And for my next film...

I would like to direct, or act in, or watch at the very least, a new film version of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. At long last I watched the 1996 film with a young Nicole Kidman and a malicious, balding John Malkovich. He does a great job at evilness.

The movie broke my heart, truly. But I'd like to see it done again, because there is too much art in it, and not enough simple life. And the little things that were changed were unnecessary. Kidman was spectacular; the entire cast was perfectly first rate. I couldn't believe the acting chops that were present: Christian Bale, Viggo Mortensen, Martin Donovan, Barbara Hershey, Mary-Louise Parker, Sir John Gielgud.
I was glad to see it, but like I said it was heart-breaking, and I don't use the term lightly. Harder even to read, and reading first is fairly necessary. Not reading the book first would be the difference between eating a grapefruit whole and peeling, slicing, and sprinkling sugar on one. Rather messy and frustrating versus delectable and dripping juiciness.

A modern version wouldn't work. I doubt it. The shaping factors would not be the same; the plot needs the period it is set in. And yet (which is why the novel is known as classic literature) the insights, the manipulation, the disappointment with what a rotten oyster the world turns out to be sometimes...very modern themes. The tragedy is the loss of Isabel's potential, and the loss of her life's opportunity to love and be loved. What a perfect trap is set by others when they slowly draw her in with what looks like an open door. Her marriage turns out not to be an adventure, not even an escape, but a hideous, malignant trap.

A woman today would not live in such fear, would she? Not so easily trade her dreams for cheap and lifeless baubles? She would simply laugh, or yell or scream, and run away wouldn't she? Or perhaps not? The power of Isabel's own ability to choose was the lock and the key and the cage. All in one, and one for all.

The ending of the novel leaves a reader positively gasping for air, as she returns to Rome and maybe to Osmond...? Or was it to Pansy only...I haven't read any critical literature on the subject. I really can't understand it totally. The ending of the film was rather different, and I'm not sure I liked it as much. A portrait, yes, of self-knowledge and awareness. But it was only a portrait, with no action, and it left you not gasping but simply wondering what was next. In this case brevity was certainly not the soul of wit. It was as if Polonius had a hand in it indeed...more matter with less art would serve The Portrait well.

(But I loved it! I'll watch it again. Once a week for a year? Or until some genius reinvents it?)

Poems and Such

Lots of ideas but not a real blog post this time, just a smattering of poems that have come to me lately.
They need to be distilled perhaps but they are who they are for now.

Thanks for reading if you do; it's always good to be grounded by the sounding board of other's ideas and thoughts!

At That Age

It’s not teenagers,

But the twenty-something’s that should bear

the grimace of society.

Teens hunger and thirst, they struggle and bend,

Emotive, restless, straining toward.

20’s sit smug in pools of stagnant ambition,

Mouths open like baby birds for warmth and food and approbation

Tossing no longer jacks or colored balls but ideas back and forth

Stretched out on couches like the Enlightenment’s elite

Noshing on lattes and relevant ethics

While their parents, with aching smiles, stand beside.

Nothing for them but bland replies,

Whose backs were bent at 20 forging paths

With delicate dreams

and pocketed coins to pay the rent.

 This is (obviously) about my own introspection and selfish tendencies in my early twenties. And also about what I see around me from time to time.

Night Falling

Sometimes the moon is just right,

Over the house

A crisp crescent the cow jumped over

And the sounds of the music are just right,

Slow, steady, moody and blue

 

The evening sky pale through dark leaf-lace

Luminous, colorless, grey-scudded clouds

And the garden lamps glow on

The evening shower that passed

Minutes ago

Leaving drips on dim flowers

Musky in the gathering dusk

 

And the moon is just right,

When you look up,

The night’s soft arms are folding

‘Round colors of grey and white

 

It’s a good time to be alone and breathe

In the voluminous air of the night.

 This one I wrote quickly on my phone memo-pad one evening after a rain shower as I was walking into the house. The moon was perfect, and the radio still coming from the car speakers fit the mood exactly.



