There is something about... oh, finish that sentence however, in a hundred million ways, baby, and you’ll be fine. You’ll get what I’m saying. But today, right *now* I’m talking about music, dancing, dancers, and memories like neon blue strobes, cool, cold, chilling me beneath the fine, clean, sweat that covered my body that night and now.
She’s across the room. Four dozen dancers away. “Bring Me to Life” plays loud, pushing the sound system to its limits. Someone shouts in time to the music, lost, melding, with the electric riffs, hard drums and raw vocals. Remixing an already good song into something somewhere South of the border hard... which makes sense because that’s where I am, secretly, with friends... shhh... don’t tell. Work thinks we’re... working... which we are. Trust me. I have never worked this hard.
In loose black leather pants that fall, smooth with ripples and fine stitches in red thread, she is dancing with a clique but she is dancing alone. Black tank is simple, not covering her black bra. Her nutmeg brown shoulders are ropey with muscle. The tat on the right one says Mama.
Oh, mama... *whew*
There is cool vapor rolling through the room. Smells a little like violets. The lights slow strobe red, blue, purple. I watch Bobbi buy a drink for the dj. Coke maybe. He’s eyeing her and she doesn’t correct him. She’s slipping him MP3s, motioning with her body toward me, sitting at a tiny corner table, leaning back against the wall on my high stool, still breathing hard, eyes on the dancers... typing with my thumbs.
“Wanna get her on the floor, man?”
“Yeah... please.”
“This is what you gotta play, baby. She don’t dance for hip hop.”
“Yeah... let’s play.”
Yeah. Let’s play. And I’m up again, while Mr. DJ (Digital Jockey) spins my own music for me. Remixing on the fly with skillz that will gain him enough attention to break away from here and maybe hit the other, bigger clubs in the city. He knows what to do. His eyes are on his panels as much as one his warriors. How do his hands need to move? He judges by their response. Hm. Good man.
Mama looks up. About five inches up because she’s little, compact, tough like the word “mother,” soft like the word “woman.” She smiles at me and doesn’t look away. Her hair cut is asymmetrical, black and silky like anime feathers. She has thick lashes and eyebrows. No make up. Full mouth. She smiles and doesn’t look away. We dance in time. Hips and thighs. Rolling shoulders and when she puts her fingertips on the back of my neck, I take it low, leaning back, bending my knees, bouncing down to her height, my hands above my head, my eyes closed as my spine keeps beat.
“You have pictures?”
“¿Qué?”
I smile at her, friendly, side by side at the bar, a few songs after I first arrived. She is waiting for club soda. I’m waiting for a Coke and you-know-what. I glance down at her tat. “¿Tiene usted fotografías de su niños con usted?”
Her smile is a slow, careful reward, followed by a bold, smooth appraisal of this gamer grrl. My Spanish is far from perfect, but she seems okay with the rest. “Sí...”
And they are beautiful children. Four. Big bronze eyes like their Mama.
I am thinking, which means I’m all danced out. I’m in afterglow now. That space where everything is done... and so my mind clicks back on. Tension is gone. My body is my own, reclaimed from the world. Requirements have all been met. I’m thinking about the personal responsibility of the strong. The responsibility to set an example. Should the strong shun the weak and grow their ranks, so that, eventually, the human race is all like them? Strong of body, mind and spirit? Hm. Not spirit.
Therein lies the catch, doesn’t it? If you are willing to focus on natural selection, than you are animal, not man. (Please. Spare me the emails about the soul in all animals and plants. I believe more than you think and none of it is relevant to this conversation.) The song says, “Climb on a back that’s strong.” Let me carry you because I can. I’ll let you be the woman you need if you let me be the man that I am. It isn’t about gender fluidity, it’s about gender roles switching it up so become a fully realized human being. If my man cries for me and I fix his car, are we less of a couple? Don’t split hairs. Of course not.
Among the dancers on the floor it seems apparent which ones could carry a conversation about politics, nonlinear time or the nature of the soul. Which ones could riff with me about mathematics or religion or theoretical physics. They are the one’s who move with a confidence that has nothing to do with physical prowess or sexual experience. The ones who close their eyes as often as they meet my gaze.
They are not meek, but they will inherit the Earth.
Because they are the Earth. They understand. They look out and in. They come to these clubs, underground in more ways than one, loud, dark, free. They are here to reset, recharge, recenter. Before they climb the narrow stairs to the surface, to the bright, hot sun of late summer, to reenter the world as mothers, mechanics, teachers, tutors, warriors.
When I grow up... these are the ranks I want to join.
EJ
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 27, 2008
My Wings: Our Propensity for Speed
And so we begin again and again and then five times on Sundays. Always renewing ourselves to our cause, to our focus, to being in love. Like those little corrections we make constantly as brand new drivers. We become more aware... more *aware* (Wake up!) with every time our heart beats. More aware the nearer we come to returning to God’s arms. The closer to death, the more awake. The mortal shell like sleep. Making love like waking briefly. Praying like spending a full moment aware between dreams.
“The moon's a fingernail and slowly sinking.
Another day begins and now I'm thinking:
That this indifference was my invention,
when everything I did sought your attention.”
Sleeping through mortal life (to one day awaken on celestial shores), we are, of course, so constantly tested. The idea is to hurt and grow and learn and bleed and fail and fail again more horribly, and devastate one another, and lift someone else’s heart to ecstasy by saying “I will. I do. Forever.” when inside us fear sinks steel teeth into our marrow and tries to shake out our soul. The idea is to live. Even sleeping. To live. Reset the clock to zero, lover. Start again. Right now. I still love you. Fancy that, Wings ;) Fancy that. We can begin anew and so many people will come with us. We lose nothing important.
“You could say I lost my faith in science and progress...
Lost my belief in the holy church...
You could say I lost my sense of direction...
Could say all of this and worse but
If I ever lose my faith in you?
There'd be nothing left for me to do.
Nothing left to lose.”
We are constantly tested. Who sends these tests? Not really God. He’s so seriously *not* kickin’ back somewhere soft and cool and cozy and thinking, “Guess I’ll slam it to Eliza Jean today...” We’re tested by *life,* by *living,* by walking in the world. Boots on the pavement, baby, and we’re tested. We’re faced with choices – large and small... and larger – that often wind up having more weight, more consequences, and just more dang trouble attached in a zipped folder than we could ever have anticipated or guessed when someone asked us, “Do you want fries with that?”
The trouble, of course -- right? – is that our choices (our general failures of judgment and so-not-fate) affect not just our own lives (where it’s easy to shoulder mistakes and be proud little martyrs) but the lives of *others,* where it is far harder to face our short comings and own up to the truth. The enabling that occurs when people love us is pretty addictive. All those juicy, “It’s okay”s and “I’m just glad...”s pretty much wash away our responsibility... unless we take a deep breath and wake up for a moment.
I suppose this is the difference I see, more often than not, in the people I surround myself with. I chose to keep a circle of lucid dreamers near me. The ones that aren’t afraid to feel ashamed, embarrassed, and ultra-freaking-responsible. Because a few dozen little inconveniences piled upon another person can drown them just as easily as one devastating blow. When I fail, I fix it. But more than that. When I fail, I tell everyone *how* I will fix it. My failure is my responsibility.
A friend rolled her car the other day. Well, technically, it wasn’t *her* car. Oops. But everyone is just happy she’s all right. And, *dang,* so am I. Because more people lose their lives to single-car rollover incidents than any other type of accident after head-on collusion. I woke up this morning feeling (first) glad that she was still in my life because she’s a grrl like I like ‘em (which are rare), and (second) wondering what the heck she was going to do to make this okay with her roommate (whose car it was). I forgot for a moment who that roomie was (a mutual friend) because it wasn’t important. What was important was that my grrl would do right... do Right... like a good NTC grrl would do. Go over-board to shoulder this, even when those shoulders might still be shaking from adrenaline and thankfulness.
