The Old Year

Listen while you read: "There Goes The Fear" - Doves

Every night is a reset button.

But tonight is something different.

Tonight, I'll close my eyes when I sleep and wish with every muscle and tendon and cell, that I'll wake up to the first day of 2011.

I want a reset, to do the last year over. Not because I made mistakes, although I did, but so I could relive the best moments, and appreciate them, and so I could make choices for the right reasons, not out of desperation or expectation.

If I were to wake up to January 1, 2011, all over again, I'd be in the same room, here in my parents' house. My ears wouldn't be pierced yet, and my grandfather would still be alive.

What I'd do first: I'd wake up in the morning, and call the Foxes of Hickory Hills to ask if they wouldn't mind having me for lunch. I would cherish it. I'd take a picture of the three of us together: a replacement for the one I won't have on my wedding day, and didn't get at my graduation.

If I woke up to the old year, I'd make mostly the same choices, because the point isn't to make some manufactured future where things are "better," but I'd care better for the hearts of the people I love, because I've done a poor job of that for the last six months. I've been selfish, to the point where I lied myself through a relationship that was completely fabricated in my mind--I made it something it would never be.

But I'd still approach that relationship with the same hope, because we came to understand each other better and more easily than anyone ever had before.

My heart was out of sorts for a while because of it, but I learned about myself, and about relationships and people in general. I now I know what it's like to have a man ask me what's wrong, because he knows that I'm thinking about something that has upset me, but that I won't talk about it. All this he can tell by the way I bite my lip when I'm simultaneously frustrated and resigned. Yet he doesn't love me.

I'd do our friendship the same way in a repeat.

There are times when I'd hold my words and wait for better ones to come, because there have been, especially in a Chicago apartment since October, plenty of words that never should have left my mouth. And for all of those, I am still sorry. I was destructive in the wake of the waves that a broken heart made in me. I was some one entirely different.

But I'm better now. If I was to do it again, I'd skip the disasters, and come straight to the healing.

If I woke up to the start of 2011, I'd be so very excited to go back for my last semester of college, and that, I would do better. More studying, more reading, more writing. The new friends I made in the last year: I'd start those friendships all over again. Everyone from Westwoods, in particular. And I would pour into that community ten times over. Those people helped me hold my world together this summer, and I never gave them proper thanks. They were all beautiful and I hold them in my heart. I would be a better youth leader, and I'd be closer to those kids. They'd know I'm still here for them.

I would be a better roommate to my best friends, and I would value living with them so much more, because A207 was a perfect home for us, and I never loved it while I was there, but now I miss that place and the three girls I had lived there with so very much.

I would spend more time with Laura and Jessie. I'd get closer to Jess.

My college friends started sort of slipping away from the scenery of my life before we were even close to leaving CCU, and I wish that even back in our sophomore and junior years, we had kept the bigger group together--all those Shelter boys. I know that people drift apart, and that's obviously a part of life, but I know that a good number of us are still close enough and have the sort of relationships where the distance and time apart will never matter. Boys, I miss you, too.

The summer was a dream. I wouldn't change a thing. Except I would have saved more money, and saved Barry. Poor little guy all crushed up from an RV on I-25. (Barry was my old car, for those of you who don't know. And no one was harmed in the accident.)

If I'd been smarter and worked harder, who knows, maybe there would have been a job waiting for me when I graduated, and maybe I wouldn't have ended up coming home. But it's no matter, because despite this great wish to relive the last year, I've found my way:

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." -- Philippians 4:11-13

I've made it through another Old Year, in the air of loss and change and heartbreak and a hundred other ugly things.

I've made it through another Old Year, because I was swirled with snowflakes and love and laughter and butterflies in the rain. There were fireworks and we held hands and breathed the mountains like we owned them, and we did: they were our private gift from heaven, and we threw worship to the Creator from their roads. We worshiped with our hands and our mouths and our pounding feet and fists. There was love. And wedding cakes in bright and shiny shoes, on my best friend's best day. There was Denver and DC and Lakewood and CCU and Target and Lemont and wonderful everything. I wrote letters. I danced. I laughed, God did I laugh. I walked and I smiled and I cried and I hurt. And there was so much love.

With another shot at that old year that tore up my picture of the world, I'd love more yet.

Cheers to the Old Year, here's to the New Year.

For more love, we'll take 2012 as it comes.

Because You Asked For It

First a note: I'm shutting down my Facebook, so if you use my posts on there to find my blog, you obviously won't be seeing them anymore. You can sign up to get emails when I post, if you want to keep following me, in the box to the right on your screen. Otherwise, let me know and I'll be sure to let you know when I put up new poems/posts. You can email me at emilyymariee@gmail.com if you want to be on that list of emails.

Now for the real stuff...

Listen to The Shins cover The Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes" and hear these words...

How do I know I'm a "writer," and not a writer? I just watched The Simpsons episode "The Book Job" featuring Neil Gaiman and spoofing the Ocean's trilogy, and realized that as Lisa was trying to write the next great teen series, she looked like me.

I've got a cupboard with cans of food, filtered water, and pictures of you.

And I'm not coming out until this is all over.

She reorganizes her CD collection. I create a new Pandora station. She goes to a coffee shop, as do I. She watches the entire series of Friday Night Lights, and I'm watching her. We get mad at sellouts, we play with pencils, we kill time, we write next to nothing.

I know, it's stupid that I'm using Lisa Simpson as a metaphor for my life. I get it. And really, I don't even watch The Simpsons. I was just procrastinating... the life of a "writer." (But give me a little slack: Neil Gaiman was in it, so how could I not watch, right?)

So I'm taking my headphones and a notebook out, and I'm going to start writing a story that's not quite fiction, and I don't know where it will go yet. But I've been asked for it, by my stepfather, and an ex, and some boy in some city some where, and by the smiley-est girl in all of Colorado, and by my own need for recognition, and by that feeling in my heart when I believe in greatness because the right song is on and I close my eyes and my hair is curled and I feel light and like flying.

Because you asked for it, I will create, and I will not abandon my own pages this time.

I don't know what it's about yet, but I know I'll know when it's finished. So now just for the start.

You're right, I'm not giving you much here. But I'll tell you this: today's the day I start the next big thing. It's a story of a girl who's almost me, but not me enough to be somebody else so I can make up all the wonderful and awful things that happen to her.

