observations from the garden

deep in the heart of texas

2009-05-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

I know now that my feet will always carry some Texas earth. Deep down, buried into the grooves of my skin, Texas is my home. It is my beginning, my childhood, my self. It is the elusive blur of a memory awakened by a smell, a step, a face, a thought.

I didn't understand until today.

There's no escaping your self. There's no escaping.

I went running this morning and ended up on the side of a creek that I'd play in as a little girl. My whole body, mind, and spirit was struck by the smell—the hot, muggy, stagnant water smell that cooks all summer a few feet up from the earth. The white rock at my feet, reminiscent of the white slippery tongue of clear creeks I'd explore in the Texas hill country. My childhood. My childhood was Texas. And I have cursed Texas, as I have wrestled the stories of my childhood.

It is odd, really—for this realization to come to me as I sit, eating swirled frozen yogurt in a styrofoam cup, reading the last few pages of a book, allowing the smells to mingle in the breeze and settle beside me on the bench. (I am a little schoolgirl, swinging her feet back and forth, lost in the world I imagine as I turn the pages.)

Summer here is freedom, utter abandonment. Texas summers are biting out of fruit, its juices running down your face, spilling onto your arms and legs and shoes. Texas summers are bike riding in the shade, closing your eyes in the breeze as long as you can. They are burn-the-bottom-of-your-feet heat. Swimsuits are your uniform, even on the weekends. Your beach towels, hair, and eyes are constantly stained with chlorine. Lips and tongues dyed red and blue from 7-11 slurpees. They are napping away the hottest part of the day in only underwear to the rhythm of a ceiling fan. Sandwiches on paper plates. Your dad's grilled chicken. Mosquitoes. Leaning into the slightest breeze. The chirping of Katy-dids singing the sun to sleep.

I was certainly not alone there—on that bench today. A good story, a good ending leads me into my own story. Rather, the days which come together to form sentences and paragraphs around the events and non-events of my life. At what point do you begin to look ahead? Where in the timeline of a life are you supposed to start planning long-term? Thinking about what you want, how to get there, and taking the first step?

I am at the point where I am seeing a future and I'm beginning to see more clearly the past. I'm not sure what emotion it is that comes to me in this place. Maybe its fear—fear that a (prescribed) future will be gone in seconds, that the past will always be elusive and blurry, and that this strange life might be all there is. I am not ready for the rest of my life to go by in seconds. I am not ready to be seventy and wonder where all the time has gone, wonder where my life has gone. And I don't want to "long-term plan" myself into a life void of creativity and play, which has to be improvised.

As I begin to look ahead, what comes clear in my sight is grief over the past, hope for the future, and a longing to know that there is something beyond it all. A longing for someone bigger than my story to sit beside me at night and turn the pages for me. Someone to remember my beginning and reassure me of a meaningful ending. This story is far too real to fuck up. For me, at least. Or is it even possible? Is it even possible to "fuck it up"?

My thoughts here, over a cup of swirled frozen yogurt, are getting fairly existential. (Needless to say, the sensation of being a little girl has faded.) Nonetheless, I think I am facing the essence of what it means to be human. Will I ever be satisfied? What life am I "programmed" to want by my culture, parents, etc.? What life do I long for with tears in my eyes and my hand to my chest?

I don't want the American dream. I don't want yellow box, or a red one, or a green one. I don't want a box.

I want to know my self. I want to know God. I want to know grace, enough that I may offer it. I want to know a lover. I want to be a lover. I want to live into my humanity, invite others into theirs, and find deep communion there. I want children. And I want to be a mother who can live with passion and creativity, who can reflect the changing faces of those I have borne so that they may know and believe in themselves. A woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter who can speak to her mistakes with grace and hope in hand.

Practically, of course (of course), we exist in a system. A governmental, economic, cultural, capitalist, patriarchal system which in many ways allows us to co-exist in the hope that we may pursue the life we desire. So, I recognize that there are practical steps necessary at times in our lives.

I guess, the only excuse I have to offer is, "I may be wandering, but it is not aimless. It is so that I may be whole."

at death, a proclamation

2009-03-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

A proclamation, indeed. Of freedom. Of regret. Of sorrow.
Of suffering. And of the glory, the glory, the glory....

I am dying. Or dead, and remembering maybe. The face
of a loved one before me, eyes spilling over—so full of desire
and longing and sorrow.

His silence, his eyes so clear, so honest and full.
Hovering, waiting for the loss to be complete. Staying, those
last few moments—days feel as brief as seconds—of life.
There has been too much between us to speak it. And there
has been too much to not speak. Come close. Lay here.
With me. As I find the words. Let me feel the warmth of the
body I have known so intimately, as mine goes cold.
I love you.

A room, quiet with sorrow and respect, but teeming with
bodies—souls. Mothers, fathers, his and mine and so many
others'. Brothers and sisters, murderers and martyrs, alike.
A swirling of white, only just becoming visible to me (though
I understand now they have always been there).
Swimming out of the walls, excited. Preparing, awakening
even the bed, the plants, the trees outside our window,
the curtains and desk. Even they will join us. We will all worship.

