Reflections on Newtown

I went to the church I grew up in the past weekend.  It was the first time in months, and it left me with a deep reminder of why I'd needed distance; the pastor referred to the Newtown shooting multiple times, but his analogies and references were subtly insidious.  Some of his rhetoric had the undertone of Mike Huckabee ("We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?").  Other allusions to the tragedy seemed to be couched in religious appeals, seemingly as an attempt to tug at heartstrings in a way that felt contrived.

Anyway.  I felt really unsettled.  

However, I found these two responses on the interwebs - and felt like this resonated with my desire to simply mourn for the lost, and grieve and pray for the suffering of the families and Newtown and the brokenness of our nation.  No explanation - no manipulation. Just...

Loss of the Innocents

God can't be kept out

unspoken, internal, nebulous justification

via an email I wanted to write, but didn't send.  Just:

It's not about the make up grade - it's about the fact that in undergrad I goofed off and spent a lot of my time on  extracurriculars, which was well and good.  I was a slacker-of-a "B's get degrees" type-kid, but I was blending learning and doing, and that was fabulous.

But -- for graduate school I had really envisioned digging in and developing better academic habits and truer discipline.  However, the nature of all-things-quotidian have made that quest completely and utterly unfeasible. 

 So. I rewrote this paper - not for the A -  but to, in some small way, reach at that goal. 

 And this whole joke of an attempt is shoddy, and will still garner a B,and I'm sorry you have to waste time re-reading this, but I needed to do it -- not for the grade, but for a continued glimpse at the attempting to be the student I might have been.

Semisonic syndrome.

Some days you have nervous breakdowns...

...other days you listen to Closing Time on repeat and pretend it's still 1998.

But then, they hit that line 'every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end' and, whilst rolling your eyes at how trite that is, you get pulled back into 2012.

Closing Time on loop.  I'm pretty sure I'm coming unhinged.

carry and be carried: songs

Songs have been carrying me through.  Someone shared this one with me yesterday

...and I've added it to the list of things I go to when I'm worn, exhausted and unable to piece together my own words or thoughts.  

melioration via:

Thought of You

Brother

Slow and Steady

Hard Times

Where Are You Now?

autumn.

Being deathless, Eden could never have an autumn. Somehow, a great beauty of the world was missing from Eden, and will, maybe, hopefully, someday be missing again. Autumn will only be our memory of it, as for eternity we remember the brief flicker of a world where there was tragedy, and it was beautiful.

-Lyman Stone 

{reblogged from here, who reblogged from here}

Have also been thinking (prompted by this blogger) about how it works when your personal life happenings don't align with what you generally attribute to a season.  More on this later, maybe?

true life stories

Three weeks ago, I drove a young refugee woman to medical appointments all day.  What I expected to be long, tedious, harrowing and full of awkward language and cultural barriers was completely inverted.  This young woman, who has serious heart issues, had an incredible, positive and thoughtful demeanor.  I want to write something especially descriptive and pithy to encapsulate the way her generosity of spirit and resilience blew me away, but (a) I'm never pithy and (b) it won't be accurate enough.

All this to say - I've carried it with me, felt flooded with waves of gratitude for how Providence managed to align the stars* so that I could spend the day with this particular young woman.

Also, I am making phone call after phone call - rushing hastily from and to waiting -one pop musak stream to the next.  This morning I had to call an insurance company to sort out my brother's coverage options for seeing a counselor.  I expected heinous, horrid line-holding and brusque conversation with a frazzled representative. Instead I quickly reached a local service representative. (I'm finding things in Kentucky to sometimes be blissfully small and personal right when I need it most.)  I began by giving her my information, but then told her my brother's name and put my mom on the line to verify (as the account holder) that it was okay for me to get the details of his account.

True life story: the representative knew my mom...was a former student of hers.  They chatted for a bit.  When I hopped back on the call again, she told me she had heard about mom
        asked me how I was doing and meant it (remember my rant from yesterday?),
                asked a few questions about how our family was
                       - told me she was praying for us.

Flashback to another true life story: two point five months into this whole ordeal, and I feel so isolated.  I've met others who've dealt/are dealing with care giving  navigating the monster of dementia, etc etc.  But, I remained desperate for someone who understood how surreal it is to cope at this juncture in life.

Three-ish weeks ago, I was at a conference for my grad program - sitting down to a nice dinner, and swapped tables to be nearer to an engaging speaker.  Twenty minutes into a dinner where I'd planned to be gleaning insight from a woman who worked for a civil society organization in Afghanistan - I find myself engrossed in a conversation with the wife of one of my favorite professors.

