The color of natural order

2008-06-03T11:32:00.000-07:00

The color of natural order:

I’m in the middle of a room. Each wall is painted a different color. I can interpret the colors any number of ways but there’s an inherent meaning to each one.

A western meaning.

But I’m stuck on one color:

White.

White is death in some cultures; in ours it’s a rebirth, a cleansing. But in my case, maybe it’s both.

Its cyclical, the meaning of white. How it’s both transcendent and pure, but all at once blanketing and absent.

I’m looking at all the things this represents and how it’s saturating my life. Not just my life but also others. But, I’ll stick to what I know:

My grandmother on her deathbed of white sheets.

She sees white lights.

She sees portals and triangles.

Her angel is a little black girl in a pink jumpsuit with little braids in white clips. My grandma really sees her, and I believe her. This little girl was the daughter of a neighbor she knew in Dallas who was killed. I think its so fitting that a little black girl is her angel because my grandma has always been so racist. I think the way god works is exquisite- that someone who has said “nigger” and meant it can have a beautiful little black girl with white clips representing her is the most forgiving thing I can think of. There are no coincidences.

But then there’s the crazy white. I’m watching people suffer, and it’s not for a reason. This white blinds you from understanding how things work. Mystery is stripped of excitement and replaced by fear. Because when something is not understood it’s the most horrific thing.

I’m watching someone die who doesn’t want to die. I’m watching her fade but cling. I’m seeing my mother unravel even though she’s a stone. But I’m unraveling too. When you see the blankness of white, the absence of something tangible, its heartbreaking. Why fight? But she still does. My mom has pleaded with my grandma “when you see white lights, please go. There’s nothing for you here. This is miserable.”

Fucking Darwin said it’s the order of things to fight to win or lose. But bodies shouldn’t break like this. So I question faith and what I’ve built. I’m blind and crave color. My mother does the same. It’s a torture that’s double edged like a sword: their death = your peace, their death = their fear. How can you cope with that? What do you say?

This is how I cope with it:
I have to accept death like a friend. I’ve seen death too much to say it’s not necessary. But it’s so painful. The loss is so great. Even if you aren’t close to them you feel the sting, and when you are close it’s a pain worse than if you died too.

Then I think of my grandma who fights to live even though her life is over. What prompts us to keep going in the midst of phobia? Is it simply the will to live or something greater?

My great Grandmother Ruby said in her journal, “This is life, live it.” She rebelled and was hoydenish. She rose above being labeled. And I have to think that life is just a temporary game that we all play while we have a chance.

I have to learn from this: Take nothing for granted. Not one love or look. Not one opportunity. I don’t believe in conventionalism. I believe in the wild of not knowing. Of plunging in without thinking. Of rising above and growing. I gotta get out of the white, fall into the blue and black, the red of lust and green of new so I can crawl out of this blind faith or lack there of to be something more than a vessel waiting to pass on. I want my last words to be “ I lived.”

-S

I Saw a Painting of a Fire

2008-04-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

I saw a painting of a fire. At least, I interpreted it as a fire. Like flames licking pages or the corners of houses. I am looking at my life like Vesuvius on canvas. There’s the dark of the smoke, where my desires hide like kittens. My dreams burst forth out of this darkness in a thousand bluebirds scattering to the sky and I can never quite catch them. They won’t be held in containers of the heart or hands. But desire is Vesuvius; desire is flame, a red burden of hunger that won’t go away. It’s my aversion to the calm, the water, and the stillness of a breeze that keeps this flame going. An unsatisfiable flame that flickers and dares to unravel me and what I’ve made. What is this desire? It’s the thirst to move on to the next thing, then the next, always growing, and always-changing direction. Boredom and stationary are the enemy. Wind and fire carry me to the edges of cliffs, where I can barely hold onto solid footing. Why can’t I be stable? It’s the fear of not doing that ushers a new beginning, a seedling of something beyond reach that I grasp only in my mind. So frequently I am swallowing down the little bluebirds to hide those wild dreams that rise up above the smoke and ash, above the flames and escape from me. Only to have them erupt out, chattering and untamed, to be born in someone else’s treasury.

-S Terry

Hoydenish

The color of natural order

I Saw a Painting of a Fire