In winter, there was a sacredness to everything, whether it was the bold red cardinal flaring against the fine white of a Sunday morning, the pine needles falling all over the red carpet next to the fireplace with a cracked flue, my father’s red hunting hat with the ear flaps hanging next to the door, or the garish nylon snowpants drying in the garage next to carelessly unlaced and kicked away boots. The nights came on quickly and stealthily, and I got off the bus in twilight some days, when the sun hid behind the thick rumpled clouds signaling an oncoming flurry. My brother and I rolled together countless, half-finished forts and scrabbled over the mountain of snow formed by the plow at the end of our driveway, playing king of the hill with shrieks and laughs.
Every evening, my family would flock to the cloth advent calendar, shaped like a tree with golden ornament beads all over it, and hang another small, stuffed ornament on it: a blond girl with a giant yellow 14 on her blue smock dress, a candy cane with a green 3 emblazoned on its center. Every year, we traipsed out, the five of us bundled up tight, to one of the many local tree farms and picked our favorite tree, often lopsided or misshapen because my mom loved the “special” trees. My dad worked the snarling chainsaw himself some years, while I stood back in awe with my hands stubbornly by my sides. We all dressed the tree together every year, marveling at forgotten ornaments, this one from Paris, that one from the glassblower in Mystic. Benton and I always claimed our favorite ones to hang ourselves: A surfer bear with his name on its board, a Santa that jumped when you pulled a string at the bottom, a plaster cast of my hand as a 2 year old. My parents hid the pickle ornament last on the new tree while Benton and I turned our backs, whispering to each other, and then whipped around to scrutinize it, not sure what we were competing for, just that we were competing.
We had a fire every night, had to have one in that house, eternally freezing, and on special nights, if I wheedled for long enough, my dad would sprinkle the magic powder over the fire that made it turn emerald green, vibrant blue, shimmering purple, palest pink, while Benton and I gasped and smiled before it and Dad stood proudly by. And at night, the creaks and groans of an aging house in a harsh season seemed like a lullaby to me, comforting rather than foreboding, like the house was muttering to itself, telling its own stories. There were no ghosts there.
I look back on what seemed so mundane at the time, and it’s only now—now, when I have a plastic tree, snowless Christmas after snowless Christmas, subdivisions everywhere instead of tree farms and white-topped forests, two homes, two deflated Christmas Days, the advent calendar missing all its pieces, the pickle vanished, my favorite ornaments broken or gone, a gas fireplace, the magic and friendliness gone out of my houses—it is only now that I appreciate what I had. Only now do I realize that truly, I was blessed.
And at night, when I lay awake in the glare of the streetlights instead of the light of the white moon, I remember those winter days, the gleaming white country laying out before me, the wonder in the eyes of a girl as she watched the snow fall and felt the warmth of a fire at her back, and I promise that I will be back, one day I will be back, and I can forget the suburbs ever existed.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The Strangest Things
Another day was much the same, except for the headlights that greeted her with a smile and the tail lights that left her with a tear.
The house was heavy, felt sad, was well-worn but not well-loved, carried a stain on it from years of sorrow, contention, unease. It sighed, it ached. It fell apart while still so young. It festered.
The silence was sacred, the darkness was sacred. She could create it with the push of a switch to lay softly sighing below the lid of the house, listening to its remorse, feeling its ebb and flow.
She thought,
Maybe I will lose my mind,
and she smiled. She felt its wandering paths and strange trailings off, wondering at the breadth and scope, something wholly hers yet possessing more than she was aware of.
And the ghosts, the ghosts whispered, and the weights lay on her eyes, and the breath slowed as it escaped her lips, and she slept, she slept alone, she slept alive in that cave, that crypt, the World Apart beckoning her away while the ghosts murmured and shuffled their feet.
They laid their hands on her and touched her dreams, tinging them grey, black, brown, damp and rotting green. They watched her play on the land of her youth and made it dissolve, twisted it, let her thirst for more so that she could know their pangs for A Life Greater.
And as the morning swallows chased the ghosts back into the walls, she thought,
Maybe I have already lost it,
and she smiled.
The house was heavy, felt sad, was well-worn but not well-loved, carried a stain on it from years of sorrow, contention, unease. It sighed, it ached. It fell apart while still so young. It festered.
The silence was sacred, the darkness was sacred. She could create it with the push of a switch to lay softly sighing below the lid of the house, listening to its remorse, feeling its ebb and flow.
She thought,
Maybe I will lose my mind,
and she smiled. She felt its wandering paths and strange trailings off, wondering at the breadth and scope, something wholly hers yet possessing more than she was aware of.
And the ghosts, the ghosts whispered, and the weights lay on her eyes, and the breath slowed as it escaped her lips, and she slept, she slept alone, she slept alive in that cave, that crypt, the World Apart beckoning her away while the ghosts murmured and shuffled their feet.
They laid their hands on her and touched her dreams, tinging them grey, black, brown, damp and rotting green. They watched her play on the land of her youth and made it dissolve, twisted it, let her thirst for more so that she could know their pangs for A Life Greater.
