This Post Is Not About Anything: A Guest Post From Christie Purifoy

March 12, 2014March 12, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

I have the honor of having my new writing friend Christie Purifoy guest-posting here today. If you don’t yet know this beautiful soul and her art, you are in for something simply wonderful. Though I have only known Christie for a short while, I feel I have know her as long as her Victorian home, Maplehurst, has been providing a backdrop for living in southeastern Pennsylvania. Christie is real and fresh. And her writing speaks for my own tired soul on days I can only mumble, “me too”.

You will hear a deep thinker but one who is unpretentious. And you will fall in love with the art and the heart of this woman. Christie, I am honored.

The close of day one of Daylight Savings found my husband Jonathan and I washed up like wreckage on our old green sofa. We could hear all four kids still awake in their rooms. Maybe that is why we left the dinner dishes on the counter and the toy dinosaurs on the floor and simply sat right where we happened to be. We were too tired and too irritated by the noise to attempt anything productive.

We had no energy for choosing or making a plan, but the evening chose something for us. Something lovely. Jonathan opened the laptop left lying on the floor. He hit play on a recent episode of Austin City Limits, and we let the sounds of one of our favorite musicians wash away every irritation and tired distraction.

Listening to these songs, I remembered that the lyrics have always been indecipherable to me. I have no clue what this singer is singing, and yet these song have been some of my favorites for years. They are soaked in beauty, drenched in emotion, and, listening to them, I found myself floating in a rich sea of meaning.

I don’t know what they are about, but I seem to know just what they mean.

***

Living my ordinary day-to-day, I often find myself tripping over the same question. Something like, what is the point? What is the point of sweeping this floor, what is the point of baking this bread, what is the point of putting the toys back in the basket? The floor will be dirtied again in minutes, the grocery store sells bread, the basket will be upside down in no time at all. If my life is made up of these seemingly pointless activities, then what is my life about?

I am afraid that my life is not about anything beyond time wasted, tasks repeated and minute-by-minute survival. Yes, the minutes might be adding up to something good, but when the minutes are messy I can never feel sure.

But what if I am not asking the right question?

***

The film critic Roger Ebert used to say, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”

These are important words for more than just movies. These are words to remember for novels. For poems. For paintings. Whether we are making them or enjoying them. These are words that help us appreciate the wholeness of a work of art as well as the small grace notes.

These are words that honor the joy of creation.

We do not ask ourselves what the sky is about. I has a purpose. It is far from pointless. But its meaning is blueness. Spaciousness. Openness. Its meaning is shelter and canvas. Its meaning is the joining of heaven and earth.

What is my life today about? I don’t know. But how is my life about this thing called living?

My life is about fresh clean skin after a shower. My life is about butterfly kisses on my baby girl’s cheek. My life is about lighting a candle. Brewing tea. Even the back and forth beauty of my arms holding the broom.

I focus on the how, and I am convinced.

My life–yours too–is about great things.

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Christie Purifoy writes at an old desk in the parlor of a Victorian farmhouse called Maplehurst. After earning a PhD in English literature from the University of Chicago, she traded the university classroom for a large kitchen, garden and a henhouse in southeastern Pennsylvania. When the noise of her four young children makes writing impossible, she tends zucchini and tomatoes her children will later refuse to eat. The zucchini-loving chickens are perfectly happy with this arrangement. The chickens move fast and the baby even faster, but Christie is always watching for the beauty, mystery and wonder that lie beneath it all. When she finds it, she writes about it at There is a River (www.christiepurifoy.com)

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Joining Jennifer Dukes Lee for #tellhisstory and Emily Wierenga at Emily Wierenga dot com for Imperfect Prose

The Bowing Out

March 6, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

The Bowing Out

It started as a slow waltz
Front porch rocker, book in hand
Slow
Friend to the left
Friend to the right
Sun up
Cool breeze
The dance was an old soul
Disguised by youthful ignorance

Someone turned the volume up
The metronome cranked up too
Warped speed
Weary-making, manic the music
Syncopated beat
Too fast, too loud the pace
The rate, the chatter, and the speed

She bowed out for a bit
Dove under the water to the ocean floor
The one of wet and cleansing grace
She swam down where the sediment sits
To sift and filter, like a sieve
Her mermaid tail was all she’d need
To rest on the muddy bottom in the dark
Muted and muffled is the world
Down
Down
Down there, on the bottom of the sea

