Roy Reynold's sketch of a Hipster

Late 60's. I was in Moscow, Idaho looking into the church, and I read the scriptures for hours at a time. My artist friend Roy sketched me reading the Bible. I glued the sketch on a cutting board, so as not to lose it in the next 22 moves. The sketch looks like I felt at the time--scared, unsure, reluctant--praying all the time that I wouldn't find the Mormon church was true. "Please don't let it be true." But it was true then and is still true-blue now.
I splashed my favorite colors on the sketch. It makes me feel good to remember those slow diamond-like discoveries.

Bright Spots of Time

Wow. You knew I would love the poem. I really love it. Where is this museum? And how was the poem in a museum? In what form? Or were there just poetry books lying around on every surface and decorating the floors? This is how I would arrange a museum: I'd lay my friend’s sculptures on slabs of marble and hang art pieces suspended from the ceiling to eye level; our chairs would be books.
I hope you get the job. It fits you, but how did you feel when you interviewed? How come I’m always in the middle of what you’re doing? Rachel is calling me early early in the morning because she can't reach you, so she turns from Utah to Idaho to find you in AZ.? Logic? I'm trying to find you with zip luck as she's in a panic on the other line. I finally told her that I had shouted--not gently nudged--but shouted at you through text and e-mail. And even though I personally knew you were in a fetal position somewhere under sagebrush, cuddling with the snakes, I didn't tell her that. I told her I was sure you would contact her immediately. And I knew you would, since the job fell obviously from heaven into your un-deserving lap.
How is the desert? I think it wears your name, but so does a graduate program.

Hey and thanks for bringing me back here. I’m looking around, and it feels good. Jaren blew me off this site a couple of months ago like a dark wind from hell with his condescending remark about changing reality. Now, he’s sent me an essay to read, which I’m dying to open, but won’t until I get an official apology from Tuscan. I love Jaren, so I’ve wondered why his snooty comment caused grief, since I realize he completely missed or willfully ignored my point. But, no matter what he says, he, Greg, and James were a delight to be around. Jaren and Greg pulled up chairs in my office to sit in on my interview with James, coaching him in what to say either before or after (can’t remember, Jaren, and it doesn’t matter anyway) because his answers read like textbooks. “I don’t need to hire another EGO, James. Looking at Jaren and Greg, I said, “We have enough egos already at the WC. Don’t need more, thank you very much.” Whoa and what if I hadn’t hired James? Makes me sick to think I might have missed knowing James Best.

Time is a strange animal. As I grow older, it speeds up and passes like a Technicolor dream. Memory is even stranger. Summer and fall semesters blend like falling leaves. However, at times, I DO choose to have a selective memory. I remember only good times in my marriage unless I’m with other people, since it’s a safer way to live. I locate bright spots and ask why they are bright? My memory of knowing James and Greg and Jaren (“around” the same time, Jaren) has sunlight about it—Why? Because I enjoyed their cynicism? Hardly. More because I loved their ability to let go of cynicism and see the present, see “now” like innocent children. They have keen minds and love to use them. (However, Jaren’s mind suffers lately from sunburn.) James and Jaren usually live at the front edge of their lives while, all the time, both investigate their darker pasts. Greg’s mind needs a hook like a large crochet needle to pull it in, but once in the vicinity, he sparks up any landscape.

In my writing, I compress time and blend characters together. My mother becomes part of my grandmother. Randy becomes part of Jim. You--Em G. -- and Em Little often blend in your exclusive brilliance. But I don’t mistake the center of reality, Jaren Watson. How could I? It has often slapped me side the head –even while I pulled mountains down to hide my home--with its continual harshness, complicated paradoxes, and forever beauty. Here’s why I think I felt insulted: 1) My life’s goal is to find exact reality; without that goal, I’m aware that I cannot find God. 2) I’ve been a long time at it. 3) It’s important to me because I spent time in a landscape where I wasn’t sure which reality to believe. Is the paint really dripping off those walls? Should I walk over and touch it to find out? Did that radio really come on before I turned it on? 4) It’s almost as exciting as being in love (but not quite) to find what really “is” underneath the 1000 illusions we pile on top of truth. 5) I’m aware there are 1000 truths inside one truth, and I love the hunt.
Enough. I love the poem

At the Heard Museum today......

