Way Up West, Part III

“Way Up West,” not “Way Out West,” which is intentionally counter-intuitive as goes the common vernacular.

I had turned and looked West to the mountains but found myself able to stare directly into the sunlight above because it was mercifully shrouded in veil enough to prevent blinding me. So. Way Up West.

Have you ever noticed how maddening it is to insert into someone’s head or ear or mind’s eye whatever it is that washes over you? That is, without rival, one of my biggest frustrations with how God made things. That is, that everything from our musings to our madness to our inspirations to our visions are so anchored within our own experience such that they openly defy a perfect expression. This has got to be the largest part of what fuels the artists across all mediums: the unquenchable need to get someone, something, somewhere in the world to see or hear what we’re held by or singing to. And I don’t care what anyone says…the need to create is less an altruist gifting than it is the secret cry of the heart in a desperation to be known—which doesn’t implode under its own weight simply because it is more than a little counter-balanced by the genuine animation in which the soul luxuriates by living out loud.

In other words, the straight jacket we right-brainers wear isn’t for our safety. It’s for yours ha ha.

Where was I.

Ah.

So I put it on Facebook before I lost my nerve. I was leaving. Not going dark (which I do about once a year and on purpose). And not mad at anyone. Just missing substance and weight and recognizing that I’d gotten scared away from writing certain things and in certain ways.

I’m working on several books but had avoided working on them at all because, quite frankly, it wasn’t fun any more. Since January of this year, a lot has transpired and very little of it has been funny. We’ve a teenager in the house who is becoming more young man than I think I ever could have been at his age in my wildest dreams. I couldn’t be more proud. Or more convinced in His genius for writing into the plot the journey of a teenager and how it mirrors all too uncomfortably the exodus through desert full to the brim with forty years of lesson.

That’s one thing.

Marriage is in what I call the ‘rooting underground’ season. Augustine said it something like the season in marriage fraught with life’s wind and sun and rain and storm where the blossoms fade and the timber roughens. For all accounts and purposes it appears things are fading, to put it nicely. And in some ways they are. They really are. And none of us were told this at the altar.

But it’s okay. Because while things seem to be fading above ground (they’re really not), your roots are growing toward one another under the convulsing earth…and threading themselves safely, safely, safely together (and they really are).

That’s a second thing.

The final thing is that enough had happened to insulate me from the live-wire tension I find in the act of writing. Meaning that the work of staying in what I’m trying to write can be as cathartic as it can be anxious. I find it even more demanding than drawing has ever been. It doesn’t take everything to break down in order to rob me of the inclination to write. I almost wish it did. That way I’d have an easy explanation no one would hold against me. Such as it is, though, the writing can often be discomforting enough to get me to chicken out for the smallest reason. Which is cowardly. And stupid. Because, as I said, for as anxious as it can make me, there is little else as cathartic. It was shameful for me to forget that.

But I said forces were lined up to be sure I remembered something I was supposed to forget: that the fears are smoke screens. Mere one-dimensional Hollywood sets designed to give the illusion of fact enough to convince you things are what they seem.

Which they’re not.

I know better. I should have remembered to forget that and written anyway.

Which I’m going to.

And here’s a visual representation of why. Remember that sun way up west? Here’s what you see when I pull the camera back…

(I know.) (wait for it.)

Can you believe this? I’ve been schooling you the whole time. With the photo, not the content. That beautiful image was a screen saver. And though Colorado can more than provide the very same and then some in real life, it seemed fitting to use the photo as it lives on my laptop. I wanted to convey the rude facsimile of what can’t be duplicated electronically.

Because that’s what I felt like I’d devolved to with writing. That’s why I decided Facebook, though little more than the Virtual Water Cooler, had hijacked my better work. Which I’m returning to but without pulling the plug on how fun it really can be (and it can) to stop by the water cooler and catch up.

