Today I stood in the pouring rain and watched you seduce another woman. The lot lights had come on four hours early, in response to the dark sky, and the gold-white illumination caught torrents like beaded strands of gemstones making molten the liquid storm coursing over her hair, then her jacket, her shirt, then her bare skin.
I knew this was the last time I would be here.
"I'd rather hate you
for everything you are
than ever love you
for something you're not."
I miss riding. But it seems that trashing three bikes in one year is enough of a message from God. When my last Kawi went down and over the edge, tumbling more than a hundred feet to her final rest, I spent long minutes, face to asphalt, rethinking my last forty thousand choices. Sometimes it stuns me that I don't drink or drug. Seems a grrl so sober shouldn't wind up eating the yellow line quite as often as I do. I knew there was a Lesson somewhere between my face and the road.
I also knew this was the last time I would be here.
"I'd rather you hate me
for everything I am
than have you love me
for something I can't be."
She is a beautiful woman and, apparently, impervious to rain and cold. Which is impressive. Speaking of perv, I suppose I shouldn't be standing here, leaning back against your truck, watching you like this. The long, slender, strong lines of your body are becoming more obvious as additional layers of clothing are striped away and the storm soaks you through. The angles of your bodies sliding into place and together into one is artwork, sculpture to me. The eroticism isn't lost but it doesn't hold my gaze. I'm detached from the reality and watch as if your images are splashed on the screen -- where I've certainly seen you both before -- technique and technical merit casting you in perfect light, the sound of the rain artfully concealing each gasp, the wind stealing away the scent of cologne and perfume.
I find myself thinking that the garden like this, the heart of the lot and home to so much quiet memorizing and quiet contemplations both joyful and desperate, is actually the perfect place to make love.
The sky loses all light and there is a rumble of thunder.
"I remembered black skies, the lightning all around me.
I remembered each flash as time began to blur.
Like a startling sign that fate had finally found me.
And your voice was all I heard that I get what I deserve."
There had been a pull-jerk-yank. Some unseen and strong hand. Something, some force, someone, God. To rip me off my bike like a drag line, throw me into the road while my bike laid herself down of her own accord, still at ninety miles an hour, and went parallel to the street for a count of one... two... three... and then through the curve in the guard rail and over edge, dropping instantly out of sight and leaving me with my yellow-line, center line view of sky and ocean meeting as a horizon's horizon.
My atheist friend tells me that it was momentum and centrifugal force that tore me off my bike and threw me onto solid road instead of into cold thin air. I tell him he doesn't know squat about physics.
It is two months and several million revelations about life, about truth, about being tested, later that I finally look away from you and your long-time lover. I am sure she knows everything about you and loves you just as you are without judgment or pause. I am sure she has several billion scathing words for me that she is too elegant to share but that are expressed with startling eloquence every time she looks at me and smiles.
We're all damaged and casting the first stone just makes it bounce around in my head. I find myself staring at the asphalt of the parking lot when the storm shifts and I hear your voices tossed together, cried promises both wild and tender at once.
I sink down to the curb, my palms to the cold road once again.
This soldier travels.
Wrists bound in the yellow center line.
The song of storm raging at her back.
This soldier travels.
Pan pipes play from steel forests
all neon and chrome.
The soldier travels
armed with scripture
armed with mistakes
armed with the reality
that she is always
only
forever
a practicing Christian.
I am still sitting there when you drive away. I am still sitting there when the storm surrenders to clear, starry night. I am still sitting there when I look up and find her watching me. Her eyes speak volumes that all begin with disappointment. But then I blink my eyes, I shiver, and she is gone.
A friend wrote to me with her heart in a panic. She said, "I have spoken thoughtlessly and destroyed someone's chance to come closer to Christ." She knows and I know that it isn't true but the regret and sorrow she feels in the pit of her stomach, welling in her chest, is very, very real. I assure her, "No mortal hand can keep a soul away from Christ." They have certainly tried over the ages, and none of them have succeeded. Only we can distance ourselves from God. And even then He fights for our return. My friend writes, "I'm going to make this right. It eats at me. I *want* to make it right. I must." And I pray for her and I tell her, "Do it. No hubris. Be brave. Do it." And she does.
And less than a week later I find myself in the same situation. But still I click Publish Post.
Like a petulant child who will not learn from the mistakes of her parents, sometimes one soldier will throw herself into the mine field in the heat of battle, in her furor to reach and purge the enemy, even as she sees her fellows scattered around her.
Only to find that the enemy, when faced, is not roaring, but weeping.
"So give me reason to prove me wrong, to wash this memory clean.
Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes.
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between.
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies across this new divide."
Because from the depths of my heart, I'm sorry.
EJ
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Caught in the Act
Winter light is pale and sharp, adding a definitive edge to the profile of a stranger. The light is tinted with time and emotion even though to some it might just be the color of the stain glass sunset (sunrise?) hung in the window of the coffeehouse. The stranger is the son of my favorite professor. She and I spoke once or twice every month since I graduated. A lot of years to stay in touch. I was expecting to hear from her again, having already had a early-month exchange... instead I hear from him. She never told me she had cancer. She never told me her estate would pay off my school loans. And now her son has flown three thousand miles to tell me he hates me.
Richard (let's call him Richard) is all pressed linens, polished buttons, expensive shoes. He is a hard worker in the sense of hours and stress and mergers. His hands are long and tapered and groomed and graceless. He does not have his father's hands. Those large, open, welcome hands that met mine only once. They were callused and paint-speckled, his fingerprints always in relief from acrylics, from charcoals, from life. Nor does Richard have his mother's hands -- expressive, expansive, ethereal. He is a hybrid from both but of neither.
"When my father died, I thought my mother and I would finally connect. He always took up so much room in her life."
Richard's coffee is cold now, crude oil in his mug, but still it is warmer than his eyes as they pin me to my chair. I imagine that everyone in coffeehouse is wondering and watching to see if and when he'll leap across the table and kill me.
"We... she... would finally see our shared love of business. Our common ground."
I feel physical pain in my chest that a person -- an only child, an only son -- might know his own mother so little. Professor Montgomery cared more about pocket lint than about commerce of any kind. She believed in barter and trade and art being free. She taught and ran a gallery because of pure passion. Her all-consuming love of painting, raw, wild, explosive, just like she was. Richard is angry I was named in his mother's will. Richard is angry because he was only twenty-four when my only New York gallery show opened in his mother's gallery and the central piece was a woman he wanted to own but obviously did not even know.
"But she was just as gone... distant... absent. Maybe more then, than ever before. I tried to engage her in my graduate work but her... interest... was obviously held elsewhere."
I look past Richard's face. It is most likely a handsome face -- both Mr. and Professor Montgomery were handsome -- but not today. He cannot seem to uncurl his lips to cover his bared teeth. His snarl is almost stage dramatic. He seems incapable of stilling the vein throbbing between eyes so narrowed, only the pupils, wide and black, glint with malice.
He knows, of course. And he knows I know he knows.
I wonder, fleetingly, why Richard is so angry. Is it because of who and what I am? Who and what I was? Or is it that she wasn't in love with him instead? Why was it me -- right place, right time, right canvas, right colors -- instead of him? Doesn't Freud and Shakespeare argue that with the father dead, the son is rightful heir to his mother's heart?
"I've come here to give you this chance," Richard tells me. It is not an offer. "This is your chance to make so many wrongs right."
Richard leans back in his chair. His expression is neither hopeful or grateful. It is entitled. It is spiteful. It is resentful.
I think of Professor Montgomery. I think of how she looked in class and out on the town at a gallery not her own. I think of her standing in front of a piece she has never seen before. Her first emotions and responses and reactions bursting. I think of her face, lips parted, cheeks flushed, brows knit with the beauty of it all, with the beauty of each stroke so extreme they were almost too much for her to bear.
I painted only 5x5 back then. Wide and high. She was barely an inch taller than the canvas. She would look at my works in progress and trail the strokes in the thick paint, barely a quarter inch between her fingertips and the work. "It breathes," she would say. "Here is the pulse." Her reviews were like poetry of detail and technique. She could deconstruct three hundred hours of work in thirty minutes and I was a better artist because of it. Because of her.
I lean forward. Richard leans forward.
