There is a song

There is a song playing in my head and you can't hear it.
Its an oldie and everyone knows the chorus, but not much more than that. It has been played in movies, comedies and dramas. Right now the chorus is stuck in my ear canal, my esophagus and the edges of my rib bones.

There are many unsent letters. Wishes that never get to people. Strangers that get estranged and I never find a stamp to put on the envelope.

There is an unused tent under my bed.

There is a sweatshirt covering my arms.

There are places in books that when you get there you think, oh this is a bad place.


Perhaps this is what anxiousness is. How will all this come to pass. Without God I would throw the pebble in, walk off the hopscotch and go punch a tether ball. But a funny little voice is telling me that it will be okay. In fact it is okay. Perhaps today you feel as if you accomplished nothing. You can not base your whole life on feelings.

I base my bus choice on feelings. Normandie seemed like such a trafficky straight line home. Dirty bus windows, stuttering buses. Headache.

The 20 seemed a bit more promising. A shorter line, a friendlier place.

Nothing was accomplished.

P.ys.t.g.

Ten things I am thankful for (a discipline)
1. the pretty flowers I bought for the two birthday girls
2. the kind hygienist who by my name thought I was black, and asked me if I was.
3. Joy who gave me a ride home and a hug.
4. My bed.
5. Scrabulous
6. I am alive, breathing, appendages in tact.
7. Hope is a thing with feathers.
8. my hair color
9. anger that makes me clean my room
10. his mercies are new every morning.

And we are rolling...

There are strange people all about my apartment building. Its as if aliens have taken over. They are friendly. This is Hollywood in my backyard. I have started having nothing to do on Friday nights. It is okay with me. I watched an ABC tv show and felt rebellious since NBC is the station filming outside. The station who negotiated the street space. The people who found it fiscally sensible to take down the dividing walls of the four garages in the back and turn it into some strange place. They speak loudly and quietly. There is a gentle hum of human voices and machines. Every now and then someone shouts “Rolling” or something of the sort. I saw a chair with Dania someone’s name on it. Cast on another. This is the real of un-reality. I sit by my phone and type with my fingers and wonder how long a week is. The week in between Christmas and school starting was forever in kindergarten. How I longed for school to start again. The week between Christmas and work starting was only a night. How I did not long to ctrl alt delete and log into my computer again. “Quiet Guys” “Quiet Please”. I am doing laundry. I wonder about the laundry lives of the people outside my windows. Are they all rich with maids, and or stay at home lovers? Do they arrive at a time when all the clothes are dirty and they are shoveling their laundry into the machines at the laundrymat. I heard that in NY laundry service is pretty standard. People take their dirty clothes to other people who return them clean. Money is exchanged. “Pictures…black tiers” I am making things up. I don’t know what they are shouting. I like the show Pushing Daisies because of the rules and the straightforward nature. The narrator explains the who what where when of the bad guy and of the characters emotions, when things get too intense that I am about to fall of my seat. The rules are simple: if she touches him or he her, she dies, so they don’t touch. (I only fall out of my seat because I was trying to get comfortable and my chair is on wheels). I am going to go read poetry now and fall asleep. “We’re rolling. Quiet Please” and a few minutes later, “Cut” I feel so old fashion that my art is words and paint. “Standby”.

In so many ways I see how 1 plus 1 does not equal two. Because one has hands and hands have luggage. Black suitcases with red tassels tied to handles so it’s easy to identify at the baggage claim. In those suitcases are history books, pages dusted with anxiety and fear. One has rainbow colored suitcases that need no tassels, they are always stored in the overhead compartments. They are heavy with dark chocolate and braids of garlic that for years have tried to use gravity, but yet they still curl and twist and turn against conventional wisdom.

Good night. Sleep tight. "Quiet please"

This weeks program brought to you by the word: Self Control.

Put down the ice cream. turn of the t.v. dont hit snooze. walk away. run towards. ride your bike home. Stop at the red light. Charge your phone. pick up the dirty clothes off the ground. throw a dinner party. watch them turn your garage into a home fake home. drive. listen. dont shout. dont be sad and 12.30. wonder what is wrong. believe in hope and transformation. learn spanish. take the GREs . play scrabble only once a day. drink lots of water. floss. shower. question. learn. try to learn. travel. go away. see. listen. frame pictures. decorate your walls. play softball. wonder. sleep. goodnight.

frustration on the 10 East

I am so frustrated it is ridiculous. It took me and an hour and 10 minutes to drive to work, when it usually takes 20 minutes. Road rage is understandable in this city. If I only had a flaming dart thrower. Just joking. Kind of. NPR wasn’t that interesting this morning: they just kept telling me about the Nobel Prize winners of physics and my hard drive and magneto resistance. I wanted a story or news from Burma. Ahh Woe is me.

I also forgot my lunch. Thought about fasting but decided that today was not a day to start being holy as I have been wholly out of practice and I'm sick and I screamed the last of my voice away on the freeway. But then I feel lame, like I don’t trust God to take care of me on this frustrating day if I eat no food. I have much to pray for. I am fully aware of my unrighteousness. I feel it in my pores and I want to take a shower, but I took one last night. My mind thinks of things I could have done differently starting when I was four years old. It is an exhausting list that my fingers don’t want to tell you about.

We sang a song at church and it said, the Lord’s name is a strong tower, the righteous run into it and they are saved. I remember really liking this song when I was learning/realizing the power of the name of the Lord. But right now I am hung on the righteous word. I am not righteous, but my desire to be saved and run towards that strong tower is there and I wonder if it is enough. Everything on my insides tells me it is. I remember Jesus saying that he came for this sick not the well. I remember the lady with the alabaster jar crying and carrying on at the dinner party and Jesus saw her and loved her and honored her. She was not righteous in the conventional sense.

