but now I see

Notes from the Road: Pit Stops, Part I

2011-07-14T09:19:00.002-04:00

Good thing I don't have a large readership. This sort of tardy writing would drive them all away. In my defense I've been very busy unpacking my car (which took half an hour), undergoing various interviews to determine my employment future [another post altogether], and spending a lot of time trying to get my 15-month-old nephew to like me best. Updates on that shall be forthcoming.

Depending on different factors (how badly I have to go to the bathroom, whether or not I decide to put real clothes on or do some housework at any given point) this could be a two-parter. I haven't decided (read: I don't have to pee that badly yet).

I left Tulsa on a Sunday, around 7 am. The planned breakdown (actually given my history with road trips that is an exceptionally poor word choice) was as follows:

-Sunday: Tulsa to Columbia, MO (5.5 hours)

-Monday: CoMo to St. Louis (2 hours)/St. Louis to Indianapolis (4.5 hours)

-Tuesday: Indy to Newark, Delaware (12 hours)

-Thursday: Newark to Bloomfield (5 hours)

Wednesday I planned to spend recouping from Tuesday's drive by hanging out with Sharayah and Jason before driving home to Connecticut on Thursday.

Of course I told my family I wouldn't be in til Sunday. SNEAKY.

Anyway, those distances there? I beat all of them except for the last one, and that last one only went over because I had to drive through New York on the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Which I loathe will all my being. There was traffic after the GWB, too, and into Fairfield County. But aside from that last leg, the highways were (mostly) clear and the driving was smooth. Such are the benefits of interstate travel on 4th of July weekend. Hooray for holiday driving!

The best part about this trip (that is already a lie, I can't pick a single best thing) was getting to stop and see friends and family during my non-driving hours. This post is supposed to be a rundown of those breaks. Let's get to it now.

In Columbia I stayed with Mo. Columbia, strictly speaking, is not on the route back to CT, but I always go here first. It's tradition to include Mo in some aspect of a roadtrip. During my college years (still love saying that) I spent countless hours/vacations on the road with her or crashing at her parents' house. PLUS this was my last time seeing her as a Single Lady. Hooray for the impending nuptials!

Impending Nuptials formed the focal point of our all-too-brief time together. After reaching her house and dropping off my things we hit the road again for a whirlwind afternoon of dropping off invitations, meeting with photographers, sample hour at Sam's Club (it's tradition, don't judge), and stopping by the Impending Groom's apartment to pick up/drop off various items. Then followed an evening of making wedding send-off/favors while eating cookies baked by the I.G. and watching BBC's new Sherlock Holmes. In short, it was delightful.

Stop 2 was The Roman Residence in St. Louis. I happened to arrive the day after their one-year anniversary, so lunch was a fairly laid-back affair consisting of Nate's Secret Ingredient Burgers and about three episodes of The Big Bang Theory, Season 3. We vetoed a walk in favor of vegging on the couch. It may be instructive to note that whenever possible I will probably opt for vegging on the couch.

Post-lunch (and post-stop-for-a-caffeinated-beverage) I turned North and East to stay Monday night with my cousins, expectant parents Mike and Meagan. There were plans in the offing to go see fireworks--but Meagan was pregnant and I was wiped after driving. I don't know what Mike's excuse was. We ate grilled cheese sandwiches and played this game, which by some astonishing stroke of beginner's luck, I won. I fell asleep on the couch to the intermittent rumblings of fireworks. It was glorious.

Notes from the Road: On the Radio

2011-07-08T09:37:00.003-04:00

[Some notes after my four day drive, beginning in Tulsa, OK, and ending up in Connecticut.]

I frequently hit 'scan' on my radio console to help me stay awake on my solo trek. Five-second blips of song mingled with intermittent bursts of static and raucous dj squawks will do a lot to keep you going without overdosing on caffeine. (That, and turning the ac to its coldest and strongest settings and freezing yourself for thirty seconds.)

With that said, here is a rough rundown of the most overplayed (or overblipped) songs across the radio stations of America:

-Katy Perry, Extraterrestrial (ET), Last Friday Night, Firework (Ms. Perry was far and away the winner of this overplay showdown)

-Black-eyed Peas, Just Can't Get Enough

-Adele, Rolling in the Deep

-Train, Save Me San Francisco

-Britney, some godawful guttural techno that I never figured out the name to

-Ke$ha, Blow

-The Script, Break Even

-OneRepublic, Secrets/The Good Life (only other artist [besides KP] to get two frequently played numbers)

-Bruno Mars, The Lazy Song

-Taylor Swift, Mean

-Ceelo Green, F You

Most of these are wretched. "The Lazy Song." Britney's "music." Anything Ke$ha has ever, ever done, or will do. It was nice to hear Adele getting so much air time, but even so, it got pretty old, pretty fast.

On the other hand, sometimes scans would yield gems:

-WHAM!, Careless Whisper

And that's all I need to say about that.

More notes from the road possibly in the future. For now, I must needs unpack.

Burning bridges

2011-06-19T18:33:00.004-04:00

Two people can live through an identical experience and be affected in utterly dissimilar ways.

I grew up with two loving parents, enough food, clothing, and shelter, and a houseful of siblings. Any way you slice it, I have no room for complaining about my childhood, and I don't intend to.

Everyone, however, has bad experiences. Mine came in the form of church leadership. My home church experienced a roller coaster of screwball stuff, but it survived. That church was my world growing up, and the damage done to the congregation went past what it might have in a larger or less involved group of people. By the grace of God the church has become what it was supposed to be: a place full of joy, and laughter, and music, and Christ. But what takes an institution a few office changes (and the power of God) to overcome can take an impressionable child years to shake.

So, I've had my share of baggage. Trust issues. Bad memories and connections. Knee-jerk ideological reactions. But--especially in the past couple of years--I've learned how to uncork some of those memories. I know I don't carry around much of that baggage anymore. The past has weighed me down. Has pushed and pulled me and contributed to making me who and what I now am. I've recognized that--but I have ceased to believe that it's the greatest defining factor of my existence, or of my childhood relationships.

Still hurts to think about, though, and I'm thinking about it today. Especially how differently others who lived out the crazy are now reacting to it. I stumbled on something written by an old and very dear childhood friend and reading what she had to say about the past that we share made me feel as if I'd been given a swift kick to the solar plexus. She's moved on, has created her own idea of what it means to be free of the past. But moving on and healing, while sometimes synonymous, aren't always. Sometimes you have to live with a hurt in order to get better. You have to examine what's wrong. Gangrenous limbs need to be cut off, yes; but a broken arm can be set, made strong again.

Some of the really good memories--the ones with no hurts attached--come from time spent with this friend. I don't want or mean to judge her, or to sound judgmental. Our experiences were certainly not identical, and maybe not even comparable. Maybe for her amputation was the only solution. It's just that someday I pray that she and I can sit down together somewhere, can look each other in the eye, with nothing obstructing the view.

End Times

2011-06-03T00:29:00.002-04:00

Back for my last stint in T-town.

I'm ready to move on.

If humans ever really colonized space I would so be down for relocating. (As if we haven't already. I'm looking at you, GOVERNMENT.)

But before I bound about the rocky hills of Mars I think I would enjoy going to Ireland or something. Lots of somethings.

I bought a dress while I was home this past weekend. I wonder what it would be like to just go and buy an article of clothing without having a fight with the price tag first. (At the mall I mean. I have no particular desire to wear anything worth anywhere near as much as, say, my car.)

It's a goodlooking dress. I look good in it. It looks good on me. This is an agreeable state of things. Now to find shoes that agree with the both of us: we'll see how that goes.

I bet that dress would look awesome on me on Mars.

But I've got to get out of Tulsa first.

And another thing

2011-05-15T01:38:00.003-04:00

Addendums (addendi?) to previous post:

13. The weather this week has been unseasonably cool for Tulsa in May; it's as though we are having an actual springtime! Which means on my early runs at Lafortune I can smell honeysuckle and cold morning air, which is one of the best of all good things.

14. I have free time to read novels! And have conversations with good friends!

15. I bought shorts today! This is Somewhat Miraculous.

16. I have to change Thad's oil and get him realigned (categorized with packing the apartment and applying for jobs: by adding it to the list I will generate excitement within myself!)!

Things I am excited about

2011-05-13T18:33:00.002-04:00

SUSAN IS COMING THIS WEEKEND and I can't say how glad I am about that.
Going to Chicago! in a week with Leslie and NOT SPENDING THE WHOLE TIME SHOPPING (Last time I was there I was with a group who walked A MILE to get from one H&M to A DIFFERENT H&M. I am still boggled by the incomprehensibility of this)
Seeing Adele! in concert while in Chicago (in my head she is going to hear me singing along and ask me to come on stage with her at which point I will (pee myself) blow her and the whole crowd away with my singing prowess and she'll insist that we go on tour together and be best friends)
Going HOME! after Adele and Chicago (Adele will agree to reroute the tour through Connecticut)
Seeing THE BABIES while I am home and resecuring my title as Favorite Aunt with them ALL
The Wedding of the Roommate! The Wedding of the Roommate! The Wedding of the Roommate! It's going to be amazing (especially since Adele is going to agree to sing at it WITH me). My first time as MOH. I hope I do not blow it
Packing up the apartment! I don't know why I'm excited about this but I am including it on the list in an attempt to make me that way, and ditto for
Applying for jobs! I have some in mind, but I refrain from talking about them til I am more sure of my own inclinations
Jenna's Wedding, at which I am the Wedding Singer. I shall wear red lipstick and a fedora.
The Epic Summer Roadtrip of 2011 which will consist of me and Thad (my Camry) and all of my worldly goods driving Tulsa to CT with stops including but not limited to CoMo, STL, and possibly Indianapolis. I LOVE ROADTRIPS and this one will be by myself which means I am gonna get me some books on tape and a crapload of mix cds.
My cousin's wedding which is on my birthday so you know DOUBLE EXCITEMENT (I told him they need to prepare extra cake)
The Wedding of the Stark(e)s, otherwise known as The Day All Was Right With The World. I have been excited about this one for years.

That's four weddings over three months, which has got nothing on last summer. I guess I am excited about that too!

Clocks

2011-05-09T10:54:00.005-04:00

I think it is my overwhelming love of narrative that made me a Victorianist in grad school, way back last week when I was in grad school. The thing that I fundamentally and always disliked about Modernism as a literary movement was the en medias res opening which is when an author plunges slap into the middle of someone's mental processes or lunch break or car chase without an ounce of back story. I love back story. In grade school (completely different from grad school but the same in that both are in my past) (I am going to try to stop bringing that up now, the thing about how I'm finished with grad school) I always got annoyed by story problems in math because I never felt like they gave me enough context. In the first place, why is the farmer planting so much corn and so little soy by comparison? Is that all he plants? Does he have a vegetable garden and maybe a cow to supplement his income and feed himself and/or his family? Why diversify his crops at all? What is his name? Is he a lonely, reedy bachelor farmer saving up to propose to the baker's daughter in town? Is he a florid, well-established married farmer with a rosy-cheeked, bustlingly capable wife and a kitchen-table's worth of stalwart sons? Is he a struggling immigrant with many mouths to feed? If I get this question wrong, will he be able to feed his family this winter/propose to Ida Mae/avoid being scolded by capable bustling wife? What are the stakes here? And why is a FARMER asking an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENT to do his basic math? How good of a farmer are you if you can't compute bushels and acres?

This is also why I have always loved Victorian novels. Four solid chapters about the family background of the heroine detailing her parents' lives before she ever enters the plot at all? Yes please. Meandering description of topographical surroundings with broad regional metaphors? Sign me up. I like to know how a story goes from the beginning, an element I assume everyone I have ever told a story to also appreciates, which ~~drives my friends crazy~~ all my friends absolutely love about me! The more back story, the more detailed, (provided it's well done, of course and always), the more satisfied I and my endlessly questioning imagination will be.

I've recently realized that I try to treat the Internet like a Victorian novel, in that when I find a blog or webcomic or Twitter feed that I like I will go back through the archives to the VERY BEGINNING and read it the whole way through, regardless of inanity, and will continue reading even if it stops being funny or awesome, because I want to know what brought the author/s-in-question to the point at which I encountered him/her/them. I want their back story.

All that to say that I recently read the blog of a woman who blogged her experience with the pregnancy of her now seven-year-old daughter, and it occurred to me that as a 23-just-shy-of-24 year old it would be neither unusual nor illogical for me to get married and have a baby, right now, at my age, and my instantaneous reaction to this realization was a very mature bout of irrepressible giggling at the idea that I have a biological clock and that it is supposed to be ticking. So there goes that theory.

Series Finale

2011-04-28T01:31:00.003-04:00

And OH HOLY COW here it is.

The Last Week. Of School. For me maybe ever.

What comes NEXT, I ask you?

(You are probably not the one[s] to ask.)

Well here are some Ideas I've had:

The only idea I have is to make enough money to pay my loans. Foresight!

I would like to stop and consider the view from where I am right now, because in a week I will not any longer have the same one.

Life is whizzing right along. A summer of weddings approaches (no one is surprised) and also of job applications and hopefully interviews and acceptances, et cetera.

I feel sometimes the same way I feel when I'm playing soccer. I'm best on defense. When I play forward I can't figure out where I should be looking. Behind me to see an oncoming pass? Ahead to make sure I'm not offsides? At the ball so that I know where I should be going? All trying to figure this out while running. I can never get it right. When the ball does come my way I'm inevitably looking the wrong way or I can't figure out what to do with it before I run out of time or room.

That's a bit incoherent, but it's how I've been feeling about life. I can't keep my eyes on the ball and on the rest of the field at the same time. I can't figure out how to live in the present and how to effectively consider the future.

At least I haven't learned how yet.

This summer might help, somehow. I'm choosing to think it will.

I get more done when I leave the apartment.

