Category Archive

Apparently I so rudely left the blogosphere out of the loop.

Remember how I mentioned that I was going to Amsterdam in May?

Well, I’m here! I’ll be here til Tuesday. Talk to you all then!

Dewey!

And what if I want to be out adventuring at one in the morning? It doesn’t even have to be with anyone. I wish I wasn’t constrained by sleepiness or a disgusting head and chest cold. I’m just in love with the idea of being out, walking on the hushed streets on a cool May evening like this. Light runs along the sidewalks and plazas like rivers and small creeks. It rushes over edges and trickles across intersections and flows quietly along the edges of the road while we all sleep. I want to follow it and pursue it even into the deepest corners of the morning. I suppose eventually I would either be swallowed into darkness that not even the water-like light will touch, or the streams of leaking man-made light would be drown by the light gushing from the sky from a pale yellow heavenly chandelier rising in the east.

The world is indeed flat. I can tell you this because I’m sitting on the edge of it. My boat is riding just off from the edge as we run parallel to the cliff of the earth. It’s the place where sea and sky become one and eventually the darkness swallows anything nearby in its insatiable and endless hunger.

I feel somewhat like an astronaut. The only difference is, is in space there would be no sound and there’d be no water at the edge of their ship.

I stared at one star near what I thought I could make out as the horizon. I stared at it long enough that I almost could see the earth tilting. When you’re sitting in the middle of a forest or in a backyard during the day and you can feel the earth moving, it’s incredible and fascinating. At night on the sea… It’s absolutely terrifying.

While leaning on the glass railing of the balcony, all I could think was “That’s the rest of the universe and I’m looking straight into it.” How do we not go around with the fear that one of these days gravity will lose its grip and we’ll all just fall into that huge expanse?

On nights like these I find the sky to be less like a ceiling and more like a nothingness–a huge expanse that we’re inside.

It’s this huge, dark, silent and roaring space and we’re just a little strip of land floating inside of it.

It made me want to grip the arm of my chair harder.

It’s absolutely awe-striking and completely terrifying.

I feel like we have gone inside a huge planetarium.

It’s as dark as it’s going to get tonight. When looking off the side of the boat, you can see the white water rushing from underneath, and you can see the dark blue water for about forty feet before everything is swallowed in an immense black.

At one point there were two ships out on the horizon in front of us, so if I blocked the white waves out below me from my line of sight, it looked like we were sailing straight into deep space.

After the other ships in the distance were long past, I felt like the stars were holes in which someone on the outside shook flashlights over. The sky felt like a jet black ceiling.

I feel like we’ve passed into a walking closet of the world that has been forgotten about and left empty. It’s like a pitch dark breezeway between rooms in a house.

There is hardly any sense of spatial relation to anything. The stars are the closest light that is not from the glowing city on water.

And back home I had never seen a star twinkle or flicker. Out here, all of them do. Every single star’s light wavers and is not constant. The stars never go out, but it’s still very different from anything I’ve seen in my backyard.

Another reason it feels like I’m in somekind of a dark hallway or a planetarium of gigantic proportions is because of how the stars have a fixed position in the sky. If we were truly travelling my brain would expect me to see the stars slide slowly but surely towards the back end of the ship. During the daylight I can see the ship passing the rivets in the water and moving past the waves. The waves sloshing against the metal exterior of the ship gives my mind some kind of a landmark for my mind to work against so I know that we’re still moving. But at night there is only darkness and the stars remain where their geostationary and heavenly bodies were when I looked up ten minutes ago. 

It’s dark. I can not longer see the water except the water that glows unnaturally blue just at the edge of the boat. My sense of space outside of my own body is completely limited to the architectural features of my 4 x 9 balcony, my chair, my laptop in front of me, and the glass sitting on the small table beside me.

I was unable to write or even power up my laptop when I first stepped out onto the balcony because of this alarming phoenomenon. Because there is no sense of space or distance, the brain starts to panic. There is no frame of reference to anything outside of the ship. Even though this sensation is extremely strange and foreign, I kind of like the feeling.

I feel completely isolated for the first time since I left my house.

I feel like we are completely alone in the universe and if we were sink or be lost, we would never be found.

I feel like I am a child hiding in a closet. We’ve left the door far behind and the ship will cut through the black nothing until dawn when we’ll reach the next room in the house.

I feel like this is my first vacation. For some reason it’s like I didn’t really pay attention before. I remembered the scent of the Florida air, but that’s only because I subconciously assign smells to memories and it has been printed into my mind because of my various trips to Disney World as a child. Besides the scent, I have almost no memories of any sensory input except the freezing water when swimming in Cozumel, Mexico on the day after Christmas.

