for grace

A few things, recently:

Jessica Ingram's Road Through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial at CDS. Such a beautiful, haunting exhibit. I still cannot believe I get to work at this place that I love so much.

Elephant Micah + Joan Shelley at Dear Hearts a few weeks back.

Today I tasted a sweetness long forgotten, something I have not known since those days of fierce independence, when I was in step with my own longings, attentive to the world, patient with myself. It is what I have been praying for, wanting back, feeling as if I had perhaps lost forever amidst these months and years of saying for grace, for grace, for grace.

And these words, from that summer of forgetting long ago:

Walk

Some things are solved by walking
in the night alone, striped by light

in the corridors of unknowing, you walk
down the street, past the rosemary hedge,

the wet hydrangeas that eat your shadow,
your shadow like a cookie that the sun

cut out of you—sun-stalker, you say
to the blue mouths: but then there is

the ping-pong moon, the warts of the
weeping willow, the uprooted crack

waiting to fault you for lack of confidence:

this is the world of Walla Walla,
of couching black blistered beetles—

don’t even try to run,
the only way is to walk.

[honeywell pentax, 35mm film, balancing rock, nc; words from seattle]

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blue

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Upon Running to the Sea

It happened as I ran towards the Pacific, like one of those moments you imagine
will flash by like a news reel when you first arrive in heaven, surreal patches of colors,
sunspots, children let loose to run, running, running, running towards the cool blue

submersion, then splashing and letting loose the fear in an involuntary forgetfulness,
and then this—in a stand still moment—the imperceptible reality of the greater certainty
surrounding all my uncertainties, which have, anyhow, dissipated in the sand, swallowed

whole like the snail I feed to the sea anemone, and I find myself attempting to convince
myself of doubt to convince myself of faith, until I just stop it all, and believe—
for once in my life faith is effortless, sweet like the juice of a nectarine in my mouth.

[disposable camera, sky and ocean off the coast of pt. reyes, california]
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walking questions

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I.

The way you live
is a work of art —

and it does not require explanation or profundity,
just mystery and paradox, magicians and nonsensicality,
graceful question marks walking down the street,

our S-curved bodies as
marks of holy levitation.

[words from this summer, photo from the boulders at st. peters in early august]
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dear yosemite

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One of my dreams for my Californian trip was to go to Yosemite. And thanks to some dear friends and an early morning squished in a pick-up truck listening to horror stories about deaths in Yosemite, I got to go last week. And gracious, what a place. Someday I want to go back and hike Half Dome.
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Dear Yosemite

I walked your stairs to glory.

I breathed your aurulent haze,
and your sky-flung pines
stigmatized my longing,
as I ascended your heights.

But heaven is not here,
at least, not now,

not yet.

And I descend your deflated walls,
readdressing the world--

and try again, with this:

Dear Fern,
Dear Pebble,
Dear Pine Needle.
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crepuscular suspending spectrums

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I am home for a week here before I take off again for a little Californian adventure, with a wayside stop through Boston to visit some friends. I feel very independent to be packing up my suitcase alone and planning time in far away places. I like to travel alone, but I am grateful that there will be dear faces to meet me at each of the stops along the way.

I have also decided that this shall be the Summer of Poetry, or something like that. Basically, I have three goals: (1) Read more contemporary poetry. (2) Always carry a book of poems in my shoulder bag. (3) Write seventy-five poems. That's five a week with one week of vacation. I know this sounds over-the-top, but I haven't pushed myself to do something hard recently. And maybe it will help me see if I really like doing this thing that I simultaneously find excruciating and freeing. I am scared to write this here, but I thought sharing my summer project with the world would force me to actually hold myself a bit more accountable to it.

And after one week, this is what I have learned: to write you have to love words, to really really really love them. To notice them, say them out loud, whisper them at night when you can't fall asleep, keep a log of them with you at all times, underline your favorite ones when you are reading books, just fall in love with the sound of them. Spectrum. Fester. Suspend. Disparage. Crepuscular. 

[click for pc - jess, you and I are taking a picture like this soon]
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peace and rivers

Someday I will live by the sea and wake to a mingling of fog and blue every morning.

And Em and I are currently at the Festival of Faith and Writing. Completely overwhelmed by creative inspiration and books and poems and people and wonderfulness. And we met Luci Shaw tonight. I had her sign a book for me, and she wrote, "Peace and rivers, Luci." Isn't that lovely? Maybe I will start signing my name that way. Or maybe "Peace and sea." That doesn't quite have the same ring to it though.

Peace and rivers to all tonight.

[picture from maine last summer - just want to be back there . . . ]
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every day

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Stone & Flesh

Do you ever look down
at your naked body
and wonder what
sort of animal it is?

Do you ever hesitate
before saying something
and wonder what
good it will even do?

Do you ever gaze
at a single blade of grass
and wonder why
it dances all alone?

I pray, God, boldness:
I shelter myself in
a citadel of apathy.
May I learn

to go to the limits
of every longing--
to know what
I really want

and to utter it
not loudly, but
a little eloquence
might help. So

meekly
I open my fists
and show you:
a few small stones

pieces of a
tongue-tied soul.
Someday I will
be prolific.

Do you ever imagine
lilies in your lungs
and wonder how
it would feel to breathe?

[photograph of me by the lovely heather on one of our recent excursions]
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our fixed attention

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"Creative work will demonstrate to you again and again that the world is bigger and deeper than you perceive, that God has many ways of speaking to your soul, and the the soul itself possesses much wisdom that you simply hadn't noticed before."
(Vinita Hampton Wright, The Soul Tells A Story)

"Suppose the Holy One Whose Face We Seek
is not so much invisible as we
are ill-equipped to apprehend His grave
proximity. Suppose our fixed attention
serves mostly to make evident the gap
dividing what is seen and what is here."
(Scott Cairns, As We See)

These are the two quotes that I wrote on the first page of my writer's notebook.

I wrote them there because they sum up for me why I write.

I write because I am often confused. I write when I see something beautiful and want to let that admiration free from my own soul. I write to bridge the gap between what is seen and what is here. I write to seek out the promises. I write so that I do not forget what happened today. I write when I am alone. I write when I am surrounded by voices I do not know. I write because I often cannot speak. I write because I want other people to think I am artistic. I write because I like my handwriting. I write to pay attention. I write when I notice the way the sunlight hits the chair. I write because when I do not write I feel trapped. I write because it reminds me that the world is so much more complex than I think. I write from fear that my life will be meaningless. I write when I have questions that I cannot answer. I write even though I am often frustrated with the limitation of words. (That is why I dance.) I write because it makes me feel like the only person alive, because it gives me a deep sense of contented loneliness. I write because it makes me feel a part of the universe, of this space we call our temporary home. I write because it helps me be more compassionate. I write to myself. I write to others. I write to God. I write through judgments into love. I write through pain into hope. I write through selfishness into understanding. I write because I am selfish. I write as I sit in trees. I write in the morning when the mercies are fresh and sweet. I write when I am angry in the darkness under the pillow with my cell phone giving me light. I write to be more grateful. I write when I do not know what else I can do.

"I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient."
(Terry Tempest Williams, Writing Creative Non-Fiction)

[picture of my beloved typewriter back at home, and some rilke]
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