Tonight I will stand witness. Tonight I will not look away. Tonight I will know the truth.
The music is loud and booming. It does not crash with sharp brights, it rocks, vibrates the floor, the columns, the bones of the dancers. The bones of me. Of you. This is the first time you have invited me dancing with your friends. I never knew this side of you. It has been several months of living together but no one here has known you for less than ten years. I am the outsider. And the you that you are with them is not the you that you are with me.
A voice is shouting in my ear. Just loud enough to be heard. The cologne already familiar. "'Lizagrrl, wazup u don hang it wit us bafore?" Marx spreads his hands, palms up, his hip cocked, his head tilted. His hips bump-rock into mine. He is a spit heavier than a twig. Great big eyes and sweet dreads. His belly shirt is Bedazzled to spell a three-letter F word. I'm nervous for a minute that our belly button rings will get tangled. I blink. I have never had anyone call me 'Liza, let alone 'Lizagrrl.
The strobes flash. Blue purple green blue blue red white. Alvaro thumps down behind me, one combat boot steps the beat between my ankles. Shouts to Marx, "E her fuzz, not her grrl! You know the rulz wit Sun!"
And the sound of my jaw dropping and the sound of my head whipping 'round is surely louder than the music. I pin you to the bar with my eyes, which are huge and brown with shock. You turn suddenly, do a double-take because I am staring at you. Like you know my thoughts. But not my thoughts at all as your surprise fades into appraisal and you turn all the way slowly, your butt to the bar, a Coke in your hand, your braids and beads glinting, you take me in like... well, like some fuzz, some grrl you'd shag but not date and never marry. It is clear that you like the sight of me sandwiched between your friends. I think I'm hearing the music for the first time. "It's so good to meet you all," I shout to Marx and Alvaro, my eyes never leaving you. One-handed, I unsnap my leather vest and throw it to Tonka back at our table. I turn my back to you as I continue to dance.
In 1983, a woman was raped by two men in the pool room of a bar. A group of eight other men circled and chanted encouragement. The rapists were convicted. The spectators were acquitted.
"It is not a legal crime to watch a rape. But it is a legal crime to command, induce, entreat or otherwise persuade another person to commit a rape."
Apparently not.
On October 24, 2009, ten young men and boys raped a fifteen year old girl while another twenty looked on.
Are the spectators responsible? The spectators who stood and watched (that's what spectators do). The spectators who did not step forward. The spectators who did not call the police. The spectators who let it all sink in, right down to their stomachs, right down to the souls, for two and a half freaking hours.
Four hours later, we sit in Alvaro's condo with the breath-taking view and the swank wood floors and giant balcony and windows showing off the glimmer gloss of Los Angeles at night. Everyone is still buzzy from the club and I am made to feel very welcome, though I am constantly a step behind the conversation. You all speak in the short-hand code of long-time friends. Alvaro appears to be madly in love with you, the way he hangs on your every word. But by the end of the night I'll know that isn't true. I wish it were. Lord... I wish it were.
There are variations on this theme:
"I have always feared being violently raped. (beat) That's why I walk alone at night."
What?
"It's good for her to get out every day and walk. (beat) She can't let fear rule her life."
What?! Am I the only one who can spell "self-fulfilling prophesy"? Perhaps being a victim of violent rape would give her an excuse to be a lesbian? For the first time in my life, I feel the urge to slap Jennifer. Who should know better.
Ten years old. Abducted. Violently raped daily for two months. Sixty two days in July and August. Ten years old. Followed by ten years of prostitution. I think people would add that up to ten years and two months of abuse, wouldn't you? I know Cris would. I know I do.
"We were kissing." (I chose to touch the rabid dog.)
"He reached to open my jeans." (The dog snapped at me.)
"I told him no." (I told him no.)
"He urged me on and moved over me, pinning me." (He growled and cornered me.)
"I continued to tell him I didn't think we should. I was scared. I said no. I said stop. I was... it was... he was..."
And this is called acquaintance rape or date rape. Which we are supposed to classify differently from violent rape. But every human with a brain calls it all what it is: Misogyny.
There is laughter here in this swank residence. The walls are hung with original paintings. There is an abstract sculpture of a male dancer in the foyer. You and Tonka make a spread of nachos and Spanish rice. You turn sometimes and catch my eye through the kitchen pass-through. You like me here. Surrounded by your friends. You have allowed me into your inner circle.
This one at least.
Marx is telling stories about clubs you all used to frequent. Marx is telling about your long line on conquests. They were creative. Wild. Often very public. I like the professor from UCLA best. The one you talked up for three hours about Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ, Camille Paglia, and Marge Piercy, matching her wit for wit, scathing observations followed by political observations, sprinkled with economic repercussions. Your friends were so dang bored they drifted away, leaving you two alone at the booth in the corner of the crowded club.
"Then it was, like you know, four in the morning and time to go grab some meats, so I goes back to the booth and nobody is home, 'Lizagrrl! 'Cept," Marx laughs hard. "Sun is home. She going home on this professor and the only things I see 'bove the table top is a black high heel digging into Sun's yin yang ink on her shoulder!"
I find myself blinking a lot tonight. I catch Alvaro looking at you. He seems nervous, excited to be in your presence. It is odd to see a grown man like this, especially one as classicly handsome as Alvaro. On his right ring finger, a thick silver band imprinted in black: Five Years Sober
"Food," you announce as you smile at me and you and Tonka drench the coffee table with noms for all. Your dark hair falls away from your shoulders. In your white skin-tight tank I can watch your muscles tight from the gym and from dancing every weekend. There is no yin yang ink.
Do you think I'm that innocent? Or am I not allowed to bear witness for your truth?
We eat. None of you drink. It's all Coke and Dr. Pepper. You know how much I like that. You wink at me. You wipe cheese off my bottom lip with your thumb. Your arm around my shoulders, your thigh against mine, I am trying to listen to Marx's new stories as Tonka adds in street-slang sound effects and commentary ("Dats the truth!" "Fersure, man!" "Hm-hm!") but my gaze keeps slipping back to you.
"Not too wild for you, E?" Alvaro asks and I tear my eyes away from studying you. Alvaro is reaching for a Coke. Tattooed inside his wrist: Never Forget and a date.
My mouth is dry.
"Nothing too wild for my Angel," you say and I can taste the possession in your tone. It is sweet and bitter at once.
Marx is not telling stories about you now that you're here. Like he knows not to. You are the group leader. The only gamer grrl in a posse of gamer boys. You have inadvertently over-shared tonight. Not over-share for me. I have soaked up your truths like a sponge, dry and empty before. But I am sure there is nothing I've learned tonight that you actually wanted me to know.
"Oooh! Boi!" Tonka slaps his leg. "Marx, tells da one 'bout the Underground rave! Dat one grrl gettin' wit both--"
"Nuf." You stand. Alvaro stands. The two of you look at each other so intently. Alvaro's eyes are huge wide. Your jaw jumps.
Marx kicks Tonka, "You weren't there, man. Shutup!"
Looking up at you, I slide my hand up your leg. You look down at me with a snap. I say softly, "I'm ready to go, Sunshine."
One. Two. Three. Silence passes. Then you smile. "Of course, baby."
You bud-hug everyone good-bye. You hold Alvaro a moment longer than the others. He looks at you with a silent question while I pretend to look down at my (not really) stuck zipper. You shake your head no. Barely a movement.
"Good to meet you, E." Alvaro extends his hand to me. His smile is like a little boy's. I have a crazy feeling. It grips me, cold and sharp. I don't want to take his--
I see you looking at me. Your lips are parted, jaw juts, one eye squinted, your eyebrows twitch.
I take Alvaro's hand tight then pull him into a quick hug. "Yeah. Good. Thanks."
You smile at me. Whatever it was pissing you off, it's gone now. You think it was an imagined slight. But it wasn't. It was an instinctual one.
Good thing I can ignore my instincts.
G, Liquid X, Liquid E, Scoop, Soap, Gook, Grievous Bodily Harm, Georgia Home Boy, Natural Sleep-500, Easy Lay, Gamma 10. GHB. Gamma-Hydroxybutyerate.
You toss your keys on the kitchen table. I have rarely been so happy to be home. You shrug out of your jacket. I watch you. You never turn on the lights. The whole room is in shadow. You see perfectly even in the pitch black. I never realized before that all your tight friends are men. I never realized before that your mannerisms are so masculine. I never realized before how very little I know about you.
You turn to me. The distance between us seems full of something present and tangible. A beast wrapped in static electricity and incendiary charge. You smile at me, light and sexy and gentle, your eyes already sliding over all the places your hands and mouth have explored before. You say, "I'm going to shower." Already you've dropped the urban edge. The slang, street luilt. You linger for a second (I remain so still I am not breathing) then you're gone into the darkness of the house cloaked in more than the low tock of the grandfather clock. It is not even a minute before I hear you lock the bathroom door. As always.
I am breathing. That is all. I am not thinking. I wet my lips. I am sweating more than I did at the club. I take the skeleton key from the fob.
I unlock the bathroom door.
The mirror glass is already steamed over. How long did it take me to move from my planted place in the kitchen. You have lit a candle. It's red. Cinnamon. The only light in the room. The textured glass of the shower door makes your body a mosaic of smaller images.
I am very still.
You turn off the water. You step out, looking down. You reach for the bath towel, turning away from me. Yin yang ink. And three others I have never seen. And a scar, long an arching, jagged and ugly, down your side and across your abdomen, curling around your hip.
You see me. You drop your towel.
The ink along the scar reads: Never Forget. Same date as Alvaro. It repeats along the length of the thick, still-raised trail.
I cannot breathe.
loy.al.ty
1. the state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.
2. fealty, devotion, constancy. Loyalty, allegiance, fidelity all imply a sense of duty or of devoted attachment to something or someone. Loyalty connotes sentiment and the feeling of devotion that one holds for one's country, creed, family, friends, etc. Allegiance applies particularly to a citizen's duty to his or her country, or, by extension, one's obligation to support a party, cause, leader, etc. Fidelity implies unwavering devotion and allegiance to a person, principle, etc.