Conversation with my professor is as follows:
conversation...conversation...get around to my mom (because he knows, because I had to tell them to get back in to UK)
Prof: How is your mother?
me: *lots of words...say something trite about how it's been hard but is getting better (fake smile)*
Prof: you know that my wife's father had dementia and moved in with us when we were 26?
me: *jaw dropped -agape.*

Then my professor switched seats with him wife, and thirty minutes later I've completed neglected my salmon, know nothing  new about Afghani civil society - but have had the most timely, understanding, hugely-needed life-line-type conversation.

It changed the game - just in the knowing.  And I carry it with me.

And here is a video of the good, good man I married dancing at a wedding last weekend - with our dear friend Nate (and Rachel chuckling with me in the background).

Sometimes, when I get home from school, he dances with me in the kitchen - just a few moments between tutoring Corey or cooking dinner.  He drives me home after one too many drinks out with my classmates.  He sends me emails that contain love notes from when we were seventeen, because he knows my day is hard - and he knows because he's standing right in it with me.  And he loves me fully, even in my gross, emotional-blob-lump-heavyboots days.

Waves of emotion.  As deep in the sorrow and even deeper and fuller in the joys, and the blessings.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.  Psalm23.6

*I mean this differently, and more personally to my faith - but presently can't find a way to say it that doesn't feel -- goofy or trivial.

complete and blatant ranting; via sentence fragmentation

Of all of the things I could say, as of late, let me go with this one for tonight...

Do you know what drives me batshit-crazy?  

When people look completely aghast when you reply "I'm feeling pretty crummy" after the perfunctory "how are you today?"

I'm not naive; I know it's a societal nicety, and that everyone always answers "I'm well" or "fine," particularly when it's in passing or when unacquainted with the asker. 

However, I've made the (what now appears to be oafish) move of telling a local soul or two about how  life is all heavyboots and kind of tough right now - even providing a few of the details.  Annnd, I know that no one really understands another's struggles (i.e. how infuriating and debilitating it is to answer the same question ten times a day, how mindbogglingly numbing it is to navigate retirement paperwork and clinical trial options, how hard it is to drag yourself home after a long day filled with vacant, horrendous fake smiles and proceed to then slap on a completely different grin-and-bear-it, level of fake smile and positivity and muster up the energy to tackle social studies homework with a kid who's academically behind because he's been in the thick of it for years longer than you have).  

I get that others don't get the depths of how hard some of the days are.  I know that I've flippantly asked this same question to friends of which I am fully aware are battling some really tough demons/hurts/losses.  Guilty as I charge others.

Still.

What I don't, 

do not, 

cannot fathom 

are that people could miss that it's hard in general.  That some days aren't going to be "fine."  That when I say "my day is crummy" I don't need to be given the blank look of expectation, I don't owe you some lame back story about losing my keys or missing my favorite TV show this week.  Think for just a second: you know the background, and it's not getting better overnight.  (Not everyone, mind you, I'm filtering my desire to verbal process with every living thing.  But I did confide in one or two people I thought might-could be supportive.)

And to you all: I don't need you to fathom the degree - but I want you to know that it's tough. 

--> Not in a, "be impressed with me and place some epaulets on my shoulder" kind of recognition 

--> nor in a vapid "my life is so hard, give me attention" kind of way.  

...But more in a "I don't have many friends in this city and thus vulnerably confided in you that life is hell in order to get a slight feeling that someone understands/can support, can not ask a vacant, thoughtless 'why?' when I don't have energy to pretend any longer and say that all is swell and thus answer 'completely crummy' when I'm asked 'how I'm doing'" kind of way.

Also, 

I really don't want to be a one-upper, or obnoxious or self-involved.  However, if one more of my classmates blathers on about how terribly and horribly busy and exhausting their life is (particular points docked from the few that I told bits about my heavyboots and have already kicked off the this stimulating conversation via the aforementioned aghastness/blank stare), I'm probably going to croak.
As in completely snap.

I have no idea how we as a society have come to deify and curse, toil for and run from, blather on and be silenced by a lifestyle of (often feckless?) busyness.  I do know that a year ago, I was blundering on and on most every day with my cohorts about how 'my life is sooo busy' (and thus - important? valid?), and I hadn't
a
clue.

