The wind and her...

Something about wind and her hair makes her eyes that much sexier.

I was thinking about sand and an hourglass. That bird that carried those grains to a distant shore, one by one.

For eternity.

Alone but not lonely because of a purpose however mundane. He's changing the world with each piece of sand carried in his tiny beak. And it's changing slowly but surely. Improving. Changing into something more beautiful because he is beautiful.

Like her. Sweet and young and pure of soul. White and wonderful. And if you look beneath his wings you'll see her reflected there. You'll see the form of the world's beauty because it contains her and she contains it. Complet and sublime. He'll save the world and carry her with him, wrapped in soft feathers.

They may soar to new heights and new sights. A wind-washed cliff or white-capped waves. Because from the first moment he shook his wings, that wind was set in motion and formed the rocks and the waters of the earth with its soft fingers. He formed man from that same sand that he carries still. Sand and clay and the wind from his wings became man's breath.

And man's breath and his body became woman's and she was perfect in shape and spirit. Much like her who is another image of that first woman...

The quiet hours...

In the quiet hours of the night, when all I hear are the day's echoes, I whisper to you. About will and about death. In the hours after the sun has set, I contemplate breath and blood and warmth and how my thoughts cycle and spin like snow and dust, blowing in the same wind. When the body cools and the soul awakes. Passes through dirt and leaves, does its gaze fall back to earth? Is death really, as Rilke says, when the living depart from everything in order to reflect upon life? Will my identity remain with my soul when my breath goes or will it decay with my skin and flesh until it is merely an imprint on my bones. If it imprinted on my soul, will it remain intact? Or will it evaporate in space with other minds and memories, floating endlessly? I want to believe that these fragments of past generations, the thoughts and feelings and passions of others no longer living, have combined in me and I will remain long after I die. I long for that quiet place where I can sleep and awake to consider life and eternity.

Not much sense among these words probably...

Helpless...

Helplessness is beautiful. Helpless beauty... The feeling that you are at the mercy of another, but that other is good and right and true. I've felt helpless. Helpless to be the man that God has called me to be. The one I dreamt I would be, running through the South Carolina nights. That was where the spark of manhood was lit and I chased it through those trees by the creek with my friends. I've been chasing it ever since.

Then I lost it when I needed it the most and wept because of my weakness. But despite my failures and my faults, the Good brought me back to it and placed that spark safely in my heart. I hope. Because now I see why I needed it in the first place.

There was a time not too long ago in the grass where I watched and heard two separate mouths speak separate words. Those words joined somewhere in the air and became sentences and paragraphs. Poems really, we were right. And like those words our minds joined until our thoughts walked hand in hand. And as I lay on my back, watching this unfold, I saw a dragonfly on the top branch of the shading tree. It sat still and alone except for the slight vibration of its wings in the breeze. Then as I watched, another flew to the branch beside it, to also sit in the warmth of the summer afternoon.

Fly beside me, I wanted to say, because I'm safe although this world isn't. We'll follow the breeze together. Let the Wind take us where it wills, somewhere safe and still and quiet. I will watch over you on the way.

Then, like our thoughts, the two flew off together.

I want to feel helpless in this Wind. Just float where it wills because I believe that it is good and safe to do so. And on the way I want to write beauty into the world. There in the grass and the breeze I began to believe that I could.

A dead phone line...

The phone connected after the first ring and the voice that answered trembled. The sales pitch ended mid sentence when I realized that the old man on the other end was tired and certainly not interested in anything i was selling. He sounded worn out and i thought about hanging up the phone. But then he asked me my name and i told him. And after a minute of listening to a silent receiver i asked if he was ok. He told me that he was exhausted and restless. He told me about his job. How he had at least ten more years in a career he never chose, but he was turning fifty tomorrow and had kids and a dog and a house he couldn't afford. He was broken and poor and floating through life in all the wrong ways. His wife hated him for being boring, his kids never called, and he didn't know if he could take one day more. "If this is what life is really like kid, get out while you still can," he said. Speechless, i held the phone and he thanked me for listening and hung up.

I left the next day in my car with a handful of cash and a bottle of water and just drove...

