tonight i watched Les Miserables.
if you want to see something that will make you think about grace and love and mercy, that's a good place to begin. it's a very good story. do you remember a time when stories were built by characters who reflected God's mode of love?
me neither.
i wonder, just what love is. lately i've been feeling like mine is broken. my love i mean.
i've also been reading a book, and a quote in the beginning of this book says this:
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart
'Tis a woman's whole existence.
(-Byron)
oh really? then i am reallllly broken. absolutely defective in fact, i suppose!
but just hold on because honestly, what is love? who ever really told me, or you, what love is? i bet our parents tried and i bet God tried and i bet movies won. don't they always win? because the definition we hear the most repeated is the definition we expect a thing to embody. i think i knew better once...i think i knew God's love better once...but then i watched too many movies.
but maybe love ... well i don't feel qualified to define it or discount the definitions that i don't think define it. but here is the thing. in that movie there were a lot of different loves. but the only one that remained steady and true under all the tumultuous, selfish, seeking versions, was grace.
grace is a love that nobody tells us stories of anymore. we don't even tell ourselves stories of grace, do we? do we daydream of giving gracious love? or do we daydream of love that is received..love that comes to us..love we can capture and keep. even if we suppose the one we dream of receiving this love from is one whom we love...what is that? what is the love we think we have for them? is it more often than not greed masquarading as love?
the villain of Les Miserables is a police inspector whose life ambition, whose motivation, whose love becomes the hunt for jean val jean--the former convict who has turned his life around as a result of an act of grace and devoted it to multiplying that grace. it is absolutely tragic because this "villain" wastes his entire existence on the lusty pursuit of his heart's tainted desire.
is our love tainted? is that why we can't love very well? is that why we long for love that never seems to find us...because it is too busy longing for its love to come as well? is that why we doubt what we feel pieces of and label "love"--afraid to give it because it might not be returned?
has greed become the new definition of love? could you ask yourself why you love someone? could i ask myself that? if i love because i lack, because i want, because my own love is tainted and i need someone else's virtue to compensate for my failing...what has love become?
God's love is not greedy..he does not reach out to capture us up in his fists. love cannot clutch the loved. it cannot own. an open hand, extended to the loved with a gift of grace is maybe real. and to be loved in return might be once the gift is extracted and the open hand lies empty..the beloved takes the hand. did we forget that part? oh...what are we doing..
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
li - li - liar
i never say anything i don't mean.
i might if i could...but i can't. but even if i could i probably wouldn't do it on purpose, maybe just sometimes by accident when someone caught me off-guard and i needed a quick lie. but i can't even do that--if i get caught off guard and need to give an answer, i always say some part of the truth. mahah sometimes though the truth is a secret, so i say it in words that keep the secret. there are so many interesting ways to say things. i wonder how many ways people can hear the truth through?
i forgot why i was writing this.
tonight, i really feel like going to a show. but not a Now show...a Back in the Day show...like where there could be 4 different bands playing 4 different genres that everyone in the crowd was too new and just plain excited that there was a show to even be able to label. where everyone didn't have to sound the same and look the same and where creative (even poppy) melodies were allowed among the breakdowns and where there were more people in the crowd and less people in the "VIP section" on the sidestage. where there wasn't a stage. where you could have a conversation with someone in a band at their merch table because they weren't hiding out from the groupies and making their merch friend fend off the life-sucking masses...
and i'm not gonna lie...i really like Marianas Trench...i've only heard their one song that gets played from time to time on MuchMusic. can't get enough of it. upbeat melodies just make me smile. they feel like summertime.
i just watched a moneen video...and i miss them! sooo good live. it's been a long time since i saw them last...it would sure be swell to catch them again.
i think this is the most i've talked about music in 2 years.
i also would like to know what i'm supposed to do after grad. i've got a few months though..so i guess i'll find out when the time is right. oh silly life. today Marv e-mailed me some instructions for the independent study some of us are participating in this semester...he wanted to know how my internship went and i always get kind of vague and drift off when people inquire about my "logical path to youth pastordom"...i still really don't feel built to do the logical thing...to be a typical youth pastor at a squeaky suburban church.... i really love my church and the people there but its demographic and system is much different than ... me and mine?
i'm not so much the preppy, cute young mom with toddlers and a love for contemporary music and symmetrical surroundings and charts and graphs. i always kind of smile to myself during the music section of the service...i think they use the same hyper drum beat for every song...and everyone is suuper smiley and stoked on life, and it feels like the carebears are going to burst out of the worship leaders' chests or something...which i'm sure really gets a lot of people pumped and helps them worship God. it kind of assaults my senses though. i'm not a particularly exhuberant person, so mirroring that kind of stuff makes me feel really fake. OH i just put 2 and 2 together there and realized why i have a hard time participating in those songs...because i can't lie! aaaahhh that makes so much more sense. here i was dreading that i'm dead inside. hahaha. i would someday like to hear a haunting worship song in a minor key though. that would be very beautiful i bet. or just a purely instrumental one. or to see a sanctuary that doesn't have microsoft-colored carpet and trim. or to visit a youth centre that is a-little-less-random-smattering-of-donated-items-and-pool-tables-with-a-"freeway"-themed-environment, and-a-little-more-coffeehouse/show venue/welcoming-to-kids-who-don't-necessarily-have-a-raging-addiction-to-floor-hockey-and-loudass-TFK-tunes. or to offer a small group based on media study, where it wouldn't be offending someone's anal rules to watch a popular movie and discuss it.
but yes it's kind of crazy when everyone is cheering you on to glide into the niche in life that they've been expecting you to, the one that "makes sense." i mean, my degree is super flexible so that's rad, it's not like i only have one option of what to use my life for. but everyone just seems to love putting the limits of logic on life. i still have no idea where i'm supposed to go. or just exactly what it is i'm meant to do with 5 years of youth culture/adolescent development/psychology/theology/history under my belt. but i know this: i love Truth. i love challenging people. i love creating and building things. i love helping people see things in ways they haven't thought to look at them. i'm not sure what that adds up to, but i think it's something interesting. my pastor/temporary-boss and i talked a lot last semester about calling. which is kind of a can of worms in my case i guess. but hey, i'm young and imaginitive, so it'll work out. no sweat.
"Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"
--Luke 1:45
(...even if she hasn't quite deciphered what he's said yet! mahah)
i might if i could...but i can't. but even if i could i probably wouldn't do it on purpose, maybe just sometimes by accident when someone caught me off-guard and i needed a quick lie. but i can't even do that--if i get caught off guard and need to give an answer, i always say some part of the truth. mahah sometimes though the truth is a secret, so i say it in words that keep the secret. there are so many interesting ways to say things. i wonder how many ways people can hear the truth through?
i forgot why i was writing this.
tonight, i really feel like going to a show. but not a Now show...a Back in the Day show...like where there could be 4 different bands playing 4 different genres that everyone in the crowd was too new and just plain excited that there was a show to even be able to label. where everyone didn't have to sound the same and look the same and where creative (even poppy) melodies were allowed among the breakdowns and where there were more people in the crowd and less people in the "VIP section" on the sidestage. where there wasn't a stage. where you could have a conversation with someone in a band at their merch table because they weren't hiding out from the groupies and making their merch friend fend off the life-sucking masses...
and i'm not gonna lie...i really like Marianas Trench...i've only heard their one song that gets played from time to time on MuchMusic. can't get enough of it. upbeat melodies just make me smile. they feel like summertime.
i just watched a moneen video...and i miss them! sooo good live. it's been a long time since i saw them last...it would sure be swell to catch them again.
i think this is the most i've talked about music in 2 years.
i also would like to know what i'm supposed to do after grad. i've got a few months though..so i guess i'll find out when the time is right. oh silly life. today Marv e-mailed me some instructions for the independent study some of us are participating in this semester...he wanted to know how my internship went and i always get kind of vague and drift off when people inquire about my "logical path to youth pastordom"...i still really don't feel built to do the logical thing...to be a typical youth pastor at a squeaky suburban church.... i really love my church and the people there but its demographic and system is much different than ... me and mine?
i'm not so much the preppy, cute young mom with toddlers and a love for contemporary music and symmetrical surroundings and charts and graphs. i always kind of smile to myself during the music section of the service...i think they use the same hyper drum beat for every song...and everyone is suuper smiley and stoked on life, and it feels like the carebears are going to burst out of the worship leaders' chests or something...which i'm sure really gets a lot of people pumped and helps them worship God. it kind of assaults my senses though. i'm not a particularly exhuberant person, so mirroring that kind of stuff makes me feel really fake. OH i just put 2 and 2 together there and realized why i have a hard time participating in those songs...because i can't lie! aaaahhh that makes so much more sense. here i was dreading that i'm dead inside. hahaha. i would someday like to hear a haunting worship song in a minor key though. that would be very beautiful i bet. or just a purely instrumental one. or to see a sanctuary that doesn't have microsoft-colored carpet and trim. or to visit a youth centre that is a-little-less-random-smattering-of-donated-items-and-pool-tables-with-a-"freeway"-themed-environment, and-a-little-more-coffeehouse/show venue/welcoming-to-kids-who-don't-necessarily-have-a-raging-addiction-to-floor-hockey-and-loudass-TFK-tunes. or to offer a small group based on media study, where it wouldn't be offending someone's anal rules to watch a popular movie and discuss it.
but yes it's kind of crazy when everyone is cheering you on to glide into the niche in life that they've been expecting you to, the one that "makes sense." i mean, my degree is super flexible so that's rad, it's not like i only have one option of what to use my life for. but everyone just seems to love putting the limits of logic on life. i still have no idea where i'm supposed to go. or just exactly what it is i'm meant to do with 5 years of youth culture/adolescent development/psychology/theology/history under my belt. but i know this: i love Truth. i love challenging people. i love creating and building things. i love helping people see things in ways they haven't thought to look at them. i'm not sure what that adds up to, but i think it's something interesting. my pastor/temporary-boss and i talked a lot last semester about calling. which is kind of a can of worms in my case i guess. but hey, i'm young and imaginitive, so it'll work out. no sweat.
"Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!"
--Luke 1:45
(...even if she hasn't quite deciphered what he's said yet! mahah)
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Building a Mystery
So since I'm not really allowed to talk to anyone, here I am again...
(I'm not copping out on in-person communication...this is one of those topics that I actually have talked to locals and bestfriendsonthephone about...and have been met with vacant expressions or "Shaina, you think too much"s...sooo the internet = my last resort!)
D'you ever realize at the end of a day that you seem to've had a Theme Day?
I so had a Theme Day today!
One of the first things I did this morning was write a beefy check, which really should have made me wince because really I have no money and really have to pay the school even more money to graduate...but I really didn't care! No matter how much I try to make myself get concerned about money, I have never been able to work up a worry about it.
I carried on to church where the sermon was about ... money! But not a "the church needs a new carpet" sermon...it was a real good one about not being a slave to money, and about freedom. I really respected my pastor for putting the emphasis in the right place. He even busted out my very favorite Bible verse, and one of my Top 3 Verses to Build a Life On: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
[Extra Interjected Story: Once, at the end of a Briercrest year, around 3am... Elsa and I decided to "paint the town" so to speak. With a carton of sidewalk chalk and eyes full of stars and hearts bursting with secret excitement, we made our way all over campus, leaving kindergarten graffiti in our wake... I never felt so accomplished as a human being as when I scrawled that verse across the curving A-building steps. Oh the satisfying sensation of assaulting public property with a message no one can complain about!]
Now you might think the theme of the day was "money" but you'd be wrong. Because I don't even really know what the theme of the day was. But it was something, I'll tell ya that much.
Next thing that happened was that at church and after church (practically everyone from my church goes to DQ for Sunday lunch...kind of an unofficial tradition), was that every other person I saw said, "Oh you're still here! Are you going back to school? Are you staying here??" The thing that happens when you're one of those "responsible leader-types" who has gone to college and functioned in an official position is that people really really want to be able to label you. Well, that happens with everyone. But it becomes much more acceptable to overtly discuss with a person who has built up a "title" to apply to themself. I want to disintigrate when people ask me things like "What are you going to be?" or "What degree will you have?" because that's not who I am! Ask me what I want to do in life, and you'll get a very different answer that might even dare you to imagine or feel something! Aha, but not many folks want to know those things...they're dangerous...maha...
