Bent
Bentwoman@***.com is the email I created accidentally in 2001. The minute my friend David reached over and typed, “woman,” next to the first part of the tagline I was toying with in my head, which was, “bent,” and pressed return, I was stuck.
I freaked out. I yelled, “David! What did you do? This so crazy! Bentwoman?”
He reassured me I could always change it.
I didn’t.
At the time, I didn’t know how to change it, and I still didn’t know what I wanted my email handle to be. I knew the word “bent” spoke to me — for reasons I will unpack — but I didn’t know what or if I wanted “bent” coupled with.
I started using the email handle “bentwoman,” and it built traction. What do I mean by traction? Well, inertia. Too much trouble to change it. Also, intrigue. I would tell people my email address, and they would laugh or pause, and then repeat, “bentwoman . . .” ?
Yes.
Often I found myself spelling it. You heard right.
I think most of them thought of yoga.
Or something else.
After awhile, I moved to Bend, Oregon.
From here on out, I had to help people understand that no, I wasn’t saying “Bend woman.”
Give me more credit than this — I’m not that enamoured with the place I live in. Bend is still white and redneck down to it’s toes, no matter how many families from New York or Los Angeles move here . . . no matter how much influx of new ideas or people we get here. It’s insular.
People move here for the nature and the outdoor activities — to get away. It is a “Bend bubble,” and no, I’m not that much of a fan of it. At least not enough to name my email after it. The beauty is great. The bubble, not.
Bent, on the other hand, I am a fan of.
What was I trying to get at with “bent,” in my tagline?
I’ll tell you.
I saw it last night. Beauty. In a bent world.
I was hiking to the top of a rocky crag here in town, and as I surfaced over the ridge, to the north I saw a streak of pink, settling into the night. I stopped. My spirit opened. Pain flitted out, and also, pain was fanned. The pain was fanned by beauty. My body — my chest, to be exact — depressurized. A smidge.
A smidge enough for me to remember, we live in a hard, bent world. But. There is a goodness. Beauty. In this case, the beauty arrested me, and the lines from the poem after which my email address is inspired, came to my head:
“And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
It made me cry. I hadn’t cried for some time. At least not since the day before.
Lately, I cry on my walks. So much comes up.
The poem is “God’s Grandeur,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Here it is, in it’s entirety. It is a sonnet that was published 30 years after his death.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
The first time I heard this poem, I sunk to my knees. I wanted it to be true. True, that even though this world is oft-times ugly, and we are lost, there is a warm, bright presence watching over us.
That it will be okay.
Now that I am 47 years old, and have been an atheist for 15 years, I think of this presence differently.
No longer do I think of God as being in charge, like I did years ago. I think of nature and of us, taking care of each other. That is the Holy Ghost with the warm breast and bright wings. I think of the mightiness of nature, of it’s everlastingness — how it always bursts through, even when we are in a pickle.
The other part of “bent” that I love is the reference Matchbox Twenty’s song, Bent.
“Can you help me, I’m bent? I’m so scared that I’ll never, get put back together . . .
Airing our “bentness “— to ourselves, and others — can bring light and freedom.
It can be the beginning of acceptance. Change.
Even community.
I am bent.
I am the girl who wastes water. I take too many baths. Or I let the water run down the drain too much, when I do dishes.
I try not to. I think about it when I’m doing it, and notice it. I stop. I say, “I will do this less!” But I still do it. WASTE water. It’s such a a waste! People are dying in Palestine!
I am the girl who throws away food. There is extra food in my fridge. My leftovers go bad. I don’t use them. Not all of them. I try to use most of them. I do. But I don’t. And I think of all the people who are starving in Palestine. The displaced and starving in Sudan.
I can do better!
I am the girl who listens to sad and beautiful songs during a thunderstorm, and almost texts someone. A man I am not with. Do I get a pass? He and I both love rain, thunder, wind, clouds, lightening. What if I send him this song (Morningside by Neil Diamond live at the Greek theater in 1972). During this storm. If it strikes him right, he might come fuck me. Look at me.
I hold out. But, I think about it a lot. It’s almost as if I did it.
Nah.
I’m gonna save it for another time.
I am this girl.
Lost.
Trying to go to Gaza to help.
Learning Arabic
Hating my job here.
Hating I am alone.
Accepting it.
Am I really alone?
Loving it.
Loving you.
Not all the time. Sometimes.
Speaking of “bentness”.
Anger.
Pema Chodron’s Don’t Bite The Hook is helping me right now.
You are helping me. By reading this.
I’ll see you on the top of the ridge.
With that occasional pink.