a jar full of fireflies

A Match for the Keyhole

2011-05-26T18:36:00.007-06:00

little things by u-t-e

The people at the end of your line were not without weight. But mine were colder and the line was heavier. Littered by styrofoam boxes from diners where we contented ourselves with too much food and the dependable noise of crowds. (how did we get here. how will we escape. why do happy people’s lives seem so obvious and far away.) That line is what I would think about at night under the glow of Chinese lanterns and dishwasher steam. when the dark and the line melded together like figures in a purgatory hallway or what you see when you bend over. and look inside a well. I would ponder the line. ways to pull wine rings from of glasses. Ways to get revenge. The artifacts, slightly moved but mostly left alone, like leftovers on an adolescents' dinner plate. The clang of inarticulated words against throats that were now hiding in my books. In the attic.

Sometimes you would see them, you said, across the street. In the way I picked at hangnails. By the creak of the chair in the kitchen at night. I would blush with the resentment of empty bedrooms and picture frames and curse cheap pencils with bad erasers.

I always wondered if it mattered. that I didn’t remember them in good ways much at all. Or that at the beginning of winter I had broken one of their bedframe’s in the yard. or that I tried my best to sell what they left behind in 25 cent bins at garage sales with the cheap pencils.

It was fun and I was angry.

Lay Your Linen In the Mud

2011-03-28T09:26:00.006-06:00

untitled. by pete parker

And at last, after such a long absence, here we are. to the new breaths of bodies and a dripping roof. to each other and our fingers. suddenly my heart is twisted up and spilled out. i am beautiful. i am terrified. we are the lucky ones, you and i.

Wake (up now)

2010-09-02T16:42:00.005-06:00

untitled, by torium

Darlin.

I have been ready for your leaving for a long time. and watched as all my friends lost their loves. Brothers. Half brothers. And the best of all gardens fell this summer.

I have made the preparations. Black clothes and soil. Knives and empty notebooks. Curtains and weeds all methodically pulled away. The first glimpse of newer dreams on my eyelash. I am ready. Taking my time and all the time it took.

But in the bathroom today, painting my nails. My eyes keep pulling to the lopsided hook you replaced and all those damn towels I didn't need but really needed. You’re always doing things like that.

You have to leave. I know it.
So for the towels and giving what you had to give.
Thank you.
Ashley

the summer that wasn't

2010-08-23T08:41:00.003-06:00

untitled, by jeansman

a description of my summer and an understanding of a promotion to "senior instructor".

We are, all of us, perhaps for our whole lives, waking. From the clean cut circles of stereotypes we were placed inside. From a good night‘s sleep or a numbness. To strangers at your bed. And then we are here. In the woods and the middle of our messy lives. We are waking into something quite different than what came before. Into an adventure. A craving. Something new and perfectly frightening. Ourselves.
Being a Senior is giving honor to all those rocks sunk in the lake by now and all the ones that will be. It is allowing people to hear their darkness. It is believing in the eventual unlocking and the lift away.
And with courage and humility, watching the release.

The Telescope Trapeze: Artist's Statement

2010-03-14T12:06:00.003-06:00

Farmgirls and Chickens

An acrobat. A tight rope walker. Someone who has a way with the elephants. We were gathered up as collectibles, as convenience, as a matter of heredity. Walking on high arches and strapped into all that color. Power. Lust. Sticky finger clap and the spotlight glare. A vendor stocks his cart.

This is when we tell our secrets if you are looking, you know. When we are hidden enough to feel at home. Beneath the blush and orchestrated electric fervor. Lips smudged with a lover’s kiss. The cheekbones of our remembered pasts. Wordless story irises and the cut of our fearful and immeasurable truths.

Powder hands sweep. Voices catch fire. This is the telescope trapeze.

The Telescope Trapeze: Ashley's Artshow

2010-03-08T16:25:00.017-06:00

The Fox Confessor, oil on paper

Ashley Brown
The Telescope Trapeze
March 9-April 5 2010
@
Modesto
Ste 138B, Page Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801-2393
(in the Grove Arcade)

Mon-Thu, Sun 11:30-9pm
Fri-Sat 11:30-10pm

Information: ashleyelizabethbrown@gmail.com or 615.944.5400
Artist's Website: www.ashleyelizabeth.org

and some other sneak previews...

The Executioner, oil on paper

The Bird Welder, oil on paper

I am a Visitor Here, I am Not Permanent, oil on canvas

I See it All Through a Telescope.

2010-01-24T19:14:00.007-06:00

street performer by the thames

frozen harbor.

southwark cathedral and a coffee drinker.

Say That You Will (Stay)

2010-01-20T12:33:00.005-06:00

the city of beach, bed, and umbrella. taken by bozo_8

I am surrounded by the silence of a snowstorm with the thick scratchless train window pane between. And there is this solitude that only traveling and a good pair of headphones can settle you into.

I think of the irony of pigeon lances atop passing church crosses. My easily and currently bruised knees. my train companions likeness to Che Gevera. and how your ankles were always falling past the edge of the bed.

Time shuttles past. In bright blue electric lines and I am already jealous of myself in this now, past moment whose end will be marked by the trains arrival and thinking of more practical things. My bills. Resumes. Gas mileage.

Marked by another continent and someone elses ankles.

Time Without Consequence

2010-01-09T18:58:00.008-06:00

untitled. by edmund_li

It was the year I didn't read a single book. not cover to cover anyway. i would only read half of them, sometimes less, and get lost in worries. half drunk cups of coffee. half drunk friends. it was the year rubber tires turned to bodies and worn down pavement. the year i learned the joy of looking at lips when someone speaks and the importance of pomegranates. it was the year of the ox. steady plain quiet. impulsively shoving food into its belly and cursing the cold. it was the year my sister thought she would marry and didnt. it was the year i lost you, but you know that. the year i learned that genetics and never taught lessons will unwelcomely ressurect themselves. like a ghost or a familiar perfume. the curls of smoke. the edges of beds. one letter. two just right gifts. a frozen cup of tea. a silent birthday. hips sway. heels blister. an oven full of fire.

someone get the champagne.

I Became a Thin Blue Wire. That Held the World Above the Fire.

2009-12-20T21:53:00.005-06:00

big snow in japan by takezzo

We all stood still in the snow but time surged ahead.
It went on like this for miles. Frozen track weather and us, climbing out from beneath it.
Lovers stood stranded in doorways
Neighbors trudged up the road clinging to children and their grocery bags.
Whether or not we believed in the accuracy of weathermen or the church. We all still needed it.
This return to seeing each other outside and uncovered. This return to walking.

This return.
It is upon us indeed.

Put on your parka.
Get out the snow shovels.

Prepare the way.

Adventures and the Aftermath

2009-12-19T20:01:00.007-06:00

eleonore in the snow by milkie

Dear.

I love adventures and tonight, there the most delicious one afoot.

The lights have gone out and I have never seen this much snow before. I pulled my bed into the den with the wood burning stove and piano. Lit four candles. Thanked my elementary computer teacher for making me memorize as I pressed practiced keys in the dark. Thought about call of the wild. Where the wild things are. and cold mountain. and stacked the wood so high, you would have laughed and reminded me how they looked like linken-logs.

All these memories are housed only in my mind. To be released only through my own recollection of them. In a journal or on a camera. or strung into some selfish regale I will later mention in a crowd to boost my independent persona.

I miss sharing and I am weary of having adventures alone.

I wanted you here with me. grinning about linken logs and laughing.

Please come find me under all this snow.

Ashley

promise what you will. by iron and wine

2009-12-10T13:28:00.006-06:00

untitled by mephisto19

a song about waiting. put simply and much more clearly than i have managed.
You can also go here to have a listen.

Lately she don't care for a warmer breeze
Or shade around the base of the maple trees
Spring was on the mountain we climbed upon
Stopped to see how high and how far we'd gone

I said "love is waiting and better days"
She smiled and placed a kiss on my waiting face
Promise what you will something good for me
Time will take it all and it will you'll see

The take cover. The sweeping insensitivity of this. Still Life.

2009-12-07T17:41:00.003-06:00

lift your skinny fists. by ashley brown

When I wish to be elsewhere at 26. With someplace or someone to call home. Please remind me that you promised. without fingers crossed behind your back. like I would have done given the weight of all those prophesies and parched lips.
Remind me that when you said no. and not yet.
You were just busy writing another part of the story.
One where more hearts beating blood through our veins and against our ears and lips.
Where bodies would turn to bread.
And planning the night when all those cathedral walls fell down and we would find you sitting among the rubble.
Remind me, you were just busy saving my life.

The Waiting Place.

2009-12-03T22:19:00.003-06:00

The Waiting Place. By Dr. Seuss

You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance. Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing. With banner flip-flapping, once more you’ll ride high! Ready for anything under the sky….

Dear Dr. Seuss.
Indeed there are so many useless waiting places. But I do believe our particular waiting place is not so useless. You see, the waiting has become useful because the object waited for is not boiling water or a bus. But a person. And the very person that will draw a map most odd looking and more like a figure study. of our escape route.
Yes.
somehow we will escape all that useless waiting and staying. with the longest piece of string.
through the most unexpected alleyway.
Today is our birthday.
An exodus.
A new born and our escape into a new world.

Ashley

It Could be a Bomb or a Bullet or a Sentence or a Savior.

2009-12-02T20:39:00.006-06:00

sandy blue waves. by stoonja

We have needed this for so long. Thought of a thousand different ways it would happen. The weathermen spoke of floods and opened their umbrellas. The faithful mentioned crowns full of anger and amethists. fearful fortune tellers tried to plug the hole to heaven and the pagans just plugged their ears. We all thought you would be louder, you know.

The mere waiting or wild guesses might have stopped our hearts altogether. I think I see now there is some reason for all that waiting. something tangible and important. A savior or a set of gold clubs, isn’t the gift always that much better after we have wanted it, seemly forever. After we have anticipated. Guess at. dreaded. expected.hoped...

something is coming to us. so says the translation and our telescopes. Someone we have waited for since before we knew it. Someone who will sew us up.
wrapped in prayer shawls and the smell of cattle.
Ambilical cords instead of golden robes.
Go figure.

songs for the silence.

2009-12-01T20:16:00.014-06:00

waiting. by ynot

We should all have soundtracks for pieces of time in our lives. one for autumn. One for a lover. One for faith. For the moment we started our own family. The moment puberty hit. These kinds of things. And I think advent should be one of these particiularly held, communicated moments. It is important. to me. So I will sit around and soak it up, listening to thoughts about time and timing. wishes and waiting. put poetically. practically. so I understand it.

here’s my list and in this order.

Coal War. Joshua James
All My Days. Alexi Murdoch
Time Goes Away. Rosie Thomas
The Longer I Lay Here. Pedro the Lion
Please Stop Time. Tyler Ramsey
Table for Two. Derek Webb
Revelator. Gillian Welch
Communion Cups and Someones Coat. Iron and Wine
Here at the Right Time. Josh Ritter
In My Time of Need. Ryan Adams
Passing Afternoon. Iron and Wine

Help Me. Please Stop Time.

2009-11-30T14:56:00.009-06:00

the window in the window by lovely lena

April 29.2006.5:43am

Dear.

Today is just beginning and so are we.
I will always remember you like this. Asleep and clinging to my collarbone.
Thank you.
I love you.
Ashley

All Those Years, They Were Here First.

2009-11-29T15:56:00.007-06:00

untitled by tupimiquim

dear fisherman,

I hear you were a good waiter. Rolling silence around in your hands like snowballs. Walking rather than riding. Telling a story rather than refering to your outline. And I hear that you loved to fish. For people and deepwater bass. Sitting there with your feet sinking in the sand.. your wire floating across the sea. You didn’t mind the wait. and with such shotty bait. skinny worms and unexpected truths, I suppose you knew, that you would be sitting there a while.

I believe what they say about ghosts and birds. that you placed some of that patience inside of us. down in the bones where it won’t easily escape.

You waited for all those stubborn souls and shy salmon. A lifetime and not just mine. You gave us the best pieces of you. the only ones that will remain after the world catches fire. the only ones that will matter. your body, not just mine. Thank god.

Ashley

Watched The Sky Breaking on The Promise That We Made

2009-11-28T13:30:00.000-06:00

laundromat, by eyecon

dear god.
It was the year of the early winter. We had pressed our feet against frozen crops. Sat upon hard surfaces listening to the priest praying loudly. trying to pull you down here. We were up to our elbows in tree roots and the torah. we had finished counting, on fingers and toes, the generations since you left. we thought the mountains would crack right in half. we expected golden thrones. glorious thunder. a royal war in which we had picked the winning side.

we were all waiting. And some of us not so patiently.
Maybe you were teaching us something. About silence. About faith. but we didn’t get it and it didn’t make waiting any easier.

And then, after we had all forgotten. After you had been forgotten among cynicism and semantics. you came. covered in horse shit and hay.

you must have known such an entrance would not go over well. we all laughed. Looked away said surely not. yeah right.

you came anyways.