I know these definitions. But I don't know the definition of what I feel beneath my fingertips. The truth is never pretty and some truths are so jagged they can still wound after years and years.
There are no words. There were no words. But the truth is still there. I have witnessed it.
And I do not believe that spectators are ever innocent of the crime.
Stand up. Intervene. Represent.
EJ
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Lightning Rod
[But nothing worth doing is easy. A dream like this demands all of you. A dream like this demands you risk everything. A dream like this takes you down the the darkest pit of despair that you can possibly imagine and asks, "Are you ready to give up yet?" And when you say No, it it takes you down one level further. "How about now?"]
Coffee & Chocolate
Lord, I want to be lightning
streaking wild and crackling
across your open expanse of night
the stars above me watching
unable to outshine me
cold and uncaring
while I set fire
to the world.
And the pens are all here. The set of highlighters and colored Sharpies and the ballpoints with the special grippy dots and metallic pastels that you bought with rolled pennies three months ago and mailed them to me on the sly. The graph paper comp books are here. Four of them. Black, green, red, blue. The 1:4 ratio you love. The scent of another woman's perfume. The taste of coffee on my tongue. The beating of my heart.
The grandfather clock is ticking.
The rulers are here. Two lengths. The pencils are here. Purple erasers. My hands are on the table top, palms flat against the cool wood. There is bread in the oven. There are fat lilies floating in a bowl of scented water. My Bible is open. A deck of cards from the game I've built -- the game with the Fallen Angels and the quantum mechanics -- are fanned like a rainbow. There is a silver thumb ring resting in the white margin at the top of the page.
The grandfather clock is ticking.
I sit there for four hours. I straighten the rows of supplies. In the silence of the room (silence because no one else is here) all the little inanimate sounds become elaborate distractions and launch flights of fancy completely unrelated to any reality in or out of work. I sharpen a pencil. I click a ballpoint. I pop a Coke. I tell myself, "If you were here..." I tell myself, "What is the point?" I tell myself, "You are afraid to succeed."
You are afraid to try.
My housemate comes home. She has known of me for years but only known me half of one. She hangs her keys. I hear her smile because the bread is done and sitting out to cool. She unzip her jacket. Comments on the cold. I hear the snap of her clasp popping open as always. Her hair tumbling free. And then the sound of her heels on the hardwood floor.
"Eliza..."
Then there is true silence. It seems, as the wave of her anger rises, there is a moment when all sound -- even the inanimate sounds of the radiators and the clock and the house in the cold wind -- is swallowed. I am holding my breath and perhaps more than anything else I have ever wanted, perhaps more than anything else I have ever needed, I pray for her to yell at me.
She doesn't.
Her heels. The sound of them. Her slacks. The swift brush. Her sharp, short intake of breath as she steps up behind me and sees the table... exactly... *exactly* as she left it... eight and a half hours ago.
As if on cue, the clock chimes 2:00. In the morning.
I look up at her. I want the lecture. I want the indignant speech. I want the confusion, betrayal, hurt. I want the litany that will rain down on me like stones and batter me back into the warrior I know I am. I want to be dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the table of the last supper and be forced to eat, to drink, to listen.
I look up at her. I turn my face up like a child. But I am not a child. The failure of a child is a learning experience. The failure of an adult is poor planning, laziness, sickness, no excuse and no lesson learned. Failure enables more failure. Until finally, even small successes don't feel like victories any more. Failure casts a very large shadow.
Her face is hidden from me. Her hair is beautiful and dark and full. It falls in waves like chocolate. She has been on her feet, literally, all day long. The "break" she got eight and a half hours ago wasn't anything more than her racing in to pick up a change of clothes and a different PDA, another set of keys, and three ounces of peach yogurt. She could be thinking that I escaped stress and doubt by watching tv or playing BioShock or even falling asleep on the couch in front of the fire. She could be hating me. She could be forgiving me. She could be thinking about the stack of bills -- all opened and dated and categorized by payment plan and due date -- and how I have never touched one of them. Maybe she's thinking I am weak. Maybe she's thinking I am fragile. Maybe she's just so consumed with jealously that she's been working all day and I've had the balls (or lack thereof) to sit here, at her table, doing *nothing*....
"Get out."
Her voice might be conversational. It is neither loud nor soft. It is simply strong.
She walks from the room. There is a new sound. A blue vase I adore (but which is not mine) shatters. I can't see her but I know she's picked it up by the mouth and slammed it against the cream stucco wall. With the pottery there is the sound of coins across the hallway floor. The household piggy bank is empty now.
She come back into the room and throws a wad of cash into my lap. There is maybe four hundred dollars. I stare down at it. This was toward the month's mortgage. I had contributed maybe one tenth of it.
"Get out."
She turns and leaves again. I see a mane of hair as I catch a glimpse of her face. It is as though she is carved from stone.
I stand. I stare at the door way into the house. I dare not collect my things. I can't think to do anything else but turn away and go to the door. I don't need to get my keys. I trashed my bike almost a month ago driving way too fast when it was way to dark and all I knew was rain and that hard, cold jerk of some hand yanking me off my baby before she went over the rail and I went under.
My hand on the knob. I can't say if I'm afraid. I can't tell you if this is rock bottom. I feel nothing. I am past numb. I am somewhere on this side of done. Somewhere on that side of terrified. I look back at the table.
She is standing there. Her fist is clenched over my open notebook with the blank page. My ring is gone. Her eyes burn like I have never seen eyes burn. She dares me silently to speak.
She lifts her chin. Her jaw twitches. Her breath is broken for a moment and then, "Come back when you grow up."
And she stares at me hard... until I turn and leave. Because there is nothing to say. There is no excuse. There are no words.
But everything more she could have said and everything I want to sob, flooded me over and over again in waves all the way down the coastline, all the way across the border. Words unspoken and embraces not given, haunted me for three days and three nights and filled my body with so much truth I had no room for food and forced myself to sleep only when I could no longer see.
I made my confessions:
The fearless one is afraid.
The resourceful one is out of ideas.
The inspired one is unmoved.
There would be no resolutions. There would be no second chance. This was the first offense. It was hell. A second failure would not be so bloodless.
When I returned, the posters on the wall were gone replaced with a white board, markers and eraser. With a yard stick she had graphed it all out in permanent marker. I had a new desk. It faced a window. A new laptop. It faced the room. There were cards on the wall -- Alpha and Beta Deck -- slipped into protective sheets and tacked in order. There was a color-coded schedule of chores, of work, of project tasks, all broken out with little flags and arrows and instructions and slide time and firm lines. It was posted in the hall where the vase had once been.
I heard her step up behind me. I smelled her perfume. One hand on my hip as she leaned against me, her cheek to my shoulder.
I covered her hand with my own. I reached back without looking and touched a lock of her hair. I looked at the schedule, the meticulous hours of work. "I like," I told her. "'Dinner out with Sunshine' on Saturday nights."
"Only if every prior task is marked complete," she told me, and she reached past me with her free hand and tapped the small white boxes next to every colored task.
I nodded quietly, unable to speak, the warmth of her so obvious after being so absent. Her fingers traced the lines of days, the open spaces of slide time that would surely fill with contingencies and shifting hours. She stopped when she reached the empty bars that represented this hour, this moment, now. I blinked. "What should we do?" I asked very quietly, my voice almost a whisper beneath the pounding of my blood in my ears.
Her voice against my shoulder, "I think we should pray."
Lord, I need to be grounded
fighting hard and impassioned
through all these burning days
your dawn above me watching
doing everything to lift me
the ones you send help me
to find the truth right here
my faith, my lightning rod.
Coffee & Chocolate
Lord, I want to be lightning
streaking wild and crackling
across your open expanse of night
the stars above me watching
unable to outshine me
cold and uncaring
while I set fire
to the world.
And the pens are all here. The set of highlighters and colored Sharpies and the ballpoints with the special grippy dots and metallic pastels that you bought with rolled pennies three months ago and mailed them to me on the sly. The graph paper comp books are here. Four of them. Black, green, red, blue. The 1:4 ratio you love. The scent of another woman's perfume. The taste of coffee on my tongue. The beating of my heart.
The grandfather clock is ticking.
The rulers are here. Two lengths. The pencils are here. Purple erasers. My hands are on the table top, palms flat against the cool wood. There is bread in the oven. There are fat lilies floating in a bowl of scented water. My Bible is open. A deck of cards from the game I've built -- the game with the Fallen Angels and the quantum mechanics -- are fanned like a rainbow. There is a silver thumb ring resting in the white margin at the top of the page.
The grandfather clock is ticking.
I sit there for four hours. I straighten the rows of supplies. In the silence of the room (silence because no one else is here) all the little inanimate sounds become elaborate distractions and launch flights of fancy completely unrelated to any reality in or out of work. I sharpen a pencil. I click a ballpoint. I pop a Coke. I tell myself, "If you were here..." I tell myself, "What is the point?" I tell myself, "You are afraid to succeed."
You are afraid to try.
My housemate comes home. She has known of me for years but only known me half of one. She hangs her keys. I hear her smile because the bread is done and sitting out to cool. She unzip her jacket. Comments on the cold. I hear the snap of her clasp popping open as always. Her hair tumbling free. And then the sound of her heels on the hardwood floor.
"Eliza..."
Then there is true silence. It seems, as the wave of her anger rises, there is a moment when all sound -- even the inanimate sounds of the radiators and the clock and the house in the cold wind -- is swallowed. I am holding my breath and perhaps more than anything else I have ever wanted, perhaps more than anything else I have ever needed, I pray for her to yell at me.
She doesn't.
Her heels. The sound of them. Her slacks. The swift brush. Her sharp, short intake of breath as she steps up behind me and sees the table... exactly... *exactly* as she left it... eight and a half hours ago.