I’m realizing that despite what many people think, going on a cruise is no way to “get away”. When you board one of these gargantuan ships, you’re not getting away from anything. There is everything from pools, saunas, spas, stores, lounges, restaurants, hotel rooms, and anything else you can imagine that would be put on a floating city.

It’s even more sophisticated than an average vacation to a Florida beach house. The beach house bedrooms might be more spacious, but other than that the crew of the ship makes everything so incredibly convenient it’s sickening.

“Hi. We’re definitely moving, so I wanted to call and say goodbye really quick.”
“Oh, okay. Come back home soon.”

I paused to reply. Solid land was inching away from the edge of the boat.

“I will.”

This really was the only moment I felt anything remotely close to leaving.

After the ship-wide emergency drill, I went back to my room and powered up my laptop, noting that my 4′ by 9′ balcony is the perfect place to do some editing. My computer booted up, and in the process alerted me that there were wireless connections available.

Please don’t tell me that they have Wi-Fi, I thought. Please don’t tell me they have Wi-Fi.

Sure enough. There were the words “Carnvial Wi-Fi” and directly following them there was a large green bar indicating the excellent strength of the signal.

The only difference between a cruise ship and home, is there is no driving, no corporate sector, and you have to pay for everything. Seven dollars a minute to call the United States, ten dollars anywhere else. Their satelite wi-fi has prepaid plans. Anything but the barebone drinks like water, tea, and lemonade cost extra. Island excursions are hundreds of dollars. The cans of pop that the statesmen so kindly put in your room cost three or four bucks a piece.

There’s no escape from anything. Cruises are nice vacation, but they are hedonism as its finest.

I’m home from the cruise!

My flight home leaves tomorrow at eight in the morning, so I won’t have internet again really until tomorrow night.

Lots of posts and stories to follow. (Hopefully pictures, keep your fingers crossed!)

I didn’t know there were such things as getting splinters from cactuses. But, ow, I know now.

My sister and I have decided that we need to mount a video camera onto my dashboard. We’d be YouTube starlets because of the conversations we have.

“And you’d be like ‘WHOA!’ And I’d be like ‘Yeah!’ You’d say ‘Haley I’m so impressed with your musical tastes,’ and I’d be like ‘Why thank you, I heard this and thought of you,’ and then we’d be best friends forever!”
“Wait, we’re not best friends forever already?”
“Well… We are… It’d just solidify it.”
“Oh, right. We were best friends forever but now we’re bestest friends forever and ever. I mean, until–”
“Until I’m eighty and deaf and instant message you in all caps.”

In other news, I’m about to take a hiatus. (Heh, not that I haven’t sort of taken one already this week, as one reader pointed out.) I have a good reason for this one. I’m headed south to Florida and then onto a giant boat that’ll whisk me away for a week.

For all of you who are still suffering in freak snowstorms and less than fifty-degree weather, I promise I’ll bring some sunshine back for you.

“Yes you are.”

“I am not!”

“You is be.”

“I ain’t is be nothin’!”

(The best part about this is it was between two very intelligent individuals. Bad grammar just for kicks, anyone?)

I didn’t used to cry during movies. It took a lot for me to even near that point, and only one or two movies had claimed the title of pushing me over that point.

But all that’s changed now.

I’ve allowed the characters to start reaching through the screen and touching the deepest chords of my heart. Or maybe the roots and flowers in my heart have broken through the concrete shell. Or I’ve finally found the way to let the well overflow.

Either way it’s movies like In America and Bella that contain moments of such beauty, and self-less love, and community that I just want to sink into my chair and drown in a puddle of my own tears.

I want those things so much for this world. I want that for the people of Amsterdam; the ones that seek for love and hope in everything but find it in nothing. I want it for my own town; a place that seems to be either asleep or dying, and whose people desperately need true community and authenticity. I want it for my family. I want it for the strangers I pass everyday.

I know we all want it to an extent and maybe I’m just one more person saying all this, but there’s so much opportunity around us that I barely know where to start.

I just know that when I look back on my life I want to be able to see that I at the very least tried. Tried to bring beauty, love, hope, and community to wherever I am in life.

Oh. Maybe I do know where to start.

Tomorrow is a place to start.

I was in the middle of a movie when someone called and asked if I could send an email for them while they were out of town. I said yes, then had to go digging through my email to find the correct email address. Amidst all the digging, I came across an email from 2005.

