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oposición. kampf. esforço.

Last night I had a dream that flipped me upside down.

I sit writing, hat on my head, unmatching socks on my feet, and between these two is a body full of: resistance, perseverance, determination, confusion. This dream brought back what I had flatly pressed into memory, brought back what was stored in a part of my brain labeled: PAST.Why are you back?

This past week, I have been less composed, less vertical, less steady. Opposition has rocked my stability with waves of a coming storm. It fights me. I fight back.

I see the windy haze between me and the mountains—and know: IT IS NOT OVER.

School is hard, but at this point, irrelevant to the weight of my other challenges. What is school? The story of my English major? How does modern era literature affect my writing as compared to my modern day challenges. And then, my most challenging: My Claire story.

Why is the whole world against my Claire story? It’s not theirs. It’s not yours. Why is it always pressing upon me? It is hard enough without the world, and we don't get it either.

I am still waiting for my Dad to write me a letter. This is the part where we go into PAST, and take the parts that are not flatly pressed, the parts that are scattered and neglected and screaming for attention. The parts that are The story of Dad. Some are monsters—I am scared of them. Some are only sad children, they are very alone—I am unsure how to finally ease them into resting. We take the children and the monsters from the back of my mind, and we… what are we going to do with them? I’m not sure, but we will start with words. I wait for the first letter, wondering if he has any idea what we're up against.

My firefighter is coming on Wednesday, and that is another story in itself. What is Our Story firefighter?

I am young and alive. I am full of beginnings, but some of them are so heavy. Some of them have their toes curled around my core, and their bodies stretched out from there… so that their fingers pull at my skin—aching to be seen. They want to be heard.

I am these stories, not because I chose to be, but because they were born in me.

I am Lyndsi Shae.

I can see a fireside turn blue.

A painting unframed: dries and crinkles. And so...
Sometimes it is necessary to press-out the edges, flatten the spaces,
before putting it all away.
Or else, know that the decay will come,
and the colors will fade, and say goodbye.
Let nature eat up the remains.
These days I am flattening what I can, and relinquishing the rest.
I give them up to the burden of measurable time.

Paintings of people I love.
Ideas of people I thought I would love.

People I could not keep.
I hear them decreasing in the distance.
You are my wrinkled paintings.

...

I am lying with my book upstairs. That’s right, the upstairs apartment.
I look at the oppressively rectangular off-white curtains and feel their
oblique isolation—attached to that clinky metallic rod which
makes no statement whatsoever, except to be blank and uninviting.
I hate these curtains, and yet, feel bad for them.
I want to wake them up— I imagine myself attempting to do this, sharpie in hand, scrawling out all my questions onto the folds of ancient linen.
What are his intentions?
Why does the night ache?
Will I ever write a page that completes my pulse?
And why, why do people nuzzle in the library?
There are more questions, but you know…
...its not like I’d post my whole soul online.
I say this as a joke, because some kids think I do that.
Guess what though—there’s still a ton of pages concealed in my journ.
That’s right, not virtual pages—paper ones.
Ink. Paste. Spelling Errors.
Words you haven’t seen.
Maybe about you.
Oooooooo.

And now, if you're still here... Time for blurbs. These days I scribble on napkins and calendars and torn out syllabus-margins.
Recently, I cleaned them out of my purse and my room.
Here's a couple things I had to say on days before Friday.

Last Thursday
the washing machine knob signaled that it was on RINSE.
I opened the lid, what does rinse look like?
Then, I saw it. I saw the deep rinse.
I lower my head down to smell the clear water.
A minute or so later, I open my eyes... realize that I am not floating in Lake Mo.
This is not a mountain spring.
Already my mind has run away from the kitchen.
Hi. I stick my face in washing machines,
and get lost in summer fantasy.

