:: new management ::

She teaches class the way an auctioneer sells off an estate.  There is no silence, as though silence would punish us with its presence, would take something away from us just by existing.  But sometimes silence does us good.  Sometimes it pushes us to do what we wouldn't in the noise, make us say I'm sorry in the rippling wake of angry words.  

She wrote an angry word -- no, a whole angry sentence -- on the wall of the girls' bathroom.  They closed it for the day to paint over the sentence, and I might not have thought about it again except that My Name was the noun, followed by a common state of being verb and a predicate nominative (I learned that in 7th grade English, the same year I learned how much it hurts to be called fat).  It is one thing to tell the truth, to offend with a mirror, but it's other broken glass to say: this is, when, it isn't.  Pushed into the skin and bleeding, in stillness, in any ordinary silence.  

So it's a good thing this woman isn't letting any silence in.  Good thing.  

:: too many coats for one checked bag ::

If the entire state of Michigan freezes over this weekend, I'll be fine.  I just packed a suitcase with the dead of winter in mind.

:: 100% beautiful ::

Yesterday I had the privilege of meeting Viviana, David and Veronica's brand-new daughter.  She's pretty tiny, and sleepy, but perfect for holding.  I took their wedding pictures a little less than a year ago, so it was pretty crazy to be holding the new addition to their family.  Especially since I've known David before there was ever Veronica!

But I'm so glad there's both Veronica and Viviana now, David's two beautiful ladies.  I'm so happy for you! 

I should have known chocolate chip cookies could be a spiritual experience.  I mean, they are glorious in pretty much every way.

So today, I made cookies.  Chocolate chip cookies.  They are delicious and warm right now, filling the house with that Taste of Home smell.  And I'm also sending them away, today to someone who will be more excited about me, the cookie maker, than the cookies.  I got a little teary-eyed thinking about that, about how many cookies I've sent off in cardboard boxes, to be consumed entirely out of sheer enjoyment of the cookie with very little thought to me, the one who stirred them all together.  

And I was thinking about that, getting emotional about cookies, when I realized that I do the same thing to God.  Maybe I was even doing it right then, being exceedingly pleased with the cookies without thinking about Him, the best cookie maker ever.  

So thanks for the cookies, God.  They are delicious, but mostly:

You Are.

On a bottle of pomegranate flavored Honest Ade:

"To achieve great things, two things are needed; 

a plan, and not quite enough time."

- Leonard Bernstein

:: of late ::

I feel like I've been taking alot of pictures. I also feel like I'm losing my mind. While the latter is unconfirmed, I thought I'd share some of the things I've gotten to see this past month. 

And of course my extraordinary nieces, Ellise and the Bear-bear:

Somehow just rolling down the windows and turning the music up makes the whole day smile.

It smells like formaldehyde in here
From all the preservation
Of a Death Thing I've been
Doing lately,
Which is just a waste of time
Unless it's research we're conducting,
And let me tell you
I have journals-full of theories proven:
I deserve a medal of distinction
For my study on the extinction
Of your kindness when I walk into a room.
And though I am a creature of 
The perpetual habit of caring,
I'm going with my baser instincts on this one:
It's time to leave the lab.

I just watched three cigarette-smoking teenagers fish money out of a fountain.  What kind of person steals someone else's wishes?

:: on disappointment ::

3.21.08

I am feeling largely apathetic, which is a pathetic way to approach a day.  I am in the process of being broken, bit by bit, because I'm of little use in this over-confident state.  I handle disappointments by deciding I never really wanted that in the first place.  But I know.  I know.

Mostly I want to be loved.  I am afraid of failing.  I want to go to a safer place, a place where achievement doesn't matter, where what I know doesn't make a hill's bean of difference. (that's right: hill's bean)  Mostly I want to grow down, back into childhood, back into when I didn't understand how things worked.  Now I feel like I'm in a corridor of doors, finding most of them locked -- no.  Finding that they are opening and closing constantly, allowing only some in while denying the rest, and always based on the things I try to tell myself I don't care about.  I don't really get life.  I don't.  

3.23.08

I guess the good news is, I won't be lulled to sleep by any of my life events!  But like an air raid is a sure fire bet that it won't be a boring night at home, this is no consolation.  

A part wants to just go home.  The other pushes on.

:: the good thing about wearing my heart on my sleeve ::

At least you know I have one!  (and I do, have both heart and sleeve)

:: bali morning ::

Woke up this morning and went walking on the beach.  I love it here.  I want to go buy beautiful Balinese things -- and eat.  I want to understand all of my relationships thoroughly.  I want to see my life rolled out like a scroll, and have some white-out on hand.  God, I want to choose you first.