So this all got me antsy and edgy because I have issues with being stationary. It's just not in my blood. Not that I need to be a chronic drifter...but I'm just not built to settle in too deep. I can settle into people quite nicely (if they're clever and determined enough to trick me into it), but I can't seem to settle into circumstances long-term. I think that's going to be conducive to my role in this life, but I don't know how yet. I'm good at waiting though. My friend Jess--we used to stay up ridiculously late at school watching movies with beautiful art direction and then have long talks or read poetry and I miss that--she reminded me of one of my old favorites the other day, Mister Robert Service. She sent me a piece of a poem that perhaps perfectly matches part of me...
[ http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/8336/robertservice/men.html ]
I told Kim about it at lunch and she laughed at me for loving it and for getting angry over it all at the same time. (Personally, I think love and anger are very necessary for each other). I love it because a) I just love how Service writes 'em and b) it rings true in that people who have no sense of responsibility or dedication will ultimately fail at the challenge of life and c) the slow, steady image reminds me of my dad who is my ultimate role model....BUT it makes me angry because it makes it seem that those who wander and plough through life as adventurers and discoverers and pioneers are setting themselves up for disaster. That they will never know life
or love
or effectiveness
because they didn't follow the pattern cut out by old hands and laid before them. Nuts to that! I'm rubbing the pattern out of my eyes, dashing it to the floor, and I just dare anyone to tell me that there is no one else out there who will do the same
or will go along with me
or will know my message when I'm dead and gone.
I only felt more affirmed tonight when I saw this annoying commercial that plagues my existance from time to time. I think it's for workopolis.com and it has a voiceover that says "You want..." and fills that in with a dozen stupid things emphasizing career, economic, and social success. GAH! I think every time I see it my mind does a subconscious auto-response that I catch sometimes saying "I don't want..." (fill in the blank with: "a prestigious career, a 4-bedroom house, 2 SUVs, a hot tub, 2 blonde kids, vacations in Mexico, etc.") Hahah I really am going to fail at the life I've been set up for. And I couldn't be more excited!
I was watching a show, one of those crime dramas, and it was about this really smart kid who went to private school and was all set to breeze into an ivy-league school and become some doctor or lawyer or something (heavy emphasis on these boys' fathers who are gunner businessmen/dads with big dreams and heavy expectations). But as it turned out, the kid had a couple run-ins with cut and bruised looking chaps in his class who lured him into a pseudo-fight-club where they escaped the numbness of their copy and paste lives. The turning point for the kid was this really well written scene (accompanied by a fantastic Death Cab song that got me extra-energized when coupled with the speech this fight club founder was laying on the zombified guy--don't you love when something good is built on top of the perfect song??) umm...oh yeah the scene where this really savvy and passionate guy is riling the other guy up by trying to snap him out of his mould, by opening his eyes to the fact that he's not living his own life or doing what he's meant to do--he's just conforming to the pattern that's been laid out for him to put on, like a chalk outline.
And what happened in the end of a complex criminal mystery situation as it were, was that one of these kids' dads (in an attempt to cover up the fact that his son accidentally killed a guy, so that he would be sure to get into schools and be the success his dad was willing him to become)..the kid's dad brutally murdered this newly involved kid because he was going to man-up and do the right thing by telling the police what had happened. This guy killed a kid, not for any legitimate reason that a person's life should be taken. For the lust of success and prestige and money.
This made me think of investments. Which I've been thinking about a lot lately. Which also makes me think about resources and commodities. WHAT IS IT THAT IS VALUED? What do I save up and spend and invest? Hah, I can guarantee you at this point in life that it isn't money! And I don't think I ever want it to be money. "Spend time, not money" is what I always say to myself. Time. Love. Passion. Truth. These are good investments. Abundant resources. Precious commodities. Money is paper and scraps of metal. Status is a label they won't carve in your epitaph. And accomplishments can't be hitched to your hearse.
They're building bodies to fill buildings...tall glass cases, full of numbers and papers and spent time. Maybe I'll carve a cathedral?
(I'm not copping out on in-person communication...this is one of those topics that I actually have talked to locals and bestfriendsonthephone about...and have been met with vacant expressions or "Shaina, you think too much"s...sooo the internet = my last resort!)
D'you ever realize at the end of a day that you seem to've had a Theme Day?
I so had a Theme Day today!
One of the first things I did this morning was write a beefy check, which really should have made me wince because really I have no money and really have to pay the school even more money to graduate...but I really didn't care! No matter how much I try to make myself get concerned about money, I have never been able to work up a worry about it.
I carried on to church where the sermon was about ... money! But not a "the church needs a new carpet" sermon...it was a real good one about not being a slave to money, and about freedom. I really respected my pastor for putting the emphasis in the right place. He even busted out my very favorite Bible verse, and one of my Top 3 Verses to Build a Life On: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
[Extra Interjected Story: Once, at the end of a Briercrest year, around 3am... Elsa and I decided to "paint the town" so to speak. With a carton of sidewalk chalk and eyes full of stars and hearts bursting with secret excitement, we made our way all over campus, leaving kindergarten graffiti in our wake... I never felt so accomplished as a human being as when I scrawled that verse across the curving A-building steps. Oh the satisfying sensation of assaulting public property with a message no one can complain about!]
Now you might think the theme of the day was "money" but you'd be wrong. Because I don't even really know what the theme of the day was. But it was something, I'll tell ya that much.
Next thing that happened was that at church and after church (practically everyone from my church goes to DQ for Sunday lunch...kind of an unofficial tradition), was that every other person I saw said, "Oh you're still here! Are you going back to school? Are you staying here??" The thing that happens when you're one of those "responsible leader-types" who has gone to college and functioned in an official position is that people really really want to be able to label you. Well, that happens with everyone. But it becomes much more acceptable to overtly discuss with a person who has built up a "title" to apply to themself. I want to disintigrate when people ask me things like "What are you going to be?" or "What degree will you have?" because that's not who I am! Ask me what I want to do in life, and you'll get a very different answer that might even dare you to imagine or feel something! Aha, but not many folks want to know those things...they're dangerous...maha...
So this all got me antsy and edgy because I have issues with being stationary. It's just not in my blood. Not that I need to be a chronic drifter...but I'm just not built to settle in too deep. I can settle into people quite nicely (if they're clever and determined enough to trick me into it), but I can't seem to settle into circumstances long-term. I think that's going to be conducive to my role in this life, but I don't know how yet. I'm good at waiting though. My friend Jess--we used to stay up ridiculously late at school watching movies with beautiful art direction and then have long talks or read poetry and I miss that--she reminded me of one of my old favorites the other day, Mister Robert Service. She sent me a piece of a poem that perhaps perfectly matches part of me...
[ http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/8336/robertservice/men.html ]
I told Kim about it at lunch and she laughed at me for loving it and for getting angry over it all at the same time. (Personally, I think love and anger are very necessary for each other). I love it because a) I just love how Service writes 'em and b) it rings true in that people who have no sense of responsibility or dedication will ultimately fail at the challenge of life and c) the slow, steady image reminds me of my dad who is my ultimate role model....BUT it makes me angry because it makes it seem that those who wander and plough through life as adventurers and discoverers and pioneers are setting themselves up for disaster. That they will never know life
or love
or effectiveness
because they didn't follow the pattern cut out by old hands and laid before them. Nuts to that! I'm rubbing the pattern out of my eyes, dashing it to the floor, and I just dare anyone to tell me that there is no one else out there who will do the same
or will go along with me
or will know my message when I'm dead and gone.
I only felt more affirmed tonight when I saw this annoying commercial that plagues my existance from time to time. I think it's for workopolis.com and it has a voiceover that says "You want..." and fills that in with a dozen stupid things emphasizing career, economic, and social success. GAH! I think every time I see it my mind does a subconscious auto-response that I catch sometimes saying "I don't want..." (fill in the blank with: "a prestigious career, a 4-bedroom house, 2 SUVs, a hot tub, 2 blonde kids, vacations in Mexico, etc.") Hahah I really am going to fail at the life I've been set up for. And I couldn't be more excited!
I was watching a show, one of those crime dramas, and it was about this really smart kid who went to private school and was all set to breeze into an ivy-league school and become some doctor or lawyer or something (heavy emphasis on these boys' fathers who are gunner businessmen/dads with big dreams and heavy expectations). But as it turned out, the kid had a couple run-ins with cut and bruised looking chaps in his class who lured him into a pseudo-fight-club where they escaped the numbness of their copy and paste lives. The turning point for the kid was this really well written scene (accompanied by a fantastic Death Cab song that got me extra-energized when coupled with the speech this fight club founder was laying on the zombified guy--don't you love when something good is built on top of the perfect song??) umm...oh yeah the scene where this really savvy and passionate guy is riling the other guy up by trying to snap him out of his mould, by opening his eyes to the fact that he's not living his own life or doing what he's meant to do--he's just conforming to the pattern that's been laid out for him to put on, like a chalk outline.
And what happened in the end of a complex criminal mystery situation as it were, was that one of these kids' dads (in an attempt to cover up the fact that his son accidentally killed a guy, so that he would be sure to get into schools and be the success his dad was willing him to become)..the kid's dad brutally murdered this newly involved kid because he was going to man-up and do the right thing by telling the police what had happened. This guy killed a kid, not for any legitimate reason that a person's life should be taken. For the lust of success and prestige and money.
This made me think of investments. Which I've been thinking about a lot lately. Which also makes me think about resources and commodities. WHAT IS IT THAT IS VALUED? What do I save up and spend and invest? Hah, I can guarantee you at this point in life that it isn't money! And I don't think I ever want it to be money. "Spend time, not money" is what I always say to myself. Time. Love. Passion. Truth. These are good investments. Abundant resources. Precious commodities. Money is paper and scraps of metal. Status is a label they won't carve in your epitaph. And accomplishments can't be hitched to your hearse.
They're building bodies to fill buildings...tall glass cases, full of numbers and papers and spent time. Maybe I'll carve a cathedral?
Saturday, January 06, 2007
dear world,
jamison says we're sticking it to the man in our exercise to avoid msn and myspace for a week...but i don't think i'm trying to stick it to the man...(and i know he's kidding)...but i do agree that it feels nice to be partially free of the internet. although i haven't really been doing many other amazing things with my newfound spare time. kim and i agreed to have a Star Wars-athon before she left and see all 6 movies. which was a wretched mistake. but we were dead set on finishing, so i think i've spent the better part of last night and today watching those. there was a shining moment last night at around 3am when Yoda did something i found excessively hilarious. oh and dear jamison (an aside): i was only wearing a hoodie outside here in saskatchewan in the middle of the night tonight...although i think i encountered an abominable snowman at one point in a Star Wars movie..it was COOL! i think more puppets/animatronics should be integrated in films...CG is soooo lame. but anyways, it has been a good exercise in self-control steering clear of these two avenues of communication (although i admit, i had to sign on to myspace very briefly to get in touch with a couple of my youth leaders about youth group tonight..but i avoided all other temptations like messages and comments!) um yeah it's hard though because i don't really have anyone literally here with me to have a good conversation with! except kim's here till sunday..except we basically know all each other's secrets and stories and lives, so it's not as exciting as faroff friends i suppose.
un-internet things besides Star Wars that i did today:
- began to make up about 4 stories in my head and then abandoned each of them once i got too wrapped up in them (they're awful, like big spider webs sometimes)
- saw my doctor/surgeon guy who is a very sweet man from Nigeria (he was happy to tell me i'm not as bad-off as they thought i was and then he prayed for me using lovely ancient words and his nice African accent, it kind of felt like magic i think)
- rocked everyone's faces off at youth group with my previously unknown pictionary prowess (i chalk it up to reading too much and being so "thesorelogical"--yeah. i'm that good. i have the authority to make up my own words.)
- spent some time with kim watching The Man In the Iron Mask (which made me happy because:
a. it fit with me and karl's discussion about honor and the characters in it were very inspiring
b. i was reminded how much i like watching leonardo dicaprio make me forget that he exists outside whatever character he's playing in a film
c. it renewed my appreciation for the modern accessibility that men have to showers)
i also spent a good deal of time feeling something growing inside of me and not being able to tell what it is...it feels like it's in my heart, but then it feels like it's in my throat, my hands, in my eyes... maybe it was just the stories. but it somehow seems to me that something is building, and it's not just in me but it's outside of me, but it's so safely contained in either place that it's aching to escape and threatening to but i'm having a hard time discerning things lately, too. there are many paths to the same end. are there? ambition? mission? love? going, staying, it's all the same, all the same... there is an end i'm supposed to be making my way to. i just can't tell which decision will lead me there. my distrust for myself looms unwelcome in the rooms i go to seek counsel in. and i know i shouldn't give my self so much credit. i'm awfully bad at this all. i'll keep at it though. and if anyone should entrust you with any clues for me, please don't hide them away...i could use a clue or two!
signed
sincerely,
Nancy Drew.
un-internet things besides Star Wars that i did today:
- began to make up about 4 stories in my head and then abandoned each of them once i got too wrapped up in them (they're awful, like big spider webs sometimes)
- saw my doctor/surgeon guy who is a very sweet man from Nigeria (he was happy to tell me i'm not as bad-off as they thought i was and then he prayed for me using lovely ancient words and his nice African accent, it kind of felt like magic i think)
- rocked everyone's faces off at youth group with my previously unknown pictionary prowess (i chalk it up to reading too much and being so "thesorelogical"--yeah. i'm that good. i have the authority to make up my own words.)
