Snow Owls, Marshes

It's been a strange day, a strange week, maybe even a strange month - I wrote and wrote and wrote, often after long work days, until writing was done and nothing but exhaustion remained. Now, I'm thankful that that time is finished, though sad as well.
I drove a long ways today, from home to home. Washington is my first love, and as my friends all get married and disappear on new adventures, I wonder whether my footsteps might eventually return me there. There is a music in the hills that sets my spirit free so easily when I visit my parents' home, and I wonder if I might love Washington more.
The tall grasses, thick with a morning hoarfrost light as a dusting of snow, and the marshy woodlands with mossy limbs and knuckled, gnarly branches beckon to me. The evergreens tall and stately address my verdant needs, but its winter falling today. Why do swamps sound eerie and sodden, or marshes mushy and miserable? Can this, the most beautiful of lands, a bog be? Cobalt-plumed jays whistle away and the snow owl, rare sight indeed, gazes on with golden-gleaming eyes like the wolf of the skies.
It's the golden grasslands, the odious skunkweed, the tendrils of fog like clouds left behind and lost in this ghost of a land, and ramshackle homes that must be empty, empty, empty as the eyes on the longest of nights. No, maybe it is the dreamy rendering, and knowing that if I left this road and followed the lights, I may wander this exemplary purgatory forever, swimming in the grasses with that doe, that deer whose heart I follow through the mists.

I discussed sharks with one of my roommates. We were contemplating spiritual direction and one of my favorite passages of the Kite Runner, and it transformed into a discussion on Christianity and sharks.

I drove a billion hours and collapsed in a heap when I arrived. I started reading again, delving into The Story of Art, Sin City, Selected Poems by ee cummings, Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, White Pine by Mary Oliver, and a Helprin novel (thanks J - he's actually quite wonderful), and an Agatha Christie (too late, huh Matthew?).
I usually only read one book at a time, but I just missed reading so much I read everything until I fell asleep.


This is what holiness is
or perhaps is, I cannot tell
when the marsh is full of fog
the hands of the trees cup the mists
like the wisps of dreams and forgotten things
and you ask - must you always ask?
if I promise
I promise I'll love thee, love thee
love thee beneath the shadow of the willow
in the months of moss and rainy days
and forever if you allow,
set apart in these reeds and grasses
with a heart of eternity and grace

Thanksgiving-Lights

I like the coincidence of Chanukah and Thanksgiving. The farther north you travel, the darker the season surrounding Thanksgiving. For instance, living in the southern US, you may have days that are still longer than 10 hours, while here, we may have 90 minutes less "day" each day. Intrinsic in Chanukah is the God-given nature of light, especially when none ought be. That it appears in the darkest season (for the northern hemisphere) has definitely helped me refocus on Yeshua's guiding light through our spiritual, emotional, and anxious seasons. I'm ever reminded of how God appeared as a pillar of flame for the Israelites as they were led from Egypt (which links Chanukah to my favorite holiday: Passover), and I'm encouraged by this beacon of promise and hope, even when my future footsteps aren't clear.

I'm thankful for all those in my life who have been lights for me: family, friends, mentors. They are too many to name, and my words would be insufficient praise for their love. I cringe a little, because I feel like thanksgiving almost makes me feel cliche about thankfulness. It should not. Being thankful is something we can almost always use a little more of, even especially in the darkest times of the year.

Home: The Finish Line

Home is peaceful, and the perfect place to finish a story. My parents live in the hills, six to eight miles from anything that might deserve the name city. The house is in the cup of two hills, a cradle betwixt two higher ridges, and a forest of evergreens, maples, oaks, pines, and aspens surround each side, with a small stream passing through the forest in no-man's-land, which Phil and I often explored when we were young. When I am at the highest points of the area, I can see all the way to the Olympic mountains, purple and snow-tipped on the western coast by the ocean, and all the way east to the cascades.
Even just walking around outside, the brisk air seems cleaner, lighter (not just because I'm above sea level a ways).
Tonight we lit the chanukah lights, played bananagrams, listened as my father played piano (trans siberian orchestra - mad russian's christmas and ukrainian bell carol). Even in the darkest seasons, being at home brightens my life immeasurably. As we say the chanukah prayers, my spirit is lifted up and rejuvenated. It's a spiritual rekindling, and I can smell the snow in the air. They say that snow level is only 6000 feet, and dropping below 500 this weekend possibly.
The story is finished as of tonight. I wrote ~5500 words today, and I think words are numb to me right now. I haven't been reading very much this month, but simply knowing that I'm almost finished with this marathon, I: picked up The Story of Art and read the first three chapters; bought a Mary Oliver poetry book as a celebration present to myself for finishing (half price books sale!); checked out five books at the library; bought four books; and bought a jacket in case we go climbing mountains and it gets cold.
I'm so ready for December.

Thanks everyone for bearing with me as I disappeared this month, and canceled every hangout possible so I could writewritewrite.

Happy Chanukah - Happy Thanksgiving
Rest well, friends.

Home in the Hills

a passable castle, a fortress of solace,
these hillsides incline their white-caps at me
at the center of an empty crown, looking 'round
what do you see but the valleys and trees -
every night when I fall asleep
the grass and the leaves and the flowers all consume
me, into their petals and autumnal embrace,
lightning bolts me down and hurls me
high through the sky,
I am electric
And nature is mine, I hers
Her beautiful smile and frown, these luxurious clouds -
where her fingernails trail, leaves only frosty ground
come, see this world with me, the swallowing seas
and twisting streams, spelling cursive mysteries
I'll tell you what they whisper, the poetry of the river no one reads.

