Recently in just in case Category

she asks if there is anything she can
bring
I think first of the tree under her nest:
of the tiny maple,
the dwarf lemon
but most tenderly
the tall olive tree
(a mere branch leaning down across the soil
when she brought it home bowing, like a blessing
to her lover)

bring a branch from the olive tree, my dove:
my heart has been afloat too long now.
When you arrive, carry in your mouth the proof,
tell me
there are trees again
bursting from the horizon.
Tell me silently that the earth reaches out her arborized hands, and leafy fingers,
hoping to hold you up, proudly (loving your tiny toes curving around her fingers)
where you perch and play
and perform your miracles.
If there is solid ground again, a place to make a home,
I know you will tell me and you will bring a bit of it
wordlessly, weightlessly
leave leaves with me, my peace, my piece of home.

to tell you here its because i can't tell you here, but also because i can't tell (i just don't know), i can't say it, because there is no way to say any of this (i feel just awful about this whole thing). and the words are all ruined anyway.

but i thought it would be fair to let you know i won't be installed this Sunday. I'm taking a leave from my church family to attend to my troubles.
because
there are words we have begun using about ourselves that are really scary words and now they have begun to mean new things (which are not less scary, just less fearful):

violence doesn't mean hatred like it used to; now it means i have to notice there are safer ways of being (with or by) myself.
abuse doesn't mean hatred like it used to; now it means crossing boundaries made of barbed wire: both of us got hurt and we have to stop that right away.
afraid doesn't mean weak anymore; now it means i am listening to my heart.
a threat doesn't sound so ridiculous anymore; now it is a signal for me to begin letting go of the confusion hanging over my head. i am giving up the seeing-stars after-shock, wrapped like a gauze bandage over my forehead, like a blindfold, which was only supposed to be some kind of cure for a broken-home dizzy spell.
coping doesn't mean we're able to do this; it means we were merely surviving because hurting is all we could manage.
move doesn't mean new place;
leave doesn't mean abandon, that is just what we were always most afraid of.

so i wrote this little poem about all these words that i am having so much trouble with.

this word

A scrap of muslin tied to my tongue with one running thread of hope
hiding underneath and then showing
against the worn down knit of who I was
jumping over the muscle and skin,
loose, rising
with each wily hurdle:
over the barren landscape, its discrepant hanging snags, and wild fray.

Not only in my mouth, but a false loose covering
the down on my skin
catching against and weaving, over, under,
each inch of the patchwork cover:
grasses tangled with wild flowers in a wind
a comb caught in curls,
nerves straining when my heart pulls away
--your fingers in the weave of my sweater--
and tighten down, the desire--mending hopes

as sinews strain and capillaries flushed with blood: writhing
twine twisting in and around itself for strength
just before the gravity of the moment snaps the twisted cord and splinters hollow bone.
I am free but I am broken:
all this time
I spent
knotting the bedsheets together, stringing sentences like a rope.
I strung together the pieces of the fairytale, hoping the language would
make my escape for me,
only to find I held them so tightly, the words refused.

Down and out with nothing but time
to heal.
The needle and thread slide in and out now between moments,
Wrapping me in pricks and drawing blood: this resurfacing and strengthening.
Shaking and confident and smooth to the touch
I try to hold on
Still.

i went looking today for the blog that got me mad enough to start the skinny tree project years ago and its gone. it was a sort of exposure and i answered back in kind.
i just thought you should know that matters to me. the story and it doesn't end just because it isn't showing itself the way it used to.

the reasons i write are many but now, one less.

and the last time i heard

your voice was all there was--no grammar, no diction, no shame, no way to edit--and i

remember it well because it was the most solid thing i have ever heard, it said

i don't know

and then it said my name.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Dear friends and family,
As some of you know I will be the next intern at our church. I have been employed there since 2007 as the Children and Family Minister and will continue in that position as I take on additional responsibilities as the Vicar.

This internship will satisfy the Field Education requirements for my Masters in Divinity at Mars Hill Graduate School. After the 2009/2010 school year, I will have only two more trimesters of a sort of supervised Master's Thesis process and then will graduate at a commencement ceremony in June of 2011 (if things go according to plan). After that, Martin and I hope to stay here, in Seattle, in our little house, and I will stay on as Children and Family Minister. We like it here; we are putting down roots and bearing good fruit.

On September 13th 2009 I will take my place in the Chancel, wearing an alb and clerical collar among my fellow ministers and looking especially official. This is another in a series of important firsts along my journey toward ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Rites of passage, like this, whether in the form of liturgy, ceremony, a common meal or simple prayer are important to me and to the larger Church, of which we are all members. This journey is meant for traveling with companions and so it will mean a whole lot more if those I love most are invited to participate fully.

The preparation for professional ministry, for ordination, calls everyone who loves me into the process. I have unwittingly dragged all of you my beloved family and friends into the deep waters of discernment so that we might hear God calling.

I realize now: what I have supposed all along
to be,
what I assumed was
my calling,
is not my own at all
it is your call, my call, our call,
and we will only hear clearly
when we listen together.

If you would like to join us on the 13th of September, there is no need to rsvp--we will be welcoming all God's children that day and you will find yourself among a church family that has welcomed Martin and I warmly from our very first Sunday in the fall of 2006. Our church family will be so very glad to embrace you.

Please pray that these last weeks of preparation for my internship will be restful, warm and hopeful. Pray with me that family and friends will come together in a way that honors our different beliefs about women in professional ministry as well as our myriad hopes and fears about what it means to be the Body of Christ.

yours,
Abigail

I saw her today. The little girl strapped in by a seat belt. You really don't see it anymore; they discovered a couple years ago that the lap belts in the backseat wouldn't save her, they would only rip her in half. Funny the ripping wasn't a concern back then. But I saw the old footage of her, thick brown braids laying down over her bare shoulders, larger than life, brown eyed and squinting out the half-rolled window. She was staring blankly out on trees and fields, blurry, and becoming bridges, sidewalks and boat docks. I felt again the spinning and dizziness, nausea thickening, after even the 60th mile when the road straightened out and flattened. The rise and fall of sick building in her stomach and also hope, that somehow this would all end (that maybe this time mommy would simply say, "I don't want you to bring them back on Sunday. It would be better if they just stay in one place for a while.") This her most shameful hope, that the gone away beloved would simply go away for good and stay away forever, climbed its way up and tightened in her throat.

For the first time today I showed the images to you who noticed first how alone she was, noticed no one heard her when she cried out for relief. Her tantrum and vomit were not despicable, they were not signs of her own failure to bear the confusion. And the light of acceptance shocked and flooded the empty rooms of her hidden hoping love would disappear and the work of rupture and reconciliation would finally be done.

Her bravery was suddenly solid and admirable to you.

And I began to hope for her: that disappearing love might return, because I began to see her burden would be shared. That her body and bile were not a waste, her feelings and fears would be parceled out and precious to all who would receive her. Finally, she is loved, as she wanted to be: not because she behaved bravely but because she couldn't. Not because she asked for help, but because she couldn't. Not because she told the truth, but because she was too scared to. And in spite of the blurring and ripping, the whole thing was clear and solid and real: real sad, real shame, real attempts to hide and speak and cry out. It was real enough to be part of the story and there is hope only because we are taking it seriously enough to keep
writing.
::
When a saint arrives, or even an angel, they call it visitation. Ironically, that is what they call it when parents share a child over long distances. But what do they call it when the holy heart of someone, more like a prophet than a parent, comes close and then stays? What do they call it when a friend refuses to leave? What do they call it when the prophet leaves, only to return?
How like is an angel to a father when he is more like a rubber band, stretching and snapping back and a mother is more like a boomerang spinning out almost out of control and then miraculously dangerously close enough to catch and it means that a father is less like a rock or a mother less like a hard place even though the latter is what you needed them to be. and everything shifts and though we were always caught in the middle, we realize now that we felt like we moved around so much, as though we weren't actually caught in the middle muddle of all this transitioning, when really
they were moving, changing and we held tightly to the covenant they gave up on. we don't wear the rings on our fingers, the way they used to, the way tradition would symbolize their eternal promises. the rings, they are, rather inside of us, beneath the bark of the trees we have become because we put down roots when they refused. and the knots in our stomachs, weak spots evince the places where branches were trimmed away, hopes and habits were pruned.

and how do you share custody of a tree? even a small tree, that has yet to bear fruit? If you love the tree you see how it hurts and perhaps you go on hurting it anyway because there simply isn't another way.

well, well. We are grown now. and the fruit we bear falls on both sides of the fence and rubber bands, boomerangs, rocks and hard places are only able to scratch the bark, they are caught in our highest branches and tucked between our heartiest roots, perhaps for safe keeping and we hold on, stand tall, support one another.

a friend, or sister, a brother or a fellow tree, we finally learn, in the end, to stay put.
to let the seasons come and go, to soak in the place we have finally come to call home and the growing up slows and the growing into begins.

as for those of you with rocks and hard places, those of you with parents who kept those rings on their fingers, who never shuttled you from house to home and back again, I am not sure I am writing about that--I don't know about that, but I have a feeling you will know exactly what I mean anyway.

i admit public school teachers can be so self-righteous

and today i am glad i am not among them because sometimes
they hurt my feelings so much when they complain and judge everyone
from the government to the parents of their students.
i just don't remember complaining so much when i taught in public schools, i remember avoiding the teachers' lounge because people were complaining so much. and i remember being angry about things but i didn't try to boss other teachers around, especially via email, dear God!

sometimes email is so ambiguous.
i just end up working so hard to decode it in a way that isn't violent against myself.
i think i just need someone to send email that says right away in the subject line: "if the world stops spinning it won't be your fault; i know that and hope you do too,"
and then they could go on with the rest of the email about how i was forgetful or unclear or my other email address isn't working exactly how and when they thought it should, or they themselves were forgetful and could i please pick up the slack for them because if i don't all will be lost.

but evenso, if they could just include a really gracious subject line, it would be there reminding both of us that we are neither of us so important that our mistakes reverberate throughout the universe destroying all that is holy.
and sure, people don't ever intend to send a message like that in an email; no one is actually trying to tell me that exactly--i don't get such blunt email--i'm not in high school anymore.

