The Last Poem I Wrote Before All the Rest Were Lost...

Five years ago today my house burned down.  In my purse was a copy of the last poem I wrote before the fire.  The sole survivor.

March 2005

The one I call myself

I find I barely know

When all I see falls away

All I can touch

Becomes no more

I’m left in the dark

Among the stillness

I wish I didn’t know

I long for a touch

A whisper in the dark

To sweep me away

And carry me home

To that place where I know you wait

The place where I can see all that is, has been and will be

All this was to lead to one place

The place where time is no more

Fear is no more

Tears are no more

And when all is stripped away

I’m left there all alone

With the one who knows me better

Knows me more

I see that all that was me

Was a broken image of a tattered man

Who was blinded by a nature not his own. 

Full Moon Dream Board: Peace

So ends my four-day writing marathon. (It was more like four and half really).  I have a word count, but I feel like it is really no way to measure what happened inside me this weekend.

I lived. 

I’ve started my first real piece of fiction (I say “real” because I’ve written fiction before I’m sure, but never seriously.)  Currently my characters are still only giving me the beginning of their stories—their tragic stories.  I am begging them to give me a glimpse of their futures so that I can trust that their story redeems. 

Being the narrator has always frightened me because for so long I was convinced that God had an “ultimate will” for me.  I have come to believe, to much relief, that in fact, the joy of writing my own story is before me.  As the author, I have created these characters with names and faces and fathers and fears.  I’m hovering above somewhere, hiding behind a tree maybe, and I can see the torment they feel.  But I don’t know yet what they will choose tomorrow.  I want to interfere, to control the story.  But I will not.  It is their story, not mine to tell.  I can only plea with them…

                                             Thoughts on Fiction

                                             29 Mar 10

I want to write a redemptive ending,

But I don’t know if my characters will let me.

They’re stuck

Somewhere between the ninth hole, the Baring Sea and delivery day.

And they are running from,

If not paralyzed by,

The fear

Of an ever growing roundness protruding from her belly.

My dear characters, may your joy grow with each day.  We are hoping for you. 

And while I am hoping for my characters, I can only pray that someone is hoping for me.  I was amazed, ashamed and confused by some of the things that crept out of me over the last few days.  Solitude and expression can do that.  Anxiety has been overwhelming me. I’ve spent moments sitting silently; asking the screaming little girl inside what she needs to say. 

She wants to be accepted.  I guess that means           

I want to be accepted. 

Yael Naim - Far, Far

As these and other beautiful and hideous thoughts rage through my being (I swear I can feel them in every joint), I know that there must be somewhere they can be placed where some other power can quiet them and I continue on in peace. 

Because peace is beautiful. 

How convenient that the moon is full and birthing creativity and excitement.  I shall use her offering of energy and offer her back my creativity.  I made a box.  Not just any box—a beautiful box.  The tag on the front reads “everything will be okay in the end…it’s not the end.”  Inside this box I will place my fears, crazies and gremlins.  (I suggest taking a listen to this and embracing the restful breaths it offers to the creative soul.)  I’m sure it will fill fast but that guarantees that I can fill with peace and light. 

And so I end my evening with a cupa, a warm meal and The Science of Sleep.  The rain will sing me to sleep tonight, like she has the past few nights and tomorrow I will wake and write again. 

Live at peace,

Jenn

2010 Book List-This Year With Reviews

Book reviews terrify me.  I'm not sure why.  Probably because I just spent hours taking it all in and now you want me to spit out a few sentences summarizing the book.  But, last year I sped through fifty books without giving a single review.

Here's my list so far this year.  I'd say it's pretty impressive considering the quarter I had.  I'm working on quiet a few books over my break and have a good list for the spring including the ones for school.  

Please add your suggestions.  I have more than enough books on my shelf to read, I'll probably buy plenty more, but I want to know you are reading and get some suggestions.  

