alone

We've been married almost four years now.  It went by quickly.  What I wanted to write here, before I forget, is the pearl of wisdom that just came to me whilst looking at a wedding picture just now of us raising champagne glasses:

I laughed just then, because I realize how wrong I was from the start.  I was so afraid of marriage, because it would strip me of my being alone.  I realize that most people, or at least, many people, get married to leave their loneliness--to always be together.  But I am not most people.

I was afraid of having to sacrifice the core, quiet, completely whole and compact self that I am.  The part that doesn't need or want anyone, anything.  The isolation I adored seemed selfish.

But I was so wrong.  For nearly four years now, I have been mourning the loss of self and trying to melt into something indistinguishable, wrongly equating formlessness with selflessness and service.

We (husband and I) have been in pain because of my incorrect conclusion and where acting upon this conclusion has taken us.

More than anything, Noa wants me to live fully, because he loves me.  He longs for, prays for, me to "be happy."  What he really means, though, is to be something, to do something, to become all of me that I can be.  To take a form, to define the lines boldly.  To be.

Ever since we got serious (thought we might get married), I have worried about losing him in the distance as I sprint towards where my inner compass points as true north. We did talk about it once, in the car, parked at a gas station across the street from the ice skating rink (another story for later). We sat there for an hour, going back and forth about hypotheticals.

'What if I want to move to a foreign country?'
'What if I want to be a missionary?'
'What if I want to start a business, or a non-profit?'
'What if I want to go save the world, and it takes all of me?'

In that car, he told me the truth.  I wasn't ready for it.  It didn't seem fair, but I knew that didn't matter.

'If you want to go to a foreign country, or save the world, you have to lead it--it's just not my thing.  But I will go with you anywhere and support you with anything.  I will be your co-pilot,' he said.

'How can I be the pilot? Shouldn't you be the pilot?  I kind of want you to be the pilot as the man.'

And we did get married, so I have tried to die inside.  To wait for a miraculous stirring in his heart to dream big and shake up the world.  Something is budding--God is doing great things and is changing his heart to want to serve.  But leadership is a few years out.

I don't have to wait to be me for him to be him.  Doesn't that make sense?  To think that somehow God needed my sacrifice, like penitence for his heart to grow? Where the heck did I ever think that my sacrifice was good enough for anything?  It is only by Christ that anything is done: 'Apart from me you cannot do anything'--'I am the vine, you are the branches...he who remains in me will bear great fruit...'

So I need to be attached to the vine.  I need to live fully, abundantly.  For all of us.  Fruitless me is hurtful to me, God, the world, and the man I love.

This is going to be a streams of conciousness sort of thing.

Let me start with there is sunlight right now.  Sun.  Shining.  blue skies.

How do people deal with these seasons?  This long delay of despararation. Of burying desires until they blossom again with each spring?

I  forget how sad I am until the sun comes out and I feel happier than I can remember.  

I don't know how much I need to be outside until I am inside all day.

I forget how good it is to love and be loved until I spend all day at home and have no friends.

I am becoming something by having nothing.  I always wanted to know I am, who God made me to be.  Maybe this was a necessity, a necessary evil, this dark silence?

Birds, birdsong.  Amazing.  They feel the sun and celebrate for this short hour before the early sunset at 4.  

I want so badly to be in the sun.  

I want so badly to be back home.  To swim in the ocean.  To smell the air.  To be able to drive to see my family.  

Just a few years, right God?  Ii am thankful that you will use this fast to sort something out.  I givie ti to you to do that.  

God I long for clarity, for direction.  I feel like the next word is on the tip of my tongue...but it never comes.  And so I am breathless and silent.  Watiing with bated breath.

Things where I feel movement, like a baby in my belly:

Mom being back and my fear of  losing her, of seeing her frail, of missing my time with her and her time with her potential grandkids

Noa cousneling me with wise H.S. counsel in Dennys

Being asked by Sharon to sing with her, asked to join worship team.  In a time when i couldn't care less.  When i don't want to be public, don't want to be a figure, don't want praise.  

