He drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm back," he said.

Reminded that this blog existed this week; found this half-written and decided to continue. Nearly in this season again. Original from December 28th, 2011.

This is only half finished, and I can't decide which direction to go next.

What will it be like, do you think,

To live where the wild geese land,

To hear sirens over the water and watch

Them come, sliding and settling before

Your feet. To winter with axioms,

Walk out in the mornings and throw corn

To the pole of every desire,

Live in the proximity that is

Nine-tenths possession.

And then what? The whole thing begs equivocation, the grand bait-and-switch that is human nature. Just the moment that I pronounce something the need, the end, the ultimate, it is not enough. Everything disappoints once we are close enough. They do not call to you once they have landed.

But if this is strictly truthful - if I am speaking of myself, and my composite experience, and not one flippant month or two - and the axiom is Lewis's Joy, the gleam and flicker of You, then there is never possession. Scarcely presence. Either way, it is lost once owned.

...so what exactly am I talking about? It's been like this all month, a time to be poked in the eye, elbowed into reassessing what I am chasing and why. Many stories, and you don't want to hear them, :) but the nights have been long.

And then I stumble across this today, from the Twitter feed of John Piper (who usually posts a first tweet at five in the morning).

"There are dreams that should wait for the age to come. The world is fallen and there are other things to do. They will come."

Among many other things, our society privileges dreams. They are a right: if you dream something, you're authorized to pursue it, and anyone who discourages you from it was suppressed themselves as a child, and someday after you have achieved your dream they will embrace you and apologize through tears. The inevitable real world rarely affirms these dreams with a job or a PhD, but still we are shoved towards them and guilted for eventually selling out.

But that's just our society. There are calls in God's economy, visions and desires, but there is also a great deal of duty on the way.

October 2012 again.

I don't remember where exactly I was going, even if I had an end in mind. Probably why this was never finished.

But it is continually in my mind, as the seasons change. I have lived so long in a state of want - either waiting for or resigned against people, places, futures - that as I approach the fruition of these things I find myself afraid that I will miss the wanting for the possession. After all, aren't we created in that mode? - obvious relationship with God aside, our relationships with other people are never absolute, either. By the time we fully know a person, if it were even possible, they have changed. And we are still dissatisfied in them.

Chicago, for instance. Even Cape Town. As I wait for word from Moody, I tell myself that it wouldn't be so bad, after all, to not be accepted for this year - I could intern for SCF, save money, get better TESOL training, try again. My people here still need me. I tell myself I have peace, contentment. True - six months ago, thinking of another year in Evansville had me on my hands and knees. I am so grateful for the fruit of the past year that would almost have me stay and cultivate it a little longer.

But is that all? Or isn't this fear - fear of expecting too much good of any one mortal place - masquerading as pride - pride that I don't actually need any one place or person - masquerading as holiness?

Of course it is fear. To this point, everything I've loved has functioned as an Isaac: do I love Him well enough to give it back? And when I do, He is so good to me; He is better than family or beloved, den or nest. I can say this with certainty, and that knowledge is worth all the world. But it is still painful to have it proven all over again, and somehow I operate as though He only gives to take; I hesitate to receive good from Him. As if He were not a good Father.

And there is inherent good in risk. I've learned that in the past three years, too: regardless of the object of risk, it is a necessary exercise of the heart. We have a finite amount of emotional energy, so use it wisely and on the people God obviously gives, but even if people were not infinitely valuable as facets of His image it would still be valuable to risk on them.

One of my favorite passages of Lewis -

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
-C.S. Lewis, from the Four Loves

This is the way He has always functioned, after all. He acknowledges the pain of living in a broken world, but be of good cheer - He is better, worthy, and will soon, soon work all sorrow backward into glory. He gives to take, yes, but gives so we remember our need and takes so we will come running after Him. There must be a copy that causes us to desire "a better country, that is, a heavenly one." And then - I first found this a few years ago and it still shivers through my frame every time I see it - "therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city."

So I take it. I accept from You new cities, new people, things I have long desired - even the possibility of fifty-years people, which is still a little ridiculous - and acknowledge that I will likely lose them. I will prove that You are worth more, and that it is better to burn out than freeze as I am. I will sojourn here, with the things I think I love, and send them winging off again in the spring. You will be good. You are good. Do be gracious to me.

an appalling Whitman reference

Chicago, another (drafty)

You are a Jerusalem, a Mecca,

The axis of every desire so designated

With scarcely any credit,

My particular dream because I must have one

And you sit at a distance that is convenient.

Conjured complete in my head,

You wear derbys with satin bands

And old sweaters, patched at the elbows;

You are slightly hoarse.

You have great, missional, scheme-bearing shoulders.

You are the city of the great shoulders.

I have heard tales of you

And I love them.

bucket list

By way of writing something a little more cheerful. There will be no other time to write this week - four serious papers, two minor ones, teaching, and an Old English recitation to finish between now and Friday - but I have next to nothing due for two weeks after. Perhaps I'll be able to catch some of the thoughts that have been buzzing 'round for you. Still more optimistically, perhaps I'll have understood them by then. Prayers appreciated, my friends.

But for now - the current bucket list.

Publish something. (A scholarly article would be fine, a biography best.)

Learn to fly. (A plane.) And jump.

Run a marathon with Mom.

Ride an Amtrak. Overnight, if possible. (Silly, I know. There are childhood reasons.)

Walk through Robben Island, South Africa. (And a hundred other places, but this one is chief.)

Spelunking. With James, preferably.

Play an instrument on a street corner.

Never let the passport expire.

Speak a dying language. (And record it for the rest of the world.)

Speak an unreached language and translate the Word into it. (Become part of the kingdom come.)

Speak Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian well enough to be able to share the gospel clearly. (Just think of how much of the world that is... :))

Raise multilingual kids. (Assuming the above happens quickly. And I marry someone who's multilingual, and...yeah. :D Lord willing!)

