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 |  A journal of impressions, memories and thoughts. |
| This journal’s goal is not to chronicle the vagaries of daily life, but to record those moments when the greater passions of existence touch the mundane moments of life. As a child, I was inspired by the Romantic poets. I read their journals, and I found in them not mere records of activities but instead deeper musings on existence and on the world around us. |
| I’m proud to consider myself a Florida girl. It’s true that I am not from around here, and it’s true that I really hated it here when I first arrived. But over the eyars, this new place has become my home in a very real way. It’s given me a second life; it’s brought me love; and it’s shown me more magic than I would ever have believed possible in the scraggly landscape that I first saw when I came here. But we all carry habits and traditions with us, activities born of experience and memory so vivid that words do not contain them. My memories of the blinding chill of blizzards and ice storms, of bouncing across the beautiful white-wrapped world in the wake of a 4-wheeler, of spinning madly on an inner tube at what seemed to be the edge of the world are still close to me. They ignore the span of years to come crowding at my call. And in their wake comes the warm glow of home at the end of the ride – of dry clothes and warm feet and of the comfort of looking out frosted windows at the cold world kept safely at bay. Even in college, when I lived at the farm house, a mile from nowhere, it gave me great pleasure to look out the double-paned windows at the bay window at the front of the house, tea in my hand, and feel the warm wash of security knowing the cod and the ice was out there, and I was safe and warm. We don’t have snow in Florida. We have rain and wind. And the electric sense of security that charges the air upon their arrival is as potent as the wake of any blizzard or the ice storm. They bring out that same need for security, for warmth, and for certainty. Outside the concrete block of my little home, Alberto is making the world glisten – the grey sky weeping with the advent of the season’s first tropical storm. The rain is quiet now, but less than an hour ago, it was whipping against the glass with angry force – sounding more like hail than rain. And my reaction rises from my past – I make tea, open the blinds, and curl up to watch the fury of the sky and to reassure myself that there is still safety. Most folks with a sense of self awareness spend their spare moments looking for something special. We look at the world and see what it is – a place of wonder and magic – a miraculous interconnected miracle that with millennia of great minds and centuries of great science, we have not yet begun to comprehend. We glory in that magic and that magnitude. But even as we appreciate the wonder, we need the security of knowing that the greater universe will not swallow us whole, that we will not be lost in something so great that it overwhelms us. It seems a contradiction – me, the one who always searches for, longs for the magic – I want to sit here under my patchwork quilt and watch the rain. How can I call myself a creator? Do I not want to venture out and feel the charge in the air? Perhaps later, but for now, I am content. I love to touch the wild magic of God’s world, but I do not wish to let it consume me, for if it does, I may no longer echo the creation, for I am then no longer able to touch both worlds. So, for now, I watch the chaos and the power outside my windows and am grateful, both for the power unleashed and for the opportunity to know that, in spite of the wild magic, there is still security to be found. |
| I love the human condition, those larger, less tangible elements that tie us all together. I have my master’s in humanities; the study of culture and of the common elements of experience that touch us all are the things that fascinate me. That love has served me well. In college, we went to Paris for three weeks, and while my fellow students were busy bemoaning the culture shock, I was thriving. Others complained about how they were mistreated because of their nationality – everyone thought I was British, and I got along wonderfully. But in some ways, I am proudly and quintessentially American. Take, for example, my utter agreement with the American icon of the automobile as the symbol of personal freedom. I grew up on wheels, so to speak. My parents were equally dedicated to living in the country and to providing their child with educational experiences and culture. Those two goals combined to fill my childhood with road trips. To this day, being half-awakened and lifted into a nest of blankets in the back seat of a car is a warmly positive memory for me. I got my license as soon as I turned 16, and my high school life revolved around the liberty to go find food, shopping, and adventure. In college, the brightest moments of my undergraduate life were found on four wheels. One of those moments is seared in memory; it was one of those timeless instants of joy, realized with crystalline comprehension – one of those moments that we never realize will become prized memories. It was late afternoon, and I had driven four hours from school to see my friend Beth. I was traveling down an unremarkable stretch of Pennsylvania highway, my