How to Survive Apocalypses

Scripture: Job 14:1-14 and Mathew 27:57-66

“The death of a young person for no reason is an apocalypse.” The greatest challenge to my faith has been surviving one apocalypse after the next. Epilepsy claimed my 18-year-old sister when I was 10. A car accident got my high school crush when we were 20. And when I was 30, a heart attack laid low my colleague and friend during a pick-up basketball game. He was just 36 years old. Two months earlier, I had danced with him at my wedding, and then he was gone. 
Little makes sense in the aftermath of losing someone before their time. The void created by their sudden absence, bottomless; the assault of their deafening silence, relentless. One minute, standing on both feet, cheerily answering the phone. The next instant, inexplicably kneeling, gasping for the breath to cry out. But mourning a future that could have been does not honor the person lost or ourselves. It denies the miracle of their existence, the ways they enriched our lives, however briefly. 
Faith is making choices to continue living honorably. Choose gratitude instead of despair. Two months earlier, I had danced with him at my wedding, and...I am so grateful to have shared that moment with him. I am grateful that my high school crush signed my yearbook with a personal inscription, seasoned with inside jokes. For every time my sister dared me to keep a straight face and then tickled me until it “cracked.” Choose the joys of community over bitterness. I find joy in the teachers who experienced the first Hoops for Hope charity basketball game, benefitting our fallen colleague’s wife and children. Joy is being Facebook friends with my crush’s twin, witnessing all the journeys she takes, the ways she is thriving. It is spending time with my loved ones, particularly when my father laughs, and for an instant in his smile, I can see my sister. With these maxims, the greatest opportunity of my faith has become cherishing one resurrection after another.

Compromise & Control

Together
the antithesis of
alone
Yet so clearly
linked by compromise
Give up your time
and learn
to ride a horse
to render a
subject in
nuanced black
blue-black
red-black
green-black
Accept that no
one cares to learn
about you
just what you can
add to them
the hue you will
bring to their
blackness

***

Walk forward
on your hands
In this space
you are alone
working toward
a goal
that belongs to you
At first it is just
one step
tentative
collapse
But you start
again
upsidedown
Two steps
Your own persistence
amazes you
But if you are
the only one
awed by the result
Then has it really happened?

Aperture

I didn't realize
that by not working with you
to achieve closure
I was creating an aperture.

Closure means that
something is complete
By this logic
Aperture means that
something is incomplete.

Our relationship is incomplete
because
I am
My heart is incomplete
The aperture
lets you in
like a flash of light
and your image is
burned onto my heartfilm
whether I like it or not.

I think I need a new heart
you can still crawl in
although your staying power
isn't what it used to be
My voicemailbox used
to be filled with your
after midnight
drunken
rambling
confessions of love.

This was the foreground, clear
I cherished your
uninhibited words
for their scarcity.
This was the background, unfocused
I never questioned
their sincerity
or my own
that came later.

A lower f-stop can achieve this effect - 
this means a wider aperture.

I was always anxious
doubted myself
my worth.

Your words pop up on
my phone
And while I am flattered
that I am in your
thoughts
I am also reminded that
you scarcely know me anymore
I don't question your sincerity
it is obvious now
but it is also unsolicited
unwanted.

This is now the foreground, blurred
I erase your texts
almost as soon as
they appear
I read them but
am not hanging
on every word
no matter how sincere.
This is now the background, clear
Your messages have become
scarce, which is how I like it.

What f-stop could achieve this?

A cut is an aperture
a scab is closure
a scar is the picture
the composition that results
from the collaboration of
open and shut
wounded and healed
birth and death
light and dark.

Primacy v. Recency

I write in my letter to her,
"How is Nathan?" and then
"How are you?"
I am the child who
eats the red Skittles last
because they are the best
So when I ask my
sometimes sister
often pen pal
how she is
last in the list
of people I inquire after
she is supposed to realize
that she is
important to me
I think she is
the best.

On her next visit
during a weekendbirthdayholiday
she teases me for caring more about
the well-being of her boyfriend
than for her
She has misunderstood
he was a green Skittle
tolerated to make the red one sweeter
But his position in the list
before her
has given her the wrong impression
about my
priorities.

Now she is gone
it is too late for me
to tell her that
I finally understand
She taught me to say,
"our dad"
But what she really wanted
was to be his first and last thought
the primacy and the recency
rolled into one
To be the apparent afterthought
of his always last thought
must have made her feel
insignificant.

According to Eddinghaus
when given a sequence
people tend to remember
the last thing in the list first
This is known in the field of psychology
as the recency effect
The items in the middle of the list
are usually forgotten
But the items at the beginning
are recalled
at last
in what is known as
the primacy effect.

