Back to the old paradox.

This was the first fall that I have remembered. That is, this was my first fall that did not include going back to school since I was four. Now I drive to work through the farms and the shop almost always has a wall open to the outside. I have felt every stage of summer leaving, autumn coming and now going to welcome winter. I never noticed how long fall could be. I never remember anticipating Christmas for more than the two weeks between finals and Christmas day.

I like this pace of life. I like how much room for celebration there is. Celebration. That is important. I can find a lot of sources of discouragement these days. But I can also find a lot of reasons to celebrate. It seems to be my only defense and the only way I have found to encourage myself when my encouragers are... otherwise occupied (if they are indeed on their way).

Anyway, this is the first day in a long time that I have felt like myself. It is also the longest amount of time I have spent alone precipitated by a rather lonely week but punctuated by a long day with the very absent boyfriend. I think things are working their way into a balance. Time with people who pour into you: check. Time with...yourself: check. Time for art: so much checking even though I have nothing to show for my efforts (yet). I do not think it is possible for a body to hold any more contentment wrapped in and woven in with so much discontentment.

I just want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.

I think that's a quote from graphic designer Saul Bass. His quote is all over pinterest in bright colors that look not a thing like the man himself. I looked him up. He is old and not quite portly but seemingly kind. He was rather unimpressive in his first video talking about why you should draw. His second video was no more impressive. It was the one from which the quote comes. It was not much more spectacular than the other, just some musings on how your customers and your audience may not understand why you take the time to make something beautiful... but it doesn't matter because you don't really do it for them.

That is good but it kind of let me down. I was hoping for a more verbose explanation, for something a little more inspiring... I guess I was hoping for something I could connect with a little better. I mean, I connect intellectually and experientially with all of that. It just doesn't do much to answer The Loneliness.

How do I describe The Loneliness in terms that are both honest and accurate? Bold and gentle? All of my life, there has been this loneliness that seeps into the cracks. It is this feeling of otherness and of not belonging, of always being unmistakably foreign. I used to wander off from time with friends just to listen to the quiet, to greet the loneliness, and to try to understand it. The Loneliness goes back much further than that too, to years before school. Maybe I learned it from my father. And maybe it just found me one day while I was playing in the woods. I do not know when it came or where it came from, only that I have almost always known it. It gets stronger when I give too much away to people. I have to remember that. I have to keep an eye on The Loneliness. It gets hard to be alone if I have not done it in awhile. I forget what it will feels like, forget that I don't have to be afraid of it, forget that this is normal in some way.

I suppose that it is no more dangerous than happiness is. It is a lot less distracting than the race of daily life. But I forget all of this. Sometimes I imagine that The Loneliness and I will grow old together. This is probably not a good aspiration since The Loneliness is also a liar. But I imagine that living a lifetime with The Loneliness will make me wise to all of his lies and all that will be left will be this tired familiarity, like old friends who don't have to try to be anything but themselves anymore, who have seen the very ugly pieces snuggle up to the purest of qualities and intentions of one another.

Still, The Loneliness presents a problem. I can never give into him. As I have said, he is a liar whispering that I will never be known or understood or cared for. He tells me that love is too high of a goal for people to meet and so I should never expect to be loved. I have lived a long time embracing these whispers as Truth. As I grow up, I learn how damaging it can be to the people closest to me if I never accept their efforts as love, if I always expect to be disappointed eventually, if I always cynically recite some sort of creed of how I would rather be surprised by love than let down by its lack.

It did sound like wisdom for awhile--this idea that if I do not expect or allow myself to need love then it will be a blessing when it arrives. And yet, the years have shown that if you make it so hard for people to love you, they will never succeed. This distant watching to see if someone is finally going to get it right only calculates all the ways they could have done it better. The Loneliness loves that. He wraps his cold arms around me and tries to act like the only friend I have left. He is greedy and selfish and he wants to help me be the same but he will call it 'protecting myself' or apply some other benign label.

The answer to the Loneliness is love. Lots of love. Love even The Loneliness. Somehow you have to hold hands with The Loneliness, not because I trust him or believe any of the lies but because there will be lonely days where everyone who understands has gone on vacation without you. There will be days and weeks when all of the love that you send out into the world comes back beaten, unrequited, and empty. It is ok to have those days and to feel lonely and to hurt. The Loneliness will be there then and he will tell you how he tried to save you from this, tried to warn you, tried to keep you safe. Hold hands with him then. Let the ache into your bones. Do not gloss over any of the pain. That will be as dangerous as embracing The Loneliness. If you embrace him, he will never leave and your arms will be too full to carry the weight of love. When The Loneliness has said all of the almost true things that he likes to say, he will recede slowly like a reluctant aunt who wishes you had taken her advice.

And you will be left to make beautiful things with arms full of love. Even if nobody cares.

Things Here and There

I have tried to write so many things lately. All of them come out wrong missing pieces or saying things I never meant to say. So here are some people who are saying things more worthwhile. The first video is excellent. The second, is the answer to an argument that I've been having all of my life with so many people about art, aesthetics and practicality. The third is great food for thought and leaves the 'art theme'. If I can grow up into a person with something to say, I will have succeeded.

And then I wrote forever and wondered if any of it came out right when I was done.

I have been a mechanic for a little over 5 months. There have been things that I have loved and hated in bright and severe extremes. I think my favorite thing has been earning the right to define myself. When I started studying to be an aircraft mechanic, I tried to distance myself from feminist labels and all other stereotypes regarding women in industry. I mean, who really wants to represent all of womankind as they are studying for exams and really have no idea if they have what it takes to succeed? No thanks. Womankind doesn't need to feel the weight of my failure.

Moreover, I have never really identified as particularly feminine. I didn't do girl scouts. I hate dressing up. I wasn't boy crazy at any point in my life. Neither was I the tom boy who did all of the sports and was super tough. I was... just me. Quiet. Artistic. Curious. Creative. Academic. Always watching the sky. Most of my life, the definitions of feminine that I have received have left me wondering how long I have until everyone figures out that I am not following the rules. Who am I to speak for womankind? I am pretty sure that if it came to a vote, I would not be elected as a representative.