...oh, and so many other things...this is the silly list. Amusing to note just how much of it has to do with words...characteristic, no? :D

Suggestions welcomed. :)

have been writing too much theory.

I have always hidden behind certain things: my interesting hair, the wideness of my smile, the crisp edges of my prose. They are an easy identity, a convenient and thoughtless handle, the stuff cute bios are made of.

My flesh likes the easy answers, so these self-markers usually suffice, but every once in a while I look at them too hard and am weary. Another email this morning, from another professor, which wound somewhere along the lines of, "Outstanding evaluation paper! Would you mind if I posted it as an example for the class?" I was polite and grateful in my reply, but I wanted to attach a bulleted list of fallacies in said paper, the soft logic and brash leaps. Did you happen to notice the content, sir, ma'am?, or have my decisive statements claimed another victim? Is this a judgement of the arguments, or an acquiescence to the neat touch of irony at the end? Because I always smile, for everyone.

So much glitter, surface excellence. Sometimes, although the honest prospect is terrifying, I yearn for them to see beneath the nice front, to hear the ugly, hollow woosh and sigh that only human hearts - that I, in all my stratified selfishness - commit. Not because I have some desire to be known, or something else that assumes there are things worth knowing there, but because then I think I would feel less hypocritical, smell less like formaldehyde.

Apologies...in the post-summer funk, that awful, reverberating dullness that happens every year when I leave the tangible, fruitful, crazy-busy goodness of camp for a world of half academic hubris and half sloughing through waste for a piece of stamped paper. I nearly quit school every fall, to go pass out rice in Uganda or teach English in China or talk to students in Johannesburg, just do something that is measurable and good and not centered around myself. (Although doing things for that reason wouldn't actually be any less selfish, but...you understand. Argh.)

Also have been convicted of a few pervasive idols in my life over the past month or so, things that have been suspect for some time and I've just been ignoring. But I have confessed it now, said it all aloud, and just that acknowledgement is usually enough to keep me alert. Sometimes it is hard, especially waking up in the middle of the night, cold and terrified, to keep from turning to those thoughts - so easy! - and letting them lullaby me back to sleep. But then there are afternoons like this past one, riots of yellow lights and More on the radio and the sun behind opaque clouds, where He has painted love across the sky in every word I know. That reckless personalization - of the whole universe, and for me - breaks my heart every time. He is enough, so ridiculously enough, and everything else is threadbare next to His grace.

Just talking now, and I have other papers to write before midnight. Sorry to rant again.

To my friends who keep saying simple, wise things, thank you. I apologize for the mix of "oh, fine" and ridiculous theory-of-my-life I unleash on you every time we talk. You are much better than I will ever be able to say, and I am blessed to have you.

old lessons

Found this in my five-pound notebook from last semester - since it still sounds pretty good three months after the fact, :) I thought I'd put it up here.

This semester, I have learned...

how to write a literary paper. Really fast.

that violence is useful.

that you cite your own work when talking about yourself.

how to contextualize, destabilize, and analyze someone else's work.

that I am not really that good at Spanish.

that we are not nearly so advanced as we think, that there is still a great deal of ugliness and use in the world. That Roosevelt participated. That wars still rage.

that I am a pretty good writer of prose. That I could be published, even.

just how comfortable I am.

how good it feels two hours out of my comfort zone.

that there are still good people in the world, and they love me. And they want me to talk about myself.

that I desperately need my family.

that one can spend a fortune at Starbucks.

to love linguistics.

to love Moody.

to be content. Almost. :)

that pity is not equivalent to love, and rarely has any part in it.

that people will not hate you because you say no.

that everyone doesn't have to love you.

that I could do so much more.

hardly a prologue any longer

this is me getting carried away. there's a cycle of poems, a book, the rest of my life crammed into this poor thing. and it's probably entirely incoherent. but it makes me quite happy to have it all in one place. :D please do let me know if it made any sense (especially the third stanza!).

later - have redone the whole ending, and am much happier with it now. it's true now. :)
(except the title. i can't do titles.)

Coming and Going

I remember the first time I re-met you

As an adult; it had been three years

Or so. I had fallen in love, gotten engaged,

Since I last saw you, and you had fallen out of it

And lived with your dogs.

You hugged your daughter first, in the kitchen doorway,

And then your son-in-law, who was inwardly

Pleased that you had driven up without coercion.

The kids bounced off your knees, running circles, bubbling

"Papaw!" Later we sat on the couch

And you grilled me about this guy,

Brandished pictures of a new dog

On a newer cell phone that wouldn't text.

Somehow we started talking books, comparing Joyce episodes,

And we finished a sentence about being locked in a closet with King

Together and just laughed. Somehow

You are me, fifty years older and wary with

The lives scattered behind you - four daughters,

Three wives, each dropped in a different city.

You have a gentle forehead, you never meant

To hurt anyone, but your eyes are large

With cowardice. As are mine. I detect

The same reluctance to move in, settle down,

The same nameless dissatisfaction

With life in myself. You are atoning now,

And moving to Belize, which I will follow

When I am sixty as well, but I am terrified

That I will also break the people I love

In all sincerity. Surely you loved them all.

And yet our notion of love is not enough.

The guy we talked about that afternoon -

I loved him as fervently as I knew how, and likely

For longer than I should have,

But that wasn't gravity enough to hold

The universe from spinning into the night.

I am moving to Chicago next year,

As soon as I have sorted all this out,

And alone. Maybe I will get a Doberman.

Sometimes when I am speeding in the dark

It occurs to me that I am selfish,

Stubborn, proud, demanding of space.

I may have been unloveable

For a very long time.

It also occurs to me that I would be content

To drive on forever; my dreams

Are of places and concepts, not people.