She loves going to the movies alone because she hopes to see some grumpy boy on a date, looking miserable, so she can nickname him Holden. And she's unstable as Esther Greenwood, but she'd never try to kill herself. And she's just realized that she has faith in herself, really, for the first time, and has moments of infinite feeling, like Charlie the wallflower. She's sweet as Scout, and gentle as her "Hey, Boo." She's as adventurous as Sal Paradise, and thinks about the sadness and wonderfulness of life like him too. She's reaching into something bigger than herself and trying, like Nick Carraway, to look like she belongs.

She's a philosopher, a heartbreaker, a beauty, a poet, a lover. She has been let down, and she is ready to surpass her highest highs. She is, quite simply, a real girl.

She isn't me. But I'll tell her story. I'll write her name.

And today's the day I begin.

Had You Followed Me Home

An old poem: for October and November, for quirks, for happy times and timely goodbyes.

Had You Followed Me Home
For all the things that never happened with you,
and all the things that shouldn't have happened to anyone else.

If you had followed me here, we’d be in the breaking leaves
behind my parents’ house—the dying earrings of the cottonwood
litter the grass, the chopped onions from a mower blade in a lawn salad.
Your warm Pacific blood would move slowly and
you’d beg my worn Midwestern hands to assure you—
You’d stand, swirled by yard dusts and flakes,
and I’d touch your knee and smile with my father’s laughter
when we’d meet him for pizza on an October Thursday in Chicago.
We’d see my high school friends and sing our way to the all-night diner
that’s been made-over (purple ceilings and yellow walls) by the
Greeks who’ve owned it for the last five-hundred years or so.
Holding the menu half open, you’d order—no, ask for—chocolate cake and
my friends would taunt and tease you, actions typically reserved for me.
I’d swipe a taste of the frosting and bury myself in the corner of the booth,
green glows for irises at the impossibility of you on the vinyl with me.
Had you followed me home, you’d have seen Chicago play a symphony of who I am:
the Metra hum beats percussion with State Street brass and theater light strings
and my hometown, my mother’s house—its mellow reeds play woodwind tones.
In grass under cotton shade, we—with closed eyes—would float on
the rising of the suburban orchestra and then, with the birth of these thoughts,
you’d tune the masterpiece and call it love.

A Tribute to Anne & Ian

I want any where but here. I don't care if I'm alone. I just want out of this cubicle.
Seven years: some of them have been here, doing this, for seven years.

How do people do this? They say, "Easy job. Decent pay. Reasonable hours."

I say I'm going insane, sitting here staring at the same three textured little waist-high walls that shut me out from the rest of the office. I'm in the back with a real wall to my right, over the carpeted hedge.

It's almost demeaning. No windows, just three rows of little worlds: phone, computer, catalogs. I need out of here. Everybody should need out of here.

Just on a twenty minute call:
"Ok, ma'am, I'm going to spell that first name back to you. V like Victor-I-E-T like Thomas-R Robert-A, correct?"
She says yes and gets frustrated that I can't find her in the system. Exasperated. I ask her who she's shipping to and look up her boyfriend's name. Mark. I find him and the order confirmation.
My, my, Vietra, what cute little shorts you're getting for the boyfriend. Funny that you first referred to him as your husband. (I don't ask. There's a reason she's shipping directly to the man.)
"Ok ma'am, I apologize for the delay. I've found your order here using Mark's name, and just once more, I'm going to spell your name to make sure we've got it correct on the order here: V Victor-I-E-T-R-A and the last name starts with B like boy?"
And then she snaps, "No! It's a D. It starts with a D. Like... like Dead." Well, that's certainly uplifting, Ms. D--. Golly. "I see. Well let's cancel your original order and open a new one because it looks like the original was put in for cheer shorts, not boxers, and I'm sure Mark would prefer the boxers."
"What's the difference?" she scoffs.
"The cheer shorts are for women and fit like softball shorts, and the boxers are for men. Like boxers, ma'am."
"Oh." Yup.
Here's my issue: I pull up her order, and her initials: D. B. not V.D. Learn how to spell your name, Dietra. Are you even listening?
V like Victor. D like David. Not the same thing. What are you hearing?
Delaware. Another state I've never been to, but right now, I'm glad; at least I'm not going to run into Vie--I mean-- Dietra when I stop for lunch on the way to work.

So I send her boyfriend some boxers and roll my eyes; why don't people hear anything?


I spent last weekend in a blackhole, a parallel of lives that were not my own. And I came out on the other side with few lessons learned:

We all need people.
We all need books.

More noise. More poetry. More revolution.
More plumbers and Netflix and hardwood living rooms and Saturdays and lawyers and busses. And housewives and sisters. More Annie, more Ian.

Yes, more busses and streets and birds and mornings and floors.
Less carpet. Less work. More real. More laughter. More youth.
We need more hummingbirds.

("Yes, Ms. Humphries, I know that the website should tell you that there will be additional charges, and I agree that it is unfair as is... No, I don't write the code for the web so there's really nothing I can do." When did I become such a sell out? I should move to the city; this office is killing me. And Ms. Humphries, please don't call me sleazy again. "Yes ma'am, I do know how to spell sleazy... Yes, I did go to college..." not that it's any of your business. "Yes ma'am, I do have a conscience, a big one. My mother gave it to me, and I don't ever take that for granted... Yes, she is a good woman. She gets it from her mother." Was your mother a good woman, Ms. Humpfries? Are you?)

We get stuck. Not ruts. More like dry troughs or run-off ditches. More like deserts.

This is the desert and I am searching for Moses--lead me out, old bearded patriarch.
Or Aaron, too, a man with a voice.

Someone just lead me out, anywhere but this cubicle. Anywhere but Delaware.

"I'm glad your daughter is in love, Adelaide. Summer must be a happy girl, and I'm sure Charles is a lucky man. We'll get this order in and you'll be receiving your confirmation shortly." Thanks for reminding me about all of us who aren't happy-in-love. Thanks for bringing up summer, that season of empty passion. "Oh, no, thank you ma'am, it was a pleasure, and good luck with the rest of your holiday shopping. Enjoy the season!"

