A normal day in the week

Well, it's that time of year again for a new look and feel. The cool air from our first autumn cold front of 2011 has me all inspired and giddy. Today is the second day of the second week of school. I love Tuesday/ Thursdays because I have no work or class until 9:30am. It is a beautiful change from the last three years of all 8:00ams. My living room windows are open, the sun is up, my kitten is purring and coffee is brewing in the kitchen. Hazelnut brew...mmmhhh...my favorite.

I'm looking forward to my Nonfiction class with Bill Carrol this morning. We are reading our first text "The Sacredness of Questioning Everything" by David Dark. It was quite a wild and strange read. I've never read anything by an agnostic before and he had my head quite spinning with all of his ambiguity. It prefaces itself for an exciting discussion in class today, which I am actually pumped about. That is what happens when you hit your senior year as an English major, you start waking up and actually want to talk in class.

After my morning class I have chapel, which is only 30 minutes, always a good time too see my community in Section C. Then work for an hour and half...and then Business and Professional writing with Haley at 3:00pm. See as all my homework is done for that class and the one this morning I feel ready to seize the day. Being prepared just makes life so much more relaxing, don't you think?

I might even get Phil to put the hammock up in the yard this evening so I can do my homework out there before the sun goes down. He's leading Fire in the Night with Ashley at 9:30pm (which I also need to be at) so hopefully he won't be to busy preparing for it.

Two more weeks and maybe, just the weather will be cool enough to wear my boots all day. I love pulling out all the fall clothing. Makes me want to eat apple pie and take pictures in the leaves.

Hold on.

A thousand little pictures, they flash, in between blinking lights, faded memories of sorrows and joys. It's like a heartbeat, pulsing under the flesh of a human body. Slow and steady. The rhythm of another world, the unseen life source behind the veil.It grips you and then releases. One minute your free and the next your are enslaved. The force of the wave you leave behind in your wake can cause the driest tree to bloom and yet leave a trail of causalities with the deepest wounds.

You would die if asked, for a taste, a glimpse, a simple kiss of the one you ached to know. And yet to know is surrounded with heartache, with loss and with thwarted desire. You bend to not break and break to be healed. It's not easy, when a gun is pointed at your head and the trigger decides your next breath, your next embrace and your next life.

You fingers grasp and yearn and the pictures keep dancing, reminding you of what you do not have and yet what you long for. You would scream if you had enough air to breathe and you would cry if indeed your tears would be enough.

But none of it is...so you keep searching.

...Lucy

We adopted a kitten this summer. Since I've been in college, these have been the only three years I've not had a pet. I've been begging my husband, since before we were even married to get a cat. On August 1, 2011 we did it.

Her name is Lucy.

Film

Its not hard to see why so many people find life in front of a TV so easy. It makes you forget real life for a while, with all its pain, struggle and heartache. Instead you watch other people's pain, struggle and heartache and then rejoice that it isn't you. I've found myself watching too many movies and TV shows this summer. So I keep asking myself. Why this fascination with a story? This addiction to drama? This obsession with the lives of other people, both their joys and their sorrows, their adventures and their losses?

What is the secret to a story as its plays itself out on the flat screen TV in your living room? (I personally don't own one, I just use my laptop) I wonder this question over and over again as we watch millions of people flood the theater's on opening nights; as we watch billions of dollars being poured into the film-making industry. I'm not against it, but neither can say that I am for it. You can't just say that those stories that flicker across your television screen are all entertainment and nothing else. If it was simply that I'm not sure that it would be such a big deal. No it's something much deeper, even as it numbs you to reality, it also awakens you to something you can't quite put your finger on and every time you the credits scroll you feel it drop away just out of reach and you are left with that burning desire to see the next sequel or the next episode, anything to feel it again.

And so it happens over and over again. More movies are filmed, by tickets bought and more shelves built for their showcase DVDS. Why?

Memories

I was in Hawaii less than a month ago. Sitting on a beach with a book in my hands, sun tanning my skin and sand creeping its way inside my bathing suit. I was staring out into rolling blue waves, watching my husband of only a few days riding the wakes with his surf board. Kauai's impressive mountain range pushed its way to the clouds behind me, where four-hundred foot waterfalls tumbled down to the island's valley floor.