I read everything in his eyes. I realize that as much as he knew nothing of her in life, he knows no more of her in death. I wonder what happened to her journals. In his eyes I see a million things. In the pacing of his breath. His choice of cologne. He is consumed with his own thoughts.
"The most powerful thing one person can say to another..." I murmur, almost a whisper. His eyes burn cold. I continue, "More powerful than I love you... or I'll wait for you... or I'll never forget you...."
His left eye twitches.
"Even more powerful than I'm sorry...." And I stand up. Abruptly. Reined in. I look down at him without pity and without remorse. I am done wasting this day that God gave me. This day that started with his phone call. With the drive to the airport where I shook his hand, not understanding, and without letting go he told me so bluntly, 'My mother died Monday.' I am done sitting in shock and pain. I want to be walking in a sculpture garden. I want to be in a quiet gallery. I want to be somewhere remembering my friend. Anywhere but here worshiping at the alter of this monument of self-importance. I tell him, "I forgive you."
Richard jerks, startled. But not nearly as startled as when I add, "And so does Katrina."
I am almost to the door when he shakes off his shock and barks, "My mother's name was Kathrine!"
I don't bother to look back. "That's what you think."
Richard (let's call him Richard) is all pressed linens, polished buttons, expensive shoes. He is a hard worker in the sense of hours and stress and mergers. His hands are long and tapered and groomed and graceless. He does not have his father's hands. Those large, open, welcome hands that met mine only once. They were callused and paint-speckled, his fingerprints always in relief from acrylics, from charcoals, from life. Nor does Richard have his mother's hands -- expressive, expansive, ethereal. He is a hybrid from both but of neither.
"When my father died, I thought my mother and I would finally connect. He always took up so much room in her life."
Richard's coffee is cold now, crude oil in his mug, but still it is warmer than his eyes as they pin me to my chair. I imagine that everyone in coffeehouse is wondering and watching to see if and when he'll leap across the table and kill me.
"We... she... would finally see our shared love of business. Our common ground."
I feel physical pain in my chest that a person -- an only child, an only son -- might know his own mother so little. Professor Montgomery cared more about pocket lint than about commerce of any kind. She believed in barter and trade and art being free. She taught and ran a gallery because of pure passion. Her all-consuming love of painting, raw, wild, explosive, just like she was. Richard is angry I was named in his mother's will. Richard is angry because he was only twenty-four when my only New York gallery show opened in his mother's gallery and the central piece was a woman he wanted to own but obviously did not even know.
"But she was just as gone... distant... absent. Maybe more then, than ever before. I tried to engage her in my graduate work but her... interest... was obviously held elsewhere."
I look past Richard's face. It is most likely a handsome face -- both Mr. and Professor Montgomery were handsome -- but not today. He cannot seem to uncurl his lips to cover his bared teeth. His snarl is almost stage dramatic. He seems incapable of stilling the vein throbbing between eyes so narrowed, only the pupils, wide and black, glint with malice.
He knows, of course. And he knows I know he knows.
I wonder, fleetingly, why Richard is so angry. Is it because of who and what I am? Who and what I was? Or is it that she wasn't in love with him instead? Why was it me -- right place, right time, right canvas, right colors -- instead of him? Doesn't Freud and Shakespeare argue that with the father dead, the son is rightful heir to his mother's heart?
"I've come here to give you this chance," Richard tells me. It is not an offer. "This is your chance to make so many wrongs right."
Richard leans back in his chair. His expression is neither hopeful or grateful. It is entitled. It is spiteful. It is resentful.
I think of Professor Montgomery. I think of how she looked in class and out on the town at a gallery not her own. I think of her standing in front of a piece she has never seen before. Her first emotions and responses and reactions bursting. I think of her face, lips parted, cheeks flushed, brows knit with the beauty of it all, with the beauty of each stroke so extreme they were almost too much for her to bear.
I painted only 5x5 back then. Wide and high. She was barely an inch taller than the canvas. She would look at my works in progress and trail the strokes in the thick paint, barely a quarter inch between her fingertips and the work. "It breathes," she would say. "Here is the pulse." Her reviews were like poetry of detail and technique. She could deconstruct three hundred hours of work in thirty minutes and I was a better artist because of it. Because of her.
I lean forward. Richard leans forward.
I read everything in his eyes. I realize that as much as he knew nothing of her in life, he knows no more of her in death. I wonder what happened to her journals. In his eyes I see a million things. In the pacing of his breath. His choice of cologne. He is consumed with his own thoughts.
"The most powerful thing one person can say to another..." I murmur, almost a whisper. His eyes burn cold. I continue, "More powerful than I love you... or I'll wait for you... or I'll never forget you...."
His left eye twitches.
"Even more powerful than I'm sorry...." And I stand up. Abruptly. Reined in. I look down at him without pity and without remorse. I am done wasting this day that God gave me. This day that started with his phone call. With the drive to the airport where I shook his hand, not understanding, and without letting go he told me so bluntly, 'My mother died Monday.' I am done sitting in shock and pain. I want to be walking in a sculpture garden. I want to be in a quiet gallery. I want to be somewhere remembering my friend. Anywhere but here worshiping at the alter of this monument of self-importance. I tell him, "I forgive you."
Richard jerks, startled. But not nearly as startled as when I add, "And so does Katrina."
I am almost to the door when he shakes off his shock and barks, "My mother's name was Kathrine!"
I don't bother to look back. "That's what you think."
Sunday, November 08, 2009
We're All Damaged
I have nothing to say. That t-shirt floats here. A cataract of reason if not good-taste. "Actions speak louder than blogs." I couldn't agree more. Felt so good to hurl that laptop off the roof. Sounded so right to hear it splinter, shatter, scatter like the fatal collision that proceeded it.
I find that I prefer it when I don't speak.
I've basked in and endured a myriad of responses to essays here (in writing or life) and I can honestly say that I try of myself sometimes. I feel it coming. My own dismay at my own spin, my own happy-happy-joy-joy crap. When the truth be told I can't always find the positive learning lesson behind every slap in the face, smack on the ass, turn-me-inside-out-why-don't-you golden moment brought to me today by the letters F and O-Lord and at least a triple X. Before my dismay turns to disgust, I try to forget my password.
If I were self-righteous and always right, would you still be with me?
I think the most honest relationship I've ever had is with Christ and strange as it sounds He doesn't seem to give a fuck whether or not I use a swear or slang or ancient Greek with bad pronunciation. Strangely, He doesn't seem to care as long as I'm honest with Him. More honest than I am with myself. He doesn't get hung up on the lexicon of this urban grrl just trying to vent, just trying to keep it real,just trying to really *talk* to Him.
I still dream myself there. Though not always with you.
I really do have nothing to say. No more, at least, for now. The maze of blame is always concentric circles and mob mentality blends so nicely with popular belief for a little salt in the wound. We will always believe what preserves ourselves. The proof is not in the pudding, which so many of us will eat double-helpings of, but in which one of us bends first.
You will allow the baby to be torn in two.
She will offer you an olive branch three times... before you betray her again.
I find that I prefer it when I don't speak.
I've basked in and endured a myriad of responses to essays here (in writing or life) and I can honestly say that I try of myself sometimes. I feel it coming. My own dismay at my own spin, my own happy-happy-joy-joy crap. When the truth be told I can't always find the positive learning lesson behind every slap in the face, smack on the ass, turn-me-inside-out-why-don't-you golden moment brought to me today by the letters F and O-Lord and at least a triple X. Before my dismay turns to disgust, I try to forget my password.
If I were self-righteous and always right, would you still be with me?
I think the most honest relationship I've ever had is with Christ and strange as it sounds He doesn't seem to give a fuck whether or not I use a swear or slang or ancient Greek with bad pronunciation. Strangely, He doesn't seem to care as long as I'm honest with Him. More honest than I am with myself. He doesn't get hung up on the lexicon of this urban grrl just trying to vent, just trying to keep it real,just trying to really *talk* to Him.
I still dream myself there. Though not always with you.
I really do have nothing to say. No more, at least, for now. The maze of blame is always concentric circles and mob mentality blends so nicely with popular belief for a little salt in the wound. We will always believe what preserves ourselves. The proof is not in the pudding, which so many of us will eat double-helpings of, but in which one of us bends first.
