This has been the most difficult finals week of my academic career. Regarding next term: Goal #1 Don't get sick. Goal #2 If goal 1 is not achieved, do not get very sick. Here's to hoping my next one will be better than this one!

I have one more final left...
But I am much more interested in my winter break reading.

So far I will be choosing between:
Aviation from the Ground Up
The Shack (a highly controversial book I've wanted to read but not wanted to start for lack of ambition to read it while everyone was 'up in arms' about this and that point.)
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Leadership and Self-deception recommended to me by my boyfriend
Tuesdays with Morrie (a classic that was given to me off hand by a friend of a friend)
as well as picking away at these long time companions that I simply cannot chew up all at once:
The Letters of  Vincent Van Gogh
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

So many choices! And I haven't even gotten to books I requested for Christmas! Oh, and given the absurd class load I will have next term, I suppose I should get on that reading...but not for the first half of break.

I will never be a mermaid.

I am learning the full circle of stress--
learning it with all of its particles.
This is much more than a "beginning, middle, and end."
We are not talking about literary rising action
or falling action.
Though it has all of that.
I mean the living
--and the breathing--
bits of stress and anxiety.
It is like looking at yourself
in a mirror
underwater.
You are not allowed up until
you learn something,
but you never wanted to look
in the first place.

And so I learn the full circle of stress--
emotional CPR
and eye drops for chlorinated vision.
I learn the headaches
I receive just after the dreams start.
I learn not to ignore the dreams
if I expect to greet my life the next day.
I learn that the dreams aren't reality,
but they are a sort of mirror
for those who can bear to look.

But I have yet to learn
how to breathe underwater
and I am afraid
by how slowly I learn.

poetry like a game of scrabble.

I want to drink words that have aged like a fine wine.
     It has been awhile and I do not quite feel myself.
     But...how could I be anyone but me?
     Maybe if I could hear the world in another's words,
     I would find myself.

I want to slow down time and to stop wishing for the rewind.
     I keep missing things and I know it but I am helpless.
     Why is that the important things travel fastest?
     How is it that they feel heavier?
     Perhaps, to force us to drop what does not matter.

I want to hold the seconds tighter as if they could be mine.
     My arrogance tells me I would be a better clock keeper.
     ...As if that will fix my problems.
     Changing time will not teach me to use it well.
     Wisdom comes, it seems, from failing.

I found an old favorite poem and I believe in sharing.

To Walk the Knife

I cherish quiet friendship more than anything I own,
And love the sound of laughter, yet I long to be alone.
A solitary spirit on a never-ending quest,
I roam a twilight forest as a strange, expected guest,

Or watch a new horizon when the darkness turns to run,
And stare with blinding wonder at the beauty of the sun.
A knife of dreams and visions is the price of what I do -
I walk its edge with bleeding feet to bring that world to you;

For sometimes in the shadows or the early morning mist,
I stand between the worlds and know that all of them exist;
And if I were to stumble or to put a foot astray,
Then I would fall to madness and forever lose my way.

The earth is filled with wonder; ev'ry hill and secret brook
Can be your inspiration if you take the time to look.
Exhilarating moments just beyond the blade of life
Will change your soul forever if you dare to walk the knife. 

M. Teresa Blaylock

October Leaving

I kept a pretty thorough log of 'doing one thing everyday that scares me'. A lot of days were pretty uneventful and I really had to examine myself, but I succeeded everyday except for October 11th. Most of the things I was scared of had to do with hurting other people even if I needed to do what I should (like tell the truth or just say 'no I can't do that') or with not feeling equipped to handle a situation and being afraid that it was going to end very, very badly. I was just going to post the list, but things repeated a lot and I have decided I do not like the list format. It kind of divorces the fears from their context and I'm not so much a fan of that.

A few of the highlight events that revealed these things were my oral and practical exams for my mechanic's certification (I have never tried so hard to do something I didn't want to do!), dealing with some family/financial drama, trying very hard not to pick a fight with my landlady, and trying to learn how to cope with life without shutting down my emotions (apparently that means I stay home from school if I have a migraine, say what?). Oh and I bought a dress and danced with my boyfriend *in front of people*.

All in all, I am very glad October is over...not so that I can stop doing scary things, but because it was a very full month. My prayer for November is that it shows a little mercy. However, the mercy I receive may or may not be related to the mercy I allow myself to take in. October was confronting fear, maybe November can be about receiving mercy and grace. October, unrelated to the confronting fear, taught me a lot about my shortcomings, faults, failures, and the way in which I hurt people. I am very acquainted with all the things which make me ugly. I could use a healing balm. I expect anything that could bring healing to initially be terrifying, but I may just be ready.




Oh, also, I am an A&P mechanic! That was one of the gifts October left me with.

writing your own story

I have been following Stephanie's blog for a couple of months now. She is an excellent photographer and an incredibly impressive baker/chef. She has a gift with food. She makes it art. However, the post I am sharing today is not one of her recipes but one of her musings on purpose in life, choices, and building the life you want. It is excellent. She has words that so many need to hear. Even though many people make up that "many who needs this", everyone thinks they are totally alone.

Everything that needs to be done is.
Everything that can be done will be.
That is, until
Tomorrow.
Then, we will start again.
It is frustration and it is grace.
And then I am humbled
for being frustrated by grace.

I want to read.
I want to absorb the wisdom of someone else.
I want something new, something I do not have yet.

But that will have to wait.
I am better at waiting than I would like to be.
If I was really bad at it, maybe I would not have to do it.

October Coming

"Do one thing every day that scares you." Eleanor Roosevelt

At the end of October, expect a detailed list. If you feel so inclined, share yours. Some days should be more exciting than others.

Stars. :)

I have already shared this with a lot of people; but, just in case I have not shown due excitement, I want to share this.

This is the most awesome free software I am yet aware of.

That is all for today. Go explore.

Skin to marrow to unexplored soul.

How do I explain this?

Fall makes me... restless. In a good way.

It makes me seek changes I have long been putting off. But fall in the city feels off beat. Fashion changes first. Then Halloween paraphernalia comes out. Then change grabs a few leaves or the air temperature. It feels funny. And I ... get stuck. Like a lizard trying to shed old skin, but not allowed out.

