Yay! I finally found my old password for this site.

God's alone

And I'm alone

Inside of God.

Here's another old poem of mine--this one was actually published in a teen magazine like a thousand years ago!

To all who know
And some who don't
Wouldn't it be nice
To fly in the sky
With Lucy
Or dance with Jude
To yesterday's song
Out on Strawberry Fields
Maybe you'll meet
Mean Mr. Mustard and
Talk to Polythene Pam
Or to wander across
The universe on the
Magical Mystery Tour
Get a ticket to ride
With Sergeant Pepper
And see
The fool on the hill
But when it's all over
Golden slumbers will come
And you'll carry that weight
Till the End.

I'm going crazy tonight. I spent the entire day prepping for my new semester and finished only one syllabus. Although I've taught the course before, I had to change a bunch because there's a new person in charge with different goals than those of the person with whom I've worked for the last 3 (or is it 4?) years. Once the class starts, it should actually be easier than before, but the switch is absorbing my precious time. I've still got to wrap my mind around exactly what I'm supposed to do.

Anyway, now I deserve a break, but I'm locked out of my favorite forum (darn server, I guess). What's a girl to do? Well, here's another little poem--an old one of mine--to pass the time:

When Doug died
so did my love.
Crushed to the ground
like leaves in the dirt.
When Doug was alive
so were hope and dreams.
Always something to
move on to.
Before Doug left
things were looking down.
My love to leave
unable to stay.
Sometimes I'd cry,
but it was
meaningless pain...
because when Doug died
the slate was wiped clean.
Nothing to cling to.
No one to hold.
No dreams worth having.
No life to live.
And Doug was Dead.
And that's when you left.

And I drove

Across lands of asphalt and places of trees. Where landscapes were made by man and to places men seldom see except in movies and in dreams. I drove to an ocean surrounded by a city and to a city surrounded by a long dead sea. I played in fields where my ancestors were slain and stargazed at the sky to which they'd prayed.

I drove to a mountain where the snow never leaves--then back down to the desert of the Joshua Tree.

And I drove because all my dreams were wrapped up in being someplace where I wasn't and seeing things I've never seen before or since. I drove to the edge of sanity and ended on the brink of reality. I drove in the day just to see the light and kept on driving in anticipation of the night.

I drove and drove. And when the wind wasn't whipping my hair and my hands weren't on the wheel, I flew.

In my mind

I soared.

Gad! What a lonely life this is!

Some days I can't stand being alive. Loneliness tearing, ripping, biting, gouging. Ah, but to tell the world, "I am lonely!": It just sounds so melodramatic and self-pitying.

I'm not the only one, though. So many people out there sitting in front of a computer screen, staring out the window, walking in the dark, dreaming of an unrequited love, watching a movie all by themselves, reading a story about a character who they wish actually existed, engaging in on-line chat or forum discussions, and just generally being alive and alone.

And what does it mean? Why do so many of us feel this gaping emptiness inside?

Prologue: Unity & Division

In the beginning, we were one, and, in that oneness, we were two. How we got here, who created us, I can’t say. Looking back to our youth, I remember love, I remember fulfillment. Since then, it’s been mostly emptiness and longing.

How we were ripped asunder remains unclear. In my memory, clouded by eons, I see an angry god and hear pronouncements of pain. The culprit was surely annihilated by such fearsome rage, but the damage had already been done. We looked down at ourself, and there were two where before there had been one.

Then we wept, and the gods wept with us.

Love, however, welled up inside of us, and the pain for awhile subsided. Clasped in each other’s arms, we could pretend that we were as we’d once been. Then—I’m not sure who started it—one of us wandered away. At first, as we learned to stand alone, the separation was no more than a few arms lengths; gradually, though, we often found ourselves almost out of sight before the panic set in. And, having discovered solitary mobility, we’d rush back to one another and lose ourselves in love.

The conflict, I suppose, was inevitable: No longer attached, our hearts and minds could no longer communicate directly. I was angry, my other self was angry, and neither of us could say why. We simply couldn’t find the words.

Hurt drove us to solitude that first time. Then we came to seek it for no reason. Perhaps it was simply easier that way—the frustration of hearing and not hearing…of touching and not touching: sometimes it just overwhelmed us.

Then we felt the stirrings of our first child. One of us embraced the life inside and thought she might be whole again; the other wallowed in bitterness and outrage over what felt like his second loss. (Always it would be so, and so I do not wonder that we think ourselves so different today. What might have joined us, if only in spirit, has only driven us further apart.)

Our child soon experienced his own separation, amidst a flood of blood and pain. Frightened, we clung to him and each other. His mother grieved at the emptiness he left behind, but delighted in his seemingly perfect singularity. His father simply looked on in awe.

