Tales of Tangeline

2010-04-23T07:27:00.000-07:00

If ...

2009-04-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

I'm keeping a little list of some of the things I'm getting done in the city -- the classes I take, the shabby rough drafts I write in a month, the plays and museums I visit ("cobbling together" an education out of nothing -- to paraphrase the great Mamet). I want to assure myself I'm not wasting my time ... you take stock of that sort of thing at age 30.
It's also kind of expensive/tricky to live here. You don't want to fritter away your days, at these rates.
But I guess New York also feels a little dangerous. Not meaning "street crime." I mean, I'm naturally hyper-aware, I think, and see things, but am not afraid to the point of being preoccupied by it.
I'm thinking more of New York, the Target -- 9/11, etc. You're walking down the sidewalk and the big ticker in Times Square brightly warns you to stay out of the subways (last summer). This does not preoccupy me, either, but you do get the sense that ... I'm in a beautiful place of opportunity -- I need to use it and enjoy it. Now.
My co-worker has dreams of fires, and one of my best friends, in her darkly cheerful way, forwarded me a prophecy written by NYC Pastor David Wilkerson of FIRES impending, immediately ... Well, I'm always one for hoopla, so ... I'm not really preoccupied by this, either.
I am preoccupied, though, by the early Christians -- my fascination partly inspired, interestingly, by Buddism and Taoism -- simplicity. I like how the early Church, for the most part, was just Jesus -- relationships, sacrificial service and love. A crew that was hunted and killed, whose lives depended on each other.
I wish I had Googled this before I started writing, but there's a story of early Christians ENTERING a city ravaged by a plague, dying while they helped. So ... being in my right mind, and safely seated in the South Park Ave Kinkos, with a stomach full of turkey sandwich, I want to say if anything ever happens, ever, I want to be here. And to help. (Though I could see how it could also be helpful for me, Sara Harvey, to go, and get out of everyone's hair.) And to not pee myself.

New York Minutiae

2008-11-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

I see a million interesting things, here, every day.

There's a open-air market in Union Square on the weekends, with vegetables and fall-decorations etc. I look over and, under a tree in the park, there's this squirrel clutching a decorative, dried ear of Indian corn. Theif! Dried stolen corn is so, so sweet.

There are so many actors, in New York, that I feel like if I walked into Grand Central Station at 5 p.m., or any crowded street corner and shouted "Zip!" I'd be barraged by "Zaps!" and "Zups."

It's hilarious when people start laughing, on the street, and get loud and boisterous in their own languages.

I'm noting what people read on the subways, and (discreetly) making notes in my Moleskine, @ what that book might say about them, as a character.

I have a sense of New York being a city of a billion windows -- the impression I got from the top of the Empire States Building. For some reason, walking alone on Park Ave. (alone among 8 million people), thinking about "1984," and about how one room represented individuality, freedom and connection for the hero. And how maybe, in a city with such a wealth of windows, there might be the possiblity of such a connection for me.

Espresso like blood -- warm. Thick, and taken from a living thing.

How you're right in the middle of writing down a thought, and you reach your subway stop, and you can't finish it. You can't just ignore your stop, because you'll end up down at the Brooklyn Bridge, and you'll be late for work. You close your notebook with a half-finished sentence, and hurry out.

Pouring an iced coffee -- where the ice cube looks like a black mandarin orange, with cream marking the veins in the ice.

New York as an experiment in nerve -- being as bold and comfortable with new friends of 6-months, as if you'd known them all your life. Actually doing something, rather than over-thinking it. Writing something, and hitting "post."

Being confident that, if you're wearing sneakers, you'll get down Madison Ave. at lunchtime fast -- you can walk on the subway grates (not wearing heels), if you can stand its warm, "subway breath." Not that it stinks; you just know it's exhaled up from the subway.

Ephiphany

2008-09-19T10:25:00.001-07:00

The girls in the Salem Witch Trials, for some reason, confessed. And not only confessed, but thrashed around like Things Possessed. Maybe, because they revered their leaders and families, that's what they were told they were. Possessed. It's bad enough to believe your own fears, but to believe someone else's fears ...

Let's say one of them was led to a pyre, stood at the stake, and let it burn her.

But for some reason, it didn't consume her. She took stock and a studious look back. And when someone new came at her waving a torch ... in a moment of triumphant euphoria she suddenly knew, and laughed and said, "Bullshit! It was all bullshit. And not only am I fine, I was nothing ever other than fine. And, actually, I am much, much better than fine."

The actual words of a 1700s Salem girl.

Everything old is New Kids again

2008-09-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

Somehow, they kept their love for New Kids on the Block alive for almost 20 years, though Nirvana and Grunge, through two wars, and a crop of new boy bands that failed to woo away their First Love. New Kids.
And I'm talking love, because on Monday at lunchtime, I passed these people camped out in lawn chairs on 5th Ave, outside a Best Buy where the Kids would make an appearance the NEXT EVENING, promoting a new album. I walked that way to work again the next day, to see if they were still there. Yes. And the line had grown, and the police had corralled them all into heavy, steel-riot fencing on the asphalt of 41st St.
"The B-Town boys are back in town," one woman declared, as if I could doubt it. No way. Six-foot posters of the Boys blotted out the windows of the Best Buy where they were due to show (in only six more hours).
A little gang of these women, at the head of the line, had camped out over night. And they were great. I'm this random person walking up to them, "Are you freaks?" And they were more than ready to make scoot over and make room for me on the street, obviously recognizing another freak.
No, that's not how I approached them, or how I feel. The more hoopla, the merrier, and they had it going on.
"We're here to say hello to the cutest five men on the face of the Earth!" the office manager said, one of the passel of managerial-types in tanks, shorts and in full block-party mode.
A little farther down the line -- I'm afraid of people who have mullets. I feel like they're so tough, that they even resisted the passing of decades. They brandish their fists at Time itself. (Actually, it may have been a bigger hoot to have talked to them. "Why are you out on the sidewalk?" One would have leaned forward on an elbow, cracked her knuckles -- with one hand -- and said, "The B-Town boys never left.")
The IRS agent at the head of the line that I did talk to, explained that her sisterhood lived their New Kids fandom day-to-day by listening to the music, and writing to each other on message boards. Where she'd met most of the people she'd been hanging out with the past two days.
They mercilessly nudged awake this woman who looked like she'd melted into her lawn chair. Her head lolled to the side, she opened a serpentine eye, her whole manner bespeaking, "bus trip." Long bus trip. She'd come to this thing all the way from Dallas. And in only six more hours, they'd see the new New Kids on the Block! Arising from the ashes of musical obscurity like the phoenix! And just as glorious!
"They're hot," said the IRS agent, who'd met all five members of the band at one time or another. "And they love their fans."

books

2008-08-29T10:05:00.001-07:00

Since, when you flip the calendar to September, there are pictures of school buses or apples (even if it's a calendar of South Park, horses, or the sketches of Escher), I'm going to end "summer" at Aug. 30, and post my list of summer-books-read.

June 1, True and False, David Mamet. There is a God and He is, somehow, sympathetic for my yen for Zen. First, a freak interest in improv -- spontaneity, the "one-ness" of making up a story/being the story for a few minutes, etc. Then, I stroll into St. Mark's bookstore (excellent!) and a yellow spine straight-away catches my eye. True and False. I pick it up. I read the back and ... a seamless weave into the theme of spontaneity, total-ness, etc! The exactly right book for me right then/now. And I don't care what you think of David Mamet.

June 3, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Davis Sederis. I just love David Sederis.

July 13, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, ZZ Packer. Her characters sometimes do unbelievable things like, the girl falls down with a bag of groceries right when it would be most-humiliating/kind of contrived for her to fall down. Still, you still "believe" it. The Story itself is powerful. Props to her Story.

July 20, Exit Ghost, Philip Roth. I haven't read anything else by Roth, to the dismay of several New Yorkers who saw me reading it on the subway/at work, but I'm banking that his earlier works are better? I got the book from the library and it was full of pencil ticks, probably where the previous reader had to get off the subway. Well, I think my own disjointed reading actually helped me appreciate the ... repetitiveness. Everytime I opened it back up, I got caught up. But who am I to judge?

July 23, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie. Pretty and diaphanous as a silken scarf.

August 2, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. College reading was always daunting because I read slowly. So, my impression of Edith Wharton was always -- the writer of things I couldn't read fast enough, and the author of one GREAT short story. (Roman Fever, my dear.) So, this collection of short stories? GREAT re-introduction to the excellent Ms. Wharton.

August 5, Fearless Fourteen, Janet Evanovich. I love this series.

August 11, Junky, William S. Burroughs. Um, the veins. If you're going to read a book/watch a movie about heroin, you can't be vein-shy. Which I am, but the language was so 50s hip, and the idea of an ... incorrigable lifestyle so interesting, I couldn't put it down.

August 27, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrelll, Susanna Clarke. Great! Great! Great! Her notions on Fairy, her "world building" (re-building?), and the humor. Oh my goodness. Laugh, laugh, laugh.

improv team names

2008-07-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

The Upright Citizen's Brigade is having a Del Close Marathon Aug. 8 to 10 with non-stop improv on about 10,000 stages (teams scheduled for 4:15 A.m., the next team at 4:45, etc.)

So, I have this 4-page, 8 1/2 x 11" flyer of solid team names, and I need to list my 20 favorites:

The Ninjas, Blue Shampoo, Whorenado, Mailer Daemon, Gift of the Wild, Afternoon Delight, Suspicious of Whistlers, Big in Japan, I Eat Pandas, Last Day of School, Shark Attack!, Quiet Monkey Fight, The Sickest F***ing Stories I Ever Heard, Strippers' Picnic, Imaginary Friends, Bedtime Stories for Kidnapped Children, Matador Now!, Super Yum Yum 2, Mr. Licorice, and Brian's Epic Tan.

Sk8

2008-07-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

I bought a skateboard! So, this is my last post, as I'll scoot under the wheels of the crosstown bus on my NEW SKATEBOARD at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.

I don't want to ride the subways anymore. They are dark, crowded and underground. And, while I own rollerblades and have the conpunction to go really, really fast, I'm bad at stopping. Now, I would love a bicycle, but this apartment is small, and I'd have to sherpa it up 5 flights of stairs. Plus, it would be strictly street-use, while a skateboard ...

Two instances cemented me on this rash ploy. The first -- I was walking home one night and leaped from my skin when some guy, right in my right ear, screamed, "MUCH-a CA-JONES!" (Not "ka-Jones," but cajones), paired with a shrill double whistle. Then, the squeal of brakes and the skid of tires, a car's frantic hoooonk, to my left.

The guy to my right was a Hispanic waiter reclining at an outdoor table, loudly approving the courage of a skate-daredevil across the way, who had just squeaked by a car vs. 9-ply deck catastrophe. WOW. New York's wheeled pedestrians must feel the joyous freedom akin to a bird's, swooping past a Civic's grill.

When you're walking, and the bright hand shines on the "walk" sign, you wait 1. For cars to go by. 2. For all the wheeled pedestrians that chase behind like dry leaves -- bikes, bladers, boards.

The second thrilling "wheeled pedestrian" experience (to sell me on a skateboard) was this one moment now forever-imprinted upon my psyche. The cars and buses at 3rd Ave. and 95th St. were converging on the intersection like the Red Sea, falling. Suddenly, your eye alights on one lone figure, carving through the center, barely making it out alive. A girl.

Or a statue. Of a goddess. On a skateboard. Probably woman's studies, but I do not conclude it based on cartoonish stereotypes, but on everything noble about the major. She's in the middle of the street, she's late for class, she's giving you a heart attack, but she does not care. And she has perfect confidence in her ability to execute this ... swoop.

I, on the other hand, just walk and walk and walk in New York City. When I used to drive, I tended to go just a leetle bit faster than everyone else on the highway (I-385!). I don't know why, except maybe I felt restrained, wanted to "break free." That's the way I walk, now.

