I'm sorry,

I know it's below zero out there, but I LOVE the snow. It is wickedly beautiful.
Would you like to know what else is beautiful? Vocabulary. Saturation, faithfulness, and essential are all words that gave me a stomach ache today from experiencing them freshly and yet still knowing their presence like familiar friends.

This morning

I wish I had a camera so I could have shown it to you.

...Just imagine an understated sunrise, snow dusting the trees on the horizon line, thin green and pink streaking low along a very powdery blue beyond.

Instead of growing and letting myself be shaped to love others increasingly better, I find I shape myself to be better loved. I do need to desire love to be healthy, but how do I get big enough to keep that away from my motivation? How can I love because He loved me first? It is the first day of spring classes, a beautiful day - and I am reminded that even if I forgot, even if I walked out my door with books over my shoulder, eager and rearing to do well and learn much, He would sustain me. I don't have to recognize it for God to be great, He is One - eternal; above, before, and after me. But how much better for me to hold tight onto the rope and bucket that will let down into my well of deep, dark peace.

For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8.26-27

It is almost ten o’clock, I can see the snow falling from my window by the street lamps and I feel better in spirit. It is good to be home here with my friends. Kaethe and I watched a half hour of His Girl Friday, and we will finish it later on. I have homework to get done. My newly accquired, two-dollar copy of Anna Karenina sits on my bookshelf, a crumpled tissue with spots of blood from my running nose sits ontop of it. I am imagining that it is too cold outside for people to be walking around, but there are still some trails of footprints on the powdered sidewalk. The orangey yellow lights in the parkinglot illuminate huge piles of ploughed snow, and a couple standing at their car, sometimes kissing, sometimes kicking the snow at their feet.

Megan turned out her light, my head is so congested and I have felt like going to sleep since we had lunch today so I will finish my work in the morning. Class begins at 11.30, Work and Vocation with Doctor Carmer, then Life Drawing immediately after with Professor Seitz. I am excited, my body is not feeling well at the moment, but I feel a membrane-like layer of hope. It’s thin and kind of see-through, but it’s resilient; sticks together and holds its form even when it gets a little stretched or pulled on.

But I do have a new home,

So its alright. Maybe its reflective of my tendency to pull away, or of my current feelings about returning to the cold East, but look, there are stairs. Come up and stay with me, yes?

Farewell is mostly a sad song.

Tonight is my last night to call California home. Tonight is also the first time that the realization has made me feel like crying. I’m not ready for the snow yet, not quite. I like feeling the hot sun of the past two days weave in with the fibers of my muscles, making me stronger – I cannot even tell you how much I love the feeling of the deep icy Pacific crash against my body when I get in its way, I love the goosebumps that prick up on my skin while it goes numb, purple and white at once. I love the knots that the salt and sand and wind tie into my hair and I love to lay on my back and really see with my eyes how huge and great the sky is. I love to watch the moon rise in bright white even with the sun still in the sky. I love to track the birds and think about why they fly. I like to dig holes into the cold, damp sand with Amanda and then carve out a tunnel under the surface until we can feel each other’s fingers meet in the middle, with Alli digging her own little hole to the side of us. Pushing sand, hunting for sticks of bleached wood, stones and rocks, finding a bone and a seed pod.
I love how the sunlight looks on all the grey and charcoal and dirty white asphalt, sidewalks, industrial buildings, warehouses. I love how it dries everything to a hot, simmering surface. This place has rugged bones that are softened by a covering of green and dry, sandy-orange umber. Looking at the mountains from above, their ridges and peaks are worn, smoothened, and their sides fall away, trenches just like the ones that appear in a mound of beach sand that sea water has been poured over. The land always looks so alive to me, almost saying, ‘come settle into me, I am rich and there is much to give.’

A morning excursion tomorrow, for Amanda and I, to the sand....

Somewhere else (than here) I am...