On Perfection, Weekends, and The Philadelphia Story

For you, Matthew:

I'm going crazy. I'm standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy.

~ Philadelphia Story

Limn the sky with peach pie, the clouds are crushed-melted marbles and strips of grated cheesecloth, pink as cherry blossoms. How can such a mountain be: Rainier, towering twice as high as these others along the way, like arrowheads or a picket fence before the giant house, imposing and towering.

I was thinking about shapes and forms again, this weekend. I had a lot of driving. When contemplating perfection, I keep returning to the idea of perfect art. Can there possibly be a perfect art? You see, if you can objectively state that one song is better than another song, or this artistic piece is better than this one, can you not simply leap to the conclusion that there is, somehow, a perfect piece? There are a couple of counterexamples to this that I've been considering: squares. Is there a perfect square? What size is it? You see, there are a ton of different square-forms, but all squares are simply rectangles with equivalent side lengths on all sides. How long those sides are, as long as they are all equivalent with corners at right angles, is irrelevant. 

Is a similar pattern true of songs? Let's upgrade to rectangles themselves: is there a perfect concept of a rectangle, one rectangle whose lengths are "correct" or "more perfect" than every other rectangle?

So with regards to art, we've stepped up in complexity through an impossible number of layers, several orders of magnitude more complicated. My artistic merit is negligible. I can draw stick figures (maybe), I can't pretend to draw anything that actually looks realistic, or purposely surreal. (I'm sticking to sketching, painting art at the moment - art is too broad a word). 

Just looking at Picasso or Leonardo Da Vinci and anyone can see, from the smallest child to the highest authority on art, that Picasso actually knows what he is doing. More, that his work carries an artistic merit, a skill, and is more sophisticated. I would even go so far as to say: "better" than my scrawlings. 

The question is: is there an array of "perfection" and a system of tiers where everything is too nebulous to rank? Or do artistic pieces simply become "perfect enough" after a point? See, we see from a very finite point of view. But in order to receive an answer to any of these questions we can't ask with humanity in mind. We have to ask from an infinite point of view, because the very conceptualization of "perfection" is beyond us. 

So either God sees no differences in artistic merit between mine and Picasso's work, or there is some sort of standard. Is the standard creation itself, before the fall? Was it just "good" or was it perfect? But is each new painting is a rectangle to a trapezoid, a square to a circle? Or can there be a perfect painting?

More sophistry, I suppose.

My parents are making a culinary case for preventing me from returning to Oregon. My mother bought me all the delicious cider, several different types of juice (she knows my weaknesses so well), she made my two favorite dinners on Friday and Sunday (I guess Dad made dinner Sunday), and she bought more chips, salsa, guacamole than I could possibly (is that a challenge?) eat. To say nothing of the eventual Thanksgiving dinner. 

Writing is almost finished. I'm piecing together the final stitches on the last chapters of the novel, drawing them tight and prepping the climactic knot. Weekend was awesome (thanks Matthew). We watched Matthew's favorite movie, which neither I nor his fiance were aware of the existence of (The Philidelphia Story), and it was amazing. Definitely worth a placement on my non-existent list of favorite movie experiences. We drank pumpkin egg nog, wrote in a coffee shop, watched a movie, made food (more realistically, we made a mess), and discussed life, the universe, and everything.

I've driven nearly four-hundred miles, seen a ton of beautiful mountains, and glanced out over the sea. I'm ready for the week, I think.

Mountains again, mountains... and a place to finish my book

the fencer and the painter is
a dualism picturesque and particular.
draw me as the ocean breathing
above a coral reef
with your pretty palette mixed
in this fluid motion,
we are the ribbon dance
we are the hummingbird
we are the wind in the wildflowers
galvanized
until each sunflower is only electric
with our souls the conduit of eternity;
it is the rainbow and the breeze
born of storms and souls
spinning, weaving, then
pirouette until
we are the fireworks and
we are the waterfall
we are the hearth flames


....


Sometimes wintry days are the prettiest. It is as though the cold were glass, on the verge of shattering into a thousand diamonds, or tiny stars. The sun shone bright over a cloudless sky, and the mountains were ever so elegant: Hood at the peak of beauty, St. Helens, hatless and whiter than pearls and gossamer, Rainier, at the pinnacle of majesty towering over everything - I could not stop staring, though I drove.
It's good to be back in Washington, in the hills and mountains of home.