New Yorkers, though, whether there are 2 or 20 in their party, fill up the entire sidewalk and walk slowly. The man is on the outside, sauntering, gesturing broadly with his lit cigar. His wife leisurely glances this way and that way at their five children, toddling along in a little string, the distance between each just slightly too narrow for an adult to politely BURST THROUGH at a brisk pace.

If New York is the melting pot, I am the spoon sticking straight up in the middle. So ... I would love to just go really, really fast. Hopefully, not out in front of a taxi. We'll see, tomorrow.

Union Square Park

2008-07-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

It's hard to know how long it's going to take to get anywhere in New York City, so you just start out an hour ahead of time and take a book. Any commute is going to be a complex mix of errand-running, trains (which will appear at your feet within 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the time of day/night), and the last few blocks walking (or walking around in circles, if you aren't quite sure where you're going).

So, I ended up in the Union Square park yesterday for an hour before work, reading Exit Ghost by Philip Roth beside a guy wearing a super-hero-y hood with holes for the eyes and mouth, wearing a Sharpie-marked cardboard sign declaring the day's top news stories. A student-type crouched down in front of him and, I could barely overhear, offered him the last cupcake in a plastic box he was holding. "No, no," said the Super-type. "I don't touch that kind of stuff."

The main part of the park lay across the street, and I watched a lanky man doing distintive kung-fu movements; with purpose, but also with such a casual playfulness, I thougth it might be Capoieta. (I was peeking over the top of my book.) But no, it was kung-fu, with the similtaneously moving hands/feet, blocks/strikes, and "upright" balance that prevents over-committing, provides the freedom to change direction/movements quickly, etc. Just stuff you know is called "Monkey combs his hair," and "Crane nips a dragonfly."

It was a few hours after lunch, but the park teemed with people. A large, flat configuration of light concrete, puddled with iron-ringed patches of grass and trees. It was a little cooler, yesterday, and the sun seemed bright but gentler. The concrete gave the impression of light reflecting upward, like a low, bright band into the pedestrian level, like the light-casting of a swimming pool or beach sand. All these bobbing heads, enjoying Union Square, close together and unconcerned, eating sandwiches and talking on iPhones.

Harold is Brilliant

2008-07-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

I've been champing at the bit/pawing the earth for a while, now, to see the Upright Citizen's Brigade's Harold show -- funny enough, they switched things up to mock short-form improv the first night I tried to catch it (April Fool's day) -- since I'll be doing it/learning to do it (whatever Zen-appropriate verb I should use) in August.

Last night -- eureka! I already had the gist; had read Truth in Comedy (and I'm probably going to plagerize it in some way, though the akwardness will be all mine), but to see it ... wow. The laughter didn't seem like just an emotional response to the energy of someone having a good time pretending to be gay or drunk (they were all already gay or drunk -- Ha!) It was ... delight.

It seemed like an "efficiency" going on (now, I'm getting all Zen) was the pleasing part. They seemed to chase the path of simplicity and connection (of plot, dialogue, etc.) Fantastic. Plus energy -- they seemed delighted too, and to have a good time pretending not only to be gay or drunk, but also opera-singing contractors. Specifics, and not extraneous specifics, but specifics becoming "plot," becoming character ...

I wonder if I've always tried to create in a vacuum -- I think, for the time being, poetry is going straight to the slam, short stories straight to the mailbox, the urge to sing straight to the karaoke bar and ... random thoughts/journaling to the blog no one reads. An attempt at connecting with an audience? To try to complete the circle of creating, finding a little more meaing in it ...

A little more connecting, and hopefully a little better-quality creating; though I'm realizing my "(karaoke) stage presence" looks like I have long-studied the movements of the wind chime -- a gentle twisting, turning, to Erasure's "Respect." Hey, I'm still "trying hard to discover! A little something to make me sweeter."

Nothing to speak of/(so I wrote something really fast)

2008-07-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

Intro:
I don't really have anything to write about today. I don't know if I feel comfortable meandering around on a blog, so I'll try it.

Habits:
I did hear that cigarettes are $9 a pack in New York, so I feel justified in buying books. The unbridled courage smokers have in plunking down ten for their habit gives me the courage to plunk down ten for, in particular, the Penguin Books Great Ideas series. In one bookstore I pass on Madison Ave., on my way to work, there's a whole wall of the things -- thin books, covers embossed with maybe a quote from the work, a stylish retro red-and-white design ... I am helpless! Everything from Seneca's On the Shortness of Life to Nietzsche's Why I am so Wise.

Exorcising the Shy:
It's courageous because I am just on the brink, again, of being impoverished. Spinning on a dizzy edge (air) ... And I'm also embarking, soon, on a creative activity that's going to require me to have composure, of sorts, in front of people. So, I'm singing karaoke. A lot of karaoke, trying to enlist co-workers to go with me -- getting up in front of people again to at least try to knock off that edge. If I had my guitar here, I would busk in the subways. I might also try a poetry slam, and am scouting a likely venue in the Village tonight. So, just books and Bleeker St., and probably the Battery this morning, to read by the water while it's still cool. Nothing of which to speak.

How it turned out:
Tonight's out-in-front-of-people thing was poetry slam at the (very, very fun) Bowery Poetry Club. I had never even seen a poetry slam before, I'm ashamed to say, (after all those shifts at Coffee Underground)! So ... I kind of got a quick overview, and since it was a nerd-themed slam tonight, decided to try. I wrote that stinking thing in @ 15 mintues and ... well, got up and performed it. Some good response! Some things I know I need to definitely work on. But ... extremely worthwhile. Here's my nerd love to Loch Ness (and the general field of cryptozoology).

Poem:
Black slate clasps
the surface of black slate breaks
up through Loch Ness--
my monster

They say peat bleeds green,
obscures your world-- empty --
40 feet below the air--
plieosaur

I know they shut the case, say
you're fake, but I'll see your face
slytherine, serpentine

in the labyrinthine loch,
prehistoric rift, a gift evolution missed --
dinosaur!

Faithful, I wait (even at work)
watching the Loch's webcam, bookmarked
on my MacBook --
Monster,

choose me to be the one to see
you emerge
to hit "save," and "freeze."

lunatic lover poet

2008-06-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why Midsummer Night's Dream gripped me so tightly this time around ... I really, really enjoyed the Flux Theater Ensamble, especially the lovers. Which is high praise because, as a rube, I bank on the mechanicals to get me through the poetry recitals and the "splayed fingers are mysterious" fairy gyrations.

Appearently, the actors submerged themselves in the meanings of every phrase (which, though admirable, may have done something funky to the mechanicals' comedy? -- and what's with the balloon-boobed Thisbe all the time?)

Then, director August Schulenberg added a note in the program echoing a beloved professor of mine (who might have screwed me up for life) -- something about Midsummer, the mystery of love, its supernatural aspects ...
I believe that the "yes,-it's-love!" certainty is a sister to the mysterious God-love that tells us, "Yes, I'm real. Yes, it's true."
Then, we surrender to what we can't entirely quantify: faith.

"In the 1557 Geneva Bible (the version most likely to hae been in Shakespeare's home), that passage (dealing with the impossiblility of describing an encounter with the divine) ends with 'For the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the bottom of God's secrets.'

"The Bottom of God's secrets! If this is a deliberate echo on Bottom's part (and Shakespeare's), then we can asume this epiphany is about a deeper transformation then man to ass; it is also about the change that happens from a brush with the transcendent -- a change that could only be described if eyes could hear, if hands could taste, if the heart could report in its own language."

Shakespeare 101, I guess, but I thrilled to how he put the inexplicable, "brush with the transcendent."

And, because I love his passion: "All the characters in this wood have been torn in some way, and in this play of weavers (magical and otherwise), some are mended, and most are forgiven. And I am torn, too, for all the moments in the play I could not find a way, or time, to report. The play has streaked our eyes with Love, and we are chasing it through the woods, but it will not stay for us."

Five Luck

2008-06-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

When I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Lowe, gave a lesson on the days of the week. Being a third-grader, I needed to choose a favorite, so Thursday it was. Thor! The mighty. And, being a third-grader, I thought I'd choose an accompanying number, so 5 it was -- so brave with its mock-the-future squint, and full chest facing the gale.

I stumbled across a tiny Chinese restaurant yesterday, a few streets away from my Upper East Side apartment, with the best name ever: FIVE LUCK.

And this being Thursday, I'm going to eat lunch there, and fully expect an amazing revelation from my fortune cookie.

THE FORTUNE: Ok, I went and they had no cookies. He apologetically handed me an elderly piece of candy, Milk Flavor, which had fused with its plastic wrapper.

I went back yesterday, June 23, and received not one but TWO cookies, a double fortune! The first: "The Destroyer shall ruin a city." Um... The second, "Then suddenly one will see vengence. Are you ignoring the signs?" They also bore the History Channel logo, and a promo for a series on Nostradamus shown during some October or another.

I showed my co-worker and, smiling, she said, "Don't forget to add, 'in bed.'" Which actually might be an interesting writing exercise -- a plot -- a dangrous liason! A ruined city. Viva the mystic whimsy which enslaves me.

My sofa slips the firth

2008-06-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

I had this sofa for forever. There’s a picture of me as a baby on it, when it was olive-striped and besotted with rusty cabbage roses, the sofa-equivalent of cat’s eye glasses and pointy collars.
It went on to become brown and nubby, and, much later, graduated to the “junky furniture” twenty-somethings carry from apartment to apartment. Pretzels, pennies and Kleenex burrowed under the split cushions. Friends crashed on top, roommates “turned on their bed” as if hinged, there, watching hours of TV straight: the Amazing Race, Lost, entire seasons of Dawson’s Creek. It was a heck of a sofa.
And on May 18, it met the final qualification for “legend” (though, setting it ablaze and launching it onto the open sea would have also worked) -- mystery. A “mysterious end,” even. Consider Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa. Bilbo Baggins.
A former coffee house co-worker-friend thought her boyfriend might like to use the sofa at a musical venue if her friend’s boyfriend would pick it up in his truck. So, I gave it a last glance, May 18, the day I moved out, turning away so its few remaining button eyes couldn’t see my tears.
I left it, alone in the empty apartment except for the rug I’d managed to sell to my landlord, and called my friend. I left her a message. I had hidden a last key for her and, if she wanted it, they could go in and get that heck-of-a sofa.
But it’s fate, to me, is ... a mystery. She didn’t call back, and I’ll never go back. And, you know, it’s all right. It elevates that sofa to mystic.
Maybe the fairies came and got it, its cracked frame a snap to carry for magic wings. Maybe it went up in a whirlwind. Maybe it just popped back, with a flash, to the realm it came from in the first place. I’ll never know, but that’s OK. It’s legend, and that’s enough for me.

“Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.”

-Chapter 9, "The Gray Havens"
The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien

Think

2008-06-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

It’s Palestine and this traveler is winding through the arid landscape. It’s twilight, and his day’s walk is almost over. He drinks the cooler air, and lets the feathered barley wands brush his palm. Something luminous shines at the base of the stems up ahead, so he stops. He stoops to see.
A pearl?!?
He sells everything he owns to buy the field, pearl included.

Therefore, I believe Jesus wants us to think, to be fairly up-front about where we are in our thought processes -- bouncing ideas off each other -- and, ultimately, patient with each other. Revolutionary!
We’re an immense Siamese twin joined at the heart by the creeds, what’s plainly written, and the “love God, love others” that sums up all the other commandments. But as far as most everything else goes, I think God actually wants us to be ... different. (And I love it.)

Therefore, God wants us to think, which is what I think the parables were all about. Necessarily, you had to put some effort into it to make it your own -- if you wanted it.

So, “different” v. everyone voting the same. Because, otherwise, how would we have power and clout?
I’m visiting my parents in Virginia, and the Lynchburg's News & Advance’s most-read story, on-line, for at least a week and a half was Liberty University’s adverse reaction to an evangelical manifesto that, as I understand it, downplayed the importance of “Christian politics.”
Political activism was Jerry Falwell’s thing, and I can see his point. America’s bit, broadly speaking, is in Washington’s teeth so, obviously, Christians should have a hand on the reigns.

