Fireworks 07 04 2008 plus 08 05 08
From our core came the power, with dangerous momentum.
We became an expanding orbit of fire,
A color change,
A spray of sparks through thick southern air.
Beautiful in our creation,
Wild in our assent,
Abrupt in our ending.
We were a flash.
A shimmer.
An explosion that preceded its own noise.
But in the opening silence, there was a golden savor.
You were a sleeping servant to a wilting fire
The striking contrast of black and white-- faded gray
Now new flames shed light on the smoke we have quickly become
We are the aftertaste of autumn,
Flowing north with the subtle wind.
Charred from the love we made.
Somewhere, our ashes are landing.
July 6th 2008 12:11am
I sit at this desk in our dark room with my book about Africa and my crayon for marking it. A snake light peers down from the shelf and Brooklyn sleeps beside me. I also have a cup from DI, with BYU creamery milk inside. Two apples and some peanut butter in my stomach. I read into the night for a while and sip my milk, conjuring up humidity in my subconscious until I can feel it in my hair and stick to it with my legs. Because in this minute- I remember myself. I’ve been here on nights from all different years. I am home.
12:18 am
070808 8:40 pmish
It was just my apex break and I was in the bathroom washin my hands, ready to read what my Katie sent to me. I take one look at the splattered counter and think I am not putting my best friend’s letter on that mess. It goes back in thee purse next to my journal and my chapstick and everything that deserves the love of bein carried everywhere in my life. As I’m dryin off my hands I catch myself in the full length mirror, and walk over to my reflection. I side-thought mess with my hair for a second… and then I see my eyes. I look into myself until my reflection feels like a separate woman that will walk out of the glass at anytime. I see her, and I think, I am this woman. I focus in on my eyes until the black stops shrinking into the green—everything settles. I feel God tell me that he loves me just like this. That he is proud of my work and my heart and the intentions within me. I am Lyndsi Shae with my long skirt and unexpected reddishbrown hair. I am alive. I am here. I am real. I am calm.
070908 2:56 am
There is a sphere I live within, which is sometimes far away from yours, and other days, next door. We all have our our layer of thee world which knows no geographical location. One of us is frantically braking—checking and re-checking the speedometer. Another stares out at thee passing elementary school. Both are reaching to identify with a past that will not resurface. We cannot remember. And so, in this moment, our spheres collide—our layers erode against one another’s boundaries. We could have mourned together of our loss against time.
Instead, we quietly resign to our separate defeats, because it sometimes takes words for one’s layer to diffuse into another, and ours was a prideful silence, at best from ignorance. Which is really a shame, because I could love the mind behind thee eyes that finally see my sphere.
So often I am calling to share with others who reply “Where, I can’t see.”
Eventually… “Hello, I can’t hear you.”
And then, our spheres ricochet in the contrast, we never cross each other again.
There are times when I’m relieved to be alone here. But always I am wishing you could see. What is your name? Always I am missing you.
3:12 am
July 10th 2007 6:26 pm on the airplane
There’s something about Utah I never fit with—everything is square. The roads inline with cardinal direction, all grids. Logic. Repetition. I am not this way. Within me, I burn for the natural—which is not at all anchored in this organized 300, 200, 100, center street way. The spirit of the earth is not mathematic.
I know there’s someone who would argue with facts and stats that are way over my head. Regardless, this is sure: I am connected to the mountains. In some way, we understand each other—I can feel it. They do not demand attention, but they are undeniably natives, innately many-sided.
Between the sky and the earth, the sun’s chaotic colors blend without bitter compromise, settling into the irony of their calmness.
From above I see the grids, the human flattened blocks of earth. And the mountains reach up and over them, as if to escape to the godly chaos of the sky. “We will not be interrupted. We the ancient ridges, the raised scars of the earth.” From a distance, I commune with them.
071108
On the plane, the sun was goin down outside my window seat. I felt myself getting closer. I knew that home would provide me with sparks. Is that the right way to say it? Thee sparks are my own, but lit by home. Like a conduit through which to receive myself. I hope that I will use this fire to awaken me. To fuel my idle state. To activate the choices that should connect with my desires. Everywhere it is green here—and I believe in the power of home.
07212008
Reaching out, reaching in.
My heart is not safe here, always at the expense of the next moment--home. A violent disruption of my equilibrium. Internal is bombarded with external. A natural disaster of past and present.
Every road, a foot out the window. .Wvery bridge, a silent contemplation. A dig for myself.
Clouds drift over, lake flows beneath, and always I am trying to balance myself between—while trying to find the desire: the will to surrender to this reoccurring imbalance of home.
072908
Today when me and Katie were walkin on the beach, there were almost no shells. I don’t know exactly why this is. Maybe they’re getting picked up faster than nature can discare then. Even when I saw some in the sand, they were only fragments. I often feel just like that shore.
