in front of me. I was not embracing the mystery. It was not long ago that I felt a thrill at the symbolism, sanctity and unity that infused traditional services. Now I only felt impatience. Can it be that I’ve killed my ability to be receptive to this mode of spiritual connection?
My schedule has been completely askew this week, set on the shelf waiting for Monday and the promise of a more normal work-week. The result has been a perpetual struggle with anxiety and irritability. Thursday night I was on the edge of despair. Friday morning I rallied, but my response to the service acted as a catalyst for a decline in morale. Saturday I slept deep and late into the morning; running errands in a mental fog and returning just in time to leave for an Easter/Birthday cook-out.
After that I felt pressed for time to do laundry and get a good run in before going to HR to cover the night shift. I couldn’t find my keys and was feeling agitated and rushed when J called. I overrode my usual inclination to ignore incoming calls and answered. It was good to catch up with my wise, mystic, silly friend. He said some things about faith that made me wish I’d been recording our conversation. It was something about the need for an apocalyptic, eschatological faith—as crazy as it sounds, he said, we need a Christianity that embraces the idea of a kind of Utopian future—we need hope. In the moment I didn’t fully agree or believe, at the same time though, something clicked. I was raised, if only a little.
This morning I went to St. Thomas with no expectations. In truth, I went anticipating the discomfort of insincere recitation as I participated in worship. I went with the expectation of being unmoved. I was drifting until the gospel when Andy’s reading of John 20:1-8—Mary’s lament at the empty tomb of Jesus—captured me. It was her despair at the perceived loss of her believed that pierced through my apathy. Not only was he dead, now even his body was absent and she had nothing left to hold on to. I grieved with her.
Without recounting every detail of my thought process, there came a point in my sparse notes that I scratched, “Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how long will you put up with me?” Mary mourned at an empty tomb. I avert my eyes like someone avoiding the sigh of what they are afraid of (will it turn out that no one is there?). Both of us focused on an absence, ignoring the presence that asks of her, “Why do you weep?” of me, “why do you ignore?” Communion was a blessed reunion and the song that accompanied it contained a verse, “How I love him,” that I sang with the heart of a grateful lover; changing my vocabulary from “I doubt,” to “I wonder.”
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
March Musings...
When I said “I don’t want to write,” I may have been telling only part of the story. Another part indicates the opposite is true. A third says I’m lazy. This laziness is compounded in times of enhanced guardedness, times when I am reluctant to share my thoughts or even to explore them myself. This is not one of those times. What follows are some journal excerpts for the month of March.
“When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name—but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease. But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden
3/7/09
Spring. We set our clocks forward tonight and nature has spent the day dropping heavy hints. Straight narrow blades of thick dark grass pierce through earth into air, which is warm and windy. These will soon surround bright yellow daffodil blossoms. One of Kentucky’s most brilliant indicators of seasonal shift. Birds are exultant and fat squirrels shake off their lethargy to hop across open spaces in search of new food sources. Patches of delicate, pale purple flowers are cast across the grass like throw rugs. I’m sitting at a picnic table on campus. The sun is low. From the building behind me I can hear a faltering but rich melody; a student is practicing piano.
Sitting atop the East Pinnacle with L…we talked about the various ways that we respond to coincidence; sometimes trying to find the secret signs and meanings, sometimes just sitting back in amusement. During the silence that followed, I looked over the distant littleness of Berea and the wide wild expanse of hills and valleys and ragged winter forest that surrounded it. I mulled over the other part of my conversation with A [ about the death and new life of moving from one place to another—wondering what reincarnation of me would present herself in Chicago.], understanding that to a large degree the me that will arrive in this new place is largely a matter of choice. It is a rare, priceless opportunity. As I present myself to a new place and new people, who do I want to be?
