Meandering

rich bitches, time troubles, and wailing sirens

2006-09-21T19:34:00.000-05:00

i am torn apart by time.

my friend matt would dispute this though because he doesn't believe in it. he's a vonnegut fan through and through. and so it goes...

can i possibly have been gone from home sweet waco, home sweet ubc for a month? is that conceivable...? how does a place impart seemingly life-alterting lessons, deep meaning, with a shared experience of pain and suffering the ultimately made me feel known like i've never felt known...? how did i leave that? and at the same time, did i do myself a disservice or a favor?

is this jaded or was that jaded? am i being dualistic?

is this bosnia or washington d.c? because i hear so many sirens. have you ever seen a fire hood? well they are these amber colored bags for your head so that if a fire/smoke breaks out you can pull it over your face to keep it from burning. i have a fire hood now. i went to walmart before i left and politely asked "do you sell mace?" the big small city isn't really that scary it is just that i think others are trying to subtly persuade me that some people are "worth" more than others and some people aren't worth it at all.

i am getting a free flu shot next week. they've assured me that they're won't be a shortage...this time. next time?

a man quietly asked me outside of the dupont metro exit if i had a spare fare card. i reached into my purse to hand the man my remaining .65 cents when a woman dressed in a matching pinstripe suit pulled my hand away from him and said "don't give it to him, he'll just sell it." i gave him my card and yelled "ok!" at her as she rode down the escalator. all i heard her say was an offended sounding "what?!" at that point i didn't care if he used that .65 cents to buy heroin and shoot up. i just didn't want that rich bitch telling me what to do with my hard-earned money. i didn't like the way she looked at him...compassionless.

dammit all. i always felt like that spelling for "dammit" was the most elmer fud spelling possible...like "here wabbit wabbit wabbit." maybe i should use "damn it" which sounds very formal or damnit which seems contrived.

this post probably makes it sound like i hate d.c. or something- and i DON'T. but, i can see how the hill/the city has made people hard.

i can see the doctrine of love that i learned may not work here...

is that idiotic?

2006-08-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

as much as i don't want this blog to really be about the day-to-day happenings of my life...today it needs to be. i am closing a chapter on one of the most important periods of my life so far. i'm leaving ubc/baylor and moving to dc. i don't know if it will all work out, i may just run back "home" to the ubc womb and stay :) i don't know. but, i'm excited about the change that is going to happen and i am anticipating the new things that god has for me (wow that sounded way too christian...) oh well. nothing profound in this blog, but hopefully there is more enlightenment to come.

"as we go out this week may we love god, embrace beauty, and live life to the fullest. amen." -k.l.

lorn lost love

2006-08-17T23:15:00.000-05:00

"'Falling in love', we said; 'I fell for him.' We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. 'God is love' they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh."

-"The Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood

have we had/do we have the capability to flesh that love out, but instead chose to believe in the fantasy of the abstract, ideal, Love?
that is my question.

2006-08-06T22:53:00.000-05:00

mosaic...

a fantastic little community of peeps in central city austin. don v. is the pastor there and if vonnegut's theory of each of us having a karass (from Cat's Cradle) is correct, i imagine don and i are in the same one. he is one of those people that has love, admiration, grace, and understanding just bubbling from his lips.

it was so wonderful to go tonight. i went with few expectations and no solid concept of what to expect from the evening, but...wow. something inside me that had been dormant the last few months suddenly was nudged out of a sleepy-eyed state and brought into the light of day. boy have i been cynical lately. i think it is a trap that my friends and i are all caught in...

have i have been justifying my reasons for doing whatever i want, being narcissistic, ironic, judgmental, and possibly prideful all the while? don't get me wrong...i have had a darn good time. i do love freedom...but i also love joy and peace. can i emphasize that none of my conclusions are coming from the sermon i heard at ubc today. during that sermon i was ridiculously cynical and wanted to leave. not that i don't love love love ubc but it was so nice to remind myself that i get inspiration and am moved at other places as well.

but at mosaic...i loved seeing a group of 40-50 people who are also emergent, closing their eyes and singing earnestly and honestly to god. sure, they haven't been where we have been...they haven't known the same darkness. but like i heard at a wedding held at first baptist on saturday, "joy conquers despair." that itself was an experience--being able to go back to that building where the funeral was and see something as delightful and fulfilling as a wedding be performed. joy has conquered despair...see? and i don't mean that shallowly because clearly the low points have shaped us and are a continual presence, but i am ready for some lightness. i am ready to let some love in. i'm ready to allow people to experience simple joys without mentally thinking..."they wouldn't feel the same if they had been through what i've been through."

and although life seems to resolve very little right now...i am reminded of our ubc spring hub series of the _ _ _ _ _ _ of the spirit.
love
joy
peace
patience
kindness
goodness
gentleness
faithfulness
self-control

2006-07-17T00:36:00.000-05:00

so i jumped on the bandwagon.

go ahead...judge me! i'm not sure i'll keep up with posting anyway. as much as i'd like to see some consistency in my life right now i am finding that to be a frustratingly difficult ideal.

this is my first public blog that i have ever had. i've actually had a private blog online for three years now but it's really just a sounding board for me and my anonymous readers. this is a big step for me.

i've been asked why i have felt compelled to start a blog, especially since for about three years i've carried an arsenal of answers, fully-loaded, for why so many people are xanga/blogspot/myspace whores. and now i have joined the ranks, sold out, and commodified myself. *sigh* but as with many things in my current tidal wave of change, i have begun to[re]define for myself what it means to have a blog. i have committed myself recently to a conversation, primarily an emerging church conversation, but also one with spiritual, intellectual, and communal roots. a conversation involves one or more parties and if i'm not sharing my ideas/ thoughts/ beliefs/ nuances then i am doing my partners in the conversation a huge disservice. sure a blogger entry can quickly (and inevitably will) turn into a huge ego or sob fest, but hopefully there will be minuscule particles of truth and inspiration lodged in between the cracks of my theories. hopefully my friends (readers) will be able to look past my admittedly verbose ways, my horrendous attempts at spelling, and my entire disregard for sentence structure, and my use of incorrect grammar. also, as my former roommate loves to point out, i often use vocabulary words out of context. i am flawed! but i am thankfully, flawed. b/c perfect is uber nauseating. further, i guess i hope that this blogger site can be a way for me to express myself in a public setting. even though i desire to be authentic, i'll admit it is a rather scary concept for me to embrace.what if raw/ unedited/ scathing/ unabashed/ inappropriate/ label-laden/ stereotypical/ crude statements find their way through the byzantine conduit in my brain and onto this blog? will my thoughts be met with forgiving/ loving/ protecting/ accepting/ affirming/ respectfully disagreeing responses? we'll see. i'm going out on a limb. i'm breaking my own tradition of silence and facades and essentially "going there." sojourning on into the unknown. wow, that was needlessly deep.