ideas?

12.6.09 (a working draft...this needs revision, and i need ideas for it...)

We were surprisingly pure white
like the whiskers of a man
grown old overnight by
some old dark magic.

Though we’d spent years in
that soot-dimmed room
trying to make sense out
of the smoke and ashes.

Though we’d walked miles in
that fenced-in garden
carving circles of regret
in the unwilling dirt.

We were surprisingly pure white
like the fur of the rabbit
pulled unexpectedly out of
some old black hat.

Weathered. (summer fiction draft)

It's not really a secret on any night but tonight. I come here just to be. My belly presses against the cool concrete ledge that exfoliates my elbows. I can't decide if I'm comfortable, but my coffee is a warm blanket and the passing storm a cool breeze.

I keep looking over my shoulder, as if you'd be there. I want you to be there. I want to call you, to go to the house and bring you here, but it's more romantic knowing you don't know where I am.

The clean electricity skims my nose, and I listen to the sounds of the undisturbed city. The rain has stopped, but flashes still light the sky from end to end.

Even though I'm here by myself, I realize that I'm never alone now. My thoughts are tethered to you and they roam and swing, but they always wrap themselves back around you.

I've passed a long time here, and it's much colder. The storm clouds are indistinguishable now that the sun has set. I watch for headlights, afraid of being found. But I root myself further into the concrete as the silence confirms my solitude...

While it has taken me awhile to realize, I know I've been planted with you, too. We grow as separate trees but our roots have become entangled. Storms come and sometimes they claim a branch or two, but none will ever uproot my thoughts, me, from you...

I think we're alone now...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the paradox of loneliness. It is generally thought to be an unpleasant and undesirable feeling, yet it is what often opens our hearts to new possibilities, even those within possibilities that already exist, and it also paves the way to newfound understanding of our deepest selves. So in one sense, I run from loneliness in order to enjoy the deep connection I have with others, but I also want to cautiously enter into the cave of loneliness to mine its riches.

We don't like talking about this feeling--or others like it. We think of it as negative, something to be avoided, something shameful. How, with deep and meaningful relationships, can one feel stark loneliness? I think part of it stems from a misunderstanding of the feeling. Sure, loneliness includes wanting more deep relationships, but the true heart of the experience is realizing that in the midst of even deep relationships, no matter how connected we are to other souls, at the end of the day, we will always be basically alone. Even swimming in a sea of shared love, I am the only one who can understand how I feel when floating or when struggling for the surface. And even then, understanding oneself is highly difficult, thus intensifying the experience of loneliness. Not even I can fully commune with me.

I love how God seems to connect us to things most valuable at our most present time of need. Though I've known of the publication for years, I've never connected with The Sun until recently. And the more of it I read, the more I find connections in the articles and short stories to questions and thoughts I currently face. I stumbled upon an article in The Sun's archives today from 1986. The editor, Sy Safransky, interviewed one of his teachers: Stephen Schwartz. Schwartz talked about feelings in an unorthodox way: connecting them to their presence in the body in order to face their heart instead of their interpretations. He writes:

"Disliking feelings or making them wrong never solves problems. The reason we dislike them in the first place is because we’ve been taught to. There is nothing in the feeling to dislike. It is a movement in the body, a flow of something, maybe a hurt or a woundedness, which we assume to be weak, neurotic, or wrong. All those labels are made up.

Feelings come and feelings go. The interruption of this flow comes from conditioning, from habitually imposed responses. When a person turns toward whatever is being felt in the body, it is always different from what they initially thought.

Something is happening to us as human beings that can’t be explained by surface events or by the psychological dogmas that parade as truth. Deeper than the content of life swells a mysterious force — a presence, if you will — which is guiding us towards an unknown end."

I like the freedom to charge into the heart of emotions, versus doing all I can to resist them, in order to learn more about myself and the truth of experience. Who knows what gems I'll find in allowing myself to feel alone. I don't see it as a sad and hopeless feeling or process, but a deep significance, one which requires acceptance, respect and just some time to dig through.

Altered.

...and out from my fumbling fingers slips the unfilled jar I've been holding onto all my life. Crashing open, it releases all I've ever known onto the dirty floor, mixing with salt and blades of grass and yesterday's rice. I want more than anything to sweep it up with my shaking arms, but I know that I can never separate out the dirt or put it all back into my shattered jar. For as fire forever alters what's been burned, so changed are all my realities when faced with the idea of You.

Fields

She walks through Earth's whiskers along a clumsy path as if she's wandering. Almost drifting, she browses the trees, swaying conveniently with the wind. The tall rough grasses bow out of her way, and she thanks them with her light step.

Everyday I see her there. She maintains her route as if her footsteps create the refrain to her favorite song. As she stops to watch the far off road, the wind carries the song to her lover. And after a few moments, the gentle smile on her face reveals he's sent one back. Though I often try, I cannot hear what it is she hears.

(from January 1, 2009)

?

(A story from 2006. Not sure what to think of it now...what does it mean?)

Little did he know, he left the light on in the kitchen. He thought he had flicked it off this morning...but he didn't. I guess it was ok.

"Be sure to turn the light off in the kitchen," she had said. She was a reasonable woman with few requests. But she had a thing about turning off the kitchen light when they left the room. It was ok to leave the bedroom light on for the evening if they were watching tv in the den or even to leave the bathroom light on as a nightlight. But just turn the light off in the kitchen.

He came home to an empty house. She wouldn't know...so he thought. He turned off the light, his breathing pausing slightly. He didn't mean to forget this morning....it just happened. Just like the day happened.

"By the way," she said, "did you take out the trash today?"

"Yes," he said, with a glance her way.

"Ok," she sighed.

She had forgotten his dry cleaning. He reminded her about it this morning. I guess she just forgot. He didn't bring it up so neither did she.

They played a game of checkers while sipping wine. They always listened to Johnny Cash when they played checkers. Sometimes he let her win, and sometimes she let him win.

She knew about the light, and he knew about the dry cleaning.

They kissed goodnight.

In the morning, she flicked the kitchen light off before she left, and he left early to pick up his dry cleaning.

Little did they know.

Hidden Treasure

In between the green trees and dark mountains of Guatemala lie los pueblos de oro, no, rather, the sparkling diamonds of a beautiful life. What seems at a glance to be concrete and rusted tin and poverty and danger turns out to be the hidden jewels of a simple but rich life. Even largely unrealized to the inhabitants, these treasure chests carry a value more important than money and glamour and luxury. Though few come searching, the rare that mine these fields find a part of the very soul of the earth. And dwelling in eternity, as souls do, the treasure waits to be discovered and rediscovered by any who choose to hunt a different kind of diamond.

This was my journal entry written as we we're riding on the bus out of Xela. At the end of the trip, it struck me that more than one person told me to tell others about Guatemala. Tell them you had a good time, tell them it's beautiful, tell them it's not so dangerous, they'd say. While all those things are true, I found it so interesting that they wanted so badly for people to know the truth about Guatemala, versus the overload of negative ideas out there about the developing country.

Returning from Guatemala has been an exhausting process, but leaving this time was much different from leaving last year. At the end of my trip last year, I was excited to come home and see family and friends again, but something felt wrong about leaving Xela. The trip back this year opened up the wound a bit at first. However, it seemed to have healed in two weeks. Leaving this time felt right, like I had a chance to say goodbye properly knowing my home is not in Guatemala, though I'll always love it there.