Saturday, April 17, 2010

Isn’t it strange how many days go by? How many things happen, whether or not we think that they matter, and then how soon they are completely over, untouchable because the window of ‘present’ has passed by them? How soon they are simply a journal entry, not alive anymore – just a memory. Something that happened once but has gone and can only ghost through printed lettering put together to describe it or hover in the deepest recesses of a brain. Still there, stored and filed, but in a wilderness that cannot be ventured into. A place things can only venture out from unexpectedly but cannot be retrieved because they are far, far in the distance.

Maybe somewhere I have a reflection image of that hospital room, and the man who sat in a chair waiting for his somebeody to come back out to him. Maybe I have the taste of the July 24th dinner I ate when I was three, maybe I have the sound of the way Shannon’s dog barked from behind our fence. I had pet the fur of a cat, I pushed through playground gravel looking for a lost birthstone, I put my nose in the carpet to catalogue a different smell, I picked a scab off of somewhere my skin had been cut. Blood rushed to my head through these same veins I have now and pounded against my temples when I hung up-side-down, I stepped on a rainpuddled sidewalk in a single space at a particular moment, I tasted my own blood when I hadn’t before known the rusty metal-salt of it, I heard my name come from someone’s tongue. For eighteen years, eight months, two weeks, eleven days and 42 minutes with one, two, three more seconds I have been breathing from outside of my mother’s body and taking more, more, more into the wilderness of my conscious at each flare of ‘present’.

Then I can't help but look at someone elses skull. Something I cannot penetrate and will never look through. But they have seen and touched and felt and remembered years worth of the present, and it is all there – somewhere – in their head but it seems so small for so many years, too small.
That’s why it is so fascinating to talk with people, to watch them as a memory emerges from their mouth. Do you know the sound of someone’s footsteps? Recognize the feel of their hands, though blindfolded? Have you copied some of their described memories, painted with your own fill-in-the-blank colors, and re-stored them in the fortress of your own brain?

I am caught up in the things that will be 'forgotten' so easily and fast; minutia - the sting of bleach in my lungs this morning, the hair color of the woman I walked past a few hours ago, the shape of a single dying tulip that I noticed for a slice of a second. It will fade away soon, maybe even tonight. I have already forgotten half of the things I touched, saw, felt with my hands from the moment I woke up. So I wonder about it all.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

A Conversation with a Lady

Have you ever really listened to someone's voice and wondered why it is they choose to change tone, pitch, volume when they do? Maybe they don't realize they are doing it, perhaps we don't realize we do it, but I think it is because everyone has a music.

By the way, did you all know I admire Abigail Adam's very sincerely? I do. She was a woman to emulate, and she makes me laugh. "Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since."
Oh, silly daughters. Perhaps that is not funny, but it struck me that way and I laughed. However,
"If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women."
Yes, I am realizing that it is not radically feminist or Amazonian to affirm that we have worth, wisdom and leadership to give the world.
"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence."
Ardor and diligence can be so much to take though, Mrs. Adams. I want to float down a stream and nap on a river bank and read in a tree. I don't want to do things all the time. There is a season for everything and sabbath is a blessing.
Yes, true but do not let that obscure the fact that "Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues."
There are great necessities in the world, so I will keep working.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Managing time, trying out decisions...

Seek first the Kingdom of God,
and then everything else will....


"I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.” John 14.30-31

So that the world may know that I love the Father.
Rise, let us go from here.

Friday, April 02, 2010



Grandmother’s handwriting on the white paper
modern garden
grass
liatris spicata
siberian iris
blazing star
papyrus
baby tears
interesting
clean
,
Strawberry stains on the white plate
rectangles of sunlight
neat, clean, ordered study
my books on the rug – in my lap – on the chair
pages assigned to myself
going unread
lie still
and my heartbeat moves my whole body
a pendulum clock
full veins, heart prone to wander
rays of sun
warming skin
quiet
sounds soothe and make for real stillness
I wont write what I love
because I love it,
the dance on the bricks
the chime in the tree
the metallic, the rust, the green living friend for the breeze
I noticed her age
but I don’t want to know -
timeless, forever, she’s always.
avocados, sea salt
blueberries
a glass of clear water.


Thursday, April 01, 2010

Sometimes it doesn't seem like it,

but:

Forbidden fruit a flavor has
That lawful orchards mocks;
How luscious lies the pea within
The pod that duty locks!

~ Emily Dickinson



Since I can remember I've had a secret affection and desire for the bad boy, for forbidden fruit. It wasn't until I read Redeeming Love that I really truly wanted a man of God. Because until then, I had never seen such a good, 'luscious' as Miss Dickinson said, portrait of one. By the way, yes, this book is a Christian romance novel, but it is so much more. It has touched every person I know who has read it in remarkable ways (and it is certainly not just women.)