- spent some time with kim watching The Man In the Iron Mask (which made me happy because:
a. it fit with me and karl's discussion about honor and the characters in it were very inspiring
b. i was reminded how much i like watching leonardo dicaprio make me forget that he exists outside whatever character he's playing in a film
c. it renewed my appreciation for the modern accessibility that men have to showers)
i also spent a good deal of time feeling something growing inside of me and not being able to tell what it is...it feels like it's in my heart, but then it feels like it's in my throat, my hands, in my eyes... maybe it was just the stories. but it somehow seems to me that something is building, and it's not just in me but it's outside of me, but it's so safely contained in either place that it's aching to escape and threatening to but i'm having a hard time discerning things lately, too. there are many paths to the same end. are there? ambition? mission? love? going, staying, it's all the same, all the same... there is an end i'm supposed to be making my way to. i just can't tell which decision will lead me there. my distrust for myself looms unwelcome in the rooms i go to seek counsel in. and i know i shouldn't give my self so much credit. i'm awfully bad at this all. i'll keep at it though. and if anyone should entrust you with any clues for me, please don't hide them away...i could use a clue or two!
signed
sincerely,
Nancy Drew.
Monday, December 25, 2006
"a (Christmas) day in the life"
as far as this blog goes, i still have no idea how to add friends or really do anything but post pictures and words...so this is going out to you 5 or so random people who stop by to check in on me from time to time. it is an exciting look at Christmas Days in The Life of Shaina!
I haven't really been super into Christmas this time around, I guess I've been pretty tired and felt like it's come and gone a zillion times over with the amount of "Christmas" junk all over the place...I went to The Nativity Story the other week, but it didn't really spark any inspiration in me...I was kind of sad coming up on Christmas, because I usually really connect with the Christmas story spiritually and hold it dear..and I found myself not really even wanting to read it by myself because it gets quoted left and right and we always read it as a family on Christmas Eve anyways, and also because sometimes I dread that after so many years of Bible college and of reading the Scriptures and studying the passages, that they will become too familiar and I am horrible with the familiar...I always want something new and unknown, I am absolutely unfaithful to the used-to (or maybe I just fear that I am or will be)...but I knew, the night before Christmas Eve, that there's always something hiding there in that Book, and I was going to find it. (So strange how with changed perspective something old can unfailingly offer something new.) I think whenever I read that Story, I try to think of who I most wish I could be in it. This time I wanted to be the shepherds. Can you even imagine how magical and holy and overwhelming it would be to be nobody special out doing the same old thing, and to encounter angels in the quiet, dark night, and to hear their praises to God?! And then to be told to go and see God himself, just you, nobody, out in the dark night? To be among the first few people to ever be in the presence of Jesus? Oh if I dread anything worse than myself and what might be about me, it is that I've forgotten the feeling of the magical, holy, overwhelming presence of the Lord! Ah, how many words have fallen off mossy lips as shabby substitutes for gold, frankincense and myrrh...for wonder and awe and love...what's become of worship?
Yesterday morning, my pastor continued a December series he's been doing on Christmas songs. Oh Holy Night was the song, and it was lovely because there's a sweet old man with a beautiful voice at my church who performs that song every year and it's a huge tradition for Gerald to sing it, and it makes me want to cry every time. And then Jay did this sermon where he told us a really funny and action-packed story of his Holy Night: the night his first child was born. It was a really great and engaging sermon and we were all just riveted, but there was this one sentence that just happened in the midst of all the rest of them that I don't even think he had planned for or knew he was saying. He was telling us how he got to carry his daughter from the operating room to the little room with the baby beds, and how he made that the longest walk of his life because "I had this sense, that she had just come from God's presence...and I wanted to soak as much of that up as I could, before she grew up and forgot."
mmmhmm...
Last night was the Christmas Eve service at my church, which was wonderful because everyone was home and I got to see all my old friends and visit a lil' bit with some of them, and it just felt very homey and warm and special. Plus, there's some sort of thing at my church where pretty much everyone who's grown up there is amazingly ridiculously musically talented, so it was a treat to get to hear a lot of them perform beautiful songs and worship together! Plus this little teensy adorable girl with black pigtails and light-up sole knee-high boots did a wicked boogie and almost dove into the advent candles when her family was performing. (There always has to be something funny). Then they surprised me and gave me a gift, and the bag was as big as me, so I looked pretty stupid lugging it back to my seat in front of everyone! But there was a ludicrously amazingly lovely cozy plush blanket (that reallllllly soft stuff) in it, so it was worth the scene!)
Then the whole fam went over to Grandma Stella's house (she has a really pretty name, doesn't she?)...we have done that since before I was born on Christmas Eve...and it was just the most fun and special time! I just wish I could invite everyone to some sort of get-together with my family--they are the funniest people in the world. Basically what we do is laugh and eat and sleep. And laugh. Sooo much laughing! It's like not just one funny thing happens/gets said...something happens or gets said, and then it gets exaggerated, and built upon, and branches out to become even more hilarious, and sometimes even reaches outta-control status, where there is an epidemic of wheezing and near-vomitting. But anyways, my little cousin Robert was like the presents patrol, asking every 3 seconds if we could open presents yet. So my aunt and cousin Jess and I dragged out the pre-present portion of the evening really long with ridiculous Christmas trivia and stories, plus a premiere family viewing of "Big Mama" -- a home video Kalen and I made when we were like 9 & 11 with our now-20-year-old cousin Matt that involved him dressing up like a blonde dress-wearing, purse-toting villain and Kalen smoking pot (fake of course) and getting shot and kicked a lot. Ah we were imaginitive kids...
This morning Kalen put a ban on me coming out and joining the family until he had wrapped my gift. This was a gift in itself, because it left him no time at all to spend coating the gift in some form of tape that has to be removed painstakingly. The thrill of this blessing soon subsided however, when I discovered a hideously disturbing object in my stocking...SILLY PUTTY! I can't even begin to tell you the story behind that. It's truly awful. My mom got just the reaction she was fishing for when I took one look at it, shrieked in horror, and dropped it on the floor. sicksicksick...I don't even want to talk about it anymore. While I was pulling myself together, Kalen was unwrapping his gift from me. Immediately upon realizing what it was, he started laughing and demanded that I open his gift to me that instant. He couldn't even wait, and blurted out that he got me the exact same thing! We completely neutralized each other. It was very strange and very funny! My parents once again failed to sever me from "Santadom" and gave me a little plethora of cute presents instead of just one boring grown-up gift. I think it's 'cause they paid for Kalen's flight out to see Krissy and they probably felt guilty and like they should give me more junk. Pfff haha. Which, hey, y'know, isn't all bad...it's kind of nice to be at this stage of life and still be getting we-got-your-younger-brother-things-so-we-wanted-to-get-you-things-too gifts. Not getting married and growing up too fast has really paid off! jooooking..but they gave me a digital camera! Which is really sweet of them because they always try to think of things I need for "my career" and school and whatnot that I probably can't afford to buy for myself. But which also means that now I am going to have to set aside and devote an entire day to technology I think...because that ipod from last Christmas is still definitely in its box...I honestly appreciate and can use all the technological things they have given me over these past few years...I just...gahahaha....I'm ridiculous! But actually, I think I'm set now...stereo...normal camera...video camera...laptop...ipod...digital camera...and I already have a dvd/vhs player and a tv...I think I'm technologically-established enough to go ahead and get married and watch those boring grown-up/couples gifts start rollin' in! Pffff hahah. My parents definitely received a turkey deep-frier from my dad's older brother. What the heck! hahaha...Oh Christmas. I don't think I like gifts half as much as I like the stories behind them...and the thing I'm sure I'll remember past any of that, is just us sitting around in all our sweet sweatpants in the cozy basement, the smell of coffee, half watching A Christmas Story and laughing our heads off, Dad chiding Mom for "breaking the pact" and giving him gifts (after years of him sneakily doing the exact same to her and hiding diamonds in tupperware sets and the like), and that effing Silly Putty and the joy it brings everyone to taunt me during this particular season.
I'm pretty sure the rest of the day consisted of a lot of turkey and saskatoon pie with the saskatoons scraped out of it, countless hours of "Mall Madness" (an electronic board game that encourages poor financial management and excessive shopping) played with an 11 and 14 year old who just got cell phones and mock-designer purses from Santa (I know! RIGHT up my alley!) and then several hours of semi-consciousness featuring Indiana Jones special features and my dad snoring. And my grandma keeps telling me that I remind her of her mom, which I'm not sure if she's just kind of getting old and crazy a little or if I really am like this lady I never met. Her name was Lena and she was from Norway. I bet she was interesting. Wish I could've known her! In any case, I guess I look like her when she was young and I make lefse just the same as she used to, which Grandma hasn't done/seen done in decades. So now I feel extra-connected to my family. I always thought it would be fun to be a vivid continuation of an ancestor's existence!
Well, it's after midnight now, so Christmas is officially over...until Kim and I go to Regina for the Patented Ultra-Deluxe Shaina Strategy of Christmas Shopping: treasure hunt, buy everyone's personalized gifts for real cheap on Boxing Day, stow it all away for a year, and say "Oh! Hey! I'm already done my Christmas shopping!" when everyone else starts saying "Crap! I have to do my Christmas shopping!" and then just spend time hanging out with Grandma and helping her with her baking and watching movies with Kim and Amie. Hey now! Christmas is pretty swell.
Hope yours was delightful as well!
<3>
I haven't really been super into Christmas this time around, I guess I've been pretty tired and felt like it's come and gone a zillion times over with the amount of "Christmas" junk all over the place...I went to The Nativity Story the other week, but it didn't really spark any inspiration in me...I was kind of sad coming up on Christmas, because I usually really connect with the Christmas story spiritually and hold it dear..and I found myself not really even wanting to read it by myself because it gets quoted left and right and we always read it as a family on Christmas Eve anyways, and also because sometimes I dread that after so many years of Bible college and of reading the Scriptures and studying the passages, that they will become too familiar and I am horrible with the familiar...I always want something new and unknown, I am absolutely unfaithful to the used-to (or maybe I just fear that I am or will be)...but I knew, the night before Christmas Eve, that there's always something hiding there in that Book, and I was going to find it. (So strange how with changed perspective something old can unfailingly offer something new.) I think whenever I read that Story, I try to think of who I most wish I could be in it. This time I wanted to be the shepherds. Can you even imagine how magical and holy and overwhelming it would be to be nobody special out doing the same old thing, and to encounter angels in the quiet, dark night, and to hear their praises to God?! And then to be told to go and see God himself, just you, nobody, out in the dark night? To be among the first few people to ever be in the presence of Jesus? Oh if I dread anything worse than myself and what might be about me, it is that I've forgotten the feeling of the magical, holy, overwhelming presence of the Lord! Ah, how many words have fallen off mossy lips as shabby substitutes for gold, frankincense and myrrh...for wonder and awe and love...what's become of worship?
Yesterday morning, my pastor continued a December series he's been doing on Christmas songs. Oh Holy Night was the song, and it was lovely because there's a sweet old man with a beautiful voice at my church who performs that song every year and it's a huge tradition for Gerald to sing it, and it makes me want to cry every time. And then Jay did this sermon where he told us a really funny and action-packed story of his Holy Night: the night his first child was born. It was a really great and engaging sermon and we were all just riveted, but there was this one sentence that just happened in the midst of all the rest of them that I don't even think he had planned for or knew he was saying. He was telling us how he got to carry his daughter from the operating room to the little room with the baby beds, and how he made that the longest walk of his life because "I had this sense, that she had just come from God's presence...and I wanted to soak as much of that up as I could, before she grew up and forgot."
mmmhmm...