1.  Stones Into School, Greg Mortenson  

Written in what feels like a rush and using a bazillion pages to tell the Central Asia Institute’s story in Afghanistan (a story that was hinted at in Three Cups of Tea), this book floored me; the Afghani men who represent the antithesis of the Taliban, the desperate fervor for life.  Afghanistan may hold my heart more than any other nation.  Afghanistan has the second highest illiteracy rate the in the world and not only one of the highest birth rates (seven births to each women), but the country’s infant and maternal mortality rates are just as high.   I could go on forever, at least fifteen pages, as that’s how long my research paper was this quarter.  But I suggest, for the hopeful side of the story, you read Stones Into Schools.   Mortenson presents a look at the Taliban, the most forgotten people in the most remote corner of the world and how pockets of the US Military are changing their approach.  Every page of this book cries out “everything must change.”  And I cried through every page. 

2.  The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

How many reviews have been written on LOTR?  Must I give another?  Let me say this much—the trilogy stands as a testament to passion.  The amount of time and creative energy that was spent for its purpose are evident through every word of every made up language.   The culture of creativity is seen in every character.  And the book reminds me, above all, that even if I were to know all that would hinder me along the way, the journey is still worth every step, every tear and every crumb of Lembas. 

3.  Savage Beauty, The Life of Edna St. Vincent Milay, Nancy Milford

I’m sorry to say that I could not finish this book.  In fact, I could barely start it.  While Vincent ranks right up there with Zelda and Sylvia in tortured famous females, there are a lot of pages filled with very little depiction of the world outside of Vincent’s own mind.  The author herself writes in a such a straightforward manner that I believe it actually contrasts with the manic nature of Vincent too much.  As a result, I could not engage with either fully. 

* Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan, Sally Armstrong

This was a book for school, so it doesn’t actually count for my twenty-five, but it is worth making a note of.  Armstrong, a Canadian journalist, follows the story of RAWA through the refugee camps of Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan.  Veiled Threat exemplifies the kind of writing I most want to do.  She gives a history of the women, the Taliban and the current war and provides the stories of the Women who have endured all of it and have continued to fight for their own futures.  This is one of the most captivating books I have read on the subjects of both Afghanistan and women’s right.  

4. The War of Art, Steven Pressfield 

What can I say?  The day I opened this book on the bus, I stayed on the bus for a few extra stops, planted myself in Stumptown and skipped class.  The next day I called a counselor.  Being an honest person, I will say that I am a drama ridden, justified hypochondriac. I hate this about myself and have often wondered where this comes from? The book has helped me explore some of the roots of these character flaws and see how the directly relate to my creative expression.  Pressfield doesn’t leave anything untouched.  He address the ways artists try to escape the pull of our art, he draws the picture of a professional and shows you just how much time you need to put in to make your work sustainable, never once sugarcoating his own long journey to success.  The Art of War is wise, contemplative and raw.  It’s kicks your ass. 

Working on Now

5. The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

6. Snow, Orhan Pamuk

7. On Writing, Stephen King

8. A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver

The Spring Reading List

9. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

* On the Road, Jack Kerouac (for my Beat Generation Lit. class)

* Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs (for my Beat Generation Lit. class)

* The Pocket Beat Reader (for my Beat Generation Lit. class)

10.  Half the Sky, Nicholas D. Kristof

11. A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, Ernest Hemingway  

Thoughts on the Summer Books           

12. Strength in What Remains, Tracy Kidder

13. The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

14. The Outliners, Malcolm Gladwell

15. What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell

16. What is the What, Dave Eggers

15. Zeitoun, Dave Eggers

16. The Kite Runner, Khaled Housseini

17. The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad

18. The Evolution of God, Robert Wright

19. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

20. I really am not at a loss of books here…But I’m leaving room for suggestions.  Help!!

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

If you wrote your life story, what would the first line be?

Insomnia has struck again.  The reasons are obvious.  I have been obsessed with writing and have spent most of my time the last few days sitting at my desk moving nothing but my fingers.  I tried to go the gym, but apparently they are open twenty-four hours a day every day but Saturday.  So I did yoga in my room and then wrote some more.  It’s four AM.  I think the neighbors (the ones who live in a van on my street) are having a rock concert. I am wide awake and suddenly obsessed with the first lines of stories.  So, like any sane person I went through every one of my books and recorded the first line of the ones that struck me. 

