11/25/14

There are leaf-stains on the sidewalk this morning

from the rain last night, little brown memories, little
ghosts, little impressionistic paintings on the concrete,

the leaves themselves all gone. The trees are bare.
In a day, or two, or five, nothing will be left.

This is a metaphor, of course. It’s heavy-handed, true,

but Ferguson is refusing to be turned into a poem
and so the options are limited. The leaves are
the bodies, obviously. Trayvon, Michael. Tamir, Eric, John.

Michael Brown’s body lay in the street for hours

and whatever mark he made on the asphalt is long
since gone, his family left with memories, ghosts,

impressionistic paintings of an eighteen-year-long life.

The life itself all gone. Can you see the poem

begin to unfold? It is autumn. The leaves are falling.

Can you see, also, the limits of metaphor? Let me

speak plainly: these deaths were not inevitable.

They were not leaves scheduled to fall before winter.

The stains these bodies made on the sidewalks
and roads and autopsy tables were not art.

The sky is grey, heavy with snow. Michael Brown
was shot dead in August. Walking down the street.
Eighteen years old. Michael Brown is refusing

to be turned into a poem. There is nothing left to say.

in memoriam: robin williams (1951-2014)

it's a strange thing to feel sad about the death of a person you never met, especially so when said stranger is a celebrity. it is, perhaps, even weirder to feel like you have any sort of ability - any sort of right - to bear witness to the life of a person you don't know. and yet here i am, gutted in a totally unexpected way by robin williams' death, and ready to try to set down words that capture something of my sadness and his life.

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mostly, i suppose, the ache in my heart has something to do with watching Dead Poets Society nine years ago in a classroom across from a cornfield in lampeter. it all happened right smack dab in the middle of ordinariness, is what i'm trying to get at; i was distracted, giddy with the thought that my english teacher was ... creatively bending the rules w/r/t what we could watch in school. how was i to know that i was about to be given a huge, huge gift?

the tiny seed of a thought (that i could do poetry too) - that's what i'm talking about. which, okay, had to germinate for years and years (six years, to be precise), but: it was there waiting for the right time, nonetheless.

this is what i'm talking about; i watched this clip twice yesterday night and there were tears in my eyes by the end.

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details of robin williams' death keep trickling out into the public, and i have been uncomfortably reminded of david foster wallace's widow talking about how painful the months after his death were. "people read his autopsy report like it was great literature," she said, and the line lodged in my throat, a distasteful reminder of the way we are often voyeurs of suffering.

it is hard to understand why people like dfw and robin williams and aaron swartz and marina tsvetaeva and mark rothko and virginia woolf commit suicide. looking at their life from the outside, it is so easy to see the marvelous, larger-than-life gifts they had, and terribly easy to miss the suffering that chased after them like wolves.

mental illness. it's a thing, y'all. it doesn't discriminate, either, as someone so eloquently put in an article today. at the risk of repeating myself (i put this on facebook earlier):

"these aren't my words, but I read them recently on the internet & thought they deserved a share:

robin williams died today.

here is a list of things that robin williams was:

-funny

-sharp 

-kind 

-clever 

-and sad.

that’s important, the “and sad,” because sometimes sadness can feel like the only thing we are. it can feel all-encompassing. it can feel like the only thing anyone could possibly see, when they look at you: sad. that person is so, so, sad.

but there is always an “and.” we are never just sad. we are never only. we are always and.
we have all known people who were sad, who are sad; some of us are ourselves sad. being sad does not remove the other parts of us, though it can make them harder for us to see. when you are sad, you don’t necessarily feel like you are also funny, and sharp, and clever, and kind.

but you still are. you don’t have to feel like something to be it.

those things are written on your bones, they are woven into the fabric of your skin. sadness can feel so big, so big and overwhelming and complete, even when it is not a directed sadness. maybe especially when it is not a directed sadness, when it’s a depression that has no direct cause and nothing we can name.

sometimes the sadness is too big. people try to cut it out, or starve it out, or drink it down, or drug it silent. if this is you: i’m sorry. if this is you: you are not alone. if this is you: remember that the solution is never to give up, because you do not live in a vacuum. there are people waiting for you. there are films and songs and books and not-sadness waiting for you. i know that you don’t feel like waiting, but wait anyway.

if you need help, ask for it. here’s a link to crisis centers across the globe. (http://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres) if you live in the U.S., this is the national suicide prevention hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

robin williams died today, but the genie didn’t, and mrs. doubtfire didn’t, and peter pan didn’t. sean maquire didn’t, and professor philip brainard didn’t, and alan parrish didn’t. batty koda didn’t. john keating didn’t. you didn’t.

don’t."

(source: http://ofgeography.tumblr.com/post/94482062006/robin-williams-died-today-here-is-a-list-of).

