Inconsistent Me

the big post-script

2010-07-26T20:39:00.001-04:00

Find me here, in the coming months.

(Although, if you show up before August 1, don't expect much of a show. I won't get there until then.)

"Loose ends, dangle down and then take flight... But never tie me down..."

2010-07-26T20:37:00.000-04:00

When I find the time to breathe between hypothetical syllables and a roommate saying, ‘I think you really do like being a little stressed’ (what did you think all the caffeine was for?), I find that simple stream of consciousness is getting the better of me.

Like that moment in movies when time slows down you’re just able to pick up the details before the explosion happens or the ring falls in the fire or that great, epic, heart-stopping kiss finally draws the film to a close. That’s where I find these thoughts. Like day-farers struck along the wayside, lost in the current of everything else that is beaming down my way (like Eastern currents or far off dreams not yet written on uneaten, uncooked grains of rice. They’re necessarily small, but no less intricate in detail.)

How many similes can you fit into one sentence?

This blog’s been running for four long years. Imagine that. Imagine thinking about moving. Taking all this time and effort and casting along the day-farer wayside where the rest of my thoughts seem to land at one point or another. (Like I’m proud of every one of them. Ha. That’ll be the day.) So maybe some deserve their fate. In some derisive sort of self-knowing self awareness or something, that is.

It’s like how Greg Laswell said the other night that he knows his music is depressing, but did we know it? He asked all this in a laughing matter that I liked, but didn’t understand. You wonder sometimes what’s hidden beneath or behind all those teeth. What we cover when we smile. But his deep timbre (pronounced tam-burr, not tim-burr—no trees falling in this phonetic) kept me company last night as I again went to pack all these ‘things’ into boxes and put them away for yet another year in a different hemisphere. Away from here… Oh! For the fear… Steer clear…

I’m sorry.

And there’s all this stuff, which I’ve been through a thousand times and still have most of. I can’t throw it away. All these pictures, all these images, all these hand-scrawled notes on whatever was closest at hand—Kelly? Where are you?—Kelly, I got you coke zero—Kelly, here’s a note to brighten your day… the list goes on and on. I wonder why I’m still keeping them, but then I don’t. They’re better than that outrageous shoe collection that’s blocked by the outrageous jean collection. (Where. Does. All. This. Stuff. Come. From?) You can’t take it with you. And I don’t mean when you die. They literally will not let you on a plane to China with more than ONE BAG. So get rid of some of the shoes, kid.

This is what happens when God asks you to simplify your life.

You want the notes worse than the shoes, in the end. The shoes have been with you through a lot (as has Greg Laswell), but both of them don’t know it. The people who wrote the notes do. The people in the pictures did, and most of them still remember. So you keep those too in order to remember their faces better when the moments get bad. When you’re alone across the world, thinking about that Polaroid of your grandparent’s fiftieth anniversary cake.

We all thought that cake was an architectural wonder of cake-dom. So pretty—with it’s marzipan flowers and fondant edges. ‘Who made this?’ we all asked. Some baker from this or that part of the Raleigh-Durham-Apex-Whatever. It was a marvel. A year’s passed and now my aunt could make that same cake in a couple of night’s concentrated work. She’s been slogging through culinary classes on a mission to palette-thrill and she’s winning.

That’s how much changes in a year. That’s how much you can learn. The things that seem marvelous become attainable and other things drift away. For whatever reason. I’m waxing philosophic again. Must be the impending doom of jeans and shoes.

In some ways, my bedroom’s turned into a living will. Between the clinging of my cell phone (Lauren’s, ‘Yes! I’ll take you CDs for a year!’) and the moving, shifting sounds of dragging around crates that someone else is going to have to carry up the stairs (Sorry!), I’m finding out who I thought I was all over again. I thought I was all these things in the boxes. I thought I could summed up by Tokyo Police Club’s ‘Bambi’ or even better ‘Boots of Disaster,’ which is about the best song title since Lord-Knows-When, but I can’t. There’s nothing in all of them about giving and giving and giving until there’s nothing left and you can’t paint lines on your eyes and black on your lashes just to intensify your looks as they pass from me to—who? (I know, whom—but it messes up the flow… So sue me.)

You can’t hide anymore.

I never wanted to be in a box (you can ask Kait Tancini all about that). But it seems all this time, I’ve

been trying to step inside of one or the other just to what—satisfy the urge to be clear-lined and clean-headed? To be able to say, ‘Well, if the shoe fits, then I’m wearing it!” (So much about shoes tonight. I have really got to get my priorities in order.) To encase myself in more and more of whateveritwasohmygoshIneedthis until I disappeared?

So, when God shows up at your door and asks you to simplify your life and get away from all these things that supposedly defined you [me]—what do you do? Do you contemplate the blue and green one last time, just to feel better that you contemplated something other than the task at hand? Or do you accept the fact that maybe he’s not going to stop until he gets all of you [me].

Here is my blatant transparency.

"...in time, my love..."

2010-07-11T10:11:00.000-04:00

This is coming down to the end now. By that I mean (much less apocalyptically), that this may be one of the last times I post at this URL.

It may, indeed, be the last time. But it’s hard to ever say in absolutes.

Sometimes, these days, it’s like living through someone else’s eyes. When you know you’re leaving a place, when you know that you only have this many weeks left to pack your bags and get your plane tickets and finish whatever it is you hadn’t already done (there will always be something else) and pack up your house… I pale, sometimes, in the coming wake of everything I have to do.

For nine months now, no, make it ten, I’ve been living the good life on a little island.

For nine months now, no, make it ten, I’ve been pushed and stretched in ways that I didn’t think ‘coming home’ would entail.

Constant note to self: stop underestimating everything.

Constant note to self: even the places you think you know the best can hold surprises.

So I drive home in the evenings, looking over the marshy expanse of blue and green, and I let the scene take me in. Because that’s how Charleston wins your trust—its simple melding of blue to green—in every direction.

I think about how things are changing.

And how for once in my life, I’m ok with that.

So start over…

For nine months now, no, make that ten, I have seen the damage that fear does when you let it be your only source of wisdom.

I have been too afraid to try.

But it’s safe to say that safety may remain in every ‘old way’ that I possess, that comfort remains there too, but the upshot of that is that when ‘old ways’ become ‘only ways,’ there’s nothing left to learn.

All that is a fancy way of saying that sometimes, at the appropriate moment, you have to try.

I have had to give over fear.

I’ve had to give over insecurity.

I’ve had to trust that if I do this—Jesus will be there.

It’s so much bigger than you would think.

Like I said, I’ve got to stop underestimating everything.

In close, I am moving to China for a year. I am also moving blog locations. Check back to see when all that’s finalized.

"...this is not how I want to be forgotten. This is not how I want to leave remains..."

2010-05-26T23:22:00.000-04:00

It is

tonight. Thinking about how I wish sometime this page was like the first page of the books I used to read when I was small. The first letter consuming half of a page. Taking up the ink and paper like it was someone’s idea of a grand entrance.

It is

how I write these things out. One at a time. Hearing the voices of all the people, old and young, I see on a day in and day out basis. Of hearing my four-year-old charge’s (oh-my-Michael) voice from the backseat the other day, ripping through a slightly chaotic and admittedly anxietal thought stream: “Kelly,” he said. “The dream of moving is not as good as actually moving.”

So he says. I can’t help but thinking he might be right.

It is

running my hands along the walls in these places, these times, that are starting to seem fleeting in the grander scheme. If you make this decision and it inevitably leads to the conclusion of either points A-1,000,000—how do you ever decide? And so the fear of failure is becoming a much welcomed, but often disdained friend of old.

His footsteps, or footfalls—so well marked and memorized—should be ignored.

It is

the fact that, as I write these things, I know they sound like riddles and, to some extent, they must be. I have nothing to say for myself. Besides the fact that I’m learning it all too, as I go along. They told me, once, that [I] could literally do anything. They just never mentioned that getting to ‘anything’ could be littered with the pitfalls and fitfalls of what we call life.

What do you risk in terms of what could be a greater reward? How far out do you go before the water is too deep and you turn back, or drop the anchor, or just throw yourself overboard?

It is

secrets that you give away on a day to day basis. Like the eight-year-old who is also in my charge (for-my-Gracie), asking me, begging me to show her what I look like without make-up on. I put my head slowly under the water before resurfacing to answer, “Much like this.”

“Funny,” she answered. “I don’t see that much of a difference.”

So, why take the extra time… honestly… to hide?

As these days go out and I’m awaiting this news or that that could change the rest of these next years in a way I didn’t hardly suspect (Do you sail to far off places and drop an anchor in more ancient lands? ), I wonder at the possibility of all the things to come and what changes when you actually make a change and what will stay the same. And more bluntly and less poetically, all the new ways I might be able fail.

Or, do you

do as Matt Pond suggests and say, “I give the finger to my fate. He doesn’t know me and he cannot see that far…”?

Advice: get this. It’ll do you good.

"...now that I've found it, I'll tie the ropes around it..."

2010-05-11T20:21:00.000-04:00

The crickets are starting

It’s 8:17.

I can hear them

over the soft hum of the

Bird and the Bee

through the Open Window.

Too bad

that

this is a night not to be outside.

But pause what’s playing nonetheless

for there may be

no better soundtrack

Than this.

***

(through the sound of her laughter): well… I guess you really are running out of reasons not to go.

***

Everyday is a struggle for bravery.

Find it within yourself.

"...turns me to gold in the sunlight..."

2010-04-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

Rain, rain shadow

on the edge of spring

I can see it

—Cross the distance—

of marsh and bridge and everything.

What should not go unnoticed

—See this wind? How it whips through the trees?—

but like all double negatives,

some are deaf to its’ pleas.

"...see how they resemble one another?"

2010-04-14T22:49:00.004-04:00

Spring has sprung like a better version of a tourist-based mousetrap. Of all the things I had forgotten about this city, one of the most important was the traffic that magically appears after April first.

It’s ok. I’ve used what I have. An award went out, the other day, to whichever of the four kids I had in my car to whoever could spot the most out of state license plates. They were all a little baffled when I explained to them where Ontario was.

In terms of life these days, I’ve hit a rut in reading written words and have turned to guilty pleasures like Glee and 30 Rock. They say it’s whatever helps you get through the day. Evidently I’m leaning on a strong satirical sense of humor. And a steady diet of Bloodbank and Part II by the Dirt and the Flood.

In other terms of life, I seem to have more and more people these days telling me that I must have something to be able to work with kids as much as I do. I don’t know if that’s true. All it takes is a simple understanding of how basic humans are and how, when bored, you will always get one of three responses out of them: “I’m hungry.” “Can we turn on the TV now?” or “No, I didn’t just do something incredibly destructive just to get your attention.”

You’d be surprised (or maybe not) how often the first two get shucked in favor of the final alternative. Or how many times a day I find milkcerealtoysclothesexpensivegadgets intentionally broken and purposefully strewn about the floor.

But that’s not the point.

Every single one of these children has a name. And the days that I find the most things broken on the ground are the days when they are (usually) seeking out the most love.

They all want to sit at an all-encompassing set of feet, listen to the stories and breathe deep. (For which, I am and always will be a shoddy-second alternative. Even when the time comes that the children are my own.)

It’s changed my mind about some things, this last few painstaking months of (quote:unquote) childcare. It’s changed my mind about where God is. He’s above us, somewhere, yes, but he’s in the dirt too. I feel like He smells like something salty and sweet. The way these kids smell after a long day outside. Or how the ocean smells in the early morning, before the sun separates its molecules between light rays.

It’s earthly in its beauty and heavenly in its visceral reality.

Who knew it was so close? Like a hair’s breadth from our fingertips.

For all the days (recently) I’ve felt like a teacher, I’m still the world’s best student—humbly bearing a cross that breaks down in its mirrored counterparts.

***

that secret that we know

that we don't know how to tell.

and I said, "I... I know it well."

"...we're right on time..."

2010-03-18T22:42:00.001-04:00

I think it's interesting when-
a group of songs comes in a point in your life and they mean so much. I think it's even more apropos when said group of songs comes from a band whose music is gracing the radio. This is how I learn that The Voice is everywhere. Sometimes it just depends on how hard I have chosen to listen.

***

I don't know if it's true. But I've decided to stop fighting it. I'm going to believe in this for you.

***

The blank canvas before me is spread taught across the frames.
I see this canvas. God, how I see it.
Stretching and yawning—indifferent. Blank. Wonderful.

            They told me I’d be rebuilt.
            Yes, yes they did.
            It occurs to me now that not one of them ever knew what that meant.
            Interesting. They all once seemed to know so much.

Who has the paint, I wonder?
Or the markers?
Or, dare I say it, the felt tip pens?

            I am unique.
            And you are not.
            Am I allowed the contradictions?
            Of course. You feel both things.
            There are two sides to every coin.
            Well said.

Who has the blueprints for this canvas?
Not me.
I have not seen them.
I doubt, on occasion, there are none.
It’s a silly thing: this doubt.
So much borne out of fear.
So much born out of fear.
***

...you are good to provide. We know our needs are met.

***
When the plane arrives, character will wait. Character will not leave her seat until everyone else has disembarked. Character will be polite about this.

At a certain point, halfway through Concourse A, character will realize how hungry she is. She will also, simultaneously, realize that she has not seen this side of 6am in a very, very long time.

The hunger, she can remedy.

Sleep will have to come later.

Character will then weigh all options in terms of inter-airport travel, as there are inevitably hundreds of ways to get from point A to point B. And even though this airport offers one of the best underground transportation systems in modern flying, character will not use it. She will prefer to walk. If, for no other reason, then to stay awake.

Somewhere between aforementioned point A and point B, character will realize that she has neglected to check the connections board and may be at the wrong gate. Or that her gate may have changed. Or something like that.

Who are all these people? character will wonder. And where are they all going? Usually these questions would occupy the character for hours, but her general sense of fatigue is winning. It’s not even ten o’clock yet and she’s been awake for so many hours. And people do this everyday. Character will not understand the mentality behind rising before six a.m.

Character will consider how long this next hour and a half is going to be. Fatigue lengthens hours by ten-fold. Because all the body asks for is sleep. Character is not available to give that one thing.

Character will have been fighting a steady set of nerves at this point. A set of nerves that kept her up most of the night previous. She is not good at staring these things down. She is also beginning to wonder why she continues to put herself in these situations. The ones without guarantees.

But she does.

Character will acknowledge her commitment to finding a place to land and out of the cycle of perpetual hanging by a thread. She will continue putting herself in these situations as long as it takes to achieve the end gain. (Whatever the end gain is. Character will be unsure of that as well.)

"...take what I took and give it back to you..."

2010-03-06T18:49:00.000-05:00

A sunset is a sunset is a sunset.

they’re all (minutely) the same.

So, in saying that,

Do we call a city,

a city,

a City.

All (minutely) the same thing?

"...everybody knows- you'd break your neck to keep your chin up..."

2010-02-24T10:37:00.001-05:00

First cup of coffee over the RSS feed. (It is becoming my new favorite thing.) Picking up your news and their news and trying to find some of my own.

Philosophical Question #8062: Why are we all not drowning in this informational sea?

Flipping forward over the other things I check: gmail, facebook, biblegateway.

‘you will seek me and find me when you seek me with your whole heart.’

Shit. My whole heart? What about the parts I don’t want to share?

Reviewing the technicalities is daunting.

Or, say, don’t back down. Getting to the bottom of me is much easier than getting to the bottom of all of Him.

***

You’d be so proud of me. I came to a conclusion. A real, written conclusion.

***

Running, yesterday: turn left out the back door, right at the access, down towards the beach.

Hitting sand.

Hitting a complete and utter wall of fog.

It’s an interesting situation when you can’t see where you’re going. It’s a mind-boggling situation when it’s at 1:30pm on a Tuesday afternoon.

I could see the sun, sort of.

I could see the dunes, sort of.

I could just make out the breakers.

I could see 25 feet in any direction down the beach.

Another runner appeared and disappeared out of the fog.

So, this is loneliness.

***

'I see nothing. I see a boy who chews off the ends of his fingers and bleeds ink.'*

***

Wrapping still around my fingertips
And travelling downward to my palms,
my hands.
Retelling the history
or something
like your child’s favorite game:
“Now this finger.
Now that.
Pull tight.
Look!
A cradle for your cat!”
I was never good at games
this, at least, you should already know.
I lose on the slightest technicalities,
trading pressure for coffee mug
and letting it all kind of go.

***

If this conversation was never repeated,
never written down:
no one would know it existed.
How many are like this?
Where do they go?
When the fire of their words is spent?

*Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna

"...oh, well, make a decision..."

2010-02-18T09:55:00.000-05:00

Sometimes (and only sometimes) this URL bears too much of a weight. For some reason, I get caught up in this idea that it's all got to be very significant or it's not worth reading. Here's to unreal expectations.

So I call this: (In)Consistent Me Lite.

1) Reasons why I don't have a Twitter.
(The only way to illustrate this point is to give you a sample of how my Twitter would probably run.)

8:17am- I just woke up and am desperately trying to decide which crew neck sweatshirt to put on. Which one goes better with a french press- grey...or grey?
9:12am- Obscure song lyric.
10:00am- Thinking about going for a run, but it's probably too cold. Tweet that back if you want to make fun of my lack of determination.
10:47am- Obscure song lyric.
12:00pm- Debating whether or not to get coffee before I pick the kids up from school... I think I'm classifiably addicted. Well, what do you do?
12:35pm- Car pool line. I feel like we always all sit in the same order. How does this happen?
1:41pm- Obscure song lyric.
2:04pm- Movie with Abby. I remember the days when I could watch Cinderella twice a day and it didn't get old. Something's changed- right about now I'd like to punch Tinkerbell in the face.
3:17pm- Obscure song lyric or something cute one of the kids said.
4:24pm- Walking to the park today, the dog got spooked and took off after a squirrel. My arm is still recovering. The good news is that I know I have a guard dog on my hands. All rodents beware.
5:02pm- Obscure song lyric.
....do I need to continue?

(All I've done now is convinced everyone that I do, in fact, secretly have a Twitter. Because, you feel like you've seen this before?)

2) Reasons Why Relieving Your Childhood is Not (Always) a Bad Thing
There are extreme upsides to being a little kid that I had completely forgotten about. Besides junk food and the mandatory afternoon nap, there's all the little things that come with being a kid. Like...

unlimited energy and the ability to run long distances without being tired or winded.
excuses to watch and laugh at things that aren't supposed to be funny, but are.
being able to really show how you feel in pressing situations. Like if you're tired- you whine until someone puts you to bed or if you don't feel good- you can repeat it over and over again and no one will tell you to shut up and take some DayQuill already, god!
small things are the best things. When a piece of candy is ALL you've ever hoped or dreamed about wanting all day- this has got to be a good life.
doing over the top and social inappropriate things is not considered weird, it's encouraged! Want to wear a flouncy pink princess gown to target? Sure- why not! Want to run around the living room and make up all kinds of audiences and stages around the world- please do! It shows you're growing.
you're not (really, to an extent) responsible for anything. Be clean, quiet when asked and generally respectful and everyone loves you.

3) General Blog Housekeeping Things
I'm going on four years doing this. Which is incredibly strange to me, since all of these words were sparked by a dare with a girl I have not seen or heard from in almost two years. Oh, how so many ideas are spawned out of dares and jokes. (As a good friend said the other day, "That might be the nicest little hipster anecdote I've ever heard.")
Anyways, I am working on moving this site, or updating it or something. I have no idea when that will happen or how. For being a person blessed with a multitude of extremely nerd(ish) friends, it seems no one can really give me clear direction in the ways of the internet. They're trying, don't get me wrong. I think it might be my own user-inadequacy more than anything else.
Anyways, if and when the jump happens, I'll make some kind of blog-related announcement.

4) Peanut Gallery Is Now Closed. Thanks for Stopping By.

"...the nights grow short as the days grow long..."

2010-02-14T23:16:00.001-05:00

Winter flowers

on my windowsill

greet snow

—oh surprise beyond surprise!—

for, in which, a greater thread lies.

Frozen wind,

to these southeastern states,

finding itself

like an uneven or unexpected

step towards grace.

"...my heart's still beatin'. I guess I'm pretty lucky..."

2010-02-03T20:00:00.002-05:00

Today

I threw dust in the eyes of everything about seasonal affectations and dragged whoever was with me at the time outside. Finally, the rain, which so likes to haunt and drag around this part of the east coast, had called its long deluge off and the thermometer treated all of us to a day leaning just around sixty.

I’m not ready for beach weather. No, not yet. But a break in the grey monotony was undoubtedly nice.

Between bikes and dogs and a little bit of a hike down to the beach, I found myself blessed in the moment of just pure sunlight. Maybe I’m seasonally affected by everything I’m reading, but I think it’s ok once in a while to admit that life is just good in and of itself.

Confessions, these days, seem to be coming out of my mind quicker than most things in the past. Don’t get ahead of me. When I say confessions, I don’t mean deep and burning secrets. No. Finally, I am taking time to get to know one person who has stood in corners burning up over the last few years. Myself.

Every one of my roommates had a good laugh when I finally admitted to them that I thought I was a clean freak. You know, one of those people who adores their spray bottles full of caustic purifying agents. I am this. I prefer a clean house and a neat space more than most other things.

And so as some like to say, ‘a life unexamined is a life half-lived,’ it seems as if I have been missing minute details like this in my own life for several years. In other words, those things that—if you know me—you probably already know.

Of course this got me thinking, as all these things do. I have no stop button on where true life ends and symbolism begins—although the older I get, sometimes I wonder if they’re not all just one and the same. (Thank you literature, and a tiny passion for psychology.) Different can of worms, forgive me. I’ll try to stay on topic.

It got me thinking about identity and who we all think we are versus who we really are. In the last few weeks, I’ve been blindsided by the number of current and popular periodicals that are finally pointing at my peer group and using words like ‘overindulged,’ ‘apathetic,’ and god-forbid ‘lazy.’

I find myself agreeing, much to my own chagrin. Soccer Mom put it so simply a few nights ago, “You were raised in one of the most affluent times in known history. What else did you expect?” Well, Soccer Mom, I don’t know. Not this, I guess.

I’m lazy. I’ll admit it. Or, I was. I got a real shock when the ‘real world’ camped out on my doorstep and demanded rent and insurance payments. I sit sometimes in this house, that the sweat of my brow now allows me to live in, and wonder what I did with the money I had in college. Where did it go? Somewhere—and it took time with it. They’re partying somewhere else now. Just not on my bank statement.

I know times are hard. If you follow this blog at all, you’re aware of my gripe with the economy. Aware of my sarcasm and cynicism at the fact that some of the greatest people I know in the world are sitting at home in the mornings watching the View. I’m blessed to have the work I have. I am aware of that fact. I am blessed that families let me come into their homes and play with their children. Don’t count me among the ungrateful.

But I wonder, with all the finger-pointing and sardonic turn of phrase towards my aforementioned peer group, if we’ve all lost track of where our true identity will lie in the next ten to twenty years. When everybody else is gone and we’re left to run our own households and businesses and, oh geez—the government. I wonder, myself included, whether or not our piles of stuff are going to be shoddy protection to hide behind when the responsibility train rolls in.

I know the responsible ones are out there. I know a fair few of them. (Hat's off to you, Biggest Brother.) They’re buying houses, getting supplemental degrees and living on shoestring budgets that would impress great-granny-Hoover from 1931. So maybe some of that will rub off on the rest of us.

Truth be told, I feel sometimes like we think our identity is somewhere out there. Out there being some mythical planet where the Kardashians do exist and where they (whoever they are and wherever their power is bestowed) really do know all the answers and we’re just dying to hear them. And yes, on this planet, a new pair of shoes will satisfy every hope, dream and book deal you’ve ever wished upon. (You’re welcome, Dylan.)

But damn.it.all—that planet does not exist. There is no out there. There’s an in here. The place that encompasses those things that we actually need and not all those things that we just think we want. Like food for today, maybe tomorrow and a nice place to curl up at night. That place where the glory and the holy coincide and you find yourself not really dying to have all those things that seemed so important twelve seconds ago. (That place that we’re slowing destroying as fast as we can. Environmentalism rant will also be curbed.)

