The Benefits of Filter Application

Sometimes when I fall asleep I still dream dreams that I used to dream, but now I dream different ones, too. Very different.

But in the last 37 days it seems like everything is different. I’m not even one person anymore; I’m kind of two, but still one. I’m me and then someone else got mixed into me. And I got mixed into them. We’re one flesh. That’s different. Very nice, but different.

I live in a different place too. There are buildings everywhere, and cars and car-sounds; people and pavement. I miss the woods and the cows grazing alongside my dead-end country road. I miss fishing in the pond behind my little house and sitting on the roof overlooking acres and acres of pasture. I miss sloshing through the creek, black lab in tow, grass clippings sticking to my bare feet as I walk to the house past my dad mowing the lawn and into the kitchen, my mom making dinner. I miss the stars, sans light pollution.

I’m glad of the change though; I don’t think I would have been happy in the same place forever. And this is a nice home too, because it is ours: mine and his. And I know if I went back, I’d miss this. It seems that whichever place I’m in, I’m homesick; but then again it seems that no matter which place I’m in, I’m home.

There’s been so much change and what’s strange is I seem to be enjoying it. I miss the old but I’m embracing the new and I’m surprising myself. Normally I hate significant change of any kind. But there’s been so much and I feel ready for even more; I want to cut my hair short again.

It’s always an adventure, and in adventures there’s always some danger; some discomfort. But then there’s always thrill. Oh, the thrill! And fun, and brave new winds blowing and we’re traveling towards something. I don’t know what but I’m determined to forge ahead, stumbling into all sorts of messes and miracles. The messes I’ll learn from and in the miracles—small as they might be—I’ll rejoice.

Because there’s always something to rejoice in. Sometimes a lot, and sometimes just a little, but always something.

I know that sometimes it’s hard to see. I know that sometimes life is like a photograph taken with the flash on. So much bright and with the aperture wide open so that every blemish is highlighted, shutter speed slowed to show garish glares and shadows, sharp and cutting. Sometimes it hurts to look. But sometimes I think there’s no shame in applying some filters. Soften the edges, warm the skin tones. Sometimes that’s all it takes to show the beauty that was there already. Sometimes it’s important to see every scar and every pore, but other times it’s best to overlook the inevitable imperfections in favor of all the good that exists. I’ll overlook for now and be happy and I will lose myself to this moment, when I watch you building and your kiss tastes like whiskey, so deep and smooth and biting and warm; all the very best of us string ourselves up for love but this I will never regret. Because sometimes I wish so hard that I was a mannequin but you never do. Sometimes when I fall asleep I still dream dreams that I used to dream, but now I wouldn’t trade you for them.

Girl of the Earth

I love the smell of soil and rain-wet leaves. I love burying my feet in the sand as if I am growing from the earth myself. My hands raised, I am a woman-tree; through the bottoms of my feet I absorb what is good from the land and even when I step away I feel I am nature’s cousin. I am, after all, made by God from the dust of this planet; I am, I often feel, a Girl of the Earth.

I am Girl of the Earth and I never cease to wonder at the clay from which I was made; the atmosphere through which my being came forth. All around me is its majesty and I am proud to be related in some way to this planet; to share the same Creator. The ocean is black and it merges seamlessly with the night sky, stars and sea occupying the same dark space, as if the earth ends here. Waves groan, swelling white-crested from the darkness, groping desperately at the shore. With joined hands we stand at the edge where the waves can break against our feet, foamy fingers wrapping around our ankles. We stare out into the roaring abyss, watching lightning in the distance. Here at the edge of the world he kisses me, long and deep, as we seem to drown in wave-roars and cool, salty night air. I am one flesh with him and together we are siblings with creation and children of God and nothing could be more wondrous or mysterious than this. Even my dreams are neither as strange nor as beautiful as this reality. It rises slowly, swelling, pulsing, then explodes in a fray of sparkle and light. I am Girl of the Earth and my tectonic plates move and shift in time with it, over and under and around each other, creating and filling spaces within me so that I too pulse its rhythm.
Even as I sleep it beats.

I am Girl of the Earth and I’ve lived a thousand years in the night. I can feel the dreams in my bones still. I lie on my back amidst the blankets, arms stretched out and ankles crossed, crucified to the morning.

