Cold

Tonight I'm going to go sit outside in what will probably be 20 degree weather (if not colder) and sing under bright cold stars and be cold and talk about things that encourage and inspire me with people who do the same.

But we'll sleep indoors. Which will be good.

Fate (or less ominous stuff)

I have been ordered to post and, even though I'm a hyprocrite, I am nothing if not obedient. *looks around warily*

I have been missing the blog, anyway, and decided it was time to come back. And some things are too long for comments and inspire post ideas themselves and I talk too much as it is, so it's all inevitable, you see. Like Fate.

*ahem*

So...summer's over and the stores are full of Back-to-School spirit... Just kidding. I am pretty bad about living up to what I say I'll do, partially because I'm bad about decisions and settling things in my own mind. One thing I've noticed this plainer and much-more-muted fall than last year's is that the energy expended in great emotional proclamations and hopes and promises can be used in actually accomplishing some of those things. A lot of things I realized last fall were good. Wonderful, really. But there was also a very rampant tendency to glory in the emotion of a lot of good things and lose sight of actually putting a lot of the original intentions and ideas into practice.

It has been hard to realize that some of my thinking last year really didn't make a lot of sense and was pretty overblown and unfounded. I'm not talking here about my beliefs about Christianity, except in the way I was pretty dead-set on God reacting to me. I was thinking about it today and some of the struggles that have consumed me over the past several years, how it became a recurring frustration to me at some of the worst times that I felt I was not seeing an issue right and yet I was not seeing an alternative--and it occured to me perhaps I was doing something I know very well is foolish for a human to do when dealing with God. Expecting him to deal with me on my terms.

At one point I had got so entrenched in an internal debate over how to obey certain passages--and had got myself so backed into a very difficult corner with my logic--and kept backing myself in further--that I began to feel frustrated that God was leaving me pretty much to handle the situation all on my own, to figure out the answer (the alternative I believed existed but couldn't see) or stay backed in this horrible corner.

I don't know what God does behind the scenes. I don't know how he helps, or chooses not to, according to his own wisdom, when we pray for wisdom, strength, a way out--any of it.

But the thought that began to gnaw on me was I was a weak human being with an obviously imperfect brain. What if I wasn't smart enough to get myself out of this? Would God leave me, sincere, pushing myself to sacrifice as deeply as necessary, maybe even as possible--and do nothing? Just break and maim my life over an honest but wrong understanding? It was very -- infuriating. I am not sure this is the right way to say it and I don't mean this to get sympathy, but it felt -- like I was being hurt. Destroyed.

I was doing the destroying, because I could see no other way, and was trying in the way I knew to be honest and self-sacrificing, but I knew it couldn't be the right way, and God wasn't getting me out of it.

'Course, this wasn't actually the whole picture. I had started resisting an important point along the way--the point that made me struggle to be self-sacrificing to begin with. And that's that the world is God's and that even in our struggles with truth where we pick the wrong thing, if we submit in humble sincerity, we are reformed by those choices into humbler, better things.

I knew that, but the struggle was getting very hard. I still don't know for sure what I should have done. I am still uneasy in some of my choices, in how I am moving away from the thinking that lead me into that dark corner.

This was not supposed to be so long and I was not going to talk about all this. See where opening up the blog again gets me. ;) I can't seem to help myself.

Anyway, the point of that line of thought was--actually good. Yes. The realization that I have been expecting for a long time for God to react to me on my terms.

Maybe the world isn't how I think it should be. Maybe God doesn't reveal things and our brains learn things the way I want them to. But it's the world, all the same. I didn't make it, I don't run it. And maybe it's better to deal with it as is--take a few steps back and turn a few circles to get new perspectives when I find mine blanking into a stone wall. Maybe when I do, I'll find out how God really talks. And find some knowledge about how the world really is, for a change, 'stead of how I want it to be.

