UpfromtheStump - Archive 53

21 April 2009 2:16pm

Sometimes I picture myself and everybody around me as garments. This is because, out of everything I know, clothes look the most used and the most lasting. And people are like that. I'm used and still alive.

'Thank you God for waking us up today,' everybody says here in Paterson. Maybe here that's cliche, but to me, to have this as a well used prayer is beautiful. Yes, God, thank you for waking me up today. For when I come off my bed I feel like a garment. I feel folded and wrinkled at once, ready and tired. And always alive. Still after twenty six years I am waking up in the morning.

The past week I listened to a CD that I had discarded after the first listen. And now, a week on replay, I am beginning to see it fully. After it is used and tired does its soul shine, and do I see its stamina as a CD for years and years. Only now, after I had grown tired of it, did I have the unsuspicion or the lack of attention to let it find a way into being beautiful on its own. As I drive numb on errands and through lots and streets, as I go to the post office or markets, and as it spins innocent in the dash, its content lifts up and sits on the ledge on its own. And suddenly I've been enjoying for hours, more by each minute, unsuspecting.

How contrary to logic all this is. Things are supposed to be beautiful upon energetic inspection, not in exhaustive apathy.

Is this what it means to be alive? To be foundationed in joy and exhaustion? To be that worn, freshly folded garment, mended on its edges, handed down from one place to another, useful, and sometimes set aside? And are you the One who loves these? Calls us sons and daughters? Makes us to be your visible representatives, your outward coveralls? Stand upright God, as you always have, valiant and strong. I want them to see what I cover. I want them to notice the shape we make as we live each day, the image of the invisible God, used and still alive.

2 April 2009 4:15pm

Apparently its April. Does perception of time keep on like this, growing in obviousness like a feedbacking microphone? I know time is passing because my tube of Dabur Herbal 'Salt & Lemon' toothpaste is empty. I bought this in Nairobi right before I left. Its like Crest but with moxy, having 33% ppm more fluoride. And that salt and lemon flavor really gets me going in the morning.

I still think about life in Kenya all the time. Today I took the 'dollar bus' downtown to a local CC, and the driver kept it rolling when I was stepping out, so I disengaged midroll, like most so many matatus over the past three years. In other ways, Nairobi is such a world away. Coffee is so much more prevalent here. I don't have to walk/bus fifteen minutes, since most places have a machine right inside. But the deliberate slowness to the brew I miss. There is a percolator in my kitchen, but nobody ever uses it.

I wish the return was over by now, but its not. I wish the memories from Kenya would be crisper and more full of solid lessons, but they aren't. I wish community and friendships were quick as striking a matchstick or turning a car key. Sometimes that engine just seems to turn and turn and turn these days. But I think that such a return will be done soon, and I will have fully arrived somewhere. I believe the stories from Kenya (as I relive them over and over) will gel and take a solid factivity, and that good friendship will be made to stop the turning of my feet, gain a sense of place, and bring a daily purport of commitment in a way that fosters sustaining love. I hope this is bound in finding work, that a focus on a place will begin tying all these loose strands together. Yes, this is my prayer today God, as I look towards the coming year and know it is coming fast.

23 March 2009 10:25pm

The clouded ending of winter has passed, and a strange shining entrance of spring is layering the surface of my neighborhood like a veil. We have left home our collections of winter coats and hats, and I haven't used the heat in my car for two weeks. The other day I let the window sink down and the cool wind in, and the musty smells that collected in the bottom of my car, the odors of all that evaporated grey slush, just spun up and out forever. I drove slow past people standing outside the corner stores, drove past women talking easy on their stoops, drove on by a world which had come outside. Some sort of quickening was flicking in the air, pushing an acceleration upon our walking and opening of doors, our collective goodmornings and invitations for lunch. When I push the key through the lock and turned, it seems to take less time.

And my friend Frank is walking with a familiar bounce towards me outside our house. "Hey!" he waves at me smiling. And a simple couple steps of me to meet him prompts him to say his news: today he got his warrants erased and his record clean for the first time in 22 years. "You don't know what its like Simon," he says in that sliding Jersey accent, shaking his head in amazement. "I walked down the street today for the first time without looking for cops."

We split ways, and I know he was telling the next guy too. And I was thankful to God for bringing us together: different people from different places to share in the fact that things truly are getting better, death truly is still slowly dying. And the weather today was an usher of that fact.

15 March 2009 7:09pm

We are in a hospital room, surrounded by visitor parcels, gifted physicalities of previously expressed love. People had come to show how much they care, come to express their sympathy, and they come tangibly. A flower, a card, a box of Girl Scout Cookies (thin mints): people have been here before us. The shelves of the hospital know the deal. There is a ledge for this stuff built into every wall. Their visitor policy is part of the room's blueprint.

And we are standing there, so obviously attuned to her. In the bed she is metastasized and terminally ill, IVs and a tray for hospital food are her bed attachments. The whitened plastic halfcup of apple juice with its foil lid is untouched, as is the rest of her meal. The uneaten tray is not from lack of appetite more than its coincident arrival with the arrival of guests, and she doesn't mind. "We decided something today. We're going to worry about life instead of worrying about death," her family members tell me. "We're moving out of here. We want this to end in our house, in our living room or in her bedroom. Peace is hard in hospitals."

