and this is how we live

Good morning, C.S. Lewis

2010-09-06T13:59:00.003-05:00

C. S. Lewis is a wise, wise man - on grief, on love, on life.

"Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief."

"This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted."

"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step."

"You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me."

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."

"Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities."

"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

"Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind."

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates that deserts that our lives have already become."

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

just gonna stand there and watch me burn, but that's all right because i like the way it hurts

2010-08-28T11:29:00.004-05:00

On compassion:

Life is much too messy to fit into an outline, but I've often found an outline useful in understanding life. Therefore, I've broken people into two categories when it comes to dealing with compassion - those who can relate to your pain, and those who cannot.

Let's take the first category. First you have the people that can relate, and accordingly, they want to help you. It's wonderful to have an example of someone who made it out the gauntlet alive, and who is, in most cases, better for it. Your hurt is vindicated by them (because who doesn't feel an inkling of guilt that they should be able to master this immediately?) and the intensity of loneliness is somewhat relieved by the realization of the universality of your pain.

Then you have the people who can relate to you, but don't want to talk anything about it because of the reminders it brings back. I have met less of this type of person, but their instinct to avoid shows that they have never truly dealt with their pain. It lives with them every day, sitting on the backburners of their minds, stealthily sucking joy from their life. They may not know this, but they have made the decision to live a half-life rather than dive back into the pain to find the healing necessary to feel whole again. It gets much worse before it gets better, and it's true, some people never resurface. These are the people I feel the most for, because I understand the inclination to hide. Unlike physical pain, it's much more difficult to get a rest from mental pain. You cannot sit still enough for it to not be agitated. So these people remain constantly on the defense, and for that I hurt for them.

The second category of people, those who have no background, it is understandable that they don't know how to help you. You wish they would have tried harder, but then you think back to when you were in their position and you didn't know how to help either. It's a pain impossible to describe, for the pain is in your mind and you are in the thick of it. Observational clarity is impossible when everything is swirling around you - you have lost your footing and no longer know which way is up or right or real. No wonder they can't understand - neither can you.

There is an exception here, one that remains a mystery to me. What do you do with the person who has no idea what you're dealing with, but knows all the right things to say, and takes care of you with no complaints, going above and beyond, carrying an emotional load that is not their own. Most of all, they believe you when you say that every day is a dark pit that you have to climb out of, only to fall back into when you're unconscious at night in order to start all over again the next morning. And they want to hold your hand for that tedious climb every day, day after day after day after day.

It's love, I know that much. A selfless, pure, rare, unconditional sort of love. But what makes a person that way?

is it time i befriended all the ghost of all the things that haunt me most

2010-08-22T23:29:00.002-05:00

Two areas of exploration for the future:

1 What is it within a person that prevents compassion? As per a lengthy, yet too short discussion, people do what they think is the right thing to do the majority of the time. Therefore, it is usually not a personal vindictiveness that causes the neglect of a hurting person. Then what is it? A friend proposed the following two options: an adherence to the status quo, or a desire to teach the person a lesson. Why do these take precedence over mercy?

2 What is love? It has many manifestations - romantic, friendship, family. It has many corruptions - manipulation, obsession, idolatry. God's love is perfect, so how can earthly love and all its nuances be compared to it? Is our love some imperfect version of God's love, or do we truly love only sparingly and the rest of what we might call "love" is only an attempt at it? And what is this "falling in love" thing about, and what does God say about the ideal ratio of head/heart? Or is that missing the point entirely?

i wish you'd hold me when i turn my back

2010-08-22T02:11:00.004-05:00

"If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?" - Matthew 5:46a

I want to be loved in the moments that I'm most unlovable. It is a lot to ask, but I do not think that it is too much. It is a love I feel from God, but rarely from His people. More often than not, it is a lover of people but not God who reaches down into the pit & pulls me out, blackened but loved in spite of it. I am understood. We Christians have learned absolutes, and we have learned to apply them in the worst of circumstances. We think we know right and wrong in every circumstance, and we have attached our own consequences in the form of finding fault and assigning blame.

When I am incapable of feeling anything but low & broken & utterly abandoned, that is its own punishment. I want to shout "be compassionate!" from the rooftops. Obvious disapproval in the form of your eyes, your silence, your pointed absence only serve to exacerbate the pain. You seem to think I need your help to see the right way - instead, you create a strange mental condition where I think only in cliches. Here are my shoes, walk in them. Be kind, for my silent battle may be quietly devastating. The cliches have revealed their truth, and the pain clouds my view of you.