I'm pretty sure every thing is several tones brighter in Hawaii. Also the rain is clearer and fruit is three times as big. When I took  my first step off the plane in Honolulu I swear the air tasted like sugar. Maybe not the most accurate description, but it was what I felt, plus the breeze blowing in from the ocean was like heaven.

People can say I was on my honeymoon and perhaps every thing was romanticized, but I'm pretty darn sure that was the way it was. In any case, now that I'm back in Texas, and the weather is sizzling hot and the air dry and your sweat tastes like vinegar salt I can't help remembering Hawaii. The only way of enjoying a good book here is in the cool, air conditioned atmosphere of your own home or sitting on your computer near an electrical outlet.

Like today I'm inside, with the curtains drawn and cool cup of sweet tea in my hands. A cool, deep, blue ocean of water would be real nice right now.

You can feeling the yearning.
You can taste.
Hear it.
Almost touch it.
It follows you around, on the hem of your jeans, hanging there silent and heavy. It pulls with uninhibited inconsideration at what you are doing, jerks at you with dogmatic precision and whispers with gentle caresses. It never leaves, but neither does stay close enough for you to hold and real enough for you see. It dances just out of reach, teasing, laughing and winking and then falls back in step just behind, dust in its wake and fire in its eyes.

If you look back it will slide to the left and if you look to the left it will slide to the right, but it always pushes you forward, pleading for a chance to show you it's dreams. One by one they flash in before your eyes, leaving you breathless and aching. And when it touches your belly with that finger of desire you flail and writhe, begging for mercy and but asking for more. You cover your ears, but your heart is unguarded, then you close your eyes, but your feet keep moving. There is no power to stop it on earth or in heaven.

And so you walk and then you run, but the yearning remains, holding your hands and kissing your feet. The strength of its will and the fury of its devotion sweep you off your feet and you fall panting in the dirt.

It really does not have a name, but the only one I can come up with today is this: Heaven is out there, reminding me I belong there and not here and it will never let up until I am home.

Poems

I wrote several poems in poetry workshop class last semester. Here are a few samples. Mostly about Israel...

Masada

The air over the Dead Sea
shimmers and pulsates
like a force wall
from a sci-fi movie
I squint outwards
into the heat
It bounces off the
canyon walls of En Gedi
and distant shores of Jordan

I am standing on an ancient
fortress rising from
the baking dust of the 
arid desert gently sloping
above the acidic waters

Moans of the dying
and screams of the anguished
echo up from the
valleys of history
I can see the vultures
as they circle in lazy
lurid loops above a dying
sunset

Blood lies in pools
and runs in rivulets
from every abode
They had no other choice
we are told
Women and children first
Slain by the men's swords
then these slew each other
until only one remained
taking the curse upon himself
He fell on his own blade
The Romans were defeated
before they even breached the gates

I stand on the edge
staring at the crumbling walls
and fallen bricks
letting the sun
beat on my
bare head
I wonder if I would
have done the same
to escape slavery
and living death

The hot air rises
from the Dead Sea
fans my dripping face
and I taste
salt

On the Shores of Galilee

I walk down the shore

on a dirt path

away from my hotel

as cars belch fumes

on nearby roads

and bikini clad

swimmers soak themselves

in the nearby swimming pool 

surrounded by perfectly

manicured green lawns

He walked here

his bare toes upon

the pebble strewn shore

so small

this three mile

half moon of land

around the Galilean Sea

Bethany, Capernaum, Tiberius

All within my naked eye

He sweated

on wooden boats

as he fished

and under the midday sun

he burned

My own feet stand on a dock staring out

onto the water he quieted

and the cities he lived in

They feel so gritty, so dirty and so loud

as techno-pop music ripples

across the water

where gaudy lights glow

Over the concert’s steady beat

a starry-eyed couple is kissing

in the dark

I can hear their quickened breath

I am standing where he walked

dirt in his fingernails

where a woman washed his feet

with her hair

Only a few minutes’ walk

from here

He danced at weddings

drank wine

and laughed with the men

I feel the weight of the night sky

he once gazed at

pressing in with the reality

of his humanity

and the unity of this

with my own desperate

longings

I think of how

I sailed in a wooden boat

a few hours ago

on this sea

no storm

and no oily fishermen

just jet skis

following our waves

and the hum of our modern engines

as droplets of water

sprayed my sunburn cheeks

He walked on this water

he was here

just as I am now

I close my eyes

and breathe

wondering what

he would have smelled like

and I hear the water

lap against the rocky

shores