I'm not sure if that was a helpful metaphor.

But I am itchy. Skin to marrow to unexplored soul. There is no salve I know for this. Only the need to lie still out somewhere where I can count the space between passing cars in minutes, in breaths taken and released.

Yes that is what I need... a forest full of release.

There is nothing which *mandates* that my most itchy days be lonely days. It is just... that I become picky about my company. And the company which I would choose is typically unavailable on these days. Or they do not understand the importance of them. Either one. Justified or unjustified. I am at a point in my life where I do not wait for people because the longer I wait for people who are very likely going to misunderstand... the itchier I get. I can come very near to manic if I wait too long.

I do not know why.

There is pressure pushing me from an unknown direction. It is not meant to be lonely or to make me antisocial... It just is and it does.

I would bring people if they would come, but schedules are treacherous things. You need to be good at them, but not too good. Or else the itchy days will get you and gnaw on you until you blow off the really important things. In view of the week I have planned, I should not go. I have homework and preparation to do. In view of the week I have planned, it has to be today.

So South it is. Lunch is packed. Camera is charged. Notebooks still have space. Books are yet unread.

Grab the keys. It's time to go.

Real Fear

I am afraid.

I am afraid in new ways I have not yet known. This is real fear. I know a lot of people who are afraid of a lot of things. I often times do not understand. But here I am, very much afraid, and only just now finding the words to say what it is that I am feeling and have been feeling.

I am afraid that it did not happen.

I am afraid that I woke up.

I am afraid that I am starting over.

I am afraid.

And if it never did happen, maybe it never will.
If it was a dream, maybe it will never be real.
If I have to start over, maybe I will not start at all.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Being done with mechanics should be a relief; but I am back at Bible College for my senior year. The longer I am there and the more I adjust, acclimate, and succeed... the farther away the last two years feel. Maybe they did not happen. Maybe I do not know anything about airplanes at all. If I do, maybe I will forget. Maybe it was just a joke or a vacation.

I was kind of hoping it would be the rest of my life.




It will take all of my strength to hold onto both of my realities until I graduate and forge a new one.

God provides things you don't think you need sometimes.

He gave me free muffin tins, old bananas, and a sunny Saturday morning. I've been in culture shock for two weeks and sick for the week after that. Today, though, today, I feel that he has not left me alone to figure out the rest of my life.

I do not know why I know it so strongly now. Only that I made banana bread muffins with what he gave me. Muffins are different than my usual banana bread because they are what my mom always made. The mornings I woke to banana bread muffins were always special.

Somehow, that makes this morning special. Somehow, it invites parts of me that have long been standing vigil to sit down and rest. Somehow, today is the day that the wind comes and hits my sails at just the right angle to reassure me that I am not stuck here. I am indeed moving in a direction and that is enough today. Last weekend a good friend took the time to remind me of exactly where I want to be and why I am doing what I am doing. I went flying. There is not anything I love more than flying. But I needed this week to challenge the rest of me.

Most of all, I needed this morning to tell me that I am full sail ahead for something. Something involving flying. And that is enough today. Hopefully that will be enough for quite awhile.

Some days are slow going. Like this one. It's chilly so the blood flows slow and thick until you get moving, get your heart pumping. But so much of life does not actually get your pulse up.

So some of us drink coffee. Others drink tea. Some go for a run. Others sit and wait.

I like sitting and waiting, if I have the time. The day, however, is sneaking up on me. The morning is slipping away. The time is coming when I will simply have to rouse myself. There will be no inspiration. Just a lot of will.

But I am cold. That does a number on my will.

Truth is... I do not want to feel today. That takes energy I do not yet think I will receive today. I want to sleep until it is over. If I cannot do that, I want to get through my day as fast as possible and get as much done along the way. I do not want people to ask me how I am because I am afraid I will be honest. And I cannot buoy their inquiries today.

I want some chicken soup and some rest. I want to write my paper before my ideas grow stale. And then I want to lose this day to the thousands I have already left in the past.

Maybe that is grumpiness speaking. Or maybe just honesty. For now, I will suffice it to repeat over and over until I believe these words, "my grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Already I begin to forget and so I begin again "grace is sufficient...grace is... grace..." That's going to be a tough one to remember, but it fits the theme. I don't suppose it should be easy. Today, that is what gets my heart pumping. Just trying to hang on to Truth until I see it.

Morning.

I love the morning.

I say this with my eyes not yet fully open of their own accord. I say this not yet ready to talk to anybody who does not understand the sacredness of morning.

I don't wake up feeling on top of the world. In fact, even this morning I groaned internally when I realized it was 7:00am and then 7:09am (which felt like an hour later) ... and my body was not going to go back to sleep easily. I do love sleeping. It is not the act of waking up that I enjoy in the morning. Rather, it is mornings like this one. I cannot see the morning from my bedroom. But now I see it is one of those perfect mornings.

It is Saturday so the world rests easy. The birds wake up first, after the sun. The air is crisp and cold but the sun shines gently promising it will not stay this way. The space between summer and fall is best, especially for mornings. The evenings hold onto the warmth built up in the day, at least here in the Northwest of the States. But somewhere in the night, a chill steals in and mornings crack open. I wish I had a porch swing.

There is nothing quite like wrapping yourself up in a blanket, bringing something hot to drink, and watching the world wake up slowly. You can hear yourself think in those early hours. Nobody has to know that your thoughts are slow or disorganized. Morning is a good back drop to organize yourself. I feel like my soul can breathe then. Nothing is yet expected of me. It is something I can share with the world before society wakes up. Society with its demands and rules, with its expectations and deadlines.

Let that sleep.

I want to wake to stillness.

I want a space to be.

I want to remember who I am before the day starts and I am too quickly reduced to function and reason. I am so much more than just who I have to be. Everyone is so much more than who they have to be to make it through their day. But it is so easy to leave the rest of you out.

