there's a mockingbird that lives in one of the date palms in the front of my condo. i've watched this bird for weeks, and really fell in love the day it impersonated a frog, trying to throw one of the neighborhood cats off it's scent. smart bird, that one. i think about her, nested in the palm, and think about myself, and how it feels to be nested in the palm of someone's hand. i am profoundly grateful for that thought.
may is almost over. thanks be to God.
mil besos,
rmg
27 May 2010
11 May 2010
ordinary time
the church nerds out there will point out that the season of ordinary time doesn't start until may 23rd. to the church nerds out there, i offer my deepest, most sincere apologies, and best wishes for you to get the hell over it.
ordinary...that word conjures up a lot of feelings inside of me, lately. it's a dangerous kind of word, a middle word, like "better" or phrases like "on the other hand". you have to be careful with words like "ordinary". we are all painfully ordinary in our extrordinary ways. each of us is a bright and shining thing, andare dulled by the lustre of the other. and while what i bring to the relationship table may seem like something rare and unexpected, i can assure you that it feels painfully normal and utterly ordinary to me.
case in point: i am never suprised. i am unflappable. it's damn near impossible to shock me. seriously, i'm not making this up. i say this without a single trace of pride. because, seriously, once people know that about you, it's kind of like open season. and that's ok, and i'm happy to turn this bizarre talent into something that's helpful to people. i mean, it's not like it's some parlor trick i've worked to perfection over the last decade. it's just how things are. i mean, the shocks i incurred as a teenager and young adult, the things i heard and saw, have made it virtually impossible to knock me off my stride. redemptive experiences find us in the oddest of moments. it's just this really totally ordinary thing in my life, not altogether different from the trick i can do where i fit 38 whole grapes in my mouth, at one time.
i've heard and seen some things. the echos and prints of terminal illness and drug addiction, of watching my family spin and struggle, and find it's footing, again...those echos make it almost easy to hear everything that has come after it. and those echos make it easier to carry the things people leave with me, when they tell me their stories. in this life, my lesson is to carry stories, to hold them, to remember them, to protect the sanctity of the stories i get to hear. i didn't understand that about myself until i was 27 or 28...but i understand it, now. and even though some of those stories find their way to me in the most unusual of ways, they are, at the bottom, ordinary stories of ordinary lives. people are just people, and shit happens.
i love stories, even the sad and hard ones. once i've heard someone's story, or part of it (because who ever really knows the whole story of someone, other than G-d?) my perceptions of them rarely change. people are who they are, the details notwithstanding. G-d put something special, unique, beautiful, magic, and world-changing in each and every single one of us, and that can never be taken away, reassigned, or given up. we are born so extraordinarily ordinary. and all the ancilliary things that happen to us along the way shape us, for sure, but for most of us (clearly exempting shit i don't understand at all, like serial killers...or televangelists...), the changes and chances and little lives and deaths inside our big life, they can't touch the absolute beauty that G-d puts inside each of us, nourishes with the milk of human kindness, and the strange and awesome forces of grace and mercy.
the native americans (total badasses...navajo rugs are my new favorite analogy...) used spirals in their sacred art. the entoptic shapes you see behind your eyes, when you close them, or press them tightly, are sometimes spirals, too (and hatchmarks, etc). this life, this ordinary life, sits on a spiral. we will learn the same lesson, over and over, because that's the lesson we have to learn, the lesson G-d asked us to learn as we were put together inside of our mothers' bodies, a lesson about our brokenness, our wholeness, how to tell stories, how to hear them, when to love more deeply, and when to walk away. it looks different for everyone, but it's all the same ordinary lesson. and that's pretty wonderful, i think.
mil besos,
rmg
ordinary...that word conjures up a lot of feelings inside of me, lately. it's a dangerous kind of word, a middle word, like "better" or phrases like "on the other hand". you have to be careful with words like "ordinary". we are all painfully ordinary in our extrordinary ways. each of us is a bright and shining thing, andare dulled by the lustre of the other. and while what i bring to the relationship table may seem like something rare and unexpected, i can assure you that it feels painfully normal and utterly ordinary to me.
case in point: i am never suprised. i am unflappable. it's damn near impossible to shock me. seriously, i'm not making this up. i say this without a single trace of pride. because, seriously, once people know that about you, it's kind of like open season. and that's ok, and i'm happy to turn this bizarre talent into something that's helpful to people. i mean, it's not like it's some parlor trick i've worked to perfection over the last decade. it's just how things are. i mean, the shocks i incurred as a teenager and young adult, the things i heard and saw, have made it virtually impossible to knock me off my stride. redemptive experiences find us in the oddest of moments. it's just this really totally ordinary thing in my life, not altogether different from the trick i can do where i fit 38 whole grapes in my mouth, at one time.
i've heard and seen some things. the echos and prints of terminal illness and drug addiction, of watching my family spin and struggle, and find it's footing, again...those echos make it almost easy to hear everything that has come after it. and those echos make it easier to carry the things people leave with me, when they tell me their stories. in this life, my lesson is to carry stories, to hold them, to remember them, to protect the sanctity of the stories i get to hear. i didn't understand that about myself until i was 27 or 28...but i understand it, now. and even though some of those stories find their way to me in the most unusual of ways, they are, at the bottom, ordinary stories of ordinary lives. people are just people, and shit happens.
i love stories, even the sad and hard ones. once i've heard someone's story, or part of it (because who ever really knows the whole story of someone, other than G-d?) my perceptions of them rarely change. people are who they are, the details notwithstanding. G-d put something special, unique, beautiful, magic, and world-changing in each and every single one of us, and that can never be taken away, reassigned, or given up. we are born so extraordinarily ordinary. and all the ancilliary things that happen to us along the way shape us, for sure, but for most of us (clearly exempting shit i don't understand at all, like serial killers...or televangelists...), the changes and chances and little lives and deaths inside our big life, they can't touch the absolute beauty that G-d puts inside each of us, nourishes with the milk of human kindness, and the strange and awesome forces of grace and mercy.
the native americans (total badasses...navajo rugs are my new favorite analogy...) used spirals in their sacred art. the entoptic shapes you see behind your eyes, when you close them, or press them tightly, are sometimes spirals, too (and hatchmarks, etc). this life, this ordinary life, sits on a spiral. we will learn the same lesson, over and over, because that's the lesson we have to learn, the lesson G-d asked us to learn as we were put together inside of our mothers' bodies, a lesson about our brokenness, our wholeness, how to tell stories, how to hear them, when to love more deeply, and when to walk away. it looks different for everyone, but it's all the same ordinary lesson. and that's pretty wonderful, i think.
mil besos,
rmg
22 April 2010
throw down your arms
so this seems to be a season of acceptance. the time in my life where i literally and figuratively issue my unconditional and absolute surrender to a Power larger than myself. for someone who has spent the bulk of her life fighting like the dickens for the next thing, capitulation is a hard concept to grasp. it's incredible to realize that i don't have to fight, all the time. in fact, sometimes fighting is the exact opposite of what i should be doing, because in the midst of the fighting, you sometimes miss the little pieces of wonderful that can come along and suprise you.
case in point: if i play my cards right, and don't get busted for soliticing or anything really scandalous, and don't screw up my model lesson, i'll be teaching three classes at the day school connected to my church. HOLY CRAP. that's right...someone is letting me mold and shape young and impressionable minds. theology (DOUBLE HOLY CRAP!), journalism, and public speaking. and my boss is totally fine with it, thinks it's a super idea, and isn't going to cut my salary. TRIPLE HOLY CRAP, Y'ALL. and all of this comes on the heels of me literally laying in the middle of my bedroom, crying and asking G-d to just DO SOMETHING, because the last six months have been pretty miserable, work-wise. and i have been fighting, fighting, fighting. and all i had to do was lay down, and be willing to be still. funny how G-d always manages to do just the right thing when i get the hell out of the way.
but it's not just work that needs me to lay down and take instruction, to be humbled, and to be disciplined in a real and profound way. i talk big. i think bigger. and my dreams are beyond belief, somedays. and fighting with God about what i should/shouldn't have, and when and how i should have it isn't really helpful, or fun. and i'm over crying in the car, and in the bathroom, and on the phone. and you've all been reading about that, too. and there's really nothing new to say about that. so i'll just leave your imaginations running wild. but not too wild, i mean, this is ME we're talking about. and trust that if there were/are any hot dates, i'd be sharing them with all the interwebs, in pg-13 detail. no, it's more like i'm just laying down on the floor of my heart, accepting that i still have a lot of feelings and thoughts to work through, some old scars to heal over, and i know that when it's time, it'll be time. and it'll be for all the marbles, and i won't even have to wonder what the hell is happening, because it'll be happening. and that's enough to get me to the end of the day, today.
ramble much?
mil besos,
rmg
case in point: if i play my cards right, and don't get busted for soliticing or anything really scandalous, and don't screw up my model lesson, i'll be teaching three classes at the day school connected to my church. HOLY CRAP. that's right...someone is letting me mold and shape young and impressionable minds. theology (DOUBLE HOLY CRAP!), journalism, and public speaking. and my boss is totally fine with it, thinks it's a super idea, and isn't going to cut my salary. TRIPLE HOLY CRAP, Y'ALL. and all of this comes on the heels of me literally laying in the middle of my bedroom, crying and asking G-d to just DO SOMETHING, because the last six months have been pretty miserable, work-wise. and i have been fighting, fighting, fighting. and all i had to do was lay down, and be willing to be still. funny how G-d always manages to do just the right thing when i get the hell out of the way.
but it's not just work that needs me to lay down and take instruction, to be humbled, and to be disciplined in a real and profound way. i talk big. i think bigger. and my dreams are beyond belief, somedays. and fighting with God about what i should/shouldn't have, and when and how i should have it isn't really helpful, or fun. and i'm over crying in the car, and in the bathroom, and on the phone. and you've all been reading about that, too. and there's really nothing new to say about that. so i'll just leave your imaginations running wild. but not too wild, i mean, this is ME we're talking about. and trust that if there were/are any hot dates, i'd be sharing them with all the interwebs, in pg-13 detail. no, it's more like i'm just laying down on the floor of my heart, accepting that i still have a lot of feelings and thoughts to work through, some old scars to heal over, and i know that when it's time, it'll be time. and it'll be for all the marbles, and i won't even have to wonder what the hell is happening, because it'll be happening. and that's enough to get me to the end of the day, today.
ramble much?
mil besos,
rmg
08 April 2010
how this be
i imagine that if we all compared our inner-monologues, we would all be at least half-crazy. for instance, while i was waiting in the drive-thru at subway, i went from shaving my legs, to buying new shoes, to aristotle and current american politics in about 15 seconds. seriously.