I stopped trying to be 'girly' a long time ago. I decided, instead, to be the healthiest version of myself as a human being as I could. I wanted to see where that would take me. There is a lot more agreement about what it means to be a healthy person whereas being a man or woman is often colored by caricatured cartoon versions of humanity. I mean really? All women are emotionally unstable and all men are emotionless. Women must be up on all the latest fashion and men are hopelessly unfashionable. Women must travel in giggling groups everywhere and men must love to be alone. Women must be kind and gentle but men must be strong and in control. Right. All I know is that I know lots of people of both genders who fit any given one of those descriptors and some of those are healthy and some aren't. Some of those leave both men and women at opposite ends of a spectrum when the middle is the most healthy, but apparently men and women are not capable of being healthy people. It's not in their nature. Anyway, I digress.

My resistance towards representing women or feminism was fueled largely by a desire to just be myself as I defined and discovered myself to be. It is hard to do that with so many people telling you how to be a woman, how to not be a man, how to...etc. So I threw the lot out the window. I began ignoring every stereotype because they simply were not useful. No one I knew fit the stereotype perfectly, I even less than most. Stereotypes began to look more like unrealistic expectations which when exerted were wrong at best and cruel at worst. So, ironically, I ran from representing women and feminism as well as all of the unfeministic stereotypes so that I could have the freedom to be a woman my own way. In the end, that lead me straight back to the doorstep of feminism. My femaleness is subject to my humanity. And I think that is exactly how feminism started: with a desire to be human before there is any commentary on people's perceptions of what it means to be a woman (or a man).

I cannot be more woman than human. If I am not a healthy human first and foremost, I have failed to be a good woman. If I forget that men are also human like me, I commit the same sin that so many have committed against women. If I forget my own humanity, all I am left with to tell me how to succeed at being a woman is a lot of cartoon versions of women. There are many, but none of them fit quite right. I am not as demure or helpless as many people's good Christian woman. Neither am I as sexy or slinky as the media tells me I need to be. Nor am I glamorous or tough and perfectly independent like the women on the cover of so many magazines. ...I'm just me. And I hope that's enough.

I have been told for a large part of my life that I resist definitions and labels because it is my personality, my hippie upbringing, my over active independence etc. I have known this to be wrong but never had words for it. My reluctance to submit to definition stems from the fact that I have felt myself growing more and more into myself... the me that is there but not always expressed. To take on descriptors that people so readily hand out is to stop the discovering process and just assume that I don't need to keep growing. Labels and stereotypes make me uncomfortable because they are expectations that I am likely to fail to meet.

I think that many of  us are disenchanted with the stereotyped options handed us. But the rub comes when we still perpetuate these expectations. I order rum, my boyfriend orders a pear brandy sidecar...the waitress hands me the girly sidecar and my boyfriend the rum without hesitation and I am reminded of just one more way that I don't belong in whatever club decided what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man. I am lucky though in that I have plenty of friends who understand and a family who has never told me that I cannot be whoever I want to be. That and I have chosen an industry where people do not doubt me as much as they used to. I can say, "I'm going to build a rocking chair." or "I'm going to bake a cake" or that I'm going to do both of those things and people are not surprised. It still gets cumbersome though in that, occasionally I meet people who seem to actually believe in these stereotypes and then it is hard not to get defensive, not to feel like my whole way of life is threatened as if their belief is going to make these stereotypes more true and more real and more binding.

It is hard because sometimes my right to define myself collides with another person's right to define themselves and we generalize too much, ask too few questions, and defend and defend and defend because we are so very used to defending and being attacked and being told that we just aren't quite right or enough or good. It is hard to just believe that it really is ok for people to totally misunderstand you. I want so badly to be understood. Many people just want to be understood. But more often than not, people do not have the time and energy to make it through the misinformation, the clumsy knowing, and into the understanding. It hurts in some way when people you thought understood get it wrong. I always expect to get used to that feeling, expect to stop feeling the hurt. And yet, I am no better at knowing and understanding the people around me.

It is all very dangerous. This living in a world together with sharp corners and blood hidden beneath such fragile skin. But I am coming to terms with this. Slowly. As I become a mechanic. As I look to what I want to be after I am a mechanic. As I earn the right to define myself and the panic subsides and I get to just be. Then I get to turn back to the past and learn that apparently, I am some generation of a feminist and I am ok with that descriptor now. I have grown up and into it. It was heavy with all of these unspoken expectations that I felt. But now, I am just me. And now, I am a little more equipped to make room for people around me to be themselves because I know myself and do not have to defend and defend the fragile pieces which I did not previously understand.

If it is encouraging, let him encourage.

Life has been hard lately. My life has never been without obstacles and challenges and I have not regretted it. I have often had to decide to be happy in the middle of the mess rather than just waiting for the mess to get cleaned up. And I have been happy. But these last few months have been a new kind of hard. That is, they have been some of the most ostensibly discouraging. I was neither the cool kid nor the awkward one who got bullied. Rather I was often if not always the quiet one no one really talked to until they had to. Lately, I have felt like I'm back on the school playground at recess again. I guess that's the working world? Or the industrial world? Or just my world?

The primary means of communication has turned out to be a solid mixture of sarcasm and complaints. When people stop complaining about you, they've stopped caring about you. When they've stopped caring about you, you are about to be fired. Therefore, if you find yourself barraged by unreachable demands and stinging sarcasm, take heart because you are probably doing well. They would not criticize you if you couldn't take it. It's a form of respect to be torn down daily.

I have never been so thirsty for kind words and encouragement in my entire life. I am trying to find the syllables to ask friends for what I need... but I am far away, physically, from everyone. I feel out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, it seems that the people I do find are also experiencing a drought of encouragement. We are brittle and hollow and trying so hard not to break. I keep finding more people who need encouragement.

This is not my gift. I am not known for my kindness and certainly not for my gentleness. The closest I come to being encouraging is praying for and with people and being really willing to share people's grief and believe long after faith seems vain. These attacks, however, require so little faith. They do not speak to grief. They do not in any way engage my strength. Rather, they speak to my false sense of humility that whispers variants of "you are not doing enough" and "you don't know what you are doing" over and over until I am deaf to anything else.

I am resilient and strong. ...but only to a point. At this point, I have to choose if I am going to keep feeling or if I am going to be strong long after I should have broken. And so, I break. A lot. Frequently.  Again and again. It is not quite like bleeding. It is more like letting sand slip through your fingers--a sort of letting go of the quest to be stronger than rock. I crack open and I slip and pieces I cannot identify blow away.