We’re all hungry. It’s true. All the time. For food and water and warmth and sex and coping mechanisms because sometimesthisisalljusttoomuchtohandle. But stuffing all those hungers into a race for more of what we aren’t is not going to stave them off. It will make them multiply.

So, I thought about it. (I also thought about how this post is entirely too long in its entirety and if you made it to thus point, maybe you should go eat something extravagant to wash away the taste of soapbox in your mouth.) And I think a little introspection and some good-old-fashioned caring would go a long way. I’ll leave religion out (for now), just to save another sixteen paragraphs of extremely pointed ranting.

In the end, what do you know you’re hungry for? And then, what are you starving for? Know the difference. It might mean everything.

"...and like a bird in a cage, i broke in and demanded that somebody free it..."

2010-01-30T14:30:00.002-05:00

A short thought- fueled by long driving times and a steady diet of the Avett Brothers.

When the company you keep is mostly under the age of seven and you simultaneously realize that you've become what most people would affectionately refer to as 'The Help,' you find yourself in an interesting position. You quit debating with yourself about first, the economy, and secondly, whether or not your college degree is worth more than toilet paper, and simply accept that you're now in charge of someone else's something. That something being worth more to them than probably all their other something's in the entire world (Or, so, let us hope). And because these somethings are living and breathing and needing help with their numbers and ABCs, you know you're there helping because they are what will come next or something deeply philosophical like that.

Or you step back and suddenly remember that you had completely forgotten how fast your luck can change...

in Candy Land.

"...do you remember me? before I learned to run?"

2010-01-17T17:42:00.004-05:00

She is standing on her chair, screaming through a rendition of a song I’m sure I might have heard before, but maybe not. Between her monotone and the volume, I can’t make out the words.

He sits next to her, a cape carelessly hanging, about to brush the ground. I can tell by the look on his face that this is not concentration; this is fighting the urge to cover one’s ears.

She gets down off the chair, and we’re halfway through the second rendition. I’ve caught the words ‘Lord’ and ‘holy,’ I think. But I’m still unsure. The volume and pitch have not changed.

He’s suddenly at my elbow.

“Tell her she needs to be quiet,” he says to me. “Kate is sleeping.”

Kate was sleeping. The cache of my own nostalgia broke that right up. Somehow, Kate had woken up.

***

Don’t get mad at me. But I’m starting to believe in your non-coincidental universe.

***

Sometimes
I feel like
We’re writing our own romantic comedy out here
On the island.
I didn’t think I’d find a place to fit in.
I did.

Dancing,
Last night,
Christin was.
With one of the this-or-that friend who we know because it’s community out here.
It’s small.
But she was dancing with him, spinning and twirling and
I felt like
I remembered a time when
I had not been so subject to everything else that came down
From this minute to
That minute.
I had been able to just breathe in the freedom
Of whatever was going on just then.

***

Towards the tail end of 2008, over a year ago, I published this:

Being whole seems so simple, but in the end, it will be the practical application of all these things that make us show our teeth. That will make us prove ourselves in trust, and hope, and artistic patience.

I wrote it late at night, evidently. Publishing time after one o’clock in the morning. (In those days where nothing really happened before nine p.m.)

I read it recently, wondering several things. I wondered, in hindsight, if I knew more then that I was letting on. The next few months seemed to hit like an unexpected freight train on an interstate. (what the heck is that doing here?) These words lend me to the belief that I had some foreknowledge of what was coming.

Or maybe not.

The Plan (the BIG plan, capital ‘P’) has been on my mind lately. I often realize, in hindsight again, that God rarely ships us out on a difficult mission without some sort of training. I know, I know. Things happen all the time and they seem to have no reason. But I believe, much to the chagrin of many more well read and educated than I, that there is a Plan out there. It just probably doesn’t belong to you or to me.

It’s all circling me in a sort of feather-like fashion.

***

I thought I could promise all of you I’d never let you down. I was wrong. I’m sorry.

***

They told me something.
I don’t remember what it was.
Why don’t you do this forever?
Why don’t you scream your shadow into the void until He tells you to stop?

Why don’t you make a wave
in an ocean
Consider yourself so small
that you are still just a tree
In a forest
On a hill.

I thought, once, that I did this to satisfy some need in me.
I don’t think that’s true.
I think I do it because it is. And it is of itself.

***

build me a home

inside your scars

the only place

i ever

will

belong

"...maybe this year will be better than the last..."

2009-12-25T14:48:00.003-05:00

A year in review

I know
A couple days ago
I treated this URL to a completely disjointed moment in my consciousness’ minefield of present thoughts.

When life changes, sometimes the current theme is disjointed—among time and space and where we are versus where we were. Things get a little screwy around the middle. In confession, sometimes this blog becomes a place for me to order my thoughts that have in some way become twisted around the uncertainty of growing up. Or just everyday.

Or something like that.

I said in the previous post, that the year Two-Thousand-And-Nine had not been good to me. I want to amend that. Or at least acknowledge that that may have been the wrong turn of phrase.

It was more like Charles Dickens. The Best and the Worst (of times).

I felt a list coming on today, in the midst of unwrapping gifts and eating too much and something like my third cup of coffee. I thought I’d share. Because it’s Christmas, you know?

To a Nikon D40, stock lens and kit. For using it more than I ever thought I would. For falling in love with images.

To David Joseph III and his grey eyes. As nephews go, I’ll assume he’s the first of many. For now he’s my favorite.

To the end of January and Death and All His Friends. For learning the expectation is never what it seems. So, to not looking back. Or something of the sort.

To Avon, Colorado and Bachelor’s Gulch. To ten days I’m not sure any one of us deserved. The gift, then, and what it means to be blessed.

To April and breaking and being and learning and changing. To the rearrangement, and what is good now and should stay good. (Also: here’s to being incredibly vague.)

To the first week of May and finally graduating from college. The full impact has still not hit me. I have not words to complete this sentence.

To my little brother and what the haze of a car crash did for him. No casualties, thank God, but maybe a better sense of understanding.

To JenniGray and Chris, Mary Gene and Andrew, Justin and Emily, Josh and Mallory (I really was there in spirit), Brandon and Rachel, Jason and Meg, and Jason and Colleen. For starting something really beautiful and really new in the face of all this world.

To Caleb and Zach, my surrogate summer brothers. The ones that kept me grounded for those months, and more than anything, kept me from getting lonely.

To New York City and trying. For being brave, I guess. Because in all essence, I think I failed. But I went. Somehow, in the balance of those two things, it meant enough.

To Abby and Connor; Tatum and Owen; Jack and Sam; Will, Henry and Grant; and Anna, Lena, Reo and Daniela. You’re the kids that have stolen my heart slowly and patiently over the last few months. You have taught me the meaning of family. Actually, these kids reminded me how to care.

To Clemson and Asheville for being perfect at the perfect times. Because you can go back, sometimes.

To Jimmy and Audrey for accepting the hand of the other in love and friendship. I was given a second-sister this year. I never had real sisters. I do now.

To Picture of the Day challenge and being the only one who survived its rigor. Six days left. I don’t believe it.

In closing, sometimes I wonder what possesses me to share here. With so much unlimited web space, sometimes I feel like we’re all just screaming shadows—trying to make a dint in nothingness with nothingness.

But I read something this morning that said that God spoke us into being. And that Jesus was the word became flesh (the logos beyond logic). So in his power, maybe the scream presented to the void is only rebounded back in chorus through his love. We are shadows of him, after all. So shall our words be.

I thought, once, that if I filled up all the empty spaces around my heart with what other people had said to me or around me or at me that I’d be full. It doesn’t work like that.

Thanks to all of you, whoever you are, for reading and keeping track of whatever comes out of my hands. I pray the year Two-Thousand-And-Ten is good to you.

For so it goes. And goes on.

"...listen to the magick..."

2009-12-22T23:25:00.001-05:00

I’ve been thinking about Christmas. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

I was thinking tonight, standing in line at the grocery store that something has changed. The bag-boy thanked me when I used the word ‘Christmas’ in the space of ‘Holidays.’

I thought that was odd.

My family, so evidently wrapped and hung together on the tree, is now drawing boundary lines across areas codes and cell phone plans. Funny, we used to argue about who stole whose sock mates.

I heard carols this evening, across a telephone line, from the upstate. It gave new meaning to long distance call.

It still made my heart full.

These are just words. I keep telling myself that. They are just.

They’re nothing more.
But they’re my gift and so, for Christmas, I have little else.

The year Two-Thousand-And-Nine was not especially good to me. It was not my ally in all situations. But in God’s creeping sense of pervasive education, He has taught me that when everything is down: there is usually enough. (Because He is enough.)

And enough, in itself, is all that is needed.

I have made mistakes. I’m falling down. I’ve learned that this life is not easy. I tried to do handstands, I learned the shiny bruise—I am still singing some of the songs I thought I turned off years and years ago.

But if this is my season of enough, I am unafraid. So to the year Two-Thousand-And-Ten, I say: rejoice.

And:
Get. At. Me.

For He who is greater, we will not sacrifice in deed or in name.

Merry Christmas.

"hey, little lonely smile girl..."

2009-12-01T22:25:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I want to talk about writing. Sometimes I really do.

They told me (they being a room stuffed with amateur writers), that metafiction was little assessed anymore. And little tried. But maybe not out of style. But this isn’t metafiction—so that probably doesn’t apply.

Truth be told, it’s not something I like doing. You get into the specifics of aesthetics and questions that only a reader or writer or someone obsessed with the English language would care to contemplate. For hours on end. Everyday.

But I read my last post, and while I like it, I’m realizing that my artistic obsession with obscurity is really starting to get the better of me. Meaning: it may or may not have meant anything to you. Or, better put, it might have sounded good—but did it really mean anything? (That’s a pulled quote from a friend from a few years ago.) In answer to all of the above: I don’t really know.

When I sit down here (or let’s go broader and say when I grab my camera), I’m not always really looking for something. Something just usually occurs. It’s part of creating I guess.

And yet still, I’ll digress.

Forgive the rhyme scheme, but lately (in definition of what’s posted in previous) all I’m learning is how to be set free. Simply and completely. And if you’re sensing something more in all that’s coming out, then good. It’s probably related to you in some shape or form.

But that’s the daily grind, isn’t it? More than the way I take my coffee or tea—it’s about the daily (being) set free. And starting over. And all of the above.

There’s something about fear in all of this that’s very real. And very pervasive. And very, very silly. I sit here (I live on an island now) in front of a double-paned window and wonder about all the things I’ve passed along the way. About all the bridges I’ve crossed and all the lessons I’ve learned and all the times I’ve jumped in and out too hastily without much regard for what might break.

I have seen, regrettably so, how much several hearts can take.

But you learn to not be afraid anymore. And not need the lessons the world teaches. The ones that say that you haven’t done enough yet to deserve this. Isn’t it so much simpler than that? Shouldn’t it be?

I used to say that if Jesus only came to get us good parking spaces, everything would be free. Don’t dip into my obscurity. I’m saying that Jesus came for much, much more than that. And there’s something about that sneaking word trust that rings so true. He came to give us life, and not as the world teaches. He came to coat everything in (as I used to say love, now I say) Him.

Does all this have to do with you? Sure. Coincidence or no, it’s coming across now, isn’t it?

There’s something in everyone that’s truly ubiquitous to the need of a saving grace. You will not find it in the list of broken things we’re promised by a broken world. Believe me, I’ve looked.

Find me in the present tense: grateful. For in freedom, we hope as it goes. And goes on.

Destinations never known,
But
I’m always there on time.

"...ok, part two: now clear the house..."

2009-11-22T22:21:00.001-05:00

The education I don’t think I need—
on how to live this life and not someone else’s.
The time I spent wandering around without much in my pockets,
I miss that.
I learned how to see my face in mirror and not next to
Or in place of
Something much more than what I needed to be.
Do I not too, bleed?

I guess what I’m saying is
We’re all trying to teach each other something
(or other)
over a glass of chardonnay
or something much stronger
but my truth never came in a bottle
or in a filtered package wrapped in cellophane.
It didn’t even come when he left me standing in the parking lot—
Like how I remember what I was wearing that day.
Almost down to the minute detail.
(how many bobby pins were in my hair.)
no.

That was the cleanest break I ever felt
That was the day
(I’m so sure of it now)
that I was finally set free
and it is still not my truth.
My truth comes in a similar moment,
But not the same packaging.
And I found it in the bottom of the wishing well
(self-same styled fountain of what it means to be debonair)
I found it in the depth of
(how did they say it?)
oh, my,
peace.
And yet, I’m still on learning’s lesson-track.

So, if you go out
Only
To come back in
And teach me something else,
Then consider this pupil fair warned—
of not something much stronger.
For, what all men are reaching for
is the same in this lifetime as it was all those millennia ago.
(and, see,
there is my hope)
Reaching for,
to wrap my fingers around.
Reaching for,
just to plainly come out and say it,
all those
broken
broken
broken
parts and pieces
that someday will materialize into
whole.

And so,
There you do have me.
And have me there.

"...and i said, 'oh-you should have seen me, a couple a years ago'..."

2009-11-01T23:37:00.003-05:00

There are places and times in life when all the themes, all the moments that we're all living day in and day out, day in and day out converge. When these (places and times) are recognized, it's less like a mix and more like a collision.

I don't know what possessed me on December 31, 2008 to agree to the challenge of taking a photograph everyday. I don't know what clicked inside my brain that made me say, "I have the drive, will power and stamina to do this."

I think at the time I thought it wasn't going to be that big of a deal.

So what's what? You snap a photo everyday and move on with your life. You upload them to facebook and make a little album. It's significant to you and to the people who challenged you to it.

In it's barest bones of skeletal bliss, that's all picture of the day is. I snap a photo everyday. I have successfully uploaded to five small albums on facebook. It is important to me and maybe less important to the people who challenged me to it.

But in a rare moment of personal confession, I can honestly say that to me, it is more than that. Picture of the day has become a very big deal.

I don't know if it's the thousands of random photos I now have, the changing of computers, three software programs or the stigma of being the 'girl who always has her camera' that has gotten to me.

Or maybe it's the collision.

Picture of the Day is where my entire life has collided this year. Not only do I have a visual record of something that happened everyday for the last 304 days, I have had to see something worth documenting everyday for the last 304 days. And in that, every facet of my life has become fair game to the internet and the mecca of web-based social network. (Don't make the point here that I didn't ever have to post them to the internet. It's done now.)

I'll say now I feel like everyone should (maybe) have to try this exercise once in their life. Committing to do something everyday for a year is no easy feat. I know this now. Because it's never what you think it is. It's the flippant, 'ok I'll do it' that turns into the, 'when I get six months into this and it's not all that fun anymore- can I force myself to go on?'

They say New Year's resolutions never last, and I've been running that one over in my head a lot the last couple of weeks as my resolve has slowly dissolved into a strong sense of 'going-through-the-motions.' I will see the end of this one. 61 days left- what's left to lose?

All this to say that I was sitting here tonight thinking about what it means to keep a record of what happens to you on a day to day basis. This year of my life has been an interesting one to document. It's been incredibly unpredictable. It's been a collision of everything I am, was, were, could be and thought I'd be. Strange to see it from a third perspective that is still your own.

(I may make mountains out of molehills, but the unexamined life is a life half-lived.)

The moral of the story (As I find myself completely and utterly unable to publish at this url without one. I will fix that later.) is simpler than I expected. It is the challenge, I think, that is making this whole thing so worth while. And that small sense of accomplishment that I will hold true to this one commitment if it is the last thing I do.

And when all the things that I see everyday have finally converged into that final album- I will brush the dust off my 35mm and give it a hug.

So maybe that's the moral of the story.

"...these are the songs that we sing..."

2009-10-26T23:28:00.002-04:00

Imagine this:

It’s an unseasonably hot day. That would be the first thing you notice. Next would be that since the sun went down, the bugs have backed off of your epidermis and made for whatever hell-hole they originate from. You’re grateful for that reprieve.

It’s been a long day, but not necessarily a rough day. You’re nearing the edge of tired that your body confirms as a day well spent. Meaning, in briefer terms, you got everything done.

You’re sitting towards the back of a crowded room, enjoying the people around you in that collected silence that anticipates who will take the floor next. You breathe in it because you can. Its headiness is bracketed by one word: family.

An old man gets up in front of all the tables, taking his time and grasping the microphone with his right hand. After a short introduction and a longer pause, he raises his arms, “I’d like you to know that we’re responsible for starting this clan,” he says loudly. “And we couldn’t be prouder.”

****

I cannot say or guess at this season in my life. So much has changed that I feel like I poke a stick at embers and flames ignite. There are wellsprings in corners of these halls I never imagined.

From where I sat on Friday night, bookended by my cousins, I saw something unfold that I would have never thought possible: I saw legacy. And I saw it begin.

It’s hard to say how it feels to watch one brother claim a someone as his own and now I call her sister. There is less to express how it feels when the second goes and does the same. From where I sat watching my grandfather on Friday night, I didn’t need the words. I just needed to be there. And enjoy the moment.

Bigger Brother is married. He has extended his hand and had it accepted. And here we are, on the other side of Saturday.

The family I have always known, the one that included Soccer Mom, SuperHero Dad, Biggest Brother, Bigger Brother, Little Brother and me, has grown by three in the last four years. Take that in. I now have two sisters and a nephew all wrapped up in the mix.

This is how we increase ourselves. By taking others in.

In love’s thunder show this weekend, I was tipped over by the embrace of sacrifice and what it means to give. In loving and doing we are getting and giving all at the same time.

I was touched, again this weekend, by what it means to give of oneself. I’ve seen wedding after wedding lately and they eventually all leave me with one thing: there’s a lot of sacrifice in love. There’s a lot of dying in living.

It’s a lesson learned inch by inch.

You take thankfulness where you can get it. You also get it sometimes where you least expect it. I am thankful for the legacy that made me. And that had never sounded quite as right as just now when I wrote it.

And so, in the offering of hands and acceptance—to Jimmy and Audrey.

"...if you could see me, whoever i am..."

2009-10-13T15:44:00.003-04:00

I have started this post any number of different ways the last few times that I've found myself with an inclination to blog. I though about redressing the basics issue that I started a couple weeks ago or talking about music and an experience I had with the notes and numbers the other day. I thought about just giving out a story from my often absurd and haywire life.

As sometimes happens to me, I am lost on the ability to choose.

Charleston has settled itself into a cool rhythm that I'm crossing my fingers and hoping warms by next Saturday. Bigger Brother is getting married and for his sake, and my own selfish reservations about bare arms and legs, I hope for warmer temperatures.

It's safe to say that Charleston never really gets cold. Which is nice for some people and others it isn't. If your blood has thinned out to water, like mine, you sometimes feel that the Caribbean and the norther parts of Australia got it right. Which sometimes makes me wonder about my possibility of survival in New York City. And all other places that turn normal conversation into a string of onomatopoeias.

I sat yesterday in one of my favorite places in this area letting this Holy City (as it has been called) take my heart away. It does that in a very specific way that involves blue, green and storm clouds gathering. Those moments that used to live on opposite hands of the time clock are coming closer and closer together now. As a good friend has said to me several times over the last few months, "Look at this. How can you look at this and not love it here?"

What I'm saying is that there's a benefit to loving where you are, when you are. My rampant inability to often make decisions has turned into one thing: a rampant inability to make decisions.

Milton said that the mind can make a hell out of heaven and a heaven out of hell. Is it that powerful? Yes and no, but I feel that there is the power to make the best of the worst. All things considered.

I get obsessed with the weather because it doesn't have anything to do with me. And yet, its beauty goes unchallenged among many of the earth's other spectacles. I get obsessed with music because something in it makes more sense than I do. There is a freedom there that I have only experienced between thunderheads, sweeping mountains views and the drop of a minor fifth to a minor third.

If you came out to see me today, you'd see a fish out of water. Or a bee without a hive. Or some other animal analogy that I can't even fathom. I am so far out of my comfort zone most days that making due is the only due.

But, all that to say, all of this to say- all these scrolling words that drop like my thoughts down the barrel of wherever unsolicited advice goes- when everything you thought you owned turns out to be an extended rental agreement, you'll find yourself so much happier flat on your face than you ever were on your feet.

Take the risk of counting it all for loss.

"peer over the edge- can you see me?"

2009-10-05T22:42:00.000-04:00

Lauren said something the other day that gave me pause. Moving her hands and canvassing the neighborhoods that make up the little-seen infrastructure of Clemson, she said, “I create towards the basics.”

She was talking about her artwork—a talent about Lauren that I admire and often don’t comprehend. About how she thinks of a painting or a pot or a photograph.

But here I was stuck on one thing: the basics.

I went to Clemson this weekend for a wedding and a stolen four days of ‘girl time’ with the women who have carried and blessed me over the last four years. And everyday, while we walked and talked, I felt a little deeper in. (Or filled a little deeper in.)

There was something really special about those walks. I’ll say that first.

When you’re a place like Clemson, the world feels really small. There’s hardly a moment on any given day that you feel nameless, lost in a crowd. It’s a town of friends. That’s the best way to describe it. (The cynic in me leans towards the phrase ‘fish-bowl life,’ but you get the idea.)

There’s an up and a down side to that mentality—as there is with all things. When nothing is unfamiliar, it lends itself to complacency and inaction. A person (me, namely) can get really caught up in the feeling of home.

A good friend once pointed out that all animated children’s films these days revolve the journey home. We’re teaching our children something in all of this. Or maybe, we’re yearning for something that we wish to leave to them.

"...come on, come on- give me a sign of life..."

2009-09-23T09:56:00.003-04:00

Count your blessings

One by one by one.

Learning to love—

This, too, I relinquish in regret

For candy-coated sunsets

And a handful of reasons not to fret.

To feel like yourself,

Well, now, who is that?

Is that my face in the mirror

Or someone with a little less to bet?

Come on! Come one!

—let’s celebrate today.

green like your pond in the middle of June

(water level slightly higher)

she calls,

“wait for the butterflies”

Drop across my vision.

“they block me out.”

(for caleb. because he doesn't "do" poetry.

let me know if you figure this one out.)

"...to all my friends in the oceans and the seas..."

2009-09-15T22:52:00.001-04:00

I stood in Wal-Mart the other day.
I did. I just stood there.
The “old” Wal-Mart in this town is undergoing major renovations. So major that they’ve decided not to close their doors for one single second of the day.
If the Please Excuse Our Mess sign or the constant promise of inhaled sawdust had not deterred me, then the sound of electric machinery should have. The building was in utter chaos, which I could see from the outside and experienced once I walked through the front door. But I persevered—in some kind of perverse way.
Wal-Mart is, after all, America’s most well contrived game.
If you can get in and out of the store without any hiccups and only one item, you’re rewarded with a moderately good deal. (That analogy is blatantly stolen from a good friend.)
Hardly anyone ever wins. Many people choose to not even play. That’s category I generally fall into. I’m not burning Wal-Marts to the ground or anything. I just choose to avoid their chaos.
And their moderately low prices.
But for some reason, on this day, something possessed me to go.
I am happy to say that this Wal-Mart had outdone itself in sheer Wal-Martness. More chaotic than usual and utterly disheveled, I think I actually yelled at a sales person as to where electronics were and he just shrugged.
I don’t even really think he really heard me over the clang of scrap metal on, well, scrap metal.
So I continued in my perverse perseverance. Wal-Mart was not going to beat me. No matter how good this one’s game was.
It’s weird to be in a building while it’s being built.
It’s weirder to shop in a building that is being built.
It’s weirdest to see a salesperson walk by with an armload of things you need and just take one out of their arm. And have them not even acknowledge you.
Because it happens all the time.
When I finally found what I was looking for, I was sweating and really, really agitated. Somewhere in my mind I think I contemplated that this might have been one of Wal-Mart’s techniques to crush my winning spirit.
If it broke me down enough, I might unknowingly buy a toaster. Or something.
And maybe, just to get out of the scream of the shop class that was obviously taking place behind sporting goods, I could be persuaded to buy a TV. And in that moment, my resolve was tanking.
LG flat screen, I was coming for you.
I had to get out of electronics then. Right then. And I did. Somehow. With no plasma in hand.
You don’t think that these kinds of situations exist, but they do. I am living proof as to what a Please Excuse Our Mess sign really is.
It’s not a recipe for bigger, better developments.
It’s a warning.
Dually noted.

