The Influence of War

Tags

American Literature, conflict, country, Fallujah, fiction, imagination, journal, life, political, politics, prompt, soldier, United States, war, writing

The result of a twenty-minute prompt I promised my students I would do with them during class, The influence of war on [any type of person/group], only slightly edited for clarity.

When I think of a war-torn country, I think of a Middle Eastern wasteland. I only know a wasteland from pictures, from movies, from descriptions in articles and well-crafted stories spun with more than old adjectives. I’ve never walked a wasteland, never picked up the broken dirt pieces in my hand or smelled the still-burning flesh. I don’t know much, this is just how it seems.

I think of Fallujah from an essay of a peer years ago, a big man with a beard and a whimsical pony-tail, wore Hawaiian shirts and reminded me of Penn from the magician pair for dudes. He didn’t know a wasteland as a victim, he was merely a master of words, spinning them to form the void where resources once were. I think of a vast, barren space, of buildings crumbling down, brick by brick, mortar filling the cracks in the rubble, covering the air holes that were life lines for the buried and the crushed. People die inside those piles, but they are people I don’t know. In my mind, their screams still bother me.

I see bombs explode and shrapnel flying everywhere. I suppose I imagine the part with the shrapnel, because I can’t see through the smoke I suspect is there, thick like substance, making the air tangible, breaths impossible. I can’t see my hands, my soldiers, or the enemy; I can’t aim. Only blasts and burst of light, black.

War is always a mess in my mind. War is always far away. War is never near or knowable. Why isn’t war knowable?

This isn’t some kind of fantasy, some collision that I’m creating for the purpose of the story’s climax. This happens; war happens. War is real people, pressed suits, stamped and sealed papers in cherry wood offices making decisions on my behalf. Choosing, siding, deciding for me, my fate. No, but war is more. War is real people in big boots, camouflage suits, backpacks, water jugs, big guns. They follow orders. They end lives. That’s the part I can’t reconcile, I shy away and retreat again into the comfort of the far away. The screams inside those crumbling buildings. War is those real people too. Was.

War is conflict. War robs the rich. War backs us into corners that we never realized did exist. War takes men I know and makes out of them something else, or something more. Which, I’m not sure. War takes our land and makes it a safe ground or a battle field, sometimes both. [unfinished]

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This Must Be Fiction

Tags

adventure, automobile, automotive, car trouble, cars, driving, expressway, fiction, highway, Illinois, Indiana, life, Michigan, midwest, night, roadside assistance, story, tow truck, travel

Car skids on the wet pavement, hydroplanes, the wheel shutters and shakes but only a little. She turns the music down. Drives, drives, drives. The car rumbles, she worries. Doesn’t know, but decides to pull off at the next exit. The roads are long, the night’s been dark for hours now. Mile marker, tree, reflector pole-thingy, where are the exits on this highway anyway!? Something shifts, the rumble turns to a grind.

Panic.

She pulls over immediately, as fast as she can get her Taurus over that solid white line, not 200 yards from the exit ramp. As the car slows, she hears the uncomfortable sound of metal to asphalt. Oh no.

Guilty that she doesn’t know more, that she didn’t pull off sooner, that she didn’t see it coming, she breathes heavily and her face feels hot. Fearful that the problem is bigger because of her ignorance, she waits a moment. Afraid to be alone with no answers, she fishes for her phone. Plus, she used to be afraid of the dark. Used to be, right.

She calls dad, calls the insurance helper people. Someone’s on his way. Wait, wait, wait. She drank coffee and ate popcorn all the way here and she has to go. But she has to stay and wait for the man who will fix her tire. Wait, wait, wait. It’s taking a while. He’s going to be late. An hour goes by. She prays for her students with notecards stuck in the mirror. She practices her sign language. She checks the rearview mirror obsessively, but doesn’t mean to.

The driver calls and they figure out that he’s searching for her in Indiana. She’s in Michigan. That’s not going to work out, she thinks. And says. More calls, lots of apologies. A new truck goes out in search of her blinking hazard lights. One in the same state this time.

