my new favorite thing is looking up etymologies.
which led me to stumble upon this, and it made me giggle.

"The expression [the shit hits the fan] is related to, and may well derive from, an old joke. A man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn't find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender, who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what had happened, the bartender replied, 'Where were you when the shit hit the fan?' "

words are fascinating!

It's the first day of spring
And my life is starting over again
The trees grow, the river flows
And its water will wash away my sins
For I do believe that everyone has one chance
To fuck up their lives
But like a cut down tree, I will rise again
And I'll be bigger and stronger than ever before

For I'm still here hoping that one day you may come back
For I'm still here hoping that one day you may come back

There's a hope in every new seed
And every flower that grows upon the earth
And though I love you, and you know that
Well I no longer know what that's worth
But I'll come back to you in a year or so
And I'll rebuild, be ready to become
Oh the person, you believed in
Oh the person, that you used to love

For I'm still here hoping that one day you may come back
For I'm still here hoping that one day you may come back

sort of obsessed with noah and the whale right now. i recall hearing them in portland, and promptly forgot about them until driving with darja the other day. they are beautiful and brilliant. they have a new cd that doesn't come out until october sixth, but some of the songs are listenable online. like this song. it's my favorite. i can't wait to get this album. i'm very excited. and very in need of autumn sounds. which is ironic, since the album is called the first days of spring. hmm. bad timing.

i wonder about many things.

i love ann lamott:

you've got to love this in a god - consistently assembling they motleyest people to bring, into the lonely and frightening world, a commitment to caring and community. it's a centuries-long reality show - moses the stutterer, rahab the hooker, david the adulterer, mary the homeless teenager. not to mention all the mealy-mouthed disciples. not to mention a raging insecure narcissist like me.

she's so beautiful.

i also love autumn. more than anything. it's a wonderful time with vibrant colors that speak into my soul. i love its smells. i love the way it feels, its crispness enveloping me and the way darkness begins to creep into the daylight. the way that darkness brings about a feeling of numberless, anything's possible thoughts. i'm usually restless, but autumn nights make me so itchy for adventure i can't even stand it. i love, and despise, the way that this season fills my nostalgia bucket to the brim, spilling over. drops and drops of meaningful memories. it takes me back to days of high school, and the youngest of loves that created crippling depression and mountains of glorious growing and learning. i recall visiting the darkest hours of night in my first moments of being completely independent, the freedom and loneliness that was discovered there, revealing itself through deep, emotional writing, feuling my love for these things. i remember restless night time drives to no where in particular. a playlist i made that made me feel infinite, listening to that playlist under golden branches. i think of leaves falling on lakeview and fumbling to describe the notion that is my god. and always, at the forefront of my nostalgia, is evening through the hills of pennsylvania, more stars than black sky, balto, feeling infinite on the brooklyn bridge, electricity inside of a subway car, and innocence.

significance always occurs in my autumns. i'm eager for this time.

i want to meet someone who sees beauty in places i see it. because it's big and it's indescribable and it's just so...

you know?

sunday evenings have come to be a renewal.

this is something i haven't experienced in years. once there were days when i looked forward to sunday evenings more than anything in the entire world. it was a wonderful time in my life in general. i think it was more carefree. i was filled with a lot of hope. god was opening my eyes to about a million things at once. there was still an innocence (naivete?) to growing. and sunday nights, they were priceless.

the past few have been this way. mostly because they've been filled with really inspiring conversations. they've been filled with jokes and laughter and really beautiful worship, really beautiful words about god, and lovely, wise people who have spoken into my life. one exchange in particular was someone who, upon telling him that i had been an art history major (which i always follow with, yeah, ya know, so i won't be doing anything with my life), said, "no! don't say that! there is a reason and a purpose for you being in that place and going through all that and having a degree in art history. and it's good. so don't knock it."

i really appreciated those words. i think sometimes i put myself into this wrestling match, between the things i genuinely enjoy and the things that i think i'm supposed to be doing as a follower of christ. my art history classes taught me so much about beauty, creativity, passion, politics, religion, the indescribable relationship between our souls and our minds, the way that emotions can transcend and speak through visual mediums, the way that people are just so absolutely amazing and fascinating creatures - there were times in class that i felt like i was learning, discussing, seeing something so sacred. and so i wasn't taking a biblical history class, or a social justice 101 class, but i was learning about god. i was learning about the way he's made our souls. and i'm realizing how much that isn't worth trading for anything.