"..."

2009-09-02T00:22:00.001-04:00

Soft rain (reign) shadow
on August’s edge of blue.
like lining on the curtains
we don’t have,
For some reason.
You cannot love what you cannot see—
that is what they told me.
that (this) is where the argument
folds.
Around the ankles
of,
well,
Truth.

"...we're all growing now. faster than our skin..."

2009-08-25T22:44:00.001-04:00

If I could put into words everything (slash) everything the last ten days have been—this would be much longer.

Much more involved.

Life comes at you fast. This I’ve said before and misquoted. It does though—and in the words of a friend, “Get a helmet.”

It might be all you need.

I rode to New York City on a number of different tidal waves that crashed around Brooklyn’s doorstep without much of an explanation. The familiarity that was lost in the getting there was not replaced in the there.

I was as confused on the doorstep as I was on the bus. Or the taxi. Or the Nissan Altima.

But I got there. There’s little left to say past that.

It’s funny how time passes slowly in the mist of uncertainty and excitement. If anyone could have untied the knots in my stomach, there would have more to fill the gap.

And after seven days, a brush with Connecticut and a whole lot of living, I came home.

Much to my surprise as to anyone else’s.

There are things that New York taught me in that short time that I wouldn’t have learned in a month anywhere else. Like how I could do the city. Or how normal couch surfing is.

Or how your heart repeats what it cannot explain. And how the mind will follow after—trying to make sense of the circular repercussions.

If you accept your place [here], there often seems to be no harm in trying.

And when not yet becomes now, I’ll know the difference. But I had to go in order to see the difference. To know its grain against anything else’s.

Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I wish life came prepackaged or wrapped in red arrows. Saying, “here,” “now here” and “yes, here.” Then I’d know I’d never get off track.

But the beauty in Adventure (capital ‘A’) is that you’re granted the ‘not knowing, but still going.’

The Surprise.

You’re allowed the option of a big mistake, but also the possibility of a bigger return.

Or, as Run DMC says, “No risk, no reward.” (That’s right. I just quoted Run DMC.)

Like hands pulling up a volume slide—you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start at silence before the sound comes in.

In other places, it’s called a leap of faith.

In the settlement, the landing, I realize that little of it still makes sense. But the accomplishment of doing is the only one I offer tonight.

You love where you are because it is where you are and there is not much else. In the mist of everything else, I could be a thousand places. But here is where I am, so here is where I’ll be.

"...everything you need is here; everything you fear is here..."

2009-08-09T23:31:00.002-04:00

I was given a choice a few months (a year?) back. A choice you don’t know about. I took the easier way, I thought. It proved to be much more difficult in the end. I will stop taking the (seemingly) easy way now.

No one said it would be easy, because livin’—it ain’t easy.

I was given a choice two weeks ago. I ran down the (seemingly) harder road. I’ve never been this terrified in my entire life.

But I was given a choice. Sometimes you don’t know what road you’re on until (oh shit), you’re on it.

And then,

sometimes,

you do.

You are worth more than many sparrows. Even to the hair of your head. Hairs of your head. The plural makes much more sense.

So it was said. So it shall be still.

Still.

"...because nothing ever happens here, that doesn't happen there..."

2009-07-25T11:43:00.001-04:00

Sights and sounds of summer, including:

the french press in the morning. brown waves on tan beaches. 12 seconds for my car to catch-then start. the avett brothers on a stage. my roommates conquering charleston's music then photography scene. click of bike spokes. the sun going down over the harbor.

Contents of the kitchen counter, on any given day:

one loaf white bread. one sterling silver bracelet. two cell phone chargers. one paper weight embossed with common household measuring conversions. one set car keys. two sets house keys. a stack of napkins. a stack of graduation announcements. a stack of wedding invitations. one laptop. one pair of little brother's elbows. (and what pretty elbows they are, too.)

What I found unexpected pride in:

friends who got the job. visiting instead of living in a previous home. a girl who won't let me say no to a dream. (even when it is still just a dream.) sacrificing pictures for words. sacrificing more words for less words. networking. driving- to greenville, to oak island, to savannah, to and to and to.

Where you might find me today:

starbucks. the secondhand bookstore. on a bridge in this town. on a waterfront in the city. the sun room, laptop balanced precariously across my knees.

***

If you find hope in a word mosaic, then I have done my duty to its components. For every letter of this is, practically and unexpectedly, life. If there is one lesson I have come to learn: make a list of the things (whatever they are: needs, wishes, wants, this or that), don't rank them, and go.

"...buy a pretty dress, wear it out tonight..."

2009-07-15T16:40:00.005-04:00

(a post in recognition of my own anxieties...)

These days, hope seems a little thin on the ground. I look around me, through a few months of disappointment and delayed opportunity, and I'm feeling a little grey around the edges. Where are we--standing at the brink and hearing, "you picked a really great time to graduate" almost everyday?

I don't need to rant about the economy for you to already know what I'm talking about. The job market. The war. The government. This. That. The struggling America that we know and love. The struggling world, also. I don't need to, so I won't.

I can't say that it doesn't bring me down from time to time. I feel like we've all gotten a little aimless through all of this. But that would be assuming that life was a set playbook that if followed correctly, would turn out fine. It's not that simple.

So, better put, we've gotten a little skeptical. Even to the extent of our own abilities.

The funny thing about this season--this uncertain time tinged the slightest hue of frustration--is that it has not clouded absolutely over with it's grey. I mean that literally. I have walked through this season with several setbacks, but the constant reminder that love still exists and restoration is alive. It's become the burr under my saddle.

I offer this as a word of hope to you, whether you have felt the burden or not. Take my sappy optimism for what it is. I have only this to say:

I have met few people in the last five years or so who are not motivated towards being better than this. If we are to be innovative, we must first be sacrificial. If we are to make change, we must give change. Out of ourselves. (In other words-at our own expense.)

And we must believe. I must believe.

That someone much bigger than me guides this--all of it everyday. And that we're not alone. If it means getting alone to figure that out.

It all seems very vague, right now, doesn't it?

In the wake of disappointment and unmet expectation, I offer a bit of hope. From someone who knows, I guess, if nothing else.

"...guess everyone has their own view..."

2009-06-29T11:09:00.001-04:00

I remember leaving Australia. I do. I remember getting on that plane—left foot, then right. I remember the Sydney airport. Sitting with Joey and Ori and Jess before Vanessa and I picked up our extremely heavy carry-ons and made for the gate. I remember feeling heavy and loaded down. Not just my 150 pounds of luggage (you think I’m joking)—I knew I’d never be quite the same.

I remember leaving Ukraine, the first time. Standing at the check-in counter and turning around to make eye contact with translators and Ukranian friends who were blocked by one of those nylon tape lines that says, “you shall go no further” in Cyrillic. We all had tears streaming down our faces. I remember that.

I remember leaving Avon and New Orleans and Toronto and New York City. I remember the Houston airport, Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Charleston.

I remember throwing my stuff in the car and driving. Driving to Hilton Head or Raleigh or Adelaide or Concord or Chicago or maybe just Keowee. What was I in search of—always out there on the road?

Probably a QuickTrip gas station, if nothing else.

For the first two years of my college experience—even if you scroll back my written web-blog—I was always moving. I spent less than six months in one room, one place or one space. I was consistently packing up and carrying everything to somewhere else. I have loved the luxury of travel made easy.

And then I moved up here, on top of the hill, and I swear to you—for two years—didn’t move. This place became home to me so fast, I had forgotten the thrill of moving like a ghost. And so, in between intermittent trips to closer destinations and the occasional cross-country road trip, I found a central base to house all my stuff and a large portion of my heart.

Two days ago, I went and cleaned out that space. I took everything and boxed it up and moved it all away. (A side effect of what we like to call graduating…) After two years, it was strange to be saying that I was moving again and stranger still to realize that this was way more stuff than I had ever imagined I had.

Leaving takes an effort—but it’s the same every time. You pack, you tell yourself it’s not happening, you get into your car, on your plane, train, and then you go. And go. I should be a wizard at good-byes by now. I’m not. I’m awkward as ever.

In so many years, I’ve never actually said ‘goodbye’ to any of the places I’ve been. How do you do that? Do you move slowly around the room, running your hand along the walls and whispering silent prayers of gratitude and anger for the moments they witnessed? Do you walk the streets, one last time, and mark that certain spot—that certain smell? I’ve never known how to record all of it. I just know that some days I round a corner and I feel Australia, I see Christchurch, I hear Odessa or I miss Chicago.

And so in honor of moving onward still, I’ll take my boxes and continue my journey. For all things remembered and instilled in cardboard.

My fingers—they are blistered, and my eyes—they are bullet holes. But my heart’s still beating—guess I’m pretty lucky.

"...careless in our summer clothes..."

2009-06-15T23:31:00.003-04:00

A few nights ago, over good food and company, a friend went around the table and declared what each of the people present would be. These were not your every day, run of the mill descriptions (Corbin's was complete with a design of a few loop-di-loops and a corkscrew)-they were detailed as the person describing is want to do.

Me-well, I was something complex. And my description came first. The puzzle. Without the box top...and in 3-D. 1000 pieces and counting. The constant rearranging of seeing if this piece might, fingers-crossed, fit. And towards the end of the discussion, Little Brother declared- no one will ever figure you out.

Thanks, Little Brother, but who isn't a complete complex mix on any given day?

This summer has been nothing that I expected. I went from having some pretty concrete plans to a flitting and inconsistent existence spent with my life in two separate places. (Thank you, job market. So the question becomes: does home constitute where you are or where your favorite pair of shoes are? Kidding, only.) I have become malleable to home being where I am and where I am fed (spiritually, physically, emotionally, etc). The specifics get lost in the mix. I'm carrying home on my back (another reference to my aforementioned and descriptive friend). I'm living out of this suitcase of a heart.

In sum, absolutely no guarantees.

So puzzle-piece-writer-girl finds herself counting her blessings in mysterious places. Like old literary friends (Barbara, Joan and Microsoft Word). The beach. And a pack of Charleston-based girls who have not forgotten my name after so many years of a covert and unrightfully College-absorbed experience. I will thank them for their fortitude later.

A good story to tell, at any moment these days, is one about how I'm reliving a time in my life I didn't expect. (Expectation, I'm learning, is something to handle lightly and with reservation. When I figure out if it's a good or bad thing, I'll let you know.) I didn't expect to be here- on a sofa in North Carolina in the middle of a Monday night. But, I am. So, here I will be.

"Some modest dream- the kind you can't speak of..."

2009-06-08T11:41:00.003-04:00

To Interstate 26, heading either East or West through the state of South Carolina:

I know you too well now. While traversing your yellow-punctuated surface in my little car a week ago, you seemed shorter than ever. For now when I reach what used to be the halfway point, I feel like I'm almost home. Thank you for allowing me to get to know your straight and uncomplex distance so very, very well.

Now that that's out of the way...

This morning, Soccer Mom asked me to help her with a project. I usually say yes to these sorts of requests for the sheer fact that her projects are never boring. When she opened the door to the office in our house and I realized that she wanted me to help her sort through our family photos--I had said yes too soon.

To put this into perspective-- my family has effectively photographed every moment over the last twenty-something odd years. I'm not complaining, it's fun to have a record, but honestly- there was a whole roll of film dedicated to my cat. Who is weird enough to have something like that? But there were some gems--let me explain.

Three years ago, when I got my first digital camera (Call me old fashioned- I still love film too much to say 'no.'), I was trying to translate the meaning of 'macro' photography to Bigger Brother. He seemed to not be getting it. In response to my love for 'artsy' photographs- he wandered around our grandmother's kitchen and took an out of focus picture of a poinsetta, a pot of macaroni and cheese (with the lid on it, not off) and the dirty scrub brush in the sink. He declared them his 'art' and asked anyone to challenge him. I didn't. I simply printed the three photos out, taped them together and hung them on the fridge the next week when we got home. I was never too sure how happy he was about this turn of events. (The one of the scrub brush is my favorite.)

The thing about photographs is that you can see the memory. You can capture something, an image, a figment of time. I was wading through all these photographs wondering at their purpose. They're pleasing, like all art. And simple. Maybe that's why we all love it so much.

They're something the mind forgets that a photograph remembers. And so we all stand around, snapping a permanence onto memory, one shutter click at a time. And I'm left to wade through the evidence, years later, on a Tuesday morning in June. Wondering at how this has changed to that, and etc.

For the last five months, I've been committed to taking a picture everyday through a challenge with some friends. It hasn't been easy- I'm learning that image capture can become tedious when it's no longer a hobby (But, alas, all things seem to be like this).

In the moving season that I'm in right now, where the only thing that seems to be consistent is my addiction to caffeine, I'm finding a comfort in the photographic possibilities of this life. For what I have not been able to express verbally or with a pen, I have striven to conquer by combining subject and light.

And, you know, it's working out. Like everything else.

"...and I don't have to fight in the weekend wars..."

2009-04-30T22:45:00.002-04:00

A few days ago, family surrounding and up to my elbows, I had one of those moments where something that consistently swims around my brain came into sharp contrast:

for every sin committed- the beauty is there. Enduring. Forever.

Fifty

It was their love that made my parent’s love possible.
It was that love (like so many loves before it)
that made the love of a mother (the love of a daughter)
real.

For fifty years, we see the generational
something
that explains the pursuit of this happiness.
And so like the ring on a finger
(for which father promised his love to mother)
we are made possible in the promise
of love everlasting.

In the sepia tone of the photograph,
as that car, some fifty years ago, pulled away,
I see the expectation of what was started—
so overwhelmed.
so overjoyed.

For what love was presented and will,
someday,
come to be.

For my grandparents- celebrating fifty years of marriage.

"...stardust to remember you by..."

2009-04-21T11:23:00.002-04:00

For some reason, these days, the truth seems to be out there, somewhere. Do you know what I mean?

There's a concept of running- I've talked about it with my friends. It can also be called 'hiding out,' 'ignoring,' or 'approach avoidance.' Used, typically, in the face of all the things you fear.

I used to wonder if I was the only one. The only one who was in pursuit of truth while still running from it with every humanly power I possess. It turns out I'm not.

These last few weeks, between school ending, exams beginning, wedding season commencing and moving away from this university- I've been breaking under the stress of life piled upon life. I've been using all these things to salve my running heart.

The problem with running away is that those things- they always find a way to find you when you least expect it. And so, three days ago, when God told me to stop, look, listen and open my hands (again) I was astounded. I hadn't realized anything was wrong.

Past the ache in my heart, a vague sense of apathy and a general annoyance with, well, everything.

Let it go, he said. Finally. Once and for all. All those broken pieces you've been hauling around since the end of January, hoping against hope that that wasn't the final word.

I could not run from the reality anymore.

Kait sat next to me last night, on the porch, holding my hand and telling me about faith. About believing in the promise of more than this. That we have and will become less, but in His greatness- so we will thrive. I had not found better reassurance than that.

Why do we [I] run from all these things? Like it causes me less pain to hide from the actuality- to not admit the loss?

The human heart, while broken, is still complex. And if it were not for Him in whom all things hold together- there is no question as to what gutter I would be in.

i live to make you free.
i live to make you free.

"...beautiful boys and girls. Beautiful broken world..."

2009-03-30T10:04:00.003-04:00

I cannot tell you how many times I have sat down in front of a blank screen this week willing words to fruition on the keyboard. During most of those attempts, something would stop me short- a phone call...a visitor...homework. I have said you cannot rush words. You also cannot will time to stop.

These passing weeks, since my last post, have been entirely busy--spent in transit from one end of the country to the other (literally). More than anything, I can say that I have defeated Kansas- going both ways.

I said a couple years ago that you don't really know yourself until you spend an extended amount of time in the car. I'll rephrase that: you don't know yourself until you spend an extended amount of time in the car with your friends. (A little over fifty-four hours, if you want to get technical about it.)

When we decided to go to Colorado about a month ago, I wasn't sure we would actually do it. When Lauren and I dropped our bags off at the boys house the night before we left, I still wasn't sure we would go. Somewhere in Illinois, Dan posed the question, "So, we're thirteen hours in...this is the last chance to turn back."

After Illinois, we were halfway there. Illinois, then Missouri, then Kansas, then Colorado. We did go. And so- a hastily thrown together adventure turned into a larger than life surreal reality. And it was one of the top things I've ever done- I mean that.

I've thought of several ways to write about this trip, but a blog is a poor excuse for this series of events. I will say that I asked God to tell me Colorado's story and I believe He smiled. It was too good for me to believe otherwise.

I can't help but thinking that so much right now is drawing to a close. Unlike the posts from Aprils and Mays from years past, this time I'm not coming back in August to the mountains. It's such a strange thought. Three of my lifelong friends are getting married in the next two months. I remember when we were kids (or well, Josh, I can imagine). And I'm finishing school. At least for now.

Sitting in a house on a much bigger hill (or mountain), some 1500 miles from here, I realized how much of this I will take with me and how much of it I will not give back. How I have been found, over and over again, in the beautiful and broken that is this moment.

And how much I love my friends. They are all so uniquely genuine. I wish my words could do them justice for you. (How simple a realization is that? So hear me prove how, sometimes, simplest is best.)

Next to the crippling awareness of fear, doubt and the inexplicably broken--Newness, it seems, is always out there. Waiting.

"...and we're all the more beautiful in red, gold and brown..."

2009-03-08T19:16:00.007-04:00

There are certain things in life you are not allowed to rush. One of them, sadly, is the ability to create. If my blog seems neglected, it is only for the fact that I find myself with little to say. I would just put something out here, but I have developed a real fear of your opinions.

My life has been all over the place, which is also a cause of prolonged blog-silence. I am running in several different directions and following the chaos that is southern weather. (A week ago, we were ankle deep in snow. Today, it's eighty degrees. Who knew March would provoke a split-personality in mother nature?) You can't make ambiguously loaded half statements if you have no idea where you're coming from. (That's a joke.)

Pause with me... in transition.

Every once in a while, God seems to think that we would all do a little better to give something specific away. (And what we will not give, he will eventually forcibly take.) I am told, over and over again (and hear myself repeat the phrase to my friends) that it's all to the good. That it's making me better.

But, let's be real here: it really, really sucks. I sit on our porch in the evenings, listening to story after story about how things should have gone, but somehow, didn't.

Now, I know that no one sees all ends. That no one knows how the means to getting to where you're going add up to a proper story line. I even know that the should in one of the previous sentences implies a whole world of distinct possibilities--not one of which could be part of any kind of good situation.

I'm not complaining. I would say, more accurately, that I'm stating what we're all thinking. The following questions and statements (check all that apply):

Hey, guess what- no. I don't get it.
I would like some sort of explanation.
I know I've been told to wait, but, really?
So...now I'm just supposed to forget about this? How am I supposed to do that, keep up and maintain my sanity?

And then my two personal favorites:
What the hell?
Really? No, seriously, REALLY?

Pause again for transition.

When I am forced to stand still these days (and seek some sort of order to my present state of chaos), I hear a voice pushing me forward. I confess my inability to trust, to rest, to persist in peace. My list of questions (involving all those listed above) is rift with my own misgivings, issues and fear.

Fear. Funny what that will do to you.

Questions are what they've always been: questions. And even with the ability to ask (which we are freely given), God still reserves the right to absolutely not answer.

Where does that leave me?

I regretfully admit that I don't fully know. But if this is the greatest story ever told, here is my thread in it. And if to further that story I need to lose something: then by all means.

Does that sound defeated? It really shouldn't.

I have spent enough time running away in my life to know what good that strategy will do. It has never worked for me. In fact, it has done the opposite every time: I've not only ended up further away from the problem, but also further away from its solution. I've spent so much time running that I've run out, over and through people that I've loved. I've lost more on account of my running heart.

The interesting thing about trust is that it flows from discipline right on down to peace. The even more interesting thing about trust is that you don't have to do anything. You just kind of have to sit and be still. Which is often the hardest thing.

But running equates to doing, so mostly I'd rather do that than sit and be still.

In the end (and as a side note, this one post has taken me entirely too long to write), it comes down to the difference between what you want to do and what you have to do. It's less about the long list of questions and answers and more about paying attention to the task at hand. Or living, I guess.

Within responsibility comes the dictate to trust and, more importantly believe. Through all these things: you must believe. And believe still in--

for and by whom all things were created. And in Him who all things hold together. Including me.

Including me.

"I like how the day sounds through this new song..."

2009-02-17T13:55:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, I took my shoes off and went for a walk around the hills adjacent to this illustrious university. After a long morning of stuffy discussion about our modern society, I found I needed a breather. Evidently, Lake Keowee will always provide the perfect vista.

There is a church on the way out to the Lake that I fell in love with years ago. It's white, small and squats toward the road without a marquis. (A rare find up here in the hills of Oconee.) Lauren and I have spent many a drive talking about how beautiful that church would look in a photograph. A few days ago, I went to test our theory.

Sitting on the church's front lawn (still with my shoes off), I contemplated the long walk that these last two weeks have been. The weather has been fitting the mood in our apartment: cold to hot to cold again. There seems to be no balance inbetween the temperature extremes.

I was getting good results with my favorite Christmas present. Above the noise of shutter clicks, I realized that someone had pulled in the parking lot of the very building I was photographing. In that moment, I had the gut-check instinct that every daring shooter will experience at some point or another: I could very well be trespassing.

The old man who introduced himself as Richard and shook my hand seemed beside himself with happiness that I thought his church was so pretty. In a moment of sheer luck, he unlocked the door to the building and let me inside. Standing six feet from the altar (this is a Methodist church), my bare feet were cold against the hardwood flooring. I was reminded of all the altars and cathedrals that I walked through in a land miles and miles from here in a different hemisphere.

Somehow, no matter if the building seats three thousand or one hundred, something about stained wood and elevated pews will lead straight into silence. I think my mouth might have gaped a little bit at the carved wood Eucharist table. In Remembrance of Me. For everything the morning had been, I had lost sight of that simple fact.

I snapped a few more pictures, on Richard's permission, and thanked him for his humble generosity. He had simply unlocked a door for me, so my thanks seemed a little too profuse. Nonetheless I could not communicate the gift that the interior of the small building had given me.

I could not shake the silence. I could not drown out the remembrance.

I looked up, still thinking, as I walked to my car. Nothing is going to drown out the sound of the whispers of my love. So I said thank you to Him also and closed my car door.

It is so simple, these days (well, for me in particular), to lose sight of the fact that the silence and the beauty are lying calmly at the foot of the cross(roads) where I am also heaping my mess. Eliot called it, 'a heap of broken images/I have shored against my ruins.' I guess I'd call it a perpetual return to the thing that keeps me here.

Once again, I am bowled over by the perspective of simple grace.

I stopped today, for the first time in months, and stood at the top of the hill that leads up to my front door step. I looked down over the field of our University and breathed. I seem dramatic and rightfully so, but you never realize what you're carrying with you until you're some two years down the road and the past seems too far gone to consider, but still close enough to the surface to forget. I wanted the memory of the Glory that has been in these years to stick. There is nothing like the sign of His hand.

In Remembrance of Me. Like a seal pressed against my heart, set on my arm.

"...this is the sound..."

2009-01-31T13:20:00.003-05:00

Last night, somewhere between here and there, I stopped at a gas station to re-gather myself before finishing the final leg of my journey home. Full of the Dirt and the Flood, time with my friends(family), sympathy and nicotine—I realized at the pump that all I was leaving on the road were hours’ worth of tears.

I stood in line with that self-consciousness that understands how bad you look to everyone you talk to—the way that avoids eye contact at all costs. (Trying, desperately and ineffectively, to hide your tell-tale signs of dirty tracks and stains on your face that no amount of makeup seems able to hide.)

Two women (Girls? Birth year: 1985- what is the distinction here?) stood at the counter, bargaining over the clack of high heels and smell of cheap perfume for alcohol. The both seemed out of it, high and so artificially put together that I kept my head down in absence of anything good to say. The gas station attendant, patient and sweet for someone assigned to the third shift on a Friday night, looked at me as I approached the counter and said, “They sure wanted more for their money.” I nodded. This was not a night where I had anything to say. Not even in the way of small talk.

