These are the hours of doubt, when too many words have spilled out — unchecked — like contraband. They’re editable, erasable. Too many are harsh, too many revealing, too many true. And part of me flees to the drawing board — the erasing board. And part of me clutches at my own sleeve, drawing me back to the chair to relax and to say, “what’s done is done, and it is you.”
my fear 22.December.2005
I’ll own that it’s energizing to think of words upon words to write – but the energy is always coupled with one of my greatest fears: that the words will be utterly without hope, without the ability to show the slightest glimmer of God.
blank paper 22.December.2005
What an amazing thing, when you’ve got more words than paper, and then you suddenly find the backside of a paper square, totally unused. What a gem.
about lamott 22.December.2005
I thought these sounded like good book-cover quotes, and it just so happens that I believe them:
“Anne Lamott is one of the few people – perhaps the only person – who makes me think of things to write while I’m reading her. Reading Lamott is a highly productive exercise.” -me
“Lamott gives a lot of skill, a lot of truth, and in the end, a little hope. I think I’d be content with a little less skill, if I could only offer more hope – lots of hope – scads and scads of hope.” -me
(Okay, maybe the second is more a critique than book-cover praise. But it’s still quite quotey.)
prejudice 21.December.2005
As I was walking into the library, I met a woman all decked out in her police officer costume. I wasn’t sure what she was an officer of, or if she was even an officer at all, since I had never before seen an officer with a Muslim shawl over her head.
I smiled at her, though. Sometimes I do that when I feel sorry for a person, and I usually feel sorry for Muslims. She didn’t smile back. Maybe in her lifetime, she had seen one too many smiles of pity directed her way. So I guess I couldn’t blame her lack of charm.
Later, when I was reading my book, she was back in the library, quietly patrolling it and never smiling. She really seemed to be on duty, except for the string of wooden beads behind her back, which she click, click, clicked through her brown-black fingers like a Catholic praying through her rosary. For a moment, the thought occurred to me that she might blow the place up — or something — but then I realized it would hardly be worth her while. Better a Christian church than a public library.
She stood near the kids awhile, as they whittled away time on the computers. Perhaps she was with one of them — a mother, no doubt.
But then the black officer clothes walked behind me, and I hurried to shield the words I had written about her. She stopped. Click. Click. Click. Telepathy. She could feel the prejudice emanating from me and my covered words. Maybe she’d just blow my head off.
Then, the library lady came and called the names of children whose time on the computer had expired. My Muslim officer watched the whole thing. I guess the library was having trouble with kids abusing their public computer rights. So it turns out she was there to keep people from getting out of line. Kids who disrespect authority — people like that.
observation and judgment 21.December.2005
The Asian man opposite me has been stuck in his newspaper for over an hour now. I’m happy he’s finally stopped sucking food from his teeth. That lasted a half-hour. I was about to offer him a toothpick, a safety pin, the corner of a book cover, anything that would work better than tongue and saliva. He’s got to have perused the whole paper by now.
Once he took notes from an Ace Hardware advertisement and once he said something out loud – something I didn’t understand, something that sounded like wick-a-low. A little tot just came up, looking hungrily at the library’s globe, but when he saw my Asian friend sitting right beside it, he sneered at the globe and went for the window blinds instead.
. . .
A man in Starbucks started coughing loudly while I was reading my book. Okay, so I didn’t see that it was a man, but it sounded like a man-cough. I felt my eyes get closer to popping out of my head each time the loud car-offing continued.
And then, it got worse. A quick, bluesy song came through the speakers, and he started tapping the table to the rhythm. Twitch your foot, sway your body, do anything but tap the table. Okay, so I’m not positive the cougher was the table tapper, beings my back was to both… but I just couldn’t imagine two equally annoying people in one place at the same time.
like kids 21.December.2005
I want to be like the little girl who crawled under the library tables — just because she wanted to — before rushing back to her mother’s side. I’ll admit to having somersaulted through the aisles of the store where I used to work, but that doesn’t count: no one saw me.
I want to be like the 3-to-4-year-old girl — with glasses too big for her face and curls too big for her head — who grabbed book upon book from the stash of Harlequin romances… simply to find satisfaction in examining the cards and mail-order forms stuck in its binding. I want to be satisfied in things like that.
I want to be like the girl who didn’t care so much about the thrill of watching a falcon fly around at a Medieval Times dinner show as much as she cared about the consequences: “what if it poops on our plates?” Hey, good question! Why didn’t I ask it first?
the joke 19.December.2005
She sees this thing called caring, and she hates it. If caring is caring, how can it come in words not spoken? She dreams like they do, and scorns the lack of friends. If it’s purpose she needs, she wonders where theirs is. Hypocrites — the whole lot of them.
She hears the sounds of laughter. The words “blessing” and “prayer” keep coming and coming and coming. With looks of sympathy — or hate? — they cross her gaze, and she feels small. So very, very small.
There are things withheld from her. She sees the secrets behind the hands of the holy, and she knows they’re talking about her. Sinner. Loser. Lost one.
Everyone knows she needs to find her way to where they have come because obviously they have arrived. But no one will show her where to step, or how. No one will ask if she even wants to find her way. They just stare at her. They stare and keeping talking behind their hands. And wait for something…
She wishes she knew what that something was. But the biggest joke of all is that no one will ever tell.
come together 19.December.2005
Pride glints off both of our pupils as we stare at each other.
“You move first.”
“No, you.”
“I’m a farmer’s daughter. I’m tough. I’m brawny. You give in.”
We will come together. We work together, and all those strange people swarming around draw us to the only ones we really know: ourselves. We are not enemies any longer, nor strangers. We are acquaintances. Our eyes meet in the courtyard; we try at a smile.
I see you looking sharp and talented, and my heart remembers that I love you. “Love thinks no evil.” We melt at a wink, at bumping into the wall and a pat on the butt. It’s over. The long wait is over.
And if we never see the pathways for the proud sunlight in our eyes, we will find each other — come together — in the darkness.
zhi yuang and the lights of christmas 15.December.2005
The name of Pastor Zhi Yuang on a card in my coat pocket is supposed to remind me to pray for a man who suffers for believing in Jesus. I have a hard time comprehending he exists until I remember what I was told last year about the duties of imprisoned Chinese pastors like Zhi Yuang…
A blister bursts on Zhi’s finger as he inserts another bulb into its socket. How many hundreds more must he assemble before the day is over? For all the tiny bulbs strung out in front of him, the prison cell is dim.
A man sharing his cell told him that these were called Christmas lights, and that they’d be shipped to America after leaving the prison. Americans would buy them to decorate trees in winter. The man said he had seen twinkling trees in a picture book once.
Zhi feels like he has assembled enough bulbs to light a tree for every person in the entire world.
Another blister breaks open and blood spills across his fingers. Zhi is quick to wipe it away before it damages his work. He isn’t allowed to make errors.
For a moment, the pain tempts Zhi to feel hatred toward the Americans that will wind these Christmas lights around their trees, oblivious to the hands that have cracked and bled and throbbed with pain over the strings upon strings upon strings of miniature light bulbs. Zhi feels the Spirit of God, then, prompting him to love instead. If there were not Christmas lights, there would be something else to assemble.
So Zhi decides pray — for Americans, for any eyes that see the world brightened by these Christmas lights — that they would have their hearts brightened by the true Light of Christmas.
