Snow Owls, Marshes

It's been a strange day, a strange week, maybe even a strange month - I wrote and wrote and wrote, often after long work days, until writing was done and nothing but exhaustion remained. Now, I'm thankful that that time is finished, though sad as well.
I drove a long ways today, from home to home. Washington is my first love, and as my friends all get married and disappear on new adventures, I wonder whether my footsteps might eventually return me there. There is a music in the hills that sets my spirit free so easily when I visit my parents' home, and I wonder if I might love Washington more.
The tall grasses, thick with a morning hoarfrost light as a dusting of snow, and the marshy woodlands with mossy limbs and knuckled, gnarly branches beckon to me. The evergreens tall and stately address my verdant needs, but its winter falling today. Why do swamps sound eerie and sodden, or marshes mushy and miserable? Can this, the most beautiful of lands, a bog be? Cobalt-plumed jays whistle away and the snow owl, rare sight indeed, gazes on with golden-gleaming eyes like the wolf of the skies.
It's the golden grasslands, the odious skunkweed, the tendrils of fog like clouds left behind and lost in this ghost of a land, and ramshackle homes that must be empty, empty, empty as the eyes on the longest of nights. No, maybe it is the dreamy rendering, and knowing that if I left this road and followed the lights, I may wander this exemplary purgatory forever, swimming in the grasses with that doe, that deer whose heart I follow through the mists.

I discussed sharks with one of my roommates. We were contemplating spiritual direction and one of my favorite passages of the Kite Runner, and it transformed into a discussion on Christianity and sharks.

I drove a billion hours and collapsed in a heap when I arrived. I started reading again, delving into The Story of Art, Sin City, Selected Poems by ee cummings, Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, White Pine by Mary Oliver, and a Helprin novel (thanks J - he's actually quite wonderful), and an Agatha Christie (too late, huh Matthew?).
I usually only read one book at a time, but I just missed reading so much I read everything until I fell asleep.


This is what holiness is
or perhaps is, I cannot tell
when the marsh is full of fog
the hands of the trees cup the mists
like the wisps of dreams and forgotten things
and you ask - must you always ask?
if I promise
I promise I'll love thee, love thee
love thee beneath the shadow of the willow
in the months of moss and rainy days
and forever if you allow,
set apart in these reeds and grasses
with a heart of eternity and grace

Thanksgiving-Lights

I like the coincidence of Chanukah and Thanksgiving. The farther north you travel, the darker the season surrounding Thanksgiving. For instance, living in the southern US, you may have days that are still longer than 10 hours, while here, we may have 90 minutes less "day" each day. Intrinsic in Chanukah is the God-given nature of light, especially when none ought be. That it appears in the darkest season (for the northern hemisphere) has definitely helped me refocus on Yeshua's guiding light through our spiritual, emotional, and anxious seasons. I'm ever reminded of how God appeared as a pillar of flame for the Israelites as they were led from Egypt (which links Chanukah to my favorite holiday: Passover), and I'm encouraged by this beacon of promise and hope, even when my future footsteps aren't clear.

I'm thankful for all those in my life who have been lights for me: family, friends, mentors. They are too many to name, and my words would be insufficient praise for their love. I cringe a little, because I feel like thanksgiving almost makes me feel cliche about thankfulness. It should not. Being thankful is something we can almost always use a little more of, even especially in the darkest times of the year.

Home: The Finish Line

Home is peaceful, and the perfect place to finish a story. My parents live in the hills, six to eight miles from anything that might deserve the name city. The house is in the cup of two hills, a cradle betwixt two higher ridges, and a forest of evergreens, maples, oaks, pines, and aspens surround each side, with a small stream passing through the forest in no-man's-land, which Phil and I often explored when we were young. When I am at the highest points of the area, I can see all the way to the Olympic mountains, purple and snow-tipped on the western coast by the ocean, and all the way east to the cascades.
Even just walking around outside, the brisk air seems cleaner, lighter (not just because I'm above sea level a ways).
Tonight we lit the chanukah lights, played bananagrams, listened as my father played piano (trans siberian orchestra - mad russian's christmas and ukrainian bell carol). Even in the darkest seasons, being at home brightens my life immeasurably. As we say the chanukah prayers, my spirit is lifted up and rejuvenated. It's a spiritual rekindling, and I can smell the snow in the air. They say that snow level is only 6000 feet, and dropping below 500 this weekend possibly.
The story is finished as of tonight. I wrote ~5500 words today, and I think words are numb to me right now. I haven't been reading very much this month, but simply knowing that I'm almost finished with this marathon, I: picked up The Story of Art and read the first three chapters; bought a Mary Oliver poetry book as a celebration present to myself for finishing (half price books sale!); checked out five books at the library; bought four books; and bought a jacket in case we go climbing mountains and it gets cold.
I'm so ready for December.

Thanks everyone for bearing with me as I disappeared this month, and canceled every hangout possible so I could writewritewrite.

Happy Chanukah - Happy Thanksgiving
Rest well, friends.

