November crept in.  I don’t mind.  Today was warm and I opened all the windows.  The sidewalks were blanketed in yellow leaves.  I let my legs loose, no socks, no tights, my toes free and wiggling one last day before the colder days of autumn arrive.  Just last week, it was snowing.

I tidied quietly most of the morning.  On a far corner of my desk, I found a scrap of paper with a copy of my driver’s license, a tree drawn in red, and a small poem on it.  I don’t know when I wrote it.  It might have been a year ago.  It goes something like this:

When I think of autumn
I remember growing
older and dying
with you and the trees.
You are kind and life
is short but wide.
Laughter is sweet
and so are apples and grapes
and quiet hands.

I already posted this poem, but I wanted to post it again.  Hearing about the economy, the state of agriculture, the forests, the planet, the human heart, something is happening these days.  Something is shifting.  This is the heart of the matter, this is my heart about the matter: hope is unfailing.

Thanks by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

I feel like Adam and I are taking these great little steps. My writing is inching along in quite beautiful ways*, and Adam is moving in the direction of Industrial/Product Design school. Yup! I am proud and excited. Financing all this will be an adventure, so send your prayers our way, friends. It’s an adventure I’m looking forward to.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn’t for our having.
-Li-Young Lee

Amen.

*Let me know if you’d like to help me edit the first 37 pages of my next book. I need all the help I can get.

I lick the juice from my fingers
stained by berries and blood.
The thorn you pulled from my thumb,
you drop to the ground. No one
will find it. It is hidden by tall
grass and men
standing like wheat.

How do you spend your work breaks?

At work, I get a ten minute break. Sometimes I like to sit and take little notes about people around me while I sip on my cappuccino. I feel like Harriet the Spy when I do that. Other times, I journal. Or read. Lately, I’ve taken to memorizing my favourite poems. This is the one I started on today. It is beautiful, and speaks to me in about a thousand ways.

To Hold by Li-Young Lee

So we’re dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,
measuring by eye as it falls into allignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I’m lucky,
she’ll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day, we’ll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn’t for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I’ll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.

Your destiny is safe with me.
Your childhood is safe with me.
What you decide to bury is safe with me.

-Li-Young Lee
This has also been a spring of thinking, reading, praying, and crying with people I love. I’ve been learning a lot through it all, though I’m not sure just what, yet.

Two things I am sure of:

I am sure we are always safe with God. Our destiny, our childhood, what we chose to bury, all of it.

I want to be a safe place, too.

(Where do you feel safe?)

When it’s cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can’t explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

-Rumi

I discovered something unexpected, today. I love Valentine’s Day. Really! I do. The holiday gets such bad a rep these days, like its some commercial thing we have to rise above rather than enjoy. But it’s a very old holiday, actually. And what’s so commercial about love and showing affection?

It was interesting to work at a coffee shop on Valentine’s Day. People react to it in such different ways. Most people are pretty apathetic. One man who daily bikes through all this winter snow bought us all a box of incredible chocolates to thank us for brightening his days. One woman, who was long frusterated with romance, had a love/hate relationship with the holiday. Another lady (who is now one of my favourite customers) told me it was her favourite. She handed me a print-out of the holiday’s history and pulled a handful of fallen rose petals she gathered at work from her pocket. She kept them there so she could smell them all day.

And me? I couldn’t stop smiling and wondering about the love stories of people on the street. I loved how the snow began to fall so sweetly in the afternoon. I loved walking through the sparkley, snowy city after work to meet up with Adam. I loved thinking about how God romances us. I looked up at the dark trees on State Street and thought of a small story that went something like this:

Once upon a time, long, long ago, God created the first human. God looked down on him and loved him so much, that right where the man had stood, the first tree twisted its way through the soil and up into the sky. A year later, a wind blew the tree’s seeds, and another tree grew, and then another. And from that one tree, the world soon was covered with leaves and winding branches.

Adam and I went to a poetry reading by my favourite living poet. It was wonderful, not just because it was Li-Young Lee standing there in front of me, but because Adam came along, even though he didn’t feel well and doesn’t care much for poetry. He’s such an incredible husband.  We rode the bus home together and spent the rest of our Valentine’s Day snuggled together on the couch watching The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and eating salami from the deli bag.

I can hardly think of a more perfect day.

The last week or two has been filled with days messy with tears spilling all over in my chest for no reason other than that is the weight of life, sometimes, when I let myself feel it.  It seems to be a normal December thing for me, as I look through the few entries I have written in past Decembers’ journals, most of them scribbled quickly and filled with sweet obscenity-laden prayers.  I have found myself crying in the morning and crying in the evening and crying myself to sleep with no answer for Adam’s worried “What’s wrong?”s other than “I don’t think it’s all bad, whatever it is.”

My tears seem to have subsided, at least for today.  I don’t think they were bad tears.  I think sometimes the way God works on me is to have me cry things out for a while, a detox of sorts.  And as I said, in the midst of the sadness I’ve been feeling, the long hours of sleep, the occasional nausea, I’ve had the sweetest days I’ve had in quite a while.

I think something I learned these long days is that the world does not revolve around how I am feeling.  How I feel things are has no bearing on what I know is true.  I may feel like a failure, but that’s bullshit.  I may feel hopeless, but that’s a lie.  There is a place for feelings, but their place is not to determine my identity or worth.  My worth is not determined by my happiness.  Nor is my success.
When I’m feeling very very down but know I’m okay, I find it best to tell my feelings to go fuck themselves.  I try to turn my face out and take care of other people instead of worrying about myself.  I’m no saint, and I’m not very good at it, but thinking about how to make peoples’ day’s lighter seems to be a much better and sweeter use of brainspace.  It so good, that exchange of care and love we can have with each other.  It’s easy to become self-contained in this culture, sometimes I forget that.  As for taking car of myself, I pray.  Usually prayers laced with obscenities.

And now, after all of that crying and doing and praying, I feel more solid, selfless, a bit more ready for what’s to come, and a bit more sure very very good things are to come.

So here’s to tears in December!  The best kind I know!  Here’s to crying for no reason and the best reason.  Here’s to falling in this snow now and again, smiling at strangers, and chatting with the UPS man that wheels packages in a cart like Tevye wheels the milk when his horse’s leg is lame.  And hears to you, kind readers.  I enjoy and appreciate your visits here and comments and wish I could send you all one of these fine lussekatter I am nibbling on.  If you live nearby, stop over and I’ll send you home with a couple.  For the rest of you, I’ll leave you with this poem by W. S. Merwin that was introduced to me by a dear friend.

Thanks by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from tables we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

I am a fish.  You are the moon.
You cannot touch me, but your light
can fill the ocean where I live.

-rumi