It was a good thing to realize today--a point of change, I think and hope. Of progress, even if not the enveloping, emotional, dramatic kind. A rather small-looking correction in dusty, gray logic. I'm beginning to notice those are the kinds that tend to be the actual bigger, broader-reaching changes in my life. How annoying.

long time, no post

I have been thinking about what I want to do with this blog--or that I want to sit down and figure out what I want to do with this blog. And, in the meantime, the summer's moving on.

I will at least go ahead and admit defeat and the obvious: no more blogging this summer. I will try to make up my mind what I'm doing come fall. In the meantime, happy summer.

Horrible and/or Funny

I ran over a squirrel on my bike yesterday. It was funny and horrible all at once. ...Mostly funny. Horribly funny, maybe. I suppose the most accurate explanation would be it was hilarious to me (he was okay), but there was a pedestrian near-by (one I had been trying to avoid hitting; thereby precipitating the hitting of the squirrel) and I thought maybe I should pause and show some concern for the poor creature instead of just riding on.

Which I really didn't mean to hit; I just thought he would move, but the poor thing panicked, I guess, and went right under my front wheel--making a little chittering/squeaking sound as he went under--and right up a tree a little behind me beside the trail. And then he was obviously fine so I just wanted to completely crack up. But there was the pedestrian jogging along a little behind me now; hence the slowing and demonstrating that I really had been concerned for the squirrel (I just knew he was okay already). Silliness, I'm fairly sure.

'Minds me of some commenting on another blog a few weeks back about finding the humor in the painful things in life; or the relationship between painful things and funny. Does this qualify? The squirrel would probably not appreciate my sense of humor on this.

Whew

Writing all that down (last post) made me feel better. So I thought I'd also write that in the last few days I have been reminded what a wonderful sister I have. She is beautiful. (I meant inside, although also on the outside, but she's also taken, so...Sorry. Actually, they both are, but I was thinking of my older sister.)

Ahem. She called me two days ago and left a voicemail asking about a song she heard on the radio and thought I might know...but all that's beside the point. The point is, when we did talk, I was reminded and it was reimpressed on me what a beautiful, wise, practical spirit she has--how she faces life and deals with it. I love her attitude and am proud to realize how good an attitude it is; what she's dealt with in life and how she's grown through it.

I remember when we were kids and she was the 'rebel' (of the two of us) and I was the 'obedient' one. I'm not sure anymore we're actually all that different--in a lot of our attitudes and personality--but we do seem to have opposite approaches to life--she's always been more willing to take action and be brave and I've always been more intent on obeying and thinking about things. Am I right? (She reads this blog sometimes; she can contradict me. But I think I'm right.)

I'm just glad to have her. Even if our conversations these days are sometimes few and far between, I'm glad to realize how good and loving and determined she is about life--how she is a lot of the things I've been reaching for in my own life; it's good to remember again I'm not the only one. That in fact many people desire and struggle for good things. (And all people desire them.)

If you read this :P
So there.
I love you.

A post -- Mostly confusion

[withdrawn while i think about how much of this is whining or just not particularly well thought-out, therefore, accurate. :) my apologies.]

Grrr

I really do have like five posts sitting on this thing in draft form (no joke) and I keep trying to post them but I keep changing my mind because I'm not satisfied with them. And, plus, I have this searing headache that won't go away. Feel my pain and shut up. Or...just feel it. So I don't have to. Durn headache.

(I'm really not in a bad mood; I just wanted to post and since those other five won't cooperate, I thought I'd post anyway, because like I said, after all, I want to.

Oh, well.)

Some People Can Be Such Jerks

Some people, they get engaged, they think they don't have to blog anymore. I mean, like it's a choice!? She says this is not one of her longer pauses and that I should read up on history, but it's history I'm looking at! We all know What Happened to Deva. (She got married.)

And, honestly, what's this crap about reading your blog's history? You think I get on here to read or something? I mean, you wanna talk about losers...

I believe congratulations are in order.

I Love The Sound of A Good Keyboard in the Morning...

