A few small things

“I Only Seem Alone” by Emily Leonard

I think God knew that I needed cats in my life. When I moved in July, I couldn’t bring my beloved Angelo with me. He returned to my mom’s house in Murfreesboro, and I settled in here behind the red door. But, about a month ago, I stepped out to get the mail (which is always a near-ecstatic experience for me: a microcosm of life on the whole…the waiting. the disappointment. the frustrations when bills come. the surprise and joy of an unexpected, or expected, letter). I wouldn’t quite call it quite paradisaical, but it is cerainly satisfying to peer in that well-hole dark and spot a white glimpse that is not the reflection of the overarching sky or a thin, wan face.

Anyway, I stepped out, but my small trek across the lawn was curtailed by a little, extraordinarily personable cat who had situated himself underneath the connection for the garden hose in the front landscaping of our house (was he thirsty? I put water out for him in a plastic sour cream cup just in case). He approached immediately and subsequently, days later, invited two of his friends. He is marked like a clouded leopard; his friends, first, (a youngster) is white with blotches of orange tabby; the second is pitch black. Since that day, they have been the constant denizens, a triumvarate presence around our front yard. I might even venture to say that they are the cherubims of the mailbox, elegant guardians of our most treasured missives! Well, anyway, I am waxing poetic. BUT, I’ve enjoyed them, immensely so.

Perhaps it is egotistical to believe that God arranged their coming. Is it so to think that the Marley song I heard on the radio when I really needed to hear that every little thing was (indeed!) gonna be alright was not coincedental or that my accidental discovery of Emily Leonard as I flipped through Nashville Art magazine was nothing short of divine? These small one hundred things that I notice or I don’t, surely, are the one hundred invisible strands of something I catch a glimpse of only ever so often, like when I am walking at Radnor at a particular time of day when the sun is at a particular slant, and the spider webs gleam from between the trees like shining eyes or portals or cross-sections of a ghostly hundred-year’s trunk. There seems some sort of substance in these daily things, the sort that is sustaining. I can’t help but share Emily’s work with you. This is what she wrote about her collection, “Together.” Whew.

Together
May 2006
Southgate Studio and Fine Art
Franklin, Tennessee

I have been thinking a lot about space and spaces lately. One day while I was supposed to be painting, I thought at length about the spaces between notes on a fiddle in a particular bluegrass song. I have thought more about the space between the sun and me; also, about the space between me and people that I love; and quite a bit about the precise amount of space in the bed of my truck that all these paintings must fit into. And as I carried them here with my cat across the space between Seattle and Nashville, I thought about the space that my paintings travel on route from nothing to something. While they are being made, the time and layers of paint that lapse between conception and the finished piece rolls over weeks and months and the countenance of the painting changes in the journey. In the beginning, I am sure in my gut that the shape of a tree against the sky has eternal significance. And so I paint and this thoughtfulness grows and just as it begins to tip over into knowledge, I have to laugh at myself and walk away. The trust must be the answer. But here is what I did learn…

I have been painting the Middle Tennessee landscape at dawn and dusk for a while — a time in these parts that is so rich at once in both color and loneliness. As I write this to you on a back porch overlooking a meadow between two Franklin hills, the sky is turning from orange to deep and the field that was before me becomes lost. It occurs to me that twice everyday the sun actually comes down and touches the land, taking us from proof into trust. I think it is in this coming together of the earth and sun that I find my contentment, my deliverance, and of course my subject matter. This grand miraculous movement of the sun tells me again of the smaller, more internal movements that are possible — movements of peace, of homecomings, of travel, of quiet revolutions. It is in those moments where the very parts in me and around me that I thought were alone are now, actually, together.

Weighty Things

Lately I have felt just worn down. Oppressed by my usual fears and vanities that I just cannot seem to shake. I keep hoping that maybe when I’m a little older, or have a little more life experience, they will slough off, a brown and crumbly cast of skin for those behind to marvel at. But, these uncertainties aren’t loosening or becoming brittle. Nor have they changed color or loosened at the stems…Not ever. Or, at least, not so far.