I walked out to my car and watched the girls pull away in a beat up convertible Mustang from twenty years ago. They were laughing and smiling. For seeming so lost in the night, the assumptions I had made in the two minutes inside the gas station stuck in my rib cage. There I was, so broken in that moment—who were these women? They were like me, broken, high, drowning a deeper pain in something. I got in my car, cranked the Format in regression and rolled down the windows to let in 32 degree Piedmont air.

So maybe we were not so different after all.

For all the songs that have been circulating in my mind for the last twenty-four hours, I guess the least of these would have something to do with moving on.

The gift I left, well, it was the last of the things I will give. And so as my car stuck in drive last night, cruise control will drag me out of here. And. So. It. Goes.

You can...(watch Her Go.)

"...I think, maybe, it turned out ok..."

2009-01-16T09:49:00.003-05:00

So, hey, little wild girl- down by the ocean dressed in white- all that's left is your whole life. Your whole life.
(Thank you, Matt Pond, for perpetually saying it better than I can.)

Blue shoes-
you choose.
To be what and who you could and ought to be.
For if you can prove, through being uninspired,
that there is no adversary through this fire,
you have not looked back.

Mary Gene used to hate it when I would tell her that writer's block was getting the best of me. Unfortunately, when these days come the best I can do is loaded, vague statements that mean only a little to me and less to you. Part of art, in finding its heart, is that it makes you look twice.

At least, that's what they tell me.

This semester (the last I will spend on this campus) has dawned bright and has not failed me in its beauty and call to bravery. I am learning, through a series of forsaken hiding places and swiftly shifting moments, that sometimes being brave means not moving at all. When God teaches patience, perseverance and an end to all pride- you sometimes have to sit and wait. Because he is still moving while you are not.

Also for Mary Gene's sake, I will avoid the phrase 'counter intuitive' and just continue.

As to current events, I have already attempted to burn down this apartment twice, fallen more deeply in love with the people who share it with me and learned a new meaning to partying-all-the-time. My musical slump is looking towards coming to a close and the Dirt and the Flood has an album (finally) coming out. More on all of this later.

In an epilogue to my previous post, I have decided that newness in itself is not something that can be (or maybe even should be) defined. Where is the adventure if not for the unknown? Part of waiting is accepting this terrifying dichotomy. And so, in patience, trust is born. And my hand in His hand is never, ever more than this.

Believe, oh please, believe in all your wild dreams.
The well is full and you can fill you cup.
(Once again, thank you Matt Pond.)

"...the well is full and you can fill your cup..."

2009-01-04T19:19:00.003-05:00

Newness is a concept that I have trouble grasping from time to time. Life, it seems to me, cycles in and out of itself so often that a real concept of 'new' is coated in a shell of post-modern thinking. (In other words, the past is forever with you.)

But I got up this morning at biggest brother's house and stumbled to the coffee maker as usual, when an unexpected turn came in my morning. My sister-in-law's mom unceremoniously plopped my nephew into my arms. "Dana's getting in the shower," she said, and then she was gone. I stood there, with this little boy cradled in my left arm. Well crap, I thought, What do I do now?

I can safely say that I can now operate a coffee pot with one hand.

My nephew is less than thirty-six hours old. When he opens his eyes, he looks at me with this bewildered expression on his face. "What are you?" he seems to ask. I rock him and shush him and hold him. Not much of an answer, I know. I watch biggest brother do the same. It is funny to me how instinctive we are about these kinds of things. In the vein of 'new,' for this being their first child, biggest brother and sister seem to be doing just fine.

He is the definition of new. He is new incarnate. The air he breathes, the things he sees, his clothes- not an ounce of it has he comprehended before. He is the growth of the world. His person, his cognition, his soon to be personality is not recycled- it is his. It is new.

The beauty about the circle(cycle) of life, is that it begins in newness and ends in newness. What is death if not the most unknown, newest point that a human can comprehend? We are stuck in cycle of thinking that nothing is new. That nothing can change. That life is just the same thing over and over and over. I looked at my sleeping nephew yesterday and realized that that must not be true. A lack of newness would ultimately negate a need for learning, or research, or further study.

I'm following this thought path in my own mind. I am down six rabbit holes all at once.

In the end, I will say, that the dichotomy of new versus old is a lifelong battle of infinite versus finite. In the infinite, there is always more- there is always new. Learning to pursue an infinite lifestyle may be all that we're here for. It baffles me how prone we are to pursuing the other way.

Wow, I have gotten off on a tangent that I could no way resolve in this post. I'm going to have to raise the white flag of defeat on this topic and think about it.

Celebrating: David Joseph III aka Trig.

"...we've been complacement, been bad neighbors. We've given in to getting through the day..."

2008-12-18T00:29:00.000-05:00

These days, when the sun is at the right angle and I find myself sitting alone on the porch, I sometimes find myself whispering to the night sky--God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Grant me the knowledge of what never needed changing to begin with.

I find myself repeating myself throughout these posts, so maybe it's all a slow lesson in regression. I told a good friend the other night over hot chocolate mixed with strong coffee that my mind doesn't process bullet points. Not entirely true, I guess, but my lists do better in some form of free association that restricted short thoughts. My resume is lacking this form of simple continuity.

Earlier this month, when Corbin, Lauren, Jess and I would find ourselves awake late at night in the 1000 square feet of space that we have come to call home, I would see, again, what slow moments passed in joy mean. Now that I'm home, it's this house- wrapping Christmas presents together in the living room that spin the same meaning.

While Corbin protests my constant need to find a deeper something in all of this, I am finding the complications of being who we all essentially are is nothing more than a quest for whole.

Christmas is calling at our doorsteps, hanging off the eaves of some of my favorite places. Every season, I find, is a quest for rebirth in hope. The beautiful and broken of this(that) heart is the essential ticking of the greater story of the one who was and is and is to come. The knowledge, also, that we have already been saved from all those things that were and are and are to come.

When I step back and look at all these things in front of me, I am struck by a call to unintentional intentionality. In a simpler sense, I am struck by the dichotomy of caring. Love is, in its most basic sense, so much easier and infinitely harder than we've all made it out to be. Rest, as another good friend often reminds me, is not much more than letting things be as they are. Now that I've said it, show me how to put it all into practice. The practical application is where life gets so sticky.

I used to think that the externalities of life would be the things that would be the end of me. The point of this (love of the Father) being a relationship as opposed to a social contract is that it's not concerned with your environment as your ability to accept his decided place for you in it. It is the loss of control that defines existence, not the insistence of an ordered world. And being lost in (that) love, I guess, is where we're all ultimately aiming to be. That's why so much aims at the heart of life and not at the head. And why, I'd wager, more people understand the poets, but respect the theorists.

Being whole seems so simple, but in the end, it will be the practical application of all these things that make us show our teeth. That will make us prove ourselves in trust, and hope, and artistic patience.

"...now is the time to think about our words..."

2008-12-12T19:27:00.003-05:00

Every time I change hands on the wheel, when I'm barreling down I-26, something glitches in my stomach for the slightest half second. The drive is always just a touch unfamiliar.

It amazes me that I can leave Mt. Pleasant for months on end and still come back to knowing exactly which turns to take. When I change hands, while barreling down Highway 17, something feels right. This town is just that familiar.

There's something about coming home that never changes. As I helped Soccer Mom lay down the futon in my room tonight, it didn't really surprise me that we have guests. Or, that I didn't know about them until roughly 4pm this afternoon.

This house seems to morph itself around new things every time I darken the doorstep. New appliances, a sofa- maybe an end table. Even in their newness, they seem like they've always been there. Maybe because the floor plan never changes.

I helped Soccer Mom lay down the futon tonight and was hit by a distinct wave of nostalgia for a summer when I lived on that same futon. A summer filled with dogs and Hilton Head on the weekends.

In a rush to clean out our attic, Soccer Mom has also retrieved all my dolls. I wonder when the moment came that they became too small for me. Or maybe it's the other way around: there was a moment when I became too big for them. Whichever the case, I don't speak their language anymore. Funny, those toys used to be some of my closest friends.

What you find in nostalgia is that it washes over and then moves on. It has left me with such a sense of clean newness. Like a nephew due any day now and a season of expectation.

I pray you open the gate...

"...I'm going nowhere, lately..."

2008-11-26T18:38:00.002-05:00

Should I
write
all these conversations down
so I'll remember them in a
day,
a month,
twelve years?

Will you
remember
this next moment
so I don't have to?
And so
it goes,
and goes on.

Remember who, in all these things, you are the most thankful for. In a season, no-change that, in a world when life seems to sneak from around the corners and challenge the belief that we actually have things to be thankful for, remember what has been given and how much is left to give.

Live in love--
loud.

"...everything from now on is-- this is pouring rain..."

2008-11-19T15:03:00.001-05:00

The cold snap of November, taken away from me—by a woven blanket, tight around my knees.

Hot cups of coffee and calisthenics at 2am, I guess these days are beginning to blend.

Forty days since my last post. Who would have guessed...?

I am done with working. Breathe that, for just a moment, after eight months of my sweat and tears (very little blood was split in this process) going into website after website, I have fulfilled my contract with Corporate America. At least for a few months, or so.

It’s a reprieve more than anything else, I guess. I learned to love the morning drives and the late afternoons in downtown Greenville’s perpetual heat of Falls Park, but the constant juggle of school versus everything else was a drain on my faculties. (That’s a complicated way of saying I now have free time.)

You might hear more from me in the coming weeks, you might not. The purpose of this blog is to get something out, and currently, I’m not so stocked on advice. I’m not stocked on anything. The entirety of my creative energy for the last eight months has been used toward making you want to stay at this hotel over that hotel.

I hoped it worked. Otherwise, all I have imparted is the facts pertaining to TV size and triple-sheeting.

I’m not making any sense.

November’s chill has settled on us in a way that is unmistakably winter’s eve. It breathes down my neck as I walk across campus and threatens at our floor to ceiling sliding glass doors. I’m watching time pass with open hands, enjoying the smiles that flit my way.

I was driving out here today (Here is turning out to be the only place in the area where I can find the space(time) to think.) when the realization settled on me that there cannot be much more than this. That contentment is as heavy as the yoke and as light as the burden. I had not realized that so much of this depended on how much I could learn to give away.

But, then again, what of this is mine anyways?

"...like the movies I have often seen..."

2008-10-09T14:02:00.003-04:00

Consistency is the name of the game these days. Consistency and the ability to get everything done when you say you will. I am slowly learning that there is a difference between quality and quantity.

You have to find the time to put effort into the things that you love.

All summer a friend’s voice would come across the telephone line and say a similar phrase over and over, “You’ve got to know your limits.” To that same friend I owe a debt. His family’s generosity equaling quiet afternoons out here over the lake are a gift that is helping to keep me sane.

In order to know your limits, I guess you first have to find them. Maybe it’s me, but mostly I believe it’s Him—proving to me over and over again the meaning of the word enough. The realization in these chaotic moments is that I have everything I need. That this thing plus that thing plus that one can be remedied with an ability to try and diligence. And that I’ve got to stay in the race if I ever want to win it.

They tell you, at some point, that growing up is hard. I am blessed to be this age with the luxury of learning what the ‘real world’ looks like. It could have come dangerously sooner. I told my roommate this morning that I was too young for all this responsibility, she responded quietly that I wasn’t. I was just busy.

Just busy. I am overwhelmed by the simplistic genius of this statement.

When a trial comes, we are promised that it will never be too much for any one of us to stand under. And when life isn’t what I thought it was, it just what it is—who am I to find fault in that? But sometimes I change the question and say I could so much better without all this transition. (Laugh. It’s a funny joke.)

When He told me to be balanced, He didn’t ask too much. I guess I neglect the simple fact that the Glory in me is not mine, therefore to live in It means to prosper. And to find that quiet space between chaos and apathy. There, now, I think I have stumbled on some part of Peace.

In its own way, this time of constant, yet stagnant movement is an adventure in itself. And at every corner this familiar university presents itself in some new way. I should not limit the possibilities of surprise.

So, on and on—
Now.

and i told you to be patient.
i told you to be kind.
i told you to be balanced.
and i told you to be fine.
-bon iver

"...so the story goes..."

2008-09-17T10:23:00.002-04:00

Short Thoughts (from someone who hasn't blogged in a while)...

Work plus school plus social life equals something is continually on the backburner. I am learning new meanings to words like importance and urgency. (Notice that blogging didn't make the list at all...)

When I came to, I realized that the whole world had not stopped living on account of my blindness. Now, not one day goes by where I don't see His hand on my life.

Dear Australia,
One of these days I will find a way to return to you. Until then, I hope you're well.
Sincerely,
K.B.
P.S. New York City- that goes for you too.

Long days mean cutting back on sleep, but not upping caffeine intake. This was a lesson I learned, to my chagrin, this summer. I have found that if I have to be up, I have to do it without my mermaid friend... which is slightly depressing.

Growing up is like everything you've ever known ever. The further out I go, the more I realize that not much has to do with me. (And as Matt Pond would say, "Perfect plans cannot be made.")

The weather's getting colder. Here's to a final color change in my Clemson history.

"...I'll be holding all the tickets--you'll be owning all the fines..."

2008-08-26T16:08:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago a new and favorite neighbor wandered across the hall and put a book in my hands. He asked me to read it, to tell him what I thought.

There’s no gift like a book, I’ve decided.

I read it once and found it meandering. A story within a story, meant to be taken in small bites and not in large portions. It kept me company through the month of June, as I sat at my favorite lunch time haunts within the three mile radius of my office building.

As my summer wound down—July bled into August and I-85 became I-26—I found myself on my way back to the Lowcountry. And as my neighbor said it might, this small volume depicting the life of a traveler began to make sense.

This summer, in its heat and complexity, has been a tale about cities. I sat at a computer for the better part of it, researching places I’ve never been. Cities I’ve never seen. I gave advice to certain travelers for certain hotels that I’ll never step foot in. It was a surreally enlightening experience.

I stumbled across a metaphor through this book on a second read a few days ago. Through the connections patterned in the fabric of what a city is. What, where and how they are. What makes a city different from a desert and a desert different from a city? Or, as my metaphor unfolds, what makes a person so different from a city and a city so different from a person?

I have begun to realize that we are each our own specific city—a sum of architecture, roads and gates. A labyrinth of experiences, thoughts and feelings all building on itself and what you can or cannot remember. Some streets are cracked, some are like new, some are paved with cobblestone and others with asphalt. There are dark corners, hidden places and transportation—from one thought to the next. And everyday, people are traversing your city, seeing how far out they can go before you change a street on them or bar their way.

And so we learn each other, like we learn a new city—slowly and with a certainty that there is always some side street we might stumble upon.

Much the same as we learn ourselves.

I am pressed to find, in the chaos that becomes my life, something that does not equate in some way to growing up. A side street or corner that doesn’t seem to be under construction. I am structured and growing around life’s one guarantee (besides death and taxes)—change. Who knew so much could be subject to this without ever changing zip codes.

You can only go so far out before you find that you always take you with you. Your city is your home, and after months of cold anxiety, I am finding peace in the place that is me. That growing up is often growing in as well.

Oh the places left to go.

Who will love you? Who will fight?

"...I mean to quit stealing..."

2008-07-29T21:53:00.002-04:00

...as soon as I steal for the last time.

I came out here tonight with no intentions in hand- so we'll see where this takes me.

Like a winding road, these moments that started yesterday have progressed and will become tomorrow. I watch them from behind and ahead. The only reference point I have is this one. Right now.

Alone on the porch, I have my last commute in two days. May I never forget the feeling of walking around in grown-up shoes. August is looming as this winds to a close. I'll head back to the coast soon to get the sand back between my toes.

The upstate has had its blessings and its burdens. Its slow lessons over cups of coffee and a shaky finality that only comes with too much caffeine. I have learned to love sleep. To appreciate Saturdays and live on a schedule. I have learned how little of this I'm actually in charge of. It's not much and evidently a lesson I'll be getting for as long as I'm still breathing. And then some.

I guess you could say this is a new iteration of an old theme. That I'm learning to step lightly and freely.

As a favorite coworker says, almost on a daily basis, we are willows- learning to bend but never break in the changing wind.

For the joy of this summer and a breezy beginning to the school year, I guess I came in unprepared and am leaving much in the same way. Like the aforementioned road, I see the pebbles skip and change. So, this is what it looks like when you have to grow up. Life in the balance- somewhere between making a decision in every moment and hope-fully willing to give it all up. When the time is right.

Or, like a favorite friend always says, holding what you are given expectantly, but always with open hands.

This is no contra. Nothing against- in Him who for all things were created, and all things hold together. He is the foundation to the road. I cannot explain it in a better way. Who am I without this hope? This expectation in waiting? Without Him who authors, perfects, and loves?

And as a last favorite friend often repeats, the end will justify the means.

To listen. To pay attention. To believe. To freely give, and freely receive.

"...one small atomic bomb...I'm not..."

2008-07-14T22:22:00.001-04:00

Wanting to be whole is hard I, guess and it’s something we’re all looking for. And as the crickets back drop the end of this day I see it, and it’s painful.

In a different tone to my most recent posts, I know, but it’s something I need to get off my chest.

Freedom comes to those who wait—
but also to those who struggle.
Free styled in grace and epiphany, I am seeing that easy is not in the vocabulary of trying.

And if you’ve earned your lessons, well then, good, but prove them against a scene of black and gray.

Every moment in surrender, I guess.
Every breath in deep anticipation.

"...I'm just waiting until the shine wears off..."

2008-07-08T13:35:00.002-04:00

I find myself leaning heavily on an acknowledgment of grace in anticipation. If I had not believed before that God can work all things to the good, then I believe it now.

With a bruise on my left knee and a feeling of recovery after several days on little sleep, I have once again been reminded why I will always remember Hilton Head Island fondly. Mary Gene had a fortune from some cookie on Thursday night that predicted a family reunion going well. Evidently fried Chinese food knows more than just how to give you a Class 1 stomachache.

Standing in front of Joey’s house on the day of American Independence, I shut my eyes and lowered a firework in Budde’s general direction—hoping for the best. Soccer Mom would have died at our general lack of care for safety. In my head her voice warned me that accidents happen. I felt the firework shoot out of my hand and silently apologized to her voice inside my head. I have never laughed so hard, screamed so loud or been so choked by gunpowder and smoke. Sometimes the danger is what makes it worthwhile, I guess.

Laying under the South Carolina sun, I was reminded once again of the beauty of the Lowcountry. I was reminded that this summer cannot possibly get more terrifyingly wonderful, or I might have to close my eyes. The roller coaster that has been my past two years has stopped and I am standing on the platform—feeling myself regaining a strength that must have always been there, but I never knew I had. In all this beauty, you might have to close your eyes. And slowly open wide to watch the sun rise.

God is singing to me, smiling with me, pouring blessings over my head and laughing. I sat with my friends for four days and pulled in the memories that have been cataloging one on top the other for the last three years. We have grown together, laughed together, fallen down and bruised our knees together and if there is not something redeeming in every moment of the last three years, then I have lied. And as rain rolled in over Hilton Head on Saturday, I thanked Him for a lazy day to soak everything in. We drove home the next day and I could barely keep my eyes open at work on Monday.

Overarching and reaching, these words mean something new. In the barest, most broken honesty I am finally learning what real peace is. I had always thought that peace would be that stable feeling when the world is falling apart. It often is that reaching calm that starts in your chest and hits your whole body, one inch at a time. But the peace I’m coming to know, the one that surpasses all understanding, is a peace that accepts and does not expect. It is not a feeling, but a knowledge of who takes of me. It doesn’t cancel out my shaky unsteady spirit, but enforces my strength of soul. And while uncertainty abounds in this (or all) life, I am leaning on that grace in anticipation of being taken care of.

For a girl who walked for months in despair, I am seeing that the things that have been such a big deal fade in comparison to the reality that is Jesus. That I am blowing this or that out of proportion. And that, as Eric pointed out yesterday, the moments we try to hold on the tightest are the ones where we are in the most danger of giving up control. And also the ones where we most need to.

My rhythm waxes poetic in the more beautiful seasons in this life. On and on, now.

"...so live inside your shades of gray and nevermind the sunshine..."

2008-07-01T19:20:00.002-04:00

I'll find. All good things...

Pressed upon this memory of photographs I am forever paging back to see what's gone by. The past might be what makes you who you are but it doesn't define the future you. If the taste is still sweet, then... I am pressed between the pages and worth a thousand words. This is what memory is.

Oh! To talk about the past in such present tense.

A slow summer- learning freedom that set pink and dawned bright- I'm making shadow puppets in the evening light. The sun won't go down for hours still, resting easy on the sill before disappearing into gray. I wouldn't have it but this way.

I wouldn't have it but at this slow pace.

When God is everywhere- you are who you are. When he relieves you of grief, you find out that He can be whoever He wants to be. And this is who you aspire to be, also.

I'm not making any sense.

In summary, my lessons are showing their teeth, but not in a way to bite. Well, not me, at least. He is protecting me and I am content to lean. He has caught me now (like Father to daughter) and I am no longer falling, falling between. How did Keats say it? Or was it Shelley? I fall upon the thorns of life--I bleed. A familiar tune but a song to which, at this point, I no longer sing.

If joy comes in the morning, then this summer is the dawn. I see it every moment around me and it's breaking against every pain of glass that had become dirty with my dirt, my fingerprints and my dust. This is how I have learned to trust.

In the quiet of this day, punctuated only by the muffled conversation I can hear on the other side of the sliding door, I am content in my lessons.

"...when the burden seems to much to bear- remember..."

2008-06-21T10:02:00.004-04:00

Now, (as the Long Winter's say), that we're just putting our days to bed-
I feel good. A gift in a moment is when you feel God's goodness running alongside you and you're not afraid to look left or right. I am hemmed by his love- and at this particular moment- I am learning about Him carrying Me. I used to wonder where You are-these days I can't find where You're not.

The insurmountable becomes plausible the minute it is given away. (Or, well, the minutes after it is given away.) Much in the same way that mountains look so much smaller at a distance. The further away you go, the smaller they seem and the lines you would have/could have never crossed become negligible. These things I am learning, but like all good battle-worthy skills, I am still learning them and have no sharpened edge yet. I digress in the sense that I can't tell you exactly what they are.

So, against my better judgment, this poem is the only thing that I really feel like posting today.

Perfect People

Don’t ruin this by your deep thought-ed and smart ways. Don’t waste your gifts on making Them something They’re not.

The father-wonderful, broke your puppet strings.

The son-merciful gave you a handful of grace.

The spirit-magnificent, took away your pride.

And coming into these days, you are more and more sure that you are alive.

Prettiest of babies, how did your garden grow?

Youngest of the younger—did you see the last light’s glow?

Of light and fire, ice and wind—learning to bend in the hail storm,

but ne’er breaking in the end.

‘I have given it… Oh, now I have forgot!’

You have given it nothing.

You have given it to him.

You have forgotten all your reasons,

you have lost dearest of the friends.

Good morning, sunshine—the stars, they were for you.

The ocean rumbled softly, and this, also, was a gift too.

Melting words and dripping phrases—drying in the gravest sense—

died.

And I gave what I had to give,

meaning simply, that I tried.

"...I wish you well..."

2008-06-13T21:50:00.003-04:00

My water bottle sweats and South Carolina is hot. They call them the dog days of summer and at JenniGray’s house the other day—the dogs looked close to miserable. Her black lab gave me a similar look to the one that came from behind Rick’s glasses the other day when I refused to turn the air-conditioning on in the car. Welcome one-hundred degrees and an office that never reaches above sixty-eight.

I’m wearing jeans most days to ward off the temperature we’ve nicknamed ‘Russia’ that blows across my desk at nine-thirty in the morning. No one understands why I’m not melting this summer. I blame it on corporate climate control. And Corbin’s incessant knack for wanting to run our electricity bill into the hundreds. I’m enjoying this balmy season- even if no one else is.

For the first time in weeks, I’m alone in this apartment. It’s a strange feeling, but a good one—mainly that the stretching space allows me to free verse into the night sky. I’d take the stars apart, but the summer rain shower that threatened us a few hours ago never came through on its breezy promise. You can’t see them glow.

My routine life would make for bad television, but my heart’s in the right place. I feel my skin tighten around the heat and I’m happy here. Happier than I’ve been in many places around the world. Here’s to a simple moment in a life defined by chaos.

