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.

Give A Man A Dollar

I know many men named Michael.

One is Mykael.

One is a dear old friend who knows all my secrets.

One shares his name with a dead celebrity and is my go-to for zombie apocalypse advice.

Two went to grade school with me for years.

One is my father's brother-in-law.

One is my mother's brother.

One is my step-father's brother.

One is my cousin.

One was in my high school youth group.

One dated my best friend for a minute one summer.

Some are brothers of friends.

Some I went to high school with.

Some I met in college.

And this is a story about one of those Michaels: Michael Krepps.

I met Michael during my sophomore year of college. The next year, he lived with my friend Austin, whose brother and sister-in-law would have a group of us students over once a week to hang out and play cards and eat Pizza Rolls. I went to EJ and Chad's with Austin and Michael and a collection of other friends most Wednesday nights over the course of three school years.

Michael was always pretty quiet, but as he began to open up, I realized how funny and genuinely caring he was. He spent last Spring studying abroad, and unfortunately for me, it was my last season in Colorado so I haven't seen much of him over the last year. I still have a Paragon magazine (our college's yearly literary publication) sitting just across the room from me with a post-it on it that reads: "Send me to Michael!" along with the Florida address of the office for the mission organization he worked with this summer. (Sorry I never sent that Michael!)

Being so far away, sometimes you forget to remember the people who played different roles in your life. Ready for a cheesy metaphor in which I explain Michael's role in mine? Here it is:

If my life was a weekend-long party, the main players like my family and closest friends would be sitting with me on the patio hanging out and telling stories. There would be other people mingling and scattered about throughout the venue, maybe a restaurant or some kind of big estate. Michael would be the guy who would show up early to help set up on Thursday. He'd quietly help until things were pretty much set, and at some point he'd slip out and head home. He might not even come to the party on Friday, but at some point during the event, he'd show up while I was feeling overwhelmed about running out of guacamole, and he'd stand in the kitchen with me cutting avocados and hearing about what he'd missed, just smiling, for as long as I needed him. I'd dash out of the room to go refill the bowls, and he'd wander the party, people watching, until he found someone else on the sidelines. It would probably be someone that I'd just met once or twice, but who had to be at the party because to some degree, they were an important part of my life.

Michael would be the guy to sit down and ask that person their story, and to invest a little bit of who he was.

Like I said, it's a cheesy metaphor, but the point is that Michael takes notice of the broken or the lonely, and he cares for them. He is a seedplanter, and a thoughtful, kind man. I'm proud to have been a friend to him. And now I'm excited to share what he's doing.

On January 31, Michael kicked off an experiment: His goal is to ask 1 million people to each donate a dollar to him over the course of the next year. He has pledged that the first $10,000 will go to charity. If the donations surpass this amount, he will then begin using the remaining money to enable his work for those in need. I could tell you what I know about the work he has already done, but I'd rather you explore for yourselves.

The link for Michael's experiment and for the Facebook event page are below:

The Self-Serving Social Experiment: For the Benefit of Others

SSS: For The Benefit of Others Facebook Event

You can use the first link to visit the Experiment website where you can learn more about Michael and donate $1. You can further help by going to the Facebook event and inviting your friends to donate as well.

I understand that this may sound completely crazy, especially for those of you who haven't heard of Michael, not to mention those of you reading who don't even know me personally, but let me tell you this: If Michael Krepps collects even half of the million dollars he has set as his goal, he will change the world for good. I know this because he is already making a positive impact through his work with the International Action Club at Colorado Christian University and through the missions work he has done over the several years in eight countries.

I believe in Michael's experiment, and in the charity and hope of the people I know, and of the people who read this blog. I can promise you that Michael is not and never would be scamming anyone. His desire is to do good things for people who have little, and who need love. So please, give a man a dollar, and help him change the world.

If you have any questions about the experiment, you can comment or email me at emilyymariee@gmail.com and I will forward them on to Michael for you.

Thank you for supporting a dear friend.

Nothing

This is something that isn't anything.

This is where I ask a boy why he would let me think we could love each other.

This is where I wonder what reality is, because someone has deconstructed it. And everything. With single words, with "I can't talk about this now."

This is the moment when I wonder why any of us are where we are, because why are we why, because when are we when, because what are we?

What!?

This is nothing.

This is where I stop letting myself love.

This is where you break my heart...

where my heart breaks all which loves it.

This is something and nothing and everyone who knows what I have not yet been allowed to understand.

This is conspiracy.

This is dogma.

This is life.

This is.

I don't know what is tonight. The things I believed are no longer believable.

This is a man sleeping on a mattress. This is a girl waking in the night.

This is a boy not knowing what love is.

This is a girl who is not the boy's own to love.

This is how a girl hates him for no promise he made.

This is nothing.

This is everything.

Relationship. Words exchange.

This is no poem; this is no cry.

This is what falls out of my mouth as I think about carelessness and novels and song lyrics, the mix CDs made for me, and the city streets I cannot face, for love has paved them, and I do not seal its tar.

I am forbidden from the paths the men have laid. I am restricted from the asphalt under my feet.

This is nothing.

So on I'll drift to nothing else.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.