a wine glass can break into 57 pieces.
57. shards displaced in blades of grass,
on sidewalk meant for chalk and rainbows.
small, meticulously sharp.
find their way from the confines of communion
to the trenches of brokenness, of depravity, of no hope.
it is a fallen world that put the pieces there;
understanding that quietly picks them up;
and love that takes another glass from the counter-
returning it to the position of wine and bread-
blood and body.
preface.
i am no poet. sometimes i try to make small efforts to say something in a different way. this is one of those efforts:
__________
awake
closets cluttered crowd my head
with the sound of something new
these small rooms are stored
with books of history
with journals of prayer
with scrapbooks of memories
they’re opened by the song of birds who awake
with hunger and together confess their
hope and fear and need
and their longing to know
and though they may be muddled
the voice of God is present, still,
ever-nearer
Monday, August 13, 2007
When I was five-years-old I lost a doll made out of sawdust. My mom had bought it for me in the backwoods of southeast Missouri, down a dusty forgotten road from a woman who was surrounded by her dolls…all made out of sawdust. I didn’t really like the doll much; I didn’t really like dolls much at all at any time in my life. But it was expensive, and I liked it because my mom liked it and because both my sisters had one. Then I lost it. It was the first time in my life I wasn’t just missing something, but losing it: a strange mixture of embarrassment, regret, disappointment, irresponsibility, apathy.
When I was eight I left my beloved Michael Jordan wallet in a hotel room with a $5 bill proudly nestled within. His signature and the number twenty-three were signed in red on the front; a photo of Mike driving to the basket with his signature tongue and sweat resting on the left corner of his mouth was the wallet’s back decoration. A few years later I was leaning over a boardwalk in Biloxi, Mississippi. Because I was cool, a pair of flip sunglasses made popular by Dwayne Wayne on A Different World were a regular addition to my early 90s fashion. However, that day as I was looking for turtles and fish, maybe hermit crabs and jellyfish, my Dwayne Wayne’s cultural influence became a permanent fixture of the Gulf of Mexico.
Along with learning that words can hurt and boys are cute and girls are mean, I saw that things beyond material possessions and iconic paraphernalia could leave your life. One of my oldest friends lost her dad to cancer when we were 12; I lost my 6th grade best friend because I didn’t wear black nail polish, smoke cigarettes, listen to Nirvana, or make out with those cute boys; my coach that had already promised me a #23 jersey cut me from the basketball team. It is heartbreaking when you first realize that people will disappoint you.
But perhaps it’s even more tragic when you first realize that you will disappoint yourself. In the past nine months I have lost composure, integrity, convictions, love, my mind, my grandfather, faith in healing, any sense of direction, a friend, a mother of a friend, trust in my emotions. And just like the sawdust doll, the embarrassment, regret, disappointment, irresponsibility, and apathy reign…a more mature palpability.
Unlike the sawdust doll, however, the sensibility of loss becomes far more complex, sometimes less profound, sometimes more, with more corners, more surprises. The feeling of absence is at times not so permanent. Faith and truth and disappointment wax and wane with only one absolute promise: you will change. You won’t be able to help it. It will come so naturally but feel so unnatural, so uninvited, so desired, so misunderstood.
In the midst of drought, doubt, debt, death, deprivation, you will have moments of hope, comprehension, a revival of faith and trust. It happens when you least expect it, in small seconds most frequently overlooked…in sunflowers twenty feet tall, grins, the silence that comes when you're reading someone's mind, slushies and conversation, remission, a beer, the moment a giggle turns into a cackle, the way cream mixes with coffee, a dead bird no bigger than the size of my palm, twenty flying birds whose wings are too desperate to ever be quelled and swallowed.
I have come to believe that the chest is filled with vignettes of possibility: emotional hallows. We lose heroes to strokes and confidence to self-consciousness. We gain vision from prayer and understanding from humility. Moments of time and life are these small illustrations of joy and pain, loss and apathy, failure and success, love and betrayal. Their sacred and secular natures are threaded together with no definable border, masking muscles, outlining organs, blending in with bones. And these vignettes, these hallows, are the great nine muses for the mind, the heart, the tongue, the eye, ear, pore, breath, touch.
__________________________________________
I am looking forward
Toward the shadows tracing bones
Our faces stitched and sewing
Our houses hemmed into homes
Trying to be thankful
Our stories fit into phones
And our voices lift so easily
A gift given accidentally
When we’re not sure
We’re not alone.
