To Diaries and Journals

My first one had a cover of pink roses, padded and shiny, about half the size of a regular book.

And it had a key that went to the little lock that clicked when I shut it.

The very idea that I could lock my writing away wasn't exactly freeing, but it did create the idea that perhaps maybe something I write could be dangerous.

I would write at night, a small lamp clipped to my bed headboard. The diary began to take on a personality, someone who waited for me, who listened, who didn't judge but always knew better. I admit, though I had no reason to, I lied. Maybe I just wanted to see what it would be like to live a life I wasn’t living. I got in so much trouble at school today. I am planning to run away. As an adult, I would call it fiction.

But I also told the truth. Years later, my poetry professor would tell me to write something that scares me. I was very familiar with writing towards fear. By then, I was older and kept spiral notebooks in my desk drawer. Unlocked. 

Those fears and dreams and angers roaming around the pages of our juvenilia don’t want to be released. Writers, scientists, and artists die and their notebooks are discovered in their basement boxes. A distant relative thinks they may be of interest and sends them out. It seems freeing, but not everything written needs to see the light of day. 

So if you have them, burn them. 

Feel the heat on your fingers. 

Again.

To The Calm After the Storm

You kept the weather channel up to track the storm, playing in the background while you clean the kitchen, chop the onions for dinner. You listen for the names of towns as it moves in closer. You wonder if you should turn the stove on or wait.

The sirens start. Though they are telling you to head to the basement or the stairwell, you have to see. One huge gunmetal grey cloud just above the highest oak tree branch. The raindrops break on the sidewalk.

You grab the radio on your way down, the flashlight, and the beer. Then you gather the dogs. Windows open or closed? Something about a mattress, but you can’t remember and you aren’t about to pull one off the bed and downstairs. Your neighbor has bottled water and canned foods in his basement. A generator. Months ago, when he was checking to make sure it was working, you shook your head a bit. When you said you didn’t have one, he shook his. 

The sirens stop 43 minutes later. Only once did the power flicker off. You shoo the dogs back upstairs and out to the yard. Rain has softened all the edges.

Later, you will watch the news, see the stories of the houses that were leveled. Luckily, this time, no one was hurt, but only because they weren’t home or they had taken shelter. Behind the reporter, roofs are caved in, trees are down.

But right now, in the first few minutes after the storm, when you realize it’s over, you survived and you know it doesn’t always end this way, you feel a calm in the very center of your chest. Not in your heart, but just beneath. Whatever deeper space that’s called.

To Our Shadows

You are absence of us, the outline and dark space, the suggestion of our shape, what we might look like if we were there.

You are the presence of us, the proof that, despite how we feel some days, we have weight and matter. The light breaks around us.

You join with other shadows: I hold my niece’s hand she tells me about her school; my son grabs my arm as a step toward the street; we seek out the shade and open a book. The shadow moves just slowly enough for us to finish the chapter, close our eyes and feel the heat slowly cross our cheeks.

When the light is low, you stretch, the truth becoming a lie. We are not who we think we are. We are not what other people see. We are so much more. Much less. We are empty.

You play beneath and beside us, a silence that follows us into every night.

To Toddlers Who Misunderstand Adults

When my son is little, about 3 years old, we are sitting in a Sunday mass and in between the music and the small bowl of snacks I have for him, he’s doing well, not bothering too many people around us. 

The church gets more and more quiet as the priest begins the eucharistic blessing and when we all kneel down and bow our heads, my son begins to listen harder. I’ve done this so many times in my life, I don’t even think about what’s about to happen.

“And he took the bread, broke it and said, “Take this and eat it, for it is my body which has been given up for you.”

“Eat my body?!?” Whit looks at me in disbelief. He doesn’t seem horrified, but certainly confused. Toddlers, it seems, are used to trying to figure out the insanity of adults, and though he doesn’t know what it means exactly, he knows enough to be surprised.

