The Rains

lost beauty ever seen in memory
now gone beyond all hope of reclaiming
passing Time reclaims his own
draws along those bound by him
breath of beauty lingers on the air
drifting downward to up raised hands

my scribbling muse has once again wandered through my door and has taken up a seat in the easy chair... now if only I could manage to wander down to the library with the sheets of my writtings or when I had the time to put them up here...
ah well
I make no promises but I should soon have a few poem and a bit of a short story/flash fiction thing I scribbled out a week or so ago...

I don't understand. How can a bad mood settle so thoroughly? I have rarely been so very out of it... Say a prayer that my guardian angel will give me a swift kick in the pants...

so hey guess what- I'm in the Big Apple... yeah, I hopped on a bus last night and got dropped off on a street corner in the middle of Manhatten and now I'm here for three days. I don't quite know what I am going to be doing - but I have internet connection so you'll end up hearing about some of it (or perhaps lots of it...)
At the moment I am looking out onto the river (? I think...) at the George Washington Bridge listening to jazz and the rush of cars on the road below me, and sound of the fan (one of those ancient ones from the 40's or 50's) and feeling the heat gradually rise outside. Across the river the bluffs are green with trees and beneath the trees and very large buildings are red rocks looking very old. I feel vaguly silly that I don't really know where I am spacially or geographically but that only adds to the fun and adventure of it all. I suppose I'll figure it out eventually so I can tell people about my trip without sounding either too blond (no offence) or too hick...

The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.
~Sarah O. Jewett

I am curious my friends, is this the case? I am thinking it is, both with people and places. I arrived here in DC two months ago and am loathing the thought of having to leave so soon. I know I would eventually get tired of being in the city and long for the country again...

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."
~Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps this is the reason I find it so very difficult to be on time for anything...

hands held open now
receiving all God's goodness-
what of passing time?

The light is slowly fading from the sky, draining the faint colours from the haze that is spread across the patch of blue out the window. There is a bit of reflection shining off the office windows across the street, but it too is fading. I think I am falling in love...this city os so much more than I had anticipated. What is happening to the shy and scared country mouse that showed up less than a month ago?

I've been looking around at grad schools, searching for a master's program that fits what it is I think I want to do. I know it must be out there - everything else I've looked for has shown up hasn't it... ok hang on don't jump all over me... I found the right school (pretty much), I've basically figured out what I want to write about for my thesis, so grad school is the next step. Which means I'll have to take the GED some time in the next year or so and probably take some pre-recquisits and what-not to round out my already well rounded BA. The other bits and pieces that make up life (and I will leave those to you, reader, to fill in) will either come or not as God wills. I keep googling environmental programs, and conservation programs, and ecology programs and nothing particularly strikes me as being what I want to devote years of my life and enormous amouts of money to. I think I need to find someone who knows a bit of whats out there to help me figure out what it is I'm looking for...

It's become rather dark outside, the only lights from the office building are ones from cubicles and hallways left on for cleaning crews or security purposes. The headache that has been taunting me all day is beginning to return with the lessening of the gin and tonic buzz from supper. Time to go and watch some Mariokart...

~When I began this compendium of thoughts I often used excerpts from letters and e-mails to (and sometimes from) friends. In keeping with that...

(from note written 10 June)

DC is treating me well so far. It is very unlike LA, it is smaller and much more self-contained. The different areas and neighbourhoods have a feeling of knowing who they are and where they belong in the scheme of things (do I sound crazy?) Things are much older here, houses, monuments, roads, trees... It's really quite strange to wander up and down the streets and think that people have been doing the same thing on the same road for the last 200 years...
As for work, I am slowly figuring out what it exactly consists of... It's all well and good to say that I am an "intern interpretive ranger" - but what does that mean? So far it's meant answering questions that I know the answers to and finding someone else who does if I don't. In a week or two I'll become one of those nice know-everything people who give programs and hikes and tours around the park... I have to design my own presenations... this makes me rather nervous... it's like writing, producing, directing and staring in your own one act play every couple of days... At school I can simply vanish into a corner or wall or middle of a room and no one notices me and now I am working to figure out ways to make my work the center of attention. Very very different mode of thought...though it's probably good for me.

So apparently there is a bill before Congress now about internet neutrality. From what I've read it would give priority to large corporate users, while leaving whatever is left over for everyone else. If it were not the end of finals week I might do a bit more research on it and write down some of my own ideas on the whole mess... As it is I am going to put up a few links and ask you to poke about yourselves some and come to your own conclusions... So for general info go here, for petition to Congress go here, for more general political goings on...
I will confess that I have not checked out these sites completely, so I don't know where they stand in relation to the lables of "conservative" and "liberal," but the thought of big multi -national corporations getting to use more of what seems like it should be fair use for all is unappealing to me to put it mildly...

the evening air was chill as the sound of corsican and russian chant poured out of the darkness from the direction of the commons roof. it was the perfect way to signal the close of the year...

are we really supposed to have one "love of your life"? Somehow I can't bring
myself to believe it. That's not to say I don't believe in true or lasting
loves, but that almost fairytale like greatest love just does not seem like it
could actually happen. Perhaps I see it this way because I see love as being a
decision, an act of the will, lived and carried out in the day to day of life.
And that's not to say I don't believe in romance - I just have a rather
different view of it. For me, it's all about how you look at it, in a word,
it's all about perspective. The simplest actions, a touch of the hand, a look,
small things, the thoughtful things.
So many different paths and possibilities, who or what's to say that this one or
that one is the only one for you? We are as adaptable as any other animal, to
situations and people. Love happens all of the time, it's the day to day stuff
that makes everything hold together and stay somewhat sane. It's not knights in
shining armor, or dancing in the clouds happily ever after...

*sigh*
..so why is there a part of me that wishes it were everything I think it's
not?

There was sun today....clear skies, blue sky and sun! After weeks of rain and
coldness, it was so very good to feel the sunlight...

My mum went home this morning. The clear beautiful day that we had awoken to in the dawn hour had vanished in the hours spent battling trafic and drooping eyelids. For the first time all year, I went to class as a means of forgetting everything else I had to be doing- rather a waste of the time. But the taxes are nearly done, Goodwill has been called, I have someplace to take my car to at least find out what the *&@# is wrong with it, and I have something of a notion of what I am writing on my paper...

I want a stop button for life...

... or perhaps just lessons from the guys who seemed to think they could live in the manner of the last quote posted...

Omnipresent phrase in my mind
Spoken words I've said one million times
Who are you to tell me
It'll always be this way
I close my eyes
And I turn around
And leave it all behind

So free for the moment
Lost somewhere between the earth and the sky
So free for the moment
Lost because I wanna be lost
Don't try to find me

Always try breeze through my life
Repititious things I've done one million times
Who are you to tell me
That I'll always be this way
I close my eyes
And I turn around
And leave it all behind

What could I do
It's not such a terrible thing
What would you do
It's not such a terrible thing

So free for the moment
Lost somewhere between the earth and the sky
So free for the moment
Lost because I wanna be lost

So free for the moment
Lost somewhere between the earth and the sky
So free for the moment
Lost because i wanna be lost
Don't try to find me

The Martinis, Free

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writer (1922- )

How possible is it to live like this for long? Is one able to live in this manner for all of life? what of security and stability? it almost seems as though the "edge" were characterized by the 'not knowing what is going to happen'... there is an allure about this, but time makes everything familier, even the most spectacular and beautiful or awful and terrible of things. that edge would have to keep being pushed and expanded, a sense of place would never be developed... can you really live like that?

Pretend you're happy when you're blue
It isn't very hard to do
And you'll find happiness without an end
Whenever you pretend

Remember anyone can dream
And nothing's bad as it may seem
The little things you haven't got
Could be a lot if you pretend

You'll find a love you can share
One you can call all your own
Just close your eyes, she'll be there
You'll never be alone

And if you sing this melody
You'll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why don't you pretend?

And if you sing this melody
You'll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why don't you pretend?

~Pretend, Nat King Cole

... and not I am not going to give an explanation for this...