They move to the pulse of my heart. But not mine alone.
I close my eyes. It is a heartbeat that pulses quietly within all
things. All things. A holy rhythm, all-encompassing, swelling—
kind and generous, and oh so reverent.

He is quiet beside me, my love. His breath, warm. I breathe
him in. His fragrance is so sweet. You have been so good to us.
So good. Oh my. Oh my, my Love.

As I am drawn further and further into the vision around me,
the rhythm swells and swells and shakes, stirring the floors and
the walls. The whole house, the whole neighborhood stirring,
responding. The bed is lifting off the ground—everything, everyone
is carrying us. It's rhythm, my breath, my heart, my love, his tears.

"O in life, through many dark rooms we must go," these words
spill out of the pulsing inside me. We are all singing, clapping, beating,
dancing to a rhythm that floods our bodies and all around us.
The room is full of people and sound. The ceiling tears open to such
a brilliant light. We are breathing it in, and singing it out.

"And all right, though many's the hour will come to you sour and
slow. And all night, though flames in the forest ring halos to glory us
both. All I can bring to that chorus of smoke is the hope that you
knowed," cries the singular voice of all humanity, all the earth, rising.

It is a homecoming, a celebration. My skin prickles with excitement
and awe, with the anticipation of a longing nearly met. I am singing,
unabashed. Singing to them all. Singing it over, to my love. He sings it
with me, over me, washing me, anointing me. They are all singing
it to me. We are all singing it to each other. And, we are singing this
sweet, fierce glory to the Heartbeat running through us all.

The collective longing of all creation and Creator, shouting at long
last, "O love, though one day I tarried too far and I never came home.
O love, always I carried your heart, married deep in my own."

(A piece inspired by the song "At Death, a Proclamation," by Phosphorescent)

i am (not) self-possessed.

2009-02-15T15:20:00.000-08:00

What comes to mind are the small things of the night.

My cell phone running out of battery. No friends accompanying me. The awareness that doing this—it would be for me. Just me. Me. Alone. Wandering whole foods, talking to my sister. Her insistent pleas for me to take her to the dentist on Monday. In Texas. And the ache, that I could not. My boyfriend on call-waiting. Feeling his softness in the silence—even before he responded to my "hello." And the ache, that I was not there. Sitting in a poorly lit corner with a bowl of soup and a roll. And my self. Part of me was begging to be released from my plans of attending a lecture on campus. The other part, quietly but firmly voicing that this was mine. It was me. It was what I wanted. I needed. I have been waiting. Yes. And. Maybe. Just as important if not more, the hope, the longing to be breathed into. Inspired. Encouraged.

Forty-five minutes later, I am settled into a seat not too far from the podium in the center. And I am settled. Like it is church and I'm attentively waiting for the pastor to arrive. I feel at rest. My aloneness is relief, an elastic waistband after a whole day in skinny jeans. I glance around at the others. The age of those around me is mostly around my mother's age. Mostly women. And as Liz approaches the podium and begins to speak, I think we're all holding hands. I think. I think we're all on our knees. We're crying. We're laughing. We're praying for ourselves. We're praying for a very troubled people, the human race. And a very glorious people, the human race.

I think we are all exhaling. And we are all inhaling. The air is so lovely, so promising, and full. (My mind is as lit up and clear as the morning sky in Texas in June.)

And the lecture is over, the community dispersed. I think I want to sit down.

And sitting there, my breaths are slow. I can feel my chest rising and falling. Everything is slower. Or everything is every little thing.

And from my feet to my fingertips, I am exactly where I am.

I am not outside myself, watching. Assessing how I look, how I am being perceived on the outside. I am not measuring my actions, responses, behaviors against those around me. I am my self. I am in my own skin.

And the feeling is so distinctly different. So nice. Almost new.

s l o w d o w n t h e t i m e

2009-01-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

I'm up in the woods...I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still...to slow down the time.

(Lyrics for Woods by Bon Iver and my soundtrack for today)

11:58, 11:59, 12:00AM January 1 2009

2009-01-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

A new year has begun, although for as long as I live, the new year will always begin with the first day of school (sometime in September). I should probably write some profound reflection on the past year, followed by a prophetic word on the year to come. But then I wouldn't write anything at all. Let's stick with the mundane, shall we?

I woke up this morning, first, to my phone announcing the arrival of a belated birthday text at 5am. I ignored it after glancing at the phone. It chimes again, persistently wanting to be acknowledged. I spit a curse into my pilow, roll over pick it up. At this point, my curiosity has grown and I spend the time and the precious little vision I have when I'm that groggy reading the text. It is the long-expected "Happy Birthday" text my boyfriend sent the morning of my birthday — two days ago. Love modern technology.

I return my phone to the bedstand, roll back over into the nest that is my bed. After a couple minutes of trying to slip back into sleep, I concede that I may have crossed the threshold and may be awake for the day. I go to the bathroom — damn, no toilet paper. Get half a paper towel — ouch. Get back in bed. Turn on my left side, my right side, my stomach — my back is hurting. (Ahh, yes, high heels for New Years. That probably did it. And volleyball the night before. I wonder if I'll be one of those people who when they get pregnant, will have to be bedridden at week 6 because her back is so bad. Perfect. So now I'm going to be a cranky pregnant bedridden stir-crazy adult with a bad back and dentures in a glass by my bed like Mr. Wilson in Dennis the Menace. This is what I have to look forward to.)