I know she will. Why? Because I feel *connected* to her. And no one I feel connected to abdicates responsibility. As if. Like...
“God? Yeah. Christ here. You know what? I’m thinking maybe no. Maybe I won’t go through with this whole cross thing, you know? So. Chill. I’m just gonna ascend. Check ya soon, Big Guy.”
Blasphemous? You obviously have never trashed your best friend’s wheels. It can feel like carrying a cross. And if it doesn’t? How about you go take a few No Doz and *wake up* (refer above).
Until you’ve made a colossal mistake with long-reaching, rippling, killer consequences (accidentally, like over-compensating on a twisty road at 5 or 10 miles over the speed limit... or with a lack of control, like hitting your teenage son... or even purposefully, like telling off your boss) you will never know how easy it is to accept all the platitudes of “okay”s and shrink away from “I’m so freaking sorry...” without tack-ons like, “But I didn’t mean it.” Responsibility is a great big word for a reason.
Factoring salvation and single-car rollovers in nondenominational individuals and American light vehicles (non-SUV):
Propensity volume determination for rollover considers X (speed), Y (plane/horizontal angle), Z (plane condition), A (counter force: external), B (counter force: internal), C (mechanical malfunction) with decreasing effect ratios from the extreme former (X) to the extreme latter (C). Likewise, redemptive probability involves Q (socio-economic status), R (race/region), S (parental example), E (peer environment), F (intrinsic responsibilities), and G (extrinsic responsibilities).
This is why the NHTSA Static Stability Factor rating system sucks. And why until you do it, you can’t rate it. Evaluating rollover propensity is the same thing as evaluating grace under fire. Until the bullets fly, you don’t know squat about yourself. You have to have that dynamic maneuver, in-action testing procedures going on. Because you know what? You can roll a car going 35 mph on a -270 degree left turn followed by a simple overcorrection of 540 degrees to right. That’s as little as a one quarter over-turn from the horizontal axis. That’s it.
In other words? It’s really easy to screw up.
Not so easy to survive it gracefully. Ethically. Morally. Especially when you don’t have a built-in Sunday morning community to turn to. You stand *alone*... ah... but not alone, right, baby? Never alone.
“What is the force that binds the stars?
I wore this mask to hide my scars.
What is the power that pulls the tide?
I never could find a place to hide.
”What moves the Earth around the sun?
What could I do but run and run and run?
Afraid to love, afraid to fail...
A mast without a sail.”
It is recognized by the authors (Richardson, Rechnitzer, Grzebieta and Hoareau) that an advanced methodology for estimating vehicle rollover propensity is needed. A criterion relating both handling and Stability Factor is proposed as opposed to the prior methodology which examines Stability Factor only. Though there is sufficient evidence to support the contention that Stability Factor and the rate of real world rollovers is linked, it is the contention of the authors that the noise (scatter or X factor) within the Stability Factor data is due to vehicle handling by the *individual driver.* This new methodology allows the combination of the Stability Factor and handling characteristic of the driver to predict the probability of rollover and fatality for a single-vehicle rollover.
Following me, baby? It all comes down to *you.* How do you handle your life? Waking. Sleeping. Crying. Loving. It ain’t about the random acts of the universe. It is about walking like Christ walked. Responsibly. Utterly. Especially when it’s hard. And most especially when everyone just wants to cuddle you. Stand up and be the individual driver in your life. You have all you need in the palm of your hand. What? Nothing there? Look again. That weight like a smooth stone? That’s Christ.
“You are my compass star.
You are my measure.
You are my pirate's map.
My buried treasure.”
NHTSA advises drivers to reduce the risk of rollover by: Avoiding speeding. (For a vehicle to produce a rollover or spinout maneuver it must be travelling at least 10 mph above the posted speed limit on the given road formation. See above for all factors.) Avoid panicked steering. (Driving directly off the road has a .018% probability of causing a fatality, whereas rollover annual fatality rates are 2,000 fatalities for every 70,000 rollover incidents.) A skidding car decelerates at 10 mph per second of a skid. A spinning or rolling car decelerates at 20 mph per second of a spin or roll.
Moral of the story? Slowing ourselves down will save our lives. Not just on the road, of course. Everywhere. Working hard can be done slowly. Heck, darling, pretty much *everything* is better done slowly.
And when you all roll your eyes heavenward because you know I zip along those midnight highways... just remember... compared to the cosmos? Compared to the speed of light? I’m a drifting mote. A very responsible drifting mote. And I’m a mote floating on, technically, my own bike *wicked grin*
With love, humor, and trust,
EJ
“The moon's a fingernail and slowly sinking.
Another day begins and now I'm thinking:
That this indifference was my invention,
when everything I did sought your attention.”
Sleeping through mortal life (to one day awaken on celestial shores), we are, of course, so constantly tested. The idea is to hurt and grow and learn and bleed and fail and fail again more horribly, and devastate one another, and lift someone else’s heart to ecstasy by saying “I will. I do. Forever.” when inside us fear sinks steel teeth into our marrow and tries to shake out our soul. The idea is to live. Even sleeping. To live. Reset the clock to zero, lover. Start again. Right now. I still love you. Fancy that, Wings ;) Fancy that. We can begin anew and so many people will come with us. We lose nothing important.
“You could say I lost my faith in science and progress...
Lost my belief in the holy church...
You could say I lost my sense of direction...
Could say all of this and worse but
If I ever lose my faith in you?
There'd be nothing left for me to do.
Nothing left to lose.”
We are constantly tested. Who sends these tests? Not really God. He’s so seriously *not* kickin’ back somewhere soft and cool and cozy and thinking, “Guess I’ll slam it to Eliza Jean today...” We’re tested by *life,* by *living,* by walking in the world. Boots on the pavement, baby, and we’re tested. We’re faced with choices – large and small... and larger – that often wind up having more weight, more consequences, and just more dang trouble attached in a zipped folder than we could ever have anticipated or guessed when someone asked us, “Do you want fries with that?”
The trouble, of course -- right? – is that our choices (our general failures of judgment and so-not-fate) affect not just our own lives (where it’s easy to shoulder mistakes and be proud little martyrs) but the lives of *others,* where it is far harder to face our short comings and own up to the truth. The enabling that occurs when people love us is pretty addictive. All those juicy, “It’s okay”s and “I’m just glad...”s pretty much wash away our responsibility... unless we take a deep breath and wake up for a moment.
I suppose this is the difference I see, more often than not, in the people I surround myself with. I chose to keep a circle of lucid dreamers near me. The ones that aren’t afraid to feel ashamed, embarrassed, and ultra-freaking-responsible. Because a few dozen little inconveniences piled upon another person can drown them just as easily as one devastating blow. When I fail, I fix it. But more than that. When I fail, I tell everyone *how* I will fix it. My failure is my responsibility.
A friend rolled her car the other day. Well, technically, it wasn’t *her* car. Oops. But everyone is just happy she’s all right. And, *dang,* so am I. Because more people lose their lives to single-car rollover incidents than any other type of accident after head-on collusion. I woke up this morning feeling (first) glad that she was still in my life because she’s a grrl like I like ‘em (which are rare), and (second) wondering what the heck she was going to do to make this okay with her roommate (whose car it was). I forgot for a moment who that roomie was (a mutual friend) because it wasn’t important. What was important was that my grrl would do right... do Right... like a good NTC grrl would do. Go over-board to shoulder this, even when those shoulders might still be shaking from adrenaline and thankfulness.