:: indonesia ::

Ah, Indonesia, how I love your smells and abundant green grassy areas and staring people.  I am a princess here.  I forget that until I am the only white one, about one airport away from Jakarta.  Then I am crowned again and begin casting benevolent smiles all over the place, tipping my royal head to the shy brown babies who just want to touch me.

They love me.  They really love me.

:: on the road again ::

I must look honest as I have been left so far today to watch people's bags, computers, and (right now) an iPhone.  

I always say this when I'm traveling and thus must say now: I love traveling!  I love meeting people and hearing what they're going to do (one lady is headed to Singapore to set up payroll for a brand new casino; a guy who manages a Bubba Gump's on the east coast is going to Malaysia to open one there).  I love hearing languages I don't understand spoken in little waiting room bunches, mostly families, often arguing.  

The iPhone guy just came back.  He tells me I'm a novelty here because I'm in a room full of brown people (I'm in Taipei).  I hadn't noticed the staring, but in this moment they might be noticing more than my fair skin.  They might, for example, be wondering why I smell like everything the Duty Free store sells (**note to those who have traveled with me before: I just made my usual stop there for face and fragrance renewal**).  

And I would muse some more but the waiting room seats just cleared and a line appeared in front of me.  Apparently, it's time to board.  

:: something big ::

I'm at a women's retreat and she's talking about plans.  She just said the magic words: God has big plans for your life.  Word. For. Word.  And we're getting the formula right now -- quick!  Write it down!  (Why do I sound so jaded?  The answer belongs outside of these parentheses.)

I just don't think we should be the subject of that sentence.  God has great big plans.  True.  Period.  And like any cause, once you're in, it doesn't matter if you're the secretary or the right-hand-man, there is an excitement in the air.  We're part of something big!

Indeed we are.  If only we talked more about God and less about ourselves.

:: kaela ::

:: balboa park ::

The girls in my small group had spring break last month, so three of us spent a day in the park.  The following is the proof.  

:: kaela bear bear bear ::

Everything was fine with the present-opening at first....
... until it just wasn't anymore.  She was past consolation, and I can't even remember why.  But that's fine.  It was her party so, as we all know, she can cry if she wants to, cry if she... anyways.
Party?  We're there.  Birthday crowns?  We're on it.   

In what was a smashing success of a 1st birthday, Kaela-bear is now one year old.  She can't tell you that yet, but she's working on it.  First she'll learn how to say "maahhn-dee!"  It's a matter of priorities. 

:)

I just like white better.

(that was for you, Brian)

:: extraordinary ::

Something extraordinary. She said she's waiting for me to do something extraordinary. And that's not to lay pressure on my cocoon lest my shimmery-wet beginnings get bent. No, she's just waiting by my branch for the someday emergence. Because she is so sure I'm coming out of that cocoon glorious.

And I'm terrified that after all this time I'll turn out to be a moth, whose wings are only almost pretty when they're resting (just the opposite of a butterfly that shines in its flight and folds it all up for repose). I always say -- yes, I'm teal and purple and you won't be able to imagine how fluorescent my wingspan is! But inside, when I'm going to sleep, I just wonder quietly to myself: will there ever be a coming out?

Sometimes I say stupid things. Really. Stupid. Things. They just come flying out of my mouth and I want nothing to do with them, want to yank them back into the silence of having never been said, but I can't.

And I haven't learned anything profound about this lately but am just writing because I said two Stupid Things today and can't get them back. By telling you here I have now shared a bit of the burden with you, so thanks for lightening my load. I appreciate it.

:: march and starbucks and life ::

2008. I'm used to the sound of that now and I suppose I should be considering it's been two whole months. March is just the next customer on a very busy day, with the line of months going out the door till 2012. I can see them all waiting, impatiently, to step up to the counter with their order of the usual mundane things. And maybe one or two exceptions like a tall epiphany or one venti conversation that is supposed to change the course of my life.

Looking all of them over with their no surprises and few possibilities I take my apron off: I don't want to serve them anymore.

There was a full lunar eclipse on Wednesday. There was also a giant rain cloud over my portion of the sky. I was exceedingly pleased with the rain and even skipping in it as I walked into work. (I love rain) Until I realized that the same happy rain that was misting my eyelashes was covering up my hopes to see an eclipsing moon. Blast.

And isn't that just how it happens to me. Good is a beautiful curtain in front of glorious, and once I notice this I can't even enjoy good anymore. Again, blast.

Why am I still awake? I was headed to bed an hour or more ago but restless. Wrote some emails. Checked something off my To Do list. Read a post about community and that felt like cold water in my face. Now how am I supposed to sleep?

