Great Expectations

I'm interested in collecting stories of people for whom love/life has come in unexpected forms. I think sometimes we have an idea of what/who we will end up with and how it will all play out. That idea can create destructive (oxymoronic?) energy if we cling to it too fervently.

I was reminded of the story of Alma and Ammonihah recently from ye olde book of the mormons...Alma the missionary got tired and counted the city of Ammonihah as a loss (with good reason! Those jerks were pelting him with sticks and stones and words that hurt him) and headed out...on his way home an angel came and told him to go back (WHAT???!!!) so he did, BUT HE WENT THE BACK WAY. And at the back gate of the city he found his BFF Amulek who was prepared by a dream to take him in and minister to him. As Elder Holland reminds us in one of my favorite talks of all time "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence"

"That is the second lesson of the spirit of revelation. After you have gotten the message, after you have paid the price to feel his love and hear the word of the Lord, "go forward." Don't fear, don't vacillate, don't quibble, don't whine. You may, like Alma going to Ammonihah, have to find a route that leads an unusual way, but that is exactly what the Lord was doing here for the children of Israel. Nobody had ever crossed the Red Sea this way, but so what? There's always a first time. With the spirit of revelation, dismiss your fears and wade in with both feet. " Jeffrey R. Holland, BYU address, 1999

So what has the back door looked like for you in matters of love and pursuing authentic adventures of self?

Spinning Ninny

I did a spinning class this Saturday. No, not the kind where you learn how to turn some sort of grass into yarn, or the kind where you twirl like a dervish. The kind where they put you on a bike, strap you into said bike and then proceed to turn the lights off and yell at you to "get out of the saddle and CRANK IT UP!" while you spin your way to glorious nowhere.

I've been afraid of the spinning class because the only people I ever see going INTO that room of bikes are people with no fat on their bodies (great genetics/workethic) and special butt padded pants (great confidence). I, therefore, lacking two of the two qualifications for spinning class, concluded that I would never be able to do it. But I did! I did! And though they never said it would be easy, it was worth it.

I sweated my way through a full hour of intense uphill biking while staying comfortably in one place. It was more fun than running and by the end, I was asking around about those butt padded spandex. (PS...I was sore in my nether regions for a good 3 days, but now I'm all better and ready to hit the spin again...)

All this is precursor to a very special NormalGirls announcement:

I bought and wear a pair of size 12 jeans. THE END.

A conversation that I had with myself

Self: What did you do at work today NB?
NB: Oh you mean besides the normal coordinating things that one does when one coordinates for a national scientific society? Let's see... hmm...nothing out of the ordinary...oh, um, except maybe for the part where I spent TWO hours blindfolded being spoon fed baby food while wearing a garbage bag and holding a bottle in my coworkers mouth.

(awkward pause)

Self: You work in non-profit, right?
NB: Yeah.
Self: Thought so.

Whatever the mess you are, you're mine, ok?

There's this boy. He's really smart. I'm completely in love with him. Completely. More than I've ever been in love with any boy in my entire crush-heavy life. It's slow and frictiony, slightly exhausting and it grows a little bit deeper every single day. And guess what? He's in love with me too. When he holds my hand, I feel connected to everything and free from it all at the same time. Sometimes I watch him while he's asleep (which is all the time) and I think, now my life has exploded into a real existence.

The most perfect love story ever? Nope. Not by a long shot if you're tallying up perfection by hollywood standards. In fact, if I was sitting across from Dr. Phil, he might listen to our complications and advise me to cut and run. The most important part of all this love is that I've come to a few conclusions that have changed me in a million little and big ways. And then there's this part:

Today he said, "we bring out the best in each other in so many ways." I'm my best self with him even in the parts that are frictiony- that friction borne of honesty seems somehow to meet my roughest parts and create a humility that leads me closer to God. That's pretty F-ing amazing stuff, people. A gift, really. From one soul mate to another.

And what of the end? Still unknown. Neither of us can confidently exclaim that we will be eternally connected though there is so much so much so much hope. Ain't that a kick in the gut? And somehow, it doesn't even matter. Would I do it again? Yes, yes, a million times, yes. Will I do it again should the outcome come out in sadness this time? Yes, yes, a million times, yes. I'm built for love. No regrets.

There was this time when SB and I lay meditating in the morning. Eyes closed, our breath coming in and out. in. out. warm air swirling in and out like slick sea lions. I was breathing in love and breathing out peace. Gently barking a command to every pore and synapse. love and peace. And he was beside me, breathing his own command in sync with mine. Different but the same. I don't know what he was asking his breath to teach him. It wasn't mine to know. Breathing each other's air, pups coasting in and out, pumping warmth into frigid veins full of old sorrow. Eyes closed. Hopeful.

Sometimes Rilke Says It All

Overflowing heavens of squandered stars
flame brilliantly above your troubles. Instead
of into your pillows, weep up toward them.
There, at the already weeping, at the ending visage,
slowly thinning out, ravishing
worldspace begins. Who will interrupt,
once you force your way there,
the current? No one. You may panic,
and fight that overwhelming course of stars
that streams toward you. Breathe.
Breathe the darkness of the earth and again
look up! Again. Lightly and facelessly
depths lean toward you from above. The serene
countenance dissolved in night makes room for you.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Paris, April 1913, from _Uncollected poems_ selected and translated by Edward Snow New York : North Point Press, 1996


You the belovedlost in advance,
you the never-arrived,
I don’t know what songs you like most.
No longer, when the future crests toward the present,
do I try to discern you. All the great
images in me – the landscape experienced far off,
cities and towers and bridges and un-
suspected turns in the path
and the forcefulness of those lands
once intertwined with gods:
all mount up in me to signify
you, who forever eludes.

Ah, you are the gardens!
With such hope I
watched them! An open window
in the country house –, and you almost
stepped out pensively to meet me. I found streets,—
you had just walked down them,
and sometimes in the merchants’ shops the mirrors
were still reeling from you and gave back with a start
my too-sudden image.—Who knows if the same
bird did not ring through both of us
yesterday, alone, at evening?

-Paris, winter 1913-14

I'm desperate to find the Ed Snow translation of an uncollected Rilke poem that starts "Again and Again even though we know love's landscape and the reticent gorge in which the others end." There are many imposters on the internet, but only Snow's translation will do. I have it in a book (Uncollected Rilke by Snow) which I love more than any other poetry book (and I have many) but it is trapped in a storage unit in Utah. I pay the $53 a month ransom to keep it alive, but its release is dependent upon acceptance to a certain graduate program. This is a poem that deserves liberty. Once I find it in cyberspace, I will send it out to you to change your lives as it has mine. I guess I have to try the library. Sigh.

(this post is dedicated to KA whom I miss and who sends me poetry and stamps from far off lands reminding me of who I was once upon a time)