michellatron writes.

Dying Season: Quieting Down

2011-09-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

I love the rust quiet that climbs into autumn. I love sinking into that atmosphere, feet taking to it first, going slower. The sidewalks are clean, the air seems wrung out, rubbed down. Everything becomes pleasantly raw.

Fall reminds me to quiet down, to just sit in the buzz of other people's laughter, private talks in the cafe, hoops and shouts on the street. I am learning that in new places I become paranoid. I feel desperate for validation, for someone to say, "WOW, I am so glad you stepped into this corner of the world." I find that I am more doubtful, that if someone seems happy to see me, I get very squinty eyed in my deep self. I am chock full of disbelief.

I noticed yesterday that I try to close the gap I create with my paranoia and doubts through speech. I talk a lot. In class I am half dying to answer a question (I am becoming THAT girl). In all honesty, I feel like I have to prove myself. I'm sure just about everyone feels this way in new situations, but I'm becoming exhausted by the desperation of it--the worries.

Yesterday I tried to quiet down. I let myself sit back, I let myself listen. I thought to myself, Is it really such an emergency that you be known, heard, loved? It felt so good, just listening. Just letting myself feel okay about not contributing constantly. I felt more myself, more composed. Immediately I felt that I didn't need to speak. I could if I wanted, but I didn't neeeeed to.

The road from Blacksburg to Roanoke is sometimes unpleasantly long and car-sickness inducing. I plug my ears with so much sound to try to pull me out of the twist-bounce-headache of it. But yesterday afternoon, winding up and down through the mountains in the high-up bus had me looking out at dozens of birds hovering high above the valleys between mountains almost sweatered in pine. I felt the word height press down into my bones. I began to value their distance; the boundaries of birds. They could touch down on a tree top or rise. They could walk in the shadowy woods or cast cloudward. They let themselves mingle, speak, and hover in softest silence.

I remembered times with very dear friends. Andrew and I sitting on a hill side smoking cigars, watching deer, and riding our bikes through town to the fireworks. We were twenty-something-year-old-kids playing, flying kites. Chase and I walking the Hope College campus at 3 a.m. baring our souls, sharing pain. I remembered sitting at Noshville reading Lewis and working through difficult theology till 6 a.m. Paula bringing me Thanksgiving left-overs after I got out of work, walking every subdivision sidewalk, and waiting for meteor showers under dozens of blankets. I remember porch nights with Alicia and our endless conversations.

I felt so lucky, so buoyant. I remembered that by some miracle I met these people and they met me and we prize each other and our memories as some of the best that ever happen. I have my value. Everyday spent with them and other friends and my family and David have just pressed it into me. I forget it. I wake up empty, unfamiliar even to myself.

And I can't wait to grow new friendships here, to still this new space for a moment with a kindred spirit. And I'm excited for that exchange of value, and humanity. But I don't need to prove myself. That is not how friendship, how validation, ever works. You don't work for it. You just let it.

One of the two things I have learned (over and over again...and again this weekend) are to quiet down, listen, and just be. Stop proving. Hold back the need. Listen. Speak words that are true and aren't asking for anything. Secondly, I need belief. I need to start opening up to the possibility that it is okay; that I am okay now.

Here's to a new place and the way a new place pulls at your limbs, opens you up and sifts through you looking for ways to grow you everywhere. I am glad I am here, glad I am surrounded by such cool people I can't wait to continue getting to know, and glad to be inside a courageously dying season here.

A Very Good Place

2011-09-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

I am afraid to write posts lately. I used to do it all the time, and then the wimpish side of me got bigger and I began to get to know lots of different people who might be critical about lots of different aspects of myself. I still haven't gotten over that adolescent stage where you think you are the center of the world and there are eyes of all sorts along your cupboards and walls sizing you up every moment of your life (even when you're alone).

The adolescent still punching around in my veins gets hurt awfully easily. I'm working on that backbone, but I've noticed that in effort to work on my backbone, I've tried to tape up the mouth that is genuinely afraid and worried and doesn't feel quite up to par in most circles.

In effort to approach my growth holistically, I want to take the tape off, and let that mouth speak a little more. So at long last, I have steadied myself in a desk chair by my best window overlooking my festively green and lush backyard and turned my fan to its softest setting to write a post about a few of the feelings Virginia and graduate school have brought me.

This transition has been difficult for me. I feel smaller here than I did in Grand Rapids. I used to enjoy hiding in colorful cafes, smiling brightly over all the new art on the walls and the shops and people walking the messy blooming streets. I used to feel invisible, but in this really important way. Like I had some secret, and lots of joy. I think the secret has to do with possibility. I was in Grand Rapids wondering and wishing and hoping and dreaming and fantasizing about all that might happen in a few months. I wasn't living in reality. I walked around Grand Rapids in dream goggles. Everything smelled sweet because I was expecting sweet just around the corner. And Grand Rapids is beautiful, and the art is luscious, and the cafes are such fun places to hide in journals and books and still be near enough to lots of other people doing the same things.

But the point is that I felt possibility. Now, possibility has arrived. A big fat chunk of it. I mean, I have to fulfill this chunk. I have to write and publish and grow and learn and all of that. But the opportunity came. I am in the place. And the surprising thing is that when I arrived, color seemed to fall out of the atmosphere. Not entirely. My little cottage-y apartment is color-full and feels like home. But my life in general feels a bit more on the gray spectrum.

David told me one night that he thinks this is because my self-worth doesn't come from myself. It comes from the situations or people in my life. The hope of the future gave me a strong feeling of self-worth, but I didn't have any plan for keeping my bright composure after attaining that hope.

A friend of mine commented on me when we were in our early teenage years that I was always bent on growing, on re-inventing myself, on starting fresh toward some new me. A part of me whispers that it is wrong to locate myself in my own possibilities. And perhaps that's true. I cannot define my own worth, I cannot let color drown when I attain or lose a hope or possibility for my life. My worth cannot be dependent upon that.

I need to work on defining my own worth. I need to learn how to cover up the eyes all over my apartment, in the clouds as I walk, and say, "Nobody's watching. Just do as you please." I need to take some joy in my own way of living. I need to take joy in my quirks. I need to press guilt back into it's stoney throat and let myself just be thrilled about watching a Murder Mystery when I could be chugging away at accomplishing this or that.

I love Anne Lamott's words, "Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down. I recommend that you all take a long deep breath, and stop. Just be where your butts are, and breathe. Take some time. Refuse to cooperate with anyone who is trying to shame you into hopping right back up onto that rat exercise wheel."

I love how spirituality rests on this tenant that there is more to you than what you do and what your skin and swank says about you. I think the big huge sacrifice of living a spiritual life is taking on that lightness and emptying the stones from your pockets.

I think this is the way I'm going to tackle the gray in my life. I'm going to try and live into a new possibility. That I can take joy in myself. That I can sit and paint and write and that no one even needs to know or approve or give me pointers or anything. I can be myself and revel in that. Perhaps that sounds childish, but to me, today, in this new place, it sounds like taking a forkful of chocolate desert. It sounds succulent.

And I need to see this place as a possibility I am still moving into. My writing has possibility. There's this whole shadow over my writing since I got here, as well. I just don't care about it. And I think it's because I don't know where it's going. Now is the time to revise it, to work it out, to strengthen it. And I've never been there with my poems before. It's always just been my own pair of squinty eyes working over the page. Now I've got dozens of others, and they're so smart, and I just don't know what my writing will become, and that unknown stage I'm in is scary and repels me.

The thing is, something will become of it. I'm in this process, now. No getting out. And I will enjoy it. I just need to be vulnerable to it and enjoy it because there is possibility there. There is hope there. My creations are inside an important process. They are not finished, but they have come from a very good place.

To Savor: My Resolution

2011-01-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

There is so much (too much) that needs to be written. There's so much that needs mulling, that needs a quiet Saturday afternoon alone in my little city apartment, half lit with afternoon sun, the heat turned temporarily up. I need distance from my life so I can see it clearly, so I can bring it all into focus, and perhaps learn something. I want to be a bird on a branch above my life, watching me work, watching me become so stressed out my stomach twists and turns, my back bones grip and lock. I want to be the bird seeing me so afraid of what people think, of wishing they think I'm pretty, of wishing to be something special in their eyes. I want to gain that distance and sing back to myself some new song that eases my stomach muscles and pulls my shoulders tenderly back into place.

There's a me I've lost lately. When I think of myself, of the person I have been and want to be, I think of something fresh, like the faint citrus scent you catch if you press an orange up to your mouth, the peel still cloaking the fruit. I am vibrant, and never wear dress clothes. I wear skirts, and overalls, and capris, and tank tops and t-shirts. I never smile when I don't mean it, and my eyes have lights that switch on when paint hits the canvas, or a new poetic line catches on the synapses of my brain, or my boyfriend practices guitar and the sound of him working over frets and strings tucks the moment in day blue.

I want the me who relishes in the sound of onions simmering in olive oil, who creates and creates and goes for walks and delights and thinks and reads C.S. Lewis until her brain throbs with thoughts deep and wide as the Mystery that breeds them. I want the me who savors.

Something I've realized recently is that I am not refreshed or truly relaxed by doing nothing. I like to believe that watching marathons of crime television dramas is truly cathartic. I like to believe that television and movies and general provide relaxing entertainment. My weekends are home to these sorts of experiences. And though I love them, they don't provide me with any real rest. I will not be sustained by those moments when I'm back in the grind, dealing with an inconsistent work environment, painstakingly completing graduate school applications, and occasionally allowing the big worries inside to make an even bigger mess in my head.

What does sustain me, what moments I still remember (simple as they were at the time), are moments when I savored something. I remember sitting by myself out on my back porch at my old apartment with all the lights off so I could see the stars, talking to God about the pains and feeling somehow secure in the big dark world with its miniscule glowing markers and tree shadows. I remember dicing peppers, tossing spices, entirely focused on the art of creation.

I savor laying out my tapestry, making a big mess of all my paints and charcoal pencils, ripping up designed paper to collage and paint over. I savor checking up on blogs and websites of those who inspire me to be as tender and loving and hopeful and creative and helpful as possible in this world (lately, maganda.org...who's actually moved...but she has a link you can click to find her new site...I have to do it every time :)). I savor going for walks, writing poems on the walls of my mind as I cross the street, breath deep into every well as I enter the bookstore, heading straight for the poetry section first, celebrating story and the ability to dream up and give words to the sights only you have held.

I savor journaling. I savor blogging. I savor this walk over what my mind has been turning and forgetting and stomping under all the stress and clutching and gripping. I savor thinking about my boyfriend and what we are beginning together. I savor the image of him, shaggy hair, jeans with giant holes in the knees. I love coming back to the realization that I have never felt so lucky as I do now.

So, here's to 2011. May it be a year of savoring. And it will be some work, as odd as that sounds. It is most difficult for me to take time to enjoy. And there is time--not much--but there is. There are long enough moments for taking in sights, for going slower, for returning to being a simple human being with one life that is going, moving, now. I'm starting now, writing what I love to write, here, for whoever reads it. May you find time to savor, and be filled and refreshed and sustained.

The Tugging and The Vision

2010-10-25T15:47:00.001-07:00

I am watching fall blue out the faces of houses and cement sidewalk slabs, rain clinging to the air, my own eyes hoping it will just let go, fall just beyond the coffee shop windows, make the world slick with shine. For the first time in a while I'm enjoying my music, particularly Ellery/ Dividing the Plunder. Tasha and Justin Golden (the band members) have always sung a story so like the one walking the often puddly floor of my heart.

There's always this deep longing in the lyrics, something stretching out the emptiness in me, helping me explore all the rooms that feel stark and gray.

I feel so unsatisfied lately, and I worry that I'll never go where I want to. That I'll never write or help other people acheive their creative goals. I want to feel meaningful, like the hours of my life contribute to the vivacity of fellow human beings. I want to pull all the people who feel meaningless out of hiding and help them make their lives, and make things, make art or journals or poems or paintings that give them hope, some sense of originality, of, "I can do something and it has never been done the same way."

I want to help re-invent what makes a person valuable. There are such superficial criteria out there for people to measure themselves up to. It's absolutely ridiculous. I hear people talking about how a man isn't clean shaven and I think, "What if he spent the past three days concocting the most brilliant screen play, if he couldn't sleep, could barely eat because characters were on his brain, jumping new dialogue, movement into his every thought? What if he was helping someone, or organizing his books, or making music, or learning something new?" Why does a clean shaven face mean a damn thing?

I wonder if it's possible to escape such talk. If we can jump first to conclusions of gradeur. If instead of assuming the old homeless man is a mere deadbeat, considering him to have done great things, and met such horrible circumstances that he really does need society's help.

I know that we're taken advantage of, and that so often the book's cover actually says something about the book, but that doesn't justify superficiality becoming the rule. Too often, we apply the most convenient of our explanations because it makes us feel superior, as if we're justified in our plastic-sour talk, our choice to turn away smugly.

So yes, these days my desire to be a part of something colorful, supportive, substantial is immense. I feel tugged deep in the soft wells of my organs. I feel a cloud of dream swelling at the tip-top of my skull.

And I start to compose a vision. A workspace. A schedule. A plan. I found this wonderful wonderful book on amazon called, Creating a Life Worth Living by Carol Lloyd, and though the title is a tad bit cheesy, the book is written very well and provides a lot of insight and practical guidance for the creative individual who longs to make a creative professional life for herself.

The book has me attmepting to come up with a clear, concrete vision for my future career. I am holding onto all of my ideas, idyllic as some might be, in order that I might acheive as much of that vision as possible. I know life and God and relationships and children intervene, but I'm just trying for the best, clearest picture I can get of what I want, and working toward that, so that maybe, someday, I might come close.

What's interesting is that the ideal so often is not to sit at home and do nothing...to watch television and eat as many potato chips as their are channels and commercials and talk show fights. Tyically, after about a week of that, we're ready to do something, to create a life for ourselves. Armed with a bit of the vision already--that I want to write--mostly poetry--and help others actualize their creative/emotional selves--I am attempting to clean it up and put together the stepping stones of the path.

While I'm here, the biggest struggle is satisfaction. It is so hard for me to rest where I am. It's easy for me to do nothing, to stare off into space ninety-percent of the day, but while I'm staring I'm spinning wheels behind my eyes, doing the maddening work of worry. I need to be able to sit for five minutes and be okay where I'm at. Breathing. Catching up with a friend. Allowing myself to be hugged while I'm being hugged.

Sometimes there's so much to undertake. Satisfaction. A vision. Vivacity despite the emptiness I find inside myself when I am without a definite plan. I'm working on it, and working on getting quiet for a small space in the day, finding out that I'm worth something even when I'm not making it all work perfectly, when I'm undisciplined, when I'm alone without anyone to say whether I'm good or not.

Reason to Write

2010-07-25T19:12:00.001-07:00

Tonight I find myself in the thick shadow of dismay, raking the grey-blue for possibilities, links to some shiny hope of happiness without a huge-impossible effort. So much of the happiness I never thought existed, and most definitely never thought would fall straight into a chair across from me at a coffee shop, has come in such richness. But now that I am steady in that one great happiness, I begin to search around noting depressing matters of money, impossible dreams, non-existent satisfying jobs, and my heart sinks.

I consider how this country is owned by other countries, and how everything seems to be worse and worse every hour. How the earth suffers and the poor suffer and the abused suffer. How so many of the people I know are worried sick and have no security blanket. All of reality keeps building and building and soon it seems almost naive to allow myself to live into any lightness with all this loss and decay and sufferring around.

I think of writing poetry, and how the whole dream or desire seems like such a joke in the face of all the needs doing in this big crazy world. Nobody reads poetry, anyway. I once read something by Kathleen Norris about following a calling because it's a calling, and trusting that somewhere, there's reason.

Perhaps it's not what you do that changes the world, or brings any hope to anyone. Perhaps it's how you do what you do, and who you are because of what you do. If I became some sort of disciplined writer, who urged other people to write and write truthfully, who attempted to inspire to any degree, then maybe it's worth it. Maybe the point is becoming the sort of person I want to be, and that writing helps me be that person.

Perhaps it is not that I need to be a sort of person to write, but that in order to be the person I really love to be around, to be the sort of person that feels light and airy and hopeful and spiritual and deep and thoughtful, I need to write. I need to go into that place, spend time, pay attention, and record.

Tonight, in the midst of this darkness, I've also had the realization that perhaps thinking about life--the hugeness of it and the seeming impossibilities--is harder than actually living. That perhaps our dreams are not so difficult to pursue as they are to think about pursuing. Thinking about anything too long can give it such terrifying shape, wings as black as night and immense lungs blowing a big storm of depression and pessimism. But doing the work of the dream, opening the notebook, going outdoors, calling words from the edges of fields, trash caught on the breeze, bird feathers falling slow, is a better way to go about things.

May you go into your work and not think so much that your dreams become too much, gaining a more nightmarish resemblance, losing all their light and compelling power.