Free

I’ll rent a space, where they race snow machines over high fields, and swings go up and down too high to hear the recess bell.

I’ll climb a tree in the dark, where they can’t find me and wouldn’t think to look. Or wander through the pitch black where the noise of an animal, probably wild, doesn’t scare me as much as going back.

I’ll take a walk in an odd direction, and in the space between being lost and being gone too long I’ll feel the joy of heedless breezes that come from anywhere.

I’ll climb some stairs to a grey haven, an attic room with a rectangle of window and just a bed and a wood floor.

I’ll bend to buttercups with my child self, little girl with no care too large to hold out and drop on the world.

I’ll pay my rent when it is due. In the space between I’ll hide from you.

This one also dropped out of my head in a hurry. Sometimes I like these better than the ones I tweak and puzzle over for an interminable length of time. The fast free verse stream-of-consciousness poems don't win prizes, though.


 

Disappointment

 

Tin taste and lead

Grey stone swallowed

And stuck

Long white hallways

End in space

Pace the miles

Drift right and left\ backward/ forward

A sneeze dies behind the nose

 

Burst into laughter once

Glitter in the eyes

A caked-on smile

A wait-a-while

 

Burnt smell and dead

Fish in the pan

Not fried

Not half alive

Indelible

Print inside

On the live wire

Pulled out

Frayed, splayed

 

Push the whole mess off the counter.

Push      the      whole

Green, purple, and some red. Same as the dead. And guns going off all day in my head.

 

 

 

(Quick! Call a psychiatrist! Ha ha!) This is a strange one but I love the way it pulls the angst out of my soul. I read it now and then for catharsis.

 

Bye for now!

 

FREEDOMMM!! (Part 2)

Last week I wanted to talk about freedom, expressing my deep desire for it. This desire seems to make me different than many women I know. Rather than seeking security, routine, home fires and white picket fences, I tend to pull the other direction, feeling stifled by these (admittedly wonderful) things. Here's a short list of the more typical comforts I find a tad suffocating:

Doing the same routine every day. Please, can every day be different?

Having my home and furniture decorated and set up beautifully. Sigh. I do want this. But not that badly. If it was perfect I would change the furniture arrangement and paint something the next day.

Staying home. Well, this year I've liked it, for sure. But generally the best feeling is going somewhere, anywhere. Hitting the road.

Meal plans. I've tried, I see the benefits, and I go crazy knowing what I'm going to eat. I want daily inspiration, and a microwave that thaws meat instantaneously!!

Enough about me! The ME MONSTER! There's like a thousand "I's" in the last paragraph. So we've established the abnormality of my gypsy-like nature. Good enough.

GOD. I know Him. I believe Him. I trust His Word. (okay, ignore the "I"s for a second)

Does He want to trap me, bind me up in misery, keep me from Freedom?

I KNOW He isn't like that, but yessss.... it does feel that way at times. The life of a believer in Christ seems like an endless obligation to church programs and meetings and stuff that should be done. Plus, you can't do it grudgingly, nope, gotta have a cheerful attitude and a right spirit! The healthy ones who learn to set boundaries and do what they are able to do, cheerfully, yeah, good luck to those guys. Eyebrows raise. Heads shake. Lips, they purse. "No, don't ask so-and-so, they've got boundaries." Like it's contagious. The Lazy Disease.

So yeah, I feel like God's got it in for me through my church obligations. I can't succeed here, all the time, and the failure is haunting. I WANT to be available and be able to serve with a happy smile, but the reality is DIFFICULT. I go, but there are shrieking voices in my head, and the smile is made of paper, glue, and pink markers.

Does God want me to feel like this? Is it a kind of perpetual testing? Keep trying by fire until some gold survives? Is it a punishment? Penance for past sins? No, that's not true. I know Him well enough to know that is not His Way.


FREEDOM. I think God loves it.

Isaiah 58 is where I go again and again to be challenged and shaken up.

"Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself ?Is it for bowing one's head like a reed And for spreading out and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord?

Is this not the fast which I choose,

To loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke,

And to let the oppressed go free

And break every yoke? (vs 5-6)

 

Not to spend our energy on looking spiritual, but to set people free.

 

 

Isaiah 61 tells of the coming Savior who is bringing freedom. And in Luke 4:17-20, the prophecy is powerfully fulfilled.

"And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
 

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.'
 

And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him."

 

The Pharisees and teachers of the law had decided who they thought Jesus was. Maybe you have, too. But when He shows up in your life, when you see Him, it doesn't matter anymore.

Your eyes are fixed on Him.

 

He came and died for freedom.

 

"If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." John 8:32

 

"It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1

 

 

It's pretty clear...freedom is stamped all over everything God writes and does and plans for. I know one thing comes through loudly: He didn't come and die and rise again so we could be a slave to church programs.

Is it the programs' fault? Not really. The bondage is in my mind and heart. Am I really free?

 

James calls the "perfect law" the "law of liberty". And that if I walk in that, I will be blessed in all I do.  (1:25)

 

I don't think I quite have it yet. The struggle is still raw and deep, and I can't go on walking in this disconnect. Desperate for the freedom I see and yet feeling bound up and whipped like a circus performer.

 

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

 

If I'm not free I can't untie anyone else. I can shout at them and tell them what to do, I can bounce around in my chair, but I can't cut the bonds.

 

"To set free those who are oppressed."

 

I don't have it yet, but one thing is Really Clear, and that is...

 

The truly free have the ability to set others free.

 

THINK about that.

 

I want to be the one running around on the battlefield lifting up the fallen, breaking into where the captives are and setting them free. Not on my face in the mud just wishing and wishing it was all over.

 

So that's Freedom Part 2, "from the Christian perspective". God is very much for freedom, and I think He planted the desire in my heart. Not so I would run away from Him, but so I would have such a thudding heart that I would not be content with slavery, and would run like a paint-streaked, bloody Braveheart into the thick of the mess, yelling for freedom.

 

By My Spirit, says the Lord.

 

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 





 

 

 

 

Freedom!!

"FREEDOMMMM!!!" cries William Wallace and his army of Scotsmen in Braveheart, defending their land and their lives.

I find the blood and sword-clashing mayhem in the movie hard to watch, but I resonate with its theme. In my life to this date, I would say freedom has been the strongest desire of my soul. From long solitary walks across field and woods as a child, to my love of airplanes as a teen, to the pull of the open road today, I want to be free. The tie-downs of modern society wear me out, maybe more than most.
Part of my struggle with teaching has been the rigidity, the insistence, the bells and the deadlines and the slavish consistency that goes into making the whole thing work. Some may think we do better in the idealistic conditions of measured hours, measured assignments, measured paces along clean floors, but I beg to differ. It does work, but it's a soul-killing business. At least for me. How do we train free, independent, deep-thinking young men and women by making them ask to use the bathroom all day long? And we wonder why they don't know their own minds when they get out of high school? Hmmm. I wonder why we all want to live in little boxes in little mazes with bells and line-ups for the rest of our miserable lives. Lab rats, all!

Ok I admit that is a bit extreme. My personal views on schooling are skewed a bit left of center, that's the truth. Let's leave this particular soapbox for now.

"You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing." -Tertullian 

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul." - Moshe Dayan

I love to see a motorcycle at the gas station. The heady smell of leather and exhaust makes my head spin. Though I don't ride, the image of a motorcycle heading down the highway is one of freedom. A child in a field of flowers, like Heidi with the goats in the mountains, is freedom. A jet leaving a high ribbon of white against the blue is freedom. Horses running, powerful and beautiful - free.

What images evoke the word 'free' for you?