3/10/09
There’s a bright full moon tonight and I was wishing I could just lie back and look at it instead of having to drive my car home from Jackson County. I could go gaze at it now, but my body feels so tired, nothing outweighs the appeal of being stretched across my bed wearing loose light clothes…Mitch Barrett was playing at AJ this evening and his music, as usual, draws me deep. There’s magic in that man’s art. My thoughts were many but primarily I’m being kept in mind of D. “…she wasn’t born to waste, she had to develop the taste,” is a recurring line in a song Mitch wrote…I felt the stories of all the Healing Rain women; those stories I’ve made them write not once, but twice over the courts of their stay, the stories I see them act out day after day…D said writing hers brought up all sorts of negative feelings. Looking back, all she was a waste. Some women pointed out she had her daughter. I said something feeble about her now having a unique perspective. I meant it, but I hate that I said it—filling the silence, putting a band aid on a bruise—knowing all the while that I saw the waste too. The heart-breaking, bewildering waste of a beautiful life.
I keep thinking about this and mulling over how I could have responded, how we can respond when encountering these things in ourselves or others. I cannot think of a way to look back and make the bad things good. Valuable perhaps, as lessons, but not good. The good can only come in present awareness and future creation. That is where D’s gift comes in. She can look at her life and see what it has been and what she would have liked for it to be. D can look back with the perspective of today; a perspective grounded in life as a treasure, recognition of responsibility—she can see that there was something to be wasted. Whereas, those who’ve lived in relative ease with little disruption sit heavy on their eggs, crushing what was meant to be hatched. Not to say we need disaster in our lives to truly live, but something that’s what it takes to wake up.
3/11/09
Morning. The tree outside my window is budding!
3/18/09
In East of Eden, when contemplating the meaning behind the story of Cain and Abel, Lee has an epiphany. He realizes that the story is about rejection and man’s response to being overlooked in his quest for love and approval…I read this over a week ago and, while I felt it deeply then I’ve only just begun to think about it. Looking at the stories of the Old Testament through the lens of Lee’s revelation, I can see this theme of rejection and response cropping up everywhere. Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, David and Saul—the party that wields the sought after love varies, but the primary elements remain. One is chosen over the other for reasons appearing, for the most part, to be entirely arbitrary. While this seems utterly unfair, does a lover not have the right to choose a beloved and is it not possible that this is true with God as well? In any case, that part is not a thing that can be changed or controlled. As with HR classes, the story shows that we can’t make anyone feel anything, that’s up to them. Freedom comes though in the next step, acknowledging that in the same way that we don’t have control over other’s feelings, neither do they have control of ours. Hence, timshel, “Thou Mayest.”
“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto Thee shall be his desire, and thou mayest rule over him” -God to Cain
“…the word timshel—thou mayest—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man.”
- Lee, in East of Eden
3/23/09
I don’t want to be a cynic. “I want my heart back,” an inner voice whimpered; creatively remembering an innocent, hopeful, believing heart. I’ve always been receptive to cynicism though, identifying it in others and reaching my arms out to wrap it in an embrace even as a decried it. Cynicism is safe. Eventually you come out on top, life proves you right. Every battle that you win though brings you closer to losing the war. Maybe it’s not better or worse to think one way or another, it only brings you to different results…This morning’s meditation on the same old words lit a fresh angle:
“…If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong…if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge…but
have not love, I am nothing.”
“I want to go back,” I started thinking but was corrected and redirected by what I would call the Holy Spirit,
“You can’t go back (and if you could, it’s not what you’re thinking), there is only forward—but you can choose what you will bring with you.”
---Timshel, “Thou Mayest”---
Skepticism has its place; turning stones and revealing new truths. Cynicism though, I believe it closes more doors than it opens. It asphyxiates the spirit.
During meditation this morning (and this is so silly, but it touched me) I had an impression of Jesus, bending down and reaching out – like Aladdin on his magic carpet to Jasmine – asking, “do you trust me?” And oh, how I wanted to take his hand!
