Finding Peter

lunar soil

2008-02-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

The whole idea of faith is such a magnificent concept in the face of despair. It feels almost fake until one is trapped between time, grief and loss. That space really is both the worst and most beautiful place to be. It's where the moon collides with the night. Where the stars disappear from the sky. Somehow it leaves one with the sense that beauty and pain must live under the same roof in order for there to be any light at all. Without blackness, there would be no need for the sun. And without the sun's brightness, there would be no need for life.

Somehow the knowledge that there is a sun that produces immense amounts of energy and light gives courage to the idea that the darkness has boundaries. The darkness can only last so long. And it's how one handles themselves in the darkness that is of rare value; almost more than how one may act in the light. Because it seems so easy to navigate one's way in the light. It's easy to know what to do in the light. But it seems far more difficult to know what to do in the dark.

Everything feels foreign when one is blindfolded and stumbling through familiar ground. Pain has a way of leaving one feeling like a foreigner even in familiar places. Everything around you turns into lunar soil. And somehow you are supposed to live the very same life you have always been living but trapped inside a spacesuit and breathing in dead air. Nothing stops with you. The world keeps ticking by while time has frozen for you. All you hear is the drone of your own voice and a few other ones. Ones that bring to mind everything and everyone who has hurt you or left you or forgotten you. And that same dead air. You wonder when you will breath fresh air again. And if there really ever was such a thing as fresh air in the first place.

The stillness. It's there with you. It's in you and surrounding you. It's haunting at first. It seems to threaten suffocation within your already close surroundings. Then slowly, curiously, it becomes the silent friend. It begins to fade from a shadowy mass into a crimson ghost and then, it combusts into a pure and simple light. The delicate glow begins to infuse a hint of hope into your being. Just enough.

And somewhere in a cold, hidden cavern within, you begin to believe again.

Green

2008-02-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

I went to the store just the other to buy a bag of peanut M+Ms because the crave was on. In the candy aisle, which was filled from top to bottom with all kinds of Valentines candies, I noticed a very strange bag of Peanut M+Ms. They were all green. Very, very green. Each and every one of them were green. And the same color of green too. Sometimes they actually try and mix different colored green ones together. But not these. On the front of the package there sat one very large, round and green M+M looking rather enticing with long, draping eyelashes, plump, green lips, and dark, floating eyebrows. All this was situated beside the slogan, "Green, the new color of love." Very curious. I put the bag back and found another bag of the peanut kind that held the classic Valentine's Day colors of red, bright pink, soft pink, and white. I grabbed the all-green bag again and read the labels. I read the labels on the pink bag. All Peanut M+Ms alright. And all for Valentines Day. The thought crossed my mind at one point during the exchange that maybe the St. Patrick's Day candies were out too. But after some debate I decided that the green ones were, in fact the Valentine's candies. And after even more debate, I left the candy aisle with the pink bag.

Not sure I'm ready for green being the new color of love. I think of gang-green. or puking over the railing of a sail-boat. Mold growing on old food. Dirty, crumbling spunges, the kind with the green rough surface on one side and the yellow sponge on the other. I think of mildew. And tangly, thick seaweed floating through the ocean. Drunken green men posed as shamrocks slumping through bars. I think of spinach unknowingly caught between my two front teeth and smiling at a very cute man at the next table over. Yeah. It may take me some me time to re-direct my thinking into green being the color of romance and love. I don't even wear green. Except for those opportune moments while eating spinach.

long time

2008-01-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

OK so to all my faithful blog readers I need to offer a huge apology because of my long absence in writing even one dang word on my blog site in the last forever months. I admit I have not been good to my long-standing fans. But I am back. And this time I am in the control of a very special item. It happens to give me the power to type away as much as I like, whenever I like, and wherever I like. Very cool.

I'm sitting here next to a Mr. Aaron Strump in the Mine after the knitting circle. If you are wondering if Strump is a knitter than you might be disappointed to know that he is not. He just called Donald White "thee effer." Anger management for the Strump is at all time low these days.

