"everybody's changing. come change with me."

Until about 2 weeks ago, from August ‘09 to August ‘10, I have lived in an apartment over Cafe 4 in Market Square. 4 girls, 2 bedrooms, 1 Parking garage, 1 roof, 1 outrageously big TV that only was only worth anything at night and not worth much then. The year before that I worked as a barista at Cafe 4 just downstairs. I would stand at the window behind the coffee bar and would watch the wind blow the leaves trees in the Square outside and think of the line in Maya Angelou’s poem “Caged Bird” that says “trade winds soft in the sighing trees/fat worms waiting on the dawn bright lawn/and she claims the sky her own”. Maya Angelou knows what's up. so just like little Zaccheaus, the wee little man (a wee little man was he), I climbed up in those sighing trees and lived right above that same window with a birds eyeview of the square. 12 Months with 4 Market Square 4 stories up was our little birds’ nest. The Square is people watching paradise. Our window had a nice deep window seal that I would climb on and sit or stand and watch people and thought about how if I was one of Maya’s poetry birds that’s all I would do, just sit up in those trees and look down at all the groundlings living their very busy and important lives and watch them all swipe their keys on the side of the building and run up 4 flights of stairs with groceries and walk to Soccer Taco and Marble Slab (which was literally in what would be our front yard which was excellent/terrible, and I loved/hated it.) The little bird would watch us get bright orange parking ticket after bright orange parking ticket and having dance parties in the windows of the living room and in the bedroom and think about how much these people danced. Well a year of all that football season in the fall and the skating rink in the winter and sundown in the spring all came and went and now it’s August and it’s time to move. Just like that. I took all pictures off the wall and sat in Rick’s office and unceremoniously turn in my keys. The last night I sat on the roof with Nick and Jess and quite ceremoniously drank wine straight out of the bottle and went down all the flights of stairs through the restaurant for the last time and moved somewhere else. (just now, when I typed the word moved, I accidentally typed the word ‘love’. Coincidence? I don’t believe in ‘em. But i also accidentally typed ‘word’ as wordk but lets forget that and just stick with sweet poetic irony). That was my exit which is not nearly as memorable and wonderful as this one: Enter Holden Caufield, L(ove) of my L(ife)



”When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddamn corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddamn voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.” (Holden knows what’s up).



Rewind back to real life. This is the thing: I love to move. Really, if you asked me me to move somewhere with you any, really, anytime, I would definitely think about it. Moving reminds me that God is a God of motion. In Donald Miller’s beautiful and wonderful love letter of an author’s note to Through Painted Deserts (which I refer back to in real life and in Internet life a lot) he talks about moving from Texas to Portland and writes, “Did You really do all of this to dazzle us? Do You really keep it shifting, rolling round the pinions to stave off boredom? God forbid Your glory would be our distraction. And God forbid we would ignore Your glory.” Don Miller knows what’s up. Almost a century before Don Miller was writing, Ezra Pound’s was writing the jist of his message in poetry which all thundered “Make It New”. I think we all want newness. I’m all for making it new; new beginnings in any shape form or fashion. I’m wild about them. New Years, New Years Resolutions. Mondays, mornings, Monday mornings. New mercies every morning. Yes please. So moving feels like another new beginning, even if I’m just moving a mile away. Which I am, but that is neither here nor there because who really knows? That one mile could be a whole new world.



A great thing about new beginnings is going through the old beginnings bygone and stroll down memory lane and look through old books and shoe boxes and notes. I found a single monopoly dollar I used to use a bookmark and a small brown square piece of paper left over from some art project that had a small sticker taped to it that said, “a child is a curly headed dimpled lunatic”. Naturally, this reminded me of my sister circa 1991, so I taped a picture of her to it. Going through old stuff and even pulling out the furniture that I had in my college apartment nostalgia reared it’s sad little head and made me really miss my life two years ago in my sweet apartment with the people in my life then. Holden, ole buddy ole pal, welcome back: “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” Salinger know’s what was up. So I put Anne Lamott and Mary Oliver together in a old borders boxes and packed up all my junk. In 100 degree heat, my dad packed the bed of his truck like a freaking Beverly Hillbilly







<-----------------THIS IS NO JOKE and moved everything out from Market Square and spread it back out in my little room in a little house a little ways back from the big Tennessee River right in the middle of Big Orange Country. It’s an old house with wood floors painted black and lots of windows all along the walls. From those different windows in the house we can see Ayres hall, Worlds Fair Park, Neyland Stadium and the BBT building downtown. A bird’s eye view. This new nest really is a little house. Little in a charming way but also little in a little way. 4 girls. 3 Bedrooms. Exactly 1 Bathroom. 0 washer,0 dryer. Here’s the kicker: On job application one time under long-term goals I once wrote ‘simplicity’. I want to have less, I want to want less, I want to need less.I think that’s why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all his possessions: because Jesus knows what’s up. less less less. So God must have read that job application (or maybe he reads my Facebook statuses, I can’t really keep up with Him) and I thought about me that when he gave me a new little house in a tiny new room with no closet. Here’s a little about how it went: God: So your nonsense facebookery about simplifying your life and the fact that you even have the word Simplify hanging on your wall and because I see that is your real desire and I think that’s swell, I will help. You just won yourself a one-way ticket to cute little downtown house and a cute little room. It won’t have a closet, but that will be fine. Because you’re simplifying. Facebook says so.
Jen: What. .... Where will I put all my STUFF? everything in here is so close! (soclose)! (aggravation. stress. bad mood for days).
God: Right ..... So about how you want to care less about material things.... This should be NBD (no big deal. in my world, God uses abbrevs.)
Jen: (Not really listening, figuring out a place to put my shoes) ...um okay because this feels like a BD.
This went on for a while. You get the pic(ture). And in the wonderful way that God reminds us of things apparently this time in the form of little baby birds. Before we had moved in, a little family of birds had apparently moved in and made a nest in the chimney and that nest had fallen through into the fireplace. The day we moved in there were tiny baby birds and broken shells all bottom of the hearth. I bent down to look at them and remembered where it says in Matthew about birds: (the passage in The Message translation appropriately entitled “Forget About Yourself" ) when jesus said that He knows when each one falls and Jesus really does know what's up. In a twist of wonderful irony, the next day at work I was telling a customer about the nest and the birdies and he said, "eh they were probably just sparrows. Who cares about sparrows?” I just smiled at God’s creative little reminders and my little room still crammed with stuff and my shoes were all over my floor, and I knew knew that God really did care about those sparrows and the lilies in the field. Mary Oliver and I have been thinking about those birds and living like those lilies. Speaking of lilies, out my window is a single window box for flowers that I will soon plant and water and look out on them and whisper, “Try and touch the sky”. I once heard that’s good for flowers.
So I know that all this is true, that changing and newness is good because it’s in books and in God and it’s why moving is good and hopeful. So when I ask you come over to my house one day, talk about how small is charming and how closets really are overrated and it is fine that my furniture doesn’t match and maybe say that my flowers are nice and one day they might touch the sky.

August and Everything After

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
-August. Mary Oliver.


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Wild Geese. Mary Oliver.


Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.
-Landscape. Mary Oliver