I have felt much like I have been knocked out of orbit while the rest of the cosmos spins quietly on; but I have been sustained this far. Only now, in this space, am I beginning to accept this new season of life on its own terms rather than the terms I thought I could set. That, that is freedom. And so I breathe easy as one who is free, but has not yet forgotten the feel of being bound and the weight of shackles.

I discovered today that my favorite part of cooking is this moment when I put the taste test spoon down and begin washing my knives and stowing the excess spices. There is nothing quite like that exact moment. It's when I have either finally found the flavor I was looking for or else submitted that what I have is about as good as it is going to get this time around. I look forward to the clean up because it signifies a close of the search. I am not looking for something I cannot quite put into words, something I know I will only recognize when it is right in front of me. No. Instead, I have either found it or lost it and I am packing up my tools to try again tomorrow.

other news

At the end of my time set aside for literature, I discovered 1. The Gabriel Hounds was not worth finishing. 2.Through the Ivory Gate was enjoyable though the first half was immensely better than the last half and 3. Bird by Bird is actually a book about how to write...and how to live. It is thus far quite excellent. Therefore, it requires being consumed in smaller bites. So I won some and lost some. Mostly, I am back in school... for better or worse.

Other than that... I was stung by a bee today. Final analysis says that I am indeed mildly allergic: check. (I'll spare my imagined audience the details of my reaction due to its gentleness though odd.) Oh, and I have started writing compulsively again. There should be more poetry soon and less senseless tidbits of a life that almost (stress that almost) makes sense.

classic

Well, I am 0 for 2 on literature. I have read Of Mice and Men and The Catcher in the Rye over the last few days. I did not enjoy either. They were dark and empty. While I understand their title of classics in light of their echoing many modern questions and trains of thought before they came, they are not my questions or patterns of thought. So I am left hoping for more. I like Ecclesiastes. I like the questions it asks. I like the answers it gives.

Anyway, in the next week before I start real school I have some filling up my mind to do. I plan to read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho today. After that, The Gabriel Hounds which is a book that I have carried around with me for about 5 years since a good friend gave it to me just before literally disappearing. I will finally know if it is worth keeping. Then I have Bird by Bird and Through the Ivory Gate.

It is a heavy list for only one week but seeing as my only occupation right now is fixing my couch, gathering firewood and waiting for school to start in a week... I should be able to manage it. It also helps that each of these books is fairly short totaling exactly 948 pages. I can totally do that in a week...if my week goes as planned. This last week I updated my deviantart and got is almost up to speed. It's really quite close. I should be able to get it done during the next respite I have. Which is to say, for the first time in my life, my photographs resemble organization. I wish I could say the same about my music.

See. Give me a week off from class and see what I wont do.

seeing

I was a photographer once.

And once, I was the friend of a girl who could only see the stars. We left each other because I could not live in the dark while she was blind but for the stars.

I have always wished I could take photos exactly as I see them. But I cannot, you see, I cannot. I cannot make that glass eye record my interpretation. I could fit a world onto a blade of grass, but the camera does not see a world. It sees a blade of grass. I can manipulate the frame, the color, the light, the physical context; but that world is only there for those of us who do not need a camera to see these things. I cannot teach that glass eye to see.

It is often like that with people too.

I wish I could make that girl see herself the way I saw her, brilliant and all lit up with stars as if she herself were one of them. I can manipulate the pace, the tone, the words, our physical context; but that brilliant girl can only see the way she always has before. My eyes are as foreign as glass ones. She cannot see the world she herself carries within her.


It would seem, I cannot teach anything to see.

But I have to wonder, does that matter? I would like it to. But the fact is, I keep on seeing just as I have before. There are worlds I study, and those which I myself ignore. And I guess, if I give over teaching, I may be taught how to see.

just once

Let me explain this just once.
I say just once because...
it is hard.
They are hard words to organize,
to make obedient enough
to march out as I would like them to
to bridge the gap between me and...
anyone else.
They are hard words for my audience,
my dear 'anyone else'
to accept, take in, and give shelter to.
And it is so hard for me to send them out
and receive them back
because they were not given room abroad.

So let me explain this just once.

It has become common knowledge that certain clothing brands, food makers, and corporate companies support, use, and abuse modern day slaves. Most people accept this with distant sarcasm with poorly played jokes about sweatshops and children making your shoes in a 3rd world country. And people laugh as if it is funny. But mostly because they believe there is nothing to be done and laughter is the last defense.

And I? I live with a modern day abolitionist. There are resources (like this one) for those who want to ask questions and make little changes to their lives here and there. But it costs to make changes. More often than not, the cheapest option is the option most tied to slavery. (However, the most expensive option doesn't guarantee that you wont support slavery either.) Truth is, it is going to be more expensive to care. While the people around me understand why I care and why I make the shopping decisions that I do, I know that it puzzles people.

Which is to say, I have a very, very tight budget. But I have my freedom. And I happen to believe that God personally looks over my budget. I always have enough. Enough, though, in a sense that would make a lot of people very uncomfortable because it is enough without the comfortable abundance most people imagine. It has been something I have had to think over... is my comfort and my insecurity over my tight budget... worth the continuation of slavery? Not that I take personal responsibility for it as a whole, but my attitude towards it contributes to my culture's attitude and so on. So here it is: it simply is not cost effective to discontinue slavery. That's what it really comes down to. That's what people were worried about pre-civil war in the U.S. and it's what a lot of people continue to say.

While no one will criticize me openly and thus appear to support slavery, I can feel people meeting my budget and my decisions thereafter with confusion. This is not a cost-effective method of buying groceries. And that would matter. It would matter greatly if buying groceries was really my goal. It would matter greatly if I believed that my personal survival was more important than another's. I challenge you to read Philippians 2 (especially verses 3 and 4), to think it over and to let it change you with way Scripture should, and then to build your life.


And yes, most of those who I would love to understand will never read this post, but it makes me feel better.

musing

Oh my goodness. These are both excellent. I like the second better... but I am incredibly biased due to my love of heights. 