Here again I am your granddaughter:

If all the rest of the world,

Beating against the bars as it does for love,

Still struggles to keep it, why should we,

Who have pragmatically ceased to seek it,

Be the ones to own it at all? Are we

Defective? Suspect, unable to maintain

Another person? Is it written across my forehead

That I will never need them so much as they need me?

But we are different, you and I; I am also a child of

Your wife, who was last in a long line

Of Weaver women, keen, tenacious,

Griffin matriarchs, dichotomies of

Diaphanous wings and harsh tongues.

I have seen my own parents recoil

And consciously eschew your legacies.

And I do love -

Many, and very well, even the dangerous

Who doubt sincerity universally.

I have misloved, but never unloved,

And never in fear.

And I would like to think

There is redemption for us both; you were

Striking out at the world, as hard and fast as you could.

That was a haymaker in a glass town

Fogged with the breath of your mother

Who never told you she had cancer.

I can nearly understand the rebellion, then the fear -

An affair, a pregnancy, and finally

Stripping the bank account of your little girls.

I can fathom the how.

But I have passed through my own waters -

I looked that boy in the face when he said

He had not loved me for some time,

And I swallowed it and spit it out and

I still love people. He even says

Every once in a while

That he misses me, and I do not break

Anything. I can still see

Sparrows clinging to fence tops like dust,

Glimpse the great portentous fact of the world that is love,

That from which you have been running so long.

I have seen it, Papaw. It sits in the corner of a coffee shop,

Sings between the stars, far outside you and me

And the shards of other souls we mince around.

It will come to you when you stop swinging.

Love will come.

dear Smorgasbord Studios,

it's been a long time.

I have missed you. Really, I have. The stress of lines, the energy of stage lights, the jokes. Makin' Eggs. Even the pancake.

And I have missed your people. Not everyone, all the time, but at least once. All of them at least once. Their faces, their moods.

I am jealous for the new people you have acquired. And the old ones who have mellowed since I was last there. I realize this year would've been easier than any in the past, and perhaps I could have handled it again.

But you understand, don't you?, why I cannot come back. I am old, and older every day, and I see too much now. No matter how endearing, or careful, or mature you become, I cannot look you in the face without my chest tightening. I have forgiven you, and re-forgive you every time I see you, quite gladly, but I do not love you any longer. You are not mine any longer, and you must stop asking. Please, stop asking.

In fifty years, when I am a little old bird-woman, I will still be hunting up good theatre and sitting in the front row, trembling with emotion along with the actors when they don't quite get it. And this will be entirely your fault. Thank you, Smorgasbord, for that much. It was lovely, and Our Town was a very lovely goodbye, and I think it is time.

Goodbye.

happy Monday!

No time to write - none at all - so here is a mid-week treat for you.

Hi, Becca. :)

i think this is what our lives look like - the whole world is stifled with ugliness, but love is always just around the corner.

this makes me giggle.

Camp is beautiful. Will write when there's time, I promise.

one prologue

to the indefinite love poem. This is what I was talking about, and in a stage I am not entirely happy with, but it's presentable and I really just want to throw it out there...getting a little giddy. It *has* been a long time since I wrote.

This is complete, as a piece, but it's not the whole story. Will work on that.

a prologue, of sorts

I remember the first time I re-met you

As an adult; it had been three years

Or so. I had fallen in love, gotten engaged,

Since I last saw you, and you had fallen out of it

And lived with your dogs.

You hugged your daughter first, in the kitchen doorway,

And then your son-in-law, who was inwardly

Pleased that you had driven up on your own.

The kids bounced off your knees, running circles, bubbling

"Papaw!" Later we sat on the couch

And you grilled me about this guy,

Brandished pictures of a new dog

On a newer cell phone that wouldn't text.

Somehow we started talking books, comparing Joyce episodes,

And we finished a sentence about being locked in a closet with King

Together and just laughed. Somehow

You are me, forty years older and wary with

The lives scattered behind you - four daughters,

Four wives, each dropped in a different city.

You have a gentle forehead, you never meant

To hurt anyone, but your eyes are large

With cowardice. As are mine. I detect

The same reluctance to move in, settle down,

The same nameless dissatisfaction

With life in myself. You are atoning now,

And moving to Belize, which I will do

When I am sixty as well, but I am terrified

That I will do the same to people I love

In all sincerity. Surely you loved them all.

indefinite love poem

Finally, writing new material! Finished something and been happy with it for the first time in...a very long time. :)

This was composed at two o'clock this morning, after writing something else about families past that made me desperate enough to write an indefinite love poem (which is not directed to anyone, I promise, just a reaction). That needs severe editing, but it may crop up some time too. As I said, I'm just thrilled to be writing again.

indefinite love poem

I have been thinking, love, and come

To a conclusion: now I know

Why people ink their skin indelibly.

They are writing, with words inescapable,

What they most fear to forget:

Names and dates, their rebellion, freedom songs,

Reassurance of their own selves, now unquestionable,

Fixed to age away on their arms.

And sometimes I am afraid, too,

That I may forget

You, your name; my family forgets.

I watched my great-grandmother believe

She was sixteen, working in a sweatshop,

And she would beg my father to let her leave

And go back to Chicago after she finished this quilt.

She did not know her daughter's name. And I,

Who have not named you, but only watched

And loved you as I have watched the stars,

Will some day forget how you are called. I cannot

Remember Orion's track from night to night.

I cannot set you

On my arm, for you are a stranger,

But I have placed you here now. Perhaps,

In fifty years, when I recall your face

As it is this morning, I will remember

I have loved you. I have loved you.

i think this is the last of it!

One more found piece from the spring of 2010. Please to note that this was not at all representative of the whole week. :) And please to pardon the last three lines. I don't know where they came from or where they're going and it's been too long to change them.

