Church Hill Sonnets (III of VII)

Sonnet XLVIII (Church Hill III)

There’s something sacred about this table,

Oak, like the door, rooted in love and time;

Like a lesson from some ancient fable;

The beauty of nature is made sublime.

It frightens me, this comfortable peace,

The fabric of tears, happiness and joy,

Encompassing me like the softest fleece

Making me feel like a lost little boy

Who is finally home... and yet, not so,

For though I am welcomed with open arms,

As often as I arrive I must go

Face this world alone and endure its harms.

I don’t understand why your family bloomed

When mine died long ago; I still feel doomed.

Phil's Story, Final Chapter

The Truth.

I thought I was doing the right thing when I threw Phillip off of his ninth floor balcony. Phillip had to die. I didn’t understand him. He scared me. I was convinced that there was no good outside of God, and I still believe it, but there was good in Phil and there is bad in me. What would Hyde have been if Jekyll were more flawed in his fundamental character? Who am I without my conflicting inhibitions? What is there of value in me? God’s image… what else is it that intrinsically imbues this world and it’s fallen, fallible, occupants with the ability to seek this evasive love that not one has the means to give…

I thought that if Phil was out of my life I would be free and able to pursue and discover real love without the hindrance of the knowledge that there was one so akin and yet so unlike me living in this world. Phil posed the threat of discrediting my need for God. I needed God. I still do. There is no justification for the taking of another human’s life, nothing that could be said that would make such an act excusable, nor can we end our own existence without eternal consequences, but I thought I could dispose of Phil… I thought that that part of me was expendable, even detrimental, and so I could dispose of it without repercussions. I tried to do it subtly. I tried to reason with him, I tried to frighten him away, I tried to overpower him, I tried to kill him. I was wrong.

It took some time to realize the effects of denying an identity that was so influential for so long. There are aspects of all of us we’d rather do without. Inaction can be just as deliberate and purposeful as action. Phil’s presence was my suffering… vice versa, no doubt. His passion and his imaginings, his emotions, his doubt, and his reason, all of who he was suffocated my understanding and perception and my belief. His unconscious unwillingness to proceed was my deliberate influence, and my insatiable desire for companionship and rest in the arms of another, is his legacy. Phil is alive in spite of my best efforts to quell his cumbersome existence. If I could be content to seek higher eternal principals alone I would be free. My humanity, my longing of longing, my desire of desire, my pursuit of pursuit, my love of love… all have their origins in the human emptiness we all seek to fill. I keep trying to convince myself that the next rejection will be the last. After all, the standard can’t be perpetually raised, but the measure isn’t linear and so there will always emerge someone whom I will believe is the potential one. I’ve come to learn through Phil’s death the value that is Phil’s life. It’s good to be in love in Love. I’ve become convinced just now, that in some non-heretic sense (if it could be articulated) that the human need for companionship and the spiritual need for God can be sated through one person… the person. If there is evidence of God in others, there is the fulfillment of that love available in and through tangible relationships. If there is no evidence of God in humanity, there is no God. My solitary conviction is that once I’m with the definitive one, all other potential ones will be revoked. I am of the persuasion that God is in love and life and everything and anything worth anything… God is.

I wonder if anyone can relate to this struggle… if anyone, having come this far, will be able to sift through these crystalline grains and find anything worth keeping in me.

There are so many decisions in life. So few are important. So few of those that are important are decided upon.

I’m so confused.

If it were you, if you knew that I loved you, what would you do? If any one of us knew the end before the beginning, would we continue? Love and pain are symbiotic, so are hope and despair, care and indifference, depth and superficiality, reality and appearances… the list goes on; all dichotomies require pairing antonyms. All we can do is risk and wait, living by habit and intuition according to any given situation at any given time in any given manner as our character deems the circumstances’ necessity. How depressingly inconclusive. At least there’s love to look forward to.

