Ascent and Deliberate Fall

I walk under a canopy of letters, 
half-formed words of script 
and block print.
They fly, like bees, or crows,
in a swoop and a swarm
of black and gray fire.

I walk, a basket riding 
low on my hip,
and a ceaseless flow of letters -
down, and up again,
again and again,
in delicate arcs
and deliberate angles, 
like the wings of angels 
that climb and descend,
flowing like time
or an absence of light.

They smell of water,
or maybe winter,
and they whisper stories
of love and shame
and the secret name of God -
which is no secret at all,
but is merely unpronounceable
as breath - so they say.

They can cut you
those letters -
all sharply angled
and razor thin, like wire.
My fingers come away bloody.
every time I reach into
that basket of blessing
and curse;
and I reach in,
again and again,
my blood mixing with
their black and gray fire,
and the swarming,
swooping canopy
of half-formed words
and graceful curves.

The basket chafes my hip
and I bow under the
boundless weight of canopied
letters that dance in magpie joy
just out of reach,
and my fingers grow
blistered and raw;
but I feel the butterfly kiss
of every letter in its ascent
and deliberate fall,
from down to up
and down again.

And I walk under a canopy
of letters, a basket of
blessing and
curse at my side.

At War with the fine art of Writing

A few years ago, I got a letter from my son, who was away at camp.

Let me amend that: I got an envelope from my son.  I was quite excited to receive the lett— the envelope.  He’d sent two letters within the first week.  The first was printed on a scrap of paper.  It began: “I’m not gonna make it.  Pick me up Sunday…”.  The second came two days later, written in some secret code, with the key included on a separate piece of paper (possibly the remainder of the scrap from the original letter, folded  eleventy-seven times for security purposes, no doubt).  The crux of the coded letter was “having a wonderful time; send money…”

So, after another two weeks, with nothing further to grace my mailbox, I was eager to get something.  I ripped open the envelope, took out a piece of paper, and………………………………………………

Nothing.

He’d sent me paper.  Blank paper.  As in: bright white with translucent blue stripes, college-ruled and fringed in all its perforated glory, unsullied by anything as mundane as pen or pencil.  Perhaps, as a follow up to the encoded letter, this one was written in invisible ink.  I stewed a bit, fretted less, and figured I would have heard, from one of his counselors at least, if he had been abducted by aliens, was suffering from amnesia or was dead— if, in short, there was some physical reason that prevented him from writing.

When I retrieved him a week or so later (after the requisite hugging (from me) and embarrassed shrugging (from him), and the commotion of goodbyes and hellos), I asked him about the Blank Letter.  As it had been less than an hour since I’d picked him up, I tried to keep the aggrieved-mom tone from my voice.  I mostly succeeded.  His reply?  “There were no working pencils, Mom.”

I stared at him as blankly as the “letter” in question.  Never mind the pack of 24 mechanical pencils that had accompanied his eight pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelopes.  Or the pen that I’d sent in his care package, along with a book of word-finds and sudoku. 

No.  Working.  Pencils. 

In the entire camp, a camp that housed a couple hundred kids and staff at any given moment, not one writing instrument that worked.  For him.  Sigh.

Why, you might ask, do I bring this up?  Why use almost 500 words to lay the groundwork necessary to talk about writing instruments and whether or not they work?

Why?  Because I stare at a blank screen, free-floating pixels at war with the delete key, and I think to myself “No working pencils.”

I seem to be stuck, at war with my art.  Or stymied by it.  Like that character in The World According to Garp, the woman who wrote brilliant first chapters and nothing more, I stop after the first few perfectly wordsmithed sentences, unable to continue, unsure where my writing wants to go, unclear what I’m trying to say.  And if I got quiet, and allowed myself to listen to the voices whispering in my head, I’d be afraid that I really have nothing to say at all.  Easier by far to have no working pencils than to face a blank screen.

So what to do?  Like a recalcitrant teenager, I ignore the computer sitting malevolent and silent on my desk.  Or at least, I ignore the document section; Facebook and youtube seem to work just fine.  At times, I will type at the screen, though I seem to delete way more than I type.  It is an odd little dance that I do, a two step of add and subtract: one sentence written, three thrown away.