I was not prepared for this. I don’t remember, as a child, ever being bothered or even surprised by the communion ceremony. I was never upset by Jesus hanging, bloody hands and feet, in every classroom. We read stories of young children put in ovens, survived and then became saints. We acted out the Easter story, Jesus arriving at the throne of Pontius Pilate a beaten and broken man, and some of us cheered, as the script called for, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Cain and Abel. Abraham walking his son into the desert, moments away from killing him. Solomon suggesting the baby be cut in half. Even Jesus one day, angry at the tax collectors, raging against them and throwing them out of the temple.

Ours was not a childhood without violence and gore.

But communion didn’t seem violent or even odd. In fact, it was the very moment we waited for. This is what made us faithful. This brought us together. This was the underscore for all the other things we were asked to believe in, the things that stretched logic: the virgin birth, the water into wine, the walking on water. All the loaves and fishes. Stories we heard every year. We could recite them the way we recited our alphabet and two-times tables.

Now, I am looking at my son, his eyes wide, waiting for an explanation. Part of me wants to laugh and another part feels shaken, as if I have suddenly seen what this looks like to the uninitiated. I gather the snacks and his book and whisk him out of the pew, but not before the priest says, “Drink this cup. This is my blood…”

“Drink my blood?!” Whit repeats loudly as we head to the back of the church.

I distract him outside. The church has a row of tulips growing, complete with dirt and rocks and bugs. He forgets about the body and blood. He’s digging with a stick in the flowerbed and though the groundskeeper might get mad at me, I don’t stop him as he digs up two bulbs in full bloom and carries them over to me, one in each hand. So proud of himself.

To Complete and Utter Failure

She is six hours from home and just starting college. Every weekend, she finds a reason to go back, She never knew how much she loved her family. She starts leaving Thursday nights and missing class on Fridays. She comes back in time for class on Tuesdays. 

Finally, she just quits coming back. This whole college thing just ain’t gonna happen. At least, not this far away from home. Screw the grades.

So we could look at this and call it failure. In fact, all the F’s on the report card say it for us. And that’s $10,000 down the drain. She’s gonna have to pay that back. It’s harder to go back to college after a semester like this. Why didn’t she just stay? Why give up like that?

The story is that if we stay with something when we hate it, when it’s harder than we dreamed, when we can’t see the value, then later--months, years--there’s a big pay off and it all makes sense. “That’s why I needed to learn French!” or “That’s what algebra is good for!” We will be rewarded for our grit and determination.

At very least, we can say we never quit.

But until you have quit, you can’t really know the value in it. Walking away. Finally just saying “Forget it.”

You’ve imagined it. Your boss steps into your cubicle and asks, again, how the new design is coming. They aren’t due for another week, and you want to say, “Look! They will be done! Don’t you trust me? Am I 12??” but instead you say, “Fine. Almost done.”

Or maybe you get it wrong. You put the decimal in the wrong place or make a bad prediction and that’s it. You’re fired. They don’t even apologize. No, “Hey, sorry to have to do this…” No, you're just told to pack your things and leave within the hour. Some mistakes will not be tolerated.

Source: http://morethansound.net/

You will feel terrible. Worse than terrible. If you walk away or if you are told to go away, you will reconsider your whole life. 

Tom Andrews wrote in a poem about pain, that pain “simplifies” you. So does failure. Simple is the hardest achievement to endure. Complicated is distracting and seductive. Simple will require all your patience and none of your attention. Failure will require all your strength and none of your loyalty.

Go ahead. Walk out the door.

To Songs we Sing to Children

The morning Whit was born, when he was wrapped and warm and well, Keith scooped him up into the crook of his arm and spoke the first words he could think of:

   Let us go then, you and I, 

When the evening is spread out against the sky 

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Prufrock are not usual the first words a baby hears, but the melody of the lines is undeniable, the rhythm so calm and besides,  a baby will never understand the angst beneath it. This is daddy, his voice, the way he rocks.

