Here we are again.

I have a lot on my mind right now. There are lots of pieces threatening to come together, to resolve. The suspense is killing me, but the next 2 years are going to determine so much of the course of my life. And there are lots of questions that refuse to be answered. Mostly, I want a lot of conflicting things that God has little interest in helping me sort out. Instead, I am processing things that I thought I had long since finished the grief process for. But it turns out that you can start the whole process over in a moment's notice...and that has been a hallmark of my life.

I get angry when I realize that I am back in this familiar place. I have a lot of bad poetry from the first few times. I am not here to contribute anymore of that tonight. Mostly, I am here to write until I understand myself.

See, I loved my growing up. My running through the woods of Montana under the watch of mountains and sky. My making candy in mom's kitchen. My long ago friends with our silly adventures. These are all precious pieces with specific pictures of people and places.

And yet there is this haunting feeling of loss. I don't know how to explain it except that in psychology it is often referred to as abstract loss. It is the loss where you know that things as they are do not quite qualify as normal, something is missing...even if you don't know quite what the name of that thing is. It is not that something physical was taken away or stolen. For me, it is that I grew up so fast. I went from 7 years old to 18 and from there to 30 years old. Or something like that. From child to adult and from adult to parent before I ever turned 10. More or less. It is not an exact science. I cannot say that I was paying much attention to the details of the experience when it was all happening.

And now I am trying to explain what it means to have lost so much of your childhood, to grow up so early. It is not as though I can try to be 8 years old again. The best I can do is be the age I am. I get flack for that sometimes, for really holding onto being just my age and no older. Our society is so good at praising those who mature quickly. I loved being 19. It was horrible year of life filled with abandonment, but it was the first year that I got to deal with my problems as a 19 year old, my actual age. And I will never be 19 again because I grew up. But there are ages that fell into the chasm of survival. I never was those and it wouldn't be healthy to try to reclaim them now, ten or more years later. How do I explain the loss I feel in knowing that? There is no good comparison because I do not know what I missed except by the quiet envy I experience from time to time.

Looking back, I think I made the best of a bad situation. I think I chose well. I think it was all that could be asked of me and I would give it all again. The anger and hurt rise though when some secret wind whispers, it didn't have to be that way. The game was set and the odds were stacked before I ever had a chance. It is then that I remember that I live in a world under a curse. Most days, I am fine and grown up and unaware of the damage done. But then something small happens and all of the walls of the rooms that I have built inside myself crumble under a torrent of emotion that I wish I could control. Then the feeling of loss overwhelms and I wonder if healing is possible, if it ever really stays. And I think it does. It is just slower than I am patient.

But then that whispering wind hands me more discontentment as it howls around the ruins inside me.

You may heal but you will never be restored.
You will always be just a little bit

broken.

 It helps when I remember that we all have lost something in this curse, that we are survivors of a heavenly war that we chose the wrong side in. It is best not to compare pain and loss. No one wins that way.

Mostly, tonight I hope that healing is still possible. That restoration is a bigger miracle than I can imagine. And that eternity can provide things that are impossible amongst the mortal, cursed, and dying.

And that all of this grieving really will be turned to a celebration that is not forced or false in anyway.

My quest has never been for beauty. Beauty is something people have intrinsically because they are people. Male or female. It is something you let yourself not something you seek out or develop.

My search has always been for strength. Why? Because it is not enough to be beautiful. Pretty things break. Not all breaking is bad. Not all breaking is good. I want to be strong enough but not too strong. That is something I can seek and develop.

I have been told all of my life that this is a man's pursuit. Women should be beautiful and men should be strong. Women should want to be beautiful. Is it possible that so many women want to be beautiful because they were treated as slightly lesser humans than men? I could never prove that. I have known that I am beautiful and it has brought as many problems as it ever has blessings. I want to be strong. More than that, I need to be strong. I have places that I want to get to and a lot of people telling me it cannot be done. Good places. Peaceful places. Far away places that lie across the valley of the shadow of death. And I am going (and have been going) because that is where I have been led and I cannot wait for other people to be strong for me.

Also, I cannot help but think that the world needs more beautiful men and less men who are only trying to prove that they are strong.

What if we were all beautiful and strong?