I’ve made some decisions though. And, I will tell you so that I will be accountable to someone, something: the void, at least, or my God who fills it. I cannot go to graduate school. I will not. I decided today what I have known for a long time, as I was talking to Amber, whom I am so thankful for as she holds these same questions in her hands. We were making Swedish meatballs. And, over the stove I decided that my love of the study of literature or of composition, my love of teaching even, is not strong enough or passionate enough to merit the sacrifice of years and the garnering of debt. I love literature. But, only because I have found within it glimpses of something else. Even beyond the craft (which I believe is remarkable), even beyond the theory (which I am beginning to find stultifying and desecrating). And, I realized that I can see those glimpses clearly (more clearly?) without a graduate education. I know that these glimpses come with years, the examination of plants and of vegetables, from friendships. They come from learning to cook and take care of people and things. They come from seeing through the lies of our society, those that advocate immediacy over commitment, superficiality over depth, scale over quality. They absorb through the hands, I think. I also know that to go to graduate school for any reason that is a means to any end that is not my own passion is a bit vain, self-defeating…even, on my own part, a little faithless, perhaps hypocritical.

I can’t help but quote Jayber Crow again. Maybe for the last time here, though it is so rich: “But faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a little boat, in the fog, in the dark. Even a man of faith knows that (as Burley Coulter used to say) we’ve all got to go through enough to kill us.” Who would have thought (and I speak only for myself in this matter) that it would require more bravery and courage to stay than to go? I would not have thought or imagined this.

It becomes hard when I learn that friends are applying to Yale or finishing their masters, and I am still here just making it. Or when they get married and fall into ready-made roles when I feel as though I am still floundering around alone out there, trying on the stereotypes to see if any fit, trying to see if I can feel out a part which I could at least mostly accept and quit questioning everything, which gets tiresome after awhile.

I do not know what I will do or where I will go from here. I am very scared. But, I think that for now I am where I am supposed to be. And, that has to be enough (it is not yet, but I can hope). I keep thinking about the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and has to “die” before it can bear fruit. I used to think this was about very pious things like sacrifice or even emotional things like letting go. But, I am beginning to suspect that it is really just about letting things be what they were meant to be. Knowing. And acting on that knowledge. The seed was meant for the ground. It needs the worms that were meant to be worms and the rain that was meant to be rain. And, in time, beyond what we could have foreknown or guessed, everything is given to it, and it is given to everything. But only, only, in time.

Halloween

The pumpkin with the face I hastily rendered
is propped just outside the door, aglow.
Light from the eyes, the mouth, seeps thickly
through the gaps, flickering and warm.
The moon lies like a chunk of ice in the
frigid sky, its almost face comely but pocked.
Trick or treaters in an intermittent parade
have gathered, may gather again, about the porch,
as we have opened and will open the door
to them with our bowl full of sweets.
Jake Shimabukuro, and others the computer finds
comparable, fill the air with the sounds of vibrating
strings, and the candles on the coffee table absorb
their flames, wicks slowly sinking within waxcraters.
And for the first time in a while, I am not unraveling
my past or attempting to secure my future.
And reflections are beginning to settle upon my still mind.

Beyond my home, all alight, the driveway runs into my street,
which converges with another, again another, and another.
I become a part of all that is. And many are afoot tonight.

Listen

“Listen. There is a light that includes our darkness, a day that shines down even on the clouds. A man of faith believes that [man] is not lost. He does not believe this easily or without pain, but he believes it. His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing. He believes that the child in the womb is not lost, nor is the man whose work has come to nothing, nor is the old woman forsaken in the nursing home in California. He believes that those who make their bed in Hell are not lost, or those who dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, or the lame man at Bethseda Pool, or Lazarus in the grave, or those who pray ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.’ Have mercy.”

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

This Past Week.

I. West African Dance class at Vandy. Wednesday.

During this hour and a half, I became a part of some story I did not understand. As I learned, dance for the West Africans was, and still remains, a means of telling a story. Each movement has significance. And the drumming is all repartee, a conversation that speaks in a language deeper than words.

So, for this hour, I wept, rejoiced, wiped sweat from my brow, and cast nets all, and only, with my body. I stomped, jumped, and kicked in large movements and gestures that seem so very foreign to the 1 2 3, 5 6 7 motions of the salsa pattern or the rise and fall of the waltz or the jolting three count of swing.

This, more than any dance I have experienced so far, was not just about aesthetics, the line of the body in space, but about taking what lies within us all: disappointment and hope, celebration and the need for work and shoving and thrusting and stomping the story into real life.

And so we resurrected the dead in our room full of mirrors, witnessing the stories of the past and of the future manifest in our reflections.

