In Middangeard

2011-05-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Souvenirs

All she wanted was a coffee mug

And no one ever remembered

Or their suitcase was too full

Or someone told them not to buy porcelain

at THAT tourist trap

And then they forgot until they were on the plane

We joked about Ecuador

And she reminded me before I flew to Asia

And then you left on your extended stay

And the silliest thought entered my head:

Gosh. No one ever brings back coffee mugs

from Heaven.

All the pressure's on me.

2011-05-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Just the fact that my homepage login prompt is 로그인

and I have to read the Korean

or stumble upon the way

to get English prompts

highlights the fears I had about this place-

- this place you encouraged me was where I needed to be

-this place where I sit on the floor slapping my Acer open-fisted

AGAIN! i scream silently

AGAIN! because i hate this computer

AGAIN because I don't know why

and cursing

mostly not

because I screwed up the commands again

and hit the wrong button,

sending my words into oblivion,

closing a tab, losing my place.

Losing my place

Who will hold it for me? Damn it - you said you missed me,

said it five times in one email,

said it like it was an accusation,

a plea,

a charge,

even though you told me to go. Most of you did.

Well I'm throwing it back. I miss you.

Who the hell told YOU to go?

All those talks we had,

talks thinking we had more time

(or did you?)

to argue about goals and dreams, call each other out -

what did they come to? I was angry

that you questioned me, interrogated me,

wanted to know why and where...

you didn't tell me more about your work.

What the hell? I sent my words

into the dark bright magic-ball of your mind

And you ate them. You ate them and fed me so little

Of your own. What do I have of you now?

Did you somehow know

Did you know how much I worry about wasted time?

Did you know there were some people who hold memories

and hard stories like crushed glass

in the bottom of a paper bag

waiting for the right time to dispose of them?

Were you protecting me? None of your bad shards....

You didn't know- you were just greedy. Eat my dreams....

You caught them and held them. Give them back, you...

Why do we always impose extra virtue on the dead? you didn't know.

It's your fault

We all have this compulsion now

to do the things YOU loved.

are you laughing, you jerk?

because you know we wanted it anyway

We wanted this compulsion to serve, to use our hands

voices, time,

and you have the last laugh - because now

We don't know if it's your memory

or really just the best of ourselves

that strains forward to live life REALLY. I don't care

tonight while im slapping my computer

wanting it to die for cutting off a conversation

that might be my last with one more heart I love

I hate you for making me want each message

to COUNT

No nonchalance -

all pain and passion and truth, even in rest.

Why did I make you that promise?

I won't like these words

When I come back to them.

I will shake my head at tinny shards of sound

squeezed into form

Like bad karaoke on some squalid stage

In front of ears who listen to applaud

Because they know the singer.
You wouldn't even read this

because I said it wasn't my best

I wasn't ready, they were just thoughts -

and here I am throwing phrases

on a stage, singing cheap tunes.

I'm glad, i would have hated it

if I gave you my best words and you said

they were right. And you took them, my words

And tied them into memory so I could never speak

never sing

without remembering you.

You thief,

I would hate that.

2011-05-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

You sang so badly

Passion, never censored words

We debated, fought

Your texts woke me up

Turns of phrase kept me guessing-

Our talks like swordfights

Your words were bear-hugs

They always gathered me in

A frightening comfort

Your praise was lavish

Always in love with God's own

You drew out our dreams

What words are there now

That can speak of your living?

Death still holds my tongue.

You promised me then

The letter I still wait for-

One more talk with you

2011-05-05T00:30:00.001-07:00

Somewhere along the way,

While I was looking for your face in a place a world beyond

that dim past where you last closed your eyes,

I realized that every face we see contains

a feature of the same Face.

"Oh you look like your father!" they say

And some recognize a resemblance

because they themselves know the Man well.

"It's just around the eyes,"

or "It's the brow. Your face is so much like His, but

with different expressions." We recognize

our shared blood often after a long time staring.

You never needed very long- you leaped into kinship

with a clear-eyed welcome. "What took you so long?"

now

I do not need to find you, I know,

because you are in His house,

looking at the real thing.

No more cloudy pictures for you...

while I still gaze at fractured portraits,

trying to put together the pieces of a lost face.

...

2010-10-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

Trying to read, trying to edit, trying to write. This "flash fiction", or ultra short story, comes from last year. Upon review, I've seen a number of flaws. Any suggestions?

“Shit, Burt. I lost my shoe.”

It was the third time she’d called me that, and I was getting tired of it. If she’d lost the ability to remember names, I was prepared to understand; but calling me a man’s name was the last straw. And, this cursing was new. Grandmothers aren’t supposed to curse.

“Your shoes are both there, Gran.”

“No. This one’s gone.” She shook her left foot and its sturdy black lace-up. “It’s gone.”

“It’s right there.”

“Hell, no it’s not. Hell. It’s not there.”

“Will you stop with the cursing?” I resisted the temptation to shake her, knowing the words wouldn’t fall out of her that way. They were stuck there, along with the confusion that gathered in her brain and spilled over into every conversation.

“But I tell you-"

“Look.” I held her arm and bent down to point to her shoe, tapping it, holding up the double-tied laces. “They’re both here. See? Both shoes tied on firmly. You didn’t lose one.”

I searched her face for understanding. Blue eyes swam in their sockets, looking for an anchor in my face, looking for an explanation for this mystery.

“But there’s something…” She couldn’t form the words.

“Wrong?”

“Something on…” One eyebrow writhed with an effort to capture fading language.

“Schuhe. Meine schue. Ich denke…” She tried again and trailed off. I hated this worse than the other loss. Even her retreat into childhood language ended in the same confusion. Words were lost in any tongue.

She was shaking her shoe again. Suddenly I spotted something white on the bottom. Paper: of course it was a sticker. I should have understood. She watched as I pulled it off and held it up for her.

“There. You see? Your shoe’s still there. Just paper stuck to it.”

“Oh.” Her watery eyes studied the scrap with pathetic intensity. “My shoe’s back. It’s fine.”

I wanted to scream. How can a life continue this way – with this living loss, this isolation in the middle of companionship, the mind groveling before the body’s fall? Mein Gott, what are we going to do?

Her hand pressed softly into mine. “Thank you, Burt.”

2010-10-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

You and what you are is a beattrack, subway sound, blank face, turnaround, apple picking, apple bin, fruit stand, safety pin, hijab, kippah, Carolina, Punjab, coffee, java, hamburger, challah, dance party, prayer shawl, skinny jeans, Queens Mall, cafe, dog barking, 2 am parallel parking, screaming, big smile, Zydeco, Burek, cemetary, blank check, stoop talk, feta cheese, sidewalk, Cantonese, streetmeat, cheek-kissing world.

2010-10-07T08:53:00.001-07:00

Let us climb the craggy clouds
Stepladders to God
Cup-handed to catch blessings
Cup-handed to catch tears

2010-09-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's the first day of Autumn, and it's beautiful!

This poem's mood does not sympathize with my current buoyant one; when I first read it, several weeks ago, it matched my mood perfectly. I read it full of hushed resigned expectancy. Yes, I love Autumn- but it is, indeed, the beautiful burn of a dying year.

Autumn Day- Rainer Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

2010-09-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

To a child, the loss of a doll, or even a pretty rock, can be devastating for a day or, in my case, a few weeks, but the childhood joys - those great tingling heart-leaping, sunshine joys one could derive from such small things as an unexpected gift or wind turning grass silvery inside-out - make up for them. Then we grow and we see loss that makes that doll look like one blade in a sea of grass. When I was seven, my best friend-cousin died and I remember all of my insides trying to throw themselves out of me as I sobbed on my knees before God. None of me wanted to stay inside that now-destructible body if any atom of me could make my appeal stronger : oh bring him back, bring him back, bring him back.

But as we age, the force of both our losses and joys seems to diminish just a bit.

I am told that if I marry and have children the part of me that is my own will no longer be that and I will be capable of feeling the beauty and agony more deeply because it is forever dependent on, and flowing through, extensions of me. I can imagine that this is true - but for now both these emotions are blunted by the pure fact that I must survive things without being incapacitated. I cannot stop work for all of the days my heart feels like grief or loss has shriveled it into a small shrunken ancient in a dark room. The bills will continue to be due no matter how many Autumn days shoot liquid gold into every pore of our skins and call us to go rule like monarchs in the parks and woods. People will call or text and clamor for attentiveness no matter how hollowly the dull drum of depression seeks to pound out every other noise. Life must progress - and so we must live like adults. We must...

I am convinced that God uses even this to get our attention. We need Him. Vitality of emotion and innocence of youth cannot be enough. We cannot stay fresh and untired. Life becomes meaningless if we cannot appreciate and love and receive love as deeply as we think we ought - and of course we cannot. So we need Him, we need His rest.

2010-09-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

Autumn -by Ranier Maria Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

Rainer Maria Rilke

2010-09-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

There are moments when I think of my barely-28 years, the joys and griefs packed in and overflowing, the long moments of waiting, the sudden sparks of brilliant happiness, the dull and consuming ache of unrequited affection... And I look toward old age, toward death, toward 70ish or 80ish - and I feel exhaustion. It makes me laugh when I realize that I don't feel anticipation or fear or worry - only an overwhelming TIREDNESS thinking of living so many more moments in this Middangeard, this place BETWEEN.

Last night I sat on the rooftop of the boys' apartment, looking over this city, this 8-million-storied city, and wanted Jesus to return. For the first time I WANTED the world to stop, hush, crumble, cease before the perfect end of His coming - just because the weight of all this sin crushes us, compresses our souls. We're weighted down by sin, crushed again time, what little time we have, and the good things of our lives squeeze and trickle through like too-sweet juice. Those good moments we talked about last night - the gold, gold, gold of Autumn sunlight in a brilliant sky; the wind and leaves; the brisk, singing air while we run on a field in October, friends who know us and laugh because they understand the joke even before we speak it ourselves; love; closeness beneath the stars - these goodnesses hurt us with their transience. They're like that perfect sip of wine, but one only. They're precious and tinged with an almost-bitter truth: nothing lasts. Things cannot be too beautiful - if they are, they will tip over into sadness.

When a loss is coming, in these rare times when we can see a change will strip us of this good, or alter it, the sweetness is already marred. Last night I stood looking at my friends' faces, and it was almost as if my eyes tried to change them into strangers'. They were too good, too beautiful, to remain, and I must, MUST love them less or my heart would break. Can I leave? Yet we are all leaving, one way or another, we are moving toward loss. So in the midst of beauty is the breaking.

Rilke says many things well:

Lament (O how all things are far removed)

O how all things are far removed
and long have passed away.
I do believe the star,
whose light my face reflects,
is dead and has been so
for many thousand years.

I had a vision of a passing boat
and heard some voices saying disquieting things.
I heard a clock strike in some distant house...
but in which house?...

I long to quiet my anxious heart
and stand beneath the sky's immensity.
I long to pray...
And one of all the stars
must still exist.
I do believe that I would know
which one alone
endured,
and which like a white city stands
at the ray's end shining in the heavens.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

2010-08-26T20:42:00.000-07:00

Rainer Maria Rilke is one poet to whose works I return again and again. Whether I'm struggling with great pains through German compound nouns in order to understand the vividness of the original poetry, or savoring the purity of his concepts and thoughts in an English translation, I believe my time is well spent. Why? Because Rilke expresses the simple, labyrinthine emotions of the human heart so beautifully...

Lament: Whom Will You Cry to, Heart?

Whom will you cry to, heart?
More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

2010-08-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

It's Bad Poetry Day! We are celebrating on Facebook...

The Taxiwock

With cursory apologies & casual tips of my mad hat to Lewis Carroll -

Twas mumid and the brimy stikes

Did swash and climmber through the smeeks

All brumpy were the grismensikes

And the olvers outseeks.

"Beware the Taxiwock, my dear!

The bones that crush, the feet that swipe.

Beware the Shumsters, turn your ear

From Bornercirds that gripe!"

She took her vorpal bag in hand:

Longtime full weight of bricks it boasted

So rested she by the Java tree

Where thoughts and beans were roasted.

And as with gifil thought she stood

The Taxiwock with eyes alight

Came groowshing through the pilgered streets

And greeped as if to bite!

Nine! Ten! And down again

The vorpal bag went whapper-whon!

She left it dented while she vented,

Went pranceening on.

"And has thou bashed the Taxiwock?

Come to my heart, my pridesome girl!

O magful day! Huzzeye! Woohay!"

She warbled in a whirl.

Twas mumid and the brimy stikes

Did swash and climmber through the smeeks

All brumpy were the grismensikes

And the olvers outseeks.

2010-08-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us" in a moment of world-weariness.

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

I was thinking of my childhood days on our tiny farm, and the way the sun and the wind and the field were real and vivid and sufficient. I felt close to them, and they comforted me even as I neared adulthood. Their almost-magicness drew and held me. They possessed a power to comfort and connect with my heart in a way human hearts could not. Now, in a city that sparkles with man-made lights, I feel far from Nature's power. Even in a park, brushing my hand down a birch's skin or sitting motionless and watching the tiny worlds of ants and their kin hurrying by my blanket, I've lost the connection. The stars are far away from my rooftop in Queens. Why did I ever think I could touch them? And so I wrote my response:

A child, I would lie in the field and watch the stars
Flat on my bending back and see the heavens stretched like a bowl,
Like a round, poured out arch of water
Like a cathedral, like a bell, smooth, whole-
The wide firmament over me
Like a snowglobe's dome
And I at the bottom watched the heavens roll
The stars above me like snow, like fire
Shaken and flung by a matchless Hand
But days and aging soon exact their toll.
The wide-won wonder of the snow starred nights
Snuffs out in the bared necessity of our days.
The business of adult lives fills up the hole
Where midnight skies of angels sang their songs.
When once a small cold hand could reach the heights
And make friends with the shadow of God's face
Now life is a tally, a closet, a couch, a goal.

