Negotiation

You just... meet people.

You don't decide,
"I shall go out and meet people."
I mean, that can be done,
but I so dislike purposefully mixing statistics and literature.

You don't want to unmeet people...
but sometimes you wonder why in the world you meet the people you do,
and why people meet you?
There is no photoshop, much less general customization, of people, the way authors freely may do with fiction.  Nope!
and I depend on my Author,
but I can't see the story from His perspective.  or his.

Tomorrow

Chris Rice sings a lullaby, his voice blending with violin, cello, piano.
I hum along in the empty house full of Christmas decor and incandescent light.
Refreshing a spread of worship songs--dusty--freshly alphabetized, some newly sung.

Sorrowing that we all crowd surf so much,
socially enforcing extroversion and sociopathy.
Loneliness doesn't need a city.
Loneliness doesn't just need a friend.
A friend who is tired of God
weighs on the heart;
when they are gone, the separation is devastating.
Where the spirit is absent,
loneliness is hell.

Craving the presence of a friend
all the more desperately
for the lack of warmth across distance.
Anchored to a material world,
while dreams cloud the air.
What a desperate and bored darkness!
Scrabbling for a door that leads to tomorrow.

the rescued lamb

Silence
----confusing.
An aching heart.

Silence
----formidable
A raging heart.

Silence
----clarifying
A chastened heart.

Silence
----releasing
A guided heart.

Silence
----reconciled
a beloved heart.

Austenland

But of course--
the love you broadcast is generous
and you will remember me,
and your heart is so big,
(mine sequins and brand-new chocolate wine,
when I stare over the brink of Capulet hill
and wonder for what design are you a Montague?)
While the real Frank William Abagnale, Jr. stands up,
and his shadows still run and dodge the hounds,
the real godfather could not have played his own part!
whose portraits discover themselves and outshine the rest.
Your stage made my heart pound!
A breathless community sits ecstatic and ready to enter the better, louder, more beautiful blue kingdom of avatars,
until the lights turn brown and hands fall to gathering spent bills.
So go, .....go drimk to th-e-a-tt-r-e,
toast all the fadings of the dream.
Rush to sleep; there if you pretend you're unafraid, thus choose your destiny.
Not in basements, but on your familiar rooftop dream-sharing happens;
mountains of sacrifice all built upon earth so the highest terraces reach dream height.
Dear frand----------
Genie, ....genie----
I saved that wish
for you
(who art so much bigger than I, living the blue)

resistance

Reading,

Allowing the surroundings to settle as they will.

Reading,

I used to fly over the tablelands of an open book, grasping only landmarks, ignoring what I did not comprehend, hungry for simple happiness.

Reading,

Academia said stop.start.stop.start.make notes.ask questions.
But with no innate curiosity about the subject beyond its obvious landmarks, where was the joy?

Reading,

for pleasure.

Now, researching something of interest:
not stopping out of duty,
but because I can't read another sentence without knowing more.  Words, not new to me, yet in three decades I never learned the meaning; descriptions of artifacts and places and geographies: I will not go on without looking up so many unknowns!  On this occasion I am immensely grateful for the internet at my fingertips.

Reading,

with instant coffee, cloudy and stale.
Leaves outside wait for me to come to a good stopping place.
I vacuum autumn out of the recently shampooed carpet.
Like the tired people in my reading, I seem always to be waiting for something...

Reading, at least, purposeful.
With big eyes, along the edge of a chessboard.

Reading,
once for what I knew,
now for what I don't.

72

the flutter of the vocal chords
words I can almost understand,
and sounds that make sense.
Audio of another language I begin to love.

Is it too late?
It is 72 degrees there,
and seeing that stat gave me a moment of access
to how much I loved being there and didn't want to leave.
the final night
looking sadly in the face of the blazing moon
fluttering curtains
breathing that place,
tears.
I must relive a little in order to press on.
and
/finally, a little rain!

Writing on the wall

It's not the little guy but his brother

who lead in a whole gang

and the ostriches are bagged,

oh Lord, I am feeble in heart

as the money machines with the souls of tight-lipped or drooling demons

make batteries out of a million ants.

Help me to stop trying to save my life,

as this ship heats up.

I remember Your magnitude

because I am just a dust mote.

The sheep stone the shepherd

and they skip every direction, bleating.

I lose my interest in all this cardboard,

history of a people and its art

who sigh under squidly beaks

and laughing, laughing, drinking, sinking.

Fixed gazes, inward stares;

drink the kiss and paint the frack-well green.

a screen.

I have no sustainable resource to configure upon this stone of grace--

Help me stop trying to save my life--

my soul faints--

Oh, my beloved Shepherd.