And we are holding hands: her goateed son-in-law with his racing tshirt and her grandson with his AC/DC black tshirt and her granddaughter with the lip ring. We are carving a hollow within the hospital craze, aligning ourselves with God that we might be pulled a notch higher than the madness of the sickness and be given full breaths of life and solidity.

I have the honor of holding her hand, as I am on an edge of the visitor pool. And as we pray, I am blessed to feel God's Spirit soaring in her with such heavy delicacy, thundering whispers of peace through her mind, and so I follow his lead. By and by we amen and touch goodbyes all around, and everybody is feeling better already.

7 March 2009 4:16pm

Finally was able to stop from the motion and go by my favorite local Dominican eatery. The bustle of work gets under my skin sometimes, and the world sort of bleeds linear. I wish things rolled off with less resistance and attention, but they don't. But eating helps a lot, so thats why I went. And I swing and ding the doorbell at the restaurant, search my pockets, and come up with a measly 5 dollar bill. Lincoln.

I roll with it, so in control and so Captain Flexible. "Only rice and a soda", I tell the busy woman behind the counter. What meat do you want, she motions. No meat, I say again, tighter spoken, so sure her lack of English proficiency is the cause of this problem. Only rice. I break into bad Spanish while holding up the Lincoln saying, Yo tengo solo cinco dolores, or something like that. But she comes back at me - what side dish? Roasted chicken or porkribs? I am about ready to call the whole thing off, its not worth this. I just don't have enough cash today. Why can't she understand that?

She calls over a bilingual man from another table, black smooth hair combed perfectly. He stands from his soup and walks over. "I only have five dollars," I tell him, "So I'll have the plate of yellow rice, the green sauce, and this soda. He speaks with her, and turns to me, saying that she will give me the meat side anyways. Dumbfounded, I motion to a rib.

Impossible boy, I say inside, forgive myself I tell myself. This whole time when you thought she was dumb, she was actually trying to be kind and give you a full meal. This whole time she was communicating, in her second language, that its ok I have this five dollar bill, that it doesn't matter.

When is the last time they did 'that' at McDonalds or Wal-Mart, deliberately lower the price for somebody who didn't bring enough cash? God, thank you for the small eateries, the bodegas, the local owned restaurants who seem at times to be the lights on our hills, the specks of actual blooded humanity within that greater mechanical enterprise.

27 February 2009 8:08pm

We are marching in the light of God. We are walking to the rhythm of this holy ghost. We are dancing and clapping our way into paradise. The walls of trouble, of danger and shame, of pain and position, these walls fall away with ease beneath our feet. We are stomping down the establishments of oppression, of depression and hunger. An air from somewhere unseen fills our lungs with hope and resilience.

Something happened two thousand years ago, and it undermined all these structures which have for so long intimidated us into apathy and cynicism. And we are marching through them, sending shockwaves.

A song is heard above our feet, a hymn of healing and bliss, of joy and laughter. The song echoes off the mountain sides and peals across the sea. Reaching the edges of creation, it ricochets back the other way, growing in cadence.

What can be against this? What chance does anybody or anything have in the face of such a wonderful terror? The very establishment of the grave has been ended, has been put to death. Nothing remains.

We are walking in the light of God. We are moving to the beat of grace, and it barrels through our veins and sends song into our lungs. We are standing upright, full facing the coming future. We are breaking the margins and edges of what we had known, breaking the definitions of our minds and books, and the tumultuous collapse is almost unnoticed because of what lies before us. And neither words nor expression can contain this. Our eyes alone are failing to see it all. Only this: that we are marching in the light of God, and it is good.

14 February 2009 1:08pm

I was waking early. Afraid I would miss my ride to Harlem, I actually awoke at 5am instead of my alarm's preset of 6.15am. I shifted and lost consciousness again, with the alarm beeping an hour later. I've always had trouble waking up. I sort of groan and loll on my back for at least ten minutes while the blood begins to flow and my mind sputters to a manageable level of functionality. I spend about a minute or two dealing with it, grudgingly, then beeline to the preset coffee maker and pour, sip/stare/sip/stare, and wait for normalcy. I would be ashamed of my chemical dependency, but thankfully in our culture such a thing is pretty typical, like khat in Yemen or kola nuts in West Africa. Yes, caffeine is buddied with America, and I'm on the bandwagon. That morning at 6:15am it arrived in its usual quiet splendor. My morning coffee is like a rising sun, and I am as an unfurling city, being gilded awake beneath its morning gaze.

Usually I get up at 7.30am, but today, because I was earlier, I was able to witness my roommate's morning routine. I walked back into our room and he is laying prostrate beside his bed, praying his morning prayers. I felt bashful watching, but privileged just the same. He wasn't bent over his bed with his hands folded, austere and smiling like a precious moment doll. No, he was laying collapsed. I remember wondering if he was praying or asleep. But he eventually rose and began brushing his gray hair.

What sort of God is this, who cares for the ruined elderly, who saves them from their chaos and deposits them into safety and love? I watched him pray that morning, unabashed and full, pray with every part of his body and mind, pray like one being both coddled and knighted. I watched because I knew I was witnessing something magnificent. I don't know a greater privilege in life than the witness of dependency between the earth and God.