They tell me that I wont make it in this industry if I am so sensitive. They tell me that this is what it is to work in a man's world. They tell me this is the way things are. They tell me I am wrong in at least a thousand ways. And then they laugh at any question of health and how things should be. We are all wiser than those dreams. No one is healthy here, only strong.

It would seem that I am being taught how to be an encourager in the strangest of schools. Everyone I work with is so thirsty for encouragement, but so untrusting too. Like they have been given poisoned water so many times that they are afraid to drink from even the most honest oasis in the middle of the desert. We are all strange creatures.

I have never built something so much out of my own need before and it is exhausting. I think I will like who I am when this is done and that gives me hope. But for now, I am so aware of my own fragility, my brittle edges, my own weapons that I use to cut down when I should build..it is hard to feel like giving when so much is being taken and stripped away. That reminds me of a professor as he spoke on the book of Romans. When he came to chapter 8 where Paul lists peoples gifts and tells people (redundantly) what to do with their gifts, he stopped to explain.

I was surprised, seeing that these verses seemed to me the easiest to interpret of the whole of Scripture. You know, leaders should lead and servers to serve and merciful people should show mercy. Teachers should teach and so on. But he stopped here and I will never forget what he said with genuine weakness in his voice and the beginnings of tears in his eyes. He said these were hard commands to keep because it would seem that we are to do these things regardless of our circumstances. Our gifts are given to us to use and therefore we are obligated to use them. He asked the class, "who encourages the encourager? If the encourager is discouraged, does he or she stop encouraging?" And with all of the pain of the many years of his tired but still encouraging body had, he said, "the encourager is still supposed to encourage even when he or she needs encouragement." In a perfect world, someone would encourage each encourager...but we will never find that world and we will never resemble that world if we wait for eternity's perfection. 

I am afraid. If I am telling the truth, I do not want to encourage because I feel so empty inside some days. (It will be 5 months of verbal attacks next week.) I do not feel strong or equipped or ready. And I do not want to be. I want to be taken care of and healed. It is hard when the most encouraging people are hundreds and thousands of miles away...besides my boyfriend, but he is one man against a torrent (he never was supposed to be my only strength). But these are the walls of the room I live in. These are things that I do not know how to change. I do know how to be honest and hopefully I will learn how to encourage.

I have been reminded as of late about how bad I am at loving people. When you move, people you once were close to grow and change at a different pace...that is, without you. And some of the change is good, some of it isn't, and some of it will turn out to be very different than you first thought. In my own life, I get justice and love confused. I want to right all of the wrongs...even when it turns out, I don't really know what I'm doing. I justify it saying that this is what the love of God looks like, justice and love in equal measure. The only difference is...God is love.

And I?

I am weakness and selfishness wrapped together realizing that sometimes I want to 'right wrongs' that aren't wrong. It comes from an imperfect sort of love that loves the person I remember and who used to be but who is not anymore. It comes from loving the memory more than the present reality. We have to learn to love the broken places and the foreign lands that are inside the people we know best. Sometimes, people don't want you to see those places...and that's their right. But sometimes, they are waiting for those places to be loved.

I am neither just nor kind.

But God has not asked me to carry the weight of justice into all of my relationships, which now I realize is grace. I can learn to love. If we all learn to love, we may be able to build something strong enough to take us home out of this shipwreck. But if we try to be justice, we will all drown. There is only one man whom God asked to be both love and justice...and that man died a horrible death on a cross trying to balance the two. He did it. And I should not pretend that I could easily do the same.

Plums and things

Can I tell you a secret?
Even if I haven't decided what that secret is yet?

We all have secrets and I tend to carry around more from other people than I ever do my own. In fact, mine tend to be rather silly things and I like it that way even if it can be a little embarrassing. So here it is:

I as a social introvert have forgotten how to be by myself. Somehow in the struggling to stay in community while learning how to date while trying to get all of my homework done while no one is around...I just forgot. I leap past solitude to sheer loneliness even though I have a thousand enjoyable activities that I would prefer to do alone. I go looking for companions and either lay aside what I wanted to do or else find frustration in the fact that no one is available.

This puzzles me.

I have never been the kind of introvert who would do well living in the woods alone in a cabin for months on end, though there was once a romanticized version of myself that could have. I have always enjoyed the company of just a few very close friends above either groups or solitude, but I have also always known that I needed it all. I do not know when I began leaving solitude out....real solitude. Not read Grudem in the bath  before class solitude. Not 30 minutes to quickly process my life before I leave or someone comes or whatever else. Not cleaning your room solitude (though it may include that).

So I went on an adventure to teach myself, to reacquaint myself with my own company. And I took these photos sometime between 4:30am and 7:30am:

I found some plums.

I took a 1990's style self portrait. It's blurry because it's artistic to be out of focus...or at least it was in the 90's.

 

I traipsed through vineyards and farms. I got my car good and muddy. I watched the sun rise even though it was over cast and all you could see was the heat behind the clouds trying to burn a hole through the blankets to let the light in. It was beautiful in its own way. 

...and then I went back to bed. 

 

Some days...
I sabotage the silence. And some days it besieges me. I have not decided which is better or good or even winning.

Other days I look at the silence and say, "Here is some purple. This purple is the loudest purple I can find. Isn't it beautiful? Let's make clouds out of it."

mmmm

I have loved pie for many reasons in my life. And now I keep finding more--especially juxtaposed a long work week.

I like my job, but I am still learning where I fit there. I am still drawing boundaries and forming a workplace identity of sorts. I want to be reliable and helpful, but ours is an industry of constant crisis and need. It becomes difficult to know where the real crisis is and what is something that will be there tomorrow. I was asked to work this weekend. I said no. Why? Because I am tired with a deep tiredness that pulls on my bones stronger than gravity. And because I need time to do other things that make me feel human. In short, I need time away from the machine.

I needed time to make a pie.

I have on several occasions given all of my reasons for loving pie. I must at this point add a few more as my appreciation matures. Now, I love making pie because the butter I knead into the crust slips between my fingers and into all of the cracks, cuts, and callouses I have earned. (I used to have such beautiful hands.) I love that fitting a crust to a pie plate is just the right shaped to massage tired muscles in hands that have been stretching and wrestling, grasping and tightening. I love that I can take as long as I need to and no one yells 'hurry!' I love that I can have a glass of wine while I work.

