Amy Loves Books

When I was a punk rock girl, there was a sort of list that everyone knew existed of the bands that were cool and proved you had depth and insight. Then there were bands that meant you were a sold-out wanna-be. Love and Rockets were acceptable, Bau Haus would have been better. Everyone knew how it stacked up.

Echo and the Bunnymen were pretentious. That was what whoever it was that made the list had decided. I always liked Echo and the Bunnymen, but it was always a secret pleasure. I mean - I did not want to seem pretentious. I wanted to be deep and cool and have people respect me for having such impeccable taste.

The only problem is, that with literature, I am hopelessly emotional. I get attached to characters, or to words, or to the way it feels when I speak a passage in my mind. I suppose I would say that literature is like keys. I do not understand how it works, but I know when I read something and the key turns and a part of me unlocks. It is not something I consider rationally, or intellectually. It is just a search for keys that I don’t understand that open doors that I did not know were there.

So, I responded in a comment that The Unbearable Lightness of Being was one of the top two most influential books (key-unlocking books) I had ever read. Which is true, and easy to admit to because it is an obscure book (at least in America) and it has intellectual merit in terms of academic snobbery. My college professors would approve of such a selection.

I did not list the first book because it is the literary equivalent of Echo and the Bunnymen. It is a book that college professors would consider a nice book for high school students - for pretentious high school students. It is a book my professors would think that I should have grown out of. But when I read Franny and Zooey , I feel in love with it. It spoke truth straight into my little Glass heart. Without Franny and Zooey, I believe I would have rejected everything about the church. This book was a key. I cherish every word.

”But most of all, above everything, who in the Bible besides Jesus knew- knew- that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff. Why don't you think of these things? I mean it, Franny, I'm being serious. When you don't see Jesus for exactly what he was you miss the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. If you don't understand Jesus, you can't understand his prayer- you don't get the prayer at all, you just get some kind of organized cant. Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important mission. This was no St. Francis, with enough time to knock out a few canticles, or to preach to the birds, or to do any of the other endearing things so close to Franny Glass' heart. I'm being serious now, God damn it. How can you miss seeing that? If God had wanted somebody with St. Francis's consistently winning personality for the job in the New Testament, he'd've picked him, you can be sure. As it was, he picked the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental, the most unimitative master he could possibly have picked. And when you miss seeing that, I swear to you, you're missing the whole point of the Jesus prayer. The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who'll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty Weltschmerzen and Professor Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that- and you do- and yet you refuse to see it, then you're misusing the prayer, you're using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints."

i wish i could go back in time and be the lead singer in a teenage garage band.

i would write a song.

it would be called: "i tried to burn the school down baby, but cinder block don't burn".

“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake."

“The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.”

E. L. Doctorow

This past summer, I read The Book of Daniel, by Doctorow, in one of my classes. Most of my classmates hated it. The text itself was a difficult, nonlinear narrative. Simply from a technical standpoint, it was not an easy book to read. But the general aversion to the book went beyond the writing. Most people hated Daniel.

Daniel was the narrator; he was a fictionalized version of the eldest child of the Rosenbergs. He was not a likable character. He was cruel to his wife, and he was searching, and he was angry. He was just trying to figure it out. He was just trying to figure it out and he was making a hell of alot of mistakes along the way.

But I loved this book. I loved Daniel. There were moments when he made sense of things - moments where he was able to make a gesture that came from a deep and true and real place of love. Those moments made me cry. The book made me cry. I cried for Daniel, and for all that he was witness to. I cried that in the midst of such pain and loss and fear, Daniel managed acts of bravery and compassion. Small acts - acts that some may think did not even begin to justify him when they were held up against every bitter and cruel act that he committed - but acts that struck me as Holy. In those moments, I saw Grace.

I am grateful for writers like Doctorow. I am thankful that they are willing to hazard themselves to bear witness to the terrifying. I am grateful for the truth that they let themselves be endangered by.

I am thankful for every writer who has ever written something that they know will make people uncomfortable - that they know people will read and will hate.

I am thankful for the writers who give voice to the lost and broken. Who find the Holy. Who name the moments that are Beauty. Who reveal to us the mystery of Grace.

For our Daniels. For our prophets.

I am thankful.

When I was a child, they built a new state capital building in Tallahassee, Florida. People hated it. Adults thought it was ugly. We heard them talk about it with disgust.

The building was a massive twenty-some odd stories high (by far, the tallest building in town - a veritable skyscraper). It was huge, and for some reason, it had been designed to bear more than passing resemblance to a certain male body part (so much so, that it won a contest).

We were just kids though. To us, it was just a big building. A cool, big building. A cool, big building that could potentially lure a super hero to our fair metropolis. We were in awe.

We were taken in huge yellow buses to gaze upon the wonder of our new capitol. We were given tours of the building; we saw the moon rock in its little Plexiglas case in the governor’s office. We were silenced by the majesty of the senate and by the house of representatives. And finally, we were taken all the way to the top of the building.

The top of the capitol was an observation deck, with floor-to-ceiling windows. The windows were thick and we were told that they were unbreakable. I stood right up against one. I leaned my whole body against it, my face smushed against the cold glass.

Suddenly, I stepped back, with my heart pounding in my chest. For a moment, I had heard a voice and that voice had told me to fall.

Thinking back, it was not the ground that had called to me. It was the horizon. It was the vast open space that stretched out - all the way to the ocean on a clear day. It was the sense that if I had been able to step outside the glass, I would have still found myself suspended. It was the unspoken surety that I would have been miraculously held up by a transparent something that would have held the weight of me against it as long as I was willing to spread my arms and press my palms to its cool strength.

This unspoken feeling contradicted physics - and it was the laws of physics that made me step back and interpret my pounding heart as something horrible and dark. I did not go up to the glass again. I was afraid of it. I was afraid of me.

Later, in high school, I found Milan Kundera. This is one of my favorite quotes:

”Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

After I read Kundera, I started going back to the capital building.

I went to the quiet and stillness of the observation deck to study. I would read there for hours, surrounded by the glass and the horizon. I would study from the safety of the benches, but before I left, I would always go up to the window - lean myself against the glass - and imagine that falling might feel like flight.