In that same moment that Rick was begging for air-conditioning, he also told me that computers don’t simulate random. That would explain my on-going struggle with the shuffle setting on my iPod. No matter how many times a week I scroll over to that setting, I get more Dave Matthews Band than anything else. I find myself wondering what all those songs are doing in Sonya’s memory anyway. There a quick finger-flick skip every time they surface.

That simple statement had me on my toes for days. Not the Dave Matthews, as much as the random setting on my computer. Does that mean we can’t simulate random? That silly candy bar commercial is replaying in my mind—life comes at you fast. Too fast. It’s uncomfortable.

And for all the changes that are made who is to say what’s simulated and what’s full on God’s pull on the threads of everything. On the threads of this life lived out in quick heartbeats and then it’s gone. I am one moment after the next—picking up glimpses when I can and hoping the rest falls into place. This is my day to day, watching moments fall. And when the question gets inevitably too long to listen, don’t give up.

But as darkness hangs over head, this summer is teaching me to be who I am in terms of who He wants me to be. There is so much freedom in the night sky and open roads, I’m finding peace marked in freedom and un-simulated seconds that come everyday. Like life isn’t a series of choices that are made every morning. Where’s the random in that?

I came to the realization sometime late the other evening (as I have before) that very little in my life has to do with me—more to with Him and His plan for me. I make choices and I hold on for dear life in hope that it all comes out clean (redeemed). I plan for the future only to find my way wasn’t always what I was looking for. So I take comfort in the sometimes repetition and hope my decision is better the next time. Hope I catch the hint, the thread, the moment where I trespassed.

The good is when I listen. When I decide to stay. When inconsistent becomes steadfast and I let most of the everything else fade. When I’m leaning the most heavily not on my own understanding (that sounds familiar) and paying attention. It all happens when you pay attention.

Moment by quick second and this is what I call daily.

"...when you have decided- the question was too long to listen..."

2008-06-01T10:55:00.003-04:00

When God teaches humility—your entire commute to work becomes an argument.

One that I have no business winning. Or, for that matter, being in at all.

My life has lapsed into a slow rhythm that begins, ends and moves through a few different places throughout the week. I am learning the complexity that is Greenville a little more everyday. I am also extremely pleased with myself if I only have to turn around once in confusion. I count one U-turn days as my best days.

There are important places I need to know how to get to—like Eric’s office, Vanessa’s house or Whole Food’s. If my everyday was straight shots to and from the office, I suppose my life would be a little easier.

I used to think you had to go out of the country, or at least out of the state, to be put out of your element. Clemson is a dear place to me and one I know very well. Funny how such a familiar setting can frame such incredible uncertainty. I am, with several others, reluctantly growing up.

And as Joey mentioned two nights ago, English majors have a terrible time finding jobs. I guess this is a fate I decided on. But working full time has made me question if I truly regret the path that leads me straight to Starbuck’s. (I’m halfway kidding.)

Yesterday was Joey’s birthday and it worked out that most of us were together. In Greenville. And we only had to turn around once last night. So, technically, yesterday was a good driving day. (I have decided that folding lawn chairs and driving in new cities are purposefully designed to make you feel as unintelligent as possible.)

This post is all over the place. After three weeks of silence, I feel like I owe it to you to make up for lost time. Like my summer at the moment, picking one thing and staying on it has proved to be a little difficult.

I say, ‘when God teaches humility…’ because during the last three weeks of this neglected blog, my lessons have been about just that. God loves to teach me to shut up, and it’s a lesson I am constantly re-learning. Like the kid in the corner with the dunce cap.

There are moments when you get up, and before your first cup of coffee you realize how you have been surprised by someone you would have never expected. How you can be comfortable without your normal security blankets. How this kind of discipline, this routinization of your life is making you better, somehow. And that, yes, the old adage still applies—you will find life in the balance.

Over dinner every night with our close knit little family, I am smiling and seeing how some day this aspect of life, the universe and everything will work out to. That God still stands in every corner with that look in his eye that says he loves us so simply. I guess ascribing to a simple love is a lesson in humility I have trouble grasping. In a world of so many complicated truths, that brand of simplicity doesn’t seem less powerful, but more unfathomable. I think the uncomplicatedness of God’s love for us might be the most beautiful and terrifying thing about it.

And finding a place in this heart to accept it, well—if you wonder why that conversation turns into an argument, know for certain that it’s something to do with me and not with Him.

Welcome June, and all that it brings.

"...give yourself up, make yourself sing..."

2008-05-20T09:21:00.003-04:00

A proverbial summer- straight to you from my desk.

The things I thought I knew would fill many books—very few (if any) of them would fall under the realm of non-fiction.

The sky is, inevitably, open.

A forty-hour work week makes Kelly a lot of things. Possibly not a dull girl.

A journal entry a day means a summer to remember. A journal entreaty a day means I could probably use your help.

Nights on the porch are now my days of the summer—long, and slow. Punctuated with laughter.

Waiting is like watching the seasons change—it's a slow process, but steady. The colors in-between will take your breath away.

Burning, shining and blazing are all words that come just before clean.

Change is something I expect, but do not accept. There, for you, is my mind’s battle with almost-homonym contradictions.

A transition, even a small one, takes my creativity for a decent two week period. This is a phenomena I’ve ever quite understood.

Tell me something new, or better yet, show me. You never know who shows up to change your life.

More to come when I've got time. Hopefully that's something I'll experience soon.

"...get up now, baby..."

2008-05-03T01:56:00.002-04:00

Leaning inconspicously on the edge of two. It's hot in this apartment. We're in a battle with our air-conditioner, trying to convince it not to freeze over--again.

On the edge of two, and I'm stil up, long after the hummings of my roommates has died and I've got one light lit for this last night. After tomorrow passes, I'm officially a senior and my time, unfortunately, grows short.

It's all coming between the commas now. And on the edge of two, I find myself wondering where everyone is. A block party late in the evening and remembering these days as they burn down to the slow coal of summer. Spring has made us smoke, and now we are smoldering--waiting for fall to start us all over again.

I will weather summer here, from this side of campus. Holding evenings in my hands after a job I hope to get. Every time my cell phone rings I'm slightly panicked my matt pond's moving guitar. I'm so determined. I'm so determined.

It will be a good summer, that much I can say. But what comes between the commas now will make all the difference and I am finding her face more and more these days in the mirror. Learn to love the ways you are- beautiful and broken my heart. Like all these passing seasons, I'll close this one with Lovedrug.

I see Him so strongly these days. He is everywhere, in their faces and in mine. And I wonder at how we laugh more than we cry and how this end of a season is so different from all the others. These days are all on His time and His watching. I am standing in the center and watching the seconds tick by. Fasting moving flashes of instinct, decision and His face. Reading life between the commas.

I am sitting, realizing that I'm out of coffee for tomorrow morning and going to need a solution to this problem sooner that I think. And I watch the people leaving through my windows. They put their clothes in their cars and drive to where ever their road goes. Some I'll follow, most I won't. It's different stories that only time can tell. Depending on which clock they're running on and how their second hands tick.

I will be here, this side of campus, for another year. Oh, for the favor that his and his alone to give.

Get up now, baby. Get up now, baby.
It's your song playing.

"...a mystery lies in her..."

2008-04-23T14:03:00.003-04:00

Leave me to be forgetful about important things. Between my playful excursions into Shakespeare and a gravitous look at the photography relating to the Holocaust, I forgot something altogether important.

Sunday marked Superhero Dad's birthday. He's older, but not yet deserving of 'old.' Some day, when the moment is right, I'll tell the whole story about his life and Soccer Mom's. They have some pretty spectacular God moves in their life. It is a goal I hope to achieve one day.

The reason why I forgot this important date was because of afformentioned excursion having to do with a certain Englishman that you are all sick and tired of hearing about. It's Wednesday, I'm exhausted and still have two more days to go on this tedious week. Oh, and then exams, so help me for some sweet relief.

I was whistling with the birds today as I walked across the big green field that I roughly consider our front yard. It's a good two minute walk to it, but from the balcony it seems so close- so I often claim it as mine. It was a brief stretch of sun to my hours hunched over my Toshiba. You learn to love to hate the things you need to do. When my one form of expression becomes my job... need I complete the sentence?

You can see the multipe brown rings around this table where my respective coffee mugs have sat over the last three days. I am a person who is occassionally caffeine intoxicated, I learned in Psychology. It's one brand of crazy I think I can accept.

But my guidance counselor told me today to expect good things from this summer. Job or no, right now, I think trailing my fingers through the water at the lake would be a simple form of pleasant relief.

For you today- I have this... Cue the birds singing:

If you hit play somewhere between
the middle and the end
you'll do well for trying.

The ache for me to tell you the ending
is heavy on me tonight
but a girl such as this has no great
story to tell.
Nothing final. No.
Like the breeze-
roll over and,
Go.

When you have decided the question was too long to listen:
Don't Give Up.
keep it comin'
-matt pond

"...in hindsight..."

2008-04-20T21:59:00.002-04:00

Title for my latest work of historic research: 'Shakespeare: What if He Was a Total Bum.' Does it work? I'm pretty sure I could argue this for a pretty solid 'A.'

What if Shakespeare showed up in your living room and was the sketchiest guy you'd ever seen? For all we know about him- he was gay, on every political side, married then not married-but possibly still married, in the favor of the queen or the king or whoever, wrote his own plays, didn't write his own plays... The specifics would be baffling- if there were any.

What if he came in through the back door and was the most homeless looking man you’d ever seen. The kind with no shoes that smelled as Elizabethan as he was—living over on the other side of the river in Southwark with the hookers and the drunks. Living on mushy peas and fried fish and whatever else they eat over on the never-sun setting isles--or whatever they ate back in 15-oh!-something-hundred-theyearofourlordannodomino. Would he seem so illustrious? So genius for hiding his personal convictions and contradictions so heavily in literature that you cannot find his face? Would we love him- call him the 'old bard,' feel so obliged to his work?

If Trevor falls asleep at night thinking about how to land this certain wakeboard trick on that certain wakeboard- I am falling asleep at night thinking about Shakespeare and the never-ending quest for questions surrounding his name. Relationship to Elizabeth, relationship to James.

What do you do with a girl who's papers never live up to their titles? I'm realing you in with all kinds of preemptive promises of big things- funny how they never really seem to deliver. And in terms of writing papers- I'm burnt out and procrastinating on my two last reasearch papers of this semester. Because these last few days have been like chipping at the iceberg from the deck of the Titanic-you hope the last lifeboat hasn't left yet. I might drown in homework, ne'er to be seen again. (Iceberg=homework, titanic=last week of school/due dates, frantic chipping chiseler=me).

A little sun, a little friend love has given me a little more zeal and a little less drive. Two hundred posts and still a wash of indistinct contradictions. Maybe if I had gotten more than five hours of sleep last night-I'd make more sense.

Probably not. But it might be why all I had for you tonight was an impertinent question about what it would be like if Shakespeare came back to us as a bum. It's the best I can do. I can see good things (as afformentioned) for this paper. And heavy amounts of sarcasm on the side, too. Can I reference myself in MLA style? This paper would be a riot on main street.

For example:
Quoted by one blogger, "Shakespeare was most possibly a bum" (Inconsistent Me, 1). The evidence is probable, she continues, that he smelled like fried fish and mushy peas.

I am as reliable as Wikipedia, aren't I? This is going no where fast.

And you and I will go on.

"...your smile is a drug..."

2008-04-14T22:39:00.001-04:00

I am exhausted. It is one of those days—and I’m wondering who chooses the upholstery in the library. Its muted earth tones don’t seem to keep me awake any more than its ridiculous pattern. I have Patrick Park on my earbuds and April threw us all a curve ball and got cold. Welcome to the chaos of my mind today.

Eric told me today that he’s glad to continually see me in the library. I didn’t really respond, but made a half-grimace and put my earbuds back in. I am clocking hours here in Cooper and feeling the sting of a heavy semester. I’m hardly a full time student these days and I am working like someone with twice the hours. Or three times the work ethic. Pick your poison.

I was thinking about multiple things today in my trek back and forth across campus to this six-storied mecca of books and studious young adults. The clouds were rolling in stampedes today in an angry dark grey. I saluted their salute to my grey mood and climbed three flights of stairs again.

I thought about this past week and where it went. Little Brother and I have taken to contra dancing. He’s better at it than I am. We took a girls day out to the lake and laid on our backs—staring at the last warm day of the weekend. And somewhere between all of this, our open door is still revolving and people are pouring in. Somehow their smiling faces are taking the strain off my days. Rick felt the brunt of a good twenty minute rant of mine today. I guess sometimes all it takes is the simple ability to listen.

I break for small things, like class and a desperate need to exert pent up energy at the gym. And to laugh with Corbin and Lauren until my sides hurt and my cheeks crack. I think half our apartment complex is convinced we’re crazy. On many days, so am I. There is a fine line between madness and genius—this I know for sure.

In a good moment, I’ll crack open Evelyn Waugh and wonder how on top of everything else, I’m supposed to finish a novel. As I’ve said before and will say again—c’est la vie.

Oh, and this is my gift to your ears.

"...well, you never said it, but I think I get it..."

2008-04-08T15:46:00.001-04:00

Twenty minutes left in this class and I'm thinking about cancelling my RSS feed. Mary Gene told me one time I should watch the news- I told her I enjoyed my ignorance. She rolled her eyes in that way that said I'm too smart to be so stupid. I don't watch the news, no. But I do read about it, now--thanks to Joey, Gavin and something known as RSS subscriptions.

But the news is depressing, and that's the reason why I enjoy my ignorance. Call me stupid (Mary Gene almost did), call me silly. But evidently, according to all these articles, the world was scheduled to blow up yesterday. Or the day before, the articles weren't too specific. And here I am, on the cusp of really, for seriously entering this world on the verge of blowing up. And I'm going to add to this? Holy hell.

I'm taking a class on the Holocaust. It's reminding me that things can get much, much worse. That I don't know pain. It's making me, greatful, thankful, blessed and a little guilty. It is reminding what we have the capacity for. It's scary.

I'm taking a class on the abnormalities and disorders of the human brain. We talked for an hour and a half yesterday about the bad relationship this country has with food. As someone who has always had a bad relationship with food, that was not so good for me either. How do things that are so necessary become so evil?

The worst pain of all,
some time between Adam and Eve,
just before the fall.
Some time before now.

Can you tell I'm feeling a little depressed? Here I am, from this wooden desk on campus, half-listening about the history of the British Empire. Mondays and Wednesdays are my British days. I flit from their history to their literature for the better part of the day. It's a wonder I don't come out with the accent.

History is so interesting when it's compressed and explained. Years of conversations, pain-staking decision making, hurt feelings, winners, losers-- it's all boiled down into an hour lecture about how twenty years of a man's life went down. So is that all we'll be, twenty years to an hour? And that's only if you were king.

Funny how things change and stay the same all at the same time. How the world was scheduled to blow up yesterday and still hasn't. No matter how many times we schedule it to blow up, it hasn't yet. It's come close, but for all the tearing down we do, we do a hell of a lot of building.

And then there's where all this always ends, but I've been thinking about it more and more. There's the resurrection, the one way to play- as I learned so many years ago. You wonder what everyone's screaming for when this, this Jesus makes so much sense. That's the question that always jumps to my mind. And no, I know we don't look so good from the outside and yes, we have our issues. And no, being a Christian will not make every problem go away. And yes, I was raised this way, and yes, we seem intolerant- the list goes on.

A good friend of mine looked at me yesterday and quietly stated that he doesn't know where else people get their hope. I think I nodded my head and awkwardly agreed. Who am I without this hope? And he's new to this whole thing- but his fullness already shows. Because thank goodness it's Jesus, not me, that you ultimately throw yourself on. That's another thing all these crazy classes are teaching me. I am entirely thankful that no one's salvation depends on me. Depends on, well-- any of us.

I will go on and watch like Chicken Little that the sky does not fall on my head. Without this hope, I am sure it's a fear I would have developed. Along with a gawking neck that strained from constantly looking up too much. What a sight I would be.

But convinced am I
the more we condense the sky,
the further away things seem.

"...time is contagious and everybody's getting old..."

2008-03-28T11:20:00.004-04:00

We pulled all the doors open yesterday to let this mild March seep through the screens. It smells so good outside- like green new life coming up through the ground. No wonder so much talk is circulating about rebuilding and restoring.

Time is contagious, and after being a blogger for two years and a blog toll leaning dangerously close to two-hundred, I have to say- this has been so different than my original reasons for blogging. And I watch time spread it's arms like some crazy contagion and cover all of us. All these moments later, still atop the hill, spinning words out of wherever they come from in this brain.

Because it speaks to someone, I'm still here. And because it speaks to that someone differently than it does this someone is also why I'm still here. Also, because I'm an advocate of reading and a propopent of literature. And mostly, because I told a certain friend of a friend from Texas that there's a certain unstable feeling that opens up around my middle when I'm away from click-clacking on keys for too long.

Time has sped up on me and Spring is running by me at full speed. Someone said the other day that in August, November always seems an enternity away, but in January, April seems like tomorrow. Or, the next day.

And as I continue after two years I guess I tell you less about my day to day and more about what's running between my ears. If I could record all these things properly, I wonder what more I'd know and what less I'd forget. If my mistakes would come fewer and farther between because I seem to make the same ones so often.

I can hear my roommates talking through the open door. Their voices are soft and we're comfortable, taking a day of rest and enjoying a slow afternoon. I'm savoring every moment, because March makes our time short- it seems. And April is, after all, tomorrow. Or the next day.

My stream of consciousness, you can have.

"...tell me what's your secret..."

2008-03-23T21:50:00.002-04:00

Humming and drumming along- the slow murmur of the dryer punctuates this first evening back in Clemson.

Nine hours there, five days and nine hours back- a quick stint in Greenville and two long trips down I-26 (trading passengers every hundred miles) equals a good Spring Break. One to rival the last, which would have been two years ago now. After so many hemispheres and helpless months of Fall.

New Orleans is something like what you would get if Charleston and Las Vegas had a one night stand in the bayou. We broke Louisiana dirt and found that even more than two years after the water has subsided, you'll still hit the table two feet down. Mix in a little concrete and create a little staying power. Twenty eight posts and fifty-two feet of wood seems like a daunting task until you throw in thirteen amateur builders and then things get really messy.

But we built it. The bruise on the inside of my palm has gone now. I thought electric drills were an easy innovation. In some ways, I'll submit, they make life a little more difficult. Though, I'll follow that with, we wouldn't have gotten very far without them. Or with the genius of more than one of those amateur builders.

God stranded us out across Lake Ponchotrain and told us to build. Not all of us were complete strangers, but I feel like I have good friends now. Somehow, all that space between us and the other four-hundred some odd Clemson students let us all know that we were there for each other. So, yes, I believe family ties can be built in five days.

New Orleans still looks like the flood just left. After church on Sunday, we drove around and I could feel my heart speed up and slow down with every houseless slab we passed. It moved all of those afforementioned people to silence. That one tour alone was enough to motivate us in any project, I think. Because sometimes you have to know you're at least doing something... anything.

We talked about brokeness- the soccer player, the loud country boy, the architect and the future human resources executive--the sum of our differences equaled our sameness. It was a picture painted by circumstance but colored by us. By absolutely who each of us are.

I won't go on much longer, but I'll mention it again. Building, digging, sweating and making up the difference was what I can say about the past ten days. Whirlwind, I guess, or something more powerful. Like love trapped up in a hurricane.

"...if there's any truth- it comes from you..."

2008-03-08T01:44:00.002-05:00

It's supposed to get cold tonight, at some point. But here when the day's recharging its batteries my clock's leaning on two a.m. and it's not so cold.

I hope this is how it stays.

If I seem a little dark lately, it's just because it's these moments in the evenings when I find time to stretch my fingers from one click to the next and back again. There is such a big world out there, and it will only take you a few micro-seconds to forget. So drop a blanket of clouds on me in prepositional phrases so I can stretch these sentences a little farther.

And speak to you about the things that fall below the lines.

I had forgotten Spring Fever. I might have said this before. I had forgotten the rosy color that floods people's cheeks like the pink lines in the buds of the dogwoods' blossoms. I had forgotten how much easier your classmates seem to laugh when the sun's brilliant in the windows and we're springing our clocks forward another hour. To save daylight (playlight).

I had forgotten that spring has its own smell too, and it's not threatening to burn your whole house down. That's what good October will do for you.

So I puff up my chest and wait for March showers to bring April flowers. I hope the cold picks another venue to play its show today. I don't think I can handle a damper on all this good fun.

Because you see us, don't you. We are kids after all. We dress up and dress down. Our shoes might be a little too big, but we'll fill them someday. So we smile at each other and enjoy the rehearsal. We play in the grass on the front lawn and roll around like puppies and constantly remember. It comes with learning--

well, I guess, everything.

"...I love it when we touch on something we can't find in any book..."

2008-03-02T22:57:00.003-05:00

Find me perched on a chair, somewhere near the afternoon, wondering where March has found you. March, like every other calendar month has found me making, breaking and taking (to, from, with and for) this journey we call life. So from my brown leather chair, somewhere near the afternoon I wonder, also, where life has found you.

Learn to live to love the disciplined life. Learn to say 'no' in the right situations. Learn to walk away, to not hold on. To take all the screaming and bleeding from the last year and throw it at the demons who've been on your heels since God knows when and tell them to shut up. So you can rest at night. That is where March finds me.

I told Soccer Mom not too long ago that I know all the 'right answers.' It's the practical application of the whole thing that has got your girl on the run. Say 'no' to this, which is inevitable saying 'yes' to that. Don't just know the difference, do it. The verb part of that sentence, when it changes, that's when I see things getting rough.

See, I'm good at advice. At least I think I am. Let me change that, I'm good with words. I can analyze situations. I can metaphorically turn situational glass to sand. I can think that, see that, hear that, know that.

Ask me to do it. Then, watch me run.

Don't get me wrong, doing isn't easy. The things I'm learning discipline in- well, I guess the word has a negative connotation for a reason. Discipline implies a slap or a snap or something. It implies learning the lesson through a long term of hard earned working at it. It implies sweat. (Look at those descriptors. Those alone have got enough edge to cut.) And for the control freak, you can't control yourself- so why not control everything else?

So I got asked to actually do instead of just know a few weeks ago. I got challenged to do the things I've been saying I would. Like eat better and make the grades I know I can. And for all the benefits hard work eventually reaps, discipline will make you hurt before it relieves you--like waiting for the endorphin rush after a good work out.

I've learned a lesson lately and I am so in the thick of it. What do you know when all you have left is to do? When you ducked behind all the corners, run to all your safety zones and done everything to avoid actually doing? It's hard to say. You'd probably look a little like me and be a little frightened by your own inability to change purposefully. Like all change is a bad thing. As if there are things about me that don't need fixing. Is it enough to say that at some point you have to love yourself enough to know that you need to change?

My final question may seem redundant- but it's something to think about. What do you know when all you have left is to do?

"...with the golden smile that made you feel new..."

2008-02-25T13:21:00.003-05:00

Once again, the weekend has blown past me and I'm sitting here on the other side of Sunday, trying to catch up. But I got up this morning and the three classes I thought I had diminished into one, so I've gotten some breathing room.

So, say hello to a good Monday.

I'm a little short on words this week. Between school, friends and family, I'm a little spent. These are the things I want to mention for this week, or until the next time I post.

I said once that February was a good month for birthdays. The most important woman in my life celebrated another year of being amazing this past Thursday. This all goes to say that in the way of mothers, I am most blessed.

I love my brothers. I miss Big and Biggest Brother. I am anxiously awaiting hugging their necks and kissing their faces on Friday.

My family at Clemson is constantly surprising me and coming through. They are the people I don't deserve. They are God's grace embodied.

I am officially addicted to mewithoutYou, Matt Costa and matt pond PA. I am obviously very confused about my mood at any given time. And that, unfortunately, I should have listened to Rick a long time ago about Aaron Weiss's band.

French Press is really the only way to drink coffee. I find myself getting up fifteen minutes earlier for this luxury.

I cannot tell you how much I'm realizing that art is essential to life. If you cannot express, something is lost. I'm becoming such an annoying proponent of turning off the television.

That's all I have for today. South Carolina is beautiful this February.

