Between the Numbered Boxes

I moved this past weekend, and in the process of packing up 4.5 years of life in my previous space I came across four well-worn books of Sudoku puzzles. Before I got my smartphone, a book of puzzles was perfect for entertainment so I had one on me at virtually every moment. It was just mindless enough to relax while keeping my brain on a quiet humming plane.

I was going through the old books and came across little notes or ideas I'd written in them. Some are song lyrics, some are quotes or things to do, but others are things I scribbled down. Maybe if the words won't come now I should air out the ones I've had before. I'm still searching for my once and future words. So here are a few of the things I found jotted in pencil in the margins, between those numbered boxes.

"My ice has melted into mesas, monoliths left by the low tide in my glass."

"I keep hope like a flare gun, strapped to my leg."

"The heart of the day
has overstayed
a guest without insight to leave.
The crickets are sighing
in kind manners trying
For something akin to reprieve."

"My hand looks like my mothers. Outside the double-paned glass there is frost.
On the ground it is 85 degrees. Under the ocean of cumulus there is another, more staunch in its perceptive, precipitous state.
And I don't know this ocean."

"You stop hearing the train once you live by the tracks.
That's what my dad says.
He does.
He says, "Son, watch 'em tracks. Stay away from 'em tracks."
And I do stay away.
Sometimes."

The state of:

• Maine
• Main
• Mane

Poor Names for US Battleships:

• USS Asston
• Good Ship Lollypop
• Love Boat
• Dingy
• USS Flee
• USS Milliard Fillmore

And this quote:
"Somewhere are place where we have really been,
dear spaces
of our deeds and faces, scenes we remember
as unchanging because there we changed." --In Transit, W.H. Auden

Gone

Let's be honest: I haven't been writing. At all.
I don't know exactly why.
In some form or fashion, it's as if words have left me, angry and unused. I didn't love on them and now they are gone. And I'm going. A lot. Work has me traveling and when I'm not traveling I'm either recovering from the travel or preparing for the next trip, and while I love such constant motion it hasn't been good for me. Feels like much that I thought was certain is no longer and the constant going keeps it all in the appearance of motion. Getting laid off back in January, though for the best, shook my understandings of anything claiming certainty. I've neglected things. Most things. And I've atrophied in just about every aspect I can, becoming more insular, more selfish, more reactionary, more exhausted. I don't know how to break out of it, even as I deplore it in me. Those lost words are haunting in their absence.
I really, really need some time off, but as I'm a contracted employee I don't get paid vacation and can't afford to simply not work. I'm craving respite and peace, calming quiet and time away from electronics. I'm craving Natalie's couch.

I wonder if people having breakdowns know it's coming. I'm worried I'm approaching one.

Space

I have a dear friend who is a bit of a space nerd, and he likes to complain during movies when spaceships pass the camera and their engines roar. “That doesn't happen,” he insists. “There is no sound in outer space. Sound is a variation in pressure in the air caused by waves, and as there is no 'air' in space, there is no sound detectable to the human ear.” This is usually when I'd throw something at him.

There is something so beautiful and mysterious about that. The vastness of space is silent. How absolutely lonely, to have the wonder of infinity in your sight and no way to proclaim it.

Bigger Standing Alone

Friday made me turn 30.
It snuck up on me while I slept.
Don’t quite know how I feel about the new decade. What I thought I’d be doing when I turned 30 is vastly different than the expectations of even 3 years ago. I thought I’d be married or at least thinking about it. 30 sounds bigger when it stands alone.
And so it was that I rented a 12-passenger van and filled it to the brim with some of the women who have loved me so well over this rocky and rough past year. Noticeably absent were Leslie (family vacation) and Katherine M, who is about to have a baby at any moment and was thus excused. I was grateful to have the group that we had: Tammy, Katherine B, Amy, Betsy, Emily, Robin & Tara. I asked my friend Wes to be our driver and he jumped for joy. What a great sport he was to handle a van that was not only full of women, but full of women who were celebrating a birthday with wine & cheese and loud, sing-a-long tunes.
Every woman came with their game faces on and the night did not disappoint. We were loud, we were laughing, we were talking over each other and we were supportive. Women who may not have known each other prior become friends. It was a community experience, which is my favorite part of any holiday. I don’t really like things to be about me (at least holidays) and it felt like it was a memorable experience for all involved.