So…here’s to comin’ out of the shadows, Juna (shut up, Jeff) and living and writing a bit more out loud. Here’s to excavating a bit more and bringing a bit more pause to the table…not in replacement of the Facebook bits and pieces…but in addition to them.

Here’s to merely using the electronic as vehicle to the real.

Way Up West, Part II

Keep an eye on that photo above. It’s the same photo from the other day, just reversed and rendered in sepia tone. At the end of this story, I’ll pull the camera back and show you what resides outside the frame and what landed right between my eyes.

There are about half a dozen of you around the world who, unbeknownst to one another, contacted me within twenty-four hours. With apologies. Were it not for sheer shock at your words I’d have laughed my self senseless because you apologized — several of you with an effusive lament quite betraying the posture you maintain in public (but I won’t betray you). Each worried they’d done, said, or written something making me pull the plug and turn my back on Facebook altogether. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were in league with one another. But I’m convinced otherwise because no one did a thing to make me decide to do what I did. What’s more, I idle (so I’m told) at Crosses The Line in word and in person, so the idea that I’d been pushed over it by someone else (forgive me) made me laugh.

And while several apologized, quite a few more had aneurysms. Only one made it clear I was off-script with four very unnerving words: “We’ll discuss this later.” Oh wonderful. I’d roused the one man who considers the freedom to get in my kitchen and cook on my stove the sole office of his friendship with me. And, for better or worse, it is. His name is Jeff Graves, just so we’re clear.

What seemed sudden had in fact begun with my friend John Eldredge who’s words lay before me held fast in my hands in spite of the wind seeking purchase and the letter for a plaything. This is what he wrote:

“…and as I looked at his life again one of the things I was most struck by was Jesus’ ability to navigate praise, then hatred, false flattery, then adoring crowds, vicious slander and then people who simply don’t care — all with grace and a sense of self that was simply stunning. Here is one grounded man. Which brought our lack of groundedness back into stark clarity when compared to his deep, deep sense of self, identity, and substance.

“Years ago when Brent and I were writing The Sacred Romance, one of the thoughts we were most deeply struck by was how our souls in this post-modern world have grown so thin, so ‘light,’ so in-substantive and therefore so vulnerable to every passing wind. We called it the lack of ‘ontological density.’ The lack of groundedness of being.”

Damn.

When I read it I found myself cornered and staring into and between every word. Everything came into focus and I realized I’d been seduced away from the place where I live better. And I knew better, which really angered me. But, like those clouds, the anger shifted and the light changed and I let that go so I could get down to whatever the anger was protecting—because anger always exists in service to the two things it covers…Fear, directly under it. And then Pain—that most heavily defended core fact of ourselves, whatever it may be.

This isn’t a therapy session so I’ll spare you the internal ramblings and cut to the chase:

I wasn’t writing deeply anymore. The blog had gone dormant since January (January!) and I’d devolved to a hit-and-run contributing possessed of a subtle yet very lethal agent. That is, Substance. All of the No Unspoken Thought I post on Facebook is genuine, trust me. But in light of John’s words I felt embarrassed. Shamed.

Because they were too safe. Meaning I’d let them take over and replace the deeper excavation I’m wired for. Which is not the end of the world, I know. And definitely appears reactionary, I realize. But I couldn’t escape it. Worse, when I decided to blame everything on Facebook and execute a fitting punishment by turning my back and never looking back, my first feeling was fear.

Not unlike addiction.

And that didn’t anger me.

It enraged me.

(to be continued)

Way Up West, Part I

I’m back. And here comes Where I’ve Been in this a small dose, that is, to make a bit more digestible a rather circuitous wandering.

One week ago, on a day where Spring had more legitimate right than courage to assert herself, I pulled a wanting jacket and set my face toward a soccer field overrun with boys still in the embryonic spring of their lives. But only for a moment before some kind of Weight shifted, turning my attention toward the mountains.