This years winter is early again and Im not sure we are so much better. At getting it. At waiting for you. You know. We are huddled in bars and churches with our heads down and the television up. fearful of lonliness. Avoiding the silence and all that waiting. christmas songs in october. Incense and piety. We trying to pull you down here again. anxiously rapping our fingers against the clouds. We are shoving busyness into any foreseen space. Pushing fast forward. Speeding. I cant wait for my soup to cool much less for a savior.

I miss you and I don’t want to wait.

We are hopeless foot-tappers. Bags packed. Checking our laundry and burning our lips.

Even so. Come, Lord Jesus.

Ashley

Santa Claus or a Savior: Thoughts on Advent

2009-11-28T13:25:00.005-06:00

by gabrielle blair. advent calendar

On watches or airplanes. in cups of coffeeor or calendars. We are all waiting. for presents or the poorly made chocolate behind paper doors. for santa claus or a savior.

for something better.

through the month (and each day, if I may be so ambitious) I will try and write about this particular waiting. and what, or rather who, it seems, we are waiting for.

The Time When We Counted Every Black Car Passing

2009-11-12T14:37:00.006-06:00

diana by jeansman

Dear JP,

You drank too much and because of it I didn’t know you. I hear that you loved to talk politics and had big ears. That you were the first to hire a black pharmicist and the last to leave the drug store. That you loved telling stories.

Your sons turned out well. Though I suspect they all changed a bit when you died. One burned his house down over a boiling pot of chile and a bourbon. Others fear the inescapably of genetics and swore to God and their doctors they would never touch the stuff. Some forgot. I’m not so great around it either and I worry alot. I cant wait until I brush my teeth.

The things you did, turned around to follow you into the dark. I guess all our actions do.
You were a good father and great man. You were gentle. I don’t like thinking some company with mechanical arms and good tag lines discovered your weakness and loved it. I loved you.

I wish you could have been my grandfather. I think you would have made a good one.

Ashley

Love is a Dress: Photographs for Laurie Ruth

2009-07-26T15:38:00.004-06:00

Gathering moments through a lens is often the better way to see the world. it gives me something to do rather than just sit there with my mixed drink and bad humor. thank you laurie for letting me see you and this weekend in this way.

Please Click here for a photo documentary of laurie ruth and the days leading up to her wedding.

Books by Their Covers...and other Assumptions

2009-07-26T15:15:00.004-06:00

For Laurie and John One Week after their Wedding.

Laurie.
You were never one to do as you were told, though many may have that impression of you. You have such a fondness for dainty and dutiful practices, drinking tea, reading Austen, that type of thing. And I thought, at times, you may be engulfed only somewhat willingly into this appropriate world of social tradition. But you had only to look again and there you were slipping Baileys in your coffee and scribbling in the margines of Austen and your Bible. You would be the revolution noone suspected. You were always suprising and confusing in that way. We grew up together, so I do not lack for a good many more examples from teenage years to this effect, but most clearly in my mind is that example of your wedding weekend…I watched in admiration as the pipe organ played. as your father lifted veils to give you away. as we all prayed for you, threw parties and ate pastries. your were announced in his name…Barbeques and boats. Tea cups and the trinity all gave tribute to your proper and traditional life. And I think appropriately so.

But I saw you sighing beneath all that new silverware and silk skirts. growing weary and wishing for a moment. a memoir for your other way of life..one that, perhaps you wrote into your wedding day without anyones help at all. You wore your pink old navy sandals down the aisle and forgot about the cake. You sang a hymn only I would know we had heard so many christamas ago redone by a indie pop singer as we drove through the low end of town. You cut your dress with scissors from the golf club gift shop attendant so you could dance. You were honoring your resistant and courageous life. And I think appropraitely so.

John,
I do not know you well save for the time I hung up on you. and later after confessing over coffee I could see how greatly you hoped to pursue laurie with all love and appropriate ritual and honor. and i also hear from laurie that you like sailing and boats and water. I dont know much of these things except that I am sure that they hold the same disreguard for civility in them that a good Augustine or Neitzche might, so I am glad. I suppose you delight in the delicious duality of your now wife. it is of course different and of course the same as yours. Hearts are often mirrors, after all.

To you both,
You know, I think too many people told you that it is supposed to be hard and I hope now you didn’t believe it every time. Its hard, god knows and I certainly do, but it also not hard at all. So I hope for you remember that too. That you sip tea and dress in fine attire. Top hats even. That you sing hymns with lauries mother around that old upright... And that you also slip away for a smoke when a dinner party gets boring. That you read Trompsky and Kirkegaard at the same time, in bed together. and, for god's sake, that you help each other cut the clothing if you can’t dance.

Your friend and bridesmaid.
Ashley

We'd Get Out If We Knew Just How (With the Radio On)

2009-07-04T16:49:00.005-06:00

untitled, by bruno miguel

We all have something we were supposed to be out there doing. I get that. and yet, there it is. my paintbrushes stiff, my canvases all moldy in a basement somewhere, and I'm sitting in my perfectly clean apartment wearing whitening strips and balancing my checkbook.

like an watch alarm or a piece of string. thank you athena for reminding me with your writing where it is i was suppose to be.

http://neverwalkedinhighheels.com/2009/07/her-portrait-of-me/

Every heart is Much the Same The Same Chambers Fed By Veins

2009-05-15T11:12:00.003-06:00

photo by sally mann

Dear Sarah,

There are so many stories and sunbeams bottled up on your insides. You may have held even as many as my childhood. Sliding through snow packed side streets, inching along and collecting friends and mittens along your way. Loaded up to your top with wood, canvas, and staple guns and coming home months later with oil paintings the size of tables. I think you prefered the slick black or bumpy concrete tickling your toes and giving you purpose. To the grocery. To work with those ferocious and forgotten children. To philadelphia and davidson and asheville and back again. You knew me at my best and at my freest. in the dark driving away or in my bikini with boxes in your trunk and coming out the windows. and you also knew me when I was fragile. when I feared the most. Shaking against the wheel and feverishly talking to myself.

you had your share of bangs and scraps i couldn't afford to mend. levers and lightbulbs. a rusty door hinge and superglued windshield wiper. i would sigh to myself and apologize for not repairing them sooner. then, months later, look them over lovingly and remind you they gave you a story. like a keepsake or a photo album.

How silly of me, and how true to my character…covering you with my favorite things. Orange smelling bubbles and Finger puppets and a valetines day card with red and blue dots, the card that blocked the dashboard so I couldn’t see you didn’t have any oil. Now there it was, a hole blown in your motor the size of a flashlight and you sputtering and refusing to go.

I don’t blame you.

So I sold you south to guatamala, to someone who I think will bring you culture and undoubted adventure.

And though I must admit you looked quite finished, covered in pollen and cardboard shoved in your sides, I was sorry to see you go. Blurting out to him at the final minute that you had a name and so many stories. And though he couldn’t fit the syllables smoothly between his teeth he said you ahd a soul, so I trusted him with you.

I know most people (and even me sometimes) think its absurb to name inanimate objects. Reminds me of knitting sweaters for your dog or a guy who pops his polos shirt collars and listens to an ipod. its weird. Quirky. Materialistic. But I do think when we do name things, its because they have given us something in return. Some companionship or hint of humanity at its best.

So I will say goodbye and tell you, what I would hope to tell anyone who was my close companion. my favorite. My reminder of the best of humanity.

You heard the secrets I wouldn’t have told anyone else….and didn’t flinch.

You were so strong and said the scars only helped to tell the story.

You brought me to where I needed to be.

mayo, la carretera se levantan

ashley

Don't wear sandals Try to avoid the scandals Don't follow leaders Watch the parkin' meters

2009-05-06T21:52:00.008-06:00

music by sylvie wibaut

Dear Car Buyer,

After several hours of second guessing and silly questions, phone calls and fears that you would not come, I sold you my car in a gravel driveway auto shop. witnessed by some old storage units and a tow truck. I tried to look tough, holding my words quick and tight against my lips. I felt it much like a card game or stand off, not wanting you to make a sudden move or shift your hands too much. And now I am sorry for thinking you would try and cheat. It is how I was raised. It is what I was told. And it was only after the lines had been marked and dollars exchanged that I loosened my grasp, of my chest and all those ideas of you. I had not thought before that you must think the same of me. Or that you must be tired after driving down from virginia. I wanted to tell you I was sorry my upbringing had made me skeptical, that I couldn’t help myself. or at least to try and step across some gap that had been preemptively placed in our paths. And all I could muster was a muttered question in spanish about mexico. but even so, i watched your back change shape to something more porud and I think my question must have offered some agreed sense of relief or perhaps a movement most like a string, being suddenly pulled from my life to yours. I think you must have understood. and my words began slowly stretching their syllables supriselingly painlessly across that lovely language. and we decided to stay and talk. you with your rusty wheelbarrow car tow and plaid shirt and I with my rough past tense verb usage. I was glad we talked about sandino and costa rican farms and your children. I laughed when I told you my car had a name. you said it had a soul and made a motion with your hands to the sky. Even your slightly codling and blatantly flirtaous reminders of how dangerous it was for such a beautiful lady to be walking rather than driving and the bold blunt exclamations of how linda and hermosa my name and hair and self were, were not troublesome or threatening, (as comments like those often are for me.) They only seemed to harmlessly settle you into your character.

Thank you for talking and for talking with me.

It was a rest from all those boxes I had been checking and buildings filled with paled faced people and paperwork. It was the book I stuffed in my closet with pictures from Nicaragua. Panama. Mexico. It was a truthful chance to say something and take my time saying it.

It was something with space. something better.

Ashley

Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall

2009-03-02T16:08:00.005-06:00

cyan door by petcharat chanbua

Dear neighbor,

Last Thursday I saw your things in the rain on the sidewalk in front of your house. A chair with its legs broken. A big screen TV. A wobbly record player. An woven basket some wooden shelves stacked on top of each other. Now soggy and with a bit of mold about the edges. Little leftover corpses from an outdated style. A worn out decade. A mistreated youth.

I took the old record player. Fixed it with packaging tape and some old insulation tape from the sunporch windows until wobble as much. I propped the lid against the wall and laid down between the bed and the hardwood floor with its scratches of its own and that distinct smell of perfume scented smoke that reminds me of my grandmother. And listened. To the sound of women talking downstairs. The scratchy unsteady song I ever sang in public. The old spiritual you left along with it. The specific sound your heart makes when one ear is pressed to something and the other covered. Like a sea shell or a lover.

I have seen and taken other discarded items from the frequent piles outside your home. Among them, a couch we smoothed down and safety pinned a new green quilt covering to it. A golden Victorian sofa we scrubbed with barbasol and now watch movies on and eat soup and sausages. A rickety cart now filled with cookbooks and a bowl of fruit.

We love your things.

I thought of knocking on your door and telling you about how we mended all your thrownout things. And how the mending makes us feel useful. gentle. kind. Closer to the good person wd like to be. And frugal like my father. But whether it was my introverted nature speaking loudly or my overprotective mother voice saying do not talk to strangers, I didn’t. Rather, I left you a chicken scratched note attached to your mailbox with a clothespin saying something like, please let me know if throwing this record player away was not your intention, and I will return it straight away…

And so, I realized, ironically, that the truth is, our relationships, most of them, need some mending too. Perhaps more so than our things. And that mending, I never been as good at. So, perhaps, though I didn’t knock on your door last week, sometime soon., you come to our home, to sit on a familiar couch or hear some music without all the scratching. So we can remind ourselves we are not really separate, despite what the bricks and walls and walkways might indicate. So we can practice mending. you and i.

ashley

*relevant reading, Mending Wall by Robert Frost

I Asked you A Question, But I Didn't Need You To Reply

2009-02-01T16:06:00.011-06:00

as quick as lightning, by philipp koenig

to my friend. (and one of the best),

Together we were never theologians, musicians, or lovers, reserving our friendship for things much more light hearted and perhaps just as sacred…adventures, art, and always plenty of laughter. Yes, I think we have always known quite particularly how we were supposed to fit in each other’s lives and that is indeed why we have fit so well.

Do you remember the year we had Spanish together, the class with that ridiculous moo-moo wearing professor and you, as always, sitting in front of me and pointing them out? or the day, you told me to sit still. Pinched your forefinger and thumb between my eyelashes and pulled out a clump of mascara. So casually and just like that and then turned around.

You know, I remember that now and often. When telling my roommate or smiling to myself and my eyelash curler, I often point to that moment and whisper, “that is what love looks like”. Not in some startling revelation about you and I, but rather a moment pointed to with a settled sense of silly blunders, feeling cared for, feeling at home.