There is nothing quite like the sound of the computer art lab (or, for that matter, some of my livelier classes): happy, noisy, goofy. I love it. After a couple of frustrating semesters batting around here, it's been an unexpected surprise to have it suddenly feel like home this year.

becoming seen

There have been so many things happening the last few weeks; some of it's been hard, yes, but the last few days especially just a lotta good, good things starting to 'become seen' to me--in me, in others--in 'real life', I guess. All the things I ever heard or thought about (over and over, I'd warrant, for most of it) but I guess never got to see in real life; or didn't understand it when I did see it. There's so much I want to write about, but I'm also trying desperately to catch up in all my classes and hopefully NOT fail any of them. But for now, at least, I will just leave you with the very good words of a friend of mine: "God makes the world stand still so that our hearts have the chance to catch up, to completely take in the glorious power and majesty of it all."

Yeah. I need that a lot right now. There's so much to take in. It's really too much. I need a chance to slow down, and steep a little while. Bout one more month and this crazy semester will end and then maybe I'll get a proper chance. 'Hold on if you feel like letting go.' Yeah. :) Whew. Am I ever ready for summer. :)

Takes my pain away

"Anyone can see my every flaw
It isn't hard.
Anyone can say they're above this all.
but it takes my pain away."

Yup. But it isn't as bad as I thought.

I think I'm glad I don't have to watch my own back all the time, after all. It's kind of hard. It's kind of impossible.

"I don't feel the way I've ever felt.
I know.
I'm gonna smile and not get worried.
I try but it shows."

God's pretty amazing. That's all.

But now I see -

"but maybe you have more grace in you than I gave you credit for." Yup. I'm glad.

The Hairy Eyeball

I don't know if this is original to my family or not, but my dad has a unique expression for the squinty-eyed glare people get sometimes when they're angry or suspicious. You know, the "you're going to pay for that" look. Kinda like what Clint Eastwood does sometimes in his movies, though maybe that was just all that dust in his eyes.

Yeah, my dad calls that the hairy eyeball. (You know--'cos of your eyelashes.)

I have fairly long lashes, but they go from brown to blond pretty quick, so about half of them aren't visible without mascara. Even when I put mascara on, I rarely like to darken them all the way.

Today I did, for fun, and you know what? The only thing scarier than the hairy eyeball is the mascarily hairy eyeball.

The Right and Wrong of It

The inside of my head--in all its 'right and wrong -hood glory'--is as valuable as all the outside I've been ignoring or misunderstanding all these years. (As if I've got it all straight now.) I don't mean that it is true because I believed it; that 'my' truth is not 'your' truth, though maybe not everyone has meant what I thought they meant by that phrase. I mean it was truly a part of my mind...therefore it had a real effect on me. It is truly who I was. Truly a part of me.

...And always will be. (Though I trust/intend the wrong-hood part to continue more and more in a 'how NOT to think' vein...You know the whole "I serve as an example to society of what NOT to do" joke? Yeah.)

Denying all that--all that I've thought and been and did--is as stupid as denying the history and minds and lives outside my own, which is what I've been doing, unconsciously and otherwise...for quite a while now...in some ways, I think, my whole life. Like trying to deny World War I to the world. It's just stupid. And means coming up with some pretty ridiculous and far-fetched theories to explain all that war...stuff.

We all do stupid things. The point is when we learn better to get up and do what we can to do better. I have finally understood what my mom and dad have been trying to tell me for years (well, one thing): There is no shame in being wrong. The shame is in refusing to live by what you really think. [edit] --To live honestly is a better way to put it, I think--mind, heart, will, body--the whole package. Doing the best you can with what you've got.

I'm not claiming total ignorance (or innocence) for all my mistakes, but I am starting to believe that things done in honest ignorance are still at least...honest. If you're doing the best you can, what more can you do?

I mean, really? What else is there?

What's left?

More and more I think I'm starting to get what Jesus was talking about when he said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains." (John 9:41)

My Difference

There is a wasteland of difference between where I am now and where I was back then. Even if I see now that things really are the same, that I am still who I always was and so is everybody else--that we really are all still people and this really is all still the real world-- even if all this is so, I can't deny the difference. I can't deny the wasteland.