And as the morning swallows chased the ghosts back into the walls, she thought,
Maybe I have already lost it,
and she smiled.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Only Moment We Were Alone
The sound of thunder woke us, great rolls and booms shaking the room. Outside, the sky was falling. You could reach out and touch the roiling steel thunderheads that coiled and uncoiled up above. The sky was cataclysmic, a panorama of smudged oranges, reds, and bruised purples hidden in places by the grimacing charcoal of the clouds. Ash drifted lazily through the air, hell’s snow flurries staining everything grey, making outlines hazy and indistinct.
We rose in silence to stand silhouetted against the open rectangle of the door, rubbing our eyes in disbelief. Nothing was the same; the violent shades of the sky seemed the leech all color out of the normal greens and browns of trees and grass. Houses that had been familiar for so long took on new, darker facades, some seeming to shrink back in fright, others appearing to loom menacingly against the wild sky. Windows became gaping eyes and doors grim mouths in the warm, dying light.
A few other families and individuals had also turned out for the spectacle, as we had. Mothers clutched small boys and tiny girls close, husbands placed reassuring hands on the shoulders of their beloved while looking apprehensively skyward. All bore various expressions of shock, confusion, fright. A few were crying, children whimpering quietly, adults standing in silence, tears streaking down their faces. One man was face down on the pavement, prayer beads grasped tightly in both hands, his lips moving franticly in a soundless prayer. As we watched, another woman joined him, prostrating herself with Bible in hand. The two of us just stood there, framed in the doorway, watching it all unfold.
A low moaning could be heard, a collected sound of worry, fear, and shock. It came from everywhere and nowhere, rising and falling, mingling with the distant rumble and crash of thunder. An odd hush had fallen elsewhere, the normal sounds—of traffic, birdsong, dog barks, and children playing innocently—were all but gone, replaced only by the ethereal groan of a million terrified souls and the disgruntled growl of thunder.
A sudden ear-splitting scream made us all jump; planes streaked overhead, hundreds of them flying to God knew where. Many turned their faces to the sky, mouths agape, as if they’d been struck dumb by such a sight. I turned to the horizon instead, in the direction the planes now soared. Huge twin columns of thick black smoke reared up to meet the matching storm clouds above, feeding them urgently. The columns looked to be hundreds of yards across, each within about 30 miles of the other. A city and its suburb had once stood there, but now there was only smoke. Ash swirled about, floating on a sulfurous and heat-tinged breeze.
The planes continued to blast on overhead, all disappearing into the thick belt of clouds to reappear in the orange-red-peach-vermilion-plum-sulfur-black patches of the sky.
“The city,” one man murmured. He was heavyset, with thick glasses, a bald pate, and the moustache of a walrus. “Someone’s burning the city.” A perfect copy of the apocalyptic sky and ravaged horizon could be seen on his glasses, making him seem eyeless. He licked his thin lips and swallowed nervously. “What’s happened?”
At his words, the first audibly spoken in too long a time, others looked stricken and panicked. “They can’t do this,” one woman said faintly, but nobody even knew who “they” were. Terrorists? Rebels? Did it even matter?
As more people began to talk and fret and rage together, I slipped my hand into yours and watched the smoldering city in silence. The other voices, the thunder, the drone of the planes still fanning out overhead, the cries, the prayers, they all faded away. It was just that glorious bloody sunset and your hand in mine, the only moment we were alone.
And so we watched as the world fell to pieces and the normal order of things ceased to exist.
We rose in silence to stand silhouetted against the open rectangle of the door, rubbing our eyes in disbelief. Nothing was the same; the violent shades of the sky seemed the leech all color out of the normal greens and browns of trees and grass. Houses that had been familiar for so long took on new, darker facades, some seeming to shrink back in fright, others appearing to loom menacingly against the wild sky. Windows became gaping eyes and doors grim mouths in the warm, dying light.
A few other families and individuals had also turned out for the spectacle, as we had. Mothers clutched small boys and tiny girls close, husbands placed reassuring hands on the shoulders of their beloved while looking apprehensively skyward. All bore various expressions of shock, confusion, fright. A few were crying, children whimpering quietly, adults standing in silence, tears streaking down their faces. One man was face down on the pavement, prayer beads grasped tightly in both hands, his lips moving franticly in a soundless prayer. As we watched, another woman joined him, prostrating herself with Bible in hand. The two of us just stood there, framed in the doorway, watching it all unfold.
A low moaning could be heard, a collected sound of worry, fear, and shock. It came from everywhere and nowhere, rising and falling, mingling with the distant rumble and crash of thunder. An odd hush had fallen elsewhere, the normal sounds—of traffic, birdsong, dog barks, and children playing innocently—were all but gone, replaced only by the ethereal groan of a million terrified souls and the disgruntled growl of thunder.
A sudden ear-splitting scream made us all jump; planes streaked overhead, hundreds of them flying to God knew where. Many turned their faces to the sky, mouths agape, as if they’d been struck dumb by such a sight. I turned to the horizon instead, in the direction the planes now soared. Huge twin columns of thick black smoke reared up to meet the matching storm clouds above, feeding them urgently. The columns looked to be hundreds of yards across, each within about 30 miles of the other. A city and its suburb had once stood there, but now there was only smoke. Ash swirled about, floating on a sulfurous and heat-tinged breeze.