windows rolled down, my music thrumming through the rush of the wind, and in that moment I found one of those great intangibles of humanity: I found freedom. That ineffable sense of freedom brings with it a deep seated peace that glows like a mythical treasure in the soul. It is ephemeral, rare, precious, and to be valued when it is found. It is not something I consciously pursue, but when I find it, I cling to it with all the strength of one who all too rarely finds that purity of experience. I found it last night. It was one of those perfect nights, the breeze soft and cool, cutting through the almost tangible air of the closing afternoon with the promise of the sweet night to come. Overhead, the clouds began to crowd in, their torn-edged shapes dark against the ivory and purple of the fading sky. As I sped homeward through the dimming twilight, the dark outline of the horizon filling the end of the road in front of me, I rolled down the windows, allowing the roaring tide of air to pour into the car, pushing tendrils of hair across my cheeks and into my eyes and mouth. Leaning forward, I twisted the volume knob on the dashboard, raising the rhythms of the music over the rush of the air, and I leaned back, transported, not in time and space, but in soul. There was true freedom there, caught between. Between indoors and out with the soft cushion behind my back and the rough touch of nature against my face, between day and night as I pushed through the twilight world toward the horizon, I was disconnected from all the responsibility and constraint of life. I was in control, the wheel beneath my hands, my self, my soul, caught up in motion and music, gloriously alone and utterly free. It was magic, for those shimmering moments of the journey, it was magic. It ended, of course, with the safe glow of home and the familiar welcome of love and my dogs. And the ending itself was beautiful. But the beauty of home was all the more willingly received because it wrapped its soft comfort around the glow of a soul that still smelled of the freedom of the wind and music of the road. |
| The mist lies thick over the morning world, its pale fingers twining in tree branches, the swirl of its breath pooling over the roofs of sleek modern cars as they pause at stop lights. It is the whisper of uncertainty in our well ordered existence, a reminder that the familiar and mundane is so reliant upon what we can see, what we interpret through the sieve of experience. The white wonder beyond the windows changes the world, reshaping it without its sharp edges, dulling the brilliant sheen of the modern and mechanical and casting us into a less certain, more frightening place. I pushed my modern machine through the mist this morning, metallic tan chassis sliding through the suspension of water and air – iron wending its way through the world of magic with practical purpose. Ahead of me, the thin stripe of dark road stretched out, the lights of other travelers markers in the mist. But beyond the few light markers ahead of me, the road and the world around it faded into pale uncertainty. Strapped into technologically contoured padding, I smiled to myself, knowing that, in a way, the pale fog of morning was more than a bit of beauty and wonder, soon to be burned away by the Florida sun. For me, the mist was a marker, an emblem of life. Each human being has a world, a space around her or him in which things are known, familiar, sure. But few of us live only in the certainty of now; there are so many other things further out. Hopes, dreams, plans, and promises crowd the edge of our vision. They are powerful things, sometimes as clearly defined as the tangible present – last week I missed my turn on the way home because I was dreaming of my own office as a faculty member. Yet the further ahead of us those hopes are, the less clearly defined they become. Like the cars in the mist ahead of me this morning, the future too far ahead, or the possibilities too far away from us fade into half-seen forms which we define only through guesswork, half-knowledge, and past experience. Outside the office windows, the mist is glowing now, its magnificent fusion of water and air touched by the fingers of the sun’s fire. It will soon fade, unable to sustain its mystery and obfuscation in the powerful presence of the summer sun. But as it fades, it takes on a brilliance beyond belief, a surreal golden glow enveloping the world in tangible light. It leaves behind the sharp-cornered world, the place where the shine of technology promises certainty and dreams are assembled, not crafted. In my office I wait, sipping coffee, facing up to another day, and knowing that, if I wait, the mist with its promises will clothe my world again. |