You will allow the baby to be torn in two.
She will offer you an olive branch three times... before you betray her again.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Represent
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 snug 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 crime to watch a rape. But it is a 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 of 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 classically 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 da truth!" "Fersure, boy!" "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 lilt. 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
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 snug 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 crime to watch a rape. But it is a 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 of 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 classically 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 da truth!" "Fersure, boy!" "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 lilt. 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, 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 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 exposure,
EJ
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Fifty-five Words
I never intended to be reborn
as someone other than
the grrl I’ve always been.
If I ever walked on water
it was only to reach you.
It was always more about
self-preservation than
self-sacrifice. (I wasn’t
coded to be a martyr
this time around.)
Yes, I pushed you.
And you let go
and jumped.
as someone other than
the grrl I’ve always been.
If I ever walked on water
it was only to reach you.
It was always more about
self-preservation than
self-sacrifice. (I wasn’t
coded to be a martyr
this time around.)
Yes, I pushed you.
And you let go
and jumped.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Your Great Big Ruler
I watch you measuring me up. In your three-piece and your shiny shoes. Your glasses make your eyes look small and rat-like. You twitch your nose in distaste at my ACT UP tee and only intensify the rodentia impression. I am only numbers to you -- some too little, some too big. I am a collection of converse and concave angles, curves and lines. I am BOP and Q Score. I watch your eyes scan me, taking in as much information as is packed into a barcode. Yeah, you don't just think you have my number, you think you have my price.
But I don't even know my price.
"What are you thinking?"
She always wanted to know. It was the only time I saw real fear on her face. Not fight, just fear. I think she really expected that one day I'd say, "Not of you." And because I knew that's what she thought, every response of any sincerity choked me and stuck half way up my throat. I couldn't get the truth past that lump. I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, even if I was solving world hunger while she went down on me, or composing sonnets about the way her hands lifted my hips, her wedding ring catching on the satin sheet, even if I confessed to all of that, she'd know I was lying. She'd see in my eyes I was thinking of... nothing.
You were my oblivion.
Going cold-turkey sucked.
So here I am and you're sizing me up and dressing me down with eyes as judgmental as hers never were, and you're already undressing me so you can attach all the labels that you can fit because of my nipple rings and my Christian tats and my d6 pendant and my ankh ear cuff. You have made every decision about me that you will ever make and it stuns me that you don't think I believe in God. I don't just believe in God. I have living proof that He exists and looks out for me. Because if He didn't, than two hours ago, when you first stepped into my trailer, when you first straightened your tie and began to talk, when you first measured my worth with you great big (probably three inch) ruler, when you first did all that... well... if there wasn't a God?
If God hadn't been looking out for me, I would have leaned forward in the first thirty seconds and told you that your wife tastes like honey and nutmeg, and your side of the bed has a great view of the ocean.
(And I would have lost my job.)
God rocks.
But I don't even know my price.
I'm laying in your arms and I know you're somewhere else. Got some other browser window open in your brain. Your breathing, I know it so well, and it's not right. You're only pretending to me asleep. As my breath fills the hollows of your back, your hair black satin in the night, I cannot see your face but I imagine that your eyes are open. You are thinking about...
"What are you thinking?"
She always wanted to know. It was the only time I saw real fear on her face. Not fight, just fear. I think she really expected that one day I'd say, "Not of you." And because I knew that's what she thought, every response of any sincerity choked me and stuck half way up my throat. I couldn't get the truth past that lump. I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, even if I was solving world hunger while she went down on me, or composing sonnets about the way her hands lifted my hips, her wedding ring catching on the satin sheet, even if I confessed to all of that, she'd know I was lying. She'd see in my eyes I was thinking of... nothing.
You were my oblivion.
Going cold-turkey sucked.
So here I am and you're sizing me up and dressing me down with eyes as judgmental as hers never were, and you're already undressing me so you can attach all the labels that you can fit because of my nipple rings and my Christian tats and my d6 pendant and my ankh ear cuff. You have made every decision about me that you will ever make and it stuns me that you don't think I believe in God. I don't just believe in God. I have living proof that He exists and looks out for me. Because if He didn't, than two hours ago, when you first stepped into my trailer, when you first straightened your tie and began to talk, when you first measured my worth with you great big (probably three inch) ruler, when you first did all that... well... if there wasn't a God?
If God hadn't been looking out for me, I would have leaned forward in the first thirty seconds and told you that your wife tastes like honey and nutmeg, and your side of the bed has a great view of the ocean.
(And I would have lost my job.)
God rocks.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
One Patch of Earth, One Grain of Sand
“The temptation of Christ refers to the trails of Jesus by the devil as detailed in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. According to these texts, after being baptized by his cousin John, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the desert. During this time, the devil appeared to Jesus and tempted him to demonstrate his supernatural powers as proof of his divinity, each temptation being refused by Jesus with a quote of scripture. The Gospels state that having failed, the devil departed and angels came and brought nourishment to Jesus.
“Mark's account is very brief, merely noting the aforementioned events, but giving no details about them, not even how many there were. Matthew and Luke on the other hand, describe the temptations by recounting the details of the conversations between Jesus and the devil. Since the elements of the narrative that are in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark are mostly pairs of quotations, rather than detailed narrative, many scholars believe that these extra details originate in the Q Document.”
It is just a patch of Earth. There has been no stone rolled away here. There has been no murder. Likewise there has been no rousing call to arms preached from this spot. No child conceived on a warm spring day, picnic blanket spread here beneath the surrounding privacy of the trees. It is just a patch of Earth. That is how some see it. And that is truth. Not *the* truth. *A* truth.
Just like I highly doubt that those forty days of fasting were the first or last time that Christ was tempted.
I’ve written before about the glass being half-empty, or half-full, or, as I like to see it, all the way full -- water and air working as one to fill every empty space. But our individual perspective doesn’t begin or end with glasses of water. We are constantly, each of us, living in our own reality. Our own OS. My Reality, version 1.5.
Why the version? Because sometimes we are shaken by quakes of realization or enlightenment that our reality shifts. Not reality itself. *Our* reality. But still that is monumentous because *our* reality is the only reality we have.
Matthew 4:1
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
I am standing in the dead of winter staring any where but at the patch of dirt. Because, you know, it’s dirt so why would I look at it? I am entranced by the sky and the feather brush of the evergreens as they stroke the low clouds. But my friend is staring down. Staring at the dirt.
“In summertime, bronze and orange irises sprout here. They push up from that spot right there and their stems, their stalks are thick and strong. The colors are almost masculine. They look metal. Steampunk even. I can’t look at this patch of dirt and not see them. I feel an ache... and anticipation for them here--” he touches his chest. “I know this is their place of slumber. Sacred. They’re waiting... and I’m waiting with them.”
I look at the ground. The grass is pale and weak. The soil is dun and dull. It is not lush and loamy. It is not dark and pungent. It is actually what you think of when I say the word dirt. It is nondescript. Littered with small pebbles, leaf remnants, bits of twigs and pine needles. It’s just... dirt.
“You see the potential of what this patch could be, will be,” I offer, trying to mesh our realities because human nature drives me to do so.
My friend, who is also my father, shakes his head, “No. I see what it is. Now then forever.”
Mark 1:12
And immediately the spirit drove Him into the wilderness.
I slip the photographed out of my grandmothers New Testament. It has as many blank pages filled with hand-written scripture as it has printed pages. The cover is blood red leather, almost black. The pages are like sheets of rice papers. The photograph is borrowed... stolen... treasured.
Here is that patch of dirt. Just that dirt as it was years before my father and I ever stood and stared at it and not. There is actually no dirt to be seen in this picture. No ground at all. The space is over-flowing with dense clusters of forest green leaves studded with brilliant robin egg blue gumdrop shaped flowers. Tiny petals are visible if I stare hard enough.
My eyes are drawn to the dark-skinned woman in the picture. She is kneeling by the tiny gemstones of blue, one hand reaching out not to touch them but as if to feel their color and vibrancy in the air like heat or vibration. It is obvious that she sees something I do not. My eyes are on her. The lines of her body that are as familiar as my own. Her posture and unspoken language that says so much without words. My eyes are not on the dirt. They are not even on the flowers and leaves and colors. I see only the person and everything my mother is telling me about herself, about myself, about that one patch of dirt.
