Pleased

Many of you should be pleased and finally get off my back because this is my sixth post in the last 24 hours. Granted, I started most of them before then, but I was gung-ho last night a finally pumped the bulk of them out. I sacrificed my sleep for you. Be grateful.

Contract

All too often I'll walk into a bathroom stall and find a pink paper printed with a peppy advertisement from some Cougar co-ed trying to sell her housing contract. I love them. I think I might start collecting the prized advertisements.

A typical housing advertisement might highlight number of bedrooms or bathrooms, proximity to campus, kitchen and living room, if utilities are included, laundry services, maybe even parking. But the best part about Cougar Ads is that the main bulleted points are as follows:

• Great Bishopric. Seriously, these men are inspired. The Bishop has helped me overcome so much and really is a great guy. They are so nice and easy to talk to.
• Such a social ward. If you're looking to make some friends, there are loads of girls in the ward who anyone could get along with. Activities are always fun and we get so much free food. It's amazing.
  
• Fantastic Roommates. Really, these girls are the greatest. They are so thoughtful and kind everyone absolutely adores them. They're so easy to get along with a such great girls to be with.
• Down-to-earth Boys. Look ladies, I know that many of you are looking for that sparkly ring to dazzle your finger and take it from someone who knows, there are tons of eligible bachelors in this ward. They are so cute and nice and down-to-earth. Dating rarely gets this easy.

  If it's so great, why am I leaving? Well, I just finished my Mission Papers so I really need to sell my contract. Contact Mindy Pepsalot for details about this great apartment.

That's no exaggeration. Just yesterday I read an ad that listed "down-to-earth boys" as one of the amenities. I started laughing in the bathroom stall and hoped no one was outside wondering what in the world was going on behind the latched stall door.

Oh Cougs how I love you.

Perfunctory

I ran into this lovely lady (whose treehouse we snuck into last Thursday. Shhh, don't tell her.) on campus today. I was so attentively tuned in to a conversation I was following across Brigham Square involving a secret crush, a bad hair cut, and roommate feuds, that I didn't even notice as I passed within feet of her presence. Luckily, she startled me out of my eavesdropping trance and I had a few minutes to catch up with her. Sometimes I wonder how my heart can love so many so much. I'm glad so far there's no capacity quota. It just feels like it keeps getting bigger and deeper.

We got to talking and she said to me, "I read your blog and I don't even know what's going on in your life!"

So I decided to throw a little perfunctory post about my day-to-day happenings.

Item A: I am living with OlderAndWiserToo in Typewriter Grandma's basement apartment. I don't mean to brag, but our place is probably the cutest apartment within 5 miles of Cougar Campus. Tell me, who else has a purple pantry door?

Item B: I am taking the following courses this semester, Lithography, Watercolor, Intaglio, Painting, Old Testament, C.S. Lewis Literature, Model United Nations Prep, and Studio Seminar. Honestly, I love my classes. I just wish (as always) that I had 8 more hours everyday. Okay, maybe 10.

Item C: I apply for the BFA Program in April so I'm working on building my portfolio and it thrills me to jot down ideas for series and watch them grow and materialize. I think I'm really going to enjoy this art business...

Item D: I work in the Theatre and Media Arts Office doing odds and ends, building and designing websites, designing posters, flyers, banners, displays, you name it. On my pay check, my position is listed as "Creative Specialist No. 1" I sort of like that title.

Item E: I have a habit of staying up too late, but somehow manage to subsist off of an average of 5-6 hours of shut-eye a night. Last night, I got 4. That was a bad one.

Item F: I'm working on a grant proposal (and yes, I'm actually working on it and did a majority of it last night, hence the 4 hours of sleep) for a video project a professor and I want to carry out. Remember this? We're going to turn it into a masterpeice.

Item G: I feel a little better now that you all know a bit of what is going on with me. Email for details. Much love.