Because it's cold, because it's anything but summer, and I'll find a way to be anywhere but here.

We all need books.

More noise.
More poetry.
More revolution.

And all the president's men.

Anklet

If I were to make a road map,
I’d begin with where I am
which would span into the metro
and plains mountains deserts
oceans continents that haven’t
had the please of my bare
feet digging through their
soil grain dirt dust sand—
our toes sliding over white
porous stone on glowing
cerulean greenblue seas—

The map veins would circle
in the net of longitude-latitude
yarn choking the hemispheres
in place—a fat ham in my
mother’s Chicago Easter Morning
Kitchen, the lines holding meat,
threading spools of fishing line,
wrapping packages.

I’d sketch the map of every thing
that ever passed between us—
word and wave stitched together
with the string around your ankle.

Waking Up

I took a nap for the summer.

I slept in the wake of funerals and baseball games and hot afternoons. I curled up in a nest of cool basement air, of inconsistency and laundry baskets and evenings on front porches in recliners.

I was in a coma of lust for life and other things, a trance of disproportion and an adventure that took me no where in particular, but home.

And home is where I hope to wake up.

A professor told me near the end of last semester that I was in a funk, and that a trip to DC would pull me out. It did something, but I think I ended up losing part of myself in the capitol's old thick air and its sidewalks, which seem to know more than those of Chicago or Denver. The city has been breathing. The people wake and sleep.

When I returned, I moved out of my apartment and into my vagabond summer, the strangest of my life. And though it had some of the best days I'll ever know, I look back on an October morning and laugh: wasted time and useless motions.

What did I read? What did I write? Where did I spend my weekday mornings? When did I run? Who did I love? Why did I cry?

All just to end up where I began, another midwestern girl in a small town with a wish to get out. But this time, things are changing: Maybe I'll go somewhere new.

In the summer slumber, I fell into some directional blindness. I saw nothing of where I was headed until I was there, in everything I did: where I lived, somewhere new nearly every week); when I worked, checking my schedule only the morning of; who I saw, making plans on my own whims and movement. All these things with no intentionality.

And now I feel invisible. Youngest person in the office and all us little women answer the phones: "Thank you for calling. This is Emily. How may I help you today?" followed by either, "Great, may I have your order number?" or "Alright, are you calling with one of our catalogs today?"

What am I doing? Still sleeping.

But the choice now is to be awake and wide-eyed and ready--for a campaign, for a crowd, for a move, a leap, a change. And I will be.

There is no excuse for the post-graduation summer to linger through October morning moons.

So I say, "Good morning Moon," and Mrs. Hill of Indiana puts me on hold to the sound of country music while I'm waiting for her credit card number, then I laugh, and continue, "Good morning Sun."

I'm waking up.

The Weight

I keep wanting to start things, but I'm afraid of finishing.
When you finish something, you want it to be good, to be right, to know perfection.

But that's too much Weight.

The Weight

For Thomas Walter, Stephen Thomas, and Thomas Stephen.

I laid down in my home town, feeling the weight of the dead,

fresh off the flying machine with altitude dropping in my head.

Here, brother, I made it, where’s Grandfather in his eternal bed?

He looked down, and shook his head, and Here was all he said.

Let your cross fall, Grandmother.

Let your burden fall free.

Let your cross fall, Grandmother, and

pass your lover’s timber box on to me.

I picked out dark sister, and I took her to the alley to hide,

then I saw how same and different we are, standing at her side.

I said Hey Sister, where’s your life going, there downtown?

She said, It’s something else—this town ain’t a place to stay around.

Lay your load down, Father.

Let your weight fall free.

Lay your load down, Father, and

pass your handle on to me.

Go hush great-grandchild, there’s nothing you’ll ever say;

It’s us asleep and waiting—to see the man on Judgment Day.

Well Thomas, my brother, our children, he’ll never see,

But I say, Burn our worries, brother, our stories will keep us company.

Let your pain fade, Thomas.

Let your name be free.

Let your pain fade, Thomas, and

pass your name right on to me.

Mister Grief came in shadow stalking, and settled on me, a fog.

He said, I will take your heart, blanket and warm you in my smog.

I told him, I’ll stay awhile, Darling, but I’ll leave you alone, man.

He said, You think you’ll leave, girl, but you’ll come back when can.

Take a load off, child.

Leave it there buried.

Take a load off, child, and

put it in the ground for me.

We held our unthorned roses, and all stood there in line.

Our ungloved hands, were shaking then, knowing it was time

To drop the petals and the bones, with the casket all as one.

We said goodnight, grand man, rest well from everyone.

Take a load off, Grandfather.

Let your spirit fly free.

Take a load off, Grandfather, and

You stay in heaven and keep a watch on me.

Mountain Breath

Miles out from the foothills at the end of a July light:

look up and west.

Peer beyond those ridges, to the verdant valleys

nestled between weighty hills.

Then, when the sun hangs low,

and the clouds grow heavy, spilling with wet pearls

You will see the earth reborn.

Breath goes climbing and life comes falling, in drops, sheets.

Watch it come graceful and smooth over all,

heaven and creation.

I stood east of the range, and

saw the great land go up,

crawling through golden, misted flame,

reaching into the lungs of God.

He spat life down on the hills.

I watched with the eye He gave me,

and I will tell you—with the rhythm of

the rain in my chest—this:

This is the way of the rain,

the Creator falling with the air.

Montage with And Today

I've started a couple different posts over the last few weeks, but haven't finished any of them.

So rather than starting another that I likely won't finish, I'm posting all the scraps together.

Snippets of my brain all weaved in patchwork and sad melody. La dee da.

First, listen to a sad song while you read through the first few posts. The song in the link, Manchester Orchestra's "Sleeper 1972" has been a backdrop for the last two months of my life. It's beautiful and heartbreaking.

3/27/11

On Silence

We had a moment at chapel last week when they had us all quiet down and pray in silence.

But I didn't think it felt the way it should... the creaking of bleachers and rustling of paper.

I think if we really heard silence, we'd be terrified.
We are caught in the noise of our lives.
Wadsworth hums outside my window.
My laptop purrs on my bed.

My breathing tenses and flows.

My roommate closes, opens doors.

