Grace's Paradox

Time to confess
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The sins of the day:
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One two three or four,
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Every second I waste.
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He knows it all;
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Why bother with lies?
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After all, I had reasons;
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Each one justified.
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Now cavalier,
.
I cut myself loose,
.
As if admitting the truth
.
Makes it an excuse.

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My Empire of Dirt

They say it’s the little things, and that is such a cliché, but maybe it’s true. It’s like how I don’t like the cold, hard, crunchy days of February. They’re abrasive, scraping up against my skin to leave burns. Like freezer burns or rug burns. But life is just better when the weather’s nice, or during a steady rain. It doesn’t really change anything, yet somehow it matters. Even when the weather’s cold and gray, there are little things that can make it alright.

I went on a walk a couple of weeks ago, when the drifts of snow were so high, and on my way back to my equally-cold dorm room I felt I had to do something about this freezing phenomenon. I’m not sure why; I guess because the day brought something uncommon for the state of Kansas, I felt I had to do something uncommon of my own. I like to match the days like that, the way most people match their clothes.

So I went on the little hill in the middle of campus to make a snow angel. I looked around quickly before I plopped on my back in the snow, a shy smile on my face like a child about to make a new friend. For a second I was afraid I’d forgotten how—being a child isn’t like riding a bike, you know—but back and forth, back and forth, arms and legs, legs and arms and I remembered. It made me so happy. I don’t know why. Just something about that solitary, messy, childish act of spontaneity cheered me up. I wanted to skip and laugh and tell the whole world that I made a snow angel. That I got snow down the back of my shirt and all in my hair and soaking through my jeans, but I made a snow angel, just cause I had the impulse. Just me, all alone in the muffled white; a random gesture executed in complete silence.

It’s something I would’ve done Before without a second thought. I guess it reminded me of who I was then; who I still am that’s been buried.

The next week I found the feeling again, in the vacant volleyball court on a day warm enough to go out in short sleeves. The sand crunched softly as I knelt down and I felt it’s roughness in the scrapes on my knuckles as I leaned forward to inspect its consistency. Dig a hole, wet-dry, pile it up, wet-dry, pat it here and there and lean back on dirty knees to admire my sandcastle. Honestly I made far better ones when I was eight, but back then I didn’t understand the luxury it was to grip such simplicity—the elusive pleasure in constructing one’s own Empire of Dirt.

There is such power in the context of a sandbox. Shall I knock down the fortress I built with my own bare hands—a tyrant exerting control by display of easy destruction—or let it stand and become the benevolent ruler of the ants? Either way it is mine, and just for me. I’m not sure why it was so satisfying. Maybe lingering wisps of childhood; maybe the pleasure I take in having innocent secrets.

Or maybe I just like to play in the mud.

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Sandcastle

I pack each wall

Constructed by hand;

My own to destroy

Or let stand.

Back I lean

On dirty knees,

Benevolent ruler

Of the ants.


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Coping in Three Not-So-Easy Steps...

Hey, what if I changed everything? What if I shook my life like a snow globe and just hung around to watch where things might settle? Though, knowing me, shaking up my life might turn out more like shaking up a soda can: an explosion triggered by the slightest hint of release. Instead of watching where things settle down, I might be watching to see them hit the ceiling; to see what the hissing spray will stain. And how very, very sticky it would make things.

It might be worth it, though, because this isn’t working for me. I don’t like who I am here. Everything I say and do just seems to be wrong. Not wrong in the moral sense. Wrong in the sense of being an inaccurate representation of my nature. I think it’s because most of my soul is made up of things that really can’t be demonstrated behaviorally. Things that have to be heard in the pauses between the words I speak—the quiet ones, when my gaze wanders and rides on invisible currents of warm air towards the ceiling.

Sometimes I wish people knew me only from my writing. Then they would know my true essence instead of this character they are forced to create for themselves by patching together a few random patterns. What I write is really much more accurate—my pulsing, writhing, bleeding, laughing, crying, skipping, sinning, loving, doubting, living, breathing soul—and here it is, represented in a truer way than could ever be expressed in person. I don’t speak or act in ways that express the truth that my written words do.