Well, yes. Every Christian needs to vote, but as far as the direction we should all be pulling ... I’m not sure there’s anything we ALL should be doing, except seeking God, living the simplicities of the creed, etc. And thinking. If you find yourself among a big group of people all doing the same thing, well, maybe you’re a bird of a feather (flocking together) and that’s so very nice. But it’s statistically very unlikely.

For whatever Matt Taibbi stumbled into at the Cornerstone Church’s Encounter Weekend in Tx, undercover as a Rolling Stone contributing editor, I extend my pity:
“By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that christians of this type should learn to ‘be rational’ or ‘set aside your religion,’ about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this -- once you’ve gone this far -- you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc. that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a room of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.”

-- May 1, 2008, Rolling Stone

Woa

2008-03-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

"Starlight" by Muse.

More music

2008-02-27T07:39:00.000-08:00

This is astonishing. I usually buy a CD and listen to it for the next year, or years. That one album.

Since I've worked in a kitchen w/out a good radio, though, and put all my CDs in one of those travel books, I'm musically insatiable. The Juno soundtrack, infected me with Belle and Sebastian, leading to Dear Catastrophe Waitress and Sinister. I am also smitten with notion of "anti-folk." (Was any of the folky, girl-power 90s anti-folk?)

From a friend's Raising Sand (Allison Krauss and Robert Plant), I am on the brink of pursuing a 4th-grade music education by checking out some Led Zeppelin. I am full of musical ponderings! Did Robert Plant make rock ... "epic?" You mean, there was a time when epic wasn't a given? (Maybe! I hear he influenced some fave 80s rockers I lovingly consider kind of ...
mock epic.) And, on a side note, did Freddie Mercury launch the trend of melodious, almost-operatic gay-men-in-pop? Hm. These are the questions that drive me. These are the things that I must know.

Ham

2008-02-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

I spend more shifts as "kitchen person" now at the restaurant, so upon the occasion of slicing my first ham (and not losing any fingers to the whirring blade), I would now like to recount the famous Taoist tale of the butcher (from my Idiot's Guide to Taoism, Toropov/Hansen).

"Cook Ting was slicing up an oxen for Lord Wenhui. At every push of his hand, every angle of his shoulder, every step with his foot, every bend of his knee-- zip! zoop! --he slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were dancing to Mulberry Grove or keeping time, as in Qingshou music.

"Ah, this is marvelous," said Lord Wenhui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"
Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is a Tao that advances my skill. When first I began cutting up oxen, I could see nothing that was not ox. After three years, I never saw a whole ox. And now-- now I go at it by spirit and do not look with my eyes. Controlling knowledge has stopped, and my spirit wills the performance. I depend on the natural makeup, cut through the creases, guide through the fissures. I depend on things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less bone.

"A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month because he hacks. I have had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it. Yet the blade is as good as if it had just come from the grindstone."

Movies and Music

2008-02-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

MOVIES
Juno
I hear domestic disputes are extremely dangerous for police officers, which sounds like it should be a surprise. I don’t think anything, however, pokes us to the core besides what’s “domestic.”
I think Tolkien foisted that nebulous hugeness on me via epic, and hoisted me by the scruff of my neck, like a dwarf would grab a hobbit, to hurl me to the apex of three thick books. And, it was just a story about friendship.
Well, I admire Juno because no one had to resort to the epic to make it amazing, and they kept the humor so true, it never lost its footing to stumble down into the depths of formula. It was only as ridiculous as a teenager. It was only exactly, precisely ridiculous as ... Juno.
I love that it was done so well on so many levels, and that someone realized a story like this was worth it. It’s a type of situation, I suspect, that’s touched just about all of us.

There Will Be Blood
The title is great! It’s its own little marketing campaign. People all over America are saying it over and over, alone in their cars, to their friends, in the voice of Daniel Day Lewis’s character. THERE WILL BE BLOOD. There WILL BE blood. There will be BLOOD.
The movie, for me, was such a powerful jolt of character. Even the music ... it had nothing to do with the plot. It was an absolute extension of DDL’s character. It was awesome. I felt danger, I felt a disregard of danger, I felt immediacy. It was strong and kind of bitter, (like oil? like blood?) all power and desire.
As far as Story goes, I’m an intensity junkie -- not so much as “please overwhelm me with visual stimuli” (though I did enjoy Moulin Rouge, and loved, loved, loved the circa 90s Romeo + Juliet), but just stuff that’s effective, in whatever way, and can reach through the clouds of ennui and grab me by the lapels and give me a good shaking.
Well, this did. And I’m no theater expert, but I loved watching DDL. And, though his charisma dwarfed every other actor in the film, even going mano a mano with Cute Child, it was no one man show. The pastor was FREAKAZOID. Put down that old lady’s arthritic hands! I pleaded silently with the screen. Please, please, please.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Powerful and disturbing. Mighty, mighty props. I’m still trying to process a reaction.
It was all “show,” and hardly no “tell,” so visually powerful. A relentless sense of feebility (the perfect word from a friend of mine). It should have made the “butterfly” more beautiful, but I’m so modern -- I’m so unattached to the ideas of suffering and dying. It’s a shock. A disturbing startle. I’m afraid we’re all this, and waste our time, don’t value each other, accept nothing less than Strength and, if you’re not Strong, get the heck out of my schema.

MUSIC
Paste Sampler 39
I am inordinately preoccupied by this selection.

I fancy Flight

2008-01-29T06:28:00.000-08:00

The Flight of the Conchords brings me comfort and joy, just to know I am not alone with my appreciation for freakish humor.

(You are a picture of the devil's daughter. I am a pitcher of holy water.)

A Cautionary Tale

2008-01-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

My dearest Lucas,

I write to you with trembling hands, but see only small lavender boxes, descending with my tears.
I have waited for you, it seems, beyond my endurance. I have gazed out the small window of my solitary cottage, touching the frozen window panes with small-work-pricked fingers beyond my paltry will's ability to bear it.

Lucas, the dark figure in the yard, the one of which I wrote to you, the one of which you replied in your last post from the port in Siam ("Don't let him in for God's sake, Lysinda! Don't let him in!"), yes, that dark figure, came calling again last night, with a gentle rapping upon my door ...

Lucas! I have pledged myself to you, and to write this accursed novel that cries out day and night and day and night to live, live, live ... but I instead have succumbed to the licentious Tetris!

I know it makes you tremble! You, who knew from a small child, you would live a life on the sea until you saved up enough to establish a small vacuum-repair shop, and you who always awoke at night in fear of the dreadful Sirens and Scylla as if we lived in the days of the ancients and not in some ... vauge, kind of Gothic/Edwardian imaginary time period ...

You dreamed them, in fear, for me, dear Lucas. For I did not resist the siren's call of Tetris!
You have at least the church, my Lucas, in which to pour the dregs of your broken life, but I have not that option, now.
Unholy, unholy undead Tetris!

What am I to do? What am I to do?
But wander the moors, to wander the cliff-edges facing out-to-sea as if to recall our fond dream of your happy home-coming to our own cottage, together, but I will be unable to look up from the Gameboy, clutched in my stiffening hands!
Oh, cold, cold Tetris, my new, un-loving master. Oh Tetris, who called me with your hazel squares, falling, the music of your chortling, electric beeping.

Do not search for me, Lucas, for the girl you knew is gone. Her hair is grown long and snaggled, her gown twisted, her skin bleached white by darkness as she wanders, playing Tetris through the night ...

I write this final post, lovingly, as I speak it outloud dramatically in a fake English accent.
There is nothing else to say, my love, except good-bye, and to beg you to warn the young girls in the village who aspire to write to never, never to make this mistake.

Your loving fiancee,
Lysinda

Howard Jones

2008-01-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

I know to each his own but ... I love Howard Jones.

If each decade's rock, in general, is heavy on one particular aspect or another, I'd applaud the 50s for audacity. I love the 60s for pure music-crafting (I think they added heart, and a message, to rock). The 70s ... well, they, in part, were swinging (drifting?) away from the 60s so, they did excess well? Then I will argue that the 80s added heart, and a message, to excess.

(Live Aid. Erasure's politics. Everything Depeche Mode is saying without really saying it.)

And PIANOS. Viva the much-maligned synth! And enter what slays me: complexity (have you ever really LISTENED to Just Like a Dream? Over and over? And over?) Then, these layers, ranges (the guy from A-Ha), and melody.

Melody, melody, melody.

Dismiss it as "hooks," unbeliever. Then dismiss Tolkien as plot-heavy. What a beach read! Great plane-ride paperbacks!

OK. High, high praise. But Howard Jones' melodies (which I've just admitted my weakness for) are surprising and brilliant. I guess they really are gems set in ... aluminum alloy pop trinket lockets. Which I, being a girl, and not too much of a music snob, root through greedily.

Howard Jones, maybe I've elevated these songs to sacrity, but I would love to see you spend the next 20 years weaving each of them into 15-minute piano "symphonies." Things Can Only Get Better "amplified," expounded, expanded?? That is your assignment, so stop reading my blog and get started. :)

Beastly

2008-01-10T04:32:00.000-08:00

I just finished "The Bestiary," by Nicholas Christopher; another one heavy on motif. This time it was pseudo-history and fantastic beasts.

Um ... I like these books. It reminded me of "Salt," with its faces-and boot-shapes-in-the-clouds motif. (They're "painterly?") But motif ... I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do every time I spot a "motif."
A griffin! A manticore! The name Sylvia, again!

I loved the main character -- these great twists and quirks that made him very real, for me. I felt like I was sitting in a coffee shop across from the author, telling me a ripping good yarn, when he pauses, leans back, cocks his head at a jaunty angle and blurts, "phoenix."
"Pardon?"
A chuckle. A lean-forward on conspiratorial elbows.
"You heard me. Phoenix."

OK. But more about the guy! More about your excellent premise! The lost medival manuscript of fantastic beasts!
Instead ... how about 100 pages of forgettable history-snippets (I'm sorry). And, since he's only writing around 200 pages total on this epic, life-long quest to find the bestiary, he must dash through a childhood, schooling, Vietnam, a first romance, world-travels and a final romance with a fugitive animal-rights activist.

But what of the bestiary??

This one historical snippet was priceless, though: I never really understood how Lord Byron had both time to write and to window-dive into canals, maintain scandalous romances, participate in the political unheavals of non-native nations. First, he didn't have TV. Secondly, he apparently wrote from midnight to five a.m. EVERY NIGHT. He also didn't have online Tetris.

I may as well blog (as play hours of online Tetris)

2008-01-06T18:52:00.000-08:00

And, I'm going to let people know of this blog.

"Once when Lord Mitsushige was a little boy and was supposed to recite from a copybook for the priest Kaion, he called the other children and acolytes and said, 'Please come here and listen. It's difficult to read if there are hardly any people listening.' The priest was impressed and said to the acolytes, 'That's the spirit in which to do everything.'"

(Including quick, clean decapitations.)

-- From Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Shelved

2007-12-22T14:57:00.000-08:00

I'm going to have to mothball my blog. Life is good. I'm looking forward to some very exciting developments, but not writing-writing, so off I go.

Wrestling with this ...

2007-12-13T07:07:00.000-08:00

OK ... Does God want us to "wrestle" with Him?
I've been in chuches where the feel is ... subdued. (Not so Wild at Heart.) Everyone murmurs reverent hellos, sits stock still, takes copious sermon notes.
Then, I experience God-as-lion with his paw suddenly, squarely on my life -- terrifying. Whatever it was, it impressed on me His holiness and sovereignty.
However, I still see Job "calling God out," and David's crying out, and Jacob actualy wrestling, physically, with God's representative, at least.

When I was a wee lass, my dad asked me, if there was a hole all the way through earth and a person fell in, would he go all the way to China? Yes, Dad. Duh! (Roll eyes.)
And my kung-fu teacher ... Sifu couldn't walk by without setting up for some sort of attack. Which was scary, because he was there to teach, which meant he was going to hit me. But ... he was there to teach. And he always had "twinkling" eyes under his fiercely knitted brows.

