I would like to grade papers, but my brain won’t focus

I would like all of this to stop.

Now.

And what could I say that I haven’t already said over and over again? My problem is that I allow myself too much time to think about it.

There are times at which I absolutely CANNOT WAIT ANOTHER SECOND for things to be different. I am so impatient for change that it becomes painful.

And then there are other things that I hold on to with a vice grip. I strangle them.

It is so very easy for people to say that God has a plan — a wonderful, beautiful story for my life. But when I feel THIS way, those kinds of statements seem like great ironies. Like, HA! Joke’s on YOU! And to avoid feeling like a pit of deep, pathetic dispair, I bury my heartache under the sleeves of my skin and the soles of my feet, where I can only feel it if I move a little too quickly. And MAN, when that happens, it hurts — does it EVER. So I end up moving v-e-r–y s-l-o–w-l-y and people mistake that for an extreme lack of motivation.

Listen, people, listen.

I WANT to feel joy in others’ joy. I want to be truly selfless, to feel empathy and genuine compassion. Sincerely, sincerely. Why can’t I do it?? Why can’t I take myself apart, pull the stitches away from my little heart muscle and just find where that REAL love is? The unconditional stuff? It’s gotta be there, right? So where is it?

Practice?

Oh, somebody help me.

 

From Our Next Episode

Life like a classical romance: discord, smolder(s), hope, proposal, rejection, (several ineffectual) revocations, longing, realization, and finally one amazingly sweet and gentle kiss to finish it off.

Too bad there is such a thing called reality.

 

Stay Tuned for Scenes

How does one begin to heal from the batterings of everyday? How does one rise above it? Can I continue to look in the mirror each morning and grin despite my lack of self-assurance? A matter of humility. A matter of constancy. Day in and day out.

Someone said to me just this past evening: Everyone of us has a right to claim, “They can’t understand me and my struggles. No one has suffered in the same way that I have.” Perhaps in a strange way that can bolster us up. Or we can say individuality is such a constant curse; no other human person will understand us and it’s true for many — I can say especially for myself — that we barely understand ourselves. Is understanding so vital? Does it bring peace?

So… sufferings, longings, moments of joy and years of patience. Of waiting. Decades spanning the horizon of — just making it through one day at a time — doggedly but with hope. This is a kind of stubborn hope, wherein the wearisome and heartsore stuff of life is made to fly under the radar, just barely in one’s peripheral vision; there, but not named. Not spoken out loud.

Poignant. Bitter. Striving.

Dumb Ass Move #5

Remember — I’m always reflecting on memories because my own memory lacks so much clarity — how hard it used to be to organize your thoughts into words — sentences — paragraphs — monologues — conversations — ? You would struggle, paw around your mind to wade through single letters, single words and confusedly arrange and rearrange. Language was one enormous billion-piece puzzle and even before you knew how to fit one to another, there always seemed to be those obnoxious two or three missing to complete it.

Yet — and yet, there was always, ALWAYS so much purpose to the words, sentences, thoughts you were trying to convey into coherence. You had a single-mindedness to what you meant, what you wanted, and nothing was going to stop you from reiterating your meaning, even if it meant using crazy hand-gestures and your own extreme pattern of body language to put your point across and gain understanding. Like lighting a little spark to the candle of someone else’s brain or finally connecting the dot-to-dot to form a picture that clearly visualized your meaning, the end was satisfying.

But now, today, you have in your possession a well-oiled, well-worn maching of language making. You can spew the finest-formed string of adjectives, nouns and verbs the world has ever seen. At the top of your tongue lie tiny modules of sound just waiting and ready to create the beautiful syllables of structured sentences, refined words, luminous monologues and meaningful conversations.

And yet. Even with all the purpose, meaning, WANTS and NEEDS battering against the back of your skull to tell me with all these beautiful and refined tools of language that you struggled so long and hard to grasp — can you — can I – find the right words to tell you what I think and how I feel?