The divisive internal monologue so long rampant due to my unwillingness to interrupt his musings was finally taken off guard by an external distraction… a whisper in my ear:

“How could you…”

I exhaled, opened my eyes, and the response came, just as before, without any advance directive, of its own accord:

“How could anyone not love you?”

And there she stood before me, my Hope, Angelica. I can’t deny that I was hurt. The episode of living in constant intellectual stagnation, the promise it proposed of a bleak, lifeless, future, had almost succeeded in driving me from this temporal structured embodiment and my pain redoubled, started all over again, if it had even yet occurred … nor could I deny that I had hurt her. She must have her issues too; we had some things in common. Of course, to any degree that two lives are infused, their separation is bound to leave scars. It was apparent that my bounding confession had left her somewhere behind me in the dance we danced. We had connected, but now it would seem that Hope had cut in with me and Fear, or Phil, or some unnamed creature, had cut in with her. She stood in my doorway, shocked and appalled that I could say such a thing. My finger on her lips, my attempt to silence her protest, seemed to hurt her all the more. This time… being the first genuine time, my decision to kiss her was based solely on the belief that I would never have another chance to do so. She slapped me. She left. Three days later, failed attempt after failed attempt to know why, I stood outside on the balcony, dusk settling in for another night to be passed in despair. It would be too much. I looked over the inviting edge below and wondered what anyone would miss. No answer came soon enough so I straddled the barrier. I couldn’t believe how acutely I had perceived all of what was happening. Except I had no one to write my story to. Both Phil and Foster were over the edge. I was teetering, filling my lungs, leaning forward, and letting go. All of a sudden I was gripped. It wasn’t about a girl. It was about what she embodied. Not her body, but the potential of what it could contain. It’s about Love, Truth, Freedom, Joy, all the capital letter virtues. It’s about God, and God’s willingness, not just willingness but preference, to dwell within these temporal flawed (some more than others and all subjectively) broken vessels. I had opened up… something… something that wasn’t pretty, within the one I loved, and in myself. I had found room… room for more God… I was about to make a lot more too, for myself, because I was out of control now and pavement had a tendency to breach a number of physical enclosures. My momentum was being manipulated by gravity. I was falling. That’s when he caught me. He caught my hand and effortlessly lifted me up and set my feet back upon the concrete floor of my ninth story balcony. I had yet to see my savior, but I felt his hand on my shoulder, firm and engrossing. And I fell… this time to my knees, and I prayed to God; I don’t yet know what that means, but I did it. I communicated. No more games with time. I just closed my eyes and an all-consuming peace, which confirmed that this was neither the beginning nor the end, came to dwell inside me and reunited my broken heart with my hemorrhaging mind… I felt more myself than I had felt in a long time. I embraced my friend, glad to be together again… glad to be whole.

I heard the phone ring. I didn’t know what had transpired. I was sitting on a chair on the balcony. The sun was setting. The phone was ringing. The sirens passed along the nearby roadway. People were about below; invisible voices were sharing their stories. A plane flew somewhere above. The phone was ringing. It was beautiful… For the first time in the long moment-years of the past day-hours spent in introverted extroversion, spanning two lives, two loves, a death, and countless manipulated amalgamated musings of terror-bliss, I was honestly happy to be alive. The phone was ringing. How long had the phone been ringing? Without anxiety, without fear, and with a new placid confidence, I answered the call:

“Hello.”

Nothing. Then a dial tone. Oh well. I went to go and dig up a Bible but it rang again… the phone. This time I caught it pretty quickly.

“Hello?”

Still nothing… which was good. No dial tone, no click, no defaming remarks… just silence.

“Angelica?”