House

I am a house. Houses are always changing. At times they are imposed upon from the inside; forces come in to rebuild me from the inside out and at first I understand what they're doing. They're busy at work unclogging drains, fixing leaks, refinishing floors . . . But then the repairs start to hurt as they knock out a wall or drill a few holes to hang a light and I begin to wonder what they're up to. What I fail to realize in those moments is that the Lord has a different end goal in mind. His perspective of what I can be far exceeds my own expectations for myself. He's not content letting my home remain a decent little cottage. No, He's building a palace, even one fit for Him to come and live in. So I go on living amidst the anomalies, inconveniences, hopes, faith, and excitement of being a house that's getting rebuilt over and over again. Renovations seem routine.

Other modifications originate from the outside. The elements erode away the shine to keep the house humble until the inside is glorified. Although many transformations are the result of external influences, most variations of my emotions and opinions (which in most cases lead to action) are consequences of my own internal struggles as I learn to let the forces within my walls change me.

Dealing with the pain of change comes along with the growth as I feel the Lord throw up another wing here and add on another floor there. He builds towers and courtyards, gardens and ballrooms. Sometimes witnessing the change is as painfully beautiful as experiencing it.

To sit and ponder how the atonement is changing me and couple that with the influences of such exquisite people around me is astounding.

I am a house. I breakdown, and need constant rebuilding.

I am a house. At times I am imposed upon from the inside; other modifications orginiate from the outside. Although many transformations are the result of external influences, most variations of my emotions and opinions are consequences of my own internal struggles as I learn to let the forces within my walls change me.

Detachment

There is not enough time to take for myself. It sounds selfish and reclusive, but sometimes I can feel myself becoming detached from my insides. It's unsettling and unnerving, it makes me anxious and panicky. None of these feelings are healthy for a busy girl with too many priorities. But I have taken time lately to assess, to sit down and take a personal inventory and try to do a preemptive strike on detachment from my guts.

He thought detachment was a tool of the little devils who pull us away from what we know is right. To make progress, the devil wants to detach us from ourselves. How does this happen? It happens through the mundane, day-to-day tasks that absorb us. Uncle Screwtape says, "The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forearmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack." And so we get too busy. We bet too self-absorbed. We get too incumbered with life that eventually we become non-thinking, non-feeling machines, entangled by a compulsive need to do things constantly. (I am far too often guilty as charged).

But yet another form of detachment from the self is good, even godly. There is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness that is healthy and wholesome. A perspective beyond the bridge of your own nose. A caring for people who don't share your blood. Willa Cather said, "At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep." And I think this is true. The unassuming moments when we find ourselves dissolved, we become detached from everything that binds us down, and that is when we allow ourselves to feel a closeness to God.

It seems paradoxical that the remedy for detachment from ourselves is just that: a detachment from ourselves. But the subtleties lie in the undulating fabric of humility and pride. Self, this sense of choice and individuality, has the potential of being the greatest trap, but it is also one of the greatest gifts we have been given. The trick comes in learning to harness and balance ourselves.

A challenge: Detach. Correctly.

Reality

There seems to have been a lot of words and ideas I've butted up against lately dealing with reality. It all started with her talk a few weeks ago and has been followed up by several novels and essays I've consumed over the past two weeks.

I think that we are fogged up about the idea of what "real" is. Reality seems to have dominion over the tangible, the physical, the stuff you can see, smell, touch, taste, hear. But I argue that there is such a reality that we miss out on by becoming detached from ourselves, and therefore, from reality.

All this leads me to the conclusion that the ultimate reality is God. If you say His name five or six times in the silence of your own room, by the time the last utterance leaves your lips and a hush falls over the space, descending from ceiling to floor, you feel the weight of it rush in, like your very being is sucking the contents of the air inward, and the stillness witnesses that He is real. He is supreme. He is our Father.

I'm finding that he was a very wise man. In this book he describes Heaven as being so real that those walking on its footpaths feel like they're walking on glass. The people traveling to it aren't tangible beings until they accept for themselves all the reality that Heaven has to offer.