I think I need to hang out with some artsy, slightly emo hipsters. We’d listen to The Decemberists or the latest Paste sampler, draw weird things depicting words that end with “ism”, discuss the autobiographies of Augusten Burroughs, wear serious expressions and experiment with beat-poetry. There would be a guitar in there somewhere, too. I would probably even wear plaid and skinny jeans, to be honest. Or a black turtleneck. I can’t help it; I just like that stuff.

Is it possible that it could really be all about location, location, location? Lately I’ve been feeling like where I am doesn’t cultivate my natural self very well. Like something about my environment is keeping me from thriving in the ways God intended me to. Do I need to find a new habitat? Or simply alter my current one?

I don’t know; I’m so tired and just the thought of change is exhausting. But then, so is the thought of things staying the same.

I don’t have the energy for much more than damage control. Damage caused by my lack of energy and the presence of pain. Do you see the vicious cycle here? It makes me dizzy; makes my heart nauseous and I suppose this is the emotional vomit. Maybe I’m choking on it.

Sometimes I want to try to explain it all—every physical, emotional, psychological, relational thing that it significantly, negatively affected by lupus. But then I remember how, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. Being sick sucks, just like a lot of things that a lot of people go through in life. It sucks more than some things and less than others, just like everything else. I remember that a lot can be solved by following one or more of the instructions in the following sentence: Trust God, Grow Up, and Deal With It.

But gosh darn it, sometimes that can be hard to do.

The Vain Pursuit of Origins

I tried to draw roots, once. Intertwining and coiling down and tangling around each other. I couldn’t do it; couldn’t hold in my mind the complexity of just one section long enough to transfer it to paper.
God wove the roots. The sections that curl and push and squirm down under the earth. The loam on top of the ground—that alone is an advanced multimedia art piece. But beneath the ground, the roots go—the tendons, veins and nervous system of the planet. They web out while growing in the dirt, some silken and delicate, some giant, twisted pillars of strength.
A pencil can’t conquer that. Not mine, anyway. My pencil can’t truly conquer anything. It compromises. Sometimes I so dread the inevitable compromise that I’m actually afraid to begin a drawing. I procrastinate. Maybe I write instead sometimes.

I want to go walking at night, in the city. On one of those desperate nights, you know? Not when you’re desperate for anything in particular; just when you feel like crying for no new reason and it’s cold out but you leave your coat behind anyway, just because it’s satisfying to do stupid things when you feel like that.
I want to walk until my feet blister, until my hair is stringy, then stumble into a stranger I can trust. One who needs help; maybe an old lady with a cane and a big box to carry.

I’d help her carry it up the stairs to her little apartment, where she’s lived all alone since her husband died in 1975. She’d show me pictures of him, and he’d be handsome, but in that old-fashioned way that isn’t really considered attractive anymore. She’d have a cat, and it would rub up against my legs. “Oh, he likes you.” She’d say as he purrs and I reach down to pet him. He’s an orange tabby, maybe, with long legs and a high, keening meow like my cat Milo who passed away last fall.

I’d say I have to go; it was nice to meet you but I have to go. Then maybe my stomach would growl and she’d insist that I have some toast or something, and a glass of milk. I would stay, and I would drink the milk even though I hate milk. She’d tell me all sorts of stories from her childhood years, before her family came over from England to America.

She would ask me why I was out alone at this time of night, and in this weather, and I don’t know her at all so I’d just tell her the truth. I’d just tell her that I was troubled and restless and lonely and sad. She would ask why and I’d tell her I really don’t know. She’d say it’s alright; she’d say I’d feel better once I had some tea.

It is cold outside, and empty, but the apartment is warmly lit and full of soft, faded old-lady things, in including the old lady herself—a stranger. So I’d stay for tea and we’d talk more about why I’m feeling this way, and she’d tell me it’s going to be alright and I’d believe her.

Because sometimes I can feel alone in a group of wonderful friends, but feel cozy and connected in the presence of a stranger. Sometimes I feel homesick even when I’m at home.

