The Grinch that Stole Passion

Passion. It’s a funny concept. Passion, calling, gift, vocation . . . over-used, lackluster terms nearing a drought of meaning. Calling and gift smack of evangelical necessities.

Vocation may follow in suit.

Passion? Passion is intense.

Left with passion and vocation, I judge one intense and the other stoic.

‘Tis my vocation . . . Serious business.

What is your passion? Extroverted interrogation to find the inner key to a happy, successful, meaningful life. Passion. My passion? Passion. Compassion. I get that.

Passion. Phooey. Vocation. Phbt. Life?

Life without either, oh probably slow and unfulfilling. Bugging about disinterested and tired. 

With? Don’t ask me; I don’t know.

Do you like green eggs and ham?

Yep, that’s what I hear when asked for a passion presumably packaged in my pocket.

No. I do not like green eggs and ham. 

I do not like them, Sam I am. 

Cliché but True

            It has been a while since I last wrote—at least for the blog. But between last post and now, I’ve graduated (or “commenced”) from Calvin College: four years of strenuous studying, of passionate and inspiring professors, of learning, of being loved, of struggling, of being cheered on through it all. Four years, and I have graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in Spanish. Four years and I’ve left bits of my heart scattered at Calvin, throughout Grand Rapids, in Michigan. Four years, four CAM/walking boots, one semester in Spain and one semester on academic leave, three communication classes, two psychology classes, countless books (the beginning of a mini-library), three semesters with a solid, wonderful counselor, one Festival of Faith and Writing (and a hankering for more), four years. It has been, as goes the cliché, good, and it has been hard.

            So now what? The always present question, the unoriginal question, for “educated young adults”: now what? Oh, I don’t know. Nor do I mind not knowing. I’m not God. (Who would’ve thought?) Part-time work. Lounging around Felton and Santa Cruz, fat and happy. Writing. Living as a "wordsmith,” however that may be made manifest in the employment I see this year. A little fun wouldn’t hurt either. :)

Quiet Company

Quiet mornings . . . I’m a sucker for them. And I try to draw them out as long as possible. It’s almost ten, and I’m still calling it “my quiet morning.” Meaning, I have put very little effort into starting into a project, homework, getting out of my PJs. Meaning, I have put my efforts into coffee, food, and chill music. So maybe Miranda Lambert’s “Kerosene” doesn’t qualify as chill.

I need my quiet. We all do. Need. Just as we all need people, dammit. It stinks—quiet, solitude, what you will, is torture for some people. People, noise, talk (that nasty impossibility called “small talk”), interaction—that is torture for others.

But that quiet is also the most conducive for reading, writing, being a student. The quiet without the music, that is. The quiet whose music is a snowflake, a blue sky, a breeze, a shuffling of papers, a scratching pen, a clicking keyboard.

Quiet is dangerous. No. Aloneness is dangerous. Prolonged aloneness. Days. Hours for some. It depends on the person and her situation. But she always has her breath; truly, she is not alone. Her breath is always there. The internet is lonely. It is a dead complexity. The breath is company. It is a live simplicity.

Jesus, you say, Jesus is company. So send Him to my pal over there. He doesn’t disbelieve you; he’s just waiting for the tap on the shoulder. And is Jesus, or God, pleasant company? What if he wants Him to go away? That young man would say He already has, if He was around in the first place. God kneeling and wiping the tears from his face is an image of beauty and compassion. And it is a cruel joke. Where is He? “Do not be afraid. I am with you.” Oh really?

This is when solitude can be torture. When company is emptiness. When alone in a crowd. As if crowds weren’t bad enough, not a soul is familiar. Already panicked, the promised company to see you through is nowhere to be found. So this is what I get for trusting.

Returning to the breath is much more comforting. It is always there. It is not disruptive in solitude nor does it desert one in need of company. Here I am, it whispers. Here I am.