2011-04-12T17:11:00.001-04:00

I am having such a productive day. I almost have a whole paper written before 3.30 in the afternoon that I hadn't thought about writing until I began it at 11 am.

This has also been a fundamentally unsettling day: I drank coffee and enjoyed it. After my run this morning (I hydrated with water and Gatorade post-run, and the Gatorade was awful because I brushed my teeth right before my run, but I drank it anyway) I went to Nord's. At Nord's I told the guy three things: I needed caffeine, I wanted something cold, and I wasn't a big coffee fan. He proceeded to make me an iced cold brew something or other that I poured skim milk into and drank with a growing sense of disbelief. Apparently the cold-brew process (which takes eleven hours [ridiculous]) makes the final product less acidic and bitter. It still tasted like coffee, but it was...palatable. A first for me. Normally I only like coffee in two forms: 1. ice cream 2. Seattle's Best Peppermint Mocha Trio (hot minty chocolate with just a smidge of coffee flavor).

He suggested it and I agreed because that's what I do; I agree to things. But I enjoyed it. I still don't know what to think. Am I going to like coffee? Even if I do, I refuse to become addicted. I just won't. I've lasted this long.

(The other unsettling thing about this was the effect that coffee tends to have on my withinsides. Blerg.)

Back to paper-ing. Let's see if I can finish it by 4?

Unsurprising

2011-04-04T18:22:00.001-04:00

I can't stop listening to boyzIImen.

School of Hard Heads

2011-03-29T00:22:00.002-04:00

Academia is hard because it is an artificial environment that intrudes into the real. It consumes my life.

I don't want it to, so when I'm done with this, I'm getting out. When I'm done. It's not as easy as it sounds--I have only a few weeks left and I can't see my way past them. But we've been over that.

What am I going to do when I don't have school as an excuse anymore? I'm serving my Tulsa church, and I love that I can do that. I'm trying to the best of my poor ability to be available to friends in need, but I'm inadequate, and I know that. Meanwhile I throw the last few minutes of my day towards Christ and I think it's the best I can do, because I'm just so busy. My busyness, examined, yields a different record of the day, the remains of which are idled (idoled) elsewhere; the between-times of tasks that I never quite seem to accomplish.

I've found my need for grace to be overwhelmingly more than I once assumed. I've found His willingness to cover me to be beyond the limits of my presumptions. And I've taken advantage of that.

Where's the line between rejoicing in the ever-presence of Grace, and abusing it? Between security and complacency?

I've spent years and years in school and now, emerging, I'm confronted with my own staggering ignorance.

More than a Mile

2011-03-24T11:16:00.002-04:00

So...I didn't get ten pages written. More like eight.

BUT this morning at the park I ran for a mile and a half. I don't think I've ever done that before. And I'm not even in pain. Much.

Off to babysit for the day: I will have to bring a book to read, in case Little Man deigns to nap. Laptop battery and adapter coming this week! Soon I will be a normal computer-toting person, able to do my work on-the-go. Instead of precariously balanced on a chair in my living room, hoping I don't jostle the frayed and cantankerous cord as it juts awkwardly from the socket. Oh get here soon! Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds!

(that was from memory; I hope it is correct.)

By Saturday night I will have doubled my current thesis pagery. Ready? GO.

Accountability

2011-03-21T23:47:00.002-04:00

I have six weeks to write approximately 70 pages, grade approximately 100 papers and projects, watch five films, and read an innumerable amount of essays and novels.

And then I will be out of school.

*hyperventilation*

I haven't decided yet if my regularity in working out is really just closet procrastination of my scholarly tasks. Regardless, tomorrow I'm going to get up, do my three miles, come home and write this thesis. By this time tomorrow I'm going to have ten viable pages.

*checks clock*

10.54 pm it is. Jesus, take the wheel.

The Best Thing:

2011-03-21T00:15:00.003-04:00

Coming home after a soccer game, victorious, to an apartment freshly cleaned.
Alt. def. Anything with Hugh Jackman (Exception: Kate and Leopold).

2011-03-11T12:44:00.001-05:00

I want today to be over now. Can't time do one of those speed-up things it likes to do sometimes?

Susceptible

2011-03-10T01:13:00.001-05:00

These days chick flicks do not have any impact on my somewhat downplayed romantic side. Netflixed episodes of Bones, however--

My hair grows fast.

2011-03-07T18:17:00.004-05:00

That is, quickly.

After cutting off about 18 inches a few weeks ago it's already tickling past the tops of my ears and swooping over my eyebrows. I'm enjoying the change, though.

There are many changes right now, and more to come in rapid sequence. In the first place, I'm working out consistently and on purpose and under no motivation but my own for the first time perhaps ever. I'm apprehensive about putting it up here because I am (always have been) just slightly superstitious and I can't help but think that bragging is just about the surest jinx there is--but it's true. Even last week when I felt the reverse of good I still managed to do three miles twice. It's not impressive working out--I'm not training for a marathon (idea?), I'm actually just walking (rapidly) the three-mile trail at Lafortune or doing three miles on the treadmill at school. The point is, I'm doing it.

I've always hated running/speed walking/jogging because 1. it's uncomfortable 2. I look ridiculous and 3. I could never focus. Seriously, any time I tried I would get so caught up in how hard it was to breathe and how much it hurt that I'd just give up. Aiming for a set distance never helped--I'd talk my self out of it--and the same thing with a set time. For a brief while one collegiate summer I tried doing that walk-run challenge--where you build up to running through increased intervals on a walk. Over the course of the summer I think I actually did it...three times? So much for that.

These days, if I want to see if I can run, I've figured out how to do it--by songs. I recently inherited an iPod nano. It's changed the workout process. Step 1. Select playlist. Step 2. Walk. Fast. Step 3. Start running at the beginning of a song. Run til the song ends. Step 4. Back to a fast walk. Repeat. The result? I am running. I don't particularly like it, but I can, and that's the difference. No significant weightloss, according to my clothes, but it's only been a few weeks. On a good week (two out of the three so far) I walk/run four days and play racquetball and soccer one day each, respectively. Soccer could soon up to two days a week-- and I keep telling myself I'm going to walk on the weekends. It just hasn't happened yet.

The first few post-workouts are the best. Normally they're the only ones I experience--the first ones. A few weeks in and I don't feel as smug or as exhilarated as I did the first time. I feel leaden and slightly pained. I intend to continue (how I feel, I find, matters less than what I do).

Another change--I'm working on my Master's thesis. This means I'll be out of school soon--very soon. Out of school. The phrase is as yet hollow and meaningless. But not for long.

When I am done with school I know exactly what I am going to do--read all the pointless books I own and NOT THINK CRITICALLY about them.

Who am I kidding. I can't help that.

Some things will not change.

I've always wanted to shave my head

2011-02-17T01:34:00.002-05:00

But I can't. Oh social convention.

So a pixie cut is the closest I'll probably ever get.

I am getting my hair cut SHORT tomorrow, and I am currently afraid of looking like 1. a boy 2. a lesbian 3. Kate Gosselin so I really hope the stylist isn't awful.

I have been growing my hair out since I last got it cut short, sophomore year of college. The current length is the longest it's been maybe ever.

But it's been annoying me--and I want to donate it--and if I don't cut it all off now, when will I? I figure now is best. I have no man in my life to object--and I have noticed that guys have Opinions about hair. So since the only person I have to consult here is me, snips away.

oh please oh please don't let me look gross please

And THINK of all the money I'll save on shampoo.

Snow Daze

2011-02-09T01:21:00.001-05:00

Ooooh I don't want to have school tomorrow

I absolutely don't

(five hours of student conferences followed by a presentation on Henry James? Let it not be, Dear Lord. Even so, come quickly, Snowpocalypse.)

I'm Every Woman?

2011-02-05T02:18:00.006-05:00

This is a rant. This is only a rant. The result of too many videos of windbag preachers with faulty scriptural interpretation clogging up my facebook page and the misinformed and asinine defenses that come with them. This does not apply to many, many, many people, so when I use sweeping generalizations and fail to qualify them, understand that this is a rant.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with people.

Specifically (this is going to come with a lot of qualifiers) with the gender-stereotyped mindset of many of my fellow believers in the evangelical church.

The dynamic of June and Ward Cleaver is an incredibly loaded cultural icon: for some it heralds a Lost World, a harking back to the Way Things Should Be. For others it's a black-and-white reminder of what we have escaped. For still others it represents a cultural hilarity, an amusing artifact of our benighted ancestors. Either way, it is an image that has largely disappeared from the cultural landscape.

Living as my generation is in the midst of third wave feminism, girls [in my general socio-economic stratum] have been raised to believe that we can do anything we set our minds to. We can have the same careers as boys do. What were once closed doors, men-only clubs, are now viable options for a successful and fulfilling future, regardless of sex. This is what we are told; this is what we take for granted. Leaving aside the grandiose childishness of career opportunity, we've also been raised, for the most part, in an economic climate of career necessity. Our mothers worked outside the home because we needed groceries, or rent, or mortgage payments, as much as they did because they were following their dreams, or loved their work.

The point is that many of us were raised by working mothers as well as fathers. This is largely regarded as a necessary evil in the Church, rather than an historic opportunity or a possible good. The shifting gender roles of the 20th century have, in the evangelical church, been blamed on (not explained by) such anathematic movements as Feminism and Women's Lib (never mind the historical movements in gender that go way past Betty Friedan or even the activism of Margaret Sanger and her ilk. As though gender role shifts were nonexistent until their advent.).

At any rate, the churched children of my generation have been raised with a somewhat schizophrenic reading of gender roles: little girls are told to be anything they want to be, while little boys are told that they must, under no circumstances, relinquish the role of primary economic provider within a family structure. Young women are expected to simultaneously believe that careers are an open opportunity for them, and that housekeeperhood (not just mother- or wife-) is the obvious first and best choice, with all other callings, gifts, talents, or dreams becoming necessarily secondary to the undeniable claim staked by her reproductive organs and hormonal functions.

And so the little girls grow up dreaming of careers that they are expected to faithfully forfeit as soon as they wear a wedding band, or as soon as they first ask for maternity leave. While economic necessity forces many mothers to work, many pastors still paint working mothers as at best a worst case scenario (woman who would much rather be a keeper at home needs the income to make ends meet for her family) and at worst absolute selfishness (woman who despises children seeks self aggrandizement in a soulless search for money and prestige). Rarely are we presented any sort of middle ground, and just as rarely do we see a woman who feels a greater call to a particular field of work than to mothering, helpmeeting, or housekeeping, as a figure to admire or emulate.

Far be it from me to malign in any way the godly, holy calling of motherhood. I would never disgrace the insanely difficult, demanding, and challenging job of the stay-at-home mom by suggesting that it is somehow less than a career in itself. I will say, however, that even though women as a gender are built to carry children, not all women are called to be keepers at home. Not all women, despite their ability to carry children, or even their desire to bear children someday, feel called to forego the gifts that God has given them in favor of full-time housekeeping. If you are so called, be blessed. Work hard. Be devoted to that job. But if, like a case I have in mind, you are gifted in, say, languages, and feel called to work in international business, then do that. Do it well.

And--here's the kicker--do it even if and when you have kids. Why is it wrong to ask a man to take a prominent role in the home life of his children? Why does that make him somehow less manly? I am not advocating for stay-at-home dads. I am not saying that wives and mothers should all leave the home and enter corporate America--far from it. But I'm asking for a little reciprocity. I keep hearing the virtues of the "either-or" dynamic. What is so wrong about a "both-and" family? Why is a man providing for his family only considered in economic terms? What about emotionally? Spiritually? Surely a man can do a more fulfilling job as head of the household if he spends more time with his children, even if that means his wife maintains an extra-domestic career of some sort, whatever that looks like. Surely a woman would do a better job of raising her children if she showed them that she had a set of gifts and abilities that she used to make their lives better and to bring glory to God.

I guess what really gets me is the idea that everyone accepts that there is more than one type of man in the world--you have engineers and fighter pilots and dentists and cricketers and midshipmen and lawyers and accountants and professors and musicians. A man can be any of these things and still be considered manly. But too often (see disclaimer above) women who do likewise are not considered womanly enough. And that frustrates me. If a woman is following the will of God for her life, how could she be otherwise than womanly?

Tip

2011-01-24T12:24:00.003-05:00

If you can, watch people enjoy eating something you cooked. It's the best.

Why I write; also, Why I don't

2011-01-23T21:44:00.005-05:00

Do you know, I have so much terrible poetry stored up in me from my childhood; and, do you know, it still affects me, sometimes, more than some of the excellent poetry I have loved and learned since then?

I have High Ideas about art--I would rather not write at all than not write as well as I want to (I am understanding how stupid that is)-- but they are not right ideas. Is it better to produce something that meets my own personal standards of brilliance or to produce something that affects people, that stays with them, however lowbrow it may be? I can't decide.

On the one hand, I feel personally compelled not to contribute to the mass of terrible writing that is already available for consumption. A recent trip to B&N resulted in an hour of bemused disgust in viewing sequel after sequel of Pride and Prejudice, including but not limited to Mr. Darcy's Sister; Mr. Darcy's Daughters; Mr. Darcy and Me; Elizabeth's Betrothal; The Shades of Pemberley; Mr. Darcy, Vampyre; The Wooing of Elizabeth, equivalent in my mind to a sort of literary prostitution. Poor Jane. Of course you can imagine something that's already been imagined. Of course you can warp what's already been created. If you can't write or imagine or "make up" yourself, that is. I don't think loathing is too strong a word for what I feel for this sort of "literature". I hate it. I think it could all be destroyed and the world would be a better place.