for the last year, much of my prayer life has been focused around a prayer i read several years ago, by a man named mychal judge, who was the chaplain to the nyfd, and was the first registered casualty of 9/11. father mychal's prayer, the way i say it, goes like this:
"lord Jesus, help me to see what you want me to see. help me to hear what you want me to hear. help me to meet who you want me to meet, and help me to stay out of your way."
it's the first thing i pray in the mornings. it's the last thing i pray at night. i know that to learn what God wants me to learn, i have got to practice radical and absolute surrender, and to be radically compassionate to everyone i encounter. and that scares the absolute crap out of me. to know the power behind what i am saying, to understand the underneath meaning of absolute and unconditional surrender to the God who made me. i mean, it's not like you can really fight city hall, anyway. but being willing to go along for the ride, to abdicate my silly right to kick and scream and protest seems to be the key, lately.
all of which is to say, i really want to get married and have kids. and it's profoundly difficult to understand and appreciate that even though i may want that, it may not be what's in store. and i have to decide, every single day, if i'm going to be sad about what i think i want, or be expectant and excited about what God is doing, at this present moment. some days, it's chicken salad. some days, it's chicken shit. the jury is still out on today.
mil besos,
rmg
for the last year, much of my prayer life has been focused around a prayer i read several years ago, by a man named mychal judge, who was the chaplain to the nyfd, and was the first registered casualty of 9/11. father mychal's prayer, the way i say it, goes like this:
"lord Jesus, help me to see what you want me to see. help me to hear what you want me to hear. help me to meet who you want me to meet, and help me to stay out of your way."
it's the first thing i pray in the mornings. it's the last thing i pray at night. i know that to learn what God wants me to learn, i have got to practice radical and absolute surrender, and to be radically compassionate to everyone i encounter. and that scares the absolute crap out of me. to know the power behind what i am saying, to understand the underneath meaning of absolute and unconditional surrender to the God who made me. i mean, it's not like you can really fight city hall, anyway. but being willing to go along for the ride, to abdicate my silly right to kick and scream and protest seems to be the key, lately.
all of which is to say, i really want to get married and have kids. and it's profoundly difficult to understand and appreciate that even though i may want that, it may not be what's in store. and i have to decide, every single day, if i'm going to be sad about what i think i want, or be expectant and excited about what God is doing, at this present moment. some days, it's chicken salad. some days, it's chicken shit. the jury is still out on today.
mil besos,
rmg
30 March 2010
spring...lightly
it's been a long time since i've gone two months without a post. it's not for lack of trying, either. i think about posting something to the blog almost every day. but the fact of the matter is that i've been dealing with a monumental case of writer's block, and i've actually been kind of busy. writing about my life has taken a back seat to living it, and i think that's probably how it should be. however, living an unexamined life has never been one of my goals, and being self-aware is something i work on daily.
i keep reminding myself to look at the big picture. in fact, the phrase "big picture" has become my new mantra, the way "it is what it is" was the mantra a couple of years ago. sometimes, just saying "big picture" to myself is enough to stave off a crying fit, or make me laugh, or feel incredibly grateful. sometimes, "big picture" actually makes me want to barf. nevertheless, it's the mantra, for the moment, for better or worse.
this life is in a state of constant change and readjustment...people being born, people dying, people marrying, people divorcing, people moving closer or farther away. relationships are profoundly important, but the context in which we have them is important as well. sometimes, we all seem to be in the midst of readjustments, and it's hard to know where the hand-holds are. at least, that's how it's felt for me in the last month. change, like the tides, seems to rush in and rush back out, and i'm left picking through the debris on the shoreline, reminding myself that this little life and the little place i have in the universe is still here, even if the geography looks different than it did at Christmas, or my birthday. and it will look different all over again, in a few short weeks or months. that is life. this is my life. it's not meant to be static. that's why people painted epic moments on cave walls, on canvases, and take pictures now with digital cameras. because the movement is constant, and you don't need stephen hawking to tell you that to go back in time, you have to go back in space, too. and that, friends and neighbors, is pretty well impossible at this juncture.
i was driving home a couple of days ago, and looking at the wildflowers on the side of the road. i love wildflowers, and they are one of the reasons i moved back to texas almost ten years ago. one spring away from them was almost more than my sanity could bear. springtime is my favorite season...but i say that about all the seasons. this year, though, the colors seem to be shouting...the greens are greener, the blues are bluer, and the colors of the cows and sheep seem to sing a beautiful harmony that's unlike anything i've seen before. it's almost like seeing something for the first time.
i wonder if the ground hurts when the flowers begin to burst forth, the way a mother hurts when she brings a baby into the world? a precious and needful ache, an ache of completion and surrender and acceptance...a growing ache that has nothing and everything to do with loss and gain, of zero balance? in this life, birth is always a part of brokeness, and coming to terms with our pain, radically surrendering to it, breathing with it, and out of it is the only way we can really gain the big picture, i think.
maybe it's the spectre of holy week that has put me in the mind of loss being gain, in the shadow of the cross, and the long walk up the last hill. we live in a world of powerful opposites, of attractions and repulsions. and the more things change, the more they stay the same. God is good, all the time. God's ways are not my ways. God has nothing to do with fairness, only mercy and grace and love. for that, i am profoundly grateful.
mil besos,
rmg
i keep reminding myself to look at the big picture. in fact, the phrase "big picture" has become my new mantra, the way "it is what it is" was the mantra a couple of years ago. sometimes, just saying "big picture" to myself is enough to stave off a crying fit, or make me laugh, or feel incredibly grateful. sometimes, "big picture" actually makes me want to barf. nevertheless, it's the mantra, for the moment, for better or worse.
this life is in a state of constant change and readjustment...people being born, people dying, people marrying, people divorcing, people moving closer or farther away. relationships are profoundly important, but the context in which we have them is important as well. sometimes, we all seem to be in the midst of readjustments, and it's hard to know where the hand-holds are. at least, that's how it's felt for me in the last month. change, like the tides, seems to rush in and rush back out, and i'm left picking through the debris on the shoreline, reminding myself that this little life and the little place i have in the universe is still here, even if the geography looks different than it did at Christmas, or my birthday. and it will look different all over again, in a few short weeks or months. that is life. this is my life. it's not meant to be static. that's why people painted epic moments on cave walls, on canvases, and take pictures now with digital cameras. because the movement is constant, and you don't need stephen hawking to tell you that to go back in time, you have to go back in space, too. and that, friends and neighbors, is pretty well impossible at this juncture.
i was driving home a couple of days ago, and looking at the wildflowers on the side of the road. i love wildflowers, and they are one of the reasons i moved back to texas almost ten years ago. one spring away from them was almost more than my sanity could bear. springtime is my favorite season...but i say that about all the seasons. this year, though, the colors seem to be shouting...the greens are greener, the blues are bluer, and the colors of the cows and sheep seem to sing a beautiful harmony that's unlike anything i've seen before. it's almost like seeing something for the first time.
i wonder if the ground hurts when the flowers begin to burst forth, the way a mother hurts when she brings a baby into the world? a precious and needful ache, an ache of completion and surrender and acceptance...a growing ache that has nothing and everything to do with loss and gain, of zero balance? in this life, birth is always a part of brokeness, and coming to terms with our pain, radically surrendering to it, breathing with it, and out of it is the only way we can really gain the big picture, i think.
maybe it's the spectre of holy week that has put me in the mind of loss being gain, in the shadow of the cross, and the long walk up the last hill. we live in a world of powerful opposites, of attractions and repulsions. and the more things change, the more they stay the same. God is good, all the time. God's ways are not my ways. God has nothing to do with fairness, only mercy and grace and love. for that, i am profoundly grateful.
mil besos,
rmg
04 February 2010
naked singularity
from wikipedia.org:
In general relativity, a naked singularity is a gravitational singularity without an event horizon. The singularities inside black holes are always surrounded by an area which does not allow light to escape, and therefore cannot be directly observed. A naked singularity, by contrast, is observable from the outside.
i went to see one of my old people today. i see him every thursday, usually in the afternoon. but i had some extra time this morning, and i was already out on visits, anyway, so i went. it was not a good time. but, i did find out later that he was having some trouble with his blood sugar, and nothing seriously bad wrong was happening. he's fine.
what i saw in his room, or more accurately, what i heard, threw me for a loop of epic proportions. he was having a hard time breathing, and because of (unknown to me) the drop in bloodsugar, was kind of loopy and confused. he sounded like he was breathing through a hundred pounds of wet sand, and struggling to get the job done. the last breaths i heard come out of my father sounded just like that. i gave him communion, prayed with him, and left as quickly as i could. i called the office, and relayed the info that john was having a tough morning, and that it might be nice if a clergy person ran by to check on him later.
mostly, i think i just needed to hear a familiar voice and know that the person on the other end of the line was hearing what i was saying. luckily, my favorite co-worker took the call, and said the right things. and then asked if i was ok. and then i started getting teary. before, i was just freaking out quietly in my head, willing myself to calm the eff down, and not spiral. after i hung up the phone, i pulled into a parking lot, parked the car, put my head down, and promptly and efficiently lost my shit. for fifteen minutes. and then, i put on my big sunglasses, blew my nose, and went back to my office.
there are days when the weight of losing a father is especially hard to carry, and there are days when you can almost forget that the load is there. loss is an innate part of this life. it is inevitable. and sometimes, it's impossible to ignore. and sometimes, the sounds are deafening, and come at you in full decibels, demanding that you remember and feel all those sharp edges, again. it's like dropping a straight pin into a bag, and forgetting about it, until the day you go rooting in the bottom of the bag, and get the bastard lodged right in your cuticle. at least, that's how i try to make sense of the fact that even after thirteen years, death can still seem so fresh and terrible, all over again. it's frustrating. it was kind of scary, too. it's been a long time since i cried that hard over all of that. a very long time, indeed...years, maybe. but in a matter of 15 minutes on this rainy morning, i was 18 again, and in a parking lot, in another white car, sobbing into the steering wheel because my father was dead.
i'm ok. just needed to get it out.
mil besos,
rmg
In general relativity, a naked singularity is a gravitational singularity without an event horizon. The singularities inside black holes are always surrounded by an area which does not allow light to escape, and therefore cannot be directly observed. A naked singularity, by contrast, is observable from the outside.
i went to see one of my old people today. i see him every thursday, usually in the afternoon. but i had some extra time this morning, and i was already out on visits, anyway, so i went. it was not a good time. but, i did find out later that he was having some trouble with his blood sugar, and nothing seriously bad wrong was happening. he's fine.
what i saw in his room, or more accurately, what i heard, threw me for a loop of epic proportions. he was having a hard time breathing, and because of (unknown to me) the drop in bloodsugar, was kind of loopy and confused. he sounded like he was breathing through a hundred pounds of wet sand, and struggling to get the job done. the last breaths i heard come out of my father sounded just like that. i gave him communion, prayed with him, and left as quickly as i could. i called the office, and relayed the info that john was having a tough morning, and that it might be nice if a clergy person ran by to check on him later.
