The drumbeat of small reminders
Is so often "the thing with feathers"
Choosing to alight on me
From across Emily Dickinson's sea
And the eclipsed gap between earth and Heaven.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
.spilled earth.
Melting ice in my stomach and dying flame in my mouth.
Would that the misting warmth could excise my heart:
So unsteady, half glass and half stone
It sometimes seems…
Hunger and sickness, some vive la revolution
Cry stirs within me, but no kingsbanner
Rallies to any causal center.
Empty-handed and too-full-hearted,
I dream with bloodshot open eyes;
Watch me sleep, and raise a cup of unsweetened cocoa
To the moon that dreamed he loves me.
Even the child, growing like a flytrap
From my cardiac arteries
Thinks the woman in me, wherever she may be,
A demon of the reddest kind.
Distance yawns with me.
Pity chuffs grotesquely at my shoulder.
Sunbleached eyes see lies;
Truth seems a dull stylus tonight.
Would that the misting warmth could excise my heart:
So unsteady, half glass and half stone
It sometimes seems…
Hunger and sickness, some vive la revolution
Cry stirs within me, but no kingsbanner
Rallies to any causal center.
Empty-handed and too-full-hearted,
I dream with bloodshot open eyes;
Watch me sleep, and raise a cup of unsweetened cocoa
To the moon that dreamed he loves me.
Even the child, growing like a flytrap
From my cardiac arteries
Thinks the woman in me, wherever she may be,
A demon of the reddest kind.
Distance yawns with me.
Pity chuffs grotesquely at my shoulder.
Sunbleached eyes see lies;
Truth seems a dull stylus tonight.
Friday, December 23, 2011
I often have doubts about things.
And every now and again, just when I'm not expecting it, God shows up and says, "Your life would be better if you didn't have this doubt, and I'm going to prove it to you." The form of this proof is sometimes spectacular and mind-blowing, and sometimes it's tiny and warm and fluffy and still amazing.
HE is so great. In every sense of the word.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
I know it's a whole year away, but…
THIS IS GOING TO BE SO FANTASTIC.
I'M REALLY, REALLY, SPASTICALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS.
(Also, this was my first attempt to embed a video in blogspot, and it actually worked on my first try! Hurrah!)
Monday, December 19, 2011
On prophetic stuff and a little looking ahead
(I'm going to just leap into a story here.)
So, for a few weeks now, I've been wanting to get prophetic ministry at church (for the non-New Dayers who may be reading this, that's where a team of people speak over you what they hear God saying for you and your life. it's pretty much amazing). I haven't done it yet because I haven't had the chance, basically, what with having my own duties at church after service. Last week at Dwell, Seth and Sarah Gerber spoke about prophetic ministry (the history of the prophetic, giving prophetic words yourself, and also a lot about receiving and "stewarding" prophetic words). One thing Sarah said stuck out to me—she told about this point in her life where she literally had a basket full of tapes of prophetic words she'd gotten over the last several years, and she hadn't done anything with them—hadn't pursued them, hadn't prayed about them, or anything, and she felt like she couldn't go looking for any new prophetic words of the like before she worked to "steward" the ones she had already gotten.
That got me kind of thinking—I've gotten a number of prophetic words over the last three years, almost all of which I have in some recorded form. I've listened to them all several times, and prayed about them a little bit, but I haven't really made an effort to find out what God means by them and what he wants me to do in regards to them. So this morning in church, as I was considering whether to go up for ministry, I decided to hold off and really think about pursuing the words I already have. The weird thing was, I kind of expected to feel reluctant or disappointed about it, but I actually felt pretty good about this choice.
Then, tonight (or, rather, last night [Sunday], since this will post on Monday) was the Dwell Christmas party. We did some crazy worship, had a fantastic prayer time, and opened gifts; were having yummy munchies and I was just kind of standing around when Jo Leitz (awesome lady who has definitely got a heavy-duty prophetic gift) came up to me and just said, "God's really going to start moving in you with the new year. I really feel like He's saying you're going to experience a new outpouring of creativity, especially in your writing, and it's going to be really anointed. God is basically going to be writing through you."
…Whoa.
Aside from that very last bit (verbatim, anyway), and without the specific time frame, this is basically the same prophetic word I have gotten at least six times from various people in the last seventeen months. (I even got it twice in the same session, by two different people who weren't there to hear each other give the word, and they said almost verbatim the same thing.) You would think I'd pay attention to this, as God is practically throwing it in my face, but every time I got it I was like, "Wow, that's really cool!" and then didn't really pursue it at all. (Actually, I proceeded to pout excessively about writer's block. In fact, in hindsight, I might have actually used it as an excuse to complain about my writer's block. *cringe*). But when Jo said this one today, I was kind of like, "OH! Man! I am totally going to take this home and tell somebody about it and pray over it and journal and by golly, it's not my responsibility to make it happen, but, by golly, am not going to just shelve this again." So that is what I am doing. And I am massively excited, and, yes, also kind of terrified.
Jo also told me that my poetry is especially important, and I need to not give up on that. (This is especially interesting, because poetry is something have been writing only very occasionally lately—I used to write several dozen poems a year, and in all of 2011 I have written exactly nine. Most of which were depressed backlashes at the sudden falling-apart of a major part of my life.) I wouldn't say I've given up, exactly—I can't imagine I'd ever stop writing it totally—but I think I have gotten somewhat hypercritical of my poetry, which is why I've given up on songwriting ten times over in my teen years. I don't know what direction God will take it in, but I can't say I'd much object to His influence!
…I sort of feel like my mind ought to be blown, but it isn't quite. I'm just like. "WOW. Yes, that has 'God who loves you a whole darn lot' written all over it."
Oh boy. I am definitely going over all my recent prophetic words again. Time for an ongoing tête-à-tête with God? Yes.
So, for a few weeks now, I've been wanting to get prophetic ministry at church (for the non-New Dayers who may be reading this, that's where a team of people speak over you what they hear God saying for you and your life. it's pretty much amazing). I haven't done it yet because I haven't had the chance, basically, what with having my own duties at church after service. Last week at Dwell, Seth and Sarah Gerber spoke about prophetic ministry (the history of the prophetic, giving prophetic words yourself, and also a lot about receiving and "stewarding" prophetic words). One thing Sarah said stuck out to me—she told about this point in her life where she literally had a basket full of tapes of prophetic words she'd gotten over the last several years, and she hadn't done anything with them—hadn't pursued them, hadn't prayed about them, or anything, and she felt like she couldn't go looking for any new prophetic words of the like before she worked to "steward" the ones she had already gotten.
That got me kind of thinking—I've gotten a number of prophetic words over the last three years, almost all of which I have in some recorded form. I've listened to them all several times, and prayed about them a little bit, but I haven't really made an effort to find out what God means by them and what he wants me to do in regards to them. So this morning in church, as I was considering whether to go up for ministry, I decided to hold off and really think about pursuing the words I already have. The weird thing was, I kind of expected to feel reluctant or disappointed about it, but I actually felt pretty good about this choice.
Then, tonight (or, rather, last night [Sunday], since this will post on Monday) was the Dwell Christmas party. We did some crazy worship, had a fantastic prayer time, and opened gifts; were having yummy munchies and I was just kind of standing around when Jo Leitz (awesome lady who has definitely got a heavy-duty prophetic gift) came up to me and just said, "God's really going to start moving in you with the new year. I really feel like He's saying you're going to experience a new outpouring of creativity, especially in your writing, and it's going to be really anointed. God is basically going to be writing through you."
…Whoa.
Aside from that very last bit (verbatim, anyway), and without the specific time frame, this is basically the same prophetic word I have gotten at least six times from various people in the last seventeen months. (I even got it twice in the same session, by two different people who weren't there to hear each other give the word, and they said almost verbatim the same thing.) You would think I'd pay attention to this, as God is practically throwing it in my face, but every time I got it I was like, "Wow, that's really cool!" and then didn't really pursue it at all. (Actually, I proceeded to pout excessively about writer's block. In fact, in hindsight, I might have actually used it as an excuse to complain about my writer's block. *cringe*). But when Jo said this one today, I was kind of like, "OH! Man! I am totally going to take this home and tell somebody about it and pray over it and journal and by golly, it's not my responsibility to make it happen, but, by golly, am not going to just shelve this again." So that is what I am doing. And I am massively excited, and, yes, also kind of terrified.
Jo also told me that my poetry is especially important, and I need to not give up on that. (This is especially interesting, because poetry is something have been writing only very occasionally lately—I used to write several dozen poems a year, and in all of 2011 I have written exactly nine. Most of which were depressed backlashes at the sudden falling-apart of a major part of my life.) I wouldn't say I've given up, exactly—I can't imagine I'd ever stop writing it totally—but I think I have gotten somewhat hypercritical of my poetry, which is why I've given up on songwriting ten times over in my teen years. I don't know what direction God will take it in, but I can't say I'd much object to His influence!
…I sort of feel like my mind ought to be blown, but it isn't quite. I'm just like. "WOW. Yes, that has 'God who loves you a whole darn lot' written all over it."
Oh boy. I am definitely going over all my recent prophetic words again. Time for an ongoing tête-à-tête with God? Yes.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
a relatively lazy Thursday.
Today is the last day of my semester! I finished finals on Tuesday, but still had to show up to classes yesterday and today. This afternoon I am just going in for my last yoga class and to pick up my graded French final. I am so glad to be done for three and a half weeks. I plan to read a lot of books, and do that Marathon of Must-See Movies Kiersten Hasn't Seen Yet as hosted by Emily Wright, and go to sleepovers and finish a novel and do other fun and fantastic things. Oh, and Christmas. It's going to be a good Christmas break this year. I can feel it in my toes.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Not to be presumptuous…
…but I am gollydarned proud of myself right about now.
50,041 words on a single piece of fiction in 30 days.
I honestly didn't think this was going to happen.
Now I just need to do some brutal editing on the 4,598 words of something akin to total rubbish that I churned out in the last two hours to make it happen. And some less murderous editing on the rest of it, which isn't nearly as bad but still very rambling and untenable to an unbiased reader's judgment, I'm sure.
…Also, I need to finish it.
There's probably another 10,000 words in this thing, and somebody shoot me if I am not going to finish this creature I spent a month pouring a good deal of my lifeblood into. (Ignore the preposition on the end of that sentence, please, except insofar as you need to cognitively process it for semantic intelligibility.)
(Ignore anything else I write that doesn't make sense. I am so jacked up on words and long sentences right now that could probably invent a subspecies of incoherent English on the spot [because, you know, we don't have enough of it already]. If I lived in Britain, I could probably also give Donna Noble a run for her money for the notable position of the fastest-typing temp in Chiswick. At least until the caffeine from my tea wears off, at which point I would just go to bed.)