The same is true, to an even greater extent, with fiction marketed as "Christian." I pick on the Jane Austen fanfics because those are currently saturating the market. But as a Christian, and as one who, if not a writer herself, at least appreciates writing, that stuff makes me alternately writhe with rage and howl with laughter. It also makes me squirm with discomfort. My great fear is that if I were to begin writing, really do it, actually attempt the presumptuous act of fictive creation--that it would end up like that writing I judge and mock and scorn.

So I don't write. I know something of my capabilities: I've finished a few short stories and memoir pieces. It is rarely a satisfactory experience. I want to write better than I do, and of course, the way to improve is through writing more. Practice. But some people practice--and practice--and practice--and never achieve anything better than Mr. Darcy's Harem.

On the other hand, however I may rail against them, those books have found an audience. People who read them are entertained. I don't just want to entertain people. Would I be false to my ideals to produce and share writing that I am not proud of? That is not up to my standard of what is Good Writing?

Or, worse--could I stand to produce anything and have it ignored? Could I stand to fail? As it stands, no. I can't. I have, apparently, an imaginary reputation to protect.

It remains to be seen how I will handle this. I have a convenient collection of empty notebooks. Maybe it's time I began to fill them, to see what I'd have at the end of it.

Brittle

2011-01-21T20:53:00.003-05:00

O hollow hallowed bones,

So light, and lightly flung

Away, nested in flesh

And feather, fear and fight:

O breathless air,

In calcified traps concealed,

Never to nourish

The red blood, starved--

Where do you live

When flight stops

And the broken laws ascend?

You wait in caverns,

Through echoes of living drums,

For the ringing stillness.

Only rest within these walls.

No explosive without

Is known in sealed serenity.

Unless--fractured--

Exposed, unlocked, maimed--

Done to decay, gentle

After violent life. One fall

For many flights,

O hollowed holy heart-in-hand

You were never known

To live, til life were not.

Credible

2011-01-12T00:41:00.002-05:00

Tonight a doctor told me I was one of the most responsible people he's ever met. I'm going to use this to batter the voice in my head that says "you're slacking" for the rest of my life. A real live doctor!

Unrelated Items of the Day

2011-01-10T15:01:00.003-05:00

I'm happiest when I'm singing. (not performing.)

In candid, honest self-evaluation, I see that I'm not fiery or passionate. I'm obsequious and careful, looking out to make sure I squeeze through life with as little of the following as possible: 1. effort 2. discomfort 3. mayonnaise (I don't like it).

Started my final semester of school (as far, at least, as I know) today. Taught two classes. Not wide-eyed freshmen this time: cynical juniors and seniors, in varying business majors, who will learn (I will make them) how to write appropriate, clear, coherent emails, memos, and cover letters. Boring? Yes. BUT I made a few of them laugh today (I was younger than they thought I would be) and also I am pretty sure I'm the Hot Teacher. I definitely got checked out. Foolish boys. I will wield my beauty to make you use correct APA formatting. (Ugh, APA formatting.)

Got home tonight and took out the trash and was accosted by my neighbor. Understand this about my neighbors: they are a family of five-- mom, dad, daughters-- who moved here from New York so the parents could attend Bible school. The oldest daughter, 15, is out of control, and the middle one is right there with her. The mom has begun clinging to me and my roommates with a sort of determined desperation, since we are, from her perspective, what she wants her daughters to be.

Lex, Vic and I have all tried to spend time with them. We've prayed with them and for them, hosted movie nights and baking parties. Sometimes more enthusiastically than other times. We're all busy. We all have full-time lives and these girls have problems that go beyond an after-school special sort of fix.

Today the two oldest girls ran away after fighting with their mother. Not the sort of running away that entails planning and packing--they ran out in a snowstorm without coats or shoes. I prayed with Cathy (mom) and washed the dishes and cleaned the bathroom while she waited for the cops and cried. I imagined giving the girls a piece of my mind when they came back home, teaching them to respect their mother, inspiring them to change like in all movies about rebellious or under-privileged high-schoolers ever. Instead I had to leave to pick Vic up from work. As I write this I don't know whether or not they're home yet. I scrubbed the bathtub because I didn't know what else to do, except keep praying.

I can't do anything for this family, even though I can identify several problem spots. The husband doesn't back up his wife on discipline, and her discipline, such as it is, is erratic and tends to be little more than shouting and complaining. Over the past few months she's come over a few times, looking to us for guidance. No parents are perfect, and those girls are theirs. I can't step in and try to fix it. I know some of what needs to change, but I can't dispense child-rearing advice to a woman twice my age. All I can do is pray that those girls come home. That they know the Lord. That they allow Him to change their hearts. And that I allow Him to use me to minister to them in any way I can. To be candid, I would rather not. These sorts of situations make me intensely uncomfortable. But their well-being, and their need, trumps my comfort. Time to get out of the bubble.

I don't know how to get through to them. But I have to trust that the conclusion of my relationship with this family depends on Christ.

Bring them home safely, Father.

Postscript

2011-01-07T00:57:00.003-05:00

I say the same kinds of things on here, over and over again. Be original, Colleen.

That can be my final resolution.

2011

2011-01-07T00:21:00.003-05:00

Something I thought of tonight:

I'm in my 20s. I will be in my 30s. (God willing.)

And then my 40s.

50s.

60s.

70s.

80s? (If I avoid the hereditary pitfalls of heart disease and cancer.)

23 years of it are gone, and they aren't coming back. I find myself thinking and planning and dreaming of "what I'm going to do when I grow up" as if I'm not here, living it, day by day, minute by minute. That's it. No do-overs.

Sometimes I have thought of this and been uncomfortable, and afraid, but now I am excited. Curious. Piqued. Oddly enough, secure. Not secure in definitions, or plans, but only in the fact that Life is here, and I am in it, and I'm not in control.

This Christmas has been wonderful, if not strictly Christmasy. I'm going back to school tomorrow, to teach classes I'm unprepared for and to pick up my freshly fixed car and to hug my roommates. I'll be finishing my Masters degree and missing out on my nephew's first steps and first words. I'll be helping plan a bunch of weddings and researching Life After School.

I'm not ready for it, but somewhere along the line that just stopped mattering to me quite so much. All I can do is what I know to do; the Lord will work out the rest.

So resolutions?

Discipline (Weddings! also, avoiding heart disease?)

Follow-through (no more using realized hangups as excuses to continue in them)

Prudence (financially. Hello, Sallie Mae, we are going to be friends.)

Welcome, welcome, Newest Year.

(oh and PS. 61 posts for 2010! somewhere around thanksgiving I stopped writing on here, and in my journal, and pretty much everywhere, but I don't even care. final resolution: to write because I wish to write, and when I wish to write, and to neither force nor deny the impulse. huzzah!)

The Last Bowl

2010-12-01T06:04:00.004-05:00

Sometimes,

When it is 5 am and you have been writing about Klingons

(Klingons!)

For the past seven or ten hours, and you go to the fridge

In stiff-jointed despair,

A bowl (the last bowl) of beef barley soup

Can actually save your life.

I'd like to do a pledge drive for this, the kind that celebrities do,

To raise awareness in the academic community

About soup

And how it can work miracles when properly applied.

Complete with a dramatic photo montage,

Heartfelt testimonials,

And some musicians who like Causes.

It's more than the soup itself though.

The fact that it's the last bowl has an awful lot to do with it,

That I'm the last one who's going to get

To slurp up that savory delectable warmth,

Is as much of a miracle as a night like this requires.

The Final(s) Countdown

2010-11-28T20:50:00.004-05:00

Just two and a half weeks left in the semester and i am as usual TRYING NOT TO PANIC

But here are some things that are keeping me sane (are going to keep me sane [oh please oh please]):

Eureka. I am on season 3.5 and it keeps getting better.
I should have listed this first, but Netflix (under the capacious umbrella of which Eureka would accurately fall).
Chocolate. I know. I'm a total girl. and I have some cadburys in the freezer right now.
Candles. I like fire.
My roommates. One of whom will be in CANADA til WEDNESDAY which is UNACCEPTABLE except that you know the world does not revolve around me.
Pandora.
Christmas. And all things pertaining thereto.
Sleep. Something I didn't appreciate as a youth. But now, in seasoned age, I can appreciate it for all of its full loveliness.
Jesus. Who operates kind of the way Netflix does, a few items up, in that everything I've listed should properly be ascribed to Him.

Okay, kids, let's get this underway. Tomorrow my students start their oral presentations and I owe them donuts. Also I have to start writing intelligent things about Klingons, and some abotu Shakespeare, and science fiction dystopias, and Victorian novels.

I AM NOT PANICKING

And Again

2010-11-22T10:59:00.003-05:00

Maybe I'm writing this because I have my entire day planned out in order to achieve maximum productivity over this Thanksgiving break, and I'm rebelling against it by sabotaging myself.

Maybe I'm writing now because I feel like poor November has been slighted in posts this year (that's not why).

Maybe I'm writing now because I have Something to Say of Utmost Importance that Will Change Everything.

Who am I kidding?

Gotta get to work. Maybe I'll finish what I started here once I can finish everything else.

Cold feet

2010-11-02T16:57:00.002-04:00

Because it is 63 degrees out right now. Which is relatively cold--relatively, for the weather we had during October, which was nice but could have reasonably dropped another 15 degrees or so. I cannot express how badly I want Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

This is attributable to several factors:
1. missing the fam
2. academic apathy (my poor students. my poor professors.)
3. disliking Oklahoma.

It's not exactly Oklahoma's fault, understand. It's just that our relationship has grown stale. Six years is long enough. Now if I only knew where to go next...

All in due time. But for now, Dean Martin, Boyz II Men, and my Shakespeare paper are all beckoning me to rejoin them. I will think snowy thoughts and produce brilliant prose about Desdemona.

Remains of the Day

2010-10-19T15:49:00.005-04:00

Right now outside is Cloudy and Damp. It's been raining more or less consistently all day. the window is open and Actually Cool Air is coming in--intoxicating combination of dead leaves and wet pavement. The sound of the dryer forms a sort of bass for the competing melodies of the outside (rain and dull traffic) and inside (currently the Braveheart film score). I'm reading Hardy for my Victorian novel class.
I haven't gotten out of my pajamas yet. It's nearly 3.
Today is just the sort of day it ought to be by rights.
There is nothing momentous, nothing profound, no mental troubles that have distilled to the point of reporting.
Life is in limbo. Most of it is, I think. It's easy to get sidetracked.
I'm glad the rain is here. I've been waiting for weeks.

I have a superpower

2010-10-10T19:49:00.001-04:00

It is to plan a party for 12 people and end up inviting 20 the day before.
Seriously, I'm really good at it.

October, you slay me.

2010-10-07T00:33:00.002-04:00

I wish that all major life events happened in October. Because it is the most sublimely, ripely mellow of months. It is perfect and golden and crimson and splendid in the fullest sense of splendidness, and it towers and booms and melts and whispers and beams all at the same time, and it is just plain the best thing ever.
O October, I wish I could celebrate my birthday and Christmas and Thanksgiving and Valentine's and everything wonderful during your thirty-one days, because you are perfect, and then I could be connected to you somehow, other than just living through you every twelve months.

2010-10-03T19:56:00.003-04:00

I need to write something out.
There's a quotation I picked up somewhere along the line that goes something like this:

"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day that says only 'I will try again tomorrow.'"

I will try again tomorrow.

(That's all I really needed to say here, I guess.)

"in the midst of life we are in death"

2010-09-23T21:46:00.003-04:00

That's a line from the Requiem from the Book of Common Prayer. I like it.

A personal side effect of going to funerals is that I being to think about what I have for posterity. I always end up thinking I should start writing more. Since, in childhood, I periodically destroyed everything I produced, there's really not much that remains. Good luck to whoever writes my memoirs.* All they'll have to go on are this blog, facebook, a few documents on ye olde laptop, journals starting in 2007, and possibly some random letters I've composed. I've been thinking about writing more letters (I love love love writing/getting letters) and maybe composing them on carbon paper so that if anyone writes back, I'll know what I said. Thank you, 21st century, for my three-second attention span.
I've been thinking about sending flowers to people who are still alive to appreciate them. I've been thinking about the kinds of things I'll want people to say when I die. I've been thinking about when I'll sit in the "reserved for family" section, sending off the ones I love best in all the world.

I should go check out that carbon paper and price flower deliveries. (The kitchen needs to be cleaned too, but that's way less interesting.)

*No one's going to write my memoirs. I'm pretty sure.

Excepting this, I am beyond excited about the approach of Fall.

2010-09-16T00:39:00.004-04:00

There are no shoes in my closet that meet both of the following requirements:

are NOT flip-flops
do NOT cause me great blistery pain.

Did You Know?

2010-09-15T12:04:00.001-04:00

I have been craving trail mix something fierce.

A Little Light

2010-09-11T15:21:00.002-04:00

I tried to leave my apartment today to run errands. I had to go back twice. Twice.
That's just gross.

There's banana bread baking in my oven and I'm about to go have an overdue catch-up session with a Good Friend.
That's just perfect.

(I make killer banana bread.)

My roommate just opened the blinds. It's so amazing what a little light can do.

Wax On, Wax Off

2010-09-09T11:17:00.002-04:00

Still trudging through Hebrews.

My students handed in their first papers yesterday. The first sentence of the first paper I read goes like this:
"...Both the protagonist of the stories long for their mothers through their tail."

I'm hoping he meant "tale."
This is the kind of writing that gets you out of high school and accepted into college? Apparently. Have I got my work cut out for me. They are good kids--they participate. They just can't write. Yet. They will.

This could be one of those days where I get sucked into an introspective whirlpool of reminiscence about my walk as a follower of Christ and my thoroughly inadequate demonstration of what that is. I know I'm not where I could be. I know I have a long way to go. I know--nothing.