My list of reasons to love pie keeps growing. But I think that an important reason that has been there all along, though often without words, is the shape. Pies are a circle. They have no points or rough edges. They have nothing hidden away in some secret corner. Just a circle, wrapped in crust. And I? I am... so unlike that. I forget to share myself. I take and I take. I do it to take care of myself. I do it so that no one else has to. I do it because I'm not sure anyone else wants to. Even when I take care of others...I often forget to give any bit of myself.

Pies don't think about that silly stuff. They are not brownies with the corners that often get burnt while the middle stays gooey. They aren't cookies all broken up into pieces you can fit in your hand or pocket (or stolen on the sly). They don't freak out if they leave the freezer (like ice cream). Nah. They just go from mixing bowl to oven to plate with all of their messy insides...still messy but ready to share at a moment's notice. Wish I could be like that. Guess I got things to look forward too.

Anyway, I like pie. I identify with it in that, it is effortlessly what I am trying (with much effort) to be.

in summary

In high school, I made art to justify my existence. ...Which, if you know my highschool, is funny.

The people I went to highschool with joked that artists had no souls. I was asked regularly how any of it was 'practical' and what it 'contributed to society'. In general, art was viewed as a superfluous function of the upper class bending to society's expectations of a nice, pretty, and presentable exterior. Often, artists seemed to be viewed as poor people who had little else to offer the world and so made things which were tolerated, patronized (in every sense and meaning of the word), and occasionally appreciated. I will never know if these were the products of poor communication or the precise intentions of those around me...or an evil mixture in between.

I knew of course that none of this was true. And I knew with the knowing that does not need to be defended or strengthened because the roots are deep and strong. It was a knowing that merely grew out of the soil I had. That is a very good thing too because if that knowing had broken, I surely would have drowned a long time ago. That knowing was my anchor, my life preserver, heck my whole vessel!

And it justified the breaths I took, the eating and sleeping I needed, and the relationships I made. It gave pain a purpose, and joy too.

--I don't say any of this to be melodramatic. Rather, I want to explain and, in my explanation, to understand for myself this journey so that I may know where it is I am going.--

It was the backdrop of my mental energy and the safeguard of my emotional stability which allowed me access to spirituality and honesty.

Then I moved to Portland. I reasoned that my art supplies could not fit into a dorm room and that I would leave them behind. I created a few good things that year discovering quickly that I still had this need to make stuff, though it was not so much out of this need to justify my existence. Rather,  I think it came from this need to grow and to sort through the old ideas to see which ones I would take with me.

But I found so many photographers in Portland that I could find no more meaning in it. It was an empty medium because I found myself having to justify my existence as an artist. That was my tree with the deep roots that anchored me through all those years of feeling like a non-person. Suddenly the bar had been raised and it was not enough to be a person. My art was my evidence that I was a person. To have to defend that my art was art was unconscionable. Rather than summon any form of bravery, I quickly surrendered the ground on which I stood. My camera began to stay home more and more. In Montana, my camera bag was put on with my belt and shoes everyday. There had been so many things to see that I was sure I could bring a new perspective to. In Portland, glass eyes abounded looking every where and every way. I could not see the forest for the trees.

I kept on painting though. It was slow going but I took on harder projects. I stretched a bit and grew. I wrote when the painting was sour. Then I moved into a house with seven women and I was never alone, never not watched, and never allowed to just exist without a defense. It felt as though I had to justify my entrance into the house I lived in. I paid taxes in stress and in a total creative block. When my only successful attempt at pushing through the darkness was accidentally knocked over and broken (being glass), I hit a wall. I was officially too busy existing to think about if I should or not much less what it meant for me to exist. More machine than woman, I tried to keep up and in keeping up I lost any kind of anchor. Even writing itself became a chore that I imposed upon myself to remember who I wanted to be when I finally surfaced from whatever cavern I had fallen into. I lived this way for a year.

But I did not surface after that. My resources were dry. My intuition was tied in a knot around my creativity. My mind's eye hardly had the strength to open. So many of the muscles I relied on to buoy me in my earlier years had atrophied and could not yet be trusted with the full weight of my needs.

And so here I am at the end of a long stretch of surviving, coming out of survival, transitioning, and attempting to stabilize. Four years of giving up the way I justify my own existence later and I have a lot of questions to ask myself. I think it will feel like deep sea diving and gardening at the same time. There are some roots which need to be nourished and driven down deep so that I have something to tie this creaky vessel of mine to.

I am a hurricane. It is not that I am bent on destruction but just that movement and wind are all that I really know and life around me is so fragile. I am a storm stretched between the ground and the sky. I cannot hope to leave either behind.

A quote from the book I am reading says, "The more abstract our life plan, the easier it will be to feel good about it but the harder it will be to know concretely what we are affirming. The more concrete our life plan, the easier it will be to know what our tasks are but the more likely we are to overwhelm ourselves with tasks and narrow our possibilities." This same book (The Van Gogh Blues) cites a lack of meaning in life as one of the primary causes of depression in 'creative people'. Now, we will ignore the fact that I do not comprehend the existence of uncreative people. We will also ignore the word depression because it is an overdiagnosed, misunderstood (but real) state of being with a lot of baggage.

Let us call it hopelessness. Let us call it sadness. Let us call it whatever name we find ourselves saying after dark when we should be asleep but something is sitting on our chest keeping us awake by sheer force of panic. It may stay for awhile or it may visit only briefly. I have hours of despair in which I do not comprehend what it means for me to be alive and living much less what I am supposed to do about it. I have always had these hours interspersed with my life and they never once made me feel like I had the right to end my life or harm myself in any conscious way. Yet, I am coming to understand them as a kind of mild depression, which is funny in a way because I never set myself to reading about depression only Van Gogh.

My struggle has always been to sail the storm that I am, to understand where I find myself and what to do about it. Abstract wrapped up in concrete. If I get too specific, the wind kicks up and beats against the barriers and boundaries. If I remain nondescript, my hurricane becomes clumsy and I become self conscious of my dangerous blustering as I aimlessly tear through life. I may understand this and be able to define life in a meaningful way, but I do not cease to be a hurricane. And that is something I am coming to terms with.

I was a hurricane of a child and have never really purged myself of the storm. I am constantly in danger of being pulled apart between the ground and the sky only to discover that I am full of an ocean that must be sailed. I have only learned to sail more (and sometimes less) expertly over the years in an effort to connect the parts of me that are deeply rooted in reality as I understand it with the parts of me that resist definition, classification, limitation, and reservation.