| There’s something about Rudolph. Most of us, children of the seventies and eighties, finding our feet as career-oriented adults remember the event of watching Rudolph on TV, long before the advent of watch-when-you-want VHS and DVD. So, perhaps the return of the audience to the familiar holiday classic may simply be chalked up to nostalgia, but perhaps there is something more there. As a lover of myth and meaning, I choose to see something a little more subconscious there. Perhaps we recognize the place where we live in the faded Technicolor of stop motion animation. In so many ways, we all live on the island of misfit toys. The more I interact with the world, the more I realize that we are, each and every one of us, broken in some way. No one makes the journey through life without being dropped, cracked, discarded. We are never what we expected to be, or what the others around us expect us to be. Whether we recognize it or not, we are misfits, broken creatures lost in a place that frequently seems hopeless and overwhelming. The proof of our broken and misfit state is everywhere. Half of the people I know are on anti-depressants or mood regulators of some type. The media in all its forms is saturated with advertising that promises relief for physical and mental distress, and the statistics on depression in America and Europe are staggering. Beneath the veneer of public image, “I’m okay, you’re okay” looks much more like, “I’m screwed up, and you’re really broken.” But the broken-ness of the individual isn’t the point on which we must focus as we struggle through our lives. There is little question that we are broken; the question is what we do about it. For some, that question isn’t even a part of their consciousness. They live in the present, so completely in the swirl of social interaction and bright consumerism that they avoid looking at the spiderweb of cracks and the stress fractures under their surface. They view themselves as whole, as fitting in, and any suggestion to the contrary simply inspires a new spate of frenetic action. If they keep moving, they will never have to acknowledge or to deal with the possibility of brokenness. Others acknowledge their status as broken, and give up on ever being anything else. The fact that they are broken in a world that holds up an ideal of perfection is too much for them. They see all too clearly that they are misfits, inadequate or damaged in some way, and all they can focus on is the breakage. The cracks are all they see; they know that there is no repair complete enough to restore them to the standard of wholeness they view as necessary, and they retreat into their own pain and into the company of others equally broken. And, more often than not, the stress of their sorrow damages them even further, spinning their pain into a deepening cycle of self loathing and breakage. But for the rest of us, there is hope – there has to be hope. We are broken, misfit, and we know it. We see the damage, the misassembled bits and parts. Some things don’t work; some things overwhelm us; and some things are simply impossible for us. But we refuse to stop trying, to stop hoping that we still have value, functionality, beauty. We find others whose fracture lines meet up with our whole parts, and we find strength in each other. Beauty, magic, and love are more than words for us – they are the religion of the misfits, the things we have to believe in to survive, to patch ourselves together, to escape our island in order to serve the purpose we trust we were meant to fulfill. I may be a misfit toy, cobbled together from broken pieces, but I believe in hope. I believe that every one of us has a home, a place where we belong, whether that place is here in the mundane, or elsewhere in magic and wonder. The world is a difficult place to live when you’re broken, but I believe in life, in the validity of the struggle, and I will continue to live with all of my pieces bound together with faith and with hope. For me, the mantra of the broken is “I will never stop trying because I never know what miracle will be waiting for me around the next corner.” My chips and cracks are what make me unique, I bear my brokenness with a dark humor and a curious pride: I am me, and that is, for today, enough. |
| The sky is tarnished silver today; it is one of those rare chilly grey days that occasionally find themselves in Florida in the spring and the fall. The wind whispering between the sharp fingers of the palm fronds is cool, and I find myself grateful for the warmth of the sweater I regularly keep stashed in the back of my office. Today, it seems the greyness of the outdoors has crept into my soul; I feel bruised, tired. I want to be alone, somewhere warm and comfortable, somewhere safe, in the pleasant company of a good book. But we all know that money makes the world go ‘round. And money, in the summertime, is in short supply. So I stay here, clinging to the brightness of memory. Last Friday was one of those bright spots – my husband and I ran away, went to a place where the illusion replaced the dreary reality. For a day, we were Someone; we were living in a place a little brighter, a little more important than daily reality. I think that most of us who are naturally attracted to the worlds of the imagination – those who lay claim to bibliophilia and mediaphilia (Yes, I can invent a word) – long for something more than the binding threads of the social webs of daily life. Human beings naturally long for story. Stories are the stuff of life, and we need something dramatic, something affirming that convinces us that we are more than simply another dot in the pointillist canvas of the universe. Human beings need that, but we find that sense of story in different ways. After more than a decade in public service work, I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people: there are those whose mental worlds are limited to reality and who must find or create drama in their relationships and activities, and those who