Upon Hearing Your Message, October 11th

Everything is covered once again with the most
brilliant, immaculate glitter
Our breath turns to smoke

The hands that have gone unnoticed all year
are stiff, are frozen

You are missing your gloves

The fingertips and knuckles that have gone unnoticed all year
are finally felt at the gas station, the gas pump

You can feel your toes in your shoes

She is grieving for the first time,
all over again

Every freezing breath she takes
is a breath left behind,
a breath not taken

Winter is a birth of the brightest or the darkest kind.

The One About Dreamy

“I’m usually not a fan of Tim Burton’s style, but for Alice in Wonderland (03/05/10) it seems about as appropriate as appropriate gets. And I’m quite excited. I will be officially annoyed if it’s takes a Narnia turn and becomes one of those loved books that was made to be really pretty but strayed so far from the book that I feel like destroying the DVD in an Office Space manner.”

I posted the previous paragraph on Facebook as my status and within minutes one of my friends, Tim, commented, “I’ll take this as a rave review for Narnia. Maybe I should actually see it now.” My first thought is, Not exactly. That might be a bad idea. I’ve never had good experiences with Naria.

For Prince Caspian, I went to see it with my sister and boyfriend. I then proceeded to make the mistake of sitting between them. My sister and I and my boyfriend and I have vastly different methods of movie-going. My sister and I go to movies and either heckle the characters through the entire movie. My boyfriend? No talking. Even when we watch TV together the only way I can ask questions or make a comment is when there is no dialogue going on and I’m quick about it. If I get too talkative or start asking too many questions, he loving pats me on the head which I know is a nice way of telling me to be quiet. So, you can imagine what it would have been like to be with both of these parties at a movie at the same time.

Come on now, children, let’s put on our thinking caps and rose-colored glasses!

I know people tell me things will change when I’m older. I won’t be as open-minded, my metabolism will suddenly slow down to a slug-like speed at 12:01am on my 30th birthday, that I will no longer have the energy or desire to stay up until 4am, that if I am proud of the fact that I can sometimes out eat any guy I know that I will suddenly wake up with at least another ten points in my BMI if I don’t watch what I eat RIGHT NOW, and that I won’t view love or the person I am with the same way.

The problem is that I feel like I won’t be alive in two years. Not that I’m going to die, or that I have some prophetic feeling that I will die young and I remain fixated on the fact that I don’t have much time. What I mean is that I have absolutely concept or foresight into my life in two years. I don’t have the foggiest idea what it means to live another two years. I don’t have any understand of what it would feel like to live to be 30, 40, 50, and so on. My understanding of time and how long it feels is limited by my own biological age. My only concept of time, of age, of life, of death, is what the point of reference built from a little over two decades.

[4] Slaap Lekker, Sleep Well

Something inside me can’t sleep.

Dreams are a constant mystery in my life. Everything from my grandfather coming to the house to talk to me, to my sister coming down with an awful nervous system disease, to caustically honest conversations with former lovers, to a storm of epic proportions, to coworkers showing up to see me perform in a play but because I hadn’t even looked at my lines the play was a disaster.

While many of the dreams that crash into my evening’s rest are absurd, there are those dreams that refused to leave me alone even when I am awake. They are vivid, nauseating, haunting. They’re memories that form like infections and lodge themselves in crevasses of my waking mind.

Sometimes its just too much. Too much to sit and wait for the storm outside to be over, not knowing if we’d be alive at the end. Too much to see my grandfather’s face so plainly in front of me, just smiling, just smiling. Too much to see my sister struggling to maintain any kind of physical activity knowing that her nerves are ready to strike at any moment.

Sometimes I don’t want to go back to sleep.

[3] About a Painter

I was coming back to consciousness, waking from a deep and restful sleep. The room was quiet and cool to the touch. The three or four thin blankets I had wrapped around me were just enough to keep me warm. The light coming in through the wall of windows behind me matched the temperature of the room; a refreshing and calm grey light of a cloudy late summer afternoon.

I had woken up in someone’s studio. The room was made entirely out of brick and the ceiling was at least two stories up. There were canvases and easels all over the place. Some standing blank, awaiting their clothing in paint. Others were in stacks or were drying, with rough and splotched brush strokes in bold and expectant colors. Cans and brushes and palettes and tubes of paint scattered on the wooden tables throughout the room.

The bed I was sleeping in was pushed against the left wall, and at the foot of my bed was another easel, but this one had the painter sitting in front of it.

Though I had never seen this place before or ever met the woman with the paint brush in her hand, gently studying and attacking the canvas in front of her, I knew I belonged here. Maybe I had fallen asleep and awakened to be ten years in the future.

