These Hands

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/these-hands/

As I lied, I lied

tears shook your shoulders while you cried:

please stop, and hide the truth no more -

A ghost, poltergeist, an echo at most

left behind when you’ve carved out hope

replacing dreams with ash and lime;

traipsing down the somber street side

blithe and blank with an empty face

no matter the distance down aching lane

turn around and you’re home again

beside a hearth-whole fire

safe inside these walls

It’s amazing how little distance you must travel to find people hurting. We assume missions are necessary to Africa and Eastern Europe, or dangerous places for Christians like China or the Middle East, but plenty of hurt sits next to us on the bus, at the dinner table, or even on the church pews - perhaps especially on the church pews.

And how do you address such pains, the problems not of meals and poverty, but of internal poverty and spiritual starvation? How do you address depression, anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, a lack of self-confidence, doubt, pain, or stress? These things our individualistic society has told us to bury deep within our psyche until they are embedded in our personality, entrenched in our existence, when a person cannot separate their identity from stress, pain, and the horrors of ill-relationship.

And I’m an introvert, tentative with hands of healing, shy with words of comfort, timid with grace and mercy, wordless with exhortation, bashful with blessing, hesitant with hope and helpfulness. How do I extend hands that are stuck in my pockets, and how do I open eyes that are self-consciously staring at my toes, and how do I love when my heart hides in my sleeves?

Holy Spirit move in me; a susurrus of wind and wave that washes me from head to feet, and dresses me in neat white linens, and sets me free to serve and be, and be wholly loving.

These hands that have taken, let them give; these feet that have wandered, set them true; these eyes that have judged, let them cry with mercy and grace.

Gentle Summer Love

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/gentle-summer-love/

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Sunny days pierce me as surely as biting winds, colliding with my soul and warming me. It’s as though I’m sitting beside a fire with my friends, the cool wind nipping at my neck but my eyes are mesmerized by the embers bright, and the sparks like shooting stars fired back at the heavens – I’m warmed and unafraid, the master of my destiny. And love surrounds me in just such a way, the intense fragility (nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals / the power of your intense fragility - cummings) of our spirits strengthened like a three-cord rope (And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart – Ecclesiastes), until we are more than the things we bring.

There is peace in this world, and anger. As the sun rides high over the sky, and sets in pumpkin and cranberry sauce like a thanksgiving spill, the storms of night linger over distant Europe, tearing snow up from the mountains and dashing it violently against the rocks. The herbivore quietly nibbles at flower stalks while the predator stalks the prey, and what shall we say, when the beast survives? That the world is not beautiful? But see the petals, the roses, the sky, the mountains striking even in the night where only their shadowy silhouettes frame the horizon.

Tonight, I’m enveloped in loving-kindness, and shipped into sleep, praying the waves are gentle, else I might wrestle with the good night.

Entitlement Rant

Our culture has really adopted, and swallowed whole, a sense of entitlement. In Christianity, we say a few words and claim an entitlement of love, grace, protection, hope, and kinship with the creator of the universe; in friendship, we imagine our contract of mutual care ensures an entitlement of mercy, grace, forgiveness and love, even when we grossly overstep our bounds without remorse.
I hate this word, and equally I despise its connotations. Sanctification does not come from an empty proclamation of faith, but from an abiding belief. If your personal convictions of immorality and choices are stronger than your belief in the divine, your faith is empty. Are you not Judas, trading sanctity for coins? If your desire to sin, to cross the line, to ignore the laws of righteousness are stronger than your faith, what IS your faith in? Yourself or Christ? And if God does not grant you justice, can you really blame him? If you decide morality, surely you can impart your own justice? If you have set yourself up as your own god in life, aren’t you to blame for its misfortunes?
Friends, too, do this same thing. “I don’t mind lying, betraying my friends by abusing their trust and kindness, but I consider it a personal affront if my friends return the favor.” Entitlement then conceives an anger, a bitterness like that Blake spoke of in the poem A Poison Tree.
Let’s say for a moment you’ve made a mistake with someone whom you love, or claim to love. There are some options: confess the mistake and root out the mistake before it flowers and grows, or conceal it, nurture the mistake and water it until a poisonous tree grows up betwixt the love, and when it is noticed, your entitlement claims it is the other party’s fault, or tries to conceal it again. You see, those people will find out those things eventually, whether you will it or no. Perhaps you’ve chosen to conceal it, and when they find out, you pretend that you thought they knew all along, and so you initiate another lie to replace the first. You are the Johnny Appleseed of Poison Trees.
So, who are you, then, having planted so many poisonous trees amidst your relationships, to claim entitlement in these relationships? Perhaps if you had behaved respectably yourself, you might merit a little grace, a little forgiveness, a little kindness, but having behaved atrociously can you expect the other party to protect your abuse of their love?
As a simple example, if you lied, can you really feel entitled to know the truth your friends carry when you’ve lied? If you haven’t kept a secret, can you feel entitled to be told them? Entitlement is foolish, but I’ve seen it so many times throughout my life, often coming to the fore in passive-aggressive self-righteousness.
I know that as a friend and someone who loves, it is my job to forgive and love, even if I’m hurt. But there are limits. If a friend lies to me, or betrays my trust, even having forgiven them, I’m less likely to trust them in the same capacity, the same circumstance as before. And if I’m betrayed twice, or they justify their betrayal, doubly so.
If you were a knight and betrayed the knight’s code, can you really expect the all-knowing monarchy to protect you when you find yourself in trouble? Especially if you are unrepentant of your trespass, and perhaps continue to break the code daily (without remorse)?


