***
the face peeks
just out from the shadow of
stiff brisk brick.
nineteen degrees.
the head – its squinting eyes, its
blistered lips, cracked from wind and
overuse, its gray jelly belly –
warmed by hints of day.
the rest, though, the
body, stands motionless in the shade.
blood still moves, but flows
floe cold. toes frigid,
rigid in iceberg shoes.
hands in empty pockets, holding
nothing, warming nothing but
themselves.
***
we’ll see how this goes. whimsy often betrays.
***
last night i was certain
that i wanted
some scorching black drink brewed
fresh and only for me
and when it was done and
all the grounds were coursed through and
all the oils and sacred secrets had been
sucked out i
poured it into a cup and
set it somewhere new, different,
seemingly benign
heat scores and
time wears and apparently
together they conspire to draw
rings in unsuspecting innocent wood
at last when
undeft fingers clumsily looped into
ceramic rings to
rescue planks of ancient trees it was
too late
and already carelessness had
spent its fortune on
making some mark that
no one but me would
ever see
i hoped, more
dearly than i hope that
euclid was right, and that five hundred
billion years hence no one
still
will have heard my name
***
it’s been a while. challenges are welcome. please, shout to the heavens the horrors of this poem. it will, in all honesty, be appreciated.
***
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. – Psalm 36 : 5
***
Not long ago i had the joy of attending a reunion of some of my friends from high school. Initially i had quite mixed feelings about the event. There were, of course, a few friends who i was very excited to see, knowing that our friendship from school remained (mostly) intact and untainted. Overwhelmingly though i felt a tremendous sense of dread about encountering many of the attendees; i had not left a good impression on many people while in school, and i could only begin to guess at how much this would still be a factor.
The evening was quite pleasant at first, comprised primarily of the standard exchange of updates. Conversation centered around jobs, children, living locations, and other sundry pieces of data about each person’s current situation. It wasn’t long, however, before talk naturally shifted to more nostalgic ground, and tales from our time together 15 years prior began to surface. This, of course, was the part of the evening i had been dreading all along.
i will spare you the details, because some of the stories i heard about myself are truly too embarrassing to pen, but suffice it to say that even i was shocked at the level of callousness, selfishness, and utter depravity that the character Rich Wilson exhibited in some of these stories. With no exaggeration, i can honestly say that i was such a pompous and disgusting ass in high school that i had forgotten some stories that most people would remember with cringing horror. In essence, i had done so many awful things to people that my memory could not contain them all.
Reflecting on this later in the evening, i found myself shaken to no small degree as a result of these encounters. This event revealed two things about my heart, things which i knew to be true but clearly needed to be reminded of. First, it still matters to me a great deal what people think of me, so much that i believe it is somewhat idolatrous. While it is true that i should be concerned with how i come across to other people, i should only have this concern in the context of my identity in Christ. My primary concern should be reflecting Christ’s love to the world, and not what opinion people may have of me. If anything, my self-image issues frequently get in the way of this reflection, and often i find myself less bold about the gospel than i ought to be for fear of seeming crazy or silly. Secondly, i have a tendency to dwell on the mistakes of my past, so much so that sometimes this becomes my identity. My mistakes and inadequacies also have relevance only in the context of the gospel: they display, if i allow them to, how deep is the Father’s love and how powerful is His redemptive might. If He can love even me, He can surely love anyone.
Somewhere between the abject blind selfishness i showed in high school and the co-dependency i exhibit in current relationships lies the proper place for my heart. This place creates a man who is aware of his failures and yet not afraid to show them because in them Christ’s ultimate grace is displayed. This place creates a man who is concerned with how others see Christ, not himself. In this place, my image is of no consequence; in this place, i am not afraid in the least of looking like a fool so long as it is done for the sake of loving God and loving others well.
Outside of this place, there is only worry, guilt, shame, and dark, weary stories from the past. i do not want to forget these stories entirely, because they remind me of who i was, and they remind me of who i would be without Christ. At the same time, i need not fear these stories nor run from them any longer. i may concern myself with how others feel about them for the sake of healing and amends, but i myself can be free to feel nothing about them. That man, praise God, has been and is being put to death each day.