That moment, getting out of the car at the Ponzi wine estate in willamette valley.  The air and the freedom and those birds, and the silence, the only movement soudns were of birds winges and trees shaking when they land and take off.  I was free.  Knowing that somewhere in my heart you placed a seed in me to be outside.  To be something.  Something defined.  Every no is a yes to me because I started with no boundarieds.  So thank you for ievery no.  Thank you thank you thyank you.  But I still want to do sthing And I don't want to run away.  I don't want to hide in the beuaty of nature away from you.  I don't want to hide liek adam and eve in the gardene.    If you tell me to go somewhere where my heart cant dream of where I don't long to be, I will go, and I will be happy to serve.  I have the hardest damn time thinking that you would want me to be where it feels like ..joy.  What the hell is that ?   That I can't serve you if it is pleasant/  Is that some weird precomception and misconception?  Does serving the Lord need to be painful?  Hard?  Full of war and trouble?   

what does it mean that you want to give your children good things?  could it possibly mean that we could be free?  and do things differently?

And if that is so, God, what about all these worldly skils I have worked out?  What do I do with those?  HOw can I use those to glorigy you?  Should i just trash them and leave them behind?  

Come

Now is the time 

To Worship

Come

Now is the time 

To Give your life

Come

Just as you are

To worship

Come 

Just as you are

To Serve your God

Come

One day every knee will bow

One day every voice will sing

Greater is the one who remains in me

I gladly serve him now

Where do you want me to go?  PLEASSE PLEASE PLEASE KEEP TALKING

What hte heck are are the talents of the parable?

great website just found: theology of work

Mountains Out of Mole-hills

So the mole isn't cancerous.  I was really hoping they could take a biopsy without taking the whole thing.  

But it all happened so fast.  I didn't know I was agreeing to remove it all.  And now it's gone.  And it feels weird, the new skin is growing in tight and bothers me when I turn my head or lie on it or have a collar that touches it.

I am actually saddened by the loss of this little thing.  I know my response is pathetic.  I have a friend who just lost the very little bit of vision she had left by trying out a surgery that was nearly guaranteed to help her blindness.  And I just, I can't even imagine.  I love my senses, because they help me love life, even when circumstances are shitty.  On the worst day, I can see the color of a leaf or sky, hear these leaves rustle in the wind and I am happy.  I can feel the smooth thin petal of a rose between my fingers and roll it into a ball between my palms and smell it on my hands, put the petal ball in my mouth and taste its sweetness, its acidity.  My friend is heroic everyday, at least to me.  

So this silly mole.  The thing that makes me sad is I never knew it.  I only noticed it a few months back and it was much larger than any others that I did recognize on my body.  It was on the back of my neck to the left of my nape.  If it was truly new, I'd be OK getting rid of it because it was an evolution, new growth.  But if it was there my whole life, I will be sad to have so hastily rid myself of it, because it was part of me--holy.  

I can't even imagine an amputation or a mastectomy.  What a baby I am.  Actually I understand something like a removal that is necessary.  But preventative removal?  Not sure.  

All I can think is maybe that mole was there during my wedding pictures--the only pictures I think I have of shots of the back of my head.  Noa didn't seem to recognize it as part of me, so that was slightly encouraging that it might be new. But not much as he is bad at recognizing detail.

It just raises this issue of not knowing myself.  Really not knowing myself.  Like not recognizing my own body and its physical parts. 

Also, the haste that occurred in removing it was reminiscent of that half-understanding, half-awareness I had the first time I chose to have sex.  Reluctant, but urgent.  I was leaving the country that afternoon and this was likely the last time we would see each other, whatever that meant.  Half of my mind had to go somewhere else in order to belay the immediate regrets during it, half of my mind was watching from above us in curious shock of what it really looked like to do this.  I would take that morning back if I could, because I lacked full confidence in my decision and also because I wish I could have shared the moment of innocence with Noa (though it pretty much felt new with Noa since 5 minutes of dissociative sex, far away in Africa, in my mind, did not feel like I had de-virgined myself).

