To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell

I know this piece is a staple for all high school english classes but I have been rereading and re-experiencing it a lot lately. Because regardless, its a masterpiece. One book I finished this Winter Break was A Time Traveler's Wife, (I didn't pick it out, it was given as a gift, but I'm making no excuses here.) and it referenced this poem a lot. I might even say that To His Coy Mistress provided a part of the emotional backbone for the entire story. And what an expansive, well-character-crafted story it was. I would recommend reading it if you want to spend time in a book sans a dictionary, yet without sacrificing any intellectual rigor. (and with a kick-ass love story, yeah that too.) I'll probably talk about it more on here. 

Anyways, read this piece, let it sink in and fill your corners like rising water. 

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

        But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

        Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run. 

Merry Christmas Eve, From T.S Eliot

Journey of the Magi - 

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

(Christmas is here and I'm happy to be in my living room with my sisters and mother and father playing risk and watching the fire. We are about to leave for the Mt. Angel Abbey for midnight mass, I am looking forward to clearing my mind in the holiness of it all. I can't help but think about future christmases from now, and I hope they will retain some of the good fortune and broken love that is now and unfold new healing and new relationships on all of us in the Field house. I am happy to have this brain that, although its inclined to melancholy and sadder thoughts, loves to read itself to sleep in Eliot and Blake and Donne. And loves people. Thank you all for such a year as this. Here is to 2011 and 20. God, thank you for manifesting your self in my hearts and those around me. Thank you for the love.. not for the fate. you know what I mean? Merry christmas.)    

marvelling, and after the butcher shop.

Thousands of worlds
inhabiting only One

barred to every would-be explorer
due to a lack

of understanding
of underseeing

Frankly speaking, we cry.
and no one feels it too

currents moving a single ship
leaving ones sent out by the same hands untouched

in the harbor.

World enough and time world enoughand timeworldenoughandtime

This is, going to be,

Such an amazing piece of work:

ct>


Oh, Terrence Malick!

Sparrow

Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
Thats not the time now, its simply a great album.
Really really. I miss talking/listening old music with people. Simon and Garfunkel, The Carpenters, Carole King, Allman Brothers, Stevie Nicks, whatever.
Sometimes I want to venture into a purgatory of only listening to this specific era of music. A fasting, except I'd be lacking the altruistic sense of the usual fasts.

I would like to fast from a lot of things.
A lot of things namely being:
85% of my wardrobe
pointless sugary substances
conversational babble
making mistakes.

Now that I have that listed, I just have to find the key to achieving those things. Except that's going to be impossible. The key has been lost, swallowed by some proverbial urban legend.

All thats left is the sense that something is too much. Something is not enough. On the streets, in the classroom, outside my apartment, people ask me how I am ("sup?") as they walk/move/run to their next engagement. It all happens so fast - One is inclined to care and also inclined to keep moving ("uhfinethxbye). It's a dichotomy that I don't have the stomach for anymore.

Next time someone nonchalantly asks how I am, I am going to throw up in their face.

This all sounds very pessimistic. But I'm listening to Sparrow, remember? I feel great.

Things Flitting Around in my Brain

A couple weeks ago Bob Zurinsky said that every evening, for two years, he spent two hours in quiet. Quiet of the body, first. I imagine little to no movement: no drawing, reading, knitting. Just a person and a balcony and a man-made canal with a view of city lights. Of course, the quieting and stilling of the physical senses does not immediately conduce a brain to the state of quietness.

You and I both know this. We've tried one with out the other -- hard to acheive.

Bob said that, "At first your brain goes over all your interactions in a day; what you did "wrong" or 'right,' what you said to the last person you talked to. It buzzes and circles and then, that just slowly fades out." (Bob, forgive me, I'm paraphrasing now.) "It was in those moments that I learned the most - that all people are simply broken." Maybe he said he learned the most about himself in those evening-moments too. I don't remember.

All people are broken.
Most kids in college don't like themselves.
Maybe most people everywhere don't like themselves, but I can't speak for people everywhere.

Because, Unluckily, I have only been alloted a finite view in life. Unluckily, I'm not God.
No wait... That is Luck. Blessed Luck for Humanity.

I look at myself alot. In the mirror in my apartment bedroom, in the mirror in my apartment bathroom, in the mirror in my rear-view window, in windows on my way to school, in clear pools of water after hunting in the forests.. (oh wait. That last one is someone else.. oh the long upholding tradition of literature.)

But if I was around pools of clear, reflective water on a daily basis, who's to say I wouldn't be eternally captivated by a peek or two, you know? God, give Narcissus a break. At least he loved himself.

Who reaches that point anymore?

This summer I drove to Chicago with my friends in a car. It was beautiful and sweaty and summer in the first degree. We didn't have to stop to think about the emotions of it at all; we just had to look at each other to know. One rest stop in Eastern Montana we tumbled out of the car and sprawled out on the grass. Babies on a blanket of green. I was by Brittany, (She's a sister friend, I've known her for moments and sometimes for years) I looked at her closely. I realized that I've looked at Brittany alot too. There are things I notice about her face now.

Annie Dillard, in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, talks about Love, and Seeing. She says Lovers are the only ones who truly See. They notice the difference that makes morning and day, evening and night. Mmm, Annie.