They won the game—no thanks to the parental weak link I was since I recall nothing more than the obligatory, “Go give ‘em hell, kid.”

As divine appointments go, I’m irresistibly intrigued at His economy of scale and why it is the smallest, most benign of matters should amount to axis-shifting moments for God-knows-why. And though I long ago gave up the need to decipher, I nonetheless remain fascinated by the precision of days over hours over moments over impossible ends breaking through to the darkest before the dawn.

Except that it wasn’t dawn. It was dusk.

Or…far from dusk if we’re to deign to the Talmud and the argument that such isn’t such until three stars debut. But the only star was our own, as you see it in the photograph up top, resigning itself to working with the cloud-game instead of against it, and affording all of us on the soccer field a display bordering arrogance.

Except that I was the only one looking.

And the excess of rain unearthed the earth with a redolence which the sacred Spring alone adorns, and reminded me again that I forgot to remember…

…that in spite of the proliferate digitizing of everything in our world, there is no way to make binary the organic. And the smell of the rain leaving with a blast of unseasonably cold wind does an outstanding job of side-stepping every opening argument and silencing the gallery to utter shame and vexation.

[Translation]: I looked at the sunset and, in the space of two heart beats, realized I’d spread myself too thin and taken in too much technology not unlike too much fast-food.

As it were.

And never one to ponder overmuch what the heart proclaims in small slices of time, I resolved then and there to wrest from my preoccupied mind an accomplice: Facebook.

If memory serves, I posted something like this: “I’m signing off of Facebook. For good…and returning to a far less virtual wandering and pondering. Back to the blog, back to writing the books.” I think I even ended it with “Blessing, all.” Which was gracious of me considering the public and private vitriol I provoked by my audacity.

Several things happened concurrent to the decision. Firstly, the Exhale.

There is no replacing pulling the trigger, pulling the tooth, tearing off the band-aid, or jumping off the cliff. It wasn’t easy to do, but I did it, taking into account no one besides myself and the voice inside…now indignant after so much neglect. Neglect of writing, that is.

It was nothing more than recognizing that though I was writing frequently, I wasn’t writing deeply.

And that had to change. Quick. Because forces were aligning themselves to see to it I remembered something I was supposed to forget.

(to be continued)

Luminal

Below is a paragraph I wrote about six years ago. I don’t recall what made me write it, but I’m guessing it came through me one afternoon in my backyard while I watched the gloaming. I have a lot of unanchored pieces — which is what I call them: odd bursts of writing that come through me and never from me. They make no rational sense and yet all the sense in the world. I can never tell if they’re bubbling up from the past or slipping sideways and one step over from something upcoming.

I was bothered by this paragraph because it felt like it begged a whole story around it. When I wrote it down, it came out like an opening piece at the beginning of book. Except that I don’t know what the book is about.

I imagine my friend Betsy nodding in full understanding, because I’ve seen her sing and play her piano. I’ve watched Music come through her, in full measure and small washes, both impossible to catch or contain.

I share this small wash, therefore, in the WiP Journal as I prepare to return to several writing projects.

Oh, and I include up top a rendering of the home where I grew up which faced the St. Clair River. Which is also unanchored, in that it has nothing rational to do with any of this. Still, I love that rendering because it looks like one of the days when the wind off the water made for a gusty summer day. Which makes me sort of laugh because, to this day, I love windy days. Really agitating, boisterous, squallish days—except they have to be sunny. They remind me of the wind off the water that the lake people know.

“It was where they’d sit in the deep of the warm

afternoons in the luminal moments, after the last hard

light relaxed into longer shadows. From a distance, you

could hear them before you could hear what they might be

talking about—because they seemed to always be talking.

And the sound of them felt like the memories of our good

fathers…the ones who filled our heads with white t-shirts

and slacks, common cologne and cigarette smoke, short

trimmed haircuts and approving lines in their faces when

they smiled at us from behind sunglasses.

That’s what they sounded like.”

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