I'm walking in the tension between knowing that God is Himself, and knowing that I am myself. The stress--the opposite pulls--of living for Jesus through the body of Colleen. I don't want to say anything here about how I need to violently revolt against my flesh, or how Jesus is all the victory I need, but not because those things aren't TRUE--they are. I don't want to post a dozen paragraphs of them because they are just words. They're too pat, too cut-and-dried, for what this life actually is, in the marrow of it, and words are not enough.

This blog is not enough. Nothing I write will ever, ever be enough to communicate the hardship and the immense worth of signing your life over to Jesus Christ. So what am I doing with my time? I've devoted the past five years to words (seventeen students will undergo my red pen today because they can't use words properly). But outside of the artificial strictures of academia--what is it for?
I find that I constantly question the value of my knowledge, of all the criticisms and alternative reading methods I've stored up. Most of the time--in all honesty--though it's fun for me, it seems essentially useless. A means to an end. I'm here for the experience and for the degree. Pragmatism. But the knowledge I acquire to achieve that end--what good is it?

I can't sit around and theorize or ask answerless questions for the rest of linear existence. As much as I'd like to throw an existential tantrum and refuse to do anything more until all my questions have been satisfactorily answered, those papers aren't going to grade themselves, and I get paid to do it. I used to have a large box in my mind labeled "Things I Know." It used to be crammed quite full, but now the items within are so few I could keep them in my pocket.

I know that my work here is not wasted. I don't understand how, but I understand that God doesn't call us to do things so that we can trash them. And now I need to go put that transitory, inadequate knowledge to use so that Steve never uses "tail" for "tale" again.

Retrospective

2010-09-09T00:51:00.002-04:00

I had a conversation with my little brother last night that led me to go back and read all--yes all-- of my posts here since the inception of this chronicle some five years ago.

Reading it was embarrassing. I said some stupid stuff. This medium of communication is such a strange one--if I wanted to, I could go back and cover it all up. delete it, or change what I said then to better suit what I feel now, or how I desire to be perceived. I'm not going to do that--but there's nothing stopping me. I could take them down, then, the sidebar reminders of past pomposity or clumsiness.

But it's good for me to remember where I've been. Good to see what I've come from. Good to remember some of those highs and lows. And, barring everything else, it's a perspective check, for if I'm ever so foolish as to think I've arrived anywhere.

She Stews

2010-09-07T01:39:00.003-04:00

Reading slowly helps. Who knew?
(this from the child who used to read four and five novels a day.)

So. Does this sound familiar?

"Yes, this is all very elementary stuff. I've spent the past years analysing Victorian social conventions and women's literature and not studying theology and sanctification and justification and doctrinal issues. As a PK who's spent most of her Sundays in a church, maybe I should be embarrassed that I'm still making these kind of baby steps. Maybe I should be. I'm not."

It should. I wrote it a day or two ago. And then I read this:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Heb. 5.12-14)

and now...
Well.
Candor. I let myself off the hook too easily. At the moment, I'm writhing inches above solid unembarrassed ground; but then, all of this book is making me squirm.
Ugh. What do I do with this?

On to Chapter 6.

He Brews

2010-09-04T13:14:00.005-04:00

Every night, before I go to bed, for a few months now, I've read at least a chapter of the Bible. New Testament, specifically.
Considering where I started (Matthew) and where I am (Hebrews) and how fast I read some of the books (Acts took about two days), I know I have missed days--probably many--but this is still the longest stretch of disciplined commitment to the Word I've yet experienced in my 23 years, and my however many of those spent identifying as a Christian (we'll leave the hairy question of when exactly "identifying" properly changed to "being" or "living" or even "believing", since that's not one I'm interested in [or really capable of] addressing at the moment).

I started, as I said, in Matthew. I loved the Gospels. Really loved them. I found that I had a different interrogative for each book: How? Why? And in the case of John, What?! I lingered over the Gospels, I admit. I didn't want to finish them. Here was Jesus, himself. His own words. Not the extrapolations of generations of followers, but him. And yes, I know that the gospels weren't jotted down during Jesus's sermons, like notes in a class lecture. Nonetheless, I didn't want to leave the Gospels. I didn't want to leave Jesus.
I know that that sounds irrational, but I'm the kind of literature student who connects irrationally with fictional characters on a printed page, much less Real ones. I envied the disciples, fiercely. I wanted (and I'd forgotten about this until just now, sitting on my couch and writing this while consuming half of an excellent omelet) so badly to have my own experience of that Jesus that I reread chapter after chapter, verse after red-inked verse, reading his words out loud to better understand what he might have been saying (which he said, of course, in the King's English).
Leaving the Gospels was eased somewhat by the adventure of Acts, which was so exciting that I burned through it like I was getting paid. But then my headlong course hit Romans and I bounced off of it like I'd hit a wall.

So for the past few months I've been making more laborious process through the pauline epistles. There have been amazing moments there, too. In the spirit of candor, however, it's just easier for me to read story than philosophy. So it's taken me more effort to read these; effort that has, until now, been quickly rewarded with some illumination, some conviction, some healing, some breaking. For some reason I felt as though I were reading II Corinthians for the first time. Ephesians knocked the wind out of me. It was great. Everything was great. I felt--come on, candor, out with it-- like I was getting what I deserved-- what I'd "earned." Effort in, Enlightenment out. Isn't that how it works?
Well, sure. Except last week I read Hebrews.
And this week I'm reading Hebrews.
And I'll probably be reading it next week.
Look, Hebrews has some famous moments: The "faith" chapter--what self-respecting church kid can't quote it? And more. So this is not a book without signposts for me, points that I hit in unfamiliar reading territory that tell me, "oh, this is where I am. Now I know what he's talking about." Except that on my first read-through of the book none of those registered. I just felt lost.
I read Hebrews in only a few days, a few chapters at a time, hoping that if I read long enough, everything would make sense. I hit chapter 11 without a clue as to what had come before. True, I could have finished it up, marked the mental notch, and moved into James, but I didn't.
So now I'm on my way through it again. I've been hovering around the early chapters, rereading 4 and 5 last night. Along the way I ran across one of those signposts I must have either missed or glossed over the first time:

"For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

Ow. There's something that made sense. I still didn't quite get why the author was telling us to labor to enter in to rest--

"Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things [are] naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

"Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast [our] profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."

Nope, still don't get the rest (no pun intended) of chapter 4. I don't understand why such importance is being placed on the idea of the sabbath, of God's first and eternal rest, or why there needs to be such emphasis on the issue. But.
I think maybe the whole thing hinges on that last clause:
to "find grace to help in time of need."

Yes, this is all very elementary stuff. I've spent the past years analysing Victorian social conventions and women's literature and not studying theology and sanctification and justification and doctrinal issues. As a PK who's spent most of her Sundays in a church, maybe I should be embarrassed that I'm still making these kind of baby steps. Maybe I should be. I'm not.

This is, as discoveries go, probably minuscule. I can live with minuscule. I still don't get Hebrews. the more I read the less I think it's at all possible for me to live the kind of life I've signed up for, and that's the point: it's not possible. I can't live the way I want to. many people have discoursed about that topic much more eloquently than I'm capable of doing, so I'll leave it at that. I can't live how this book is instructing me to. I don't have the capacity to do it.

"Let us therefore come boldly before the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."

and all I can think, reading this, is,
OK.

El Anochecer

2010-09-04T00:37:00.002-04:00

The weather we've had recently is the kind that makes me absolutely the happiest kind of person i can be.

Reaching fall is like coming home.

The windows are open and the air conditioner's off. O gladness.

new month

2010-09-01T02:43:00.002-04:00

September came while I sat on the couch, feet propped higher than hips on the chair set up for that purpose.
It's going to stay for a few weeks. I don't know how much we'll see of one another...but Spetember has a way of getting in there, even when I'm rude enough to let it sit unnoticed for a few hours while I go about my busywork.

Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, for Piano

2010-08-31T13:08:00.003-04:00

Listening to this and working on a massive presentation for tomorrow, it occurs to me that I am an essentially shallow person. Thinking about things wears me out, and I rarely follow a thought process through to a sound, logical, absolute position. In fact on many subjects I have no absolute position; in many others I have an absolute position unjustified by any apologetic reasoning other than my own gut.
But I have so much homework. And to be honest, the firm establishment of the finer points in my worldview is going to have to wait until Thursday.

Working at Writing

2010-08-31T00:21:00.003-04:00

"I want to be able to convey the idea I have in my head right away, and that just doesn't happen."

My roommate said this to me tonight. She's sent me some sketches of hers to look over and critique, which led, of course, to a discussion of writing in general.
I read somewhere that Tolstoy said nothing is worth reading until it has been revised a thousand times. If Tolstoy felt that insecure about his writing, then my need to rewrite is probably somewhere near a trillion. That's precise mathematics at work, people.

I credit my aversion for rewriting with the meagerness of my portfolio. I've written very little. When I do write I find it hard, nearly impossible, to make substantial changes to a "finished" piece. Maybe the years of writing essays for classes, the sense that when something is handed in, it is for all intents and purposes formed permanently, have hardened me into a routine of non-revision. Whatever it is or was, I don't rewrite. And so I don't write. If I can't at once leap to what is in my mind, I give it up for lost.
I wonder what would happen if I didn't?

the dishwasher hums incessant

2010-08-29T14:50:00.003-04:00

and it makes my head spin a little. It's full of the dishes we used last night: five of us consuming stir-fry and rice and then pear tart and ice cream and for whatever reason those meals produce dishes like you would not believe.

Also we played Risk: I won.

And now one half of the sink is gurgling up used rinse-water from the dishwasher and chugging it back down again, like sudsy cud, and suddenly the sound has cut out and my right ear rings with the silence of it.
Not long. The air conditioning has replaced it.

I am curious about silence. Even without the air on, my computer emits noise, and my fingers clack on keys and my neighbors walk up and down and my building creaks and cars drive by...
Perfect stillness? Not something I'd ever achieve.

Back to work. I need to accomplish a Million Things. Schedules and papers and presentations o my! And o, I am feeling the lure of a non-school existence. Silence, siren! I must needs do what is before me.

(also, lookie there, this is my bloggiest year ever. who'd've thought?)

Augh

2010-08-25T22:32:00.005-04:00

I am enrolled in a class that's more demanding and incomprehensible than anything I've ever taken. And it's not the subject matter, entirely. It's also the professor. For a great deal of my academic career I've gotten by on my ability to pick things up initially quickly and then bluster my way through the rest, charming teachers along the way with eye contact (am I andy bernard?) and generally impeccable grammar.
This will not work for this class.
I'm a bit wigged out.

El Aguacero

2010-08-17T13:27:00.004-04:00

Rain is plummeting towards, pummeling-plashing-pounding my apartment building and probably also the rest of Tulsa. It has been too long, Precipitation.
This is positively the best sort of day to have the sort of day I'm having: an unexpected reprieve from mindless orientation activities, a day alone at the apartment to clean and bake and spend short moments scampering through puddles in order to 1. take out the overflowing (nearly) kitchen trash 2. roll up my car windows (poor upholstery!) 3. check the mail. Punctuated with lightning that barely registers on my dining room wall, held back by the incandescence of indoors, and the far-away snores of thunder; overlaid, of course, with every Chris rice album I have on iTunes (6, not counting the Christmas one).

And to look forward to (like dessert): After the banana muffins emerge sugar-topped and spicy from the oven I will splash to my car and go to purchase necessary things like: toilet paper, and cotton balls, and brown sugar, and butter, and then:
AND THEN--
I will go to Barnes & Noble and buy a new journal.

People give me journals somewhat frequently. At the moment I have three empty ones. But I can't use any of them. One I will never use because I think it is somewhere across the continent and another I would not use of everyday journaling--probably more for writing letters out of--and the third I've begun using for plots and stories and ideas that I am terrible about writing down and thus remembering.
So you see I need a new one. I really do.

Also: I am learning that grace is a posthumous process. it's monumental in my mind--

Oh, it's been one of those days
where you walk with me so close

El Amanecer

2010-08-16T16:33:00.003-04:00

As far as I know (a short distance indeed) I am beginning my last first week of school.
TU gives free lunch during orientation week. Lasagna! Also, I discovered that I could leave right after lunch today. Leaving early!

I am excited about Life right now. The future, as pertains to me, inscrutable as ever, is today shiny and appealing. I don't know what's in it, but I know it will be Good.

I drank a 32 oz. QT drink quite quickly. now I have to get up and pee every fifteen minutes or so. Diet Coke!

The world, as I approach it, looks more and more different from the shadowy place my timid eyes once assumed it to be. Better; also, worse.

There was no mail today in the box. My kitchen smells of soup and whipped cream. I do not like my oven. (It does not work as it should.)

I am working on: Not fearing people, not believing in my own entitlement, and keeping my room neat. Based on my track records, all three have an even chance of failure. But! Grace, I find, has little-to-nothing to do with Track Records. They don't even speak to one another at parties.

Well, well, well.

My mouth tastes like foot.

2010-08-13T16:44:00.004-04:00

I said something REALLY stupid today.
I'm still embarrassed.

(p.s. I may have begun writing what may become a novel last night. A children's novel. Maybe?)

I don't do embarrassed very well.

Last Hurrah?

2010-08-11T00:44:00.002-04:00

I changed the layout here. I like this. We'll see how long it lasts...

I intended to be so productive this week-- I NEED to be so productive this week-- but three old friends are in town and I NEED to catch up with all of them, and the Perseid meteor shower is about to hit and I NEED to watch that at least a little, and-- and-- AND--

Enough excuses. What I must get done, I will get done. I'm apprehensive still about teaching this semester, but I know that it will work out. I'll do my best. I hope my students will do theirs. (and the copout in the back of my mind comfortingly murmurs that even if I don't, and they don't, this is it. my last year in school. my last hurrah.)

(That's actually not comforting at all.)

