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.

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.

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.

( )

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.

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.

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.

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.