And I know that I still don't have a clue. I've never woken up for crazy feeding hours or to the cries of a sick kiddo.  I'm sure I can't begin to imagine the depths of despair, illness, stress, financial burdens, and loneliness many are currently experiencing - and that are minutely universal, but mostly deeply personal and crippling and seem to weave in and out of different life seasons while no one else seems to notice.

Why do we compare suffering? And scheduling?  And validity?

Why is busyness a rallying point? trophy? accolade?

So I am perpetually trying to check myself.  And to no longer bring up how busy and tired and crummy I feel in conversation, as though they are a prize to be won.  I'm trying to reign in the bitterness and resentment I feel toward my fellow twenty-somethings who can just be busy with middle-class American twenty-something things.

And I'm trying to be mindful and aware that in spite of this {totally obvious} enlightenment(?)/perspective, that I, like the rest of us, am completely immersed in the going, doing, racing, filling up every moment. Right now I can't stop it, but I am trying to name it - and knock it off the pedestal - and call it for what it is. 

brainstorm

In a month or two I will buy a house.  I've 'pinned' (what feels like) a million beautiful rooms via interior design blogs.

However, it just dawned on me that instead of focusing on colors/patterns, or modern v. traditional, or shabby-chic v. country living - I'd much prefer instead to focus on highlighting memories and blessings.  I'd like to avoid spending a bajillion dollars to make it all come together, and instead incorporate pieces from the lives of myself, Charlie, Corey and Mom in certain ways that are visually appealing and uniquely ours.  I'd also like to avoid the go-to mode of capturing memories (via photos) and instead think of other items that can be placed throughout the house, so that we can walk through on the day-to-day and interact with those memories.

I have no idea where this thought just came from; it feels a bit like a wild hair, and a tall order.

However: Challenge accepted.

{something within this is what it's really all about}

solipsism and sabbaths

Not sure how they relate, but it was all I could think about yesterday in Statistics class.


We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog’s yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum’s scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother’s retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we. Solipsism binds us together, J.D. knows. That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what’s brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd.

{DFW in Girl W/curious Hair, p308}

and


Sabbaths

He wakes in darkness. All around
are sounds of stones shifting, locks
unlocking. As if some one had lifted
away a great weight, light
falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
gone. He has known a long suffering
of himself, himself sharpen by the pain
of his wound of separation he now
no longer minds, for the pain is only himself
now, grown small, become a little growing
longing joy. Something teaches him
to rise, to stand and move out through
the opening the light has made.
He stands on the green hilltop amid
the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all
opened doors. Half blind with light, he
traces with a forefinger the moss-grown
furrows of his name, hearing among the others
one woman's cry. She is crying and laughing,
her voice a stream of silver he seems to see:
"Oh William, honey, is it you? Oh!"

II
Surely it will be for this: the redbud
pink, the wild plum white, yellow
trout lilies in the morning light,
the trees, the pastures turning green.
On the river, quiet at daybreak,
the reflections of the trees, as in
another world, lie across
from shore to shore. Yes, here
is where they will come, the dead,
when they rise from the grave.

III
White
dogwood flowers
afloat
in leafing woods
untrouble
my mind.

IV
Ask the world to reveal its quietude—
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellows, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

V
A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares
Inhabit it, and daily evidence
Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,
Of freedom slack and dull among the free,
Of faith subsumed in idiot luxury,
And beauty beggared in the marketplace
And clear-eyed wisdom bleary with dispraise.

VI
Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

VII
The wind of the fall is here.
It is everywhere. It moves
every leaf of every
tree. It is the only motion
of the river. Green leaves
grow weary of their color.
Now evening too is in the air.
The bright hawks of the day
subside. The owls waken.
Small creatures die because
larger creatures are hungry.
How superior to this
human confusion of greed
and creed, blood and fire.

VIII
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cezanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he's alive
forever, this instant, and may be.

{Wendell}

In what way?

Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.  -John Lennon

How so?
-> As in, 'pay attention to the present?'
-> As in,  you can think you're going to spend the next two years of your life in ABC city, doing DEF vocation, with GHI people, soaking in JKL season, only to find out that's not at all the case and instead you will be doing the last thing you ever envisioned doing, especially in this phase of life?

Either way, the statement kind of annoys me because it's trite and absurd.  But, it came to me on a recent weekday afternoon, and something about it feels true (and still equally overwrought and trivial).

Also, I really miss my books.  Everything is in storage, and I didn't anticipate it, but I really miss sitting by my books.  Not sure where I first heard it, but a book really is like an old friend.  This simple revelation made me realize why I'm so adverse to E-readers....