Motion

wolf-eye moon rides the sky tonight
orion low on the horizon, fights
the bear, the lion;
reflected in this pond, it's no yellowed pupil,
but maestro swan, stately and solemn -
a string quartet this movement, each stroke
sliding through the black-glass waters
silk smooth, there are lessons here
deeper than the night above
higher than the pond beneath
heaven's eyes are all-seeing,


When I was a child, every now and again our parents would treat us with a trip to the zoo. I liked the zoo. Snakes, monkeys, giraffes, elephants, the nocturnal house, crocodiles, penguins - every corner turned was a new exciting form of life. Only I, competitive as I am, can forge a game out of the zoo so easily as I managed. We would enter the snake house and you got points for how quickly you found each creature, or creatures, in the tank. If you found a creature but skipped on to the next window, and there were more creatures, you got less points. It became a game of motion detection, and spotting sly animals through their clever camouflage.
If an animal moved, I was most likely to catch it first. If an animal sat still, hiding in colors and clever spots, Phil was often more likely to notice it first. I once had a psychology teacher suggest that women have more cones (color vision) and men have more rods (black-white, motion vision, peripherals). I don't know, scientifically, whether this is valid or not. But I've always been incredibly capable at spotting motion.
I've always felt that humankind has a remarkable aptitude for adaptability. Every person has adapted and constructed elaborate defense mechanisms and responses to certain stimuli - responses to culture, relationships, events, fright, food, and so on.
Someone said once that it is possible to master something new every seven years. Now, this depends on what you want to master and how motivated you are, but I think that this is easily within the realm of adaptation and the evolution of knowledge and skill. I'm working, desperately, to train myself in a number of things. It is difficult, but I want to learn not only to spot motion, but really stop and swallow colors. In good paintings, sometimes colors and slurs of motion leap out at you, or you dive into the scene, a daydreaming machine. This is how I wish I could write poetry. Poetry with motion, poetry with color, poetry with a symbioses of these, a merging complete and wholly sanctified, a truth-beauty dream of mobile hues singing, saturated and living, bright as living things in the wake of a storm, thundering.


I don't know 
what death's ultimate 
purpose is, but I think
this: whoever dreams of holding his
life in his fist
year after year into the hundreds of years
has never considered the owl
~ Mary Oliver - Lonely, White Fields

Weeds

A man full of words
is a garden of weeds,
and when the weeds grow,
a garden of snow,
a necklace of tracks: it was here, my snow owl, perhaps.
Who scared it away?
~ Jorie Graham - The Dream of the Unified Field (book not poem)

I remember one person saying recently that he stopped dating a woman because she didn't have any dreams, no hopes or motive - she didn't want to do anything.  I can't comment on whether this was true or not, but I do realize that I experience similar feelings of interest in people and their journeys. I was realizing earlier how attracted my personality is to knowledge and dreams and journeys: motivation, hopes, yearnings, cravings, gut-burning, heart-wrenching aching adventures of appetites. Patrick Rothfuss posted this link, earlier today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmEbF2uhsZk
And I smiled as I admit that knowledge, understanding, wit magnetizes me, galvanizes me into a headlong pursuit of friends and ambitions.

Full of words and weeds
It's two owlish eyes staring over me
do these fingers sing across these keys
as the crickets, the nightingale, the mouse scurrying
through the brush, between the trees
who? who? precedes the swooping death
in a breath it ends, soon as it begins
pierced in the talons and watching the worldfall
beneath, a blackplate pool and bristlebrush leaves
crows cawcall - is it a prayer?
someone must the sacrifice be - no
my fingers do not sing
but for a second before the mouse's life ends
does she fly with the wind rushing by,
before one creation ends to another one feed?



I found a whole bunch of poetry books at the library, and I think my collection is a little too varied. I found some Robert Bly, some Mary Oliver, some Jorie Graham (I just discovered her), some Bukowski (mixed feelings) and some Maya Angelou. I've been really enjoying my Jorie Graham experience, actually, and Mary Oliver is simply the best.

More Philosophy

Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps, if you are not willing to move your feet - Anonymous

I may be stumped until the end of the month with writing. I need to be reading again. It isn't writer's block, it is 'writer's tired mind'. 

I had an interesting discussion about the infinite, today.

I commented that extreme statements have always been hard for me. I once wrote in my journal, asking myself if I'd ever lived any perfect days. Not days that were better than any other day in the history of mankind, but days without sin. Is it possible? Have I gone any days in my entire life without any sin? I'm not even sure. How could I even verify that? I think that my discernment sucks, because sometimes the line between sin and not-sin can be fuzzy at times. 

Then I got to thinking about what a perfect day might even look like. What does it look like to live a perfect day? I don't think any such philosophizing is getting me there, and I wonder if Solomon had it right with his directions to live happy and to seek out those things which bring you joy, when you are living with faith: Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.  (Ecclesiastes 9)

It's a philosophy sort of week, I suppose.

I'll likely continue reading Mary Oliver and fall asleep, and hopefully some of these questions dream with me. I'm even dreaming about this story, lately. I think that of each of my novels, this is the messiest. It is still better than my first year's, and more advanced than my second year's, but I was probably a little overambitious with the mystery plot.

Rainy Night Writing

I often wonder if I would still have cherished writing so much if not for nights such as these: the rain in the eaves and gurgling in the gutters. Would I have snuggled up in the window-seat, layered in blankets with a steaming mug of cider, prepared with a splendid book, listening to the pattering percussion of nature - would stories have enamored me so?