A most excellent quotation:
"Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown. And since what's impossible is always unknown, it allows me to believe I can cheat the impossible.” (Philippe Petit)

Also: "The opposite of poverty is not wealth. … In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.” (Bryan Stevenson)


I know it's a lot to take the time to watch. Trust me, though, they are good thoughts. All very different, but all very much good thoughts.

These days,
well,
these days are numbered.
It has taken awhile
to trust that they truly are in order
and it has taken even longer
for the numbers to get small enough
to mean something.
But these days...
are numbered
which is to say,
passing,
leaving,
draining,
fading.
But when they are gone,
I will still be here.

A bit overdue:

Montana and I are complicated lovers. 
We should probably move on. 
But I cannot. 
There is something about waking up in the embrace of mountains...
of hearing nothing but the very distant car 
interrupting the slow inhale of hills 
and the long exhale of sky. 
It takes my breath away 
but gives me its own breath. 
And so I breathe easy 
as I take in winding dirt roads. 
I breathe easy 
as on cold mornings 
when you can see your breath leave in puffs 
like lost clouds trying to find their way home. 
I breathe easy 
and I know this will always be, 
in some ineffable way, 
home.

Seeing.

I have begun taking walks as prescribed by my mother. I forget why. There was some very important health reason. Muscles? Maybe... Stress relief? Sure... Better sleep? Could have been... Less headaches? Sounds right... Anyway, yesterday being the exception, I have been walking about 20-70 minutes everyday. I feel like I am seeing the world for the first time some days. I used to look at the details of other people's worlds and lives. I am only now reclaiming that. Here's my album.
I realized that I stopped taking photos in the city because I don't like being watched while I work and here someone is always watching; and because everyone is a photographer here, I felt like I had to know what I was doing. I needed to choreograph my seeing; but that's not how seeing works best. You should see the objects and people on their terms, put them in their best light and angle, and forget about how you look in this process.
And so I walked and kept on walking. I saw and I kept on seeing. I saw so much that I forgot I could be seen.

And then I saw things that I could not photograph. I saw where wealthy neighborhoods fell away into *other* neighborhoods as if a line had been drawn. Feeling seems a lot like seeing when you begin to see abstract concepts. You close your eyes and the feeling is still there with senses that have not yet been named, telling you about the worlds out there.

It's taken nearly 3 years or 8. Depending on how you count it. But I have successfully changed my identity, I think. I say "I think" because of my own insecurity. (Because I'm afraid it wont stick). But I call it a success because I have seen the way people have changed the way they see me. And the way people I know see airplanes. I love it. I get photos, cards, texts...and so on. Because people I love see an airplane and think "Elaine!". Yes. Success. It's not all of who I am and it is not all of who I want to be. But I am days away from finishing my mechanic's program and only just realizing I am in a new chapter of life and one which I have fought so very hard to get to. I am battle weary, but I guess I should be. It's nearly the end.

Overflowing.

I promise...
to do more seeing
and less talking.

There are too many words here.
Too many so as to take the place of Oxygen.
So let us look
because our eyes are not yet full.

Home, revisited.

From a letter I received upon returning to Portland,

"Is home just an idea? Is it just a feeling? Is it an actual thing that can be tangibly felt? Or is it tangible at all? I once thought that I was satisfied just believing that home would only come when heaven did but that's not satisfying at all. Another time I convinced myself that home is where there are friends and food. But that leaves the impression that home can never be stable."

 They were perfect words to go to sleep to because they gave names and faces to many of my emotions having just left one home to return to another.

In reading Radical Hospitality, I am beginning to wonder if home is not much more easily defined as space. Space to breathe and be. Specifically addressed in the book are the areas of people, of ourselves, even of God that remain mysteries. Homan writes,

"There is a gentle hospitality with the self that most of us fail to practice. You know that moment you look in the mirror and see a stranger staring out those eyes? We don't accept the stranger within. We dread the regions of ourselves we don't understand. By learning to value the otherliness of the actual stranger, we honor the mystery within us, too. ...Not only is there a stranger in your skin, there are several in your home too. The essence of hospitality is receiving the stranger while letting them remain a stranger."

He continues on talking about the importance of making room for who people actually are instead of who we want them to be, elaborating on God in the stranger and our inability to ever understand God... how He is always a bit of a stranger. Already, however, I have copied enough words to keep me occupied the rest of my life. I could spend the rest of my life just trying to "receive the stranger while letting them remain a stranger"; and I am sure that it will take months if not years of trying before I begin getting it right often enough to see any progress in myself. While this is profoundly overwhelming, I digress in my pursuit of words to address home.

I do not think home in the truest sense is possible without great endeavors toward hospitality. Home is that space where you can be greeted for the similarities you have and the sense you do make, but your mysteries and tangles are welcome to come inside and rest too. A space where it is safe to grow because no one and nothing are trying to force it.

I will not fully understand myself at the end of my life and life is so much easier to handle if I am not expected to. If I am free to take in hand one mystery at a time and let them rest in a safe place, I may yet learn and grow. I can hardly do that if I must hide the irrational and non sequitur from view, much less the bent and broken.

Intermission Over.

chili oil. not related to pie.

Today is a very important day.

Today is the first day I have made a gluten free pie crust that actually did exactly what it was supposed to.

Today is the first day I follow all the directions on the recipe because I do not have to 'get creative' to make it work.

Today is not the first day I have made excellent crust.

strawberries for pie

all the flours for gluten free crust

It is however the first day which I find myself actually wanting to use a rolling pin. And that, that is worth celebrating.








I wrote the above words and took these photos *last* Saturday...and it was an important day. But I really do not know what I was building up to with them. I had an idea of giving reasons for why I don't have a food blog and I probably was thinking about how all of my creativity goes into food these days. This morning's invention in my not awake but not asleep state being chocolate chip pie crust. In the shower, I contemplated putting berries into banana bread. Raspberry banana bread. That's where it's at. With chocolate. Or Nutella. Or just with butter.

However, I am not the sort that should start a food blog on my own. I am easily distracted. To take photos AND write AND cook is asking too much. You will notice that I have no photo of my finished pie. I forgot. In the birthday-ing and the eating, I forgot. Some processes should not be interrupted for photos. Sometimes photography is the natural outcome of the way you live and watching the world around you. But sometimes, sometimes photography gets in the way of the living. You begin seeing so much, begin saving so much seeing for later...that you hardly have any at the time. I don't like that.

