withhandsandfeet-blog

[withhandsandfeet-blog]

Big Plans= Big Doubts

I woke up with big plans.  I mean change the world kind of plans,  (or, at least make yourself a better person kind of plans.  Or, maybe just make breakfast kind of plans)  and right away the doubts started.  I mean right away!  So here’s what happened:  Last night I went to the library.  I picked up four books.  One by Yeats, one by E.E. Cummings, one by Frost, and one by T.S. Eliot.  Then for two hours I read sections out of each one.  And do you know what I learned?  T.S. Eliot thinks that April is the cruelest month.  That’s it.  That’s all.  I would have had more success trying to translate a language from farts.

Here’s where the doubts came in.  I thought what I was doing for the last year was poetry!  YouTube's greatest cringe compilation video has nothing on me at this moment.  I am embarrassed!  I am that dude in high school doing the one handed stylized layup while everyone else is doing dunks. “Doing dunks”.  What is this writing?  I’m keeping that in.

Side note: It might not be doubt but instead common sense or objective rationalism.  Here’s another place of doubt.  Get a trashcan near you for the vomit.  I was pretty sure I could make money with my writing! Oh shit!  You weren’t ready for that were you!  See even now I am writing this like someone will read it and enjoy it.  Maybe someone will enjoy it but only like we enjoyed wiggling that loose tooth when we were kids because: 

1.  There was something exciting about the pain.

2.  We couldn't wait to get that dollar.

Another assumption has been made and the writer accepts he may be the only weirdo that liked the pain of pulling on a loose tooth.  What if there is something wrong with me! 

I’m still writing this like I have an audience!  All those other poets were crazy in a way that contributed to their poetry but mine is in a way that’s just crazy!

So why share this with my made up audience?  I realize my writing isn’t great but I though my vulnerability and insight and truthfulness could make up for it.  That’s not why I’m sharing this though.  I’m sharing this because its fun for me.  It’s fun to write something that perhaps a trilling people have already written better or haven't written better.  it’s fun for me to breakdown myself and my delusions, and my insecurities and my dementia and my failures.  “Its interesting to cut yourself to pieces once in a while and wait to see if the fragments will sprout.”  Got that one from Eliot too.

[withhandsandfeet-blog]

We the Wanders

Having become too sophisticated to live in tents, traveling were there is food and water and the promise of a future with all our possessions on our backs.  We replaced our tent stakes with blocks of concrete, our tarps with wood and tar.  Our things are too many to carry on our backs so we buy things to put our things in.  The promise of a future is no longer our promise but a promise we bought from someone else.  A once-in-a-lifetime deal we saw on QVC while trying to sleep.  We no longer have to worry about sleep either.  There is a pill for that.  Besides to get by in this world there is no time for sleep.  Surrounded by people but we don’t know anyone.  We once wandered from place to place, now we wander from purchase to purchase.

Night-owls, crying in the night.

Hide and seekers.  Always eluding our own discovery because we have fallen in love with hiding.

Come out, come out wherever you are.

[withhandsandfeet-blog]

The Good Samaritan

What is this story?  The story of the “all we want” and the “nothing we have”.  The emptiness that can come.

Stepping out of my car and closing the door it makes a horrible crunch.  The sound of something not aligned properly and being forced back into its origin.  A scrapping and popping.  Terrible.  A noise I have heard now a thousand times.  “I really need to fix that.”  A statement I have made a thousand times.  Why do I do that?  Why do I avoid the things which by avoiding will only cause more work for me overtime?  But I’m not here to self actualize, this is work.  

I look around, entering into observation mode.  The grounds remarkably unremarkable.  All the other yards have something that stands out, some plant or tree or carefully designed garden.  This yard lacks nothing in design or expense but misses the mark in some other way.  It seems curated by some algorithm.  The house was in complete agreement.  Beautiful, yes.  A mansion, yes.  But any passersby would quickly glance by it onto the other homes in the neighborhood.  A finished masterpiece but simultaneously a blank canvas.  Before I could stir up some cogitation the front door opened.  

The Reverend’s wife met me with a smile.  I startled when I saw her face, the very example of contradiction.  Her smile said “the Lord is good and so is my life”.  Her eyes were not so disciplined.  They seemed tired and empty.  Not containing nothing emptiness but more like if you were deep underground on one side of a giant cavern and on the opposite side there was a lit match barely visible as it neared the end of its fuse.  Empty because there was more of nothing than there was something.  It made me sad and I caught my hand moving toward my chest as if my heart hurt.  There was no reason to greet her with anything more than a common salutations.  She was a hollow structure.  

