two hundred. thirteen.

& I heard
"You aren't called to fully understand God. You are called to worship Him."
which made me think
perhaps I've been worrying about and mulling over the wrong bits.

then I wonder where the line is between being steadfast in your faith and being stubborn in your beliefs.
and who is too fearful to be one or the other
but sits in neutrality?

What is in front of you?
Do that.
& freedom must begin in obedience.
[at which I balk, I know.]

Here are some words that aren't mine
since mine aren't very concise:

"Reason tells me about the truth, but I really cannot grasp what it means; I can’t understand it without art. Edwards said that unless you use imagination, unless you take a truth and you image it – which of course is art – you don’t know what it means. If you cannot visualize it, you don’t have a sense of it on your heart."
[Tim Keller]

What do you think?

Grateful for the crescent moon hanging in the sky this morning as I drove off to work and the loud greetings of the birds who were far more awake than I.

Yesterday, we were inspired by the various food/farm documentaries we've been watching and books we've been reading, so we all went out and hunted down some farms in the area. Some were out of our price range but some we could afford. In a year or two, perhaps, we'll get one.
For now, it turns out the study downstairs will be *mostly* mine and I'll hole up in there to write & sew. Or we'll all gather there. Things are going so well I think it's about time to ask for a kitten again. Yes?

two hundred. twelve.

I'm bad at keeping a blog, lately.
I've been doing a bunch of outside of blog writing, which is good. Long overdue. Unfortunately it hasn't been much in the way of a finished piece, more just like a bunch of bits that might one day be unified. We'll see.

I recently read Annie Dillards book about writing, "The Writing Life." It was exquisite. I nodded along a lot. Two people have made me want to smoke cigarettes: Annie Dillard and Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf.
No, I won't be picking up the habit.
It seems such a writerly thing to do though, cooped up, malnourished and smoking cigarettes. Oh, the glamour.
Anyhow, it was a good book.

It's funny how often I neglect to lead the life I most want to. I fall short and take cheap shortcuts which bring me back even further. I'll feel fulfilled in the tasks I'm set to do and then the next day I'll be lazy and constantly find myself falling underneath my goals. It's quite frustrating. I find myself shifting blame to the cloudy sky, to my  job, cold breezes. I blame my blankets for their warmth, my eyelids for their heaviness, my lungs for their inability to keep up.
Truly, I know it's a lack of discipline. I find myself looking inwards with a snarl of loathing at the indecision that makes me paralyzed.
It's Monday, a better day, starting off this week fresh. The sun is shining and I can't blame the sky for anything.

In regards to what is urgent to write, I'm not sure this would be seen as urgent, but there is something that needs to be said on nose-picking.
This won't be the first time I've said something on the subject.
It may well be the third.
It's that important.
There is a man, we'll call him John, who sits at the coffee shop nearly every week day before he goes down and teaches in the city. He's on his laptop writing papers, grading papers, etc. He always gets a latte in an in-house cup. He is very direct in his gaze and always intentionally says thank you.
[It's a bit disarming, to be honest.]
Anyhow, John always looks as if he's about ready to dart out of his chair: elbows half perched on the table, one leg under the table and the other shifted outwards, his body at a diagonal. It's very humorous.
One interesting thing about John is his unashamed habit of picking his nose. It could be said that 80% of the time that I look over at John, he's got his finger halfway up his nostril. Now, I've always been one to say that I wish nose-picking was socially acceptable so that I could have the same casual approach of picking my nose as John does. The sad truth, however, is that it is not, and so there is a sort of horror about a man picking his nose constantly and with such a breezy attitude. It's done with the same habitual air as those who drum their fingers on the table, jiggle their knees or bite their nails (guilty).
It's one thing to pick your nose in the privacy of your car. We've all passed and smiled at those old men who absentmindedly poke around their noses at the stop light. Funny old men.
But here John is in the middle of the cafe picking his nose like a 4 year old.

two hundred. eleven.