Anyway, I've lost myself again. I will be found in the pages of my newest endeavor: Radical Hospitality. It is a book which is both validating so much of what I have always wished I could express and challenging me to be a bigger and better person than I am right now. Why can't healthy things feel only exciting and wonderful? I have growing pains already which only mildly encroach upon the excitement.

It is a new time of life for sure. And soon, very soon, I will be heading home...except, everything is different. Therefore, there will likely be the requisite musing about home and place and people about ... two or three weeks from now. For now, I leave this virtual page with two quotes. One which has followed me from a poet I heard earlier today: "Becoming a person who does not do things just because I can."

I do not yet know its significance in my life and ponderings but for now, it has gentle muse-shaped claws which are hanging on until I have the space to think about it. I think it is related to becoming someone who is free, who thinks enough about what they do and who knows themself well enough with honesty that they are not subject everything and anything which makes a demand of them. Life is so much more than keeping other people happy.

And the second, from Ray Bradbury since he passed away this week and there are few people who I would  love to spend a day, or a lifetime, trying to see the world in the eyes and the shoes that he did. I love the way he looked at and described life.


“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Ok, and a third:

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Sometimes it's better not to rationalize what you feel.

From a time before college. A time before Portland. A time before living on my own. ... A time before 'growing up' meant doing things you did not really want to do. A time before I knew what I would get to do that was never really planned. Before bungee jumping and food allergies. Before I was finally the one to move away. A time before airplanes and a boyfriend. A time before...now. A time no less simple or uncomplicated. Just, before.

This is a story I am sure to rewrite again and again until I find exactly what I am trying to say.

I have my mother to blame for my love of flowers,
which is not such a dark thing to blame your  mother for.
It is most definitely her fault though. 
I remember, summers at the farmer’s market.
Always waiting until we were ready to leave 
to go to the vendor we had asked to save our favorites.
It did not occur to me then 
that we did not have money for flowers
--but she bought them anyway. 
I learned from her
to love summers and flowers;
and that beauty is worth the price you pay.
At least, it is worth it for flowers
--More than makeup or high heels.
Flowers cause no pain.
And so I learned to love those summers, 
just us girls: my sister and my mother and I,
between my father and my stepfather,
between one school year and the next,
deep in that place of rest
between one remembered event and another.
It is a gentle space
too quickly unappreciated
for its lack of busyness 
and for its brevity.

Unofficial Title: [Something New This Way Comes]

I want to write
but it has been such a long time.
All of the words try to come out
ahead of each other.
As you can imagine,
this makes communication difficult.
Pretty soon, there is no message.
Just me breathing in so many words.
My lungs become jealous for Oxygen
--and that’s not fair because, well,
I need both.
And yet I get neither.
I guess I am out of practice.
I always forget how clumsy practice can be,
even for simplicities like breathing.
Breathe before you speak.
Or risk running before you can yet walk.

It's been a long time.

Luck Runs Out

I am not a lucky person by my own standards or anyone that I know. I don't find $100 folded up on the ground when I need money...or even $5. My health is not a constant. When I don't study for tests, I don't pull A's with made up elegance. No pots of gold. No four leaf clovers. The wishes I make on stars, birthday candles, eye lashes, and in tunnels are all still in the works if they are coming at all.

On the other hand, I suffer from no great amount of bad luck. The mirrors remain in tact. The things I do on Friday the 13th prosper. Black cats are ... just like white cats except, well, black. And so on.

But it takes a lot more than luck to get by. Luck runs out. It leaves. It wears thin. It turns sour. And yet... yet I continue to make it. Despite all of the "almosts" and close calls that have filled the pages of my life daily, I am still here and still heading into some kind of future. It bewilders me. It is not by my amazingly strong will either. Many a time my stubborn will has been determined to go in what turns out to be the wrong direction.

I think it is called it blessing. I think it is named grace.
...I think it makes me want to paint again.

And I would. But I cannot yet breathe. My lungs are full of water ...or mud. Better yet, my lungs are vacuumed shut and emptied. Yes, that is the feeling. And I keep wondering if I will ever breathe again. Oxygen would be so sweet. Like sugar. Or maybe less sweet and more like fine salt. Or cold. Like snowflakes. I forget just now. What's worse is I feel myself arguing against it. "If I let myself breathe again, it will consume me for the rest of my life."

But I forget how naturally it comes. It does not distract from the rest of life. It is no threat. So what if it consumes my life? Without it, there is no inhale.exhale. rhythm. Without it, I am certain to forget how easily luck runs out and how gently grace finds you when you stop running.

Real Quick:

...a reading from Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love by Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Gollins Pratt. I found this in a book I randomly picked up while I was babysitting a sleeping child.

"When we speak of hospitality we are always addressing issues of inclusion and exclusion. Each of us makes choices about who will and who will not be included in our lives...Issues of inclusion and exclusion, while personal, are not just personal. Our entire culture excludes many people. If you are in a wheelchair, for example, you are excluded because there are places you can't go. If you are very young, if you are very old, you are excluded... Hospitality has an inescapable moral dimension to it... It is an issue involving what it means to be human. All of our talk about hospitable openness doesn't mean anything as long as some people continue to be tossed aside...

"But calling hospitality a moral issue does not tell us the whole truth about hospitality either. A moral issue can become bogged down in legalisms, and hospitality is no legalistic ethical issue. It is instead a spiritual practice, a way of becoming more human, a way of understanding yourself. Hospitality is both the answer to modern alienation and injustice and a path to a deeper spirituality."

mr. sun, sun mr. golden sun...

I wanted to start this post announcing my first and deepest love for the sun and sunshine and summer and warmth. And then I realized there are many things that were first loves and very deep loves. Stars (And yes the sun is a star but the sun keeps me warm. It's a very different sort of relationship than the nocturnal stars.) And sunshine. Being barefoot. Chocolate chip cookies...or really, cookies. Pie. Fruit. Family. Friends. Rivers. Lakes. Mountains. Clouds. Wind. All the pieces of all the homes I have ever loved.