 We're getting tired of this writing marathon, I think. I'm struggling more and more to come up with cohesive sections, pieces of the story that reveal just enough, but not too much, of the unraveling mystery. When I was a child, I did not enjoy television as much as everyone else seemed to. However, when my mother turned on Perry Mason, or Matlock, or Diagnosis: Murder, or any number of the murder-dramas that she enjoyed, I often plopped myself down and enjoyed the show. I craved mystery and diagnosis, problem and solution, hypothesis and conclusion. It contained everything I loved: a fairy-tale simplicity of good vs. evil, with good eventually outwitting evil, and tripping him/her up in the deceit; the tension of hurt and hero; justice; and the chance to match my wits with that of the investigator (I always really liked that part - in Scooby Doo, it was always the first person you saw, and not the grumpy, angry person. That person was usually just a grumpy, angry person)

Unfortunately, I have not READ much mystery. I've read some thriller, all the boxcar children (I loved Benny - mostly for his name), and not much more. Not an impressive mystery resume, huh? On top of that, I decided on a whim to write a mystery less than two weeks before NaNo began, and to do so in concert with Matthew. All this is a silly disclaimer for the fact that my writing has deteriorated greatly this past week, everywhere. My journaling looks like a tiny, heart monitor of bumps down the lines of the page; my blog blather is aimless and blubbering, and my story has a very confused inspector, who probably should know more than he knows, with only a few days left before the mystery has to be solved.

I think I'm ready for December, though. For reading, and more casual writing and blogging, and for more time for whatever. 

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

~ Sylvia Plath

A little encouragement from Sylvia Plath. 

I think if Sylvia Plath was still alive, I would follow her around crying piteously until she taught me to write. 

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

~ Sylvia Plath

So very much to learn,  yes. If I keep reading Sylvia Plath too long, I may get morose, cynical, or dark of humor.

In the summer, flowers are commonplace, beautiful as a natural gift of the season. In the winter, it's the solitary blossom, a snowdrop peeping its head out of the snow, the camellias, pink and bright even without sunlight, the tiny trumpets of winter paper bush and the vibrant reds of holly berries. Snowdrop, my favorite flowers, like the joyful tears of winter springing up from the ground.

Where are you going?

I've been tired the last few days. Hanging out on Friday after a long week; a late night Saturday night, which ended in getting home near midnight with no writing done; waking up after only a few hours of sleep for some writing before church, and then going out to eat. I settled down to take a nap, and the roommates started yelling jokes from one end of the house to the other - no nap.
My thoughts have been ranging all over. I won a competitive game, recently, that took me almost two months to top the charts in; a friend's mother is dying, and has been dying for almost a year, though this will likely be her last week; sick family members; missing people split up over the world; reading poetry, and digesting the intricate imagery; scouring classical pieces for useful tidbits, and contemplating on creation, life, knowledge, sin; friends hurting, living, loving. 
On top of it all, I'm writing hours each day, keeping up with the strict pace I've set for myself for this novel, trying to bring the mystery to life with all its characterization. I even sat for hours in a coffee shop, analyzing each person who walked in, imagining their days - what a bizarre, daydream exercise.  I listened to thoughtful bands: Sufjan, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, trying to fabricate feelings as I enter into different settings, and help myself envision the spacial, temporal, emotional constraints of so many variables.
I'm over-thinking this.

I wanted to write a thousand different things in my journal and blog-blather today, and I'm finding I'm getting none of those done. I wrote two-thousand words and then halted, turned off the lights, lit a candle, put on my slippers, and played guitar. I deliberated over how much I wanted to get done: learning how to write poetry; studying lyric, rhythm, rhyme, meter; understanding more on the nature of mystery and tension; studying character development and setting construction; learning, again, about some of my favorite time periods: victorian, renaissance, feudal, Edo Japan, mandate-of-heaven China, early yerushalayim, aztecs, incas, and the mayans, the mesopotamian fertile crescent: the cradle of man.  I yearned for a study of trees, plants, flowers, and where they naturally grow and flourish. I wanted to follow the patterns of birds, which trees they prefer, and how they build their nests, and when/if they migrate. I wanted to know where the animals go and when they come, and how they find their food, and where they all live.
I wanted to know everything: geology, geography, history, biology, chemistry, physics, mystery, mythology, fantasy, science-fiction, classics, languages, people - people, oh so much! 

But instead, I'm sitting and playing guitar, plucking at chords and singing lightly into the darkening skies of night.  My mind is craving for more, and my heart is telling me to collect some weekend rest, while I may. I miss A, and our roommate adventures, our talks into the night, the last word: chandelier, before we slept. I'm ready to jump, I'm ready to fly. Fire an arrow, Jonathan. Is it beyond me?
Where am I going? Where do I go.

Are you looking for answers
To questions under the stars?
Well, if along the way
You are grown weary
You can rest with me until
A brighter day and you're okay
~ Dave Matthews

This song is my night. I wanted to know everything, and I'm only given more questions, and the light song of fingertips across strings. Does everyone have such nights? Nights when all the colors mix together to grey.


I'm a fledgling, a monarch with morning-cold wings. Breathe on me, and I will fly.

Message in a Bottle

I love hope, with its mercurial-Janus cruelty. Tantalus' hunger, a Sisyphean trial, Danaides filling of urns without bottoms - hope is constantly in the sway, a pendulum of the soul, between incredulity and faith. But I always believed, ever persevered, and without doubt there is no rest before the breaking, burning, bleeding burden carried by a heart - by such a heart. 

It was impossible; it's always impossible. Intractable love only makes miracles of divine sacrifice the greater. And how can one submit to half-love, when one has seen the perfect?

