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.

A Lesson in Hope, a Story about Gulsoma

Twelve year old Gulsoma from Afghanistan spent the greatest part of her childhood under a household of flotsams and a tyrant. A "wife" at the age of 6, she was a household slave subjected to daily torture, violence, and dehumanization: beatings with electric wires and sticks, forced to sleep outside on the cold dirt after long and laborous days, and the daily wear of being hated by those called her family. Once she was forced to lie on her belly while her torturers used her back as a cutting board for food. She was scalded with hot water over the head, after having been locked in a shed for two months. She was beaten nearly to death, finally escaping to hide under a rickshaw, where she was discovered by its driver and taken to the police. One year later, this is the smile she wears. Her skin aged from toil, her eyes wearing courage that has faced an unfathomable war for dignity. She is a woman with children's limbs, and she will never leave me.

I wept through her story a year ago. Her torture and suffering are so vastly beyond any volume I have ever experienced, the damage done to her is most likely irreparrable wholly, and what pain she bears only she knows. When I look at her face there is something profoundly resiliant about her will to smile, to comfort those who hear her story.

For so long I have carried my past as though it were something I should be ashamed of, trying to protect those around me from the trauma of hearing it, as though the evil in this world were only for certain of us to experience. Like a leper in ancient Israel, warning others and shouting as they walked, "I am unclean." I have carried the shame handed me as though it were mine alone, approaching relationships as someone who would take scraps of dignity if only I were so lucky, and I am so tired of that swallowing walk of victimhood.

The amazing and inspiring thing about Gulsoma beyond her sheer survival, is how she mustered herself to hold on to her spirit when every human being around her was assaulting it. Living under the regime of the Taliban, and under the shrine of a cowardly household tormenter, at the age of 12, her dignity remained her own through iron fingers. She is a humanitarian in true form. Gulsama is now 13, and lives in an orphanage in Kanadar. The women's embassy knows of her story, and she aspires to one day help women in her situation. Her torturer is in prison in Afghanistan, while there remain many like him wandering free. I hope with what suffering she bears in her future, she will know how inspiring her bravery is.

In her words, "I believe all people are good, except for the ones that hurt me."

Kevin Sites tells Gulsoma's story in his documentary, "A World of Conflict."

Finito

This canvas has been sitting in the corner of my living room tormenting me for months.  This morning I woke up and alas, I got up and painted. Resolve. 

On Wandering

What tears I have shed

in loss of dream upon dream

so many wandering desires have been mine

I am dizzy

in search of them

of love in every corner

of power and of sparkling things

whilst I remain a pillar

talented, brave, intelligent, sweet

always kind and wise beyond defeat

worldly in exceptional taste

while maintaining Christian simplicity,

searching for prudence

To be a Christian, it goes against every leaning

For who willingly dies?

my searching won't seem to find Christ

Every feeling revolts

No I would rather soon live my pagan dreams

than truly live as he calls

or die trying to be a "Saint"

and I wander the earth and its ideas

embracing what beauties come my way

I am so easily charmed

even when left undone

I am exhausted 

Oh Giver of life

do I dare come, eat, drink free of charge

--only this

 to die first?

Passing

         Listen.

 

I am fading away.

      Time doesn't heal all wounds

and mine haven't gone away.

I'm still here

       they're still here

waiting for another day