Then, I read in Luke 12:7 --
"Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows." Regardless of human termed issues of predestination, selective salvation, and free will, God Sees particular things about my face. Has seen every hair on my head. I know that at this point in the Western Tradition that is a cliched maxim... but C'MON. Tell me one person who has seen/known/remembered every hair that belongs to you. Name one person.

I think loving is Seeing. And you can give to all the charities you want to but not really See. See people. Call me an idealist but I'm okay with that right now: I'm nineteen.

At first I thought that was my Lucky own idea too, but no. Ideas are all collective, anymore. Thank you Bob, Narcissus, Brittany and Annie.

Sincerely,
Lyndsay
.

So Many Foreign Roads

when the time is three in the morning this is all that can reach me

An Unlecture From ee cummings

Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself.
An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide;and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself — whoever himself may be — is immortal;and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality

Daily Exercise In Gratitude

Thank you Friend in the front seat of my car
How to explain the ways I see you;
You compel me to speak things straight and to unwend
The twine of intent/action curling in my brain
I left my glass to you, the Woman Soldier.

Thank you Friend by the living room book shelf
You let me speak and you let me listen-
To real things in the smallest hours of the morning
And frankly, I hadn't had a conversation like that
for a while. I'd say we shared the lightning on our shoulders.



I am awake because I am happy in this moment. I am happy in this moment because i am Awake.

Just Another Sufjan Moment

Scientists and Sufjan Stevens, or Proverbs 23:7

This summer I had a job pulling invasive plants from the ground in Oregon. The work was monotonous and earthy and made an easy way for streaming thoughts and river-like conversations with a group of multiple personalities called "my co-workers." Joe, my boss at that job, was studying psychology at the University of Oregon. One of the dominating personalities, we would listen in interest and sometimes feigned interest to his acquired knowledge and professor-penned beliefs, but one morning our conversation found me in the midst of overgrown ivy. There are small moments where suddenly you see more, where mirrors are violently held up to your awareness and instead of a tree, there is the forest.

Everything that has happened to me is somewhere in me..
"I've always believed that we retain all of our memories, somewhere in us," I said to Joe, "It just seems natural. There are things we forget, but forgetting isn't erasing, is it?"
"But it is," He grabbed an ivy root and pulled, "Our long-term memory inexplicably holds onto some memories for indefinite amounts of time, even an entire life span, but most things it just lets go forever." Look at those big words, you can tell he goes to College.
"So memory is more a process of pencil, then permanent ink?" I live by metaphor.
"Maybe Lyndsay- at least that is what the scientists say."

Yesterday I woke up to a clean house. Caitlin had adjusted it for her (mostly) Canadian friends staying over night with us for the Sufjan Stevens concert that night. So I drew a picture for chapel and ran at the gym. We drove to Fred Meyer to pick out slippers for Tim's mom's birthday. The fuzzy kind. We drove again to Capital Hill to find old friends and secure hot lattes from Roy Street. Britta told Tim and I a story and I teared up a little bit while Tim couldn't get over the neighborhood's reminiscent feel of London. Back at the apartment the friends arrived with laughing and excitement and Canadian pride stamps. We played speed scrabble and it felt like Christmas break. I was more content than usual.
And then it was time for the concert.

Sufjan is a man who I have followed for some time now. I can't remember now who it was that first showed me his music, burned me a CD, scribbled down his lyrics on a piece of paper. Maybe you can? For my whole year of sixteen I fell asleep to his Illinois album; the blue light of my stereo flashing in my bedroom. When its walls were still painted tangerine. His songs transformed before me into anthems attached to the memories of my life. I asked the Canadians where they first heard his pearly voice. In a car, they said. With all the windows rolled down we listened to the Predatory Wasp of the Palisades over and over again.

At the concert I cried and danced and laughed. Sufjan took us on an electro-pop ballad adventure to some place outside of our contexts and our concepts, while still finding us intimately close at our own cores. "These are songs of heartache and mental illness, rendered through the phenomenon of the apocalypse," He explained,"There is no better way to view heartsickness than through the lens of end times. It's a little bit dramatic but it pays the bills." The crowd loved it, such a wonderful man...
During one of these moments Sufjan played his new track "Now That I'm Older," and the background changed into a quiet black screen. As the song moved on, tendrils of beautiful muted colors grew from the bottom left corner. I sat transfixed as the tendrils grew, overlapping each other to reach further up the screen, like an exotic, apocalyptic plant. I sat mesmerized as the trombones cleared the air and the piano dropped thick chords and they sang now. that. Im. Older. over and over again. I promise I couldn't move. Soon the the curling edges of the plant where reaching the edge of the screen and then moving past the screen to places we couldn't see. Each tendril coming from the left-corner-source, blotting out the ones underneath it, leaving a fine edge of green, blue, brown, on either side. The center of the tendril was cleared, a muted black.
"Its different now I think...
....Somewhere I lost what ever else I had
....I see it run inside itself...
..Someone else, can see it for myself
Now that I'm older..."

I sat in my seat and I cried. I wanted to be touched in that moment. I thought about Jesse and wondered if he had a enough time to fill the screen and maybe, maybe his tendrils never had to overlap and erase any of the others. Was there just enough space for all the colors to stay in their places? Before the Fire-lights glimmered and ceased.
Nothing is ever erased.