“Ah, you’re finally awake!” She said, still poring over the painting.
“Yeah…” I said, still incredibly groggy.
She said something about my husband and I moving closer to the city in a couple of months so I wouldn’t have to drive two hours to hang out for the weekend. “And so you won’t lapse into 14-hour comas while you’re here.”

I had gone to sleep at 3am the night before and from the clock on the wall across the room, I could see that it was now 5pm.

I didn’t mean to sleep that long, so my immediate disposition was to be frustrated at myself and the other small annoyances going on around me at the time. After making a few comments about how long I had slept, she and I began talking about everything going on in my life. All the present bothers, the points of stress, the logic of current worry, irritations, odd dilemmas.

She continued painting, and I sat up in bed against the wall, trying to keep my hair from getting caught in the tiny teeth of the bricks and talking about present day. A creative focus that’s be neglected or left to wander aimlessly on its own in my mind with no way out. The way I talk myself out of my own internal dialogue and feelings. An late inability to way to express questions and feelings about the relationships in my life. People who turned out differently than I needed them to. Things that started out looking like a storybook and took a sour turn towards an awkward that I still don’t know what to do with. Communication breakdowns that hurt and leave bleeding scars.

The conversation covered years of memories and all narrow hallways of situations. But then said something that absolutely struck me.

“Well, why don’t you do more with your art?”

She presented this as a partial, though not complete, yet substantial solution.

I didn’t have an answer. All I could think of were little excuses and burnt wishes that I hadn’t paid attention to.

“Oh. Yeah… I guess I could do that.”

And then my alarm clock on my cell phone woke me up. It said 9:32am.

I dreamt this over a week ago and yet I still can’t forget the conversation. I still don’t know who I was talking to, where I was, how I knew her, but her question has resonated deeply and hung in my mind every day since. All I’ve been able to do is respond the same way I did when I was talking to her face-to-face.

Why do storms and painters to give me messages in my sleep? Even though it was only a dream, I cannot ignore its truth.

(Number 3)

[2] To Measure in Color

Because everything tonight is measured in pink and white. Pink and white, blue and white, or maybe purple. An occasionally green filling the room, drop by drop. The electronic beats shake the walls, shake my knees. “You’re all alone over here.” Yes sir, and that’s how I want it to be. I know you watched me most of the night, and that’s why I danced quietly, not as loudly as I would have if I had known you weren’t there. Songs about American Divorce and American Girlfriends made our ears ring but fills our souls up for an evening. “I’ll be driving nuclear submarines before I’m 24.” Just don’t blow them up, American Man.

Because tonight everything is measured in red and white. For the girl that doesn’t watch the weather channel and ends up cleaning the snow off her car in sandals. For the girl who had her first ultrasound too early, at a small age of 16 to make sure her heart was still in one piece. “Just to make sure, just to make sure.” Just to make sure the chest that is coiled so tightly isn’t constricting her red heart. The traffic lights on the way home bled onto the windshield.

Because tonight is measured in black and white. We’ll let the music rattle the white flecks of our bones while we stand under the blacklights. I’ll make a pretty wallflower and you’ll keep your eyes to yourself. He’ll drive his submarines and you’ll just drum your arms into the floor.

(Number 2)

[1] Laughing Steel

I’m wilting a little. But not for long.

Hundreds of tiny birds swarm peacefully in their flocks around the stoplights. The tree frogs and bullfrogs are awake and are singing again in the swamps and the sunlight is bursting into our Saturdays. The rain is getting warmer.

Any hint of smoke in the air throws me back to memories of camping through the long and delicious, warm Julys. Cooking dinner over the campfire, the smell of the wood left in my sweatshirt for days. We’d cook sausage and even though I rarely eat it, during the summer I love the salt and smoke on my tongue.

My creative focus has waned a little bit. I daily question the validity of the words floating around in my head whether they are just the playthings of my mind when it reaches levels of boredom from living in the same town everyday or whether they might actually mean something.

I give them meaning today.

No one questions dreams when they wake up. Of course, they are mostly absurd. But no one questions if they saw the vivid colors, or if they actually heard you say what you did. If your grandfather who passed years ago came to visit you in your sleep, and he smiles and asks how you are, you believe he was there. If the dreams are full of new and violent thunderstorms or a taunting and jeering man with a cane who can only be seen by you, we never question those truths.