“If worse comes to worst, I can stay at the motel down the street. I love you enough to sleep with cockroaches. I’d prefer not to, but I would.”

My response?

“‘I love you enough to sleep with cockroaches.’? Alan, think twice before you say something like that again.”

Hard to believe, I know.

As you’ve probably read from me in the past, Sunday mornings are absolutely beautiful for me. Something this year has completely changed Sunday from being just one more day I get up early to a day of the week that is restful, peaceful, insightful, and a day that offers intense clarity.

My Moleskin notebook is the closest thing to me on Sundays. I occasionally have to zone out to what my pastor is talking about to write things down in the middle of the morning. But, at the same time I feel that my mind might fog up and cause me to forget them, so I try to write them down before that happens.

I wanted to put these bouts of musings and insight someplace. They didn’t quite fit over here at Soul Like a Spider. I mean, they did, in a way. It’s just that my Sunday posts were emerging at something of their own and I wanted to give them a place of their own.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Sunday Pen.

Written by yours truly.

I am so excited about life right now.

1. On Saturday morning I had breakfast with two of my best friends that I haven’t seen in ages. It’s been at least six monhts since I had seen either of them due to the way our lives have split and headed in such different directions. We stayed at the coney for almost four hours just talking. Best way to start a Saturday. Hands down.

2. I’m going to Amsterdam in May.

3. Jason Castro is decidedly the single reason I am watching American Idol this season. I come into the room when he sings and then leave when he’s done. During the last episode I was asked, “Hey, is your dreads boy still in?”

3. Today it hit 50 degrees and there was sunshine pour out onto our pale earth for the latter part of the day. I don’t mind cold weather all that much as long as it stays just about thirty degrees… But I have to say that I have really missed sunlight. So today with the thawing of the ground and the warmer weath, and the incredible sunlight, I was a very happy person.

4. Because of the warmer weather I was actually able to drive with my windows down today on my way home from work for the first time in months. I’ve been dying to drive with my windows down. And finally! Sunlight, warm air, windows down, and the John Mayer Trio.

5. It feels like the world is opening up. I’m on the brink of so many opportunities I hardly know what to do with myself.

Happy Thursday! Celebrate a little bit, even if you just have a party in your own head. The world is alive!

I haven’t posted much lately. It’s due to the fact that by the time I get around to having time to post I’m exhausted. That, and I can’t stand just posting to post. It irritates the creative purist in me.

I do know that two days ago I stepped out of my car and heard birds singing.

This absolutely made my day. Actually, my week.

Winter is so silent and the snow does a magnificent job of muffling and silencing all sound outside. I’m so used to getting out of my car at work in the mornings and feeling like someone hits the mute button until I enter the building.

But on Wednesday… I heard birds singing. I didn’t realize how much I missed hearing birds in the morning until I heard them again for the first time in several, long, cold months.

This is a wonderful time of year because it’s like the earth wakes from a deep sleep, and is starting to open its eye. Only a slit, and it will probably go back to sleep for a bit. (I can prove there’s a snooze button: we’ve had everything from 55 degree days to snowstorms this week.)

The awakening is upon us. Hello birdsong, and hello the first traces of a new season.

Sometimes it’s weird what small things we bother spending our negative energy on.

Now, I’m not completely above it myself and I’m not perfect. But sometimes I stand back listening to arguments and upsets and think, What? What are we arguing about again? Can someone please inform me on how this started?

For instance: cookies.

Everybody loves cookies. That’s fine that everybody love cookies. But to assume things of other people, assume that the other person is assuming something about the other person, get in under-the-surface arguments, instigate tension… What?

A couple of solutions:

1. Um, stop?

2. When anyone asks for a cookies, grant them one as long as each individual in the household gets the same amount at the same time as the person who asks. Makes it fair and rationed.

3. Get rid of the cookies.

Bingo, problem solved.

It doesn’t matter how expensive they are or how tasty they may be; they aren’t worth the ensuing disharmony among members of a household.

We’re sitting on a two-lane road in a huge line of traffic. Some jerkbrain decides to move into the left-hand lane and drive in the opposing traffic’s lane to cut in front of everyone. I honked.

Hae: Honk!

Me: I did!

Hae: Honk… Louder then!

Me: No, I don’t want to honk at this nice [Volkswagen] Beetle in front of me.

Dani: How do you know that it’s nice?

Hae: Because they have flowers on their license plate.