Okay

I am pleased to inform you that I now have 15 followers on blogspace, USA. Maybe this will be a means to a more consistent routine of blog-expression.

One can hope.

Lets begin with recent happenings: On Sunday, October tenth, in the year of our Lord 2010, a white flash hung in the air of our apartment. Moments afterward a low and progressive rumbling shook the floors of 204 W Emerson. I couldn't move, I was afraid. I've never been around lightning that shoves that much light into a space. The girls and I couldn't see each other for a moment - light filled the air like white paint covering a crack in woodwork.
I couldn't move, I was afraid.
Lightning really isn't the issue. I remember back to long days and nights in the backseat of my dad's pickup. Maddie would have her feet on bailey, her head on me (The perks of the eldest sister?) I remember the dark hanging heavy around us in the middle of no where. I would count the tree shadows as the radio stations fuzzed in and out. Sound is described sometimes as cutting through air, but this noise never did - it seeped through the speakers and sat heavy on my shoulders - John Tesh departing wisdom, Kenny Loggins singing stories. ( Luckily Maddie was asleep at this point. For the first 6 years of her life she would cry at any song in the minor key, a favorite Loggins musical tool.)
On one of these trips, somewhere between Idaho and Colorado, we drove in to a large thunderstorm. Desert hills stretched for miles and my eyes tried to meet the edges of the hemisphere: so much space. Strike after strike of lightning illuminated the hills. A realization that we were watching something otherworldy stopped my sisters and I in our backseat fights and grievances and we sat silently, staring. John Teshed buzzed on, unaware of the new setting to his voice.
And I wasn't afraid either.

Douglas Coupland, in his book "Life After God" says: I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After
that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't
register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess
of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the
cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in eleventh grade."

It is a really, really good book. One that speaks things now and then five years later you find yourself thinking them all over again. His voices fuzzes through the speaker and sits on your shoulders heavy. It illuminates your surroundings with otherworldly clarity. I read it a while ago, and here I am sitting in my apartment in Seattle, thinking them all over again.

goodness.

How to be a Man according to Brian Field, part deux.

" Make sure you eat healthy. You know, like canned beans and stuff."

Always have a Mt. Dew in hand. Always.

Disneyland.

Sometimes I imagine we fall into a pocket of an old winter coat
accidently, midsummer,
and get lost for a little while.
Sometimes longer than others if the weather takes a while to turn;
But eventually we are found again.
by somebody.
Needing a good coat for a windy day. (accident or not, you decide.)

And we re-emerge back into time; coat-pocket hair being a little messy, we brush it over with our hands and blink in the sun's reflection off the snow.
"funny," is said when we are seen, "That girl is in sandals, and where are her mittens?"



A new place to appreciate

There is no title here.

Do you remember the canyon that serves as the backyard to my house?
There is a creek, there is a glade, there is a cliff of clay and fallen trees.
My friend once said that was the last place he really felt like a kid. Felt like a real kid.
Well that  felt like a compliment, to me. (Though truthfully I have no bearings on what effect the backyard has on people; it is it's own entity.)

And so I believe that is why I sat out there tonight, summoning an entirety apart from myself. The black had fell again - so a wall of feeling drips into the canyon with the evening - removing the scenery and leaving what I mentioned months ago: wild glory, simple authority.

Something that scares me nightly. But tonight in particular I sat with my back to the house, the lights my dad left on throwing my shadow over the porch and out onto the wall of dark. My heart wasn't racing like I expected it too during that confrontation. It was 3 am and my mind was clear. I sat that way without moving for a long time - I felt my slow breaths.

"You need to take time to ask God for things, Lyndsay. It's okay to ask. It shall be given, and I really don't think he is referring to material possessions at this point. You are knit together and set apart. Ask."

If you are a bear...

...then I am a deer.

My alarm is set for six a.m.

A myriad of things;
baking bread and whispers.
a thousand cliches counted as my own
setting apart and dropping out
out of the race
for time
distance,
place.
first third fourth fifth.
I would never know how to spell fifth if it wasn't for spell check.
Is spell check created for me or I for it?
medicinal mysteries wrapped up in commit
to yearly check-ups and daily routines
brush brush brush

please.

Bianchi

Before I knew her I heard about her. She was born in Eastern lands but French blood ran in her veins. She was new movement in an old frame; people turned there heads when she went by. To the store, to the school, she turned over distance to the minutes, they slowly ate her up. 

When she was born They called her by a name, emblazed their words on her side. "Words of Love.." She thought. This she showed to the world, belly up and soft side out. "She's really going places now," They said, "There, that is the look of the New Age, and we want everyone to know - we want them to know we made her who she is." So They sent her to America, because that is the place where all examples for the new age are sent. The ideas, though, trickle in too fast and pool at the door, they create a mess in the winter time, look sloppy in the spring - the americans in new york complain; "We are up to our heads in talent, Our toes in innovation!"

So this is where ideas go to get stuck.

And there she stayed, I hear, for years. The rains came, and went, and came again. The words of love She kept carefully displayed on her side began to peel off, letter by letter. With rain comes rust. A thing like her, made to move, was forced to sit. I am told that when someone is made to do a certain thing in life, they must do it or they risk a pile-up in the soul. Let the poet write! This I am told. 