But the thing was gone, and this thing is gone.  Both hurt somewhat, both physically and symbolically, but soon I will forget both to the point of a foggy memory. 

So someday, when my daughter asks, I will be honest.  Because it’s not fair to pretend life is easier than it is—that is no preparation for what life is like.

The idea of a easylife brings me to one more topic.  I don’t think I deserve the simplicity of Noa.  He just loves.  He just does things.  He does think through things like card games or chess, loves to strategize and learn battle techniques in that way, how to master movements.  But with life, real life—not abstract games?  He just does, just acts.  He just sees what is there.  The shape.  The outline of blank space.  The values.  He categorizes, figures out patterns and sticks to them.  Schemas are his good friends.

And I don’t know how to let any of me out in that situation.  But the truth is, I never could zip down and open up and bubble out—to anyone, because it is too much, and too garbled to make sense of anyhow.  So what is the point?

I map the overflow (I don’t plan on unzipping fully maybe ever) out here.  Each word is a dot, a wave pattern, a longitude or latitude.  Maybe someday I can read this all and actually see a shape, a terrain of mountains and oceans, cities and roads.

Goodbye mole.  Thank you God for making me beautiful.  Sorry I wreck it sometimes, and without enough thought until hindsight.  I'm certain, despite my unawareness, that it was lovely. 

when words are just words

There's not much to say.  I am incredibly lucky and I must figure out a way to enjoy it.

For some reason if one thing is amiss in a scene, I cannot help but focus on it, forgetting the other 98%.  But that is a horrible way to live.

The only exception is remembering home.  I have extreme homesickness but I choose to not divulge in those feelings.  I know to do so would be incapacitating.  We are here, not there.  I have to be where I am, there is no sense lusting after what's not.

That's how marriage goes too.  Remembering single-hood, being selfish and not noticed for it, the excitement of flirting with men,  the sweet silence--those are things that are best left forgotten, if only because there is an allure when remembering to recreate what I once knew as good.

So how do I live in the present here?  In Portland?  I didn't want to be in this city, but God told my husband it was time to go, so I tried to help.  And I knew, change is GOOD.  Stasis is death, right? Someone famous said that, a writer, I think.  Chekhov?  Chaucer? Updike? I don't remember.

So maybe
Until I have words of worth,
I will paint to marvel in colors.
Until I have words of worth,
I will take pictures or what is beautiful.
Until I have words of worth,
I will dance until i feel my blood flowing.
Until I have words of worth,
I will pray to God to find His voice.
Until I have words of worth,
I will play a tune that resonates.

For if I find those colors, the beauty, the blood, and God, then the song I sing will be worthy of sound.


Maybe it's time to have kids.

Back to Voice

I guess it’s fair to start writing again.  The weather is fair, I mean.  There is enough space for me now.  Terri is gone, though I love her.  And I have a pass to the Elks club which is my little piece of peace.  And I actually read something –for pleasure!—yesterday. 

A MFA in writing sounds like a ton of fun.  What that gets you, though, I’m not sure.  Who the hell cares?

By “gets you” I mean, what kind of life-success, what kind of pay you might make, whether you’ll live in a nice house or rent a shitty little apartment the rest of your life.  So I guess I do kind of care.

I’m ready to find my voice again.  It will not be as full of wonderment and hope as it once was, and I think I was waiting endlessly for that voice to return before returning to writing.  But no, who I am now will just have to do.  And maybe, just maybe, the hope of old will seep back into my bones and I will feel nourished.  Maybe.

There’s a cat that lives right outside the place that I love.  She is old, maybe 10 years and looks it—her paws are calloused, with a pinky toe on her left hind paw splayed out sideways (maybe broken).  She is black and white with green eyes that are dark and lined with milky grey cataracts and her mouth doesn’t ever close fully.  She looks a little funny with her jaw ajar like that, like she’s always a little bit stunned at something.