I figured that whoever it was remaining on the line was either sick or she… I took my chances and voiced, with as much tact as I could muster, my thoughts and feelings towards my Hope…

“I do love you. I was right. And I still love you, Angelica. And do you know what it is that I love the most about you? The possibility you represent. I love our shared potential… I love the prospect of us… I love the Hope… I love all of that right now… and I believe that I could grow to love you even more, with every passing day I spend with you, especially since I have come to love you increasingly every time I’ve been with you… and I sense a pattern developing. I want to know you Angelica… I want you to know me. I think you need to know that. At the same time, I don’t want to put anything on you that will cause you any grief. As it stands, I can’t help but choose you… and I’ll continue to do so even if I have to wait for you. Because I value my decision to love you. I’ll wait if there’s so much as a chance that you could love me too… but, if you know now that there is no place in your heart, nor will there ever be, where I may come to reside, just speak the word and I’ll bear my sorrow, and I’ll be ok… but whatever you think of me, know that I’ll always be available should you need a friend; the rest is a limited time offer.”

I couldn’t help but grimace at that last line… but I think my point was made.

It seemed like I was left holding the receiver for some time. But I was still. Not a single dialog was being recorded in my mind. I was only aware of a gentle breeze, the door to the balcony having been left ajar, but it didn’t smell like the city. It smelled like a rose. Then came the response.

“Phillip … We need to talk.”

A still, small voice… but her voice. Definitely, decidedly hers.

Still, God was God… is God, working things out for good. In full knowledge of my heart’s desires, on the brink of realizing one, I expressed my mustard seed of faith and lo and behold a mountain moved. I had no idea what would come of it, but I was believing that God was in her, that God was in me, and that the possibilities were endless.

“How about a chai?”

Phil's Story, Chapters 20 & 21

To Hope.

I didn’t think that there could ever be any sort of good birthed from the despair that was spawned by the disintegration of my parents’ marriage. Then I met you. This is my proposal: I want to try and live up to what I think you deserve. I want to believe that I can be the best for you. I want to trust myself to trust you. I want to invest the time, however much is necessary, into whatever it is we have, to nurture it into more.

It’s funny where a journey ends. A train of thought that boarded at death has led me here. Sometimes it’s good to lose your baggage on a trip. I’ll never forget the first train ride after I met you. I can’t recall a single face or scene that reflected or passed through the pane, but I still have the sketches, poems, lines and prayers that were penned those hours. Some have been worked into this story, others will surface in future havens, but all have their source in you and your source. I’m learning ever so slowly that there is so much more to you and me and life and love than I can record on discs or drives or print on paper.

I know that this was an odd way to come to terms with something of this nature, but I’m a little odd by my own admission. If you are my Hope, I pray that you might come to know me. There is more to me than is bound in these pages. Many of these pages can probably be cut away in due time too.

As much as I want you to know me, I want to know you. I want to read your story. I want you to read it to me. I know it may take a while, but I can’t think of time better spent. If you are to remain Hope, then I want you to know that I have no desire to create for you an identity of someone you’re not, such as Love, which leaves but two more things to say.

If this scares you, or leaves you wondering why you’re such a rotten judge of character, or why you always attract the wrong element, please, just tell me, that I might seek the Hope that will become my Love.

If this leaves you wondering, give me a chance to wonder with you, seeking out together what ever comes next.

If you’re reading this and you are the Hope of another… take whatever you can apply as my gift to you. But don’t you dare allow what possibilities may exist to stagnate or rot or even ferment. Tell whoever it is now, while the idea is fresh and true and pure, while there is still Hope; I may already be too late.

To Love.

Nothing scares me more than these evasive ideas; what is love, and who is Love; these two realizations are presently beyond my understanding; I think I know why. I can’t have this aspiration before me and the secret I’ve been harboring behind me; secrets are too quick, they are always before us, and they’re too big, insurmountable, and so before so much as the prospect begins, I have a confession to make…

There is something that you need to know…

Phil's Story, Chapter 19

To Phil.