Anyway, I have about four different lists started: reading lists, lists of handouts I'll eventually make, lists of workshops I want to focus on, lists of exercises for class activities...now I just need to make all of these lists happen. Which I will. In between stargazing and friend-seeing and putting everything back in the cabinets of my apartment since the maintenance people have to spray for cockroaches. yuck.

Tomorrow I will get so much accomplished! Right?

It's Nice To Know

2010-08-10T00:59:00.003-04:00

That I'm on the same page with those I love
that I'm not alone in uncertainty
that I'm needed.

I worked all day on Monsieur Syllabus. and Dented him. Tomorrow is my last (!) babysitting job of the summer (PRAISES) and tomorrow night I get to see one whom I love dearly, and whom I must lose ere long. Ere long being Saturday, when she goes off to law school. Life is just transitioning it up all over the place. Like a house afire!

I like to say that whenever I can. It doesn't often work. In fact it works far less often than I manage to use it. But that's not slowing me down.

Well, the summer's over. And to show for it I have the best tan I've probably ever had, ever; up-to-date rent payments, and a much better working knowledge of Tulsa's upper-middle-class suburban cookie-cutter neighborhoods. Also, a concrete experiential knowledge of the old axiom that one's own children are always less dreadful than a stranger's.
But I have loved these kids. These spoiled, weepy, neurotic, rude, lovable, corrupt, manipulative, capable, intelligent, challenging, wonderful children. And it's fitting that I end my time as a summer nanny with the kids I've seen most often this summer. The kids with whom I have spent many a tuesday relaxing at the country club pool while they have their swim lessons (my life is an ABC Family Channel original series waiting to happen. how depressing is that thought? [answer: quite]). The kids I've gotten to know best. They will forget about me: soon I will be a faceless, vague memory of that one summer babysitter before time eradicates me entirely. It's been intensely interesting being the fly on the wall of so many homes this summer, observing people who most often could not remember my name and wouldn't recognize me again. getting to play a part, however small, in all sorts of lives. I wonder who they will become; if the dreams they shared with me will come to pass as they see them now, what kind of grownups they'll morph into.
But I'm SO glad tomorrow's my last day.

It's nice to know.

I HAVE TO MAKE A SYLLABUS

2010-08-09T01:14:00.001-04:00

and I don't know what I'm doing.

The Girls

2010-08-07T18:05:00.002-04:00

I used to do a lot of writing like this and I never saved any of it, but this I will post, for no other reason than that it is written.

I read lines written by a friend and one of them was this:
"There are girls to be had in either direction, too, by the way. Nobody does anything for 'the girls' because they're everywhere. Really everywhere."
and as I read it I could feel myself shrinking down and dividing, spreading out everywhere, thinner and thinner; I am "the girls" now, I am one of "the girls," and I am everywhere? I am to be had? on either side? Sides do not matter anymore but they did once. I never did, because I am the girls and am to be had everywhere, on every side. Or perhaps I am like the directions you take, used-to-matter but now indistinguishable. I do not distinguish between them. I do not even know they exist, I am the girls, and I am not to be done for because there are so many of me.

And these lines are taken out of context, and they are not the whole, they are not the point, but the girls will never know the point. what point? girls in every direction, in either direction, and either and every combine to form everywhere, which is where I (the girls) am, standing around, universal. taking it all in and giving nothing back, because noone will do anything for me anymore anyway, there is so much of me to go around. I am to be had.

P.M.

2010-08-03T00:54:00.002-04:00

Post-mortem, perhaps?
So it didn't go as I'd hoped. I unpacked from my weekend away and tidied my room, hied me to a coffeeshop and commenced work--only to waste an hour on a wild-goose chase after an extremely necessary component of said work. It's hard to compose a syllabus and schedule without a textbook.
It frustrated me more than it should have, and I was off for the rest of the day. Unfocused. Not good. I got some reading done for orientation, and did some planning of my future days, but nothing helped more than cooking dinner with Vic and eating mango sorbet while watching The Young Victoria. All men are now ruined for me because I will always compare them to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Alas?

Anyway, yes, good film. I love the Victorians.
And tomorrow I enter another round of babysitting. And soon, soon I will be back in the whirlwind of school things and I think if I put a few more long days into it everything will get done okay and on time.
I think.
Tomorrow is another day (two minutes away)--and no mistakes in it yet. Thank you, Anne Shirley.

A.M.

2010-08-02T10:46:00.003-04:00

I am about to go start having a responsible day.
(at 9.47. aka the Crack of Dawn!)
I will write again later, to see how I did.
Over and out.

(Unrelated note: I need to learn to take criticism better. Or, you know, at all.)

2010-08-02T01:17:00.003-04:00

Summer's almost gone.
I speak not of summer, the season as defined by Earth's axial juxtapositioning with the Sun, but rather of the superimposed artificial strictures of education's demands. The school year, for me, begins in a scant few weeks, and the Things I Need To Do for the year are yet undone. I have postponed doing them, not through sheer Laziness, but rather through Not Knowing How. But now, as it often happens, they must be done, somehow, whether I think I can or not. And so, I will commence doing them...tomorrow. today was a long ten-or-so hours in the car on the way back from Minnesota.
And a wonderful drive it was, too, though I learned a valuable lesson: ridiculous Justin Timberlake music can only be truly appreciated in the proper mixes of companions. Today was a more respectable, less ridiculous Nickel Creek drive. Which is just as well.

Wedding #4, the final wedding of July, is now crossed off my imaginary calendar. The bride at this wedding is Greek Orthodox, and it was fascinating to get to observe their tradition. Added to this was the benefit of sitting with an old family friend and church member at the reception, and having one of those rare conversations with him about our traditions and faiths.

O weddings! more of you loom on my horizon, and though I love you, I welcome the break from the every-weekend schedule I've been keeping.

I'm wiped out from driving all day. To bed I go.

P.S. If you heard anything strange Saturday, or noticed it getting kind of chilly around the Underworld, it was probably just Hell freezing over--I now have unlimited texting. Kuh-razy.

Roadtrip Season

2010-07-29T00:20:00.002-04:00

Means making mix cds and doing laundry and arguing with my roommates about various Google maps suggestions (you can't, according to them, bike to Dublin. We're not going to Dublin, but in case you are...) and re-affixing my rearview mirror (which came off again, after I epoxy'd it back on a scant month ago) and purchasing candy in boxes and trying to remember how I did my hair that one time so I don't forget any of the products needed to recreate the magic and packing and trying to remember things like my phone charger and the wedding gift and my contacts case and underwear.
and I love it oh so much.
The current mix cd trend is decidedly danceable-summer tunes, with a heavy emphasis on my days with Souls A'Fire. The cd is of course named according to my Souls nickname: Affirmative Action.

I really hate that "airplanes in the night sky" song.

2010-07-21T01:34:00.003-04:00

You can wish on a night sky as easily as on a shooting star; at least, I've always found it so. It's a poor wish that depends on a star for delivery. Stars aren't always the most reliable creatures.
My hatred of the song may also have as much to do with the repetitive and boring melody as the idiotic lyrics. I can't say I've really invested in analyzing this dislike.

Life is good. So, so good.
I'm praying for a family I sit for regularly. The parents are great people: successful, caring, got-it-together, and yet they do not know Christ. Their kids are tiny monsters, as all small humans are, and I need so much to pray for them, so that I can infuse as much Jesus into their lives as possible this summer.

I have come to see that (incredibly) maybe someday I will understand things that make no current sense. To see and to accept! It's all pattern recognition at heart, after all.

Isn't there some famous quote excusing women from being inconsistent?

2010-07-19T03:36:00.002-04:00

Because if there is, consider it invoked here and now.
Being at Bekah and David's wedding this weekend made me want to fall in love. If you don't know me, you will not realize how somewhat monumental that statement is--
But I'm learning to believe that just because I don't understand something does not give me cause to reject it out of hand.
Bit by bit, a little at a time. Maybe the old ways don't have to be the new ways. Maybe I can start from where I've learned to be, instead of where things were. Maybe I can trust for real what I claim in theory.
Isn't this exciting?

23

2010-07-18T18:25:00.003-04:00

My birthday was wonderful.

The wedding in St. Louis was one of the best I've been to.

And now I am hanging out with my friends while they cook Pork Tenderloin with Camembert and Risotto. I got to tenderize the meat. As I type they are discussing the merits of cooking sherries and reductions. They are much cooler than I am.

At childhood's end

2010-07-14T01:02:00.002-04:00

You know your childhood is over when you (in mercenary materialistic Western [broke grad student] fashion) begin to count up the number of people who will probably send you birthday money and realize that they are all dead.

This happened to me while (of all cold-hearted things) I was working on my budget the other night. I sat wondering if I could count on any other odd income this month, and I remembered the birthday hovering around the bend--
and then I recalled that all those wonderful old people, who sent small bills with love and shaky handwriting, are all gone now.
Rocked me a bit--still recovering. What a silly way to miss someone. But what a permanent reminder.

My father's father, Poppy, spelled my name wrong on every card I ever got from him: either one and two e's or two l's and one e, but never the whole thing all correct. I used to look for it on the envelopes, eagerly awaiting the sight of his forward-slanting all-caps handwriting, to see if maybe he caught it this time. He never did, and he likely never knew the difference, but it made me laugh. He made me laugh. And I miss him. Seven years later, and I miss him.

This will be my first birthday away from home, away from my for-now-home, even, as I'll be in another state at a friend's wedding. This will be an excellent lesson in selflessness, and also, probably, my first grown-up birthday, since grown-ups do not get to have a day of their own. I don't even know if I'll have facebook access. Dearth of festal cheer, indeed (O American culture, what a truly bizarre thing you are).

World Cup

2010-07-11T19:06:00.003-04:00

What is it about large sporting events that makes me so happy?
The energy? The passion? The illogical devotion?
The fact that complete strangers feel periodically compelled to pound shoulders and backs in ecstasies of despair or fulfillment, as the case may be? To hug, to cry, to shout, to break bread together?
The unbridled excitement? The instant community?

Anyway, congrats, Spain. It was an excellent game to watch.

(What I will miss most about the World Cup [other than this, or this, or, you know, this) is the announcing. In what other sporting event do you get commentary like "a howl of derision rises from the crowd"? or "...something sinister is afoot". Oh soccer announcers. I will miss you.)

Moderation, in all things

2010-07-09T23:41:00.003-04:00

I have been trying hard lately not to give in to regretting my relationship decisions.
In most cases they are really not all that regrettable.
When I was a kid I did and said some stupid things. Cruel things. Ignorant things.
When I was in college it got better and also catastrophically worse.
It's the splintering of the paths that keeps messing me up. What could have been, and what that means for what should have.

Regret is largely a waste of time, useless except as a 1. poison or 2. history lesson.
I'm trying to use it as the latter and not the former, since I find I cannot rid myself of it completely.

I got sick.

2010-07-09T00:55:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I puked.
Eventually Leslie got tired of our conversation being punctuated by my frequent flights to the toilet and forced me to go to the store for antacids. I ate five fruity chalk bits in as many minutes. As such I am now qualified to rank off-brand Tums by flavor:
1. Lemon (I had two.)
2. Orange
3. Lime
4. Strawberry (gross.)
Then I crawled into bed with a big red mixing bowl on the floor next to me in case of sudden nocturnal upchucks, reminiscent of childhood's stomach viruses, when Mom would buy Saltines and ginger ale and set us up on the couch with the yellow plastic pitcher we used for a. vomit and b. pancake batter. Odd how that never bothered me before. The red mixing bowl went unused during the night, however, and I spent an uneasy day hanging out with my young charges (13 and 15 years old, respectively. Nice, because they really take care of themselves) and driving home with a headache roughly the size of a barge.
Apparently the cure for what ails me is ibuprofen, half-hour naps, and Vic's beef-and-lentil soup. Divine. I felt so good after dinner that we sat up watching the MST3K "Space Mutiny" episode and laughing inordinately.

For some reason I tend to think sickness only counts when the digestive tract malfunctions, specifically as pertaining to the process of peristalsis. If I throw up, I'm probably kind of sick. But I'm only sick for the period of time when I'm throwing up. Otherwise, I am being a giant pansy. The other kinds of sickness that matter include malaria and pneumonia. Serious sickness. Sore throat? suck it up. Headache? drink some water. But vomiting is special, because it is such a violent reversal of the body's natural order of things.
I have, as is probably apparent, been giving a little too much thought to the inner workings of my physical frame.

Here is something I have noticed: in the school year (thanks to graduate funding) I have no time to do anything I want to do, but, barring major emergencies, I have no want for money; during the summer, I have time for everything in the world, and a major fund shortage. Alack and alas. Greener grass, silver linings, etc.

I never get sick.

2010-07-07T01:00:00.004-04:00

Never mind that for the past three days I have woken (woke? waked? wokened?) with a sore throat and one (only ever one) plugged and wheezy nostril.
Perhaps it is more true (provided that there are degrees of truth [?]) to say I never remember being sick.
BUT (God is good) despite the waking-symptoms I have not displayed or felt sickness while on jobs babysitting, and none of my kids have begun to sniffle.
Most of them still yell a lot, though. Occupational hazard. It is amazing how patient I can be when small ones lose their cool, whether tiredness or tantrums or injuries. It is also amazing with what degree of sang-froid a five-year-old boy can carry off climbing onto the kitchen island and subsequently kicking off and smashing my (half-full [half-empty?]) glass of water ("I became momentarily unbalanced," he explains as he sticks sock-clad feet into a nearby gallon-sized Ziploc, "Don't worry, I am okay." Well good. Now take that bag off your feet.)
Amazing.