.....I bought a book of Louise Erdrich's poetry and found a poem that made me wish I were reading it with you, Sharon. So I thought I'd post it on here so you could read it. I was really impressed with the museum....I'll have to talk to you about it someday. Hopefully I will get Rachel K's job in Utah and not be so far away, although my heart is settling nicely in the Sonoran Desert....I'm afraid I will always be returning to pull a week on the trail here and there. I definitely need to purchase some artwork while I'm here.



Grief


Sometimes you have to take your own hand
as though you were a lost child
and bring yourself stumbling
home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house.
A page of warm light
falls steady from the open door.

Here is your bed, folded open.
Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.


Love you, Shar. --Em

"Snow Woman"; Criticism; and J. Grifter

Stressful day. Actually a bad, bad day; Nothing goes right, and I ache to drop this life flat and run to search out old hipster friends--just to hear someone sit quietly and pick a guitar. So driving home from work at 12 a.m., I'm looking forward to seeing deer in my yard. But, tonight, when I need them, the deer are across the river eating my neighbor's hay. Worthless deer. Tears move close to the surface, when I turn off the loud 4-wheel drive truck. But one thing I know--for dead certain--is I'm not going inside to sit in a pool of self-pity. I'll stay out in this ice land all night before I'll sit on my floor and fall face-forward into a "woe is me poor victim stance." Solutions?--none. First, I want the key to unlock my 22 to shoot at the moon, which I can't see behind the clouds. But I now it's there. The moon won't desert us like some famliy and friends do. It can't walk away. It's got to run the tides, the hecks sakes. But the key to my pistal is lost; Thank heaven. So I fall out of the truck, since I'm too short to step out gracefully, and stand to squint at the trees where the deer bed down. I'm emotionally stuck. But, slowly like small drops of water rolling off my roof, I hear the Quiet of my farmhouse laid out in the new snow, and walk in a circle.... I've never been able to find the exact words to describe snow falling past my big yard light.
It falls soft and light as if the flakes barely disturb or move the air. Quiet. The only sound tonight comes from ice breaking up in the river. The world begins to shift and change and fall back into reasonable places.
I can hear my dog, Patch, clawing at the door to get out. He loves me, can't wait to see me, needs contact with me, or he stops eating, drops into severe depression, which makes it hard to have my oldest son babysit him when I travel. I change into boots and my Minnesota coat, wondering if he got this disease from me. Patch jumps around my boots; I watch the sky for a break in the clouds. The snow falls straight down and makes the trees look like they float above ground. I study the sky again and remember making snowmen with the kids on nights like this: a familiar ache churns into it's fiamiliar pattern. I feel like spitting out a swearword. Surely, there's a way to live without constantly grieving the loss of people I have loved--some I'll see again; some are gone like they've been blown out of the universe by a hurricane--before I had time to wake up and say a proper, dignified good-bye....

