Category: Fiction or Not

Night Talk

How many nights of my life have you gently knocked on my door with a plate of nachos, a glass of coke, or some bag of chips, ready to settle down into my comforters and let me cry because you knew there was more to be answered than “How was your day”?

How many nights have you stayed steady in the dizziness of my contemplations?

How many nights have you sucked the sourness of frustration from my heart like you suck vinegar out of chips?

How many nights have I thrown my words to the winds of your wisdom hoping they would catch truth and not be offended by it?

How many nights has your wisdom wind smoothed the rough patches of my heart, eroding doubt, anger, bitterness, or other vile, unrepentant emotions?

How many nights have I felt like too much and you have responded, “Me, too”?

As many nights as you have been my sister.

How many nights do I get to talk to you?

As many nights as we knock on each others’ doors with plates of nachos, glasses of coke, or bags of salt and vinegar chips.

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Library Pie, I am tempted to name you Honesty Pie.

On Thursday, I was checking out books at the library (the ones you recommended) and I caught myself bursting into the most simple of smiles.  I uncontrollably, and very sappily, blurted to the librarian, “I love coming to the library.  I just love it.”  And with my mittened hand to my winter-coated heart, I added, “I love it so much that I couldn’t keep from telling you that.”  This kind, middle-aged librarian and her slightly older co-worker smiled sweetly back at me in my childlike state.  “That makes our night,” they said and I could see honesty in their eyes.  It held me.

As I walked out into the snowy evening, I rolled that conversation around in my head a few more times until it came out as a pie.  I put 5 cups of flour, 5 tablespoons of butter, 1/2 a cup of cold water, a pinch of salt, and a pinch more of sugar into a bowl.  I stirred it up and put it the fridge.  Then I took my 8 most truthful pears from all corners of the world, peeled them, sliced them, and arrayed them in a deep bowl.  I doused them to taste with cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, and a teaspoon or two of cloves because honesty is flavored by our personal pallets.

I rolled out my crust from my tip toes to my finger tips and laid half of it in a glass pie pan.  In went the pears, on went a cup of chopped pecans, and over went the other half crust.  I pinched the sides to hold in the truth, the honesty, the realness.  I cut a heart in  the top, and a few stars to guide it home to a friend.  Brushing on the egg wash, I gave my pie a smile and wink.  “You’ll be all beautiful and golden, Honesty.”  Then it went into the oven for a good 75 minutes of 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

I shared my honesty with a few friends last night.  I shared it in the form of library pie, fresh whipped cream, violin strings, Pavlova’s tutu, flower skirts, elderberry syrup, drums, texted poetry, sketch books, and circuit board wallets.  It held me.  The honesty held me most.

 

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Home

I carry my home in my heart,
but sometimes the wind carries me
high and cold.
Then my home is seen
flashing and bursting so briefly
in the faint light of winter skies.
And only the ghosts can see
that I am jumping hard
into the door of my home
chanting,
“Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.”

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Endings

Someone (a lot of people)
once said (said many times)

An ending is just another beginning.

I say (probably some others)
today (probably many times)

Endings are just too stringent to hold even themselves.

So I guess that’s why I don’t believe in them (often).

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Out of the Library #2

I was happy and lucky enough to be able to stop at the library this morning on my way to work.  I returned last months books about 80 percent read, which I consider quite an accomplishment for me.  If you question that statement, then you should know that while I am an avid reader, I am actually quite slow at the task (recreation).  I am also easily distracted and my life is usually lived in 15 minute increments, having often so many jobs and all.  I rarely have a whole hour to sit down and read–not that I can last that long anyway.  Even if I’m sitting by the fire reading, I don’t last  long because I’m constantly worrying about the fire going out.  I really hate failing at the fire.  And yet, I continue to pursue this passion and hope to do so with greater intention and peace this year.

Here’s my reading list so far for this month:

  • James Merrill’s “The Country of A Thousand Years of Peace and other poems“
  • Roethke: Collected Poems
  • The Poems of Emily Dickinson as edited by R.W. Franklin

and in keeping with February’s theme of sending and inviting love,

  • Jane Austen’s Sandition.