Idealism...

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. Some of them hurtful, some very thoughtful. Idealistic. A romantic. A romantic idealist. These are the words that were thrown out and struck me recently. The funny thing, to me, was that the title wasn’t meant to be a compliment necessarily. I find that to be disheartening. I listen to my friends whose hearts I deeply admire. Whose minds I deeply respect. They all seem to be echoing the same cry for something beautiful and perfect and true. True love, perfect romance, a beautiful intertwining of souls and bodies into one wonderful shape. Is that too much to ask? “Yes” is the answer I receive far too often. The majority of the time, to be perfectly honest. And I sit wondering what my flaw is. What my curse is. To hold out so much hope for something so unreasonable. The fact is that I’ve heard those stories of perfect harmonious love affairs that led to perfect harmonious marriages. They exist somewhere in the cracks of the broken and painful failings. They do exist. For me though? I’m not sure. I’d like to think so, but the truth is that it’s quite possible that they will never come true. My only comfort is that I know somebody who holds my life, and he has my best interests at heart. My cry to all those hurting and hoping is to always, always remember that our idealism is not merely our stretching imagination, but the intended reality that was meant for all of us.

I'm reading about shit...

I’m reading about shit in a book of prose poetry. Scat. Scatological. My uncle asked me once if I knew what that word meant and I said yes, that it always reminded me of my grandma and the habit she had of examining the piles of animal feces we would find on our walks through the New Mexico desert. Chimney rock and it’s surrounding canyons and cliffs. Chimney rock was this beautiful sculpture of red stratified rock with a sort of mesa at the top and then a little pillar of rock barely connected that stood like a chimney. I used to speculate whether a climber could jump from the mesa to the chimney and make a camp on top. I concluded that nobody had ever tried because of its obvious danger. My grandma and I would walk with my mother and sister, sometimes Jim Hall or my aunt. My mom had an eye for arrowheads and spent some time as an amateur archeologist. My grandma’s uncanny gift was being able to deduce any number of things about the environment and nature simply by examining the excrement of the areas numerous animals. I always thought it was weird. Now I see the strange beauty in what she was doing. Immersing herself in every part of the natural world. Appreciating every piece of matter and mud and rock and chlorophyll. Appreciating the beauty and, in so doing, joining the community of seekers who can find deep spiritual truths and lessons by entering into natural creation. There was a rock climber that my grandmother knew who, in my mind, always appeared as one of these people. I would picture him climbing a rock sheer, his hands on the stone, feeling and listening to God through that rock and learning his purpose and his passion. He fell from one of those walls and broke his back. By the time anybody realized that he was gone, he had died. Somebody carved a bear out of soapstone and it sat for years where his body had lain. My grandma would sometimes take us to that spot and I would stare at the bear in awe and respect of the man that it memorialized. To me he was the epitome of adventure and an example of one who sought peace and found it amid rocks and sage. The fact that he died doing what he loved only reinforced my idealistic image of him. It’s funny that now I can’t even remember his name but I can picture the little smooth black bear surrounded by rough sandstone and dust.

More thoughts...

