The Geography of Love

My newest posts are at my new blog: The Geography of Love

lexicography of my inbox. (draft)

A tiny box, 
that doesn't really exist,
but somehow exists, but
not anywhere, and 
invisibly. You explained
this to me once, but,
you don't know: it's magic. 


And there are eight worlds
here, six seperately, three
continents.  She speaks with
the wisdom of one-hundred-forty-four 
years-- "exclusive devotion", (but I get
lost on nightingale, imagining 
statutes that shed their 
snow-cold marble tombs,
winged-souls fly, 
naked and unashamed.)


He describes blow after blow,
bruises conjured to the surface,
lines bent into angles,
"life is fantastically strange"
and broken down, he finds his
bearings in our blood (life is glorious)
and we love. who can know that,
without knowing, what it is to hurt?


She says "tentatively"
but I feel the way she leans into it,
aching, wanting,
"when the circle is smaller"
the strip you cut into the earth thinner,
the purple buds, the red clay,
she is saying: home.


and this one patiently, enduring love
(you will know if you know)
windows open to fields and flowers 
and the sun coming in
(as it will, every morning)
space. and quietness. and you.
terrarium dreams. always, our lives 
imagined old together.


"There is so much possibility....."


"Appelsbosch."
she speacks of shuttle to ship,
the dockyard (the seagulls cry,
my cold feet warm on the sand, )
Durban, 
... another home that sleeps 
inside this tiny body
(How can anywhere be small enough,
for the miniscule intimacy I can offer,
I want to absorb a place, inch by inch,
but where could be small enough for I?)
Top deck. Scrubbed walls. Mercy
climbing over waters, set to sail.


This name scrawls i-miss across
my heart as I read, 
this one, a galaxy alone,
memory "silver and shimmery"
Inshaallah. 

I echo... 
who are you, Lord? who are
 you, Lord?
"life is fantastically strange."
How is it that I traveled these
eight worlds. That they wait
for me, await repsonse.
The smallness of me falls
like rain, singular and whole,
drop by drop, immersion. or,
baptism. The chorus repeats:
"and love was left over. and 
love was left over." 

you may think so.

Bitterroot is also Lewisia Rediva. Oh the metaphors you created, my Poet.

"When Lewis’ pressed and dried specimen was examined months after picking, it still showed signs of life and upon planting, it grew – hence the scientific name rediviva meaning “restored to life” (Parish et al 1996)."

Perfect.  Even she exclaimed, "It's us! It's us."
But, The Sparrow whispered a sentence for you I will not soon forget, either as memory or premonition or prophecy.  I am sorry, that I don't speak your language yet. or have forgotten it, or you've moved and I have to come after. It's okay. I know it is. I want my heart to bleed you, like it used too. I want to cry at what I feel now, even joy and hope pierce with beauty-ache.  But that doesn't change how it feels, how incapable of articulation I am... the ground of it, flying up to crash into a wild sparrow. It becomes another inhale, another silence held inside like that continent. I am weary of trying to pass the stillness of silence off into air, to send it over my vocal chords into vibrations for other ears, I am too weary... always lost in translation. We stood in the kitchen and laughed (a merciless laugh, the laugh of ice and fear)
: if you returned and spoke your language, there'd still be no one to translate.

How does one find the word? "Not all who wander are lost." Remember.

Remember when I was standing on the table and you talked casually until your legs began to migrate to the doorframe only then did you turn to ask me "why?" and I could only collapse into that laughter.
Remember, that you do not know how I want to hold, how I am breaking, you can not feel my bird bones snapping, the hollow crunch I taste in my mouth when I step on leaves, the aching. And I can not tell you how.


"It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive with the restart."

Comparisons and Liberation

I hate how I descend into this, energy turned inward, my stakes to identity threatened by comparison, and I feel transparent and flat as Kansas, though I shouldn't compare. I feel vacuous, vapid, suffering from my own self-absorption and psychology when I want to touch physicality. Story of my life. I am never filled enough with vision or meaning. How else ot move past this, not only biting into the apple skin of the present but also turning my eyes toward the lives of people around me, toward the Uncreated one. Listening, asking more questions: understanding the way they see is a new world, every relationship is a way out of my one-dimensionality. In philosophy i was realizing how I would rather have reality/encounter (even if it were humiliating or hard) than entertainment, idealism, unreality. I fear inertia. I am compelled to impuslive self-disclosure because I need something to happen. I linger in cg, I write letters, I stretch out my tentacles, seekers, hoping that one more interaction would change anything. I want to be more  that I am. Is it the pressure to do more? create more meaning? hyperactivity? What is bad about slow? do I really fit more (and more what) into my day by facebook, by constant go, by constant music, by constant purpose? I am essentially reducing meaning to consumption. To consuming doing. How would life open up if i only used my computer one hour a day? What would i loose by that? What am I "saving" time for so urgently anyway? I want to spend it. When does advancement over do it? Life feels concrete, essential among the under-privledged tin ways the suburban hub-bub can't reproduce. They aren't less happy (unless as a result of injustices or lack of access to being, to their hopes.) What if I did things slower? Less hyper efficently? Patiently. If I forced my boredom into using my body, sustaining my life in non-alienated ways. Could that possibly make me less happy? I can't imagine so. Repetition is not an evil- kneading bread, watching a thoughts sunsets, tasting any flavor. And presence helps me to have solidarity, to lip-laced listening, not Saviour-status. 

