under siege

Do you ever have thoughts attack you, waylay you, nearly asphyxiate you with their constant proximity and weight? James 2. That's the one that finds me.


When I travel downtown.


Or to the grocery store.


On the way to school.


In city parks.


If I happen to catch a glimpse of the news.


When I see old photos, tell certain stories, or hold memories above the chasm of forgetfulness.


Words I innocently memorized in middle school to appease a teacher who never could have imagined how I would be tormented for what is turning into the rest of my life come back in torrents to flood a mind that is struggling to be made up.


What good is faith that has no deeds?
And again: If you say "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?


How is one supposed to function with words with weight like that pounding, throbbing... burning inside?


It does not matter how I choose to cope with whatever rhythm that pounding creates because the bottom line remains: I am not doing enough. My well-intended words exit my mouth only for those same phrases that always find me to take up residency in the space left over. What good is it...when you do nothing? 


It does not matter that I do not know what to do because those are hollow excuses and I have been burning with the weight of this challenge long enough now. Long enough to feel the urgency and long enough to be friends with despair as she echoes you aren't big enough and there is no way for you to be big enough.


I feel with sudden but thorough certainty the edges of the rabbit hole I stand above. There is a whole world down there; and, if I let myself fall, I may never come back. I will never be who I am right now and my eyes will never be able to see the world the way they do right now. And it is not a fear of being too small and too weak to handle the change (I am both of those for sure), but the knowledge that the way is shut once I enter. 


Did Alice ever really leave Wonderland entirely behind? Or did she take it with her everyday just behind her eyes like a filter or perhaps a buffer that used to exist between her and the world until everything changed?


It is knowing that I have absolutely no control who this will make me if I keep following my white rabbit. But the change is sure to be real, permanent, and terrifying. Oh yes, and I think good. But it is not the only rabbit hole I could choose to fall down. How do I know *THIS* is the one I want? Do I even get that choice? If I don't like it, can I choose another? All of that to say: how much do I give myself to homeless ministry? 


I already know the answers to all of those questions. Respectively: because it's bigger than me. Yes, but no: I already chose a long time ago. Yes and no again: it wont leave me the same even if I leave it. As much as I am allowed for as long as the season stays.


Somehow, these do not bring the comfort that we always expect of answers we do not yet have.

in an effort to distract myself, i bring you: the past.

She stands there like sad poetry gracing pastel pages,
ill-fitted but never wrong.

If you look at her side-ways,
her smile could be a frown.

Doorway open.
Sun streaking perfect, amber light.
Imperfect flies buzz at screened-in windows
as if to make you aware,
there are still worlds out there;
and they know nothing of her sad laughing eyes
and her big, sarcastic lips.

She is less sure than you
that there are differences
between your world and hers.

Some would say
to let the poetry be.
What is ethereal cannot
be understood.

Some would say.

Some always
always
have to say

something.

But as the sun wraps layers of warmth
around your shoulders,
as that perfect amber light
contrasts those imperfect flies,
as you contemplate the poetic differences
of tragedies and comedies
etched across skin,
there is prose that beckons understanding.

There is poetry in human living.

She has it all in her own subtle way.
Those who would say to let her be
have never met her, right?

When you begin to hope to understand,
her world comes crashing in.
Violent, living poetry
without a shade of gray,
her polarized planet stopped spinning
a long time ago.

She stands there
and when you are done reading her,
you smile.

There is poetry in human living.
And it is best when you understand
but understand without division.

There is nothing beautiful about
dismembered worlds yanked from orbit,
dissected lives taken out of context.

And those who always have to say
are only half right.
They read only their own poetry.

 08.03.09 3:24pm

One of my favorite places to just be at: Avalanche Gorge.

knots tied in between anger, boredom, and anxiety

Task (1): Meet the world each day somewhere between whatever terms it gives me and whatever terms I give it.

Task (2): Remain stress free.

Task (3): Try not to laugh/cry/scream at the combination of 1 and 2.

I have been mulling over how much of stress is a choice and how much of it just is. --As immovable, unalterable fact. It would seem that my body, and human bodies in general, were not made for stressing. They were not made for worry. They were not made for life to be so... hard. We are such fragile creatures for all of our bluffing and hoping and straining.

But how much of life being hard comes from our making it harder than it has to be?

I had a history teacher once who said that the purpose of history was to remind us that just because this is the way things are, does not mean that this is the way things should be or always have been. And ever since those words left his lips, they have followed me. He continued to explain that we need history to tell us that sometimes we need to fight and sometimes fighting is ugly. More than that, sometimes the way things are is, quite simply, wrong; and when it is wrong, we are not powerless. We are not restrained to a passive watching of the world, our world.

Those words have made me bold on more than one account in the years since. Lately, however, I have been really good at refusing to apply this idea. I am not so much the humanist that I can believe that a man's or woman's destiny is in their own hands entirely; but I do believe that the many of us spend too much time reacting to a life that appears to just happen. We are not as powerless as we often feel. We can take responsibility for more than we realize.

Those are dangerous beliefs. They are heavy and ready to add their own layer of chaos to the pile of things worth stressing about. And up until now, I have "turned a blind eye". Yet, I feel it is time to apply the process to the process itself... if that makes sense.

Because apparently, handling stress well is not merely refusing to let things bother you by forcing them into unsee-ably dark corners of yourself. And it is more than cheap denial or delayed reactions. It is not storing it for later to be dealt with when no one else is around. Apparently. Which sucks because...well, I am so good at those. Or I was.

Until my body rebelled. Treason. I had done the hard work of persuasion. Mutiny from the inside.

Now, it turns out, I am not meant to house and store things for later and 'not now'. I am learning to be more intentional about letting things go. Which is strange, because I swear that that is exactly the opposite of taking responsibility and meeting life on its terms and not just being a victim of passive reaction. Yet, it takes so much more effort to say (in a way that my body actually believes), "This is not worth the pain I will feel if I hold onto this one second more."

It is letting go of my right to feel incensed, annoyed, piteous etc. But it is not denying myself emotions, because that also I feel in this seditious wreck. Instead, it is the highest honesty of feeling everything as it comes without letting it rule me. I have never been so aware of my own thoughts or how little true self-control I have. More often than not, it seems an impossible balance to strike; but I guess it is just a more mature version of choosing to feel. To feel without shutting down or being consumed by emotion. To feel emotions in wisdom, if that is possible (and I do not yet know if I believe it to be).

So here I am. Open window blowing peaceful wind across my typing fingers as I try to figure out why I hurt today. All I can figure is that I am pushing myself too hard this week and  my body is too tired to filter out the stressors. I was not always this fragile. But I did love my strength.




Also, art. I have very much enjoyed this photographer over the last few days.