I think it is that we have seen each other’s less perfect sides and do not mind them. In front of my paintings and telling me the truth, beneath Christmas lights and Klimt and crawling into bed to wake me up and fall asleep. Between my eyelash and your finger. Over mistakes or a story, our sides splitting and all those wrinkles forming at the edges of our eyes...

ashley

Letter to My Professor's Father

2009-01-20T12:42:00.002-06:00

worker, by mauricio arana

Last September when I thought you well and living I sent a letter to your daughter. And now I am sorry I wrote about travelling and my new dog. That I didn’t somehow intuit your passing. Today in the coffeeshop line I hugged Magdelana and half your soul. Her fingers bending to my shoulder blades and me breathing in all that rough, Argentinian perfume and Bourges. Her black hair straight against her ears still refuses to gray, her jawbone tight and resolute with no hint of fresh dug earth or quiver. But I see monuments to you in her midnight mass eyes, tiny puddles that lift and sink back to cemeteries and the bristle of your mustache. I don’t know if she believes in God or if believing in Him will help her get back to you. So I can only hold fast to the hope that God does not judge the distance like we do on maps and in telescopes.
may the road rise up.
Ashley

*Also published in The Matthew's House Project

Christ Walked on the Water, We can Wade Through The War

2009-01-18T16:54:00.005-06:00

green eye by stephen kaps

Dear crosswalker,

Every day that fall and just before the sun was up, I took the train from Cite Universitaire to the French school, coffee filter grit between my teeth and my metro pass clumsily shoved between my skirt and hip. And after school I wandered your city, watching the way high heeled women walk and how little french people’s mouths move when they talk. I sat for hours in front of the seine, the bread shops, and cathedrals watching the sun glint against the tourists and lovers. The business men and beggars.

That day I saw you, I watched the street sign turn from red to white and all those people pass you by. I watched your clean and open eyes pass right through them, figuring, for a moment you were daydreaming...But you were somewhere much farther away, unsuspecting. brave. lost. So I took you by the arm and we walked across the street, you and I and all those shifting clothes and feet. We were the perfect pair, you holding whispered conversations and words and cadences and i with my memories of colors and people and sun. Each disconnected, in our own way, in that endless city of streets and savants and silk.

We could have shared our secrets, been each others treasured maps, had they not been sealed up in a language I didn’t understand. But then again, I figure that of course you would not have known just where the sun was and if you did it would not have mattered. And I don’t care too much for gossip.

So instead, we shared a crosswalk. some sort of lovely and strange solidarity in all that silence and seconds, grabbing each others' coat sleeves and pulling ourselves across.

I think you knew.

Just how I felt.

Ashley

Spirals and Capitals: Like the Twist of a Script

2008-12-27T19:43:00.017-06:00

moving forward by ian rica roxas

to someone who always understood my jokes,

how silly and new we were as freshmen year roommates. listening to those 80s songs on our computers. our hammock and Siamese fighting fish, bivens. our window that was a shortcut to the walkway and that terribly ridiculous picture of us with side ponytails. you helped me hide in closets from boys. you always came with me to eat quesadillas. you were a wonderful roommate.

I remember the following year I would start painting and fall in love and make new friends and I would miss laughing with you. and that the following summer, though our lives so separate, you would let me stay in your room since I had none and we would talk through books in that group at the church. you would, also, give me a ride to the airport, on my way to texas and to see the boy i loved so much. I remember you had me listen to your favorite rhett miller song, "am i gonna be lonely for the rest of my life". and as those words spilled from the speakers, i was so full and so in love, and your life seemingly so different, i couldn't even hear them or relate.

And, oh, had I known. that god has a strange sense of humor like my father. or it is more as josh ritter sings, that he is a drunkard for pain. perhaps i would have known that 6 months later that boy would leave me and i would fall apart. that then we would begin performing songs together, and you would help me play those very love songs i had written for him. and i would have known that you would become as happy as i was, and maybe far more so. that you would begin to date that same boy. that you would then be the one who flew across across the country to see him. that i would begin avoiding all those weddings of our friends where he and you would be together. that, eventually, one of those weddings, would be yours, and his.

I know we all change. I know we rarely can choose who we love. I know you will love him very well. I am not angry.

And as I drive towards the mountains through a wordless world the day after Christmas, I am still full as I once was, and maybe more so now. of memories of you. memories of him. of a bittersweet sense of irony and imagining my life better because of you both.
your roommate,
ashley

"We'll climb another roof top, and scare the crooks away. A gypsy and a singer..."

2008-12-20T19:08:00.004-06:00

dear (dear) friend,

We met for the first time singing other people’s songs and drinking coffee. And it was then and on purpose that I asked you walk me to my car. Beginning my memories of you with simplicity and shifting feet. Later that year, we would drive across the county lines for adventure and friendship. Exploring the carlisle mountains. searching through bookstores. And living our own dreams of being a writer. a musician. someone famous or loved.

I believe I was more truthful with you than I have been with most. in that terrifying and honest moment, months later, when I told you I wanted only to be your friend. Fearing with unbearable certainty, that the sudden spilling of those platonic words, would take away the sacredness of all our memories together.

I am, perhaps and at times, sorry I met you as careless and unsettled woman, saying no to everyone, to anyone I could, to you. Maybe it was that you always reminded me of someone else I used to know. Someone else who broke my heart. Maybe my cheap perceptions couldn’t pass through that ghost behind your face. Maybe it was that you questioned christianity. Though now I might say that makes you all the more beautiful.

Nevertheless. The reasons I said no, or said anything at all, did not, for me, dismiss the happiness of our time together. I found, eventually, that that conversation would pass and we would still be good friends, though the fear of mixed messages and the pride of being pursued kept me from saying how much I admired you. You are a good and brave man. You sent me a children’s book and gave me your headphones. You brushed the hair from my eyes on that street with the ice cream shop. You to took my picture. You made me feel adored. You are part of my story and I won't forget.

ashley

All the Girls and Their Secret Ways, All the Girls Who Have Gone Astray

2008-12-15T16:13:00.004-06:00

here's one of my many stethoscopes...shhh. listen.

be careful

If the Best is For the Best, Then the Best Can be Damned

2008-12-08T12:38:00.010-06:00

I will begin these letters, with a letter about a letter....

dear first love,
The year I was smitten by the poet at school and I learned how to drop leaves by doors for others to pick up. The year I took my first prescribed depression medication and I painted my friends nude to tell their stories for them. at the end of that year, you wrote me a letter. at the end of that year and you were standing there. actually. there. thinking better of giving it to me, but still you did. and i couldn't believe you. not really. I wanted to ask you where you had gone all those years back. why you hadn't written or wanted to meet. i wanted to tell you were too late. that i had loved you. and that my heart had broken and mended with string so tight it wouldn't let you in. again. That my love was buried too deep by then. you see. Beneath all that silence and space. oceans and oil paints. New loves. newer heartbreaks. so I buried your letter and told you I wasn't interested. I loved you safely because I was scared. I loved you not enough to get hurt. as best I could. at arms distance. as a brother, i would later say. I laughed at your jokes. bought a new raincoat. told you stories about what my life had been like between then and now.

(It's now that I see we loved each other at different times. and maybe the same times. only became too good at hiding it, you and i. keeping it from the ourselves. from each other. like a secret. or a daydream. )

4 years later and yesterday I found your letter, looking for Christmas ornaments in boxes I rarely open. Discovered, along with it, that you were married last month and had these lines at the corners of your mouth. I wanted you to know. The letter didn't bring me back to you, as maybe, once long ago you had hoped it would. Rather, it did something altogether different. It reminded me that I was worth it once. That I still am. That love should fold maps, thread through time, makes fools of us all. That it's that kind of love that, in the end, will remind me over again of my story. my worth. my redemption. that will give me the courage to speak the truth about how much love that I. you. all of us. deserve. I will also admit that the letter and following discoveries evoked, for a brief moment, phrases, true or socially acceptable...i am too late. the best is for the best. congratulations. But these do not speak total truth or real honesty, nor do I know if that is possible. So, instead, I will say thank you. thank you for reminding me of what I deserve. Your letter had a purpose and I'm glad you gave it to me.
I wanted you to know.
Thank you,
ashley

One Certain Letter: An Autobiography About Finding Home

2008-12-08T10:20:00.007-06:00

movement. by maya newman

"And angels everywhere were in my midst. The ones I loved and the ones that I'd kissed"

I've been looking for home all my life. And here, the home I've found, I've found in people. Ones I laughed among. Ones I barely met. Ones I loved. Ones I kissed. I have decided over the next several months, to write a series of letters to honor the weight of these homes. these people. These letters will be written as my way of threading through. holding on and letting go. being thankful or grieving. remembering. As a way of saying what I would have said, had the words come out right in the moment. As a way of speaking to those who I have lost touch with or just lost. They will be addressed anonymously in order to hold in a single hand, my complete honesty alongside respect for each addressees' new story. new lives. new loves. etc.

So, friends. I hope you will read on and, perhaps, resonate with one certain letter. recognizing your story has found its way inside of mine.

.

2008-12-04T12:48:00.006-06:00

They sparkle, bubble over and in the morning, all you got is rain....

Wolves in the Piano, Wolves Underneath the Stairs

2008-11-30T11:47:00.004-06:00

what is it, edward lc jung

When I started this blog I emailed my friends and family. Told them to look, listen, and read their way into my life. That this blog would help them see things the way I did. That I had nothing to hide. Then one day I discovered my own secrets. The ones that would cover you in that thick clay-like mud. all the way to your elbows. were to try and undercover them. And I also discovered burying them deeper doesn’t mean they will never be found, only that uncovering them will be messier. In short, and to quote a better poet than i, "one day I just woke up and the wolves were all there, wolves in the piano, wolves underneath the stairs”. In shorter, one day I woke up and had everything to hide. So no, I will not say “It will all make sense when you are older” or even “It will all make sense eventually”. I will only try and tell you my story from my perspective. And not just in my words, but in pictures and parables and other people's words. Because I believe I have something important to say and contrary to appropriate social ettiqutte, that having nothing to hide is much better.

The Day After All That Was Good.

2008-03-23T08:54:00.004-06:00

the lake's been dredged and dried up for months and all they found were old tires and bits of broken glass. "everything went to rot when the fishermen left," the man next to me says. this day is not good but faking it anyway. sunrises. first breaths of spring. and the birds singing. beatiful words. all is well so says the sun. but i am remembering when this tree hung over the water. whispered its bracnhes into it. when there were more trees and they didn't charge addmission to see them. i am remembering how you died decades ago and all your devoted disciples tried returning to their boats and baiting nets, but there wasn't enough water.

*photograph by larry mcgrath, Australian Sand Dune Field

To Accomidate For The Brillance of Man

2008-03-19T16:50:00.005-06:00

I will tell you your story from my point of view. Though there were several decades in there where I missed it all and a few where I chose to. I will tell you your story, though you may not recognize it now through all the history books and blackboards. I will tell you your story though perhaps you have already seen it a better way ‘round. Way up there with all the wreckage and stars.
I found you when I was walking in the monsoon and stubbed my toe on your feet and gathered the courage to climb your branches. When I was young I climbed (and didn’t mind the callouses on my feet) to your hear your leaves shake and talk and shake back again when my face was close enough. I would watch your great trunk tremble and tell of all the bodies bent beneath you. lovers. hippies. the romans to hide their swords. and marys rounded bastard belly . Later, maybe because my mom was tired of my bruised knees or because we were running out of Band-Aids. My father climbed high into your branches holding boards and a rusty hammer and into your arms laid a room for us. and I would climb and read you where the wild things are and a wrinkle in time. fight battles from your boughs. And on Sundays I would sit to watch you talk to the sky. The way we would if we could hear its language. But then I started having to wear stockings and go somewhere else to learn things. and I gathered philosophy and politics and so many words in my arms I no room for holding your branches. now I am sorry it took me so long to unfold the map that led back to you. and am glad you didn’t mind the wait and said you didn’t understand time anyway, that yesterday you watched as the world was made.

*photograph by neek nick, books

Apple Tree

2008-03-15T09:43:00.004-06:00

i crossed my fingers and wrote a song. to speak of things that were true and only seemed like death if you did not know the face. of things that welcomed you back to the dust you were made of. i call it "apple tree"

Black berry blossom tree,
Bend your boughs and carry me.
Black ice bottomless,
Bring me down into your darkness.

Black soil buried seed,
Break this ground that covered me
Black boat steady oars,
Sail me safely to my savior.

Chorus
Bury me beneath your garden apple tree
By my beloved with bruises on his knees
Have you haste my friend, I hear them welcomin me

home

Black letters, take your time,
Write me barefoot, brave, and kind
Black coast, fishing wire
Cast me close I have grown tired.

Chorus

*photograph by shang chanti. tree

Him. Or Her. Or Me.

2008-02-28T17:55:00.005-06:00

me. by will perreault

there is a group of people soon to be my family. now only uncommon indivduals with their own mysterious feelings and furrowed brows. they will wake up tomorrow and get on a plane. they will see nicaragua and so see me. and then we will recognize each other.

a letter for when you return.