Chicago, 1

What frightens me most about this place

Is the sky. My window is on the second floor;

I am level with the street lights, the

Sodden mud mosaic bricks shifting mirage-like

Through half-blinked blinds. I look down

And out; I am only here for five days.

The curve of the street lights mimics the wings

Of carpetbagger gulls and the humped median,

Arching its back against the sky like the ribs

Of an umbrella. This sky comes down

And eats roofs in the fog; a ladder

Runs into the gray density from one roof,

Forgotten against an AC unit, like a sacrifice.

And will I learn to brace against the damp,

Give it what it wants and still remain?

Can I look you in the face, griffin city?

it's been a long time

since much of this was written. Perhaps long enough to find its way into a public sphere. Not that anyone reads this little old blog, anyways. :)

I've been sorting for the past month. Sorting and throwing things out is very cathartic for me, and always has been since that year I almost ran to South Carolina. There's just a very lot of freedom in knowing you could stuff everything you own into the backseat of your car and fly anywhere. We are strangers, after all, pilgrims who "desire a better, heavenly country," and it does my heart good to shed a few more suitcases every once in a while. (It does my heart better to read the rest of the verse, which you should go and find yourself in Hebrews 11.)

In this particular rummage, I've been finding old journals and notebooks, scraps of ages past buried beneath the health notes, birthday cards, and innumerable love letters from Caroline and Seth. (Sidey-side note - I ought to be more like them. [later - ironic in light of poems...bahaha.]) I also found a handful of old poems, all written for a fiction class in the fall of 2009 or spring of 2010. I am posting them here for posterity, just in case my computer dies, but - they all need sequels. Which I can write, now, in this age of grace. :)

Written September 2009, edited again in November, strongly resisting a desire to edit once more! I have gone back and redeemed this place already; will have to write that up. All things new. :)

St. John's Cemetery, October

I found the place myself, and it was lonely -

The hills stand back, just beyond reach;

The wind rattled by, leaving me tall, strikable,

In a field of dead sunflowers.

I had stopped to walk in the graveyard

With its marble angels and acolyte pines,

But they were not taking visitors

And the fence hustled me on,

Past a ravine where ghosts sunbathed as dusty birches,

Up the hill beyond the cemetery.

Geometry fell before me - the chain-link

Square, fuzzy bushes perching on banks,

A precise highway bisecting the west.

Windshields glinted with the mass concentration of salmon,

Muffled out by the shimmering atmosphere

Between. I sat down among the sunflower

Skeletons and watched the silence float in the air.

Also from the fall of 2009. Good in concept, but very badly done; I apologize.

Inheritance

You have succeeded,

Jessie Miller, great-great grandmother,

Deceived me into carrying

Your heritage. The family story went

That we were Amish, until you ran to California

And those you left were shunned.

When people asked about my name, it was

A melodrama to tell, like a novel,

Like fiction.

Last week, at a funeral, I acquired

A scrapbook of photos, old photos. I flipped

Through the pages, found you seated there,

Squinting at me, head turned

With the predatory precision of a praying mantis.

Your clothes were elaborate, frothy, machine-sewn.

Your husband wore glasses and smooth-greased hair.

There were no severe collars, no monotone hats,

No draft horses or cattle. Three children.

The other half of the family never heard

That they were Amish, and gaped at me.

Only I am assigned to propagate stories

Of yours; I would have told my children.

You have left me as you left your husband,

Homeless, explaining away the lies you scattered.

...this poem is going on two years old. It contains little identifying detail. And these things always have so much less power when thrown to the sunlight. So I am putting it here, where no one will ever notice, (and if you are long gone, please don't notice; it isn't my intention to beat you with this again) in the cyber equivalent of throwing it to the winds. All things new. :)

Note Paper

November has come early. The sky

Is deep and intricate, a dry rotting plush.

My car swings up next to yours,

And I set my boot heels emphatically

Onto the wasting black asphalt

Of the Eastland Mall parking lot.

I squint through the glass doors to where you are

Selling sugar-drowned pretzels inside.

Against the wind, I clutch

A torn scrap of paper, written

Earlier in the day so its intent cannot change.

As I walk around your car, I run

My fingers over the bleaching bumper stickers,

The rusty gravel nicks above the tire well.

One quick glance - I always expect

Mall Security to come whining up

When I clack open the wrinkled Toyota door.

I lean in, half-kneeling, to place the note

On the console, and I am crushed

In the smell of you.

It is like cider, onions, autumn;

A root cellar, smoky-dark and devastatingly sweet,

With splintered Mason jars in the corners.

You smell like three nights ago,

The long drive home where you sat here

And I sat there. The sky was full

In the darkness, and I carved

My nails into the door handle.

You told me many ugly things,

Growled imploding confessions of treason,

Beat the steering wheel, yourself.

I twisted my ring and took it like a priest

For a long time. Chewed forgiveness, and

Spat it out the window. I cannot believe

Myself - to think you were in there

With her, while I left you these

Stupid little 1950s housewife notes.

I slam the door, wrap my arms

Around my shoulders, shake my hair.

The glass of the mall only glints

My own face back, heavy as the sky.

The slam sends my note paper scrap

Skittering down onto the floorboards, and I see

A nest of paper tucked into a pocket,

A smiling Post-It note gummed

By two summers onto the visor,

A faded pentagon slipped into the dash,

Covering the gas gauge. I love you.

Your stupid little notes

Make my week!

You hammered every syllable into the wheel,

Rasped and chewed your lip. You turned to me;

Your eyes were green, as they always are

Before they cry. Deep and full and heavy.

I am green; I sink into the driver's seat

And press my face against the steering wheel.

I cannot create enough barbed wire

To keep you out, it molders in my hands.

Trust died in that sky, and I will exhume it again, find enough

Machismo to be the 1950s housewife.

Also fall 2009. A bit more fictional than the rest. :) This one has actually already been released on the world, through last year's Fish Hook (the USI liberal arts journal).