    I have incredible laziness and a dose of apathy to fight, and I think its most realistic to do so by gardening, writing letters, collecting objects and collaging, collecting impressions and writing, reading, looking for ways to serve my housemates and community (to love them, to lay deep roots), to stop whining about my emotions and invest in joy, in love. To stop feelign disconnected from my body and start dwelling in it. With less. Becoming rooted in reality. More dependent.

[Reflections from Borgman and http://www.geezmagazine.org/blogs/filter/amishmash/]

I just want to know the meaning of life, no big deal.

This morning when the ten faces of my room woke up-- glaring horrid faces of light, I did not want to get up. Sometimes my ache for purpose is counter-productive to my desire to live deep awake. I have been talking to God a lot lately, because we're brawling, and I am not ready to let him come sauntering back in with his silences, so I am holding him at arms length and leveling every accusation against him-- this time the fight will be out in the open, down and dirty, and I will not let go until there is some resolution. But, He prefers this, he is inclined towards those who never shut up or sit down with their hopeful doubt. 


And this morning I recalled: "all actual life is encounter." And that struck me, as certainty and determinism are lost to my vocabulary-- the glory of every day is this: to encounter, to search, to "purpose" of right now is this- to indwell the moment, to encounter an Other.  To live as if it were my purpose to pour all of myself into the present, to hear others, to love others, to love God. 


Since I am not nearly as stubborn as God, this morning He managed to wrangle his way back in, sneaky Being. I chose to just move moment by moment, with joy. I spent an hour doing yoga, then drank coffee and ate pastries with my housemates in the kitchen. I search for meaning to much when meaning may be as simple as being witness to this moment, cherishing it, filling it with love and allowing myself to be filled with it...  "Most of the time, there is only this moment, and the imperfect love of people."


I feel peace, not because of resolutions, but because God is more ornery than I am.


"the way will descend into my

soul as the dew, inescapable,

I adore the distance as a

worshiper of wandering

of the thousand lives indwelling one 

and this storm shuffles down the valley,

a steady unhurried approach, 

where time is only a servant to emergence

an arrival that can never be late

all i have left is this

is this and only this

(and this is more than enough)" 

how to lay the mind to rest?

Another chilly night, and I feel restless, sleepless again: searching for an activity that satisfies my exhausted mind. Non-verbal ways to process (yet here I am, scribbling.)

Thia and I sat on the porch talking of how endlessly we return to this navigation of identities, the struggle of margins (blurry lines we barely fall across, and yet, are torn by still.) 

These words from the summer resound:

The coyote howls, mangy gray, on the horizon I sit and simmer, I simmer like steam leaving tea, simmer, like a low turned burner, like less heat rising, the emotions simmer, they do not cook up or boil, slowly they turn into something more steady, more concrete, steam leaves, exhaling, I breathe in the vision of a dawn I breathe in the vision of...

I feel the jagged edges of my soul, like these broken mountains. Befriended, I want to reach my hand out and press it into another's, amiably, comforted by the physicality.  To know how to feel my way into another's existence… in the cracks, to climb the crevice, pressing what can reach into a hole and pulling myself up, invitation, not invasion.

The wind is singing, slowly, a lullaby for waking, a lullaby for stirring, she calls forth from our hearts the tune of movement, the lust for touching (dancing) moving air around our forms, occupy this space, occupy this territory of myself so that others can move into it, the settlement of hospitality even while we emerge, this is the story, this is the tale she has to tell:   “I will be a human like a tree is a tree.”

another day.

(from woolgathering)

messy room, troubles sleeping, blank pages in my journal, heavy boots for one reason or another. 


tonight I made myself resurrect the stillness of desire, of the summer and sit, and sit, and sit... under a black sky, gleaming lights, backlit leaves.


doubts. wonders. 


so many things I silence inside myself.


// we'll find a cathedral so you can convince me I'm pretty //