Anyway, with a lack of proximal close friends, I miss sitting by my old book-friends and having access to my familiar things, which are currently all boxed and inaccessibly buried in the abyss of the garage-storage.

Ahhh American materialism, I am deep in the throes.

words.

The past few weeks/life lately has provided excellent fodder for internal musings - many of which I've drafted and redrafted mentally - but all of which feel loaded and confused and thus hard to write down.

So, in the meantime - a quote that stuck out to me in The Economist, and three words that have reemerged in my thoughts lately:

But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. {found here}


Some words:
wrenching
juxtaposition
abounding

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad.  Everything is Illuminated 

who knew adventuring could be so circumnavigatory?

“Farewell! O Gandalf! May you ever appear where you are most needed and least expected!”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

tres

{reblogged from}

And a link.

Pulpiteering

Disclaimer: This post is straight-up prattle and harangue.

This past week has been full-on crazy train.  Earlier in the week I developed an affinity for the word 'wizened' because in I read it once in Harry Potter and automatically defined it in my mind as the encapsulation of Dumbledore's character.

{as wizened should be}

Ellie's definition of wizened:

wizened [wiz-uhnd; wee-zuhnd]

(adj) sagacious, slightly greyed, long-white-bearded, perceptive, thoughtful. subtly keen, wizardly

{i *guess* i could use wizened correctly to describe this dumb leaf} 

REAL definition of wizened:

wizened [wiz-uhnd; wee-zuhnd] 

(adj) withered; shriveled

So I've been (incorrectly) wielding the word as a crutch in the moments of exacerbation. And then! The bloody dictionary had to go and unveil my usage of wizened as totally off-base (although potentially correct in it's own way).

I protest.  

When you have the World's Greatest Grandparents...

...you get the world's best {and most appropriate} birthday cards.

And a bit o this for a Mondaytime-morn:

Waiting.

I have been anxiously anticipating the move to DC.  The past two weeks my anxiety level ticked up a few notches as Charlie and I began our apartment search in earnest.

My friend, Hannah, best captured how the apartment hunt in DC makes you feel when she posted this picture on her own blog:

So over the past few days, I’ve been forced into a reflection on the worth of waiting.  That which started as thinking about waiting as it relates to finding the right apartment in an incredibly-crazed city (realty-wise, at minimum) manifested itself into something much deeper.

I realized the hardest part of the past two/three years has been in the waiting.  I’ve had to watch the brilliant mind of my ebullient, sharp and driven mother slowly deteriorate. 

And I’ve had to wait...  

...on the end of phone lines

...at the end of confusing accounts of medical appointments

...in the awkward pauses that come at the end of conversations trying to explain to others

...in the awkward pauses that come at the end of my thoughts when I ask if I’m just making things up

Waiting has been the worst part.

I am a planner; a list-maker; a strategist.  Much of this I actually inherited from my mother. 24-hour notice was king in my household growing up.  The only way mom could juggle working, taking care of a teen and toddler and all the other things life threw at her, was through marking down everything on the calendar.  She was the watermark as planner, list-maker, strategist, and balancer.

So, as I watch things fade away, I want to go – to do – to plan.  Not just in the short term, but to prepare for how the specter of whatever is behind the memory loss will impact the longer term.  I want to tackle what’s happening like I have the apartment search.  (Game plan: live on Craigslist -> email first -> be friendly-aggressive -> go prepared (I MADE A TENANT-RESUME) -> win.) 

But that’s not how sorting out, diagnosing and addressing memory loss works.

So far, what it’s meant is waiting between the spaces of doctors’ appointments, fears, forgetfulness and questions.

I’m still loitering in those spaces, but the apartment search has helped me to refocus, and to remember to lean into this:

{Oh!  Heyyyy there, waiting!}

 Let all that I am wait quietly before God,

 for my hope is in him.
 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
    my fortress where I will not be shaken.
 My victory and honor come from God alone.
    He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me.
 O my people, trust in him at all times.
    Pour out your heart to him,
    for God is our refuge.

Psalm 62:5-8 nlt 

Caffeinate the blues away...

Burundian coffee makes recent goodbyes bearable.

My friend, Kevin, offered me his extra cup of this liquid-magic.

Little does he know how much it's helped ease the blow of returning to a 9to5 Monday - and of leaving these ones, their owners, and the fabulous city where they reside.