I am one part sailor, one part cartographer, and another part ocean but two parts hurricane. Life and living are very much about getting all of those parts to sync up without letting any of them win. Not just for my own benefit, but also for the sake of those around me.

The world has carried on nicely without me.

Life is happening and that is beautiful. I do not yet know what this section of living means, but I hope to discover it soon. I think that is the secret to transitioning well from one season to another. Find the meaning, the change in the meaning. Or, at least acknowledge that what it meant to be alive then is not the same as what it means to be alive and living today much less tomorrow.

I think that is what makes change so difficult. Sometimes we don't know what the new meaning of life is or perhaps we can't quite identify what we are losing when the old meaning passes. There are certain seasons in which I liked the meaning more than others. And yet, I find that some of my favorite seasons were ones that, for better or worse, I was totally wrong about the meaning of life and I only thought I knew.

It is hard to have the meaning of living change for people close to you, especially when you used to share that meaning. I find this rubbing on me today. There are things that I cannot see, but which I still seem to touch and almost to hear, pricking me and whispering about something unknown which has been lost. But at least now I know that something has been lost.

I think that some of my new meaning is healing and rest. But it is a strange sort of healing and rest because it happens in the midst of the working and the running parts of living. Yet, it still happens. I have been asking for this season for such a long time, I hope it stays for awhile so I can be ready when the meaning changes again.

other people's words

Here is where my food has been lately. This and a poet by the name of Shane Koyczan who tends to talk a lot about sex but he is such an amazing poet that I don't even feel uncomfortable despite my extremely conservative upbringing. Here is the first poem I watched (which is possibly the only one without the metaphor of sex). Here is a heartbreaking one. And this one, this one I love; but if sex makes you uncomfortable, just skip to the last minute and trust me that the beginning is beautiful too.

From home to home.

There seems to be a large number of half finished posts in my blog drafts. That seems about right. None of my thoughts seem to end before I am aware of a dozen more standing at the door waiting for my attention. Anyway, I have just returned from Montana, which is one of my favorite places to write about. John Steinbeck wrote “I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it." I used to think that quote was silly. But the more I untangle myself from my growing up, the more I love Montana.



There is no better place than summer in Montana. Of this much I am convinced though I admit to a heavy bias. There are so many stars and rivers. The clouds are always changing, growing, and traveling across this theater sky. The mountains rumble with the gentle roar produced by snow melting and racing down to the valley. And it is in the valley that I grew up and learned all of the things which have made me who I am.

Have I mentioned that I love Montana's sky? Because I do. I do not know if I would want to fly so badly if I had grown up somewhere else. In Portland, flying is a nice idea, but the sky is gray and unplayful. But in Montana, it is always changing. When I go there, I spend half of my time just watching it and it teases me. It tells me that I am still tied down by gravity and have so much left to learn and explore.

And then there is the rumbling of the waters. They used to put me to sleep at night. Everything has its rhythm and I am convinced that the blood that flows through my veins keeps pace with the rivers of Montana. I rafted them with my parents soon after I could walk and I have never been the same. My heartbeat answers to glacier water and my breath to the sound of wind in tall pines, cedars, and my most beloved cottonwoods. The wind too told me I should not trust the ground.

These pictures are of Avalanche Gorge and Avalanche Lake. There are pictures from both sides of the lake including some of the glacier snow for a reference point. ...And one more for good measure.

Yep. This is Montana and I am in love with it even though I no longer belong to it. Even if I never return, it will remain home. My first home. And that is so much more than a first love. Though, if you asked me the difference between those two, I am not sure I could tell you. Perhaps, home is the place where you learn to love and be loved. That is why it is so difficult to leave if the love is good and kind. 

Written to someone who [I hope] will never find this blog much less recognize themselves in this.

When we talk, I try to stifle every cliche question that would elicit preset promises that neither of us are able to fill. And yet I find that they creep out when I am not paying attention. Why haven't we talked sooner? Why not more often? 

Even the subtle statement of fact builds promises like containers which we ourselves will fall into when they have been left empty long enough. We should get better at this.

It's been years since we last talked, but I shouldn't tell you that when you call next. At this point, every phone call takes a week's worth of courage and a month's worth of guilt. Every phone call is expensive and it is not my right to make it cost even more.

Neither of us really remember how we got here. Well, we do but we didn't know what would happen then.

Robert Frost should have wrote, "Two trillion roads diverged in a yellow wood" and I took one that you didn't take. And you took one that wasn't even close to mine. And now, we are trying to bridge a distance not imagined by poet, scholar, or us. But for a while, a long long time ago, we shared a road and that has made all the difference.

At least, I hope it makes a difference.

"Exhale."

I am on the other side of graduation. I said goodbye to my family a few hours ago and now it is just me in my apartment. I poured some bath water. I listened to the rain. All the lights are off and I can finally hear the pace of my own breathing.

It's hard to do just one thing sometimes.

And by sometimes I mean...most of the time. Even now. Bite of carrot. Bit of thought. Type, type, type.

I have been looking forward to this after-graduation-time for awhile. I have doubted its coming and yet it came. Now that it is here, I am aware of other things stirring. I expected change. Something else has my attention though.

I really want to settle into a life of my own that runs at a pace that I could keep for more than a season. I want to recharge and start some healthy habits that have long been waiting. I want to move slower than before. And so, with this change I keep trying to peek around the corner to see if this just may be a good space to transition into that life. If there will be time enough for the life I want or if I still have to work to get to that place. Is it time? Is it possible?

Here in the dark and the rain, I think I hear the rumble and rustle of new labors. I am a little bit saddened by this. It's not the life I'm trying to get to. And yet...

I don't really know.

Just, "and yet..."
Perhaps, it is 'yet I dream and I breathe and I wake up for all of the tomorrows that will hopefully take me closer to where I want to be' [hopefully].

It is hard to accept the evidence I feel. It's not what I want, but I know it to be true somewhere past all the places that my will penetrates. This is not the season I wanted, but this season will be good. I will struggle through it, but at least I will know that this is the way that life is supposed to feel [for a time].

I am quite uncertain about where I am now headed, but I am approaching something new at a rapid rate. Here's to hoping I can still make good on the promises I made myself in the last few months of surviving.