That mostly happens when I’m over-analyzing things, as I tend to do the vast majority of the time. Even during the last Chiefs game. I don’t even really care about football, and that simple fact got me thinking. Watching all the Chiefs fans on TV, the sea of red and the painted faces, I admit I thought, “Don’t these people have anything better to care about?” And as soon as I thought that, I realized: yes; yes, they do. Maybe the reason I pour myself into art no one sees and writing no one reads and songs no one hears is the very same reason why they pour themselves into the red and yellow and freezing cold stadium.

They are hiding from the nothingness that threatens to consume them if they don’t care—passionately—about something. Anything. The threat of a great void if they don’t chase some kind of faux-fulfillment. They are filling their lives with pleasurable distractions to avoid being left alone in the emptiness with all of life’s inevitable monsters.

Or maybe some people just really like football. I don’t know; who am I to say?

Why do I have to assign a deeper meaning to everything? Can anything ever just be? Freud, when was a cigar just a cigar? Was it ever, really? I don’t believe you. Maybe that sounds arrogant; after all, what do I know? But if I can’t wear a certain pair of socks without analyzing all the possible reasons why I might have picked it on this particular day, how could you, with your famous fixation theories and revolutionary notions regarding the subconscious, possibly believe that anything is ever “just” what it is?

Even the seemingly innocent things of childhood were never really simple; we were just too young to question them. Why did we all assume that Humpty Dumpty was an egg? The rhyme never specifies. I read somewhere that the rhyme came from an incident in which a massive cannon that was supposed to revolutionize European weaponry—nicknamed “Humpty Dumpty”—fell from a tower and was demolished before true progress could be made. I also read that it could be about King Richard III, who fell from his high horse and was hacked to pieces.

But who knows if any of that is true? It is nothing more than speculation. All the false information—the unanticipated complexity of every little thing—makes me feel as if everything is wearing a disguise and I can’t even trust myself anymore, with how distorted everything seems. Every unidentifiable emotion feels inexplicably fraudulent.

But of all the vague speculation, this is fact, not fiction: for the first time in years, I think I may throw myself to the wind.

Watermark

Condensation:
Little drops
On the paper roll
Together;
So many things gather
Into a weighty pool.

Absorption:
Colors bleed into
One another, spreading
Ambiguous edges—
Nothing begins,
Nothing ends.

Evaporation:
All previous existence,
Gone.
Reason disappears,
Identity dissolved,
And I am nothing more
Than a watermark.

Split Ends

I feel like I have changed so much these last few months. In August, I knew something was about to happen; how the buildup of summer’s days had rotted away in my bones and it seemed like they were cracking with the desire to be filled with something new. And they have been, I think. They are still the same old bones—some things will never change—but they seem different, as if some balance in me has shifted just a bit.

I'm a little more bold than I used to be, on the outside. I talk more than I used to, more frequently and to more people. That might sound like a good thing, and the change is so slight that it is probably imperceptible to others, but I'm not sure I like it. I'm getting better at small talk and I've never liked small talk. Because when you talk, people assume that what you're talking about is what you have to say, and I have more to say than the stuff of polite banter but I'm still too reserved to say it all. If you're silent, at least people know that there's more in your mind than such-and-such, even if you don't tell them exactly what it is.

I’m too good at small talk now and sometimes I feel starved for a serious conversation.


Maybe I’ll grow my hair out. Measure it in inches against my heart; compare and contrast all the alterations that come with time. By the time my hair reaches my shoulders, I wonder where I’ll be. It’ll probably take more than a year. I wonder who I’ll know by then, and who I’ll just remember; what I'll have done, what I’ll be trying to do. I wonder how my heart will have been changed, by the time the tips of the strands first brush my collarbone.

Of course, I never have the patience to let my hair grow more than a few inches before I cut it all off again. Hopefully I’ll have better luck with my heart.


Because there’s a lot to be said for growing. Growing up. For shaping up, for taking responsibility and pride. There’s a lot to be said for prioritizing higher things, or at least wanting to. There’s something to be said for the end of play-time.

I’m not saying let go of your inner child; never do that, ever. But, as with all children, it isn’t good to let it have its way all the time. There’s something to be said for practicality; there’s something to be said for a little pretention. Even a healthy dose of cynicism, just to know how it feels.