"when people aren't thinking that means there is elevator music in their heads"
-Lily Katherine, age five

The future is a stereo that eats your favorite tapes.
The soundtrack to your youth that can not be replaced
- Josh Joplin

That is, until iTunes adds "So Alive" by Love and Rockets.

Two minutes and fifty-one seconds of pure sixteen-year old angst and longing and bliss.

I wish I could stop. Switch off the clock. And make it all happen for you.

- and I am dancing while I iron laundry
I am dancing while I make the bed

"We live in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion. Our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
- Henry James

This past fall, I was taking three graduate-level literature classes. I read a number of books. Unlike my undergraduate days where (to be honest) I did not actually do all the reading, this time I was convicted about reading everything. I did. I read it all. I read it all and I learned some surprising things about myself:

I like Romans more than Greeks.

I prefer Naturalism to Romanticism.

I do not find Medieval philosophy even the least bit boring.

I am not so much an Edith Wharton fan.

I am a huge fan of Henry James.

If I could sit down and have a glass of wine (screw dinner in a case like this) with any dead writer, I would be tempted to choose James.

James, because I like the way he plays with words. James, because he shows instead of tells. James, because he makes me laugh. James, because he wrote both of the following quotes:

“Three things in human life are important.  The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind.  And the third is to be kind.”

"I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them."

my house has an ancient attic fan. when i turn it on, huge vents in the roof get sucked open and i can see through to the fan and even further, into the interior of the attic.

i was afraid, at first, that it might frighten the children. luckily, they think it's cool.

the fan is very loud and i have found myself growing increasingly attached to it. i have become dependant on the sound of it. i am addicted to its industrial rumble.

i lay in bed at night, listening
and i fall into dreams imagining that i am sleeping on a train.

by Cynthia Rylant

No, not that one.
Everybody thinks he wrote that one,
but He didn't.
He's a better writer
than that.
Those guys just
went on and on
and did they
bother to edit?
No.
But wouldn't you know,
you mention a name
and you're in.
So they said,
"I didn't write it,
God wrote it."
A sure way
to get out of revising.
But God wrote
His own book.
He wrote it for
one little boy.
Just one.
He read it the boy
at bedtime
because the boy couldn't sleep.
So God read him a book.
The boy grew up. He became a writer.
Which one?
Not telling.

-from God Went To Beauty School, a collection of poetry.

Tribute to Howard Finster

Christine Kane CD Release Shows
For all of us in the Atlanta area - she has added a show at Eddie's Attic.

When you were four, you had a blanket.
It was yellow and you called it Kakie.

You were hopelessly attached to this blanket.
You took it to school everyday.
On the hellish nights that you left it somewhere,
you could not sleep, no matter how much Benadryl we tried to numb you with.
It was so ragged, we thought you might get strangled in it at night.
So we secretly cut the hem, to make it less likely to entrap you.

This blanket was, quite honestly,
disgusting.

Its baby-duck yellow had turned an institutional shade.
It was threadbare, and you could put it over your head and see through to what was outside.

Worst of all were the stains.
You took it to school so it was covered with paint and Kool-aid and Spagettio sauce.
I suspected, you probably even took it in the bathroom with you.
(since you obviously ate with it in your lap)
I shuddered at the thought of it dragging on the urine-soaked tile,
imagined you rubbing your face in it at nap-time.

Whenever I could, I tried to sneak in a good washing.
Hot water and lots of soap. Bleach.

I saw you though, when you came home from school with the horrible blanket.
You would sit on the couch and hold it up to your face.
Your eyes would close and you would inhale its essence.
Tomato sauce, play-dough, urine, heat, and Lysol
Then, you would sit silently.
Eyes closed.
Reverent.

I want to say to you now, before you forget.

Son, marry a girl that you can love like that.

they wanted to be baptized in the middle of the night.
because God, they were so sick and tired of living in their old skin.
they could not bear it. not anymore.

we wanted to say wait until sunrise. it will be more aesthetic. think of the great photo we could take.
you. in a lake. with the painted sky.

you would look so Holy.

No.

they wanted to be baptized Now. Now, while it was still dark.

we went to the lake. and stood on the shore.
we stood on the shore like we always did to watch baptisms.



but it was dark at the wooded lake. the night was overcast. it was hard to see.

we knew what was happening but could not see.

we heard the splashes as they waded to where the water was deep enough to be buried in.

we heard, but we could not see. we wanted to see.

and so everyone waded out, into the water.

to get closer.

to bear witness.

to welcome them Home.


afterwards, we passed around towels, wet and laughing,
embracing all that had been found.

and she makes art.

lily is five. she did this all by herself. including finding the images in magazines and cutting them out.

me: you can take a picture, but there is no way I am buying them.

Last night was my father’s birthday. We went over to my parents' house to celebrate with my parents and their friends. My brother was there.

I have a brother.

My brother is distant. He visits from time to time, but he is always far away. As a child, he was incredibly close to my mother. Even as a teenager, they were incredibly close. But he married too young and got divorced and drifted. He distanced himself from her. Hurt her. He calls sometimes. He visits on holidays. When he comes into town, my mother goes grocery shopping and cooks elaborate meals. She wakes up early and washes his car.

My childhood was difficult. The fact that my mother loved my brother with such intensity made her indifference to me stand out in perfect clarity. I wrote poems that said: “if a car was rushing towards Jonathan, you would push me out in front of it”.

My brother and I talk sometimes. The weight of our childhood stands between us. I know that being idealized was not an easy burden for him to bear. He tells me that he is applying to Texas for his residency. He tells me that if he gets it, he will never come home again. I tell him he will. I say that he will come home for holidays. For Christmas, at least. He tells me no; he will not. I forget this conversation. I think he was just in a bad mood.

He gets his first choice placement for his residency. In two weeks, he moves to Austin, Texas. In the meantime, he is living at home. Living at home, getting ready to leave.