I found her in a corner of America; hiding her belly, hard side out. She's beautiful, I thought. "She's not worth it," They whispered, "Those words of love aren't ours any longer. You can't un-rain the thunderstorms that have let loose over her head. There is damage there, and oh, the baggage!" 

She can't be more than 20 pounds soaking wet, I thought. I guess thats baggage I can deal with. I approached.
"I'm an old idea," She warned me, "I'm just steel in an aluminum world."

"But you were made to move," I said, my eyes looking down. "All you need is new shoes."

She was beautiful; "My name," She said, "is Lorena,"

Back to a place!

Visual reminder that there are many things to go back for. It feels wierd, but right.

How to be a Man according to Brian Field, part one.

"If someone hands you a pistol, you've gotta check the action. If you don't know what the action of a pistol is, you shouldn't be holding a gun in the first place."

This Last Week Or So...

Things to do:
Buy Books
Sell Books
Pay Bills
Clean Room
Take Care of Miscellaneous Shit
Learn How to be a Woman
Read Books of Substantial Literary Quality
Family Responsibilities
Show Sheep
Work for $$

Things I have actually done:

Looked at Bikes
Bought Bike
Looked up song tabs
Played song tabs
Made Mix CDs
Generally laughed
Drove around
Ate
Ate
Ate
Spent time with miscellaneous friends
Felt sorry for myself

[[Heard you tried to, to keep your hat up on the shelf]]

Hiatus abolished, disguised as self-centered political musings

Okay, here we go.

...

Neither here nor there
we talked for 1 hour forty seven minutes to be exact.
About what makes someone a pragmatic, about how not to be idealistic until your idiotic, on whether or not we were nineteen and disillusioned.

Pragmatism; \ˈprag-mə-ˌti-zəm\ a practical approach to problems and affairs. (Nathan tried to strike a balance between his principles and pragmatism) 
the function of thought is to guide action, and truth is to be tested preeminently by the practical consequence of belief. 
What does that mean, exactly? If I am honest, I allow my thoughts to stray always from my impending actions. 


But then the other voice in my head, the one that isn't Nathan, I suppose, says that all my thoughts really do just react or re-instate some sort of action. This proves the American-forged philosophy correct. I'm currently looking for a loophole in opposition, I promise. 
In the meantime this means I'm a pragmatic? When I was younger and forced by public education to evaluate my personality via online testing all the time I came to the conclusion that I was a realist idealist.  What does this mean? A 5'5 blonde girl who liked reading Dickinson and going to professional bull riding events. 
The truth is, I don't know what that means. I had dreams but I was tethered to a state of conservative reality.

I hear people say that the world needs free health care. That sounds really perfect. Then everyone could always be healthy and things would be really easy. I guess I just wish that doctors weren't people. Then every time a diseased person walks into a health care clinic they won't have to worry about malpractice and negligence and ending up on a wait list for fifteen more years. They won't have to wordlessly receive simple antibiotics when what they need is a double bypass surgery.


Ah but that happens now, doesn't it? I'm a bird with an identity crisis. 


I guess we will need Will Smith in a pair of Chucks to solve our problems. Sooner than later.

They Capture Light Well

After the wedding I let Joe drive and we ended up at Thriftway with chocolate milks in our hands. I forget the name of the brand now. Something about moo, something with double vowels. Not too creative. I had been a little aggressive in my conversation with the cashier - I wasn't wearing shoes, I was over compensating. The boss from my summer job, (also named Joe) had said that most of his past girlfriends never wore shoes. He also told me they all had dreads. I never knew how to react to that statement, me with my little beaded knots of hair, so I would lean down and pull another root of ivy from the ground. Damn non-native plant life. 

I am nervous right now, can you tell?

Well, we sat outside Thriftway on a plant box with a wide enough lip for people to sit. It was made out of brick, or something like it. An obsolete building material kept around for aesthetic value only. I never want to resemble brick. Joe was talking about the wedding, "A pastor friend told me something the other day: he said that people do a lot of thinking, if not the most, at weddings and funerals. The think their thoughts at funerals, and at weddings. That's a reason I bought new pants today." (I still don't understand how that relates, but I'll let it remain a mystery.) 

I was momentarily captivated by the light coming from the street lamps. There was so much of it. It trickled down through the thick summer air and pooled in the parking lot. 

I don't remember what I said particularly about the wedding, but I had the over-arching impression of innocence and eloquence. ence ence ence. They captured the light well, with white sheets stretched out as drapes and shades along the sun-edge of the sitting area. I thought a lot. I decided I wasn't praying enough for my future One Love, and then I took that decision back. There is so much to pray for. I keep telling people that I just want a dog and a house in the mountains. Maybe that statement is real, will become reality.

I am afraid to use too many sentences that include the word I. I am afraid to spend too much time making assumptions about other people. I am afraid that I will never find the balance between the two and begin to be a real writer. When one is real, does she even have to begin?

Before I Forget

And once the creeds fade from the lips of the people
the pictures will still remain.
staying the same on the flags my dad placed in front of our
steeple of a house

we called it a home.
I keep choosing words because the pictures they paint are also made out of stone.