Licorice Tea

I'd like to be pensive. I'd like to be thoughtful. I'd like to be insightful, intelligent, awake, healthy, beautiful, put together, motivated etc.

I think I'll settle for being kind.

I have 3 exams in 24 hours and a few more in the days that follow. I'm sick. But I have a cover of "Come Together" playing in my headphones and a sense of purpose, weary as it is. Five days to prove that I've learned something, become someone, am going somewhere.

If I've learned anything I've learned that these five days are going to pass no matter what I do. I think that is grace. I think I'll keep smiling until it proves otherwise.

It's amazing how motivativating the sky is.

Sometimes, you can't quite find the right picture to go along with your thoughts. This is close. I think my friend Nicole took this one awhile back. I love the clouds in it. It feels similar to today in that I look at it and know, 'summer is coming'. That's half the battle sometimes.

The other half of the battle is the bloody part. Related to that, I am happy to report that I only have one more paper, one other assignment and 5 exams. In one week, it will all be over--not without some metaphoric blood spilt. Everything has its price you know. The groans of my muscle and bones testify with my budget. Que sera sera!

And then what? Then I am going to write about a girl named Jullanar who loves to fly and a man named Caelum who grew up under the stars.

Belated.

I had a very wonderful birthday. It wasn't my first choice of events. My birthday often gets overlooked because February always ends sooner than people expect and the first week of March comes in seemingly unannounced. Also, I have hitherto spent my life in the rat race that is education with the full knowledge that March is about one thing: surviving until spring break. This year was extra set against birthday festivities in that I couldn't receive calls because my phone was broken and I had an evening class that day. I really didn't have the time to celebrate my birthday.

All the same. I felt loved. It was the little things, the roommate breakfast and egg curry. The boyfriend flowers and necklace. Texts from my family and attempted phone calls from Dallas and other places. A few belated wishes because, hey, we all have days and weeks and, well, years where we forget. It'll be my turn next if I haven't done so already.

Anyway, this post is really about the cake I made and kind of pieced together between classes. Keep in mind that I'm gluten free so if I'm going to go to the trouble of making cake...it's going to be the best damn cake that's ever been made...or close to it. Photographing it was an interesting challenge and lighting sparklers as my candle on my piece turned out to be less tasty than I anticipated (though just as awesome). Unfortunately there are no photos of the sparkler going that I care to put up because it's my birthday and if I don't want to put up pictures of me in my sweats with my hair not brushed staring in excitement and just a little terror at my firework cake, well no one can make me. :) That said, here are my belated photos including a very bad one of my flowers(...but what can I say? I really love flowers. All of them.):

Waiting for the Exhale.

I cannot tell you with what great agony I begin yet another paper.

I have been diligent. I have been as focused as my body will allow. I have been committed. And yet, I still only have 3 days to read about and write a rather large paper on the book of Revelation. I finished a different large paper yesterday and turned it in. Today is a new day! And a new paper.

My mind is explosive.

I have exactly the minimum amount of time to do this. If I use my time well...if I keep trying...if I push hard, I can do this and all the other tasks which demand my attention.

But there are tasks which will never make such demands. Those are my favorites. They are not pushy because they are fragile and will quickly be trampled and drowned if they assert their own importance in the ocean of errands. They are kind, giving me more than they ever take away. They do not seek to be my master and they know only a little of discipline, of struggle, and of pain. They are polite...always respecting whatever decisions I make and never holding my lack of wisdom against me.

These tasks are labors of love and imagination. They are not concrete or physical and they cannot give me a leg up in the world. What they can give me is all that I want and it pains me to deny them space and time to be. I make empty promises which I hope to be able to fill knowing that merely wishing it were so changes nothing.

These empty promises grow hungry and gnaw upon me from the inside.

I become vacuous.

What was once going to explode begins to shift, turn inward, and give me new fears. The mass of my hopes, fears, and promises may be enough to draw me tightly to my core in one final inhale as I implode.

I'm just waiting for tomorrow, whenever tomorrow comes.

I got a taste of summer.

And it sent me reeling. Many of my best memories are of summer. Many of my favorite people only exist inside those memories anymore. Many of the times where I felt most like I was a better version of myself only exist there. It's a sort of sacred place, summer.

I got a taste of summer and every summer past came crashing back to mind along with every hope of who I will become.

But then it left.

And now, I have lot to think about

--but not very much time.

I count down to things.

Actually, I count down to just about everything.

It's part of feeling the weight and whirl of time, even if I am helpless against it. I keep track compulsively and I try to trap bits of sand-time into the cracks of my life that will fail if they do not receiver added support soon. But time is a slippery, trickling thing; the larger the crack, the sooner it will require more sand so keep the cold and the dark out.

I have slowed my count down so that I have space in my head for other things. (It is very difficult to spend time wisely and actually build with the sand you have, if you get hypnotized or paralyzed by its constant departure.) Still, the count is there.

For graduation, it is not so much in days that I am counting, nor weeks, nor hours.

11 more required chapel attendances
10 more exams
( I feel like there should be 9 more of something, but the countdown within the countdown was incidental)
8 more papers
7 more chapters of Grudem to be read
6 more required textbooks to finish...

Anyway, you get the idea. It's not a perfect system, but it feeds my need to feel like I am moving in a definitive direction and it keeps me focused on what remains to be done while holding 'senior-itis' at bay.

And then what? And then I hope to be a better person. I hope to write. I hope to grow plants. I hope to stretch and take care of this body I've been neglecting. And I hope to learn things that no university can teach me. Like how to bake pies or convert certain recipes into allergy sensitive goodness. I hope to explore a few waterfalls and lay down in at least a few fields with a good book...perhaps even some of the books I picked up while I was here in school. I want to have the time to let everything I learned in university change me. And I want to learn to be a better woman.

I hope to learn how to function as an adult with a job and balance all of the things I just mentioned with that.
But mostly, I hope to have time to celebrate having made it farther than I ever actually believed I would... or should. And I hope that if I forget all of the things that I want, writing them here will help ensure that I stumble over them again.

There'll be days like this.

"There are good days and there are bad days."

I find things like this scrawled in my sketch books, in the margins of my science notes, and in other much more illogical places. I used to wake up holding crumpled sticky notes with a faint memory of having such an important thought that it could not wait until morning because, well, what if I let go of such a revelation? I used to wake up with nonsense smeared across my hands because I wrote ...something... on my skin, in the dark, in a fit of desperate trying to remember what it feels like to wonder in the dark at a universe so much bigger but not quite threatening.