History Lessons

2010-07-04T20:26:00.003-04:00

This morning in church, in celebration and acknowledgment of Independence Day, one of the elders introduced the sermon with a short recounting of America's early history, including a litany of national heroes. He brought up the Continental Army's Hard Winter of 1779 in Morristown, Pennsylvania; the Kentucky longrifles in Andrew Jackson's Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812; General Patton's fight through Italy in World War II; and Dwight Eisenhower's command of D-Day, June 6, 1944.
As a lifelong lover of American history I have always taken great pride in the heroism of American fighters and politicians, in Old Glory, in the way that We were Different from the Rest of the World because of Judeo-Christian Values, Democracy, and Capitalism. But today as I sat and listened I could only remember other things:
Like the way Andrew Jackson authorized and enforced the removal of the Cherokee, Seminole, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations along the Trail of Tears;
Like General Patton's racism and anti-Semitism;
Like Eisenhower plotting to execute Patrice Lumumba, newly elected president of the newly independent Congo;
it was kind of a buzz kill.
Do not misunderstand me: I love the United States. I love the stories of patriotism and hard-fought battles and adventure. I stand when I hear the national anthem and I cheer obnoxiously during the Olympics. I am acutely aware that there are places in the world where I would not be allowed to post even such a criticism of my country's past and present as this one.
And yet, knowing all of this, and knowing more (Jim Crow.Interment camps.Roe vs Wade), I cannot in good conscience say
"God bless America, because we are great"
but with gratitude, and reverence, and humility, and penitence, say
"May God, in His greatness, bless His creation, and everyone in it [Lord have mercy on me, a sinner, dwelling in a land of sinning people]."

Happy Fourth of July.

Speed Racer

2010-07-02T14:20:00.002-04:00

After bachelorette-partying til around 12.30 (we so crazy!) (said bachelorette party consisting of Mexican food, chocolate, underpants, and in-depth discussion of menstruation managements strategies. Awesome.), got up at 5 a.m. to drive to Springfield to pick up Mo and made it back to T-town by 11.
According to Google Maps that drive is 2 hours and 55 minutes. According to Colleen's Driving it's more like 2 hours and 20 minutes.
I love driving alone. Modify that: I love driving long stretches of highway alone, when I'm heading someplace and there's no rush, no demand, no stress waiting for me at the end of it. In leaving at 5.30 (by the time I'd filled up the car and hit the road) I was up before the sun, and I had a solid 45-minutes or so when I was mostly alone on 44-E, just me and the pre-dawn world: dim early light and the occasional 18-wheeler and Jesus.
Delightful.
When I am driving alone I can do all sorts of things: pray; sing; skip songs on whatever cd I'm playing according to the song's appropriateness for weather, season, time of day, and mood of me; pretend I can fly; pretend I'm escaping; pretend I'm going home; pretend I'm an adventurer (still one of the best dreams); pretend pretend pretend. And I'm still being productive, I'm still accomplishing something: it's a few hours of movement, of freedom from the demands of life, even while fulfilling them.

Friends are all coming to town for the wedding tomorrow. I love it.

Ow.

2010-06-30T13:12:00.003-04:00

Reading 1 Corinthians is an exercise in humility.
I do not, for example, particularly want to realize that I've subconsciously accepted ignorance as faith. That when I read things in the Word that I don't like, or don't understand, or don't agree with at first glance, I've somehow convinced myself that ignoring it all is somehow a good thing.

It's not. How can I have a relationship with Christ if I brush him off? How, if I don't even bother getting to know him, or working past mistaken impressions, or refusing, even here, even with this, to be vulnerable? Where along the line did I buy into the lie that true faith is smothering the process?

I don't know. But I'm done. I'm done with passivity. I'm done with apathy. I'm done with being afraid that the Truth will somehow melt away if I am honest with my questions--that the solid Rock will shatter if I knock a few times. It is time for me to grow up, to pry open my eyes, and know in whom I have believed.

Life can roll on to something good...

Internal Processing Systems

2010-06-28T15:24:00.003-04:00

I read somewhere once that mundane tasks can be good grief therapy: no matter who you have lost, someone still needs to vacuum the floors and the car will still need to be filled up with gas. Performing necessary tasks is supposed to help you come to terms with loss.
So this afternoon I washed the dishes.

A Balanced Diet

2010-06-20T18:04:00.002-04:00

Consisting, so far today, of a slice of watermelon, three "wacky whales" (read: knockoff Goldfish crackers), a fake chocolate organic cookie (baked by roommate, slightly burned), a slice of questionable watermelon, a 32 oz. QT slushie (a sadly mistaken combo of white cherry, blue raspoberry, and orange? What was I thinking?), and a fried-egg-mashed-potato-leftovers combo washed down with glasses and glasses of water.
How's that for variety, and also, grossness?
There is an explanation for this bizarreness, however:
I am moving today!
My room is all packed (nearly, since I'm staying the night at the old place) and all that there's left to move are some big bulky items I'll need help for and the stuff I'm leaving here until the Last Time.
and so I am hot and sore and tired and susceptible to leftovers and 75-cent frozen sugar highs, and also I do not drink enough water.
Moving is an adventure. I'm glad I think that, because otherwise it would suck. This place, despite the hazards of the bachelor-predecessor, has been awfully good to us. Only ten months. But lots of memories. I'm grateful.
It's Father's Day, incidentally, and I'm thinking of mine today: the upsides and downsides and how grateful I am for him too. I have an unfairly good and easy life. I'm grateful for that too.

The melting remnants of my slushie await, and so do those last few boxes.

the Swing of Things

2010-06-17T22:06:00.002-04:00

There's a rhythm and a pattern that's being established even in these unstructured summer months--little things that become common, though unexpected to begin with, or unusual in itself.
What that means is that I've been watching World Cup games with Vic and making delicious cheap meals and watching awesome movies with Eden.
What that also means is that this month is a dance of sorts, in which I am being led (I am a clumsy follower) through movements the choreography of which I cannot yet guess.
What that means is, simply, that I am trusting the Lord for a job.
And that I'm about to be moving to a new apartment,
and that in only a year I'll be done with school--the student part of it--for the foreseeable future
and that my life goals consist of being a folk-singing archaeologist and sailing across the Atlantic by myself (I do not know how to sail).
The "foreseeable future."
What a ridiculous thing to say.

And now to watch Wolverine with Eden. Hugh Jackman = my type.

I Kill Plants.

2010-06-09T13:05:00.002-04:00

Kara gave me her potted calla lily (they are poisonous to cats? who knew.) and the blossoms are brown and crunchy. It wouldn't drink the water I gave it. It's terrible, because I love calla lilies. They are so fluted and solitary and pure.
However, the baby basil (named Larry by Vic) which I insisted on buying at a Nashville farmer's market, because I wanted to feel like I was really at a farmer's market, even though it was a March weekday, meaning cold-gray-drizzly-deserted, and drove through three states before I deposited it on the coffee table, is still green and bushy. It likes the water I give it when I remember to give it water. I pull leaves off every so often and throw them in vinaigrettes and chilis and salads and sauces, and am rewarded with a delicious smell and flavor and a feeling perhaps more delicious than either, that comes of reading too many books as a child about pioneers with vegetable gardens, which I still think is one of the most romantic things in the world. Showing conclusively that I have never had a vegetable garden.
Oh calla lily, you are so beautiful. why won't you let me feed you?

I need to go water the basil.

I can save your life. Maybe.

2010-06-08T19:52:00.005-04:00

My roommate is watching a video of Lindsay Lohan's court proceedings, prompting a reflection: it would be awful if everyone knew my name.
Today I became certified to perform CPR on adults, children, and infants. Also I can alleviate hypothermia. Bring it on, babysitting.
While I was at the Red Cross building taking the class I met a girl named Sarah. She was funny and nice and hanging out with her (in the back of the class, of course) made the six hours exponentially more bearable.
We cracked jokes about the mannequins and the instructional videos, and we will probably never see each other again, but at the start of the day I did not know who she was, and now I do, and that is an amazing thing.
It's awfully nice to be obscure.

Statistics

2010-06-01T18:57:00.003-04:00

In 2006 I posted 40 updates on this blog.

in 2009 I posted 8.

Demotivation much?

Already this year I've written 11 times, with this being the 12th.

I am not on track to beat my 2006 record, but (this being the 1st of June) with any degree of continuity I may be in line to pull ahead of 2007's 23.

Keep on truckin'?

Either way, I'm enjoying this again...a good sign.

And this from the girl who refused to cry for most of high school?

2010-05-28T17:33:00.003-04:00

Just watching a preview for Cinderella Man makes me bawl. Who am I anyway?
Oh how I love that movie.

In related news, why does life not have a soundtrack?

I Keep Writing Terrible Poetry About This

2010-05-28T01:06:00.006-04:00

Maybe it is something to be assessed in prose:
Life is moving very fast. I still think I am about 11. I am not.
Things that happened two years ago feel too recent. Things that happened yesterday I have already forgotten.

In other news*:
I am learning that to defeat one all-encompassing inner demon is to clear the way to see the rest of the inner demons you hadn't noticed before.

It's summer again. I love weather. I miss home. I'm craving a reality that is not, and coping with that the best I can.

It is nice to know: I am not as agile at making quick friends as I was, but I can still make them slowly, little at a time. The process is enjoyable.

A Note To Self: If I keep listening to Over The Rhine's "Little Did I Know" while driving home on hot moonlit nights I will eventually burst into melancholic romanticky tears and swerve into oncoming traffic and die. Or just get pulled over. And I can't cry my way out of a ticket. I'm not that kind of girl.
But YOU listen to it and tell me you wouldn't be absolutely drowned in languorous heartache listening to this while driving summer nights!
Listen here.

*not really news

half-way

2010-05-11T00:07:00.001-04:00

this week, by way of celebration (or defiance?), as I am now half-way through my Master's program, I have
driven six hours in blinding rain
bought four books that i don't need
borrowed four books
read three
and sat on a couch doing nothing nothing NOTHING with Moselle;
also, I plan on
driving oh say twenty more hours, round trip
reading the other five books
and not not NOT thinking about anything productive.

bliss.
(three and a half months. I like -versaries.)

Good Friday

2010-04-02T11:57:00.002-04:00

I have been re-reading the Gospel of John, and it's prompting me to wonder some things about Jesus.
He is not adorable. He is not cute or cuddly. He cuts with his words. He shouts. He cries out with a loud voice. He escapes assassins, skirting the crowds and disappearing through stone-carrying mobs. He lives in the wilderness, on the outskirts, and he mocks the people who come to tempt him.
And yet.
He stoops to scribble in the dust for the sake of a shamed woman. He "must needs" go to Jacob's Well to reach a despised people. He weeps to see the grief of a sister bereaved.
I would have wanted to get to know him, and I would have (knowing me) been awfully insecure about it, always checking to see if he still thought I was cool. Would he have? I don't know--there weren't very many people he was close to. Not everyone was a Mary, Martha, Lazarus, John, Peter, James. He was a man--only so much of his personal resources could be outlet to camaraderie with his fellow individuals. Jesus wasn't everyone's Best Friend.
Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Not life of the party. Not all the time, at least. He must have been burdened. He must have known where he was heading. He must have been acutely aware of dwindling time, to which all of humanity is bound. (How bizarre, to be forced to accustom yourself to the strictures of linear existence.)
There are only a few places in the gospels where the narrative says that Jesus--Jesus the man--loved someone. I have come to treasure those statements, and those people. The beloved disciple. The siblings from Bethany. The wealthy young man who came running to find eternal life. There are few mentions of this idea of Jesus having human love for a fellow human, and while I am certain it happened far more than the text specifies, the English major in me protests the importance of this textual evidence. "Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him." Did he know? Do you?
It's good Friday. Long ago and far away, Jesus, beholding us, loved us. On Calvary his humanity was stretched past the limit of what any soul could bear. He remained human, suffering his heart to beat til implosion, his lungs to expand til asphyxiation. Acutely aware of time, of biology, of the processes he had himself ordained.
I have to remind myself of these things when I get caught up in the cyclic and linear strictures of human time. I have to keep returning to the Word (made-flesh-and-dwelt-among-us) to recognize who he is, and the once-for-all of that day. I wonder about his blood type, the erythrocyte-leukocyte-plasma cells of innocence. O positive? That would be most appropriate. But who knows. I wonder about those details you only know about someone after having lived with them for a while. I wonder what his myers-briggs personality would have been. I wonder quotidian and ridiculous and patently human things,
And I wonder how, beholding me, he could love me.

This weekend

2010-03-30T22:49:00.002-04:00

This weekend I invited friends over to my apartment. Three married couples, one engaged couple, a dating couple, and one half of another dating couple, the woman of which was out of state. And then there was me.
It was funny, and also I wonder when this happened, exactly. My friends are grownups.
I am a grownup?

This weekend I spent an afternoon making a lemon meringue pie and snickerdoodles (from scratch)and another evening altering a sundress I picked up in a thrift store a while back. Baking and sewing. I am a grownup?

o how odd.

Pep Boys

2010-03-26T21:27:00.005-04:00

Well.
I've been reading lots of Billy Collins lately.
On the basis of that, here is an apology to anyone who reads this (come to think of it, this also goes out to Billy): the reading is prompting effusions of terrible poetry to come out of me.
more than I've written since--pause for document folder check--last November. None of which I actually posted here, I don't think.
anyway. That's what this blog is for now, a repository for somewhat terrible free verse.

On that note, here's more!
----

Was it inordinately pretentious of me
to sit today in the Pep Boys waiting room,
reading Billy Collins while my oil was being changed?
Wearing aviator sunglasses, and a spring skirt?
I took the sunglasses off when I got inside. Does that
even a little, expiate the bringing of poetry to the auto-shop?
Because there was a quiet rattle of guilt in the back of my mind
like the background noise of the small flickering television
(playing the afternoon soaps and Bonnie Hunt’s talk show)
as I sat and read Nine Horses against the dramatic revelations
(from the soaps) and mechanized clangs and whirs (from the garage).
Yet, too, there was the way in which what I read—
the plainness of the words, the precision of the images—
meshed without a visible seam with the movements of the men behind the half-glass wall, with the up-and-down of two-ton trucks on humming hydraulic hoists.
How I knew the poetry and they knew the cars. How the elements of each were perhaps not so different
From what my initial embarrassment painted them to be.
Yet when the man who took my order poked his head around
and told me that my car was ready, and asked me how my book was,
I couldn’t help sliding it out of sight, and standing up so quickly that I tripped a little,
leaving the waiting room.

