um...intimidation...

intimidation: transitive verb
to compel or deter by or as if by threats**

a few posts back i wrote about my need to write more. i'm trying. i really am. i've posted a few things and taken them down because they're too personal and they need more work. not that all i post here are finished perfect pieces--far from it. i've come to discover that this space serves largely for the great dumping ground that is my random thoughts. i love to tell stories--finding them can be a challenge--but when i do find them, it's fun to take them out and polish them up and throw them in this online journal. i used to use the counter tool all the time to see how many of you out there in cyber land were reading along with me, where you're from and what key word got you here (some of those key words, by the way, are just really frightening. psychotherapy by a highly skilled therapist, my friends, is good for those of you searching the internet with combos like "priest" and "happy ending massage."). but i don't check much, if at all any more. i just want to write. i want to find some way to harness the energy and the random sentences that run around in my head. sometimes i write them down. this is my most recent random sentence: last night i dreamed that the london bridge was falling down. i waded in the waters in a vain attempt to hold it up.

so today i'm at story studio, which is where, many moons ago, i took a fiction writing class and met three women who quickly became my good friends. today is an open writing session. for $12 i get quiet, wifi, all the coffee i can drink, twizzlers and promts on the hour to get the writing juices flowing. i came in a little late, so i've not yet heard a prompt, although i'm looking forward to it. although i started a sermon earlier this week, i think i'm going to turn it into a blog post and move in a differerent direction. if you're a regular reader (hi mom, hi papa), it'll be the post on ted haggard.

there are 3 classrooms at story studio in addition to an open space with sofas and the coffee pot and the office set up. i confess i wish i was on the sofa instead of in the classroom, although, realistically speaking, this space is probably more productive. walking in was an exercise in fear. this event started at 9, with a come-by-anytime welcome. i arrived around 1:10 and it's so crowded. i had hoped the back classroom would be a little more empty, and i did find a seat. but walking into a room full of very intense, artistic looking 20 years olds is, well, intimidating. at least i have a mac. out of the 10 computers in this room, all are macs, save 2. so at least i can appear to be a cool, deep artistic type.

the pounding of keys, the clacking sound of word moving from head to finger to computer is both distracting and at the same time comforting. the guy next to me has, hands down, the loudest typing fingers i've ever heard. boom, boom, boom. he just updated his word count on the white board: 1438. rockstar? maybe. that's just a sermon in my world. speaking of...i'd best get to the preaching part of today. wish me luck!

**www.m-w.com

Gatsby's green light

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that is was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning--

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.**

I fell in love with the Great Gatsby, reading it, like every other Sophomore at Clarke Central High School. Well, sort-of. Over Christmas break of my sophomore year I had major surgery. After a week in the hospital, Christmas break was over, but I still had weeks to go before I was ready to go to school. So my mom served as my home school teacher. At first I was so weak and in so much pain, that about all I could do was listen. My mom read to me (and to this day I love hearing books and being read to). I don't know how far she got before I picked it up and actually read it myself, but two chapters in and I was hooked.

My love affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald would last for years. And while I read other books, it really always came back to Gatsby and the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. The poetry of the book (you will be hard pressed to show me text that is more beautiful than that last page of the Great Gatsby I've printed above), the language, the rhythm all combined in my 15 year old head to create the symphony that still plays for me today. I hear echoes of those words and patterns weave their way into my sermons, often unnoticed until long after the sermon's been delivered. I long to be able to write, to use words, like Fitzgerald does.

Something about the green light, the searching for and never finding, and not realizing it's right there--it evoked something visceral in me. I used to think about Gatsby and the green light and wonder about my father. So much that he longed for seemed to be right before him, but he just kept missing it. It was so close, just right beyond his line of vision.

But now, as I read it, I read myself into it. In the strange season in which I find myself--the season of longing--I think that's what I'll call it--I read these words with new eyes. I don't fully understand it, this season. I think that's okay. [H]is dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. My hopes, human hopes and dreams sometimes seem so out of grasp. Not rooted in the material, but crying out for that which is unnameable, that which is beyond us, the longing continues to call to us, or at least, to me. And paired with the longing, if we are lucky, is that other piece that Fitzgerald names, that we... for a transitory enchanted moment [hold our] breath...compelled into an aesthetic contemplation [that can be] neither understood nor desired, face to face...with something commensurate with [our] capacity for wonder. And therin lies my hope. That my, that our capacity for wonder will lead us to and eventually beyond the siren's green light.