I think of what to write and how to write it.
Where did I read to: Write what is urgent?

So I wonder what that means. 

What is urgent?

There are things that are pressing. There is a story I'm trying to finish and wishing it would just finish itself. Not all of it is urgent though. You know? Time is pressing, rather. I know you've got to just do it, just shove at the bits that aren't urgent, wrestle them around until they stay put. There's writing to be done that doesn't always feel important, but if you set feelings aside for long enough you might find there's an importance to it after all. 

Some things seem urgent in moments, but only to me.
Those moments when I say to myself
This must be written. 
Of course it's not always gold, it's often rubbish. But I have to write it out nonetheless.  

It seemed urgent to remember my dogs and their snowy faces when they came in from outside this morning, the way they shook and snuffled it all over the floor in our basement. I saw their faces and wonder how I would write it. I wondered why I would.
Stories & thoughts seem urgent at times. As soon as it happens I rush to jot it down, on napkins, on receipt paper, on coffee filters, in a notebook. The random scraps I have hanging about everywhere is appalling. My purse is always full of these bits: from work, from driving, from conversations.

Why?

The lady who came in to the coffeeshop this week, she'd had a stroke a while back and now has trouble with some words. She is the tiniest lady you'll ever see, light blue eyes that almost look blind, they look past you at times with that strange glow.
She equates size with age when ordering. That day, she ordered a caramel latte, the oldest size.
So we gave her the biggest.

There was an urgency to this moment. Her adorable giggle as she held her hand over her mouth and corrected her mistake, embarrassed at the way her brain works now.
But why?
It did seem important, in any case, and here it is, I've told you.
I wonder at journaling, at updates and the details of a life lived, and I wonder if there is/should be an urgency to that.
[Anyhow, I've been awful at journaling recently.]

What else seems urgent?
What do we neglect when it does?
I think it's telling. 

two hundred. ten.

I read something at an open mic night a while back & thought I would post it here. If you've read this blog at all some things will be a bit redundant. If you make it through to the end you should win a prize.

Here goes:

            I still long to stare at things and wonder.

I think some of my favorite things – my favorite songs, words, images – are an implication. Just a nod.

A nod in a direction, and if you tried too hard to grab on to it and bring it into the light so you could see it quite clearly, it would swiftly flee, understanding that the words that remain unsaid are powerful words. There are some things you must let others see for themselves without telling them how to see it.

My father taught me some things about seeing.

I remember the first time I saw the water as a color other than blue.

If he had handed me a canvas at any point in my life and said to me: “Paint the water.” I would have painted some blue waves, perhaps white tipped, the sea in my mind.

And he would tell me to really look.

One time I did, the time that no one told me to. I was sitting and eating ice cream on the dock. The sun was setting and there were the colors all over the water. The blue was the sky, with the pink and the orange from the sun, the green murky bits from the seaweed, the silver flash from the fish, so quick you almost thought you imagined it.

The things that surround us are anything but commonplace.

There are moments where I am overtaken by longing. There is an ache driven by yearning at the back of my throat, wishing I could open my mouth and swallow this moment whole. And I would keep it here in my chest for always. There is an ache in my fingers as if they wished I could open my hands and hold this moment, those words, that music, that sky in my hands, feel it & know it.

He is an artist and it’s the only way he can hold the sky in his hands, the only way he can know it and let it then be known. This is his reaction; this is what he does when something alters him.

You’ve heard the bit about ripples, about a drop of water causing a big reaction.

The ripples simply can’t help themselves but react.

What is created or done when you are a ripple fascinates me. I think it’s one of the most interesting parts of people – what alters them. You know? Something strikes you and you can’t help but react. It’s bigger than being grateful or angry; you’re thrown into a whirlwind of expression almost helplessly. You see or hear or experience something and you must in turn react: you must paint, dance, write, sing or create. You must go or come or stay, walk, run. Whether it is in awe or in fury, or an awful fury, or wonder, or joy, the weight is too much to sit in passive silence, to coat with weak words. No, you must answer, you must join, you find yourself altered.

