I like to turn all the lights off and wait to see what happens. The cold dread, the spectral fingers on the back of my neck, the sense of a presence in the room -- these things have not happened since I was nine years old. Like the wonder and mystery of deja vu being shattered by the simple truth that it is a chemical loop in the brain, I sometimes miss those very early nights when I was certain that something dangerous lurked in waiting for me.
It should surprise no one (certainly not my parents) that I grew up to be a danger addict with more bones broken than years lived and a complete willingness to do any physical feat that excites me as long as it doesn't put another person at risk. And as for what excites me? Hm. That would make this blog very, very long... and require me to climb down from this roof top, jump over to the next one, shimmy off the side and slink back around to my new bike for jelly beans. Cuz, baby? I'm gonna need a snack if I'm gonna be here that long.
The darkness of a room or the night doesn't scare me any more. The idea of being stabbed or raped or robbed on a city street doesn't amuse me much but I'm not talking about that darkness. I'm talking about the darkness of a room or our homes where we know very well we are safe and sound, the door locked and the windows too. I'm talking about the darkness of a bedroom, quilt over our heads, nervous to turn off the reading light and make every draped shirt a creature reaching through the shadows.
Memory of You... I come downstairs. My bare feet soundless. I am listening to you wash dishes in the light of a full moon. You leave every light off. The whole house is silent except for the water running and the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. I turn into the kitchen. I stand in the doorway. I watch you from behind and I wonder how many women have stood and watched you across a room in the dark. I feel something just shy of predatory...
Are we afraid of those monsters and unknowns because we know *something* must exist other than we? Something must exist, surely, beyond this reality of work and money and petty tones of voice. Something... oh... anything, please! Or are we afraid that *nothing* else is there? Nothing at all. This is it. Seize it. You didn't? Too bad. That was it. Right... there. Gone.
We rush from darken rooms. We turn on lights at night. We carry flashlights. We stumble up stairs wondering what is behind us. We cling to beliefs that grant us epic fantasies and call them religion. We pray to an entity we call God as if He is corporeal and we are able to comprehend Him. But the truth is so much more complicated. The truth is not fairytales for children to soothe them into sweet dreams.
When will we wake up from childhood? When are we ready for the truth?
Memory of Me... I am thirsty. Not like I have ever felt before. I dreamt of music. I dreamt of lights. I am nine years old. My white and red pjs were soaked with sweat and I strip them off in the darkness. My night light has burned out. The moon is black and new. I am so thirsty. I don't want water. But it will have to do because I do not know the name of what I desire. I am a child. No one has told me the words yet. I walk out of my room and into the silent house...
What if the twenty-one grams we lose at death are just returning to whence they came? What if we are all possessed with twenty-one grams of electrical, biological, sentient life and, when this clay dies, we snap back to being with God... to being that force that supports and enables God... to dancing with bosons and demi quarks... stretching thin together like solar sails to glide across this fine cosmos. What if...?
I don't believe in heaven. Nor do I believe in hell. I have never believed that Thor makes lightning or that Athena lept, fully formed, from the head of her father. I do believe that Christ changed the world. I do believe that He hears my prayers. That He answers. That He speaks. I know that the human race did not begin with Adam and Eve. That Mary had never lain with a man in order to be with child. I know that my Christ died a mortal death, bloody and in tears on a cross and that He rose again, unable or unwilling to let go of His twenty-one grams until He finished the circle on the greatest story to ever be told.
Memory of You... You turn off the water. You are pulling off rubber gloves. Looking into the steel basin, now empty. I step into the room. The wood floor is cold. I don't blink. I come close enough to take in musky, rich scent of your hair. The sound of your breathing. My lips part to say your name and you look up. My intent to speak has alerted you to my presence. You meet the gaze of my reflection in the window in front of you. You do not turn to face me. Instead of your name I say, "Did I startle you?" You are silent. There is a long passage of time. You turn. The hem of your sweater jacket brushes my arm. Your eyes, blue-black... undo me. You turn your hands palm up at your hips. You tilt your head to the side in slow motion. You set your jaw, say, "Did I startle you?"
Tucked into easy categories and wrapped in careful mythologies, we want to sing hymns and know that this isn't everything. We want to live right and be rewarded. And just like some little children are happy with a hug and others want candy and still another demands expensive electronics, each of us look for the reward that fits our temperament. Even those of us who walk away from or pretend not to seek religion still search for the reward of living. Look up which religions are the fastest growing. One is even so fast that its founder said he rivaled even Christ. How's that for diverse choices?
In the darkness, what are we afraid waits for us? The truth?
"…For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone." (Sean Penn, accepting the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of equal rights activist Harvey Milk.)
In the darkness, where our hands become our eyes, where my touch across your skin is sacred and burns sweet as rebirth, what are we afraid of? That with hands, fingertips, mouth and tongue we will discover the lies in the doctrine? That we will find the cracks in the logic of these human mythologies? If you come for me, like God's own shooting star, like comets that cycle and return, do you think you will wake up somewhere else completely without a road map... or perhaps without a torch to show your way? Is this love not truth enough?
"When I was thirteen years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life; it gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married… Most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us thirty years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value. And that no matter what everyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours." (Dustin Lance Black, accepting the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for "Milk")
Memory of Me... The house was full of shadows. Was I sleeping still? Was I walking through the cold house nude and skinny and afraid? Every corner, every plant and picture and side table I had known all my life was a creature or presence waiting to touch me with unworldly hands. I was alone on the planet. I was driven to keep moving but only because it was so essential to drink. I knew I would surely die if I could not drink. Through the living room, the carpet beneath my feet... the big windows, tall and showing only night... He stood right there. Between me and the kitchen. Just... stood. He could have been a friend of my parents, dark skin, dark eyes, crisp hair. He could have been my brother. Deja vu. I stood and looked up at Him. Deja vu. I stood. He was so normal. So natural. He just... stood.
And I got it.
And I wasn't afraid any more.
Now, turn off the lights.
EJ
If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.
Christ didn't turn tables in the temple because He wasn't a proponent of activism.
"There are a multitude of reasons why marriage equality lost in November. The one I keep coming back to is a failure to cast the role of the villain in the battle against Prop 8. Unlike Prop 6 in 1978, there was no John Briggs to debate, and no Anita Bryant to galvanize our base. Instead in 2008 we had the Catholic and Mormon church, two amorphous beasts that were nearly impossible to vilify in the minds of the public." (www.inlookout.com)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Personal Mythology: Light and Dark
“Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from rituals of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements.” --Camille Paglia
“The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.” --Joseph Campbell
Light, dawn light, creeps across my sky, and I think about great thinkers. To listen to the lectures or read the books of Joseph Campbell is to remember that before modern man there was still man. Our rich existence as a species did not begin with the qwerty keyboard nor was it spiritually enriched by the invention of the itty bitty cell phone. Modern playthings are just our current accessories, replacing the beads and bones that once adorned our hair and clothes, replacing runes and smoke signals. Our lives are neither richer nor poorer because of these changes; Our lives have simply continued.
The ebb and flow of time seems to disappear when you listen to Campbell discuss the inherent differences between men and women. Their different needs and responses, their psychological and psychosexual baselines. I do believe in equal pay (for equal work) but I do not agree in different standards for the same task. If a man can do the job better because of muscle mass, aggressive approach or what have you, than a man should be given the job, quotas or not. God did not make men and women the same. He made them equal – just as He made every male and female in every other species equally important – but not the same. To ignore these differences – to not celebrate them – is a crime not just against each other but against the beauty of God.
To grossly simplify Camille Paglia: I want my women passionate, sexy and straight, and I want my men possessive, aggressive and erect. Disgustingly blunt? Not entirely correct? Of course to both. Because in God's natural order for man, as mirrored in nature, His divine map laid here for us, there is room for gentle, quiet, sensitive men, and there is room for protective, assertive, viciously brilliant women. The point is, there is room for all kinds of vibrant differences.
“I do not believe that Christ, our Lord, our Lion and Lamb, placed us on this world alone and without guidance. And you will know your guides because they will refuse to call themselves divine and may not even call themselves Christian. They will be humble. They will hide nothing, for Christ hid nothing. And not everyone will follow them but all will hear them and agree with what they say. Because the truth can be ignored but it cannot be denied.”
I want to paint. Instead I am sitting outside on the closed dome of the private observatory of a friend. I have realized, strangely, that I like to look at the stars with my naked eyes more than I like to view them through the telescope. I do not want to see them so explained and scientific. I want to view them through the lens of my personal mythology. I want to connect their points to form my own constellations. I want to remember them attached to my own memories and the histories of my family. I don't want to *know* what I see. I want to believe what I see.
“Religion is a construct of man. Even if you subscribe to a denomination, you know this as truth. It is a construct of man which stands *between* man and God. It is meant to better facilitate the understanding of God by man. But religion must be transparent. It must be open like air and sky. If it is not transparent, than God cannot be seen through it.”
Why do so many of us flock like sheep to the constructs of man? Why does denomination soothe and call to us? Because it is comfort, ritual, structure and pattern. Because it is tangible belonging. I met once a man who said to me that his faith was strong as steel, that it was everything to him, his life and breath and thought and reality. Walk away from your church then, I answered. Walk away for one year and walk your path, just you and your God. And it was obvious from the blanch of his face and the panic in his eyes that he was sincere when he responded, I would lose my center if I lost my church.
The loss of mythology is indeed the loss of our center. Without mythology we lose the knowledge of who we were and lose touch with the primal forces that still exist within us, sometimes slumbering, other times roiling. Mythology is the key code or directions on our road map to a life lived not in fear but in rejoicing. A life lived fulfilled and rich, a depth of experience that nourishes and sustains us.
Of course, how we build that mythology, where we turn to for that mythology, is entirely our decision and there are as many personal mythologies as there are people on this only green world. Of course, my answer was: Fill that center with Christ.
“The power of Jesus Christ is that He does not need to have been a god to have changed everything.”
“I live my life as if there is no heaven that awaits me, but that Christ was still the son of God. Now then forever, He is my teacher, guide and maker. There is no incentive. There is no after life. There is only what my Lord has commanded of me, and that is enough.”
Society crumbles when one of two things happen. When we either destroy our mythology or our mythology destroys us. Both are equally possible and equally horrible.
“Babylon Syndrome is man as God. Man proposes now or in a far future to be as God. God is not now and was never a mortal man. We are and will be until we return to that which we came from. We are not now nor will we ever be gods. To strive for this – to strive to be as our Lord – is not just blasphemous but a disease that infests through the wound of hubris and spreads like the most virulent of contagions. These are mythologies for small, fearful minds and they are addictive.”
“When we topple our gods, we topple our survival as a unified people. God surrounds us and classifies us as natural unto Him, as He planned for us. We are embraced by Him. Once we fell God, once we lift ourselves out of His natural center and place ourselves outside with Him, we are no longer a people of one heart, one mind, one path. We are no longer concentric circles, but rather opposed and opposer. Elevated and descended. More than and lessor than. Right and wrong. The table, my friends, is no longer round.”
I am witness to a small group of brave young people choking on tradition and struggling against real odds to find themselves in a heritage that has no room for them. I think of the human rights activist Harvey Milk talking about there being no time or luxury for hiding. If everyone was aware that they knew a gay person, he argued, they would see us as human. Not abnormalities or even just the extremes they may glimpse in public. They would see us as part of the pattern. One of the concentric circles of human life.
But instead many people see the world, and raise their children, entrenched in personal mythologies that are outdated, outmoded or simply wrong, founded in hubris or otherwise out of control. It is terrifying how recently many major religions still proclaimed racial segregation a holy mandate and equally disgusting how many denominations do the same today for orientation. Both diverse attributes are positively displayed in abundance in nature and seem to make only logical sense – vivid difference in species allows for the adaption to multiple environments; homosexuality allows for birth control on a planet with limited capacity (gay couples, if they have children at all, have far fewer, on average).
By propagating mythologies that are contrary to our natural truth, we are allowing discord. We are moving against the grain that is God's plan. His map for us is so very beautiful and we are ignoring it when we try to build religions out of smoke and mirrors, denominations that do not stand up under close scrutiny and that fight for traditions that only benefit the further spread of ignorance. The blind are so more easily led. The collection of souls at the thrones of men naming lightning in the dark.
EJ
“The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.” --Joseph Campbell
Light, dawn light, creeps across my sky, and I think about great thinkers. To listen to the lectures or read the books of Joseph Campbell is to remember that before modern man there was still man. Our rich existence as a species did not begin with the qwerty keyboard nor was it spiritually enriched by the invention of the itty bitty cell phone. Modern playthings are just our current accessories, replacing the beads and bones that once adorned our hair and clothes, replacing runes and smoke signals. Our lives are neither richer nor poorer because of these changes; Our lives have simply continued.
The ebb and flow of time seems to disappear when you listen to Campbell discuss the inherent differences between men and women. Their different needs and responses, their psychological and psychosexual baselines. I do believe in equal pay (for equal work) but I do not agree in different standards for the same task. If a man can do the job better because of muscle mass, aggressive approach or what have you, than a man should be given the job, quotas or not. God did not make men and women the same. He made them equal – just as He made every male and female in every other species equally important – but not the same. To ignore these differences – to not celebrate them – is a crime not just against each other but against the beauty of God.
To grossly simplify Camille Paglia: I want my women passionate, sexy and straight, and I want my men possessive, aggressive and erect. Disgustingly blunt? Not entirely correct? Of course to both. Because in God's natural order for man, as mirrored in nature, His divine map laid here for us, there is room for gentle, quiet, sensitive men, and there is room for protective, assertive, viciously brilliant women. The point is, there is room for all kinds of vibrant differences.
“I do not believe that Christ, our Lord, our Lion and Lamb, placed us on this world alone and without guidance. And you will know your guides because they will refuse to call themselves divine and may not even call themselves Christian. They will be humble. They will hide nothing, for Christ hid nothing. And not everyone will follow them but all will hear them and agree with what they say. Because the truth can be ignored but it cannot be denied.”
I want to paint. Instead I am sitting outside on the closed dome of the private observatory of a friend. I have realized, strangely, that I like to look at the stars with my naked eyes more than I like to view them through the telescope. I do not want to see them so explained and scientific. I want to view them through the lens of my personal mythology. I want to connect their points to form my own constellations. I want to remember them attached to my own memories and the histories of my family. I don't want to *know* what I see. I want to believe what I see.
“Religion is a construct of man. Even if you subscribe to a denomination, you know this as truth. It is a construct of man which stands *between* man and God. It is meant to better facilitate the understanding of God by man. But religion must be transparent. It must be open like air and sky. If it is not transparent, than God cannot be seen through it.”
Why do so many of us flock like sheep to the constructs of man? Why does denomination soothe and call to us? Because it is comfort, ritual, structure and pattern. Because it is tangible belonging. I met once a man who said to me that his faith was strong as steel, that it was everything to him, his life and breath and thought and reality. Walk away from your church then, I answered. Walk away for one year and walk your path, just you and your God. And it was obvious from the blanch of his face and the panic in his eyes that he was sincere when he responded, I would lose my center if I lost my church.
The loss of mythology is indeed the loss of our center. Without mythology we lose the knowledge of who we were and lose touch with the primal forces that still exist within us, sometimes slumbering, other times roiling. Mythology is the key code or directions on our road map to a life lived not in fear but in rejoicing. A life lived fulfilled and rich, a depth of experience that nourishes and sustains us.
Of course, how we build that mythology, where we turn to for that mythology, is entirely our decision and there are as many personal mythologies as there are people on this only green world. Of course, my answer was: Fill that center with Christ.
“The power of Jesus Christ is that He does not need to have been a god to have changed everything.”
“I live my life as if there is no heaven that awaits me, but that Christ was still the son of God. Now then forever, He is my teacher, guide and maker. There is no incentive. There is no after life. There is only what my Lord has commanded of me, and that is enough.”
Society crumbles when one of two things happen. When we either destroy our mythology or our mythology destroys us. Both are equally possible and equally horrible.
“Babylon Syndrome is man as God. Man proposes now or in a far future to be as God. God is not now and was never a mortal man. We are and will be until we return to that which we came from. We are not now nor will we ever be gods. To strive for this – to strive to be as our Lord – is not just blasphemous but a disease that infests through the wound of hubris and spreads like the most virulent of contagions. These are mythologies for small, fearful minds and they are addictive.”
“When we topple our gods, we topple our survival as a unified people. God surrounds us and classifies us as natural unto Him, as He planned for us. We are embraced by Him. Once we fell God, once we lift ourselves out of His natural center and place ourselves outside with Him, we are no longer a people of one heart, one mind, one path. We are no longer concentric circles, but rather opposed and opposer. Elevated and descended. More than and lessor than. Right and wrong. The table, my friends, is no longer round.”