©Me, 2010

2010-07-28T21:05:00.001-07:00

Words are jeweled fruits at your lips. You open your mouth and taste them, sip their juice, smell their fragrance and roll their texture on your tongue. You bite hard and joyfully, delighting in the crunch that gives way to malleability. Yes, you chew and savor. Yet there is more: how to share with friends who see that these words are not new? How to make them see that the sharing, the family act of passing this fruit one to another, makes the sweetness all the deeper? Taste it! you say. Is it not all you hoped for, this fresh nectar made no less delicious by tasting the second bite?

Taste and see that the Lord of Words is good.

2010-07-08T04:27:00.000-07:00

Dead heat.

Subway cars smell like sweat; people sit limply on the trains, grim and exhausted by the weight of the sun; homeless individuals huddle faintly in doorways, waiting for water; sidewalks bake our feet; children fidget crankily in front of televisions and air conditioners. This City withers in the heat. Even words fry on a flat page.
Ugh.

2010-07-07T06:11:00.001-07:00

Writers' Meme courtesy of my friend at Quotidian Light:

1. What's the last thing you wrote? - A letter to my brother's girlfriend.

2. Is it any good? - Well, I like to think I write witty letters.

3. What's the first thing you ever wrote that you still have? – My Mom has a few birthday cards I created for her during my elementary school days and an illustrated short story I wrote in fourth grade. The story featured a young girl who learned perseverance by working to earn money for her sick horse's veterinary care. My artwork was terrible.

4. Favorite genre of writing? - I particularly enjoy poetry, short stories, childrens' books and creative nonfiction.

5. How often do you get writer's block? - Writer's block is like one of those needy acquaintances who attach themselves to me and call me their "friend."

6. How do you fix it? – Fix it? [laughs hysterically]...

7. Do you save everything you write? – No, but most things.

8. How do you feel about revision? - It's unpleasant but imperative - even on Facebook! I especially despise the misuse of apostrophe's. :-p

9. What's your favorite thing that you've written? -- I am particularly proud of a college paper I wrote critiquing a scholar's Marxist-Feminist interpretation of Jane Eyre.

10. What's everyone else's favorite thing that you've written? -- Usually I receive the best feedback from my short stories.

11. What writing projects are you working on right now?--I'm co-writing writing a script for an indie film, and there is a novel fizzling its way into my word processor a few paragraphs at a time. Of course, I'm always scribbling at silly poetry...

12. What's one genre you have never written, and probably never will? - I will never write a formulaic romance novel.

2010-06-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

Here's something I wanted to tell you:

My landlady died on Sunday. Today at the cemetery, after everything, after we put her in the ground and made the walk to the front gate to wait for a taxi, we were sitting on a bench and saw something. In the middle of the parking lot, scurrying confused and blinded on the cement was a mole - a real mole with his front paws curved trying to dig while he ran. He was lost and fumbling outside the dirt, so we picked him up and put him in the soft earth of a flower bed. We watched him burrow safely underground and I imagined I heard a sigh of relief and happiness. And I was reminded that God created all life - life springs from the ground and goes into the ground and HE knows what He has made. Resurrection and life! And we were glad God gave us that moment.

2010-06-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." C.S. Lewis from A Grief Observed.

Rest in HIS peace, Crystal A.

2010-06-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Something I wrote today. It comes from feeling like second-fiddle, the sounding-board, the gal pal and the girl-next-door - never the truly loved.

I would like online editors. Will you offer advice, either on form, imagery, musical references?

Do you hear music?

If music is the food of love....

Go play on, first trying to find those beginning notes

That beg a harmony sweet and clear

A counterpart, a partner for polyphony

But you must claim your voice.

Your instrument is made for strength

The strong pure notes of boldness

That call up courage in another,

Notes that inspire bravery and trust in the hearer.

Do you hear music? It is the predecessor

Of what you are, of what you can be.

Do you hear music?

This harmony, a forward-memory

Of what your melody needs, these notes that blend

Clarity with beauty, are waiting in a gentler voice.

But first you must establish your song.

With clear eyes, a firm hand, you must test your notes.

Is this music? It is a music of the mind.

You fumble for the notes, lose the melody

And look for help in what is closest.

Here! A way to test your pitch! A tuning fork

Reverberating straight and true

A voice of truth to point to stronger melodies.

You strike the stroke

And find that what you sought was farther still

And strike again, a smile of triumph as a closer try

Results in purer sound. Your notes begin

And sound with truer tembre on the ear.

Do you hear music?

No, it is the soft reverberation

Of a one-toned voice. The voice that stands

And never wavers from its place

To guide the tuneless back to clearer notes.

Do you hear music?

It is the sound of a one-note melody.

Do you hear music?

Perhaps in your now-broadening, now-wavering tune

You land on a note and hear it sounding stronger

Braced and fortified by what is now

Only a memory of guidance, one battered tuning fork

Forever called to assist, never to make her own music.

© me, 2010

2010-06-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I grow tired of noise. The cacophony of the City dulls my mind and i want to find a safe place where sounds are their separate notes and clarity - if not beauty -finds place. Here, everyone stands in boldness (perhaps bravado), playing her tune as loud as her life-instrument can play. I weary of working to distinguish the melodies. In plainer places, one may hear well-played songs, but here - here- everyone wants to become a virtuoso. My ears strain to separate calypso from samba with aria swirling throughout... The noise drains energy and I long for clear and simple songs.

2010-06-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

The rooftop doorway
opens like a treasure chest
skyline lights are jewels

2010-05-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

This man is one of my new favorites:

Creative City

to look, and not avert one's gaze;
that is where all the art is, the passion
and the city. people who do not look,
cannot see canvas, or poems or

notes for
happiness.

art does not begin with art,
but in the eyes. the eyes are everything;
when you look up at another,
and look away without a smile,

you have killed
everything you want to
bring home, oh citizen.

-by Fr. Pier Giorgio di Cicco

2010-04-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I'm posting this. Somehow tonight it feels safe.

4/21/10

There is a code we keep to when speaking of those whom we have lost.
It is as old as we are; older, even. Some people keep the code differently, but we observe it in this way:
First we do not speak.
Then we do not speak of them.
Then we do not speak their names.
Other things come after.
If a child dies, it is permissible for all but his parents to pretend that he never lived. Only other children in their nimble voices ask questions that make grandmothers cry.
This code I learned early and well. I began keeping to this code when I was seven years old.
Because of the code, I do not often say his name.
I do not say Nicholas Sherrin, died in a car accident.
I do not say he was six – he was six years old when he died.
I do not say that he was my dearest cousin.
I do not say I loved him best, that he was my first and closest friend.
I do not say these things. In this way, I keep the code.
I pretend that there are no turning points in life upon which all other moments turn.
Last year I broke the code and spoke with his mother. In reality, we did not speak. We typed our words back and forth in safe Lucida Sans, but it was enough.
We spoke of him then and imagined him now.
We acknowledged each other's grief and the injustice we do each other by silence.
Later I sat with my empty hands and thought: I have lost him. Now I do not even have my grief.
But perhaps the code has an answer. When grief empties, something will fill the grey spaces.
Now I still cannot touch him.
I do not lean against his memory in the train.
No one reads me joke books on Sundays after lunch.
But I can look backward and forward with clear eyes.
Yesterday I sat in Madison Square Park watching friends walk in the twilight.
I sat without friends for a while, waiting to see what the spaces would bring.
He was warm against my shoulder and Happiness surprised me.

2010-04-21T21:24:00.001-07:00

I'm so far behind on NaPoWriMo. Life forced a few pit-stops, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Posting what I had scattered over a few days will help. When I have the time, I will make up the number of poems so it totals 30...or at least 23, since I started late.

Poem I wrote for my sister's Facebook Wall: 4/17/10

Blossoms float from limbs
Soft and perfumed afternoons
Now i must go sneeze.

The following is a P3T poem I wrote while at a pub with friends on Monday. After our artists' collective meeting, we sat at a table for 12 or so and rounded off the night with conversation, P3Ts, and, eventually, a pass-around poem. I felt as if I had been handed a birthday gift early as I looked around the collection of artists' faces and saw that my friends, poets or no, wanted to join in and make art together. Teachers, musicians, poets, painters,actors and entrepreneurs all participated. Collaboration is one of art's most beautiful gifts. I will not share what we wrote because Anna commandeered it for her wall.

ANYWAY, here's a rubbish P3T i wrote based on the words
Wagging
Across
Due

4/19/10

Pigtails wagging
like the tail of a small dog
matching his girl's footsteps
across the people-strewn landscape
of Union Square.
Somewhere a philosophy student's homework
is due. But the ice cream man on 14th
pretends it is always Saturday.

2010-04-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

NaPoWriMo gets harder. I'm headed into the last half of the month, working 40-hour weeks and writing a script for a friend's indie film. My creative muscles are exhausted but feeling deliciously limber. If I get one good editable poem out of this project I will have put in a good month's work.

4/13

I'm hungry, he said
One more squatting pigeon by the church.
Not “Mister spareadime” but just that
three toned plea
out of a mouth opened like a nestling
warm and red
insistent
that food comes
winged out of the air
when gullets call like chimes
no clock can control

I passed again and saw landed
red scarf feathered for winter,
a perched provider
balanced beside him
dropping sandwiches into his palm

4/14

They say smell is the strongest sense.
Once in the middle of a retail store, choosing stationary, I lifted up a box and
suddenly, scents—
flowers, talc, children's shoes—
I was standing in my Sunday school nursery
Alone
five years old,
world-new.

2010-04-12T08:56:00.001-07:00

I decided to do a P3T for my 4/12 poem.

A P3T is a Poem of Three Things, the idea for which was originated by an old Xanga acquaintance. The writer flips through a dictionary, chooses 3 words completely at random, and uses them (altering tense, etc if you choose) in the poem. Ok, ok, it's rough.Suggestions?

P.S. Happy birthday to my sister in South Korea. I am thinking of her.

My 3 words were:
Cleanness
Regression
Regularity

In a new land of exquisite cleanness, sanitary lines and pastel characters,
you must hold a hand.

But for you, once a hand-washer, cleanest of clean,
perhaps your cells know their kin…
Perhaps this is a regression to belonging.
This homogenous world is part of your family tree.
Your clean hands belong at the ends of the limbs, stretching East.

Yet belonging is never of the entire self. Here you are sometimes like a child,
seeing and hearing words for the first time. These words are not yet for you.
You do not understand their soft, chopped edges,
the subtle suffixes resting against the roots,
the way the grain goes.

Belonging is not evergreen. You were planted in English, once.
Now you watch your words - the stems and shoots of you- pruned
with requisite regularity. Now, to be intelligible, they must re-grow.
Even the ones that bloomed well must die.

Rebuild. Respect is the bowed bough here from which all else grows.
Every son and daughter learns to speak softer under its shadow.
Rebuild as you speak. Surely Babel borrowed from us all.

2010-04-11T20:39:00.001-07:00

Once more I haven't had time for a longer poem, so today's effort is another haiku:

Five tulips awake
Shaken from their winter sleep
Sleepy Spring quintet

2010-04-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

2 Haiku

4/09

A pigeon looked up
he saw his sky was metal
and his earth a stone

4/10

Steel constellations
Dogwood pavements in the park
East River midnight

2010-04-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

4/8/10

Headphones Mp3 beat on the street
Beatbox fricatives bust out beats
Cardboard box breadcrumb bards beat out no eats
Greengrocer marketplace unloads beets
Beatdown bankers buy street meats
Big City breathes 8 million heartbeats
Baby boys breakdance to beat the street
Billystick guardians police their beats
City day beat track just repeats…

2010-04-08T07:21:00.001-07:00

I'm a month late for the National Poetry Writing Month and the poem-a-day challenge.
*Disclaimer* - these will all be rough drafts, posted the same day as written.

That said, here's yesterday's, finished today:

4/7/10

Winter ended and I waited for wonder-

I waited for the familiar warm winded wonder of daffodils

For the washing waver of sunlight, the welcome

Of sunlight, smooth peeled slivers of green,

Green in eager grasping for growth, clustered up in hope

And they came, clawing, calling SPRING

In their tiny cracked calls, crawling cramped from the chrysali

Crawling into the quiet crashing cacophony of SPRING!

And I crept quiet toward it, decrepit, crammed and carrying my walls

Quartered and crushed in the box blunderingly built for blizzards and boys

Brought to bury the cold and carry crushed leaves left from last year’s love

Oh let me leave these leaves. Let me call SPRING, cry this clogged coldness out.

Crying would crush the corners and let me leap! Light limbed

Like the rest of this limber land lush in the newness – come, SPRING

That singing spring that a thousand sad winters sired

Burst and blossoming with choirs infant-throated and utterly new

Whole and heartbreakingly new – neophyte and fresh fighting

Their bright flight-formed wings warm and well in that wonder I want.

Oh SPRING! You, reaching, eager, welcome want.

Bring my burdened being under your boughs

Bowed, fresh born and bloody bring me into newness.

2010-02-02T21:34:00.000-08:00

Furrows

My grandmother kills groundhogs.
She fights them grimly, coldly, hating their lifelines plowing through hers-
furrows of unter-growth growing under the wholesome earth of her kingdom
tracing lines around her friends, the sunny faced chlorophyll nymphs
who smile into her day with gloss-green faces so different from the grinning furry ones
chewing cheerfully through her ambition, not really meaning to scribble out the outlines of perfections
she has drawn: here, the perennials reminding us of eternity. Here, the tulips holding cups of quiet celebration.
She sings off-key praises to the certainty of sun and soil, to the Hands who draw the year.
And she imitates - perpetual student of the master. But the warm tenacity scrawling the earth meets her own.
She thinks she hears laughter bubbling from silt and loam - scuffle! scratch! crumble! delight
in blurring the edges of semi-perfection. A marred and marvelous surprise.
Look at this new picture! And she sighs and reaches for trap and trowel.
Saint Francis sits in his pebbled silence smiling sadly, looking at dirt and blossoms.
Who hears his voice from the stepping-stones?
From the end of mossy furrow, he shakes a cemented head
And thinks these two creators should collaborate.