find drama and transcendence in the realm of imagination and media. The vast majority of those I work with on a day to day basis are members of the former clan. Their conversation is grounded in the tension and drama of their friends and of their sex lives. If there is no activity in their social sphere, there is no motivation for converse, and they are unhappy. Without story, they are lost, and since the source of story is the lives of those around them, they have a sense of loss, of longing. That sense of story, of drama found in the rushing tide of day to day life is certainly viable; it serves as the branching off point for literature and art, but it is a source in which I do not wish to bathe. To me, the drama and interrelation is exhausting. To a woman who spent much of her life isolated from the social “friend” scene, it seems somehow petty and contrived. I admit to not watching many critically acclaimed films and twitching at most epistolary novels. I am perhaps dull, insensitive, for I find them mundane; I long for something more transcendent, something…bigger than the transactions of day to day life. The drama that calls to me is the drama of media – the drama that deals in the fantastic, the wonderful, the things that utterly surpass the grind of the everyday. From my first favorite books, Robin Hood and Peter Pan, to my current DVD shelf, filled with fantasy, sci-fi, and action, I am a woman who feeds upon the fantastic, the larger than life. Pixar’s Incredibles remains one of my favorite films because I find deep personal truth in its plot – I believe that people who want to make everyone special and remove the incredible from our world in order to prevent feelings of inferiority are indeed evil. I love that incredibleness, that continuous hope for magic and wonder. With my eyes fixed on the amazing possibilities, I have a chance of rising above the day to day grind, to shoot for the incredible, and perhaps attain it. Although the drama of everyday inspires many, my inspiration comes from possibility, from remarkable stories, true or imagined, that show me what might be, if only I dare to try. I cannot find drama or fascination in whether or not Janie reached orgasm in position A or position B or in whether John fought with girlfriend A or boyfriend B. I do not like reality television: it neither inspires, entertains, nor teaches me. I want to run through Sherwood forest, to dream of great heroes who stand strong against incredible odds, to learn about men who stood against the greater horrors of our own time. I want to turn my eyes to the sky of imagination and see beyond the grey. So I cling to my day in the sun, away from work, in a place where I was free for a few hours. And I long for the company of a good book, a doorway into a place of greatness…to a place where the sun shines on the extraordinary. |
| I write because I need to. I am no existentialist, yet I believe with all the passion of my being that we are indeed creatures trapped within our own minds. Our world is a vast honeycomb of souls with their noses pressed against the glass of personal point of view. I know all about trying to break those walls, to reach out to those around us – I’ve spent half of my life trying. I’ve tried to make friends; I’ve given to others; I’ve found best friend after best friend, only to find myself alone again in the end. On the MBTI, I come up a radical introvert – somewhere around 78% on the introversion/extroversion scale. I get headaches from going to large parties or meetings where I am expected to be social. As a kid, I was the odd-girl-out in the world of my small parochial schools. Most recess breaks, I was the weird girl sitting at the edge of the grass with the big book of poetry or the notebook. But what the other kids didn’t know was that, much as I longed to be popular like them, I wasn’t alone. Certainly, I missed out on the physical activities and the note passing, but I made other connections, touched other souls with tenuous fingers of thought. In the books I read, the stories that carried me away from the often-cruel laughter, I found a connection with others I could never quite master in the “real” world. In those places, I learned that words could pass through the cells in which we find ourselves trapped. You may not be able to touch through a glass window; you may not be able to hear well through it; but you can hold up a paper caressed with the touch of the written word, and the message transfers undiminished. I think that is why I write. Certainly, like Picasso, a part of my art (if I dare to apply that term) is exorcism. Words have ever been my way of expressing my inner demons. But beyond that, I write because the pain and the beauty I find in the world around me cries out to be shared, to be seen. We, as human beings, miss so much in our world. There’s the old action movie cliché about people not looking up, but like most clichés, there’s truth in it. I’ll never forget one holiday season evening at EPCOT, my husband-to-be and I were sitting on a tile wall, watching the fountain dance to a program of Christmas music. The park was closing, the fireworks show had finally gone dark, and the crowd was pouring out of the park, the mass of people breaking around the fountain like the ocean around a beach rock. The play of light and music was breathtaking; the water shot more than 