Luke 4:1
And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
That one space is unable to grow a tree, we learned. Though no one could establish why. It is unable to grow roses of any variety and sedge grass loves it. It receives mid-day an late-afternoon sun but some morning sun as well though the shadows of transition still rest there at dawn.
A person could choose to ignore the space. The study it for hours and days. To write a book about it. To photograph it. To explore it. To turn it. To cement over it. You could nurture it or burn it. Replant or experiment. Wire a street lamp. Lay a patio. The choices for that patch of dirt -- for any and every patch of dirt (or moment, or sentence, or praise, or insult, or strike, or dream) -- are endless and countless, different in all of our realities. What is a temple for me may be invisible to you. Your joy may look like my slavery.
We can never change our reality to another’s. We are simply not made that way. The closest we come is to stop ourselves and lift from our own lives for a moment. To ask ourselves, “How must that feel?” and truly and thoroughly slide into another’s shoes. I think very few people can do this well. I think many don’t take the time to learn how.
After all, even if you can understand or glimpse another person’s reality in perfect detail, impossibly unbiased by our own, it still does not change your own world. You will still have your reality and they will have theirs. The best we can hope for is that, by changing places, by considering the insular realities of others, we might some day come upon that divine moment of realization and enlightenment. That moment when our own reality shifts up a version and finds itself renewed.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to think that Christ’s forty days was something extraordinary for Him. A great Temptation. A poetic and dramatic event that surely served as enlightenment. A unique and power set of trails.
Yet, interestingly, the story of the temptation is one of the notable omissions from the gospel of John the Beloved. Perhaps John, arguably nearest and dearest to Christ, knew that He would suffer so much more, that in other instances (perhaps ones not noted in the written scripture) Christ had faced much worse. Maybe what Matthew, Mark, and Luke saw as a great temptation, was just yet another bout with that same old satan, that same force of malice that dogged Him every where He spoke.
Maybe John knew that Christ would see the temptations as something else. As just a patch of dirt, an expanse of sand in the desert. Just one temptation, one trail among countless others in the life of our Lord.
EJ
“Mark's account is very brief, merely noting the aforementioned events, but giving no details about them, not even how many there were. Matthew and Luke on the other hand, describe the temptations by recounting the details of the conversations between Jesus and the devil. Since the elements of the narrative that are in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark are mostly pairs of quotations, rather than detailed narrative, many scholars believe that these extra details originate in the Q Document.”
It is just a patch of Earth. There has been no stone rolled away here. There has been no murder. Likewise there has been no rousing call to arms preached from this spot. No child conceived on a warm spring day, picnic blanket spread here beneath the surrounding privacy of the trees. It is just a patch of Earth. That is how some see it. And that is truth. Not *the* truth. *A* truth.
Just like I highly doubt that those forty days of fasting were the first or last time that Christ was tempted.
I’ve written before about the glass being half-empty, or half-full, or, as I like to see it, all the way full -- water and air working as one to fill every empty space. But our individual perspective doesn’t begin or end with glasses of water. We are constantly, each of us, living in our own reality. Our own OS. My Reality, version 1.5.
Why the version? Because sometimes we are shaken by quakes of realization or enlightenment that our reality shifts. Not reality itself. *Our* reality. But still that is monumentous because *our* reality is the only reality we have.
Matthew 4:1
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
I am standing in the dead of winter staring any where but at the patch of dirt. Because, you know, it’s dirt so why would I look at it? I am entranced by the sky and the feather brush of the evergreens as they stroke the low clouds. But my friend is staring down. Staring at the dirt.
“In summertime, bronze and orange irises sprout here. They push up from that spot right there and their stems, their stalks are thick and strong. The colors are almost masculine. They look metal. Steampunk even. I can’t look at this patch of dirt and not see them. I feel an ache... and anticipation for them here--” he touches his chest. “I know this is their place of slumber. Sacred. They’re waiting... and I’m waiting with them.”
I look at the ground. The grass is pale and weak. The soil is dun and dull. It is not lush and loamy. It is not dark and pungent. It is actually what you think of when I say the word dirt. It is nondescript. Littered with small pebbles, leaf remnants, bits of twigs and pine needles. It’s just... dirt.
“You see the potential of what this patch could be, will be,” I offer, trying to mesh our realities because human nature drives me to do so.
My friend, who is also my father, shakes his head, “No. I see what it is. Now then forever.”
Mark 1:12
And immediately the spirit drove Him into the wilderness.
I slip the photographed out of my grandmothers New Testament. It has as many blank pages filled with hand-written scripture as it has printed pages. The cover is blood red leather, almost black. The pages are like sheets of rice papers. The photograph is borrowed... stolen... treasured.
Here is that patch of dirt. Just that dirt as it was years before my father and I ever stood and stared at it and not. There is actually no dirt to be seen in this picture. No ground at all. The space is over-flowing with dense clusters of forest green leaves studded with brilliant robin egg blue gumdrop shaped flowers. Tiny petals are visible if I stare hard enough.
My eyes are drawn to the dark-skinned woman in the picture. She is kneeling by the tiny gemstones of blue, one hand reaching out not to touch them but as if to feel their color and vibrancy in the air like heat or vibration. It is obvious that she sees something I do not. My eyes are on her. The lines of her body that are as familiar as my own. Her posture and unspoken language that says so much without words. My eyes are not on the dirt. They are not even on the flowers and leaves and colors. I see only the person and everything my mother is telling me about herself, about myself, about that one patch of dirt.
Luke 4:1
And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
That one space is unable to grow a tree, we learned. Though no one could establish why. It is unable to grow roses of any variety and sedge grass loves it. It receives mid-day an late-afternoon sun but some morning sun as well though the shadows of transition still rest there at dawn.
A person could choose to ignore the space. The study it for hours and days. To write a book about it. To photograph it. To explore it. To turn it. To cement over it. You could nurture it or burn it. Replant or experiment. Wire a street lamp. Lay a patio. The choices for that patch of dirt -- for any and every patch of dirt (or moment, or sentence, or praise, or insult, or strike, or dream) -- are endless and countless, different in all of our realities. What is a temple for me may be invisible to you. Your joy may look like my slavery.
We can never change our reality to another’s. We are simply not made that way. The closest we come is to stop ourselves and lift from our own lives for a moment. To ask ourselves, “How must that feel?” and truly and thoroughly slide into another’s shoes. I think very few people can do this well. I think many don’t take the time to learn how.
After all, even if you can understand or glimpse another person’s reality in perfect detail, impossibly unbiased by our own, it still does not change your own world. You will still have your reality and they will have theirs. The best we can hope for is that, by changing places, by considering the insular realities of others, we might some day come upon that divine moment of realization and enlightenment. That moment when our own reality shifts up a version and finds itself renewed.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to think that Christ’s forty days was something extraordinary for Him. A great Temptation. A poetic and dramatic event that surely served as enlightenment. A unique and power set of trails.
Yet, interestingly, the story of the temptation is one of the notable omissions from the gospel of John the Beloved. Perhaps John, arguably nearest and dearest to Christ, knew that He would suffer so much more, that in other instances (perhaps ones not noted in the written scripture) Christ had faced much worse. Maybe what Matthew, Mark, and Luke saw as a great temptation, was just yet another bout with that same old satan, that same force of malice that dogged Him every where He spoke.
Maybe John knew that Christ would see the temptations as something else. As just a patch of dirt, an expanse of sand in the desert. Just one temptation, one trail among countless others in the life of our Lord.
EJ
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Impulse Control
There are certain words that get overused (actually, there are a *lot* of words that get overused -- like "lite" and "free" and “forever”) and used incorrectly and so they begin to lose their meaning, lose their power, and this worries me.
No. Wait. It doesn't worry me. It infuriates me.
Let's talk about these words. Let's actually talk about them as they were conceived, not as they have been conveniently co-opted by lazy thinkers who have nothing better than to approach life as gluttons for momentary pleasure, living so much in the hererightnow that their lack of reflection on what might come after (if anything) doesn’t bother them in the least because, not unlike trans fat, if heaven and hell exist, if reward and consequence are real, than we’ll only know for sure when it’s too late.