Yep. I'm awake.

I spend the next hour and a half rationally sorting through life concerns, like the above. Spend the next 20 minutes talking myself out of my warm nest of a bed, so that I can meet up with a friend for tea at 7:15am. I get out of bed at 7:09, put on some leggings, boots, coat, and stumble out the door.

The gust of cool air takes my breath away, and I'm coughing as though I've just choked on my own saliva. The walk feels good. Eventually. A store window shows me that my hair is in quite the disarray. Go figure — at least I remembered to go for the boots over the flip flops. Two blocks from my front door, I am there. And as I open the door, I recognize that I feel beautiful.

Just for that moment, its tangible. All the way down to the way my fingers wrap around the door handle, the way I feel my hair shift as I glance down moving through the doorway.

Cool wind in my face has always awakened my awarenes of beauty.

2008's word: r i s k

fluorescent lights, rainbows and conductors

2008-12-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

Spent the day.

The dying fire in front of me spits lasting signs of life underneath Coco Rosie's K-Hole. I am tired and restless. Not sure how to be content these days. Always feeling as though my aspirations are not quite high enough. So I spend my days. I spend my days. Play them like cards, sleepily.

Here's a Tuesday. Passed and what have I done? Wrong question. How have I been? Yes. Distracted. Afraid. And then there are moments I am most present and I feel it. Coming home this afternoon, I enlisted a roommate to make a fire. I sat—the crackling, a consistent soundtrack behind the books through which I rotated.

I nearly played my piano today. I took a step—a literal step—towards it. But I rewound into my bed. Back under the covers. There's nothing to lose there.

I do not see rainbows as the backdrop to my days. And maybe it would be naive to.

A man at the coffeeshop told me he walks around, reciting to himself 5 times a day, "Opportunities come every day if I am open to seeing them." Maybe rainbows are not naive. Maybe they are the opportunities. The belief. The faith that says these moments are opportunities, not dead ends. And they are both—same same. He also said we are conductors. We can turn a flourescent light on and off if we focus our energy a certain way.

We are conductors.

Sometimes, I pretend to not see the sheet music in front of me. It is easier then. When I get it wrong. Because I didn't know.

off the hook

2008-10-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

"So you're not letting me off the hook?"
"You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call free will."

Sitting in Caffe Vita, I am out from behind the counter and enjoying a slow afternoon at work and a lukewarm cup of tea. I am feeling my back these days, and my knees (more from training for an 8 mile run I agreed to do with a friend over Thanksgiving than from work). Work does exacerbate these aches. So, sitting on the stools up at the bar against the window, my legs curled up...moments of utter contentment touch me briefly like an occasional raindrop—small, cool, makes you turn your face up to the sky, and blink hesitatingly.

I read through this dialogue in my book, and look up from the pages, creating a distinct pause—a break in the text for me to consider where and how I am hit by these last two lines. How and where they intersect with my story...

My mind scans through all the things I only half-finish. A cup of milk. A book. The "might-could's" of my life. Definitely, maybe. I run when it gets hard or boring. I leave. I buy something new. Distract. The distraction of a shiny new thing or the reality, the hardness, the sandpaper of what is, has been. (And, yet, even as I re-read those words, I feel the longing ache inside my chest for the long-standing. For the constant, the sandpaper when its sandpaper—and, when its home.)

And so, there are the things, the times, the people, the places, the memories worth not running from—not letting myself off the hook. And that is the harder choice, I know. It is not a choice I often make. I know others who choose this route daily, hourly. Their courage and the knowledge of what lies on the other side of such a choice presses them onward. How beautiful a life. And how blessed I am to have people of such courage in my life.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

But it all comes down to this:

If I stand still
you will see me.

If I stand still,
the blurred comes into focus
stand before me
hear me sigh
tired with circles under my eyes.

In a moment, off-guard
confess the thought that i'm scared
that if i stop, you will stare.
See the demons, bare
against a landscape of a heart
you couldn't quite catch
so it wouldn't risk a tear.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

I recently picked up a book I had long-forgotten, The Interior Castle by St. Teresa de Avila. I read a couple pages, sarcastic and angry responses flying through my mind as I read. And this was a voice in which I used to write. How I spoke onto a page. I am very different than before. I am....

I am also the same. A very intense conversation ensued as a result of my internal response. He did not "let me off the hook." And, I chose, with great internal conflict, to stay.

My counselor, a few days later, said he was glad I was reading the book because it was leading me into my shame. I understood this. Understand this. And am grateful he made a point to say it. Otherwise it would have wriggled its way to the bottom of a stack of random etcetera's forgotten in the back of my car. Instead, it is next to me waiting patiently for me to find stillness.

Listening to Comes and Goes (in Waves) by Greg Laswell
Reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (p164)

Pleasure...I am eden. Nice to meet you.

2008-10-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

The tragedies in my life have been of a personal and largely self-created nature, not epically oppressive. I went through a divorce...a crisis of identity. Still, I will say that the same thing which has helped [them] hold their dignity has helped me begin to recover mine—namely, the idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity. I believe this is what Goethe meant by saying that you have to come here, to Sicily, in order to understand Italy. And I suppose this is what I instinctively felt when I decided that I needed to come here, to Italy, in order to understand myself.

