7:50 p.m. - 07/27/03
:((the size of our love.::)
And now it's time for some for some more...varied...topics. Or at least, some more varied emotions. The world does not consist entirely of happy things.
I'm caught up, not entirely against my will, in Rogers. I've been eating yogurt pretzels and crocheting. I talked to Sara, my sister by journey as well as by soul, who's simultaneously there and anticipating the time when she will not be. I'm thinking about us, about Rogers, about Tracy, about what it was like to be there, about what it was like to leave, and I can't seem to find anything in me that I haven't already said. I can't seem to turn this information around in such a way that I discover something I didn't already know. I know about leaving. I know about being there. I know about loving, generally, and I know about specific loves. What else am I supposed to say? Why do I feel the need to talk about it - about something vague inside of me - when I know so much already and none of what I know seems to fit what I want to say? Oh, sure, I could tell and retell stories until the house has sold, but that doesn't seem right somehow. It seems like there's something close but not entirely the same I want to express. There's so much to reiterate, but beyond that, the things that I have yet to start saying ... Maybe they're things for which there aren't words. Yet, I'm so compelled to tell them...
My ears are pounding with my pulse, and there's a yearning at the edge of my brain - come on, come on, come on... It must be here.
What? ...I love them. Rogers, which is more than the sum of its wonders, is better described as people than place. But it's more than that. It's more than the addition of Leah to Stacy to Steph to Brea to Dave to me to Sara and so on...It's more. It's more than anything I ever experienced prior. More than theater in stale gymnasiums during blazing summer heat. More than attention coaxed out from a source powerful enough to scratch sparks from the stones inside of me. More than eighth grade when flights of angels sang me closer to awakening. More than anything I'd ever known. And unexplainable. We store meaning in the place. I can't imagine how many people have stored their stories and their love and their transformation there. I only know that the colors and the textures and the smells all hold tiny cells of what we love. What we love is too intangible, too beyond my scope, too powerful, and so we store it in pieces...in scraps of crocheted fabrics, in drawings, in mix cds, in poems. In journals. I can't say what Rogers is. There are certain words and looks exchanged between residents that work like passwords, giving us access to the knowledge. I can't tell Sara what Rogers is, but I can inhale deeply or sigh at such a moment that she knows I know. Knowing we are not the only ones aware of this makes it easier to carry. Dave made it small, said, we are of a type who could live there. But we're too vast for him to minimize. And no one who hasn't lived in a world, even one so seemingly miniature as Rogers to the outside eye, can say whether or not it's home. Sara and I quote each other, not always knowing that we do. We have some of the same reality. We both know what Rogers is. I can't outline it with my words; I don't know if she can express it with her art. This is why I have trouble believing (as in putting my faith behind, as in spiritually experiencing) religious text. I can write a book. Books are interpretations, they're simple, they're made by human beings. Why would what/who people-who-aren't-me call God simplify zir creations with some shoddy translation into English? Why should I believe that the Bible (or any other holy book) is a more valid interpretation of creation than my own experience? I don't. I could tell you what I know from experiencing the world, and you could call me less than, more than, or equal to a disciple. But there's a difference between documenting creation and creating. I can create new tellings of stories that exist inside and all around me. I can find unique ways to express what I see written in the language of elements. I can tell you in a thousand poems and as many essays who I knew Tracy to be. I can't tell you who she was. And I can't make her live.