But I love and respect my dad who had the power to, in the later years, withhold car keys. And I respected sifu, of course, who had the ability to break my elbow.
So ... to wrestle with God? To vigorously, energetically, "engage" Him? To say, for instance, "Hey! I've sorrowed overmuch! It's 99.9% because of something I did/might still do, but ... can I have some relief?? Hey!" (Though I have no right to ask.)

Then, to sense Him step back, consider, raise eyebrows (twinkle eyes?), and say, "You think you can 'go' with me?"
I actually had this conversation with Him yesterday, and was led straight to James (in the Message) where it says, "You ask, but you know you have no right to ask because you ask selfishly."
"I know. I've been extremely selfish. But I'm trying my best. Can I get some relief?" :)
"A miracle? And even more grace??"

Saturday morning, the chirp of a bird

2007-12-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to write this without it being all ephemeral, non-specific and non-concrete -- basically, horrible writing. (Probably why Jesus used parables, and the mystics warned us not to describe the Tao. They were concerned for our writing style.)

Blogging might help crystalize some thoughts, though. So, here goes.

I finished 3 books on Thanksgiving: Truth in Comedy by Del Close and Charna Halpern (on improv comedy), Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (on writing) and Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell (Christianity). All, freakishly, about the same thing: authenticity and ... I have no idea what to call it. I'll call it "Sumatra," because it's a sensation similar to good coffee (multiplied by infinity).

I do that nervous thinking, which is just sorting every conceivable thought into some pile or other, compartmentalizing EVERYTHING. So, this might be painfully obvious, and just my personal process of making things simple again but ...

"Authenticity" in art was an earlier epiphany.

In writing, you should say what's "true" to you (and true fairly broadly, even if it's leprechan cowboys rounding up a unicorn herd). Hemingway sought "one true thing" when he wrote, and I think fiction's "authenticity" gives it its power. Apparently, comedy's authenticity gives it power (Mark Twain said comedy plays close to the "big hot fire" that is truth), and the authenticity in a Christian life ...

The two art books, at least, were about getting into this "place" where you can sense that authenticity ("be still ..."), and then to joyously/energetically pursue it ("... with all your might"). Ahhh ... the Sumatra.

The fresh component for me, here, is "Sumatra's" similarity to love, as I know it, as a Christian.

It's fearless. A few months ago, I came across this sage improv master -- white beard, tortoise-rimmed glasses, Nazi officer’s uniform, the whole nine yards (we were in the Sound of Music) -- who told me: “Don’t judge it,” and “You can make no mistakes.” That was revolutionary.

Next, Sumatra involves all of you. Continously authentic. Spontaneously, harmoniously authentic -- all your facets/facilities working in concert toward an aim, which, for me, ultimately, would be desiring God. (That's what I want my chief desire to be.) While, at the same time, someday, creating powerful art. (I don't know which book in particular, maybe improv, impressed this on me; maybe it's some residual Zen thinking?)

And it's joyous*. Anne Lamott most-blatantly compared writing to love (my words). You do it because you just DO it, and you're pleased, ultimately, just to do it. Even if you never get published. (Heaven forbid.)

*Joy or rage? Passion? Something of that intensity, vibrancy ... I will call this new nebulous idea Ethiopian Harrar.

It's Wednesday Again, and I'm in the Coffee House

2007-12-05T07:18:00.000-08:00

Writing, but not writing what I should be writing, so I should just go home.
With the pseudonym "Tangeline," my life should be much more exciting.

It's Wednesday and I'm in a Coffee House

2007-11-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

Writing, but not writing-writing, so I need to stop it and go home.
I just needed to change my blog to keep weird music out of J. Nicholas's head.

I heard the voice of Gilbert Gottfried say

2007-11-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

It didn’t matter back when all I wanted to do was make a racket. The more sensational, etc. the better. Lions roaring! The trumpets of the Valrikies!
But I want to speak "authentically" now, to people I care about. However, it sounds like I’m in a library, hoarse-whispering with the voice of Gilbert Gottfried. I am gears grinding, hydraulics tapping the Dumpster against the side of a truck. “I’ve never heard you like this, Sara!” A gentle chide. Hm. Well, that’s probably why you’re still reading my blog.
There was a cat food commercial once with these sped-film kittens streaking around to the roar of stock cars. A kitten close-up: his mouth says "mew! mew!" but the speakers scream, "VROOM! VROOM!"
I'm speaking kittens: "I like you," or, "I'm sorry," and it's coming out Camaro engines. Must work on delivery.

Glint of Fathom

2007-11-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

(With props to my computer’s thesaurus)

Think smart.
Select, and reject alternatives,
with the mind
Mind over matter
Open your mind
Never mind
To have someone in mind
Put it out of your mind

Do not be alone.
You don’t want to be susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.
Or you can stay where one is or delay action until a particular time or until
something else happens.
Remain in readiness for some purpose.
But while looking up the origin (French, origine)
of some word for some poem (Latin, poema)
I glimpsed fathom

in him,
belonging or relating uniquely to a particular subject,
an intermittent shine, briefly and partially,
extending not far
from the top or surface. Glimmer.
Fathom: faethm: original sense, something that embraces,
the outstretched arms, hence a unit of measurement based
on the span of outstretched arms.

It's Not Thanksgiving Yet

2007-11-06T05:30:00.000-08:00

But my phone switched over to daylight savings time automatically Sunday, and I got an extra hour of sleep without knowing it.
I accidentally dropped the espresso shot glass in the trash last night and, while it will hurtle to the very bottom like a ship's lost anchor, I reached right in and found it. (And washed it.)
The last two times I got in the car and switched on a new random radio station, I heard two obscure favorites I haven't heard in more than 100 years. I won't assuage any curiosities with the first, but the second was Duran Duran's New Moon on Monday.
I am loving me some The Cars lately, and they're everywhere. In the car, on the Muzak, in the sushi restaurant after work. "She's taking a swipe; at fun."

When I Find the One that Likes Me Too

2007-10-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Instead of hours, on and on,
over pints, or through the park
about my Past,
I’ll take you to SkateLand, where we will couple’s skate,
skirting the fallen, popular tweens, one standing, the other,
a half-circle Sit-N-Spin on the seat of jeans

We will go to the Air and Space Museum
to pulverize astronaut ice cream like florist-foam, brown
and pink. There, a shy girl-nerd studies the suspended
Cold War jet, the IMAX marquee, various capsules,
diesel Blue Birds idling in line,
vehemently ignored,
by nerdy, high-school boys

We’ll go to a symphony at a conservative religious university
and hold hands. No longer library staff, I will
not police the stacks for stolen kisses.
We’ll instead pretend to look up Ezra Pound and,
between the shelves, I’ll take your lapels,
a mix of permission-asking and desire,
and kiss you, there, myself

Sit on the couch,
at dark 5-o’-clock while I write
and the dim light shows up ghosts. You
won’t see them, but you’ll believe, for me,
and I won’t be afraid, with you.
And that’s all you’ll need to know.

What I’ve been reading. What I’ve been hearing.

2007-10-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Salt, by Jeremy Page
This man is a master of, I’m going to have to say, “motif.”
It’s one of those stories about generations clashing, the woes they pass down via genetics or weird-parenting, set in an English seaside-marsh starting in World War I. The matriarch can (possibly) read the future in the clouds.
So, clouds loom throughout. They’re full, literally, of symbol, foreshadowing, hark-backwards-ing, whimsy, myth, family myths, beauty, theme, etc. etc. The idea is gorgeous. So are his details (characters, setting). The clouds, though, fogged the story’s progression for me near the end. Maybe he wanted the story to dissipate?

Pictures of the Gone World, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I do not have the words to describe this poetry. Actually, I have way too many words.

Paste Magazine
What? A magazine? Yes. I was appreciating the magazine very much this month. I’m in the middle, reading the dozenth review on a tiny indie band (that I will probably never ever encounter in any way) when I realized, inductively, that this little band is part of a bigger discussion about Art. Check this blurb on Janis Ian (I’m in the Oct. issue), “I’ve never heard a record more bitter and forlorn than Between the Lines. It’s nuts how brutally upset she seems, and brilliant how well she translates it to music.” Janis Ian, but also art + life, for me.
Then, art + life + sin + grace in “Listening to My Life: Saints, Sinners and the Honky-Tonk Gospel,” by Andy Whitman. (Pondering the faith, addictions, incarcerations, music of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, etc.) “There’s nothing neat and tidy about it. It’s an unholy mess. It’s music and it’s life, bound inextricably together, and the glory and the wonder of is in the tension. It’s some of the best music America has ever produced.” And all the hipsters said, "Duh."

Over the Rhine
I must first confess a dark love for novelty rock, hooks, neo-Appalachia’s ballads of dead babies, The Cure’s angst, punk “rage,” Stephen Merritt’s gorgeous, mellifluous melodrama, Dragonforce’s fight against dragon oppression.
But I sat before bluesy, indie, Over the Rhine, last week, and felt my face heat, no lie, like I’d just eaten taco salad sluiced with Texas Pete. An amazing feat when I’m moved by happy music.

9Tail Fox, Jon Courtenay Grimwood
And, finally, I read a man’s book this week.
Calibers, car engines and the inner-workings of the San Francisco PD.
And ... celestial foxes, and Chinatown, and street people, and people who wake up from comas after 20 years, and how Russian hit-men get offed, themselves. Loved it. (He even jabs at people who believe Evanescence is “real goth.”)
The dust-jacket blurbs: “the only real heavyweight ... in orientalist post-cyberpunk fiction.” Beware, squeamish, it’s guy-fiction (with all it’s expected accouterments) but also great fiction.

Monday

2007-10-22T06:09:00.000-07:00

It's cool and rainy, but at least I'm writing.

Hey! Uh-Oh! Let's go!

2007-10-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

I retract the blog, a few posts ago, concerning improv. Because that is just not the spirit. (And this is not the spirit, either, but after this I will stop apologizing and explaining for good. I really will.)
These hippie guys in the coffee house the other night were telling me all about their band, asked my name, etc. I went back to our kitchen hippie and said, "Why would hippie guys flirt with me?" He said, "Well, you seem like a nice, laid-back hippie girl." Really? "Well, I never really thought of myself as a hippie."
He said, "Well, what do you want to be? A punk?" with the hippiest tone of tolerance and acceptance.
Maybe! Aside from the tendency to punch things and to pierce with pins, there's something pleasantly up-front about punk.
"This is what I am. And if you don't like it (expletive)." How refreshing!
I'm just going to have a good time. And if anyone doesn't like it, they know what they can do.

yellow steps at morning

2007-10-03T06:18:00.001-07:00

I'm back on the porch.
It's October-cool, but a yellow jacket scribbles near the lip of my coffee cup.
A grey squirrell ripples like a goosebump on the surface of my street. Everything's a gentle yellow and quiet (except for Modern English in my earphones). The school buses have already tunneled under the tree limbs to school, and the walking moms are back inside for another cup of coffee.
And I am blogging so I don't have to start any more ambitious projects. So I need to stop blogging.

pink sky at night

2007-09-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

It's 7:30 p.m., and I'm on my front porch with my laptop.
Tolkien had this word for how the stars looked through the tree-branches, and I'm waiting around for the first one to show. (He loved those words. He had words for everything.) I'm partial to the first star of night, as it has a special meaning (to me).
It's almost getting too dark to keep typing without adjusting the brightness of the screen, but I'll wait a little while before I head inside to non-blog write.
Inside ... I don't really know where, in the house, my TV is. I've wanted to experience the solitude of my house; to kind of "man-up" and take it. It feels a little more organic that way. The quiet gets so bad, the tension of it propels me out in search of real people and real conversation. Then, having been with real people, I'm more content to crawl back into the quiet of books and words.
It's still a little creepy, though, the quiet of books and words. I made myself write at home, tonight, instead of going to the library or Barnes and Noble, because I'm afraid my home is becoming a kind of "wild." (Hm. Re: Isaiah's wilderness.) Like I'm abandoning it. Abandonment. I've gotten to the point where the cat sits on my purse protesting me leaving (again) and I feel this huge pity, like ... Well, I've written on my front porch, tonight, with tea and some muscadine grapes. And it's been really nice.
Now, if the star would just show up, I could go inside to the quiet and be content.

