Building a Mystery

I've been on a Sarah McLachlan kick since I "discovered" her Christmas cd in Starbuck two months ago. I'm a little late, I know. I wait until Sunday mornings to prepare esl lessons for the UTDallas graduate students from China who visit our church to learn about American culture and practise their English. The editors at Relief hyperventilate as I stall and reread submissions up to the very last possible minute. And two days ago, I dimantled the cone-shaped fire hazard occupying the tv stand. While the girls lay prone on the carpeted floor watching reruns of Curious George, the four foot tree I'd bought on my way home from work late one December night had dried to a crispy version of last summer's drought. So it wouldn't disentegrate into the carpet, I lifted the tree, light as straw, out the back door before removing the lights. The stubble on the concrete, a barren crop circle. A fact of gravity and lack of water.

I have a problem with procrastination. It is a confession I make with no real knowledge of how to change or if I should. Procrastination is a fact in my life and why is the mystery. The when of my memories is as mysterious as the acts themselves. While others work to build a mystery, I follow the winds of change. It's a condition abhorant to proverbial wisdom. I think that wisdom calls it sloth. Which windows of opportunity have I missed while my tree dried and the ornaments collected dust?

mysterium tremendum

Your best guess on the origin of this mystery.

News Buzz

Relief Journal has just posted the author lineup for the Winter 2007 issue due out in February. Take a peek here at the awesome writers who will be messing with your head in just a few days.

mudmen

When building men, the snow seems a purer medium, I suppose. Unless, like the Emperor Qin, you desire an army of terra cotta warriors to command in the netherworld beyond Xi'an. Or, like God, you desire a friend made from terra firma. But a child's need to create transcends having the best materials. It's still three parts snow or mud formed by hand, placed one on top the other until a pyramid of sorts, a stocky, rounded man, appears. Rocks for eyes, sticks for arms, leaves to crown the head, breath to warm and mold the clay into sentinels of art and joy and need.

On Ice

We were on tinterhooks all weekend, waiting. Venturing out for a drive to the mall in the freezing rain, we'd hope the roads wouldn't ice before we got back. On Saturday, the saturated trees began to bead and then freeze, suspended on the branches by a molecule strong enough to resist gravity. The ice storm never really materialized in this part of north Texas, though our neighbors to the west might disagree. The glazed roads mirror the street lights and the cars fish tail on the ice but the world has not stood still. Not like the winter morning in Houston years ago when I awoke from a dead sleep. A hundred miniature windchimes echoed in the stillness, an eerie quiet that seemed louder than the chimes. No cars hummed along the roads, no doors slammed, no dogs barked, no sirens signaled danger. I felt raptured from the dead and followed the sound of the chimes to my window, nearly frosted over with a thousand dendrite flakes. I opened the door and let in the cold stillness, squinting my eyes against the light. The air breathed in chimes, tinkling and shimmering tiny bells of sound. It was the trees. Iced and glazed with tiny daggers they bowed their limbs in the wind, brushed their frozen nakedness against the nearest neighbor, and sang like winter fairies.

Late this morning, the world is melting and drips a slow and steady percussion. A chickadee flits to the Christmas wreath still hanging from the eaves and nestles in the cherry-red bow. I want to wait some more, in hope, to be raptured from the dead. The world has not long enough stood still.

speaking with tongues

Thank you Dave Long (Faith in Fiction) for the link to this article in last Sunday's New York Times. I am taken with the processes by which our minds create and think and expound. We often forget the importance of the tongue - that the spoken word is the power by which God creates. Imagine God typing a memo to Michael: Bring me dirt that I may form man.

And for more on the typeset word, check out my new "button" to Shelfari (scroll down and to the right) which allows me to display my library. I'm still in the process of loading the isbn #'s, but it's way more fun than keeping my list in a suitcase! What's on your shelves?