30 feet into the air, its crystal clarity cast into all colors of the rainbow by the lights. Below the seething mass of people, the pavement twinkled as lights set into the concrete danced in preset patterns across the courtyard. But the only people who saw the fairytale world the lights, water, and music created were the children. They oohed and ahhed, pulling at their parents’ hands as they tried to pause to watch the fountain or to follow the lights chasing across the pavement. They tried to tell their parents to look, but their elders, faces creased with exhaustion and purpose, focused only on the park exit. I write because a part of me is still one of those children. I fully understand the need to keep your eye on the exit and maneuver your way through the crowd to your goal. But I also understand that those things alone not enough. Our world is stockpiled with wonder. There is magic around us if only we are willing to see it, to accept it as magic instead of pressing its beautiful, uneven outlines into our straight-lined world. My soul aches with the desire to share that magic, that wonder, with those around me – to reach out for others who are willing to pull at the hand of responsibility and drive in an attempt to stay and marvel at the beauty offered to us. And for me, the best way to communicate that wonder, to get it through the isolation of “me” is in the written word. I write because I long to communicate, to reach others, to share what I see. And I write in the hope that perhaps someone else will see it too… |
| Human beings are naturally self-absorbed. Mythology warns us about our fascination with our reflection, about the obsession with looking back at ourselves, but even when we cannot see our own faces, we must by our very nature, see things from only one point of view – our own. Our world is filtered through our own eyes, our own minds, and our own spirits. Like the stained glass of a gothic cathedral, every image we see, every encounter we have, while retaining its nature, is ineffably changed by its passage through our perspective. Working at a college, each semester is a new challenge. No two are ever alike, but inevitably the end of a semester brings a mixture of exhaustion and relief. This semester is no exception. If anything, I am even more grateful than usual to see this school year end. It has been a traumatic time, and it seems on some days that each blessing must be paid for in suffering. Some days I feel as though the universe hates me. And then I am reminded how small I am allowing my vision to become. I am reminded that my eyes allow me to see the world, but that the world is frequently unaware of my observation and my importance. Take, for example, the new miracle in my life. The prior owners of my house were an elderly couple who were very interested in setting their residence apart from the broad spread of pre-planned layouts spaced across the development. As a part of that campaign, they planted four shrubs across the front of the residence. In the intervening years, those shrubs grew and spread, shading the front of the house and sheltering the front window. My husband and I spend a good bit of time in front of that window, sitting on our couch drinking tea, studying, and talking about all of the things we share. About a week ago, we heard a repeated chirp outside the window. Peering through the glass, we caught a glimpse of a blur of deep mahogany feathers and a brilliant orange beak. A tiny female cardinal, her dignified brown feathers counterbalanced by the brilliance of the red of her under-feathers. A few moments later, a metallic vibration marked the tiny bird’s return – this time with a branch twice her size clamped in her beak. Sitting on the windowsill, the little female cardinal cocked her head at us, bright eyes sparkling, dragged the end of the branch along the screen one more time, and then hopped into the sheltering branches of the bush. With grace and determination, she dragged the branch through the shrub, finally reaching the clump of intertwined sticks she had begun to compile near the trunk. Clinging to a branch, she bent her head, tucking the end of the new twig in among the others. She worked on that nest for almost three whole days, flying in and out of our window with a variety of sticks, lichen, and bits of plastic bags. And we watched her come and go, fascinated by her determination and by the remarkable mastery of the rising nest within the shrub. But the fascination went even deeper for me. I watched the tiny bit of nature, her feathers catching the light with the deep browns and auburn hues that only nature creates, and I was reminded of how utterly unimportant we are in the grander scheme of the universe. This tiny miracle outside my window was doing what she did best – weaving a complex bit of architecture in preparation for perpetuating her kind. She understood that we were no threat, and since we were no menace to her, we were irrelevant. The life-force of nature, the complex inter-working of the world around us keeps flowing without any concern for our problems. The human interpretation of life, filtered through our own eyes, that sees existence as shifting tides of good and bad may be legitimate for the individual, but it is artificial in the light of nature. That little cardinal is still in the shrub outside my window, and I am still an eager voyeur each morning, peering out at her bright eyes, and the brilliant orange of her beak in the morning sunlight. She is a tiny miracle, a wonder of nature that I am blessed in sharing. But more than that, she is a reminder, a “reality check” for me. When I feel as though the world is against me, I look at her. She reminds me that, regardless of my vision, it is not all about me. I have to remember that, when the beauty within me begins to fade, I must look beyond my own ken and find the wonder around me, oblivious to me as long as I am not a threat. |
