"year of the locust"

Here is the beginning of an old essay about crying, believe it or not. Doesn't have much to do with crying, does it?

Princeton is perfect in summer. Rows of trees stand tall, branches sheltering pedestrians from the hot Jersey sun. Hedges are clipped, fences neatly divide neighbor from neighbor, and the Doric columns on the porches give the whole place an imperial feel. Every homeowner ruler of his own little kingdom. Every child knows which Ivy League she wants to go to. Every bike is shiny and new. Our neighbors in the pink Victorian once tried to install a window air-conditioning, and within a day, the Historical Society called to inform them that they would need to take it down.

Several forces invade the tranquility of this neighborhood. First, the ghosts. In one house owned by Princeton Seminary, the ghost of an ex-faculty wife rocks back and forth in her chair, weeping and muttering, wild in her grief. Another ghost hides out in the oldest house in Princeton, built in the seventeenth century. This ghost re-arranges the socks. The owner called in a priest to perform an exorcism, but it didn’t work. The ghost continues to have his way with her laundry.

Potholes are another force to be reckoned with. The roots of the trees run deep and break up the pavement. So all the Benzs and Audis pop hubcaps right and left as they drive. Some days, my sisters and I would find three or four in our yard in a single day. Property taxes are high, so the city can afford to re-pave the road often, but it doesn’t do much good. The roots are too unruly, and too deep down to tame.

Perhaps the two most disruptive influences are plagues of creatures. The first, cicadas, who every seventeen years, invade the town in great hordes. Individually, they are beautiful, with their amber carapaces and beady black eyes. Overall, their presence is fairly intense, actually alarming, like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It is impossible to avoid stepping on them, and together, they hum loudly, a kind of eerie drone, a soundtrack to normal tasks like washing dishes. One never quite get used to it. Bob Dylan happened to be receiving an honorary doctorate from Princeton in a cicada year, and he was so shocked by their omminpresence, that he wrote a song about them. It’s called “Day of the Locust.”

And the locusts sang, well, it give me a chill,

Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.

And the locusts sang with a high whinin' trill,

Yeah, the locusts sang and they was singing for me . . .

The year of the locusts, my brother, who likes to buy crap off the Internet, made good use of his special-edition Lord of the Rings sword. He slayed his thousands upon thousands up in a tree. I like thinking about him up there, thrashing. “Yeah! Got one!” The boyish grin on his dirty, cherubic face, the bright sun catching his golden curls, and the insect blood and guts spurted everywhere.

The last, and the most disturbing plague, is the influx of deer. Deer are everywhere in Princeton. They chew flowers, they mar the lawns with their mangy rumps. They are skinny, ugly things, desperate for food. They are so weary and faint from hunger that they will walk out in front of cars without a second thought. In the second before you end their skinny lives, they look reproachfully at you with their large fawn eyes through the windshield, as if to say, “Why?”

In January of 2002, a State Superior Court judge blocked Princeton Township's deer-killing program, which included using high-powered rifles with silencers or catching deer with nets and firing bolts into their heads. Officials had hoped to use some 400 deer for food. Animal rights advocates asked for a restraining order on the grounds that these measures were dangerous and cruel.

Ghosts. Tree roots. Cicadas. Deer and their mournful brown eyes. In small ways, these disruptive visitors, thes inconviences reminded us that for all our money and authority, we were not all-powerful. That we could not control our lives. That chaos lurked underneath the semblance of order.

your darling imperfections, your dear particularities

As a child, I enjoyed the story of the velveteen rabbit. I especially loved the part about love's roughness. Do you remember what I'm talking about? As time passed, the child's unbridled affection took a toll on the rabbit. Love dulled the rabbit's fur, rubbed the pink out of his nose, unraveled his threads and unloosed his stuffing. But the child didn't care that his rabbit was dirty and worn. The child's heart clung to the rabbit's imperfections, and loved him all the more for it. And the child's love made the rabbit Real.

I've been thinking about how I love the people who cross my path at work. By necessity, so much of my loving is "sisterly" and "dutiful." By this, I mean that I can have a "heart for the homeless population" in general, but I must remain professional – keep my distance.

I'm in a public role -- I work in Development for a large organization -- so that's fine. But I am sick of trying to represent people in the abstract. So today, while maintaining my distance, I am going to do things a little differently. Today, from my car window, or from across the table, I will look hard for funniness in your walk. I will listen for the quaver in your voice. I will watch for the expression you wear when you think you are alone, and I will use the most specific language I can to describe it. I want to see the damaged and frightened and imperfect and beautiful you. I don't want to just love my idea of you. I want to stop, breathe, and really see you. And then I want to write about that.

you rolling river

Why are the saddest songs always about rivers?

Think about it. "Just remember the Red River Valley, and the one who has loved you so true." Audrey Hepburn cooing on the balcony: "Old dream maker, you heartbreaker." "River" by Joni Mitchell. "Watching the River Flow" by Dylan. Even Gertrude's river song in "Hamlet."