Window View

When the ceder
 branchs twist 
she turns her 
collar to the 
wind

The weather
 can enclose the
world
within it's
hands

I wished to fly

We were walking by the water back to our car parked by the tram. We had just had the full Portland Blues experience, purchased by 12 cans of food and a lot of smiling. I wanted to dwell on the idea of a society dominated by hagglers. Goods for Goods, no longer paying homage to Mammon.
Becca looked up and said, "I have this friend, he traded everything he owned since when I first met him." She stopped momentarily to trail her hand along a chain link fence, "He started with stuff, and then started trading that stuff for other, more compact stuff like tools and knifes that would fit in his backpack. He consolidated. Then he traded more. Now all he really has left is his back pack.."
We piled into the subaru and drove home listening to mix CDs.


And now its time for a poorly written reflection:
Today I realized that everything is based on actions. Every relationship depends on the action and inaction of the words you use, the time you show up, the acts of love you commit to. This is not a subtle and intricately woven question concerning life. This is a frank statement that I may or may not even believe as truth, but regardless it is significant enough for me to write about now. I can think about my emotions and beliefs and how they translate to other people all I want - but the only way other people will realize anything that I feel is through action. Active expressing, active doing.


I wish to consolidate my words.

Small Story Sunday

There are very few places today where you can sing as loud as you want.

My sister and I were brushing shoulders as we reached to fill our plastic containers with strawberries from the neighbor's garden. I was surprised to find so many ready, red, ripe. June this year brought with it a lot of rain and very little sun; "A low season, a real pain in the ass.." The Farmers trail off as they walk through wet fields, gathering moldering hay into piles with rakes and tractors. They lean down with matches and gasoline, watching as their march, april, and may turns its atoms into ash. One thousand dollars in ten minutes.
But nothing can lesson the sweet of the first strawberry of summer, and my sister and I are almost dancing with our hands, happy to be outside in cut off jeans and flowers in our hair (weeds from the ditches but we don't care, they are orange, blue!) - we lift leaves to reveal each fruit, a tiny world caught up there, and in each seed another tiny world. Each seed must lead potentially to another, and I am almost dizzy for a moment with the weight of it all. Picking one, I hold it in my hand and for a moment, I hold one thousand worlds. --And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

Tomorrow I lose my wisdom, teeth. I think I sentimentally attach to things and dates and places. (Don't we all? Maybe I am being selfish with that analysis..) Anyways, they have spent so much time with me; hiding snug along my jaw line somewhere, waiting to make their move all these years. For some reason I think that I will be different tomorrow, after the surgery. I really do. I'm clinging onto my last remaining physicality of childhood. No more ducking around the question of adulthood. As of tomorrow its a Statement. A downright Assertion. My friend Michael, who is currently 100 miles from the Oregon-Idaho border, assures me that I am being overly sentimental. He assures me of a lot of things actually, whether or not he is aware of it. Primarily, that it is possible to live a life like the ones we read about in english class. (He walked to his current location from Canby, by the way, and he plans to continue on until he reaches Nebraska.) I guess the lives we all read about in English class all have one thing in common: A climactic point where the protagonist addresses a challenge or solves a question.
Tomorrow this protagonist does one of these things, or both.
To dentistry, friends.
Cheers.

Drawing a Blank

I'm still alive, I promise.

Congratulations to the Graduates whom I love. Namely Bai, her best friendy Kayla (who is joining me at spu next year!) and you too, tyler! 

Sister of mine, you are such a stable, hardworking woman. I love the way we talk with each other, your ability to forgive my nerdly jokes, and the way you care about your family. Your a bombshell, one of the prettiest girls I have ever known/seen. I wish you would come make your life with me in Seattle but you have things to do, other places to see. I am so excited to hear about the FFA adventures that are coming your way this year. ah life! love! ces't la vie!

Small Town Wave

A crane fly is climbing across my computer screen as I type this. In the spirit of summer I opt to let it live: there is a Mr. Crane Fly anxiously awaiting her return somewhere out there, I'm sure. This fits in smoothly with my midnight conversation over the last several hours. Dear Friend on the trampoline, that was really nice. But you seem to just have your heart set on that Mrs. Crane Fly, don't you? We are so different.
Its too bad that for all either of us know, She is out there climbing across someone else's computer screen tonight.
And Dear Friend in the driveway, I know I just needed to listen to what you were saying. And I did, I did in the spirit of summer and the type of me-to-you connection we keep up over the 300 miles that usually span the distance between my bed and yours. For the next three months we've simplified that number to a prime three. I don't think that equation works out correctly, but math was never our best subject.
Either way I pray that God sends a few of the right things to say in my direction - however let me be anything but super-fixer-upper-friend. I'm a James Taylor type Handyman, give me your situation and I'll give my two cents and a year-long down payment.

And who wants that?

And who wants to read a blog that starts and ends with ungrammatical conjunctions, strangely hyphenated nouns, and loosely-tied-sentimental-metaphors?
A Mr. Crane Fly, hopefully.

Last year's poem.

(Found this on some paper scraps initially supposed to be used for kid's scribbles at a past church service today. going to write it on here so I don't lose it in the summer -moving-mess. Looking forward to: sunrise hike at little Si in a few hours.)