Pinpricks of Light

Today, my words are lacking. This last week and most of last weekend my words have been lacking, so I offer bits from previous writings, and a poet whose words I have shared before.

It is often nothing more than the gentle acts of caring that see us through the day. I wrote in my snipit style memoir of this gentleness: 

“[There] continues to be something in the word during the showers of spite; something in that smile saying, I am listening and I hear you, while the fog of muted emotion fills the air and the mind; something in those patient eyes and open hands . . .” These “somethings” can be painful; I want to do it myself, fix it myself. But that won’t do. It doesn’t work. We need someone to talk to, albeit frightening. We carry eachother through life. “[We] owe [our]  existence to others, to those who offer the simple words, the smile, the kind eyes, the gentle hands, to a broke soul. They reassure [us] that [our hearts are] beating, and that maybe, one more day or minute or moment is worth the while.”

Small but Urgent Request to the Unknowable

Whatever small nugget of kindness we carry,

that shy opal I picture buried in gray folds

of a cortex evolved to flinch at fire

and whittle sharp sticks when beasts

stalk too close; whatever prompts

bereaved widows to offer you coffee then

the guestbook, and parched sailors adrift

to share the day’s thimble of water,

and mothers to lift the most bent and broken

children with joy and glad for the work of it;

whatever iota of caring has survived

the millennia’s hardships, ice age and terror

and the simple tedium of walking upright—

maybe it’s no bigger now than a seed

in a fig—tonight I call for it, call

with my dry mouth from this cold room

clouded by my being alive

on a planet whose true gravity

eludes me; let that pinprick of light

multiply in the sky’s nightly leather

and in the pupil of each eye. Let me seek it

in the large, crazed creatures whose shadows

I fear most, in myself, for instance.

Kneeling, I poke at this ash-heaped hearth in hope

of some faint imagining, grateful for that.

Mary Karr

Sin in Eyes

            There is a weight to eyes—ringed purple and grey, rimmed red, or plain—there are days they are top heavy with sleep, days they are bottomed out with a faithful sorrow. The eyes retain truth invisible, invisible but palpable, undeniable.

            There is a sin, a type of sin that I despise more than any other in myself: that which causes pain, but not to myself. The sin committed intentionally against myself without contrition, until it sears the surrounding people. The consequence is terrible, and rightly so, but the harm done to others is irrevocable.

            The eyes suffer for the sin and tempt for an escape. Darkness. Hiding. The weight is heavy, but deserved. The eyes empty of color, fill with fog, and feign indifference. The eyes send acid guilt into their body. The eyes find distraction: flitting, firing, falling. Falling away from the eyes of others.

            This sin designed for ourselves, but producing suffering where not intended, spirals. One sin becomes two, two becomes three, three, ten. In an attempt to punish ourselves, we continue to punish others. This sin cannot be escaped alone. The very people we pain are the ones with whom we will make it out, onward, from the floor to our knees. Our eyes tell us this. They speak inward with their want of words, with their silence.

Sentence vs Cents

Artists make it. (Funny term, no? “Make it.”) Some folks, I can’t help but wonder how, but someone enjoys their music or art or medium of expression, their manner of interpretation, of caprice, of notions, the known and the unknown. Perhaps my favorite country singer and songwriter, Miranda Lambert, is an example of this “making it,” and continuing to do so. With the time she has been performing and writing, the quality of her music has not diminished; sure, her music isn’t the same as it was ten years ago, but the songs do not feel forced.

Perhaps that is what makes an artist an artist: patience. Words, music, paint strokes, carvings, welding, all of these can be forced. The products can be okay, sometimes pretty darn good, but the art lacks patience, which I would argue is a form of love. The best art is not forced.

This is why I don’t believe I ever could or will be a writer. No. I cannot and will not rely on writing for income; the writing will become desperate. Chasing the cent rather than the sentence—that is desperate writing. Not because life is about money, but because it takes money to survive in this world. And I fear that if my motive is money, my writing will not come from a healthy source.