On the flip side, there are many around me with enduring kindness, endless selflessness that I cannot help but return. Love is contagious. When a friend hugs me, I want to pass on that hug to the next person I see. When a person shares a truth with me, heals me, listens or speaks reassuring words, or comforts me in pain or sorrow, I can’t help but be a prism for that light.

If I'm hurt, this doesn't mean I'll deliberately be vindictive and full of vengeance, either. I hope I'm the very opposite. But it does mean I won't leap into making the same mistake twice.

I was thinking about entitlement today, and just was disgusted with its use. I think passive aggressive natures are my least favorite, and I’m no stranger to acting them out myself. So this was a bit of a rant. And so on.

But I know that in the end I need to be more forgiving, more graceful in reply. It's a vicious cycle otherwise. Instead of repaying with vindictive hate, anger, revenge, or petty cruelty, I need to be loving and patient, even especially when those who have hurt me know what they've done, and may even continue to exacerbate the circumstance. But even as I love them, I'll likely protect myself from future pain; even as I love them and extend the grace of God their way, if I choose not to return to them first when I need comfort or love, it is this, the poison tree, that stood in the way

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/entitlement-rant/ 

Flux

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/flux/

I read an article recently on divorce, whose author suggested that America's concept of marriage is tremendously skewed into believing you are marrying an instant of a person, a daguerreotype. People change, year by year, day by day, moment by moment, and if you love someone as an instant, as a trophy mounted on the wall, it's no wonder that divorce rates skyrocketed. There's no value in a person as a person, but only a value in the haloed, sanctified idol we’ve replaced them with.

I’ve never been in a relationship before (until now!), but I can’t tell you how excited I am to change, and see change moving through us as we grow in relationship, Christ, and simply as persons.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said that no man ever steps in the same river twice. He invented the concept of “flux”, the constant shifting of things, organic and inorganic. There is a hint of truth in his words, in that things are constantly changing, new molecules pass down the river instant by instant, and experiences mold the clay that makes a woman or a man. But there is some quality, a consistency of being, that stays.

Life, being, persons, everything is in flux, perhaps, and it is this which makes the “daguerreotype love” so precipitous, and enduring love so beautiful, even divine.

Your first love for somebody can last ... but it changes too after promises have been made and time as passed and knowledge has come.
Wendell Berry (in Hannah Coulter)

At the same time, the rustling zephyr canters

Through the leaves of trees and pushes clouds

Across the countryside, a gentle scythe over wheat

It transforms fields into a great, golden sea;

And a newspaper tumbles like a wheel of weed

Down soggy streets whose only light bounces down

From building window to window until it drowns in the road

And makes alchemy of oil, puddles, and spilt drinks;

And the clever man tips back his tumbler and taps his feet

To the beat of the jazz hands stumbling up the bass, down the piano

While a hundred classy customers celebrate with feast and dance;

And the same stars rise, climb, and fall where a boy sits

In the hospital and glances out the screen, remembering

That in the relativity of things, the heavens are a great eternity

Tonight was soccer night, coffee night, and the beginning of the weekend. There is nothing like soccer to end a week – I wish every night ended thus, sometimes: the adrenaline, the friends, the grass between my toes, the goals, the smiles, the joy at understanding how to run and kick and play.

Nervous Quotations

Standing atop the tallest turtle, Yertle, I think I own the sky. Nothing could be so high as I, I smugly reply to the wind, which turns me around to see a mountain-top nestled within the mighty clouds. Well, and then again, perhaps my head has been misled, and it’s time to climb again.