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when i read about robin williams' suicide i thought of this tribute to dfw:

I am sad now because his words, his mind, were such a companion to me and to others, yet clearly a terrible master. I wish that I could have returned the favors he has done for me in some small way.

i wish robin williams could have understood the worlds he opened up inside of countless other human beings. i would have liked to tell him that i thought about the Dead Poets Society during the year in college that i started to think of myself as a writer. i would have liked him to know that.

-

when i read about robin williams' suicide i also thought of his role as sean mcguire in Good Will Hunting. 

"It's not your fault."

mental illness, y'all. 

it's a thing.

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so - yeah. i don't know robin williams. i don't want to be a voyeur to his family's suffering. i can't really say anything about his life, or make meaning from his death. 

but i guess i can say that there are a lot of suicides that are a surprise to the people left behind, and maybe the best way to remember robin williams (and these other artists i love who also took their own life) is to say that i would always, always want to know. mental illness is not too scary for it to be spoken of, okay? i would want to know.

my blog stats say i have readers from 8 countries. i've had over 10,000 hits. who knows how many individuals have virtually visited me? 

to all you nebulous people out there, listen: if you're thinking about suicide, there are places you can turn to for help. you can leave me a comment, if you have to. we'll find someone to help you out.

-

robin williams: 1951-2014. 

your life was a gift to many. 

thanks.

instructions on beating a summer headcold: 1. drink tea 2. lay very still after work 3. blog

i've been listening to anais mitchell a lot, recently - often the child ballads, but i have her album The Brightness in my car and i've been doing a bit more driving than usual, recently.

there's a few lines in the last song on that album that always punch me in the gut a little when i hear it:

you can hold her hand
you can kiss her face
go slow if you can
cause the world is a very sad place
and when she leaves she'll leave no trace
and the world will still be there

 -

i've fallen victim to one of those horrid summer headcolds, so i know i'm already prone to be in a down mood anyway. but: the world feels a very sad place, right now.

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people on my facebook keep talking about a girl from L-S who was killed in a car wreck this week. she was just a month or so out from graduating high school, all ready to go away to college. and now she's not, and that's that.

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sometimes i see headlines about syria, or israel, or the west bank, or the gaza strip, and i just can't open the articles. i can't make myself read them. other times i read them and just feel very heavy and tired.

i happened to see pictures, this week, of the crowds teetering on the edge of riots in east jerusalem; streets i could have walked on, maybe, the jerusalem stone familiar in the photos; streets now full of anger and bitterness and the stench of hate. israeli teens: murdered. palestinian teens: murdered in retaliation. stones thrown.

i happened to see pictures, this week, of parents running with small children in their arms down the streets of gaza city, smoke billowing up in the background.

the spirit groans.

-

a couple from my university is traveling - soon, very soon, in their orientation even now - to iraq, for three years. it is hard not to be afraid.

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and yet the world is still there, somehow, despite it all.

like: holding two very small humans this past weekend; twin baby girls born into a home fairly shimmering with love for the created earth.

like: getting letters in the mail from old friends.

like: a weekend with my family, camped out in the backyard.

and like this:

To love is to feel your death
given to you like a sentence,
to meet the judge's eyes
as if there were a judge,
as if he had eyes,
and love.

and like this:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

and like this:

 Surely I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.

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the world is a very sad place. but headed, i hope - i believe (help me with my unbelief) - for redemption. 

melancholy; memory; a writing exercise; feeling that "thirst for the goodness I do not have"

missing Harrisonburg achingly. today, sitting in the lab, I had a sudden, sharply clear memory from last fall, of eating supper in the park with my home group from Early Church.

the sun setting. running down the hill with S, holding J; he still just a baby. D with a chicken in a crock-pot, and the kids telling me about butchering it. biking there and back, food in my basket; the corn salad, maybe? (how happy it makes me to realize I contributed enough times I can't remember what I brought).

oh, I thought today, like pressing on a bruise, J will be talking now, maybe. I wonder if K & J have trained Edison out of jumping on the kitchen table and chewing up their books. R will be pulling out her winter sweaters, now, and wearing them to church. 

---

all I want right now is to sit in my tree on the hill behind EMU, the time and space and silence to write.

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there are tall trees lining my street in Bethesda, and in the evening, when I am either biking home or walking up from the bus stop, I sometimes stop and look up at the leaves. the way the sun sets, the lay of the land, the hills, the location of the buildings in the neighborhood to the west means that the setting sun lights up the trees from underneath. they glow, the bark turning orange and the leaves lined gold.

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how to love the place I am in:

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"...time is always time,
and place is always and only place,
and what is actual is actual only for one time
and only for one place,
and I rejoice that things are as they are..."

I can't remember, anymore, if I ever wondered if Eliot was being sarcastic, the first time I memorized this poem.

But then again, I was 19. I took everything seriously.

ugh! to get out of my head!

"...and pray to God to have mercy upon us
and pray that I may forget
these matters that with myself I too much discuss
too much explain..."

it's like I'm trapped in an irony spiral. stop. analyzing. now.

---

(it's quite possible that I shouldn't have read Candide right before graduation.)

---

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a 
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expecting
to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.

-Mary Oliver