At my father's party, my parents and my brother and I are sitting close together. Like a family. My mother says Jonathan is making a word-a-day calendar for her. Jonathan explains: He is making a calendar with words and phrases, each word in a shared language known only to the four of us. Each word a memory - a symbol of remembered laughter - of moments we connected and were a family.

He gives an example: “The Michelle Garcia Prayer”.

We start laughing. All the guests are puzzled. I try to explain:

Michelle Garcia was a friend of mine and she was beautiful and smart and terribly cool. She was the coolest girl in school. We were friends, but only hesitatingly. I was a preacher’s daughter. Michelle was very wild. I was far too sheltered, and she tolerated me only in moderation.

My mother was always asking people over for dinner and for some reason, Michelle accepted my mother’s invitation. I warned my parents ahead of time. Michelle was an agnostic. Please, do not be too preacherish. Please.
Let her think I am at least moderately cool. Please.

Michelle came to dinner. We sat down and my father began to pray. Usually, our mealtime prayer was simple - a one sentence blessing. For some reason, on this of all nights, my father began praying. He began praying, and did not stop.

He thanked God for the sun and the moon. For the earth. For the animals. For the clouds. I opened my eyes and saw my brother looking at me. We gazed at each other in horror. What was dad doing? The prayer went on. My mother looked at us sternly. We bowed our heads again. We tried to contain our irreverent thoughts; we tried to contain the laughter.

My father kept praying. He thanked God for the trees.
Then, he thanked God for the leaves on the trees.
And my brother and I lost it.
I tell this story and we all start laughing. The guests at my father’s party are confused. They don’t really get it.

You had to be there.

This morning I woke up and thought back on last night. I thought of my brother’s word-a-day idea. I thought of this gift - this gift of good memories. This list that he was making to name the blessings. This list to make us smile. This shared language he was writing. This map.

I thought of all this, and I realized what he is doing.

He is saying good-bye.

If I appear to be ripping of Walt Whitman, well - that's because I am. This was an assignment. I had to write a biographical poem inspired by "There Was A Child Went Forth".
I did not intend to post it, but have been asked to - so here it is:

There Was A Child Went Forth

I am in class and we begin to go over the assignment. My professor pulls my poem off the digital blackboard and it pops up on a huge screen. I am asked to read it. She has not read it beforehand. As it appears in front of us, she comments.

"There is not much punctuation or capitalization".
I reply, "It is a poem."

She tells me Whitman used grammar correctly. I say that Whitman believed that form follows function and this is a poem about my hippie childhood and the lack of capitalization and punctuation is a deliberate choice. She accepts this. At least, I think she accepts this.

When I finish reading she says: "This would make a great grammar exercise when you teach. Give it to your students and have them correct your grammar."

So - this is for my classmates who wanted it posted.

Feel free to use it as a grammar exercise. I hear it would make a good one.



there was a child who was brought home
to a home that was the top floor apartment
of a house that was also a church on college avenue
in tallahassee,florida
in 1970

her first hesitant steps were into the arms of girls
in peasant shirts and layered skirts
boys with beards and sandals and guitars

this child was fed spaghetti and sloppy joes
wheat bread and brownies
carrot sticks
kool-aid from orange coolers
food always cooked to feed many, never just for a few

and she ate on paper plates, on the floor
with uncombed hair and bare feet
tanned arms and mosquito-bitten legs
she felt her teeth sink into styrofoam cups with each sip
ate to the sound of guitars being strummed
and the laughter of long-haired boys,
the singing of girls in beaded braids
the hands that held hers in a circle
all this was food and she was fed

she slept
in a bed bought at goodwill and spray painted white
in the back seat of the blue and wood paneled station wagon
in the arms of hippies
outside, in tents
lulled by the sound of cicadas
quieted by heartbeat of muffled rock music

she had no children to play with
but was amused by the conversation of college students
who understood child logic
made plastic animals talk to her
put flowers in her hair

instead of a playground, this child was taken to the library
pushed up the hill in a stroller
to the worn and tired downtown building
with cracked plaster and the musty smell of old pages
cool and dark
sacred
to the basement where picture books lived
everyday almost
it was her mother’s escape
her secret way to find moments of quiet
she entertained this child with books

the gates of the university were familiar to this child.
the fountain, the noisy pigeons
this was another walk her mother would take
not even a block away
from the house that was a church that was her home

this child would sit on a porch swing
look at the peeling paint
imagine she might swing high enough that her toes would tap the ceiling
or possibly, she might fly

she watched students walk to class
she heard music drift from dorm rooms
from the fraternity house next door
cat stevens, bread, the doors
always jimmy buffet on friday night
or in the summer
jimmy buffet and the smell of day old beer and stale cigarettes
seagulls in the parking lots

on Sunday mornings the child would sit on the staircase
and listen to her father preach from the living room
listen to the songs sung from hand-typed and stapled songbooks
listen to prayer requests and praise
finals, war, peace, hospitals, weddings
help me know what to major in
help me forgive
help me, i am scared
and thank you
thank you
thank you
she would learn the words by heart

after church, she ate the leftover communion bread
drank warm, leftover grape juice
from a cup made of thick, hand-thrown pottery

one year, on her birthday, the child woke up
and the spanish oaks
and pecan trees
in the yards of all the sororities on the street
were dripping with white toilet paper
in hung down like a banner
waved in the wind
it felt like being underwater
or inside a cloud

“look” said the child’s mother “this is for you today. for the day you were born”

and she looked
and it was wonder
and peace
and beauty
and love
and it was all for her
a gift

This is a real church sign. I saw it with my own eyes, right by Emory university.



I don't get it.

Are they suggesting we repent now before their creepy sign makes us plow into a parked car and DIE?

Or is it just - weird.

The best reason that I ever had for deciding to go out with someone: He wore a Sherlock Holmes hat to school.

The best reason I ever had for breaking up with someone: Stolen poetry.

I had a history of being the not-chosen one. Of taking hand-me-downs from girlfriends I could never match. Of being told, “Yes, very nice - but what I want is not you”. And it was always someone who was there first that haunted me. That I was compared to and found lacking . I was always just not big enough to take her place.