I think we know this. I think this is why we write books and have Bible studies about "real strength" and "real beauty". In every women's Bible study that has ever tried to teach me to be feminine and beautiful, we talk about real beauty not being fleeting, not being on the surface, not being how we look but how we think and act and... it all sounds like 'strong beauty' after awhile. Real beauty has to be rooted and lasting and loving. Have you ever trusted weak love? But if I say that I have been searching out strength... well, apparently I have forgotten that I am female rather than male. So I will use other words. I will say "patience" or "discipline" or "self-control" because those are gender neutral words and I am allowed those even if I am denied strength.

Real Quick:

...a reading from Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love by Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Gollins Pratt. I found this in a book I randomly picked up while I was babysitting a sleeping child.

"When we speak of hospitality we are always addressing issues of inclusion and exclusion. Each of us makes choices about who will and who will not be included in our lives...Issues of inclusion and exclusion, while personal, are not just personal. Our entire culture excludes many people. If you are in a wheelchair, for example, you are excluded because there are places you can't go. If you are very young, if you are very old, you are excluded... Hospitality has an inescapable moral dimension to it... It is an issue involving what it means to be human. All of our talk about hospitable openness doesn't mean anything as long as some people continue to be tossed aside...

"But calling hospitality a moral issue does not tell us the whole truth about hospitality either. A moral issue can become bogged down in legalisms, and hospitality is no legalistic ethical issue. It is instead a spiritual practice, a way of becoming more human, a way of understanding yourself. Hospitality is both the answer to modern alienation and injustice and a path to a deeper spirituality."

I do not have to grow up
And I know it.
But I cannot keep the world young.

That, I realize, is what I really want.
It is a tragic case of miscommunication
Between cause and effect.

Digging in my heels will only make me
Terribly alone
--and covered in dirt.

Life is not ever one single thing,
That's just how our memory records it,
Editted and glamorized.

Instead, it is the quiet pounding
Of a thousand hearts
Headed hopefully home.

And every one of those hearts
Spins ever onward
At full tilt with our globe

As we race ever and always
Around the only star
That gets to rule and reign time itself.

We can stop all of the clocks
And break all of the alarms
But the world will never stay young.

Brilliant Archimedes wrote,
"Give me a place to stand,
And I will move the Earth."

But that is not the problem, is it?
Try to hold this Earth
Stationary.

Try to keep her still.
Yes, unwind all of the watches
And let us together lose track of time.

But neither you nor I can stop it.
And we will never be free
So long as we spin.

So shake the Earth from orbit,
If you can find a place
To stand so far away from home.

Or better yet,
Let us sail
Straight into the sun.

Let us make it explode
With all of the star light and wonder
Held in our own aging eyes.

There, in the dark of newly emptied space,
We will finally be free of time and change;
But we will also be left with no where to go.

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.

What to do, what to do?

The world feels awfully big today. Body hurts. Soul hurts. Soul hurts for all the hurting souls. Big. Heavy. World.

I spent last night talking to (primarily) homeless people with a fantastic group that exchanges a hot dog for a story. Any story. Preferably, true, but they will listen regardless. It is amazing the secrets that people will tell. Many of them like to start at the beginning and tell us how they got to where they are. Now, the human condition is all I can see and hear and feel. Too many ladies walking the same streets over and over. Too many men medicating. Too many people without hope and direction and any idea that it doesn't have to be this way. So many lonely, lonely people.

As usual, there is no easy solution or cure for the human condition; and it is this weight that is going to spare my bit of virtual space from more philosophizing about home and context as I get ready to head to Montana for a spell.

and we come back to the human condition, since I cannot escape. I went to a small time poetry slam downtown a week or two ago. It was fascinating. I am convinced I will never find more exquisite people watching if I search over and through half the globe.

I swear, nobody feels comfortable until they are the most outrageous form of weird here. You would think that abnormal people would feel at home in such a crowd, but I think they felt like they've been displaced, one-upped, and turned out. It is not a gathering of idiosyncrasies but a parade that somehow became a pageant of sorts. Oh, Portland. Competitive over quirks. Brazen and bold but not yet confidant. Everybody has to keep moving before you see too much of them.

And the poetry. Oh yes. I was surprised to find two categories: sex and questions. Sex, sure. It's Portland. Questions. Really? But it is the questioning and the uncertainty and the doubts and the... lost feeling that everyone connects with, writes about, shares in. I guess. And words are apparently the answers. The very words that may or may not have any meaning to begin with are the tools that the slammers go about looking for answers.