Dear brothers. Dear sisters. By now you have flown south for a week and back again. Seen Nicaragua. Not the postcard. Painted on. Coffee and and green pasture Nicaragua. Not any Nicaragua your friends would believe. Really. if you told them the truth. I know. By now you are fumbling for phrases that hold the weight of what you saw. every trash can reflects the sin ripped open and spread acroos the grit grey ground of la chureca. Davidson walkways and walls, a reminder of all those bright painted buildings and the feeling of dirt and dust dragging against your feet. Your eyes are showing the faces left behind. The women and their cloth. The men and their stories. The children and their sturdy innocence. Sandino’s silent stare across his once was city. You miss it. I know. Searching for the Nicaragua beneath all that red brick. And textbooks. And money. I know. How your words and your pictures tell of something so urgent now. How your lungs breathe relief when a team member passes you going to class. How Nicaragua has now become a part of your story and not just someone elses. You are changed. and the truth you hold is Beautiful. Important. almost unbearable. I am not writing to tell you it anything you don’t already know. You probably know it much clearer than I remember it now. I only want to say that we, all the groups that woke early in the dark, and traveled south, and watched Nicaragua move before us, remember and support you and the truth you now carry. I believe you are now the builders. the memories. the believers that something has begun that cannot be stopped. Fair trade. Fair wages. Knowledge. Words. Movements. slideshows. Stories. Ssshh. You are changing the world.

May the road rise up.

In a Telescope Lens

2008-02-09T16:57:00.000-06:00

some phototgraphs developed from my last roll of film...

my neighborhood

ben

dylan.

Do They Collide, I Ask and You Smile

2008-02-09T16:46:00.000-06:00

Today is Ash Wednesday and I am feeling indulgent. Giving things up is for the pious I whisper into my espresso. Teenagers who want to loose weight. people who want to pass the time. That sort of thing. But what if we really are turning to dust. My espresso. My house with the slanted floors. Myself. If it is true, then maybe I need to touch these things before I do go down into all that dirt and darkness. The mud in my front yard that I usually curse at after stepping in it on my way to work. The slick stairs I skip for the elevator. And all those puddles pushed against the pavement that take weeks to dry up after it rains.
Maybe the answer is to forsake my car for my feet so I can feel these things rightly. But I have grown so fond of going places quickly. Of keeping out the weather and other people. Of Sealing up my secrets inside metal and gasoline.
I suppose Jesus knew a bit about walking. Feet all calloused and cracked from the sandals he wore. I guess rubbing against that desert dust everyday reminded him. How all these cities and disciples would be sunk beneath the sand someday. Speed. Space. And all this sand. isn’t what matters. He whispers as he bends down to feel the forehead of his friend.
The air is getting warmer. I am learning the feel of grass. carpets. sidewalks. we are all turning to dust. Jesus is leaning forward to lace his sandal.

Birds and all The Time in the World

2008-02-09T16:40:00.000-06:00

Here's my stethoscope... www.myspace.com/ashleyelizabethbrown

When I've Lost All Care For the Things I Own, That's When I Miss You

2007-12-02T15:26:00.000-06:00

2 winters ago. The year I gave you the rickety blue kettle and scratched your name on the bottom so I wouldn’t change my mind later.the year all that snow froze the freeways and branches. You drove down from Bethlehem wearing the scarf Jamie bought you with a package under your arm. you had found a mug for me, some day searching with Hannah Pleckon north of here. It had these dots around its top that looked like peacocks tails and an indented rectangle just under the handle with letters in it. I loved the thumbrest and the way it felt heavy inside my hands. last year I lost it between the hills I hiked and my new apartment with the wood burning fireplace. I lose things all the time, my father, bad memory, bad habit might say. My turtle pin in Scotland. My favorite cd on the airplane from paris. My ring from Istanbul while washing the dog. Yesterday I found my mug holding a scrub brush and the dish washing soap. I filled it with spice tea and told the kids I work with that I think smells like Christmas. Now when I bring it to school they stick their little faces into its big rim and say christmas.
I think maybe there are some things that are lost for good and good reason. But, perhaps, there are those other things, lost and then brought back by the world’s magnetism. good karma. God. Because you’ve lost enough enough already and they have more stories to tell.

Waking Field

2007-08-30T09:46:00.001-06:00

I Said Kiss Me You Are Beautiful, These are Truly the Last Days, oil on canvas

by ashley brown

"Waking Field"
September 1 - October 1, 2007
@

Gourmet Perks
165 Merrimon Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
Weekdays 7 to 4 pm
Saturday 8 to 4 pm

Reception For Artist: Sunday, September 2, 7 to 9 pm

Information: AshleyElizabeth.org or 615.944.5400

We are, all of us, perhaps for our whole lives, waking. From a daydream where we have dared drink from our deepest memories. From the clean cut circles of stereotypes we were placed inside. From a good night‘s sleep or a numbness. We are waking into something quite different than what came before. Into an adventure where everything we touch is both perfectly new and completely home. Into a to do list or a craving. A utopia or a nightmare, a prayer or ourselves.
We wake into moments of vulnerability, the sudden bearing of these, once, mysteries, to a companion or passerby. Our bodies becoming wordless stories of our fearful, beautiful, and immeasurable truths. When I paint, I try and listen to what bodies say in these moments. The reminders lips pin in. The weight bones have carried. The landscapes eyes reflect. Shhh, Look. We are telling our secrets.

.

2007-06-23T16:45:00.000-06:00

Asheville’s black blaring pavements and sun tanned elbows have me curiously longing for Christmas morning and the waking to a frozen tarp and toes and the hope of instant mashed potatoes. or if not that, to trace the tracks of my old college campus the year of the ice storm. listening to sigur ros and the silent frozen destruction of all that water and weight. my mind always wanders where I am not. to dreams or my to do list. to those distant dots on the timeline somehow made perfect with the passing of time. i look at the maps in my room and move my fingers across the crooked country borders. Check for plane ticket deals and mend my suitcase. there are so many things that came before. My grandmother’s recipes. A room full of scrapbooks. still others that are ahead. weather forecasts. blank camera film. Before you wake up I watch the steady motions of your eyelids. I am not remembering or planning. You are my first moment.

painting by edouard vuillard. lugne poe

Pumpkins and Pockets.

2007-06-23T14:28:00.000-06:00

Today I asked myself, since when did my journal become student names and to do lists? and when did I even start writing to do lists? so, I wrote a different and delicious to do list in high hopes of it keeping me busy doing more pleasurable things than going to the grocery or paying bills.

Use a typewriter.
Collect stories.
Leave things behind.
Plant a garden full of flowers and pumpkins.
Wear skirts with big pockets and carry candy and smooth rocks in them.
Walk slowly.
Build forts.
Sleep outside or next to the fireplace.
Surprise friends.
Write secret love notes and send them.

photograph by mauricio arana, choco kids VI

It Flies, and So Should I

2007-04-02T16:00:00.000-06:00

tick tock, edward lc jung

The winter’s bare branches sink the ridge lines right down to the ground. Time is tricking me with sunlight, but I am still sitting in my bedroom and wishing there was more of it. Then I wouldn’t have to worry that it was slipping by, dragging on, stopping, or winding itself tighter around pocket watches and paychecks. My friend calls to me from my log cabin porch, that soon spring will raise the ridge lines back up and mend all those hillside holes where you can see right through to the roads. That warmer weather means we can sleep with windows wide open and not catch cold. That I have a great big porch, perfect for taking it all in. I can’t always take in time as it passes, not without worrying of what work needs to be done, like my dad on Christmas morning with all those great big boxes to break down…

Costa Rica (Revisited)

2007-03-17T08:39:00.000-06:00

I wanted to pass along some things my eyes saw in Costa Rica...enjoy.

My Art Website

2007-03-17T08:26:00.000-06:00

quietness treasured is more so shared, ashley brown

Friends,

A new website for my art has recently been created. I invite you to glance at in occasionally. I will be updating it with new images as time passes.

www.ashleyelizabeth.org

passage to ephesus

2007-01-29T17:34:00.000-06:00

impressionista, Bruna Marchiori

we crossed the strait in the middle of the night on the ferry. slipped out of sleep by the swaggering of heavy machine engines. we leaned against the railing, twisting our toes contently above all the frightened fish and boat rutters.

maybe we will become stars when we dye and be buried beneath the shivering black sky. or maybe when the boat has crossed we will find ourselves at some strange gate or different land all together. i have heard of passages such as these in cs lewis chronicles and hymnals. how wardrobes or death can form a bridge to some new dimension.

these are some of the things i would have told you then if i thought them quantative. complete. or satisfying. but silence seemed fitting. you and i and the great big boat and all our sleeping friends.

A Publication From The Peanut Gallery

2007-01-14T14:29:00.000-06:00

words, marc davies

It is with great excitement that I bid you visit the the matthew project website.
There you will find a publication by me called Letter to my Professor's Father.

outsider's sabbath

2007-01-03T14:31:00.000-06:00

love me, ally payne

“Something there is that does not love a wall.” -robert frost

You would never know what lyes inside. Not unless you are brave enough for breach the great walls. Walls that fortify the divine and the deep pockets of America’s wealthy rulers. I have slipped my Trojan horse body into this sacred space and lye still as in the belly of a great muddy trench. But my walls can not decieve as the church’s ivory stone or the wooden flanks of cattle. Mine are baked dark from the coffee farming of my African brothers and there are thick smells of trashcan fires and treatment centers escaping from the corners of my lips. During the second hymn my legs would not carry me upwards as the invitation urged. Left behind with the old men beneath the weight of weary sleep and sin. There is no place for me this side of the wall, where Christmas trees crowd out holy saints pulpits and white beards line the rows of pews like Romans going into battle. calvary. the homeless. jesus. Something there is that does not love a wall.

Yesterday. Tomorrow.

2007-01-03T12:24:00.000-06:00

playa uvita*

Starting January 4th, I will be pausing my current occupation as a wilderness therapist
in the familiar and now cold mountains of North Carolina and traveling south in pursuit of coffee farms, chickens, and warmer weather.

I will be living here

I will going with this fellow

I will be exploring there until February 16th.

*picture provided by the coffee farm

christmas day.

2007-01-01T10:18:00.000-06:00

sally mann, jessie bites

I have climbed the wall of this mountain to perch with the birds on bare branches and wait. Watching the rain pull up the earth and make moats around my feet. Greed gathers hot on my face and parades before me all those I want to take my place. instructors. Ben. the messiah. I am quick and jealous of Josephs and Marys now propped beneath their dry wooden roofs in front of churches and hospitals.

I want so badly to be home again. To be warmed between the fire and my dog’s side. To abandon this nativity scene for something more predictable. gift cards, my uncle’s jokes about conservative politics, stockings.

I listen to the water outside my raincoat and watch the clouds turn to tarnished silver. there are flaming stars rising in the east. Old men with saddle bags full of gold following the stars’ smoke signals. The great primordial movement is violent and surging, threatening a mother’s womb.

Even so, come lord Jesus.

Letter to My Professor’s Father

2006-12-15T21:35:00.000-06:00

In the Rye and Elsewhere

2006-10-28T15:04:00.000-06:00

silver lining, angie tan

Of Catchers (for andy)
by Anthony Abbott

In the rye and elsewhere I can only say
It is a matter of timing. These kids,
You know, running through the deep field,
Not seeing the cliff and you there, noble you,
With your big hands grabbing one. Great.
But the next tumbles screeching down below
Into whatever. The field is too damnned
Big, the kids are everywhere. You see?
Watching her fingers one last time stretching
for you and she falls.

Catching. It’s bruised thumbs
And busted bones in every joint and a cold
Smack in the soul every time you lose one.

So drop it, son, so to speak. Now.

Here, in these piles of leaves and chapped finger fires, I find myself wanting to be a chaplain. I started drinking coffee without sugar. A gift one morning from a bedside friend. I need to be awake so I can hear people. God doesn’t always show up where you expect him, but some people see him all the time. Dollar bills, billboards, that sort of thing. I try beginning Buechner books and seminary applications but never finish either of them. (“He who has a slack hand becomes poor. The hand of the diligent makes rich.”*)
I want to spend days studying through stories, I want to pull the shoestrings together between the dedicated and dismissed. I want to collect mana and other things that come from the sky. gather all the rain. cynics. kites daydreamers. leaves. And put them in apple picking baskets. I want to be a catcher.

music to listen to today: trapeze swinger, iron and wine

*proverbs 10:4

I Dream a Highway Back to You

2006-10-27T19:29:00.000-06:00

bouchon, by bernd hofbauer

"Loving God is like coming, without passion neither one is any good."*

We picked apples today. That and the traffic jam have me thinking about God. We pass a Baptist billboard, “god answers knee mail.” laughs. a few comments. "I've seen worse I mumble." Cars are walking like old men across the interstate and the same bumper sticker “it’s a child not a choice” goes back and forth across the windshield.
Did you see the man driving?
Yeah, he’s holding a crucifix and blood’s dripping down it.
I wince and look out the window. say something about being carsick but I am really thinking about god and the intangibility of faith and all the ways we try to hold it.
I don’t feel like I fit. In the car. In the traffic jam. in my substitutions of harmony for truth. In my beliefs in a book passed down for too many years and now sold in 56 different covers at Barnes and Noble.
I keep my eyes closed and remember playing hide and seek by closing my eyes and thinking no one could see me. faking naps in kindergarden. falling asleep when my mom read me The Bearenstein Bears Go on a Picnic. my mom always reads good books, holds to the family christmas tradition every year, lets me choose, gives all the important advice. My mom says “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

I think God listened to my mom when he came down here. Pencil traced his words into the journals of his best friends for them to remember and for us. Drew with crayons. knew we, none of us, would believe any of it. Too much the same. Too many contradictions. Too unsuspected and far fetched.

