Always,

with these two, my Sam and my Katie.

genesis 1:31

(funny how darkness can lift.  we had a good conversation and our hearts feel a bit less burdened.)

we end rehearsal very early.  i spend time at a Barnes&Noble.  i want to peruse the sexuality shelves, find more information about what it's like to be a gay teen today so i can better help the young people i try to serve as an OUTreach volunteer.  when i turn toward the aisle, i see a group of teenage boys in trenchcoats, hair unkempt and faces half fuzzed.  they are joking with each other at some book they were reading:

"Look at those fags!  Can you believe that's what they do?"

i think i should feel brave.  i'm not.  i should enter the aisle and peruse the limited selection.  i don't.  i should take the incident and say something, teach these boys a lesson.  i won't.  feeling like a cowardly failure, i go to the poetry section instead.  i purchase a translation of Neruda's 100 Sonnets.  sometimes, when there are three teenage boys and  you haven't got your mace with you, poetry is the only way you can examine your truth:

y asi como no tuvo nacimientono tiene muertes, 

es como un largo no, 

solo cambia de tierras y de labios.

i meet my friend, Miss Chanel-Number-5 (not because she wears the perfume, but because her name is CoCo), for lunch at the Copper Onion.  her lovely son--a singular, Johnny Depp-ish junior high heartthrob--joins us.  we laugh and extoll the brilliance of the food while we catch up on the travel and events of the summer and this fall.

i buy a ticket to a screening of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and having an hour to spare, spend some time at the citycreek mall (somewhat affectionately dubbed "the temple of Mormon capitalism" by me).  as i enter the mall, i see two men holding hands, walking the way any "heteronormal" couple unflinchingly could, looking in storefront window displays.  i follow them, trying to find the nerve to say thank you.  thank you for quietly living out your lives, for holding your hands together in this place, this American/Mormon trade center.  it is inspiring.  it is finite and perfect, which makes it infinite.  i ask GOD to bless them.

i watch the film.  i get excited about the previews=new films to see.  i feel the weight of the pain of the world on my heart as i watch this story play itself out on the screen.  i think of the stories of the kids at OUTreach.  i think of my own story.

i feel drawn to Temple Square after watching the film.  i know i'll end up there, but i pretend to shop at a few stores at the mall to take up time.  this tactic does not work, and i find myself within the gates of the Salt Lake City temple sooner than i anticipate.

at first, i ridicule myself for being here.  soon enough, i accept the logic that this is a traditionally sacred site for me and my people.  i sit on an uncomfortable bench and ask GOD if i'm following the path i was meant to seek.

prayer.  it's a constant in my life, but it feels more urgent (for lack of a better word) as i sit and look up at this Holy House from my uncomfortable bench.

"Look up," that still Voice seems to say.  spires point like arrows and the Angel Moroni holds his trump to his lips, unaided.  i think of Moses, whose arms were so tired his brother, Aaron, had to assist.  there is no assistance for Moroni--he's held that trumpet on his own for the last 150 or so years.

i think of Jonah, who rathered a fish's maw than than a visionary call.  i am more like Jonah than Moses, or even Aaron.  sometimes, i don't want to heed this call to lift my voice, to share my story, to build these bridges I AM prompted to build.  i wonder where my Aaron is.  who lifts my arms when they grow weary?  sometimes, i feel so much doubt.

and then, bells from the Madeleine cathedral begin chanting the vigil for the hour and i feel the answer to my prayer:

ye are called to the work 

perfect love casteth out fear 

IT IS GOOD

go forth, my beloved son, in whom i am well pleased 

our lives are lifted up by moments of atonement.  i am full of them.

But for the Grace of GOD

ever wonder what God's grace looks like?  sometimes, it looks like this:

• Pretty Girl, Sweet Pea, and Handsome Boy.  #childrenareart
• pondering the last six years and talking with Mom and Dad about the intersection of "gay" and "mormon" #lifewasshaken #thechoosingwasnot
• realizing that love and family loyalty are more powerful than tradition or doctrine #thisisourfamily #justdontletitgo
• dinner with Mission Companion and his beautiful wife #thosegood&crazypeople #mymarriedfriends
• chatting with Kim and sensing we see many things with similar feelings.  #nooneisalone
• comparing the history of your one wild and precious life with that of another #makestheormeanmore

these pictures of grace remind me of where i'd've blindly and miserably gone had i been a weaker being.  thanks be to all things sacred and profane heaven's been holding my hand, lighting my eyes, leading my heart.

(also, sometimes his shows are my scriptures #lessonsfromSondheim)

What I Wrote To A Cute Boy On OKcupid.com

i promise, i'm not nearly as elegant or well-composed in real life. i'm an emotional, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-as-long-as-i-think-i'm--in-control-of-the-trip kind of person. i'm great with spur-of-the-moment picnics, friday-night-art-strolls, pick-up-and-move-across-the-country-because-there's-a-gig kind of vibratory living, but i'm lost and unsure as the next in unfamiliar territory. i write well, but i'm not good at putting down solid roots (crazy geminis, right? flighty as bats out of hell!). i get drunk with people i trust (and forsake capitalization when i am so hammered) and i live my life probably too invested in miniscule moments. 

i care too deeply about spelling rules, but there's no need to be intimidated, (i don't know your name!) Friend: i'm as wonderfully lost and happy and unfinished as the next soul. 

i spend the summer with fireflies and the atlantic tide. i make good music and bad jugdements. trust me, i'm as human and unintimidating and blessedly-beautifully flawed as anyone! 

Before I became a "real" musician, I painted. Oils. I 'd become too excited about the application, eschewed the distance of a brush, preferring the immediacy of putting paint to canvas with my fingers. Sometimes, I worried chemicals from the paint and turps might soak too deeply into my fingers, but when I imagined the hues seeping into my skin like tattoos, the worry went away: I had all the colors inside my fingertips. I think of that sort of image sometimes when I'm practicing -- I hope my color-drenched fingers make vibrantly shaded songs. 

heartbeats

when life is just too big and too beautiful and too full of every.thing that all you can do is breathe and weep for wonder.

this is the way i feel things: kind of like the immensity will make my skin shatter if things get much more immense. mahler's 'resurrection' symphony. rothko's tryptich. beethoven's final three sonatas for piano and late string quartets. mountains and caves and trees. spiders' webs. constellations. neruda's sonnets. all good things declare the world, with all its ugliness, still creates and revels in beauty, right?

Beethoven: Op. 97, Andante cantabile

for Lydia Wu

these times, when i walk in moss-gowned, cascade-falling forests
and remember when your fingers played the colorful ghosts of beethoven
in concert halls peopled like half-empty egg cartons--

i think of the times when my life was close to the sacred
and i feel your abscence like an unmeasured rest, held
far too sweetly
and a bit too long