Here we go again (deep breath)

gettin' up again~



got a call to answer

what solvent to create the solution?

"First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean."
-Matthew 23:26

These simple instructions have seemed so difficult to follow for so long - how do you clean the inside of a cup?

...Perhaps by drinking it?
Can't go under it, can't go over it ...

the breathing is worth the work

To my 5-years-ago-self:

Thank you for your work,
the first good lungfuls are already worth it.
I know you remember this song in your struggles - it is now one of emerging -
keep going - there is sight of land - and we can almost stand again...



I'm not sure if you can hear me or not,
but thank you.
The drowning has seemed awfully easy at times.
Thank you from the future. You did well. We're going to make it.
briney, tangled in seaweed, and all...
Don't let up...

Thought pocket

God is all of the journeys

There is a cradle that can be made in the distance between two peoples' eyes

the pain of parting is down payment for reunion

everyone is me, but with their own unique changes. I am you, with some important differences.

when trying to make decisions under emotional influence, remember that your brain is on drugs

everyone just wants to be respected, understood, and allowed to live

a torn seam in the fabric of my life has just smoothed over.
it's a little like being able to see the whole sky again - front and back.
and maybe the water will warm enough that my fractured iceberg will dissolve, and hey, it's all water anyway.

I got rhythm, I got music, I got my wide horizon
my world just recovered some of its fullness

regathering the horcruxes… I made too many .. In attempt to save it, I divided my heart and scattered the pieces into hiding. I face a cooling - now I've been remembering my hiding places - bring them back together, gather embers - it is not yet time to fade.


I think,
that as the life moves up through the trunk from the earth,
it can feel the other branches, the roads not taken,
as it stretches towards the particular leaf from which it will be exhaled back into the world.


When You Are Old by Wiliam Butler Yeats

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced among the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

(Happy Easter.)
One month since I made it to the river

"I hope

the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams."

- Red
The Shawshank Redemption






I think I just remembered something.

forgiveness: a background story

I was thinking of this story when writing the previous post:

(I might not be remembering this right, but the idea is there)
I remember hearing a story once about a woman who survived through a WWII concentration camp in Germany. She later became a speaker, sharing the stories of her terrible experiences of what humans are capable of in the camps. One day, a man approached her, appreciating her story, greeting her, and extending his hand to her in introduction (he may have even been apologizing and asking forgiveness - I can't remember). But she needed no introduction. He obviously did not recognize her, but she knew him as one of the guards in the concentration camp she had suffered within. As much as she had come to terms with her past, moved on, and forgiven others, in the long moments between her and the guard she wondered if she could do it. With that man right there before her, bringing the loud significance of everything he inflicted upon her, she didn't think she could bring herself to forgive him, though she knew that such a thing was supposed to be good.

She didn't think she could bring herself to forgive him. But, she could lift her hand. So she thought to God, All I can do is lift my hand to meet his, and trust God to do the rest."

She found that when their hands met and they shook hands, she was able to forgive him.


The previous post came partly from reflecting that it seems like forgiveness in this case was not a gathering up or a mustering.

It was a choice of direction.

forgiveness

Today,

I think that forgiveness is not about justifying, explaining, or finding ways to believe that some offense has been accepted, paid for, or can be mitigated.

I think I'd come to think of it that way, which surprises me by seeming foreign. And yet, I think I see it in my actions.

I don't like this view because it seems to me that if something is not ok, then attempts to make it so retroactively contribute to a sort of excuse-finding or rationalizing that I think is unhealthy because it begins to invalidate the significance of an offense/consequence and cast it as something other than it was. If we begin trying to say that something not ok is ok, I think that produces an unhealthiness as we succeed in confusing ourselves. It's true that there's more than one side to every story, but it's also true that there are consequences to actions. Some things, even if understandable or inevitable, are still not ok.

I was just remembering some Biblical concepts of repentance. Repentance is not about using the right words or actions in professing guilt, shame, justification, or indebtedness. Repentance is a complete 180-degree turn away from those characteristics and actions which caused an offense.

In the teachings of Jesus, when one person comes to another in a spirit of repentance, that person should be forgiven.

Forgiveness is the freedom to start from a newness and to make something different. It's a chance to learn from past mistakes, and when you come across a similar situation, to use what you know to make entirely different mistakes ;). Forgiveness doesn't mean that old things are 'ok', but it means that they don't have to get in the way of new things being possible, acceptable, and enjoyable.

I think that repentant persons are forgiven because this way, if the person has really changed direction, they are free to walk a new path, and meanwhile the old offense has not been made any less significant, just less relevant. Repentance and forgiveness together recognizes the significance of what was without obstructing what could still be. I think this sounds healthy when used with understanding.

suntelia

born and raised in the Midwest
refined by fire
disassembled, gathered, and matured in Portland

Portland has been good to me.

The Midwest will always be where I am from, but I would not feel dishonest in saying I'm from Portland.

Both places have been environments of my development.

