Story of the Book
I once began writing a book when I was 10. After writing several pages, I made a decision. I went down the hill from our
house to the aging mansion at the bottom. I walked up the
stone path and went in through the side door. I made my way
through the halls, past the east wing, the library and into my
pastor's study. There he was at his desk, in his sunlit room on
this warm afternoon.
I greeted him and nervously expressed my desire to read the beginning of my book to our congregation. He began speaking about many things unrelated to my request and his words became muffled in my ears. My eyes drifted over to the corner of his desk and fixated on his clear plastic and green ant farm.
He asked me something.
I pulled my attention back to him. His one eye moved about as he asked me again, "why?"
I could only think to say something that would persuade him,
"Because God wants me to."
On Sunday, I read my story.
Excerpts: Ugly Cry
“I woke up to an another world. The streaks of dust-speckled sunlight made my eyelids glow and for a few moments I didn’t know a thing about a thing. The world didn’t have to inform me about the past and I didn’t need to think about the future.
I lay there for maybe five minutes without thoughts, without words, just nothing. It was as soon as my legs moved off the bed and toward the floor that gravity seemed to care about me too much and the weight of my body seemed heavier than most days. I stood with a stiffness that each step was able to loosen for me.
I found the bathroom and didn’t eagerly look for a mirror, but there it was anyway. In the reflection I had to remember, no other way but to notice. Those eyes aren’t from laughing, they aren’t even good at seeing, as I consciously put on my glasses. My face was swollen from a one- minute cry. It always reacted so abrasively. I always looked fatter and older after a cry, it was never a romantic look like I read in many books, it was quite ugly on me.”
Sojourn
A trail of children followed her and she moved the earth around them. She built a home, a city, heaven.
If she ran, they followed in step. They wanted to know where she was going and join the adventure. She allowed them in sometimes. And once in a while they found a clue under a rock or a lost story from a broken branch.
They knew they had to follow her. They wanted to know what she was seeking but she hadn’t a clue. It was her greatest fear to understand what it was. It was the search that she sought.
One day she was a woman and a trail of women followed her. They wanted to know where she would lead them, wanted to know what she was searching for. She opened her hands to show them her palms, they gently lined her creases, they made assumptions, they created a story of who she was and it was good. She grasped their hands in hers and led them to a mountain. They stood before it and began to climb.
Myth of the Vacuum
A big breath pulled in,
No planets or stars were lost there,
Just a child or two, when they couldn’t follow the path home.
Their mother waited for them at her front porch.
She sheltered her eyes as she looked over the hills.
The green land darkened slowly,
until a large blackness could be seen.
The ground shuddered and those poor babes were swallowed.
The mother’s chest began to beat ferociously.
The aching could be felt like a loud drum.
Her ribs imploded to the sucking swells of her burdened heart.
Breath upon breath was heaved in,
and a vacuum formed there.
The edges of her form began to bend in,
and she was sucked in and swallowed whole.
The Dance
There was a moment when I walked across the mountain tops and decided to descend.
I slowed as I came upon a path where a young woman was sitting. I spoke to her and she looked at me.
She whispered to me. I beckoned her to come closer, and she did.
She began to stroke my arms, but I pulled away. She reached and I put her hands to her sides.
I told her to wait.
She took her clothes and rolled them in a ball and handed them over to me, I told her to wait.
She kissed her arms and her hands and offered them to me, and I told her to wait.
She crept into my shadow and breathed into my ears,
but she could not wait.
“I will feed you, but you must feed me” I said to her.
She nodded and began to speak, she danced, and she almost fell off the side of the mountain.
She grabbed my arm, I pulled her back and we danced off the mountain together.