“Either everything will fall apart, or poetry will make everything alive again. It’s not going to stay like this.”

-Matthew Stein, Words from a Dream

January thaw in Houghton is a bit like a teaser trailer for the next highly anticipated movie – it may be weeks, months, years before the main feature is released, but it’s all you can think about until the moment the first screenings open.

Unfortunately, the season of spring can’t be leaked online, it cannot be interviewed, and there’s never an exact release date, especially in western New York. Spring may come as early as March or as late as June. All the snow may disappear overnight, or there may be a period of uncomfortable indecision where snow boots and a t-shirt may be a compromise.

The thaw is cruel as well as kind in its winter reprieve – it will haunt you until the first daffodil breaks through the crust of slush on the grass and the temperature stays above fifty for more than two consecutive weeks. It also allows you to carry on through winter with some optimism. You will dream of fresh air, the cloudless sky, of sitting in the grass with bare feet while listening to peepers sing to their mates. Spring is a siren; a trap; the very best strain of seasonal disease. She infects and she lingers and she overwhelms you with a sense of security and warmth. She leaves no lasting damage, only seamless transition. You don’t think of winter, you only think of tomorrow and the breaking of a new day, just like this.

The thaw is just a sampling of the real thing, but in the State of Perpetual Winter, you cling to what you can get without complaint.

The afternoon air is registering at 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Proper steps must be taken:

-          Exchange a sweater for a long-sleeved t-shirt.

-           Slide open the storm windows to let in an ozone and grass-laced breeze.

-          Slip off ski socks and slide into flip flops.

-          Ignore remaining snow drifts and icicles hanging from gutters.

-          Listen to the animals waking and scratching, to the birds twittering unseen in the trees.

-          Feel the warmth of the noon sun on face.

Close eyes, breathe deep. Exhale, repeat.

I am no fool – I will not miss an opportunity to bask in the gloriously soothing glow of mid-winter sunlight. There may be snow on the ground, but if it smells like spring and you can comfortably walk about with only a light jacket, there’s a sign of hope. There is an end in sight; there is affirmation that winter is neither the conclusion nor the stopping point… that there’s something more than this, something yet to come.

Reminders of this truth are everywhere. One that sticks prominently in my mind is the Disney animation for the 1919 version of Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. The underlying message is that destruction is a natural part of the flow of life. Despite what may happen or what forces may lash out and seem to tear the world apart, there will be renewal. There will be dawn and life and growth and light.

Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain took me a longer time to figure out, but it’s along the same lines. We have death and decay, and in a sense without it the world could not progress. If you only have growth and expansion, you face overwhelming surplus. Living forever on earth can only be accomplished by being a part of other living things; by feeding the earth in death. There is death, but it leads to new life and afterlife and ultimately a better existence. Death is not a means to an end but a means to a new beginning. Time is a cycle, time offers repetition.

I’m at a time in my life when this idea is showing up more frequently and an in more obscure ways. Celebrating my twenty-first birthday this summer, I found myself facing the death of my childhood, but through it finding the excitement of finally growing into adulthood. I had to say farewell to the benefits and joys of adolescence, but was then able to step forward into a brand new light of legality.

Graduation is the expiry of my formal education, of my time in this place with these aims, but without the end there would never be a new beginning elsewhere, utilizing the knowledge I have garnered here. (You can read more about my feelings on senior year here).

In just over seven months, I will be getting married. There has already been an ending to our “dating” relationship when we felt we had reached the preparedness and commitment to quest on to marriage through engagement. Soon, we shall face the termination of our lives as solitary individuals, but without this surrender we can never be together, bound in matrimony, united until physical death do us part. Some people try to accomplish this without sacrifice, but it’s not the way the cycle is supposed to function. An end brings a new and more wonderful beginning.

The end of a day brings the promise of a rising sun, and the falling snow brings hope hinted at by a welcome thaw. It’s an offering of grace.

Without winter, we would never know spring.