Nature v. Nurture

Lately I've been thinking about nature versus nurture -- and I mean really thinking.  I even made a Venn Diagram:

{i kid you not}

However, I'm not so great with the self-perception and remembering things.  So I had a super-interesting exchange with Charlie after I asked him about what traits he thought I inherited from the familia.  Via his input and my limited self-assessment, I think nature can get props for my mom's more olive/Greek features, including a big nose and bushy eyebrows.  Also, I can probably thank the gene pool for the extragangly-middle ( extended into high school) phase, which left me irreparably uncoordinated.

Nurture gave-to-me more things like my type A-ness and the development of a deep love for James Taylor (and folk music in general).  I also developed a guilty pleasure/ironic-but-NOT-really-ironic appreciation for the show, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.

{Sully, serving up a bit o' Nat'l Parks with a side of mountain-man sexual tension}

And speaking of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman - remember that time when Sully single-handedly lobbied/helped establish the National Park System? ('Oh, the reeesearch that went into the show!' my mom would proclaim at the end of each episode.)

Annnd here's where things come full-circle!  While I was hiking in Yosemite National Park (Thanks for that, Byron!) this past weekend, I began to reflect on how I spend way too much time licking familial wounds.  I bemoan the current obstacles that my parents, brother and I face and feel bitter that my family unit isn't more 'normal'/'healthy'/'balanced'.

But in actuality, contrary to my recent maudlin outlook, I had a hella' good dose of nurturing growing up.

{YNP - the other one}

Case and point: my love for hiking and camping.

Of my favorite things, I really love napping and indolence.  And I hate mosquitos and blisters.

Thus, if my parents didn't cart me to at least half of the National Parks for family vacations growing up, I'm about 99.72% sure I wouldn't have developed a deep affection for hiking, camping and experiencing nature in the way my parents taught me.

So, I'm grateful- for my kick ass mom and dad, who instilled some fantastic preferences and interests within me, right alongside just enough dysfunction to keep things interesting at Thanksgiving.

It happens.

{terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mood = me today}

Day in, day out...

In the words of David Foster Wallace, adulthood can really suck.

Okay, he said it more eloquently, accounting for complexities and such.  I.e.:

There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. ...

Today, going along with the vein of the wretchedness of routine, I'm led to sulk over how my dear friend Kacey is getting married on a beautiful, sunny Carribean island - and thanks to a collusion of adulthood things (work obligations, limited vacation time, logistics) I can't be there.

And it megasucks.

However, to find the silver lining, I'm trying to reflect on how, in the thick of the day in, day out - the timecards, grocery trips, light rail back and forth and forth and back  --> we cross through some mystic, veiled periphery - from adolescence to adulthood.

All of a sudden, in the midst of calls with insurance companies (that our parents no longer make for us), paying rent and student loans, mowing lawns and taking out the trash -- we begin to strive for more.

We try to make ourselves better
              - through lifelong commitments to one another
                     -bringing new life into the world
                           -coming together when unfair loss arises
                              -carrying one another through sickness and suffering
banding together to honor our brokenness and our triumphs.

In spite of my nobler yearnings, I'll keep it real.  My despondence lingers.  I'm bummed I can't be with Kacey and Joe today.

But! I am immensely grateful for the privilege of calling them friends, even when it's from far away.

And I guess... I'm grateful for the doldrums - for being stuck at my desk even on days like today - if it means that I can hone maturity, develop a sense of responsibility, enter new phases, discover greater challenges and resulting fulfillment, establish deeper commitments and explore new horizons.

So, this is for the doldrums:

And since I'm on a Neruda kick, this is for my cherished friends, Kacey and Joe.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. 

Pablo Neruda

Exactamundo.

It’s worth noting that you can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. Understanding heroism and schmuckdom requires fewer Excel spreadsheets, more Dostoyevsky and the Book of Job.

More where that came from here.  

the field where I love to lie

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.  

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.

― Rumi 

{clockwise - starting top-left: 1. whittling via squeeze bottle, 2. again, 3. purdy, 4. frivolity, 5.this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things}

 It's weird that the season of living in Baltimore is coming to a close.  I feel like I spent a good portion of the time scurrying - to find a job, get settled and build community.  Years two/three have been the most rewarding- as we slowly started setting roots and developing some authentic relationships.

Yet, in spite of how much I've loved our new community - I was reminded this past weekend (and over the past month or two) of the difference between new and old friends.  I love the friendship-honeymoon that comes with burgeoning relationships, and the refreshment of meeting new people that you feel as close with as those who you've known for ages.  But there's something unique about the bliss of spending hours whittling the day away with the people who know you best.

