WordArt

A Hero Deferred...

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Today, I thought I would share the gift of life by donating blood to the American Red Cross, as is my every so oftenly tradition. I have it to spare and I can save 3 lives, so if you know I'm a superhero this all makes sense.

So I roll down to my local donor center this noonish and sign in and do the tests and get my under the tongue and around the arm and out the finger and gently on the wrist and the list of bizarre and nearly perverse questions... finally we review the questionarre and I am ready to start gushing blood into the bag.

Then the nice lady gets to the part about having been out of the country within the last 12 months, and I'm like yea, I went to Costa Rica, what's the big D? And she starts asking me parts that I went to, and apparently a couple of them are high malaria risk locations, which is a bust because they told us there was almost no risk there. The even bigger bust is that I am now "deferred" (not allowed to donate blood) until July! This officially sucks, no?

So, what I need to ask of all of you, is to carry the torch for me. I will have missed approximately 5 donation cycles before I am able to give in July... and these are like guaranteed life helping/saving opportunities! If even just 5 of you could support me in my innability by donating blood between now and July, (or even every couple months between now and then) I would really appreciate it. If you haven't done it before, it is a relatively painless and incredibly rewarding experience. The people are kind and you always get snacks and juice when you are done. You're helping people, straight up, plain and simple, handing over some life juice.

Please take this opportunity and check the American Red Cross website for local donation sites and drive dates.

Much love, and thank you for your support. It means more to me than you may expect.

Courtney

Thanks giving to God, and to my fellow human
A rambling tale of my heart at the moment:

I suppose in every choice I am thankful for the freedom to choose it
I am thankful that while God could be anything, that he is Good
There have been deserts and tropical islands and cement shoes at the bottom of the ocean
Thanks for every place you've taken me
I think of every simple thing that I am thankful for
And they all become manifestations of God
When I hold them to light
And I am thankful for some clarity of vision
In that sense

Today I became accutely aware and anxious
That my choosing to follow the essential passion
The ticking in my soul, the God in me
It leaves me out of control, not like wild
Rather out of control of myself in a fearfully constricting way
And then I remembered that it is okay,
Because it isn't like I'm giving it up to someone else like me
I am giving it up to the one who knows both the plan and the person
That I can actually do best what I am best suited to do
If I continue to commit to this

So the universe is returned to order
Lucky for all of you
My anxieties subsiding in appropriate ways
As I recognize my lack of control as a gainful-loss

So I am thankful, at the moment, for the God whose nature makes me as I am and makes that alright at the same time.

The other things are great. The gravy. The house the cars the food the job the family supporting me the friends the senses. And I am thankful for them in many ways. But to me a prayer of thanks is like an exhaling. A joyful acceptance of things as they are, in and out. If I had none of the gravy I would be as thankful. I am sure of it. I'm not proud, I just want to be honest. That's all.

I am oh-so overwhelmed,
While remaining ever-so underwhelming.
I am tired of working so hard.
But where are the fruits of my labor,
For me to eat and be sustained?

Empty girl, are you unfilled?
Is there a leak, are you a sink?
Or are you simply a vacuous wasteland:
Take love, take love take love take.
Return nothing.
It is burning a hole in the pocket that you do not have.

You had some
Resources, we call them.
You came with some and picked others up.
You put them in a backpack for later use,
Then broke the zipper.
What a fuckin waste.

Cry yourself to sleep again,
Wake up anxious and angry with yourself,
Have them tell you not to be so hard.
Don’t ever tell them that you know what you’ve wasted,
Because you know;
Better than them, you know.

Waste another minute.
Just one more, one more one more one.
Every time your heart beats, every tear breath nervous twitch second wasted thinking of a better word for this and then there is that thing over there you need to stop this stop this stop this stop


Breathe deeply,

Slowly,

Know that God forgives,

(How kind)

Fall asleep believing you have done all you could.

Wake up tomorrow,

Stomach sinking, teeth grinding, leg twitching.
What a shame, what a pity, what a waste.
A criminal to your own supposed system of the Right.

Lately I have looked at life on such a grand scale, forgetting the beautiful little adventures that tune our eyes as drifting sparks to the brushfire that is the Grand Adventure of life. Today I caught a glimpse again; got carried away on the wind with a snapping spark that caught my eye.