Once up, on a Time

2010-03-17T22:44:00.002-04:00

Once up on a Time, one must take care to balance well
Times are slippery things.
Once, up on a Time, I tilted oh-so-slightly
and found myself hanging upside-down
where nothing looked as it ought.
Gravity takes everything, even Times
(though they spiral down slow, if "down" is where they go
indeed), no matter where the balance lies.
But even if it's all the same (it isn't)
it's best to be careful. There was once a place,
up on a Time,
where, they say, just so, you could see forever
and not break your neck. Once. Still? I am unsure.
And it's not so easy, you know,
to get back up on a Time
that has once spun by.

it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt

2010-03-06T12:06:00.002-05:00

the moon fell tonight
behind the apartment buildings on 81st and Yale,
coasting down smooth at 40 mph,
as I drove down the hill from Harvard.
before the impact that I did not see
it slid behind the tall shadows
that make the hill on Yale higher
maybe, than the moon anticipated.
I thought maybe I'd stop to see
if it would get up again
(it was robust, but looked
a little jaundiced)
but that green arrow steered me imperiously North
and I didn't look back.
If the moon
did not manage to hit the brakes,
if it did not follow my lead, and turn,
I didn't want to see the aftermath:
the lopsided luminous globe bursting on earth
cosmic corpse bleeding
all over those swanky cars and balconies
up at the Vintage,
less devastating than the thought
that it would never race me down the hill again.
Pulling into my own driveway, not a quarter mile from the hill
but less elevated,
I heard no sirens, no disturbances,
leading me to believe that the moon made it okay.
Next time I will take that hill more slowly,
give the moon time
to ease behind the cover of buildings
and crouch there, safe,
until another night.

The Heart of Life

2010-02-19T13:23:00.002-05:00

Despite having professed Christ for most of my life, the older I get the more I realize how unstable and insufficient my understanding of Him is, and my understanding of what His life requires of me.
I'm not discouraged--I'm not--but I am uneasy. I've been encouraged to disciple, and, in principle, I agree that those who have been longer in the faith ought to seek out the younger, the weaker, and help them to grow. Ought to offer encouragement, a listening ear, a strengthening hand. It's nothing particularly complicated.
And yet, it is.
God's been working some things out in me over the past year: soul-deep stuff, not fodder for a blog, things I've carried for as long as I can remember. I don't really know what to do with any of it. I don't say this to complain: I have my weekly call with a dear friend for accountability and fellowship, but I'm suddenly feeling the lack of something I didn't know I was missing. I have no mentor. I don't know how to disciple when I'm so in need of discipleship myself. (I don't know what to give when I feel I have nothing to offer. In all honesty, I feel like God could do a lot better in choice of instrument than to use me. Lord, work it out.) I don't know how to process the revelations in my heart when I'm floundering in the midst of it, perspective-less.
Then, too, somewhere along the line in this religion-saturated realm of the Bible-belt, I've acquired a degree of cynicism, of unwillingness to show my weakness, my brokenness, to others. Especially others with leadership labels. I've done it before, and been burned. So has everyone. The Church is made up of flawed people, and I'm not leaving it just because the perfect work of Christ isn't fully manifesting in everyone. I get that. I get that it's not an excuse. But--in the spirit of candor--it's still there. I don't know how to overcome it.

Encouragement: the One in me is greater; He's the One who overcomes. That's fact. That's proven. That's gospel.
And it's what I'm holding on to.

Give Us this Day

2010-02-05T12:44:00.001-05:00

Written for my graduate creative writing course last semester.
About Zambia, of course. More later? Someday?

Give Us This Day
We are over the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, shopping in the rows of open-air markets. I have bought everything I plan on buying. I have spent my dollars and my kwacha and I am not in the market for anything else, but the rest of the team continues to barter and haggle and trade with an enthusiasm I can never muster. I do not like shopping, and shopping in Africa is a full-contact sport. To all of the vendors I am “sister”: not one gives up on me until after I am out of sight or out of earshot, whichever comes last. It is understandable. They have a living to earn and window shopping does not factor in. For whatever reason, the market is mostly empty of tourists today, so the vendors are free to focus on our little group. I, however, already have the gifts I want for my family: tiny hippos for Josh and Alyssa, chetenges for Sarah and Lauren, a bowl for Susan. But the men with cardboard signs over their stalls do not know this (Mr. Cheap, Mr. Cheaper than Cheap, Mr. Bargainmaker, Michael Jordan, and my favorite, Mr. Nice Man), and they keep trying to tempt me into spending my nonexistent cash. I’m sorry, I tell them, no more. I have no more to give you.
It’s not true, of course. I have five dollars left, but I am saving it so I can buy my mother one of those ceramic thimbles they sell in airports. For some indecipherable reason she collects them and I always, always forget to pick one up for her when I go places. I am determined to bring her a thimble from Africa, so Mr. Nice Man will plead in vain.
He is persistent, though, and so are his fellows in the next block of stalls. The open-air markets near the falls are laid out in squares, open on one end. The lists that Matt and Phil and Katie and Shelly have brought are approximately a mile long each, and, since Phil has just entered into negotiations that look like they will outlast the Middle East peace talks, and rival them in diplomatic tension, I stop for a moment to look at a thumb piano with elephants carved on it.
“What’s your name, sister?” asks the young, grinning proprietor.
I do not want to answer, and I do not want to be rude. Dilemma.
“What’s your name? This is my shop here, come in, I give you best price.”
Panic: “No hablo ingles, señor. Lo siento.”
For the next hour I chat with them: Owen and Nkonga. “Soy de Valencia,” I tell them, “y me llamo Esperanza.” This second item is technically true. My middle name is Hope. They are very excited to meet a Valencian and they ply me with questions about futbol, and since I do not speak English, I cannot answer them. I nod and smile and say, Si, and Futbol! and every time I do they laugh. But they are professionals, and they do not give up, offering to trade me something for the Nike baseball hat I permanently borrowed from my sister two years ago. They point and gesture.
“Sombrero? No, gracias, señores, me gusta muchísima ese sombrero.” My grammar is probably atrocious but they do not know it, they just ask and ask and I repeat myself and they imitate my words. No, gracias. Sombrero. They ask me questions: what is this? pointing to shirt, shoes, socks. I answer Camiseta, Zapatos, Calcetines. “How about your socks?” they ask: here, everything has market value. “Calcetines?” I answer, “Pero necesito mis calcetines! No, lo siento, gracias.” In half an hour we do not progress past the stuff I remember from high school, and when they ask me something too complicated or when I am tempted to laugh I rattle off a string of vocabulary words.
The rest of the team has finished shopping and I am telling Owen and Nkonga goodbye. “Wait, sister, wait,” they say. “We have a gift for you.”
For most of the shopkeepers, a “gift” is anything in their store they can charge you for, and I shake my head. “Gift? Que es Gift?”
“Wait, sister,” Owen says. “Wait here, I will get it.” He turns to his stall and back again quickly, holding a tiny plain carved giraffe that is worth about a nickel. “Gift for you, sister, gift.” Nkonga writes down his cell phone number and winks as he slips it in with the giraffe.
I am overcome with remorse. I offer the elastic around my wrist or my bobby pins, both accepted forms of currency, but they refuse, grinning and waving. “No, no, gracias,” they tell me. “Goodbye, sister.”
I open my mouth to say “Take it back, I lied, I can’t keep your giraffe.” I don’t say it.
“Gracias, amigos,” I say as we walk away. “Adios!” They are my amigos. But they are not my friends. How can they be, when we only communicate in a way neither of us understands?
I speak only in my fake Spanish for the next half hour in case by some chance of `supersonic hearing or some kind of marketplace grapevine they overhear my American English and uncover my deception. I slide the gift into my bag, where he sits along with my passport and my hand sanitizer. I will give all the other things away, and I will keep the giraffe, because I don’t know what to do with it. And I never do call Nkonga.

* * * * *
We came bearing gifts: our contacts used us as pack mules to get crates of donations from the States over to Livingstone. Butch and Janet relocated to Livingstone, Zambia, from Texas some fifteen years ago, and they asked us to bring along donations that had accumulated Stateside. Because of this, we packed few clothes for ourselves, and my suitcase, when I opened it, held peanut butter, a saucepan, about twenty t-shirts, cardboard copies of The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and Peter Rabbit, and a carton of black pepper that somewhere over the Atlantic imparted a sneezy benediction to the lining of my suitcase that it will probably never be wholly rid of. These things all find homes, either with Butch and Janet, or in the villages where we work: Sekute, Mahelituna, and Katubiya. Our first afternoons and evenings in Livingstone were spent organizing the boxes of clothes, separating them into individual piles by size. Into each pile we put three pairs of underwear, three shirts, two pairs of pants (boys) and two skirts (girls). We were very careful as we organized to make sure that no one got two of the same shirt, or three pairs of white underwear when there were polka dots or penguins available in the appropriate size. Each stack was folded, underpants discreetly hidden on the inside, tied up in bread bags and placed in cardboard boxes in the back of Sir, the creaky green truck, where they wait as goodbye surprises for each village.
Today is clothing day in Mahelituna. Shelly wraps up the lesson while Katie and Phil organize the kids into lines: boys with Phil and girls with Katie. We duck in and out of the building that looks exactly like it should—mud-and-stick walls, thatched roof that sheds the rain we never see. The handing-out process is one of organized chaos, as is anything involving children and gifts, and as we match shirts to shoulder blades and cuff sleeves and pant legs, I am amused by the reactions. The boys take their clothes and say thank you and look at them with stoic curiosity, and the little girls dive straight to the middle, to their patterned underpants, and immediately begin comparing them, squealing and pointing and gasping. They are happy with the shirts and pants and skirts but it is the underwear that really gets them excited. Hanes and Fruit of the Loom wave to each other, bright colors on a bright landscape, and the excitement in their faces is the same excitement of any child on receiving something new and exciting and wonderful. Floral patterns and electric guitars and scalloped elastic waistbands flutter in the incessant breeze, rolling with the puffs of red African dust so ubiquitous during the dry season.
The littlest ones, Nadia and Abraham, are sitting in the dirt, chewing on the bags. They are two and three and do not understand that the bags should be opened. Shelly stands them up on tipsy legs and sends them to where the mothers are gathered, watching, by the water pump. Every day they come closer and closer, these women, with big loose t-shirts and babies tied on their backs with chetenges. Some of them look thirty and some look sixty, but you do not see many in between. It is the same in the city. No middle-aged people. They die young or they grow old, but you don’t catch them on the way. There are never any men around. We see one or two sometimes on our way in, with the cattle or driving the trucks, but they do not wait around the well with the women, and I do not know where they are.
Ndumba-Ndumba and Patrick have gotten the same shirt. They trade high fives and gap-toothed grins while Rosemary and Eustina twirl in their bright peasant skirts: blue-green-yellow-blue-green. I flash back to every Christmas morning I have ever had, and watching them I know that I am the same as they are. They are thanking us for the gifts as they take their bags and peek inside, the way they have been taught: hands cupped upwards, head bobbing. They are thanking us and I want to stop them. I want to say, Do not thank us. We did not buy you these things. I want to say, I am sorry that in two hours we will be full of cole slaw and peanut butter and jelly and you will be remembering the chimkwa and bananas Janet brought that you ate already, to make sure your parents didn’t take it for themselves. I want to say, I am sorry that I never have been sicker than bronchitis in the eighth grade, that my mother is recovering from cancer and yours is dying of a cold. I want to say these things but I do not, because I am so happy that my mom will be okay and I really like Janet’s cole slaw. So instead I say, You’re welcome. Over and over, to each bobbing head. You’re welcome.
* * * * *