but sometimes the kind i do get is about someone's dire concern for how i am about to ruin lives, that i haven't yet, but that i could
because even if they aren't trying to tell me i am Gozer the destructor (of Ghostbusters fame), they are not trying not to tell me that.

so here is the life lesson i am learning and it sucks to have to learn it but that is just what it is--no more and no less:
the onus is always on me to remember that any and all accusations do not account for all the good i am capable of and all the righteous risk i am willing to take,
and all the ways that even the best work can hurt or cost us and that
pain is pain and also prevalent
and though i may participate it is less and less likely,
as i become an increasingly compassionate person, that i am the cause of that pain or that i can't work with that pain when i do cause it (because i undoubtedly will),
to deepen relationship through reconciliation.

and it might come across like i am well adjusted, with lots of good ideas but i just have to tell you, today, a thursday of very little consequence,
i just don't know what to do about all that but i'm telling you because i think you will understand and that makes me feel a lot better. because even if i'm not actually a better person, i am at least not feeling awful about the person i am and i think that is
really important.

working for the CIA would be a real chore... and getting the job would be even worse.
But now I think it is probably a lot like getting ordained PCUSA.
I didn't realize how funny it would be (and by funny I mean ironic) for me to live this life i live now:
to fly down to cali just for a meeting with my committee, wow them with my honesty and self-aware self-expressive answers to their very normal questions, then fly home that evening to my charmed life in Seattle, wake up the next morning, present a poetry series on Pneumatology to my Systematics C class and then give a two hour reading for an intimate little group of fans at the little local coffee shop where I am a serious regular.

but that is what happened. and if I told you the whole story there would be an interlude about a good friend explaining that she slept with this really cute boy twice in one week because she just really didn't want it to be a one night stand.

and I would tell that I just couldn't sit by and watch the performance art presentation of one of my Theology classmates as she attempted to toss back 250 single serve, communion-to-go shots of grape juice and wafers to prove a point to herself and to us about how lonely Holy Communion can be. So I conspired with my neighbor, and as I rose from my chair to help her eat all that Jesus, I was so nervous about participating I missed the look of overwhelming gratitude on her face but my co-conspirator did not.

Thursday I met with the Committee that will authorize my candidacy for ordination in the PCUSA. I felt nervous and afraid of them. I thought that they would take one look at me and decide to ask harsh questions. I was afraid they would assume I had an inverted reading practice and ignore the larger context and conversation of my life.
I told myself to give them the benefit of the doubt and sat in shock as they gently probed, asking very normal questions about the story that had brought me to their table. They were putting together the puzzle of facts and their feelings, tying up the loose ends in their minds and I think I saw wonder and admiration in their faces as they did so.
It was not the normal intake interview--I have that on good authority. They asked questions they have asked of others who have hoped to come under their care but I could tell by their reactions that I was not giving the answers they expected. I was accidentally asking them to reorder even their kindest perceptions of me and it was causing them to make note that what is important to me might differ from what is important to them, if only slightly, but in impactful ways.
The best explanation I have for the way the interview went was written down weeks ago in the notes from my Reading Practices class: "When we begin to create meaning around the biblical text we say, "these are the things that matter." As they listened to the story of my call to seek ordination, the committee seemed to follow all the rules we set out for treating any text with dignity and curiosity.
They wondered if their reading of my story took context into consideration: theirs, mine, and ours. They acknowledged the breadth and depth of my impact on and interaction with the larger community. They let my story disarm other stories they had heard. They found a way for my, very particular story to fit within the broader framework of the text of professional ministry. They saw me as human and speaking of the human experience and as I worked to explain the inner coherence of my story, they graciously sifted together the anecdotes and short answers, matching large answers to small questions. I am not sure if their understanding of God's person was enlarged but only because I think they were working with a pretty big God and assuming that even though the process seemed like law, they were ready to show grace wherever possible.

There would also be a part in the story of this week about the impromptu dance party after the reading at the coffee shop, and the break dance lessons and the lecture I got from a friend who just couldn't believe I didn't warn him about a zit on the side of his nose because I just didn't care about the zit on his lovely face because it didn't make it less kind, less fuzzy, less laughing or less helpful, in fact it made it a lot more human. Brenda used to say that when you really love someone you look at his face and say, "woah, what a cool zit!" and she won the Guggenheim Fellowship and everything.
watch this and listen for the second piece about custody battles... it will explain so much about me.

that was how she looked when she had just finished running my life for a couple years.
I have that book, you know, you can look at it, if you want but you can't borrow it because i can't really bear to part with it. i bought it for one of her classes and didn't have the nerve to ask her to sign it even though i love it very much and she probably saved my life once or twice i never told her that. she explains how she was working out a feminist geography right after reading the custody battle poem and how she named her car caliban, like the character from shakespeare... how could you not lover her annoying little voice?

tonight we go to see Swan Lake, and the 32 fouettes and I am feeling really a lot like all the deciduous and ornamental fruit trees, with all their new leaves just peeking out from between certain blossoms, looking a little awkward, the way I do, when Spring is happening inside me but I am not sure it is time to let it show.

I used to think I had to ask for respect for my tiny accomplished life, now I think I have to ask for presence and the respect will follow; if I invite you in, there is a chance you will come respectfully
and I have to
take that
chance.

there are so many masturbatory things we do around here:
undemocratic award ceremonies, self-flagellating relationships, bitch sessions, being right, being wrong, irrational fear...
you know, that kind of stuff

i find though that getting the writing done occupies my mind and re reading the finished product, as self-gratifying as it can be, is just curiosity inducing enough to keep me from giving in to the dangerous fantasy, the selfish climax, and especially the last part, the guilt that seems to arrest the planet mid spin.

this, the most recent sermon i wrote really bothers me because it just goes on and on, i will never preach it again unless i can make it somehow less redundant and, well, shorter. as it is, i only preached it to the four men in my homiletics class preaching group yesterday. i couldn't look up from the reading, i couldn't face them and in fact the famous and talented Phil Nellis (who, in a moment of prophecy and brilliance, named his children after the Spanish words for lion and eagle which is just as good as naming them after st. Mark and st. John) pointed out the truth that had i looked up and seen him, surely he would have been undone, to which i replied that i would have as well...

so don't look up as you read and i promise i won't either.

sometimes graduate school makes me feel like a piece of meat

the president of the graduate school sends us audio files of his comments on certain papers for certain classes he teaches. soon he will not be the president anymore--he was never really into that job anyway, he will just be a prof come May.

I scheduled office hours with him for today and, now I can't sleep.
it is 2:42 in the morning, the time i usually wake up, freak out about the economy, children's word or my class load, then say the Jesus prayer until I go back to sleep.

I am sitting in my kitchen, listening to his comments, to prepare myself for his cadence and vocabulary. I think if I can be at least a little prepared I won't just sit down on the leather couch in his disheveled office, and stare silently at the fly fishing art until I can't help but cry.
in the commentary he says, "does anyone take you seriously?--I am trying to... yet we don't have permission. ...there's a whole lot more being said than you have chosen to write and I don't fault that... I just want it to be engaged with someone, sometime."

which, of course is where you come in, as my practice audience, the one I don't really have to interact with, the reader I can try to tell the truth to. so hang in there...
because

What I really want is to plop down on his couch, meet his penetrating gaze and ask him what he knows about me. I want to ask him something like, do you know who I am, or maybe, do you know which one I am? (in fact, this is what I want to do to lots of people in my life.)
I have been at this for almost three years, I have put stock in his reputation and theory, (I have literally invested thousands!) I have listened to his lectures on heart stopping topics, and read his books. I have contributed, in my way to the school community--I have not tried to hide this time. Even the paper he commented on was, as he said, "a courageous paper" and quite revealing per the assignment's requirements. I have shown up and only had a very one sided relationship to him: listening to his comments and lectures, frustrated by his busyness and absence and importance, and so tomorrow I will make one more move toward him
and I am scared shitless.
there is a good chance it won't matter to him, that there are too many students, too many papers, too many stories for mine to matter. to that I know I might just say
phooey
but I am still out of my mind with fear that I will not matter and rather than just keeping my mouth shut and pulling away I will have put myself in the mix, been overexposed and needlessly courageous and he will get away absolutely unencumbered by my feeling as though I don't matter at all, in spite of my best attempts, I am just a piece of meat.

And then there is this: perhaps I am using him, and I ought to confess. maybe I want to show up and just tell him that I have completely objectified him. he is no more than a lecture, an audio file, a comment, a face, a name and I have not needed him to be more than that, thank you very much.

probably, it is a little of both and then some. and I will most definitely feel like rotten meat, if not shit when I leave his office and head to staff meeting. I will not know what to tell myself to preserve my dignity, I will not know whether I shared too much or held back, whether he understood or didn't. And it will feel awful, but because the only framework I have for relationships like this is built from experiences of confusing all my relationships with each other:

I mean, for someone like me, if there is such a person, there is very little difference between dissociated office hour conferences and bad breakups, insincere lectures and angry love letters, gradebooks and gradeschool crushes. In my mind it is all the acceptance/rejection game. As awful as it sounds I am willing to accept it, if only in hope that I will one day move past it, and I am willing to confess it, if only in hope you will find it helpful to you, and I am even willing to type it out, if only in hope that I can finally get it all out or down or something and get some sleep.

Bird in a buckeye tree

The dreams I have lately upset me so
Like gale force wind or news of a death
Like the image of a dead bird body among the leaves, fallen and moist, already in rigor
obviously gone on beyond the canopy of the old growth shadows.
Or the crack of one twig breaking in the quiet of the night.
I worry over snowflakes, and frozen streets,
rubbing the buckeye you wore
raw against your thumb before you passed it on to me, i look down at
a blistering thumb distracted from the fiery friction of your hand on my heart.