By this time, she can’t wait; she absolutely has to go. Kleenex, hand sanitizer, a break in the oncoming traffic. She runs up the embankment, out of sight. Two steps out of the car, a ditch. It’s been raining all day, so a muddy ditch. Maybe a foot of muddy water. She nearly loses her shoe, soaks her sweat pants. Anger. The hill is much steeper than she realized. Halfway, she can’t stop to pee; she can hardly stand. Her hands are muddy, her feet are soaked. At the top of the hill, she can hardly stand it. She goes and runs back down. But the hill is steep, and the only way back. She falls, slides down the hill in her clothes, caked in mud, twists her arm to catch her fall.

She has a suitcase full of clothes, but no pants to put on. Distressed, she stands outside the car before getting in and getting everything muddy. Her shoulder throbs from the fall. At least it had stopped raining.

The man finally comes, changes her tire, tells her to drive 50 on the highway marked 70 with the spare. Be careful. She turns the car on and slides back onto the highway. Warning lights pop up all over the dashboard. Emergency break, antilock brakes, transmission something bad. Dad is annoyed with the problem, two hours old by now, and offers no help via phone. So she drives slowly, burned by semi trucks through three states and all the way home with warning lights burning her retinas.

She waits to wake up, to snap back to reality. There’s no way this is real. This just must be fiction.

The Recipient of Our Thanks

Tags

annual, family, God, gratitude, holiday, thanks, Thanksgiving

We’re all about to be very thankful people according, politely, to Western traditions and patterns. Thursday is Thanksgiving. And my family, they’re good people. Most anyone would say so. And they’ll truly be thankful tomorrow; they will. When we’re sitting around card tables smashed together and hidden under fall-colored tablecloths, passing the gravy boat, they’ll really be thankful.

Grandpa is the biggest proponent of the toasts or monologues of thanks that tend to circle up and appear around the holidays. He’s always thankful for family, thankful for health, we all say Here’s to a good future.

I realized, in studying the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi with my community last night, that our thanks—don’t worry, I won’t put it lightly—is a big, fat, waste of time. It’s piles of broken and often empty words that sit, rotting, not unlike the way we throw our garbage in toxic piles in other countries. Thankful, thankful, thankful, we say. To whom?, I am now wondering.

If words of thanks just tickle the ears of others, or fulfill the should-be’s on this particular holiday, we may as well skip the toasts and the once-a-year prayers. I don’t reckon it pleases God and, frankly, the mechanism and ritual of it is quite frustrating for the likes of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I give thanks, and tomorrow with be no different. I give thanks, though, to my God, the author and perfector of my faith, the Savior of the world, the Creator of mankind. A recipient for our thanks gives meaning, relevance, worth.  Without, your thanks are vapors, disappearing like steam in this November chill.

Playing With Dolls

Tags

Barbie, childhood, dolls, imagination, irony, life, organization, perfection, planning, play, success

When I was a little girl, I played with Barbie dolls like most other little girls.  My mom was (is) really into organization so my Barbies had some method to their madness.  Shoes were in a little Rubbermaid container with a blue lid.  Clothes were in a larger Rubbermaid container with a pink lid.  I must have lost the pink lid, because I remember that the clothes were always brimming over the top of their box and spilling out the sides.  Sorry, Mom.

Unwittingly, this organizational obsession weaseled it’s way into my gene pool and the way I played Barbies was affected.  After sliding all my Barbie boxes out of the shelves in my closet organizer, I distinctly remember that it was hours before we actually got to playing Barbies.  We’d open the tubs and survey the scene.  Sometimes the dolls would have clothes on, but none of their outfits were right, so we spent dozens of minutes undressing them in an orderly fashion.  All the while we were lining them up for the ceremonial choosing of the dolls. 