I think I am beginning to think I am getting stressed, if stress levels have any relation to an inclination to depression (or at least mild bluseiness- and if that wasn't a word already I just made it one...). There never seems to be enought time to do even the minimal amount of everything that needs to get done, and I am always exhausted... Each week-end I think "ok now I will be able to get caught up on things" and then somehow I don't, not homework, or paper, or sleep... sigh. Perhaps it's just the weather getting to me. It has turned cold and damp without actually raining yet, with a fitful wind that wanders below skirt hems and down necklines. Watching the massing grey clouds out beyond the hills from the lab class window an hour ago I could think of little to drive away the feeling of pressure and tension (although I was in lab class and that generally has that effect on me, cloudy day or no). I started scribbling and between the notes and objections to the ramblings of the instructor these came out...

play me the falling rain
the gradual sweeping up and covering over
of all things seen and not
by soft sheets of
colors muted, angles grown soft
coming down of cares and sighs
whether washed away or
sunken slowly deeper...


song of falling rain
set'ling cares and sighs deeper
in growing chillness

I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free.
-Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957)

What sort of freedom is this? I don't understand. How can you be free if you hope for nothing? It makes no sence, unless you think of freedom as a sort of nirvana or state of nothingness. Even fearing nothing does not seem to acuratly represent freedom, just express an aspect of it.

~ ~ ~

The sky is grey and clouded over today, but it fails to bring the pleasure that such a sight would ordinarily bring. Instead it seems lowering and forboding. The ache of beauty is still present (when is it ever not?), but it does not satisfy, does not fill. I have too many things on my mind, and not enough substance (or focus) in any of it to hold my attention. Thoughts of the near and far future keep distracting me form the present, and I keep returning time and again with a thump and bump of semi-painful awarenesss that I am neglecting life for chimeras and might-be-perhapses. And then I begin to wander off again telling myself that unless I work and plan for the future now, then I won't have much to work with when I get there and it begins all over again.
*sigh* balance will come, with practice and a few more bruises.

three haikus written during seminar this evening... I've been wanting to write and finally gave in...

green tips edging limbs
black wings looming close sit silent
hearalding chill rains

~ ~ ~

falling drops chill hands
'plashing amoung small heart cracks
bringing beauty nigh

~ ~ ~

memory recalls
sardonic smile causitc tone
known - missed- air and walk

I am going to get prefected in a moment I'm sure, and justice requires me to be gone anyway...

But to reiterate me annual complaint: I hate taxes and everything related to them!

they're married now. It seems like such a long time since this morning, and even
longer since yesterday and last week is well nigh unimaginable. But the passed
time is not lost in a fog of incomprehension or insinsibility, it's gone... now
where has it gone? I'm not sure. Lost in love perhaps. And believe me not the
silly insubstantial all blown to the head sort of love. no, the sort of love
that carves out a life, one life, together out of what was two. the sort of
love that leaves no doubt that the bride will not only be at the church when
things are beautiful and centered around them, but will also be there when
times get rough and every little things seems to ge going cross-wise to them.
the sort of love that leaves no doubt taht the groom will devote himself to
her, mind, body and soul, not only when she is the most lovely radiant creature
to walk the face of the earth, but when she is tired, worried and stressed. the
sort of love i see in their parents, so different from each other in so many
many ways, but similar in all of the important ones.
i was witness today to the beginning of a life so beautiful that even now, hours
after i was to draw out words to toast the event, i am still without any i feel
could be sufficient. i am left to say again, it is only the beginning.

A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.
-Nikos Kazantzakis, writer (1883-1957)

someone remind me of this over the course of this next week...


I promise to write soon (-ish...)

perhaps its the time of year but I have a few poems that I mangaged to sketch out over the last week or so...

incomplete

head sinking below the waves
wash after wash of time and event
takes a toll on heart and mind.
waiting for such ineveiabilites
that are not to be counted upon
wandering always amoung
unrecalled dreams and lost hopes
waking recollection of ideals
in attempt to find...


~ ~ ~

All fall down beneath
the reaching gloom of
a deepening darkness-

after seeing the light of
wandering joys that
stumble through doorways
to stay for a moment
while brushing off
hope dusted knees...

after hearing the rush of
speaking winds bringing
tales of a life known
in dreams and desires
all the while rifling
through hair and trees...

after feeling the small song of
a little bird in the bush tree
outside the window sill
beyond nodding rose heads
sweet in life held
though unknowingly fleet...

~ ~ ~
and yet...

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
ills have no weight, and tears not bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

I spent a goodly portion of the week-end at the "Last Homely House" helping to set up for our dinner there Sat evening and then Sunday brunch... No time at this House is complete without singing which we did a fair amount of. I discovered that the tenor parts of many of the songs we sing are wonderful, particularly the tenor line of Abide with me (the fourth verse of which is just above for those of you who are not familiar with the hymn). I will be looking back on this week-end, full of rest and beauty, often over the next two weeks...

I began and finished Graham Greene's The End of the Affair earlier this week (actually in all of about two and a little bit days) and have been waiting to write on it... But now find that I am at a loss for words to say anything about it. I have not been moved so much by a book since I read Brideshead Revisited over a year ago. Perhaps the words will come with time (or frustration after the seminar next week...)

This is something of a response to topic of the week... it came to me while in
philosophy class yesterday (I know, I know one ought not to be day dreaming in
class but when the Muse wanders by...)

~ ~ ~
The coffeeshop was one I'd been in and out of all summer it was the perfect
place- the only place- for our symposium on friendship. The late summer night
was mild and the place was expectedly empty. The atmosphere itself was
friendly, open with large couches and not-florescent lights. And yet I sat on
the outter edge of our group, on one of the chairs we'd pulled over in the
process of reconfiguring nearly all of the comfy funiture in the place. I'd so
many questions and thoughts and ponderings, collected, gathered and stored from
over the years - and it was all overwhelmed by a searing unintelligible ache.
"What is friendship?" Ah, the ambition of youthful passion in quest of the
good.
Round and round the question was passed, touching on this and the other, and all
seeming so far away. I watched the discussion form and shape itself into a
reflection of so many internal conversations with myself, only drawn out and
voiced by many characters. Gradually, almost inevitably, the ground shifted to
love and the scene to the coffeeshop steps, the sidewalk, and streetlight. Far
into the night we talked, so serious and earnest in our persuit of the beauty
of company and shared knowledge and ideas. Then, I stood apart and laughed
ironically to myself, perhaps more at myself and all of the others by
extenstion, for trying to grasp and understand the greatest mystery of life.
Now though, I smile at the remembrance and echo of the pain and still hold the
wonder that had brought me to that night inspite of that ache.

I stumbled across this passage as I was stealing a few moments between studies to read this morning. (I think I "stumble across" things far more often than any other way of discovering or noticing them. I will be pondering some problem or other and out of the apparent blue something hits and seems to exactly apply to whatever it was I was pensivating about. My guardian angel has a hand in it I'm sure...)

It runs: "We make our own lives wherever we are, after all... college can only help us do it more easily. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here... everywhere... if we can only
learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness."

I've been worrying about finding a summer job and future plans about possibly continuing on to grad school, and what I need to do to make that a real possibility. But I kept forgetting that what it important in life is to live deeply. What or where or how you do that is almost accidental and is important only in regards to whether it is helping or hindering you in achieving that end.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

-William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)

So my good friend and former roommate is (hmmm, what do you know, are works too... but that implies t that she isn't my good friend which is simply not the case...) getting married in a month... I would have thought that it would take me a while to get used to this idea, but so far it hasn't, which I guess is a good thing. I am down at their little house (this place needs a name, the nest? love shack? (too corny) something will come no doubt) having secumbed to the general feeling of bleh-ness I've been resisting all week. ('nuther mental note: only come to hang out at the home of a happy couple when in the best of moods...) I forgot homework so I've been wandering back and forth between watching over the shoulder of Gigi while she was playing at the computer and reading random books pulled off the shelves in the living room... And now the eveing has passed, pleasantly for the most part, and it is time to go. (hmmm no homework done again. this is becoming a vaguly disturbing trend perhaps I should do something about it...)

The other day I re-discovered one of my favorite songs from back home...