| I was coming up the stairs this morning when I saw him. It had not been a stellar morning. Hell, it hadn’t been a stellar two weeks. The end of the semester is approaching, the stress ramping upwards. And, of course, this semester has been generally located at the bottom of the toilet bowl rather than the rim. I was rushing from one place to another, my wallet clutched in my fist as I whisked around the back of the building to avoid another encounter with the pair of over eager Gideons guarding the front entrance, and there he was. Halfway up the concrete and metal staircase, huddled out of the harsh sunlight was a little green tree frog. All in all, he wasn’t really that tiny; for his species, he was actually quite a bruiser at about two inches in length. But crunched into that dusty corner, he seemed tiny, his green skin brilliant against the rust red paint. I stopped for a moment, staring at the minuscule smidgen of life so unexpectedly thrust into my world, wonder at the pale green skin vying with instant concern over the effects of the bug spray so liberally splattered across our buildings in the noble cause of eliminating the indoor-mobile cockroach population. As visions of the dried carcasses of little froglings danced in my mind’s eye, I shoved my wallet into the waistband of my slacks, hooked my keys through a belt loop, gathered up the little amphibian, and turned back the way I had come. The cool dampness of the little creature’s skin pressed against my palm, and I peered into the dark cave of my cupped hands, marveling at the delicate pebbling of the green skin and the elaborate traceries of rust red across the brilliant hue. Oblivious to the certain accusations of insanity from my co-workers and the administration, I explained to the little frog that his location on the stairs was not his wisest choice, and that I was transporting him to safer – and leafier – climes. Depositing the green and red miracle under the shelter of an aloe vera planted at the base of a spreading live oak, I turned to seek out a bathroom and wash my hands, only to find myself facing one of the administrative assistants. Understandably curious, she had ventured out of her office to ask what type of creature I was relocating outside of her building. Assuring her that it was in no way a danger to her or her office, I pointed out the new resident, explaining his prior perilous location. She smiled, shrugged, and commented that he was lucky I had seen him first – someone else might have just crushed him for fun. And I shuddered. That part of human nature ranks highest on my list of incomprehensible things. I will never understand the apparently natural desire of some creatures who label themselves as human to kill, maim, and destroy without any benefit or cause. Don’t mis-label me; I was reared in a hunting family; I ate venison for most of my childhood. I saw death and saw how ugly it was; I understood the cost of the food I was eating. It didn’t make me a vegetarian, but that intimate understanding of what the “food chain” meant, coupled with hours of trekking through the gracious woods of the Appalachians, made me love nature and love the world that crept, hopped, and ran outside my limited, straight-lined doorway in a way that nothing else could have. I respected the powerful, chaotic beauty that was nature; I mourned for the lives that were lost to sustain others. But more than that, I fell in love with the wildness. I learned about death in those days of wanderlust, but I fell in love with life and with wonder. I watched the deer pick their way through the first snowfall; I froze with respect when I heard a rattle in waist-high grass. I sat for hours, my feet in a woodland stream, just being. I carried the intense passion I developed for the natural world with me to adulthood, and with it, I carried a hatred for those who kill for their own aggrandizement and pleasure. As a child, I wept the first time I saw a buck killed by a hunter, the carcass abandoned, bloated, rotten; the only part taken was the antlers, claimed as a trophy for some small-testicled over-egoed imbecile. I got beaten up when I lashed out in horror at Dale Frailey for smothering a turtle just to watch its mouth work. I could not comprehend how people failed to see the miracles in the habits of the creatures around them, how they felt obligated to interfere. As an adult, I still cannot comprehend. Six or eight months ago, I was taking a break from my desk, standing outside the building, watching the wasps build their nests on the swaying fronds of the palm trees at the edge of the building. The nests were beautiful, delicate works of geometrical precision, drooping over the abyss as the wind blew the wide green fans of the leaves back and forth on their thick stems. As I was leaning against the