the mind is a breeding ground.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
as beauty, Bill, breeding ground, call, grey blue eyes, ground, harmless thoughts, lovely creature, martha graham, moment, ocean, parking meter, Preferably, present darkness, thin girl, time, transcendent, transcendent moment, typewriter, wainscoting
Sometimes you don’t sleep enough at night. You wake up early, you don’t even open both eyes yet, but you decide it’s time to write.
It’s moments like these when one wishes they had a typewriter. Preferably by a window. One with wainscoting. I don’t know why wainscoting came to mind, but it did, so I wrote it down. I’ve learned to do that. Write things down that come to mind. The mind is a breeding ground. Little, baby, innocent enough thoughts are born there; they grow up to be Mozart and Martha Graham and Tennyson–shedding so much light on the beauty that already exists here, but now the rest of the world can see it, too; we step out of our present darkness for a brief transcendent moment and we think, It’s so lovely here. So achingly lovely–maybe I’ll stay here forever…But then a bill that is larger than our meager bank account becomes due or a parent makes us feel very small indeed and we forget the call to think higher, to see beauty, to be free.
We forget who we are.
Until the next transcendent moment shakes us from existing within the confines of our regrets and our fears, that is.
But, right, the mind is a breeding ground.
Those little thoughts.
Those harmless thoughts; they are the tiniest grey-blue puppy pit bull with matching grey-blue eyes that I saw chained to a parking meter the other day, while walking to the gym. He was one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen and I wanted to take him with me just about everywhere. ‘Oh, there is that tall and thin girl with the puppy the color of the ocean at dawn,’ is what people would say when they saw us.
But a puppy the color of the ocean at dawn soon becomes a dog who can bite, no matter what color he is. And there is a lot of responsibility that comes with handling that potentially dangerous and lovely creature. You don’t let a dog do whatever he wants, no matter how pretty or innocent he looks; because, eventually, the dog will ruin the world–or at least the fabric of your best drapes.
Drapes and wainscoting; I must have dreamt pure Jane Eyre last night.
I did perform at Sleep No More, which was not a dream, but was so dreamy, it might as well have been. All smoky and speak-easy-like, dimly lit with lots of sparkling pieces of jewelry hanging around the throats and wrists and fingers of women who looked to have stepped right out of 1939.
But back to the mind and how it’s a breeding ground.
The puppy and how it’s innocent until it’s not.
Our thoughts and how they can grow into grace, if we let them.
Unless we don’t.
So, here’s to our thoughts growing up to be Martha Graham, Mozart, and Tennyson. Or maybe even a simple, kind farmer in South Africa that neither of us will ever know, but whose life consistently makes the world a stronger, better, safer place.
And here’s to writing our thoughts down.
Even if we still haven’t opened up both eyes. Because the morning came quickly. Just as quickly as the night flew by while you spent it singing and rapping and talking and eating and platonically sitting on the laps of a couple of friends you’ve not been lucky enough to see for a while now. Not until last night, and on into this morning, that is.
it’s a chrysalis, always a chrysalis.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as beautiful place, beauty, behalf, castles, choice, chrysalis, course, devastation, disappointment, existence, kind, land, night vision goggles, old photos, pain, pool of light, reaction, vibrant blossoms, visceral reaction, waste
I wish it were easier.
No, I don’t.
Okay, sometimes I do.
But then I remember the fire lilly. The fire ephemerals. Those bright, vibrant blossoms that only bloom after devastating fires have ransacked the land. That’s it. They don’t come out any other time. The world would never be captured by their beauty if it wasn’t first captured by fire.
Can you pray for me? a friend texted me tonight.
Of course, what are you feeling? I texted back.
And then he called. Quickly, I pieced it together. His break up. His devastation. His disappointment. God, it was so familiar. It was like looking at old photos of me. Or not too old photos of me, actually.
“I just hurt. I hurt so much; I can’t get away from this pain…I don’t know what to do…I can’t control my feelings…” he said through his tears.
And then I began talking, telling him that I know the feeling. I still get a somewhat visceral reaction to it, actually, when I remember. To be honest–though, in somewhat lesser degrees, for sure–I still feel it. The pain and sadness and a kind of disappointment that bleeds out until your entire life, as far as you can see, is covered in a kind of dulling, damp sense of waste.
“But I think–I think that God is smiling. I mean–he’s hurting with us when we’re hurting, for sure–but I think he’s also smiling. You know, like, just cause he’s so supremely confident. Because he knows the end of the story…It’s like we’re in this dark place. Maybe we have one match and maybe we remember to light it every once in a while–on a good day, that is. There’s a small pool of light at our feet, but we really can’t see beyond that. But God–he’s got these night vision goggles on, you know? And he can see what the darkness hides from us. That if we just keep walking forward, it’s a beautiful place. Breathtaking, really. Castles…and, and…joy and…well, more reasons to keep walking forward than to stay here. It’s beautiful up ahead, and that’s why he’s smiling.”