This weekend, this week, is beyond my comprehension I think, at 2 in the morning. I think the whirlwind of events is more the cause than the hour, but I suspect that little makes sense to my addled brain at 2am, even were I not on being set aflame, with teary eyes, pumping heart, nervous fingers, and lungs remembering what breathing is. So this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.  (TS Eliot, Hollow Men)

You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.
(Morgenstern, Night Circus)

Let your gentle spirit be made known before all men. The Lord is near. (Philippians 4:5)

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (Yann Martel Life of Pi)

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud... (Yann Martel Life of Pi)

You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself. (Scalzi)

And for you, Em:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
(Mary Oliver)


I don't know what my life is at this time, but here are some quotes that I've left running through my head. Some are relevant, others just for thought. There is much to be found in the world, even when you think you know everything.

You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month and yet, after a hundred years, they can still surprise you. (on the topic of hobbits.. or perhaps anything)
(Lord of the Rings)

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/nervous-quotation/ 

Even Especially a Child

 http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/even-especially-a-child/

Even especially a child can change the world: the boy with stockings, suspenders, and too-big shoes and the lass with frilled dress, mother’s necklace, whistling a new-found tune. Now, when the stars are too big for solemn hearts and the moon, Olwen, larger than any room in the manse of my soul, I contemplate the negative space of shadow, and is that light? And does the lunar night illumine dust? Or twilight angels falling as broken stars, meteorite well-stones wishing for right and wrong to clarify in the ripples of falling fire?

Is the number of questions without answer, divided by the number with, irrational or just am I? Do the heavens mock, or is the gravitas pulling my own satire back into my own eyes?

We’re at the blurred lines of time, and I’m still running my stopwatch to see if moments are faster than always, but I’ll wait until the end for conclusive evidence. If this is a race, I’m wishing I hadn’t tied my shoes together, and cinched the blindfold so tight, but with the heavens as my guide I may be all right.

I’ve not gotten sufficient sleep lately. I had a few words stuck in my head, and as I stared at the cloudy sky they rumbled around my skull like thunder, but without the lightning strike cracking through the fogginess of creativity. So there is a tiny bit of cleverness and a lot of finding myself squinting my eyes at every word I write, wondering whether it could be worse, and whether focusing on that aspect is actually driving me in that direction. We’ll see, but for now there are questions whose answers I might only find once I pass the starting line. I thinking I’ve only managed to knot my shoes further, and maybe I must progress barefoot, for spiritual travel is sanctified ground sometimes.

The Cowled Mount

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/the-cowled-mount

At times like these, I feel I’ve unfettered feet, and more than perhaps two. I’m a centipede, marching mind thinking a hundred things, estranged from my own wandering shoes. I found the glory within, crawling over the pass and seeing the mountain, wearing no hood or cowl to match its name, but gleaming like a frozen font, a spike, a rigid canine, a snow-leopards ear. A valley swoops beneath me, the very land removed from under my rolling toes, and the curving wyrm of the land is like a Chinese dragon colored in wildflowers, a royal carpet sliding towards the sanctified Olympus.

And seeing that vision, the pinnacle of creative mass, I understand the inertia of love and the gravitas of sacrifice and sanctification, if only a little. I can feel the weight of it on my dreams, the deep, heavy sighs of the earth and I imbibe of the grace therein. I need everything, the nearness of it all and the prescience of divinity.

Tonight is the last day before my last best friend is married off. I found the most beautiful road in Newberg (well, I’ll hedge that with a ‘one of the’), and drove along a ridge facing Mount Hood, vineyards and grazing livestock filling the periphery with the perfect ambiance. I wonder whether my words are a subtle injustice, a slight on the majesty of creation. Does poetry only detract from true creativity, and music only a cheap substitute for the orchestra of creation? I cannot believe this to be true, as a general rule, but sometimes I cannot collect any words that portray the mountain, that harness the motion of the river, that captivate as surely as the woods, the rain, the clouds gloomy and playful over the starry sky.

I want to sleep, but my body fights me; I want to eat, but there, too, I’m refused; I want to imagine worlds and write poetry, to sing, play guitar, dream, and write beautiful things, but I’m stymied by an incessant farewell-love. It’s that inhibitive time where nothing can be done until I’ve done what must be done. I’m not the parents, but I feel as though I’m surrendering J and S to each other and to another place, just as I did Matthew, just as I did A and S, just as perhaps I’ve done countless times before, though each time with a greater piece of my heart to offer up.

So here I am, staring down a bag of chips and wondering if my pacing mind will focus enough to finish reading a book, or whether I might just sleep instead. I fear I’ll be stuck in a pasture without sheep to count, dear Olwen, but perhaps this is how all vigils should progress, in existential-quandaries of beauty, peace, and letting go.

There’s probably a Disney song about this. 

Gatsby Fortress

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/gatsby-fortress/ ‎

I’m reading The Da Vinci Code, which I never got around to for whatever reason (I probably eschew popular books out of some intrinsic literati-hipster tendency within me), and even though I have mixed feelings about the book, I always get a little excited about cryptography.