I am witness to a small group of brave young people choking on tradition and struggling against real odds to find themselves in a heritage that has no room for them. I think of the human rights activist Harvey Milk talking about there being no time or luxury for hiding. If everyone was aware that they knew a gay person, he argued, they would see us as human. Not abnormalities or even just the extremes they may glimpse in public. They would see us as part of the pattern. One of the concentric circles of human life.
But instead many people see the world, and raise their children, entrenched in personal mythologies that are outdated, outmoded or simply wrong, founded in hubris or otherwise out of control. It is terrifying how recently many major religions still proclaimed racial segregation a holy mandate and equally disgusting how many denominations do the same today for orientation. Both diverse attributes are positively displayed in abundance in nature and seem to make only logical sense – vivid difference in species allows for the adaption to multiple environments; homosexuality allows for birth control on a planet with limited capacity (gay couples, if they have children at all, have far fewer, on average).
By propagating mythologies that are contrary to our natural truth, we are allowing discord. We are moving against the grain that is God's plan. His map for us is so very beautiful and we are ignoring it when we try to build religions out of smoke and mirrors, denominations that do not stand up under close scrutiny and that fight for traditions that only benefit the further spread of ignorance. The blind are so more easily led. The collection of souls at the thrones of men naming lightning in the dark.
EJ
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Are Angels Dancing? G2G
"And so, on the Sabbath, do His work."
The question becomes, now (in our post-modern times), then (when He walked a mortal man) and forever (into our future as a species): What is worthy?
I have a friend who never emails me more than twelve words at a time. She never asks a question without providing multiple choice answers and she rarely expects a response. Lately, her subject headings have all been: Mustard Seed
Christ said all we need... the only thing... is faith as large as a mustard seed. Barely twice the head of a pin. It may seem absurd until you remember how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Perhaps those of us with even just that faintest whisper of faith have enough space to have angels dancing "Swan Lake" in five dimensions.
The simplest answer, of course, and the one that begins to answer that now then forever question is: We are all worthy.
Now, stepping forward, none of us left behind, the next part of the question: *What* is worthy? *What* are we supposed to do on the Sabbath?
My friend Gille does not really believe in God. But she cannot explain to her satisfaction why incredible people like Gandhi and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ have come to walk on this only green world if there isn't a God. She feels that people like these would never be born if mankind were left here to our own devices alone. Gille believes that goodness -- change -- as ministered by these individuals can simply not be produced from the human animal without divine intervention.
I went to spend the day with Gille today. She is expecting her third child joyfully. She and her partner and their toddler son live together in a classic alpine cabin slash seaside cottage hybrid that is, in fact, sitting on the seashore. It was the first time I'd had Internet in three days. I was most def shaking with cyber withdrawal when I arrived. But the moment I walked in, my busted laptop under my arm, I knew the last thing I would be spending my Sabbath doing was answering email and surfing the web. Every horizontal surface in Gille's house was covered with beta cards of Mardi Gras 3000.
"I'm not sure what I believe, Angel," Gille told me. "But I know that what you're doing with MG3K speaks to people. It lifts them up. And when they look closer, they find God in the details."
And so Gille spends every Sabbath immersed in the brand. I do not have words for what that meant and means to me.
What does God intend for us to do on the Sabbath? His work.
I remember being in elementary school and arguing passionately with a student a few years older than me. Funny how when I look back on "conversations" like these they never seem childish. My religion was far more a point of ridicule than my skin color or (early on) my accent. I don't remember what denomination the seventh grader was but I remember the constant use of, "My teacher told me..." with the teacher in question being a Sunday School teacher. The idea was: The Sabbath is for rest and I was a sinner because I'd spent my Sabbath with my parents on a Habitat for Humanity homesite. It seems building a home for a family in need was a grievous evil.
Less dramatically, I've heard it argued that if something makes you money, it should not be done on Sunday. (For this very reason, I waived all royalties to the MG3K brand and even this blog book -- the printed and bound edition -- will be given away free and sold at cost.) I have no problem with this definition though I do not find an issue with parents who choose to work on the Sabbath in order to support their families. I only hope that they give another day to God. Not for God. He doesn't require our worship to survive nor to love us (it isn't a trade). But in order for us to thrive, we must throw ourselves into *worthy* work at least one day a week.
The celebration of family is a celebration of God. I have always followed that as a good guideline for what should or shouldn't be engaged in on God's Day. Family being defined as partner, spouse, child, sibling, heart-friend. Those that by blood, oath or love are our family in the eyes of our Lord. Sometimes this means making love. Sometimes it means playing tag. Often it manifests as hard work -- working together in the home or yard.
The Sabbath is not a day of rest. God rested on the seventh day after He created the universe. I didn't create the universe this week, did you? The Sabbath is our day to show how grateful we are that He worked so hard to give us what we all take for granted just by not spending our lives on our knees kissing every flower petal, blade of grass or bumblebee. Every breath, every dawn, every windstorm, every kiss, every heartbeat we stand beneath His blue sky or beside His blue-green sea, we have reason to do His work, and do it to the best of our abilities until we are ready to drop into deep dreams, every single Sabbath.
Through the crimbly speaker on the old wireless phone, I hear a mutual friend talking to Gille:
"I just wanted to work today. To lose myself in good work. But I knew they needed something. It was the last cash I had from selling that furniture on Craig's List. I just wanted to show them that even when we have nothing, there is something if we think first of each other, and not of ourselves. Not my money. Our money. We'll do fine if we stay together, if we're grateful, if we stay on the path. I can do the work tonight when they're all asleep. God made me able to push myself. It would be wrong not to. And I saw their smiles... they all knew this was the very best I could do and it was barely anything. But... oh Gille... they were so thankful. It was worth doing."
What is worth doing?
1) Does it change you for the better?
2) Does it change someone else?
3) Does it share the word of God and celebrate Christ?
4) Does it open up your world?
5) Does it fill your heart with light?
6) Does it hold up your impassioned sky?
7) Is it living prayer?
If it is effortless... if it requires no thought... if it doesn't energize and lift you up... if it isn't good, hard work... than it is not intended for the Sabbath.
Christ? Today felt right because I gave myself to you. You rested on the seventh day. I create in your honor on my seventh. Today. Forever.
EJ
This blog entry is dedicated to Ginny and Jennifer in honor of their joint venture, "G2G," a graphic novel/anthology of stories by grrls, for grrls, that center around the theme of bringing glory to God. My pledge is my first paycheck from my "day job." I couldn't be prouder.
The question becomes, now (in our post-modern times), then (when He walked a mortal man) and forever (into our future as a species): What is worthy?
I have a friend who never emails me more than twelve words at a time. She never asks a question without providing multiple choice answers and she rarely expects a response. Lately, her subject headings have all been: Mustard Seed
Christ said all we need... the only thing... is faith as large as a mustard seed. Barely twice the head of a pin. It may seem absurd until you remember how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Perhaps those of us with even just that faintest whisper of faith have enough space to have angels dancing "Swan Lake" in five dimensions.
The simplest answer, of course, and the one that begins to answer that now then forever question is: We are all worthy.
Now, stepping forward, none of us left behind, the next part of the question: *What* is worthy? *What* are we supposed to do on the Sabbath?
My friend Gille does not really believe in God. But she cannot explain to her satisfaction why incredible people like Gandhi and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ have come to walk on this only green world if there isn't a God. She feels that people like these would never be born if mankind were left here to our own devices alone. Gille believes that goodness -- change -- as ministered by these individuals can simply not be produced from the human animal without divine intervention.
I went to spend the day with Gille today. She is expecting her third child joyfully. She and her partner and their toddler son live together in a classic alpine cabin slash seaside cottage hybrid that is, in fact, sitting on the seashore. It was the first time I'd had Internet in three days. I was most def shaking with cyber withdrawal when I arrived. But the moment I walked in, my busted laptop under my arm, I knew the last thing I would be spending my Sabbath doing was answering email and surfing the web. Every horizontal surface in Gille's house was covered with beta cards of Mardi Gras 3000.
"I'm not sure what I believe, Angel," Gille told me. "But I know that what you're doing with MG3K speaks to people. It lifts them up. And when they look closer, they find God in the details."
And so Gille spends every Sabbath immersed in the brand. I do not have words for what that meant and means to me.
What does God intend for us to do on the Sabbath? His work.
I remember being in elementary school and arguing passionately with a student a few years older than me. Funny how when I look back on "conversations" like these they never seem childish. My religion was far more a point of ridicule than my skin color or (early on) my accent. I don't remember what denomination the seventh grader was but I remember the constant use of, "My teacher told me..." with the teacher in question being a Sunday School teacher. The idea was: The Sabbath is for rest and I was a sinner because I'd spent my Sabbath with my parents on a Habitat for Humanity homesite. It seems building a home for a family in need was a grievous evil.
Less dramatically, I've heard it argued that if something makes you money, it should not be done on Sunday. (For this very reason, I waived all royalties to the MG3K brand and even this blog book -- the printed and bound edition -- will be given away free and sold at cost.) I have no problem with this definition though I do not find an issue with parents who choose to work on the Sabbath in order to support their families. I only hope that they give another day to God. Not for God. He doesn't require our worship to survive nor to love us (it isn't a trade). But in order for us to thrive, we must throw ourselves into *worthy* work at least one day a week.
The celebration of family is a celebration of God. I have always followed that as a good guideline for what should or shouldn't be engaged in on God's Day. Family being defined as partner, spouse, child, sibling, heart-friend. Those that by blood, oath or love are our family in the eyes of our Lord. Sometimes this means making love. Sometimes it means playing tag. Often it manifests as hard work -- working together in the home or yard.
The Sabbath is not a day of rest. God rested on the seventh day after He created the universe. I didn't create the universe this week, did you? The Sabbath is our day to show how grateful we are that He worked so hard to give us what we all take for granted just by not spending our lives on our knees kissing every flower petal, blade of grass or bumblebee. Every breath, every dawn, every windstorm, every kiss, every heartbeat we stand beneath His blue sky or beside His blue-green sea, we have reason to do His work, and do it to the best of our abilities until we are ready to drop into deep dreams, every single Sabbath.
Through the crimbly speaker on the old wireless phone, I hear a mutual friend talking to Gille:
"I just wanted to work today. To lose myself in good work. But I knew they needed something. It was the last cash I had from selling that furniture on Craig's List. I just wanted to show them that even when we have nothing, there is something if we think first of each other, and not of ourselves. Not my money. Our money. We'll do fine if we stay together, if we're grateful, if we stay on the path. I can do the work tonight when they're all asleep. God made me able to push myself. It would be wrong not to. And I saw their smiles... they all knew this was the very best I could do and it was barely anything. But... oh Gille... they were so thankful. It was worth doing."
What is worth doing?
1) Does it change you for the better?
2) Does it change someone else?
3) Does it share the word of God and celebrate Christ?
4) Does it open up your world?
5) Does it fill your heart with light?
6) Does it hold up your impassioned sky?
7) Is it living prayer?
If it is effortless... if it requires no thought... if it doesn't energize and lift you up... if it isn't good, hard work... than it is not intended for the Sabbath.
Christ? Today felt right because I gave myself to you. You rested on the seventh day. I create in your honor on my seventh. Today. Forever.
EJ
This blog entry is dedicated to Ginny and Jennifer in honor of their joint venture, "G2G," a graphic novel/anthology of stories by grrls, for grrls, that center around the theme of bringing glory to God. My pledge is my first paycheck from my "day job." I couldn't be prouder.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Leave Me Breathless
“Because it seemed like a good idea at the time...”
[...was achieved, 26% of study participants reported one, or various combinations, of the following involuntary responses: brief loss of sight; a sensation of falling; loss of fine motor skills; trembling in extremities, and/or involuntary vocalizations. If... was achieved by a combination of... instance of involuntary responses as listed above rose to 92% with a high occurrence (more than 72%) of an inability to breathe...]
I decide to turn over a new leaf and so I say yes (for once) and go to Mass with Lillian. After all, these are dark times and all that yadda and maybe my heart needs a little stain glass light stations of the cross contemplation down on my knees God be with you and also with you inspiration.
I wake with little grrl eyes when Lillian turns off my alarm and strokes my hair. Over her arm is an eggshell white dress in layers of silk and soft lace. I blink up at her. She lays the dress down and moves soundlessly from my room. The smells of dark coffee and fresh sourdough with clover honey fill the space around me. I lay there on my back, staring at the ceiling, my fingers moving over the line between silk and lace.
“...like silk to brushed lace, satin to fine corduroy, you changed under my fingertips in a tangible expression of desire. You whispered something to me. But I found I was breathless and could not respond...”
I think to myself, “In for a dime, in for a dollar.” and I pull myself out of bed as well as out of my d6 boxers. I know I have grrl's underwear somewhere... and I think it's in my size.
Lillian French braids my dark hair with white ribbons. She smiles down at my grandmother's prayer beads, double looped dark olive wood spilled over the high-necked opaque front of the dress. It is surprising comfortable... I feel sheathed in... hm. I draw my mind back to the kitchen. I have not been able to speak to Lillian yet. There is something more perfect in this unspoken time.
She tips my head up with two fingers under my chin. She contemplates my unadorned face. I am three shades darker than the headshot attached to my resume. After an indeterminable moment, dawn's clean light slipping across the tile counters and floor, slipping into my empty coffee mug, across the honey toast crumbs, Lillian nods once and gives me a hint of a smile. Her perfume is exotic. Her suit is Italian. She nods once more and I rise as if commanded in my heels and stockinged legs. I follow her from the house; I am a different woman with very little effort... but with a universe of awareness.
“...were going to be late, the evening almost certainly ruined, and she made a small sound. It may have been a sound of apology had she glimpsed my angry glance at the grandfather clock in the foyer. I looked up. At the top of the stairs she was poured into low waisted black leather pants and a white silk shirt cast with ruffles, waves of softness, across her small breasts. I drew sharp breath. My heart pounded. I felt faint. I had to look away.”
I am presentable. The little white purse and black hymnal work so well as accessories to my good grrl outfit. I keep my eyes on Lillian's face or on the ground. The incredible marble of the cathedral floor is peach and rose and white. My mind is bright and blank, as if willed that way so that my thoughts won't offend this structured holy place with its traditions and rituals of human comfort. I bob my head. Smile without showing my teeth. Avert my eyes. Fold my hands. Lillian introduces me as Angel.
I take in textures through osmosis. As the priest murmurs in a tone patterned to soothe, I absorb the cold of the marble floors and stone columns. The oak and velvet of the pews. The leatherette of the pad beneath my knees. The ricepaper thin pages of the mass-produced Bibles. I breathe slowly and deeply and draw the scents of this place into my body, allow them to become part of me.
“...I remember... I remember your perfume. Still so far away. In my parents' house. Your bandanna. Your perfume. Wild roses. I slept with it under my pillow. Buried my face in it. Closed my eyes. Wanted to breathe nothing else...”
“And I can still smell you on my fingers, and taste you on my breath...”
Half way through the service I think about the light coming in the highest stain glass panes and I look up to see the molten lead lines that stitch together angels... but my gaze never rises that far.
Her red hair braided modestly, her deep green blouse ripples down her narrow torso and tucked into pleated black slacks, is the Horseman of the Apocalypse I danced with not so long ago... when I was, of course, that other Angel. A totally different woman. My mouth opens. Did I think she went forth on her steel horse to seek the other riders and discover the seventh seal? I am about to blink and look away... when she looks up from prayer, and then back at me. Over a sea of bowed heads I am discovered.
“...Christ... there is what I want and what others want to give me. There is what I am content to receive and what others desire to grant. Allow me the wisdom to bring these two extremes into alignment. Guide my decisions and show me the way to the path I must walk and I will walk it. Lord... just point me in the right direction. I will discover the trail.”
The prayer continues and her eyes walk over my body like I have been gift wrapped and delivered to her doorstep. Which, in some ways, I can certainly see how my garb and this circumstance appears to fit that bill. I am unable to look away from the appraisal because I find myself thinking. I am so lost in thought, actually, that my surroundings fall away and my head tips a little to one side in realization.
Feeling helpless. When I was ill, you said to the friend who was caring for me, “I feel so helpless.” And when life, in general, takes us and spins us 'round, we feel out of control. But there is always something to do. There is no scripture or memory I have ever heard that speaks of Christ doing nothing. There is always something to do... it simply may not be what we desire to do. It is easy, for instance, when someone is ill, to be the one to wrap them in blankets and make them soup. Not so easy to pray for them hard and heart-felt at a great distance, to send them a story, a picture, a funny I-Can-Haz. To impress them with poetry or by cleaning their house. To care for their children (who are wild things) or paint their deck.
I think about how we all seem to like feeling breathless... but none of us like to feel helpless. But isn't it when we feel helpless that we are most likely to turn to Christ? Isn't it when we feel helpless that are are most likely to open up to a new friend and realize how much we are loved? When we are most likely to discover peace?
“'...someday you will leave because my life is complicated and entangled. Someday you will go, but until then I will love you.' And I looked at her and I shook my head. Soundlessly at first, but then, 'You're worth it. I'm not going to make a mistake and pass you up because you aren't simple.'”