Message in a bottle, tied on balloon strings

hope is your wings, take flight 
soar high above, pass over 
everything, my letter-lamb

and land where a heart makes room.

lead the road back home;
remember

if the message is an ocean 

(of hope or love)

where can you put the bottle?

only heaven knows

Goodnight Week

Nothing like friends, cider, a movie (Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic), a group dinner, rest after a week's work - not that I got any novel writing done. Everyone needs a Sabbath.
It's more difficult maintaining a high level of reading when trying to write 5-10 pages each night, or even every other night; it's more difficult balancing friends when locking myself into my room, slaving over a notebook, transcribing ideas and paragraphs from my quick, chicken-scratch onto the computer; difficult managing sleep when my best ideas often arrive late at night; difficult remembering to call people back, or text, once I've stepped into my writing zone.

I know the worth, at the end - this is my third such novel. But the duration is frightening, exhausting, intense, difficult, lovely. When do I read? My mealtimes are erratic, my sleep schedule wonky, and my additional writing suffers from lack of ingenuity (thus). Still, every night I open a book, and breathe in words that are not mine: Mary Oliver, Orson Scott Card, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Keats, TS Eliot, Genesis, Job, Faust my companions this month, and more, as they guide me through writing, and dreaming.

Thank you, friends, for supporting me, carrying me in your thoughts, even if (when) I disappear.

A strange season, the tulips rise again, then fall -
it's autumn, so why, sunflowers,
do you lift your heads
greeting this sun?
oh, yellow faces, I whispered goodbye
long, long ago
you fled south with birds and song, leaving
grey skies, low and lovely
my heart torn in twain

My eyes are drooping, and it's not yet even eleven. Another poem, another piece unfinished for the time. Tomorrow will be a busy day, a creative day, a writing day. Friends, I love you and pray for each of you, even when I cannot see you. I miss you each moment.
Sleep well, dream well, be.
Goodnight Moon.



I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.

From Sleeping in the Forest 
© Mary Oliver

Belfry

Some nights are most poignant from the belfry

the tattered bat-wing clouds flap

over the blood-thirsty moon
hearts are swallowed,
pulled out by such a moon
I thought the sky protected me
gazing up so reverently
but this is darkness, and midnight
here is desperate, you notice
with sugar sweet starry lies
even the night cannot hide
hope in its many folds and faces

clearly, i see clearest, with my face lodged in the mud. If my heart sees and my soul beats, and my eyes simply be, though wallowing - perhaps finally this is where faith takes seed. Ask, and I will pray. Ask again, and I will answer your questions, give you directions, and wish you well on your way. Ask again, and I will join you, forever and a day, always.


uhohhhhhhh.... I think I'm addicted to italics....

Handful of Dust

frozen the mammoth, ice prison
Or am I?
Who's caged really  in crystal time
Cinched the cooler
glass glacier world, standing
watching, watched?
Gimmicky, are we all? Finicky, though lodged within the aqua pearls of iceberg penitentiary, slow as the ice floe, stuck in ocean eddies. It's only the top, the upturned face of the iceberg, breathing in the sunlight - the peninsula of a vast, underwater continent of ice, blinding bright in the dawn. Am I a penguin, sheltered safely en masse; a walrus, all tusks and whiskers, clamping onto the ice and hunting molluscs; or, perhaps, a polar bear, transparent skin and ravenous fight?
Marble, mystery of water and lime
my eyes swirl in striated lines
blue and white, her paintings
blurring, arching, and dividing
mosaic of color
do the fish beneath understand their sky?
do we?


http://funnydoom.com/wp-content/gallery/8caves/caves-0001.jpg

Today was not a writing day, I'm afraid. Everything fell flat on its face. Yesterday: that was a writing day.


A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
~ TS Eliot - Wasteland

Leftovers

Honestly, I'm nervous about this, about everything. I don't advertise my blogging, because I've worked long and hard on writing, and what does this show? Casual, lousy, stream-of-consciousness blather, that's what. And I wonder: can Mary Oliver write, and it not be poetry? Can Gaiman spill ink on paper, and mythos and wisdom not flower forth? Will Sylvia Plath's words ever not cinch a rope about my neck and drag me, smitten and smote over a wasteland of macabre beauty? So what is this drivel I spew, writing leftovers - why is my basest rhetoric like somersaults on broken glass sometimes?
It's dastardly pride, believing my writing is within earshot of such champions - but, Gaiman, are not dreams hopes, and echoes of hopes? Permit me this dream.
When someone stumbles upon this blog, these virtual scrawls, I cringe - could they not read something more spectacular, something polished that I've written? No. Because I don't share those, either.

Morning at the Peak
Long necked trees burst like swans
swimming downstream with the morning
light wings the way
mists like ships pass through
the susurrus of empty branches, calm
the white-tailed deer of dawn drinks.
milky, the mirror-pond sees only fog.
magician snaps a kerchief
gossamer valley, white rabbit
drawn from blackhat night
I, too, take wing and vanish
into the smoke

Hands

hourglass, crystal ball, scythe, neat-tucked bed, dusty corners, spiderwebs, time-greyed armoire, rusty crib, ancient toys the stuff of nightmares, ceiling collapsing beneath a weighty loneliness.

have you found what beauty is for?

