Tag: Imperfection

Drinking Water in the Dark

Rita Sommers-Flanagan5 Comments

Drinking Water in the Dark

No one is ever fully embodied, hydrated, or sure of the way. We cope by using various hilarious defenses, but the joke is on us. And most of the time, it does not seem all that funny.

One foot, then the other. One meal, then the next. One face melting in your hands. Your own two hands. You do what you can, which should be enough, but it’s never enough.

Regrouping

Consider the options. Choose two or three and try them on. Personally, I like that purple gown, but the itchy wool sweater will always be available. Jump suits are impractical, especially for the aged or those too young for zippers.

You can carve the turkey or carve your name into a place that is mistakenly called history. But remember you are surrounded by a raging sea. Saltwater makes most choices irrelevant.

Getting Along

 Give away what you can. Keep what you must. Break bread not promises. Find yourself out walking with a colorful umbrella and murmur thanks to the Makers of Rain. Make fun of your ulterior motives and make light of the pain.

Take the heavier loads apart and see what can be shifted. Carry the burdens wisely and be mindful of your knees. You weren’t born yesterday.

Circling Back

As you were, so shall you never be again. Someday, you will touch your chest and notice that you no longer exist in any meaningful way. The relief will be palpable. Your exile, over. Your failings, forgiven.

No one is the best at anything for long, but the Choreographer loves imperfection, raw emotions, and pods of dolphins who, like us, are doomed but defiant.

The One-Eyed Chicken

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

The one-eyed chicken turns her good eye towards me, poised to pounce on the moldy cheese I intend to scatter for our flock of five. In terms of pecking order, I doubt she’s at the top, but she’s held her own, foraging and evading predators for months now. I drop chunks of mozzarella well within her visual field and cheer her on.

Each morning, I render thoughts, words, and prayers the way lard is rendered from the carcasses of the beautiful pigs. I endure the heat of certain realities, stirring the hot mess around in the cauldron of my mind, watching impurities rise to the surface. To those in charge of assigning value, the one-eyed chicken might be classified as an impurity and skimmed off the top. But I’ve hung around with The Idea long enough to realize that the one-eyed chicken is not an impurity. She might actually be the purest expression of meaning available.

I don’t know how she lost that eye. I don’t know how it is that humans lose their way and kill each other. We are frightened and ashamed of our perceived inadequacies. Life seems wildly unfair. We’re lonely. Despite warning signs and alarm bells, we continue to accumulate possessions as if they will save us. We don’t realize we’re gathering floatation devices that push us to the surface where our fatal impurities will be most obvious.

And there it is.

We cannot save ourselves, and this makes us go a little crazy. Will humanity survive the adversarial urges that elevate winners and denigrate losers? Can we decenter ourselves enough to relax into being an ever-evolving, transitory, fraction of The Idea?

Botox doesn’t make us younger. Wealth does not make us worth more. Denial doesn’t change the truth. Fame does not make us immortal. We are loved, as is, by The Idea—a fertile complexity that in the end, renders us as wordless and dependent as the day we were born. The Idea that birthed us is in perpetual danger. It must be hell to watch us gorging on toxic delicacies to prove her wrong. Or prove her right. But The Idea needs no proof. We’re the ones who need proof, so we make things up. False justifications and worthless guarantees.

For now, the one-eyed chicken still lays eggs, which of course, proves nothing.

And everything.

Feet

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My feet are propped comfortably in front of me. Morning light plays over the intricate curves and delicate runs of bone, cartilage, joints, digits, nails, veins, and varying hues of smooth, innocent skin. From this angle, the lumps and bumps don’t show. I’m caught in the magic of backlit flesh, sad that it is such a transient reality.

“Ah, don’t cry,” the Artist says, but it’s obvious she’s gratified by my reaction. Art is about emotion and recognition. It solves problems by simplifying and causes problems by revealing. At this moment, my feet are perfect. They don’t belong to me.

Perfection dwells in the twinkling of the eye, not the tally of a lifetime. It never lasts, but it leaves telltale signs: a smear of sacrificial blood wiped away, a cruel thought left unexpressed, a knowing glance, a long, hard day. Perfection is when traffic stops both directions to let a single ray of sunlight reach a dark place.

“God,” I say, pulling my achy feet back under me, reclaiming their imperfections. “These feet remind me of you. You’re both getting less reliable. Why did you choose evolution and entropy for design motifs?”