Geez, I sound like a Carol King song. And who am I talking to anyway--the trees? the covered-up moon? or to God? I'm disgusted and throw a snowball at Patch. He runs around me, barking; he thinks we're playing. So . . . we do play. I roll the first snowball to make a snowman--Never mind. It'll be a snow woman (I hate all men tonight including my dad and my boss)-- mindlessly, roll it too big, I suppose forgetting that it was my boys who lifted the packed-down snow, forgetting that Patch is obviously too small to help me, and he's worthless anyway, since he's over by the river barking at ducks he can't even see but knows are there--somewhere. He trots back, tilts his head at the snow ball and heads for the trees to flush out the deer, who, for some reason, are usually there, but are not there tonight. This is life--animals, things, family, friends should be there, but, really, are not ever in a close enough landscape. The cat, who lives with us so distantly that I haven't even named her, is trying to get across the snow to where I'm standing. I wonder how she can see me through the flakes as she jumps daintily from one pile of snow to another with a faint, pitiful meow before every jump. She loves me also, but is a worthless cat who crawls up and sleeps by my neck as soon as she hears Patch snoring. If she makes it across the snow field, I realize I'll have to carry her back, and since she's not used to being carried, or even touched, she'll scratch the heck out of my neck. Wow. Geez, life is complicated for those in a bad mood, who like to complain. Turning back to start over on the snowman, I leave Patch to bark at phantom deer and by 3:00 am, I've made a very anorexic snow "woman" with small Christmas bulbs for her eyes, nose, and mouth--they shine--(I don't want her to have ears). She wears a cowboy hat and a tie-died red scarf, and though she tilts to the left side, she is one Picasso of a snow woman. "She's so fine," my artist friends are going to be jealous; Sculptress Friend Ann, move over and eat your heart out. I pat more snow underneath her left silver-ornament eye to keep the wind from sailing it into the river, since it's not real silver. It's not even plastic, but more like glittered egg shell. Nice. So nice. This Snow Woman is taking grand art prize of the year. I'm certain; they'll freeze her, wrap her in cellophane, and ship her back east to a famous museum, probably the one where Meg and I learned that J. Best is the only male we know who loves Wuthering Heights as much as we do. Even her stick arms still have dried leaves on them. A western Madonna. A Greek goddess. Just before I reach for the cat, who is now crouched against my boot, watching every shadow in tight fear, I'm proud--I'm feeling very proud--especially proud that--tonight--I beat back the Big Bad Blues, sans Ipod, sans late night TV, sans Alive PM.


Note to Em: Sorry I yelled at you during the whole phone call. I can't do that anymore. Just way too expensive for the minutes. Really. Sorry. You'll just have to come up here if you want criticized like that again.

Joe G. came to take me to lunch and left a note that was better than any mere lunch. Has anyone seen Grifter's hand writing? It looks like calligraphy. When I grow up, I want to write like that. But the cynical, music-lover that he is cannot write a straight-up note if it kills him. He turns everything into satirical drama, which makes life more fun. What a treat.
I, myself, would have written: "Hey. J. Came to take you to lunch." Not Joe. He starts with no salutation and turns the note into poetry: It's rings faint like "Forgive me; I ate the plums . . ."

Sharon
I stopped to take you to lunch.
You were gone.
Rain check. . . .

I also want you to know
That I would have bought
dessert.

Next time, dessert is
not an option.

PS
I was also tempted to
steal your checkbook.

Joseph Wyatt Griffin

New York 2008

The Fox

Guess who breezed into my office right before we marched through graduation in the Hart? Yep. The great breezer of all time--Gregory Fox himself. Bearded, handsome, excited to see Kimberly, taller? or did I shrink? Wow. It's good to see old friends. He's rich, thinking about grad school, still grins all the time he talks like he has a big secret he's going to tell you. He's writing, but it sounds like it's for other people--not his "truest blue voice" stuff, and he wants to party with AZ people after Christmas. As I sat in the Hart with the December graduates, wishing I'd talked him into sneaking away for dinner, listening to a speaker encourage students to build the right "study environment" (a little odd for an exit speech), I thought of the many days Greg and I have been through, many hours, thousands of minutes.