My World

2010-07-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

The rain has started spooling through the air, falling down strands of light and other heavy, near-bursting molecules. I am treating myself to coffee at a nearby shop, listening to Katie Herzig and Neko Case, hoping there will be enough time to immerse myself in the life I want to be living, the world in my head that begs for real space and becomes so rainy and blue when I'm living outside of it, on everyone else's terms, pleasing, climbing ladders.

I know it's childish, selfish, and it has nothing to do with the "real-world." But it's simple enough to be, perhaps someday, feasible. It has to do with color, silence, the sorts of songs made to fill rooms and still allow space for thought--for reading--for a kiss. It has to do with writing without judgement, and reading without feeling as if I have to somehow match or learn from the story--the plot structure--the diction and syntax. It has to do with treating people as real dignified, feeling, worthy human beings.

Lately I get home from work around six from a job which hardly allows my brain to excercise any of its creative components, and usually has me so strung out I talk about it for another hour, talk in my head about it for another, watch a movie to escape the conversation, and end up dreaming and talking in my sleep about it all night long. It's not a bad job. I'm so lucky to have it, and it has been a blessing. But at the same time, it is forcing me to realize that if I'm going to have the life I deeply desire, if I'm going to have peace and time for creativity, and lingering dates, I'm going to have to make some changes.

For REAL this time, I'm going to have to try discipline. I'm going to have to get up early if I want time for myself--time for yoga--prayer--going into the deep and hopefully keeping some remnants of that place inside me for the rest of the day. I'm going to have to stop worrying about what people think. I won't see people as much as I'd like to...because I'm going to have to start making time for myself, on my terms.

I know I'm without so many responsibilities at this point in my life...namely children...but I still need this. I need this if I'm going to keep growing. And that's something that's always been important to me. I want to stay vibrant. I want to become more vibrant. And I want to continue cultivating a balanced center. I want to learn emotional boundaries and start using them. Start protecting myself from becoming a twisted up wreck.

I don't want to waste time being unhappy, feeling disappointed that the world I want to live in and the world I live in don't seem to be working out together. Here's to making a way, and the discipline and work that takes.

Here's to building my truest self into the fabric of my world.

Day's End

2010-04-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

With work consuming the majority of my time, lately, I have a tendency to begin to feel rather purposeless. My creative life falls to the wayside, and I have little time to rest in the sun and read and clean up after my morning rush. But, as I've worked at the coffee shop today, I've thought about whether I would feel satisfied if I was doing my creative work all the time. If my life was different, more free, would it be enough?

Sometimes I wonder if anything is really enough. I notice that I don't often feel satisfied. Part of this could be my ever-analyzing mind resisting any sort of rest or letting go. Part of it may be the fantasies of living a very gleaming, sun-lit, successful, romance adorned life.

And though I have my moments, even in my moments of bliss, I begin to roam the familiar passages of my brain, trying to draw conclusions from the bliss, and most often using up energy I could be spending enjoying, determining whether the bliss is warranted, whether I should start worrying, and usually the answer to that question is a resounding (truly unwarranted) yes.

What I've been thinking about tonight is how I can be content, what grounds I can authentically say, at the end of the day, that I've done what I've needed to, and it is okay to rest. First off, work isn't much of a choice, and while I'm there, if I can cultivate any positivity, any connection, perhaps any food for thought or eventual creative works, then work is not a waste. And, it financially sustains my other endeavors. After work, if I can go into my own work, and perhaps even for a half hour give over to the spinning wheels of color and words, I am fulfilling the part of myself that has always desired to make, to inspire, to tell stories, to breathe some sort of life that is not necessary to life, but to moving into the vibrant swells life offers.

If I can be close to someone...hug or laugh or spill or simply exist together for some amount of time, I have made connection, and connection is perhaps the most essential aspect of my happiness, of my finding meaning in life at all.

I don't think God hates me for not running running running all the time. Actually, I do think that, but I know, deep inside, that this is not the case. I know I also see myself in an incredibly negative light all the time because I have not accomplished. And, as mentioned earlier, I don't know if any accomplishment would actually make me feel worthwhile, as if I deserve to take in air, food, go into worry-less rest.

But, I am choosing, for my own sanity and potential happiness, to learn satisfaction. To, when sitting on my bed, seconds from lying down, know that I am human. That some wasted time is good. That if I have loved at all, been honest, done the best I could in my art and work (the best I can given any constraints and my humanity--not perfect), if I have striven at all to connect and know God (for me, this is important), than I am okay.

I can't afford to heap guilt over my head anymore. I need to know that rest is okay. That sometimes our expectations really are unreasonable, and in one day, unreachable. We need to learn the process, which is slow, and requires breaks and lots of time out cuddling, putting our feet up, breathing deep.

Thriving

2010-04-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

With one tonsil the size of a bowling ball making the slightest swallow a most horrendous and anxiety producing experience, and my work schedule infringing on any potential sanity and rest and creative projects, somehow, in the coffee house, having just brewed a very potent cup of green/black/fruity tea, watching the rain pull from the sky and spool down the sidewalk and parking lot, with Ingrid Michaelson's hummy hopeful songs dipping through the air, I feel light. I feel relaxed. I feel softened--tensity trailing until I am a weighted cloud, leaning against the counter just enough.

I am reflecting, actually, on the good. The fact that I do have a job, that this tea is soothing the tonsil that's freaking me out. That I can do this--journal, read, listen to music that inspires and cradles my deep, sip tea, listen to customers' stories, feel familiar, dabble in the poetry running somewhere behind the stressed portion of me. I am remembering that I was able to spend time with good friends this week. I was able to have deep spiritual discussions with one who I haven't seen in two years.

As cheesy as it feels to write this, I saw my first sunset with my boyfriend. I was able to share time and laughter and silliness and acceptance, and know, for another week, how very lucky I am, and how that feeling is mutual.

My bank account might be drained over car expenses and doctor's appointments (if this tonsil thing gets worse), but I'll still be here, still with friends, still working, still sharing, still attempting to open myself to bigger, more meaningful experiences and concepts.

I need, often, to step back. To stop pining over what's lost (time to work, time to worry, time to sickness, time to thoughts about what will happen if I never forgive my father, never become super-spiritual, never go to graduate school, never accomplish anything), and know what I have, what I will take and live tomorrow and the next day and the next week. More time with friends, a lover, with books that might help me get closer to believing, to trusting, to living more deeply and truly and freely. I will write. I will thrive.

And eventually, perhaps, I won't need to step back. I'll have grieved enough to have truly lost. And I will have taken my father off his hook and gone even farther forward. I will love better and take myself a little less seriously.

I feel like a cheeseball today. Oh well. I feel good. There's sweetness popping around in my life, and I'm grateful.

Solitude: What the Dream Requires to Come to Life

2010-02-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the dreary slips out from my deep, and I begin to consider dreaming up, actually doing, writing, creating, reading, journaling. I make to-do lists. I think about buying a vanilla/cinnamon candle to burn when I leave work, and begin remembering what my solitary life entails. What I would like it to entail.

I have dreamt, my entire life, of who I will be. I consider the house I'll live in and what I'll draw on the walls, what paint I will use to make the space spacier, to make it a bit easier to spread out and breathe within four walls. I dream of afternoons where the windows are open and the breeze is calm and the flowers haven't wilted in their vase on the sill. I dream of stillness and my lungs lift, all of my organs lift, at the thought.

And then there is the exhilerating thought that I can make my dreams, or begin the process, with my two hands now. I can put my words to paper and I have paint, unopened, on the shelf. I have memories to turn into stories, and a few solitary mornings to breathe into the full person: myself by myself, and the self I've been in social circles, with my boyfriend, at work. I have time to connect all the dots, to bring all aspects of myself together like ribbon ends and know who I am, in my entirity.

So I begin the work. I open the journal. I make lists. I find poem notes to stretch into full pieces, and small thoughts to elaborate. Then the major conflict I always encounter strikes. I go to the keyboard and am empty. I take words out of the air and all of them come together in such shabby pairs. Everything is disappointing, suddenly. Thus, I am disappointing, suddenly. And I cannot go on.

I begin working out the dream, and the dream turns out to be a hell of a lot of work. I'm ready to crawl back into bed, to call up someone to dive into, to pass the time with, to forget about what I've been avoiding: time to know and be and live into my own dreams, into what makes me. I become and observant dreamer, again. Wishing and hoping and fantasizing, but never stepping into the big mess living out our dreams requires.

I have learned that I need solitude to be fully me. I need my own work to feel fulfilled and feel valuable. I need solitude to mull my social experiences and open myself up to what has happened in that part of my world. I need to be by myself, with my art, candles, taking baths, listening to my favorite soft-blue-toned music, with my deep pain, with the joy people have brought, and hem it all in, consolidate, and feel full, satiated, alive.

I don't know how to approach solitude right now. I am restless. I want to move and go and talk and be with, rather than without. I don't know how to be productive when it comes to my own life and my own aspirations. I'll try again to set goals, and hope that this week I'll have the exhilerating experience of accomplishing one.

To Live More Widely

2010-02-03T19:53:00.000-08:00

There is a knot devouring muscle in my back pulling my spirit down, winding it up in so many words I can barely distinguish them, blurring specific emotions into some sort of dreary cloud nest. It is hard to undo these sorts of things. It is best if you can find the point of origin, the moment, the first word, the news, the situation that might have been the catalyst. Start there. So, that's where I am now, tonight. I am gripping the portion of the root I can name, the one that first made me uneasy, that began constructing this strange uncomfortable edifice to the left of my spine.

I am starting there. And how ridiculous? Something rather simple created a chaos of insecurity in my head. Had me drifting through the grayscale--back and forth. I started comparing myself to some people who are way cooler than I am. Started worrying. Started feeling jealous. And also felt the strange weight of futility that comparing oneself to others often delivers.

Whenever I do this, delve into that awful, stupid, juvenille jumble of feelings that are somehow responding to the fear that I am not good enough as is, that I am not pleasing, that I cannot possibly be worthy for more than five seconds at a time, I end up discovering something essential. I cannot step outside of me (not to mention I can't afford to). Not really.

I can pretend. I can dress the part, change a few externals, but I'll get tired and I'll come back home into this silly, messy, sometimes remotely and oddly artistic, occassionally lazy, seemingly television obsessed (as of late) person. I have to give into who I am. And if I can for once push the image of the person I should be out of my head, I feel comfortable inside my own spirit, my personality, my body, my boundaries. What's even more interesting, I suppose (something I'm discovering as I write this) is that I actually admire the women I compare myself to and I feel so terribly ashamed of myself because I haven't yet achieved what they have.

The women I am most jealous of, and feel most ashamed around as I feel like I'll always be too lazy to actually produce or complete or really do anything, are beautiful people. Really, they are lovely. They are artistic and they take care of things. And the reason they produce things, the reason they are so amazing is that they are able to detach themselves from the terrible web I'm still stuck in. This web of, "Am I good enough for this person, for this calling, for these friends?: I am still responding and reacting and looking around for feedback. I am connected to other people, even strangers, in that I am terrified of what they might think of me and yet, wholly dependend upon what they might think of me.

What is nice is that, as I think of the attributes of these strong, stable, solid women I'm jealous of, I come to realize that perhaps I am not so devoid of these qualities. Perhaps the vibrance these women carry, the spirit and soul these women exude is something I, sometimes, also radiate.

Instead of feeling jealous and avoidant toward these people, I really would like to learn from them. It would be beautiful, a tremendous feet for me, if I could simply drop the comparison and start believing that I have something to offer. It would be beautiful if I could decide to step out of the web and in that instant feel it lose its power and join again a more natural gravity, a more organic way of living, a way of life which values everything and everyone, a way of viewing oneself with utmost compassion and forgiveness.

I want to operate from my core. I want to know what I love and live for and go from there. I want to tap my desires and not pay attention to what gathers positive response. I want to go out, walking on my own feet, feeling connected to my body, feeling carried by some energy that rolls and wells and hums within rather than without.

This is what I've learned tonight. I want to make my spirit a home, and move about as if I am settled in me enough to not worry about stretching out hands, being ridiculously brave, taking little risks, and living more widely, into more light and movement.

100% Crisis and Here We Are

2009-12-27T12:35:00.000-08:00

I am crazy-brained and cranky today. I have cussed out every driver on the street and cast unmentionable spells against anyone who gives me the remotest of dirty looks. I realize this feeling has lingered from yesterday, and though I know some of this has to do with the fact that the caffeine I have been devotedly consuming the past couple of days has not really absorbed into my body the way it normally does, I know the majority of my rotten mood is resulting from the seeds of hopelessness once again scattered over my sadly receptive soil.

I feel like there are weights hanging from my eyelids, and my forehead is host to a bag of sand so full it is bursting at the seams. I just want a job. Whine, whine. I just want to have my own one-room apartment with a few flowers in a vase by the window and some coffee that actually conjures some resemblance of vitality in my body. I just want a simple existence that's relatively stable. I feel selfish for this. But I don't care, anymore. Whine.

I think it's not so much not having the job, and so forth, but simply that I'm afraid I'll NEVER have a job. I'll NEVER move out and live on my own experiencing peace solidly for over a month. I'm afraid I'll NEVER feel remotely secure.

As I wrote that I realized something. A few months ago I told my friend Elizabeth on the phone that I doubted I would ever meet a man I thought worthwhile. That I'd never find someone truly interesting, and appealing in the whole romantic avenue. Truth is I have quite the crush at present, and so far, I find this person quite appealing.

When I told Elizabeth how I would NEVER meet someone I liked, she said, "Michelle! Hold on! Right now, write that down. Write down what you just said!"

I said, "Why?"

She replied, "Because, I know you're going to be proved wrong."

Thus, I have come to a new verdict, that it is simply foolish to believe in such absolute terms that nothing good is on it's way to you. It's foolish to believe that good is never ever never never in the wings. Somewhere something is hanging out, waiting for us to turn the corner, waiting for us to start down the road.

Earlier a friend was in the coffee shop and she was telling me about how her life has been in 100% crisis for the last year. And yes, TERRIBLE things happened. Things had gone to hell in a handbasket. All at once. But, as she said that: "100% Crisis," I thought, "and here you are, leaning over the counter, small coffee in hand, cell phone ringing, talking about graduate school and a new job, and all of the languages you plan to learn."

The shit is going down everywhere, and maybe there's no light at the end of the tunnel as far as we can see. Truth is, though hope seems far off, the tunnel isn't so bad. I'm still here, meeting people, making friends, developing unexpected crushes, feeling the warmth of generous strangers, and attempting creativity and peace despite potential crisis. Things will change. They always do.

I want to begin leaning into the notion that there are no absolute negatives. There are terrible things that happen; unspeakable awful things. But there are always bedside flowers, cups of tea, kind faces, offers of forgiveness, a ten dollar bill hidden by a friend in the glovebox, coupons, second and third and fourth chances, moments for prayer or meditation or silence. Time can't be filled so much that on a single breath we can't pull focus (an idea I got from Julia Cameron), we can't slip out into a more open space, and let our spirits spread out. There are opportunities for good, for small acts of generosity or appreciation, for closeness, for affection, and peace.

May you and I find something in the dry spell.

This Christmas: Walking the Walls Down

2009-12-23T15:21:00.000-08:00

Today I am sitting in one of my favorite coffee houses, trying to conjure a sense of hope, trying to lift my own spirits and connect with whatever magic it would take to make some of the people I love, and myself, feel secure. I remembered Daisy May's music, particularly songs like, "Like This," and "Simple Secrets of My Heart." They are making their way through the winding tunnels of my spirit, digging down into the sore spots.

I feel like everyone's taking a beating. So much good is running through the air, leaping into our lives, and at the same time, we can't claim it, because there's so much worry, so much insanity, so much that must be cleaned up, repaired, financially supported. It is unfair.

And just as I typed that, one of my best friends and favorite people in the universe came up behind me, and hugged me, and wow...it is so good to know I am loved, and to know that I love so deeply and freely. It's amazing how much love can change you, as cliche as that phrase is. It's true. I am very different, and revel in how many doors have opened beneath my skin.

Which reminds me of why I wanted to write this post in the first place. I've been scanning blogs, specifically maganda.org, where she wrote a letter to her baby son, and at the end, she wrote something about how she loves this holiday because it's when God expresses his big love for us. I don't know why, but my eyes kind of welled up. I don't think I was thinking about God's love. But just the warmth of love in general.

Like, despite all the hardship and restriction, we can still share, and we do. We keep moving, and hopefully we keep moving nearer, exploring and opening ourselves to the gift of other people: their views, thoughts, scars, feelings. Within the past couple of years, after breaking off a rather serious relationship, the word share became such a vibrant, deep, breathing word. It was something I couldn't really do with the person I was with. And so, now, I love that word.