The appreciation of pleasure...an anchor of one's humanity.

I walk down the street, skirt floating behind me as I move. My flats are so worn, I walk nearly barefoot upon the coat tails of summer. It will not last much longer. My face turns toward the sidewalk in a moment of sorrow—sorrow over something other than my current tragedies, which I envision in this moment as a series of worn, leather-bound books, small enough to be cradled between a child's two hands. I cross the street. I am not sure where I'm going or how long I'll walk. I only know I am walking to escape myself. Or find a self. Or I am just walking. I understand what makes people crazy. The thoughts, the lack of something tangible, touching things only with our minds, our dreams, forgetting how to use our hands. My hands. A little girl smooths by following the windows of the shops lightly with her fingers. I move my fingers sympathetically in the air, mesmerized by the space between her fingers and the world she sees through them. As we cross paths, fingers seeing for our eyes, I see an ice cream shop. A wave of unreserved joy passes through my body. I used to love ice cream cones. I walk into the shop, barely tall enough to see over into the buckets of ice cream under the glass. The dollar bills are big in my hands. The man hands over the ice cream and a delightful grin sweeps onto my face, widening my eyes, raising my eyebrows, and crinkling my forehead. The gap between my tongue and the melting ice cream closing. My mind, my senses, all of them, drawn into this moment. Mmmmmm. (She was here. In this ice cream shop.)

What other of my former delights have I forgotten—sacrificed for control? No, let me amend that: what other of my former delights have I told myself I do not really delight in?

1. Ice cream cones
2. Swinging
3. Swimming
4. Walking in the rain
5. Fireplaces
6. Boardgames
7. Angelhair pasta
8. Bagel pizzas with my sister
9. My natural hair color
10. Heels
11. Not wearing any make-up
12. Sleeping in an entirely unmade bed (sheet, comforter wrapped up against either side of me, pulled up to my nose)
13. Biking slowly
14. Breakfast
15. Baking
16. Big sweatshirts
17. Falling asleep to black and white movies
18. Falling asleep with a book in my hands
19. Napping in the sun
20. Chilli's with Jess
21. Anything with Jess
22. Dogs
23. Little kids
24. Listening to a song, lying on the ground, ear pressed to the floorboards....feeling the song
25. Being kind to unsuspecting strangers

The appreciation of pleasure. I am relearning this currently. Learning how to walk again.

(Quote from, "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Listening to "Electric Sky")

wûrds

2008-10-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

SEX

That's Rome's word, as identified in, "Eat, Pray, Love." Thinking about it, dressing for it, eating towards it, considering it, refusing it—teeter tottering in her scales. Rome's scales of passion, lovers attention, impetuosity, spontaneity, long-standing race towards sex. Always.

Okay. And so what about Seattle? What is Seattle's word? COLD? There is indeed something cold about Seattle, but that word feels too narrow. OVERCAST? As it is most of the year. (I will not even throw out RAINY because it is not always rainy and I do not want to entertain long-standing myths about a city that has become dear to me.) Even the people though, have an overcast-ness about them. We might have a winner.

And for myself? Now? Today? What would my word be?

My word(s) as I arrived here three years ago would've been LAST RESORT. My word(s) for my year at Mars Hill: SHOOT ME NOW. Just kidding, I'm breaking the rules of this game. One word. Take it seriously.

Refocus. I'm there.

HONEST? As I am definitely learning more and more how to be honest. But really that is all encompassed by my efforts at being MYSELF, versus your self (or how I perceive your self). RELEASE. RELAX. Somehow de-clawing the hands that have clung to control. CLOCKWORK. No. MECHANICAL. That could've been a word for me last winter and spring. But now, maybe AUTHENTIC is a good one, all-encompassing....kind of.

I'll keep pondering.

What is your word?

three years ago today

2008-10-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

"Where in this deep dark place does God reside?

Our own complexity surpasses even our comprehension, I think. We are a brilliant people. But we know so little of the heart. Neither has brilliance accomplished any reign over our hearts. They are wild creatures, acting through our bodies.

They roar and they whimper. They cry and they sing. Our minds cannot cope with the fullness of the desires our hearts birth. But somewhere, in my story, I want wildness to reign free. I want to live in the wildness of my heart, allowing its song to sing life into the dying. I want to exist in the wild moments of singing to Christina Aguilera in the car with my sister. There is a joy there like no other. A joy borne out of knowing that even though she will always be kept under the watchful eye of my parents, even though she will never achieve the 'independence' so coveted by our society, her heart and her eyes and her voice is wild with hope. She invites me to a wildness, which terrifies and allures me. She has been my greatest teacher.

Oh, Emmanuel. If You are truly with me, why will You not speak? Where is my Easter morning? My heart is faint, when will my Lover return?

(Please do not read my words as hopeless, because, in spite of it all, my eyes are full of love.)"

Desire expands. Breathes. Swells. Heaves against the mind. And I am once again on my knees, in tears. This deep dark place is familiar. It is rest. It is. I am. Here.

Smeared mascara.

where are we? where we are, of course.