Beauty is beyond me, its outer gardens waft to me. You've seen the whole of it: the love, the new words and senses, the pinched and kneaded time, bleeding colors spinning rainbows into auroral webs. It's in your eyes, face, rhythm and tempo. What do the lines in my hands say? Do they frown or smile pleasantly? Do they beggar me with wisdom, or silent, plaintive, whisper I've made mistakes - too many. A ledger of scarlet, written in palm cuneiform, a pictograph of questions, unclasped, etched into flesh.  Thumb isolated, a border of sharp fissures, fault lines - my fault?  Large 'A' on each hand, an 'l' following? Sacred symbol lines?

It is not for all, every experience.  My hands tell stories I cannot hear.

listen: the swan song sings for me - this is beauty, truth, beauty

I slept, and woke on a snowflake, just me and a giant snake, shivering with cold. Gazing into each others eyes, must we put our selves aside and cuddle close? I wrapped my arms about him, he around me, and we shivered together atop our snowflake eternity, the worldscape beneath of clouds, aurora, fields and forests. But the snake loved too much, or nature prevailed, and constricted - I could not breathe. But warm, warm, it's better this way, coiled not cold.

black glass ponds are not mirrors, but windows. What do you see? Is it love, or sorrow?

Sorrow, the crow, and memory - or thought? Dusty roads barefoot glow beneath yellowed-paper moon, glitter-black dress of twilight - is it dark in a phoenix egg? Is it this that drives the fight for freedom? Or because inside, without room, the song of life is strangled, muffled?

before you blink, as you smile,what gift to you who loves no gifts? It beats sola para ti, and it's glass running through my veins, and sand, will you have my hand if I give it? no. take this empty box, it's mine, it holds my everything. is it mercy or grace I need more? 

have you found everything without me

to guide you

i'd give my blessing but i misplaced it with my heart-

felt hopes and dreams of warmer things, what everyone

else just forgets - it's the best, the only, night of my life

let me have it with all my dreams intact

these lines on my hands untouched

such stories 

~in memory of..~

where prayers were not enough to save us the sorrow of your passing.

Five Steps Back, Four

Aimed and Aimless Thoughts.

Ever since I started writing, I realized I'd finally found myself an unwinnable game. Or, perhaps, a game I could not surpass everyone in - there is always room for improvement. Another aspect about this game that, perhaps, suits me particularly well is its individuality.  It's also a bit embarrassing. I was always a bit of an individualistic player. I love team games, but I don't believe that they inspire my competitive drive. Since the team relies on me as only a small portion of the victory or defeat, I don't feel as though I need to better myself exponentially. I'm usually more than content simply matching the mean skill level.
Not so with individual games. But the strangest part about my competitive nature is that once I win something, I don't really care about it any longer, win or lose. I know that I CAN win. I don't have to try to win any longer. That doesn't mean I don't try to win, it just means I don't TRY to win.
The difference is spectacular.

Writing is different. It inspires my individualistic cravings for competition and betterment, without having any actual competition - or at least any concrete competition. And the first thing I learned in this competitive marathon, a marathon that may well last the remainder of my life, was that I'm awful. Simply. Awful.
For every discovery I gleaned, improvement I bled for, each sacrifice made, I fall behind five steps. It's like being thrown out of a plane with a sewing kit and cloth. Every time I sew together a piece of my parachute, I fall slower? Maybe? But I'm still falling. More like it, it's rowing a canoe upriver, a white rapids. I'm actually going backwards with each stroke, but eventually, my arms may get strong enough to make headway. (I should have just pulled to the side and walked upriver, huh?)
Now, though, I've improved. Instead of one step forward, five steps back, I'm only retreating four steps.

The same quality of rowing upriver sometimes affects other aspects of my life, and some I've been enduring recently. In church today, the discussion was on vulnerability, clothing yourself in righteousness, openness in the church, the family of the church body. How many things are there that we internalize rather than sharing with our church body, and how often is the church body helpful in overcoming these things? How often does the church body help rather than leave us hanging, or, worse, judge us for our failings?
Things such as anger, shame, depression, panic, pornography, psychological disorders, difficulties in marriage, relationships, the home - none of these are things I struggle with at this time, but how many people do, and don't feel open to tell the church? Or, having told the church, feel judged or "prayed at" rather than aided in the healing process, the grace and mercies of God?

One thing I was thinking about, in relation to this, is the short story "Franny" by JD Salinger, where Franny and Zooey are discussing the short prayer of the Tax Collector in the gospels: "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner." Actually, they are talking about it as a repeatable phrase, and as a way of praying without ceasing. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good way to avoid temptation, to refocus on God with all your might.

Inundated

Inundated

seas outside,
who requests this moat, tonight?

Once a house, a boat

soaring on an inland sea.

In undated lands, we

flow over, overflow

low mountains, clouds, drifting

below the flood, below

gold-leafed mud, shining

tiny cities, water-whelmed;

rising, the ocean breathes

salty dreams alkaline,

brine bitter as wine clams

over hearts tonight

locked behind window, pains

bleed over the sill, puddle

in your eyes, faltering

hands fumble, still

desperately distinct.

all your answers lie

in my heart tonight.

Where you are in always

time, there is, love

never sleeps, ever

dreams.

Good Night.