The first boy I dated seriously in college had an ex-girlfriend who he had loved so much that he put her initials on his license plate. He had followed her from Maine to Florida when she went off to college. She had been the prom and football games and holding hands in hallways and yearbook pictures and sex when the parents were not home. The memories of high school and the hope of invincibility - the conviction of sixteen-year old immortality - all this was tied up with the memory of Krista.

I hated her.

I always had this thought: “I am not the first girl”. He had loved someone else before me. Being not first seemed to make me less. It seemed to me that I would always be held in comparison, since there was someone to compare me to. I was pretty sure I would fail the comparison.

I mean, seriously, in high school this girl had been a popular cheerleader. My boyfriend at the time, a star soccer player. They had been a golden couple; they had enjoyed a kind of existence that was completely outside of my frame of reference.

But I tried. I tried to carve out a place for myself. I tried to tell myself that I was deeper than this girl had been. I tried to believe that he would see this. That he would see that the way I loved him was so much deeper and real than her.

I wrote him a poem. I thought that this was one thing that would be mine. I would be the girl that wrote him poetry. My poetry. I would give him my poetry.

He read it and thanked me. Then, he told me that Krista had written a poem for him once. My heart sank. I had always believed, secretly, that there were two types of girls. There were girls that were cheerleaders, and girls that wrote poetry. It was either/or. This was my belief. I depended on this belief.

He took down a box and found a worn, folded piece of paper.
The Poem.
The poem she had written.
The poem that he carried in his wallet for two years. He unfolded the paper.

I read the first line. Please God, I thought. Please just let this poem suck.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

Suddenly, things became very clear to me. I broke the truth to him.
She did not write this poem. This was a poem by e.e. cummings. She had stolen this poem. Krista was a poetry thief.

I was angry. Furious in a hell hath none type of way. This girl, this other girl had the nerve to steal a poem. And not any poem - an e.e. cummings poem. She put her name on it and let him carry it for two years thinking it was a glimpse of a soul that in reality did not exist.

I expected him to be outraged. She was a poetry stealer! He had to hate her now. It was a lie. She was a lie. He had to see this. He had to.

But no. He folded the poem back up. He put it back in his box.

So I left. I left and did not look back.

I went home and wrote my own poetry. Imperfect, unpublished poetry. Vulnerable, secret, heartbreaking, and hoping poetry.

Poetry that was mine.

You don’t love me - this I know.
Don’t need a Bible to tell me so.
But it’s a shame and its a sin.
Everything I could have been (to you).
Your last chance Texaco.
Sweetheart of your rodeo.
Juliet to your Romeo.
The border you cross into Mexico...

- Emmy Lou Harris

I am given a paper in class. It is called “The Wit and Wisdom of America’s Finest”. It is compilation of mistake-ridden statements pulled from student papers. It is full of grammatical mistakes and misspellings. It is supposed to make us laugh.

It contains many absolutely horrible sentences. But there, among the ruined phrases, are a few passages that haunt me. A few that are shocking in their beauty. A few that are poetry - of the highest order.

The presence of many people causes a reluctancy to spew forth the subconscious.

Everyday the teacher would make a joke about some aspect of the American government or economy and no one would laugh except the boy who always loned pencils to people for money.

Some mountains are smaller than others with regard to how easily a friend forgets.

He was simplyt a man who wore men’s clothing and looked like a human being who was preaching a sermon in my church.

These passages are beautiful. Strange and lovely. They speak of potential. They speak of students who saw the world through the eyes of a poet. Like all poets, these children were fragile and hoping. Longing to be seen. Longing to be found - to be heard - to be understood.

But we failed them. We laughed at their truth because it seemed odd. We bled our red ink on their strangely painted words. We silenced their hearts with our misinterpretation of beauty.

They have gone.

Our last chance Texaco - who could have filled us up for the journey ahead.

The sweetheart of our rodeo- with her scent of cut grass and cotton candy - and her reminder of all that is pure and young and dreaming.

Our Juliet - strong and brave enough to wait for us in the tomb.

The border we might cross. The bridge. The hope.

All this has been failed. All this has been silenced. And I want it back. It's a shame and it's a sin, and I want them back.

God, I want them back.

And behold, it is called: "The Education Department".

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

There is no theory to memorize. There is nothing to be gained from work samples and outcome generating standards of practice and comprehensive pedagogy exams and fifteen million point lesson plans.

This is the answer:

Love your students. Love what you teach.

If you can not love your students. If you can not love what you teach.

Get the hell out of the classroom.

I absolutely love Publix sheet cakes.
Yellow cake with that grocery-store icing.
Kept in the fridge.

When I was pregnant, I would go and buy the pre-decorated half-sheet birthday cakes from the bakery for my own consumption.

They always asked me if I wanted a message put on them. It seemed wrong though - to put a message on your own cake. I did light candles once, when I was home alone. I wanted to blow them out and lick the frosting off the ends. To taste the frosting/wax combination of birthdays.

I craved weird stuff when I was pregnant. I would come home from the grocery store with bizarre tailsman-like groceries. A jar of marinated artichoke hearts. Smoked fish. Hummus. Things I had never really eaten before.

My strongest desire was for school cafeteria pizza. The kind from elementary school, cut into squares on oily wax paper. With the bizarre, grain-like, spicy sausage mixture under the rubber-like cheese. I dreamed of this pizza; I was consumed by thoughts of it. I wanted so badly to call the local elementary school and find out when they were serving pizza. I wanted to drop by. I longed to sit in the cafeteria, surrounded by the smell of warm children, and eat my remembered pizza and drink from a little carton of chocolate milk that I shook well before I opened. But I was afraid they would think I was crazy, and unfit to be a future mother.

Instead I stayed home, and ate sheet cake, and silently hungered for school cafeteria pizza - astonished by the strength and strangeness of the cravings that pregnancy had given me.

his self-portrait


Remember that “How-To” speech you had to give in high school? Back when they made you take speech class as a junior or senior. The girls usually gave speeches about applying make-up or cooking. Cooking was a popular topic - because it was really just an excuse to eat. Boys tended to give speeches on fixing things, or something related to sports.

When Charles gave his speech, he went by the book.
He used the prescribed step-by-step outline.
He had his colorful poster-board visual aid and informative hand-outs.