The planes continued to blast on overhead, all disappearing into the thick belt of clouds to reappear in the orange-red-peach-vermilion-plum-sulfur-black patches of the sky.
“The city,” one man murmured. He was heavyset, with thick glasses, a bald pate, and the moustache of a walrus. “Someone’s burning the city.” A perfect copy of the apocalyptic sky and ravaged horizon could be seen on his glasses, making him seem eyeless. He licked his thin lips and swallowed nervously. “What’s happened?”
At his words, the first audibly spoken in too long a time, others looked stricken and panicked. “They can’t do this,” one woman said faintly, but nobody even knew who “they” were. Terrorists? Rebels? Did it even matter?
As more people began to talk and fret and rage together, I slipped my hand into yours and watched the smoldering city in silence. The other voices, the thunder, the drone of the planes still fanning out overhead, the cries, the prayers, they all faded away. It was just that glorious bloody sunset and your hand in mine, the only moment we were alone.
And so we watched as the world fell to pieces and the normal order of things ceased to exist.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sprawl
To wander among the forests of memory
To re-experience the good with the bad
To judge and correct and mourn
Is to know myself again.
To dwell there among secrets I didn't know I hid
To recreate and tweak and search for meaning
To thirst and ache and long
Is to threaten disaster.
A memory, a flash of insight--
the old church, long wooden pews, red candle behind the altar flickering in the darkness, small and inconsequential below the high polished rafters, shaking from a fear i couldn't name, was it god? could a nine year old know god? what scared me? i ran, tripped, fear seizing my heart as i dashed for the heavy wooden doors
sitting in front of the bay window looking at the tennessee hills, missing my father, my mother holding me, singing, i see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody i want to see, so god bless the moon, and god bless me, and god bless the somebody i want to see, telling me he would be home soon, holding my small hand in hers
making myself small in the unfamiliar gym, the voices of children loud around me, groups i had no part of, sitting alone by the lines of the basketball court on the polished wood, reading quietly, close to the doors so i could get out as soon as the bell chimed, missing home, missing my friends so badly it hurt, fighting tears some mornings and anger others, wishing i knew someone anyone
sitting in the parking lot of the hotel we stayed in only moments from my big blue house, my brothers getting out to go in, my mom telling me to get out, but i couldn't, burying my face in my hands to sob, never to drive among those streets as an inhabitant again, sitting in the silence mourning the loss
trembling under the organ blasts and impossibly high ceiling as we walked into the cathedral, worn through centuries of use and history and love and hate, that same fear gripping my chest, bowing my head, gasping and shaking, wondering at the beauty and the sheer size of the offering built to god, losing words
To know my mind
Is to know myself
Is to be made new and old
Is to be washed clean and dirty
Is to reconcile and ignore and forgive and forget
Is to be amazed.
To re-experience the good with the bad
To judge and correct and mourn
Is to know myself again.
To dwell there among secrets I didn't know I hid
To recreate and tweak and search for meaning
To thirst and ache and long
Is to threaten disaster.
A memory, a flash of insight--
the old church, long wooden pews, red candle behind the altar flickering in the darkness, small and inconsequential below the high polished rafters, shaking from a fear i couldn't name, was it god? could a nine year old know god? what scared me? i ran, tripped, fear seizing my heart as i dashed for the heavy wooden doors
sitting in front of the bay window looking at the tennessee hills, missing my father, my mother holding me, singing, i see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody i want to see, so god bless the moon, and god bless me, and god bless the somebody i want to see, telling me he would be home soon, holding my small hand in hers
making myself small in the unfamiliar gym, the voices of children loud around me, groups i had no part of, sitting alone by the lines of the basketball court on the polished wood, reading quietly, close to the doors so i could get out as soon as the bell chimed, missing home, missing my friends so badly it hurt, fighting tears some mornings and anger others, wishing i knew someone anyone
sitting in the parking lot of the hotel we stayed in only moments from my big blue house, my brothers getting out to go in, my mom telling me to get out, but i couldn't, burying my face in my hands to sob, never to drive among those streets as an inhabitant again, sitting in the silence mourning the loss
trembling under the organ blasts and impossibly high ceiling as we walked into the cathedral, worn through centuries of use and history and love and hate, that same fear gripping my chest, bowing my head, gasping and shaking, wondering at the beauty and the sheer size of the offering built to god, losing words
To know my mind
Is to know myself
Is to be made new and old
Is to be washed clean and dirty
Is to reconcile and ignore and forgive and forget
Is to be amazed.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Catharsis
When the rain came down, she was looking out the window at the hills. They should have been green, but they were brown, the life leached out of them by the hot harsh glare of the sun. She watched the long grass sway in the wind, watched invisible hands tug and pull on the stalks, watched the dust turn to mud and the mud turn to puddles. She tracked the invisible movement of the sun through the sky, hidden though it was behind dark pewter clouds.
She watched countless drops beat their bodies into the dust-ridden ground, stamping it into something new. She watched them wash some things clean, like the dusty leaves on the tall oak trees, and watched them make others dirty, like the roots of the grass and the clapboard on her house.
She wished they would wash her clean and dirty, too. Removing some things and covering others.
