October: 2009

The brightness of the leaves bursting color are humbling, after all of the complaining I have been doing, this year. October has taken on a redness I don't think I have seen yet, thus far. Something having to do with the elements over last winter in all its brutality has bestowed it, I hear.

I have been starting to glean some things recently. Most pertinently, that I have survived something, plain and simple. The details are less important than what they amount to which is the reality of injustice, and still I am not a saint for survival, even if I tend to turn survivors into saints. In all reality my eyes have not seen the worst, and no amount of psychological distance, geographic gymnastics, self-soothing, distraction, denial, time, or even prayer, can take away the pain of knowing that in this world people go through these monstrosities everyday, in great numbers and on vastly higher scales.

Death has a way of slapping you in the face, insulting your intelligence, and in case you have any arrogance left when it is through with you, it dares you to grieve without turning away from a God who sees. Hagar called him "El Roi." I can say without reservation, that I would have been counted among the scores who have lost hope, not seeing the goodness of the Lord, as that ever important clause in the Psalm goes, "in the land of the living."

The mercy in pain is not something I can really comprehend, much less communicate very well. This past year I might have spent some time in the belly of a whale, I was so bitter, but I am coming to realize, that the redemption of my own story is not the point. Jesus said he came to heal the broken-hearted, that by his stripes we are healed and that was my hope when I left Mormonism. It wasn't about whether or not Joseph Smith was a heretic, or even how wonderful it was to stop standing on my elbows for an apple, trying to make circles into squares. Death- was overcome. If that isn't hope I don't know what is, and I don't ever want to lose sight of that again.

Some thoughts on geography

I went to the Boston Public Library today. It is one place in this city I like to go, and tried some research on a real essay. I spent this last year standing on a fence, wavering between fear and bravery and foolery. Applying for an MFA in New York was a nice move, though it was rushed and somewhat a last fell throw away from having spent another year in indecision. My mother calls me fickle and I like to tell her she just doesn’t understand, to lecture her on how dull and meaningless living for security is, even if bills are constant. If she had her way I'd be settled and “taken care of,” meaning married and sheltered from life's storms. More than once I’ve fallen into the promise of thinking a guy’s affections could make me forget my troubles, and I have watched enough couples I love tear one another’s hearts to shreds to know that marriage can have its own. Still I never imagined how difficult it could be to really be on my own, in what often feels like a man's world, even with friends and freedom to roam. I've spent a fair share of time standing back from that dance floor, where hearts can get flipped around, watching out for the kick turns. Once in a while I have wonderfully spun, but I must admit I don't always know what rhythm my feet should take or how to keep the dust from getting in my eyes, or how anybody really does. Most hearts seem to be pretty messy, and yet even with my cynicism and a few tail bruises I want to believe it possible for love to remain. .

The truth is I’ve been wandering since I was barely eighteen, and while the saying goes that not all wanderers are lost I am kind of sure I have been, much of the way. I've laid eyes on the thrusting desert, mountains and canyons, Spanish blooming Lelia's, the African stars, and I have felt the sweeping breezes of turquoise beaches, and have lied under more than one oak tree. Through it all I have seen redemption enough to keep me going, when there has been terror and horrors too. I wish I could say those things haven't made a poor mark on my desire to attach to this world or the people in it, knowing how quickly it can all wither away.

Many of my hard earned friends in Boston are leaving this fall, and I cannot help wondering why I am still here. Boston has been often a place of bitterness, and I would like to put it behind me, to try and stay somewhere awhile, but I just can't seem to find a place I feel at home. I wonder if that is the point sometimes, if the grand biblical story tells true, how it will all pass away, and maybe we really are not meant to get too attached here. I have one real piece of furniture to my name, and I bought it with the moral support of my friend Sarah, who has such a beautiful way of creating a home. It is a small antique chest, and it reminds me of the one my Grandpa made for my mom when I was young. When I was coming of age he made me a bread cabinet, yes, and still whenever I am home I look at it puzzlingly trying to imagine where in the world I would put such a piece of furniture, or why in the world I would be making or buying enough bread to fill a bread cabinet. I might have known if I were the molly Mormon girl I had been reared to become, by now with a healthy sum of children, sewing dresses and making casseroles, blasting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir over the speakers in my home. Last time I was home my eardrums nearly broke so loudly my dad felt the need to play “Come Come Ye Saints” on Sunday morning. Whenever I am tempted to think about staying there for a bit, I merely recall the loud chorus and I am cured.