Blood and havoc!

2007-09-26T06:55:00.000-07:00

I'm going to write a book now, after years of just thinking about it. I will finish Oct. 1, 2008.

(I know only Jason, Cindy and Emily will ever read this -- a shout-out to my peeps! -- but a "public" announcement still feels enboldenig. :)

I'm going to stop trying to tame all the ravens of unresting thought, blacking the sky of my mind, and just get down to some other thought-business. I'm going to have to take my eyes off a raven pepper-small above me, because my eyes alone can't call him to my window, and I have nothing to tempt him but an empty hand.

My story's not going to be anything overtly practical. Nothing about South Carolina ghosts or saving the planet, but I'm in love with a monster that's come to mind (and it's habitat!) so it is my own personal quest to write it. Or die! Blood and havoc!

Patience

2007-09-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Patience with other Christians, when their bite seems the most dirty, infectious. "They'll know us," though, by our love of that: other Christians.
No details neccessary. Everyone knows what Christians do at their worst. (Every Depeche Mode song's a veiled reference.)

There's still the human capacity for evil, now amplified, I believe, by pride (I do GOOD, now!), repulsively contrasting with the purity of Christ and what He wants us to do. I think it's an agony to the world, which is physically hungry, suffering, lonely, spiritually hungry. They need bread, we tease them with a hope that there just actually might be "bread," and then give them a stone. Or a snake.

I need to love other Christians patiently, gently, truth-speakingly, "calling out" wrongs, etc., getting angry and/or shaking dust off my shoes and moving on but still lovingly. I have been the evil Christian.
To keep hate from settling in, killing the spiritual heart, or killing our own desire to live out Christ and to identify with Him. God, help me! I have been so discouraged.

It's the Thing.

2007-09-19T09:39:00.001-07:00

I just finished three weekends, eight performances, of the Sound of Music. My tan is gone, as well as five pounds (probably of muscle, since I stopped going to the gym -- though I scarfed McDonald's at @ 11:30 every night), and am now enboldened, in polite company, to make weird faces.
I did/had more antics and revelations backstage than on-stage as Nun 25 in a nun chorus of 30, but ... it was great.
Something I'd wanted to try a long time, prompted now by a need to get out of the house (and out of my own head).
The day before the audition, I was frothing milk and doubting the theater itself (two counties away) and my own leaden, melancholy soul, when this puckish, curly-haired girl danced out from behind the espresso machine. (A coffee customer. Maybe one of the art school teens.)
"What's your story?" A saucy boldness.
Eh?
Puckish girl: "You look like the art-type. Are you in theater?"
Me: "Hm. Why do you think that?"
Puckish girl: "Your face, it's very subtle but ..."
... latent obnoxiousness! The cold mercilessness to inflict it on you, or anyone else nearby, hapless victims!
A cruelty un-honed by training or talent, but amplified by uncouth, stupid audacity. However, I've learned that it's forgiven, and even encouraged, backstage! ( ::villanous laughter!:: )

... then again, miracles do happen

2007-09-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

... though I always seem to convince myself otherwise. Like ... I'm single and, since that's my state now, I believe, somehow, that's the only state I can be sure of. So, it's the "default." So, I try to steel myself for a lifetime of it.

It's magnitude, though, is huge. People choose lifelong celibacy after much, much prayer and consideration because its magnitude is fairly HUGE. And I just assume it. I "bravely" convince myself of it; disregard desire and hope; actually try to strangle desire and hope; and grieve and grieve and grieve ... It isn't something I give, it's something I feel like I've lost.

(Not to attack a beloved classic but -- did "Passion and Purity" do this to us?)

I'm training myself to think, "This guy won't want me." And "That guy isn't going to want me." Which seems like it would guard a heart against disappointment -- to not hope. (My kinsman redeemer woke up, smiled sadly, regretfully and did not want me.) But rehearsing something that isn't (necessarily) true seems like ... believing delusions (madness). It's not logical to think, because something is the way it is now, there's a 98% chance it'll stay like that for the rest of my life.

I don't want to disregard the Variable. We pray to God, who loves us and is good, and can work changes among the mysteries of free will and His plan. So ... hope "Godwardly?" Desire God first, and then the other good things in the way. So if something I desire drops out, I'm still wanting Godwardly, and satisfied. Easier said, though ... unfinished thoughts.

Proof there's a God ...

2007-08-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

... and He wants me to be happy:

Beer.
Yes! But also, if I may be confessional: I love talking about thoughts, though I'm no philosopher, and I have these conversations almost constantly. If I'm trapped in an elevator with one other person, it'll be a Taoist. The young guy at the end of the coffee bar Wednesday, a Guinness pint blacking the middle circle of his face, read a paperback Jung.

If God is sending me in to "sic'em," He's chosing the most ineffectual attack dog, philosphically, of the universal litter-at-large. I approach, eyes bright with delight. "What are you reading?" His eyes, brightening, "Symbols!" and so it ensues.

Whatever I contribute, it's from a Christian brain/heart, so ... it's the most joyous, organic "evangelism" I do.

With unquantifiable results. Only God knows where that person is in their thinking. It's a light yoke to just enjoy, speak honestly, and let God do the soul-work of soul-winning.

I'm the least-schooled of the litter. There are wizards of minuitae -- dates, systems, terminology. I dig the philosophers' macro-visions, their bird's-eye views of life/existence/meaning-etc. The nutshells the thinkers honed their ideas into before they keeled over. Which means, I'm flush with broad simplicities -- but isn't that what matters most? (To Christians and Taoists. :)

I really don't know how to say this but, there's a specific Walk with God that I want more than anything else in the world. (And it does have something to do with the nebulous "love-of-thinking" and a few other elements.) I guess I'm blogging about it because I'm coming to new conclusions, concerning it.

For one it's overwhelming, because God's re-energizing this dream in the midst of ... my rampant imperfections. I've also realized, lately, that it may mean I won't get married (though God could miraculously find me a kindred spirit). I just want this more than marriage, or anything. Doing what I truly enjoy, "partnered" with God, the spring of joy.

Not too swift

2007-08-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I gravitate towards "quick" activities, while my brain moves as fast as an ent. More "hoom, hoom" than zoom, zoom.
In kung-fu, I'd finally gotten into the habit of "stepping up" when challenged (since, in my style you interdict quickly, act on the absolute very-first opportunity to strike, it being designed for smaller fighters), so I'd step up and ... just stand there. "You think too much!" Sifu would say, pummeling me about the eyes and nose. Hypothetically blinded and broken, I'd slouch back against the wall to ponder this.
But, I already know this about myself. I work in a coffee house now because it's Zen-like -- spontaneous, external, physical, rewarding with the pleasures of skill, etc. When I started, though, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of minutae: dust on the brass lamps, fetch more espresso, stock the Red Bulls, make more iced latte for the lunch-folk ... Where do I start! Frozen, I ponder, where do I start? Well, just start. And my mantra now: Just be quick.
Still, skill plays a huge part, right? If I'd ever become proficient in kung-fu, I would have had an army of techniques burned into my muscle memory, flowing from me naturally in a fight. I've got pretty good coffee shop-skills, after three years, and do "flow" around the counter. (I think the same applies with Christian living, having Scripture so absorbed that when an occassion arises, we at least hear that truth via the Spirit).
The thing is, now, though, I'm trying to "figure out how to do" improv comedy. It's been @ three weeks, and while I've had moments of ludacris lunacy, I've also stood there like a (too long! I'm taking too long to decide what I've "stood there like") ... doofus. (Yawn.)
So ... where does skill fit in with this? Do I actually try to "quantify" some of the random characters I like to pretend to be out in the real world? (I am a freak!) (But even our kitchen guy has a "character." Trouser Troll. And you WOULD laugh until iced latte came out your nose, if you ever saw it.) We'll see. I'll just start and see where it takes me.

Martial Arts + Writing II

2007-07-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

One more quick book review: "American Shaolin" (Matthew Polly) = exceedingly, exceedingly good, renewing my faith in martial artist/writers. (Pen and Sword! The name of the magazine I'll launch to cover this budding literary genre.)

The hills are alive with the sound of nuns

2007-07-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am Nun No. 6 in the nun chorus in a local production of the Sound of Music. The nun (backstory) whose left femur was shattered by an angry dairy cow, making her gait ungainly and her prospect of marriage not-likely. She arrived at the abby the next Monday, clutching a battered case.
Her domestic chore at the abby was to darn habits, which was her passion, though it strained her already-weak eyes into severe squints. Still, tears squeezed freely the day Mother Superior pried the needle from No. 6's iron-vice pinch. Sewing duties passed to the more charismatic and talented Maria (who would make a stylish wardrobe for six children out of curtains).
Nun 6 was re-assignmed to the VonTrapp mansion -- where she fell for the baron. Her physical disabilities, however, prevented her from twirling in meadows and climbing trees to wave at trains (and might have eventually slowed down the entire family enough to be caught by the Nazis). She just "wasn't working out."
Watching from afar as the baron wooed Maria, No. 6 yanked down the abby parlor's lace curtains one night and stitched a diaphanous white gown, which she wears at night through the empty halls.
It's one of the most challenging roles I've ever tackled. Oh, the complexities! The dragging of the left leg and the squint will be a piece of cake, but the madness! I must -- though it be extremely avant garde -- wrest control of the musical mid-performance and shriek out mad despair the Baron and Maria's love. It would cause an emotional sensation never to be recreated. Art!

Tire Fire of the Heart

2007-07-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

My Volkswagen Golf supposedly has tires that, if compromised, leak air in itty bitty incriments so if I'm blazing down the Autobahn at 200 mph I won't have a blow out, flip up into the air and down a picaresque Alpine mountainside.

However, as far as life's concerned, I usually shop at front-yard used-tire piles so when the going gets (too) fast, I careen around on rims, feet from precipitous edges. Note to self: build a big bonfire of bad mindsets, predjudices, fear and furies. Do whatever it takes to Think Right.

2007-07-02T14:16:00.001-07:00

So tired of the straight life
where everywhere you turn
there's vultures and thieves at your back.

-SM

If you can make it (to) there!

2007-06-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

That's what the song should be. If you can make it TO New York City, you can make it to anywhere -- you wouldn't need a head-hunter or real estate agent (or infinite on-line want ads) to get to the top of Mt. Everest.

Mishima's Sword

2007-06-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

I have the audacity to review a book: Mishima's Sword by Christopher Ross. It might be the fever talking, but I just didn't like it.

I thought the idea was very worthy. A national icon committed ritualistic suicide and Christopher Ross recovers the sword (and story) decades later. It's a first-person investigative adventure of the heart (he's a martial artist, he's a writer).

The book bursts with Japan-icana: the traditional measure for sword-sharpness (the number of cadavers it could cut, at which joints of the body); the oils for rust; the legend of a "good" sword, how leaves on a stream evade the blade (while striking another) because the moral sword avoids unnecessary hurt.

The drawing of a human body, scored by 10 horizontal lines, the diagram for cadaver-cutting.

His writing is clear, hard, efficient -- sentences cutting clean and sharp, clean and sharp, with Japanese names, detailed rituals, history, etc. But I can't shake the idea that all these sharp sentences are just facts drawn quickly across a dead body.

"Mishima claimed that the feminine side of Japan, displayed in the arts of ikebana and the tea ceremony, in kimono design and the institution of geisha, in haiku and ceramics, had been deliberately stressed since the American occupation. But this side was not the whole of Japanese culture. There was also an immense historical and cultural investment in the arts and attitudes of the warrior: the sword needed to balance the chrysanthemum."