There’s a slam poetry coming to town this month. I mentioned this to my mother two days ago when we met for lunch.

She said, “What’s slam poetry?”

It goes without saying tht I had a very difficult time explaining it.

These two pieces by Vanessa German are the best examples I have heard in a long time. Her poetry is mesmorizing in the sense that you get lost in how every word and sentence tugs on your sleeve. You get lost in her pictures.

I hope you enjoy her as much as I did.

(There is a video version of this through the Pop!Tech podcasts on iTunes.)

Freeandflawed’s fault!

(I was going to post links and totally embellish this thing, but it’s far too late at night for me to want to try and do that. Besides, I reckon you all are intelligent people and know how to use the ‘net to find what you’re looking for.)(Once again, going back to the late at night thing, I won’t be tagging anyone. But feel free to fill this out with your answers.)

8 Things I am Passionate About

1. The little things in life. (There’s so much joy to be found in just the itsy-bitsy things in life, it’s almost ridiculous.)

2. Constantly learning (intellectually, emotionally, spiritually)

3. My relationships

4. Writing

5. My sister

6. Connecting to new people

7. Reading

8. Blogging

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1. Take a tour of Europe

2. Get married

3. Write seven books (the first is close to being completely done) (and the number seven is not significant–I just want to write more than one)

4. Finish my bachelor’s degree (innnn progressss)

5. Have kids of my own

6. Visit Japan for something completely geeky, like an anime convention, or a sci-fi gathering, or something crazy.

7. Go on another mission trip

8. Go to Pop!Tech and TED.

8 Things I Say Often

1. Wow, way to ____ . (not have your turn signal on)(drive in two lanes at once)(not look where you’re going)

2. Awesome!

3. Oh sweet!

4. It’s fine, no worries!

5. Your face. (It’s one of those elementary insults that I haven’t quite given up yet.)

6. Hm.

7. But… Whatever.

8. It’s fine, don’t worry about it!

8 Books I’ve Read Recently

1. The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan

2. DO NOT DISTURB by Andrew Schwab

3. We Caught You Plotting Murder by Andrew Schwab

4. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

5. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

6. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

7. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

8. The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

8 Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

1. The Dryness and the Rain by Mewithoutyou

2. Paper Snowflakes by Backseat Goodbye

3. Snowfall by Brian Mazzaferri

4. Daydream by Jason Castro (a cover of Lovin’ Spoonful done on American Idol)

5. Ghouls by Chasing Victory

6. Dear Las Vegas by De Capulet

7. Adelaide by Anberlin

8. Speak by Nickel Creek

8 Things that Attract Me to My Best Friends

1. Sheer brilliance.

2. They are the funniest people I know.

3. They love me for who I am and all my dweebazoid geekness.

4. They always have stories to tell

5. Always listen to my stories

6. They see life the way I do

7. People I can count on to be there when I’m wrestling with life

8. Always supportive

“Be nice to me, I donated blood today.”

I would have taken a picture of the sticker that said this, but directly after I got home I proceeded to lose the sticker and then curl up into bed with a movie.

“These sweatpants have pockets. I think that’s what the extra ten dollars was for.”

“Really? Can they not find anything else to write about for this show? I mean, really?”
“I told you! This show has the same storyline over and over. But they’re probably really popular with the short-term memory crowd.”
“Oh, that’s true.”
“It’s like, if you can’t remember what our last episode was about… Here ya go!”
“Yeah. In case you retain the storyline, here it is all over again!”

My father said this to me in an email a few days back. We were talking about sleeping patterns at the time, but what he said is applicable at any moment.

“Life is just a learning process, yes?”

The last few nights I’ve been hearing voices go past my window.

The first time I heard the voices I panicked, and nearly called someone on my cellphone to keep from completely losing my nerve.

And now? I mostly freeze for a second, wait for the voices to pass, and then continue with my regular routine.

Who are they? Late night sojourners? A group of friends who take walks that stretch across town and go deep into the early morning? Something I make up in my head?

I don’t know. Usually by the time I can work up the nerve to press my ear against the glass of my window they are already gone.

They walk out on the road, so I’m not too worried or anything… They just stir the coals of my already active imagination. I wish to either find out who they are and why they pass here at the same time every night, or write a story and create who they are and why they are here.

It’d make a better story than the one I made up on the spot in the restaurant today about mutant platypuses vaporizing and returning to the mothership once I have shot them with my invisible laser gun.