I’m a sucker for the romantic and the idealistic and everything that brings light and goodness into this world. I say a ‘sucker’ because it’s not the trendy or normal way of poetry these days. It seems that way to me at least when so much of the art I witness in the dark rooms below coffee shops is so broken and twisted…hurtful.
I saw a lady at work today who was young and pregnant and wearing a little red jumpsuit. She came in with her mother I guess and described, with the brightest face, how they were together to paint her coming baby’s room. I shared in her excitement and imagined the joy that she must be bringing her husband.
It’s a theme that’s been coming up a lot with me lately. Pregnancy, and the absolute ecstasy it must bring. I thought again about my youth and my parents and how happy I remember everyone being.
I told my dad for the first time in I don’t know how long that I admired him. I talked with friends about it the other night and how my friend, at 22 years old, should never have had to stand up to his dad almost to the point of blows. Over the way his father was treating his mother. I have my own demons of that sort but not to that extent. We talked about it and my friend sat there with this look of detachment. As if he was tired of being ashamed of his dad and tired of being hurt by it.
I understood him that night better than I had before and we talked about who we were because of these experiences and how they’ve caused us to grow so much more completely than we would have otherwise. After a while I just smiled about it all because it’s alright now…completely alright, and it has been so only by the complete grace of God. I love my father very much. And I love his wife who kissed me affectionately for the first time since I met her.
I’m going to hurt someone and disappoint them too some day. It’s a part of life and, in some ways, a beautiful part because I’m a broken person too. An imperfect person who is unstable at times and doesn’t do things the right way. I don’t do the things that are expected of me and usually have very little desire to.
I’m walking my own road, as cliché as that sounds, and I’m learning and becoming who I think God wants me to be. I drink too much and smoke too much sometimes for example, but I’ve seen the most beautiful moments between friends come at those same times and I wonder at how God uses the broken and the confusing moments of life to reveal truth and goodness to the point that sometimes I don’t see how it could be otherwise.
I slept poorly last night and woke up sensitive and frustrated and shed a tear over a movie that I had seen a number of times before. I was discontent and far from feeling the peace I always desire. But seeing that lady today with her swollen stomach and shining smile put things into perspective again. Life is good and always will be.

awaking to a dream...

I dreamt about a cellar door cracked open and a dim light shining into a dark hallway. I opened the door and I walked down the stairs. Old bare wood stairs, I could feel the grain with my bare feet. I was wearing old jeans and a white t-shirt and I was young. I realized it then as I walked. I realized also that the light drawing me at the bottom was flickering. A candle was burning in the cellar and it's shadows were many and motioned me forward.
I reached the bottom and there, among the cans of paint and nails, the old radio and typewriter, various tools, there sat a small table. The candle was in a dish on that table and my grandfather, whom I hadn't seen in many years, sat in a chair next to it. Rocking back and forth, he wore slippers and a gray robe imported from some asian country. He was eating grapes and offered me one. I took it and put it in my mouth, feeling it's smooth round shape before splitting it in half with my teeth, lengthwise. I savored the soft meat and sweet juice.
Then I smiled at him and he smiled back. "What are you doing here grandpa?" I asked, 'it's cold."
"I was waiting for you," he answered and I realized that I hadn't thought about him for a long time. I looked at his hair, thin and gray and parted at the side. His shoulders, broad and uneven. He seemed thicker than I remembered him being. Maybe younger perhaps as well, but death does that to people.
"You've been waiting a long time haven't you," I said. He nodded, smiling. I said, "I'm sorry."
"It's alright," he said. I stood there in the cellar looking at him and felt sad. All the things he didn't see and wouldn't see. I wanted to thank him for everything he said to me and every wet kiss he gave me and the trains and breakfasts. I wanted to tell him that he was the reason for my passions in many ways and that I wanted nothing more than to read every word he ever wrote. I wanted to tell him how many lives I realized he touched and how I wanted to touch people that way. I looked at him and he looked at me and then he spoke: "I am proud of you Pieter. You wondered once to yourself if I would be proud of who you have become, and I am. I wanted to tell you that."
And then he was gone. I stood in the dark cellar by myself and I heard what sounded like raindrops. I looked out the small windows near the ceiling and realized that the world outside was on fire.

You were lost, or I was...

Where have you been child? While I have been here, in this filthy city. I looked for you but could not find you. I walked and prayed for your return. I crossed an entire country because I thought that maybe I had left you behind somewhere far away. Maybe on some previous journey. Or maybe I felt that if I left my worries you would find me, and we could move on together. I didn't know what drove you away or if I even needed you still. Maybe this was just a part of life's process, but it all happened so suddenly and expectedly. I had no choice but to look.
I realized later that I didn't drive you off. Leaving wasn't even a choice you made. You just didn't recognize me anymore and became lost yourself. I wept once, picturing you wandering these dirty dark streets alone. Looking for me. Maybe you would even follow me at times, thinking I resembled that man that you wanted to be. The man who once guarded and grew your hopes and dreams. After a while I lost you completely though, and you lost me.
But someone watched over you while I was away and we were separated and I am grateful for that. And when I was at my worst. When I had been wounded the deepest and realized that you were what I was missing, we were reunited and I finally realized who you were and why I needed you. You were wounded too I think because you are quieter and somehow sad in your own way. But you're my anchor in this stirred sea. My compass in this wilderness and I know that I can do nothing good without you and that the closer I am to being you, the better we both are. We can become who we were meant to be. Who we both dreamed of being.