**The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Page 182 of the 1988 Hudson River Edition. If that's not your edition, just read the last 4 paragraphs of the book.

update

thanks to all for your concerns and thoughts around my apartment mess. word on the street is that the plumber is done and the tile and drywall guy will finish up tomorrow. good news, meaning i don't have to move. i'll confess i haven't been in it since sunday, so i'm not sure what to expect.

i could kvetch about the management, but i'll hold off for now. i won't believe it's done and ready to go until i see it with my own eyes, but i'm hopeful that life may be a little less wet this week!

are you kidding me??

i am so beyond angry right now.

my apartment is managed by a company, S&M property management. the name should've been my first clue of the hell i was entering into.

i called yesterday. pipes frozen. i called during business hours, no one answered, so i left a message. no one ever called back.

paged the emergency number today, beginning at 10:00 AM. no one ever called back.
upped my paging to every 10 minutes once the pipes burst and the flooding became about ankle deep. no one ever called back.

finally, now that the kitties and i have made our way to shelter, i page one last time. this time he answers--the pager was on vibrate on the kitchen counter and he couldn't hear it.

describing the damage as a "minor catastrophe," he tells me i may have to move, but that he doesn't have a free unit. asking where i should stay, as i have no working bathroom, he tells me to rent a hotel room. i ask if they'll pay--maybe, maybe not. do i have renters insurance?
thanks be to god, i do, but it strikes me that this isn't MY problem--it's theirs.

i hate this apartment. it stinks from water damage in ages past. and now i'm furious with the rental company and their crappy service.

moreover, i hate the idea, i'm terrified of the idea that i might have to move again. and i still have a sermon to write...

jesus loves me--here's proof!

signs of hope--both my grandmothers have/had dementia in some form. here's hope for me and a get out of jail free card

on being like martha

i've been so remiss with this blog of late. i sit down and i WANT to write but i just don't make time for it, or i make the time, only to find myself distracted by so many other things...martha, martha you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.

yeah, if jesus said that to me today, it think i might just stick my tongue out at him and tell him that if he's so mellow, that HE can go fix the boiler! and then he would. and i'd feel bad. so maybe that's not such a good idea.

i have been so distracted by things of late--things like boilers (at some point i'll post on the boiler going all berserk on CHRISTMAS EVE, when it was below zero outside) and money (i had a come to jesus meeting with myself and finally got honest about my debt this week. it's not pretty, but it's better when taking an honest look, i guess).

there's also just weirdness in the work i do. dealing with people's emotions, their anger and anxiety, the way it gets channeled, the way it is expressed--sometimes it feels like it becomes, in some small way, part of me. by which i mean, that, because i have work and growing up still to do, i take on some of this. and i'm trying to learn what's mine and what's not--what's my responsibility and what's not. and then there's just the whole learning to deal with the human condition and all its complexities. i have miles to go before i sleep.

martha, martha you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.

in my prayer life, i keep asking what it is i'm supposed to be doing, what it is i'm missing. the response is always the same--read your bible. write. lately, i do neither. so...here's my stab at listening in the new year.

Happy New Year!

happy 2009! i'm in DC with friends, still in my PJs, which makes me very happy. and i cooked a good southern girl new year's day feast. the menu includes: ham (not necessary, but i couldn't find a ham hock last night for flavor and our hosts had a ham needing to be baked, and so...), sweet potatoes, braised cabbage and apples (basically butter, with a bit of cabbage and apples thrown in for good measure), black eyed peas, attempted in the hopping john style, and, of course, collard greens. my mom, rockstar that she is, found the Grit recipe and i jotted it down on the phone. they are so good and so easy that my new year's resolution (if i made them) might just be to make them twice a month.

if you want to make some Grit style collards, here's my adapted recipe. please note that, with the exception of baking, i rarely measure. i eyeball and taste, so if you use this, please do the same:**

2-3 pounds of collard greens, soaked and washed at least 3 times, de-stemmed and torn or cut into bite size pieces
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
3/4 cup cider vinegar
pinch of baking soda
1 tbsp hot sauce
salt & pepper
a couple tablespoons of olive oil

put greens in a pot. cover with water plus 3 cups additional water
add stuff.
boil for 45 minutes to an hour and a half--try them here and there until they're done to your liking. happy new year!!

**the grit recipe includes the grit yeast gravy, which i didn't make and since that was left out, i majorly upped the cider vinegar.