Over time, we developed our favorites. Bare Naked Ladies for nap time and Jimmy Cliff for playtime. We made him mix tapes of Beatles and Bob Dylan. Carlos Santana and Little Richard. 

At bedtime every night I sang, “If I Had a Boat” by Lyle Lovett,

    If I had a boat

   I'd go out on the ocean

   And if I had a pony 

   I'd ride him on my boat.

And when he sings, “Kiss my ass, I bought a boat…” I'd sing it too and hope it didn't make its way into the preschool classroom the next day.

We walked a thin line, I know, about what was appropriate and what was not. But singing to children often works. They drift off to sleep or become distracted on a long road trip or pass time waiting at the DMV so much more easily when we sing to them. To keep our sanity, we picked songs we knew, songs we loved that, at least melodically, could also work for a toddler.

And then, one day, my toddler son turns and sings to me. We are out shopping and he's riding in the cart. I'm deciding between cereals and his eyes get big. He begins to sing along, a song I know but not one I have sung often. But he knows every word and sings with feeling:

Some...times in our lives

We all have pain

We all have sorrow… 

I wonder what he knows already. Three years old and he's singing like he means it. 

Lean on me

To The List Game

Give me your top 5 reasons you like to play the list game, the game where you rank everything under time pressure and without much thought. The list has to come from the heart or it’s meaningless.

Top 5 American novels. Top 5 romcoms. Top 5 places to spend a long weekend.

You have to reveal something of yourself in these lists. You have to giveaway a secret you didn't know you had.

Top 5 Beatles albums. Top 5 Michael Jackson songs. Top 5 concerts you've ever seen. Top 5 concerts you want to see given by any and or musician, dead or alive.

Numbers 1 and 2 are easy. You don't even have to think about them. But when you get to 3, you have to start making decisions. Was it Springsteen in ‘87? Or was it that singer you didn't expect in that dive bar in Indiana? Springsteen was good, but he's always good. That night, the Indiana woman sounded like your past stayed up all night writing all the songs about you and then gave them to her, and she sang them like her own. She haunts you still.

Top 5 restaurant meals you've ever had. Top 5 ice cream flavors. Top 5 things you'd have at your last dinner. Top 5 people you'd have at that dinner.

Sometimes you start the list but you just can't finish it. Not that finishing it is too hard, but it means admitting what you've been denying. It means naming what you want to remain unnamed, waking up from the dream.

Top 5 regrets.

Top 5 do-overs.

Top 5 wishes you'd make if I had the power to grant them.

To Precise Measurements

 As the crow flies, the distance from here to Dallas, the city I grew up in, is easily measured: 1, 019 miles. 

If I get on a plane, I have to add the 38 miles in the car to the Cleveland Airport and account for the layover in Chicago. Add 131 miles.

If I drive from the airport to the house I grew up in, I add another 3 miles.

If I get out the car and knock on the door, I add the the 62 feet up the drive to the front door.

If I turn around and run my hand over the brick wall we used to climb, I add 3 feet.

If I touch the highest spot I could reach as a kid and trace the edges of the brick, I add 4 inches.

If I remember being 7, the fear and joy of being even a few feet off the ground, looking through the spaces between the brick, I add 2 inches.

If I remember the sound of the bolt on the front door as it was unlocking, the heavy clunk of old mechanics, I add 4 centimeters.

When I remember stepping through the doorway, when I remember the light in the living room, when I remember the long hall that went back to my parents’ room, when I think of the years I’ve spent leaving and returning, leaving and returning, and leaving...I divide.

To Big. Ass. Trucks.

I love Big Ass Trucks.

I don’t mean big trucks. I’m not talking about Ford F150’s.

I mean Big. Ass. Trucks.

You may think it’s because I grew up in Texas, but really? No. I grew up in Dallas, in the city. We weren’t ranchers or farmers or oil barons riding out the rigs. My dad was a professor and my mom was a nurse and we had VW’s and station wagons. I didn’t know anyone with a Big Ass Truck.