The information age has not only engendered a paranoia, but also a plethora of sensitive information that we throw around over wireless, free for any hungry recipient to grab. Sure you can log on to your online user account in the coffee shop, but my computer in “promiscuous mode” can also catch every request you make to the server and, if the request isn’t carefully encoded, peal it apart. Recently, the HeartBleed fiasco revealed a technique for reading through a whole bunch of what should have been carefully guarded server data, including countless numbers of users’ passwords and login information. The first generations of cryptography were relatively simple, but we’ve had to develop more and more elaborate systems to protect a very different kind of information.

As happy as cryptography makes me, though, it also imbues a certain sadness, a longing for a world where security wasn’t so requisite. A missionary came back to our church when I was a child, and told stories about living in rural Russia, and how he frequently had people enter into his house in the wee hours of the morning and yell for a feast and drinks to share, and the owners would happily oblige, even if it meant bustling about the kitchen and waking up everyone at 2am. No one locked their doors, because community was an axiom, and no one feared the robber or the Raskolnikov.

This sort of living always seemed beautiful to me. Matthew and I used to always have this argument about socialism/communism where I would say that, on the barest of levels, I admire these theories. A major problem is a lack of motivation to work, and the required bloody revolution, but I’d always argue that I wanted to be a communist NOT for the politics and revolution of the proletariat, but for the root word: community. I wanted to be a six-home communism, and, in all actuality, Amish.

Now, I don’t actually think I want to be Amish, at least not right now. I admire the community aspects, but I think I’d miss the travel, the motion, the technology of modernity, but there is a beauty in the close-knit community, in the comfort of neighbors that don’t require locked doors and hidden lives. America has cultivated this dream, this American Dream in us that says: “you can go from zero to hero; from ashes to riches”, and be the Bill Gates, the Gatsby, the next magnate, but I think that our media and this theory have isolated us. By telling us of the American Dream, it has set every person against his neighbor, against his family and friends, and marked them as stepping stones into a higher future.

We view our God as father, mother, sister, brother, friend precisely because our culture has stolen those concepts from our worlds.

I wish there wasn’t a reason for security because I wish people trusted each other. Every day the news reveals stories of shootings saying those people sitting next to you in the classroom aren’t safe; we hear stories of break-ins and murders telling us our neighbors and families are ever on the verge of insanity; we’re told we live in a dangerous, scary world, and we must overcome it. I’d rather live in a beautiful world, and together enjoy it. I decided a while back that that was my world, but the shadows and ashes of paranoia still cling tight to my every day. I’ve got passwords, I’ve got secrets, I’ve got layers of deceptions prepared in case my emotional fortifications are brought to their knees.

And I think what I look for most in friendship, in people I can love, is finding people who I can open the doors of my castle to, to whom I don’t mind showing the unswept corridors and dusty rooms of my ugly life. Wouldn’t it be great if this was everyone? Or if I actually didn’t have so many locked rooms in the first place?
What if my life was a field and not a fortress, a forest with flowers instead of fortifications and fear?

Still Awake

The clock isn’t even ticking, and there is no subtlety in its passing. You can shadow me, I don’t mind, I’ve lost mine somewhere in the shifting sands of time, and we’ll wander this ghastly town tonight around, beyond, and past the disembodied moonlight illuminating lonely places. There is always rain, a thousand tinny voices of gutter-speak, drinking until the night is weak and no one hears the music if it’s playing. Someone, we know not who, is always awake, fluorescent lights blinking like the eyes of Cthulu, the elder ones indeed are even asleep, but not the whoever-you.

Muggy, the even tides, yet we’re all still reptiles, Olwen, cold-blooded whenever without who, and I only wanted the anima-lune smiling its Cheshire smile, though I found out soon why the lady of the water wields a sword. Excelsior, Henry, my name, and for it I cannot brake, for I know why the raven spake nevermore, and why the rook resembles the writing desk, and I’ve survived the light brigade and believed where hope was naught – and still, John, my name is not writ even in the waters,  nor ever be.

I, too, Robert, traveled an alternate, unused trail, and it ends on a ridge overlooking a great valley, each tree reaching towards the sky with prayers for light, with gilded rivers. Come away with me

Tonight I can write the saddest lines - Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

...

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

...

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

Pablo Neruda – Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

I understand, Pablo. And it is no depression, no sadness that summons these lyrics, the metric of melancholy or the glossary of gloom, but the rhythm of the rain dancing against the window pane and the emptiness of the night. The day was bright and sunny, but the night – oh, what is the night? – is full of the null of time, and now is when I write.