It explains exactly what I want most. To share moments, words, couches, glasses of water, blankets, hugs, bodies, stories, pain, hope. I usually think of it in the future tense as if I'm excited to share, someday. But the truth is, I'm sharing now. In this moment, with Chase, at a coffee shop. Last night with a bunch of charming strangers. With my sister when we both get home late. Sharing stories and poems and questions with David. Car rides and tears and a giant pile of blankets for a meteor shower with Paula. Scrabble boards and hookah and good wine with Laura. Three hour phone conversations with Elizabeth.

I have something magical right now. My life is full and wide and it is so terrifying and unpredictable. But what I know is, I am so happy with what it is right now. I hope for more. I want security and things to keep evolving and becoming more exciting, and more financially stable, but right now, it is still good.

And perhaps Christmas can still mean something for me this year, when I think of it this way. That this abstract concept of getting close, sharing life, risking a little more than usual, really trying to see deeply into another, is something I can't explain without spirituality.

Lately I have felt this huge discomfort with my beliefs. Not the beliefs themselves. I can't even begin to think about them, because I'm trying to stay outside. It's like I'm pressing my arms out, trying to feel my way around these ideas, and I try and keep my heart as far from it as possible. I'm not so good at breaking open. And whenever I begin thinking about my spirituality, give way to the first moments of prayer, begin to disclose some sore spot to someone else, some tender insecurity, I quickly urge the walls up. I lock. I can't get close.

This Christmas, maybe for a few moments, I hope to let myself open up. Whenever I enter prayer, actually go there, lay open and listen, the unexpected happens. I am never berated, and I am often urged, deep in my spirit, not to feel guilty, but to feel strong and able, to feel soft and accepted and lovely. So with God, with some people too, this is what I hope to do: when the stone begins building in my back, muscles stacking like bricks, I hope to breathe slower, walk the walls down with slow sweet silent words, and remember what I want most: to share life, to allow love to move back and forth as it should.

Kitchen Experiments and Remebering Who I Am

2009-12-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight I am finding my people pleasing attitude exhausting, as I'm rather tired of always trying to figure out the geometry of what people want, straining my body and brain and spirit and soul to make myself into that shape, and fit perfectly. I'm realizing that though it is exhausting, while it's happening, I almost want to perpetuate it. As long as I'm not quite the person yet, there's work to be done. I can avoid my life: my art, my writing, my heart, my soul, the time to stand in my body and be still there, the time to know that this is alright and okay and even nice. It is difficult to stop and do what I should do, and what, deep down, I most want to. It is difficult to give up on the game, to trust that some people see through your bullshit and shape-shifting, and just like you. They don't care. They just want to sit with you. Get comfortable. Get cozy. Be.

So, tonight, driving home from the coffee shop, I began playing Deb Talan, my usual favorite when these thoughts come on, when I begin thinking about loving myself, as corny as that may sound. I begin playing her and Daisy May and Rosie Thomas whenever it's time to speak my words to no one but myself. To write the silly big hard truths as plain as they exist in my head. To not doctor everything up, not even tell the complex story of it all. It is the feeling I become interested in. The big worries. The hopes. The fears. What's rooted deep.

I'm sitting in the dark, now, typing this while listening to my little potato dish simmer on the stove. I soaked it in soy sauce, of course, and spices. I love the slicing vegetables. I miss that. I miss that about living in my duplex, having enough money, earlier this summer. I would buy produce, tons of it, and I'd slice everything up. I experiemented, mostly. I learned that I love red peppers. And I love onions. A lot.

I love how calming simple acts can be. I love the slower motion my brain moves in when I'm doing something like slicing a potato, turning it on its side, slicing it again. I love using my palm to slide the whole mess of cubes and odd shapes into the pan. I love pouring olive oil, and the careful sprinkling of garlic.

I soften when I'm cooking. I get quiet. I remember who I am, and that nobody can hear my thoughts. Nobody's watching. I can be unsexy. I can be uncool. I can be boring and rather unintelligent. But I do develop a sense that I am good. I am worthy and once again, I like myself. I can enjoy my own company. Time cooking by myself, time making art, time writing out the truths as messy and simple as they may be, is time very well spent.

Tonight I remember after quite some time of forgetting that I like this place. I can forgive myself for getting caught up in the taxing acrobatics of trying to be what he or she or they might want. I am myself as ridiculous and soft and delicate as I sometimes am. I stand in my skin and enjoy being here.

Winter: Hemmed In

2009-12-05T17:16:00.000-08:00

All this sudden snow has hemmed me in, and surprisingly, I feel warm. Typically, I enjoy the roominess of summer; that I am able to go out, lay out on grass, spread. Spring and summer allow me leave the stiff geometry of ordinary living and feel shapeless, large, as if my spirit cannot be contained by my body and needs the wideness of beaches or blankets in the park.

But, as this first snow came down, I felt different. I felt hemmed in, containted. I wasn't slammed with claustrophobia. I am confident the world will spring to life again. But for now, this place, this new shape I find myself in is homey. It feels more like I've been wrapped up, and am still warm in some sort of embrace. This winter room, my spirit, isn't grey, dark, thick with depression, but it is clean, buzzing with a slow kind of energy, and there are lights (lamps and candles and strands of dripping bulbs) dispelling shadows from the corners, compelling them to dance toward the center.

Perhaps part of this "hemmed in" feeling is also coming from considering not applying to graduate school this winter, but waiting. I realized the other day while driving with a friend that deciding to wait to apply, to go off somewhere else and get caught up in writing constantly, trying to fit the program's formula, trying to figure out how to conform to the shape, the style that professors like, that publishers like, feels so right. I am always looking into the future, my mind frantically probing for what will get me to where everyone might think I should be. I am reaching always.

Considering not going to graduate school yet makes me come home. I have to be present, because I have to start living for me, now. Not when I've achieved this or that. But now. As I am. I have to apply for jobs. I have things I need to do. I have writing to continue honing. I have creating to do. BUT, my creating, my art won't be geared for a program. It will be mine. Perhaps I'll get it published. I will try. But, I won't be basing my worth on my acceptance, yet. And perhaps I'll make room for being me for no reason at all. I can lay out my art supplies, play in the words and the paint and the characters and the ink, and just be.

I love the thought that we are valuable regardless of our achievements. Yes, it is good to be active, and to take care of business. It is good to be responsible. I love these things. I like taking care of myself. But, I don't like hanging my worth, my life's worth on whether or not I'm impressing people, whether or not I'm making the grade.

I think of doing things on my own, like taking a bath, or stretching on the floor with a few candles lit listening to music, or painting something random, journaling, going for a walk, and how time spent on such things is not wasted. I am good, still, in my everyday living.

Truth is, I love the adventure, but I don't want the adventure all the time. I want it sometimes. But lately, I just want home. I want curling in warm spaces. I want closeness with sweet people. I want hot chocolate, and a long sweater, and work that doesn't have my muscles contorting, doing unnatural acrobatics beneath my skin. I want books, and baths, and cutting vegetables and smelling them in the oven, their scents breathing into other scents: oregano, garlic, olive oil. I want calmness. I want to feel somewhat enclosed. At least for a few months.

And so this is what has happened: the snow has fallen, winter cupped her cool hands around us and it is not crippling. It is not terrible. It is another opportunity to find something sweet, to stretch blankets around each other, to talk quietly, and appreciate what warmth we are able to find or make. Even this is a gift.

Locked Rooms

2009-11-21T21:42:00.000-08:00

Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "You are so young. You stand before beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear Friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign language."

I am standing before many many locked doors, at present. And yes, it is terrifying. My hands run along the handles, how many times? I think of rooms in my old house, my parents' house, the house I grew up in. I think of rooms I rarely entered. I think of the front hall with the oak chest, and the pictures my mother had setting up on top. The pictures of her mother who died before any of us could know her at all. I think of the pictures of the family that has since abandoned us, and the family that is still firm at our sides. I remember my mother's bookshelf to the side, and a dresser full of random odds and ends. I rarely entered the room, and so it seemed to me this magical place. There was an old hat rack in there with my grandfather's hats that sometimes we would try on. The room was full of antiquity, and yet, with all mysteries so near to our hearts, the real intrigue is how these old objects, these photos, and more importantly the records of these people, enhance and change and hold meaning in our lives.

The locked rooms, the rooms rarely entered, or not at all, might speak the most into our lives, might tell us the stories of our pasts, our presents, or futures. I run my finger along the doors I look at now: careers, future artistic projects, future friendships, a current spirit lifting crush, and I feel all this energy coursing. And at the same time, immense dread.

What will happen? Which doors do I open, and which doors can I? How long until someone comes to the other side and pops the lock, pulls the chain, removes the chair wedged firmly under the knob. And is there a way to speak to that someone, to change the course of things. And who holds the big wand. Who is at the controls?

I want, I want, so many things. I want mind crushing kisses. I want to lay deep into another human being and not feel like I'm wrong, not have to try and keep my eyes from darting for escape. I want to know what my hands will make. I want to know where I'll be so I can orchestrate the rest of it.

Rainer Maria Rilke goes on to write, "Do not now look for the answers. They could not be given to you, because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything...You need to live the questions. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer some distant day."

I'm glad there are doors at all. Questions. Big mysteries hanging around in our lives, waiting to surprise us. There are doors we HAVE to open. Only our touch will do the trick. There are choices WE must make, which no one can make for us, and steps only our feet can take if we are to move at all, move anywhere.

The doors say to me, Sweetheart, there is a story. There are rooms you have not seen, but will see. You are walking through new rooms already, and Wow, the windows cast so much light.

Here it is. Cheers. We're standing on so many threshholds, and one day we will pass into new spaces, and we will find at least a few of our answers there.

Back to Myself

2009-11-17T16:57:00.001-08:00

It's amazing how far I can get from me. I can spend so much time jumping into other peoples' heads, playing all the guessing games that get you no where, that keep you lost and losing.

Today has been wonderful. Truly. I am me. Yes, again, I have fallen back into this body, and I can feel the weight of it. I know the weight of it. It is familiar to me, and it is good. It is a good body. I am not ashamed of myself, today. I have no eyes watching, but for the two professors I met with today, and though one of them always tends to make me feel a bit intimidated--a bit lost and unprepared like I need to start winding up for the big race--the other was so kind and encouraging. I felt very warm leaving her office.

I spent some time at Grand Valley's library, while I was on campus, and found my favorite spot on the third floor. Whenever I have set foot in that library, even while I went to school there, I always would go straight for this very old tattered Carl Sandburg collection. I love it. I love it with my whole heart. His poems have touched me, deep. I run my finger over them and I feel him writing them, I feel him looking out on waves, women, his wife. I feel his words, homey, like the one he uses to refer to his wife, his Pal. Because I can't paste them here, for some reason, look up, "Clean Hands," and "Let Love Go On," and "Mag."

I feel quiet today. Quiet and warm and at home. I am at Lemonjello's in Holland, headphones full of Melody Gardot, Carla Bruni, Great Lake Swimmers. I like to go slow. I was made for slow. I have needed to have this time. To be.

I'm wondering if another factor in me feeling very much myself, very comfortable and real, as if my edges have rounded over and I am less jumping into heads, but resting in my own, seeing out my eyes, enjoying the atmosphere in a calm, organic sort of way, is that I've just finished writing twelve pages in my jouranl. Yes, I wrote everything. Every detail. I did my overanalyzing and wrote about my new feeling that overanalyzing is a big waste of my time and energy, and has lost me some good moments in exchange for wild eyed crazy-brain activity.

I wrote about losing myself by feeling insecure, by being adamant that I am no good. I feel like in my crazy-brainedness lately, I kept jumping between trying to feel worthy, and falling incredibly short of that. As all people seem to do, I wish I could go back. I wish I could go back to that brain and say, "Hey Sweetheart. It's alright. You're good, right now. Let yourself."

I'm glad to be back, and still feel a little foolish about my foolishness. But still, I came back. And I feel good now. I'm worrying about things. I'm researching jobs, internships, graduate school programs. I've been spending hours with my eyes wide as fear, working the computer screen up and down, reminding myself to breathe, reminding myself that this is not the end, that there are years ahead, and big chances ahead, and that hope is still here, and maybe some things are attainable. Maybe I haven't missed the boat. And if I have, it'll be back around in time.

Sometimes I feel like God is after me. I called about some jobs I'd applied for, and I had connections, and the positions apparently had been filled just as I turned in my application. I looked up any job possibilities online and nothing seems remotely promising, or even legitimate. I'm looking at graduate schools, thinking about the people I know who've gotten in and how they were so much more involved with things on campus, and I was always so busy working multiple jobs. Sometimes I feel screwed.

Truth be told, I may not have really tried yet. I know I'm scared. I'm really scared of taking a path, and missing out on a bunch of other paths; missing out on the other landscapes, cities, people, friends, lovers. I don't want to take the wrong path.

But I was thinking about this on my drive out to Holland. Is it possible, if we believe in any sort of diety, the Christian God perhaps, that we could take the wrong path? And what is predestination after all--how far does it extend? Are God's hands at my shoulders always, when I'm meeting my friends by accident at a coffee shop, when some stranger and I click, when my poem finally works, when I make the big mistake of losing myself in worry and fear and insecurity? Where is God? And what is he doing? I've asked these questions before. I've gotten answers.

I just don't want to choose wrong, you know. I don't want to miss out. I really don't want to miss out.

Amidst the questions, the deep swelling worried hope that I will take some course that will meet me with some sort of good life, maybe not perfect, maybe not bright and cheery, but organically beautiful, smelling of earth, smelling like morning breath and nasty cars, and good, like morning bodies, open as broken seeds, vibrant as the first stem of grass lifting her forefinger to the air.

For the Weaklings Like Me

2009-11-06T14:04:00.001-08:00

I'm once again inside my coffee shop, playing Ingrid Michaelson, trying not to be bogged by my instinct to jump into other people's business. I want to shine a big spotlight and say, "You are okay." To say, "Yes, I see that and that, those sickly sour scars and how far you've fallen. But who cares? Somehow you were woven; there's a strand that came winding up through all of those things, all of the rips and tears and sweet soft stretches of fabric, and they have made you. And wow, the totality, the complete project, the whole of you is worthy. It is good."

I know too many people who need to hear this. Every five seconds, they need to know this. And they need to know this in the real, in the deep, in the dirt and earthy guts of themselves. They need to know not that they are OH MY GOD SO AMAZING. They don't need worship. And that is what they will feel when they are complimented, and they will shrug it off, and it will be meaningless. But, what if it is real, and meant, and true, and leaves room for deep screwy faults?

I am pained by people who cannot accept love. Who prepare not to accept it. I'm one of them.

I'm reading this book my psychologist insisted I read for two years called, Surrender to Love. It seems incredibly cheesy, and it is incredibly cheesy. It is too nice. It is too sweet. But, sometimes I wonder if what we most deeply desire is easily discarded in our minds as, "too cheesy. Too nice." I wonder if it is our deep shame, our rich knowledge of our own shortcomings, that makes us discard these things; that makes us cringe and quit reading. We don't allow the words to burrow. We don't allow them to balloon into sizeable shapes in our lives, our souls.

And we do this with people. And we do this with God. We do this with anything that might get too close to the wound, and expose us for what we are: repulsive and marred, disgusting and torn and weak and cowardly.

It's amazing that some people do this. That they eventually lay open, and allow themselves to be seen. It's even more amazing to know that other people love us, that perhaps some kind of divinity is constantly and consistently reaching in, pressing on the walls of the wound, attempting entrance, despite the ugliness, despite what is. It's amazing that we can be loved for our wounds, not despite them. That what we have found repulsive for ages, is what intrigues another, draws another in.

I pray that all of us who ride in this boat develop a knowledge that we are accepted now, and that we can live in this: in this body, this screwed up mind, this low and sagging and broken heart. We can do things. We can go places. We can make mistakes, and take risks, and be, and live and live and live. We can live in our wounds, until they don't matter. Until they are a part of us, but do not inhibit us.

Maybe our strength does not come from ridding ourselves of weakness, but our strength is born in allowing our weakness to exist, and simply ridding ourselves of our incredible shame, that has so long kept us from jumping into our lives, singing loud, saying the words we have pressed so far down our throats.

Love Poem

2009-11-05T21:28:00.000-08:00

I have always written love poems, and often keep them hidden, only to be revealed to a few individuals who will not think me oldschool and unsophisticated for writing them. I'm deciding not to hide this one, as I just put it together (within the last ten minutes or so), and it has really captured something I have felt. I'm hoping that some of you can relate to it, or feel it in some way. I also hope that when I wake up tomorrow morning and re-read it, I'm not embarrassed for having posted it, as I often am with my own work.

A Joining

I do not need to touch you--
but near you my ribs open and stretch like tree
hands, lobed fingers walking for sky--
not to take, no, but to comb the clouds to say:
Here, my leaf, here, your pilling white.
I run my finger down your nose
like a slow sliding capsule of rain and watch
your eyes draw down like distant thunder,
your mouth the burnt, parting earth.
It is a sharing, yes, a swollen lung
bonding us, of which we someday say
delicate and trembling: we.
And this is the word for it always--
not the taking or giving or even knowing.
The word makes its breath in the slow of one
motion--a joining, my finger now homed
in the valley of your neck.