Igor Stravinsky – 1919 Firebird Suite

“Well, next fall SPOT, we’ll….”
“Just another Christmas Break, you know?”

“It’s been forever since we did coffee. Soon?”
“Sure, but it’s not like we’ll never see each other again….”

The table grows quiet as everyone, regardless of the separate conversations they were carrying on, lets the weight of the words settle over the group in a heavy layer of realization.

This is the last. There won’t be any more after.

When senior year of high school flew by, I wasn’t surprised. I had grown up with the people who sat at the desks next to me, many of whom I loved and many of whom I would not miss. I was ready to leave my birthplace, my origins, and prepared to blaze new trails and see new things and continue to learn and grow and open my eyes and take my first real steps into the world. It was a feeling of branching out, not parting ways. There wasn’t a pain in leaving as I knew at some point that we’d all be back. We all had common origins. We would have to return. And if we didn’t, it was for good reason.

The beauty and frustration of Houghton College is that it is a place that filled me with unrealistic expectations and a set idealism. I will always have hot meals available and a local coffee shop where the barista knows me and my order before I even step up to the counter. I will always have my friends within a ten-mile radius, and they will be available to talk and spend time at any hour day or night. I will get to be taught by experts in every field of my interests and spend time at length in their tutelage and friendship. There are enough jobs for everyone to earn some money, even at minimum wage. There is no need for police and there’s a preconceived notion that doors need not be locked and no one will ever steal from your bag. We are not spoiled by perfect weather, but there are warm beds to sleep in winter and when spring eventually wakes, she is the very essence of joy. There is no sound of the freeway, and skyscrapers and office buildings are replaced by pine boughs stretching towards an open sky. My commute to class is through the woods, crossing a weaving, burbling creek and smelling the moist dirt beneath the trees and feeling whispers of hushed wind through spreading branches.

We may feel a million miles from elsewhere, but this is home. No one really needs Wal-Mart when you have thirteen-hundred acres of woods, rivers and fields.

Only four brief months, and I’ll be like Truman, crashing my boat into the edge of my man-made sphere and climbing the skyward stairs towards the exit. When I finally get brave enough to sail to new horizons, harsh reality will tear through my sails and deconstruct the dream I created. It’s just plaster and paint. That’s not the sky.

I’ve spent four unbelievable years feeling like Houghton and Ohio were the only worlds that existed. I’ve known better all along, but it didn’t hit me until the other day that this is my community. This is the first place I’ve made a home all on my own. I bustle through to the post office; grab my mail and then a cup of coffee, running off to my next meeting and waving hi to the familiars on the sidewalk. I met my first boyfriend and found my last “forever” love. I won and lost and got published and was rejected and learned to build a thicker skin. I slept and I woke and I lived.

My belongings fill my apartment, my art on the walls, my baking in the oven and my favorite foods in the fridge. My blankets on my bed and clothes in my drawers. My lights that glow on the deck and my card telling everyone Cleveland, I love you peeking out from the door into the night.

My footprints are locked in the ice on the stairs.
My car leaves a dry spot on the driveway.
I tell them to come in, and I close the door behind them as they leave.
My key fits into the door.
My hand turns off the lights.

So short a time, and another’s belongings will fill this home. The smell of someone else’s cooking and the hanging of someone else’s art. Someone else’s mail will fill my box and someone else’s body will inhabit my usual seat in Java. They will find rest in my bed and a seat at my table. They will look out my windows and watch my birds and feel my floors beneath their feet. They will watch movies on the squeaky futon and have friends over and make a place and fill the empty space I will be forced to leave behind.

As much as I never thought I’d admit it, it will inevitably be a space that is cut from my heart.

In less than a year, I’ll find a new space and start a new life with a husband, my best friend, and we’ll make a new place ours, together. There’s already so much of him in this house.

While Ohio is a first and foremost,
this has become a home.

In a few months, we’ll throw our caps and be spread like scattershot into the many corners of the world – yes, truly the world. Houghton becomes a place of origin, like a womb from a second birth, the birth of adulthood. We’ll all have this place in common, but it will be home no longer once we have left. There’s a good chance we will not see each other again – not all of us. And as much as it hurts to think about the distance, it’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We can’t live in isolation forever,
but we can live well here while we still have the chance.

