I laid in the grass on the edge of the canal and read all of Home by Marilynne Robinson this afternoon. The water smelled green, like honey and musk warmed by the sun. I heard a bird that sounded like the loons landing gracefully with their sleek wings on the surface of Leech Lake. A ways down from me, a group of lanky boys - on the cusp of adolescence - hollered with loose laughter and jumped into the glinting water. Their unabashed enthusiasm made me want to cry. A couple lay sleeping side by side underneath the slips of gold from the leaves, her hand rested on his slumbering form.

I walked back to my apartment and scrubbed dark velvet beets from the farmer's market until the dirt came away in my hands. They're roasting in the oven now, and I'm lying on the couch, a little burned and weary, but with the good kind of exhaustion that comes from a long day in the sun doing not much of anything at all.

"There's so much to be grateful for, words are poor things."

***

words from yesterday, photos from last weekend on the ferry to whidbey.

Everything reminds me of Minnesota now. The sky, the water, the gold veined pocket of leaves during sunset. I walked past a house with windows like the homes alongside Lake Harriet, the large and lonely mansions made of cherry wood and marble stone, with space for light to seep through the cracks. The only time I can write lately is nighttime, when I’m too tired to think about what I’m writing. I’m not self-conscious. Because it is silent, save for the thrumming of air conditioners, the needle prick in your eardrums of quiet, or the random car rushing through the streets like wind. If I’m still enough, I can hear the water. I know it’s not the water, but if I slip into a kind of dream, I can pretend.

In a week, I’ll be home again, and in one of the dearest places I call mine. The water - the lake - will be a stone’s throw away. I will taste the lake in the air, see it in watery light against the wood walls when I wake. “For who can see a stones throw of ought thing in land or plain?” In plain: we will make pancakes for breakfast and walk around white from sunscreen. We will go to bed with sand on our feet, in our hair, etched into our skin. We will play games with ads grown soft under our fingers from years of slapping, we will see who will jump off the dock first. We, my siblings and I. I haven’t seen them for six months now and they’ve freckled and grown lean and lanky in my absence.

Absence, to be away from. Not much longer. I will scoop them in my arms and pretend they still fit in the crook of my elbows, against the hollow of my collarbones.

We stood against the edge of the bridge. Let's sit, she said, and I shook my head. You need to face your fears, she said and I laughed. Not this one. I love the moon, she said. We all rest beneath it, and then, look at the sky, we live here. Look at the water, we live here. Our hands swept out beside us, willingly, unconsciously. We leaned on the moss and watched the sky mirror itself, blue here, peach here. On one side, a last emergence, and the other, surrender, surrender.

Green leaves, for split seconds, revealed golden strokes. And so the world burns. Across the water a boat ran in a single path. The wind sounded like a brush, sweeping across the whole of the world and pulling all colors into one. Everything bleeds into each other. I won't be here forever, I said, and she responded with a kind of understanding, I know - I knew that.

We talked about babies. A couple walked past holding hands. Look, and I pointed to the house behind us. The windows, the light - it's like a house on the lake, back home, I gestured, and did not have to say Minnesota. She smiled.

How do we perceive beauty? How do we speak to a God who seems silent? I don't feel anything, but I love him. We nodded we nodded we nodded. A kind of dance.

I chose carrots for their color, for they looked sweet. the raspberries and strawberries in their pale blue boxes reminded me of Minnesota summers. round yellow onions and fat cucumbers, leafy kale and sugar snap peas. what a gift. thank you God for your faithful provision, your bountiful gift of generous tips, surprising jobs, deep purple beets. all undeserved blessing. what a joy it is - that I'm able to hand over crumpled ones and fives in exchange for a pound of cherries or a soft peach. I don't want to take that lightly, but to recognize it as a mercy of God. remarkable with how he provides more than necessity requires. I walked back to my apartment and laughed. Lately, I'm laughing and crying daily. For once, I don't see them as two opposites canceling each other out.

"Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers? Why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become.”
― Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection

We do not want merely to see beauty... we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses, and nymphs and elves.


― C.S. Lewis

And Yet Again
Tonight I want to offer you
this moonlight cupped in a purple
flower; this chorus of crickets
holding no grudge against the day’s
dying. I want to lift the cool sweetness
of sour-grass under the night wind
and soothe the tautness in your face.
I want to tempt you away from your heroic
silence for joy that is free and foolish.
I want to weave these early stars
like a rope for you to hold
and make your way past your old
hurts, faiths crumbling like dust.
This wanting is not a nebulous thing;
it is the soul desiring its other self
where need knows no hindrance of words.

Now, only this longing, this reaching
yet again – in spite of.

- Esther Phillips

To the man praying on the bus—or maybe you
are sleeping, your breath a hum, chin
knocking your chest to the road’s curves—

You, silent, transfigured in
solitude. What do you ask for?
Most rest without thought

But you pray. Tell me.
I want you to open your eyes and speak of
unseen things.

Briefly, you do.

The woman with the purple head wrap,
a mushroom cap, stands up. You nod
and close your eyes again.

I cannot pretend to know what you pray for,
but like all prayers, I imagine yours round
into safe safe safe—our human hymns.

And aren’t we like God,
praying our prayers into green leather seats
and purple clouds.

march 2015

how I remember you

2011-2013

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come
up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their
curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come
home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,
happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to
go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of
this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

* * *
Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

mary oliver.

it's a good life (happy birthday shongi)

sometimes your sheets are stained and shins are sore and your sunday scooped out into a shape of loneliness. sometimes, it rains on a monday and you miss your family and your brothers are two inches taller than when you left. sometimes, your avocados go bad and your friendships feel unsteady and your whole self feels uprooted. sometimes you cry on a tuesday. sometimes bills come in and summer plans are set and you have to make hard decisions that you don't feel ready to make. and sometimes you know, this whole adult thing, is really really hard.

and then, sometimes, you bus to a stop before the woods and walk to the beach with ten bags among six of you, and cook chicken and barbecue sauce on the sand and eat watermelon split open with a small knife. sometimes the sun doesn't set until ten pm. sometimes, your feet get dirty and your hands stay sticky and the burgers have an extra grit, and it's alright. sometimes, you bring speakers and forget the music and realize it was there all along. and sometimes it's okay.

(happy birthday shongi, I - we - love you)

it's a good life. from Hannah Nicole on Vimeo.