The world has rotated greatly since the last time we met. I think the sun may be a little more yellow, but it's hard to focus on the color when the light hits the eyes so mercilessly.
I no longer frolic across the green hills of east Texas. No, I've changed positions to a distant land, not half way across the country but halfway across the globe.
The stage is set differently. For one, most of the players don't understand my monologues. I now speak in short, half sentences, butchered bits of English syntax that bleed when they protrude from my mouth and cry out at me, staining my clothes with the leaks from their amputations and infecting the listener with language gangrene. Most often, the other players don't notice. To them these Frankenstein-ian monsters come out as golden children; the players wonder and awe at the quickness or struggle, smilingly, to reproduce such grand elements of a foreign tongue. I go home with the guilt of an international murder for I just told one player "neko wo tabemas" in a desperate attempt to communicate with another human. But I told a cat-lover that "I eat cats" rather than "I like cats". And we laugh. And we learn how not to say things that sound violent against cats. And we laugh. And we learn the names of colors, of scissors, of circles, of squares, of bugs. It is all a very fun game.
Yet when a teacher who teaches me walks in with a heavy head and cold eyes, I can only say, "red scissors" when I want to say, "bleeding heart?".
I am such a newborn to this side of the rotating planet. I've not even a chance to get lost in translation because I cannot even find the words with which to translate.
I've had to move away from the monologues. I'm a practicing mime. I point here, pat there, gesture this gesture that. I gesticulate around the words that I do not understand, bowing to their ancientness in our first meeting--or was it our tenth or twentieth? I'm an impolite learner, never remembering a face.
So I dance every day at school. I smile and wave and make my language a carnival of the grotesque so that--please, oh please--the children I run into in the halls will find it intriguing and will want to learn, so that the adults will find me friendly and not find the frustration that plays pop-a-mole with me.
Can you hear that song? It's the song found in each others being. It's the sound of our souls, which sing as surely as the planets. If it were not for this song, we would never understand each other for music is the speech of the mute parts of our souls.
I'm certain I am guilty of great paradoxes in thought and greater inaccuracies of mind. In a place where I must be mute, I've begun to listen. If this is all I learn on this side of the rotation, it will be enough.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Music of the Soul
It’s the sound of my voice I am surprised at; I can’t bear
to here it reflect back to me. I’ve been laughing at something with a family
member because I’m afraid they will hear the secrets of my soul if I don’t. I
can tell it’s not working. My laughter sounds hollow, frustrated, and a little
angry. I swear that haughty, treacherous bastard betrays me all the damn time. I
have less control over the inflections of my language maker than I have over my
face, my hands, my body.
A face you can make-up to be cheery or seductive. Hands can
be made to rest still or to flop about like an adolescent sea lion. A body can
be pushed, tugged, dressed up, stripped down, remade into whatever fashion
category or dis-category desired.
But a voice?
A voice, like the eyes, connects to the soul on a visceral
level. A voice connects to that which remains barbarian in a man or woman. Our
voice conducts the nightmares of our heart into passing comments, cryptic
humor, cutting statements. Your voice connects to that which is unsettled and
dissatisfied in a finite, terrestrial existence and reminds the soul, the
speaker, the listener of a paradise forgotten and one yet to be created. A
human voice, whether spoken or left tiptoeing around inside the head waiting to
be written down, The human voice is the music of the soul.
A man named Wallace Stegner once wrote that a writer should
never try to create a masterpiece but instead be the sort of person from which
a masterpiece may flow. I love these
words and fear them. What if the voice I
use, the voice you hear, the voice that is a secret between me and my Maker is
not masterpiece ready? And so I fear using lest someone tell me that it will
never be ready, that it is diseased of mind like Hitler, that it died
still-born and deformed.
But isn’t that what makes a masterpiece? Isn’t the struggle
against the unknown, against the odds, against the very depths of fearful hell
the very outline of a masterpiece? And so I write with this voice.