I would choose, then Lauren would choose, then I would choose, then Lauren would choose.  Back and forth until there were no Barbies left.  It was like a fantasy draft, now that I think about it.  Ken was always the difficult choice, too.  You didn’t want to pick him first, because then you’d miss out on the really pretty Barbies, the one’s with such amazing hair and subtly permanent makeup.  But you couldn’t wait too long, because Ken held so much power over the ensuing plot of Barbies.  Ken was responsible for the asking out and the dumping of Barbies and, inevitably, my pretty Barbies would be on the brunt end of those choices if I didn’t choose Ken.  Ken was a tough draft pick.

So the Barbies were chosen, mostly naked, and we had to prepare the plot.  We’d carve out homes for them underneath dresser drawers and behind bookcases.  We’d lay out blankets and towels and pretend they were the beach or the gym.  While we spent hours dressing each girl, from her French braided hair to her missing red shoe, we would narrate where she was and how she felt and which other dolls she was currently in a fight with. 

Typically, by the time all the dressing and the scene-setting was finished, Mom would call up the stairs, Girls, dinner!  And we would lay everything exactly right and promise to come back and play after dinner.  If you think about it, we hadn’t actually played yet.  We had only set up to play, even though Lauren had been over since noon. 

I laugh to think of how many times dinner led to other things and the fate of the Barbies was to fall back in the box that evening, never to live out the elaborate plans we’d narrated for them in their perfect outfits.  We bought the dolls just to dress and plan for them, never to actually play with them. 

And I can’t help but think–no longer a little girl–how much do I dress and plan, never to actually act and play?

Coffeeshop, No Shoes

Tags

amusement park, Chicago, coffeeshop, commitment, forgiveness, friendship, life, memory, past, silence, Six Flags Great America, Starbucks

I took my cowboy boots off and folded my socked feet underneath me on my armchair. I wish I didn’t get so distracted when I tried to work here at the local Starbucks. I wish I could find my headphones to drown out, with my own kind of white noise, the Jimmy Eat World or the Sara Barielles variety, the chatter and melancholy music in this place. I wish I could lasso my wandering mind when it screams for a lesson-planning break and goes traipsing around in my missed past. But, alas, my wishes are wished to a lesser god of the coffeeshop and go unfulfilled on this evening.

I remember making a choice, the background of which, too labyrinthine to relate here, gives little insight to the mess that follows anyway, that may have changed my company forever. I once had a friend, the memory of and impacting force of, I cannot seem to shake in my least focused moments. She was a good friend, committed. A fun friend, exciting. Funny. She had depth. She was serious about loving Jesus. There’s so much good wrapped up in being friends with this gal. But then there’s this decision. A whole history of us, and this one decision that I dwell on, I regret, I wonder…if it wrecked things.

A waitress and a student at the time, I was living in Chicago and my friend was coming to visit the big city with her family. As with plans of all kinds, the details were floating around like dust specks in the air. The light would shine through the window and they’d be clear for a split second, then a cloud would cover the sunbeam and, again, the times were unsure and nothing was nailed down.

I should’ve just waited. If she had been important to me, I’d have waited. If I were worth my two cents as a friend, I’d have waited. I should have waited, waited, waited.  You can imagine, I didn’t wait.

I planned a small trip on one of the days in question, figuring I’d be back in the evening and jettison right over to the hotel to see my friend. I thought I could do it all, accomplish everything, like life was a game to win.

Things slipped slightly out of my reach as the day grew closer, came, the sun rolled across the sky until night. The plans I’d made were outside the city, a ways North at an amusement park. I stayed too long, the traffic was heavy, never made it back on time. More than that, the man who was with me wasn’t a favorite of the friend who was being edged out. The tension of it all came to a point here. It all came to the climax peak on a plot chart, and from here the plot chart goes nowhere but down.

So, we went nowhere but down. I think she gave up on that day. Gave up on me, gave up on being friends.  I made a decision, and she responded with with one that was much bigger. One that left a huge silence in my life, a silence that I’ve been trying to fill, erase, ignore, or heal depending on the day for a couple years now.