When I interviewed him for hire, he looked so dang normal. How'd he do that? I swear his head circled the moon at least three times a day. He's a delight, but hard to explain to people. One time before a party, I threw a mop in his hands and said, "I'm so glad you came early." Ten minutes later, I came downstairs from cleaning the bathroom, and Greg's still standing in the same place, looking at the same mop. Luckily Beau came in the back door, saw the problem, gently took the mop, and talked nonstop to Greg, so Greg wouldn't notice him rinsing and cleaning the floor. It was just too hard to explain "mopping a floor" to Greg when the sun hit the horizen. At one Christmas party, I had forgotten presents for the spouses and was hurriedly wrapping last minute gifts. He and Jaren watched for a minute, then, behind my back, they sneaked around corners, scooping up things from my shelves, kitchen, etc. and wrapped them up as gifts to put under the tree. I opened one up later and said, "Wow. I just bought a straw doll at D.I. just like this." Weird? Ohhhh, "I could tell you stories." I grounded him from taking the Scribblers to the English Department because he stopped and flirted with the secretaries and caused such chaos. One day he whine and whined, so I sent someone with him to babysit. Geez, sure, as if she could control him--"How'd it go? Did he behave?" "Well, ...Sister Morgan, yeah, he did. I mean he didn't stop in the office and flirt, but.... " I was walking away and turned sharply to face her. "Well, nothing, really; he just sort of stopped at every open-door classroom and waved at people."
After the Becca heartache, he'd be so ADD some days that I couldn't stand to have him in seminar. But he wouldn't go away, so I'd give him paper to draw on and make him promise to sit in the corner and shut up. One seminar, while he threw across the room strong insights about the essay we were analyzing, he drew fifty pigs in different stages of dying--one had a dagger through its throat, another had his eyes blown out, blood everywhere, etc. I wished I'd saved it. In case I ever get accused of having sane acquaintances, I can pull it out as proof. Nope. Sorry. Normal? Never heard of it. I hang out with writers.

The semester that he, James Best, and Jaren Watson sat in seminar together was electric. Fun. Seriously brain-ripping brilliant, though I wanted to shoot all three of them before it was over.
I really think old friends are the best.

"There are many prodigal sons ..." And football

Tanner, I posted your picture today, so you won't go into withdrawal after seeing two of your pictures in the BYU-I class schedule. Those are W.C. pics. aren't they? You scene stealer, you.
Hey, I wish you weren't still such a graphic writer. The image of the rage-soaked boy knifing his own mother haunts me, as do some questions about free agency. When you said "There's nothing free about this kid's agency now"(that's such a great line), I thought this boy lost his agency long before he grabbed that knife. But when and why did he lose his agency? And how much did he have in the first place? The same amount as you or I? I'm so intrigued by "when and how," though as in this case, it's often a moot point. I think of this kid's intense anger and rage and wonder . . . because anger is always a secondary emotion, which usually starts with sadness or comes from fear, and fear makes most of us act like animals. I'm not trying to justify what this boy did. I just wonder what happened in his nightmare life to push him past living in reality. Why did he make this decision to plunge a knife into his mother's head? When did he make this choice? Did he just wake up that morning and say, "Hey, good day to kill a mom?"
You say that you believe all emotions and chemistry are rooted in choice, which implies that every act has a choice attached to it, which is when it gets very complicated for me. Something makes my head ache about that idea. I see a six year old in Iraq get his leg blown off, and I think, "Whose agency is working here? His? For being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Pres. Bush's agency? Whose? That’s at the other end of the spectrum, but still, some choices people make seem so limited to me. Or it’s like listening to a candidate who promises massive changes once he/she is in the White House, when I know that all new presidents are very limited in decisions they can make because of the circumstances they inherit with the office, and because of the “time of season, the time of man.”
I remember Elder Holland's talk and Elder Bedner's on the same topic. I thought, "So true, how wise. And who would choose not to forgive? Who on this earth would choose to purposely be offended and stay offended? What a small and closed-down way to live." Then my shirt was soaked with tears because I thought of all the people I know who are filled with such agonizing pain that they can't even spell the word "forgiveness" yet. I thought of the long walk they must take with the Savior before they get past the pain to see what forgiveness really is. I thought of little girls now grown into W.C. assistants who've learned to walk very quietly in the shadows, so as not to call attention to themselves. Some voice deep inside still warns them to walk here--on the very edges of life (long after they’re physically safe) so Dad or Uncle Harry won't hear you and come looking. Or slice your arms to shreds tonight because your body was involved in a horribly wrong act, and that will punish it for you. And they don't even know they still hear this little voice. Is this a choice? Of course. Is it a negative choice? Yes, it keeps them from living fully, but it's a choice born out trying to survive because someone bigger-- someone they trusted and loved-- betrayed them and used them like rubber dolls you buy at stores. Their choice, which governs how they live now, came about as a reaction to someone else's free agency. When families are ripped apart by whomever or whatever, Tanner, how much agency remains in the ruins? Aren't we all just scrambling to get to a safe home again? And when we don’t feel safe, we run, or numb ourselves, or get angry. When I see a snake, I shrink up inside and freeze in utter horror because I’m so afraid of them. I can’t move. I can’t help it. It’s a reaction. So, explain this to me? It all sounds so hopeless and helpless.