What Everyone Who is Anyone Says About Writing

Jerome David Salinger
In his seminal novel, The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger writes of a young man whose place in the world is uncertain. Holden Caulfield flunks out of Pencey Prep and spends the rest of the novel wandering New York, being an asshole - rationalizing his behavior as grief for his dead brother, Allie - until he remembers his love for his living sister, Phoebe.

Everyone in my AP English class in high school loved this book, but I only took away one thing from it. At one point Holden goes to Phoebe's school and finds a wall graffitied with the words "fuck you." His reaction to it is something along the lines of "no matter where you go, some asshole has gotten there first and written 'fuck you' on the walls." I read this as, "no matter what you write about, someone else has already written about it." So why write?

Ernest Hemingway/William Forrester
"The first draft of anything is shit." I see your bet, Papa, and raise you the wisdom of a fictional author, William Forrester, who said, "No thinking. That comes later. You write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head."

I miss writing. Since I started teaching in 2008, I have written very little and it disturbs me. I saw Finding Forrester the same year I read Catcher, and I understood that while someone might have written about "it" first, they didn't write it with my heart. Or rewrite it with my head. It's time to get my heart and head back in the game.

Ray Bradbury
I cried last June when Ray Bradbury died. And not just weak, slow-rolling tears. I full-on ugly cried. It was 5 o'clock in the morning before school, and I was reading the Sacramento Bee obituaries, which I usually skip, and there he was. The rocket man, fuse burned out.

I am reading The Martian Chronicles with my junior English class. Yesterday we read "Usher II," a chapter among several about the settlement of Mars. Or, an overt homage to Edgar Allan Poe. Stendahl builds a house on Mars that will enable him to exact retribution against the culture police of Earth. The culture police walk right into their deaths because they burned the stories of Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Premature Burial, The Pit and the Pendulum, the Cask of Amontillado - without ever reading them. My students rejoiced; they knew some of the source material but wanted to read more. They won't be victims of ignorance.

Bradbury wrote about what someone else had already written about. But it was new, from his heart and an obvious love for Poe. Embrace the fact that someone has already written "fuck you" on the literary wall. Change it, update it, revive it. Again, do it fast. Spare no time for thought: "In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping." The rocket man, fuse eternal.

Me
I use my typewriter or a pen and legal pads when I want to write from my heart. How much good writing is lost because we rely on computers? The cursor blinks, we type a line, the cursor blinks again, reminding us that the text we've just completed is temporary. It can be erased. Should it be erased? I should just erase this and start again. Thinking.

I am starting again, this time from the heart.

Polyphonic Improvisation

Definition: Instruments playing independent parts at the same time.

To make
this decision is to have
a polyphonic improvisation playing in your
head at all times; instruments play their
independent parts - pros and cons -
simultaneously.
The cacophony is resounding.
On your feet
as if to dance
pace and turn and frown and smile
independent parts improvising
involuntarily without rhythm or grace
They are all you and so
Beautiful.

An egg
fertilized, latches to lining
cells form, replicate, divide, and replicate again
a heart beats
ribs, lungs, eyes, skin debut their solos
in time
Polyphonic improvisation of the womb
Half you but still
Beautiful.

After Midnight

I go out walkin'
I am restless
I need to think
Thoughts are restless

After midnight
Explore possibilities in dreams without feeling guilty - it's subconscious
Dangerous, taking a risk
Vulnerable while we sleep

Out in the moonlight
Moon - nightly changes
Hesitant to see the world in full light
Moonlight - restores confidence that danger of dark withholds
Truth, guiding light in darkness
Casts different shadows, see the world differently
Turns the world inside-out
Fear things normally don't
Brave things normally won't

Just like we used to do/Just hopin' you may be
Past and present coexist
If I can't think in "we" terms, I think next of "you" first
Relive the past
"Hope" for a confrontation of past and present
"Like" only approximates reality
Actions can be repeated without achieving the same result
Nothing will ever be exactly as it was no matter how much we hope for it to be
"Maybe" you can save me; you are my only hope
You are my first and last thought; first through remembering, last through hoping
I don't know who we are anymore
I don't know who you are
I hope I'll recognize you

I'm always walkin'/Somewhere a walkin'
I'm always restless
I'm always thinking
I'm always looking ahead
I'm always moving forward
Walkin - I never expect to win; I only expect to finish
I'm always taking care not to get hurt
I'm always taking my time
I'm slow
I'm hesitant to move forward
I'm hesitant to move on
I linger
I am careful at the expense of expediency
I am expedient at the expense of being stationary, being still
I cannot be still with you
I still cannot be with you
Not ever; always
Your place is undefined; "somewhere"
Somewhere, you're like me
You're restless too
Thinking
Wandering
Taking forever to get to me
Taking your time getting to me
Taking your time realizing you can't live without me
Because you are "somewhere" you are separate from me
Are you "a walkin'" toward me or away?
If you are walkin' away, the distance will grow, may never be overcome
If you are walkin' toward me, the distance between us
remains constant
The only way for it to be overcome is for you to hurry
That is not the only way. I can stop. Until your somewhere matches mine.