      My father is an artist. As children we were all forced [against our will at times] to take his art classes. I don’t think my brother and sister minded nearly as much as I did. There was a lot I didn’t understand about drawing. My Dad would tell me to draw him. I would. I swear I would be drawing him just as he sat there with his hat on his head and his eyes down. What happened on my paper looked like a disfigured creature. I would get frustrated and begin to cry quietly out of my obsessive perfectionist nature. He would have me draw perspective drawings of shapes disappearing into the horizon line. How difficult is it to draw several squares? He always made it look so easy but I couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. The thing that stuck the most about art class were eyes. Drawing eyes, and where they were placed. I would always draw people with eyes stuck in the middle of the forehead, that’s where eyes went in my mind.

The first time Dad told me that eyes were not placed so close to the forehead line, that they were between your ears in the middle of your face, I was flabbergasted.

What?

It couldn’t be true. When I tried it out on my next drawing it was so true. I was amazed. I had never thought of eyes sitting between your ears. One day when he asks me what I’ve learned from him, I’ll tell him that. I know where to put my eyes now.

I remember possibility. Those days when I was learning how to see, every morning was full of it, days ahead stretched out with it in abundance. My parents convinced us there was nothing we couldn’t do. They were dreamers with us, just children raising children. Grabbing the future in the palms of grubby hands we could be really something extraordinary.

If you could be anything you wanted, what would it be?

We’d lay on our backs, looking up, windswept and whimsical.

It’s different now, isn’t it? As we fast forward I’m left staring at and standing with people who might not remember possibility or hope. Or it’s one of the old things they take out and look at every once in a while with a sense of loss and nostalgia. I am tethered to hope, I think, there is a thread that ties me to it. When I fall it tugs me back.

There is one girl.

She is one who looks at hope like an old thing.

Her hands are shaking as she lights another cigarette. She is dressed in her hopeful pink dress, hopeful that he would take notice this time. When she heard the violin strings she started to cry quietly, but you could tell she had to squeeze the tears out because they wouldn’t spill over by themselves.

Several heavy drags in and she begins to talk about why she still loves him.

But he doesn’t notice her dress.

He hasn’t noticed her dress for the past 7 months, ever since she told him that she loved him. He calls her twice a night to tell her about his day. Sometimes he talks about other women. She smiles with her lips pursed. It’s forced, just like her tears were.

The window is cracked and it’s cold cold cold in the car. I’m not smoking and I don’t need the window down. I clench my knees together tighter and listen more.

She shows me a poem she wrote about a dream – dreams that are fleeting and flitting. She turns on a song about getting over someone. We both know she’s not trying, though.

He’ll come around and see what he’s been missing.

It’s lonelier to long for someone who doesn’t long back. She knows that if she turned away from him she would be totally alone but so free, content maybe for the first time in a while. But she can’t do that.

She’ll wear a hopeful dress tomorrow and she’ll make sure he remembers to call his mother to wish her a happy birthday. She’ll squeeze his knee and he’ll get angry, but oh, it was just an accident.

She closes the window.

In a moment she laughs a bitter laugh, rolls it down, and lights another cigarette. By the time he does come around she’s not healthy enough to care. 

two hundred. nine.

Took Kanoa for a lovely walk today.
We got all bundled up
(well, I did)
and walked to the sledding hill and sat at the top.
Kanoa takes wide open spaces to mean reckless frolicking
so i sat on the bench and watched her
then raced her to the bottom of the hill.
She won.
Sheffield was quite distraught being left at home.
Precious.

Started ANOTHER book.
But I've put it away now, for the time being.
Just a book of essays.
So easy to just read a chapter or two.