“I mean, I was there.” “I saw you. You were there.” “I dreamt about Grandaddy last night.” “But the storm was so real!” “And there was this man, and he never stopped…”

And yet, simple things like poems that are woven when I step into a greenhouse, or the book I want to write about you when I realized how beautiful you are when you poured out your soul and sang in front of me, or the instant pain that rushes to my reddening cheeks when you wield your words like daggers and you act as if they have no more weight than paper snowflakes–I question all these.

Somehow a dream with smoky thunderstorms can be life-altering, and yet I can’t allow the pictures and poetry and ideas and words that run in rivers through my veins and ateries all day fill me up and run back out.

It’s like I’m working on the skyscraper of my soul, and as I build I consider each steel beam and tell a few that they aren’t worth keeping. I tug with white knuckles to pull them away from the frame. My building either collapses or the beams remain in place and laugh at me through grey teeth.

Because each piece is essential.

To all the words and pain I’ve left behind, declared void, ignored, brushed away, talked myself out of, I give meaning to today.

(Number 1)

Ava Marie

But I want to know why you miss me.

Because you’re sending me mixed signals and confusing all the sense out of me. Because I think there might have been more going on and I didn’t even know it. Because you sent me a picture of your newborn little girl, and even though she is beautiful like the flowers springing up, I don’t even know what to say anymore.

Nothin’ but a Ragdoll

Because I worry.

It’s like even after I take time to quiet the chattering inside my own head, I still have a fist gripping my stomach and fingers creeping up the back of my neck to tell me something isn’t right. Or that I’m not perfect enough to sit down just yet.

Worry has it’s purpose–if for nothing else but to motivate. But my mind has escalated to the point where worry has fed on my peace of mind and my thoughts are now laced with guilt.

Guilt has been an exterior motivator in my life for so long from multiple sources growing up that my mind has trained itself to go into overdrive and it slowly gnaws at me until I have nothing left to offer but a ragdoll heart.

The logic goes like this: In order to protect myself from further nagging, guilting, anger, or awkward conversations, if I can worry ahead of time before the conversation even happens, then maybe I’ll altogether prevent or avoid what might invariably happen, and we can all go on living happy lives.

It’s a feeling that if there is even one person in my life who has a different opinion or has different preferences or just flat out thinks I’m wrong, I have no equilibrium in my life. I’m left crippled by my own doing. Because, as I’ve been told before: “the holy life is the life that everyone else is happy with.”

My emotional logic is still in [this is so messed up] knots.

If I intend to be anything but play-dough for everyone else to put their hands around and squish into the shape of their own liking, I will never be able to live this life. Instead of learning to operate with a functioning spine, the worry throws me into the cupboard with all the other chipped plates and I am out of balance.

The choices I make in life should make me a little bit stronger each day, like learning to walk or use rollerblades for the first time. With each step or each time I pull out the skates my ankles grow stronger out of practice and dilligent use. But instead, as of now my ankle is twisted and I’m still hanging on desperately to the crutches beneath my shoulders when I don’t have to be.

Because I worry.

Black and White Ants

Even the cakes and black ants cannot contain
the messes we’ve made for ourselves.
I spend hours in the kitchen
baking cakes of red anger
and black silk using
white knots of worry as frosting.

I’d hold your hand and play
ring-around-the-rosy
but we’re just

spinning in circles in spinning in circles in spinning in circles and spinning in circles

and we
are
getting
nowhere.

It’s all coming up and coming out loud
and I don’t know if I can stop myself this time from using the handle
as a ledge into a life
of apathy
woven into tears.

You ask if I’m okay,
you ask if I’m fine,
and I reply why yes! I’m as well as I was yesterday
(for whatever it’s worth)
because even though I tire of being in the same town every morning
I’m never quite tired enough to leave.

We eat dinner and lunch and dinner again and we keep running our mouths
like engines in ten year old cars.
We fill our ears with kindling and spew petroleum,
our tongues spit the sparks.

The fire will climb up into our souls.

We eat a dinner of fruits of overdone thought and a roast of timidity and
we’ll keep plunging our forks into the food and passing the bowls to the others at the table
but there never is an end to our hunger.

We’ll spill the wine of selfishness
and the milk of fear to make it go away
but there is no end to our hunger.

It’s the ache
the anger
our elbows on the table cloths.

Dinner is finally removed from the table and dessert is brought in.
After we finish our plates we sit and cry
because even though the cake was decadent!
delicious!
delectable!
delightful!
we howl because our stomachs are emptier than before.

We’ll take blood, we’ll take water! Whatever fills the holes inside.

You ask if I can help with dishes and I do not reply because I eat the black and white cake alone at the other end of the table.

Even the black ants cannot clean up the messes we’ve made for ourselves.
I spend hours in the kitchen
baking cakes of red anger and
black silk using
white knots of worry as frosting.