I think that between the censored Spanish inquisition and texts buried deep in the sand by now there is truth in that book. That Christ sometimes spoke to specific people and sometimes in metaphors and sometimes he said exactly what he wanted to say. I think jesus would have loved English class, Shakespeare, ee cummings as much as Peter Jennings, CBS, and The Economist. so, in my theory, there is much shifting through of stories and intentions to arrive at belief. All is not literal, god leaves space for change and new generations to hear. All is not pick and choose. We are too good at picking the comfy pages and end up reading “love is patient, love is kind” to ourselves all day long. we are stubborn and hear what we want to. god speaks of great waters and broken desert people. He speaks about sheep and sandals. He speaks of evil and swimming. Motivational speaking. Metaphor. Fact. I believe it is ours for fumbling through but not for forgetting or chalking up to misinterpretation of our forefathers. I think even the hardest passage has its core truth passed from the whispering lips of his best friends and we should listen.

This makes me different than the people in the car with me. my parents. and paige.

The traffic lessens but I keep my eyes closed and pretend to sleep against my hand. Smoke and Medeski Martin and Wood blow in my face. it’s like always looking for home and never finding it.

anothony abbott, from night crazies, a small thing like a breath

Prophets and Parachutes

2006-09-17T21:19:00.000-06:00

resident, ingrid fankhauser

It is the end of the weekend and I am in a coffeeshop gorging myself on the latest middle eastern crisis and free coffee refills. Syrians are gathering lebenese refugees into their hopsital beds and there are more sillhouettes on the horizon. They come by way of the sand marked suspicous street that leads into damascus. grandfathers sit in store windows sipping cardmom coffee and smoking pipes. Talking about oil and the prophet paul.

paul was set on hauling fumbling christ follwers away in metals and keys. instead he gets knocked clean off his horse. told to run rampant and tell fables of sea floating saviors. Has to confront his friends and his donkey on this cathartic moment. Embarassing, stumbling moment. when everything he has has changed and cannot be undone.

That road is full of magic and unsuspected skylines they whisper through beards and bombshells. Open armed syrians or god. never know who youre gonna get or where you will end up. faces and veils. river lines and compasses. heaven.

in moments of honesty, I know i am walking the same lines. With the lebeneese women paul and all our beliefs of exactly what lies at the end of the road. On other roads I have simply said I learned my lesson or forgotten the lesson all together, either way I do not remember well what it is that happened.it wears off as fate. Coincidence. And I revert to my old routines. lists. worries.

I cannot play the violin anymore. I worry about money. my weight. my sister. How slow I read. I still look for red jeeps on highways. but I believe there is hope in the end and the end is never what we suspect. we will all get knocked clean off our horse and not be quite the same afterwards. The lebenese are flooding syrain borders. Paul is leaving legends that god is a jouster.

I Have Measured Out my Life with Coffee Spoons

2006-09-14T18:08:00.000-06:00

photo by elisa mascarello

mountains make traveling marked yellow lines towards asheville easy. they are my home along with the people in them and i am reminded of this all the time. i have taken a step back from my experience in phialdelphia, as you can only seem to do with experiences after you are out from them a certain ways. like rivers from planes or impressionist paintings or something like that.

philadelphia is now connected to those memories of children, bedtime stories, a growing garden we planted in the spring, and all those things that will never be fixed in their lives. it also brings to mind new friends found when least suspected and held along the way. lovers. you. the vegan sensitve coffee shop and $50 a cut hair salon. the carefully chosen rock gardens and the posh, expensive corners of south street. and a house to share with people i met.

i have been given many things from the place itself. an oddly shaped room, i imagined many nights and especially in snowstorms, was a treehouse. a big porch. strangers. a blog created out of boredom that filled out the pages of my ordinary days. a space just for typing.

i have left many things behind that might only have closure because of my leaving. the secret stories in a house on manheim street now newly filled with others' treasures and groceries. the pages of feedback and prayed for change to my director and his assorted board members. the missing from children who always guessed i would be in their lives forever but will move on to other workers just as easily.

ts elliot says, "we shall not stop from exploation, and the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time." nights i fall asleep in the mountains, and against the blue of my now home i imagine this to be true. and that finally or for the moment, i am where i started.

Thank God You See Me the Way You Do

2006-09-03T21:35:00.000-06:00

The week before I left Philadelphia the rain came down in sheets and drowned the city parks. Channeled rivers turned to quickly moving currents of wood and trash. people came out from their houses and rode bicycles downtown to watch all the water spill over the damÂs sides. i forget, here in the city, nature is not so tame as these bridges and cement make it out to be. i had forgotten its delightfully fierce power I say to myself and take a picture.

The day after that, I left philadelphia. my work moved me to the north carolina mountains. They are old friends. My grandfather.. My blue car and three steaming trucks barrel up its sides. Wheel brakes burn and give off rubber thick smells reminding my of old cars and my dads persistent advice. I chuckle at my still present desire to harness these hills in picture frames.

Its late summer. The mountains are full of screech owls and troubled youth this time of year. I have settled into week long work schedules and drinking strong gritty coffee on an empty stomach in the mornings. I talk with students about letters. outkast. family. cocaine. wishes. I am still telling bedtime stories and finding bits of time to read Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.
My memories are, most often, tangible images and my attempts to yoke the delicious labyrinthh of landscapes, faces, and materials I have known inside film canisters and developing solution. I cannot take pictures in the woods and there are no mirrors to record our faces. my memory is unused to working off such penetrable, flimsy evidence and so, at times, refuses to draw my particular and present landscape into it.In remedy of this, I am taking more pictures of faces during my off shifts and discovering new ways to catch the rest of my life in baskets. I bought an old upright piano with dark green insides for my room and a big straw sun hat to wear when I write. One addition to my tactile memory is the photograph above. The CVS attendant left it out of the hardcopy role with the exclamation, "I didn't develop a few of them. I don't know if you were trying to be artsy or if it was a mistake." I only came upon the photograph yesterday and will leave its intended purpose or lack thereof to the reader's discretion.

tactile thinker's wish

2006-07-05T13:34:00.000-06:00

hand, simone frignani

i hope that when you said you were the passage to God you were talking most importantly about your body. i would take your body over disciplinary rules and my ablity to keep them any day.

Thoughts from a Concerned Airplane Stewardess

2006-06-21T20:18:00.000-06:00

sunset @the airport 3, liad cohen

you tell me my past, looking on my hands for childhood scars, but those were so long ago and hardly relevant. you are beautiful and feisty you think to yourself. i watch you like a movie with the sound turned off. i am more than my past and my memories of things i think to myself. i have wings and can fly. i just winked at you, told you something about wind currents in Nepal.

yesterday i left you a message that said i was out for the day. went off to follow sails and the fishermen as they cast for food and wishes and men. i gathered sunsets into my dresses like comets or seeds. tied up my hair and slipped stones into my pockets for awakening the water down below. when it runs out of friends. there are times i cant remember why i left you. for higher ground or level water. or if it was because i wanted an adventure and someone to tell me they loved me because i could skip rocks.

Homesick Geographer's Logic*

2006-06-20T08:32:00.000-06:00

philo, lee lee

Dave is teaching high-schoolers in Virginia. Charles is finishing up his first year of medical school. Carter and Will are married almost a year now and talking a language I don’t understand. Lucy joined an artist co-op and is painting in her own studio now. Laurie is waiting tables in the North Davidson District.
Some of my friends chose to stay. To Teach. Work. Drink. Commit themselves to graduate school or the World Cup. Some of my friends chose to go away. To Travel. Relearn languages. Ride in trains. I sporadically read their postings about protests in Dublin and humanitarian aid in South Africa.
I measure my life by these people.
I am turning twenty something. Deferring my college loans. Learning to cook. Refusing to live at home. Paying bills by myself. Planting a garden. Finding unfamiliar communities and new friends. Julie calls and tells me she got a job working at Bank of America. I call Laurie and tell her it’s not really about the boyfriends or the benjamins. This backfires because I, as it turns out, am not humorous or entitled to this joke, and because it has everything to do with both. I am writing new songs and spending time in a newfound, bohemian coffeehouse. I’m wondering if I lost weight since last year and about the new changes my parents made to the house.
Strange, scattered feeling when you realize your home is made of people. Vulnerable feeling… and that these particular people, come and visit, but that they are visiting. Awkwardly asking where the bathroom is instead of stealing your leftovers.
This realization makes your home smaller. Because maps full of pen marks and scotch tape still fit in your pocket. (You shouldn’t have to use these kind of things to find your home.) And it makes your home bigger. This too. You stretch out your index finger and point in the direction you last saw them go. (But they’ve gone farther than your borderline fingertips or vanishing point, primary school perspective.)
“Learn how to use a compass,” I tell myself, “and hope map keys lie about all that distance in-between and make the decision to believe that, maybe, the latitude line mathematics and geological dots we call home will turn into people soon, and we will hold each other by unfolding our maps.”

*a short story written for a reunion journal comprised of reflections one year out of college. the ending may be familiar, as much of my writing mixes in, out, and in-between each other.

Left Without a Trace

2006-06-15T23:41:00.000-06:00

www.lomography.com

just imagine me in my hexagonal room. packing boxes. sipping coffee too slowly so it keeps getting cold and i never finish it. getting weighlayed by photographs and email and sticky packaging tape. and enjoying every bit of it...

forgive what has been, by gina kaz

click through the song selection track until it comes up. please forgive those bad marketing schemers who supposed gina posing in a small red dress and extremely odd position against that wall was a good idea. im sorry it was not. im sure it was peer pressure.

The Last Stop Before Heaven

2006-06-13T09:25:00.000-06:00

clarisse merigeot, shadowy

This is a story I found stashed in an old journal. The author is Christina Hotsko, a dear friend and fellow writer who shared many great stories, the finding of a second family, the Mcfaddens, and an unsuspected home when we so badly needed one. Thank you Christina for putting this story to words. Thank you Janet, Micheal, Summer, Meghan, Bryce, and Mikie for loving us and our journeys and our mistakes and for giving us a home.

I'll write about home-that's easy enough. What I didn't realize was the many definitions of the word home, the many different conceptions of the idea of home. To me home is home-a place I know, a place I take comfort in; a place I can turn to, always; where I can run to and play, where I can turn to and cry. Home will always be a retracing of my childhood and a tracing of my future. Thomas Wolfe argues, "You can't go home again." Perhaps this is true, in the sense that home, like life, is and always will be changing. The home you leave will never be the home you return to-we shape our definition of the word home and we shape the home we live in. Emily Dickinson wrote, "Where thou art, that, is Home." I leave home and I go away-to school, to study, to work, to live-but I keep an image of my home with my family nearby and create new homes where I go. If you can get people to understand you then you can understand what it means to have a new home. Undoubtedly the house where you live, the first of your homes, will always be the place to which you will return. But to survive in this world new homes are constantly being built in the company of others, in the company of those who are able to understand you.

I started having dinner at the McFaddens's house, every Thursday night. No questions asked, just show up. That's what they said. I knew them from Summit, the coffeehouse nearby at which I had spent numerous hours of those first eighteen months of college. There was no formal meeting, no expectations to be met, just a once-a-week dinner with a family away from home. I often sit and wonder about the people with whom we come across in this life. There must be a reason for the meetings, whether or not it is ever known; we are affected by them, just as they are by us. I remember, after the first initial dinners, thinking, this family has taken me in as one of their own. They already have four younger children, the eldest being fourteen, and the youngest three. Slowly I began feeling more like an elder sister to the kids, a younger friend to the adults. Slowly I realized I had been accepted and by now I have come to understand that I am not a guest at their house but an adopted member of their family.

At some point last spring the McFadden's neighbor Janet was going to be marrying john, and they were searching for a pianist to play at their wedding reception. After discovering I was a friend of the McFadden's I was hired instantly by this couple-to-be and before I knew it I was invited over to their pre-wedding parities, meeting more neighbors, and when the wedding fate came, I played at the reception for a ceremony that had united them for life.

A year later, it I spring once again. A time for change, a time for new beginnings. I still am having Thursday-night dinners with my adopted family, only the family has grown; Ashley is the newest addition, another adopted college student. The "youngest," I am told. As of now there are three of us college students; Amanda, the respsonsible older child-the , "Dad" says, "will take care of us when we're old." I am the middle child, Ashley the youngest. Of the three, that is. Then we have the other four children, making the new McFadden household one of seven children.

A year later and, after everything, that has gone on, it is once again Thursday night and Ashley and I are having dinner with the McFadden's. Janet comes over; John is not doing well. He had been in the hospital for a while, his cancer has gotten worse. After 46 years of working with chemicals, only now has it affected him. The McFadden's day he fluctuates between doing really well and falling apart. Janet says he came home this past weekend. "The first things he did was get into his own bed. He said there's nothing like being in your own bed and in your own home. He asked if I remembered the clouds we used to talk about, the clouds we would see when we fell asleep. Wouldn't it be grand=, he said, if the last things you looked at before falling asleep would be clouds, and when you awake the first this you would see were clouds? I said yes and smiled; he smiled, then fell asleep. The best sleep he had had in a while." He went back to the hospital the next day.

