my mailman, my matchmaker?

The night outside is steamy and clingy so it is even more delicious to be writing in the cool cocoon of my blue room. Patsy Cline drifts in and out. The fan beside me is blowing so hard that I feel like I should be talking to Dana Andrews as he is flying one of those old WWII bombers on his way home in "The Best Years of Our Lives." What would I say? That I wish I treated every year like the best year. There has been so much to be grateful for these past few weeks:

-My tests came back saying that I'm in remission for the first year! What a relief after dreaming for days that I was inside my body and cells everywhere were floating like clouds but totally out of reach.

-My mailman who I got to know after staying home from surgery came to say hello as he delivered my mail and told me how he introduced a couple of the people on his route. They eventually split up he says sadly because she was crazy. I couldn't tell if he was offering his services, but I was happy nonetheless as I looked at his beard which grew longer on side than the other, that he was kind and he was my mailman. Such a dear man!

-Getting a bear hug from my niece Sara and even having her do my hair so I ended looking like David bowie only with a thousand pink bows and clips

Madame Butterfly

Careful and slow, this week closes its pages and I sigh. Tomorrow I will go once again for another test. I will wade through the palpable heat that rushes at me like a thousand children that haven't seen me and cling to me now. Walking slowly...hoping.

Hoping this will be the last of those needles, those nurses who cover their mouths with their hand in shock and say "oh honey" as if they were in "Gone With the Wind" because you were yelping like a 5 year old and they don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies and those temporary receptionist who keep telling you how amazing it is that you knew their name was Allen (when you were just trying to tell him your last name) and could you call your other doctor on your cell to confirm something because he hates using the phone. What could I do but smile.

Smile, sit and reminisce in the mauvy cotton candy pink waiting rooms about another summer where I first saw Madame Butterfly. I recall my surprising flood of tears for Butterfly and I know that this waiting room cannot be half as unbearable as hers'.

Needle and the Damage done

Somewhere I can't remember, shards of the word hurt tear boorishly though skin and the needle damages a familiar crevice in my arm. My eyes are closed, so tight, but I can't get away from the color red. I start thinking of lines from one of my favorite poems by cummings:

"or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;"

I imagine the snow, silent and precise. I hear the echo of a verses I cling to:

"therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corth 4:16)

"for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine.." (1 Peter 1)

"let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Hebrews 12)

Somewhere I can't remember, I hear someone say, "see you tomorrow." It will be a long week.

Zizou: mais Pourquoi?

Wasn't "you must control your temper!" something one of the teapots said to the beast in beauty and the beast? I wish Zidane had remembered that this afternoon. Depite the political din that surrounds the French, I got nostalgic and was so hoping that one of my favorite players would have been able to finish his career with a bang. I didn't expect that bang to be a head-butt in the chest of the Italian player. Who says anger isn't a sin? It was almost painful to see Zidane absent from the penalty kicks and from the subsequent award ceremony where he would have led his team out as the captain. As his absence filled my tv screen, all the very public, shameful, and sinful responses I've had in anger throughout my life started popping up in my mind like that wack-a=mole game at theme parks and I just wanted to cry for Zidane. Who knew that the world cup would be a reminder to me of the cost of sin.

Om

Still thinking about putting a pillow underneath my shirt and taking prenatal yoga classes with Amy. I just have this horrible feeling though that we'll go in there and end up wearing bells, chanting Om...Om...Om, choking on incense and sweating in weird positions. My co-worker who has told me about the classes insists that Amen and Shalom are words derived from Om, and though I want ask "so why don't we just say Amen or Shalom," I don't, because she also plays women's soccer, comes in to work with all sorts of bruises and could probably beat me up with her pinky finger. She insists that yoga is probably in my blood and I remember slightly that all my people across the ocean probably think of om-ing and chanting as a smashingly good time. Since dancing and being stick thin should actually be in my blood too, I'm not sure I'd buy that even with the fortune I've accumulated in monopoly money.

Drive Home

Although I can't drive for more than two hours without wanting to pull out every hair on my head, I am already ancipating the green fields fading past me like a runny watercolor. Past corn fields and remnants of tradition standing as still and scared as red barns. Old things. I will most likely be contempling the word hope. Hope as dry as fallow wheat fields. Hope waiting for its season to arrive. Abraham who hoped against all hope (Rom. 4). Love always protect,always trusts,always hopes, always perseveres (1 corth 13). Thoughts to swim in on the drive home.

Romans 5:3-5
"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

Rain Drops Falling on My Head

The pouring rain has been entertaining us for days here. Its drops have been racing down my bedroom window, down streams of memory, pursuing strains of rachmaninoff's vocalise. They pause slowly to watch a girl dancing on cold slippery tile of a flooded courtyard of a home by the sea. The laughter fractures in the distance.

I keep thinking of proverbs 20:30 "Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being.." Keep thinking of how most of the beauty I've observed is wrought by violence, by struggle. Flowers that break the dark surface of the earth, the child born out of a womb, mountains shaped by storms. My own life restored after being broken because Another was broken for me. Thinking of Christ dying for my sins, wounded, beaten, so I could be forgiveness and restored. Amazing.

Amazing to hear the brokeness of the night trickle down my bedroom window. I will wait for beauty.

Welcome

LXXXIII

THIS world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles;
Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
Sagacity must go.
To guess it puzzles scholars;
To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
And crucifixion known. -- Emily Dickinson