Poems for Jesus: #3

Just That Kind

So this is your mercy, then
The double blind
The double bind
You put yourself through
Your mercy does cruel things to you
But you're just that kind
That's what I'm thinking when
I'm eating pods
And turning clods
And all the gold's run through
So I turn back to home and you
But you're just that kind

My Leo Tolstoy Vendetta

I am not at all shy about hating Leo Tolstoy.

At this very moment, I could list off half a dozen literature professors I had in college who would lecture me soundly that I don't really hate Leo Tolstoy, that perhaps I dislike a particular work of Tolstoy, or have a bone to pick with Tolstoy the author as opposed to Tolstoy the historical figure (as if Tolstoy the author were the evil twin of Tolstoy the man). But I find that my bloodthirsty rage against Tolstoy is not half so satisfying when I give way to such pedantic discriminations, so I'll just go ahead and say that I hate Leo Tolstoy, and if this particular DWM (dead white male) were loafing around St Petersburg today, this LWF (living white female) would hop on the first transatlantic flight for the singular satisfaction of punching him in the nose.

The infamous, nefarious, and otherwise intolerable crime for which I cannot forgive Mr. Tolstoy is that of having written War and Peace. Now, I'll surmise that for most of us, this quintessential Russian novel, longer than the Bible, falls under the category of books that everyone would like to have read, but no one wants to read. (For the record, I do like some things that Tolstoy has written. He has some first-rate short stories with which I can find no fault.) During an ill-fated trip to the bookstore recently, I picked up a copy of War and Peace, a delicate little 5-lb tome, to make myself feel better about the otherwise fluffy fare I was purchasing, in the same way a dieter might eat 5 lbs of lima beans to assuage their conscience concerning a piece of German chocolate cake.

My first charge against the Mr. Tolstoy is this: War and Peace entirely ruined my Memorial Day Weekend. Tolstoy lured me so effortlessly into a flood of Russian dissipation and depression that it was all I could do, on this loveliest of four-day weekends, not to compensatorily imbibe large volumes of vodka. Without my here rehashing 1100 pages of plot about Rostovs and Borises, Sophias and Natashas, you would have to read it yourself to understand, and if you've ever experienced any suicidal ideation, I beg of you not to attempt it.

My second charge against Mr. Tolstoy is this: He's way too damn good of a novelist. Yes, I said damn. He breaks every single rule that I know of. Instead of sticking to one point of view, he introduces hundreds of intricately imagined characters with such brilliancy that I feel sucked into the vortex of their psyche, drowned in their guilt and their downward slide. He drones on for epic lengths about parties and balls, dinners and pointless affairs of state, as if he wanted to cover eight years of boring Russian domestic life in real time. No major publishing house in our sound byte age, I venture to guess, would have found any place for this novel of novels but the waste basket. But it is perfect. As a novel, absolutely perfect, because it thrusts myself and all mankind into the light of day, with all its pettiness and haunted searching and irrational loves. That is why I could not put it down, even while I was busy wanting to burn it in some satisfyingly intricate way. It was like reading my life.

Nobody, Mr. Tolstoy, should be that good.

Step in the Dark

It's hard to wait well, especially because in the short term, the most profound satisfaction in waiting is derived from doing it poorly (ie griping to your family, the mailman, the grocery bagger, and the cable repair guy about how miserably impatient you feel). But I think it would be worth learning to wait well - I say this hypothetically, I'm a lousy waiter - because so much of our lives is spent waiting . . . to meet The One, to marry The One, to get that guy/girl your married to get their act together, to have children, to get promoted, to feel a speck of joy, and, if we are lucky and survive all that waiting, to die. All through the years, we wait. Heaven is this - the arrival of all that, in our inmost being, we have waited for our entire lives, and never quite found.

At this particular moment in time, I am waiting to learn whether or not I was accepted to the Johns Hopkins MA Writing program. The tentative plan is to take one course per semester (fall, spring, summer) while still working until I can complete my master's degree. It would take three years, but hopefully I could avoid being in debt by doing it slowly. I've actually had some people advise me against entering such a program, but it's the only way I know to stab at the thing I love best to do, and someday want to do all the live long day. It's a step, even if it's just a step in the dark.