Isn’t the value of a (heroic) protagonist measured by the
articulations of his fears and the depths of his struggles? The protagonist
rarely knows the end of his story and yet he fights on for what he has hoped
and believes. And so I write with this voice.
Doesn't a masterpiece reflect frustration, hollowness, and
anger as much as it projects love, joy, beauty and hope, intent, and triumph? A
masterpiece is written by a voice connected to the most visceral aspects of a
evolving humanity; this is why no story will ever be new, and this is why no
story will ever be old. The voice connects humanity to its own soul, to your
soul, to my soul. And this is why I write, and I would desire to do no other.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Scrubbing the Scruffy Off: Ode to Bathtub Psychology
It's a bathtub from which I write to you, not a bagel shop.
Sorry. Blogs seem to never follow their original intent.
Whoops.
Don't judge the setting. I'm not naked. Im not scrubbing the scruffy off. I'm just sitting with the curtain drawn...in somebody else's bathtub.
Oh, it is definitely not my tub. This tub is clean; thus in it I sit. It's cozy, close, and white. It is easy to sit here and get work done. No distractions. I'm tiled in on three sides and the curtain is thick and dry.
My relationship with this tub is excellent. This Tub doesn't expect me to clean it. This Tub doesn't worry if it finds too much of my hair pasted to its sides. This Tub doesn't hold grudges about its past treatment. We've just met. This Tub doesn't expect anything of me. This Tub is not like my tub at home.
I've a pretty rough relationship with my tub at home. I certainly never sit in THAT tub. I take quick showers every other day just to minimize contact. I'd close my eyes if I weren't so afraid of slipping and cracking my neck open (and I do mean "my neck open" though that is not the correct way to make the gory phrase).
Tubs.
tubs.
Tubs.
Why is the relationship with tubs so stressful, so heart breaking, so...so murderously depressing? I slept all day once for fear of the uncleanliness of my tub.
I sit in THIS Tub partaking of happy with a side of bitter-sadness. The longer I stay in the vicinity of this Tub the sludgier, bacteria-y, and unusable to me it will become. I can't clean it. I can't clean it . It will never be the same. It will despise me. It will resent and spurn me. It will Laugh at me.
I wish I could say that this little tale, this silly-sick game my mind plays with tubs is a satire on misplaced human guilt. Well, if I were some other, non guilt-ridden person it might function very well as some sort of truncated satire. But I struggle, writhe with the weight of misplaced guilt.
I wish I could say that this little tale, this silly-sick game my mind plays with tubs remains weirdly isolated to tubs, but it is not. One day a week or so ago I looked at a shoe and literally thought, "I'm a miserable person deserving the very depths of hell for leaving my shoes out all month and thus not exercising and so permitting severe disorganization which provided the circumstances for losing the shoes' mate--how could I do that to a poor helpless shoe--, and, after all that, I presume to wear it." I promptly decided to go back to bed (at 2pm) feeling unworthy of one pink tennis shoe. After all, why study composition and rhetoric if your own blasted shoe hates you?
Paralysis comes in many different shapes and forms, but it is only the paralysis of the will the cripples both mind and body. I've wanted this quiet half-life, this death. I've desired to sponge the me from this world, suspecting and accusing the Creator for making a mistake in making me. Duh, shoes hate me and tubs resent my existence.
These are all hard things to say, And I apologize for this flasher-like confessional. I do not intend for this to be a habit but an explanation for my blogging absence and my (depending) impending "break" from graduate school. More importantly, I want you to know the following incase you or a friend of yours has such issues.
Because I've learned a lot about dealing with philosophical depression through a little research, friends, the Bible, and personal meditation I'm not as yet providing specific sources. But please, take the following for what it is worth.
Unlike an active guilt ridden person, A passive guilt ridden person fails. The world is a tornado with which they are too frightened to contend. They don't wear those bastard shoes that hate them. They sleep; They sit in someone else's bath tub and let the stank germinate. But they do all these things on purpose, every bit of it. They strip themselves of the ability to respond with "free will" because their decisions can't at all be good, right, or productive. They strip themselves of the memory of their creation and will.