There are moments where I feel like such a child because of the stories I create, the silly things I think about. I mean, really? What girl my age comes up with things like me? Though at the same time… I’d have it no other way. The platypuses need someone to see them and the dragon in the hallway needs someone to breathe fire at once and a while. Otherwise, I half-think that the platypuses and the dragon might actually die somewhere in the back of our heads. They will leave their bones in the archives of the child-like imagination that we seem to abandon somewhere in our skulls more and more with each passing day.

It sounds like this week has been kinda rough for just about everyone.

Even if I get a decent night’s sleep tonight and tomorrow proves to be bright, sunny, and beautiful like it was today… At least my heartstrings got their workout this week.

(And I’m still trying to figure out whether or not that’s a good thing.)

I feel like Luke in Star Wars. It’s that part in the Empire Strikes Back where Luke lands in the swampy, foresty looking place.

Luke: I don’t know. I feel like…

Yoda: Feel like what?

Luke: Like we’re being watched.

I suddenly have found myself feeling self-concious about the things I post. Since I’ve started coming in contact with some marketing bloggers, professional bloggers, and a generally wider audience than six months ago, I feel like people are now watching my writing. It’s a weird feeling and I don’t like it much. I start feeling like the content I want to write is not good enough, or not professional, or not ______ .

And then I think, Wait… who’s blog is this anyways?

Oh, right. It’s mine.

Interesting things about today:

1. The quote: “If you mistreat the dog, I will mistreat your face.”

2. Raw milk is amazing. Forget the watery stuff you buy at the store. I’ve been making this slow-ish move towards organic foods, and it’s getting better everyday. Before I started being into natural foods and such, I was totally the type that didn’t want to think about the whole health food movement. I mean, com’on, everyone knows that health food doesn’t even taste good, right? Oh man was I wrong! If you start eating pure, organic vegetables, and hormone-free meat, organic peanut butter, raw milk… It seriously just feels better to my body. My friend Tony classifies health food people as “crunchy people” after the way their eat crunchy granola.

3. A lunar eclipse! Last one ’til December of 2010. Though, unfortunately, it will be over by the time you’re reading this.

4. I found this site called Scribd. It’s basically an online document storage site. It’s not an online word processor like Zoho or Google, but it stores documents and allows you to display/distribute your documents digitally. The site is very clean looking, the document display is fantastic, there are tons of options and really cool features that any web guru will appreciate, and right on the front page there is a tag cloud that allows you to navigate to the document genre of your choice to browse what other users have uploaded.

5. I actually got stuck in the Screenplay section and found a sci-fi story to pour over for the next couple of days. It’s about 70 pages. I don’t know if it’s any good yet, but I’ll be sure to post a link if it is.

6. This week has felt very disproportional to most weeks. For some reason it’s felt slightly off-balance, and I unusually aware of how slowly or quickly time passes.

7. I wrote some lyrics this week. I think I’ll be posting them soon-ish.

8. I hope you all had a lovely Wednesday!

This is about the only way I’ve found to describe today:

Meh.

The snow is back, so I assume we’ve finally decided to be Arctic.

Although, two happy things came along to brighten my day.

1. Bright, ripe, large red strawberries. (I’d take pictures, but they’re gone now.)

2. The most amazing fruit dip ever with which to eat the strawberries. The ingredients are marshmallow cream and cream cheese. It’s delicious. You should try it.

Hopefully with some sleep, tomorrow will be better than today was.

And I have the song from that silly Macbook Air Commercial stuck in my head. (Luckily for Apple, that was the point.)

Yeah… Indication #341 why I should be sleeping right now.

I discovered a new terrible feeling tonight.

It’s made up of a combination of being over a half-hour from home, with an almost completely empty gas tank, an almost completely dead phone, and the inability to get my gas tank open.

We had a random bizzare-o ice storm hit in the middle of the night last night. And somehow, by 2pm today it had hit 40 degrees. My state really should make up its mind. To have Artic-like weather, or not to have Artic-like weather. That is the question.

Because of the dramatic switch in tempatures, we had pouring rain and awesome sheets of ice all over the place.

So today was icy, slippery, drippy, slushy, grey, and just generally off-kilter.

I hate to be Johnny Jane Raincloud, but according to today’s weather it might actually be appropriate.

Last night the boyfriend and I had dinner with the youth pastor at my church and his wife. She made some delicious chicken, and then after dinner we proceeded to play a few games of Sequence.

“This game makes enemies. Really fast.”

After the few games of Sequence, we broke out the milk and Oreos for dessert. Once we had our fill of Oreo-and-dairy-heavenliness, we started playing Hearts. We played for at least another two hours.

