14 de Agosto 2008
with unflinching confidence
a good friend came into the chocolati during my office hours,
she read through a paper over which i had an anxiety attack
after i turned it in
on my way the beach
where i built two sandcastles and dug one trench
from our blanket to the ocean
with my nephew, who still answers to his
nickname: Mocos
she told me to
show up to the page with unflinching confidence
and get it all down.
then, she ate two truffles and, left.
and somehow she has managed to silence the motherfuckingverballyabusive editors in my head and in my heart and i thought i should send this news out into the abyss. because i wonder what it looks like in the rss feed.
and now it is back to the nestle-aland.
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9 de Julio 2008
woah
i almost just published a really mean entry. that was close. here are the nicer parts:
i just thought i should clear something up: i can't stand facebook and i refuse to join. the only reason i keep this blog up is because there is still a great deal of stuff out there, written about me, on the internet, whether you know it or not, whether you will read it or not. And as long as it is out there i have to have a voice of my own and this is it.
at least i think that is why i do this.
i made a new friend this week, not by meeting him on facebook. his name is nathan. he offered me the nasty brown part of his carrot today in such a funny "from the carolinas" way i laughed and am still laughing about it. i may never forget that moment; it was real good. so when you read this, nathan, these are your propas: i think you are a good person, which is quite a feat because there are lots of people i don't like. and i will tell all the pretty girls about you. its not facebook but it will have to do. and i can't believe you were in the stranger want ads, i mean, i believe it because you probably offer nasty carrots to all kinds of potential friends all across the country but the stranger ads--that is like being famous! i've never been that close to being in the stranger so of course i admire you.
that concludes the message to nathan.
the moral of the story is this: internet is a good place to make yourself or someone else into a ghost that just haunts and howls and cries over the sad parts.
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30 de Junio 2008
God tends
for vacation bible school we wore tee shirts that said "...on earth as it is in heaven." we went to the transfer station and we went to the forest and we went to the museum and we played some games and nobody won and nobody lost and we only cried on the first day and we sang about hippos and each other and it was very good, just like the bible says.
and what did we start with: toe hoo wah boe hoo.
which is what i always start with and we ended with the saddest day because it had to end and we had to rest like we always do.
sometimes when things go really well i feel very small.
so we went to the beach. and slipped slurpees and then i went home and my dog was there and he was so happy to see me, just like you used to be. so happy.
when you see something really beautiful you should say something because why not? you should definitely say it. that is one thing i am learning this summer... say it out loud and maybe point if you have a free hand. kneel down and with confidence just say it carefully, slowly or maybe your eyes squinting in the brightness of it whisper it so it lands gently because she doesn't know you are thinking it. she doesn't even know you are capable of thinking it but she might need you to be brave enough...
i have this thing i think about love. i think about love.
and i can't stop doing it
here is one reason why i am not the wife i wanted to be:
everyday dinner time comes and all i really want to do is eat a carrot or something stupid like that.
so if you think of it, send snats that is all we can handle right now.
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24 de Abril 2008
for emilefoggyheart
use the arrows to go to the song called sunny road. it is very helpful. the first two songs are OK but the others are, well, consider it free spiritual direction from someone who is certifiable... i mean, a certified spiritual director.Posted by crymytinyflood at 2:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
17 de Marzo 2008
on the brink
"How can I, how dare I presume to form you from my rib?... To do justice to you an essential injustice is required. That is the heart of my dilemma. I can never be you:yet in order to be myself I must imagine what it is to be you."
--A. Brink, The Wall of the Plague (London: Fontana, 1985), p.446.
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10 de Marzo 2008
cfm like peterpan
last year at the easter vigil i led the procession of children away from the altar and out the main sanctuary doors.
afterward someone said i may be the new children and family minister but i am a little more like an imp, or the pied piper or peterpan.
but i don't do it for the parents to be rid of their children. i am careful to engineer each event so that children will have access to their parents. and slowly, and much to their dismay, the parents are beginning to realize this.
now i don't claim to know what the parents are going through as they struggle with flash floods of parenthood ambivalence. i don't have "my own kids". but i meet their frustration and pain with genuine concern and THANKGOD genuine curiosity--that is the prerogative of the childless children and family minister.
