[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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

life and living

My thoughts are sticky mess. I keep trying to take one out to examine it, but it will not leave its kin. A lot of life has happened in the last few days. And yet, it is just life. Nothing I am not used to. I have been practicing living for awhile now. Somehow, however, I round a corner and everything feels foreign again. Like the laws of physics have changed and gravity has a different tug and the science of living is not what it once was. None of my equipment and formulas and expectations are relevant anymore. Or maybe the laws of metaphysics.

But there's hope. I do not know what I am hoping for, but I think that it is enough to know that hope is alive. It is not certain or else it would be fact and well past hope. I am through the meat of my mechanic's certification, which is a milestone I have long been looking at with uncertainty. I know I am ready for something new. I do not do well with the formulaic life anyhow. A life I could transcribe from a textbook would never be big enough, rich enough, or otherwise worthwhile. So here we go. Onward.

trains [& planes]

I love trains.  They keep a pace all their own. The world outside becomes a silent movie interrupted only in passing by the train's own announcement, that ominous wailing, familiar calling. You can watch the world and know that you do not belong to it--you are a traveler and you are merely passing through. It makes so many cliches come alive and soon, you are dreaming, thinking, crafting. Even if it is the first time you have ever done so, you are liable to find yourself, pen in hand, attempting to record the richness of the moment.


Travelling by train is purer than almost any form of traveling we have left today and this is due to the  lack of distractions. The walls have no advertisements or even cautions besides the requisite "emergency exit". There is no "in flight movie". No billboards. No tourist shops by the roadside. The closest thing you can find is the dining car; and while they make full use of that to acquire a little more of your money, you are not bombarded with messages. If you let yourself, you can get some real thinking done. Finally, the single biggest distraction you have left is yourself... a lifetime of being told who you are, what you need to be happy, how much that will cost, how much you do not yet have, what happiness looks like and so on.

Trains have been in the background of so much of my growing up; but I have only in the last few years begun to travel by them. I always feel more at home if I can hear the train whistle light up the night like it just might touch the stars. The world feels more familiar, more like the one I believed in when I was little and thought that the adults had everything under control and people only ever hurt each other by accident.

Yes, it's been a lovely break. Highs and lows all mixed into the paint but, regardless, still lovely. Now, for the rest of my life.