When are we most likely to unlock strengths we never knew were there... even though they had been whispering to us all along? When our feet stand on bedrock, when we have reached that rock bottom, that is when Christ equips us with our wings. And I have always been partial to wings.
When we feel helpless, it is the perfect time to sit with Christ and make a list of all the things we could do. The grail is always full and there will never be enough hours in a mortal day to fulfill our every prayer. Helpless simply means, undecided. Undecided simply means you have the opportunity to make a decision. And every decision you make builds your emotional muscle. That vital system that allows you to claim your own faith. To carry your own armor. To see the truth in everything.
“Hello, Angel. I didn't know you were Catholic.”
“I'm not.”
“I see. Another faith then?”
“Yes. I'm a Christian.”
(laughter)
“No offense intended.”
“None taken.” (pause) “Would you like to...?”
“I'm sure I would.”
(smiling)
“But, I don't need to. So no thank you.”
And I leave St. Peter's with Lillian and we eat small sandwiches with brie and drink coffee with cinnamon under a heavy, silver sky. We talk briefly about the rise of the church in pagan England and the structure of redemption and the lack of faith in the self that it all represents. And as we walk back to her car and she stops suddenly and the color drains from her face even as I am watching her... as she grips her chest near her shoulder in two hands and crumbles into my arms even as I am reaching for her... as she calls me Pablo and I answer to his name... as I feel the *helplessness* welling in my chest and spilling from my eyes, down my cheeks, across my eggshell white dress... I know I have a hundred million decisions to make and I make them all. I know I will not lose her now. I decide that I will not lose her. And because of that decision, every other choice falls into place to support that first. I am everything she needs (fast, resourceful, him) and nothing that I want (to scream, to shout, to crumble to the sidewalk with her) and I am utterly *there.*
These are the moments that define us. The helpless ones.
Lord? I'm here.
Baptized in your words, I am breathless.
At my best, I am helpless.
These are our moments.
EJ
[...was achieved, 26% of study participants reported one, or various combinations, of the following involuntary responses: brief loss of sight; a sensation of falling; loss of fine motor skills; trembling in extremities, and/or involuntary vocalizations. If... was achieved by a combination of... instance of involuntary responses as listed above rose to 92% with a high occurrence (more than 72%) of an inability to breathe...]
I decide to turn over a new leaf and so I say yes (for once) and go to Mass with Lillian. After all, these are dark times and all that yadda and maybe my heart needs a little stain glass light stations of the cross contemplation down on my knees God be with you and also with you inspiration.
I wake with little grrl eyes when Lillian turns off my alarm and strokes my hair. Over her arm is an eggshell white dress in layers of silk and soft lace. I blink up at her. She lays the dress down and moves soundlessly from my room. The smells of dark coffee and fresh sourdough with clover honey fill the space around me. I lay there on my back, staring at the ceiling, my fingers moving over the line between silk and lace.
“...like silk to brushed lace, satin to fine corduroy, you changed under my fingertips in a tangible expression of desire. You whispered something to me. But I found I was breathless and could not respond...”
I think to myself, “In for a dime, in for a dollar.” and I pull myself out of bed as well as out of my d6 boxers. I know I have grrl's underwear somewhere... and I think it's in my size.
Lillian French braids my dark hair with white ribbons. She smiles down at my grandmother's prayer beads, double looped dark olive wood spilled over the high-necked opaque front of the dress. It is surprising comfortable... I feel sheathed in... hm. I draw my mind back to the kitchen. I have not been able to speak to Lillian yet. There is something more perfect in this unspoken time.
She tips my head up with two fingers under my chin. She contemplates my unadorned face. I am three shades darker than the headshot attached to my resume. After an indeterminable moment, dawn's clean light slipping across the tile counters and floor, slipping into my empty coffee mug, across the honey toast crumbs, Lillian nods once and gives me a hint of a smile. Her perfume is exotic. Her suit is Italian. She nods once more and I rise as if commanded in my heels and stockinged legs. I follow her from the house; I am a different woman with very little effort... but with a universe of awareness.
“...were going to be late, the evening almost certainly ruined, and she made a small sound. It may have been a sound of apology had she glimpsed my angry glance at the grandfather clock in the foyer. I looked up. At the top of the stairs she was poured into low waisted black leather pants and a white silk shirt cast with ruffles, waves of softness, across her small breasts. I drew sharp breath. My heart pounded. I felt faint. I had to look away.”
I am presentable. The little white purse and black hymnal work so well as accessories to my good grrl outfit. I keep my eyes on Lillian's face or on the ground. The incredible marble of the cathedral floor is peach and rose and white. My mind is bright and blank, as if willed that way so that my thoughts won't offend this structured holy place with its traditions and rituals of human comfort. I bob my head. Smile without showing my teeth. Avert my eyes. Fold my hands. Lillian introduces me as Angel.
I take in textures through osmosis. As the priest murmurs in a tone patterned to soothe, I absorb the cold of the marble floors and stone columns. The oak and velvet of the pews. The leatherette of the pad beneath my knees. The ricepaper thin pages of the mass-produced Bibles. I breathe slowly and deeply and draw the scents of this place into my body, allow them to become part of me.
“...I remember... I remember your perfume. Still so far away. In my parents' house. Your bandanna. Your perfume. Wild roses. I slept with it under my pillow. Buried my face in it. Closed my eyes. Wanted to breathe nothing else...”
“And I can still smell you on my fingers, and taste you on my breath...”
Half way through the service I think about the light coming in the highest stain glass panes and I look up to see the molten lead lines that stitch together angels... but my gaze never rises that far.
Her red hair braided modestly, her deep green blouse ripples down her narrow torso and tucked into pleated black slacks, is the Horseman of the Apocalypse I danced with not so long ago... when I was, of course, that other Angel. A totally different woman. My mouth opens. Did I think she went forth on her steel horse to seek the other riders and discover the seventh seal? I am about to blink and look away... when she looks up from prayer, and then back at me. Over a sea of bowed heads I am discovered.
“...Christ... there is what I want and what others want to give me. There is what I am content to receive and what others desire to grant. Allow me the wisdom to bring these two extremes into alignment. Guide my decisions and show me the way to the path I must walk and I will walk it. Lord... just point me in the right direction. I will discover the trail.”
The prayer continues and her eyes walk over my body like I have been gift wrapped and delivered to her doorstep. Which, in some ways, I can certainly see how my garb and this circumstance appears to fit that bill. I am unable to look away from the appraisal because I find myself thinking. I am so lost in thought, actually, that my surroundings fall away and my head tips a little to one side in realization.
Feeling helpless. When I was ill, you said to the friend who was caring for me, “I feel so helpless.” And when life, in general, takes us and spins us 'round, we feel out of control. But there is always something to do. There is no scripture or memory I have ever heard that speaks of Christ doing nothing. There is always something to do... it simply may not be what we desire to do. It is easy, for instance, when someone is ill, to be the one to wrap them in blankets and make them soup. Not so easy to pray for them hard and heart-felt at a great distance, to send them a story, a picture, a funny I-Can-Haz. To impress them with poetry or by cleaning their house. To care for their children (who are wild things) or paint their deck.
I think about how we all seem to like feeling breathless... but none of us like to feel helpless. But isn't it when we feel helpless that we are most likely to turn to Christ? Isn't it when we feel helpless that are are most likely to open up to a new friend and realize how much we are loved? When we are most likely to discover peace?
“'...someday you will leave because my life is complicated and entangled. Someday you will go, but until then I will love you.' And I looked at her and I shook my head. Soundlessly at first, but then, 'You're worth it. I'm not going to make a mistake and pass you up because you aren't simple.'”
When are we most likely to unlock strengths we never knew were there... even though they had been whispering to us all along? When our feet stand on bedrock, when we have reached that rock bottom, that is when Christ equips us with our wings. And I have always been partial to wings.
When we feel helpless, it is the perfect time to sit with Christ and make a list of all the things we could do. The grail is always full and there will never be enough hours in a mortal day to fulfill our every prayer. Helpless simply means, undecided. Undecided simply means you have the opportunity to make a decision. And every decision you make builds your emotional muscle. That vital system that allows you to claim your own faith. To carry your own armor. To see the truth in everything.
“Hello, Angel. I didn't know you were Catholic.”
“I'm not.”
“I see. Another faith then?”
“Yes. I'm a Christian.”
(laughter)
“No offense intended.”
“None taken.” (pause) “Would you like to...?”
“I'm sure I would.”
(smiling)
“But, I don't need to. So no thank you.”
And I leave St. Peter's with Lillian and we eat small sandwiches with brie and drink coffee with cinnamon under a heavy, silver sky. We talk briefly about the rise of the church in pagan England and the structure of redemption and the lack of faith in the self that it all represents. And as we walk back to her car and she stops suddenly and the color drains from her face even as I am watching her... as she grips her chest near her shoulder in two hands and crumbles into my arms even as I am reaching for her... as she calls me Pablo and I answer to his name... as I feel the *helplessness* welling in my chest and spilling from my eyes, down my cheeks, across my eggshell white dress... I know I have a hundred million decisions to make and I make them all. I know I will not lose her now. I decide that I will not lose her. And because of that decision, every other choice falls into place to support that first. I am everything she needs (fast, resourceful, him) and nothing that I want (to scream, to shout, to crumble to the sidewalk with her) and I am utterly *there.*
These are the moments that define us. The helpless ones.
Lord? I'm here.
Baptized in your words, I am breathless.
At my best, I am helpless.
These are our moments.
EJ
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Remind Me Remember You
...what comes from asking fourteen friends when they are most themselves
And they try to break us. Because they think we are powerless when we are broken. They nailed Him to a cross. They crowned His head with thorns. They beat Him. They tore Him down with words. He knew betrayal and fear. He walked this land, this land I have seen with my own eyes, have touched with my own hands.
They try to break us. And they do. And when we are pieces scattered at the feet of their emptied eyed soldiers... they will find that we rise remade more powerful than we were before. For even in my destruction, another sister, brother, child, lover stands. For my Christ is now, then, forever. Never absent, always present. He walked here once but walks here, my heart, your heart, this kiss, this midnight prayer, now.
I’m finding myself at a loss for words... but the last thing I need is to be heard. I need only to hear what you have to say. Christ. My Lord. In your light, in your arms, beneath your hands, I am remade. Renewed. Reborn every dawn. Teach me. Guide me. Lift me to skies adorned with constellations that only you know their names. Place your mark upon my brow. I am ready to stand up.
“Word of God speak!
Would You pour down like rain?
Washing my eyes to see
Your majesty.
To be still and know
that You're in this place.
Please let me stay and rest
in Your holiness.
Word of God speak...”
In the quiet I hear your voice. In the midst of you I find release from this coil. Foil to faith, this culture of breaking, tearing. All I need to find myself is the knowledge that you already know who I am. I am unafraid then. I do not need to blush in shame or hide my eyes from what I know stands within me. Because my Lord, my Christ, you already know and you love me. Show me then? I’m looking. Draw me close. Whisper. Don’t let anyone else hear. It’s just you and me. Like when I was a child. Show me... please.
Musing, wondering
how it is
that you can inspire such
confidence
in me.
Once, I thought
that only my
Christ could continuously
break and remake
me.
But, now
it's as if I've
transformed into another woman
nearly unrecognizable
to myself.
And I muse. In your light. In your velvet dark. Beneath your sky. I hear the sleeping sounds of doves. I hear the movement of the universe. I realize that I am not interested in being stable. Even if it loses me the one I love more than any other. I am not interested in being anything other than the angel I have always been for you, Lord. I am finding myself, again, in the midst of you. And all that I need is to be with you. In this quiet... I hear your voice.
Divinity rises white-light before me and I lose my connection to this thing called consciousness. I prefer the place I visit. You are there. And you. And you.
Who is this woman
before me? I don't
recognize myself
in the mirror.
What is this
feeling? Primal.
Almost dangerous.
Confidant.
Christ?
What have you done?
This intensity.
What has she shown me?
Walk into my life, Lord. Walk into my room as lover, child, friend. I will recognize you. I will know you instantly even hidden behind roses-and-cream skin or eyes cerulean blue. I will know you if you are listening to rock ‘n’ roll. If you swear like a sailor. If you wail like a toddler. If you sip coffee, if you ask me for change, if you cut in line. I will feel you like a cascade of kisses. I will feel you like the caress of poetry. I will blush. I will cry silently, tears hot on heated cheeks. I will know joy as a golden welling in my chest. I will know you. I know me. I will know you. Test me. I will not fail.
I find myself
I find my Christ
when I dance with her
the woman
who completes me
as no one ever has.
And the beat
carries us through
these dark times
forever times
beginning times
the children laugh
she is crying
and I love her
endlessly.
I feel Him to the core of me. I feel Him at the core of me. He is my bones, holding me here. He is my muscles, moving me through. He is my heart, beating in my love for you. A seed of perfection in a mortal woman who is far from perfect. But not so far from Him.
He had his reasons.
He had his lies.
Saying he loved
but he didn’t.
If you could only see
the way she loves me.
Then maybe
you would understand.
Why I feel this way
about our love.
And what I must do.
If you could only see
how blue her eyes can be
when she says she loves me.
My hands
on her face.
Her hair falls
over my fingers.
My eyes are closed.
But still I see her.
Her breath
on my cheek.
I find myself.
And I rise and walk into the night. The sound of the waves is beneath the fog that’s rolling in. I recite aloud. I think my voice sounds like my own. I know your scriptures better than my parents think. Those words that may or not may be your own. I know your scripture.
Where is that sound
you make only for me?
Let me trace the shape
of your mouth
with my fingertips.
My own lips pressed
close to my own hand.
To feel and taste you
at once.
Make that sound for me
again so that I
can know you.
Can we serve Him before we know ourselves? Do little children serve Him? Do those still in the harbor of their parents, moored and bobbing? I want to know who I am in this world of His so to know exactly what I can do. I don’t want to find myself in the heat of battle. I want to know my armory.
“I can make you feel yourself again.”
“You certainly can. No one makes me more *myself* than you do.”
Lord? Speak to me. I am right here. Find me. I call to you... unbidden. Oh sweet Christ. Your touch like none other. Lover, father, teacher. I recognize you. Shh. I’m listening. Shout for me. I’ll find you. Help me... recognize myself.
Christ...
You placed me here.
Divinely inspired.
To protect and defend.
Impassioned.
Absolute fire.
Days, weeks, months...
years. I am
yours.
I am
me.
Place me in your
moment. I will
see seize be
in that moment.
I will live
cry bleed shout
in that struggle.
I will fight.
I will fight
for you in your
name until
the calm comes.
Finding myself, finding my God. Finding you, finding my God. Opening my eyes, opening yours. Name it. Name me. Name us. Claim me. Take me. I have taken you into my heart, into my body, into my blood stream. My heart breaks against my chest. And it wasn’t until He showed them the wounds at His side and in His hands that they believed it was Him. And these are the men I’m supposed to trust for my scripture?
Hm. Baby? I don’t think so.
For in my heart
I love and cherish you.
Forever.
This feeling will not calm.
Walking my divine path
to make this love
with you.
You make me
the most myself
every moment
of every day
because I am yours
and you are mine.
Being yours
is sacred.
And I find myself.
Toss my hair. The wind like birth. Cold here. I strip my jacket away. There is something to remember. Broken bones. Something. Not sure. Father? Watch me. This is called... running.
“Rivers flow into the sea
yet even the sea is not so full as me.
I’m not blind so I can see:
That a circle can’t fit
where a square should be.
This hole in my heart?
Can only be filled by you.”
In the hospital, I dream of the night we went dancing. You were the symbol of everything I desired (and could not have). You were the symbol of my Christ (which I could and did have). My back against the bar, the blonde from Bellevue draped off my neck, I watched you while she whispered Saccharine nothings. My gaze was not exactly friendly but exactly Christian. There was a passion for you I could not contain. You danced with your hands above your hand, your shoulders rocked back. I watched the arch of your neck and your spine. I saw Christ. And I know that every New Testament Christian who has ever laid eyes on you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Owl wise eyes so closed, you were living music. I re-found my Christ. Finalized Mardi Gras 3000 that dawn.
Wanted to wake up with you. Wanted to roll into you arms after making love and flutter my eyes open against your cheek. Knew I would feel the most myself in that moment. Instead I woke up praying. It was the same. I woke up myself.
“I’m not ashamed
to be the person that I am today.
These are my words
that I’ve never said before.
I think I’m doing okay...”
I was born this way. In love with my Christ. I was born this way. To celebrate this body. I was born this way. A woman unwilling to compromise for the finite mortal phase. I’ve been wrong. I’ve been blind. I refused to be myself while my Lord danced for me. I’ve covered my ears. I’ve turned to His world instead of to Him.
But I’m done. Being undone by you, I am finally done.
Lord...
“This is how you remind me
of what I really am.
It's not like you to say sorry.
I was waiting on a different story.