I know she will. Why? Because I feel *connected* to her. And no one I feel connected to abdicates responsibility. As if. Like...
“God? Yeah. Christ here. You know what? I’m thinking maybe no. Maybe I won’t go through with this whole cross thing, you know? So. Chill. I’m just gonna ascend. Check ya soon, Big Guy.”
Blasphemous? You obviously have never trashed your best friend’s wheels. It can feel like carrying a cross. And if it doesn’t? How about you go take a few No Doz and *wake up* (refer above).
Until you’ve made a colossal mistake with long-reaching, rippling, killer consequences (accidentally, like over-compensating on a twisty road at 5 or 10 miles over the speed limit... or with a lack of control, like hitting your teenage son... or even purposefully, like telling off your boss) you will never know how easy it is to accept all the platitudes of “okay”s and shrink away from “I’m so freaking sorry...” without tack-ons like, “But I didn’t mean it.” Responsibility is a great big word for a reason.
Factoring salvation and single-car rollovers in nondenominational individuals and American light vehicles (non-SUV):
Propensity volume determination for rollover considers X (speed), Y (plane/horizontal angle), Z (plane condition), A (counter force: external), B (counter force: internal), C (mechanical malfunction) with decreasing effect ratios from the extreme former (X) to the extreme latter (C). Likewise, redemptive probability involves Q (socio-economic status), R (race/region), S (parental example), E (peer environment), F (intrinsic responsibilities), and G (extrinsic responsibilities).
This is why the NHTSA Static Stability Factor rating system sucks. And why until you do it, you can’t rate it. Evaluating rollover propensity is the same thing as evaluating grace under fire. Until the bullets fly, you don’t know squat about yourself. You have to have that dynamic maneuver, in-action testing procedures going on. Because you know what? You can roll a car going 35 mph on a -270 degree left turn followed by a simple overcorrection of 540 degrees to right. That’s as little as a one quarter over-turn from the horizontal axis. That’s it.
In other words? It’s really easy to screw up.
Not so easy to survive it gracefully. Ethically. Morally. Especially when you don’t have a built-in Sunday morning community to turn to. You stand *alone*... ah... but not alone, right, baby? Never alone.
“What is the force that binds the stars?
I wore this mask to hide my scars.
What is the power that pulls the tide?
I never could find a place to hide.
”What moves the Earth around the sun?
What could I do but run and run and run?
Afraid to love, afraid to fail...
A mast without a sail.”
It is recognized by the authors (Richardson, Rechnitzer, Grzebieta and Hoareau) that an advanced methodology for estimating vehicle rollover propensity is needed. A criterion relating both handling and Stability Factor is proposed as opposed to the prior methodology which examines Stability Factor only. Though there is sufficient evidence to support the contention that Stability Factor and the rate of real world rollovers is linked, it is the contention of the authors that the noise (scatter or X factor) within the Stability Factor data is due to vehicle handling by the *individual driver.* This new methodology allows the combination of the Stability Factor and handling characteristic of the driver to predict the probability of rollover and fatality for a single-vehicle rollover.
Following me, baby? It all comes down to *you.* How do you handle your life? Waking. Sleeping. Crying. Loving. It ain’t about the random acts of the universe. It is about walking like Christ walked. Responsibly. Utterly. Especially when it’s hard. And most especially when everyone just wants to cuddle you. Stand up and be the individual driver in your life. You have all you need in the palm of your hand. What? Nothing there? Look again. That weight like a smooth stone? That’s Christ.
“You are my compass star.
You are my measure.
You are my pirate's map.
My buried treasure.”
NHTSA advises drivers to reduce the risk of rollover by: Avoiding speeding. (For a vehicle to produce a rollover or spinout maneuver it must be travelling at least 10 mph above the posted speed limit on the given road formation. See above for all factors.) Avoid panicked steering. (Driving directly off the road has a .018% probability of causing a fatality, whereas rollover annual fatality rates are 2,000 fatalities for every 70,000 rollover incidents.) A skidding car decelerates at 10 mph per second of a skid. A spinning or rolling car decelerates at 20 mph per second of a spin or roll.
Moral of the story? Slowing ourselves down will save our lives. Not just on the road, of course. Everywhere. Working hard can be done slowly. Heck, darling, pretty much *everything* is better done slowly.
And when you all roll your eyes heavenward because you know I zip along those midnight highways... just remember... compared to the cosmos? Compared to the speed of light? I’m a drifting mote. A very responsible drifting mote. And I’m a mote floating on, technically, my own bike *wicked grin*
With love, humor, and trust,
EJ
Sunday, July 20, 2008
For the Naysayers, Doomdayers and Other :( People
“But despite what had been done for them – the finest wines and richest foods laid there as a feast – they could not recognize it. Their palettes found nothing but gruel and foul water for they had turned away from faith.”
If you are familiar with classic volumes of children's fantasy (which always speak on a different level to adults) then you know the pivotal moment I have paraphrased above. Likewise, if you are a devout Christian (read: one who thinks for himself) or a student of religion, you will be aware of the significance of the verse and myriad of interpretations that it has spawned. Personally, I do not believe that this lesson to be learned is that Christians experience more joy than non-Christians but rather if a person consciously *turns away* from Christ, his eyes are blinded to grace. His life devoid of elysian. When you do not place Christ into every living moment of your existence, accepting Him as a living presence, entering into that continuing conversation, you are shutting your senses to joy. The feast becomes gruel.
The glass is half empty. The glass is half full. The glass, my friends, is simply full. All the time, every time. It just isn't always full of *water.* Step One: We accept there is a glass. No... not a glass, a *grail* and that grail has been handed to us by the Lion, the Lamb, the Changer. If we accept the grail than we accept it as complete and full as it is. The level of water, wine, rain, tears, poison, potion, atomic particles, becomes just part of the miracle of our lives known best as our personal adventure with faith.
I found myself, this last week, on twelve hours notice, leaving for Croatia for work. I have been twice before with family, roughly ten years ago, and I started counting the hours until my body could move anonymously over the glass dance floor of the Hopdevil, losing and finding myself to Saturday's live DJ while the cascade of the interior waterfall mesmerized and rolled turbulence under my feet. And though I spent a good many hours celebrating this body Christ gave me not once but three times (at birth, at baptism, after near-death) in three of Zagreb's excellent rock and alternative clubs, I found more of my hours were spent with its doves.
It seems whether on Los Angeles rooftops or in Croatian cobbled courtyards, God's common birds remind me of pure divinity, inherent in all moments when we not just accept but enact and embrace faith as a force in our lives. What is this? This pure divinity? Can it be found in timeless scripture or prophesy? Can it be discovered by lighting the right candles, displayed by intoning the proper patron saints? Can it be depicted in stained glass windows?
There is Christ. There is man. There are no other designations or gradations of man. God, all-powerful, provided our genesis flashpoint and allowed the fractal spiral to begin, to unfold and multiply, populating the universe with mirrors all reflecting outward and inward at the same time in four or ten dimensions. At the very heart, the center of this collection of mass welded together and apart by science and ethics, consciousness and the laws of gravity, love, laughter and lasagna, there is something *completely different.* When all of space and nature and science and biology mimics (“...as in nature, so in man, so sayth the Lord...”) each other, this singular core differs from every rule. This center will turn every table in the temple and then turn the other cheek. Christ. The pure divinity. Available in one-size fits all but insisting upon being *different* from everything else, ever.