“You Are My Face”
Wilco
Sunday, January 28, 2007
I find myself numb more often than I like. It’s the feeling of taking prescription drugs…except you’re completely aware that you’re not taking prescription drugs. A mental vortex, a spiritual desert…one of those stages where nothing makes complete sense but everything’s a nice distraction. It’s not exactly sad and it’s not really happy…I have cried more these past couple months than I have my entire life. In the past, I would cry once every six months as a mandatory emotional cleansing (usually encouraged by Million Dollar Baby). Now I cry at really beautiful things such as Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (“So long, honey babe, where I’m bound, I can’t tell. Goodbye’s too good a word, babe, so I just say Faretheewell.”) and six-month-old children that laugh like adults. And then there are the times I cry because I’m scared, I’m lost, cancer has sneaked itself into the families of my friends, my other soul mates are struggling with loneliness, and all I want is to build an orphanage right next door to Many Glacier Hotel with classrooms where my favorite professors can continue their passions of Chaucer, Keats, Welty, Yoder, Bonhoeffer, and Edwards in the hearts and voices of students. I keep telling myself that this new-found emotional treasure chest will make me a better artist, lover of art, writer…and maybe it will. I have only listened to Patty Griffin this past week (ALWAYS a sign it’s been rough) and I’m already finding her more poignant. That’s got to be something.
And if these moments are a desert like I gestured before, I think I’m okay with that. Deserts tend to prove that I’m less profound than I once thought, and that I really don’t know what’s best for me. In my experience deserts also have a tendency to make you slow down, be silent, listen every once and a while, and remind you that everyone needs a dash of humility. Water is provided along the way—sometimes in the short relief of a shot glass and other times given in the abundance of a nalgene. And desert’s never last forever…I know that Edward Abbey was crazy about them, but seriously, they just get a annoying after awhile.
Most of those sips of water are in the form of the aforementioned ‘nice distractions.’ Here in Colorado the past 2 months I’ve found that there really is nothing cuter than an infant swallowed whole by an REI snowsuit. My new-found exploration as a skier has not only taken me down my first black diamonds but has made me realized that Sigur Ros was meant to be heard while the sun turns snowflakes into crystals and skis surf mountaintops. Two weeks ago, the church I’ve been attending played a Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute video with U2’s “In the Name of Love” playing in the background, the preacher used Amos 5 as the point of reflection, each Sunday morning is polished off with a “Shalom Response” to each other, and there is one woman in the choir who looks just like Shirley Maclaine and another who’s the spitting image of Kathy Bates—both sopranos (seriously, people, I’m pretty much a Methodist now). I have become happily obsessed with tea, oranges, and avocadoes…nectar of the gods, really. And nothing has been more surprising then while snowshoeing on top of a deserted lake, the surrounding snow completely traps all sound.
These diversions are welcomed as my life prepares me for new change. Change to go back home in just a few more months, and for the first time in my life I’m ready. Lately, I have found great truth in a section of Donald Miller’s Author’s Note of Through Painted Deserts:
“I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
This season of my life is just preparing me for my next. I have changed quite a lot in the past year…some good, some bad…or maybe there is no good and bad, just a constant metamorphosis. In any case, I’m starting to be thankful for the desert, the tears, the avacadoes, the REI infant clothing, the confusion, the awareness of change, and the new reasons.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
I live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, as of a week and a half ago. After 23 winters in the fickled weather of Tennessee, with 4* ice covered roads one day and 67* tank top weather the next, it’s a beautiful consistency of snow-packed mountainsides and liveable degrees from below zero to the thirties.
I like it here. And talk about a different culture. Steamboat relies on skiers for the winter season to load the free buses, to fill the packed bars, to occupy seats on the lift. The other day as I was sitting in the mountain’s coffee shop, Gondola Joe’s, sipping away at my caffeine and watching person after person awkwardly walk by with their ski boots securely fastened, I realized that skiing/snowboarding is a completely exclusive sport. One can only participate when the weather is dumping snow, where there is a hill or mountain set up for its purpose alone, if they have the money for the equipment and ski lift, etc…so basically, only if the weather, local, and money are right. Different culture, indeed…I grew up running around bases at the neighborhood softball field, shooting a rubber ball into a plastic hoop in heat, snow, or rain, and jumping into anything that contained water to swim about. I don’t think I was made to be a skier. My childhood and a little tree bumpage almost 2 years ago have helped me come to that decision.