You ask if I’m okay,
you ask if I’m fine, and I reply why yes! I’m as well as I was yesterday
because I eat my misery alone.

A Noiseless, Patient Spider

As artists we learn to love that we sell our souls to our art.
That’s because our art is our soul.
It’s the fruit on the branches of the trees,
the petals on the edge of the flower.
My writing, your photographs, your songs, your paintings, and anything else that you create:
It’s our soul on paper, in the melody being carried by a voice, in the colors that bleed off the canvas into the rest of the world.
When it comes out of us it takes a life that it might not have had locked up inside of us.

“The fish swims in the sea, well the sea is in a certain sense contained within the fish. Oh, what am I to think, what writing of a thousand lifetimes could not explain if all the forest trees were pens and the oceans ink?” (“The Dryness and the Rain” written by MewithoutYou)

The Last Box!

I officially unpacked the last box at my apartment!

Well, not really a box. It was a suitcase.

I’ve lived in this area of town for almost six months, and yet somehow there was a suitcase full of last minute things like photo albums, an extra pair of shoes, misc. papers, and a few of my shirts still left in my trunk.

I swear, it’s been sitting in there for three months.

My father so graciously gave me a printer out of the fleet that he has in his collection of all things computer related, so I found a place for the printer on the table at the end of my bed. I used the box to reorganize underneath my bed and then had room for everything in the suitcase in my trunk. So, I brought it in and unloaded it.

Last box.

I think I should throw a party.

Seven Hours

It’s still raining seven hours later
Maybe the angels and devils are rinsing out their sinks
Or perhaps this is the leftovers of punishment
like the heel of a loaf of bread
that’s been sitting out on the table
since two.

“Seven Hours” © Deanna Gernert 2008

Honey.

It’s 1am and I’m just now sitting down to write.

Today has been full of uncomfortable conversations and raw honesty.

I’ve got a pen, some notes I have to look over before tomorrow, and a mug of warm tea.

With honey in it.

I’m not usually the honey type. In fact, most of the time I put honey in my tea because I want to like it and then am reminded of why exactly I’m not a honey type.

But tonight, along with some Gerry Mulligan jazz, the gold glaze adds the taste of hope to my unintentionally under-steeped tea.

The Brogan Twitter Email

Why is it that I felt like I might actually be someone in this world when I got the following email?

Hi, whythulc.

Chris Brogan (chrisbrogan) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Chris Brogan’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan

…Never mind that he follows 14,013 other people.

Debate Drinking Games

Fifteen minutes into the Vice Presidential Debate I was texting a friend of mine. The ensuing conversation represents just why I love the debates this year so much.

“Are you watching the debate?”

“Yeah. No alchohol so no drinking game though.”

“No Obamashots? Darn.”

“Drink every time wall or main street is mentioned. Each time Palin says ‘McCain’ or Biden says ‘Obama’. Would already be plastered.”

Borders’ Jazz

I am currently loving this collection.

They play this kind of music in Borders, which usually ends with me subconciously half dancing in place while browsing the aisles of books.

Richard

Death is still the black shadow that falls when the sun closes its eyes.

Rest in peace, Richard.

Morning is waiting for you.

We love you.

Yes, ketchup.

“Are you putting ketchup on your salad?!”

“If by ketchup you mean french salad dressing, then yes.”

Dances

And she likes how he dances through the hallways when everyone else is inside.

What happens when I don’t use proper grammar…

…Is my coworker gets mixed up with Jesus and Elvis.

Don’t ask, just read.

http://onlynatural.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/yay-for-typos-and-lack-of-commas/

In case someone is confused, I am “D” in the conversation.

What’s Left of Hide and Seek

I went out into the parking lot after work and started walking to the other end of it towards my car.

The sunny and humid summer day had rapidly wrapped itself up into dark rain clouds and the air was full of electricity.

It was going to rain soon.

It was the same feeling of when you play hide and seek. You run through the house in your bare feet grinning and collapse behind a door or in a closet. The voice down the hallway says “8… 9… 10…”

And then there’s that moment.

That moment between the last number and when you hear the first creak of the floor. That moment where you are gulping air because of adrenaline but the moment where you want your heart to quit thumping so loud.

It’s the silence.

That moment where your entire existence is pointing to this moment and hanging onto it for dear breath.

I hurried to my car and got in. I left the parking lot and drove up to the corner and within twenty seconds the sky started to pour itself out.

The first drops on the windshield.

The groan of the wooden floor.

It’s raining.

