Don't look in the mirror.

I am struggling--have been struggling--don't expect to stop struggling any time soon.

I think the Christian way to say this is that "God is refining me". But I do not often think in the Christian way and all I feel is disgust and dread and a little bit of fatalism. I am learning about myself...the trap doors and movable walls and booby traps. Here we go. They were made for someone else; but, once made aware of such things inside of me and how they affect those around me, I begin to fall into one after the other in rapid succession. I am not allowed out. The hallways are long. There are stairs missing. I have already made mention of the moving walls and alluded to the sharp things that find you in the dark.

But worst of all is the feeling that I am responsible for this even though I have no immediate knowledge or secrets that could ever help me to safety. It is, after all, the inner workings of my emotions and intellect and that damned tongue that keep this fun house dangerous and make a haunt out of what should be a home.

I think the Christian solution is to pray more. But I rather feel like hermitting in the woods. Besides, I am certain that improvement will be slow, dangerous, and always a little too late to save those whom I would spare the razors and mazes if I could.

Transitions. Life. Moving. Change.

I think I will leave those words on the virtual page for at least a day. Treat them as if they have ink that needs to soak in and dry on the page. There's been so much of all of that happening all around. It is a whole season in and of itself.

I want to write a poem with a central metaphor of plate-tectonics, another about painter's tape making my worlds make sense, one about my alarm sounding like a siren (which is actually just about done), one about limitations, and a few other's about nothing in particular. It is quite possible that a few of these may bleed over into each other. For that, I am excited. Until then: letting the words above dry. And yet, by the time you, invisible reader, find them... these words may be well past dry and much more towards stale.

This is what I am listening to today between one responsibility and another. It's all very interesting and only vaguely pertains to my ever continuing pursuit of trying to figure out what it means to be wholly human and live the life that a healthy functioning human being should. She has a tattoo which I have thought about getting ...or something similar to it; go figure. I like her talk though, especially the last few minutes.

Meanwhile, I have been hiding in coffee shops trying to study enough, leaving my computer at home. It is not my norm. I like to work from home when I am stressed. I like to come home to that safe place, shut out the world, and dig in my heels until I can push past and through whatever challenge is looming. Lately, however, my focus has waned. I am not trustworthy. I cannot stay home because I will cook, clean, talk to people, make art and all manner of other good rebellions will find me. Even now, as I type when I should be reviewing, I realize I am quite possibly misusing my time. My normal default of bookstores will not do either. I am sure I will be found in the arms of a book which has not the slightest thing to do with mechanics or airplanes.

And so the coffee shops find me awkwardly trying to recall what it is to order drinks that are always only three sizes but which are never called the same name. (I don't know if it's a tall, just give me 16 oz. of something hot...please.) Then there's the awkward turn around as I fumble to find a seat that is culturally acceptable (Portland is a city of misanthropic, space conscious people attempting to look intellectual... at a distance). I am incredibly out of practice.

I found myself, on one occasion, in a coffee shop that I had only been in one other time and that time belonging to a different life. It was sometime in my first few weeks of moving to Portland, to college, to this new life that I have made and grown so used to. I was sobbing. My RA was asking me about myself, trying to get to know me and finding herself ...in over her head. Even then, I could discern that she was in no way prepared for my tears or for the wounds which I then carried with me everywhere.

It was strange, is strange, to me to stumble upon such an isolated memory and to know that who I was then... is gone. And yet, I am still her. If anything, I am more her than I was then. I am who I was then only yet becoming. In the months and years that have filled the space (only 2 years...and yet a whole 2 years!), very little of my externals have changed. I am doing what I said I would be doing. The things that made me ache, bleed, and ... sob are still very much a part of my life, without much change in shape. When I am honest, they can still bring tears; but they are not the same tears I poured out in that coffee shop. I do not know if I am capable of explaining the difference.

Most simply, I am not who I was. I am more myself and less my weakness. Perhaps it is in the gradual separation of pain and identity. It is easy to take a wound and make it your name because it is all that you can see and feel. It is much more difficult to hold pain in an open hand...to let it hurt and make you cry until it heals and dissipates. The latter takes a good deal more practice, band aids, and time.

so many thoughts and no sifter large enough to fit them into

I want to hide myself in pictures, but only words come.

I want refuge in the expressed yet unexplained.

I want to lose myself to complexities of color and depth.

But everything has been laid bare:

too vulnerable,

too certain,

too easily ascertained;

but not the least bit understood.

So I am left saying what I try to mean

And not meaning very much.

If I could but bite and swallow and win and smile--

all at the same time,

in the space of half a breath.

...If I could just command obedience,

and cooperation from my insides

to my fingers...

then maybe you, they, I would see

what it is that I keep inside of me.

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Your body of suffering now brings pain where once I sought release. It is not supposed to be this way, I think. But here it is in my body condemned to death. And it is fitting, though unexpected. You are the only one I could accept this from. But that does not mean that I want to. Forgive me?

I want to be strong enough to give you my weakness. Perhaps, tomorrow. Or perhaps a miracle instead. If only I could be strong enough, but weakness is my marrow, my blood, my DNA, my name. No, not my name. It is in my weakness that I find those quiet moments.

In these moments I am finding out who I am. And who I am is Pain.

Your body, broken for me, has never meant so much... but it has never felt so far away. Our symbols break down and I feel the weight of the debris. Silly contradicting vanities open wide their questions and load them on my shoulders. Too strong, but not strong enough to be weak. Not weak enough to surrender them to you.

I do not think I am doing this right; but I am not yet ready to stop, only ready to be taught again.

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I can feel you leaving.

Bit by desperately-needing-to-be-untangled-bit.

I do not have the power to stop you--

Only this bit of broken will.

But you say nothing to draw attention,

(you had that a long time ago.)

You do nothing to be remembered,

(It doesn't matter. I have tallied the smallest details of expressions.)

You try your best to fade out.

(I am disappointed by your lack of originality.)

Friend, stay?

And that is all I have to offer.

But things are changing like a city in its last hour of day light.

Soon nothing will be the way it was.