mostly, i think i just needed to hear a familiar voice and know that the person on the other end of the line was hearing what i was saying. luckily, my favorite co-worker took the call, and said the right things. and then asked if i was ok. and then i started getting teary. before, i was just freaking out quietly in my head, willing myself to calm the eff down, and not spiral. after i hung up the phone, i pulled into a parking lot, parked the car, put my head down, and promptly and efficiently lost my shit. for fifteen minutes. and then, i put on my big sunglasses, blew my nose, and went back to my office.
there are days when the weight of losing a father is especially hard to carry, and there are days when you can almost forget that the load is there. loss is an innate part of this life. it is inevitable. and sometimes, it's impossible to ignore. and sometimes, the sounds are deafening, and come at you in full decibels, demanding that you remember and feel all those sharp edges, again. it's like dropping a straight pin into a bag, and forgetting about it, until the day you go rooting in the bottom of the bag, and get the bastard lodged right in your cuticle. at least, that's how i try to make sense of the fact that even after thirteen years, death can still seem so fresh and terrible, all over again. it's frustrating. it was kind of scary, too. it's been a long time since i cried that hard over all of that. a very long time, indeed...years, maybe. but in a matter of 15 minutes on this rainy morning, i was 18 again, and in a parking lot, in another white car, sobbing into the steering wheel because my father was dead.
i'm ok. just needed to get it out.
mil besos,
rmg
01 February 2010
sounds like home
i'm consistantly amazed at the wisdom i ignored as a teenager. occasionally, that old wisdom comes screaming back into my ears, and oddly enough, is carried in my own voice.
i remember laying across my brass bed, all of fifteen years old, wondering what it all meant. and i remember hearing neil young in my stereo speakers. the fact that his voice is not the best, that his lyrics sometimes are cryptic and bizarre, that no one i knew was listening to him, that made neil young that much cooler to me. i can see myself sprawled against my pink-striped sheets, agonizing over my journal, and feeling the "hurt-so-good"-ness of "harvest", and knowing that it didn't matter that i didn't have words to put with any of my feelings. it was enough to just feel them.
there was a time in my life when i pretended that i didn't have crushes, or unrequited loves, or ridiculous "cinderella"-esque fantasies. for most of high school, i pretended to be above that kind of thing, at least in my head. and for most of my 20's, i just worked myself into such a frenzy about...work, that it didn't seem like i would ever settle down, and figure out what my heart really, really wanted.
and so, here i sit, at 31, feeling all these gross and disjointed and angsty feelings that i should have felt fifteen years ago. you can only hit the snooze bar on parts of your life so many times, before they crawl into your bed and demand that you deal with them like a sane and rational adult. it's a hard reality to finally see. i always took getting married and having kids for granted, like i wouldn't have to try and be present for those things to happen. i'm realizing more and more that the more cerebral i made my ideas of love and loving, the less and less real those ideas became.
i know a few things, on this cold and rainy day. i want to marry a nice man who loves Jesus. i want to have lots and lots of babies, and live in a house full of music and good smells. what i have right now, is a head and heart full of a 15 year old who wants to listen to her records and figure out what all this means. even thought the pink striped sheets are long gone, and all that impossible hair is being shot through with gray, i think i'm going to let the 15 year old drive the heart bus for a while, because the 31 year old driving the head bus is making a pig's ear out of this whole "adult relationship" thing.
mil besos,
rmg
i remember laying across my brass bed, all of fifteen years old, wondering what it all meant. and i remember hearing neil young in my stereo speakers. the fact that his voice is not the best, that his lyrics sometimes are cryptic and bizarre, that no one i knew was listening to him, that made neil young that much cooler to me. i can see myself sprawled against my pink-striped sheets, agonizing over my journal, and feeling the "hurt-so-good"-ness of "harvest", and knowing that it didn't matter that i didn't have words to put with any of my feelings. it was enough to just feel them.
there was a time in my life when i pretended that i didn't have crushes, or unrequited loves, or ridiculous "cinderella"-esque fantasies. for most of high school, i pretended to be above that kind of thing, at least in my head. and for most of my 20's, i just worked myself into such a frenzy about...work, that it didn't seem like i would ever settle down, and figure out what my heart really, really wanted.
and so, here i sit, at 31, feeling all these gross and disjointed and angsty feelings that i should have felt fifteen years ago. you can only hit the snooze bar on parts of your life so many times, before they crawl into your bed and demand that you deal with them like a sane and rational adult. it's a hard reality to finally see. i always took getting married and having kids for granted, like i wouldn't have to try and be present for those things to happen. i'm realizing more and more that the more cerebral i made my ideas of love and loving, the less and less real those ideas became.
i know a few things, on this cold and rainy day. i want to marry a nice man who loves Jesus. i want to have lots and lots of babies, and live in a house full of music and good smells. what i have right now, is a head and heart full of a 15 year old who wants to listen to her records and figure out what all this means. even thought the pink striped sheets are long gone, and all that impossible hair is being shot through with gray, i think i'm going to let the 15 year old drive the heart bus for a while, because the 31 year old driving the head bus is making a pig's ear out of this whole "adult relationship" thing.
mil besos,
rmg
21 January 2010
...and i feel fine...
so in the span of less than two hours, two people i adore and who are totally unrelated to each other, asked me about 2012 and what i thought about it. crazy, huh? if i'm honest with myself, i really don't think it's crazy, at all, and is probably one of those little synchronicities that need to be dealt with, in some form or fashion.
it's no secret that the last year has been a real struggle for me, both personally and professionally. it's no secret that the world is changing, is getting exponentially smaller and larger at the same time. there are no secrets. and i don't think there are accidents, either. sure, there are things that defy explanation or reason, but that dosen't mean they don't have some greater good/deeper meaning attached to them. of all the things i've ever quit believing, waste has been the easiest one to cast aside. i don't believe in waste, and the belief in accidents allows for that. but i digress...
2012...possibly one of john cusak's worst movie choices...that hurt to type. i think that's the worst thing i can say about 2012, with any veracity. i mean, talking about what might or might happen when the Long Calendar runs out makes about as much sense as talking about what might or might not happen tomorrow. it's another day. and all the prognostication about the end of the world, cataclysms of epic proportions, and the ultimate doom of humanity seems a little ridiculous, if you ask me. it's not for me to know. and even if i did know it, what's to be done about it?
in the final analysis (and after all, isn't that what all the fuss with 2012 is focused on), everyone's world ends, sooner or later. for some people, it will be today, or was last week, or will be a hundred years from now. how we tell our stories, how we tell the Story of G-d, what words we use, how we find a way to hold Jesus's hand...those are the details that should interest us, should drive us forward, should compell us to love each other and our little lives a little bit more, every day. when we get bogged down in when the end of the world really happens, who gets rewarded or punished, we lose sight of the life we have to live TODAY, in the most ordinary and trascendent of ways.
i thought about what i would do differently if i knew i only had 24 months left on the game clock. things i've never seen, or done, or experienced that i thought were important went flashing through my head first. and then i thought about things i've done that i'd like to do, again. and then i realized that if i knew i only had 24 months left on the clock, i wouldn't do anything differently, not really. there is a lot left to learn in my little life, in my insane job, with my amazing family, and from my incredible hedge of friends. why would i leave that for a minute to go running off someplace else? so maybe i'd listen harder, ask better questions, be nicer than i absolutely had to be. i'd paint once a week. i'd write more letters. but that's about all. and those are things i've been working on doing, anyway.
the end of the world is not my perview. it's not something i think i should think about, or dwell on. my job is to live into the Gospel, and to sometimes use words; to praise God, love people, and use things well. i'm content to let G-d, who is doing far more than we could ask or imagine, handle the rest.
mil besos,
rmg
it's no secret that the last year has been a real struggle for me, both personally and professionally. it's no secret that the world is changing, is getting exponentially smaller and larger at the same time. there are no secrets. and i don't think there are accidents, either. sure, there are things that defy explanation or reason, but that dosen't mean they don't have some greater good/deeper meaning attached to them. of all the things i've ever quit believing, waste has been the easiest one to cast aside. i don't believe in waste, and the belief in accidents allows for that. but i digress...
2012...possibly one of john cusak's worst movie choices...that hurt to type. i think that's the worst thing i can say about 2012, with any veracity. i mean, talking about what might or might happen when the Long Calendar runs out makes about as much sense as talking about what might or might not happen tomorrow. it's another day. and all the prognostication about the end of the world, cataclysms of epic proportions, and the ultimate doom of humanity seems a little ridiculous, if you ask me. it's not for me to know. and even if i did know it, what's to be done about it?
in the final analysis (and after all, isn't that what all the fuss with 2012 is focused on), everyone's world ends, sooner or later. for some people, it will be today, or was last week, or will be a hundred years from now. how we tell our stories, how we tell the Story of G-d, what words we use, how we find a way to hold Jesus's hand...those are the details that should interest us, should drive us forward, should compell us to love each other and our little lives a little bit more, every day. when we get bogged down in when the end of the world really happens, who gets rewarded or punished, we lose sight of the life we have to live TODAY, in the most ordinary and trascendent of ways.
i thought about what i would do differently if i knew i only had 24 months left on the game clock. things i've never seen, or done, or experienced that i thought were important went flashing through my head first. and then i thought about things i've done that i'd like to do, again. and then i realized that if i knew i only had 24 months left on the clock, i wouldn't do anything differently, not really. there is a lot left to learn in my little life, in my insane job, with my amazing family, and from my incredible hedge of friends. why would i leave that for a minute to go running off someplace else? so maybe i'd listen harder, ask better questions, be nicer than i absolutely had to be. i'd paint once a week. i'd write more letters. but that's about all. and those are things i've been working on doing, anyway.
the end of the world is not my perview. it's not something i think i should think about, or dwell on. my job is to live into the Gospel, and to sometimes use words; to praise God, love people, and use things well. i'm content to let G-d, who is doing far more than we could ask or imagine, handle the rest.
mil besos,
rmg
17 December 2009
prime
31...wow. i'm here, and i must say...i love it. i really do. it's an incredible blessing to wake up in the mornings, and not roll over and start crying, or be immediately and devastatingly disappointed in who you see in the mirror. for the first time, i feel entirely myself. and i realize that sounds like such a strange thing to say...i mean, it's not like i've undertaken some bizarre change. i think i've just come to an understanding with G-d, the universe, and myself.
to be able to see myself as G-d's creature, something beloved, that is apart from who i am in my family, to my friends, at my work...to realize that i am wholly pleasing, just on my own, because Jesus loves me into that, is fantastic. and it makes the fact that i cried my way through this summer, spent a lot of time being quiet, and have radically adjusted my expectations on every single level in my life worth everthing. to feel safe, saved, and free is a wonderful thing. it even makes the gray hairs that seem to show up with more and more regularity beautiful to me.