2008-09-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

There is so much going on. So much I am learning. Seeing. Too much, really, to offer here.

But — this morning — I am well. I count myself among the living.

This song. It is angry, confused, sad, still. It is the moment that everything, everyone slows down around you. The moment all you hear is your breath, the inhale of a megaphone at your ear. The moment before it all happens. The final collision. The pause between heartbeats. A needed meltdown. A beginning disguised as an end.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. We will all be moving again soon.

Listening to Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap.

"where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
sinking feeling

spin me round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets amass with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first

oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the takeover,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines (oh, you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears (hearts)
they were here first

Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmm that you only meant well?
well of course you did
Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmmm that it's all for the best?
Of course it is
Mmmm whatcha say?
Mmmm that it's just what we need
you decided this
whatcha say?
Mmmm what did you say?

ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling no I don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a bit.

tweedledee and tweedledum

2008-08-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

The day had passed along all right. The usual customers, familiar faces (although I don't have many names down yet). To expedite my familiarity with the usuals, their names and their drinks, I scratch down this information quickly between customers. One a day, I've averaged. (Why does this matter?)

A tall older man, in shape, who works for the fire department walked in. With his dog preceding him, which walks directly through the door, around the bar, gracefully taking a seat behind the bar. I know the dog's name: Sean. I have no idea what his owner's name is, although I do know his drink. I reach down to grab a dog bone out of a bag stashed behind the counter. Sean moves his head slightly forward, opens his mouth slowly, carefully taking the bone out of my hand, and then trotted back to his owner.

A little while later, another owner and her dog come in. When they walked in, I couldn't quite tell whether the owner had actually planned to come in, or was merely following the agenda of her dog. The dog slid up to the counter and knocked against the display case. Fluent in dog language, I knew what this meant. I reached out again to grab a dog bone. This time I almost lost my hand passing it over the register to the leaping dog with a woman leashed to it. I said something to make her feel less awkward about her unruly pet, but really assuaging her own embarrassment over untamed aspects of her life.

In response, she exclaimed, "Oh, she is eternally hungry!"

"Aren't we all," I responded with a smile and pat on the counter for added sympathy. I know my eyes widened as I internally gasped at what I had said and what I had so very haphazardly revealed.

"There is an empty space in many of us that gnaws at our ribs and cannot be filled by any amount of food. There is a hunger for something, and we never know quite what it is, only that it is a hunger, so we eat...We lived in a larger world where there is also a sense of hunger and a sense of lack. We can call it loss of religion, loss of the nuclear family, loss of community, but whatever it is, it has created a deep and insatiable hunger in our collective unconscious. Our perpetual search for something that will be enough to fill us has led us to a strange idolatry of at once consumption and starvation. We execute complicated vacillations between self-worship and self-degradation, missing the point of balance every time. We know we need, and so we acquire and acquire and eat and eat, past the point of bodily fullness, trying to sate a greater need. Ashamed of this, we turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how to not need."

"...masochism–the subjection of the self and/or body to pain and fear, ultimately resulting in a transitory sense of mastery over pain and fear." Pain and fear (both symptoms of need, hunger) are, in part, what drive us towards spirituality, or a search/awareness of the existence of a greater Being. Without pain and fear, we settle into a steady numbness—the legs of life untraceable. Master them both? We will die in the attempt, truly. The truth is that such mastery is a seductress. It allures us into a netherworld of illusions and false gods—false structures we construct along the way to make sense of or escape the pain and fear, the need, the abyss of hunger inside us.

"Well, it's no use your talking about waking him," said Tweedledum, "when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real."
"I am real!" said Alice, and began to cry.
"You won't make yourself a bit realer by crying," Tweedledee remarked: "there's nothing to cry about."
"If I wasn't real," Alice said–half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous–"I shouldn't be able to cry."
"I hope you don't think those are real tears?" Tweedledee interrupted in a tone of great contempt.

We experience these moments. We cry because they hurt. And they are ridiculous. We experience them again, we cry, and they seem ridiculous. Again. We tear up, but swallow. Maybe they're not so ridiculous. Again. We swallow. The experience becomes the truth, and I am the ridicule. Again. I am the ridicule.

He does not hear Alice crying because she is not real.

The truths are reversed. The self is lost. And our path into the netherworld of illusions begins.

"...but let her bury her face in the dust—there may yet be hope." (Lamentations)

events and non-events

2008-08-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

It would be an understatement to say I have avoided a few minor categories of my life the past several weeks. And maybe not. Maybe there has just been a barrage of events and non-events which have, for whatever reason, held these other categories under water until now. It has been a bit of a battle to maintain my own buoyancy. (Some things have to sink until you're ready for them to surface.)

Events and non-events. Such a lovely and accurate way of describing it all. Yes.

There is a slow and sweet rustling between me and a God. It likens itself to a gentle flirtation with she who is visibly wounded and frightened, but allowing herself to feel enough desire to stay in the midst of her fear. One step forward, two steps back.