I would like one more non-fiction book, so recommendations are welcome.  I greatly enjoyed reading from the desert fathers and mothers last month, so anything in that line of thinking would be great.  I need words to create peace and a rooted state of mind.

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F.W. and the message of Persuasion

“Miss A. E–

I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone brought me to Bath.  For you alone I think and plan.  –Have you not seen this?  Can you fail to have understood my wishes?  –I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.  I can hardly write.  I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me.  You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.  –Too good, too excellent creature!  You do us justice indeed.  You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.  Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in

F.W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate, but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening, or never.

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from.  Half an hour’s solitude and reflection might have tranquillised her; but the ten minutes only, which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity.  Every moment rather brought fresh agitation.  It was an overpowering happiness.”

–Persuasion (Jane Austen and some other lady), page 184

To Anne Elliot: I know the feeling.
To you: I read this whole book just to read this passage.  It was worth it.  Every story has its own beginning, unassuming and natural, but the ending is up to the writer in whose hand the story is tossed.

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The Flood

All is quiet now.
No one has gone where
anyone used to go.

This is man being born

again, in trial again–
God in labor again.

Again, everything starts
again.

Yes, even God’s life is wrought with agains.

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A Latent Conversation: Praying on the Phone in Dunn Bro.

“I’ve been busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.”  That was just the beginning of his conversation.  You can only imagine how colorful the rest of it was–complete with generous amounts of: inherited that nasty OCD, my third wife, people praying, two psychologists seeing her, and the whole church lifting her up. –A phone conversation in the booth next to me at Dunn Brothers coffee house.

As abrasive as his speech was to his long-forgotten friend (re: “Sorry I haven’t called you back;  I’ve been busier…”) and my strange ears, I couldn’t help but wonder when his prayer turned into conversation and when it might turn back.  Because to me, prayer is simply very special talking.

Prayer is the process of moving spiritual longings from our spirit to our physical minds and tongues and back to the spirit world of God’s listening.  So when we talk, it simply makes sense that we could very well be praying.

When we speak, where do our words come from?  It is a matter to contemplate.  Are they streaming from spirit or from mind?  In the end, it doesn’t really matter as long as we are aware of both.  This is because prayer is transient.  It moves from spirit world to earthly world effortlessly and thus connects our parts into a whole person.  But we must be aware and we must be able to place the words into the left out world.

If your words are coming only from your mind, learn to put them into your spirit.  Check in and see if your spirit need be concerned.  Ask your spirit to lay a supplication before God.  Connect your mind to spirit.  If your words are coming from your spirit, make sure they travel through your physical mouth and back into your spirit to rest.  This releases the mind from circumstantial control, from a timid human path of healing into a more bold spiritual grace.  Why?  Because prayer is transient and it must be released in order to do its work.

I am beginning to believe prayer is faith in true completeness, in healthiness of mind, spirit, and soul.  It is letting the spirit voice its concerns and weights while at the same time letting the mind know one’s depth of person and place.  Prayer is what creates peace within the battling self.

So be attentive to your words and to your spirit.  Allow both to say what they feel need to said and in this way, you will be praying continually, should that be a desire of yours indeed.  And remember, even latent conversations, the ones you always wanted to have but never did, can today be voiced and prayed in sweet humility and renewed fervency.  “In all things pray continually.”  I Thessalonians 5:16

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Imagining

In January, it was snowing in the morning and I was reading Persuasion.  I imagined it was raining in June.  By noon, it was just windy; I imagined the wind was the kind August sun and I was reading Persuasion. I talked to my friend in Spokane who said it was raining there on a Saturday.  I imagined Spokane was in the Red River Valley and the rain was falling upward for two Sunday afternoons in a row and I was reading Persuasion in church.  Then, while I sat there in the sunlit chapel with the rain crawling into the clouds, I imagined a quiet conversation, a peaceful fireplace, snow, and January.  I laid my book down for a good long while because this imagination was simply the one I enjoyed best.

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