Doves are classically portrayed white as driven snow, composed and regal, their faces knowing and wise, resembling eagles or other noble (albeit predatory) birds. They are graceful as first light. Eternal. Ethereal. But in reality, these birds are often far more like their pigeon cousins – auburn or gray, cock-eyed, single-minded – than like anything in the standard definition of pure. Which is, of course, exactly why they are divine. Christ, too, was outside the guidelines, rules and definition of religion or savior. He didn't amend, baby, He rewrote. Everything else before Him had been (and was after Him) only a continuing mimicry of the same ole fractal. Only Christ was, is and will be unique.
I have heard it preached on tv, on street corners, in my inbox, that I can join any of a great number of denominations and be then allowed access to an ordained, blessed, appointed, anointed, trained, touched, and otherwise elevated mouthpiece for my Christ. A mortal man or woman who anonymously or voyeuristicly (both are equally useless) will “listen with Christ's ears and speak with Christ's mouth.” I call this Babylon Syndrome. It was a virus present among some of the apostles after the Ascension but it most certainly began far before that. Rooted in the innate human fear of being no one/nothing, the terror of not being enough (to just be one of His the same among billions), it survives and flourishes because the antidote to hubris is hard to find.
Only Christ is Christ. All others are part of the repeating pattern. One and the same. Only Christ is an original blueprint. Outside the cosmic binary. No mortal can speak for Christ. We mortals don't speak the same language. Ever. The end.
When I need (because I am corporeal and mortal and so limited) to physically see the eyes of Christ looking back at me, to be heard and responded to by a voice not so intense as Alpha/Omega, I look for what is different and unexpected. For that which is striving to be, by practice or design, outside the pattern. The Sunday school teacher with the Psalm tattoo. The friend who boxes instead of painting her nails. The two year old eating twelve tacos while he recites “The Raven.” The eighty year old with the electric guitar impromptu jamming at LAX. The bronze and cream dove with the copper eyes eating Crackerjack from my palm while he sits on my knee.
Fact is stronger/better/smarter/wilder than fiction. And doves as the eyes and ears of Christ? Yeah. That pretty much rocks this gamer grrl's world. I accept their presence in my life as a tangible jewel of faith, like slow kisses, breathless poetry, wicked LOLs, midnight motorcycle rides, Glo Goats and hard dancing with strangers. I embrace my faith (as I embrace you, my love) as light, as strength, as armor and sword, as starry night, as the air I breathe... as tears, as heartbreak, as struggle, as hardship, as pain, as doubt... as everything, the grail always full.
Because the feast is everlasting and I have no taste for gruel.
EJ
If you are familiar with classic volumes of children's fantasy (which always speak on a different level to adults) then you know the pivotal moment I have paraphrased above. Likewise, if you are a devout Christian (read: one who thinks for himself) or a student of religion, you will be aware of the significance of the verse and myriad of interpretations that it has spawned. Personally, I do not believe that this lesson to be learned is that Christians experience more joy than non-Christians but rather if a person consciously *turns away* from Christ, his eyes are blinded to grace. His life devoid of elysian. When you do not place Christ into every living moment of your existence, accepting Him as a living presence, entering into that continuing conversation, you are shutting your senses to joy. The feast becomes gruel.
The glass is half empty. The glass is half full. The glass, my friends, is simply full. All the time, every time. It just isn't always full of *water.* Step One: We accept there is a glass. No... not a glass, a *grail* and that grail has been handed to us by the Lion, the Lamb, the Changer. If we accept the grail than we accept it as complete and full as it is. The level of water, wine, rain, tears, poison, potion, atomic particles, becomes just part of the miracle of our lives known best as our personal adventure with faith.
I found myself, this last week, on twelve hours notice, leaving for Croatia for work. I have been twice before with family, roughly ten years ago, and I started counting the hours until my body could move anonymously over the glass dance floor of the Hopdevil, losing and finding myself to Saturday's live DJ while the cascade of the interior waterfall mesmerized and rolled turbulence under my feet. And though I spent a good many hours celebrating this body Christ gave me not once but three times (at birth, at baptism, after near-death) in three of Zagreb's excellent rock and alternative clubs, I found more of my hours were spent with its doves.
It seems whether on Los Angeles rooftops or in Croatian cobbled courtyards, God's common birds remind me of pure divinity, inherent in all moments when we not just accept but enact and embrace faith as a force in our lives. What is this? This pure divinity? Can it be found in timeless scripture or prophesy? Can it be discovered by lighting the right candles, displayed by intoning the proper patron saints? Can it be depicted in stained glass windows?
There is Christ. There is man. There are no other designations or gradations of man. God, all-powerful, provided our genesis flashpoint and allowed the fractal spiral to begin, to unfold and multiply, populating the universe with mirrors all reflecting outward and inward at the same time in four or ten dimensions. At the very heart, the center of this collection of mass welded together and apart by science and ethics, consciousness and the laws of gravity, love, laughter and lasagna, there is something *completely different.* When all of space and nature and science and biology mimics (“...as in nature, so in man, so sayth the Lord...”) each other, this singular core differs from every rule. This center will turn every table in the temple and then turn the other cheek. Christ. The pure divinity. Available in one-size fits all but insisting upon being *different* from everything else, ever.
Doves are classically portrayed white as driven snow, composed and regal, their faces knowing and wise, resembling eagles or other noble (albeit predatory) birds. They are graceful as first light. Eternal. Ethereal. But in reality, these birds are often far more like their pigeon cousins – auburn or gray, cock-eyed, single-minded – than like anything in the standard definition of pure. Which is, of course, exactly why they are divine. Christ, too, was outside the guidelines, rules and definition of religion or savior. He didn't amend, baby, He rewrote. Everything else before Him had been (and was after Him) only a continuing mimicry of the same ole fractal. Only Christ was, is and will be unique.
I have heard it preached on tv, on street corners, in my inbox, that I can join any of a great number of denominations and be then allowed access to an ordained, blessed, appointed, anointed, trained, touched, and otherwise elevated mouthpiece for my Christ. A mortal man or woman who anonymously or voyeuristicly (both are equally useless) will “listen with Christ's ears and speak with Christ's mouth.” I call this Babylon Syndrome. It was a virus present among some of the apostles after the Ascension but it most certainly began far before that. Rooted in the innate human fear of being no one/nothing, the terror of not being enough (to just be one of His the same among billions), it survives and flourishes because the antidote to hubris is hard to find.
Only Christ is Christ. All others are part of the repeating pattern. One and the same. Only Christ is an original blueprint. Outside the cosmic binary. No mortal can speak for Christ. We mortals don't speak the same language. Ever. The end.
When I need (because I am corporeal and mortal and so limited) to physically see the eyes of Christ looking back at me, to be heard and responded to by a voice not so intense as Alpha/Omega, I look for what is different and unexpected. For that which is striving to be, by practice or design, outside the pattern. The Sunday school teacher with the Psalm tattoo. The friend who boxes instead of painting her nails. The two year old eating twelve tacos while he recites “The Raven.” The eighty year old with the electric guitar impromptu jamming at LAX. The bronze and cream dove with the copper eyes eating Crackerjack from my palm while he sits on my knee.
Fact is stronger/better/smarter/wilder than fiction. And doves as the eyes and ears of Christ? Yeah. That pretty much rocks this gamer grrl's world. I accept their presence in my life as a tangible jewel of faith, like slow kisses, breathless poetry, wicked LOLs, midnight motorcycle rides, Glo Goats and hard dancing with strangers. I embrace my faith (as I embrace you, my love) as light, as strength, as armor and sword, as starry night, as the air I breathe... as tears, as heartbreak, as struggle, as hardship, as pain, as doubt... as everything, the grail always full.
Because the feast is everlasting and I have no taste for gruel.