As if on cue, the clock chimes 2:00. In the morning.
I look up at her. I want the lecture. I want the indignant speech. I want the confusion, betrayal, hurt. I want the litany that will rain down on me like stones and batter me back into the warrior I know I am. I want to be dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the table of the last supper and be forced to eat, to drink, to listen.
I look up at her. I turn my face up like a child. But I am not a child. The failure of a child is a learning experience. The failure of an adult is poor planning, laziness, sickness, no excuse and no lesson learned. Failure enables more failure. Until finally, even small successes don't feel like victories any more. Failure casts a very large shadow.
Her face is hidden from me. Her hair is beautiful and dark and full. It falls in waves like chocolate. She has been on her feet, literally, all day long. The "break" she got eight and a half hours ago wasn't anything more than her racing in to pick up a change of clothes and a different PDA, another set of keys, and three ounces of peach yogurt. She could be thinking that I escaped stress and doubt by watching tv or playing BioShock or even falling asleep on the couch in front of the fire. She could be hating me. She could be forgiving me. She could be thinking about the stack of bills -- all opened and dated and categorized by payment plan and due date -- and how I have never touched one of them. Maybe she's thinking I am weak. Maybe she's thinking I am fragile. Maybe she's just so consumed with jealously that she's been working all day and I've had the balls (or lack thereof) to sit here, at her table, doing *nothing*....
"Get out."
Her voice might be conversational. It is neither loud nor soft. It is simply strong.
She walks from the room. There is a new sound. A blue vase I adore (but which is not mine) shatters. I can't see her but I know she's picked it up by the mouth and slammed it against the cream stucco wall. With the pottery there is the sound of coins across the hallway floor. The household piggy bank is empty now.
She come back into the room and throws a wad of cash into my lap. There is maybe four hundred dollars. I stare down at it. This was toward the month's mortgage. I had contributed maybe one tenth of it.
"Get out."
She turns and leaves again. I see a mane of hair as I catch a glimpse of her face. It is as though she is carved from stone.
I stand. I stare at the door way into the house. I dare not collect my things. I can't think to do anything else but turn away and go to the door. I don't need to get my keys. I trashed my bike almost a month ago driving way too fast when it was way to dark and all I knew was rain and that hard, cold jerk of some hand yanking me off my baby before she went over the rail and I went under.
My hand on the knob. I can't say if I'm afraid. I can't tell you if this is rock bottom. I feel nothing. I am past numb. I am somewhere on this side of done. Somewhere on that side of terrified. I look back at the table.
She is standing there. Her fist is clenched over my open notebook with the blank page. My ring is gone. Her eyes burn like I have never seen eyes burn. She dares me silently to speak.
She lifts her chin. Her jaw twitches. Her breath is broken for a moment and then, "Come back when you grow up."
And she stares at me hard... until I turn and leave. Because there is nothing to say. There is no excuse. There are no words.
But everything more she could have said and everything I want to sob, flooded me over and over again in waves all the way down the coastline, all the way across the border. Words unspoken and embraces not given, haunted me for three days and three nights and filled my body with so much truth I had no room for food and forced myself to sleep only when I could no longer see.
I made my confessions:
The fearless one is afraid.
The resourceful one is out of ideas.
The inspired one is unmoved.
There would be no resolutions. There would be no second chance. This was the first offense. It was hell. A second failure would not be so bloodless.
When I returned, the posters on the wall were gone replaced with a white board, markers and eraser. With a yard stick she had graphed it all out in permanent marker. I had a new desk. It faced a window. A new laptop. It faced the room. There were cards on the wall -- Alpha and Beta Deck -- slipped into protective sheets and tacked in order. There was a color-coded schedule of chores, of work, of project tasks, all broken out with little flags and arrows and instructions and slide time and firm lines. It was posted in the hall where the vase had once been.
I heard her step up behind me. I smelled her perfume. One hand on my hip as she leaned against me, her cheek to my shoulder.
I covered her hand with my own. I reached back without looking and touched a lock of her hair. I looked at the schedule, the meticulous hours of work. "I like," I told her. "'Dinner out with Sunshine' on Saturday nights."
"Only if every prior task is marked complete," she told me, and she reached past me with her free hand and tapped the small white boxes next to every colored task.
I nodded quietly, unable to speak, the warmth of her so obvious after being so absent. Her fingers traced the lines of days, the open spaces of slide time that would surely fill with contingencies and shifting hours. She stopped when she reached the empty bars that represented this hour, this moment, now. I blinked. "What should we do?" I asked very quietly, my voice almost a whisper beneath the pounding of my blood in my ears.
Her voice against my shoulder, "I think we should pray."
Lord, I need to be grounded
fighting hard and impassioned
through all these burning days
your dawn above me watching
doing everything to lift me
the ones you send help me
to find the truth right here
my faith, my lightning rod.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Stressed is Just Desserts
Spelled Backwards
“We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again
like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home."
Since thirty-four *million* Americans will be told they suffer from depression at some point in their lives, we *all* know or are someone who has dealt with this mood, mind and life altering state. However, that means absolutely nothing to that much, much smaller number of Americans who fight, daily, hourly, heartbeat to heartbeat, with the physical, chemical imbalance of clinical depression. This is not that thing that grips you after Bobbi Sue leaves you at the alter (even though, dude, that did suck). This isn't even that terror, helplessness, immobilization that happened after your third baby when postpartum hit you like a hurricane and you thought that Brooke Shields was the only voice of reason in the world (and you were probably right, grrl). This is every day. This is like demon possession or a contorted stranger who rides around on your back, maybe letting you have one or two or ten "good days" before you haul off and slap your son or tell your wife she's useless and fat. This is the stuff that robs hard-working, brilliant artists from being able to create. This is the hardcore sniper who takes out the most articulate word warrior and leave her speechless when she most needs to fight.
This is depression you can't pray away.
Or... can you?
I am not, by many definitions, a Jesus Freak. And yet that's exactly what I was called today by a very near and dear friend. We were just talking and she said, as an aside, "I know you think you can just pray anything away, little Jesus Freak that you are, grrl..." and then she ate a jelly donut.
I blinked. I cocked my head. I took the last bite of her donut and said, "I don't believe that, actually." But by the time I got home, I decided that I do.
"I know you're out there.
I can feel you now.
I know that you're afraid.
You're afraid of change.
I don't know the future.
I didn't come here to tell you
how this is going to end.
I came here to tell you
how it's going to begin.
I'm going to show you a you
not ruled by this thing.
A you without without
borders or boundaries.
A you who makes anything
and everything possible."
The bigger the problem the harder it is to fix. Um, yeah. That makes logical sense. And yet billions of dollars a year are spent by people trying to do the hard thing (no, it isn't easy... shoving your face full of garbage food is easy) of losing major weight by some easy method. And, stunner of all stunners, it doesn't work. Like my jelly donut friend likes to say: Epic fail.
What's more, we all have different *God-given* abilities. Strengths and weaknesses that are different, unique from one another. What we have seen is easy for one person might be colossally difficult for us. But who are we to question the divinity and reasoning of God? Yeah, I don't think so. Kinda like a ten-step plan with fewer steps, let's just:
1. Accept life is hard.
2. Accept life is struggle.
3. Accept life is worth it.
I've been told before that my attitude (encompassed in these three points) is way too "willing martyr" or even far too "accepting of the unacceptable" for most everyday Americans. I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that many of my fellow Americans were so delusional. I don't feel like either a martyr or at all accepting of the unacceptable. I simply believe, with all my heart, that if life were easy, if the physical, chemical framework of our bodies were simple, we'd all be running around singing "Man in the Mirror" and making that change. But life is actually all about the complexities that make us made in His image and not made in the image of tapeworms.
Another adage kept coming into my mind on the drive home. That hiking saying: Walk lightly. Carry what you need and leave nothing behind.
Of course, that is not a good adage for life. It would actually be a really, really crummy life philosophy. But often, someone who suffers from major or "explosive" depression, feels like they are stomping through life leaving behind them a path of destruction and damaged that cannot be undone. These individuals are damaging themselves as they crash through the thickets and brambles of life, and they are damaging every loved one traveling with them. Because, far more often than not, these individuals are not alone, but rather surrounded by partners, husbands, wives, and children. Everyone is hurt. And no one is left the same.
I think the best approach would be to add a step to our not-quite-ten-step list:
4. Leave the moment better than it was.
Stop and think about that. Now, you might say, with depression, wouldn't it just be enough to leave the moment? Or leave your family? Or shut up, tune out, plead the Fifth? Um, yeah, if you want depression to win. I know that sounded simplistic but what I mean is: For every moment that you just try to stay quiet and get by, not engage, you are thinking of nothing but your depression. Your entire focus is on that. But what if, instead of wallowing, drowning in your own chemical bloodbath of doubt and despair, you made it your personal freaking mission to make every time you walked into a room actually *better* for someone else?
You step into the room and kiss your baby.
You step into a room and hand someone a cookie from the jar.
You step into the room and tell a joke (not a sarcastic or biting one).
You step into a room and hand a love note to someone you love.
You start to leave positive marks on your landscape. You leave behind the best of who you are. Even if depression has stolen your tongue and you can't find the words, you will not be without a voice. A good friend of mine has a sock drawer full of colored papered hearts. Every day she puts one in her coat pocket. When her depression spins out of control and drags her down, she gives the hearts that have gathered in her pocket to the people around her. Because they've stayed. They've stayed even though, sometimes, she's hurting them as badly as the depression hurts her. She just walks into the room and leave behind her hearts. Instead of screaming or fighting or throwing a vase, she leaves behind hearts. Her seventeen year old daughter told me, "I have a treasure chest. It's handmade and sits in the corner of my room. In it I have a shard of glass from my graduation photo that Mom threw across the kitchen once when she was raging. I also have three hundred and seventy-eight paper hearts. That piece of glass always reminds me how ugly she can be when she gets low. But I don't see it very often buried beneath all those paper hearts."