Oh, how the leaves have to burn before they
 fall
        fall
                fall
But you don't weep for the leaves on the tree so please. don't. weep.
for me.

Driving past the road between your house and mine,
watching as the clouds fill up the sky.
The sparrow spins the heron beats his drum,
Sing! the last lingerings of the sun.

This year ghosts have haunted
the corner of my eye;
Too dark, subtle shifting for the daylight.
There is something in the way they move..

.. I know I have no time to lose
But when I turn my head, they're gone gone gone again.

Midnight Revelation

There's a window, and there's God, and there's me.

But I am very lucky, I think, because this window has a latch and Someone already opened it for this brown-eyed girl. And the outside air just smells so good.

for the future

I need to get a little more creative in my blogging syntax.

I mean c'mon. I have 11 followers now - it is time to step it up. (ha)

So what I am saying to you is this: look forward to a little more form in the upcoming weeks. A little more interaction too. I want to hear some collective memories coming from you all out there.

You see, thats what I'm interested in truly. Stories... and there are so many more out there than just mine.

speaking of stories, this is something everyone should read, and if not read.. then I will admit, watching the movie version is sufficient. I mean, it is still in subtitles, and that is kind of like reading, isn't it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PXHeKuBzPY

It's interesting, the things people choose to part with.

I'm going home this weekend, and since it is three weeks before the end of classes (and the start of summer!) I am taking home the things I brought to Seattle to keep me company over this past year. As a rule, this includes a lot of books. A girl like me finds friends in the other people's words.

However there are a few literatures that I just cant send away on early summer vacation. They will stay with me in the rainy city, until the second week of June when summer waits no longer.

Here are the books I coudn't separate from.. I thought it was truth telling:

Lonesome Dove

Bach Jonathan Livingston Seagull

All the Pretty Horses

The Prophet

Life After God

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The Bible

Ishmael

The Poetry of Robert Frost

Selected Poems of Yeats

and lastly..

Food Rules ( Thanks Madi Becker)

Dear God

I am sorry.

My will power is very small.

For something so invisible it weighs very much.

If only I could see it, cup it in my hands like the water from the faucet in the early mornings. Then I would remember not to forget about the important things.

What does the will feel like?

I need your help, and by prayer and petition I'm begging to be shown how. So I can grope up the little wilting will and sling it through the air, faithful it will be caught up in Your waiting presence. Soaked up, maybe. Like water effused through the skin in the early mornings. Without You I think I would feel it rain back down in pieces.

But most importantly I am not without You. And what falls back down is not a shattered will but a restored faith, a peace of God that transcends all understanding.

Oh Aryeh;

"Man needs to make the first move, even if it is the size of the eye of a needle."

68 degrees in the shade

It was cold on the walk back to my dorm tonight. But this day was beautiful. Kylee called me and left a message mentioning her day and how she hoped it was sunny up in Seattle. And oh it was. Sunny enough for the college girls to break out in tank tops and summer-skirts (Which doesn't take much usually, but today was a reasonable excuse.)

Yesterday I went on a night run with Karianne, and although it had been a slow cold rain all day, the night was warm. It was a good run in general, feeling my body work against the pavement and pull of the hill - gravity calling me home - come here, come here.

Here is my question:

Is it at all possible to be in touch with the way the weather turns, here in this place full of murmuring television sets and the airy roar of cars. I would just like to be able to feel the air at night and be assured of sun the following morning, or watch the clouds linger in a winter afternoon and know that the next day will bring with it snow.

Instead of turning to the weather application on my iphone.

The day belongs to those who are aware of it, and I want to be fully awake.

There are so many things to say

I remember sitting in the old kitchen chairs at the house on Black Bear Drive. They where a scratchy 70's beige; the kind of color that a kid my age would consider a bad yellow. Ten years later the padding sewn inside would start to creep out the stitches after ten thousand games of pretend-mountain-hiker and boat-in-the-sea. The rules to these games were adjustable and were most often adjusted by me, the eldest. I liked(still like) winning and knowing. The plot of these games, however original they began, always turned out to be some sort of escape. Escape from The Sea Monster, from The Abominable Snow Man, from Mom With the Vacuum. We always made it. (Though there were times that MWtV prevailed and we were banned to the out of doors to make way for Clean.) Still, my sister Bailey and I were quite the heroines. We would dangle on the precipice of make-believe danger until our littlest sibling, Maddie, would be close to tears in fear and angst over our make-believe safety.

But I made it through, all pretend appendages still intact... Though, what if Maddie was right? I just wonder sometimes if I were ever truly at risk, of losing something. She was always so scared for us during the cliff-hanging climax of our adventures; so breathless and teary-eyed.

There are those nervous dreams where you try with all your might to get a message across, your mouths opening and closing like unsatisfied goldfish. No sound coming out.

Does child deal with more than we/he understands during his hour of afternoon play? Our old chairs now sit in the kitchen of our new house, faithful runes remaining from the earliest years of the family. Our own little Easter Island. The rules of the games they played their parts in are long since mist among the runes - fuzzy memories we bring out and polish with talk until a film covers the clearest parts. We laugh at ourselves. We have lost nothing, we think.

But maybe we are wrong.

Two doors down the neighbor girl makes a fort in her living room, shadows creeping through the table top draped over chairs.

Happy Birthday

Dearest Friend,

You are a part of my heart.