Definitely a meme

I’ve seen this on seven different blogs at least, and I’ve been dodging it so far. So, here goes.

And this is totally a meme.

The sun and the moon in the hallway

The sun and moon are fighting for the hallway.

The golden moon lit up the sky from the east tonight like a night-light in the hallway of the earth. As it rose it lost its jaundice and there were still flashes of lightning coming from the west.

I feel like I’m the child still creeping about the hallway chasing the shadows as if they were friends. I feel like I open my mouth and let it run itself right into a book by Yeats and yet that doesn’t seem to matter when I can’t get past this hunger to create.

I’m not Yeats. But that’s where the door at the end of the hallway leads; right into a poetry book! At least that’s what the shadows told me.

I feel like I can’t hide my heart through my face. I need some overdone blush and eyeshadow that could make a clown run and a Shakespeare monologue and then maybe I wouldn’t feel my eyes roll in my own head.

I remember waiting for the sun to make its exit. I remember feeling the drops of sweat rise through my skin onto my face as the light painted itself onto my cells. I remember thinking that if I could just wait until the sun dipped below the edge of the hill that everything would be just fine.

The sun has gone away and now I’m tip-toeing and creaking through the hallway listening to the shadows whisper and beg me to walk through the door at the end of the hall.

My mind is an engine and if I cannot spill these exhausting words onto paper or into song or onto the side of a downtown bridge the car will run out of gasoline and we’ll be left right where we started. I’m asleep in the seat next to you and even though it’s freezing outside the heat is doing its job to keep us warm. My high heels are crunched in the corner of the floorboard and my skirt is cover my knees like blanket. It’s sometime in February and we’re coming home from some kind of museum. The salt has made the roads a washed white and the pale yellow sun is screaming at us from the horizon at the end of the road and just slightly to the right. The piano music is keeping my eyes closed as you drive and I’m still standing at the end of the hallway in my dreams.

The sun and moon are fighting for the hallway.

Falling

Fall is coming. It was in the breeze this morning.

There is something about this coming season that begs me to be quiet, begs me to listen. The dreamer inside me awakes once the leaves start to turn.

Autumn is enchanted and the magic runs through our fingertips out onto our warm cups of cider and onto the sleeves of our sweatshirts.

This time of year the libraries in our minds open up and I spend most of my time reading books I forgot I had. The angry books lay themselves out on the tables for me to see and yet I remain in retreat behind the shelves seeking out the small and nimble memories I’ve almost forgotten.

From our first conversation I knew that you would always capture my attention and this has not failed.

“The dreamers are not the ones who sleep.”

Bond

The difference between an average movie watcher, a writer, and someone with an overactive imagination:

An average movie watcher:

While at lunch, notices that there is a guy who looks like Daniel Craig’s James Bond sitting two tables away.

A writer:

Notices that besides herself, the Bondman, and the man Bond is talking to, there is no one else eating in the porch of the restaurant. Glances around room looking for hidden cameras in the restaurant and sees that there aren’t any. Thinks to self, “You know, this would be a great place for some kind of action sequence.” Thinks about possible storylines for the perfect action scene in a movie.

Someone with an overactive imagination:

Pays for her meal and the proceeds to leave the restaurant, but not before shooting the Bondman a look that says, “Hey, don’t you try anything. I’ve got a Leatherman Sidekick in my purse and I’m not afraid to use it! Let me leave the restaurant before you prove why your name is James Bond to the business man you’re talking to.”

Al Gore

“Sweetheart, prepare for Al Gore being funny. Crazy! I know!”

“Weird.”

“Al Gore really should have been a comedian instead of a politician.”

(sarcastic) “Ah, where would we be without Al Gore…”

“We wouldn’t have the internet or global warming!”

I don’t want to know.

Someone was using the search terms “large immaculate” and somehow found my blog.

I don’t even think I can explain how awkward I feel right now.

Shades

Outside it is bright, warm, and sticky.

So, if you see me and I scowl at you, I’m not mad.

It’s just the weather.

Stephen

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

You notice all the little details about me that no one else sees; you’re one of the most understanding people I know; and you treat me like I am beautiful. And for all of that I have to thank you.

You’re the best boyfriend ever.

And as cheesy as I know this will sound, hope today is as wonderful as you are.

Ladies and gentlemen…

This beautiful July the 15th is a special day, a very special day indeed.

Why, you ask?

Because today is the anniversary of a birth that changed the world forever.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENN!

I was going to make you a Kidpix cake but my painting skills proved to be a little worse than rudimentary. So instead I decided to write you a post/tweet and leave the Kidpixing to you. It’s the thought that counts, right? Enjoy your pretend digital cake.