5.Pray constantly.
Ah, the Jesus Freak is in the house. I mean, could just as well say, "Sing constantly" or "Talk constantly." but I thin "Pray constantly." just has a certain freaky perfect to it, don't you? Let;s practice:
"Lord, I'm about to see Joss. He will say something with double-meaning. He will act like he owns me. It isn't my imagination. It isn't depression. Others have substantiated my feelings about him. He will be an ass. Help me smile at him, speak clearly and say only what is needed, not engage, and think of naked mole rats and how his wanker must look just like one."
You think that's too irreverent? Guess your Christ and my Christ aren't the same one. Go ahead and click to another website. Come back when you actually bring someone to God instead of terrify them into submission.
Let's keep praying:
"Lord, I'm feeling scared and low. I'm going into a stressful place filled with stressful people. Give me the strength to just wade into that stress and tell the really funny joke about the priest, the hamster, and the IMVU credit."
"Christ, allow me to swing my daughter into my arms and make her whole evening."
"Christ, it's me again. I just want to cry. Let's listen to music instead and then watch 'Glee' on Hulu."
"God, the chemicals surging through me are like a cancer. They eat away at me. Wearing me down to nothing, to worse than nothing, to a cancer in the lives of the people who love me. Because God? They have proven their love. Because they are still here. It would be the easy thing for them to go. But they stay because I fight to stay, too. Fight with me, God. Help me lift them up even as you lift me."
The moment, the second, the heartbeat you lift someone else, you will be lifted. The moment you reach out, you will be touched. No, not because turnabout is fair play, or because you're keeping tabs, or expect anything in return. But rather because thinking about something other than yourself and your situation and your own spinning wheels to nowhere, will *free* you to sing.
So maybe we should rewrite our steps. Maybe they should just become:
Accept it.
Face it.
Pray about it.
Rejoice in it.
Live it.
What's it? Life.
Or maybe the paper hearts line the path and the approach is only:
Love
"I looked at the sky
and remembered that
you’re always there.
Reminding me that all
I really have to do
is breathe."
For you are already loved in return.
EJ
Alex shares.
Krizia shares.
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again
like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home."
Since thirty-four *million* Americans will be told they suffer from depression at some point in their lives, we *all* know or are someone who has dealt with this mood, mind and life altering state. However, that means absolutely nothing to that much, much smaller number of Americans who fight, daily, hourly, heartbeat to heartbeat, with the physical, chemical imbalance of clinical depression. This is not that thing that grips you after Bobbi Sue leaves you at the alter (even though, dude, that did suck). This isn't even that terror, helplessness, immobilization that happened after your third baby when postpartum hit you like a hurricane and you thought that Brooke Shields was the only voice of reason in the world (and you were probably right, grrl). This is every day. This is like demon possession or a contorted stranger who rides around on your back, maybe letting you have one or two or ten "good days" before you haul off and slap your son or tell your wife she's useless and fat. This is the stuff that robs hard-working, brilliant artists from being able to create. This is the hardcore sniper who takes out the most articulate word warrior and leave her speechless when she most needs to fight.
This is depression you can't pray away.
Or... can you?
I am not, by many definitions, a Jesus Freak. And yet that's exactly what I was called today by a very near and dear friend. We were just talking and she said, as an aside, "I know you think you can just pray anything away, little Jesus Freak that you are, grrl..." and then she ate a jelly donut.
I blinked. I cocked my head. I took the last bite of her donut and said, "I don't believe that, actually." But by the time I got home, I decided that I do.
"I know you're out there.
I can feel you now.
I know that you're afraid.
You're afraid of change.
I don't know the future.
I didn't come here to tell you
how this is going to end.
I came here to tell you
how it's going to begin.
I'm going to show you a you
not ruled by this thing.
A you without without
borders or boundaries.
A you who makes anything
and everything possible."
The bigger the problem the harder it is to fix. Um, yeah. That makes logical sense. And yet billions of dollars a year are spent by people trying to do the hard thing (no, it isn't easy... shoving your face full of garbage food is easy) of losing major weight by some easy method. And, stunner of all stunners, it doesn't work. Like my jelly donut friend likes to say: Epic fail.
What's more, we all have different *God-given* abilities. Strengths and weaknesses that are different, unique from one another. What we have seen is easy for one person might be colossally difficult for us. But who are we to question the divinity and reasoning of God? Yeah, I don't think so. Kinda like a ten-step plan with fewer steps, let's just:
1. Accept life is hard.
2. Accept life is struggle.
3. Accept life is worth it.
I've been told before that my attitude (encompassed in these three points) is way too "willing martyr" or even far too "accepting of the unacceptable" for most everyday Americans. I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that many of my fellow Americans were so delusional. I don't feel like either a martyr or at all accepting of the unacceptable. I simply believe, with all my heart, that if life were easy, if the physical, chemical framework of our bodies were simple, we'd all be running around singing "Man in the Mirror" and making that change. But life is actually all about the complexities that make us made in His image and not made in the image of tapeworms.
Another adage kept coming into my mind on the drive home. That hiking saying: Walk lightly. Carry what you need and leave nothing behind.
Of course, that is not a good adage for life. It would actually be a really, really crummy life philosophy. But often, someone who suffers from major or "explosive" depression, feels like they are stomping through life leaving behind them a path of destruction and damaged that cannot be undone. These individuals are damaging themselves as they crash through the thickets and brambles of life, and they are damaging every loved one traveling with them. Because, far more often than not, these individuals are not alone, but rather surrounded by partners, husbands, wives, and children. Everyone is hurt. And no one is left the same.
I think the best approach would be to add a step to our not-quite-ten-step list:
4. Leave the moment better than it was.
Stop and think about that. Now, you might say, with depression, wouldn't it just be enough to leave the moment? Or leave your family? Or shut up, tune out, plead the Fifth? Um, yeah, if you want depression to win. I know that sounded simplistic but what I mean is: For every moment that you just try to stay quiet and get by, not engage, you are thinking of nothing but your depression. Your entire focus is on that. But what if, instead of wallowing, drowning in your own chemical bloodbath of doubt and despair, you made it your personal freaking mission to make every time you walked into a room actually *better* for someone else?
You step into the room and kiss your baby.
You step into a room and hand someone a cookie from the jar.
You step into the room and tell a joke (not a sarcastic or biting one).
You step into a room and hand a love note to someone you love.
You start to leave positive marks on your landscape. You leave behind the best of who you are. Even if depression has stolen your tongue and you can't find the words, you will not be without a voice. A good friend of mine has a sock drawer full of colored papered hearts. Every day she puts one in her coat pocket. When her depression spins out of control and drags her down, she gives the hearts that have gathered in her pocket to the people around her. Because they've stayed. They've stayed even though, sometimes, she's hurting them as badly as the depression hurts her. She just walks into the room and leave behind her hearts. Instead of screaming or fighting or throwing a vase, she leaves behind hearts. Her seventeen year old daughter told me, "I have a treasure chest. It's handmade and sits in the corner of my room. In it I have a shard of glass from my graduation photo that Mom threw across the kitchen once when she was raging. I also have three hundred and seventy-eight paper hearts. That piece of glass always reminds me how ugly she can be when she gets low. But I don't see it very often buried beneath all those paper hearts."
5.Pray constantly.
Ah, the Jesus Freak is in the house. I mean, could just as well say, "Sing constantly" or "Talk constantly." but I thin "Pray constantly." just has a certain freaky perfect to it, don't you? Let;s practice:
"Lord, I'm about to see Joss. He will say something with double-meaning. He will act like he owns me. It isn't my imagination. It isn't depression. Others have substantiated my feelings about him. He will be an ass. Help me smile at him, speak clearly and say only what is needed, not engage, and think of naked mole rats and how his wanker must look just like one."
You think that's too irreverent? Guess your Christ and my Christ aren't the same one. Go ahead and click to another website. Come back when you actually bring someone to God instead of terrify them into submission.
Let's keep praying:
"Lord, I'm feeling scared and low. I'm going into a stressful place filled with stressful people. Give me the strength to just wade into that stress and tell the really funny joke about the priest, the hamster, and the IMVU credit."
"Christ, allow me to swing my daughter into my arms and make her whole evening."
"Christ, it's me again. I just want to cry. Let's listen to music instead and then watch 'Glee' on Hulu."
"God, the chemicals surging through me are like a cancer. They eat away at me. Wearing me down to nothing, to worse than nothing, to a cancer in the lives of the people who love me. Because God? They have proven their love. Because they are still here. It would be the easy thing for them to go. But they stay because I fight to stay, too. Fight with me, God. Help me lift them up even as you lift me."
The moment, the second, the heartbeat you lift someone else, you will be lifted. The moment you reach out, you will be touched. No, not because turnabout is fair play, or because you're keeping tabs, or expect anything in return. But rather because thinking about something other than yourself and your situation and your own spinning wheels to nowhere, will *free* you to sing.
So maybe we should rewrite our steps. Maybe they should just become:
Accept it.
Face it.
Pray about it.
Rejoice in it.
Live it.
What's it? Life.
Or maybe the paper hearts line the path and the approach is only:
Love
"I looked at the sky
and remembered that
you’re always there.
Reminding me that all
I really have to do
is breathe."
For you are already loved in return.
EJ
Alex shares.
Krizia shares.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Praying in 140 Characters
I found it's possible, when it rains like this, to remember the face of Christ without being a fanatic or insane. Though sometimes I'm both.
How can intelligent people vomit ignorant bigotry all over their children? The whispered answer is simple: I overestimate their intelligence
Christ in raindrops, in pixels, in metalwork. My Lord in words, not scripture, but backbeats. Holy Spirit in speed, the wind, dark freeways.
I must call you my community because our bedroom politics are the same? You are raising your child blind to God. How can you possibly see me?
So hard to be the moral ruling class. Zipping up the chasm between church and State the way they zip up the body bags of all their gay kids.