Over the Moon

2009-11-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

Autumn is raw, a short stretch of skin rubbed until it burnt up. I don't want the cold. Desperately. I am looking out th window and it has begun to rain, and unless I get to find your hands and take you out in it, go nuts in it, feel full and risen in it, I'd rather it just go away.

I could use the sun right now. I could use it ripping right through me. I could use that burn. I could sit on the beach with my friends waiting for the sun to split on water, bust open. We would trip over ourselves with glee. Skirts and dresses and no-sleeves and bathing suits and water bouying our hair into mushrooms of brown and red and blonde. Spinny-wild-open summer. God, I miss you already.

But, I have found things now, in autumn, November having stuck its fingers through the open doorway, my birthday on its way, possibilities with the most frighteningly beautiful palms lying wide for me.

I was thinking on my drive today about how I always feel unallowed. I feel like I need to ask permission. I see an open hand and I say in my stomach, "Can I? Please?" And it's not needy. It's not weird. It's the question, "What do you want?" And the answer, "Yes."

I'm really tired of staying behind the door, waiting for someone else to open it. I feel like so much of my childhood was so out of my hands. I was taught to be polite, and I took that lesson to heart. I never asked for anything. Not ever. And if I did, I felt terrible for that. In a lot of senses, I was made to feel terrible for that. I was made to feel childish, stupid, ashamed.

Even now, I imagine reaching out and though my reaching might seem welcomed, I'm waiting for the grimace, the, "I didn't think you'd actually do it."

At the same time, I have so often become the person who reaches and reaches and reaches and wants to give and help and help and nothing. No mutuality. That terrifies me. That terrifies me deep. That dives into my stomach with the yearning and the two mix and a paralysis ensues and what do I do?

I am thankful for the question, "What do you want?"

What an important question. What a way to live. Asking people and asking ourselves, "What do we want? Where shall we go, and what shall we do, and what will be our first big or small or teensy tiny step?"

Perhaps someday, muscles aching, emotions stretched, courage swollen and bright, spirit broken and mended, we will make our way over the moon.

I've wanted to write these things...

2009-10-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

here for a while now, but kept forgetting when I came to the keyboard. Tonight, candles lit, catching their golden fingers round threads of smoke, headphones firmly clamping my ears, and a new song, a new artist I am suddenly floored by, awaking my spirit to old thoughts, and renewed passion for real, tangible growth. Yes, a friend of mine insisted Kelly Clarkson is talented, and I, basing my decision entirely on radio hits, said that I just didn't really get anything from her music, didn't find it exceptional in any way. Today my friend posted a thousand Kelly Clarkson videos to my facebook, and I listened first to, "Sober," and have to say that this song is going to be playing on my ipod nonstop. This is going to be my background song. This is the song that sends me back in my rocking chair, knees tucking excitedly into my chest, smile breaking my face open, spirit flying up. I will wear this song out.

The reason I love this song is not necessarily because of Kelly's vocal talents, but I feeeel this song. This song is sticking in my skin like summer sun, like something long missed. I feel like I am finding a letter in a box, a secret joy that was always waiting somewhere beneath a shadow. The aspect I love most is simply the three months.

It reminds me of a time, during my senior year of high school, my youth pastor called me because a girl I knew was considering giving up, ending her life. When I met her in a room at the church she showed me the pills, she rolled them in her hands. I didn't know what to tell her.

It came to me somehow to get up and literally walk forward in the room, and have her walk with me. And it was the simplest thing. We talked about taking one step forward. That was all. She gleamed. I don't remember entirely what went on in that room, but I remember that, this discussion of steps. I asked her to, every time she felt like ending it all, stepping back, stepping out, to try and inch forward. Literally, I told her to feel it, feel it with her toes, get up, and inch forward. And if she had to step back sometimes, she could, and that was okay, because someday she'd move farther again. She would go somewhere. And that was the point. That we get somewhere. We go places. We change, and we do it so slow sometimes, we have to look back, we have to force our eyes over our shoulders and see the distance. She called me to tell me when she moved forward. Honestly, it was so simple. So simple. But sometimes, that's all we need, I guess. To feel like somebody is willing to stand beside us and inch and tell us it's okay if we have to take a few steps back sometimes, and that they know, they trust our goodness, our possibilities, our potential enough, the Bigger world enough, that we will go forward again, we will not be stuck forever.

I fall into depression every so often, particularly when the world grows colder and I begin to feel forgettable, unworthy, unlovable, even repulsive. It's painful. Physically. And in those moments where every fear, every worst thought comes stabbing (I literally think of that scene in Lord of The Rings where the wraiths plunge their swords into the feathery beds), I feel the deep plunges, the incredible voids making themselves in my stomach, spreading their weight onto my spine.

Today, I felt this. I took a nap, and snap, as soon as the alarm sounded I felt the deep churning, the terrible shadow coming down. I couldn't stop the thoughts--the joblessness (despite the fact that my seasonal job only ended a few days ago and I still do have one job), the masks I wear in different environments to keep people pleased, the pain that I haven't just let the joy out (let myself laugh and joke and play like I want to because I'm too busy playing the game in my head, worrying and controlling and feeling my way, trying to stay one step ahead), the dependence of my situation, the looming of graduate school deadlines and I've done nothing, the incredible weight of potential failure arriving in soft light envelopes in a few months, my inability to just be brave and live what I have always wanted to live.

I read this thing once, I believe in The Artist's Way, (and this is what I've wanted to write here for so long), about imagining yourself five years from now looking on yourself now. In the exercise, you're supposed to consider what you would say to that self? What would you do to that self?

And Wow. I hear that question ring in my head, I think of myself five years from now wherever the hell I am, single, married, still struggling in the job market, dealing with all sorts of strife, and not giving a damn. I think of that self seeing this self who is so scared and sad and worried and crazy and I think of rushing to her and holding her to my chest and just whispering to her that I don't want her to worry, that I want her to be free, that I wish to free her. My God, the compassion I would feel, the compassion I do feel, thinking this way. It's amazing. I want to rush myself and save me. I want to say, let's go, let's do this, let's get up, let's walk around this room, let's walk out, let's walk around the city and sing OUT LOUD. MY GOD LET'S SING FOR SOMEONE RIGHT NOW.

I am listening to this song on repeat, joining Kelly near the end, my spirit-voice scream-singing that three months thinking, Wow, thinking, how long can I keep this. KEEP THIS. I think of goals to make. Small small forward steps. Like making my bed in the morning. Like, staying off of facebook for a while. Like writing in my journal. Making art. Singing. Singing all the time. Setting out to really find a good job. Really finally putting that portfolio together that I've been planning for some time. Really finishing jobs. Really being honest and brave and just bulldozing terror as if fear isn't worth my time anymore. Who cares? Who cares? I have places to go, people to kiss, hands to take, hearts to accept and love and remain open to. I have poems to write, books to write, letters to write, songs to write. I have things to do. And I won't stay pinned in the sweat and toil depression takes.

Cheers to counting steps and looking back with immense pride. I have come a long long way already, and I am so proud.

Alchemy

2009-10-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

I am practicing alchemy at the coffee shop. Trying to spin gold from rain, trying to make some kind of sun explosion, glint in my palm, from this damp, dark day. Patty Griffin raises something, a flag of organic, earthy hope, with her song, "I Don't Ever Give Up," thumping through the small speakers perched up near the menu boards.

The place was empty a few minutes ago, so I started singing, and it echoed, my voice, it echoed and that echo, the thunder of my own sound coming back toward my spine, climbing it back up to its origin, helped me out. It pointed my spirit up, again. It felt creative, and it was loud. Singing sometimes feels like the bravest thing, especially on these days, even when there's no audience. Just belting it, bringing force to it, attaining new heights with it--that feels like triumph.

I have this gorgeous fairy-esque friend, who has the biggest, most magical eyes you've ever seen. She and I always end up talking on the phone for hours in the middle of the night and she always brings such an interesting new shade of light to what I am going crazy over, and a few nights ago she said this, "In order to live, we must lose our fear of being wrong." Then we began to talk about how, as children, we were so brave. We were limitless. Our imaginations stretched their palms to the edges of everything, and nothing was impossible. And though some things were improbable, everything was worthy of testing, of trying out. We didn't assume we were right about situations, we simply didn't care, the experience being worth so much.

It is a wonder how many people are hiding their dreams in boxes, three ring binders, their heads. It is a wonder how many people only speak to themselves of high hopes, and great expectations.

I found something I had written on a piece of paper about a year ago. I'm guessing I got it off of a movie or something. And though it's somewhat cheesy, I am strengthened by it. I feel more capable after reading it, hearing it in my head as it should sound, this great noble question, "Is this the woman who doesn't give up?"

I want to be that woman. I want to learn the art of shutting up the surpressive voices in my head, to say with vigor, "Enough! I have had enough."

2009-10-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

Because I was bored tonight I went here and read this:

http://www.mattlogelin.com/archives/2008/04/13/what-happened/

Then, I read this...and looked at the pictures...particularly the one where the mom is seeing her daughter for the first time:

http://www.mattlogelin.com/archives/2008/03/24/update-715pm/

READ THE ABOVE BEFORE MOVING ON.

And now, after three glasses of wine especially,

I am bawling my eyes out over the keyboard

thinking of how everyone says that people are in a better place

when they die, and all theological arguments about heaven and hell aside,

I imagine being in Heaven,

having just given birth to a baby girl

crawling on the golden streets looking at God with such bitterness

crying, "I just wanted to watch her sleep for one fucking night."

Reading this makes me feel incredibly hopeless about the future. I don't know if I could ever deal with grief. Not that immediate. Not when someone so close to me is taken away so soon.

Loaded Guns: Some Thoughts on Vulnerability

2009-10-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

It is fall and cold and numb and unproductive and lonely and drifting. Sometimes I am able to romanticize this and for an hour, life has potential--even in this Blah-Dee-Blah--this cloud soaked ceiling and grey floor, I can hear a sweet red secret leaving lips and I think--yes--I think there is something pressing in with fire in his hands.

I am listening to Damien Rice, one of my new favorite fall-ish musicians. My recent favorite has been the song, "Dogs," because I fantacise about being the beloved girl who does yoga. But today, it is, "9 Crimes." I never understand the lyrics entirely. It seems to be about cheating on a spouse or partner who really isn't there anyway. The chorus is beautiful and strong and the words are, "It's a small crime, and I got no excuse. Is it alright, yeah, to give my gun away when it's loaded? If you don't shoot it, how am I supposed to hold it? That alright? Yeah, with you."

I'm always fascinated by the inclusion of a loaded gun. I was taking a bath the other day, submerging myself in warm water, because the house was too cold, and sometimes a bath, making myself stay there with music and no other sounds, bubbles cracking at the air, the occasional re-situation of water around the body, can pull my mind back down into my bones, into the organic thing I am, the organic reality of my life I so often forget about, when I jump all the way to my forehead and run frantically in that space for weeks. I was listening to this song, as a part of a playlist, and I kept trying to figure it out.

Of course, the gun could be sexual. And that's probably part of it. Maybe. But today, I happen to be thinking about vulnerability, of laying cards out on a table, or stepping forward not taking into account anything, just reaching from the gut and not stopping that soft hand from grasping. A gun is dangerous, something to be held carefully, cautiously. It can destroy, easily, simply. And in a way, it could be fragile, it has the potential of indicating the fragility of whatever it is aimed at.

I think about relationships, such as the one exhibited in this song, and how, when you hand your loaded gun to someone, you're giving them power, you are entrusting them with something, and in essence, you want them to shoot it, to make you that fragile thing, that rests entirely in their arms. It may not be as unhealthy as it sounds, as in, the person you choose to take you out, take you as their, "kill," I guess, to put it as cheesily as possible, should be trustworthy. And it sounds like in this relationship, each has this loaded gun that they have given to the other, but the other doesn't seem interested in owning or declaring or committing to the relationship. If they shoot that gun, they're in it. They've chosen something.

Terrifying. But, in essence, lovely. I admire those who can hand over their loaded guns, who are smart enough to know who to hand them to and when, or eventually take the risk despite not knowing fully. I know a few success stories, and hope, someday, to be among them. To be a part of the brave fold, the hardest working fold, I know.

Twenty Facts (Because Everyone Else Has Already Done This)

2009-10-17T03:33:00.000-07:00

1. I have a birth mark that looked much like a four-leaf clover as a child. It's on my ankle, and I used to show other kids, as if I were telling them a secret. I remember thinking it looked like a three-leaf clover, but the stem was transforming into a fourth leaf, and I remember believing that this meant I was becoming special, becoming lucky.

2. I am not a crazy animal person. As a child I loved the various dogs I grew up with, and actually started bawling on a friend's shoulder one day leaving school because I had learned that our beagle had been hit by a car. I remember feeling ashamed of the sadness, actually, and held it in and told no one, and this friend happened to hug me as we were leaving school and I just fell apart. Anyway, the real point of this fact is that when I was six years old, (my mom verified this information for me last night), my mom brought home a cat named Toby for me for my birthday. I loved the cat, and was very excited. One night, my mom asked me if I would like Toby to sleep with me. My mother tells me that I looked at her as if she had lost her mind. She said I was careful to be nice and polite, and just asked her, "Why would I do that?" She said she actually felt rather dumb for suggesting it, as if it was totally illogical for children to want to sleep with their pets.

3. I find Helena Bonham Carter to be the most attractive actress. Honestly, I would begin batting for the other side, if I could be with this woman (though her ferocity in most of her films is rather sexy, it would probably actually be quite terrifying). I was thinking about this last night, and tried to think of which actors I find to be attractive, and I couldn't think of any right off the bat. None that I would be drawn to physically. As I am a heterosexual woman, I began to ponder why I find Helena Bonham Carter so attractive, and my conclusion is that I envy her ferocity, and very defined face, as these are physical features I lack. I always am terribly insecure about my jawline. So, apparently, I rarely find a man I'm physically attracted to because I'm so busy worrying about my unattractiveness. Ylechblech.

4. I hate wearing jeans. I don't know how to describe my dislike for them. I would rather be wearing a dress or linen, or something. I just don't feel myself in them.

5. I also don't wear shorts, often. I wear them when I'm by myself, but never in public. I have knock-knees, and feel like I look like a chicken or something. I'm starting to get over that, though.

6. I love driving through snow. I find it thrilling, unless I'm late for something.

7. Sometimes I listen to country music.

8. When I get really stressed out. I mean REALLY, I forget to eat. This is how I keep a steady weight. I gain a couple of pounds for a couple of months, and then something stresses me out (oddly in the spring, somethimes in the fall), and I don't eat anything for a week or so.

9. I love potatoes. And I mix tuna fish with thousand island dressing and eat it...just like that...in a bowl. My old roommates used to love my eating habits, and even used them as part of their way of introducing me to new friends.

10. I always jump to the conclusion, when people are MIA, that they have died. Specifically in a car wreck. Morbid, right? I don't know what it is, but my youngest sister seems to have similar ideas, in that both of us get really freaked out if we can't get a hold of our mom. She calls me, or I call her, and we both wait in agony for Mom to call us back. I'm living with my mom right now, and if she goes to visit her boyfriend, an hour and a half drive away, for a Saturday, and it's two in the morning and she isn't back yet, I imagine this one particular stretch of highway I once drove with her to his house that has these really high cement barriers around it, and I worry that something terrible has happened. I can never sleep when I know she's driving home, late. And if I know any of my friends are driving late at night, the same thought will typically cross my mind, though I usually talk myself immediately out of the worry.

11. I love mornings, though I don't get out of bed early. I love to wait in my sheets, and just feel them, and see the sun laying on the floor. I get soo blissed out just lying there, softness stretching around everywhere, I feel almost foolish.

12. I enjoy singing more than writing, or anything, really. But I am terrified of sharing my voice, though sharing my writing doesn't faze me all that much.

13. This summer, I developed an interest in cooking. Not by recipes, but just experimenting with spices and sauces in vegetables and so forth. I've discovered that when I cook, alone in the kitchen, I get very hushed and accepting of all that is, and isn't. It's like meditation.

14. I grew up with a farm across the street from my house and got up early every morning, before my mother, and went to help the farmer with the cows. I remembered recently that I've actually taught calves to walk, and remember feeding them with bottles. I've always admired cow eyes, soft and wide, and almost terrified looking, their long lashes framing them like eccentric curtains.

15. I love water. The house I grew up in (until I was 20), has a giant pond beside it. My sisters and I used to put on goggles and submerge ourselves into the fields of bluegills beneath the surface.

16. Despite my love of water, and wanting to be in it or near it, I think I would be quite afraid to take my first step into the ocean. Because I've never been there, all I know of the ocean I see on television. So, my first thought, when dropping my big toe into the ocean would be that somewhere in there rested enormous monstrous creatures which produce their own light and have teeth two feet long which stick out of their mouth like spider legs. But, if I ever make it to the ocean, I will try my very best to brave it.

