rosie said only with laughter can you win

"If I come without a thing then I've come with all I need."

I'm experimenting with long exposure on my lomo, and I want to capture the orange glow.

I cannot figure out how to unlock this cable release.

Also I've become fascinated with magical realism and insanity in literature. If you have title suggestions for me based on this please share.

Brother, Sister

"Because it is a negation in itself, poverty is not sought for its own sake but for what it makes possible and much easier to attain: a radical readiness, a sensitivity to what Jesus is about, a sharing with the needy, an apostolic credibility, a pilgrim witness in a world of dwindling resources."
Dubay

Take heart when the misery of life looms, dear ones, for the joy of the Lord carries more power! I can't see or stand in the presence of this, the brightest Light in all eternity. I must bow, I must kneel, I am overcome.

give me only my daily bread

Reading before I set off on a geologic adventure. Let's hear it for limestone!

"Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: 'He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.'"
II Corinthians 8:13-15

This is not the case. How about a redistribution, of sorts? First, with that real kind of raw love. There is a vision, and it must not be lost.



Praise God for my mom's healthy heart! May it not beat faster than necessary from this day onward!

I want to watercolor right now. I don't think watercoloring on rocks will work. Might it?

I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
- Thomas Merton

from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

So that Christ's power may rest on me.

I've made a waste of this morning with darjeeling and the last Gilmore Girls episode ever, segmented into five parts on YouTube. Should've read Lu Xun.

There has just been a higher than usual tea intake, lately. I s'pose my iron intake is plunging rapidly.

Yesterday yielded so much love. Also, so many words of the documented, published, and purchashed sort. Homelessness, discovering God in India, Indonesia, and Italy, also education of the Afghani-women variety.

Wherever God got the idea for these fluffy green leaves outside my bedroom window is the good place.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses...

I just now got a notice from my landlord that he needs to know by May 31st whether we are renewing our lease that ends September 1st. This makes me sad, because my roommate is moving to Chicago and I don't have another.

I know Jesus sees what it is I'll be doing come mid-August. In fact, it may involve me living in a pseudo-cabin attached to the house of some people I love. Or maybe something I can't even fathom with the information I have and people I know presently. It could even be less adventurous, like me living in my old bedroom at the house I grew up in. I do not just have to learn to be content with these things, I must learn to rejoice in them.

"O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console."

Beams, Tile, & Other Things Like White

I can't say I've ever felt so deeply connected to beams of light, old hoses on mossy concrete, and grey wool as I did today. I spent the day post-church in my parents' back porch with them. It seems best remembered in sun-washed polariods. There was the time we all ate together sitting on the floor, and the time Mom slept next to me while I talked with Dad about many things, the time Mom rose and Dad brought us a jug of water, and the time Mom and I sat on the seat and Dad on the other. Discussed: dumpster diving, Hindu religion, work, God, how and why to get up in the morning, genealogy, education, my living in that room should housing be hidden in the fall, among other topics--be sure. For the duration of these hours, the screens permitted the breeze to brush us occasion, all the while sun enveloping our shoulders.

It was surely a happy mother's day, spent with the loveliest of mothers to exist.

"For when I am weak, then I am strong."

My neighbors are grilling out on their porch indefinitely. I expect them to still be there when I crawl into my bed tonight. Mrs. Neighbor's rusty high volume pitch will coax me to sleep with the help of their good friends Pink Floyd.

In a way, it's admirable, but doesn't compare with the accidentally vegetarian potluck picnic of Spring 2007 with absolutely delightful small group girls. Oh my heart, they are the loveliest.

I have to remember batteries for Elmo tonight. His most radical audio cassette player is in dire need of power, and by no means would I ever want to squander dear Elmo's intake of anything emitted from a yellow walkman. Anna is joining me tonight at FOTV. I love company on these ventures so close to my soul, and she's good company.

I need to stop putting things off until "later," because "later" keeps stealing my memory, and I forget many things that I need to work on.

It's warm weather concert season, and though the Friday before last was decent weather, I'd venture to say that last night was a more appropriate kick-off.

Alas, all these things and all other things are of little importance. Seek God Himself, lest we marvel a little longer on the perfect notes sounding from a banjo than necessary, and forget how that banjo could ever serve purpose or to whom that banjo rings prettiest.

Awe

"You must obey God rather than man if you're in awe..."

Crayons

Tonight I walked to the library with my wet hair piled into a hat, in a paint stained shirt and a laptap crammed into my bag, and grabbed some napkins to wipe the tea off my hand that I had spilled from my leaking travel mug.

All signs point to my habits becoming increasingly messy.

Then you pick up rocks

Me, being equated to brokenness, and me being a professional in the arena of brokenness, but having connections that lift me into wholeness.

Incomplete sentences at night. Think about that next time you vote. One night spent on the corner of College and State flippin' coins with friends, eating donuts, and not recycling a lot of paper that went into the trash.

There is a difference between accidental singleness and living single purposely. I'm looking forward to becoming more intimate with God in my state of committed singleness for a bit, He's been stirring this in my heart and giving me so much joy out of it, it's beautiful. Sometimes it won't be but that's when I'll run to the mountain and rest in the hollow of His neck. So, it may be this way for life if he calls me to that. I can't wait for His Holiness to draw me even closer and whisper me truths that I'm simply not worthy of.