i've been reading a lot, as always. and i've been reading a pretty wide range of material...fiction, biography, science, wikipedia, etc. i recently finished "a brief history of time", by stephen hawking. it's supposed to be a book on quantum physics for the layperson. i read the whole thing, cover to cover. i understood every word on the page, but i'm still not entirely sure what i read, or anything at all about quantum mechanics. but i have to tell you that what i did come away with was a profound and deep appreciation for this amazing Creation, and am in awe of the Creator.
some people read physics, study science, and believe that they have nothing to do with G-d. i suppose that's true if one's perspective of G-d is limited to devine parental figure. i don't want a G-d that small...and fail to see the point in having one that small. G-d is big. and in a real sense, i connected the idea of G-d and the universe in some new ways. for instance, did you know that the universe has no edge, and no center? the universe is expanding at the exact right speed to not collapse in on itself. time and space move constantly, so you'd never really be able to travel back in time, unless you could also travel back in space. that can't be accidental. you really and truly never cross the same river twice...not the guadalupe or the rubicon. and i think that's kind of incredible.
i've thought for a long, long time that my greatest strength was my endurance. maybe that's not true. maybe it's not enough to be able to bite your lip and get through whatever life is handing to you. i've been trying more and more not to just bite my lip, but to have the grace to look around, and realize that life is happening all around me, beauty is waiting to be seen, comfort is waiting around ever corner (to recieve, as much as to give), and i will never pass this way, again.
to be fully present, and fully invested in being fully present is hard to do. we live in a world of bells and whistles and shiny things. we live in a world focused on the future...whether that's the next political cycle, the next pay check, the end of the mayan sun clock, etc. what we forget is that if you aren't living this moment, right to the brim, you're missing out on something that you can't ever get back, that you can't even imagine. and i don't want to do that anymore. i want to live out loud, in every possible color and flavor, while all the speakers and colors and flavors are available. i don't want to waste time wishing for things, or hoping for things. i'd rather spend the time being grateful for what's in front of me, around me, beside me, and know that all of those things and people and experiences are a gracious plenty.
the land of prime...where a number is divisible by itself and one, and nothing else...i like this place. i like how it feels to be here, even the sharp edges. i'm profoundly grateful that it's cold, that it's Christmas, that my family and friends are happy and healthy. i'm thrilled by engagement announcements, shower plans, holding babies, opening cards, and sending emails. every day is such a blessing to me. to be divisible by nothing by G-d, nothing but love, nothing but hope, and peace, and joy...prime is good place to be.
mil besos,
rmg
to be able to see myself as G-d's creature, something beloved, that is apart from who i am in my family, to my friends, at my work...to realize that i am wholly pleasing, just on my own, because Jesus loves me into that, is fantastic. and it makes the fact that i cried my way through this summer, spent a lot of time being quiet, and have radically adjusted my expectations on every single level in my life worth everthing. to feel safe, saved, and free is a wonderful thing. it even makes the gray hairs that seem to show up with more and more regularity beautiful to me.
i've been reading a lot, as always. and i've been reading a pretty wide range of material...fiction, biography, science, wikipedia, etc. i recently finished "a brief history of time", by stephen hawking. it's supposed to be a book on quantum physics for the layperson. i read the whole thing, cover to cover. i understood every word on the page, but i'm still not entirely sure what i read, or anything at all about quantum mechanics. but i have to tell you that what i did come away with was a profound and deep appreciation for this amazing Creation, and am in awe of the Creator.
some people read physics, study science, and believe that they have nothing to do with G-d. i suppose that's true if one's perspective of G-d is limited to devine parental figure. i don't want a G-d that small...and fail to see the point in having one that small. G-d is big. and in a real sense, i connected the idea of G-d and the universe in some new ways. for instance, did you know that the universe has no edge, and no center? the universe is expanding at the exact right speed to not collapse in on itself. time and space move constantly, so you'd never really be able to travel back in time, unless you could also travel back in space. that can't be accidental. you really and truly never cross the same river twice...not the guadalupe or the rubicon. and i think that's kind of incredible.
i've thought for a long, long time that my greatest strength was my endurance. maybe that's not true. maybe it's not enough to be able to bite your lip and get through whatever life is handing to you. i've been trying more and more not to just bite my lip, but to have the grace to look around, and realize that life is happening all around me, beauty is waiting to be seen, comfort is waiting around ever corner (to recieve, as much as to give), and i will never pass this way, again.
to be fully present, and fully invested in being fully present is hard to do. we live in a world of bells and whistles and shiny things. we live in a world focused on the future...whether that's the next political cycle, the next pay check, the end of the mayan sun clock, etc. what we forget is that if you aren't living this moment, right to the brim, you're missing out on something that you can't ever get back, that you can't even imagine. and i don't want to do that anymore. i want to live out loud, in every possible color and flavor, while all the speakers and colors and flavors are available. i don't want to waste time wishing for things, or hoping for things. i'd rather spend the time being grateful for what's in front of me, around me, beside me, and know that all of those things and people and experiences are a gracious plenty.
the land of prime...where a number is divisible by itself and one, and nothing else...i like this place. i like how it feels to be here, even the sharp edges. i'm profoundly grateful that it's cold, that it's Christmas, that my family and friends are happy and healthy. i'm thrilled by engagement announcements, shower plans, holding babies, opening cards, and sending emails. every day is such a blessing to me. to be divisible by nothing by G-d, nothing but love, nothing but hope, and peace, and joy...prime is good place to be.
mil besos,
rmg
09 November 2009
variations on a theme
so much of what i remember about my childhood can be distilled down to things that happened in just a few rooms. my bedroom (of course, hosed down in pink toile and covered with clothes i never quite managed to put up) in our old house, which i feel like i lived in for a thousand years, but really only lived in for just over eight, was the center of my universe. my mother's kitchen, blue and always full, was the place i picked up and dropped off information. our little breakfast nook, where i took nourishment, where we talked about current events, where we fought, where we ate every day, with windows on two sides, seemed like one of the safest places on earth. my father's study was much like my mother's kitchen, in my mind, except it wasn't blue at all, and always smelled like "chaps" cologne and pipe tobacco...i picked up and dropped off information there, as well as being called to the carpet for having a smart mouth, etc. the room i remember today was the family room...
i can still feel the heat of the day coming off the glass blocks, and i can feel the nap of the rug under my legs, which were almost always crossed indian-style, sitting slightly to the left and in front of my father's brown upholstered recliner. behind me, my brother sits in the wing chair, or just behind me on the rug, playing with leggos or micro-machines, or something that screams "hi, i'm seven, and i'm here to make your life a living hell." my mother sits on the couch, at the back of the room, working on a butterfly-themed afghan for my bed. and we're all watching the news, which is weird, because it's the middle of the evening, and shouldn't we all be watching something inane like "Growing Pains"? but we're not. we are definately watching the news. (actually, it's more like The News, because Peter Jennings is Reporting, like God intended. ) and my parents look very nostaligic.
i can see the men climbing on top of the wall, just in front of the brandenberg gate, the checkpoint i heard them call "charlie" in the weeks leading up this night. they have crowbars and hammers and sparklers. the noise coming through the screen is amazing...horns honking, people shouting and singing and crying and calling out the names of loved ones. there are fireworks. there are pictures of presidents, and soundbites, and i hear the one about "mr. gorbechev, tear down this wall" and i remembered watching that bit of news in our old house. Peter Jennings keeps talking about how historic this is. my parents remind me about the olympics, and how now there will only be one germany, and we won't have to feel sorry for the poor east german athletes, anymore, because they don't have to be communists and live away from their families, anymore. and sit there, in our house in brady, about ten million light years away from berlin, and i watch history. i remember sitting there, and reminding myself to remember this. remember that this happened. remember that you had a lump in your eleven year old throat, but couldn't really figure out why. remember.
i remember another day, about ten million light years away from brady, and berlin, and remembering things. i can see myself walking into another museum couryard, just about like every museum courtyard i've walked into since i moved to this city of marble and exhaust fumes. and i see slabs of concrete, replete with graffiti, with stubs of rebar showing, screaming in the silence of masonry that Things Happened. and i put my hands on the mute concrete and i remember the night i saw this wall come down. i remember all the things i learned about it. i remember telling myself to remember that night. and i put my hands out, to touch the silent stones, and i weep with the weight of remembering, and the joy of it, too.
today, i sat down to remember, again. i'm not weeping, today. but i am profoundly joyful, profoundly grateful, profoundly hopeful that the human experience can include the redemptive work of tearing down unjust and ungodly and unneeded walls. i remember that love is a powerful force, but a power that is never bent to dominate. i remember that love wins. love is what tears down walls, not crowbars or dynamite. and that's pretty news-worthy, i think.
mil besos,
rmg
05 October 2009
post it notes i wish i'd left for myself to find on the bathroom mirror at two am on days when i can't seem to sleep
dance naked in the rain every single chance you get.
one of the perks of having a privacy fence is just that: privacy.
in the small scope of this life, you will be born a thousand times, but you only have to die once.
letting the rain wash you into the next iteration is important, as important as the waters that washed over you as you were born fresh into the world, mother-naked and blinded by the light, squalling and covered in remnants of a life you will never remember. this dance is important. the steps don't make any difference, nor does the color of paint, or the words and worlds you paint with them. but the dancing is important-vitally so.
you will dance, just like rumi said, in your blood and your bandages. you will be reborn and learn that God forgives you completely, just like Jesus said. you will look at the world in wide-eyed wonder, like you've never seen it before, smelling polyphenols and ozone, and hoping to God that the neighbors aren't up late and looking out their top story windows. but there's a part of you that could care less if they do see you. this is your experience. this is your dance, and there's never been one like it, and there will never be anything close to it, ever again. self-consciousness is a burden too heavy to bear when you're in that alone and not-alone place with God. you will shed old skin, and understand snakes in a way you thought impossible.
when you find yourself dancing, you will realize that you don't believe in words like "impossible", or "war". the only things you think of, the only mantra you can find, the only words that will escape your lips will be all about love, mercy, peace, and hope. the rest of the words don't mean anything, in that context. when you dance, you will know that simple and complicated fact down to the bottoms of your bare feet, caressed by the darkening mulch, making those red toenails you sport 365 days out of the year jump out darker in the contrast. you'll dance to the music you love, whether it's coming from your stereo, or rumbling out of the sky.
this is your communion. this is your holy moment. these are the words of institution. this is your wailing wall, your holy of holies, your tabernacle, your mt. horeb, your singing praises on trail out of babylon. and it won't matter that some people will think you are a heretic, an exhibitionist, a crazy. because when you dance naked in the rain, it all makes sense. all the colors bleed to green and gray, to black and silver, and darkest blue, and the color of water that holds them all together, and even at night, you can imagine the rainbow of promise that is lingering and wooing the world back to wholeness, somewhere. when you dance, you put to sleep all the nay-sayers, the down-keepers, the ancient and unrequited love, and the longing for small children of your own. when you dance, you know that you are what God made you to be--unique, free, happy, grateful, redeemed, adorded, forgiven, loved, and at peace. the rest of what you might or might not ever be doesn't even start to matter while your feet are moving and your body is swaying. this a good thing to know.