(I think of the book "Hind's Feet on High Places," a child's allegory for one's journey with a God.)

e

the year 1926

2008-08-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

A few years back, I was browsing a used book store for old books when I came upon this tall skinny, oversized book. I pulled it out and glanced through it. It was a kind of business and personal log for someone for the year 1926.
Each page is a day of the year. January 1 simply says, "New Year's day. Spent at home." Reading some of the other days, I'd say it was a man who owned this journal, as the notes are detailed and informational, "January 8: Came back from Ithaca at 9.50 arriving at Scranton at 2.15 am in the snow storm. Drove car home from Prairie Brook in storm. Had to stay along roads several minutes to clear off wind shield."
These pages are hardly filled, and honestly, I bought the journal to use the cover as a cover for a sketch book. In my recent move, I was re-acquainted with my typewriter, but (as always seems to be the case) I did not have any paper. So I pulled "Tuesday Jan 5" from the stack of yellowed, frayed pages and slipped it in through the typewriter and wrote.

And so I am in love. These pages with my typewritten words upon them are so lovely. And this process invokes a new voice from me. Very candid and less guarded. Less philosophical and aware of an audience. Stepping into the nature of the typewriter in that I cannot quietly press the delete key to make all errors untraceable and non-existent.

My errors are blatant black blemishes across the page. And nowhere else in my life do I allow my errors even a fraction of this visibility.

I am contemplating the word "grace" today. I think it feels like a visit to the sauna....and getting a job (wink wink to the G-O-D up above)?

an 8k for dessert.

2008-07-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

I ran an 8k yesterday with one of my new roomies. Quite the bonding experience. I warned him (at the end of the race) that this was the smelliest I ever get, so if he can handle that, we'll be good. There were also moments of candid conversation involving a car key as big as a leatherman and where a girl puts it for a race. I didn't know that he had never lived with a girl before. Jump right in, right?

It was a great experience. I felt really alive afterwards. Adrenaline can be such a wonderful thing. Of course I crashed 2 hours later, but only after a round of karaoke duet-ing Goldigger by Kanye West (ps. rap lyrics, much better heard than recited) and a little background dancing.

On a separate note....I went to the new Batman movie with some friends. This experience (not necessarily the movie itself, but the event of going) left me with a few self-realizations/reminders, some of which I'll relay below:

1. Jessica, my sister, needs space after a movie. Whether it's an epic or the latest Lindsey Lohan teeny-bopper movie, she is affected by the movie. Her life story, longings, are always ALWAYS present...and they mingle intimately with the terrain of every movie she experiences.

2. I often see movies/television as an escape, something outside myself, my life. Not an entry-point into the profundity of who I am, where I am, and what I long for.

3. I used to be so aware and attentive to the needs of others. Rather, I think I still am, but my response is different to them. I dissolved into others' needs then. I shut out others' needs now. Polarization. I miss that softness in me. A kindness in which I lost my self in the past....

4. Can I be honest and present when someone needs me without reacting in a polarized response? (And I might add, growing up, when i asserted my self, it would mean a break in relationship. And so, it is this loss that I fear. Either loss of self, or loss of you.)

5. Hmmm, my brain is leaving....its saying, "dude, you just ran an 8k. take a break from self-analyzation and sempiternal philosophizing." I think I'll listen.

peace.

e

i confess, i cannot save you

2008-07-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

I am back to a place of patience today. At least in this moment. I am there. Here. I have been reading Shining Affliction. I have been listening to Sigur Ros. And I am now sitting in the sun at the phoenix airport.

I went to the pool around the corner from my grandma's house last night. Laid there and called my friend nat. Ended up crying on the phone with her. There in the sunlight, in my suit, by the pool. Crying. Where I moved in the process of the phone call feels really important. I had just had a conversation with my sister walking to the pool and back, where, once again - once every visit, I felt her despair and (foolish) hope in writing letters to movie stars. Wanting so desperately to be heard, for her life to change, for her desire to be heard and met. Even now, I wonder what, of her desires, will be met. Ever.

I felt myself pulled into the despair of that unmet desire in her. Into the desolate landscape of her heart – and I say desolate from my perspective. Though, I imagine it is truly rich and fertile ground, watered with tears and abundant in a hope less marked by fear than I will ever know. I make up for her lack of fear, lack of protection, as fear mounts and readies itself in my throat. Jessica, oh Jessica. I lose myself in the landscape of your heart. Is it because I do not see as you do? Because I cannot understand the hope you wear so graciously? You do not ask me to make up for your lack of fear. Nor, do I imagine, would you ever want me to. You are a woman full of desire and I am threatened by your fullness. My fear only intensifies as I witness its fullness. And so maybe it is not your fear which swells restlessly in my chest, but my own.

(I could not wear such pure desire – even if it is for a moviestar's life in Las Angeles and someone who will "talk to her and do things with her." I believe, as she knows a fullness of desire I do not, she also knows a loneliness i could not bear.)

Which brings me to my next realization: I am surrounded by people with desires, unmet - expectations. My grandmother, my great aunt, my sister, old friends in St. Louis. And I am full. I am overflowing, overwhelmed. (And seeing them I am only so aware of my failure or pending failure.) But their desires are lovely. My desires are….yes. I am too full. I am ready for my own desires to swell and speak within me, as they have waited in suffocation and fear for many many years. And those years, in this moment, I remember with utter compassion and empathy….and lastly, resignation.