I am knitting a very bright yellow neon hat with two power blue stripes for a miss taylor. I'll post pics of it once it's done. and now for a few more pics of the strump and I.

a day in ned

2007-06-02T12:50:00.000-06:00

yippee! i have some pictures to share! i finally had a much needed day of rest yesterday with my dear and lovely friends in the mountain town of Nederland. we ended up in a cozy old railroad train, turned coffee shop, very cool. we laughed and rested and listened to patty griffin and talked about pretty much nothing for 2 hours...it was sooo wonderful.

i know, even on off days i'm still mischievous as ever...oopsies.

today i went to the outdoor pool for some lap swimming, but it was closed. so i sat on a bench in the park for a while as a friend of mine came walking past with his little foxy pup. as we talked about art and architecture his little lady pup was very keen on watching the squirrels that temptatioulsy (not sure if that's a word, but it seemed to fit right) flaunted their way very near to her restrained, furry body. it's funny how mischief and restraint very often go hand in hand. and i had to laugh at myself.

overalls in namibia

2007-05-30T22:01:00.000-06:00

today i put on my old, patched-up overalls and smiled. i used to wear those old friends everyday while on african soil, making pottery and wipping the red clay on their fading denim. everytime i put them on i think of namibia.

i went around barefoot all day and layed down in the grass. it smelled like summer. green grass, wet soil and lilacs. the sky was so blue and clear. the leaves on the branches above were a thousand little green flags clapping together and laughing. green and blue mixed with a little red makes deep purple. that was the color of my soul. rest, quietness and purging merged within.

namibia is a desert. but within that desert one can find an oasis. and on the oasis is the color of red mixed with blue, mixed with green. it rains sometimes there. when it does, the flowers bloom quickly and then fade quickly. hardly anyone sees the flowers that bloom in the desert. but they still bloom. they still show their pretty faces and smile very brightly towards the heavens. and then they fall asleep again.

kind of like old patch-up denim overalls.

dorothy and the red wagon

2007-05-06T23:32:00.000-06:00

I was thinking about Dorothy today. She was trying to reach the Emerald City. But all she really wanted was to reach home. I wonder if I’m Dorothy. I wonder if I’m trying to reach a place that’s green and sparkly and pretty when all along all I really want is to reach home.

A friend told me today that my dreads are wild and crazy and colorful and that they look like the way her insides feel. And I wondered why I wear my heart on the outside of me.

Last night I dreamt of a massive, churning, violent tornado coming straight towards the place where I lived and I knew that if I asked God to keep it from devouring us, He would change it’s course. So I asked, I actually screamed the request. The tornado snarled it’s way towards us and in the very last minute it darted to the left and only took a small nip out of the side of the home. Prayer is a very mysterious thing. I wonder if it’s the language of change. Or maybe it’s the language of love.

Once I was given a leadership role over eleven young women. They would often come to me and ask for prayer. I often cried afterwards because I was asking God to work within them the very things I wanted to ask God to work within me. One day, while in tears I explained this to my leader. He told me about the red wagon. Say there was a little girl who knew that her little sister wanted a red wagon very much. And so the little girl goes to her father with some money she's saved up and tells him that she wants to use the money to buy a red wagon for her little sister. All the while though, this same little girl very much wants a red wagon herself. Would the father, seeing the little girl's desire for her little sister and the tears brimming in her sweet eyes not also buy a wagon for her?

Prayer is like coming home. And coming home is like love. And love is worth it…every time.

mystery

2007-02-14T00:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight I want to write from my heart. I want to become alive with the mystery of my own heart. It’s strange how ones heart can be their closest companion as well as their greatest stranger. I feel I’ve spent so much of my life trying to become a friend of my own heart. How can something so near to one be so far away as well?

