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Nov. 24th, 2009 @ 09:07 pm the truth so far
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: corcovado
1. I go through phases of being an old-head. A BORING old head. Per essampio: my evenings have happily consisted of sittin' with the cats reading, eating popcorn and sliced apples, sippin' lukewarm tea, knitting, and reading comic books. For the past month. It makes me chortle into my drink.

2. I can be quite a snob sometimes. Ew?

3. Full circle. I cry a lot these days over things I can not fix by myself and that hurt people I don't know yet. I also spend a goodly amount of time figuing out what I CAN do. I'm learning. Yes!

4. Being away from my family for Giving Thanks day makes me oddly sad.

5. knock knock
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Oct. 3rd, 2009 @ 12:52 pm Journal entry hm
Current Mood: sincere
Current Music: spineless--alanis morissette
10/3
"It occurred to me this morning that I am living at (if not below) the poverty line now.
This came to me while I was trying to find a way to purchase pants for my service site from the second hand store and enough groceries to last until my foodstamps kick in. Not easy and uncomfortable.
The thing is, I have a sturdy support system.
This is the true difference between me and many of the young ladies in this city.

And I have an education.
And a job.
And no children.
And transportation.
And immediate access to resources.


. . . So what I'm saying is that I'm at the tippy tip of the iceberg. And it's not easy here."


I want to do this by myself.
And when I say "by myself" I mean I want this to be difficult and uncomfortable. I don't want help.

God, show me how to be compassionate and resourceful. Show me how to be brilliant in the dark. And quiet. Tell me how to shut up and listen. Thanks. Love.
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Oct. 2nd, 2009 @ 10:04 pm Absence
Current Mood: boooo
Current Music: cat purr motorboat
la la la
lonely
 
She comes into the house sometimes,
wears your clothes, pretends she's a man and that she doesn't care.
Plaid shirts are her favorite. The kind that button up at the top
(buttons 1 duex tree)
if she can get 'em.
I hold still like she's a snake in my bed.
Breathe through my skin only
and wait for the --click-- when she exits our house and once again pours back into the streets.



"The comedy of distance/ the tragedy of separation."
Oi.
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Aug. 26th, 2009 @ 01:17 pm their names are
Current Mood: good
Lu and Finnegan.
They are simultaneously the sweetest and most active things in our house at most any time.


This is fine by me. Except when it's three in the morning. And I want to sleep.
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Aug. 21st, 2009 @ 03:22 pm KITTENS
Current Mood: insane
Current Music: Your love is extravegant--Casting Crowns
I
am
SO freaking over the moon for these two little pooping muzzle-faced collections of legs and fur.


Who could've known?
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Aug. 19th, 2009 @ 01:38 pm Spit-shower
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: welcome me--Indigo Girls
Just received one, courtesy of one gigantic St. Bernard puppy dog. She barked at me, and well, created her very own atmospheric event.

Entirely comic. Entirely disgusting.


AND
A very important someone told me last night that he thinks I'm brave (in a good way and a bad way. Both ways please me.)
I don't think he knows how much that means to me.

AND
Saturday night I biked about St.Louis with a bunch of other environmentally aware, peace-clammerin', easy goin' folks completely starkers for the World Naked Bike ride. It. Was. FABULOUS! Oh so much fun, and had weird "I just might be in the middle of one truly unique dream right now" moments including, but not limited to, teaching three mostly nude and one kinda drunk biker men how to belly dance, singing back-up singer to Journey's "When the lights go down in the city", and ending a ten mile bike ride by riding into a gauntlet set up on the gay-bar street to the tunes of such timeless songs as "sexy back" and "single ladies".

Ohhhhhh wow.
I know what you're thinking! And you're right! What an incredible adventure!
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Aug. 7th, 2009 @ 03:15 pm Woman.
Current Mood: in the headlights
Current Music: chatter chatter chatter
"It's one thing to want to fix the world, but another to understand how to live well in one which is completely broken."

This hit me between the eyes.
I'm not sure how to recover yet.

to live well

There was a time during college which in which I went to counseling sessions. The woman who was counseling me was completely brilliant and gentle and wonderfully insightful and I remember just talking to her about the nature of her work sometimes.
One of the things we discussed was helping to heal someone: if someone came to you noticing that they were functioning within a fundamentally sick society and that they were ill themselves, would it be the therapist's responsibility to heal them (and make them a type of social deviant. You just wouldn't fit any more.) or lull them back to complacency.