I also cannot believe that was a whole month. November has been insanity. Really compressed insanity. I think there are whole days that time-traveled out of themselves and passed me by without so much as a wave of greeting. Actually, I'm rather surprised it didn't turn out like more of a train wreck in the end.
Also, speaking of writing, I have two math papers due tomorrow that I lovingly put off writing especially for this. So I go, back to the keyboard. (On another bright note, only three weeks left of school! The end is in sight! Tally-ho! [Maybe too in sight for comfort, actually…].)
But I am happy right now. And not as sleepy as I likely ought to be.
50,041 words on a single piece of fiction in 30 days.
I honestly didn't think this was going to happen.
Now I just need to do some brutal editing on the 4,598 words of something akin to total rubbish that I churned out in the last two hours to make it happen. And some less murderous editing on the rest of it, which isn't nearly as bad but still very rambling and untenable to an unbiased reader's judgment, I'm sure.
…Also, I need to finish it.
There's probably another 10,000 words in this thing, and somebody shoot me if I am not going to finish this creature I spent a month pouring a good deal of my lifeblood into. (Ignore the preposition on the end of that sentence, please, except insofar as you need to cognitively process it for semantic intelligibility.)
(Ignore anything else I write that doesn't make sense. I am so jacked up on words and long sentences right now that could probably invent a subspecies of incoherent English on the spot [because, you know, we don't have enough of it already]. If I lived in Britain, I could probably also give Donna Noble a run for her money for the notable position of the fastest-typing temp in Chiswick. At least until the caffeine from my tea wears off, at which point I would just go to bed.)
I also cannot believe that was a whole month. November has been insanity. Really compressed insanity. I think there are whole days that time-traveled out of themselves and passed me by without so much as a wave of greeting. Actually, I'm rather surprised it didn't turn out like more of a train wreck in the end.
Also, speaking of writing, I have two math papers due tomorrow that I lovingly put off writing especially for this. So I go, back to the keyboard. (On another bright note, only three weeks left of school! The end is in sight! Tally-ho! [Maybe too in sight for comfort, actually…].)
But I am happy right now. And not as sleepy as I likely ought to be.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
I have to say all this out loud, in front of people, from memory, in less than seventeen hours from now.
Je ferai un voyage au Suisse avec mon amie Léa. Avant notre départ, nous téléphonerons à l'hôtel à l'avance pour réserver une chambre. Nous achèterons nos passeport et nos billets, et informerons avec des sites Web et des guides touristiques. Nous demanderons à nos familles de donner à manger à la chats et mon chien. En Suisse, nous ferons du ski en les alpes, et goûterons la cuisine bien.
La Suisse est très célèbre pour ses montes (c'est les Alpes), sa chocolat, et sa neutralité politique. Les langues officiel sont le française, l'allemand, et l'italien. Vingt-deux pour-cent de le population de sept-point-sept million n'est pas suisse; il y a beaucoup d'étrangers, surtout enfants. Les Suisses aiment lire et jouer du sport. Aussi, ils font beaucoup de travail volontaire. L'environnement est très important à les Suisses.
Suisse a commencé au un-mille-deux-cent-quatre-vingt-et-onze, comme le confédération. Pendant La Reforme au la seizième siècle, les Catholiques et les Protestants ont divisé le pays. Suisse a lutté avec Napoléon pendant le révolution française, le seul temps ils n'étaient pas neutre. Suisse est devenu le pays moderne au un-mille-huit-cent-quarante-huit.
Si vous visitez la Suisse, il vaut mieux que vous fassiez votre valise avec des vêtements pour le temps froid. Il est bon, mais n'est nécessaire pas, que vous sachiez le langue. Il mauvais que vous oubliez votre argent. Écrivez les cartes postales chez soi! ne te perdez pas à la grande ville, et amusez-vous!
(La fin.)
…I'm kind of freaking out.
(I apologize. You must be sick of hearing about my collegiate stress every other blog post…but I feel like it's consuming my life.) (Yet not enough of it to make me quit procrastinating.)
La Suisse est très célèbre pour ses montes (c'est les Alpes), sa chocolat, et sa neutralité politique. Les langues officiel sont le française, l'allemand, et l'italien. Vingt-deux pour-cent de le population de sept-point-sept million n'est pas suisse; il y a beaucoup d'étrangers, surtout enfants. Les Suisses aiment lire et jouer du sport. Aussi, ils font beaucoup de travail volontaire. L'environnement est très important à les Suisses.
Suisse a commencé au un-mille-deux-cent-quatre-vingt-et-onze, comme le confédération. Pendant La Reforme au la seizième siècle, les Catholiques et les Protestants ont divisé le pays. Suisse a lutté avec Napoléon pendant le révolution française, le seul temps ils n'étaient pas neutre. Suisse est devenu le pays moderne au un-mille-huit-cent-quarante-huit.
Si vous visitez la Suisse, il vaut mieux que vous fassiez votre valise avec des vêtements pour le temps froid. Il est bon, mais n'est nécessaire pas, que vous sachiez le langue. Il mauvais que vous oubliez votre argent. Écrivez les cartes postales chez soi! ne te perdez pas à la grande ville, et amusez-vous!
(La fin.)
…I'm kind of freaking out.
(I apologize. You must be sick of hearing about my collegiate stress every other blog post…but I feel like it's consuming my life.) (Yet not enough of it to make me quit procrastinating.)
Monday, November 21, 2011
Main content of my Facebook newsfeed ticker: a highly emotionally charged metaphysical debate via status and following comments.
Decision: follow urge to (as non-judgmentally as possible) argue my beliefs or follow much smaller urge to figuratively run far away at a high rate of speed?
*bangs head on wall*
Sometimes, wanting to stand up for the right thing makes actually doing so far more complicated than it seems like it should be.
Decision: follow urge to (as non-judgmentally as possible) argue my beliefs or follow much smaller urge to figuratively run far away at a high rate of speed?
*bangs head on wall*
Sometimes, wanting to stand up for the right thing makes actually doing so far more complicated than it seems like it should be.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
☮
See, Kiersten? You did it. Now all you can do is wait. So stop being so stressed about tomorrow, because tonight darn well has enough stress of its own. (To very loosely paraphrase Matthew 6:34, in the hopes of hammering it into my brain and my slightly nerves-nauseated stomach.) Pax vobiscum, Kiersten.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Remarkably, I feel great right now.
"Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you.
How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God."
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21, The Message)
How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God."
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21, The Message)
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Right now, I'm really frustrated at myself for:
a) accidentally emailing the only professor of the University of Michigan's MEMS 350 course who teaches a Tuesday/Thursday section instead of a Friday section.
b) wanting to go to a prestigious university that happens to be a hundred miles away from Kalamazoo, so that visiting it on a Tuesday or Thursday guarantees missing three of my regular classes.
*headdesk*
It's times like this when I wonder…why am I an honors student again? (i.e., "is free tuition really worth all the stress the requirements for this scholarship puts me through?!")
(…Aaaand the answer to that is probably a rhetorical "yes." Augh.)
b) wanting to go to a prestigious university that happens to be a hundred miles away from Kalamazoo, so that visiting it on a Tuesday or Thursday guarantees missing three of my regular classes.
*headdesk*
It's times like this when I wonder…why am I an honors student again? (i.e., "is free tuition really worth all the stress the requirements for this scholarship puts me through?!")
(…Aaaand the answer to that is probably a rhetorical "yes." Augh.)
Finally getting around to that one particular bit in Acts 2:38…
Yes,
I'M GETTING BAPTIZED TOMORROW
I'M GETTING BAPTIZED TOMORROW
and I'm
ÜBER–EXCEEDINGLY–TREMENDOUSLY–FANTASTICALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT.
It has taken me way too long to get here.
Friday, November 4, 2011
The homestretch of the TV/movie/books fast is the most frustrating bit yet. All day my brain has been weeping in a corner— "Feed me mindless entertainment! Just half an hour! I don't care what! Feed me mindless entertainment!" And I have to be all like, "Shut up, brain. Jesus is way more awesome than mindless entertainment." And my brain's like, "Yeah, but all the homework isn't." And I have to sigh and agree and then we're both moping in a corner.
limbo word count and some obsessiveness with new music
NaNoWriMo day four, except that it's the middle of the night, so it's sort of a limbo between days 3 and 4. I'm currently about 230 words ahead of my day 4 quota, and dawn hasn't even risen on day 4 yet. I am going to be a little computer monster on Friday, hunched over my laptop, dividing my brain ignobly between the passionate fit of novel-writing mania and all the mound of ever-present schoolwork that is my bulwark against social anxiety. (Pardon me if some of my sentences don't make sense; I would offer to translate them, but I may not be any more able to than you once I've gone to bed and come back.) Also, I listened to the indie singer-songwriter genre station on Pandora for an hour or so and discovered this and this — I wish I could remember our iTunes password.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Happy November! (Or, Na na na na na...I feel like there's an xkcd comic that matches this)
It's the first of November! Excitement. I've decided not to do NaBloPoMo (blogging every day for a month) this year, as I'm already committing to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), meaning that—one way or another—I am going to write one cohesive, comlete story of at least 50,000 words in thirty days. IT'S MADNESS. But I have a (dare I admit it?) plot outline (I'm going to do a loose retelling of this old, incidentally rather tragic Celtic legend). I think with a) a deadline and b) a flexible yet complete plot framework, I can actually do it. I'mso jazzed. I probably won't be able to make much of a start until tonight, since I'm in classes noon to seven, but it's going to happen. Jesus, bless this endeavor. Because I'm also kind of shocked at the prospect that this is even possible for me, since I have literally thousands of pages of very unfinished stories on my computer and a couple of composition books.
INSANITY!
I actually considered combining the two Na'Mo's and blogging what I'd written each day for my novel, but considering my tendency (when writing anything) to skip around and edit/re-edit with a meticulousness that is probably my habit that closest approaches clinical OCD, I thought perhaps not. I will give periodic updates, I'm sure, and anyone who may be interested in reading the draft when I'm done will be welcome to it. Oh man. I feel like I'm going skydiving. Even though I've been trying to write novels for years, this feels so gollydern massive.
Anyway, happy November! I think I might have one friend who's doing NaNoWriMo with me. Are Hannah and Emily doing NaBloPoMo this year? It would be fabulous.
{Also, the xkcd comic referenced in the title, which actually has nothing to do with this post.}
INSANITY!
I actually considered combining the two Na'Mo's and blogging what I'd written each day for my novel, but considering my tendency (when writing anything) to skip around and edit/re-edit with a meticulousness that is probably my habit that closest approaches clinical OCD, I thought perhaps not. I will give periodic updates, I'm sure, and anyone who may be interested in reading the draft when I'm done will be welcome to it. Oh man. I feel like I'm going skydiving. Even though I've been trying to write novels for years, this feels so gollydern massive.