Phil, I tried my best. I’m not going to accept that ‘too much’ or ‘too little’, but in the months that have elapsed, and in all the years to come, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain why you did what you did, but I keep forgetting that wasn’t my commission. Still, I’m not going to make excuses for you. I’m not going to try and say that because of who you are, or what you went through, your final action was in any way justified. When you left I think you took a piece of me with you. Perhaps you were the one to separate the wheat from the chaff in my life… and it took the reaper’s blade to find something of worth in me. I’m sorry if there was more I could have said or done.

For what it’s worth I learned a lot from you. You taught me a lot through your life and your untimely death. I learned a lot about myself from spending time with you; so many times it was like seeing myself through a kaleidoscope. If I’m ever on the verge hereafter of following your footsteps, I’ll at least have this manuscript to look back upon, and I’m sure I’ll be able to re-evaluate things to a different end. I am going to write you into a world or two of my own, wherever I think you’d fit. I can’t promise you eternity, but I’ll try my best to provide you with a little bit of heaven.

As for your postscript regarding Angelica, that is the one request I refuse to fulfill. For two reasons: primarily because I haven’t seen her and I’m not looking. Secondly, I don’t think your intentions, restricted to the confines of that final goodbye, are as honorable as they appear. This is a perfect example of my unwillingness to look beyond humanity’s fallen state and see the good in people’s motives, but my giving Angelica any message would be futile at best, if not utterly destructive. I think she knows as much as she needs to, and that you’ve laden her with enough therapy bills (in due time), and that your final aside was more than likely the last tirade of your incarnate malice before he carried you with him to the grave.

I miss you sometimes. I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I’ll be over it, I hope there won’t. I have a lot of memories. Camping with the boys at the bay. All night road trips during god-forsaken storms. The improv club in college. The summers filled with basketball, biking, swimming, and the few parties we could muster. The time you shot me with the pellet gun. And of course there are the late night discussions when we solved all the problems of the world, and each other, over a hot cup of coffee (only to forget about our solutions by morning). There are always the cliffs. The risks, and the freedom that comes with them. If I find the spot from your dream, rest assured, I’ll jump. If I don’t… rest assured anyway. Rest in peace.

Church Hill Sonnets (II of VII)

Sonnet XLVII (Church Hill II)

I walk through the heavy, unlocked, oak door

Tapping a rhythm in case you are home.

I tiptoe past Woofy strewn on the floor,

Turn on the light and thereby cease to roam.

I breathe in the air thick with years gone by,

Taste lives past and smell who is yet to be.

I'm perched up on a limb, towering high,

Where generations have sat and dined free.

I remember faces of old and young

Embraced in communion; many made one.

With children instructed to hold their tongue

While Gramps told his stories of World War One.

All this remains a mystery to me,

The stranger who has climbed your family tree.

Phil's Story, Chapter 18

The Ticket.

Remember that speeding ticket the officer gave me in response to Phil’s… outspokenness? I pondered that ticket for a long time. The rest of that night was a write-off, even coffee. I kept looking at the ticket. I’d fold it up and stash it in my wallet only to pull it out five minutes later. I kept it at hand for weeks afterward. I still have it. Now it’s secured with other mementos from the past. From time to time I take it out and read it again. Simple advice that may seem cliché to some, but it sentenced me to life.

“Don’t fall into love. Let Love lift you. If truth sets us free how much more should true Love? It’s the look you had in your eyes that paid for this ticket. I understand your hurry; I’ve been married twenty-one years to the love of my life and no law could have kept me from her. It didn’t have to. The law could not keep us apart (1 Cor. 13). The sooner you tell her what you have to say, the sooner you’ll be less inclined to be in such a hurry, and more apt to squeeze every moment from every second she’s beside you and, consequently, the more you’ll see the sense in the good that presently seems obtrusive. This is your ticket of proof of Love’s redeeming nature. Hurry up and slow it down.”

I personally feel safer with officers like him patrolling the streets. Not because he let me off the fine and points… ok, maybe that plays an insignificant bonus in the story, but because I know what he fights for and I can believe in the law he upholds and the principle that is its foundation.

