----Echoes and Silence, Patience and Grace.

More pieces from the May Book.

May 6^th, 2008

I cannot yet get enough of summer. Nothing seems to bring my restlessness to a complete calm. I need to lay in places like this, hear the birds, wonder what’s splashin ripples in the water… feel the goose bumps go up my legs in the breeze.

The mountains are strangers to me, though they are always settled reverently in the distance. I wished on a wishin flower in the tree field today… that I would feel and write beautiful things this season-- that I would find myself in this place.

Lyndsi Shae 8:14 pm

May 7^th, 2008

Finally, there is thunder in Utah. It roars through the steeple tops and stiffness of gridded streets. Rivers of spontaneous birth unite, with no heed to the east, the west, the south or the north. They rush only downward, toward some unanimous crowd of the west’s long lost drops.

My love is like the trees, which sway in raucous approval of this chaotic interruption. They soak up the moment with the excess overflowing down their sides. Even my roots receive the aftertaste of this day.

Lyndsi Shae 4:25 pm

ITS MAY EIGHTH TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT; ONE O’THREE in the afternoon. Last summer is gone forever. I do not mourn its passing. I’m still in Provo, for reasons I feel but cannot articulate. I am elated. Today. Here. I sit cross-legged under the sun, covered in Brooklyn’s tanning oil. My hair’s in a blob on top of my head, my feet rough all over the bottom… a scruffy book on my towel. I am calm, my restlessness is present but not agitating. Who have I been? Who will I be? These questions are silenced as I warm up to who I am. Now. Here. The immediate reality of my progression. My Father cannot touch me here. In this moment, I am aLIVE. I am undeniably present. Tides of being, moons of slow change… I breathe amongst them. Let time flow.

Lyndsi Shae 2:26

May 9^th, 2008

I talked to Stephy Jay tonight about her Aunt’s funeral and I was sad for that family. A shockingly sincere kind of sad, it welled up from this place inside me, a place I’m not sure I’m familiar with, and I felt it pound and flow through me as if it were my own husband that had died, or my own Mom or… I really can’t explain the deepness of it. What else resides within this place that my sadness was springing from? Whatever it is, I feel like I don’t understand it enough.

Also about her marrying Pete—again, I felt that pulse in me. I can see it in her expression though, the rivalry of yes and no. And it hurts me.

May 16^th, 2008

My 60 hour work week

=

Killing my writing habit

=

GAY

=

Not politically correct

Now I work from 5:30 to 2 am. What will I do without my summer nights? Probably make out less… just bein honest. I can deal with that, maybe even benefit from it. Can I deal with snuggling less? Not likely. But I don’t want to talk about it.

Lyndsi Shae 7:47 PM

May 16^th, 2008

I know there is something I’m supposed to learn this summer.

If there were a word for last summer it would be strength or resilience or maybe worth. A word for my last year at home would be something like perseverance. This summer, I feel like my word will be something softer. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I’m anticipating some kind of mix between patience, peace, and trust.

This is not like before.

I cannot run towards the target with all that I have—I’ll miss everything if I do. This is more fragile, more quiet, more hidden. It is a new challenge, a different, maybe even deeper, form of progression. It is exactly what I need, though I may not be ready for it tonight.

Lyndsi Shae 9:34 pm

O5.21.08

Swallowed a plastic pill, it sticks to my throat. Smash it down with a mouthful of cold brown rice and pinto beans. I lay next to the blinds. A window gives clues of soggy man-made roads underneath a hazy mountain chain… they say “lay still… your summer sun isn’t here to wake you, to save you… lay still within the condensation.”

And I felt myself dripping from the ceiling.

Lyndsi Shae 2:07 pm

May 27^TH 2008

There is so much yellow inside of the green. I squint from sleep. I stray away from shade. I say I am of nature, but where have I been? The ink doesn’t wait up when I spend my days in bed. And as I stumble out of my box, into my green open home, I am not recognized. While I was sleeping, the earth kept building. I sit within its boundless offering as the yellow betrays me.

Though I have betrayed the green.

But this is spring—in the in-between.

The winter and summers fight within me. I am ashamed of my foolish bet for summer’s victory. For while it is the best of me, it is not always the majority.

And judging from my history, my imbalanced transitions and curious location…

Maybe I should have foreseen my own winter weakening me… as I roll over and over… not yet ready (subconsciously unwilling?) to jump for the light.

Lyndsi Shae 2:16 pm

RestlessRavenousForTheNew

Chunks from my May notebook.