Anyway, happy November! I think I might have one friend who's doing NaNoWriMo with me. Are Hannah and Emily doing NaBloPoMo this year? It would be fabulous.
{Also, the xkcd comic referenced in the title, which actually has nothing to do with this post.}
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thursday and a broken brain.
So, I'm fairly certain that I failed my math exam this morning. I don't think this has ever happened to me before. Once in a while I might be like, "I don't feel great about this test", which roughly translates to "There's a chance my grade might end up as low as a C on this test." But this morning was a nightmare. I literally could not remember how to do almost any of the problems, even the ones I aced on the homework and the ones we did in a review session half an hour before the exam. I didn't even get to finish the whole test before the period was up and my professor had to leave. I know for sure the highest grade I could possibly get is an 80%, and I will honestly be shocked if I get anything higher than a 60% at best. My professor drops our lowest test grade at the end of the course, but I didn't want to use that failsafe so early in the semester.
This first session of my half-semester yoga class was today, and that actually went pretty well. I'm looking forward to this course. It was the most relaxing thing—kind of like soaking, except without as much Jesus-happiness because you're thinking about your breathing and your spine and all of that jazz. But I think it'll be really good, although it will make my Wednesdays way more homework-intensive now since I won't have time to squeeze in my French homework on Thursday afternoons anymore.
And then there was Intermediate French. I think my brain literally stopped functioning normally. People were saying things in English and I wasn't even comprehending them, let alone comprehending the new lesson, the imperative tense en français. We were doing our normal oral exercises out of the textbook and the professor had to correct really basic grammar errors I was making. I've almost never had such a hard time thinking straight—certainly not in the middle of class. My grey matter just ground to a screeching halt.
Then I promptly proceeded, after leaving class, to take an inadvertent hourlong nap, despite having just drunk a whole bottle of caffeinated iced tea. I also forgot the word "combination" while I was in the middle of talking to my dad, and spit out the words "convolution," "conversation," "confrontation," "condominium," and "confiture" (which isn't even English! It's the French word for jam!) before I remembered "combination." I am a limp welter of fatigue and lethargy and MY BRAIN DIDN'T WORK AT ALL TODAY. Ce n'est pas un bon jour.
Thank. God. It's. Thursday. and I don't have to go back to school until Monday and I don't have to get any homework done tonight and I can just do some worship/soaking and go to bed.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
iTunes had a sale last week of soundtracks for $7.99. And I was going to buy some today, because there were some *superlative adjective of joy* amazing soundtracks in that sale. But I got on just a few hours too late, and now the soundtracks have reverted back to their $9.99/$11.99/$17.99 prices. *bawls*
———
EDIT: as of Christmas: Amazon totally had a massive sale of soundtracks for $4.99. And I totally had $75 in gift cards.
Providence, anyone?
*cheeriness*
———
EDIT: as of Christmas: Amazon totally had a massive sale of soundtracks for $4.99. And I totally had $75 in gift cards.
Providence, anyone?
*cheeriness*
Mandos
We sit in the halls of the dead, among the mourning
Among the extinguished stars blackened by intemporality
My eyes and yours, the lanterns burning
For all that we cannot say "I love you" any longer.
Not in word, and not in deed
Because the sky has not yet forgotten us.
Others wait, and so are we chaperoned
Even as we wait for the utmost river to cover our heads.
We know there is no death as this silence.
In the moment when we are dead to memory but not yet to soul
On the cusp of terra nihilo:
I will whisper in your ear—
Vos amo, my fair one
And no one will be there to marvel at what we make in the last farewell.
Stories die to reach the halls;
But how many more begin at the coda,
Be it only the blink of my eyes, or yours?
Monday, October 24, 2011
Icarus' Uncertainty Principle
Trying to quantify uncertainty, I am;
Reinventing Daedalus' craft,
Losing oneself in a Labyrinth, and no golden clew
To show the way of escape;
Sewing zeroes onto the exponent
Like feathers onto wings
That will only fall apart when used.
Watch me collide with all I thought
I'd left far behind me.
Falling from the sun, too exhausted to be free
Under the depths, with a dead mind
That can move no wakeful limbs.
(3 July 2011.)
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Cloudburst
This season of my life has been all about rain, in so many forms. I drafted another post a couple of months ago detailing all the specific incidents that have been befalling my life having to do with rain, but I don't think I'm going to post it now. (Though, as you fine readers of mine perhaps noticed, the current background of my blog is a photograph of rain, which I changed a few weeks before writing that post.) Suffice it to say that rain has been very much an overarching theme in my life the last few months—astoundingly so, when I really stop and look at it all. Rain in songs, rain in art, rain in real-time weather, rain in Bible study, rain in prophetic words. And not just mine, but other people's, too, that they share. I keep meaning to research it, pray about it, that sort of thing. It's so crazy. It's got my attention, and if it's God—and I assume it is, considering all the contexts in which it keeps cropping up—I am extremely curious to know what He's trying to say before it's past.
*Amidst the stressful scholastic wrath of the mid-semester point, I do plan to write a follow-up to this post, within the next month or so at the latest.*
*Amidst the stressful scholastic wrath of the mid-semester point, I do plan to write a follow-up to this post, within the next month or so at the latest.*
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Frustrations of a saturnine 19-year-old.
In some odd fashion, I've always sort of prided myself on being a "moody" person. I think I see it is an expression of my deep, artistic soul (or something equally dramatic). But this week/weekend, it has made me absolutely miserable. WHY is being levelheaded so abominably near impossible?
I'm so tired. I thought my endless summer of not sleeping well was vanquished and forgotten in September.
I'm so tired. I thought my endless summer of not sleeping well was vanquished and forgotten in September.
Friday, October 14, 2011
A Few Mostly-Disheartening Facts About My Weekend (and the bipolarity that has been haunting me all day).
- I REALLYREALLYREALLY want to go to Chicago on Monday with some fabulous friends of mine to meet John Green. This is like one of those massive not-going-to-come-again-anytime-soon opportunities.
- I have to review sixteen freshman English papers and turn them into the professor I'm a TA for on or before Monday. As of right this minute, I have three of them half-done. It's surprisingly terrifying, writing on other people's non-honors essays in an official capacity, even in orchid colored pencil.
- I probably won't have time to work on them tomorrow, because of the AutumnFest at church. (I'm dressing up as a mime. My costume is rather last-minute-makeshift, but it's going to be über, I hope.)
- I probably won't have time to work on them on Sunday, because I have church, and Economist homework about democracy in the Middle East, and Dwell.
- I have no money. I spent my last 58¢ on a donut at Wal-Mart on Wednesday.
- (Other complications exist which pertain to us as a group whole, like not having a car so we can drive to Michigan City to catch a train to Chicago.)
- I D'KNOW IF I CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN. *many headdesks of sadness and frustration*
- I am going to be super diligent and sage about reviewing these ejkadhfkhagfjdhgka papers.
- Prayer is good. I'll try that, too.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
I CAN'T QUIT LISTENING TO CHAMELEON CIRCUIT.
So much nerdy goodness. It's not helping me make progress on my collegiate workload (e.g., homework! Studying! scheduling counselor appointments and volunteering stuff!, e.g., stuff that needs focus!). Also really not helping my TV/movies/books fast to listen to music about Doctor Who. If my brain is focused on Doctor Who even if I'm not actually watching it, my fasting is ineffectual.
…So now I need to get at least temporarily unhooked from Still Got Legs. How is this possible? :0
…So now I need to get at least temporarily unhooked from Still Got Legs. How is this possible? :0
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Acheron In Blue
It was a starry night, above a world filled with the rich, rolling blue of seas. Waves capped in silver and cream, so vast they would have blotted out the sky to any human who stood on the ocean's shore, rolled up and over themselves, seeming to hang poised at their apex before crashing to their place in the tide with a deafening roar that covered the shores in abandonment. Not a living thing for miles dwelt above the ground, but had there been someone, they might have been able to hear the lustrous, heartbreaking strains of whalesong that the waves carried with them. The rivers in those realms ran silver, thick as the drink of Immortality, the bathwater of merfolk, the wine of the Fey. Winter never froze its beauty; summer never baked it to sultry stillness. Vast, spiraled towers of black and white marble and glass stood rooted, forever unmoving, except when a brittle bit of rubble, a brass roofing tile or jagged fragment of striped turret, fell from its height in the heaven to break the tide-smoothed virginity of the wet sand, always dark. The footprints of Men were forgotten centuries ago, even by the stars, who had memories longer than the span of the earth.
Was it possible one still lived? That under the starry dome of the world, in the vast swaths of silence unplumbed by the green and blue whorls of brinèd chaos, there might yet dwell, in the hovelish ruins of the Old Cities, a lamp-lighter who amy yet breathe, may still have eyes to behold the glories of the reborn lands? Was it possible that it was not only the faerie children who danced in the gleaming streams, not only the treefolk who sang to the stars in the perpetuity of unpollutable nights?
Nay, and yes—for he was an Archaia, a man who had learnt the manner of living forever. He sat alone in his tent of broken obsidian, and though he could no longer remember the art of making a fire in wood or coals, nor the manner of consuming food that was good for the body, nor the words to speak prayers to render the soul secure,he remembered the undreamable intricacies of the Knowledge. He recalled the thoughts that one must keep forever in the forefront of one's mind, the measure with which one must count one's steps, the iron tenacity with which one must hold one's will steady.
He no longer remembered what it was to be human—
He knew only what it was like to live forever, with the same songs in one's head, with the same words on one's lips, with the undying burning of one's deepest core, the inner torment and pleasure of the lining of one's soul. His eyes, which had once seen men's faces and women's bodies and the streets of bustling cities and the multihued flare of kings' banners and the sheen of sweat on horses' haunches and the saliva spooling from the jowls of panting dogs, now saw only the unbroken, incomprehensible mundanity of pure, beauteous nature. He who had heard the whispers of lovers and the gruff rapport of business partners and the strident tones of a general's command and the screams of children beneath the horrific clamor of booted feet and unsheathed swords, flashing in the brightness that had once been sunlight, now heard only the tide. There was nothing else to occupy the senses, for there was nothing else in life but the sea and the sky and the rivers. The world had died in apocalypse itself, and been rebirthed in the ever-lusterful swaddling of desperate prophecy and deity's regrets. The air that had once been thick with noise and dust and disease and laughter and change now hung in stillness and perfect clarity that could have no antecedent and no scion.
The love that had once given substance to the air was centuries lost; now it was so thin as to never be breathable, never intended for human consumption. What could have been drowned in was now forgotten, buried under the eerie sheen of the meteor that hung in the air, one figure perched atop it: a tree. The Great Tree, the World Tree, the bearer of the memories of all that had existed before Time. before Time and after Time—what was the difference? There had been footprints, but they were long washed out by the tide. There had been clouds and blood and typhonic entropy. Now there was eternity—and even that word no longer existed, for outside of time there can be no proportion. there can be no understanding of passage, no apprehension of movement, no clarity of gradience, no cognizance of nuance. There can be no build and no death. At the moment when every wave marries itself to the thick wet white grit of the seashore, there is an identical breaker rearing its curling, arching mane to the stars.