I had thought about it some before asking her, and was intensely suspicious of her and her answer. And I remember having so much respect for her answer: it depends on what the patient wants.


I remember wondering if she laid awake at night, wondering about the people who just wanted back into the infirmary. I wondered who she had trouble letting go of.
"Suicide is much more common than we think. Most leave shells, not bodies."
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Aug. 5th, 2009 @ 03:48 pm To do:
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: air condition woosh la
__ Remain conscious throughout the rest of the work day.
__ Bike home.
__ Walk to neighbor's homemade slip n' slide bonanza in the park.
__ Become a tasty ingredient in the summer-lovin' dish of chaotic soapy-slidy-plastic salad

Fun, friendly, and nutritious hooray!

Also, the breast lump is a cyst! I've contemplated naming it "Milk-Snake Minnie" because of milk snake's close resemblance to more dangerous coral snakes. My sister, Indira's, exact words were, "You're a very strange person. I don't know what to say to that." 
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Jul. 23rd, 2009 @ 01:10 pm Doings
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: I can't keep it in--Cat Stevens
Reading this article. Called "A Journey of Formation" by Jan Johnson.
There's going to be a discussion/potluck/gathering of spiritually seeking folk I'll be joining tonight, and this was the elected discussion topic. The article itself talks about the art of praying for others: how asking God to stop your boss from being a big fat jerk or that your friend will take this job so she'll stop whining to you about financial problems or any other number of small ''y(memememe)ou" prayers is outside of the original intention of the suggestion that we pray for each other.
I've read it a couple of times, and I'm really interested in what's going to happen tonight.

I was recently asked a really good question: how does my belief in God and what God does or doesn't condone differ so much from someone's similar morale compass minus a God? "You believe this is wrong for XYZ reason, and I agree for very similar reasons. But without God being involved." Was the basic statement. I wasn't really able to give a good answer and that bothered me inside of me. But I feel like I might have one for myself forming, and it pleases me.
God comforts me. Moreso then just being like, "I do this because I think it's a really good idea," there's something in the conversation, the relationship, the being closeness that really makes me easy. The knowledge and acceptance that I'm not working this out by my lonesome, that things don't just happen, that there is an ultimate and underlying direction and song that parts of me are incredibly attuned to . . . God does this for me.

I don't know that that's going to sway any person one way or the other, or that I'm done with that thought, but it's a start.


In other news, I've got a breast lump. Been there a couple of months now. Going to the doctor's today to get it checked out. I'm a pretty unlikely candidate for cancer (I figure), but meh, what do I know? Typing it up makes it real and makes it seem a little more . . . something. In my head, I'm okay. I'm taking care, and expect it to be completely beniegn and friendly.
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Jul. 22nd, 2009 @ 01:33 pm Dear Neglected Livejournal,
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: josh ritter--The Right Moves
Please accept my most heart-filled apology.
I can explain.
My hair is growing back.
I would like to have it noted that this takes incredible energy; such intense focus that I completely forget about doing it as a defense method.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand also I moved to St. Louis, am working, bicycling like mad, moving into a new apartment with happy man-friend, learning to belly dance, jump-starting personal life paper journal, writing letters, losing fillings, making doctor's appointments, learning how to fix said bike, attending improve comedy nights, making fire-balcony gardens and compost bins, drawing all over the house walls with chalk, clipping my fingernails, making friends, making food, making love, making mistakes, accumulating books like I'm a blackhole, taking walks and meeting incredibly cute children, being a kid (which is nice I'll have you know), and pretty much enjoying life.

It's pretty mindless right now.
I don't think much about what I do. This is my only minor complaint. 'Minor' because maybe this is a season of repreive. 'Minor' because I recognized that 'maybe' needs to be scratched out (' this IS a season of repreive') and I'm just impatient in everything.

Please rest assured that all is well, and brain-streching will comince again shortly.
Amen.
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Apr. 3rd, 2009 @ 04:57 pm change
Current Mood: electric
Current Music: you dont make it easy, babe--josh ritter
Thinking of applying to a couple universities for their MA Social Justice programs.


