Wednesday poetry

the river
psalm 63

We draw near to your waters,
a thirsty people
parched and begging
for our portion and more
than we deserve.

Our thirst makes us greedy and desperate,
frenzied and ultimately
relieved when we can see that the
water level remains unchanged
as we nobly attempt to drain you.

We float through your waters -
embracing one another,
giving thanks that we can float
and that the water isn’t solid
but has life and keeps pushing us onward.

The quickness of the current isn’t always natural,
yet we are learning not to fight
(as our fragile bodies do not do well with fatigue).

In due time you will take us where you will,
in the pace you’ve perfected over millennia.

A new psalm

Don’t teach me how to live like a free man,
just give me a new law.
Don’t want to know if the answers aren’t easy.
Just bring it down from the mountain to me.

A New Law – Derek Webb – Mockingbird

*****
I’m working on being ok with the hard stuff,
I promise I am.

And though I don't deserve it
when I have such teeny-tiny faith
(not even a mustard seed or an atom in size),
you still give me little glimpses
of what's to come to tide me over.

They're like sunshine licking my chilly skin.
Your warmth reminds me that I've been here before.
You've covered over me and kept me warm
and gave me a thousand times my portion
just because it pleased you.

I'll keep repeating “I trust you”
until my mind catches up with my heart.
It's dangerously slow to listen,
overlyexcruciatinglyfrustratingly
crowded with anxious thoughts,
but I hear your voice when the quiet comes.
I feel you coarse through my veins when I am still.

It is good that you do not come down from the mountain
when we ask, but when it pleases you.

summertime soul searching

I find a way back to myself each summer. Perhaps it’s the longer days or the sweet and soft air but I feel more content when I get in some porch time in the languid air.

My hypothesis is that after a winter spent hibernating, I’m ready to throw the covers off and see what’s below. If it’s bad, it’s just too damn hot to care. If it’s good, well, it’s just perfect weather to sit outside and drink tea in its company.

Either way, I’m approaching each new day like “it’s summertime and the livin’ is easy.”

So easy, in fact, that I only winced (not wept) when I turned in my cable box yesterday afternoon. It was sort of like passing around the collection plate and turning my head to the heavens - “Really? I should put in that much? Maybe we could just baby step this first, ya know?” But, it turns out that you can’t give back half of a cable box, soooo….it’s kind of a done deal.

I predict:

1. My apartment is gonna get REALLY clean.
2. Both my gym and running shoes will get a lot more use.
3. I’ll get some sort of fix from NPR for a while but will throw my radio through the window after I hear the same story 3 times in one night.
4. Books will be finished! Huzzah!
5. I will make a SERIOUS dent in my writing/editing projects.

Who are you?

Self-identification is one of the great hobbies of our existence. Who are we now? Who will we become? Who have we been?

I'm reading the fantastic book, "Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas" and I'm riveted by it. I pretty much love Bono to pieces, but as I'm learning about his views on life and spirituality, I'm undergoing my own sort of reckoning. It's making me rip my skin off and look at what's beneath. It's incredibly honest, visceral stuff, this book. And I love it for that.

One question that he answers is "Who the hell are you, then?" His answer is a litany of qualities: he's a wine-drinking, Bible-reading, friend of the poor and sometimes the rich....etc.

I was so moved when I read his honest interpretation that I scratched my own definition in the margins. I was tempted to leave it there, but I figure that part of genuine assessment of one's self is owning it.

So, "who the hell am I, then?"

I'm a voyeuristic, wine-drinking, gut-singing, Bible-reading fount of empathy. A reformed neurotic, too cerebral, too emotional. A mess. An artist, a great lover, an even better friend. An advocate and counselor for the lonely, a selfish show-off, mediocre club dancer, shameless seeker of attention and God. A beautiful woman who fights her inner voice to believe it, but usually wins out, often erring on the side of vanity. I have rhythm in my heart, love dripping from my lips and I need books like I need air.

****

Thank you God, for these gifts and for your grace at how I fumble about while using them.

T-minus 10 days...

A month ago I started toying with the idea of canceling my cable. I hemmed and hawed, even came up with a list:

1. This could be bad for my career.
PR folk are supposed to know lots of stuff about lots of stuff ("or a little bit about a lot," for all you Moore family members out there). But really, this isn't a valid reason with all the newspaper and online coverage I see. So really, #1 is just a b.s. excuse for "I should probably know the latest E! news gossip straight from Ryan Seacrest's lip-glossed lips." (You just know he uses gloss.)

2. But what about educational TV?
Right. Because I'm watching a lot of that at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. (In case you're wondering, that's re-runs of 90210 on Soap Net.)

3. But I don't get sucked in to all the crap!
Despite the fact that I've just referenced E! News (and that I know to use the ! after the "E"), I spent 3 hours last Sunday watching America's Next Top Model. I felt really sh*tty about my body after that. Just like I've stopped reading high fashion magazines because I know how they make me feel, TV is full of really thin, really shallow people. What goes in feeds how we feel.

4 through....yeah. I got nothing. There's no time like the present, and whatnot.

So, I've decided that after The Sopranos finale, I'm gonna pull the cord. (A smoker picks a quit date, after all.)

As far as how long I'll hold out - I'm shooting for the duration of the summer. There are fields to roam through and friends to visit and neighborhoods to be explored. If there's an easy season to to do it, I figure this is it.

Just to be clear: this isn't some sort of soapboxy plea for all people to give up their TVs.

I've simply realized that this is a good deal for me right now. The TV has been too much of a companion. Hopefully this will lead me to grow more comfortable with silence, to rediscover old music when I can't take it anymore, and to get some fresh air when I'm claustrophobic.

Today's Album: Kicking Television - Wilco

A time for whittling down

I'm told that when the you have nothing to write about, the trick is to just write. I'm curious if that works the same way for blogging, because it would seem that I've had very little to blog about.

This used to be a place of great creative output. Some of the things I wrote were turbulent outbursts from a passionate place deep inside of me. A year ago I had all sorts of public thoughts. Diatribes, even. But it would seem that those days are long gone and I feel bad about that. I mean, there isn't much that's new for the few of you who faithfully check this site.

The funny thing is, though this place has been oddly quiet, I'm actually wrestling with my writing more than I've ever done before. I've been sharing very little of it with anyone and producing even less, but I've been tending to the fruit of my sowing - lovingly trimming branches, watering sections, seeing what good blossoms might be plucked.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a rather serendipitous meeting with a group of aspiring writers. I was sitting in the patio's catbird seat at Broadway Cafe when a nearby group caught my attention. I just happened to be reading the same instructional writing book as one of them (Anne Lamott's - Bird by Bird). This happy little coincidence led one of the members to invite me over to join their discussion group and ultimately, their writing club.

One of the guys asked each of us what we're looking for from the group. Some people want to be published (strangely, not me) or learn to create compelling characters (also, not me). When he asked me, without hesitation I said that I wanted focus my thoughts. I need to see if these abstract ideas make sense to someone else. I want to edit them down to something beautiful and tight and understandable.

I want to reap what I've sown wildly into the wind.

It should be no surprise that I lovelovelove the message in chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes (or the Byrd's "Turn, Turn,Turn" for the music fans in the crowd). There is a season for everything and that's beautiful for people like me who like to go 90 to nothing. I need separate times for reaping or sowing. For creativity or rest. For birth or death.

This is the beginning of my season of whittling, reaping, picking and cultivating.

Though this space may suffer for it, there is "a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them" and my pockets are full of pretty little rocks.