The day had been threatening rain but the storms skirted around us, creating a halo. Above us was only stars. I felt bigger.

Six Thin Strings

I got my first guitar for my 15th birthday.

My dad had just moved out of the farmhouse where he lived after he and my mother had split and was looking for houses within our school district. I’d started playing two years earlier and had learned on my mother’s classical guitar and my father’s acoustic Guild that he owned due to an unpaid debt. Both my parents play (though not much and not particularly well) and I had been begging for a guitar of my own since I first started. Being one of five children meant this just wasn’t happening, so imagine my surprise when my reward for sticking with a hobby for two years was to get one of my own.

It was a Yamaha FG-401 and dad splurged on getting me a hard shell case.

It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was going to get me my first Grammy and the folk-rock chick status that would have the whole world at my feet. Or it would allow the guy I had a crush on who played guitar to see my skills and fall madly in love with me, instead of what actually happened, which is me teaching my good friend to play guitar and she using that feature to have him fall madly in love with her and then get married and have two lovely and amazing children and continue to be two amazing people. Whatevs, totally part of the guitar plan.

So guitar became my friend. More than my friend, it was the way for me to express myself. I wrote well over one hundred songs. I wrote songs about EVERYTHING. And everyone. I’d say 98 of them are terrible. Guitar was the way I got comfortable in front of people, pulled me out of the shy bubble I’d lived in up to then. When Natalie found out I played, I was pushed to the front of middle school YL club (or Wyld Life) every other week to lead songs. The very first night of college I ended up playing guitar in the hallway while my new floormates sang along to ‘Closer to Fine.’ It was like a scene straight out of ‘Felicity’ but on happy pills and with less Scott Foley sad puppy eyes.

Over the years I’ve collected a few more guitars. I have three of them in my house now, with another in storage. That old FG-401 is still with me, though I haven’t played it in years. What guitar means to me has morphed. It isn’t the primary way I express myself anymore; somewhere along the way I discovered my own voice. I still play and still very much enjoy the process. I even write the occasional song (still terrible). But I never knew when I got that first guitar 15 years ago how much of an impact it would have on getting me out of me.


(I've been playing this song quite a bit lately. I forgot how good it is)

My Dogs Are Tired

I haven’t been writing lately.
Haven’t felt too interesting.
Or maybe I’ve just been too exhausted.


I have six puppies in my house right now. It wasn’t my idea to have them (thank you, whore dog) and as they’ve aged they’ve become more work than I had even imagined. The heaviest is currently around 12lbs, or the same weight as a newborn baby. Multiply the waste of a newborn baby by six, and you have what I am cleaning up every day. I pray you never have to deal with that much poo. They scream like they are being beaten whenever they want anything. And they try to escape. This morning I decided that as a group I shall call them, “The Screaming Houdinis” and now think it’s a good band name.

These puppies have consumed my life.
And I love them so much it is distracting.

I don’t have much that is ‘mine’—don’t have a boyfriend and haven’t had one in quite a long time. The people and living loves in my life I share. I share them with their significant others or children, or their parents, or their ‘real’ owners. I love in the collective. Patsy Cline is the first thing I’ve ever had that was mine. She’s mine to love, mine to care for, mine to worry about and mine to throw money at all her problems. Having her has opened up parts of my heart I didn’t know I didn’t know. Strange to say it about a dog, but it is nonetheless true.

If the world doesn’t end on Saturday then next week holds my 30th birthday. I’m wholly engrossed in the unmet expectations that such a milestone brings. I’m not where I thought I’d be when I was 16, or 20, or even 25 and in that I’m melancholy. But on the whole I’m happy. I drink less than I did, because I go out less. And I feel good about myself. I’m starting to like the way I look. I’m good at my job. I’m healing from the losses of the past year. Slowly.

There is a subtle little mustard seed of restlessness that has taken root. I’m quietly considering leaving Asheville, but don’t know where I’d go instead. It feels like my time here is coming to a close, but the great What’s Next has never been more murky. Maybe I stay.