And yet the Tree, and the Man, live on. They will not die. They cannot die, outside of Time. The Tree existed before Time, and saw all, and was thus outside of Time and could not be ravaged by time and its happenings. It was the Man who discovered the true secret: to survive Time is to escape it. To remain unfolded by the unstoppable entity that shapes universes to its will is to remain unbowed by epitomized creation and destruction itself. To live through is to live on. To die, to dream, to drown, is to fail. to change is to surrender to the unrelenting ebb of Time. But to live is to conquer for all of existence. To survive is to exist is to die is the be immortal.
The stars have no major qualms about the shape and history of the shadows they cast.
And the tree is. And the man lives on, perfectly dead.
Was it possible one still lived? That under the starry dome of the world, in the vast swaths of silence unplumbed by the green and blue whorls of brinèd chaos, there might yet dwell, in the hovelish ruins of the Old Cities, a lamp-lighter who amy yet breathe, may still have eyes to behold the glories of the reborn lands? Was it possible that it was not only the faerie children who danced in the gleaming streams, not only the treefolk who sang to the stars in the perpetuity of unpollutable nights?
Nay, and yes—for he was an Archaia, a man who had learnt the manner of living forever. He sat alone in his tent of broken obsidian, and though he could no longer remember the art of making a fire in wood or coals, nor the manner of consuming food that was good for the body, nor the words to speak prayers to render the soul secure,he remembered the undreamable intricacies of the Knowledge. He recalled the thoughts that one must keep forever in the forefront of one's mind, the measure with which one must count one's steps, the iron tenacity with which one must hold one's will steady.
He no longer remembered what it was to be human—
He knew only what it was like to live forever, with the same songs in one's head, with the same words on one's lips, with the undying burning of one's deepest core, the inner torment and pleasure of the lining of one's soul. His eyes, which had once seen men's faces and women's bodies and the streets of bustling cities and the multihued flare of kings' banners and the sheen of sweat on horses' haunches and the saliva spooling from the jowls of panting dogs, now saw only the unbroken, incomprehensible mundanity of pure, beauteous nature. He who had heard the whispers of lovers and the gruff rapport of business partners and the strident tones of a general's command and the screams of children beneath the horrific clamor of booted feet and unsheathed swords, flashing in the brightness that had once been sunlight, now heard only the tide. There was nothing else to occupy the senses, for there was nothing else in life but the sea and the sky and the rivers. The world had died in apocalypse itself, and been rebirthed in the ever-lusterful swaddling of desperate prophecy and deity's regrets. The air that had once been thick with noise and dust and disease and laughter and change now hung in stillness and perfect clarity that could have no antecedent and no scion.
The love that had once given substance to the air was centuries lost; now it was so thin as to never be breathable, never intended for human consumption. What could have been drowned in was now forgotten, buried under the eerie sheen of the meteor that hung in the air, one figure perched atop it: a tree. The Great Tree, the World Tree, the bearer of the memories of all that had existed before Time. before Time and after Time—what was the difference? There had been footprints, but they were long washed out by the tide. There had been clouds and blood and typhonic entropy. Now there was eternity—and even that word no longer existed, for outside of time there can be no proportion. there can be no understanding of passage, no apprehension of movement, no clarity of gradience, no cognizance of nuance. There can be no build and no death. At the moment when every wave marries itself to the thick wet white grit of the seashore, there is an identical breaker rearing its curling, arching mane to the stars.
And yet the Tree, and the Man, live on. They will not die. They cannot die, outside of Time. The Tree existed before Time, and saw all, and was thus outside of Time and could not be ravaged by time and its happenings. It was the Man who discovered the true secret: to survive Time is to escape it. To remain unfolded by the unstoppable entity that shapes universes to its will is to remain unbowed by epitomized creation and destruction itself. To live through is to live on. To die, to dream, to drown, is to fail. to change is to surrender to the unrelenting ebb of Time. But to live is to conquer for all of existence. To survive is to exist is to die is the be immortal.
The stars have no major qualms about the shape and history of the shadows they cast.
And the tree is. And the man lives on, perfectly dead.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
{I've been talking a lot more like Frank lately. He would be so proud.}
I noticed earlier this week that I have recently begun prefacing a lot of sentences with the word "frankly.". Frankly (like just there. Didn't even realize it was done until I typed it.) it's a word I have always disliked. There's nothing pretty about it, and it's not really the kind of inaesthetic word that is okay because it's descrbing something nasty. It's just not a likable word. "Candidly" is much nicer.
Using "frankly" so often has led me to feel like something of a more vindictive person. As if I judge things more often (and always feel the need to somehow ameliorate my harshness by prefacing it with word that says "Hey, I'm telling the truth, so get over it, because it's straight-up fact." (Which, actually, is usually true, because my sentences usually, rather amusingly, start with "Frankly, I think…" So it could go either way.)
But my real question is, is Frank really the one I want to be paying homage to? I need truth but not snarlinginyourfaceblunt. Even if I'm only talking to myself, because…frankly…it sort of freaks me out, just a little. I like being non-confrontational, and most of the things i preface with "frankly" can be very unnecessarily confrontational, if I actually said them to someone's face. Does that just mean I'm not really that bold of a person, either?
Friday, September 23, 2011
new space efficiency and reversion to the dandelion background!
Bam. Thanks to the assistance of the lovely Tori, I now have enabled the mobile version of my blog (I got really tired of trying to navigate the web version when I tried to update it on my iPod touch). Misfortunately I can't enable my über background and fonts (hence, this post title), but it's still, eh, AWESOME.
I'm really uncharacteristically excited about this.
So, those of you with iPhones, you are now obligated to give me feedback! Muaha. (Ha.)
Thank you, and goodnight.
I'm really uncharacteristically excited about this.
So, those of you with iPhones, you are now obligated to give me feedback! Muaha. (Ha.)
Thank you, and goodnight.
Carried along
Sometimes music confuses me. Not the way people make it, or what's inside it, but the way we listen to it. Especially the way we listen to music we love. The way we bend it to ourselves, and our self to it at the same time.
There are some songs where I just listen and marvel at the beauty or the creativity, or feel mildly depressed that I (however possible or impossible it may be) didn't come up with it first, or enjoy their capacity to make me smile every time. There are songs that move me to worship.
Then there are songs that, when I listen to them, I think "If one could drown in a song—physically drown—this would be a glorious way to go." They're the songs that can make a daydream feel like it lasts a week, or insomnia feel like an inamorato; the songs that you turn up to eardrum-splintering volume or put on repeat all night. (I do, at least.) When I listen to these, it's like I am simultaneously trying to awaken part of myself and kill part of myself. What are the chances that that's actually healthy? Probably not all that high, at least in frequent doses.
There are some songs where I just listen and marvel at the beauty or the creativity, or feel mildly depressed that I (however possible or impossible it may be) didn't come up with it first, or enjoy their capacity to make me smile every time. There are songs that move me to worship.
Then there are songs that, when I listen to them, I think "If one could drown in a song—physically drown—this would be a glorious way to go." They're the songs that can make a daydream feel like it lasts a week, or insomnia feel like an inamorato; the songs that you turn up to eardrum-splintering volume or put on repeat all night. (I do, at least.) When I listen to these, it's like I am simultaneously trying to awaken part of myself and kill part of myself. What are the chances that that's actually healthy? Probably not all that high, at least in frequent doses.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
A Playlist for Change (Summer 2011)
Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are as you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye
The people were overjoyed, they took to their boats
I thought it less like a lake, and more like a moat
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood-lands to your door
Has been silenced forevermore
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no—
I need you so much closer
With the mention of Derbyshire, there were many ideas connected. It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its owner. "But surely," said she, "I may enter his country with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me."
The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at Longbourn.
…The Gardiners staid only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth.
Dreams come clever, hearts now severed
Difference of forever
And I'm lost there
I finally found that life goes on without you
And the world still turns when you're not around
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are as you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye
The people were overjoyed, they took to their boats
I thought it less like a lake, and more like a moat
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood-lands to your door
Has been silenced forevermore
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no—
I need you so much closer
I woke up and wished that I was dead, with an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you'd gone
And let the world spin madly on
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tumnus."
"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tumnus," said Lucy.
"And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve," said the Faun, "how you have come into Narnia?"
"Narnia? What's that?" said Lucy.
"This is Narnia," said the Faun, "where we are now: all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle Cair Paravel on the eastern sea. And you – you have come from the wild woods of the west?"
"I – I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room," said Lucy.
"Ah!" said the Faun in a rather melancholy voice. "If only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I would no doubt know all about those strange countries. It is too late now."
"But they're not countries at all," said Lucy, almost laughing. "It's only just back there – at least – I'm not sure. It is summer there."
"Meanwhile," said Mr. Tumnus, "it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"
Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to existence
The tension is here, the tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be
Am I losing my mind?
Vacuumed every room for the second time today
You can't go through your life without killing something or someone at one time
Losing touch with everything that I like, keeping busy day and night
Am I farsighted or just blind
It was right there in front of me, but the whole time
I swear I saw nothing wrong; I swear I saw nothing wrong at all
The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at Longbourn.
…The Gardiners staid only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth.
Dreams come clever, hearts now severed
Difference of forever
And I'm lost there
I finally found that life goes on without you
And the world still turns when you're not around
I would find a different way to go
There's no signs in life to guide you on that road
And if it's the most important thing you say, make sure they understand
Every way you wonder if you're wrong…
Inaccurate and imprecise, there is no gift without a price
It's lonely out in space on such a timeless flight
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
'Til touchdown brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think i am at home, oh no no no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone
Yo, el otona
Yo, el vespero
He sido un eco.
Sere ina ola
Sere la luna
He sido todo, soy yo.
Yo, el verano
Yo, al ebano
Soy la sonadora.
Past is past, you never really gave it a shot
To survive with your one last shot in the dark
And if your conscience weighs a little heavy tonight
Maybe you'll find that
Empty boxes on the stairs remind you that there's no one there
Is it everything you thought it would be?
Can you tell I'm not myself
I'm a slow-motion accident
Lost in coffee rings and fingerprints
I don't want to feel anything, but I do
I want to change the world
Instead I sleep
I want to believe in more than you and me
All that I know is I'm breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
All we can do is keep breathing—now
And so it is, just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is: the shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her skies
I said, "My pretty Creole girl, me money here's no good.
If it weren't for alligators, I sleep out in the wood."
"You're welcome here kind stranger;
our house, it's very plain.
But we never turn a stranger out from the lakes of Ponchartrain."