Night thoughts...

If I sit here long enough will I feel the earth spin, shifting under my body? Will I feel the branches of the trees outside my window blowing in this night's Autumn breeze? Will I understand that the breeze, smooth against my cheek, is the flutter of some faraway bird or a butterfly's wings? The breath of a crying baby or the sigh of it's mother perhaps. Will I hear a child's vespers, whispered into the twinkling evening?
How far have these words traveled, to be heard or felt by me? Alone in this room. Alone with the shadows that seem to me to be the shadows of all lights. Representations, somehow, of everything bright. If I listen hard enough, will I hear you? Will I find your voice, your sound, among the sounds in the night's wind? The night's traffic and trains that i try my best to ignore?
Maybe your sound is there too though. Carried by those trains. I listen for it every night because I feel that it will help me find you sooner. I feel that maybe if I could hear for a moment the sound of your voice or your laugh, your own prayer for me, I would know better where to look. Where to find you among this broken rubble of the world we share. The world that is now still spinning, carrying me on my knees through space or time. Spinning in the hand of God I guess.
I used to look rather than listen in these nights. Look at the lights spread outside a different window. I would guess at which one was your light. Imagine that it shone brighter than the rest. Like some beacon and, if I stepped barefoot into the night, I could walk to it and find you. Under the night sky where we could stand for a while, spinning together.
I started this evening thinking about the night and, like most of my nights, it turned into yet another searching. I feel another poet's reverence for the night. I guess because my life mostly takes place there. Where I can think and live freely. May my reflections and longings lead me home and to you some day.

Hearts and Hands?

I have this image burned in my mind of this person, barely distinguishable as a woman, sitting on an empty doorstep in Berlin. She had bandages and cloths wrapped around her feet and her shins were bare. The skin covered in sores and blisters. Peeling and cracked. I thought for a moment as I stared that perhaps this was what leprosy looks like. She looked at me and said something (or wailed it really) in Turkish. I looked at her helplessly and shrugged because i couldn't think of a single think i could do for her. And i walked away.
After a few yards, I looked back and watched her as one person after another passed her. Those that noticed her recoiled as I did. My heart broke as i watched her wailing, holding out her hands. I don't know if she wanted money or healing or just a kind word. Her face was frozen in an expression of such complete sadness. As if she had wept for so many years that not only had her tears dried, but her face had taken that mournful shape permanently.
I figured she was born in the wrong time. A time when not only would the passing people be helpless to heal her, but wouldn't even care. Could I have sat with her and tried to pass some peace to her? A peace that I didn't fully feel myself even if i could have expressed it. I could have given her some change but it just seemed so trite and meaningless. I wondered how long she had sat there and if anybody even knew who she was. Sure my heart went out to her, but my hand didn't and that breaks me over and over.
This isn't some motivational blog to go out and help the homeless. I'd be the first to need it if it was. I guess I'm just trying to make sense of this strange incident that I cannot seem to forget. I wrestle with this feeling of complete helplessness but also the conviction that I should have done something for the poor lady. These sort of people were the exact people that Christ and his disciples healed and we're supposed to have that same kind of faith? Sounds all good in theory but, confronted with a living example of that kind of deep hurting, I shrank away like everyone else that passed her. Afraid i would contract the same disease she obviously had. Or maybe I just didn't want to smell her. I don't know. The point for me isn't what specifically stopped me from reaching out my hand. It's that I barely even considered stopping.
I'm wrestling with that part of me that is afraid of faith and stepping out. Hope this all makes sense.

Inspiration and imagination.