How Great You Think You Are

I thought great thoughts:

Why people are so insincere, so single and self-minded and I patiently exercised patience. I understood easily the difference between a glorious heaven and the glorious passions of earth and I easily overcame the weaknesses of simple mortals. It took me merely an afternoon to contemplate and conquer the imitations and deceptions of intellectuals.

I blinked

And a sparrow flew down and dropped divine inspiration into my open palms.

I gave barely a whisper of command and the wind rose up and shoved clouds away from the sun to warm my skin.

A synapse snapped in my brain and a seraphim with six pairs of wings all burning rubies appeared to satisfy my hunger for knowledge and conversation.

Because I speak with angels.

In my spare time.

Oy Vey. The things you said.

It’s today.

And in this semi-quiet moment I’mdreaming of lonlieness — a genre, a theme of mine.

To be just myself beside a window, a doorway, one deep-blue shadow across the pavement, across the pillow, my own ear pressed against the music that I chose and no one else.

Fool’s Gold

Could it really be that NOW I’m thinking time should just stop.

Or pause.

Hold its breath. Then JUMP two, three, four — six! Dead, unexuberant, unnecessary moments in life and then stop. Again. Pause. Recalculate, breathe out and begin again.

No, no, no don’t rewind — don’t make me relive — make me alive!

I want to be awake and collecting moments, handfuls of them, armfuls. Enough to make a giant leaf-pile to leap into. Yes, the imagery comes easily into your spectacular imagination. Can you see the times I collected fly up into the air and sprinkle down around me? I can reach out my fingers and SNATCH

one in particular, turn it in the palm of my hand to watch it glitter as it catches the light and shove it into my mouth and swallow. It slides down my throat and then spreads like something precious and severely painful, shooting through my veins, agonizing around the endpoints of my brain, down my spine and breaking through my fingertips.

NOW.

Am I different? Is this life any different? Have I succeeded in finding — is my long weary journey winding down?

Absolutely

Not.

So I open my eyes, look about me, shake my finger at time — though its not your fault — and now breathe. Recollect. I close my eyes and force back the evil intentions of existence to keep them from finding a home in my thoughts.

Instead I plant a tiny, tiny seed of fool’s gold in my mind, carefully tricking myself to believe the thing that keeps me going. That out there, far away, is something better. And it could begin at any moment.

colloquy number one

There it is again.

It is quite, quite small.

And like all small things, it sits in the middle of a gigantic, empty space, all alone, where the light touches it just right and shadows outline and exaggerate it across the floor.

That is the difference between it and me.

It loves to be the center of everyone’s attention, absolutely adores being superficially fascinating.

But I shrink away from the spotlight, I shrivel under people’s gazes. I know that under the harsh moonlight my features will stand out in unpleasant relief — the shadows will distort and define every aspect of myself that I try to keep hidden.

That is why I am looking for someone. I am looking for someone who dwells on the periphery, like me. A someone who sees through the skin to something deeper, mysterious, but undyingly attractive.

I am looking for someone who sees me.

Benedicta a Cruce

“God is there in these moments of rest and can give us in a single instant exactly what we need. Then the rest of the day can take its course, under the same effort and strain, perhaps, but in peace. And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it with Him. Then you will be able to rest in Him — really rest — and start the next day as a new life.”

If they can do it, so can I

So this was amazing. It was the middle of yesterday afternoon and I hadn’t even noticed the beginning of the crisp cold skyline creeping up on the tiny hairs of my neck. What could I say to the incredible feeling of forgiveness sliding across my shoulders, down my spine and wrapping around my thighs? Could I repeat the whispers they blew into my ear only at two the previous morning? Reminiscing would make me tearful with sweet exuberance and defiant blessings. I drew a long, thin cigarrette from the silver case in my stocking and trapped it behind my ear. It wouldn’t say a word — three inches. Four. So far.

Today it could have been a secret affair, not a breath worked into paragraphs of promises and lifted spirits. Too, too bad. It’s the start of a random compromise, a treaty with my broken soul in the sunshine.