Hypocrites are not only two-faced to their enemies. They barter in lies, make trades with stolen trust. Not a fortune cookie. Your mother.
Finding inspiration in salty sea spray, fresh sweet rain, and the cold brilliant night that is just between my Christ and me and all of you.
Dawn arrives without trumpets. Even arrives on time. Every songbird had faith. Every flower turned her face in anticipation. Suspended there
Christ is unchanged, always changing. Rain falling down glass, the waves of the sea, the clouds in the sky. Gamer grrls change too. S(t)weet
It amazes me how much can be said (and left unsaid most artfully) with only 140 characters. And certainly Christ doesn't care whether you spend forty hours a day on your knees or fifteen seconds praising His name. After all, He's got billions of us already. He's not really looking for quantity. He's looking for meat. And amazingly, that sustenance can be found in ever fewer than 140 characters. It can be found in:
Please help me.
I trust you.
Walk with me.
I love you.
Like the child who asked his grandfather, "I only know one prayer. Do you think that's enough?" The grandfather answered, "Christ doesn't hear the words, child, He only hears your voice."
Spreading the word in every medium, because every gamer grrl knows the value of good brand exposure,
EJ
How can intelligent people vomit ignorant bigotry all over their children? The whispered answer is simple: I overestimate their intelligence
Christ in raindrops, in pixels, in metalwork. My Lord in words, not scripture, but backbeats. Holy Spirit in speed, the wind, dark freeways.
I must call you my community because our bedroom politics are the same? You are raising your child blind to God. How can you possibly see me?
So hard to be the moral ruling class. Zipping up the chasm between church and State the way they zip up the body bags of all their gay kids.
Hypocrites are not only two-faced to their enemies. They barter in lies, make trades with stolen trust. Not a fortune cookie. Your mother.
Finding inspiration in salty sea spray, fresh sweet rain, and the cold brilliant night that is just between my Christ and me and all of you.
Dawn arrives without trumpets. Even arrives on time. Every songbird had faith. Every flower turned her face in anticipation. Suspended there
Christ is unchanged, always changing. Rain falling down glass, the waves of the sea, the clouds in the sky. Gamer grrls change too. S(t)weet
It amazes me how much can be said (and left unsaid most artfully) with only 140 characters. And certainly Christ doesn't care whether you spend forty hours a day on your knees or fifteen seconds praising His name. After all, He's got billions of us already. He's not really looking for quantity. He's looking for meat. And amazingly, that sustenance can be found in ever fewer than 140 characters. It can be found in:
Please help me.
I trust you.
Walk with me.
I love you.
Like the child who asked his grandfather, "I only know one prayer. Do you think that's enough?" The grandfather answered, "Christ doesn't hear the words, child, He only hears your voice."
Spreading the word in every medium, because every gamer grrl knows the value of good brand exposure,
EJ
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Suspicion
"You start walking your way
and I'll start walking mine.
We'll meet in the middle..."
"Too right for left, too left for right.
You can't get me, I can't get you.
From my spot on the fence
what a wonderful view."
I do this sometimes. Well, I do a lot of things sometimes. Not a very stable grrl, I suppose. But I can't remember ever reading about an artist who was stable. Most of them are down-right nuts and nuggets, as a matter of fact *shrug* I suppose I'm doing all right.
"Walk on down to the corner grocery store.
Bought myself some groceries and a little bit more.
Now I'm flying, flying higher than a kite.
And I'm doing all right, doing all right."
There is a stranger and you all know how I never learned not to talk to strangers. I figure that ever stranger is just an experience I haven't had yet. And as a gamer grrl I gotta get that EXP or I'll never level up, baby. I mean, What's your story? Right? This is Hollywood. Land of Dreams. Everybody gots a story.
So I'm slumming it because I've been working for twenty-three days straight and they've been those killer ten and twelve hour days and it's just shy of midnight and I look like slop. I'm in jeans all torn up and combat boots I bought off the back of a truck that have claw marks from some cat (I hope) along one side and a new-to-me ratty-ole brown leather jacket with Airforce patches and... oh yeah... that's about it.
'Cept, you know, my cross.
Now sometimes I don't wear one. I mean, I have ink. My shoulder. So I'm always wearing one. But sometimes I do stumble on my own belly button lint and I start to spinning about that whole concentric circle game of we're-gonna-be-different-because-we've-so-enlightened, "Why the cross?! What an icky symbol! Why celebrate His death?" And so I wear my Ichthys. You know. The little Christian fish symbol. But tonight I just so happen to be wearing my cross.
And my lefthand thumb ring.
And my left back-pocket purple bandanna.
And my attitude. And your cologne. (Not that I put it on... per say.)
So when I smile (way) up at the stranger in line before me at the corner store -- me a great big cornucopia of patches and symbols and code words and statements -- I'm not really surprised when he starts in. I was only surprised that he wasted no time.
"How do you know who you are?" He motions me up and down (mostly down because dude is like a big brickhouse and I'm his pool boy... or the tool shed).
I tilt my head and shrug a bit. "Cuz my Bible tells me so?"
He smiles, showing perfect LA teeth. I wonder, Do I know him? He says, "Society tells you who you are. The media."
My grin deepens. "I am the media, baby."
He laughs and he has a nice laugh and I look down and he steps outta line and I follow him. he leans against a concrete pillar next to the ice cream freezer and I notice he wears a wedding ring and the numbers tattooed across his knuckles might be scripture or they might be California penal code. Hard to tell. His skin is a two shades darker than mine, as chocolate as mine is cinnamon.
"You aren't suspicious?" He's looking down my half-zipped jacket. Not much to write home about ('cept the wearing no shirt part) but I know he's looking at my cross. "You're all covered in tags."
Oh, hon. If you only knew.
"It takes too much energy to be suspicious," I answer and my sincerity is so obvious in my voice it startles me a little. I guess... you know... I have something to say about suspicions. "I gotta look at it like this: If I work my skinny butt off to prove all my suspicions, I'll do it. Every one. I'll find liars and cheats and people who hate me who I thought were my friends. I'll find money exchanging hands in the parking lot of every church and blood in the confessionals and bribes on the offering plate. I'll find good people where I don't want to find them and bad people holding me tight when I cry. I think I'd rather spend my energy doing something else. Doing something... for Him. Not for me."
The stranger looks at me. The clock on the wall behind him says that, according to man's time, it's the Sabbath. Saturday and turned to Sunday by the power of man's great big black-on-white numbers. The power of the tick tock. It doesn't feel like the Sabbath to me until the horizon is painted with color. Or... does it?
"Do I make you suspicious?" What on Earth made me blurt that I don't know. Maybe not on Earth at all but rather in Heaven.
He smiles at me, the glib response ready to tumble on my deserving head but then he stops. He holds out his hand. We shake, just one pump, then hold, nothing wrong, mutual understanding. His hand is the length of my forearm.
"If I asked you, what should I do today, what would you say?" He means Sunday morning. What should he do Sunday morning.
"Ask me."
His smile widens. He even shakes his head in amusement. I don't wait for him to ask again.
"Stay home," I tell him as I realize our eyes are almost exactly the same color. "Stay home and make love with your lady and laugh with your kids. Go walking alone. Go walking with them. Plant something. Pray aloud together. Pray aloud alone. Realize that every congregation you need already hold dominion in your heart, in your home. You. Your family. God. The rest..." I look away. I shake my own head. I drop his hand and smile back at him. "The rest, man, is all suspicious."
And I turn and get back in line to pay for my gum, my Coke, and a pack of Beef Jerky.
I'll take my communion without the smoke, without the mirrors, without the closed curtains, pre-determined ballots, political pay-offs, and absolutely without the media.
The church of my heart is like my favorite dance clubs. Media Free.
EJ
403. Every person who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character (only in its spirit), other than an assembly or meeting is guilty of a misdemeanor.
404. Any use of force, disturbing the public peace, or any threat to use force, if accompanied by immediate power of execution, by two or more persons acting together, and without authority of law, is a riot.
405. (a) Every person who with the intent to cause a riot does an act or engages in conduct that urges a riot, or urges others to commit acts of force and power, or the burning or destroying of lies, and at a time and place and under circumstances that produce a clear and present and immediate danger of acts of force, is guilty of incitement to riot.... (b) The existence of any fact that would bring a person under this definition of subversion shall be alleged in the complaint, information, or indictment and either admitted by the defendant in open court, or found to be true by the jury trying the issue of guilt, by the court where guilt is established by a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, or by trial by the court sitting without a jury.
406. Every person who participates in any riot is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
407. The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer or lawful institution which confines any person is considered a lynching.
408. Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.
409. Whenever two or more persons, assembled and acting together, make any attempt or advance toward the commission of an act which would be a riot if actually committed, such assembly is a rout.
410. Whenever two or more persons assemble together to do an unlawful act, or do a lawful act in a forceful, boisterous, or tumultuous manner, such assembly is an unlawful assembly.
Yeah... well... nolo contendere, baby. Nolo contendere.
and I'll start walking mine.
We'll meet in the middle..."
"Too right for left, too left for right.
You can't get me, I can't get you.
From my spot on the fence
what a wonderful view."
I do this sometimes. Well, I do a lot of things sometimes. Not a very stable grrl, I suppose. But I can't remember ever reading about an artist who was stable. Most of them are down-right nuts and nuggets, as a matter of fact *shrug* I suppose I'm doing all right.
"Walk on down to the corner grocery store.
Bought myself some groceries and a little bit more.
Now I'm flying, flying higher than a kite.
And I'm doing all right, doing all right."
There is a stranger and you all know how I never learned not to talk to strangers. I figure that ever stranger is just an experience I haven't had yet. And as a gamer grrl I gotta get that EXP or I'll never level up, baby. I mean, What's your story? Right? This is Hollywood. Land of Dreams. Everybody gots a story.