The Loveliest Bit

Hello, reader.
Kind of you to stop in.

I haven’t visited myself much lately. Been feeling more…private. Maybe it is a bit of whiplash from the speed of social media, maybe it’s a season or something else; I’m not sure. But I’m keeping words closer. I don’t go out as much anymore and I am thankful for this. Maturity or fatigue? Conversations keep more of a reality to them. Though the other week an old friend from VA came through town for a Friday night and we ended up in an alley with some of my friends, dancing in a spray painted square on the asphalt before hitting one last night spot, where the entire (and I mean ENTIRE) crowd broke into a spontaneous sing-a-long of the Cardigans’ “Lovefool” even as the bouncers turned the lights on and ushered patrons out the doors. It was the loveliest bit of fluff.

My new awesome job has me working nonstop (she says, as she pauses between emails to write this post) and my big trips start next week when I fly to Dallas. The next three months are straight gameface time. I’m already tired just in the preparation but I’m thoroughly enjoying what I do. It has pulled me away from writing, but I think I’m just using that as an excuse. Writing scares me as much as it saves me. It calls out to others in the storm while forcing me to realize the storm exists.

My sweet Patsy Cline had puppies two weeks ago. This was unexpected, shocking, miraculous, totally gross and several other words associated with the miracle of life. I’ve drafted a post on this, roughly entitled “What to Expect When Your Whore Dog Is Expecting” but that is for another blog site. I’ll let you know if it comes out funny. I don’t tend to be funny in writing; don’t know how to translate the timing required for humor into paragraph form.
There is more, as there is every spring. I’m basking in the drama-free, in the regretless day, in the intentional and the lovely. I spend part of my day staring at 6 sleeping puppies. Life in abundance.

“April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.” –E. St.V. Millay, Song of Second April, v1

Anticipate

I haven’t posted since I got my new job. I am shocked and appalled by this.

To be fair, I’ve actually written a few blog posts but they are tucked neatly into word documents on my laptop that haven’t yet made it to eyes other than mine.

I wrote four entries for my church’s Lenten devotional and though they were short I was surprised how much they took out of me. And how much I loved writing in that way.
2011 has been quite different that I’d assumed. 2010 was a year of death and loss, but in a way it was predictable—many of those losses I could anticipate, even as I couldn’t fully comprehend their scope.

2011 has been just the opposite. In the first two months of 2011 I got laid off, got a dog and got a new job, three actions I did not expect were I asked on January 1. I’ve begun to at least attempt to do some freelance writing in between but have found my time sucked up by the aforementioned canine and occupation (and I decided to watch the entire series of “Alias” which didn’t help the time suck). Those three sonic booms have drastically shaped my every day.

I didn’t set out to get a dog. She appeared because some friends found her and couldn’t keep her. No one came forward to claim the little 30-lb beagle stray. I named her Patsy Cline. She is what the Cajuns call a lagniappe—a small, unexpected gift—who has blessed me in her own ways. I can’t believe the joy and stability she’s brought. I walk 3-5 miles a day now; I get up at a decent hour and don’t stay out too late. I worry about another life that belongs to me. I love her and that is frightening.

My new job has me traveling to seven cities across North America in the coming months with the potential for more in the future. I love to travel and am thrilled at this addition. I’m ready to get moving again.

Spring is the season of resurrection. Somehow I forget that every year and get waylaid by the senses it brings. This year I’m feeling it more acutely than ever before.

Marathons and Sprints

After several days of warmth and spring hope it is back to the cold gray of late February. I'd actually forgotten spring was coming; I'd gotten so involved in the woodstove and books and hibernating that to come outside and see the optimistic sprigs of daffodils was a literal surprise. This reversion to the cold was expected and yet still manages to be a letdown.

Lately I've been thinking about running. Unemployment is a marathon and not a sprint and I've realized that this is true with most things. We are running marathons. Nothing is a sprint except an actual sprint.

And yet, I think in terms of sprints. I think short-term, I think here and now and do little to consider the future. I do it with relationships, friendships, finances and more; whatever feels good now is what I'll do. I distill my world to 140 character status updates, and do not consider the punctuation marks I use may not be correct. The place I put a period may be where God wanted a semicolon, changing what I thought was an end into merely a pause. I don't look far enough ahead to understand the difference.

