Existence

Every day I experience the immeasurable joy of simply existing

The beauty of the world and the beauty of all of its people

The joy, the power found in the heights and even the depths of passion

A fire

a tree

starlight

the bright face of the moon

eyes (I want to write forever about eyes)

newborn hands and hands worn down with time

voices rich and full of history

the special, sacred sensation of touch

love -consider all the associations that simple word brings-

reason, the wild notion that we can find meaning in anything

temporality, the storied past, fleeting present, mysterious future

life

life life life

life forever and always fully existent experiencing the world seeing life everywhere bounding and leaping and creating and hoping and flying through the air into daddy's lap and kissing the person you love and staring at clouds and reading a really good book and writing one someday and the sheer joy of existence in a world with other people to share it with and to talk to and love and exist with-

~

These things exceed my capacity to understand

to contain

to create

and all I can do is fail to comprehend the impossible fact that I exist, and sit back in my chair and be glad.

Six Variations on a Theme (Six Simple Sentences)

I
They kissed under the exploding stars.


II
“We all die,” he sadly replied.


III
I’ll miss you when you’re gone.


IV
What does it mean to lie?


V
,the author asked with a grin.


VI
I dance into the bloody sunset.

Of Young Love and Uncertainties

This story has never been and will always be true.

High school, May 2010. My knees shook as I stood there alone with her. I had rehearsed this moment, planned it, executed it a million times in my head. Plans within plans, outcomes judged and anticipated, acceptance, rejection, hesitance, eagerness.  But the illusion of control quickly vanished in the shifting sands of reality. My world fell apart, my carefully constructed artifices shattering, crumbling as quickly as my hopes for success.

-God help me I’m not ready I can’t do this she’ll say no she doesn’t even know me that well she’ll never speak to me again I won’t even be able to ask she’s so beautiful I’m not ready-

"Hey... so... I was wondering if maybe... you'd like to, maybe... go with me to a movie or something, at some point..."

The moment of suspense. Thoughts racing. Wish I could see what she was thinking. Wish somehow I could know, wish I could get inside her head and see what’s going on, but I can’t, so time just goes on and on and it really hasn’t been any time at all but at the same time it feels like it’s been forever as I look at her and wait to see what she will do. What if she says yes? What if we go to a movie, go to coffee, go to a nice restaurant, go to school together, slowly build a life together? What will this moment come to mean? Will my future self look back upon this moment as the true beginning of a beautiful life? What if she says no? What if we go our separate ways, lose contact, go to different schools, find different friends, and build our own lives apart from each other? What will this moment come to mean? Will my future self look back on this moment as the true beginning of a crippled life? No matter what she says, am I prepared for this to be one of the most significant moments of my life? With the myopia we have about the future, is it even possible to be prepared for something like this? Is it possible to be prepared for any significant event in one’s life? What does it even mean to be “prepared”? Does it mean an encyclopedic knowledge of all possible outcomes of a complex moment in time, the ability to anticipate everything that may happen, and the readiness to have power over any potential future? This is impossible. But perhaps it means something else. Perhaps being prepared means possessing a willingness to live in the present without disregarding either the past or the future, to see that one’s actions have consequences but to be content with making decisions without having all of the answers. Perhaps being prepared means understanding that one will never be prepared, but that life is there to be lived, difficult decisions and easy ones, beautiful triumphs and crippling disappointments, and that all one can do is embrace that difficult, easy, beautiful, crippling life. All one can do is live.

She is about to speak now. And I am ready to live.

Someday I Hope You'll Understand

Someday I hope you'll understand this cuz I'm not real good at writing yet but I really want you to understand this someday. I want you to understand how much I love you and how you've always been real nice and you mean so much to me and I think you're the nicest and prettiest and most soft girl I ever met. I like when people are soft cuz when people are hard they like to hurt the other people even if they don't mean it they still like to do it sometimes even when they don't know they're doing it. Sometimes people think they're real soft or real hard when they're really the other one and when people think that sometimes it hurts all the other people then too cuz then even the soft people can hurt real hard. But you're not like those people cuz you're soft and you know you're soft but not in that hard way where your knowing makes it hard and makes it hurt all the other people.