Yet a passive guilt ridden person is thoroughly rational and often very intelligent (score?). They've rationalized themselves into sincerely believing they are incapable of positive action... or action in general. They've rationalized a system of thought that defines themselves in the pejorative: "I'm lazy." "I'm dumb." "I can't spell." "I'm incapable." "I shouldn't of needed help." "I don't care." "I'm afraid". "I hate what I'm doing (school or work)". Or, they've self-deceived in another way to rationalize their non-activity in a positive, guilt producing fashion: "I've always been this way." "I'm fine low achieving, disorganized, overweight, etc and these are socially acceptable".
A passive guilt ridden person tends to be very hopeful even while suffocating in his or her own fear. The hope in this instance is tainted and not healthy. Like so many Shakespearian characters, They hope for an external source to nudge them into taking a shower or cleaning the tub. When the external source comes, the passive guilt ridden person (hereafter known as PGRP) isn't relieved. "why couldn't I do that on my own?" "I am so pathetic I needed help" are recurring thoughts and they hope for the time they can do it on their own...without really thinking that time will come.
Now, there is much more to the psyche of a PGRP but this tub is getting cold and I want to go play in the wind. Such things shouldn't be discouraged. I will be brief and existential: life is what you make it. Note the PGRP psyche is self-stripped of a desire to function. Through the mysterious workings of the holy Trinity, totally-dduh-family, and a couple of spunky friends (you know who you are), I've seen that if a young Christian such as I am may spend all her time and energy defacing everything good and strong created in her, then she can do the opposite as well.
It's not been all candy canes and Lolly pops. I still have a psychology trained to dislike myself. I procrastinated. I forget to proactively deal with my mental state. However, I can see misplaced guilt for what it isn't (it's not a sign of humbleness, not a tool for repentance or sanctification, not a preparation form of repentance, not a way to figure out what is 'truly wrong' with oneself) but for the crippling (unbiblical) socially disastrous, false tool for coping with fear. I've nastier adjectives to use but I didn't close this blog off from children under the age of 17--words as obscene as the affects of misplaced guilt.
Much more could be said, but the day is getting old and this blog is getting too long. thanks for reading all 1,184 words of this blog. You mean a lot to me. (1,195)
Sorry. Blogs seem to never follow their original intent.
Whoops.
Don't judge the setting. I'm not naked. Im not scrubbing the scruffy off. I'm just sitting with the curtain drawn...in somebody else's bathtub.
Oh, it is definitely not my tub. This tub is clean; thus in it I sit. It's cozy, close, and white. It is easy to sit here and get work done. No distractions. I'm tiled in on three sides and the curtain is thick and dry.
My relationship with this tub is excellent. This Tub doesn't expect me to clean it. This Tub doesn't worry if it finds too much of my hair pasted to its sides. This Tub doesn't hold grudges about its past treatment. We've just met. This Tub doesn't expect anything of me. This Tub is not like my tub at home.
I've a pretty rough relationship with my tub at home. I certainly never sit in THAT tub. I take quick showers every other day just to minimize contact. I'd close my eyes if I weren't so afraid of slipping and cracking my neck open (and I do mean "my neck open" though that is not the correct way to make the gory phrase).
Tubs.
tubs.
Tubs.
Why is the relationship with tubs so stressful, so heart breaking, so...so murderously depressing? I slept all day once for fear of the uncleanliness of my tub.
I sit in THIS Tub partaking of happy with a side of bitter-sadness. The longer I stay in the vicinity of this Tub the sludgier, bacteria-y, and unusable to me it will become. I can't clean it. I can't clean it . It will never be the same. It will despise me. It will resent and spurn me. It will Laugh at me.
I wish I could say that this little tale, this silly-sick game my mind plays with tubs is a satire on misplaced human guilt. Well, if I were some other, non guilt-ridden person it might function very well as some sort of truncated satire. But I struggle, writhe with the weight of misplaced guilt.