I work myself into a frenzy of writer’s block— frustrated, distracted, mopey— and then, glory be!  A friend reminds me to breathe.  Breathe, he says, and take up my pencil.

So I do; I grab onto his metaphysical pencil, and take a deep breath, plunging into the fray once more.  And as is my wont, I write about the thing that scares me the most.  I write about fear, and doubt, and tiny whispers that leave me breathless and drenched in flop sweat, convinced of my ineptitude.  I write, and I delete– but with precision and mindfulness.  I still feel a bit logy after so long an absence, but the pixels are starting to dance instead of stumble.

Breathe.  Find a pencil.  Write.  A writer writes, even through the fear.  How else do I get to hope?  How else do I get to dance?

Permission

“You have my permission,” he said, “to write about the thing that scares you most. Seven hundred fifty words.  Go.”

Yeah, right.  As if I need permission.  Ha.  I can write about anything.  Don’t need anyone to tell me what or when to write.  Anything I want.  Yup.  Even scary stuff.  Even the stuff that knots my stomach and makes my fingertips tingle.  The stuff that I would prefer to avoid— or at least lock up tight in a tiny box buried waaaay deep back in some cobwebbed and little used corner of my head.  I could write about that.  If I wanted.

Permission?  Ha!

And please– pay no attention to that whisper you might hear, skittering and wild between my ears, the one asking why I’m not writing about that scary stuff, why I’m wasting precious time and space typing all this introductory nonsense, instead of the important, vulnerable stuff that I am so cleverly avoiding.

And I would continue to avoid it, because, really— who wants to dredge up that mess, who wants to go slogging through that swamp, lifting up all those slimy rocks to find the things that go bump in my personal night?  Well, at least they go bump in my head, and maybe squeeze my heart in a slightly alarming way.  But the cost of avoidance, I’ve learned (the hard way, of course) is a helluva lot more painful, more breathtaking (and I don’t mean that in a good way), more constricting than the fear itself.

Trust me on this one.

I know all this— know it, and yet my first instinct, every time I come face to face with my personal demons, every time that fear begins to slither around my head and my heart — I want to run and hide and ignore it long enough until it just goes away, disappearing into the neverwhen where all my fears have migrated.   Trust me on this; I know the drill.  

Except.

Except they don’t.  They don’t migrate.  They do not dissipate or fade or diminish, no matter how much I wish it to be so.  Far from scattering into the mist, my fears morph and shift and grow and grow and grow.  The more I run, the more they drive me.  In whatever boxes I’ve buried them, however deeply I’ve hidden them, they begin to fester and ooze and leak— never forthrightly, but sideways and slanted, and suddenly, my world becomes a funhouse mirror, distorted, disjointed, twisted.

For all that I know that the easier, softer way to exorcize my personal demons is to talk, to write, to claim them as my own, I cannot shake the conviction that were I to name them, were I to bring them into the light of day, far from banishing them to the neverwhen, I would, instead, be giving them power and making them real.  There is always the possibility (slight, I’m sure, but more than real nonetheless) that they are not, that the scary stuff is just a figment of my imagination.  Why give those fears form and substance?  Because if they’re real, if that scary stuff is as powerful as I imagine it, it will devour me, swallow me whole, and I will disappear forever into that black hole of neverwhen.

So sometimes, I need permission.   I need to be reminded that I am tilting at windmills, solitary and resolute and fighting the good fight (even if I have imagined my foe so much more powerful than it really is) (even if my foe is me).  I need to know that I am not lying, broken and bested, at the feet of the Knight of Mirrors, that the scary stuff is just that: scary stuff that only has the power over me that I give it.

And so, remembering, I will write the scary stuff.  I will delve into those hidden places.  And my fears, once magnified and threatening and insatiably hungry, will shrink and shrivel and be powerless before me.  For today, I have been given permission, have given myself permission, to brave the scary stuff and come out the other side, unscathed (mostly) and free.