Humility

When a heart is about to break
It rumbles like a piece of
sheet metal being warped to
imitate a roiling thunderhead
about to crack.
It doth protest too much.

But when a heart is finally forced
to separate from itself
It sounds as delicate as
newspaper being torn lengthwise very
slowly
Making the heart's earlier complaints seem
inadequate.

Proof

I like the movie "Proof"
Or rather
the idea that one could fill hundreds
upon hundreds
of black and white
speckled composition notebooks
with numbers, figures, processes
that build toward
proving something
amazing

I dont want to wear neutral tones
Beige, champagne, ivory, latte, or rustic pink
which are all just ways of making myself
invisible
Wait, where did I go have I been want to be
Let's go through it again
Explain to me your hopeful criticisms and
altruistic outcomes again from the beginning
Prove to me that these are
your thoughts
or that you had them once
can have them again
only changed
for the better
Share with me your qualitative
and quantitative methodologies
I can't afford not to be concerned
with the anthropology
I have recently created
I design my future through careful
contemplation of the
possibility of
domestic terrorism [I will sabotage myself]
Kerosene is a slow-burning
fuel, which proves that it is
not an ideal material for
setting yourself on fire
When I incinerate, I want it
to be a fast burn almost like
evaporating
A flash which is a way of making myself
visible
if only for a second.

Birdhouses

Three white birdhouses
sitting in a row on a fence
like tiny benevolences in the sun.
One is a light house
with a tiny twinkling light
in the tower
It's a small revolving mirror
powered by the breeze
and when the sun hits it just right
it seems bright enough to light
the world.
Two is a schoolhouse
with tiny bird brains to mold
I like to imagine
a wise old owl with a big full belly
an even fuller brain
with knowledge and experience
to impart to all the fledglings.
And if you pass by it closely
you can almost hear the
learning.
Three is a church house
with a tiny, clumsy steeple
and bird families and folk to uphold
and uplift
But this the birdies like least of all
Because they are already in Heaven
when they fly.

Cellophane

What if we saw everything through
a layer of cellophane
that was the same color as our eyes?

I would see you
in shades of sepia
and even new pictures of us would feel
nostalgic
like we have always belonged together.

You would see me
in waves of blue
that never think of receding.

Places

People are the places we wanted to go
If I am and remain this stubborn
We will never speak again
Remember that time when you
hung up on me and I called you
back so you could
do it again?
I couldn't get enough of you and your
abuse.
I wish I could have thought of a better
use of my time back then.
Get it off your chest, regress
Quit telling me lies that make me miss
myself and who I was before I let you
win.
If I call you now would you have
anything to say to me that I
haven't heard before?
I could tell you lots of things that
you don't know about me now, but why
should I? You won't remember
or maybe you'll try to forget that
you're not a mistake I want to
make anymore.
I'm sorry there's nothing to save
When there's nothing left to burn you
have to set yourself on fire
The opposite of that is this:
When there is nothing left to save you have to
save yourself
When there is nothing left to fear you have to
fear yourself
When there is nothing left to lose you have to
lose yourself
When there is nothing left to love you have to
love yourself.
Maybe "opposite" is the wrong word. Maybe these
are all ways of setting yourself on fire.
I hope you do because you've got spark
And you can't tell me that I've extinguished it.
I see it still and only you (I) can extinguish
your own (my own) fire.
Let it roar, invert it, toss it, turn it, play with
fire - let it burn you, consume you, turn you into
ashes and dust.
The world is made of ashes and dust that have
fallen into compromising piles, comprising places
rather than people where we wanted to go.
I'm covered in your soot and you're pristine
Clean and white and lazy.
You never handled my soot
Afraid to get your hands dirty?
Come, come now, we know each other
much to well to be flirty
Will I make it to thirty?
Or will I divide and replicate
Share myself with another other
One with fire in his eyes
Which are the windows to the soul
and heart.
When there is nothing left to burn you (I) have
to set your (my) heart and soul on fire
Become the place he wants to go
Make more places together
I never knew this could happen.
Repression begets repression
Depression begets depression
which is freedom, but with restraints
Restraint begets restraint?
Is that what went wrong?
I don't think so because my restraint
begot you freedom.
But maybe because
your restraint begot mine.
Let's never be restrained
Is it too much?
No, never enough
I think I need help because I have
started to get depressed without you.
I have started to doubt that love
is equal - that I love you as much as you love
me and vice versa. Do you love me as much as I love you?
Sometimes.
I watch you sleep sometimes and it
feels like the first time.
Does selfishness beget selfishness?
If I am selfish and decide that I want
to spend my time with you and only
you forever and ever, then will the same
selfishness awaken in you?
If it did, would I continue to want
you as much as I did before?
Do I lust for unattainable things?
I don't dream of wedding bands or rings
but I sometimes think that I'd love
to be bound
by love
Not symbols of love, because a symbol isn't the
real thing. It stands for something else.
That's what it was! I fell in love
with your love symbolism, which
was very convincing.