She Led me into the living room.  It had all the appearances of such a named place.  Many pictures on the walls of family and friends in occasions of joy, all telling a tale of afternoons spent in love.  Most of them looked like they had been unmoved since the genesis of Reverend John Doe’s empire.  The occasional phrase that has been regurgitated in some form or another in every living room in the world like: ‘Bless this House’ or ‘Family is All’.  The couch sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by accompanied chairs.  There was an uneasiness about the room, It was clean and neat and silent but felt much more like sterility than comfort.

The Reverend soon walked in and introduced himself with a warm hug.  A uncomfortable greeting if performed by anyone but him.  The uneasiness that seconds before surrounded me hid itself.  I liked him right away.  Later I was shocked to find my fondness had turned to love.  I had followed his career closely and was well aware of people’s adoration toward him but still found his charisma to be disarming.  This must be how he had come to such power.  In just fifteen years of pastoring his church had moved to three services, opened ten satellite locations, planted fifteen new churches, grown to 1000 members, was visited by more than 15000 people weekly, started thirty new ministries, and  had been credited with countless converts.  All under the leadership and shepherding of Reverend John Doe.  Still only in his forties he was as much a pop-culture icon as a religious cornerstone.  His realm of influence ranged from presidents to movie stars to the average Dick and Jane.  He has been on the front cover of TIME, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and The Wall Street Journal to name a couple publications.  He is able to cross all political and religious divides.  Already a legend but completely present with me a mere mortal.

He demanded respect but not in a authoritative way.  When he listened you could tell he was all there, right there in complete attention to what you were saying, focused and undistracted.  He balanced the line of edgy and conflict.  He was dynamic, personable, satisfying.

Suddenly I saw his family on a couch behind him  I never noticed them come in.  They sat straight, perfect, quiet, almost fading in with the rest of the decorations.  They all sat smiling in silence.  And there was something else, they all seemed to be waiting as one.  A stale waiting, a vain waiting but a unanimous waiting. I forgot they were there as the Reverend told stories about the early years; revivals, miraculous healings, stories of salvation, redemption, freedom, marriages saved, families united.  The hungry fed, the sick given medical attention, the forgotten brought into visibility.  The country was changing.  Politics, legislation, morality, it was all changing and it was because of this man.  In between stories his family would catch my eye.  Still sitting, smiling, and waiting.  That terrible waiting.

At the end of the interview I thanked him and headed out the door.  I turned to say my final goodbye.  His family was still sat on the couch, heads crooked toward me, eyes on the Reverend.  Still sitting as one, still smiling as one, still waiting as one, and waiting and waiting.  A horrible, deafening, blinding, waiting.

[withhandsandfeet-blog]

It seems quite clear.  Too clear, and too comfortable.  The path stretched out before me.  Where that path leads I have no idea.  What are the means of this path, too fuzzy.  But the clarity is this: this is the path for me.  Of that there is no question.  There is a question, the same doubtful, insecure questions that have been with me for so long and are so twisted into my identity that they might as well be called me.  But they have names and I have learned to live despite them, a man who doubts before he jumps is the man I was, before. So here I go, one foot in front, each step makes a noise and each noise pulls on.  Its hard going down a road you don’t know the destination to.  Its hard to not see the end.  But I have never had such foresight, even when I thought I had vision, I was wrong.  My lot in life wasn’t vision but just one foot in front and then the other.  And repeat.  

[withhandsandfeet-blog]

^^^ Meet my husband, Quintin. I’ll be introducing him to you.

I’m sure you’ve heard all of the cliche love references about people in love; he is the peanut butter to my jelly, my other half, the missing piece to my puzzle…blah blah blah. While I wouldn’t deny that I haven’t once said those things, I will go on to say that once upon a time, we decided to get married (ya know, we thought we were in love) and upon saying our vows to each other, before our God and our witnesses, we made a solemn commitment to each other and that was the end to our beginning. Every passing day, every passing year, I learn from him and about him in new and different ways. And every so often, I fall madly in love all over again. I thought I knew him then, but it turns out, there is so much more than love.