So I'm slumming it because I've been working for twenty-three days straight and they've been those killer ten and twelve hour days and it's just shy of midnight and I look like slop. I'm in jeans all torn up and combat boots I bought off the back of a truck that have claw marks from some cat (I hope) along one side and a new-to-me ratty-ole brown leather jacket with Airforce patches and... oh yeah... that's about it.
'Cept, you know, my cross.
Now sometimes I don't wear one. I mean, I have ink. My shoulder. So I'm always wearing one. But sometimes I do stumble on my own belly button lint and I start to spinning about that whole concentric circle game of we're-gonna-be-different-because-we've-so-enlightened, "Why the cross?! What an icky symbol! Why celebrate His death?" And so I wear my Ichthys. You know. The little Christian fish symbol. But tonight I just so happen to be wearing my cross.
And my lefthand thumb ring.
And my left back-pocket purple bandanna.
And my attitude. And your cologne. (Not that I put it on... per say.)
So when I smile (way) up at the stranger in line before me at the corner store -- me a great big cornucopia of patches and symbols and code words and statements -- I'm not really surprised when he starts in. I was only surprised that he wasted no time.
"How do you know who you are?" He motions me up and down (mostly down because dude is like a big brickhouse and I'm his pool boy... or the tool shed).
I tilt my head and shrug a bit. "Cuz my Bible tells me so?"
He smiles, showing perfect LA teeth. I wonder, Do I know him? He says, "Society tells you who you are. The media."
My grin deepens. "I am the media, baby."
He laughs and he has a nice laugh and I look down and he steps outta line and I follow him. he leans against a concrete pillar next to the ice cream freezer and I notice he wears a wedding ring and the numbers tattooed across his knuckles might be scripture or they might be California penal code. Hard to tell. His skin is a two shades darker than mine, as chocolate as mine is cinnamon.
"You aren't suspicious?" He's looking down my half-zipped jacket. Not much to write home about ('cept the wearing no shirt part) but I know he's looking at my cross. "You're all covered in tags."
Oh, hon. If you only knew.
"It takes too much energy to be suspicious," I answer and my sincerity is so obvious in my voice it startles me a little. I guess... you know... I have something to say about suspicions. "I gotta look at it like this: If I work my skinny butt off to prove all my suspicions, I'll do it. Every one. I'll find liars and cheats and people who hate me who I thought were my friends. I'll find money exchanging hands in the parking lot of every church and blood in the confessionals and bribes on the offering plate. I'll find good people where I don't want to find them and bad people holding me tight when I cry. I think I'd rather spend my energy doing something else. Doing something... for Him. Not for me."
The stranger looks at me. The clock on the wall behind him says that, according to man's time, it's the Sabbath. Saturday and turned to Sunday by the power of man's great big black-on-white numbers. The power of the tick tock. It doesn't feel like the Sabbath to me until the horizon is painted with color. Or... does it?
"Do I make you suspicious?" What on Earth made me blurt that I don't know. Maybe not on Earth at all but rather in Heaven.
He smiles at me, the glib response ready to tumble on my deserving head but then he stops. He holds out his hand. We shake, just one pump, then hold, nothing wrong, mutual understanding. His hand is the length of my forearm.
"If I asked you, what should I do today, what would you say?" He means Sunday morning. What should he do Sunday morning.
"Ask me."
His smile widens. He even shakes his head in amusement. I don't wait for him to ask again.
"Stay home," I tell him as I realize our eyes are almost exactly the same color. "Stay home and make love with your lady and laugh with your kids. Go walking alone. Go walking with them. Plant something. Pray aloud together. Pray aloud alone. Realize that every congregation you need already hold dominion in your heart, in your home. You. Your family. God. The rest..." I look away. I shake my own head. I drop his hand and smile back at him. "The rest, man, is all suspicious."
And I turn and get back in line to pay for my gum, my Coke, and a pack of Beef Jerky.
I'll take my communion without the smoke, without the mirrors, without the closed curtains, pre-determined ballots, political pay-offs, and absolutely without the media.
The church of my heart is like my favorite dance clubs. Media Free.
EJ
403. Every person who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character (only in its spirit), other than an assembly or meeting is guilty of a misdemeanor.
404. Any use of force, disturbing the public peace, or any threat to use force, if accompanied by immediate power of execution, by two or more persons acting together, and without authority of law, is a riot.
405. (a) Every person who with the intent to cause a riot does an act or engages in conduct that urges a riot, or urges others to commit acts of force and power, or the burning or destroying of lies, and at a time and place and under circumstances that produce a clear and present and immediate danger of acts of force, is guilty of incitement to riot.... (b) The existence of any fact that would bring a person under this definition of subversion shall be alleged in the complaint, information, or indictment and either admitted by the defendant in open court, or found to be true by the jury trying the issue of guilt, by the court where guilt is established by a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, or by trial by the court sitting without a jury.
406. Every person who participates in any riot is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
407. The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer or lawful institution which confines any person is considered a lynching.
408. Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.
409. Whenever two or more persons, assembled and acting together, make any attempt or advance toward the commission of an act which would be a riot if actually committed, such assembly is a rout.
410. Whenever two or more persons assemble together to do an unlawful act, or do a lawful act in a forceful, boisterous, or tumultuous manner, such assembly is an unlawful assembly.
Yeah... well... nolo contendere, baby. Nolo contendere.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Relevance
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[I am sitting in the sunshine, pale and sweet with autumn, in the public park in town. I am reading from my Bible and lost in thoughts private between me and my God. A woman comes suddenly to stand so close I see her feet first... and then the feet of her little children. "And if you bigots won't let me marry my partner, their other mother, the only family they have or know, what will happen to my children when I die?!" And she does not wait for a response. She is so angry. There is no time. There is no time because the effects of chemotherapy are obvious and universal. You come up behind me and only then do I realize I am standing. You saw and heard it all. You wrap your arms around me from behind. You whisper, "She doesn't know. She didn't see." But I look down at my Bible and I respond, "She saw enough." And I start to cry.]
I find the people I want around me are the ones who write a good press release. Better yet, the ones who can take a book, song, product, movie and boil it down into two sentences of why and if it's relevant.
Relevant. That means it means something. To us. Now. That means it reaches us, touches us, finds and discover us. And the "it" doesn't have to be inanimate. It can be he, she, them, even us.
Are we relevant?
I felt lost and alone. Oh, look. I'm unstable. I asked, "When you are struggling, when you're ill and hurting, is this... all of this... even relevant?"
You were silent for a long time. The distance between us clicked and hummed on the phone lines. I imagined I could count the beat of your pulse. "I'm sorry," you said, your voice low and smooth. "When did salvation become irrelevant?"
The partner you always wanted is right there.
And there. And there.
Have you ever done something, dreamed some dream (you know, a Dream), and thought it was big, it was wide, it would teach and preach and reach and touch, find and discover and no one, no one at all, would ever resistant it, ever close their hearts to it, because it was right (you know, Right)? Have you ever felt that feeling? Maybe even seen the proof in the pudding and in the reality of the reason for believing.
But you can't change a heart. You can cause a heart to open or close. You can coax or condemn a heart. But what it is, who it is, at its core, it will remain, now then forever. The scripture of the heart, wisemen like to say, is written in blood and muscle long before we are grown men. The scripture of the heart is what we have come to believe -- not the words we have memorized or the parts we have played -- but the truth behind it all. Arrogant, self-important, doomed, dreamer, useless, soldier -- the core truth is there, imprinted if not by the hand of God, than by the acts and reactions of our parents, our peers, our reality, our nonreality. The truth remains, lingering, whispering, carrying on into immortality, even after our bones (and heart) are less than dust.
I have witnessed and known -- blessed to know -- fighters who have risen from darkness and struggle and hopelessness. They are bright and they blaze trails for others to follow (or fall behind if they can't keep up). But even there, deep inside these burning hearts, there are whispers from the seed they grew from.
No. I am not saying "once poor, always poor." No. I am not saying we cannot change our station or that our lives are pre-written and we can't break away from cycles of abusive, of nature, of nurture. I am saying simply: The whispers will always be there.
So... I'll surround myself -- arm myself! -- with seeds who are:
Humble in speech
Proud by right
Relentless in desire
Driven by faith
Strong in community
Brazen in spirit
Unshaken by adversity
Deserving of respect
"No one *deserves* my respect," she told the group of teens. "They earn my respect." She looked at them each, slowly. It took time. Everyone waited their turn. "My parents. My teachers. My peers. Any and every authority. All of you. My loyalty is legendary. If you earn my respect." (Gee... think she grew up on the streets? What does her heart seed whisper?)
Earning respect. I would think, to do so, you'd have to be pretty dang relevant. You'd have to be active and push. Not passive and pull. You'd have to be a fighter. You have to read the signs.
"Push Communication is where the offer of information is initiated by the speaker. It is contrasted with Pull Communication, where the request of information is initiated by the listener."
They cannot read the signs. Because the trappings of comfortable religion (which have never fit the amorphous, limitless possibilities of faith) are just that, traps. The lightning is not Zeus. The rain is not tears. But neither is science the devil. Neither is desire the enemy.
They are lonely and lost. They are arrogant and meek. They stumble and ask questions that those who have trampled before us cannot answer. They are seeing in nature what is killed inside their churches. They are looking for truth before the faith in them dies.
"There is tranquility in ignorance, but servitude is its partner."
The New Hampshire license plate once read (still does?): Live Free or Die
Who am I serving? Who are you serving?
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." --Abraham Lincoln
The whispers in my heart are wild, untamed. They turn tables. They do not waver. If I drift from the path, they call me back. If I look to the sky, they bring me dawn.
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." The ones you don't want anymore, the one who are beginning to want something and it isn't you, we will take them in. And we won't all get along. And we won't all look alike. And we won't all agree. But welcome is what happens when people listen. Welcome is what happens when people speak. Community is what happens when you earn each other's respect. Christ is just a natural consequence of all that truth.
Mark Twain said once, "Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." Especially when the diet is hollow but convincing. Tasty and neat. No clean up afterwards. Drop your tithe in the plate and continue on. The country songs croon, "Here's a twenty for last night, and another for what I'll do tonight." Now ain't that American?