The sound of my minor chord shakes tears free from the place in my throat, in my chest,
So near the surface, where shallow breath rises
in strangled, wrangled puffs caught and thick behind my breastplate.

you insist there are soft parts
and you have found them
but I just can't imagine what that must mean to you, what you will do with those tender parts now that you have seen them once, twice, again and again.
And I hated you for saying, the way you would say anything simple and true,
That you held on to them.
It felt and still feels like the sting and stench of second hand smoke
Familiar and full of holes
Like a cage
And I, like a bird
With nothing but a beak to bite mildly and sing sadly against it
Inside this little space you built to keep me safe
but it will not protect me from myself.

sure have been good to me.

there are those of you who refrain from commenting;
and there are those of you who just avoid reading the comments.
both options are fine; if there is something you need to know i will call attention to it... which is exactly why i want you to keep reading:

in response to the comment from (my new friend, if its ok to call you that) "north carolina"
i'm not sure exactly who you are, you north carolinian wonder, but it is okay if you go ahead and speak for the whole damn state because
and i may be just flattering myself here,
but you sure do know a few greats.
here is where i went for the audio of Tony Hoagland
http://poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=377
and i really really liked that.
read: if you are having a bad day go listen to mr hoagland and you will probably feel better.

and as far as victor lavalle is concerned, i'll just go ahead and recommend him around generously, generally because my sister graduated from mills college, where he teaches and also, very importantly:
on his wikipedia page (iknow, i'm cringing too) but if you do ever accidentally go to wikipedia at least you can find an article with a link that reads
"Personal essay about LaValle's sexual adventures as an obese man."

and now i'll leave you to your thoughts and research...

i bought a new computer. i am still wondering what it would mean if i wrote that i had to...
did i really have to?
i feel very nervous about it; i think one day i might live in a third world country where a new computer would be less important, and so i wouldn't even want to buy one. then i wouldn't have to deal with the guilt over having bought one.

so i make sacrifices, sort of reverse bargaining with myself. i say, you just bought that computer, you can't have that chocolate croissant. or i tell myself it will be a while until i can buy the boots i want.

and i keep wondering how i can earn my computer, even though (and this is very american i am sure) i already have it in my possession.

which is probably why i am finally writing.
today is the anniversary, two years, i have had my job as the children and family minister.
and also, i am discovering my worth in general, what makes me worth something and to whom i might be worth more than i thought.

to whom i might mean more than i thought.

and also, the man i love has commissioned a little poem, on the occasion of my needing and loving him, in the messy, drowning in it way that i do.

here is the poem i am writing down for him because i wrote it and never actually wrote it down and wasn't going to until he said he wanted me to... and he asked twice, so i know he really means it.

us, molluscs

the broken mirror of our being from the same family but not the same
shows more than it used to: you reflect on me, in the shards, that you hope
i am disconnected from my worst parts, only for a moment,
that i will always be myself but you are
willing to pick gingerly through the confused scraps for the fragment that reflects
the part of me that says
it is good to see you, in the silence
i love you

and i bought this hokey little card that has a picture drawn on it
of a man kneeling and he seems to be proposing to the knees of a girl but in his hand
there is no jewelry box
there is only a lovely little lobster
and it says something terrible about how they sat by the sea and promised all of their days of forever together.

so while i'm not a big proponent of forever, i never really intended to live even this long,
i am realizing i have all this extra time coming soon (everything after my 30th birthday i'm counting as freebie),
and since this is all turning out to be much more than i bargained for
i think i will give forever a second thought and get back to you, in bits, perhaps, but to you for sure.

i wrote this for a friend who is grieving some parts of her that will soon be cut off, some emotional parts, some body parts,
we're throwing her a little party but couldn't figure out how to invite her to it, so here is what i wrote:

the invitation:
to more than any of us deserve, no more than we can bear...

be yourself.
come because i love you,
leave whenever you need to,
I trust you will return when you are ready.
you're the one we want,
not just the feeling fertile version or just the feeling empty version,
not a happy version, or a sad version,
but whichever mix of emotions shows up,
whenever they do, taking turns or all at once.
come,
eat too much,
drink too much,
hug too much,
cry too much.
laugh at the jokes, yell at the sadness.
we love you.
we want you to love your body again,
to think of the pleasures it can offer you,
to think of the life it still has left to give.
maybe not as you had hoped or planned,
but the way it draws me in and enfolds me in a hug,
when I am in your arms I am in one of the few safe places I can rely on.
as it always is with this kind of invitation, but always,
bring nothing but the parts of yourself which manage to show up,
come early,
stay late,
stay forever.

she loved it.

the creek, at its widest point was about ten feet from my shore to the other. at the deepest it was impossible to touch down without ducking under.
i knew the bends, the rocks, the sandy places under the water and which parts dried up first in summer.
i knew its scent in summer and its sound in the flood seasons. i knew where to find mosquito eggs and tadpoles. i knew the safe places to climb down the bank and if a tree came down in a storm i was sad and scared to see such a change in my friends along the edges.
i could walk the length of it barefoot because i was there so often alone with just familiarity to keep me safe even though my papa had once told me that if he ever caught me down there alone he would make sure that was the last time.
the rocks taught me to balance on my legs, to trust the soles of my feet. the cold water rushing along my backside washed away the feeling of her hand coming down too hard, numbed the sting of the spankings.
but this is also how i think of shame.
the waters of my shame run right through the forest of my self and i know them well. i spend most of my time there, alone, with the hushing rush of my embarrassment. when the shame slows down and pools i get a good look at my reflection in it. i could walk for miles on the rocky bottom with pebbles pressing into my feet and legs going numb. i have learned to balance here, to stand up against the current and watch it swirl against my body. and even though i am afraid of what i imagine just a little deeper down, in the darker water, hiding, i force myself to stay, to tread in the deepest part. i know the way to climb out, i know the shore is kind
and forgiveness is in the space between
the dry grains of sand that built up
under a tree around the next bend. but i don't climb out.

when i grew up a little more i was the counselor who held hands with the smallest, bravest among us who wanted to walk the creek too. i was confident and caught them when they slipped or warned them against the holes threatening to swallow their tiny feet.
and i'm still doing this. moving into the shame, holding your hand, inviting you to do more than look, to get in, both feet, then ankle deep. then asking if you will take one more step knowing your knees will disappear. lovingly, i point to the next safer spot, knowing you might slip and land hard against the bottom and drench us all in the spray that will fly.
and with each moment i am shocked that you are still with me, still looking down for a new foothold on another slippery rock. still in it and headed for deeper waters.
i have been warned to guard my heart against you, not to become emotionally involved. and i have been hoping to protect your heart. to keep you from falling,
in love.
but i can't. i haven't, have i?
today you told a story and expected me to guide you through your shame in another way, less loving, less careful, to drag you along, to chide you for calling him a friend even though you were in love with him. you thought i knew enough to give you some advice that would drag you down deeper until the shame of it covered your face, just so i wouldn't be able to see you anymore. but i didn't because i know about falling in love and i know about drowning in shame. and the way i see it, they have to be two different things.
you should never be ashamed you fell in love with him.
you loved him.
and as with any friend i want more than anything to hold your heart above my head and just keep walking on but i can't keep my balance that way,
heart
high above
head.
you loved him and he will never understand how much or what it cost you because they rarely do. you will just keep coming back down to these banks to throw stones at your reflection and i will be there, catching the stones you throw toward where i wade.

why can't we be gentler with ourselves, one another? why can't i be strong instead of stubborn with you who i love? when will the glassy chill finally dry up, quit foaming around the edges and leave a little of the dry ground of forgiveness behind?

never. and that is why i keep up with this ridiculous all wet writer's trek through the beginnings, endings, like midpoint interruptions or extensions of my favorite conversations. this is why i write: you.

this is the best i can do to be with you, in it. because i need you, in it. when i send this on i know you will help it, make it mean something by adding yourself, the self i love from so far away.
if i could be alone with my thoughts i would wonder what it means and come up empty. without you it has no meaning.
but when i am with you here, or there in this way,
i know you make meaning with me.

i know you,
make meaning
with me.
make the wet of my tears and yours, the deep dark waters that cut self-loathing into the story, make them mean.
and though i know it sounds less like an invitation and more like my heart begging yours for permission,
and though i am sure to hurt you again, to let you fall in love, and slip and trip and to risk the desires of your heart and your head drowning in it, even though the last thing i want is to make you feel stupid and i do it everyday, i hope for you to wade knee deep in the fast moving stream of your worst self, lapping unabashedly, painfully bruising your body and hopes against the boulders of your worst story,
because
i know, (i don't know how but i know) you aren't ready to climb out yet and neither am i.
and if we have to be here, the least i can do,
the best i can do,
the only way i know to repent, is to invite you in so i can see your face and stop turning long enough, just long enough
to see you
here, silent and afraid
but not alone.