Which brings me to the next realization.

I cannot save them. Any of them.

And, oh, how grave and somber this makes me. (And how relieved.) The sound of those words in my own voice into the phone. Through tears. Their taste, their weight. For how I love them, how indeed, for these people, I have wept on my knees, on my face.

There is a longing there I cannot meet. Nor will, honestly, any of these circumstances fulfilled. These desires are meant for something greater. Much greater than me, greater than what lies here for us, I think.

Maybe it will be what we wake up into when this life passes. I pray.

holy grand old people

2008-07-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

oh jeez. so i love my grandma and great aunt as any other dotingly sweet grandchild does, maybe more. who knows. and in the past, these trips to the wee little town of kansas city have been grounding and much more. this one began well (with the plane flight). however, the moment i stepped into their house, i have been trying to leave.

things i've realized while i'm here:
1. iPhone......can we say UH-DIC-TED?
2. their homes, the smell, the cats (i swear there are 20 of them), how early they get up is like a black hole i have been trying to get out of the moment i stepped in.
3. I have a bit more sympathy for my mom and what she grew up in.
4. not seeing my grandma for three years is not worth the guilt she is putting on me now that i'm finally here.
5. the good news is, my grandmother wakes up about the same time i do, except i've reached my peak at 26 (and she at 78). dude.
6. mm, also good news, my dad has LOADed my grandma and great aunt up with home videos i have NEVER known existed. sooooo funny.
7. escape escape escape.
8. i think i lost 10 lbs last night from sleeping in a SAUNA. old people keep places really warm. what am i saying?!?! so do i. (so basically i'm a 78 year-old trapped in the body of a 26 year-old. AAWWEE-some)
9. humidity is a serious self-esteem killer. hair products hair products hair products.
10. my great aunt rocks up, nugs, whatever you want to call it. and punched me in the shoulder for comedic emphasis. it kinda hurt.

okay, enough of my spouting for now. mooooooore to come. midwest. signing out.

some things unsaid

2008-07-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am overwhelmed with fear
And I try not to feel it
Yesterday today now
I can't even breathe
Can't, i have filled myself so desperately
Stretched the apple into the pig's mouth
So you can't speak, Fear.
Unworthiness, you have no voice.
When i am full of something -
Anything else i cannot feel your absence
I cannot feel the gaping hole in my soul
Screaming for you.

Weigh me now and compare it to then
The difference, the cost of your leaving
Physical only, though it may be
The emotional cost to life, all too heavy

I recount the loneliness and despair of
Three summers ago this summer.
The bottom touched
Stretched upon it
Surrender and hopelessness
To find a bottom, relief.
To find a ground, sweet rest.
To see that there was nothing left, resignation.
It is finished.
I am done.
The end is near.

Hasten, hasten,
Lest hope quakes me from my resignation.
Hasten hasten me to my final ending.
I am ready, all.

I absorb you into me, and
Die a martyr's death when mine
Catches up with me, devour your anxiety
For the weight of it all
Buries the child's heart within.
Her courage is lost
Her desire drowned beneath
A mortal wound, a cross too heavy for
A one.

I need to leave
Walls strangle faith
Leave me impatient, violently
Flaring against my own self.
I will die a martyr and I will die
At the murderer's hand, my own.
My own, mine own hand steadies
Ease the blow into my chest.

It ripples into my stomach
Bending over to hold the pain
An abdomen aflame
It writhes through my chest
Shivering organs, splitting bone
Arms shoot out, pain's electric city glows
Fierce and defiant,
Chest to throat,
Mouth to mouth
Breath to cheek
Arm in hand
Laundered sheets
Stammer ahead
Feathered hearth
Hope's remorse
Buried unsaid
Apple in mouth
Hand in head
For fear of
For fear

death's power

is here
here,

here.

spiegel im spiegel

2008-06-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Allow me to pause here on a blog to remember. I return to St. Louis soon. For the first time in four almost five years. The people and memories there have and will make me weep they are so full.

My mind moves through so many images, moments remembered by how they made me live into my body and my heart. And desires. I find myself shaking my head, saying, "I was so free then." And I think I was...in contrast to my past, my history up to that point. The freedom I lived out then was glory. It was glory. And I am grateful.

Only, it would not be freedom now, with a few significant chapters added. Those chapters have grown vines and thorns and fruit and stand very tall. They both keep me out and hedge me in. Sequestered. Safe. Stubborn as hell. Divided.

It is time to return. (Even as I say that, it does not sound quite right. It will not be a step backwards into the past. Rather, this past I've held at bay through the past 3 years...it is, in collaboration with my present self, an ever brilliant and full tomorrow. There is no light switch for it. Light. Dark. In. Out. It is slowness into grey.

My desire for God is a sustained note on the cello. Rich and full of sorrow

...sweetness.

Sorrow for something so beloved. And lost. (maybe you understand. maybe this is foreign to you.

But where there is grief, there is hope. I have not wanted to bear hope, as I had bourne it for naught, it seemed. Too long, for naught.

O heart of my heart,
how long.
Where are you leading?