The retreat is over, and I have decided that I will ride home alone. I have done a lot of thinking this weekend, and while it has been water to my soul I don't want to talk my way home. I want to turn up the radio and sing very loud and possibly out of key if the song is right. I have already packed, so I toss my Bible and scarf on the passenger seat, wish them a good ride, buckle up, and pull forward without looking back. I engage the four-wheel drive, and haul past the little turtles holding 'drive slowly' signs. The children are at church, no need to slow down.

I hit the main road, I am free. I have been singing that James Blunt song to all of my friends out the window, mostly because it has often repeated lines of "goodbye" and because it makes them all quite uncomfortable when I say "lover", and this is my role. So "Goodbye my lover, goodbye my friend" to you all!

I flick on the radio to get something else in my head, I am taking the little curves at the highest possible velocity for safe home-getting, because I can. What do you know, Sir James is on the dial, singing to me about how I have been the one and how he shared my dreams. I've kissed your lips and held your head, Shared your dreams and shared your bed, I know you well, I know your smell, I've been addicted to you. -- Ah, I know exactly what you mean.

But I won't be stuck in a moment, so the song ends and I change the channel, Switchfoot is telling me that this is my life and wondering if I am who I want to be. I tell them in my mind as I sing their questions at the top of my lungs: No guys, I'm not everything I dreamed that I would be when the world was younger and I had everything to lose. I am so much more and so much other. The world hasn't gotten that much older, and I now have nothing to lose. I am becoming, and I am being. This must be who I want to be, because it is who I am being.

And suddenly the music stops mattering. I think there was some more Switchfoot, I vaguely remember singing along with The Cure, and Rascal Flatts, some good stuff like that. In some instant the slow truck in front of me had disappeared and the road had widened to two lanes, leaving me free to wander at my own pace. The sidelines became marked with signs of scores and symbols, all leading to the very adventurous game. Some might recongnize these signs as warnings of the dangerous turns ahead, giving suggested speeds to take them safely. To me and my Wild and Dangerous comrades, there is an entirely other symbology:

• The yellow numbered sign is of the curve's rating. The scale is inverted from 55--being the lowest fun rating, to about 25--the highest fun rating.
• The adjacent sign with an arrow representing the turn may show a slightly curved straight arrow, indicating that one may begin gassing directly after getting into the turn because it will soon be over.
• The fully curved arrow indicates a complete hairpin turn. In this case one should downshift, take a deep breath, and gain control, and get ready for the rush.

The feeling that kissing gives to lips, these turns give to the rest of the body. As the tires grip the road and centrifugal force tells the vehicle to fly off a cliff, every neuron in the body gets a hit of some craved adventure signal. About halfway down the hill I hit a Full-Curve 30, the best this mountain has seen yet. I kick to third, turn down the radio, take a deep breath, and smile deeply as my hands tighten on the wheel, my right quad tightens my foot above the brake, both arms firm up in yoga like posture. Jeep and I take this curve at the absolute maximal tension point, which happens also to be the climax of the curve for safety and pleasure. It seems to go on for ever, like we may have gone through the mountain and come back out somehow. It was absolutely beautiful. I hear only rushing wind and my own voice cheering at our success. Yeahea! I suppose it is like a blend of yeehaw and woohoo, both of which I adore.

After this, we float down the rest of the hill, rocking out to Otis Redding singing 'Sitting on the Dock of the Bay', finally meeting a red light and a car full of friends at the bottom. I sing to them with my flush face and euphorically smiling lips. They shake their heads and smile, tell me I'm getting on the wrong freeway. I tell them that the road is my home now, so I certainly don't need directions. The light turns green and I greet the road, knowing I have somehow just been initiated. Welcome Home.

I would like to congratulate myself on having completed a new poem, the first of its kind in my work in that it is split into two stanzas, and in that it is not written in sadness. I did not think the second possible, and definitely did not think the first possible in light of the second. I will be presenting it in the form of a reading this weekend, which seems to me for some reason an acceptable excuse not to publish it here yet. I think that I am unprepared to give it up in written form yet... there is a danger in giving people the opportunity to read, reread, scrutinize, analyze. I would let you do these things to past art, I have detached from them sufficiently. but this is new, these words fresh, still deeply connected through the neural framework to my soul. So, you cannot have them yet. Someday.

Anyway, yay for me. I have created, for the first time in a long time. It feels like a freedom I had forgotten.