Motion

wolf-eye moon rides the sky tonight
orion low on the horizon, fights
the bear, the lion;
reflected in this pond, it's no yellowed pupil,
but maestro swan, stately and solemn -
a string quartet this movement, each stroke
sliding through the black-glass waters
silk smooth, there are lessons here
deeper than the night above
higher than the pond beneath
heaven's eyes are all-seeing,


When I was a child, every now and again our parents would treat us with a trip to the zoo. I liked the zoo. Snakes, monkeys, giraffes, elephants, the nocturnal house, crocodiles, penguins - every corner turned was a new exciting form of life. Only I, competitive as I am, can forge a game out of the zoo so easily as I managed. We would enter the snake house and you got points for how quickly you found each creature, or creatures, in the tank. If you found a creature but skipped on to the next window, and there were more creatures, you got less points. It became a game of motion detection, and spotting sly animals through their clever camouflage.
If an animal moved, I was most likely to catch it first. If an animal sat still, hiding in colors and clever spots, Phil was often more likely to notice it first. I once had a psychology teacher suggest that women have more cones (color vision) and men have more rods (black-white, motion vision, peripherals). I don't know, scientifically, whether this is valid or not. But I've always been incredibly capable at spotting motion.
I've always felt that humankind has a remarkable aptitude for adaptability. Every person has adapted and constructed elaborate defense mechanisms and responses to certain stimuli - responses to culture, relationships, events, fright, food, and so on.
Someone said once that it is possible to master something new every seven years. Now, this depends on what you want to master and how motivated you are, but I think that this is easily within the realm of adaptation and the evolution of knowledge and skill. I'm working, desperately, to train myself in a number of things. It is difficult, but I want to learn not only to spot motion, but really stop and swallow colors. In good paintings, sometimes colors and slurs of motion leap out at you, or you dive into the scene, a daydreaming machine. This is how I wish I could write poetry. Poetry with motion, poetry with color, poetry with a symbioses of these, a merging complete and wholly sanctified, a truth-beauty dream of mobile hues singing, saturated and living, bright as living things in the wake of a storm, thundering.


I don't know 
what death's ultimate 
purpose is, but I think
this: whoever dreams of holding his
life in his fist
year after year into the hundreds of years
has never considered the owl
~ Mary Oliver - Lonely, White Fields

Weeds

A man full of words
is a garden of weeds,
and when the weeds grow,
a garden of snow,
a necklace of tracks: it was here, my snow owl, perhaps.
Who scared it away?
~ Jorie Graham - The Dream of the Unified Field (book not poem)

I remember one person saying recently that he stopped dating a woman because she didn't have any dreams, no hopes or motive - she didn't want to do anything.  I can't comment on whether this was true or not, but I do realize that I experience similar feelings of interest in people and their journeys. I was realizing earlier how attracted my personality is to knowledge and dreams and journeys: motivation, hopes, yearnings, cravings, gut-burning, heart-wrenching aching adventures of appetites. Patrick Rothfuss posted this link, earlier today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmEbF2uhsZk
And I smiled as I admit that knowledge, understanding, wit magnetizes me, galvanizes me into a headlong pursuit of friends and ambitions.

Full of words and weeds
It's two owlish eyes staring over me
do these fingers sing across these keys
as the crickets, the nightingale, the mouse scurrying
through the brush, between the trees
who? who? precedes the swooping death
in a breath it ends, soon as it begins
pierced in the talons and watching the worldfall
beneath, a blackplate pool and bristlebrush leaves
crows cawcall - is it a prayer?
someone must the sacrifice be - no
my fingers do not sing
but for a second before the mouse's life ends
does she fly with the wind rushing by,
before one creation ends to another one feed?



I found a whole bunch of poetry books at the library, and I think my collection is a little too varied. I found some Robert Bly, some Mary Oliver, some Jorie Graham (I just discovered her), some Bukowski (mixed feelings) and some Maya Angelou. I've been really enjoying my Jorie Graham experience, actually, and Mary Oliver is simply the best.

More Philosophy

Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps, if you are not willing to move your feet - Anonymous

I may be stumped until the end of the month with writing. I need to be reading again. It isn't writer's block, it is 'writer's tired mind'. 

I had an interesting discussion about the infinite, today.