Rally forces and step in time. One person made a difference, you know His name, but now He asks us to repeat His cycle. He turned the tables, turned everything upside down. No more original sin. No more sacrifices. No more anything but a direct line to Him. Times have changed. They had changed then. The old ways fall away. They were crumbling then. To be a real Christian is not to hate. It is not to oppress. It is not to deny certain inalienable rights.
It is to bring change. It is to rise up and embrace thy neighbor.
Those of us who have broken free of denomination's pasture to find the Shepherd have one journey and one alone:
To keep Christianity relevant.
EJ
[I am sitting in the sunshine, pale and sweet with autumn, in the public park in town. I am reading from my Bible and lost in thoughts private between me and my God. A woman comes suddenly to stand so close I see her feet first... and then the feet of her little children. "And if you bigots won't let me marry my partner, their other mother, the only family they have or know, what will happen to my children when I die?!" And she does not wait for a response. She is so angry. There is no time. There is no time because the effects of chemotherapy are obvious and universal. You come up behind me and only then do I realize I am standing. You saw and heard it all. You wrap your arms around me from behind. You whisper, "She doesn't know. She didn't see." But I look down at my Bible and I respond, "She saw enough." And I start to cry.]
I find the people I want around me are the ones who write a good press release. Better yet, the ones who can take a book, song, product, movie and boil it down into two sentences of why and if it's relevant.
Relevant. That means it means something. To us. Now. That means it reaches us, touches us, finds and discover us. And the "it" doesn't have to be inanimate. It can be he, she, them, even us.
Are we relevant?
I felt lost and alone. Oh, look. I'm unstable. I asked, "When you are struggling, when you're ill and hurting, is this... all of this... even relevant?"
You were silent for a long time. The distance between us clicked and hummed on the phone lines. I imagined I could count the beat of your pulse. "I'm sorry," you said, your voice low and smooth. "When did salvation become irrelevant?"
The partner you always wanted is right there.
And there. And there.
Have you ever done something, dreamed some dream (you know, a Dream), and thought it was big, it was wide, it would teach and preach and reach and touch, find and discover and no one, no one at all, would ever resistant it, ever close their hearts to it, because it was right (you know, Right)? Have you ever felt that feeling? Maybe even seen the proof in the pudding and in the reality of the reason for believing.
But you can't change a heart. You can cause a heart to open or close. You can coax or condemn a heart. But what it is, who it is, at its core, it will remain, now then forever. The scripture of the heart, wisemen like to say, is written in blood and muscle long before we are grown men. The scripture of the heart is what we have come to believe -- not the words we have memorized or the parts we have played -- but the truth behind it all. Arrogant, self-important, doomed, dreamer, useless, soldier -- the core truth is there, imprinted if not by the hand of God, than by the acts and reactions of our parents, our peers, our reality, our nonreality. The truth remains, lingering, whispering, carrying on into immortality, even after our bones (and heart) are less than dust.
I have witnessed and known -- blessed to know -- fighters who have risen from darkness and struggle and hopelessness. They are bright and they blaze trails for others to follow (or fall behind if they can't keep up). But even there, deep inside these burning hearts, there are whispers from the seed they grew from.
No. I am not saying "once poor, always poor." No. I am not saying we cannot change our station or that our lives are pre-written and we can't break away from cycles of abusive, of nature, of nurture. I am saying simply: The whispers will always be there.
So... I'll surround myself -- arm myself! -- with seeds who are:
Humble in speech
Proud by right
Relentless in desire
Driven by faith
Strong in community
Brazen in spirit
Unshaken by adversity
Deserving of respect
"No one *deserves* my respect," she told the group of teens. "They earn my respect." She looked at them each, slowly. It took time. Everyone waited their turn. "My parents. My teachers. My peers. Any and every authority. All of you. My loyalty is legendary. If you earn my respect." (Gee... think she grew up on the streets? What does her heart seed whisper?)
Earning respect. I would think, to do so, you'd have to be pretty dang relevant. You'd have to be active and push. Not passive and pull. You'd have to be a fighter. You have to read the signs.
"Push Communication is where the offer of information is initiated by the speaker. It is contrasted with Pull Communication, where the request of information is initiated by the listener."
They cannot read the signs. Because the trappings of comfortable religion (which have never fit the amorphous, limitless possibilities of faith) are just that, traps. The lightning is not Zeus. The rain is not tears. But neither is science the devil. Neither is desire the enemy.
They are lonely and lost. They are arrogant and meek. They stumble and ask questions that those who have trampled before us cannot answer. They are seeing in nature what is killed inside their churches. They are looking for truth before the faith in them dies.
"There is tranquility in ignorance, but servitude is its partner."
The New Hampshire license plate once read (still does?): Live Free or Die
Who am I serving? Who are you serving?
"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." --Abraham Lincoln
The whispers in my heart are wild, untamed. They turn tables. They do not waver. If I drift from the path, they call me back. If I look to the sky, they bring me dawn.
"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." The ones you don't want anymore, the one who are beginning to want something and it isn't you, we will take them in. And we won't all get along. And we won't all look alike. And we won't all agree. But welcome is what happens when people listen. Welcome is what happens when people speak. Community is what happens when you earn each other's respect. Christ is just a natural consequence of all that truth.
Mark Twain said once, "Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." Especially when the diet is hollow but convincing. Tasty and neat. No clean up afterwards. Drop your tithe in the plate and continue on. The country songs croon, "Here's a twenty for last night, and another for what I'll do tonight." Now ain't that American?
Rally forces and step in time. One person made a difference, you know His name, but now He asks us to repeat His cycle. He turned the tables, turned everything upside down. No more original sin. No more sacrifices. No more anything but a direct line to Him. Times have changed. They had changed then. The old ways fall away. They were crumbling then. To be a real Christian is not to hate. It is not to oppress. It is not to deny certain inalienable rights.
It is to bring change. It is to rise up and embrace thy neighbor.
Those of us who have broken free of denomination's pasture to find the Shepherd have one journey and one alone:
To keep Christianity relevant.
EJ
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Surfacing
No matter what you say about life
I learn every time I bleed.
That truth is not a stranger to me.
I admit that I'm wrong
and then I change my mind.
I realize nothing is broken.
No need to worry about everything I've done.
Live every second like it was my last one.
This is my path and I walk it.
You tell me, it's not you, it's me.
And, baby, I would have to agree.
The radio is playing, running off batteries the way my bossman ran off at the mouth today, keeping us four hours long on no extra pay to give us notes (you know, Notes) on performances phoned-in by walk-ons who weren't even there. I'm told I'm supposed to be joyful that I have work at all. And I do have it. Work. Lots of it. Work. But not sure where the money goes after rent and food and utilities. Seems like there's never enough left for anything more. Not gas, not 'net, not a movie out. Seems like we're drowning in all this work... with nothing floating on the surface.
But I take a deep breath of the cold city air and I am thankful. God bless America, I am more thankful than I can find words to express as I exhale a free woman with access to free press and a heart that loves who she pleases and how. I am aware and awake to the truth that what I take from my job is less stress than the world hands some of my friends -- where rent or food or utilities are not paid. Where kind words cease to be helpful at all if they aren't accompanied with cold, hard cash to buy shoes and winter jackets at Goodwill.
The day, my day, falls away to the pavement and I walk the last two blocks home. I stood on that street corner for half an hour coming to terms with the fact that I was so far from drowning I was laying in the sun, on the sand, drink in hand, compared to some of those I love.
No sooner do I arrive home that you take off. Take your jacket. Take your keys. You're gone. I sink down on the couch, tug at yesterday's paper. I watch you leave. I hear the lock snap. Your face, just a glimpse, was tight, angry, your teeth bared while you breathed through parted lips. I close my eyes. I think it was only for a moment.
When I open then again, you are standing in the threshold. The only light is behind you, indirect and diffuse. You are cast in shadows heavier than night. You are holding a rose, deep red, long-stemmed. You stand there forever.
A drowning man doesn't worry about pride. A drowning man will fling out a hand to any soul, friend or enemy. A drowning man who believes... who Believes in himself, in his own worth, in his own place, in his own value on the face of a world of billions, will fight fiercely until no breath remains, until oblivion swallows him whole.
He does not fight only when it is easy. He does not fight just until it gets hard. He does not fight only when there is a chance. He fights even in the maw of the lions. He fights when there is no reason or logic or peace from fighting.
Christ did not suffer... for hours... pain and humiliation, degeneration and betrayal... just so we can give up on His ticket. Just so we can step off His watch. Lay it down. Hand it over. "Let go, let God." doesn't mean give up. It means: Open up! He doesn't have a queue. He's not backed up, baby. You scream, when you bob to the surface, "Lord! Lift me up! Lord! Fill me with your fight!" And He does. He just... does.
Because that's what a Christian is. A live wire. An open conduit for Christ.
I am not understanding the reason why the Far Right pounded their chests whenever liberals (dear Lord, what does that even mean any more?!) "disrespected" the president. And yet... every right-bent blog I visit, opens with, "Hey, *I* didn't vote for him..." or "I'm conservative. That means I didn't vote for Obama." Oh. Okay. Hi! *waving* Hi there, *minority.* Hi there, loser! Hi there, person calling attention to the fact that you don't agree with most of your own country. United we stand, people. Before you blog, "Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing." How about you try typing, "Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for proving to a world of 6,485,614,626 non-Americans that if they just wait four years, the heavy-handed, bigoted, Republican, double-dealing, intolerant white men will, by and large, be cast aside by the free thinkers who understand what the words 'freedom of religion' and 'division of church and state' mean and elect a new president... one that might *finally* be a decent man... instead of a creature owned by the institution of lies that is Man's Church." (MLA or APA Citations for these statements have been removed to encourage readers to GO READ history themselves... and perhaps the Bible, too.)
I am surfacing. I rise from the couch.