It's not like you didn't know that.
I said I love you and I swear I still do.”
And I asked, “When do you feel the most yourself?” And you answered:
Who am I? That first is the question. I would like to be many things. I have dreamed of being many things. But I *know* only that I am one thing. I am Christ’s. I belong to Him as I have belonged and will belong to no other. I am without the empathy that I think my fellows were born with. I recognized it early enough to not know to shut up about it. I will break anything and anyone and not wonder why. I will make someone, fight for them with words and fists and savvy and not question their worth. I will pray for deliverance and not expect it. I know only that He whispers it, and so I do it. By His light I have walked and will walk these dark streets. I am not afraid. My shepherd in dark alleys and the back’s of cars and cheap hotel rooms and expensive condos that over-look the water. This is who I am. This is what I am made of. He put me here. This is what I’m good at. I am myself when my head is bowed. I am myself when on my knees. I am myself... when I celebrate everything He is, when the fire of prayer burns over my hands, fills my mouth, rocks my body like thunder. When I feel the force of Him, I am myself. The force of Him that has allowed me to survive.
This force.
Lord?
Beneath your night time sky. Shooting stars. This force. You. I am found.
EJ
And they try to break us. Because they think we are powerless when we are broken. They nailed Him to a cross. They crowned His head with thorns. They beat Him. They tore Him down with words. He knew betrayal and fear. He walked this land, this land I have seen with my own eyes, have touched with my own hands.
They try to break us. And they do. And when we are pieces scattered at the feet of their emptied eyed soldiers... they will find that we rise remade more powerful than we were before. For even in my destruction, another sister, brother, child, lover stands. For my Christ is now, then, forever. Never absent, always present. He walked here once but walks here, my heart, your heart, this kiss, this midnight prayer, now.
I’m finding myself at a loss for words... but the last thing I need is to be heard. I need only to hear what you have to say. Christ. My Lord. In your light, in your arms, beneath your hands, I am remade. Renewed. Reborn every dawn. Teach me. Guide me. Lift me to skies adorned with constellations that only you know their names. Place your mark upon my brow. I am ready to stand up.
“Word of God speak!
Would You pour down like rain?
Washing my eyes to see
Your majesty.
To be still and know
that You're in this place.
Please let me stay and rest
in Your holiness.
Word of God speak...”
In the quiet I hear your voice. In the midst of you I find release from this coil. Foil to faith, this culture of breaking, tearing. All I need to find myself is the knowledge that you already know who I am. I am unafraid then. I do not need to blush in shame or hide my eyes from what I know stands within me. Because my Lord, my Christ, you already know and you love me. Show me then? I’m looking. Draw me close. Whisper. Don’t let anyone else hear. It’s just you and me. Like when I was a child. Show me... please.
Musing, wondering
how it is
that you can inspire such
confidence
in me.
Once, I thought
that only my
Christ could continuously
break and remake
me.
But, now
it's as if I've
transformed into another woman
nearly unrecognizable
to myself.
And I muse. In your light. In your velvet dark. Beneath your sky. I hear the sleeping sounds of doves. I hear the movement of the universe. I realize that I am not interested in being stable. Even if it loses me the one I love more than any other. I am not interested in being anything other than the angel I have always been for you, Lord. I am finding myself, again, in the midst of you. And all that I need is to be with you. In this quiet... I hear your voice.
Divinity rises white-light before me and I lose my connection to this thing called consciousness. I prefer the place I visit. You are there. And you. And you.
Who is this woman
before me? I don't
recognize myself
in the mirror.
What is this
feeling? Primal.
Almost dangerous.
Confidant.
Christ?
What have you done?
This intensity.
What has she shown me?
Walk into my life, Lord. Walk into my room as lover, child, friend. I will recognize you. I will know you instantly even hidden behind roses-and-cream skin or eyes cerulean blue. I will know you if you are listening to rock ‘n’ roll. If you swear like a sailor. If you wail like a toddler. If you sip coffee, if you ask me for change, if you cut in line. I will feel you like a cascade of kisses. I will feel you like the caress of poetry. I will blush. I will cry silently, tears hot on heated cheeks. I will know joy as a golden welling in my chest. I will know you. I know me. I will know you. Test me. I will not fail.
I find myself
I find my Christ
when I dance with her
the woman
who completes me
as no one ever has.
And the beat
carries us through
these dark times
forever times
beginning times
the children laugh
she is crying
and I love her
endlessly.
I feel Him to the core of me. I feel Him at the core of me. He is my bones, holding me here. He is my muscles, moving me through. He is my heart, beating in my love for you. A seed of perfection in a mortal woman who is far from perfect. But not so far from Him.
He had his reasons.
He had his lies.
Saying he loved
but he didn’t.
If you could only see
the way she loves me.
Then maybe
you would understand.
Why I feel this way
about our love.
And what I must do.
If you could only see
how blue her eyes can be
when she says she loves me.
My hands
on her face.
Her hair falls
over my fingers.
My eyes are closed.
But still I see her.
Her breath
on my cheek.
I find myself.
And I rise and walk into the night. The sound of the waves is beneath the fog that’s rolling in. I recite aloud. I think my voice sounds like my own. I know your scriptures better than my parents think. Those words that may or not may be your own. I know your scripture.
Where is that sound
you make only for me?
Let me trace the shape
of your mouth
with my fingertips.
My own lips pressed
close to my own hand.
To feel and taste you
at once.
Make that sound for me
again so that I
can know you.
Can we serve Him before we know ourselves? Do little children serve Him? Do those still in the harbor of their parents, moored and bobbing? I want to know who I am in this world of His so to know exactly what I can do. I don’t want to find myself in the heat of battle. I want to know my armory.
“I can make you feel yourself again.”
“You certainly can. No one makes me more *myself* than you do.”
Lord? Speak to me. I am right here. Find me. I call to you... unbidden. Oh sweet Christ. Your touch like none other. Lover, father, teacher. I recognize you. Shh. I’m listening. Shout for me. I’ll find you. Help me... recognize myself.
Christ...
You placed me here.
Divinely inspired.
To protect and defend.
Impassioned.
Absolute fire.
Days, weeks, months...
years. I am
yours.
I am
me.
Place me in your
moment. I will
see seize be
in that moment.
I will live
cry bleed shout
in that struggle.
I will fight.
I will fight
for you in your
name until
the calm comes.
Finding myself, finding my God. Finding you, finding my God. Opening my eyes, opening yours. Name it. Name me. Name us. Claim me. Take me. I have taken you into my heart, into my body, into my blood stream. My heart breaks against my chest. And it wasn’t until He showed them the wounds at His side and in His hands that they believed it was Him. And these are the men I’m supposed to trust for my scripture?
Hm. Baby? I don’t think so.
For in my heart
I love and cherish you.
Forever.
This feeling will not calm.
Walking my divine path
to make this love
with you.
You make me
the most myself
every moment
of every day
because I am yours
and you are mine.
Being yours
is sacred.
And I find myself.
Toss my hair. The wind like birth. Cold here. I strip my jacket away. There is something to remember. Broken bones. Something. Not sure. Father? Watch me. This is called... running.
“Rivers flow into the sea
yet even the sea is not so full as me.
I’m not blind so I can see:
That a circle can’t fit
where a square should be.
This hole in my heart?
Can only be filled by you.”
In the hospital, I dream of the night we went dancing. You were the symbol of everything I desired (and could not have). You were the symbol of my Christ (which I could and did have). My back against the bar, the blonde from Bellevue draped off my neck, I watched you while she whispered Saccharine nothings. My gaze was not exactly friendly but exactly Christian. There was a passion for you I could not contain. You danced with your hands above your hand, your shoulders rocked back. I watched the arch of your neck and your spine. I saw Christ. And I know that every New Testament Christian who has ever laid eyes on you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Owl wise eyes so closed, you were living music. I re-found my Christ. Finalized Mardi Gras 3000 that dawn.
Wanted to wake up with you. Wanted to roll into you arms after making love and flutter my eyes open against your cheek. Knew I would feel the most myself in that moment. Instead I woke up praying. It was the same. I woke up myself.
“I’m not ashamed
to be the person that I am today.
These are my words
that I’ve never said before.
I think I’m doing okay...”
I was born this way. In love with my Christ. I was born this way. To celebrate this body. I was born this way. A woman unwilling to compromise for the finite mortal phase. I’ve been wrong. I’ve been blind. I refused to be myself while my Lord danced for me. I’ve covered my ears. I’ve turned to His world instead of to Him.
But I’m done. Being undone by you, I am finally done.
Lord...
“This is how you remind me
of what I really am.
It's not like you to say sorry.
I was waiting on a different story.
It's not like you didn't know that.
I said I love you and I swear I still do.”
And I asked, “When do you feel the most yourself?” And you answered:
Who am I? That first is the question. I would like to be many things. I have dreamed of being many things. But I *know* only that I am one thing. I am Christ’s. I belong to Him as I have belonged and will belong to no other. I am without the empathy that I think my fellows were born with. I recognized it early enough to not know to shut up about it. I will break anything and anyone and not wonder why. I will make someone, fight for them with words and fists and savvy and not question their worth. I will pray for deliverance and not expect it. I know only that He whispers it, and so I do it. By His light I have walked and will walk these dark streets. I am not afraid. My shepherd in dark alleys and the back’s of cars and cheap hotel rooms and expensive condos that over-look the water. This is who I am. This is what I am made of. He put me here. This is what I’m good at. I am myself when my head is bowed. I am myself when on my knees. I am myself... when I celebrate everything He is, when the fire of prayer burns over my hands, fills my mouth, rocks my body like thunder. When I feel the force of Him, I am myself. The force of Him that has allowed me to survive.
This force.
Lord?
Beneath your night time sky. Shooting stars. This force. You. I am found.
EJ
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Diligent
I'm waiting for you only... you alone. But not so easy when I get in my own way. Amazing how I can compose and even murmur entire conversations to you which always end in my breathless yes... at least once a day... twice on Sundays... and yet it seems that Christ will return before I can muster a yes for you live.
What exactly is my issue again? What does it say about my character if I'll drop to my knees but won't drop my pants?
Oh. Too candid? My publisher tells me I should consider an anonymous blog for writing essays like this. But isn't every part of me -- aren't all my thoughts Christian thoughts? And aren't all of my musings, gamer musings? And so, they all belong here, do they not? I think someone, somewhere may need to hear me.
Wow. Aren't bloggers full of themselves?
I think... *I* may need to hear me.
"Go on, come on leave me breathless.
Tempt me, tease me until I can't deny this.
Make me long for your kiss.
All we have is here and now.
And I'm happy just to have you."
I want to be diligent. I want to be a hard-working angel with great big white wings that lift my brown body and dark eyes into star-filled night skies that are wide and warm and impossible to tame. I want to throw away laughter, trade it in for a serious gaze and taut-lipped expression. I want to be serious and respectable. To enter into that quiet place with the marble pillars and tile floors; that place called Accomplishment.
But guess what? I only seem to apply myself in one arena. And right now it's covered in jelly beans... and an emerald-colored silk sheet.
I am so tired from not shouting from mountain tops that my throat is sore from holding back cries.
"But if my lady
soft as night before dawn
and sweet as new cream
and ready as summer peaches
pressed beneath my tongue
were ever to find herself
satisfied and satiated
by my touch
laying tucked at my side
or straddling my lap
or breathing steady under me
her body languid from pleasure
what then, I ask
what then does my Christ
intend for me to do
with my hands?"
I find joy in poetry and passion. I look to lyrics and prayers. I surround myself with people in love. I walk with others on their impassioned paths. I find myself in love with you in this world in everything. I feel part of something bigger than this heart that pounds unrelenting in my chest... I feel part of something small and private and holy.
"The soft blue of the tiny dangling lights appears every time I close my eyes. At work at the dining room table, I cover my face with my hands in thought... and stifle my gasp. My fingers and palms carry your scent. Behind my hands, I pass my tongue over my lips, taste you there. You are everywhere. Stress falls away... but I continue to pass my hands over my face, through my hair. I want to bathe in you."
Baptize me, indeed.
EJ
What exactly is my issue again? What does it say about my character if I'll drop to my knees but won't drop my pants?
Oh. Too candid? My publisher tells me I should consider an anonymous blog for writing essays like this. But isn't every part of me -- aren't all my thoughts Christian thoughts? And aren't all of my musings, gamer musings? And so, they all belong here, do they not? I think someone, somewhere may need to hear me.
Wow. Aren't bloggers full of themselves?
I think... *I* may need to hear me.
"Go on, come on leave me breathless.
Tempt me, tease me until I can't deny this.
Make me long for your kiss.
All we have is here and now.
And I'm happy just to have you."
I want to be diligent. I want to be a hard-working angel with great big white wings that lift my brown body and dark eyes into star-filled night skies that are wide and warm and impossible to tame. I want to throw away laughter, trade it in for a serious gaze and taut-lipped expression. I want to be serious and respectable. To enter into that quiet place with the marble pillars and tile floors; that place called Accomplishment.
But guess what? I only seem to apply myself in one arena. And right now it's covered in jelly beans... and an emerald-colored silk sheet.
I am so tired from not shouting from mountain tops that my throat is sore from holding back cries.
"But if my lady
soft as night before dawn
and sweet as new cream
and ready as summer peaches
pressed beneath my tongue
were ever to find herself
satisfied and satiated
by my touch
laying tucked at my side
or straddling my lap
or breathing steady under me
her body languid from pleasure
what then, I ask
what then does my Christ
intend for me to do
with my hands?"
I find joy in poetry and passion. I look to lyrics and prayers. I surround myself with people in love. I walk with others on their impassioned paths. I find myself in love with you in this world in everything. I feel part of something bigger than this heart that pounds unrelenting in my chest... I feel part of something small and private and holy.
"The soft blue of the tiny dangling lights appears every time I close my eyes. At work at the dining room table, I cover my face with my hands in thought... and stifle my gasp. My fingers and palms carry your scent. Behind my hands, I pass my tongue over my lips, taste you there. You are everywhere. Stress falls away... but I continue to pass my hands over my face, through my hair. I want to bathe in you."
Baptize me, indeed.
EJ
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Untempered
“Cuddle up, angel.
Cuddle up, my little dove.
It's just the three of us:
You, me and all that stuff we're so scared of.”
My coffee is hot and sweet and rich sitting on my tongue as I read an article about addiction. I walked away from this particular one several months ago and have just recently jumped off the wagon with a glorious reverse somersault and a perfect landing. It won't wake me up (only one thing does that, babygrrl) but I find it strangely calming. Like an old friend. A tradition unchanged since I started school in NYC at sixteen. There were so many cold mornings and always that hot cup of coffee, dark as the nights I loved, to mark another day begun.
You are awake. I can tell because there is a thrumming in my chest and a warmth in my belly that has nothing to do with the coffee. It is almost dawn. I have fought my desire for you all night. I am somewhat more than unwilling to have you see me like this: so willing to throw away stress and demands and the whole rest of the world to fall to my knees before you. I am not yet ready for you to see the desire on my face like scripture. This living divinity that breaks and remakes me: my passion for you.
“Save tonight
and fight the break of dawn.
... burns like me for you.”
I return constantly to these late nights, so still and sleepless. Here I can quiet my thoughts if not my pounding heart. Here I can become myself, feel every inch of the woman I have grown to be, and be content and strong in that knowledge. But as my parts fall into place I find that I want you even more. We compliment each other. We...
Why do I try to make this into something so complicated and complex? It isn't. This love I feel for you is simple and bright and burning like my love for Christ. I love you because you are you. Not perfect. Not refined. You are untamed and untempered and more than anything else unbroken. I may be able to lay you down, lay you back, but I could never bend you to my will any more than anything in man's world could bend you. You are that perfect balance of elements and reactions and responses and stillness. I want you because you are wild and beautiful and bold. I need you... simply because my heart beats.
My heart beats. I raise my hand, touch my skin with my fingertips. Slide my hand up to linger at my pulse. There is a knock on the door. Isn't it dawn? Oh. Yes. But my work day begins at dawn. My day begins:
Ginny doesn't care if I use her real name because she quit two days ago and this is her last day on set. She thinks Hollywood pretty much bites but she loves it anyway. She just couldn't wake up any more and go to work and be part of a system “screwing so many women.” So Ginny doesn't care about anything right now other than watching me eat pancake sandwiches with sausages and eggs. Ginny is concerned that work requires I stay ten pounds below the optimal weight for someone 5'2” and I'm 5'5”. Ginny doesn't really understand that skipping meals stopped bothering me ten years ago when I started this.
Over breakfast, Ginny stares out the window. She is twenty-one and four days. She looks twice that in a bad way. She looks worn down by a system she's just starting to grasp. Not just the entertainment industry, but all of it. Life. Ginny says:
“It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough.
Man meets woman and they fall in love.
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough.
And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.”