Ice Princess

Two winters ago, the city rang

With ice. I remember mincing home, cringing

At the trees. The day before, they were

Neat-cut bones against the sky; tonight the ice,

Relentless, adamantine, drug them to the earth.

They shimmered in the cold, gorgeous pain, fragile

And lovely as captured princesses.

Later that week, I stumbled across

My old sign language teacher. After the first

Hello squeal and hug, she stepped back, cupped

Her florid hands around my shoulders. Baby, there's

Nothing to you. I can feel your ribs.

I laughed. I've been sick. But I could feel the warmth

Puffing out: I would take care of you.

To be doomed, one must be beautiful,

Or the tragedy is only a comedy.

I found that in a book and kept it:

Only the lovely are loved, the pathetic pitied.

I strait-jacketed myself in pain,

Skipped meals and slept on Sundays. Aches were precious,

The concave hips only a side bonus.

My essence was the blue Diana skin, ribbed

Wrists, opaque eyes. I was a ghost baby,

Goblin princess, glass tree, before the world glanced

Up. My soldier came home and cried over

My cell phone fine; I melted.

Also published in the Fish Hook, from spring 2010. In the fiction workshop, we peer reviewed each others' work, and I got an amazing response from this one - all sorts of touching, empathetic notes from guys and girls alike.

Looking-Glass

It makes me wince, some mornings, watching

My frail-boned body come from the shower

Towards the full-length mirror. My ribs

Fall meekly as drapes over a window,

Keeping the chill out. I draw

The towel around my shoulders, wrap

Its hunter's orange across my chest.

With it sanitarily under my chin, I can see

My face, the steamed flush pulsing between

Full, peppered cheekbones. I did not realize

Their shape until someone mapped them carefully,

Ordered me to smile and traced the topography with a blunt finger.

I hang up the towel and dress myself as distantly

And carefully as one dresses a paper doll. Just before jeans, I flip

One thigh toward the mirror, crunching the muscle, willing it

Taut and shining as the neck of a horse.

I contract my eyebrows, assessing muscle tone

With the ruddy alien squint of an overseer

Below the auctioneer's platform. I am cold,

I could not care twice, but neither has anyone else.

The hands that held my face always dropped it.

When I am through watching the opacity

Of my invalid ghost-baby body flicker in the light,

I turn from the mirror and close the bathroom door.

Finally, a pantoum, also spring 2010.

Apprentice

for Beth

You are the birdcage waif, my friend;

I whispered rumors of keys to you in the dark.

Recite the lesson for me again.

I taught you what I did not know.

I whispered rumors of keys to you in the dark:

When you are lost, sing here, and so loudly.

I taught you what I did not know,

Yet it looked right, hung in the sky.

When you are lost, sing here, and so loudly.

You took my wispy words and hammered them true

And they looked right, hung in the sky

Now, beneath you and your dance.

You took my wispy words and hammered them true -

Remind me how you twisted from the cage

Now beneath you and your dance,

How you have learned what I never said.

Remind me how you twisted from the cage:

You were the birdcage waif, my friend.

How have you learned what I never said?

Recite the lesson for me again.

almost thanksgiving

I have just finished the dishes and the rotini, and I should probably turn down Frank Sinatra a little. In an oddly riotous mood. Thanksgiving is nearly twenty-four hours away, and home almost as close - perhaps that has something to do with it. :) Or maybe I'm just starting to un-knit my eyebrows after an overwhelming, frightening, beautiful weekend. Oh, and the responsibility still turns heavy between my hands, but I'm regarding it objectively now. Maybe.

(This is the point where I insert a disclaimer - I'm assuming that anyone who still reads this blog kind of cares about me, and half-expected that I'd talk about myself. :D If you really just want to be entertained, try engrishfunny.com. The word nerd in me never fails to be amused.)

I have an opportunity to participate just a little in a crazy work God's doing in North Africa next May. I've known about it since October, and been completely gung-ho if a little intimidated by the preparation. Part of that preparation entailed attending the National Missionary Convention in Lexington last weekend. I expected the workshops; I'd heard of the keynote speakers. The exhibit hall was full of Bible colleges and campus ministries, including my own. It was good, and I learned and had thought-provoking conversations.

But...oh, how do I say this? I had never before sat in a stadium with four thousand people and listened to them sing Revelation Song, sing it as it will be sung around the throne, in a hundred different shades and accents from hearts that have been both emptied and filled. And I cannot comprehend the amount of other voices around the throne who will have been brought there by that four thousand. I was surrounded by people who were giving their lives for the words of that song. And was I?

A few hours later I found myself in a private debrief-and-praise meeting for everyone who had birthed or somehow touched the North African ministry. I felt like I'd been invited into a family reunion - no one actually recognized me, they just assumed I was a second cousin they'd never met. A few key people shared the events of the past year (and God really is doing some crazy things, things that haven't happened in other countries) along with prayer requests for the next. They thanked us all for our fervent prayers over the past eight years, blessed our faithfulness, fed our visionary dreams that have propelled all the impossibilities.

I did not stand up. I did not shout across the room that I struggle with focus, love, nerve, and a very lot of apathy. They do not know that I usually pray for about twenty minutes a day, most of which is in the shower. Or that I know all the correct phrases because I was raised in a good family, not because I have dogged them from the page on my own. I would sooner be comfortable than meet someone else's needs. And I love Jesus because He takes care of me, not for His incredible goodness and glory.

I did not leave, and I will stick with this and work for it, but...I am very much humbled by this weekend. Still thinking.

G'night, all...I'll be back on Thanksgiving.

Vitriolic U

The Shield is significantly worse this week...for your consideration --

(Disclaimer: all below is transcribed sic.)