You beautiful creature.

Houghton, I love you

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are book which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.” 

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Torn between these two feelings, I cannot contain my affection for John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. How can a book about two teenagers with cancer not be about cancer? Simply, it’s not. It’s about two teenagers and how they love, how they live, and how cancer is a part of the equation but it’s not what really matters. 

It’s about not being afraid of death, but understanding it. 

It’s about fear, pain and love.

It’s about forcing the veil off the deceived face of optimism, but not resigning to depressive failure. It’s not all going to be alright, but it’s not the end. It’s part of how it’s all supposed to be.

It’s about a second chance and few steps back.

It’s about the choices we make to take advantage of opportunities that are set before us. It’s a reminder that life isn’t fair or perfect, but it’s consistent. Everything that lives will die, some much sooner than others. But it doesn’t mean a momentary life is worth any less than one drawn out. 

It’s about letting go but not giving in, taking baby steps when we lack the strength to move mountains.

It’s about not letting what you want to feel or ignore interfere with what is really a movement of the heart. Ignorance is bliss, but love can be the sweetest cause of pain. It’s about willing to choose who may someday break your heart and loving them in spite of it.
 

“Some people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said. 

“Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.” 
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
 

 We’re doing our best to keep the promise. 
Cry, feel love,
I can say no more than Mr. Green will tell you in far better words. 

Read the book. 

We can happily sit for hours on end, dabbling away at whatever craft or hobby we choose and at the end of the day, as long as no one was hovering over our shoulders or thrusting deadlines at us over a cup of lukewarm coffee, we are pleased as punch at whatever we spewed out. Day complete, we move on to whatever activity was waiting for the evening, and the next day we start it all over again.

Occasionally, demand and requirement can produce some stellar work, mostly because of our inane desire to please everyone and impress people with our style, finesse and output. We want to make ourselves objects of interest, and we constantly seek approval from the people around us.  In contrast, there is that person, and we all know at least one, who does whatever they choose without fear or thought as to repercussions, consequences, or an awareness of other human beings in the world they inhabit. Once and a while, they will part the swaths of greasy hair hanging over their eyes and acknowledge that ah, yes, someone is breathing the same air and, oh please, won’t you pay some attention to the quiet, brooding hell I’m raising? For the most part, however, they exist solely for themselves in a space too small for anyone else to occupy; an emotional washer/dryer box in which they can sit and imagine and have their own club with no grown-ups allowed.

Between these people and our generally individual nature, in the end we are creatures of self. We have grand ambitions and hopes and goals and lofty expectations. If we divert even a little energy to focus and become brooding and speak in internal monologues all the time, we will produce work that we will read at parties or set as our desktop wallpaper or give as gifts with the attitude of blessing the world with our brilliance.

If we were smart or clever enough to stumble across humility, then maybe we’d just keep it to ourselves.

Chances are, if we’re honest, we can admit that this detached work for no-one-but-us is perhaps not the masterpiece we envisioned. When placed side by side with those who are making millions of dollars doing professionally what we’re doing in our parents’ basements and corner coffee shops, our grand endeavor s will probably seem a bit like a child’s finger painting of a dog or a horse or whatever that blob with legs could be. We’ll put it on our fridge, swelling with pride, oblivious to the fact that it’s only there to make us feel good about ourselves. People may comment on the colors or the design or express “how sweet it was that you did this all by yourself”. In reality, no one will take us seriously.

The root of the problem lies in the face that we are lazy and scared stupid.