I dreamed that when we die we all become one disembodied entity, all consciousnesses mixing and intermingling with one another, a melting together of souls. Feeling, celebrating, and mourning together; knowing and wondering as one. In my dream, lonely people wanted to die and join the communion of souls. And when I woke I wondered if they would be quite so lonely if they realized that they too were part of this grand, fantastical reality. That they also are of the earth, of each other, and of God.

I am Girl of the Earth and I will never want for magic.


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Nebbiolo Reserve

I like the sound of lots of computers typing all at once. It’s like dry rain, or like the sound of my pretty beads when they spill on the floor. I always liked that sound, as much as I hated the mess. When I was a child, I spilled a large bag of glow-in-the-dark beads on the basement floor, but instead of picking them up I turned out the lights and walked amongst the stars. I lay down, made star-angels. I got up and I spun around and around and around looking at the floor, pretending I was flying through space at light-speed. The beads hurt my bare feet, but they were so beautiful I didn’t mind.

Sometimes I don’t mind the beautiful things that hurt my bare soul, either.
Even now, with these grown-up things: grown-up joy, grown-up hurt. They leave me a little breathless. I’m twenty-three and wide-eyed still, as cynical as I feel sometimes.

Rarely do I feel qualified for this “life” thing I’m supposed to be doing. Just occasionally, sometimes when I’m driving or when I sit outside for a very long, long time. Then I feel grounded, rooted to the earth and level with it. Things seem more real—contrasts less sharp, colors less saturated. The world stripped down bare for me to see its pores. Then, when I am able to get a foothold in the rough surface of reality, I feel like maybe I can get something done. At least something basic, like get myself to the doctor or balance my checkbook. Then I feel like I can do it, maybe; like I can be out in the world on my own and maybe be ok. Because I do the things I do and at least I do them, though I may not do much else. Because at least I try. Most of the time.

In the passenger seat I dreamed it was raining in my room. I laughed and spun around, my face turned up to the fat, heavy drops. I spun and spun, soaking wet, but woke warm and dry on the Virginia border at night. Below the high mountain road spread some sort of plant or series of factories. Gray structures in geometric shapes, cylinder towers rising from clusters of rectangular buildings, all different levels. On every edge, every corner, a light glinted. It was like Atlantis raised, suspended in a sea of darkness, sparkling with little points of yellow light. Smoke rose from towers, causing the light to swim in places. I’ve never seen something so industrial look so otherworldly. I watched it pass beneath me as we crossed the bridge, all sprawling stone and steel and light. Like I had ascended above the stars.

I searched for inspiration there, for a poem perhaps, or a song. But then I realized that, were I to write an ode to you, it would sound more like a taste of fine red wine. A flavor of elegant complexity, and in your enthralling depths I find violets and forest loam, dark berry and tobacco notes. Rich and firm structure; a solid, seamless finish. Delicious fruit and leather in your kiss, chocolate undertones; strawberry and spice in your fingertips. You are full and rich and challenging, fully appreciated only by the most discerning of palates. Yet I am blessed to enjoy your fragrant bouquet and refined flavor. I hold you up to the light to admire the gradient and depth of your color as, bit by bit, I observe all you have to offer.

And often after, I feel bold.

I will be more than just ok.

Before I Wake

I’ve been thinking a lot about aging lately, and doing it, a little more each second. I used to look forward to growing old, growing beyond the cultural pressures of beauty and success. But these days I’ve been afraid of it—of losing my mind and what mobility and vitality I have. I never understood the attraction to the idea of a fountain of youth until recently.

If I should die before I wake…

But right now we are young and the angles of our faces aren’t yet lost in folds of skin. Let’s kiss while we’re like this and let’s not forget it; let’s take lots of pictures so we’ll remember. Future generations will stare wide-eyed at the photographs, barely believing that grandma and grandpa were once young and beautiful.

Or will we die just like this, our youth immortalized by an abrupt absence from time?

If I should die before I wake…

It seems presumptuous to assume that we’ll achieve old age when we have no idea what fate will give us for Christmas this year. There could be coal in our stockings, no matter how well we behave. We are nothing but a rush of air expelled from the lungs of God.

So we pray for good things and for lots of time, and I like to pray with you. Your prayers are prose and they are beautiful to me when the two of us join in divine conversation with God.

I often pray in my dreams. In the bad ones, of course I pray for Him to save me. In the good ones I say bless this food, our Father who art in heaven; now I lay me down to sleep. If I should die before I wake, if I should die before I wake…

But I never see God in my dreams. Maybe this means something. Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s funny, that for all the strange and wonderful and horrible and completely random things my subconscious has put me through, it has never offered up an image of God.

