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Tonight I downloaded a free DVD player and watched The Royal Tenenbaums. I hadn’t seen this movie in years, and its immersion in a specific period of time in my life meant, of course, that it brought some very old thoughts and emotions to the surface. When I was watching this movie for the first and seventh and eightieth time, I was at college, my friends’ marriage was dying, and I was as alone as I have ever felt in my life. The despair in Richie’s eyes was most familiar. I used to lie on my stomach on the cool gray tiles of my dorm room and make slicks of tears.
The characters in this movie are all — and this was my favorite metaphor — walking on broken legs, and I spent some/enough days feeling like I was walking on broken legs, too. Wow. The huge presence of sadness, and the strange beauty that supports the sadness so you can walk all inside it, were, just as God was, closer to me than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. I wrote papers, too, rode my bike to coffee shops and went to parties and Sacred Harp singings and talked to my mom on the phone, but the predominant tone of most of my junior and senior years at college was this dark room with shafts of light falling in like the play of light and shadow in water.
I’ve been mostly happy, for a while, now. What a revelation, is happiness. What a ray of light, is Marshall. The long loyalty, the kiss, the lashes on the cheek, the knowing glance, the shock of mutual vulnerability. But the beauty of happiness, even mostly-happiness, is of a different sort than the beauty of sadness, and we are to suppose that each sort is only a facet of a unified beauty, who is God. I believed this then, and I believe it now. How strange to remember all those nights and days, now, when I’ve been watching a different sun set and rise on my days. I’m relieved to find that I have so much compassion for myself, in that time.
Maybe this time, with its particular character that I haven’t fully understood, will come to a close as every other time has. Maybe the broken bones of this time (of course there are some) will be set in five years, the way the bones of five years ago are being set, now. God is teaching me how to have compassion (and patience) for the present time, I think. I’m such an emotional paraplegic of course but I am, I think, learning this.
I’m having tea in my room with a granola bar and brownies, at noon. If this sounds strange it’s because it is.
The neighbors asked us at the last minute if we wanted to ride up to Bloomington with them to see Mumford & Sons, and I decided within a few seconds that the answer was yes, so I talked Marshall into it, and we went. Got a little scalped on tickets, but that was ok. The five of us squashed into Aaron’s four-door Camry and traded stories all the way there (six hours), bit our nails and strained forward in our seats when we hit severe weather just outside of Bloomington, and walked to the Bluebird with about ten minutes to spare with the clouds breaking behind us into a golden sunset, and a double-arced rainbow in front.
And Mumford & Sons are great. Some of their songs are so anthem-like, we cried, right there at the edge of that huge standing crowd. (Everyone singing along, even us, everyone pumping their fists and closing their eyes very tightly.) If I had even an extra dollar, I would buy their album, even one extra dollar, or fifty cents. These are the cries of the heart, and we feel it.
So we left and drove home, switching out drivers twice, and got home at 7:00am. We laid down and slept for a strange two hours, Marshall went to work, I slept for one more hour, and then got up. Looked for my keys (lost, oh gosh), made tea, leaning in and out of shades of anxiety, ate brownies, and am now having a moment where I’m prying my fingers off my life and trying to give myself room to just live peacefully for a moment.
If I can learn anything from yesterday, it’s that life is bigger than I thought it was yesterday morning. Maybe I can’t decide whether I’m living in glass paperweight or a grass house on a windy plain somewhere, but I can put off that decision for another day. God puts a hand inside my life, and it’s as simple as new friends taking me to hear music in another city. I needed those songs, and I think I needed the kindness of those people. I needed to sneak off and have a burger with Marshall, to talk over the sad and happy shifts in community, talk over what it means to love, and how it may be that God is moving.
I hope today becomes rich with flowering realizations. I hope today fills with light and memory. I hope all things.