I’m still seeing mountains, frosted and buried trees. A rabbit in his fist; but up here I don’t mind. Up here there is a taste for it in my mouth and we are grateful to God and the rabbit’s life. My clothes don’t matter here, it’s okay that my hair is long and has nothing but soap and melted ice to keep it. I don’t have to bother about pressed linen or a solid red lipstick line in order to read and cook and look out windows. We can listen to records but the snow’s paradoxical sound, the creak of the floor as a bare foot steps across it; the sounds of the house outside and the fire are enough. Maybe neither of us even talk much, we love one another because we can be alone together. Sometimes a word might start to rise up in my neck, but then to let it dissolve in with our quiet is just as rich a contribution to our discussion as speaking would have been. There is enough speech around us to lie still for centuries and listen.

Hearing his voice saying words is far more sacred than if we were in the city. Before nighfall he would sit on a rock in the white, a David with his lyre, cold smoke streaming from his mouth and nose while the rare and careful sounds came. We’ve listened to try and learn from the foxes, the crystal ice snap, the stars in small puncture wounds to the velvet-thick heaven. The pouring forth – he won’t touch it because here is a place redemption hadn’t needed to come until we did. We know we are being sanctified, but the pouring forth is an ancient holiness and to join our water with the voices, our voices must first know a harmony or create in reference to its rhythm. If he ever sings, I lie down and touch the scars on each bare twig that will swell into buds.

Its this kind of morning in my thoughts. I keep trying to get away from where I am even though I am preoccupied with missing what I'll be leaving behind when we go. Ah well.

Evening

The back of my hands smell like Stetson.

Feel like I want to read a Dickens novel.

Also feel like digging my shoulder blades into a hillock of sand, where the ocean's push is heard but unseen from my spot

- and where I could read Dickens.

The scent on my hands makes me think of rushing rivers, the silhouette of a man standing staunch in the water’s flow and casting his line in twilight glint. I could read in the mountains too; maybe my hillock of sand could be replaced by a pine fire and the fly-fisherman.

Recapture my wandering feet and nail them down

I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord.
Hosea 2.9-10

The Swans

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- Mary Oliver

Love, Alexa

      dear jordie           -->    i am overjoyed that
   you are going to      -->        be home in
 less than two weeks                 it is so weird
that these 4 months                      went by so
quickly maybe                             it is because
because i have                           been partying
so much                                        just kidding.
my performance                            for choir
choir and                                      all I have
one tomorrow                               aka Saturday
We had a                                     performance
on                                               tuesday
 that                                             went
 amazingly                                  well . the,
Agrons                                       are coming
 to my                                       performance
   on Tuesday                          which i am
so so excited                         about about.
I hope you                         had an amazing
som 4 months                       at college. i love
      you and i                   will see you
    in less then                  two weeks and
   i will probably            be there to pick
you up if i am aloud to.   ok i
love    you  love you  love you x infinity
and   will   see   you soon    say hi to
friends   love    your    little   sis


Can't recreate the loops in her handwriting, the punctuation, the drawing in the middle that broke up her sentences. But, you may get a sense of what's smiling in me now.

This morning a package came with a black dress for tonight, a new Kings Of Leon album, and hilarious letters from Jeff and Alli.

I was laughing out loud in Chesters as I read them, their letters always make my entire week.

Okay there is no way I can read philosophy and enjoy my music. Its sounds like driving!! Windows down, ocean and cliffs to the left, sun up above and in my eyes....I want my curving green hills, my downtown, my vineyards flashing past, my rocks and sand to watch the waves from, my friends.

Home is always going to build. I used to think that wasn't my home, that I didnt fit there on the coast - and I was right, I don't fit anywhere. But I am a very happy guest of Oregon, of California, of Massachusetts, and now of South Carolina too. Homes aren't lost, they add onto eachother. You can go back and be a guest again.

How beautiful artmaking is...

Bruce Herman

I just don't have words for the goodness you can feel in it.

I liked it better at this stage.

But the thing is, you can't go back. So you just keep painting honestly, putting down what you see in the mirror as best you can, and take drinks of the mercy that's held in cupped hands in front of your lips.

Teacher...

…thank you that something mattered today. Something really physical invaded our metaphysical talk.

Time to count blessings:

Because of my aforementioned discontent, I ought to find no less than twenty good things. I've got at least fifty blessings on just a square inch of the back of my hand I'm sure, but twenty to start with for now.

One. My more-than-comfortable bed.

Two. Advil for headaches.

Three. A roommate to motivate me to take said Advil.

Four. A pair of glasses to help my eyes see.