I’ve made many mistakes I think, Olwen, and I only hope my triumphs define me and not they. Earlier today, I had in mind to write on topics of weddings, of joyful unions and communions of friends, old and new, of misty-morning drives and the celebration of fathers, but I feel like a child in the Cat in the Hat, uncertain of the joy that’s arrived, and whether, indeed, the fish is right.

a long ways away, the river speaks like voices,

echoing high and light over the morning, it reigns

from the clouds formed from droplets falling into the waiting

open arms beneath, where spray lifts as water drops

and dashes against the rocks, and  opal lights briefly

find being, and lose it in a breath, one they’ve stolen from me

and in these virginal waters I see the still naked eve and a’dam

so absorbed in the moment, they notice not me

nor the snaking, twisting branches of water falling –

before and after, such feeling,

though for a moment there was peace

Before pain, before the fall, would oysters still have formed their pearls, without the itch? 

Rivers Mighty

There is beautiful land here: the Columbia gorge, the Willamette (the river why?), Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, the Olympics, the Cascades, the Issaquah Ridge, the national forests, the stony refusal of nature to comply with silly roads and forested towns, the bays and ocean vistas, the lakes and river curlicues – how arabesque and wavy is our world, like a dervish dance spinning or the sinuous shapes of ancient eastern art, twisting and rolling like the waves and the snakes, and the wind eddying around the minarets and parapets of time.

But every string I’ve seen possesses both beginning and end, end and beginning, even the wind whispering and the ocean waves singing, even the dreams I’m clinging to, with distant, foggy shores. Some metaphysical kitten plays with the sweater-threads of my life, gnawing, clawing, fraying its unravelling strings and deftly splitting the colors into a mess of sudden ends and new. And though it is a sweater no longer, I’m beginning to believe it’s beautiful, nonetheless. Perhaps more so, with its spontaneous elegance, an arbitrary truncation into a colorful next – a rough patch in a river makes the river leap, and where water falls, rainbows spring.

Is the river’s might in raging rapids,

smoothing the stones and leveling mountains?

or in the width of its waters gently

etching a means towards eternal seas?

perhaps her strength lies in a sleight of hand

breaking boulders into sand and hiding

around clever bends, tracing the moon’s path

through desert, forest, fields, and quiet hearts.

but no matter where it goes, it’s coming

home again, racing to the end, he sways,

tipsy and tired – greeting the ocean

with sad smiles, wondering now and then,

how poignant the sunrise and set can be,

even here, even now, even eventually

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/rivers-mighty/

Do they call this a week?

This is the longest time I’ve gone completely without writing since 2008 (although I may actually have written something  in the fogginess of this weekend, and perhaps I only wish I hadn’t tried). On Tuesday night, after work I joined Matthew and “groomsman” (men here is misleading) at a dinner in an Issaquah brewery, wherein I alone did not consume copious quantities of alcoholic beverage.  Then, at some horrible hour (probably after ten), we split and Matthew and I headed separately to Bellingham where I’d spend the week until the Matthew’s wedding.

On Wednesday, Matthew worked while I did not, and I used the time to explore Bellingham, visit a few shops and bookstores, wander aimlessly in search of a good beach, and admire the pleasant, Elvish feel to the woods and hills surrounding the bay. When Matthew returned, we walked back from his house to downtown and ate some pizza (delicious – they used an almost sourdough-fluffy bread) and discussed the upcoming days. We returned to Matthew’s to watch Ghostbusters, but did not watch very much before J and sisters arrived to collect a bike Matthew had built for J’s youngest sister.

We oohed and aahed at the bike while Matthew and company attempted to make a few final adjustments and get it ready for transport. Then, when everyone finally left, I retired for the night.

Thursday started with work, and when I finished, Matthew and I proceeded to make sushi rolls (enormous amounts of avocado, assorted vegetables), and then headed for the park to play some Frisbee golf. Matthew won. When we arrived home from the park, it was already nearing ten, so we decided to just hang out and talk before falling asleep, because both of us had probably slept little over the last few nights. Matthew promptly zonked out, and I followed shortly thereafter.

Friday, I worked but Matthew did not. After I finished work, I went to the church and helped organize and set up before the rehearsal, which, after a scene of organized chaos (emphasis on chaos, diminutive on organized), we considered ourselves prepared and ate pizza for dinner.

That night, a couple friends came over and for a few hours we attempted to play family business while Matthew’s friends tried (and maybe succeeded) to get Matthew tipsy. Conversation got wild and crazy, but the end result was staying up until 2, at which point everyone retired except for Matthew who felt ill and sat in the bathroom nursing an upset stomach. I stayed with Matthew there until slightly after four in the morning. At five, the dog started barking. At six, J sent Matthew some texts which he did not hear, but did not stop his phone from dancing madly and beeping every couple of minutes. At seven thirty, the other couples in the house started waking up. There was not much sleep to be had. Matthew and I left at eight to go do more setup at the church.