Also, I wasn't able to complete my reading of Camus' The Plague for tomorrow's discussion, but I've got some gaps before Geology and after Geology that I can cram it into. I need to form some thoughts and opinions about it though, and I can't cram those. I want to know this text--not consume it.

Speaking of Geology, last Friday I was waiting outside the classroom sitting on a bench, and the girl-always-in-a-hurry sat down next to me. We had a quiz to prepare for, so both of us were grazing through notes and trying to make sense of incomplete jottings when I struck up a conversation. Something about her interest in Geology. Turns out she is also girl-with-a-lot-to-say and it was exciting to talk to her. She was in this mood of blitzkreig and opinion and I was all a'peace. Needless to say it startled me that after sharing that she wanted to become a Geology professor, she said quickly, "I just want to be old and tenured and drinking at the faculty club on Thursdays," and got up and went into the classroom.

I wish I had more time to read Fromm. I took a thought holiday from writing today. I stared out my window through the six pillars of bark and the light breeze and distant trees said that I'd be better off sitting in grass reading my Fromm book.

Chris' friend Steve the Crohnie does not take 6-MP or Asacol, but jams an epi-pen type instrument into his leg several times every few months or so. I'm looking for a new physician, and may try his. I'd rather stick a needle into my leg for a couple hours every now and then than pills, pills, pills. Not to be confused with Bills, Bills, Bills, which was a Destiny's Child hit.

Oh, Matt Hamparian said this today in regards to water gun fights:
"Except water violence always gets boring so then you pick up rocks."
But things are never as funny afterward. I promptly wrote down this quote, but what I couldn't write down was the tone of his voice, the inflections, or the casual way he looked into space when he converted his weapon from harmless to capable of creating serious flesh wounds.

Oh admiration, and falling asleep...

reviving national anthems with new life and meaning

I can't stop being affected by this text long enough to write about it.

I love.

Yesterday was phenomenal. I was blessed to see Kim, Kelly, and Carl at Kent, followed shortly thereafter by Leah and Adam and later Ashley and Aaron. Not to mention I drove there with Billy and met up with Matt, Jen, Niki, and Emily.

It was practically a game, but not like silly monopoly. The game was titled: How many lovely people can you cram into a short time period? Copyright, right?

Not just those lovely people either, but the Psalters are a fair amount of lovely, and we were able to clapdance to noises of praise they created. We met so many great people at the show. Documentary man from Kent by way of Cleveland, Erin, Drew, Lindsay, Tera, ScottPsalter, and the list goes on and on. Tera needs to get her Dirty Folk Experience some recording time, or else I might be forced to learn Mandolin and recreate her pieces. Which wouldn't be so bad after all.

Could not be recreated ever.

The best of all were two boys hitchhiking to Portland. Tera had picked them up, and they got to hear about Jesus. Thank you, Holy One, for your orchestration.

Attn Carl, Sonya, Kelly, Kim, Andy, Paige, anyone who wants to come: I can't wait for family dinner. If we have it in this place I live we can invite my crazy neighbors.

Oh, my crazy neighbors. They are so good.

Pelo

I grow these on my windowsill and feed them lukewarm water.




Today I was driving home from work, and couldn't stop thinking about how useless long hair was to me, specifically in warm weather. It takes sleep away from me, makes me hot, takes up time in the morning and throughout the day, and I waste some thoughts thinking about what it's doing or what it looks like sometimes. I decided these things were of no good to me, and that it would just be best to cut a lot off. I didn't want to do it myself, as I normally cut my hair, because of the shortness desired. I've never cut that many inches off my hair, you see. Naturally, the next step was to ask my mom to do it. She did it when I was 8, why not now? I drove to my parents house and she relieved me of my burden:

(I think I must look so happy because I'm thinking of the extra bit I'll get to sleep in tomorrow, not having to dry that long mess.)

Roughly the length of my hair prior to cut:



Phew. Praise Jesus.

Also this:
True silence which is creative silence is the most demanding activity God asks of any of us. Here it is that heart and mind and will, memory, and imagination are gathered up and collected in God.
- Robert Llewelyn

I am not always on time

Among a few other more scholarly things, this week the lesson I've been so graciously taught is that getting a good night's sleep translates into being relatively able to stay awake in class. This is opposed to getting a short night's sleep and never really waking up until you climb into bed the next night. Also, Monday night I had a horrible idea inspired by the late hour it was born. The idea was to quit doing my philosophy homework in order to "sleep" for the night, and wake up earlier in the morning to do it. Turns out, when I do this, I'm actually just guaranteeing that I will complete (arguably) my work in a zombie-like state, instead of in an exhuasted state. The result is obscene and illogical documentation of inarticulate thoughts, as opposed to perhaps not fleshing coherent ideas out as well as I could have the previous late-night.

I have four papers to write for World Lit. I'd rather just sit in the class with Nina Berman all day all week and discuss things. Borges is so good... more on that later perhaps? Camus for the next bit of class time! I'm excited.