Song, Unfinished

There are very few things that I will admit to doing well.  That is, that I will admit to doing well without a whole lot of arm-twisting and cajoling, all the while secretly loving all that arm-twisting and cajoling.

I mean, let's face it: it's kinda nice, when people argue your merits for you, to you.  Sure, some of those people are family, so they almost have to (even in those weirdly dysfunctional families that are tangled and messy and just a little bit nuts; they still (at least in public) sing your praises and claim connection to your talent).  Others are mere acquaintances, some casual, others less so, who say these nice things because, surprisingly enough, they just may be true.  No one is holding a gun to their heads, and the don't seem motivated by blackmail or ransom.  Nice.

But I do admit, pretty freely, that there are a couple of things I'm good at. 

Writing is one of them (she says with only a small amount of knowing self deprecation).  I am in love with words.  Have you ever watched a little kid learn a new word?  You can almost see how they taste the words, roll them around in their mouths to make sure they feel right, taste right.  I try to do words that way when I write: they can be so succulent, juices sweet and tart and running down my chin so I have to slurp them up, and forget using napkins or even my sleeve, it's skin-on-skin to catch every drop of them.  When the word is right, it tastes like dusk in summer, or moonlight on snow.  It is apple-crisp and bursting and whisper-soft, all at once.  It fits, and I will go to any length to find the perfect word, to craft a perfect sentence. 

I am awed by the raw power of words.  Whoever first uttered the phrase "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm me" was a liar of the first order.  Bones heal. Words wound, which is infinitely more cruel.  They fester and ooze and corrupt.  They don't wound; they kill, if not the body, then surely the soul.  And yet, they have the power to heal a heart and change the world, and create joy and celebration. 

Writing helps me to understand who I am and live a very examined life.

And if writing helps me to learn about myself, if it helps to keep me honest and grounded and connected to the world at large (and my life in particular), then singing is the thing that helps me to fly, to crawl outside the boundaries of my own head and find God.  It is holy and sacred and transcendant, in a way that writing, for all its power and glory can never do.

It is no surprise that, somewhere in my fledgling adulthood, deep within my angry and existential angsty period, when my search for spirituality and meaning more often than not led me to a drink or six, that I gave up the two things that mattered most, that helped me to find myself and God.  And believe me, this was a conscious and deliberate decision on my part.  Abandoned by God?  I'll show You:  I will deny You (as I was denied).  I will reject You (as You rejected me).  "I will never sing again,"  I said deep inside my heart, "I will not write."  And I didn't, not for two-and-a-half grueling and lonely and desparate decades. 

I was trapped in my own head, a tiny universe of one, silent and solitary and dark as fear.

It was a bad couple of decades.  Getting sober helped.  Having a child unlocked so much.  Day after day of searching and seeking and hoping, the darkness slowly got brighter.  Finding others along the way, who offered their own illumination and could help point the way, they helped.  It all helped; it was all balm to my hurt, but I was not healed.

And then one day, after my long, self-imposed exile, I walked into a synagogue.  More surprising: I asked if there was a chance to sing.  I didn't know I was asking to have my life changed.  I certainly didn't realize I was asking to be healed, or made whole, or find God.  I got all those things: in that instant, all my unasked-for yearning was answered.  I found something, through my voice- through music and song- that I didn't know was possible.  I certainly didn't know it had been missing.  I found a connection to God that was startling in its simplicity.  It was prayer and forgiveness all at once. 

What began as an off-the-cuff question became an avalanche of joy.  I learned how to dance a path to God, to celebrate and sing a new song.  More (and here's the wonder, for me): I learned how to help others find their own path to God.  It wasn't easy. It meant learning to be vulnerable, letting people in, not always singing the prettiest note, but rather the most honest one.  It meant showing up, unafraid, and allowing myself to believe-- even if only in the moment that I sang-- that I could be redeemed, that I would be forgiven.  When I did that, however falteringly, however much I stumbled along the way, I blazed a trail strewn with a light that all could follow and so sing their own songs to God, find their own voice of foregiveness.