I had a dream last night about my grandma feeling unloved by me. We were sitting on the couch and she made it seem like I had been ignoring her. She got up and left and I stayed with my head on the couch cushions. Someone was crying. I remember thinking of m and how I should talk about him because it would be something we can relate to eachother on.

There are not very many things in my hands. Other people’s hearts and lives are not in my hands. The LAUSD is not in my hands. Life and Death are not dirt under my fingernails. The wrinkles on my palms are not the future, they are not even the past. I do have pens in my hand with which I can write. I do have touch in my hand with which I can reach out and feel. I do have my own blood vessels buried in my skin, bones, sinews, tendons all holding themselves together but those I did not create, I can not regenerate them, they are some what mine, kind of like an extended loan from the library. or as ani would say, "got em on loan for the time imbetween my mom and some maggots."

And in conclusion, written 12 hours after I started this not so quickwrite. I am less frustrated. I am breathing. I am happy with how I spent my time today. I am thankful for my family, friends, food and sleep and scrabulous. Goodnight.

p.s. my garage is gonna be on "Heroes" so I get $200. Hoot. Thank you Hollywood, its about time I got some of my money back!

This is for you

For you who speaks with 30 years of experience, of smiles and strawberries, of bitterness, doubt. After thirty years of questions become encrusted with hopelessness? Conversing, of doing, of dreaming, of being, of sleeplessness. It was a standard response but if bad things happen to good people... The injustice in the world was referenced. In a single sentence revelation, transformation, creation were tossed aside as things that do not happen. But perhaps they were simply just not tried.

I believe. I believe in transformation. I believe it and I’ve seen the edges of it. I lived in the middle of it. I have been disappointed by the slowness of it. I have dreamed of it, I have thirsted for it, I have waited for it, I have worked for it. I am waiting for it, I am working, hoping, living for it. And I still believe. The storms, they will come to the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the plain, and the mediocre. How and why change from person to person, but whether or not the storms come is not optional. Such is life. Why, I don’t know but it is, okay. Storms come, boats sink and that is reality.

But God has arms and legs and breath and life. God has the arms that are not too short to pull the boat from the depths. The breath to calm the storm. The legs to run after and rescue or walk beside you while you window-shop. The life enough to live with all of us: The suffering woman in Burma whose been raped by her own government. The sales rep who talks fast and walks faster whose two kids have never wanted for anything. The homeless man on drugs sleeping in his urine. Angela Braly, Tom Hanks, Elian Gonzalez, Joey Fatone and the inventor of Top Ramen, and you and me and every one we have ever driven next to on the freeway and never seen.

I will choose to be hopeful, when all I see is grey and transformation seems as likely as the grass growing in the cracks of the sidewalk suddenly growing into a rainforest. I will choose believe that my sigh is a prayer that God hears, understands and responds to. I will read Psalm 16 and know that is true, that I have no good thing apart from God.

God is transformation and, you know, I like God. He has been good to me. I can't always see it and I don't always believe it. But I know it right now so I am writing it down to help me remember.

I respect you, friend, so we will just have to agree to disagree.

Regarding Humility

I live in the city that favors Glam over that unmenntionable thing I hesitated to type above. I was afraid that you wouldn’t even take the time to read it since I gave it such a boring title. Humility. Dang I said again.

Recently I have discovered that humility is the best of qualities. I don’t say that to argue with you over virtues, I say that because I see humility as a welcome sign on your unlocked, front gate that people will be obliged to walk through. I mean humility breaks down barriers. A humble person can talk to anyone. A humble person can talk to celebrity and make them feel human. A humble person can a homeless person and make them feel human. A humble person is confident, not in their money, background, attitude or some other lame quality, but confident in their humanness. They acknowledge their “brokenness,” as Christians like to say. (in non-Christian-ese, one might say shortcomings or tendencies toward failure or something of the sort). But while the humble person acknowledges their brokenness, they do not wallow in it, they do not let it lock them in a dark room of shame. They walk around their lives, knowing that their failures is not all of who they are, but instead, their failures are a source of encouragement and a way to relate to and understand other people’s humanity. They listen and can be silent. They acknowledge God. They admit God is smarter, bigger, and more beautiful then anything they can imagine, and the humble person knows that this God is for them. Is their advocate, the cheering father at the soccer game, the warm mother tucking them into bed at night. The humble person always remembers to ask how another is doing. The humble person opens doors, is easy to confide in, is loving. For fear and judgment of another is not in their vocabulary. They know that they could just as easily be in your shoes as you could be in theirs and so they understand. I desire humility.

So I pray for humility. I ask for it but wonder what it means to ask to be humbled. What kind of christmas paper does it come wrapped in?

I am realizing that I don’t have to wait to be knocked down in the dirt to be humbled. I can choose it. I can join the choir and softball team. I can wear a dorky looking helmet while I ride my bike. I can remind myself to consider another better than myself. And while I’d rather not play a sport that I am not good at, or join a choir that doesn’t practice enough to sing the four part harmonies it attempts to sing, or wear a dorky looking helmet, I know that my head is breakable, that I will be all right if I strike out every time I am up to bat, and I will learn from those other humble people who put themselves up there in those church choir robes.

finally a poem....

Sidewalk Café

Eggshell fractures, the unsullied yolk slips
into the frying pan.

I don’t hate you
on Saturday morning,

a mug of coffee between my palms,
I drink it without sugar.

A transient pokes through a trashcan, unblinking
finds a paper cup, shakes & drops it, empty, in the gutter.