I can't create Rogers. I can't create any of the people who were Rogers. I can't tell you what the truth is; I can only say what I know, and what I hold true, based on my experience. And this may seem obvious; duh, I'm not God, ok...but there's something strange to me about it. I think I used to believe that I wrote things no one had written before. And now, I believe that I uniquely reiterate what is personally innovative and (hopefully) universal. My art means a lot to me. It's the documentation of something far more impressive, and I love it, even as I recognize that there is something far more impressive. I don't want to stop writing, but I do know what it's like to think, "This time, instead of writing a poem about the sunset, I just want to watch it, feel it, smell it. This time instead of composing as I go, just let me experience this." No page, no pen, no keyboard. No interference. Maybe experiencing all that was and will be created is the closest I can come to creation. Maybe that's all I want. I don't particularly want to write love poems; I just want to love. I have feelings too huge to express in terms of the outlets I know; all means are inadequate. I come back to the one example. I knew Tracy. And how can I express that truth in any way that explains who she was, how I knew her, who I was around her, or what she meant to me? I can't tell you the magic without the biology - the sum of carbon and water and skin - and I can't tell you the textbook facts without the experiential ones. She glowed. She deserved to live. She wasn't dead when I knew her. I have known her after death. She wasn't alive when I knew her; I saw life in her. I loved her, but feel awkward enough to wonder if she wants my love. To question if I did know her, even when I can't question our connection, or the extent to which I care. I can question if she'd want me to...
And like I said to Sara on the phone today - not everyone at Rogers understands what we know about it. Not everyone sees past the hospital to where there's hallowed ground. And that doesn't make it any less real. We're the ones who lived there. We're the ones who were transformed. We're the ones who witnessed and experienced outright miracles and the kind that crept in, unnoticed, and blossomed in our sleep. We know how it feels to sleep in those beds, to wake to that call, to wear the gowns, to walk the halls in slippers, to break the rules, to have late-night-type talks with friends at all hours of the day. We know what it's like to be sisters when the genes say otherwise and what it's like to have home when no one around us understands why.
So here's what I promise you, Sara. Here's what I promise myself, that dimension of me suspended at the time - just over a year and six months ago - packed to leave home and family that did not understand its place for a place that did not understand me. Here is the offering I give, smaller than creation but great with love, to myself when I come stumbling into D!@#$%^, and Sara as she grieves her way through this transition. I understand. This time you will not be alone. You will not be expected to pick up your life as if you haven't left so much of what shaped it behind. You will not have to suffer silently this time. You will not have to endure the words, "Welcome home." You will not have to try and communicate your feelings to people who cannot understand - to doctors who seem like dolts because they can't absorb a simple fact: You had a home like few childs or adults ever experience. You had a home of pure love, pure health, pure gift, pure transformation. You had a home that you will always have, but few people in this world will understand it. All the silly sightless people came and looked ... and called it junk.^ You will not have to doubt yourself when they don't understand. People will look at water deep enough to hold you and see only their reflection on the surface. They will not all understand. But you will not have to be overwhelmed by that. You will not have to listen to those people, from home and without, who doubt you. Who challenge what you know. No. You will not have to fight for a year or two years to find the one person who can listen without judging, and you will not have to cry alone if you'd rather cry with company. Not again. You will not be forced into situations you can't handle, you will not have to get sick to gather what you need, you will not have to lose Tracy, you will not have to go to school. This time, I promise, you will be allowed to love. Without people stomping on it, squashing it down, acting like your discharge is not, in one very important way, a tragedy. This time you can stay in touch with people who created what you loved, you can stay in touch with yourself and trust what you know, you can feel whatever feelings peak inside of you, and you can be safe.
This time, self and Sara, we will be safe. This time no one will beat us up with the love we have because we will feel confident about our right to have it. No one will demean our home because we will store its meaning in our untouchable hearts, in memories, and scraps of fabric, and crochet hooks. In photographs and drawings, paintings and poems. They won't be able to get at it all, and we'll keep growing until they'll have to stop and listen when we speak. It won't matter if they don't hear because we will hear, we will speak, we will know. And we will fold and unfold our love like a blanket, big enough to wrap us both. The blue one. Or one we're patching out of what will come.
Or both.
*
So that's it. It's time to grieve the fact that I didn't receive what I deserved - and what I needed - when I came home. It's grieving what wasn't there, from Rogers, and from the people here. So that's it, in part at least. Well, I have practice crying; give me a box of Puffs, some significant stuffed animals, and space. I know grief well, though in translation, I have only words.
chord
^Shel Silverstein, "Hector the Collector"
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