A Damsel, A Tramp, A Wildcard, A Jack of All Suits: The Story of The Knight

Good Lord.

The Killers are the soundtrack today; you know the drill: open this link and listen while you read.
You know, artistic choices and stuff.

When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?

I'm warning you all now: I'm experiencing a bit of virtually every emotion on the spectrum today. So brace yourself. Here goes.

Becca told me once, "If they can't accept you at your worst, they don't get to see you at your best."

But for me, it's about being accepted at my best. And I don't quite know why that is. I get to the top and somehow throw others down to the bottom. Stay with me...

If you can hold on, 
If you can hold on, hold on.

I'm going through some things, and in the last 72 hours have been filled with love and heartbreak and angst and grief and shame and pain. Overall, I'm overflowing. And at the same time I feel a little empty inside. Like there's this swelling loss so big that it's taking up all the space inside my insides, and it's pushing my lungs up out of my chest and it's hard to breathe and eat and sleep. And I only stop thinking when I'm sleeping.

I'm hurting, because I was called fragile.

Fragile is one thing I am not. Never have been. Never will be. 

I wanna stand up, I wanna let go.
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't.
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men;
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand.

No.

I have faced abandonment and abuse, divorce, depression, hatred, loss.
I have seen cancer and rape and violence.
I have been hit and hurt and cut and thrown aside.
And what hurts most of all of it is the thought that I might not be able to handle any of it again.

Another head aches, another heart breaks.
I'm so much older than I can take.

I'm not asking for it, of course, but in life there's one thing I've learned again and again: Man will not save you. Man will not hold your world together.

You know you gotta help me out.
Don't you put me on the backburner.
You know you gotta help me out. 

You grab your satchel and your wheelbarrow; you load up your skeletons, and you call on your God to get you through. Because no one can carry the burdens of your heart but you. You set off along the railroad tracks, another tramp in the haze of a southern summer and you go make your own story. You march, crawl, scramble, amble, sprint: to your hurdles, your loves, the moments in time when you stand and point to the first person in the room who catches your eye and he changes your life.

And then you go to the next room. And you point out someone else. And someone else changes you, too.

But you never let those cards--the Jacks and Queens that float in and out of your hand through the trick, through the game, through endless turns and rivers--the cards never play for you, never throw your ante into the pot, never raise your stakes, never hold themselves up at the table.

You hold your own. You tramp along, another game awaiting your bid.

It's a valiant knight who makes the attempt to pull you onto his horse and carry you along. But there are some pieces of your life in that wheelbarrow (your family, your desires, your memories, your insecurities) that you cannot leave behind. And in his armor, he will try to lead his horse while you ride; he will push the barrow. And you're there: just riding along.

But eventually you both realize he has done too much. He has carried all your weight. You wrap your arms around the neck of the steed, laughing at the irony of a man so strong who has worn himself so ragged. You tell the horse to carry his master home. You thank the knight for the beauty of his heart. You give him one last look while the rider mounts, and you say goodbye, and thank you to your dear, dear friend.

You know you got to help me out, yeah.
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

And you pull your satchel back over your shoulder. You say a prayer of thanks for the kindness of a wildcard in a moment of need. You realize you lost the hand, but the Dealer is still at the table, and He's got another trick for you. And all the cards are back in His hand. And you've learned another secret of the game.

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.

So many metaphors. Sorry if I lost you. That was maybe more for me than anybody else. And I feel good about it. But here's where I wanted to end up...

I am a strong, strong person

You're gonna bring yourself down.

And I am resilient.
Three weeks ago I was at the bottom: emotional, frustrated, hurt, trapped, angry.
But I built myself a terrace; I climbed my way out. No one else did that climb for me.
I had plenty of concerned hearts on the outside cheering, but for years now I've been the one to pull myself from the hole.


But this time, at the mouth of this crater, I was careless. I saw a hand reaching in to pull me out, and what I thought was one quick pull turned out to be much more, and when I regained my footing, I saw I had thrown the body of that salvation into the place I had only just left. I made a martyr of the grace I was given.

Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done

I didn't realize how tired the knight had become until I saw him fallen and bloody at the the bottom of the hole I'd dug  I never wanted that. No one should ever work so hard only to come out feeling like a failure; like I feel now.


So, I shovel another heartache into the barrow. I say my prayer of thanks, remind myself of the lesson I keep relearning: man will not save me. But oh, it is a beautiful ride when he tries. And for that, I stay grateful, and with grace, I stay away while the knight picks himself up from the pit, rebuilds the terrace, climbs his way out.
 
If you can hold on
If you can hold on.

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.

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.