It is our last day in Katubiya village. Janet drives us in. We have grown accustomed to the hour-long trek into the bush: the bone-jarring ruts of the dirt road, the sudden swerving into underbrush whenever we encounter unexpected cows or delivery trucks full of cattle feed or wire for the transformers being erected across the low hills. We know which forks in the long road will either take us into five-foot ditches or will bounce us safely around them, which roads are sandy pits that defy the four-wheel-drive and which are hard-packed with travel. Southern Zambia is a land of low hills at high altitude, of gnarled trees and thick undergrowth. It is winter and there is no rain; the land is yellow except where the black burn marks show through, where the old growth is torched to make room for new. The black smoke from the burnings mixes with the red dust and the yellow grass so that you are always thinking of fire. Sitting in the truck I brace myself against the shocks of the rough terrain and go over the names of the fifty some-odd children in my head, trying to keep them all straight, trying to remember who they are. Tom. Junior. Ngombe. Benson. Namakando. Beauty. Helene. Like the mornings before, they will be shy, and we will play games in a big circle until they have warmed up to us and the showoffs begin to take over. Like the mornings before, Janet will sit in the truck, drawing up a preschool curriculum for the villages in the Lozi and Sekute regions. Like the mornings before, but after today there will be no more mornings.
Sir coughs and rattles into the village, and we are abruptly surrounded by shouting boys and girls, trying our best to communicate across language barriers in a country whose official language is English where something like 83 dialects are spoken. The mothers walk by with baskets of laundry on their heads. Whose laundry it is I could never tell, since the children wear the same thing every day, with the exception of Rose, who fell into the cooking fire a year ago. She hobbles about now, bent like a crone but dressed daily in clothes scrupulously clean, per the orders of the doctors in Lusaka. Rose’s surgery was sponsored by a visiting doctor from the States who was doing demonstration surgeries for the Lusaka hospital and whose specialty happened to be skin grafts. After she was burned her leg fused to her torso as it healed, so she will have more surgeries in the next year to help her learn how to walk upright again, but for now she sits and watches. She watches us and she watches her little sister Margaret who is plump and three and she watches the women with the baskets on their heads who have moved their wash site from by the pump to where we are. They shoo their toddlers in our direction, despite the announcement at the beginning of the week that the lessons were only for the children older than four, betting that we will not make them leave. They are right.
The older children are here again, arriving mid-morning: Sophia, Memory, Mary, Friday, Junior. Janet is always surprised when they come. They should be at school, she says, but the school is a mile away and we can neither corroborate nor refute their claim that it was cancelled for the day. Phil asks Virginia, who interprets for us, how often school gets cancelled. She shrugs.
Before we start we ask if they have any songs or games they want to teach us. This always takes a great deal of prompting and generally ends with us doing ridiculous dances and Phil doing handstands and the smallest ones tumbling off of their benches with laughter. Sophia is shy, like most girls her age, and Sharon and Memory nudge her forward until she comes to the front to sing a song that the kids all know. We clumsily imitate each clap, echo, and spin. Her voice is strong.
Last night we hard-boiled sixty eggs, and now Shelly and I peel them and hand them out, one egg and one piece of bread for each child. Matt makes the boys laugh by cracking the shells with his head. They imitate him, and more than one will wave goodbye with tiny white egg fragments speckling his hair. While they eat we sit with them and chat, and I ask Sophia how old she is. This sounds simple, but it is not, and it takes a good five minutes of back-and-forth before we understand each other, and she tells me she is eleven. I remark that she is tall for her age, and she smiles and laughs, yes, yes, very tall. When we get back to the house I will mention Sophia’s age to Janet and she will raise her eyebrows. “Sophia,” she will say, “is at least fourteen. She told you she was eleven because she was afraid if you knew how old she was, you would send her away, you would not allow her to learn.” But right now I am only surprised. So tall for an eleven year old!
After the lesson we ask questions through Virginia, and Sophia waits for the smaller children to get the answer wrong before putting up her hand and giving the right answer, always in English. She speaks it better than she understands it, especially our garbled slippery American.
We are packing up and saying the last goodbyes and Sophia catches my arm and leads me towards the other girls.
“We have something for you,” she says. A plastic grocery bag full of mysterious lumpish things, and a small round watermelon. “These are for you,” and she places them in my hands, “and for Feel and Sherry and Kehtee and Matty.”
“Sophia, I will miss you,” I say, and she hugs me, breaking away to reach into the bag and pull out a small cylinder wrapped in notebook paper and a folded sheet that, unfolded, shows a ballpointed message scrawled, probably by Virginia:
Do not forget us
got bless you
god bey
Janet honks outside and I hug her again. “I will not forget you,” I say. “I promise. Thank you for everything.” She and Mary and Memory crowd at the door, waving as I wade through the crowd of small people, all wanting one more hug or one more piece of gum or one more smile, and I hop up into the back of the truck with the gas can and the empty boxes. I wave as hard as I can. Phil and Shelly and Katie and Matt stick their heads and hands out of the windows and Janet leans on the horn with her elbow as she steers around the dogs and cows, to the delight of the small boys who run beside us on the way out.
Out of sight of the village I pass the bag back into the cab. “There’s one for each of you,” I shout over the rumblings of the truck. Janet can’t go much over 45 km per hour on these roads, so we can communicate still, me in the truck bed and the team up front. They open their gifts and pass them around. Shelly’s is a half-empty bottle of baby-powder, Phil gets a rusty Tonka truck, Matt a t-shirt from a university in California, Katie a brightly illustrated children’s book: Suzie Learns About Aids. I unroll my package: a pale-blue sports bra. It is stained and smells of urine and sweat. Shelly asks if any of us are chafing. Matt offers to trade Phil for the truck and Katie reads her book out loud. From the grassy path Janet turns onto the red dirt road that leads out of the bush to the highway. As Katie finishes reading Janet mentions that this is the first time she has ever known these kids to give anything away. We are pretty quiet the rest of the way back to the compound. Matt keeps his shirt.
When we get back we slice open the watermelon. The flesh of the melon is white and smells faintly of onions, indicators of soil so leached of nutrients that it cannot support even a vegetable garden. It looks strange lying in pieces next to our crumby white-bread sandwiches and Janet’s cole slaw. But we crunch through the onion-watery tastelessness til we reach rind, and as I eat I reread the note from Sophia:
Do not forget us
got bless you
god bey

All at Once

2010-02-05T12:33:00.001-05:00

After a period of prolonged apathy, I have returned. Now that there is no danger (hope?) of anyone frequenting here...I will post a many things I have concocted between times, and thus, maybe, I will take some interest in here again, and in writing things for here again.
Maybe.
From the Files of Fall '08

Swing

On a swingset I go back, and forth
with the rhythm of the creaking chains.
He waits for me, watching: I glide away
and arc back. We came to make a circuit of the park,
but I, as usual, got distracted:
I never met a swing I didn’t like.
He’s learned by now
my goal is not to make it all the way around
but to see if there will be swings.
So now he waits for me, and I go back, and forth,
glide away, and arc back.
“When I was little,” I say as I swing,
“I thought if I swung high enough, I could take off”
whoosh
“and fly straight up”
whoosh
“and land on the moon”
whoosh.
“Please,” he gently scoffs.
“You think that still.”
He is right;
but he doesn’t know how right he is.
I can tell, because he stands and waits, watching me go back and forth,
away and to,
waiting for me to put down roots like his
when I’m only trying to grow wings.

afterhours

2009-07-21T23:11:00.002-04:00

I am here:

Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.

-Job 40.4

I can add nothing to that.

Well, God, I've tried everything else.

2009-07-17T23:42:00.004-04:00

Last fall, during one of those late-night/early-morning talks that are oh so indispensable during the college years, I was introduced to an Idea that has stayed with me since. Through it I am spending my last-summer-at-home, my time-before-grad-school.

The night I went to Mo's room to debrief the day, according to tradition, and ended up falling apart about something, according to habit. Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything, as specifically applied to our own microcosmic existences, were batted about for the next few hours. These are generally very cathartic experiences, helpful for the momentary release of stress or tension but of little lasting impact (other than, of course, the inestimably great additions they make to the "quality time" foundation of friendships).

Susan smacked me with this one, though, that shook me up so much I haven't forgotten this particular conversation, while hundreds of its companions have been lost to recollection.
She said something roughly akin to the following:
"So I pray for my family. So I worry about my family. Well, when I pray, even for good things, like my family, from a place of worry and fear, I am not praying because I believe God is the answer. I'm praying because I don't believe anything else is. And that is not faith."

Often, that is how I pray.
Often, when I am afraid of something, I pray as a defense against what I fear. When I need something, I pray as a last-ditch effort. If Plan A or Scheme B falls through, well-Jesus-it's-all-in-your-hands-now-your-will-be-done. When it's not His will I'm seeking at all, it's mine, with the rubber-stamp thumbs-up of divine sanction on my actions.
Seems that this kind of prayer is somewhat insulting, if He is who I say He is.

So. Do I mean what I say?
Does He mean what He says?

I've gone too long treating God like the panic button.
Like the joke about the old lady and the captain of the sinking ship:
"Well, ma'am, we'll just have to trust in the Almighty now."
"Oh, captain, surely it's not as bad as that?"

As a matter of fact, it's not as bad as that. It's as amazing as that. It's as true as that. It's as factual and splendid as that.

So an adjustment had to be made. Is still underway. I'm still praying about many of the same things. In same cases the ship is still taking on water. Everything hasn't transformed. But some things have; some things have been answered and resolved so incredibly I can only credit Christ. Which is exactly how it should be, and, so help me God, how it will stay.

Faith is a funny thing. Where I don't see, I'm told to believe, and more than singing it or thinking it or even philosophizing it, I have to do it. He's not a long shot, not a dark horse candidate who can maybe pull something out at the last minute if I'm lucky.
That's how I've acted, though.

So much has happened in the past six months, and so much more looms ahead.
Bring it on. No matter the outcome. He who began the work will complete it, one way or another: I know in whom I have believed.

Not the last resort. The first choice.

update

2009-06-22T18:36:00.003-04:00

Been thinking a lot about love. Decided I don't get it.
I may be becoming an introvert.

Been talking to people about Jesus. Reminded I don't deserve Him:
but I have Him, and they need Him.
(me too)

Been raining for two weeks here. After a month of Zambia's dry season, I'm not used to it. The air here is soft and heavy; I want to sleep on it.

Been confronting life. Feel like I'm along for the ride, destination unknown.

There's a lot in my head, and none of it is willing to come out.

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand: I'm tired, I'm weak, I'm worn.
Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light.
Take my hand, precious Lord.
Lead me home.

2009-06-16T15:58:00.005-04:00

The true test of a sunrise
is morning.
Without a compass it's hard to tell
until then.

(I actually forgot about this blog for a bit.)

I can't decide if this is cheating or not

2009-03-13T01:22:00.002-04:00

During Lent, I watch the Food Network a lot more often.

Solidity

2009-02-06T01:48:00.003-05:00

Sometimes:
I feel neither called, nor chosen, nor equipped.
All times:
That does not matter.
And so, bam, there it is.

The Problem with Realism

2009-01-31T22:29:00.002-05:00

Expecting something doesn't make it suck any less when it happens.

Improvement

2009-01-22T14:47:00.001-05:00

I am planning a major Honors Program event for this Saturday, and thus far I have not cried over it.

Ten Inches

2008-12-19T23:48:00.004-05:00

Ten and a half inches of snow descended upon my house tonight.
After the yellow streetlights came on and the accumulation slowed
I took three small children, scarved and mittened, out to the driveway
and we shoveled away, effort on my part, adventure on theirs.
As we scraped the asphalt they began to conjecture
Amid the grunts and heavy breaths
That made them feel so much more effective:
"You think it'll still be snowing tomorrow?"
Debate ensued, exchange of ideas and spirited conjecture,
the final conclusion drawn: maybe
the snow would continue through the night and pile up so high
that even Dad wouldn't be able to make it out the front door
and we'd all be trapped inside til spring, or else
we'd make tunnels through the snow, live in subterranean splendor,
burrowing to the mailbox or tripping over
the neighbors' surprised and uncomfortable dog.
"Yep, that's probably it," they decided,
and having agreed upon the immediate future of the neighborhood,
fell back to work, carrying each shovel-full
down to one corner of the driveway,
piling it up "so we can build a snow-fort."
I did not see any reason to remind them that their tunnel system would
Serve to render moot the igloo plan, nor to inform them that
the Weather Channel had already predicted
a cessation of flakes by the wee hours of the morning.
They are still able to have and eat their cake:
who are the Weather Channel and I
to take it from them?

12.19.2008: I miss believing the weather reports I made up.

oh today

2008-12-09T18:36:00.002-05:00

Oh today was a waste.
Mistake upon mistake, and
can't I this once have that do-over?
Oh today mocks me, halfway through
a bad joke--realize
cold and suddenly
the punch line will make you cringe.
Oh today smells offensive
a sullen dirty wind not cold enough
for clean or the season.
Oh today was a trip
(insidious sidewalk crack--stubbed toe).
Paralytic gloom and forty-watt bulbs
make for an indigestible supper.
Anticipated expiration
must needs hurry along, hurry along,
before I run out of reasons.
(Oh today
You did have a chance, I think. Around 6.55.
That was when I woke up.)
Even so midnight
hurry along.

12.9.2008: Sometimes the only optimism is the change of the calendar.

Carpentry

2008-11-29T13:23:00.002-05:00

I set out to say that Poetry is useless
but could not bring myself to do it.
A good carpenter does not blame his broken table.
It is not Poetry that is incapable.

This month I have written, I think, nine poems, and most of them did not come with a great deal of planning or forethought. Consequently, none of them are very good. This one slipped out the other night. It sums up my month pretty well.

I will not ACTUALLY submit this to a grad school...

2008-11-19T01:48:00.003-05:00

(Unless one of you thinks it's a good idea, too...)

I'm working on grad school applications, and this one says to "outline in general terms your reasons, goals, and other considerations relevant to undertaking graduate studies." I think this would do it...

A graduate education would further my knowledge of the English language, enabling me to waste more of the precious fleeting years of my life discovering that which has already been found, pleasing people who, in ten years, will likely neither remember nor care about me, echoing empty phrases and terms, learning to speak in a language of convenience. Graduate school could serve as the mortar for the cinder-block wall I am building to cement myself into my comfort zone, another layer of knowledge slapped, viscous and oozing, into the crevices of my mind, left to slowly ossify, optimally arresting all inconvenient wandering forever. A graduate education would let me stave off the inevitability of real life as well as serving as a pretend solution to the vacancy I fear.

The universe is a howling wilderness of despair. Carlyle says so. And all of us upper-middle-class yuppies have got to find some sort of cocoon to help us pretend that it isn’t. Some prefer a white picket fence and a hideous beast of a mortgage—I choose grad school. There’s this gap, see, this chasm that no one remembers to tell children about as they’re growing up and obsessed with high school and moving on to college. And it’s not until sometime—oh, maybe the summer of sophomore year—that the truth kicks in and our minds begin to spin the silk that is meant to serve as the parachute against the bitter winds of that cold, cruel May day when we throw our caps in the air and, with them, every link to the carefree, dependent past. I’m well aware that grad school will just give me two more years of that artificial scholastic co-dependency, but every little bit counts, right? And from there, it’s only another forty years or so til Social Security kicks in…sooner if I move to Sweden.

Say, does your graduate school have a program in Swedish studies?

Of course, I know this doesn’t apply to pre-med kids. But that is because they are all zombies.