Apparently, I am a woman who has loved a lot more than I first thought. This a great comfort to me as today... today feels empty. This is because the sky is the color of concrete and it is driving me mad. It is too high up, too intangible, too unstable for me to reach up and paint it. I have to wait for it to change its mind. But I feel like it gets stuck sometimes. Like the sky itself could have seasonal affective disorder and needs a good dose of Vitamin D and the like. And when the sky gets stuck, I get stuck. I want to go to sleep until the Sun feels like waking up. When he comes to wake me up in person THEN I will get up.

YA! Take that.

Because, we are totally on a first name basis, the Sun and I. He's on the speed dial [that I've never set up] and we hang out when he's not too busy with you know, galactic star stuff.



Even I'm rolling my eyes at myself now. I can only swallow so much B.S.

But seriously, when the sky is blank and empty like concrete, I begin plotting. I begin dreaming. I begin hoping for a real dawn.

The view from my high school back in the day.

Almost.

I have files and files
and notebooks upon notebooks.
I also have scraps,
class notes
with less space in the margins
than in the paragraphs,
church bulletins,
and a host more of artistic shrapnel
from a mind that is ... dysfunctional.

However, my dysfunction is a special kind
because it looks so useful,
it looks like responsibility,
it looks like the right thing.
I hope I do not learn
to regret all the right things I do in my life
like I regret this.

When I have worn through my poetic dishonesty,
all of that 'shrapnel'
from all of my ideas and thoughts and wanderings
is not as much lately,
not as much as it used to be.
I guess that is success.
I think they call it focusing.
But I,

I feel like I am dying.

I did not think I heard voices
until they went silent
and there was only me
and my routine,
my checklist.

Today, all of my files,
each one of my folders,
and binders full of scraps
looks like a monument
to the ungrateful false god:
 'almost'.

It used to be
that when my imagination
had even the slightest drought,
I would throw up my hands,
throw in the towel
and wonder if I ever was an artist.
I am not so melodramatic now.

I have begun to define an artist,
myself and others,
by how they interact with the world,
how they see the walls and people around them.
Though, as of late
I have begun to wonder
if I have seen the world at all.
Or I am always just passing through?

I want to write something new
but I am old.
Old like the feeling that today
would be so much better
if I had never left my bed behind.
Old like the popping of joints
and the creaking of memories.
Old like the slowness
that makes the world wait for you

But not old enough for wisdom.
No, not old enough
for experience to mean something
more than weariness.
Not old enough yet for patience.

I would walk the world over
with worry
if it would make a difference.
But it does not
and so I do not,
most days anyway.

My almosts stay almost done,
and I begin to itch,
begin to burn
wondering if there will ever be more
or if this is it.
The loss of eyesight
at the end of a life
lived too fast.

wandering

I am taking a Spanish class.
I am finishing a Spanish class. On Wednesday.

Much better.

However, the final for this class requires me to tell about my life up until now. I have to fit my life into 8 photos and 10-12 minutes.  Admittedly, I only have to make sense of 21 years and yet... I am proud and ashamed to say they have not been an empty 21 years. It takes a good deal more time than 12 minutes to make sense of them. I am struggling because, the point is not to make sense but to use the past tense of Spanish. And because I have only just finished remembering that the way I remember things is gone. Where I come from exists in fragments and it would not matter how many times I rewrote my past and what adjustments I made. The past is always just fragments. This crisis is not unique to me.

But I want so badly for it to make sense to these near strangers. I like my life, all of it. It is the tangled knot of yarn and time and memories and people and other broken bits that may not look like much one apart from the other, but that maybe, just maybe, might add up to something all together.

All of this would not matter so much except that it feels like the most disrespectful thing I could do, this condensing of life and accepting that I will misrepresent a good amount of it. Not disrespectful to me, though I guess that is likely to be true as well, but to life itself. I think there is a certain amount of respect due to things just because they are alive and even more so a certain amount of respect due to life.

Living is tough sometimes and it takes a lot to hold on. But life, life is a tenacious thing with strong hands and maybe even claws that dig in deep into living, whatever living is made of, and do not let go until it is time.

I do not understand whatever pact Life and Time have made, but it is not one to take lightly. I see them, in my mind, shaking hands. And if I had the time and the ability, I would draw for you what that looks like to me. It is terrifying and beautiful and just about comforting but not quite there. I promise. You will have to take my word for it because words are all I have today.

I am constricted to 26 characters and a handful of punctuation. Twenty-six characters to explain to you that I am homesick and day dreaming and not altogether here because everything that I want to touch is not in the least bit real. Some of it was. Some of it may be... and a lot of it never has been and may just stay that way. And that may even be ok.

26 characters to communicate the sort of pictures that my mind sees which is tricky because my mind knows no language only picture after picture after picture. Today, my translator is broken, both of them. And so I say too much and draw and paint too little and never get the right thing out, never say what I meant, always wish I could take back what I said even when no one is hurt. It's still a waste of words to say anything other than what you mean. Anyway, I am lost and currently untranslatable. Don't expect me to make sense; and please, send my apologies to my Spanish class after I try to explain myself for 10 minutes and leave them to wade through my verbal debris.

A picture and a poem. 

banana froth and acid.

Sometimes my imagination gets the best of me. Usually, it is quiet, docile, and well adjusted to the life I am told to lead. But sometimes, when I am most myself...that is most the me that I would be if I did not have so much practice at being 'well rounded', 'well behaved' or whatever form of civilization someone has decided I need, anyway. Sometimes, when I am most myself, my imagination sneaks up on me. Today, it was making banana bread. The bananas and sugar were all whipped, frothy and ready for the dry ingredients. I began to add the cinnamon which popped the frothy bubbles it fell on, mesmerizing me.

And suddenly there was a city in my bowl beset by acid rain and it was doomed. And then? Then I realized I had added well past one teaspoon of cinnamon in my zeal to destroy the miniature city below. All the same, the bread was very tasty which I guess is what really counts, right?