EJ
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Making Life, Moving On
...or The Practice of Being Grateful
Human condition. Isn’t it all about this? The human condition. Which, of course, can be in a state of grace, of despair, of struggle, of passion. If I blog about the minutia of my specific daily existence (script revisions, cleaning brushes, thickening paints, feeding the doves), or about being an Armenian daughter, single child, twentysomething painter/game-designer/whatever, I might lose most of you in translation. But the pigeonholing of a person never discounts the universal truths that buoy us. It’s as though we all exist in the same sea and only our ships are individualized. Our prows and sterns, our sails, masts and figureheads, elegant or punk, natural or ornate, the projection of ourselves, our nautical avatar on God’s common waves.
There are elements, experiences which speak to all of us. The crest and swell of our lives united.
11 September 2001
Little one? Today was a very painful day for our family and for everyone in America. I will write about that here and share with you what happened and how we discovered it when we returned from a long, all day hike in the forest above the ocean. How afterwards we stopped at a truck stop for a late lunch and how staff and customers were gathered around the radio in the kitchen. How it felt surreal and how your Mama Jenn shook and had to leave the diner and go sit in the truck and just hold your brother and cry. We lost friends that day. We lost, and found, a lot of things. I will share everything with you... but first I want to tell you that today, in part because of all that has changed in this day, we have decided to bring you into our lives. We don’t want your big brother to live alone, little one, because he is different from other kids and he needs our help. We know in our hearts that you will be strong, you will be perfect for him, you will be the brave hero that he needs. You will shine. And we will love you endlessly.
“I used to lose myself
chasing after tears
falling down the face
of each memory.
“But now I let tear drops fall
like the autumn leaves
forever knowing
what is passing...”
I don’t really believe that death and life are opposites. Any more than I believe there’s any true connection/comparison in making a life and taking a life. These things (all four) are so unconnected really. Only on the surface to simple minds do they seem dynamically opposed. Death is a segment of life. Life’s opposite is, perhaps, stagnation. The inability to make a decision. The terror of choice. To be “unchoosing” is to be “unliving.” For even in death we have choices – like what will happen beyond the shelf life of this mortal shell. To stay in one place, unchanged, safe perhaps, but without growth, is not life. To stay the same is really death.
Along the same lines, the making of a life (not unlike making love, or making art) is a further celebration, an embracing of life itself. It is the transformation of everything you know and everything you have into something else. As one of favorite poets wrote (and I have quoted before) when I make a baby, I am “changed forever from woman to mother.” The change is the same: I make love, and I transcend from a place of words and logic to a place of sensation and emotion; Two people become one experience. I make art, and I transform a blank canvas into a celebration of color, texture and depth; An figment of imagination takes solid form.
20 September 2001
Oh, little one, we want so badly for you to come and be with us. Right now you are a collection of names that may or may not change – Benjamin Aoebinn, Orion Kier, Natalie Katherine, Jette Jeal – but you are also already a presence in this home. Your room awaits you, painted in bright spring greens. The curtains are down to let the sun shine in over the tops of the trees in the orchard. We wanted Mama Jenn to be growing you by now but her body cannot carry a baby to term without help from the doctor. For four months before you can be conceived she gets special shots and takes a special hormone (like a medicine) and many vitamins, too, just to get ready to be a good home for you for those first wonderful nine months of your life. That time is almost past now.... It is so hard to wait for you! So hard to wait.
“Letting loose these gnarled talons holding on
to what already changes.
I’m letting loose these gnarled talons holding on
to what already changes... and emerges!”
We really do cling, don’t we? To that nonliving that seems like living. The unchanging, “I’m just at rest” excuse for a life. If not busy changing ourselves and our world, than we might we well sit and watch ten thousand channels with nothing on. It really is impossible to live a realized life if you don’t know how to build a porch, make a decoupage of photos on a coffee table or explain the smexy perfect of algebra. We have to be able to work and think and *change* to live.
I suppose this is why the Sabbath being a “day of rest” is alien to me. I recast this definition into, “A day to rest from man’s world and man’s demands. A day to transform, to grow, to sweat, to create, to become and cause to become, myself and my world into a more perfect reflection of what Christ wants for me.” On Sundays I like to make life.
Sundays are for waking up.
28 September 2001
We went for the ultrasound today. Mama Jenn’s left ovary is ready to release its egg. She got one final shot to help the egg along its journey and that was the whole appointment. It was... oh, little one! It was so joyful to see you there! That round egg on the ultrasound. I held up your brother to see the screen. I pointed and he touched my face. I tried to get him to see that little beginning of you. I think he saw. He doesn’t speak yet, little one. He should but he can’t because of his differences. But he loves with a fierceness and he’ll love you most of all. I just know it.
29 September 2001
Well, my little one, we drove to the clinic for the insemination today. Grandma Carol came to our house and stayed with Max. We were very sneaky and told Grandma Carol we were going to see a movie. We want to be able to surprise her with the news of you.
The clinic was very quiet this morning and full of autumn light. We went upstairs to the lab to pick up the vial of sperm from the donor we choose three years ago for your brother and you. The lab technician gave us the report that showed what he’d tested, the count and motality of the sperm in the vial. Everything looked good. There was a wonderful poster on the wall of a sperm and an egg. We stopped and looked at it because sperm are so small you can’t see anything at all in the vial except about a teaspoon of slightly pink liquid. But on the poster the sperm was sleek and beautiful. I looked at the poster for a long time, even after Mama Jenn went to look out the window at the sixty year old oak tree growing outside. I thought about how amazing those sperms are that they can wake up that round egg we saw on the ultrasound and make you.
I close my eyes and pray. I picture your face, new and tiny. I’m not imagining. I am seeing outside of time by the grace of God. I am already your mama. Life begins before conception and I am holding you in the palms of my hands even now.
“High above in a cool, white cloud space
the air is rushing and streaming by.
My wings whisper to me silently
of what is changing... and mine!
“And I am balanced
on the face of the wind.
I am balanced on the face
on the face of the wind.”
EJ
Human condition. Isn’t it all about this? The human condition. Which, of course, can be in a state of grace, of despair, of struggle, of passion. If I blog about the minutia of my specific daily existence (script revisions, cleaning brushes, thickening paints, feeding the doves), or about being an Armenian daughter, single child, twentysomething painter/game-designer/whatever, I might lose most of you in translation. But the pigeonholing of a person never discounts the universal truths that buoy us. It’s as though we all exist in the same sea and only our ships are individualized. Our prows and sterns, our sails, masts and figureheads, elegant or punk, natural or ornate, the projection of ourselves, our nautical avatar on God’s common waves.
There are elements, experiences which speak to all of us. The crest and swell of our lives united.
11 September 2001
Little one? Today was a very painful day for our family and for everyone in America. I will write about that here and share with you what happened and how we discovered it when we returned from a long, all day hike in the forest above the ocean. How afterwards we stopped at a truck stop for a late lunch and how staff and customers were gathered around the radio in the kitchen. How it felt surreal and how your Mama Jenn shook and had to leave the diner and go sit in the truck and just hold your brother and cry. We lost friends that day. We lost, and found, a lot of things. I will share everything with you... but first I want to tell you that today, in part because of all that has changed in this day, we have decided to bring you into our lives. We don’t want your big brother to live alone, little one, because he is different from other kids and he needs our help. We know in our hearts that you will be strong, you will be perfect for him, you will be the brave hero that he needs. You will shine. And we will love you endlessly.
“I used to lose myself
chasing after tears
falling down the face
of each memory.
“But now I let tear drops fall
like the autumn leaves
forever knowing
what is passing...”
