Dickinson / Today, I’m in Costa Rica

and I slept more last night than I did in the last three days combined and I got to hug my sister and dad and mom for the first time in months and I met a really kind man named Donald who has never been to America but loves the NFL so he wants to visit Dallas someday (just thinking about that now, I should have told him Dallas isn’t the best place in the states) and I did my morning run along the beach like they do in movies (do they do that in movies? idk, they should.)

But I also have my final essays due online and so despite the fact that I’ve left my phone in the room and decided to not pay extra for internet, here I am, in the lobby, writing about Faulkner, Emerson, Nature and Dickinson. I’m not mad. So here’s this beautiful quote about poetry:

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

-Emily Dickinson

this a quote worth sharing

School and lack of sleep are quickly eradicating my sanity and halfway through most sentences today I forgot what I was saying and I also just erupted into laughter over a dumb sentence I wrote at work today (the sentence was: “cocktail bitters are you scared?” and i’m still laughing). i’m writing another essay right now on Emerson’s nature and wow what a beautiful work that i can hardly comprehend with this frenzied state of mind.

but i’m going to take a moment, and read this quote a couple of times (slowly) because it’s breathtaking.

All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world, Some men even to delight. This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the same love in such excess, that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms.The creation of beauty is Art.

-Emerson, Nature

(quotes I have to cut from my essay but love)

Sprained Ankle/ Julien Baker

This song is ethereal and melancholy, but not in the climactic moment of pain and “I can’t remember what light looks like” type of way, rather, in the “life is hard and i’m tired and I’m not sure how I got here” way. It reminds me of the best parts of both Keaton Henson and of Mree except for Julien isn’t writing explicitly about a relationship (which is nice).

And even though I’m not in a “life is hard and I’m tired” season, I’ve been listening to it on repeat for days because it’s that beautiful.

Oh and the lyrics. The first ones are: “Wish I could write songs about anything other than death”. wow.

Here’s the link to the song (which is on NPR’s all songs considered). It’s a beaut.

Common prayer, 22 July 2015

“Lord God, you reveal yourself to us in so many subversive and unassuming ways. Give us the eyes to see the miracles and resurrection that happen every day. Unclog our ears to hear you, and show us how to get rid of the clutter of our lives that we might make room for you. Amen.”

I can only deal with the past when I search for the resurrection. I can only find the resurrection when I am healed from my blindness to see mystery of the life. I need deep faith to believe the mystery that I am loved by God in order to stop being a consumer (of friendship, of accomplishments, of accolades, of fading bliss).

Emily Dickinson / 372 / 23 July 2015

Wow, anyone wanna talk about how beautiful this is? Call me. Xx

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner, 171-172

That was when I learned that words are not food; that words don’t ever fit even what they are trying to say at. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride… that we had had to use one another by words like spiders dancing by their mouths from a mean, swinging and twisting and never touching, and that only through the blows of the switch could my blood and their blood flow as one stream….

…He had a word, too, Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time, I knew that that word was like others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.

Today I stumbled upon Lisabeth Zwerger

I’m captivated by this illustrator i came across from a Brainpicking’s article on “The Most Beautiful Illustrators from 200 Years of Brother’s Grim Fairy Tales”. Her name is Lisabeth Zwerger and she also has some beautiful work for Alice in Wonderland.  Her illustrations draw my eyes to small things it seems only a child would notice and they awaken the imaginative quality of children that remembers we inhabit a world of mystery.

Here are some of the images.

The Frog King or Iron Henry

Alice In Wonderland

The Brave Little Taylor

Alice in Wonderland

teardrops

This is Peter and Kerry covering Womack and Womack walking around WHERE I USED TO LIVE. it’s been over a year since i took strolls in brick lane area.

missin’ it.

Playlist: “In July, I learned that it is both heavy and light to be in love with everyone and with no one at all.”

This morning, my july playlist magically queued up the 3 songs that are currently my favorite (by currently, i mean, it may change by tomorrow).

I want to share.

(PS, that’s the title of my July playlist and i know that it’s maybe dramatic, but hey, i really do feel like God is trying to teach me to replace comparing myself with others to being absolutely enamored by the way that God has designed the people around me. He teaching me to be free to rejoice in the gifts of those around me that used to make me feel like i’m simultaneously too much and not enough)

^thanks Neal for this beaut

^one of my favorite love songs rn / on repeat during my commute

^”You must be loving your life in the rain” / i love running to this song (and fifth harmony, but i’m less proud of that)

someone told me you’re still pretty

Yesterday, during the morning, i had a series of anxiety attacks . i wrote a thing about it that i may or may not share. Anxiety (which is different than stress) and I are strangers. Yesterday’s experience increased my compassion for people who wrestle with it constantly or who are in anxious seasons.

Today’s different and better.

and this song will always be one of my favorites. it makes me think of holding hands, entering cathedrals, swinging, walking up hills in the wind, bucolic mornings, praying with open eyes, smiling at someone with that “i-know-exactly-what-you’re-thinking” in both of your eyes, rolling down a hill, and,
the kind of nostalgia that is grateful for all beautiful things that have happened, even if and though the moments and the people who were there are gone. If not gone, then changed.

and that’s good and ok.