Not Mickey Mantle

The last time I touched a softball bat was March of 1995. I played slow-pitch softball with dire little-girl intensity for three seasons. By the time I was nine, I was on the All-Star team. The next season, I fell apart completely. I shivered in the batter's box, praying that every pitch would miss the strike zone and I would have the good fortune to walk. One defense, I went from being a reliable shortstop to a rank outfielder. I cried my way through game after game, while my parents watched from the bleachers and tried miserably to do nothing about it.

Halfway through the season, I quit the team. I don't know when in my life I've felt more like a complete failure. The motivational poster in my elementary school hallway, "The only way to fail is to quit," confirmed these self-effacing sentiments. A month later, on a family vacation to Santa Cruz, someone discovered that I'd gone horribly near-sighted, and I couldn't catch or hit the ball primarily because I couldn't see it. So my personal tragedy became, in hindsight at least, a morose little comedy.

When IJM's Joe Jordano, our resident bass-voiced, brillo-haired Italian, organized this year's softball team, I decided to join in hopes of redeeming my ignonimous past. We had our first game last night at the corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue in DC. We were soundly pummeled by another corporate team all dressed in orange, 9-3. But I don't know when I've ever enjoyed playing softball more. A quarter mile away, the Washington Monument glowed fleshly pink in the sunset, rising from the ground like a granite sword piercing a green scabbard. Canadian geese drummed the air with their wings, and airplanes, soundless and slow at this distance, wheeled toward their hangars at the National Airport like great metal cows coming home. In the middle of these pleasant reflections, an aluminum CRACK announced the oncoming grounder. I woke up long enough to chase it and throw it to the cutoff man. Then back to daydreaming in righfield.

As it turns out, I can still catch and hit. As long as the flyball's not too high, the grounder's not too gnarly, and the pitch is gently lobbed. I never said I was Mickey Mantle.

Westminster

I'm a sucker for old stone churches, so when I saw the stately Gothic spires of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, I followed them down Nicollet Mall to Twelth Avenue. The main entrance to the sanctuary was locked, but little arrows led me around to the the other side (the church occupied an entire city block), where I could enter past a receptionists's desk. I crept into the sanctuary. My mouth fell open and I gasped. Just as quickly, I shut it again, noticing too women wending between the pews checking to make sure that the little half-sized pencils were sitting properly in their holes in the backs of the pews.

I wish I had words for the loveliness of the inside of that church, oval like the inside of an Easter egg, and colored as brightly by the strong noonday sun stained with intricately leaded glass. Over the galley, a massive corona of purple irises inlaid with butterflies. Majestic saints and golden columns. I wish had the words for it, but truthfully I don't.

If an Ethiopian Answers My Cell Phone

Dear readers,

There are three possible reasons that a strange Ethiopian will answer my cell phone if you call it.

A) I have signed up at the last minute for a humanitarian mission to the Horn of Africa, but I have been captured and am being held for ransom by a gang of international terrorists in Addis Ababa.

B)I have fallen madly in love with my Amharic-speaking neighbor from down the hall, we have decided to elope, and he is holding all my calls.

C) I took a taxi to the airport this morning, driven by an Ethiopian driver, and I left my cell phone in the backseat of his car.

A or B would be much more exciting, but the answer, as you might have guessed (I'd be troubled if you were thinking A or B), is C. So if you call my cell phone and an Ethiopian answers, don't be surprised. I won't be able to pick it up until Friday.

The Broken Point

Past the breaking point, there is the broken point, where all the striving gives way to an utter stall, an exhalation that echoes in the dark. Saturday night. 9:30. I've paid twenty dollars to be let back into my apartment (in my general distraction, I've left the keys at the office again.) I wither onto the sofa. Bethany vacuumed the livingroom before she left for chapter camp, a brief mercy. A thunderstorm is growling over Arlington, shaking the trees, plunking heavy drops against the windowpane. I want to cry from excess of exhaustion, the way a small child cries, not from any specific motive, but because there seems to be nothing left to do.

But I love the broken point. I do. It is precisely here, at the breach in the wall, that my God slips in to find me, where there is nothing to drown out his red-letter whispers. Oh, joy.