come out and play

i still don't feel like i have anything to say, but i don't want to encourage this dawdling over uncertainty. this kind of uncertainty that is. i embrace the other kind of uncertainty, the unknowing. but this malaise that hit me has to go.

i keep looking at my calendar wondering, when will i get a day of rest? but it doesn't look clear until monday, two full weeks of all day (or a day's worth) of hustle and bustle. it can wear a soul out. my soul, that is. i need copious amounts of alone time. down time. reading time.

this time of year little girls all over the country (perhaps not in the north) are hauling their cookies around town and trying to make sales.

i don't like sales. i have no interest in parting you from your coin.

my daughter, loves selling. i picked up 122 cases of cookies last thursday, spent 8 hours sorting them into individual girl orders, then spent the next day at a meeting. the entire weekend hocking my wares, and the week continues to steam on without a break in sight. i need to pick up 6 more cases today. there is something incredibly american about spending so much time handling and dealing cookies. i don't like it. i wonder why we don't sell pedometers or something? but i guess people wouldn't buy.

i realized as i was sitting in the conference center this weekend, there is so much hustle and bustle--endlessly so--that i just have to get away from it. i have to retreat. there is a song on my station, which you will likely never hear, but it has a hook that says,

if you talk too much my head will explode.

and you know, that is how i feel most of the time. i don't want to talk except to those few friends who really have a listening ear and something deep to say.

i keep hoping i'll be able to take an artist's retreat and go away somewhere and simply be silent. but i've not found anywhere to go or any way to get there. there is a huge music festival, cochella, i think it is in sunny so. cal. i would love to win the tickets, airfare, and hotel my station is giving away so i can take my sister to cochella. two frumpy (she's not so frumpy, but i have my moments) middle-age moms at a music festival. we'd have a blast though. it wouldn't be very quiet, but would serve. yes, it would serve.

i've been digging into nouwen again, found a book called lifesigns. also found a curious transcription of kathleen norris' quotidian mysteries (on women's work, liturgy, and something else, the full title escapes me). nouwen's words wrap themselves around me like a blanket and i can be safe there. strangely enough, having spent so much time with him and merton, i've come to bristle at manning. i hadn't thought there could be a softer touch than manning's, but apparently, there is.

last night i read death shroud all the way through to a few poets. open mics are interesting venues, there's a whole slam poetry scene down here that i'm not a part of and don't think i'll ever be. i'm not a performing poet in that sense. i think in some ways my words live on the page and have more freedom in your mind than on a stage.