The drowning man does not have time for oratory. The drowning man does not have time for clever twists of words, barbed and stinging. The dying *man* does not strike out in his last, but rather fights on with it. It is only the dying *beast* (so close, sadly, to some men that one is the same and indistinguishable) that strikes out even as it falls. Where is the victory in pity, in pain, in energy and heartbeats spent toward two defeats?
I was nine. I was angry. In the way that only children can get angry. My mother tired to reason with me. I mother never reasoned well. She called, throwing up her hands, to my father. He lowered his paper slowly. He tipped his head and looked at me.
"You think this is righteous anger, Eliza?"
"I do, Papa."
"You think it brings glory to God?"
I am silent. He is not:
"You are the scorpion in the desert drowning in quick sand. With your last strength you strike and kill the owl. If instead you had wrapped your tail around his foot, he would have lifted you from the sand."
The thing that haunted me, stayed with me, for years afterwards, is that my father, gentle, conservative, traditional, joyful, open-minded, intellectual, had given me the blue prints for life. With that one fable -- a flash fable, like flash fiction -- he had left enough unsaid that I could carry on as pacifist or fighter. I could move forward in silence or with shrewd retort.
I learned:
To let a bigot talk himself out... and then use his own grandiose flight against him.
To find my footing, and then strike.
To call for help, and value help, but still know forever who my enemies are.
To struggle. Always. Until I get it right.
To see my attackers for what they are: A chance to stretch, to reach, to grow.
To trust that God will always send the owl.
And that the owl will try to eat me.
And that sometimes I will have to sting the owl when we are still in flight.
But falling through a sky of Christ's own stars is the best kind of drowning I can imagine.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
It is not morbid or emo to admit, to announce, to confess and to confer that we are all drowning men. In sadness, in regret, in anger, in inaction. We are all drowning in some small or large way because we are not perfect, we are not divine, we are men, we are human, we are mortal. We can wash ourselves with thankfulness that we are not another man, who no longer can break the glassy surface of the stormy sea, but thankfulness alone doesn't buoy us for long. We can stop the weeds of wallowing self-pity from tugging us down, but eventually, even thankfulness will fail if we are surrounded by other drowning men.
But what happens if instead of dying together, we cross the fathoms and give to each other everything we have? Do we drown faster? If we are all struggling together, if we all unify to struggle toward one goal -- to host an art show, to hold an open mic, to launch a book... a shuttle... a dream -- aren't our chances for survival a thousand times magnified? Aren't we stronger in numbers, as a community, as a people?
Abraham Lincoln, before his election, said to a prominent preacher, a man who could bring about or bring down Lincoln's nomination to the party, "I will join a church when they ask me to subscribe not to man's word, but to the words of Christ: To love one's neighbor as oneself. To see all men as equal in the eyes of the Lord."
Standing before you, the scent of roses from one rose, the ceiling disappears and I am beneath a billion stars. I could stand here forever, tracing angel constellations, wishing that someone would defend me.
But I would rather stand here and shout, sing, pray. And defend someone else.
Just think if we all saved a drowning man today, how clear the sea would look tomorrow.
EJ
I learn every time I bleed.
That truth is not a stranger to me.
I admit that I'm wrong
and then I change my mind.
I realize nothing is broken.
No need to worry about everything I've done.
Live every second like it was my last one.
This is my path and I walk it.
You tell me, it's not you, it's me.
And, baby, I would have to agree.
The radio is playing, running off batteries the way my bossman ran off at the mouth today, keeping us four hours long on no extra pay to give us notes (you know, Notes) on performances phoned-in by walk-ons who weren't even there. I'm told I'm supposed to be joyful that I have work at all. And I do have it. Work. Lots of it. Work. But not sure where the money goes after rent and food and utilities. Seems like there's never enough left for anything more. Not gas, not 'net, not a movie out. Seems like we're drowning in all this work... with nothing floating on the surface.
But I take a deep breath of the cold city air and I am thankful. God bless America, I am more thankful than I can find words to express as I exhale a free woman with access to free press and a heart that loves who she pleases and how. I am aware and awake to the truth that what I take from my job is less stress than the world hands some of my friends -- where rent or food or utilities are not paid. Where kind words cease to be helpful at all if they aren't accompanied with cold, hard cash to buy shoes and winter jackets at Goodwill.
The day, my day, falls away to the pavement and I walk the last two blocks home. I stood on that street corner for half an hour coming to terms with the fact that I was so far from drowning I was laying in the sun, on the sand, drink in hand, compared to some of those I love.
No sooner do I arrive home that you take off. Take your jacket. Take your keys. You're gone. I sink down on the couch, tug at yesterday's paper. I watch you leave. I hear the lock snap. Your face, just a glimpse, was tight, angry, your teeth bared while you breathed through parted lips. I close my eyes. I think it was only for a moment.
When I open then again, you are standing in the threshold. The only light is behind you, indirect and diffuse. You are cast in shadows heavier than night. You are holding a rose, deep red, long-stemmed. You stand there forever.
A drowning man doesn't worry about pride. A drowning man will fling out a hand to any soul, friend or enemy. A drowning man who believes... who Believes in himself, in his own worth, in his own place, in his own value on the face of a world of billions, will fight fiercely until no breath remains, until oblivion swallows him whole.
He does not fight only when it is easy. He does not fight just until it gets hard. He does not fight only when there is a chance. He fights even in the maw of the lions. He fights when there is no reason or logic or peace from fighting.
Christ did not suffer... for hours... pain and humiliation, degeneration and betrayal... just so we can give up on His ticket. Just so we can step off His watch. Lay it down. Hand it over. "Let go, let God." doesn't mean give up. It means: Open up! He doesn't have a queue. He's not backed up, baby. You scream, when you bob to the surface, "Lord! Lift me up! Lord! Fill me with your fight!" And He does. He just... does.
Because that's what a Christian is. A live wire. An open conduit for Christ.
I am not understanding the reason why the Far Right pounded their chests whenever liberals (dear Lord, what does that even mean any more?!) "disrespected" the president. And yet... every right-bent blog I visit, opens with, "Hey, *I* didn't vote for him..." or "I'm conservative. That means I didn't vote for Obama." Oh. Okay. Hi! *waving* Hi there, *minority.* Hi there, loser! Hi there, person calling attention to the fact that you don't agree with most of your own country. United we stand, people. Before you blog, "Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing." How about you try typing, "Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for proving to a world of 6,485,614,626 non-Americans that if they just wait four years, the heavy-handed, bigoted, Republican, double-dealing, intolerant white men will, by and large, be cast aside by the free thinkers who understand what the words 'freedom of religion' and 'division of church and state' mean and elect a new president... one that might *finally* be a decent man... instead of a creature owned by the institution of lies that is Man's Church." (MLA or APA Citations for these statements have been removed to encourage readers to GO READ history themselves... and perhaps the Bible, too.)
I am surfacing. I rise from the couch.
The drowning man does not have time for oratory. The drowning man does not have time for clever twists of words, barbed and stinging. The dying *man* does not strike out in his last, but rather fights on with it. It is only the dying *beast* (so close, sadly, to some men that one is the same and indistinguishable) that strikes out even as it falls. Where is the victory in pity, in pain, in energy and heartbeats spent toward two defeats?
I was nine. I was angry. In the way that only children can get angry. My mother tired to reason with me. I mother never reasoned well. She called, throwing up her hands, to my father. He lowered his paper slowly. He tipped his head and looked at me.
"You think this is righteous anger, Eliza?"
"I do, Papa."
"You think it brings glory to God?"
I am silent. He is not:
"You are the scorpion in the desert drowning in quick sand. With your last strength you strike and kill the owl. If instead you had wrapped your tail around his foot, he would have lifted you from the sand."
The thing that haunted me, stayed with me, for years afterwards, is that my father, gentle, conservative, traditional, joyful, open-minded, intellectual, had given me the blue prints for life. With that one fable -- a flash fable, like flash fiction -- he had left enough unsaid that I could carry on as pacifist or fighter. I could move forward in silence or with shrewd retort.
I learned:
To let a bigot talk himself out... and then use his own grandiose flight against him.
To find my footing, and then strike.
To call for help, and value help, but still know forever who my enemies are.
To struggle. Always. Until I get it right.
To see my attackers for what they are: A chance to stretch, to reach, to grow.
To trust that God will always send the owl.
And that the owl will try to eat me.
And that sometimes I will have to sting the owl when we are still in flight.
But falling through a sky of Christ's own stars is the best kind of drowning I can imagine.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
It is not morbid or emo to admit, to announce, to confess and to confer that we are all drowning men. In sadness, in regret, in anger, in inaction. We are all drowning in some small or large way because we are not perfect, we are not divine, we are men, we are human, we are mortal. We can wash ourselves with thankfulness that we are not another man, who no longer can break the glassy surface of the stormy sea, but thankfulness alone doesn't buoy us for long. We can stop the weeds of wallowing self-pity from tugging us down, but eventually, even thankfulness will fail if we are surrounded by other drowning men.
But what happens if instead of dying together, we cross the fathoms and give to each other everything we have? Do we drown faster? If we are all struggling together, if we all unify to struggle toward one goal -- to host an art show, to hold an open mic, to launch a book... a shuttle... a dream -- aren't our chances for survival a thousand times magnified? Aren't we stronger in numbers, as a community, as a people?
Abraham Lincoln, before his election, said to a prominent preacher, a man who could bring about or bring down Lincoln's nomination to the party, "I will join a church when they ask me to subscribe not to man's word, but to the words of Christ: To love one's neighbor as oneself. To see all men as equal in the eyes of the Lord."
Standing before you, the scent of roses from one rose, the ceiling disappears and I am beneath a billion stars. I could stand here forever, tracing angel constellations, wishing that someone would defend me.
But I would rather stand here and shout, sing, pray. And defend someone else.
Just think if we all saved a drowning man today, how clear the sea would look tomorrow.
EJ
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