It's Tuesday and I see Ashley in the library. She tells me the hospital had informed Janet that her husband has less that a week to live. She tells me the McFadden's called her earlier that morning and asked if she was busy, if she had work to do. Suprisingly, no. Ashley is an artist; the Mcfadden's wanted to paint the ceiling above Janet and John's bed and fill it with clouds. All day Tuesday Ashley stands of a ladder and paints the clouds and the sky under which John and Janet will fall asleep peacefully, rested, untroubled, dreaming.

I leave Friday to Florida, my sister's graduation. I return Sunday and call the McFadden's, letting them know I have gotten "home" safely. John came home from the hospital that Friday afternoon. As darkness stole the blue sky and the white clouds, as daytime shifted to night, John fell asleep in his own house, in his own bed, next to his wife, both of them under their own clouds. Saturday morning the sun rose and darkness fell. The sky-clear blue. The clouds-vanished. Not a single cloud could be seen. In his sleep,. John had stolen all the clouds from the sky and taken them with him to heaven.

these days since have been clear, the troubles washed away with the rain that came, the future shown amidst clouds of white and skies of blue. In the end, you see, we all come together, filling in missing gaps that make each one of us complete. How I found a home away from home is in itself a mystery, but I have become a part of their life and they a part of mine, affected day in and day out buy the activities their days, by the experiences of mine. Away from home I can still have a home, a place I know, a place I take comfort in; a place I can turn to, always; where I can run to and play, where I can turn to and cry. Home will always be your first home but, while you are away, there are always little spaces that need to be filled with love, laughter, tears, and cries. So, if you can find a home-away-from-home take it, and cherish it. In the meantime, take time to notice the clouds in the sky.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet sirs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes, a thousand tangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

(William Shakespeare, The Tempest III.ii.135-43)

Here. You. Me. Home.

2006-06-08T10:33:00.000-06:00

grant edwards. lizzy gone

6:45 in the morning and the sky is grey, skyline silver, and all the cars in between make this great assemblyline city surge. I could almost get sentimental. I take my roommate, Kathryn, to the airport asking if she's happy. she says yes. to go eat at the "in and out" burger joint only mass produced on the west coast. to enjoy summer and less humidity. Shes happy to be going home, she says.

I returned a ladder I borrowed from ms. mimi down the street. (I actually lost her original ladder and had to go buy a new one.) last month i painted clouds on her ceiling, complete with her grandchildrens names secretly encoded into them. ms. mimi works with kids during the day but her husband, josh, is usually at home when i come over, watching a tv that comes out of the mantel and can go back in when theres company. josh answers the door and im holding the ladder thats not really her ladder in my hand. i forgot that a few weeks ago ms mimi had told me josh had a brain tumor. i feel forgetful and sorry for him. his hair is patchy now and behind him i can see theyve moved a twin bed into the dining room and the dining room table into the den making watching the mantel tv difficult. i return the ladder. make small talk about good restaurants in the area. think about the macaroni and cheese im going to eat for dinner. im sorry ms. mimi for loosing your ladder and thinking about easy mac while your husband is dying of a brain tumor.

4:35 and im on my way to get my car fixed. im edgy from spending too much money on the ladder and rush hour traffic and city rain that isnt decisive about pouring or not but just drizzles constantly. i walk in and the man at firestone says sacrastically "someones having a good day!" i try to beg my way down a cheaper price or a fixing deferment until i have more money. $389.49. unless you want your wheel to fly off while your driving. awesome. i step outside to wait for a ride. light a clove. blow cinnamon tasting smoke into the air defiantly. a lady with bad blonde streaks and a grey sweatshirt walks by. she has a black eye and her nose is busted. she looks at me self-conscious and accusing and embarrassed. i wonder why she didnt pull up her hood and block the rain and hide her eye. if you fall your arm usually hits first and you break that instead. someone hit her face, her friend, her lover, her husband...

kathryn. josh. lady in the grey sweatshirt. you arent really home yet. but i dont blame you for believing this is all we got.

This Is the Moment That You Know

2006-05-24T20:26:00.000-06:00

friends, i am moving from philadelphia to north carolina soon. current life changes=more thoughts=more writing. i dearly hope i will find myself with strange and new things to say as this happens over the next month. other than: its for the best, i've had a good time, i've learned alot, bye.

ive written and recorded new song about just these things called "expect delays"and can be heard on my music website

also. here are a few moments of my recent life i am very happy to get to keep.

construction zone. bala cynwyd, pa

ben and me. philadelphia, pa

convent. boston, ma

The Distance is Quite Simply Much Too Far For Me To Row

2006-05-22T22:10:00.001-06:00

the subway kiss, henry lichtman

"why does everyone want to go away? i like it here. i like home."
when in high school i watched little women. and didn't like any part of its boring, matriarchal madness save for this line from beth right before she dies. i thought if she had the courage to stay, she had courage enough for anyone. to stay where she had family. where had planted a rose bush in the spring and watched bugs crawls their long stems and get stuck in their bouquets of orange and red petals. where the walls remembered every line from her childhood plays and where she could tell you all the good places for making forts from blankets and beds. where every bit of it, architecture and anyone, would remind her she was home. i respected her for staying. i respected it maybe because i knew i couldn't do it. i say to myself, people leave. i leave. even jesus leaves when theres no hollywood to back scenarios as romantic as happily ever after.

jesus leaves. he was only teasing all those government people, the tin soliders with spears, the people in town with his brief comeback and reworked torah. all mended and magical he finds his friends back to seagulls and synagogues after only 3 days. "i missed you." peter fumbles through saltwater soaked teeth. toes all sticky with brown sun baked sand. fingers rubbing fish smells against his back. "you will miss me again. but i will be with you, even to the end of age." he whispers reassuredly back. "and i will think about you but it wont be the same. figurative language is never the same," he mourns under his breathe.

i leave. i went to college in north carolina. i lived in paris and taize and lots of other places very far away. i visited the west coast and imagined someday i would move out there to study theology and two summers ago i bought a car for very specific things like leaving and carrying all my things with me. i am worried it will hold everything this time. this month i tell my taperecorder and close friends. i am addicted to leaving. to that romanticized feeling i get about somewhere i won't see for a while and all those goodbyes that get wrapped in packaging tape and budweiser cartons.

people leave. my roommates go before me and i am thankful for all their magazines, still sent to this address. josh leaves. his father is a pilot and he flies for free. kevin's leaving for portland. i tell him he will love it there but ive never been and i don't know. people leave for lots of logical reasons. better weather. the bus. greener grass. love.

have so many of us gone away that theres no fixed point with bugs and rosebushes to call us home. maybe the latitude line mathmatics and geological dots we call home will turn into people soon. and we will hold each other by unfolding our maps.

*please refrence transatlanticism by death cab for cutie for more thoughts on leaving, geology, and maps.

once upon a time

2006-05-01T11:49:00.000-06:00

red, petcharat chanbua

you are not my friend. i said to time. my friends tell me you bring healing, stand still, wear down riverbeds, fly. a little girl will read a fairy tale and picture, in her head, sitting upon you, her legs dangling off. an old man will hang you from his pocket, click open and closed the gold round shutter to your strongwilled second hands. but i know better. you are my lists of things to do, my reason for leaving, the overgrown bushes by the church, and all those hours ive lost in manilla files and counting machines.
tonight and maybe i will not be afraid of you and your blinking red lines. i am good at flying too. and i will laugh and hold his hands and stretch them as far as i can, to the sky to prove it. and we will win.
i roll against his arms and the alarm clock. open your eyes its morning and the sky is on fire, you whisper.

all those words we wrote are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go

2006-04-14T14:54:00.000-06:00

please enjoy these readings from jeremy huggins and his suggested authors. i think they are important.

gospel of songs

lines the essayist considers before taking up the skies

of gardeners and ghosts

2006-04-08T11:36:00.000-06:00

holding viriginia, sally mann

people say so many things with their faces. so many silent conversations all around me all the time. catching the bus. waiting for the doctor. eating at a restruant. their eyebrows, cheeks, smiles, necks, eyelashes. there's some phrases for these conversations. you can make eyes at someone. look in a daze. give the evil eye. look like you've seen a ghost....
so. when writing a book or telling a story or history, its difficult to explain those conversations of the face..the fable. the moral. the summary isn't there. so the story is skipped for more catchy hook lines...jesus is known to many, as a good storyteller, a teacher, a revolutionary. his words surface in mouths of ordinary people, christian people, people who wouldn't be caught dead if they realized they were refrencing jesus...jesus! the golden rule. oh my god! god bless you! i love you.
but what of the looks between jesus and someone else where there were no words, no stories to document. id like to talk about those. i think there are many of them. the look of well drinkers and money spenders. the look of rabbis and of his mother after pulling his splinter. the look of peter. like he knew it was coming and couldn't help himself. the look of judas. there against his face all chapped lips and change rattling. all of these people find jesus' looks to be comforting, haunting, human. and theres others. and one in partiular that, dare i say, catches my eye. that points to this look-like-you've-seen-a-ghost expression and mary's blue eyed blubbering at a tomb that was regretably (for her and at the moment) empty. i think there a wonderful secret shared and something else mary remembers and can't write in words. because she is a woman and good at keeping secrets and because words would never do for this.
mary thinks jesus is the gardener beginning with his feet. gardeners have those same dirty toes and ragged sandals and worked brown back muscles and faces like..but he is not the gardener and mary knows it. for a moment, face turning white to match his robes. supposing him to be her imagination. her overextended hope. her ghost. until she finds his face. recognizes his the way his nose and cheek twitches when he gets sand in his eyes, his cracked lips from all those stories he told her. his scar just beneath and to the left of his chin she would notice, those many times he would looks at the clouds and would wonder where it came from, his freckles. color comes back to her face, he is not a ghost. he is comfortable and familiar and safe for her and at the moment. and then he tells her, mary, im leaving and i can't stay and i will be gone soon. i think mary tries to understand. for christ's sake. for her own. lines her eyes close against his. so they share things like smells and rustling of clothes. like saying, i will forget you and you will be papyrus and paintings before long. and i will weep for things like dirt and gardeners who turn out to be just gardeners and all those white sheets i wake up in. because i can't help myself and that's how it is, with me. she fills her eyes with promises and this picture she sees him in and lets him go. (a picture is worth a thousand words). i understand you mary.

Planes and Trains

2006-03-30T10:23:00.000-06:00

train, sylvie wibaut

friends and romans, here is one of the latest songs ive been working on. i hope soon i will be able to make an attachment with the actual song for you.

as long as there's treetops and wings she can hide in
flying is all that she needs
but this coastline earth ground train that you ride in
would she still choose to believe

shes too proud to say that this she can't afford
the empty place where you lay
but your smudged brown earth face at the door
would you choose to stay
for this forgive
for this forgive

she hated to see you on that runway
its not like thats something, she didn't learn from you baby
hated to watch your arms spread and fly away
pray the train pulls her through
i pray the train will pull her through

slowly shes learning and forming the words
could this survive your embrace
take the train in the morning the background will blur
but theres lines on her face you can trace

canoes and acordians
the west and the mountains
are filling your heart like a well
and there's no use pretendin'
you're over her darlin'
but your secrets i'll try not to tell

she hated to see you on that runway...

theres letters of lessons you never did learn
as she shadows the walls with her hands
and acres of ashes from bridges you've burned
backyard rings buried in sand.
for this forgive. me.
for this forgive

she hated to see you on that runway
but its not like that something she didn't learn from you baby
hated to watch your arms spread then flying away
pray the train pulls her through
all you can do
pray the train pulls her through.

2006-03-27T13:03:00.000-06:00

come home darlin', come home quickly, ashley brown

i went over to a very cold ohio college last month to do a visual art and theology talk. this is the painting that came from the service. and indeed, the words are meant to point upwards. for those of you interested in the artwork ive been doing since you've last seen me or it or either, an official website is coming soon.

These Days They Are a River, And We're All Floating Down, Every Loved One, Every Neighbor, and Tennesee and My Hometown

2006-03-25T12:04:00.000-06:00

i grew up in nashville tennessee in a family of musicians and school teachers. we had a record player in the den that provided me with hours of dancing around the house while my parents worked. my mom graded math papers with red pen in the renovated attic. we were always saving turtles and tadpoles and ducks and mice from highways and the creek. after making trips to science classes and show-and-tells we would take them to the woods and let them crawl or swim or scamper away. my dad would walk around the house with his guitar and harmonica strap singing mostly bob dylan. he taught me how to play chess good enough to beat the boys in my fifth grade class and that you should play guitar with your fingers instead of a pick when you're first learning so they can get the practice. and then, there were other things i learned seperate from my parents, which, all theological practicalities aside, makes me think i was pieced together with more than a genetic mixture of the two. i made the attic into a place where i could paint and discovered the one spot next the the fence where, if you dig deep enough, you can find red dirt and china. at the fabric store i would run down the aisles with my hands stretched out and hid inside the circular stands. i loved the way everything felt and felt different. these are really good memories, ones i remember after listening to my dad's voice singing subterranian homesick blues on the answering machine and moving earthworms from piles into the dirt and watching walk the line and hurt, the johnny cash music video

Will You Say to Me, A Little Rain's Gonna Come

2006-03-23T12:43:00.000-06:00

hannah. i started a garden the other day. and now my fingers are calloused from all that digging and dirt. it rained and then the dirt mixed into a red and brown mud. the kind, i remember, you were always proud to play in. smiling and stomping. i think i understand now why you loved it so much.

suggested listening: Time of Need ,Ryan Adams

2006-03-22T13:18:00.001-06:00

After signing a few notes at my work, I looked at the pen I was using. "You are God's Valentine" it read inside a little candy heart shape. This was among similar pink and purple hearts that read "the greatest love" and "i am here" and other sentence fragments that would make your English teacher tremble. Unless you are him or him you have legitimate right to be concerned.