Always, when I find them later, I am disappointed by my own simplicity. If I do not keep a careful eye upon  myself, I find the most basic ideas to be revolutionary. I am not just easily amused, I am easily motivated... and just as easily lost.

These fragments

These fragments genuinely console me when I find them, before the disappointment and the intellectualism kick in. There are good days and there are bad days.

I have to remember that sometimes.

Those bad days can be so shocking that I forget that I ever had a good day. Those bad days can come in swarms so thick that I forget that they had a beginning. Those bad days can last so long that I forget what it feels like not to be... heavy.

But those good days...

Those good days can end so abruptly that I wonder at their truth. Those good days can get so comfortable that I forget I am being allowed to rest and will be expected to leave. Those good days can restore so much that I forget what I was taught in the dark and broken places.

There are bad days and there are good days and it is no small thing to hold onto both.

Oh Friday. You feel like a hug.

I wanted to put up something pretty. My blog has been all words and far too few pictures. This is a throw back to the days when all I was armed with was my Powershot A80, whom I still miss. His name was Evelyn. I'm sure this dates to 2006 or something when I was younger and still convinced I could learn 6 or so languages in the next ten (ish) years. It's ok to let some dreams go after all.

Don't look in the mirror.

I am struggling--have been struggling--don't expect to stop struggling any time soon.

I think the Christian way to say this is that "God is refining me". But I do not often think in the Christian way and all I feel is disgust and dread and a little bit of fatalism. I am learning about myself...the trap doors and movable walls and booby traps. Here we go. They were made for someone else; but, once made aware of such things inside of me and how they affect those around me, I begin to fall into one after the other in rapid succession. I am not allowed out. The hallways are long. There are stairs missing. I have already made mention of the moving walls and alluded to the sharp things that find you in the dark.

But worst of all is the feeling that I am responsible for this even though I have no immediate knowledge or secrets that could ever help me to safety. It is, after all, the inner workings of my emotions and intellect and that damned tongue that keep this fun house dangerous and make a haunt out of what should be a home.

I think the Christian solution is to pray more. But I rather feel like hermitting in the woods. Besides, I am certain that improvement will be slow, dangerous, and always a little too late to save those whom I would spare the razors and mazes if I could.

My quest has never been for beauty. Beauty is something people have intrinsically because they are people. Male or female. It is something you let yourself not something you seek out or develop.

My search has always been for strength. Why? Because it is not enough to be beautiful. Pretty things break. Not all breaking is bad. Not all breaking is good. I want to be strong enough but not too strong. That is something I can seek and develop.

I have been told all of my life that this is a man's pursuit. Women should be beautiful and men should be strong. Women should want to be beautiful. Is it possible that so many women want to be beautiful because they were treated as slightly lesser humans than men? I could never prove that. I have known that I am beautiful and it has brought as many problems as it ever has blessings. I want to be strong. More than that, I need to be strong. I have places that I want to get to and a lot of people telling me it cannot be done. Good places. Peaceful places. Far away places that lie across the valley of the shadow of death. And I am going (and have been going) because that is where I have been led and I cannot wait for other people to be strong for me.

Also, I cannot help but think that the world needs more beautiful men and less men who are only trying to prove that they are strong.

What if we were all beautiful and strong?

I think we know this. I think this is why we write books and have Bible studies about "real strength" and "real beauty". In every women's Bible study that has ever tried to teach me to be feminine and beautiful, we talk about real beauty not being fleeting, not being on the surface, not being how we look but how we think and act and... it all sounds like 'strong beauty' after awhile. Real beauty has to be rooted and lasting and loving. Have you ever trusted weak love? But if I say that I have been searching out strength... well, apparently I have forgotten that I am female rather than male. So I will use other words. I will say "patience" or "discipline" or "self-control" because those are gender neutral words and I am allowed those even if I am denied strength.

blindness

Tonight, I watched a movie called Volviendo and I listened to a woman share about her life before, during, and after being trafficked. She now works to help other survivors reclaim their humanity, their self-worth, and especially their health. I had this question burnt into me as I watched and listened: how do you stare into the darkness for so long and still see?

Me? I am torn. I do not want to look away and neglect the darkness. But I am small. If I stare at it too long, I am sure it will creep inside of me, take up residence, flood me, spill out, and not even notice me struggling to breathe. The darkness is...dark. And I? I do not possess any light of my own. Most days, I forget about the light I have been given and I trade it. I let go of the joy of the Lord for busyness. I let go of my self-dignity for productivity and survival and getting to wherever someone else told me I should be going.

I am fragile. And the world is heavy and sharp and full of broken things that want to make me like them. It is hard to even figure out where to stand much less how to stick both of my hands into those dark places and keep trying to pull them that would come out. The dark is full and everywhere and deep.

I know God is big. I know He uses small things, weak things. But I am certain that I will break if tried.

But I cannot look away. I want to some days. I want to move to suburbia and construct a beautiful life that is so safe and so far away from all of these things. I want to reduce injustice to stories and brokenness to the part just before the fairy tale gets good. But I cannot. I love true things, even when they are ugly. Ugly truth is still more trustworthy than the most beautiful of lies. And healing, healing makes the broken places worthwhile. I have never met someone who has been down that very, very long road who has been disappointed with the result.

But I am so unqualified to help the people around me to find healing. I have tried in good ways and bad. And both of failed much more often than they have succeeded to any degree. Of this I am certain, I am no good at healing. I am afraid that I am very bad at loving people, especially the closer they are to me. I have some very good intentions sometimes, but I am a clumsy healer in the least poetic sense. But this is not really about me. This is about that overwhelming darkness and how much respect I have for people who have the strength to stare into it without going blind.