Everything was following the rules. Except the topic.

"How To Skip School Without Getting Caught"

More actual conversations:

Chip: Those people in front of us have a bumper sticker that says: "The King James Bible is God's Final Word".
Me: I don't think they would like my blog.


Me: What the heck does that mean?
Chip: I have no idea.
Me: It scares me. Take a picture of it.

and it is an e.e. cummings kind of day

from A Poet's Advice:

my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world —unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

And more:

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel...

the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else— means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

The moment you feel - you're nobody-but-youself.

Write that on your hand with a ballpoint pen today.

The way you used to write phone numbers you were hoping to be brave enough to call.

i am at Lowes hardware and i see this plant. "look!" i say. "it looks like some kind of daisy tree".
it is a daisy tree.

somebody made a daisy tree. and it is weird and wonderful all at once. it actually looks to be shocked by itself. sitting there, improbable, among the more orderly shrubbery and landscaping supplies.

it can not contain itself. it's daisyness explodes in a fit. messy. not at all pruned or shaped.

so they move it to the back of the garden shop.

where it faces the bags of play sand and slides and all the components that someone will turn into a swingset.



poem 30 from 73 poems
e.e. cummings
one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is becomes if)


a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.


Nobody,it's safe
to say,observed him but


myself;and why?because


without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last)


mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i've
no word except alive


--that is,completely alert
and miraculously whole;


with not merely a mind and a heart


but unquestionably a soul--
by no means funereally hilarious


(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious:


a fine not a coarse clown
(no mob,but a person)


and while never saying a word


who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him


self sang like a bird.


Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international


measures that render hell rational
--i thank heaven somebody's crazy


enough to give me a daisy

Hope.



But beneath my surface
A song is rising
And it may be simple
Well it hides its true intent
We may be looking for our deliverence
But it has already been sent

It's in the nightfall
When the light falls
And what you've seen
Isn't there anymore
It's in our blind trust
Love will find us
Just like it has before
- The Indigo Girls

I am half-sick of shadows.

www.churchsigngenerator.com

and i am officially employed.

I have an important interview today.

My supervisiong professor told me that whatever I do, I can not interview without pantyhose. Evidently, principals have a pantyhose fetish. They see bare legs and they think "Unfit to teach! Unfit to teach!" This would be fine if I owned pantyhose. Or the type of dress/shirt/suit you wore panthose with. Or the type of shoes that matched the type of dress/shirt/suit that you wore pantyhose with.

And this just leads to other problems. Mainly, that if I did own those kind of clothes - I would feel weird wearing them. I would feel like a kid playing dress up and pretending to be a grown up. I would want to start each interview with an apology. This really isn't me.

I have no idea what I will wear to this thing. And I wish I owned more makeup. Eye shadow - and maybe mascara. If I owned lipstick it might make me look professional.

Crap.

I am so screwed.

On a positive note. I finish practice teaching today. The next time I teach - theoretically - I will be getting paid.

If only I can pass for an adult long enough to get the job.

chip: since it is Easter this weekend, why don't you let me buy you a cd?
me: (after looking for a really long time and seeing him eye me nervously as i approached the "soundtracks" section) i just have really bizarre taste in music.
chip: yes, you do.
me: i think i should stick to iTunes so nobody has to see what i buy.


me: dinner really sucks because i thought i was cooking tilapia and instead it is some fish that should be deep fried and eaten with ketchup - but if you eat it fast with cantaloupe it is bearable.
chip: you are right. it sucks - but the cantaloupe helps.

chip: so what do you call this cd you made? pissed off girl music?

me (taking an online doctrine quiz): don't even look at my answers - you will be convinced that i am going to hell.
chip: are they that bad?
me: you don't even want to know.

me: (after chip read my post on heaven): i know if i die you will get married again and like her better because she will be nice and friendly but if you die i will never get married again.
chip: really?
me: yup - i just need to be alone too much. i already have kids - i would not need to remarry.
chip: but what about sex?
me: remember when we saw the movie The Missing - how she kept a boyfriend in her barn. that's what i would do. i would just have a barn boy.
chip: instead of an ox in the manger you would keep a boy in the barn. (a reference to my favorite Bible verse on marriage: "where there is no ox, the manger is clean - but there is much to be gained from the strength of an ox")
me: i would be all about the barn boy.

chip: but doesn't it look nicer in this new, big kitchen when i leave the cabinet doors open?
me: where there is no ox, the manger is clean.
chip: at least the cabinets are high enough that you don't knock your head on them anymore.

chip: i have a present for you - look on your computer
me: a picture of the garbage truck picking up our packing boxes?
chip: doesn't it make you happy?
me: i am happy that the boxes got picked up, but i don't really understand why you took a picture.
chip: i thought it looked cool.

my worst quality: an inability to need other people - and my subsequent ability to simply cut them out of my life.

i went to therapy for this once, because it scared me. it scares me.

i went to therapy and i told the therapist “i am afraid that i do not really love anyone because i know that i have the potential to just cut them out of my frame of reference in a heartbeat”.

and the therapist said: “i don’t think that is a problem with you. i think it is a problem with the other people”.

this was probably said because i went to a therapist that had at one time been a teacher of mine, a mentor of mine. a therapist i knew. a therapist that loved me. a therapist that i had loved.

i thought his answer was bullshit and it pissed me off. so i never saw him again.

On Easter morning, we baptize a kid from Iraq. He fell in love with Jesus through the coffeehouse, but he attends a “real church” on Sunday morning to get baptized. And I sit as the preacher peppers his sermon with good election-year references to “the Iraqis” and “muslim fundamentalists”, and I hold my breath almost the whole time but then I thank God that this kid’s love for Jesus is bigger than politics.

Afterwards, the college kids come to my house for brunch. They come into the kitchen and talk to me about books while I cook pancakes.

My daughter keeps dropping off toys and flowers and bugs as gifts for the students. She brings someone a caterpillar in a little toy birdcage from her dollhouse. The student she gives it to is puzzled. I explain. For some reason, my daughter has an obsession with cages.