Quintin is far more brave and wild than I am or will ever dream of being. His appetite for adventure is one of the things that I love most about him. He loves being outside and being one with nature; being a part of it’s every move. He is renewed by it. He longs to live among it, breathe in it’s wild air and drink it’s rushing waters. He wants to adventure always. He wants to experience life in a real and hands on way. He cares about hearts and souls, not just the exterior of what his eyes relay to his brain. He is attentive and sweet, present and thoughtful. He has a work ethic better than anyone I know, which I think he got from his mom. #shoutouttoallyoumamas! He is determined. Committed. Steadfast. This man is tender and quick to listen. His willingness to change and humble his heart challenges me daily. He fights for what he believes in and commits to. I love him for who he was when I married him and I love him more for who he is today. I look forward to the many years ahead, if the good Lord wills it.

He is my wild adventure.

This is my wife, Jade^^^

Jade met a girl in the bathroom at church because Jade liked the girls shoes and the girl liked Jades dress.  They talked about their clothes, returned to their seats and Jade told her husband “I just met a friend in the bathroom!”

Jade takes a million photos, looks at the display on her DSLR, moves her mouth all to one side, frowns and says “One more, this is the last, I promise”.

Jade dreams of climbing mountains, having twins, owning bicycles, growing avocado trees, being best friends with Taylor Swift, swimming with whales, spending a month in Hawaii, being skinnier, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, having her own horses, being with her husband more.

Jade looks forward to waffle Saturdays.

Jade thinks its funny to put a boogie in a very noticeable place on her nostril and see if her husband says anything… He never does.

Jade talks to her cats and dogs as if they can understand her and speaks for them in mock response.

Jade gets excited at sunsets, dancing, friends, dresses, haircuts, spa days, traveling, learning, eating (dessert), dreaming.

Jade feels bad that when she was younger she would steal money from her brother  because he always had some and she always spent hers on candy, and then use the stolen money to buy candy.

Jades favorite jokes are poop and fart ones.

Once, on her husbands 30th birthday she went on an hour-long hike with him in the hottest most humid day of July, sweating her balls off just so people could get his surprise birthday party ready.

Jade hates sweating her balls off.

Jade once prayed that God would help her find her dog’s collar and found it.

Jade once prayed that God would help her dad and now she lives next to him.

Jade has prayed for a horse since she was six but still doesn’t have one.

Jade laughs when she is happy and sometimes cries.  She laughs when she is angry and sometimes cries.  She laughs when she is sad but mostly cries.  She laughs when she is annoyed… her husband can be really annoying.

Once Jade lived with one of her best friends and she loved it.  Once she lived with her  mother-in-law and she loved it.  Now she lives in a 30-year-old RV in someones backyard and she loves it.

She bumped into an old friend and they stayed up all night playing super Nintendo and talking and so she married him.

Jade loves volleyball and so she signed up for a monthly volleyball tournament and every month she went and played till she knew everyone and everyone knew her.  And they became her friends.

She coached middle school volleyball and loved the girls she coached and loved the coaches she coached with and they became her friends.

She worked at a school and had so much fun with the kids and teachers and misses them all because they became her friends.

Recently she and her husband almost got a ticket for being too close to a seal sanctuary.  She had said in the first place she didn’t think it was a good idea to be so close.  And then later that night they parked at a trail head and decided to hike up to a campsite.  She again didn’t think it was a good idea and thought they might get in trouble but put on her pack and started hiking.  The trail was thin and the side of a cliff, 3 miles straight up and it was dark and you couldn’t see anything without headlamps and her dog killed a skunk and it seemed like it was going to take forever to get to the campsite but she did.  And Jade and her husband set up their tent and she laid down on her sleeping mat but her dog wanted to sleep on it too so she slept mostly off the mat and mostly on the hard, rocky ground.  She didn’t really sleep.  The next morning she woke up on the side of the top of a mountain and gasped as she saw fog returning out to the Pacific ocean and the different shades of red and yellow as the sun came up and the green tree tops blanketing the mountains with the occasional rock jutting out and heard the seals barking from the beach thousands of meters below.  She got up, took a million pictures with her husband, looked at her DSLR display, frowned and said “One more, I promise this is the last one”, hiked down the trail passing the dead skunk, got back in her car and drove off to be with friends.

I love Jade.