I remember when I first started walking with my head down--always looking at the ground-- because so many bombs were falling that I couldn't look up without fear of my head splitting open. The world was agonizingly ugly. Now, the bombs don't fall so much, but I still walk stooped over. Choice? Yes. But isn't there a difference between free agency and choices one makes from an instinct to survive? You are wise, Tanner. I think you understand something I don't see. Yet . . . when you draw causal connections between mercury poisoning and our decision to eat fish, I want to say "Whoa. Hold it." The mercury poisoning that kept me in bed, studying plaster on the ceiling, for two-three years while I was married to your uncle came from having soft teeth (gene pool--didn't choose that one. Or did I?), and my mother taking me to a dentist, when I was nine, who filled my mouth with mercury (an odd practice still around). I can't see a choice I made to get this illness. Once I had the mercury removed (an excruciating experience), I started to heal, but that took another year, and I did not heal before my children had suffered from my absence. They made choices--very young--to fill up holes in themselves from not having a mother around, so where is their free agency. They made decisions out of a need to survive a situation created by me? But, again, where was my agency in this? Did you choose your M.S.? I don't think so. Do you choose how to react to it? Of course. But you have an education, a safe, well-lighted house, lots of family who adore you, and someone warm in your bed every night who probably even laughs at your stupid jokes. So, your agency seems freer to me than some other's, Tanner.
What I'm saying is that for some people, this life has many dark crawly caves where the only choice is "to be or not to be" until they come out in the light again. And if they are strong enough to wait it out and fight an intense heart battle, they usually make it. But many people are not strong, Tanner. Really. And waiting for that light--sometimes it's a long time coming--takes more faith than they ever thought they'd be asked to give, more faith than they have, until they realize they have no faith left, and they have no place to go but to ask God for a gift of faith--or they will die. (And maybe this is a state of grace rather than one of tragedy, Tanner. To see the hand of God moving in your life is no small thing.)

See? I just go round and round about this. Of course, you're right and the brethren are right, but thank God for a Savior who stays with me--He stays--and (for me) that is the highest praise I can give, and He holds onto my children in our darkest places also, healing and speaking soft peace until some of the blood stops filling up our mouths and ears and eyes, until we can turn--and on our own--finally--as we begin to feel like the earth is not going to drop away underneath us again, like we might be safe for just a little while--forgive and forgive completely. I don't know, Tanner, I just don't know. It seems to me that choosing to not forgive or to stay offended is more a choice made out of fear and pain rather than one made out of revenge or anger. Otherwise, who would not choose to do it? This doesn’t make the choice less wrong or make the consequences go away, but I think it’s complicated. I don’t think we can judge. It’s like the beggar in Luke who lies under the rich man’s table to catch his crumbs as dogs lick his sores. If we saw him, we would say, “Get up. Get a job. Geez, this is America. Get an education. Stop whining that you’re hungry. Do something for yourself or you deserve this.” But he didn’t do anything to better his state while he lived, and he was taken directly up to Abraham after this life. So, is it that he couldn't do anything? Maybe he was ill, insane, incapacitated by brain chemicals, but the Lord allows it? Or is he just a symbol to highlight the evilness of the rich guy in purple. As in the beggar wasn’t real?
You said "we anticipate and accept some consequences as fair, and we don't anticipate or accept others. Our foresight doesn't seem to influence the consequence, but our ability to accept, adapt, and advance may shape our next choice," and this sounds so wise. But if we cannot anticipate consequences, how is our agency free? Or if our choices are made under the intense influence of other's agency, how is our agency free? I just don't get it. And I’d welcome any enlightenment because all this just bugs the crap out of me.