I'm a Midwesterner and a Portlander.
Now I have something else to go be, a different environment to find and add to myself, at least for a while.

pour

This feels like rain,


the kind whose threads you can see in streaming sheets beneath those so-tall clouds.





(Scala & Kolacny Brothers Cover of The Knife's single "Heartbeats"

"Scala & Kolacny Brothers" is a Belgian girls' choir, conducted by Stijn Kolacny and accompanied by Steven Kolacny on the piano.)



edit
06 Mar 2010
edit

I found it. The video I was trying to think of when posting this music. The video of pre-storm originally uploaded with (but later removed) music by Porcupine Tree.
It is described in the next post

accompaniment

There was a get-together of the choir last night. I went for the sake of friends. There was impromptu singing, even in barbershop style, and I loved it. These things don't happen enough. There was also a quadruple chocolate cheesecake. That was also fantastic.

Somewhat as a joke, one of my housemates started singing the first line "On Top of Spaghetti" and I harmonized.

How did you know to sing that harmony? He asked. As usual, I didn't answer well.

That's what I do. Sing harmony.
If I can anticipate the melody and if I know the words, I can come up with a harmony.
(I was cut off for a while, so I'm a bit out of practice, but it can come back)


Few people know this because few people will give me someone to sing with.

Few people know I can be a good tango follow because few people lead.




I sing harmony with myself and with YouTube and began learning to lead so that I don't have to wait for others.

side-effects

Good news:

I feel !


side-effect: I feel
and sometimes the edges are sharp.
Why are there edges? I feel a little too comfortable with this.

Wheat

At the end of the summer when it is ripe,

Wheat is harvested and separated.

Some parts will be caught by the wind and discarded, but the inside is important to keep. Know the difference.

That is what remains of summer.

The smoke, it sank into my skin

I am not hurt.
But, "Anything dead coming back to life hurts"

This might be true for live things continuing to grow and live as well.
No change without death?

be the colors

Sshh, sshhh.

Just let the colors move. Even if they don't spread and blend the way you hoped or thought they might, it's still a beautiful aurora now.

And besides,
they just might spread and blend in a way you didn't know to hope for.

On Your Porch

woke up this morning with The Format's On Your Porch playing in my mind. It seemed very appropriate.

(the video is one of those school project things)




I can hear it better now.





- edit -
(these started as comments, but I decided to move them to the main post:)

This song is making me feel like I really want something that I can't quite recognize or name or grasp, but that I already have, or will move into soon. And, I like the feeling. If there must be more than 1 world, (one of desiring and of having), then it is a soothingly anxious mix of both.

It fits my context.

... I like the feeling 'having' something without that being very dependent on the motion of time, or on exactly when in my life it actually appears.

There are quite a lot of things to appreciate, especially if I am not picky about 'time'.
For a creature like me that exists in one-dimensional time (at best), this is rather comforting.

discolored

Several months ago:

The dudes had again confirmed each others' coolness.

"Yeah, pound it," one proffered a fist.

"Respect knuckles." was the matched response.

"Not respect," corrected the first in an expanded gesture of brotherhood , "Love."


"Love without respect?" I interrupted.

They turned to acknowledge me out of the haze of their coolness and still using their cool voices, "Yeah." heads bob.

"So," I meddled further, "abuse?"







"Ha- .. uh ..." In the long silence, their eyes searched the air above our heads for a good reply before admitting defeat: "yeeeaah ... There's no way to make that funny."

I felt like I had spoiled something.

Flower!

Flower can be a verb.



Flower!

- Lloyd J Reynolds

responsibility for the gift

During daylight, I had considered the people of various ages, social maturities, and conduct that I've encountered. It seemed that, even if one is well-intentioned, there's still no substitute for experience and for the way we all learn from each other how to navigate as a collection of individuals.

The words incubated until dark, and I had to crawl halfway out of my bed the other night to find a pen and the back of a business card so that I could scrawl out the thought before it was submerged in the unconsciousness behind my eyes:


To be able to care about someone

is not just a permission,

but an acquired skill

girl. (keep moving)

As a girl in math/computing, I am generally surrounded by guys - and ones who seem to readily accept me and my abilities, at that.

Gender imbalances have historically not bothered me personally, as I tend to feel more socially at home among guys anyway. But, in the last few years, I think I have learned to look down on myself, even though I suspect that actually, my fellow nerdy gentlemen readily view me as an academic peer.

Even though I feel aware of this, it is sometimes difficult to overcome,
and to remember that we all have various insecurities regardless of gender.

I can work to improve my own abilities, self-conduct, and my own opinion of my character, independent of my biological disposition.
I just have to avoid feeling discouraged enough to stop moving forward.

diff'rent strokes?

"What's this?" he asked, picking up my jar of coconut oil.

"Coconut oil!" was my obvious and enthusiastic reply.

"Oh!" he said. And then, "Where I'm from, people use this to put in their hair."

"Oh." I said. "I like to eat it."

He looked suddenly at me, at the coconut oil, back at me again, and laughed.
It was funny.