pocket dweller

Prayer

by Marie Howe

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

via NPR discovery

“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.'
And how long is that going to take?'
I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.'
That could be a long time.'
I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.” 
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow: A Novel

right as rain.

{best work email, evar.}

What is absolutely correct, you ask?

...that my coworker's response to my previous blog entry described my behavior towards UK fandom as incestuous.  It's quite the fitting analogy for a Kentuckian.

At this point I don't think I've gone so deeply into the UK-basketball incest that my children will have a blue hue, but I can hope...

a magical, magical village

I was talking with a co-worker about a potential forthcoming existential crises:  If I attend the school-which-must-not-be-named, how I'd grapple with the cognitive dissonance of supporting said school-which-must-not-be-named and my undying loyalty to Kentucky basketball.

I assure him that it was easy, on all school-that-must-not-be-named apparel, I'd simply employ some handy-dandy duct tape to cross out the 'D' and 'E'.

Said coworker counters with - "But if they give you a scholarship, how can you not support the university that provides you with a great education?"

I respond with a blank stare.

Coworker fires back with an analogy - "Listen, if you grow up in a village and then move away -- when it comes time to get married, do you go back and marry someone from that village?"

If that village happens to be UK basketball.... absolutely.

{who wouldn't marry into this?!}

GO BIG BLUE.

love letter: brief

dear tomorrow,

I'm immensely grateful for you.

With deep affection,

Ellie

ponderent

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.
 -Gabriel Garcia Marquez















ps. If David Foster Wallace can make up words, then I can, too!

redux: the power of vulnerability

I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. 

-JSF, ELIC

I'm a cryer.  Maudlin.  Tears start flowing the moment sleep-deprivation, super-stress or anything semi-emotional sets in.  Resultantly, I often find myself in a vulnerable place when I don't want to be.  Lately I've become irked and repulsed by this pattern.  In these instances I'm overcome by waves of frustration, loathing my lack of control over my emotional barometer and it's outpouring.  So, I've started to try and shut it down sometimes - to shut out feelings, in exchange for vacancy, or anger.

This morning -- I'm grateful for this video (that I earmarked months ago, but just got around to viewing).  It's a powerful reminder that we all feel and express our vulnerability at different times and in different ways.  And most of all, we're well served when we embrace, walk through and grow from those moments.