I'm usually exhausted by this time of night, my mental state reduced to a lump of melting wax. I thought my transitory insomnia had dissipated for good, but it strikes again, playing its hand in spades. The mountains of my dreams are skull-capped in white, the trees garlanded with carnation lays, the birds decorating each with the wreaths, singing sweetly. The pond frogs hum the cadence of the morning, bagpipes, yes, that will do nicely. The grey sky drizzles its tears over the valley bowl, tears washing the feet of God, gently perfumed with the redolence of pine and floral exuberance.
Drink in this incense prayer, for mine are none so pretty, none so pretty indeed.
Singing, strumming at this guitar, staring down the flickering candle, wishing my voice wasn't drier than chalky beef jerky with a side of desert sand, raspy as those frogs might be, not in dreams. Ah, my idealism says my flats are just sharps from below, a piquancy of music, perhaps. Judge not my music, prithee, lay your hardness aside and your hearts before, and let's sing. Sing the songs of mountains, hills, deer, love, breeze between the leaves, dewdrops on flower petals, snowflakes on the rabbit's nose, hibernating bear, leaping fish in sunset's last green explosion, lunar eclipse on a night of naked joy, racing faster than every heartbeat. Let's sing, and remember what's good, and what's good night.



Discussions were good, this night. Enneagram conversations; psychology and competition discussions; dialogues over whether pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and apple-cider might mix into something tasty, or disastrous; people discussions. I think I'm fairly consistently learning how full of holes my psyche is. We walked through some patterns of psychological taxonomy, and I found myself nailed on almost every parameter, consistent even to the disregard of classification, the grave weakness shared by this psychological collection, the triumphs and hopes of this diagnosed individual. Yes, stuff me in a box, staple it closed, lock me in an attic, neat and disposed. But while I understood most of these things concerning myself, I have gleaned a few tidbits that were interesting. I'd explain what these were, but, unfortunately, my classification tends to secrete this sort of information away, and I cannot break free of this box...

Blank

Blank. I cannot remember, anymore, what I dreamed of writing, discussed writing, or actually have written this last week. Everything swirls together, a beautiful misery. I'm sleeping, dreaming, writing, thinking, seeing, ingesting words, and jettisoning everything temporarily superfluous, extraneous, inessential. And it's a race against my leaking intellect. Will I realize the race continues without end, surrendering first? Can I lose a game that exists only within? Or, perhaps, not even there?
Even the words are blank, like fake bullets the target ignores, or disregards - a nuisance, a distraction, a trifle, a red herring, if you please. Color me... disinterested, they say, child's play. They turn away into the sea, a vastness unexplained (by me, at least).
The moon's a mistress made of me, grasping at my tides, I, a pendulum in lunar sway. This lunacy, I plead - do the ocean's truly rise and elsewhere must recede: a teeter-totter, I see, I saw, now my vision's clouded intimately. I loved once, and lost twice, and regret thrice, afore the rooster crowed; and I love thee Lord, but scarcely feed myself. The wolf's teeth are canine white, angler fish's lure so bright, dart frog saturated with color, belladonna - doth beauty's embrace only destroy?
Fairy tale me is no hero, but the crooked man, swallowing stories for life. Not mine, the princess, nor battles won, riches gleaned, the dragon slain. No, I quite believed a different tale. If, knowing everything of everyone: dreams, desires, hopes, prayers, experiences, I expect I'd love them, wholly, unconditionally. The double standard is this: I believe if you knew the same about me, I cannot believe the same, or anything near. There is knowing... yet, understanding is supernal, a celestial gift. This I hide behind lest you enter the shell and find the sea.

Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?
(Milton - Paradise Lost)

Midnight Sophistry

It's a night for useless philosophizing, and I, the eternal sophist. When it comes to actual writing, important writing, or important aspects of my own existence, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps this stems from my competitive nature. When I watch a movie like Ender's Game, I constantly find myself thinking: "I could beat him, let me play." What arrogance is this? Who am I? But even if I couldn't, my heart would try.
But I know my motivations, and my drive, and I know, too, that if that was my heart's desire, I may very well win it, against superior forces. Such is the power of conviction.  And now, sitting here contemplating pieces I've written and examining them, I find them pierced with errors like arrows, more wholly holey than a frayed web, and less useful.
What is perfect writing? I'm stuck in a platonic mindset where the mere existence of a story implies a perfect story.What is the perfect story? What is the perfect song? Are there an infinite number of perfect stories or perfect songs? Perfect paintings, perfect sculptures or vessels, the perfect art.
Then I think to myself, can there be more than one? Two sculptures, both perfectly done?  This is a mind-bending mental-yoga-preztal seen through a bent-mirror-prism-raindrop-stainglasswindow. Because, to my thinking, unless the sculptures are 100% equally perfect, how can they both be perfect? Is perfect like infinity? The numbers between 1-2 are infinite, mathematically. What about 1-3? Double infinite? No, just infinite. But it's double the infinite as between 1-2, right? Right? So can both paintings be perfect, but one be "double perfect"?
Even if that were true, what is the most perfect perfect? Can there be one? Or, like infinity, can you always add one more? You see? A sophists night.
But instead of getting wrapped up in all the cognitive gymnastics, I'm struck by this fierce competitive desire to acquire the most perfect perfect something, whatever it is. I'll never get there; that's beyond my ken. Yet, the intense craving stirs in my gut most mightily. How can I aim for less than perfection? It's like the quote by Les Brown, famous motivational speaker: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
Oh, let me hit the moon.