I miss your laugh today

hey girls, lets grow old together, okay?

with or without children, with or with out baked bread and sweet iced tea. without a single white picket post in sight.

to simply sit out on porch swings and watch the sun sink over places we've watched so long,

they are a part of our souls

now.

I don't even need the swing.

there will be others too. but you know (that you can count on),

there will always be us.

Where is your(my) plot, what is your(our) syntax?

I had to walk through a wall of water to get to the library today. The library, a bubble for the body as well as the mind. In this third story look out the rain blurs the normally rigid lines of the Aurora bridge, breaks up the smooth curves of cars coursing over it like blood through an artery. It disturbs me for a moment. I can't see, I can't see, I can't see.

Imagine a small dot of water left over on a kitchen table, making its little resistance against the pushing air. That is the inverse of my environment. One film negative in a digital world. This library is...

wait.

I don't have to explain everything, do I?

...

Why, and for what?

"Cathy, I'm lost," I said.

Songs on repeat establish themselves as memories in your mind.

It's true - try it sometime.

Drive down the the road and take any song, any tune will do, and let it play over and over itself on your stereo. Slowly, surely, it will make its mark. A little trail of bread crumbs back to this moment, if you will. And they connect with so many different feelings and situations in your life. Trust me; there is plenty of Paul Simon that has woven itself into the fabric that connects my 16th year to my 17th year, my 18th year to my 19th year, and so on and so forth (at least, that is the projected estimation. troubled waters on the horizons, but you can be my bridge.)

what a rug. or a tapestry, if you want to get all prosey on me now, Carol.

The ear is the slut of the senses. The scent of lilacs reminds me of one thing: childhood houses. Bubble tea only reminds me of Brittany. And just one movie reminds me of teenage lovesick on the couch.

But a song is different. "Don't let them attach themselves to too many memories. It gives them too much power."

I understand now, and wherever we had this conversation - whether in my car or on that park bench - it is finally sifting in.

I need to write everyday. When I don't, I forget to think worthwhile things (not that this blog is an example of worthwhileness...) Instead I sit and watch television shows on a channel that claims to be man's best friend. Well here is the one truth I claim today: That is a lie.

so.. thank God I'm a woman?

Bed time story

I am driving home following the river on 99E its one in the morning its dark and I've only seen one other car my destination is clothe less in my bed but there are several worlds to move through before I reach it yet I've left the woods as lights of Canby sway in time steady with all things of the information age though for all their inanimate nature they still fall short lightbulbs someday die and the little hairs inside the glass bulb sway around without a beat at all but now the 7-11 shines like a beacon like a lighthouse like a reminder to turn left and so I do a girl sitting outside looks up takes a drag off her virginia slim she knows she remembers but the visions gone again my car will forever slide along I think I forget all the money it takes to move it places movement isn't science it is economics until I roll up the hill past the herb farm and my old summer job everyone always wanted the dill in great big bushels of yellow flowers too beautiful to smell like pickles I would say no laughs and I laugh now at the absurdity of things even though I'm so wrapped up in the lives of my friends do they even know because when do I admit it in the end its selfish wheres my portion of blame wheres my honesty bravery I could of lost it here under the hazelnut trees along with that journal I wrote in for two years about them him I which now is just mulch how environmentally friendly of me but don't tell my dad he will think I'm swinging far too left when in truth I'm just swinging in the spirit of reminiscing and childhood remember back when you could ask questions and the answers weren't always masquerading worries but the stars aren't worried look up there in the same place you left them three years ago look back down ever since I was sixteen I've driven this road at night and believed this part would last forever this part with the hazelnut orchard and pavement and stars but it always ends by the time I reach Lone Elder Store "little tijuana" we named it that for the way they keep their cigars on the outside of register within the subtle reach of any tall third grader and then I am pulling into our long driveway where I learned to drive stick and love and leave I guess its not that much of a stretch I turn the keys and grab my coat out of the passenger seat walking around to the back door the light clicks on but sight stretches only to where the ivy starts and then continually beats itself against the wall of dark that is the little valley and creek where anything everything is hiding all nature on the cusp of horrific glory and simple authority but just in time I'm through the door through the kitchen through the hallway to my room and my bed smells like nothing except clean what a comfort I'm tired of everything having to smell I don't care about lemon fresh and ocean breeze and then

the silence hangs

until the rain starts again pushy and haphazard not comforting at all.

A Toast to the Gods

Here's to

conversations in the middle of the night

stamped obsolete by more rational minds

but kept in secret

pockets and boxes only to be opened, coaxed out into the

dark car interior,

the blue light from the stereo casting shadows

across the words as they sit in the air between our mouths

the Shadows playing with the Light

on our faces

and we wince and smile because they will only play for so much longer,

until either sleep or dawn will call them their own.

and once Shadow and Light are summoned from

their child hood haunts in the curve of my lip

and their hide-and-seek games in the space between your eye,

and your nose,

we will return our thoughts to our pockets until 2 am comes again.

because daylight has no room for

years and the quiet keeping emotion carried therein.

oh the little lives and little deaths of those.

listening: Iron&Wine - Judgement.

Beyonce Knowles probably changes her own flat tires

I got a call from Switzerland this morning.