I wish I could say that this little tale, this silly-sick game my mind plays with tubs remains weirdly isolated to tubs, but it is not. One day a week or so ago I looked at a shoe and literally thought, "I'm a miserable person deserving the very depths of hell for leaving my shoes out all month and thus not exercising and so permitting severe disorganization which provided the circumstances for losing the shoes' mate--how could I do that to a poor helpless shoe--, and, after all that, I presume to wear it." I promptly decided to go back to bed (at 2pm) feeling unworthy of one pink tennis shoe. After all, why study composition and rhetoric if your own blasted shoe hates you?
Paralysis comes in many different shapes and forms, but it is only the paralysis of the will the cripples both mind and body. I've wanted this quiet half-life, this death. I've desired to sponge the me from this world, suspecting and accusing the Creator for making a mistake in making me. Duh, shoes hate me and tubs resent my existence.
These are all hard things to say, And I apologize for this flasher-like confessional. I do not intend for this to be a habit but an explanation for my blogging absence and my (depending) impending "break" from graduate school. More importantly, I want you to know the following incase you or a friend of yours has such issues.
Because I've learned a lot about dealing with philosophical depression through a little research, friends, the Bible, and personal meditation I'm not as yet providing specific sources. But please, take the following for what it is worth.
Unlike an active guilt ridden person, A passive guilt ridden person fails. The world is a tornado with which they are too frightened to contend. They don't wear those bastard shoes that hate them. They sleep; They sit in someone else's bath tub and let the stank germinate. But they do all these things on purpose, every bit of it. They strip themselves of the ability to respond with "free will" because their decisions can't at all be good, right, or productive. They strip themselves of the memory of their creation and will.
Yet a passive guilt ridden person is thoroughly rational and often very intelligent (score?). They've rationalized themselves into sincerely believing they are incapable of positive action... or action in general. They've rationalized a system of thought that defines themselves in the pejorative: "I'm lazy." "I'm dumb." "I can't spell." "I'm incapable." "I shouldn't of needed help." "I don't care." "I'm afraid". "I hate what I'm doing (school or work)". Or, they've self-deceived in another way to rationalize their non-activity in a positive, guilt producing fashion: "I've always been this way." "I'm fine low achieving, disorganized, overweight, etc and these are socially acceptable".
A passive guilt ridden person tends to be very hopeful even while suffocating in his or her own fear. The hope in this instance is tainted and not healthy. Like so many Shakespearian characters, They hope for an external source to nudge them into taking a shower or cleaning the tub. When the external source comes, the passive guilt ridden person (hereafter known as PGRP) isn't relieved. "why couldn't I do that on my own?" "I am so pathetic I needed help" are recurring thoughts and they hope for the time they can do it on their own...without really thinking that time will come.
Now, there is much more to the psyche of a PGRP but this tub is getting cold and I want to go play in the wind. Such things shouldn't be discouraged. I will be brief and existential: life is what you make it. Note the PGRP psyche is self-stripped of a desire to function. Through the mysterious workings of the holy Trinity, totally-dduh-family, and a couple of spunky friends (you know who you are), I've seen that if a young Christian such as I am may spend all her time and energy defacing everything good and strong created in her, then she can do the opposite as well.
It's not been all candy canes and Lolly pops. I still have a psychology trained to dislike myself. I procrastinated. I forget to proactively deal with my mental state. However, I can see misplaced guilt for what it isn't (it's not a sign of humbleness, not a tool for repentance or sanctification, not a preparation form of repentance, not a way to figure out what is 'truly wrong' with oneself) but for the crippling (unbiblical) socially disastrous, false tool for coping with fear. I've nastier adjectives to use but I didn't close this blog off from children under the age of 17--words as obscene as the affects of misplaced guilt.
Much more could be said, but the day is getting old and this blog is getting too long. thanks for reading all 1,184 words of this blog. You mean a lot to me. (1,195)
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Meditation I: After a time of brief despair
Calm you nervous anxious heart, for the Lord is God.