E Pili Mai

'Auhea vale ana 'oe
Ku'u lei o ka po
Po anu ho'okahi no au
Sweetheart mine
E pili mai

Ina 'o 'oe a 'o au
'Ika i ka ahi o Makana
He makana ia na ke aloha
No na kau a kau
'O 'oe a 'o au
Sweetheart mine
E pili mai

~
Where are you
My sweetheart of the night
The night is cold and I am alone
Sweetheart mine
Come to me

If you and I are together
We'll know the fires of Makana
It would be a gift given of love
For all time
You and I
Sweetheart mine
Come to me

semi-response...

moonrings and icy fingers
star scatterd sky
deep breaths of holy wonder
strange peace drawn
from halls of old haunts
gradually gathering bits
of my world from yours.

the white petals of a lone rose
scattered and frail
on the black mesh of the table
remind me of the beautiful things
of my life
and I find myself both
wishing they could find a whole-ness
and simply grateful for their
individual beauty.

see this

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
-Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

I have been wondering recently about self-knowledge and how one is affected by surroundings - where one lives, who one is with... It is so easy to become a different person everywhere one goes. Now granted those differences may be subtle, but for all their subtlely, how deeply do they go? How much of the real self remains constant and unchanged? And how much in the end does it matter? If one finds happiness and goodness somewhere, is there some falsehood in desiring to be there when one know that in other places one would act differently... It almost seems that there is, but perhaps that is a reaction to wanting there not to be...

I have once again joined the campus workforce. It is a rather odd feeling to pick up three week's worth of assorted mail and discover a work schedule among the mix. I suppose it says something the opinion your employer has of you when they are willing to give you a job without notice. So I'll be spending about 14 hours of quality time with the kitchen staff... I am actually looking forward to it. For all of the extra stress it cause last year, I did enjoy working in the kitchen. And the money is undeniably welcome.

*sigh* However, at the moment I feel very ungreatful for the opportunity...

~ ~ ~

I was reading over some of my posts from a year ago. It seems almost strange to think that I wrote what I did. The thoughts and emotions now seem almost foreign and strange, and yet they are still deeply expressive of myself. I have not written anything like that in what seems like a very long time. I would like to again but it is as if something turned off, or went away...

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

Yes I am still alive and Happy New Year to you all! It was brought in round a dancing bon fire and with many a firework and no little amount of the fruit of the vine or nectar of the Norse gods (as the Sprit says. She also says to say hello in lieu of actually posting on her own).
I am also bid to wish you all a happy Twelfth Night and near happy Feast of Epiphany. Here in the country of the Cajuns Epiphany is the opening of Carnival season which will last until Mardi Gras (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday for anyone who may not know). I am told that Carnival is marked with balls and parades (and beads...) Unfortunatly we are leaving before thing really get under way, which is a shame...

We finished watching Lawrence of Arabia this evening and I am left with my head and thoughts in a whirl. I hope I well be diciplined enough to at least scrible down some more of what I think of it in the next few days, but if not here is a little bit. It is a sad story, sad and haunting. The Sprit aptly remarked that he was not a god, nor a saint, nor really in my own opinion a great hero. He was a man, very, very much a man. He did not know himself, not who he was or what he most wanted and this was in the end his undoing. The friend who introdudced us to the movie said he related very much to Lawrence and I find that vaguely frightening in some way. He said that it seems very true to life that all things, great and small, come to an end, and the more one devotes himself to something great, the further from it he will end up. Perhaps this troubles me because for all of my deep facade of cynisism, I am in the end a romantic and I need that ideal to be pasionate about and love almost blindly. Perhaps more on this later...

Perhaps the saying that absence make the heart grow fonder is true, but time and distance also work wonders on a worn and weary heart and soul. I have flown away from SoCal to the snow laced woods of the Shenandoah Valley and at the moment I have no desire whatsoever to leave. I went sledding this afternoon in the fading winter sunlight down a relatively shallow hill. The snow was all iced over and there were tufts of grass breaking through in random places. Tholnar's coment was that it was like being in Narnia at the end of the Witch's reign. As I looked up at the surrounding hills, letting my eyes wander over the brown tree branches up to the pale blue sky, (and except for the drop in temperature) I couldn't have agreed more...

My postings will be rather spotty and random for the next few weeks. But I will be going into DC a couple of times and midnight mass and hiking and shooting and reading and talking and watching Tholnar milk the cow twice a day - in short just being happy. And then I'll head down to the fey Wandering Minstral's home for more adventures over New Years...
Right now life - for the most part- is good.

Hey I've passed 200 posts... pity I am too worn out to write something long and substantial to commemorate it... other mile markers, my car is (mostly) fixed thanks to the mechanical genius and patience of Toque. I looked down at the odometer last night as I was driving back from the beach and realized that I will not be the one driving when it rolls past 150,000 miles and the thought made me sad... The beach was breath taking last night and not because of the cold. The moon is waxing and the tide was wandering in, long breakers taking on an almost bluish shade in the moonlight. I wished I could have been there by myself instead of with 8 other people... but if not for them I would not have gone at all so in the end it all balances out.
I am in a rambling mood but to no avail, lab final studies are demanding my attention. We'll see what becomes of my writings over the next few days...

A bit of something for all of us coming up on finals...
"The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in.
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens; it is the logician who
seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
~Chesterton

Music, song, laughter, drink - everything one need for the perfect evening...
And it very nearly was. It has been too long since those nights of last year
spent singing until the throat was raw and the voice hoarse. I've missed it so
much more that I allowed myself to realize. How many more such nights lie
ahead? Time moves so quickly, carrying all of us in so many directions. It is
so easy to forget the beauty of the people and the places and time right before
us at this moment while working toward the future...

So I and four other girls are in Flagstaff at the moment. It has been a long eventful day, following upon a particularly long and rather sleepless night. I will share a bit of the day with you thru the medium of photo mostly because I am too tired to write out accurate descriptions of everything that has happended. (I am also too tired to make this come out in chronological order...) The top one is of the girls singing at the top of their lungs to something playing on my computer. The next one down is of the brush we had a "run in" with somewhere between Barstow and Kingsman (my car lost an eye in the encounter...) Then there is the nearly mile long train... and then a testimony to the girl's addiction (seriously - this place was closed and we followed the signs for the next "fresh jerky" shop for well over 100 miles, not that it took us out of way but we were watching the signs...) So tommorw's plan of opperation find a mechanic who can tell me what is wrong with my car (other than being filled with juniper twigs and cactus paws) and fix it for a price I can afford, and then the Grand Canyon (the original reason for this escapade...) More on what happens latter.

If I were the rain that binds together the earth and the sky, who in all
eternity will never mingle, will I be able to bind the hearts of people
together?

It's over and done. This small sheaf of papers waiting to be stapled and laid
outside the prefect's door, the summation of weeks of thought and writing,
seems to be too little to show for all of the work that went into it. But it is
done now and I have a week before I have to start thinking seriously of finals
study.
*sigh*
Time moves far too quickly...

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
-Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

This is such a true observation of the "hermetically sealed bottle" we live in. Why is that???

life's noblest lie:
Amor omnia vincit
...it hurts.

I will not attempt to argue with the good senor on his point that I would not have remarked thus if I had known love. I have and it is reflection on this love that lead me to this statement. But that does not express the reflection in its entirety (neither will this though...)

In the end it all depends on the direction one is looking from... from the perspective of mortality and change and imperfection it is true. Men change and thus necessarily so does their love. It waxes and wanes, finds new direction and looses intensity. It is everything man is, it reflects him in all his faults, it is imperfect - it dies. It is the doom chosen for all human things at the moment Adam took the fruit from his wife's hand.
However, in the end, that is not solely what love truly is. From the perspective of the immortal and unchanging and perfect, it is perhaps our closest conception of what God is in Himself. It is all that St Paul described- patient, kind, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, never failing, never ending. This is what man was intended for at the first creation and lost in his fall. In the re-creation of the Cross, it is offered to him again but this time with a requirement attached. Man must enter into the sufferings of the Cross, sharing in its the pain and sacrifice in a spirit of submission and willingness and humility. Man's love becomes his cross, drawing him in two contradictory directions, toward heaven and across the earth. And even then the fullness and perfection of love desired cannot be achieved in this life, it is only seen from a distance as Moses saw the Promised Land from the peak of the mountain but could not enter into it.
Man, acutely aware of his passing-ness and imperfection, craves the unchanging and the perfect. And every fiber of his being tells him that this desire ought to be satisfied in goodness, truth, beauty, and most especially in love. It could perhaps be described as his recognition of what was lost in the fall. Man, being the mixture of the mortal and mutable with the immortal and perfectable that he is, is neither able attain the love he desires in this life nor condemned to the merely mortal affections proper to the flesh. He is given both, mortality with the promise of perfection. Change and death are inexcapable and are yet able to be overcome.
Hence I feel justified in saying that man's love fails - it does. But that is not the end of the story because to be true love it must be God's and that we are assured never fails.