If it gives you a sense of justice or retribution I have been the recipient of speeding tickets since and have never tried to use love as an excuse. I don’t think of love as an excuse. I don’t think there are excuses in love. You can’t assign blame for an action motivated by love, because real Love is a God-given grace, undeserving and largely inexpressible… it upholds the highest, purest standards; no evil can be spawned by a truly loving design. On the flip side however, wherever the capacity to love exists, a choice has been extended, thus it is only through the choice available in the execution of love that evil is possible.

It all goes back to Eden. Regardless of your take of the validity of the story, the insight into human nature is so beautifully woven into the illustration of humanity’s struggle with will, that I can’t help but bring it up. But that last coffee with Frosty, I didn’t even have to bring it up. He read the ticket and his first words required no explanation; we’d been through this before.

“We were set up.”

Phil couldn’t get beyond this idea that the Creator of this depiction was a sadistic domino mastermind who after setting up his pieces, waited for the inevitable bumping of the table that would send them toppling over, and was thereby the cause of all the crap in the world… and why serve such a being?

“Without the facet of choice, love is impossible; God is love, so the ability to choose was a necessary aspect of God’s perfect creation.”

“That’s a cop out so you’ll be justified in your miserable life of constraint and moderation… I know, I grew up in it, I’m affected too.”

“I think it would be more comforting to dismiss it all as nonsense and live without the burden of consequence, either by a lack of authority, or the one I create for myself…”

“There aren’t any absolutes, Fost. No capital T truth.”

“Is that an absolute?”

“Shut up.”

I think we usually ended in stalemates, one telling the other to shut up.

“Not this time Phil, this is important. This is love and death… this is the essence of life… the gift of will and the grace to exercise it and choose between right and wrong. This is what makes it all worthwhile, the pain, because it opens the door to the possibilities of acquiring real joy and peace and comfort.”

He let that sink in.

“How.”

“It gives every decision we make power through our intrinsic worth as humans being.”

“Human beings.”

“No, humans being. We’re actively responsible in our fates through our being, whatever we may be.”

He looked at me and tried to quell whatever it was that I stirred up in him. He failed; it boiled over. I probably looked too smug to let it slide.

“That’s too much.”

“Too much what?”

“Too much hypocrisy from a guy who’ll sit through the movies you sit through and listen to the music you listen to and worst of all sit idly by musing over a stupid ticket while the girl of his dreams is off doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who God-knows-where by whatever grace God has bestowed upon this God-forsaken world with this so-called gift of choice. It’s too much.”

Ouch.

“Shut up.”

We passed some minutes in silence before he asked me that question that incessantly echoes throughout my mind as the big one where I dropped the ball.

“What would you die for, Foster?”

Sometimes I feel like a question asked is a trigger pulled. Words have power. I don’t know how much and that’s why I’m so wary of what I communicate vocally. I always made it a point to watch my mouth and speak as honestly as I can. There are degrees of honesty and I have no difficulty in telling people what I think, it’s sharing what I feel that kills me. I lied when I spouted off all of that rhetoric garbage about abstractions and their worth only because it was a plausible emotional deception. I should have just said what I felt like saying. I find myself in that predicament far too often.

Phil's Story, Chapter 17

Love.

As I write this, shrouded in a fragrant cluster of lilacs, in May, almost a year after Phil’s death, in Hope’s backyard, I have a familiar thought progression prompting me to write; it always begins with Hope. I’ve just spent thirty six consecutive hours with her. I came over last night with a chai, and we began talking. It was almost like having a cup of coffee with Phil… it was almost better… it was different though, not quite comparable. Anyway, we were up all night. Whispering when we could help it, trying to when we could not. She has left for work, and she’ll be tired, but that’s something she’s used to. I was recapping all of the open memories stored away, bottled up, still bubbling over from the conversations that jarred them, disturbed them, spilled them onto the table. I was thinking of how I’ve once again approached a place in a relationship where a choice is inevitably on the horizon. It’s a choice that has previously been answered for me by my neglecting to acknowledge it. It’s a frightening concept… it is the epitaph of hope… it is Love.