17. I want to see a giant whale before I die. I've never seen one, and I think that it would kick all the depression I could ever have's ass. I can't imagine ever really feeling truly meaningless or suicidally sad if I see a creature that large alive, functioning.

18. I have also never seen a snow capped mountain.

19. I often feel like there are things that will never happen in my life. For instance, I feel like I may never get married or have a baby. I think I accept these things as impossibilities because I don't want to get my hopes up. I've always been so interested in people who talk about their future husband, and future life, when I can't assume that any of those things will ever happen. I want them, too, and I feel like part of me should start living as if they are a possibility, as if I am totally as capable as these other people of having a good future relationship which would result in marriage.

20. If I ever get married, I want it to be a backyard potluck wedding. No expenses, really. Just mothers making meatballs and rolls and potlucky foods, and dancing, of course, in the yard, late into the night after a brief ceremony. I also would not want a pastor to give a sermon or anything. I would just want friends to read things. I told my friend Andrew this idea once, and he said, "Michelle, that sounds like the happiest wedding, ever." I agree.

I'm hoping at least one of these was a new to you.

New Poems

2009-10-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

I just wrote this first poem today. I don't know how it happened, and once again, it's from a man's perspective (perhaps I'm in need of some serious psychoanalysis).

A Turning

You have changed direction
in the kitchen, bird
slipping on the green
tile, as if figure
skating, and I remember
your yoga class stories, the cunning
of your tongue
conspicuously tipping on your right
canine, as if to say also, and not to
say what you could do
in bed.

This is your language—
the non-language language
which keeps our small mouthed relationship
eventful,
and uneventful; the way you
stroke your forth finger,
left hand, while we are
eating pizza in the living room,
and after we make
love on the orange couch, sagging as if it has just
given birth and its womb is full
of nothing.

You have signals, and yes,
I read you.
We watch movies,
my movies, and you fall asleep
twenty minutes in.
When I ask you how
you liked the show
you say, always you say, you
did, sort of. I say,
You would have liked it if you were awake,
and you— soft and broken,
lax as fabric just out
of the dryer—
whisper, I was awake.

And I thought I'd include the poems that have been accepted to be published in Weave Magazine:

Only Transactions

I.
It was the question in your head why certain people
will not look you in the eyes. It was the man turning apricots
on his thumb, pressing into bruises, looking the kiss of skin
as if a wound. You had asked him, making the usual words:
How are you, today? And either he spoke another language,
or he did not want to turn his face up to your sound.

When he finally looked up, he saw your hands,
and stayed with them, and that was fine—the soft green bills
unfolding between you, the plastic bag whipping up,
opening like a new yellow lung, sweeping back to the table.

II.
After that, a day of men keeping their eyes down—
taking only transactions, fruit, testing everything, you needed
pouring coffee beans into a grinder, your sister speaking in her large
eyed way, and even the conversation, however it started, of when
your mother would die, and how could either of you handle that.

She said, I want to go first. You told her you wanted a husband by then,
to sit on the floor with you, who would hold the pictures up in his
hands of your mother, and her mother, the pictures taken before you
lived, the pictures in black and white, yellowing.

III.
Another man came in today and he said he was not going
to buy anything, but he wanted to talk, looking you
straight, he smiled, told his story: Missle testing sites in July,
tucking the nose of jets into their bellies, lowering docks,
firing and watching how many colors you can make

out of sand in Northern Texas, out of atoms split wide, the oily ocean
at the shore of hell. He said, he lost that job, he lost everything.
You notice, in the silence after, how hard it is to keep your gaze
steady on the weighted water of his.

In Spirit

We are afraid she is not touching the bed,
our mother, levitating again,
lifting in her old bones lying
there, her mothballed nightgown
inflating as if it were a great
lung, her whole body pitching itself
to the slope of her voice, coming up
out of her like the fin of a fish
cutting the dark surface of water:
Do not kill me.

Our tongues are stuck to our teeth
while her voice stretches to us,
standing around her in suits, black,
we were tired, until she came at us
in spirit, yes,
is she here?

Her body lies on the bed, and I think of sliding
my hand beneath her shoulder blades just to see,
just to see if she has died yet.

Thanks for reading!

Some Help

2009-10-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

I don't often write posts like this. It is more of an inquiry than anything else.

Tonight I read a story in Sex God, by Rob Bell about a wedding where the couple walks out into a field and lets go of balloons. The gesture symbolized them letting go of their pasts in order to create a new future together. A couple of years later, the couple divorced.

I have probably read this story more times than any other passage in this book. It crushes me. It twists in the deep and I want to press my hand against the story and make it new, let it end with balloons bouncing against the bottoms of clouds, finding their way through a great maze of atmosphere.

But the story doesn't end that way.

I look at my story, my head lost in the clouds for a few moments, hope snuggling in the soft stem of me, and a few moments later the realization that everything is still a mess--my room strewn with clothing and records and books and glasses where water used to sit and gradually evaporate; the passenger side of my car splashed in mud; one job ending soon; the world growing cold and desperate; my inability to focus on anything; how very empty and cold my hands are and how my time seems not to have done a thing about that.

But then, some days, with good organic stories, lovers still choosing one another, delicious kitchen experiments to long winding road songs, smiling strangers, art on the street, a look caught before it was too late, a honest word spilt finally despite the risk, a walk in the leaves, a rocking chair, sitting in the mess and being okay, small successes, surprising conversations that last forever and stay fresh, slow movements, coffee-some days these things make me wonder how far down or up we really are.

And is it really discipline that gets us there? What about us hopeless cases? What about the ones who despair so quickly? What about the ones who live so far down in their minds that even the light hurts when it finds them, and it is so much easier to shrink back, to fall away?

I don't want to say that we should all just lay in bed and wait for God to come to us with breakfast on a tray, an invitation to work at our dream job folded nicely next to the orange juice, a flower from some idealistic boyfriend smilingly perched in a vase. I know that to live is to risk. To get anywhere implies jumping from enormous terrifying heights.

But, is there room for Something to help us fall, help us make our beds in the morning and actually apply for jobs, be strong enough to risk relationship, meet the world and test the soft skin of its wounds with our trembling fingers? I've often asked God for help but never believed he/she/whatever would really be interested in lending a hand. In fact, I doubt I've ever believed he/she/whatever felt that I needed help.

When I think about it, I find it fascinating when people say, "We could only have accomplished ____ with God's help," or, "God, we need you to help us be _________ and _______ kind of person."

I know that it is in desperation that we realize a lot of things--that we delve into the dark waters to find the ropes that might (just might) lead to something important, something that would make us feel okay about coming up for air.

I feel like I need something to help me along. I don't trust life, anymore. I don't "believe" in life. And in a way, I don't "believe" in myself. I want to learn to like myself, and to trust myself in some senses, but to rely entirely on myself is beginning to feel impossible. I know many of you might not agree with that statement. Perhaps we'd have to discuss it in person, for me to really make my point. But, I am terribly fallible. And I'm trying to believe in Something or Someone, who might not be as crazy as me.

It's fascinating how the mere thought of setting some of this weight into God's hands makes me feel more capable. I still can't logically explain it, because I can't prove God, but for me, right now, this is what has to be. I have to hand it over, because otherwise, I will drown.

Better Story

2009-09-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

I felt like such a rage-aholic today. Such a ferocious wet blanket. And I indulged this, yes, with Natalie Merchant songs about resigning, stepping down from the task it is sometimes to keep moving on a dark day. I threw things around my room--paintings, drawings, piles of books, sweaters. And I swore in such a way that would make Eminem hide in my closet whispering prayers that the storm would calm and I would light a joint or take a sleeping pill.

Why, you might ask, was I such a hurricane of a human being? Honestly, it's difficult remembering. I have the slightest cold. I was going to have to work outside in the rain with my disgusting cold cinching my sinuses and clouding my brain, my hands numb and achey. The internet went out at my house, and I didn't do all the things I wanted to (like putting together portfolios, improving cover letters and resumes, finding businesses to actually approach about positions). I think that last reason was most of it. And the fact that I am so deeply disappointed in myself ninety-two percent of the time.

It was the lack of doing those things I had planned on doing, and the sudden leap from my not finishing those things to the thought that I am an entirely irresponsible human being, that I am ugly--my hair making sloppy shapes in the humid air, and the thought that my ugliness coupled with my irresponsibility tripleted with my terror of approaching men would inevitably lead me to a life of loneliness and poverty.

And I packed my things, loudly. I drove depressed and gray and full of self-pity out to Grand Rapids, to the Bitter End. I listened to Natalie Merchant, and I didn't feel so alone. I remembered a moment when the girls I used to work with at the cafe in Zeeland hugged me in the back room and started crying when they saw my tears about something my dad had done. I felt a little warmer. I remembered other moments where people were super-humanly empathetic.

Those memories redeemed life for me, despite Natalie Merchant (who only has one remotely positive/hopeful song on that whole album). And then The Bitter End coffee house. Looking now through the front windows, rain settled in luminescent drops, leaves limp and wet, green as ever against the dark oak of this place, I feel settled. Danielle called me and told me that she can't imagine me enraged (though she's such a wonderful friend that she really listened and believed that I am capable of rage). She told me what she knows of me. She was very kind, for the most part. I actually surprised myself by not contesting the nice things she was saying. I listened. I studied her words, and took them like water.

Chase told me a few days ago that he thinks most of what I think are my problems, are merely perceptions I have of myself that are entirely incorrect. Nobody apparently sees what I see of myself. This fascinates me, because I've always thought I was good at knowing myself. Apparently, I'm wrong. I'm glad I'm wrong.

Sometimes, we have to listen to our friends. And we have to believe people. Really believe them. We have to sit in their words and let them come into our skin. We so often are lost in our misconceptions of ourselves, that we don't live in the great goodness that lives in us--we don't use our gifts, because we deny them.

I just finished Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Hundred Years, about our lives as stories--about living them as if we are "graceful participants," rather than, "unwilling victims."

At one point he writes, "Not living a beter story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it's not normal to want to die."

In all honesty, there have been quite a few times within the past few years that I have wanted to die. I have wanted, sometimes desperately, to be out of it. To be done. To have the pressure off, the burden lifted. Even though I'm terrified to say that because I'm afraid of how I'll be percieved, I say it, because I know there are plenty of people who feel the same. Don's book, as well as my beautiful, generous friends, have really made me want to live the better story, which may simply mean living into me, into whatever good I am bestowed with.

I love thinking that perhaps the better story is here, and we are already the better characters, we just don't know it yet.

Space

2009-09-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

I am imagining the ideal, now. If I could make my life into whatever I wanted it to be at this moment, this is what it would look like. It would be very very quiet. Still. I imagine very vibrant grass. Grass and feet, and wind sounds, and maybe the soft buzz of traffic--of life around, maybe a slider door opening or closing. But no words. I imagine a very clean apartment, all white walls and wood floor. I imagine curling my knees into my chest in my rocking chair near a window and not having to talk my shoulders down--not having to make myself learn how to love who I am, how to accept any goodness, how to believe that it is okay for me to be fallible.

I wrote in the margin of some book recently that it is awful being a perfectionist who is so goddam imperfect. It is painful. It feels like suffering (while I write that, I feel guilty, because my brain is rushing into images of people who are truly suffering. And the next thought is: WOW, am I capable of not being hard on myself?)

I want my own apartment--my OWN--like nothing else in this world right now. I want it like a lover. I want it like something that's always there--by my side--available for me to fall into, fold into, find myself in. I want cleanliness and SPACE. Any space. Space for me. For my voice. Space for becoming new.

The past two days have brought that thought into focus as well. Becoming new. I need to be new. Fresh. I need to make who I am. I need to choose who I am. I think I have victimized myself so much lately. I feel victimized by my financial situations. I feel victimized by the job market. I blame everything. I feel strung out. I feel wound. And I am so depleted. But I also feel guilty. I know I'm to blame for the place I'm in. But, I also want to concede that it is hard. It is super hard to be everything you want to be, and to find a "real" job in this economy, and to change a lot of habits that you've functioned in for years and years and basically your entire life.

I want to be new, though. I want to stop feeling victimized or guilty. I want to start feeling in control--feeling vibrant--feeling energized. I want to want to be around people. I want to feel even remotely free.

And I really really would like to start engaging spirituality. I want to pray. I want to want to pray, and really open myself to the possibility that I am worth anything at all. I want to believe that God is the opposite of all of my skewed perceptions. I want to believe that he/she/it is trustworthy. I want to believe that there is a better plan, a better way than the one I've been on--the one that has me hopeless, dark, exhausted, and furious.

For example, I went nuts this morning because my dog puked on the floor. Seriously, if I were a parent right now, I would be terrified that I would go nuts, get angry, and my kids would become seriously anxious people like me, always waiting for the ax to fall. Just so you know...I did not even yell at my dog. I just wanted to. I wanted to scream and rip the curtains and stomp holes in the floor. And of course, anger is always indicative of something deeper. It wasn't the dog. It's this place I'm in. This scary, unpredictable, guilt-ridden, place I'm in.

I want to get out. I want it. I want respite and hope and light and silence and strength and time and space to fail and grow and heal and explore.

I want to not feel immature for it either. I don't think I want to run from the real world. I want to work hard. I want to care. I want to be active. But I want to stop running in circles. I want my brain to take on calmer waves. I want to make changes. I want to engage in whatever's beneath or above or invisibly active in this world.

May you all find hope and silence and time and lightness.

P.S. I had an interview this week. I'm trying desperately not to bank on this as my way out of crazyness.

Pulling Focus

2009-08-28T10:16:00.001-07:00

Can I keep the clouds and rain and grey suspended here, over Michigan, please? Just a few more days? I am at Nosh, mocha half-empty, Bon Iver sweeping in my ears, mind moving in to focus on the words, "You're love will be, safe with me,"...and moving out again, to the parking lot, the book open beneath my elbows.

I am reading The Artist's Way. Slowing down this time to really take this in. To take these words on as if an identity, a new, more active, fresh, name. I just read this line that really reached into the swirling chaos of myself for a moment. It reads, "In movie terms, we slowly pull focus, lifting up and away from being embedded in our lives until we attain an overview."

Last night I opened the two art journals I've made over the past couple of years. I read the sloppy ink spotted scrawles of, "Today is sun strung--light linking everything. Today is my sister laughing just inside and the thought of building a fire for lunch. It is free. I feel that--YES. Free slipping around in tank tops, through paint. There is some pain--some soft dark lingering. But for now, this: the paint, sun, Bonnie Prince Billy, some hope, is enough."

I read over other pages, examined the pictures I glued in, the spray paint spattering, the lists of places to go, of things to see: whales, cacti, a real snow topped mountain.

I felt like I was looking at myself, from far away. And I was smiling. I was proud of this person. I did not consider her job situation or her level of discipline, or whether she can maintain a clean and organized closet. I did not consider how she might be terribly absent minded and worn out and even awful at taking care of valuable things. I simply liked her, because she was this fresh, wide, lit-up, person.

It was nice. It was very good for me, because I've felt incredibly inadequate lately. It's been impossible for me to finish cover letters or resumes. It's been so hard for me to actually doooooo these things, because I'm terrified. I've accidentally gone to work at the wrong fruit stands. I've forgotten I had to work at all. I feel like I'm losing it. Like I'm just falling out. But, last night, as I struggled to sleep, feeling like I'll never get anything right, like I'm on a downward spiral and I have no idea if I can regain footing, or if I have the will, I picked up these journals, and I found myself in them.

Today I sent out my resume and cover letter at last to one organization. And I started reading this book again. And I wrote a draft of a poem, and I'll be going into work in an hour. And I am proud of myself.

I hope you have the chance, a slice of time to pull back from the present, and look at it all, and love it in a silly, deep way. May you find that you are alight, and that all of these terrifying, risky things are gifts. Right now, they are gifts. And here you are, their wrapping crinkling in the palm of your hand.

Reaching In

2009-08-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

I didn't like this post. :)

Heroism

2009-08-09T15:25:00.001-07:00

The view right now out these windows is almost pixilated. Rain is on it's way--is so close to bursting right out of the air. I am dreaming up things. I am making plans to accomplish these things. I want to buy a web design book. I want to expand my areas of knowledge. I want to write some very influential people in my life (and out of it--one, I hardly know, but I feel like writing her anyway).

I'm reading this book (which you should definitely pick up whether you are artistic or not at all) called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. This book is recovering me from a lot of destructive, negative thinking and is taking me into the mindset that I am allowed to create, and that my creativity (my art, my life, my personality) brings about good. This book is empowering me to find the roots of some of my more depressing feelings and beliefs and put those un-worked-through experiences to bed so I can wake up and move on.