2010-01-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

The night was beautiful and bitter. As I walked from the apartment to the train, from a house to a car, from a car to an apartment, I marveled at how weather can change so rapidly. The cold sparkled and shivered in my bones, turning them to liquid, reminding me that we are only tiny parts of Creation and COLD, HEAT, WIND have existed so much longer than our blankets, instruments, weathermen. I tasted the cold on my tongue and welcomed it. I made a phone call outside without my jacket and I held my back straight, daring myself to fear the cold that never means to harm. The wise moon was not afraid of it. It, too, stood cold and brave and solitary, watching me - and I was glad.

2010-01-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

Response

Are we in Queens? a man asks his companion
at Queensborough Plaza where trains move
snaking their solid competent commuters toward Manhattan
or move away to three-family row houses smelling of homeland spices

And I think about the exquisiteness of real trust
When a man props his will and control on the sturdy shoulders of a friend
Leans his stuffed human brain and shrugs - I don't know - so resting.
But I jerk my head up sniffing the wind, smoke, hot dog signs
Unwilling to relinquish that which makes me adult.

Yes we are in Queens. You need to know this: Queens begins
When you land at the airport. Watch these train people - these women
in their boots like velvet lances . Watch these men who cannot smile.
They might remind you that your control of the world is the size
of a small frightened animal shivering in the corner.

2009-12-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

This is something else I was thinking about while at work. Suggestions are needed as well as solicited. Happy New Year, loves!

Nativity

This little commercial nativity on the counter,

the one that garners attention

from middle aged women who stand and admire

Is nothing more or less than chunks of clear glass.

The pieces fit in my palm in a disconcerting way-

Too easily swept up –too easily dropped on the floor.

I pick up a Magus, cool in my palm, looking at his nose, a triangle of glass,

Feeling the folds of his faceted garments

Frowning at the way I see through him –

a beveled glassy Christmas. Mary looks like a man

Her arms are crossed over her chest in a gesture of defense

Or so it seems. No peace or resignation on her static face. You-

You are a salt shaker, I say to Joseph. Hollow on the bottom like the rest

He clutches his glass chest and bends forward,

Jesus’ dad with cardiac arrest. Does he know, I wonder,

Where the shepherds have gone? The focus of this scene, the lord of glass,

Is Baby Jesus, whose manger leaves a scratch on my finger. The thick straw rounds

His bulbous limbs. His face, like a Byzantine saint, frowns contemplatively

At those who worship his immobility. Where is the dirt and the blood,

the reality of a Christmas we need?

© Me, 2009

2009-12-24T18:34:00.000-08:00

There are numerous reasons
Why the night sky above Manhattan
Doesn’t show the stars – not the least important of which
Is too many lights on in this City
Which sleeps fitfully. I wonder, though,
If lights are on because these adults who spend their lives
Chasing spotlights and shiny things feel the darkness
More keenly and need the light, like children who pretend
That what is beyond the reach of bright rays
is not real. O Morning Star,
touch this skyscraper firmament
with a holier light than these.

© Me, 2009

2009-11-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

What happens when someone you love completely dashes all of your hopes and expectations for their standards and honor? What happens to our hearts when someone dear to us betrays the ideals he/she professed?

It's been a while since anyone for whom I had such affection disappointed me so thoroughly. I feel as if a tiny piece of myself has died. Upon reflection, I think that this is more common than I once knew. A friend moves away: we die just a tiny bit. A relative passes: part of us passes too. We give sacrificially of our time or energy and it doesn't seem to go far: again, a miniature death. Entropy isn't just limited to the physical world. Sanctification certainly isn't. But oh it hurts, especially when we kick against it.

To live is Christ; to die is gain? Die to self? Are we allowed to mourn these small deaths?

Pick me up, O God. Only You you will never fail. Your angels amaze the mortal stars with songs of eternal wholeness around your throne.

2009-10-30T10:57:00.001-07:00

This afternoon I was walking toward the N/W trains at Madison Square Park when a woman tried to shove a flier into my hand. In these situations I usually smile and shake my head; I mean, just because flier-hawkers make money through actions that annoy the general public doesn't mean that unspoken rules of common courtesy should bend and break in their faces. But in the infinitesimal moments between seeing and refusing the flier, I realized what she was saying: "Ma'am, can I tellyouwhatIseeforyou?WhatIsee foruisa vision of a--" and I understood: fortune tellers. They ply their trade not only in storefront businesses in the boroughs but also at stands in Union Square and on the radio stations here: "California Psychics: What's in YOUR future?"

My first reaction was a frown and a half-turn away - but in the next millisecond I was considering engaging her in conversation about my motivation for refusal. Yet, as I did, she broke off and drifted away without even the appearance of tenacity that clings to hawkers who want to get rid of their alotted fliers. She GAVE UP at the first sign of disinterest and moved on to solicit the next stranger in her rushed, auctioneer's voice.

My reaction shocked me: in the moment after she melted away, I felt offense. My offense came not because she'd offered me an unwanted flier; not because she'd taken up my time with foolery or things distasteful to someone of my faith - but because she claimed to have a vision and gave up on it. I entered the subway with a bitter taste on my tongue. Of course I knew she was selling visions; of course I knew they were not real. But this tangible evidence of the commercialization of a lie made me furious. She was saying this thing to everyone. She was blatantly perpetuating a lie and cheapening even the idea of what she claimed to be truth.

A vision, by its very definition, connotation and semantic uses, implies a special ability to see truth that others cannot see. It's a gift, an ability passed on by the supernatural to equip the seer to understand truth or future events or to imagine possibilities otherwise unimagined. Visions are sometimes not even specific to one visionary; in the context of the Church they are, like speech in tongues, often shared and confirmed by others. The visions serve to illuminate, elucidate, bless. They are, like water, air, trees, gifts of the Creator - not to be SOLD and not to be taken lightly. They are - like superpowers - to be used for the greater good. Think of Scripture, folklore, even common popculture references: visions don't always bless the seer, but the seer is always compelled to tell of them or act on them. If this woman indeed had a true "vision" she wanted to tell me, why did she give up on telling about it? And - God forbid such things - why was she trying to sell it?

What angered me was this woman making money by lying in the faces of harried, lonely New Yorkers who want to know whether they will be happy and loved or even alive two years from now in this City of steely canyons. She's offering them visions and taking their money to make them blinder.

"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." James 4;13-17

2009-10-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Do you remember when you first understood a poem? Do you recall that moment when it hit your heart and your ear at the same time and reverberated like a tuning fork struck smartly, confidently, straight and true? Can you reclaim that clarity to break your heart, like a horn across the hills, or the lone sound of a cello calling to the silent orchestra in the stillness of a concert hall? I remembered tonight while I was reading; it happened in a moment that left my mouth dry. I crouched transfixed in front of my laptop screen while I read, each atom of me thrilling warmly to the POEM -the truth of those images and thoughts like kinsmen embracing me.

Human heart, you wicked wicked wonderful thing that yet retains the echoes of a perfect Word: You can still vibrate with the smallest pulse of greatness.

2009-09-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

At my age she already had three children. She laughed and struggled and basked in the familiarities of wanted motherhood. This had always been her dream: to make a family and turn her agile mind to the task of raising them better than she had been raised. And she struggled- oh she did- against poverty and in-laws and the little disappointments of a young man’s pride and a young woman’s expectations. But this was what she wanted for herself.

At my age, she had loved and been loved and made love and understood the differences between infatuation and loyalty. The infinitesimal beauties of daily requited affection lit workday darknesses and rockingchair nights. She shared her life with one person to whom she had pledged it with all the girlish hope a woman’s heart invests. She knew love and she clung to it.

I look at the woman she was at twenty-seven, when I was six, and I imagine myself with two small children and a baby in my arms. With wonder I kiss their infant cheeks and hold them close, rejoicing as their limbs harden, their faces change, and infant cries give way to childish shouts. They run – I watch and laugh, my voice echoing theirs, the sound of a hundred million mothers watching the stories of their children’s lives enfold before them. Tears wash them away before us; these mingled tears of joy and grief carry them out into the channels of time. They go – and we follow along the banks, baskets in hand, waiting to scoop them up, hug, dry, scold when needed. But they go –

From my place here I watch her live the life of one who’ll always be left behind. I ache with the responsibility of that tender-fierce love, the ageless knowledge of loss and memory and hope. Her pragmatic mind will never express these things; yet I see within her capable frame the fire and iron of a wondrous strength. This love, mother, forged within you, is just what you wanted.

2009-07-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Writing Exercise: A non-restrictive imitation of Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

13 Ways of Looking at an Umbrella

I.
Among other discarded things
Sleeping next to trash cans
A man and an umbrella share shadow.

II.
I felt myself drained of life
Like an umbrella gasping
On the coat rack.

III.
The umbrella cranes its neck
To judge the sky:
It looks like sunny weather.

IV.
A girl and a dog
Dance down the beach.
A girl and a dog and an umbrella
Dance down the beach.

V.
We do not know which begins romance:
The gesture
Or the acquiescence,
the umbrella arm offered
or accepted.

VI.
The moon pooled thick
And pallid above the chimneys
It melted over the umbrella
With slow insidious light
And dripped
Onto the dark ground
To ooze a stasis.

VII.
See, O Manhattan
That Spring is capricious like a teething child;
Better to bring a small umbrella everyday and be mostly dry
Than to bring a big umbrella by forecast
And be wet by Spring’s fretfulness.

VIII.
I perceive
That uniformed people kissing
In frozen black and white
Call forward my history;
I know that an umbrella
Is somehow involved.

IX.
Because the umbrella moved
Into your space
It brought into contact interconnected travelers.

X.
In a land unprepared for storm
The phantom of an umbrella
Over a lone man’s head
Throws people into red panic.

XI.
She climbed into the painting
On a sunny day
And jumped at a pointillist downpour
For she had taken
George’s umbrellas
To be parasols.

XII.
A wet man clutches his fingers.
His umbrella must have passed on.

XIII.
Sol was singing in the rain.
Prismed color hung in the air
And hung like mist-music all day.
Umbrellas floated through rainlight.

©Megan Sherrin 2009

2009-07-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Struggling with a first draft that eludes me. I need thoughts and ideas. Thoughts from listening to a Redeemer Presb. service on King David and community (2 Samuel 23 and surrounding)...
Am i understandable? How do i achieve clarity?

Community

In the indeterminate breaths
Between the moment of handshake
And souls’ unconscious two-armed clasp
How does the spirit-blood transfuse?

Friendship is a brassy, colored thing
Boasting feats and twirling bold-faced
In the street. What is this Other -
Pulsing quiet between these selves?

We strain beyond our holding squares,
Tossing coins at neighbors’ cold feet
Imagine – cents for lifeblood—so
God laughs and pours it on the ground.

Sometimes in the clamor of a life
Some separate selves press close, share blood
With sting and spark of mingled drops

Thought far behind us - is this will
Or childlike mimic of the He
Whose own blood still makes us Other?

©Megan Sherrin, 2009

2009-07-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

Today is the day before my twenty-seventh birthday.

Today is the day before the next day of my life. No one day is momentous in itself, I think. Even if we graduate from college or lose a tooth or find the love of our life, the connecting steps between, and choices we make before and during and after, those days, determine where our lives are headed. One simple choice can change the course of a day - or life - but another can alter it yet again. I'm trying to learn to live purposefully each day. It's these lost days in between the momentous ones, these days during which I do nothing because the day is normal and calls for no extra effort, that keep me rolling smoothly and banally along, accomplishing little of what I dream of doing. I betray my own aspirations because I fail to see the importance of the little days.

Tomorrow I must wake up prepared, or perhaps expecting, to die. Perhaps then I'll live purposefully.

A friend's husband cheated on her. I read her blog remembering who she was when I knew her at college, recalling the quirks and off-kilter humor she offered the world. Now I hear her screaming and slanting more - verbally punching walls and cursing the God who tilted the smooth plane of her life and sent her sliding into an unknown rocky landscape, alone. I wonder how she survives each day and wakes up with a cold and hateful emptiness on the other side of her bed. Her name means grace. Will she find it?

On the night before my birthday, this woman's half-birthday has just passed. I wonder why she's on my mind and why I grieve for her when our friendship and contact is limited. Perhaps I see in her life what mine may have been - what any woman's may be - through no or little fault of her own. Perhaps I grieve for beauty of spirit bent under the warping weight of betrayal. Perhaps I hear in her crude acerbic tone echoes of my own spirit's response to life's cruelty (mine is laughably smaller). I stand and wonder how well I would survive under such a strain, and I wonder what this year might hold for us both.

Perhaps birthdays aren't times to reflect on sadness. But perhaps they are if that reflecting eventually prompts a desire to look forward. When one has sadness to look back upon, light ahead seems all the brighter---- right? Pray for C. - pray for restoration. And pray for a grace that lifts both a betrayed woman and one who betrays herself.

2009-05-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

“Shit, Burt. I lost my shoe.”

“Your shoes are both there, Gran.”

“No. This one’s gone.” She shook her left foot and its sturdy black lace-up. “It’s gone.”

“It’s right there.”

“Hell, no it’s not. Hell. It’s not there.”

“Will you stop with the cursing?” I resisted the temptation to shake her, knowing the words wouldn’t come out of her that way. They were stuck there, along with the confusion that gathered in her brain and spilled over into every conversation.

“But I tell you-“

“Look.” I held her arm and bent down to point to her shoe, tapping it, holding up the carefully double-tied laces. “They’re both here. See? Both shoes tied on firmly. You didn’t lose one.”

I searched her face for understanding. Blue eyes swam in their sockets, looking for an anchor in my face, looking for an explanation for a mystery.