The rain drummed late into the night, filling the freshwater barrels and making the animals huddle, wet and miserable, under the porch and eaves. When the dawn finally broke over the marbled dark clouds, creating a glorious sunrise to smile on the fresh day, she was no longer watching, and she no longer cared.
She watched countless drops beat their bodies into the dust-ridden ground, stamping it into something new. She watched them wash some things clean, like the dusty leaves on the tall oak trees, and watched them make others dirty, like the roots of the grass and the clapboard on her house.
She wished they would wash her clean and dirty, too. Removing some things and covering others.
The rain drummed late into the night, filling the freshwater barrels and making the animals huddle, wet and miserable, under the porch and eaves. When the dawn finally broke over the marbled dark clouds, creating a glorious sunrise to smile on the fresh day, she was no longer watching, and she no longer cared.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Fire
I speak often of home. I call Franklin home sometimes, when I'm returning from trips and when people ask where I'm from. I call Preston home other times, or New England, when I'm saying where I love most, where I'm pulled to. I have two homes. My mom's, my dad's. Preston, Franklin. North, South. Many pairs, many preferences.
But when I close my eyes, I see it. When I wandered among the borderlands, the Borderlands, searching for the thin place between heaven and earth, I found home. The place that left marks on my heart and longing in my eyes.
Iona of my heart.
My heart, my heart.
Is it wrong to thirst for leaving? Is it wrong to want to part from my family and friends physically to seek a place where I know no one but God? Is it wrong to desire a change in everything, from the way I think to the way I see, to want to turn away from my birthplace and my homeland?
I close my eyes, and I am there. The top of Dun I, the wind whipping around me, my smile huge, the sunset before me. The hand of God playing with my hair and touching my face, telling me blessed, blessed, you are blessed. The Spirit filling me, that fire. I was so alive. For the first time, I was alive.
"When you come back from a pilgrimage like this, much may have changed..."
I prayed for fire, and fire I found. Fire in my heart to think of the places I've been, to think of what I have left to do, to think of all the stories I want to tell. It is impossible to separate the secular from the spiritual on such a pilgrimage. God was present in the laughter. He was there in the coincidences that led us to spectacular detours among the highlands. He was there in the frustration and the lessons we gained. And I can't keep quiet about an experience like that, nor can I keep from thirsting for more.
Life as it should be. A life where the gate between this place and beyond stands wide open. The life we were meant for.
I close my eyes, and I am there. The Abbey on Iona, the beach, the sandy ridge where the lamb kissed me, Glasgow Cathedral, Dryburgh Abbey, the ferry, the Pilgrim's Way. Heaven on Earth, the closest I've been, the happiest I've been. The places that lit the fire and have left it burning still, driving me to wander until I am home again, to wander for the rest of my days until I can truly rest at my sunset, to rise again on the other side, the true life beckoning me forward.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
( )
It's beautiful. The sky is so blue there in the summer, and even though it's sweltering, the woods are always cool and shady, and I'd walk with Mikey and Benton and sometimes my dad all the way out to the swamp. The colors...burnt orange sodden brown flaming red lurid shaded subdued standard a thousand different shades of green, colors so fluid words don't work for them and pictures don't capture them right. Birds sang overhead, not the cheesy way but loud, raucous, sometimes grating. Insects sang everywhere--wasps, bees, crickets, katydids, cicadas, June bugs, flies, millions of gnats and mosquitoes.
You'd start out on top of the hill on a path wide enough for a car--wider still once my newfound neighbors forced a backhoe down it and upped the grade, a tragedy, a loss I'm still saddened by. We ran down that hill, we raced. Laughing, yelling, panting, red faced and grinning. He beat me, usually. Long-limbed and skinny Mikey, head shaven, wearing his dad's old Led Zeppelin shirt. I was small for my age, determined not to wear anything remotely feminine, my hair cut short and carelessly parted. I had dirty knees and grimy hands, but I was happy. Happy the way only a 10 year old with the best yard ever is.
We got older, explored every inch of my land and beyond, walked out so far that the woods stopped and we were at the edge of a field of cattails, my dad holding me back with one gentle hand and breathing, "Look" as a single buck bounded through the swishing stalks, head held high, white tail up in surrender, the velvet still furring his horns. And at night, when the moon hung huge, white, luminous in its cradle of stars, the woods were never silent. In summer the frogs were so loud Benton couldn't sleep and Mom's relatives asked what was going on when she called them on the phone. Bassy bullfrogs, defiant peepers. Crickets sawing away to make a symphony, our symphony, the one I laid awake to in the dark, warm beneath the cotton sheet, Pooh clasped against my chest.
I was so positive I'd be there forever. So sure I would always climb those crooked apple trees and eat blueberries until my tongue cringed from the sour and play with kittens my mom warned me not to name so we wouldn't get too attached. I was so sure I'd always be the owner of that big blue house with the cracked, crooked driveway, lumpy yard, leaning woodshed, outdated kitchen, and fantastic basement. Change was for others, not for Grace, so sure, so stubborn, so young.