There’s something to be said for respect, maybe even a little fear. Fear can be a great motivator. You run the fastest when you’re afraid.

Sometimes I wonder how it would feel, to be the scary one. To be the one in the shadows with the crazy eyes; to be feared instead of afraid. Because sometimes I have to be alone. To walk until I’m dizzy with the solitude, singing snatches of half-remembered songs, my voice all lonely fallen flat in the air. Sometimes I have to go walking in the dark by myself to let my restless thoughts propel me, and that’s hard to do when one is so weak as I am. When I am of the prey variety and there are so many predators out there to watch for.

So sometimes I try to imagine how it would be if it were the other way around. To walk swiftly and silently down the sidewalks and backstreets, safe to be able to be completely inwardly absorbed because I am the one with the sharp teeth and lethal speed; I am the one with the strength and fight.

Sometimes I’m brave against whatever—whoever—is out there, when I’m feeling restless or particularly cynical. Once I walked the city streets over two miles away from campus, all by myself. I was feeling brave that day. Or at least too preoccupied to be afraid.


Not today, though. Today is one of those days—one of those vaguely despondent days that, for no particular reason except maybe the color of the sky, make you want to go home and curl up in your mother’s lap. It’s an irrational day; a day when emotions just don’t fit the logic. I hate that. Everything should fit some sort of logic. So these kinds of days truly throw me off, mostly because of their pure irony.

These kinds of days when I feel like I’m looking for something, but I don’t remember what it is; or like there was something I wanted—really wanted—to do, but I forgot what it was so this unsatisfied craving just drifts, suspended in me and I look around....what do I do now?

I pick up a classic book, is sometimes what I do—or one that everyone tells me is classic. Some of them live up to my expectations and I love them—like Atlas Shrugged and Dorian Gray—but then there are some that make me puzzled as to why they are so famous, like Catcher in the Rye. I mean, it was good and all; it was very good. It was one of those kinds of stories that I like—the kind where it’s just somebody doing stuff and thinking things and there’s not much resolution at the end. But I don’t understand why almost every high-schooler of my dad’s generation was forced to read it, or why people murdered celebrities over it.

I don’t usually tell people that, though—when I don’t understand why a certain book makes such a big bang on society—because lots of smart people say those books are revolutionary and who am I to say any different? I assume I am just missing something. I keep reading anyway, though, cause I do love to read books by famous dead men. It’s almost more fun than reading people.


I used to people-watch all the time, back before I learned how to make small-talk. I still people-watch whenever I can; whenever I’m around lots of people I don’t know. Not just to silently laugh at them, which I do sometimes, but because I like attempting to comprehend how this person I’m seeing for five seconds—who I’m snickering at because she’s wearing a Christmas sweater or because his hair has been horribly dyed—are real people, doing real things, having real lives.

I even nicknamed some of them, some of the characters I used pass in the halls and class rooms every day at Johnson County Community College when I was seventeen. I wanted to know their stories—all of them.

I wanted to follow Red home and see where he lives and what he does in his free time and what’s his family like? Maybe he doesn’t have one and that’s why he’s goth’d-out and looks like he hates the world.

I want to ask The Blond Guy if he smokes weed before Algebra class, and maybe find out where he gets his tie-dye shirts.

I want to listen to Fish Boy’s whale tales; to ask him if he’s ever been deep-sea fishing, or if he’s only ever caught the giant bass and catfish that are depicted on every single one of his t-shirts and baseball caps.

What kind of insecurity makes The Ditz use so much hairspray and cake her face with hardened masks of makeup? I don't think she ever meets anyone's eyes.

What kinds of books does TeaMan read through his horn-rimmed hipster glasses, and does he speak French? He just looks like one of those people who can speak French or Mandarin Chinese or something.

I wonder what my nickname would be, if someone like me saw me from across Java Jazz every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I can’t even speculate; I know myself too well.


Or at least I did. Like I said, I’ve changed an awful lot in these last few months. And maybe I’ll just go with it. I’m ready for a change of some kind, and I’m trying really hard not to cut my hair--I'm even keeping the split ends, just for the sake of resolve.

Maybe a change of heart will satisfy.