However, having said “nothing” in a long-winded down the valley way and . . . speaking of irritation and anger-- Jaren Watson, if you send me one more football score or long e-mail discussion about the injured QB of whatever stupid football team plays this week, I'm goin' bring a football down to your backyard and bury it where the sun don' shine. I DON'T CARE ABOUT FOOTBALL, you stupid Tucson novel writer.

Re-Thinking Education; Still Thinking Tanner

Carver got his registration book for BYU-Idaho the other day. I'm in it twice! That's right, folks. Tanner can leave the Burg, but the Burg can't let go of Tanner. I was so tickled with my self that I signed Carv's book in my own honor.

November 19, 2007

A fourteen year old kid stabbed his mother in the chest and head last night. She didn't die. The kid's life is over. He faces attempted murder charges, and plead 'not guilty' this afternoon behind a straight jacket and a black eye. He couldn't weigh more than 120 pounds in a fat suit, but he raged the steel knife bent on his mother's skull. Granted, innocence is presumed, but the four people who wrangled the knife out of his hands and plugged his mother's body with washcloths will have a ghastly story to tell a jury. Bloody pictures won't phase most film-going sorts - who hasn't seen someone shot or stabbed? - but I imagine that these four will tell quite a story with their eyes.

There is nothing free about this kid's agency now.

On the other hand, James Talyor came to town the other night. He sings songs for a living. He's bald, but he didn't seem to notice. He kicked around with with the Beatles, Jim Croce, and Carol King. His music listens easy, and, though he claimed to have performed it everyday for decades, I know I've heard "Way down here, you need a reason to move" more times than he has sung it. JT knew that we wanted to hear Country Road, Fire and Rain, Something in the Way She Moves, Walking Man, and Mexico; he obliged. He is a musician, but we weren't too interested in his new music.

I suppose we make some choices, and consequence makes the rest.

Nick Drake Pink Moon

We'll create our own fairy tales...

About your utopia in the trees, about all our crazy animals that magically make you happy with their little faces and paws. And their sweet, sweet, trusting spirits. Flying horses... We could even have a pine-tree eating beaver as our villian...

And my childhood? You've loved us through it all. And you gave us a love for books, Mother, so many beautiful books...

Thor vrs Helpless woman waiting for Princes

OK. OK. Yeah. I always get my fairy tales mixed up because they used to scare the crap out of me. Although, I do relate to the dancing around the fire and stamping my foot in a rage. Chan says it's Rip Van Winkle, but I think I'll go with Sleeping Beauty--no, no, never mind. Wasn't she surrounded by briar's and brambles (like my house now) and had to wait for a man to wake her up? And that let's out Snow White too? Wow. No wonder I didn't tell you guys regular fairy tales; Too many sexual innuendos and helpless woman. I remember having nightmares after reading Hansel and Gretel: Then when Mom stuffed our pockets full of treats before a school outing, I was sure the bus was driving us into the darkest forest, that Mom had given us away, and I was so sorry for reading Gone with the Wind by flash light under my covers until she come up and grabbed the light last night. Whew. Even look at Rock a bye baby. It's so gross that people sing a song to little kids with a wind breaking a branch, and a baby goes splat on the ground, cradle and all. I'm glad I told you other, more gentle stories than were in the books we bought you, like Thor sulking, after fighting other gods with lightning bolts and thunder. (Oh, what a childhood you've had.) But I have learned we do have to wake ourselves up, every other minute. It's an constant art that takes practice.
Ahhhhh, but I'm beginning to think that sleeping is an art form also. You know, like those stretched-out, deep down sleeps after long horse rides? Remember the good tired left over from rainy days, the smell of leather and sagebrush? Ummmmm that sounds as good as eating lobster or watching waves wash up on a beach. Let's write our own fairy tales. I like that scene in 6th sense when Bruce Willis is dead, but he's trying to tell the little boy, who sees dead people, a bedtime story about a little prince who drove , and then drove further, until the kid says, "You haven't read many bed times stories, have you? ----Once Upon a Time . . .