But even while we were there things shifted. They cut down half an acre of trees to build a house just off of my sacred wooden path. I was so angry I cried, yelling at my dad that they couldn't do that, it wasn't right. The scarred stumps of oaks and maples cut me, bruised me. I hurt for the woods, my woods, the same way I do now to remember that after we left, the logging continued, the paths were swallowed up, the beautiful cherry tree that hung over our driveway was torn up and hauled away, the house painted a lighter blue. 26 Miller Road, Preston, CT, 06365. Not mine, not anymore. But oh, the memories. Beautiful. It was beautiful.
And now I sit in the dark in the room of this house, a young house, and I look out the window at the silhouette of tree branches against the bruise dark sky, at a silhouette so similar to the one I knew before, but a thousand miles away. And I mourn what I had, what I lost, the people I've forgotten and let go, the ones who are growing up apart from me with lives of their own, once intertwined with mine, now separate. I love the ones I cannot hold and ache for the past. For one more summer day, please God.
One last day.
You'd start out on top of the hill on a path wide enough for a car--wider still once my newfound neighbors forced a backhoe down it and upped the grade, a tragedy, a loss I'm still saddened by. We ran down that hill, we raced. Laughing, yelling, panting, red faced and grinning. He beat me, usually. Long-limbed and skinny Mikey, head shaven, wearing his dad's old Led Zeppelin shirt. I was small for my age, determined not to wear anything remotely feminine, my hair cut short and carelessly parted. I had dirty knees and grimy hands, but I was happy. Happy the way only a 10 year old with the best yard ever is.
We got older, explored every inch of my land and beyond, walked out so far that the woods stopped and we were at the edge of a field of cattails, my dad holding me back with one gentle hand and breathing, "Look" as a single buck bounded through the swishing stalks, head held high, white tail up in surrender, the velvet still furring his horns. And at night, when the moon hung huge, white, luminous in its cradle of stars, the woods were never silent. In summer the frogs were so loud Benton couldn't sleep and Mom's relatives asked what was going on when she called them on the phone. Bassy bullfrogs, defiant peepers. Crickets sawing away to make a symphony, our symphony, the one I laid awake to in the dark, warm beneath the cotton sheet, Pooh clasped against my chest.
I was so positive I'd be there forever. So sure I would always climb those crooked apple trees and eat blueberries until my tongue cringed from the sour and play with kittens my mom warned me not to name so we wouldn't get too attached. I was so sure I'd always be the owner of that big blue house with the cracked, crooked driveway, lumpy yard, leaning woodshed, outdated kitchen, and fantastic basement. Change was for others, not for Grace, so sure, so stubborn, so young.
But even while we were there things shifted. They cut down half an acre of trees to build a house just off of my sacred wooden path. I was so angry I cried, yelling at my dad that they couldn't do that, it wasn't right. The scarred stumps of oaks and maples cut me, bruised me. I hurt for the woods, my woods, the same way I do now to remember that after we left, the logging continued, the paths were swallowed up, the beautiful cherry tree that hung over our driveway was torn up and hauled away, the house painted a lighter blue. 26 Miller Road, Preston, CT, 06365. Not mine, not anymore. But oh, the memories. Beautiful. It was beautiful.
And now I sit in the dark in the room of this house, a young house, and I look out the window at the silhouette of tree branches against the bruise dark sky, at a silhouette so similar to the one I knew before, but a thousand miles away. And I mourn what I had, what I lost, the people I've forgotten and let go, the ones who are growing up apart from me with lives of their own, once intertwined with mine, now separate. I love the ones I cannot hold and ache for the past. For one more summer day, please God.
One last day.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Otherside
It is cold, and I am on a lake. The sky above is uniform grey, leeching the color from everything. The trees on the banks of my perfectly circular lake are black, decorated by defeated orange and brown leaves, quiet and still in the wintry air.
No boat supports me. I in my black coat and brown shoes merely stand there suspended on the clearest ice, ice that seems to dance and glimmer as the water beneath would, even in the eerie monochrome light. Unearthly silence surrounds me, and I am unafraid.
As I walk across the silent, sober lake, I look at the water below me, so close I can almost feel it. I am chilled to the bone, but I do not shiver. I just walk, measured and even, from the center out. The black forest is striking but not unfriendly, just sad. The boughs of the trees bend out over the motionless shimmering dull water, and I watch the leaves curl into the lake, into one another. I move closer, I with my somber clothes and serious eyes, slowly, steadily. The trees neither welcome nor deny, they just frown. Mourning, quiet.
And in the breathless muted silence, weird and lifeless, I fall. The glassy ice shatters soundlessly below me, and I plummet down. Not into dark water or lurking depths, but into a brilliant blue sky, rushing past clouds in astonishing, immaculate bright sunlight. I lean back, my clothes whipping around me, arms and legs akimbo, and exhilaration overtakes me.
I go back in time, memories flashing past me, friends family tears smiles jokes sighs a blue house a green room my heroes my obstacles my hopes my dreams my shortcomings my failures, blistering happiness and crushing sadness, and it matters not that realizing each frame is impossible, I lean back and fall.
I close my eyes, and I fall through the perfect cloud-spangled sky, free, free.
No boat supports me. I in my black coat and brown shoes merely stand there suspended on the clearest ice, ice that seems to dance and glimmer as the water beneath would, even in the eerie monochrome light. Unearthly silence surrounds me, and I am unafraid.