These new notions are also causing me to really appreciate spirituality even more. I like the idea of the "New Country," Henri Nouwen writes about in his masterpiece, The Inner Voice of Love. He describes the place we need to get to in our lives: a place of peace, of acceptance and love for ourselves and others, a deep appreciation of the good all around us, and a striving to bring light to spaces that are suffering terribly from deep darkness. Most of all, I suppose the "New Country" is really a place of trust. It becomes a reality for those who learn to trust that there is good somewhere inside of them, that perhaps there is a good God who is active and trustworthy.

I think the most difficult thing for me to do is trust. I just can't. I have friends who have massaged my shoulders before and could tell you about the massive knots that make themselves in my muscles, in my soft, tensing fabric. I am not always active in my life--pursuing things that would boost my financial situation or bring me peace of mind. Instead, I am always worrying. I don't believe in anything. I apply for positions half-heartedly because I don't believe any good will come of it anyway. I am terrified. And I am exhausted from what being terrified most of the time (even subconsciously--hence the bazillions of knots in my back I am typically unaware of until someone touches my shoulders) does to me. And I need time alone. But I feel guilty wanting that because I still don't have a full-time job, and I still haven't paid back all my debts, and I am not the best friend in the world and feel like I should be laying down my life for the people who are always there for me. But this is the trap. This is the scary place you get to where all of your muscles can't even knot up anymore because they've gotten so tense their material is unable to bind up, but exists more like concrete plates mashing up and down and side to side. I need to rest. I need to believe in Something. I need to believe in Something that I can trust--and deep down--deep deep--I know that this is possible. I need to believe in myself--that I am equipped with incredible power. I need to trust myself.

So, I write this not only for myself--because I haven't vented in a while. I also write this because I know a lot of people are feeling the same way. We are exhausted. In this economy it really feels like there is no hope. In this world...in this screwed up self...it often feels like there's no hope. I've been visiting sites of people I find incredibly inspiring this afternoon and they have taught me this: that I have company. That I am allowed to be a HUMAN. That it is heroic to believe in yourself--to say in one of those great movie-theatre resounding voices that you are GOOD, that your dreams are VALID, and that you have POWER. It is time for action, but action out of a spirit that says something good is on it's way, somewhere waiting for me to tap into it. Something is out there, and I can find it.

Good luck to all of you.

In Transition

2009-07-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

I am in the process of moving into my mom's house. I'm not at all ashamed of moving in with her, as I don't feel entirely irresponsible and will be paying her some rent (about half of what I've paid for the past few years, but some). I also feel like her house, the house she bought after the divorce, is kind of a safe haven. I feel like it's got some kind of slow-dripping peace about it. A cool, soft evening peace about it.

I've been gradually moving things: one stack of books here, a load of clean laundry there. While I'm moving these things I have this distinct feeling that her house will help make me new. That, when I finally get my desk in there, in front of the lovely front window in the room she's giving me, I'll keep it uncluttered, spotless, excepting the occasional post-it which will list all sorts of things I will actually do. I really, deeply believe this. And at the same time, I have this awful gnawing that maybe I won't be perfect when I walk through these doors for the last time. I know that when I realize I have left my room a mess at my mom's during the first couple of months I'm there, I'm going to feel so disappointed in myself. Like, I'm totally incapable of ever cleaning up--of ever really being an adult.

And my mom is the best. I know my room won't be awful, and I know I clean up after myself in general areas of the house, but I think a lot of this is stemming from this terrible feeling that I'm not getting anywhere--that I won't get anywhere.

I know I'll likely have a decent career someday. And hopefully I'll get into graduate school. I'm already starting to prepare for that. I'm working on my writing again--scribbling everything that comes into my head, and I plan on sending some new poems out to literary magazines this summer. But, I feel like there are other areas in my life--other deep deep desires I have, that I'll never see actualized.

For instance, every time I come in contact with an individual who has a great marriage, I wonder when they met. I want to know, "Is there still time for me?" I really don't want to be married this instant, but, I want to know that I'm capable of that--that that's a possibility for me. That I may eventually find a real sweetheart to share this journey with.

And then, within this past year--more and more--I've felt that gut-wrenching maternal instinct. I finally love children. I want to hold them. I may not be overt about this. But I feel this very deep, welling tide inside me to have a child someday. Though I have plenty of time for that, and really do not feel as if I'll be prepared or will actually want to be in that sort of situation for ten years or so, I want to know that perhaps one day, I could be. I want to know that these dreams are not elaborate, fanciful things, but really are possible. And not only possible, but legitimate.

I want to know that I can want these things. I can hope for them.

I was reading Shauna Niequist's Cold Tangerines (a deliciously refreshing read--I'm worried I'll finish it so soon and I'll miss it terribly once it's over and not new anymore), and found this:

"I wear my ugly pants , the saggy yellow terry-cloth ones with the permanently dirty hems, and I walk around my house, looking at all the things that I should fix someday, but I don't fix them just yet, and I imagine God noticing all the things about me that should get fixed up one day, and lloving me anyway and being okay with the mess for the time being."

I loved reading that. It makes me want to spend more time with myself--just myself--appreciating my own art, and my own unique existence, and perhaps being really brave and talking to God about some of these big worries on my heart. I want to trust that maybe he does hear, and I am not sitting alone in a giant void that so happens to be hosting a very beautiful sunset at present.

I have so much to learn. I have so many rooms in my heart that need deep cleaning and turning over to Something that will love them better than I have been able to on my own. I think this will be a good year. A very hard year. I have a feeling it may feel like a very dark tunnel of a year. But I'm going to put all of my effort into it, praying that because of the darkness, I'll come up again fresher, and more at peace with what I've got.

Resolution

2009-06-20T21:36:00.001-07:00

In the midst of some sweeping sad-ish spell, I noticed a painting I threw together on New Year's this year. On the back it says, "New Year's Resolution: Be Good to Me." That's what I've needed--simply put.

This week calls for quite a few quiet beach mornings, and time to myself because for some reason, time with myself is well spent.

Better Company (and other newer poems)

2009-05-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

Better Company

Slicing into a tomato at the counter there is a question:

What language is strong enough? I remember my father,

and vegetables, and vegetable gardens—turning on

the sprinkler—turning it off—the soft fuzz of grass cut

days before swathing and sticking around my ankle bone.

Father, I think of you, yes. I wonder how much of your hair

has grayed, and if you remember how long it has been

and if you really were afraid of me when I raised my voice.

I still want to stick it to you, like the green painted spade,

a trellis the morning glories are climbing up. I want to take you

down, as far as I have been, your hand twisting my wrist

until I couldn’t feel my hand, had I been paying attention

to it, not combing the clear brown sea of your eyes for weeds

for things I was hoping I would find, floating, like kindness,

tenderness, some sign that you are human, that you have always

been made of something, but I never found any of that,

did I? I ask God if your eyes will ever make windows, and would

it be a good idea if I brought you over a dinner plate so,

for once, the beer in your belly, and the yellow sludge

from of other waste, will have better company?

Here's the piece that was in the recent issue of Fishladder:

Web

Sorry about the rabbit turds

that will inevitably smoosh themselves

into the tread of your shoe.

Because of the rain, the snow melted,

and because the snow melted,

the turds are there, and the air smells

the way that old cow barn across the street

did before they burned it to the ground.

The air smells like straw and mud,

like rabbit turds, but sometimes the air smells

like your hairspray, and when you turn

to look into the hands of that maple for the Blue Jay

you swore you saw fly up there, I am flooded

with the smell of your hairspray.

The smell of your hairspray pushes my breath

back into my throat, and it combs my throat

the way cigarette smoke combs my throat,

and I feel almost as if I am eating your hair,

but I can see your hair in front of me.

When your hair gets caught in the tree branches

while we are walking the sun hits it

and it looks like spider webs in the morning.

Your hair feels like spider webs, in the morning,

on my face. It feels like sticky spider webs when you

haven’t washed it the night before, and your hairspray

is still tangled in it, the way dew gets tangled in webs.

Your hair feels like spider webs, sticky with hair spray,

sprawling my left cheek, on the mornings when you haven’t washed

it the nights before. It sprawls my left cheek like a web

sprawls tree branches because you have moved so near to me.

When you have moved so near to me in the night, your hair

suffocating this day’s first breath, curling your thumb at the base

of my neck, the way a kitten taken from her mother too soon

curls her paws into any softness, I cannot help myself.

When you are curling your thumb at the base of my neck,

your breath so warm saturating the deepest well of my ear,

I lift my heavy hand and I take one long coil of hair

from your neck, and I wrap it and unwrap it in my fingers,

and I lift it to my nose, though I smell it already,

though it has already stopped my breath, I lay it across my mouth.

And I wrote this one...in between:

In Spirit

We are afraid she is not touching the bed,

our mother, levitating again,

lifting in her old bones lying

there, her mothballed nightgown

inflating as if it were a great

lung, her whole body pitching itself

to the slope of her voice, coming up

out of her like the fin of a fish

cutting the dark surface of water:

Do not kill me.

Our tongues are stuck to our teeth

while her voice stretches to us,

standing around her in suits, black,

we were tired, until she came at us

in spirit, yes,

is she here?

Her body lies on the bed, and I think of sliding

my hand beneath her shoulder blades just to see,

just to see if she has died yet.

I hope you enjoy them.

Spilling

2009-05-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a while. Been having this inner conflict about spilling the beans. When is it alright to bear it all? To open out, say, "Here's the struggle. Look at it. Touch it. Feel it. Know what I've known in the deep, deep--the dark--and whatever spots of intense light my spirit has recorded these last few days."

I've become incredibly self conscious recently. More than usual. But...something happened a couple of days ago, when a friend of mine sort of spilled to me a sad sad story that turned out very happily. We were in my car and he was beaming about how he suddenly felt so loved by God--he motioned toward the stars through my windshield and described how he didn't need anyone to tell him that they loved him anymore. Because the person who made the stars loved him. His face got so brilliant. I felt so soft, so grounded listening to his story. And I decided, when I got home, that I didn't need to be affirmed that night, I didn't need to feel accepted by other people, I just needed to rest.

It was wonderful. It was a great wide night, and I've felt so much better since.

I know that often, when I get scared, uncomfortable, whatever, I begin entertaining people a lot. I become funny. I am really really extroverted. Sometimes I'm being myself in those moments. Sometimes I'm generally just laughing hard, spinning into the joy of the people I'm with. But, sometimes, when I feel like I'm the only one, like I'm the one entertaining, like I'm in front of the eyes, I begin slowly losing myself. I go away after that feeling really ashamed and isolated and needy. I think the whole show--my hilarity--my song and dance--in those moments were meant to try and bring me some sort of confirmation. I like to make people laugh. And sometimes I think I use that laughter as confirmation that I bring joy. That I am worthwhile. When I bring joy because I already am worthwhile.

It's crazy finding out how many people share this. The neediness, sometimes. The panic that perhaps life doesn't have space for them. That they aren't a part of it. They are somewhere outside, trying very hard to get in. Trying to give some kind of show, in order to gain entrance.

I love finding that we're already inside. I love seeing other people find that they are already inside. I love their faces when they find out. Their softness. Their depth. Their silliness.

I am hoping I can live into this more. I want to love myself. Deeply. I don't want to go on with this constant re-thinking everything I've done. I don't want to go on planning every move, being as cautious as possible so I don't get caught in a space that may not want me.

When I think of living this out, I feel good. I feel very very much myself. I feel smiley. I feel warm.

I hope that you have found this way of life. I am so happy thinking that there are people out there who have become tender toward themselves. Who can laugh--very freely--and are not trying to buy love in any way.

LATER TODAY:

I just was going through pictures on facebook and I found these pictures of me driving my dad's tractor that my mom got in the divorce away from the house I grew up in. It was rather hilarious at the time. We were all celebrating getting away from that place...or the person that had hurt us all so much for so many years. We took pictures. And there I am, posing on the tractor. It was the last thing I drove away from my dad's (only a few blocks...down dirt roads...to my aunt's house). There was this brigade of my mother's brother and sister, my great friend Paula (it was her BIRTHDAY...and she helped me move my mom's stuff out. She's amazing. I needed her so much that day), all driving behind me. Smiling. Beeping. Waving. Helping out.

Today was the first day I realized that that was the last time I saw my father. Driving away on his tractor. It was about one in the afternoon. He was already drunk. Had nearly hit someone when he sped it out of the area behind his barn. He wasn't very whole that day. His girlfriend was coming over later. He was trying to corner my mom all the time and tell her how greedy she was when she still has hardly anything and he seems to own every toy he's ever wanted.

One time, I went inside, stood in his way and firmly told him to "Shut the hell up. " To leave her alone. I said, "Where the hell are your trash bags?" I was so strong on the outside. That's how I've learned to be with him. And on the inside I'm shaking, scared to death he's going to come at me...he's going to pummel me to the ground...and I'm going to be left, voiceless, again.

Today, driving around a bend in 44th, on my way to work, my father popped into my head. The image of him hiding, clinking bottles, peeking above shelves to talk to my sister popped into my head. The cold eyes. The eyes I've never ever known to hold real warmth. I thought of the things he's called us. The nights he put us through. And I felt very sorry. For him. I have been angry. I have wanted to see him cry in front of me. I have wanted to stare at him with the coldest eyes, and have him fall open, bawling at my feet. I have wanted that. I mean it. But, today, I felt sorry. I felt that this man is a product of something very big and very dark. I have never known what is beneath those eyes. I've glorified him and been let down before. But ultimately, he is flesh, and he is blood. And I am feeling the sharp pain he has inflicted. And he is feeling the sharp pain inflicted upon him. And perhaps, unlike my mother and others dealt very hard hands, he has not been capable of seeing his way to a different life, a different way of seeing things.

I am not going to go see him very soon. He would make me feel like I deserved to be punished. For what? I'm not sure. I'm still trying to get over the feeling that I am deserving of everything bad. That I have done something wrong all the time. That I am not worthy of anything. Of love. Of affection. I need to find my way to that first. But it is good. It is amazing, thinking that God does love this man I find so terribly hard to love, who I often want to hurt soo soo badly.

Imagine my mother and I with orange triangles on our butts...

2009-04-18T13:11:00.001-07:00

pushing my car down Lake Michigan Drive. She still thinks we should have done it, rather than using our free towing service. :)

Yesterday was pretty bummy as I ended up having to shell out 200 dollars in unplanned car repairs. In the throws of absolute major panicky breakdown when I found out that I would have to have the thing taken in to a garage, imagining the money I've just started putting in my savings account flushing down the toilet bowl with graffiti on it reading, "God hates my guts!" I called my mother and she said, in between my sobs, "What? You feel like life isn't worth it because of your car?" By this time, I was on her doorstep, and started laughing at my absurdity. We got the car towed, and it ended up working out. I thought that I was going to have to come up with hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and in the end, I will be able to pay this.

It was fascinating, though. My inner dialogue was so ridiculous. I kept thinking, "This is your fault. You cannot take care of anything." And then I realized that that is absolutely ridiculous. I started to realize that so many of my thoughts come from things I was told long ago. And it's very sad. I remember realizing what was going on in my head, yesterday, and suddenly feeling this great compassion for myself. It was nice. I think everyone should have that every so often, a good dose of compassion for themselves.

Anyway, while my car was getting fixed, my mom took me out to Chinese, and then we went back to her house so I could fix her mailbox, which was hanging sideways next to her driveway. Supposedly she keeps getting hate mail from her mail carrier. So, after we pounded this stake in to straighten the mail box, laughing and being silly the whole time, she wanted to re-glue this wooden slat on top of the mailbox. After she glued it down she went around looking for something to hold the slat down while the glue dried. Finally she brought out this HUGE box of kitty litter with "Fresh Expressions" printed in big block letters across the front, and the image of a kitten pawing through grey and white pebbles. I had to pull out my camera. Seriously. My little mother trying to balance a box of kitty litter on top of her mailbox in the middle of a sub-division. And she just bought this house. I thought we might have to explain to her new neighbors, "Early onset of alzheimers. Very sad," or, "She was just trying to return it." :) I laughed histerically, and she did, too.

Then we played Mario Kart on the Wii, and drank chocolate milk.

I love my mother. Can I just say that? I love her. She's hilarious, and so warm. She was so good to me yesterday, and I don't know if I enjoy playing Wii with anyone else, quite as much.

Joy, deeply.

2009-04-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

Last night:

In my mother's living room, I played Great Lake Swimmers', "Unison Falling Into Harmony," and danced around, finding out how difficult balance has become. It was interesting, dancing around by myself, on my own, discovering that it is nice to dream without expectations, without faces to put to dreams. I sang, danced, changed songs, listened for water boiling over in the kitchen, stirring mac and cheese noodles, calling down to my sister talking to her boyfriend on the phone.

Once, when going up to change to another song, some bluesy thing, Melody Gardot and Eva Cassidy, I noticed these clay hand prints my sisters and I made when we were young, and though it seems cheesy, and maybe it is, I put my hand in the print, and realized that once, I was very young. I was very young, once. I was small.

I have had very small hands.

