No Joy Apart from Him

O, God...
You give such joy. There is no joy apart from you, because anything apart has refused some part of your goodness and is not whole.

When your face turns on us, the sun brightens, breezes live among the trees, leaves shiver at your touch and everything basks in the tender hand that made them. There are no words, suddenly, because words do not describe the connection of your eyes to ours, the stirring of your breath as you sigh on the trees; we cannot speak or we ruin the connection. It is something beyond words, beyond the mouth and deep in the heart and eyes.

I find myself chasing beauty, hungering for perfection and seizing the first image floating by. You have created all these, though: what is there to worship but You? We are beneficiaries of your talent, your fingers precise with each crooked twig. Waves lash, mountains mast, lightning blasts at your word: please God, tell me, how beauty can be so cruel?

Stray trees crush humble dwellers, icons of beauty tremble and lash out with abandon; we who worship them are smashed beneath the falling idol. Places of glory turn rancorous in on themselves, as you the artist destroy spectators with the piece. Why is this so? Do you loathe when we lift the art above the artist, seeking to place it as our God?

Help us, lead us to glorify you and enjoy your art while loving you apart from it. Give us joy to live among beauty, to lay in green pastures and walk beside quiet waters, but let that joy and love remain when beauty is stripped away. Give us joy to follow you in the valley, too.

Calmed by Shadow

Quiet summer nights. Slipping cool curtains over the grass.
Feeling heated and urgent after a day of to-do's, I fall to the feet of the weeds, sinking gloves into brambles; they gnash their thorns. The pain only spurs me, and I drag out bramble after clutching bramble, feeling the rip as their long bodies resist, scratching through undergrowth and holding on tooth and briar. Finally the last dragon is pulled from its weedy lair, and I sit back Conqueror, quieted at the sight of a peaceful garden. Lovely fire lights the crowns of the trees, but only for a minute, slipping away as gold clouds cover the sun. Shadows slip like curtains, birds draw theirs and whistle their last contentment, leaving
a quiet       summer        night.

Lost Soul

Purity. Purity is a lost soul in this world. She gave us beauty, and we seized it, ripped off its gossamer garment and gave it a leather crotch. While she cried, over her child naked, alone and dazzled by the lights from a thousand stages, we mocked her pain and demanded more. Beauty wasn't exciting enough anymore, and she had grown old and unmanageable.
So Purity groaned and reminded us that passion was still alive, in the dusty corners of the earth. We discovered it, remembered the sweetness it brought before it was bound and locked away, and let it out, encouraging it to grow and flourish. Passion beamed, relieved to be set free, and rode the wind of our desires, flitting here and there by our guiding hand. When storms of lust or ravenous attraction descended on passion, however, we abandoned it to the wind and let go entirely, blissful in the knowledge that if we desired something with passion, it must be allowed. And Purity watched, horrified, as we let passion be dashed by our emotions, and we spat at her if she ever objected in giving us whatever we desired.
But we still wanted something, something was missing, so Purity choked up the last of her posterity, a child with eyes clear and quiet. We took one look at innocence, saw her soul and pureness in one glance, and threw her into the Past where she belonged. We scoffed at her limited wisdom, deemed it unrealistic and ridiculous, and hoped she would grow up someday and step into the real world. We knew how vapid a life would be without disorders, frenzy, violence and hatred, so we jeered her desire for normalcy and morality into the ground. We need to accept everyone as they are, we declared. Take your self-righteousness and go torture someone else. But she didn't change, she kept waiting for us to listen. She asked us if we wanted to live the right way, we said furiously, There IS NO RIGHT WAY! and drove a stake through her, hoping she would be silenced for good.
Whispers come now and then from all of these, but we close our ears, listen to our heart. We never hear Purity, though, because she does not live in our heart. She is a lost soul in this world.

Earth-bound

Merciless tragedy
We are... graceful distortions
And angels with clipped wings--
Flying through this night on earth,
Waking up no further with the morning.

Florence in July

July 14, 2013

    It was so hot today. Walking through the Florencian heat for three hours with no water, I got a little heatsick, and felt like I was going to faint. I'm sure I was jolly company for my mother and sister, at that point... We went through the gardens, which were nice but no flowers, and then stopped by a boutique and market on the way back. An ice-cold apple has never been so good, and then I had some "limone" gelato which was ecstasy. Then we all layed down at the place for a while, gathering our strength. Octopus and pasta for lunch, biscotti and milk for dessert.
    I suppose I should talk about something other than food. We have to keep filling the AC, otherwise it burns out if there isn't any water in it. We're all getting tanner, little by little, and I feel like our legs are very strong from walking around so much. \no handsome Italians have taken us off on their vespas yet, but Ellen did get a wolf whistle today (she was wearing a crop top). I saw a very handsome Italian who served me gelato today; he smiled at me and dropped my cup (who knows what that means).
    It's strange to see dogs peeing right on the sidewalk, but there isn't any grass. People also pee on the sidewalk, probably because public washrooms cost money. There can be very foul wafts of smells in Florence, sometimes rotten eggs and sometimes excrement, but the houses and buildings are still so beautiful. I cannot pin down the city, cannot understand its many ways, which probably makes sense~it just has many ways because it has many people. And yet it is also so much the same~the same types of faces, the same cigarettes, the same heat and food, and the same peddlars hawking their wares hopefully and doggedly each day. Does no one get tired of it?
    And yet, I'm not tired. We leave day after tomorrow and I'm still intrigued. I guess that's how it should be.

Lopez lyric

Black sharp against the pearl of twilight

A heron wading, knee-deep in sheen;

Starlight breaks through a canvas shining,

Drops light like a tear on water clean.

What did I find

        Five days on Lopez island.... I feel slower, stretched out in a comfortable way. Even the clocks in the house where we stayed were all an hour late, and time seemed to slow down to oblige us all. Morning fog, quenched by a hot sun bringing the fish and bugs alive, followed by twilight's soft cloak and a stirring moon.
        The last day of our stay, I kayaked along the rough-rocked shore, encountering jellyfish, starfish, kingfishers and the occasional human. At one point, I saw a distant slick head appear, look about and then slide beneath the surface: funny how seals are so sweet-looking until they could possibly come up underneath your small craft and capsize it. A small curve of beach appeared, and I pulled up along the rocks so I could drag the kayak further up; the waves and barnacles were not helping at that point, but I managed. Out of the top of my lifejacket, my book was protruding, reminding me that I had stowed it away intending to read it on some reclusive shore. I read probably three paragraphs, of course, before I was distracted from Finding God by the massive pile of slate rocks behind me. Somewhere inside of me I was inspired by an urge to start moving rocks, to look for the bottom of the pile and whatever lay down there, covered with moss and algae. I don't know what I was looking for, or even expected, but I began industriously throwing rocks left and right, pounding out a rhythm of slate knocking against slate, and the pile shrank. Then, it appeared: a giant rock with a wide flat bottom sitting like a slug, completely immovable and non-negotiable and quite depressing if you are trying to get beneath it. Sweaty and determined, I began shoveling out sediment and pebbles from under the front and removed several small, burgundy crabs from their impending doom. At last I gave a great heave at the rock and probably a hernia to my midsection, but it began moving: like a limpet from its suction hold, it was pried from its home and I saw beneath it.... nothing. I kept digging with a sharp piece of slate, through pebbles, muck and dead crab shells, and as I hit the hard rock of the island itself I realized that I had found strength, something that cannot be given or bought, but fought for and achieved. My perseverance had paid off, and it isn't something I can explain to anyone but something inside which is different from before.