Not very far yet into Pagan Christianity.
At times I feel vastly unprepared for topics like this & like others.
Tend to give up a little.
This time I'm trying to pair the book with similar study, like studying Acts and the early church, listening to lectures on church history, etc. That way I feel more rounded in what I learn, not just reading a book.
I'll be honest and say that it's easy for me to do a poor job of it.
I'll quit reading altogether for a week or two because I feel quite at a loss at conflicting opinions, at things I don't know.
Something to work on.
I'm not to have a spirit of fear.

A woman who gets a small latte with no lid and no sleeve sat and talked with me for a bit last week.
[Do you see what her drink says about her?
She doesn't like waste.
Usually she'll bring her own mug, but this time she forgot.]
She is the sweetest lady ever, and I'm probably not exaggerating.
She is that earth mother type, you know? A little off the wall, very peaceful, soft smiles, etc.
When I asked her if she made any New Years Resolutions she replied with: "I believe that every moment is new."
Which meant no.
We chatted some more.
I would say something
she would agree
she would say something
i would hastily nod.
Interesting how two people with vastly different belief systems can be so alike on certain things.
At one point though, I was talking about how much I loved working at the coffee shop and she said she understood. She told me about how she used to work at a coffee shop too, and loved it because of how she would see herself in others, just like how she saw herself in me.
"Namaste."
And it struck me how that was such a self-centered concept.
Even though I'll admit I'm a pretty selfish person, I can honestly say that I have never loved working at a coffee shop for that reason.
I love the people for who they are, for their angels and their demons, for lessons learned, for stories, goodness, don't I love the stories the best.
& how delightfully unique yet similar they are, sleepy persons who walk through that door.
I don't look at them to then turn inward.
There are many things that make me self-aware, conscious. You know? It imprisons you, yet of course you know because we are all caught there sometimes.
Hummm...
Not quite sure if that all makes sense.
This could miles longer, I could start talking about art & music & other things.
It just struck me, sort of. You have this idea of namaste, of bowing to the divinity in each other but it just becomes a glorification of yourself.

 Anyhow, if you've made it here, now go and read this. Thought it was interesting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?pagewanted=all
I'm off to eat some chunky monkey ice cream before heading to bed.
Hope you're sleeping tight.

two hundred. eight.

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. -Carson McCullers[This reminded me of Ireland & heaven, though I'm starting to think they might be one and the same?]
I have issues with reading several books simultaneously. 

Right now: 

I was reading Jane Eyre and The Four Loves, but then I also started to read A Moveable Feast [Hemingway] and Pagan Christianity [Viola/Barna]. 

The last two are probably taking priority right now.  

I love Hemingway, have decided I need to read more. 

I've just started Pagan today, looks fascinating. 

This was a good weekend, filled with friends and a little bit of Jameson, little bit of Steph's feet in my face, an art show, red jeans, reading, fellowship, coconut chocolate chip cliff bars and the buying of promising concert tickets. 

Fridays at work are funny [I know this is old news]

Every Friday we're used to the old & crazy, a father and son duo, though the son is more of a silent crazy.

They come in on other days too, sometimes Tuesdays. 

I bring out a sandwich to a lady sitting in one of the comfy chairs and I see their car pull in.

"They're here!" I call back to Ash.

She knows who I'm talking about and so do all of the other Friday regulars. 

"Man your battle stations!" Laughs the woman who sits in the corner and spins yarn [she really does, she brings in the whole shebang and sits and spins. She said she would teach me!]

I rush to the back and we try and get everything started before they walk in. It's usually coffee, a caramel latte, an oatmeal, a cheddar and herb bagel. 
If we don't have everything ready, they start to show an inwardly frantic impatience as they wait. They begin fidgeting. We tell them to go and have a seat but they aren't quite at ease until drinks and food sit in front of them. 
The father is known to get quite crazy, yelling and screaming, showing paintings he did to customers, spreading out sheet music everywhere (before he got kicked out of the band) telling other customers corny jokes, etc.
Today, though, he is muted, coming in and immediately showing us how he is locking his mouth up with a key and throwing it away. He does this several times. His son must have told him to pipe down (he gets quite embarrassed by the rambling and shouting his father does). 
This is a low key day. He doesn't ask me to wash his teeth. He doesn't come up and demand a cup by saying: "INEEDACUP! YOUKNOWWHATACUPIS? INEEDACUPRIGHTNOW! CUPCUPCUPCUP!" He doesn't say anything about how he was a toolmaker and he understands the pressures I go through. Almost disappointing.
When they leave, someone announces it, but not in a mean way. We enjoy their mad company. 
Any mad company, really, isn't all that bad. 

two hundred. seven.