Dan allender says that really being with a family is like being on the autobahn and if you don't know where you're going to, you'll miss the turn off.
sometimes all i can do is believe in the healing power of a casserole. othertimes, well, miracles happen.
but the parents often respond to even the most genuine curiosity the way groan-ups often do:
we're fine.
we're well.
we're just tired.
they think i can't see behind the sad crinkles around their eyes or the way their lips tremble, just a little when they look to the left and try to evade the questions about what they did with the dead cat, or said about the dead grandpa. they don't think i notice the gray hairs they have grown this year or the tired way they slump to the altar railing for the host.
you can't depend on parents to understand children--it is so difficult. they spent so much energy trying to separate themselves from childhood and now, they somehow can't get back to neverland because they have run out of pleasant thoughts. sometimes they are, in the best innocence of the word and also in the worst way: children themselves.
they should call me the children and grown up children's minister.
you know, in the gospel reading from last week Jesus wept.
and i told the children sitting on the wine-soaked carpet stairs up to the altar:
weeping means big, giant tears come pouring out.
and they were looking right in my face. so i told them, i said it right into the lapel mic: it is OK to not be OK.
but i can't force you.
so today when i sat in my car and thought of the way i send mixed messages, and the way i confuse people because i hope beyond hope that they will read between the lines,
i felt real not ok and real bad, and so
i was weeping.
and i had this one tiny wonderful thought: even if you don't understand, i do.
i know exactly what is going on in my head and if you just stay with me a little, and get creative, and add in your two cents, and then ask a genuine question or two, you could understand too. but that is all debunked now.
i think today will be the first day i can stop expecting the adults in my life to understand. i think i can finally see how badly they want me to explain things to them in words they understand. not that i will be able to do this, but at least i have a new view of the problem.
and i called my husband and he said, "you have a prophets heart and you have to call these parents to more." and then i said that i feel like i chose to be in two worlds at the same time and he said, "because that is what you did."
because he just knows this stuff.
and i think its real difficult when i wake up on a gray morning in March and realize that my very presence is pressuring parents to put one foot in their child's world, and keep one foot in theirs and it really sucks to have to be both places. the word is "ambivalence" but it might as well be ambivolatile or ambifuckedover.
i know, because i am dumb enough to hope, they can do it; there is plenty of casserole around here and still a few miracles yet to get born.
and you have to realize that every week when i give the children's word as part of the liturgy the room falls silent because the children are interested (which is to say, not fidgeting behind a pewback too tall to see over) and
the parents are taking notes on how to talk to their children and
the grandparents are grateful that somebody can keep this shit simple, for once... and
the pastor is praying thankyouGodthatwasonethingicrossedoffmytodolist and
the childless couple is heartaching in the back row, holding onto somebody else's baby girl, as she sleeps in the barren arms hopefully realizing that Jesus probably fielded the questions and accusations about why he didn't get married or have kids or settle down or whatever. and
even my husband sits with the young adults and they listen in out of jealousy or hope for an entry point or something funny to happen because they want so very much to enjoy church.
i do not want you to think that i am in anyway tooting my own horn because you can see now the pressure i think i am under, i think we all just want out so bad that when i tell them that Jesus' sadness is, in fact, good news... well, it doesn't take a genius to hate me or at least smile knowingly that this is pretty insane, and think silently, to oneself, "oh, no she didn't".
and yet, they haven't fired me yet.
i may look like peterpan, leading your children off to some safe place where their childhood will stay the same forever... but really it is more like i'm hoping you're jealous and looking back and forth at your own life the way you watch a tennis match.
neverneverland is named such because i haven't been there and i can't suggest it: you have to take yourself with you when you grow up.
and that is why i am here to help, in my mixed message sort of way.
go on, give in to the morbid curiosity--lean over the casket and get a good wiff of or at least a good long look at the dead body of your dream that adulthood would be better. i'll be here when you look up again, just hanging around like some sort of good idea, bad idea whore on the corner, tempting you to dream a new, violently hopeful dream.
hinthint: adulthood is just another childhood but now you know the names for all the colors, all the flowers and all the people you just don't like, and some of them are the smallish folks you yourself named.
and that is ok with me, sad, realfuckingsad, but OK.
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3 de Marzo 2008
when to say when
i may have told you this before but i've been on the roster at quite a few schools.
two preschools
presby kids
mudpies
one grammar
Harmony School,
one middle school
Salmon Creek Middle School.