"High & Dry"

"Two jumps in a week
I bet you think that's pretty clever don't you boy?
Flying on your motorcycle,
Watching all the ground beneath you drop
You'd kill yourself for recognition,
Kill yourself to never ever stop
You broke another mirror,
You're turning into something you are not

Don't leave me high, don't leave me dry
Don't leave me high, don't leave me dry

Drying up in conversation,
You will be the one who cannot talk
All your insides fall to pieces,
You just sit there wishing you could still make love
They're the ones who'll hate you
When you think you've got the world all sussed out
They're the ones who'll spit at you,
You will be the one screaming out

Don't leave me high, don't leave me dry
Don't leave me high, don't leave me dry

It's the best thing that you ever had,
The best thing that you ever, ever had
It's the best thing that you ever had,
The best thing you ever had has gone away"

when we saw radiohead at the salem armory ten years ago we were all so so close, my body was pressed between aaron, dre and tim. they stood behind me like my goons and my flat front
pressed flat against one of those security walls they put up right in front of the stage, looking straight up at thomyork, doing that funny little wiggling dance he does, my posse boys were afraid if they didn't press in hard enough their little abifrail would be crushed by all the other fanatics.

and being in the heat of all the lights and the crushing weight of my highschool crushes
it was easy to believe that thom is very much afraid of cars and
worried about
Evil Knievel's daredevil heart simply drying up and leaving even such a hero lonely as hell.

lonliness is the real risk.

i am finding that i am capable of so many things,
saying things, writing things, loving, hating, and i've been lucky to land most of the jumps

but even the controlled risk, the safest landing costs me.

i am often overwhelmed by the grace written in bold letters across your face, the way your eyes don't crinkle or look afraid, or the way the eyes of a good friend slowly redden around the rim and blink quietly, madly, hopelessly begging me to stop whatever i'm doing, or rescue you from whatever you've stumbled over that calls out the tears. i am easily tamed by the way there is a little bit of sweetness in your quiet voice, or a tiny whirring in the silence between us. and my own ears stop ringing with the high hiss of fear and my body stops shaking and i uncurl in the space you make for the way i see things.
it is truly lovely.

and many times you step out even further into me and you say something like 'i love you' or 'this is why i am glad we're friends' or 'i hate you sometimes' even while you smile so sweetly...
i hear your smile over the phone, when you say 'yeah' and i rise slowly out of my fears a little more, not so fast i would get the bends, but just a little at a time
and i can see the surface where fresh air will meet me, not today, probably not tomorrow, but one day soon.

i held so much of it in until about 2pm when donnalinn came into the chocolati and just seeing her means i am safe and i couldn't hold it in anymore. my whole self filled with tears and overflowed. it was a little funny to me, i laughed a little when i explained that i don't know how to do these things, to be a good friend or to hold all this well. i just keep thinking about it and hoping about it, but it is not easy. i don't just walk away and my thoughts organize smoothly so i can focus on staff meeting agendas and carefree car rides to the chiropractor. of course i can compartmentalize enough to get through the day. but i don't want you to think that it is easy because, well, how important would you be to me then? not very. you are worth more than the easy way out. you are worth enduring thousands of papercuts on the thin skin over my heart, you are the reason i take one million tiny risks, i just don't know that i would like who i became if i attempted to endure it all alone, keeping the salty difficulties from you. i know you might begin to be afraid they are too much, but i think they jolt me tenderly from my worrying so i can join you in reality. and that is good.

maybe that is why the hugging has become so very important.
here is a line from henri nouwen that makes me think about hugs as
"invitations to come higher up and closer by."

by the way, i was hugging lots of people, i was hugging like a maniac on Sunday. it was just fine. nobody died or got hurt or seemed angry about it. which sets the bar pretty low, but it is honestly what i was sort of thinking (as impossible and unreasonable as that sounds) and it is a good start.

today the questions about punishment, people kicking other people or people repaying a kindness with judgment, seem to be very vivid in my imagination. it is painfully familiar, all this violence done to the people i love.
and the question seems to be how could you do that, nobody deserves to be treated like that.
it was no big surprise then when i looked into that sweet injured face, opened my mouth and this fell out:

nobody gets what they deserve, not in this life.
not the recognition, not the conversation, not the easy childhood, not the easy out, not the spankings or beatings. everything (insults, generosity, laughter, the palm of the hand) lands in the wrong place, on the wrong person. there is no way to balance the equation here.

after i said it i decided to think about it for a few days, maybe a few years because it seems really true today and it might be true for a long time.
but today--i wasn't reasonable--i could have, i felt mad enough to, slap the women in the stories i heard today, to grab them and shake them. to swear a blue streak and tell some crazy truth that would blacken an eye or knock loose a tooth. to get behind the desk and make some big decisions that might rescue my friends, rescue myself.
it used to comfort me when my mother told me that the people who hate me would get what they deserved. but they won't. i hope they won't. in the end i will be the one screaming out to them, not to leave me.
and then there is this: the grace we didn't conjure between friends, the grace i can't see, i only smell the sweet refreshing stink of it, landing all around like rain. and i hate when it storms and i hate when it lands on everyone and everything. but it does. it is big and bothersome and my only hope.

when Kj aksed me to write for vespers, and address the incoming students as well as the usual suspects, i went home (shocking, i know), poured about 20 fingers of some 2buckchuckred in a juice glass and wrote this.

it helps if you know that i kept thinking about the sunny day real estate called 'what it feels to be something on'... its called

what it feels to return/arrive

like the feel in your throat when the tone is perfect and only clear and matches the sound of my heart or when the strings in the bow vibrate just right up through the tendons and soft muscle in your arm or when an old word makes a new sound in your ear because you understand it for the first time
or the first time you kissed and it is just like that
like the first time you heard a baby cry out just to cry
or the way her heartbeat fills in your empty places without even trying.
or his sweatshirt under your hand when you hold on too long to his body hugging you.

and you remember the journey so suddenly when you do
the moment when the road opens up and 75 is as good as flying and the yellow bands in the road and the rows of corn finally tick past faster than you can count the blank spaces dark with fertility

the way you knew as you packed up
you know when you closed the door on the old ways
you broke someone's heart and you had to--
in order to escape.
and their disappointment in you is drifting off
like clouds move across the sun

you had to come see
you had to go where they can't follow
you had to follow the sound of the siren because it was your own heart seducing you.

of course it sounds like a stupid old love song
because it is
the song that says i'll love you for the rest of my life and i'll be here when you need me and i'm not ashamed of you.

i like you.
(which means a lot coming from someone who is really good at hate)

i like-like you.
which means that all the things you are about to say are like the little dreams i never dreamt
(i wait for the night to come, i wait with all my being wrapped around the first star coming out so i can close my eyes and see what comes in the colors you invent).

because when you are here i am here and
little by little
we will both be very soon indeed
drunk with the possibility that
God arrives
God returns
for another sigh another hurricane of grief
for another tear another storming hope
another knock knock joke from your favorite six-year-old.

knockknock
who's there
God
God who?
God who do you think you are to make every day such a trial and such a triumph?

so when you collapse against the sofa in the field abbot's office like a withering vine against the augustine heat of theology
and describe the way
your heart is breaking

just remember
me.

remember those who never intend to master divinity
or those who used to hate you
until i learned how
you can turn rotten carrots into friendship and make the pages of a theological text feel like home.

i hope i will stop imagining your hatred for me because it is not as deathly as i think.

i've always wanted to go home, i've been so homesick.
that is what led me here. to you, who i try everyday to hate.
but you prove me wrong everyday
you tell me i've let you in and i think
hell no
i think i don't change that quickly
but i do. because when i can't hate you like
i want to
it breaks me open.
it breaks my heart
when i see you take communion
when i see you carry your children
when i see you hug each other
or hold hands
when you argue, when you lie
when you cry over deciduous tree leaves falling the same way i do.
and i see your lovely swollen eyes and
runny nose
i break open and see your shame
like a little spark and you hold it out
cupped in your hands like water to drink and you tell me
this is all that is left of Fantasia
one tear
we are so sad
you must invent more
we have so much sadness yet to come
take room for our tears
make a room
make it in the house of your hearts because, and i know it isn't good for your broken down hopes to say it: 'you can't go home you can't go home'

yeah, i like the one about space a little better too, but i really edited that one for hours. this one, what you see is what you get. and i'm practicing being less ashamed of things for now, if i start to shake and cough i'll just return and edit. that way you can watch how it changes too. won't that be fun? sigh.

see, there is one woman, who i like a lot, she is a poet too, she saw me once and she asked me if i have a tattoo (in my experience, people with visible piercings get that question quite often). i said no, but i always think about getting one. she said we should go together and to let her know if i decide to get one because then she'll know it is time for her to get one.
she is probably in her late fifties. she is waiting for the right time.

one sunday, only a week or two after that, the pastor, my boss, preached that sometimes--especially in seattle--the gospel shows up pierced and tattooed.
at coffee hour that day she caught me at the cookie table and looked right at me and said, "see! i knew you were the gospel!"

i still get goosebumps when i think of it. maybe you should too, i'm just saying...

martin keeps playing that song over and over again. he pulls the car over to the side of the street, leans over and not only unlocks the door,
but pushes it hard so it swings open
like the door is an extension of his arms flung open to welcome me in one wild gesture

he picks me up from church history class (which is messing with my heart and my head in the way that sexual disorders messes with the counseling students--they should just call the class church disorders, but ATS won't go for that) and "I wish you would" is playing in the background like cathedral bells marking the noon hour. the bells beg me to look backward, look forward. faith, hope, ding, dong, faith, hope, past, future, dong, dong, dong, and then do it again.

when they ask me what i'm taking this, my third year at seminary i should say Church Disorders, How Not to Hate and Integrating Responsible Parties... Theology One hasn't begun yet so i'm not sure what to call that (mhgs calls it "Theological Mosaic" but somehow i'm already wondering if it should have another name based on the syllabus alone) this year begins with lessons about hate, integrated pastoral personalities, and sharing responsibilities. i think i can explain:

the new vicar asked if i have days off. i said i think of the day off as a day when its ok to accidentally swear (insert canned laughter from other staff members present) or show a bra strap, or wear my painting pants.
she asked about book club. i said that is technically off because i tend to swear there.
it has come to my attention, though, that some (most?) pastors--especially children's ministers--have two personalities. and i don't think i could handle that.
here is how it works: we start out thinking that we should behave a certain way. then one day we don't like it anymore so we address some close friends, who may be parishioners. we ask them to stop thinking of us as pastors in certain context. so they attempt to do so.
here is where it gets interesting:
sometimes, as a pastor, I think that this system breaks down because these parishioners who are also good friends, are incapable of seeing beyond the clerics and it is their fault. as if the parishioners are two dimensional people who simply can't imagine their pastor as other than preacher, communicant, marrier, burrier (barrier--hmmm), baptizer. but what if its the pastor, what if we can't stop acting like their idea of pastor? it is just as much about how the pastor acts as how they perceive her.
if you trick your parishioners into thinking you simply gave up swearing, drinking, smoking, brutal honesty, arguing, overeating, burning the toast or any other vice the day you were ordained then of course they will either see through you and mistrust you. or they will think you betrayed them when they come over and see that case of pbr in the fridge.
let's be honest: i took this job because there was swearing in the narthex on my second visit, and i wasn't the one doing it!