II. On Being Educated and Educating. Today.

I feel as though I am finally getting the hang of this teaching thing. Which means, I am actually beginning to enjoy my job. After a couple of years of grinding my teeth down to the nubs almost, I’m starting to lighten up.

My fifth period class is teaching me very important lessons. The black sheep among my classes, it is a group of only four students from here and there and everywhere. We did not bond right off the bat, namely because my expectations were not being met. This is a senior level class, I would think to myself. Why isn’t everyone up to par? They aren’t going to be prepared! How has the educational system failed them? A few had come from other, less serious tutorials or from public schools. No one seemed to have had a solid background in writing or reading.

My first unit on Chinese poetry failed miserably. My first essay prompt failed miserably. Everything failed miserably. My attitude failed. My faith failed. We all just failed. But, the coursework is always for me, too. Unfailingly. So Lao-Tse subtly reminded me through the Tao Te Ching that there are no accidents and that to yield unremittingly is to triumph in the end.

So, taking his advice, and garnering my good faith, I chucked my entire year’s plans and decided to start back at the beginning. The class is very vocal and have bonded well with each other. Alright, we’ll ramp up discussion. Everyone needs a lot of work in writing. Okay, we’ll start back at the beginning with paragraph development. We’ll start doing writing journals and practice getting our thoughts out on the page. I’ll teach the essay. We can do this.

And so. Laying aside my expectations was like tossing out sandbags from a hot air balloon. We’ve been rising since. Together. I am learning what it means to meet my students where they are. Yes, there are things they need to know. There are skills they need to learn to be prepared, whatever the heck that means. But, their enthusiasm has not been squelched. They love class; they are eager to learn. They are relishing The Inferno,and we are learning to write. Today, we practiced paragraphs. Next week, we’ll work on thesis statements. Someday, along way off, they’ll write an essay, and they are going to be good. Yes, they are! And if I manage not to crush their blessed enthusiasm in my hands and manage to guide them even one footfall further than they were before this year, then surely I have done my job.

Another sighting.

This morning the woods were so beautiful, so brightly colored that I wanted to sit down and weep. And, on top of all that, I saw him again. (This is the closest image I could find to show what he looked like in that moment). If I had been hurrying, or if I had been looking for him, I don’t think I would have seen him. This is rare, and I consider it a gift. This time, we locked eyes only for a moment before he flew off to another part of the woods. It seemed as though the world itself could have been absorbed into the darkness of his eyes without so much as a glimmer returning from them. This moment had in it all the wealth of the world.

On Growing Up. Whatever that means.

Lately, along with dreams and visions and hopes and fears, I’ve been contemplating what it means to grow up. The process is something like a heave-ho of sorts, as I understand it, like the final lurch a baby fawn makes before it manages to prop itself up on its spindly, trembling haunches and forelegs (which never gain a perfect balance). I haven’t noticed it happening before, but today, even in the middle of one of my classes I paused in front of the white board and realized: it is happening. My spirit, haltingly, is beginning to stand.

I’ve been watching my students grow up right before my eyes. Just this afternoon, I passed a student in the hall that I had in my 7th grade English class the first year I taught (poor girl!). She’s now a freshman, and oh what a difference those two years make. Taller and lankier and with that high school swagger, the brightness of youth had already diminished in her eyes. It had been replaced with some look of strength and solidarity that was just not the same. One can’t help but grieve a little at that loss, even knowing that good and beautiful things of a different sort certrainly lie ahead. And so life takes us.

And, so now, the question becomes, how do I get older without becoming old? And I think, deferring to the Taoists on this one, that the answer is simply get old. But get old with gusto. The metaphor they supply is that to win a battle of force, one must overcome by the capacity for yielding: this is like striking at a piece of cork in a body of water. The effort to sink the cork becomes wearisome after a while, the cork, however, in its yielding always remains afloat.

Which means, I guess, accepting that I am 24, graduated, with no more “landmark” years left (except 40, which means over the hill, I suppose). Yet, there surely is promise in these years. Of a different sort, perhaps, if only I would let myself be refined. In garnering the limitations of adult responsibility, a compromise of freedom ensues. Is there a greater thing than freedom? I had not thought so. But, maybe a greater thing is love. Maybe to commit oneself to a place, to a person, to an identity, to an idea and see it through for better or worse is better than the unlimited (but insubstantial) opportunity to choose? Or, maybe it is not. I am beginning to suspect, though, that it might be. Perhaps the imperfections inherent in choosing and being chosen, often ignorantly maybe always ignorantly, are the means by which we learn to love. Maybe.