When I was a little girl, maybe four or five, I dreamt I was in a cemetery. Satan and his demons were gathered on my right, snorting and pawing the ground. They snarled at Jesus and his army of angels, who stood fierce and silent to my left. I was in the middle of them and they were preparing to battle for my soul. Maybe this means something. Maybe it doesn’t.

If I should die before I wake…

But I wasn’t afraid.
How such a little girl comes to dream of such things, I don’t know.

In my dreams my hair is long. Maybe this means something. Maybe it doesn’t. But that’s how it always is.


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It Is Winter

Winter seems so wasteful, especially when it snows. So many artfully crafted ice crystals sparkling in the light, beautiful together and individually, and then they turn to sludge. God, why do you waste the snowflakes? So many brilliant microsculptures, thrown away on mush. I suppose He can always make some more. Still, though. I think if I made them, each one would seem precious to me.

In the afternoon, the snowy horizon blends with the pale sky and it’s hard to remember that winter will end someday.
And there will be warm nights again, hot fire wood smoke hamburger grill and summer skin, and running through fountains; the doing of the things of summer.

It is summer 1996 and I eat the mulberries with the bugs on them accidentally; it is summer 2000 and I sleep in a tent.
It is spring 2008 and I paint a turtle’s shell; it is autumn 2012 and I find bones in the woods.

It is winter 2006 and I wither; it is winter 2009 and I bloom.

But really it is winter 2014 and I haven’t painted in a long time; it is winter 2014 and I am cold. It is winter 2014 and God blows cooly on the world and I shiver, but it is the breath of God nonetheless; I’ll do my best to embrace what the season has to offer.

It is winter and the cemetery looks more forlorn than ever. Of course in this little town, the dead rest in the lot beside the Price Chopper. The stones aren’t ordered in any particular way; they’re just scattered like a careless handful.

Now outside it is all winter-black. Frigid-darkness, cold-hard-obsidian-darkness. The dogs bark at something beyond the windows; they pace worriedly and I am unsettled. Dogs know what happens in the insidious black. Then as they snuffle my face it seems as if they also know what happens in the space between words; the oblivion you trip into when you’re walking up the stairs in the dark and you think there’s one more step but there’s not and you fall forward. The spaces that are the contractions of silence as it labors to expel certain words from its womb and they come crawling, groaning into this world like they don’t belong here at all. Like they belong in some other existence entirely. And yet they come bloated, distended with a truth that uncomfortably satiates the need for honesty. Stupid words, go back into the silence! But they just stare at me blankly, zombie-words, completely unaware of their destruction.

It is winter and I wish I could sleep through it; it is winter and I can’t feel my toes.

The Fall of a Kite

When I was nineteen years old, I wrote a letter to the idea of a person. I thought I would give the letter to them if we ever met, if they ever existed. I was tired, I think, and I’m always more sentimental when I’m tired.
In the letter I felt compelled to tell this person about my earliest memory.

I was sitting on my dad’s lap in our old glider rocking chair, the one with the blue cushions all snagged and lumpy with age. I used to pick the little balls of lint absent-mindedly from the fabric. Dad was reading a book to me, an old vintage-looking book with pictures and names of animals—four per page against a forest-green background. At least, forest-green is the color of the page I remember; the other pages could have been different colors. He would say each animal’s name in a funny voice. For example: “pink flamingoooooooo” with a high-pitched lilt at the end of the drawn out sound. I don’t know how old I was; whatever age children are when they first start saying real words, words besides “mamma” and “dada”. That day, I pointed at the illustration of the long-necked pink bird and said, “Pink flamingooooo!”

I’ve never told anyone that before.
I was afraid no one would believe I actually remembered it.

I wrote about other early memories, too. A crystal bowl of oranges; scraping my face in a fall on my aunt’s steep driveway.

I remember a beach; I think it was in Seattle. It was too cold to swim, but I could taste salt anyway. Our bright Ninja Turtle kite stabbed neon green into the gray flesh of the sky, a diamond-shaped wound bleeding ribbons.

Months later that kite hung in our garage, covered in little baby spiders. I liked spiders back then; I don’t know what happened.

We threw the kite away eventually, and I mourned both deeply and briefly, as children do.