so then i started thinking about perfectionism, especially because i received marks that would make any olympian proud
in old testament and philosophy but practically failed my exegesis paper.
there is this person i stopped hating, no, it isn't mccain (i still hate him). it is this person, let's call him rico, even my husband has a man crush on--martin reads Details now because it is delivered to the seminary free (chalk one up for the gay infiltrators). and i thought maybe it was the bucket of Sessions or the end of the week of intensive classes with dr. craig barnes, a man who could accidentally turn anyone into a nicer person. but i'm thinking maybe all this time i hated rico because he was always trying so hard to be perfect, to be all things to all people, and that afternoon i stopped hating him so much because he seemed a little less interested, if even for a moment, in being mr. right. maybe it was the way he was leaning, or the words he said or the way he said them... i don't know.
i thought, at first that i was becoming nicer (as unlikely as that is). now i think it was just as much about his behavior as mine.

maybe this next part should be another entry entirely but i just don't have that kind of compartmentalization going just yet so it is here:

at text study we read matt 9.9-13. nevermind all the normal exegesis--the lead pastor remarked that the part he can't get over is that matthew just takes off after Jesus. in response i waited for a lull in the conversation and then i spouted off my own theory which was mostly like this:
"what if (it may be poor exegetical method but, honestly, i always start that way)
jesus was walking by matt's office one day, and frustrated by a lack of sleep or whatever, he walks into the office and tells matt something like, hey, come outside with me, i have to show you something, and then once they get outside jesus says follow me, and matt's interest is piqued because jesus takes off in the direction of matt's own house. so matt starts thinking one of his kids is suddenly ill, or the house is on fire. when they arrive at matt's house jesus says something like, hey do you have anything to eat? and matt looks at his watch and realizes he isn't going to make it back to the office today, or maybe ever. so they sit down and have a few beers and chat. and come on, even matthew would probably be disinterested in collecting taxes after a few beers with jesus, right?"

so by this time all the pastors sitting around are howling with laughter and one shrieks about what they must be teaching me at that crazy mars hill. and i admit to just barely passing my first exegesis, class and avoiding theology classes like the plague. but then the laughter dies down a bit and the lead pastor, who is one of my favorite people in the whole world--through no fault of his own-- says "well, that is probably more accurate than the way i imagined it."
don't get me wrong, he is a complex man. hopefully, by now you know that i tend to represent people in my stories as boobs at times, even if they aren't.
but, all i really mean to say is that that felt pretty damn good.

yes, it felt pretty damn good.

screw all my friends, they're all full of shit.
i wish you would...
i wish i could.

so i'm that much closer to the commencement,
i have big plans to
cower in fear
in my favorite sweater
all the old love letters fresh in my mind.
with the windows clear

you know you could
i wish you would.

rock and roll.

i've become more and more curious about what other people write about in seminary.

there is a sort of unspoken rule about papers at mars hill: if you didn't cry over it, don't bother turning it in.
which i guess means that i'm not the only one crying out in frustration, or innocently writing along until the end when it all came crashing down around me in the conclusion because i realized
i thought i was writing about divorces or an underdeveloped pneumatology but i was really writing about the really sad parts of my life and the broken parts of my faith.

goddamnit

so i spend all my seminary office hours at chocolati racking up the free drinks on my punch card and discussing my seminary induced bowel issues with my favorite barista... she called me crabigail and gave me some 'super cleanse' tablets today (she just had a spare bottle under the counter--which is reason #564 'why i lurv molly').

here is the text for today's assignment:
"A concept is a set of inseparable variations that is produced or constructed on a plane of immanence [not just a two dimensional plane as i had thought--which makes the rhizone theory work better for me] insofar as the latter crosscuts the chaotic variability and gives it consistency (reality). A concept is therefore a chaoid state par excellence; it refers back to a chaos rendered consistent... And what would thinking be if it did not constantly confront chaos?" deleuze p 208

write hard, die free

my favorite candy.
did you know they come in a giant size, like necco wafers size? now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
go joe.

[i've said goodbye to so many people, i guess that is why you called. and you remembered that i might know how to be a good friend or at least what i want from one. so i wrote this little poem because it usually helps and i put it here, just in case it helps you to feel (better?) too. I mean, i really did cry when you mentioned the ranch dressing memories, and then i thought, very quickly, how can i be crying over ranch dressing?]

when it happened they said,
she won't be writing any more letters.
she won't be calling or leaving messages or riding in your car or making plans.

but you will.

i keep going over the why in my mind
(kneading it, like a sore part in my heart, hoping it will relax and stop hurting me.)
even if you don't and one day i wake up and see that
you kept going even if i tried to make you stop.

how do we separate out all the friends and lovers and family members?
how do we organize them
so each gets the same number of sad memories or wild prospects?

over the phone

i told you how these things make me wish i had never moved away from you, never broke your heart,
i wish we could do this together
and wade again in the same creek(bed), as if the water had never moved on.
is that what she would say, is that what you want
to hear or tell even the saddest of her friends?:
i wish your heart didn't have to be broken

and what did you say to me?
you can have it all.
just ask me.
just tell me what you want (you never said need) and i will give it to you.
i've never done this before,
you said,
knowing
that it is the only way
i know to make friends,
and you asked me for help.

remember this? i wrote it for vespers and then cried all the way through it...

Dear Lord,
Thank you for the families.
For the nose wipers
The shoe tiers, diaper changers
Handholders and shoulders to sleep on.
Thank you for the
Booger faces and finger paintings
Thank you for the people who cry whenever they bleed and hug us around our middles
Thank you for the favorite colors and sometimes thank you for wedding vows
For times we have to argue
With the people we love most and the holy conflict that our families endure
Help us to pass on what we know of you and to hold on and love what we know of each other
In the name of the father, son and holy spirit.

but today the prayer would sound more like this:
sometimes i get so fucking angry.

did you ever account for that?

because i'm not willing to punch people in the face today, which is why i can at least type about it. but at any moment i may explode into a million insults.
they call me volatile.
perhaps it comes from my love for conjunctions... i love conjunctions and commas. with the proper grammar it is possible to get it all out there, just keep going, listing it all off: grievances, desire, hateful cliches strung tenuously together ( imagine sausages in the barbarian butcher windows).

martin elias jimenez
charlie rose jimenez

i think they like each other pretty well...

sometimes things just disappear and you can't do anything about it.

i wrote a little poem and thought you might like to see it.

but you probably won't.

here it goes:

the evergreen branch lets go the old leaf.
one by one the tiny knives fall like three
days and i hear you drop, in disbelief,
the fingers you wore so proudly--how we
read, hoping, beneath the shade of ennui.
one word in my hand (heartache) sharp and tight,
balanced on my desire for one more tree
in the forest of hope, one line of light
on arms that once pointed out to the night.
the tip of a finger floats across one
morning, like this. dry leaves tumble in spite
of the yearning, bleak breathing confession
all wound in the breeze that whistles beneath
a dagger, used once, returned to the sheath.

i think it has a few brilliant moments, but it is sort of a lot of words, too many for my taste, but those are the constraints.

one of my many grandmothers died.
i spent a sunday morning at the hospital then at her apartment then at breakfast where we ate together on the day after her husband died.
we stood around the altar of her hospital bed while her mouth slowly fell open. the rigor mortis swept up from somewhere under the bedclothes.
it was a good week: family around. looking through her things
breaking patterns of behavior that never did suit us well
flipping through photos of my mother's first marriage, to my father.
not i'm sort of lost, though. and alone. and i don't like it much.
but that is how it goes.
what would i say to her now?
the same thing i would say to you, love:
stop. go. stop. go. stay.
this way you break my heart.

my head is a little foggy; perhaps you can tell.

the Tequila book
radiant heat
more south park episodes
new collared shirts (not blue)
beer, not pbr
new pants
nintendo wii supersmashbrothersbrawl
big pointy dog [just kidding]
grace
phoff to stop trying to convert him to lutheranism
a hole in the fence so our big [not] pointy dog can be friends with Andy and Mary's burmese mountain dog [actually Yuba is a mutt, but when the list was composed they were thinking of a burmese, and Yuba who munches quietly on ornamental cherry blossoms, is better than some weird mountain dog anyway]
teeshirt from the grinder [his favorite coffee stand] with special long sleeves sown in
kleen kanteen
a circular saw
40 0f his bestest friends to come to the baseball game and see something poetic on the jumbotron in his honor.
~
his birthday is coming up.
4/25/08
we're going to see the M's & A's which is sort of funny because one time he scratched the very same thing into the bridge over the creek where i grew up, but it wasn't about baseball back then... i think he must have been in love with me or something.

Hello Abigail,

I just wanted to wish you a very good day today. I wish I could hang out with you today and hear you laugh. It just turned to spring this morning in Kansas. An army of invisible birds have come out of the woodwork to make a whole bunch of noise. It’s beautiful and I like to think it’s for you and your birthday pal Shantelle.

Love!

--Emma

Abigail says:
spring is the best time to be born, over and over again.
consider this your engraved invitation:
"Love!"