Five. Strings of christmas lights in our room and wrapped around trees.

Six. Texting that allows me to laugh with a sister who is on the other side of the country.

Seven. Hot, running, clean water to turn on and off without a thought.

Eight. A finger ring of mysterious black wood, found floating in the ocean by my sister who eventually passed it on to my hand.

Nine. A welcoming and generous family taking me in for the holiday.

Ten. Socks on my feet, with ten more pairs in the drawer.

Eleven. A full stomach.

Twelve. Memories poked and pressed like a mint leaf by the Christmas decorations that are appearing.

Thirteen. Hugs, hands, respectful human touch that grounds a person so well.

Fourteen. Color in the world - color that changes too.

Fifteen. Megan laughing across from me with her headphones in.

Sixteen. A patient book of true holy things that will remain true when I don't.

Seventeen. Frost on the grass.

Eighteen. Frost disappearing in the morning when the sun comes up over campus.

Nineteen. Classes to go to.

Twenty. A ticket home.

It's hard to make a happy list when you aren't happy. Even when you have no reason whatsoever in the world to be unhappy...but God won't forsake me to my own greedy dismissal of the good things that more than half of the world is denied.

I want more humility - I've been asking for it, and He gives it to me in sticky red spoonfuls. Maybe I could write a Christmas list with those kinds of things on it...

Ich fühle krank.

Und Arbeit gefällt mir nicht heute.

This is dreadful. Timing couldn't be worse for apathetic lethargy to set in - I have finals to finish in a blaze of glory, people!

I just watched an hour's worth of a movie instead of working on a paper and I've never really done that before. Now I have a headache and want to go to bed early, but the paper must still be written and my 'big picture perspective', which is also unhelpfully timed, makes me waste energy trying to even justify writing it, instead of just going at it with blind, persevering industry.

I keep digging out motivational quotes and paragraphs, convicting lines written by church fathers and historical heroes.

Like BB gun pellets bouncing off Jack and the Beanstalk's giant, all of it. Still sitting here finding the relative importance of my assignments almost funny.

Autumn is coming to a close.

I would like this. Everything about it....one day.

The sunlight is beautiful now; its becoming winter light, but because we haven't had snow yet, there is still life that you can see and feel in the grass and the trees. I love the solid, clear blocks of sun that come with such clarity, neat and geometric as life settles down because the harvest parties in the woods are being replaced by gentler discussions inside our homes.

Everything is getting colder and harder and I look forward to the soft acoustic of snow. Its easy to romanticize, easy to forget how the ice comes too, and how it melts and mixed with dirt to become wet, sloshing mud.

But we aren't there yet. Winter is on its way, yet late November crispness still gives the fallen leaves a skeleton (the snow will make them limp and flat) as they are tossed everywhere by strong winds. Green still spreads across the ground like an aging carpet and like everything else it has some grey around the edges. Frost comes in the mornings too, glorious spiked crystals of white helping the world get used to the cold before December finally comes.

I am glad for the winter, for the humbling quiet it can force us into. I just wish I was a wild animal who could hibernate as we are probably supposed to. Instead, rigorous study is my lot - something I'm grateful for too, but sleep would be most natural and I am tempted to follow Annie Dillard's advice when she says “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.” Surrendering to our instinctual needs, and ceasing to live by the ‘additions’ we have built on to our humanity, that is what I want. I don't do it very well, but oh how much I want to! I am grateful to have been created and to live embodied, to be clay infused with life from the breath of God's own mouth feels good - and I know that He is my one, my great necessity. I want to 'dangle from it limp.'

Dixie moonlight, Swanee shore

Headed homebound just once more

To my Mississippi delta home

Southland has that grand garden spot

Although you believe or not

I hear those breeze a-whispering:

"Come on back to me"

Muddy water 'round my feet

Muddy water in the street

Just God don't shelter

Down on the delta

Muddy water in my shoes

Reeling and rocking to them lowdown blues

They live in ease and comfort down there

I do declare

Been away a year today

To wander and roam

I don't care it's muddy there

But see it is my home

Got my toes turned

Dixie way 'Round the delta let me lay

My heart cries out for muddy water

I do wish I was Southern sometimes. Such romance.