sometimes, i'm a 14 year old.

solid proof that love exists.

(seriously, though. ROYALTY.)

THE FOREST (a long entry.)

"This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed."
— D.H. Lawrence

I read this quote within an article a million years ago and felt really moved by it. Soon after I read it, something really beautiful happened.

The other day I was talking to someone about this and it reminded me that I needed to write it down.

*****

One Easter, when I was probably sixteen, my mother was going to throw away some old Lilies that were on the outs. I took them from the trash and decided to go and leave them on the most forgotten looking grave I could find. It seemed to make sense to not let them go to waste. I had also just got my driver's license, and was looking for any excuse to be in my car. I went to a cemetery in Wilmington, right down the street from the little house I grew up in.

I ended up finding a man who died in 1888. His name was Silas Carleton, and he was buried beside his wife and children. Whatever living family he had obviously never tended his grave. The only thing that proved he had ever been alive was a slab of weather-worn granite. I gave him the left over lilies.

The cemetery was on my way to school. Even weeks after my lilies had completely decayed, I visited his grave. Things are really tumultuous when you're sixteen. For one reason or another, this old dead man seemed to give me a bit of a break from everything. I don't remember exactly how or why it happened, but at some point I started to talk to him. I would pull up beside his plot, sit in my car and allow myself to think out loud.

He never asked questions and he never judged. He never doubted my intuition or acted as though my teenage problems were too small to worry about. He just was there and let me speak. Usually when I talked to him, I would bite my nails or twist my hair. I started to take pennies--something that always seemed to be around--and stroke them while I spoke. I let the pennies become a vessel for my thoughts and worries. When I was done, I'd always take them and tuck them at the base of his grave. He became a spot in the ground where I could leave my problems.

So, back to that quote.
I read something for one of my English classes in senior year that included this D.H. Lawrence quotation. To think of the 'soul' as a layered, complex space--a forest--instead of a single, quantifiable object was pretty incredible. I've always had trouble understanding the traditional concept of a 'soul'. Just in my relationship with myself, there seems to be so many nuances and complications that make it kind of impossible to understand my 'soul' as a measurable thing. Lawrence's illustration helped me to understand what the complex landscape of a 'soul' could look like.

Later on that week, for one reason or another, I was looking up name meanings on the internet. After looking up my own name, all my friends names, my mother and fathers and sister's names, I thought to look up 'Silas'.

Silas is a Latin name, which means 'Man of the Forest'.

You know that feeling of shock and excitement you get when you are a part of a really lovely, intricate coincidence? I think that might be what 'God' is.

*****

ENOUGH.

Since mid-January, I have been saying that I couldn't believe winter was going so fast. It seemed nothing like all the other endless boston winters through which I've suffered.
I hadn't yet hit that wall where I just want the cold and the snow and the darkness to stop. I think today I hit it.
My boots are too heavy. I want to sit in grass. My skin is fully transparent, and I forget what it feels like to walk without 5 pounds of wool on my back for warmth. Really though, how much longer will this go on?!

(p.s. the lovely david shrigley made this snow man.)