Our first taste of laziness can be easily confused with creativity. Usually sometime in early childhood, age five for example, we discover the joy of doing what we want, conveniently when we should be doing something we’ve been asked to do. We start having homework assigned and our parents ask us to clean up our toys or make our bed. In those times, we are suddenly overwhelmed with creative overload – we want to go outside and do somersaults in the grass or color a picture or invent some new language to speak with our best friend. We vanish for hours on end, causing panic and angry parents and dinner growing cold. Once they find us and scold us and see what we’ve been up to, they are generally still sore but they praise our ingenuity and ask where we got that idea. From this occurrence, a spark ignites in our tiny brains and we see the full spread of potential before us. We call it “creativity”, but that’s just a convenient cover. In actuality, it is laziness and lack of desire to do mandatory tasks that creates a path for diversion. Eventually, when we’re old enough to have gotten tired of the charade, we usually just give up our artistic creative streaks and admit we just don’t like to work.

Laziness is easy to understand, but scared stupid? That’s a pretty harsh assessment of our situation, don’t you think? To illustrate this point, I’d like to bring up the Biblical parable of the talents (bags of gold). There are a bunch of guys who are servants. One day, the head of the house comes to them and gives them each an amount of money based on their skills. Then, the man leaves for a long business trip. Meanwhile, the first two servants invest their money and earn back double what they were given. Wall Street, here they come. The last guy gets cold feet and panics and buries his share in a hole in the ground. After a long time, the master returns and wants his cash back. The smart young men who made a profit turn over the goods and are rewarded for their quick thinking and wise actions. The last guy, knees quaking, wobbles up to the master’s table and shoves the dirty bag of gold towards him. He admits that in fear he did nothing with the money because he knew the guy was demanding and hard. For his foolishness, he was thrown out of the house and left with nothing.

The last servant could have taken some sort of action. Knowing that his master was demanding, you think that would have spurred him to action of some kind, even if that meant fleeing the scene and having some gold and the authorities on his tail. But because he succumbed to his fear of critique and demand, he was scared stupid. Numb to all action or initiative, he ended up looking like a complete idiot and babbling excuses rather than really take responsibility for his actions.

All of this is to say that we are afraid of criticism. We’re dead afraid of being told that our work isn’t worth anything; that people don’t like it; that we’ve wasted our time and energy and emotions for a useless end product. We would much rather live in childish ignorance without a concept of quality or alternative viewpoint than to strive to be better or risk growing from hearing less-than-perfect praise.  When that fear shuts us down and meets the laziness we’ve been fighting, laziness takes both qualities and reduces us to passive layabouts who would much rather scramble to meet a deadline last minute than try and produce quality work now.

It’s easy to write when there’s no grade involved and when no one is peering over your shoulder to get a glimpse of your word count. It’s easy to be proud of your words when someone isn’t trying to look at them before they’re finalized and certain. It’s easy to tap out three-hundred pages of the fan fiction to the Twilight series, but when a professor asks for a semester of writing in a genre of your choice?

That’s a feat that seems nearly impossible.

But I didn’t come three and half years to get lazy and scared stupid now.
I’ve got writing to do.

I’ve known people who were single for life, married for more than sixty years, divorced. I’m friends with people who are and associate with gay, lesbian, transsexual lifestyles.  I have met people of many different professions from many different countries all over the world. I’ve known the poor, the rich, the middle class. I’ve met brilliant thinkers and simple-minded artists. I’ve met people who were blind, deaf, paralyzed, suffering from illness since birth. I have known people, one being my wonderful fiance, who almost didn’t make it into this world – but God has given us the miracle of their being.

Many of these people have lifestyles based on choices. Choices make up the foundation of who we are, with exception to those with illness or naturally-occurring circumstances.

In short, I’ve seen a lot in the time I’ve been alive.

Death is something I’ve known quite frequently. Mostly family, but many family friends and distant acquaintances and politicians and celebrities have passed away in the time I’ve been alive.

However, whenever death is purposefully brought upon a person too soon, it’s not a part of the natural flow of life. It’s not how God intended for death to occur.  When choice and death are combined, they are unnatural and they tear the world apart.

Suicide starts by being about one person, but the shock wave of it spreads to everyone involved… anyone who has ever known them.
I shook their hand, I embraced them. We shared meals, we shared words, we shared time.
And just like that, they are gone.

