"Thou was not born for death, Immortal bird!"

i was talking with a friend this week (you know who you are) who does not love this world, though he tolerates it. this was a surprise to me--i'm afraid i love this world too much. i believe in something before and beyond, a frame for this scene, but besides the suffering and confusion of here and now, i wonder how this place we inhabit (and not just the physical place) can be improved on. that's a very big but besides, though, in the previous sentence. the concept of 'heaven' eludes me in every practical way, except that as someone once said, "heaven becomes dearer as those we love go there." so my heart learns to long for something it does not understand. it does understand, however, love and community and snow on the mountains and discovery and awe--all in the here and now.


i saw two lovely films this weekend. one was better than the other, and i'll let you puzzle which.



ok, not much time for puzzling. WATER is one of the best films i've ever seen. i saw it for the first time with Steph and it's stayed in my heart since then. the second viewing did not disappoint. it portrays several things i wonder about: the role of women and the power of faith. at one point, kalyani talks about being like the gods who grow like lotus flowers from the filthy waters (that but besides part from before), and the man says something like, "but you are not a god." and kulyani says something like, "but i can still be the lotus flower." PLEASE see this movie. and then tell me what you think.

i also saw this movie about john keats. i liked it. it was pretty. i like john keats. it didn't change my life however. sometimes movies can just be movies.



p.s. i would like to amend my previous "i believe" list:
i believe in not having all the answers and in asking sincere, authentic questions. i have written a letter to the editor of the Daily Universe about this that the paper people may or may not read, and soon it will be on my blog.

somethings really lovely

these are the songs that are saying it how i feel today.
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i heard someone sing this song today, and it was very very nice. made me cry. i don't want to be responsible for binding anyone to the pasture. that's the lesson of the day.

HOMEWARD BOUND
Marta Keen

In the quiet misty morning, when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing and the sky is clear and red,
When the summer's ceased its gleaming, when the corn is past its prime,
When adventure's lost its meaning, I'll be homeward bound in time.

Bind me not to the pasture. Chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I'll return to you somehow.

If you find it's me you're missing, if you're hoping I'll return,
To your thought I'll soon be list'ning; in the road I'll stop and turn.
Then the wind will set me racing as my journey nears its end,
And the path I'll be retracing when I'm homeward bound again.

Bind me not to the pasture. Chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I'll return to you somehow.

In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing, I'll be homeward bound again.

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and this one--well, just give me one thing that i can hold on to...

ANGEL FROM MONTGOMERY
John Prine

I am an old woman, named after my mother
My old man is another, child that's grown old
If dreams were thunder, lightning were desire
This old house would have burnt down, a long time ago

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster from an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

When I was a young girl, well I had me a cowboy
He weren't much to look at, just a free rambling man
But that was a long time, and no matter how I try
The years just flow by, like a broken down dam

There's flies in the kitchen, I can hear 'em there buzzing
And I ain't done nothing, since I woke up today
How the hell can a person, go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening, and have nothing to say

this vid is not the best ever, but i kinda like bonnie's feathered bangs. plus, she's just pretty killer i think, though getting better with time.

i wish it would snow

i wish it would snow* and wash my face clean
i want to find some dark cloud to hide in here
oh love and a memory sparkled like diamonds
when the diamonds fall they burn like tears
when the diamonds fall they burn like tears
--nanci griffith


i know i carry my sadness and everyone carries theirs too. meaning: i go on and on and on here about my particular lot, but that doesn't mean i'm not thinking about the people around me who struggle and bow under weight. and there seem to be an awful lot of people around me--people i love love love--who seem to be measured a bigger piece of the pain pie.

we can't compare lives: there is no grand equal sign or scale that balances the dispersal of pain. i like to think it is in our power as compassionate and conscious human beings to ease the disparity, even just a little bit.

all i want to say is thank you to everyone who shoulders a chunk of my load.

"my waking thoughts of you are but extensions of the dream and without you here beside me, i'll never know all that you mean."

some holes never fill. they will always be holes.

went walking a few days ago and it was winter, all of a sudden. in the same way, it is three years, all of a sudden.

each year is a reconfiguring. a new constellation of meaning.
see that precarious balance, the fragile weight, how things cleave to hold on?
surprised at how loss can be so universal and individual at the same time. hoping everyone has someone's love to make them an individual in a crowd.
doesn't matter how many times winter has come, how many lives have ended, how many treasures lost. eventually it is the first missing, the first frost, and a new sensation: cold cold cold.

what does it mean to let go?

loss is the home, the object, of all of my longing.

perhaps I've become predictable in writing this--but only as predictable as death, never more predictable than winter. i hope to meet her in my dreams tonight, to see her eyes regard my face as they did that last time, with love and approval.

ps forgive me for using the same picture. it isn't for lack of suitable pictures. there's just something about this one.

"Keep me, I pray thee, whole. Not as the dust."

It took feeling wonderfully happy to realize I have been sad for a very long time.

This is not to say (see here for a lovely short essay titled thus) that I have not felt any happy in between or amongst sad. Or that sad will not continue to appear in my life. In fact, my heart has become quite serious about feeling all kinds of things lately (are you getting this sense too, or is it an inside-looking out sort of thing?), which is indicator number one that sad, as a way of life, is on it's way out. Sad does not like to be interrupted.

So long sad.

The cause of wonderfully happy? Only the rain at three in the morning or a dinner table of family and friends or a nice poem. Which is to say nothing is the cause that hasn't always been the cause, but something has been working inside my heart, healing healing healing. Putting things back together, but slowly.

More on the rain.

I have a very good life. A very good life. I feel lucky to be alive, to be human, to be part of this blur and thrash of mortality.

Someone died during the Ragnar Relay, got hit by a drunk driver, someone with a family and a future. I don't want to be dramatic because that cheapens things, but I do want to grieve out loud.

Someone died this weekend. Someone dies every weekend. Someone died five minutes ago and someone is dying right now. I don't mean to sound morbid or calloused or depressed: to live is to die. No way around it. But we try so hard to prevent dying (what other inevitable process do we resist and resent as much, drain money into, obsess over?--besides aging, which is just the body's warning that the end is not far off.) We fight so hard to stay here and for what? The people? The beauty? The fear of the darkness ahead? We cannot learn how to die, really; we'll never know how it feels, really; until it is our turn. And for some people, they are gone before they know it, transformed into an incomprehensible state of being before saying goodbye.

How do you properly say goodbye to this life?

"Where else could I dwell," Scott Russell Sanders asks, "except in this familiar flesh?"

Today I walked in the rain. My pants were soaked and my feet were soaked and my sweater was splotchy and soaked. My hair, weighted with water, fell over and into my eyes. And all I saw was colors. Everything was dripping, slipping down; the colors were leaving blank bodies behind and crowding the ground with a puddley rainbow mess. That's how sadness feels sometimes. That's how thinking about people dying feels too.

"And as I watch the drops of rain weave their weary paths and die, I know that I am like the rain: there but for the grace of you go I."

I am amazed by the duality of things: the mystery of life and death descending upon us hand in hand, the kinship of joy and sorrow. The line intersecting the circle at a point called now.

Here's a photo of me feeling lucky to be alive.

Ragnar

Running.
Running.
Running (that strongly resembles limping. Which is fair, after 9 miles of hills.)
Pretending that running is fun. Liars.When not running, peeing. And admiring local flora and fauna. If you are scared of the burros during your run, race rules allow you to get in your van. We all know burros can be dangerous.