"...confirms my deepest held belief..."

2008-02-17T16:07:00.004-05:00

I've used 'We are starved for your attention' as a title before, so I had to come up with a new one for today. That should be the right name of this post, I feel.

We went to Moe's on Sunday and saw a guy that reminded every single one of us of Dan. Something about lunch after church wasn't the same without him squeezed into the booth. I get his updates and scattered phone calls. Even though he's trucking along the Moutain West, he's still right here in a lot of ways. In more ways than one, I'm seeing that you can be in the same place as someone even when they're miles and miles away. And oh, the stories we will tell.

This weekend flashed by me in a blur and I'm standing somewhere between Thursday and Tuesday- trying to recollect all that I did. Kait told me the other day that she felt like the whole world was moving and she was standing still. Something that was said at church the other day made a lot of sense. In this world of effervescent struggling we are finding what it means to be in this moment. And there is no telling where time goes after it passes. There is no understanding everlasting to everlasting, but there might be a little understanding in this. Right now.

This is the busiest I've been with school in a while. When you're in the library on a Saturday afternoon, it makes you reavaluate this moment. And the next and the next. Because no one else was there. And I mean, no one. All I had was me, my iPod, an array of books and a Diet Coke that I didn't buy. I got so emmersed in the Romantics, I thought about going on a hunt for a cool mountain stream. There were none close by, so I had to do some intense imagining when I was looking over the reflection pond on campus. It's not as good. The pond scum and greenish tint to the water killed my revelerie. So I went back to the Ridge and found Mary Gene- she's enough blue sky for ten people.

But it's Tuesday now and I've been consistently in the library for five solid days. Still working. Still wading through assignment after assignment that are supposed to let you know that I've learned something. It'd be a lie to say that I'm not tired.

But you should see the sky over Clemson today. Cake layered clouds against an Australian blue sky and I am satisfied. It's windy and crisp and instead of a stagnant reflection pond, it's swirling and rippling with this breeze. I can see it all from the windows. And I can almost hear the people I know fanned out across this nation, wanting all the same things but differently. Wanting Jesus' life and needing his ressurection, craving the silence that comes with wisdom and the truth that breaks in the light.

So we're following a dream and chasing the yellow brick road that seems some how to be made more out of dancers than of bricks (Did you catch that, Joey?) and more winding than a river.

You're missed, those of you far flung, but with connections to this place. And we are, regrettably, starved for your attention.

"...don't make appointments with disappointment..."

2008-02-13T21:32:00.002-05:00

A writer and her pen are an interesting combination. And when you're someone who enjoys sitting outside in the evenings, your pen can get a little frustrated with you. Like me, the ink runs slow until I get into a good rhythm. I guess it inevitably has something to do with the cold.

We've all been talking about the future lately and it's got me a little frustrated. Not to say that I'm not to blame. I'm talking about the future too. Somewhere in the city, maybe, or somewhere quieter. Who's to say what a year can change? I surely don't know.

I sat out with my little green book tonight and comtemplated how only six months have it and I been companions and how it tells that I've changed. It has too. When I bought it in a CVS somewhere outside of Charlotte, it's pages were all crisp and stuck together. Now it's binding is broken and sheets of paper are always littering the ground when I hold it the wrong way. We'll only be together for a few more weeks, I fear. It's pages are so full, there's not much left to be contained between it's cover and backing.

I think, sometimes, it'd be nice to burn something to the ground, just to watch it go. Just to get a break in the day. And then I watch the sun set out over the lake and somehow, it's enough to know that each day is burning itself down. That we'll get to the end of this day and the next will come, burning out our retinas and saying it has something different. And even if isn't, there's a possibility in the next. And the next and the next.

We've been talking about the future like it's looming and gloomy. Like it's the clouds that were blocking out today's sunset. There's something about not being able to see what's exactly coming next that makes all this seem a little grayer. Life's uncertainties seem so daunting when life's certainties get bland. So maybe I'd go for a change of scenery and see who remembers my name. Maybe I'd wish for the change just to know that there's some certainty in surviving what you don't know. As if adventure isn't terrifying. As if life won't throw curves in a different time, a better place. As if all of five years were tomorrow and you wouldn't know where the rest had gone.

And all I get from this, as the cold seeps through the double window in my room, is that change is a good thing. It's the only bland certainty you'll never be uncertain about.

Every time I get a little hazy about where I'm going, what I'm doing I think about what I signed myself up for. This constant and unwavering rollercoaster of beauty dotted with pain and hardship ridden on the back of rejoicing. You think a person can't stand contradictions until you look at life. And if the future is wavering like a white line in the distance then there's all this right now I'm counting on.

If you heal, teach, design- if you get out on a February night and find your pen no longer writes, but your candle still burns, which loss do you mourn? If art is already out there, what am I writing for? I won't say it better than it's already been said, I promise you that.

I don't doubt the future, it's something about the past that always gets me. And here we are, the walking contradictions of everything inbetween. Learning, looking ahead and getting there all in this one moment. I don't understand how life works, but I know we'll all get there eventually. And that person who said it better than me hopefully will never have to suffer hearing me say it again. And if they do, oh, a good reference never hurt a body. Any body.

In that clever movie Stranger the Fiction, Dustin Hoffman says, "whole books have been written about 'little did he know.'" So little do we actually know. It's what makes it so worthwhile. I could leave you hanging and then you'd have to think about it. Little did you know.

"...I am listening. I'm hearing every single word..."

2008-02-06T22:45:00.001-05:00

You should not want to sound like they do- you should want to sound like you.

I am so stuck on matt pond PA, I'm driving Lauren insane. But the Format evidently decided to no longer be a band the other day and Matt Pond is helping me overcome my grief. Slowly.

Little Brother stopped by yesterday and our conversation was so good, it's making me want to blog. Funny how that happens. It was something I used to get inherently teased about. So, I will go blog about it. He's a cool kid. He reminds me how blessed I am every time his pretty blonde head comes around my door.

What a week this has been. Knox's birthday yesterday, Dan's today. February was evidently a good month for a lot of people, but I think May or June might have been better. Anyways... All these birthdays get a girl thinking about the good life and what it means to live.

Little Brother is getting so grown up, I don't know what to do. I used to always be looking out for him, and I guess in a way I still am, but he's so much bigger than me now it's hard to think of him as Little Brother. But I listen to him talk and I see myself in his eyes. It's something we all share as siblings. These glaring green things that have been passed down for generations on Soccer Mom's side of the family. He looks like Soccer Mom, but seems like Superhero Dad. Map me the human genome and you still will not be able to tell me why Carbon fires the way it does. Why Little Brother and I have completed different life stories when the majority of our lives have been spent in the same places. And what it means to live.

Little Brother called me grounded last night. I guess I'll accept that, but it sprung questions into my mind. It's easy to say you're grounded, but sometimes gravity is a little too much for me. So let's say grounded, but hardly rational. I told him last night that he's learning himself right now in a way I can't fathom. There will come a moment in all our lives when we're asked to assess who we really are. Not what you're doing or where you're going, but who you are. Outside of what everyone's telling you. Outside of disabilities, responsibilities, sensibilities or chronic diseases. Learn to love the ways you are, beautiful and broken heart.

I guess it's an uphill battle because the parts are so evenly mixed. You are as beautiful as you are broken and you will not know one without the other. So ask God why pain exists and why death occurs and why some people get and some people don't. I bet he'd answer you that it's necessary. Why is it so hard to think that maybe God created us this way so that we'd know the difference? So that we'd be complete beings- understanding both good and evil and all the things between. That I choose to follow Jesus because he lived in a way that demands my love. There is no one else out there who did the things he did or loved the way he loved or understood what he understood. And if I truly lived like him, loved like him- the messiness of middle ground wouldn't be so bad. If I depended on him the way I say I do, I'd never get blurry around the edges. I'd own this-broken and beautiful- I swear I would.

But grounded, hardly ever rational makes for a hard road of not seeming like a shadow.

That turned into a rant rather quickly. I'd apologize, but I find I kind of like it. I write this sometimes wondering how many of you ardently disagree with me. I'd like to meet you and hear your opinions. I feel like it'd be a bettering sort of experience.

"...and i'm sure i don't know it..."

2008-02-04T23:30:00.000-05:00

I promised Dan I would update more. And he called me an author. That shows how bad I am about this. And, so, in short, I apologize.

My life has become crazier and crazier over the last few weeks. Like how people who don't even know it are pouring blessings all over my life like water. I'm getting metaphorically rained on, in a sense. It's funny how the simple touch of words can mean so much in the right moment and context.

Update, update, update. Let's not get too deep tonight. I'm not really in the mood. It's February and I'm outside with my shoes off. They tell me I might even be able to wear a dress tomorrow. It's supposed to get that warm. It's been almost a year to the day since I left for Australia. And so much, I mean so much, has changed.

I found out that Grad school is a dream which you should chase when you know what you're getting yourself in to. I don't know what that looks like, but that doesn't mean I'm out for trying. Things get so perplexing when they move from being dreams to actual goals. Now I'm not just going, I'm working to get there. Funny how that works.

We celebrated Vanessa's twenty-first birthday with cake and beer the other night. I feel so grown up. I get to say beer and no one shakes their head. That's one year of life will do for you. It will make you legal.

I see the boys often enough. They flow in and out of this apartment, usually on some kind of hunt for food. I'm happy enough to feed them and talk to them about whatever's new today. We're all moving on different time frames this semester and that makes life a little more difficult.

This has been my slow semester of dawning relationships. It sounds silly, but it's a challenge for me to keep up on all ends. They say all gifts come with an inherent curse. Or at least, I feel that way. They don't have much to do with it. You have to be able to balance your trade-offs that come with being good at something. I'm good at relationships, but I get spread too thin and lost in the mix. When I find myself craving silence, it's usually because I've talked all day. Because I've listened all day too. Quite making noise, and lend an ear to the silent voice.

God will shout from time to time and that will get anyone listening. Usually by then, I'm so far out in left field, it's hard to tell. Like an analog watch that has fogged over.

Lauren and I make dinner and laugh with Corbin and Jess. We make time for each other in the spaces between everything else. The same goes for the girls downstairs. We're all trucking lessons in priorities and what it means to be women. That's right, women. It's so inherently different from being girls.

The east coast is quiet tonight and resting. February's rumored to be bringing in some warm days and less rain. I'm excited, but sad. I need to move somewhere where the weather isn't as inconsistent as me. Then maybe I'd post more and you wouldn't be wondering where we've all dropped off to. Why I didn't have a rant for this day.

As always, it's slow going. And I think I'm long suffering and patient until I look in mirror and realize that I've got that all backwards. I'm chomping at the bit as much as anyone, if not more. So if you're feeling the need to slow down, life doesn't end when you're cell phone's off for one day. That is something I've come to realize.

And you, out there on the road, we're with you. Whole heartedly.

"...from debris- you and me could start something..."

2008-01-29T21:05:00.000-05:00

Never tested is always failed. That's what I have for you today.

I've been doubting all this lately. You know I do that from time to time. If Jesus writes his name on your palms, can you show it people? Or do you wish you could pull your sleeves a little lower sometimes? Not have to show his name? Yes.

My friends have been letting me play passenger in life lately. I rarely drive. I'm sitting out here in my office and it's a balmy fifty-eight degrees. After months of consistently denying that it ever gets cold, I'm starting to accept this season. And the inherent changes that come with the South Carolina climate. It's inconsistent, like me.

It's hard to believe that a week ago, we had snow. It's only been in the last few days that the final remnants from that day have dissolved and winter has accepted us into a swing from coldest to cold to cool. People in Pennsylvania must think I'm crazy.

I went to Atlanta on Friday to watch a band play. I have to preface that, because just saying Manchester Orchestra makes people think that they have strings and wind instruments. They don't. Just shocking lyrics and a grungy sound. I've developed a taste for an edge over the last few months and they have a little of one. Enough to keep you guessing.

Eric let me play guest to his family. Ten thousand fishes later and I'm still left with a remembrance of a time when Little Brother was smaller than me. Both Eric's brothers are younger. Young enough to remind me what it was like to see over your sibling's head. It's a feeling I get when I'm with the fleet of cousins Soccer Mom keeps in Raleigh. They're something about being young and impressionable that I miss. When the world was fish in a tank, swimming lazily by. You wondered if they slept and that was the most profound question of the day. I told Eric's brother that we used to have a book entitled, 'Do fish sleep?' I also told him that I was never young and impressionable enough to pick it up and read it. After seeing the Georgia Aquarium, I wondered why I never had.

Our apartment is loud most of the time. I brew coffee and try to do homework and keep Lauren company in the dark room. When my hands smelled like fixer today, I missed a little piece of Australia. I keep pressing these leaves of memory between the pages of my day to day. I had a long time to sit around and see what developed.

We eat together and I've started to wonder what's so unifying about food? Is it because we all need it and will break for it? I guess so. I'm making lunch and dinner dates, all the time it seems. So if you want to talk over coffee, give me a call.

Never tried is always failed, I guess and that's why I'm still writing. If I do this til my hands are cold, it still seems like time well spent. Even if it is just a silent dialogue between me and you.

Ten minutes of silence out here on the balcony and I feel a little better. When there's so much talking all the time, sometimes you just have to make a choice. If you don't give God time to speak, you'll never hear him. I've found that out too.

In memory of Australia, I feel like taking a walk. I feel like seeing where this road leads. You never know. (The aforementioned advice should do.)

"...just one thieving moment..."

2008-01-22T22:28:00.000-05:00

Short thoughts on a cold January evening:

Tires and things that scratch
the interludes that break rainy days-
those moments before age twelve
that all seem like one day.
One lifetime lived and
the rest, anxiously waiting--
chomping at the bit of life
and waving.
Come sweet shadows and speak to me
of craving silence.

"...is it enough to write a song- and sing it to the birds?"

2008-01-21T23:46:00.000-05:00

"...they'd hear just a tune and not understand my love for words."

Our internet’s running slow tonight and I’m wondering if that’s because someone flipped our router upside down. The little lights are all flashing in the wrong directions. They look a little lost and confused. I should probably go right them, but wrestling with a mass of cords and cables just doesn’t sound like a whole heck of a lot of fun right now. So I’ll leave them be.

I learned some important things today. Like whipped cream can definitely grow mold and that I should charge for my unexplainable gift of cleaning out refrigerators. It’s not something you think you should do, but you should. Because whipped cream can grow mold, especially if it’s from 2004.

I also learned that hunger causes anger, or better yet, irritability. This was something I already knew, but was reminded of only when Lauren and I could think of nothing to say to each other when the clock was leaning on three p.m. and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I think we were both biting our tongues. And this is coming from someone who struggles with silence.

I learned that winter is a funny season. It catches up to you, red faced and puffing even though you’ve only walked a few yards. The cold air turns every one into asthmatics. I steal warm clothes from my roommates and refuse to tell Little Brother the whereabouts of his favorite fleece. I guess you could call it a ransom, I just say I’m keeping warm.

To all of you out there who are reaping encouragement on me this week, I don’t think you know how timely your responses were. You may have saved the world from another lawyer, because that was where my train of thought for the future was heading. (It was a moment of weakness, what can I say?)

There’s something about politics that teaches too. We watched the Democratic debates tonight and I couldn’t help wonder what inspires people’s voices. Not all of life is literary, but sometimes it sure seems that way. What stories do politics tell us that nothing else can? It’s been debated by better men and women than me and still, no one completely understands it. So where does your responsibility fall? Should you take a stand in the dark? I don’t know. I’m guessing striking matches blindly is better for producing light than spending the rest of time sitting, wondering when the darkness will end. But there’s got to be some system to figuring out what’s worth using your matches over. You don’t want to start a fire and then realize you’ve burned a neighborhood down for no reason. Or a small nation. Take your pick.

Maybe someday we’ll all find balance and then death and destruction won’t mean so much anymore. But until the pendulum stops swinging, I guess I’ll hang on for dear life and hope to play my cards right.

And now I’m leaving too much up to chance. What’s a girl to do?

I’ll take my leave and go to bed. All this philosophical thinking makes a body tired, don’t you think?

"..there are just as many ways..."

2008-01-13T20:34:00.001-05:00

I have control issues.

I should probably leave it at that and go in for the night. Let you sit back and puzzle out what that looks like.

Strength is provided to those who stumble.

And when you have a chronic illness, sometimes you get up in the morning and stumbling is all you can find yourself able to do.

Funny how control issues and things like chronic diseases go hand in hand. For a girl who wants everything here and now- not controlling how far out you can go makes a difference.

So, in the evening, when all you’ve got left is these moments of weakness- where do you absolutely turn?

Joan Didion says that you can sit down to dinner and your whole life can change. How about watching the ball drop inconspicuously over New York City? I guess the circumstance doesn’t matter as much as the moment itself. I have a new Psychology professor who is constantly chaptering her life into BFL’s or Blinding Flashes of Light. I guess those come too, but only after a slow grade of uphill trudging. Or at least, in the life of this control freak, that’s how things seem to happen.

We talk about the past like it’s arbitrary. Like water under bridges and remember that time? We also talk about it like it’s all that will ever happen again. This is where I say I’m not so ready to watch history repeat itself. Over and over and over again.

When you find out that everyone bleeds like you do, does it really change your perspective?

If you spent every day in a hospital, watching people bleed, would you accept that you’re not the only one? Or would detaching yourself be the easiest thing?

Can you really expect to be the exception to the rule- or is there a science to grief? Is life proving that you can handle something just a bit differently? The same situation- different outcome. Or is the proof just in the theorem- the end gain?

Is the nausea only because you now know how everyone else it too? Is the loss really because of that person, or just because you’ve lost something?

Anything.

I remember the first time I ever lied to Soccer Mom and Superhero Dad. (I take that back. It probably wasn’t the first time ever, it’s just the first that I remember.) I was four years old and a friend of mine had broken one of the tea cups out of a set that had come as a much anticipated birthday present. The problem with the broken cup was that the girl had done it on purpose. My parents had heard the glass shatter. They asked me seriously who had broken the cup. I lied and said it was me. I didn’t want them to hate my friend, and I thought I’d get off easier. I fessed up a few hours later. I got in more trouble for lying than for actually just telling them the truth.

In the end, the cup was broken. I felt terrible for the punishment. I felt a little worse for the lie. The most wrenching thing of all was that now, instead of a perfect set of six, I had an imperfect set of five cups and a mismatched saucer. I was four years old and somehow, I knew I wanted that cup back.

In extreme situations of loss, when all hope seems a little faded, you have to ask whose arrow it was that broke this time? You have to ask all the questions about if you’re any different? If you’ve handled it better, worse, more poetically? I will never be Juliet. I will not sacrifice openly, lovingly or with a dagger. But a loss is a loss and when you wake up, you don’t feel much different- no matter who you convinced you had ‘gotten there.’ No matter how silent your cries were. Or if people really believed there was anything there to break in the first place.

Shattered glass is shattered, whether it was you who threw it against the wall or that bratty little girl from down the street. And me, the control freak, sixteen years down the road- would have desperately tried to glue that patterned cup back together until the heat left its chemistry and I was playing with sand. A memory of something lost is still a piece of it- right? Even if it in no way resembles the original.

What are we settling for? That’s what I wonder, out here under God’s thumbnail. What have I settled for over this last year? Probably more than I should, come to think of it. Accepting a loss, or a break is like swallowing bitter medicine. (Thanks, Soccer Mom.) You have to get it down, no matter what Mary Poppins sings her British little head off about. It will still burn, no matter how much Splenda you take to remove the edge.

So strength comes to those who stumble. To those who have forgotten how to walk long enough that they actually break in their normal routine. Strength comes after all your arrows are broken and all your ways of ‘getting there’ are spent. Strength comes when you can’t control anything any more.

And that is why being a control freak is absolutely no fun. That’s why just trying to ‘get there’ doesn’t cut it. There’s no strength in that.

*See II Samuel 2.

"...a picture or movie that I've never been into..."

2008-01-11T12:13:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and Clemson greeted me with a bright blue sky. I went to sleep last night with the lightning taking snap shots through my window- so a little change of pace is nice. Blue skies like this make me think of the land of Aus, so you can bet I'll be a little more reflective today.

I used to hate the rain, but it's funny how things change. Artists love the rain- so I guess I decided somewhere in this long sojourn I should give in like all the rest. I don't love the rain, but I do feel different when the sky is watering us. Watch me grow. is it still raining everywhere you are?

It's been a slow start the semester and I'm dragging my heels in it. Looking over syllabuses has convinced me that I'm going to be up to my ears in reading. About everything. The history of Britian, great British writers, the Holocaust, and all the nice abnormal things that happen inside a person's head. It's encouraging to me that I'll be forced to learn on so many different planes this semester. And I am also terrified. I don't think I'm going to be the least busy person you know for much longer. Responsibility has been an old friend, but a dormant one. I'll take some time to remember the difference.

Clemson seems slightly different. I've done three fall semesters at this school, but only one Spring. Funny how that works out and I'm not sure at all what to expect any more. I have decided that I have so little to lose in life. You could take it all from me and I'd be miserable, but I'd be ok. Ask me about that statement in about five years when I have a credit history and then I might tell you I've got something to lose. But hopefully not.

Today started slow and eagerly. So maybe I'll go apply for a job and buy my books.

"...beautiful world- have you figured it out yet?"

2008-01-03T10:54:00.000-05:00

If I could name you, things that make me smile- things that make it to the top of my list in the mornings, I'd be here for hours. And I'd never get the true beauty into words. If that was even possible.

I'm up this morning, late, and wondering what I'm going to do in a few days when I'm forced to get back on a schedule. I'm wondering what it's going to be like to stay in one room for a whole year. What it will be like to have all this stability. I can watch the seasons change all from my third floor window.

You don't realize just how blessed you are until God gives you an outside view of your friends. Of the people he has decided you need. They're crazy, the kids God has blessed me with, and all so distinctly original it's insane. But we run like clock work and sense the movements behind the hands and eyes. It leaves a person satisfied.

And for all the slow tears that have been forced between us-- for all the things that have been used to rip us apart, God has held us together. And this love, this dynamic, individual sort of love has bound us. And I have no definitions as to the differences between the bounds of friendship and the bonds. We're held together by nothing more than that love and therefore, you cannot see our seams. Limitless.

I hugged Dan yesterday for the last time for a few months. Clemson seems to have a revolving door of opportunity. You can go to Australia, to California, or just out on the road. Dan's trying to save lives and spread the word about Africa. He's wants to make the Invisible Children seen. I can't wait to hear his stories. (If you're reading this and feeling at all inclined to support him, comment on this blog and I'll get up some more information.)

I'm really proud of him. And it's a weird kind of proud, too. It's the kind that wants to point a finger and say, 'I know him.' Not that I don't do that anyway, as far as Dan is concerned. But he's reaching out his hands this semester and giving himself away. Service has a strange way of showing you just how terrible you are for the job and then assuring you that you are the only one who is equipped enough to do it. By that statement, I simply mean that it humbles you to the point of no return and then fills you with the purest sense of love. Love for the people you're serving. And that is point where acts of service teach you who you really are. It's like walking through fire or spinning on a pottery wheel- it just makes sense in a re-crafting sort of way.

And this is why I'm so proud of Dan. He signed up to be refined. And I think that's pretty awesome.

So, this is the new year. Seize it.

"...at the top of your voice- there's no doing wrong. I swear..."

2007-12-21T00:04:00.000-05:00

Listing time is here. Happiness and cheer.
(Oh come on, everyone loves these lists as much as I do... Right?)

Things I'm currently ok with:

. Being home for Christmas
. Not reading anything of substance
. Driving
. Spending time with myself

If you don't know me by now, that last one is more or less really hard for me.

Things I'm currently not ok with:

.JenniGray being far away
.Conversly, Mary Gene being far away
.The format of this blog- I need to get someone to update me
.The things that seem just out of reach

Like Grad school and a successful thought pattern that involves me writing it down.

Things I've just fallen out of love with:

.Pencils (Random, yes. But they bug me outside of test taking)
.The Cold
.Layering (clothes)
.Worrying

And all the time I've wasted doing it.

Things that I'm falling in love with... slowly

.Matt Pond PA (Ok, so this was not slow, but I'm definitetly in love.)
.Walking around without my headphones in
.The soundtrack to this life (Cars, people... the humming of the wind)
.Chances

First, Second, Third... to the thousands. You're given more than you think.