In my life, I’ve had at least three people who I have personally known, a couple better than others, who have committed suicide. Just a few days ago, a distant acquaintance I met while in college. While I know emotional and mental factors play into why this final, heartbreaking choice is made, I will never understand why that conclusion is an option to so many. Especially for Christians, I can’t figure out how they can worship a merciful, loving God and still submit to their own crushing depression and cut off the gift he has given them. But every time it happens, it sends ripples through the circles of people in their life. Even though we only met once, we ALL feel it.

I pray for the family dealing with this tragedy. I pray for his wife of less than two years. While I didn’t know him well and I don’t understand why, I can feel the weight of loss and my heart goes out to those nearer who feel it so much more.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
Absolve, Domine,
animas omnium fidelium defunctorum
ab omni vinculo delictorum
et gratia tua illis succurente
mereantur evadere iudicium ultionis,
et lucis æternae beatitudine perfrui.

Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.Forgive, O Lord,
the souls of all the faithful departed
from all the chains of their sins
and by the aid to them of your grace
may they deserve to avoid the judgment of revenge,
and enjoy the blessedness of everlasting light.

Amen. 

It’s only been a week since my fiancé asked me to marry him, quietly and tenderly in our library at my house. It was peaceful and simple and he apologized for not being a very ceremonial man. I told him no need for apologies, as I’m not a girl who requires a lot of ceremony. I don’t need a big diamond or a huge house or a princess dress or my name written in the sky. I just want the man who I love, who has become my best friend, my confidant, half of my heart, to look me in the eyes and ask me to spend the rest of my life with him because he wants no other. And all I needed to do was say yes.

So I did.

Now what?

Well, we’ve got less than a year to plan a wedding. Venues are booked up quickly, and especially when we’re looking to be married on Labor Day weekend, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Once we get a venue, we can book a DJ, catering, anything else we need. We have to rush to try and find a place that will accommodate everyone (not a huge wedding, but I have a big family) and allows us to not serve alcohol and not break the already struggling bank. We’ve got logistics to work out with people coming in from out of town and lodging and travel time. I’ve spent the past week with my parents looking at venues, discussing pricing, sending emails and facing some disappointments. Dad had mentioned briefly the idea of using our own relatively spacious backyard, but I had somewhat brushed the idea aside. The thought of having a wedding at home was initially tacky, and I didn’t like it.

But the more we’ve gone through our options, and the more I’ve felt frustrated at plans and numbers and picking a spot, why not just use one place that means the most to me in the world?

A while ago, I wrote a post about home and what it has meant to me. When my parents first put the house on the market, it severed a large part of me in two. This is the only home I can remember, the home that I made friends and grew up in and went through all stages of my childhood. I’ve made my memories in this house and to think of it being taken from my life, from the lives of my children someday… I’m already getting emotional just rehashing it. But the potentials that selling would provide for my parents are really exciting. It’s a chance for them to start something new, away from debt and the city and noise. I want to be a part of that, and I’ve accepted the fact that it will be sold someday and I’m coming to terms with that more and more each day. But then why not, as a final mark on this house in my heart, just have the wedding in the backyard?

Many people don’t have the room or girls have the huge checklist since the day they were born about their dream wedding and their dream dress and their dream groom. I have the only man I want to love, I have a dress that fits me like a glove and speaks to me, and I have friends and family and love. Why in the world would I need a venue that means nothing to me? It may be beautiful and it may be somewhere new, but that’s catering to others. My desire for beauty and the desire to please my guests fuels the need to be somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere set apart. But it’s my wedding and my heart is here. I wanted an outdoor, natural venue that had trees and beauty and calm. I have it right here. I have a house that I grew up in, a yard that I played in as a kid, trees that I climbed and people nearby who have helped me grow into the woman I am. All I need is a tent, food, music and the people I love. I’m not a girl of conformity and rigid tradition, and I’m not a girl of grand ceremony. I don’t need the princess dress and the spotlight and the flair. I just want the man I love and the people I love in a place that I love. That’s all I need.