1. My friend/boss Katie’s son died over the weekend, and the idea of loss bloomed into a more fully-fleshed reality of loss as I ran errands today. Returning a book to the library, crying at the stoplights, wondering why we can’t say goodbye to ones we loved, like the animals seem to do so easily. At the stop signs, seeing the sky flat as a trapdoor into the next universe, the Lost Property Cupboard, the place where all lost things are kept until we come with the key. And we are coming with the key, coming.
2. The next year as a year-at-school is lost, churning up the possibilities of a year-of-new-connections. At the Old North Abbey cookout last night, we discovered the relief of finding gentle people, finding friends, and left as the sun went down, fireflies glimmering in the bushes. Mary is a poet, and I have needed one. Maybe she is someone I need, just as Josh B may be someone Marshall needs. Just as we all are people we all need. In my mind I extrapolate the tiniest of hesitant ties among us, flashing with the gentleness of firelies.
3. If something would change, I would become an unblocked artist. Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, images of energy sent hurling from the tips of wands come to mind. Reading the New Testament, images of the fully-human Christ fully risen come to mind. If something would change, I would become an unblocked artist.
A mourning dove, walking across the triangle bed in my backyard, just stretched its tail out and then its wings, one at a time, with a little shrug. Almost like a person. The fact that I noticed this, and that it transported me, is a sign that taking today off was a great idea.
I got up, had frosted shredded mini wheats, and went out to work in the garden, thinking about how much I wanted audible words from God. I worked the soil in the long bed over, then the soil in the triangle bed, and edged the latter with some beat-up old bricks. Suddenly the dirt patches have become beds, and everything is growing so fast, so fast. Two peppers, thyme, and a row of cilantro are going into that triangle bed, all proper, now, with bricks. I kept breaking up families of bulbs and cutting worms in two, but that’s ok, because I’m bringing something new into the ground.
Marshall’s grandfather isn’t doing great, but is doing better, and while Marshall thought of death last night, I thought of it, too. How easy it would be to believe that all the losses of childhood, growing into branches and trees of loss the older we get, are the final words we have. On life. I finished HP & the Half-Blood Prince last night, which is largely why I was thinking about death. Dumbledore, the great wizard, on whom the war seems to depend, is dead, and the shock waves of that sudden and meaningless loss ricochet even in the air … something about this kind of blow, this kind of haemorrage, is familiar, and we’re so afraid (afraid afraid afraid) that we write these kinds of stories for ourselves because something in us knows that it’s true. That life will soon be forgotten by death. And of course I thought, then, of the Emmaus travelers, the “we had hoped he was the one” … and I read Jesus’ words like I was dying of thirst. Read them this morning, when I am more sure of life, that the darkness can’t overcome the light, “can’t comprehend it.”
I feel like I completely lost my blogging touch, which is why I haven’t been posting much, but I felt like I could do it today. Also a sign that taking the day off was astonishingly brilliant… and now for a beer.
Speaking of narrow escapes, when I called this morning to set up a payment plan for the $585 ultrasound I had last month, they said that I did have a discount of 90%, and the bill had just been sent out before the discount had been applied. Now I just have to pay $58.50, oh so sweet small numbers, triply good because I’m starting to pay on my Stafford loans next month. I’ve been doing calculations and figured that I will have about $50 a month to burn, and when I say burn I mean like, buy food and gas. If you can imagine me smiling right now, do it, because I am smiling. God has fed me like Elijah, with ravens, and now is never more difficult than any previous moment. It’s going to be a good day.
I’m listening to Iron & Wine’s “Someday the Waves” and looking out at all the sunlight. I’m listening to the Lord, these days, and coming back to some stillness of soul. Still coming back, still slowly. Katie’s in Bogota, today, Natalie’s at the courthouse, today, and I am remembering the surprise of reading Song of Solomon last night and realizing that I was a delight to God. This realization, that someone’s “desire is toward me” brings a wind and my sails are luffing, flapping, filling with a breeze and lifting off the surface of the water, flinging drops like diamonds into the air and pushing the canvas into a firm bow, pulling the boat, moving. Distance is so hard to understand, but it’s easier because in spite of the unknowable distance between us and God, there is no distance between us. In the sense that I can never enter or leave His presence; I can only ignore or attend. Somehow. I don’t know how.