3/26/09
…I was reminded of The Poisonwood Bible, the part where the sisters are touring a temple and the guide explains some of the religious rituals that basically amounted to massacre. The tour guide pronounced the barbarism of the race, while one sister pondered, perhaps this was a survival skill in a region where sustenance was scarce, and she questioned the ethics or her own role as a doctor. K and I went on to consider, if all of the men and women who died in wars and other acts of cruelty or neglect had lived and had children—would the earth be able to sustain us? Do we need wars? Do we need the elimination of individuals in the present for the sake of the survival of the species throughout the future?
I told K that I ask God everyday to teach me to love. Some days I have the heavy feeling that the best way to love is not the kind that brings warm fuzzys and that tough love goes beyond telling a child she can’t have a piece of candy. It’s a thought that challenges and sometimes frightens me. I want my love to feel good. Bother to me and to those who receive it. Here, K, beautiful big-hearted K, interjected. She said, even recognizing this argument, she could never go against her feelings and support a war or any kind of killing. Nor could I, I conceded, but I’m not confident that I could fight convincingly against them either.
Then, one of us brought up natural disasters—is what happens naturally not enough to maintain the balance?
K made an interesting point; if we were not destroying each other, as the human race expanded would the earth not more naturally assert herself, express her boundaries—swallowing us in water, withering us in drought, ravaging us with disease—we could experience the natural consequences of withdrawing earth’s resources, of living, rather than bearing the weight of another’s death. Anxious to take on the power of God, we crush ourselves beneath a responsibility impossible to understand or bear...
It rained steadily through the night and into morning. A light drizzle continued into afternoon. I went for a jog. The air was damp and hung heavy with the smell of earthworms that stretched across the pavement.
3/29/09
While chopping lettuce for future lunches, I recalled something I’d thought of while driving home from work. I decided to say it aloud to A.
“I don’t know why I started thinking this,” I began, “…it occurred to me that my growing romantic skepticism runs parallel with my religious skepticism…faith seems to require believing something and then building a life around it, much the same as romance involves feeling something and then building a life around it…”
…I did not tell her, I didn’t even remember until now, my minds rolling about the word “believe.” Focusing on the letters that begin it: b-e. What you believe is most accurately revealed not through what you say but what you do. So, to believe something is to be it. To be something requires a series of complementary thoughts, feelings and actions. These I identify as being a matter of choice. Is a belief a choice? I think so. As such, can it change without losing its validity or diminishing its value? I don’t know. In the past, I think I would have said, “No.” In the past, I also believed I’d feel romantic love for one man only and that I would love him until my dying day, even if it was unrequited. And so I move most of my beliefs to the shift but not altogether unwelcoming house of doubt.
All this from a girl who yesterday morning sat cross-legged on a porch swing and felt the pull to commit her heart to the Creator for keeps. The subtle greatness of sisterhood is never allowed to travel far from me before I call, “Wait! Stay where I can see you!” (Followed by a whispered, “but don’t come any closer!”) Processing the idea a little, I thought that one of my dominating inhibition regarding relationships is a reluctance to become too involved in one thing lest there be something (calling, person, place) greater—what could be greater though than a commitment to be eternally devoted to the God of the Universe? No wonder such a notion would beckon me, and that it would call all the louder in times of uncertainty.
“When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name—but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It’s not an uncommon disease. But it’s nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden
3/7/09
Spring. We set our clocks forward tonight and nature has spent the day dropping heavy hints. Straight narrow blades of thick dark grass pierce through earth into air, which is warm and windy. These will soon surround bright yellow daffodil blossoms. One of Kentucky’s most brilliant indicators of seasonal shift. Birds are exultant and fat squirrels shake off their lethargy to hop across open spaces in search of new food sources. Patches of delicate, pale purple flowers are cast across the grass like throw rugs. I’m sitting at a picnic table on campus. The sun is low. From the building behind me I can hear a faltering but rich melody; a student is practicing piano.
Sitting atop the East Pinnacle with L…we talked about the various ways that we respond to coincidence; sometimes trying to find the secret signs and meanings, sometimes just sitting back in amusement. During the silence that followed, I looked over the distant littleness of Berea and the wide wild expanse of hills and valleys and ragged winter forest that surrounded it. I mulled over the other part of my conversation with A [ about the death and new life of moving from one place to another—wondering what reincarnation of me would present herself in Chicago.], understanding that to a large degree the me that will arrive in this new place is largely a matter of choice. It is a rare, priceless opportunity. As I present myself to a new place and new people, who do I want to be?