Tea with Mr. Wilde and God

I like my life.

It is small and quiet and often times difficult. I can't really afford much, but there is always enough, every time. I have a handful of close friends here and the circle gets smaller every time life changes. There are healthy good byes and less healthy good byes and there are a lot of far away people that I love very much. But my handful of people that I hold here know me and I like to believe that the depth of love and the miles of life we have covered together is more than a fair trade for the small number. I am ever so slowly learning how to be a healthy human being before God and learning enough about myself to figure out where I want to go. The questions are not all answered, but I am sure that I will have them when I need them. I really do like my life, the people in it, and where I am going.

I need to remember that sometimes. It is so easy to forget in the natural process of moving forward and changing and growing and striving. It can be so easy to lose sight of such a quiet feeling while I am reacting to deadlines and people I like and people I don't especially when those two people are actually the same person. But right now, in the Sunday quiet of my house with too many too busy people, before all of the trying to be who I am becoming starts, and before I begin to take on all of the descriptors for the roles I will play today, I want to remember that I really do like where I am at.

I think life would be a lot less stressful if I could hold onto that while I race through my days. I think I would be better at remembering that if I gave myself the time in the mornings that I promised God I would. It's like he knows what I need, like he's on my side trying to help me first, be healthy and second, stay healthy. Weird.

But I am fighting so hard to be so good that I forget that I do not have to fight him. In fact, most of the fighting I do is fighting that he would gladly do for me if I would just stand on the promises he has made and let him fight for me. As long as I am fighting, however, he stands aside so he doesn't hurt me... so that I know he is there after I beat myself up. I do a fine job of that even during this part of my life that I like so well.

Today, I woke up two hours before I needed to be awake after a whole night of dreaming that everything that I need to do in the next three weeks needed to happen and be finished tomorrow. I was so frustrated and anxious that I could not sleep and then I realized that I was probably going about life wrong again. I was probably fighting too hard when there wasn't really a fight to be had. So today here is what I need to remember (and what I will likely need to know again and again for the rest of my life):

I am loved and I am learning how to love. I am loved by God and by the people he places around me and most days, I don't get to know why. But I do get to know that that is enough. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

One final thought for the rest of today, "Who being loved, could be poor?" [Oscar Wilde]

It's been a long start to this new year, but I am almost to a fork in the road with a promise of a change of scenery. I can see it now with eyes that no longer have to trust that the darkness ahead holds more than shadows. For this occasion, I have a photo. It's of Coloma, California on a beautiful night. It was probably a minimum of 60 degrees after the sunset and we had pitched our tent. Good times. One of those nights I will travel back to many more times through the years.

what I have left

The walls are better at listening than you or I are
And I guess this is due to their immobility
And lack of lips and mouth and tongue to fill the air between us.
Their spatial awareness is superior to either of ours,
Like how many words it takes to fill the room
And tip the emotional scale,
until there is not Oxygen enough for after thoughts like human lungs.
I have never seen a wall's proverbial ears
but I suppose this is not their only secret.

----------yep. I wish I had more; but that's going to have to do for now.

Fascinating.

there are no drugs for this

My past is being rewritten for me it seems, and not in the typical 'fell back in time and made different decisions' sense... if that is typical. It is a very different kind of being rewritten. People I know keep remembering things differently. Not anyone I live with in Portland. And not any one particular person. But I have had about three weeks of  people who either do not remember at all or who have totally rewritten a past that I shared with them.

It is a very ambiguous sense of loss, a very certain alone-ness, and very likely steps toward losing my own grip on reality. My past and my reaction to it have made me who I am. Memories are important if fleeting. Count how many times God tells the Israelites to remember, to teach their children, to take care not to forget. I am not unaware of how much my whole life has been built on the breath of God willing me to make it long after I am tired and do not want to try anymore. I do not want to forget a thing, good or bad or even ugly.

However, I am afraid these past few weeks have made me question if I truly remember my own life. There are enough people telling me that what I know is wrong or worthless, I feel I have lost all my anchors in the past. It brings about great existential questions like, "If my remembered past is remembered wrong, am I still who I think I am?" and then "Should I be me or someone else?".

The answers may seem obvious to the reader. I however, have had a heck of a time trying to even match words to the feeling and now that I have perhaps, I hope, the answers will feel obvious and real. But the truth is, I still feel the weight of those questions and others wearing me down inside much more strongly than I feel their counterparts. This wont be forever, I hope; but if I am extra exhausted in these coming days, it is because I am trying so hard to remember history that no one else wants to and I do not always remember the value of.

I have tried to see 
the world through your eyes;
but they are closed.
There is nothing there.
If I could but see the pictures
painted on your sleeping eyelids,
maybe I could understand.


Tell me,
could you wake if you wanted to?
Your sleeper's life must be so beautiful
to have held you asleep for so long.
So much more beautiful 
than your memories of this waking life.


You told me once that you
no longer remembered
anything but your somnambulance 
and I wept.
I cried the tears you could not.
I cried until the clouds above 
were tired of my rain.


I wept because you will never know 
the color of my sky
and I do not quite remember 
the color of your eyes.
I imagine them to be the same though,
your eyes and my sky,
the one forgotten by the other
and yet the same stardust and storm.


I wish I could see the world
and your own sky 
through your eyes,
sleepy as they may be.
But there is one problem.
I am wide awake.

from Wednesday with love

Apparently, Wednesdays are going to become "talk to a random stranger in the commons of building 3" day for this term. I'm ok with that... It's just funny to me how these people find me. First Catarina and now, this last Wednesday, I spent most of my 2 hour break between classes talking with a woman named Michelle. She has children about my age and is taking a Spanish class in the room next to mine so we ran into each other at the table I always sit at before class. It can be difficult to get people in the city to come out of their shell, their routine, or whatever but Michelle found me and was more than willing to bridge the distance.

She told me about her studying nursing for her second career. She will be over 50 years old when she graduates her program. She asked about what I was doing and we connected on not picking 'womanly' professions (she used to be a truck driver). We talked about her daughter, about her friends coming to her to understand 'man speak' or their husbands coming to her to understand women better. She thinks it's funny because she herself was married once, divorced, and decided she is 'not the marrying kind'. And yet, people keep coming to her for advice.