I need a heart that carries on through the pain
When the walls start collapsing again
Give a soul that never ceases to follow
Despite the infection within
I'm waking up now in this empty house
Doing my best to keep my comments down to a minimum
But it's just so hard to bite my tongue
I'm waking up now and its just so loud
'Cause everyone here loves somebody else
And somehow I always seem to get left out
Trees fall, and so do men
Even the walls start caving in
And you feel like there's no pretend for you
CREDITS: (yes, these are all links)
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Lots of sentences that start with grumpy "I want"s. …Sorry.
So, it's only nine days into the semester and I already want it to be over.
I want to take classes that I like with professors that don't intimidate me out of my skin. I want more sleep (right this minute). I want to not be stressed out all the time. I really want to not be such a procrastinator. I want to be a better studier. I want to be articulate in conversations with people I respect but don't know well. I want to really buckle down this weekend and NFTBA. I want to have healthy eating habits. I want to not get sick to my stomach. I want to be better at replying to people's messages in a timely fashion. I want to learn to take experienced people's advice (e.g., implement it, not just say, "What a good idea!" and forget about it). I want French to make as much sense when I'm doing the homework as it did in class. I want to know how to use a graphing calculator. I want my woefully limited time to not be running away from me faster than I can figure out how to keep up. I want to not feel guilty for opting not to murder myself with a ridiculously packed workload like some other honors students I know. I want to not have to rely on the Internet for a third of my GPA. I want to sit down somewhere and have a good cry and a cup of tea and then go accomplish Things. I want my friends all to live nearby and be tangibly huggable. I want to not have overdue library books that I didn't even get to finish. I want to be motivated to seek God, every day, above all else. I want to be consistent about praying for the people I promised to.
(I want to find better ways to get my point across when I'm depressed than using the semi-dubious syntax of most of the above sentences.)
I want to have ONE GOOD DAY (at minimum.) instead of days that are purely drab, or days that start well and go sour, or days that start sour and take until evening to cheer up, or days that are just awkward as heck. I'm still waiting for one. I haven't had one in some time (meaning, months. I'm pretty sure. I think there's a Switchfoot song about this).
I want to take classes that I like with professors that don't intimidate me out of my skin. I want more sleep (right this minute). I want to not be stressed out all the time. I really want to not be such a procrastinator. I want to be a better studier. I want to be articulate in conversations with people I respect but don't know well. I want to really buckle down this weekend and NFTBA. I want to have healthy eating habits. I want to not get sick to my stomach. I want to be better at replying to people's messages in a timely fashion. I want to learn to take experienced people's advice (e.g., implement it, not just say, "What a good idea!" and forget about it). I want French to make as much sense when I'm doing the homework as it did in class. I want to know how to use a graphing calculator. I want my woefully limited time to not be running away from me faster than I can figure out how to keep up. I want to not feel guilty for opting not to murder myself with a ridiculously packed workload like some other honors students I know. I want to not have to rely on the Internet for a third of my GPA. I want to sit down somewhere and have a good cry and a cup of tea and then go accomplish Things. I want my friends all to live nearby and be tangibly huggable. I want to not have overdue library books that I didn't even get to finish. I want to be motivated to seek God, every day, above all else. I want to be consistent about praying for the people I promised to.
(I want to find better ways to get my point across when I'm depressed than using the semi-dubious syntax of most of the above sentences.)
I want to have ONE GOOD DAY (at minimum.) instead of days that are purely drab, or days that start well and go sour, or days that start sour and take until evening to cheer up, or days that are just awkward as heck. I'm still waiting for one. I haven't had one in some time (meaning, months. I'm pretty sure. I think there's a Switchfoot song about this).
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Je vais retourner à l'école…
So, yesterday was the first day of school and it was not a fun day. I woke up with a nasty headache, couldn't load my email, almost missed my bus, had trouble with getting my financial aid to go through, and spent all day stressing out over whether I could take intermediate French (which needs to be taken, but for which I had no backup plan if it turned out to be too much for my slightly rusty français. I think it'll be okay, though. If a lo of work, but hey. I didn't really expect anything less in any case). I also somehow happened to lose my brother's $90 graphing calculator. …Brilliant.
I actually think the highlight of the day might have been sitting in math class, and maybe running into a student I knew from last winter who visited his in-laws in England over summer break. And maybe this:
Older guy on the bus, after complimenting me on my fedora: "I love fedoras. It's so great that you can buy them 2/$20 at Wal-Mart, because they're great to have on hand. Especially the pinstripe ones, because I like to match my hats with my clothes—it's classy, you know—and you never know when someone's gonna die and you'll have to wear a suit to their funeral."
Oh man. Will the bus never get old? I forgot how much "fun" it was riding it in the fall. I got so spoiled in the summer when there were only fifteen or twenty people on it at a time, instead of thirty-five or forty. And I haven't even ridden it in the morning yet. That'll really be fun.
Today's outlook is much sunnier than yesterday's, so far. I get to start my TA for English 110 today, and go to psych 270 (which actually sounds horrendously boring, and it's taught by Mr. Louisell, who directs the honors program and chairs the psych department and is rather…intimidating), but I get to see all my honors homies from last year, so i'm looking forward to that. ("Homies"? Did I just say that?) I also purchased all my textbooks yesterday, so hopefully I'm done having to stand in 40-minute lines (I had to stand in three of them yesterday. Buying textbooks online was definitely one of those things I meant to do weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle).
So, it's off into the wild yonder of breakfast and a shower and triple-checking the stuff I packed…adieu.
(I really hope this semester doesn't culminate in my posting frequent and gloomy posts about stress. Oy vey.)
I actually think the highlight of the day might have been sitting in math class, and maybe running into a student I knew from last winter who visited his in-laws in England over summer break. And maybe this:
Older guy on the bus, after complimenting me on my fedora: "I love fedoras. It's so great that you can buy them 2/$20 at Wal-Mart, because they're great to have on hand. Especially the pinstripe ones, because I like to match my hats with my clothes—it's classy, you know—and you never know when someone's gonna die and you'll have to wear a suit to their funeral."
Oh man. Will the bus never get old? I forgot how much "fun" it was riding it in the fall. I got so spoiled in the summer when there were only fifteen or twenty people on it at a time, instead of thirty-five or forty. And I haven't even ridden it in the morning yet. That'll really be fun.
Today's outlook is much sunnier than yesterday's, so far. I get to start my TA for English 110 today, and go to psych 270 (which actually sounds horrendously boring, and it's taught by Mr. Louisell, who directs the honors program and chairs the psych department and is rather…intimidating), but I get to see all my honors homies from last year, so i'm looking forward to that. ("Homies"? Did I just say that?) I also purchased all my textbooks yesterday, so hopefully I'm done having to stand in 40-minute lines (I had to stand in three of them yesterday. Buying textbooks online was definitely one of those things I meant to do weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle).
So, it's off into the wild yonder of breakfast and a shower and triple-checking the stuff I packed…adieu.
(I really hope this semester doesn't culminate in my posting frequent and gloomy posts about stress. Oy vey.)
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Excerpt from "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan
When I am consumed by my problems—stressed out about my life, my family, and my job—I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God's command to always rejoice. In other words, that I have a "right" to disobey God because of the magnitude of my responsibilities.
WORRY implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.
STRESS says that the things we are involved in are enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace towards others, or our tight grip of control.
Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional. Both worry and stress reek of arrogance. They declare our tendency to forget that we've been forgiven, that our lives here ate brief, that we are headed to a place where we won't be lonely, afraid, or hurt ever again, and that in the context of God's strength, our problems are small, indeed.
Why are we so quick to forget God? Who do we think we are?
…
Frankly, you need to get over yourself. It might sound harsh, but that's seriously what [God being the center of everything] means.
…
To be brutally honest, it doesn't really matter what place you find yourself in right now. Your part is to bring Him glory…The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His. It is His movie, His world, His gift.
(pp. 41-42, 44-45)
WORRY implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.
STRESS says that the things we are involved in are enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace towards others, or our tight grip of control.
Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional. Both worry and stress reek of arrogance. They declare our tendency to forget that we've been forgiven, that our lives here ate brief, that we are headed to a place where we won't be lonely, afraid, or hurt ever again, and that in the context of God's strength, our problems are small, indeed.
Why are we so quick to forget God? Who do we think we are?
…
Frankly, you need to get over yourself. It might sound harsh, but that's seriously what [God being the center of everything] means.
…
To be brutally honest, it doesn't really matter what place you find yourself in right now. Your part is to bring Him glory…The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His. It is His movie, His world, His gift.
(pp. 41-42, 44-45)
Monday, September 5, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
On the Coexistence of Awesome and Suck
(With both "awesome" and "suck" being nouns in this context.)
So often we tend to think of "my life is good" and "this is the dregs of my coffee cup of life right now" to be a dichotomy—two states of being that are diametrically opposed. You're either in mostly good circumstances or you're in mostly bad circumstances. Or at least I often think that way, probably because a lot of artists tend to juxtapose them in popular worship songs. But I've been thinking today—there are some circumstances in my life right now which are definitely adding to World Suck, in both minor and major ways. But there are also ways in which God just keeps showing up, proving that He's good, loving, faithful, a good listener, sovereign…yes, all the time. For example, my home life is on a roller coaster with a very high nausea rating right now, but I'm getting two years of free college tuition.…I'm stressed beyond reason about these intermediate French classes I have to take, but I've suddenly started sleeping better than I have all year.… I might not have any idea how I'm going to finish a novel by the end of the year, but I'm no longer catatonically depressed about it.…Facing the labyrinth of choices I'm going to have to make in the next two-ish years literally makes me sick to my stomach, but I'm getting it really hammered into my head for the first time that I can trust my friends to love me even if I'm not perfect. My life has nadirs and zeniths dwelling side by side, and it always will (if not to this degree all the time).
…Yes, my second thought after all this was, "Well, duh." But I think we can tend to dwell on one or the other most of the time, so it's nice to have it out of my blind spot for a few hours.
I tend to be an optimist in the short term and a pessimist in the long term (e.g., I think human culture as a whole is undergoing steady entropy, but I tend to be hopeful and "look on the bright side" regarding things that happen in my life and the lives of people I know). Comes with the Christianity, I suppose. (Fallen world / sovereign God. Also not really a dichotomy.)
…I have no succinct or revelatory ending for this post. That's pretty much all I have to say.