Christopher Ross is the book's only warm, living character, and I couldn't feel a pulse. Too much "steady hand and mind" as he faced the potentially bloody ritual of writing? Was he ashamed to share his true emotion? (And is that's why David Sederis is so powerful; because he tells everything? Shameless.)

The author admits he felt kind of victorious in befriending a true-life Japanese bartender. AND felt constricted on a plane ride! The factual evidence was all there -- Mishima is worthy of our consideration. But our passion? The author's passion? More chrystanthemum, less blade.

In Sickness and in Basements

2007-06-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Well, not-blogging didn't improve my not-writing situation, so I may as well fling more thoughts into the void from the Greenville Public Library.
The only thing going on right now is that I'm sick again.
I've been marking on my calendar when I jog, to make sure I'm actually going out more than once (which feels like three times, to me), and there are at least three gaps in the past two months, when I've suffered a thin, hot grizzly-drizzle. (And exhaustion.)
Now, more fodder for my morbid, fever-fueled fantasies: what if the apartment's making me sick? Like, with mold? It is a basement, with about three windows total. And sixty crickets (the spidery, cave-crickety sprickets), and slugs. SLUGS. I'm not kidding -- on the living room floor. So, it's pretty damp, too. (Why do you live there? It's $500 a month, and a mile from Main Street.)
One of my friends, a nurse, said, "I don't think you should live there at all, Sara. Not even for another week. Not even another day. So, what are your plans?" Ha, ha. But really, I don't know. Like, why didn't it strike all last year, while I lived there? Well, I lived in the room with the clothes dryer. Understandably a little less damp. ($500 a month, a mile from Main Street.)
However, the bottom line is that it sucks, being sick. The first day of my being sick, this time, I noticed a big, fleshy wood spider near my front door. Over-weary, I suffered it to live. The second day, like the discomfort in my gullet creeping from my sinuses to my throat, I realized it had stealthily moved from the front wall, to the side wall, above my dresser.
On the third day, as some thick substance resonated in my chest with each cough, I reached to answer my phone when The Sudden Spider! (an emotion in and of itself) It was on the curtain above my bed.
Unable to deal, I slept on the sofa.

break

2007-03-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, faithful readers. I think I'm going to take a break from blogging for awhile. (To spend more time on other writing projects, hopefully.)

My windows are open

2007-03-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

... now, and I'd like to write about dogs. No so much of a rant, than a rave?
My neighbor's dogs bark a barbershop quartet. There's a bass New Foundland, a spaniel, a tenor Corgie-mix and a pug, assaulting every tinctature of my eardrum. Actually, I'm not sure if the pug barks. He just kind of stands around and shakes the hypothetical tambourine.
A neighbor boy, 11 or so, though, sometimes just happens to walk his monsterous Great Dane past the yard. The New Foundland raises his dusty bulk, bounds toward the chain-links and roars masterful rage. That boy is my hero. The commotion is magnificent.
The subdivision I grew up in in New Jersey wasn't an ... airtight, treeless, taupe newcomer-depository (like we have around here, sorry), but I don't think I've ever lived in a real neighborhood until now. I look out my front door and see family-dogs-on-leashes. Terriers and greyhounds. Baby strollers. Greyhounds peering adorably into baby strollers. Tattooed neighbors, carrying babies. All waving, as I read on the porch. Even the dogs. (Which is kind of a dumb ending, but I was going for poignant, with a dab of mystic mystery, and came up empty. Maybe I'll try one more time ... )
I know I'm living in the perfect place, when I look out my open window under a full moon, and see the Corgie, the pug, the New Foundland, the Great Dane, the greyhounds, and the babies all dancing, paw-in hand-in-paw, in a great grand circle.

bright salt

2007-03-07T08:53:00.000-08:00

Woke up at @ 2:30 a.m., thinking that what I wrote wasn't expressed in the right spirit. (Confirmed by the intro to Colossians in The Message, which I just happened to be on this morning!)

I Think ...

2007-02-20T16:16:00.000-08:00

I'd like to write something without over-thought or merit. :) I'm making my own head hurt. But I don't know what to write! And I'm defeating the purpose because, right now, I'm thinking too hard.

Ivan the Wonderful

2007-02-17T09:57:00.000-08:00

My cat, Ivan, bites. I like to blame it on his declawing because it's a rabid pet peeve of mine, and I trash it at every opportunity. I think, mostly, though, he bites because he's a cat. I hate that he wants to bite my friends but, being a cat (which, to train, would take more thought than the brooding Jellicles'), I mainly ask people not to touch him, despite his fluffy body, bright, inquisitive eyes, etc.
He doesn't bite me. I stuff him in a tote bag when I take him to the vet. After a shot for athsma, once, he galloped down the examination table, smacking the vet's arm with inpotent paws. (Scared my vet to death! Guilty hilarity.) "Do you need help getting him back in that bag?" No, thank you. I just picked limp Ivan up, stuffed him in, zipped it.
All this to say, I'm coming to the realization I have an animal heart. Quick to bite, very hard to tame, wants to love slavishly, but surprised, hurt, bites. Fight, hide, survive.
I've called it by 100 self-flattering names, while leaving teeth marks in table legs. It's like, I mean what I say, in love, and usually don't regret it, I'm just sick of the words marching out fully armed, swords drawn, ready to kill or be killed ... Breaking it out of metaphor, I'm timidly quiet, often, in general, to muzzle a potential roar. (Oops. Back to metaphor.)
I'd rather lean more on Christ-love, growing like a spirit-fruit, saturating that part of my wierd, fearful heart. And not so fearfully aware of the fearful potentials of fear. I don't think the Spirit would bring it to my attention unless He could do it. To be tamed by Him, and tempered towards everyone else.
I liked this out of "Blue Like Jazz:" "We dream of Christ's love for His bride reading like Romeo and Juliet; two equals enflamed in liberal love. I think it is more like Lucentio's pursuit of Bianca in 'The Taming of the Shrew.' That is, the groom endearing the belligerent bride with kindness, patience and love." Amen.

snip snip

2007-02-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

I'm getting my hair cut in exactly 30 minutes!

my sin, oh the bliss, of that wonderous thought ...

2007-02-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

... that it's gone, under Christ's blood.
We took communion Sunday after a few minutes to think about how we might be at odds with the Spirit. Sin, after sin, after sin came to mind. I confessed and confessed and confessed ... We sang a closing song, and they came back again. But this time, they were sweet. Sin, the opposite of sweet, flipped suddenly to sweet because I was realizing grace.
I came from a Christian community, where, I think they're afraid to admit sin to each other, or themselves. It's almost as if there's a superstitious dread of "getting it on them." What? Get what on them, that isn't already writhing in their own hearts? It wasn't until I felt almost crushed under the weight of my own sin, that I felt grace. The freedom of admitting sin, and the freedom of grace!

bit part

2007-01-31T16:53:00.000-08:00

I think I've done it! Moved from fantasy to the quest of an attainable dream.
First of all, let me innumerate my tragic assortment of paradoxical qualities. For one, I jabber without a single eye-blink before vast crowds (for better or for worse). Assigned a chapel seat "down front" in college, I realized, one morning, I was still standing when the organ cranked up the service. (Picture this in slow motion ...) I turned, looked behind me at five thousand of my peers, all looking my way. Whoo! Wow! I grinned, I waved, I finally sat down.
I also have a fair dose of audacity. And a ... secret longing for the theater. Enter the tragical paradoxical: I have a "tin ear" for acting. So, it's a pitiful whine of a longing, never to be fulfilled. (Though my parents were in plays, and took me to innumerable plays growing up.)
Auditions after auditions, from Cheaper by the Dozen in the tenth grade, to Into the Woods, a few months ago. So many, that the audition's kind of become "the thing." If an audition-reviewer had been there, this past summer, he'd most-definitely have noted my rousing rendition of "Rainbow High!" from Evita at the Little Theater.
This past Monday night would have been the pinnacle of my auditioning career -- to become my alter ego, Aldonza (Man of La Mancha). Aldonza, who sings, "kitchen slut!" and all manner of thrillingly despairing lines at the TOP of her beautiful lungs. The Aldonza I listened to as a child, over and over (my parents had the record). Doubtless, why I am so warped.
But I didn't go, Monday. Because, you know what? I think I actually, for real, might like a go at the stage. Just once. Which is hard to admit, because I have friends who are the real deal (maybe I'll sneak off to another state).
But just to taste it. Once. To get it out of my system. A few weeks in those mysterious shadows, behind the red curtains.
I may blaze with the fiery spirit of Aldonza! (ha!) but, with my ability, I wouldn't truly enjoy trying to play her on stage.
This year, 2007, I want to aspire to something real. A bit part. Which, to me, would be more thrilling than the breathless silence of an audience, just subjected to my heart-wrenching wail of a woman, "spawned in a ditch, by a mother who left her there; naked and hungry, and too cold to cry." (I can't say I blame her, I'm sure she left hoping that I'd have the good sense to die.)

I Deserved That

2007-01-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

Hey, Christian folks -- read this blog. For one, I love the writing. Which makes the ripping-out of my guts all the more horrible. Don't read to agree or disagree -- just learn.
I wish the only thing he had to say about Christians was, "There was this guy at work who spent all Saturday helping me move."

http://www.brentrasmussen.com/log/node/363

Punk Write

2007-01-12T07:46:00.000-08:00

I don't know if on-line guy-meeting is for me, because it involves writing. And writing's where I love to shout, rage, rave and basically, act the loon. I mean it! Everything I'm saying! With a world of thought and conviction! But the keyboard's still a 61-piece drum set, and I am the spiky-haired, tatted, two-drumstick-twirling punk. (Despite the limitations of my talent and skill.)
We're not entirely what we create, you know. I don't think Stephen King chats up the grocery clerk with, "Gray day outside! Kind of like the mottled coat of a ressurrected Yorkie." Monet wasn't a blurry smear of color; he didn't dash along hallways marking blurry smears, or smear YOU with blurry smears.
I once wrote to a guy I was just getting to know. A fellow creative. We ate supper one night, and the only thing I really remember him saying was a thin, dismissive: "weird." Which I've carried between my ribs since. Doubtless, something I'd written gave him that impression.
I have a few optional responses to my dilemma. Channel the inner Ritalin when it comes to the simple, communicative e-mail. Very good. Also, maybe I can do what the Apostle Paul couldn't even pull off: meld a mild personality with bold, vivid letter-writing.
I don't want to tame words, though. I want them to dance through a meadow like the townsfolk in the Safety Dance video. Give me a meldody -- a plot, a point -- and I'll crank it up as far as it'll go. Just be glad I'm not in your basement.

Something Like Shawshank Redemption

2007-01-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

But not involving sewers (or emotionally gripping characters or situations). Independent filmmaker, I envision a cubicle, maybe seventh floor of your average office building. A woman, entombed in her gray box glances nervously right, left, before crouching and lifting a square of her carpet, cut with a razor. It resembles a hatch, a shaft, leading down so far the tiny square of light, shining like a diamond. A deep breath, one more glance, and she begins her descent.
Now, I think the hook to all this is: everyone really wants to see what's under the floor. Really. Literally, and what's between floors. Right? Cut carpet, wires, foam ceiling tiles, dust. Spiders. And what's at the bottom? You'll just have to wait for Sundance, or Cannes.

funky fonts

2007-01-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

I think Christianity-in-postmodernism is all about Christian books and Bibles in funky fonts.

holy, holy, holy

2006-12-30T08:16:00.000-08:00

There's something fresh going on in my (sad, frail) Christian heart, and it looks like it's part of a collective sweep. I was reading the intro to "The Dust Off Their Feet" a retelling of Acts by Brian McLaren (I love it!), and picking up those buzz concepts: relevance, truth presented to appeal to the entire person (including sensory -- art, music) ... When opponents name this (movement?), we'll see all it's components in a nutshell, with a conclusion, probably, about selling out (selling out what?) to appeal to the worldly, or everyone jumping on a bandwagon.
The funny thing, though, is that I unknowingly climbed on the bandwagon a few years ago when I started longing for Real Truth in a (feeble, frantic) quest for holiness. I want the non-negotiables in Scripture that transcend, and translate to all cultures.
I'm too afraid to get close enough to a holy God to put words in His mouth right now. To say, "This is how God wants you to dress. This is the music God wants you to listen to ..." Look like this, say this, do that. I will say, "Don't get drunk. Don't steal. Be modest. Love, love, help, serve ..."
So, this truth-quest is the search for "relevance?" I'm already sure it's relevant, and not so much wondering "What's in it for me?" I wanted meaning, for me. Pondering all this, I'm both joyed and terrified that God's not compressed into Exactly What I Thought He Was, that He's untamed, that He's allowed to have mysteries, is in control of everything (sovereign), is author of my life and the world's life, and it's all good. Release and surrender. Relief. (Which is why I love a Reformed church for the chance to just lift the hands of my heart and say: "It's all You. Your blood has washed away my sin, Jesus, thank you.") Ponder God = truth/meaning = awe = joy/fear.