I commented that extreme statements have always been hard for me. I once wrote in my journal, asking myself if I'd ever lived any perfect days. Not days that were better than any other day in the history of mankind, but days without sin. Is it possible? Have I gone any days in my entire life without any sin? I'm not even sure. How could I even verify that? I think that my discernment sucks, because sometimes the line between sin and not-sin can be fuzzy at times. 

Then I got to thinking about what a perfect day might even look like. What does it look like to live a perfect day? I don't think any such philosophizing is getting me there, and I wonder if Solomon had it right with his directions to live happy and to seek out those things which bring you joy, when you are living with faith: Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.  (Ecclesiastes 9)

It's a philosophy sort of week, I suppose.

I'll likely continue reading Mary Oliver and fall asleep, and hopefully some of these questions dream with me. I'm even dreaming about this story, lately. I think that of each of my novels, this is the messiest. It is still better than my first year's, and more advanced than my second year's, but I was probably a little overambitious with the mystery plot.

Rainy Night Writing

I often wonder if I would still have cherished writing so much if not for nights such as these: the rain in the eaves and gurgling in the gutters. Would I have snuggled up in the window-seat, layered in blankets with a steaming mug of cider, prepared with a splendid book, listening to the pattering percussion of nature - would stories have enamored me so?

 We're getting tired of this writing marathon, I think. I'm struggling more and more to come up with cohesive sections, pieces of the story that reveal just enough, but not too much, of the unraveling mystery. When I was a child, I did not enjoy television as much as everyone else seemed to. However, when my mother turned on Perry Mason, or Matlock, or Diagnosis: Murder, or any number of the murder-dramas that she enjoyed, I often plopped myself down and enjoyed the show. I craved mystery and diagnosis, problem and solution, hypothesis and conclusion. It contained everything I loved: a fairy-tale simplicity of good vs. evil, with good eventually outwitting evil, and tripping him/her up in the deceit; the tension of hurt and hero; justice; and the chance to match my wits with that of the investigator (I always really liked that part - in Scooby Doo, it was always the first person you saw, and not the grumpy, angry person. That person was usually just a grumpy, angry person)

Unfortunately, I have not READ much mystery. I've read some thriller, all the boxcar children (I loved Benny - mostly for his name), and not much more. Not an impressive mystery resume, huh? On top of that, I decided on a whim to write a mystery less than two weeks before NaNo began, and to do so in concert with Matthew. All this is a silly disclaimer for the fact that my writing has deteriorated greatly this past week, everywhere. My journaling looks like a tiny, heart monitor of bumps down the lines of the page; my blog blather is aimless and blubbering, and my story has a very confused inspector, who probably should know more than he knows, with only a few days left before the mystery has to be solved.

I think I'm ready for December, though. For reading, and more casual writing and blogging, and for more time for whatever. 

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

~ Sylvia Plath

A little encouragement from Sylvia Plath. 

I think if Sylvia Plath was still alive, I would follow her around crying piteously until she taught me to write. 

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

~ Sylvia Plath

So very much to learn,  yes. If I keep reading Sylvia Plath too long, I may get morose, cynical, or dark of humor.

In the summer, flowers are commonplace, beautiful as a natural gift of the season. In the winter, it's the solitary blossom, a snowdrop peeping its head out of the snow, the camellias, pink and bright even without sunlight, the tiny trumpets of winter paper bush and the vibrant reds of holly berries. Snowdrop, my favorite flowers, like the joyful tears of winter springing up from the ground.

Where are you going?

I've been tired the last few days. Hanging out on Friday after a long week; a late night Saturday night, which ended in getting home near midnight with no writing done; waking up after only a few hours of sleep for some writing before church, and then going out to eat. I settled down to take a nap, and the roommates started yelling jokes from one end of the house to the other - no nap.
My thoughts have been ranging all over. I won a competitive game, recently, that took me almost two months to top the charts in; a friend's mother is dying, and has been dying for almost a year, though this will likely be her last week; sick family members; missing people split up over the world; reading poetry, and digesting the intricate imagery; scouring classical pieces for useful tidbits, and contemplating on creation, life, knowledge, sin; friends hurting, living, loving. 
On top of it all, I'm writing hours each day, keeping up with the strict pace I've set for myself for this novel, trying to bring the mystery to life with all its characterization. I even sat for hours in a coffee shop, analyzing each person who walked in, imagining their days - what a bizarre, daydream exercise.  I listened to thoughtful bands: Sufjan, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, trying to fabricate feelings as I enter into different settings, and help myself envision the spacial, temporal, emotional constraints of so many variables.
I'm over-thinking this.