May 2, 2008

Something odd is happening these days. Everything is a novelty. All tones are introductory. I am not the shabby saved newspaper clipping in the desk drawer. THAT is what I’m used to. Instead, I am a magazine in the front room, in the middle of the coffee table alone. I am new, glossy and impersonal. Front and center, but in a haphazard no-second-thoughts kind of way. This place is not my own, and I cannot make it mine. I can contribute, but the home-feeling that I belong to faded pages in desk drawers will lock-in on its own. Until then, I squint in the fluorescent living room lights, I bake monotonously in front of the drowsy window. I need to burst, but I can’t push it. I try to be wise, to keep my senses open to natural reaching, innate seeking.

There is a feeling in the air, particularly in this place… there is something out there I want so bad but I can’t yet see it clearly. It reverberates within me, but its pulses are quiet, unassuming, waiting to be found.

I am coming.

12:45 AM

“Loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.”
Gretel Ehrlich The Solace of Open Spaces

May 3^rd, 2008

The grass feels new on my hands, waxy like the skin on an apple. Stiff, but willing to bend and mold between my fingers. I pull hard with my closed fist; it stays with its roots. The bell tower wakes. I close my eyes and feel the mountains that encase me. This is the west. I live here. On my own.

I roll more towards my stomach and feel the spiral of the notebook go up and down the tip of my nose. I sink into the ground beneath me, the slope of the hill molds my stomach, hips, toes. My heart thuds against the opposing ground. I wait: they find each other, calm each other, and I am hidden away.

4:11 PM

Tonight I am packin up my glenhood life for a little while.
Scramblin through the wreckage, I found a page in one of my notebooks from December.
I post it now as the last evidence of winter.

12-5-07 4:40pM

I am the breath that once filled your lungs & now hangs frozen before you. It’s time to fly away now and I will float across the country…
I am beneath the feet that litter the streets: I am breezing through the tree you are too distant to climb.
I dissipate,
I fill new space and
I am leaving
As the oxygen,
Leaving as the oxygen that never could be captured by
Nervous hands or felt within
Strict
Mechanical
Hearts.
I have pulsed
through veins ignored.
I am my own transient matter…
My own deep call for catalysts.
I am the oxygen—electric.
I am the oxygen with no cautionary goodbye.

...* * *...

Let the summer begin.

SUMMERRRRRRRRRR

Hi, welcome to the Monday of my life. I cannot write my final essay for Humanities as it would currently sound something like "Julie Ransom, I have a small obsession with you and your unfairly perfect vocabulary. I'm the girl with un-honor-code hair, that comes late almost every week... only to step on the cute international boys feet, bookbag, and ego as i try to make it to my seat where I will almost surely not make it through class without gracelessly conking out on my desk. This is especially bad on hat days, when I wake up to see that during the unconscious state of my floating mind, my hat has knocked itself off... revealing my smooshed roll-outta-bed raunch hair. BUT... I mostly want to say that I love art. I love music. I love books. I love the things I learn when I'm awake--- awake and not staring at the one rugged shaggy boy two rows over. However, I don't know enough about any of these topics to analyze their existence during five different time periods. What I can do is go play outside. Because not only is there not an ounce of snowy soul-sucking deathy gusts of wind/snow... there is a sun... and a high of 78 degrees. I shaved my legs today. I haven't floated in a body of water since the hot pots... I haven't floated in a decent non-sulfury-raunch thing since I skinnydipped in DT pool last Fall. I'm a mess. I need grass. I can't stop this urge I have to mack the foxy boy in my ward, who, is absolutely perfect until he starts talking about colon cleansing and his highschool prom... which should be a couple years further away than it was. Still though, young and immature as he is, I've got some serious fever. So no, I don't want to write about naked greek statues or ancient frescoes because... pretty sure I won't get an A for talking about my soul... and pretty sure I don't know how to talk about anything else when it comes to art and things. Pretty sure I just want to steal a popsicle from the office and go frolic in the fields."

Psycho.

Runnin down a stranger’s street
Late for something I cannot remember
There was a comet in my childhood
Now I’m just a woman under a streetlight
Losin my magic
Losin my voice
Wonderin who’s screamin from the sidelines
I’m watchin the sea erode my footsteps
Not able to admit that
I feel betrayed by what I loved
My floating ocean solace
is far away.
But the reoccurring salty waves
Remain.
Can you feel it in the breeze?
Rivalry.
How can I see his eyes
How can he see my eyes
And not see me.

Lyndsi Shae

2:29 aM