Please enjoy

“EVERYTHING WITHIN TAKES PLACE AFTER JACK DIED AND BEFORE MY MOM AND I DROWNED IN A BURNING FERRY IN THE COOL TANNIN-TINTED GUAVIARE RIVER IN EAST-CENTRAL COLOMBIA, WITH FORTY-TWO LOCALS WE HADN’T YET MET. “ –Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity

Sometimes, I sleep with Dave’s books.  Now that I saw that out loud, it sounds creepy. This, on the other hand is incredibly intriguing.  

“By the time you finish reading this book, ten thousand children will starve, four thousand will be brutally beaten by their parents, and one thousand will be raped.” – Peter Kreft, Making Sense Out of Suffering

I almost didn’t add this one because well, it’s traumatizing.  But then, maybe that’s why it should be included

“Then there was bad weather.” –Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

            I will read this book once a year until I die.  One day I will read it in Paris. 

“I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.” –C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

            This is possibly the first book I ever read that truly left me speechless.

“No one ever told me that grief feels so much like fear.” –C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

This book has always come to me at the most needy times. Last year I read it after reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the same day a good friend died. It was a pretty hard week. 

“Sometimes I feel as though I were born in a circus, come of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands, the band going great guns in trombones and drums.” –Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

            Dear Don, write me letters will you?

“It was one of those nights, one of those lovely nights, dear reader, which can only happen when you are young.” –Frodor Dostoevsky, “White Nights: A Sentimental Love Story”

            Yay for the Russians! Yay for short stories! Yay for Sentimental love stories!

“When Mr. Bilbo Bagins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his elventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobiton.” –J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Whenever I read these books I usually spend the first hour on the first line.  It’s magical.  And then I spend the next hour wondering how the hell he got from there to Mount Doom and why he never thought of this…

 
“As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God.” –Karen Armstrong, A History of God.

Perhaps the one woman who has helped make more sense out of God than I have been able to find anywhere else, except, of course, for Anne Lamott...

“On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life was hopeless, and I would eat myself to death.” –Anne Lamott, Plan B

My dear Anne Lamott, in the words of Kelly Clarkson, “My life would suck without you.”  Thank you, Anne, most sincerely, for allowing me to be myself and think all my crazy thoughts and still be sane (mostly).  And mostly, thank you for believing enough in the human race to write about them with truthful aggravation and expansive compassion. 

           

*8 Things I Need to Remind Myself That I Love and Too Often Make Myself Ignore

1.  Recycling & composting.  I really hate not doing these two simple things.  I’ve gotten way too lazy lately and I won’t settle for it anymore.  Either I care or I don’t, and I’d rather care.  It’s amazing and simple and it goes far beyond food and plastic.  I’d rather buy recycled products like clothes and trade things with friends.  I want to reduce the amount of waste I produce and the amount of plastic I use.  I would love to commit to not using plastic at all. It’s a big commitment, but I have good inspiration. 

2. Writing/Reading/Blogging/Words in general.  I don’t have words to describe this.  I’ve been avoiding writing because every time I write a little bit my head starts swirling and then I want to write everything. I literally feel my soul die a little bit every time I ignore the words that live inside me. The same happens when I start to read—I want to read everything.  Oh books!  They are my very best friends. When I moved back from New Zealand I got rid of clothes so my books would fit in my suitcase.  To this day I will skimp on other things so I can browse used book stores.   When my house burned down I had 297 books.  I said goodbye to each one of them by name.  I am often still devastated by the great loss of words in that fire, my own and those of others.  

3.  Drinks with friends.  I never have been a “going to the bar” kind of person.  I know little about alcoholic beverages.  But lately I’ve been out a few times for drinks and these times have been intimate and encouraging.  They have replaced communion in a way and I long for that relationship with quality people. 

4.  Cooking and, most importantly, watching my friends enjoy the food. I love to cook, obviously.  I’ve been cooking for myself a long time and I’m kind of getting sick of it.  Meals, like drinks, are meant to be shared.  There is no reason to be lonely.  That was my valentines days lesson.  To be lonely when there is food around is to be deprived the great richness of life. 