El Molino High School
Shorecrest High School
Meadowdale High School
Edmonds Community College
Santa Rosa Junior College
Bethany Bible College
St. Mary's College
El Diablo Valley College
Sonoma State University
San Francisco State University
San Jose State University
Mars Hill Graduate school
read'em and weep.
over the past seven years i have taught at
Bryant Elementary
Campolindo High School
Fairmount Elementary
Jackson Elementary
Little Sonshine Preschool
Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church, ELCA
somewhere in there between schools, when
i was a barista or
a landscaper's assistant or when
i sold designer jeans or when
i was a cook at the summer camp,
i harnessed the power of a lateral lisp,
i buried a few friends and relatives,
got married and
wrote a pretty good poem or two.
so now you know my qualifications, i want to tell you something that you may not learn at anyoneschoolinparticular:
somebody really important in my littleworld, somebody who has a two year old son who sang to me holy holy holy
told me today that
sometimes i don't have to do what i don't want to do, which is sort of like last year when somebody else told me that
sometimes trying harder is not the answer.
i think this falls under the category of learning when to say when or learning about enjambment and also under the heading of seeing the past redeemed.
i just thought you might like to see it all here in lines and circles. maybe,
seeing it
written down like
a prescription or
a contract or
a receipt or
a love letter
makes it easier to refer to when you wonder what the hell is going on around here. and why i have finally landed, even though it ought to be about time for me to participate in commencement or transfer out, or something like that--i mean, two years at the same school is a long time for someone like me.
and if you want to know
why i do what i do, or
why i like what i like or
why i don't have what people call "kids of my own", or
why i am suddenly discovering
that having boundaries is a lot like having
a superpower
i think this might help to answer those questions too...
i'm already doing the best i can and i have a sneaking suspicion
that you might be too, so i'm pretty damn thankful--
confused, but thankful.
and since it is lent and we aren't so say all*l%&!, i won't, but i'm thinking it, and God knows and that is probably OK.
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18 de Febrero 2008
a confession in favor of the church of gay
sometimes i am really selfish...
there is a midpoint between thinking only of myself and not knowing who the hell i am, it is a moment when i am not entirely myself, i am just sort of a self: self-ish. and it is still in its experimental stages.
and it is very messy, like when all the little ballerinas would show up with their laces out and their hairdos all fuzzy and falling out and it isn't quite right but it is OK, for a little while at least, because the only alternative is to shellac their baby bangs with hairspray, which is pretty gross on a five year old.
and i have these momentary lapses in judgment.
like telling my friend (who happens to be gay which isn't a huge part of our relationship but it is a huge part of this story) that if my church won't hire me full time i can just stay home and make babies. which turned out to be rubbing his face in it because he would love to do that but he doesn't have the parts. and then i just kept going, i didn't even apply the breaks. I said, "You should be a children and family minister; you'd be great." because he would. and that is that.
i honestly think i have the best job on the planet and if my theory about the importance of children's ministries and his idea about the church of gay would or could or might someday (if i have my way) intersect, then things would be even better.
I told my lovely straight husband (who happens to be straight which IS a huge part of our relationship as well as a huge part of the story) and he said, "people would freak out." and i said, "not all of them." which is also very true.
sometimes people are concerned about their/my qualifications: "if i'm not married can i offer premarital counseling?" "if you don't have kids, do you think you should really be working with families like you do?" (in all honesty, my poetry professor would freak out at me if she heard the details of my life at present "But are you getting your WRITING done?!" she would squeak out at me.)
And then i remember that there is Amy Sedaris who wrote a book about entertaining called I Like You. Now i don't know if Amy's parties are any good but i know that she thinks that when you invite someone to a party it is just her way of saying, "I Like You". And that is how she goes about throwing fabulous, iingenius parties... i guess.
what if my only qualification was that i care. my resume would just be a long list of times when i really liked my students, or times when they tried to make me not like them, but i did anyway. and the educational experience part would be about some poems i wrote about how much i like you.
so how can things get so complicated that such a rare person who really cares about these little kids would freak us out by doing so?
it is just hard to see where my friend's heart breaks and then watch him walk away from that ache because he is too tired or too busy or he thinks he is too fragile or just hasn't figured out how badly we need people like him or whatEVER it is that keeps him from doing what he really wants. Don't get me wrong; i could just be putting words into his mouth and not doing this problem any justice. But that is my prerogative i guess because you don't know him and you might never get to but i think you ought to at least think about this problem.