I had this moment looking back into my memory, mostly composed of old photographs, thinking of myself back then, five years old, silly, restless. And I thought of how much my mind has taken over. How, back then, life was running. It was tossing about with my sisters in snow, in the yard. It was chasing the dog, and exploring color and new stones on the driveway. It was bending down to see. It was getting real close.

Looking back, seeing myself as this separate small person, helps me develop this compassionate view of myself. I have grown. I have been through legitimately painful experiences. I have survived, and I have learned joy, deeply.

And I have met people who are willing to bend near to me, to take me in, whatever I am, and love what they have in their hands. I love them, too. They are in my grown hands, and I am proud of them.

Inside the Panorama

2009-03-27T10:29:00.000-07:00

I was driving, twisting my neck, craning around at the fields on either side of the road, the dusky yellow, everything laying flat, still. I thought it was beautiful, the sun cutting in from the clouds every few seconds, catching the bone corn stalks lying in heaps. I felt the landscape this great sad, broken thing, and at the same time, this fresh, supple, space. And driving through, I suddenly saw myself, my little car, closeups of my brow, my hairline, my ear, my eyes reflecting in the mirrors, and I realized, I felt that I was inside this panorama.

I feel broken lately. Slashed. Fallen. Splayed out on the floor. Splayed on my bed in the morning. Not sad. Just wanting to stay. Wanting to hold fast to that space, the wadded knots of sheets, the blankets swarmed like currents colliding. The lighting, the grey soft diffusion through my big window, through the wild branches of the oak standing out front. I want my bed. I want that softness. I want to sink and sink until all the coils have me, and I don't have to keep tense, keep holding myself up.

I'm guessing a lot of this has to do with working forty-fifty hours a week while finishing up my last semester of college. I realize I've done this for the past five years. I have worked full time, gone to school full time. Managed to make good grades. Managed to connect with people, make friends, experience so many new new things I never thought I'd try.

It's been a good five years. But exhausting. I am burnt out. Legitimately. I never thought I would burn out. I thought I was stronger than that. And I hate the thought of burning out because it makes me feel very ashamed. I can do this, I think. I am capable.

But it's time for it to end. I am ready to graduate. I got another job today to take the place of my office job on campus, so it looks like I'll be able to save money this summer, and perhaps move somewhere warmer before it gets cold again. I really want to move. I really want warmth. Ohhhh...it would be so nice.

I just have to figure out where I'm going.

I read nearly half of Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved last night, while avoiding school work, and was struck by one particular line, "But neurosis is often the psychic manifestation of a much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence." I think that this is the major issue running through my mind lately. I feel so ridiculously undeserving. Sometimes, when I am alone, I literally start laughing at myself because I am soooo ridiculous. I am so loved. So loved. I think of Andrew. I think of Chase. Of Elizabeth. Of Amanda. Of Ashley. Alicia. Paula. And so many other people who tell me they love me. And they aren't awkward about it. It's just true for them. And it's unbelievable that I still experience these bouts of just wanting out of life, because I don't feel like it has any significant space for me.

I remember working at starbucks and how all the young girls had this radar for guys who I felt were not good enough for them. They chose guys who called them idiots. Who were possibly physically abusive. Who relied on these girls more than they should have. I started taking note of my own radar (romantic). When I walked on campus I noticed that when I found someone attractive, or interesting, I would tuck my head down, automatically assuming that I would not have a shot with those people. Or perhaps I'd talk with them, and remain confident, but I wouldn't continue being interested in them, I would still believe that there was no hope for me in the romance department with those people. For the most part it was subconscious, but as I paid attention, I realized just how often during the day I subconsciously say to myself, "I am not worth that." I noticed how very quickly I construct walls to keep my safe from having someone else tell me I'm unworthy, I'm not good enough, before I tell myself.

It's all about control, really. It's about thinking, "I'll just guess that I'm horrific looking, that I'm completely idiotic, that I am not creative, that I'm a poor writer, that I am totally scatterbrained, before someone else tells me these things. Because if someone else tells me them first, I will die. I will melt into the carpet, and dry up. I won't be here, because I can't handle that."

When I really think about myself, how I view myself, I like who I am. I think I'm more scatterbrained in public, when I'm worried about what people are thinking. But when I'm confident, I'm smart. I'm witty. I can do conversation. And beyond that, I connect with lots of people, and I love them dearly. I am creative, I love my imagination. And sometimes, I'm even a good writer. And in the past few years, I have even learned to sing in front of one or two people, and have danced like a madwoman.

There are possibilities for me. There is hope. There will be jobs. Will be love. Will be holding-close. Will be good writing. Success. Some falling-short. And hopefully, some real letting go. Less self-rejection. More believing that I am beloved, as is.

Don't Push, Don't Shove

2009-03-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

Late night, again. Adrenaline, again. I'm listening to the album Andrew made me, this Gasoline Heart song called "That Girl," in which the vocalist sings, "This is where you are, don't push, don't shove." I feel so often this pressure in me, pressing against the walls of my lungs, stretching them, stripping them the way cigarette smoke strips them, the way screaming strips them. I feel tight, stretched, dried out. I am pushing. I am shoving.

The reason for all of this is this stark realization that I don't quite know where to go with myself in the coming year. I mean, I'll graduate. I'll try and save some money working at the cafe, at a fruit stand, hopefully, and move. But where? Should I apply to work at that monastery in California? Am I only thinking about applying because I want to put that in my statement someday for graduate school? That's awful.

I HATE the fact that I am still working to please people. To please grad programs. To look good. I think about this, this part of me and I feel violent. I want to be done with myself, with all the ways I keep from knowing myself, from doing what I most want to do, from even knowing what I most want to do.

Granted, working at a monastery would be amazing. It would probably be very good for me in so many ways. The environment would be great. But, would I get bored? I am such a stress addict. Really.

I've been thinking of all the ways our society works, that we graduate and if we're going to get retirement plans we're going to have to jump through hoops, we're going to have to flaunt ourselves, make ourselves these "professionals" and further remove ourselves from our humanity, our feeling of worth simply because we are here, because we contribute on a level deeper than filing paper, creating spreadsheets, putting together cubicle walls in a factory, doing more and more. I am SICK of this. I don't want to be a part of it. But, perhaps there are good aspects to it. I feel like a mess of thoughts right now. And there's no where to go with any of it. There's nothing to decide.

I want to be a part of sweet full living. I want to make love out of life (as silly as that sounds). I want my good friends. I want more good friends. I want closeness. I want work that inspires closeness, that involves healing. I want work where I can share art, and make art with other people. I want work where I can help people find what they want, what they've lost. I want light. I want brilliance. I want joy. I want carelessness. I want floppy-soft-yellow days. Mornings. Days that look like mornings. I suppose none of this has to do with work, with business, with occupations. But, it's what I want in my work, my business, my occupation. I don't want to be stifled. I don't' want white office walls. I don't want hierarchies. I don't want regulations. I already feel like the past twenty-three years have been strangled by these things.

I think of Sabrina Ward Harrison's saying, "Make your own life." And I think, I have to do something different. I have to look deep and pull up my art, my real art. The poems I most want to write but haven't because I'm trying to write what will be accepted. The paint I most need to throw on canvases in configurations I've needed to set down, to lay out. What do I WANT to do? What am I going to make, if I am to make my own life?

It's somewhere in me. It's risky business. And I'm terrible with risk. But this is all I've got, I suppose.

Sabrina also wrote, "I'm afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it, and that's all I've got." I think of this in terms of going out into the world, of putting my art out there, and this is what I have to stand by. This art, this work, is all I've got. I'm afraid. But I don't want to go out of this life as big of a wimp as I am now.

"Tell Michelle"

2009-03-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

I had the strangest realization driving home from my cafe tonight. I was flipping through radio stations because I couldn't find the one cd I wanted to listen to, and I landed on this Christian radio station, and this song was playing about God's grace, and I actually liked the sound of it, so I stopped twisting the dial. While I was listening I remembered why it is I like this faith.

And I almost felt ashamed, well, I did feel ashamed, for listening to Christian radio (granted, there are some things I really don't like about it or agree with). I've realized that I've become very ashamed of expressing belief in anything, or even my opinion to people who might disagree. I try and keep my mouth shut.

I'm not out to evangelize at all, but I'm starting to realize that I stifle my own growth by trying to hide what it is I care deeply about. Faith is a vulnerable spot.

The strangest thing that came to me suddenly, that made my eyes feel tight and misty and a smile stretch across my face in the dark of my car was that I am allowed to believe things. I can claim something. I can claim belief. I am allowed.

I think I don't want to express my beliefs because I am afraid I won't be valued by some people for them. And I need to be valued by EVERYONE. I am desperate to be valued by everyone.

And while I turned onto my street I thought of something else, that I want to be a brave person. I want to be courageous, and very true to what I think, who I am. I WANT this. If I do not embrace what I am, I might lose it. And the truth is, I kind of like what I have here in this skin and bones. It feels good. Feels soft, tender. Warm. Light. Yellow. In the fibers of me, the me that I like best, is faith, is belief, is Christian belief (even), is some other beliefs, but mostly Jesus. It's true.

I want to take more risks. I have nothing else. I have myself.

In other news, my friend Rachel told me tonight that she's getting a tattoo on her wrist that says, "The Lord provides." I liked the phrasing because it's not "The Lord will provide," it's that he does, that he's doing it right now, and it continues. When she told me this, I had another smile stretching, eye misting experience. I don't think I often believe that I will be taken care of. I imagine myself most days, mouth bursting through waves for air, swallowed sporadically by white foaming curls of water. I am trying to survive. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, financially. I am trying to survive. And the business of survival has stripped me of my humanity. It has stripped me of my ability to believe in something bigger, because my eyes are not looking beyond this ocean.

The Lord provides.

I love that. I really do. It resonates deep, somewhere. It holds something at the base of me.

It makes me think of the middle-aged man (actually exactly twice my age) who visits me at the cafe, who brought me a stack of sticky notes that starts with "Tell Michelle" and lists tons of songs and artists he's heard during the week that he thinks I would love. And all of his recommendations are AMAZING. He knows me well. Though we only know each other because of the sweet little cafe I work at. And he cares enough to write me a list of songs on sticky notes. I think of my father who can't even tell me, can't write me an e-mail that says, "Merry Christmas, Michelle. I hope you have a nice day." I think of him and how he forgets my sisters' birthdays and middle names. Who cannot spell our first names. And I think of this man, and I think, The Lord provides.

Though I do not see him as a surrogate father, he has remembered me. I am provided for in this way. And it is good. And I am thankful.

Can I just say...

2009-03-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

I am such a dreamer right now. I am sitting in The Sparrows cafe in Grand Rapids, sipping the best tea EVER, and perusing my favorite blogs. And these blogs, and this place, and just this feeling in my chest is leading me into these fantasies of what my future existence might contain.

I am thinking of breakfast nooks in my future kitchen. Of owning a home, and feeling satisfied with settling in for a while. I am thinking of stacks of books in my breakfast nook. I'm thinking of some sweet someone peering into the room. Of him taking up books with me, and steaming mugs of tea or coffee or cocoa and sitting across from me. Oh, just to see him there, sitting across from me. That some good relationship could happen, that I could be a part of some good relationship, some hard-earned deep love, real sharing with a man who is honest, and who is willing to risk it, every time. I would be so thankful for that. I would brim. I think I would brim. It's so hard to believe that something good could befall me in this area, that I think I would glow unto eternity if it actually should come to pass. Maybe not. But maybe.

Another dream that has recently tripped over my brain, over my maternal synapses, is the dream of possibly having some child of my own in my arms someday. I'm not one to coo over babies like a lot of women I know. I'm not up for hanging out in crowds of mothers. I just imagine myself, alone in a dim room, in the morning maybe (I have a thing for mornings, though it's difficult for me to join them when the alarm sounds) with someone in my lap who has the characteristics of my lover and myself in his or her face. It's cheesy, maybe. But I don't care. I want it. I have come up with names, since I've decided to allow myself this dream (I was with someone a bit ago who was adamantly against every having children, and so I gave it up, without much thought, just gave it up because I'm so quick to throw my wishes, my possible desires on the altar). I've come up names like Willa, or Willa Margot, or Jorie (after my mom's mother Marjorie), or Charlie, or Oliver, or Olive for a girl and we can call her Ollie and other sweet things, or Eveline. So this is a dream I am finally allowing myself. And it feels good to be allowed. I have to find a man first, and before that I have to find a bit more of myself, and I have to love what I find in myself, I have to be compassionate. And then children. Then babies. Then breakfast nooks, and intimate small moments.

Maybe this could all happen. I don't care if there's struggle. I've done struggle. I might even resent these dreams someday. I'll just want my kids to shut up and do their homework. I'll want my husband to pay more attention, or to leave me be for a bit. But still, I will fight for it.

I only worry that I want these things to complete me, to finish off the areas in which I feel so unfinished, so tender and insecure. I hope not. I don't want to take advantage. I just want full life. I want glowing vivaciousness.

The biggest problem, the biggest struggle I'm going to have for now is living my life as if it is glowing and vivacious and full and fulfilling right now. I want to appreciate this time. I want to drink it in. I want it to taste like some kind of thick nectar, rather than some stale white wine. Something that makes my stomach ache. Something that makes me want to spend the rest of the night hanging over a toilet bowl. I want to loooove my life. I want to love it right now. Where it is.

Everything is uncertain. My hands are up in the air. I have nothing to bet on, to be sure of. I have have no idea where I'm going. More than ever. I have no idea. I try to reassure myself that I'll survive, that I won't be homeless, that I'll somehow feed myself. But with the state of the world, about to graduate college with a useless degree, I have officially said goodbye to my one serious lover who I spent so much time planning my life around, and my lease is up in August. Where am I going? Oh God, I'm scared out of my mind. Oh, and one of my jobs is on-campus and ends when I toss my graduation cap in the air. Do I want to graduate even, if it means giving up the security I have now?

But, I think this is what was supposed to happen. I am supposed to be without a plan. I always plan. But I can't do that, now. It's impossible. There's just no way I can. Not if I try. Grad school isn't an option. It's all up in the air. It's exciting. It would be more exciting if I was financially stable. But then there wouldn't be much risk, here. And maybe this is where God wants me. I really, deeply believe this is where God wants me.

After all, where else can I place my trust right now? Like all those hymns, and bible passages, my life is out of my hands, and now I have this big scary chance of pushing it into the hands of something bigger--something I cannot sense. Wow. Terrifying. Maybe I can do it. Maybe I can.

Here goes. This is my life right now. I am on the verge of something. And I think I'll be on the verge for some time. And God has some kind of plan while I'm here. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised. I hope He has good things in mind. But then again, isn't that what we're asked to believe?

I am on my way to something. And right now, I think it might be light-filled and so morning-like.

"I Open All My Doors"

2009-03-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

So, here it is. Abstract, yes...but this is what I have to write for today:

In the spirit of Deb Talan's song lyrics, "You are forgiven, I open all my doors," I will attempt to stop trying to figure all of this out, and just let things come my way and deal with them when they do. I can't do it all right now. I can't figure out my job situation, figure out what I'll do for grad school next year, figure out my own neurotic mind, figure out my family, figure out the ridiculous--seemingly meaningful--dreams I keep having, all together. I need to break this up. So, I'm going to open all my doors.

I'm done with the struggle. My muscles are limp from all the fights.

It is sunny. The psychotic man who stayed at my coffee shop because God told him to is gone. I am somewhat safe. I have books. I am okay. My friends are near me. It is good.

Heart Advice

2009-03-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

I am worried about myself. I am worried about being closed and inauthentic because I'm very afraid. I feel hard in some situations...around some people, and I know it's not me. And it is so frustrating when I'm near these people because I want them to see what I am underneath. But at the same time, I don't want them to see that because what I am underneath is very soft, very tender, and if I become that person I may just fall apart. And maybe I don't trust that those people would comfort me or understand my grief.

Have you ever felt like you weren't going to be alright with people in general until you just allowed yourself to fall apart?

Pema Chodron writes, "To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes."

I was thinking about that quote (and desperately trying to hold myself back from logging onto amazon and ordering her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times) and wondered if in order to "look clearly and compassionately at ourselves" we really must fall apart. I feel like those of us who are hard and gaurded around people (not all people, but many), are often very gaurded even when we are alone, with ourselves. We avoid things. We avoid things that will make us very deeply sad or angry. We project. It is difficult for us to sit in the pain. Or to just sit, in general, with emotion.

I feel like I need to crack up a bit. I need spaces in my walls so that I can speak into myself what I have most needed to hear--that I am worth something to me, because I'm all I have, and it turns out I'm glad that I'm what I've gotten stuck with.

It's cheesy. I feel like most true, good things are in some form, corny as hell.

I need rest. But the sun is bright. This area is finally starting to warm up.

I am watching as 80 year old husbands...