I’m not talking about monster trucks, nothing with airplane wheels that aren’t really allowed on regular neighborhood streets. Be real.

But I do mean a Big. Ass. Truck.

One I have to pull myself up into.

One that, if I am driving, people would make assumptions about the things I “haul” and the number of trailers I have to “hitch.” No one just has a truck like that unless you are “hauling” and hitching.”

They assume I have livestock.

And I don’t mean chickens.

It will have at least two gas tanks and I would fill them both during the week. Gas mileage is not a concern for the driver of a Big Ass Truck.

I’ll need boots, of course. I’ll have to swear a lot more. I may have to start going to church, at least on the major holidays.

I can’t explain it. I’m an English teacher and the most I haul is sometimes a trunkful of books for charity. I know it’s environmentally wrong and I doubt it’s the safest ride on the road. I have no live animals that would need a trailer. My little dogs would insist on the heated cab.

But I love the dream. Driving my Big Ass Truck up to the grocery store. Pulling into the parking spot. “Hey, baby Volvo. Hey, little Mini. Don’t mind me. Don’t mind me one bit.”

To AM Radio

I’ve had all the NPR I can take for one night and I’ve got 30 more minutes on my drive home. I cannot listen to anymore Ed Sheeran or  Adele, lovely as they are.

 

So I hit the AM button to see how the other half lives. And by “half” I mean 4%.

It’s like the county fair of radio, utterly charming, profoundly useful, and yet terribly outdated. I expect any second now someone will start reading from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. And be right.

As I scan, I pick up mainly sports. A local high school basketball game called play-by-play with all the passion of the pros. Whoever this guy is, he knows this team and its history like a real fan. He must be sitting courtside; he knows the players. He knows their parents. They all meet for pizza after the game.

There’s sports talk radio also, which is almost impossible to hear, not just because of the static but because they are all talking at once: the two hosts and the person calling in. They are arguing over who is the best free throw shooter and disagree over which stats to use. One guy says you can’t just take the basic average because it really only matters in playoff games, under pressure. The caller disagrees. I think. I only make out bits and pieces, and two minutes later the voices fade to static.

And then there is Jesus. Jesus loves AM radio. Or AM radio loves Jesus. Somehow they have found each other in the 21st century. I scan past a lot of scripture quoting and fire and brimstone. But one preacher gets me. He is clearly close to the microphone in the studio as he talks and he is trying desperately to save whatever soul he can on this here frequency. He says our country is “antithetical” to spirituality. I agree with both his philosophical point and his use of the word “antithetical.” He talks about all the screens in our lives: our phones, our TV’s, our computers.

We need to put them down, he says. We need to spend a little time with God. Turn off the TV, he says. Turn off the computer. And then he says--he actually says--”Turn off the radio.”

To Winter Solstice In The Northern Hemisphere

Today, I say I’ve made it. For months I have been watching the sun go down earlier and earlier, the light fading in the living room sooner and sooner. It's like eating a bowl of soup and then having to tilt the bowl and scrape the spoon against the side of the bowl. And then getting out a piece of bread, trying to get every last bit of broth out of the bowl.

Today is the last day. The sun sets at 4:56 PM. And then, slowly, the bowl fills again. The light rises more and more. Every day in January just a little longer than the one before; even in the  brutal February evenings, with their negative wind chills and icy sidewalks, the day lengthens.

Today is when it all turns around. The earth swings back. The mood shifts. We all lean a little closer toward the sun.

To Bumper Stickers

I follow the blue Toyota Corolla an extra block just to try to read all the bumper stickers. Clearly, the driver, or at least the person who added all the stickers, is very liberal.

source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Madisonian-bumperstickers.jpg

“Coexist” “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.” “Obama ‘08” “Obama ‘12” “Bernie Sanders” “Legalize it” “Feminism: The radical notion that women are people.” And something about dogs, but it turns the corner before I can finish reading.