Quote of the morning:

"Oh man, the sun is so sunny...and glorious."

hehehehe - what a night of papering can do to one's power's of articulation.

It's so wonderful to be loved... Upon confessing to Sir Jeo that my familiar had
blown in on the winds and had set to work to make me depressed, I was informed
that if he happened upon that unfortunate creature it would be preemporally
shot and then kicked about upon the ground. "Things that make you depressed
ought to be shot!"
"Life goes on," he said "You've got friends, and school, and beautiful
weather...so no frowns. Smile, come on, corners of the mouth up...that's it."
How can one refuse? So I will try to give my familiar a bit of a kick to
dislodge him from his wonted location- entwined about my ankles- and move
along.

Shortly forthcoming, further thoughts or perhaps a modification of my rashness
of the other day.

I've been promising to share my plans for the future for about a week now and the thought occurs to me that I should perhaps give you something to make up for the blatant misery of the previous post. (In addition it gives me a break from my philosophy paper...) I was reminded of them (my daydreams, I mean my plans) again when the lovely student worker from our campus career center tracked me down to subject me their current junior survey. So in simple, humble terms I will lay forth for your perusal my thoughts for my future...

After graduating I plan to wander the world, beginning in Europe and working my way east, staying as long as my money (what I have, what I can make while I'm there, and what I owe due to loans) holds out and perhaps a bit longer after that. The reason for this period of wandering is not entirely frivolous, but I'll come back to that. After the year or so of travel, I am hoping to continue in school, hopefully on the graduate level, but if I have to take some more undergraduate classes that will be fine. And the field? Not theology or philosophy (though I will always study in those areas- its gotten into my blood, its how I think now). I am going to go into conservation and research, so a degree in conservation biology, ecology, or natural sciences is the general aim right now. I need to do more research in the specific degrees, but that is the field. Where is such a degree useful? Government work to begin with, National Forest service, Department of land and natural resources; within the private sector there are conservation agencies and organizations.
Now back to the year or so of traveling. I have noticed that while being here in school will expand one's mind regarding the intellectual life, it can cause a rather narrow view of the world as a whole. Given the way technology and global economics have been developing in the last decade or so, there are few things that happen in one corner of the world that do not affect other parts of it in some way. I want to be able to see how this works first-hand. Further, if I want to enter a field that is concerned with the world as a whole, it will give me an advantage to have a feel for it and some first hand knowledge of it. In addition, I have seen that within the conservation movement, people tend to get dropped out of the big picture. In the more extreme views mankind is seen as a plague upon the earth. I see no danger of this happening to me, but I want to know the people in these areas that are so "crucial to the salvation of the earth."
What draws me to this? Various reasons. I love nature and the outdoors and abhor the idea of being trapped behind a desk as a career. I see the world not as being a possession of man, but as a stewardship entrusted to him for the greater glory of God. Destroying it will not give Him glory and I do believe that we will be held accountable for it in some way. Thinking less theologically but along the same lines, it makes no sense to destroy what has been inherited from our fathers; rather we should strive to be able to had down to innumerable future generations. I find the workings of economics and politics on all levels ( global, national, local) fascinating, and conservation seems to be an apt way of combining many of the areas I am rather passionate about.

So that, in brief, is the direction I'm headed in. Its the "what I want to do when I grow up," modified and refined, that I've had since I was about 12 or 13, having only gotten stronger as time went by. I honestly have no idea where or how a husband or family work into this, but right now I don't have to worry about that...
I do need to start looking into grad schools and degree requirements and grants and scholarships and - but all of that can wait until my paper is finished...

~life's noblest lie:

Amor omnia vincit.



it hurts...

Closing time, open all the doors
And let you out into the world
Closing time, turn all of the lights on
Over every boy and every girl
Closing time, one last call for alcohol
So finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time, you don't have to go home
But you can't stay here

I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home

Closing time, time for you to go out
To the places you will be from
Closing time, this room won't be open
Till your brothers or your sisters come
So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits
I hope you have found a friend
Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end

I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home

Closing time, time for you to go out
To the places you will be from

I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
I know who I want to take me home,
Take me home

Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning

So yet another evening has gone by, full of potency and expectation of accomplishing plenty... with little to nothing to show for it. However I have a few more dollars in my pocket and a bit more perspective on the beautiful little bottle I live in most of the time, so perhaps it was not as fruitless as all that.
"Tiny Dancer" is playing on the internet station in the background... I need to aquire some Elton John... I do like his music...
I need to write to you all my discovery of actual plans for the future... it was an exciting discovery on my part I can tell you. But the baristas will be giving me dirty looks soon...

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to
write one story, and writes another, and his humblest
hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what
he vowed to make it.

-J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-193o)

Take The Quiz Yourself!


ok I am going to go out on a limb and admit that I am totally into this series...perhaps addicted is a more accurate description....

How I spend my Friday afternoons...

I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so
much. It means to me now - only that place where the
books are kept.

-John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

~Notes from the exile wandering the balcony (ok, its a patio but that does n't
sound as nice) behind the rose hedged wall...

Ink splotches on fingertips
damp blacknes that smears on
everything I touch and then
it dries and will not come off for
love or money or hot water adn soap.
Yes, good quality ink
it will never fade or run or
come off my hands.

A dry heat has settled upon us, apparetly coinciding with the jump to daylight
savings time... I have no idea what the two have to do with each other, but
seeing as they came together I have no reason to think they don't have some
sort of causal relationship.
I've been reading Alice in Wonderland and am caught up in the myriads of
equivocations and puns that I didn't noticed the first time I read it through
years ago. I knew all this education would come in useful somehow...

..and now back into the heat of the day with productivity in mind...

Here's the deal:
1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing. (concider yourself tagged)

Here it is: Within 10 minutes we are heading down the highway, windows down and I am feeling free. I had no idea where we were going, but it did not matter.

Beach day... I remember it well. And to think we were running away in the same car that Toque was driving in his tagged account. Too weird...

Funny what you will find by hitting the blogs of note button on the blogger home page...

------
Another for the List
I stood at her door, wearing saggy pajama bottoms and an oversized men’s t-shirt, barefoot on the cold linoleum, in the dark. Waiting. Got chocolate? I asked when the door finally cracked open. She grinned and lifted a pillowcase filled with Halloween loot.

We were college freshmen living on the same floor of an all girls dormitory. At first, I would pass her in the morning bathroom rush – we’d nod and smile with towel turbans on our heads and toothbrushes poking into our cheeks. For all of our passing and nodding and smiling - it took my insatiable need for a peanut butter cup at midnight to bring us together. We sat in her room for hours that night, until her roommate kicked us out in search of sleep. At which point, we slunk out to the hallway and sat on the hard floor with our backs pressed against the cool concrete walls.

We spent most of that year up late, talking. We talked on long walks or while stitching designs on thrift-store pants and eating microwaved potatoes dowsed in salt and vinegar. We talked about anything. Growing up. Families. Home. Why we were there. Where we wanted to wind up. Everything unfolded effortlessly between us over plates of potatoes. Later, in letters from home, she would refer to us as soul sisters.

She is the latest one that I’ve lost. We haven’t spoken or written in over a year, and I’m not even sure how to contact her. She has vanished.

And she’s just the latest in a growing list of people who have wandered deeply into my life, only to disappear. There's the boy who sat with me in our cafe, sipping coffee, reading scripts and planning how we'd spend our lives together, playing here and there - never settling down. There's the adolescent flirtation that grew to an intense friendship and then became my last kiss, just two weeks before meeting my husband. There are too many; the list is long. Sometimes I sense them slipping and I simply let them go. Perhaps that makes me to blame: I don’t fight for my friendships. I welcome them, I love them, I listen and share and I wait to be needed. But, I don't poke or prod them like a fire needing to be stoked. I let them evolve, as they inevitably will. And I cherish the ones that remain. (italics mine)
--------
I know this so well, but don't know if it is right or not. Love in all of it's forms must be freely given and recieved with no holds or expectations. At the same time there does seem somthing right about fighting for something beautiful and true and good. I am so often at a loss as what the best thing to do is...

Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.