I hope you can read this but I know I don't write so good so please don't think I'm hard even though my writing is so hard but writing is hard for all the other people too I think. I want to be soft like you but I think maybe you can't be as soft as you are without some of the other people being soft too and showing you how. So I guess what I want you to understand is that I want you to show me how cuz I'm tired of writing hard and being hard and being hard to all the other people when all I want is to be soft but no one will show me how but I want you to. So will you show me cuz I love you and I want to be soft like you.

Fullness

I am empty, and I hope that someday I can be full. I have felt fullness; I felt it that night in that car, and I felt it during that long conversation, and I felt it on that cold winter walk. I cling to those moments in time, those memories that contain within them all that I desire and dream. That dance, that bonfire, even that day in the classroom when you pushed me away. All of these events linger constantly on the horizons of my brain, and I race toward them even as they recede hopelessly into the sameness of the past. There is no going back; it is futile to look to the past for the fullness I desire for my future. And yet, what is the past but a future that has already occurred? Fullness is infinite, and the fullness of the past is more vivid to me than the fullness of the future. Perhaps one day fullness will be more than a fleeting moment of contentment. Perhaps the fullness I have only experienced momentarily will become a way of life, and I will be able to laugh as fading memories of emptiness replace the past I covet so dearly now. Until then, I can only pray that I can find the momentary joy of fullness buried like hidden treasure in the desert sands of my life. Fullness in a book or film that caresses my soul; fullness in loving the people around me; fullness in my trust in a God who will one day make all things full.

May that God of fullness bless you and keep you through all the fullnesses and emptinesses of your life. If you are empty, may you find the peace and fullness that comes through the experience of being human, living, breathing, creating, and loving without reserve or limit. If you are full, may you hold fast to the blessings in your life, never growing complacent or forgetting the infinite value of the life you have been given to live for whatever length of time remains for you. And for the sake of both the empty and the full, may He come soon to restore His kingdom, where fullness will be found by all, and emptiness will be banished forever into the abyss of history.

Peace be with you.

Story

The world is a set of icy fingers

Wrapped around a fragmented page

On which are written broken words

In a language I can’t understand

Telling a story with no ending

At least, not one that is written yet.

I am trying to write an ending

But I don’t know what words to use

And the ink is drying on the quill

With only a little while left

For me to learn the language

Much less to tell a good story.

But just when I lose all hope

I think, maybe, I understand

Just a few little words, like

“grace”, “laughter”, “patience”

And maybe that’s enough

To carry on just for now.

Not an ending but a beginning

A story still being told.

And maybe I’m not the only one

Who gets to tell it.

Maybe I’ll leave the next part

For you and for you and for You.

Broken

This narrative is broken. Behind a carefully constructed facade of seemingly ordered words, only chaos reigns. Just as a life, a seemingly unified unit of animate existence, is in fact a constant struggle between constituent pieces, a roiling conflict that seems to have no singularity in itself, so also this narrative is filled with internal conflict, failed expectations, colliding inconsistencies.

I want to tell a story about a man and a woman, but I cannot. I want to relate with clarity and truth the ways in which they lived their lives, caught within life's cyclical routines, never escaping, never changing, never accepting the touch of another, never looking outward to see the face of the Other. I want to talk about a certain day, a day in which the previously divergent paths of their lives became connected, a day in which the endless cycle seemed to

stop.

Stop writing. Stop this nonsense. Stop this misguided attempt to tell events as they are. The narrative will not support any attempt to tell the truth. Symbols on a page cannot tell the truth. Words refer to words refer to words refer to words refer to words refer to words refer to

Words exchanged on a sunny day. Secret smiles, shaded symbols. A kindness shared by two blossoms, two rose blossoms rose together. A second meeting, not by chance. Meals shared, meaning shared. Time passes and the narrative continues. Two cycles merge. A bicycle trip, a world common to both, days, weeks, months. Life and love abound.

A bound manuscript, bound with bonds, bound with chains, bounded by cut corners and missing pages. A shadow crosses the sun, the page, the world, the life. Meanings diverge, multiply, deconstruct, crumble. A misunderstanding, a fight. Battles, losing focus, out of focus, out of sight, binocular breaking, one circle becomes two, one cycle becomes two, a unicycle trip. Time apart, time parts, parting time.

And so the narrative remains unfinished, unfinishing, unfinalized, unfinalizable. The circle closes but the ends miss each other. He misses her and she misses him. Cycling again, but the narrative remains unfinished. The story goes on and on, up and up, story upon storey, Tower of Babel, endless babble, babbling brook, broke, break,

broken.