It is like a sad super hero hanging up his tights because the headlines were full of bad news. And i understand certain kinds of exhaustion but i also understand the power of exhortation.
so you better know that i am sort of sorry for being so self-ish and dragging you back and forth across the desert of your desires by way of exulting my own.
but i'm not that sorry.
because i like you.
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17 de Enero 2008
on a less upsetting note
pretty much another PSA, for your own protection.
i thought i should tell you that i am running into a lot of people named Abigail.
you should tell you: they are all very good people. we are a group to be reckoned with.
just be careful not to confuse one for the other, that will probably piss each one off. And be sure to ask whether you will be allowed to call us Abi, Abbey, or Abby.
some of us hate it, no matter how you spell it.
Thank you.
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30 de Diciembre 2007
short cut
sometimes a hair cut is the answer.
just consider it.
it is often more helpful than not.
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26 de Febrero 2007
lent
best for praying
when you are most
lonely
http://web.mac.com/benjaminoldham/iWeb/Ask%20For%20Wonder/Lenten%20Prayers/Lenten%20Prayers.html
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2 de Mayo 2006
arty tooty,
he was there, in the photograph, a large white spot with blue stripes, behind the giant Lego sculpture of Darth Vader. I could have taught them how to write his name months ago (a couple consonants and "the second number in the alphabet"), I could have taught them not to shout out when they are excited but I just think that at the right moment I am glad they are still calling them as they see them... after all, I'd be hard pressed to tell Jo Jo, "no, baloney isn't one of the fine foods the city mouse fed the country mouse when the two sat down to a fancy dinner."
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17 de Marzo 2006
we go over the rules sometimes
at morning circle.
this morning i chose the one about poop on your finger:
don't panic.
that is what i told them.
and i think it is pretty good advice.
or at least a good rule... i mean, if you have to have rules to keep poop off the stall wall.
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21 de Agosto 2005
one funny thing
Martin happens to have taken pictures of most of the people I stare at when we drive through Gilroy. Today it was a kid who looked too young to be driving a 1968 Volkswagen bug painted to look like Herbie.
"I know that kid."
"Which one?"
"The one you were looking at. He has chickens."
"Oh." (Keep in mind I am still feeling a little under the weather, trying to sit still and keep quiet.)
"They call him the chicken whisperer. His chickens are real calm."
I laughed really hard and kind of honked.
He is a very important kid. This is the second article.
This is the first.
Just thought you might want to know what it is like around here right now.
If that doesn't work, you can wait until September 19th at 8pm and watch the season premier of Arrested Development... whee!
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14 de Agosto 2005
Super glue.
Swan Lake is back.
And just in time to glue yourself back together after the holidays.
On the flight home I sat next to a man who grilled the pilot in the aisle seat until the latter opened up his copy of the new Harry Potter book. I have come to understand that landing a plane is like playing the drums, all hands lifting and dropping at the right time while feet and ears follow a rythm.
But I have known for some time that playing the drums is about toes and fingers too.
The ballet explains all of this, don't you see? landing gear, trap sets, Tendue, sur le coup de pie, (French spelling abilities aside) you learn to curve your arm for a drop of water and it tells the truth, and you can even be taught to keep yourself from getting dizzy in the turning. No wonder we send little girls as soon as they can stand still; it is good to know what your arms are doing and how to keep from falling down when things fall apart.
Find your Bill Withers record and put it on. That works even if your eyes are closed: we have to stick together.
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13 de Agosto 2005
+,-
While I was away my cat fell out the window and landed in a bush with purple flowers. At least we know she lives with the right family; it has been a difficult week.
Two good things: first, taking showers at someone else's house means you can use all the fancy potions they keep in there. I can't recommend using the bar soaps-that is gross-but the sparkling moisturizing body wash and the fruit salad fortified microbead facial and the sea salt exfoliating scrub that feels like scratching itches you didn't know you had. If you are really lucky they will offer you a washcloth and you can just stand there with a hot washcloth over your face and breathe in, out and think about how to get your poems to rhyme or a word for the sound of your friend telling you "I don't know" and how comforting it is.
second, when you get home there are welcome home phone calls.