Acts Now

2006-12-13T10:02:00.000-08:00

A friend the other day commented on how men, in general, seem to be abdicating leadership when it comes to women, family, etc. Maybe guys see women's independence as a convenient excuse to fade into a more comfortable background, I don't know. (Really, I don't know what guy enjoys confrontation on an emotional plane where women stand, a lot of times, hand-on-holster.)
But a thought occurred to me, in relation, concerning Christian singleness. I wonder if we're waiting for the Magic Spouse in order to find real support and fellowship. And blaming guys (or girls) because we're ... missing a mysterious spiritual component. What is it? Is it support? Maybe not. We're comfortable, except for this one lack of security: someone to care, know me, offer insight, support. Otherwise, I'm comfortable. So, all I'm really waiting for is Magic Spouse.
Which came out snarkier than I intended. It's just that, it's not all about comfort, right? Think about Truth and how, if you really meditate on it, Meaning soaks through your mental membranes. Then comes awe = joy + fear. Not comfortable. Almost unbearable, but God's joy = strength. And you want more, more, more ...
Desiring God, I experience joy (thank you, John Piper, for putting it into words), and I chase Him via the "Way" (thank you, Lao Tzu and your brother-mystics for suggesting a "best way"). The Way, as I mean it, of "forget me, love God and others." Which is absurdly un-safe, in a world whose most-every fiber shouts: "forget you." (Or worse.)
I want to -- intentionally -- give God my little loaves/fishes of obedience and -- expectantly -- watch Him multiply it. Which = joy. And I need brothers/sisters to 1. want that too, 2. team-up and get to know me, bear burdens, share insights.
Embarassing, obvious simplicities. But I haven't experienced this much. And not for a long time. And in the meantime, I've been eaten alive by discouragement. While I've smiled and eaten potluck.
"Join a team! Join a ministry. Become a missionary, and head to China." Those are great ideas, for real. But I have a mission field already, and a Christian organization doesn't guarantee heartfelt brother/sisters.
I don't want a para-military prayer group, a curriculum-spurred Bible study, matching T-shirts, communal living, just serious, lets-get-busy, here-we-go heartfelt teaming-up to care and serve.
"Join a care group! Meet with an older woman!" I will. This is just a Wed. afternoon blog-servation -- and prayer request. Less a want ad than the little ads Catholics sometimes take out in the back of newspapers: cryptic "thank you's" to God.
I want to live Acts now, even single. I absolutely cannot wait.

Swarm

2006-12-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

Let your Swallow loose, to eat the swarming termites of my mind.

Freak of Gravity

2006-11-27T10:31:00.000-08:00

I visited a great Methodist ministry this past week, prompting me to ponder how service harmonizes with my now, Reformed-ward longings: "It's all for God, by God. (Praise God!)" Where does that leave me?
If salvation, on our part, (faith), is a "non-work" -- "I accept/submit to/want/need/am engulfed by Your grace" -- maybe our service is really a series of "non-works." (Don't blame BJU's faculty for this idea. I think it was more Taoism-inspired: wu wei, "doing" by not doing ...)
Not so much living Christ via these verbs: "Storm! Besiege, infiltrate, persist, break down, demolish!" But these: "Gravitate, enjoy, share, explain, love, help, serve, whisper, wait, wait, listen, walk-beside, hold, weep, willing and want." Kind of sounds mamby-pamby, but all that with a definite intent, expectancy, firm truth-grip and Godward-ness.

Engine Light

2006-11-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

Blink. Volkswagen on
the blink. Keep me safe, little
light, and keep me poor.

All Quiet

2006-11-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

Now that everyone has forgotten my blog (except for Nicholas), I will begin to write again. My shoes climp clomp across the old stage, dust angels levitate in the solitary light.
"Hello?"
All quiet.
A tentative: "At first I was afraid, I was petrified ..."
No muffled twitters.
"I felt I could never live without you, by my side ..." (Continue full-fledged singing of 70s liberation anthem, complete with dancing!) I think blogging's like the difference of singing in your car and getting out, and singing on the sidewalk in front of your house. A neighbor might be listening, but he's more likely to be watching The Office or Dr. Phil. But still, there's that 1% chance that someone, somewhere, is paying attention.

passion

2006-10-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

fearless passion is theater.
fearful passion is poetry. (or ferocity.)

Evora Tangeline

2006-10-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

Mi abuela was a pistolera. A hired gun. Unheard of, for her day, when the only acceptable professions for women were wife, school teacher or saloon can-can dancer. They had not yet won liberation enough to be stage-coach drivers, cowhands or bartenders.
Mi abuela, though, was not seeking fame or glory, though both haunted her through her short, tragic life. Haunted her with shame.
She grew up the only child of a blind farmer, maimed at the Alamo. Maimed by the Alamo, a bit of exploding brick struck his handsome visiage. Now marred, mi abuela's mother left him, and left mi abuela to shoot the jack rabbits who sought solace from the scorching sun in the grasses twisted hard as wicker. The droughts were terrible, as was the shooting. Her father wiped away the tears he knew, without seeing, streaked his child's silent face. It was appropriate, he said, to kill to eat. To kill for independence, even. She was not convinced.

Sad Haiku Say So Much

2006-10-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

root

you were shallow dirt.
dandilion-wand me blew
where I don't know where.

Enclosed is a Random Thought

2006-09-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

I like to capitalize otherwise unassuming words and make them into Concepts. Today, walking up to the library, revelling in my Pedestrianism, it occurred to me that at least three generations of my family have been Enclosed. Well, maybe not the generation right before me who've mostly been moms, teachers, postmen and misc., but my 75-year-old dad was, for years and years, a manager-type in a state office (Enclosed in an office) and my grandma/pa worked in a mill. Which, for all its bustle, is still ... Enclosed. Before that (I could not predict what I was getting into, when I first opened that book of Wendell Berry essays ...) they were all out in the fields.
So, was newspaper reporting Enclosed? Half immersion in a conceptual world, and half "normal" interaction in a social, and if you count actually walking around and seeing stuff happen, in a physical way. Hm. Is being a barrista Enclosed? Mostly, no, though I work in a basement.

My Locust Mind

2006-09-01T15:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, I do have the brain of a locust, but I'm actually referring to the miracle that I've actually read this summer. My brain's gobbling up words, locust-like. (It usually leaves a snail-trail across a new book every two to three months.)
I'm going to list them, for your amazement and my own:
June:
This Book Will Save Your Life
The Life of Pi
Ten Big Ones, Janet Evanovich
July:
The Enormous Room, ee cummings
Sailing Alone Around the Room, Billy Collins
Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, E. Fitzgerald
August:
Falling Up, Shel Silverstein
Scarlet Feather, Maeve Binchy
The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger
The Irresistable Revolution, Shane Claiborne
Everyone Worth Knowing, Lauren Weisberger
Adverbs, Daniel Handler
Driving Mr. Albert, Michael Paterniti

On the Road

2006-08-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

It's my annual visit-the-nephews tour of NJ/Pa. And, since I just finished On the Road by Jack K., I'll write a stream-of-consciousness travelogue.
I-95 rolls blue! But my eyes rise to the orange side of a U-Haul falling away beside. Someone's peeled off a letter, and "self moving" is "elf moving."
Now, a pickup sports magnetic catfish and a bumper sticker for a diner that serves a "trash plate." It swallows me at Exit 14, East Bessemer City, 11:48 a.m. The Fray bewails, "Over My Head," on the radio.
A mud-flapless truck chucks a tiny, five-pointed star into my windshield, 12:03. Shoot.
A billboard: "After 10,000 tries, there was light," with a portrait of Thomas Edison. The radio: "No one can take away your right to fight, and to never surrender."
I think of: selling my car to become a hard-core pedestrian, guys, rolling the coffee shuttle on a hand truck, guys, how to capture my co-workers in words, men, the details that really "tell," God and grace, why I always forget my cell-phone charger, guys, what I -should- have said.
This song! "Ooo, drivin' my life away ..." Country's great for road trips bcs the songs tell stories, but the Open Road genre is dangerous for a woman steeling to give up cars. A Volvo wagon's bumper sticker: "Military solutions are problems."
2:54: Live's "Lightning Crashes." Must sing along. Loudly. Following a flatbed of compressed-wood 4X4s, Virginia plates, into Vance Co. (Home of Kerr Lake.)
4:37, Richmond. The elevated highways to this pale spread are disconnected from earth. A pale haze. 104 degrees. Electric dynamos. Phillip Morris' corporate HQ with its huge, cigarette-silloutte sign emblazoned with brand names. Staind on the radio. All paleness and powerlines except for a sudden, antique, red-brick church, and a beatnik billboard for "Departing Bike Works."
Pretty Harley to my left. The pickup's driver to my right glances over, in interest. Bumper sticker in the window by his ear, "Watch for motorcycles, Virginia!"
Descent into Washington, 6:07 p.m. Traffic stops. On the shoulder, one black rubber galosh. Then, a whole McDonald's cheeseburger, nestled on its wrapper, three feet from my car door.
Israel's turmoil updated on NPR. The big rectangle of a white Ford Explorer, Maryland plates, 284M505.

The Enormous Room

2006-07-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

ee cummings' memoir about his imprisonment in a French prison during WWI for suspected espionage. (He and a friend were volunteer ambulance drivers.)

This is what happens when poets write books! Poets, the most painterly writers. Mr. Pound's Impressionist "petals on a wet, black bough." Billy Collins' fine, dark brush, "The moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed."

He SAW the details, in the scruffy cell-mates, to paint them, excrutiatingly, as the most wrenching creature known to man: Man. Which is the most ... True. And True is exactly what knocks us on our butts, artistically. And that's what he really wanted to do -- France misplaced these lifes and forgot them.

What a writer! A portrait-painter. It's a phalanx of paradoxes: bright, bitter, satirical, beautiful. A story about justice, the value of a life, etc. But to me, personally, it's also about Art. (Which I'm always trying to define, just like the Tao. "Which I think is ..." Shhh, Earth inturrupts. "No, really, I think it's ..." Fingers of wind against my lips.)

I'm so fascinated by the HUGE FEELING involved in creating. Like, what is it? I will venture an audacious suspicion that ee cummings ... loved Life. That he searched Life's face (like a lover! Oh, the drama!), for these intimate details, in the faces of Fritz, Haree, Bill the Hollander, B., the Cook, etc. A deep Appreciation (of these flea-bitten, greasy-soup-swilling "Delectable Mountains"). Passion! Being consumed. Outrage. Love.

Doesn't Rhyme, but May Resonate

2006-07-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes,
I wonder if I'm due
to suffer this way
until I find the words
to capture it
more exactly, piercingly,
than anyone ever
before.
So, I'll wait and wait
and write
and write.