rain is forcasted all week. blessed be.
mil besos,
rmg
one of the perks of having a privacy fence is just that: privacy.
in the small scope of this life, you will be born a thousand times, but you only have to die once.
letting the rain wash you into the next iteration is important, as important as the waters that washed over you as you were born fresh into the world, mother-naked and blinded by the light, squalling and covered in remnants of a life you will never remember. this dance is important. the steps don't make any difference, nor does the color of paint, or the words and worlds you paint with them. but the dancing is important-vitally so.
you will dance, just like rumi said, in your blood and your bandages. you will be reborn and learn that God forgives you completely, just like Jesus said. you will look at the world in wide-eyed wonder, like you've never seen it before, smelling polyphenols and ozone, and hoping to God that the neighbors aren't up late and looking out their top story windows. but there's a part of you that could care less if they do see you. this is your experience. this is your dance, and there's never been one like it, and there will never be anything close to it, ever again. self-consciousness is a burden too heavy to bear when you're in that alone and not-alone place with God. you will shed old skin, and understand snakes in a way you thought impossible.
when you find yourself dancing, you will realize that you don't believe in words like "impossible", or "war". the only things you think of, the only mantra you can find, the only words that will escape your lips will be all about love, mercy, peace, and hope. the rest of the words don't mean anything, in that context. when you dance, you will know that simple and complicated fact down to the bottoms of your bare feet, caressed by the darkening mulch, making those red toenails you sport 365 days out of the year jump out darker in the contrast. you'll dance to the music you love, whether it's coming from your stereo, or rumbling out of the sky.
this is your communion. this is your holy moment. these are the words of institution. this is your wailing wall, your holy of holies, your tabernacle, your mt. horeb, your singing praises on trail out of babylon. and it won't matter that some people will think you are a heretic, an exhibitionist, a crazy. because when you dance naked in the rain, it all makes sense. all the colors bleed to green and gray, to black and silver, and darkest blue, and the color of water that holds them all together, and even at night, you can imagine the rainbow of promise that is lingering and wooing the world back to wholeness, somewhere. when you dance, you put to sleep all the nay-sayers, the down-keepers, the ancient and unrequited love, and the longing for small children of your own. when you dance, you know that you are what God made you to be--unique, free, happy, grateful, redeemed, adorded, forgiven, loved, and at peace. the rest of what you might or might not ever be doesn't even start to matter while your feet are moving and your body is swaying. this a good thing to know.
rain is forcasted all week. blessed be.
mil besos,
rmg
28 August 2009
episode 300, in which rachiepoo tells you a story of two deserts.
this is my 300th post. for some reason, that seems like a really big deal to me, and at the same time, seems kind of ridiculous. i seem to be of two minds about a lot of things lately. duality, causality, context, and synchronicity seem to be the themes running in my life, through my brain, and in the world that i know, right now. and to tell the truth, i've never been more ready to see what comes next.
The first time I got lost in the desert, I was with two of my girlfriends from college. We went to the desert to camp, to see new things, swim in new pools, climb new mountains. We went to the desert to shed old skin, to tell each other sad things, to tell each other hopeful things, to laugh, to cry, and to stare up at the stars, with the asphalt hot against the skin of our backs, on the high-line drive, where no cars were allowed after dark, to pass cigarettes and wine glasses back and forth, to sleep harder than we had slept in months. That we got lost wasn’t so scary, because we were together, and we were experienced campers. What was scary was that we were so close to not being lost, at all, but just couldn’t seem to quite get to where we needed to be. I think the edge of missing the mark, just missing by a hair, is so much harder than being absolutely annihilated. So I felt about being lost. I knew we would eventually end up where we needed to be. I just didn’t know how long we would have to wander.
June in those desert mountains was a beauty to behold. Everything was still flush from the spring, ripening to summer, like a pretty girl after a nice kiss. All the shades of green, hit randomly with pinks, yellows, occasional brilliant orange, and the whiteblack blur of quail startled out of their hiding places said that the desert is far from a dead place. Coming through Wild Rose Pass, with San Solomon Springs behind us, I knew that we had come to a place where we could find what we needed, and leave behind what needed to be left.
Sometimes, I think what you leave in a place is as important as what you take away. I mean that literally, as well as figuratively. We tried never to leave physical evidence that we had been someplace when we were camping, aside from the park-installed fire ring. But we did leave a lot behind, in the ashes inside that fire ring. We each left something we needed to get rid of. For me, it was realizing that a guy I had only gone on a couple of dates with was really bad news, and even though he was the best kisser I’d ever met, I knew that nothing about where we were going was good. God, it was hard to say that…was harder still to hear it said back to me by my sister-friends. But I needed to say it, and I needed people who loved me enough to hold me accountable to hear it.
For fifty-odd days this summer, the temperature has been over 100 degrees. It’s starting to mess with my head. I feel like I’m dealing with the worse case of pms in my whole life, and the period to beat all periods is hours from beginning, wreaking an almighty havoc upon my life the likes of which I have never imagined, much less experienced. Aggression seems to simmer just below the surface, like I could go out and pick a fight with Gandhi or push down a blind kid. I feel aggressive, paranoid, anxious, and maybe a little bit strung out. All the brown lawns and the blinding light of the sun are buzzing in some bizarre bass line that makes my eyes tear up. I don’t even want to drive around my favorite neighborhoods and look at houses…it just makes me want to cry.
I wake up and pray for rain. I go to sleep, and I pray for rain. I wake up and go to the bathroom, and I pray for rain. I toyed with the idea of putting my underpants in a ziplock bag in the freezer, like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. I didn’t do it. And then the other day, I was really in a bad way, and found myself thinking about that trip to the mountains with Kristen and Laura. I thought about the clarity of thought I had on that trip, I thought of what I left behind, what I took away, how I feel right now.
And I realize that what I’m feeling now is a lot like what I felt four summers ago, when we went the long way around the mountain. The difference is that I’m not on vacation, and the bulk of this little sojourn has been on my own, in a manner of speaking. Being in the desert of this summer has been profoundly difficult. It’s also been incredibly beautiful.
Last night, for no good reason other than God's own great mercy (and isn't that the best reason of all), it rained in this desert of a city, parched and languishing in the last month of the longest summer of my life, and the only one I'll live as a 30 year old. As I drove down 281, back to my little house, and my fat cat, I was running the windshield wipers at full speed. And when I got home, and walked through my back door, I could smell my rosemary and lavendar giving up their sweet fragrance, I could smell the ozone in the air from the light show in the clouds, and I was so very happy. I pulled the clip out of my hair (which I can't wait to cut...ten inches for little bald kids is a LOT of hair, and I'm almostbutnotquite there yet), shook the day's tension out of my shoulders, and danced. Rumi, one of my favorite poets, said this: "Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you're perfectly free."
I imagined that this year of my life would bring change, mostly internal. I planned it that way. I promised myself that by the time I turned 31, things that I struggled with in my life, for huge parts of my life, would be confronted and dealt with in healthy ways. The list isn't complete, not by a long shot, but I've made a dent. I've allowed myself to start thinking about going back to school, about believing in the strength of my own convictions, of the sanctity of real and profound surrender. I am still who I was on the last day of my 29th year, who I have always been, down to my toes. But I have shed some skin, drug the dead parts over and over the rocks in my path, and left the bits that didn't belong to me anymore for someone else to wonder about. The marvel of all of this to me is that so much of this has taken place inside myself, inside my head, and heart, and soul. Most of the conversations I've had have been just between me and God. To say that I am grateful for this experience, even the things I've said goodbye to in my heart of hearts, would be a gross understatement. There's not a word I know to make it big enough.
I remember when Laura and Kristen and I figured out that we were right where we needed to be to pick up a trail back to our tent. The relief I felt was almost overwhelming. I teared up a little bit. I am tearing up a little thinking about it right now, four years after the fact. We shambled down the switchbacks, trying not to run, trying to conserve our energy, and I was trying not to show how really scared I had been. I drank three 32 ounce bottles of water until I finally had to go to the bathroom. We had to hang our clothes out on the campsite clothesline to dry them, and I was suprised they didn't have salt flakes on them once they were finally dry. But that night, by the fire, and later that night up on the highline drive, we laughed and laughed and told story after story, just happy to be safe, and not lost, and still on our adventure.
I feel like that now. I feel like I have been in the desert. Like I took the long way around the mountain. Like I am most definately not lost, anymore. And I am still on my adventure.
mil besos,
rmg
The first time I got lost in the desert, I was with two of my girlfriends from college. We went to the desert to camp, to see new things, swim in new pools, climb new mountains. We went to the desert to shed old skin, to tell each other sad things, to tell each other hopeful things, to laugh, to cry, and to stare up at the stars, with the asphalt hot against the skin of our backs, on the high-line drive, where no cars were allowed after dark, to pass cigarettes and wine glasses back and forth, to sleep harder than we had slept in months. That we got lost wasn’t so scary, because we were together, and we were experienced campers. What was scary was that we were so close to not being lost, at all, but just couldn’t seem to quite get to where we needed to be. I think the edge of missing the mark, just missing by a hair, is so much harder than being absolutely annihilated. So I felt about being lost. I knew we would eventually end up where we needed to be. I just didn’t know how long we would have to wander.
June in those desert mountains was a beauty to behold. Everything was still flush from the spring, ripening to summer, like a pretty girl after a nice kiss. All the shades of green, hit randomly with pinks, yellows, occasional brilliant orange, and the whiteblack blur of quail startled out of their hiding places said that the desert is far from a dead place. Coming through Wild Rose Pass, with San Solomon Springs behind us, I knew that we had come to a place where we could find what we needed, and leave behind what needed to be left.
Sometimes, I think what you leave in a place is as important as what you take away. I mean that literally, as well as figuratively. We tried never to leave physical evidence that we had been someplace when we were camping, aside from the park-installed fire ring. But we did leave a lot behind, in the ashes inside that fire ring. We each left something we needed to get rid of. For me, it was realizing that a guy I had only gone on a couple of dates with was really bad news, and even though he was the best kisser I’d ever met, I knew that nothing about where we were going was good. God, it was hard to say that…was harder still to hear it said back to me by my sister-friends. But I needed to say it, and I needed people who loved me enough to hold me accountable to hear it.
For fifty-odd days this summer, the temperature has been over 100 degrees. It’s starting to mess with my head. I feel like I’m dealing with the worse case of pms in my whole life, and the period to beat all periods is hours from beginning, wreaking an almighty havoc upon my life the likes of which I have never imagined, much less experienced. Aggression seems to simmer just below the surface, like I could go out and pick a fight with Gandhi or push down a blind kid. I feel aggressive, paranoid, anxious, and maybe a little bit strung out. All the brown lawns and the blinding light of the sun are buzzing in some bizarre bass line that makes my eyes tear up. I don’t even want to drive around my favorite neighborhoods and look at houses…it just makes me want to cry.