...

explain what was so upsetting.
so he just sighed a death rattle sigh and i threw up my hands and took off my glasses
to try to let him off the hook and
i guess it was too late because the damage was done.

it would be nice if people who are having a bad day would just pass around duct tape before they begin the meeting so i could cover my mouth.
but they don't.
they never do.
you can't count on them to even think of bringing duct tape, much less pass it around.

my heart just goddamn hurts over it.
every hero has to fall sometime.

i feel like some big hope is trying to hatch.
these days feel like the last days of middle school--slow walks and sleepless nights. hunger pangs and nervous laughter.
don't get me wrong: i'm not expecting a grand commencement. i'm thinking more along the lines of some great short-lived show of gratitude or apology or someway to mark the time we spent together. or else maybe this is just the way life feels when, at last, i can feel again and nothing will come of it because this is just how things go up and down and up and down because there isn't a singular cause or result, just the up and down and the pain runs through me and then through you like electricity, it just comes and goes but we stay and do the work and cry and laugh and keep on.
so i think i'll just keep all this in my brain, store it away and not say anything right away. i'll just add it into the mix of things i know him to be capable of, and hold the whole situation real gently and keep thinking of what might be hatching and what kinds of things hatch from hurts.
i can't really say much else about it, not much else at all.

in other sort of related news:
sometimes people put all kinds of shit in their front yard and it looks real good, you know? like nasty old shoes and plants grow up out of them, and old bed frames and bits of broken glass and pottery, like something Job would scratch an itch with. and it all looks real welcoming; like they want you to know that even plants know that shittiness is OK in a way, so come on in and stay a while. like maybe shit grows there like plants grow there. oh, i don't know!

and all of this dreaming
the silver and gold
something to break this
winter so cold.
and these sorrows
i'm crying over
and these sorrows
i'm crying over
we go straight for the thunder
straight for the rain
-PG
the more i think about it, the more it behooves me to research the matter,
the more i think that it doesn't matter who you marry; you will always hurt over the love you let go along the way.
and that is sad for both of us, all of us, even the smallest of us. and it means naming love where it has been and fallen and broken just so we might know where the sad is coming from because somehow that kind of helps, a little tiny bit.

recently a friend in a powerful position screwed up and then apologized to a large group of people.
he said that there was one section of people who were more gracious than the rest with his apology: the women.
why do you think that is?, i asked.
power, he answered.
i was nodding frantically.
looks like you agree, he said.
yup, was my super fem reply.
but now that i am thinking i wish i had told him:
well, they probably have bigger fish to fry than yours.
perhaps we are no more gracious, just choosing our battles.
and what you mistook for grace, was in fact, a little more like a nice way to say: i can't be bothered with your failure; i predicted it and it is fun to be right but please just, well, nail it to the cross.

the moral of the story:
unless you're going to apologize for years of victimization and an uncompromising global power structure, don't bother.

a couple days ago one of my girlfriends with super boobs and perfect hair ( she is amazing despite these assets) wore a tight yellow tee shirt made by her coworkers to commemorate their surviving another New Student Orientation. written in tiny letters on the back was the bumpersticker advice, edited, of course, to be worn by employees of the methodist school she works for:
Jesus loves you, but i want to slap your face.

one thing i am learning in seminary is that a good, old fashioned bitch slapping session may be just as helpful to us as it is to pimps, mothers of teenagers, you know: people who deal with bitches who need to be slapped. What i mean is i suddenly know how nice it would feel to haul off and spank the five o'clock shadow off some of those clergy bastardbitches. can we make it part of the liturgy again? wasn't it part of confirmation before? somebody look that up, willya?
i think of Britany's poor dad. He called in Dr. Phil to visit Brit in the hospital and i honestly wondered how badly the giant, don't mess with texas, Dr. Phil wanted to slap that girl silly. I'll bet the one thing stopping him was the fact that there is, in fact, a muppet made in his image and muppets generally leave the slapping up to miss piggy.

Dear Emma,
the whispers of loved ones are unquieted tonight.
We will all bury the dead along the way. But will we also bury parts of ourselves?
the strongest parts?
and how will we mourn?
with tears and screams?

sheets spread in the wind, basements flood with inches of water.
sisters marry, cats purr.
lace turns brown and light bulbs pop when they are giving up.
things around are full of life, full of the winds and rain that come with December.

Advent is here. but i have given up smoking; how will i wait for the Christ child now? how will i keep myself warm among the dripping awnings and bus stops?
how will i wait?
how old will i be when i finally grow up?

i love you, and i hope you won't drink too much... and when your dreams come true you will get your washer and dryer back; i have faith in those kind of things... appliances and basements and double paned windows.

whatever makes it home, that is what i will believe in, that is where my heart waits for the christ
the baby in the hay.
Abigail

mondays at 8.

i really like Chuck. and his sister told him on tonight's episode that it is time to cut his hair because she is beginning to see animal shapes in it (like the giraffes and rhinos in the fluffy clouds).

that is funny.
that is all you need to know for now.

other than that, we're tearing apart the bathroom and painting the walls green.

eat breakfast, listen to huapango, say the Jesus Prayer if you can't sleep and do your best.

those are the lessons I have learned this week.
that and some other stuff about postmodernism that I can't articulate very well.
I'm getting my money's worth.
and see the extended entry for the essay I wrote about my pastor/boss.

radar screen:
job
mother
husband
students
classmates
drinking buddies
family
ex-boyfriends
butt
grades
calf muscles
bad skin
therapist
appetite
dirty dishes
habits
gums
cat
hope
professors
love of lettuce
potential for narcissism as defined in the DSM-III

and then the green arm swings around like the hands on a clock and all these things blink up at me again and again in a cycle, not a line, as if they are in any order but just over and over. and i monitor closely like i am pushing tin, as they say. just once i'd like one of them to be a target rather than an enemy and all the others will be caught in friendly fire and blow each other up and i could go on vacation from the sweating and stress of it all.

i know you feel this way too sometimes and i also know that i want you to be OK with it. it doesn't stop and it won't stop and i'm in the process of defining it all and its taking me a long time so don't hold your breath for any good answers. we just have to try to be OK sometimes without really knowing.

OK is defined forthwith as just good enough to get up out of bed and sit in whatever chair you have designated the prayer chair in your house. which is not to say that sitting in the prayer chair makes you holy or anything but at least when you are in that chair you made it a priority to get the hell out of bed today... who knows about tomorrow but you made it out today and that has to be enough... that means you are OK--not super, not great, not good enough or expected to do great things but at least (what-the-hell?) OK.

that is all i have to say today, the day before another mother's day strikes like a giant heat seeking torpedo aiming to blow me out of the water.

lordhavemercychristhavemercylordhavemercy

but i'm not sure if i am called
children and family minister
(that is what it says on the job description)
children and families minister
or
children's and families minister
either way i start the 15th of january at phinney ridge lutheran church, ELCA.

i think i just want the nouns to be the same and can't figure out how to make them...
family's
families
children's and family's
child and family
i think i may just call myself the children's minister... i really belong to them anyway. (hooray!)

juliana posted the link so if you want to see what it looks like when someone chews me out on the internet go to the link juliana posted in the comments and look for Sept. 20th
but before you do that, read the entry she wrote about jules/juliana because it helps to combat all the mean things people say about each other, it is sort of an antidote.
but be warned: i don't like myspace so don't think this is some kind of endorsement.

i probably need to redraw the images i have of myself slapping certain people across the face... i don't think slapping counts as "holding the tension" (welcome to the world of allenderisms).
is slapping like murder? thinking it is as good as doing it, and all that... i think so... i think there is something in the bible about committing murder by thinking mean thoughts, wink wink. its kind of like adultery in that sense.
so thinking these thoughts is pretty bad because i would never ever murder anyone, i don't even like to watch a movie if there is a gun in it.

violence violence everywhere...

and so i ask you with a tone of fear, as if i am asking about my pants making my butt look big:
does this blog make me look nice?

don't answer that.

she let me borrow her copy of blue like jazz and i made quite a few corrections to the text. so instead of underlining, i crossed things out and i am feeling a little snobbish.
and then, last night, my mother in law was telling us about her friend who broke up with a boyfriend and stayed up all night washing the windows-- two nights straight-- until two o' clock in the morning; she fell off the ladder into the rose bush. and the only thing i could think to say was "at least it makes a really good poem."
i am becoming a real jerk, it is a good thing i registered for a class on prayer.

i am leaving california on monday.

i've been thinking about the idea of the soul as a kind of box

and something to do with second chances
which aren't all they are cracked up to be.
and when you are guilty or at least feeling it, like a fever and a wound which you really have, you are more familiar with second chance than first chance or even last chance

man, i have a pretty bad cold right now. but propas to the good husband who dragged me out of the house last night to watch Boondock Saints at Juliana's house (offering a couch and blankie much warmer than our century old attic apartment) and i woke up just in time to see my favorite part: Willem DaFoe looking very wild, straightening his wig. Between Les Miserables and Boondock Saints it has been a good Lenten season... i think that is possible.

drinking hot chocolate with my sister, she is wearing only green clothes. So she must have learned how to match sometime in our childhood; where was I for that lesson?
Interview on Monday. I'll be the one who looks like one of the applicant's teenage tagalongs. But if I don't get in, everyone at home will chalk it up to God's sovereignty, rather than ask me why.
That is nice of them, isn't it?

One of my students managed to make eye contact with me at the exact moment he licked the toe of his tennis shoe. I was speechless. I left off explaining the letter m in all its glory. mmmmmmmmmmmm, there was nothing else to be said.
Another student has a car salesman for a father, upon his arrival said student began to cry, suddenly and inexplicably: the usual. Answering my blank stare--no amount of schooling can prepare you for this--superdadtotherescue asked if she was having the kind of problem ice cream can fix. Let me just say

yes!

yes! this is the kind of problem ice cream can fix.

Yes! I am glad to be back amongst the wild huggers. I had to take off an entire week to recuperate from the 102 degree fever. The royal shoe taster even remembered to hang up his coat on my first day back.
Miracles are all around.
For example: Martin and I became members of the church. Ha! Session said they were impressed by my reasons for joining. (I told them I can't figure out why this whole church thing isn't working, membership schmembership, why isn't there anyone volunteering to teach sunday school?) I figure I'll get in on the inside and attend some real important meetings, maybe even join a committee with a long name, like "projector has a broken lightbulb committee".