As I walk across the silent, sober lake, I look at the water below me, so close I can almost feel it. I am chilled to the bone, but I do not shiver. I just walk, measured and even, from the center out. The black forest is striking but not unfriendly, just sad. The boughs of the trees bend out over the motionless shimmering dull water, and I watch the leaves curl into the lake, into one another. I move closer, I with my somber clothes and serious eyes, slowly, steadily. The trees neither welcome nor deny, they just frown. Mourning, quiet.
And in the breathless muted silence, weird and lifeless, I fall. The glassy ice shatters soundlessly below me, and I plummet down. Not into dark water or lurking depths, but into a brilliant blue sky, rushing past clouds in astonishing, immaculate bright sunlight. I lean back, my clothes whipping around me, arms and legs akimbo, and exhilaration overtakes me.
I go back in time, memories flashing past me, friends family tears smiles jokes sighs a blue house a green room my heroes my obstacles my hopes my dreams my shortcomings my failures, blistering happiness and crushing sadness, and it matters not that realizing each frame is impossible, I lean back and fall.
I close my eyes, and I fall through the perfect cloud-spangled sky, free, free.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Into the Wild
I have these dreams of the open road, of frozen tundra and white-bearded trees. I dream of wandering from town to town and place to place, no ties to anybody or anything, just my whim and my wanderlust, the same itch that's bothered me since we got here three years ago. I dream of northern lights and the oppressive silence, of the familiar yet distant forests and the song of the wind.
I want cold, the sharp, bone-cutting cold I used to know. I want the wind to knife through me again and herald the snow, want to shiver under the diamond points of stars in a sky the color of ink. I want to know the wild abandoned freedom of being untethered, if only for a month or two. I want quiet, just me and my thoughts. I want to find life in the tradition of Thoreau, in the bare essentials and in human wandering. Deserts, plains, rolling hills, mountains, tundra, forests, rivers, waterfalls, canyons, I want to know what our country has to offer. I want to quit being a tourist and become a traveler instead. I want to live.
I'll turn off my phone and dream instead, painting pictures on a canvas I could never even hope to fill. And in the quiet hush of midnight, I'll feel like it's right here, my dream. It's close.
I dream of freedom. The closest I can know here on earth.
I want cold, the sharp, bone-cutting cold I used to know. I want the wind to knife through me again and herald the snow, want to shiver under the diamond points of stars in a sky the color of ink. I want to know the wild abandoned freedom of being untethered, if only for a month or two. I want quiet, just me and my thoughts. I want to find life in the tradition of Thoreau, in the bare essentials and in human wandering. Deserts, plains, rolling hills, mountains, tundra, forests, rivers, waterfalls, canyons, I want to know what our country has to offer. I want to quit being a tourist and become a traveler instead. I want to live.
I'll turn off my phone and dream instead, painting pictures on a canvas I could never even hope to fill. And in the quiet hush of midnight, I'll feel like it's right here, my dream. It's close.
I dream of freedom. The closest I can know here on earth.
Home
It was winter nights and starry skies and the smell of smoke and snow angels and forts and the gap underneath the porch, fleeting whiskers and a stripey tail, so many strays I lost count. It was the song of full-throated bullfrogs and tiny peepers, deafening in the curtain of summer air, hidden in our red rest fenced defunct pool that I never even swam in. It was that little hole and tiny creek (or I fancied it one) where, regular, always, water would gurgle forth from I knew not where--the well?--to drain, like clockwork, even in winter. It was an icy pond we skated on in our boots, slipping and laughing and falling with rosy cheeks and bright button eyes, gasping when my foot went through into chilly swamp and then limping home, laughing, laughing.
It was Butterscotch, the ragdoll cat I loved, I loved. She had beautiful blue eyes and a smart gaze, loved to be carried around and petted and crooned over. Her bottle-brush hot chocolate tail, cream and butter patched coat, dark ears, fur so soft I buried my face in it, warm and musky and alive. I loved her. I watched her leave. I won't forget.
It was the quiet solitude of the winter forest, snow hissing into the ground around me, my arms outstretched, my face to God, the trees reaching up with me, spinning, spinning it felt like. The air was so cold it stung your nose, cold and clear and clean, like nothing else I've found yet. It was those smiles because this was home, this was where I belonged, this was me. Pewter cottonball sky, innumerable flakes, the crunching of new snow.
It was the seaport, crushed shells instead of gravel crunching underfoot, the tang of salt in the air, tall, creaking ships,
oh lord,
the people. Everywhere, always. Ones who watched me grow and smiled at me, ones who gave and gave and gave and never asked anything in return. Ones who cared like I was one of their own. I loved,
I loved,
I loved,
I loved.
Always, everything, everyone, from my big blue house with the cherry tree out front to the forest tall and brooding and hidden and free to the faces the friends the laughs the games the school the teachers the strays the roads the snow the bus the fields the crooked lamp post the rutted driveway the fruit trees the berries the sky the things I loved the things I lost the things I learned the dreams I made the friends I held the years I treasure.
I love, I love, I love, I love.
Preston.