If I sound all noble and charismatic, forgive me.  It isn't like that at all.  A little wonky, sure.  A bit God-centric, absolutely.  I was like a kid who'd just been released onto the playground after a long confinement : I wanted to feel the sun on my face and swing my arms and race the wind-- and take everone aong with me.  It was all energy.  It was all glorious, joyful play.  "Come sing!" I shouted. "Come play with me!  Oh!  What fun we will have, all singing and praying and laughing together!"

And they came.  Not everyone.  Never everyone,  but many did, to my delight and astonishment.  And it wasn't all just me; far from it.  Leaders and followers- we exchanged places in a stately dance, again and again, sometimes a smooth and studied legato, sometimes a quick staccato rhythm..  It was fluid grace and joyous celebration and intense, prayerful wonder. 

The more I sang, the more I sang my prayer, the more I found God.  Found me.  Found you, and my place with you, the place that I fit, that I belonged.  I was home at last. 

And then one day, quite by surprise, I couldn't sing anymore.  Couldn't find my voice, sing pretty.  What had been effortless was suddenly strained.  What had been unthinking beauty was now spotty and intermittent.  My heartfelt prayer, my connection to God and grace now dust and shadow. 

I had a friend once, who prayed with his guitar.  That was his voice.  You could see, when he prayed, when he cradled his guitar to him, made it sing and cry out, made it laugh and weep and whisper and shout, he became incandescent, a light of sacred beauty.  And when he set his guitar aside for a time, when the silence of his nylon strings filled the sanctuary-- you could see how that silence filled him as well.  What light had flared so brightly, shining into darkened corners and weary hearts, guttered and dimmed.  I was so sad for him, for us all, who were denied that spark of holiness that each of us has, not for ourselves, but as an offering to others.  I was so sad that he could not find his voice without his guitar, varnished wood and nylon and metal, slim-necked and faintly worn paths that fit his fingers so perfectly, tuned to the music of the spheres, an altar upon which to place his prayer.

Sad, yes, and so hurting for my friend.  And so secretly smug (I admit now, shame-faced), because I had my voice.  I could pray without music; my very prayer was music.  As I said, to anyone who would listen: "At first, I came so I could sing.  In time, I came so that I could pray." It was all prayer, all praise, all holy and sacred.  And I sang, and raised my voice, and found the spark and made the offering and shared the gift and sang and soared and danced and was filled.

So now, I cannot sing.  How, then, can I pray?  How will God hear my voice without the music that carried it- without the music that carried me?  This was my gift-- not that was given to me, but the thing I had to give, my offering of thanks and gratitude.  This was my salvation, a small bit of grace that illuminated the wilderness and filled it with sound.

How can I pray into this silence? 

How can God hear my song when the notes are trapped inside my head?

I do not know the lesson I am supposed to learn here, if there even is a lesson.  I don't believe I have a God who tests me.  My God, of infinite kindness and compassion, of endless grace and gentle foregiveness, waits for me to cry out in the darkness.  This I believe.  This I know.  But I cannot cry out in a voice that feels so broken to me, sounds so strange. On the willows there, I hung up my song; how can I sing in this foreign land?

So I stumble along, into this new-found silence.  I feel quite lost; desolate and weary, and desparate to sing a song unto God that will be pleasing, that will reach God's ears. 

I don't know if I have lost my song forever, if this is permanent.  But perhaps I should stop searching for the familiar notes, the well-trodden pathways.  What I need is a new song.  Not for God; God hears the music between the notes, the songs our souls sing, and is gladdened by it all.  Perhaps I need a new song for me, so that I can find a new path to God, an undiscovered territory that is deeper and richer and resonates with a different joy.  Perhaps my song is not ended but unfinished.  Perhaps if I listen in this silence, I will hear a different melody, so that I can sing a new prayer.

It is all prayer, all grace-- every shout, every whisper, every cry of despair.  It is all God's music, even the silence.  So I will stumble, and pray, and shine light on new pathways, and sing a new song, and find me and God.  Ever and again, I will find God.  And together, we will sing.