I don’t know if it will happen or if it’s even a serious possibility. It would be a lot to ask of my parents to realistically look at these plans. It would mean postponing the sale to ensure the house wouldn’t get sold, it would mean delaying the movement of the future, it would mean a lot of work to make this all go smoothly. But if I could, I definitely know my heart.

Happy New Year, everyone. I’m sure I’ll have a New Year’s post at some point and I need to fill you in on the matters of my engagement, but when I have something on my mind I need to send it out there.

And there is so much on my little mind.

In the words of John Abruzzi, “Maybe the Beatles were right… Maybe all you need is love.”

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Even when I am no longer immersed in this world, I am a part of it. I find it in my dreams and in my thoughts and in my ears and in my head constantly, inescapable, the plains dragon swooping his great shadow over my head and waiting for the strike, the burst of curling flames consuming my figure. But I can make him burn, I can use similar shouts to set him ablaze and my fire is lasting, it is forever, it creeps deep in his scales and chars his heart slowly, one lick at a time until he falls, a dangerous, poisonous bird ready to consume the world. The ones I find dead are reminders of the power that I can have and the hero I can become. I can become the hero or I can surrender to evil and destroy this land, make it my own, assassinate the powers that be and be one power with the world, myself and all. Summon the dragon, bring the torches, set fire to this motherland and watch her burn.

Sublime submission, that was always your rite. To go through this passage of time and age and finally meet some sort of standard for your class, your race. Struggling to survive in a society that does not take pleasantly to your heart or your aims, they continue to knock you lower until you know the taste of the earth better than your own name. And there is only so little power that you have to change any of it for anyone except yourself. You can’t control it until you take the power you were given, that you refused the believe was yours for the using, the way of the voice, the vice, the virtue. There was a chance for things to be better for you, someday for your children, but they struggled to stay alive and asked you how you ever put up with this hell for much longer than a day. But you remembered how you toiled to get here, and you knew, staring at your small blossom, all that it was worth.

There is so much to see in the dark if you let your eyes adjust. You begin to see the shapes of love and familiarity and corners that you’ve bumped into and toys you’ve stepped on and steps you’ve missed and switches you forgot were in that corner. You begin to realize how much light is in your house and how well you know your way around. You make your way towards the light, towards the things you know best, to the way that makes sense in wisdom and light. There is life in the night, but the still of the house is the death of the being and there is no return from this trek into the deep, but you walk on, you will get there. There is a night waiting to swallow the dark and the fight and there was once a sign that there was more but you overstepped and fell into the aching, yawing void and went tumbling into limbo where you were a shade of your former self and you say the glow of millions of other eyes looking you up and down and reading you and swearing that you did not know their face. And the black hands shot out from the crack in the Gate and seized your face and whispered into your heart that it was time to give up the fight, to surrender to this white blizzard of sacrifice and that you gave too much already to go back without cost. There will always be a way to pay the price, whether it be with limbs or organs or a first born child.

Don’t give yourself up to the sky too quickly, my dear. There is much left for you here but if you look up all the time, you’re bound to slip and fall on your face and lose sight of dry land. If you look down at your feet all the time, all you’ll ever see is ground and you’ll never rise beyond where you are now. And when the lowest of low is the burning of  hellish reminder of loss, you’ll want to look up but black clouds and dirt will cover your eyes and you will be blind and forget how to see. And if, ever again, you somehow find the light, you will not recognize it and will turn the other way. It will hurt, cutting into your brain and forcing you to cower away and cover your cloudy irises and try and find the comforting cool of the dark. Close the second eyelid and sit by the river of light and listen to the whispered mutterings of a million creatures flowing in one formation to the path to life. Listen to the one-eyed man across the river and don’t go to close, don’t burn out your eyes, don’t give up one of your greatest gifts for the sake of the unknown. The unknown cannot keep you alive, it cannot save you and the thrill only lasts for a short while before it is dead like your useless eyes, and years later you will sit by the river and think of the man whose eye sits borrowed in your head and connects you two for eternity.