Clothes I wore to AB’s last night still smell like smoke, and I still see her sitting in her chair as we were leaving. Dimmest sadness but not hanging onto us, as a younger person might have, not asking any favors or for any understanding. Getting old must mean an enormous amount of containment, and I can be ok with that. Perhaps.
So what’s it going to be like, moving away again? I still don’t have any feeling for this, like it’s a numb limb. When will feeling start creeping in?
P.S. The ultrasound results came on a little blue card a couple days ago: “Your ultrasound on 12/28/09 has been reported to us showing completely negative [results] with absent right ovary. Great news!”
Lean woman, near eighty, with the weight of wisdom and the lightness of humility seeming almost to carry her, themselves. This is one of the great moments of my life, seeing a great woman from a near distance, hearing her with my own ears. I have not outlived her yet, and will never, I know. And she loves Hafiz. Of course, of course. Here is one she didn’t read, but I read. It’s from her newest collection, Thirst, from a poem called “More Beautiful Than the Honey Locust Tree are the Words of the Lord”:
7.
I had such a longing for virtue, for company.
I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear.
I wanted to read and serve, to touch the altar linen.
Instead I went back to the woods where not a single tree
turns its face away.
Instead I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something
useful and unpretentious.
Even the chimney swift sings.
Even the cobblestones have a task to do, and do it well.
Lord, let me be a flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.
Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone
brave and kind, whose name I will never know.
There’s a lot to be said and learned and unlearned about forgiveness, how it doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation but necessarily means some sort of recovery of equilibrium. in oneself. I need to learn what it means and how to do it. I think Jesus may have some things to say about it, things to do about it. I’m ready for it I think. you look around and relationships are splintering beyond any control, you hear the tough fibers cracking like gunshots in the still air and watch the building you built leaning and falling into the ground with the calmness of a dream … I don’t know whether it’s as final as all that, I don’t know that what feels like a tree dying is just one larger lower branch shearing down the trunk as it goes, I don’t know that what’s diseased should be kept alive at all costs. you feel you need to start over, sometimes, from where you are now.
Last night as Marshall, Natalie, Matt and I were leaving the Mexican restaurant in Maryville, a little white-haired old lady with white capris and a floweredy shirt was leaving and fell on her hands and knees on the grass. She’d obviously been drinking too much and laughed it off as she kind of weaved toward the parking lot by herself, and it didn’t hit me until I noticed Matt and Natalie watching her intently that she was walking toward a van with keys in her hand … we walked out together toward her and Matt came up to her just as she was getting ready to close her car door and asked her if she was alright, if she needed someone to drive her home. Embarrassed as hell, laughing, patting her hair, “it’s these shoes” and “oh I’ll be fine!” as she smiled and waved, closed her door and drove away. I have brave friends, and I hope she was alright and just embarrassed enough not to do it again,but you don’t know. you don’t know how it ends, when someone says “no, thank you” and closes the door. you don’t know what happens after.
I’ve read this today: Art is the only way to run away without leaving home (Twyla Tharp). I’ve painted and missed a meeting and been living here in my house all evening, from the sun going down to the moon coming up. I dream all day every day of what it would be like to be making art again, to be living at home in beautiful dresses again and saying what I think out loud. As soon as things let up a little, I’m going to get my little factory together and become an artist. As soon as I can run away a little in my soul, I’m going to, and maybe other people will be inspired to run away, too, looking at what I make. I’m thinking of things like photographs with too much light, or too little, with lots of velvety shadows or pale, husk-dry reflections. (Yes I’ve been looking around on Tumblr again … and they’re all 18 year-old girls, the ones with these photoblogs of the mysteries of life. Strange.)