My mind jumps on drums and thoughts and clatters.
Words dance over highways in our brains and if you concentrate, sometimes you can feel them between your ears: which synapses are firing, which cortex is acting.

And they pop and fly and fuse and all at once we get going in a dozen directions and suddenly the peace we were trying to find in the quiet is a race inside us--to find conclusions and to really feel the contentment we try to believe in.

But I don't believe it at all.

4/11/11

Yessing

I'm sad about some things, and it's making it hard to write. I fall into these cycles of pushing everybody away for little spurts of time, and I'm approaching one. And the rough thing is that there are people I don't want to leave me, to get past me.
I worry that I say all the same things over and over and that these rambling thoughts start to all sound repetitious and shallow.
I think I repeat myself---I say the same things and live the same patterns and make the same choices and give in to the same fears.
I think I'm unprepared for happiness--that I'm afraid of it. I freak out about the future so I'll feel like I'm preparing, but really, I'm circling.
Commitment makes me shudder. Saying yes to anything means saying no to everything else. So I worry so much about missing anything that I hardly let myself ever really experience anything.
And life is about to become a bit bigger. City and family and choices and saying no, so I can say yes. I've been afraid of yessing anything for a long time, and sure, there have been exceptions, but for the most part I've stopped at cliff edges and backed away with apologies and insecurities: I bailed on China, I can't choose what September should be, or where my life will feel at home. I want the future to fall into my lap, fully stocked with adventure and love.

4/17/11

Choosing, further thoughts on 'Yessing'

Life, at its barest, demands little of us. But the breathing and moving and living of every day requires that we make decisions. We have to choose.
There's a flooding phenomenon in my generation for a dislike of decision-making. I'm certainly guilty of this; I've told friends recently that choosing what to do after graduating from university is like marrying something. Picking one avenue to pursue, and leaving the rest to fall to the wind. And I'm not talking about leaving paths for other days; Frost covered that business, and it isn't what I'm addressing here.
Decision making. Choosing.
It takes saying no: prioritizing, and letting go of the other options.
So settling into some role, some thing for the next year of my life is commitment, but it isn't marriage. It isn't exclusive and picking an opportunity doesn't mean saying no to all others; in fact, chances are, one will lead to another.
But I worry. I get scared. Jobs, connections, relationships, everything. Terrified.
It takes responsibility and courage just to live, to function and sleep and commit to being ourselves and doing the best we can.
Then there's risk. We have to ask ourselves what we want, and we have to answer--stand to make a choice.
I'm asking myself--and ask yourself--'What do I want?'
And how big and how much and where? And how much am I willing to say no to, to get those things? What am I willing to sacrifice to be able to grasp the things that are yet out of my reach? And why, to all of these inquiries?
How do I answer, and what do I say to the questions I have to ask?
Do I want places or people or opportunities or experiences---or all of them?
What am I willing to risk?

5/8/11

In Chaos

Today's soundtrack. Aqualung: "Broken Bones"

Another sad sort of song. Sing sing sing.

Simultaneously graduating and grieving, I've found, makes for uncomfortable handshakes and repetition of all the same things: No, I'm not quite sure when I'm leaving; Oh I haven't quite figured out what comes next; Yeah, it was a great time at CCU; I've been friends with your son for years and he's one of my favorites here; She's a wonderful woman; Yes, I'll miss them.

I miss you. I already do.

The thing is, I miss everybody when they're not there. I cry when listen through Transatlanticism. And I miss Dr. Woodruff every time I write or read a poem. I miss the relationships I had with all my crazy friends from high school and the early days of college. I miss Uncle Rich when the Bears play and when it snows. I miss the dynamics that used to characterize my life because at some point along the way I started with this grieving and I haven't stopped.

And now I'm grieving all the moments I won't have with my grandfather in the future. My children will never meet him, and he won't see his grandchildren marry. The sons- and daughters-in-law won't understand who he was.

That was why I loved Salinger's Holden the first time I read Catcher.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

I do; I do miss everybody all the time because I can't stop talking about the people in my life, and because I love hard. It's exhausting, wanting to be everywhere, to be everything to anyone who might need anything. And it's exhausting to fail.

I want to see heaven, and know what it's like, if my grandfather is sitting with his mother, catching up and playing cards. If Dr. Woodruff has been having lunch dates with T.S. Eliot or anybody like that up there.

I want more time. To finish, to smile, to breathe. I'm always in such a hurry, getting from one thing to the next and trying to do and solve and fix and save and salvage.

5/28/11

Saturdays: Plans

Plans fall apart on a Saturday night, so I finally post on my blog. [Clearly, this didn't actually happen.]
A lot has happened lately, and I thought that at the end of all of it, I'd sit back and feel some deep relief and profound change. An "I just grew up so much in the last two months I can't even believe it" kind of thing, you know?
But instead, yesterday, I was sitting at the pool with a friend and I thought to myself, I haven't really changed at all from last summer. I'm still lusting for the sun and burying myself in novels. I'm wishing I was younger and things felt easier, or that I could fast forward to a point in time where these things all begin to make sense.

I've been obsessing over plans for months now, yet I still don't feel like I've made much progress. I said a big "No" in a case that was incredibly difficult, and I've realized home isn't what it used to be, but it never is.

And today...

In rereading all these posts and pasting them together, I think the main reason I've had such trouble finishing them is that they're all just about me and getting inside my head. That's not what I set out to do here. It is not what I want.

The problem then, as a result, is that I don't know what I do want. Always the problem, really.

Relationships? I'm utterly lost these days. The major shut out I predicted in the scrap of "Yessing" absolutely came true. (That said, if I haven't responded to Facebook messages or texts or phone calls, I'll call this my reason; apologies.)

One thing I know: I want to get back to bigger things, the bigger things at work. The abstract and undefined.

So I'll try to do that more in the coming posts while I'm sorting things out here and getting my head back on straight. It seems that I'm finally managing that after a couple months of being pretty scattered.

I said goodbyes and found some peace... now just to find a place to live.

I appreciate your patience, and as always, thank you for reading.

Earthquakes

I think my generation is going to feel an earthquake this week.

Osama bin Laden is dead. I've known for just about an hour now, as I sit in my room, at 10:45 PM in Denver on May 1, 2011. Sixty-six years after Hitler's death was announced. What did Hitler's death do for the families of his victims? Was there rejoicing, or quiet closure? (I wasn't there, and I don't know, so maybe I shouldn't use that parallel.)