“But there’s something…” She couldn’t form the words.

“Wrong?”

“Something on…” One eyebrow writhed with an effort to capture fading language.

“Schuhe. Meine schuhe. Ich denke…Ich...” She tried again and trailed off. I hated this worse than the other loss. Even her retreat into childhood language ended in the same confusion. Words were lost in any tongue.

She was shaking her shoe again. Suddenly I spotted something white on the bottom. Paper: of course it was a sticker. I should have understood. She watched as I pulled it off and held it up for her.

“There. You see? Your shoe’s still there. Just paper stuck to it.”

“Oh.” Her watery eyes studied the scrap with pathetic intensity. “My shoe’s back. It’s fine.”

Her hand pressed softly into mine. “Thank you, Burt.”

2008-11-29T22:06:00.001-08:00

The Strand has to be seen to be believed. 18 miles of books (although how that's determined is beyond me... do they estimate based on the average length of a book itself?) packed into a New York store makes for a dizzying experience. My friend Liz and I stumbled upon this New York City marvel one evening several months ago. We were drawn inside by its magnetic force and spent over an hour wandering its delicious, narrow aisles. I snapped photos of titles like Shaving the Inside of Your Skull: Crazy Wisdom for Discovering Who You Really Are and Liz spent time flirting with employees. "I couldn't help it, Megan," she laughed when lovingly taunted. "Boys who sell books are attractive. Aren't boys who sell books attractive?" I had to admit that they were... are.

Even men are strangely affected by The Strand; my writer friend David admitted that he gets nervous when he enters the store and sees its magnitude. "Don't you feel anxious when you walk in? It's--" His body language implied a mixture of jitteriness, awe, and nausea.

"Too much for a book lover? Too many beautiful books to choose from?" I asked.

"Exactly." He agreed. He never admitted to me (or maybe I never asked) how much money he's spent there at one time. I had to limit myself to one book. So, while Cheese, Glorious Cheese and Do I Look Fat in This? were fun to photograph, I decided on C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, pried Liz away from her conversation with the cabbie-hat-wearing bibliophile behind the desk, and left The Strand behind.

Manhattan itself is less than 14 miles long and about two miles wide at its widest point. Empty The Strand and string books across the island nine times... I wonder how long it would take to read eighteen miles of books?

2008-11-15T17:13:00.000-08:00

Ecclesiastes calls me to read it again now that the grey sides of my mind throw shadows on the brightness elsewhere. I need to know that the futility I see around me exists, and has existed, instead of being some strange conjuring of a depressed heart. Why this cheers me remains unclear: maybe it's a paradox only explained by my need for truth---any truth, even a dark truth that laughs at the light. This recurring depression recedes when pierced by the hope of an eternity bright and nightless and returns again when I remember that the One who promised this holds the fruition beyond my grasp for His incomprehensible Glory. I don't want to be His hands and feet when I'm unable to touch or run fast enough to stop the pain and rape and blastings that will happen---will happen--will happen. Why doesn't He come NOW and stop ME; why doesn't He end this selfishness that keeps me from standing in my small corner of this globe and holding out the biggest light I can? I can't do everything and I cannot make others do anything, so, God help me, I sit in my corner and wait for the world to end in howling silence. The worst part of this futility is that I recognize it for what it is and still wait for the impetus to change, for some brilliant idea that will somehow make all of this easier. Maybe I should pick up a Bible or a shovel.

2008-09-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Matches

"Hi, " I said. "Those look a little dangerous."

She was probably about about four years old and her dark, curved eyes crinkled with puzzlement...and a bit of disgust. She stood nonchalantly behind the courtyard wall, a single Saturday schoolchild spending her morning outside in what yard she had. In her left hand she held a book of matches, the sandpaper side of which she was using to try to strike one single, drooping match. Beside her lay a large cardboard box. I resisted the urge to shake it and see if it was filled or empty.

"You shouldn't be playing with those. You might set something on fire." I groaned inwardly. This sounded like a grownup speaking, and a dull one at that.

"They're not working." She looked scornfully at me. Of course she wanted to set something on fire, but the matches had foiled her plan before I even came on the scene.

"Well, let's not play with them." It's amazing how quickly we use first person plural with children. Involve ourselves in a request for action or avoidance and we think we gain their acquiescence more quickly.

"Is your mom home?" I asked, searching with the practiced mind of an oldest sibling for any authority to which I could appeal. "Let's tell her you found matches." My eyes swept the courtyard area, the little metal fence, the porch of the small row house. A neat stretch of trashcans and tightly-closed trashbags lined the house wall behind her. The matches had probably been intended for the trash.

"She's not here." The laconic voice could hardly have belonged to a four-year-old.

"Is this your house?"

"Yes. But she's not home. Grandma."

"Let's tell her, then." I tried a hopeful tone. Surely Grandma would be happy for her granddaughter to show her the matches she'd nearly used to burn up the cardboard box and singe off all of her hair.

"She no English. She Chinese." She seemed to have lapsed into the speech of the non-native English speaker. I took a second to marvel at the way children--and often adults, who are, of course, only grown-up children-- often communicate our view of people through unconscious emulation of their voice and mannerisms.

Now the girl was staring at me, a glare of suspicion on her face. Was I going to get her in trouble?

"It's ok. Can I tell her?" She nodded, still frowning, probably wondering why I pressed the issue. She had, after all, put down the matches and now stood with her hands at her sides. The dark of her eyes was uncanny.

I knocked on the door and fidgeted uncomfortably on the stoop. The moment before a stranger's door opens always seems like a decade. When facing the possibility of no language commonality, one begins to dread and wonder to a degree completely disproportionate to the errand. My throat called insistently (in several different, completely unhelpful languages) for water.

A middle-aged woman stood in the threshold, baby on her arm. She looked at me, and past me to the girl standing guiltily behind me, with absolutely no expression whatsoever. Even her eyebrows and the wrinkled corners of her mouth held themselves unnervingly still.

"Um... Ni hao," I began. She looked at me blankly. Maybe she was confused by my Southern-accent.

I tried again. "The little girl has matches." I nodded in the girl's direction. Naturally, she wore the look of a child trying to appear innocent. The woman's expressionless gaze flicked between myself and the girl but showed no emotion. I frowned and began pantomiming striking a match. My invisible match made a flaring sound and elicited an "oooh" and a raising of the inscrutable eyebrows. "No, no," she said.

"Yes. I didn't want her to burn herself. Maybe she got them from the trash." I indicated the trash bags and then pointed to the matches, which the intelligent child had thrown on the ground. "Do you want me to pick them up?"

At her nod, I retrieved the matches and handed them back to her. She looked at me, perhaps unable to remember an appropriate English remark. I knew how she felt. "Xie xie."

Shuffling out of the gate, I felt a four-year old pair of eyes on the back of my head. Hopefully soon she would find something to replace the fun I'd spoiled. I turned and waved.

Grandmother and granddaughter watched me in silence as I headed for the end of the block. Their dark eyes followed me wordlessly.

2008-08-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

A picture:

Two doors down from mine is the Mediterranean grocery. It's filled with shelves of oil and canned vegetables, coolers of olives and feta and pounds of pita and rice. Hanging from racks above the register, blue and white flags proclaim Greek pride, and strings of beads painted with charms promise to ward off the "Evil Eye." The cashier looks disappointedly at me since I don't speak Greek when I purchase stuffed grape leaves or pomegranate juice. No matter: I go inside for the smell and the sensory experience. Strangely, Bouzouki music soothes my American ear, and I feel like a part of my neighborhood shopping for foods the names of which I once could not pronounce.

2008-08-14T15:51:00.001-07:00

He wasn't exactly handsome but he sort of shone. I even liked his crooked teeth when he grinned: a shy, yet somehow assured smile. We talked about life in the city, his work on the police force, food, books, and family. We talked about men's and women's roles, respect, ethics, what it was like to be Hispanic in America. My stoop became a forum, a barstool, and a classroom. He told me about Afghanistan and the lies we hear every day. He talked about books he had read, and the people he met on his beat. I listened to him and rested in the knowledge that here was time; here was heart in a person who saw broken ones every day. I respected him, knowing all the while that alcohol lured him away from bad memories, and that God, in his eyes, offered comfort but not a Savior. And somehow, under these buggy streetlights and smudgy August skies, I edged a little too close to the line between respect and love.

God answers prayer in ways I hate. I admit it: there are half a dozen human reasons for my anger. But I asked for it; I asked boldly for a direct answer to the "Can I....?"

I guess you understand the outcome. He is gone, and that stereotypical ache remains. A few gray, tearless nights should do it, and I'll be busy reading and working my way around the rubble of a miniature heartbreak. The times I've shaken my head at friends enamored with a beautiful lost boy come back to haunt me in these long moments of no occupation. But, really, I'm too busy putting away my casting stones and ripping the two-by-four out of my own eye.

And, in the meantime, my jealous God draws me back to Himself with a strength that breaks my heart. I turn away from His face but know He looks on me with a love that outweighs the world.

2008-07-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

The man on the corner with his cardboard sign and bullet hole pants
Sits yards away from the vendor selling water and gum
Two doors down the donut lady pours coffee and hums
From fifty feet away the bullhorn deacon rants

They will be mentioned by gleaming young writers scribbling sweat
Six hundred word columns about skyscrapers and rock art
Immigrant lives and how a waitress got the star part
During this we ride subways and get our feet wet

© Me

2008-06-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

P3T (poetry of 3 things)

It's a writing exercise one of my xanga acquaintances devised. You flip through the dictionary, randomly placing your finger on three separate words and writing a poem based on --or using--those words. Then you post it and ask others to use the same three words in a response or poem of their own. I gave myself a time limit. This is eight minutes' worth. Your turn!

The words: Little, Milk, Imitate

A little stone fell into my shoe
And I walked on it for a mile, or more…
I don’t really know, because I
Count blocks now, in this place—
And out of this place.
It makes for more measured-out moments.
The sunshine, measured and strained
Like milk, this skimmed light
Filters through my mornings.
In my cup of afternoons, I drink it
Cloudy, warm, I stir it through to
My evenings when imitations of stars
Glow in the skyscraper firmament,
Measured and limited stars—
in their glory they yearn after God.

2008-06-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

What Have I Done?

The writer's group I've been loosely involved with has begun a playwriting project based on Flannery O'Connor's short stories. Forgetting what Flannery does to me, I commited to being a part of the endeavor.

What am I going to do, y'all?

2008-04-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

A new theme. Should we as writers (professional or amateur) avoid certain themes because of a lack of experience? Should we "write what we know" or let our writing be an outward expression of explorations as we make them? If we only wrote what we know from past experience, travel journals would never be written... and fantasy novels would be non-existent. Of course, a reader should never expect or allow herself to be led morally or intellectually by a writer inexperienced in her subject------but how much of our reticence to write about a subject we don't understand really comes from fear that we will mislead?

Romantic love is a theme I've long avoided. As a twenty-five-year old with little experience in it, I've avoided writing about it for obvious reasons: a desire to avoid speculation, embarrassment, etc. But as I've observed single women around me struggle with their singleness, and as God has dealt with my latent feminism and hatred of certain men my life, I've begun to avoid avoidance...

I'm struggling to write. I'm struggling with a ferocity I don't understand. I defy writer's block and lack of time; I fight to make it to my writers' workshop and force myself to dream of success... but, repeatedly, I retreat behind excuses. For this reason, for the need to clear away every selfish and fearful rationalization, I want to face those themes I've never faced before.

The following IM conversation got me thinking....
Is my friend right in her last comment? I still can't figure out what she mean by saying "just get out there (so you can meet the right one)" We are told from our cradles that love really is everything. It almost sounds flippant to say otherwise....

Conversation:

me: it's all i've heard lately: relationships, relationships, relationships....... and i just realized today that i was ready for someone to fall madly in love with me lol

[Friend]: i hear ya sister

me: i can't say it without laughing but it's so true. and crazy

[Friend]: lol

me: my college roomie and best friend called earlier...and we found out that a classmate who was once engaged to one of our close pals (and my best friend's former boyfriend) had a baby.....without getting married first and i am thinking how darned COMPLICATED life is. I just want ONE man -----not a guy----to fall in love with me and walk through my neighborhood with me and talk about books and springtime..... not more than one guy and not any games, y'know? Life is too....messy

[Friend] : I hear ya

[Friend]: I think what I have been learning though is that when you just get out there (so you can meet the one) there is some crazy drama that might still come your way you just have to not let it become everything you know?

2008-04-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Usually my trips down memory lane to my small school in Tennessee involve amusing recollections of classes, professors, camping trips, concerts and conversations with friends. On Friday night I watched a play that took me back to those years and into their darkest moments.

Suicide. It always sounds so melodramatic; the play demonstrated unflinchingly that it's far from being so. Its meaning is ugly, a slap in the face of life, a bloody and unromantic thing. I won't say it again: the word is too small and easy to say to express what it means.

In that tiny theater I remembered an email the morning after a close friend's attempt. I remembered my best friend's grey, aging face after a night spent talking a neighbor out of taking her own life. I saw broken rope preventing a hanging that almost happened. And when one character recited a torturous list of consequences a victim's family must endure, I was struggling to control my facial expressions and still force air into my lungs.

Get out of my head!

That actress's voice grated on cruelly...The mother: what would happen to her? The father: how would he ever get over feelings of responsibility for his daughter's death? The siblings: what kind of role model would they have, and how would they survive? I held my breath. How had that playwright read my mind? None of my friends knew that I, "the steady one," weighed my options, trying to find the best way out. No one knew the talks I once had with myself, the anguished half-hours spent planning and re-organizing a death that would harm no one. But how could that be? This play concluded what I had to admit those years ago: the life is one's own but the death would belong to those left behind. Knowing this kept me alive when God was too big or too small to hold me up any longer. What would happen to them?

This may take time: this memory is too big to deal with alone.