Ultimately, the only opinion of me that matters is God’s. It would be great if these people learned to love me, but if they do not, God has chosen to, and that is not only enough, it is everything. i would be lying if i said i understood it, and even to say such is humbling beyond words, but for purposes of His own He has chosen to see in me His child. i pray that i will learn to see myself in the same light.
***
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. – Lamentations 3 : 22
There’s no falling back asleep once you’ve wakened from the dream – from “February Seven” by The Avett Brothers
***
Is it possible a scent can actually hurt? That the right particulate olfactory matter can actually translate through some registering synapse into legitimate pain?
I didn’t go there with any purpose other than to kill time. Get out of the house for a while. Stretch my legs. Live up to some other clichéd phrase about wanderlust or boredom or some such sensation. I certainly, at least on the conscious level, didn’t go there to catch fire or to have life breathed into my stagnant malfunctioning lungs. I hadn’t been there in months, in fact. Used to go every day it seems. Did some of my greatest work there, though greatest is at best a relative term and at worst a complete misnomer. My portfolio, to date, hardly includes anything that merits the creation of a ranking system.
But the smell. It burned like icicles on bare hands. I’ve been to coffee houses many times since, and I drink coffee every day, so it couldn’t possibly have been just the coffee. Instead it must have been some amalgamation of that scent mingled with the aromas of unread novels and newsprint that did the killing; or rather, undid it. I found myself almost unwittingly back in the bookstore which during my fervent writing days I often haunted. Now instead it was I who was the haunted: potent, almost feverish, memories of those days when I felt right with my purpose and place in the universe now plagued me as I wandered from shelf to shelf. I felt like an amnesiac almost; there was a lingering and perfect sense that something significant had happened here, but I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t lay hands to it and hold it tangibly, lift it to the light and inspect it. Instead I could only walk from floor to floor in the store, wondering, fearing. I was covert, on the sly, sneaking almost, either hiding from something or desperately searching for it. Rows of books that I had never read assailed me like the faces of people I thought I should recognize, yet I was adrift in a crowd of strangers.
I settled on a book, almost at random (although I have my doubts that anything is truly as arbitrary as it may seem) that was a compilation of essays by various successful writers about their motivations for pursuing the craft.
Not one of them said they did it for the money.
I would love to claim that I didn’t know the reason I stopped writing, but that would be a lie. I know exactly why and when it happened. Truthfully, I didn’t actually stop writing altogether, I merely stopped doing it for myself and began doing it for someone else instead. There was an immense and seductive thrill in this: someone actually wanted to give me money in return for borrowing my skills. Isn’t this, after all, what we all dream about? What we all think we need? Finding someone who is willing to pay us for doing what is our passion?
I have awakened from a dream that was not mine, as if while I slept my mind was transported into someone else’s body. In truth, money is a beautiful and alluring mistress, and an absolute, horrid lie. I probably run the risk of alienating my employers by even saying all of this, but nevertheless I felt snapped out of a coma in that store. I have left something essential, fundamental to who I am behind to pursue something that is not only unsatisfying, but ultimately unreal. I haven’t felt so sad and wonderful at the same time in a while. It is the blessed delicious hurt of tonguing a sore tooth or pressing on a knotted muscle. I feel bruised and bloody, like a survivor of a building collapse or a car accident, and I have the same sense of contrite gratitude at still being alive, the same sense of having narrowly escaped a crushing and tragic fate.
Who can say why the Lord gives us what He does? The obvious answer, of course, is that we need whatever He supplies, but sometimes it seems He gives us those things not so that we may be satisfied by them, but so that we may truly know that they do not satisfy. It is hard to say, but it seems this might have been the case for me as far as my recent “jobs” are concerned. I will undoubtedly continue the “professional” gig for a time, at least to fulfill my contract, but I am beginning to be possessed of the notion that said path is not for me. After all, money comes and goes, but the impressions we make upon our brothers may echo many lifetimes into the future. This is what writing should be about. Forgetting that was like forgetting my own name.
And I already hear the clamor: Rich, you have said this before. In fact, I can recall several posts, (this one and that, among others) in which you stated nearly the same thing. What can I say? My heart is fickle, and a liar. No doubt in a few months I will need to learn this lesson again. In the meantime, while this correction is fresh (and since this prose is awful and meandering and utterly indicative of someone who is out of practice), I will stop boring you with all of this and get on with some real writing.