How can the sky be flush against my skin, hugging my being on every side, wrapping itself around me as a waterfall of invisible molecules, and yet seem so distant? I find myself looking heavenwards, my arms reaching, wanting to somehow embrace the vast breath of air far above me and feeling as though it is completely unreachable, completely untouchable. Little realizing that I am not only touching it, but am actually consuming it with every breath I take, with every one of my movements. It’s constantly dancing around me, flowing as a current of water over rocks and broken trees, the solidity of my being merging and colliding with it’s vulnerability. And the air fills me, the fusion of oxygen and blood creating new life within the darkness of my being.

I love the pulsing of my heart. I hold my breath quiet, stilling any movement from my body and I begin to listen. And there it always is. The methodical swishing of fluid in and out of my ears, the ever-so-slight bounce of my thumbs as the blood rushes in and out of veins. The existence of a pulse always means the existence of life. Without my pulse my body would hold no life. Without my heart regulating the currents of blood rushing through my being, I would simply cease to exist.

My physical heart speaks to me in rhythm. But the invisible part of my heart speaks to me in words. It touches me with emotions. It warns me, cautions me. It laughs, and sings. It weeps and heaves. It dreams. And sometimes it even seems to deceive me. The perfect stranger. The perfect friend. The perfect mystery.

the mirror

2007-01-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

1.27.07

Tonight I had a little conversation with myself. I stood in front of my mirror and asked myself who I saw. Attempting to play a little trick on myself, I decided to imagine that this person I was looking at in the mirror I had never once seen before. For anyone wanting to attempt this trick on there own, I will warn that it required a couple of trips to the mirror. During this first trip, the person looking back at me was very familiar to me. In fact, she was so familiar, that I found myself looking very closely at her face. I decided that picking the teeny, weeny deposits of sleep out of her eyes, itching her forehead, scrunching her nose, and picking her teeth clean probably wouldn’t be the first things I would do to a complete stranger.

Before the next trip to the mirror, I decided to turn on all the lights in the house just so I could get the full effect of color and light on this “stranger” I was looking at in the mirror. This time I grabbed my trusty little mirror from under my bathroom sink so I could get the full-scale reflection of the person I was looking at, from booty to poochy. Shoulders back, check. Head straight ahead, check. Stomach in, check. Head moderately cocked, lips slightly curved to form a smile, eyebrows lifted; check, check, check. And then, I began pulling at the waist of her butt-sagging, black fleece pants, attempting to bring some lift to them. Her nostrils gave a slight flare as I noticed the hole on the front of her pants from a little hot “kiln” accident a month prior. I complimented her vibrant, sage-green wool sweater (thanks to local thrift store,) and laughed at her bright red, longhaired slippers protruding from under her pant legs.

On the third trip, I hid behind the corner of the mirror, attempted to clear my mind of all pre-images of myself, counted to three, and then walked out (with little mirror in hand) and stood in front of the mirror. I looked at the woman before me. She stood confidently. She enjoyed her long, red, black and brown dreads, wildly hugging her shoulders and back. She was hip, funky, and smiled a lot. She was comfortable in her not-so-perfect clothes and actually seemed to like herself in them. The curves of her face were gentle, encircling kind eyes that spoke knowingly of joy and pain. The creases around her mouth and eyebrows were deepened by 26 years of laughter and tears.

I liked her. I was intrigued with her and wanted to know more about her. I wanted to take her out for coffee and hear her laugh and sigh and speak of experiences, of ideas and dreams. I wanted to watch her work her magic on the potters’ wheel and create pieces of art out of mud. I wanted to eat breakfast with her and talk about her dreams from the night before. I wanted to drink a glass of iced water (with hints of lime juice and vanilla mixed in) with her while she talked aloud and typed away on her computer. I wanted to be her friend. And I could tell she wanted to be mine.

Dreams

2007-01-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

I wonder about my dreams. And not about the dreams I have when I’m sleeping at night. I wonder about the “fond hopes” I carry within my heart. And fond they are. And deep they are. And yet, how futile they seem too. How distant and dormant do they burrow themselves within my being.

And I wonder how to unlock them? How do I open their eyes and look at them without feeling sadness within? How do I begin to nurture and care for them as babies without fearing that I will lose them as I have lost so many dreams before?

