Awakening

I got a gift certificate to Borders from some friends from work. A hardcover copy of Kate Chopin's The Awakening was waiting for me on the bargain shelf. This is an amazing story, and there is one chapter that captured my heart the first time I read this novel. I've put the entirety of chapter six below. Chopin's words are poetry to me- they describe a personal journey that I have experienced these last years.

Chapter VI

Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her.

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,- the light which, showing the way, forbids it.

At that early period it served but to bewilder her. It moved her to dreams, to thoughtfulness, to the shadowy anguish which had overcome her the midnight when she had abandoned herself to tears.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within her and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight- perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude, to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in it's soft, close embrace.

1173 and counting

as i type this post, there are 1173 days, 22 minutes and some odd seconds until we get a new president. this is why that count is important to me...

Intuition

Something strange happened to me this week... I have a gift I was not previously aware of.

Let me start by saying this: I got stuck in an elevator on Tuesday. My friend Mollie and I were returning to work after a nice pizza lunch. We greeted our friend, Dianne, as she got off the elevator and then we stepped on with several others. After dropping riders off at the third floor, the metal death trap sputtered and dropped a little, then nothing. I panicked- pushed some buttons, including the alarm and the emergency phone and started randomly pushing numbers on my cell phone. I then got the bright idea to press floor five- not sure why, but it seemed to work. We started up again and stopped at five. We had to pry the doors open, but we were free, our lives had been given back to us. It seemed like an hour, but I think it all lasted about 2 minutes. Mollie and I gladly took the stairs to nine, huffing and puffing all the way.

But that's not what's strange. What's strange is that I almost got stuck in another elevator yesterday. I was at a training class in another building on the opposite end of the North side of Indy. My coworker, Neill, and I got on the elevator and and immediately I saw the red flags- lethargic doors, slow response to the selection of desired floor, and an overall air of trouble that my highly sensitized "bad-elevator" intuition picked up on. Then the situation went from bad to worse- four other people got on. In a split second I saw the future- we would soon be hovering between one and three, six of us, full from lunch, mostly strangers, trapped for who knows how long. It was too much for me. I was prompted to dive off the elevator before it departed. On my way out, I screamed "I'm taking the stairs- that elevator's going to get stuck." Neill followed, as did two of the other women, looking like they had been shocked into following my example. It must have been my foreboding tone. (They thanked me later...)

We walked up three flights of stairs and heard it..."ring, ring." The elevator was indeed trapped. I did my duty and reported it to the closest maintenance man I could find, then I smiled in relief as I walked into my class. And, I must say, for the next hour (yes, hour) as I heard the desperate "ring, ring" plea for help from my doomed classmates, I promised myself that I will always pay attention to my newly honed and proven trustworthy bad-elevator intuition.

Refrigerator poetry

the only creative urge i have lately is to create refrigerator poetry. i have three different sets, but i am down to one actually on my fridge. it was too much- too much clutter, too many words. i am in the mood for simplicity right now. i don't need verbosity, but rather brevity, or i seem to shut down...

here is a sampling of my refrigerator poetry:

imagine her story:
a soul in the middle
of a lyric,
a dream in between
life's new spirit and sad end


i could burn
like an electric night
in an acoustic soul


get
deeper
like a
crazy
beautiful
dream


damn vulgar loathsome man


ask fear who she is


Drink
&
travel
more
Party
Girl

I am in blogging exile. It just took me 15 minutes to retrieve my username and password. Anyone ever experience that? As a writer, I struggle so between the prolific and the impossibility of committing words to paper or cyberspace.

Katrina kicked me in the ass. It is important to state that I live in Indiana, however I was still devastated by the tragedy that the human beings who are my fellow citizens experienced, not to mention the shame I felt at my government's response (or lack of response), and the complete inadequacy of my desire to want to so badly to help but being told that the best I could do is to write a check. I wrote my check while I hung out over Labor Day weekend on my leather couch. This couch, by the way, is the one that I couldn't get off of all Labor Day weekend, as if my own living room was full of water. It was my own act of sharing in the suffering- and the only thing I felt I could do that weekend after calls to the Red Cross, Salvation Army and the mayors of Houston and San Antonio provided no tangible action that I could take part in. My sister in law and I decided driving to LA to pick up the poor woman and baby who had not had formula for 4 days- the ones we saw on the news station- was a futile attempt at doing something. After all, by the time we got there, that woman would surely have been rescued, right? And for god's sake, if the news people were on that overpass, surely our government could get there.

And so, I am in blogging exile, for what is there to say? Even if I could say it, I couldn't do it justice. I am still recovering, and I didn't lose my home, my family, my livelihood. I just lost what little hope I had in my country's leaders.

Spent the afternoon studying Economics, sipping coffee and hanging with Jules. One more week till this class is over- thank God. Although, I must say, I am enjoying this class more than I thought I would. Who knew supply and demand would be so interesting?

Naturally, the common people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and endangering the country. It works the same in every country.

-Herman Gorting
Hitler's Reichsmarchall at the Nueremberg Trials

Be a witness

Lost Boys of Sudan was the first look I got at the personal and tragic repercussions of the, what is now realized as, genocide occurring in Sudan, specifically the Darfur region. How many times have I cursed at the news anchor that thinks Tom Cruise getting engaged or railing about Prozac is more important or more interesting than exposing the truth of what is happening? (or the hot weather, or the latest grossly overpaid sports "hero" under arrest for domestic violence, etc., etc.). Do the powers that be at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, etc. really think that's all we care about? Apparently they do because they aren't telling us the real story about Sudan (or a lot of things- can I say "WMD?"). I just found this website. I can remember the call of the church in my earlier years urging me to "be a witness." Well, this is something to proclaim.

Go here for an opportunity to ask the major news organizations to not ignore this issue. Hopefully our government and world community will hear the call and stop ignoring it too.

I will just say this- The New Yorker wrote a good article last year about what is happening in Sudan. Kudos to them for speaking up. Let's hope others follow suit.

Words to live by

“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”

-Rainer Maria Rilke