I'm already thinking about the conspiracy lines people are drawing. Like the coincidences of life are scripted by the Victorians.

I'm speechless and happy and angry all at once. People are celebrating the death of a man.

I am rejoicing too, but not at death. I am thankful for closure that is settling over some of the survivors of 9/11. I am hopeful for the return of American troops.

And I am fearful.

Tomorrow, Sarah Palin is coming to speak at CCU for the Tribute To The Troops. Does a man's death diffuse the anger of potential protesters? Alright, good.

But what about the response now? The whole world is seeing America rejoice in the death of a man and I am attached to the news just the same as I was on the second Tuesday of September when I was in seventh grade.

I can't stop.

My generation is going to be shaking, because some of us are shouting USA, because we believe we've met a goal, we've made a safer world, we've showed evil what's what.

But I am aware the hiss of evil, and its sting, and I do not rejoice at suffering.

I am weary of men.

I trust my God, and I rest in knowing that plans are in hands bigger than the universe itself.

But I can't say that the world will smile at the show we've made of America tonight.

How will individuals who have never been to America see the rallies of my peers outside the White House and at Ground Zero? Thousands of people cheering. Will the world understand that this is our response to nearly ten years of agony?

Will they know that our cheers--some of us--are for the peace we hope to see?

Reports say that Pakistani officials were unaware that bin Laden was within their borders. How will Americans respond? Floating levels of approval for Obama now like Bush had based on war "success" and casualties? Will tension with Pakistan rise?

I have anxieties indeed.

My generation, all of us, saw tragedy when we were children. We saw steel giants collapse and we were impressionable and our lives were changed, impacted more than we can even understand.

And now, what? I don't think the death of bin Laden should be a platform for jubilant celebration. Obviously, others in my generation disagree. A college student at Ground Zero said on MSNBC: "I feel great right now. We need to party right now. He's dead."

I think this is only a single battle, not the weight to tip the scale toward a "win" in war.

My generation will feel the quake. Because we are young and we are strong and a man hurt the country we were born in and we got voices--politically, philosophically, socially.

This man had a huge impression on us, and he is dead. That doesn't make the impression go away. His actions affected my life. His death... his death means almost nothing to me as an individual.

I am not rejoicing in his death.

My peers, the masses of them: they are drunk on the air of his demise.

I feel the tremors.

Notes.

Hi all,

Glad you're stopping by again. I don't have much to say tonight, but I wanted to check in since it's been over a week since my last post. I spent a few days out of town and have had a bit of a whirlwind life this month so I've gotten a bit behind from where I want to be.

One thing I've been meaning to do though, is to write this quick message. Over the course of the next couple weeks, I'm going to be pulling already-posted poems off the blog. At this point, I'm not overly concerned about material being plagiarized/stolen, but it may be an issue in the future, and further, I'm getting ready to send material out over the summer in hopes of getting published.

So, I'll be starting with the oldest poems and taking down poems from each month at the end of the week... meaning I'll take the January poems off on Saturday, and the February ones off the week after that.

I wanted to let you know so you'd all have a chance to look through them if you had any desire to do so. I'll make poems available to individuals by email after they've been removed if you request them.

Now, that business is all out of the way. I've been writing some pieces about perception and childhood and my grandfather, so you can expect to see some selections from those in the coming weeks. And I had a zombie dream last night that I want to write about here, so we'll see how that goes.

We're in our last two days of classes, and have finals next week, so it might be another week before I get to posting, but you'll hear about it when I do. Thanks for checking in, everybody. Have a good week! And as always, thanks for reading.

-E

I Was Climbing In The Rain (Brand New Poem!)

When the kettle came off the stove
with a whistle and the smell of forgotten toast
I cursed the coils for trapping food beneath themselves.
Such greed displayed in the morsel hoarded there.
I thought it selfish.
And the steam
when I emptied the steel out into my glass mug
crawled up the air and I felt it on my cheek
because it was a quiet love letter
from some man some place.
I closed my eyes and felt its warmth to my shoulders and down
so I breathed and grabbed my keys.

It was raining and I thought it ought to be snow—
quiet and cold—just the same with the
sliding of tires on the hill and the way my eyes felt.
But my cheeks were still warm from the steam and
the color stayed until I opened my empty mailbox
and remembered my eye-open dreams
where letters are for novels and
tea waited, steeping for me.

I smiled at the sadness of reality
that I, with words like these, might
not know an address for their envelope.
So in the buzzing yellow and the icy drops
I laughed like tobacco at the thought of you,
and how you had let me become a drug
that you could swirl in your fingers and exhale
in any weather.
Smoke to climb the same air, to break under falling love.

How Important is the Who?

I've started five or so posts in the last week, and haven't finished any.

I've started a lot of things, and only finished some.

There's an incompleteness, a sublimity. Something to do with Spring not being quite here yet, with Summer feeling so far, with so much left to do.

And life is changing all the time but some days we feel it more than others, and right now I feel it everywhere and deeply.

I've been particularly afraid of things lately: death, love, the future, uncalculated change.

All of these play into who I am, aside from what is happening to me.

Someone pointed out to me recently that these words, these thoughts--they're coming from some place far inside my head. I think that got to me a little bit.

I'm thinking about how many things I can say before I run out of anything I can even put into words, because we do run out and quiet down and fall apart.

Why do we listen? Why do we ask questions? Why do we give up moments for some people, things, places, experiences---and not others? Is that who we are, or just what we do?

I don't mean that in an apathetic why do anything at all kind of way, but as a serious series of questions: how do we decide what to spend parts of our lives on? What is our currency, and are we responsible in our spending?

My time is undoubtedly the commodity I trade with most. It is the most valuable thing I share without great restriction, and I think I do so generously. I love giving my time to people. I much less like spending it on tasks: cleaning, driving, working, studying. Writing and reading are exceptions.

I wonder if that's pretty average, if most people find that time is the best way to show a person love, or at the very least, concern.

I don't much like talking on the phone, and I like texting even less. But spending a few minutes with a friend, even just in passing on campus or at work--that I love.