Last night was the Christmas Eve service at my church, which was wonderful because everyone was home and I got to see all my old friends and visit a lil' bit with some of them, and it just felt very homey and warm and special. Plus, there's some sort of thing at my church where pretty much everyone who's grown up there is amazingly ridiculously musically talented, so it was a treat to get to hear a lot of them perform beautiful songs and worship together! Plus this little teensy adorable girl with black pigtails and light-up sole knee-high boots did a wicked boogie and almost dove into the advent candles when her family was performing. (There always has to be something funny). Then they surprised me and gave me a gift, and the bag was as big as me, so I looked pretty stupid lugging it back to my seat in front of everyone! But there was a ludicrously amazingly lovely cozy plush blanket (that reallllllly soft stuff) in it, so it was worth the scene!)
Then the whole fam went over to Grandma Stella's house (she has a really pretty name, doesn't she?)...we have done that since before I was born on Christmas Eve...and it was just the most fun and special time! I just wish I could invite everyone to some sort of get-together with my family--they are the funniest people in the world. Basically what we do is laugh and eat and sleep. And laugh. Sooo much laughing! It's like not just one funny thing happens/gets said...something happens or gets said, and then it gets exaggerated, and built upon, and branches out to become even more hilarious, and sometimes even reaches outta-control status, where there is an epidemic of wheezing and near-vomitting. But anyways, my little cousin Robert was like the presents patrol, asking every 3 seconds if we could open presents yet. So my aunt and cousin Jess and I dragged out the pre-present portion of the evening really long with ridiculous Christmas trivia and stories, plus a premiere family viewing of "Big Mama" -- a home video Kalen and I made when we were like 9 & 11 with our now-20-year-old cousin Matt that involved him dressing up like a blonde dress-wearing, purse-toting villain and Kalen smoking pot (fake of course) and getting shot and kicked a lot. Ah we were imaginitive kids...
This morning Kalen put a ban on me coming out and joining the family until he had wrapped my gift. This was a gift in itself, because it left him no time at all to spend coating the gift in some form of tape that has to be removed painstakingly. The thrill of this blessing soon subsided however, when I discovered a hideously disturbing object in my stocking...SILLY PUTTY! I can't even begin to tell you the story behind that. It's truly awful. My mom got just the reaction she was fishing for when I took one look at it, shrieked in horror, and dropped it on the floor. sicksicksick...I don't even want to talk about it anymore. While I was pulling myself together, Kalen was unwrapping his gift from me. Immediately upon realizing what it was, he started laughing and demanded that I open his gift to me that instant. He couldn't even wait, and blurted out that he got me the exact same thing! We completely neutralized each other. It was very strange and very funny! My parents once again failed to sever me from "Santadom" and gave me a little plethora of cute presents instead of just one boring grown-up gift. I think it's 'cause they paid for Kalen's flight out to see Krissy and they probably felt guilty and like they should give me more junk. Pfff haha. Which, hey, y'know, isn't all bad...it's kind of nice to be at this stage of life and still be getting we-got-your-younger-brother-things-so-we-wanted-to-get-you-things-too gifts. Not getting married and growing up too fast has really paid off! jooooking..but they gave me a digital camera! Which is really sweet of them because they always try to think of things I need for "my career" and school and whatnot that I probably can't afford to buy for myself. But which also means that now I am going to have to set aside and devote an entire day to technology I think...because that ipod from last Christmas is still definitely in its box...I honestly appreciate and can use all the technological things they have given me over these past few years...I just...gahahaha....I'm ridiculous! But actually, I think I'm set now...stereo...normal camera...video camera...laptop...ipod...digital camera...and I already have a dvd/vhs player and a tv...I think I'm technologically-established enough to go ahead and get married and watch those boring grown-up/couples gifts start rollin' in! Pffff hahah. My parents definitely received a turkey deep-frier from my dad's older brother. What the heck! hahaha...Oh Christmas. I don't think I like gifts half as much as I like the stories behind them...and the thing I'm sure I'll remember past any of that, is just us sitting around in all our sweet sweatpants in the cozy basement, the smell of coffee, half watching A Christmas Story and laughing our heads off, Dad chiding Mom for "breaking the pact" and giving him gifts (after years of him sneakily doing the exact same to her and hiding diamonds in tupperware sets and the like), and that effing Silly Putty and the joy it brings everyone to taunt me during this particular season.
I'm pretty sure the rest of the day consisted of a lot of turkey and saskatoon pie with the saskatoons scraped out of it, countless hours of "Mall Madness" (an electronic board game that encourages poor financial management and excessive shopping) played with an 11 and 14 year old who just got cell phones and mock-designer purses from Santa (I know! RIGHT up my alley!) and then several hours of semi-consciousness featuring Indiana Jones special features and my dad snoring. And my grandma keeps telling me that I remind her of her mom, which I'm not sure if she's just kind of getting old and crazy a little or if I really am like this lady I never met. Her name was Lena and she was from Norway. I bet she was interesting. Wish I could've known her! In any case, I guess I look like her when she was young and I make lefse just the same as she used to, which Grandma hasn't done/seen done in decades. So now I feel extra-connected to my family. I always thought it would be fun to be a vivid continuation of an ancestor's existence!
Well, it's after midnight now, so Christmas is officially over...until Kim and I go to Regina for the Patented Ultra-Deluxe Shaina Strategy of Christmas Shopping: treasure hunt, buy everyone's personalized gifts for real cheap on Boxing Day, stow it all away for a year, and say "Oh! Hey! I'm already done my Christmas shopping!" when everyone else starts saying "Crap! I have to do my Christmas shopping!" and then just spend time hanging out with Grandma and helping her with her baking and watching movies with Kim and Amie. Hey now! Christmas is pretty swell.
Hope yours was delightful as well!
<3>
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
munday
"Okay wait,
so did you win?"
"No."
"Oh.
Did I win then?"
"No."
"Well that doesn't make sense.
One of us has to have won."
"No, I don't think that's it."
"What? Seriously.
Who won? Just tell me, k?"
"Neither of us.
No one ever wins at this."
"Someone has to have won at it.
Otherwise there's no point."
"Well okay, one guy won once."
"Who?"
"The guy who made it up."
"That's ridiculous."
"I'm serious. He won. The first time they played."
"How do you know?"
"I was there."
"No you weren't."
"Okay I wasn't.
But I kind of thought I was.
Just trust me."
"You're kind of hard to trust."
"I know.
I think that's why we lost."
"Sometimes I hate you."
"I know.
I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry."
"I can peel my skin off...
d'you want to see?"
"No.
That's gross.
What makes you think I'd want to see that?"
"I don't know.
What makes you think you wouldn't?"
so did you win?"
"No."
"Oh.
Did I win then?"
"No."
"Well that doesn't make sense.
One of us has to have won."
"No, I don't think that's it."
"What? Seriously.
Who won? Just tell me, k?"
"Neither of us.
No one ever wins at this."
"Someone has to have won at it.
Otherwise there's no point."
"Well okay, one guy won once."
"Who?"
"The guy who made it up."
"That's ridiculous."
"I'm serious. He won. The first time they played."
"How do you know?"
"I was there."
"No you weren't."
"Okay I wasn't.
But I kind of thought I was.
Just trust me."
"You're kind of hard to trust."
"I know.
I think that's why we lost."
"Sometimes I hate you."
"I know.
I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry."
"I can peel my skin off...
d'you want to see?"
"No.
That's gross.
What makes you think I'd want to see that?"
"I don't know.
What makes you think you wouldn't?"
Monday, December 11, 2006
you just break me with your beauty
yesterday as i walked out of the restaurant i noticed the pale faces, the traces of life in the lack..but the want was too strong, strong like the descent of lead in the part of the ocean that's dark. disappear. they've disappeared. their ghosts haunt their gazes, on the brink of abandon. i can't tell if they've forfeited or if they never knew to come in the first place. and i feel like, "am i the only one really here??" the empty streets were not only in dreams, they are here, full of everything that's not, bursting and bustling with the nothing. the sound of silence pours into my skull like cold thick medicine, a prescription for a misdiagnosed condition. "i never knew you!" i said, "i never knew you before. i don't want to, i don't. you're uninvited and please go."
the pushpins on the wall beside the door: primary colors.
oh how i hate those hues.
horrible, ugly, reds and blues. greens and yellows. overused. trusted so quickly so lastingly only because they came first. oh i hate them and i always have. it's the unimaginitive decor in a toddler's nursery, a sentence imposed on an innocent, unwittingly intended to stifle his life and to ensure uniformity, conformity. "Die, Variety!" they shouted in their sleep, striped sleeves pumping starchy signs (painted up in primaries no doubt): a protest they all joined in the end (the end before The End, the one that came with the adoption of the color palate of their parents, the one that finished them before they even started).
everything in that place, in those few brief moments, strangled me. the apathy with which it grappled me was stunningly hideous. i curled my lips at it and said goodbye, and not farewell, for well to fare would not dwell there. i burst into the winter air, free and new and down the stair and on the ice and in my hair i felt the willing of the world--the canvas asked--for more. more than four, or maybe five. more than life... To Be Alive! i made a list i've made before, silly really: seafoam green. robin's egg blue. espresso. magenta. but it's mine. and they sky today agreed with me, i heard him answer with his ownly shade of blue. he made the frosted world, the branches coated in his breath, pop upon his sprawling chest like the mysterious fluff that sticks out of grandpa's shirt...oh he loves us even though we hardly notice him with his big arms around us.
but they keep asking me to stay. their vacant gazes, spectral summons, make my bones cold. a chill inside is hard to shake. i lay under layers, flannel, down, all around, because i know i have to stay a little longer. but the cold is getting stronger. it's not the cold that worries me now--i know it won't take me. it's the sickness. the sick is the stay. i need their help now, and they gladly oblige, because it's what they do. they survive. they will keep me alive, until it's time to go. but they don't know. no, where i'm going...they can't.
"these bright eyes were built by lies," they theorize, halfheartedly humoring me (if i accidentally idealize out of the bounds of my own mind). i wish they could see! oh i see so many things that could be...but here i am (here we are) in black and white, in lack of light that might reveal them. i'll wait, i'll wait until i go. but in the meantime, it tires me so to daily wake and cake on this cadaverous foundation. and you will argue because you see me doing it, but do you live this? do you know? i can't keep on with color, i'm tired and it's just easier to hide and endure. it's wasted here. isn't it? a tear may fall and reveal a tone, and that moment real may reach but one, and that's all i can give. because color loses its meaning when it's lost in blind eyes. "am i dying?" i wonder...can it exist if no one believes in it?
oh the beautiful are few and far between. "i never met you, oh but how i've longed to! are you lonely out there? are you dying, are you lying beneath layers, with cold bones? i hope you know i'm out here too, loving you!" mister poe, and brother weiss, kensrue, lewis, burton, Christ...you ignite my marrow and i thank you, from the depths of this long winter. i will join you in good time and bring you something somehow mine and somehow ours and somehow someday maybe it will shatter a buried beauty like how you have broken me. (hold fast hope!)
Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/poetry/annabel.html
the pushpins on the wall beside the door: primary colors.
oh how i hate those hues.
horrible, ugly, reds and blues. greens and yellows. overused. trusted so quickly so lastingly only because they came first. oh i hate them and i always have. it's the unimaginitive decor in a toddler's nursery, a sentence imposed on an innocent, unwittingly intended to stifle his life and to ensure uniformity, conformity. "Die, Variety!" they shouted in their sleep, striped sleeves pumping starchy signs (painted up in primaries no doubt): a protest they all joined in the end (the end before The End, the one that came with the adoption of the color palate of their parents, the one that finished them before they even started).
everything in that place, in those few brief moments, strangled me. the apathy with which it grappled me was stunningly hideous. i curled my lips at it and said goodbye, and not farewell, for well to fare would not dwell there. i burst into the winter air, free and new and down the stair and on the ice and in my hair i felt the willing of the world--the canvas asked--for more. more than four, or maybe five. more than life... To Be Alive! i made a list i've made before, silly really: seafoam green. robin's egg blue. espresso. magenta. but it's mine. and they sky today agreed with me, i heard him answer with his ownly shade of blue. he made the frosted world, the branches coated in his breath, pop upon his sprawling chest like the mysterious fluff that sticks out of grandpa's shirt...oh he loves us even though we hardly notice him with his big arms around us.
but they keep asking me to stay. their vacant gazes, spectral summons, make my bones cold. a chill inside is hard to shake. i lay under layers, flannel, down, all around, because i know i have to stay a little longer. but the cold is getting stronger. it's not the cold that worries me now--i know it won't take me. it's the sickness. the sick is the stay. i need their help now, and they gladly oblige, because it's what they do. they survive. they will keep me alive, until it's time to go. but they don't know. no, where i'm going...they can't.