And why have to? Why pretend none of this in-between never happened? Because it did, too--just as real in its way (even in its 'abnormal' and distorted thinking, forcing the world into distorted shapes and wrong thinking) as all the 'outside' reality of the outside world and other people's minds and thoughts--the shared 'collective' thinking of a whole race of humanity whose strength is not just in our individual thinking but in our willingness to share our thinking, and lean on each others' now and then, when our own gets tired or is showing itself faulty or just, yeah...tired. They're not that different, really.

And after all what's the point of a blind spot if you can...see it? Duh. That's what other humans are for, right?

*sigh.* Okay...

Big Head

The needle hurts, but it drains the pus and the swelling will go down in a few days. Good thing I'm not a balloon!

*little stars*

I just had a brilliant thought. I am okay.

That "am" needs little stars, but on the other hand it would look stupid. Oh well.



I *am*...!

Wow...

Thank God

Thank God for people in the world who think like me. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I mean, I am just glad to know there are some.

:)

*Sigh*

My head hurts. Urg.

I've got homework to do, but I also ought to go eat something; now, before class.

Funness With My Brain

[look at the post below this one if you are confused]

Although, now that I think about it, I think a lot of those different "sometime" views of the universe (me, the world, etc) are actually true; I'm just not seeing the whole of any of them and most I see more like quick, dramatic sketches which really means exaggerated; caricatures. Which means they sometimes seem to contradict each other, even though it's really that I just haven't had/taken the time to let them sift down into my brain, or tried to see them better--both, really. And the thing about letting things sift down--both trying to ink the bold and general and sketchy and also giving yourself time (life; classes; work; cafeteria food; ad "boring," "mundane" life; ad whatever) to let it sift down and shift around and make more sense; give yourself time to understand it better (even just get more comfortable with it)--is that...uh...what was the beginning of this sentence? Heh; hang on...The thing about letting things sift down is that...they sift down. And stuff. I guess I meant the apparent contradictions eventually un-contradict themselves. Yeah.

I talk in run-ons. You don't have to read. :)

I thought I had one more thing to say but I've forgotten it since. Oh, well. This was fun.

"sometimes"

Sometimes when I write, and sometimes when I talk, and sometimes when I think, and sometimes, a little bit, when I listen (I don't do that one much)--and sometimes, when I sit outside in the evening air and rising dark, my life seems to make sense, or almost does. Most of the rest of the time it tends to be muddled--or get that way really fast. Yeah, I feel like I've got mud on the inside of my head.

...Although now that I think about it, those sometimes are maybe a...lot of the time? I'm not sure. I just tend to feel so widely different even from one type of sometimes to the next, that it makes me very confused and the muddled times a lot stronger. I think I've got about maybe ten too many different "sometimes" going around in my head. (Okay, maybe 20 million.)

Did that make sense to anybody else?

.
.
Okay, probably not.

Big Day

I started this yesterday. That's why it says "today" when it really means yesterday. [edit: Well, okay, Blogger insists today really is yesterday (aka I'm posting this on Thursday but it says Wednesday). Confusing... Shut up.]

Today was a big day for me. There are things in me I haven't dealt with--really "handled" in a long time. Well, maybe--ever. Not with any authenticity--the tough "grace" of being who you are and nothing more, or less, for that matter. Being ordinary.

I am still learning--some of it I used to know, some of it I can't remember one way or the other, some of it is brand new for me--I never really engaged the first time; never made the effort, both to think it through, or especially even actually try it out; experiment. Never really "engaged". If there's one thing I've learned from my sister's cat, it's that you learn faster by experimenting than by being cautious. (Yeah; jus--don't ask... :) ) 'Course, using your head saves a lot of time, too...