But it is her greeting that I count on into the place I love and when I leave.  We have some sort of connection that I did not ask for, but I certainly hoped for.  When I first saw her at a distance and called her over to me and she came, I was delighted.  When she sat with me on the concrete pathway and rolled over to let me scratch her dirty white belly I was surprised.  When the old man with slicked back hair that works at the place I love walked by and told me “she doesn’t do that for anyone,” I was special.  Sometimes I think about whether I will like this place as much as I do without her—especially since she is so old, but that is like saying that a building will be worthless without its doorman.  But it would make every entrance and exit feel empty, and just thinking about it makes me sad.

The place that I love is not a place I would have gone to on my own.  First of all, it’s a club, so you have to come invited by a member anyway.  Second it’s a club, and to me clubs were either hoity-toity and exclusive to people with an exorbitant excess of income or reminiscent of tree houses with paper signs hanging with “NO GIRLS ALLOWED” scribbled in crayon.  Or perhaps the tree house just evolves into the country club with a registration fee of $30,000 as the members get old and fat.  Either way, a club was not a place I belonged.

But past the cat and through the entrance, you immediately notice how run down the place is, like an old hotel on the beach, whose bright peach and turquoise patterned carpets are …realized the cat was a clue—a raggedy cat would have been kicked out or trapped long ago

-Part retirement home part campground
-Musicians and empty tables w/vinyl covered seats on rickety rattan chairs
-An old couple
-Construction workers at the bar w/neon t-shirts, steel-toed tan work boots, thick blue jeans, beer bellies, faded white mustaches

-Danced for them breathe some life—but not too much (blues dances  not ok)

-Swim around the canoes
-Yesterday I swam out to the waves that the surfers catch, something I would have dared not to try but after several days of wanting just went.  The freedom of just being able to swim and swim, no one knowing where you were, no one missing you (at least for a few hours), and endless ocean to swim through was exhillerating. 

First, I learned, or remembered—I think I knew this before but forgot—waves break because there is something there to break them.  I quickly found myself scratched up against the reef around my feet and shins as I was treading, but I simply adjusted to stretching flat and floating on my stomach.  The waves—there is nothing in this world that smells like the white foam of a fresh wave deep in ocean.  It smells different than

It is crisp and light, refreshing, and as you inhale it, even though you may be getting pounded crashing next, the mist fills you and you feel as though you are floating up into the air.

-Sit and read

vent

I am fully aware that each and every person has their own strengths and weaknesses, and that these show themselves in the workplace.  People are by no means all weakness, nor all strength.

Anyhow, that's a disclaimer.  I am frustrated because I get reprimanded for spending extra time fact checking and communicating clearly.  To me, it is better to not say anything than to say something misleading or confusing, especially to a client.

Anyhow, now I am stuck cleaning up the fast, dirty, no-research work of those who reprimand good work....

Chances are, too, that they'll tell me I took way too long doing so.

I have always, always, preferred being the tortoise to being the hare.  I work for a hare though.

My weakness?  I am incapable of sprinting, and so always feel behind, even if I do win the race in the end.

the evil 200

i have to exercise now. 
I've hit the ominous 199 as of this morning.  So wrong to be this big.  I don't feel huge though, but I know I am getting bigger when I look in the mirror.   How did this happen?  two months ago I was 15 lbs lighter.  I know I was stressed with the wedding, etc.  I was also on a higher dosage of meds (by choice). 


It's funny, I've spent all this time telling Noa I'm worried about his weight and his health and now I'm suddenly on the decline myself.  Hm. 

So the other part is I know I need to step it up for us.  We're both waiting for each other to get motivated.  Hrm.  I'm frustrated to have his weight on top of mine, but I'm sure he feels the same way about me. 

Lucky, then that I hit that 199--because I will fight as hard as possible to stay far away from the evil 200, as it is, to me, the sign of defeat.  Of letting laziness take control of me instead of taking control of myself. 

Okey doke.  So we'll work out tonight.  That's a good start.  And tomorrow, I'm walking to work.  Even though I have an 8am call.  So be it.

God bless us as we try to be better.  Please give us your H.S. bump, and may we permanently lose more than the weight--may we lose our laziness and lack of focus as well.  Shed us of that as well as the fat!  And may we seek you daily as part of our discipline.  Amen!