"these bright eyes were built by lies," they theorize, halfheartedly humoring me (if i accidentally idealize out of the bounds of my own mind). i wish they could see! oh i see so many things that could be...but here i am (here we are) in black and white, in lack of light that might reveal them. i'll wait, i'll wait until i go. but in the meantime, it tires me so to daily wake and cake on this cadaverous foundation. and you will argue because you see me doing it, but do you live this? do you know? i can't keep on with color, i'm tired and it's just easier to hide and endure. it's wasted here. isn't it? a tear may fall and reveal a tone, and that moment real may reach but one, and that's all i can give. because color loses its meaning when it's lost in blind eyes. "am i dying?" i wonder...can it exist if no one believes in it?
oh the beautiful are few and far between. "i never met you, oh but how i've longed to! are you lonely out there? are you dying, are you lying beneath layers, with cold bones? i hope you know i'm out here too, loving you!" mister poe, and brother weiss, kensrue, lewis, burton, Christ...you ignite my marrow and i thank you, from the depths of this long winter. i will join you in good time and bring you something somehow mine and somehow ours and somehow someday maybe it will shatter a buried beauty like how you have broken me. (hold fast hope!)
Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe
http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/poetry/annabel.html
Friday, December 01, 2006
There lived a girl who lost her love
(if you can really call it living;
if you could really call it love).
There was one who'd loved her in return and she'd kept him close, almost inside of her. She wondered why he felt so far away.
"so much time he spends with me, and i with he, but i never feel we have spent it together. i feel i'm forever entering rooms he's only just left..."
She kept him close to keep him away.
A million miles, a galaxy, can't separate two hearts one love cleaves...
But the space between two bodies, between two minds, separated only perhaps by the space of a breath, is the space she accidentally (intentionally) employs to let a chasm drop between them. ("A closeness almost realizing but simultaneously denying is intoxicatingly satisfying...")
She never finishes anything she starts.
Oh she ends it though.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Midnight Adventure * *
The sky is an amethyst tonight.
I looked out the window (I knew I shouldn't because I was at that very perfect tired spot where I knew I could fall asleep if I just went to bed...) and I was a goner.
I had to wait though, because I was just already waiting for the special secret midnight oatmeal in the pot on the stove.
That only made it better though, because then I got to eat it with the milk and the brown sugar like when I was little, at the old table like when I was little, and look out the big window like when I was little, at the first snow silently sparkling and growing like holy moss on everything outside.
Having to wait and watch something so new and pure and lovely as it happened right before me (but still somehow apart from me) was so wonderfully torturous! I just wanted to be out in it and I felt like I was on the verge of melting through the walls just to be in it...but first I had to wait and watch...but then! I noticed that watching it from inside got me ready to love it right, better than I could have if I just ran out the door at first sight of it. I absorbed the glow of the hazy heavens, starless but then suddenly full of sparkling bodies (the reflection on the window of the specks in the ceiling above me), studied the way the old white of the gnarled birch tree challenged the sky and harbored its beautiful orphans beneath his boughs, acknowledged for the first time this year the towering height and noble stature of the old evergreens whose knees grow weak as the time goes by, admired the bold virginity of this unnoticed midnight landscape...
I didn't anticipate how wonderfully deep it was. I'm glad. Shoefuls of powder were welcome in this girl's world tonight. I'm terrible about depth perception. Which makes for everything always being much more impressive and engulfing and interesting than I anticipate it to be! I'm not going to lie...I love snow...and I greedily covet first snowfalls...I just wait and pray that they will be during secret midnights when I can be the only one who notices them...(I prayed pleadingly today for it to snow just like this...for the sky to wait till everyone was asleep and then whisper its winter wish into the world, warm but just cold enough to make your nose run a little, so much snow, swirling and filling up the empty spaces fall left...and here it is! Exactly what I asked for! What a lovely gift!!)
Sometimes I think I should be a tree or something outside. I don't quite feel right indoors. Not that I believe in reincarnation or anything (pff), but I just mean that...well nature is so much better at all this than we are. Every branch and bush and leftover leaf I passed was just patiently reaching up to catch the blessings that were drifting down to them. How often do I miss that when I've shut myself up inside of some manmade dwelling? I am sooooo good at shielding myself from wonderful possibilities. I felt ridiculous to be shown-up by a dead bush. Super-humbling. Super-inspiring. I guess I have to ask myself if I'm going to file it away in my mind or live it now.
(I'm always bad at this part) * * *
I looked out the window (I knew I shouldn't because I was at that very perfect tired spot where I knew I could fall asleep if I just went to bed...) and I was a goner.
I had to wait though, because I was just already waiting for the special secret midnight oatmeal in the pot on the stove.
That only made it better though, because then I got to eat it with the milk and the brown sugar like when I was little, at the old table like when I was little, and look out the big window like when I was little, at the first snow silently sparkling and growing like holy moss on everything outside.
Having to wait and watch something so new and pure and lovely as it happened right before me (but still somehow apart from me) was so wonderfully torturous! I just wanted to be out in it and I felt like I was on the verge of melting through the walls just to be in it...but first I had to wait and watch...but then! I noticed that watching it from inside got me ready to love it right, better than I could have if I just ran out the door at first sight of it. I absorbed the glow of the hazy heavens, starless but then suddenly full of sparkling bodies (the reflection on the window of the specks in the ceiling above me), studied the way the old white of the gnarled birch tree challenged the sky and harbored its beautiful orphans beneath his boughs, acknowledged for the first time this year the towering height and noble stature of the old evergreens whose knees grow weak as the time goes by, admired the bold virginity of this unnoticed midnight landscape...
I didn't anticipate how wonderfully deep it was. I'm glad. Shoefuls of powder were welcome in this girl's world tonight. I'm terrible about depth perception. Which makes for everything always being much more impressive and engulfing and interesting than I anticipate it to be! I'm not going to lie...I love snow...and I greedily covet first snowfalls...I just wait and pray that they will be during secret midnights when I can be the only one who notices them...(I prayed pleadingly today for it to snow just like this...for the sky to wait till everyone was asleep and then whisper its winter wish into the world, warm but just cold enough to make your nose run a little, so much snow, swirling and filling up the empty spaces fall left...and here it is! Exactly what I asked for! What a lovely gift!!)
Sometimes I think I should be a tree or something outside. I don't quite feel right indoors. Not that I believe in reincarnation or anything (pff), but I just mean that...well nature is so much better at all this than we are. Every branch and bush and leftover leaf I passed was just patiently reaching up to catch the blessings that were drifting down to them. How often do I miss that when I've shut myself up inside of some manmade dwelling? I am sooooo good at shielding myself from wonderful possibilities. I felt ridiculous to be shown-up by a dead bush. Super-humbling. Super-inspiring. I guess I have to ask myself if I'm going to file it away in my mind or live it now.
(I'm always bad at this part) * * *
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Girl Secrets
“But little by little, the tease became the truth”
FACT
Between 1992 & 2004, breast augmentation procedures in the U.S. went from 32,607/year to 264,041/year (more than 700%).
Can you love something you don't believe in?
Oh yes.
You can.
You do.
(Don't you?)
I love fairy tales. But I don't believe in them. Maybe it's the scientist in me or the cynic in me or the secret in me. I just haven't seen evidence and I really don't expect to. We make them up to escape the pain of reality, to own and experience the things we imagine should be and really never are. Maybe I love them because they're ideal and untrue--there's no danger in loving something that doesn't exist. It can't let you down. It can't need anything from you. It can make you happy.
The Question of the Week is really part of Karl's blog, but he's going away for the weekend, and it's burning a hole in my mind tonight. So I'll talk about it here (for the possible 0 to .5 people who are tuned into it...). I'll just address Part A: "How do you think woman are viewed in todays sexually twisted society?"
Basically, I'm pissed off and confused and disappointed and a lot of other things along those lines. I let myself think about it a little bit the other day when I was watching a movie where an Irish princess was promised off by her father in various scenarios that affirmed her objectification and subhumanity. That would be very hard to feel like a disposable and sellable resource. Oh wait. (we'll come back to that in a minute).
I let myself think about it a little more as I read the book of Ruth last night. (I read Esther last week). Now, I realize I'm a product of a supersexualized/dream-chasing/human rights-clutching/individualistic culture that assures its members that they have the right to a personalized, idealistic, pleasure-trove of a relationship that will magically develop in each of their lives at some point.....and I don't buy into that. But what then am I supposed to "buy into?" Biblically, (agh I can hardly even say it because I know I'm going to be able to disagree with myself in ten different ways and argue the other side too)...well, sometimes to me as a 22-year-old girl who hasn't exactly had experience with "honorable" or "respectable" men (as in: the majority of guys are products of the culture too...sex-starved, mom-replacer-needing hedonists who aren't exactly looking to take care of a girl Boaz-style)...k well, "Biblically," it seems the standard narrative profile of a woman is...a youthful and productive resource.
I really went to town thinking about it tonight.
Instance A: When Kalen decided that I should marry Bobby so that family get-togethers would be fun for the two of them. Now I love Kalen and I love Bobby, but I felt it was important to point out that their shared glee is probably not going to be the basis for my marriage (should I get past the apparent disdain I am building for the whole "love" scene and actually participate someday). The added fuel to that fire is that the pair of them are quite the public pigs and see acting disgusting and mannerless as something I should get over and embrace. I do not find that attractive or funny, and I am nobody's mother. It really gets to me when guys think they're magical creatures, immune to the standards of decency, who should be supported and loved despite their childish conduct. I am not a ridiculous robot designed to laugh, cook, endure, etc.
Instance B: When a few of us went to 7-11 and some drunken fratboy lurched out of his friend's car and leered shamelessly as I passed by. I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie, just goin' to get a Slurpee with 2 of my male friends, guy...clearly this is not an invitation for you to peruse and pursue me. Basically, I want to scream f-words and angry diminishing intellectual inquiries at guys who do this and at all the women in the past 30 years who have apparently given them permission on behalf of the female gender to cast that same gaze on EVERY FEMALE THEY ENCOUNTER. I just wish that guys could feel the way flesh crawls beneath carefully applied layers of clothing when it feels that kind of gaze boring through the armour. Just because you saw something that looked like me at the store doesn't mean I've sold out.
Instance C: I hardly even want to get into it, it was that offensive to me tonight. I'm not a Family Guy-hater..I think it's pretty darn funny and says some accurate things about/satirizes culture quite well. But one of the best ways to affirm and propogate negative and damaging worldviews is to frost them with delicious humor. The episode we watched tonight made me feel like its writers were asking me to lick that funny frosting right out of the bottom of a urinal. I was literally disgusted. I don't really even remember the point of it, something about Peter and sexual harrassment and having to go to some womens' retreat...Every part of it just completely affirmed (directly and indirectly) the expectation for women to be little more than sexual, servile resources. Even though it was "satirizing" that. It just felt the same as watching a group of kids humor the handicapped kid in their midst...not for his benefit, but for the enjoyment he brings them. One of my favorite unspoken cultural commentaries heavily represented in this particular show (as well as basically every other sitcom) is the physical presentation of the husband/father figure and wife/mother figure: It's totally okay and normal for a guy to become a hidously obese slob with low motivation, standards, intellect, expectations, and basically nothing other than a few sarcastic comments and slapstick moves to offer...but wifey better hit the gym after popping out those 3 little ones, read up on ethics, current events, social issues, and common sense (because she's going to have to comprise 93% of the combined spousal image/knowledge/action), and always be available to have a hot meal ready, change the baby, and have sincere sex with her bloated carcass of a husband.
I'm pretty sure we went on to watch the new Blink 18new or whatever they're calling themselves now video...where I came out with some dark and sarcastic comment (yeah, I don't know where it came from either) ... about how it'd be interesting if these guys got women their own age in their videos. Had something to do with likening women these days to toilet paper. Abundant and disposable.
So as we search for the answers to the Question...of how women are viewed in today's sexually twisted society...I wonder wonder wonder...if boys aren't falling in love with things that don't exist, and if women aren't going extinct as girls become ghosts.
"For Further Reading"
If you are a boy, and are interested in researching the topic of girls and sexuality and the effed-upness of it all...I recommended the book Female Chauvanist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy to Karl...it's amazing and will unlock a lot of doors to you if you're into that kind of thing...here are some selections from a research paper I did last year:
"Because we have determined that all empowered women must be overtly and publicly sexual, and because the only sign of sexuality we seem to be able to recognize is a direct allusion to red-light entertainment, we have laced the sleazy energy and aesthetic of a topless club or a Penthouse shoot throughout our entire culture."