5.  Silence/Aloneness/Poetry.  I love to turn to the music off.  I love to turn all the lights but my little lantern off.  I love to read the words of Rumi and Rilke and Mary Oliver and be lost in the wonder they impose on me.  These things breathe a kind of life into my soul that I can only attribute to something eternal. 

6. Creating things with my hands/designing furniture/helping build furniture/Painting furniture.  I bet you didn’t know this about me.  When I was 17 I really wanted bookshelves.  I had a very specific vision so I drew them out.   They were measured to my favorite books, my favorite lamp, the stereo and logical storage in my tiny little room.  I gave them to my grandpa and he built them.  They were with me until my apartment building burned down.  I miss them.  Since then I’ve helped build other things, like houses and coffee shops.  I’ve also painted stuff I’ve found for cheap that needed a new life.  I’ve created paintings and quilts and poetry with my hands and that kind of satisfaction is maybe my favorite.

7.  Organic things.  For about six years now I have been devoted to Organics.  It started with shampoo, and then food because I wanted to start taking care of myself.  Then I started to see the quality difference.  Now I’m very aware of agriculture, pollution, waste and the corruption of the food industry, specifically meat.  I can taste high fructose corn syrup in things.  I can’t take hydrogenated oils.  They taste gross.  We vote with our money.  Sometimes it costs me more (though, you’d be surprised how much I save by staying out of the center aisles of the grocery store).  Sometimes it takes more time.  But I’m confident that by choosing to not be part of the demand, I will make a difference. 

8.  Rock Climbing.  Another little known fact about me.  I love rock climbing.  Sometimes I dream about it.  I started climbing in New Zealand and I was getting pretty good and had nice muscles happening and then I moved back to the states and don’t have gear or a climbing partner or the knowledge.  Last year I thought I would start, but I didn’t.  It’s still on the list for this year.  Hopefully, but publicly admitting that deep inside I love hugging big rocks, I will be more active in making it happen.

Be inspired by Magpie Girl and join *8 Things yourself!

Under the Tree

Writing, writing, writing…

It’s the thing that

keeps me sane.

 

The thoughts in my head get so jumbled and then my emotions hitch a ride until together we are all too tired to settle anything and logic becomes our long lost friend.  I wonder some days if I will find a way to navigate the labyrinth of my mind.   If I will find solace beneath a shade tree and learn to enjoy the soft breeze and the songs the birds sing just for me?  How long will it take me to learn this?  To love this?  To see that it is not complicated or a burden to get to a place where I can rest in peace?  My self-made drama and my extra long processing time often gets the better of me.  I find myself stumbling over words and thoughts and emotions as if they were pebbles in my path and not the stepping-stones they are.  As if they were merely rocks instead of precious jewels I must learn to enjoy the beauty of. 

            I must learn to find a center; a place of refuge.  I must learn to love myself.  I want to learn to be positive and embrace the here and now.  I want to learn how to move on and not give control to the past or future or circumstance, but to know that in this moment there is calm and I am protected from these winds.

            I must learn how to see Jesus again.  I must re-know God.  Learn how to be joined with them in our spirits.  It is with them and their songs that I have always found calm.  They are my birds and my tree and my song.

            So I picture myself resting in a field.  There is lake and a small stream.  I’m under the umbrella of a tree, back to its sturdy trunk.  I have with me a sandwich that I will eat later because right now I am following the outline of its shadow on the ground, noticing how the shades of green vary in the sun and on each individual blade.  Every once in a while I spot a small flower living at peace in its own beauty.  She doesn’t think much about her size or her strength or how others view her.  She just exists in her beauty and I would like her to teach me.  And there is a frog and a small bee.

Above me someone is singing a song.  There is chorus actually, of strong voices.  It’s a song that I seem to know as if it has always been there, always being sung over me except that every second feels brand new and beckons me to close my eyes and just explore its melody.  The birds fly and hop back forth from branch to branch between the fluttering leaves which dance, uncaring of how and who sees.  They dance because they must, because this is what they do when the wind catches them.  When they dance on this wind, to this song they are beautiful and fluid.  They are at one with all the parts of life they are connected to.  The millions of tiny leaves flutter against the blue sky, giving glimpses of the clouds slowing passing overhead. 