I don’t really believe that death and life are opposites. Any more than I believe there’s any true connection/comparison in making a life and taking a life. These things (all four) are so unconnected really. Only on the surface to simple minds do they seem dynamically opposed. Death is a segment of life. Life’s opposite is, perhaps, stagnation. The inability to make a decision. The terror of choice. To be “unchoosing” is to be “unliving.” For even in death we have choices – like what will happen beyond the shelf life of this mortal shell. To stay in one place, unchanged, safe perhaps, but without growth, is not life. To stay the same is really death.
Along the same lines, the making of a life (not unlike making love, or making art) is a further celebration, an embracing of life itself. It is the transformation of everything you know and everything you have into something else. As one of favorite poets wrote (and I have quoted before) when I make a baby, I am “changed forever from woman to mother.” The change is the same: I make love, and I transcend from a place of words and logic to a place of sensation and emotion; Two people become one experience. I make art, and I transform a blank canvas into a celebration of color, texture and depth; An figment of imagination takes solid form.
20 September 2001
Oh, little one, we want so badly for you to come and be with us. Right now you are a collection of names that may or may not change – Benjamin Aoebinn, Orion Kier, Natalie Katherine, Jette Jeal – but you are also already a presence in this home. Your room awaits you, painted in bright spring greens. The curtains are down to let the sun shine in over the tops of the trees in the orchard. We wanted Mama Jenn to be growing you by now but her body cannot carry a baby to term without help from the doctor. For four months before you can be conceived she gets special shots and takes a special hormone (like a medicine) and many vitamins, too, just to get ready to be a good home for you for those first wonderful nine months of your life. That time is almost past now.... It is so hard to wait for you! So hard to wait.
“Letting loose these gnarled talons holding on
to what already changes.
I’m letting loose these gnarled talons holding on
to what already changes... and emerges!”
We really do cling, don’t we? To that nonliving that seems like living. The unchanging, “I’m just at rest” excuse for a life. If not busy changing ourselves and our world, than we might we well sit and watch ten thousand channels with nothing on. It really is impossible to live a realized life if you don’t know how to build a porch, make a decoupage of photos on a coffee table or explain the smexy perfect of algebra. We have to be able to work and think and *change* to live.
I suppose this is why the Sabbath being a “day of rest” is alien to me. I recast this definition into, “A day to rest from man’s world and man’s demands. A day to transform, to grow, to sweat, to create, to become and cause to become, myself and my world into a more perfect reflection of what Christ wants for me.” On Sundays I like to make life.
Sundays are for waking up.
28 September 2001
We went for the ultrasound today. Mama Jenn’s left ovary is ready to release its egg. She got one final shot to help the egg along its journey and that was the whole appointment. It was... oh, little one! It was so joyful to see you there! That round egg on the ultrasound. I held up your brother to see the screen. I pointed and he touched my face. I tried to get him to see that little beginning of you. I think he saw. He doesn’t speak yet, little one. He should but he can’t because of his differences. But he loves with a fierceness and he’ll love you most of all. I just know it.
29 September 2001
Well, my little one, we drove to the clinic for the insemination today. Grandma Carol came to our house and stayed with Max. We were very sneaky and told Grandma Carol we were going to see a movie. We want to be able to surprise her with the news of you.
The clinic was very quiet this morning and full of autumn light. We went upstairs to the lab to pick up the vial of sperm from the donor we choose three years ago for your brother and you. The lab technician gave us the report that showed what he’d tested, the count and motality of the sperm in the vial. Everything looked good. There was a wonderful poster on the wall of a sperm and an egg. We stopped and looked at it because sperm are so small you can’t see anything at all in the vial except about a teaspoon of slightly pink liquid. But on the poster the sperm was sleek and beautiful. I looked at the poster for a long time, even after Mama Jenn went to look out the window at the sixty year old oak tree growing outside. I thought about how amazing those sperms are that they can wake up that round egg we saw on the ultrasound and make you.
I close my eyes and pray. I picture your face, new and tiny. I’m not imagining. I am seeing outside of time by the grace of God. I am already your mama. Life begins before conception and I am holding you in the palms of my hands even now.
“High above in a cool, white cloud space
the air is rushing and streaming by.
My wings whisper to me silently
of what is changing... and mine!
“And I am balanced
on the face of the wind.
I am balanced on the face
on the face of the wind.”
EJ
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Lucky 4 U
I was newly into my twenties when I was visiting a city friend who had relocated to a small borderline redneck town in the (usually liberal but not so much in this story) Pacific Northwest. When I say “city friend” I mean it in every sense. A friend who grew up not just streetwise but street-walking. Who lived daily with drugs, gangs, and State-subsidized housing that was just a pretty word for the Projects. Like in many of these (all too common) life stories, she found God (meaning she saw His face despite what the world wanted her to see instead) and she proverbially and literally Got Out.
But the cliché exists for a reason: You can take the grrl off the streets but you can't take the streets out of the grrl. My quietly buttoned-down, easy-smiling, sharp-strategizing, sometimes-domineering friend is *tough* and she's got a wicked straight/hook combo that has taken this gamer grrl out cold more than once (three times) in the ring.
So we were out together. Me, my friend, Anna, and her new little son. We were shopping for eggplant. And while I was waxing poetic about eggplant dishes I'd had in various parts of the world (probably trying to impress her) I kinda half notice that she's nodding and uh-huhing and looking at her son... but her ears are obviously following some other conversation. I pause and tune in.
A father is arguing with his lanky preteen son. The boy wants to do some activity at school but his father explains it's too expensive. The tone of a spoiled kid is absent but there's an obvious disconnect. The boy just doesn't get it... and boy's deadly little bon mot is too much for dad: “Maybe we'd have more money if you kept a job.”
The sound of a grown man's fist (not hand) meeting a child's face is always the same.
The boy tumbles, sprawling in surprise, into the display beside him and bell peppers roll onto the floor around his off-brand sneakers. But I'm not so much watching that as I am watching Anna *wail* on daddy dearest.
I vaguely remember (okay... I brilliantly remember) my 5'2” buddy showing me a perfect demo of how a kidney punch, followed by a gut punch, can double a large stranger over enough that a small fighter can deliver a volley of straights and a hook without having to jump up or stand on a stool. I also remember thinking: Oh, Anna... not a good choice.
Because, in America (and many other places in the world), we're allowed to hit our children... and we are not allowed to hit a stranger in the middle of the produce section. Especially if you're a itty bitty woman roughly the size of a twelve year old boy.
But that day, other strangers intervened even before store staff did. Almost as soon as the first grunt was heard, two other male shoppers pushed between them. I thought maybe that they assumed they were saving Anna from being pummeled into the brussell sprouts as soon as daddy got over his shock, but as daddy called out, “You're lucky, girl! You're so lucky!” One of the other men snorted, “*You're* lucky, man. She's a ****ing pitbull.”
Anna stood for a silent moment, fuming. I watched her beautiful body, in a basic white tee and black vest, blue jeans, black sneakers, like I might have watched a young gladiator. She trembled and, because she's a woman, her face was wet with tears. Finally her little guy ran from my side to hers and she raised her chin, took his hand, and said to the stranger, “You should be *grateful*...”
Years later I think I understood what she meant. Her son had recently been diagnosed as autistic. The preteen boy was a healthy, handsome boy with easy social skills and public demeanor. But in that moment, her comment as she walked away touched me in so many ways and on so many levels.
A new friend was talking to Anna the other day about me. She commented, “That EJ, she makes lemonaid out of the sourest of lemons. There are no sour grapes with that grrl.”