Earlier tonight I was listening to a condensed history of missions, from the Gauls to William Carey. Something about sitting in that room makes me fill up pages in my journal -- but I'm still listening to the speaker, I promise. I multi-task. And I digress.

Anyway.

Tonight I was writing about the lost feeling I've been having and the multiplicity of answers people have given as the way to find a way again. I am afraid of most of the solutions, primarily because I'm leery of anything being offered as a "solution" to some supposed "problem." We're all about fixing things, in the most expedient way, and then driving out of the pit to reach 200 miles an hour again. But right now I don't think I want to be fixed at all. I think I just want an arm around the shoulder, or a hand on my back. And I don't want either of those to exist in connection with something I have or haven't done, or have or haven't been this past week.

(does that answer your question, Mandi? A more thorough reply is on its way...)

He never stops smiling. In fact, his smile is so perpetual as he talks that I have learned a few things about consonant pronunciation: it is possible, for example, to create the same sounds with lower lip and teeth as lower and upper lip. Like an "m." Apparently the same sound can be accomplished without a smile ever disappearing.

And the thing is, he's talking about the glory of God -- as revealed through the death of his firstborn baby boy.

Valentine's Day of my 26th year.  It has only been 20 minutes so I don't really feel like I'm in it yet.  But here it is, a day in which (apparently) women even send themselves flowers.  How pitiful we are, and I don't mean the women.   How we have made a spectacle of romance, have so charmed ourselves into believing it is the pinnacle that even those watching believe all the hype.  If that is the peak, I want a different mountain to climb.

But I do want to acknowledge the beauty of love.  I watched an old man push his grocery cart to the car today.  In the middle of his canned food and fruit was a big bundle of long-stemmed roses.  I smiled.  A teenager was picking out a teddy bear in the store, laboring over the choices (and there were plenty).  I rolled my eyes.  But I have been her.

Not this year.  No, this will not be a chocolates and hearts February 14th for me (unless someone brings theirs to share at the office).  But just because it isn't mine doesn't mean it isn't someone's.  Alot of someones'.  So to every tenderhearted woman who will be duly touched by an unspontaneous yet sincere affirmation of her value today -- to you I say: happy valentine's day.  (I hope he writes more than just his name on your card.)

I've always thought of being sick as just like being well -- only with a permit to stay in bed and read a book or watch tv all day. But the trouble with being sick is usually one or two places hurt quite alot. Like your head, not permitting you to read. Or your stomach, not allowing you to think, or really even breathe properly.

So I think we should just suffer at work when we're sick and save the staying at home for being well. It would be alot more fun that way.

:: ellise ::

My beautiful little Ellise is three today. There is a sort of sadness in that, because now bragging about her advancement will diminish slightly as it is more impressive that a two-year-old says "bushel and a peck" than a three-year-old. But. Even if she ends up to be no prodigy at all, if her development will mark the charts at about the middle, I will always be exceedingly proud of her for who she is. She is my Ellise, and she is fabulous. Happy birthday, baby!

Feeding the ducks with Lori's Andres

:: sometimes, i love today ::

I usually shift slowly, railing against change for change's sake: why must things always be new? I prefer worn-in shoes and heirlooms.

But. Today I love today, as the future mingles with the past more decisively in the form of...

a podcast.

And the gem from a podcast today, written by a painter but giving insight to writing:

"There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug." Edouard Manet

(it's his birthday today)

Jury duty: it's like all the reading community decided to sit in one big room together. Everyone's a reader here, albeit at different levels. There are a few Stephen King's and some cheap romances, which are just a breath away from the fashion magazines. Those are shiny filth. And I am, as usual, trying to glide over these to get a good view, this time on the wings of John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Virtue is its own kind of burden.

:: happy birthday to me ::

Twenty-six new ways of looking at the world.
At least, that's what I hope.
I honestly don't know that I am
Higher now than last year at this time --
It frightens me to think I might have just been
Crawling downward this whole time.
Or maybe I'm a mole and all this digging
And the darkness of my hole are what's
Supposed to be. Maybe.

:: 2007 ::

In 2007 I learned:

• When I don't know where to go, I stop moving.
• I thrive on encouragement.
• Motherhood is not a bit like aunthood, and I am only good at the latter.
• Above all I am selfish, and emotions make me more so. I am a much better friend when there are no boys around.
• Wounds heal, but sometimes they leave a scar.
  
• Decisions that I mean to last a lifetime end the day I stop choosing them.
• I can save money -- I just have to not spend it.
• Time is a faithful instructor.
• Marriage is what happens when two people spend all their time together.
• My $100 jeans are no better than my $12 ones. In fact, I think I like the cheap ones better.
  

:: christmas ::