And, of course, "Shenandoah."

Why do rivers provide such rich, loamy song-writing soil? Well, we all know rivers are beautiful. Also, their mossy, shady banks provide an idyllic (pastoral) setting for laughing, loving, and longing. Most of all, rivers' elusiveness adds to their pathos. For rivers cannot be stopped. They rush on and on and on, like time, like our little lives, never pausing for breath or regret.

If you haven't heard the famous jazz pianist Keith Jarrett play Shenandoah on his album "The Melody, At Night With You," please find the album and give it as a listen. As a high school student, my dad introduced me to this song, and I used to listen to it over and over again. Jarrett's arrangement still breaks my heart today. From the very first few notes, one feels that this song's beginning was borne out of a painful "goodbye."

In "Shenandoah," in our relationships, in our days on earth, there is no "hello" without a "goodbye." Anyone who has paid any attention to the Way of Things knows that music and life possess rules and rhythm: Death comes, and Time marches forward. As we grow older, we learn to work and love within this world.

As I listen to Jarrett play piano, I hear and feel that he holds nothing back. He does what he can with the time he's been given, but this power is tempered by his unwillingness to get to the "goodbye." His chords become increasingly fumbled. He is resisting the river's swift and insistent currents. You can even hear his raspy humming, coming from the pit of his stomach, and you think, this man's instrument is an extension of himself. Truly.

But before we know it, the song fades away. The melody, at night, with you is whisked away, and dissolved in the river, just like the minutes of our lives. The piano whispers. The chords slow. I think he's begging for just a moment more.

Hold it dearly when you have it, hold it dearly when you have it. That's the lesson of these mournful river songs.

so much for being an adult

Here is a list of items I left at the Carwells' house in villa park, IL:

my cell phone charger
half the computer cord for my work laptop
running shoes

This morning in my kitchen, I lamented my absentmindedness to Mel, my roommate, who sympathetically said, "Well, that's beyond the point of being frustrating. It's just funny!"

Maybe so, maybe so. There does seem to be a "forgetfulness" gene in our family. My dad called me a year ago to ask me, "What's wrong with you kids?" My sister had left an iron plugged in, face down, on the hardwood floor of our living room. Now, we conceal the dark burn with a house plant.

A few weeks ago in church, I reached into my purse for my Bible, and instead pulled out the DVD remote. I have no idea how it got there.

In the sixth grade, I lost six pairs of shorts in one summer.

I must conclude that my genes have made me this way.

went to chicago. all things go

"life is supposed to be epic"

Life is supposed to be epic. Even just glancing over the Psalms this morning, I see that David lived in a gamut of color and terror, praise and desperation. Three thousand years later, my life questions sometimes echo his.

God. Where are you?
Why is my flesh so confoundedly weak?
Why is this world so heartbreakingly lovely?

writing and translucency

In my acting program, we learned some basic moves on the trapeze. Flying was fun, but as we swung through the air, I wondered "Why are we doing this? Because it looks cool? How does this help our acting? "

One of the more blunt class members voiced this question to our (famous) instructor, who, in characteristic fashion, stared over our heads with parted lips, and smiled as if greeting a ghost.

He then whispered a word through clenched teeth: "Translucency."

Translucency, he went on to explain, is the ability to let go of the "process" behind the work, and to live honestly in the moment. In trapeze work, translucency manifests itself as a graceful weightlessness. Nobody can see the effort behind your leaps, your twirls, the bend in your back. You are transcending your own work.

Obviously, translucency becomes easier with skill and strength, as you gain confidence in your body, your instrument. You can be honest, spontaneous and messy in the moment without strain, over-thinking, self-analysis. Because, really – who wants to see someone thinking about their next move? You want to see the music take over: the dancer is propelled by the cello's tender growl. The lover is driven, not by the list of things she "wants in a man," but by the cracking open of her chest.

Lately, I have been thinking about how the concept of translucency, or rather practice of translucency -- it isn't just an idea, that's the point -- applies to writing. I have been thinking about this because I often edit my writing into oblivion. My voice loses its freshness and immediacy. I kill my own writing by trying too hard.

This isn't unique to me. I used to see this "trying too hard" in others' stories and essays when I worked in the writing center. I would ask the students to tell me about what they wanted to communicate, and they would verbally express clear, engaging ideas. On the paper, however, their thoughts were convoluted. Their effort had obfuscated their work, rather than strengthened it.

So now, I ask myself, where is my work most beautiful and clear? Well, this week, I reread some of my old journals, and I found lyrical, but effortless, writing – in other words, translucent work. And it just sort of comes out like that. Beauty in trying less.

By contrast, whenever I try to write anything longer or more "serious," I stumble and trip. My work becomes thought out instead of felt. So today, I am wondering how to work hard at writing, but eventually move beyond the struggle. I want my sentences to float buoyantly, gently, as if on currents of air, as if I'd only just caught them with a butterfly net.
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