You will never be severed, for you have this bond of everlasting friendship and devotion. He saved you with a piece of himself that he did not have to give. But he gave without doubt and knew you would do well with it. You could not be the fullest without one more eye, to see beyond the veil of this aging world to the future beyond, to the light beyond light, to the better. You awoke in a heavenly lush of green from the hanging moss and he gave you a hand and you were naked but you didn’t fill the chill or the shame, simply walked barefoot in the mossy green of the trees and listened to him tell you of a world beyond this world, a world you had touched and would always be native to despite your greater fighting to be a part of something different. You cannot deny what you are or what made you, you can only admit that you love it despite yourself and that it made your heart so there must be some good in it.
——-

Self discovery is the first step to growth. As soon as we can tell ourselves who we really are, as soon as we can sign the contract saying that we are human and we allow ourselves to be judged by ourselves and others, we are golden, we are good. We may turn later on, but it was all foreseen and could we make an alternate decision anyway? Do we have the choice to make our choices or are they all foreseen, predestined, chosen, put in stone for us to stumble upon like jagged words in a cave, marked and worn and washed away by erosion of the river that swept through in a flood, flooding you with down and emptying you of all treasure and hope and a light to see the door. The cave is a round room without corners for reference and without a point of origin, a start, a birth, but you were born, screaming and bleeding and pulled from darkness to light, but you thrive in the cave blackness. You thrive with the rats and the moss and the bats because you are like them, blind and crawling on all fours and content with solitude, alone on the rocks where you can hear yourself think and forget about the sins and the stains on your past and be nothing, floating in this viscous silence as the legs forget to walk and the eyes forget to see and the hands feel nothing but the cut of cold rock. You slide into the glistening ice of the river and you feel the breath bubbling against your nostrils and you dive, smooth and slick through the floes and the eddies and the crags. You touch bottom and you feel the silt and muck, and you run your body through it and feel for the seaweed and the giant oysters and the cold currents seeping out from under the rocks that make the sea, the foundations, the deep.

You were forever in eternal sleep, heavy as a stone and quiet as one. But even stones make noise and moan and grit their teeth as they slide and shift and are pulled down by cruel gravity, faces to the soil and no power to lift themselves back upright. There would be no waking you until a proper time when you were meant to open your eyes and weep and see the faces of ones you loved who had been waiting for so long to hear your voice, even one last time. You would not be like the movies, you would not slump in their arms and close your eyes and whisper and splutter and choke. You would sit up and remember, and speak, and ask for a glass of water. You would not be one of the hopeless patients who are gradually unplugged until their heart is the only thing still attached to a wall, but eventually even that is disconnected so that it beats once, a last attempt to speak for itself, and then stops, a long drone, a sharp tone that means end, finality, nothing is left but the beyond, the other side of the bridge, the dark river, the future for you and all it beholds.

Well, dear readers, it’s November. If this statement doesn’t result in sympathetic nods of understanding, it means one of two things:

1. You are not a full-time college student or have not been in an educational atmosphere for some time.

2. You are not a writer.

Even when we try our best to treat it like any other month, November just ends up being one of those months where everything happens at once and without warning. College midterms are finishing up, second-half projects have begun, snow is coming, Christmas is coming, the world seems to be coming to and end. Besides the pressures of school, it also tends to usher in a slump of energy as the weather gets worse and colder and darker. When you can see the moon rising above the trees at five o’clock in the evening, you start to feel like everything is just plain wrong. Until the 25th, we don’t feel like giving thanks for anything except for coffee and sleep and sometimes football (even though I don’t like it, it’s normal and familiar and a good time to nap.)