What? You'd like to know what these words are, specifically, before investing in the time to scroll down, read (skim), engage (or not) on this topic with a grrl you've likely never met or will meet but who seems to think that actions don't always speak louder than blogs? (Because why else would I? Blog, that is.) Of course, that is another conversation and not the one for today, so I’ll give in and give it up... but just this once, and just because you’re special.
Addiction. Empowerment. Sin.
Still with me? Most of you, I think no. Right about “addiction” is when the zoning out began and right about “empower” is when tiny minds who think I mean men when I say man are rolling their eyes skyward in chagrin in the face of the touchy-feely wonder of it all. Then we hit “sin” and I peak a little interest in the apparent paradox offer, the contrast/compare of gamer and grrl, but quash a bunch more interest because, heck, hererightnow who needs to worry about sin and since when did I start believing in sin anyhow? Like everyone in the whole wide English speaking world knowing the name Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein but only half those knowing who they are and only a tenth of those having ever actually read anything written or composed by either of them.
Now that there are only four or six of us left reading, let’s jump in. Because if I can’t live an examined life, than I’m just wallowing in slop and the last time I looked in the mirrored wall of my favorite dance club I was a taut and sexy thang, not no swine, baby. So let’s go play with pearls.
Addiction is a buzz word. It is hollow cheeks and dark circles and blood shot eyes. It is ultra skinny nothing but bones, covered in bruises, dirty and raw. It is destructive. It is illogical. It is not what anyone wants. It is a call, a pull, an inanimate thing that gets what *it* wants, without thought to host, to effect, to consequence.
I’m sure you can imagine the posters now. The faces. The taglines. The stark colors. You know the substances. The behaviors. The guilt, pain, sorrow, disappointment.
But what if I want to look deeper. What if I want to say: Addiction is an ache that cannot be filled until fed its desire. A constant yearning. A distraction. Elation beyond reason when satisfied. Defying logic to rejoice in consummation.
What if I defined addiction as: That which drives us beyond reason, to the edge sanity and logic, to the utter destruction of everything we were before and everything we could be with it. To yearn, to weep, to ache, to reach. To desire more than breath. To be willing to pay any price, any time, over and over again.
The pearl of great price. The wisdom of His stand: Do not as you have done. Change everything. Change everyone. Change yourself.
His words were more radical than email to carrier pigeon. His actions were more radical than covered wagon to space shuttle. I can code prayers in binary into the backgrounds of the newsletter I publish and that’s still tame compared to turn the other cheek, judge not your fellow man, and ask me for forgiveness... for anything, for everything... and it is yours.
Speak to me, from your lips to my ears, and I will hear even the unspoken that hides in the shadows and folds of your heart.
I will hear you. And what is more... I will understand.
“I fall to my knees
when I hear my angel’s voice.
Oh night divine, this night
when this love was born.”
It is addiction if it hurts someone else. Whether it’s drug-use, hatred, anger, compulsion, sex. It is impassioned if it drives us closer to God... when as it drives us mad.
Empowerment is a raised fist, a rousing speech, a grant, a trust, a parade, a law. Empowerment is pride in the lift of a chin, the direct line of a gaze. It is hoping and dreaming and building pillars beneath every castle in the air.
Empowerment is so close to enabling that the line is draw in dry sand. The winds of popular opinion shift and suddenly the division is gone and so are our good intentions.
I sit in a basement room with checkerboard lino and a cool comfort that encourages talk and chipped, second-hand mugs of hot cocoa and cheap tea, drip coffee that somehow emerges from the keg-shaped tank at the end of a green folding table. The bargain table cookies are gone and the crumbled napkins and crumbs are abandoned and forgotten. It will be my job to clean up the mess.
For a generation, this new generation, after Gen X, sometimes called Gen Y, the words have been shouted: Be proud! Stand up! Stand Out! FTW! (Forget the World.) Embrace the moment. And the statistics that had fallen are rising again. The rousing cry of, “Don’t let them beat you down!” became a growl of, “Nothing can take me down!” and there is no truth in that that isn’t misguided and twisted.
And every time you take him back in, you enable him to keep drinking and smoking pot.
And every time she weeps sorry and you murmur itsallright, you enable her to keep killing you.
And every time you let him fight alone, you enable him to be a rock, an island, an untouchable thing.
Every time you offer best wishes instead of time, every time you let confessions of hurt hang in the air, every time you flood her inbox and her ears with hypocrisy, you are enabling the very behaviors you pray would cease.
We empower because there is a darkness that must be risen above. But all that black still exists, swirling in eddies, maelstroms. We need to educate, not empower. We need to illuminate and examine, not empower.
We need to face the midnight storms, stand within the event horizons, and shatter them, disperse them, destroy them. It is easy to lift up. It is harder to dig down. But solid foundations are always stronger than pillars.
It really seems a sin to ignore the problem and throw bouquets of empowerment. Whether or not the soldiers are empowered, the darkness will still eventually kill them.
Sin is everything you have been taught it to be. Some of us have been taught the same actions, thoughts, behaviors. Others have never even heard of them. It floored me to hear that one doctrine claims masturbation will keep you out of heaven but resisting could eventually make you deity, when just down the street and around the corner, another congregation was teaching humility and out-right martyrdom to its youth, with masturbation as a way to rid yourself of sexual urges and desires and keep your body pure toward others.
Perhaps “sin” cannot be so easily defined? Unless “sin” is a convention of man (by which I mean humans, mankind, not everyone with a penis) and so is concocted by the ruling class, the rule-making, the money-holders, the power players. Is it a sin to step on an ant on accident? How about on purpose? Is it a sin to let a child cry unattended? How about to slap your wife? How about to cheat on your husband? What if you just *think* about slapping your wife when she accidentally looks at another man’s butt? Oh, how tangled a definition of sin we weave when we practice to deceive.
Who is drafting the definition of sin? Certainly not God. Deception is not in the genetic makeup of our Lord or when they told Him, “Dude, just *say* you’re not the son of God, and we’ll get you out of here, ‘kay?” and yet there He stayed. Bleeding. Dying.
But man and deception goes all the way back to Eden:
“Did you eat the fruit?”
“Oh no, no, no!”
“Than why are you buck naked?”
“Cuz we got shy!”
“Who told you to be shy?”
“The armadillos!”
The art of war and survival (not to mention those holy scripts) tells us we need to be fruitful. Just makes sense that anything that doesn’t make babies should be a sin. Common sense! (Oops! Guess none of the prophets foresaw gross overpopulation! Dang it!) The very same arts -- war and survival -- say safety in numbers, safety in homogeny. So suddenly conversion makes sense... holy wars... terror and bombs and ourgodistheoneandonly mantras that are justified even as we vilify each other.
Who decides what is sin?
God decides.
But the masses cry, “What about *until* God intervenes?! What about *before* we slip our mortal coils? What about others who sin and them needing to be punished? What about a prophet or helper or preacher or someone to facilitate the recognition and ramifications of sin and sinners *now*?”
You know what I say to all that? I say, “What a bunch of impatient, self-important, greedy, voyeuristic frakkers.” That’s what I say.
Sin is when Christ whispers into your heart and you pretend not to hear Him.
Sin is when He lights your path but you find it too rocky to walk.
Sin is when you damage or destroy that which is precious to Him.
Sin is hubris, jealousy, hatred, possession. Destruction, disregard, disrespect.
Sin is not dictated from the pulpit. It is a knowledge in ourselves, placed there by His hand, and it is as unique as our finger prints, sewn to fit our soul alone. Where cowardice may be the sin of one man, fury might be the sin of another. Only Christ and our hearts know the truth.
And that is why no man can judge another.
There is power in words. Great hurts can be healed or hidden by simple phrases. So when I see t-shirts with slogans (therein lies a delight) that shout for action instead of words, I pause and muse on longevity and remembrance, on meaning and definition. I think about all the actions -- of addiction, of empowerment, of sin -- that make us all who we are, that make our world what it is, ad I can’t help but wish that a few of us (a few hundred thousand of us) would sit down and stop taking action for a moment.
Just sit down, reflect, shut up... and blog.
EJ
No. Wait. It doesn't worry me. It infuriates me.
