Autumn falling from trees

from Jaymay's See Green, See Blue

October, the first day of, and I'm already anticipating the joys of my favourite month. Crisp mornings and chilly evenings. Hot cider and rum. The clarity of the stars. Carving pumpkins. Bonfires. Camping. Costuming. Hayrides. Candy corn and (my personal favourite) candy pumpkins. Apples. Long sleeves. Tights under shorts. Leaves turning hue. Caramel flavoured everything. Scarves. Long walks. And best of all, my Birthday!

And then there is love for the enemy

--love for the one who does not love you, but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.

from Frederick Buechner's The Magnificent Defeat

Unfortunately, I just witnessed my youngest sister being punished. Leather belt style.

I'm at my parents' house for the next few days, which is always a nervous situation for me. There's a risk to coming here. But still, I keep coming.

Growing up, I, too, received the belt treatment. I don't think there's anything wrong with that traditional southern discipline. I only know that a tool like that would be dangerous in my hands, that my kids will never receive that kind of discipline from me. For their sake, and for mine, I can never employ that. But in my parents' house, my mother enacted the policy that we would receive the belt for every transgression. There was no set number of lashes; the whipping stopped once you cried. My other younger sister, closer to me in age, learned the lesson early on: the sooner you cry, the quicker your punishment ends. But I was a prideful girl, more stubborn than I am today, and I refused to cry. Needless to say, my punishment only ended when the welts were criss-crossed and my dad's arm grew tired. Dad would even whisper to me "just cry, Nik, fake it, your mom will never know. Don't be bull-headed". I pity my dad in all this. He's a good man. But my mom has always used him as her tool. He hated enforcing the belt. But I remember the sting of the belt, my teeth scraping as I grit them against the pain, and the heat of unshed tears behind my eyes. Yett those punishments were nothing compared to the un-prompted, outright abuse that my mom poured out on me.

So tonight, when my littlest sister was punished, I couldn't help but pity her. She gave my parents horrible lip, had an attitude when she argued, and completely disrespected them. So I can't deny that she needed to be disciplined. But as my dad went to fetch the belt, I could feel my stomach twisting in knots; I didn't want to witness what was about to happen. Yet, as my dad hit my sister, he barely grazed her. My sister never winced, didn't cry out, never shed a tear, and when it was over she merely stormed away. It didn't even hurt her.

And a part of me got angry. It's so unfair that my siblings are treated better. That things are always easier for them when I was twice as well behaved as they are when I was their age. For the smallest second I grew very bitter and my heart hardened. Some people would call this righteous anger. But then, once my mom sent my littlest sister to bed after her punishment, mom turns to me and jokingly says "don't you remember when that was you". And I laughed it off but, yes, I remember all too well. And that comment made me realize, that my siblings are blessed to have gone through only a measure of what I endured. That I have always been glad to know things aren't as rough for them as they were for me. How could I, in one tiny moment, forget that relief I've come to know? I am ashamed of myself.

So, at times, it's weird for me to be here at my parents'. There are memories ingrained in these cement walls that I would rather forget. And I'm always on edge, tip-toeing around tempers. And I come back home to school a nervous, jumpy shadow. Because, occasionally, things still happen here. But I keep coming to my parents' house. Because I love my family. All of them. And no amount of physical pain could ever stop me from loving.

I have always said that my huge capacity to love is my one redeeming quality, Mayhap, it is my curse also.

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things,
out of the dust

from Gungor's "Beautiful Things"

I cannot explain to you, in mere words, the pulchritude of all to be felt around me: The slight giddiness as I stand at a dizzying height, looking down at the precipice of a new, yet unread, novel to be delved and mined. The strange sigh of regret, inaudible, loosed from my lungs at the finish of a good read; that bittersweet sound of reverberation as the book snaps shut, echoing in my head. The genteel fingers of the wind, threading through the tresses of my hair, as it pulls tendrils tenderly from my forehead and cheeks. The caress of a summer sun, alighting upon the tender spot of the neck and thrilling every nerve and sinew in the body until the knees grow weak. The drum roll of the sea, my heart beat catching cadence from the incoming waves. The security of a warm body curled into mine; a kitten, a child, a lover. The intoxicating smell of fire as it insinuates an unattainable passion to the other senses, save sight. The simplicity of melody interwoven with the complexity of harmony. The intricacy of life, of every living thing entwined with the lives of each other, unwittingly denying the idea that we, that life, is randomly made and exists. These sensations, these everyday quotidian feelings that rarely give the average person pause; they are the beauty of God. They are my joys.

Therefore since the world has still

much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
and train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of the stem that scored the hand
i wrung it with a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
the better for the embittered hour;
It would do good to heart and head
when your soul is in my soul's stead;
And i will friend you, if i may,
in the dark and cloudy day.

A. E. Housman's Terence This Is Stupid Stuff

I wonder sometimes if I have become desensitised. It seems near impossible to faze me. You can tell me good news, bad news, anything, or even tell me something in the way of changing my life, changing my current lifestyle, and I come to terms with being wrong so far in something I've done. But I have no reaction. I can agree  with what you say, I can accept the thought as truth: make it my own, believe in it, give it life. But i do not react to it. It causes no emotional reaction in me. I feel nothing.