As for my second point, I have sold my soul to the English language for one month for my second year of NaNoWriMo – that’s National Novel Writing Month for the uninformed. I still remember when I set out last year, starting at midnight of Halloween and writing long into the morning of November 1st in an attempt to reach the Holy Grail of the event: 50,000 words by November’s end. Pumped up on tirimasu wafers and espresso, I leaped ahead in my word count in the first three weeks. Well, then… relationships ended, relationships began, I had minor emotional breakdowns and lost ten pounds and didn’t sleep and then scraped school back together and spent time with friends and was fed dark chocolate and gained weight and my novel sat, 9,000 words or so, lonely and sad until I blew the dust off of it this September.

Looking back, there was some GOOD stuff in those pages of Word. Well-written, engaging, dangerous, imaginative, strange, beautiful. I was (and am again this year) attempting a free-association experiment, writing whatever was on my mind and in my head and around me. It’s hard to write an entire novel on rambling, with no journey for characters or unfolding plot or aim. But it is a great way to train yourself to write about anything and everything without thinking and getting caught up in doubt. Again, good stuff in there. If you’re good, maybe I’ll even share some with you. One condition: read it with an open mind and open eyes. It’s the stuff the moldy parts of my brain are made of. Check out my page at NaNoWriMo’s site: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/sisyphusfalls

It’s a fantastic exercise for anyone who wants to hone their writing skills, practice setting up a plot or even just pushing on to be consistent and meet a goal. You can write about anything and you can start with your whole novel planned or from a blank page and a single idea. Mix it up, try something new, write your little heart out until your motherboard is smoking and there are dark circles around your eyes and the caffeine shudder in your hands has caused you to type the same three letters repeatedly for a page. It truly is thirty days and nights of literary abandon. Stop being afraid of your words, of your imagination – let them out to play. I’m at about 15,000 words so far this month, and with all the schoolwork and musical ensembles/concerts and friends and games (SKYRIM) I’ll be lucky to get close to my goal. It’s why I spend time with other writers – we all help each other along

November does hail in blessings as well… Matt, for example. It was this time last year that he really stepped into my life and changed it forever. He’s been an encourager from the start and as he’s come to love me, the good and the bad, he’s helped to remind me that no matter the darkness that comes my way, I will always have people here on earth to help me face that dark. He’s not leaving me. He refuses to give up on me. I guess we’re just stuck together for life

When the Write-In group for Allegany county met down in Java 101 last week, I received a NaNoWriMo sticker for my efforts:

Whatever You Think You Are, You Are More Than That.

The reason Matt comes into all of this is that he and I just had a conversation the night before about that exact subject. I was down on myself for being selfish, for being angry, for feeling like I was worthless and undeserving of anyone’s time. He took the time to lovingly remind me that he knows me, inside and out, the best and absolute worst of me and he still loves me. I am far more than the dark parts of myself that surface at the worst of times and attack the ones I love. I am not a bitter person, I am not an angry person; I’m not stuck. I am so much more than those things that pull me down. The people who surround me in my life build me up and encourage me and remind me of the good that I have, of the power I have to make the world a more beautiful place. I am God’s creation and I am part of his world.

Whatever we think we are, we are more than that. Far more than that indeed.

All of this boils down to say that I’m sorry to leave you hanging this month. If you notices my absence, I appreciate your diligence (send me an email/message/FB to prod me along, eh?) If you hadn’t happened to realize I’ve been gone, I’ll forgive you and hope you see this apology anyway.

So, to wrap this up, I’m grabbing a drink from Java and heading over to hang out with my favorite married couple and get some writing done. It’s been a thrilling, busy, emotional month so far and it’s not even half over. Already, however, I’m thankful for Matt, for good friends, for warm houses and tea and warm days and for words and for music and for tears and for lamb roasts. I’m thankful for so much, and it keeps me pressing on.

Until later, my friends – happy reading and happy November!

P.S Due to my digital imaging class, I may try to update every-other day or so. It’s a challenge our professor has given us, so I may spring for it. They’ll be much shorter and more concise, but we’ll see what happens. No promises, I don’t want to make more excuses for myself

Digital Imaging work for a project on the Seven Deadly Sins. For each, I used the work of other artists (some classic, some modern) to inspire and shape the final piece. This idea came to me from Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”.