May the results matter not nearly so much as the reason for the act.
***
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
“But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to follow their own counsels.
Oh, that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!
and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
Psalm 81 : 10 – 13, 16b
***
Fiction has long been a part of my life. There have been books historically which i have read and re-read incessantly throughout my life. When i was a child and a teenager, most of these tales took the form of fantasy or science fiction. Even fancied myself a bit of a fantasy writer at one point, and i still feel as though i could set down a rather rousing epic if i put my mind and (more importantly) my heart to it. Some period of time into my early adulthood i started shifting my reading and writing interest to more “literary” fiction, whatever that nomenclature signifies. i have begun and left unfinished no fewer than five novels, having never caught sufficient steam or momentum, or perhaps having never had the requisite discipline, to see these projects through to completion. My reading in this arena has been, for a time, rather diligent at least, and there is certainly a tremendous and nameless appeal that the fictive voice holds in my heart. It is not out of the realm of possibility that i may at some point dig up from under the earth of time and business these efforts and breathe life into them anew.
Poetry has also competed for dominance in my aesthetic sensibilities, and though i have not quite had the patience to study it as thoroughly as i ought, there are still times when it seems that the only mechanism which will do a subject justice is the poem, thus as you can see i have written my fair share of them. Most of them are at the very least elementary, and some even go so far as to be downright terrible and asinine.
Recently, however, despite my traditional attachment to these slightly more artistic forms of communication, i have begun to suspect that perhaps my gift really lies in the area of non-fiction. i have never written very much of it, save on this particular blog, and even though the bulk of my posts here can be classified as non-fiction, they still feel fictitious, at least in the sense that they are driven by narrative rather than by research. i must confess i owe at least a portion of this suspicion to my wife, who first pointed out that she found my non-fiction to be my best work. Lately i have toyed with idea of working more exclusively in this domain, and it is starting to gain sway for me. i suppose what always steered me away from writing non-fiction was a lack of qualification. i am an expert in precisely zero subjects, save perhaps the subject of myself. But perhaps this is enough. Perhaps there is enough of a story in my life – and i suspect there is, not because i have lived a particularly adventurous or meaningful life, but because i have lived a particularly rebellious one – to merit its writing. After all, God has written a rather amazing story already, having provided for me time and time again despite my unwillingness to receive that provision. i think perhaps i will stay away from fiction, at least for the time being – God is, after all, a better story-teller than i will ever be – and stick strictly to writing about my experiences with Him and the recovery He has seen fit to mercifully bring into my life. Maybe in this, at last, after a year of dabbling in essentially every variety of writing and succeeding at none, i have found my calling. Time however, will tell.
The well-known adage “truth is stranger than fiction” has a less-familiar second clause, which i find even more profound than the first. “It is because,” Twain says, “fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” If you had asked me 30 months ago what i dreamed would be “possible” for the coming years, for my personal and spiritual life, for my career, and for my marriage, i would not have been able to even begin to guess at the current shape each of those elements has in my life. i believe that the purpose of writing is to provide insight and wisdom into the life of another, and by doing so, be a force for peace, for reparation, for reconciliation. Fiction gives us a certain view of truth through its exploration of possibilities, and poetry another through its propensity for ambitious metaphor, and both can provide some measure of universality, and thus each may, in part, accomplish the objective of establishing commonality. But God has written a truth, full and glorious, that no human word can sufficiently capture, and in my case, as it is for many of us, that truth is more compelling and more exhilarating, and thus ultimately vastly more unifying, than any story or device which we have ever conceived of or read. These stories, our stories, with all of their ugly and rambunctious and supercilious components, are the stories which people most need to hear. These are the stories that will heal, because ultimately they are not about us at all. Tell yours, and i will do mine.
***
***
not every thought is destined for
setting down firmly in
carefully selected words
trimmed and pruned for
devastating effect, growth,
titanic impact; and though they
cry out for enumeration, explication,
most will remain unspoken,
never leaving generating home — pent,
rapt, glued to muted televisions, slouching
permanently, sadly down on
overworn inadequate couches, and will only always
wonder what it might be like
to have a voice, to echo in
canyons and open spaces, to be
trapped by pinna, resonated by
malleus and incus, to shake loose
the untilnow passive fluids in
semicircular canals, and to at last
electrify in a cochlea, transmit through
axons and dendrites into web of
gray matter, and there translate into
the quickening pulse of
someone else’s heart —
***
Best i can muster right now. Forgotten but not gone. – r.e.w.