I’m thinking about quilts, small ones, ones made of the dear pants I’ve just had to retire and all the outlines in my head of boats, birds, wheels, branches, all things passe and lovely because they still mean things to me, things I will write about while I’m sewing and think and think about even after. I’m thinking about oil pastels, all the color laid on so thick, and how a rich red one would look on the walls of the Blue Garrett. I’m so lonely today, not sad, just so alone and I’m used to it … I just forgot I was, for a while. I feel like I’m walking around so lightly in this dress that I’ve worn for two weeks, like it was made for me, and all the things that were so overwhelming this morning are gone for now because … what can one do, really, to avert disaster at 11:02 at night? And what can one do to avert disaster, anyway?
It’s a strange mix, today, of being aware and being unaware of God. I think it’s been a failure, overall, because I’ve worried so much, and worried some more. I can never tell where a healthy honesty of emotion runs over into an unhealthy disbelief or wallowing. Well, actually, I can. Just not today. But it must mean something that tonight is so still and peaceful, at least it’s still, and I’m not crying anymore. Oh, I have to go for my first six-month check-up at Dr. McDonald’s in two weeks (got the appointment reminder in the mail today), and that’s one reason I was worrying. I opened it and started to cry, because, I don’t know? What if they ask me something about my job (and I get kicked out of the program), or the appointment is expensive, or I have another cyst? Nothing can be averted at 11:09 at night, though, and nothing can be averted. God is holding this in his hand I must believe.
Where is my Mark Jarman book, To the Green Man? “Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” Everyone in the world is flying to Wales for the Green Man Festival and I am at home worrying and pale. But it does feel pretty good to write everything down. Some color is coming back. I know I need God more than I need anything, and that he is here.
One more thing is that I miss Marshall, who is still hiking the A.T. with his brother. I thought he was coming back today, and at noon or something he sent a text that said (wait, I will find it, I must find it, you will love it): “Im hikin w Taylor n Virginia on the A.T. We just had lunch at 5,000 ft. Lunch today was peperjack cheese, summer sausage, whiskey, and a camel lite for desert” (sic). At the time I thought that sounded delish, except for the camel lite, but now I realize my brain was adding some kind of bread or crackers in there … you see there is none. Maybe the whiskey stood in well enough for the carbs. So, he’s having fun. Glad for that, for all that fun, for the fun that is happening out there, somewhere, “n Virginia.” I seem to be very happy about that, that fun. I appear, even now, to be smiling, oh whatever it’s a grimace damn why do people get to have fun WITHOUT MEEEEE, why. I hope they sprain their ankles, all four. I hope everyone will be miserable until I start having fun.
I guess I need to stop blogging and go to bed.
Today, well, right now as a matter of fact, I am eating grapes and a pita with cheddar melted on it and throwing Patrick off the table for the fourth time in as many minutes. How would he like it if I walked all over his kitchen table with no shoes on. I ask. Not him, because he will not learn English.
Today is another day filled with things like dropping off a resume, depositing a check, writing a check, mailing a check, writing letters, finishing a book. It’s raining, has been all morning since I’ve been cognizant, and it blows through cold. It’s another one of those days that is necessarily a progression of miscellaneous pieces, but that I want to be connected by a single idea. Lived against the background of a single song. I’m measuring my life by pieces, now, smaller and smaller, but I can’t give up on a single connecting strand, sinewy, tougher.
The vent in the floor is blowing the leaves of my small dark houseplant against the strings of the guitar set in the corner, playing mostly an E flat but sometimes a C. It’s like the chimes I grew up listening to on windy days, brass tubes strung with clear plastic string in a circle, clattering, or singing, or clattering, or singing. There’s a connecting strand, here, hearing the central heat making music. These chance sounds I would almost rather listen to than anything else.
I finished Cold Mountain by Frazier this morning, and was surprised. I want to be stronger. And so, I will be. I will look back and see miles, I will look forward and see miles, too. I will learn what suffering has to teach, and there’s a lot of joy, there.