The Lord is God, oh my soul, bless his name,
For the Lord is sovereign above all else
And Good
Why do you tremble at the Nations, Oh, people of God?
And Curse the traditions of your age
Isn’t your God greater than all?
Hasn’t he clothed you skins with righteousness
And blessed your youth?
Is he not the God of the Covenant?
Is not Christ the Lamb?
The problems of your mind
Isn’t he Greater?
Remember not the lie of your strength but the Promise of God’s
Even in the depths of your despair
Even in the loop of your frustration
The madness of heart
The madness of mind
The splitting of soul
Despair
Toil
God is grander, more than all that and
God is a generous God
Not like the trickster Gods of the Germans
Not like the callous God of the Greeks
Not like the emasculated God of the Americans.
God is the God of the Gospel
Rejoice
Thursday, January 6, 2011
un-edited meanderings (your welcome)
When I sit down and write, I am a messy writer. I will do anything to distract myself from distracting myself. At the moment it means resting the keyboard on top of the computer screen. (My display is an older model and leaves me plenty of room.)
I remember being so freaked about writing a paper for school that I nailed two 8 by 14 pieces of paper to the wall and wrote the introduction in graphite crayon.
I’m suyre by now I’ve filled the that fake white paper in Microsoft screne with tons of illegible blkdsjf;alkej fwdef and m,xcnvwa478jkdf, but I can’t care about that. I’m too busy tricking myself. I’ve an insane, intense, inglorious fear of writing. I don’;t know when it strated because I wrote quite well as a younger girl. I’ve won two awards in college for writing (one for an opinion column and one for peotry), but I still squirm when it comes down to it.
It’s not unusual, I think. I heard somewhere that the difference between a published writer and all the rest is that the writer won’t give up.
This is me not giving up.
A writer once came to a school to give a lecture on becoming a writer. He opened by asking the students how many wanted to be serious writers. A whole sea of hands rose. “Then,” he said as he began to leave, “why you at aren’t home writing?”
Pithy.
I’m not at the bagel shop.
It’s a new year. The last new years of my undergraduate career. I didn’t make all aa’s last semester but that’s ok.. …and even though I think my Shakespeare professor is quite possibly insane (the good kind), I am proud of the work I did for that particular class.
I’ve had to distract the wicked editor within. The computer screnen is off now and I’m seated.
Someones fire alarm keeps going off athte apartments across the street.
I imagine “oooo, perhaps if I put the peanut and butter jelly sandwhich in the toaster it will taste better “ being thought each time the alarm goes off.
College kids
You love them or hate them
This year is only slightly different from laszt year.
Last year I was gioing to save the soul of new york city. This year I want to live on a farm and grow green beens.s It seems like a big difference , but really the similarities lie in the pronoun “I”. It’s all about what I want (damnit!) [sorry].
There goes that alarm
Beep beep beep……beep beep beep…..beep
Good, someone shut (beep beep) if off.
How distracting. Now I’ve got to do something entirely desperate. Now I must turn the computer screne off.
There, that’s better. As ai WAS SAYING, Y, ITS Always oubt me (ooh, gotta whatch that caps lock light) But not so much anymore. This has been a difficult semester emotionally, though granted they all are (yes,m, I do frequently ride the whambulence), but God has shown me many different things:
- He’s shown himself. I’ve a stronger, inexplicable desire to read the bible. I pray. I seek his counsel for things.. It’s not just because I know I’ve got nothing on me, it’s just a natural pull towards him. A pull I didn’t put there and I believe won’t be going away. I praise his name so much. My heart has felt so cold and dead for so long. I can breathe his name and not feel hypocritical. I don’t feel a huge burst of religious energy. It’s more like being pulled up stream by a warm river. (oh dear, I feel a a poem coming on).
Actually, I’m satisfied with talking about 1 right now.
Life is pretty much the same. Laws of gravity apply and I still eat way too much macaroni and cheese (sorry Matt). Yet my hearts at peace with God and the sky is a stark-dreamy blue.
Thanks for reading an un-edited blog.
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