Then, there were pictures and the wedding.

One more week and all of my greatest of friends will be married off.

This is a strange “summer”. It almost feels like a bunch of ends are all tying off at once, but I’m so focused on doing the tying that I’m forced to live other people’s summers instead of my own. Meanwhile, I’m purchasing a house, moving out of an old one, and praying for some time for hikes, friends (outside of the context of their busyness), writing, exploring, adventuring, reading. I did read One Hundred Years of Solitude and start on Love in the Time of Cholera. So that’s something. I’m too tired to do any creative writing tonight, so I won’t try. Hope all of you are doing well.

Audio Books and Fae Things

I used to glance askance at audio books, always assuming that listening to a book was ridiculous in comparison to reading the book myself. Only in the past year have I realized how foolishly blithe this was. Audio books are awesome. Not as a replacement for reading, but as an opportunity for reading while driving, running, working, or for listening to other interpretations of passages that I’ve only read within the echoing chambers of my skull.

At first, I started “audio reading” books that I was struggling to find time for, but had always wanted to read, but then I realized an alternative use for this particular format. My speakers aren’t particularly good in my car, and the bass and treble often get truncated, and because I often acquire my audio books for free from librivox, every chapter is a different reader and some of the authors are impossible to hear. The difficulty, then, is knowing that I might miss important information, and that makes reading more involved books almost impossible. The alternative I found is listening to poetry and mythology. I’d always wanted to read the whole of the Ramayana, the Poetic Edda and the Central American mythos. Listening to the philosophical conversations between Arjuna and Krishna is easier than struggling to follow difficult Russian names in War and Peace (which I’ll just have to read in my free time), and listening to the rhythm of poetry has revived my interest in certain poets that I previously struggled reading because of how I read their poems.

I started listening to Wordsworth, Edgar Allen Poe (I’ve liked his short stories, but his poetry I never read much of), Keats (I always liked Keats), Whitman (thought he was a bit wordy), TS Eliot, William Blake (I really enjoy listening to Songs of Experience). I even have new playlists lined up for some other poets I’m excited to listen to as well. One of the neat aspects of public domain readings is that I can find single poems all over the place, and combine them into playlists for long trips.

Turns out, audio books are awesome.

Today, as I sat on the deck listening to The Raven and then The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I realized just how beautiful it is in the hills. I always realize this, over and over. I can’t even count the number of types of trees I can see just from my deck, even though the big-leaf maple does its best to hide all the rest. It’s really quite beautiful.

Is this your dream,

your fulfillment of being?

a heart leaves on wings,

forgetting – does the brother bird

remember his siblings

when they are old, gone

from their fledgling feathers left

to molt on the forest floor?

melancholy hills cover the sunset

so it strobes over and over –

a million sunsets over the ridge lip

bleeding until the silhouettes run

together in the dark,

and father earth and mother sea

flush the light into the western reach

of endless night.

I’m fae today, stepping gingerly between the shadows of the moon left by lofty branch boughs – silver traces like icy-argentine rivers, like eyelashes of light on the cold, bumpy ground. The moon is too slow for the agile earth, and revolves the wrong way though it tries, like swimming against the current, to travel east, though each night its journey is westward bound, following the sun inevitably. The stars wink, knowingly, for it’s all a ruse.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/audio-books-and-fae-things/ 

Morning Mood

My little brother is graduated, and because his class his relatively small (~100), every student gave a thank-you speech to his/her parents during the ceremony. Because I was only there for my little brother, I spent much of the time reading, but a couple of speeches dragged my attention to the fore. One of the students approached the podium and started off with a stutter. I was immediately yanked into the King's Speech movie, and the heartbreaking tragedy of this student's inability to formulate his words. W-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-would my p-p-p-p-p-p-p-parents p-p-p-p-p-p-pl-pl-please s-s-s-s-stand?

Already I was bawling, and cheering him on with everything in my heart.

Those are bravest who possess no courage at all. If you have no fear, it's not bravery standing before a crowd and speaking. Only by moving through the fear can you defeat it, beat it, and exhibit courage and the tenacity that the King’s Speech expressed so eloquently. So many of the students droned their speeches, or pitched high into a descending resonance with each sentence, portraying an ennui that grinds at my bones. Are they thanking anyone or going through the motions? And I don’t know their stories, but this boy, with the courage of a saint, stood up and bore the pain of stuttering through a two-sentence speech that took him his whole minute to repeat, with all of the emotive outpouring and love that could be.

It filled me, and I was not even the target. It was no wonder that he almost got a standing ovation for his speech, and high-fives from his classmates. I hid my tears – I don’t even have the bravery for those, sometimes.

Now my little brother is graduated; he’s growing up. Already, he’s smarter than I, and I hope, by God’s grace, he’s not long in becoming wiser.