So often we tend to think of "my life is good" and "this is the dregs of my coffee cup of life right now" to be a dichotomy—two states of being that are diametrically opposed. You're either in mostly good circumstances or you're in mostly bad circumstances. Or at least I often think that way, probably because a lot of artists tend to juxtapose them in popular worship songs. But I've been thinking today—there are some circumstances in my life right now which are definitely adding to World Suck, in both minor and major ways. But there are also ways in which God just keeps showing up, proving that He's good, loving, faithful, a good listener, sovereign…yes, all the time. For example, my home life is on a roller coaster with a very high nausea rating right now, but I'm getting two years of free college tuition.…I'm stressed beyond reason about these intermediate French classes I have to take, but I've suddenly started sleeping better than I have all year.… I might not have any idea how I'm going to finish a novel by the end of the year, but I'm no longer catatonically depressed about it.…Facing the labyrinth of choices I'm going to have to make in the next two-ish years literally makes me sick to my stomach, but I'm getting it really hammered into my head for the first time that I can trust my friends to love me even if I'm not perfect. My life has nadirs and zeniths dwelling side by side, and it always will (if not to this degree all the time).
…Yes, my second thought after all this was, "Well, duh." But I think we can tend to dwell on one or the other most of the time, so it's nice to have it out of my blind spot for a few hours.
I tend to be an optimist in the short term and a pessimist in the long term (e.g., I think human culture as a whole is undergoing steady entropy, but I tend to be hopeful and "look on the bright side" regarding things that happen in my life and the lives of people I know). Comes with the Christianity, I suppose. (Fallen world / sovereign God. Also not really a dichotomy.)
…I have no succinct or revelatory ending for this post. That's pretty much all I have to say.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Frustrations of a Night Owl
You know, I actually have a surprising capacity to be productive (tangibly as well as mentally) at 1:30 a.m. The problem is, I live in a culture where I'm more or less expected to (once in possession of a career, anyway) start being productive at around 9 a.m. (pre-afternoon, my productiveness capacity is at maybe 8%, possibly as high as 30% if augmented by Extremely Imminent Deadlines), and being tangibly productive in the middle of the night would be labeled workaholism. (My current status as a college student, I am sure, exempts me from that latter point for the interim.) This is land of the coffee gods and the home of the morning people. (See, the reasons I should move to Europe someday just keep compounding.)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
On the Possession of (Mostly Fictional) Books
It's funny; I used to be the type of person who never purchased books.
I didn't see the point in spending money on something that's going to last me half an afternoon—a whole day, or two, if I was unusually lucky—and might never reread. But in the last several months, that's started changing. Oh, I wouldn't buy books on a whim, and I still much prefer to read them for free (via the four libraries to which I have cards, plus the heavensent MeLCat interlibrary loan).
Yet there are books I would buy (some of which I already have bought) in a heartbeat if I could afford them—Tolkien's works, for example, which I will probably never stop adulating until I die—and most of C. S. Lewis' works, Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, Tosca Lee's books, Francine Rivers' Mark of the Lion trilogy and Redeeming Love, Karen Hancock's The Light of Eidon, and L. B. Graham's The Binding of the Blade series. And there are some books that I don't know if, no matter how many times I've read them already, I'd really reread them once I owned them (weird phenomenon that's happened to me before), but they're so beautifully written and I loved them so the first time through that it feels like a crime not to own them, like Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, The Books of Pellinor series by Alison Croggon, and Meredith Ann Pierce's Darkangel trilogy. Then there are the books, like Castle In the Attic and my Black Stallion novels, that I already own and reread even long after I've outgrown them, because it's almost as much paper nostalgia as my own childhood journals. Then there's books I ended up with and have utter intention of reading eventually, such as Julius Caesar (by Shakespeare) or The Once and Future King; and the books I have read and can't recall a word of, like The War of the Worlds. And the books that I cried over the first time I read them, but have not reread since purchasing, such as Memoirs of a Geisha. And then there are books that I feel like I ought to own because they're classics, but I have only marginal interest in actually reading. And there's books that I may not have even read all the way through, but am somehow convinced that owning them adds somehow to my quality of life, like my four anthologies of Irish myths, or my three-inch thick "concise" French-English dictionary. And the books I didn't realize I'd outgrown until I spent money on them, like the Dragonspell series. And the book series that were really good when you bought the first books, but now that the last book is out, you realize you don't really care about the plot anymore but you feel like you should buy it so you'll own the complete series (Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle). And the books that looked good in Barnes & Noble yet turned out to be worth about as much effort as it would take to throw them off a cliff, like The Summer King by O. R. Melling.
It's funny (again) that, unlike many people with whom I've chatted, going to college has not made me sick of reading; it's made me want to really know what I'm reading.
I didn't see the point in spending money on something that's going to last me half an afternoon—a whole day, or two, if I was unusually lucky—and might never reread. But in the last several months, that's started changing. Oh, I wouldn't buy books on a whim, and I still much prefer to read them for free (via the four libraries to which I have cards, plus the heavensent MeLCat interlibrary loan).
Yet there are books I would buy (some of which I already have bought) in a heartbeat if I could afford them—Tolkien's works, for example, which I will probably never stop adulating until I die—and most of C. S. Lewis' works, Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, Tosca Lee's books, Francine Rivers' Mark of the Lion trilogy and Redeeming Love, Karen Hancock's The Light of Eidon, and L. B. Graham's The Binding of the Blade series. And there are some books that I don't know if, no matter how many times I've read them already, I'd really reread them once I owned them (weird phenomenon that's happened to me before), but they're so beautifully written and I loved them so the first time through that it feels like a crime not to own them, like Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, The Books of Pellinor series by Alison Croggon, and Meredith Ann Pierce's Darkangel trilogy. Then there are the books, like Castle In the Attic and my Black Stallion novels, that I already own and reread even long after I've outgrown them, because it's almost as much paper nostalgia as my own childhood journals. Then there's books I ended up with and have utter intention of reading eventually, such as Julius Caesar (by Shakespeare) or The Once and Future King; and the books I have read and can't recall a word of, like The War of the Worlds. And the books that I cried over the first time I read them, but have not reread since purchasing, such as Memoirs of a Geisha. And then there are books that I feel like I ought to own because they're classics, but I have only marginal interest in actually reading. And there's books that I may not have even read all the way through, but am somehow convinced that owning them adds somehow to my quality of life, like my four anthologies of Irish myths, or my three-inch thick "concise" French-English dictionary. And the books I didn't realize I'd outgrown until I spent money on them, like the Dragonspell series. And the book series that were really good when you bought the first books, but now that the last book is out, you realize you don't really care about the plot anymore but you feel like you should buy it so you'll own the complete series (Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle). And the books that looked good in Barnes & Noble yet turned out to be worth about as much effort as it would take to throw them off a cliff, like The Summer King by O. R. Melling.
It's funny (again) that, unlike many people with whom I've chatted, going to college has not made me sick of reading; it's made me want to really know what I'm reading.
End of August…WHAT.
So, there have been a dozen or so blog posts floating around in my brain for the last two weeks or so, but I have been too tired/lazy/sick/far away from a halfway decent Internet connection to actually commit them to the blogosphere. My apologies. I have plans to update this soon. ("Soon" being a relative term which here may mean anywhere between "later this afternoon" and "next Monday".)
I have five days left before I start classes again *sigh*. My two weeks "off" are flying by with the sort of speed that makes me want to curl up in a corner and cry until the laws of physics are emotionally moved enough to alter themselves and spontaneously generate a few more hours (or days?) for me. So much to do, not as much time as would be highly preferable. Oy vey…
In other news, I want to do a virtual happy dance with two of my friends (you know who you are! Or at least one of you does!) because their sheer adorableness makes me happy.
I have five days left before I start classes again *sigh*. My two weeks "off" are flying by with the sort of speed that makes me want to curl up in a corner and cry until the laws of physics are emotionally moved enough to alter themselves and spontaneously generate a few more hours (or days?) for me. So much to do, not as much time as would be highly preferable. Oy vey…
In other news, I want to do a virtual happy dance with two of my friends (you know who you are! Or at least one of you does!) because their sheer adorableness makes me happy.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Say hey to more weddings, eh?
I went to the U.P. for my cousin's wedding this weekend. That was completely super. It was a sort of deep, incongruous experience, because this particular cousin has never previously either a) held a serious conversation with me, or b) hugged me, both of which happened on Saturday. (Well, a didn't really happen, because I barely saw him, but it didn't happen in reverse, which is new.) I saw a whole new side of my cousin, and it was sort of amazing, in a great way. (Shout-out to all my relatives who started reading my blog while I was up there this weekend. Haha. Hello, there! :)
*Obligatory extra paragraph for my grandmother. Love you! Am I correct in inferring that you like mushroom pizza? That's great, because as far as I know, we two are the only people I know who like it. Also, hurrah for dessert options!*
Weddings are the best, and by golly, I've been going to a lot of them this summer. Three already gone and one, possibly two, more yet to go. Weddings always turn on the faucet in my brain that thinks about the future. I wind up investing several hours of deep thought into ideas and plans for my own wedding—assuming it will someday happen—and, this time, perhaps because this wedding was full of family members, my siblings' weddings (Weird thoughts, especially since it's going to to be some time before any of them get married. So I presume). I even got somewhat teary-eyed, which is an interesting rarity for me. Considering how emotional I tend to be, one would think I'd cry more at these sorts of events, but I don't. I just marvel. And dance a lot.
*Obligatory extra paragraph for my grandmother. Love you! Am I correct in inferring that you like mushroom pizza? That's great, because as far as I know, we two are the only people I know who like it. Also, hurrah for dessert options!*
Weddings are the best, and by golly, I've been going to a lot of them this summer. Three already gone and one, possibly two, more yet to go. Weddings always turn on the faucet in my brain that thinks about the future. I wind up investing several hours of deep thought into ideas and plans for my own wedding—assuming it will someday happen—and, this time, perhaps because this wedding was full of family members, my siblings' weddings (Weird thoughts, especially since it's going to to be some time before any of them get married. So I presume). I even got somewhat teary-eyed, which is an interesting rarity for me. Considering how emotional I tend to be, one would think I'd cry more at these sorts of events, but I don't. I just marvel. And dance a lot.
Friday, August 5, 2011
I'd like to teach the world to smell like strawberries…
 |
| the one on the far left makes me think a bit of marshmallows, which are another yummy, albeit human, invention. |
And—mon mot—have you sniffed one recently? or even better, a full punnet? I am convinced that one of God's most wonderlous gifts to humanity is the smell of ripe strawberries. (Their genus name in Latin, on the authority of Wikipedia, is Fragraia.) I wish I could get this into a Google picture, but I doubt it would produce quite the desired effect. And they're quite sweetly aesthetic, too. I think I'd like to grow strawberries someday (you can grow them as potted plants, and not just beds). 
Oy, I haven't had strawberries in a couple of months, and a craving is coming on right about now…
Also, this is one of the best things I have ever seen:
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
End result
Humans throughout history have had varied and notoriously weird takes on death. Today's been rather full of it, in ways. This morning I was reading C. S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, which is the published edition of the journals he wrote after the early death of his wife from cancer. And then one of our hamsters died this afternoon (Requiescat in pace, Charley Pattertwig) and we held a funeral, and we watched an episode of the Cosby Show in which Rudy's goldfish dies, and my anthropology professor was talking about these royal tombs he helped excavate a few years ago in South America.