Sunday
a three ring binder was passed to me.
I opened to a page where there was a space for my name.
LYNDSI SHAE BROWN.
Next are four columns: SPRING. SUMMER. FALL. WINTER.
This is the part where they keep track of me:
Where will you be? Will you be here?
Everyone always wants to know.
Usually, I'm wishin for the answer
much harder than the relief society binder is.
But not on Sunday.
No further soul-searching required.
I answer with four stars, which translates to YES YES YES YES.
No MAYBE.
No ? ? ?!
Just clarity. Stability. I will be here.
When does that ever happen?
This paper, in its many different forms,
has found me millions of times since I came to college.
Never have I stared it down with such surety of mind.
And still, why am I sure?
No idea. But I am. I am sure.
I am here.

Monday
Today, I am thankful.
I am empowered by my twenty minutes of scripture study.
I had to do this for a Mission Prep paper, otherwise
I know I would have kept rushing through the surface of the day.
Instead, I stop, breathe, think, write.
I feel the relief of my spirit.
I am alive.
Where have I been?

emergency above.

oh three. fifteen. oh nine. two. sixteen. pea. em.

I am in the grass on a patchwork of blankets with the women of the Conexsh. My friend Cait calls this place Break Up Park, but no one here is leaving anyone else.
It is Sunday, and half of us are no longer opening our eyes.

All weekend I have been full of this feeling… with no sure words to describe it. This morning, Track*3 began with seventeen seconds of guitar chords—those chords show exactly how I’m feelin. Also, yesterday, I got my hair cut. I leaned my sore shoulders back into the sink. Eyes closed, I caught the smell of lemony shampoo and thought… Lemons: This feeling is like the smell of lemons.
Both of these conclusions yield no further answers, only sounds and smells.

However, there is one discernable change in my senses—these past few days I have been awake to my breathing, stretching, aching. I have become very aware of my body. This is new to me—to be in touch with my temperature, my muscle energy, my connecting bones. This weekend, I perceive my footsteps. I swim laps and feel the rhythm. Reach, CHURN, Kick, Reach, CHURN, Kick… my breath escaping into the water… my angling arms… I am a tribal drum inside of Gold’s Gym. touch. turn. pushhhh.

After the pool, I am rock climbing—my legs lend themselves to my arms. I am forced to find my center, and then send strength outward in four directions. Right. Left. Pull. Stretch. This too is a rhythm, a dissonant octopoda song.
Even my toes are connected to my wrists by a wriggling line that bends and contracts between them. I dig my fingers into a distant hand-hold, and feel something new as I pull myself upward— within my forearms, tendons stretch like strange vertical strings, like there is a fret board in my forearm. They are side-by-side, but pull me individually. I think they are playing the chords to Track*3—it pulses me, finally, to the top, where I look down at Brooklyn and say, without much thought, “I’m ready.” She releases the rope and I fall in waves back to the people below.
I have ascended. I am tying knots to do it again.

Last week the wind went yelling through campus. It was at my back, then slowing my path, then pulling me north.
We were everywhere, the wind and I. She stirred the dust of the earth, hazing the air between me and the mountains, distorting my view of everything far away. Students swayed inside of her puzzling path, awoken from their sleeping Wednesday patterns.
“ENTER HERE,” I heard her tell us.
“The coming days will shake your certainties. Blow around in the beauty of risk.”
She was permeating and without apology, like the neon scent of lemons. I look down and say, without much thought,
“I am ready.”
Since that day, I have been falling in waves.

But today, something is amiss.

Track*3: Seventeen Seconds of Chords

Fill up.

6 He that ascended up on high,
is also he descended below all things,
in that he comprehended all things,
that he might be in all and through all things,
the light of truth;

7 Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ.
As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun,
and the power thereof by which it was made.

10 And the earth also,
and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand.

11 And the light which shineth, which giveth you light,
is through him who enlighteneth your eyes,
which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;

12 Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space.

My immensityofspace gratefully exhales...
not to mark the ending of a journey,
But to create
Space
For another
Deep breath.