She always includes the idea of cages when she plays. Go into her room at any given time and you will find cages with little toy people in them. I tell them that I worry that perhaps, this is not healthy. “What does it mean?” I ask, “that she always puts things in cages?”

One of the boys, who is studying behavior and training goats at the zoo as part of his lab answers: “It means that she is a girl”.

Later, I see this boy in the backyard. His dark hair is strewn with violet wildflowers and he is pushing Lily on the wooden swing that hangs from our pecan tree. She is laughing and she keeps looking for his eyes, looking at him to say with her eyes: “You are my hero”. And she is saying, “higher, higher”. And he is smiling in the sunshine, in the grass, under the tree. She has taken him away from the indoor conversation and now he is in the wind and is helping her swing and spin and when she gets off the swing she will grab his hand and tell him not to leave.

And I think.

Is it a cage, or is it a key?

Sorry, our prom is only for white people.

I heard you sing a rebel song,
sung it loud and all alone.
We can't afford the things you save,
we can't afford the warranty.
I see you walking in the glare
down the county road we share.
Our southern blood, my heresy,
damn that ol' confederacy.

I'm sorry for what you have learned,
when you feel the tables turn.
To run so hard in your race,
now you find who set the pace.
The landed aristocracy
exploiting all your enmity.
All your daddies fought in vain,
leave you with the mark of Cain.

"Become You" - Indigo Girls

One of my best childhood memories is of my father building me a playhouse. He built the frame first, and he held my hand and let me walk around on top of it as if it were a huge, square-shaped balance beam. As I walked, he explained to me what the playhouse would look like; it would have a slanted roof and a skylight and a fireman’s pole for quick escapes. Although my mother insisted it was to be a shared playhouse, my brother was just a toddler. I knew, holding my father’s hand and hearing him dream, that this playhouse that he was building - he was building for me.

One year, the sorority house next door created a Sesame Street themed production for freshman Rush. When they tore it down, my parents rescued the figures from the curb and used them to decorate the playhouse. Until it rained, I had a Sesame Street playhouse.

My father asked me what I wanted to name the playhouse and I told him that I wanted to name it after The Electric Company. I wanted to name it: “Hey You Guys - Get Out Of Here”. He cut out letters and put them up on the house. “Hey You Guys”. I was upset. Not “Hey You Guys”. “Hey You Guys - Get Out Of Here”. “Get Out Of Here” was the most important part.

Scrawled in crayon in all capital letters - right after the welcoming message - I added my own message.

"Get Out Of Here!"

Let us break bread together, on our knees.

Let us drink wine together, on our knees.

When I fall on my knees,

with my face to the rising sun,

Oh Lord, have mercy on me.

Easter always makes me think of Heather.

Heather was the reason that I loved The Smiths. It was 1985. For Christmas, she bought all of her friends albums from Vinyl Fever. She bought my friend Gwen a Cure album. She bought me the first album by The Smiths. And I was in love. I fell in love with them early and collected everything, all the import singles with the hidden messages scratched around the rim of the vinyl. This gave me the distinction of being the girl that everyone asked for mix tapes. An honor that I owed, entirely, to Heather.

Heather was smart and cool. Her father was a professor and she spent summers with him in Italy on archeological digs. She was worldly and wise and she drank wine with her parents at dinner.

It was around Easter and Heather and I were eating lunch. We were sitting outside near the bus ramp, watching the upperclassmen leave campus for lunch. The rednecks would honk and yell at us and Heather would flip them off in return. We were being cool and intellectual and deep. I forget what we were discussing, but I am sure it involved heavy use of words like fascist and anarchy.

Somehow, the subject turned to Easter. Heather knew I was a preacher’s daughter. She sighed in disgust. “Easter is such a stupid holiday. I just do not get it. All you stupid Christians making this huge holiday over the fact that your God was crucified and killed. I mean, that is just depressing. Why would anyone want to celebrate the fact that their so-called God is dead?”

I looked at her in astonishment. This was Heather. This was cool, smart, spend-all-my-summers-in Europe-daughter-of-two-college-professors-Heather. Heather who I ate lunch with every day. Heather who bought me my first Smiths album. Heather, who evidently had no idea that the story of Jesus did not end with him dead on a cross.

“Heather”, I said carefully. “Easter is not when Jesus was crucified. Easter is the day he rose from the dead.”

Heather's eyes widened in shock. “He ROSE?????????”

I nodded.

For a few minutes we sat in silent amazement. Me, amazed that anyone could think that Easter was about the death of God. Heather, amazed that suddenly it all made sense.

Eventually, Heather spoke.

“Well”, she said. “I guess that changes everything”.

and i had another dream last night that i was a kid and i was upset and it was cold and i think i was running away. but then, a friend came up behind me and took one of my mittens off so they could hold my hand and it suddenly became okay.

and i think about this dream. i think about a beloved friend of mine who is running away. i think that i have listened to her, but i have never actually taken her hand and held it. and i wish i had done that before now.

i had a dream last night that i went into the basement of my house and found huge display cases of cutlery. there was this one set with the price tag still on it. it was from Holland and it was strange looking. very short with round, lemon-shaped handles. the actual spoon or fork or knife part was very small, ridiculously small - it was almost all handle. the person who was with me looked at the price tag and saw that it retailed for almost 4,000 dollars. "wow", they said, "you are so lucky to find this in your basement. it is worth so much money. you will have to take this and use it and it will impress people".

and i just looked at the cutlery.

"yeah", i replied.

"except - how would you eat?"

I have trouble with the idea of heaven.

I will be blunt.

Heaven does not really appeal to me.

My first doubts about heaven came when I was a child and I found a dead bluebird in the middle of the street. It was beautiful. It had not been hit by a car or attacked by a predator, and no bugs had found it yet. It was as if, mid-flight, it had simply dropped.

I picked up the bird, feeling its impossible lightness, and carried it home. I buried it in front of the door to my playhouse. I prayed that God would put my bird in heaven, that when I got to heaven - my bird would be waiting. I named the dead bird “Daisy”.