And I get it. Of course the poets will go to their art, their trade, their comfort for the answers. But I don't get how time after time words themselves were said to be the answers. Go no further. Are words it? Is there a language so universal that it actually fills the holes that beg questions of honesty? Have I been making all of my life entirely too complicated? I need to search the words themselves for my answers. Truly, I am lost here.

Perhaps, it is the feeling of not knowing that is terrifying. If you can describe it, then you have nothing to fear. If you can tack words to it, stuff it full... If you find the right words... If the words fit and fall and paint a picture bright enough... the terrifying unknown becomes familiar and is tamed. Then the feeling of falling finally goes away. Maybe. Ug. I wish. But it will take more than words to fill the heart of man, to make it knowable, and to give us hope.

Our emotions and our fear keep us honest enough to keep looking... but I do not like them today. I want to bind up the hurt and the hopelessness and carry it to the sun. Maybe that is a fire hot enough to consume them.

Scott

I met Scott on the max Saturday. He was homeless and travelling to I'm-not-really-sure-where. I was meeting up with friends. He made a bit of small talk in the slightly-less-than-stable way that homeless men tend to though he managed coherency.

He greeted me and made a quip about the space in the tram (which really wasn't crowded). When I smiled and responded, he began talking about how he still has his sense of humor if nothing else. His words were hurried as if he were afraid that his time in my attention had already run out and I would soon become mindful of this and turn away. A few seconds of silence passed as he squatted down in the bike zone near the wall opposite me. He complimented my eyes and my sunglasses. He liked the way they were accentuated without being exposed, like a mystery.

And then shame.

He became quick to tell me he was too old (56 years) to think of me that way, that I did not have to worry. He just meant to compliment me. I reassured him that I was not freaked out and I watched as all of him relaxed. I asked his name and he looked up at me to say, "Scott" and then ask mine. We filled the space that followed with mutually believed commentary on how Americans are too stand-off when they travel and do not know how to have time for the people around them. (I am pretty sure that we bewildered the people around us to pieces, he and I.) He thanked me for my time and told me he was tired of talking to himself, that he missed conversation. He expounded on the dichotomy of security and freedom saying that if we never take any risks we lose our freedom. And again, when we seek security over freedom, we lose both.

And I listened. Through my aviators, across the max, I listened for the whole of maybe 5 or 10 minutes. And then he did what almost every homeless man I talk to does.

Scott told me that he liked my confidence. He likes the way I carry myself boldly, comfortably but not offensively. As he was talking, I passed my stop so I went over to shake his hand. He continued complimenting and encouraging me gently but firmly, not rushed to let all of his words fall out like he was when we first met ten minutes prior. Scott said that I shouldn't worry, I have a lot more figured out than I think I do, I've just got to keep the faith.

I do not feel that I really know what it is that he and Mike and Dave and Richard see in me. And I do not know why they all tell me the same things: confidence. faith. don't worry. i'm headed in a good direction. Always. And always men around the age of 55. And almost always, homeless. It is like they know that I do not trust myself in the least on my bad days.

In some unconventional way, we need each other. People like me and people like Scott. We need to have someone hand us back our humanity from whatever dark place it has been cast and let us rest awhile in friendly conversation. We cannot waste time because we only have 4 or so max stops for our familiarity to mature. I would have gladly spent more time with him to hear about the family he alluded to and just to watch him become more human.

Some of us are more visibly and more desperately clinging to our humanity than others. Scott is one of them. Too many people will never give him a real name...just labels and titles and shadows to live in. They wont remember seeing him. They are likely to be offended if he spoke to them. He is on the streets because he is alone. For whatever reason, he has lost or severed all the ties that might have caught him. I cannot help but use people like him to measure society against because the heart of a nation can be seen in how they treat their outcasts.

We are offended by them. We do not understand them and we do not have the time to. And it breaks me. I saw so many other people that same day. A homeless woman through the window yelling and crying in the corner of a building. A beggar working the St. Patrick's crowd. A woman and her pimp. Stories writhing without pages.

I had been told that the most meaningful things you can give to a homeless person, should reason and security allow, are an identity and a little human contact. And it is funny the way can you know something that has been told to you and still be blown away by it in real and living life. He never asked for money. He just wanted to talk, to remember, and to be without being alone. And he did not take my time even, because he gave too. I am bewildered by what he said to me, but I treasure it too. And I hope to understand.

the world as it should be

There is a world that is and one that should be, and they are not the same.

