Heavy Things

Florence is the soundtrack for the day.
Shake it out, shake it off. 



Well good Lord. I've been elsewhere for months. But I'm coming back more and more all the time.

I forgot what I can do with words. The arrangement of letters and things that aren't just noise and aren't just about me in the sun with a chai tea latte at a picnic table. Keyboards and characters.

I'm swept up in the music of life and the astounding beauty of chance leading to the whispering moment when time slows and a chill rolls across my back. Life says, "This is pure and good, dear. Rest."

The goodness makes me realize just how good it is, the essence of the thing in itself being so very beautiful.

Talking in circles.

What I mean is this. 

We, many of us, have a habit of finding heavy things on our backs: scandal, cancer, abuse, divorce, death, despair, depression. We then bear the weight of the pain, the secrets, the sickness. Brokenness: the constitution of tragedy. And the harshest inherent pang is the sly grasp of darkness when it settles on us and we forget what makes us human.

We have the ability to comprehend the badness, to carry it, share or shelter it, to shoulder it.

And we have the ability to shake it, to shrug the devils off our shoulders and rip out the deepest claw.

We, again, many of us, have the habit of letting the heavy things name us, shape us.


The blessing is here: the goodness in my life reminds me of how much I have shrugged away, and of what I still carry, the residue of disaster that makes me who I am:
Em, a product of...

Dark days and basketball games.
Youth group retreats and awful Halloweens.
Christian community and measle immunity.

Breakdowns. Lemont. Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. Rocks and rivers, brothers and sisters. Lakes. Salt. Broken-hearted boys that never could be fixed. Grand grandparents.

And so much music. The melodies that run me up and down.

I am the cocktail drink of everything I've ever seen, Daughter to the Creator of all the greatest scenes.


I've no need for the nagging presence of the bad things telling me who to be. The big disasters that make me forget that my capacity to love is limitless, and boundless.

So I shrug off all the ugly, and embrace the beauty I see in the architecture of the Fox River when my favorite playmate says, "God knew exactly what he was doing to make this all look exactly as it does." And He did.

The essence of the thing, the beauty in itself, that heartbreak lays itself to the side when its time comes: the ugly fades away.

The good persists.

 And oh, how much good there is, how much better things get.

A frightened girl finds a safe place in a drunken gamble. She teaches the art of tenderness. It all falls together.

We, many of us, let the heavy things define us.

But what if we defined ourselves by the slow moments when we feel a little more alive, and the lines that hang in our memories... You're changing me. You're beautiful. I'm better when you're with me. I'm learning to trust again. I am the way I am for a reason, and I want to share it with you. I can share with you. I'll stay with you here. I'm happy. It's wonderful.

What if we defined ourselves by the awe that fills us in the most precious sights: our children, nieces and nephews. An eagle bowing in the sky. Water crashing through a garden. The laughter of an old friend.
The quirks of our grandparents.

The moment in the precise center of balance: time goes too quickly and time drags on.

So shake it off.

And write your story with whispers Life lays in your breath: "This is good. And there is more to come."


It's hard to dance, with a devil on your back, so shake him off.

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.

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.