And then maybe the graduate school of my choice will accept me and we will move to Bothell just a few short months after becoming official members at the church we have attended and worked for the past five years. We lead a very fickle life, you see. We are glad to have the kind of problems we have, they lend themselves to some amazing solutions and this, I think, is stunning, like a new leaf unfolding. Not turning over, unfolding, miraculous.

let it be supposed that I know how to write an essay and that I should be doing right now.
but I hear Rosemary's voice telling me to get out of my head and even though I finally figured out what that means, I am still the same selfish person who would much rather the reader get into mine. I like poetry much better because it isn't supposed to be so obvious.

my grandmother sent me a Christmas card that said:
this is gramps' first Christmas in heaven without the pain.
Ain't that great?
The inscription read "May the love of Christ be your gift this year."
and I know, because I was able to get out of my own head when I read this, that she meant it to mean "I'm not shopping." But she didn't want to write that out because that is exactly what she wrote last year... and consistency is only, if ever, hampered by the nuance of variety in my family.

to post the turkey bowl pictures.
My stepmom had good reason to worry (in spanish we say tiene razon, it means she is right but it also means she is always right because she owns the patent on reasonable).

but I have survived and am looking forward to Baby Jesus Bowl!

there are some prayers tucked in the palm, in the creases. they get this way from holding my hands over my mouth from the shock of it, or the boredom yawn, or just trying to keep things from flying out my mouth when it gets out of control. And like the beads of sweat that collect there and then maybe shards of glass we are most afraid of sticking there, I think I might wipe them off but am afraid to cut small lines across lines and ruin the prints. I've been thinking about them breaking away from the lines stretched open across the taught skin, or rubbing them until they dry and peel like glue and I am bloodied by the friction.
The possible escape of these prayers reminds me of super hero hands shooting webs or balls of fire, maybe even turning anything into something else on contact. And the way kids put the kiss in their own hands first in order to blow it just a little farther, or maybe as a warning signal. And then expect you to catch it on your cheek or wherever it may land, the nose, perhaps, and clap over it so it sticks.
It still feels awkward to fold my hands when I pray, almost just a lonesome pose. I was taught to hold hands. I like the feel of stretching out arms and then clasping like a promise, or sliding palms across the table and just barely touching fingertips... I really like that. But anything to keep them still, I suppose.
Now, though, I touch the children on their heads and hands and cheeks and arms--you know how it is-- and they put their little hands flat on my shoulders to get my attention if I am sitting, or even just a poke (though it isn't allowed) on my arm and I think it isn't attention they want but before I get at that thought properly a little lightning snaps between us and we connect like we both get the joke about the banana not peeling well. I can't help but think that tiny boogered finger knows exactly where God is and how to point to Him and how to get His attention, and even open up the palm to land a kiss there and blow it right in His giant face while I stand here shrugging my shoulders and clenching my fists at the same time.
Of course there is the scar offer: to open up my hand and press it over where water came when we expected blood.
But it is tempting, and a fairly strong reflex, to keep my hands to myself over an offer like that.

There ought to be a box on the preappointment questionnaire for teachers to mark because I seem to get the same illness once a month. I have recently stopped calling the advice nurse--I have quit the usual doctor appointments to satisfy my hypochondriac drive too, you can see how unserious this has become.
But tonight I decided not to play pharmacist on myself. I made the call to ask if

it is okay to take tylenol sinus nighttime
and guiafenesin at the sametime...
and what if,
say I have this friend who likes to take sudafed but she isn't sure if the guiafenesin has worn off...

But immediately I am rushed through the halls of on hold to the appointment nurse who makes quick work of the usual maladies and she tripped me up... I answered wrong: one yes to tight something or other passageway, and no, she didn't say bronchial, I am a highly trained hypochondriac, I would have caught that one.
And now I have The Appointment for them to tell me there isn't anything anyone can do.
Shock notwithstanding, I look to my husband, the man who earlier replied to my request to finish my beer later by telling me to take it and drink it while I pedal the elliptical. He is now quietly singing along with his computer in preparation, as he says, to give me an ear whoopin this Sunday when I hear the worship band (I said: but how about if I just worship instead if I'm still alive?) and now, I continue while I have his attention, I have to go to the doctor but, for once, I'm not sure why
oh, he says, you've probably got the bird flu.

Thank you, Thanksgiving, damn it, are you even a holy day?

which reminds me: I will post thanksgiving day football pictures (Turkey bowl pictures, that is) as soon as they are available--Juliana is not superwoman, she is super and she is a woman but without that annoying patriotic hipster leotard so just be patient.

the temptation: is to assume we're friends, or maybe even family too, since you have by now seen pictures of my giant nose, my hairy husband and my cat who was accidentally colored outside the lines, and hope that you won't take the following comments too hard and suddenly lose faith in my abilities to cope.
but spending a day with family... that is, chatting and eating food (just think about what chewing actually is and how much I hate eating) with family (please read: the people who have had a serious role in messing you up for certain and for good) is just not my ideal.
but God knows He has a plan to get me through it, and you too (probably) so that is the encouragement I have for you tonight, after two fingers of Jagermeister.
oh, and last night, in bed, Martin was telling me about an ant colony living in someone's answering machine--just remember: it could be worse.

we are cutting Olivia's claws, getting ready for the holiday season, which we hate--everything past Halloween has always been terrifying--by making ourselves into blunt objects in hopes that we are at least snuggly outside when we feel prickly inside. I must confess we are considering All Saints Day as one of our new favorite days; did you know there is a patron saint for apple orchards? Is there a patron saint for calling in sick to Christmas?

and these are the people who indulge me by carrying on... they keep saying "ooooooo", but Martin only likes the candy, Jen just likes the costumes, and Joel could do without any of it.
I love the whole thing. There is a point in the evening when the kids begin to tuck their heads inside pillow cases to check the loot but they don't stop walking, so they run into their parents... tonight there were lots of parents. I saw a dad dressed as Daisy Duck tying a Power Ranger's tennis shoe, and several sets came out walking dogs with wings. One of the trickiest aspects of this holiday is that it isn't anything too exciting that any of this is happening--everyone is expected to participate and yet, if you don't that is all right too. It is as if the whole country is staying out on the porches to throw candy at wierdos without worrying about whether anyone else is playing along.

A Halloween Poem:

Pirate, pirate, Darth Vader, Power Ranger, Dragon.
Pirate, little witch, Tigger, Tigger, polka dot clown.
Spiderman, Superman, Cat.
Angel, Hellboy, princess, princess, firefighter.

I wish I could thank you properly:
Dear trick or treater,
I feel the plastic wet with sweat against your face and commend you for your commitment to candy.
Thank you for your wildest dreams, and wilting legs flopping down the sidewalk.
Your friend,
Abigail

there is a word we use for children: shy.
does that mean won't talk? or just won't tell? or hope you won't look at me or hope you won't be listening or cries easily...
or wakes with a start? We don't often use the word for grown ups; we say withdrawn, anti social, quiet, busy, holding back.
and then the light changes and autumn is here and when you search for the sounds to make a word they are already hiding behind the mouth.
um... hum and you can close your mouth and still say the word properly.
so it isn't so difficult to try; welcome to my favorite season.

James Bond is very important around here. He is one of the few things we can always agree on; even if he is a sexist bastard we marvel at his gumption and resourcefulness. We can't be troubled by certain things James does; I took a class on these films for graduate level credits (it was the only way to get my student loan, if you can believe that) and I still can't muster even a genuine distaste for him, that jerk.
Martin on the other hand, can't be bothered about James bad personality traits or his archaic beliefs. Martin is this type of person: He never bought any of those plastic bracelets to raise a dollar for anything, especially not the yellow one for testicular cancer. However, people thought he ought to be reminded of certain things so in the course of a few weeks he acquired two. Instead of wearing a big yellow rubberband in hope that we might one day find a cure for something, he has these two black things that look more like belts from the engine on a Barbie corvette. I find them whenever I try to straighten up his desk to look for the bills we have to pay: one has a little heart on it, right between "I" and "PIRATES." The other must have been left in the sun because it was cracked when he brought it home, says: REVENGE. It is plain to see what we worry about.
It gets a little confusing though, given certain scripture about "vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" somehow intersecting with the idea behind those old WWJD bracelets that we might attempt to do exactly what Jesus did, VENGEANCE is really something we could consider wearing around, or trying to cure... depending on your theology, if the bracelet wasn't cracked and ready to break.

But on a less muddled line of thought: Martin says this whale is very funny.
I say Bill Murray would have made one hell of a Bond.

The sniffles comfort me. One tiny way and then another: like a backward sneeze. Instead of cleaning things out, emotion and ailment taking in everything close by which is not much at all, really. It is a mighty effort.
Sometimes when I am embarrassed, I sniffle a little because the idea of lifting the belly out and opening up to the air seems to take up too much space.

I think back to the times I found comfort at the end of crying, when I knew it would stop hurting, finally. The ebb of the drama and the flow of tears and triumph in managing to stave off the resulting hiccups.

The woman with the pretty lips and one purple latex-free glove took about 16 ounces of blood from my arm and I tried to be brave but I jerked. I thought of bee stingers stuck in my arm and cats holding on by the teeth and blackberry thorns grabbing through the t shirt, and a splinter deeply followed by one heroic needle dipped in peroxide. Oh grief, if I didn't flinch so hard she warned me she would do it again if I couldn't remember to be a grown up.
If you could have seen me today complaining to Juliana about a bruise the size of a blueberry muffin and nearly so ugly purple, you would have thought I really had one, but I suppose most of you know I am prone to exaggeration.

The preschool day is full of crying, it is absolutely breathtaking and burns the eyes, almost instantaneously contagious. We weep for one another and call it love and when the clean-up sniffles finally come, the real cause for the sobbing is washed away by the shock of hope. We convince the children to rise and put off the thought of stings and bites and pokes, open up their little belly bellows to breathe deeply and that too is as contagious.

So it is a good to know what is in your head and through your heart, even if it means giving a little up, because you never know what is catching.

Either you get over it or you just are over it. In the parlance of our times, I am so over it.
And I realized that teaching preschool is probably more like manufacturing fireworks than it is like anything else.
Grace is mostly a commitment.

In between the sneezing and snoring I have, since Thursday, been reconsidering church membership as a serious option. Pastor Mark said such a funny thing; something to this effect: "There seem to be a lot of PCA churches down there, as if that area attracts people who believe the Bible is true."

From the look on his face and his admission that he was called to PCUSA to work for "renewal," I took him to mean that we all want to be on the winning team because that is just one of the things we tell ourselves and yet it doesn't change the facts that God is sovereign and doesn't need us to be members of any denomination... because the word of God is true, no matter who says what. I don't mean to oversimplify or offend, for all I know he was saying something different and I just heard what I wanted to hear; that would not be a bit surprising.