And the waitress asks for my autograph and Ginny frowns and we leave and I wonder if any young woman, any young person at all, ever enters the world to find it as they expected. I think I know of only one person who would claim that knowledge and she grew up in a way none of us would exchange for that premature education. I think that life is easy (even when rough) when we're children; Our choices are simpler. The world is the black and white of our parents' beliefs. The surface of everything is reflective. We see ourselves in everything. Life is as simple as looking in the mirror. Then we grow up... some of us at eighteen, some of us when we're first without a boyfriend, some of us when we have our first child... sometimes when we realize our children won't swallow the simple answers we're given them. No man knows another man's destiny. And though there are certainly universal truths, fact is stranger than fiction, and each of us billions have fingerprints all our own. Perhaps reality isn't one-size fits-all after all. So eventually we all grow up into us... and that new us is not the same as the old us.
Ginny wants to know where is the world that she thought was out there. Ginny wants to know when it gets easy and if Christ will make it clear. Ginny wants me to tell her it'll be okay and pat her hand and smile convincingly... just so she can shrug it all off for another day... but what Ginny doesn't realize is that by walking away from her lover and her job and the shelter of family name, she has already traveled beyond the place of easy comforts and convincing platitudes. Though she is not consciously aware of it yet, she has already begun her journey, all of it uphill and none of it easy. Despite Winterson's retelling, Atlas never shrugged and neither will Ginny.
Instead I say to Ginny: I'll get the bill.
T meets us outside. Motions us over to coffee. Tells us quietly that trouble is brewing without being explicit. He exchanges a few more words with Ginny, code worded to speak in front of me, about me, without me really knowing it. T speaks to Ginny like an equal because he is a decent man and doesn't see the difference between cast and crew but more than that, in this moment, when they are speaking about me, they are peers. They are both my friends.
“Somebody did.”
“Or didn't... you know?”
“More copies. Yellow highlights.”
“Unreal...”
“Tabbed even...”
“Somebody counting their lines?”
“Or not.”
T is not a small man. He likes to speak in short sentences and has a vocabulary that includes silences that are heavy and rich. To say his eyes speak volumes would be somewhat overly dramatic but the phrase works for me. I have always had this thing for eyes that speak. For men and women who say more with silence than with words. Not to say that I don't like words... I do. Very much. But T has a gentleness in his gaze that cannot be condensed into words. The way Wings has a confidence in her gaze that cannot be encompassed in a sentence or phrase. Some people just say more when they are silent.
“I can't believe they're making this something dirty,” Ginny says.
T just tilts his head to one side, purses his lips, blinks once, slowly. Ginny nods. She shakes her head. Looks away. “Yeah...” she says. “Yeah.”
By the end of the day, forty bound copies of my entire blog are circulating throughout the set. Seems my two worlds have collided. I call my lawyer at 7 and my publisher's lawyer at 8:45.
“If this is where memories are made
I'm gonna like what I see.
And everything and nothing is
as sacred as we want it to be.
And this time, this time
is fine just as it is.”
I am unshaken. The nonreality of reality strikes me as humorous today. I want to go dancing. I think clubbing on the Sabbath is why there's no cover on Sundays at my favorite spots. I'm simply meant to remember my body, this tangible gift from Christ, more than ever, on this day. I think about a friend singing: “Let's give them something to talk about... a little mystery to figure out...” She laughed to me about humming it for three days straight. The flip attitude, the joy in stress, the “oh, get a life, people” murmur behind the words. I found myself fixated on:
“Give me your sweet forgiveness
sweeter than honey.
Give me your sweet forgiveness
sweeter than wine.”
And I wasn't sure what I wanted to be forgiven for but I sure did know that sweeter than honey is exactly what you are to me, so I hummed that one all day while the strangers in my friends muttered about expectations and persona and responsibility.
I walked off set when a grip mumbled that four-lettered word while I sat eating my side salad. Funny... but I'm starting to think of it as a badge of honor.
“These people 'round here
wear beaten down eyes
sunk in smoke dried faces.
They're so resigned to what their fate is.
But not us, no, not us.
We are far too young and clever.
Ah come on...”
In the Catholic church, Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians. A muse of sorts bringing inspiration, watching over music makers. But if I ever had a patron saint it was Joan of Arc and the inspiration she brought me was historical proof that the more faithful one is, the higher the chance that she will be called a lunatic. I was equally inspired by Galileo and moved to smiles instead of tears when I walked into the Spot to hear:
“Cecilia, you're breakin' my heart.
You're shakin' my confidence daily.
Whoa, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees.
I'm beggin' you please to come home.
Come on home...”
And that's when it hits. I have my muse. I have my inspiration. That is why the dark drama at work is unable to strip me or burn me at the stake. I have my armor and sword, yes, yes, always... but they are often not enough. As in war and football, not always in life. A good offense is not always a good defense. Sometimes we need something *bright* not just something *sharp.* Sometimes we need something funny, sexy, challenging... responsive, irresponsible, wild and, of course, untempered, to remind us why we continue to fight.
And as I come to this realization, I know at last that sleep will stop eluding me. The night after night of dropping into exhaustion for two hours and then waking for the rest will be gone. I tore myself apart looking for why... *why* wasn't I *worried*? Why wasn't I hurt by that nonreality that was my very personal collision of worlds? Why, why, why?
Because I have you.
“You flash your bedroom eyes like a jumpin' jack.
You drive the pretty boys outta their heads.
Then play it pretty with a pat on the back.
You know you got it... so come and get it.”
I laugh myself through three hours of music. My laughter appears to be contagious. The energy on the floor is light, bright, sweet and fluffy like cotton candy. Like the Monster Bag I loved at the Puyallup Fair... both of them *blush* At one point, a lanky leather-and-neon raver I've seen before sizes me up. She grins crooked and cocky. “Well,” she's all-knowing, this punk. “*Somebody* got laid.”
And I laughed harder. Much harder. Because she was right. *Somebody* did get laid all right. But it wasn't me.
“Who's that casting devious stares
in my direction.
Oh baby, this surely is a dream.
Yeah baby, this must be my dream...”
There was tension -- exquisite and torturous and pounding through my bones and muscles and veins. There was stress and danger and betrayal and deceit all outside my control. And then...
And then it was just gone.
I have been called many things, some of them four-lettered and others much longer. But Polly Anna is not one of them. And so... I worried. I fretted. What insanity had taken my mind that I was so content? So settled? So pleasantly resigned to my fate? Why was everything, suddenly, so good to go? Who had harvested my emotional state?
But now I know...
“She don't like losing,
to her it's still a game.
And though she will mess up your life,
you'll want her just the same,
and now I know:
She has a built-in ability
to take everything she sees.
And now it seems, I'm falling,
I'm falling for her!”
And I was still laughing as I tumbled into dreams, beneath skylights of scattered stars and wispy clouds, and a three-legged cat snoring loudly and announcing, most certainly, the beginning of the End Times. But hey *shrug* I'm down with that *grin*
EJ
You look at me and I fall into the forest of your eyes. I am enchanted and lost and found and saved and damned. I would walk through fire to live this life, to love you. Dear Lord, sometimes, I think I do. Do you think me a fool? I look at you -- a treasure, an angel, a warrior -- and I see you quiet and fierce. Talk to me. Tell me anything. Let me read your internal state in the cadence of your words over the still night quiet. Tell me you walk with me. Tell me that nothing is left unsaid. Tell me you love me.
Cuddle up, my little dove.
It's just the three of us:
You, me and all that stuff we're so scared of.”
My coffee is hot and sweet and rich sitting on my tongue as I read an article about addiction. I walked away from this particular one several months ago and have just recently jumped off the wagon with a glorious reverse somersault and a perfect landing. It won't wake me up (only one thing does that, babygrrl) but I find it strangely calming. Like an old friend. A tradition unchanged since I started school in NYC at sixteen. There were so many cold mornings and always that hot cup of coffee, dark as the nights I loved, to mark another day begun.
You are awake. I can tell because there is a thrumming in my chest and a warmth in my belly that has nothing to do with the coffee. It is almost dawn. I have fought my desire for you all night. I am somewhat more than unwilling to have you see me like this: so willing to throw away stress and demands and the whole rest of the world to fall to my knees before you. I am not yet ready for you to see the desire on my face like scripture. This living divinity that breaks and remakes me: my passion for you.
“Save tonight
and fight the break of dawn.
... burns like me for you.”
I return constantly to these late nights, so still and sleepless. Here I can quiet my thoughts if not my pounding heart. Here I can become myself, feel every inch of the woman I have grown to be, and be content and strong in that knowledge. But as my parts fall into place I find that I want you even more. We compliment each other. We...
Why do I try to make this into something so complicated and complex? It isn't. This love I feel for you is simple and bright and burning like my love for Christ. I love you because you are you. Not perfect. Not refined. You are untamed and untempered and more than anything else unbroken. I may be able to lay you down, lay you back, but I could never bend you to my will any more than anything in man's world could bend you. You are that perfect balance of elements and reactions and responses and stillness. I want you because you are wild and beautiful and bold. I need you... simply because my heart beats.
My heart beats. I raise my hand, touch my skin with my fingertips. Slide my hand up to linger at my pulse. There is a knock on the door. Isn't it dawn? Oh. Yes. But my work day begins at dawn. My day begins:
Ginny doesn't care if I use her real name because she quit two days ago and this is her last day on set. She thinks Hollywood pretty much bites but she loves it anyway. She just couldn't wake up any more and go to work and be part of a system “screwing so many women.” So Ginny doesn't care about anything right now other than watching me eat pancake sandwiches with sausages and eggs. Ginny is concerned that work requires I stay ten pounds below the optimal weight for someone 5'2” and I'm 5'5”. Ginny doesn't really understand that skipping meals stopped bothering me ten years ago when I started this.
Over breakfast, Ginny stares out the window. She is twenty-one and four days. She looks twice that in a bad way. She looks worn down by a system she's just starting to grasp. Not just the entertainment industry, but all of it. Life. Ginny says:
“It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough.
Man meets woman and they fall in love.
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough.
And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above.”
And the waitress asks for my autograph and Ginny frowns and we leave and I wonder if any young woman, any young person at all, ever enters the world to find it as they expected. I think I know of only one person who would claim that knowledge and she grew up in a way none of us would exchange for that premature education. I think that life is easy (even when rough) when we're children; Our choices are simpler. The world is the black and white of our parents' beliefs. The surface of everything is reflective. We see ourselves in everything. Life is as simple as looking in the mirror. Then we grow up... some of us at eighteen, some of us when we're first without a boyfriend, some of us when we have our first child... sometimes when we realize our children won't swallow the simple answers we're given them. No man knows another man's destiny. And though there are certainly universal truths, fact is stranger than fiction, and each of us billions have fingerprints all our own. Perhaps reality isn't one-size fits-all after all. So eventually we all grow up into us... and that new us is not the same as the old us.
Ginny wants to know where is the world that she thought was out there. Ginny wants to know when it gets easy and if Christ will make it clear. Ginny wants me to tell her it'll be okay and pat her hand and smile convincingly... just so she can shrug it all off for another day... but what Ginny doesn't realize is that by walking away from her lover and her job and the shelter of family name, she has already traveled beyond the place of easy comforts and convincing platitudes. Though she is not consciously aware of it yet, she has already begun her journey, all of it uphill and none of it easy. Despite Winterson's retelling, Atlas never shrugged and neither will Ginny.
Instead I say to Ginny: I'll get the bill.
T meets us outside. Motions us over to coffee. Tells us quietly that trouble is brewing without being explicit. He exchanges a few more words with Ginny, code worded to speak in front of me, about me, without me really knowing it. T speaks to Ginny like an equal because he is a decent man and doesn't see the difference between cast and crew but more than that, in this moment, when they are speaking about me, they are peers. They are both my friends.
“Somebody did.”
“Or didn't... you know?”
“More copies. Yellow highlights.”
“Unreal...”
“Tabbed even...”
“Somebody counting their lines?”
“Or not.”
T is not a small man. He likes to speak in short sentences and has a vocabulary that includes silences that are heavy and rich. To say his eyes speak volumes would be somewhat overly dramatic but the phrase works for me. I have always had this thing for eyes that speak. For men and women who say more with silence than with words. Not to say that I don't like words... I do. Very much. But T has a gentleness in his gaze that cannot be condensed into words. The way Wings has a confidence in her gaze that cannot be encompassed in a sentence or phrase. Some people just say more when they are silent.
“I can't believe they're making this something dirty,” Ginny says.
T just tilts his head to one side, purses his lips, blinks once, slowly. Ginny nods. She shakes her head. Looks away. “Yeah...” she says. “Yeah.”
By the end of the day, forty bound copies of my entire blog are circulating throughout the set. Seems my two worlds have collided. I call my lawyer at 7 and my publisher's lawyer at 8:45.
“If this is where memories are made
I'm gonna like what I see.
And everything and nothing is
as sacred as we want it to be.
And this time, this time
is fine just as it is.”
I am unshaken. The nonreality of reality strikes me as humorous today. I want to go dancing. I think clubbing on the Sabbath is why there's no cover on Sundays at my favorite spots. I'm simply meant to remember my body, this tangible gift from Christ, more than ever, on this day. I think about a friend singing: “Let's give them something to talk about... a little mystery to figure out...” She laughed to me about humming it for three days straight. The flip attitude, the joy in stress, the “oh, get a life, people” murmur behind the words. I found myself fixated on:
“Give me your sweet forgiveness
sweeter than honey.
Give me your sweet forgiveness
sweeter than wine.”
And I wasn't sure what I wanted to be forgiven for but I sure did know that sweeter than honey is exactly what you are to me, so I hummed that one all day while the strangers in my friends muttered about expectations and persona and responsibility.
I walked off set when a grip mumbled that four-lettered word while I sat eating my side salad. Funny... but I'm starting to think of it as a badge of honor.
“These people 'round here
wear beaten down eyes
sunk in smoke dried faces.
They're so resigned to what their fate is.
But not us, no, not us.
We are far too young and clever.
Ah come on...”
In the Catholic church, Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians. A muse of sorts bringing inspiration, watching over music makers. But if I ever had a patron saint it was Joan of Arc and the inspiration she brought me was historical proof that the more faithful one is, the higher the chance that she will be called a lunatic. I was equally inspired by Galileo and moved to smiles instead of tears when I walked into the Spot to hear:
“Cecilia, you're breakin' my heart.
You're shakin' my confidence daily.
Whoa, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees.
I'm beggin' you please to come home.
Come on home...”
And that's when it hits. I have my muse. I have my inspiration. That is why the dark drama at work is unable to strip me or burn me at the stake. I have my armor and sword, yes, yes, always... but they are often not enough. As in war and football, not always in life. A good offense is not always a good defense. Sometimes we need something *bright* not just something *sharp.* Sometimes we need something funny, sexy, challenging... responsive, irresponsible, wild and, of course, untempered, to remind us why we continue to fight.
And as I come to this realization, I know at last that sleep will stop eluding me. The night after night of dropping into exhaustion for two hours and then waking for the rest will be gone. I tore myself apart looking for why... *why* wasn't I *worried*? Why wasn't I hurt by that nonreality that was my very personal collision of worlds? Why, why, why?
Because I have you.
“You flash your bedroom eyes like a jumpin' jack.
You drive the pretty boys outta their heads.
Then play it pretty with a pat on the back.
You know you got it... so come and get it.”
I laugh myself through three hours of music. My laughter appears to be contagious. The energy on the floor is light, bright, sweet and fluffy like cotton candy. Like the Monster Bag I loved at the Puyallup Fair... both of them *blush* At one point, a lanky leather-and-neon raver I've seen before sizes me up. She grins crooked and cocky. “Well,” she's all-knowing, this punk. “*Somebody* got laid.”
And I laughed harder. Much harder. Because she was right. *Somebody* did get laid all right. But it wasn't me.
“Who's that casting devious stares
in my direction.
Oh baby, this surely is a dream.
Yeah baby, this must be my dream...”
There was tension -- exquisite and torturous and pounding through my bones and muscles and veins. There was stress and danger and betrayal and deceit all outside my control. And then...
And then it was just gone.
I have been called many things, some of them four-lettered and others much longer. But Polly Anna is not one of them. And so... I worried. I fretted. What insanity had taken my mind that I was so content? So settled? So pleasantly resigned to my fate? Why was everything, suddenly, so good to go? Who had harvested my emotional state?
But now I know...
“She don't like losing,
to her it's still a game.
And though she will mess up your life,
you'll want her just the same,
and now I know:
She has a built-in ability
to take everything she sees.
And now it seems, I'm falling,
I'm falling for her!”
And I was still laughing as I tumbled into dreams, beneath skylights of scattered stars and wispy clouds, and a three-legged cat snoring loudly and announcing, most certainly, the beginning of the End Times. But hey *shrug* I'm down with that *grin*
EJ
You look at me and I fall into the forest of your eyes. I am enchanted and lost and found and saved and damned. I would walk through fire to live this life, to love you. Dear Lord, sometimes, I think I do. Do you think me a fool? I look at you -- a treasure, an angel, a warrior -- and I see you quiet and fierce. Talk to me. Tell me anything. Let me read your internal state in the cadence of your words over the still night quiet. Tell me you walk with me. Tell me that nothing is left unsaid. Tell me you love me.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Working on the Sabbath
Christmas morning. I open an alarm clock from Santa. It wakes me with my mp3 player. Santa doesn’t need to give me the receipt. I already paid off the card.