Strange how I can remember things from so long ago, yet yesterdays sometimes seem fragmented. These days my brain feels like a box with both ends open; things are put in just to drop out through the bottom. I deposited the information, but it isn’t there anymore. Recall is requested and I grasp desperately around my memory but so often I find only space, previously occupied.

I’m still waiting for someone to write my perfect song, an anthem for the people-pleasers and the not-enoughs; for we passionate, pining people, prone to both debilitating caution and mistakes. Those of us who feel the constant weight of debt, like we owe something to everyone. I guess the would-be writers are too busy desperately avoiding being burdensome, or maybe poring over their self-help books that they clutch like paperback bibles.

I’ve been busy too lately, in my brain. It’s been cold so I’ve been stuck between walls, and it’s cozy but I feel restless too. My thoughts have nothing to do but be popcorn in my skull, springing about with no rhyme or reason. I’ve been paralyzed by the random nature of their fleeting appearances.

I need to focus in that special way that I can only achieve on a horse. The popcorn settles, the urgencies fade, distracting excitement recedes and worry is forgotten. I am finally grounded, focused on the animal beneath me. On aligning our thoughts and movements until we are meshed; until we are no longer two shapes but one, no longer horse and woman but centaur. I haven’t ridden in over two weeks, and I miss my painted palfrey. It was nighttime when I sat astride him last. Darkness pressed up against us like a solid thing, broken here and there by a thin sheen of moonlight that drained the color from whatever it touched; the whole world in black and white. Together we were stars of the silver-screened night, for a little while.

And then it was just a memory, too; another kite to fly above the chilly beach where the past laps at the present shore.

Winter in My Heart

I like October. I love autumn, of course, but I enjoy Halloween specifically. I like the otherworldliness that seems to descend upon the atmosphere. I like the thrill of unfounded fear, the things that make your heart pound but you know they won’t really hurt you. The dark unknown that prickles the back of your neck when there’s nothing behind you and the twisted faces of some primal fear contrived into physical forms that can be escaped if you run fast enough or if you stay very, very still and if they catch you…nothing happens. For one day a year I like looking into the painted face of play-pretend darkness, all dressed up with bright colors and sugar; a twenty-four-hour-long parade making a mockery of evil. It’s a day made from the vibrant scraps of everything in the world that people have vomited back up on themselves. There’s an intensity to it that I appreciate, an intensity like the post-apocalyptic dreams I’ve been having lately. I suppose you could call them nightmares.

When it was still September I dreamed peacefully. I dreamed that we walked by the sea, and that’s all that really happened. We walked in the blue cast of dusk, but the sand was still warm from the sun. The tide was low in my dream, the waves calm and lapping. They slid up on the shore like so many layers of frost-edged glass. We were supposed to have met earlier, but I spent too much time looking for a certain blouse.

I dreamed we walked by the sea, and that’s all that really happened.

But November’s coming, and December after that. Almost time for wasteful winter, tiny ice crystals brilliant glinting intricate artistry and oh so soon turned to sludge. God, why do You waste the snowflakes? Each masterpiece tossed to the ground to melt away. Melt like everything that was before; like time dripping from the hands of our clocks as the seasons change. They say that the tracking of time was man’s invention and yet the universe goes on marking it all the same no matter whose idea it was, with weather patterns and the aging of the things of earth.

You say you’re excited for the cold to come, and you really must be; you haven’t seen winter for a while now. But it’s only been a few months for me, and I can’t say I miss it yet. It must be winter in my heart though; it’s barely autumn and already I can feel a chill in the bones of my fingers and toes. A chill that creeps and stays and all the socks and gloves in the world won’t help because it is inside, in the deepest parts, in the marrow. In the core.

Like the core of the earth all safe and protected, all crusted with lithosphere and asthenosphere. If I touched that core, would the earth flinch? Would the entire world recoil from my prodding finger with a steaming hiss of pain? Or would it bite back, crushing my hand between two tectonic plates? Because that’s always where it hurts the most: the center, the heart of things. All soft and red and raw, nerve endings exposed and delicate veins just beneath the fleshy membrane, vulnerable and so ready to bleed.

I do like having my heart wrenched in little ways, though: books, movies, songs. I like being made to feel things, and abstract heartbreak is just so deliciously haunting I can’t help but love it even as tears fill my eyes.

I like being made to feel things; just not cold. Anything but cold.


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