You can stand tall - I cannot. Do not use your elevation as a judgment stand. An airplane cannot see the inner workings of a city. Don't use your eyes, your silence, your absence to state your separation from me. Sit beside me, hold my hand, feel my hurt. Believe me. Look at me as God sees me, not as a loser but as a beloved child who has lost a game. My mistakes are not my identity. We are all broken people trying our best in a broken world. It is inevitable that one day our position will be switched, and you will understand. And I hope you will come to me for help. For it is in those moments that a person needs love the most.

a "post"

2010-01-04T22:24:00.004-06:00

Anyone else a little perturbed by the fact that "RESTROOMS" is in quotations?

"We're pretty sure they're restrooms... but we're not sure enough to drop the quotes. Go on in and find out."

please don't lose hold of me out there

2009-07-06T16:40:00.002-05:00

i think everyone should pronounce the R in february.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvKE5xAZttc

in other news, i'm off to play with my new camera. be excited.

if you cut me i suppose i would bleed the colors of the evening stars

2009-06-29T21:29:00.005-05:00

An excerpt from a memoir piece I'm working on, titled "Never Have I Ever":

Never had I ever

run farther than three miles.

Until I trained for a half marathon that took place about a month and

a half after my birthday. A friend and I were on a six-mile run as part

of our training, one of my few runs in the time between my birthday

and the race. “Don’t be offended at this,” she said to me, “but when

you told me what happened my first thought was ‘Laura can’t handle

that.’” She was right. Despite essentially not running the month before

the half-marathon because all my available energy went into functioning

during the times I wasn’t in bed, I ran the entire thirteen point one miles

without once stopping to walk. It rained the entire time, my muscles

were so strained that it hurt more to slow down than it did to keep running.

But I felt like I could run forever. I ran on a strained hamstring, but the

pain was friendly, familiar, something unique and personal to me in a street

of close-proximity competitors. Beautifully alone in the midst of strangers,

I ran on downtown roads, around the Budweiser brewery and through its

smell of fermentation, past the Clydesdale sheltered by the overhang,

and alongside the two women in the bunny ears. Everyone wanted to talk

to them. In mile thirteen friendly people passed out cups of beer to the

about-to-be-finishers. I laughed out loud when I passed by them, a

surprisingly medley of joy and the absence of oxygen. I saw the finish line

and I sprinted through, stopping once I got through the gate. My calves

immediately cramped in the cold and I wrapped myself in a silver, reflective

space blanket a volunteer handed me. It was the thinnest blanket but it

multiplied what little body heat I retained from the run. I was cold and

hurting, and someone asked me how it went. “Amazing,” I told them,

shivering and still retaining water from the light rain. “It was amazing.” I

was so sore the next day that I woke up unable to stand and planned to train

for the full marathon as soon as my muscles let me walk again.

and the complications you could do without when i kissed you on the mouth

2009-06-16T23:23:00.005-05:00

milwaukee & its suburbs, wisconsin, usa

home.

2009-06-07T14:44:00.001-05:00

The only thing that I can remember about Texas is that it makes me happy.

lessons in traffic

2009-06-04T08:13:00.001-05:00

“Why did we stop?”

“Because the light is red. When it’s red, it means we stop. When it turns green, we can go.”

“Why are they going when it’s red?” the child asked, pointing to the crossing lane of traffic right in front of our car.

“They can’t see our red light. The only light that they can see is green.”

It was my first lesson in perspective.

i would set off across the sea just to find my way to you

2009-03-04T21:18:00.003-06:00

In honor of the quotation phase I went through a couple years ago:

It was because I was now berefit of all the comfort I had had from her that my soul was wounded and my life seemed shattered, for her life and mine had been as one.
- Augustine, on the death of his mother

Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Homesick in Heaven

There are some fish that can't be caught. It's not that they're bigger or faster than the other fish, they're just touched by something extra.
- "Big Fish"

During the time I was with him, Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss. No one else I have ever met could do this.... When [others] began to feel that there was this overwhelmingly hostile thing in the world with them, then the simplicity and unity of their characters broke and they were not the same again.
- A Separate Peace

In summer, the song sings itself.
- William Carlos Williams

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
- Ronald Reagan

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state.
Being in love shows a person who he should be.
- Anton Chekhov

I loathe the expression, "What makes him tick." It is the America mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
- James Thurber

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Letters

It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
- Somerset Maugham

There are moments when, no matter the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.
- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

i see now, it's just one of those days

2009-02-19T21:26:00.004-06:00

i just wrote a biography of a middle-aged family friend. a small excerpt:

I pierced my nose at college. My mother hated it, my dad made jokes about it, and she exclaimed, "I love it! Don't tell your mom, but I absolutely love it!" When I came home over break we went to Claire's so she could buy a fake nose ring. We put one on her at a table in Starbucks. "How fun!" she kept saying, looking into her handheld mirror rescued deep from the throes of her purse. "Look how fun it is!"

on a completely unrelated note, here's a couple pictures from a project i did, eh, four or five months ago:

i can't remember when the earth turned slowly

2008-10-12T21:08:00.001-05:00

my favorite picture i've taken, to date.