My Name is a Thread and It Connects Strangers

2006-03-19T22:43:00.000-06:00

people who have called me ash in the last week

1. Betty, hospital out-patient desk attendant
2. Mark, man outside the grocery store asking for bread money
3. kid at work, (referencing the Great Pokemon Master also known as Ash)
4. Andrew, coffeehouse barista who frequently uses ash trays

These Are The Doors I Opened and Shut and Slammed in Your Face

2006-03-15T15:10:00.001-06:00

salvaged doors, grant edwards

the lady behind me slams the telephone reciever into the table and the cab company on the other line. "im about to cry," she states. three times and to herself, but i think she's hoping i hear. i try looking busy.i dont mind crying, it even feels good sometimes. but i would never say it like that and outloud like her. she walks out the door in her beige trench coat and sneakers. i feel like eating fried catfish and a soda from that place down the street today, can you spare some change?...fried catfish reminds me of my dad but not of being charitable. its 11:30 at night. the doorbell rings its archaic ring and i hear someone talking nervously outside. i try not to make any sudden moves or flip the lightswitch. they leave and i give my dog a treat for barking. forgive me god. if they really needed my help. forgive me, if they were you.

I'm a New Chicken, Clucking Open Hearts and Years

2006-03-10T18:55:00.000-06:00

the man in front of me in the grocery store line pulls money from his sock, smiles, and carts away his ramean noodles and tuna fish. i have a picture of the kid behind me. i took it on a sunny day when his brother and him were playing football in our backyard. i turn around again and he is gone. sent hurriedly down aisle 7 for the forgotten bag of something. but his mother is there and she is beautiful, and her hair wraps and braids up into itself and carries little seashells. i wish he hadn't been sent down aisle 7. i wanted to show him where trees are best for climbing and how to make castles from cardboard boxes and tell the secrets we'd kept from each other. i rummage in my purse for change, buy creamer and some gum, bring them home, and read this and this
it is 10:30 in the morning, and now (and over coffee with cream in it) i am thinking about other things like bicycles and landscapes ive seen you in and things that might not happen again. ive written two wishes in my little blue book.
1. wake up in the morning next to my cedar wood bird and you
2. read where the wild things are

*photograph by grant edwards, fog 3

What I am Reading this Morning

2006-03-09T11:29:00.000-06:00

The Beginning
By Anthony Abbott

"Isn't the end that's important," said Mary. "It's the beginning." Romulus Kinney, Jesus Tales

You see, I have forgotten everything
except the losing. I do not know
about the kissing, the placement
of the hands or the lips or whether
the Tobago goes this way or that.

I do not know any more about the touching
or the movement of limbs
or the freedom of the eyes to watch
or whether anything is wanted
or how one knows desire. I remember

only that on certain nights
when the full moon hung low on the horizon
there was the beginning
of something more than you and me
something more than self

and if I lost that forever
it would be losing God
or whatever God is. To save that
I would perform a hundred tasks
pluck a thousand blossoms,

do penance under some saint's rock
if only it would lead
to a blue door in the green wood.
I would unlive it all
so we could again begin.

*photograph by helen errington, locked no key

From the Point of View of a Catfish, Another Girl, and Me

2006-02-26T22:28:00.000-06:00

we have all been with you before and carried ourselves bravely into your town. i, your girlfriend, i, your best friend, i, your stranger. hoping to find you in a house, with orange walls, where you hang our paintings and the poetry we sent you. Hoping we’d made it into those little plastic bags full of letters beneath your window. hoping to find your eyes not all ruin and runways by now.

we were hoping to get the chance, for the first time and again, to give ours hearts to you on kitestrings. and you would say, only that you found them caught in a tree somewhere and rescued them gently from all those branches and birds. thank you.

photograph by kanwee harichanwong, bird

Meet Dylan

2006-02-20T12:10:00.000-06:00

she's from the mountains. one ear doesn't work. and she will be living with us here in philadelphia in the event that you stop by...

I Still Have Never Seen You, And Some Days, I Don't Love You At All

2006-02-15T18:28:00.000-06:00

i should be the first to admit my "prayer life" leaves something to be desired.usually feeling more like talking to those white complacent skies on snowy days, veins running through hands, or myself. at other times its quite practiced and ordinary and the last of many things i would rather not be doing, along with loading the dishwasher and making contributions to my college annual fund. but. friends. in the event i find myself in conversation with someone unimaginably frightening and great and beautiful, someone most commonly refered to as God. and, in fact, not just speaking with myself and my windows, these are some things i imagine or rather hope might be spoken between us...and if you will, excuse my dependence upon the voices of others for this exercise.

-please remember me, by the rose bush laughing, with bruises on my chin. iron and wine
-please give me time to decipher the signs, please forgive me for time that I've wasted. nickel creek.
- Come home darlin', come home quickly. come home darlin' all is forgiven. pedro the lion .
-I've made alot of mistakes. I've made alot of mistakes. -sufjan stevens
-you're still playing for a love you'll never find outside these arms of mine. pedro the lion
-love is a dress that you made, long to hide your knees. love to say this to your face, I'll love you only. -iron and wine
-if you would shine your light down here, I promise I'll reflect it right back at you. -copeland
-I will try and fix you. -coldplay
-lord, we married young, stayed where we came from, gave those children everything we had. will you stay with me, in my time of need, though it seemed we had such little time for us.-ryan adams
-we have time to start all over again. -copeland.

*photo by emiliano severoni, pray

Sunday Pulls it Children From their Piles of Fallen Leaves

2006-02-11T09:46:00.000-06:00

the fall i lived in paris, i picked up leaves everyday. the yellow ones i would gather at the bottom on the esclator, let them go at the top to slide down. it would make parisans smile or scoff at their day and the defiance of those trees to match the grey undergrounds. my sister used them as her debate block. ginko trees have the least evolved of leaves with their long, unbranched veins. when the wind blew through the esclator shaft, the leaves would get stuck in my coat pockets and my hair. i loved coming aboveground to be greeted by those darwin-loving, golden resiltiant trees. it was wonderuflly comforting for a girl like me who grew up jumping in my grandfather's leaf piles and scrapping knees on branches. the helipcopter ones i found in the park across from my apartment. the big rough ones with black spots are from scotland. there are a bunch i cant remember finding. i think you should know the best thing i ever gave you was that book of leaves. when you were missing that season somewhere across equators and oceans. i didn't want you to forget what autumn looked like, dear friend. it was the best present i've ever given anyone. i thought you should know.

*photograph by david scott, late night veiw from work, for more go to http://www.lomography.com

Come Home Darlin, Come Home Quickly, Come Home Darlin, All is Forgiven

2006-02-01T22:15:00.000-06:00

To Whom it May Concern (and I suppose God is concerned),

I'm sorry i didn't pay attention in church. i couldn't keep up with all the songs in the books with those really thin pages. i know, my fingers are clumsy. i couldn't sing them with my low range anyway. i kept thinking about those mountains you made in north carolina and about my spine that was starting to hurt. i know, i have bad posture. but the old church walls were really great. besides, rubbing fingers along incense prayer covered stone is right up my alley. i sat near one of the big columns on purpose. i was, though, a little worried because i don't think you could hear the rain with those high ceilings and they kept my friend outside who hadn't dressed up and admittedly probably not showered. the crucifix was a little dramatic, i grew up methodist. but i would keep the part with the bread and wine. god know...you know i needed a drink after all that.

then again i guess you knew we were going to need something as dramatic and gory and commonplace as a drink, after that service. that day. god, that month. and much more often than those food pyramids suggest. maybe it wasn't really a practical joke in spoiling your best friends' appetites, with the whole bit about the body and blood. i dont think it was. you must have known i need reminding alot.
i dont mind if you call me ash or darlin.

love,
ashley

*photo from Lomographic Society, colored bubbles on leg, for more see http://www.lomography.com

I Had A Lover, It's So Hard To Risk Another

2006-01-26T10:22:00.000-06:00

i don't drive to work until 230. i would like these morning hours to be sweet and quiet. to go walking water my plants watch the sun, rise, outside, not on my stomach with sleep in my eyes. much of the time i am uninspired by philadelphia and fruitless green leafs overhead, oversleep, and the hours before 9 when the world still has some of its magic are replaced with the drop of the 10 o'clock mail and the pane of light full across my room now against the plants that still need watering. roommates tires spin out, remind me the house is only mine for the morning. when noone's looking, so i hear, you're supposed to be most yourself, make your best secrets and this morning and most mornings, noone's looking. but i've overslept and the refrigerator magnet quote is all the poetry i have (live like theres no tomorrow, love like youve never been hurt, dance like noone's watching). darn.

but, in case you were wondering, when noone's, in fact, looking...i rearrange my books. sweep the kitchen floor. expect god, especially when noone's else does. think about sermons and count my ribs. count my change. check my stomach. suck in. miss you. reread letters, breath harder, we didn't know what was coming did we. pray but my lower back hurts so i stop.make coffee. address letters with middle names included (contrary to parental, you're-in-trouble-mister full name usage, i do this as a way to say i like who you are and the way your name sounds, every bit of it) water the plants. wait for the mail. watch bad tv shows. wish i could sing like john legend. still think about that letter and how its addressed to ash. my parents never call me ash. people only call me ash if they're being lazy, making a joke, or are a dear, comfortable friend who has settled into the idea that i might just be every bit as different silly serious ordinary as all those things i do when noone's looking.

heaven's just a thin blue line

2006-01-24T10:19:00.000-06:00

"but it was a valley of mere earth, rock and water; there was not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass to be seen. The earth was of many colors; they were fresh, hot, and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the singer himself and then you forgot everything else." the magician's nephew, cs lewis

you did it once before, in the beginning. i know you did. the genesis. oh god, darwin. reading glasses. monkey trials. seven days. laugh at it or shake your head. the beginning that everyone has something to say about. stupidity for the academic. magnifigence for the preacher. more work for the ecologist. bewilderment for the i-always-grew-up christian. but what for those dear desert people, corners of mouths still cracked from sandstorms or from telling too many secrets under tables about earth rich countries. maybe they heard words about a land they knew well after working it through their dirty fingers, black fingernails.back bent. maybe they heard the thick hebrew of a land that was uninhabitable, uninhabited (because this is more close to the true translation) and sighed, ah yes, one man might nod, theres a desert like that just past my fields, that heat sin struck sand ocean never returned my son last spring. maybe they heard out of the oh so monotheisticly odd sentences, god. out of his charred, slated, stub of a world. over his now broken damaged delight of a people, deciding of all things, to do good. there in the beginning. or there in the middle, desert fire ash to his right, tree roots and rubber tires towards his left. to something good, because, god knows, desert people know, its about time. and reading the scratched out story, maybe they thought to themselves, or whispered under tables, but it makes sense to us.

*photograph by carlos mesquita

2006-01-21T10:10:00.000-06:00

why i love christmas, christmas cookies, and the awesome talent that enables me to make such impeccable portraits of my dad.

somewhere north of here

2006-01-18T22:21:00.000-06:00

i live in germantown but drive north to do my errands. sigh of relief, the convience of suburbia life comforts me. in germantown people still sit on their porches next to rusted chairs or shopping carts. sitting to defy the socialites who exchanged rubbing tired fingers and post-work, stoop conversations for catching buses to walmart. running my errands in germantown means a comment from the poorly intentioned man outside the convienent store, potholes, lottery ticket stands, hot dog stands, mothers clutching babies, old men dragging their feet at traffic light crossings and making me wait. i live in germantown, but drive north, mostly, to do my errands, sigh. uneasiness on my way to green lawns and customer friendly stores. this isn't living like they are beautiful or important at all. the people eating hog dogs, clutching their babies, dragging their feet. not integration or redemption or anything good at all. i drive north anyway. lock my doors. avoid people's eyes. behind head coverings and hats. get embarassed i can't be braver. in the north, there are babies in strollers. two story houses. two parent families, white families. mothers wearing big sunglasses, high schoolers at the local starbucks. sip my mocha, $3.75. sigh. relief. disgust. this city is broken, im not helping things. and its going to take more than just doing my errands on the street with the poorly intentioned man and disorganized convienient store. i might have to, god, ask him for the time, his name. if he has time to tell a story, grab a coffee. i should stop driving north, even if rumor has it among the church folk, it gets you closer to god, they couldn't be more wrong.

you're going to be a really good doctor

2006-01-18T17:24:00.001-06:00

photo from karatography.com

looking around, sometimes, i could tell you what my friends would be. of course, i wouldn't tell my little predestination plans for them, only phrases like, "you'll be a really good doctor someday" or "you'll be able to do whatever you what to do, im sure" no, you, dear friends, give away the most when you are in a crowd, pressed against a wall or a hand, on sundays, on holidays, when you think noone's looking.
"you're going to live in the city," i told him, "and be proud that youre wearing suits with pens in the pockets and be embarassed when you forget to wear black socks with your dress up shoes."