And I wonder whence came this numbness? A product of my past habit of repressing emotion in order to survive a life of abuse? Or maybe a result of learning the hard way --that life can have more bad than good in store for me-- and preparing for such? This latter possibility is the thought that evokes Housman just now. And the poet describes his writing as the escape from the ills the world lays upon him. And it seems to me that getting those words out --"wrung" in his words-- implies a feat. A sort of work. A labor of gleaning, of prying and squeezing, those words and emotions from the things that have happened. I can understand that sort of forced writing; when it's all you can do to figure out what you feel, and you write because you're are compelled to do so --no matter that you don't have the words! WRITE! You must!-- and you put the harsh truth on paper, the raw emotion leaking from your hand, but numbness still in your heart. And why? Because, in putting the emotion on paper, even though you can't feel it, you hope some wretched soul that comes along and reads it --some poor soul that DOES feel-- finds empathy and solace in your words, and makes that effort you made to glean emotion from your empty heart somehow worth it.

In writing all this, I had maintained the hope that I would be able to glean some sort of emotion in reaction to the conversation I had not an hour ago. But I don't. I still feel no reaction. Should I not feel relieved?

Sigh no more

Mumford and Sons' "Sigh No More" and
Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"


Suddenly I'm all too aware that my life is measured out in beats of the heart that pulse to a rain rhythm, a frantic cadence counts down my moments until the final decrescendo. And upon self-reflection, what then can I say of my endeavors. Naught but save this:


     that my life and all aspects therein, were ever forfeit,


     that I desired naught but the joy and pleasure of others and to love them wholly, as so few can, and


     that I found God my Saviour daily in the basic pulchritude I found around me, and


     that He was ever my first love --that desire as the fount from whence came any redeeming quality I perchance had.




But I feel in my heart, with each drop of rain, life fleeing, and a tug of infinity.
Life can still be sought in whispers; I need only to remember how I once listened.

Every chink in the armor, an excuse to cause offense

The Swell Season's "In These Arms"

Several nights ago, a dream: I’m walking up and over the crest of a small hill, leading up to a cabin. I smell the woods behind me and feel the sun on my back. On the porch of the cabin, sitting on a wood bench much like one would find in a park, is you. I am closer to the house now and two girls I hardly know, walking with me, run ahead into the house. I move to follow them but my head turns involuntarily towards you, wrapped in a thin blanket, tears slipping silently down your face. “Oh, hon”, I say and veer towards you. But you turn your face away. I reach out for your shoulder but as soon as I touch you, you shrug it off. “No... I don’t need anything. I’m fine. Go inside.” you insist. And in that moment, I feel everything within me change. My heart breaks for you in a way it never would before. I feel my blood congeal within my veins. My bones so soft and yielding are hard and steel now. I feel tall and commanding and powerful and I cannot stop the flood that comes out of my mouth. “No. No! YOU don’t get to do that. YOU don’t get to just dismiss me like that. What right have you to refuse empathy, refuse comfort from someone who genuinely cares? What gives you the right? It’s your feelings, right? You can share them with whomever you want to, right? Wrong. There are certain people in your life for a reason. You let them continue a one-way relationship with you, and eventually God’s gonna pull them out of your life so that you don’t bring them down. Or they’ll leave of their own volition because you never really let them in. How can they be in your life if you never let yourself be vulnerable to them? So these people in your life are here to take care of you, for you to take care of them. Not using your friends for their Godly value is an abuse of friendship. Who are YOU to refuse to be blessed by God? And who are YOU that, in this moment, when no one else is around you, when no one is here to comfort you, and when I have already given up on you before now, who are YOU to refuse the comfort of the Almighty God who’s will for me to hold you just now was so overpowering that it overrode my desire to leave you be? Who are you?   ...You could have so much, if you would only give a little.” And, lips pressed tightly, hands shaking; I leave you there, shocked into silence, one solitaire tear still making its way past your nose. I have never raised my voice in such a way before.

We can't hold us anymore

no we've got to fold
down to the floor, yes I know it's cold
but baby our hearts have gone
Ingrid Michaelson's "Once Was Love"

the butterfly. life's fragility epitomized in that singular being. the butterfly flies near you and you hold out your hand. it flutters down into your palm. but what then? how do you keep hold of something so precious, so beautiful? do you curl your fingers around it, caging it in? the butterfly will struggle to free itself from your grasp. the tighter you hold, the more fervent it beats its wings in an effort to escape. in fact, it will struggle so much that eventually the powder on its wings will rub off. the butterfly will become incapacitated. it will struggle itself to death. maybe not dead, dead. but essentially the same. useless. dead to the world. what point is there to a life without flight? survival impossible. forever dependent on the captor. on you. no, rather, it is in offering freedom that you even have a chance of holding onto the butterfly. when holding it, you keep your hands flat, palms up and open. you offer the butterfly the chance to leave at will. and in recognizing the spirit within that beautiful creature, that need for freedom, you understand the butterfly fully. when your hand is open, not trapping, the butterfly stays with you. it's that simple. the tighter you hold to something you love against its will, the more you lose it. you end up crushing it. but if you truly love it, you'll give it the freedom it needs, even if there's a chance you'll have to love it from afar.