Most often, though, it’s a single sticker, carefully chosen for the statement it makes. “An armed society is a polite society.” “My other car is a broomstick.” “My kid and my money go to Ohio State.”

The Jesus fish. The Jesus fish with legs and “Darwin” in the middle. For a while, in the 90’s, the rainbow Apple logo. Tim Cook wasn’t even with the company yet. 

Visualize World Peace. Visualize Whirled Peas.

I feel a kinship with the distance stickers: 13.1. 13.1 (in pink). I have a 26.2 I’ve been meaning to put on my car, but still don’t feel like I’ve earned it.The numbers look so clean and precise, black against the white. Contained. Clear.

The irony would be lost on the other drivers.

To Kites

The impulse to fling a part of ourselves towards the heavens, hope it catches in the wind, and hold on to it, tugging at it but not really wanting it to come down, must be universal.

When I was young, we flew kites in the front yard. Colorful triangle versions from the five and dime.  Perhaps it was just a way to tire a child out, but Dad would hold the kite while I  let out the line and when he said, “Go!” I’d run across the yard as he pushed it into the air. Eventually, after several tries, it would stay there, drifting higher. I’d let the string unroll in my hands.

Years later, with a child of my own, we lived in Wisconsin. In Madison, every February if the ice is thick enough, they hold the Kites on Ice festival. Kites are so very summer, bright colors and wind swept, and so they are just the right cure for winter blues. Babies bundled on sleds out on Lake Monona staring up at dragons and flowers and box kites as snow settles on their eyelashes. The kids will stay out for hours, insisting they are not cold, though their chattering teeth betray them.

But the most vivid kites were at an oceanside park on a cliff in northern California. We were midway through a trip and he was falling out of love with me, or maybe realizing he was never in love with me. Whatever it was, we were drifting through the days barely speaking but unable to break apart. After dinner, we walked towards the kites, the ocean wind strong enough to lift them easily. People merely toss their kites up and they ascend until they are just dots against the clouds. We watch as they steer their kites over the water. The waves below. The pilot on the cliff. The sail above, dipping recklessly towards the rocks.

To “Year in Reviews”

Let’s take a look back, shall we, at all the local news and events? 

 

Isaac decided a career in accounting was not for him. He decided this after he was fired from his accounting job only 4 months in. Apparently, mistakes are tolerated for only so long. Stability is for suckers, he thinks, and has decided to sell kayaks at the local sporting good store. He hopes they will hire him. He has adventurous footwear.

Aunt Emme is back. We are all pretending like nothing happened. She looks like she lost a little weight, but she seems happier. We don’t know if that’s because she’s relieved it’s over or if the experience was transformative for her in some way. Occasionally, she steals away to the guest room and spends several minutes on her phone texting. No one knows to whom. Before this, she never knew how to text. She has a tattoo.

Main Street saw a resurgence in the beginning of the year when several shops opened in the first quarter. A bakery, a pet groomer/daycare and some kind of tech something-or-other all moved into the spots that had been vacant for years. The city gave them a discount on rent and small loans to get started. Business was brisk for the first week and then the newness wore off. Or people forgot. Or they realized they baked just as well at home and the dog doesn’t like the shears and once the tech problem is fixed, there’s really no reason to go back. By the third quarter, they had all closed. We are working on alternative business models for the new year.

The entire fourth grade class at PS 157 came down with strep, lice, and chicken pox during the time between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. Notices would have gone home, but the children weren’t in school to collect them. Some believe it was a conspiracy among the children themselves to get out the the final tests. Some parents have found search histories for “How to catch chicken pox” on their home computers. Luckily, all the children are well. We ask that parents check their search histories for more than porn.

source: twitter.com

Momaw got an iPad for her birthday and joined Facebook. She friended all the grandchildren and then began (accidently) stalking them. They love her, but have unfriended her after trying to teach her some FB etiquette, which she ignored. When she was asleep, the youngest grandchild hacked her account and “liked” several funny dog video pages. Memaw knows what’s up. She’s subtweeting them and they have no idea.