So I'm spending time with these words to let you into some far space in my mind and I'm not quite sure how to feel about the lack of time spent with you. Do you feel like you've spent time with me? Like you know me any better for having giving moments of your day here---for the sacrifice of time you're giving?

Because I want these things to be worth your time, to be worth the trip into my head without my knowing who you are when you enter.

I read Virginia Woolf for class last week. In her piece titled "A Sketch of the Past," she makes a comment that strikes me:
"Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties--one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being... I do not know how far I differ from other people. That is another memoir writer's difficulty. Yet to describe oneself truly one much have some standard of comparison."

Woolf was writing about memories, and I do a bit of that, but hardly.

But it makes me wonder. How important is the who of the what that happened, if it's only me. And here I am, saying what's happening. And nothing of who I am. I think the who is irrelevant, but I also think I may be wrong.

I think I'm too far into my thoughts, and wrapped in myself tonight. I think I've asked plenty of questions and that I need to answer to myself.

There's something in the way, I feel, of connecting to people in these words. I believe I am capable. I am unsure of any success I may have had of late.

I am not a memoir writer; this I know.
I started with intentions, well-defined.

Those goals might be changing.

How important is the what here when the who is staying the same?

Are you here for the words, or are you here because they're mine?

And you. Do you wear your hair the way you do because it's easy, or looks nice--because it's you? Or is it you because it's cool? Hairstyles don't define who you are.

Nor do fads or clothes or accessories.

Are you letting anybody in your head? Or just trying to get them to turn theirs in your direction?

How important is who you are? How important is what you do?

Child, Live Slow.

We had a Spring rain today. It was cold and beautiful.

And everyone in the city knew that it would get colder and the rain would slow itself in the downward freeze. So the people in the city put on their coats and shoes and laughed at the sandals left on the bedroom floor from last night.

We people, in the cities and the towns and the hills and the country, we get anxious.

We anticipate. And we prepare. We fret.

We're always living so quickly.

Ask around. How are people feeling about the next month. People--they'll tell you--people are overwhelmed.

I wonder why we get so weighted down. Why today when I turned my music off and opened the window and listened to the rain turn to snow, why I was amazed at how much peace I felt, even though doing so made me miss out on other things.

I sat and closed my eyes, back to the wall in my room, and thought about what was happening through the wall and the glass.

The temperature dropped. The water in the sky froze. The people drove slower.

The little green buds that I smile at in the morning tightened up and curled inside themselves telling the Winter breath, We've captured the light of the sun, chill all you desire.

We've captured the light of the sun. For a moment, I wasn't anxious, and I anticipated nothing. I only perceived. It was calm and mild and some kind of intoxicating.

I heard the rain turn to snow.

And I realized that I'm people---people who drive too fast and talk too much and live too quick.

So I start to make promises: I'll slow down. I'll listen. I'll breathe.

I'll watch the season change from slumber to birth and I won't take the next month for granted.

And I'll remember little things.

Today I remembered that we sat three to a seat on the school bus. We were small enough to fit three of us in a seat. I had forgotten.

And I saw two pictures of my cousin's son, one from two summers ago, and one from last week. He's almost two. He grew so fast. Lived quickly.

Because when we're children, we don't know how to live slow, how to age slow.

When we're children, we heal fast and learn fast and change fast.

And what's hard to do when we're not children anymore?

To heal, to learn, to change. Let alone to do any of these things quickly.

So I want to slow down my living.

Not like in a country song that sets me on the porch watching the clouds and reflecting on old times. And not in dirty nostalgia or forlorn longing.

I want to slow down and absorb the mess of life that surrounds me, the slop that ends up in the gutters after a day of half rain, half snow. I want to understand the ticking of the clocks on the roads that connect me to the people I love. Because we're all connected by roads, to Chicago and Boston and out West and down South. The same stretches of pavement and dirt are woven together all over the country where we lay our heads.

And some of you---some of you are reading this across oceans and I'm sure at least one of you is shaking your head at my logic. You're in Germany or Russia or China or South Korea or Malaysia or some dusty or rainy or beautiful or sad place off this continent.

But we're breathing the same air.

I may not be able to take a single path on asphalt to get to where you are, but we are breathing the same air, the great forgotten cloud.

And I want for us to indulge in every breath--marvel at the slow aging of the middle years and the slow learning of the adolescent ones. The slow healing of the late and last days.

I want to appreciate every glimpse I have of the foothills: when I drive to school, walk to class, look out the windows. I want to stop taking mountain views for granted. And I want to remember why I love the plains of the Midwest, the flatness, and the way the clouds don't look the same without a contrast for their depth.

I want to remember what it was like to grow and learn and heal fast, but to live slow like the solitary moments of a child in the summer when the days are longer than the waking hours and the sun is slow and lingering like heaven and perfection at the little child's horizon: just beyond the reach of her hand as she giggles and falls asleep.

The slow settling of warmth after a cloudy morning. The thick heat of Illinois.

I want to drink it. I want to wear it on my skin and in my eyes.

I want to look out the window at the frozen buds--still green and very much alive--and hear the echo that tells me We've captured the warmth of the sun, and we'll heal fast, grow fast, learn fast. We'll live slow and steady, unrolling in the Summer and drifting in our crispy Autumn plunge.

We'll listen to the rain turn to snow, and back again.

We'll live slow and happy in the light of the sun.

Cub

November 2010

If the cub can’t trust the lion, how could she trust a man?
If the one can’t trust the others, how could she trust the land?

She hunts with the lioness
and wrestles with playmates—
not yet lifemates in her early days.
With her own kind,
their paws and manes,
she learns to fight, and yes,
she preys.
Until preyed upon.
The lion throws his weight on her back,
resilient spine, until it breaks.
The lion comes over her
stifles with knotted mane,
greater mass, mass of disgust.
He overtakes the cub of the pride,
her pride.

If the cub can’t trust the lion, how could she trust a man?

I Was The Author + Doctor Friend

First, thank you, all of you, so very much for reading this page.

Whether this is your first visit to my blog, or if you've read every post, or if you fit somewhere in between, your simply opening these posts and giving my words your time is amazing.

I'm overwhelmed every time.

And secondly, a special thank you to the dozen or so of you who have commented, Facebooked, texted, and even called in response to my last post, She Said I Lived.