List me your favorite things. Isn't that a song for this season? Like brown paper packages- tied up with strings.

"...oh beautiful world- can I win you back?"

2007-12-17T10:50:00.000-05:00

There's nothing quite like waking up in the morning to your alarm, realizing that the tip of your nose is cold, shutting off your alarm and burrowing down in your bed again to sleep a little longer.

I've had that room over the garage now for five years and somehow I always forget how cold it gets in there when it's cold outside. Funny how three days ago, we complained about being able to wear shorts in the middle of December. I think I prefer the seventy degree weather, my blood being all thin now and what not.

My first question to all of this is: who sets an alarm when they're home and on break, no less?

I do. I've never really understood why I do. It's just one of those things. I like to at least set up the illusion that I get my butt out of bed at a reasonable time, even when I don't have anything pressing to do. I beat Little Brother out of bed this morning, so I guess that means I'm less lazy than he is. I'll take that for the moment.

Soccer Mom has probably been up since five-thirty and successfully repaired most of the cracks in the Great Wall of China or something. She makes both me and Daniel look like complete slobs.

We're home for the holidays, Daniel (little brother) and I are. We both made sufficiently good grades and learned a lot. It was weird and a little surreal to have him at school with me this semester. He's been such a huge part of my life for so long, the transition was natural, too. Funny how family does that to you. Allows for smooth transitions and relaxed relationships.

I don't have too much to do today, which in itself is almost a relief. This semester was about putting pieces together and taking other things apart. C'est la vie.

"...oh bask in life! oh bask in my life!"

2007-12-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

Four years ago, God brought a good friend of mine back to life. Four years ago, his life changed and all of ours around him changed a little too. You don’t think bad things actually happen until it’s your friend there in the hospital bed. Then you know the difference.

Four years ago, I was young- I’m still young, so maybe I was just less mature. I didn’t know this friend of mine that well. He took a fall and even as the acquaintance that he was at the time, it scared the crap out of me. I can’t drive past that store now without a slight chill running down my back.

He blessed me with his friendship after his accident, so it’s safe to say that I didn’t realize the differences as much as some. Strong as he was, you would have never known that he had been in a coma four months before. You would have never known then that his floor was littered with sticky notes and constant reminders of the simple things he needed to do that day.

Some how, in some unspeakable way, he had retained his ability to be brilliant, royally opinionated and witty. I will never understand that. This kid, this skinny, lanky kid who would sit down next to me in third block and recommend all kinds of crazy music, tell me the top five American financial problems (and actually be right) and ace our next exam wouldn’t be able to remember if I told him we were getting lunch the next day. But it didn’t phase him. It didn’t stop him.

Four years ago, that skinny, lanky kid stood up and demanded his life back.

Over the last four years, he has gotten it. In more ways than I think he even realizes.

He sent me an e-mail this morning from somewhere on the West Coast and thanked me for my time. It struck me really hard, because in so many ways- I feel like I should be thanking him for his. I sit here, in between all these students who are trying desperately to bring home an ‘A’ to mom and dad. To prove their keep through studying, little sleep and a diet of complete junk food. We’re asking you to approve us and please, oh, please hire us someday.

But this friend of mine will sit on his bike today and look down over San Francisco and know that he understands that vista better than anyone else. Because it took him giving up his life to get to that moment- he had to fight to own the right to ride that bike, to stand on Western shores. He had to fight to think, to remember. He had to give up everything to get everything back. And so his beauty far surpasses mine, because he understands that. And I don’t. I absolutely don’t.

You know that, Gavin- don’t you? Your beauty far surpasses most of us, because your appreciation of this is more. Your appreciation for this is more- take it from me.

I’m going to take an exam and hopefully prove that I did pay attention this semester and then I’ll finish this time and go home. The river that is I-26 is drawing us home. To Eastern shores.

"...let's fall in love again- guard the windows and rescue our friends..."

2007-12-11T13:45:00.000-05:00

A semester of slow surrender- ladies and gentleman, raise your glasses. I should probably send this one out in style.

I gave a presentation this morning and it was too early for anyone to care. I came home and got back in my bed and slept away part of the late morning. Lauren's been up for a while. She's still chugging on work, and honestly, so am I. At this moment, two more days of this seems like a lifetime.

Mary Gene always says that this is the best and worst times of our lives, so far. All you grown folk are out there shaking your heads. College is not hard. There's no responsibility. I think the 'so far' is important in that statement. It's difficult to constantly be learning and learning and learning. But, in all honesty, I guess you could say that is what life is about: to learn. And learn well.

I'm swinging a little low today and that's in no reference to old spirituals. People tend to look down on the fact that I take emotionally difficult things harder than most. I can feel this world. And I think Soccer Mom would tell you she could too. But life's a song, so let's sing along and drop this train of thought. Circles might be broken, but some cycles have to be. Look me in the eyes and tell me that isn't true. (Wow. Mary Gene, if that wasn't loaded, I don't know what is.)

I'm sad about leaving, but excited about going home for a month. God is just as clear in Charleston as he is here. He's just been training me to listen. So I'll pack a bag and see what the coastline looks like these days.

A semester of slow surrender- I think that's what I said in the beginning. God called us back, but that doesn't mean we didn't have to lose something. And the crazy thing is that this year isn't over. We're at the half mark of a longer spectrum. I don't pretend to understand how everything works. Most of it is beyond me.

Going home. Funny what that means on this side of the Pacific.

"you say you're with me..."

2007-12-02T16:02:00.000-05:00

I've been feeling the need to be outside lately. So I crashed Eric and Joey's study party and am coming at you lakeside today. It's cold enough to have a blanket spread across my knees, but I don't care. I feel more liberated and slightly geriatric.

Driving out here today was an experience. It's like someone dropped a grey blanket and named it sky today, so I'm feeling slightly darker around the edges. If we were anywhere else, this change in forecast would mean snow. But Southern Appalachia rarely supports that kind of precipitation.

Wool blanket on top, brown paper for floor and that is my day today in the great outdoors. The leaves from this fall are dropping now which makes me sad. Last fall was so extremely brilliant it hurt my eyes. This one has been beautiful, but it feels shorter and can't make these days stretch. I'm looking forward to a winter and a spring. Ready to get some rebirth after this time of death and simple, blazing heat. Funny how the seasons mean so much.

I'm out in left field today, picking up ground balls and throwing all the way for home plate. I've got that much optimism for the next week. So sue me.

This week has passed in a blur of work and relationships. I've been sleeping less, but accomplishing more. I think my slow season of rest and relaxation is winding itself to a close. That's ok, it's just hard to see such a sweet period go. It drains like when you unplug the sink in the bathtub- slowly and with a distinctive sound.

My writers block is phenonmenal at this point, which means I can write in my voice but no one elses. In so many words, my fiction is struggling- but that's good news for some. I'll be forced to blog.

I've counted over the blessings of this last month with more than one person this week. It's funny how listing it all out makes everything more real. But they say that the Man himself, if all his deeds were recorded, it would take all the books in all the world to write it down. Adds an epic proportion to that whole story, doesn't it? Not that the story isn't epic or anything.

I'll encourage everyone to write and read in these next weeks. I heard the Golden Compass was going to destroy our clan of impressionable American children. I read it myself. Don't believe everything you're told. Let me be controversial and leave it at that.

Wool blanket to cover, brown paper to carpet- I'm crunching my way audibly through this day.

"...I hold..."

2007-11-29T11:08:00.000-05:00

I fold. I did.

I've taken to slow evenings on our porch in the cold. Rick came outside last night and told me he didn't understand. He said I must be freezing. I wrap a blanket around my knees and breathe through my nose. There's something sweeter about being outside. Rick is right, though, the temperature drops much lower and my nights outside will have to end. Or I'll have to get a warmer jacket. Or something.

I've been reading back. I do that from time to time. I keep track of this crazy life in words and I have thousands of them. I've been going back to this time last year and the year before, trying to gauge my feelings. I praise God for paience and grace. Things had gotten so dark.

I told Mary Gene that it's hard to write about the good times. These are the things you expect from me. You expect me to tell you that things are good. I expect to tell you things are good. Because even in my moments of weakness I want that first observation. It is so good.

I can say at this moment, this very moment- God is real. The blessings in this moment are real. I see God moving in these people around me. I listen to them laugh as I sit on the porch through the open doors. I can write, but I can read and there's something to this moment that is asking to be learned.

Here's my observation: that things are good. Take it.

"...but you and I will go on..."

2007-11-23T18:00:00.000-05:00

Rick evidently has a g-mail account. And it's the login I'm given every time I go to sign into blogger. G-mail wants me to convert... bad. But since I don't have a mac and I'm not in a band- I don't think I qualify. Or at least, yet.

This Thanksgiving has been a new brand of holiday fun. And if this post is ridden with more typos than usual, it's because I've had too much caffeine today. I'm not saying I'm addicted, I'm just addicted. And it's not all the diet Coke, either. It's the coffee. Always the coffee.

If I can keep my fingers from shaking for ten minutes, I might be able to finish this post. Talk a little about football and turkey- or basically how normal this Thanksgiving has been. No outlandish family stories so far. I say so far because Biggest Brother and Sister don't leave for a couple more hours. So sue me for expecting a story.

Last year, we bought a tree so big it didn't fit through our door. This year, we went back to a normal sized tree. But I think we're putting white lights on it- which just seems boring to me. JenniGray would insert something now about how white lights are more classy- I think they're boring. Alls I'm saying.

That is by no means to say that JenniGray is boring. Or that white lights, in their proper usage are not quite pretty. But we've been using colored lights for years now. I guess it's what I'm used to.

Thanksgiving gets a girl thinking about the blessings in her life. Call me cliche, but it's the season to think about everyone else in your life. It's the season to point out how good God has been to me and the people I love this year. He seems to be here every minute of every day. Seems is not a good way to put it. He is here. He's always been here- I think I'm the one with the hearing problem from time to time.

Soccer Mom was a little outdone with us last night because we made an absolute game out of the favorite childhood memory game. It's the joy of family that allows you to be yourself. I'm lucky enough to have two families. One that sits around the table and tells old stories. Another that emails each other storie because going five days without hearing from each other is preposterous. It's something not many people understand. I don't really understand it.

In spirit of this holiday, I am so thankful for the blessings in my life. Turkey, football and all.

"...do you want to make this simple?"

2007-11-06T12:07:00.000-05:00

Mary Gene added this as one of her preferred websites on facebook- so I guess that means I should update and say something profound. Say something that is worth reading. Let me try and make this post worth some time.

I haven't written much lately- much of anything. Writing is a passion, but it's also a job and it's hard work. When you don't feel it- you won't feel it. That's about as long and as short as it gets.

I'm in class now and this probably isn't a good idea. But I'm bored, to be honest, and tired of sitting in a desk. My fingers are literally itching. I need something to do that bad.

God has been everywhere lately and I don't say that lightly. He's standing on all sides and raining. I am standing outside trying to drink it all in. Heaven is coming down and it's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

We set the grill on fire the other night. I scared Eric pretty bad yesterday when I told him the story. True, that it is his grill, after all, and in close proximity to his house. I had to change the way the story was going and say that we didn't set the entire grill itself on fire, it was just shooting off three foot flames. Knox wanted chicken wrapped in bacon. Bacon grease and propane make for a rather large fire and extremely seared chicken. It was something I didn't know.

The last two weeks have been full of driving and laughing and driving. Lauren has put in several hours as our official chaffeur. With gas prices rising, it's good to car pool and better for the environment. We listen to Feist and sing in unison and dance. Always dancing. In the words of Joey, we're turning into extreme indie rock kids. I'm not sure what to do about that.

These days, it's easy to see how God moves and God works. These are the days that it is more important to remember to pray, I think. It's so easy to get lazy. It's so easy to forget the day to day.

I wish I had more to say, but at this moment- it's good to just be. It's good to feel this moment. Live it.

"...all the words are just a matter of time..."

2007-10-30T21:36:00.000-04:00

A lot was broken this week, but a lot was put together. We swing in a neverending cycle of comings and goings. Life is all those little things in-between.

Birthdays make for good times. Week long birthdays show the kind of love that is hard to come by. It shows that people make time to celebrate you and your life for an extended period of time. I'm pretty sure I don't deserve it.

Lauren surprised me with a pinata two nights ago. Something about being blindfolded in front of all your friends make you remember what celebrating is really about. I could make some philosophical comment here, but I'll refrain. This evening is too perfect for all of that.

I told Rick that the weather was right for writing, so I came out here on the porch to try and talk to the Muses. To see where I should be going with all of this after two and a half long weeks. I sat between all the men I love so dearly in my life on Sunday and watched the Colts tear the Panthers to pieces. I couldn't ask to ring in this next year in a better way. It was amazing to have everyone at one table that night. All eight of us. Our family is growing. We've gone from a small tribe of six to a growing clan of eight. I haste the day when there will be too many of us to fit around one table at a restaurant. I haste the day when hostesses swoon to see so many come through the door at once. Then Soccer Mom will probably clap her hands in delight. She and Super Hero Dad have worked so hard for these moments of togetherness. It's a really beautiful thing.

I got a number of well-wishes, hugs and happy birthdays. More than I deserve. Mary Gene and JenniGray made me a purple cake and I could hardly blow out all the candels. I felt genuinely old. I think Trevor helped from the other side of the table. That was always such a no-no when you're a little kid. With every passing year, that extra wind is more of a blessing.

I read through some old poems tonight and felt good about this moment right now. It's quiet and it's just cold enough to be comfortable in socks. This is a perfect dark evening where Clemson's stars rise over us. And I am content just to be. This week reminded me of how many people love me and how much I don't deserve that love. How much I need every single one of them to be standing there, helping me blow out my candles over and over again. It's a support sort of thing, if you know what I'm saying.

For all the things that broke this week, the beauty was in what was made. In the slow conversations that came after the glass shattered or the glass was refilled. We've all got new and bigger things ahead, it's the not looking out for them that's the difficult part. It's the remembering to write about them and answering the phone.

I feel a little disjointed tonight. I'm not sure that this is making tons of sense.

Come home, smell the burning on the air and thank those people around you who make everyday a little sweeter. Who make every moment a little slower, a little more beautiful.

"...I wanna be near you..."

2007-10-17T14:44:00.000-04:00

After so many posts of self-expression and exploration, let's hear it for the glory and the beauty of today.

Or the beauty of yesterday- because today is rather humid and sticky. I saw people walking around campus, scratching their heads. Who doesn't wonder where the weather comes from? I do. I wonder about it all the time. We were having a nice little cool snap that merited long sleeves in the evenings, but today it may as well be April on this side of campus.

Except for all the changes in color, that is to say.

People have got me lauging lately and it's been hard to stop. I've been getting Eric in trouble in Psychology class as much as possible. It's good for him to see what it's like to not be the one giving the teacher an apple everyday. I think because my cell phone was vibrating incessantly today he has to bring a snack for our entire class on Friday. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm not going to let him forget either. I want candy. The good stuff, too. None of this cheap 'tastes like chocolate but not really' nonsense.

Rob and I walked for a long time last night. I wish sometimes that it was possible for me to just say these kinds of things- but I get all awkward when I pay compliments. My hands start to sweat and my face gets all red. I'm starting to believe it is harder to give a compliment than cut someone down. Especially if you really mean it.

But like I said, Rob and I walked for a long time last night and it was pretty awesome. Rob and the rest of his apartment across the hall have renewed my hope in boys this semester. They come over here and watch our TV and bless us with their laughter and their silverware. I swear Dan has left enough culterly in our drawer for two apartments. I'm not complaining, we consistently seem to be low on spoons, so in a way it's a blessing. But we are overflowing on forks, so I think an exchange needs to be made- or something.

My favorite quote from this past weekend goes as follows:
Me: Mary Gene, do you think this sounds like Feist?
Mary Gene: It is Feist, you idiot.

Mary Gene's extreme patience with me is more than anyone has ever comprehended.

JenniGray told me yesterday that she misses my snoring. I told her I miss her dirty dishes in the sink. She told me she misses how I leave my shoes in the middle of the living room floor so that she trips over them. I told her that I miss her ever growing pile of laundry. We then realized that maybe we didn't miss each other quite so much.

That former paragraph is a complete and utter fabrication. Except the first part, JenniGray did tell me she misses my snoring. It was something that I laughed at and that is the only reason why I mention it here. You know you love someone when it's actually the things that annoy you about them that you miss. And, maybe, truly that's all love is. The imperfections.

To a glorious afternoon that looks to be filled with studying- I wish a good day.

"...learn to burn the ways you are..."

2007-10-07T18:38:00.000-04:00

The days are getting shorter and I can feel fall coming. It's waiting out there in the leaves.

I would go ahead, end the contest and declare Fall my favorite season. But I haven't seen a Spring in over a year, so maybe I'll hold off and see if it's moving up the ranks because I simply miss it. Fall is a slow fade to Spring's rebirth and newness. I could use some good newness right now.

I've been thinking about newness lately, standing in Parker's kitchen the other night and telling him how sometimes it seems like it's hard to be excited. It's hard to 'live life now' as Mary Gene puts it. Because there are the ways that things used to be and there are the things that you are used to. So many times in a day, these two things coincide.

Damien Rice says that 'nothing is lost- it's just frozen in frost' but it's true that time is contagious and everybody's getting old. Out of the two things- I think the latter is more true. Eric reminds me that everything involves a sacrifice- a something that you'd rather be doing or saying. I remind him that most of the time, sacrificing involves your self. And that, I think, is the hardest thing to truely lose.

I think about the people in my life and I think about their identity crisises. I think about my own. At some point or another we're out looking for ourselves and totally lost. We're looking for a marker to put up around us to make solid boundaries. And many times, nothing is there. No other person, no friend, no lover. No drug of choice, no word, no pain, no connection. And you're stuck with this sense that you're no one and if you stopped for a second- you'd dissove into nothing. Into that vast primordial congregation of atoms and numbers.

And then I think about my Jesus and how so many people would say that my drug of choice is religion. That I'm an addict in the negative sense of the word- not in the DC Talk kind of way. That I've traded a world face- a world identity for a hypocrisy of actions. I am the addict who denies my addiction. But find me, later, in an alley with a needle in my arm. Hiding out.

Then funny thing is that I'm not addicted to Jesus. Not in the way that says I'm covering my needs with a drug. I'm not hiding out. I'm not denying my inequalities, my iniquities, my self-loss of control. I'm addicted to Jesus like a drowning man is addicted to his life raft. He is the only thing that I have left.

I guess I say this because I see things changing around me and it's not just fall. I see the colors emerging in the people I love. Their greeness, their newness is changing into burnt oranges and golds. There is a sense of something lost, but for something better. Newer- more defined and beautiful. More rich and necessary. And it's amazing.

Maybe Autumn is my favorite season, because it implies that something dies. That something in prepared for a new season of Spring. And maybe writing is my favorite because it allows for drawn out metaphors and cheesy analogies.

Enamored October.

"...wake up! you're alive! we're on your side..."

2007-10-01T23:21:00.000-04:00

So, go ahead. Go ahead and say it. Talk about the year and everything it has been.

And well, hasn't been.

What is easy? What does that word even mean. When I get to the bare end of this day- when I get down to its very, very point of no return kicking and screaming running towards the finish line- easy is blurred. Easy is a character in this story that I don't really recognize. Easy is the fickle friend who can't remember his lines, can't remember where he left his keys or his wallet. Easy is constantly running out on me like a bad boyfriend.

These days- I recognize crazy. I sit and I ask Jess if she thinks I'm insane. Close. But not as of yet, no and thank you. Maybe not crazy, but I was getting there. I was sending all the wrong signals with incorrect postage and addresses. I was mailing social addresses to China and hoping to reach someone in Guam. I was so far off the map, Captain James Cook couldn't find me. So here was me, out looking for myself.

And while- oh- all the while that I went away, God showed up and did some housecleaning. I am the blind one from time to time. Meaning: I am so blind.

I went on holiday and God came in and moved around all my furniture. He put all the really bulky- thesearethethingsyouneedtodealwith- things right by the front door. I ran straight into them the minute I got home. And blind as a bat am I, here I was re-running into them because they wouldn't move. And so crazy am I, that I refused to admit they were there. These were the- thesethingsthataretoodifficulttodealwith. And no thank you, I'd like a rain check on spiritual spring cleaning. I like my control. Come on God, we're partners- not boss and employee. Come on God, if you knew what was best- you'd leave me alone.

Oh, how He loved that.

But I hurt myself. I did that. My blindness, my ignornance, my inability to not be in the exact same spot I was a year ago. This was me. Stagnant and stalling and this is me- holding on to the only thing I know. Me.

Oh, let me tell you how that worked out for me.

Some days- some days I was floating in the Pacific just above acres of antler coral reefs with nothing but the silence and the magnified sound of my own breath through my snorkel. Some days I was standing over rushing waters in the upstate, not knowing how to jump to the next rock. Most days, I was stranded in New Zealand, adoring the gorgeous and breathtaking scenery, but terrifyingly lost. Like a little kid who's lost their mom on the candy aisle at Wal-Mart. Everything looks so good until you realize that there is no one to take you home. You are utterly, undeniably alone.

And there was still all this inconvenient furniture that was giving me bruises and cuts and breaking my heart.

I didn't have problems. Geez. I didn't have issues. Issues are for people with drug addictions and vanity issues. I had minor adjustments to make. I found myself repeating- I am right. I am not running into bulky inner-furniture. I am not bruised. I have had so many things taken from me. Stop asking me questions, God. Stop standing in my way. What is this, an inquisition? Why can't I just do these things my way? Who made you so powerful? What gives you the right? I don't have issues! I SAID I DON'T HAVE ISSUES!

Can't sleep. Can't eat. Oh, oh God. To see those tears pour down His face.
Can't relate. Can't talk to anyone without bitterness. Oh, oh Jesus. To see the blood run from His side.
Breaking friendships, breaking people, breaking- it was all effing breaking. And oh! to see the sweat from His brow, the tears in His eyes, the blood on my dirty little hands.

My indescriably dirty, bloody hands.

Fancy that sometimes you have to actually admit that you're wrong. Fancy that God may know your issues, but he wonders if you know your issues.

The minute I stopped looking for a way around the furniture in my life- the minute I admitted to being angry, bitter, frustrated, too attached, not attached enough, self seeking and homeless- God handed me an axe. We chopped those things up to pieces.

It's hard to accept sometimes that everyday is an uphill battle. That it's impossible to have a perfect day. I think I would give my left arm for one perfect day when just a little something didn't go a little wrong. Because even if you stay inside all day, you've still got you. And you and yourself on your couch all day will miss something in the end, I guarentee it. And you'll be incredibly bored.

I told Lauren tonight that I wish I could write poetry, but I really can't. It's a crying shame for someone who loves words as much as I do. But rhythm and structure- saying something huge simply is not my forte. This is why these blogs are getting longer- I can't say what I want in thirteen lines and a heroic couplet.

But this is me, honestly and openly, scared of what you people think. Scared that you'll think I'm crazy like Jess says I'm not. So this was my year.

They say- actually John says, that if all of Jesus' works and miracles were recorded, they'd take up all the pages in all the books on earth. Because he's there, everyday- teaching and loving and just being there.

All the pages in all the books- what a thought.

"Learn to love the ways you are- beautiful and broken heart. If perfect wounds won't leave a scar then-- everything will..." -Lovedrug

"...all it takes is a little faith and a lot of heart..."

2007-09-23T22:24:00.000-04:00

Do you ever feel like life is like football? Like it's all a bunch of memorized plays and here we go again- suited up. Padded.

Do you ever feel like anything can make a nice analogy? I think I could compare life to kumquats and still make a coherent argument. It is moments and days like this when I am happy and proud to be a writer.

The Colts are three and oh. It's been a good day. They're not steam-rolling people anymore, but I kind of feel like that's ok. Sometimes doing that well this early means you've missed something inbetween. A little struggle makes the big victories so much better. I'll stop this before I feel another analogy coming.

For some reason NBC Sports is showing the names of these teams in Spanish tonight. So los Dallas Vaqueros are playing los Chicago Osos. I have absolutely no idea why. It's all very frustrating because I feel like I have to read these with an accent. I sound ridiculous- just so you know.

