The Ashes of Wednesday

Freshness finds unknown spaces
within our chest walls,
unnoticed dark innocent

       untouched

Spaces perk to the touch
of freshness when
those encounters happen with a foreign

Pronoun it he she any
sounds of it
images of she
ruddy aroma of he

Brings forth freshness
In a way that literally draws breath in--
to places we wager must be nooks of the lung
somehow virgin to air

until now.

Wednesday ashes of burned
palm branches dried for nearly a year
during communal anticipation
to set those accordion necks ablaze!

O how we love to burn things!
To see that flame feel that heat,
to change something so completely

When there's so much we cannot
as it he she changes us with annoying ease!

Power sparkling bright within us
yet feeling the limited time of July's fire of rainbows
about to fall to
invisible,
 we feel the edge of madness
and shout,

"Burn!  Burn!  Burn!  At least I can burn you!"

And the ashes
get smeared on my forehead where
women of another faith
dot themselves with red dyes
from stirring sacred communal preparation.

Ashes as such once meant dirtiness to me,
innocent biological dirtiness, that is, really
light gray or black flakes of dirt

that lift

with the faintest air.

Now, today
ash is a fresh Pronoun
(even though it's so familiar and old
since my dad helped me to spell a-s-h
for that test
on wide-ruled paper)

Fresh again because the priest looked above my eyes,
his cheeks so kind in their pudginess
pressing his thumb with that burned soft blackness
a cross my forehead
repeating "Remember
you are dust and to dust you will return."

How could those kind, pudgy cheeks be so harsh?

morbid. heavy. words.
they startled my pleasantness
for a moment
I forgot those spaces existed,
had just been discovered with accidental joy!

Then air hit another space

       untouched

within the chamber walls this time
of my ear, so much closer to my mind
than the heart, and thus quite significant

When spaces of fresh faith open and
are found
so near to the skeptical waves
and doubting synapses and thin myelin sheaths and--

"I will make your life again
from those very ashes
with my hand that molded Adam
in the playful joy of children
forming castles from chaotic sands and seas."



by Troy Ahrens
Composed Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Standing Cliches

From a distance to the pond, I don't even notice the beads.  Not even the wetness of the feathers just moments ago submerged.  Sunlight mostly reveals the silhouette of features common so long now to the decoding mechanism in my visual cortex.  I've been able to recognize a duck since before I could read, since before I could say, "duck."

As I stand in the shower, I remember this moment in splices of time.  Many similar as if one.  The pond is not distinct nor the duck.  The pond could be from my childhood park in Redlands or one of the few I visited frequently around Walla Walla during my 20's.

Even if I could get a better read on the pattern and color of the duck's feathers, I would fail the Jeopardy question.  My dad would get it probably.  He spent a few years looking at birds in a field guide, combed over that book often.  Every once in awhile he sees some bird and spouts, "Green-winged Teal," or "Barn Swallow," or something the like.  He does it so nonchalantly.  So unassuming.  I get such a good laugh each time.

It is so unexpected, coming from the man I revered as a kid for stuff like a golf swing or follow-through at the foul line.  Dad knows birds?  Ha!

I restrain from the towel.  I tell myself to be still.

Stand there, Troy.  Be.  For but a moment, be.

Light drops can be heard around me.  Then I notice the cool of sensation as little swirls of air, unseen, take heat away from my skin.  I close my eyes and hear my mind associate a cliche with the dripping of water down my body: "like water off a duck's back..."

Have I ever actually seen the beads of water fall off a duck's back?

I've seen ducks come up from a dive.  I've seen light rain fall upon them as they propel.  I've seen them shake beads of water into all directions.  I can't recall ever seeing actual beads of water roll off the surface of all those interlocking, hydrophobic feathers.  I can't recall those beads hanging there on its back, even for a flash of sight.

I can't see it in my memory.

It is magic.

The stuff of the hand being quicker than the eye.

Gravity, surface tension, preening oil and intricate complexity of feathers, skeletal angles, all combine to perform an act of water off a duck's back that is invisible to me in real time.

One glance at my forearm and I see several beads.  Though I've been out of the shower's downpour for several seconds, beads.  Visible.  Glistening.  Distinct.

How optimistic cliches can be.  We tell a friend to let the stress of this or that be like water off a duck's back.  We don't want them harboring over something so significant to them and yet inevitably unresolvable by mere rumination.

"Let it whoosh off your back; be a duck, man!" we encourage.

Yet because the bead of stress is already clinging to the back of our friend's brain, the cliche fails.  Metaphorical beads upon a duck's back don't cling.  They don't hang around long enough to see, let alone ruminate upon.

But such a metaphor continues in our pull for sage advice out of love.

Why?

Maybe it is less a reflection of optimism and more the desire to bring magic into a human moment that is so heavy.  We could use some hope—the sensation that spars so well with the realist's burdens.

Sometimes, we need a cliche akin to a child's eyes.

We need wisdom, delightful—contained in the utter, believing wonder of a handkerchief vanishing from an unmoved, and now, unclenched hand.

Water Off a Duck's Back

It has been over a month since my last post. Though I would prefer to get these articles out more frequently than that, I'm still quite pleased that I made it back to write at all. I've attempted two blogs in the past, both with intentions to keep them alive with writing that would be regular. But, alas, like a person who loves plants but fails to keep watering them, those blogs died almost as quickly as they were birthed by me.

Will this blog survive by my waterpot this time?

Time shall tell.

I can say, in the least, my enthusiasm for the theme of this blog continues strong. I think much potential rests within the shell of this bizarre theme: to improve the world by encouraging us to take longer showers.

If this is your first encounter with this blog, I encourage you to read below, especially a few of the earliest posts, for a theme as strange as I just shared needs some more background.

So where are you at with taking longer showers, with increasing, at least for a few seconds, that rare and precious time of reflection that a shower can provide?

Have you forgotten to reflect with intention in your showers of the past month? I confess. I have forgotten this intention, most of time. However, in the few times I did remember in the past few weeks, here's something that I found myself doing: I would turn off the shower, pull back the curtain, but before reaching for the towel and exiting that haven of reflection-potential, I heard this inner voice: "Don't grab the towel yet; just relax; stand here; give just a few moments of focus on the cool sensation you are feeling right now; relax your arms; feel the drops of water fall over your skin, randomly, without pattern."

So I did.

Before I share some of the pivotal moments I've had, how about you try it for the next day or so? I welcome you to post some thoughts that occur to you during that time.

On Thursday I'll share some of my experiences of standing there in the shower, like a duck with water literally dripping off its back. In the meantime, let us all be ducks for part of our day.