The question I struggle with is how am I to learn to live a marathon life in a world that thinks in sprints?

I want to train to pace myself, to work up to the hills and stretch the parts of me that get overworked along the way. I want to understand that the blisters I get are not because I'm a terrible person or a failure, but because I am a person who is running and blisters happen to runners. In the marathon world, I must pay close attention to what I take in and where I'm going. If I'm to run the race marked out for me, training for the long-distance and not the immediate future is the difference between standing at the finish line and giving up before I can see it.

Valentines

Love doesn't look the way we planned it.

I Know the Meaning of Every Word

Preface: This is totally dumb but it was fun to make up. Call it a strange writing exercise. I decided I'd take words, break them down into other words then base the definition of the original word on that. So now I can know the meaning of every word, even as they are entirely wrong. Happy weekend.

Original word: Determination.
Deter: to discourage or refrain from acting
Min: little
at: preposition, used to indicate a location
ion: type of a molecule with unequal number of electrons and protons

Thus Determination means: “the small discouragement expressed toward charged particles.”
___________________________________________________

Original word: Lifeline.
Li: Ancient Chinese word for ritual
Feline: Cat

Thus Lifeline means “the cat ritual”
___________________________________________________

Original word: Turban.
Tur: type of pea or bean
ban: to not allow, to restrict access to

Thus Turban means “disallow access to a pea”
___________________________________________________

Original word: Destiny.
Des: code for diethylstilboestrol, a synthetic estrogen known to cause vaginal tumors
Tiny: small, minute
Thus Destiny means “Small synthetic estrogen samples”
___________________________________________________

Original word: Fundamental.
Fun: joyous, enjoyable
Da: slang, meaning yes in German
Men: adult male of the human species
tal: rain or dew

Thus Fundamental means: “Joyous males say yes to rain”
___________________________________________________

Original word: Incumbent.
In: within or contained by something
Cum: male sexual discharge
Bent: crooked, not straight

Thus Incumbent means “Male discharge contained crookedly”or by its common name, penis.
___________________________________________________

Ok, that was fun to make up. Stop rolling your eyes at me. I work from home now, remember? I have a lot of time to just sit around.

Pinata

In the future, remind me that drinking half a bottle of strong wine with one friend, then going to a Super Bowl party with other friends & drinking beer there, and not eating is a very, very bad combo.
Here is a favorite video clip as of late. Cracked up laughing.

Day One

Here dies the first day of this grand adventure. For as much as I've done that may seem crazy to an outsider, up to this point the moves I've made and risks I've taken have been quite measured. I double and triple check safety gear, I do not quit a job until another is secure. My ducks are kept firmly ensconced in the row in which I've placed them. I am not reckless. Today starts a shift away from those habits, and my ducks are clumped, frightened and facing every which way.
This morning I awoke, made coffee, showered and dressed for work as I have done for the past two years (though I gave myself an extra half-hour of sleep). I made an office space for myself and a schedule, written in sharpie like it was the word of God. My hands rested on the keyboard in the way I learned to hold them back in typing class. I breathed, said a prayer, and began the day.

It was a full and productive. I am brimming with ideas, most of which will prove to go nowhere. I've had encouragement from unlikely sources. I am 90% sure this is the move I'm to be making. I have no evidence to support this theory.

My mind keeps going back to planting. At my old job, we worked with restoring old mined sites. These sites were certified cleared of mining influence, but were old areas where the soil had been so compacted that only scrub plants could grow; nothing long-term or healthy could survive with soil that hard and compressed. Roots couldn't penetrate the unnatural hardpan. My former company would go in and rip up the scrub plants. They would till the hardened soil over and over again, breaking up the clumps and once again adding air to the earth. And only when the soil was loosened was it ready to be planted with the seeds of the long-term, the seeds that would take it from scrub land to healthy forest, that place it was supposed to be all along. There was destruction in the process of construction, something I'm realizing is almost universally true.
I can say that on day one.

Diving Board

I lost my job this morning.
I wasn't expecting it consciously, though I think somewhere in my mind I suspected a change was coming.