So it got me to wondering (as if my day wasn't already morbid enough) why people do the things they do to dead bodies. I mean, physically disposing of remains makes sense. But then people hold funerals. And I don't see anything wrong with funerals at all, but they are kind of curious phenomena to me. What real purpose do they serve? It's strange that everyone has something for which they want to be remembered, as if the being remembered was the important thing. It's odd that people imagine a graveside is the somehow the best or the most appropriate place to do that remembering.
And why do people wish to be buried with things? Especially all of those ancient royal families. Clearly they believed in an afterlife, or else they wouldn't have taken civilizations' worth of wealth and thousand of fellow human beings literally to their graves with them. It's odd that everyone thought the afterlife, whatever it be, would be stratified the same way as this life. Nobody ever wondered if they might come into the afterlife the same way as this life—that is, out of a womb and absolutely penniless? That somehow material objects transcended some cosmic boundary, even though obviously people's bodies didn't. If I were dying, and I believed I was going to an afterlife very similar to the present, would I be afraid to die alone? Probably. So, why did they slaughter hundreds of servants and cattle to take with them, instead of a family member (that probably would have gone over poorly) or a lover (that might not have been the reputation they wanted to wake up with, I suppose)? And if I were a servant in this life and my dying king had me executed five minutes post his death, so I could share his large and dank and expensive tomb, what would I do if I did wake up "on the other side"? I would run, that's what.
It boggles me, frankly, to think about how very different people's minds actually worked pre-Renaissance, in societies where independence wasn't taught and pursued as a crucial goal of someone's life. "The divine right of kings" really meant something transcendent to people, and people used it in ways that weren't necessarily meant to get people to respect "the Lord's anointed".
Death is something people have never understood, and do not understand, and never will. Obviously, I have beliefs about death, but I still "know" next to nothing about it, aside from the purely corporeal aspects, and even modern science has raging debates over that. Death is a bizarre phenomenon, which makes sense, considering it wasn't meant to be at all. I don't know where this post is going/has gone. It's just something I've been thinking about today. Eh.
So it got me to wondering (as if my day wasn't already morbid enough) why people do the things they do to dead bodies. I mean, physically disposing of remains makes sense. But then people hold funerals. And I don't see anything wrong with funerals at all, but they are kind of curious phenomena to me. What real purpose do they serve? It's strange that everyone has something for which they want to be remembered, as if the being remembered was the important thing. It's odd that people imagine a graveside is the somehow the best or the most appropriate place to do that remembering.
And why do people wish to be buried with things? Especially all of those ancient royal families. Clearly they believed in an afterlife, or else they wouldn't have taken civilizations' worth of wealth and thousand of fellow human beings literally to their graves with them. It's odd that everyone thought the afterlife, whatever it be, would be stratified the same way as this life. Nobody ever wondered if they might come into the afterlife the same way as this life—that is, out of a womb and absolutely penniless? That somehow material objects transcended some cosmic boundary, even though obviously people's bodies didn't. If I were dying, and I believed I was going to an afterlife very similar to the present, would I be afraid to die alone? Probably. So, why did they slaughter hundreds of servants and cattle to take with them, instead of a family member (that probably would have gone over poorly) or a lover (that might not have been the reputation they wanted to wake up with, I suppose)? And if I were a servant in this life and my dying king had me executed five minutes post his death, so I could share his large and dank and expensive tomb, what would I do if I did wake up "on the other side"? I would run, that's what.
It boggles me, frankly, to think about how very different people's minds actually worked pre-Renaissance, in societies where independence wasn't taught and pursued as a crucial goal of someone's life. "The divine right of kings" really meant something transcendent to people, and people used it in ways that weren't necessarily meant to get people to respect "the Lord's anointed".
Death is something people have never understood, and do not understand, and never will. Obviously, I have beliefs about death, but I still "know" next to nothing about it, aside from the purely corporeal aspects, and even modern science has raging debates over that. Death is a bizarre phenomenon, which makes sense, considering it wasn't meant to be at all. I don't know where this post is going/has gone. It's just something I've been thinking about today. Eh.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
A figuratively true story:
The weary girl looked her demons in the face with new boldness of true and firm knowledge.
"You cannot have me," she avowed.
Thunder rolled in over the mountain; rain slashed through the sky and drenched her diminutive form, rode the air she breathed and tried to drown her from the inside out, as the darkness had done for so long before.
But the girl raised her voice, and her heavy fists, and veritably roared at them, defying them as she ought to have done sooner. "You cannot have me! There is no authority left unclaimed here for you!" She might have been weeping, or sobbing, but one could not tell against the rain.
"My Lover has paid the price for me. Did you see him? I know you did; what he gave ripped the world in two and stitched it back together again. He paid my ransom with his own life, and it matters not that you did not get to keep him. The price has been paid, and you cannot have me."
She spoke words of her Father, repeated the words he had said to her, and to people who had come ages before her. The dark ones recognized the illocution and fell back in a fury that mangled their forms beyond recognition, screaming as loudly as the storm. Still she pressed against them with words she knew to be true.
Finally the girl whispered once more, and her voice, always soft, still rang through to their ears, burning them as surely as if she was breathing fire.
She lit a single guttering match in the rain and burned their names from her book, every one.
"You cannot have me."
The young woman turned away from them, turned her back on the mountains and the demons, and went back to her house on the hill, the house she had been given by her Father where she dwelled with her Lover, and settled back into bed. A lullaby of safety and amazement stoppered her ears against the rain, and the arms of her Lover, when she had called his name, shielded her from the demons who might have dared to follow—thus untroubled she slept at last.
"You cannot have me," she avowed.
Thunder rolled in over the mountain; rain slashed through the sky and drenched her diminutive form, rode the air she breathed and tried to drown her from the inside out, as the darkness had done for so long before.
But the girl raised her voice, and her heavy fists, and veritably roared at them, defying them as she ought to have done sooner. "You cannot have me! There is no authority left unclaimed here for you!" She might have been weeping, or sobbing, but one could not tell against the rain.
"My Lover has paid the price for me. Did you see him? I know you did; what he gave ripped the world in two and stitched it back together again. He paid my ransom with his own life, and it matters not that you did not get to keep him. The price has been paid, and you cannot have me."
She spoke words of her Father, repeated the words he had said to her, and to people who had come ages before her. The dark ones recognized the illocution and fell back in a fury that mangled their forms beyond recognition, screaming as loudly as the storm. Still she pressed against them with words she knew to be true.
Finally the girl whispered once more, and her voice, always soft, still rang through to their ears, burning them as surely as if she was breathing fire.
She lit a single guttering match in the rain and burned their names from her book, every one.
"You cannot have me."
The young woman turned away from them, turned her back on the mountains and the demons, and went back to her house on the hill, the house she had been given by her Father where she dwelled with her Lover, and settled back into bed. A lullaby of safety and amazement stoppered her ears against the rain, and the arms of her Lover, when she had called his name, shielded her from the demons who might have dared to follow—thus untroubled she slept at last.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
What Lucy Found There
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tumnus."
"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr Tumnus," said Lucy.
"And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve," said Mr Tumnus, "how you have come into Narnia?"
"Narnia? What's that?" said Lucy.
"This is the land of Narnia," said the Faun, "where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea. And you - you have come from the wild woods of the west?"
"I - I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room," said Lucy.
"Ah!" said Mr Tumnus in a rather melancholy voice, "if only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries. It is too late now."
"But they aren't countries at all," said Lucy, almost laughing. "It's only just back there - at least - I'm not sure. It is summer there."
"Meanwhile," said Mr Tumnus, "it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"
That is, of course, the sort of opening snapshot of Narnia, from C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This passage has in my mind quite a bit over the last week or so. I'm not truly sure why.
There's so much change and choice and possibility in this little scene.
I wonder which of it is mine?
"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr Tumnus," said Lucy.
"And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve," said Mr Tumnus, "how you have come into Narnia?"
"Narnia? What's that?" said Lucy.
"This is the land of Narnia," said the Faun, "where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the eastern sea. And you - you have come from the wild woods of the west?"
"I - I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room," said Lucy.
"Ah!" said Mr Tumnus in a rather melancholy voice, "if only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries. It is too late now."
"But they aren't countries at all," said Lucy, almost laughing. "It's only just back there - at least - I'm not sure. It is summer there."
"Meanwhile," said Mr Tumnus, "it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"
———————
That is, of course, the sort of opening snapshot of Narnia, from C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This passage has in my mind quite a bit over the last week or so. I'm not truly sure why.
There's so much change and choice and possibility in this little scene.
I wonder which of it is mine?
Saturday, July 16, 2011
"I took from me pocket ten sovereigns bright…"
God is sovereign. All the time.
And I had kind of a revelation about that tonight (while at WorshipArts camp worship night, you guys rock, by the way).
When things are really hard, and it feels like half of my life is completely falling apart, I've always been fairly capable of saying (most of the time, at least) that God is sovereign—that He sees me, that He knows where this is going. It's easier to trust when I can't see a week ahead of me. But He's not just sovereign in the lows, He is sovereign in the highs, too.
Whoa. Way to overlook the flip side of the shiny coin, Kiersten.
When things are going fantastically, when all the pieces fit together, when the sun is shining and I'm getting at least seven hours of sleep every night, God is still in control. He still knows where things are going. I don't have to carry the torch alone. My effort isn't going to necessarily win or lose me the day. God is in control, even then. And frankly, I don't think about that much. When it's out of my hands, it's relatively easy to put it all into His hands. But when I've worked hard and things are going swell? Then it's all on my shoulders. Then it's all my responsibility to keep it going. But that's just not true. God demands just as much of my trust when I'm on solid ground as when it feels like I'm falling.
God is sovereign. All the time. It is never, ever out of His hands. He can juggle most anything, good as well as bad.
(Unrelated aside: the title is from Irish folk song "The Wild Rover." First thing that popped into my head for a title. Also, it was featured in one of the Bloody Jack books. I freaked out when I saw it: "I OWN THAT SONG! HA!")
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
I found my long-lost first attempt at a novel…the one I wrote when I was twelve.
It's like a 53,000-word ode to melodrama and fantasy clichés in prose form.
Complete, of course, with a partial Elvish/unicorn dictionary, complete character glossary and pronunciation guide, “A Comprehensive Guide To All the Fantastical Creatures”, six pages of prophetic poetry in ancient Elvish which has no translation, a calendar, elvish numerical system, the complete lineage of 1500 years’ worth of centaur queens (even though only one was ever referenced in the story), and an episode of American Idol.
Reading it now, it's kind of half excited nostalgia and half "I'm-going-to-go-jump-off-a-cliff-and-never-come-back."