I imagine myself wrapped in one on a cool summer evening with the windows open allowing in the evening breeze with the scent of coming rain.  There is a peace in these clouds that surround me.  Peace to be lived and breathed and to be lost in. I believe my God created these things.  I believe he lives inside them.  I believe they are parts of Him and parts of me.  To ignore them is to cheat myself and to cheat others.  To ignore them is to ignore God.  I believe He waits patiently for me to notice and will wait forever loving and blowing and singing and dancing until I notice and join Him.

*8 Things: What I Love About My Tribe

1. I don’t think they realize they are my “tribe”

2. They come from a wide range of backgrounds

3. They want to talk about the big, scary things

4. We can never go to enough concerts

5. They are women

6. They are strong

7. We LAUGH so hard the neighbors often ask us if something was wrong because they thought they heard someone scream

8. Through all the things we’ve seen we still believe in fairy tales. 

If it hadn't been for this *8 Things I wouldn't have been able to put up the blog I did. I had been sitting on the thoughts for a while but it wasn't until I made my list that I realized how to word what I needed to!

Be inspired by Magpie Girl and join *8 Things yourself!

The Freelance, Unconventional Nun: Thankful

The Freelance, Unconventional Nun is one party cynical, one part bitter, one part wounded.  This is what I left you with last.  But I am also hopeful and thankful.  The point of FUN is not that I am single, a man-hater or a whiny twenty-five year old.  The point is that I’m not alone; I have an amazing community around me.  Like I said it’s been a long year for my friends and I.  We have found more than enough to laugh and cry about and for me this has led me to realization that what I needed was them. 

I was always one of those women who would get my friendships with boys confused (for reasons discussed last time).  I got to a point at the end of 2007 when I decided that I wasn’t going to touch boys.  This was a very funny and extreme resolution because at that point I had still never even been kissed.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the physical contact, hugging is one of my favorite activities.  I just felt my friendship needs changing and knew that I was in some sort of self-preservation mode.

When I moved back to the states from New Zealand I was pretty much on my own.  I moved back in with my family for a summer and had no friends in town.  My best friend lived an hour away with her husband.  I found solace in my books and I devoured Anne Lamott.   I used the season of separation to evaluate my life.  What were the things I wanted? Needed? Dreamed about?  I started to see many of my needs change. 

This most obvious change needed was spiritual.  The practices I had been doing no longer seemed to have the same effect they once did and needed to be reevaluated.  The way I viewed my friendships needed changing.  I have always had great friends around me, but I was appreciating them in a whole new way except that now they were very far away.  I knew that in Seattle I would have a chance to explore both of these aspects of life. 

When I got to Seattle I moved into a house with three women who had traveled and lived and loved and educated themselves and weren’t afraid to speak up at the many things they saw as injustices.  They also weren’t afraid to share good wine, or books or music or spirituality or the various parts of life called art.   I also found a church community that was completely different from anything I have ever been apart of it (yet another chapter in my episodic spiritual life).   One night they made an announcement about the women’s group, Hysteria, and said to talk to Jolie about it if we wanted to know more.  After the service I promptly found Jolie and asked, “Are you the woman who has hysteria?”  (Which got even funnier when I looked up what ‘hysteria’ means.)  Jolie told me that yes, she was one of the founding mothers of the group that was created to be a place for women to share their lives, drink wine and create. 

As I became a part of this group, I realized that it feed my soul far more than a large church gathering did.   I meet people my roommates go to grad school with and have been pleasantly surprised by some of the amazing women I work with.  I then started to see how these great friends I was making are really the “church” I have been looking for.  These women are strong, beautiful, courageous, brilliant spiritual and grounded.  We aren’t an organized group sitting in rows.  We gather around dinning tables and coffee shop patios and books and lakes and wine and each other. 

The Freelance, Unconventional Nun has so many parts it’s hard to explain them all in one go.  In fact I’m still foggy on who she is and what she does but that is life right? We gather together with people in places around things and we learn about life and we cry and laugh and hopefully we don’t miss the gifts that as we women share with each other.