I wake up and pray for rain. I go to sleep, and I pray for rain. I wake up and go to the bathroom, and I pray for rain. I toyed with the idea of putting my underpants in a ziplock bag in the freezer, like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. I didn’t do it. And then the other day, I was really in a bad way, and found myself thinking about that trip to the mountains with Kristen and Laura. I thought about the clarity of thought I had on that trip, I thought of what I left behind, what I took away, how I feel right now.
And I realize that what I’m feeling now is a lot like what I felt four summers ago, when we went the long way around the mountain. The difference is that I’m not on vacation, and the bulk of this little sojourn has been on my own, in a manner of speaking. Being in the desert of this summer has been profoundly difficult. It’s also been incredibly beautiful.
Last night, for no good reason other than God's own great mercy (and isn't that the best reason of all), it rained in this desert of a city, parched and languishing in the last month of the longest summer of my life, and the only one I'll live as a 30 year old. As I drove down 281, back to my little house, and my fat cat, I was running the windshield wipers at full speed. And when I got home, and walked through my back door, I could smell my rosemary and lavendar giving up their sweet fragrance, I could smell the ozone in the air from the light show in the clouds, and I was so very happy. I pulled the clip out of my hair (which I can't wait to cut...ten inches for little bald kids is a LOT of hair, and I'm almostbutnotquite there yet), shook the day's tension out of my shoulders, and danced. Rumi, one of my favorite poets, said this: "Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you're perfectly free."
I imagined that this year of my life would bring change, mostly internal. I planned it that way. I promised myself that by the time I turned 31, things that I struggled with in my life, for huge parts of my life, would be confronted and dealt with in healthy ways. The list isn't complete, not by a long shot, but I've made a dent. I've allowed myself to start thinking about going back to school, about believing in the strength of my own convictions, of the sanctity of real and profound surrender. I am still who I was on the last day of my 29th year, who I have always been, down to my toes. But I have shed some skin, drug the dead parts over and over the rocks in my path, and left the bits that didn't belong to me anymore for someone else to wonder about. The marvel of all of this to me is that so much of this has taken place inside myself, inside my head, and heart, and soul. Most of the conversations I've had have been just between me and God. To say that I am grateful for this experience, even the things I've said goodbye to in my heart of hearts, would be a gross understatement. There's not a word I know to make it big enough.
I remember when Laura and Kristen and I figured out that we were right where we needed to be to pick up a trail back to our tent. The relief I felt was almost overwhelming. I teared up a little bit. I am tearing up a little thinking about it right now, four years after the fact. We shambled down the switchbacks, trying not to run, trying to conserve our energy, and I was trying not to show how really scared I had been. I drank three 32 ounce bottles of water until I finally had to go to the bathroom. We had to hang our clothes out on the campsite clothesline to dry them, and I was suprised they didn't have salt flakes on them once they were finally dry. But that night, by the fire, and later that night up on the highline drive, we laughed and laughed and told story after story, just happy to be safe, and not lost, and still on our adventure.
I feel like that now. I feel like I have been in the desert. Like I took the long way around the mountain. Like I am most definately not lost, anymore. And I am still on my adventure.
mil besos,
rmg
21 August 2009
most favorite thing
mom and grammy bought me an adirondack chair as an early birthday gift. i put it together as soon as i got it, and literally sit in it every night. best present, maybe ever.
it's a lovely night.
mil besos,
rmg
it's a lovely night.
mil besos,
rmg
10 August 2009
the not-oprah list of my favorite things of summer
in no particular order...
*thighmaster-- i bought one for $5 on amazon.com, and paid $15 to have shipped. i have used this thing RELIGIOUSLY, and am totally amazed. seriously.
*psalm 91.-- i read it at least once a day. this is my security blanket, at the moment. and i revel in it.
*long hot baths with epsom salts
*the dark tower books-- which i read from beginning to end in five weeks, because i love love love that story.
*fiesta dress that i wear to the pool. maybe my favorite piece of clothing, because it's green and has a peacock on it. close second is the wonderful and beautiful gauze shirt mom bought for me last month. it's in heavy rotation, at the moment.
* watermelon-- i can't remember the last time i craved a food, and this summer, i just can't seem to eat enough of this lucious treat. i honestly think that watermelon and the steadfast love of the baby Jesus have kept me sane this summer.
*old movies-- the ones that seem to explain how life is, right at this moment, and the people in my life who know just what those movies are, and just which line to say at the perfect moment. "melrose place is a really good show..."
*my cell phone and text messages-- i know, i know, i know. but my life would be so much more complicated without them. i love my cell phone. it's outdated, doesn't do anything fun, and is probably due for an oil change soon, but i just don't care. i love my phone.
*music-- like a super lot. all day long. all the time. and if i'm not listening to music, i'm thinking about listening to music. this summer's stand outs have been paul simon, emmy lou harris, bob marley (always a summer classic), lady gaga (that hurt to type), the jayhawks, led zepplin, the new pornographers, and (as always) a lot lot lot of bob dylan.
*kiss my face peaceful patchouli lotion and soap--even though one of my besties says that patchouli smells like a dirty hippy's armpit, i just don't care. i love how it smells, and i love these products. it's the simple things that get you through the most mundane days. also, an honorable mention goes out to ZUM bar soap, also in patchouli. i love this stuff.
*jinx the cat--he is the face i come home to at the end of the day, and even on days when i am not my best, jinx is always happy to see me, happy to love me, happy to share my space. he is a huge blessing in my life. i have learned more about unconditional love this summer than i ever imagined was possible, and a great majority of that learning has come while spending time with my cat. G-d knew what needed to happen when jinx came to live with me...
*movie popcorn--i learned that if i'm not hungry for watermelon, and just can't get a handle on what i want, it's probably movie popcorn. weird, right?
*this blog--this has been my mental refuge during this long, hot, incredibly weird summer. it's sometimes hard to remember that this summer has had some very happy and unexpected miracles all over it, because what screams loudest this summer is that a lot of things and people (not just famous ones) have died...i mean, just look at the lawns in my neighborhood. but i know that when i sit down to write, something fresh always comes to take the dry taste away, even if what i'm saying is hard. the reality of writing down how i feel, what i think, what's happening, even if it's veiled or abstract or in third person is just so good to feel, even when the feelings are intense and sometimes painful. thank you for reading.
mil besos,
rmg
*thighmaster-- i bought one for $5 on amazon.com, and paid $15 to have shipped. i have used this thing RELIGIOUSLY, and am totally amazed. seriously.
*psalm 91.-- i read it at least once a day. this is my security blanket, at the moment. and i revel in it.
*long hot baths with epsom salts
*the dark tower books-- which i read from beginning to end in five weeks, because i love love love that story.
*fiesta dress that i wear to the pool. maybe my favorite piece of clothing, because it's green and has a peacock on it. close second is the wonderful and beautiful gauze shirt mom bought for me last month. it's in heavy rotation, at the moment.
* watermelon-- i can't remember the last time i craved a food, and this summer, i just can't seem to eat enough of this lucious treat. i honestly think that watermelon and the steadfast love of the baby Jesus have kept me sane this summer.
*old movies-- the ones that seem to explain how life is, right at this moment, and the people in my life who know just what those movies are, and just which line to say at the perfect moment. "melrose place is a really good show..."
*my cell phone and text messages-- i know, i know, i know. but my life would be so much more complicated without them. i love my cell phone. it's outdated, doesn't do anything fun, and is probably due for an oil change soon, but i just don't care. i love my phone.
*music-- like a super lot. all day long. all the time. and if i'm not listening to music, i'm thinking about listening to music. this summer's stand outs have been paul simon, emmy lou harris, bob marley (always a summer classic), lady gaga (that hurt to type), the jayhawks, led zepplin, the new pornographers, and (as always) a lot lot lot of bob dylan.
*kiss my face peaceful patchouli lotion and soap--even though one of my besties says that patchouli smells like a dirty hippy's armpit, i just don't care. i love how it smells, and i love these products. it's the simple things that get you through the most mundane days. also, an honorable mention goes out to ZUM bar soap, also in patchouli. i love this stuff.
*jinx the cat--he is the face i come home to at the end of the day, and even on days when i am not my best, jinx is always happy to see me, happy to love me, happy to share my space. he is a huge blessing in my life. i have learned more about unconditional love this summer than i ever imagined was possible, and a great majority of that learning has come while spending time with my cat. G-d knew what needed to happen when jinx came to live with me...
*movie popcorn--i learned that if i'm not hungry for watermelon, and just can't get a handle on what i want, it's probably movie popcorn. weird, right?
*this blog--this has been my mental refuge during this long, hot, incredibly weird summer. it's sometimes hard to remember that this summer has had some very happy and unexpected miracles all over it, because what screams loudest this summer is that a lot of things and people (not just famous ones) have died...i mean, just look at the lawns in my neighborhood. but i know that when i sit down to write, something fresh always comes to take the dry taste away, even if what i'm saying is hard. the reality of writing down how i feel, what i think, what's happening, even if it's veiled or abstract or in third person is just so good to feel, even when the feelings are intense and sometimes painful. thank you for reading.
mil besos,
rmg
03 August 2009
3am, again.