This writing may seem desperate. Maybe it is. Maybe my writing on this blog is a desperate attempt to keep practicing so that someday I can maybe create something more worthwhile and send it to a publisher and then another and then another, until I can find it a home. But then again, when I am searching for a topic, writing and erasing, typing and deleting, not saving, crumpling, saying to hell with it all, I put my work aside. Not today, not this, give it a rest. I’ve practiced. I’ve tried. But this is not for the blog. Whoever my audience is, shrinking, growing, fluctuating, present upon fancy, non-existent, I will give them better; I can do better. I may make a penny for a published article, for which I will be grateful, if that day comes, but I do not want that to be my drive.

*Naturally, there is a place for monetary driven writing, and I respect those who can and do write to support their life, the life of their families, etc. Writing to support of one’s family, for lack of resources, so far as I’m concerned, is no longer desperate writing, but writing out of love. (For writing, yes, but moreover for people.)

Blessings From Whom?

Grand Rapids, sometimes, can seem to be a different country, but for reasons that seem to be anything but antithetical to what is “American.” Freedom of speech, right? That’s somewhat American, no? I don’t know. It’s a little difficult to decide whether or not it is still important when saying “Merry Christmas” is considered to be politically incorrect. But I’d rather not go too far up that stream right now . . . or anytime in the near future.

In any case, it’s a little different here in G.R. I bought some eggs at Horrocks, a market that I had never been to, or heard of for that matter, until this weekend. The eggs are from a dairy farm here in West Michigan (Grassfield); the chickens are free-range clucks that go munching on organic grass. The cartons are recycled, as in the first step of the tri-re-cycle: reuse. (It is marked “please return cartons.”)Good and green and hippy. I love it. Here’s the other-country bit, the box also reads “You [LORD Jesus] care for the land and water; You enrich it abundantly.” Psalm 65:9. !!

I have yet to see that in Santa Cruz. That’s brave. Having spent the last three and a half years attending Calvin and learning Reformed theology, I understand the reason for this verse: creation, fall, redemption. The land is good; it was made that way. That is the creation part. The redemption bit is the choice to care for the earth and its critters as, well, “God intended.” (Or follow the mandate—to have “dominion” is to take responsibility for, not exploit.) It’s a mission statement of sorts. Again, I could go into further depth, but I’m not going to.

            The next stop on my shopping excursion was G.B. Russo & Son, a bit of a snooty palooty store (high quality imports . . .), but not, as it is a family-owned, itty-bitty, the-one-and-only type store. I was there to take a gander at their olive oil selection (and wouldn’t be opposed to going back). When entering the purchase in my register, I noted some text at the top of the receipt: “Jesus is Lord!”

            Hm. Admittedly, that was a little too much for me. (Okay, so a lot of things are “a little too much” for me.) But, again, what boldness! Had it said, “Allah reigns,” I wouldn’t have been offended. This wasn’t offensive—just unexpected. I kind of prefer Grassfield’s approach to making a statement of belief. It’s more on par with saying, “God bless you” or “May Allah’s bless you” or whatever. I wouldn’t do either. But that’s me. These sayings are sending a person off with goodwill, a goodwill specific to a particular belief. And that is more genuine, I think, than an Muslim saying, “good luck.” Allah is more powerful than luck; therefore, the person is expressing the deepest blessing she can muster—it is the giving of the best comprehensible, rather than withholding the blessing of Allah from he who subscribes to a different set of beliefs. It’s something worth pondering. And I’ll step out with some words from Ms. Karr:

EASTER AT AL QAEDA BODEGA

At the gold speckled counter, my pal in the white apron—

index finger tapping his Arabic paper,

where the body count dwarfs

the one in my Times—announces

You’re killing my people.

But in Hell’s Kitchen, even the Antichrist

ought to have coffee—one cream

and two sugars. Blessings

upon you, he says, and means it.