If you haven't looked at it, I request that you do before you read the poem below; you'll understand the context and see how the two relate.

Several of you shared with me that you've faced depression and the darker side of your selves. Knowing that I am not and was not alone in feeling that sadness has been encouraging, and beautiful.

I'm humbled to see others speak to my heart after hearing that I've spoken to theirs.

Thank you each, deeply.

The following poem is about the secondary unsung hero of my high school depression. She was my psychologist starting the week I started as a freshman, fourteen and falling in every direction.

I haven't seen her in over three years, but she's still as much here for me just by existing and living as she was when I sat in her office during my teen years. She was beautiful and kind, and she too, loved me.

My friend's sister saw her first, and then my mother, and then me. But she treated me like my story was the most important in the world--like I was the only narrator--even though the characters had already been written by other authors.
Now I see how selfish I was and how I rambled about my high school indulgences, but her investment in the narrative that came from my heart and my head and my fears--that was all I needed.

My time with her taught me that listening and meaning it is love, and means as much.

This is for her.

Fall 2009

Doctor Friend

It was one hour every-other Thursday at seven
through high school but that had almost
nothing to do with it
It started with my father saying bitch and
didn’t have a definitive end because there
was a job so I stopped
She saw me every time

I sat on a white couch with obnoxious red flowers
and more throw pillows than I could squeeze
between to sit comfortably
I stared at the short legs of the brown leather arm chair
and memorized the simple pattern of the olive green
carpet worn thin by drumming feet
There was always a Diet Coke—with a bent straw
stained by dark pink lipstick—that sat on the glass
side table amid messy stacks of notes
The walls were lined with shelves which were loaded
with volumes on abuse and eating disorders and anxiety
and they all had wordy titles
She watched me every time

She wore nice outfits because she made nice money
but there never was enough color in her attire
to match how pretty she was
She did her makeup in a way that made her blue eyes
look less anatomical and more like jewelry that matched
her diamond ring and silver cross
Her nails were always painted and cheeks were always blushed
whether she was smiling in her joy for me or grimacing with
empathy or something like it as I spoke
She sat with her legs crossed and hands folded mostly looking
quite composed and comfortable but her bouncing
foot said otherwise
She heard me every time

I shared stories of my world and received advice as it was her job
to dissect my issues and hear my joys as our lives were lived
and hour by hour, years passed
She changed me every time

For Stephanie

She Said I Lived

I'm being transparent: I'm sharing dark corners of my heart. So prepare yourself.

It was last night and I felt empty after the words fell out.

These words.

She said, "You lived. There were lots and lots of days when all I wanted was to know was that you’d be alive at 21."

And I am. But she didn't know for sure that I would be.

She was not afraid of car accidents or heart arrhythmias or fires.

She was afraid of the me alone in night hours and quiet depression.

And she didn't know for sure that there were times when I laid in the bath tub wishing I could fill my lungs with water. But there were. And times when I wished my little Bic razors were bigger and sharper and more dangerous.

I love her more than life, and the fear of what my death could have done to her was the greatest motivation to keep living.

This is heavy; you can stop if you want. But I'll keep going.

I wonder now who else knew how bad it was, if my siblings had any idea, if my friends ever thought they'd get a call from their parents telling them to come home because they'd heard from mine. Or if my teachers thought it.

Could they tell by my face or my tone or my walk that I wanted to die?

It was high school. I thought I was normal. Maybe I was.

Most of us have had seasons of dark days, when it seems that maybe it'd be better to sleep, better to fall, safer or simpler to end the breathing and breaking.

We've had pains and wished for their quick release from our bodies, their cages.

I was sad, and angry, and impossible.

But I was a church kid, a youth group kid. I wrote in the school paper. I played basketball. I ran around with the drama kids for a while.

I wasn't sitting in my room in the dark all the time, watching twisted shows or playing violent games. But I'd play solitaire for hours, and I'd fill up my journals with song lyrics and short lines--not quite poems--and pleas for someone to understand what was happening in my head.

I don't know if anyone did back then, if anybody really understood, because they didn't know.

I hid so much of what I was feeling and the blackness of my thoughts, and I read the liturgy at Mass, and I edited news stories about I-don't-remember-what. And I stayed out all night time or two, and got brought home once for trying. I drank and I cried and I wished that I had some idea of what love should have been.

I slept in the basement in the summer because it was darker.

I went to bookstores waiting for an encounter with some person who would change my life, and I thought he never came.

And really, I haven't stopped. I realize every few months that my frequenting coffee shops and book stores has more to do with a belief in serendipity and moments of perfection than it does with my inability to be productive at home.

But really, I've met him, time and again, just not the right one. And I'm doing okay.

He was down the path, and next door, and he was halfway between me and home, and he was in class, and ahead of me, and in my house, and more than once he was a friend of a friend, and in the right place for me at a moment when we locked eyes and I half smiled and probably blushed and felt something for a moment.

But I never needed them. I thought I did, but I didn't.

I could tell you what it was, but I'd rather you ask me and let me take you to one of those coffee shops and share something real, so you can see my face when I say again, "She said I lived."

Because I did and I am and I do.

Now comes the time when I make a point: I was sad and angry and impossible. And a danger to myself.

And now I'm living, talking about the days of the past, that don't hang over me anymore. Of course I experience bouts of apathy as months pass, and sometimes I fear that depression is in my head again.

But I tell you this: Despite the weighty color and clouds, through the most unstable years of adolescence, I lived.

And it was a choice.

I love my mom more than nearly everything I've ever known, and what I know because of her is that love is indeed enough. To save a person. To recreate a life. To resurrect the damaged, and make it beautiful and blessed.

What I know is that love saved my life, her love for me, and mine for her.

Because she is a saint, because she knows pain, and loss, and searing wounds.

Because she knows me and she loves me and she told me that a hand knit me together in her womb, and when I was old enough to understand, I went searching for proof and I found it, and asked that same hand to pull itself into my chest and to feel the contours of my heart and to know it. To test me and know my anxious thoughts.

And there were many.

But I was lead away.

Away from the anxieties and angers and fears and darkness.

All because of love. All from the truth poured out in screaming tears on my bedroom floor.

My mother showed me what it is to love, and she said I lived.