But even if I wasn’t made to be a skier, benefits from jobs I have here in Steamboat have given me a free ski pass and free ski rentals for the season…so the weather’s right, the local is perfect, and the price has never been better. With all my fears and understandable insecurities about putting my feet back into skis, it’s hard to say no to this exclusive sport when it seems to be including me quite nicely at the moment. So I skied. It was last Thursday morning, December 7, 2006, when I did something I swore I would never do again. And I did it for 2 ½ hours. My friends here have been nothing but patient, encouraging, understanding, and fantastic teachers. I flipped out on Graham probably 6 times throughout the morning, and he just continued to emphasize breaking, turning, and that falling on your ass is absolutely acceptable, especially when trees are in sight (even if it’s just about impossible for me to hit them). And so the slopes did not beat me down that day…they could sense my fear, saw the light beaming from my scars just as Harry’s does when Voldemort has power, but the slopes respected my fear and scars.
I’m pretty sure this is a milestone. The day, the actions, the going down hill with white stuff surrounding long sticks on my feet was more significant to me than most will realize (but there are definitely some that will grasp its importance).
This past week has allowed me to revisit some of those ugly emotions that resulted from the time I thought I was a badass skier in Indiana: anger, confusion, apathy (that was encouraged by morphine and percaset…not now…then), doubt, etc. God allowed me not to dwell in these feelings in the past couple days, but flooded them by like a bad memory to reemphasize that life is shit at times, but he has overcome. Jesus says it with a little more class in John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” These words hit me like a ton of life-giving bricks this morning. In all my fears, my insecurities, my moments when life is shit, Jesus still bids me to come and rest, and to find peace is his victory over fears, insecurities, and moments of shit.
Monday, November 27, 2006
"All this - the river and flowers, running, which was something she rarely did these days, the fine ribbing of the oak trunks, the high-ceilinged room, the geometry of light, the pulse in her ears subsiding in the stillness - all this pleased her as the familiar was transformed into a delicious strangeness."
-ian mcewan from atonement, pg 20
mcewan writes this of cecilia, one of atonement's major characters, as she returns home from recently finishing university. i read this while i was in vienna just two weeks ago...and i thought it was beautiful.
i lived in the same room of the same house for 18 years of my life..i guess you could say that i was used to consistency. i have friends who have been nomads since the womb jumping from one city to the other attending approximately 47 schools - their definition of home tends to be the most interesting. i have come to realize recently that this fact about my childhood is the major reason i have been restless/wanderlusty since i was 18, but also why i've always had this great tension/anxiety about change.
if you know me at all, you probably know that i am guided too often by my emotions..this could be manifested in a sense of adventure, a pursuit for identity, the need for new memories...i think i've become addicted to the collection of interesting experiences; i haven't decided if this is a bad thing or not...yet. in any case, since i left memphis some six years ago, i have somewhat hopped from the familiar to a new familiar, and so on. so whether it was moving to nashville, working at a sports camp in missouri, studying in vienna, living in hong kong, leaving nashville, or being in glacier, i have been given this sweet blessing (and i don't take that word lightly) to experience community, to be anxious, unsure, explore, and suck the marrow out of those homes (and i still partially blame the influence of watching dead poets societyat the age of 13).
i imagine that those friends of mine who moved every 9 months as children were trained to not take so much emotional baggage from one city to the next, and learned in a very healthy way to make friends, leave friends, remember them, and know that they were in their lives for that time and that time only for a reason. like a language, it's much more difficult to learn this as an adult. i can't help but think that i can't live without a place, a group of people, a sense of familiarity when i am in the midst of them.
but then i leave the familiar and life continues to reencarnate community, peace, adventure, knowledge, awareness...and when i have the sweet opportunity to revisit those once familiars, like cecilia, it has been transformed into a delicious strangeness.
and so i ventured to vienna, the greatest period of my life as of yet, to reacquaint myself with one of those places i once thought i couldn't live without and be with a best friend. i spent lazy days in coffee houses, reading about cecilia, strolling past old men that still run the same cafe, sitting in front of klimt, caravaggio and bruegal's work, wrapping scarves around my neck, running up the stairs of hotel t, sneaking a peek at vineyards, sneaking a drink of ottakringer with beautiful company, staring at cute waiters, educating my memory in an old classroom, purchasing kinder chocolates and manner wafers, breathing in the culture from the cobble stoned paths, lighting candles for a prayer remembered...