railing, watching the busy little creatures work the malleable base into the long tubes of their nests, the security guard came through the door and asked if I was all right. I explained what I was watching, the little miracle of nature. She shrugged and commented that she would get maintenance out to spray the nests right away. No one had been stung. No one even knew the nests were there until that moment. Why was the first reaction to kill the insects? Why would anyone have stepped on my little frog? Why do we kill when there is no offense, not even an ideological one to rationalize the act? Why kill for an artificial sense of power rather than learning and cherishing for a lingering gift of wonder? My passion for the world around me is a vital part of who I am. I am a humanities teacher by choice because I feel a great call to beauty and to wonder; I believe in appreciating the magic that is all around us, in every breath we breathe. As a religious woman, I do not think that I have a choice in my desire to protect, preserve, and appreciate. I believe that God created this world as the first artist of infinity, and that humans have been charged with the preservation and appreciation of that artwork. To destroy without respect, without understanding anything about what we are blithely eliminating, is to spit on creativity itself. To kill in the name of divine superiority is the epitome of blasphemy; it is the equivalent of placing graffiti on the Sistine chapel ceiling in the name of Dadaism. I hope that I never lose my passion for life, that the pain I feel knowing any innocent thing has been lost without cause will always touch me. I hope my little frog finds himself a new home, safe and far from the crushing feet of the cruel, and I hope that someday, I may find that place as well. |
| The heat lies heavy over the land, the moisture crystallized in the light of the late afternoon sun. The humidity is almost tangible; nature holds its breath, waiting along with the rest of us to see if the white wisps of cloud overhead will join together and bring us the moisture for which the green and grey world seems to beg. At the edge of the property, a massive live oak stands alone, the sole survivor of man’s march of progress. Freed of any competing verdure, it spreads its arms wide, stretching limbs like a newly awakened sleeper and casting a shadow that billows out across the grass, its dark, cool shape irregular, unexpected, and inviting in the shimmering heat. A tiny whisper of wind curls across the open space, stirring the trailing feathers of Spanish Moss into life. The tree shimmers in the light, its edges blurred by the motion of the breeze and the swirling of the moss. It seems eternal, standing in the blaze of heat, grounded in the invisible mysteries of the earth, reaching for the faded blue of the tropical sky. For all its grounding, it is a wild thing, like the Florida landscape it inhabits. It stands proud, its limbs reaching beyond the span of most of its Northern brethren, a reminder that we, the humans are the invaders here, clinging to our air conditioners and cringing as the summer creeps in on us. But as the heat closes in, and we retreat to cooled, bearable spaces, the live oak waits in the calm before the looming storms of the next season, a living being refusing to grow within the straight lines that humanity finds so comforting. It seizes the swirling air, reaching out for the heat of the sun. It is a constant, a harbinger, a promise binding earth to heaven, and reminding us of the beauty of the unconquered. |
| We walk from day to day. We look ahead of our feet in hopes of seeing the obstacles before we trip. We look at those around us to judge how we are impacting them, how we should behave. We look within our hearts to determine what we need to do for our own moral conscience and inner peace. More often than not, we are so busy looking that we do not take the time to pause and see. There is a blue sky over our heads, filled with colors that shift and churn, hinting at wonders that only eyes looking upward will allow us to dream. There are tiny miracles, creatures who have not yet learned the habit of the constant search, of always looking for something – children, plants, pets – in whose unstinting joy we may find hope and comfort. There are wonders, things of beauty, things so ridiculous that we cannot help but laugh. But if we do not pause to see, we will be forever looking. We cannot find what we seek simply by focusing on what the world tells us we need. I struggle every day with the darkness, with the need to be needed. I watch the ground at my feet, afraid to make a mistake, afraid I will not be perfect, afraid someone will see. I study the faces of those around me, looking for approval, looking to be needed, looking to see if I am being judged. It is only in the moments when I stand still, when I dare to turn my eyes away from my own path and to see that I find the light I so desperately need. The world may think me mad when I stand still in the middle of the workday crowd and watch the hawks fly or the Spanish moss sway, but I am surviving. I must see without looking and let my soul feed upon the beauty that bears no thumbprint of human practicality. If I do not, my spirit crumbles and dies, and I go with it into the abyss. |
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