about Hannah Coulter

(a new poem, written today)

For Hannah

For a thousand lifetimes you have belonged to the quiet

of an early Kentucky morning, to a day so young the ground

slopes as you intake breath, the light coating it in muted

history.  So many days you’ve watched the world beginning.

In your lifetime you have learned to let the land you live on

make you, and you have learned to open yourself to winter –

to its loses and grief, to the fetters of a cold leaving,

then to open up to the bounty of spring.

In an undisturbed silence you have found your membership

among the ones nearest to you, and have worked at it.  

You have built and you have journeyed to the bounds

of eternity together -  you have wept and danced.

For a thousand lifetimes, desire and satisfaction have been meeting

in your rooms, casting the sunrise like paint upon the walls. 

Your memory of things come to you in surprises, often as you

walk the land where you made your love, learning always

from the ground as it makes room inside itself for things to grow.
There is peace as the world dresses itself in the early light. 

about Chance

We got Chance before my junior year of high school.  I had been begging my parents for a new dog and after a full year of bargaining and pleading they finally agreed to consider the idea. We drove out to Winchester to a farm where some Goldendoodle puppies had just been born.  The breeder opened the door and I remember that split second when we all first saw him - we were sold instantly.  He belonged with us right from the start.

He was too little to take home then, but we went back a few weeks later (those were the LONGEST weeks of my life, or at least felt like it at the time) to officially bring him into our family.  He weighs 92lbs now, so it is hard to imagine that he slept on my lap the whole trip home.  I remember looking at him, so small and curled up, and being amazed at how this little thing could call out such a great love within me.

I'm writing about my dog because I love him dearly, and because even though you might think I'm one of those crazy animal people (I am, so it's alright to think that) maybe you could say a small prayer for my little guy.  We were on vacation this past week and the moment we got into our lake house Chance fell down a flight of stairs.  He broke and dislocated his elbow (I know, who knew dog's have elbows?) and has been in doggie hospital ever since.  To make a long story short - he had surgery to repair the damage, the surgery totally didn't work, he had to have another surgery today and it was difficult, and the doctors are crossing their fingers that the screws they had to put in the bone actually hold this time.

When he fell and my parents rushed to find the number for an emergency vet, I sat with him and curled my body up next to him to make him feel safe.  I held water up to him and let him drink it from my palm and felt his heart pound. I cried for him and was helpless, sitting with a friend who was in pain and being unable to communicate that it would be ok, and that we would take care of him.  I like to think that to him those things were already certain.

I sat with him and thought about how dear his life is to me, and how his presence has comforted me through many moments of loneliness and fear. He has waited up for me when I've come home late.  He has forgiven me for going away to college, for taking trips, for working and leaving home - for leaving him.  He never forgets me when I return. He welcomes me like a prodigal son.  By his existence alone he has provided me the opportunity to be a person who loves, and to be a person whose love is received 100% of the time, whatever I have to offer.

So while my Chancey-boy sits in a vet hospital far away from me, I am thinking of all these things and of him, and I am praying that the Lord would take care of this creature of his that he made, this companion who displays the sweetest love and joy. And I am hoping that he will be bouncing around again soon, running down to Carousel to get a very well-deserved pup cup as large as his precious canine heart desires.  

about comedians in cars getting coffee

Jerry Seinfeld does this GREAT internet web-series called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
It's exactly what the name implies - Jerry gets coffee with comedians and each 15ish minute episode captures their time together.

I love this because it combines two of the things that make me happiest - laughing and having deep, honest conversation.

I love it because in the midst of the jokes and the breakfasts there is this moving dialogue about shared experience and shared passion. I love when Jerry meets with his pal Michael Richards (aka Kramer) and Richards looks back on his time on Seinfeld and wonders if he should have been more selfless in his career, and if his job was really more about doing for other people than doing for himself.

I love it because it reminds me of the freedom and the leisure and the intimacy of grabbing a cup of coffee with someone who knows you and understands you.  It's a beautiful thing. And often, in a way that makes it even sweeter, it's hysterical as well.

about a little bit country

I am incapable of loving something half-way.

When I love something, I love it to a really dramatic and extreme degree.  I love the crap out of it.
Take manatees for example.  In the fifth grade I went to Florida to visit my grandma and she told me about manatees and took me to see some and pretty soon I was reading books about manatees, writing school reports on them, doodling them all over my homework, etc. etc.  I thought it made me super hip to like manatees more than dolphins like all the other girls, but really I was just an awkward upper-elementary schooler walking around with sea cows on her shirts.

Point is - I have very little in between room when it comes to what I like.  Which I guess can be used to explain how I went from loathing country music with every fiber of my being to having five different country stations preset on my car radio.

I'm in full head-over-heels mode, people.

I'm also getting really into anything having to do with the country lifestyle in general.  Especially Texas, due in no small way to the fact that I just finished watching the entire "Friday Night Lights" television series.  Whenever someone brings up Texas I automatically squeal and get excited.  And then they ask "oh, do you have family in Texas??" and then I'm forced to lie and say yes because otherwise I'd have to say "well, no - but I did watch a TV show that took place there once. Oh, and I'm a freak."

And because when you love something you want to shout it from the rooftops, here are three of my latest country music obsessions.

Happy Tuesday and enjoy, y'all.
oh, and - Texas Forever.

about reading feelings

There is this thing that happens to me when I read a beautiful poem or story or line, and it is a feeling that feels like falling in love.  My selfishness goes away, I am filled with admiration,  I think I might be capable of floating up from my seat into the stars, I am made a better person who wants to go and expand my life in this world just to keep up with this beautiful thing I've just read.

It's like love in that it is like possibility - it's the feeling like you are starting to live out a dream that was prepared for you.  A good story makes me unafraid of the world.  I am reminded of the fortitude of beauty and sincerity.  I am reminded that it is nailed down in thousands of pages and that it is keepable.  And when I read words that make me feel like this, I feel this urgent longing to pull out of myself all the language I have inside, and to rearrange them into things of beauty.  I take the greatest pride in being a writer when I am reading the gorgeous things other writers have made.

My dear roomie Rachel just finished a book called "Hannah Coulter" by Wendell Berry.  If you have never read him, please do.  I am growing into the deepest admiration and affection for that man's words.  Rach left the book on the coffee table the other day, and I picked it up and started reading and it was like stumbling upon a beautiful and shining gem.  I am transfixed.

I wanted to share just this little blurb below because it gave me all those beautiful reading-feelings. If you need me you can find me floating up with the fireflies then off into the stars.

"Sometimes too I could see that love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in.  Though it contains the world, the sun, moon, and stars, it is so small as to be also in our hearts.  It is in the hearts of those who choose to come in.  Some do not come in.  Some may stay out forever.  Some come in together and leave separately.  Some come in and stay, until they die, and after."