***
As a few people have been kind enough to remark, i have been posting significantly less lately. The reasons for this are myriad, however a few are worth mentioning here. Firstly, i was out of the country for about a week or so, limiting my access to the internet, although it would be disingenuous to suggest that this was much of a factor, since my virtual absence really started back in late October. Secondly, i was listening to an NPR program a few weeks back on which a poet was being interviewed. (Which one, i do not recall) This particular writer mentioned that a poem written in less than two weeks was, for her, fairly phenomenal, and in general three or four weeks was more the norm. My own tendency, though i don’t believe there is necessarily a right or wrong here, is to use primarily a stream-of-consciousness approach, and do very little editing of my own poetry. This allows for ample and abundant posting of writing, but my fear is that is hinders my ability to be critical of my work and improve upon it. In an attempt to learn from those wiser and more experienced, i have begun to let poems marinate for a while before posting now, walking away from and coming back to them two and three times. Thus rather than posting a poem immediately after the first draft is complete, i now wait at least a week to see if anything about it strikes me as naive or banal. i am not sure this has catalyzed any significant increase in quality, as was its intent, but the strategy is still young.
But all of this, while true, still merely beats about the bush. The true reason, if i may be honest here (and if i cannot here, where can i?), is i have been suffering from a tremendous lack of confidence. i have mentioned before, and thus will not belabor the point ad nauseum here, that perseverance is not one of my strengths. i had high, and almost foolishly mystical, hopes for this blog. i imagined that in no time hoards of readers would be refreshing their blogreaders salivating pavlovianly waiting for the next nugget of wisdom from my mouth, then gleefully sitting back in repose after reading, content in their knowledge of having discovered a secret prophet.
Needless to say, this has not happened, to my knowledge.
Which is good. Of course. i must admit that, though my pride does not want to do so. But i need to remind myself what the purpose of this blog is, and it is not self-glorification. My stated intent from conception was to use this space for two purposes: to hone my talents and practice my craft, and to glorify the One who gave them to me in the first place. Interestingly, in neither case is confidence particularly necessary, and in fact in both cases it may strangely be a deficit and a hinderance.
A good friend once told me never to apologize for not writing. i have no intention of doing that here, at least not to my few readers. Nevertheless i do wish to admit that my heart has been in the wrong place, and thus apologize for the flaw at root in my absence. In other words, i have no specific regret about not writing, merely about the heart condition that my lack of effort writing indicates. But this, too, will ultimately be used by the Lord for His purposes. Dry seasons, too, are necessary that rain may have its desired effect when it at length blessedly falls. So my lack of confidence in my abilities in no excuse for ceasing to attempt. In fact, it is all the more reason i should be putting forth yet greater effort. God will use what he chooses, and most of the time he chooses those with little or no ability at all, that it may be His strength that shines through. May it be so here, as well.
***
The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. – John 7 : 18
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. – 2 Corinthians 12 : 9
***
This knuckle’s calloused groove has
not forgot (though mostly now i type)
the pen’s round burning embrace. Bumps and buds of
tongue remember well the taste of
bread, the sting of mustard, the crisp cold bite of
the pickle; even they cling to the flavor of
bologna or marshmallow cereals, which they have not
seen since youth.
Rough and ragged lips cannot misplace
the memory of softest pink your cheek, of
most delicate curve and hunger of your
lovely lonely mouth. The
taxidermied head was not made to be
on display except on
a neck, in the woods, its body
scampering quickly out of sight, leaving only the
vague memory of its presence.
Nothing made was thrown
happenstance together, compacted at the
center of the singularity’s unforgiving suck,
and set alone in empty space.
Rather all things, all matters, and
all molecules were forged in the
bright warm inferno of the stars, baked together in
love like the ingredients of a
birthday cake, made for
a celebrant child.
***
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. – Psalm 42 : 1
***
words thrown together –
but not in sentences.
without verbs, present action:
alone
disjoint
inert.
***
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. – Germaine Greer
Christianity teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves; modern society acknowledges no neighbor. – Benjamin Disraeli
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