And I think that one sentence explains so many of the problems that make and mar our lives. The more I walk through this particular year, the more I realize life really, really, really is not about me. I've been told this all my life and believed it in varying levels, but this last year I am gaining yet another perspective there against the back drop of a world that should not be.

Life is so much not about me, that it is not even about me trying to pay my rent, buy groceries, feed my car, get to class on time, pray, be healthy, be a responsible citizen. Those are just things I do and they aren't really life. That and, when I let him, God more than takes care of those. They aren't worth the stress they cause. Ever. And every time I find myself giving my time to worrying about them, I am missing the point.

But it's hard. I do not always know what the real point is, even when I can define what it is not. I know that I am not alone in that. Is it about alleviating pain for others? Is it about giving? What does that have to do with the world as it should be? Where did we even get that idea? What matters?

It is near impossible to answer any of those questions without a fixed and firm foundation. Today, I am reduced to saying that the answer really is Love. If I fail to love the people God puts near me, I fail supremely. And I think that trumps personal risks and nagging worries. I am so tired of being afraid. I am so tired of doing nothing. I am so tired of living like I can keep myself safe if I try.

I cannot.

People you trust have untrustworthy moments, and it is not your fault for trusting them. Sickness and unhealth may take you regardless of any caution. There will always be reasons to stay locked up. Safe. Secure. Invulnerable. But as a member of the human race, you have to admit that you live in perpetual weakness wrapped in the illusion of strength and control that you are allowed to keep because of the goodness of God as he never gives us more than we can handle.

One day at a time. Practiced vulnerability. Indiscriminate but wise love. I think this is where I'm headed. I think I'm getting closer to what it means to be human.

my heart

I think... it may be done. It's full of hardware and could use a little fine tuning (the clocks kind of need it...), but I like it and finally feel released. Which is good. I like being released. In the moments following I feel most myself and least crazy.

So here it is. My heart. Against a back drop of hardware, clocks, receipts and questions.

All things taken into account, it really is a pretty good biographical piece for where I am, have been at for a while. The two questions beside the largest heart read, "Is this proof of humanity?" and "What is this for?"

The clocks and the receipts are ... stressors I guess.

Or distractions.

The hardware continues the theme of trying to feel whatever it is a human should feel and how much a human should feel. Dispelling with the machinery. Coming alive.

Alongside of the largest heart are written accusations:

Inefficient.

Impractical.

Messy.

Lustful.

Impatient.

Insecure.

Greedy.

Deceitful.

Indecisive.

Insatiable.

Unfaithful.

Broken..

The spirals that can be found coming off the largest heart are indeed veins and arteries. I'm playing with the dichotomy of connectedness and disconnection.

There are three hearts on display here...partially because I like odd numbers and partially because it is hard to describe the heart. There's a photocopy of textbook. There's the bloody mess that takes up the majority of one's attention. And then there's the the colorful little one in the corner. I think that's what I'm aiming for. Maybe. A full color reality. Small. Simple. But still beating and feeling. Working and loving the way humanity was meant to.

And if anyone has any suggestions for my sad clocks, I am more than eager to hear them!

my cardboard heart

Here it is. The missing piece. Two weeks longer than I would have liked ... still unattached and very much not part of the whole, but here.

It is amazing how busy being unemployed can keep you, running around in the vague hope of selling yourself to a prospective employer. And it definitely drains you artistically. There are more responsible things to do... homework. job apps. people. bookstores. class. sleep. march on. It's been good, remarkably good actually. And yet, I feel as though I have forgotten to breathe. The complexities of being human overwhelm me sometimes, and that is ironic considering the art pieces that currently occupy my time. Isn't that the way of it though?

Here we are, my cardboard heart and I...flipping through job ads, just trying to figure out what it means to be a woman at a most basic level without all of the commentary of society and custom. It is one of those in between days on the way to something that will only be recognizable once I am past it. And that is more than fine by me. Today, I had dinner with two of my favorite people. It was simple and tasty and I am full. Rent is paid to the end of the month.