-W.H. Auden, poet
(1907-1973)

A thick fog has completely enshrouded the campus. It lies all around, as far as
the senses reach - surrounding trees and enclosing buildings, softening all
their edges and corners until they only remain dark nearly indiscernible hulks
in the dim lamplight. The dampness is tangible, but not weighty or sticky. I
love it. I can not remember if it was like this last year, somehow I think it
was not. I prefer to think such weather is unique and strange and new. There is
something about a fog that makes it, and the area it is spread over, seem at
once strange and foreign and yet similar to every other fog in any other land.
Perhaps that is why I love it so much, it is so much easier to imagine I am
somewhere and somewhen else.

I rediscovered my fountain pen recently. My palms and finger tips at the moment
are splotched and smeared with ink. Apparently it is the good sort of ink that
does not run off one's page if it happens to get wet because it does not want
to wash off at all. I don't mind though - it is a reminder to use the pen more
often. I am sure that it only bled all over me in punishment for its long
period of neglect. In hopes of preventing such desperate acts on its part,
again I bought fresh cartridges of ink this evening, a lovely green colored
ink. It has been quite a long while since I wrote in green ink...

I just did one of the scariest things I have ever had to do. I bought plane tickets for my holiday travel plans. Now all of the talk and promises are real and waiting for me to pick it up from the printer bay and hold it in my hands and show it to people and... It's odd I feel stuck and commited and bound in. It will pass I know, as soon as I tell Lady Gatekeeper that I have my tickets and the Sprit and JM that we are good to go. But while the rather large implecations are settling in... I just need to breath and not ever check on said flights again for fear that I will find something cheaper.

In other news, I remembered that I do have quasi-internet access down the hall, so I can actually post whenever the muse so dains to visit me. Since the realization she has not graced me with her presence but when she does...

My inner child is ten years old!

The adult world is pretty irrelevant to me. Whether
I'm off on my bicycle (or pony) exploring, lost
in a good book, or giggling with my best
friend, I live in a world apart, one full of
adventure and wonder and other stuff adults
don't understand.

How Old is Your Inner Child?
brought to you by Quizilla

Boot day
rain downpouring
puddle stomp along streaming sidewalks
ragged clouds swept up achingly green hills

crash bang flash boom

storm day
hats and coats
rush scatter hurry to cover
out from under the sheets of water

~ ~ ~

Did I mention that it is raining?

Don't You Fall

Don't you fall in love with me
Don't show me your affection
I can't give you what you want from me
I don't want the attention

I gave away my heart before
And it only caused me sorrow
How could I think of loving someone
Today or tomorrow

(Chorus)
I've been so long confused
Was I loved or was I used?

Now the sun goes up and down
And the weather rains and shines
I lost my heart somewhere
Oh I need to take more time

Don't you fall in love with me
Don't show me your affection
I can't give you what you want from me
I don't want the attention
No I can't give you what you want from me,
I don't want the attention

"Don't You Fall"
The Be Good Tanyas

Perhaps I should have taken this as a theme song months ago...
So much can change in three months.

The semester is half over; there are times I feel as though I've been here as long as some of the tutors think I have been.
The tips of my fingers are finally starting to show the effects of my guitar playing.

And now for homework... it almost feels like old times.

mostly written Friday 7 Oct
The day has managed to slip by in a wonderful semi-daze of warmed over exhilaration brought home from the concert last night. I sat in the back seat of the Sprit's chariot this morning breathing deep of the sea tang in the still cool morning air caught up in my own reflections of the day before...

It was so hot driving out, over 100*, and the four of us packed into my little car. The excitement was tangible, running like threads between us caught in grins and glances, reflected in the music we listened to on the way down. The traffic meant nothing, we were on our way.

I spent the morning wandering in and out of the thrift stores of this seaside town. The wind was deciding whether or not to pull up the blanket of fog or to pretend it was still summer. We were ruling them out as a possible source of wedding related dresses. In the midst of laughing and joking about married life as only three unmarried girls can, something else remained stilled...

Driving around Hollywood gazing at the glitter and glam of the lights, mixed about and juxtaposed with the low and dirty I was struck by the irony of going to see Gillian in the midst of all this. Her honesty and clear disdain for materialism is such a contrast to everything this facade covers.

Classes were hazy this afternoon. I was thinking too much of everything else going on this week-end and next and the one after that... I was glad to get into my still messy car and head back to the mist shrouded town, driving and not thinking. Getting out of the car across the street from Val's apartment I inhaled deeply of the salt laced air, feeling it filter down deep. The little one was alternately happily distracted and dismayed at the absence of his parents. Holding him in my arms, with his fussing rising to increasing decibel levels I glanced out the window and saw the fog.

Finding the theater proved to be something of a task. It is small and unpretentious when seen from the outside. We managed to arrive just before the already high parking fee was increased by half. This town is unbelievable. Will call provided a few tense moments, enough for me to begin envisioning the four of us sitting on the street curb, robbed of the ticket cost...Then the tickets were in my hands, really and truly there, and we were through the big black doors.

Out the door and down the stairs, into the cool breath of the wind and the softness of the fog. The little one's cries subsided almost immediately. We walked and walked, wandering up and down the small streets of suburbia. Modest houses with well kept yards held in by white picket fences passed by in a general perception of motion forward. I kept waiting to feel the familiarity of sleeping weight in my arms but he was not interested in slumber so we kept walking, up and down the sidewalks. There were birds in the trees, chirping to one another about the chill fog and the early dimness. It was odd to hear so many birds that far away from the country.

The sound of the people once inside was like the rush of wind in a tunnel or the sea from far off or the roucus chatter of birds roosting at sunset. The walls, carpeting, ceilings of the foyer were all black, the lighting yellowed or black giving the large space a surreal feeling. I was vaguely surprised not to feel cramped and smothered by the dark décor, but either the high ceilings or the excitement and anticipation made up for it. The boys decided to stake out a claim up front by the stage, the right “elbow” as the Sprit called it. The floor was gradually filling up with all manner of people, aging hippies, well to do yuppies, college age kids like us looking about as poor. Women in skirts and dresses, some in jeans looking all too “put together” to be the random favorite pair out of the closet, the rest dressed comfortably. Men in dress pants and designer shirts, jeans and t-shirts, most somewhere in the betwixt and between.

The afternoon was wearing away toward evening and he was no closer to sleep than when we first walked out the door. Indeed I had tried going back to the apartment, but as soon as we walked in the door the wailing began again. The coolness of the day had been sharpened by the setting of the sun, and I was loath to go back out unless he were warmer. So adding a layer, we headed back out into the fog.

Without warning the house mix of canned music was cut, and Gillian and David were walking up the stairs behind us, striding on the the stage. They seemed to be sharing some inside joke, just between the two of them. They said nothing as they walked up to the microphones, made last second tuning checks, then began. And the world fell apart. Song after song poured over, the words familiar, worn into my mind by hours of listening and wishing to hear it for real. And there we were, and there they were.

Coming home from work traffic was light within the neighborhood, but I could hear that the number of cars of the freeway running just beyond the trees had increased from when we first began walking. The light was beginning to fade and I began to watch for Val's return.

Perhaps at first glance they are not much. She is tall and thin, light golden hair and grey eyes, and ivory skin. And then look closer, the eyes are intense, the mouth easily finding pleasure in a smile, and her hands, my oh my, her hands are beautiful. Long fingers curved around the neck of a guitar or banjo, catching lost strands of hair and leading them back into place, white like marble or ivory. I could have watched her hands all night. He is taller, with a warm shy smile and a manner that seems to want to be any where but in the center of attention. And then he starts to play and you can almost see the world fall away from him. Each note seemed a real tangible being to be found and thrown into existence.

With her appearance the little one was all smiles for me. His world had returned to its right order. Watching him nurse I reminded myself in passing that I was really and very very honestly not ready to be married. Val invited me to stay and having no other plans I did. We fell to talking, all through the rummaging through of cabinets to find recipe books and the deciding of what to make. I asked what I could do to help with the making and was informed of my “guest status”. Laughing I returned to the vast couch flipping through the ancient GE cookery book that came with the equally ancient range and oven. Our conversation meandered from business to music and she put on one of her favorites.

As she played, her red stitched cowboy boots kept time with the music in a almost dance-like manner. Watching I found myself close to laughing in pleasure at it. On the intros and bridges of the songs she would bend low over her guitar focused entirely on her creations, a look on her face I have seen and felt – one of a lover beholding her beloved.
Requests were called out and acknowledged in one way or another, sometimes played, others not. They played through two sets, songs I knew, songs that were new to me. The time passed far too quickly.