I was a novice grant writer, hired to find funds based only on my gumption, my charisma and my writing skills. I successfully got grants but they need someone with more experience and I simply can't provide that. If it were a bigger office and I could be mentored, this wouldn't be a conversation, but unfortunately, they are small. I don't blame them for the termination; I'd do the same thing. I'll miss them all terribly. I love—and I mean LOVE—my coworkers. I love my bosses, love the board, love the members. My office was a truly fun place to work; they are friends and they matter to me. I haven't a single bad thing to say about them, and I'm assured that feeling is mutual. I leave with great recommendations and the knowledge that I'd be an enthusiastic rehire if they could find a place for me. All of that is good.

Here's a secret: when people ask me what my dream job is, the answer has always been a writer, but I've felt like it was insensible to say so. I love to write; I love words. I love forming thoughts and arguments onto paper. Writing breathes life into me and I want to believe it does the same for my readers. I don't know if it is my gift, but given the choice I'd like it to be.
And so, I finally admit it: what I want to be when I grow up isn't a grants manager for a conservation nonprofit (though that was great), it's to be a writer. A real one. A published one. But what to write? I haven't a clue. I want to speak truth. In a quiet way, I am relieved to be let go.

Maybe this is it, the kick off the diving board toward doing what I so dearly love to do. I'm terrified. Right now the lake looks cold, I'm unsure of my swimming skills and that water's surface is coming fast.

No Distinction from the Stars

I became a member of my church yesterday. Never thought I'd be one to consider committing to something like this, but I'm happy I did it. As part of my membership ceremony, I was asked to speak about how I feel called to serve. Frankly, I don't know how I'm called, or what I have to offer. It is a glorious notion made impossibly complex in action.

Anyway, here is what I said:
Several years ago, I worked for an adventure camp based in Virginia, and would spend much of the summer on an old school bus, taking kids around to various sites in the region to do different activities. I was on the younger, 8-10 year old trip when we pulled up to our campsite in rural West Virginia. The site was situated in a beautiful cove, on the flood plain of the south branch of the Potomac River. Looking up was mountains, looking around was lush grass with the river just beyond it. It was gorgeous. That night was cloudless and moonless, and we let the fire die down and all the campers lay on their backs to look at the stars. The milky way stretched across the sky like a great, glowing ribbon, and to our left and right the fireflies twinkled and danced. Seemingly thousands of fireflies flew around us and when they floated overhead they made no distinction from the stars.


It was a great scene of wonder. It felt like we were blanketed by the stars; those living and breathing insects around us, and the endless heavens above. The kids were left speechless, a miracle in and of itself.
The next morning we were packing up camp, and I heard a little girl scream. She came running toward me, yelling about a horrid insect that had landed on her shirt. She demanded I kill it immediately. I gently pulled it off her and saw it was a firefly. I told her this but she didn't care. A firefly in the daylight is just another beetle.

That image has stuck with me for years, especially when I think of God's calling on my life. Something that shone like stars in the right setting was unspectacular in the wrong one. How very much I feel like those insects when I am not where I'm supposed to be. I am nothing when I am not in the place to which I am called. I inspire no sense of God's mighty creation with my life. And so God calls me to leave the safe ordinary nature of the daylight and proceed into the night to be a light. The creator calls me to be more than just a beetle. What a terrifying prospect.
I know that I am not called because I am particularly talented; I am called because I am not. When I think I am qualified, then I believe I can do the job myself and I leave no space for God to guide. It succeeds on my qualifications and not God's. It becomes about me.

And so I don't know what I am called to do as a part of this community. I'm more often than not completely unsure of what I have to offer at any given moment in the first place. But I desire to serve, to discuss, to engage—I desire to learn and to teach, to root and to bloom. I desire to be a light, as you have been lights to me. I think of our church community as that West Virginia flood plain: the purple ink of the night sky full of stars, the blades of summer grass dotted with each one of us, shining in the way we were created to shine, serving as a light in the darkness, signaling to each other that we are recognized, we are known and we are loved for being precisely where--and how--we are supposed to be. We answer the call to our purpose.

(my church is Land of the Sky United Church of Christ)