 

 

Coming of Age

27.May.2009

“I tell you that I have a long way to go before I am—where one begins…”

–Rilke

 

“Not long ago I was looking at photos of myself at various ages and weights—way before the neckular deterioration began, way before the fanny pack of menopause—and I could see how gorgeous I must have looked to everyone else…Twenty years! Why did it take me so long to discover what a dish I was?”

–Anne Lamott

 

I’m finally starting to feel like an adult.  I’ll be twenty-five in three weeks.  The other day I bought a green shirt.  I put it on, did my hair and looked in the mirror.  It was the first time in my life that I actually looked like an adult, really, truly.  I’m not sure why I’ve never felt that way before; I’ve often felt a little mature for my age.   The moment seemed magical.  This shirt is the color of a freshly painted kelly-green tractor and my eyes reflect it perfectly.  I was wearing my favorite eye shadow.  My hair was wavy and pulled back loosely, my neck was framed by a pair of beautifully artistic earrings I bought at a market in New Zealand.   I was showing off my newly acquired sun-kissed (burn) glow. About four days a week I go through my twenty-minute beauty ritual, which includes actually washing my face, applying light make-up and not hiding my hair with a headband.  I guess this was one of those days where I cared enough to put on the earrings.

There I found myself, standing in my bathroom staring at this woman in the mirror.  She was no longer a young woman, no longer a girl. She had lived many lives, left things behind and had many adventures ahead of her.  She was someone I felt that I had known once, or would know in the future, but in this moment she was a stranger.  I paused for a moment in front of my mirror and stood up a little straighter.  This woman looking back at me had a glimmer of wisdom, endurance and other things that continue to remain unnamed but add up to beautiful.   She held herself with true confidence and I was startled when I learned that I was her. 

I’ve read a lot of books, been on plenty of airplanes and endured some big stuff, but never have I fully seen myself as an adult.  I don’t know that I’ve ever felt really at home in my own skin, but in this brief moment I did.  I haven’t been able to shake the feeling. It feels like it’s haunting me. This adult-looking-ness is new to me. I just don’t feel “there” yet, even though I don’t know where “there” is.   I’ve been walking taller, standing a little prouder but still something in me is screaming at myself to slow down!  Something is telling me to just stop, to just rest.  In my heart I want to pace myself, allow myself to learn, make mistakes, to endure the moments as they happen with all their messy emotions and unnecessary dramas.    I want to embrace being a twenty-something but for so long I’ve been trying to achieve forty and feeling very far behind.  I think I would rather gather around the women who find themselves truthfully at their age and learn from them what only they can teach me. 

For now I think I will embrace the twenty-five year old woman I see looking back at me through my very own eyes and I will do my best to record my twenty-something dilemmas so that when it is time I will pass on the wisdom I learned about beauty and love and self and life and God.  I will live at peace with now and embrace the surprising beauty as I come of age. 

Remember

26 May 2009

I must remember …

Not to turn my faith into something it is not about

Not to struggle with what should be resting

To keep my head up

To sing the songs I love most

My creator

My creation

That everything is meaningless

That there is more beauty than darkness

I must remember to breathe.  

I Will

22 May 2009

I will sit in the park, at the lake

I will stare at the mountains and their snow.

I will read my words

I will read the words of others

And I will live in love with them.

I will enjoy this day

Dwell in it’s silence

And be haunted by it’s beauty

I will get lost in the blue,

Sky that surrounds me

Today I will love all that is God

And be loved by all that is God

I will.

Possible Reasons for Feeling Dead Inside

7. April. 2009

I woke up this morning

Even though I did not believe it

You were not here

Neither were my eyes open

Something in my core felt cold

Something deep inside felt empty

I didn't dream last night

And it had not been raining

There was no peace

I woke up in a sweat

Too many blankets

I reached, but for nothing

Ad nothing is what I found

And still I cannot validate nothing with firm belief

Those flowers are not real

And there is no one who can love me

Not when they can't see me

Not when I won't let them

Is that why I can't see you?

Feel you?

You won't let me?

Can it be? 

My god is just like me?