Dreams feel sometimes as close as your skin. They are warm and soft and a part of your being. They free you to expose yourself to the world, to soak in the sunshine, to resist the elements of rain, dirt and wind. They make you want to live and risk and love. And yet, dreams can be pierced, wounded. They can cause the insides of you to bleed and ache. Dreams are so vulnerable.

I fear that by unlocking these dreams, by exposing them to air, I will ultimately fail them. I will ultimately not know how to nurture them, how to care for them. Why is fear such a strong lock? How can fear weave and wrap itself around everything that is true and real and make it seem like a mirage, like something that does not exist nor will ever exist?

I wonder if living ones dreams is far less of an arrival point as it is a course. I wonder if my dreams haven’t already been unlocked. I think they have. And I think I am nurturing them. It’s just not exactly in the way that I had expected caring for them would look like.

Maybe I didn’t think they really would be as close as my skin. I didn’t think they would be so vulnerable. So easily wounded and affected by the elements of life: Of relationships, of experiences, of living and breathing on this side of Eternity.

Solomon had a way of wording these realities so poignantly:

There is a time for everything…
I have seen the burden God has laid on men.
He has made everything beautiful in it’s time.
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; and yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

Emmanuel

2006-12-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

The name Emmanuel is striking to me. The idea of God dwelling with us and becoming His creation is beautiful in form and action.

Perfection submitted to imperfection.

God chose that which He formed and created with His own hands to nurture, raise and love His son, a perfect being. He trusted His creation to the point of releasing His son to us.

I’m beginning to see the birth and life of Jesus embodying a beautiful picture of a transparent God in absolute perfection choosing to be vulnerable. Choosing to be needy. Choosing to be naked. Choosing to be raised, instructed, and nurtured by very imperfect individuals.

And ultimately He chose to be hated, broken, and killed by the very creation He made and then submitted himself to.

It makes me wonder if true love, true perfection then is oftentimes a state of helplessness and dependence. Perhaps perfection is more about dependence rather than independence. And not only dependence on a God who is perfect, but also dependence on the people He made who are imperfect.

God Himself made an active choice to need the strength of another being by releasing His son to walk this earth and commune with His creation.

I want to love like that.

I want to be brave like that.

I want to understand that maybe true bravery is really trusting. And maybe trusting really comes from the deepest place of humility within. And maybe humility comes from understanding the beauty of grace.

And maybe grace is wildly intricate yet deeply simple.

Emmanuel.

Diamond

2006-12-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

love is a broken thing
trying to be whole
or is love a whole thing
trying to be broken

it seems I feel both within

the wholeness is solid and fierce
outside of my being
surrounding me
yet deeply inside
my core
the diamond

the brokenness is only within
a million little pieces
orbiting around the core
dancing so close and so tightly
they almost seem to be the core
chameleons

love is quiet
solid

brokeness is piercing
suffocating

I learn the language of tears
aching
heaving

I learn the language of chameleons
haunting
consuming

to know the diamond

pottery pics

2006-12-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to share a few new pitures of my work! Enjoy

Strange Little Aliens

2006-12-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I look at my dreadlocks and think how funny they are. There are red ones, purple ones, copper, orange, and brown ones. I feel like I've just stepped unto a set of Sesame Street and I'm one of the furry little muppets with fuzzy antennas of color flopping here and there singing about the word "alien," while dancing with a ruler.

Sometimes my little fuzzy alien antennas don't smell so good, as I wash them only once a month. But they have a very rich, musky smell that is actually rather enjoyable. Not sure how they conduct this odor, but it's hardly offensive, really. They've actaully recieved comlipents on their smell, be-lieve it or not. And I don't think the people were just saying it to be polite, really. And I think compliments promote the little aliens' fragrance-conducting activity, really.

I try and compliment them at least five times a day. Once in upon waking, because they've been silent all night long and tend to get a little lonely by the time the morning comes along. Once at breakfast, because it's my favorite meal and I tend to compliment everything at that time. Once when I'm pulling my dreads back in a bob to ready myself for a long day in a dirty pottery studio, because they are sooo easy to put back without the help of any kind of hair pins or clips. And twice at night to prepare them for the long silence of sleep.