Mathematics is full of theorems, half-truths and
proofs
like you
In theory you love me as much as I love
you. When a theory is more or less true, it becomes
a proof.
You once wrote me a proof to confirm
your love and it said:
"I must always put U before ME because
I only have to go through the alphabet once
to get U, but I must go around twice to
get ME."
Those lines of the proof were symbols. They spoke
of love unseen before or since and I don't
want to wait anymore.
Don't wait around for me forever because
I'm not coming back.
Your bags were always packed so why
don't you leave?
It makes me sad to know that in the
beginning, when we were supposed to be
in love - I certainly thought I was -
that you couldn't wait to leave town
or for me to leave town.
How do I know this? Because I look forward
to your absences.
I subtract you from my life
I am calculating and strong
I am not zero now that you are gone or
leaving.
Best begets best
We are at our best without each other
Am I at my best alone or will
another other make me better?
Our dreams diverge
If I don't want two of everything - dogs, kids, cars
am I un-American?
Do dreams exist outside the lines of the mainland
on the map?
But I do dream in twos
There are two of me
And two of you
And we are each a little bit duplicitous.
But I love you both, even your duplicitous bits
All I want to know is, are you being duplicitous
with me? If so,
which me are you being duplicitous
with?
I am awake for the first time. 5:57:30.
No, I was lying before. Now I am genuinely
awake for the first time today. 5:58:10.
I am awake as long as I am looking at
you, but if I blink I forget
No, I was lying before. I am dreaming when I
am looking at you - I don't want to wake up -
and if I blink I'll wake up. Perhaps for the
first time in days.
You're the places I want to go
in my dreams and in reality.

Collaboration

 I was thinking about Lennie in Of Mice and Men the other day and how much he likes to hear about the dream. He says,

"But not us, George. Tell how it is with us."

But I don't picture Lennie in my mind's eye. 

I picture myself, my face inches from yours, and my eyes are asking yours, 

"Tell me again how we met 

how much you love me already 

about the collaborations that are 

possible between us. 

Tell me how much you thought 

about me before 

Before we ever met."

Because I've been thinking about you

wanting to meet you all my life

If you can even call what I 

had before you life.

Because I'm more alive now than

I've been in years.

And for years to come, you'll

have me to take care of you

and I'll have you to take care of me.

Lennie may not be a smart man,

but he knows what love is.

-----

But George knows what love is too

and he knows that its better to have

loved and lost than to never have

loved at all.

I lost the love I had for you

Can't find it anywhere

But then again

I'm not really looking anymore

Any more? No, I don't have any more 

to give you. 

I had apples, but I gave them

to you years ago because you said

you needed them to...I can't remember now

I don't think you ever said why.

Then you came back and you needed

more, so I gave you my leaves

My green, my youth

I gave generously and you happily 

took.

Later still you returned after you'd already 

left me twice.

This time you took my trunk,

my middle, which made you think 

that you had my heart too.

But my heart was below ground

in the roots

-----

I wanna make roots with you

"the code is mixed and flesh

joins to bone, like granting a wish."

You wrote that and I fell in love

with your words

They spring from your heart

and speak to mine

and maybe someday we'll watch

our collaborations grow.

And of all the things we give them

We'll be proudest of giving them 

hearts like ours.

I have to laugh because I find

myself speaking in "wes" and "ours" 

and it's effortless.

I feel so light and free

But is it because I've lost so much

already?

-----

It's been two months already and I feel you

picking at my stump.

I wait for rain, pray for it

because it washes filth away.

You made me feel dirty

Your seed stings which makes me 

think its poison.

You have no roots or I've never

seen your heart

It never spoke to mine

the signals crossed and met with

static, bounced back and I 

thought my love was yours

and I was happy for a time

loving myself, thinking it was you

loving me.