1/25/47

"The majesty of my thoughts this evening! Do all these things read alike as they seem to to? They all send a faint nausea thru me--albeit they were sincere at the time and I recant none of my articles of faith. This evening I picture theoretically myself at 70 saying it's done, it's finished, it's what it is, and being no nearer than I am. This moral turpitude at 70 won't be tolerable. I want a revolution now, a mild revolution, something that will put an even 20th century asceticism into me at least when I pass the grocery. The intellectual and artistic delights God gives us are visions and like visions we pay for them; & the thirst for the vision doesn't necessarily carry with it a thirst for the attendant suffering. Looking back I have suffered, not my share, but enough to call it that but there's a terrific balance due. Dear God please send me your Grace. "


4/14/47

"I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic flippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually-- like this today. The word craftmanship takes care of the work angle & the word aesthetic the truth angle. Angle. It will be a life struggle with no consummation. When something is finished, it cannot be possessed. Nothing can be possessed but the struggle. All of our lives are consumed in possessing struggle but only when the struggle is cherished & directed to a final consummation outside of this life is it of any value. I want to be the best possible artist it is possible for me to be, under God.
I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You."

--The ever so brilliant Flannery

Another Wednesday at work.

"Crushing pain. He is having radiating, crushing pain!"

"Who is he? What's his diagnosis?"

Get off me. I can't breathe. Anything, anyone...

"Call his primary team STAT. Get them up here."

Half-dimmed eyes, incessant quivering, a mask taut to his face--inspiration, expiration--muddled in ultimate exhaust. 

"He is having a massive STEMI."

"Yes, yes we're here. He was diagnosed with Stage IV adenocarcinoma this morning. Poor prognosis. No family present. He was boarded for a drain placement. Cath Lab declined intervention d/t poor prognosis."

Make it stop, please. Help me, for the love of God, help me. 

2 mg Morphine IV.

"Sir, I need to know what you want right now. We can put a tube down your airway which you may never wake back up from. Or we can make you comfortable."

Please help me. Make it stop. Make me comfortable. 

"Sir, you realize that if we don't put this tube down your throat you will die?"

YES. Please, pleaaaaase. 
 
2 mg Morphine IV.

Stillness rippled through the bodies in the room like a pervading epidemic with one last kick. No dyspnea, no flailing extremities, no indeterminate pleas.

Silence raged onward, for what seemed like, an eternity.

"Stop that, you've made your point. Wilbur! Gert over here you turkey, come on. Stop eating the leaves and sticks. Do you want your stomach to blow up and butthole to burn like hell? I know, i know you want to play and go running, but we don't have the time.You're pent up with an escapade of energy, a inexhaustible drive to discover, to explore-- how am I suppose to help you? I let you go, you wait for me. Stop that neediness, would ya? You're your own creature expelled into my limited forbearing abilities--and you just look at me, despondent and trivialized, as if I yielded you the rags of my undergarments. What do you want from me? I've almost lost you time and time again. And the old destroyed tennis balls will fancy you for just a limited time... but then what? What next? Your companionship and loyalty and albeit yearnings in the morning at the window.. and for what? You don't even know. You just are."

Not everyone has to be literate, there are some great reasons for resisting language, and one of them is love.

My sweet, sweet Buechner.

Here he is. No introductory abstract necessary.

"If literature is a metaphor for the writer's experience, a mirror in which that experience is at least partially reflected, it is at the same time a mirror in which the reader can also see his or her experience reflected in a new and potentially transforming way. This is what it is like to search for God in a world where cruelty and pain hide God, Dostoevsky says-- "How like a winter hath my absence been from thee"; how like seeing a poor woman in a dream with a starving child at her breast; how like Father Zossima kneeling down at the feet of Dmitri Karamazov because he sees that great suffering is in store for him, and because he knows, as John Donne did, that suffering is holy. And you and I, his readers, come away from our reading with no more proof of the existence or nonexistence of God than we had before, with no particular moral or message to frame on the wall, but empowered by a new sense of the depths of love and pity and hope that is transmitted to us through Dostoevsky's words.

Words written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alive within ourselves. That, I suppose, is the final mystery as well the final power of words: that not even across great distances of time and space do they ever lose their capacity for becoming incarnate. And when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move us closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again and dwells among us and within us, full of grace and truth." --Buechner

Dear God, could it be said any more deliciously sweeter than aforementioned? 

It was Dostoevsky who stated, "Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on Earth."