We are prone to believe that we've got a pretty good handle on reality. We think we know what real love is or real happiness. We assume we understand real humility or real charity possibly even real discipleship. But I firmly believe that we have no idea. Our sense of reality is so finite, bounded, and mortal I think that if we understood the magnitude of what we have the potential to feel and experience, we would straighten up immediately to assure our inclusion in the pure, real and lasting ecstasy that is provided for us. (But if we take a moment to reflect on the creatures we really are, we soon realize that none of us, with all our merits, repentance or charity would qualify without the unimaginable mercy of a loving Heavenly Father).

I wake up and don my reality glasses each morning, but I'm finding that far too often, the lenses get clouded and I fall asleep at night needing a renewed perspective.

Staring

The ups and downs seem to lull me into a placid state of staring. It seems so strange and I can't put my finger on how I was taken by storm and tossed into the rocks of my own heart and mind. They're not as soft as I would have liked. I'm riding a crest and then feeling like the bottom is about to surface.

And words go through me, some of them sticking, like warmth, on my ribs. And I wonder how. Again. How? Again? Perfect words. They almost seem crafted, tailor made for me. A daughter wandering amidst the whiles. Why the whiles?

Then I find myself in low-lit places with the lights in my head flashing patterns of light on the ceiling and I lay there staring.

Just staring.

Debate

I want it to be a good one this year. Substantive. We'll see come Friday.

Falling

I flipped frantically through the pages for something to calm me, to pacify me, to hit me with the reality that I thought would be contained in the ink. I started reading, October 7, 2006. Regret. November 15th. Wishing. November 18th. December 1st. Wondering. December 19. Frustration. January 20, 2007. Appreciation. Wonder. Regret. February 11th. Confusion. March 19. Silence. April, silence. May, silence, June, July, August. All silence. There were flickers here and there from after the plane left the ground eastbound, but words then were written remembering, not experiencing.

I then remembered what it used to be; falling to my knees asking for help, praying for diligence and adherence to the goals I had set for myself. I remember the sick feeling of realizing it happened again as we watched Mom roll the car down the hill. I remember wondering if what I was experiencing was flashes of light and music rather than the steady beat that perpetuates our lives.

The pages were punctuated with longing. But as I sat there reading I just kept wondering how much of it all was fabricated, how much of what I thought I felt was wishing for the ideal.

It's different now. Steady. There aren't regretful tears. Instead, as soon as I get to my bedside I fall to my knees in gratitude, holding back the tears of thanks. As I kneel I feel like light is radiating from my core and illuminating my fingertips. I resonate. I resound. I sit quietly and wonder: how can it be true?

Remembrance

It didn't even hit me that today was the eighth anniversary of this until hours after breakfast. It crossed my mind a few more times throughout the day, I thought about this book, and made a goal to stop by this exhibit.

The exhibit has a participatory element where the patron writes their feelings about that tragic day on the small tags that adorn the four wire walls that surround the mirrored pyramid and the books of portraits of those lost.

I didn't write about sadness or remorse on my tag. I didn't mention death or destruction, hatred or love. I didn't say the word "remember" or reference a feeling of loss. I simply said that on that day America felt what it was to be unified. Over 90 countries had citizens affected directly that day and for a moment we were all suspended together, disbelieving. What a large price to pay to remind us how there is strength in love and power unity.

Too often I think we feel weak. We sit and think about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, or lament about this war, that war, and the other war. Our brains are busy worrying about all the wrong in our country. When will time be taken again when we can look to a bright future to build us? When will we turn off our dismal minds and remember that we have been given a gift? I believe in unity. I believe in love. And most of all I believe that there is might in us yet.

Nine

Nine years ago today
Pens inked the paper that signaled
The U-haul to take my bedroom
Across town
Down a hill
Away

I was nine years old
and learning how to name
all the States on a map
There was a fort
Across the street
down the cul-de-sac
Close

Bricks, cream carpet
Boxes labeled "Bedroom #3"
That was mine
And I opened up the packing tape
My own Christmas of all
The things I re-gifted to
Myself

Nine, nine, ninety-nine
I found a place to grow
To sink my roots deep and
Suck until my mouth was full
of Light.

Spare

Can you spare some conversation?