I was actually supposed to take a road trip today with a couple of friends, but it didn’t work out this weekend. And, you know, I’m okay with that. Tonight was very comfortable. I was able to really relax, take a break from my endlessly chattering brain, hang out, eat good food, and play Hearts.

Now that I think about it, I actually kind of needed an evening like that.

Just before I said goodnight to the boyfriend we were looking up at the sky through the moon roof in my car. The sky was incredibly clear. There were some stars out and the moon wasn’t quite full.

“You know why the moon’s not full right?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I shot it.”

Pros:

1. I found the perfect card

2. I found a DVD set he’s been wanting

3. I found it on sale!

4. I have someone to celebrate today with.

5. Jumper comes out today.

6. Valentine is a cool word.

Cons:

1. It’s cold.

2. Why does everyone have to celebrate this on the same day?

3. Valentine’s Day is a holiday-wannabe. It’s like a very distant cousin that you only see at family reunions. You know the one; they are younger than you, are rather arrogant, and they absoutely refuse to leave you alone until the family get-together is over.

4. Card and gift botiques weird me out a little.

5. It’s a lose-lose situation for almost any party involved.

6. It’s over-rated.

7. It’s over-rated to say it’s over-rated.

8. The coffee I am drinking is overly bitter.

9. Number eight doesn’t count.

10. …Neither does number nine.

I read this post by Bee in Bondi. My heart came up into my throat. I’m a little upset that there wasn’t more information about this in the US.

Australia Says Sorry.

(Why an apology was needed needed).

The Wikipedia entry about The Stolen Generation.

I slept where it was cold. My night was long moving quickly between waking and the depths of chilled slumber. I dreamt intensly with an ocean cold mind and a bloody and churning heart.

I went on a retreat with the kids I work with at my church. The entire weekend was a blast except the first night when I didn’t sleep well. I was having very vivid dreams but they were short and it seems like I woke up after each one. When waking up I either found myself having to get up and shut off a flashlight that had been carelessly left on, or picking my pillow up off the floor, or just generally have to rearrange my covers to reach both my shoulders and my feet.

Whether it was slaughtering the other team in Euchre, leading worship with Mr. Friday and Laura, getting whitewashed four times, sledding outside the dining hall, or just getting to hang out and grow together as a group, this weekend was awesome!

Morning was blue. She woke slowly, still wrapped like an unborn butterfly inbetween her overs. She opened her eyes. They were still drowning, her pupils were still rushing up through the water to the surface of conciousness. She lingered for a few minutes, but then she rose and walked over to the nearby clock. It had been frozen in sleep, but with a single touch from her finger it sprang to life and the day started moving.

I woke up easily the first morning. I made it to the dining hall for the leader’s meeting by 7:30am. Though on my way there, I couldn’t help but muse at how blue the morning sky was. Everything glowed blue like a dawn twilight. The thick blue light lasted for an hour or two, and then the sky eventually moved to its usual clean white color.

There were several inches of snow and it made the snow hill a trip to walk up, but in Connor’s words, “I found out that throwing snowballs at the people going down the hill was more fun than actually going down the hill itself.”

I have discovered that in the end all the gas receipts will do us no good. Our nightmares will still keep us awake, our stars will still collide, and fear and anxiousness will still be written into the liquid in our eyes.

And I wish you wouldn’t talk about me like I am not in the room.

It’s day like these when I feel like I’m spending a few days inside some kind of foreign landscape. Like I’ve been transported into a cold and winterized world that exists inside a book on a shelf in the library across town.

Maybe the little worlds that are inside children’s storybooks are escaping like animals from a zoo and have come to swallow us whole into their simplistic complexion.

We are being eaten alive by the yellow skies in the mornings and Dr. Seuss pine trees.

Maybe we’re all trapped inside a novel. A novel about life, death, taxes, and snow.

Today happiness was:

1. An appreciative email I received this morning at work

2. Being able to sing the acoustic version of the song “Supernatural” by Flyleaf

3. Salmon leftovers from Longhorn Steakhouse (mmmm!)

4. Meeting a new friend for coffee

5. The coffee itself

6. A slice of this awesome banana-pecan bread to go with the coffee and new friend

7. A good conversation with my dad, and his willingness to listen to what I had to say

8. The Bluegrass iTunes Essential playlist

It was just a generally good Monday following a great Saturday and Sunday. Which, you know, is saying something.