Hard beat. Heart beat. I bolt up sweating. Blood on my pillow. I’ve bitten my lip. Hand shakes as I thumb the volume up. My CK Playlist.
“Why do we crucify ourselves?
Everyday... I crucify myself.
Nothing I do is good enough for you...
and my heart is sick of being in chains.”
They wake me at 5 a.m. to tell me they’ve replaced me with a white grrl. They go out of their way to tell me the name of her live-in boy-toy lover. They use newly hyphenated words like financial-risk and quantifiable-liability and loss-and-win-ratio. They use saccharine words like pay-off and flat-fee.
Because I couldn’t conjure a lie and look like I wanted a guy between my legs.
“Where’s the chemistry, EJ?” I wasn’t aware this was AP Science. Do I have to retake the lab or can I get by with just the multiple choice? Can someone text me the answers? I was too busy not going down on my grrl to study.
Chemistry. Snap. You’re looking at the camera. Strawberry curls. Snap. You’re looking at her. Pupils wide. Snap. She didn’t mean to send me the photo. Not that photo. Oh baby. That’s chemistry. Catch-my-breath crackle. *shaking my head* No, I can’t fake that. They’re right.
So take back the Emmy and I’ll stop phoning it in.
“Every finger in the room is pointing at me.
I wanna spit in their faces
then I get afraid of what that could bring.
Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now.”
They call back at 6:15 to tell me they’ve changed their minds. The trades have printed a good review of an earlier version (one with me) and pulled me out as the heart-and-soul. They’d need an exorcist to replace me now. They’d need a voodoo high priest, poppet. Tammy is the only female EVP. They are standing around her, no doubt, clustered like vulture-slash-voyeurs while she croons to me. A lover’s voice. Intimate and immediate. Like asking me to stay in bed and touch her one more time. Tammy says, “I want things between us to be like they were.” I have never slept with Tammy. “Why do you put us through this, Angel?” I have never clubbed with Tammy. “Why do you make us do this?” Rape me? “Why can’t you just enjoy this?” Oh... Lord... I scramble out of bed and vomit before I reach the bathroom.
“Why do we crucify ourselves?
Everyday... I crucify myself.
Got enough guilt to start my own religion.
Where are those angels when you need them?”
And I yank the player off the alarm clock connector cord and grab my keys with my other hand. My jacket is somewhere, there, now here, over my shoulders, heavy like armor, like anger. The door slams behind me. A baby wakes. I don’t... can’t stop. “Not my baby...” Means so many things. New bike roars in the crisp morning. Rock her forward and throw my helmet into the corner of the garage. Bolt her out and flash on straddling you, my head thrown back, crying your name over and over and over again.
Some stand and some crumble. Some shout and some weep. The lions roar differently for every ear. “Do you hear your lions?” Grandmother used to say. “Is that why there is fire in your eyes?”
I don’t wait well. The den is cold. I step out of the darkness. Never wait for the angels. Christ is always right here... and my heart beats. If my heart beats, I want to be fighting. I don’t lay it down until He knocks me down. And He has certainly had to before.
“Not very stable... is she?” Hm. Make believe? Misheard? Rumor and innuendo? Lucky I don’t need someone to sign post my path. The white-washing of faith should be a sin... if it already is, someone should send out a letter.
Five things I'm dying to confess... but never will:
1) Leave me.
“Don't know if I could stand
another hand upon you.
All I know is that I should.”
And every moment I have spent with you comes into clarity as the truly dangerous and destructive force that it is. How you have torn my life apart and I have fallen to pieces like a scattered jigsaw puzzle on the floor. Your hands made me tremble while you remade me yourself, and I caught my breath at the picture of me, no reflection in the mirror, a magical creature. Creation and destruction, my Shiva. Your demolition of my life was more welcome than wind on the ocean and lightning over the waves. Your danger is sweeter than spring air and burns brighter than any dawn. Wreck me, take me apart, and hand me to Him.
“Give me life. Give me pain.
Give me my self again.
Oh these little earthquakes...
Here we go again.
Doesn't take much to rip us into pieces.”
Zero to seventy-five.
Forgot my wallet at home. Forgot the city limits behind me. Travelling north I’m moving toward everyone I love. I’m running after the rain.
Today is the Sabbath. I close my eyes.
Eighty. Eighty-five.
2) I have forgotten his voice.
More than a thousand miles away, my family is sweating. Hard work on the Sabbath clears the mind for Christ. They are hauling, hammering, cleaning, scrubbing. They are caring for animals and children. They are loving one another. They are whispering names in the quiet of the night. They are one heart even when shattered. They are a flock of angels, in all states of grace. They are alone, together, their own, and mine. All at once. All now.
Ringed by trees. Evergreens in every green holding up the sky. Strong bodies move across their earth, that region of Christ, living the Word. Only there does the Sabbath exist for me. While strangers pack churches and hum hymns and mutter morals, I know truly only those souls walking there on this day. Every Sabbath I know. She is true as rain on my face. She is passion, unbridled beneath steady hands and eyes. She is still as night sky. My patron saint. I pray at the stations of the cross. I contemplate Him when I imagine that sacred place.
Sixty. Fifty-five.
Want your arms around me. Telling me it’ll be okay.
Want your hands on my shoulders. Your gaze lit from within.
Want your attention. Your outside-the-box solutions.
Want your lips on mine. Silencing my no.
“But we unleashed a lion.
Gnashed his teeth.
And the boy was something
mommy wouldn't wear.
Jeremy spoke in class today.
Try to forget this...
Try to erase this....”
3) I would never let him yell at her. He’d be on the floor before her eyes formed tears.
And there’s no way I’ll reach the ocean because I’m travelling in the wrong direction. And there’s no way I’ll reach my holy land because I’ve no money for gasoline. I spot the high and dry median, pull the U-y across four and take myself home hovering at the speed limit. I feel myself coming down off the adrenaline high. I want waffles with strawberries and bacon. I want dark, strong coffee with raw sugar. I want you.
“There's a fear in me, but it's not showing.
I look ahead too all the plans we made
and the dreams that we had.
I'm in a world that tries to take them away...
but I'm taking them back.”
I park the bike and go inside. The house is empty. But it is never quiet. A radio is on somewhere spouting an en mass mass. The tv is on low with no one to watch it. A child’s toy is reciting the alphabet. I strip in the hall. Pull on old jeans and a tank. I go next door. Lillian is only in her late sixties but she is a woman of society and she never learned how to clean a gutter.
4) The Clozaril took away the nightmares... but it also stole my ability to paint.
Ten hours. Ten hours I bend over her roof line, mend fencing and tie up brambles. Three storeys up, I rip the butt off my jeans and lose both pockets to the uneven composition roofing. The slop from the gutters is just one season’s worth; she paid someone last year. I fill buckets, up and down I shimmy because she doesn’t have a ladder. I turn it into her flower beds, the shovel growing impossibly heavy after the first five hours. There is a dead crow in the attic eaves. There are nests of doves tucked into the observatory dome. There is a view of unbroken sky from the highest peak.
I sing “Oh Holy Night” horribly off-tune and burn away everything in me by sweating until I want to strip nude and every muscle in my body aches with the tension of not breaking my neck by falling off the roof. Ten hours. This is a Sabbath. The highest peak is my pew. My God asks that I worship under His roof, this sky. In His world. In His way. My worship is never easy. It sweats and bleeds and aches and *works.*
Ten hours I celebrate this body that Christ made me.
Lillian invites me inside when it gets too dark to see. She hands me a plate of hot scones with blackberry preserves. She hands me a gold-rimmed cup of steaming espresso. I drink it like wine, like salvation, like poison, like choice. I drink it and count the days in my head until it will be out of my system. I drink it with my eyes closed and tell myself it will strengthen my will. The bottle said, “Drink Me” and so I did.
“Cause when push comes to shove
you taste what you're made of.
On your knees you look up...
You get mad. You get strong.
Then you stand.
One more small piece of you
falls into place.”
Lillian plays harp music. It pipes through the house. I recognize it. But how can I recognize it? I am too tired to ask. She does not speak because women of class do not make idle chatter. She gazes at me quietly, appraisingly. I feel my body humming with strength and purpose and faith. I sip my espresso, roll it over my tongue. I eat my scone with a fork. Spread the blackberries sparingly. I am sweaty and I stink. But the scent is like wild roses and maple leaves and green moss and growing things almost ready to wake. In the high-backed cherry wood chair with the very white upholstery, I am out of place... and more in my place than I have ever been before.
“You’re a very beautiful young woman,” Lillian says. And she means it just as it lays. There is nothing more behind her words. She says it like she’s telling me my eyes are brown or my skin is cinnamon or my hair is raven. She is just telling me a fact because she knows I don’t believe it and she’s disagreeing with me.
I look up at her. Her eyes are slate grey. Her hair is silver and white. Her skin is like honey oak parchment. I say softly, “I’m a lot of things.” and my voice is so much smaller than I intend it to be... but it has been said and the truth is steady.
I am steady.
EJ
5) Sometimes, I want them to be right. Thirty is long enough.
Hard beat. Heart beat. I bolt up sweating. Blood on my pillow. I’ve bitten my lip. Hand shakes as I thumb the volume up. My CK Playlist.
“Why do we crucify ourselves?
Everyday... I crucify myself.
Nothing I do is good enough for you...
and my heart is sick of being in chains.”
They wake me at 5 a.m. to tell me they’ve replaced me with a white grrl. They go out of their way to tell me the name of her live-in boy-toy lover. They use newly hyphenated words like financial-risk and quantifiable-liability and loss-and-win-ratio. They use saccharine words like pay-off and flat-fee.
Because I couldn’t conjure a lie and look like I wanted a guy between my legs.
“Where’s the chemistry, EJ?” I wasn’t aware this was AP Science. Do I have to retake the lab or can I get by with just the multiple choice? Can someone text me the answers? I was too busy not going down on my grrl to study.
Chemistry. Snap. You’re looking at the camera. Strawberry curls. Snap. You’re looking at her. Pupils wide. Snap. She didn’t mean to send me the photo. Not that photo. Oh baby. That’s chemistry. Catch-my-breath crackle. *shaking my head* No, I can’t fake that. They’re right.
So take back the Emmy and I’ll stop phoning it in.
“Every finger in the room is pointing at me.
I wanna spit in their faces
then I get afraid of what that could bring.
Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now.”
They call back at 6:15 to tell me they’ve changed their minds. The trades have printed a good review of an earlier version (one with me) and pulled me out as the heart-and-soul. They’d need an exorcist to replace me now. They’d need a voodoo high priest, poppet. Tammy is the only female EVP. They are standing around her, no doubt, clustered like vulture-slash-voyeurs while she croons to me. A lover’s voice. Intimate and immediate. Like asking me to stay in bed and touch her one more time. Tammy says, “I want things between us to be like they were.” I have never slept with Tammy. “Why do you put us through this, Angel?” I have never clubbed with Tammy. “Why do you make us do this?” Rape me? “Why can’t you just enjoy this?” Oh... Lord... I scramble out of bed and vomit before I reach the bathroom.
“Why do we crucify ourselves?
Everyday... I crucify myself.
Got enough guilt to start my own religion.
Where are those angels when you need them?”
And I yank the player off the alarm clock connector cord and grab my keys with my other hand. My jacket is somewhere, there, now here, over my shoulders, heavy like armor, like anger. The door slams behind me. A baby wakes. I don’t... can’t stop. “Not my baby...” Means so many things. New bike roars in the crisp morning. Rock her forward and throw my helmet into the corner of the garage. Bolt her out and flash on straddling you, my head thrown back, crying your name over and over and over again.
Some stand and some crumble. Some shout and some weep. The lions roar differently for every ear. “Do you hear your lions?” Grandmother used to say. “Is that why there is fire in your eyes?”
I don’t wait well. The den is cold. I step out of the darkness. Never wait for the angels. Christ is always right here... and my heart beats. If my heart beats, I want to be fighting. I don’t lay it down until He knocks me down. And He has certainly had to before.
“Not very stable... is she?” Hm. Make believe? Misheard? Rumor and innuendo? Lucky I don’t need someone to sign post my path. The white-washing of faith should be a sin... if it already is, someone should send out a letter.
Five things I'm dying to confess... but never will:
1) Leave me.
“Don't know if I could stand
another hand upon you.
All I know is that I should.”
And every moment I have spent with you comes into clarity as the truly dangerous and destructive force that it is. How you have torn my life apart and I have fallen to pieces like a scattered jigsaw puzzle on the floor. Your hands made me tremble while you remade me yourself, and I caught my breath at the picture of me, no reflection in the mirror, a magical creature. Creation and destruction, my Shiva. Your demolition of my life was more welcome than wind on the ocean and lightning over the waves. Your danger is sweeter than spring air and burns brighter than any dawn. Wreck me, take me apart, and hand me to Him.
“Give me life. Give me pain.
Give me my self again.
Oh these little earthquakes...
Here we go again.
Doesn't take much to rip us into pieces.”
Zero to seventy-five.
Forgot my wallet at home. Forgot the city limits behind me. Travelling north I’m moving toward everyone I love. I’m running after the rain.
Today is the Sabbath. I close my eyes.
Eighty. Eighty-five.
2) I have forgotten his voice.
More than a thousand miles away, my family is sweating. Hard work on the Sabbath clears the mind for Christ. They are hauling, hammering, cleaning, scrubbing. They are caring for animals and children. They are loving one another. They are whispering names in the quiet of the night. They are one heart even when shattered. They are a flock of angels, in all states of grace. They are alone, together, their own, and mine. All at once. All now.
Ringed by trees. Evergreens in every green holding up the sky. Strong bodies move across their earth, that region of Christ, living the Word. Only there does the Sabbath exist for me. While strangers pack churches and hum hymns and mutter morals, I know truly only those souls walking there on this day. Every Sabbath I know. She is true as rain on my face. She is passion, unbridled beneath steady hands and eyes. She is still as night sky. My patron saint. I pray at the stations of the cross. I contemplate Him when I imagine that sacred place.
Sixty. Fifty-five.
Want your arms around me. Telling me it’ll be okay.
Want your hands on my shoulders. Your gaze lit from within.
Want your attention. Your outside-the-box solutions.
Want your lips on mine. Silencing my no.
“But we unleashed a lion.
Gnashed his teeth.
And the boy was something
mommy wouldn't wear.
Jeremy spoke in class today.
Try to forget this...
Try to erase this....”
3) I would never let him yell at her. He’d be on the floor before her eyes formed tears.
And there’s no way I’ll reach the ocean because I’m travelling in the wrong direction. And there’s no way I’ll reach my holy land because I’ve no money for gasoline. I spot the high and dry median, pull the U-y across four and take myself home hovering at the speed limit. I feel myself coming down off the adrenaline high. I want waffles with strawberries and bacon. I want dark, strong coffee with raw sugar. I want you.
“There's a fear in me, but it's not showing.
I look ahead too all the plans we made
and the dreams that we had.
I'm in a world that tries to take them away...
but I'm taking them back.”
I park the bike and go inside. The house is empty. But it is never quiet. A radio is on somewhere spouting an en mass mass. The tv is on low with no one to watch it. A child’s toy is reciting the alphabet. I strip in the hall. Pull on old jeans and a tank. I go next door. Lillian is only in her late sixties but she is a woman of society and she never learned how to clean a gutter.
4) The Clozaril took away the nightmares... but it also stole my ability to paint.
Ten hours. Ten hours I bend over her roof line, mend fencing and tie up brambles. Three storeys up, I rip the butt off my jeans and lose both pockets to the uneven composition roofing. The slop from the gutters is just one season’s worth; she paid someone last year. I fill buckets, up and down I shimmy because she doesn’t have a ladder. I turn it into her flower beds, the shovel growing impossibly heavy after the first five hours. There is a dead crow in the attic eaves. There are nests of doves tucked into the observatory dome. There is a view of unbroken sky from the highest peak.
I sing “Oh Holy Night” horribly off-tune and burn away everything in me by sweating until I want to strip nude and every muscle in my body aches with the tension of not breaking my neck by falling off the roof. Ten hours. This is a Sabbath. The highest peak is my pew. My God asks that I worship under His roof, this sky. In His world. In His way. My worship is never easy. It sweats and bleeds and aches and *works.*
Ten hours I celebrate this body that Christ made me.
Lillian invites me inside when it gets too dark to see. She hands me a plate of hot scones with blackberry preserves. She hands me a gold-rimmed cup of steaming espresso. I drink it like wine, like salvation, like poison, like choice. I drink it and count the days in my head until it will be out of my system. I drink it with my eyes closed and tell myself it will strengthen my will. The bottle said, “Drink Me” and so I did.