     .......camping in the wilderness
     .......mountains
     .......travel far away
     .......a cup of coffee alone with a book in a quiet café
     .......the call of a loon across the lake


I believe all people desire freedom. For some it is just a quiet house and room to breathe, for others it's a chance to do what they love. What binds us?
Necessity, and need.
Fear.
Expectation.
Things we own, that own us.

"Freedom lies in being bold." - Robert Frost

Music makes people feel free; it is a freedom in the mind. The same task that would be done as drudgery can be accomplished with spirit and ingenuity to the beat of a favorite song. Saying what we think is a type of freedom which we generally deny ourselves as we get older. We become wise, we say, but in reality the price exacted for speaking we are no longer willing to pay. Wisdom is born of experience and is more often cynicism's child than insight's.
What I'm saying is we call ourselves wise when we are really just careful - careful not to expose ourselves to any blame or hurt. Self-preservation at the expense of everything else.

I am trying to be more bold, like I was in younger days. The straining toward freedom cannot be fully realized here, on earth, though we can live with more boldness and passion.

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask." - Jim Morrison

Oh Jim Morrison I wish you were alive, and we could talk! You said it well. What I know of your life, however, is a travesty of freedom taken too far. Your wild and insatiable appetite for it made rock legend. To die at age 27 from drug and alcohol abuse...this is not freedom.

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty." - Frank Herbert

I think you're on to something there, Frank, though your name I do not know.
Those who express themselves with reckless abandon burn themselves out like comets or meteors entering the atmosphere of earth. A bright and searing light, then emptiness. And so freedom has its dangerous edge. But I still long for it.

If you see a woman with a face painted blue shouting "freedoomm!!" in the grocery store parking lot, that's me, and I've gone too far.

"Freedom is the only law which genius knows."                        - James Russell Lowell

 

.  

 

 

Reap the Whirlwind

They sow the wind...

I've had this phrase going 'round in my mind for a couple of weeks, and recalled that it was from the book of Hosea.

"They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour. Were it to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it up."    Hosea 8:7

Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.

Poetic, evocative. You can see the imagery; a hand sowing seeds into air, the crazy, howling twister approaching.

This phrase has been used for book titles, poems, songs, speeches -- both in and out of Christian circles. Many people quote these lines with no idea they come from the Bible, much less the context of the prophet Hosea and the Israelites who were spending themselves on idols, and still expecting the blessing of God.

But for here and now, how to understand the meaning? It can't be divorced from the original intent, a warning to people that their striving was leading to nothing, and even worse than nothing. The biblical people were expecting their God to come through for them, while they bowed to the neighbor's idols and basically did as they pleased.

A wind is nothing; it buffets, you feel it against your face, but it can't be seen or grasped. A wind is an emptiness. It blows where it wants. Who can direct it? 'Who Has Seen the Wind', writes W.O. Mitchell in his title, one of my favorite novels. Sowing the wind means sowing nothingness into air.

The whirlwind.... much different. A terrible force - a destruction that leaves chaos and scattered ruin as it passes. The power of the whirlwind belies the fact that it is wind, made up of only wind...of nothingness, of emptiness pushed. Little puffs of air, in tremendous synchronization. A whirlwind wreaks havoc.

In what ways do I sow the wind?

It's easy to look at society in general, to point fingers at aimlessness and the empty trappings of materialism.

"You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it." Haggai 1:6

Small, meaningless acts that may add up to horrible consequences. I think of our endless upgrading of computers and cell phones, and of the huge piles of discarded technology I've seen in pictures or documentaries. Children in China and other places burning holes in their fingers and lungs while separating the salvageable with vats of acid. A teenager in Somalia sifting with a stick through smoking circuit board remains to find a piece worth selling. The air above and the rivers above and below, a conduit of toxicity. When will we see the whirlwind? It grows in menacing strength over scenes like this all over the world.

Depressing, isn't it? Not exactly the cheery winds of Mary Poppins, or even the magical cyclone of The Wizard of Oz. But  I'm not thinking so much of the environmental storm clouds the world over -- though they are significant.

In what ways do I sow the wind?