revisiting old homes to find something less familiar but just as sweet has been like an invited dream - your heart is convinced that it still exists, your mind is a little more doubtful of its consistency and placement, and your emotions are completely content and just a little sad that it's impossible for life to always remain the same.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006.
i've decided that for any successful road trip, all i really need is some form of caffeine, tunes, one other person whose face my eyes can catch from my periphery, and a mind that's stirring with curiosity, confusion, and a lust for the new, the extraordinary, the surprising.
in my opinion, the latter is necessary at all times in order to not get stuck in the monotonous, paralyzed in fear, blinded by falsities, etc.
i once said that vienna owned the fall and nashville the spring; well, now montana captures summer. one's skin comes alive at the top of one of glacier national park's mountain peaks, with its fresh breath pulling each hair and eye toward clouds and sun and hope. i wrote a little while living amongst giants and blades of the most spoiled grass:
"This continues to be a popular theme throughout this summer…surprise. Not only have unlikely people surprised me, but nature has paralyzed me in amazement more than once. Perhaps this is the reason so many great authors, poets, artists, etc. retreat to nature for a muse, an inspiration. If I were a poet I would try to write how the distant waterfalls gravitating alongside mountainsides remind me of veins in the body of the earth, or how climbing a mountain can be perfectly paralleled to a puzzle, or an 18-mile hike compared to a day's journey of Odysseus's epic hike. But, alas, I'm no poet…just a small human in the midst of big mountains and skies and trees.
If I stay awake long enough to see stars illuminated they usually shoot dust across the dark sky. One night I lost count of the number of shooting stars. I lost count. Out of control, really. The first day I woke up to these mountains back in the beginning of June, I prayed that I would never get used to being surprised by nature…that physical jubilation of awe. And though I may be able to predict the surprise by now, I've yet to get used to it…my body still jolts, my eyes open just a bit wider, my ears become more attentive. Extraordinary, surprise is..
I haven't gotten used to shadows. The Montana sun enjoys casting dark reflections across the elements, and from a distant it makes a mountain's face look like a painting. As if I took the edge of my charcoal and sketched a bit of shading. Just like it. My shadow has never looked so stunning as on the top of a mountain from 10,000 ft of elevation.
Everything is illuminated in this place. Details are not hidden but revealed with glorious attention…whether it be the sedimentary patterns in rocks or the 5 different colors of the Indian Paintbrush wildflower, my eyes have new focus. And so this has happened whenever I have traveled to a new land of culture and geography and community…perspective and focus are unpredictably attuned to my new lenses.
Through the geography of mountains and waterfalls, the culture of grizzly bears and native flowers, and the community of brothers and sisters with stories and backgrounds as varied and the wildlife, my perspective has revealed to me once again how infinite and mysterious are the laws of creation, how small I am in the midst of that infinity and mystery, and yet how strong the spiritual bond of (wo)man and nature/(wo)man and (wo)man/nature and nature can be."
and so with my curious, confused, lustful, hopeful mind, i said goodnight (that's for ddubs) to the place that captured a bit of my soul these past months. on to new adventures, never forgetting or minimalizing the ones already adventured...
fall and winter came early to montana...early september, in fact. snow capped mountains and blinding yellow trees triggered my great drive through fallful america. the aforementioned criteria for road trips is the essential core, but it always helps if the itinerary follows the changing trees from late september to the middle of october...it's almost as if i was holding this giant torch and as we traveled later into the season, farther south, my magic torch set all the autumn trees into a blaze of rainbow wisdom. from "amaizing" montana through wyoming, from a ticket to ride colorado to southern utah.
it's edward abbey's land, southern utah that is. i came to realize that every edge of that area is one of the following: national park, national monument, national forest, or state park. one or two slightly isolated towns are thrown in the midst of the sacred land...i explained to graham that bryce canyon used to be the sandbox of giants long ago. their sand castles were so well known throughout the land that each spire and tower were honored by turning the sand to stone. and now, even though the gentle giants have passed on, their award-winning sandcastles remain as one of utah's greatest treasures. our homes for the nights were outside goblin state park (great name, goblin) and zion...one of the greatest feelings in the world is waking up inside a tent; one of the second greatest feelings in the world is arriving in the middle of nature in the middle of the night only to awake wide-eyed and giddy at the break of a new morning with a new perspective and a new memory: surprise of nature, once again. we passed a cow whose face coloration looked as if it had been prepared for battle and chants by an indian's brown and white warpaint...coolest cow i've ever seen. the narrows of zion only tempted us with their flash flood warnings, and so our filthy, weary selves hauled our asses to vegas.