A friend broke her finger and didn't realize it. The bone healed wrong and needed to be re-broken and repaired. Even though it's taking longer to heal this time, the finger will, in the long run, work all the better for being re-broken.

2008-04-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

Sunshine after Darkness!

I walked slowly outside today and the sunshine washed over me in one brilliant splash. Seconds later I came floundering out of it with a smile so big I must have scared the passers-by. Lux! Oh, sunshine after grey grey grey. And why wasn't everyone around me transformed? No one seemed to notice that the sun was smiling, beaming, welcoming. I wanted to shout to these people: "You can stop swimming now! This will carry us; just let it wash you forward. Don't stroke so hard. Stop doing it alone." But here if you say these things a barracuda will slash a hole in your side and swim right through. And so I stopped right on the street corner and wondered once more why Spring sunshine makes me want to dance and cry.

2008-03-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

Confirmation that going to Bible Study tonight was a good idea:

We were engaged in a slightly dry discussion when one of the intimidating strangers sitting across from me opened her mouth and said, "There's a wonderful passage in a book by Madeleine L'Engle. It's called A Wrinkle in Time, and..."

Of COURSE God uses literature to help us understand Himself...
And I was tempted to stay at home and do nothing tonight.

2008-02-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

"Oh, this has been such a Jonah day, Marilla. "
- Anne of Avonlea

They warned me that Winter would be like this, and I believed them. But somehow, when one is standing sweating ambition into the sunny August heat, gray days (no, they're not even 'grey'---they're real gray) are easy to belittle; they seem so manageable. Still, when you're standing on a wet, drizzling pavement waiting for the crossing signal and feeling bits of hesitant rain seeping slowly into your wool, even summer and ambition can seem laughable. Tonight I am alone-- but not quite alone enough to pick up the phone and call into being a voice that will remind me how far I am away from familiar arms and family faces. Laugh at me for melodrama; sometimes it's all that stands between the steadiness that is the daily me... and darkness. Yet, I'd almost rather be in that darkness I teeter over so often in the winter months. Oh, help. It's a half-hearted sigh, a self-conscious breath of frustration and self-pity. The radiator spits and spurts as if it, too, was caught in a funk of in-between.

I am lukewarm. Spew me out of your mouth.

Somehow my thoughts meander half-unwillingly to the Bible I stuffed in my bag two days ago. Read it yet? Didn't think so.

Hammer out this gray roof over my head; hammer it thin and punch holes in it so I can see the stars. What then? Don't they sing and dance for You? Let me sing, too, so I can be lifted above myself. Hammer out this grayness into silver and let me wear it around my wrist to remind me that You redeem our Jonah days, too.

2008-02-05T19:31:00.001-08:00

Hello...

Where is my MetroCard?

What do the losers in the election call today? Not-so-Super Tuesday?

I slept for 10 1/2 hours last night, ate two rice crispy bars and drank a huge coffee, and thought I'd be "normal" for nine hours at work today.

Who knew cab drivers often prove amateur philosophers? We discussed theories on friendship's place in the family, about the effects of mystery in spousal relationships...

It was 51 degrees at nine o'clock tonight!

Is denial at work in most single women's outlooks on men?

In 2005, I wanted to write books and not sell them. Now I just want to have time to read them.

Some days Father Time takes the Express Train and not the local. Where are all the hours in my day? Aurora needs to hit the snooze...

2007-12-02T07:16:00.001-08:00

My rooomate awakened me this morning. The door banged open and she shouted (actually, she used her normal voice, which is halfway between a "normal" voice and a shout, anyway), "Megan, it SNOWED!"

An inch of snow has transformed our sleepy Sunday street into a postcard-worthy winter scene.

And, as an added bonus, it's twenty-one degrees. I am about to walk to church.

2007-11-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

The firetrucks are gone.

Firetrucks were parked up and down my street this morning, along with several other conspicuous emergency vehicles. Firefighters plodded backward and forward in a nonchalant manner, looking laconic under thier bobbing helmets and occasionally carrying sections of hose hither and thither. No one knows what they were doing.

Sometimes one just doesn't ask.

2007-11-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

He was dead. He really was. Life went on around him, with small gasps of surprise, horrified looks, sideways stares--but it went on nonetheless. The one or two people standing guard and waiting for the police were herding us past: "Keep moving, please keep moving," and we did. But how many of us will sleep tonight? The pool of blood around his face looked almost too stereotypical. A fall? A gunshot?

"Oh my God!" Voices, muttering, confused or frightened or--most terrible of all--filled with that nasty jaded boredom that shuts out life, came from all around me in the shuffling crowd. "Oh my God." What else is there ever to say in those moments? Some of us meant it--an immediate cry to my God: Oh, Lord, we were just talking about this tonight... the suffering...loss. And how do we explain to this world...to ourselves...? Oh, Yahweh---

In that moment one wants to say something else, to ask if more help is needed, but too many people already pack the subway. People went the wrong way, froze, kept moving. Some looked sick. The crooked angle of his limbs twisted my stomach. Who was he? Did he know he was dying? Oh, God...

It happened so fast. Moments later my feet hit the wet street and I was walking back to our Queens apartment, alone. People slopped along the sidewalks around me, but how many knew? I was alone, separated from the people who had shared a moment of witness, who were also trying to clear their heads, who had seen normality shatter. Some of those people had an arm to hang onto, but I was alone. He was alone, too, that man lying in blood, separated from us by that veil between life and beyond, by a fragment of time and a void of space called death.

I didn't even bother with cliched questions about how life can go on normally. This is New York. I could see it in many of their faces, hear it in the "He was probably drunk" filtering back from a couple ahead of me. I didn't ask questions, but I know I won't sleep tonight.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

2007-10-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

Freelancing

This afternoon I realized that the flurry of activity surrounding my attempted move to New York City has caused me to forget to post something actually post-worthy. In short, I am finally a (paid) freelance writer. My response to an online ad yielded a job with a new, internet-based employment company (like MonsterJobs or Careerbuilder, just for the medical industry). I'm currently working as a freelance copy/content manager, writing missions statements and "about" pages, writing and editing articles for resource sections, etc. While I find myself nervous at having nearly sole control over everything copy-related, I'm relishing the feel of writing with a material purpose and accomplishing editing-related tasks...

In other news, it's the birthday of both the poet Virgil and the [call him what you will] Friedrich Nietsche. What a strange combination of hope and despair, confusion and form!

2007-10-10T05:42:00.000-07:00

Autumn in New York...Why does it seem so inviting?

While the leaves turn color and the air becomes cool and sharp, I'll be packing and moving to a City where "glittering crowds and shimmering clouds/in canyons of steel" lend me a new perspective on life. I am thrilled and insignificant.

2007-10-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Post-happy. Or is it post happy?

Ah, the difference a hyphen makes. (Lynne Truss, your pandas salute me). Am I uber-happy about posting or am I in a state that comes after the state of happiness?
In all actually, the unhealthy number of hours I have spent filling out online applications and submitting resumes via email have probably damaged my powers of reasoning. At any rate, the world suffers from the fact that I've been an unusually prolific poster (postee?) of late (Captain Obvious, I take my bow).

Written in an unguarded moment of reflection upon a recent flight.
Unedited. What shall I do with it?

(untitled, unless "Blue and White" counts)

Here in this blue we
Rest on invisible breath
I hold mine—expecting somehow
A rush and a plummeting
But science, that elusive, changing
Set of laws we often understand
Says we are birds, here, with the rest
Of the azure riders
Swooping above the world.
Carving the clouds, climbing, craning
Watching the windows to see below
The white on blue—blue and white
Clouds beneath. I name them:
Cirrus, cumulus, swirling sheep,
Dresses on a line, milk on blue tea—
Do clouds see shapes in land masses?
I do, counting these unshifting outlines
Rabbit, glass slipper, clipper ship, dragon—
Sunlight moves gold over silver wings
Pours into small windows
And they sleep, these dreamers behind newspapers
Not seeing heaven shouting: See! Blue
Beyond daydreams, this is yours; remember
When you are inches from the dirt
how flying feels!

2007-10-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

Autumn

Autumn is finally here! It sings in the blood. It dazzles, it breezes through the trees in blue and gold. Even days like today, when the sky is drizzly and dark, it hangs in the air hushed and grey and expectant. How I love it!

2007-10-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

Ye Olde Update

Did you ever wake up after dreaming of people you know doing absolutely uncharacteristic things? It's somewhat disconcerting to see people outside of the context in which you usually see them. In last night's episode, I was trail riding with my dad's second-oldest brother and his family. They were all fairly good riders (despite the view-obstructing sombrero hats and the tendency to laugh about everything, which spooked the horses). I didn't even know they liked to ride!

That dream has mirrored my life lately. No, not that I've been riding with racously-laughing Mariachi relatives; I'm trying to learn to see everyone outside of his/her box. Perhaps it has to do with growing up, a process which I am convinced happens all one's life, not just in "developmental years. " Perhaps it has to do with my musing about a post Quotidian Light wrote--the one about her cat being afraid of her when seeing her outside; he had only ever observed her in her "box," the context of her house. (Didn't I mention that post before? It's one of those ideas spinning hampster wheel revolutions through my brain).

Perhaps it has to do with the way fear or challenges sharpen the vision like a fast--a fast from happiness or fullness. Whatever the catalyst, I'm seeing myself, my family, and even my friends in a different way. My best friend recently voiced a theory that mental illnesses and disorders bring out the extremes in a person's character so that the depths of personality, goodness and/or badness come to the forefront. I think everyone has moments and times of stress or extremes when this happens and others see their barest natures revealed. I'm seeking out this real-ness of people: who they are, what's important to them--and it's both beautiful and terrifying. It's like what needs to happen in dating; books, articles, and knowledgeable people state that one needs to see a potential spouse in numerous contexts to know him/her clearly. But how often do we see friends and the people we love in his way? I have dozens of friends and acquaintances who, through no delibrate design or plan of my own, know nothing about the existence of other friends. Do we really see people until we see how others view them? Are we only to know what we are shown in our own relationship contexts?

If I look at you funny, maybe it's because I'm trying to see you outside of your box...

This was intended to be an update, but it's probably not necessary for most of you to know that nothing material resulted from my NYC trip. What did result was an idea, one that's germinating and will very likely break the surface of my blog soon.

Until then--

2007-09-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

Disappointment always blurs vision. Faith is tested not through catastrophes but through little chips at the foundation of our days. It's tested by things that make us cry on the drive home, by phone calls or conversations that keep us from driving straight while tears make freeways across the face. Faith isn't tested when we're called to serve Christ or die... it's tested when we're called to serve Christ or live the way we want to.

2007-09-21T07:51:00.001-07:00

Well.

That sums up everything: how it went, what i think, etc. The next step is waiting for the decision(s). I'm finding this the most complex part

2007-09-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

UPDATE

Currently staying in Forest Hills, Queens, NY (arrived yesterday).
Attending church with my friend K, networking, looking for apts.
Tomorrow's an apartment search & job search (walk-ins with HRs).
Tuesday's the interview in Manhattan (1 pm). Meeting with two supervisors for the position. Have no idea how many candidates are applying. Will know within a week or two...
Prayer requests:
A) Freedom from fear
B) Single-mindedness of purpose; yet balance and organization for everything I need to
research, pursue, etc.
C) Favor with the company; objectivity for all involved in the decision-making process.
D) Peace and comfort in Christ.

2007-09-07T15:54:00.001-07:00

To those dear friends who read this:

Please pray; I have received an invitiation to interview with one of the largest publishing companies in the US. I am being considered as a result of having contacts in sales from my 2004-2005 work in book buying. Since college, "to work for [this company]" has been on my list of career goals; albeit I was interested in editorial depts., not sales. Please pray that God will guide all decision-makers involved.

This company is located in New York City. In the next several days I have to 1) find the money to arrange such a trip 2) arrange air fare, etc. 3) co-ordinate with HR to arrange a time and date next week 4) prove to myself and those involved that I can "do" sales as well as purchasing. Then there are the inevitable concerns about family, knowing enough to make a wise decision in the case of a possible job offer, etc.

Our Father proves Himself so gracious in guiding me in the little details of life! It's always been this way; I project my limitations onto Him and fall back amazed when they are disinegrated by the tiniest breath of His-ness. How foolishly repetitive my fears prove themselves! His presence in the everyday things I would once have brushed away as "too small for his notice" never ceases to astonish my benighted heart. Why am I so worried about these things? Ultimately, New York will pass away; the need for these books, these words, will seem laughable. And yet HE will be--always the same, but so new to our astonished eyes.

2007-09-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

It was a Dark and Stormy Night...
A recent foray into my creative writing file revealed notes on a lesson about first lines. NO, not pickup lines; first lines. Dr. K and the class discussed the importance of a story's first line, reading memorable first lines and talking about how they demonstrate their usefulness in catching a reader's attention, introducing suspense, etc. I read over some first lines I had scribbled down during our in-class work, and they seemed flat and boring...
This called to mind the time I read an article about a contest celebrating bad writers with bad first lines. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest commemorates Edward George Bulwer-Lytton of the "It was a dark and stormy night..." fame. Contestants send their self-written "worst first lines" in for consideration. Here are some of my ideas for first lines. What are yours, and what kind of book would they begin?

"All of the other cows were wearing chicken suits."

"Although he wondered why, his mother, flagging him down to brush the overfed maggots from his shoulder, didn't answer his question about the telephone call the previous evening when, it may be guessed or perhaps surmised (or even wondered about), his sister's gangrenous state had caused a rapid stir among the house party, one or two of whose states of health required ambulances of their own, despite the assuring presence of Mrs. Macgawber-Chin-O'Malley's short husband who, while he preferred snipe shooting with his three buddies in Siberia--except for the one who died, and the one who wasn't there all the time because he sometimes had to cancel-- moonlighted as an RN on the days he wasn't playing bingo with Ryan's sister's brother and the cougar, who sometimes stunk. "

"Honestly, Bertha," she said, frowning, "you shouldn't drink poison more than once a day."