Let's talk about these words. Let's actually talk about them as they were conceived, not as they have been conveniently co-opted by lazy thinkers who have nothing better than to approach life as gluttons for momentary pleasure, living so much in the hererightnow that their lack of reflection on what might come after (if anything) doesn’t bother them in the least because, not unlike trans fat, if heaven and hell exist, if reward and consequence are real, than we’ll only know for sure when it’s too late.
What? You'd like to know what these words are, specifically, before investing in the time to scroll down, read (skim), engage (or not) on this topic with a grrl you've likely never met or will meet but who seems to think that actions don't always speak louder than blogs? (Because why else would I? Blog, that is.) Of course, that is another conversation and not the one for today, so I’ll give in and give it up... but just this once, and just because you’re special.
Addiction. Empowerment. Sin.
Still with me? Most of you, I think no. Right about “addiction” is when the zoning out began and right about “empower” is when tiny minds who think I mean men when I say man are rolling their eyes skyward in chagrin in the face of the touchy-feely wonder of it all. Then we hit “sin” and I peak a little interest in the apparent paradox offer, the contrast/compare of gamer and grrl, but quash a bunch more interest because, heck, hererightnow who needs to worry about sin and since when did I start believing in sin anyhow? Like everyone in the whole wide English speaking world knowing the name Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein but only half those knowing who they are and only a tenth of those having ever actually read anything written or composed by either of them.
Now that there are only four or six of us left reading, let’s jump in. Because if I can’t live an examined life, than I’m just wallowing in slop and the last time I looked in the mirrored wall of my favorite dance club I was a taut and sexy thang, not no swine, baby. So let’s go play with pearls.
Addiction is a buzz word. It is hollow cheeks and dark circles and blood shot eyes. It is ultra skinny nothing but bones, covered in bruises, dirty and raw. It is destructive. It is illogical. It is not what anyone wants. It is a call, a pull, an inanimate thing that gets what *it* wants, without thought to host, to effect, to consequence.
I’m sure you can imagine the posters now. The faces. The taglines. The stark colors. You know the substances. The behaviors. The guilt, pain, sorrow, disappointment.
But what if I want to look deeper. What if I want to say: Addiction is an ache that cannot be filled until fed its desire. A constant yearning. A distraction. Elation beyond reason when satisfied. Defying logic to rejoice in consummation.
What if I defined addiction as: That which drives us beyond reason, to the edge sanity and logic, to the utter destruction of everything we were before and everything we could be with it. To yearn, to weep, to ache, to reach. To desire more than breath. To be willing to pay any price, any time, over and over again.
The pearl of great price. The wisdom of His stand: Do not as you have done. Change everything. Change everyone. Change yourself.
His words were more radical than email to carrier pigeon. His actions were more radical than covered wagon to space shuttle. I can code prayers in binary into the backgrounds of the newsletter I publish and that’s still tame compared to turn the other cheek, judge not your fellow man, and ask me for forgiveness... for anything, for everything... and it is yours.
Speak to me, from your lips to my ears, and I will hear even the unspoken that hides in the shadows and folds of your heart.
I will hear you. And what is more... I will understand.
“I fall to my knees
when I hear my angel’s voice.
Oh night divine, this night
when this love was born.”
It is addiction if it hurts someone else. Whether it’s drug-use, hatred, anger, compulsion, sex. It is impassioned if it drives us closer to God... when as it drives us mad.
Empowerment is a raised fist, a rousing speech, a grant, a trust, a parade, a law. Empowerment is pride in the lift of a chin, the direct line of a gaze. It is hoping and dreaming and building pillars beneath every castle in the air.
Empowerment is so close to enabling that the line is draw in dry sand. The winds of popular opinion shift and suddenly the division is gone and so are our good intentions.
I sit in a basement room with checkerboard lino and a cool comfort that encourages talk and chipped, second-hand mugs of hot cocoa and cheap tea, drip coffee that somehow emerges from the keg-shaped tank at the end of a green folding table. The bargain table cookies are gone and the crumbled napkins and crumbs are abandoned and forgotten. It will be my job to clean up the mess.
For a generation, this new generation, after Gen X, sometimes called Gen Y, the words have been shouted: Be proud! Stand up! Stand Out! FTW! (Forget the World.) Embrace the moment. And the statistics that had fallen are rising again. The rousing cry of, “Don’t let them beat you down!” became a growl of, “Nothing can take me down!” and there is no truth in that that isn’t misguided and twisted.
And every time you take him back in, you enable him to keep drinking and smoking pot.
And every time she weeps sorry and you murmur itsallright, you enable her to keep killing you.
And every time you let him fight alone, you enable him to be a rock, an island, an untouchable thing.
Every time you offer best wishes instead of time, every time you let confessions of hurt hang in the air, every time you flood her inbox and her ears with hypocrisy, you are enabling the very behaviors you pray would cease.
We empower because there is a darkness that must be risen above. But all that black still exists, swirling in eddies, maelstroms. We need to educate, not empower. We need to illuminate and examine, not empower.
We need to face the midnight storms, stand within the event horizons, and shatter them, disperse them, destroy them. It is easy to lift up. It is harder to dig down. But solid foundations are always stronger than pillars.
It really seems a sin to ignore the problem and throw bouquets of empowerment. Whether or not the soldiers are empowered, the darkness will still eventually kill them.
Sin is everything you have been taught it to be. Some of us have been taught the same actions, thoughts, behaviors. Others have never even heard of them. It floored me to hear that one doctrine claims masturbation will keep you out of heaven but resisting could eventually make you deity, when just down the street and around the corner, another congregation was teaching humility and out-right martyrdom to its youth, with masturbation as a way to rid yourself of sexual urges and desires and keep your body pure toward others.
Perhaps “sin” cannot be so easily defined? Unless “sin” is a convention of man (by which I mean humans, mankind, not everyone with a penis) and so is concocted by the ruling class, the rule-making, the money-holders, the power players. Is it a sin to step on an ant on accident? How about on purpose? Is it a sin to let a child cry unattended? How about to slap your wife? How about to cheat on your husband? What if you just *think* about slapping your wife when she accidentally looks at another man’s butt? Oh, how tangled a definition of sin we weave when we practice to deceive.
Who is drafting the definition of sin? Certainly not God. Deception is not in the genetic makeup of our Lord or when they told Him, “Dude, just *say* you’re not the son of God, and we’ll get you out of here, ‘kay?” and yet there He stayed. Bleeding. Dying.
But man and deception goes all the way back to Eden:
“Did you eat the fruit?”
“Oh no, no, no!”
“Than why are you buck naked?”
“Cuz we got shy!”
“Who told you to be shy?”
“The armadillos!”
The art of war and survival (not to mention those holy scripts) tells us we need to be fruitful. Just makes sense that anything that doesn’t make babies should be a sin. Common sense! (Oops! Guess none of the prophets foresaw gross overpopulation! Dang it!) The very same arts -- war and survival -- say safety in numbers, safety in homogeny. So suddenly conversion makes sense... holy wars... terror and bombs and ourgodistheoneandonly mantras that are justified even as we vilify each other.
Who decides what is sin?
God decides.
But the masses cry, “What about *until* God intervenes?! What about *before* we slip our mortal coils? What about others who sin and them needing to be punished? What about a prophet or helper or preacher or someone to facilitate the recognition and ramifications of sin and sinners *now*?”
You know what I say to all that? I say, “What a bunch of impatient, self-important, greedy, voyeuristic frakkers.” That’s what I say.
Sin is when Christ whispers into your heart and you pretend not to hear Him.
Sin is when He lights your path but you find it too rocky to walk.
Sin is when you damage or destroy that which is precious to Him.
Sin is hubris, jealousy, hatred, possession. Destruction, disregard, disrespect.
Sin is not dictated from the pulpit. It is a knowledge in ourselves, placed there by His hand, and it is as unique as our finger prints, sewn to fit our soul alone. Where cowardice may be the sin of one man, fury might be the sin of another. Only Christ and our hearts know the truth.
And that is why no man can judge another.
There is power in words. Great hurts can be healed or hidden by simple phrases. So when I see t-shirts with slogans (therein lies a delight) that shout for action instead of words, I pause and muse on longevity and remembrance, on meaning and definition. I think about all the actions -- of addiction, of empowerment, of sin -- that make us all who we are, that make our world what it is, ad I can’t help but wish that a few of us (a few hundred thousand of us) would sit down and stop taking action for a moment.