oh, vegas. from 75 miles away the nevada horizon was pitch black. i asked graham if it look like there could be a fire of some kind in the distance...he stared for a second, and said that he thought that "fire" might just be vegas. i was reaffirmed by road signs that vegas was still 70 miles away...no way that could be vegas. that was vegas. it's money, hope, despair, exhiliration, sleep-deprived energy bursts forth from the desert as some sort of vanity fair flashlight. after 3 days and 2 nights, i was officially worn out and satisfied by the fair.
from vegas, the majority of the trip was located inside graham's white goblin (power of the camry) with that mind, those tunes, caffeine, hot tomales, bit-o-honey, etc. the darkest night of my life was driving through death valley, tahoe's trees tried their damndest to reach the heavens, colorado gave us rain and a little snow, kansas and oklahoma were seen at night as they were meant to be seen, and the long journey across autumn america came to memphis. elvis was welcoming as always, the zoo made me feel like i was 5 again when the only notable existing item on earth was the panda bear i saw every morning, and beale street made me feel a bit older with alcohol, music, and the warmth i get when i show something i care about to someone i care about.
i may have fallen in love with the west. i may just go back in a month and a half to live in colorado for a season..a hopeful white christmas.
new eyes...always open, trying their best to be always aware.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
i began a journal on may 8, 2005, the day after my graduation. this past year i have filled it with notes, poems, reflections, and pointless doodles. appropriately enough, i only had one or two empty pages left at the beginning of may 2006. to go back and read journal entries is sometimes laughable, oftentimes cathartic, and almost always therapeutic.
may 8, 2005:
"perhaps there are too many transitions at once...i feel like i've been sprinting since the beginning of february to catch up...i'm not exactly sure what i was trying to catch up to--maybe i was merely working so hard in order to pause life instead of catch up to it. i've worn myself out trying to make memories and preserve friendships, and now i find myself completely exhausted in the middle of a whirlwind. i just want to rest, but rest with the way things used to be just yesterday.
one thing about life i'm growing familiar with is the fact that intense moments of living-whether good or bad-eventually fade into 'something that happened' with time. for instance, i worked in an orphanage last summer and skiied into a tree in february. both events boldly altered my life but no longer consume it. there is no specific instant in which the corner turned; it's more like a magnificent microcosm of evolution. events, relationships, experiences, etc. work together to patiently paint a lifetime. therefore, graduation will also fade into a detail of artwork."
i just spent the last 6 weeks visiting scattered friends. from pennsylvania to d.c., boston to cincinnati via paducah...an american adventure, if you will. and what an adventure it was: gettysburg is crazy about the civil war and philadelphia is not only home to this country's founding documents but is also home to an ikea. d.c., boston and cincinnati were the crowning moments, however, because they are the present homes of mandy, matter, jocelyn, sheena and molly.
the first full day i was in d.c. mandy and i spent a good 10 hours saving darfur. as volunteers, we were asked to pass out 1,000 stickers and be security during the rally. our brute strength kept 40,000 people in front of the nation's capitol from rioting against one another, and withheld 7 teenage girls from molesting george clooney. we said hello to chris rock and i lusted after barack obama. oh yeah, and we raised awareness of genocide in east africa. we kayaked the rapids of the potomac river, went shopping, toured the west wing with matter as our republican tour guide, and watch "girlfriends(z?)"...and mandy said, "hot black men are way hotter than hot white men." wisdom beyond her years...that mandy spears.
matter and i took the night bus to boston and had a 2 hour visit to a dawning new york city. we dragged tina (my suitcase) to central park where we paid our respects to john lennon and then met up with jocelyn in beantown. we stared at tulips in boston common, we laughed at a swan ride in a pond, we ate canolies in the north end, greeted a statue of saint francis, and felt some fresh breeze on the bay. the next day we talked to a chic who works for "all things considered" on npr, freaked out, then saw the bosox play that night...manny hit a homerun, the man sitting next to me bought five $10 guinesses, and all was well with the world. matter went back to d.c. and i left jocelyn to write 22 papers and take a couple exams that determined whether or not she would stay in grad school...and since she's amazingly brilliant, she passed both exams and made great grades in her english grad classes. we spent the rest of the week watching top chef, sex and the city, will and grace, and twister...bill paxton is the perfect man...that is, if you want to follow him into a tornado.