Eventually, Olwen, the crowd dissipates, long in buildup and quick in escape. These trees surround me in tens of thousands, sloping up and beneath in countless disparity, and I know none of their names nor, even, the touch of their high leaves. Not nameless, are they? Glance around with me, do you see the endless they without names? The firs and the false cedar, the maple and pine, the oak, birch, ash, and wisteria vines, the huckleberry, blackberry, and the quaking aspen, the poplar and the elm – I walk below the boughs of many, today, the big-leaf maple clawing its way through the unkempt rhododendron, the keys of maples helicoptering from the tallest branches, the battle for sunlight and its scarcity at the base of these mighty things.

Even the wind reaches me not among the forest and in the valley, where the creek stumbles over pebbles towards the sea, though I suspect not in its wildest dreams can it imagine such a thing, and the pines fill the air with nostalgic mountain redolence. I can tell where I am simply by smelling the leaves and watching the lichen and moss clinging desperately to the limbs of giants, and the trunks of forest legs.

My bare feet quietly skip over sticks and stones and soon carry the color of mud along with me, and the doe recognizes the fae in my soles. I sit in the branches of old-man willow and tarry long in the arms of the burly oak, whose palm stretches out with mighty piano fingers, and tickle the harp strings of the sun, making musical notes of the mountain morning, mournful and full of love.

I don’t think I could ever leave these shores, the pacific northwest lives in me, and I in thee.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/graduation/ ‎
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Castle Caretaker

I collected all of my “100% poetry” computer writings from over the past year (not including prose of any sort), and the compilation is over 11,000 words and 50 pages. It’s odd looking back over them, not only because I consider many of those poems irreparable, ugly, or hopeless, but because they are footsteps along a journey I’ve taken. Faltering, yes, but an obstinate trek nonetheless. I see in those words things others cannot, knowing when I substituted joyful poems for sadness, or vice versa, or wove a net of complicated ideas into an elitist glob. And there are pretty moments, also.

I remember.

And the tears that arrive at the corners of my eyes, well, I remember why, and they are warranted, welcome, for the happiness, fears, failures, pains, hopes recalled, restored to me in moments like these where the soul needs a little refurbishing.

I’m the caretaker of a cobbled castle

stoking forever the struggling furnace.

never do I, even on whim, allow visitors

ringing the threshold carillon in;

my fortress is drafty, and only

by locking and shuttering myself within

might the fires suffice.

yet here they are, outsiders - oh my soul -

drinking the wine, pulling the pork,

leaving trails of grime and dirt,

opening every window and door -

and I care for them all the same

opening the treasures of my domain

which they collect in their inquisitive hands –

overnight they slip out again, whisking

the gold with, with windows wide behind

and every morning, the biting cold,

the drafty emptiness of morning

shoulders in, settling over everything,

and the furnace is insufficient again

Some of the poems I remember writing fondly, and some I scarcely remember writing at all. These poems are the oddest, because usually I can remember journal entries I wrote years ago, merely by reading the opening lines of the page. But as I glanced over my poetry, even pieces I wrote mere weeks past are foreign to my eyes. I cannot recall the emotional backdrop or even the time I spent puzzling together those lines. I had those pieces inside of me, once, but they are mine no longer. 

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/castle-caretaker/

Housing

Housing is like the not-quite-girlfriend I’ve never had. I’m shy about her existence, coy, and hesitate at showing her location. I’m playing a hedging game, and telling no one, and what will her parents, the bureaucracy, think of me? And what if the Mahr is insufficient? And what if she won’t even go to prom, or accept the roses and the card I labored so long on?

So I sequester my resolve and thoughts, knowing there is nothing of substance yet - not yet, no, please, I don’t know – and my heart races the hummingbird along, prodding at every flower until I find the perfect one.

I thought perfect love drove out fear. Does it not? Or is perfect love beyond me?

But it is working. Every day I laugh at smaller things – how hard can anything be? – if I can suffer being an adult for a month. Hah! If only they knew I planned on filling my house with ball-pit balls and legos, why, they certainly wouldn’t grant me a loan. And the sky was a granite countertop, looming overhead, and I, the toddler, beneath its hanging reach. Sometimes, I cannot even stand to touch the sky, or push back the clouds with my eyes.

As a child, I remember reading fairy tales where the king rewarded loyalty or heroic behavior with a boon. The king would say, “You may ask for anything, up to half the kingdom.” Invariably, the hero always asks for the princess’ or prince’s hand in marriage. I always thought this strange, as a child, despite the obviousness of the request, as the whole story always led up to that point. Still, every time I reached that point in the story, I wanted half of the land. I wanted to ask the king for half of the kingdom. I always imagined at this point the king would offer me half the land, and instead of ruling it, I’d set it free. Then I’d be able to wander the forests, the hills, the rivers for an eternity, living wherever I pleased.