And for those of you who do not know who Jenn is, I suggest you drop by You are flawed if you are not free and find out yourself. If you have not yet paid her a visit (or three hundred) you are very obviously missing out.

Movable Type Hair

Dooce + Twitter = Movable Type Hair

Brainstorming

If legend has it that you use a rain stick to bring rain storms, do they have brain sticks to bring brainstorms?

Dear Brain,

I’m sorry that I sometimes misspell your name as “Brian”.

I know you’re dying to stretch those creative muscles and that I have been giving you no time to do that. I’ve watched and listened to enough TED and Pop!Tech seminars to make the creative side of you stir-crazy.

I haven’t worked on my book in months. I have a playscript in progress that has been sorely ignored. I could probably reawake the fishing village in the back of my mind called “Poetry” if I only gave myself time to read more of it. I read a little bit by the poolside the a couple of weeks back, but that’s the most creative I’ve been in months.

Consider this my formal apology, and I am going to do my best to remedy this discrepancy.

Signed,

Me

I love

Chocolate milk.

What’s one of the simple pleasures that brighten your day?

Pannekoekens

The streetlights running along the canals were fireflies floating around us. The silent amber lights were fountains that washed us away. I could attempt to make pannekoekens and couscous for everyone in the room and the twenty of us would watch your low-budget Dutch movies in the quietness of a random living room like the world’s motor hinged on us.

The Concert Hall

My car is the perfect concert hall. In the mornings on my way to work, I sail along in my venue on the freeway and sing my heart out to my audience pretending to be Eilen Jewell or Brett Dennen’s counterpart. In the afternoons in traffic I’m on the dance floor with my boy dancing to Frank Sinatra who is singing to us from the stage. At night, I’m spinning the ice cubes left in my glass while sitting at a small table alone in the back of the dark room listening to Joe Purdy sing about the seasons. Occasionally, when the sky is empty and the moon is brilliant, I’m sitting by a campfire deep in the night listening to Dallas Green and looking up at the stars wondering how long it will be before I reach them.

Above Audible

Maybe we have been lost in a book. The question now is who is the author.

The lightning tonight was like a lighter that never really took flame and yet refused to run out of fuel. It was like a story that starts to be told but then is forgotten before the story ends. An artist whose piece is seen and the fireworks explode for days in one person’s head and yet they cannot remember the artist’s name.

Or maybe it’s like our memories. The cup of coffee I never drank, the letter we never wrote, the road trip you didn’t take.

It’s the same feeling coming home after a long day and massive nosebleed seeing the room filled with unfamiliar faces wrapped in your blanket watching a movie whose volume is just above audible.

Poetry

I hate the feeling of needing to use art and create something and not being able to. I have so much to say and yet my words are blurred somewhere between wondering if I’m just the irrational child or wondering if anyone would care if I opened my mouth. I’m shocked at how I’m still not really able to write or talk about my experiences in Amsterdam. It’s too bad it’s two in the morning otherwise I might call you up and tell you how arrogant you sound. I wouldn’t, but it’s nice to have a “I might” in my head.

There is something very satisfying when a storm and I both leave to go back to my house and I reach it first. I half feel like a storm-chaser and half like a mad scientist who jumped fifteen minutes into the past for the first time. Sometimes I feel like I need to eat an apple after talking to you to clean my throat and stomach. There are days where I feel like the world is a joke or that the world is a riddler whose riddle begins with the letter “k”.

I have so much to say. How do I learn to write in a coherent form again? It seems that right now my mind is running on pure gasoline and is producing endless stanzas of poetry, each about fifteen lines long which all vary in length.

If you’re any kind of a mediocre stalker you already found this site and I could write something to you, but I won’t. These trips to other worlds in my head are almost coming true with the weather we’ve been having. The mornings and afternoons are blazing and sticky but by the time evening comes there are violent winds and rain and we’re all hoping we didn’t get stuck in some tv show as the minutes turned into midnight. The ridiculous thing is not knowing what I should say to you. And you’ll be gone in three weeks. I’ve known you for so long and maybe that’s why you listened with a grin when I told you a tale about three animals who were stolen away from the zoo. You ask me for a story. What else did you expect?

I hope you can help me decipher my poetry.

yaycalendarbones

I feel like there is too much emphasis on my schedule. When we speak, I know it’s going to come up and it will more likely than not be the bulk of our conversation. When you are only talking to me about my calendar and not about how I am or how my life is going, I sometimes feel like you aren’t listening.

I know it’s your way of trying to stay connected to my life and where I am and where I’m going… But I desperately don’t want to be defined in your head by my daytimer.