I wanted to write a thousand different things in my journal and blog-blather today, and I'm finding I'm getting none of those done. I wrote two-thousand words and then halted, turned off the lights, lit a candle, put on my slippers, and played guitar. I deliberated over how much I wanted to get done: learning how to write poetry; studying lyric, rhythm, rhyme, meter; understanding more on the nature of mystery and tension; studying character development and setting construction; learning, again, about some of my favorite time periods: victorian, renaissance, feudal, Edo Japan, mandate-of-heaven China, early yerushalayim, aztecs, incas, and the mayans, the mesopotamian fertile crescent: the cradle of man.  I yearned for a study of trees, plants, flowers, and where they naturally grow and flourish. I wanted to follow the patterns of birds, which trees they prefer, and how they build their nests, and when/if they migrate. I wanted to know where the animals go and when they come, and how they find their food, and where they all live.
I wanted to know everything: geology, geography, history, biology, chemistry, physics, mystery, mythology, fantasy, science-fiction, classics, languages, people - people, oh so much! 

But instead, I'm sitting and playing guitar, plucking at chords and singing lightly into the darkening skies of night.  My mind is craving for more, and my heart is telling me to collect some weekend rest, while I may. I miss A, and our roommate adventures, our talks into the night, the last word: chandelier, before we slept. I'm ready to jump, I'm ready to fly. Fire an arrow, Jonathan. Is it beyond me?
Where am I going? Where do I go.

Are you looking for answers
To questions under the stars?
Well, if along the way
You are grown weary
You can rest with me until
A brighter day and you're okay
~ Dave Matthews

This song is my night. I wanted to know everything, and I'm only given more questions, and the light song of fingertips across strings. Does everyone have such nights? Nights when all the colors mix together to grey.


I'm a fledgling, a monarch with morning-cold wings. Breathe on me, and I will fly.

Message in a Bottle

I love hope, with its mercurial-Janus cruelty. Tantalus' hunger, a Sisyphean trial, Danaides filling of urns without bottoms - hope is constantly in the sway, a pendulum of the soul, between incredulity and faith. But I always believed, ever persevered, and without doubt there is no rest before the breaking, burning, bleeding burden carried by a heart - by such a heart. 

It was impossible; it's always impossible. Intractable love only makes miracles of divine sacrifice the greater. And how can one submit to half-love, when one has seen the perfect?

Message in a bottle, tied on balloon strings

hope is your wings, take flight 
soar high above, pass over 
everything, my letter-lamb

and land where a heart makes room.

lead the road back home;
remember

if the message is an ocean 

(of hope or love)

where can you put the bottle?

only heaven knows

Goodnight Week

Nothing like friends, cider, a movie (Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic), a group dinner, rest after a week's work - not that I got any novel writing done. Everyone needs a Sabbath.
It's more difficult maintaining a high level of reading when trying to write 5-10 pages each night, or even every other night; it's more difficult balancing friends when locking myself into my room, slaving over a notebook, transcribing ideas and paragraphs from my quick, chicken-scratch onto the computer; difficult managing sleep when my best ideas often arrive late at night; difficult remembering to call people back, or text, once I've stepped into my writing zone.

I know the worth, at the end - this is my third such novel. But the duration is frightening, exhausting, intense, difficult, lovely. When do I read? My mealtimes are erratic, my sleep schedule wonky, and my additional writing suffers from lack of ingenuity (thus). Still, every night I open a book, and breathe in words that are not mine: Mary Oliver, Orson Scott Card, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Keats, TS Eliot, Genesis, Job, Faust my companions this month, and more, as they guide me through writing, and dreaming.

Thank you, friends, for supporting me, carrying me in your thoughts, even if (when) I disappear.

A strange season, the tulips rise again, then fall -
it's autumn, so why, sunflowers,
do you lift your heads
greeting this sun?
oh, yellow faces, I whispered goodbye
long, long ago
you fled south with birds and song, leaving
grey skies, low and lovely
my heart torn in twain

My eyes are drooping, and it's not yet even eleven. Another poem, another piece unfinished for the time. Tomorrow will be a busy day, a creative day, a writing day. Friends, I love you and pray for each of you, even when I cannot see you. I miss you each moment.
Sleep well, dream well, be.
Goodnight Moon.



I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.

From Sleeping in the Forest 
© Mary Oliver