I don't want to write about love because I haven't felt enough of it. All I've felt is a longing for it. I don't want to write about politics or God because I don't know enough about either. I haven't given much thought to my life or my childhood. Or I have, but not enough to find the poems and the stories that lay there. I'll trip over them one day, fall flat on my face, and give them shape as I heal. At least that's the hope.
I want to write about inspiration... and creativity, but tonight I'm too tired. Believing that I was created in the image of a Creator makes me feel the need to exercize that part of my 'self,' my being. Ideas are hard to come by and are never good when forced. The good ones usually fly away before i can put them on paper. The ones that don't leave before I am done. Forcing me to plead with them at a later date to return so that I can truly do them justice.
I do know that I am more pleased with my creations when I feel as though I am submitting to something outside myself rather than digging within. There is nothing good within me worth writing about. I shouldn't say that. I should say there is nothing within me that I could make good. It has to be pulled out of me by something else, washed, and handed back to me to give it shape. Even now I feel that I am rambling because I am trying too hard to say something worthwhile. What is worthwhile? I'm not going to find it and express it at 12:48 in the (morning?). That's for sure.
But I can't sleep so I will keep trying....
Remember the time, as a kid, when a stick could be a sword or a gun depending on which way you held it? I remember crawling through massive forests and fording swift rivers, tracking some elusive ninja or my imaginary girlfriend's kidnappers. My friends and I truly were whatever we wanted and wherever we wanted. At what point do we lose that? When does a stick become just a stick and not a Colt revolver. (Pardon all the weaponry, but boy's don't really come up with anything else). Those massive forests were really just the the trees and streams between houses.
My point is that at some point we lose that purity of imagination and I want to know why. Why does creativity become something we search for, rather than something we can't stop? My imagination used to be so overwhelming that I often spent more time there than in the real world. Sounds scary but I think it's natural. Something God intended in his creation. Maybe it's because we are stuck in this life knowing that something else exists that we can only glimpse through our imaginations. That reality exists elsewhere and our imaginations are the windows we can look through to see it. I think Schopenhauer or Feuerbach or somebody said this once. Something similar anyway.
Did God create our imaginations so that we would in turn never stop creating? Or was it so that, while stuck here, we could glimpse the Divine and know that something else awaits us one day. Maybe none of this makes sense.

Going home? Just a slice of thought...

If I could fly what would would I find so high above the earth and the trouble that pulls at me. Until I feel that heaven is home and the sooner I get home the better because life and existence will finally be free and easy and happy. I think about home a lot while I'm here and I miss the family that I haven't lived with for four years. Some of them for longer than that. I miss my sister and her energy that fills rooms and sparks smiles. I miss my mother and her teeth. Her grin that makes you feel like there is at least one person in the world who thinks you're special...thinks you're worth something. My dad and his unexpected hyperness. His lack of care for people's regard that, in the right context, becomes a wonderful strength.
He held the keys to my security and self-worth for years and guarded it safely. I forgive him for losing it because it is time I held it for myself anyway...and I in turn give it to God, and maybe to you as well. The girl I don't know if I've yet met but have anticipated my whole life. As a boy I would see you in the school room crushes and piano class kisses. I would see you in the girl down the street that I sent rose petals to. The friends that I knew would make amazing wives...just not for me. I noticed you in my relationships. In characters in books and movies...stories of my own. All these glimpses have formed a picture in my head and I can't wait until the day I say 'Ah! There you are.' And we go on to complete eachother in all the ways that we always imagined.
All of our imaginings that have been refined and made perfect by our sufferings and stumbles...our joys and excitements. the paths we've taken that took us to places we didn't want to be and had to hack our way back to the good road. I want to tell you about all of my detours and forgings and explorations because, even though they've scarred me, I found myself in the healing. I want to explain how I believe that we are given freedom and God shapes our will back into His when we stray so that, even in our disobedience, His plan is furthered. I want to ask you how our mistakes or our own will could end up playing a role in God's that is so perfect and so crucial, it's as if we never left that road.
I want to ask God what He thinks. I want to ask Him a lot of things. When I get home I will and even though i talk about the return a lot, I know that for the most part I like it here because it's new and exciting and shifting and changing and wonderful. I've dreamt about exploring new lands and then woke to realize I do it every day. Just without the ships, the guns, the horses or cowboy boots. I'm an explorer in my own right and so are you so let's explore tomorrow together.