The defense of 'True' Science

By Ian Burleson, Staff writer

Part One

Imagine if someone today were to deny the existence of germs, the roundness of the earth, or the heliocentricity of our solar system. Suppose this person denied the credibility of science, which purports these theories, and that "true" science proves the opposite.

Would you be skeptical of this person?

Would it be consoling to know that she has a single book to back up her claims that germs do not exist, that the earth is flat, and that the sun revolves around us? Her book has not been, nor will it ever be, updated to fit our current scientific conception of how the universe works.

Does the fact that the book's teachings are eternally unchangeable ease your skepticism?

Most people these days will answer no it does not. In fact, most would--or at least should--consider the mentioned claims to be outlandish, beyond incredulous.

Interestingly, some of this debate still continues to this day among the fringe of the fringe: The Flat Earth Society and the first annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism entitled "Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right" in South Bend, Indiana near Notre Dame University which took place last Saturday.

What have we learned from instances in history when the obviously false was Biblical doctrine. If not that we must update our model of reality in light of scientific evidence on a constant basis if we are to ever understand it?

Now fast forward a few hundred years, and the new "debate" in the forefront is between the same historical opposition: scientific evidence vs. a literal interpretation of Biblical scripture.

In our case, the theory of evolution is the subject.

The theory, as science understands it today, maintains that evolution is a natural occurrence whereby all species of life developed their vast diversity and complexity from a common single-celled ancestor through an ongoing process of genetic natural selection. Creationism asserts that an intelligent, supernatural being had to have made all things in the universe because evolutionary theory cannot account for the diversity and complexity we observe--it must have been intelligently designed.

USI has been graced by the presence of one such fellow, Marlin Goebel, who argues for the latter, claiming that true science defends the Bible--that's his slogan anyway.

Let us put aside the fact that he has no training in biology, no experience in a laboratory or in the field, and further he has no official theological tutelage. He owns his own real estate company called Goebel Commercial Reality, Inc., and so he is, in a word, a businessman.

He is here--by invitation and sponsorship from Chi Alpha--for a series of lectures to inform us that mainstream scientists have got it all wrong: the answers are in the Bible.

Does this kind of rhetoric not sound hauntingly familiar? The examples presented earlier were based on the same mode of logic.

The Bible never once mentions the existence of germs, rather it explains in Luke 13:11-13, among a long list of verses, that disease is caused by evil spirits. The Bible never once mentions the roundness of the earth, rather it explains in Daniel 4:10-11 that a sufficiently tall tree can be seen from "the earth's farthest bounds," clearly implying that the surface of the earth is flat. The Bible never once mentions that the earth orbits the sun, rather it explains in Psalm 104:5 and I Chronicles 16:30 that the earth is permanently immovable and stable in its position.

Of course these are factually incorrect statements, so it's reasonable to say that if we based our scientific knowledge on them, then we couldn't have vaccines, antibiotics, satellites or an understanding of why something as fundamental as changing seasons, or retrograde motion of other planets in the night sky, occurs.

In short, if we take the Bible at its word on issues like physics, chemistry and biology, we'd be vastly ignorant to how reality operates, and we would not have the technology and medical advances that have made our lives as relatively safe and simple as they are today.

The same applies to the theory of evolution.

As the Russian Orthodox Christian evolutionary biologist once quipped, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution."

If we blind ourselves to the reality of evolution, then explaining the foundations of biology go out the window in favor of a book which teaches us that disease is a spiritual matter, the earth is flat, and the sun revolves around us.

Part Two

We enjoy the life that scientific progress has afforded us. Taking away the fundamental pillars that allowed the progress to flourish as it did is to return us to a primitive state of ignorance.

Perhaps it's just me, but Mr. Goebel's series seems like a sully insult to the biologists and scientists on this campus who spend an enormous amount of their professional life studying all the research, theories and debate that go in their scientific domains.

In none of these domains is anything like creation even a legitimate option, not because of some gung-ho crusade against theological explanations that scientists have (indeed many of them are Christians themselves), but because none of the evidence actually points to such explanations as being the right ones.

Despite the fact that the germ theory is "just a theory," no one seems to be stripping it down, tarring and feathering it in favor of the evil spirit theory as described in the Bible. Despite the fact that even before we went to space, we verily knew that the earth must be round because of incredibly compelling experimental evidence from what was then "just a theory." We often scoff today at those who believed something so simplistic as a flat earth. Despite the fact that some were tortured and even executed for dissenting against the Church's geocentric doctrine for "just a theory" of heliocentrism--a theory first formulated in 260 BCE by Aristarchus, but was truly solidified by Copernicus in 1551 CE--we again wonder how anyone could have been so malevolently fatuous to have taken the Bible so literally in spite of the clearly presented scientific evidence.

And yet, a few hundred years later, we have a man on our campus promoting the same kind of message: couching literal Bible interpretation as "true" science, and lambasting the scientific theories which contradict the Bible as essentially works of the devil, and scientists as heretics.

I for one find it truly amazing how far we've come in terms of scientific knowledge, yet how short we've come in terms of educating our nation about how science actually works and the indispensability of the theories it often produces--such as the theory of evolution--to our everyday lives.

The consolation I find in this situation is the fact that no matter how hard the church has tried to suppress scientific knowledge in favor of literal Biblical interpretation, science has won out in the end.

I suspect Mr. Goebel's presentations are the contemporary countenance of history's long-fought battle between science and Biblical-literalism. His stance is one that our descendants will look back on with the same shameful guffaw we have when discussing the literalists of our scientifically ignorant past.

Can't we just evolve already?

insomniacal chatter

...I've been meaning to write lately - really, I have. I've started a post two nights out of the past six, only to end in a fatalistic growl. I can't write presentably when I'm tired. But I'm somehow wide awake tonight, and feeling chatty. Consider yourself warned.