“I love entropy!” God declares with no hint of apology. “Random loss, chaos, the gradual decline into disorder; these spawn the next iterations of myself. You can’t expect me to convert everything into predictable mechanical work. Sometimes, thermal energy must stay put so there’s room for wonder.”

“Oh, that’s so you, God. Cold. Self-absorbed. Molecular. Can’t you stop for a minute and sympathize? Even if decline is fodder for the future, even if transition is the ground source of wonder, it’s still tough.”

“Well, it’s just as tough being eternal and waiting around,” God retorts. “But that’s not the point. Of course, it’s hard. The challenge is to grow softer and wiser. In the short run, denial makes things easier. But never better. Be brave.”

“Fine,” I say with a dismissive wave. I’ve heard it all before. I get up and put on my favorite red socks. They will help me venture into a mundane day. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful for things like warm socks and a working automobile.”

“Of course, I do,” God says with a self-satisfied smile. “And mind if I ride along? I need to check some inventories.”

“Not at all,” I say. “But bundle up. It’s wicked cold out there.”

When Pigs Fly

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“Shhhh,” I hold my finger to my lips. God raises an eyebrow, settles into the easy chair, and waits in accommodating quietude.

I cross my legs under me. Even though my back hurts, I hold absolutely still and watch the intricate frost formations on the windows melt. Minutes pass. Centuries pass. Finally, God blinks.

“If it’s all the same to you,” she whispers, “I think I’ll move along.”

“No, wait! There’s herbal tea brewing. I just needed a few moments of…”

But she’s gone. And was never here. I’ll drink both cups of tea myself, feed the fire, and ice my back. Maybe I overdid it chopping kindling yesterday. Or it could be this lumpy sofa, my latest addition to our collection of almost perfect couches. I hate icing sore places but on occasion, it’s necessary.

Maybe I should have asked for a healing touch while she was here, I think sarcastically to myself.

And maybe someday your pigs will fly, God thinks back to me. I’m not sure whether to laugh or not.

God is an ever-present elixir, an infusion, a tincture, an essential oil. Ice and fire. She goes nowhere because she’s everywhere. But even in all her infinitude, she can be a little petty. A tad reactive. Over the eons of human consciousness, reported sightings of the holy suggest psychosis or at least terrible failures in judgment.

I imagine the pigs in flight. It’s no more outlandish than dinosaurs, evolved to birds, flying and diving and pecking at the pig food. The pigs get even. Until we moved the bird feeder to a tree, they would bump the pole to get seeds to fall so they could gobble them up. And if given the chance, any one of them would gobble a whole bird in a few quick chomps–on the run from the others if necessary. They aren’t much into sharing.

I understand that. Sharing is hard. Giving up, giving enough, giving away—all tough to do most of the time. An acute awareness of my shortcomings silences me. Evolving is a very slow process.

“It’s all about process and outcome,” God says in the audible hum of life in my head. “You are all greedy and afraid, but some mothers share. Even unto death.”

I stare at her, unsettled.

“And some eat their young,” I state flatly, almost sorry I’ve found my voice.

“Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it, sweetheart?” God says. “Is the tea still warm?”

The Pockmarked Rock

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

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Sometimes God looks at me with big soulful eyes that say “I know what you know and I know that you know I know so why bother to hide?” And I say, “You know why.” And God nods. And I say, “Why do you bother?” And God says, “With what?” And I say, “With pockmarked rocks, knots in wood, burned out doctors, and the achingly slow evolution of the human spirit.”

There are tons of rocks in our house. Found, acquired, given. A few approach perfection, worn so smooth it would be hard to imagine anything smoother or rounder. Most have their reasons, but some are a mystery. How did this ugly, misshapen rock make its way into the collection? It is irredeemably ordinary, commonplace, without any distinction other than the irregularities it has not overcome. I don’t like this rock. I want to take it to the river and throw it in, but I can’t. Once a rock crosses the threshold it is beyond me to push it back out.

Without another word, God wraps strong fingers around the pockmarked rock, and it begins to glow and shimmer. Then it melts, and the demons escape, screaming into the haze. They form an astonishing acapella chorus, their screams subside into a river song, and the rock wants them back. God laughs.

“See, little one?” God says. “You already knew that story. It’s a grand one, isn’t it? One of my favorite plots.”

“You mean the inextricability of imperfection and perfection?” I ask. “Or are you just reminding me how ordinary I am?”

God takes my face into her hands, her palms under my jaw, those same strong fingers winding up the sides of my skull.

“Don’t bother,” I say. “The demons will just come back.”

“Yes,” God says. “But they always come back singing.”