And I realized that, even as I was telling this to my friend, I was also telling this to myself. Keep walking ahead, Jess. God’s smiling. Not because he’s lost his marbles and has a kind of far-away look in his eyes that lost its relevancy around the same time churches started decorating marquees with terrible cliches, but because he knows. Because he sees. The whole picture. He has this crazy ability to see the fire ephemerals even while the flames are still threatening to consume me.
And, it’s probably a good thing that nobody ever gave me the choice, but the fire ephemerals aren’t something to be traded in for a fireless, innocuous existence, right? I mean, they’re worth too much.
But still, the pain. It can make for a pretty convincing argument that a fireless, innocuous existence is just what the doctor ordered. That, and some advil pm.
Which is why it’s probably a good thing that I am not given the choice. That it’s enough to know that there’s a lot I do not see; whole mounds of stuff that makes God smile on my behalf.
On your behalf.
And I really don’t like to get preachy. Not ever. But, there’s this phrase in that really old book that just feels so relevant right now. Relevant enough to write it down, right here, even.
Rom 8:18-23: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
That means that the bad stuff around us can produce good stuff within us.
If we let it.
So, let’s let it.
And see what a strange and wonderful kind of chrysalis life’s situations can be.
But, in the meantime, I am so sorry for the pain. And, like I said, like a simpleton who cannot see so far, I really do just wish it were easier sometimes.
precarious.
in Funny Stuff, Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
as asm, audience member, beauty, breakfast, closet, compliment, english language, flick, gallon, gallon of gasoline, grasp, home, jail cells, life, musicians, show, subject, taste, way
Someone once tried to tell me that my beauty is precarious. I didn’t take this as a compliment. Then he tried to talk me into it being a compliment. But I never bought it; it sounded like he didn’t quite have a grasp on the English language at best, or he thought my beauty was [...]
this is what it feels like.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Loved Ones, Thoughts and Feelings
as beautiful mess, beauty, Cheesecake, cheesecake factory, date, dear friend, God, Happy, heartache, kind, long time, mess, nobody, own skin, progress, relationship, respect life, skin, survivors, time
About every few months or so (sometimes longer, sadly) a dear friend of mine and I get together for a date. She lives pretty far away, and now even further, considering that I spend a lot of my time in NYC these days. We usually meet at the Cheesecake Factory. She doesn’t have one where [...]
she lives here and there and everywhere and nowhere.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as beauty, city, Gershwin, girlhood, green pennsylvania, grit, movement, music and rhythm, pennsylvania streams, rhythm, Score, seat, single woman, skyline, subway, trills, unexpected rhythms, vast blue sky
I like it here in the city, I really do. But then there are times like tonight, when I really miss the stars. There is beauty in both places–here in the industrial grit and higher-than-I-usually-even-bother-looking skyline; and there in the tumbling hills and woods of green Pennsylvania. Just yesterday I was sitting, waiting for my [...]
lyrics.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Loved Ones, Thoughts and Feelings
as beautiful things, beauty, double edged sword, embrace, eminem, everything, intimacy, Kanye, kind, leona lewis, Line, love, lyrics, radio play, risk, rush, sister, sister jenna, song, time
My sister Jenna says that I am always about a billion years behind on music. And she’s kind of right. Like, I will fall in love with songs at least a year or more after they’ve stopped getting radio play. That’s what happened with Kanye’s Stronger. And Eminem’s just about everything. And most recently, it’s [...]
bones.
in Thoughts and Feelings, words all strung together
as beauty, bones, cranberry, exposition, face, Geese, home, intrigue, nobody, rib cage, Rise, rise and fall, scar, scars, shelter, smorgasbord, unanswered question
I lay down. I am just bones arranged on my bed. I become less and less until I am only the slight rise and fall of my rib cage. The bones make a funny shape from here; like a wide V, the formation of Geese as they migrate. That sounds nice. I’d like to go, [...]
should never have been.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Loved Ones, Thoughts and Feelings
as beauty, daughter, forgiveness, God, heart, hearts, look, look in her eyes, mess, mom, need, sad song, sad songs, sense, singing a song, situation changes, snapshot, song
I wrote a song tonight. I am not sure how much I like it. My mom could hear me writing it and finally said, “That’s a very sad song.” She said it with a look in her eyes that communicated how much she wishes her daughter didn’t have to write such sad songs like this [...]