When Airplanes Land

Far above the Great Sea the airplane approached a coast I have known since childhood.  I pressed tears against the porthole, thanking God for the moment.  The view did not flash by; that airplane gently circled and circled while I drank in the sight of the waves far below and that coastline, for a full half-hour, before a straightened course took us lower and lower among the popped-up concrete, until tires caught onto the runway.

Coming out of the cradle of the sky is always a bit of a letdown until the beauty that is to come takes over and new combinations of laughter ring.  And a little girl loses her balloon and cries while Bugs Bunny grins down at her from the ceiling.  It was easy for us to laugh while she grieved.

Inside Zeno's paradox, still shots crowd in upon themselves to resist the passing of time.
But at 16, 24, or a thousand frames, the reel clatters on.

I think there is something deeply disobedient about clinging so furiously to still shots of time.
(As I thought about this, an mp3 sang:
Lesson number one, overcome 
Every fear of regret and confusion 
It’s all illusion, delusion 
Sent to disconnect the holy fusion 
Of spirit and the flesh 
http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/track/the-resistance)

Losing myself in Zeno's paradox may be so much like sitting down cross-legged on the race track set before me (and the clock still ticks).

Good and bad? Or just different colors?

Jehovah-Jireh

I have enough.
Bless the Lord.

the knot of searching for answers melts:
I have what I need.
Bless the Lord, oh my soul.

I have what I need--
I have enough.
The answers do not lie in the things piled high that hid a king,
He provides and has provided
the answers are not merchandise to find.
Thank the Lord.
Provider.

Sunny and Blue

Good news can come in such a devastating fashion: we want to take it as bad news.  We want to let it wound us deeply
(if only it would catalyze a great rainfall, how I long for rain as a droughted land!)

But it is good news.
It is exciting, joyous news (but not mine).
she grew very quiet.
I got very quiet and I remember the voices more than the words: the congealing dark blood of knowledge blocking my senses from a stirring dialog.

Instead I replayed an old thought:
"will not hurt..."
And did not.

"will not reject..."
that's right.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul.
(When the darkness closes in, still I will say,)

My thoughts travel far away and I know I can never, ever again believe the lie that somebody introduced, suggesting I am a sociopath.
For far away, over there, in someone else's shoes, a woman experiences a redemption and a healing that was missing (dare she hope?)  So well I know the icicles in the heart, the cold cold, frozen summer of the heart!  The sluggish crawl of a chilled animal trying to find the sun. "how could you--" yes, that is the midnight blue of a river deep as the ocean.

He gives and takes away

Could it be? the right time, (the dream, the recurring glimpse of perfectly placed out-of-place sunshine?) for a woman
and I can find myself in my place and glad for the passing flash of gray-and-beige laughter on its way home.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, who gives and takes away.

(if only it would rain, on a weekend, flooding the streets and leaving them shining).

Horizontal cold sky while warmth dances among nimble gloves!

After a great journey, there is a lingering joy and desire to share the details with people, for those you love to feel some measure of the impact you felt by experiences in a foreign land...
"I look the same as I did, but I have changed... oh, won't you try to get to know me again?"

Then there are wonderful days around home that sound so mundane by description (which is why people who have not traveled also deserve to be rediscovered).

Here is my mundane joy.
Yesterday, I spent the day at my family's house with some of my sisters, my mom, and SJ, cleaning up a section of the yard's landscaping.  We got so much done!

Whereas, a traveler might say,
"Yesterday I was in London, and I rode the London Eye, I visited Big Ben, several museums, and five other famous sites.  It was awesome!"  The listener wouldn't be able to disagree, really, since visiting famous sites is supposed to be awe-inspiring (even if, in reality, it is possible to be absolutely bored or unhappy while visiting famous places!)

I started this blog because I was just traveling myself, and it was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, but a week after my return, I hit a wall of a fog, depression, reverse culture shock.  The shock was not that people weren't overwhelmingly curious about my experiences (I had stories to tell!) But realizing people expected me to be who I was, to act as if I had not been gone.  I have treated returning travelers the same way.  People at work are happy to have me back... but they didn't really give two beans about what I was feeling inside about my travels.  That is a sulky comment: of course they would listen to my stories given the chance.  But as is common, they didn't really have any curiosity that spoke for itself.  After all, they had been holding down the fort; they were exhausted from an entire summer of physical labor, while I had been off having the time of my life, studying my brains out, and then traveling around the world.

But my mundane joy, yesterday, was not at all mundane.  The actions don't speak for themselves, though.  There is immense subtext that made the day so joyous!