Just sit down, reflect, shut up... and blog.
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
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Think It Through
The simplest solution is often the best solution. Think of the almost incomprehensible number of creatures and objects and rules of physics that God had to craft with creation. Try to grasp that and you’ll see quickly what logical sense it made that He wove everything – everything! – from fractals that repeat and flip and turn and slide into place. Genesis made simple... only for God, of course, but you get my idea.
In teen out-reach (“RL Bible Study”) tonight one teen asked me point blank, “Why did God make sex feel good?”
An older grrl across the circle muttered, “It does?”
But I gave in. I played along. “You’re really asking, why did God make sex feel good if we have to wait until we’re married... or until we’re trying to conceive?”
The teen flipped her hair and shook her head, popping her gum and adjusting the belt on her jeans. “No. Not *that* kind of sex. The other kind.”
And my sharp retort of pleased/amused laughter rang off the church basement floor. I looked up at my co-teacher with great big eyes full up of joyful opportunity. He looked back at me with klaxons of alarm sounding. Oh... I looked away. Right. As Christians... we’re not supposed to *like* our bodies.
*shrug*
Too bad. I do.
And so I said:
I stood on the beach with the waves around my bare feet and cresting around my calves and she was running, laughing, her hair wet with the spray, leaving a trail of clothes behind her until she threw herself into my arms, tackling me into the waves and locking our mouths, our hips, our hearts... and it all felt so good. Why? Because I was alive. And she was alive. And we had the entire ocean to discover and each other.
And it was all a gift from God.
I danced hard in the darkness and the strobes were blue green red. The beat was heavy, unrelenting, power and sex (same thing), pleasure and passion (ditto) shaking me down and turning my marrow molten bronze and my skin into rose petals. I felt free from every care, every worry, every Suit telling me what to do, how to walk, who to kiss, how to live. I was me: Endurance. Beat. Strength. Firm, slick with sweat, wild with the night. And nobody was taking me home but me. I belonged to only me.
And it was all a gift from God.
The desert was like nothing I had ever seen. And we made love in the cool blue shade of ancient stones. His tongue traced the lines of my tats and the warm metal of every piercing and I felt my body like scripture, telling truths and stories unfiltered by politics or fear. All the fighting, all the sacrifice, all the compromise and standing ground was all right there to be tasted, to be read like Braille. My hands on his shoulders then tangled in his hair, I shouted at the endless sky.
And it was all a gift from God.
Holding you while you cried hard because he could no longer meet your eyes....
Holding my father while he passed from this world....
Holding my breath the first time you looked at me....
Holding on even when the world tells me to let go.
The only letting go I ever do is to let go, let God.
And that, too, is a gift.
“I hope that answers your question,” I say with a steady gaze and a gentle smile.
She squints her eyes at me than swivels in her plastic chair and fixes her youth pastor with an incredulous stare. “Where'd you find this chick?!”
There is laughter. Mine included. And I meet your eyes across the room.
When we are given a gift, we are thankful. We are gracious. We are respectful. When we are given a gift, a gift grant to us by our Lord and woven into our bodies in a hundred million fractal parts, we should not be ashamed. We should not second guess.
We must celebrate.
EJ
In teen out-reach (“RL Bible Study”) tonight one teen asked me point blank, “Why did God make sex feel good?”
An older grrl across the circle muttered, “It does?”
But I gave in. I played along. “You’re really asking, why did God make sex feel good if we have to wait until we’re married... or until we’re trying to conceive?”
The teen flipped her hair and shook her head, popping her gum and adjusting the belt on her jeans. “No. Not *that* kind of sex. The other kind.”
And my sharp retort of pleased/amused laughter rang off the church basement floor. I looked up at my co-teacher with great big eyes full up of joyful opportunity. He looked back at me with klaxons of alarm sounding. Oh... I looked away. Right. As Christians... we’re not supposed to *like* our bodies.
*shrug*
Too bad. I do.
And so I said:
I stood on the beach with the waves around my bare feet and cresting around my calves and she was running, laughing, her hair wet with the spray, leaving a trail of clothes behind her until she threw herself into my arms, tackling me into the waves and locking our mouths, our hips, our hearts... and it all felt so good. Why? Because I was alive. And she was alive. And we had the entire ocean to discover and each other.
And it was all a gift from God.
I danced hard in the darkness and the strobes were blue green red. The beat was heavy, unrelenting, power and sex (same thing), pleasure and passion (ditto) shaking me down and turning my marrow molten bronze and my skin into rose petals. I felt free from every care, every worry, every Suit telling me what to do, how to walk, who to kiss, how to live. I was me: Endurance. Beat. Strength. Firm, slick with sweat, wild with the night. And nobody was taking me home but me. I belonged to only me.
And it was all a gift from God.
The desert was like nothing I had ever seen. And we made love in the cool blue shade of ancient stones. His tongue traced the lines of my tats and the warm metal of every piercing and I felt my body like scripture, telling truths and stories unfiltered by politics or fear. All the fighting, all the sacrifice, all the compromise and standing ground was all right there to be tasted, to be read like Braille. My hands on his shoulders then tangled in his hair, I shouted at the endless sky.
And it was all a gift from God.
Holding you while you cried hard because he could no longer meet your eyes....
Holding my father while he passed from this world....
Holding my breath the first time you looked at me....
Holding on even when the world tells me to let go.
The only letting go I ever do is to let go, let God.
And that, too, is a gift.
“I hope that answers your question,” I say with a steady gaze and a gentle smile.
She squints her eyes at me than swivels in her plastic chair and fixes her youth pastor with an incredulous stare. “Where'd you find this chick?!”
There is laughter. Mine included. And I meet your eyes across the room.
When we are given a gift, we are thankful. We are gracious. We are respectful. When we are given a gift, a gift grant to us by our Lord and woven into our bodies in a hundred million fractal parts, we should not be ashamed. We should not second guess.
We must celebrate.
EJ
Sunday, August 09, 2009
God Whispers: Down. Stay. Good Grrl.
...or The Importance of Inaction
I am sitting alone with you (is that an oxymoron?) above the sea. I used to ride out here, the speed easing me half way to the healing that the sea would complete, and then sit on the bluff at the side of the road. But that isn't how you roll. You have a little... a lot... more class than I do. You are elegant and refined, cultured and measured. I think this is why you have had so many lovers. I don't think many creatures like you exist any more. Especially not in GenX.
You whisper: I don't want my angel on the side of the road.
I like it when you call me your angel.
"No playing games.
You're watching me.
All those simple things you do.
They draw me in."
And so I am alone (with you) perched on the balcony railing of a five star hotel, the sea crashing three storeys below me. My bare feet dangling to the drop, my back to your chest, your hands slipping forward to open eight buttons. I find myself counting them come undone... as I come undone... all in time with the waves cresting, crashing, cascading, creating a new shoreline with every slip, slide, seduction of you. Your fingertips brush my hem, open cloth like you open by heart. Thumbs stroke down abs recently tightened for work. I shudder. They continue down then alight, with no other fingers, on my heavy Kawasaki belt buckle.
You whisper: I'm listening.
I like it when you're listening.
"The places you touch
you mark with a kiss.
No one knows your secret
but sometimes you let me in."
I try to open my mouth but my lungs fill with sea spray and salt. Suddenly I want the sand at my back, you above me, those freezing cold curtains of mist and wave washing up and away around us. I want you inside me, filling me up in a way that only the Holy Spirit can. I want to *do.* Not talk about doing. I want *action.* Not planning. I want to shut up and take you against me. I want to scream your name like the time the neighbors came knocking to make sure we were okay. I don't want to talk. I want to do. You open my belt. I'm waiting, you tell me, without words. I push against you but you won't be persuaded. I stare at the sea and imagine drowning sweet and wild in you. Come on, grrl, you're coaxing, tracing the lines of my muscles and bones. Then, roughly, without pretense, you turn me into your arms. Kiss me hard. I feel my hands let go of the railing and I'm flailing, trying to find a purchase in your clothes, your hair, your... but you are holding me so tightly that I do not need to hold on. And anyway, I've already fallen. Oh God, you know how hard I've fallen for you.
You whisper: You will talk to me.
I like it when you insist.
"I can't wait to begin.