Alright, I'm actually up because my stomach hurts, and I couldn't sleep anyways. It hasn't done this in a year and I've lost all my coping strategies...yes, a year! Isn't it crazy? November is my ebenezer month, in more ways than one...but that is a different conversation. Which will happen before or around Thanksgiving, I promise.

-- God is just so sweet, though! I have to say something...He's given me so much good this year. I've met many, many good people, iron-on-iron people, and then a couple of crazy people of the sort you have to keep -- you know what I mean. They are the ones who you find on a bus you walked onto by accident, the ones who you meet for coffee the next day for largely indefinable reasons. And in the middle of the second or third hour of conversation, they say something that makes you glance over quickly, skeptically, because you've been waiting forever for someone else to say that. Those people. Reasonably, we only come across a handful of those people our entire lives, and I've met a few this year, and always when I needed them. God most definitely loves us through people.

But that's another post! I'll stop now... :)

And I'm starting to tire out. So by way of summary --

Lately I've been pondering just how vocal I should be -- perhaps the lack of belligerent professors this semester has given me a little bit more distance to think. But when is it necessary to put a word in for truth, and where would I do no good and only come across as another pugnacious Christian? (I'm always surprised at their numbers and tenacity, actually...and their acute lack of love. A rant for another night.) More specifically...

I have been a faithful reader of the USI Shield since last January. It makes me feel more connected to the culture of the campus, yes, but I think I've started this new habit chiefly as a twisted, autophobic way of motivating myself in my English studies. By the time I've sloughed through the whole thing and shaken the remains of the grammatical bloodbath from my feet, I feel that it is practically my moral duty to become an English teacher, or at least circulate more coherent prose. (I don't mean to sound condescending -- the Shield has made great improvements over the past semester, expanding their content and columnists, and they do offer an accurate cross-section of USI -- they just have no grammar Nazis on staff.) I've debated writing to the editor before over some very silly opinion pieces, but an article of an entirely different nature popped up yesterday and I don't know what to do with it.

Essentially, it's a critique of a lecture series on creationism that a campus ministry, Chi Alpha, hosted over the past two months. The article is from a staff writer, highly factually inaccurate, and poorly and nastily written. (I can tack up the text if anyone wants to read it.) Part two of the article will be published next Thursday, and it may moderate this week's installment, but still -- should I write in anything? Since this is the Midwest, I imagine the Shield will receive multiple letters about these articles -- the argument itself is inevitable. But should I say something, and argue well in the firestorm, or stay out of it entirely? When am I talking for the sake of doing some good, and when am I just snapping back in offense?

Motives are so hard to decipher. (Does anyone else struggle with that?) I've been poking at mine concerning a few big decisions over the past month, and I finally came to a truce -- if I'm bathing it in prayer and constantly dialogging with the Spirit, it's alright to move ahead and do things that I know are inherently good, even if I might have selfish reasons tacked onto them. I will never know exactly what my heart wants; it's a petulant, mad mess, prone to change its mind the minute I have pinned it down. And it's hard to fix, or reason into behaving. But it is possible to just tie it to the Word and make it follow along, and then life becomes much simpler.

...it's now 3:30. I do have to work tomorrow, so I think I've written enough for tonight. It's nice to be scribbling again. :) I'll be back soon...I need to explain a few things, a few of the crazy things I love that I've been scaring everyone with lately. 'Til then.

I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his children begging for bread.

Psalm 37:25

Life is good, but God is better. :)

Benevolence

Sorry about the lack of new material lately -- class assignments have become slower, and the last few poems have been icky, personal things I don't want to subject you to. But I do have something new today -- I wrote this two weeks ago, in a twenty-minute exercise. It's the Lloyd Expressway. ;)

(By the way, this should be on USI's creative writing department website by the end of the week, under Best of the Workshops for April. http://www.usi.edu/libarts/english/creative.asp Exciting!)



Benevolence



You have seen them, in their old white
Neons and bulging Caravans, throttling past you
And throwing Cheerios or Ke$ha on your windshield.

You have fought them where the highway squeezes
Itself around men in orange with Plexiglas heads, where the fast
Lane is elbowed into yours twenty yards after the stoplight.

You have waited nicely
While they pitch forward, wiggling past and then rolling
Back into your bumper, tapping the brake righteously:

Their child is on the honor roll. They must obey the speed limit.
And you have thought, haven’t you,
Of tooling beside them cheerfully instead,

Window to window, and waving
Them into the fluorescent barrels, listening
For the crunch of axle on humpbacked median.

Perhaps you would stop and hold their hands afterwards,
Let them use your phone, and you should –
They are the golden retrievers of the world,

So firmly assured in the inherent goodness of man
That they don’t check the mirrors before sliding in front of you;
They leave the windows down and sing loudly like children.

So you sit at the stoplight, singsonging I can’t see you
Because they’ve plastered two hands over their eyes,
Or throwing the tennis ball again and again, and smiling.

Baggage

There was a free duffel bag

With a bank logo on the side under her bed;

Every few weeks she would pull it out

And threaten my mother with it:

Take me to the station in Fulda! I'm going

Home to Chicago on the next train!

She filled the bag with newspapers

And soft, fibrous photographs from the thirties; later that night,

When she unpacked, she was twenty years younger, visiting friends,

And greeted us graciously.

My great-grandmother would talk

To my brothers and I if we brought her pictures

Or found the concertina case in the closet. She had run

To Chicago when the Midwestern farms dried up;

She worked in a factory and spun

Wheels of meter with tap shoes each night.

Once she and her twin sister rolled out of a car

And into a ditch after they were picked up

By the mafia. We only heard stories

About the pretty lady in the sparkly dress;

I knew nothing of the man on the badge

In her drawer, Anthony Chmela, Supervisor,

The charming man who she married

After he gave her a baby, a baby who withered

Between them a few months later.