The night wore on. We sat on the couch, supper finished and the dishes done, glasses of red wine in our hands talking about love and life. This lead again to music and she began playing the “do you know this band” game with me. So much music. The Pouges came out, along with the Moldy Peaches. She was thrilled to have someone who knew something but not enough to make them a “musical snob.” I laughed.

And all too suddenly they were saying thank yous and good nights. Calls of encore followed them off stage and twice brought them back on. And they were gone, the last notes of the last song still settling in, the reverberations of the applause and calls and whistles echoing. The house music came back on and I wondered how I was to describe the evening in words. Sitting on the couch with my computer on my lap nothing seemed adequate then...and three days later nothing seems any better. So the words go down, sticking to the page through force of habit and desire to capture the memories in a set stillness. And perhaps that is enough...

Love me or leave me and let me be lonely
You won’t believe me but I love you only
I’d rather be lonley than happy with somebody else

You might find the night time the right time for kissing
Night time is my time for just reminiscing
Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else

There’ll be no one unless that someone is you
I intended to be independently blue

I want you love, don’t wanna borrow
Have it today to give back tomorrow
Your love is my love
There’s no love for nobody else

Say, love me or leave me and let me be lonely
You won’t believe me but I love you only
I’d rather be lonley than happy with somebody else

You might find the night time the right time for kissing
Night time is my time for just reminiscing
Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else

There’ll be no one unless that someone is you
I intended to be independently blue

Say I want your love, don’t wanna borrow
Have it today to give back tomorrow
Your love is my love
My love is your love
There’s no love for nobody else

Love me or Leave me
~Nina Simone

It was hot, really hot yesterday morning. The Santa Anna winds were blowing, tossing the shed leave of the sycamore and poplar trees all over. And somehow the Sprit had cajoled me into studying on the patio rather than disappearing into the cool interior of the dorm (I will admit in a spirit of fairness it did not take much). My immediate choice of music was Gillian Welch (I am working on that concert account don't worry. I can say in brief the concert was incredible.) But the Sprit had something else in mind. As the first notes of this album flew out of the CD player I concluded she was right. This was the perfect music for the moment, just as hot as the day capturing just what I was feeling. The Sprit spread herself out in the sun, basking in a most unhuman-like fashion, ostensibly studying. Every few moments though, she would seem to fill up on sunlight and have to turn over and stretch. Then with a bit of a sheepish grin she would turn back over than return to her books (or rather her manual). It was all too much to let pass without some attempt to "capture" it. And voila, I have arrested the Sprit - after a fashion...

I bet you'll never guess who I am (finally) going to see in concert tonight...

I promise to try and tell all about it tomorrow...

I don't know whether to explain or not. I saw it and thought "this would be fun to post." So I am. (And yes, it is a real sword)

The Santa Anna winds are back, reflecting the turmult in my mind and soul. I feel like I am facing so many different questions, those posed by the material we're reading for classes as well as those brought about by life, I don't know where to start or which to face first. I tried to write in an actual journal last night and could get nowhere (too much of an exhibitionist now I suppose). There were simply too many questions with no answers or with half thought out conjectures that might one day lead to conclusions if worked on enough. It is tempting to say "I'm tired of questions. I want answers, something solid and sure. I want rest." But that is not for this life, not for the intellectual life, not for the life of a soldier, not the life of anyone who truly wants to know.
So, it's back out into the wind, the rough and tumble of it all...

and a little more...

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
-Henry Brooks Adams, historian (1838-1918)

I feel myself at a crossroads, gazing down at my feet, wondering where I am to go. I stand here in the river-road of Time, directionless and impatient, knowing my end but unsure of the route. I want to remain steady and still, to wait to be shown clearly my next step. But the flow of Time drags and catches at my ankles, urging me forward, always forward, never to be still, never to rest. The tides rise and fall around me, presenting new ways and means on the twisting and swirling eddies, and I struggle against them and myself to hold my place. Indeed my own passions and desires seek to betray me to the interminable flow. How very, very easy it would be to simply throw myself into this river, to allow myself to be swept away by its floods. To be carried along whither so ever it would, coming to whatever strange new land the river runs through. I don't know what to do. Would it be wrong to let go? Or is that determination subject to the context of surrounding events?

I think too much...

written a few days ago...

I've decided that I miss the luxury of having internet access right down the hall. Perhaps I can blame my lack of writing on that... On the other hand, I am doing more than I was a year ago, am actually engaged in the process of living we all go on so often about, with all its pains and glories however small. Real life happens outside one's head. Or is it one's reaction to what happens outside one's self? In either case, nothing (or moderatly little) real happens without being in the outside.

It's windy out today. Great gusts of a warm rampant wind play across the valley, the dropped and forgotten playthings of the storm that passed through last night. The leaves from the sycamore trees are being tosses helter skelter across the soggy lawns, danced across patios under fallen umbrellas and down sidewalks to be unceremoniously trod upon by the passing student. The sky is moody, bright blue in patches, white clouds - fluff and nothings really - in others, then dark and sullen at being herded against the mountains by the winds, only to be broken up and sent flying by the same wind (or perhaps a relative).

The sound of the wind cause my memory to belie the heat and stuffiness of the small crowded room. I am no longer here, but in a dark and sleeping house. It is mid-winter and bitterly cold. The moonlight is bright enough to make the thick shadow of the house a looming blackness on the piled snow. I feel so very small looking out the breath-fogged window at the white uneven fields, streaching out into inky nothing beyond the end of sight. The wind blows, rising and falling, whistling around corners, driving against walls and drifts, shaking and bending the dead dried stems of the grasses that grew up at the edge of the porch low to the ground. The tones of its the moaning send shivers down my arms and I can all too easily imagine the cries and wailings of those lost on the empty plains before me. But now I have exchanged the cold piercing wind for one hot and rough and the sounds of quietude and rest in a sleeping house for the rattle and grating of conversation, trying to worry objections into oblivion.

And now the wind has gone and all is still. Neither leaf nor petal is ruffled. The very silence of it would weigh were it not that I too am still.

Why pain?
Because pain draws us closer to God.

Why pain?
Because pain strips us of our reliances on things other than Himself.

Why pain?
Because pain makes us face our hollowness, acknowledge it and our own helplessness to do anything about it.

Why pain?
Because pain, when accepted, allows us to see beauty, which is simple and pure and all too easily missed.

Sad songs chasing their tails
running in and out of my mind
playing on and on
never quite out of hearing.


sequel

I sit out o' nights
beneath the star filled sky
remembering soft voices
and now faded thoughts.
The shining splendor seems,
in the chill air and cool light,
familiar and strangely warm,
they seem to know my self.
Quietude brushes by
gently carried on windy wings
bringing further recollection of other
evenings, thoughts, conversations
and a rest never fully mine.

So much to write and so little time....'tis very unfortunate. But perhaps I can catch up a bit...


I am at my favorite coffee shop for what was supposed to be an open mic night that has turned into something radically else. There are a bunch of belly dancers wandering around, mucisians are setting up... Now the music has started and there are three or four little girls up on the stage dancing in their own fashion, moved in what ever way the music wants them to... The rhythm is intoxicating, pulsing with each beat of my heart, flowing through my body. I want to learn...

Sorry about the extra step now necessary for commenting. I discovered I was being hit with comment spam and want to avoid it...

Random collection of scribbling that I managed to pin onto scraps of handy paper...

The other day I had a chance to talk with an old friend whom I have not really been able to speak to for a while. And as we spoke of ships and shoes and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings I was reminded that life is not lived out on the fringe of things. Lingering on dark rooftops almost entombed by the dark branches above, accompanied only by the dying light of one's cigarette, surrounded by the sounds of enjoyment drifting up from below is not living, as romantic and aloof and appealing as the setting might be. Not that the setting is of itself wrong, the context is just not right. It occurs to me that life is very much like music - what is good is very often determined by the context...

~ ~ ~

Memory is such an odd thing. With little to no warning your are overwhelmed with image after image, layer upon layer of sights, sounds, emotions. I was sitting in the commons reviewing the day's assignments and at the sound of an apparently unrelated note I was hurled back to another warm midmorning, sitting with a newly dear friend in the near empty commons talking of life and its lessons. To chill evenings, watching the upperclassmen pouring in after seminar waiting for friends to filter out of the mix, anticipating the coming discussion of the evening's excitement or follies...