"It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding."--vincent van gogh
i find myself thinking about romance in a totally different way than i did when i was 20. i'm glad the changeover has happened, to be quite honest. i don't think what i thought i knew about romance was even remotely correct, or that having someone jump through those hoops would have really made me happy. that's not to say that i don't think there's room enough in my life for romance. i think i just mean that romance means different things to me at 30 than it did at twenty...and i'm so glad i know that about myself.
i think if i'd had someone cater to my romantic whims at 20, i would have become pretty petulant and selfish. i mean, does anyone really need to go to four restaurants in one night...appetizers in one, entrees in another, dessert in yet another, and topped off by fancy grown-up drinks at the last? i know at 30, i'd be much happier with a good, non-tedious, honest and energetic conversation over a piece of pie in one of my favorite all-night diners.
at 20, romance would have looked like my favorite flowers on my birthday. at 30, i think romance might look like new light blubs in my vanity sockets, maybe a an extra half-gallon of milk grabbed on the way home, just in case we were running low, or having those horrible new license plates magically appear on my car. at 20, a romantic get-away would have been way over-planned, and under-enjoyed...too much money, too many things to see, too much drama to get there, etc. at 30, i think it looks like a couple of backpacks, a map, a lot of music, and a little money.
at 20, having someone read my mind and and intuit all my needs before i even articulated them would have seemed like a reasonable relationship goal. now...not so much. at 30, i think i have begun to understand that if we can find someone in this life who just really gets who we are, down at the bottom of all our bullshit, and decides to stick around anyway, is something pretty special. all the rose petals and high dollar champagne in the world can't compete with that. that's not something that sells books, or makes it to reality tv. that's not something you can ever cash in and use as a bail out. that's an intangible, a for better or worse kind of deal. that's a bigger deal that a remembered birthday, trite poetry, fancy dinners out, or knowing the day you had your first kiss. i feel good about knowing that, at least for myself. and on days when i wake up at 3am, wondering what it's all about, sometimes knowing that helps me get back to sleep.
mil besos,
rmg
i find myself thinking about romance in a totally different way than i did when i was 20. i'm glad the changeover has happened, to be quite honest. i don't think what i thought i knew about romance was even remotely correct, or that having someone jump through those hoops would have really made me happy. that's not to say that i don't think there's room enough in my life for romance. i think i just mean that romance means different things to me at 30 than it did at twenty...and i'm so glad i know that about myself.
i think if i'd had someone cater to my romantic whims at 20, i would have become pretty petulant and selfish. i mean, does anyone really need to go to four restaurants in one night...appetizers in one, entrees in another, dessert in yet another, and topped off by fancy grown-up drinks at the last? i know at 30, i'd be much happier with a good, non-tedious, honest and energetic conversation over a piece of pie in one of my favorite all-night diners.
at 20, romance would have looked like my favorite flowers on my birthday. at 30, i think romance might look like new light blubs in my vanity sockets, maybe a an extra half-gallon of milk grabbed on the way home, just in case we were running low, or having those horrible new license plates magically appear on my car. at 20, a romantic get-away would have been way over-planned, and under-enjoyed...too much money, too many things to see, too much drama to get there, etc. at 30, i think it looks like a couple of backpacks, a map, a lot of music, and a little money.
at 20, having someone read my mind and and intuit all my needs before i even articulated them would have seemed like a reasonable relationship goal. now...not so much. at 30, i think i have begun to understand that if we can find someone in this life who just really gets who we are, down at the bottom of all our bullshit, and decides to stick around anyway, is something pretty special. all the rose petals and high dollar champagne in the world can't compete with that. that's not something that sells books, or makes it to reality tv. that's not something you can ever cash in and use as a bail out. that's an intangible, a for better or worse kind of deal. that's a bigger deal that a remembered birthday, trite poetry, fancy dinners out, or knowing the day you had your first kiss. i feel good about knowing that, at least for myself. and on days when i wake up at 3am, wondering what it's all about, sometimes knowing that helps me get back to sleep.
mil besos,
rmg
22 July 2009
fable
Once upon a time, there lived a very curious little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. She often found herself tiptoeing toward places she might not should go. When she was eight, her parents moved (with her and her small brother, of course) into a big red brick house on a tree-lined street, in the middle of town. This was a magic house.
The magic house seemed to go on forever, and the little girl found herself wandering around the house and the yard with big eyes, and open ears, imagining that the next little half-door in the wall would take her to Narnia or Middle Earth or someplace she’d never heard of. She was fascinated. Her grandfather, the kind of older man who seemed to have special magic or medicine (or maybe both) with small children, helped out a lot with the move. He also managed to keep the little girl and her little brother out of trouble…most of the time…with very inventive stories.
The previous owner of the magic red brick house, an older man (much like the little girl’s grandfather…he had magic and medicine, too), had dug out an old cellar, to the right of the back door, next to the fence line. Years and years had gone by since anyone had used the cellar, and the ground had shifted and water had filled the hidey-hole. The little girl and her even littler brother were mesmerized by the cellar. You can imagine that had the little girl or her little brother ever actually made it to the cellar, this story would be very different. You may also be asking yourself how two intrepid adventurers ever managed to find the self-control to avoid such a place. In a word…the answer is the mystical, mythical, magical bullagator. Of course, the bullagator in the cellar was repatriated when the little girl’s grandfather knocked the cellar in with his forklift and beaucoup fill dirt later that summer. Little was heard from or about the bullagator until the little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes became a big girl with brown hair (and some grey creeping in) and blue-gray eyes and a job at summer camp.
The Good Lord knows that nothing says fun quite like like a tetanus shot or a near drowning….hence, in God’s great wisdom (and the wonderful mind of Poppy’s with good medicine and magic), the bullagator was born. Bullagators are half bulldog, half alligator. And if a child should find herself someplace she ought not to be, a bullagator might magically appear to bite her little nose off. Bullagators are fearsome creatures. Not much was known about the bullagator until 2006, other than their magical business as the guardians of flooded cellars. It seems that bullagators are not only the guardians of flooded cellars, but also stretches of the Guadalupe River and partially collapsed barns that seem to scream “HEY KIDS!! COME PLAY OVER HERE!”
Extensive research has been done on bullagators in the last three years, and that research has borne much fruit. For instance, we now know that in addition to biting off the faces of naughty children who stray into restricted areas, they can lob acidified spit wads at least four feet. The spit wads can cause nasty flash burns, as well as causing rocks (lobbed by naughty children, to check to see if bullagators REALLY are REAL, no doubt) to burst into flame. Bullagators are about the size of Labrador Retrievers. They can be tamed, but only if you can whistle “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” backwards, with no mistakes. They also really like black jelly beans and Hank Williams on vinyl.
And in case you were wondering, the little girl is still living happily ever after. At least, that's the way I heard it.
mil besos,
rmg
The magic house seemed to go on forever, and the little girl found herself wandering around the house and the yard with big eyes, and open ears, imagining that the next little half-door in the wall would take her to Narnia or Middle Earth or someplace she’d never heard of. She was fascinated. Her grandfather, the kind of older man who seemed to have special magic or medicine (or maybe both) with small children, helped out a lot with the move. He also managed to keep the little girl and her little brother out of trouble…most of the time…with very inventive stories.
The previous owner of the magic red brick house, an older man (much like the little girl’s grandfather…he had magic and medicine, too), had dug out an old cellar, to the right of the back door, next to the fence line. Years and years had gone by since anyone had used the cellar, and the ground had shifted and water had filled the hidey-hole. The little girl and her even littler brother were mesmerized by the cellar. You can imagine that had the little girl or her little brother ever actually made it to the cellar, this story would be very different. You may also be asking yourself how two intrepid adventurers ever managed to find the self-control to avoid such a place. In a word…the answer is the mystical, mythical, magical bullagator. Of course, the bullagator in the cellar was repatriated when the little girl’s grandfather knocked the cellar in with his forklift and beaucoup fill dirt later that summer. Little was heard from or about the bullagator until the little girl with brown hair and blue-gray eyes became a big girl with brown hair (and some grey creeping in) and blue-gray eyes and a job at summer camp.
The Good Lord knows that nothing says fun quite like like a tetanus shot or a near drowning….hence, in God’s great wisdom (and the wonderful mind of Poppy’s with good medicine and magic), the bullagator was born. Bullagators are half bulldog, half alligator. And if a child should find herself someplace she ought not to be, a bullagator might magically appear to bite her little nose off. Bullagators are fearsome creatures. Not much was known about the bullagator until 2006, other than their magical business as the guardians of flooded cellars. It seems that bullagators are not only the guardians of flooded cellars, but also stretches of the Guadalupe River and partially collapsed barns that seem to scream “HEY KIDS!! COME PLAY OVER HERE!”
Extensive research has been done on bullagators in the last three years, and that research has borne much fruit. For instance, we now know that in addition to biting off the faces of naughty children who stray into restricted areas, they can lob acidified spit wads at least four feet. The spit wads can cause nasty flash burns, as well as causing rocks (lobbed by naughty children, to check to see if bullagators REALLY are REAL, no doubt) to burst into flame. Bullagators are about the size of Labrador Retrievers. They can be tamed, but only if you can whistle “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes” backwards, with no mistakes. They also really like black jelly beans and Hank Williams on vinyl.
And in case you were wondering, the little girl is still living happily ever after. At least, that's the way I heard it.
mil besos,
rmg
14 July 2009
a true story that never really happened...
she's a pretty smart cookie, that one. not much happens that suprises her. oh sure, every once in a while, she has an off-day, but usually, that kid's head is on a swivel. she's the clutch player. she's the go-to. she's competent. and she is deadly efficient. the only caveat to that little rule...this kid only works alone. that makes the job harder, but with the ripping and tearing that she sometimes has to do, it also makes the job quicker.
she hides all the soft places she can think of...hides them very well, most people don't even know where to start looking, anymore. she's approaching solitude, and that both frightens her and kind of excites her. it's like one day, a switch was flipped, and she realized that if solitude was what life was going to throw at her, she would catch it and wear it like a crown. nothing marks her but her, like using a low grade diamond to cut one of a higher grade. she isn't particularly happy about how this feels, but life is too short to complain. sometimes she feels like she's watching it all happen outside of herself, and sometimes that's because even she can't believe what's happening, how it's happening, or even why. but it is. her life is happening. and it's not bad. not at all. not even a little bit.
she didn't mean to lie to him. really, she didn't. he's one of those people who knows the soft places, one of the ones she's invited. she knew better. he's such an old soul. she tells herself that she knows he's not perfect, but she really thinks he kind of is. and is he a trainwreck...God, yes. such a mess and jumblefuck of emotions and manifestos and guitar strings and beer bottles and cigarettes and ghosts of girlfriends past, and she loves him extra because of the mess. but she lies to him regularly. she has no desire to be what she is to him. but it's all she can be, and she'd rather be that than nothing. but she reserves the right to not have her face rubbed in it, which is why she lied and missed hearing her favorite song, and pretty much cried the whole way home.
the weight of that lie gets to her, but she chokes it down with a burning shot of pride, flicks her hair back, and keeps walking. she is pulling away from him. it's never going to be what she wants, and she's to a point that rather than have left overs, she'd really rather have nothing, but thanks for offering. it's past time. about three years past time, truth be told. almost exactly.
she remembers snips and phrases from her geometry class in high school. lines are infinite. parallel lines will always run parallel to each other. they never intersect. she thinks this is a lot like where she is with him. they see each other just fine. but they will never be on the same track. ever. this is physics. this is universal truth at it's very deepest, at least as far as their story is concerned. it doesn't matter what makes the tracks parallel...weight, distance, fright, uncertaintly, wrong hair or eye color, because it all amounts to the same thing...parallel tracks will never be more than parallel tracks. they don't bend, or move, or intersect. they are as close as they will ever be, and nothing can change that. all that fancy talk about it almost being like incest notwithstanding...and it was all just bullshit to make her feel better, anyway, things are the way they are, and ever shall be. it's time to just cut the cord and be done with it, just the same.
she is almost who she wants to be. but the weight of this pulls her back to places she never wanted to see again. cutting ties...tying up loose ends...parallel lines and universes...crosby stills nash and young...buying vinyls...doing yoga...losing fifteen pounds...stopping the clock...she is very tired, but she's getting her life right.