I can't breathe while I wait."
I tell you everything. Everything. Everything that no one else knows. Everything that I never admitted to even myself. The fears, the dreams, the hopes, the broken heart. I tell you everything. I even tell you the truth. My own quiet truth, soft and tender. And so much of what I say starts and ends with, "They said..." and "...they say." So much of my reality shaped by how other people see me -- and the labels of culture, tradition, society, religion and politics that they glue all over me. Five times... I see your eyes counting... ten times... I watch your smile keeping track... twelve times is the charm and you stop me. Your finger tips against my lips is like an electric shock crackling through my body. You are fire and ice and I want you so much it's almost unbearable. I moan. You step away, leaving me in the plush hotel room chair.
You step back... but not too far. I can still smell your perfume. You unzip your bomber jacket and it falls over your shoulders as you shrug it back. It slides down your arms and back and pools, chocolate-and-nutmeg brown, at your boots. You hold my gaze. You tilt your chin. Your hands travel your body. You shudder. I lean forward in my chair, tensing. You hold up one hand, one finger poised. You shake your head with a faint smile. I lean back. I will stay. I will do anything you command.
You whisper: Are you watching?
I like watching you.
"Every time that I look
you're more inviting."
Shirt... button by button. Skirt... button and zipper. Boots... the arch of your back, the rise of your ass, as you bend over, the swell of each breast threatening to do exactly what you do for them a moment later. You are standing in nothing but a tasteful swatch of black silk and purple lace. Now you raise your hand again. But this time, you beckon me forward. I come obediently, willingly. You have never before allowed me... you have never beckoned me to you with this look on your face, so open, so honest, so obvious what you are saying. But then, you say it.
You whisper: Touch me.
I like...
Words and music fail me. I never thought you would say those two words. Never. I do as told. Gently, shuddering myself now. Slowly, unwilling to rush this moment so rare and precious. I explore and discover your hidden places, your secrets tucked beneath your waves of hair, aside the curve of your ribs, the taut rise of your shoulder blade. I take my time because in dreams (which surely this is) you can take all the time in the world. I am certain there are more than twenty-four hours in this day to touch you. We are the same height exactly so when I run my hands down your sides, cradle your hips and lean into your nape, your lips nestle against my ear.
You whisper: ...
And my eyes fly wide with surprise and pleasure. I cannot stop the gasp that escapes me. I cannot breathe, think, speak. I simply hear your two-word command and sink to my knees.
The sun sets. The balcony doors have remained open and I hear the waves even as I taste your heartbeat and feel my own pounding in my blush. Your hands tight in my hair, some minutes... hours? ...later, and then you ask the question: *They* say what you had wasn't real. *They* say it wasn't valid with only words. You have lived with me for months. I have taken your body countless times. And now you have taken mine. So, tell me, little angel: Which one of us do you know better, him or me?
I blink. I blink again.
You know who I know best.
Sometimes the truth can only be found in inaction. Sometimes action does nothing to show us the way. Sometimes it changes nothing. Sometimes all we need is the ability to be still and listen.
EJ
I am sitting alone with you (is that an oxymoron?) above the sea. I used to ride out here, the speed easing me half way to the healing that the sea would complete, and then sit on the bluff at the side of the road. But that isn't how you roll. You have a little... a lot... more class than I do. You are elegant and refined, cultured and measured. I think this is why you have had so many lovers. I don't think many creatures like you exist any more. Especially not in GenX.
You whisper: I don't want my angel on the side of the road.
I like it when you call me your angel.
"No playing games.
You're watching me.
All those simple things you do.
They draw me in."
And so I am alone (with you) perched on the balcony railing of a five star hotel, the sea crashing three storeys below me. My bare feet dangling to the drop, my back to your chest, your hands slipping forward to open eight buttons. I find myself counting them come undone... as I come undone... all in time with the waves cresting, crashing, cascading, creating a new shoreline with every slip, slide, seduction of you. Your fingertips brush my hem, open cloth like you open by heart. Thumbs stroke down abs recently tightened for work. I shudder. They continue down then alight, with no other fingers, on my heavy Kawasaki belt buckle.
You whisper: I'm listening.
I like it when you're listening.
"The places you touch
you mark with a kiss.
No one knows your secret
but sometimes you let me in."
I try to open my mouth but my lungs fill with sea spray and salt. Suddenly I want the sand at my back, you above me, those freezing cold curtains of mist and wave washing up and away around us. I want you inside me, filling me up in a way that only the Holy Spirit can. I want to *do.* Not talk about doing. I want *action.* Not planning. I want to shut up and take you against me. I want to scream your name like the time the neighbors came knocking to make sure we were okay. I don't want to talk. I want to do. You open my belt. I'm waiting, you tell me, without words. I push against you but you won't be persuaded. I stare at the sea and imagine drowning sweet and wild in you. Come on, grrl, you're coaxing, tracing the lines of my muscles and bones. Then, roughly, without pretense, you turn me into your arms. Kiss me hard. I feel my hands let go of the railing and I'm flailing, trying to find a purchase in your clothes, your hair, your... but you are holding me so tightly that I do not need to hold on. And anyway, I've already fallen. Oh God, you know how hard I've fallen for you.
You whisper: You will talk to me.
I like it when you insist.
"I can't wait to begin.
I can't breathe while I wait."
I tell you everything. Everything. Everything that no one else knows. Everything that I never admitted to even myself. The fears, the dreams, the hopes, the broken heart. I tell you everything. I even tell you the truth. My own quiet truth, soft and tender. And so much of what I say starts and ends with, "They said..." and "...they say." So much of my reality shaped by how other people see me -- and the labels of culture, tradition, society, religion and politics that they glue all over me. Five times... I see your eyes counting... ten times... I watch your smile keeping track... twelve times is the charm and you stop me. Your finger tips against my lips is like an electric shock crackling through my body. You are fire and ice and I want you so much it's almost unbearable. I moan. You step away, leaving me in the plush hotel room chair.
You step back... but not too far. I can still smell your perfume. You unzip your bomber jacket and it falls over your shoulders as you shrug it back. It slides down your arms and back and pools, chocolate-and-nutmeg brown, at your boots. You hold my gaze. You tilt your chin. Your hands travel your body. You shudder. I lean forward in my chair, tensing. You hold up one hand, one finger poised. You shake your head with a faint smile. I lean back. I will stay. I will do anything you command.
You whisper: Are you watching?
I like watching you.
"Every time that I look
you're more inviting."
Shirt... button by button. Skirt... button and zipper. Boots... the arch of your back, the rise of your ass, as you bend over, the swell of each breast threatening to do exactly what you do for them a moment later. You are standing in nothing but a tasteful swatch of black silk and purple lace. Now you raise your hand again. But this time, you beckon me forward. I come obediently, willingly. You have never before allowed me... you have never beckoned me to you with this look on your face, so open, so honest, so obvious what you are saying. But then, you say it.
You whisper: Touch me.
I like...
Words and music fail me. I never thought you would say those two words. Never. I do as told. Gently, shuddering myself now. Slowly, unwilling to rush this moment so rare and precious. I explore and discover your hidden places, your secrets tucked beneath your waves of hair, aside the curve of your ribs, the taut rise of your shoulder blade. I take my time because in dreams (which surely this is) you can take all the time in the world. I am certain there are more than twenty-four hours in this day to touch you. We are the same height exactly so when I run my hands down your sides, cradle your hips and lean into your nape, your lips nestle against my ear.
You whisper: ...
And my eyes fly wide with surprise and pleasure. I cannot stop the gasp that escapes me. I cannot breathe, think, speak. I simply hear your two-word command and sink to my knees.
The sun sets. The balcony doors have remained open and I hear the waves even as I taste your heartbeat and feel my own pounding in my blush. Your hands tight in my hair, some minutes... hours? ...later, and then you ask the question: *They* say what you had wasn't real. *They* say it wasn't valid with only words. You have lived with me for months. I have taken your body countless times. And now you have taken mine. So, tell me, little angel: Which one of us do you know better, him or me?
I blink. I blink again.
You know who I know best.
Sometimes the truth can only be found in inaction. Sometimes action does nothing to show us the way. Sometimes it changes nothing. Sometimes all we need is the ability to be still and listen.
EJ
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