I Was Stalked by Superman

2006-07-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

By Lois Lane

I've been on the downside of a plummeting Eiffle-Tower elevator. My grip has slipped from steel siding, sending me spinning down from a skyscraper. I've been held captive, countless times, by mad genius Lex Luthor. But I've never felt terror, as a woman, as I have as the victim of a stalker.
I'm a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, conditioned not to feel fear, so it's a bitter pill to write this. But if my story can help someone else, I'll tell it.
In all those tight spots, the Paris plummet, the skyscraper skydive, the Lex captivities, Superman was there. Good thing. But also a bad thing.
His bold, erstwhile glances at me after a rescue, as I bobbed about in the crowd, pen and pad in hand, soon turned sinister. I could almost feel his piercing vision, oogling my very heart, organs.
"It'll never work, Superman," I told him, brusquely, several times.
Just that smile, in return. That haunting, haunting smile. He'd be back. Always. Trailing me through the skies, watching through the walls, even circling the Earth at beyond-sonic speed to get his way.
I toyed with the idea it was all my fault. I'm a hard-charging, beautiful, charasmatic player on the journalistic world stage. Then, there was that fling of a marriage, Niagra Falls. Blame it on the borealis, the soundtrack, the occassional kiss.
But when I say, "It'll never work, Superman," it means, "it'll never work."
And then it happened.
Only through therapy can I talk about it, to help free myself from the pain.
Last Tuesday, while on the roof of the Daily Planet for a casual smoke, Superman abducted me, high into the skies.
"Wha? Wha?" I stammered, but it was too late. During a tense conversation, he'd elevated us both into the air. The setting sun flickered on his grin as we buzzed my lakeside home. He knew where I lived. He even glanced toward the kitchen, where I, my new boyfriend, and small son cook nutritious meals together.
High above the planet, he told me he heard voices.
I am Lois Lane, but I no longer mistakenly feel like I can handle this by myself.
Support groups. Super-proof locks on doors and windows. A restraining order. Patrols by Metropolis cops. A thin shard of Kryptonite concealed in my boot.
Get help, Superman. You need it as much as I do. I say it because I really do care, even though, as far as "we" go, "It'd never work. It just wouldn't work."

Art For the Hilareous Joy of It

2006-07-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

Pirates of the Carribean! I'm back to the arguement (art-gument) that Art is simply power.
With the Godfather, the fierce love of family/ legacy/ power v. right was a dark, mental ferment throughout. A given. And I yearned along with the little guy in Rocky. (A masterpiece). But ... have you ever looked at a barnacle, the pilings under a dock, roiling water, and felt this dark, gothic, mysterious pleasure? Yes. The ickiness of the sea! The overwhelming, frightening, awesome ickiness of the sea. I felt it deeply yesterday afternoon at the manitee (oops! matinee), and that's why I loved this movie. (A squid beard!!). And I will defend it to the end, wisps of hair escaping my tri-cornered cap, smouldering eyes fixed, saber ready.

Then, there's Dragonforce. In a nutshell: heavy metal about ... surviving/overcoming in a land ruled by dragons. I have no idea how serious they are about the dragons, but the music is very, very serious. I'm no speed metal afficionado, by any stretch, but whatever else, this is absolutely art.

I Hang it, Withering, On the Porch Light

2006-07-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

South Carolina
pin oaks drop mistletoe in
July thunderstorms

My disposition,
a hopeful flag, though poisonous,
of green stuff woven

The Importance of Being Ernest (Hemingway)

2006-07-01T12:24:00.000-07:00

Act III

An Adaptation by Evora Tangeline
(With Aplogies to E. Hemingway and O. Wilde)
(And special thanks to M. Labar, who did grad work on Gertrude Stein.)

NOTES ON CHARACTERS AND COSTUMES
LADY BRACKNELL: She is a woman of ample proportions, the ultimate in a dowager of literary society. Lady Bracknell never lacks for words, and she makes every word count, savoring each one down to the last syllable. She dresses in frumpy black shirts and gowns.

From ACT III

SCENE: The scene is a steamy Mexican terrace. It is a bright, cheery porch.

MISS PRISM: I was told you expected me in the vestry, dear Canon. I have been waiting for you there for an hour and three quarters.

LADY BRACKNELL: (sitting on a sofa, surrounded by paintings by Picasso). Prism!

MISS PRISM: (bowing her head in shame). Lady Bracknell!

LADY BRACKNELL: Come here Prism! (Prism approaches her in a humble manner.) Prism! Where is the baby? The baby in your charge. In the perambulator, the perambulator with the wheels that go round and round. The wheels that go round and round in the perambulator in which sat the baby, the baby in the perambulator.

MISS PRISM: (falteringly). I admit with shame that I do not know. I only wish I did. In a moment of mental abstraction, I deposited the manuscript in the bassinet and placed the baby in the handbag.

CHASUBLE. What do you think this means, Lady Bracknell?

LADY BRACKNELL: I dare not even suspect, Dr. Chasuble. A monster puzzle, a heavy choking, a neglected Tuesday.

CECILY: (glancing toward a sudden sound). Uncle Jack seems strangely agitated.

CHASUBLE: Can't hold his emotions.

LADY BRACKNELL: A sound. (The clicking of castinets are heard overhead again. Everybody looks upwards.) Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this. (The noises stop.)

Jealousy

2006-06-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

New basement flat. She
has two floors? One gray Siamese
in seven windows.

The Importance of Being Ernest (Hemingway)

2006-06-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

(With apologies to E. Hemingway and Oscar Wilde.)

ACT ONE

SCENE: The scene is the sitting room of Algy's flat in Tijuana. The room is tastefully and somewhat artistically furnished. Two elephant guns form an archway UR, leads to the outer hall ... Rugs, several good paintings and the usual bric-a-brac, including a few trophies, leopards' heads, complete the setting.

AT RISE OF CURTAIN: Just before the curtain rises, grunting and the sound of punches into a bag are heard. When the curtain rises, LANE is arranging afternoon tea on the table C. After a few moments, the boxing stops and Algy saunters in.

ALGY (crossing LC) Punch me, Lane.
LANE (not pausing) It's not polite.
ALGY (shrugging) Did you cut the Cuban cigars for Lady Bracknell?
LANE Yes.
ALGY Did you drink eight quarts of my Tequila Wednesday?
LANE A pint, too.
ALGY The help always drink my hooch.
LANE Bachelors have it good.
ALGY Marriage is bad.
LANE I was married once.
ALGY I don't care.
LANE Me neither.

(Castenets click off L, afternoon light casts entire stage in red glow, a flamenco dancer trills his R's.)

(Lane enters UR and passes upstage of entrance.)
LANE (announcing) Mr. Ernest Worthing
ALGY Hello, Ernest.
JACK Hello.
ALGY Where have you been?
JACK Africa.
ALGY Well. Oh, why?
JACK Hunting.
ALGY What?
JACK Oh, tigers, tigers!
ALGY Are there any tigers in Tijuana?
JACK None that I can shoot. Why the whiskey, cigars? Is company coming?
ALGY Aunt Augusta and Gwendoline.
Jack Good.

(Lions roar in distance off L.)

Fragile and Precious Things ...

2006-06-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

... need special handling. My Own Mattress aback a Ford pickup through downtown, River and Broad streets, ... naked as Lady Godiva!
Waking up on the sofa in a strange room, headlights bob through new curtains like willow th' wisps. To follow them out would be folly. We signed a year's lease.
The creak of unseen feet. A stranger lives upstairs.
But she has glorious tattoos and a hippie skirt, custody of an old roommate's elderly cat, a garden gnome and an electric organ (we can hear through the floor). She also offered pity for all the Stuff she saw through a window, jammed into the front room. "Yea." Sigh. Hey -- at least it's inside. We're moving it around like one of those sliding-tile games. (But with two empty squares, where our beds are.)
Off we go in search of dusty purple paint for the bathroom. Bachelorettes with a poster of the Raconteurs in the living room.

Extra! Extra!

2006-05-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

Newsflashes! (With apologies to The Onion.)

Local man shaves head, gets tattoo, becomes big teddy bear. (Before photo: distruntled middle-aged man, comb-over, polo shirt. After: goofy grin.)

Local woman believes this the best Pop-Tart she's ever eaten. (Photo: a Pop-Tart.)

Taxi-driving baritone has just the sound U2 missing in "One." ("I know Bono will overhear me one day, singing my amazing harmony," said Patrick Walsh, 45, alone in his cab.)

Monsters with Beaks

2006-05-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

Do art-people and blogs mix? I'm tempted (dangerously) to prance about in my emotional knickers here (a tendency for most art-types?) I hope this morning session before the crackling fire (gas logs at the Atlanta Bread Company) will be just a nice, "Something I learned."

Big emotion! Passion! Conviction! I think it can werewolf us (me), in a moment, into a monster. The good news: I have something to say! And if I feel strongly, maybe I can present it compellingly. The bad news: monsters are scary.
So ... is it war? (Proverbs: Don't learn the Angry Way.) Ironically, The Art of War is about efficiency (simplicity), effectiveness (doing it well), not about ... racing around willy-willy, battle hatchet waving.
Is it frustration? Maybe. I want to say what I mean! Clearly (from my mind) and compellingly (from my heart). I'd like to -be- more true (and less afraid of what you'll think).
Is it impatience? With myself, with others ... but God says: live it, then say it and mean it. -He- changes hearts. He is changing my heart.
Outside: patience. Kindness. Inside: the Monster.
So ... I want God to leach away the frustration, impatience and/or war. I want the "monster's" beak to hold an olive branch. (I Googled "monsters with beaks" and found only pterodactyls, giant squid and griffins, so I'm going with the latter. Though I think moths have tiny beaks, so maybe Moth-Ra would have a giant beak and also qualify.)
Couldn't Big Emotion! Passion! Conviction! Be ... majestic?
Alice (in Wonderland) was quite cool with her hulking griffin. "What fun!"

Shades for Spring

2006-05-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Evangeline's Mary Kay Website

I have many new colors and textures for Spring. Opal No. 32 to coat your lids like the smear of a moth's wing. Black Cherry for lips, which say to each other, "Fool. He still will not crave you." A spectrum of Sable, Steely, Slate and Charcoal liner for lashes and lips.

New this year: Ivory No. 100 to dust the moist cobwebs Age weaves in the corners of eyes, mouth. Cobs, the unseen spiders. Legs pricking the harpsichord's brittle gavotte, composed for youths, long dead. Now, channel their spark!

Thirty shades of pink for lips, to brighten the height (and heartbreak) of beauty, "to die," even as it to perfection grows.

Bronze, Indigo and Violet make you the envy of faded beauty.

Sage No. 45 rims eyes, "green and dying," though you sing in your chains like the sea.

Come to my party!
7 p.m., June 2, 305 North Poppy Ct.

Or visit me before school, Mr. Craven's homeroom, Room 201, or in the hallway. I am the girl who looks like Poe.

Links:
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Gothic Archies
StrongBad
Chimeras, Scylla and Nymphs
Mary Kay International
Tales of Tangeline

Scouts

2006-04-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

We went to see the scouts! On Wednesday night, from between my raised, weightless feet, News 7 reported there'd be 25 scouts at Wren High to watch an outfielder named Jason, the nation's third best.
Irrisistible whimsy.
We skirted Mom at the gate, slipped through the chain links, past a portable pig roaster and a tailgate full of dads. We wouldn't be there long.
The moon sharpened into focus. Cool April crawled up under T-shirts. Teens made bee-lines to no discernable destinations, and mom-talk roiled from the depths of lawn chairs -- but all eyes were on the ball. And their louder Voice called out: "Jason!"
Twenty-five scouts. My roommate and I panned faces. We saw them! But didn't know them. (Duh!)
A khaki-clad clique grinned by the fence. Maybe just Wren's business dads, home from Greenville or Atlanta in time for the game. What about that woman, especially attentive, with the pink-sunglasses tiara?
A lean man, not three feet away, coiled in repose, brim down around his eyes. He watched, too. Waited for the signal -- Potential! Possibility! -- of something rare in the guy winging baseballs in from the outfield.

2006-04-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

Ah ha! But there's really nothing here about creamed eggs. It was just a trick.

2006-04-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

I tentatively step forth into the great void that is the Internet. Millions upon millions upon millions all happening upon this post because they've happlessly googled: "creamed eggs."