It was Butterscotch, the ragdoll cat I loved, I loved. She had beautiful blue eyes and a smart gaze, loved to be carried around and petted and crooned over. Her bottle-brush hot chocolate tail, cream and butter patched coat, dark ears, fur so soft I buried my face in it, warm and musky and alive. I loved her. I watched her leave. I won't forget.
It was the quiet solitude of the winter forest, snow hissing into the ground around me, my arms outstretched, my face to God, the trees reaching up with me, spinning, spinning it felt like. The air was so cold it stung your nose, cold and clear and clean, like nothing else I've found yet. It was those smiles because this was home, this was where I belonged, this was me. Pewter cottonball sky, innumerable flakes, the crunching of new snow.
It was the seaport, crushed shells instead of gravel crunching underfoot, the tang of salt in the air, tall, creaking ships,
oh lord,
the people. Everywhere, always. Ones who watched me grow and smiled at me, ones who gave and gave and gave and never asked anything in return. Ones who cared like I was one of their own. I loved,
I loved,
I loved,
I loved.
Always, everything, everyone, from my big blue house with the cherry tree out front to the forest tall and brooding and hidden and free to the faces the friends the laughs the games the school the teachers the strays the roads the snow the bus the fields the crooked lamp post the rutted driveway the fruit trees the berries the sky the things I loved the things I lost the things I learned the dreams I made the friends I held the years I treasure.
I love, I love, I love, I love.
Preston.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Nicky
He had big dark eyes and a shy, fleeting smile, and he loved me from the moment he saw me. He was tiny, his arms and legs skinny and awkward, like a colt’s. If you ran your hands over his sides, you could have counted his ribs, and his spine was visible when he bent over, the bumps outlined against his grubby red sleeveless T-shirt. When we were introduced, he murmured his name so quietly I had to bend down and ask for it again, even though I could see it on the wooden nametag he wore around a dirty neck. “Nicky,” he said. “My name is Nicky.”
We went everywhere together—to the state park, where we tossed a football and did a nature scavenger hunt, to the grassy lawn of our “base” church. Always, he held my hand and sometimes rode on my back, my own little shadow. It didn’t matter to him that other boys climbed all over me and yelled my name and asked to play games with me; he stayed by my side.
I told him all the time how awesome he was, showering him with praise for anything and everything, no matter how trivial. “You can throw a football better than anybody I know, bud,” I’d say. “You’re the best. Woah, did you draw that picture all by yourself? I would have sworn a professional did that. That’s great.” And every time, he’d receive my compliments with a fleeting, hidden smile, the depths of his dark eyes unfathomable.
For a week we played together. We sang songs together and danced, chased after butterflies and colored pictures on park benches, made more warm fuzzies than I could ever count. Each warm fuzzy—a simple piece of colored yarn worn in bunches on a nametag—was given away to others for good deeds and for encouragement, and I think Nicky gave me the most out of any of the kids in our group. For a week, Nicky was my best friend, and I his.
I would never have met Nicky and the other amazing little kids I did if it wasn’t for Mountain T.O.P., short for Tennessee Outreach Program. Mountain T.O.P. is a faith-based camp held each summer in the Cumberland Mountains. Campers have two options there: they can do simple home repairs for houses in Grundy County, one of the poorest in the nation, or they can do day camp for a week with younger kids from the county. I had done service projects for two years prior to the summer of 2009, but on a whim, I had decided to do day camp that year. It was a decision I will forever be grateful for.
Impacting the world is a tall order. To take it on all at once seems daunting and impossible, so perhaps it is best to start one piece at a time. Mountain T.O.P. and its day camp program is the best step I have taken thus far toward making things better for others. The children I met there could (and did) melt hearts—not only with their sincere honesty and easy love, but with their scruffy, second-hand clothing, dirty faces, and the often-decrepit houses we picked them up from each morning. They would tell stories of the many siblings they lived with, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents thrown in with the usual mishmash of brothers and sisters. To us, their poverty seemed a heavy burden, but they never noticed.
It was in helping these young boys and girls that I realized how badly America’s own poor need help. Comfortable, middle- and upper-class Americans often speak of needing to help other, less fortunate countries through donations and charities, but there are multitudes of the destitute right here, on our own soil. There are people who can’t afford to buy new clothes for themselves or their children and who live off of food stamps. People whose number one shopping destination is Dollar General, followed by Goodwill. People who may not even finish high school because the need for extra income is too great. Other countries need American aid, certainly, but care should be shown at home as well.
Mountain T.O.P. taught me that it’s the little things that make a difference in the world around you. At the graduation ceremony for the groups of day campers, each was given a backpack filled with school supplies and a few small toys. When Nicky got his, he came up to me and said, “I get to keep this? All of it?” I told him that it was a gift to him from us, and the smile that lit up his face was huge. “This is awesome,” he said. “It’s like my birthday.” And all of the sudden, he gave me a huge hug, whispering, “I’ll miss you most.”
I started small, but the changes I saw feel huge.
We went everywhere together—to the state park, where we tossed a football and did a nature scavenger hunt, to the grassy lawn of our “base” church. Always, he held my hand and sometimes rode on my back, my own little shadow. It didn’t matter to him that other boys climbed all over me and yelled my name and asked to play games with me; he stayed by my side.