It is funny how much life has been reduced ... I have no guarantees about anything but the goodness of God. It is terrifying and a bit like the longest free fall you can imagine. And after a few months of grimacing and trying to guess at the end, I am learning to rest in it...my cardboard heart and I.

swimming pool blue

I have a paper due for a class and an apartment to clean, but I do not feel tonight what I think I should. So I am trying to work myself into a pensive mood that might produce something, that might let me know that I am still alive the way a human should be. Or at least what I imagine a healthy human being to be.

I wrote some very profound things the other day on a piece of paper that I cannot seem to find. I do not suspect that I will. All my art seems to fall into a void these days. I think my muse is starving because I broke the cycle. One must create in order to be inspired, or did you not know? I did not. If I had, maybe I would not be here filling this virtual space with more letters, as if we needed more words and more messages.

Truth is out there, but it is buried with each breath and word and picture forward. It is overwhelming. I think that is where I dwell now, overwhelmed. It is an accomplishment if I can shake off most of the lies and overtly propagandized messages that adhere themselves to me by the end of the day. I think this is why depression and cynicism and skepticism have such deep roots in our society. We do not know what to believe.

But maybe we don't have to have all of our beliefs lined up. Maybe we wouldn't give up if we didn't feel that pressure. Maybe life would be worth living if we weren't striving so hard after a goal we will never touch. I keep hoping life is about more than the striving. I think that it is, but I am afraid to call it knowledge. Cheese-filled as it is, life is about the love we pour into this cracked and wavering planet. And you cannot love with a goal or it becomes a very selfish kind of love. We do not need any more of that.

forgiveness is a funny thing

Regardless of religion, forgiveness is an important part of being a healthy human being. People weren't made to store up life times of hurt and offense. We can survive such horrors, but the living afterwards can only be called life if we leave the survivor's camps and build something new. I could never accept a religion that ignored the need for forgiveness. We hurt people. We do it more often than we ever like, and it is not all their fault or just poor circumstance. We are going to need forgiveness. And so are they.

It is always different in practice than in theory largely, I think, because we talk about forgiveness so cheaply like it is a makeup we can apply in the morning if we have a zit making an appearance. It is a choice that goes so much deeper. And more.

Because it is rarely enough to make the choice once.

Even once per incident. At some point, somebody is going to hurt you, probably for a long period of time and you won't get to know when to expect it to be over. It is perhaps the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do, this forgiveness thing, when someone is still hurting you to keep forgiving them every day... every time you are reminded of that something. Too often I have acted like things should not hurt if forgiveness is there. I wish.

It is not an anesthetic. It is accepted vulnerability couched in frequently misunderstood strength. It makes no sense. I guess it is the endurance test of love. Can it really endure all things? How patient can it be? There is a balance because forgiveness is not devaluing yourself and it is not ignoring wrongs. I think it is freedom.

To heal.

To go forward.

To live.

And living hurts. It requires the full spectrum of emotions because there will be terrible-no-good-very-bad-days and really freaking fantastic ones. Only human beings get to live through both, and you cannot shut out the bad. It's not a privilege you get unless you trade in your freedoms. That is what impresses me about Christianity. To see Jesus on the cross, barely alive, dying someone else's death...and still breathing forgiveness...even though they aren't even done with him yet. He doesn't wait. And it doesn't make any sense. But I think this is because I cannot yet comprehend a love like that.

ruby

I have long berated emotions for being inefficient, and for nearly that same amount of time I have wondered what real purpose they serve. They are a large part of why I do not really believe in macro-evolution. Emotions do not aid the survival of the fittest mentality, stereotypical or not. They are deceptive and impractical more often than not.

It was easy to come up with half-answers that were never satisfying, but were enough to pacify. Things like, "they are what make us human" or "to keep us from being fake" and other explanations were in no way false...but they did not seem to be solid defense.

Maybe what I have found will only pacify any other person, but it is the answer I have found satisfaction in. Emotions force us to need the people around us. They make life about more than just getting by on our own and totally destroy the lone ranger. People are not made to be alone and we feel it more than the most perfect empirical science. This life thing, whatever else it is, is dependent on other people. We can take on other people's pain in a way that is uniquely human, even if we do not know them.