It feels more right than what I was originally aiming for.



And.
I'm itching for change. I want to go go go go

(again.)
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Mar. 6th, 2009 @ 01:37 pm Peace
Current Mood: content
Current Music: silence
I've (hippie-ly enough) started flashing the peace-sign in greeting and farewell.
It is also right to note that I am completely satisfied as of late.
This very morning, I've been walking around singing-repeat the little song I know from tot-hood through Rafi:

All I really need is a song in my heart
food in mah belly
and loooooooove in my family




And I've got all that in extra incredi-force. I am satiated. I am full.


amen and amen and amen
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Jan. 31st, 2009 @ 10:01 pm Church
Current Mood: hurt
I went to my old church tonight.
I left half way through the service.
I drove to St. Francis Sanctuary-Monastery-Deer Plantation-Land up in the forest.
I bawled my eyeballs out.
I felt better.


Tonight, spiritually, was (as I was telling sandringall's hubby) like trying to shove an orange into a matchbox. He (Chaz) said something that made sense to me: faith always grows. So someplace that you fit oh, I don't know, FOUR YEARS ago might not fit so well anymore.
It was just sad to me that I would come back to a place that helped me so much to find it had magically transformed into every satirical movie about crazy-ass evangelicals ever invented. It kinda made me sad to see that something I had so much faith in at a time could be so manipulative. Everything I took away from that place was not helpful, but I am thoroughly convinced that God can make Good out of any situation.
So some things that came from there really really got me through.
And now, it's very evident why I had to leave.
Thank. God.
Verily and amen.


I don't get this. I don't get this shit at all.
Kick rocks.
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Jan. 18th, 2009 @ 12:16 pm The older I get, the less I instinctively remember
Current Mood: sleepy tea
Current Music: there is rest for the weary--sweet honey in the rock
the thing that gets me about forgiveness is that it can go two ways:
a) said forgivee is humbled and human-ed and holds your hurt until it falls asleep
or
b) fucks your shit up one more time. Remix style.

I guess though that when you forgive for reals for reals
(not to smooth the blankets. not to compromise or quiet down thunder storm malevolence. but to make the bed all over again)
it doesn't really matter which way the ball roles.
it's okay.
it's allllllllll good, largely, in you. And maybe that's how you really open up your arms all the way again.


practice practice practice

praaaaaaaaaaaactice practice practice practice (In my head this sounds like a clucking chicken)
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Jan. 1st, 2009 @ 06:37 pm Today, my name means
Current Mood: fragile
courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage
courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage
because if I say it enough it will both become me and lose its meaning and purpose and use
courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage courage

and i will never have need for it again.
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Dec. 13th, 2008 @ 03:27 pm Tending self
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: workin' at the car wash


I remember once reading that there was a theory that suggested women respond to dangerous (or potentially dangerous) situations in a different way than men. Instead of 'Fight or Flight' (or freeze, because I remember reading something about that, too), they 'Tend and Befriend'.

I don't know. It's just a theory (a catchily-named one), but it's . . . actually it's kinda sickening . . . watching some things play out in the shelter. Not in the sense of, "ew, that's gross", but in the way that I never wanted to have to distance myself from this kind of work. I still don't. So, it bothers me when I can objectively look at a situation and go, "Hey! I read about that in this-that-or-the-other for class two days ago!"
It makes me feel like a yuppy brat medical intern staring at some person (who happens to be a patient) like an object. I understand very well how that objectivity is necessary, but it still doesn't sit well in my spirit. Dig?

Right. Tend or Befriend. You see it allllllllll the time here. It's pretty freakin' magical how this low-grade hiearchy is established; how women accept each other's children (and in some cases, use them against the other); how they cook together, and go out together, and call to check up on each other, and in a sense protect each other. This is by no means any place that any one wants to be in their planned out, ideal life, but it is a haven.
 