I told him all the time how awesome he was, showering him with praise for anything and everything, no matter how trivial. “You can throw a football better than anybody I know, bud,” I’d say. “You’re the best. Woah, did you draw that picture all by yourself? I would have sworn a professional did that. That’s great.” And every time, he’d receive my compliments with a fleeting, hidden smile, the depths of his dark eyes unfathomable.
For a week we played together. We sang songs together and danced, chased after butterflies and colored pictures on park benches, made more warm fuzzies than I could ever count. Each warm fuzzy—a simple piece of colored yarn worn in bunches on a nametag—was given away to others for good deeds and for encouragement, and I think Nicky gave me the most out of any of the kids in our group. For a week, Nicky was my best friend, and I his.
I would never have met Nicky and the other amazing little kids I did if it wasn’t for Mountain T.O.P., short for Tennessee Outreach Program. Mountain T.O.P. is a faith-based camp held each summer in the Cumberland Mountains. Campers have two options there: they can do simple home repairs for houses in Grundy County, one of the poorest in the nation, or they can do day camp for a week with younger kids from the county. I had done service projects for two years prior to the summer of 2009, but on a whim, I had decided to do day camp that year. It was a decision I will forever be grateful for.
Impacting the world is a tall order. To take it on all at once seems daunting and impossible, so perhaps it is best to start one piece at a time. Mountain T.O.P. and its day camp program is the best step I have taken thus far toward making things better for others. The children I met there could (and did) melt hearts—not only with their sincere honesty and easy love, but with their scruffy, second-hand clothing, dirty faces, and the often-decrepit houses we picked them up from each morning. They would tell stories of the many siblings they lived with, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents thrown in with the usual mishmash of brothers and sisters. To us, their poverty seemed a heavy burden, but they never noticed.
It was in helping these young boys and girls that I realized how badly America’s own poor need help. Comfortable, middle- and upper-class Americans often speak of needing to help other, less fortunate countries through donations and charities, but there are multitudes of the destitute right here, on our own soil. There are people who can’t afford to buy new clothes for themselves or their children and who live off of food stamps. People whose number one shopping destination is Dollar General, followed by Goodwill. People who may not even finish high school because the need for extra income is too great. Other countries need American aid, certainly, but care should be shown at home as well.
Mountain T.O.P. taught me that it’s the little things that make a difference in the world around you. At the graduation ceremony for the groups of day campers, each was given a backpack filled with school supplies and a few small toys. When Nicky got his, he came up to me and said, “I get to keep this? All of it?” I told him that it was a gift to him from us, and the smile that lit up his face was huge. “This is awesome,” he said. “It’s like my birthday.” And all of the sudden, he gave me a huge hug, whispering, “I’ll miss you most.”
I started small, but the changes I saw feel huge.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Raw
You don't look back, not for anything, not for me or her or the family you left behind, you don't look back.
Hold the steering wheel tight to stop the shaking, turning knuckles white, jaw muscles kneading, eyes fixes not sad, focused not wandering, can't think can't worry, can't look back. Can't remember.
And who were we? Were we the ones who held your hand? Were we the ones who watched you cry? Were we the jokers? Were we those who comforted you? Or did we turn on you, cut wound smear you, laugh cruelly and not stop? Did we hate or love?
Did you hate or love? The girl with the innocent eyes, the mother father sister brother the tall trees the summer grass the cloudy sky the brick buildings clapboard houses smiling faces friendly familiarity did you hate? Did you love?
Do you run away or toward?
Do you forget or remember too much?
Accelerate, grin or grimace try to laugh but it could be a sob stop thinking.
Pound the wheel once or twice, just to let it go.
Drown the thoughts with music.
Feel the eyes watching from the trees.
Wander away but go back in your head.
Forget me, forget us, forget what was there before. (the smiles the laughs the summer the winter the leaves the birthdays the christmases the trials the successes the failure the redemption the end)
Drive a little faster until the edges blur and you're flying you're finally flying but where to fall?
Where to fall?
Hold the steering wheel tight to stop the shaking, turning knuckles white, jaw muscles kneading, eyes fixes not sad, focused not wandering, can't think can't worry, can't look back. Can't remember.
And who were we? Were we the ones who held your hand? Were we the ones who watched you cry? Were we the jokers? Were we those who comforted you? Or did we turn on you, cut wound smear you, laugh cruelly and not stop? Did we hate or love?
Did you hate or love? The girl with the innocent eyes, the mother father sister brother the tall trees the summer grass the cloudy sky the brick buildings clapboard houses smiling faces friendly familiarity did you hate? Did you love?
Do you run away or toward?
Do you forget or remember too much?
Accelerate, grin or grimace try to laugh but it could be a sob stop thinking.
Pound the wheel once or twice, just to let it go.
Drown the thoughts with music.
Feel the eyes watching from the trees.
Wander away but go back in your head.
Forget me, forget us, forget what was there before. (the smiles the laughs the summer the winter the leaves the birthdays the christmases the trials the successes the failure the redemption the end)
Drive a little faster until the edges blur and you're flying you're finally flying but where to fall?
Where to fall?
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