“Cause when push comes to shove
you taste what you're made of.
On your knees you look up...
You get mad. You get strong.
Then you stand.
One more small piece of you
falls into place.”
Lillian plays harp music. It pipes through the house. I recognize it. But how can I recognize it? I am too tired to ask. She does not speak because women of class do not make idle chatter. She gazes at me quietly, appraisingly. I feel my body humming with strength and purpose and faith. I sip my espresso, roll it over my tongue. I eat my scone with a fork. Spread the blackberries sparingly. I am sweaty and I stink. But the scent is like wild roses and maple leaves and green moss and growing things almost ready to wake. In the high-backed cherry wood chair with the very white upholstery, I am out of place... and more in my place than I have ever been before.
“You’re a very beautiful young woman,” Lillian says. And she means it just as it lays. There is nothing more behind her words. She says it like she’s telling me my eyes are brown or my skin is cinnamon or my hair is raven. She is just telling me a fact because she knows I don’t believe it and she’s disagreeing with me.
I look up at her. Her eyes are slate grey. Her hair is silver and white. Her skin is like honey oak parchment. I say softly, “I’m a lot of things.” and my voice is so much smaller than I intend it to be... but it has been said and the truth is steady.
I am steady.
EJ
5) Sometimes, I want them to be right. Thirty is long enough.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Scattered
"Oh holy night
The stars are brightly shining
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."
Can't stop myself. From wanting you. From shaking for you. Can't ease the throbbing that grips me, the desire that surges in waves, unrelenting. I think your name, your face and my body responds; you may as well be here, right here. I pace here in the darkness of the cottage, all expensive ceramic white tile and warm honey oak. My boots make steady sounds across the floor until they seem too much and I kick them off. The cold tile does nothing to cool me down. I light two candles. The bloom, flowers, speaking in tongues. I need to write my blog... but I can barely think. You strip away reason and logic and responsibility. My passion for you leaves me bare in the universe, here beneath this ceiling full of sky lights scattered with Christ's own stars. I close my eyes. I think, ‘I want you.’ That isn't enough. I cast, ‘I need you.’ There is no power there. I sink to my knees, my head back, my face to the sky. “Take me. Dear Lord, take me.” And that is the nearest I can come without you here to hear my cries.
Two months ago:
I’m gritting my teeth. Been gritting them all day. This day started with me wanting you, and stayed that way. I need the media boy in front of me to *shut up* and give me an opening to thank him profusely, squeeze his hand a moment too long, and escape the lot – *this* world – to lose myself to speed. After all... it’s Friday night.
Straddling my bike at last at 11:48 p.m., I zip my jacket, catch the scent of the steel zipper, snaps and buckles set in earthy black leather. I remember the first time you wore leather pants for me. It wasn’t in your nature then... but it is now. I tug on my gloves and remember my hand slide along your thigh as the glove caresses my palm. I leave through the golden gate, my helmet making me anonymous.
The street is populated by steel and fiberglass beasts. Here is the only place I’m not color blind. I take in the rainbow of the automobile industry. I think of Skittles. I think of gumdrops. I think of sprinkling gemstones through my fingers. I think of touching you, taut beneath my fingertips, under my tongue. I exhale, sharp and loud. My muscles twitch across my shoulder blades. I pull over and close my eyes. The freeway traffic buzzes. My head spins. Gotta think about a different kind of merging if I want to get home safely.
“You spin me up so tight, baby... no wonder you can play me like a stringed instrument, every word you whisper a single strum across twenty-two strings. I tremble for you, your music in my blood, brisk storm winds that crash suddenly across the landscape of my body. My hands shake. This addiction... is so sweet.”
I am praying:
“I fall on my knees
I hear an angel's voice
Oh night divine
Oh night, this love was born”
I think of you and the world dissolves. FlipStart, laptop, whatever. It doesn't matter the delivery device. I want you. Now. Any way, every way I can have you. I read your words and you might as well be whispering them in my ear, your hands playing across the little cream-colored buttons on my shirt. I can close my eyes... or heck, leave them open... and I can feel my body fall out of sync with everything around me. I go to that place where we are together, were we cross the distance to stand in one another's arms. It is enough. I thank my Christ for every heartbeat. It is enough. I am blessed with you here, in this realm of desire of that no man can find, and will take you here if I cannot have you elsewhere. I am thankful. I praise His name for this gift.
I remember my grandmother speaking of transcendent love. I never knew who she meant until recently. And I never knew what that might feel like until I came to know you. You have brought me closer to my own blood which, for me, brings me closer to my Christ and I can never do or say enough to thank you.
“But sometimes I wonder how I'll even get through the night . . . through an hour . . . a minute, a second . . . without you. Without you beside me. Without your cerulean eyes locked on mine . . . But you are here, in so many ways. The scent of your perfume is still on my skin. I know it well. The taste of you is on my lips, though, it is so hard to narrow down . . . cinnamon and nutmeg sometimes . . . other times you are somewhere north of curry but west of cumin . . .”
Two months ago:
I make it home, though I’m not sure how. I realize that I really should stop driving under the influence (of you)... but then... when would I be able to drive? I push my helmet across the counter, feel my hair spill over my collar, lean back against the door, closed and relocked behind me. I
close
my eyes. One. Inhale. Two. Exhale. Three...
I unzip my jacket slowly, a tooth at a time, liking the sound of the thick-cut steel popping down my chest and stomach. Slide the quarter inch hide off my shoulders, which are taut and tense, let it drop around my boots. Gloves next. Then cotton polo, red with three black stripes, single button already undone.
“I button the bottom two buttons. Right now . . . I want one thing, only. You. I want to hold you so tight that we become one being. I want our mouths crashing together, lips, tongue, and teeth. I want my hands along every inch of your skin. I want to hear you gasp, me inside you, as I hold you, as you come for me. I wonder how long these two buttons will last . . . because, baby? I'm already undone.”
I cross my arms and lift my shirt off in one easy move that I’ve never utilized for my work on-camera but a thousand times alone like these. Boot buckles loosen with a nudge and I kick them off... walk in tank, jeans and chaps, into my room. I am led, of course, by you. Your hand in mine is bold, firm... but your eyes, your gaze is shy.
The radio plays:
“You're my only reason
You're my only truth...
I need you like water
Like breath, like rain...
There's a freedom in your arms
That carries me through
I need you”
I go to a poetry slam. Spoken word has made me a believer in more things than I can count. I nod and close my eyes. I smile and my brown cheeks get darker with my blush of understanding.
“I'm starting to think that Christ is more involved in my love life than I'm entirely comfortable with. That perhaps His hand formed you and me and lays down this love for us to pick like miniature daisies. I imagine you weaving garlands, delicate summer crowns of white petals and tiny sunshine yellow eyes. For some reason, in this fantasy, you are always grinning. Perhaps because in your long walks with our Christ, He has whispered to you His plans? I certainly know that someone divine is whispering to you. Because, baby, the way you touch me? Your fingertips, your lips. Your force, pace, certainty. Your strength, your patience. The way you reassure me. The way you never give in. I say no, no. But you pay attention. My social conditioning is not who I am even when, sometimes, it carries me away. You feel my trembling and know my heart. You lift me – hallelujah! You lift me – and as I no, no, shaking my head, you pull me tighter. You don't hesitate to tell me, firmly, oh yes. But doesn't Christ have better things to do? Oh wait. Is there anything more holy than two people in love?”
A picture of a cream-pink rose from a friend appears in my inbox. I blink. I smile. I blush. I wonder if she knows.
“Another thing I absolutely love . . . is when I'm looking for a scripture passage that I remember . . . and it's not there. And I realize that it was not something I read, but something that Christ whispered to me in those times that I was asking.”
“...so possessed by you, laying so still they think I’m napping...” But this is not sleep. This is prayer. This is discovering scripture that has not yet been written down.
Three months ago:
I want you like that. Shy gaze, bold hands. Seeing you see me... knowing that the face I turn to you is full of desire. Knowing you see what you do to me. All that and yet you meet my gaze with shy. You stand, confident and open. You wear society’s grin. You are an elixir that sparks my passion, the perfect potion, an alchemy of desire. I wanna play along, whisper, “Come here, baby. Come here...” You can play shy. I can play bold. We’ll both know the truth. Shh. *whispering against your ear... your head tips back* It’s our little secret, lover....
These politics of desire. The changing times that change not at all. The States that still make it illegal to proclaim a woman’s right for desire. Brown paper wrapper packages can be mailed only north of their borders. I think about these things sometimes. When I talk to intelligent women and passionate men who long to be something other than what culture demands of them. The Paglia approach to male prowess and female worth... do we really need to go there? She and I may agree on a great number of things... but we’re in the grips of another generation of young people coming of age without knowing what an orgasm is or how to define sex or why any of it is important to the spiritual completeness of their bodies. So... perhaps we should drop the pretenses and the brain-washing and turn the lights off and the music on and when the rave strobes catch nothing but commitment rings, let’s keep our eyes on our partner (and off the clock, Wings) and remember why Christ gave us bodies in the first place.
Because these sacred clockworks were not meant to be wound up... they were meant to let go.
"...at the point of orgasm he
becomes vulnerable.
Truly my own.
I wait for that moment.
It is what I live for.
When the ceiling of my apartment
disappears and there we are,
he and me, sitting
on the cold, steel bench,
on the playground,
not chosen for the team
that all the other boys are on.
Our elbows are touching. And
above us, the clouds roll by
like elephant kings."
“He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.”
EJ
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Unwrap Me
The sun rises and I wake on the bench that wraps around the floor to ceiling windows of my new studio... where I have never painted. The world wakes with the dawn and I slide down off the bench pillow, patterned with little roses, and kneel and pray. I think of fractal snowflakes. I think of origami hamsters. I wish for change but I pray for solace.
*aside begins* Today I have been asked by my friend Amel to speak at his church. It is a Mormon church. He tells me there will be forty-two young women in attendance. The gist of the talk will be a play on the idea that "Life Happens While We're Making Other Plans." The twist, of course is, "While You're Waiting to Find Your Impassioned Path, You're Standing On It Not Doing Anything." Amel offered me an honorarium. I stared at him until he looked away from me. In a horrible moment, he was not my friend. He was a cog in a machine that is as corrupt and fallible as any of man's machines. I found my voice. I told him, gently, that his money would be put to better use elsewhere. There was a moment. And then he held me. I did not cry. But even closer than we have ever stood, his body so near mine and so familiar to me because Amel is built like my father was... even standing in his arms, I felt a distance between us that was new and unrepairable. His understanding and defense of an organized action I consider heinous has placed us in separate realities. This tightens my heart in my chest. I enjoyed having Amel in my reality while it lasted. *aside ends*
The concept of presents is pretty universal. Many of us got a refresher course a few days ago. The idea of bright or elegant paper (mystery) wrapped around an unknown gift (pleasure) is ageless and exciting. Even virtual reality environments like IMVU (the Mardi Gras 3000 official chat client) offer gifting between members, going so far as supplying a large variety of wrapping paper. In person or in pixels, unwrapping a mystery and making a discovery speaks to a primal part of us that is delighted and untamed. Our inner child... more like our inner Wild Thing.
Just this last week, I thought two friends were punking me. They said the exact same things to me about each other and about themselves at the exact same time (one was in live-chat with me, the other was in my forum inbox). I blinked at the words -- black on white and white on black. I blushed, which annoyed me. I thought about how I had crafted this beautiful metaphor about oceans and sail boats and cresting waves to explain just a few days ago how they were very different and that was just darn okay.
And now here they were saying... the exact... same... things.
*sigh*
Women.
But this moment got me thinking. It got me thinking about how you can know someone for years, formative years even, but truly not see what is inside their shiny wrapping. Sometimes? You don't even have a glimpse or have a clue. It just isn't... what? You want to know what my two friends were saying? You want me to live up to my kiss-and-tell, little-gamer-over-share reputation? Well, duh. Yeah, I'll tell you, but I'll get there in my time, so deal ;)
*aside begins* I am talking to a spicy gal pal of mine who thinks about sex about as much as a seventeen year old boy, which, statistics show, is an impressive amount. She is not seventeen (add ten years) but she is gorgeous and, statistic show, that gorgeous women do actually tend to have brains and so my buddy has something to say about her favorite subject every day. Sometimes twice a day. Today she is bent about Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. Her cousin is having a boring time with her new husband. She's starting to get frustrated with her lack of... err... fun. So my friend decides to send her an itty bitty, adorable personal and private, small and sculpted fingertip massager from the most trusted name in bedroom items, Trojan. Their website is very professional with articles about sexual health and the importance of release for both mental clarity, energy and just general happy happy joy joy. Unfortunately, the itty bitty helper is illegal to ship into AL, CO, GA, KS, LA, MS, TX or VA. Because, my pal can only assume, women are not allow to come in a Red State. Yes, I went there. *aside ends*
And I am certain they are punking me and I'm searching for the humor in the situation. They are both coddling the other one. They are both avoiding all labels (identity is so confining). They are both protecting each other from the truths of life which are 1) not PG-13, 2) not always easy, 3) usually sexually charged, 4) all full up of power dynamics that aren't easily defined, and, most importantly, 5) are truths which are identical for both of them.
Because the awesome thing about life is that people can be in very different places and living very different lives, but be feeling many of the exact same things. This is all universal issues. Often, novels and films and good tv shows tackles these undeniable elements of life. Other times, we deal with them by saying aloud, to our dearest friend, in the middle of the night:
"I don't want you to judge me. But I can't talk to anyone else. I want you back. I need you back. I miss you. But you won't find me the same grrl you did before. I have changed... or I have discovered the woman, person, lover that has been inside me all along. I want you to meet her and like her but she doesn't like the assumption that she is anything like I used to be. And, by the way, I have *got* to tell you about what happened two nights ago on the hood of his car!"
Sometimes we unwrap ourselves like an onion or a pomegranate. Other times, we are discovered by another. Send almost always, we want our closet friend to be there when that final layer of glossimer paper is pulled away.
Because a wrapped gift is beautiful... but it is never as interesting as the intricate puzzle art that awaits inside.
*aside begins* I play the Secret Word Game with some friends at Christmas. There are four of us (three are mothers). We each have four pieces of paper. We describe each other and ourselves with ten words each. Then we get all four lists about us. We get to see how many of the words are the same. There is no losing. It is an interesting way to pass the time while the coffee is brewing and the donuts are cooling from the fryer and the XBox is cooling down after an epic frag match. We are laughing and blushing and snorting and chuckling. My friend Gille describes herself with ten words that none of us see her as. She loves this and so do I. Her partner says, "I guess I have another gift to unwrap for Christmas." I don't think I've ever heard a sexier statement. *aside ends*
Wrapping paper is sometimes not so pretty -- or, at least, the pretty parts are all covered up. Sometimes all there is to see are those ugly things called labels (as opposed to that truths called identity). The labels are stuck there by us and by the world and they cover even the outer wrapping that hides our heart away.
Oh... I'm thinking about caterpillars again. They spin as a wooly guy. They *dissolve* into goo and cells and biomatter. And from that primordial ooze emerges the mothy buttery new guy. The new creature, not so much the same as the old creature. If you liked the caterpillar, you may miss all that fur. But you may also find the mothra just as much fun. Give change a chance. Transformation can be family fun for everyone!
It seems easy to say that we should always show our true colors. It is actually as easy to say this as it is to laugh it off and say we must be prudent and protective. After all, we could change again. Why reveal who we are *now* if we may very well change, transform, tomorrow? Why live honestly if your opinions are always shifting? Because living in another way -- in a way that does not show who we are, that stifles our voice and unique thoughts and ideas -- is not living. It's acting. And acting never pays as well as they say it does.
EJ
*aside begins* Today I have been asked by my friend Amel to speak at his church. It is a Mormon church. He tells me there will be forty-two young women in attendance. The gist of the talk will be a play on the idea that "Life Happens While We're Making Other Plans." The twist, of course is, "While You're Waiting to Find Your Impassioned Path, You're Standing On It Not Doing Anything." Amel offered me an honorarium. I stared at him until he looked away from me. In a horrible moment, he was not my friend. He was a cog in a machine that is as corrupt and fallible as any of man's machines. I found my voice. I told him, gently, that his money would be put to better use elsewhere. There was a moment. And then he held me. I did not cry. But even closer than we have ever stood, his body so near mine and so familiar to me because Amel is built like my father was... even standing in his arms, I felt a distance between us that was new and unrepairable. His understanding and defense of an organized action I consider heinous has placed us in separate realities. This tightens my heart in my chest. I enjoyed having Amel in my reality while it lasted. *aside ends*
The concept of presents is pretty universal. Many of us got a refresher course a few days ago. The idea of bright or elegant paper (mystery) wrapped around an unknown gift (pleasure) is ageless and exciting. Even virtual reality environments like IMVU (the Mardi Gras 3000 official chat client) offer gifting between members, going so far as supplying a large variety of wrapping paper. In person or in pixels, unwrapping a mystery and making a discovery speaks to a primal part of us that is delighted and untamed. Our inner child... more like our inner Wild Thing.