2007-08-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Ex-Teaching Life

Another blogger gave me the idea of this post. He posted a blog and linked an article about the shortage of teachers. This shortage is a serious problem and has been growing in numerous states in the last year. While there is much that could be said on the subject, I will recommend that you visit the wise and humorous Grumpy Teacher's site for more information. I, however, would like to discuss an interesting and related problem. What if someone wants to leave teaching; how should others view him/her?

I graduated with a degree in English and ambition to become a writer. Just as I previously determined never to attend a Christian college (guess what: Bryan!), I was certain that I could never teach- and especially not elementary school. After two years of other employment, however, I found myself a first-year teacher in a classical Christian school. My classroom, composed of nine 4th and 5th graders, provided challenges and joys rivalling anything I'd ever experienced. I loved most aspects of the job: the children and their wonderful insights and quirks, the teaching itself with its capacity for imagination and excitement, and the fact that we were learning and transforming together. I did not, however, like the problems faced while grading, or dealing with irresponsible parental behavior, or trying to make enough money to pay inevitable bills. By near the end of the year I was faced with the facts that, next year ,classroom structure would require me to teach lower grades, I would not receive a raise (and thus defer finishing student loan re-payment), and I would be left with little emotional and physical energy to pursue writing in the manner I had hoped to pursue it. Despite requests that I remain, despite expressions of confidence, praise, and encouragement from supervisors and co-workers, I left...for the time being. Should I have stayed to teach?

Apparently, yes, according to many reactions I have received from job interviewers, casual acquaintances, and others equally ill-qualified to make my personal decisions for me. It appears that the world, while doing so little to encourage and support many fine teachers who instruct, encourage and, in many cases, raise their children, reviles those who turn their backs on this calling to pursue other professions. Time and time again, I have explained (perhaps in too much detail) why I left teaching, only to be interrogated, receive ugly looks or shocked expressions, and be otherwise brushed off as a quitter. The most common question, repeated in various ways and tones, was "But why did you want to leave teaching?" I also heard the much-repeated sighs of, "I guess it takes a special kind of person to do that" or "You really have to be called to teaching." Well! I don't presume to be a "special kind of person," but what about other people who believe they have a calling toward construction, or the fashion industry, or leaf-blowing? Who are we to judge them as less special because they possess less direct interaction with the future of our country than teachers do? I have known terrible teachers who deserve much less than accolades and praise, who probably never inspired a child in their lives, but who are more honored for sticking with their profession than those who lovingly guide kids across busy sidewalks or bag groceries with smiles that lift the hearts of lonely elderly women. Yet, if these grocery baggers or crossing guards leave their jobs to find something they love or are better suited for, they are not looked down on as deserters. They are not hated for leaving their sphere, exalted or unexalted.

An argument can be made that if someone has the gift of teaching and doesn't use it, he or she is depriving fellow humans of a chance to learn, or not filling glaringly empty gaps in society. I ask, what if said individual is better suited for something else? What if she believes that she can "make a difference" better in another capacity? Should we not trust that she will put as much energy and enthusiasm into changing the world in that other capacity? Would she not perhaps begin to wither or lose her ability to cultivate change if she were left in a position in which she was unhappy or less suited?

No, I'm not calling for happiness above God's direction. If God had directed me to stay in teaching, my responsibility would be to joyfully obey, regardless of whether or not it made me happy. But He did not direct me to stay; and I am unashamedly determined to wait for His direction. From the perspective of a believer, if I am in obedience, I should never be reviled. From that of an unbeliever, perhaps I was doing society a disservice. But, in that argument, could I not have said that I was "following my heart"?

Teaching is a gift and, perhaps, a "special calling." It's not a glorified jail cell to break out of and thus be hunted down for leaving. I respect and honor those who teach, especially because I understand the dedication and heartbreaking difficulties involved. But I know that there are other professions in which we can bless and assist others. I therefore call the world to account for its incongruencies in condemning me for following the path away from teaching. God help such a crazy world.

2007-08-22T08:22:00.000-07:00

". . . provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all." -from Northanger Abbey

Has anyone who reads this seen Becoming Jane? Thoughts, rants, praise of any kind?

Oh, and thumbs down for The Jane Austen Book Club. I could illustrate my point better if I were double-jointed. Thumbs way down. I don't think I'll even finish; by the last third of the book (it is now to my embarrassment that I read even that far), I was just skimming hoping for some redeeming quality. Finally I stopped when I felt too frustrated to continue. Usually when I start to say something is poorly written, I chide myself for giving an unqualified, snobby opinion. But I trust that I am justified in calling it borderline trashy--yet pretentious--pop-lit. The characters were not very sympathetic, the plot and frame were stilted, and the situations and issues discussed were handled clumsily. The idea that Austen (whose protagonists and their dialogue charm and sparkle with moral awareness) "would have written such a thing in the twenty-first century"(review) borders on absurd. Even Karen Fowler's appendixed summaries of Austen plots bear her own subjective slant. In my opinion, the only thing recommendable about it is...well...perhaps the section of the appendix in which comments and criticism from Austen's friends and family are listed in Austen's own words.

Ms. Austen is hopefully in heaven, experiencing eternal joy with the eternal Author and incapable of performing post-mortem horizontal rotations.

*Sigh* Where's Lady Catherine when you need her?

2007-08-05T21:20:00.002-07:00

General thoughts from Sunday Life

Something has happened.
I’m not sure if it’s increased health---physical and spiritual---but a difference has come upon me and is now a definite reality: I’m LIVING again. Living, FEELING again is really wonderful and painful by turns. I feel as if a well of memories and thoughts has sprung inside me and I’m awash with emotion. Sometimes I don’t know what to say, or do, or be next. Perhaps depression can come on by degrees and stay with you so that you never see a dark cloud; you just have a feeling of pollution in the air above you, choking creativity, leaving you sluggish though not paralyzed. I’m not weightless---no, I have my moments of darkness and frustration---but I feel like me again, not some boringly efficient nonentity. Questions like “Why now?” and “How long will I retain this clarity” tempt my joy----but, no! I will praise God for respite and hope!

I did the unpardonable: I flipped forward in a book, namely _The Severed Wasp_ to see if it was "worth" finishing the read. Perhaps I'm missing something, but if I could use one adjective to describe this book, it would be "unneccessary." My longing to explore Katherine's later life was cut off at the knees; what was L'Engle trying to discuss? Forgiveness? Permanence? Relational utilitarianism?

When I have nothing worth saying because I think it’s been said---or nothing I CAN say--words still want to keep me awake. They sting and sizzle inside my head, crackling with disuse. I wait things out, weighing the risk of exposing myself for an also-ran until I become one by default. How paradoxical these things: my hatred of cowardice and deceit, and the lies I live. I tell myself I’ll never have anything original to say….but the words burn and shimmer beyond my eyelids in sleep, and I wake to hope.

My prayer book is a mainstay for devotions when thoughts skitter like bugs in and out of my brain. Holy thoughts are few and the less-than-sacred take perverse joy in chasing them out. Keeping to a pattern, a liturgy, forces my unsteady focus to rest on something firm. What a privilege to read the steadying words of others who’ve been searching, too! To know that I’m unalone in this fog of weakness, that the hoots of derision from demons of fear paralyzed others, too--others whose spiritual muscles were perhaps less atrophied than mine, who are now used to encourage the feeble. I praise God for His word, yes; I praise Him also for his grace in giving us saints who’ve gone before and are humble enough to chronicle their struggles and lessons for me!

2007-07-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

As I began the summer, I was afraid.

...afraid of changes. Change always seems to me like one recurring moment of walking into a room filled with people I don't know. This situation used to petrify me. Now, instead of fear, I feel excitement at reading new countenances, at hearing stories and watching reactions... I feel stories in the air and see life teeming around me. People talk with each other and make connections that leave them always changed, never quite the same after meeting another human being. The metaphor is the same, but the sense of meaning is not.

...afraid of insecurity. I've always liked my days planned out nicely, my ducks in their neat little rows, swimming along in an orderly fashion with plenty of provisions along the way and no stragglers lagging behind. I've always liked knowing where my money is coming from and where I'll be five weeks from now... but now I wend my gypsy way across several states, meeting new moments of strangeness and familiarity with very un-clockwork irregularity. I find a blithe satisfaction in knowing that this post is being made from a laptop in the one-room apartment of a Dayton friend, and that my next will likely be made from a public library or a cousin's basement computer.

...afraid of what others will think of me. What am I doing with my college degree? I've always felt the great weight of responsibility to DO SOMETHING with my life; as the first one of my father's family to graduate from college, I feel the eyes of the family flicking shiftily over me. I've always expected to be sitting cozily behind a desk, typing away and not driving my Taurus down the road toward the next interview. Now I don't think very much about that; I see my long-term goals several years ahead; meanwhile, the scenic route is more beautiful, and I might pick up very congenial passengers on the road ahead. For now I wear tigerlilies in my hair if I want to. I sing loudly in the car, and I know that I'm headed in the right direction even though there may be several detours.

2007-07-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

Rough draft on current thoughts:

A fringe of dark withholds me from the light.
I see it with the edges of my eyes:
that wash of gold transforming every sight;
yet--not transforming--stripping off the guise
from art that lies. I cannot reach that place
and yet I know its presence by the look
of those who've been its tenants, for each face
that sees its light tells stories, each a book.
Revealing and withholding, with a grace
intrinsic to their habitation's air,
they tell a tale the Muses would embrace
but not engender. God is present there;
for surely words and thoughts of such a hue
are tempered by no Titan and no man!
Olympus and Atlantis only knew
how to construct but not inspire a plan.
True inspiration flares in the Divine,
the gift of white light searching mortal's soul
to burn into the atoms, leave its sign,
and mark the artist, make him truly whole.

©Me, 2007

2007-06-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

Eight Random Things

1. I love to look for shapes in clouds

2. I drink hot water

3. My biggest fear is the fear of feet

4. I hate government paperwork--or any "official" paperwork

5. During college, I convinced a friend that I was the heir to the Schlotzky's deli fortune

6. I love horseback riding

7. My best friend went to heaven when I was six

8. I have a song for every situation

I tag SarahLaine.

2007-06-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes xanga, facebook, and that clamorous world of friend-tracking and thought-sharing grows weary. I just want to sink down into the soft green world of my Middangeard page and say nothing for awhile. My calendar is full and I'm running on the summertime gerbil wheel of job searching and socializing...and I want to do nothing but write poetry and eat apples under my tree. Of course, Newton bops me on the head with the truth that whenever I most WANT to write it, it buzzes elusively around in my head. Maybe I just need a big poetry net to scoop it out and pin it on the wall.

2007-04-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

Another from Tuesday...
The delightful feeling of finally being able to write again--albeit frivolous, flawed verse--is scrumptious! It reminds me of a passage from The Dawn Treader, in which Lucy and Reepicheep are trying to describe the waters of the Last Sea. They compared it to drinking light--and I always feel that when I come back to writing after a long struggle with "nothingness." Perhaps I'm not lucid; never mind. I feel alive!

I called a dream doctor to find out my problems--
He said the prognosis was grim;
For each passing dream was progressively jumbled--
Too vague, convoluted for him.
The one about floating with oysters and sealing wax,
walrus, and builders was odd--
As was the strange mix of somnambulist ramblings
Through gardens with maidens called Maud.
And after I told him I dreamed of a carriage
embracing just myself and Death--
He bid me goodbye and advised no more poetry
All in the very same breath.
© Megan Sherrin, 2007

2007-04-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

In honor of National Poetry Writing Month, here's a half-formed bit from Tuesday, fresh from the ol' brain. Suggestions?

Grieve not, you wailing willow trees; cry not for Dogwood's cross.
The memory of sacrifice outlives all that of loss.
The sylvan mourners wrap thier arms in shadowlands and shades;
the flagellating pines find penance in their stinging blades.
As all of Nature labors in the pangs of mankind's might
and wavers through each season in the winter of his night
There rises from blackness in the depths of earth and stone
the brilliant King of Glory, rising living to His throne!

© Me, 2007

2006-11-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

I have never written just what I "feel." I've always strained my words through nets of form and propriety: are they grammatically correct, are they meaningful or at least not awkard? Now, for some reason, they won't come out. They just won't find voice. I've had times of frustrating writer's block before, but not like this... This intense nothingness when I try to think of words to express things. It's as if i don't have anything to write about, and yet when I'm not trying to write, so many things around me cry out for someone to write about them, to record them for some purpose. And anything i try to write sounds flat and stupid and...well, that sums it up, mostly. So, since few people seem to read what is here, I will write without revision and practice hammering meaning out of these keys somehow. No spell checkers, no revisions. Just the need to say some thing. Some damn---no, UNdamnable thing so the thoughts that pummel each other in this crowded space can have some respite from a hated, self-conscious prison.

So. there. Writers' block.

What do you call a dry spell when you don't use ink? Metaphors....

2006-05-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

A Waitress' Prayer

Lord, deliver me
from the pizza parlor;
Deliver me
from these jaws of death
that chew
and chew
masticate
break down
the meat, the minutes of my life,
the backbone
of my time
the jaws
and jaws and jaws
moving
neverending greedy
leaving no leftovers
no seconds
to box up
No more for later.
no
later

© Megan Sherrin 2006

2006-03-30T21:14:00.000-08:00

She wasn't one for sentimentality, but the old woman and the young man were really getting to her. They sat across from each other in booth #13, eating a pizza much too big for their appetites and talking like best friends. It wouldn't have been so strange if the young man wasn't scruffy with several piercings and a backward baseball cap, or if the old woman had looked less like someone right out of a nursing home and didn't have old lady fluffed hair, pearl earrings, and coke bottle glasses. They were so mismatched it was like a strange Hallmark commercial, but they were too absorbed in each other's company to see themselves as odd.