It makes me feel small.

So, if you’d like to hear from me more often… Maybe… You could… Ask me how I am? And I don’t mean the hihowareyou’s at the beginning of conversations.

EDIT:

I know this is kind of weird hearing this from my keyboard, but I didn’t know how to say this up until now, and I am fifteen times better with words on paper than I am letting them sky dive out of my mouth.

[Ridiculous me.]

1740

I’m number 1740 on the Million Blog List.

Tagless

You’re like a tea bag that does not have a tag on the end of the string
You are drowning and you wish you knew your own name

Not Andy

I was originally reading this article about Jon Foreman of Switchfoot. I already knew most of the information presented but I had been looking for details about Fiction Family, a project by Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek.

Though, that’s not what this post is about.

I got to the bottom of the article and started reading the comments.

Commenters make me giggle.

 

The toes of a butterfly

Today is the third day of rain in a week or so. It wasn’t pouring rain like last night but there was a liberal spread of fog and mist that clung to every curve of my body as I walked out into the parking lot. It’s been grey and pleasantly dark most of the day. It’s the perfect setting for me to sit in my unlit living room with a bowl of Cheerios and write.

I went to Walmart this afternoon to pick up some groceries. I still don’t understand how we have enough food and enough agricultural demand to fill one of those huge super centers and yet we don’t care or can’t seem to find enough resources to help feed people that actually need it. They need food in their bellies and we need less variety.

We’re disgusting.

There was a couple in the parking lot at Walmart with a little girl who couldn’t be older than two. The mother brought a cart over to their van and the father brought the little girl over in his arms. As they were getting her situated in the cart their faces were lit up with smile and they had been laughing the whole time.

I was very close to literally walking up to them and thanking them for laughing. It was the life-breath that I needed at that very moment.

Even though today has been a bit dreary and despite my feel overwhelmed at the fact that I feel like a disgusting pig for even walking into one of the superstores for the latter part of the day, I received a text message this afternoon that brightened my day:

“I miss you, my hobbit-toed butterfly.”

Under a Honeysuckle Tree

This morning and afternoon felt like summer. It’s the most summer it’s been since I came home from Amsterdam and the air made me feel beautiful. It was low eighties and the sky was bursting with sunlight.

Later in the evening there was a thin layer of grey spread evenly across the spatial ceiling that was thin enough to still let the sun burn like a giant candle. The yellow light rushed across the streets and up blades of grass and through the trees. The air smelled like the sweet fruit of summer. Every breath smelled like I was sitting under a honeysuckle tree.

It’s days like these that remind me that I’m alive. They put the sunlight back in my veins.

What is fire? When you see fire burning inside another human being, what does that look like? Is it warmth? Is it light? Is it anger that has been transformed into a discontent and passion to see change created? Is it a need to hear the truth proclaimed from the corners? Is it the determination and mercy to be able to say I’m not willing to wait because someone needs to help these people now?

Ever since my plane’s wheels parted with the runway here in America, my whole life has changed. The amount of change verses time ratio is incredible. Months before I left for Holland I felt like my whole existence was pointing towards the trip I was going to take. I was only in Amsterdam for ten days and I feel like the trajectory of my entire life has changed.

I reached the fine point of the cliff and now I’m flying through the beautiful flood below.

I have new hope and I officially have to do something about it now.

I bromes you.

I have to apologize for not paying more attention to my blog and my readers.

<stream of conciousness>

I’ve got stories to tell and pictures to post from Amsterdam. I’ve got lots to talk about the timing of events in my life lately. I have new-born passions and new ambition that is coming into view that are very slowly moving closer to the center of my heart and I barely know what to do about it other than chase them blindly and with mad love. I’ve discovered that I have hope inside of me that I took for granted for the longest time. I’ve found that I disagree more than I thought I did. I’m tired of pleasing people. I’m tired of attempting to look like I’m following the nice little cookie-cutter life that everyone has cut out for me in their heads. I need to slow down and take a few days just to relax and really devote some alone time to myself.

</stream of conciousness> 

You tend to build your life according to the priorites you have… But then what happens when you leave for ten days and come back with completely different priorities? Life feels awkward right now, I won’t lie. And I have no idea what all that means yet for the coming months, but I know it’s huge and it’s gonna throw me for a loop…

And yet I’ve never been so excited for the next chapter of my life.

I have so much to say and yet translating it to the keyboard has become very difficult.

