There was a time...

**There was a time when a song could move an entire room of people and for a moment, our experiences amounted to something greater than the human condition. And even after the last lyric was sung, the music still hung in the air.

It's been a long time since I've considered lunar cycles or forsythias, but tonight, tonight after a tiresome season of unrequited hope, I saw the moon hanging orange and majestic in the color of the harvest... and I sighed. That feeling has been a long time coming. So I drove to an old place out on 360 where the hills part briefly and the city-lights shine through, and for the first time in years, I felt that familiar longing in my soul of absolute delight in creation and the driving force to write. I parked my car and even though I didn't want to, turned off Kendall Payne's "Moonsong" and sat still for a quiet moment.

"Be still and know that I am GOD."

The moon was white and shining by this time and the evasive city lights that always elude my grasp continued to glimmer across O.Henry's city, yet the Prince of Peace was nearby. There were no words to say or song to sing, just my bruised heart offered up to a King. Carve my name on Your heart, oh Lord, for Your name is carved onto mine and I am engraved on the palm of Your hand.

"Forgive me if too close I lean, my human heart on Thee."

And for a moment, sitting in the dark on a well-trodden street, on a Saturday night in the city I love, I remembered who I once was and was recalled to who I'm supposed to become. So even while this season of my life may mean soul-sickness, I know where my hope resides, and in Him there I will also be.

"Failing to fetch me, at first keep encouraged. Wishing me one place, search another. I stop, somewhere, waiting for you."

"I bare my heart in all my poems..."

I've been reading a lot of poetry lately, sitting in the slant from the sunlight that comes in through my living room window, trying to remember what it means to have poignant and poetic moments in everyday life, and more importantly to recognize them. I spent my formative years trying to capture these moments on paper as they happened infrequently, always with the wrong people and at the wrong time- which retrospectively, probably renders them that much more significant- nonetheless, there was a time when I knew what it meant to long for artistry amidst the dull of the mundane.

It isn't so much that this part of my life has been forgotten, but rather that I fear it will. I sometimes worry that I've stifled this part of who I am for so long that she's almost gone now, sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere next to well-loved toys and dreams that haven't happened, fading in the quiet afternoon light. I seldom have time for documenting sentiment, or pondering the majesty of the cosmos or the striations on the earth, the tragic beauty of the human condition or the sheer heartache of days gone by. Yet still there is this longing...

I always joke with friends that I would not have been hired at my current job if they knew I was a writer. This is because the job that I do requires much attention to detail, superhuman organizational skills (which I don't have) and the ability to switch quickly from one topic to the next without much time for processing (which is why I've decided that I've developed adult-onset ADD). Funnily enough, I spent the first six months there trying to remain afloat and the next six trying to figure out why I was so tired. Now, almost two years into it, I've finally hit the groove yet while I love the work I do, it isn't as satisfying as writing has always been. I've discovered that even though I'm capable of living life at the speed of light, I'm much more inclined to sit beneath a magnolia tree somewhere, contemplating the truths of fiction and writing the poetry of my life.

So, in a hopeful resolution to merging my two divergent selfs- the poetic and the real-world self- I have decided to take up writing again, and this is my public attempt. The truth is, even amid all the chaos and hurried busyness that is this life, I've never stopped writing. I've written for time immemorial which is likely the reason I desire it so when the season is dry and my pen is weary. However, this time I will write with unction and without restraint.

A Realization of Self...

I read once, perhaps a letter by one of the Bronte sisters, or Christina Rosetti or someone of a great name, that she wrote by candlelight always, and with violet ink. It reminded me of the ink that I used to bleed all over my papers when I would write on the roof back on 38th street...when I would hide my thoughts on imagined-papyrus and see the city between the foliage on the magnolias. Their leaves fell in cascades in our yard. I used to sit up there for good moments, writing down my life, sketching the cityscape from my favorite vantage point, praying past the moon to the God Who never fails me. That year I learned a little of who I was becoming.

My life now is no less than it was then, only now it is unfamiliar. Only the pink light that slants in through my windows brings a fragrant remembrance of my earlier life in the olds of Hyde Park, on the sweetest street in the City of the Violet Crown. I sometimes think I'll go back there, sneak up the steps and climb out onto the summit of roof, sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of this world, and steal a token of time from my past. If only...