Just this last week, I thought two friends were punking me. They said the exact same things to me about each other and about themselves at the exact same time (one was in live-chat with me, the other was in my forum inbox). I blinked at the words -- black on white and white on black. I blushed, which annoyed me. I thought about how I had crafted this beautiful metaphor about oceans and sail boats and cresting waves to explain just a few days ago how they were very different and that was just darn okay.
And now here they were saying... the exact... same... things.
*sigh*
Women.
But this moment got me thinking. It got me thinking about how you can know someone for years, formative years even, but truly not see what is inside their shiny wrapping. Sometimes? You don't even have a glimpse or have a clue. It just isn't... what? You want to know what my two friends were saying? You want me to live up to my kiss-and-tell, little-gamer-over-share reputation? Well, duh. Yeah, I'll tell you, but I'll get there in my time, so deal ;)
*aside begins* I am talking to a spicy gal pal of mine who thinks about sex about as much as a seventeen year old boy, which, statistics show, is an impressive amount. She is not seventeen (add ten years) but she is gorgeous and, statistic show, that gorgeous women do actually tend to have brains and so my buddy has something to say about her favorite subject every day. Sometimes twice a day. Today she is bent about Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. Her cousin is having a boring time with her new husband. She's starting to get frustrated with her lack of... err... fun. So my friend decides to send her an itty bitty, adorable personal and private, small and sculpted fingertip massager from the most trusted name in bedroom items, Trojan. Their website is very professional with articles about sexual health and the importance of release for both mental clarity, energy and just general happy happy joy joy. Unfortunately, the itty bitty helper is illegal to ship into AL, CO, GA, KS, LA, MS, TX or VA. Because, my pal can only assume, women are not allow to come in a Red State. Yes, I went there. *aside ends*
And I am certain they are punking me and I'm searching for the humor in the situation. They are both coddling the other one. They are both avoiding all labels (identity is so confining). They are both protecting each other from the truths of life which are 1) not PG-13, 2) not always easy, 3) usually sexually charged, 4) all full up of power dynamics that aren't easily defined, and, most importantly, 5) are truths which are identical for both of them.
Because the awesome thing about life is that people can be in very different places and living very different lives, but be feeling many of the exact same things. This is all universal issues. Often, novels and films and good tv shows tackles these undeniable elements of life. Other times, we deal with them by saying aloud, to our dearest friend, in the middle of the night:
"I don't want you to judge me. But I can't talk to anyone else. I want you back. I need you back. I miss you. But you won't find me the same grrl you did before. I have changed... or I have discovered the woman, person, lover that has been inside me all along. I want you to meet her and like her but she doesn't like the assumption that she is anything like I used to be. And, by the way, I have *got* to tell you about what happened two nights ago on the hood of his car!"
Sometimes we unwrap ourselves like an onion or a pomegranate. Other times, we are discovered by another. Send almost always, we want our closet friend to be there when that final layer of glossimer paper is pulled away.
Because a wrapped gift is beautiful... but it is never as interesting as the intricate puzzle art that awaits inside.
*aside begins* I play the Secret Word Game with some friends at Christmas. There are four of us (three are mothers). We each have four pieces of paper. We describe each other and ourselves with ten words each. Then we get all four lists about us. We get to see how many of the words are the same. There is no losing. It is an interesting way to pass the time while the coffee is brewing and the donuts are cooling from the fryer and the XBox is cooling down after an epic frag match. We are laughing and blushing and snorting and chuckling. My friend Gille describes herself with ten words that none of us see her as. She loves this and so do I. Her partner says, "I guess I have another gift to unwrap for Christmas." I don't think I've ever heard a sexier statement. *aside ends*
Wrapping paper is sometimes not so pretty -- or, at least, the pretty parts are all covered up. Sometimes all there is to see are those ugly things called labels (as opposed to that truths called identity). The labels are stuck there by us and by the world and they cover even the outer wrapping that hides our heart away.
Oh... I'm thinking about caterpillars again. They spin as a wooly guy. They *dissolve* into goo and cells and biomatter. And from that primordial ooze emerges the mothy buttery new guy. The new creature, not so much the same as the old creature. If you liked the caterpillar, you may miss all that fur. But you may also find the mothra just as much fun. Give change a chance. Transformation can be family fun for everyone!
It seems easy to say that we should always show our true colors. It is actually as easy to say this as it is to laugh it off and say we must be prudent and protective. After all, we could change again. Why reveal who we are *now* if we may very well change, transform, tomorrow? Why live honestly if your opinions are always shifting? Because living in another way -- in a way that does not show who we are, that stifles our voice and unique thoughts and ideas -- is not living. It's acting. And acting never pays as well as they say it does.
EJ
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Everything to Me
A photo of blue icicle lights nestled among the low angles of a honey-oak attic room. It's tucked in my wallet. The photo, not the room... though... I have opened my black leather billfold so often now to glimpse the soft focus of those lights and the romantic coaxing of those artistic angles like a personal cathedral... so often now that I have wished, so hard, that, that photo was a portal, a gateway I could step through and be *there.* Right... there... oh.
I think I need to go dancing.
And so...
The fourth club is the charm. I've driven more than a hundred miles. I've never danced here before. The music is haunting and dark, something between alt-techno and goth. I'd be laughing if the DJ weren't live and laying down beats unique and raw, danceable, entrancing. And my eyes close and my body moves, arms up, hands open, hips rolling, and you slide into place behind me.
Imagine it. Deep breath. Let go. Imagine if everything you knew was suddenly different. Not just everything you'd been taught. Not just everything you'd been told. What if everything you knew as certainty in your heart was suspect?
Wait. The music changes. You lean tight against me. I don't know you. But I saw you across the tables when I first walked in. You are wearing perfume, light, that smells like oranges and cloves. Your hair is long and straight. Your skin is moonlight beneath the pearl shimmer of a button up. You are here alone.
What if only half of what you knew changed? But the changes were random and unexpected and followed no pattern, rhyme or reason. What if you discovered lies? What if you discovered flaws? What if you discovered jewels that were connected to your ability to breathe, that you could not live without? What if you grew up, slow and easy, all along beneath a brilliant blue sky... and then you woke up one morning, and the city streets were gone, the bustle had vanished, and the sky was black. Jet black... scattered with five million stars.
You are very careful not to lay hands on me. Your hands stay above your head, which is a head and a half above mine. My shoulders to your ribs and chest, my hips against your thighs, you toss your hair and I feel strands like ribbons of satin, neither blonde nor brunette but somewhere in-between, fall between my fingers and then slide away. My palms tingle. You are wearing a bracelet of small bells and I catch my breath.
Raised within the safety of convention and tradition and denomination and culture. It is easier to live and wake without the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake's strange whispering is rarely black and white, good and evil, but rather mixed messages like, “I knew this would be a trial for you.” and “We've always known.” The snake murmurs dissent and false discovery. But in the end, he knows nothing and no one. He is not Christ. When we reach past the snake, not to pluck the fruit, but to pull ourselves into the Godtree, it is then that we understand. We need not eat for Christ is our fruit.
The lights are blue. They arrived in my inbox via PhotoBucket and were accompanied by snow and machines and gentle things that make a young woman a woman like armor-clad fairies hanging among solar system models and family portraits of smiling parents. The blue lights hang in slender strands from the ceiling which is only six feet at its highest point and three feet at its lowest. They glow with an aura both warm and cool, suspended somewhere between temperatures when sensation wipes away the need for yes or no, day or night, hot or cold. The portal to my blue room is in my wallet. My wallet is tucked into the outside pocket of my soft, loose leather pants. A chain, silver with charms (a key, a lock, a motorcycle, a heart, a dove), snakes up out of the deep pocket and latches onto the belt loop on my right hip. The chain and charms make urban jiggle bells. I like the sound mixed with your bracelet brass.
We are raised with what works for our parents for we are part of their world. We are not yet making our own world. The reality we see, no matter how much we accept and embrace it, is their reality. It is not our own. If we attend public school we start to glimpse foreshadowing of our own reality, we start to witness the overlapping realities of others. But still, we belong to the path of our parents. When finally we come through the fabric of their universe and cross over into our own (sometimes violently, sometimes without barely noticing) it can be easy or hard but it is always intrinsically different. Even if the surface and patterns are the same, at the core, our reality is different. This is because we are not our parents. It is only when we stop craving their approval, dreading their disappointment, and living for their eyes, that our reality will at long last be revealed.
I turn to face you. I tip my head back to look in your eyes. Your features are bird-like, chiseled, elegant. Your eyes are brown, gold and green. Just beneath my focused vision I make out a small cross hanging between your collar bones. It is gold. Two more of the tiny brass bells hang on either side it. I don't look down directly. Your shirt is unbuttoned three of six. You wear nothing under it. The music pulses now in time with the lights in time with my body in time with the chorus of miniature brass bells. You are wearing jet black CK jeans. I decide you are a herald of the End Times... one of the riders perhaps... and I wonder where you left your horse.
Of course, when everything is suspect we doubt even ourselves and what our own senses tell us. The comfortable certainty that comes from living in someone else's reality is like hard candy or chocolate – sweet and soothing and addictive. Nice when someone else carries the burdens. Nice when someone else makes the rules and takes the blame and builds the truth. Safer that way. But one reality does not fit all. Reality is not wash and wear. It is customized and tailored and fit to our bodies and our hearts and our souls in a way that will feel so right and so perfect – like armor and evening gown/tux with tails all in one – that we'll realize we're knowing and feeling and living for the first time, for never before were we fully alive.
I am aware in these moments lost in music that everything about my reality falls away except for passion. Desire is my companion when I dance. She stomps, rocks, sways, slides, rolls her way between lights and strobes and backbeat rhythms until she fills my body. She is light and heat and clarity of thought and balance of action. She is ache and burning, taut and pulsing, muscle, bone, heartbeat. She carries over. She fuels me. She never leaves me. She is my celebration of being alive.
Christ carries over. Christ moves with us between realities. Not Christ as we are told He is, but the voice of Christ that speaks, privately, to each of us. The whispers of divinity. This is the only truth. Rules, dictates, man's guidelines... these alter and adapt between realities. Even morals can change. Even your favorite food, color, pass-time. But that internal voice of Christ – that voice from outside yourself that lights that place in your heart... that voice from within yourself that sends a beacon into the heavens with every prayer – will remain your own. Once you discover Him, you can never leave Him behind.
I am straddling my Kawa in the parking lot. I am looking at the photo again, illuminated by the single distant street lamp... illuminated by the aura of small blue lights. An engine kick starts. I want to fall into that portal of blue and wake up looking up at those strands of stars. I look up. You ride a black and white steel stallion that makes my T1000 look like a sleek toy. I watch you pull out of the parking lot. Your hair streams like a short cloak beneath your helmet. I look up. The sky is black. It is scattered with thirteen million stars. I was taught the names of the constellations.
Tonight I rename all of them.
EJ
I think I need to go dancing.
And so...
The fourth club is the charm. I've driven more than a hundred miles. I've never danced here before. The music is haunting and dark, something between alt-techno and goth. I'd be laughing if the DJ weren't live and laying down beats unique and raw, danceable, entrancing. And my eyes close and my body moves, arms up, hands open, hips rolling, and you slide into place behind me.
Imagine it. Deep breath. Let go. Imagine if everything you knew was suddenly different. Not just everything you'd been taught. Not just everything you'd been told. What if everything you knew as certainty in your heart was suspect?
Wait. The music changes. You lean tight against me. I don't know you. But I saw you across the tables when I first walked in. You are wearing perfume, light, that smells like oranges and cloves. Your hair is long and straight. Your skin is moonlight beneath the pearl shimmer of a button up. You are here alone.
What if only half of what you knew changed? But the changes were random and unexpected and followed no pattern, rhyme or reason. What if you discovered lies? What if you discovered flaws? What if you discovered jewels that were connected to your ability to breathe, that you could not live without? What if you grew up, slow and easy, all along beneath a brilliant blue sky... and then you woke up one morning, and the city streets were gone, the bustle had vanished, and the sky was black. Jet black... scattered with five million stars.
You are very careful not to lay hands on me. Your hands stay above your head, which is a head and a half above mine. My shoulders to your ribs and chest, my hips against your thighs, you toss your hair and I feel strands like ribbons of satin, neither blonde nor brunette but somewhere in-between, fall between my fingers and then slide away. My palms tingle. You are wearing a bracelet of small bells and I catch my breath.
Raised within the safety of convention and tradition and denomination and culture. It is easier to live and wake without the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake's strange whispering is rarely black and white, good and evil, but rather mixed messages like, “I knew this would be a trial for you.” and “We've always known.” The snake murmurs dissent and false discovery. But in the end, he knows nothing and no one. He is not Christ. When we reach past the snake, not to pluck the fruit, but to pull ourselves into the Godtree, it is then that we understand. We need not eat for Christ is our fruit.
The lights are blue. They arrived in my inbox via PhotoBucket and were accompanied by snow and machines and gentle things that make a young woman a woman like armor-clad fairies hanging among solar system models and family portraits of smiling parents. The blue lights hang in slender strands from the ceiling which is only six feet at its highest point and three feet at its lowest. They glow with an aura both warm and cool, suspended somewhere between temperatures when sensation wipes away the need for yes or no, day or night, hot or cold. The portal to my blue room is in my wallet. My wallet is tucked into the outside pocket of my soft, loose leather pants. A chain, silver with charms (a key, a lock, a motorcycle, a heart, a dove), snakes up out of the deep pocket and latches onto the belt loop on my right hip. The chain and charms make urban jiggle bells. I like the sound mixed with your bracelet brass.
We are raised with what works for our parents for we are part of their world. We are not yet making our own world. The reality we see, no matter how much we accept and embrace it, is their reality. It is not our own. If we attend public school we start to glimpse foreshadowing of our own reality, we start to witness the overlapping realities of others. But still, we belong to the path of our parents. When finally we come through the fabric of their universe and cross over into our own (sometimes violently, sometimes without barely noticing) it can be easy or hard but it is always intrinsically different. Even if the surface and patterns are the same, at the core, our reality is different. This is because we are not our parents. It is only when we stop craving their approval, dreading their disappointment, and living for their eyes, that our reality will at long last be revealed.
I turn to face you. I tip my head back to look in your eyes. Your features are bird-like, chiseled, elegant. Your eyes are brown, gold and green. Just beneath my focused vision I make out a small cross hanging between your collar bones. It is gold. Two more of the tiny brass bells hang on either side it. I don't look down directly. Your shirt is unbuttoned three of six. You wear nothing under it. The music pulses now in time with the lights in time with my body in time with the chorus of miniature brass bells. You are wearing jet black CK jeans. I decide you are a herald of the End Times... one of the riders perhaps... and I wonder where you left your horse.
Of course, when everything is suspect we doubt even ourselves and what our own senses tell us. The comfortable certainty that comes from living in someone else's reality is like hard candy or chocolate – sweet and soothing and addictive. Nice when someone else carries the burdens. Nice when someone else makes the rules and takes the blame and builds the truth. Safer that way. But one reality does not fit all. Reality is not wash and wear. It is customized and tailored and fit to our bodies and our hearts and our souls in a way that will feel so right and so perfect – like armor and evening gown/tux with tails all in one – that we'll realize we're knowing and feeling and living for the first time, for never before were we fully alive.
I am aware in these moments lost in music that everything about my reality falls away except for passion. Desire is my companion when I dance. She stomps, rocks, sways, slides, rolls her way between lights and strobes and backbeat rhythms until she fills my body. She is light and heat and clarity of thought and balance of action. She is ache and burning, taut and pulsing, muscle, bone, heartbeat. She carries over. She fuels me. She never leaves me. She is my celebration of being alive.
Christ carries over. Christ moves with us between realities. Not Christ as we are told He is, but the voice of Christ that speaks, privately, to each of us. The whispers of divinity. This is the only truth. Rules, dictates, man's guidelines... these alter and adapt between realities. Even morals can change. Even your favorite food, color, pass-time. But that internal voice of Christ – that voice from outside yourself that lights that place in your heart... that voice from within yourself that sends a beacon into the heavens with every prayer – will remain your own. Once you discover Him, you can never leave Him behind.
I am straddling my Kawa in the parking lot. I am looking at the photo again, illuminated by the single distant street lamp... illuminated by the aura of small blue lights. An engine kick starts. I want to fall into that portal of blue and wake up looking up at those strands of stars. I look up. You ride a black and white steel stallion that makes my T1000 look like a sleek toy. I watch you pull out of the parking lot. Your hair streams like a short cloak beneath your helmet. I look up. The sky is black. It is scattered with thirteen million stars. I was taught the names of the constellations.
Tonight I rename all of them.
EJ
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