Dying Season: Quieting Down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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.