Home is a very new thing to me; it is important to keep track of what it is like to be home and not home... that way, when I begin to panic at the idea of sleeping in the same bed every night, I can tell myself to shut up. After all, the cat wasn't trying to run away, she was trying to take a nap.
Posted by crymytinyflood at 11:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
6 de Agosto 2005
since more than one person asked:
I think this might make marriage out to be bad, but it isn't: I just want you to know what it is really like so you know the strange parts a little better
Lots of people will tell you there are good parts but they won't tell you how the good parts of the lollipop have some little bits of fuzz to get around.
I have heard that for marriage you choose someone you really want to annoy for the rest of your life.
What I have found to be true: you come to understand that this person has every reason to hate you, absolutely, but he is unable to get past the promise to be loyal and take up for you and live in peace. And so he doesn't hate you, even if he should. It just isn't in him because he would have to hate himself enough for making those vows in order to break them, and he isn't about to hate himself and you at the same time, it would really be worse than imaginable... so he doesn't hate you. It is a mystery how two people become folded together like this. It has something to do with hope and (ouch) love, I think.
Continue reading "since more than one person asked:"
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5 de Agosto 2005
Tout le monde est une nonne
Gerard Manley Hopkins is still one of my favorite poets ever.
And when I begin to think I really messed things up and I am definitely going to get what I deserve, I read The Wreck of the Deutschland. It is nice and long so that by the end of it I either feel bad enough to really do something about my most recent offense or I feel much better.
The aforementioned Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket has a similar effect but it is short a nun or two.
Posted by crymytinyflood at 9:04 AM | TrackBack
2 de Agosto 2005
Good luck exploring the infinite abyss
A friend of mine was recently smacked in the butt by a bus driver on account of her questionable behavior and the way I am feeling right now, I can't let this one die.
I am coming to think that we are responsible for helping each other out.
Being married is supposed to give you another chance to get holy. Do we really know, instinctively, that love leads to commitment?
There are plenty of people out there who know me; People who will tell you how much I like beer and hate to nap alone. But what they might not tell you is that I am very stubborn and I have to watch my favorite movies on a rotating schedule just to stay cogent. Oh, and I never know how to end a phone call; I always count to three or else I don't say goodbye at all: I just clap the phone shut. Also, I have a pronounced uni brow but I pluck it so I don't scare my students' parents.
I have been to exactly one very catholic funeral. The Priest kept saying "blessedartthowwwah MUNnnnnnGwimmen." It was my husband's grandma Celia's body lying quietly behind him (she was taking some romance novels to wherever she was going-- they were there in the pink casket with her). I couldn't really cry. I had to be brave. It is a wife thing.
I nearly cried the other day when the hairspray I took from her bathroom clogged up.
I think I didn't talk to her enough before she died, which is wierd because I sure as hell can talk. But, by marriage, we were responsible for each other. Its this spiritual connection, see.
It isn't as if I was her bus driver, obligated to let her know if her bad personality took over.
You just have to know to whom you are connected and your obligations, that is all.
I'm telling you, try to figure out who you belong to. It is important.
"Don't tease me about my hobbies, I don't tease you about being an asshole."-Garden State
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27 de Julio 2005
slow choosing
Grape soda will not quench even a weak thirst
You would do better to sit still and watch a good movie to take your mind off thirst entirely.
I'm just saying, is all.
In fact, I am finding that it takes a great deal of thinking to figure out what I want when I want something. And, do you think I could be the only person who has this problem?
My students are not like this. They give names to the things they want-and right away. (They are still pretty small.)
I am getting to be a slow chooser.
Sitting still, waiting for the answers to come, I've been watching a lot of good movies.
Of course, I'm supposed to be getting my writing done. Somehow writing turned into this horrible way to poke at my problems and make fun of them. But the way poetry works--hiding things, semantics blur and syntax breaks things apart--makes me a little too reliant on taking my time.
I am reading through, um, Robert Lowell... all the while telling myself I am working.
A blog is a consolation to my inside editor, and good practice at a bad habit... did you read Harriet the Spy? You have to at least go look at it. The book is such a heartbreak. Let me know what you think of amazon's new features. I haven't yet decided if I like it, especially when my computer wouldn't allow me to link you to the sneak peak page... which is really nice.
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