3/10/09
There’s a bright full moon tonight and I was wishing I could just lie back and look at it instead of having to drive my car home from Jackson County. I could go gaze at it now, but my body feels so tired, nothing outweighs the appeal of being stretched across my bed wearing loose light clothes…Mitch Barrett was playing at AJ this evening and his music, as usual, draws me deep. There’s magic in that man’s art. My thoughts were many but primarily I’m being kept in mind of D. “…she wasn’t born to waste, she had to develop the taste,” is a recurring line in a song Mitch wrote…I felt the stories of all the Healing Rain women; those stories I’ve made them write not once, but twice over the courts of their stay, the stories I see them act out day after day…D said writing hers brought up all sorts of negative feelings. Looking back, all she was a waste. Some women pointed out she had her daughter. I said something feeble about her now having a unique perspective. I meant it, but I hate that I said it—filling the silence, putting a band aid on a bruise—knowing all the while that I saw the waste too. The heart-breaking, bewildering waste of a beautiful life.
I keep thinking about this and mulling over how I could have responded, how we can respond when encountering these things in ourselves or others. I cannot think of a way to look back and make the bad things good. Valuable perhaps, as lessons, but not good. The good can only come in present awareness and future creation. That is where D’s gift comes in. She can look at her life and see what it has been and what she would have liked for it to be. D can look back with the perspective of today; a perspective grounded in life as a treasure, recognition of responsibility—she can see that there was something to be wasted. Whereas, those who’ve lived in relative ease with little disruption sit heavy on their eggs, crushing what was meant to be hatched. Not to say we need disaster in our lives to truly live, but something that’s what it takes to wake up.
3/11/09
Morning. The tree outside my window is budding!
3/18/09
In East of Eden, when contemplating the meaning behind the story of Cain and Abel, Lee has an epiphany. He realizes that the story is about rejection and man’s response to being overlooked in his quest for love and approval…I read this over a week ago and, while I felt it deeply then I’ve only just begun to think about it. Looking at the stories of the Old Testament through the lens of Lee’s revelation, I can see this theme of rejection and response cropping up everywhere. Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, David and Saul—the party that wields the sought after love varies, but the primary elements remain. One is chosen over the other for reasons appearing, for the most part, to be entirely arbitrary. While this seems utterly unfair, does a lover not have the right to choose a beloved and is it not possible that this is true with God as well? In any case, that part is not a thing that can be changed or controlled. As with HR classes, the story shows that we can’t make anyone feel anything, that’s up to them. Freedom comes though in the next step, acknowledging that in the same way that we don’t have control over other’s feelings, neither do they have control of ours. Hence, timshel, “Thou Mayest.”
“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto Thee shall be his desire, and thou mayest rule over him” -God to Cain
“…the word timshel—thou mayest—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man.”
- Lee, in East of Eden
3/23/09
I don’t want to be a cynic. “I want my heart back,” an inner voice whimpered; creatively remembering an innocent, hopeful, believing heart. I’ve always been receptive to cynicism though, identifying it in others and reaching my arms out to wrap it in an embrace even as a decried it. Cynicism is safe. Eventually you come out on top, life proves you right. Every battle that you win though brings you closer to losing the war. Maybe it’s not better or worse to think one way or another, it only brings you to different results…This morning’s meditation on the same old words lit a fresh angle:
“…If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong…if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge…but
have not love, I am nothing.”
“I want to go back,” I started thinking but was corrected and redirected by what I would call the Holy Spirit,
“You can’t go back (and if you could, it’s not what you’re thinking), there is only forward—but you can choose what you will bring with you.”
---Timshel, “Thou Mayest”---
Skepticism has its place; turning stones and revealing new truths. Cynicism though, I believe it closes more doors than it opens. It asphyxiates the spirit.