So I am working out these things, and for some reason I’m working them out in Boston, in the city, trying to find contentment outside of circumstance, outside of being able to nail things down, outside my horrible and untimely and sometimes seemingly random aim. My grandpa taught me to drive a nail when I was a girl, and I seem to spend more time pulling out the bent ones than striking them home.

I will be stacking books on that antique chest this year, getting ready to apply more broadly for schools, and hopefully more discerningly than throwing out shots in the wind. I may seem fickle, perhaps so, but I would like not to be spending so much of my spirit contending with the climate. City living is not for everyone, and I do not know why I would have imagined it being for me, who thrives so much on growth and aesthetics. Claire from Winston-Salem tells me the Carolina's have short winters and nice long summers, and a recent trip to Florida reminded me that there is kindness outside of the city, that life doesn’t have to be lived under the dread of the cold. Sometimes the unexpected can be just what we need. If Boston and I must get along to last another year, I need a good strong dose of summer for reconciliation, not to mention some good company. At least Claire will still be around, for some mysterious reason she loves it here.

spring eats

Spring is verging again, and those jitters are jabbering, the same ones that this time last year had me flying on a spur to Seattle, longing for anything, anything but these bare-boned trees, trying to get out from under the contempt of the cold air beating through my veins, when there had been six months of it. I had never been so happy to be under those clouds of home last year. If there is anything that living with such pronounced seasons has taught me here, it is that I am not so into dramatics, and that change, it always comes. Even if in rhythms I don't prefer. At least in Washington there is some subtlety between seasons, but then growing up I didn't care about temperatures nearly as much as I longed for the sun. Clearly, I have weather issues, but something in the seasons remains redemptive if not humbling; as they pull out desires, bury sorrows, amplify memories, mock frustrations, inspire faith, and always bring on those blessed summer lights.

This time of year holds something agitating. The uncertainty and flux of winter's fading. I have to work on not making rash decisions. During most of college it was when I was making some grand international summer plans, and when the romance of that waned with post-college realities like bills, the agitation nevertheless continued, with or without the anticipation of a change in scenery. This year I am facing mutiple revolving doors, some welcome and some terrifying, and so much of it relies on employment. Still there are trails my heart has been on that seem to be coming to hills, imagining God might actually mean something by my life, realizing I have a voice, that truly truly I need to figure out how to eat food sans milk, and that scars and all I might be of some use in this world. Thoughts like the last one causing such palpatations I cannot help wanting to shake the trees for folliage, waiting for paths to develop.

Yesterday my little preschool friends and I found some bunny tracks in the snow, and I remembered winter's sweet charm (even if it has faded), but today, I looked up from the playground and swore I saw some budding in a maple tree's limbs, and for a moment at least, my wait calmed to a quiet hope, not knowing what is next, what God means by everything, what climate is right, if that is even a valid question? but anticipating the coming beauty of growth. This week alone I imagined living in five different states, while considering thoughts of different schools, this time around my feet are feeling more cautious, but I have come to a grateful indifference, so long as I am not alone. Wandering has become a part of me, whether or not I ever intended it to, and despite all my presumptuous planning, my overly ambitious attempts at understanding, not to mention my kicking and screaming, I remain, ever mercifully, under the incomprehensible gaze of Elohim.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in th ehearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

-Ecc. 3 :1-11

speak easy, mary oliver

Moving is changing is ever before me, and New York is filling my mind with cement. Waiting is wondering and I can't help wondering what it would do to me to live there, assuming the school I'm waiting on even took a second glance at me. Looking on faces of countless, anonymous, broken, strangers, day after day after day, where would my thoughts find rest between signs and windowpanes? How much breath can anyone gain in that vast yet unwild park, looking down kempt paves of grey? In splitting doubts from fears tonight and filtering past memories of decision hastes, my ears are bent to Mary Oliver, a poet from New England whe knows a thing or two about grieving, about writing...and predictably, predictably, I have wound up in some trees.