I was outside looking at my car, which 24 hours ago had been a normal piece of driving equipment, but by that point a flat tire on the passenger side had led me to self-medicate the situation. So I picked up the proverbial and bejewelled title of Independent Woman and changed the flat myself.

I was rather proud of this acheivment, seeing that it was four years since the last time I changed a tire (and that time really just consisted of my dad telling me which wrench to hand him as he changed it for me.) However something was obviously wrong.

The tire stuck out about two inches from the edge of the wheel well, I couldnt screw the little screw things (I'm not the most technical mechanic..) on right, and well I was just nervous.

I had to wave the white flag.

When Brian Field came home after my phone call he laughed. "Lyndsay, honey, it's just on backwards." Blast. All the efforts of Alice Paul, Oprah Winfrey, and Joan of Arc wasted on a little failed geometry and engineering.

Then I really did mean to change it myself but at that point my sister ran out of the house holding the home phone. It may have well been another four years since I've had an actual conversation on that thing, so I was a little perplexed, bemused, intrigued.

The voice on the other end started laughing, finally managing a lovely and slightly accented "Lynnnn!"

Vanja Gudalo, the true incarnation of the Independent Woman. I'm sick and sound like a 13 year old boy on a date, so who knows if she really recognizes my voice at first. It has been over nine months since I've last heard her speak! Nine months since home-made Croatian treats, girl talks in my car, pronunciation corrections, (remember wagina at the Montage?) and the excitement only a Swiss can create over American high school. We start to talk, and my mind is reeling over the fact that she is calling me from thousands of miles away. She is so removed from Canby, Oregon, that Google maps can't even calculate the miles between here and Switzerland. (Don't judge me, I did try.)

Does Switzerland really exist, then? Does anything outside of America? Probably not, given my small range of experience. Except for Jamaica, Canada and Mexico, the three places I have traveled internationally. I have touched their dirt, eaten their food, purchased their own cheap keychains from trashy tourist hot-spots. Vanja, however, has been here; where I am sitting right now. She has touched my dirt and eaten my food. Our conversation is like a shaded window. She can see all of me but all I can do is dream about what she sees and feels and tastes as she sits by the window in her room and shares about her boyfriend and school and European summer plans.

Something in this distance merits awe. My dad says, "Well shoot! All the way from Switzerland! Tell the gal we miss her." and proceeds to fix my tire. I don't even have to pass wrenches.

What is it? I want to pinpoint the source of the magic in this distance. The magic isn't me, nor is it Vanja (Though she comes as close to magic as any person I know, V and her Swiss morals and sayings.) It is something between us and around us and could at any point in time connect any person on this earth. And it is all relative to each of those persons.

Mmmm distance.

Well somewhere in the time-distance of next summer and the summer after that her and I will exchange the miles for minutes and be in the presence of each other's voices again. Without a phone acting as middle-man between us. I have some moneys put away deep in my pocket, and you don't have to be too much of an Independent Woman to track down plane ticket prices from PDX to Switzerland. You see, I really miss her and I'm in dire need of experiences.

I'm tired of shaded windows.

Some love from Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

circa 1940. DT, in reference to his father, who was going blind. He only rhymes with two words in the whole thing: night and day. Such powerful simplicity.

But here is a promise: over spring break I am going to read Cold Mountain, (Madi, be proud!)and finish Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and The Cost of Discipleship. Que Chido!

God exists during Finals Week, too.

Yesterday I met a woman named Ruth. I learned a lot of things about her during our conversation under the bridge as cars carved out their own little pathways home. She kept moving her hands as she told me about montana and vendor wars and her daughter's college scholarship. She is writing about these things too, or at least in the midst of doing so. She wants to be a writer; I told her she already is one: "You have a story and you can't help but share it, can't help but write it down."

"And I have empathy," She said, "Do you know the difference between sympathy and empathy?"

" I don't know, tell me."

"Sympathy... sympathy is feeling sorry for somebody. Feeling pity. It is a very distant emotion.... it sets you apart from whoever is struggling... whoever is having a hard time. Empathy, that's different. My roommate has no empathy, he's a narcissist, ha. But when you have empathy you enter into another's suffering - you bring yourself back down (or up) to their level. you know?"

"yeah, I understand. I think your right, Ruth."

"I am... Did I tell you I've been to Montana? ...."

At the close of our conversation she handed me something from her white plastic bag. "For the writer," she said. A small wooden journal with a cross etched on the cover, the name Jesus written in cheesy cursive on the outside. The pages were blank.

"I got it as a gift from my friend when I broke my back last year. Take it."

"No, no thank you I can't take this journal from you." I stuttered the words.

"Yes you will because I'm a Native American! and we believe in giving - you gave to me now I'm giving to you. You have to take it."

I took it and set it down on the seat of my car as I drove away. In the rearview I saw her heading for Mo's. She was going to buy beer with the five dollars I had given her for the newspaper, she had already told me so. Oh well, that is what happens. People don't change on the basis of one conversation. At least not Real Change. A friendship, thats where the meaningful part of things kicks in.

And you know what? Beer isn't the worst thing to spend five dollars on, anyways.

The most unexpected people give you Jesus. It always happens this way.

On rainy days..

We think of the sun, sometimes.

If one were to ride a light beam, where would it take you?