Notes in April

“Clear, verbal communication is something I really value. No hints, allegations, or things left unsaid. I like to be able to ask, plainly, for what I want. I feel that I know myself really well: when I ask for something, I actually want it.

I confess that I get really frustrated with people who are not the same way. They don’t know themselves, they equivocate, they change their minds, they lie to themselves … ‘I thought I meant yes … but now I realize I really meant no’ really pisses me off.

If you don’t know yourself, admit it. I don’t want to be your fucking test case.

I don’t ‘change’ my mind because I know my mind. I lack patience and compassion for people who are not in that same space.”

I wrote these notes in April (I think it was April) in Boulder at an AORTA event on radical consent.

I am angrier than anybody knows.

11 12 13

This date holds no special meaning for me. I just like that I’m here, alive in it. I like the sweat on my body after a hard workout. I like the tears turned to laughter on my therapist’s couch. I like the vegan kielbasa I ate for a snack, and the book that I’m reading, that’s on my bedside table. I like the soft lamplight that fills this room I’m writing in.

Florence Welch sings, backed by a heavenly chorus:”And it’s hard to dance / with a devil on your back / so shake him off …”

And so I have done, and so I will do, again and again, for as long as it takes to make it through this life.

I will make it through this life.

Mostly, I’ll be dancing.

The “shaking off” is a part of the dance.

 

Seven Devils

A hole wants filling.

That’s the lesson of Luke 11:24-26.

There are holes in my autumn life that did not exist during the long, slow days of summer, which found their fulfillment in hiking and poetry and concerts underneath the stars. I work best when I have vast expanses of time, time untethered to appointments that require showing up and speaking up and pretending to be glad about it. I work best when I have spontaneity, plans  rather than commitments, options and opportunities rather than obligations.

Mindless consumption: of food, television, the internet. A hole wants filling.

I’ve been thinking about the discipline of the daily, which is a topic I return to from time to time. Christianity offered me — demanded of me — certain rituals that I have not replaced. What takes the place of daily devotional reading, meditation, and prayer? I know myself to be intelligent and brave … but too often the only evidence is internal. What have I produced that I can point to? What have I built? What am I building? And then … is that really the way I want to measure my life?

“What do I want my life to look like?” I ask myself, and picture that house in the woods in the San Juan Islands, filled with sunlight and literature, surrounded by green and that feeling you get —  that feeling I used to get — when Sabbath is coming, and it’s time to rest, to be a human being rather than a human doing.

“What do I want today to look like?” I ask myself, and make the excuse, as I turn on the television, that it’s a useless question. Whatever I want my day to look like, it won’t look like that, because I have committed to showing up and speaking up and pretending to be glad about it.

Valentine is half-napping in the sun. She would like today to look like a long walk with me-its-momma, and some quality time off-leash, mud puddles to roll in, something to chase, and then supper, and more napping. I could make that happen for her. I have just enough time.