By this point in reading this, you probably think I'm obsessed with my dreads, but not really too much. I just want these little alien tangles of hair to know just how thankful I am for their continued support of strange things, fuzzy, colored, messy, frangrant, stinky or just simply strange. My hats off to you! (Even though I can't really fit hats on my head anyways these days.)

Summer Nights: Leaves and Cork Boards

2006-06-09T15:56:00.000-06:00

I’m sitting on my kitchen floor in the dark at midnight with my back door open feeling the cool breeze of a summer night softly linger across my skin. This is a night of dreams. The night air smells of rain. I asked Jesus yesterday for ten days of rain this month of June. When I randomly mentioned it to my neighbor today, she made a half-smile and said to let her know if it happens. I will. And I’m counting. Today was day one. Miracles are missed by those who never ask for them.

I don’t want to live by the expected. Why can’t the unexpected be expected? Why can’t I eat popsicles in the morning and cheerios at night? Why can’t I let my hair grow all the way past my lovely dairy air? Why can’t I sit on dirty floors or collect leaves to write poems on only to send them floating away in the wind? Why can’t I take pictures of people and clouds and stones and pin them to public cork boards? Why can’t I write letters to old and new friends and send them with a real postage stamp? Why can’t I keep my windows rolled down in my old truck all summer long, with my music turned up real loud and my head bobbing this way and that? Why can’t I wear a skirt while I’m throwing clay on my wheel? When I ask for rain, why can’t I expect for rain to come?

I want to dream as if this was the first time I’ve ever thought of a real dream. As if I’ve never been broken. Broken people who stay broken always live in pieces. They have two and three and more worlds they straddle between. They use words like, back then, or someday, or maybe, or we’ll see, or I don’t know…
I want to live in one world. I want to live now.

Swimming in Lakes

2006-06-06T16:42:00.000-06:00

There are many things to take into consideration before running full-speed into a lake of shining waters. First, the temperature of the water is key to a pleasurable swim. There’s nothing as thrilling as feeling your skin peel away along with your breath as you fly into the icy, glistening pools below.

Second, just where does the ground disappear to once you've comitted yourself to it's goopy, tangled, or rocky surface? What wonderful surprises must live below the mud, just inches from the only two feet and ten toes ever received in this life? I mean, surely I’ve heard somewhere of inland sharks loving the low life of underground living in lakes and ponds, and burried snakes and poisoness toads. Really, I know these things.

Thirdly, just how many birds and geese and people like to use these waters as their hidden sewage system? The only reason why I even know about this part is because I have four younger brothers whom I know have let it loose in a lake or two or three. Many times have I experienced the sudden balmy tingling around my legs, a sudden warm current, disappearing as quickly as it appeared. One must keep their core body temperature regulated during times like these.

Fourthly, these waters can't be empty and hallow, it's just not that simple. Something, and possibly many somethings must inhabit the quiet murkiness underneath it's sparkling surface. I’ve seen them and their dark, darting forms out of the corner of my eye while innocently stroking along.

And fithly, one must know the etiquitte of keeping ones own bulk on top of the water, rather than below. This is the tricky one. It’s a difficult thing to keep oneself from swallowing so much pond water that you end up weighing at least twice as much as you did before entering the water.

After all has been weighed and considered, only then can one dare to wade themselves into a lake brimming with uncertainties. But, you ask, how could one know any of the answers to any of the considerations above unless tested first by the one doing the considering?

The answer? Well, I pause, the answer is just that. How can one possibly know unless one first tries? And why would one be so afraid to try? Pain and fear have kept far too many a' soul from accomplishing couragious feats as fighting for black freedom and the right to vote, as adopting a child with AIDS, as bearing a child as a single mother, to ones as simple as telling someone close to your heart, “I love you,” or deciding whether or not to jump into a nebulous lake.