To Christmas Ornaments from the 1970’s

Three clay angels with different color dresses. The long gold icicle we would each hope to find first, everyone wanted to be the one to hang it. The little red apples we hung near the bottom of the tree so that if bumped by a dog or small child, there was nothing to break.

I remember plugging the lights in as soon as we got home from school, lying on the floor, doing my homework, my worksheets bathed in green, blue and red light. Every day, I would inspect the tree, note the ornaments: the spiral one covered in tin foil my sister made, the paper one with my little sister’s 1st grade picture.

Waiting for Christmas was a particular kind of decorated, brightly lit, multi-colored, tinseled purgatory. The Sears catalog with pages bent, pictures circled: white knee-high boots and a poncho, a Barbie salon, a charm necklace. We were strategic with our wishes.

I like the decorations gaudy. Then and now. We don’t do much besides a tree, but I love the huge multi-colored lights that demonstrate no restraint or decorum. We didn’t worry about such things in the ‘70’s. We were wearing bellbottom jeans and yo-yo shoes. We were feathered hair and home perms. We danced to the BeeGees and The Commodores.

I am wishing as hard as I can; I decorate accordingly.

To Polaroids

Dad, Christmas morning

I have to stare at the pictures. 

Christmas morning. The wrapping ripped off and the boxes torn into while I snap pictures. I’m 12 and beginning to think I may be an artist,; at least, I think so; I want to have a vision. I can’t draw so I consider taking pictures instead.

So while my brother is trying out a new remote control car and my sister plays with a new hand puppet, I’m lining up the polaroids photos on the coffee table, watching them.

First just the outlines: my sister’s head, my mother’s shoulders, the tree in the background. Second by second it becomes more clear. The blue in her shirt, the red in his socks, the gold tinsel on the tree. The images swim slowly to the surface.

They emerge, finally. My brother looking at something just out of the frame. My sister studying the face of the puppet.

Mom, Christmas morning

My mom is watching all five of us. She has her coffee. I don’t notice it when I’m looking at her, but in the picture I can see she’s pleasantly exhausted.

Years later, I will learn about those Christmas eve’s when they went to bed two hours before we got up. The truth swims slowly. Images develop, the colors brighten, and the lines, finer and finer, define the faces I love.

To the Snowy Night I Drove Back from Cleveland With a Loose Tire

I-77 south at 3:00 AM. I haven’t been out this late on purpose since 1993. The snow falls through my headlights; the dark on the side of the highway is so quiet.

I’m driving back home with my son and his friend asleep in the back seat. We spent the evening at the House of Blues at a Zed show. I can’t call it a concert because he played computers; I’m not sure any of the music was anything created by his hand touching what most people would identify as an instrument. He was a conductor, a pied piper, a merry prankster.

And the crowd came for the lights, the beats, and whatever they were passing out near the bathroom. I remember Grateful Dead concerts and this was mild in comparison.

The crowd, drunk and high and with fluid boundaries. The lights flashed pink and blue and gold and green while Zed, who was just a head behind a wall, mixed music like a 21st century warlock, all shiny and half-smiling.

When it’s over, the house lights come up. We stumble over each other to break out into the freezing January night. The storm has set in and we make our way to the car, our ears buzzing. We are exhausted and not at all tired.

Ten minutes on the highway and the boys are asleep in the back seat. Across the quiet now, I hear a rumbling from the rear wheel. I’ve owned mostly old beater cars my whole life, so I have a sense what’s ok and what isn’t. Engine noises can often be ignored. Tire noises are never good.

But it’s 3:00 AM. My husband is asleep and we are 30 minutes from home. I grip the steering wheel. I remind myself of the complicated mechanics of wheels and axles, telling myself it’s a loose ball bearing. It’s a loose ball bearing.