I imagined that acquisition of place meant freedom of being.

This is not how it is with housing. I imagine by the time I acquire a house, it will be filled with the paperwork. It’s like the story Kraken, by Mieville, though I realize as I give that analogy, explaining it might spoil the outcome. It is the fear of the Wee Free Men, the magic of names, the Horned King appearing in my waking life, the frightful power of Yubaba in Spirited Away. It’s the losing of names, the scattering of self into the wind. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a character at once discovers that he is being pursued, and he removes his shadow, gives the shadow his name, and leaves, nameless and savage in the form of a bear. This is what I believe the summer will do to me.

But I’m excited. I think after a month, I’ll be free, to a certain extent. And there is a peace in that revelation.

Clouded Time

does it hurt to be so alive, rent open wide, so wide, the entire earth crashes inside, swallowed  in the hole of thee? your heart, its unbelievable size and pathetic gravity, remembers everything in dime-sized eternity.
Life seems to be a window, and I’m not sure how to work the latch. The weather outside oscillates between pleasant and frightful, and is often obscured by night. Am I glancing outside or back at my reflection? Figures pass by, quietly, and the wind rustles the screen. What can I offer the lifelike trees, wandering so close, so distantly?
Only a week until my little brother graduates high school, three weeks until the last of my greatest friends in this world are married (barring brothers), five weeks until I possibly own a house, eight weeks until I live only in that house. There is too much going on. I want to make slow, crazy decisions, like a predator, like a warrior, like a grandfather cat walking through the underbrush, like the tentative steps of the moon over the pool, as the clouds hanging overhead. I saw them each one, caught as daguerreotype frames on a vast, panoramic imax of life: the zeppelin emerging from flames; the mittened hand, reaching through snow; the shark with remora, gliding the ocean heavens; the dragon with arched spine and folded wings, all curves and sweeping motion as the ancient Chinese worm; the archipelago of turtles and ducks; cotton candy piled up and shredded by the coyote cloud.
This, too, is life, and every moment reminds me it’s time to crawl through the window and enter the sun, soak in the elephant sky, and run wherever the wind guides.

June Bug

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/june-bug/

Hello, June. I look away a moment, and you’ve arrived in alexandrite, pearl, sunshine, and a weightless world. Everything’s on me, Heracles, but I’m along the ridge and gone. A season of life is come and aloft, and suddenly I’m a child no longer. May I still be one?
I’m wobbling in place, and flirting with the precipice, and everything is upon me at once: summer, home buying, weddings, graduations, mortgages, goodbyes, travel, moving, faith, love, hope, patience, hurry, flowers, exhaustion, tension, uncertainty, opportunities, roads, activity, danger, water, the warrior, the king, anima, existentialism, philosophy, friendship. It’s the realization that the daffodils, rhododendrons, tulips, roses, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, geraniums, nasturtiums, crimson dragons, maples, poplars, plums, apples and all the beautiful trees are efflorescing in time with the weeds: the horsetail, scotch broom, thistles, dewberries, poison oak, nettles. 
Spring does not choose only joyful blooms, but the weeds spread seeds in sync. And are they not beautiful, also? The blackberries, “big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes / ebon in the hedges, fat / with blue-red juices” as Sylvia Plath wrote; or the belled foxtail and the huckleberries with their lovely little berries hung out; the blue-button flowers, pervasive and poisonous; queen anne’s lace, so blithe despite its near resemblance to hemlock, and the death of Socrates.
My life is such, as wide with weeds as the world, yet full of trees, valleys, rivers, and peaks as well, wildflowers gracing the faces and banks of each. I’m reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, currently, and I see in the fanciful fiction some of me: the journey, the home, the community that comes and goes, the unexpected additions, blessings and curses, and the oddity of it all. But it’s still lovely, and it’s mine, absorbed into a little Macondo in me, like the precious pearl in Steinbeck’s story, both drawing me together and rending me apart. I’m a cross-stitch mess, a knitting nightmare, and I’m likely to be unraveled and re-begun for the summer’s out.
And I’m excited, frightened, ready – anyone can come along.
My heart’s a magic carpet
aloft beneath the heavens
my arabesque thoughts
and minarets, whirl,
a world to resurrect 
with regress and love
I’m signing a curvature of signature into a thousand filed bureaucracies, an ugly necessity of an angry system. So many complaints, so much nightmarish idiocy and everyone covers their tracks with a thousand words of legal mystery. 
I’m too late, too late by half. With some stories, the protagonist never has a chance, but history is writ by the winners, even if there is none. Is this all Pyrrhic?