Or maybe, though I know he would never say this, he meant to say what I probably need to hear: Oh, Abigail just shut up and hold still, this will only hurt (your pride) for a second. Altogether it is an honestly subversive remark to make (if that is possible) and I am taking it to heart. I think I could get behind a church that is so big it (unknowingly?)allows people like pastor Mark-believing the word of God to be inerrant, like he does-to, um, join in at the risk that he might (gasp) somehow bring with him some kind of renewal.

Here is where I apply the old Groucho joke: I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have someone like me for a member... or something like that. But I am not sure that the church body knows we aren't members already. It has only been since we moved back into town that we quit the worship team on Sunday mornings. Martin was even on the payroll for four years. Which begs the question: do they know we aren't members and, simply enough, they don't care?
In which case, it might be fun to ruffle a few feathers and confess that we are, at last, willing to, well, confess?

Which leads me to my next question: where is the PCA when you need it, anyway?

The answer is that there are five in San Jose, but the closest is about an hour away and my husband has this idea that maybe we should go to a church in the community we live in (clearly, he is the brains behind the operation) and I am here afforded the luxury of submission. That too is Pastor Mark's doing, he married us after all. I just keep telling myself: membership will be what it is and who am I if I don't stand up on teal colored carpet between two brown pews and praise Jesus?

You have to laugh if your car is crashed on the way to the demolition derby. Martin called and said he was in an accident and even though it wasn't his fault, he was in the car that spun him around so fast his glasses fell off his face and are probably somewhere in the ditch. The skid marks say the giant white truck didn't even hit the brakes until it was already in the intersection.
Good thing our car shot into the front yard of a man who sells fences (he advertises with the Pinnacle) and his wife said they were thinking of taking out the section martin drove through anyway. The skinny little tree he drove over bounced right back up into place.
They gave him a shot at the hospital, which he says is the worst part. He doesn't complain about the arm hair burned and bent by the airbag explosion, or the fact that he had taken the time to fold the laundry before it all flew out the rear window--the tow truck man had to sweep my clean underwear out of the street. Now I'm thinking maybe I should pass up the chance to put skid marks and underwear in the same entry.
This morning the man who would be dead except for the car my dad gave me in college, is sitting on the floor petting the cat telling her it is just to two of them today: Tetanus Arm and No Teeth. He looks up at me and says he just realized that the first thought that went through his mind was "well, we're not going to the demolition derby tonight, and I didn't even get to watch the airbag deploy."

Sometimes I allow myself to remember the times when I have heard the whispering from inside that this is real, this is really happening something is actually happening and it is real. In the memories I hear myself answer, an audible whisper: this isn't real.
and the empty denial is what I think I want because there is always a tiny bit of this left to hold on to: A picture of what is ahead and behind like a landscape full of trees and moss and hope.
I have never been able to make this picture go away. I know I still choose it, but only sometimes now. It is denial cutting things apart.
The hope just looks so beautiful even when it is tearing me to bits. The consequence: it is not fully faith, I am not trembling against the landscape- if I am even in the picture at all. It doesn't diappoint me, but it doesn't ask very much either, from a character like mine. Faith, on the other hand, propels me forward, drives me toward commitment, the fear that makes my nightmares unbearable. My little relief comes from how crazy change can make me.

This is how I explain it to myself, hoping I will ...stop it.

This is from my wedding:

From Part of Eve's Discussion
by Marie Howe
It was like the moment when a
bird decides not to eat from your
hand, and flies, just before
it flies, the moment the rivers
seem to still and stop because a storm
is coming, but there is no storm, as
when a hundred
starlings lift and bank together
before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment
driving on bad ice, when it
occurs to you your car could spin
just before it slowly begins to spin,
like the moment just before you forgot
what it was you were about to say
it was like that, and after that it
was still like that, only all the time.

Falling in love is real, I know this much: the falling, and the love, and they are hard to part and hard to stop so you don't.

I took the day off to rest... but it is a joke. There are too many good things to do here. Moreover the cat just puked and is now back to carrying on the way she does: running up the walls and keeping watch from the high windows.
So I am ignoring her and her pukeitallupandjustgetonwithit way of doing things.

I bought this book for Martin because he really wanted it but then he didn't use it. I don't mind... I didn't know how good it is until today.

"Peach
Prunus persica Batsch
A well-known, small fruit tree with a
short trunk, spreading, rounded crown,
showy pink blossoms, long, narrow
leaves, and yellow to pink juicy fruit...
Leaves:...Lance-shaped or
narrowly oblong, finely saw-toothed, sides
often curved up from midvein; leafstalks
short with glands near tip. Shiny green
above, paler beneath. Crushed foliage
has a strong odor and bitter taste.
Bark: dark reddish-brown, smooth,
becoming rough, bitter..."
-
There are plenty of poems about peach trees and peaches, to be sure. But this I have found to be just as tantalizing as any, in spite of its prescient pose. High quality unintentional enjambment (hooray) blah blah blah... and the way such a fancy book would use the word twig with such authority. It is like an excercise in the subversive nature of four letter words: Screwbean Mesquite, Roemer Catclaw, Jerusalem Thorn, Silktree, Cliffrose, Oneseed Juniper and then you start to think this is your grammar school class picture, all your friends lined up, looking their best and such comforting common names: Tamarisk, Sugar Sumac, Saguaro, Lyontree, Little Walnut, Quaking Aspen.

What a great book to sneeze on.

new sniffles. There is a swarm of bees in my brain, each one angry and loathesome. I feel sorry for the four year old who had this cold before me.

about some things.
I like to eat mussels now, as long as there is plenty of garlic involved.

Paid vacation with a photojournalist means you buy one disposable camera and hope for the best.

I made the mistake of watching Eternal Sunshine of blah blah blah (titles!) and now it is even easier to explain to myself about hiding things and trying to forget where I put them. After, I peeled apart some old pictures and was very glad to draw lines around lips and curls up on the small bed in my memory.... Gummy candies don't keep well, though. Those can be thrown out but wait until you change your mind about them. Give it time.

when you have problems you are supposed to seek counsel so I remembered this poem I wrote about four years ago.

Takedown

They were married in a fishbowl--it would take Houdini.

and then recently I was reminded about this one, just as old, because a good title is very important. I'm sure it should not be so long it grates, I know, I just don't want to fix it tonight because it is really right--especially the annoying title. It feels like some kind of stupid prediction; as if shit everywhere is sort of okay.

I didn't know I could be a diarrhetic until I met you... but I must be: everytime we are together it is just shit, everywhere.

Shag carpet is like a treasure chest.
I keep finding things.
India ink
Hundred dollar bill
Milk
Wild animals like turkey, aunts.
Clear fingernail polish
Egg shells
the cello tape she called bandaids.

"I love you" means that all I can do is promise to feed your sheep as soon as I find them-every last one.
Sometimes (every once in a while) it means I don't want to turn over the tables in the temple but I will if I have to.
That is why it is so important to say it over and over again.

When I die, go ahead and cremate me, but not until anyone who wants to see the body has done so.
And please pass out cigarettes to anyone who wants one, just in case they are feeling right on the edge of dead themselves. I know that seems self indulgent but I think things are getting past that point by now.
Death makes me feel really alone now. I have been thinking about it the way we Mexicans think about it, if you know what I mean, and I am beginning to see the skeletons get up and dance without a care for who is watching.
The funeral must really be for the living, the dead are lucky enough: not at home, waiting for a phone call.

It is inconvenient to need someone around just to stand around, I know, but I think it might be exactly what husbands are for... by nature they become well aqcuainted with inconvenience--especially mine who is flying into Seattle at midnight tonight just to stand around my mom's backyard and look like a nice person and maybe play some hymns on guitar and then go home tomorrow evening. Good thing he used to be a rockstar, it was good preparation for this marriage gig.

And another thing I think I should put here just for your information because my mom was pretty surprised when I told her:
A memorial service party might be the best kind of party to throw because the host could just hole up in her bedroom, get really drunk, smoke a pack of cigarettes and never even speak to the guests... and no one would wonder why. So you know where I'll be when Martin dies, I have a plan, but you can still come to the party.

your prayer was answered! the memorial will be at my mom's house (phew) and maybe everyone will get stuck outside in bad weather
and there are so many gd raspberries in that f' ing backyard right now, i would love for my nieces to just make themselves sick at that kind of party on raspberries and strawberries covered in dirt and snail slime. and imagine them. the only family members with red faces for good reason!

but here is the main good thing:
Emily Mercedes, who, upon turning three years old, graduated to finger puppets in March: "achoo!"
Tia Abigail: "is that a real sneeze?"
"nope, now you sneeze!"
"achoo."
"gezundtight! Now I sneeze."
"bless you."
"bleh shoo."

today is the first birthday for my niece, katherine isabel, she was at her grandma mary's house and fell down and hit her head so damn hard she has a huge blue bump on her forehead. she is so tiny she is a few months shy of the clothes she should wear. but she plays a mean peekaboo.

my gramps died last night.
i had to get on a plane and for the first time i really listened to each of the sounds the plane makes during take off. they were so loud and beautiful and painful, i think that is what sound it would make if you could hear your own heart let go of a thing that really hurts.

before we landed the flight attendant told us to be kind to each other. and the plane touched down with such force and sweep i thought of swans: how mean they are and how i want to touch them when i see them. and of rose petals and how they feel in your hand when you grab the bud and pull. and, i thought, maybe i'll get this chance to do the right thing.

I have been thinking a lot about apologies. I collect them the same way I collected sea shells as a little girl. I have many. One that coils around itself and comes to a point at the end. One flat round one that rattles whenever I shake it. Another one is just a broken off piece but its very colorful.

I think about them over and over like a security blanket
and just like when I receive them, I feel like they are never loud enough or strong enough to really solve anything when I make them.

the sticker says let's stop arnold for our families
arnold just keeps pissing me off.
Laurel and Levy bravely in Africa.
Jasmine plant dies.
IRA to disarm.
Vicente Fox: what are you thinking?
These are the day's headlines.
Confession: I don't even read the paper when my husband the photojournalist

writes the articles... Sometimes he asks me to... but regularly, no.
but I did write an editorial once-its a little long.

if i don't respond to all comments. I think it minimizes the embarassment factor if you don't have to worry about chit chat all the time.