I lived because she loved.

I love because I live.

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

This Is A Grace: The Chemistry of Resilience

This one's important: Open up the link and listen. And read.

Where are we standing? What is our foundation?

Do we believe the words we say, the psalms we sing?

Because the answers to these things matter, so we begin here:

Breathe.

Let's see

if we

can work.

Futile was meant to acknowledge that there are times when words do nothing for us. What do you say when a mother dies or when a baby is sick? And grandparents--how do you reconcile the aging and disappearance--however gradual or sudden--of the matriarchs and patriarchs of our births and breakfasts and parents. So words teach nothing, change nothing, but things happen.

Life moves and bends to its own will--no, a higher will--nothing within our grasp, and only marginally within our ability to comprehend.

How do you console the people you love when your desires say "Ache, only aching"?

You breathe. Count your blessings, title your stories, and serialize your library.

You say goodbyes and place low shaking hands on shoulders and spines.

It is not healing, but it is something.

I'm grasping for mercy, shreds of redemption to neutralize the sadness of all these unstitched stories.

You've got me in your sea,

Braced until the end.

We are tattered; we are salvaged.

We find something in our pain.

This is a grace.

We find in our pain the ability to heal: the chemistry of resilience. It is a chaotic enigma that is birthed in our bones and matured in our bending years of immunizations and practical imbalance.

We pull the staples from our hearts and lay them to rest with the dead, no grudge to be held at the absence of miracle.

Perhaps we call this acceptance. Others will say denial or surrender. Titles are yet irrelevant: futile words.

Benign or malignant. Terminal, stable, recovering. In remission.

Superfluous.

All meaningless in the grace we find: we were given the ability to bend without breaking, to wither without fading, to feel without dying. But we die every day to the staples and strings that hold our fringes to the tucked edges of composure.

We are master needleworkers. We just never knew.

It's hard to believe that one year ago.

One year ago we were hurting, and we still are.

We demand healing with expectation and remorse, laden with color and tragedy.

One year ago, I was finding out I had missed the last class I ever should've had with my greatest mentor. I was melting under Spring sunlight while the diagnosis was sprinkled over enameled tables and patterned carpet in a white walled room.

I still wonder what the breathing sounded like after she said it, but I wasn't there, and never saw her again.

And as the months came to us, we lost her. At least, those are the words we use.

But I don't think she was anymore lost than she ever was; she was only leaving.

It's not so easy in other stories. Not that grieving her is easy.

We do lose people in death some times, but more in age: the way in creeps into their heads--sneaky small and limber--and cuts the wiring, leaving them short-circuited.

The years do things to us, to the people we have always loved, that we don't understand.

We're something in sight of everything all our hopes had in mind.

Years make Grandma forget which of her children went to which colleges. And what their friends names were.

Years make Grandpa say things to me that I can't accept or comprehend. The time turns him into someone else, who doesn't see me as an eight year old who wants to tell him that she took her nap for the day. The time brings his cancer back, and the decade nuzzles into his spine and rests there.

Years bury our secrets, and age our children.

Years make us love more and less and strangely.

Years break our kitchen tables and fade our scars-from trees and men and scalpels.

And years teach us, not words.

It's hard to believe that one year ago...

was only that, a year ago.

This--the quick passing of time over our sorrows and memories and sleep--this is a grace.

And the words that we use in the moments between are indeed futile at the end of things. It is something more profound than what the term loss can communicate. It is absence. And the impossibility of the presence of what we had planned is more than grief, more than aching. It is numbness and vulnerability and anger and so many things we cannot name.

The chemistry of resilience: a science we learn as a result of the biology of man.

And I'll hold you now, forever I know.

We are not breaking; we bend. And heal.
We stitch and save.

So we begin: breathe.

I have no words to heal, only thread and time.

Song "Let's See If We Can" by the fantastical musicians, Green or Blue. I write to their music pretty often and am glad they're making it. Check them out on Facebook or Youtube and listen to their stuff.

And as always, thanks for reading.

A Breathy Defense of My Reckless Disclosures

December 2009

It’s ever so peculiar—

how we tend to find something new
to say about the same things
whether they are old or unimpressive
or unamusing

that we assume words addressed to
anonymous audiences are really
calling our names or looking at us
sideways

And it’s not quite right

that I told a man it’s a lot easier to tell my
secrets to a holiday card with a calligraphy
pen than to actually vocalize them
out loud

that we keep living our lives after
parts of them end—not stages like
adolescence or relationships—but
separate worlds

It’s appalling—

the way I forgot about the boy I
abandoned when we were children
and that I didn’t realize it for
five years

that I am so thoughtful of these things
in coffee shop moments
but that they escape me in exhales
and regularly forgotten motions

Yet I—we—forget

We do

Futile.

You get Sufjan, and he's a treat, so listen.

We have stories that are secrets in their own regards--silence in their tellings.

There are words we never want to say or hear or feel.

And these are such: Cancer. Love. Death. Distance. Time.

They are harmful and breaking and painful and I fear them. I do not feel safe or happy or comforted. Right now, not even by love. But that's for another day.

I'm surrounded by cancer, in the women we've lost, the men we're losing, the places we're going.

And I feel useless. I can do nothing. I can pray. I can cry.

I've done those things, and I retire in curious March sunsets with nothing, feeling nothing, feeling scared.

I do-love you-I do.

I can change the way I feel, and the way I experience what happens around me, but I cannot prevent the spinning of the earth, or dark empty breath and its stopping, or the growing of tumors.

I cannot force life to function under the realm of my whims.

To try is futile.

So I do nothing and cry and pray.

I see the astounding simplicity of who people are---

In strings and salads, running shoes, tobacco pipes, haircuts, hubcabs, VHS tapes, nail polish, name tags and needles--for creating and destroying-- and in crossword puzzles, veils, backpacks, sandwich bags, and text books.

I see truth in picnic tables and Midwestern Oaks and the conversations we've never had with the people who have always needed them most.

We see truth and we keep quiet.

And I would say I love you, but saying it out loud is hard.

So I won't say it at all and I won't stay very long.

There are things we ought to say, and love we ought to give.

But we are frightened and foolish.

And words are futile devices.

More from Sufjan. Listen. We can do much more together.