Waking up is rough. I hate those first five minutes. Everything is unwilling. 

Even Kanoa groans about getting up. She looks so precious and sleepy. I debate between going to work and curling back up.

I find myself staring at random objects for a length of time without realizing time is passing.

Get moving.

Once I'm up it's better. 

The chilly morning air wakes me up once I step outside. 

My constant paranoia of deer keep my eyes wide open. It's true, ever since I hit that deer a few months back I feel like all of the other deer watch me. I jump and brake suddenly at signs on the side of the road. 

I might eventually go crazy. 

A sigh of relief when I arrive at work. I'm alive. Deer are alive. 

I begin the bustle of opening up. 

The first thing I notice:

Ash left her stache on our 3 hole punch. 

Second thing I notice:

Aw, Roy left us a nice note.

Lately it's been Cole Porter radio joining me in the morning. 

Pull baking, count change, evaluate numbers from the day before, pull shots, turn on signs. 

Those first shots help wake me up too. The air instantly changes. 

Mmm. 

I make a latte.

Mmm.

I eat some homemade granola.

It's the best batch yet: oats, pumpkin seeds, almonds, pecans, honey, brown sugar, cranberries, raisins, flax seeds & more goodness. I could eat it all day.

Several customers come and go. One man is always so nice, he just moved here from Montreal and is looking for a house for him and his wife. He always gets espresso [2 or 4 shots, depending] with foam on top. This is a classy staple drink. It says something about a person. 

He says "Ciao" when he leaves. I contemplate saying it back, but chicken out. 

The morning is in full swing. I catch a glimpse of the sunrise. 

I love these sunrises, though I wouldn't mind some snow.

Towards the afternoon, a delivery comes. 

Glorious! More tea! I love new tea days. They don't come often, but when they do, the aromas are intoxicating. The top right is an Irish Morning, bottom right is a Green/White tea blend, bottom left is Gojiberry Pomegranate Green with Sencha leaves and top left is a lovely new Formosa Oolong. Heaven. 

Earl Grey tea guy comes in. He still wants Earl Grey tea, no new teas for him. He smells like the man who scratches his day old beard when he's ordering, it makes a surprisingly loud noise. 

Butterscotch Caramel Latte lady comes in, she comes in pretty much every day. She didn't used to smell so much like smoke, but you can tell she's smoking more and smiling less. I wonder if the holidays were actually good as she said they were, or if like some she replies simply and vaguely at our polite queries because she has nothing positive to say. She also stares more at things, like I do in the mornings. Maybe she's just tired. 

I do a lot of speculating at our customers. 

Bible Study Friday guy, for instance, who has quite a lot to say so early in the morning. He's opinionated. He also seems to have very tight muscles because he's constantly doing lunges and stretches. He'll be talking to me, having a conversation at the horrors of materialism at Christmas and how he loves how his children took days to open up their gifts to show their appreciation for each and every one. While he's talking and sharing touching moments, he is standing with feet wide apart and leaning from side to side with his hands in the air. 

Strange.

If I am the object of a sociological experiment where people do things outside of the norm to judge the response, then yes, I find that to be a strange thing and uncomfortably flee to the back room as soon as possible to avoid another stretching session. I don't know quite what to do when he starts crouching on the floor or touching his toes. 

I suppose I could always just ask him. 

Just a plain old "What are you doing?" might do the trick. 

Maybe next time.