weird story, right...came to me in a dream...
mil besos,
rmg
she hides all the soft places she can think of...hides them very well, most people don't even know where to start looking, anymore. she's approaching solitude, and that both frightens her and kind of excites her. it's like one day, a switch was flipped, and she realized that if solitude was what life was going to throw at her, she would catch it and wear it like a crown. nothing marks her but her, like using a low grade diamond to cut one of a higher grade. she isn't particularly happy about how this feels, but life is too short to complain. sometimes she feels like she's watching it all happen outside of herself, and sometimes that's because even she can't believe what's happening, how it's happening, or even why. but it is. her life is happening. and it's not bad. not at all. not even a little bit.
she didn't mean to lie to him. really, she didn't. he's one of those people who knows the soft places, one of the ones she's invited. she knew better. he's such an old soul. she tells herself that she knows he's not perfect, but she really thinks he kind of is. and is he a trainwreck...God, yes. such a mess and jumblefuck of emotions and manifestos and guitar strings and beer bottles and cigarettes and ghosts of girlfriends past, and she loves him extra because of the mess. but she lies to him regularly. she has no desire to be what she is to him. but it's all she can be, and she'd rather be that than nothing. but she reserves the right to not have her face rubbed in it, which is why she lied and missed hearing her favorite song, and pretty much cried the whole way home.
the weight of that lie gets to her, but she chokes it down with a burning shot of pride, flicks her hair back, and keeps walking. she is pulling away from him. it's never going to be what she wants, and she's to a point that rather than have left overs, she'd really rather have nothing, but thanks for offering. it's past time. about three years past time, truth be told. almost exactly.
she remembers snips and phrases from her geometry class in high school. lines are infinite. parallel lines will always run parallel to each other. they never intersect. she thinks this is a lot like where she is with him. they see each other just fine. but they will never be on the same track. ever. this is physics. this is universal truth at it's very deepest, at least as far as their story is concerned. it doesn't matter what makes the tracks parallel...weight, distance, fright, uncertaintly, wrong hair or eye color, because it all amounts to the same thing...parallel tracks will never be more than parallel tracks. they don't bend, or move, or intersect. they are as close as they will ever be, and nothing can change that. all that fancy talk about it almost being like incest notwithstanding...and it was all just bullshit to make her feel better, anyway, things are the way they are, and ever shall be. it's time to just cut the cord and be done with it, just the same.
she is almost who she wants to be. but the weight of this pulls her back to places she never wanted to see again. cutting ties...tying up loose ends...parallel lines and universes...crosby stills nash and young...buying vinyls...doing yoga...losing fifteen pounds...stopping the clock...she is very tired, but she's getting her life right.
weird story, right...came to me in a dream...
mil besos,
rmg
09 July 2009
from the southside, vol. 1
"only love
can bring the rain
that makes you yearn to the sky.
only love
can bring the rain
that falls like tears from on high"
--pete townsend
so i'm sitting at my desk, wrapping up a short day in the office. there is plenty to do to fill this whole day, but i have other things to do. i'm waiting on an email to tell me that caro and alex's little girl made it into the world safely. today is cate's birthday. today is a pretty sweet day. later today, i'll drive across a stretch of texas, so i can attend the funeral of a great lady, with whom i shared my birthday. in a few days, i'll celebrate the birthday of one of "my babies" first baby. next weekend, i'll go spend some time with my brother and sister-in-law, who just lost a dear friend. and in a few short months, two new babies will make their presence known in the world, and just knowing that is coming down the pike is pretty incredible.
life and death are so very intertwined. i say that, i write it, and i think that it's too simple to just say it like that. but maybe it IS that simple. maybe solving the mystery, whistling in the dark, trying to make sense out of something that is so far beyond what we can even start to comprehend is just an exercise in futility. i wish i knew why and how babies really were made. i mean, i get the mechanics, that's not the issue. i wonder why some people can have them, why some people can't, why some people choose to raise other people's babies. at the same time, i wonder why some people get sick, why some people get well, why some people die with a whole life behind them, and why some people die with a whole life unlived in front of them. i don't understand it at all. and i don't want to want to understand it, anymore. i want to just accept the mystery and the ultimate gift that each life and death offers to us. even if i had the answers, who's to say that i would even understand them. they would probably make about as much sense as the quadratic equation, which is none. so, i imagine that's just as well.
God's ways are so much higher than my own. and i suppose that knowing that makes all the difference in how i feel today, a day of very mixed and very different emotions.
a friend sent me a message last week about rain falling from the southside of heaven. i like that thought. it means we aren't so divorced from heaven, after all, and i think that's a good thing. in church, i spend a lot of time wrestling with the idea of the already and the not yet, the Kingdom of God between us, and the Kingdom that is coming. so to think of myself as just on the outskirts, the almost/the not-quite, of heaven, seeing things through a veil, that makes me feel like all the emotional whiplash of the last few days is much less severe.
the births, the deaths, the miracles, the meanings in the tea leaves, and all the different journeys down all the different roads... i am learning to lean into them. and thanks be to God for favors large and small.
mil besos,
rmg
29 June 2009
snakes on a fence
Ezekiel 16:6-8 (Young's Literal Translation)
6 And I do pass over by thee, And I see thee trodden down in thy blood, And I say to thee in thy blood, Live, And I say to thee in thy blood, Live.
7 A myriad -- as the shoot of the field I have made thee, And thou art multiplied, and art great, And comest in with an excellent adornment, Breasts have been formed, and thy hair hath grown -- And thou, naked and bare!
8 And I pass over by thee, and I see thee, And lo, thy time [is] a time of loves, And I spread My skirt over thee, And I cover thy nakedness, And I swear to thee, and come in to a covenant with thee, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah, And thou dost become Mine.
I would do almost anything to see rain. A three-day soaker over a three-day weekend, the kind where you stay in bed and watch movies and eat popcorn and only stop to make more tea, go to the bathroom, or make out…that’s the kind of rain I mean. I’m to the point of painting my mother-naked body with poster paint, run out in the backyard and dance around for a couple of minutes. It’s dryer here than it’s been since the Nineteen Twenties. The river I watched climb out of her banks in front of my twenty-year-old eyes now lays sluggish and shriveled well beneath the stairs I once used with such ease on hot springtime and long summertime days a decade ago.
Everything inside of me seems to be crying for rain, echoing the wilting green screams of the lawns and gardens all around town, county, region, state. I see the popup thunderheads, so proud in the afternoons, irony gray and tinged with blue against the movie screen of memory. But what I really see is heat mirages billowing up on the asphalt that lines 410, the way the sky looks so hot and high that it’s just all white, no blue, nothing remotely like a cloud to even tease you with the promise of a little shade.
I remember the time my little brother saw rain for the first time. He was almost two. We were at my grandmother’s house, being hooligans. Clouds gathered, thunder began to rumble, and those precious drops began to color up the sidewalk. I started stripping off my clothes, running for my bathing suit, and threw open the door the minute I was decent, making a bee-line to the browning lawn to dance like a very small savage doing a spastic almost-six-year-old interpretation of a rain dance. My little brother walked onto the porch, holding my mother’s hand, looked up with his impossibly blue eyes and dirty blonde hair, and wanted to know what was falling from the sky.
It’s so dry…people who are caught using sprinkler systems more than once every two weeks are getting huge tickets. Only hand-watering is allowed every day. People are even doing laundry at Laundromats to save on their water bills, and to reduce water waste. My toilet won’t stop leaking, and that makes me feel like a horrible person, so I’m replacing the guts tomorrow. Should be an interesting trip to Home Depot…I’m a little nervous, truth be told.
But what I really want is rain…the kind that comes on slow and steady, making the dirt smell green, rinsing the dust and grit away. I really should wash my car, but I can’t bear to think about using all that water. But the car really does look kind of nasty.
I’m sitting here listening to bluegrass music, turned up loud. Bluegrass sounds so cool, clinging, refreshing to me, even the sad songs. It reminds me of the smell of rain in the woods…the way it smells like resin, and how you can almost hear the leaves getting fat and sated with the moisture. I remember swimming neck-deep in the Little Blanco River during a rainstorm in October...it was still warm enough to swim. I love swimming in the rain…not in lightening, but in the rain. It’s such an incredible sensation. I remember being neck-deep, big fat drops making splashes on the water and throwing up a fine mist, almost like it was raining up, and seeing the leaves in the hills just starting to get yellow and orange, and in the back of my head hearing “Yonder Stands Little Maggie”, with Ralph Stanley belting his guts out.
I want it to rain. I want to sit in my kitchen and eat a bowl of grits and drink a pot of coffee and listen to the rain smack against the metal roof of the carport. I want to run out the backdoor, thank God for privacy fences, shuck my clothes and take an outside shower, rinse my hair in the rain, and laugh like a small child, smelling my rosemary and lavender giving off their perfume in their own thanksgiving to God. There will be water if God wills it…I read that somewhere, once in a great story about knights and towers and a quest. I know there will be water if God wills it…I hope God wills it.
Shit has been weird for the last couple of weeks. The heat is getting to people, and it’s hanging a kind of lethargy over everyone, or it seems to have done so with me, at least. All I can think of is how hot it is outside. Seriously. Weird things have been afoot lately, they just seem to be made even more weird and sort of extra shitty because it’s so effing hot. I’m not kidding. The news did a whole play-ground experiment and tested the equipment with an infrared thermometer during one hot afternoon. The effing pavement was 140 degrees…that’s the temperature at which you poach an egg. It’s got to rain, or people are going to start going a little nutty, I think. It’s like some kind of seasonal disaffective disorder. I feel like I'm having to actively restrain myself from punching people in the face, just on general principle because it's just too damn hot. I wish I were kidding. I'm so not.
I keep looking for rings around the moon, to see if the sage bushes on the esplanade down my street are starting to pink up, to see if people in slightly shady neighborhoods are hanging dead snakes on their back fences, yet. I seriously have been waking up and going to sleep praying for rain.
Mercy…
Also, please pray for Jane.
mil besos,
rmg
23 June 2009
the more they stay the same...
it's one of those images that's etched on to my brain. it's never far from my memory, which probably means something weird. i can still see him in my mind, tall, dark hair, pants about a size too big, with a white button down shirt who's sleeves were rolled to the elbow, a paper bag in one hand, and his jacket slung over the other. he's waving his hands and screaming, daring the tank in front of him to mow him down. every time i see footage of that young man, all i can think is what i thought the day i saw that happen on cnn..."gosh, i hope they win".
i find myself now, in front of the television, watching something so oddly similar happen in iran. and i see them veiled, terrified, screaming green down the streets in tehran. gosh, i hope they win.
mil besos,
rmg
i find myself now, in front of the television, watching something so oddly similar happen in iran. and i see them veiled, terrified, screaming green down the streets in tehran. gosh, i hope they win.
mil besos,
rmg
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