Sitting in this coffeeshop next to my new old cowboy boots, my toes now cold from the customers carrying night air in on the heels, I can’t but wander and explore this silence. I can’t but figure and solve and wonder about erasing a silly amusement park date. I can’t but furrow my brow at this feeling of never being forgiven.

Watered Down

Tags

high school, identity, impact, love, middle school, salvation, shame, testimony, vocabulary, worth

I told my students my story this morning. I told just a snippet, a snapshot, a sliver of how it all really was. If you accuse me of using watered-down vocabulary, I’ll go willingly into handcuffs and plead guilty as charged. But, I’ll tell you that there were sixth graders sitting in seats only feet from me. That’s my excuse.

When I said selfish, I meant reckless. When I said messy, I actually meant dirty, what your parents won’t let you watch on television or read in magazines. When I told them that the words of Bible were a million miles away from me, I meant miles from my seductive methods, my naked body, my manipulative and enticing plans in the middle of the night. Miles from smoke circles and dirty needles, from flashlight beams bouncing around the soles of my feet running from guilt, from consequence.

I paused once, after I told them Jesus didn’t mean sh*t to me back then and some of their faces were blank. They were respectful, paying attention, listening to my story, but I hadn’t pulled them in. They were just sitting in chapel chairs in their tiny little school on a boring old day in the middle of November, waiting for basketball practice, or Friday, or Thanksgiving.

They weren’t digging deeper.  They don’t, typically. 

I thought, If I had crafted it right, if I had told them what’d really happened, they’d have been moved. I would have seen it in their faces.  It’s not liked I expected tears and counseling sessions or anything.  But something more than a blank stare and a polite hand-clap would have been nice.  I wanted something real, something genuine, not something polite and fabricated.  I’m screaming for authenticity and getting an echo of my own voice. 

I wanted to bring them there. I’d stuff them all in my Taurus and drive down I-96 to my dorm, where it happened years ago. I’d throw clothes out of my wardrobe like a maniac, piling them on piles of ignorant students. Bottles of liquor would be falling out of my closet, half-empty.  They wouldn’t know what to do. I wanted to sit them in chairs and say This is where they waited for me, those stupid boys. They waited halfway into the night and this is how I came in the door, drunken and whored out to half the school.  I wanted to surprise them by walking in like the drunk fool they’ve never seen.  I wanted it to be serious and scary, not trivial and chucklesome.  I wanted to yell at my blank-faced students, telling them how those boys should have judged me, they should have cast me away as the piece of trash that I was. But they made me coffee and handed me cards, like I was expected to play.  Like I was a regular old friend of theirs. They treated me like I was someone. These kids have to understand, I’d tell them But, you have to understand…I wasn’t someone. I didn’t deserve to be someone to anyone. Not with the choices I was making.

I want them to know they have the power to make someone feel like someone. It’s the difference in everything. I’m living a life I never imagined, never wanted. But, I never wanted it because I never knew it was worth the wanting.  Someone has to tell the people like me that there’s something worth the wanting hidden in all of this religiosity.  Because I’m no fool–there is.  There’s something worth the wanting.

All Hearts

Tags

Brad, Central Park, chalk, fall, hearts, irony, Jesus, love, mocking, New York City, NYC

New York Sidewalk

It’s somewhere in New York City, where you took your life when you ran from me.  Maybe Central Park where the leaves crunch under your Keds in the Fall, or Brooklyn, near the bridge before it turns to dusk and the corners are dark in a different kind of way, like South Chicago.

The chalk in the photo is drawn in all kinds of colors, big block letters and a heart in place of the word love.  It says Jesus heart you.  And there’s you, right next to the word you.  Jesus heart Brad is what I think when I look, linger.  When I linger and stall with an image from season ago.  When I look at it, I think, yes.  Jesus does heart Brad.  I heart Brad.  This whole mess is just a matter of Brad hearting back.  Brad hearts me, but he doesn’t heart Jesus and the intersection of Brad unhearting Jesus and hearting me is the heart of the problem.  It always has been. 