Stories, by John Edgar Wideman

2008-09-29T09:01:00.002-05:00

[a recent favorite short short story I've read]

A man walking in the rain eating a banana. Where is he coming from. Where is he going. Why is he eating the banana. How hard is the rain falling. Where did he get the banana. What is the banana’s name. How fast is the man walking. Does he mind the rain. What does he have on his mind. Who is asking all these questions. Who is supposed to answer them. Why. Does it matter. How many questions about a man walking in the rain eating a banana are there. Is the previous question one of them or is it another kind of question, not about the man or the walking or the rain. If not, what’s it a question about. Does each question raise another question. If so, what’s the point. If not, what will the final question be. Does the man know any of the answers. Does he enjoy bananas. Walking in the rain. Can the man feel the weight of eyes on him, the weight of questions. Why does the banana’s bright yellow seem the only color, the last possible color remaining in a gray world with a gray scrim of rain turning everything grayer. I know question after question after question. The only answer I know is this: all the stories I could make from this man walking in the rain eating a banana would be sad, unless I’m behind a window with you looking out at him.

times are changing, soon we'll be the same.

2008-09-23T18:36:00.002-05:00

Forest Park's Balloon Glow has been on my pre-graduation bucket list for a while now. Success.

but i'm thinking of what sarah said.

2008-09-03T23:08:00.005-05:00

Sarah wrinkled her nose, unwrinkled her nose, and wrinkled it again. She felt nothing. Her left ear twitched correspondingly.

Sarah's reflection wrinkled its nose, unwrinkled its nose, and wrinkled its nose again. Her reflection felt nothing. Its right ear twitched correspondingly.

"Here goes nothing," Sarah thought as she brought the red-hot needle to her nose.

And there nothing went.

Sarah watched the clock tick backward. Sarah's reflection watched the minutes pass. It could not feel the tension settling into Sarah's motionless shoulder, elbow, hand, fingers; nor could it slowly feel the warmth of the needle dissipate. It only saw Sarah hold a quarter of an hour in her hand before letting go.

"Nothing goes here," the reflection thought.

[In response to a prompt for Microfiction to write about 15 minutes of time]

on the back of a motor bike, with your arms outstretched trying to take flight.

2008-08-29T02:32:00.012-05:00

(cape may, new jersey, usa)

it's a free ride, when you've already paid.

2008-07-27T19:32:00.016-05:00

ask anyone who has ridden with me (car, golf cart, segway) and they will firmly attest to the fact that at any point in time, i only have the vaguest idea where i'm going. my sense of direction extends to include the knowledge of the existence of north, south, east, and west; but these rarely come into play in my day-to-day life. i use north the most of all, for the system i've developed for getting out of downtown depends on knowing that even numbered street go to one major highway, odd numbers to another, and i can take either one north, for i know i live north of everything interesting.

this is where sign reading has become a vital and irreplaceable part of my life. as i drive down the interstate, mildly lost on my way to a school i attended for a good ten years of my life (i blame the presence of the new toll road confusing my horizons) road signs become the guideposts of my existence. while others may use their mystical sense of direction, i become the instigator of many almost-wrecks as i rubberneck to look at the sign for the exit i should have taken. luckily, that's what u-turns are for.

fun fact: u-turns that go under or across the highway by way of frontage roads without having to wait at the light are referred to as texas turnarounds.

anyhow, through my obsessive reading of signs and my inability to make the correct turn for the occasion has lead to quite the number of discoveries of neat (is it socially acceptable to use that word?) and surprisingly hidden places. the other week i followed signs to a theater across a low-water, one-lane bridge and ended up at an almost completely shaded park (a necessity in texas) joined by a creek, and at that time, swarmed by a child's birthday party.

but sometimes the unintentional irony of signs breaks through, much to my amusement. the following is a project i did to fill a six-part picture frame of 3x3 spaces. i focused on signs that displayed some element of irony, though the fourth one i included mostly because i thought it was a neat sign, but as steven pointed out, it's irony is derived from being the only not ironic photo.

please come to a full and complete stop at normal.
(cape giradeau, missouri, usa)

and a formidable bicycle it is.
(arlington, texas, usa)

because swimming in water is so passé.
(arlington, texas, USA)

the 'p' sound is nonexistent, much like the ffa's presence outside of west texas.
(pflugerville, texas, usa)

the future of the next oregon trail
(pflugerville, texas, usa)

warning: there is a powerline... up.
(arlington, texas, usa)