1 Corinthians 13 is merely a definition and definitions have little application in life circumstance. Definitions are absolutes. Absolutes, and justification in Scrabble or semantic arguments. Love is a very subjective term these days at any rate, thus hard to define. It's usually thought to be a feeling, and feelings are, by my own definition, largely indefinable. I think love is too often confused with passion, or lust, or sex. Things that the books and the words are inadequate in expressing. ‘Love’ is too, which is probably why it’s so readily confused with those lesser sentiments, but I think however you write it, say it, or other wise try to interpret it, apart from living it out everyday of your life, love is just too broad to be defined. God is Love. God is boundless in everything that is good. I think the same holds true for love… at least, capital ‘L’ Love.

Perhaps I’ve been too influenced by books and movies and songs. Maybe I am naïve to believe that such a thing exists, being God or Love, but I think some beliefs are to die for. I lose no great privilege should I be mistaken, but I forfeit all I hold dear if I’m right and I take a big enough step in the wrong direction… like off of a balcony.

I think the evidence for love lies in the ability to choose. Without choice, love can’t exist. Therefore love is in both act and intent; it requires both to be effectively demonstrated, even though it is often impossible for us to know what designs an action is built upon. It’s easy to discredit motives too; it’s easy to assume the lowest common denominator. I’m so skeptical that I can’t even believe I’m capable of believing that my motivations are what I wish they were. I want to be doing things for others. I want to die to myself and live a selfless existence and prove that it can be done and done well. I want to illustrate that happiness comes foremost in making others happy. I want to be set apart and different. I want to love the way I want to be loved. I want to give. I want to offer. I want to sacrifice. In so doing, I don’t want to expect a return. I want to be perfect… I want to follow the example. It’s so inconsistent a philosophy, so full of circular perplexities and so lacking proof I can’t help but get discouraged… it seems like even questioning it is to fail it… and I question everything. And yet, it’s so simple, so easy, when it’s approached one deed at a time, one person at a time.

I can choose.

Correction: I do choose. The only thing there is no choice in doing is choosing.

Unfortunately, I usually choose to oppose my lofty standards.

The truth is I have a lot to confess, especially if I’m going to see these daunting hopes in a less consuming light, but it’s not an easy thing to do or come to terms with. Sin is such a taboo subject… if it’s even thought to exist, but if choice exists, then sin does too. I’m a sinner, that goes without saying… and if I were really convinced of my own convictions, I’d probably have more resolve to change. We’re creatures of comfort and habit. We should be creatures of risk and spontaneity if we’re going to come close to realizing the potential life has to offer. I’d rather die young and in love than old and knowing that all my hopes are well beyond my anemic grasp; ideally though, to be old and in love, having loved every passing day so far as my strength would allow.

Presently I live in a claustrophobic terror... a long way from where I’d like to take up residence. For years now my greatest fear has been that I’m cursed to sow my judgments: all my relationships doomed to failure for those I’ve criticized, unable to escape the phantom of divorce that travels back through my family tree and rots it from root to bud, that pride will drag me down in all of its various forms, even that I’ll take my life because I can’t forgive my friend for taking his… it’s not even my wrong to forgive. There are days that I believe all of that, and days when I’ll only take on the latter. I think the time has come to put all such fears aside. We take upon ourselves so much weight, as though our own sins aren’t enough. It’s about time I come to admit that I can’t do everything myself. I need someone to help me sort through all of this garbage before I trip on it… and land too hard or too far to get back up. I need more than a Hope… I need a Love, because I can’t promise a just return… I can only promise all that I am and all that I’ll ever be.