I spent this morning trying to wash the concert out of my hair and off my skin. The heat radiating from the other bodies in the small venue, the sound left in my ears, the ticket stub in my pocket, the smell of sweat and warmth woven into my shirt.

It seems it was only yesterday we tried to take off the dreams we built for ourselves. All those little plans of roadtrips and adventures and pranks and conspiracies and journeys. They’re gone. Just gone. They clung to our younger selves like our clothing and then suddenly we just left them behind like a sweatshirt in a laundry pile.

Where did they go? We seemed to have misplaced them.

You spell safety to me.

So Bee in Bondi tagged me. I either have to come up with the 7 most infamous or famous people I have ever met, or 7 weird things about me. I’ll opt for the seven things since I’ve never met anyone famous.

1. I almost died at birth. The doctors noticed my heartbeat slowed down every time my mother had a contraction. The umbilical chord was wrapped around my neck and it got tighter with each contraction.

2. Late in the summer one of my favorite things to do is when I’m driving at night alone is to roll down all my windows and listen to swing music.

3. I have been to an anime convention. I’m not huge into manga or anime, but the subculture was fascinating! (I’m going again next year and a scifi convention sometime in the next month or two.)

4. I can’t eat if I feel like someone is watching me too closely during a meal.

5. I have a pet frog named Homer II. He’s an African Clawed Frog. I’m convinced he’s immortal. He’s either immortal or a prince stuck in a 7″ x 7″ x 7″ tank. Poor Homer.

6. I actually get excited when I can link to Wikipedia in a post. (Sigh. “You know you’re in the fishbowl when…”)

7. If something we are talking about reminds me of a song, I will more likely than not burst out in song.

I tag Melissa, M, Lauren, Ashley, and Frogpondsrock.

I was in the living room thinking about what to write for my response to a meme I was tagged for.

I mused this out loud.

“I need to come up with seven weird things about me.”

Within seconds I hear:

“Do you want help with that?”

…always crazy for me.

There’s something about Sunday mornings that unlocks my mind and heart and soul all at the same time.

I end up feeling like I am on the verge of discovering something new. Something about humanity? Something about God? Something about the homeless man that was holding the door open for us at the bottom of the parking garage saying, “Be careful ma’am, the ramp is slippery. Sir watch out, the ramp is icy.”

I always find myself getting closer to something. The something that makes me think that my flyspeck existence means something, or at least could mean something. Maybe I’m just selfish in this.

That man reminded me of the woman who was standing outside of a concert hall in the heart of our dying city. It was sometime in December and huge clumps of snowflakes were trying to act like a heavy rainstorm. She was very obviously cold. I started to pull at the second sweatshirt I had on, and to this day I still wish I had given it to her.

It was almost one in the morning but we still stopped for an early (late) breakfast at Ram’s Horn after the concert. I couldn’t think of anything else except that woman’s face.

“Don’t stew over it,” Emily said to me.

I don’t know how not to stew over it at this point. I couldn’t do anything for that man, and I walked away from the woman.

And I like to call myself a generous person.

How despicable.

I have to do something to help them. I can’t just walk by again. It hurts.

Don’t tell me I look pretty in this sweater. Being pretty is just one more thing people want from other human beings on this planet. Most don’t ask, they simply take.

As angry as I was leaving the house I was surprised to find that the morning was still silent. The noise of the words and swirling frustration in my head was only internal; it didn’t touch the January morning. At the gas station it was completely quiet. I watched the breath tumble out of my mouth and onto the pavement that used to be a dark grey but now is almost pure white because of the salt we use to remove the snow. The silence swallowed me and the sunlight flung itself across the street at me. The sunlight was perfect and beautiful, and it gave me the hope it stores inside the rib cage of the sky.

Why is it always the sunlight that saves me on mornings like these?

Blogging this year has already created a ton of new connections. I’ve literally “met” people from all over the world just in this first month of January.

It’s fascinating and I love it.

I love being able to step into corners of other people’s worlds.

I love being able to see a little bit into their lives and who they are.

I don’t know. One more reason why I love blogging.

For a couple more reasons and a post that makes me wish I had written it myself because of how well said the idea is, read “What I Think About This Whole Blogging Thing” by Ian in Hamburg.

Today was a day for Chinese leftovers and snowflakes that looked like glitter.

Tonight at youth group the kids and us leaders were asked to tell their name, grade, and the story of their worst injury (or if we didn’t have one we could make one up). There was lots of blood, broken bones, scrapes, bruises, even the occasional arrow in the forehead.