We make it. I pull into the garage and turn to wake them. They are sleeping. Even if they were 25, I would still see the baby in the them. They pull themselves awake and stumble a bit towards the door. My son looks up and says, “When did it start snowing?”

To Making A Million Dollars

For Christmas, my nephew gets $100 bill and declares himself a “hundred-aire!”

 

He’s 7 and though he can literally pocket that money, he can’t really comprehend what to do with that much money.

Out at dinner with friends, one suggests to my son he write a raffle ticket app. “You’ll make a million dollars!”

He’s 15. He can imagine ways to spend a million dollars: a new car, dinners at steakhouses, any college he wants, a trip to China. It might take a while, but he could blow through it.

I try to calculate if, over my life, I’ve made a million dollars. I start with my current job but stop when I get to those years right after grad school. Making a million dollars is best when you make a million all at once.

You start a company and sell it for a million dollars. You write a book; it ends up on the New York Times bestseller list; Angelina Jolie buys the rights to it and wants to star in it. You buy a lottery ticket at 3 AM at the E-Z Stop Mart on South Broad St. and wake up in the morning as part of the 1%. Jackpot.

My mom plays this game best. Whenever she imagines winning the lottery, first she gives a sizeable but equal chunk to each of her kids. She wants to take us all on a trip, even the great grandchildren, perhaps especially them. She would hold the toddler on her lap at the end of the table where we are all eating dinner. We don’t notice but for several minutes they have been unusually quiet. We look over and Mom is holding an open sugar packet, while her great granddaughter dips her finger in and licks it. Yes, she’d pay a million dollars for that.

To Negative Space

A vase. Around the vase, two profiles. When you see them, you can’t unsee them and you train your eye to move back and forth: vase, faces. Vase. Faces. You try to hold them both in your gaze at once.

The question of how to define space--is it the place where things are? or the place where things are not?--surfaces and then fades.

In the morning, before sunrise, is the dark where I find my memories? Or are they in the crack of light from the kitchen? Are they in the sound of the train? Or in the silence after it passes?

The Japanese word is “ma”, the combination of the words “sun” and “door”. Each opens and calls you through it. You can’t tell if you are coming or going.

Musicians are taught to play the pauses, to consider the space between the notes as much a part of the song as the notes themselves. Billie Holiday, “In my solitude...you haunt me…” She is alone. She can never be alone.

A line, a pause, sometimes a breath.

He walks out of the room. The room empties.

To Craft Brews

We can do better.

We can do better than Coors and Budweiser. We can do better than mass markets and cans shipped in hot trucks.

We are craft brews. We have a guy who walks around the tanks every day. He listens and he smells. He checks the temperatures and he smells the hops. He hands smell like a garden.

When he goes home, his lover takes his palms, holds them as they talk about the day. They talk about their daughter who is just learning to walk. The neighbor insists, again, on Christmas lights that seem to scream when you walk by. They lace their fingers together. In four months, they will be married two years.

It's not about beer. He doesn't even drink that much. It's about seeing something through from beginning to end. It's about tending. He wants to take care of so much, speak about so little. 

To Pippi Longstocking

A child without parents always ends up being the hero. She is free of all the burdens parents place on a child: eating vegetables and meat, washing behind the ears, bathing at regular intervals, neat hair, shoes, even though it’s summer.

Source: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lojdq0njXk1qi6jm3.jpg

But Pippi’s dad it out to sea and her mom is oddly absent. She lives by herself with a horse in a house and makes all the decisions alone.

This is every child’s dream. Parents do not understand the need, the yearning to be free, to tear away. What would happen if I had cake for dinner? For lunch and dinner? Every day? For a month? What if I didn’t wash behind my ears? Would I go deaf? Would I miss my hearing? I like the quiet, in the morning when everyone is still asleep.

Pippi is living large. A monkey. A horse. A house. It’s perfect.

But one day, her father comes to take her to the South Seas. He’s come back for her. He misses her and has a life of beaches and coconuts waiting for them.