I am both glad and upset that tonight is my last night as a part of this.
I am okay with that.
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Dec. 10th, 2008 @ 07:38 pm Three quick things:
Current Mood: dry-eyed
Current Music: say--john mayer



1. Chatting with potential housemates is bomb. There's "Cool lady psychologist with tiny casita charging more than I could possible manage, but she's still bomb awesome and has written a book that I'm preeeetty sure is about sex"; also, "older practicing artist dude with a puppy dog who likes going for coffee with his buddies early a la manana and who doesn't like loud music please" guy; and finally "laid back college dudes who's previously female roomie has ducked out to san fran to sit about their tv-less living room and discuss the meaning of life" guy who's kinda monotone and speaks very quickly.  While I'm very excited about all of this, in the back of my mind, I'm trying to find ways of visiting the rooms/houses without being kidnapped and ending up in a freezer.
But mostly, I'm just excited.

QUESTION: What questions MUST I ask before signing on to live with any of these people?

2.  The people at my church are amazing. I adore them completely, and hope to be just like everyone of them when I grow up. Which means I have a lot of growing up to do.

QUESTION: When is this all going to make total and complete sense? When do I start feeling like jaw-dragging isn't the only thing I'm good at?

3. I'd like to do a smiddgen on traveling next year.

QUESTION: Where sould I go? What's good to see around them parts? I'm thinkin of trying to check out a Burning Man concert-thing (heard about it from a girl in the modeling class), I'd like to do some serious hiking come the warmer months, I'm thinking about taking on the west coast, and if possible, I might try to dip down into Mexico. This last part is if I can take some lessons in Spanish soon-ish.  



You're lovely. Thanks.

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Dec. 6th, 2008 @ 04:00 pm Winding down
Current Mood: constantly
Current Music: S.O.S[message in a bottle]--filterfunk
 
There are days that, as both fishers of (wo)men and (wo)men ourselves, we misplace our equipment. It is on these days we use our bodies in ways never intended.
(After all, sinew was once used for thread. Bone for hooks.)
Reel your arms back in, hands still spasming and reaching. Muscles over-extended, skin that will forever show accordion scars. The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing.
Why ever did helping hands take on masochistic properties?

It is possible to find balance between the.

 giving and keeping of yourself

_______


With the Utah thing out, I've been thinking of just moving to Santa Fe early next year. This brings to mind the need to establish a job, housing, social net, church etc etc in that place. Walking to the car a couple nights ago, I was thinking about work: how I wanted to do something that would pay the bills, but would basically let me rest. My compassion, my empathy, my heart my heart my heart--"I'm tired." I kept saying to myself. "I'm tired."
At a relatively low point, a friend and I jokingly discussed creating a club for the Bitter, Angry, and Righteous.
Funny how three minutes later, we both agreed that neither one of us wanted to be a part of that club, and it disbanded in the belly of itself (thank God)
Yesterday, I went to a presentation discussing the history of two universities in the guilford area. One was originally a women's college that later became a co-ed college; the other (the one I attend) did the exact opposite. Their histories showed surprisingly paralleled atmospheres of progressivism and just. . .  fucking gutsy acts in the name and need for equality, respect, and love.
There were a few stories that really just felt like breathing again. Stories of people protecting each other because it was the right thing to do; stories of people seeking counsel in like-minds, and not STAYING discouraged.
I feel . . . tired. But capable. and not tired of doing what's right, or fighting the good fight, or even of taking a square beating over something that deserves to be upheld and protected.
I feel more hopeful in the wake of last night. I think I just need to sleep for a minute and be near friends and family. There is comfort in that.
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Dec. 3rd, 2008 @ 09:42 pm By negation
Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Suddenly I see--KT Turnstall
Wanting to learn how to 'good-bye' better is a weird thing.
Does that mean I need to practice?
Should I 'good-bye' more often?
Or maybe i'll study the art of good-bying.


Or maybe i'll stay.
hm.






good Lord. But not here. I'll start practicing that new technique NEXT time. Cause Greensboro is not the answer.
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Dec. 2nd, 2008 @ 08:31 pm Wonder what happens next
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Float On--Modest Mouse
No Utah.
(Computers are hard. This isn't a distressed 'No Utah' just in case that didn't come across. More a 'this is a matter of fact.' Ok, just makin' sure we're all clear.)
Economic blah blah = cutting back on training = I can't commit at least 6 months if training starts in June.


Okay.
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