During meditation this morning (and this is so silly, but it touched me) I had an impression of Jesus, bending down and reaching out – like Aladdin on his magic carpet to Jasmine – asking, “do you trust me?” And oh, how I wanted to take his hand!
3/26/09
…I was reminded of The Poisonwood Bible, the part where the sisters are touring a temple and the guide explains some of the religious rituals that basically amounted to massacre. The tour guide pronounced the barbarism of the race, while one sister pondered, perhaps this was a survival skill in a region where sustenance was scarce, and she questioned the ethics or her own role as a doctor. K and I went on to consider, if all of the men and women who died in wars and other acts of cruelty or neglect had lived and had children—would the earth be able to sustain us? Do we need wars? Do we need the elimination of individuals in the present for the sake of the survival of the species throughout the future?
I told K that I ask God everyday to teach me to love. Some days I have the heavy feeling that the best way to love is not the kind that brings warm fuzzys and that tough love goes beyond telling a child she can’t have a piece of candy. It’s a thought that challenges and sometimes frightens me. I want my love to feel good. Bother to me and to those who receive it. Here, K, beautiful big-hearted K, interjected. She said, even recognizing this argument, she could never go against her feelings and support a war or any kind of killing. Nor could I, I conceded, but I’m not confident that I could fight convincingly against them either.
Then, one of us brought up natural disasters—is what happens naturally not enough to maintain the balance?
K made an interesting point; if we were not destroying each other, as the human race expanded would the earth not more naturally assert herself, express her boundaries—swallowing us in water, withering us in drought, ravaging us with disease—we could experience the natural consequences of withdrawing earth’s resources, of living, rather than bearing the weight of another’s death. Anxious to take on the power of God, we crush ourselves beneath a responsibility impossible to understand or bear...
It rained steadily through the night and into morning. A light drizzle continued into afternoon. I went for a jog. The air was damp and hung heavy with the smell of earthworms that stretched across the pavement.
3/29/09
While chopping lettuce for future lunches, I recalled something I’d thought of while driving home from work. I decided to say it aloud to A.
“I don’t know why I started thinking this,” I began, “…it occurred to me that my growing romantic skepticism runs parallel with my religious skepticism…faith seems to require believing something and then building a life around it, much the same as romance involves feeling something and then building a life around it…”
…I did not tell her, I didn’t even remember until now, my minds rolling about the word “believe.” Focusing on the letters that begin it: b-e. What you believe is most accurately revealed not through what you say but what you do. So, to believe something is to be it. To be something requires a series of complementary thoughts, feelings and actions. These I identify as being a matter of choice. Is a belief a choice? I think so. As such, can it change without losing its validity or diminishing its value? I don’t know. In the past, I think I would have said, “No.” In the past, I also believed I’d feel romantic love for one man only and that I would love him until my dying day, even if it was unrequited. And so I move most of my beliefs to the shift but not altogether unwelcoming house of doubt.
All this from a girl who yesterday morning sat cross-legged on a porch swing and felt the pull to commit her heart to the Creator for keeps. The subtle greatness of sisterhood is never allowed to travel far from me before I call, “Wait! Stay where I can see you!” (Followed by a whispered, “but don’t come any closer!”) Processing the idea a little, I thought that one of my dominating inhibition regarding relationships is a reluctance to become too involved in one thing lest there be something (calling, person, place) greater—what could be greater though than a commitment to be eternally devoted to the God of the Universe? No wonder such a notion would beckon me, and that it would call all the louder in times of uncertainty.
Monday, February 23, 2009
I don't want to write.
I don't want to write. If I could just stop thinking about it, I wouldn't write. I wouldn't have to. There'd be no need. I'd just let the thoughts run over my wrinkly brain, like waters teasing embrace of a creek bed. I'd just let it run over and out. Whether I wanted to do it or not would not be an issue. All those thoughts would just be themselves, and run their course. And I'd feel fine, just dandy. If I could just stop thinking about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