She says no.

No, Papa. I like my life here. I like my friends and house and my horse and my monkey. I go to the park and I have enough gold to last me. No, Papa. I will stay here.

But you go, she says.

As a child, it seemed to so easy to imagine and yet so impossible to pull off. How does it happen? Then one day, you are eating salad and chicken, your ears are clean and your shoes are on and then the next, you are alone in a house. Maybe not a monkey, but a dog perhaps. A grumpy roommate more likely. You’re having cereal for dinner again but it’s not as good as you hoped. Pippi made it look so simple.

She sloshes a bucket of water across the floor and straps brushes to her feet. She skates around to clean and sings sailor songs all the while.  She is clever. She is fearless. She is strong. We all watch in awe. Her red braids defiant against all gravity.

To Writing

I ask my students to fill the board with reasons why they write.

I write for people who have no voice. I write to my dead sister. I write because I have to. I write to get a good grade. I write because I'm angry. When I write, I cry. I write to think. I write when I sleep. I write to believe.

They ask me to put one up. No, I say. Today is all about you.

But now, tonight, alone, it's all about me. And why I write.

I write because I don't know what else to do. I write because I believe in words. I write because I am lonely and when I am lonely I write to find someone. And when I find someone, I write to be together. And it works. 

I write to procrastinate and ignore my other work and then I write because it is my work. I write one sentence over and over because someone in power is going to read it and make a decision based on what I've said. I rewrite because I have power. There is great power in revision.

I write to play. I write to jump off a cliff and fall. I write to fall and I write the falling and then I write to land, to hit, to break and in the breaking, I write to heal.

Writing doesn't heal us. It's not healing at it all. It solves nothing. But I write thinking I might heal. I write because it gives me something to do when I feel like there is nothing, I mean absolutely goddamn nothing to do about all the pain and suffering. Not that the writing will heal but it will get me to the next moment.

I write because I'm a terrible singer. I write because I'm easily overwhelmed visually. I write because I cannot draw or doodle. I write because I never got past calculus. I should have. It was the first math that made sense. But it was too late. I was reading Creeley and I write because Creeley wrote and broke my heart. Calculus never broke my heart. It would have. Eventually. Math will always break your heart. It just takes longer.

I write to break your heart. I write because your heart is broken. I write because we are born with broken hearts. I write because there is room to write. I write to make room for all the words in our hearts. I write to learn the limits of language and I write to feel the limits.

It feels rough. I write to the very edge. I write until I have no more words. Then, I listen.

To Being Relevant

I was relevant. 

 

Once.

It was a good day.

At least, I think it was. It must have been. The trouble is, I didn’t know on that day, at that time, that I was relevant.

Maybe it was the day when, as a sophomore at Southern Methodist University, we were protesting on the the main quad about the payments to the football players. Students were holding rallies between classes, demanding to know who was breaking the rules and who knew about it. I was wavering between a major in linguistics and poetry, and I wanted everything I said to mean something, to matter. Reporters were on campus. My picture ended up in a paper in Rochester, New York. Someone thought I was a badass. I heard about it weeks later.

But maybe, that wasn’t the day.

Maybe the day was when I was teaching at college classes at a high school in Michigan. Students were doing research papers and the principal caught wind of their topics: teenage depression, teenage violence, teen pregnancy. The principal would hang out in the hall during my class and then call me in later to ask me questions. One day, I shut the door. I called the students in closely and explained that they had the freedom to research the topics they wanted and write about what they learned. They felt dangerous. To me, it just seemed obvious.

But maybe it was a day I don’t even remember. Maybe it was a vacation I don’t recall or a conversation that meant nothing to me but everything to the person I spoke to. Maybe it was an email I sent at just the right time to just the right person saying just the right thing.

Relevant seems like a good goal. I want to be relevant again. But first, I want to have my dinner. And read my book. And write this letter. And live this life. One irrelevant day at time.