“What are we doing when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we, normally always surrounded by our fellow-men, are together with no one but ourselves?” - Hannah Arendt
It seems our minds have spent more than just three days in darkness. Quarantined inside a tomb, we yearn for a stone to be rolled away, that we might think freely once again. We are stuck in more ways than one. We are in need of new thoughts.
New words. We think in words. Words are filled with meaning, some more than others. When circumstances become difficult to comprehend, we tend to draw too deeply from the wells of certain words. We fixate. They become the lexicon of the times, a special dictionary full of very narrow definitions: airborne is no longer a reference to flight, it is a transmission method. Collapse is no longer an end to a child’s block tower, it is an end to an economy. News is no longer a paper in a mailbox, it is a frantic obsession.
We quarantine our minds with only a few phrases, and our spirits wither. The tomb closes.
This Easter, during this pandemic, may our thinking be extricated from this narrowness of language. May we gather up the pieces of words spread far and wide - spread too thin - and sit with them awhile, as with newly planted seeds. May we watch them grow, given the proper attention, the right root.
Today, may we find a better Gardener, committed to a redemption of purpose, a renewal of meaning, a rebirth of words.
- Shannon & Evan
Protect
Six
Hands
Surface
Nonessential
Delivery
Alone
Widespread
Temperature
Prepping
Stay
Infectious
Alone /əˈlōn/
Much of life should be spent
discovering the difference between
lonely
and
alone.
One is painful,
one is healing.
One is awkward,
one is good.
One is heartbreak,
one is the heart
of rest.
When you close your eyes to sleep
you do so
entirely alone.
When you wake
you wake
to a world of interaction.
Both were resolved already
in the past.
One is mourning,
one is waiting.
Both will happen.
Neither will last.
Widespread /ˈwīdˌspred/
A hug
is a gigantic sort of thing.
To be wrapped up is to be caught up,
to be embraced is to be ensnared,
to be welcomed
or comforted
or congratulated
with the physics of two human arms
is to be entangled with another soul
(no matter how reluctant the hold).
If arms can be outstretched,
they can be widespread.
If arms enact the coverage of love,
then we may call them Life
redeeming a multitude of Dead.
Temperature
/ˈtemp(ə)rəCHər/
Every day for decades now
We have taken the world’s temperature
Wondering whether tomorrow
Will be fever or chill.
Powerless except only to measure.
Now we take our temperature
Wondering whether tomorrow
Will be fever or chill.
Powerless except only to measure.
Heat is the fuel of life.
It makes the earth edible.
It reconciles our natural imbalance.
It documents the passage of time.
We love light
because of heat.
We are moths to brilliant flame,
powerless except only to measure.
Prepping /ˈprepiNG/
Wait.
That word is loaded
not because it sounds like
weight
but because it is a deep guarantee
of hurt and help
together -
an oil
and water.
Wait.
It does not blend with our experience.
It does not mix with our version.
It does not fade with time.
Wait.
It lies heavy over all things,
pregnant with the intentional or arbitrary,
poised to conclude at any moment -
you just never know which.
Wait.
This too shall pass.
It’s true,
but it doesn’t help that much.
Wait.
There is nothing to do
but demand an end.
Stay /stā/
There are so many feelings we try to push away.
Only the bright ones
are ever asked to stay.
When the nagging dark
pulls its hat down for today,
do not fear the gray.
Now I stop and let it wash
all illusion away.
Now I stop to feel the cost
of all I ever counted on,
all I assumed
would remain.
Let the sense of helplessness
remind you to look elsewhere,
when only
the overwhelming
stays.
Infectious /inˈfekSHəs/
Many things spread like wildfire.
Yawns and fear and smiles.
Our chemistry picks up on close quarter cues
(most we are never privy to).
Most have a materialist explanation -
a quantifiable cause.
But just because the wind
can be measured as a system
does not mean we know where it will go
much less point and make it follow.
We are carriers of moods and attitudes
functional philosophies
so much more viral than we know.
We are relational creatures
pretending we know where we will go,
collecting close quarter cues
more deterministic than we know.
Many things catch flame quickly,
dry kindling scattered as if purposeless,
or just a system too big
for us to measure.
Many things spread like wildfire.
Faith and hope and love.
Protect /prəˈtekt/
We cannot let down our guard
at the same time as
there is so much we cannot guard against.
Six /siks/
We shovel dirt into a garden
either to birth botany
or bury biology.
The former is six inches deep,
the latter six feet.
We shovel dirt into a garden
and wait to see if life
can overcome.
Hands /hændz/
The primary instrument of knowledge
is not the mind:
it is the hand.
Before we ever see,
we feel.
To be certain of what we experience,
we pinch.
To demand proof of existence,
we touch.
The primary instrument of love
is not the heart:
it is the hand.
Before we ever love,
we greet hello with a handshake.
To express our affection,
we write.
To be certain of reciprocity,
we embrace.
To demand proof of love,
we turn open our palms
to the apathetic sky
and beg a God we usually only barely believe in:
bend down.
The primary instrument of worship
is not the soul:
it is the hand.
Surface /ˈsərfəs/
We watch the birds in the morning.
They scavenge with such confidence.
In the winter they came in the early afternoon.
They descended as a a choral raiding horde.
They bounced around too jubilantly to be desperate.
They must have known their meal would be waiting for them.
They must have known it would not be hidden from them.
They must have known this plane
would yield its yield to them
would surface its contents
serve itself up,
so many promises
fulfilled
every day.
Nonessential /ˌnänəˈsen(t)SH(ə)l/
When you see a bird of paradise
Consider
Paradise will be full
Of wanton impracticality.
Each crease of yours you wish you could carve away
Is precisely unnecessary,
the way an artist flicks a wrist
or a poet rhymes a list.
It may be tired to analogize
aged beauty with aged wine
but time still shows
from one good thing's
Decomposition
comes another
Good
Thing
and this is only for the mature
to know.
Delivery /dəˈliv(ə)rē/
Fast forward
Time lapse
And all the patiently turning gears
Become dances.
The seas slowly scintillate.
Each supernova prances.
The wind no longer shifts:
It waltzes,
up, out, together, lift.
Bring it all just barely to a halt
and all the rapidly replicating rhythms
Become songs.
Atoms split into instruments
Molecules make melodies
The strings theorize symphonies
Gravity grows
into grace notes
even in all deep wells.
In the long view of history,
the hand of heaven overshadows the dark hints of hell.
Drink a glass with friends.
Apologize for all your wrongs,
but never anything more.
Smile while the world ends.
You will never know your place inside the song.
Buck the heart’s steep downward trends.
You will be all praise again.
And you, daughter,
Be born in a pandemic.
There is no better time for you to come.
Be we broke or barely treading water,
This broken barren ocean planet
is your home.
There is no better time for you to come.
You will never know your notes,
the narrative arc so much bigger than your mind.
You will always wonder how it always fits together,
how birdsongs become ballads
and newborn cooing rhymes.
There is an artist behind the weather,
an author of fine lines.
There is no better time for you to come.
There is no better time.