"you're going to build your own house, i told him. and be proud that your hands have callouses on them, just along the tips there and be embarassed when it rains and you weren't expecting it, because you were always good at predicting."

"youre going to tell people what to do. i told her. and be proud that you use words like subsidized and essential and be embarassed that haverford sold that land to the state to raise their average household income"

"youre going back to the mountains. i told her. and be proud that those flaming curls of yours understand just what kind of girl you are. and be embarassed you had left your home for so long that the trees almost forgot your name."

looking around, i could tell these things, sometimes, about my friends and that was my favorite part of being around them. i can remember the grieving and the shiver that they would be these things without me someday...be these things with your wives who would find that curve in your lower back really wonderful. be these things with your congregations or collegues and make secrets of your own, stealing communion bread or someone's pen, make stories just for yourself, arriving before anyone else to sign the papers, ask for forgiveness, take the sprinkled donut...

in crowds, noone supposes you are looking at them, thats why people enjoy them so much. im not sure if any of my predictions panned out, but it gave me something to do. i didn't like crowds much.

eyes.shift.wood.

2006-01-11T16:03:00.000-06:00

what is truth? pontius pilate asks, staring back into ordinary brown eyes. i think hes terrified. because his lower left eyelid twitches at the thought of all that blood. (fingers picking at nails. being soggy. or something unpleasant like that.) terrified because he had baldhead, stone, law power and a breakfast only half-eaten and now cold on the table behind him. because those eyes were, so, ordinary. terrified or just tired of it all. all the haunting. all the times he had almost believed, cried himself to sleep, tried not waking his wife over it. all the (god, maybe true) prophecies. the never really hungry feeling. maybeyesno. screw it. tired or maybe he hits the mark with his question and knows it. jesus, with all toes moving along the grained and polished corridor floor. funny feeling. sinking feeling. between the wood slats there. in his stomach too.

pilate stopped asking questions after that. he could have said nevermind, hurry up, stop mumbling, look me in the face( i want to see those eyes again so very badly). but didn't. i want to know what happened after that. alone in the corridor with the smooth floorboards and half-eaten breakfast. good question pilate. breatholding, heart in your fingers, kind of good question. what's in all that weighted silence between the corridor and the moment pilate turns away, speaks to the foot-tapping rabbis and townspeople, hanging around for a good show and primetime begging. maybe jesus makes the silence his answer. maybe he just decides its best to keep quiet and enjoy the wood grain against his toes...long story.

*photograph by daniela stumpfl, Bubbles, more at http://www.lomography.com

I'd Rather Have Sticks and Stones

2006-01-09T12:17:00.000-06:00

one day a few years ago in September i found an old man sitting with his crooked back against a the thin fidget back of a little girl. shhh. there wasn't a word between them and they were so comfortable. thighs against some sort of stone wall. his legs tapping the ground, hers dangling over because they couldn't reach just yet.

i like watching old people. i think they know the right kind of way to be quiet. as do children. sometimes, and not just when they're watching the newest spongebob movie. i think i witnessed that a few years ago in september and couldn't help but try to honor that in words. i come back to that picture often. when i think about my grandfather. when i think about the kids i work with. the importance of quietness. young backs. old faces. crooked backs. walking canes. moses.

found him between a sermon on the torah. such a great load of words. of life for one man to hold. i wonder about moses when he was old, mostly about his face and his walking cane. old with a crooked back. needing that cane that had dragged across so much. turned water into something else. held him up. scolded his grandchildren. made magic. tripped someone at the store. all smooth and smudged from the weight of his fingers resting. scratched from bumping against rock canyon sea bottoms.

do you think his face looked like he was in love. all shining and dark from deity and the desert sun. do you think his face had ordinary wrinkles. around the eyes, but, oh, they had seen so much greater hurt. at the corner of the mouth, where so many syllable had pushed out their nearly true prophecies. near the bones in the cheek, had he laughed at the sight of gold slipping magic and so many frogs.

maybe in the end. he was an old man with his cane that had dragged across so much. that fit into his fingers. that made him look like any old man you might find at the water. at the store. sitting on a wall. with wrinkles at his corners. with a crooked back. enjoying the silence of a child and his cane.

*photograph by christian kerber, grandpas accordian, more at http://www.lomography.com

I Loved Your Son For His Sturdy Arms

2005-12-30T12:40:00.000-06:00

We always, at some point or another, pick our favorite Bible character. maybe its in a classroom on sundays when the adults go to "big church" and you find a picture of mary. and decide to like her because she always wears blue and you like blue. or maybe you choose gabriel, or any angel for that matter. because they have wings and that means they can fly.
recently i discovered a new favorite Bible character in a rather conventional way. just right there, sitting in church and looking at the pages in luke and finding there, elizabeth. but she doesn't come into it until later. first. zacharius. God struck him silent. maybe he talked to much. maybe he didn't listen enough. maybe he was tired of waiting around for his turn to burn the incense. for the mail to come. for the car to be fixed. for his wife to have a baby. and he forgot why he was waiting. and then at last. he's next in line to burn the incense. he gets dressed up in his sunday best. packs a small bag. kisses his wife on the cheek. waits for the footstep and conversations about the dust and the next rain to leave him behind and alone. and after all this, with so much to say, surely, to God. about his feet hurting because of the dust. about his wife, elizabeth, who he loves dearly but never gets pregnant. about his car in the shop. and he is struck silent. ha. take that. i imagine God saying. enough. i imagine God saying. i know. i imagine God saying to zacharius. he isn't good with his hands. sharades. hasn't practiced. has, now to tell all the people about what he saw. but they aren't very good at watching and guessing games. especially in the dust and heat. He talked too much. and now, he can't talk! thank God. have God do that to my little boy a mother chuckles to her friend outside the temple.

but here is the part about my favorite character. so, zacharius returns to elizabeth. his wife who chose to stay. chose to stay when there wasn't so much dust in the ground and they had planted a garden together. when the rent was late and they painted the roof blue. when she told him she wasn't-. when he had bought books for. and he comes back, opens the door, stands there, all speechless and expected. and maybe she is mending his clothes. or hammering a nail thats loose into the wood in the kitchen. or maybe just waiting for him.

when God tells Mary she is going to have a baby, she is scared and too young and unmarried. valid feeling. when God tells sarah she is going to have a baby, she laughs. tries to hide it. but you did laugh God says. but now Elizabeth. and now Zacharius, standing in the doorway, beard needs trimming, scar above his eyebrow. and zacharius tells, god tells, elizabeth, it is tonight they will concieve. a baby, even after the year the rain washed out the fence. and the year he built her a tree swing. and the year the neighbors had a little girl. and zacharius in the doorway, with his small bag, wearing the sandals she mended for him last spring. (he is not very good with his hands). and will she understand? and how will she feel?... but because she knows zacharius and expects the curves of his chest and the scar above his eyebrow and because she is my favorite bible character, she chooses to compliment her eyes to his quietness. and kiss him on the cheek.

*photograph by Cameron Stephen, Kid with Baby Chicken, more at http://www.lomography.com

thoughts...concerns?

2005-12-21T12:31:00.000-06:00

The Trapeze Act Was Wonderful

2005-12-16T22:54:00.000-06:00

boy selling tops in istanbul, turkey

the storm broke away this morning in a great wind that hit my windows and against the trees in a fierce and cleansing kind of way. the kind you either want to stand against, all heels down and slanted, or lay across and be carried by or carried away or carried. but lying in bed, i wanted niether of these and was content to listen and imagine it washing over me and to finish reading the story about angels and sheep and straw. i've never seen the river move so quickly either. it twisted and slipped and was weighted with great pieces of ice and wood and trash but insisted on moving all the same. it moved as though the moving would take it somewhere other than into itself (but we all knew of course it would not). it felt like this day was struggling to find its way out.

suggested song: Colors, Amos Lee, Just Like Heaven soundtrack

So May the Sun, rise, Bring Hope Where it Once Was Forgotten

2005-12-09T17:20:00.000-06:00

so i have chosen to write it out, in all its insufficiency and mumbling and declarations and suprises. Because I believe words can speak the worlds into my ordinary days and help them remember their necessity. Because in writing there is the hoping that thoughts are given more than syllables and sentences, but breath and circulation that would not otherwise be. Today, my thoughts are, in fact, ordinary, but ordinary to me only because I have held and turned them over a good many times before handing them to you...
it is heartbeats that shuffle against my chest as i lay on my stomach in the morning. it is the hearing of tape unsticking and watching boxes pile and shift as my roommate makes her way back to iowa. its rolling the christmas hymns around in my mouth until they feel weighted and human. its shoveling and slipping with fumbling southern feet into snow drifts and towards the mailbox, still the same dark blue with the creaking handle. its moving my big, green chair so i can sit and warm my feet on the radiator and watch the cathedral shed light off its stone steeple. its the feeling just before sleep comes, of shaking or weariness or laughing. its the singing of oh come thou long expected jesus with a certain anxiety, as though the ending might not be the same this december. but its the remembering that it will be the same, in all its quiet grace and loyalty and roughness. and its the realizing how, so very badly, i need it to be the same, especially this year.

suggested song: Upward Over the Mountain, Iron and Wine

My Bones Don't Ache From the Snow

2005-12-05T12:35:00.000-06:00

but my heart has grown up overnight and it has been broken many times before. and not just from the loves and the lovers but also from those unsuspected. it has been broken by friends i wanted to take with me but left behind instead. broken by family and their effort to understand me in so many complexities they cannot see, and i have chosen not to show. broken over others and for others whose names are not important, at least to this reader. in this now breaking and in each time, a new cast comes forth. a new organ altogether. with new mechanisms for survival and new pathways for the blood to pass, or not. since the last breaking, i have laid my heart asleep, imagining, in its stillness it has healed properly and with the least scarring possible. i have been scared to death of its waking and so stopped any movement i thought to be coming from it. in the past few weeks my heart's waking has let me know it will now have its own way with me. that in its lying still it has in fact not healed properly. and in its now waking it is truely a tired and creaking machine of a heart. its moving challenges my survival mechanisms and sheds practicality as though it never did me any good. its orders are tall and difficult, demanding its immediate use. demanding that i love, in spite of love's impracticality or what it has taught me to well avoid in the past. demanding, that i hurt, if hurting will help the moving. because surely, that is better than its sleeping. this waking is not easy nor does it come quickly. like that of sleeping beauty's awakening, that brings life suddenly in a sweeping light across her city. nor like that of the small girl in mark's version of christ, who arises at the strange touch of deity and smooth roll of hebrew across her body. it is more like waking up to a snow heavy ground that matches the sky and spending hours in bed before crawling out into the world as you have found it. it is slow and hard to get your joints moving at top speed when it is so early. as it it with a heart newly awakened. i am quick to return to my silence, supposing if i just lie still it will fall back asleep and i will be safe in my dreams again. but i find myself rising and leaving my sensibility and my memories of "what happened last time i had these feelings" in bed. i am so very glad in its awakening. i am full in its movement and my inability to stop it because i believe, and dare i say with all my heart, this is something of what redemption, feels like.

suggested song: Time of Need, Ryan Adams
*photograph by andrew lock, i heart red brick walls

The People Who Waited in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light

2005-11-28T10:33:00.000-06:00

its not about the fixing of people at all. at least not in the way people have tried to fix me before. the strange pushing away of the abandonment or confusion or whatever the great deal of hurt is inside. because what if we, in the fixing, in the immediate reaction to a loss for words or fear or perhaps the sudden connection to our own deep hurt, do not allow our friends to grieve whatever it is that they are grieving. then we have not loved them as broken. not loved who they are in their great deal of hurt and who they will be once refined and bent by it. if we only try to fix and push and speak, we have only loved our hope of what they will be once they have mended. and we rarely, in our visions of our mended friends, take account of the scars that might be left or honor the different person who might altogether take the place of who they were before. to slow our fear of a changed friend or quicken the awkward silence of not knowing just what to say, we push them to be bright and shiny and new. but i have mended many things before and know the sweaters and the shoes always are a bit different after the mending. with more marks of care and more stories for the telling, but always a bit different. so. in our broken friends, i find a challenge of letting them grieve whatever it is they have lost, or never found, or found too often. of allowing their great deal of hurt not to make its home in them but at least to make its mark in its terribly important way. to allow the tragedy before the redemption. if i am to try anything at all, it is not to fix the hurting people so dear to me, but to love them greatly and directly in the middle of it all.

*photograph by marc davies, torment