Feeling is what binds us together. And it is pain and happiness...and both of those in strange and unexpected mixtures. We need people to help us heal. We need people we can trust to help us be who we were made to...It does not work any other way. There are no exceptions or loopholes. It is horrible and dangerous and painfully clumsy work because none of us know what we are doing. More than that, we wont know what we are doing until we have done it, probably wrong, at least once. All of us clueless people trying to make sense of what we have been given. But it is poetry, or art, or music...and we cannot stop to consider our audience or we will never finish. Because if we lose ourselves to the rules of beauty that other people make we will never wade through those tears or walk deep enough into unknown darkness to feel the weight of the worth of what we are making.

Quite simply, we are making ourselves a life.

Time

I can live through most goodbyes and I even enjoy stories where things do not end perfectly. (I prefer them most days actually.)But I hate watching things wear out. Beautiful buildings, favorite clothes, old art...I hate how beauty never seems to endure. Time is relentless and it races on at a breath taking rate.

I have caught myself searching, in every new place I go, for some sign that wherever I have arrived is outside of the weight and wear of time. I want so badly for the beauty to endure. I think this is what is meant when it is said that God has written eternity on the hearts of men. Outside of that explanation, the human race makes no sense. We want to hang onto so many things but we have never been told that anything will last. There is no evidence of anything that has lasted forever...but we have an understanding that there is such a thing as 'forever'. At least, we have a word for it.

I do not know what this means for my plan to find out what it means to be human. It looks like it means that we are doomed to long for what we do not know...even as we fear the unknown above all else. We are delicate, fragile, and temporary but we long for strength and immortality. And while we are so temporary, we are capable of so much. The strength of the human spirit is unmatched. There is an undeniable will to live even when there does not seem to be reason to. For me, this leads past wonder and makes me believe in the immortality of the human soul. Where else did this idea come from? Why can we talk about a forever none of us have ever known? Why do we look to eternity? Are we really so lost in delusions of hope? Maybe. But if the hope is real, it changes everything.

Human

I am discovering something, or rather a lack of something: I do not actually know what it means to be human...and for myself, what it means to be a woman. What is more unsettling to me is that I do not think that this is just the age I am at or where I live or even just who I am right now. I do not think there is any rule that says, "You will eventually figure this out." As best as I can tell, we are too often a species content with not knowing. I really hate it when it is not comforting to not be alone.

I want to know. I do believe that I need to know if I am to build the sort of life that I want. I have a lot of cheap answers and maybe even some good ones but nothing has been sorted. This is not the kind of thing that will resolve itself without at least the small effort of seeking. And I am excited, at least, in part. It is my project for the summer. It may last longer, I can hardly hope to know that this will all be wrapped up beautifully at the end of the about 70 or so days I have left of summer before I am back into classes and routine and schedules.

People do not usually make sense, but I have long justified this by saying that I do not know enough about them...that I am merely reading them out of context. But now, I want to know what it is that we are...and what we should be...and if there is any hope of bridging whatever gap there may be.

I believe that people have the right to be themselves. As a whole, we are not honest enough or secure enough most days. Too many of us are who we think we should be without a clear idea of where these standards came from or why. But I think it is important to be different...not for different's sake, but for honesty and beauty and all the makings of art that somehow pour out of the souls and minds of men and women. There is a way to see our similarities without laying aside what makes us different and unique.

Doubtlessly, I am a product of Western society; but I hope that I am not so entrenched in culture so as to never meet with Truth. I am what I am, and I cannot pretend to be anything else. We will see what this search brings. As I said, I am excited. I am also a little be wary of finding what I do not want to know--but more than anything I am curious. There is a life that I am looking for, and I will give up so many things to have it; but how will I know it if I do not even know who it is I should be?

perwinkle

A few years ago, I looked at various pieces of prose I had written and I realized how much pain there was. I wanted so badly to write something different, but every time I wrote it came out the same--or worse, it sounded forced. It is only now that I see how dark a time I was living in my life. Having come out of that time, I see that I longed to write about what I did not know. I could not write with the honesty I desired when my desired subject simply was not my reality.

I had been asked why I thought it was that it is easier to find dark poetry that is good. I did not have a real answer then. Maybe I do now. It is likely to be because pain forces us to be real. Humanity is seldom happy long enough to record it and deep enough to communicate it genuinely and deeply. It is a world at war, and, when we are honest, we cannot pretend any differently. We all carry our weapons beside our wounds in one form or another. Even those who find true joy, cannot honestly deny the evidence of an inherited curse. It weighs on us all, but it is not eternal.