Here are just a few of many elements of the subtext:
In the last two years, Dad had a stroke.
Mom's gardens went completely wild.
Family healing.
Teamwork among siblings.
Pushing through the first really chilly day of fall to accomplish something massive!
Laughing and singing.
SJ monkeying up a tree to saw off a couple limbs and rocking my aviators to keep sawdust out of his eyes.
Cheerfully picking up a million black walnuts with the help of two cheerful sisters (and a third who brought hot refreshments!)
Pushing on!
Raking, weeding, trimming.
Revelation of the true shape of things!
Coffee and cinnamon scones!
Healing of a sorrow that I had not moved home last year to plug away at this task alone... doing it as a team is so much better!  This gave me so much peace!
Bless the Lord, oh my soul!
Bless the Lord, who sent sleet instead of rain so we could keep working without getting wet!
And Mom, MY MOM, glorifies God in her humble, hard working, mild manner of wonderful teamwork and leading the way!
And hugs.  They do something to your heart, you know.

chirp

Ghost Groceries:  about two days after you went shopping, you suddenly know you left one of your bags at the checkout.

 The Xbox Egg:  where you break an egg into the frying pan, and streams of egg shoot at you in four arcs like the Xbox logo.

 "A plant has learned to survive" must reference a teacher imparting knowledge without killing the student by the first of its million errors.

Shema

Bless the Lord, oh my soul.

(John implored the children so sweetly, so earnestly: Believe on Jesus, and love each other.)

If renaming a term would disarm its effect...

In June I left the state to study Linguistics.  I came home on an intellectual and emotional high, knowing in only two weeks I would be heading out on another, three-week trip overseas.  I think the immediacy of another trip created a suspension bridge tower: I didn't have time sink all the way down to earth in between.

On the trip, living presently in almost every moment created an effect I might call "child time": time standing almost still in the midst of absorbing new experiences! (Remember the first time or two you learned a birthday of yours was looming in the very near distance of, say, two or three weeks, and how absolutely far away that heralded date was?)

After only three weeks, I came home feeling I have been gone for ages.  Two weeks at home was not enough to process through the summer. My summer at school is full of wonderful and important memories, but the trip I just took is a huge boulder, landed from outer space with an undramatic but juggernaut-like thump.  So imagine a sunny path through the month of June, up and over the top of the summer, turning a little more golden in color near the end.  Merging abruptly with the main highway in August, there was a short, fierce section of old highway, but I drove those two weeks with glee! And then Whee!  up in the air and over the ocean for a September real-life version of a theme park high!  And what fun! How many rides! How many thrills!  So many thrills and then another day to start over again, and again, and again; not forgetting three days at different "water parks".....and then... a few days in the lounge and arcade.... and a few more small rides... and then, with a final series of loop-de-loops and tickle-bellies (the official name for the falling feeling you get when you're accelerating over the crest of a roller coaster mountain),,,,,
I was plopped back in my nest just like the little baby bird who went searching for his mother.

An untidy, neglected nest.


I was prepared for something called reverse culture shock.  I knew it would try to surprise me, but I was ready for it!  But I was wrong.  I was prepared for people not to be interested in my stories. I was prepared for jet lag (or thought so, since I felt caught up on sleep quickly and returned to a normal sleep schedule quickly).  I forgot to be prepared for people expecting me to be the same person.  It hit me at work today as tiredness, a desire to cry, and a foggy self-deprecation and inability to assert myself disconnected me from the team today.  As a team they were very kind to me, but communication was out the window at a time I needed to be communicating and leading.

So I crawled into bed when I got home and took up the sword in the exhausting dream world I've been traversing since getting home.

That's okay.  I begin to feel better about the process.  I thank the Lord for the mysterious, ingenious psycho-metabolism of dreaming, digesting life somehow into long-term understanding of experiences.  Journaling will probably help too.  Bless the Lord.

Through Noise

Ethereal hints of music
crying out.
I stand on my doorstep as the music mingles with motors,
while the ghost of scents flutter in my face.

Deep currents--faces looking too familiar--

I am so small for a world so big.  

The world seems so small and manageable

Until you cleave to the familiar again.

Simplicity; least-common factors.

It's never enough to go to bed when it's late,

so I wait until it's too late.

Into the filtered-sun comfort of a Sukkah
reached an anthem, warped around stone--strains colored green, a fabric, a colored noise, many threads.
and they were sosweetsosweet and odd
and poignant
stirring that spark of pain and love for something unknown

--for the unknown singer? no--
but the song is longing for something and when I hear it, I long too.

There must be a king leading the rebellion--
Let the arrow fly at random and find Ahab.

Free the captives.
A child is born--who shall care for it?
And born again--who shall care for it?

Oh, farther along--farther along--
(Music speaks and cries all along the Jordan River, headlights shining on a homeless road)
Lord, come soon!
(Hear our wordless cries in harmony!)
raise up the dry bones--
the man living in another frequency needs Your love to reach him--how?
Maybe a child could send him a Christmas letter.

Ah, the peace of harmonies that build securely on a foundation of golden stone.
Found.