She was making him laugh. He threw back his head, guffawing through a mouthful of pizza crust--"Now, THAT'S funny"-- and the old lady chuckled along with him. He answered his cellphone and talked a moment while she waited. Then he turned his attention back to her: "Now, Grandma..." Her eyes watched him lovingly.

She watched them together, unable to finish her own food. They talked more than they ate. He told his Grandma about his plans for making better money and buying that car he'd dreamed of. She reminded him that his family loved him, and they shared memories about Christmases when he was young, and she wasn't yet old.

When it came time to pay the bill, he pulled his wallet out and walked to the cash register, his Grandma watching him with pride in her eyes. Even after they walked out together, she still couldn't figure out why they made her want to cry.

2006-03-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

Decided to post a current project essay-thingy. Anyone with time + inclination is welcome to tear into it and suggest innumerable improvements. It's a rough draft, so there's no possibility of offending me (hint: purty please tell me how to improve it)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was her first time at a dance; a real dance, not the laughing, impromptu dance parties she and her sisters used to have at home, when they whirled around the furniture, dodging past the dresser and beds, stomping in time to CDs from their grandfather's treasured swing collection. This first, real dance was public, noisy and involved, everything a dance party is expected to be.

Here, on the smooth, inviting floor of the pavilion, couples gripped hands and spun together, intertwined with each other and the beat, immersed in movement. Some whirled expansively, flying through complicated steps, breathless with concentration. Others danced with almost careless motion. Their bodies moved fluidly, perfectly matched and at ease with the dance's form. These experienced dancers had no need for intense concentration; they moved freely, shared contented glances with each other, communicated efortlessly each transition and spin. They showed their expertise by talking while they danced, watching those around them, calling out suggestions to the newbies nearby.

She watched these neophytes most of all, for she was to be one. She watched their uncertain eyes as they moved with bodies stiff and unaccustomed to the rocking and stepping, the balance between form and improvisation. They moved self-consciously, mechanically, measuring the distance between step and spin, spin and step. To them, music was a guide and not yet a story to interpret, as it seemed to be for the more experienced dancers.

But even the newest to the floor seemed to communicate a thrill of aliveness, something peculiar to themselves, not shared by the bystanders on the fringe of the room. Despitethe relative order and pattern of the steps, their bodies spun, flipped, and swung in a manner so different from everyday human locomotion that she imagined them becoming different beings. They were different beings, simultaneously more sophisticated and less inhibited, rejoicing in the desire to move to this infectious music. Beyond the steps throbbed something so primal, so basic, that it took her breath away.

In dance, they could throw off the predictability of life, flout practicality, spin in circles or fly while earthbound. They could embrace the desire to move to music, without reason, under no demand for explanation. They could wordlessly celebrate their limbs' creation and show appreciation for the ability to move in health and strength. She imagined them sharing the passion of all the dancers who ever stepped to a celebratory drumbeat or whirled to fiddle music on a hilltop. Some people might say they worshipped the god of Dance and made themselves slaves to this need for movement; she knew they moved because they were free to, because God designed the body to be connected to music, whether in creating it or by enjoying it.

No one escapes this connection between body and music, she thought as she watched the bystanders. Not even me. She watched as hands drummed on chairs, feet tapped, a mother rocked her child in time while talking to a friend, a college student stopped reading his history book to play an air guitar. This strange God-given need to move to the music rippled constantly through them.

She watched it all wonderingly until a friend dragged her onto the dance floor. They were playing one of the tunes from her grandfather's CD. She was an awful dancer, but it was wonderful, just the same.

Copyright, Megan Sherrin, 2006.

2006-03-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

Seven Meaningful/Favorite Songs:
(in no particular order)

1) Be Still My Soul. I used to think this hymn was incredibly boring, but I began to like it after I went to the play Dayuma and heard that this hymn was the one Jim Elliot and his fellow missionaries sang before their final, fatal contact with the Auca Indians. The tune is not one I love, but the lyrics encourage me to rest quietly in God's faithfulness despite darkness of situation. My dearest friends and I have sung it together, and it brings back good memories.

2) Arise My Soul Arise. This became one of my favorites last year, when my church in Asheville sang it to a beautiful new tune. The message is so joyful and full of confidence in Christ.

3) Before the Throne. This hymn is also one discussing Christ's work as mediator and High Priest between God and man. The melody sends chills up and down my spine.

4) In Christ Alone. I first heard this during a Sunday Night Worship gathering at Bryan. It was part of a plain, unornamented acoustic set, and the simple power of the lyrics spoke volumes. It's relatively new, a "New Irish Hymn" written by Stuart Townsend and Keth Getty.

5) Beautiful Day. This was the first U2 song I've ever heard, and it was not only beautiful, with a soaring rock chorus and awesome instrumentation, but also one of many to which my Triangle pals introduced me. I'm a definite U2 fan.

6) Eleanor Rigby OR Blackbird, both by the Beatles. The lyrics are so lonely (tragic in Eleanor's case, more hopeful in Blackbird), but the music is bewitching (esp. the gypsy-sounding violin on Eleanor Rigby). I tend to gravitate toward songs with a perplexing or haunting tone. One of my pals from the band in Asheville played and sang Blackbird after practice one day...

7) Jesus, King of Angels--or really anything by Fernando Ortega, primarily because I often listen to his CDs when trying to relax or fall asleep. They are so prayerful and full of peace... My Mom began listening to his music when I was in high school, and I always think of her when I hear one of his songs.

2006-02-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

I love L.M. Montgomery's books. Yes, I know love's a strong word, and I'm not going to say that I love chocolate or my favorite sweater or a movie star, but reading her words always leaves me breathless with anticipation--even after I've read them 10 times over. Anne, and Emily, and even Sara Stanley of The Story Girl, became some of my dearest playmates in the years when I still read their stories with a dictionary beside me. I danced in Violet Vale and shivered with fear when walking through the haunted wood with Anne and Diana; I wept for Gilbert and cheered for Davey and his adventures with Mr. Harrison; I shouted at Emily when she stupidly let her pride get the best of her and cheerfully envied her when her book became a success. Mrs. Montgomery's books smell of twilight and lady slippers and silver-edged grasses, and perhaps they were too "purple," as Emily's writing mentor told her. Perhaps she was too romantic. Perhaps Anne and Emily did have a bit more "magic" in their minds than I would have liked; but I understood them and they understood me. Montgomery knew how people work--what makes them sob or smile or sit up and take notice--and her books were filled with real people in tragic or comic situations simulatneously fantastic and utterly normal. That's her main point, I think: magic and beauty are found in the normal and familiar, which is illustrated best in the eventual love choices of Anne and Emily. Gilbert and Teddy were the constant and familiar, and rose colored glasses weren't necessary for magic. Sigh. I love L.M. Montgomery's books.

If souls were flowers, which would yours be?

2006-02-06T13:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Lord of the Flies for the first time...

[shudder]

The warping of "innocent" or beautiful things (like young children turned into murderers or barbarians) becomes about fifty times more frightening than things that are scary in their own right. That reminds me of a point Lewis stressed in the Screwtape letters: namely, that nothing is so evil, destructive, and deceptive as twisted truth, or warped good. The last few paragraphs of Lord of the Flies, which depict these brutal little killers weeping for their lost innocence, broke my heart. Wm. Golding obviously crafted his tale to be just as much a metaphor as an adventure/tragedy.

Now to read something cheerful. Maybe Madame Bovary...

2006-02-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

I was at peace...

Saturday as I sat in a small cathedral and watched streams of jeweled light warm the cool white walls. As I prayed, pure voices carried wafts of holy song out into the peaceful surrounding gardens. Visiting a cathedral may not itself be some great surprise; but the fact that this experience occurred right here in Conyers, Ga, certainly is.

They came here in the 40’s, a small group of Cisterian (Trappist) monks, and established one of thirteen similar monasteries in the United States. What devotion or sorrows led them to their quiet, hidden life and to this little town in Georgia? Many years later their original wooden abbey church has burnt down, but the monastery still thrives. The "gift shop" sells fudge and preserves made by the monks, as well as Catholic books and paraphernalia, the bonsai greenhouses have become quite extensive, and the grounds are open to all--but it's the beautiful white abbey church, built by the humble monks and craftsman from the community, that offers a peaceful welcome to Catholic and Protestant alike.

We sat in the narthex, surrounded by a peace so powerful it penetrated the bones, made whispers seem like shouts, made reverence a reflex. The lancet windows along the nave, deep blues and purples in simple geometric shapes, welcomed gentle sunlight. I thought of the elaborate cathedrals I had seen in France, and was awed by the power in this foil of simplicity, this humble glory of soft light and bare walls.

The Atlanta Boys Choir had arrived to record in the church. They jostled and joked outside on the stairs, but all rowdiness stopped as they entered this place. We sat and wondered at the effortless beauty carried in the blend of young soprano, alto, and tenor voices from young boys boisterous and uncouth--now stilled and transformed by their own song. A handful of worshippers drifted in and out, stopping to genuflect, listen, and pray, but we were almost alone on this sunny Saturday afternoon, sitting in an unlikely cathedral, thankful for the greatness of God and for moments of peace.

2006-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

I've been tagged...

"Foursquare"

Four movies you could watch over and over:
1.The LOTR Trilogy
2. Pride and Prejudice (A&E version)
3. The Sound of Music
4. The Emperor's New Groove

Four places you have lived:
1. Monroe, NC
2. Columbia, SC
3. Dayton, TN
4. Asheville, NC

Four TV shows you love to watch: (This is tricky, since I haven't watched television regularly in about 5 years).
1. PBS historical documentaries
2. Old Britcoms on PBS
3. Fox News
4. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (an old favorite from childhood)

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Okaloosa Island, Fla.
2. Boone, North Carolina
3. Sandy Hook, Conn.
4. New York City, Ny.

Four websites you visit daily:(other than blogs)
I don't really visit them all daily; regularly is more like it...
1. Google
2. Xanga
3. WorldMag.com
4. Journalism Jobs.com

Four of your favorite foods:
1. Anything Chinese
2. Anything Thai
3. Fresh grapefruit, strawberries, and oranges
4. CHOCOLATE! (The real kind...no wimpy "candy bars")

Four places you would rather be right now:
1. Hiking in Asheville, NC
2. Sitting in a tree in The Grassy Bowl with my 4 best pals
3. Touring London, England with my Mom and sister
4. In McKay's used book store with about $100 in guilt-free money to spend

All the people I would have tagged have already been tagged...

2006-01-17T10:41:00.000-08:00

Winged

when creaking pine gales
lashed moor ponies
spurred by silver fancy,
Leaping,
Flying fleetly across
the bluff of front yard
no lowly trench ever served
more eloquently than
transporting
crashing mountain streams
beside paths
for flying galoshes,
soaked singing limbs,
wild, wind-streaked
Manes,
winged days.
Ten-year old hair,
Brown,
ash,
tangled like steeds’
from frantic rides
across expanse of cliff,
of marsh,
of rise transformed,
a mountain strewn with
stones, each one an Ebenezer,
calling:
Childhood

Copyright, Megan Sherrin, 2006

2006-01-12T19:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since i last posted, and my thoughts are bouncing chaotically around in my brain...

Arid: that word always annoyed me for no apparent reason. It's another one of those words I hated before I knew what it meant. It just sounded parched and brittle. I keep thinking about that tree I read about when I obsessively devoured A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, and how it became a metaphor for Francie's life (and the life of her community). I still feel hopeful when I think of that tree, surviving with the tenacity necessary for growth in an arid place; and I still feel like I need that metaphor. Most people probably do.

Trying to register for the GRE when you aren't SURE what you want to do is like putting the cart before the horse. But I don't suppose it would be smart to put this off any longer... Jess and I were talking about how as small children we thought we'd have everything figured out by this age. Then again, at that age, I was looking forward to the day when I could swear off naps forever. Ha! Little did I know...

I am reading the entire list of Newbery Award Winners this year as I struggle to aid my fiction-writing skills with quality children's books. It's depressing to be reminded that many of the same disturbing themes and issues that permeate adult fiction are all there in the pages of award-winning children's books. Many recent winners receive awards because they "sensitively" handle traumatizing issues. I constantly ask myself how much we should expect childen to handle. How much should we seek to "prepare" and "arm" them for life? Even beautiful works of fiction like the Chronicles of Narnia, which allow children to glory in imagination and learn wonderful truths through fairy tales, are full of evil characters, battles, deaths, chases, and other potentially traumatizing things. Yes, children live in the same sinful world as we do; and, yes, many are forced to face truths many adults will never have to face...But shouldn't we try to protect them somehow? Perhaps fiction like The Chronicles of Narnia has the same fear-purging effect on children as the Greeks believed tragedy plays to have on those who watched them. Can reading about fictional wars, dangerous quests, and difficult situations and seeing how they were faced allow children to understand and prepare themselves for life and its sorrows?

We try to plot forever
By walking its boundaries
But we never get past
The third side.
If there is a fifth dimension
Let me say
I think heaven is in it
Sometimes.

Some nights stars
Look closer
From a blanket on the grass
Than they do
From the biggest telescope.

When I was five
And swinging
In the park
My feet would try
To punch holes
In heaven
And I imagined
Bits of sky
Falling, Like confetti,
Down to earth.
If I flew just a
Few feet higher
Pieces of pearly gate
Might catch in my eyelashes.

Copywright, Megan Sherrin, 2006

2005-12-03T12:05:00.000-08:00

Pride and Prejudice
The Big, Fat Review

*** EDIT: If you want an excellent and short review, go to the November 26th entry on THIS site. "The restraint prevalent in the author's writing style was completely gone (good for the movie, bad for the bringing-to-life of the book)..."

On to my review...

As for the new movie: The easiest way to compare it to both the book and the well-known A&E is to allude to Bible versions. If you are looking for a Greek or even Septuagint (sp?) version, go to the 6-hour-long A&E masterpiece. If you are looking for a movie that captures in the vernacular the fresh spirit of Austen's work, look no further. The general effect of the movie is similar to that of the Living Bible: a vibrant paraphrasation.