When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver

Yike! I acted.

Writing is strange, and even stranger when doing it for others. I have officially stepped out of the safety of my little blog. Two weeks ago I leaped a little, or a lot, I can't decide, by applying for a creative writing program in New York. I felt a little crazy. I had been poking at this story for some time, grappling with where it begins and where it ends, and to my surprise it started taking on some form. I'm still not quite sure what I turned in, or who would even care to listen, but something in me needed to try. I can think of fifteen reasons why it wasn't a good idea. For one, writers are self-absorbed, for two New York is scary, and maybe I should just let writing be a hobby.

But I am out there, and vulnerability is uncomfortable....and I know that fear squelches fire. So I am waiting...trying to keep my head, singing "On Top of Spaghetti" to my sweet little preschool friends. They remind me life is right in front of me in the mean time. Anyway, turning it in brought something unexpected, some kind of release, and I imagined for the first time in a long time there might be meaning in these silly details I am telling, and the temptation of trusting my upward gaze again has been scaring my heart to tears.

If the reviewers throw me in the pile, I hope I will learn, and that at least I'll be able to console myself with my bravery. Here is an exerpt close to the end of my writing sample...I could have used another week for editing, but so it is...

The summer after Joseph Smith died in Carthage jail in 1844, in the very same week, Henry David Thoreau moved into his self-built house at Walden Pond in Concord. Last summer I swam its shining edges, shaded by trees. Thoreau was on a Harvard and philosophy beaten path and was a seer of a different kind; nature was his poem. His eyes saw visions too, tracing the outlines of the red-finned minnow. He stalked the life of plants and found kindred in their ways. I wonder if Joseph had stayed in New England, and aged among different company. While stalking pews, entertaining visions, might he and Henry David met in the woods? Would they have spoken? Joseph entered the Palmyra grove in New York with eyes closed, searching the heavens. What if he had come out speaking of trees?

In Washington, I hear the wind brushing firs. Their sweeping arms stand tall over my childhood memories. On the BYU campus in Utah I remember the widely dispersed array of leaves. There were English Elm, Japanese Maple, Serbian Spruce, and Russian Olive. Now there are more Latter Day Saints living outside the United States than in. Grafted in, they number more than 11 million, and then there are the offshoots. In New England I hear the leaves that crunched beneath Joseph Smith’s feet. I watch the seasons move through maples and cedars. My eyes trace their branches and the stories they weave. It is one shoot after all that begins and spreads the sparsing, it branches off in curves and twining arches, and I am a tiny twig, a mere leaf. I can break off but cannot help falling beneath the tree. It is here I want to lay my head, to breath, to mourn, to laugh at this story. Why it is Christianity has lent to such wanderings, and what in the world God thinks of it all. Here my restless eyes find shade from all these horizons, their human twerps. I am tired from searching pews, and realizing how wrapped up I have been in Joseph's church-bound questions, meanwhile this earth I am wandering has been passing me by. Underneath these trees, whether my eyes are closed or open, I see hands that have been weaving something far more beautiful and complex than I'll ever understand. I remember Jesus too, his calmness when he spoke, and I faint to belong in what his words began.

On Writing

I am consistently hearing the hum of the voice of my memoir, and the adrenaline from it has empowered me to clean my room, sort the recycling, start the laundry, make my bed, and now I am sitting at my computer, ready. Calm. And suddenly I have the urgent desire to paint the insulation around the pipe in my room.