At dinner, I told my parents about the bird and how Daisy was flying around in heaven, waiting for me. I told them that when I died, she would fly to me and land on my hand. And my father, a minister who knew about such things, told me that animals do not go to heaven. I protested and he explained that animals do not have souls; only people are made in the image of God and with the potential for heaven. Once I thought about it, I saw his point. I mean, heaven would get crowded if every animal that ever lived went there. I knew he was probably right, but I began to doubt the greatness of heaven. Because at the time, I was very obsessed with Alice in Wonderland, and I had been confident, until now, that in heaven “cats and rabbits would reside in fancy little houses” and “all the bluebirds would be nice and friendly ‘how-de-do birds”.

I bother my husband when I talk about heaven. He is also a minister. Like my father, he knows about such things. He has read it all in the original language.

“I think heaven will be boring and it will get old”, I say. “I can not imagine wanting to do anything - no matter how great it is - forever. Will I be able to sleep?”

He assures me that heaven will be wonderful. He pulls out the C.S. Lewis (I think) quote about how our first words when we get there will be “of course”.

I counter with my doubts. Golden streets and big houses and jewels do not appeal to me. It sounds like Heaven is going to look like Versailles. And there is no marriage in heaven. And if there was marriage in heaven - what if I die and he remarries and he likes the new wife better than me and then when he gets to heaven he chooses to be married to her instead? I can see this happening - being the bitchy-give-me-my-space-heaven-doubter that I am. The whole thing just sucks, in my personal opinion. So, no marriage in heaven. I can see the reasoning behind that. I am kind of glad about that part.

He patiently explains that the gold and jewels part is just language to describe that it will be more wonderful than the best thing we can imagine. There will be no marriage because we will all be in communion with each other and with God and it will all be love, love, worship,worship, love. And I reply “Yes, but....”

Yes. But................

It still does not sound good to me. I mean it sounds great for a while, for a million years or so. After that? I think I will be tired. Tired of all the love and worship. I get tired being around people. I don’t know that I want to be in eternal communion with them. This scares me. It scares me that I will get to heaven and my first words will not be “of course”. It scares me that I will get to heaven and my first words will be “I guess I should have taken it more seriously when I was told to love my neighbor as myself”. It scares me that heaven may be learning the hard way.

I go back at it with my husband.

"Can I read in heaven?” I ask. And I get a very good seminary answer that Jesus is the word made flesh and I will not need to read because I can just commune with Him.

Later I tell him that I am pretty sure I will cry in heaven. I cry when I pray. I cry when I am happy. I cry when I hear God’s voice. I will, I am sure, cry in heaven and all that “no tears in heaven” stuff will not apply. I read about no tears in heaven and I say: “Yes, but.....”

At this point, my husband is just agreeing to get me to shut up. Sure. I can cry in heaven. I can knock myself out with all the crying and reading in heaven and I can do it all with Daisy the bluebird perched on my shoulder like a pirate's parrot. Now, will I please keep my heaven doubts to myself?

It just seems like such a long time. And there has never been any moment so good that I never wanted it to end. I may have wanted to prolong it - but never to make it last for eternity.

Then, about a year ago, I was doing yoga. I do yoga to Gregorian chants, and I keep little colored index cards of scripture out to meditate on during the poses. I lay them out like a mosaic.

When it came to the end, and I entered into quiet meditation, I mediated on an image of walking along a beach and sitting down on a dune to watch the ocean. I could feel everything. The warm sand, the salt in the wind. It was quiet, and peaceful. And a man started walking towards me, but I did not turn to look at Him. He sat down beside me. I knew it was Jesus. I smiled, but I did not say a word. I did not turn. I kept my eyes on the water.

The sun began to set and I reached over and slipped my hand in His. I scooted closer. I still did not turn. I still did not speak.

I rested my head on his shoulder. Silently. Silently. I closed my eyes.

And for that one moment I had the following thought:

I could stay like this forever

amen

my five year old daughter is learning to make words. she does this by methodically copying titles and authors from the bookshelves that line the walls.

she started doing this on her own. as if some part of her is drawn to the elemental beauty of the words. she asks me how to pronounce what she writes and she repeats the words, like poetry.

she writes them in brilliant colors. like things belonging in a garden.

i find the pages that she makes scattered like petals. like the petals of a flower that is only just beginning to blossom.

When I was in high school, I loved to make collages. I was quite obsessive about it. My walls were covered with them. Clear contact paper was my friend.

I divided magazines into two groups - those worthy of cutting up and those not worthy of cutting up. My favorite, by far, was The Face.

In the midst of the move, I found one of my old collages. It makes me happy to see it again.

use your mentality. wake up to reality.
love eats up everybody.
sleep.
the Beautyful ones are not yet born.

I can not get the following song out of my mind:

The Problem with Jazz
Christine Kane

Now she's got too many t-shirts and not enough time
She takes out the trash every Monday at nine
She says "No Sir - I don't want to work
I don't want to waitress
I don't want to do this
I told you - I just want to play
tell me to 'Go back to school'?
Man, you've got to be pulling my leg."

She said:
"It seems I could turn around and take back what time has stole from me.
Absolutely everything they ever told me.
Resolutely I'm inclined to fight the blows -
but incompletely I resign myself to the highs -
and lows."


I don't mind work and would love to live my entire life in various graduate programs. Still, I can so relate to this. Isn't it just the story of our lives? Well, my life at least.

Too many t-shirts and not enough time and an incomplete resolution to the highs and lows.

Among other things, Charles and I took drama classes together. He was the only boy in the class. We were always acting partners. I can still remember doing an assigned scene from a hideously sappy play together and having Charles speak to me, in the most romantic voice possible: “I’d follow you to the ends of the earth”. And I would have to fight so hard not to break into laughter when I responded with my snappy comeback - “the kitchen is far enough”.

When it came time to perform our scene for a grade, we made it almost all the way through - only to begin laughing hysterically at the very end. “The kitchen is far enough”. We just could not get past it. To this day, Charles and I end our conversations with him sighing, “I’d follow you to the end of the earth” , and me replying, “the kitchen is far enough....”