Many children followed, each born in isolation. Even our twins, who embraced in the womb, came into the world alone and whimpering piteously. Only a few were complete in oneness, whole in solitude. We thanked heaven for their happiness and tried to learn from them.

As our brood grew and we spread out to accommodate that growth, we encountered others of our kind, suffering as we did. Our children, not understanding our—and their own—condition, and feeling only loneliness and longing, tried to find completion in these others. And what could we do but hope they would find it? So loss piled on top of loss as their mother felt they were each ripped from her once again, and their father, too, felt the loss, though to a lesser extent. Truth be told, he took comfort in giving comfort to his other self. Beneath that comfort existed another thought as well: that when our offspring had all moved on, left with only one another to cling to, we might have some semblance of the unity we’d lost and seemed to lose again with each new child that came between us.

Then, somehow we lost each another. I remember seeing my other self--not really even seeing because it was a sight I took for granted. Looking away. And when I turned back...nothing. My other self was gone.

I didn’t even realize it for the longest time. I think that maybe we had grown so used to the pain of separation that we couldn’t feel the fresh ache inside us.

Realization, of course, brought desperation. I was like a wild thing--rushing about, pleading, demanding, screaming, wallowing in a new kind of despair. No matter what I did, though, I couldn’t find me: I was powerless to make it right. Ripped asunder all over again, I wept until there were no more tears left to weep. Then--what else could I do?--I searched.

And I continued to search. Even now, I search...but to no avail. Longing has been my life for millennia, an agony of longing, so much longing that now, looking back over the centuries, I am left with but one conclusion: Unity, it seems, simply wasn't meant to be.

My little one comes back tomorrow, and I'm so glad. I've spent the last week on the computer because I've felt so lost and lonely! Sounds like he's had a great visit--horseback riding, fishing, visiting the Donkeys, playing with the grandparents' dogs, and of course shooting off little model rockets. My week: checking my e-mail, posting to various Harry Potter forums, writing a couple short stories, working on my novel, and lying in bed awake for half the night at least 5 times this week--sounds like he had a LOT more fun than me. No, in truth, I've been very happy to be able to write this week; as I've said, writing never comes easy for me, so this creative period has been very satisfying. And I did get out of the house: saw War of the Worlds (very exciting!) with my oldest son on Friday and met my mom for breakfast yesterday. And, when the little one gets home tomorrow, we're going to go swimming! I think it's time to take a break from the computer. Plus, my oldest son is feeling put off about me taking away from his net surfing time!

I've just had terrific news: my earlier rejected story got accepted! (With significant additions, of course. See below for the initial version.) Here's the link if you'd like to check it out: http://fanfiction.mugglenet.com/viewstory.php?sid=28705&i=1 . I'm too excited now to write, but just had to brag to someone (and everyone else here is asleep--like I should be!).

I dream of running (and flying--but we all do that, I suppose), running as fast as the wind. But the pain doesn't pierce my chest, nor do my calves scream out their resistance. In my dreams, I am a flame, afire with the passion of the chase.

A secret name belongs to me when I run in the night: I am Jackrabbit, and she is me, but more than me. She is everything I'm not, everything I wish to be--beautiful and brave, heroic and free. As Jackrabbit, I run from the bitter darkness that threatens to engulf me--the loneliness, the longing, the unrequited love, the failure that I see myself to be. I run from it all as fast as my will can carry me, flat out like I've got a pack of wolves on my heels.

And the darkness I outrun, the darkness I hold at bay...it cannot touch me because I am a flame, flickering but alive.

I dream of running almost every night.

Another productive day for writing! But now I'm starting to miss my littlest one. I just called to see how he was doing and he was too busy to talk much. That's sweet, though. He's never spent much time with his paternal grandparents or his father even; seems like they're completely uninterested unless I call, and then they're so happy to hear from us.... It's confusing, but I guess some people just don't like to make the call.

Anyway, I'm glad I did because my son seems so happy to be there. They're having the greatest time making little rockets as I called and visiting a little town that had real live donkeys walking around in the streets earlier this week.

My older kids and I are currently getting along pretty well. My oldest son read my original story and praised it! My daughter tried to read it, but she just couldn't get interested. I don't let that discourage me, though, because she doesn't like to read that much; she's our family math wiz. At least she tried.

I'm starting to look ahead to school now. I always start worrying about now (end of July/first of August), afraid I won't get enough classes to pay all the bills. I teach Freshman and Sophmore English lit and comp, but only as a part-timer--never know until the last minute how many and what type of classes I'll get. However, I love to teach, so it's worth doing the part-timer thing until I can get my Ph.D.