I can sidestep the question by thinking closer to home. Those I know who I have watched, with a sinking heart, sowing the wind. Some reaping their own personal whirlwinds of pain, some who have the shadow of it over them. A useless and finger-pointing sort of business it would be to discuss. It does seem to make some people feel better to scrounge through the scattered remains of a life in a whirlwind's wake, poking and looking for reasons and holding up scraps of sins. What good is that? And if I haven't sounded a warning, who am I to shake my head after the destruction passes by?
How do I know the real story, the one I couldn't possibly understand even if I did know it?

In What Ways do I Sow the Wind?

So, back to a more personal (uncomfortable) level.

Empty conversation where I could be speaking life and truth.

So many times I hear my voice saying words that just stuff the air, as feathers in pillows. I meet someone, and tell them nothing that will save their soul. I keep my treasures under wraps, like rings turned backward on a royal hand. Tramping the water into mud underfoot, instead of holding it out to cracked lips.

"It's just not the right time." "I don't really know them". "They probably know already." "They've already made their choices; and rejected mine." "I have to work with these people."

Eternity waits. The blind man thanks Jesus for not making light conversation when he cried out for mercy. "Son of David!!"

I've been blind. Now, I see. Jesus I'm definitely not, but I can see.

Wasted time where I could be investing it wisely in things that count.

Entertaining myself. Stupid games are fun. I do need to have some fun, everybody does.
How long? What could have been carved into stone while I sifted sand through my hands?

I avoid fixing problems because it feels so futile. I don't know where to start! And the finish line is broken or obscured, and there doesn't seem to be anyone else running. I stop in the race and look around. It's lonely and meaningless. Household tasks I've put off for years. I sit down in the track and trace shapes in the sand.
.....The sands of time speed on.

When the Glass Runs Out

Sometimes I'm just tired, really, truly exhausted, and we all know life has a way of sucking us dry, day by day. A good rest can be the best use of time possible now and then!
There are a lot of messages out there to just take it easy, to relax, you deserve it. And once in a while it's good advice to take.

But what are we doing with our lives? Are we simply animals, to sleep, to wake, to feed, to procreate, to have the best day possible until the next holiday comes around? Is that it??!



Wow. If it is, 'tis misery. I can't be satisfied with that. I would be very like Van Gogh. Pursued by too much emotion and striving into madness, and worse. I don't know enough about his life, but I think I understand some of the agony and ecstasy. Always a dark corner, an obstruction of the light, searching, finding, trying, failing.
Beautiful starry, starry nights. Ragged men in ragged clothes. Too much life, in life, for it to be a futility, a grasping of wind.

If I sow the wind, giving way to meaningless words, empty work and endless entertainment, bowing low to the rituals of pleasure and profit, of town and country, what then?

There are days when that is enough.
Today, obviously, is not one of those days. It may be good to keep me busy, so that my thinking is so wrapped in the cellophane of urgency that I ship it off heedlessly and never unwrap it or set it out to observe. It's a rainy day. I was meant to be mowing the grass today...see, it's the fault of the rain.

I do know from observation, history and my own little life that trouble is stacked up bit by bit and then crashes down suddenly. The Bible is full of
wisdom, and warns often to avoid the fury of the whirlwind and live with eyes upward, watching what we sow daily take root and grow into a healthy, edible stalk of grain. When I don't know where to start and the sands of time seem to be running out way too fast, I will look at this hour.

Those who sow the wind, will reap the whirlwind. It strikes fear into me while at the same time there is hope, because I know Who holds the future, and I know Who holds my hand.

"Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." Galatians 6:8

Quality Work

Well, there are 101 reasons I haven't blogged in a while. 

Mostly I've had responsibilities that are more pressing...like massive amounts of yard work (knew that was coming) and house work (always) and transporting my kids everywhere, everyday (that's life) and meetings (sigh). But I could always get up earlier. There ARE more hours in the day...but they often belong to the night, and I'm generally using them for sleeping. Or trying to sleep/pretending to sleep, depending on the situation at hand, or who is calling.