I don't know if I will continue to write this here or not. I don't know much of anything right now. [edit: Whoops, I repeated myself.] I am just going to try to tell the truth today, and each day, and not just to myself anymore. Until I see something better. So far this is the best thing I have ever seen. I wish I could be more, but maybe you have more grace in you than I gave you credit for.

To those of you who know me, there are things I want to say I can't say on here. Please don't think this is the last word on the subject. Come talk to me.

The Moral of Pink

DC and I both actually wore pink today, so you can all officially have heart attacks. :)

Actually, it's funny 'cos she wears pink once a week (?) or something for her club and I own two articles of pink clothing (and don't wear either), but it seemed like a bigger deal for her to wear it than it for me. Guess 'cos I have been changing my opinions of that whole range of colors over the past few months, and have even been wishing for a few more in the warmer range of things lately. Which, so far, has only resulted in my sporadic digging through my mess of clothes, looking for something that will work. At least twice during this ordeal I will run across one of the aforementioned pink articles that I don't like, stare at it dolefully, and go look somewhere else.

It did seem odd that after all my hew and cry and posturing on the subject over the past few years, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to this morning to put it on and go. I pondered this later and thought maybe the reason for the apparent contradiction in our reactions was that DC wears her weekly pink with rebellion in her heart. Whereas I have been gradually wearing more pink in my heart now for weeks.

Wow.

I'll have you know I am sacrificing my dignity in writing that sentence, all for the sake of amusing you with my sense of humor. Feel honored.

And the moral of the story is...be careful with pink. Or only wear it in your heart, instead of rebellion. Keep your rebellion in your eyes, where it's useful. "You are never fully dressed without pink." (What?? That's not how it goes...)

Uh, DC? Help me out here?

somewhere in the ordinary

It occured to me today: I am not always in a rapturous high. I am not always deeply solemn, or even achingly real, or 'true.'
I am not even always 'lyrical' or whimsical, or even funny.
Most of me lies somewhere in the ordinary.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Mac...

I'm like a mac computer; I don't get sick often, but for the sake of the people around me, maybe I should try not to carry around so many germs.

Wahah. Now you can all construct hideous stereotypes about me, just from that one statement.

Question

What does hunky dorie even mean?

Utterly Depraved vs Totally Depraved...

That was just awesome.

Even if the rest of it was slightly painful.
(If it won't let you get back to the original post, it's "Of Cows and Men".)

My Perfect Life

In the end successful lives will not belong to the people who lived well, made the right choices, the first time every time around and never messed up, got tired, or took their hearts back from God in selfishness. There are none. It will belong to those who kept getting back up, giving it one more shot at a whole-hearted living.

Playing With Words

Justice smited thee
Justice has smote thee
Justice is smitten of thee?
Justice is smoking something...?


momentous upadate: Ah HA!--Justice is smitten BY thee! Better pun. These things are important.

Happy..."Half a week"?

I've been back almost a week now; or really more like half a week, but the point being we're nearing the first weekend, and boy what a "half a week" it's been.

I mean yesterday, mostly. The days around it were fun, but yesterday--first day of class and...Sheesh. I'm just... Yeah, pretty blown away. (Yes, "whoa"; very Keanu Reeves.) The bulk of my classes are Mon/Wed, so all of them met; or "I met all of them" might be putting it a better way.

I knew someone in every. single. class. It was crazy. I don't mean I never know anyone, or that it's automatically bad when I don't. Last semester worked out pretty good... But this one's different. What I mean is I had a friend in all but one of my classes yesterday. One! And by "friend" I don't mean just "fun person I love to hang out with". We'll get to that later. No, I mean "someone I've been around long enough for that 'lived-in', used-to-eachother feeling". Some of them I don't even like!

All the time. Heh heh. (See? Gotcha. Heh eh... Ahem.)

That's very rare, and that's worth it.

Next time I'll have to tell you about the king of my classes.

New Semester

In a few short days I go back to school again. I have loved being home, but there are a few things, small or big, that I am looking forward to about going back. That is something of a new feeling for me, and I enjoy it.