"Sex appeal has become a synecdoche for all appeal."
"Hotness has become our cultural currency."
"In this new formulation of raunch feminism, stripping is as valuable to elevating womankind as gaining an education or supporting rape victims."
"‘I was standing in the shower the other day, picking up my shampoo,’ she said. ‘It’s called ‘Dumb Blonde.’ I thought, Thirty years ago you could not have sold this. I think we have lost consciousness of the way our culture demeans women.’ "
"Gerlach made no bones about wanting to ‘climb the [corporate] ladder’ so she could enjoy life’s ultimate riches, namely Prada, Gucci, and Chanel. The ends justify the means, and the means are ‘great legs’ and ‘great tits.’"
"[Female Chauvinist Pigs] don’t bother to question the criteria on which women are judged, they are too busy judging other women themselves."
"...a person who deliberately upholds the stereotypes assigned to his or her marginalized group in the interest of getting ahead with the dominant group."
(a freshman accused on someone’s LiveJournal of being slutty and easy distributes copies of it to schoolmates)
"…which is not really all that surprising when you consider that appearing slutty and getting recognition for it (she was suspended) are the fast track to heightened female stardom right now, in high school as in life."
"These are not stories about girls getting what they want sexually, they are stories about girls gaining acclaim socially, for which their sexuality is a tool,"
"Adolescents are not inventing this culture of exhibitionism and conformity with their own fledgling creative powers. Teens are reflecting back our slobbering culture in miniature."
"…there is now a rigidly specific message girls are required to convey before they even grasp its meaning."
James Baldwin wrote:
"We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed." The cage in which we "find ourselves bound, first without, then within," is the "nature of our categorization." We are defined and ultimately define ourselves, Baldwin argued, by the cultural meaning assigned to our broadest human details—blackness, whiteness, maleness, femaleness, and so on.
FACT
Between 1992 & 2004, breast augmentation procedures in the U.S. went from 32,607/year to 264,041/year (more than 700%).
Can you love something you don't believe in?
Oh yes.
You can.
You do.
(Don't you?)
I love fairy tales. But I don't believe in them. Maybe it's the scientist in me or the cynic in me or the secret in me. I just haven't seen evidence and I really don't expect to. We make them up to escape the pain of reality, to own and experience the things we imagine should be and really never are. Maybe I love them because they're ideal and untrue--there's no danger in loving something that doesn't exist. It can't let you down. It can't need anything from you. It can make you happy.
The Question of the Week is really part of Karl's blog, but he's going away for the weekend, and it's burning a hole in my mind tonight. So I'll talk about it here (for the possible 0 to .5 people who are tuned into it...). I'll just address Part A: "How do you think woman are viewed in todays sexually twisted society?"
Basically, I'm pissed off and confused and disappointed and a lot of other things along those lines. I let myself think about it a little bit the other day when I was watching a movie where an Irish princess was promised off by her father in various scenarios that affirmed her objectification and subhumanity. That would be very hard to feel like a disposable and sellable resource. Oh wait. (we'll come back to that in a minute).
I let myself think about it a little more as I read the book of Ruth last night. (I read Esther last week). Now, I realize I'm a product of a supersexualized/dream-chasing/human rights-clutching/individualistic culture that assures its members that they have the right to a personalized, idealistic, pleasure-trove of a relationship that will magically develop in each of their lives at some point.....and I don't buy into that. But what then am I supposed to "buy into?" Biblically, (agh I can hardly even say it because I know I'm going to be able to disagree with myself in ten different ways and argue the other side too)...well, sometimes to me as a 22-year-old girl who hasn't exactly had experience with "honorable" or "respectable" men (as in: the majority of guys are products of the culture too...sex-starved, mom-replacer-needing hedonists who aren't exactly looking to take care of a girl Boaz-style)...k well, "Biblically," it seems the standard narrative profile of a woman is...a youthful and productive resource.
I really went to town thinking about it tonight.
Instance A: When Kalen decided that I should marry Bobby so that family get-togethers would be fun for the two of them. Now I love Kalen and I love Bobby, but I felt it was important to point out that their shared glee is probably not going to be the basis for my marriage (should I get past the apparent disdain I am building for the whole "love" scene and actually participate someday). The added fuel to that fire is that the pair of them are quite the public pigs and see acting disgusting and mannerless as something I should get over and embrace. I do not find that attractive or funny, and I am nobody's mother. It really gets to me when guys think they're magical creatures, immune to the standards of decency, who should be supported and loved despite their childish conduct. I am not a ridiculous robot designed to laugh, cook, endure, etc.
Instance B: When a few of us went to 7-11 and some drunken fratboy lurched out of his friend's car and leered shamelessly as I passed by. I'm wearing jeans and a hoodie, just goin' to get a Slurpee with 2 of my male friends, guy...clearly this is not an invitation for you to peruse and pursue me. Basically, I want to scream f-words and angry diminishing intellectual inquiries at guys who do this and at all the women in the past 30 years who have apparently given them permission on behalf of the female gender to cast that same gaze on EVERY FEMALE THEY ENCOUNTER. I just wish that guys could feel the way flesh crawls beneath carefully applied layers of clothing when it feels that kind of gaze boring through the armour. Just because you saw something that looked like me at the store doesn't mean I've sold out.
Instance C: I hardly even want to get into it, it was that offensive to me tonight. I'm not a Family Guy-hater..I think it's pretty darn funny and says some accurate things about/satirizes culture quite well. But one of the best ways to affirm and propogate negative and damaging worldviews is to frost them with delicious humor. The episode we watched tonight made me feel like its writers were asking me to lick that funny frosting right out of the bottom of a urinal. I was literally disgusted. I don't really even remember the point of it, something about Peter and sexual harrassment and having to go to some womens' retreat...Every part of it just completely affirmed (directly and indirectly) the expectation for women to be little more than sexual, servile resources. Even though it was "satirizing" that. It just felt the same as watching a group of kids humor the handicapped kid in their midst...not for his benefit, but for the enjoyment he brings them. One of my favorite unspoken cultural commentaries heavily represented in this particular show (as well as basically every other sitcom) is the physical presentation of the husband/father figure and wife/mother figure: It's totally okay and normal for a guy to become a hidously obese slob with low motivation, standards, intellect, expectations, and basically nothing other than a few sarcastic comments and slapstick moves to offer...but wifey better hit the gym after popping out those 3 little ones, read up on ethics, current events, social issues, and common sense (because she's going to have to comprise 93% of the combined spousal image/knowledge/action), and always be available to have a hot meal ready, change the baby, and have sincere sex with her bloated carcass of a husband.
I'm pretty sure we went on to watch the new Blink 18new or whatever they're calling themselves now video...where I came out with some dark and sarcastic comment (yeah, I don't know where it came from either) ... about how it'd be interesting if these guys got women their own age in their videos. Had something to do with likening women these days to toilet paper. Abundant and disposable.
So as we search for the answers to the Question...of how women are viewed in today's sexually twisted society...I wonder wonder wonder...if boys aren't falling in love with things that don't exist, and if women aren't going extinct as girls become ghosts.
"For Further Reading"
If you are a boy, and are interested in researching the topic of girls and sexuality and the effed-upness of it all...I recommended the book Female Chauvanist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy to Karl...it's amazing and will unlock a lot of doors to you if you're into that kind of thing...here are some selections from a research paper I did last year:
"Because we have determined that all empowered women must be overtly and publicly sexual, and because the only sign of sexuality we seem to be able to recognize is a direct allusion to red-light entertainment, we have laced the sleazy energy and aesthetic of a topless club or a Penthouse shoot throughout our entire culture."
"Sex appeal has become a synecdoche for all appeal."
"Hotness has become our cultural currency."
"In this new formulation of raunch feminism, stripping is as valuable to elevating womankind as gaining an education or supporting rape victims."
"‘I was standing in the shower the other day, picking up my shampoo,’ she said. ‘It’s called ‘Dumb Blonde.’ I thought, Thirty years ago you could not have sold this. I think we have lost consciousness of the way our culture demeans women.’ "
"Gerlach made no bones about wanting to ‘climb the [corporate] ladder’ so she could enjoy life’s ultimate riches, namely Prada, Gucci, and Chanel. The ends justify the means, and the means are ‘great legs’ and ‘great tits.’"
"[Female Chauvinist Pigs] don’t bother to question the criteria on which women are judged, they are too busy judging other women themselves."
"...a person who deliberately upholds the stereotypes assigned to his or her marginalized group in the interest of getting ahead with the dominant group."
(a freshman accused on someone’s LiveJournal of being slutty and easy distributes copies of it to schoolmates)
"…which is not really all that surprising when you consider that appearing slutty and getting recognition for it (she was suspended) are the fast track to heightened female stardom right now, in high school as in life."
"These are not stories about girls getting what they want sexually, they are stories about girls gaining acclaim socially, for which their sexuality is a tool,"
"Adolescents are not inventing this culture of exhibitionism and conformity with their own fledgling creative powers. Teens are reflecting back our slobbering culture in miniature."
"…there is now a rigidly specific message girls are required to convey before they even grasp its meaning."
James Baldwin wrote:
"We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth; and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed." The cage in which we "find ourselves bound, first without, then within," is the "nature of our categorization." We are defined and ultimately define ourselves, Baldwin argued, by the cultural meaning assigned to our broadest human details—blackness, whiteness, maleness, femaleness, and so on.
Friday, November 17, 2006
fell in love once, twice
When she stands before your throne
dressed in beauty not her own-
All soft and small, you'll hear her call,
"You brought me here,
now take me home"
Silencer . [A-->B] Life . mewithoutYou<3
dressed in beauty not her own-
All soft and small, you'll hear her call,
"You brought me here,
now take me home"
Silencer . [A-->B] Life . mewithoutYou<3
maybe only just a few things in a life are so True and so beautiful that they last through it (and past it?) ... i like finding those things. i think i maybe only just found one or two so far.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
DIY
so i've been thinking lately (by "lately" i mean..the past several years) (but more specifically maybe, the past week or so) about how crazy it makes me to have to exist within the confines of the status quo. to a certain extent. but i mean...having to grow up and then realize that you're kind of momentarily trapped in the place you've grown up into...the world as we know it.
i wrote a paper for chuck keim a couple years back about the transferrance of the european/north american system onto africa. it's completely shocking and devastating to a people who have sustained themselves in a certain way for so long to suddenly have to conform to a whole new ideal and means by which to reach not only that transplanted ideal but basic needs as well. (image: a poor african man running in the dust beside a train full of wealthy tourists, holding up a little soapstone trinket he has fashioned in hopes that someone would rain down coins on him in exchange for a souvenir...coins he now needs to a) affirm his place within the imposed economic system and b) simply acquire essential resources that have become property of the system).
i am jealous of the man in the old story because i feel he at least knew something else, a piece of a life that seemed right, from before the dictators set foot in his land and refashioned his existence... as a person who has been born and nurtured within the system, within a highly structured society, i feel that there's this whole other life that i was built for, that i have never experienced. yet. i was watching a movie yesterday wherein a scientist working on time travel was being lectured by his rich and greedy boss...Bossman offered him something along the lines of a challenge in that "in a world where nothing is left to be explored/discovered/mapped...time is the new frontier." [super-paraphrased!]
that stupid statement in a cheesy movie made me kind of sad because it's sort of true...we've sprawled all over the planet and exploited the lot of it. i'm an adventurer and a discoverer deep in my bones, so it also made me kind of sad in a global sense i suppose. not that i actually want to sail off into the unknown waters in search of unmapped land, because the ocean terrifies me. but...i guess it just hits a person prone to that kind of seeking when they realize it's all been done. that they're living in a controlled environment (gross generalization...obviously i know we aren't in control in a grand sense..just that we have constructed a "reality" in which we seem to be and act like we are, leaving little room for wonder and ambition). i remember this scene in the new Pirates movie where a guy is painting a map of the discovered world on a wall...and there just seems to be this simplicity and unfinished quality about it...blank spaces full of potential...those are the places my eyes and my essence are drawn to.
so in a culture and a country and maybe even a globe that have been so systematically developed and intricately constructed.....living within this comfortable, fully-functional, convenient context....i'm losing myself. i think. or maybe not. maybe i'm finding myself.