To Err

Books to movies always grind my gears a bit. It always seems rushed. A book that takes about two hours to read, turned into a two hour movie (Ender's Game) is one crime after another as they rush past monumental aspects of the story.

I haven't had a bad day in weeks, but I think that, perhaps, today was one such. Not all of the day, certainly, just the motif of the day scraped incessantly, like sharp nails scratching at a rash until it bleeds. That makes it sound advertent. Sometimes such things are, and sometimes it's simple distraction, forgetting people are people. I know this; I've fallen into this same trap often. So why does something so expected stab at my heart, grind into my ears with the cruel screech of fingernails on chalkboards, the agonizing snap of splintering bones?

Because I'm only human and, more than that, the weakest of them all.

Alchemy

Epsom salt the dark night sky

filter through the moon lit

over brazier bright, silver

saucer full of light,

this mercurial soup,
wait

until this lunar sway tides 

over the smoky clouds

heated rims crimson as coils

golden the horizon

I'm slowing, each moment molasses slow in my fingertips as the world jumps by, swift as the white-tailed deer. Touch these hands - are they cold from the unknowing? The longest road?

Some feet were meant to take the longest path, some hands. The valley is darker alone with a light, than together without - I see that, and everything else. Together, this everyone, is this chemistry or alchemy? What difference does it make? One thinks, the other believes, before swallowing mercury, praying for gold.

Cold

Cold

White as bleached bones, soft

as goodnight, whispering

leaves adrift as fox-fur,
falling clothes of trees -
suffered

not I, huddled in cotton dreams

shaking free as the chords

the notes

a melody so sweet, far

over the rooftops, creaking

forests sleep.
echoes over mountains along

burns and streams, 

the sea hums,
sounds from the deeps,
twittering birds migrate, mournful

bellows of whales beneath

a sky of swaying tides,
shiver bones, and breathe -

the chill is heavier, borne
discrete



With a burst of speed, we begin. Three quick steps and aloft, winging on updrafts of discovery and adventure. Is this Icarus' vice, or can I fly higher, further, still?

Empty Envelope

Empty. Blessing or curse? Tabula rosa, I'm not thinking - am I? Candle flickers, rain bullets rebound from glass inevitability, cider sits half-empty, all empty, a night as silent as the moon hiding behind these clouds. In the rainy night: no clouds, no stars, no moon, no sky, just a blank slate heavens, unthinking, leaking, a perfect mirror for my mind.
I stood in an alley of trees, the smell of fall finally arrived. Fall sits, patiently awaiting the heavy rains, where the redolence is freed. Emptied, a heavy breeze carried the rain and a torrent of leaves, and I simply stood, catching the leaves as they traveled by, pelted with colors. Even a barrenness, an emptiness is beautiful sometimes: a ghastly beauty, a transparent, phantom elegance like dust and cobwebs in abandoned homes, like ancient, cracked mirrors, a winter wheat field,  shrouded in heavy mist, hands having given a gift, winter trees with fallen leaves, violins, wordless and minor in an eerie whisper, wisps of fragment dreams come morning, silence before a storm, the wordlessness of knowing, staring at the ceiling on long, quiet nights, mountain devotionals.
An emptiness of something makes room for a fullness of another.



may I be, awakened from my slumber
you slice, with gentle knife,
my blankets and my cover
whisking me from beneath
my veil of mystery
unwrap me in your soft
fingertips, smooth 
my wrinkled edges and smell
a delivered world
pen-kisses, thumbprints, a lick
of love, each dot, jot, tittle,
our hands held distantly
caress me, hold me in your eyes
closer, fondly, my heart as paper
in your tender hands


my heart is rent and sent as missive
mailed down rainy river
in return I found a pen
which doth my blood embitter
my ink-blood blue
pen-heart stained, too
please current soon deliver

Well, that was uglier than the first...
Listening to the rain: is there anything more peaceful?


Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?
~ Milton - Paradise Lost

What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
~ Milton - Paradise Lost

Life Garden thoughts

There is a game called race for the galaxy, a card game, where every turn is a gambit and a sacrifice. While I've only played this game a few times, I suspect it offers a keen insight into my every daily decision. Every day, I have choices, many, and in order to realize these opportunities, other sacrifices must be made. If I want to spend ten hours drawing, I cannot also spend ten hours playing guitar. If I sacrifice time going out with friends, I cannot read all I wished to read.
Sacrifice makes it sound somehow morbid, or a horrific truth. Like I'm shivving myself and stepping over lost opportunities as the paving stones to preferred ones. But you can't walk in every door, and explore every room - the manse of life is vast. Still, the perfectionist in me, the Christian in me, the sage and philosopher, the fighter and lover, the finder and the seeker, the sower and the reaper in me all ask whether the path I've chosen is the best path, the most right path, the most Christ-like path. It is a utilitarian internalization that is asking if this will bring the greatest good for the greatest quantity.
So while I sit munching on the harvest of my deeds, wondering what might have been if, instead of swiss chard, I'd sown rhubarb, instead of squash, pumpkin, instead of tomatoes, peppers.

Did I have time to plant more seeds? Did I water them each enough, or are these stunted plants? Harvesting life is none so clear, sometimes.
Should I probably be writing NaNo instead of this? Yes.