Uncertainty

8.27.08

“All these people who wrote of my life both inner and outer wrote with an absolute assurance that I had never felt.”  -Ernest Hemingway

 

            I have never felt assurance in my life.  I have always been concerned with how things would ebb and flow.  How they would shift beneath my feet or the room would spin around me. I’ve always been aware of how everything can be taken away.  How in my reality nothing is eternal.   I find in myself these thoughts that at any moment I won’t be able to go back home (wherever, whatever that may be?), that all I have will be gone, that those I love will be no more or at least not with me.  While I have this family unit that is mostly free from divorce and all lives in the same tiny area of the world I still have experiences of distance from people and an overwhelming amount of short-term relationships. 

As far as I know I have always been standing on some kind of dry, shifting soil that refuses to let life dig deep with it roots.  I have a family.  Parents that are not divorced.  I lived in the same town, the same house even, my entire life.  And still, security is a word that has always been slightly allusive to me.   Something in me never allowed myself to feel at home.  In my memories I only ever remember shadows of home.  Being someplace that I really know isn’t home, but yet brings me the sense that it is close.  These moments are usually when the scent of salt water fills the air and there are mountains in view.  It has also happened in a small cottage in the mountains of New Zealand surrounded by a family and fireplace.  Every once in a while I find a leather sofa that bears some resemblance to what I believe home could be; but these things were not my roots, the history does not exist in them. 

This is something deep and personal to me.  If my parents and family knew I felt this way they would feel betrayed.  They seem to have a very different view of what my quaint life was. It was full of Christmases and birthday parties and family and happiness and all these things that I simply thought were agonizing or non-existent.   

When I was seventeen I left.  I didn’t run away.  I wasn’t kicked out.  I just left and moved to the next town.  I stepped out on my own as much as I could.  I got to a point when I knew that it wasn’t far enough away.  So I hopped on a plane and flew as far as I could.  I landed in New Zealand and then found my way around the world.  I was surrounded by this makeshift family that I love dearly, but still felt in many ways, very much alone.  As I wound my way around Earth I stopped back in at home, feeling more out of place than ever.  I then packed up one more time and headed for New Zealand again. 

It was in New Zealand that things started to resemble what I suppose “home” should be, but with a major difference.  Now people who came and went just like me surrounded me, only I was planted for a little while.  Thus began an overwhelming amount of people coming and going and while I felt roots beginning to penetrate, the seasons came and went with such a great harshness that the roots were scared to grow and were never fully as strong as maybe they could have been. 

            Here I stand at age twenty-four completely unsure of everything.  I own a very dilapidated wardrobe, some books, a backpack, a laptop and recently acquired a fifty dollar couch.  I borrow my friend’s mattress and I sleep on the floor.  For the last six years I have lived semi-nomadic having slept in fifteen bedrooms that were considered my own (that is not counting three months of mission bases and hostels across the globe).  A year is so long that it makes me ill just thinking about it, therefore commitments are not long ones.  I live in a city that I have never been to before.  I’ve been here four weeks and still don’t have a job.  My money is gone, my friends and I have histories of three weeks, with the exception of one, but we have spent most our relatively short friendship on different continents.   

            For me I guess, life is what is in front of me.  My identity is caught up in what I do.  So when I don’t do anything, then I am nothing.   The part of me that is calm and rational (very small part) knows that this is nonsense.  That actually I am not what I do.  Sadly the other personalities rioting inside of me don’t spend enough time with calm and rational.   My friends are those in front of me.  I have many relationships with people who find themselves all over the world and many of them I love very deeply, but my immediate is my reality.  It is very rare for me to really miss someone, and almost as rare for me to miss a place. 

            So there a few things I seem to feel I am missing.  Security and home I seem to equate with each other.  And yet I am missing the thing, whatever it may be, that makes me want to stay anywhere longer than a couple months.  I seem to fill my backpack with these roots that long for fertile soil.  I have yet to discover a place where they even want to be rooted. 

            What I’ve done is shut the door and started over.  This is the first and only conclusion I have ever come to.  I guess the door is a very solid thing in my mind, but the things that lie on either side of that door are unknown and blurry.  

Compline

Oh Lord, do not let bitterness take root

Do not let me forsake my love for you

Give me a gentle heart

Heal my wounds

Give me eyes to see your greatness and your beauty.

Forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

God be praised

Into your hand I commit my spirit

Can I trust you?

April 5, 2009