We must have been an awful combination for a teacher to have in drama class. Since we were so close - and since Charles was (unknown to anyone but me) - gay - we delighted in pushing the envelope. We would start something and dare the other to follow along. I remember doing a scene once where we were given a generic argument script and had to come up with characters and a setting to use during a performance of the scene. Charles and I decided to be newlyweds shopping for a mattress. It was hilarious. I loved it. I loved to play along. I loved having a playmate to push the envelope with.

One day, we were participating in a “drama game” where we sat in a circle and each of us had to tell a story about childhood. At some point in the story, we had to insert a small lie. We were supposed to watch each other and try to figure out which part of each story was not true.

When it was his turn, Charles began telling a story about his brain dead sister. His poor, brain dead sister that was in an institution. She had not always been brain dead. She had loved his older brother, idolized him in fact. She had loved his brother and she had loved baseball. She had followed the older brother to baseball practice one day and he, unknowingly, had swung back his bat and hit her in the head - causing massive brain damage. Charles was very sincere when he told this story. And I started laughing.

All the other drama students looked at me in horror. Charles started crying. “How can you laugh at this?” they asked. “Look”, I tried to explain, “he does not have a brain dead sister. He made up the whole story”. The class turned to Charles, expectant and empathetic. One girl was rubbing his back as he sobbed.

“I do”, he insisted. “I do have a brain dead sister - she is in an institution.” The girls looked at me like I was some sort of monster. How dare I laugh at such a tragic thing?

I turned on Charles. “Tell them”, I insisted. “Tell them that there is no brain dead sister”.

He looked at me, heartbroken. “There is......there is......I just never talked about her before”.

This was bullshit. I knew it was bullshit. There was no brain dead sister. I was sure of it. I had the kind of relationship with Charles that involved me practically living at his house. If I stopped by and he was not home - I was known to eat dinner with his family in his absence. “Why aren’t there any pictures of her in your house?” I reasoned. Charles looked at me - straight in the eye. He did not flinch. “Would you keep a picture of your brain dead sister?”

He collapsed into heartbroken sobs. The girls glared at me. “How could you?”, one of them said.
I looked at Charles, sobbing. Doubt crept in. Maybe he did have a brain dead sister. I felt like shit.

“I am so sorry”, I said. The girls reluctantly let me enter their little circle of comfort. “I had no idea”. Charles nodded. He embraced me. He cried in my arms. The girls all nodded approvingly.

Somehow, we came back to the exercise. Someone else told a story. I forget what story I told when it was my turn.

Then, we started telling what part of each story was a lie. One girl had worn a blue shirt instead of a red shirt; another was actually eleven - not nine when her story took place.

We came to Charles. We were supposed to try to guess where the lie was, but everyone was too sympathetic and compassionate to play games with poor Charles. Poor, sad Charles. After the horrible example I had set, nobody wanted to doubt a single detail of his story.

“So, what part did you make up?” someone finally asked.

Charles smiled. “The whole thing”.

All the girls were really pissed off. Everyone but me. I thought it was brilliant. Beautiful. He actually beat me at our own game. There are only a handful of people who I am happy to lose to. Charles is one of them.

We laughed. We laughed until we cried. It was that good.

"I remember being at a retreat once where the leader asked us to think of someone who represented Christ in our lives. When it came time to share our answers, one woman stood up and said, 'I had to think hard about that one. I kept thinking, Who is it who told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?'"

Barbara Brown Taylor


From the book Salt and Light, published by The Bruderhof.

We moved yesterday, and our neighbor came over in the evening with a six pack on English ale as a housewarming gift. I stood on my front porch as he made his offering.

Across the street was the school, and beyond that, Marta trains were runing on on elevated tracks, heading into downtown Atlanta. The dogwoods were blooming between our houses, and he had wisteria climbing his fences.

"Welcome to the Hood", our neighbor said. " I am really glad ya'll have moved in".

So am I.

Be both.

Invite them over. Share a glass of wine. Sit with them for a while. Remember to sing strange songs and practice being kind. Always. Make your peace. Be both.

This is my prayer for me. This is my prayer for you.


In Mind
by Denise Levertov

There's in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation-

but she has
no imagination

And there's a
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.

I was trying to explain Romeo and Juliet. I was trying to explain the part where Benvolio defends Romeo before the Prince by saying that he had “but newly entertained rage” when he killed Tybalt. I tried to connect this to premeditated murder vs. crimes of passion.

My kids were tired. They had been in three-hour testing all morning and were not in the mood.

”Okay,” I said , trying to be relevant. “You know how the law works. If a woman walks in and finds her husband cheating on her, and - in a moment of jealous rage - she shoots him, then
that crime does not get punished in the same way that it would be punished if she carefully planned it out in advance?” This interested my kids.

“Mrs. J”, they asked, “Would you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Would you kill your husband if you found him cheating?”

So I told them that my husband knows to never cheat on me. He has told me that even if he ever wanted to, fear would keep him faithful. Because I had a boy cheat on me once. And when he did, I did many, many bad things. I put all of the letters I had written to him in a pile in the middle of his bedroom floor and set them on fire and then poured water on the flames. I gave his clothes to Goodwill. I forwarded his mail to Alaska.

One of the girls in the front row raised her hand, more engaged in the lesson than I had ever seen her. “Wait a second - how do you forward mail to Alaska?”

And I looked at these kids, these ninth graders. For many of them, the path to adulthood will not be easy. They will be hurt. They will trust. They will love. And it will hurt them.

Last week was senior skip day - and first block - nine of my ninth grade girls were missing. Just the girls. Ninth grade girls who got “honored” by invitations from twelfth grade boys. That trust will get stripped away. It will get lost the hard way.

And I thought, for a second, that knowing how to forward mail to Alaska was a skill that could prove valuable in later life.

I thought this, but I did not tell them how to do it.

Instead, we went back to the text of the play and the murder and the exile. The kind of love that made a fourteen year old girl take a dagger to bed with her. The lies. The desperation. The tragedy that could have been prevented again, and again, and again.

The story that did not have to end the way it ended.

And the sun for sorrow will not show its head. Some will be pardoned, others punished.

I went back to that. I hope it is enough.