I think I will paint this weekend..........

creation and addiction: part 1

2008-04-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

These two are so intricately connected in us. Creation and addiction. I say one and the other follows in a hollow whisper. My thoughts on this? Look at the proof, friends. Artists, actors, painters, musicians...the prophets we have been given through the years, the decades, centuries. They give birth (create) and we take these children they offer as sacrifices and nurture them into our stories, use them to connect with our own self at three years old. The artist has a difficult calling, one which is terrifyingly prophetic and holy.

It has ceased to surprise me however, when I hear an artist has entertained in her or his life various forms of addictions. It comes with the territory, it seems.

Julia Cameron recalls, in her book, The Artist's Way, "In my mind, writing and drinking went together like, well, scotch and soda. For me, the trick was always getting past the fear and onto the page."

There is so much fear. Fears associated with anything and everything imaginable. Fear is the block. It is the anti-christ, the villain, the antagonist of an artist. The addiction is a way of getting past the fear and into a place of freedom, of play...which is synonymous (in my mind) to creation.

For my freshman drawing class, I had a professor who scared the shit out of me. I would go to class with knots in my stomach every class. But there, we confronted that fear and I produced some of the best work I (drawing-wise) I'd ever made up to that point. My mid-term critique, I did not know what to expect from a professor who would take a student's piece from the wall and red-sharpie an "F" across the entire piece. I sat down. He looked at me (he felt like god on judgement day). He started to talk and then fell silent. These kind and insightful words came next, "Eden, I think you're a good artist, that is, you have a lot of potential. But you're hitting a wall." The moment he said it, I knew it was true and that it articulated my frustrations with my work and self, really. Both, in how I presented them, were boring. Good, clean, and boring.

(image by illustrator Jon Lezinsky, http://www.scotthull.com/artists/talent/lezinsky/index.asp)

departure

2008-03-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

I just transitioned from Radiohead to Cat Power. Evidence of my attempt to enter. This trip. Geez. I need space to breathe, to feel the breath come and go. It's been a strange several months. I have intentionally jumped into things, avoiding their consequences - rather, avoiding feeling their consequences...an atypical (in the history of me) departure of self.

The following analogy waits before me in pieces, like a puzzle: there is a deer in the middle of the road, standing. A car approaches, lights on in the middle of the night. I am standing on the side of the road, watching the two and finding their imminent collision "interesting". But I am the deer. It is my body, my breath fogging in the middle of the road, my eyes blinded in the headlights. But it is vacant, as I have in spirit, mind and heart, carefully slipped to the side of the road.

Splitting. Leaving. I have kept my back to a lot these past few months - and it seeps into all things. Even these blogs, this blog.

I had a conversation the other night which left me on the verge of tears. And for the first time in a long time, I sat there, sunk into the couch and needed to cry, wanted to. I had, for the first time really allowed myself to begin to fall for someone. It's a painful and exhilarating thing, about which I am curious like a child, wanting to pick it apart and see all its sides, put it in my mouth, see if I can bite it, if it breaks when I drop it.... When it's painful, my body aches, my muscles, my stomach. When it's exhilarating, it's as though someone has picked me up like a feather and set me weightless on a cloud. In other words, there is hope. And maybe, in part, the fulfillment of hope (a shifting paradigm).

I couldn't do it though. Cry. And I wouldn't be crying for the situation. The tears would have been triggered by the situation, but they would be about so much more...are about so much more.

Such grief.

There is a lot in me. Hm.

I see this departure in my music, in my relationships, in my work.

Ironically, in this departure, I have actually entered the logistical role of being a musician head first. The first time I have really seen this ambition so fully acted upon. I think in some ways, the departure has allowed me to shut down to the self-doubts and questioning which defeats any sense of will power. Power. Now, that is a good word. I am glad it has come out. (As well as the connection between splitting and power....)

(I am realizing this will be about 10 blogs in one - in length)

A friend told me several weeks ago: Eden, it's time you reclaim your power in this space (music space).

Another friend told me recently: Power is a substitute for meaning, when we've lost it.

(I feel like I'm completing a math problem or grammatical "x is to y as b is to c".)

Oh, Eden. Because without emotion, it is a math problem, nearly. Wow, I'm good.

Well, what I have deduced in phrases over the past few weeks is that when I lack meaning, I am no longer confident in what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Meaning, for me, goes beyond my self. It has to involve another, or the anonymous other. Because if it is all about me, then I have made myself divine.

I witnessed an example of that last night....an example of power (where I can see that there used to be meaning). This woman who was performing the same night, talked to me a bit, throwing out all these things that should've impressed me. (Honestly, it surprised me as i didn't expect to hear that she had "done so well".) Well, I tried to reserve judgement (of myself for not having gotten as far as she, or of her) until i hear her stuff.

I realized it's not really about the resume we each have (I mean, the "music business" makes it about that sometimes). Rather, it is more what you bring...what is it you, as a musician/creator/giver, offer and if it moves me. Can you offer a gift in arrogance and be joined? I could not join this woman, nor did I have much respect for her craft, her person, or the group who had pulled her onto their bill because of her resume. It has to be about the music (...says the un-labelled, independent, struggling musician who couldn't make it about wheeling and dealing with label reps even if she wanted to right now).

I am sufficiently cold at this point - my feet frozen - and Riley (my new car) will be able to warm me up.