From its first moment, this movie bounces along with Lydia Bennet's determined gait. At the beginning I was a bit put off at the hasty pace, especially that of the party during which Bingley and his guests are announced. Nothing like the one shown in the sedate A&E version, this gathering is actually rowdy and more like a hoedown in gowns than a stately dance (however, I began to wonder if that might not actually be a more accurate picture of a country dance during that era) . The dialogue is more informal and, for lack of a better word, a bit modernized. In addition to this, the characters are less complex, obviously a product of an inability to reveal the characteristics of the characters slowly. Lydia is obnoxiously giggly (though perhaps not as believable as husky-voiced Julia Sawalha) and Jane is less tranquil than the doe-eyed actress of A&E, but I venture to say that this version's Mr. Darcy is more human and believable than Colin Firth (Here I am conscious of a million death threats from a million Colin lovers, but I have always wanted to poke Mr. Firth's Darcy in the arm with a pin and yell "Use some expression, man! Are you made of stone?"). Speaking of stone, there is an odd moment at Pemberly with some stone statuary that would top my list of annoying changes. While I'm there, I will list annoying changes and lovely moments so Austen purists can best judge the movie's watchability factor.

Annoying changes
#1 Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth receives strange treatment, including a different setting and some significant changes to the letter he writes. It works, to be sure, but the speed of the occurences and the differences in the letter make Elizabeth's eventual change of heart a bit quick in the coming
# 2 The relationship between Jane and Elizabeth is not portrayed as beautifully as in the A&E version (but of course, there was less time to develop such).
#3 The fact that Charles Bingley is not played by Crispin Bonham-Carter. The ungainly youth who plays Bingley in the new movie is much less amiable.
#4 The fact that Alison Steadman is not Mrs. Bennet. Brenda Blethyn tries valiantly but does not come off as a woman one would love to hate. She's just annoying (and Mr. Bennet, while not as glaringly inadequate, is still not nearly as endearing as the owly head of the A&E Bennet family).
#5 Mary Bennet does not get enough screen time. Austen's point that the too-intellectual are just as silly as the too-frivolous or flirtatious does not come across.
#6 There will be pieces of dialogue throughout that purists will flinch to hear; but remember: this movie is for mass consumption, and it does a fairly adequate job of capturing the bright social spirit of the novel.

Lovely Moments
#1 The music! While the familiar theme of the A&E version will always stir my heart, this movie flows and sings with a beautiful piano-centeric score. While I am not a good judge of art music, I thought most of it sounded like Debussy. The earnestness and vibrance of the music added significantly to the movie's overall value.
#2 The lighting. No, I am not a big student of the art of movie-making or technicalities, but I loved the symbolic use of lighting in this movie.
#3 The final proposal scene, despite the changes. You will have to see it to know what I mean.
#4 Charlotte Lucas. The filmmakers did much with the little screen time Claudie Blakley had. An improvement on the colder A&E portrayal.
#5 Pemberly itself is a more graceful and livable place than the somewhat ugly A&E Pemberly. I always wondered how fast Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth would rush to remodel and redecorate (which I shouldn't have been forced to wonder, since people of that era judged the character and personality of a home owner by the layout and landscaping of his home).
#6 The symbolism and the use of extra-dialogue devices to get at the spirit of Austen's novel. Indeed, a valiant effort to both draw in new fans and appease the old.

One of the most fascinating and commendable aspects of the movie is the director's determination to show the distinct contrast of the Bennet's life with that of the richer characters. There is no doubt that Mr. Bennet, while a gentleman, is not a rich man. The disorder and slight shabbiness of the Bennet home reflects the disorder--and shabbiness-- of the family relationships. Mr. Bennet keeps cows and doesn't comb his hair well; the misses Bennet are not as primly and nicely attired as the A&E ladies, and the general air of the family is more haphazard and in need of change. The plight of young women of the day is adequately shown; indeed, Charlotte Lucas' acknowledgement of her engagement to Mr. Collins is poignant to the point of tear-jerking. While a prime example of dialogue-change, Charlotte's lines are calculated to bring tears. All-in-all, I think this movie did a better job than the beloved A&E version of showing the downside of the Bennets' lot in life.

Final Suggestion:
See it. You may hate it or disagree with me on certain points, but it's certainly worth watching if only to see what movie-made Austen fans will see in their heads while reading. And if nothing else, it's definitely see-able in less than 6 hours. Fat free Austen? Hmmm... judge for yourself.

2005-12-02T14:21:00.000-08:00

Prejudiced?

Well, just a bit....But my pride in being a fan (purist is too harsh a word in this case) of the book did not deter me from seeing the nervously-anticipated new movie. I am talking, of course, about the new Pride and Prejudice movie now in theaters.

Yes, I would actually recommend that every lover of Ms. Austen's books grit her---or his--teeth and go see it. Next time I will present a review and comparison, but right now I must go cook dinner for the Sherrin crew. I am MOM this weekend, as my parents are both gone. Hmmm... is putting sedatives in fajitas unethical?

2005-11-03T11:41:00.000-08:00

Venturing Forth...

I have begun a new job as a 4th-grade Language Arts teacher in a Classical Christian school. The students will be few and my paychecks slim, but I couldn't be happier! My students (insert thrill of happiness) are reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and several of the students do not read well, so we have our work cut out for us... But all of the children show brightness and an eagerness to learn, and I know that adventures lie ahead!

There are no clouds today, and the sky is pure autumn blue.

2005-10-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

The Rose-Colored Approach

About a month ago, I bought new glasses. That day I wrote a xanga entry joking about how nice it would be to have a pair of glasses for each viewpoint one wanted to understand. Pop on one pair and understand the teenage mind, pop on another and miraculously understand televangelists' motivations, pop on yet another and understand men in general, etc. It probably just shows my submerged, perverse desire to stereotype any population demographic in order to understand the world better, but it also reminded me of how I once thought Christianity worked.

Before "becoming a Christian," I thought that at the moment of conversion, one put on some kind of mindset that would allow a godly view of the world and a cheerful outlook on life. Hah! And I grew up in a Christian home! How skewed my view of a Christian's daily life was! If I had known how much more difficult it would be, I would probably have run the other way.

Of course I didn't have a sudden flipflop in worldview, or even a sunnier outlook on things. In fact, my melancholy tendencies have been harder and harder to curb as I understand more and more of evil and sin nature. The processes of sanctification and growing in understanding cause more pain than I would have imagined; and yet, I wouldn't have it any other way. Putting on a "new me" without fight, without pain, would likely inhibit compassion and understanding for those in process from lostness to foundness. Sometimes I think Christianity--and here I mean the institution the world has come to see--offers blinders instead of glasses, offers little pieces of legalism or rightness that prevent us from understanding those struggling differently. Just like the way in which we TRY so hard to not sin that we focus on the sin rather than the Sinless One, we often try so hard to see things from a sinless mindset that we avoid those who see differently from us.

Lord, please help me to see clearly, purely, without pride that refuses to see others whose vision is different from my own. Help me to be the new man that I am becoming, but make me humble enough to always remember who I was and learn from it.

2005-09-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

What I wrote on my lunchbreak *

Low Carb Stuff

Upon turning onto aisle two, she automatically got that feeling she felt when she was twelve and watched a movie about a forty-year-old librarian who ends up killing all the Story Time readers. It was a chilling, creeping feeling—not exactly fear, but more like deep dread, the product of seeing innocent things turn sinister. She turned quickly, expecting to see some old lady waving a knife over her head.

No one else was on the aisle. She drew a deep breath and peered around the corner to her left. The only people in the produce section were a woman in her twenties and a young boy, maybe three years old, trying to help his mom by knocking over lemons from a display. She walked a few steps to her right and peeked into aisle three. Two adolescent girls stood in front of the Choco-Monkeys, heatedly discussing cereals, and an elderly man riffled through a sale paper. Hmm…

“Low carb snackies?” The pubescent voice cracked in her ear. She whirled around to face a gawky teenage kid in a Save-A-Pile uniform and an apron, holding a tray of flat, brown squares. His gaze swept over her in that mocking glance that she always figured meant something akin to “You could use some low-carb treats, lady. Look at that paunch!”

She shook her head and backed up toward her cart, which had stopped in front of the peanut butter and nut spreads. Fat calories galore. Maybe she should only shop right before closing. Then there would be no one to mock her for liking normal, non-low-carb foods that didn't cost $3.89 for a package of 24. The only people who shopped at night were people getting off a late shift or expectant dads picking up weird craving foods. They wouldn't care.

The kid, looking slightly nonplussed, still stood in the middle of the aisle holding the tray, characteristically teenaged. Didn’t he get the point? Maybe he was waiting for another victim. No, he looked genuinely…upset.

“Gosh, you’d think somebody would want to try this stuff. I only volunteered to do this instead of shelving so I could at least talk to people.” He shuffled his feet and glared at the tray. “No one even tastes it. Probably ‘cause it looks like sh—”

“Ok! I’ll try some!” she cut him off quickly, snatching a piece off the tray and biting into it. The kid was watching her anxiously. Well, he was right. It did taste pretty bad. She chewed, forcing herself to ignore comparisons to cardboard and dog food. The swallowing part was pretty tricky without liquid.

“How was it?” This kid seemed weird, but strangely sincere.

“Um…” She crossed her fingers and prayed for forgiveness. “Not bad.”

He smiled, and she thought that was probably worth more than 20 calories of low carb food.

© Me, September 2005

*Constructive criticism? Hate Mail? Please, no rants from advocates of high-priced low-carb snacks.

2005-09-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

Anxiousness

Recently, while discussing maiden names and name changes, I remarked to a family member that if I were widely published prior to marriage, I would like to retain my maiden name on any published works. This individual, very traditional and perhaps irritated that I would be so "feminist" as to insist on keeping my own name remarked with irritation that I had "better hurry up" [and get published, not get married].

My initial reaction was indignation. What right had he to suggest that I would never get anywhere if I didn't start early? I know of many authors who became established in other fields and then wrote books, or who didn't write larger works until middle aged life. Then I began to wonder...maybe he was right. Should I be working hard to churn out publishable material, to do some good and make some kind of a name for myself as a young person (no pun intended)? Or should I try to follow my rule of not writing anything unless it is worth writing? I want experience under my belt; I want to know that I have something worth saying to anyone who might be listening. This is why I haven't been rushing. My plan was to read quality literature, live my life with my eyes and ears open, keep an eye on the writing world and books in general, and keep my mind sharp through writing short stories, essays, and sketches. Then, when I have a solid idea or the opportunity presents itself, I will have the tools I need to do the job. But maybe I am wrong. How do I know when my time on earth will end? Will I regret not pushing myself more?

On the other hand, if I'm this uncertain, I'd probably better work on maturity first. So many things to learn, and so little time in which to learn them...

2005-09-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

Abiding

A friend posted this hymn on her weblog in response to the recent death by suicide of a Bryan student. References to and discussions of depression, melancholy, and suicide have met me at every turn this last week. My own weakness, darkness, and depression has begun to press down on me again, a spiritual and mental pressure that becomes physical as well. I read this over and over, praying its words. No other comfort exists except the comfort that Christ took the weight of the cross and our immeasurable sin on Himself to free our souls from ultimate darkness. He abides with us even when we cannot hear His voice or feel His hand.

Abide With Me

Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me!

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day
Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O thou who changest not, abide with me!

I need thy presence every passing hour
What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who like thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me!

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness
Where is death's sting? where, grave thy victory
I triumph still, if thou abide with me!

Reveal thyself before my closing eyes
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee
In life and death, O Lord, abide with me!

Words: Henry Lyte, 1847. Music: William Monk, 1861.

2005-08-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

One of my friends posted this on her xanga weblog and I thought I'd pass it on...

Ode on a Grecian Urn Summarized
By Desmond Skirrow

Gods chase
Round vase.
What say?
What play?
Don’t know.
Nice, though.

2005-08-26T07:33:00.000-07:00

Some words just make me smile.

I'm not talking about words like "love," "community," "compassion," or "salvation," words that express ideas or sentiments I find valuable. I'm not even talking about words that make modern, shrunken minds sound important, words that have to be said just right so the half-pause of smug importance won't creep in before them. Words that make me smile do so merely because they sound beautiful or mysterious or appealing; they taste delightful on the tongue and feel perfect in the ear. Among my favorites are minstrel, wilderness, symphony, silvan, chortle, faerie, vibrant, wind, and delve.

Most of my favorites seem to have a silvery, sibilant sound (yes, silvery greatly appeals to me as well), or prominent long vowel sounds (faerie, vibrant, etc.), but there are the occasional rogue (also a favorite) examples. I wonder, sometimes, if we are more affected by context than we think; for example, perhaps i heard the word "rogue" in a good context somewhere as a child and unconsciously love it for that. Or perhaps it really is just that particular sound that appeals to me. In phonetics and in our introductory linguistics class, we discussed the fact that softer sounds like 's' or the labiodentals (f, and v) appeal to the ear much more than harsher plosives, or bilabials (B, D). In our literature classes we discussed using sibilants and plosives for effects (B's, P's, and D's for harsh, popping, or point-making effects, S's for softer, musical, slithering effects). Maybe some people have rogue ears and like the B, P, D noises, but they don't seem to be the norm (Hmmm...I wonder if that's different for male and female ears, kind of like the study that showed males liking sharper, pointed shapes and women enjoying softer and rounder ones. And I wonder if they way the words LOOK influences us, too. And, what about other languages? Are people who speak other languages attracted to the same sounds as English speakers? And...)

Anyway, I delight in this weaving of sounds and results, in dancing among the letters and words, amazed at the way the mind can create and influence and enjoy. What fun it is to collect these words and pass them out for others' pleasure!

What words make you smile, and why do you think they do?