windows from Olga

Oh the things I can justify in the name of art...like the free section on craigslist. So many things there. And I am realizing something very important: potential has a certain allure. If something is already good, done, finished... then there is no room for me to love it and grow with it.

No. Give me something with a crack, a rough spot. Give me something no longer useful for its original purpose and two things happen: 1. It can be made new. 2. I have the freedom to supersede old rules and throw them out ... for beauty.

Apologies to those who have to live with me and my windows. But I am in love. In that horribly unbearable to everyone else infatuation stage. I am building promises to myself to unpack the kitchen and finish a few other projects before I am allowed to start anything with these lovelies though. *sigh* Soon though. Soon enough.

Respite. (I apologize for the ironic haste of this post)

A little rest. A few dreams. A little art.

It is funny what creeps into my mind's eye and gets lodged there when I am not looking.

I have finally had the space and freedom enough to unclench and remember a little more of art. You know. The art that I loved and breathed and was before mechanic's classes and Bible College and Portland. It's been two years and only this week have I come to terms with how much I need to budget art supplies in because it is a matter of sanity and life and living...not a question of "

responsible stewardship" or whatever else I use to justify these last two years.

And so now that I have reclaimed my imagination. Or at least come to terms with it. Ya. I begin my summer term in...8 hours. Sweet. This is going to be interesting. Also, these are the saddest photos I have taken in awhile, but I start my summer term in 8 hours and have every intention of going to sleep...twenty minutes ago.

Descent.

Two days into break. Failed waffles stuck to the iron. (Blame the lack of gluten not the maker.) Birds all excited about something... or everything. They seem to understand something more about living than most of us.

No food related pains for almost a week. Stress knots rolling, trying to self-medicate, not quite understanding how life's rhythm has changed. And myself.

I am adjusting quite well to this respite. Except... my mind is turning against me. I think. Maybe. Having enjoyed my health for some consecutive days now, I hear dangerous thoughts circulating round the tables in my mind:

I overreacted.

I was just being dramatic.

I wanted attention.

I did not want to do my work.

It was not as bad as I said it was.

I imagined it.

I am just making life difficult for no reason other than I do not know what to do if it's not.

I can eat what I want.

It is perplexing to me how easy it is to distrust my own experience. The mind and the imagination are endlessly fascinating not to mention bewildering. And the power contained therein is often amazing and frequently frightening. Moreover, this is where I find myself less than a week removed from my last food related pain and about two or three weeks from my last... immobilisation. Each day forward leaves those memories a little more wane, a little more transparent, a little less real.

I should be able to hold onto them. I should know the truth that they contain. And, today, I do.

Today that is enough.

But my grip on reality is not as strong as I would claim. And knowing what is about to happen does not change its likelihood. I will forget. I will convince myself otherwise. Call it curiosity. Dub it denial. Regard it as a lack of responsibility. Whatever sanity I have will slip and I will try again. Why?

Because the answers I have been given are not persuasive. There are still too many uncertainties. So I will keep asking questions. Not exactly the same one and not posed exactly the same way and not to anyone in particular because everyone else knows even less than I do for the most part. It is a long road to discovery, but I have the rest of my life. More than any immediate pain I may have, however acute, I loathe the thought of living with false caution and unnecessary sacrifice.

Either way, it feels like something between falling down Alice's rabbit hole and a slow but steady descent into darkness. I am not quite being hurled into the unknown, I am choosing it; but it lacks all the comforts of control all the same.

And then it was June.

Life has a new rhythm.

It is a good one too, despite the apprehensions that try to persuade me otherwise. Leaving my apartment was more... emotional(?) than I thought it would be.

It was my first apartment all unsupervised and pretending to be grown up. My first time not living with a stranger in some capacity in over a decade or so. It was the healthiest living situation I have ever had. I guess it makes sense that I would be attached, but the depth of that surprised me.

For nine months, I built life and living and home with my roommates and they are family. We did not just live together and occupy the same space. We shared our dreaming, our loving, and our growing. It is weird to me to think of that apartment as it was after they left and I was moving

out...devoid of all the fondness I had attached to it. And I knew I did not belong there anymore. I could look out the windows and see the same things I always did, but it was not my home anymore.

It is exceedingly strange to me that we should spend so much time pouring hope into a place. (I swear the walls and carpet are saturated with it.) Hope for where we would go and who we would be and what we would do. And then we outgrow it.

We leave to build new hope. To be those people that we hoped we would be or even those people we did not quite dare to be while in that former place or possibly those people we always hoped

to escape.

Whatever it is that we do after, we are forced to build or rebuild hope, because you cannot keep old hope alive in the face of change. At least, not as it was. Hope has to grow with you. Or else, it begins to stifle your own growth. By its very nature, it must elude your present abilities.

Perhaps that is what it means when Romans says that "hope that is seen is no hope at all". This frustrates me because it seems to negate any idea of rest or peace. Is that really life? To always be running and never arriving? I think so.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is not without its triumphs. My discomfort comes from my continual battle to appreciate and respect things (especially myself) in process. Just because I know where I should be does not mean that I am yet equipped to be there. It is often far more acceptable to take time in transit than I make it seem.

Yep, still learning how to be a balanced, holistic person which apparently means moving slower than I think is reasonable and going about things the long way. It is a good thing. It makes hope less harsh though the striving and elusiveness continue.