You're the bravest woman I know, and by the way...

The correct spelling of your fairytale dwarf is Rumpelstiltskin or in it's German origin Rumpelstilzchen. I think you're mistaken in wishing to be him (though if he had slept for one hundred years I'd idolize him also) However... the story of Rumpelstiltskin begins with a poor miller who lied to a king and told him his daughter could spin straw into gold, so the king locked her in a room for three days and demanded that she produce the gold and if she could not he was going to execute her. So Rumpelstiltskin appears to her in the night and in trade for his magic to make the gold, she traded him her necklace the first night, her ring the second, and on the third night having nothing left to give, the evil imp made her promise her firstborn child to him. So she marries the prince and when her first child was born the dwarf appears demanding the child, but she makes another deal with him that if she can guess his real name (he refused to tell her his name before) than she can keep the baby. She gets three days. So one night she hears him dancing around his fire deep in the forest singing his name and she guesses it the next day. And the stories say that Rumpelstiltskin got so mad that "in his rage he drove his foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized his left foot with both hands and tore himself in two." How's that for silly? I think we relate to his frustration...
Crazy little guy, huh? But yeah, I just thought I'd educate you on one of my favorite fairytales. People always relate him with sleeping for 100 years, but where in the stories does it say that? Can't find it. Beau and I used to watch the old movie of Rumpelstiltskin all the time when we were kids. It kind of used to freak me out, but Beau sure loved it.

You and this story got me thinking about who Beau really is and how much I miss him. How I used to know he was always someone I could count on, how he walked me to school most days even though I know he hated to. Helped me with my math, let me stay in his apartment in Salt Lake. He used to get so angry at the way I lived my life.
One day this will all be light again, Mother. One day, I know. I believe this, if we do not choose to believe we will live our lives small and afraid and alone, with no faith in a God that has the power to lift us high above this tiny piece of eternity we're wandering in.
I believe, Mom. Do you know that I relate my testimony to you? The example of your love for Christ in my life was my beacon. You weren't exactly the ordinary mother who was Relief Society whatever, but you were the one handpicked for me. The only one who could have stood beside me and helped carry me in my storm. Who else besides you?
I love you with all my heart. Beau will be okay. Whether in this life or the next, he'll become Beau again. I love the scripture in Morman Chapter 9 that says "When has God ceased to be a God of miracles?" Never.

I love you, I love you, I love you clear to china and back. And I can't wait to see you next weekend and walk among your trees with you...

My Silly Daughter, I do Believe . . .