I've been feeling teribly neglectful of various duties incumbant upon me recently. So I thought I'd try to make some headway on at least one of them...

My oldest cousin (three years my senior) is married now. He and his new wife are honeymooning in Hawaii, land of our ancestors. I've been to a few weddings in the past couple of years, but this one sank in the deepest. All manner of reflections roiled and simmered in my mind all week-end. "My generation is coming up, our parents are moving into the background. " More prominant was "I knew him when he had long purple hair in highschool... and now he is married!" Less prominant, but none the less still consciously there was "I am not ready for this at all...I think."

*sigh*

In any case, it was the best and most worthwhile all nighter I have ever pulled...

Quote of the week-end:


"Hey Sarah, let's go to San Francisco."
"Okay."

More forthcoming...

Is it possible to find contentment in discontent? I don't mean to propose a paradox exactly, but I do mean something along those lines. For all intents and purposes, life at school has picked up where it left off. Classes move along, assignments are given and accomplished. Life such as it is flows contentedly. And yet I am unsettled. In class, reading through the material, talking immediately after class I am for the most part happy. And then I want to talk about it all with someone, one I know will see things with the same excitement and from a similar direction as I do and I am at a loss. I can't. It is quite simple really, and painfully miserable. So in attempts to distract myself I shift the mess around in my room, or flake out of other things and hide in a cafe, or wander around the market places of the internet looking for the things I've been meaning to buy all summer. I will tell you honestly that none of it works. I want something I cannot have. I want to be content in the midst of my discontentment.

So I will go and try another distraction, another thing to pour myself into for the time being and not think about the coming up short at the end. Because that is life...

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Plato

"The unlived life is not worth examining." - Mr. Collins

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." - Jesus Christ


It is so odd how things work out. I've been musing and pondering much of late on what it is I want more than anything. For many, perhaps even most, the answer to this is simple, they want to be happy. I don't. Now don't get me wrong, I do not want to be unhappy, but that is simply not the most important thing for me. What I want more than anything is to live. Just that. The real question comes when you ask what it means to live. At first it seemed as though living were seeing and doing and experiencing with a passion (which of course leads to more discussion.) But that left something lacking, it was not enough. With that definition you are lead to (or left with) a hedonistic approach to everything. No living - truly living - consists of finding truth, the Truth. And not just finding it, but seeing it, knowing it, making it part of who and what you are in your deepest self, until you are no longer, but only Truth. And this causes pain. Because in this life that is simply not possible. We can come close, so close but we can never fully die to ourselves before the body dies so that total union is never achieved in this life.
Now the odd part of it all is that though I've been pondering and considering all of this for the last two year (or more) it didn't all come together in something resembling coherence until last night after watching Garden State (very good movie, the cinematography is amazing and the plot line is nearly as good) after meeting and hanging out for hours with a group of local poets. At one point in the movie Sam says to Andrew " I know it hurts. But it's life, and it's real. And sometimes it fucking hurts, but it's life, and it's pretty much all we got." It's life and it's real, truth is a reflection of reality and reality of the Truth. And He is pretty much all we got.

I wandered into my self a little while ago and ambled over to the curio cabinet that holds bottles filled with stuffs like extra time, the dreams I don't remember, and, as I discovered, things that I've learned. Not school-ish lessons, those go into a neat filing cabinet or are piled in the desk in a heap to be sorted at a later time. No, these lessons are the life-ish sort, the ones we learn without noticing right away. I took them down one by one, opening each and reading the lessons in turn. Amoung them were:
~Pain is not made meaningless or paltry by laughing at it. At times that is exactly what is needed.
~True love takes many shapes and forms and they are easy to confuse.
~ There are still things I want to do for their own sake, like write and learn to play classical guitar and wander the country alone and perhaps learn to skateboard...
~It is not hypocrisy to pass on advice you are not always able or willing to follow yourself.

I pondered them, holding the scraps of paper in my hand. I will not soon forget.

I thought for a bit about posting random bits of thought that got caught on scraps of paper that happened to be handy at the time they wandered out of my head, but have decided against it. The last month or so of this summer has left me rather discontent with my style of writing - I seem to either be depressing or, as one friend put it, stuck in "middle school". I have no desire to ramble about the little things that make up the day to day of my life (it would take a far more talented writer than I to make it interesting to any degree). So I am left with the inner workings of my self, which does not come off very well either...
This being said, I am going to continue writing in whatever fashion whimsy leads me at the time, hackneyed metaphors, middle school poetry and all and hopefully the summer of my discontent will pass...

It is possible to have trust without hope? I feel comptetely lost, stumbling in the dark, only knowing the ground is beneath my feet because I keep bashing into things, clinging to the thinest thread of trust. I know as surely as I know anything that I will be given the strength to find my way out of the dark, but I have no hope of when or where, just the scarlet thread of trust...

Picture this: Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, just as you are leaving the city, you drive through a couple of small tunels. As you emerge from the second you are presented with the Pacific ocean and the coastline laying itself down before your eyes to the lyrics of this song...

Take a long drive with me
on California One, on California One.
And the road a-winding goes
from golden gate to roaring cliff-side,
and the light is softly low
as our hearts become sweetly untied
beneath the sun of California One.

Take a long dram with me
of California wine, of California wine.
And the wine, it tastes so sweet
as we lay our eyes to wander,
and the sky, it stretches deep.
Will we rest our heads to slumber
beneath the vines of California wine?
Beneath the sun of California One.

Annabelle lies, sleeps with quiet eyes
on this sea-drift sun.
What can you do?
And if i said, O it's in your head
on this sea-drift sun.
What can you do?

California One, The Decemberists

Funny how things work out sometimes...

it's friday, the work week is over. the sun is setting resignedly over the hills. this past week I have carried the wind on my back (it was heavy) and perhaps remembered how to smile. dreams and plans for futures loom and withdraw, like the ocean tides, and I am left standing on the shore.

can you tell that I am avoiding having to actually do something....

randomly found online quiz...

What tatoo fits you best? (or something like that...)

Your peronality says you would most likly pick some
kind of flower. Something beautiful and
something that displays your grace. You are
quite origanal.

I took this perhaps a week or two a go... I think there is a bit of resemblence between the present me and my ghost off to the right...

travel log...

30 July
heading up north, not very far, but away from here. clouds are massing behind the mountains and I think we are headed strait for them. the heat is dry and unmoved by the wind pouring in from my open window. I fear I am equally unmoved by my driver's now occational emotional outbursts. perhaps I'm a bitch for being unfeeling, but that's how things are at the moment, and I am not going to do anything about it right now. i'll have to be nice and good when we get there.


the hills are having their usual calming effect on me. the mulitude of greens, subtle and drastic at the same time are soothing my distressed heart, playing the part of a cool balm on the rawness i feel. there are moments I feel like some sort of vampire, preying on the emotions and affections of the unsuspecting, and at the same time, willing sweet fools who take what I offer...

am i imagining or can i really feel the residue of the cigarette smoke at the back of my throat... the feel of the dry paper on my lips and the warm greyness in my mouth are vividly impressed upon my senses. i want...

31 July
so apparently, given the right conditions, it is possible for gasoline to vaporize in the fuel lines before it reaches the engine. this is damaging to the performance of the vehicle and general mental health of its occupance. Fortunatly, it does not take long for a small car to cool down on the side of the freeway, even in 100* weather...

I am sitting in a local cafe. On the wall behind me a government conspirocy theory movie on 9/11 is playing. I'm sorry that I missed the beginning, I would like to have their whole story. The evidence they are presenting in interesting, including interviews with eyewitnesses, newspaper articles, government reports - all with an anti-government hint. The narrator's voice is calm, but every now and then he throws in a bit of sarcasm. I would wager that the purpose is to undermine public support for the government's war against terrorism and all that goes with it (increased security at airports, government buildings, etc.; the Patriot Act, the war in Afganistan, the war in Iraq)
"America has been hijacked...by a group of tyrants..."

The woman whom I think is in charge of the showing is giving a speach.
"Keep your minds open...it's important to think critically..."
Machiavelli just came up... I am now regretting my lack of attention to the news in the last few years.
It is only too easy to loose trust in everyone and everything...but things like this make one wonder. The wondering is good, but how far should it go?