:) That made me smile and it may be true. But if it is, it's only because lemon trees are very plentiful and I'm very thirsty. I know and love mathematics like a security blanket but in my heart I don't really accept chaos theory no matter how hard I try. I believe that Christ puts everything on our path – from the store being out of milk to our pet goldfish being eaten by a velociraptor – for a reason. As a matter of fact, the more the experience hurts, the more it shakes us and even pushes us to our knees, the more grateful I am for it. I even once had to explain carefully that I'm not a masochist, I'm just a person who wants to *grow.*
Caterpillars don't spin a cocoon and then slim down and sprout wings. They freaking *dissolve* into a writhing mass of pulp and are reshaped into butterflies. Oh yeah. Not so logo-worthy an image any more, huh? But that's how the real world is. Messy.
If it's easy it isn't really very important. If it makes me break out in a sweat, feel light headed, cry, scream, hit something (not someone), drop to my knees and pray.... then it obviously has some depth and meaning and *reason.*
Another friend, Cris, woke up with pain in her ear last week. This is the ear that had to have the drum rebuilt. A surgery that involved removing the ear on three sides, laying it over and grafting a new little sound receptor. Cris was just hired by me and my working partner to compose original music for a trailer. She's feeling some pressure about that (her first major gig as a musician) but not nearly as much pressure as what she felt in her head that morning.
Into the Urgent Care went Cris. She waited in the long line for thirty-five minutes. All around her were silent or surly people grousing about pains to no one. Complaining about paperwork. Glaring at one another. The waiting room was thick patterned carpet and marble floors. The walls were cream with oak trim. Descendant and new. Cris finally got to the counter. Offered up her (State-subsidized) insurance card and, without any eye contact, was told: “We don't take that. We can't help you.”
That's it. Because apparently MultiCare (yes, look, I name names) doesn't care one bit.
Cris made it home before she started to cry. She grew up upper middle class. She had never experienced this before. This world of disregard assigned along economic status. Lucky for Cris, she knows Anna. “Welcome to good company,” Anna whispered to her. Then, “Stop now. We'll take care of this.”
A few calls later, and off Cris went to a different Urgent Care that accepted her insurance. She walked into the dun-colored, building with its industrial finishes and was greeted with smiles by the staff. When a waiting patient became short-tempered with an in-take staff member, another worker stepped in immediately, “I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't think that's appropriate. We're all doing our very best here to help everyone. We have to triage and make difficult decisions quickly. You may not have meant it but what you said just now was cruel and you can seek help elsewhere if you can't be civil.”
And Cris smiled while she waited for her ten minutes with a doctor.
The less you have, the more grateful you are. Not just the more grateful you are for what you have, but the more grateful you are, period. It's very hard to be arrogant and self-centered when you stand naked and empty-handed before the Lord. When we, as human beings, as the most stripped down, are desolate and without any chance of survival except by the sheer will of God, this is when we find the breath-taking beauty in the formation of clouds across the sky.
I was raised that if I am to be only one thing, to do only one thing in my life, that thing should be to be a catalyst in the world around me. To spark a flashpoint in the lives that I touch. Christ is the changer, we are the changed, but the opportunity for change, the open door that allows change to walk, bold and beautiful into our lives, is always a door opened by one another.
And no door opens without the presence of gratefulness. Revelation doesn't come when you're sitting in a two thousand dollar suit sipping cognac from an Austrian crystal sniffer.
This is far more than an issue of the “haves” and “have nots.” This pervading sense of ungratefulness that occasionally grips people. This is about a society, a culture, that sadly stands on a foundation of Darwinian capitalism where only the strongest survive (by consuming all others).
There is a small household of friends (ever growing how many of them live there, strangely LOL) in Washington State who pool their merger resources to send me canvases that they pick up secondhand, prime and restretch themselves. I simply don't have the money to buy new canvas right now and their deliveries have been like manna (I mean that literally). They are my catalysts like they may never understand. I love them so deeply for these gifts of blank space that I can't put it in words.
Sometimes, to pad between the canvases are sheets of their local newspaper. I followed a story and the responses in Letters to the Editor with increasing interest. A small farm was featured and praised by the reporter. The farmer's quote closed the article, “We finally broke even last year and we were so proud.”
For the next three weeks of papers, individuals wrote into the editor to lambaste the farmer and the farm. The letters were vapid, mean-spirited and just ugly. Almost as ugly as the paper's decision to run so many of them. Why, argued the detractors (perhaps in the grips of the green monster himself), was the farm being praised?! If no profit was had, then this business should not be receiving kudos and media attention. “Self-sustaining”? Who cares! Where is the all-mighty dollar? Where is the hard, sharp line drawn between red and black?
The farmers of that mini-farm are grateful for being able to make enough to simply pay their bills. They live hand-to-mouth. There is so safety net. They are pursuing their dream. They are growing beyond the trappings of the world and stepping onto their path. They are embracing the “green issues” that mean something to them. They are giving back to their community. They are quoting truths about the American Dream. The simple, captivating reason why most of our ancestors came to this country in the first place. Yes, it most certainly involves that bottomline, but even more it revolves around the ability to provide for one’s family – perhaps not easily, certainly never effortlessly, but at least something. To put food on the table and a solid roof over our heads, even if the children aren’t in the other room plugged into a thousand dollars in entertainment equipment.
When the American Dream is remembered as something other than winning a reality show contract with a recording agency or network. When it means reaching out when we have nothing, to be a catalyst in a life both our own and not our own. To be changed by the changer. To let Him in.
“Break even” is never failure. Success in business, in life... in love... is not measured by benefits to oneself. That is not true success. And when cut-throat capitalists are filing bankruptcy and throwing their dollars away in attorney fees, all the Dream makers and catalysts will continue on, breaking even and making due for themselves, their families, and their communities. These will be the people smiling in the sunlight, in the Urgent Care lobbies, in the super markets, and in each other's arms.
And no matter what we have or don't have, we will be grateful.
EJ
“Lucky you are that far away so
we could both make fun of distance.
Lucky that I love to travel for
the lucky fact of your existence.
“Baby, I would climb the Andes solely
to count the freckles on your body.
Never could imagine there were only
ten million ways to love somebody.”
“Whenever, wherever,
we're meant to be together.
I'll be here and you'll be near
and that's the deal, my dear.”
“Thereover, hereunder,
you've got me head over heels.
There's nothing left to fear
because you feel the way I feel.”
So grateful... of everything, in every way.
But the cliché exists for a reason: You can take the grrl off the streets but you can't take the streets out of the grrl. My quietly buttoned-down, easy-smiling, sharp-strategizing, sometimes-domineering friend is *tough* and she's got a wicked straight/hook combo that has taken this gamer grrl out cold more than once (three times) in the ring.
So we were out together. Me, my friend, Anna, and her new little son. We were shopping for eggplant. And while I was waxing poetic about eggplant dishes I'd had in various parts of the world (probably trying to impress her) I kinda half notice that she's nodding and uh-huhing and looking at her son... but her ears are obviously following some other conversation. I pause and tune in.
A father is arguing with his lanky preteen son. The boy wants to do some activity at school but his father explains it's too expensive. The tone of a spoiled kid is absent but there's an obvious disconnect. The boy just doesn't get it... and boy's deadly little bon mot is too much for dad: “Maybe we'd have more money if you kept a job.”
The sound of a grown man's fist (not hand) meeting a child's face is always the same.
The boy tumbles, sprawling in surprise, into the display beside him and bell peppers roll onto the floor around his off-brand sneakers. But I'm not so much watching that as I am watching Anna *wail* on daddy dearest.
I vaguely remember (okay... I brilliantly remember) my 5'2” buddy showing me a perfect demo of how a kidney punch, followed by a gut punch, can double a large stranger over enough that a small fighter can deliver a volley of straights and a hook without having to jump up or stand on a stool. I also remember thinking: Oh, Anna... not a good choice.
