Write her Letters and Letters If You Must
For Veronica
Sometimes I make lists:
I do not know how to
wash the dirt off
railroad tracks. Or how to
scuba dive. I can not drive
cars with stick shift. I don’t
know what to do in cemeteries
when I recognize the names
on the granite grave stones.
I don’t know how to be
an older sister. I have forgotten
the quadratic equation. I can
paint fingernails. On an airplane,
a stranger in tattoos and a smile
showed me a picture of his
11-month-old baby girl: “I do not get to see
her much;” “I make sure
she gets what she needs;” “I have gotten used
to it this way.” Sunflowers grew,
unfurled inside of me like suns,
their roots digging down
my legs, my toes, through the carpet
of the airplane floor. Their petals
rising like yellow tongues on my tongue:
“Make sure she knows you love her”
“Make sure she knows”
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sometimes Epiphanies are Simple
This weekend I took stay-cation as they have been recently termed. I stayed in town but pretended to be out of town. I stayed at a friend's apartment with her kitty-cat while she was really out of town. It was a different pace, setting, a chance to indulge in reading, writing, quiet, jewelry making, sunflowers and most importantly prayer. This was my epiphany:
His Grace is Enough.
If truly believed, this is an amazing statement. All the fears and worries, all the people I am worried about, the things I can not control, His Grace IS Enough. HIS grace is enough. His GRACE is enough. His grace is ENOUGH.
For your listening pleasure. Ani DiFranco sings, Amazing Grace. (cheesy pictures not needed)
His Grace is Enough.
If truly believed, this is an amazing statement. All the fears and worries, all the people I am worried about, the things I can not control, His Grace IS Enough. HIS grace is enough. His GRACE is enough. His grace is ENOUGH.
For your listening pleasure. Ani DiFranco sings, Amazing Grace. (cheesy pictures not needed)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A bunch of molecules in the wrong place at the wrong time
I am MAD. PISSED OFF. I screamed. Here is a list of reason why I feel like going into a forest and screaming until my throat hurts and I can not tell my screams from the echoes of my screams.
1. Car Accidents.
2. Death.
3. Car Accidents that cause death.
4. That horrible and familiar feeling when you are going about your daily stupid business and it is interrupted by an email or phone call or a knock on the door that says Someone you have known has died. (p.s. I can be mad and construct sentences at this time because the person who recently died was an acquaintance, a little girl I met just last week, not someone closer to me).
5. And suddenly whatever you were doing seems pointless, why do the dishes, why eat cereal, why ride your bike, why go to class, why worry about commas, why go to work, why do anything besides hug the person next to you and tell them to shut up and stop complaining about the cubicles in their workspace or the deteriorating reading levels of the general public.
6. Sometimes I feel like we set the bar too high. We should be thankful just to be alive.
7. Sometimes I feel we set the bar too low. We should be thankful To Be Freaking Miraculously Alive.
8. Today every child I saw seemed miraculous. Each foot step was a miracle. How had they not been killed yet, they are all so small. I looked at myself in the mirror, just that I looked back was miracle. I saw an old man waiting for an elevator. Just that he had grown old, saggy, and grey was a miracle. I am down in my heart, my stomach, my lungs MAD that it take a little girl dying to remind me of this. To pull me out of my insane nonsense, out of my selfish and egotistical perspective of everyday life to see these miracles. SO MAD> Do you get how mad I am? I want to rip things, my own skin and hair, I want you to know how mad I am. I want you to see the miracles.
9. Sometimes I feel like suffering seems to prove that there is no God. But I don’t feel that way today. I feel like suffering proves there must be a God. If not, the LOGICAL thing to do would be stop living. (I am being dramatic I know, please don’t worry: I am not suicidal). But seriously, LIFE FREAKING SUCKS, DEATH FREAKING SUCKS> THERE IS NO FREAKING REASON TO KEEP OUR SPECIES GOING if there is not something bigger than our planet and the air we breathe. If My heart hurts so bad for this little amalgamation of molecules we called Lizzie, and for all the people who are no longer living and there is no bigger picture, what is the point?
10. I am also mad because while it is impossible and STUPID to compare tragedies, I know that the tragedies I have experienced on the non-existent scale of tragedies are relatively small (I have never been in a war, for example). How much suffering, how much bone-grounding pain they must feel, not physically. How their hearts must shut off to survive. How in the book I read about Rwanda the hunted became animal-like. They were hunted like game and they became antelope. I AM MAD.
11. I give up, and this makes me mad. I can not contain this much madness. And luckily my God does not ask me to. Luckily my God grieves with me. How my eyes ached from crying, and my nose, and my cheeks. They were all rubbed raw. Luckily, I believe there is a bigger picture. Luckily I do not trust myself to make sense of the whole freaking world and make sense of it. Luckily, My God is gracious and provides sleep for us weak, easily distracted, stupid humans.
12. But I am still mad, because in a few days, when I stop thinking about Lizzie and car accidents, I will forget that my fingers are a miracle, that the person next to me on the bus is a miracle, the the bus and the garden, and the tomatoes, even the rotten ones, are all FREAKING miracles. How the earth rotates on its axis around the sun is a freaking miracle. That day is light and night is dark and summer is hot and winter is cold is a miracle. The everyday science that governs the world is a freaking miracle. When the gravity of grief resettles my lungs back into their place of resting that is comfortable, I will forget that breath is a miracle. I don’t want to forget. I want to live life full of love, I want to live life loving people, even if it freaks them out. I want to tell them that I am happy they are alive when I shake their hand and learn their name. I want to tell them they are beautiful and should enjoy the life they are living. I want to tell this to myself. I want to stop worrying about what shoes to wear and what society determines to be appropriate behavior and I want to be amazed by every sunrise and every shadow. I want to see the good in every person, even they guys who are slightly creepy, rocking back and forth on the bus, walking through campus screaming.