How can you teach them
when there are such lessons to be learned?
After all, we have the same common denominator.
Zero.

I felt like a rarity
It's my choice to feel
Like a rarity

These days rarities come in packs
Of six, or four, or ten, or more
Bound in string
But rarely headed by two

Can you spare some conversation?
Someone like you.

Still waiting.

Politics

I've always been bothered by the Blue Scare that has seemed to hold my blood-red state in a vice grip since FDR.

I wish a lot of things for the world. I wish we would all recycle. I wish everyone would burst into song and feel pure and piercing joy as music left them in elation. I wish we hard tougher skins and softer hearts. I wish waste wasn't common place. . . the list could go on for days.

But one thing I really wish, is that people would just take the time to read. Reading spawns thought and not only that, it shows that you, as a human, are interested in something other than yourself. You're interested what others think about the same things that consume your thoughts day in and day out. (Unless they don't, in which case you're detached from yourself and should jumpstart your brain with a good book). An incredible and entirely unhuman thought. To think, thinking about someone else's thinkings?! Unheard of. I wish we read what other humans thought about our country, or read about what those proposing to preside over it really have to say. I wish we would read about current events and learn about things out of arms reach. I wish we would read about not only issues and problems, but possible solutions and progress.

But above all, I wish for more time to read.

Cougs

It's my first day back and I forgot how much I miss the Cougs.

Currently, I'm sitting in the WILK eavesdropping on two twenty-something-year-old males discussing the current teeny-bopper-novel craze, Breaking Dawn. Seriously? Yes. Seriously.

The culprits: Male, Twenty-Somethings

Silence

She told me that the storm broke, that clarity filled her. And for the first time in weeks I believed her. I walked around pinning and wrapping, dressing and primping as she told me how her physical emotional reaction matched that of the sky. The picture was beautiful. And poetic.

How many weeks of tearing have seemed to ravish her heart? I can't remember the last time it seemed like the stuff that floated between them wasn't drowning one or the other. But then I was left feeling my own ravished heart, wanting to scream and shout and shake, but left silent.

A loud silence.

Two can tear and I have felt torn for weeks now wishing things would turn out differently. There is a balance between wishing for something and imposing, however. So I bite my tongue and look the other way, but it makes me feel the tearing as I watch them banter.

I made a decision yesterday to grow up, suck up, close up. But not stand up. I decided to embrace, to forgive, to love, to serve, to fill my days with charity and not dwell on the pain that seems to intensify every time I see the bird smile on account of the happiness.

Because she is happy.

Raisins

It seems that the partially dried grape (aka the raisin) has crept into frequent conversations as of late. On several occasions he and I have discussed them, and the conversation inevitabley turns to a remark directed at me that goes something like, "Who doesn't like raisins?!" which I would reply, "Who does?"

I know OlderAndWiserToo had to defend her dislike on one occasion and it turns out that Perkretary at the front desk destests the little buggers too. So I'm not alone. I think raisins ruin cookies, cakes, sweets, what have you. I think that if you're going to have "ants on a log" you might as well leave the ants where they belong. Outside. In the dirt. I've heard raisins described as "little pockets of jam." Which is disgusting. Because I never want jam in my little pockets.

Dainty

The daintiest part.

We did away with all things showery and cutesy. No one really likes to dress each other up in toilet paper or guess ring sizes anyway. Therefore, the decision was made to have a pool party. And eat hamburgers. Like real women.


PseudoSister is getting hitched in just over a month so we thought it right to celebrate the occasion. With meat.


We drove up Thursday morning, Brian absolute laden with chairs and equipment (he's such a trooper), and set up for an afternoon of fun in the sun. ]The daintiest part of the party? Paper lanterns provided by Extraordinaire! herself. She really is a hostess of the world. She threw open her doors and let us use her house and yard for an afternoon of frivolities and fun (and few taught and tighty naughty nighties. I offered these if PseudoSister preferred. I think she's going to take me up on the offer).

Extraordinaire! and I mostly kept to ourselves during the party. I put my nose in my new favorite book, and she furthered her Rockband career with Drandler.

The bride to be.