i laugh at myself a lot. because i'm ridiculously selfish and childish and grandiose about things. the part of me that resists being consumed by the system makes statements like, "i'm going to build my own house and everything in it...i don't want to own or experience or exist within anything that has been imposed upon me or designed by somebody else who has bought into this ordinary and eroding vision of what life should be." but it's not that i'm just being really difficult, i realize, it's because i feel hurt that creativity and innovation and adventure are so stifled by the IKEAn Method. (if i was a psychologist or an anthropologist, i would copyright that and write a book about it).
i am watching so many people i know growing up... (i also watched the beginning of Hook today...that always gets me going on this sort of thing...that scene where Peter's son is telling old Wendy about Businessman Peter's method for "blowing the competition out of the water" and where Wendy looks at Peter with a knowing saddness in her eyes and says, "So, Peter...you've become a pirate" .....) well...i'm watching my friends growing up into this place and this vision (or lack thereof) and dreading what they are in danger of becoming. Comfort is a horrible killer. it links its arms in Apathy's and tramples dreams and lives and possibilities. a mangled dance and a hideous laugh drowned out by the soothing lie they spin to.
so please remember, if you've read this far, to listen closely. ask questions whose answers are difficult to find.
i watched a pop culture documentary on the history of comic books this morning. it was insanely interesting. and in the end, one of the men said something very compelling that (while it was inspired by the characters at hand--ultimately "imaginary" and "superhuman" people) seemed to transcend its context. he pointed out the ability, the potential, of one person to impact the entire world. so of all the things in this life that i have laid out before me and am making my way into...what will outlast me...what will be worth my time...and what can i challenge and change? i'm making a new map.
i wrote a paper for chuck keim a couple years back about the transferrance of the european/north american system onto africa. it's completely shocking and devastating to a people who have sustained themselves in a certain way for so long to suddenly have to conform to a whole new ideal and means by which to reach not only that transplanted ideal but basic needs as well. (image: a poor african man running in the dust beside a train full of wealthy tourists, holding up a little soapstone trinket he has fashioned in hopes that someone would rain down coins on him in exchange for a souvenir...coins he now needs to a) affirm his place within the imposed economic system and b) simply acquire essential resources that have become property of the system).
i am jealous of the man in the old story because i feel he at least knew something else, a piece of a life that seemed right, from before the dictators set foot in his land and refashioned his existence... as a person who has been born and nurtured within the system, within a highly structured society, i feel that there's this whole other life that i was built for, that i have never experienced. yet. i was watching a movie yesterday wherein a scientist working on time travel was being lectured by his rich and greedy boss...Bossman offered him something along the lines of a challenge in that "in a world where nothing is left to be explored/discovered/mapped...time is the new frontier." [super-paraphrased!]
that stupid statement in a cheesy movie made me kind of sad because it's sort of true...we've sprawled all over the planet and exploited the lot of it. i'm an adventurer and a discoverer deep in my bones, so it also made me kind of sad in a global sense i suppose. not that i actually want to sail off into the unknown waters in search of unmapped land, because the ocean terrifies me. but...i guess it just hits a person prone to that kind of seeking when they realize it's all been done. that they're living in a controlled environment (gross generalization...obviously i know we aren't in control in a grand sense..just that we have constructed a "reality" in which we seem to be and act like we are, leaving little room for wonder and ambition). i remember this scene in the new Pirates movie where a guy is painting a map of the discovered world on a wall...and there just seems to be this simplicity and unfinished quality about it...blank spaces full of potential...those are the places my eyes and my essence are drawn to.
so in a culture and a country and maybe even a globe that have been so systematically developed and intricately constructed.....living within this comfortable, fully-functional, convenient context....i'm losing myself. i think. or maybe not. maybe i'm finding myself.
i laugh at myself a lot. because i'm ridiculously selfish and childish and grandiose about things. the part of me that resists being consumed by the system makes statements like, "i'm going to build my own house and everything in it...i don't want to own or experience or exist within anything that has been imposed upon me or designed by somebody else who has bought into this ordinary and eroding vision of what life should be." but it's not that i'm just being really difficult, i realize, it's because i feel hurt that creativity and innovation and adventure are so stifled by the IKEAn Method. (if i was a psychologist or an anthropologist, i would copyright that and write a book about it).
i am watching so many people i know growing up... (i also watched the beginning of Hook today...that always gets me going on this sort of thing...that scene where Peter's son is telling old Wendy about Businessman Peter's method for "blowing the competition out of the water" and where Wendy looks at Peter with a knowing saddness in her eyes and says, "So, Peter...you've become a pirate" .....) well...i'm watching my friends growing up into this place and this vision (or lack thereof) and dreading what they are in danger of becoming. Comfort is a horrible killer. it links its arms in Apathy's and tramples dreams and lives and possibilities. a mangled dance and a hideous laugh drowned out by the soothing lie they spin to.
so please remember, if you've read this far, to listen closely. ask questions whose answers are difficult to find.
i watched a pop culture documentary on the history of comic books this morning. it was insanely interesting. and in the end, one of the men said something very compelling that (while it was inspired by the characters at hand--ultimately "imaginary" and "superhuman" people) seemed to transcend its context. he pointed out the ability, the potential, of one person to impact the entire world. so of all the things in this life that i have laid out before me and am making my way into...what will outlast me...what will be worth my time...and what can i challenge and change? i'm making a new map.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
surgically speaking
let it all out
get it all out
rip it out remove it
don't be alarmed
when the wound begins to bleed
cause we're so scared to find out
what this life's all about
so scared we're going to lose it
not knowing all along
that's exactly what we need
and today I will trust you with confidence
of a man who's never known defeat
but tomorrow, upon hearing what I did
I will stare at you in disbelief
oh, inconsistent me
crying out for consistency
and you said I know that this will hurt
but if I don't break your heart then things will just get worse
if the burden seems too much to bear
remember
the end will justify the pain it took to get us there
and I'll let it be known
at times I have shown
signs of all my weakness
but somewhere in me
there is strength
and you promise me
that you believe
in time I will defeat this
cause somewhere in me
there is strength
and today I will trust you with the confidence
of a man who's never known defeat
and I'll try my best to just forget
that that man isn't me
reach out to me
make my heart brand new
every beat will be for you
for you
and I know you know
you touched my life
when you touched my heavy heart and made it light
pretty much, relient k always knows what to say.
it's sad that something that looks like love can sometimes just be death in disguise.
there's something to find here.
i hope i keep looking...
it's not as simple to love the lost
when you've lost the loved
i think
sorrow is so easy.
get it all out
rip it out remove it
don't be alarmed
when the wound begins to bleed
cause we're so scared to find out
what this life's all about
so scared we're going to lose it
not knowing all along
that's exactly what we need
and today I will trust you with confidence
of a man who's never known defeat
but tomorrow, upon hearing what I did
I will stare at you in disbelief
oh, inconsistent me
crying out for consistency
and you said I know that this will hurt
but if I don't break your heart then things will just get worse
if the burden seems too much to bear
remember
the end will justify the pain it took to get us there
and I'll let it be known
at times I have shown
signs of all my weakness
but somewhere in me
there is strength
and you promise me
that you believe
in time I will defeat this
cause somewhere in me
there is strength
and today I will trust you with the confidence
of a man who's never known defeat
and I'll try my best to just forget
that that man isn't me
reach out to me
make my heart brand new
every beat will be for you
for you
and I know you know
you touched my life
when you touched my heavy heart and made it light
pretty much, relient k always knows what to say.
it's sad that something that looks like love can sometimes just be death in disguise.
there's something to find here.
i hope i keep looking...
it's not as simple to love the lost
when you've lost the loved
i think
sorrow is so easy.
Monday, October 30, 2006
so snow
i'm ridiculously happy that it snowed. i love snow.
at my staff meeting today my boss told me i looked pale. i told him i'm just really white. he'd thought i was sick. but then he just figured i was lamely funny, being so matter-of-fact about being painfully porcelain. i've come to terms with it. and i figure that with this marie antoinette film coming out maybe victorian chic will come back in style...i'm all over new trends like that.
we also watched a lecture this morning on the topic of finding your ... oh i forget what it's called. "holy something." it was about discovering the thing(s) that upset and offend you/light you on fire...and using that passion to do what you're meant to do in this life...about the aligning of what might be your divine passion with God's same divine passion in that area...and using your combined forces to do something worthwhile with a life. like with Moses, how he saw his people being abused and that fire brewed up in him, and he killed an Egyptian over it in the moment...and then his offense and upset with the treatment of his people aligned with God's offense and upset over it, and well the rest is history. like, amazing earth altering history. i get sad when i see so many people my age conforming to a culturally dictated ideal at this point in life...
jen and i just had a conversation about how it's really okay (according to our standards) to work at some "high school job" at our age...because honestly, we're at a point where it's very easy to buy into the whole comfort/career/stability/normalcy thing...to become part of the machine, to zombify ourselves, to follow the pattern, to produce offspring and condition them to put all their life effort into becoming successful candidates to do the same...the other day i got unreasonably upset about the public school system and decided that i would rather educate my children in organic gardening and imagination and art than let some halfhearted robot teach them maths and sciences that would, at best, ultimately only equip them to live a life wherein they worked a mundane job that contributed to all the world's problems, while sustaining themselves with McDonalds and cultural sedatives.
it's not that i am resisting growing up. i just have a very different idea about what growing up should really be.
at my staff meeting today my boss told me i looked pale. i told him i'm just really white. he'd thought i was sick. but then he just figured i was lamely funny, being so matter-of-fact about being painfully porcelain. i've come to terms with it. and i figure that with this marie antoinette film coming out maybe victorian chic will come back in style...i'm all over new trends like that.
we also watched a lecture this morning on the topic of finding your ... oh i forget what it's called. "holy something." it was about discovering the thing(s) that upset and offend you/light you on fire...and using that passion to do what you're meant to do in this life...about the aligning of what might be your divine passion with God's same divine passion in that area...and using your combined forces to do something worthwhile with a life. like with Moses, how he saw his people being abused and that fire brewed up in him, and he killed an Egyptian over it in the moment...and then his offense and upset with the treatment of his people aligned with God's offense and upset over it, and well the rest is history. like, amazing earth altering history. i get sad when i see so many people my age conforming to a culturally dictated ideal at this point in life...
jen and i just had a conversation about how it's really okay (according to our standards) to work at some "high school job" at our age...because honestly, we're at a point where it's very easy to buy into the whole comfort/career/stability/normalcy thing...to become part of the machine, to zombify ourselves, to follow the pattern, to produce offspring and condition them to put all their life effort into becoming successful candidates to do the same...the other day i got unreasonably upset about the public school system and decided that i would rather educate my children in organic gardening and imagination and art than let some halfhearted robot teach them maths and sciences that would, at best, ultimately only equip them to live a life wherein they worked a mundane job that contributed to all the world's problems, while sustaining themselves with McDonalds and cultural sedatives.
it's not that i am resisting growing up. i just have a very different idea about what growing up should really be.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
21/10/06
i've come to know that wandering and wondering are two of the most valuable activities a person can participate in during a lifetime.
this afternoon, i've found myself wondering at what point a person--a character--can be loved the best and most accurately: during their life, or after their life. upon first entering the discussion with myself, i was decided that a person could be loved best in retrospect...after a life was lived and another could reflect upon it, seeing it as a cohesive whole, as history and tangible.
i was watching a biography on Jane Austen, and that is what sparked the debate in the first place. if you don't know who she is, she was an English writer who lived in the late 1700s/early 1800s. she wrote stories that have become worldfamous, stories that in her time were basically unacceptable because A) they were written by a woman and B) they were written about women who defied normalcy... in a time where a woman should be married off before her mid-twenties or become a useless burden, should be visible but uninvolved in society and influence, should disregard human emotion and rights... she was basically a huge idealist and rebel as far as i've come to believe. jane herself never married, though she wrote of great romances and second chances. she once accepted a proposal, but (appallingly to many i'm sure) called it off when she realized that she did not and could not love the man (she accepted because she was getting old and "should" accept)...she sacrificed social acceptance, comfort, and even a sort of love because she could not build a life on a lie.
as i watched this life and lack of "life" unfold before me, i grew a deep admiration and a deep sorrow for this woman. i am a product of a society and culture that loves love and where marriage is as normal as it was then, and is probably more available and flexible even. so i'm sure it's hard for all of us to imagine a life spent alone. i've thought about it, wondered if it would be doable or a good idea...if more good could come of a solitary outward-focused life or from a shared and balanced life (shared and solely self-focused is not an option as far as i'm concerned). i know that if jane had married, her books would probably have been lost to us. her life, sacrificed to the status quo. there is a freedom now that was not hers though, so i suppose i have no answer yet.