2009-02-27T16:49:00.000-08:00

Insist that their wives get up and dance with them. The banjo is sweet. The atmosphere is vibrating with it. Even the voices whip through the air in some special way.

I am not the greatest fan of country music, but sitting in this little cafe in this small town, makes me want it. I want banjo. I even want the nasal voices.

This kind of sound makes me feel like I'm growing out into the deeper world. Into some kind of home that's bigger than houses, or families. I feel connected, though I'm the wallflower. The only interaction I really have here is smiling back at all the old ladies.

I don't understand how the elderly take so much joy in the youth around them. I feel like I could be wearing chains all over my body, black makeup in great circles around my eyes, and they'd treat me well. They'd be happy to see me.

I wonder if the reason they're so nice is that they realize how crazy this time feels. At least for me. I feel so unnatural. So abnormal. So psychotic. So in-between. I feel caught in this bind where I have so much to think about and plan and work on, which exhausts me, but I can't give up, because I'm terrified of what will happen.

In a way, I hate this time. I don't want to. I want to stop. I want to go slow. I want to steep in it. I want to absorb all the good spots...the tangled garden of it. But, there is terror in possible homelessness, and joblessness, and savingslessness, and lovelessness, and all of that, and so my mind keeps running, my body keeps moving, and I am lost to what I could find here in this time.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm losing something big lately. My chance at things. Will there be other chances? Other loves? Other cities? Other explorations? Other moments?

I want it all, now. I want to have discovered it. I want safety. OH GOD, I want safety. Security. A solid ground to stand on. I want love. I want sharing. I want time to myself, I want waiting time, growing time, but what if that's all I end up with? Years and years of waiting time, and nothing I've waited for.

Here I am, in the midst of this. Headache coming on. Mocha in front of me. Music around. Banjo still going on, hanging all of it's notes up in the air. It is Spring Break, I am reminded suddenly. I have just started Spring Break. Sloooow down. Here it is, the moment. The soft, country, calm, familial moment. Take it. Take it. Steep.

Here it is.

In the Spirit

2009-02-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

of trying not to be so negative, especially since I still haven't heard from graduate schools and am pretty sure my rejection letters have just been sealed and dropped in the mail, I'm going to try and read a poems daily (just open up books and read whatever page I've opened to), and appreciate each of them. I want to savor them. I want them to sit deep in my chest. I'm so used to reading a poem, and either analyzing it to no end or using it's goodness to degrade my own writing. I often read my favorite poets' pieces with this feeling of, Oh how could I ever live up to that. What I forget is that those pieces are their art. Not mine. I have my own voice in this body. And it has its own plans. And they are good plans. And above anyone else, I must love those plans and that voice. Soooo...I'm going to stop for a while and just love other poets voices. I'm not going to interact with them. I'm going to sit in awe and appreciate.

Here's my first one.

I found this poem in the Winter 2008 edition of The Florida Review, last night, during my Contemporary English Lit. class. It's by Tony Hoagland.

Elegy

It's easy to write an elegy.
All you have to be is sad.
It's more difficult to drive a car, or open a can of soup
than write an elegy.
It's easier than keeping the ones you love alive

or trying to tell them how crazy they make you
with their stupid, self-destructive ways,
and their refusal to change.

To love people feels often like a battle,
but to write an elegy is easy.
An elegy comes after the battle is over

and the soldiers are sitting around on the ground,
their faces dirty and relaxed,
telling stories and taping up their wounds.

To live is to pay the rent,
to have dishes dirty in the sink,
to start a fight with the one you love
in the car on the way to the store.

To write an elegy is to move out
and leave only the elegy behind,
like a sponge or a mop, or a roll of towels

or a bowl of fresh wter
you place on the cleaned-up floor
after your precious dog has gone.

I felt this poem in my throat and behind my eyes. Even in class, a roomful of people, I almost cried. This is a big poem. So encompassing. It is hard--blue--dark--but also comforting. It doesn't make me feel foolish for having written an awful elegy about my father. I am inspired. I feel closer to the truth of life--of moving out and the fact that I am still in.

Waiting. Uck.

2009-02-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

Can I just say that I am so scared out of my mind. I should hear any minute now from the graduate schools I applied to, and I'm pretty positive I didn't get in. I mean, there's NO WAY I got in to these schools. I'm just waiting for four rejection letters to come my way. And it's awful waiting for that. It's so depressing, considering I don't know how I'm going to provide for myself when this semester ends.

I hate this.

So, if you would...please send up any prayers, or spiritual pleas on my behalf. I would really appreciate it.

Back to waiting.

Fit of Glee

2009-02-10T19:01:00.000-08:00

Sun is just as bright through my eyelids.
Mid-February and it is sixty degrees.

I dragged my rocker out on the deck--
1 cigarette down. Some coffee. A fit of glee
rising in my chest. Books. My journal. Wind.
Sun. Bare feet. Warmth. Maybe I will paint
my toenails.

I am skipping class for this. What a good choice.
I can hear cars buzzing by beyond the trees. I see
the shadows of my hair curling against the siding of my house.

It is warm. There is no bad taste in my mouth--
Not even the fact that the temperatures will drop,
and the snow will fall, and my car's engine will sputter
for seconds before it starts, if it starts.

But, this is a promise. This day--this unusual day is a
promise that it ends, that it will be warmer, and there will be
bare feet, there will be porch afternoons and porch nights.

It is a promise that this is not the end of my life.
Just like this last semester is not the ned of my life.
There will be a home for me somewhere. Food,
most days. Jobs, somewhere.

There will be love. There will be sharing. There will be
rooted, real people. The ones I know now won't all
disappear. Some. Not all. I will not disconnect. I will
be here. I will be somewhere.

I will have time in my life after this to sit outside. To look
up. To take off my shoes. To find blue sky and to rest a while.

I want power tools.

2009-02-02T12:18:00.001-08:00

Like this one:

So I can build a cool headboard for my bed like this:

Yup. I know, with the help of power tools, and home decorating magazines, my life would be complete.

So Much For

2009-01-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

Trying to get anything done more than three hours before deadline.

I'm just now thinking about starting an essay that needs to be sent in with this application to this summer program for young poets I probably won't get into anyway. They accept like ten students out of hundreds, or something like that.

I looked at my blog feed just before I intended on starting working on the essay and got distracted by one of dooce's headings and had to go read her blog for a bit.

But, you know, this time I'm not gritting my teeth uttering curse words at myself because I'm so awful at actually getting anything done when I want to.

I'm an incredible perfectionist. Hence, I can't do anything ahead of time, because I'm scared out of my mind. I don't know what to write, and nothing sounds right, and I just get so upset I stop. This is what happened last night with Chase at a cafe in Holland. I started writing the essay, the first sentence, and couldn't think of the right word order, and just got so pissed off, I folded my arms and proceeded to see who was on facebook chat.

Luckily, I called my friend Paula later that night and told her my first line and ideas to flesh out the rest of it and she did what she always does, she said, "Michelle, did you just hear yourself. that sounds amazing. Oh my god, it sounds so intelligent and creative. I think it's perfect." This is why I don't think I'll ever be able to live without her. And really, I don't think she's just saying this stuff. I actually believe that she believes in me. And I can always use more of that. Who couldn't, I guess?

Anyway, here's to returning again to this application. Happy sunny snowy afternoon to all of you nearby!

Too Much Coffee

2009-01-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

You must drop everything right now and go to dooce.com. Funniest blog I've ever read. Love it. Look up the post, The Paper Anniversary. Hilarious.

God...I've already downed three cups of coffee...mixed with hot chocolate and french vanilla creamer. And I've read two students' stories. One of which is making me batty and pretty pissed off. I hate vague stories. Because they're not really stories. They're journal entries, or my old blog posts (and some of my new ones), or poems from the tenth century.

I feel bad about being so mean and judgemental but really. This story is killing me. And I can't help but write "Why? WHY?" all down the margins.

I won't tell you what it's about or anything, not so much because this person might one day stumble upon my blog, but because it would make me so much meaner. It's like writing someone's embarrassing secrets on your blog--not cool.

Since I can't think of anything else to write about at the moment, I'll not write anything at all. Then I'll stay out of trouble.

Young and Old As I Am

2009-01-27T10:10:00.000-08:00

Last night:

Reading a book on journaling. Soft fan sound buzz--
Oh, and Bon Iver's new "Blood Bank" thrilling my ears,
Sweeping deeply even into my bones. I love this band.
And this book. Oh, and this new freedom feeling coursing:
This sudden rush of I am not tied down.

I hope I never will be. I want to share, deeply, I want to
connect forever, but never get stuck in one place...in one old
idea, or in a feeling of being old and finished.

These are the nights I want to remember. The nights of being as
young and old as I am--of wriggling in my covers listening to
every sound--every creaking and even the fuzz of television
noise in the next room--feeling serene and blissed simultaneously--
Knowing I will share. I am sharing. Cheers.

Africam and Endless Possibilities

2009-01-25T07:34:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but this morning I remembered the africam website and went there, and now I am watching a solitary pond in the Nhorko Pan, whatever that is, listening to bird noises. I have a cousin who plays this camera all the time in the background of her life, her five year old son and her waiting for something amazing to creep into the camera lens. One time, I guess a hippo came on, and she called all of her friends, and they were so excited, and all tuned in. I thought that was sweet. I've never been much of an animal person, though lately I feel more and more a pull toward them, an affection for them.

Anyway, the africam made me realize again that there is so much I haven't seen or experienced, and so much I'm dying to see or experience in the next ten years of my life.

Here's the list!

1. A humpback whale from a boat in the ocean--I feel like if I saw this I would have no reason to ever feel depressed. The world would be miraculous, absolutely.
2. A giant cactus in the desert
3. An alligator sunning by the side of the road in Florida
4. A pelican diving--a woman at my office told me I should see this when I told her I was applying to University of Florida. Then we googled it and it's beautiful.
5. An ashram, or monastery on a hillside
6. Riding a motorcycle
7. Riding a motorcycle in Europe
8. Mountains with snow at the tops
9. Ancient trees that are wider than my car at the bases
10. Ancient ruins
11. palm trees
12. Old women in Italy pushing food at me the way my "mother" in Romania did when I stayed there.
13. Sitting just outside of a group of people speaking another language I couldn't hope to understand, in another country. Just experiencing this bliss at their incredible different-ness from me. Getting lost in all the sounds and voices, the inflexions and all that, without comprehending or even trying to comprehend.
12. New York City
13. the ocean--I've already seen it from a plane...but I want to touch it, to learn what saltwater feels like...to be terrified of jellyfish, but standing in the water anyway. :)
14. Jellyfish
15. A Sabrina Ward Harrison art show at some small beach in San Fransisco--I know she's held them on small beaches before.

I can't think of anything else at the moment. It's nice because though I get stressed out and so forth, when I think of new things I'll see and experience, new people I can meet and share with, new conversations, I am able to pull myself temporarily from the stale, frightening, tense life that I am living at the moment. I am reminded that this is not the end of my life. That there are still possibilities. That there are always possibilities. And though some of them require money that I don't have, and security that I don't have, someday I may get there. I'll try for it.

I feel like it must be warmer out today. I don't know why, and I know that it's not true. It's nice to remember that it will be sunny again, that I will have a Nouwen beach day with Chase again, and a long walk with Paula down my road where the corn fields start, and the sky is beautiful and wide, and a nice talk with Andrew by the side of the Grand River, underneath a bridge, where the flies are buzzing for the orange light, and the fish are leaping softly.

Winter always reminds me that things change. That it will not be this cold and dark and tense forever.

Connecting

2009-01-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

I've been reading in Sabrina Ward Harrison's Brave on the Rocks. She writes in the corner of a page about a "big moon walk with Dad." Something in my stomach lunged forward--that inner palm again stretching for a moment like that.

I wish I could revel in sharing a "moon walk" with just myself like I used to. I used to be so good at feeling great on my own. Lately, I'm tired of not having some intimate someone to feel the big magic world stuff with--the stars, the winter trees weighted, the unkempt lawns, the bundling and savoring of the cool beach.

I feel so connected to these images, the sharing, that I almost feel like I miss them.

I've started listening to Patty Griffin for the first time in a long long time and I forgot how much her songs moved me to feel really deep things. It's nice. By going deeper, I feel like I'm connecting with a part of myself I have left behind lately while I've been rushing around, doing and going nonstop.

Maybe it's the lack of sleep and the caffeine wearing off that's suddenly settling me into this calm introspective state. I feel like painting. I feel like a nap. Too bad there's no sun. I'd like to take an afternoon nap with the sun laying a soft hand through my window, across my bed.

I miss the summer months.

Subversive Acts

2009-01-16T08:33:00.000-08:00

Good morning to the one person who reads this blog. :)

Today is bright. I wonder if the snow is melting outside, it must be, the sun coming on so strong. The truth is, this place is held fast in single digit temperatures. I'm listening to Ani DiFranco for the first time in a very long time, and it is so good. Right now I'm listening to "Reckoning."

Cause nothing is as it appears.
In the fun house mirrors of your fears
On a roller coaster of all these years with your hands above your head.
And win or lose, just that we chose, this little war is what kills us.
And either or it's that this war is, maybe also what thrills us.

It's funny how you can find one thing wrong, and then it spider veins out to all these dark pits of hopeless other things. I feel old. At twenty-three I feel old. I know it's ridiculous. But it feels like I've lost my chance at things. Because I'm so distant and scared I'm not getting anywhere. But,I don't know how to get out of this box. I want to connect. I want to share, of all things. I want that kind of deep sharing where you're laughing with someone, and the laughter just gets so mixed up, you forget that you are two separate people, you forget what they may think about the zits on your face, your half-curly hair, your big cheeks, and you just join them in the moment. I want that. I want that in friendship and in love. I need to forget about myself. I need to stop worrying about myself, and just trust this process--this life process--whatever it is, and wherever it leads.

I'm working on it. I've been pretty good lately. I've really enjoyed moments. I think it's just this last semester of school, applying to graduate programs, the cold and gray, family stuff, that's got me so caught up around my own concerns and pain and wonderings, that I haven't been able to just rush out and mingle with the people that I love, or that I want to get to know.

Today is my day without classes and work, and one of my closest friends is home from his school, so we're going to spend the hours in our favorite cafes, and then probably watch some good film. I'm excited. I have to finish a grad. school application first, and I'll probably work at the cafes. But, it's alright. It's all alright, and will be.

Hope, hope, hope. I need it.

Anne Lamott once wrote, "Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down...just be where your butts are, and breathe. Take some time."

New Legs

2009-01-08T23:09:00.001-08:00

Funny how last night I was listening to Brandi Carlile doing yoga, meditating, feeling pretty overwhelmed with this lucky spark in my chest.

It's just this night that's got me feeling lonely. And it will be over soon.

I know it'll all be alright. Over the past couple of years, I've grown some new legs to climb out of these low places.

Slimy

2008-12-31T23:15:00.000-08:00

Strange how I already feel lost in the new year. It's been a long time since I've been in this place, this low place. I feel so flat, and I'm not sure how to start on some kind of ascension to mental health and serenity. There's a lot of insecurity to be dealt with, a lot of grief to feel. For some reason I feel like the most slimy disgusting thing right now. I want to get rid of that feeling. I've had it with that feeling. It's about time I let go, celebrate myself, and somehow move on to appreciating the people around me. I would really like that.

A good part of me just wants to run off to a different state or country and hide out in some apartment for a year just catching up on sleep and silence.

Old Soul

2008-12-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

A secretary in my office took one of my poems off the printer this morning and read it. It was a piece I'd written about an old woman contemplating her body, from the inside. I didn't like the poem all that much five seconds after I wrote it, and I know some things are inaccurate and need fixing, but the secretary said to me, "You, my dear, are an old soul. You are in tune with things you've never experienced. You're one of those people who has come back in a different form." It was probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. She said her grandma used to say it about children who seemed to know more than they should, who were intuitive. Anyway, I wanted to write it down so I don't forget it. It meant a lot. Here's a little piece of the poem:

She still doesn't understand where the cancer

has seated itself. In the aged palms of her ovaries,

climbing up and down the ropes of her veins,

napping in each swelling node as if they were

tree-houses, as if they were forts waiting for disease

to tell its ghost story beneath the foreboding glow

of flashlights. She watches the tumors roll out

against her skin in the tender spider veined cavity

behind her knees, in the weighted slope of her jaw.

I get to leave work early because of the snow. Then I get to finish one graduate school application.

2008-12-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

A first post is so intimidating.
I don't even know if I can handle it.

Today I made it in to the office with a gigantic bag full of books: a few collections of poetry, one self-help book, a couple theology volumes, and my journal. I was so excited to just read and write and learn and grow. Now I've been here for over two hours, and I've merely roamed the internet for interesting sites and people. I've found some, and then decided to just join them by creating my own blog.

So here it is. I'm excited about it.

In the spirit of Sabrina Ward Harrison's phrase, "You must make what you most need to find," I am creating space for my own words and communication with other sweet growing souls.