Moving away from your hometown generally leads you to build your closest friendships with other people who are so-inclined as to move away/around as well.  Although the pang of missing friends can be sharp, the joy of the reunion is far sweeter.

Hurrah for summertime weddings, reunions and adventures.

everyday mathematics

hem and haw.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Nelson Mandela 
in 'A Long Walk to Freedom'

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.

Let us smile and laughrica!

This one goes out...

...to all the peeps at Invisible Children.

Kony 2012.... really?!

You can buy Kony 2012 merchandise on your site.... REALLY?!

Resolute.

This blog began as a forum for self-expression and a means to flesh out my 2011 New Year's Resolutions.  I made a decent go of it.  I definitely tackled more than I could handle, and thus didn't fulfill all my goals.

--> But! I made a point to revisit them throughout the year, and as a result I feel like I spurred myself on to action I wouldn't have taken otherwise.

--> In fact!  I've just hit my stride (March 2012) at letter-writing.  (A goal I made in...ahem... Jan 11.  Meh -- some things come in their own time.)

So, when 2012 rolled around, I felt self-disappointment at my conviction-less outlook on new goals.  But,  instead of feeling defeated, I decided to wait it out and see what came.

After reading through the book of James with my small group, I think instead of a developing massive list of small things, I've really resonated with this goal for the next few months/2012:

 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.  

-James 4:17

SHAZZAAAM!/Burn.  (I mean, not really - but it's definitely a high calling.  I think I'll spend as much time this year contemplating "what qualifies as 'the good I ought to do?'" as I spend on actually attempting to step into the calling.)

Just saw this on a blog I follow, and feel like it's a nice, folksy way of capturing my goal...

Striving for the good, a nod and a 'tip of the lid' today....

save that for the black and white

The soul emerged from these loops of affection.  The loops were momentary and fragile, also permanent and enduring.  

-p. 373, David Brooks, The Social Animal

I spent a while (and a few conversations) questioning if my wording/my entry yesterday was too harsh --if I should soften things.  (This blog has become far from something silly in for me over the past few weeks.)

I had a really good conversation with Charles about it all.  His incisive question to me was - as a believer in God, does cursing life mean you are cursing Him, too?

?

Ummm?  Perhaps?  I think I was angry at the unpredictability and inexplicable suffering in life.  As a believer in a Maker, and Christ, who stands in these gaps for us, I have hope in more.  But, I don't think that invalidates the moments when we, as humans, question that which is beyond our understanding.

Perhaps my anger was sin,
failure to trust.

But, I think {hope} there's beauty in the dialogue, the process and where we travel as we undergo periods of questioning and suffering.  And I want to document and remember these moments in the journey.

So... that.

Up next: I will likely blog about napping.  Or other cutting, insightful white-person insights on coffee, how awesome my dog is or all the meticulous details on my shower-of-the-day.

And for now, this song.  Which I like:

Loops

Sometimes words don’t suffice.

Yesterday I was trying to put into words my excitement and anticipation about an upcoming trip and best-friend-reunion.  However, for things such as these I couldn’t find words.

Instead – a picture.
I wish everyone could know my little brother well.  He’s a reserved, inquisitive and intensely thoughtful young man – full of quirks and facets unbeknownst to many.

One of my favorites is how he expresses excitement.  Here, words will be lopsided and inept, but I’ll still give it a go... When Corey gets excited he flaps his hands – in a way that is chaotic but bounded.  He rocks from side to side and sometimes jumps up and down ever so slightly.

He’s sixteen now, so this method of expression is deemed no longer appropriate and he’s learning to do it less and less.  But sometimes, when he’s interested and invested in something, he’ll ask you a question (leaning in ever so slightly and pausing to process) and then, without hesitation will launch into an exclamatory response and enter into this state of elation and anticipation.

This is what I picture when I have a deep sense of enthusiasm, expectation and joy.

I love my brother, wish I lived closer to him and wish I knew his quirks and the intricacies of the man he’s becoming even more fully.  Along this vein, I want to cherish all that I know about my brother and get to experience with him as I mourn for my dear friend who lost her younger sister this week.

Fuck you very much, life, for inexplicable losses.
But thank you all the more for the joys that precede them.

mishmash and loss aversion

{The Alchemist, Remedios Varo}

I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.

-JSF, ELIC

When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.

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. 

-also, JSF, ELIC

Plus: this. Read this.