She swam under the radar’s rays
Away from the burning sun’s
Rays too
For forty days and forty nights
She swam alone
To think and pray
And consult her muse

There in a sapphire pool
One colored in redemptive rest
Her dance shoes parked
Up on the bank, in the dirt
Exchanged them for
An emerald green
Bronze and azure blue
Mermaid tale, custom made for
Her

It wasn’t so much that her feet
Were blistered, tired or sore
Or had been stepped on by the
Other dancers out on the
Over-crowded floor

She feared she’d stepped on her own
Self-inflicted, friendly fire
And maybe another one or two
On the floor
It was best now for her
To swim alone

She told me her story before
She dove deep down
And asked me to tell you too
The woman swimming in the deep cool
Sea of salty turquoise seas
The ones which will restore her
Soul
And heal her dancing feet
She’d like to bow out
With dignity and grace
And if you were wondering
She took her blessed muse

The Agony Of Defeat

February 17, 2014February 19, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 5 Comments

The Agony of Defeat
I ask him
what happens when the Super G competitors
wipe out as they are winding their way
Down
Down
Down
making hairpin turns, carving the
ice and snow like a man takes
a new Gillette razor to the side of
his square jaw line
carving carefully to avoid a
ripping of flesh, a tearing of skin
avoiding blood at all costs

one wrong move
tactically taken
down the Russian mountainside

and pride and ego
land in the soft snow off to the side
spine and bone and muscle
in tact or broken
like the dream
bruised and busted up

we children of the sixties remember

we recall the Saturday slogan on TV
the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat

I scream at the screen
as the athletics
dissolve into a pile
a medal-less mess

and I want grace extended and do overs and second chances
for every last one

oh but that we would
extend it
the comforting caress
Balm
of the Spirit
Blow the winds of Mercy
Comfort a suffering saint

these elements of blood and grace and death and life
the Spirit’s there
at the moment of impact
always wiping the skinned knee
of his child
lying in a mangled heap
paralyzed
frozen by fear and disgrace

the agony of defeat
loss and pain
sadness and disappointment
roll down the cheek, by-product
of defeat
like an avalanche

He who makes us white
As snow
Mercy
He makes it new

Comforted in loss

Raising us up
from dejection
and defeat

I cover my eyes
Like a child
Look away
So much to bear

I tell him it’s the stories I love

Of the overcoming ones
The get-back-up-again ones

Tell me your story
Of mountaintops and mountainsides
Of trudging in the valley
Of defeat
And I’ll tell mine

The thrill of victory
Battle cry of those who
Break the seal on the package of grace

and at all costs
run into the arms
of a Carpenter
whose flesh was ripped
skin was torn
whose blood was shed

We look into His eyes
And
Forget

The agony of defeat.

Joining Laura Boggess at Laura Boggess dot com for Playdates At The Wellspring & Jennifer Dukes Lee for #tellhisstory

Why I Chose Go And Other Unanswered Questions

January 22, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

Go doesn’t appear
As the opposite of stay
Always

Somedays it is synonymous with
Life and yes
Sometimes it is on the flip side
Stagnate

Go is brave on days
And it is walking timidity
Other times
Vertical in fact
But longing to be
Horizontal, in a state of quiet repose
Of all the words in all the world
Go chose
me
To walk out 365
Sleeps
To go dreaming and go waking
To go running and go crawling

Go said let’s say yes more
And no less
Take a chance and take a turn
Pull up to the banquet table
With a fork and knife
Dig right in to life
Cut it to the quick

Go says yes
Start with desert some days
Ride into the wind
Tears burning the cheek
Swim against currents
Against the howling wind
And walk in the rain
Even the thunder
Without a bumpershoot and galoshes
Now and again
Write a song
And sing along to the song
On the radio, loud and off-key

Eat with a friend
And not alone

When you are but two
Letters in a sea of verbosity
You risk being over simplified
And when you back up and go in reverse
OG
You sound like a caveman, man

Go can
B
Complicated too
Going out on a limb
Now and again

But don’t get me wrong
We are getting along
So far
Just fine
Me and Go
Go and I

We’re linked arm in arm
Side by side
Shadow and friend
Going this road
Together
Not alone

Even when we go
Nowhere at all
Anchored in our
Going nowhere state
Up to our elbows in
Pluff mud like
Quicksand
Sinking
Going nowhere fast

Go sings a melody
Backup
Sweet harmony
Happy as a sidekick

Go and I
Tandem diving
Into the teacup
From the high-dive
I had no chose but to
Go
Chose me.

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