I nod.

On the Face of It

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

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The most disconcerting image of God any of us has to deal with is the one in the bleary mirror every morning. True, God appears in a lot of unsavory, overwhelming, challenging guises. She flies in on a broomstick with a stolen dog, her backpack filled with ruby red slippers. He spreads himself brilliant across the evening sky and sprinkles himself into a billion stars He cries like a baby. With a hammer in her huge hands, she takes down wall after wall. I like watching. I like an arm’s-length God. But I don’t like that image of God in the mirror–that fatally flawed stretch of skin and bones I know from the inside out.

Sometimes, I try to avoid eye contact. Other times, I look for the innocence that was once there. I think I see vestiges of something beyond, but it’s elusive. Of course, I see my mother, my children, that genetic overlay. There are scars. Errant eyebrows. In my eyes, the piercing steely blue of the Irish.

“Hello,” I said to the mirror this morning. I do this sometimes. It creates a little distance. But for some reason, I added, “How can I be of service today?”

And to my surprise, my face answered.

“This day won’t be back,” it said. “This day is a guest. Be kind to it. This day will be a progression of sojourning moments, hoping for your attention. Remember, you are crystalized time.”

“Say what?” I said. “Crystalized what?”

“Time,” my face said. “You embody a fraction of the cosmos for a miniscule, monumental flash of linearity. And I must say, you wear it well.”

“Why, thank you,” I said back to my face. “But you know that’s not true.” I pointed to the worst of my imperfections. My face laughed. “You poor thing,” it said. “Those are your best features. Proof of your existence. Like I said, you’re crystalized time. And time is a craggy, wizened old thing. It likes nothing better than transporting imperfections into eternity where they are fodder for the greater good.”

“I didn’t sign on for this,” I said. But my face lifted into a smile, and I knew that in fact, I had signed on for this. For this day. For this chance. I inventoried my defects and damages, circling them like wagons around my fears. Then I enhanced the patchy curve of my eyebrows with a sharp clear line, removed some unwanted facial hair, and blew myself a kiss.

“Let’s roll, gentlemen,” I said to God and the pretty little moments at my feet. “We’ve got this.”

 

I Can Move the Iris

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

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A lot of people like autumn. I don’t. Sure, autumn lovers have their reasons, and I have mine. Not worth a debate, except maybe internally, as yet again, I find myself inspecting my belly button. “Why do you not like autumn, Rita?” I ask myself. “Too much death. Too many endings. Too much work. Things to put to bed. The threats. The oncoming winter,” I answer. But I’ve now distracted myself. The mention of belly button has flipped me out of my autumn reveries to my memories of my actual belly button. With both pregnancies, it popped out of its usual spiral, protruding like a small boy’s misplaced penis. No smooth, picturesque baby bump for me.

People conscious of appearances tried to shame me into wearing looser tunics or thicker tops. They suggested bandaids or an inner body wrap to push that thing back in. I resisted, trying to be comfortable with all aspects of the cataclysmic set of bodily accommodations entailed in pregnancy. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? Or as Popeye asserts, “I yam what I yam.” I didn’t pop my belly button out on purpose. It was just part of the process. But I remember the shame. Waves of shame for both my lack of perfection and my refusal to disguise that disappointing imperfection.

God and I frequently tangle around these issues. Pregnancy and childbirth; these are not walks in the park. Of course, neither are knee replacements, starvation, braces, kidney stones, or war. Some suffering is voluntary. Some suffering has a purpose, a desired outcome. But some suffering seems pointless and avoidable. And the little ones, the powerless ones, the poor—these always suffer first and most. These are God’s peeps. If God has gone missing, this is where you’ll find her, suffering alongside. I don’t like this. I like this far less than autumn. I could endure endless autumn if God would just step up and end the vast and unjust suffering of innocent, powerless people.

And of course, I just lied.

Two years ago, I planted the iris bulbs in an unfortunate location. The weeds and native grasses have completely overtaken them, giving me a daily view of negligence and defeat. I wasn’t thoughtful. I wasn’t perfect. I acted expediently instead of wisely. Oh God, I need to save one hungry child, one mangled family, one small patch of soil. I’ve got to get something right before I die. Please. I’m begging here. Please.

The arms of God are crossed. The eyes of God are piercing. The heart of God is coursing the blood of God through the arteries of my over-exposed existence. “You can move the iris bulbs,” she says. “This would be the time.”

As I mentioned, I don’t like autumn. It’s nearly too much for me.