i am chronically drawn to revoutionaries. last night i got to thinking on V for Vendetta again, which is an absolutely engaging film to me in certain respects. i am sickeningly (and probably dangerously) intrigued by characters who sacrifice a life, a love, an existence, experience, in the interest of many lives, loves, existences and experiences that will never be theirs. whether in the way of Jane or of V. it strikes me when i consider a life spent alone or ended early (here i stop to consider "alone" and "early"...the meanings i've been told they hold, and then the meanings they could hold outside of those) , well when i consider these lives that seem to be impoverished in a certain way, it makes me think that really, Who do i think i am anyways? is my individual existence really important enough to infuse with self-affirming indulgences like True Love and relationship and validation and accomplishment? or is it granted in this short time to me to be spent on an Idea that clearly exists before, during, and after it? or could both be complementary to one another? (not that this is a crisis of choice. i simply mean to question destiny. not what should be, but rather what will be. i am horribly interested in owning answers that are not mine and never will be! hahah)
one answer i uncovered, though, as i argued opposite ends with myself (which, to interrupt me, is probably my very favorite thing in the world...the tension between complete opposing ideas...the fact that we have the capacity to believe as wholeheartedly in one idea as in its very opposite and the delicious difficulty of reconciling the two...ah! i think it's this mystery that draws me to God...this is one of the secret characteristics we exhibit as the Image of the Invisible...it drives us out of our linear human range (of thought) and therein drives us insane...the closest state to the next world i sometimes dare to think...a wall, thin and opaque, permeated by the frustrating and incapacitating Unknowable...absorbed and lost all in the same moment, by those who care to notice...) anyways, here is what i discovered:
a person is probably loved best during life.
i wondered as i argued with myself that a person could be loved better after life, if any man has fallen in love with Jane as he read her writing. if a man seemingly born in the wrong time has longed to love a woman who went before him, because he has the power of perspective that allows him to see her entire life and to wish himself into it. i wondered if this woman who spent a life alone has seduced suitors within a spiritual realm that is active beneath layers of flesh and blood and time.
i love Jane Austen, this person, this life of hers. i admire her and i can look at her existence from start to finish to onliving influence. but at the end of my perusal and consideration, she is a book on a shelf. it is a tragic and inevitable thing, this assumable ability to manipulate another person's entire existence as you would a bound set of pages. to own the dead is an offense like no other. it is to end them.
and can a love divided by an end really be called love?
i love my friends who are living life alongside me better i think. i love watching them find things out about the world, about themselves, about God...watching the transition from What Always Has Been to What Could Be or What Should Be...the realization of a whole new realm of possibility...i love learning the same things myself from them...best of all i think i love when we go together, when we see something simultaneously, for the first time. neither of our lives are containable yet...they cannot be owned or analyzed, discovered or forgotten...they can only be lived. i am addicted to potential. a life unfinished is a curious thing. Vincent Price said, "If you're curious, you'll never be bored." it seems a simple statement, but ooooh is it true! i'm so unbearably curious about me, about you! (did you know that i love Dr. Seuss too? maha.)
ohhh i should get back to my textbooks... to me, a blog is something akin to medievel blood-letting. hahah..truly, truly.
*
this afternoon, i've found myself wondering at what point a person--a character--can be loved the best and most accurately: during their life, or after their life. upon first entering the discussion with myself, i was decided that a person could be loved best in retrospect...after a life was lived and another could reflect upon it, seeing it as a cohesive whole, as history and tangible.
i was watching a biography on Jane Austen, and that is what sparked the debate in the first place. if you don't know who she is, she was an English writer who lived in the late 1700s/early 1800s. she wrote stories that have become worldfamous, stories that in her time were basically unacceptable because A) they were written by a woman and B) they were written about women who defied normalcy... in a time where a woman should be married off before her mid-twenties or become a useless burden, should be visible but uninvolved in society and influence, should disregard human emotion and rights... she was basically a huge idealist and rebel as far as i've come to believe. jane herself never married, though she wrote of great romances and second chances. she once accepted a proposal, but (appallingly to many i'm sure) called it off when she realized that she did not and could not love the man (she accepted because she was getting old and "should" accept)...she sacrificed social acceptance, comfort, and even a sort of love because she could not build a life on a lie.
as i watched this life and lack of "life" unfold before me, i grew a deep admiration and a deep sorrow for this woman. i am a product of a society and culture that loves love and where marriage is as normal as it was then, and is probably more available and flexible even. so i'm sure it's hard for all of us to imagine a life spent alone. i've thought about it, wondered if it would be doable or a good idea...if more good could come of a solitary outward-focused life or from a shared and balanced life (shared and solely self-focused is not an option as far as i'm concerned). i know that if jane had married, her books would probably have been lost to us. her life, sacrificed to the status quo. there is a freedom now that was not hers though, so i suppose i have no answer yet.
i am chronically drawn to revoutionaries. last night i got to thinking on V for Vendetta again, which is an absolutely engaging film to me in certain respects. i am sickeningly (and probably dangerously) intrigued by characters who sacrifice a life, a love, an existence, experience, in the interest of many lives, loves, existences and experiences that will never be theirs. whether in the way of Jane or of V. it strikes me when i consider a life spent alone or ended early (here i stop to consider "alone" and "early"...the meanings i've been told they hold, and then the meanings they could hold outside of those) , well when i consider these lives that seem to be impoverished in a certain way, it makes me think that really, Who do i think i am anyways? is my individual existence really important enough to infuse with self-affirming indulgences like True Love and relationship and validation and accomplishment? or is it granted in this short time to me to be spent on an Idea that clearly exists before, during, and after it? or could both be complementary to one another? (not that this is a crisis of choice. i simply mean to question destiny. not what should be, but rather what will be. i am horribly interested in owning answers that are not mine and never will be! hahah)
one answer i uncovered, though, as i argued opposite ends with myself (which, to interrupt me, is probably my very favorite thing in the world...the tension between complete opposing ideas...the fact that we have the capacity to believe as wholeheartedly in one idea as in its very opposite and the delicious difficulty of reconciling the two...ah! i think it's this mystery that draws me to God...this is one of the secret characteristics we exhibit as the Image of the Invisible...it drives us out of our linear human range (of thought) and therein drives us insane...the closest state to the next world i sometimes dare to think...a wall, thin and opaque, permeated by the frustrating and incapacitating Unknowable...absorbed and lost all in the same moment, by those who care to notice...) anyways, here is what i discovered:
a person is probably loved best during life.
i wondered as i argued with myself that a person could be loved better after life, if any man has fallen in love with Jane as he read her writing. if a man seemingly born in the wrong time has longed to love a woman who went before him, because he has the power of perspective that allows him to see her entire life and to wish himself into it. i wondered if this woman who spent a life alone has seduced suitors within a spiritual realm that is active beneath layers of flesh and blood and time.
i love Jane Austen, this person, this life of hers. i admire her and i can look at her existence from start to finish to onliving influence. but at the end of my perusal and consideration, she is a book on a shelf. it is a tragic and inevitable thing, this assumable ability to manipulate another person's entire existence as you would a bound set of pages. to own the dead is an offense like no other. it is to end them.
and can a love divided by an end really be called love?
i love my friends who are living life alongside me better i think. i love watching them find things out about the world, about themselves, about God...watching the transition from What Always Has Been to What Could Be or What Should Be...the realization of a whole new realm of possibility...i love learning the same things myself from them...best of all i think i love when we go together, when we see something simultaneously, for the first time. neither of our lives are containable yet...they cannot be owned or analyzed, discovered or forgotten...they can only be lived. i am addicted to potential. a life unfinished is a curious thing. Vincent Price said, "If you're curious, you'll never be bored." it seems a simple statement, but ooooh is it true! i'm so unbearably curious about me, about you! (did you know that i love Dr. Seuss too? maha.)
ohhh i should get back to my textbooks... to me, a blog is something akin to medievel blood-letting. hahah..truly, truly.
*
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
sub(conscious)
i don't know what this is.
it fell out of my fingers today.
(but i just found out, pre-edit, that this site by default destroys the architecture of a poem. i'll post it anyways. it won't be the same as what i meant though. it will be the only one i'll let out of handwritten context. ever!)
i am not a soldier
a mother
a martyr.
i am only
the owner
of history.
a mind/full of knowledge
a pocket/full of change
unspent
of no consequence
either way
(i suppose)
but is what i suppose
ever the Truth
i question myself
because i can't tell if youth is the place it's okay
to spend dollars and thoughts sparingly
day to day on things i'm unsure of
(will i ever be sure?
was anyone sure?)
there went those before me
who seem to've known less
but knew far more i think
(but i think much too much)
they were good
they were worse
they were unaware
(they changed the world.)
i now know...
(for a moment at least)
it's not up to me to know.
it's up to me to let what's been known
by all of us alike
outside of time
and theory
(and me)
manifest through this presence
that brushes briefly past time
and circumstance
to take part in a series of steps
i never learned
in hopes that
something
could be communicated
(somehow)
despite my doubt.
to spite
my Self
(she fights it anyway)
to take part
in the unknown
is maybe
the answer
i can never own.
it fell out of my fingers today.
(but i just found out, pre-edit, that this site by default destroys the architecture of a poem. i'll post it anyways. it won't be the same as what i meant though. it will be the only one i'll let out of handwritten context. ever!)
i am not a soldier
a mother
a martyr.
i am only
the owner
of history.
a mind/full of knowledge
a pocket/full of change
unspent
of no consequence
either way
(i suppose)
but is what i suppose
ever the Truth
i question myself
because i can't tell if youth is the place it's okay
to spend dollars and thoughts sparingly
day to day on things i'm unsure of
(will i ever be sure?
was anyone sure?)
there went those before me
who seem to've known less
but knew far more i think
(but i think much too much)
they were good
they were worse
they were unaware
(they changed the world.)
i now know...
(for a moment at least)
it's not up to me to know.
it's up to me to let what's been known
by all of us alike
outside of time
and theory
(and me)
manifest through this presence
that brushes briefly past time
and circumstance
to take part in a series of steps
i never learned
in hopes that
something
could be communicated
(somehow)
despite my doubt.
to spite
my Self
(she fights it anyway)
to take part
in the unknown
is maybe
the answer
i can never own.
love is a bit of a lovely thing
so basically, this is kind of dedicated to jamison, because basically, he made this blog thingy for me (and it's really pretty, isn't it?) what a nice friend. i really just love him. i just want anyone who reads this to know that. i have some really swell friends and they are pretty special to me and i love them a lot in all different ways because they are all so different and amazing. i also love jamison because he loves candy. but that's a whole other story.
i have another friend who is pretty neat and his name is karl and he wrote a blog tonight that was quite nice and inspired me. he is good at thinking and saying things in ways that i think anyone could understand pretty good. i bet he's going to be really good at being a dad someday. i like having friends that i can admire and be proud of.
i've been wanting to think a thought out for a few days now, but i didn't want to think it out on my myspace blog...i don't like putting real good thoughts and things in that blog...it feels kind of like the wrong place for them. but i think this new place is pretty ideal. so here's what it was.
i like reading books. a lot. and i like reading them more than once (to see how i read or perceive or connect with them differently after i've lived more life). i read one in high school that i fell in love with and have wanted to reread, and it's taken me a long time to get through it again 'cause i have to read a lot of other books right now for classes. so i've been reading little pieces most nights before sleep because i like falling asleep in a different state of mind than i spent the rest of my day in, and it's nice to drift off after being inspired or after someone's shared a well-crafted thought or image with you. a pretty place for dreams to pick up.
i don't suppose i want to talk about what i'm going to share from this book. i'm just going to put it here because i liked it in the moment and i love the melancholy and creative character who lives the story. actually, i've changed my mind. i don't feel like the part i have been thinking on is a good part to share unless you have felt the whole story. it should stay hidden within it i suppose. but a few pages later, there was a part that made me smile. so maybe i can share that and it will be okay. (i never realized how hesitant i am to share only pieces of things and how strongly i felt about cohesiveness and the appreciation of something in its whole...hmm)
well. on with it i suppose!
"When they were young, Maurice Salman's sons, Yosha and Tomas, often sent strange things to me through the mail: envelopes filled with sand, drawings consisting only of loops or straight lines, pieces of plastic of unknown origin. I answered with rocks and foreign coins."
goodnight i guess <3
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