The month is October. And I say no! to the indoor encapsulating cascade (but I am inside this cozy trendy coffee shop off 8th and I am not leaving). Rather I intend to say yes! to the roaring wind (duh, when I leave here), dried out things, and early onset pumpkin spice fatigue. I have already produced pumpkin mac and cheese once and I can rightfully appoint myself CHEESEMASTER extraordinaire. I too often proclaim as Flannary insists, "I am but a cheese, God. Make me a mystic." I like being a cheese some days, and wonder why Flannery thinks cheese and mystics serve better to be polarized. Either way, a mystic would question his art in being a cheese, as do I, but am not resistant enough to deflect such a dairy-ing claim. Bring it all on, AUTUMN, and persuade me to think I am wading heartily in both the transition of seasons as well as perspective.

I have been readily addicted to the Scumbag brain memes recently (well, again). Maybe the psyche tells us to be intrigued by the psyche, both succinctly and periodically (ARE WE NOT ALL BEING TROLLED BY THIS ORGAN?), but my fascination usually hones in when the brain is being fed well enough to think about itself ( that self-righteous bastard!). I have been chewing on Nietzche's words “Did you ever say yes to a pleasure? Oh my friends, then you also said yes to all pain. All things are linked, entwined, in love with one another.” Making decisions or even PLANS for the future that can affect your current state of being a human bean. To be continued...

Anyways, I bought a new notebook about a month ago in hopes of stirring the wrist again, hoping to evoke the lady penmanship to try fitting a new type of ship with me (aka friendship). The task of doing so is still daunting-- I am as frozen as an Edward Scissorhand sculpture and lacking its artistic prestige. But one can still hope. Here's to the challenge at hand and in the head.

Quoters Gonna Quote

Anne Lamott has been my non consensual priest again this month, well for months-- I suppose. We met back in 2009-- (well one of us met the other without the other's knowledge). Neither of us have been the same since... (One being unconscious of the other is irrelevant here).

I am wholly convinced that in my postmodern, pseudoreligious state of mind that we have many soul mates out there-- out there as in "Earth." That antiquated Zeus tale that infers an ideal of a perfect partner was just Plato pulling the regular 'tard card. No duh we live in a world starved for silence and connection-- so why would we have one iconic and other tangible whole awaiting our completion? Our lives wreaking havoc until that damn human shows up to the game.. no matter how late. Undoubtedly, it remains another egregious Greco claim. 

Back to Anne--- she is one of the few soul mates of mine. How? Why?

I'll make a list...as every sharpened and linear mind tends to make (note the sarcasm here...NOTE IT):

1. She is funny. Idiosyncratic. Neurotic. 

 “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”


2. She writes. She takes time and effort in translating her thoughts into imaginative and formative pieces of art.

 “You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

3. She recognizes the truth of her personhood, grapples with it, and let's grace have her way with her.

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us."

"Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us."

4. She is honest with her own illusions, dreams, expectations.

 “Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.”

5. She is committed to the process. The human process as well as the transcending process.

"We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.” 

 “I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.” 

And with the limitations and the bounty of rich words, I find myself and God amidst her. The very echo of thoughts and reminiscences of something I do not understand, but long for. A sweetness awaiting to be found.

Anne just did a year on Match. com-- and her ventures continue to parallel thoughts on my own. Read for yourself: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/my_year_on_match_com/

I revel in my skin the family crest of "We Don't Give Up." Highly kickass.

After being on Match.com and experiencing the utter exhaustion of trying to connect and be who you are while trying to impress, I was convinced that having utter self-respect in the midst of things not working is okay. To rush away moments at hand for idealized things of the future seems a bit asinine. Hanging on to something for the sake of mere self-preservation seems to be a cop out. But learning to love yourself, having grace for you and others, giving to people among you the gift of you, and letting go of what life was suppose to give you is a worthwhile whirlwind. Sometimes it feels like a bloodsucking whore to the mind, but what the hell, we press on.

Soulmate review to be continued...Flannery, Hesse, Buechner...all coming soon. (Being that they're already dead, I take great heed in procrastinating with great subjugation over such reviews).

"An honorable human relationship--that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"--is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few to go that hard way with us."

--Adrienne Rich

"Laughing At the Word Two"

Only

That Illuminated

One

Who keeps

Seducing the formless into form

Had the charm to win my

Heart.

Only a Perfect One

Who is always

Laughing at the word

Two

Can make you know

Of

Love.