Complete, of course, with a partial Elvish/unicorn dictionary, complete character glossary and pronunciation guide, “A Comprehensive Guide To All the Fantastical Creatures”, six pages of prophetic poetry in ancient Elvish which has no translation, a calendar, elvish numerical system, the complete lineage of 1500 years’ worth of centaur queens (even though only one was ever referenced in the story), and an episode of American Idol.
Reading it now, it's kind of half excited nostalgia and half "I'm-going-to-go-jump-off-a-cliff-and-never-come-back."
The Field Sobriety Test
I'm trying so hard right now, and I think I'm doing some things right, and I'm definitely doing a couple of things wrong, and there are a great many more things that I have no idea how they ought to be done or whether I'm putting my feet right at all. And it hurts—so very much sometimes.
A whole lot of things hurt right now that seem like they ought not to.
A whole lot of things hurt right now that seem like they ought not to.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Group presentation in nine and a half hours. Really praying I don't freeze up (like I did in our practice run-through) or go over the time limit (which I am historically prone to do) or that our PowerPoint doesn't screw up (which also happened in our practice run-through, and has happened to me in past presentations). Also praying my groupmates do great as well.
Because, by golly, we worked hard on this.
Prayer and practice and sleep. —Serve me well.
I will be so relieved to have this class over with after tomorrow.
Because, by golly, we worked hard on this.
Prayer and practice and sleep. —Serve me well.
I will be so relieved to have this class over with after tomorrow.
I am so blessed.
I'm not exactly sure how many readers of this blog know what's going on in my life right now. To those who do, this might seem like a weird sentiment. Aside form all the normal stresses of shyness and school and uncertainty and major decisions, my home life has gotten fairly screwed over in the last couple of weeks.
But I have never felt so loved in my whole life. I mean it.
In the last week I've gotten three Facebook messages out of the blue from people whom I know don't know what's going on with me, just saying "Hey, I've been thinking about you and praying for you, and you're amazing and I love you". And I've gotten several calls and emails—and hugs and prayers—from people who do know what's going on.
People are taking time for me. Even just a few minutes, but they're taking time for me. And for once, I don't feel guilty about it. I feel utterly awed. God's reshaping the weird mentalities I've had about myself and my relationships with others for as long as I remember—like He promised me He would.
I am so goshdarned blessed. God loves me so much. It literally floored me earlier—I couldn't even stand upright, I was so amazed and humbled by all the ways He keeps finding to show me I'm loved and favored, even though a lot of things are emotionally and circumstantially really sucky right now.
So—I love you guys. Thanks for being my friends, and sticking by me, and taking time for me. You're awesome, and I wouldn't be here without you.
"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." – James 1:17
Saturday, June 18, 2011
I'm going to a wedding for two awesome church folks this evening. It'll be pretty sweet. I bought them a crème brûlée torch as a wedding present, about which I'm sort of excited. How often do you have the opportunity to buy someone a crème brûlée torch? They also had a mortar and pestle on their gift registry, but someone had already purchased that. Rare that you get the chance to buy someone one of those, either.
I LOVE WEDDINGS. Aaah!
I LOVE WEDDINGS. Aaah!
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
A Good Man Goes To War
Too much Doctor Who is Time Lord.
Steven Moffat is bloody crazy, and it's amazing.
Steven Moffat is bloody crazy, and it's amazing.
Four a.m. again—oy vey.
Three nights in a row now, there is too much stuff stewing in my brain to let me sleep. All my thoughts are engaged in a redundant, unending steeplechase, and the end result is the worst insomnia I have had in ages. It is amazing how long a night can be when your mind can't wander. Give me something simple to think about, please.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Behind the trend as always…
Kiersten’s Ultimate Accomplishments of Awesome list 2011
– updated and revised –
Bold = comments related to accomplishing,
Italics = revisions & associated comments,
- Finish (writing) at least one novel. Working on it as always, not as diligently as I would like. (Also: see item 77.)
- Witness to somebody.
- Come up with a system to start memorizing Bible verses.
- Read the Bible regularly. Partially done! At least…I’ve been doing it fairly consistently for the last two weeks or so.
- Befriend S______ more successfully than I did in 2010.
- Put music to some of my poetry. Partially done. Possibly accomplished, period.
- Actually give birthday gifts to non-family people.
- Finish learning the basics of playing guitar.
- Read three more of C.S. lewis’ books. Partially done—I read The Abolition of Man on May 11th, and just checked out The Dark Tower & Other Stories from the library.
- Learn to practice good time management (Omission: “at least 70% of the time”. No good way to quantify this.)
- Grow my hair back (out). More or less done: I grew back all the short bits I hid under hats, then cut the rest of it. But I am pretty content with where it’s at right now and where it will be going at its current rate.
- Exercise regularly. I need accountability, or a good system. This is far too vague.
- Finish Anna Karenina. Partially done. Leo Tolstoy, though, requires a lot more diligence than I have to spare at present.
- Acquire a sonic screwdriver.
- Acquire a Hadhafang replica, if I can find one at a reasonable price.
- Start being consistent about intercessory prayer.
- Grow closer to my family. I feel like I am definitely making progress here.
- [Possibly] investigate learning to play the violin. I definitely want to make this happen someday, but I don’t think I could handle it right now.
- Memorize my phone number. Accomplished! Sometime in February.
- Start overcoming my phone fears.
- Figure out where I stand on dating, for me personally, at this point in my life. Is this even a possibility? I am open to this not happening like I was expecting it to possibly happen. You would think being asked out would have fixed this, but no. Though considering my most recent post…oi.
- Learn how to ride a bike.
- Acquire a bamboo plant. Accomplished! Christmas Day, 2010.
- Come up with meaningful things to blog about. Sort of Accomplished—Done, but the actual bloggage of most of those things has not happened.
- Sleep. Accomplished! I can’t believe I’m actually getting more sleep, on the whole, as a college student than I did as a high school student.
- Reread The Lord of the Rings in a month or less.
- Reread The Silmarillion.
- Have consistent pen pals (e.g., be consistent about writing letters back to anyone who writes letters to me. and vice versa).
- Draw (not just doodle) more than once a month. This may undergo revisions at a later date.
- Manage to read something (unabridged) by Charles Dickens. Partially done: I am on my way through Bleak House.
- Finish Romeo and Juliet. I am okay with this not happening. I might do it, but I already know the story and I don’t really like it, so why bother?
- Read Hamlet and Macbeth. (Revision: “either/or”. Likely won’t be both.) Though I am taking a class on Shakespeare in the fall. We’ll see how this fares against that.
- Watch Disney’s Snow White. Accomplished! I don’t remember the precise date, but I wrote a Facebook status about it. I think it was in March.
- Get to know some of the people at C & C [Dwell]. Partially done!
- Get in the habit of tithing (at least, once I have any income).
- Read The Phantom Tollbooth.
- Do something genuinely crazy (but not utterly pointless, life-threatening, or illegal). This may also undergo revision or omission at a later date, as it is rather vague.
- Take my driver’s test, pass it, and get my license.
- Buy shoes that fit.
- Be bold. Partially done.
- Buy new flavors of tea. Accomplished! Blueberry (yum), wild cherry (horrendous), mint verbena (haven’t tried it yet).
- Name my laptop. Accomplished! My MacBook is now Asfaloth, and my hard drive is Glorfindel. (Bonus awesome points to you if you get that without Googling.)
- Name the dancing monkey on my laptop.
- Name my teapot. Accomplished! Well, my sister named it for me: Clive Staples.
- Acquire some pragmatism to balance out my excessive idealism. Far too vague. Also, I am second-guessing whether I really want to do this, and whether I can without becoming outright cynical.
- Practice writing concisely so I can do so when necessary. Accomplished! (But not “done”.)
- Overcome my fear of overhead showers. Who cares? It occurs to me now that I was okay when I had to use one in El Salvador for two weeks.
- Get my Technician and Demolitionist awards on Star Wars Battlefront II. Accomplished! In mid-January and early March, respectively. Yay nerdiness!
- Write out a thorough and/intelligent explanation of why I dislike Twilight. This is a dead horse; I’ll stop beating it.
- Consider what I might do after graduating KVCC. Accomplished! But not done. There will be much more consideration and prayer on this topic over the next year and a half!
- Fast something (besides books and food) for a month.
- See Glowfriends in concert, if possible. Accomplished! May 26th, with Hannah, and it was fantastic.
- Attend at least one epically awesome rock concert with friends.
- Get drunk in the Holy Spirit more than once. Accomplished! But also not done. :)
- Learn six new long words and use them in everyday conversation. Partially done!
- Brush up on my French. This may be accomplished or deleted in the very near future, depending on whether I try to test out of it so I can take more math courses…ugh.
- Develop an appreciation for a genre of music I currently dislike. Partially done.
- Organize my room and keep it at least relatively clean.
- Write about the random stuff I research on a whim. Partially done—handy topics for school projects, these turn out to be.
- Read The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Accomplished! Not the whole book, but I’ve browsed it quite a bit and might buy a copy.
- Develop an appreciation for more spicy food. Partially done. Banana peppers, mmm. Also, Asian pork with bamboo.
- Do laundry more regularly. (Revision: this means I need less clothing.)
- Finish reading A Room With a View. Accomplished! Some Sunday in late March.
- Spread the word “über” beyond my church family.
- Acquire at least three more awesome hats. Accomplished! Christmas Day 2010, March 8th/May 27th 2011. I have a shocking nine more hats in my retinue.
- Write letters to at least eight people telling them what I appreciate about them. (Revision: five people.)
- Refine my Jamaican accent. Accomplished! I don’t know if it actually is, but this is fairly difficult to qualify. Nobody tells me it sounds Italian anymore, at least.
- Speak in a foreign accent for one full day every month. (Revision: I didn’t do it for the first five months, so I’ve technically failed. I would still like to do it at least once.)
- Help spread accomplishment in the important life skill of giving Good Hugs. Most people seem to be fine with hugs as are. I suppose this one was a bit presumptuous.
- Find someone with whom to have deep and pointless theoretical conversations.
- Acquire at least two sundresses. Partially done—I purchased one at Goodwill a couple of weeks hence.
- Create and DM (run) one Dungeons & Dragons campaign. (Revision: “campaign or adventure”.)
- Learn to juggle.
Additions as of January 1st:
74 a. Get down to business to defeat the Huns.
b. Possibly with a wonderfully choreographed musical number.
I have no idea how to go about doing this, but it sounds like an awful lot of fun.
New addition[s]:
75. Acquire a legal source of income. (To random readers who don’t know me—this would be a change from no source of income at all, not a change from a illegal source of income, ha.)
76. Take the initiative to stay in touch with/do fun stuff with awesome people over the summer and beyond.
77. Complete NaNoWriMo.
78. Do a smashing job as Mr. Keller’s ENG 110 TA in the fall.
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