I await the day when I can look at some anonymous little girl’s chalk masterpiece and the man I’ve fallen in love with who kneels ironically, poetically beside and fall asleep in confidence that all hearts are clear.  Today, all hearts are not clear.

Flashback Snippet:Waiter Days

Tags

employee, industry, job, personalit, restaurant, rules, submission, waiter, waiting tables, Waitress

My stand-in boss, my superior–unqualified for his title and nervous around me–his peon, employee, subordinate,  says to me during an informal review of sorts, though we don’t really have reviews of any kind at this restaurant, You have a great personality but I’d like to see it expressed more with the customers and less with the staff.

Within the parameters of my role, respecting his perceived authority, and with an intentionally even tone in my voice, I asked how he suggest I do that. He had no answer.

It was just a disguised way, I assume, to say Don’t have so much fun at this job with your friends. I said I’d try.  I never did try.  I did my job, met the marks, even exceeded in places, but I did not try this.  I did not turn my back where there was relationship to be built. 

The holidays are coming, and though I’ll soon begin to feel like I’m entertaining a multiple personality disorder between the Midwestern states of Illinois and Michigan, much of that time will be spent with men and women–now, my friends–I found while I was having too much fun carrying cocktails and charred cuts of cow to customers stuck in a revolving door of Chicago high life.  Never express less with the staff.

Cut Off

Tags

bold, Chicago, communication, falling in love, friends, Godly man, letter, love, mail, past, relationships, visits, words

I’m always the one doing the cutting off. I don’t know why, exactly. I’m not necessarily the type. I’m a pretty likeable person, they say. Unless no one tells the truth around here. I love to have fun, love to love–sometimes too much. But I tend to see my weaknessess and hesitate to step in too far where I’ll falter. That’s where I find myself cutting off. You’d say I cut you off, right?  Or, tried.  It was the way I thought things should go.

I try to be clear. I use my words. I remember to never make promises, because that’s not fair. I sit at kitchen tables, in parked cars on the street, on the steps of some church down the street from your place, all to explain why I think this way will be better. You fight it, you don’t hear me, only I understand.

Memories and loneliness make me turn the choice over and over, make me make sure it’s right, in the months that follow. We write letters because I said we could. I frown when you call. And when you send messages meant to make me laugh. You are breaking the rules we made, but really only I made them. I’m the one cutting off because only I understand.

Your words are as clear as these months are long. You’re stuck on me, which is not good.  So to be clearer still, I tell you about the man I fell in love with years ago. Whose salvation I involuntarily wait on. Not because it has anything to do with you and me, but because the way I wait on him is the way you’re waiting on me. And I can’t figure who’s the bigger fool. You don’t see what I’m saying, but you see something else. Something more. Because you love me, you see the way I’m stuck on this stubborn man and you see how it’s crushing me. In the end, because of it all, you cut me off.

I’ve never been cut off before. Not really. Not unless I was the one building the wall between us. I’m stunned at your finality. I will not expect a letter from you, you say. I do not think it’s a good idea to see you–and you underline do not. The ball’s in my court, you tell me, but only if I want to love you. And I can’t make myself love you.

The stiff arm you give me is bold and sure. You’ve not spoken to me with such confidence before. With such assurance. With such leadership. When I asked you for leadership–and I asked you for leadership–you never gave me this. But I ask you not to wait on me, and you give me a man of God that I could fall for. The distance of being cut off feels so isolated. And isolation is not a feeling with which I am well-acquainted.

A Time For…

Tags

Colorado, desire, Ecclesiastes, Garden of the Gods, meaningless, overwhelmed, purpose, struggle, summer, time

There is a time for all things.  This truth, I know.  Yet I find myself in want for things that this season is not offering.

I want time to sit like this.  I want time to turn off my car and leave my things in the back seat, just step out and look, breathe, wait a minute while my skins warms.  I want time to swing my legs over the edge of a cliff, pick a flower I shouldn’t probably pick and stick it in my ponytail.   I want time to tie my shoes and laugh at you and kick loose rocks beneath my soles.  Time to be in-between.

I don’t have time for…