Dreams…Lately

I am learning, again, to dream and the bravery that this requires. I am learning, again, that imagination no less than reason can reveal great truths. I am letting myself fall into a wakefulness that is more than responsiveness to the external stimuli around me. I am sinking into a place, I hope, in which the desires of my heart are no less viable than the reasons I have created to dismiss them.
Lately, my dreams have less and less included the ideas of progress and success. I have learned that no sooner than I seem to conquer one weakness in myself, one of my endless vanities, another rises to take its place. I will be no better, no more deserving of love (though thankfully that has never been a requirement for Grace) than I am now. My thoughts and plans and strivings towards graduate school, any number of meaningless possessions, or a displayable man are diminishing, as I haltingly and imperfectly allow them. My thoughts towards becoming versed in all manner of culture, too, are fading. More and more, I find my thoughts straining after memories and towards some vision, blurry yet. I’ve been imagining what my grandmother was like as a child, whether or not the house my mother grew up in had a garden, and how my dad’s life seems, to me, sealed in some manner of tomb…how I would love, no matter the joy or the pain, to know who he was and how that child became who he is. More and more my dreams are narrowing in scope, narrowing geographically as they seem to narrow in scale. At one time in my life, I might have mourned this narrowing, but now, I see it as the natural progression of life. I am here where I have always been, physically and otherwise: “‘I will stand like a tree,’ I thought, ‘and be in myself as I am.’” (I’ve been reading Jayber Crow), and may I always be so. Increasingly, my dreams are fragmented though more concrete, small shards: a creaking front porch and a rocking chair, a barking dog, dishwater and towels, warm smells of baking, and always, always, sun on my face and fields green and covered with grass. My hopes are becoming contained in these images, and though disjointed, unlike the dreams I have had before, I could almost, almost hold them in my hands.

I Think I Broke My Bum… and Other Musings

I have found that this past week, among previous weeks- the indeterminate sort that rise and fall like grey waves, jostling with the noise of junk and busyness and distraction, was remarkable.
The week consisted of these moments: coffee with my friend from years ago, with whom I worked at the community center in Murfreesboro. Three years of silence. And now, we sat on the edges of our chairs at JJ’s, fidgeting, trying at once to bridge the gap or just count the losses and begin again. The moment was full of the beautiful and seering ache that only happens when we become aware that time is passing and that we are passing with it. I realized talking to him, then, that I am not the same. And that the connection I, three years ago, felt so deeply, that inkling of a common spirit, had been unraveling slowly as I had made my way forward, struggling, and he had made his own way. I wonder: perhaps this is the moment where truth raises its weary head- when the illusion of comraderie has waned and we feel, at last, alone again. Can any true friendship exist, truly, without the sense that no one, no matter how kindred, can relieve the weight of one’s own history, one’s own foibles, one’s own, small purpose? And what then, of marriage? Of friendship, even? How do we coexist with each other without clawing at what is sacred, destroying our own souls and theirs, desiring those kernels of same-ness or a familiar understanding of life?

Hmm…on that note, I’ll have to finish up later.

No Roots

This is not a poem. Not even a good rant. But I had to get it out, somewhere.
-K

One African meal:
Akwadu, Mandazi,
Beans in Coconut Milk.
A parsel of African fabric:
a block print with orange birds,
flying against an olive sky.
Ethiopian coffee:
Beans I roasted myself,
cardamom, cinnamon.
And, in the mornings, Sam Cooke,
Bob Marley, India Arie, Gigi.

Such has been my fascination
lately.
But as hard as I wish, I can’t
change my skin.
I’m stuck like the birds on
my skein of fabric
who didn’t choose to be orange
but are.

But, it’s not about that anyway.
I’m just feeling like I was
born into the wrong people, people
who don’t dance, or use
spice in their food, eat with their hands.
My people are bland inside and out;
what culture is there to recover?
Even the deep roots aren’t my own-
the fiddle as foreign to me as the zither.
I come from a heritage of soft rock
and television, microwaves and supermarkets.

Which is why we’ve been so rapacious.
In the name of Christ, commerce, anything.
Because there isn’t one thing inside
to hold us down, and I am feeling
it. I feel it hard. Now. Too.