This weekend, much to Soccer Mom's dismay, I stayed here at the university and spent my time wisely. Or at least I wanted to. It will be cold soon and then everything will change, so we took the last advantage of a warm day on the lake. JenniGray and I successfully popped one of Dylan's tubes on the first run of the day. I blame JenniGray. People with red hair are said to be bad luck in some cultures. (Ok, and also better than me. Geez.)

We had extreme Lady's night and just the girls went out for dinner. We came back and it wasn't until I was talking to Joey and Mary Gene that I realized how much these minutes mean to me. I'll be the first to say that this year has notbeen easy. But it's also not over. I guess when you measure things by the year you miss the point. Life may come in seasons, but its also comes in minutes and seconds and hugs and smiles and tears and a hundred other things. I've spent a year invested in all those things. Invested in the names that come up here and a lot of ones that don't. And better yet, those things have invested back in me. For better or worst.

Dallas is playing this game to win right now. Sorry for cheap side notes. Speaking of years, this is not the team that Toni Romo ruined SuperBowl hopes for a year ago. This is a team out for blood. Oso blood- if I can say that.

Where was I? Or does it really matter? I guess what I'm saying is that I've spent a lot of time not paying attention or paying attention to the wrong things to think I always know what's best. I read and I write and I take photos, but mostly I just listen. And I hope you hear me. I have a habit of looking for me in everyday because I forget to look for what's important. I forget my first love. It's an everyday thing.

So I want to live like a Vaquero. Am I out for blood?

"...but I won't look up..."

2007-09-17T17:59:00.000-04:00

I spend these days away. Like they're money or currency or something that I have so much of that it's easy to give. Like I've got millions and millions. You don't think life is a business transaction until you realize that the only thing you've got to give is time. So what did you give to today?

Life was never about staying the same. The faces on my currency-time dollars seems to change. And then there are those people who just seem to keep coming back and coming back and coming back. Like wheels and circles. Who said life was a path? Maybe a path in a loop formation would be more accurate. More appropriate.

I listen to my friends. The artsy, not so artsy and analytical people who concern my time. My Soccer Mom and Superhero Dad who take time out of their busy weeks to drive four hours this way and four hours back. I sit and stare at the colors on my hands and think about the things I'm making.

Dan Roge called me trouble the other day. I think he's probably right.

I spend time with Mary Gene and JenniGray and listen to them laugh. I give them dollars in the forms of hours and they repay me with gifts of grace and laughter. Lauren lives with me and around me and we share this time as roommates and friends. She shows me drawings and paintings and they make me remember beauty. Remember things I've seen before, but could not remember. Jess is simple and a blessing. Who knew that knowing someone for four weeks could make such a difference. Who knew that God places people randomly in your life for great purposes. Don't believe me? Think of everyone you know.

I try to write with coherence and remember the minutes. I try to do something other than laugh when Taylor's around, but it's a difficult feat. We go on wild goose chases, end up in North Carolina and I laugh. I laugh because it's funny. Because it's who we are. Because this minute- this interaction of transactions could be everything. And, what? I may not even know it.

Dylan comes by and sits with us. He stays late on our porch and tells stories. Trevor comes by too and sits in our green chair and reads a book he hates. Only in school are you forced to do things you truly don't want and it's ok. You're learning. Every second of every day.

I am learning. Every second of every day. I find myself in the change. In the things I receive back from these transactions. Today, I feel like the girl who has everything and somehow- the clock has walked to past six and I didn't notice.

Mary Gene always says to drink up love. To love this- right here. Could it be good enough for me to be right here, right now? Could it be enough to not worry and stress, but be with God and in God every second? Could I seize this? Could I put my fingers around it?

Better than money. Better than gold. Better.

"...it's a lifetime commitment to recovering the satellites..."

2007-09-11T17:27:00.000-04:00

JenniGray asked me today why I hadn't posted. I told her honestly that I just haven't had anything to say. She said that wasn't true- that I have tons to say.

I don't have a lot to say at the moment. But I've been reading a lot lately- so I'm settling for telling what everyone else has said.

I've been reading Milton and James Frey at the same time. Both revolutionary, both different, one more influential than other. Milton helped change the face of English politics. James Frey, well, he just managed to piss off Oprah. Though nearly as dangerous, not nearly so impactful.

I've learned more that I ever wanted to about hardcore drugs the last week. They don't sound fun and they don't sound enticing. They sound down right dismal and dark. And James Frey's novel, contrary to popular opinion, is fiction. Which means he probably doesn't have it all one hundred per cent correct.

And then there's John Milton. Famous for losing Paradise and helping Oliver Cromwell to power. Famous for being revolutionary and not your average couch-sitting, TV watching citizen of the seventeenth century. John Milton who was so hated in England for so long that they stopped printing anything besides a simple J.M. on copies of Paradise Lost because otherwise they wouldn't sell. His name was that controversial.

And then I clicked on over to Adam Duritz's little web-page today. I'd say he's been pretty influential too. There are many people who would argue that. And he was talking about loss and living a lifestyle of loss. And he wasn't talking about loss the way you lose your keys to the ocean or someone dying. He was talking about loss in its simplest terms- when you simply walk away.

It's hard to be hated these days. But I'd say on many levels, it's harder to be loved. I've heard of being close to people defined as how close you let people get to you. It is a dangerous time, this day and age and it is hard to let people love you.

Let's be real. It's easier almost to hate someone, because then they can't hurt you. Your hatred makes them null and void. Makes them easy to ignore. But if you love someone, God forbid, they have a power over you. They have the option to accept or decline your love. In essence, they have the power to accept or reject you. And if they reject you, where will you be?

But then I think about these writers, these men I mentioned before. There were things they wanted- there were things they saw. And I'm not saying that they were all right and good and whole all the time, but it was something. You can say I'm justifying the devil, but what is this life without expression? Without the ability to accept each other at the very worst of times? I spit in the face of the lie that says we have to all be seperate. Who was Jesus if not this? If not a man of mercy and love and peace.

I have been rejected. I have felt that cold stab. But I have rejected too. I have withheld and I have let great things pass me by. I have lost good people to bad excuses and hurt pride. I have kicked sand in the eyes of people I love. And I know what it is like to feel alone. I know desperation, fear, hunger and pride. And I spit in the face of those things too. Because I can't justify them. Because I think we were created for better things than that.

Better things than that.

How huge of a statement is that? You know one way that Jesus is described is the one who can untie things that are knotted. And at the end of the day- what isn't knotted? Riddle me this.

"...but you would hear me and know..."

2007-09-05T23:10:00.000-04:00

If I'm breathing now, or if I ever was- this will be enough. Everyday will be enough for me.

There comes a day when you feel like you're walking over glass... barefoot. And mostly, well- mostly- the pieces are big enough that you will not cut yourself, until you step wrong. And it's not long after impact that you know you need surgery and quickly.

There are things that hurt and unexplainably so. There's no rhyme or reason why hearts break in this present day, but I think that lessons speak volumes. And every movement is a step in the right direction.

I sit with my friends and we hold each other's hands. We close our fingers around each other because it's all we have left to do. We hope for the best from each other. We cry and pray and eat the same meals and drink the same laughter. We see each other and hope for the off chance to run in to each other. We speak the words, but not always. We are all that boy and that girl from across a crowded room. Boy and Girl you know who you are.

Because it seems like there's a lot of oysters and no pearls. But all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.

Boy- what do you say to someone when the background noise has gotten so loud that you can't hear the person speak anymore? Do you come right out and say it? Do you go with your gut in this time- this time where the glass is everywhere and you're not sure where to put your precious feet. But if you don't do it now- if you don't say the words, where will you be? Kneeling next, surely. Although- they often say that God hears us better on our knees. There's something about that statement that makes me so uncomfortable.

And I dance along, creating things and then breaking them apart. These are my words- and for you- I've got nothing else. These are the days when we are unreal. When words like family and connection become so much stronger. When sparks and fireworks glow from across the room. And, Boy, this is where you feel like you will always be- staring from across the room. It would be so much easier if the light attached to her would go out. Someone cut the lightbulb- please. But no one- believe you me- no one said it was easy. Making a change, taking a risk- actually saying the name- it won't be easy. And if the lightbulb doesn't go out- will you dance then? Will you mourn the things that you've ultimately lost. Or will you wait until you can't see her anymore, but you can still feel her glow. And broken glass- that will be the landscape. What a dangerous time.

This is not for me. It's not about me. It's not even related to me. I just had to say it- as an innocent bystander and as a writer of fictions. We use lies to tell the truth, you know. So sue me for oxymorons, loaded statements and bad movie references. I may not be the one to say it- but maybe I should try. Let's say for the sake of argument. For the sake of our old and dear friend, possibility.

In the end, the time is dangerous. This we know. But when has it not been? When have been the roads been safe and the formulas out there? If life is an equation, then it has more variables than you can count. It is an infinite theorem with no perfect soultion. Life is not snowflakes, tidal patterns, or perfect days on the lake. Life is what it is and where is the better time than right now? No time, I think. No time at all.

"...I spilled the paint across the page..."

2007-08-30T08:50:00.000-04:00

Walking around campus with your headphones on is like watching the world on mute. So I left my shoes at home yesterday and walked barefoot across the grass. It's more practical than rebellious- dew makes everything so wet in the morning.

I painted my fingernails black again and waited for a response. I've stopped getting it. Joey says that when I stop waiting for a response is when I've started doing these things for me and no one else. He's probably right- in his incredibly honest sort of way.

The rain came over Clemson late yesterday afternoon and I sat on my front porch and watched it. I read and drank a Diet Coke and smelled the way the air changed with every degree the temperature dropped. It threatened, but never actually rained. There was lightning and thunder, though- that was enough to for me.

I went to bed fairly early last night after a hot cup of tea and another stint on the porch. Duties as an English major what they are- I had a long date with a few different texts. I don't necessarily feel enlightened, but I feel better. Reading does that, in some strange way.

I got up early this morning. Funny how everything seems a little greyer before eight a.m. It's like the world turns backwarks for that whole seven o'clock hour. The sun is so fresh and the air is changing from heavy with night to the morning- I think it's why we say the day breaks. But it's too early for me, anyways. The fact that this is all coming out before nine is a miracle in itself.

I sat with good friends yesterday and remembered how much I'd missed them. How Australia had not really changed us- or the time apart at least. Sometimes you do have to re-learn and that's not always a bad thing.

Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds? They'd hear just a tune and not understand my love for words. --Weepies

"...this is our day to day..."

2007-08-25T19:13:00.000-04:00

It's high time for a list. I haven't done one in a while and they're so easy and convenient. And my spelling and grammar is bad- lists allow for those sorts of things.

The things I strongly believe in (as of this August):

. Jesus, his resurrection and a personal relationship with him.

. A good book

. music

. chuck taylor's

. pens, paper and office supplies

. my toshiba

. slow mornings on the porch

. slow evenings on the porch

. the porch

. long walks

. the Wasteland (by T.S. Eliot)

. people

. beauty

. travel

. our utter uniqueness

. our utter sameness

. water

. the rain

Things I firmly do not believe in (as of August):

. Anger and Pride (because one causes the other)

. shoes

. my cell phone

. an empty can of diet coke

. parking at this university

. twist ties

. overhead lighting

Random? Oh yes, I think so. But I think that if we all sat down and did this, it would be strange. Because sometimes-- we are this-- we are unreal. You've got to know what's real, I think. Because if like is events, then I am living from one surreal moment to the next. The kinds of things you just hear about but will never happen to you.

It's been one week- where does Saturday find you?

"...cities ain't nothing but places to fly..."

2007-08-20T00:23:00.000-04:00

It's amazing what can change your day. I read in a magazine article once that a walk around the block can change your perception of yourself.

A walk around the block. Imagine the simplicity.

I have nothing against fresh air. I believe in the medicinal qualities of breathing in gulps of August in Clemson. But walks around the block usually give my thoughts lease to running like wildfire around themselves.

Adam looked at me once in Australia and said that he never understood how anyone could ever get bored- there's so much to think about. I agree with him. But I'm pretty sure we think about different things. I've never calculated the air speed velocity of a football- it's not something I'm sure I could do.

But thinking hasn't been my main priorety lately. Moving and unpacking and reclaiming friendships have been. They still are. My roommate Jess said that she felt like tomorrow was going to be a good day. I guess it's already started now and I have a good feeling about it too. So maybe I'll agree with her and be done with that.

There's something about change that hurts so badly and is so sweet at the same time. It's like little Brother calling to ask me where the library is. This transition is bigger for him than for me- so I sent him in the wrong direction and laughed behind my hand.

I didn't actually do that, but I thought about it. Freshmen have the sweetest terrified look on their faces right up until December. But look at me, talking like that was so long ago. And like I didn't just do it all over again six short months ago. So here's for always trying to find a way to make myself feel better- even when it's completely unjustifiable.

I think that's part of change. You have to find yourself justified. But I feel like that's what Jesus is about, so maybe change shouldn't be so hard. I wouldn't know. I struggle with it every day. Because this time, it's coming home for a change. Riddle me that.

These posts have been badly written lately and I apologize. Like I said, my brain is not functioning past nails in the walls and clothes on the floor. Good luck to you, on this soon to be good day.

"...taken I am yours... I've been doing circles...."

2007-08-17T00:59:00.000-04:00

Stealing internet has to be one of my favorite things in the entire world. Because internet is something that you wonder why they charge for it. Maybe if I understand the grander scheme of internet itself I would understand it in general. Or why Al Gore charges for it.

Oh, how I make myself laugh.

I'm home. And this homecoming has been so long in the making. Clemson, what do I say about you? There's no telling what I love about it. I think it's something about the way smells. It's different. I promise.

My friends on the West Coast are wondering what I'm doing. So I sat down in my newest address and started to construct. I say newest because for two years, I have not staid in one place for more than five months at a time. Tell me I don't love change.

But this newest place is supposed to be for a year. And I feel good about this semi-permanence. Oh, goodness, and let's say stability. Let's say that I'm excited about good things to comes. I'm excited about this year.

I know what it's like to move around. Say what you want about taking people with you, but I'm starting to think it's necessary. Even constant travellers crave a friendly face. I know what it's like to pack. And unpack. And pack again.

It teaches you who you are and where you're going. If you can't flex and move and mold with the people around you- I don't suggest leaving home. It's a dangerous business, going out your door. It's not easy to be transient and flexible. It's easy to find that people are the same every where you go. Even around the world. It's easy to not accept. Believe, I've been there.

So I've moved in with four girls I've for the most part just met. And it isn't scary for me. I never thought I'd say that. Even realizing that they're all normal like me wasn't a big shock. Of course they are. And things about living with them will be difficult and a lot of it will be amazing.

I can genuinely say I'm excited. I feel like that kid with their face against the glass- waiting for what is to come. This is an exciting life, I think.

"...how can you smile and forecast, ''weather's getting better...'"

2007-08-09T09:41:00.001-04:00

If you never let a girl rain all over you. That's how it ends- that song. And it's pretty good remake, to be honest. I love that line- even though I'm sure that I've never rained all over anyone, but I guess it has to happen at some point. Everybody's raining all over everyone else these days.

Speaking of music- I went to Canada to buy the new Tegan & Sara CD. It's always so much better to go to an artist's home town to get their latest and greatest. It's always a guarantee that the music will be there and more of a guarantee that the people will be glad you asked. The kid that sold me the CD was really, really excited about it. Just like the kid in Newcastle who sold me Angus and Julia's CD. He was pretty surprised that I asked for it. I can't mask my accent to save my life.

I'm home with my feet up on the coffee table, savoring the week gone by. Like I said a few days ago- roadtripping changes your outlook on life. It changes the way you feel about sleep, food and small spaces. Even if your vehicle has a refridgerator and a table to play cards on. And there is always a certain amount of joy to getting back to your own bed. That one thing never changes. It's something cosmic that says if you sleep in the same bed for more than a month and leave it for a week, you start to miss it. Somehow a bed can get a good grip on your heart.

Hooray for tangents and inanimate objects.

This post is early- which means I've got this whole day ahead of me. It's stretching and yawning like a blank canvas. It was almost too perfect yesterday when Lauren put on that Relient K song that says, 'it's funny how you find you enjoy your life when you're happy to be alive.' I've learned a great deal these last twelve months. Like I said, you learn something new everyday- not just yesterday. There's nothing about having to stretch physically and spiritually that doesn't sting a little.

When I look over this travelling life, I think God shows us piece by piece how important we are to each other. How much we matter. I know it's sappy- but I just spent eight days on the road with people who show me how to care. They remember me and frustrate me and do everything they can to be outstanding. I look at the people I know around the world and how they scream for a chance to be cared for. Sometimes I feel like we all fall asleep and God's slightly nudging us that there's is no reason to be tired. How can you be tired with a support system as big as him? As big as the cosmos? And yet here am I, yawning and scratching and utterly worn out from time to time.

So we support each other, the way that God shows us. We accept his peace and share it daily, like bread and water. We remember him and he does not remember us- better- he has yet to forget us. I love the word beautiful. I think it kind of sums up this picture, in a really difficult and simple way. I think it shows that God is the glory and here we are, trying to reflect it. Shiny- like mirrors.

"...dog problems- i signed a lease...."

2007-08-06T22:18:00.000-04:00

You learn something new everyday. Not just yesterday.

Everyday is a gift- that's why we call it the present. And- might I say- isn't it a gift that just keeps on giving?

And giving.

Two wrongs don't make a right. But a U-turn can come awful close.

Sitting in a RV in Pennsylvania- now ain't that just priceless?

These last two years have been my years to travel. I feel you, Ben Gibbard, there are roads left in my shoes. So let's walk there. I'm working my way around the English speaking world this year. The Fam saddled up and road and after six days- here I am, live from Pennsylvania in a K.O.A. campground. Who knew these places were so hi-tech? We've got wireless.

My parents ever present mission is to think of how to do things like no other family does them. So we rented a RV and we've driven. A really, really long way. Roadtripping this way is so different than my life in Australia. Fancy having a rig you can hook up to a plug an have air conditioning? Or a toilet? Geez, this is high living.

Canada is a weird place. As I type that, I realize I am going to eat those words. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice place- eh? But I could do with one less tourist attraction at Niagara Falls. I'm just saying. You still get the immensity of that place, though. No matter what anyone says. It's like society has capitalized on this huge monumental show of God's might and that water comes crashing over the rocks and you can almost hear him say it... Y'all have got absolutely no idea.

I'm pretty sure if you asked Canadians where not to go in Canada they'd tell you not to go to Niagara. It's like Myrtle Beach met Gatlinburg and they had a child neither of them wants to claim. It's that ridiculous.

Pennsylvania has been nice. It's so pretty and rolling like someone spread out this fuzzy green carpet all along the way. I sit an stare out of the window while Lauren and I beg Soccer Mom and SuperHero Dad to stop the car. This is the kind of air one needs to breathe and breathe deeply.

Tomorrow we'll head to Philly and I'll challenge Donovan McNabb to a battle of wills. I'll see if he can do it without breaking something. Which I'm sure he can't. That was uncalled for. I'm making all these statements I'm going to pay for later.

We'll head back to Charleston in a day or so and I'll start packing again. I cannot wait to not live out of a suitcase anymore. A whole year in one place seems like too much to ask. Roads in the shoes- is that what it was?

"...being here never felt so right..."

2007-07-27T13:26:00.000-04:00

I will say this with a hint of reservation, because it's one of those true statements that most people don't acknowledge. By acknowledging this, I'm setting it free. And one never sets things free without a little bit of reservation.

You don't truly know yourself until you've spent an extended amount of time in a car. Alone or otherwise. Because road trips, while fun and altogether memorable, will change your outlook on four by four foot areas of space. Make no mistake.

I was in a car for a long time over the last four days. These are the sacrifices a person makes to see a good show, hang out with the extended family and finish some decorating projects. By sacrifices, I mean irregular eating patterns and sleep. I am also utterly convinced that whoever designed the back seat of the Chevy Colorado extended cab was a moron. They must have failed out of kindergarten at age nineteen. Or either they enjoy pain. This is what I mean by new meanings to four by four foot spaces.

It was worth it. The Format, so promising when they come through whatever speakers my iPod is attached to, were even more amazing in person. I thought this concert would stem my cravings for them. That was a lie. I think I've shot myself in the foot because I don't think I'll stop liking them any time soon. Sorry Vanessa and whoever else was fortunate enough to live at Scott Street in Australia.

Tomorrow is JenniGray's birthday and it's a big one. It's her twenty-first. This makes her altogether legal. Eighteen only makes you a partially legal person. You can vote and be killed in war, but you can't drink. Twenty-one means that you get to pop the top and go crazy. I highly doubt that she'll go crazy. But she could if she wanted to. Because her legality is now official in every sense of the word. She has an option. Hooray for possibilities.

Because it's JenniGray's birthday- all kinds of things happen. Mary Gene will come home and we'll all do something fun tomorrow night. I hope it's a magical day. I really, really do.

Speaking of magic, I don't think I ever have or ever will see anything like Barnes & Noble a week ago. I stood in this swirling mass of people thinking about Harry Potter and how he'd caused so much difference in the way people read. I thought about J.K. Rowling and where she was. I kind of hoped she was watching the sun rise in England and waiting for her kids to get up. I hoped her cell phone was off and that she was drinking in the morning and not the stress of being successful. That she was thankful for the work of her hands. It's was a really beautiful picture in my head, to tell you the truth. I'm pretty sure it probably wasn't like that.

I hoped all those people would be satisfied with what she'd done. And in truth, they don't really have much of a choice, do they? But people will love it and have loved it, because it's genius. I loved it. I think it's genius.

This is a good place to end, I think. I hope your day is magical. I really, really do.

"...I want only this- I want to live a simple life..."

2007-07-19T10:24:00.001-04:00

I told Mary Gene yesterday, sometimes I feel a little over this. And what a way to go to. After all the grief I've taken as a blogger, you'd think I'd be in for the long haul.

At this present moment I am in it for the long haul. I haven't been writing much of anything lately, which is a crying shame. There's a certain ache around the fingers that develops when I'm away from a piece of paper too long. I haven't been reading much either. So here's to a lazy, lazy summer.

JenniGray and I have been spending lazy days running errands for Soccer Mom and watching movies with Josh in the evenings. I watched her basically climb into one of the freezers at BiLo last night. These are the days when I wonder how I lived without her for so long. A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do for the right kind of icecream- even if that does mean cold fingers.

Lauren left us this week for a trip to Atlanta to shop at the markets there. She'll come back with heaps of cool stuff and I'll wonder at how she does it. It's a guarentee that three days at any market would make me more than a little bored. I'm not a good shopper. It's one of Soccer Mom's biggest gripes about me. I need Mary Gene to come home because I've gone up to Barnes and Noble so many times by myself that the people there are honestly starting to wonder if I have friends at all. Or maybe even family. I sit and sip coffee and creepily people watch from one of the corners in the cafe area. And then I go sit in front of book shelves and block traffic and literally cry because I don't have enough money to buy every book I want. It's a hard life, let me tell you. All those people, lined up- wondering when you're going to move so they can go down the aisle of books thinking, 'why is that girl crying? she must not have any friends or family.'

In the end, it's been a slow to fast summer. Meaning that for every slow day there's three fast ones that blot out that slow one. And since the slow ones are the days when I have time to blog, I'm coming across as far less busy that I actually am. (Which means yes, Gavin, I am planning on calling you back. I promise.)

Sometimes I think it's hard to remember what a good life we all live. (As a blogger, I am completely entitled to tangents, by the way.) I mean everyone everywhere. Does it sound cheesy when I say that life itself is just worth living? For the sheer sake of thoughts and emotions and that perfect summer storm rolling in around seven p.m. I get all caught up sometimes in thinking about everything that's happened to me and in the end- what is it? Just worth living. Just worth getting up before ten o'clock and sitting on my sofa, writing and reliving every jab taken at blogging. It seems more and more evident to me that everything is funny in retrospect. I shouldn't have cared so much about what they said about me. I shouldn't have been so scared of what could have happened or what would have happened. I mean, we're only asked to live- right? And live well.

'The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying:
"I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with loving-kindness."' Jer. 31:3