#double-life

She’s the same old Country girl When she settles back in With plentiful rice in mouth; Dry and yet fulfilling with Words echoing In between chopsticks, A sentence upon, And within, Every other mouthful. She has a way with Talking while drinking tea Wherein her hands, Once left to grains of Mao, Speak nearly as much as the Sound of Slurping mountainsides, Leaves telling stories And roots shaking rock – A little something so very Ancient, so very practiced And so much so, That the burden of “old” Overwhelms her “new” And 25-year old back. She rattles and he’s a way, Away, a way away, With tinkered thoughts of Mirages buried silk screens, The gentle sweep of Fingernails upon back, Shooting stars, Dodging cars And failure. He’s the man on the run, On the road, wherein – He never ate, He only watched her And he never drank, He only watched her; He’d watch Until the faint dreams of a Sunrise’d give birth, The new day’d be promised sleep, And twilight’d be labeled, “Escapade” or “escape.” When came the closed eye, He be the same ol’ boy, The “other” she’d never known.

(I have been working on this post for almost two weeks. I prayed about it and struggled with it. After becoming very familiar with the backspace button and quiet time with my God, this is what I came up with) 

When you go to the arcade as a kid you have to pick and choose games. I rarely went to the arcade but when I did I only got a certain amount tokens to spend. In 2nd grade my teacher would hand out passes to eat lunch with her in the classroom. You would get to pick the day and could sit anywhere in the room. Once you handed over your pass you couldn’t get it back, you spent it. As Christians we treat our “Christian” tokens or pass for when we want to. We treat this so-called “new life” like a ticket, when we find it convenient. As soon as we walk in the Church doors we cashed in our ticket to put on the mask, get on the ride, play the game, or however you want to describe it. Sometimes people find themselves in this situation but swapped. They use their passes and tokens for the “other” life. But in the end we are all doing the same, fooling no one but ourselves. We’re living a double-life.

In an episode of Friends, Joey’s dad is cheating on his mom with another woman. They both know about each other and are fine as long as they have his dad in their lives. How could someone do that to people he claimed to love? How could those women even put up with sharing him? How could they deal with not being the only one he loved? BUT then I stopped myself. I do that same thing all the time. I found myself with one leg on shore and the other on the boat many of times. I wanted the best of both worlds. I know Hannah Montana is running through your head but she was lying because you cannot get the best of both worlds.  I noticed myself being Joey’s dad in my everyday life. I wasn’t fully living either, God or the world.  

May 2013 [copyright a. martinez 2013]