Sitting on the boat in the canal with you at midnight talking helped me make more sense of my life. I wonder where your life went and what you remembered of our conversation the next morning. Your gold eyes flickered while we talked and I hope that you spent the next week knowing that the conversation between you, a film student, and I, a complete stranger standing with my group from America on a bridge, was not just part of your imagination. And if you do think you imagined it, maybe at least you’ll know what I meant by “east of the city” when you go to your next film class.

I was actually leary of talking to you for so long. The rest of the festival went on and the minutes passed. And yet we wandered through the meaning of life without even originally meaning to. You asked me a question that caught me off guard. “So what keeps you believing?” I never answered you and I’m sorry.

You send me messages once a week or so in broken English. At first I didn’t know what to make of them and so I didn’t know how to respond and I ignored your first few messages but now I realize that your messages carry hope and true friendship and support, even if it means spelling “promise” as “bromes” and “protect” as “brotcht” and “missionary” as “mushonry”.

This is the first time I’ve been able to write in what seems like months. I know I’ve usually got a lot of sunlight to pass arond when you read my posts here, but I need some time to turn out the light and wrestle with who I am and who I am becoming.

Jetlag Blue

I know I should be sleeping but I’ve found myself with this desperate need to create. I’ve been taking life in like a drunk takes down alcohol. I went for almost two weeks where every single moment was as strong and powerful as the moment before it and everyday I learned new lessons.

Maybe everyone else has more sense than I do and I’m just the naive child looking around with eyes like Delft blue plates like I just woke to life up this morning.

I feel like the steering wheel of my life has been turned and I am now headed into a life that is not going to go how anyone planned.

The remaining jetlag has laced its fingers into my mind and I’m struggling to stay awake.

I was already feeling nauseous that night but then once the light-headedness started creeping up my neck combined with the overly warm air around me, I knew I had to sit down soon. I knelt down and moved closer to the pair of feet behind me. I pulled my knees up to my chest and let my eyes lazily hang, looking through the railing of the balcony at the concert venue. Clarity was coming back to me with every second I remained on the floor. Looking up I saw towers and faces staring out above me at the stage, and I remember hearing the bass through the floor. It shook the balcony I was sitting on and it felt like the earth was waking up from a deep sleep.

The music poured into and filled my ears like water. I felt Sleep try to take over my consciousness but I held onto the rumbling and shivering bass notes reverberating through the floorboards like anchors.

I tied myself to the wheel and sailed through the restless sea of sound.

Maybe people choose not to feel things deeply simply because they don’t want to stay up until the early hours of the morning rambling about Delft blue chinaware and concerts that had the dynamics of an ocean.

Home is only so close and only so far away.

Two days ago our plane touched down on American soil once again.

Re-entry has been interesting to say the least. I find my American life rather pig-ish which is entirely frustrating.

The trip has brought around a reignition of fire inside me and a reformation of self.

You’ll hear stories and see pictures soon enough; just bear with me while I wrestle with being home.

Goede alvont!

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!

Chandelier Rising

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 Rest

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.

The Breezeway

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.

The Escape Artist

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.

Honey, I’m home!

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!)

Dear April 3rd

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.

Overheard

“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’m in love with anything that’s alive.”

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.

Think twice before you invite cockroaches in.

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.”

I did actually do something productive in the way of blogging this week.

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.

Running the numbers…

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!

Hello Birdy

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.

Tasty Metaphors

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.

Nice Beetle

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.

Ready, set, SLAM!

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.)

8 Simple Things

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…

“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.

Sweatpants, Wildfire, and My Sister.

“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!”

Life according to my father

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 vocal chords that walk down the street every night

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.

Hearts on the Rocks

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.)

This reminds me of Yoda.

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.

Numerical Lineup for Wednesday

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!

Arctic (Macbook) Air

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.

New terrible.

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.

Shoot the Moon

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.”

Happy What Day?

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.

The Stolen

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.

Winter Escape ‘08

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!

Blue

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.”

Nightmares and all the little receipts we let hang around

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.

Dr. Seuss Snowstorms

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.

Feb-roo-airy Fifth

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.

 

Unwanted Reminders

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.

This doesn’t make sense in our language but…

You spell safety to me.

Taaaaaag!

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.

Yes, I walked into that.

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?”

Sundays are

…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.

Hope in the rays

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?

Why in the world do I love this so much?

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.

How to Wrangle a Kangaroo

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.

“Where are you now?” “I am stepping outside and I think I just broke my hip.”

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.

Where Light meets Warmth, Silence greets Sunlight.

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.

Twenty-First Century Annoyances

“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…”

What I Learned from 2007

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

On 2007 (twelve days later).

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!

Yes

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

Nice to meet you.

Treasure chests

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

Dreamlike

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.