2 days after boston, i drove my jeep to cincinnati...the city of bad memories. but it made up for it ten-fold with a week of laziness, good eating, and preston burke. molly, sheena and i cried together as denny died on the grey's anatomy season finale..we ate at a local diner..sheena taught me how to play poker..one afternoon for a surprise, sheena took me to the nati's oldest cemetery (she's a girl who knows me)...and we girls giggled about boys and confessed struggles.
i drove back to nashville one last weekend to spend more time with best friends...drink coffee, walk in parks, play scrabble, eat too much roasted asparagus, go to art shows, laugh my loud, obnoxious laugh (if you know me, you know it), see a good show with better people, receive gifts i don't deserve, talk late into the night about old college crushes...
it was the kind of adventure that reminded me why community is so sacred and traveling is in my blood. and leaving nashville to find myself in memphis was the end of that specific adventure.
on one of my walks in boston i stopped to watch a long line of cars follow one another to an old friend's funeral. it made me wonder how long they had known one another, how many senseless fits of laughter they had shared, when they first confessed loneliness and a need for change...how many memories remained fresh and which ones were beginning to fade. i wondered about their sadness and season of mourning...blessed are those who mourn...
i wonder if we will be friends when we're old, with grandchildren, with wise eyes, stories spun, wrinkles that prove life has been lived, following one another to eternal resting places. i hope and wonder.
one year later...recently i looked through a college photo album. i didn't grow sad for lost memories because they certainly aren't lost...they're preserved and expounded upon. the world continues to evolve, i as well...along with my friends, my experiences, my cities, my dreams, and my memories. once again, a year has come and gone and it has represented a microcosm of life's evolution. God is still good, i am still unfaithful; God is still patient, i am still confused and annoyed; Christ's humility is still the center of his life lived on earth, and i continue to desire power, attention and arrogance; But, ultimately, his grace is still sufficient, and i desire to NEED it.
Saturday, March 28, 2006
spring brings new life...too many writers have written this.
my favorite ensemble in the world is a tee shirt, a skirt, some comfortable shoes, and a hoodie sweater...i can wear that now and feel fabulous. so kudos for the change of weather toward spring...for green tights and outrageous eye shadow.
no kudos for bacteria in my lung passageways. bronchitis. you know how when you're sick you can't imagine feeling better. everything tastes like mucus, chest on fire, head pounding... everything's a little sadder. yesterday morning was the first time i woke up and remembered that i felt like shit for 2 weeks and that i didn't feel like that now...that new life of spring. but isolating myself even more than i usually do let me catch up on my mind-numbing pop culture. i watched the first season of grey's anatomy and continued my addiction to preston burke. i also resubscribed to the life of felicity and her gang at nyu. i loved it in high school and have retraveled her drama in the second semester of her sophomore year. damn, i love the drama. noel's girlfriend found out she was pregnant last night and i cried. then an hour later we find out it's not noel's baby...i cried. LOVE it.
spring is my favorite season in nashville. vienna owns fall. winter and summer can go to hell. so i drive with the windows down and fall in love with nashville and memories all over again. it reminds me that i will leave in basically a month. next steps. some blind steps...some familiar. i live for that thrill of travel, of new nature, new adventures. i will be in glacier national park for 4 months starting in june. why? why not.
lisa loeb's "stay" just popped up on a fatabulous mixed cd my best bud, mandy spears, made for me. i will see her in dc in a month and a half, then to boston with joce, then to cincinnati for sheena bean and molly.
so, sorry lisa, but i'm not staying in nashville (even though she was talking about a relationship with a fella...but i don't have a fella so i will talk about my relationship with nashville). not for now, at least. i knew i had to be here this year to rest, rest, renew, renew, be with friends that have become family. to be in this city that has become home. now i know that it has mended my wings, has prepped me for new flights, new fights, new confusions, new ineffable moments. thank you, nashville. thank you, spring.
i'll go to glacier, and fall in love with bends in trails, rocks that make water ripple in streams, the fear and thrill of grizzly bears, mountains that make me believe in God all over again. don't be jealous, nashville. then i'll probably go to memphis and raise funds to train and live in africa for a while. don't be jealous, nashville. for it is you that gives me daniel lanois, sigur ros, david gray, and griffin house in 4 weeks. it is you that gives me a reunion at baja burrito and hillsboro village without any effort of schedule. within your borders i fell in love with soulmates of all shapes and sizes. yours is the kind of beauty that moves. i'll be back.
i'm ready. i think. we'll see.