I met a woman a few days ago. She asked for a cigarette and money to feed her children. My boyfriend gave her $5 and I asked her name. Charlotte. Whatever her life had brought her, it wasn't what she dreamed of when she was 6 years old. Whether she told us the truth or not is not really important. I see her and so many other people walking about under a weight that has left them feeling less than human. And I want to teach them their worth. I want to heal them. But I cannot. The darkness is there. And I do not yet know how to penetrate it. I can only peek into it for now and hope to learn something which may yet equip me to be one who stares into it making the most of every opportunity and never goes blind. I want to see what is there as it truly is, but I do not yet know how.

jumble

I find in myself the shards of other people who have long since left. To my friend Rachel belongs Psalm 1. Hilary has left many shards, but today it is "wade in the water" that I am aware of. Nicole somehow has The Shining, though I have never seen the whole movie. To many other friends books and music and ideas belong. It is funny how these pieces remain long after the people have left, changed, and indeed become different people. It is both happy and sad. And I think it is ok for it to be both of those things. I am not afraid of sad things anymore.

I used to think that sadness was a thing that, if paid attention and fed too often, would grow and consume me. There are days where I still think that may be true, but I am not afraid today. I think it's because of the sunshine today. Sunshine makes me a better person. Seriously. It also helps that I made it through a crazy week. These days I feel a little like a bobber on a fishing line. Under water for the beginning of the week, above water by Friday. Today is a sunny Friday. That is now the definition of rest. It gives good perspective.

is this then reality twice removed?

Today in my tai chi class we practiced self-visualization. That is to say, the mental manipulation of our present realities, at least, in its simplest form. I was raised in this thought. I grew up with the foundation that if I wanted something to be true, I needed to act like it was already true.
This is a double edged sword I have struggled to balance all of my life.
I know this idea has truth because of my own experience with psychosomatic pain and illness. There is a point, where you are your own self-fulfilling prophecy. You cannot be healthy if you do not actually want to be healthy, actively and truly. If you would rather get out of this or that engagement or responsibility, your mind will sacrifice your health because you would rather be free of that responsibility than you want to be healthy.
However, I have also run headlong into the limits of any self-visualization (which is, essentially, the discipline of will power) and found myself struggling against the arm of God. All of my imaginative will and determination cannot conquer Him, but how I have tried!
And so I am left trying to figure out the confines of reality and the flexibility thereof. Mostly because, if I could, I would will myself out of sickness today. I do not seem to be able to do that today. Maybe my will power is broken... and maybe I should just take a nap.

good boy...stay, stay

Today is bigger than me ...and it has teeth.

Actually, I have encountered a good many toothed days of larger stature than myself. I am not sure what to do with them. I have been told all of the true-but-not-perfectly-helpful-things. I am fully convince that God is bigger and stronger than today or tomorrow or any amount of my life. But that does not change very much. Today is still giant and fanged...and here.

I am waiting for something to give. I am waiting for God to act, today to leave, or to be strong myself. I am feeling the fragility of weakness in real time. And that is ok. It is scary and humbling and just a little bit painful but it is honest and true too. Today is bigger than me and it has teeth.

I do not have such large teeth. I am not afforded such shining defenses. I am not really safe. I am definitely not comfortable. But I am here and here is where I am supposed to be. There is purpose in this and I am waiting to see it.

The problem with art is that it is a tentacly thing with so many arms. You think you grab one, and you may very well do that while you are creating. Somewhere, though, in the midst of your creating, 6 more tentacled arms have attached themselves to you each with a string of inspiration and direction, demanding you. Not your minutes or your hours, but you. All of you. Perhaps you will be allowed to eat. And they are not terribly polite and will not let you go on quietly with your life with a simple "Goodbye I hope we meet again, but I am quite busy today." Nope. A muse petitioned and provoked is rarely content to just go back to bed.

I should be ecstatic. But the fact is, I have 2 days, then the grind for 4 months and so many tentacles wrapped around me.

Word for today, tenebrous. I like that my browser thinks its not a word. I like having a larger vocabulary than my browser.

I wish I had a physical form for my syllabuses/syllabi to take this term... like the avalanche I feel like they represent. Then people would know where to find me. There would be rescue teams and medi-vac all poised  for the moment that I go under.
Real life, I suppose, is not really like that.
You have to ask for help. Again and again and again. Each time you need it. I am not yet good at that. I suppose I will get better or get buried alive. I'm one of the lucky ones though. I still have people to ask for help from. I forget that sometimes as people leave and fade out. But I have been blessed with new ones and just a few old ones.

Here's to having started something without really knowing if I'm the kind of person who can finish it. Here's to apologizing for the past lack of art and the continuance of this in the next 4 or 5 months. And here's for promising myself that I will learn how to make furniture or a long quality story or something when this is all over.

For now, it's time for some stew.

The Cosmological Principle official: 
"Viewed on a sufficiently large scale, the properties of the Universe are the same for all observers." 

The Cosmological Principle paraphrased by my Astronomy professor: 
"There is nothing special or unique about our corner of the universe." 

My addendum: 
"...except that it is home." 

That is all I got for today. 

Well, Christmas break is almost over, for me anyway. I always end early. I kind of like it that way. At least, I like it as much as I am frustrated by it so I break even.

Hmmm. Breaking even. That has been the feeling for awhile now. New faces come. Old faces fade out. Challenges advance. Sometimes I lose and sometimes I win, er survive... but mostly I am where I was before. And I never seem to do much more than break even. It still is a break of a sort with all the feeling of separation and loss of something inexplicable and therefore unmournable.

There have been days here in Montana where I have felt very much like this is the only home I will ever truly have, like I belong here and here alone. Yet there have been days which chase that feeling away and the mountains surrounding this little valley look as much like a choke hold as they ever did an embrace.

Have you ever tried to maintain a relationship based on who you used to be? You can do it for awhile because you have loads of experience with all of those things that used to interest you and you are very good at those old activities. But for you, they are fond memories and you enjoy them as much for that as you do for doing them in the present. It is not, however, the nature of people to stay static. Leave a friend alone for a  year and see what you still have in common, see if they have not grown. If you do not see it, perhaps one or both of you is only keeping up because of fond memories of what used to be.

Montana is like that for me. It changes when I am away and I change too. Then I come back and our reunion is messy. I can tell you with certainty that when I go for a walk after dark and pass frozen pastures with horses eating sweet hay before they sleep, I know I am home. There is room for me here. More than that, I can almost believe there is room for all of my changes. But during the day, the busy walking about day, I constantly run headlong into confines that used to fit quite comfortably. I was younger and smaller then. I hadn't explored all of who I could be yet. But I'm also not done growing up. I don't think I will be done until I die.

I suspect Montana and I (and a good many people) will have a complicated relationship for a good while. Perhaps it's just the new normal.