Because, in America (and many other places in the world), we're allowed to hit our children... and we are not allowed to hit a stranger in the middle of the produce section. Especially if you're a itty bitty woman roughly the size of a twelve year old boy.
But that day, other strangers intervened even before store staff did. Almost as soon as the first grunt was heard, two other male shoppers pushed between them. I thought maybe that they assumed they were saving Anna from being pummeled into the brussell sprouts as soon as daddy got over his shock, but as daddy called out, “You're lucky, girl! You're so lucky!” One of the other men snorted, “*You're* lucky, man. She's a ****ing pitbull.”
Anna stood for a silent moment, fuming. I watched her beautiful body, in a basic white tee and black vest, blue jeans, black sneakers, like I might have watched a young gladiator. She trembled and, because she's a woman, her face was wet with tears. Finally her little guy ran from my side to hers and she raised her chin, took his hand, and said to the stranger, “You should be *grateful*...”
Years later I think I understood what she meant. Her son had recently been diagnosed as autistic. The preteen boy was a healthy, handsome boy with easy social skills and public demeanor. But in that moment, her comment as she walked away touched me in so many ways and on so many levels.
A new friend was talking to Anna the other day about me. She commented, “That EJ, she makes lemonaid out of the sourest of lemons. There are no sour grapes with that grrl.”
:) That made me smile and it may be true. But if it is, it's only because lemon trees are very plentiful and I'm very thirsty. I know and love mathematics like a security blanket but in my heart I don't really accept chaos theory no matter how hard I try. I believe that Christ puts everything on our path – from the store being out of milk to our pet goldfish being eaten by a velociraptor – for a reason. As a matter of fact, the more the experience hurts, the more it shakes us and even pushes us to our knees, the more grateful I am for it. I even once had to explain carefully that I'm not a masochist, I'm just a person who wants to *grow.*
Caterpillars don't spin a cocoon and then slim down and sprout wings. They freaking *dissolve* into a writhing mass of pulp and are reshaped into butterflies. Oh yeah. Not so logo-worthy an image any more, huh? But that's how the real world is. Messy.
If it's easy it isn't really very important. If it makes me break out in a sweat, feel light headed, cry, scream, hit something (not someone), drop to my knees and pray.... then it obviously has some depth and meaning and *reason.*
Another friend, Cris, woke up with pain in her ear last week. This is the ear that had to have the drum rebuilt. A surgery that involved removing the ear on three sides, laying it over and grafting a new little sound receptor. Cris was just hired by me and my working partner to compose original music for a trailer. She's feeling some pressure about that (her first major gig as a musician) but not nearly as much pressure as what she felt in her head that morning.
Into the Urgent Care went Cris. She waited in the long line for thirty-five minutes. All around her were silent or surly people grousing about pains to no one. Complaining about paperwork. Glaring at one another. The waiting room was thick patterned carpet and marble floors. The walls were cream with oak trim. Descendant and new. Cris finally got to the counter. Offered up her (State-subsidized) insurance card and, without any eye contact, was told: “We don't take that. We can't help you.”
That's it. Because apparently MultiCare (yes, look, I name names) doesn't care one bit.
Cris made it home before she started to cry. She grew up upper middle class. She had never experienced this before. This world of disregard assigned along economic status. Lucky for Cris, she knows Anna. “Welcome to good company,” Anna whispered to her. Then, “Stop now. We'll take care of this.”
A few calls later, and off Cris went to a different Urgent Care that accepted her insurance. She walked into the dun-colored, building with its industrial finishes and was greeted with smiles by the staff. When a waiting patient became short-tempered with an in-take staff member, another worker stepped in immediately, “I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't think that's appropriate. We're all doing our very best here to help everyone. We have to triage and make difficult decisions quickly. You may not have meant it but what you said just now was cruel and you can seek help elsewhere if you can't be civil.”
And Cris smiled while she waited for her ten minutes with a doctor.
The less you have, the more grateful you are. Not just the more grateful you are for what you have, but the more grateful you are, period. It's very hard to be arrogant and self-centered when you stand naked and empty-handed before the Lord. When we, as human beings, as the most stripped down, are desolate and without any chance of survival except by the sheer will of God, this is when we find the breath-taking beauty in the formation of clouds across the sky.
I was raised that if I am to be only one thing, to do only one thing in my life, that thing should be to be a catalyst in the world around me. To spark a flashpoint in the lives that I touch. Christ is the changer, we are the changed, but the opportunity for change, the open door that allows change to walk, bold and beautiful into our lives, is always a door opened by one another.
And no door opens without the presence of gratefulness. Revelation doesn't come when you're sitting in a two thousand dollar suit sipping cognac from an Austrian crystal sniffer.
This is far more than an issue of the “haves” and “have nots.” This pervading sense of ungratefulness that occasionally grips people. This is about a society, a culture, that sadly stands on a foundation of Darwinian capitalism where only the strongest survive (by consuming all others).
There is a small household of friends (ever growing how many of them live there, strangely LOL) in Washington State who pool their merger resources to send me canvases that they pick up secondhand, prime and restretch themselves. I simply don't have the money to buy new canvas right now and their deliveries have been like manna (I mean that literally). They are my catalysts like they may never understand. I love them so deeply for these gifts of blank space that I can't put it in words.
Sometimes, to pad between the canvases are sheets of their local newspaper. I followed a story and the responses in Letters to the Editor with increasing interest. A small farm was featured and praised by the reporter. The farmer's quote closed the article, “We finally broke even last year and we were so proud.”
For the next three weeks of papers, individuals wrote into the editor to lambaste the farmer and the farm. The letters were vapid, mean-spirited and just ugly. Almost as ugly as the paper's decision to run so many of them. Why, argued the detractors (perhaps in the grips of the green monster himself), was the farm being praised?! If no profit was had, then this business should not be receiving kudos and media attention. “Self-sustaining”? Who cares! Where is the all-mighty dollar? Where is the hard, sharp line drawn between red and black?
The farmers of that mini-farm are grateful for being able to make enough to simply pay their bills. They live hand-to-mouth. There is so safety net. They are pursuing their dream. They are growing beyond the trappings of the world and stepping onto their path. They are embracing the “green issues” that mean something to them. They are giving back to their community. They are quoting truths about the American Dream. The simple, captivating reason why most of our ancestors came to this country in the first place. Yes, it most certainly involves that bottomline, but even more it revolves around the ability to provide for one’s family – perhaps not easily, certainly never effortlessly, but at least something. To put food on the table and a solid roof over our heads, even if the children aren’t in the other room plugged into a thousand dollars in entertainment equipment.
When the American Dream is remembered as something other than winning a reality show contract with a recording agency or network. When it means reaching out when we have nothing, to be a catalyst in a life both our own and not our own. To be changed by the changer. To let Him in.
“Break even” is never failure. Success in business, in life... in love... is not measured by benefits to oneself. That is not true success. And when cut-throat capitalists are filing bankruptcy and throwing their dollars away in attorney fees, all the Dream makers and catalysts will continue on, breaking even and making due for themselves, their families, and their communities. These will be the people smiling in the sunlight, in the Urgent Care lobbies, in the super markets, and in each other's arms.
And no matter what we have or don't have, we will be grateful.
EJ
“Lucky you are that far away so
we could both make fun of distance.
Lucky that I love to travel for
the lucky fact of your existence.
“Baby, I would climb the Andes solely
to count the freckles on your body.
Never could imagine there were only
ten million ways to love somebody.”
“Whenever, wherever,
we're meant to be together.
I'll be here and you'll be near
and that's the deal, my dear.”
“Thereover, hereunder,
you've got me head over heels.
There's nothing left to fear
because you feel the way I feel.”
So grateful... of everything, in every way.
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