07302008
Squash.Beans.Cabbage.MacNChz.Cornbread. A scoop of butter per square inch. We shove it down in silence, in seconds and thirds. We excuse ourselves to go lay down. Legitimately, this is all we are capably of post-dinner.
What do you call a Lyndsi Shae with no food?
…college.
Mamaw’s food is so excruciatingly good, so anticipated in my life… that eating it literally makes me emotional.
In half an hour, the dumpcake will be done. And oh man, dump we shall. Have mercy. HAVE MERCY.
O7|3O|2OO8 1O:25pM
This week my Dad is back. The one with the angry gritted smile and hateful yelling voice. His voice is not directed at me. I am always sideline, which I feel guilty about. Today he and Mom were yelling as they walked Brad out into the ocean. Mom had Brad’s hand—and he kept reaching bur Dad’s, but neither was paying attention to him. My Dad’s stormy face. He looked at my Mom like she were an animal. Like she’d jjust torn his muscles off with her teeth. “It’s not her fault!” I want to tell him. I hate how they scream right in that ocean, in my sacred ocean. I wish he would disappear from that moment. And all the while, thee waves are breaking into Brad; He just keeps reaching for his Dad’s absent hand.
I look out into the ocean and fill up with deep, deep red. I know that, any minute, I will pulse into ashes. The waves come over my ankles and I remain hardened in place as the sand repeatedly pulls itself over my feet. “This is the fate my father chooses,” I think. “Refusing to seek more, ruined in his stagnant indifference, he sinks in a self-dug hole.”
10:52pm
073108 1246am
Tonight we drove through the empty streets of this quiet island. Lacey wanted a book that was coming out at midnight. Corey drove her. Me and Katie in the backseat. I needed to block out the CDE, so I sang to myself quietly. My voice passed secrets out the window. Humidity in the south in a conduit for feeling. It can bring back the night to your skin. Sent it your sadness, your questions, your anticipation, and it will soak up the excess. I was football games. I was on walks with boys in high school. I was running away from home in my bare feet to Katie’s. I was sneaking out to Zach’s. I was walking the dog with Mattie Edwards. I was twenty years old, home for four more days and wishing to be out of emotional hibernation.
CD switched to radio and chords brought me back.
“I took my love and I took it down…”
Corey turned it up. I held my best friend’s hand.
“Oh mirror in thee sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart,
Rise above?”
-- I felt the words of my ten year old self, still needing a voice that I am not sure how to give her. –
“Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?”
“… and if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills, well maybe, the landslide will bring you down.”
I am still far from my full heart.
1:03 AM
07312008 pagesixtytwo
Like you. I walked away from you. There is a great divide that I crossed in the night—while I slept my walls raised up and said “We are here for your heart these days. Locked away. Safe from his winds of anger. Sleep on as we build around you.” And now, I sit towards the sand and can feel nothing but hollow breezes. Even my words cannot find me here. I am petrified, ancient, stuck numb in the ocean.
The waves come toward my face and I hope they’ll crash me back to feeling, tumble me home, wash me up on thee shore of myself.
There are not enough birds.
July 31st 2008 9:29 pm?
The rain silences my desire to understand why it all had to be this way. Because somewhere in me, purer than words, I do.
Each drop rolls in from a deep cloud.
“I was beautiful too,” she says.
And another “I apologize.”
Stories sail through the rushing waters below—dying words, the one phone call, each a testimony.
I listen to them fall from the sky.
“I remember when I thought my Father’s strength made him a hero rather than a fear. We used to watch the planes fly away.”
“You were an island. I am still a refugee, but the ocean set me free.”
“I flew on my children’s wings.”
“It is clear that I am strong in my finale.”
“I miss the blackberries we picked for pies and the arrowheads from the creek bed… the gravity of my horse and the woods.”
“I am whole in my last moments, ready fro the bridge.”
“What about the circles? We never ended the cycles…”
“I do not love him anymore.”
“I did not deserve it. I did not deserve it. I DID NOT DESERVE IT.”
“Does the music come with me?”
“Finally, finally.”
Here in this moment, each ending is acknowledged. The past is illuminated by the exploding future. Finally, healed, home.
9:52pm
Blurb from last page 07312008
When I clean out my life—I’m always cleaning out my life. I know I never truly rid myself of these people or words or…
I am a history. A script.
I am aging—changing—fluid…
Unfinished sentence.
I am a verse after verses. I am always re-defining and saying I am this and I am that.
It helps me.
I am finishing my July book in July.
My Mamaw is proud of me. My Mother loves me. My Katie sits across from me. My Brooklyn will be near me soon. I am a strong woman. I have a savior. I have truth. I’m going to make it. 11:22pm