Me? Instead of telling about the time I tried to skateboard and gave myself a three-week long bruise on my hip, I told a story of how I fought a green dragon that took a bite out of my right arm just before I had slayed it.

I’m ridiculous.

“I was just walking along one day in Australia…”

There was a guy two seats down from me that told a story of how he had to wrangle a kangaroo in the Outback for his backpack.

“I politely asked if I could have it back and he wouldn’t give it to me, so I had to fight him for it.”

Needless to say, I high-fived him as soon as he finished talking.

It’s the smell of gasoline left on my hands and the congestion I feel creeping into my lungs that puts days like these on ice.

I saw a play last week that reminded me exactly of all the things I hate about the human race.

The play was intense, highly symbolic, and circular. All the characters quoted each other, most without knowing. It was haunting. It brought all the questions we as people on this rock like to try to keep down our throats. The ones about the meaning of life or the lack thereof, temptation and whim, hate and love, lust and the desire to attain something off limits, marriage and divorce, cheating and death, spring and winter. It’s the questions that you wrestle with and if you find no answer after a while you walk away with your broken hip and try to pretend that they aren’t important.

As much as I try to snuff out the voices of the questions I also tried to douse the effect of the play. It hung in my mind for at least the next two days. I want to read the book so I can at least have the questions to hold on to. I will be able to hold onto them physically with my own two hands.

Yes, it’s a Tuesday in January. I went to see “Anna Karenina” (adapted from the book written by Leo Tolstoy) on Friday, and this is what has filled my mind since then.

I wish you all a warmer Tuesday than what we have here.

This afternoon as I was riding back towards work, I found myself leaning against the window and soaking in the sunlight. It was warm to the touch, hot on contact. A mid-afternoon sunwash.

The movement of the car was monotonous but peaceful at the same time. My mind was working on enough to keep me quiet but not enough for me to talk about any of it. Nickel Creek played softly in the background. I found myself in a very serene place at that moment, sitting in the passenger seat.

It’s little things like this that make my life so beautiful.

It didn’t last long–not much does. I wasn’t even what most people would call “care-free” at the time. It was only a few minutes of warmth, silence, and light. A few minutes was all it took.

“The fact that the T9Word on my phone doesn’t know the word ‘yay’ is the most annoying thing in the world! Well… There is that whole third-world hunger problem… That’s kind of annoying too…”

My post was put up over at Middle Zone Musings today.

(In case you missed what I’m talking about, you might want to read this post to find out.)

Here is what you all have been waiting for:

What I Learned from 2007

So we’re twelve days into 2008 and I haven’t posted any year-end blogs or New Year posts. I told you a few posts back that it was still constructing itself and I was still trying to decide how exactly to approach this year in my writing. Well, I found the perfect solution.

My actual post will be hosted over at Middle Zone Musings.

I’ll let you know when it is posted but until then keep your eyes peeled!

I’m the girl across the coffee shop from you.

Nice to meet you.

Maybe we’re all just like locked treasure chests: we spend our whole lives looking for the person who can see through the wood.

Last night on the drive home I imagined that I was sailing a sailboat across town. The few raindrops that fell onto my windshield were like a constellation unfolding onto the glass. I imagine it was my night sky and the red lights I had to stop at were sea ports. My sailboat cut through the darkness swiftly; gently. It didn’t help that the music playing made me feel like I had tripped into a movie. 

I remember you telling me all of these elaborate stories. We would stay up late; our computer screens lighting up the edges of our faces in the darkness. I spent my hours reading your words and letting your voice play through my head. Some may aruge (and I may argue with them someday) that it was a waste of time, an idle event built on nothing put our keyboards… But we had our imaginations.

You would tell me of how you were going to start writing messages in sidewalk chalk all through town. The townspeople would stir and soon newspaper articles and t.v. news stories would start to float to the surface about this midnight marauder who terrorized the sidewalks with positive messages made of chalk.

One time you had me convince you were going to hitch-hike to my house. You were a marvelous story teller. I remember conversations about how you were in the middle of writing the novel that was going to make you famous, how you were going to open a shop that sells leather-bound notebooks, how you would follow at my heels if I suddenly left for Africa, and how you were always the super hero in your dreams. Though sadly, like a child you could never hold onto anything except your memories for very long.

The hitch-hiking was a joke. The novels never turned out to be any logner than a few pages, the second leather-bound notebook couldn’t come together right so you became anger and abandoned it, and I never went to Africa.

You showed me a new meaning of imagination and what it meant to create dreams. Unfortunately, you also showed me what it meant to forget them.