Home in the Hills

a passable castle, a fortress of solace,
these hillsides incline their white-caps at me
at the center of an empty crown, looking 'round
what do you see but the valleys and trees -
every night when I fall asleep
the grass and the leaves and the flowers all consume
me, into their petals and autumnal embrace,
lightning bolts me down and hurls me
high through the sky,
I am electric
And nature is mine, I hers
Her beautiful smile and frown, these luxurious clouds -
where her fingernails trail, leaves only frosty ground
come, see this world with me, the swallowing seas
and twisting streams, spelling cursive mysteries
I'll tell you what they whisper, the poetry of the river no one reads.

On Perfection, Weekends, and The Philadelphia Story

For you, Matthew:

I'm going crazy. I'm standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy.

~ Philadelphia Story

Limn the sky with peach pie, the clouds are crushed-melted marbles and strips of grated cheesecloth, pink as cherry blossoms. How can such a mountain be: Rainier, towering twice as high as these others along the way, like arrowheads or a picket fence before the giant house, imposing and towering.

I was thinking about shapes and forms again, this weekend. I had a lot of driving. When contemplating perfection, I keep returning to the idea of perfect art. Can there possibly be a perfect art? You see, if you can objectively state that one song is better than another song, or this artistic piece is better than this one, can you not simply leap to the conclusion that there is, somehow, a perfect piece? There are a couple of counterexamples to this that I've been considering: squares. Is there a perfect square? What size is it? You see, there are a ton of different square-forms, but all squares are simply rectangles with equivalent side lengths on all sides. How long those sides are, as long as they are all equivalent with corners at right angles, is irrelevant. 

Is a similar pattern true of songs? Let's upgrade to rectangles themselves: is there a perfect concept of a rectangle, one rectangle whose lengths are "correct" or "more perfect" than every other rectangle?

So with regards to art, we've stepped up in complexity through an impossible number of layers, several orders of magnitude more complicated. My artistic merit is negligible. I can draw stick figures (maybe), I can't pretend to draw anything that actually looks realistic, or purposely surreal. (I'm sticking to sketching, painting art at the moment - art is too broad a word). 

Just looking at Picasso or Leonardo Da Vinci and anyone can see, from the smallest child to the highest authority on art, that Picasso actually knows what he is doing. More, that his work carries an artistic merit, a skill, and is more sophisticated. I would even go so far as to say: "better" than my scrawlings. 

The question is: is there an array of "perfection" and a system of tiers where everything is too nebulous to rank? Or do artistic pieces simply become "perfect enough" after a point? See, we see from a very finite point of view. But in order to receive an answer to any of these questions we can't ask with humanity in mind. We have to ask from an infinite point of view, because the very conceptualization of "perfection" is beyond us. 

So either God sees no differences in artistic merit between mine and Picasso's work, or there is some sort of standard. Is the standard creation itself, before the fall? Was it just "good" or was it perfect? But is each new painting is a rectangle to a trapezoid, a square to a circle? Or can there be a perfect painting?

More sophistry, I suppose.

My parents are making a culinary case for preventing me from returning to Oregon. My mother bought me all the delicious cider, several different types of juice (she knows my weaknesses so well), she made my two favorite dinners on Friday and Sunday (I guess Dad made dinner Sunday), and she bought more chips, salsa, guacamole than I could possibly (is that a challenge?) eat. To say nothing of the eventual Thanksgiving dinner. 

Writing is almost finished. I'm piecing together the final stitches on the last chapters of the novel, drawing them tight and prepping the climactic knot. Weekend was awesome (thanks Matthew). We watched Matthew's favorite movie, which neither I nor his fiance were aware of the existence of (The Philidelphia Story), and it was amazing. Definitely worth a placement on my non-existent list of favorite movie experiences. We drank pumpkin egg nog, wrote in a coffee shop, watched a movie, made food (more realistically, we made a mess), and discussed life, the universe, and everything.

I've driven nearly four-hundred miles, seen a ton of beautiful mountains, and glanced out over the sea. I'm ready for the week, I think.

Mountains again, mountains... and a place to finish my book

the fencer and the painter is
a dualism picturesque and particular.
draw me as the ocean breathing
above a coral reef
with your pretty palette mixed
in this fluid motion,
we are the ribbon dance
we are the hummingbird
we are the wind in the wildflowers
galvanized
until each sunflower is only electric
with our souls the conduit of eternity;
it is the rainbow and the breeze
born of storms and souls
spinning, weaving, then
pirouette until
we are the fireworks and
we are the waterfall
we are the hearth flames


....


Sometimes wintry days are the prettiest. It is as though the cold were glass, on the verge of shattering into a thousand diamonds, or tiny stars. The sun shone bright over a cloudless sky, and the mountains were ever so elegant: Hood at the peak of beauty, St. Helens, hatless and whiter than pearls and gossamer, Rainier, at the pinnacle of majesty towering over everything - I could not stop staring, though I drove.
It's good to be back in Washington, in the hills and mountains of home.

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