anniversary powerm

so, i definitely counted wrong when i wrote this. but what's a month between friends? or maybe it's just almost a month late, i don't know.

three months feels appropriate.

like the rule of threes the law of threes, the one that echoes so resoundingly in jokes, in legends, in mediocre sermons.

the city clicks and whirs like a great machine starting up. the pieces of my life shuffle and blur a little bit at the edges, but maybe it's just the coffee they have downtown, downtown where I can see the ley lines, which is to say the el lines, start to come together in the city of chicago.

the lay lines which are the el lines, the great veins of mystical elven power which are the great waves of people power, political power, “power for social movements,” a force more powerful.

and here we are in the midst of it. you are starting seminary, and i am starting whatever this thing is that comes after seminary. things shuffle and grow.

you married trickster energy, and so did i. adam kotsko messaged me on gchat:

did you know

he said

did you know that your new chosen name can be read as “weasel-like.”

“Yes.”

I gchatted back to him.

that was entirely on purpose.

and i sent him a link to the wikipedia article on the least weasel, and gchatted back to him:

“as wise as weasels, as innocent as least weasels” etc.

so, the city whirs and clicks, kind of like my camera when you first turn it on, and you should hold the button down halfway before you take the picture

so that things can come into focus

and you should turn off the flash.

And you're written everywhere I go in this city, as the Holy Spirit inscribes her name way down low in the edges of planters, in the edges of dying rhododendron leaves, in the edges and sides of towering skyscrapers, towering libraries, towering academies and seminaries, that take the script like paper drinks up ink when you leave the pen on the paper, until it is a great dark well.

and when i turn my head right, catch the light on the harold washington library

on the rockefeller chapel

on the trump tower and the business school and lowly old demolishable haymarket

i can read the script

it's three months we've been married, and three months i've been in chicago, and things are starting to whir and click, or I'm hearing them whir and click a little more clearly. loudly. brilliantly.

and every step i've taken in this city has been holding your hand. the places i walk, the great lines of bus and train, you've been sitting next to me, or your absence which is also your presence has been sitting next to me.

in some ways, when i go to the public library, to my favorite spot on the literature and language floor, by the microfiche machine that i've only seen used the once, where they have the outlet, where i can teka teka teka and the only people who smile at me are also working on their own projects, their work projects, their school of drama projects their filling the homeless hours projects their grinding the mental illness gears projects- in some ways, when i go to this place, and others like it, i am by myself.

and in other ways, there you are next to me, reading jerry spinelli or psalms or that ruth duck book you haven't read yet or anne.

because you're on every page, and you're in every sermon, and you're in every book i read. even the crappy superhero comics that i'm not sure why i read, and maybe there especially.

am i forcing this into a love poem when it's just more of an ecstasy, a prophesy?

(because, just so you know, i've been reading this dnd book about the eberron campaign setting, and they've got this draconic prophesy, you know, and sometimes the words of the prophesy are inscribed on human beings and elves, and sometimes they're foretold in the movements of fabric or the stars, but sometimes they're written “in no human hand,” in actual ancient script, in tiny or giant letters on rocks and bushes and cliffs, and boy howdy shazam motherfucker is that a cool idea, and also one that is true.)

but this is true about you, whether this is a love poem or not.

but you're on every page of my constructive-ordination-novel, and when will tanzman came to my room last night and we were talking about hope, and i started to give the book tour to someone else, and will tanzman asked if i knew any hopeful novels, i flailed at the bookshelf for some time, and i gave him stargirl, and secret life of bees, but i wasn't really happy with it until i remembered, and my eyes got wide, and i said, “o will,” and i went to my closet and pulled down my butterfly-clipped folio of my novel, with notes in blue ink, and every page has you on it, and that is true about you.

so i could start calling you hope, and that would be true.

and i believe in buying a gallon of paint, and you help me trust that. i believe in planting jeremiah's field, and you help me dig there. make the furrows from wounds into fertile places, in all that complexity and problematicness and aw and awe.

so i could start calling you ruach, and that would be true.

and that tattoo, which i drew on your back: yes, it's important that the mustard tree is a home for all the birds of the air, but it's also important that it's a home. for. me.

and so that's an appropriate thing for you to have on your belly. because i could start calling you home, and that would be true.

i don't know what our ven diagram looks like, but the fact that we have half (or a third or whatever) the same name now, that's alright. that's all right. which is what i say at the end of men's group when i don't want to say 'amen.' i hold hands with my siblings, and look around at each one of them. and things whir and click like holy batteries, like holly batteries, like visions and bus cards and the kind of dancin that looks like lying on the floor. and i say:

“alright?”

alright.