Perfection

Rita Sommers-Flanagan1 Comment

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A lot of my inventions don’t work out very well, but usually this doesn’t stop me from trying again. The lure of perfection shimmers on the horizon. For example, I dreamed up a way to install window trim that would reduce cold drafts, but it turns out that this  severely complicates the process of taking down the shades–to the point of aching arms, hammered thumbs, obscenities and temporary defeat.

So this morning, with the shade half in and half out, I’m thinking about perfection. Is intention enough? Does anything fit the definition for long? Does detaching transform imperfection? Achieving perfection seems both precarious and potentially boring. Some people think God is perfect, but if there’s a God, it’s unlikely she’s boring. Is perfection an end state or a process?

“Both,” God said, slowly materializing near the woodstove. “And hey, did I slip in gradually enough this time?” She was dripping eucalyptus oil into the hot water, trying to calm me down and perhaps, dilute the odor of this morning’s burned toast or maybe the toxic fumes from the varnish I’d applied to an imperfect tabletop last night.

I nodded. “Want some tea?” I asked, my voice tight, embarrassed about the window shades and the black crusts of toast.

“Sure,” she said.

The eucalyptus was stinging my eyes. “You may’ve overdone that essential oil thing,” I said, as I put the tea kettle on the stove.

“Well,” God said. “Essence is hard to calibrate.”

I gave God a glance. “Why do you say things like that?” I asked. “You’re so obscure and elusive.”

“Am not,” God said. It was such an adolescent response I smiled despite myself as I put tea leaves in the boiling water. The scent of spearmint mingled with varnish and eucalyptus. The aroma of burned toast had dissipated, being a more transitory odor.

“So, about perfection,” I said. “Is that what you are? Is it possible? How would you define it?”

God blew across the surface of her tea. “It’s like…well…” She eased back in the rocker, looking thoughtful. “Seeds,” she said finally, glancing out the window. This hit a sore spot. An irregular layer of snow blanketed the garden beautifully, but the last few summers, that damn garden had resisted anything near perfection. Trying to address the problems had only made them worse. Things had gotten ugly. I felt a bit defensive.

God continued, trying a different angle. “Perfection lives inside perception. Perfection is not the thing itself.” But my mood had deteriorated. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said. “Want some toast?”

“Sure,” God said, sighing. “But no jelly.” I nodded. “And I’ll try not to burn it,” I said in a self-deprecating tone.

“Perfect,” God said with an impish grin. I knew she was joking around, but I felt like burning the toast on purpose.

“Either way, sweetheart,” God said. “I’ll eat it either way.”

Too Old For Anything but the Truth

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

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I am now officially too old to pledge allegiance to anything but the truth, so every morning I get up hoping to encounter something true. If God is awake, this usually causes him to clear his throat while the sun removes the frost from the windows. Perfect frost. Perfect sun.

I try not to look directly at God because I’m afraid he’ll spoil the moment. If I hold perfectly still, perfect moments roll around in the room, clear blue marbles, resembling the way the earth looks from the heavens. They balance on the surface of reality like uncried tears. In a terrible, frail, temporary way, all things are good, and perfect. In their beingness, all things are true. This is something God agreed with at least once, so I’m wondering…

“Yes,” God says. “I still agree.”

I pour God a cup of coffee, not noticing the dead fly in the bottom of the cup. God adds cream and sees the body floating on the surface. There’s been a serious invasion of spiders and houseflies as the weather turns. Most of them come in and die. Ordinarily, I avoid vacuuming, but they’re piling up, so I’ll have to clean again. None of this feels perfect. The day takes on a familiar tedium.

God skims the fly off the top of his coffee and takes a sip.

“Gross!” I say. “I can get you another cup.”

“I know,” God says. “But don’t bother. What’s a dead fly here and there?”

I admire this crude nonchalance. In the Arctic, it’s impossible to drink a bowl of warm soup before a layer of mosquitoes dive-bomb and die on the surface. You sip dead mosquitoes gladly. A far worse threat looms on the frozen horizon.

God is watching me as he sips the steaming coffee, bushy eyebrows tipped inward in a kindly look. The frost has melted. Intense October light takes over, casting sharp shadows, promising magic.

The smell of dark honey on my leftover toast breaks my heart. I know have no choice. No real choice but to accept the ethereal truths that plague and frighten me. That exhaust and break me down. All I have is a blurry vision of this clear blue moment on this clear blue planet, and though I’d rather achieve a more known perfection, I have to vacuum flies and change the sheets. I’m expecting important guests.