I stand waiting and watching beyond the open door. The wind brushes past me, catching at my hair, my clothes.

"Why do you stand here? What are you looking for?"

"I am looking for a way to find what I once had. Tell me, wind, how to find it..."

"You cannot go back," replied the wind's ever-changing voice. "Time does not work in such a way with men."

"No, do not tell me such things," the tears and searing pain betraying themselves in my voice, yet knowing the wind spoke truly. I cannot go back. The passage of Time necessarily brings change, but through the will somethings are able to remain. Turning, I gaze once more through the doorway, remembering wondering if my will is strong enough.

Eli, the barrowboy, you're the old town
Sells coal and marigolds and he cries out all down the day
Below the tamarac she is crying
Corn cobs and candlewax for the buying, all down the day

Would I could afford to buy my love a fine robe
Made of gold and silk arabian thread
She is dead and gone and lying in a pine grove
And I must push my barrow all the day
And I must push my barrow all the day

Eli, the barrowboy, when they found him
Dressed all in corduroy, he had drowned in the river down the way
They laid his body down in a churchyard
But still when the moon is out, with his pushcart, he calls down the day

Would I could afford to buy my love a fine gown
Made of gold and silk arabian thread
But I am dead and gone and lying in a church ground
But still I push my barrow all the day
Still I push my barrow all the day

Eli, The Barrowboy -The Decemberists

who's seen jezebel?
she was born to be the woman i would know
and hold like the breeze
half as tight as both eyes closed

and who's seen jezebel?
she went walking where the cedars line the road
her blouse on the ground
where the dogs were hungry, roaming

saying, "wait, we swear we'll love you more and wholly
jezebel, it's we that you are for only"

who's seen jezebel?
she was born to be the woman we could blame
make me a beast half as brave
i'd be the same

who's seen jezebel?
she was gone before i ever got to say
"lay here my love
you're the only shape i'll pray to, jezebel"

who's seen jezebel?
will the mountain last as long as i can wait
wait for the dawn
how it aches to meet the day

who's seen jezebel?
she was certainly the spark for all i've done
the window was wide
she could see the dogs come running

saying, "wait, we swear
we'll love you more and wholly
jezebel, it's we that you are for
only"

Jezebel by Iron & Wine

I came to Life with my hands open, awaiting the good things I knew would be poured into them. I was not mistaken. As long as my hands remained open they were filled. I saw loves and joys, hopes and dreams placed in their once empty palms. At times the desire to assure myself that these were actually mine to hold and keep was too great and I found my fingers trembling. What would happen if I closed my hands on these gifts? How long would they remain with me if I did not? I did not know, and Life provided me no clear answers. Something within urged me not to cling to such apparently fragile things, and so I resisted the desire to close my hands upon what I had been given. I would wait and try to trust.
Months have passed and some of these treasures have been carried away with Time's winds. They were not meant to be mine any longer and perhaps will not be ever again. With sleepless nights and tears I mourned their passing. Others have remained, though seemingly changed to ash even as I watched and waited. These too I mourn. I am asked how could I not fight for these my treasures? Because in a very real way they were not truly mine. They were given to me, yet in a most transitory fashion, placed in my open hands. And so now I stand waiting, tears occationally disturbing the layers of ash, perhaps waiting for a phoenix to rise. For these treasures are still in my care, though not in the form they once had, and I will not reject them in order to reach after something else.

(catching up on my postings...I'd forgotten about this stuff in the ebb and flow of the past week)

8 July
Listening to the safety instructions as I sit in my exit row seat, I wonder idly if I really know them as well as my years of flying should warrant. I remember as a child being fascinated by the flight attendant running so smoothly through the routine...

The crowded trees and hidden roofs of Keaukaha slide by as we taxi down the runway. I'm on the wrong side of the plane for watching my home sink below me. It is raining again up the hill and I cannot keep the drops from being mirrored on my face. As the plane rises into the low clouds I catch a last glimpse of rugged curving coastline, white surf breaking on black rocks, forest of dark greens sweeping away from the dark blues of the sea. And then all was white and greys. Now the clouds lie below me, and below them is the ocean.
Its raining of Maui too. Watching the downpour from above the clouds gives the impression of a...
Lani, Moloka'i...perhaps I'm not on the wrong side of the plane. Ribbons of white sand beach lie along the edge of the islands, sometimes faced by off shore reefs, other times only kissed by the waves of the open ocean.
It looks like another world up here, with plains and hills, canyons and mountains - all of cloud. It is very beautiful - but I have seen few places that are as stark and empty.
How can there be so many shades of blue? The sky goes on forever, pale ice at the horizon to rich azure at zenith, and the sea holds a myriad more...

watching the news on the TV's near my gate...
I am struck again by another national leader urging a "return to normalcy", this time made by Prime Minister Tony Blair of the U.K. Assuming that the purpose of terrorist attacks is to disrupt the normal flow of life and business, this injunction makes sense. It is a show of personal and community strength, almost a passive defiance of those who made the attacks. In another way though, the "return to normalcy and business as usual" is disconcerting. It seems to be an ignoring and dismissal of the attacks altogether. Those killed are left to be mourned by their families and friends as the rest of the world goes on shopping...

This is my 151st post...

Conclusion: It is hard to stop thinking in the dark. I am beginning to fear the setting of the sun and the arrival of the night. I want to work all day and keep the sun up... Fortunately, I can do just that all week-end (without keeping the sun up). Oh, joy...

Happy 1st Blog-day to me...

So, I've been writting for a year now. Somehow it seems fitting that this is the day I leave home once again. It was because I came home last year that the writting kept up; I wonder if it will be that way this year...
I've been reminicing about this past year while I packed. Much has happened, loves were lost - and found, friendships shaken and rebuilt, strengths and weaknesses tested. I questioned the all reasons for being at school, while never doubting that it was where I was meant to be. And this blog, my burrying ground and junk-drawer for thoughts, has witnessed and recorded it all...

Well...
(the relative lateness of the hour must be affecting my brain, so I'm not going to say anything more)

It is Sunday afternoon and the house is nearly empty, well as close to being empty as it has been since I got home. The family has scattered to the proverbial four winds (for the afternoon) and I have time to fill by myself. The desire to read has somewhat abated since yesterday's reading of Steinbeck Of Mice and Men. I am looking forward to returning to school and discussing it with someone (the one-sided discussions I've been having with myself can only take me so far). I've been nibbling at an Harry Potter book (I will confess unabashedly that I have read all five of the books and am looking forward to the next) while waiting for the very slow dial-up connection to the outside world (also known as the internet) catches up with what I want it to do. All in all I am happy to be five days away from leaving. I think that I need to go while there are still things here I want to do and people I want to see, or I will start chaffing under the ever present knowledge that there is a 2000 mile barrier between myself and where I want to be... On the other hand, it will be hard to leave my younger siblings, not knowing when I will see them again, that they will continue to grow up and I won't really know them and they won't really know me... life is strange.

Random observation: blogging was meant to happen late at night when the house is asleep...morning blogging is not very practical when you have little people coming up to you every few minutes asking if you are still on the computer. ("Gabe, I can sit at the computer all day." "Wow...") I think I will surrender of the obvious and get dressed for the day... hopefully I will come back with beautiful thoughts about the beach...

Here Comes

Here comes summer,
Here comes summer,
Chirping robin, budding rose.
Here comes summer,
Here comes summer,
Gentle showers, summer clothes.
Here comes summer,
Here comes summer,
Whoosh - shiver - there it goes.

I've introduced my younger siblings to the wonders of Shel Silverstein. I remember picking up A Light in the Atic somewhere, library book sale or church grab box or whathaveyou, and thinking that I had found a treasure. Now I will freely confess that I had not read very much Silverstein myself, flipped through some of his collections of poems and The Giving Tree. Reading to my little sis, I was struck by the depth of some of these "children's" poems, "The little boy and the old man," "Nobody," "This bridge," for example. I need to wonder about these a bit more...

Random thought spawned by being home that I lack the time to turn into proper blogs...

...streets familiar in a parallel way hints and shadow of past life and what once was possible...

The warm humidity inclines me toward the water, strange for one who care not for swimming.

The land spreads itself out for my viewing, hues and shades of green down to the water. The sea is less than ten miles away... The deep blue turns grey under the reflection of the clouds.