I was allowed to play her piano, stumbling after

LEDs above the forty-something plastic keys

That taught chords and melody to eight

Pre-programmed songs. She knew the words

And sang them on clear days, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Or When the Saints Go Marching In. She sang another,

About a dear Augustine, in German, and I asked her

To teach me the words in English for a long time.

But she always finished the chorus back in her own language;

She would not remember anything else.

It frightened me then, the loss of control;

I never could tell her the train station was gone.

But she had the gift to sort through all the pieces

Of memory and choose which she wanted

And which to leave in the shoe box. I wish I had

That mercy time gives, wish I could only sing about

Her voice, reaching into the well-grooved German.

I cannot repack my bags to my liking yet.

Earthworks

I'm definitely unsure on the title...I hate titles!
Turned this in today -- I'll probably know what everyone thinks by next Tuesday. Good reviews on Antecedent!


Earthworks


I was seven when my cat died.
He was a werewolf, hunting
In his lunacy for a chunk of days,
Then returning to sleep on my lap
For a week. I read him Where the Wild Things Are.
One October he came from the woods
Dragging his dead hind legs, meowling.
I touched his head, terrified; he growled.
We bolstered him in rugs on the garage floor, left
Tins of vinegar-sweet canned meat
Beside his thrashing slow-mo head.
I stood on a bucket outside the window to watch
So I could not smell him rotting from the spine out.
We buried him in a paper grocery sack
That proclaimed its own virtue – No need
For double bagging! But we did
Anyways, wrapped his coffin a second time,
And my dad took it out to the woods with a shovel.
I followed warily from my room with binoculars, a blanket
Buffering my face.

Two months ago, in the rain, I saw
The face of a girl on a billboard, a girl
Someone had missed. She was beautiful.
I sat in my car at the stoplight and stared
At her set dimples and washed-out blond eyebrows.
She perched outside my windshield, smiling
As she did for all the Dateline specials, in the perpetually knelling
Too-personal slideshows – senior portrait, with infant daughter, last Thanksgiving.
She left in a provocative neon fade
Like a pomegranate thrown against the wall,
Sliding down smooth and terrible color, its own
Purple blood dropping slowly, delectable, on its head.

My wipers started, a horn barked, and I touched
The gas pedal. As the glass was mopped clear, I rolled
Under her face and glanced up again. I only smelled
Formaldehyde, and clicked the wipers off
To let the rain ebb between us.

Socialist U

...or just indignant naivety. Here, from this week's edition of the USI student newspaper --

"...today's companies and corporations are using [the economy] to their advantage to swiftly and carelessly 'screw' over their lower level employees."

"It's still every man for himself out there, and it's taking the good will towards our fellow man out of the concept for a healthy society."

"Let's not focus so much on profit as much as we do on actually working towards a better future for everyone and letting our services and employees both be the best they possibly can be, as we always hear from said small businesses, but never really see."


...and this from the pen of a staff writer, not a letter to the editor. I could make a comment on how vague, PC, anemic writers have bleak prospects in any free market society (and the USI Shield certainly could use a steroid shot or two), but I won't be petty...just thought it was funny, and likely accurate. This is the way my generation thinks. Comments, anyone?

sounding

Hey, Joel. I'm finally posting the poetry for you. :)

This is the piece I wrote last Wednesday -- I ought to be churning one out per week from prompts in our textbook. The subject we were nudged towards was (guess!) family, and I had no trouble with that, but I'm not utterly happy with the quality...it was too easy. Read it aloud, and tell me if you can hear it. Or perhaps it's just incomplete -- when I planned it out, this was only the intro, but I ran too long-winded. I have so many things to write on, but they don't fit on a single page!

Oh -- and in class, I got an idea for an amazing piece on Grandma Linda, and an image of her stuffing five-year-old newspapers to take home to Chicago -- remember that? Couldn't that make something nearly as pathetic and dully horrifying as dementia? Maybe next week...



Antecedent


She catches me in a moment of quiet, wanders
Carelessly in from the kitchen to snatch
A seat next to me. She plants a coffee cup claim on the table
Like a flag; I start at the bright black clink and glance up at my grandmother.
She smiles down to me.

She sends me unwinding about roommates and ethics and algebra,
Leaning one elbow among plates
Still globbed with Wal-Mart-blue icing and half-burnt candles.
Her age-purpled eyes flutter off to another room, where the voices
Of five children wheel in ribbons, dancing and dizzying each other
Until they collapse onto the floor, breathless from sugar-spangled happiness.

The youngest sings out, “Chocolate cake is
Superior!” and vaults over the couch arm.
She laughs, low and quick as pebbles
In a jar. When she turns back to me,
Her eyes are twined up at the corners;
They pat my hand, wile words from my mouth. My face
Mirrors hers, all hills and valleys, with the same sudden
Open-arms reflex, the same gratuitous love
Blinking out. My nose crinkles, too;
I smile up to her.



Then this next is from two weeks ago...if the metaphor/subject matter confuses you, just go upstairs and open my closet door. And come back and read it again -- it'll all make sense. Or, rather, it'll all make sense except the title -- I don't really like it, either. I apologize for that, and the point of the poem, too...but it's exorcism, and it does help...



Staking Out


I am cleaning house, sweeping
My life into Rubbermaid buckets
To carry elsewhere. Dusting.
There are fountains of dead
Flowers along the cedar chest; the sharp petals
Of a chrysanthemum have dropped, remembered
Like teeth after a fist. They gum to the dust.
I scrape it all into my hand,
Brushing shards off over the trash can. Some vases
I set by the door to throw out; others
Will sit on the closet shelf until I come back,
Sit in front of the picture frames. If I am thorough
In my journey, when I return,
I will only find topsoil.



...love you, brother! And I promise to attempt to make this a regular thing...just keep reminding me.
(And if anyone else actually reads this [Bryce?], I appreciate your time, too!)