It wasn't until the end of the conversation and the beginning of my class that we exchanged names. When I asked hers, she looked surprised like she didn't expect me to care. It is funny how much more personal a name can be than all of the details that make up one's living and moving about.





In other thoughts, I need an art project. I have a back log of art projects. But none of those will do. Regarding the one project I would really like to finish, I am at an impasse. I broke it and, well, I know how to fix it... but I can't. I don't have the money. And so I wait. Artistic pressure is building up inside me and I may well burst if I cannot relieve it soon.

I want to move. I want to change. I want something... different. It is time for a new thing. I know it is coming. I know that even if I beg it to, life will never be static but still. Every time I find my footing, surface from below the breakers, and remember the taste of Oxygen, I long for the undertow again. If I am not nearly drowning, I am not living enough. Or so my impatience seems to indicate. I should learn to enjoy just breathing. And maybe that will be the foundation of some art.

You steal gravity out from beneath me,
Let it slip down my quickly swallowing throat
And ask me to speak.
But my words have too much added weight...
Instead of flowing up and out of me,
They fall and fall hard
Downwards.
Inwards.
Up and down have moved
And somehow my lungs or my heart or both
[I cannot quite tell which yet]
Have become the center
Of my known universe
Threatening to suck everything inside
Until the hungry desperation subsides
And I burst.

[string theory?]

I met my alternate self this last week. If there is any truth to the string theory, Catarina is the evidence. She has done everything with art that I almost did... and I have have done everything for the love of flight which she wishes she had done...if she didn't love her paints so much.

It is funny to see all of your "almost" and "what if" or even "if only" externalized. I know now that I would have been happy to follow that road and I am glad for Catarina. I am glad someone could make that choice even if it is not me.

And I am glad to have done all that I have. Today, at least, I can appreciate where I am at and what I am doing. Quietly. But in that near silence I am uniquely confidant of where I stand. I need these encounters to help combat the sneaking suspicion that I am not doing this life thing right. Because those suspicions are always too ready to help fill the space left by more useful thoughts.

So Catarina and I talked of a lot of things... especially given that we were strangers sharing a table in the commons. It is funny how quickly strangers become familiar given a few key facts. But there is that surface tension that first must be overcome. We spoke of home, of family, of talking to strangers, and trusting the world. We compared ideas about art and flying and homeless people in no particular order.

It was much like peering into a mirror... but one which you can touch and talk to (without appearing crazy in the commons). It was a bit strange looking at my Oregon hippie reflection, but also incredibly refreshing.

[Re-fried]

It takes me about a week to do anything of any real importance that does not fall under the category of damage control. With that said, it's Saturday. I am getting lots of things done. Letters. Phone calls. Baking banana bread. You know. The parts of life that somehow get shoved to the wayside even though they really are the marrow of living.

Today, I miss my sister. And, even though I have previously posted it, this poem is particularly fitting. Can I do that? Repost something...? I don't think there is an authority to appeal to on this one. After all, I did write it for her and all the times I tell her I am making something tasty and she should join me for dinner/dessert/whatever and move in with me...drop out of high school, move 600 miles, and what not. It's selfish. I am getting better, I think. Ok, so I just sent her a letter and told her to come to me. Someday. Someday I will grow up and into who I know I should be.

Unrelated: I think I need a whole cork board wall to pin prayers on. People and things to pray for keep coming to me in flocks or herds or torrents depending or your metaphor; but yeah, you get it. And I, I have lost all discipline for praying regularly especially on the intercessory level... for myself and for others. Maybe this is a good enough reason to buy a new journal ...since that's a bit more private than a wall. Maybe I will even buy a journal with lines in it. I haven't had one of those since I stopped writing my prayers in high school.

procrastination and a well of useless thoughts

I have had a lot of things that I have been writing in pieces and they all kind of have a central theme. While it is admittedly self centered, it is what I have to offer by way of introspection these last few weeks between Portland, Montana, school, and family. I feel as though I should post them so that I can be done and move on. Maybe it will prove egotistical, maybe there is something worthwhile here.

I wonder if I will look back fondly on these day spent waking up too slowly as the rain beats and plays in turn on the hangar roof. I know I will look back on this time... on who I am now, after I have faded into who I am becoming. I wonder what she will think of me then. If she will think me naive or short sighted or if she will understand or even thank me. I cannot think of anything I am doing now to warrant thanking (and maybe I should change that) but maybe it is for all that I do not go do that I will be thankful. It is hard to tell one thing from another these days.

-------------------------------------------------

I don’t think I have grown up into who I wanted to be. This is, perhaps, because I have always (and I do mean just about always) viewed growing up as a sort of lifelong unwrapping of a package with the full implication that there is no reason to ever lose a sense of wonder and anticipation for the future. And I am not done yet.

-------------------------------------------------

I have, throughout the course of my life, been thanked a good many times for being me; but I do not yet know who else I would be. It did not seem to me a choice. Who else was there to be? It seems an odd thing to be thanked for; and yet I am grateful because, for every time I have been thanked, I have also felt the weight of confused hands trying to reshape me into something that will make more sense, something a little easier to understand, something smaller and less contradictory. 


I do not take well to this. I do not believe any human being should. It should take a lifetime to make a person make complete sense. There should be enough stuff to them to beg questions and require more context, more explanation, more than whatever it is that you see on a single given day. We are complex stuff made of God-breath and dirt. Resilient against destruction. Fragile to our cores.

I am an artist and a mechanic. The poems and sketches written in green pen in the margins of my notes are the reason I never lend them out to people who miss a day, as selfish as that is. I am entitled to my idiosyncrasies and secrets though. Or so I believe.

-----------------------------------------------
You make me explode
with all of the words I could say
if they mattered at all
but they don’t.
Not when you’re around at least.
And when you are gone,
there’s no one to say them to.
And so I give into steady silent combustion

Wondering if I want to burn out
Or just sit here a while longer with you.