Please God, help me not to forget.
1. Car Accidents.
2. Death.
3. Car Accidents that cause death.
4. That horrible and familiar feeling when you are going about your daily stupid business and it is interrupted by an email or phone call or a knock on the door that says Someone you have known has died. (p.s. I can be mad and construct sentences at this time because the person who recently died was an acquaintance, a little girl I met just last week, not someone closer to me).
5. And suddenly whatever you were doing seems pointless, why do the dishes, why eat cereal, why ride your bike, why go to class, why worry about commas, why go to work, why do anything besides hug the person next to you and tell them to shut up and stop complaining about the cubicles in their workspace or the deteriorating reading levels of the general public.
6. Sometimes I feel like we set the bar too high. We should be thankful just to be alive.
7. Sometimes I feel we set the bar too low. We should be thankful To Be Freaking Miraculously Alive.
8. Today every child I saw seemed miraculous. Each foot step was a miracle. How had they not been killed yet, they are all so small. I looked at myself in the mirror, just that I looked back was miracle. I saw an old man waiting for an elevator. Just that he had grown old, saggy, and grey was a miracle. I am down in my heart, my stomach, my lungs MAD that it take a little girl dying to remind me of this. To pull me out of my insane nonsense, out of my selfish and egotistical perspective of everyday life to see these miracles. SO MAD> Do you get how mad I am? I want to rip things, my own skin and hair, I want you to know how mad I am. I want you to see the miracles.
9. Sometimes I feel like suffering seems to prove that there is no God. But I don’t feel that way today. I feel like suffering proves there must be a God. If not, the LOGICAL thing to do would be stop living. (I am being dramatic I know, please don’t worry: I am not suicidal). But seriously, LIFE FREAKING SUCKS, DEATH FREAKING SUCKS> THERE IS NO FREAKING REASON TO KEEP OUR SPECIES GOING if there is not something bigger than our planet and the air we breathe. If My heart hurts so bad for this little amalgamation of molecules we called Lizzie, and for all the people who are no longer living and there is no bigger picture, what is the point?
10. I am also mad because while it is impossible and STUPID to compare tragedies, I know that the tragedies I have experienced on the non-existent scale of tragedies are relatively small (I have never been in a war, for example). How much suffering, how much bone-grounding pain they must feel, not physically. How their hearts must shut off to survive. How in the book I read about Rwanda the hunted became animal-like. They were hunted like game and they became antelope. I AM MAD.
11. I give up, and this makes me mad. I can not contain this much madness. And luckily my God does not ask me to. Luckily my God grieves with me. How my eyes ached from crying, and my nose, and my cheeks. They were all rubbed raw. Luckily, I believe there is a bigger picture. Luckily I do not trust myself to make sense of the whole freaking world and make sense of it. Luckily, My God is gracious and provides sleep for us weak, easily distracted, stupid humans.
12. But I am still mad, because in a few days, when I stop thinking about Lizzie and car accidents, I will forget that my fingers are a miracle, that the person next to me on the bus is a miracle, the the bus and the garden, and the tomatoes, even the rotten ones, are all FREAKING miracles. How the earth rotates on its axis around the sun is a freaking miracle. That day is light and night is dark and summer is hot and winter is cold is a miracle. The everyday science that governs the world is a freaking miracle. When the gravity of grief resettles my lungs back into their place of resting that is comfortable, I will forget that breath is a miracle. I don’t want to forget. I want to live life full of love, I want to live life loving people, even if it freaks them out. I want to tell them that I am happy they are alive when I shake their hand and learn their name. I want to tell them they are beautiful and should enjoy the life they are living. I want to tell this to myself. I want to stop worrying about what shoes to wear and what society determines to be appropriate behavior and I want to be amazed by every sunrise and every shadow. I want to see the good in every person, even they guys who are slightly creepy, rocking back and forth on the bus, walking through campus screaming.
Please God, help me not to forget.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
American Tourist Dreams of Home
The cat nosed up to the night outside
The window.
Across the street the hounds howled
Through the linked fence.
I dreamt of returning home, groceries
Bound my wrists, freeways spread across
The horizon, smooth as pearls.
But I could not
Remember which home was mine, who,
If anyone, was expecting me
And these plastic sacks of plums, pears,
And whole wheat flour.
The steering wheel, in someone else’s hands
Turned through greenways, looped
On the backs of highways and stalled out
At a red light. I rolled down the car’s window
To see if here, between the tamale vendors
And telephone poles overgrown with the hands
Of morning glories, if here, I smelled
Familiar and if my feet
like a pack of stable Horses
might lead me home.
The window.
Across the street the hounds howled
Through the linked fence.
I dreamt of returning home, groceries
Bound my wrists, freeways spread across
The horizon, smooth as pearls.
But I could not
Remember which home was mine, who,
If anyone, was expecting me
And these plastic sacks of plums, pears,
And whole wheat flour.
The steering wheel, in someone else’s hands
Turned through greenways, looped
On the backs of highways and stalled out
At a red light. I rolled down the car’s window
To see if here, between the tamale vendors
And telephone poles overgrown with the hands
Of morning glories, if here, I smelled
Familiar and if my feet
like a pack of stable Horses
might lead me home.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
American Tourist Learns New word
Wiki Says
Tricoteuse: literally translates from the French as a (female) knitter. The term is used to refer to the old women who used to sit around the guillotine knitting during the Reign of Terror in France in the 18th century. Decisions on executions had to be made in public so these women were paid to be in attendance and give their opinion. During the Reign of Terror the opinions were rarely anything but 'off with his head'.
In Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities, the character Madame Defarge is a relentless and bloodthirsty tricoteuse during the Reign of Terror.
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