One reason is my little job, cleaning the offices and shop bathrooms at my dad's business. It's a bit of drudgery that I don't mind too much. Somehow it's easier cleaning any bathroom other than my own, and mopping and sweeping up anyone else's mud but the stuff that's tracked all over my own house. At the end of a long day, when I'm rushing to finish so I can go pick up kids or get home before midnight, it's not that fun. And really quiet....a bit creepily quiet....just the howling and banging of the vents near the ceiling, a random tool crashing, the squish and slosh of the mop. At times I break out into song, a bit nervously, thinking probably no one is listening, but if they are, I'd better at least sound good.

As I stack chairs and wipe tables, walking past trucks, trailers, graders, a pump truck, and various tools of the trade, I think back. Back, and back...to the lone rubber-tired hoe parked outside a little house on the street. My mom working all hours at the hospital, my dad working all hours in the bush. No mobile radio, no cell phone, not much in the fridge. There's a picture of dad pointing to a few eggs on the top shelf, smiling, cuz that was it. The little house whose floors sloped in so many directions you had to get your sea legs.

Then, a wee bit 'o trouble. The town getting all up in arms over a backhoe parked on the street. Well, well. Have to move. Into the country, out of the way, into a trailer. Trees to clear all around, but no matter. The backhoe was well-oiled and practiced. Just not quite paid for. So work, round the clock, keep it working. When's he coming home? Late, for sure. Lots to do, and now we need a truck. A trailer, another hoe. A gravel truck, a shop, a set of fuel tanks. A few good men to leave early in the dark morning, and come back tired, full of sweat and dust from the road.

We went out a few times, to see where dad was going. Is this a road? Well...not really. Are we crossing the creek?! Oh yes, I do it all the time. But there's no bridge! Just hang on. I smile....how many times did I hear that, "Just hang on!". How much further? Are there bears? Oh yes, lots of bears. So many animal stories.....wolves, cougars, moose, fish the size of Friday, if you could only get a rod in there and catch them. Or have the time to.

Us kids would watch from the upstairs window of the new house, waiting for dad. There he was in a swirl of dust and grime, his hat on, moustache full of exhaust and prickly as he raised us over his head, laughing and saying, "Just wait, I've got to fuel up, just wait a bit. Go on in. I'll be right there. You want a ride in the hoe? Alright, hop in, we'll ride to the house." Favorite thing!! Up, up the orange metal stair and into the cab that smelled of rubber, leather gloves, and a hard day's work.

Years went by, and the office went from a pile of papers on the kitchen counter and a mobile radio that squawked all the live-long day, to a trailer you got to by walking across the yard by the garden. One time my banana-seat blue-sparkly bike got run over by the gravel truck. Well, it wasn't mine anymore, it was my sister's, but still it was hard to see it go that way. I talked to the guys often, as they trooped in the house with a question or stood shooting the breeze in the cool of the shop. I heard stories of washed-out culverts, impassable roads, places where you could get a huge piece of pie and a coffee for almost nothing. Stories of break downs, the near miss, the lost driver from the city who had to get pulled out of the ditch. And dust, always dust and diesel, and little oil slicks on the puddles in spring time. Working six days a week, early morning, late night. Supper waiting on the stove. A bit of fried egg on a plate to say someone was at the table, long before the sun stole onto my bed and woke me up for school.

More years, and the office moved to town. The shop too, and now it stands by the highway, a big sign and a big Canadian flag. We always had the flag; we were Canadian. The yard was quiet now, the shop empty but for the riff-raff leftovers that belonged to the domestic life. No more convoys of gravel trucks rolling down the driveway, quick get off the road with your bike! Life and business separated. The house was left for a bigger one. There were horses -- real horses that you paid money for, not the Paint with the matted mane and broken hooves that would stand stock still for no reason at all and had to be moved on with a good deal of boot action. There was more stress but less dust - computers, not piles of paper held down with a rock. More desk chair, less fresh air.

