end and beginning

After each war
somebody has to clear up
put things in order
by itself it won't happen

No kidding. You should see my office.

Somebody's got to push
rubble to the highway shoulder
making way
for the carts filled up with corpses.

We've got to clean up so we can clean up.

This is not photogenic
and takes years.
All the cameras have left already
for another war.

It's not right, I tell you. The element of forgotteness. Our stupid tendencies to become jaded with life. Real life. Real life in contrast to real death. And we've forgotten. Taken the shot. View it as innocuous now.

Somebody, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was,
Someone whose head was not
torn away listens nodding.

So, you think I'm talking about war. Well, it's more self-centered than that really. I'm talking about how my life and identity seems so bound with life and death right now. The death of my identity as idependent--self-sufficient--as possessing a last name of my very own--of doing what I want when I want to. Less than two weeks and something wonderful emerges, and at the same time, so many things I think about myself will change.

I am Someone, nodding...listening...yet I nod with a new head. The first one's been blown off. Wifedom is a weird thing. Such a lovely, kind existence but for the violence in becoming one.

In the grass that has covered
effects in causes
somebody must recline,
a stalk of rye in in the teeth,
ogling the clouds.

(words by Wislawa Szymborska in italics)

another wallace

This is my dear friend David (Wallace) Fleming.

He's one of the few people I see almost every day. Monday for class; Tuesday for Refuge at lunch and then again at 7 for small group; Wednesday for youth; Friday/Saturday for odd events; Sunday for church.

Sometimes we drive back and forth to or from Panama City early in the morning and then late again at night, listening to some good Panhandle bluegrass, practicing our gut-breathing, and talking of things that are deep or that are deeply nonsensical.

Once we stopped behind a car parked in the middle of a two-lane road. We offered him help, and he said he was just trying to get better cell signal. Uhmph. In the middle of the road.

Insight. Insight is good. David is pretty good at it. He doesn't give himself enough credit. Sometimes he "walks to and fro apologizing" for "ot quite understanding" and then gives a brilliant analysis of the world's postmodern version of existentialism.

Last night he gave me a word that spoke into me like nothing else has in a while. I believe it will make me a better wife...a better friend... a better believer...a better person. That's pretty revolutionary.

He wrote me a poem of relationship advice, and he spoke of glorious moments and frustrating times. And he ended with the thought that no matter what the circumstance I am in with my husband (or well, husband-to-be-in-exactly-a-month), God's love is enough. God's love is enough. This is not a simple statement for me because I have been trying to allow MY love to be enough. It's not. I love Nathan, but my love is not enough for him. His love is not enough for me. If I try to love him with just my love, I will fail. I have been trying to, and I am failing.

Today, I awoke deeply grateful because it was the first morning I sat up and realized that God's love was enough and that because of that, we can walk through whatever lies ahead.

seeing vs. seeing

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture banished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead, I saw framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

C.S. Lewis

Brandi-the-graphic-artist

Victory! Validation! The director finally like my "How the South Was Spun: Southern Storytellers and Myths" poster design (design # 349 this week).

Now back to my real job... :)

thank God for meaning

This is Campbell's masterpiece. He's a self-educated authority on the culture of myth. He undoes himself.

This afternoon, I'll watch another of his films discussing the book. Last week's film led us deep into Nietzschean territory where we discovered God and then killed God. Not that he mentions Nietzsche or killing God, but his existential drivel theoretically killed God and absolutely annihilated my love of listening to discussions of the mythical (at least listening to his discussions of the mythical).

I have a hard time listening to anything that has no solid theoretical structure. To say that the only objective truth is that there is none and that nothing can be taken literally (denotatively), all must rely on our own interpretaion of the myth we call "reality," makes me roll my eyes. Discussions afterwards are thus reduced to "my favorite quote" sessions. You can't put your theoretical skeleton together using circular reasoning and expect to come out looking like you stand on the side of sense. He crumbled. "Good sentence" though, Mr. Campbell.

God breathes life into human beings. And though I revel in the chance to consider the musings of Heidegger, Marx, and Derrida and other thinkers who may miss the eternal significance but at least aren't foolish enough to commit a major logic fallacy (see pages 42-56 in The Hacker for a complete list), I am so thankful my salvation is not merely connotative.

a-gaze-ment

little girl, you gaze at stars
and think of love and bliss and night
and feel the ancient birthpangs--
Andromeda
Antigone
Herbert’s “Prayer”
and Donne’s “Valediction”
verse that first
was turned and spun from starry nights

tonight is quite articulate,
and tells you quite enough
the atmosphere tells time
and on the greek horizon,
Aristotle speaks
of astral fixity:
“twinkle is but eye strain.”

little girl, look up, cause that’s just what you do
wasted groundly gazes
grant us little grace
so simply know
as you do go
such glances rest beneath the sanctuary
of the ages’ truest muse

(Twin Pandas)

Twinning

• Consists of two identical or similar parts

• Used as a synonym for copycat serial killing in the novel Kiss the Girls

• Affects the evolution of crystallographic texture and strength in beryllium

• Exists in concentrated numbers in my neighborhood (the first four children I saw this morning were two sets of twins—but not panda twins).

Hollow-ween

Today I was deeply sick...sick like I have been for seven months now, and then sick of being sick. Between the two of them, they nearly drained the life out of me. How do we get life back when it is draining out? I know the Lord is our divine source for everything, but sometimes I feel like I cannot access that source. At least not in the way I want to.

I want it to wash over me and heal me completely. But it hasn't happened like that. Not yet.

The Lord has sent me someone who forced me to watch wonderful old movies this afternoon, someone who sat by me, and held me, and didn't care that I had no intention of washing my hair today. He shared the life inside of him with me.

This weekend I felt like I heard a lot of good teaching, but Sunday's teaching threw me a little. I am having trouble balancing my understanding of a God who loves me and wants to "kiss my face off" and a God who looks at me with contempt.

This is honest and the way I feel. I am not normally like this. It embarrasses me that I am thinking this way.

Girls in green shirts

I just love these girls. When the day is hard and I've sat through boring committee meetings and graded essays and bowed to the massive paper trail I'm forced to keep, these students always remind me why this job is so worthwhile. They make me laugh hysterically. They make me think about things I don't normally. They bless me. They help me make hot chocolate for the masses on a cold day. They have vision and dreams and ideas and hopes, and I have vision and dreams and ideas and hopes for them. Here's to the Sigma Kappa Deltas...

Creating a weekend

God orders our days and events, but somehow I always seem to splash something on my canvas anyway:

* This weekend I laughed at Eric's haikus about gnats and love... all the way to Auburn.

* Then Mallory and I laughed at Eric spilling his tea in our food.

* It was good to be around Mal, her sharp wit and soft compassion.

* I babysat a 2nd grader who lost a tooth in my house.

* I sliced the heck out of my finger (AGAIN) while carving pumpkins. Nathan and Nicholas debated an emergency room trip, but since I didn't actually cut it off this time, we didn't go.

* Went to bed grateful for the people in my life who love the Lord.

* Went to bed thankful that the Lord loves us back and loves us first.

You remind me.

Classicality

Some things are just classic. Like the look on Jono's face here--it's memorable. Its twisted display of emotion, however, is still mysterious. You don't know whether he spits or vomits or laughs (and stops making an awful face) in the moments after the camera has clicked its way to semi-immortality. And that's why it's memorable. You remember just in case you have the chance of asking him one day...the chance of figuring out the mystery.

I want to figure out mysteries and hidden things.

Aesthetic Envy

Sarah's was prettier, so I moved.