There is a parallel life to the one I live now.
Songs take me back to my childhood and now i strive to go back to those hazy memories.
Lonestar lake, Austin City Limits, beer and pizza.
God i miss those days.
So now i'm trying to find that feeling in everyday life.
Nanci Griffiths takes me back to those summer evenings,
Tracy Chapman, Paul Simon, Mary Chapin Carpenter.
I can feel it in an old train whistle, or a frosty January night.
So now i look for someone who will go with me on this journey back to the past of a different life.
I get glimpses every once and a while.
Melancholy and wistfulness fill my body and I am transported to a parallel time, one that I cannot reach now
No matter how hard I try to get back to those days,
Or replicate them now.

“Of course he couldn’t forget! No creator can forget! If the blast-off’s successful you’re hooked, and once you’re hooked you’re inside the work as well as outside it, it’s part of you, you’re welded to it, you’re enslaved, and that’s why it’s such bloody hell when things go adrift. But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because you’re chained to the bloody thing, it’s absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess – but it’s agony, agony, agony – while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world – and that’s the creative process which so few people understand. It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope, and indescribable sort of … well, it’s love, isn’t it? There’s no other word for it. You love the work and you suffer with it and always – always – you’re slaving away against all the odds to made everything come right… Every step I take – every bit of clay I ever touch – they’re all there in the final work. If they hadn’t happened, then this” – she gestured to the sculpture – “wouldn’t exist. In fact they had to happen for the work to emerge as it is. So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears – everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”

We have adopted Christianity....

The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply the advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep, he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountaintops.
But lo! Men have become tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have build for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition.

p 51, Walden

Essences

I've been feeling a bit stifled. I forget sometimes that my personality is a valid one. My views are valid, respectable. My laugh is respectable. My personality is legitimate, no more second guessing. So I remember Lawrence Kansas.

When i need to remember myself i think of hazy lit streets late at night.
I think of harmonicas, banjos and saxophones
When I need to remember myself I hear a train whistle.
I feel a wicker basket and bisqueware
I smell rainy streets and hear thunderclaps
I wear Birkenstocks, smell weed, cigarettes.
Drink espresso and eat guacamole.
Concerts, white sundresses.....
KU basketball and
Nickel Creek and
Norah Jones and
South Park.
The essence of who I am.
For when I need to remember.

After the Storm

This is a jumbled thought, a preview to an art piece i would love to do. So it won't make sense if you are reading this....
a grief observed by C.S. Lewis
After the Storm by Mumford and Sons
A thought on grief, the transformation of a person, the loss of someone. Starting with the frozen state of refusing to accept reality, the glimpses at a pause of conscious, realizing that he must go on. Snippets. Sitting on a bed in the dark staring at a mirror. a narration, a realization of the reality of a God that is there, He has iconoclast his love, his reality is not the truth. Moving on, the romances of a good God.
After The Storm Lyrics

And after the storm,
I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.

Night has always pushed up day
You must know life to see decay
But I won't rot, I won't rot
Not this mind and not this heart,
I won't rot.

And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we lived for.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
But oh no more.
That's why I hold,
That's why I hold with all I have.
That's why I hold.

I will die alone and be left there.
Well I guess I'll just go home,
Oh God knows where.
Because death is just so full and mine so small.
Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

Back to the Book, my ideas and idols are shatttered

"Images, I must suppose, have their use of they would not have been so popular. To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the HOly easily become holy images-sacrosanct. My idea of GOd is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. " C.S. Lewis

Thank you Clive for once again setting me straight. I have this idea of who I want God to be. I have made Him out to be someone who He isn't. I have made an idol out of God; or an idol out of the God I wanted Him to be. Back to the books, my preferred ideas are shattered by the truth.

I'm going to drop out of school

What if i left school and disappeared in this?

Haircuts, Makeovers, and Hamster Wheels

Today I got my haircut, and with new bangs and two inches off it looks a bit different. I always love getting my haircut. Even when I was younger I would look up pictures and imagine myself with Mary-Kate or Jessica Alba hair. Somehow this would make me be a different person, as if sitting down in the salon chair and an hour of good smelling products (side note: my hair still smells like Aveda right now and I'm wondering how long I can go without shampooing so it stays...) would make me into a different woman, more confident maybe, but definitely more attractive.

As IF that would change me! I find myself putting this mentality into everything I do, from working out to putting on a new outfit. But after 30 minutes of plodding along on the treadmill ( i feel like a hamster, always running and never getting anywhere ) or another day of belting a cardigan and wearing a scarf, I realize the sadness of it all.

As a woman finding her faith, I realize that my identity should not be rooted in looks and magical makeovers, but in character. Please don't get me wrong, I am not getting on a soapbox and preaching to the choir, this is something that is stuffed down our throats, Proverbs 31 and on and on. So that's not my point in this post. Instead I encourage self-descriptions such as beauty, poise, and elegance to become apart of our vocabulary.

My simple call out into this cosmic void is for a re-evaluation. We are beautiful creatures created by God and admired by many.

"I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose
That blossoms in the garden of the King."
-ELSA BARKER, The Mystic Rose

So take in that confidence, but don't let it go to your head. You have a heart and mind, so use it! Looks are not everything, a character is important. Likes, dislikes, values, morals, decisions, ideas, dreams, imaginations... let your MIND have a makeover. Dream, Discover, Explore your own ideas, your own thoughts. What a beautiful time we live in. College, a time of exploring art, philosophy, science, theology. Cultivate your mind and heart, a confident woman is a beautiful thing.

And so to end this long-winded post i leave with one of my favorite quotes by Kahlil Gibran

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart”

Southern Belles and Bow-ties

This week is our Spring Break at Covenant, and my good friend Allie Dyar invited me to spend some of the week with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina. Being a Kansan girl, I relished the idea of spending some time in the "Belle and Beau"side of the South. We never had Deb balls or pearls, instead there were gravel roads leading to the end of the gray sky and farmer's markets. And after a day of 80 degree weather, bright sundresses, and southern drawl, I realize that there is something about the south I love. So, to commence the beginning of this blog, I thought i would start with a hodgepodge of ideas and words like Magnolia, Antebellum, sweet tea..... Makes you want to put the pearls on and "bless her heart" doesn't it?