When I finish the cleaning, lock up and walk out to my car, I look up and see the lone rubber-tired hoe on the sign. "McPhee Construction. Quality work". In brown and tan, just like the old Ford we had in 1979, and the business cards we were so proud to sniff, crisp and new in the packages. It's a strong emotion, and it hits me sometimes when I hear people talk, about oh, the money, and when they demand things, and complain, and take advantage. If they could see the mud, sweat and tears that went into that first lone backhoe, and all the bills and sacrifices. To me, it's as clear as the creek water flowing over the pit run. I lean out the window and smell the pines and the diesel, and I know. 

A Lot Of Heart

Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.
                            Robert Frost

Haven't written here in a little while. My thoughts have been switching stations like a kid with a car radio dial. I have trouble concentrating in general, but these last couple of weeks I've had a spastic brain -- just focus on a thought, and it switches to another. I want to write about something -- then I want to write about something else. SHINY!!

One common theme has been a song that I. Cant. Get. Out. Of. My. HEAD. But I like it so it's okay. Ha ha. Lady Antebellum's "Just A Kiss". I know, I know....it's sappy and I'm not even a big Lady A fan, but there's something about the harmony, the melody, the lyric....it's crazy but I could have it on repeat for half a day.
(Not that I've tried that. No, believe me, I have NOT. I might though. Just as an experiment, for Science, like.)

So the song gets me thinking about emotions, about feelings, about the way we turn away from sappy-ness and gag.
I've always felt things too deeply, too much. I always hated that about myself. As a kid, I wore my heart on my sleeve, and it got roughed up. When I had a friend, I loved them to the moon and back. When I was hurt, I cried for a day.  (seriously I cried for a day when I was seven. yikes.) I felt everyone else's heartache and joy too. It wears a person out.
There's something rotten in human nature that rejects too much feeling in others, I think. I was open, I was honest, I was myself. I laughed too loud.
I was too much.

I learned, like we all do, to hide the truth of how I felt, finding a neutral expression that would stand by me through painful rejections, awkward moments, electric joy... that would cover my features through the sound of a heart breaking in half, mine or another's.

Another song I love is The Killers "Be Still".

Be still, wild and young

          Long may your innocence reign

          Like shells on the shore
         And may your limits be unknown
         And may your efforts be your own
         If you ever feel you can't take it anymore --

         Don't break character
         You've got a lot of heart

         Be still, one day you'll leave fearlessness on your sleeve...steady and straight
         And if they drag you through the mud,
         It doesn't change what's in your blood
         When they knock you down

         Don't break character
         You've got a lot of heart...
         Be still, be still

         Over rock and chain, over sunset plain, over trap and snare, when you're in too deep,
         In your wildest dream, in your made-up scheme, when they knock you down....

         Don't break character, you've got so much heart....

I don't mind expressing myself more these days. I can take the strange looks I get from people and just laugh at them. I've learned that there are those who are like cold fish on a marble slab, cold through and through, and there is no waking them. You could pour on passion, fire, wind and water. Just dead eyes staring. I don't waste a lot of time, these days, in reviving cold fish.

Others feel a great deal and hide it well. They've got a lot of heart, but they've had to lock it in a safe, that's locked in another safe, that's locked in a vault. That's in a bunker at the bottom of the ocean.
To you I say, don't break character -- be you, your wonderful self. Let yourself feel again, though it sears -- earth might be the best place for love, but it will never be safe.

I can be unbelievably cynical. I surprise myself with my lack of faith in the human race, sometimes. But I'm not willing to bury myself with the cold stones that break and bend; I want to be the river that runs over them, that ripples and sparkles and rushes down falls, that roars and trickles and bubbles and rests in deep dark pools.

I know what is sappy and ridiculous -- I revel in it. I laugh at it, I relish it.
I'm alive and arms outstretched on the open shore.

I have a lot of heart. I'm betting you do too.