that was not laughter; I call that hysterics. But how interesting that we both revert to giggling and uncontrolled rolling-on-the-floor laughing when faced with feelings of total helplessness (though I'm sorry I called your cat, husband and boss "stupid," when in reality only your husband and boss are stupid. Joke. I'm just still mad at Ben for taking you away from Idaho). I also think it's interesting both of us feel we've walked through most of the garbage trials life can offer--not with much grace (on my part anyway), but we've faced these trials and are still breathing and even still in love with living. I mean after brushing up against deaths, suicides, drug addictions, prison, divorce, prolonged illness, abuse--whew, never mind; I'm depressing myself; you know the rest--we actually thought ho, ha, famine, earthquake, terrorist attacks? Big deal. We'll be fine when those types of trials come. But, how could we have known that we'd smash up against another experience so far over our heads that we're craning and straining our necks looking into the heavens for understanding. I do not understand Beau.
I know hell. And I know you know what it feels like, looks like, etc also. We've visited there and know for sure we never want to go back. But Beau's particular kind of hell is one that's beyond me. His problems are surreal. I can't grasp them; they float in between neurotransmitters, deep in his hypothalamus, around dopamine levels, which reach out to circle the moon. But, I've got to believe that somewhere, somehow God's provided answers or that He will provide a way to ease some of his pain--even though, right now, it's a path that's invisible to me. This is more than simply changing, simply repenting. When he's driven by biology and mental illness, how much free agency does he have left? You are reading my words now, and my words are real to you; to Beau the voices he hears are just as real, only he has no reference point in his life to handle them. Can you imagine that kind of madness? His whole life, he's been brilliant, and now he's trapped in the very mind that was his greatest asset. And his thinking has betrayed him. On some level does his feel this? He must. Yet, when I talk to him, he justifies and slips between ideas so quickly--back and forth, up and down--that I feel like I'm listening to a thousand philosophers (every writer he's ever read) talk all at one time. I want to open his head with a knife and while it's open, quickly slide in this idea: "You are ill, Beau; You need medical help before you get worse. And you've got to help us because we don't know what to do." He jumps on a plane because the only thing he knows how to do anymore is travel, but he's lost track of where he's going and even where he's coming from. Has he told you yet he's in San Francisco? (I still can't figure out how you lost him when he lives right next to you; it's not like you're busy or anything. Another joke.) But I don't think he's going to Las Vegas. He's so slippery. Though I know this: things have to be very bad for him to call me for money, and last night when he called me to wire him $15.00 (Megan, even the amount shows his humiliation), I just sat there. I know he could sense my feelings through the satellites. "Never mind, Mom. the voices are just really loud today, and I wanted to get back to the airport." And I still had to say, "Beau, . . . I can't. I know you'll drink to get numb, to stop the noise in your head, and I don't blame you, but I'm more afraid of the alcohol.?" "No, Mom. It's OK. I can just run to Corey's; he's working, but he gets off soon." Then he just clicked off in humiliation. I felt so sick. You know the feeling: your throat tightens up, your head gets thick and heavy, you know you're going to throw up, then you want to rip the phone out of the wall, or scream and scream and scream, or jump in the car and drive all night to California to pluck him up off the streets yourself before some other person as crazy as he is finds him, before something irreversible happens, but you know it won't do any good because he'll just sneak away again to England or NYC, because nothing we do can help him, Megan. Nothing.
Later he texted me: Sorry. Phone needed charged. I texted him back: I will pray to God that He will send someone to help you get through this night because u r too far away to feel how much we love you. Then, I can't sleep again, Megan. I'm so stinking tired. I haven't slept in months, years. Somewhere, sometime, I'm going to find the softest cloud and sleep for a couple hundred years--like RumpleStilzSkin (msp)
In my life, Beau's always been this bird flying somewhere above my head. He's like a constellation I can't grasp. He was born thirty years old, much wiser than I, always sensitive to my every feeling. At Christmas or Thanksgiving, with a room full of people, he always knew exactly what I was thinking. I've never met anyone as sensitive, as beautiful, or as bright (except you, of course of course). To walk with him through an art museum, through China town, along a beach, to talk with him about Herman Hesse, Zen meditations, or any book (he's as widely read as you are), to hear him talk about India, Europe, Egypt, or Israel was to have a total involvement in a total experience. I don't know how else to say that. He lived so intensely. And now he works just as intensely to numb his pain. When he talked of swimming in the Thailand sea late at night, or running madly with Katy through the Himalayan mountains to shake off leeches, being attacked by the monkeys that guard temples in Cambodia, I was there with him. He's been a great gift to us. And now we want to give back to him in the worst way. We love him. But, like I said last night, this one is way beyond me, Sweetheart, way beyond the dark hall you just walked of also. This one we have to leave in God's hands now. Yet, more than anything else, we have to live so that if God whispers some idea to us, we hear Him. And we will not hear Him through worry. Worrying about Beau is too loud for us to hear God.
I'm so glad I have you. And, again, yelling about your stupid cat and your stupid husband and your stupid boss was me yelling at the whole stupid universe. In fact, "stupid" is my favorite word right now. In fact, if Beau comes back alive this time, if he isn't killed on the dark streets of San Francisco, when he gets back, I think I'm going to kill him myself. (Never mind. I can't find the keys to my locked down gun.)

My friend...

So good to laugh with you last night...