The Clarity of Catawampus
I believe in the pure sweet clear musings of a poetess & the quill & ink & the power of the pen. I adore the sound of the scratching soft swishes of the beautiful words falling against the endless possibilities of reams & reams of empty white paper.
I believe in the uncluttered beauty of deceptive simplicity. I believe in Emily Dickinson. I believe in her words–Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the words without the tune & never stops at all—I believe that she had a knack for hiding absurdity in the smooth placid unwrinkled sea of placidity.
I believe that had she been given the freedom from her time, that she herself most certainly longed to describe the epiphany of the sleek & streamlined squiggles of life’s odd edges, I believe–that even she felt an affinity for the clarity of catawampus.
I believe in the Zen of dogs who smile with lolling tongues & snore in the warmth of any corner you give them, who prick up ears & snap to attention when you call, always up for a scratch & a single kind word & who snaffle up the crumbs you toss & rarely ever seem to think to ask for more.
I believe in cats & kids finding the patch of sun on the carpet. I believe that when they begin to dance or stretch– however each sees fit–with outstretched paws or hands they begin to weave in wisps of mists & grab with perfect unselfish gluttony the warmth of light to spin a length of tapestry from the dust motes drifting down—I believe that God, Allah, Buddha, Odin, & The Great Spirit link arms & begin to dance along with them under the welcoming boughs of the Druid tree.
I believe that safety shouldn’t always come first & that sometimes you should bite off more than you can chew & that most often the biggest leap of faith is smaller than you’d think. Usually, it is the distance between your feet & the floor as you set out to face the world & to try once again. I believe in kindness & laughter & crazy wild hope & swirling up an irrepressible bubble of dreams in the face of the ordinary. I believe in the icy cold controlled beauty in chaos & in holding on while letting go.
I believe in rising from the shambles of broken things & that the kaleidoscope reformation of such shattered pieces, once tumbled into place end up far exceeding the beauty of the originally intended perfection of the pristine & unblemished things.
I believe in the rightness of lopsided logic & linear soft monolithic quirking up of a twitching grin–I believe the road less traveled has a fork & both ways will double back & in actuality is the only road that has ever been traveled at all. I believe in carnival glass & theater masks & that the writing on the wall has gone askew.
I believe in polka dots & curly cues & in the echo of ghosts whispering & Gregorian chants of monks tasking out the gospels in carefully crafted strokes of calligraphy still being carried on the wind. I believe that Einstein & Doctor Seuss would have enjoyed each other’s company & that tea with the Cheshire cat is as possible as it would be utterly delightful.
And that is to say that all things exist in the same breath, in a puff expelled mingled together of chalk & whimsy, dreams & hope, life & death–to be returned again & again to the dust, as God inspires– The beauty, the mess, the rising, the falling, the grace, the awkward arms akimbo stumblings, the chicken shit spirit that sometimes sends a soul hiding & the badassness of bawling fists & facing the monsters in the closet & under the bed & of the past & the stealers of joy & beckoning them all to turn the corner & face you all at once–all of it belongs together.
The Tao of Pooh, the mystery of what is plainly spoken, & the hidden words that show themselves only in the screaming of a wind-whipped shrill of sudden silence left in wake of a hurricane.
I believe the answer is the question & that anything else you might suggest, is dull. Perhaps that’s the point.
I also believe in the court jester whose heart bleeds out beautiful stories about ugly things & who steals Emily Dickinson’s blank papers & puts his quill to that onion whisper shivery thin skin & types out with a dignified clackety-clack & keening soft eloquence a brand new story of whatever it is that it means to believe——-in anything at all.