so admist this wrestling match, i've been thinking, man. i need to do something that will matter. maybe i should go back to school and get a nursing degree. that way i could really help people. but i stink at science! i'm terrible at it and i'd have to work really really hard learning about things that i just don't really enjoy, because i feel like i have to do something that is meaningful. something that i can tell people about and they will really think i'm doing great work. work that is empirical. it can be studied and tested and the results can be produced. there will be no doubt that i am following christ. but i think, instead, i'm learning what i'm not called for, and what i think i am.

the things that allow me to see god in profound ways are incredibly abstract. they're in ways that the english language does not have words to describe. the things that light up my soul and make me jump for joy are things that are beautiful and creative. these things make me feel a sense of purpose, a sense of oneness with the spirit. i believe the key to what i was made for lies inside of these places.

so, i guess i don't know exactly what it is i'm looking for, but at least i can stop trying to feel like i have to do all of these things i think are great in my mind in order to claim i'm following christ. because following christ doesn't always mean saving people's lives. it's also about finding new and creative ways for god's glory to be revealed in this place. it's about making sure all that glory is attributed to god's beauty and creativeness. and it's about taking a step outside of the proverbial box and seeing that creativity is good. and holy. and is made in the image and likeness of god. the created creating because their creator gave them the ability to do so. we have these things inside of us, we don't always understand them, we certainly can't describe them, but we know they come out in the most profound and incredible ways. if you only tap into that kind of freedom. it's beautiful. and i want to experience these kinds of things for the rest of my life. and i want others to experience them too. it's what we're made for.

so, popular culture is not anything that i ever want to be saturated in, but it sort of just seems to happen that way. the unprecedented event of the evening - kanye's shocking display at the vma awards, which i did not even know were on - was bombarding the vast masses of social networking. and me, being the curious controversy lover that i am really wanted to know what happened. so i saw the video, and then directly proceeded to be swept away by all that junk for the past half hour or so. i had several revelations - including how shockingly staged everything seemed, and how pretty lame all these music videos are in the first place.

one in particular got to me, it was taylor swift's video for the song that she won the award for. the one that clearly outraged kanye - which was ridiculous anyway, because he said that beyonce had one of the best videos of all time, and maybe i missed the creative music video train, but all she was doing was dancing for the entire video. anyway, that's not the point i was getting to. so this taylor swift song is essentially your classic she's all that move - with the cute, drama free girl made to look nerdy, and the adorable quarterback with his mean, skanky girlfriend. so there's this theme that the video is centered around - the nerdy girl and popular guy living across from each other, and sometimes writing signs for each other to see. so she has this sign that says, 'i love you', which she never gets to hold up because he always closes his blinds right when she's about to (of course). while i'm watching, the montages of dorky band uniform girl and cheerleading captian girl, scantily clad outfits and tshirts with cardigans, and the tension with this guy, the whole time i'm thinking, poor dorky girls of real life. because this is not how it works. the captain of the football team will never want to date you. and once you get a little bit older, you'll realize you wouldn't have wanted to date him anyway.

i understand, i'm judging through a very stereotyped filter, but that's what the premise of the video is in. i do suppose in some anomalous situations, stuff like this happens - but clearly, not the message taylor swift is sending to our tweens.

so anyhow, i'm watching the video, thinking the whole time, this isn't real life! stop putting these awful false notions into girls' heads! let them find their own identity and boys who will appreicate them for who they are! and then, of course, at the end, she takes off her nerdy glasses and shows up at the dance wearing this amazing dress and looking beautiful - and the popular guy leaves the mean girl and goes for her. i'm thinking, this isn't right! real life never happens like this! these poor girls!

but all of a sudden, she holds up the 'i love you' sign she'd written before but didn't get to show him...and he takes a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and holds it up - and it says the same thing. he loves her too!

cue my heart melting. i was so mad at myself. but ohmygosh it was adorable. and so i'm sick to my stomach with all the false realities but at the same time wanting so badly a cute romancey thing like that to happen to me and thinking, what the heck is wrong with me?

this crazy, backwards culture and its messed up notions of things like love and reality. but i feel like this is perpetually my place, being appalled and disgusted but a product of it at the same time. opposing everything it stands for, but still becoming enthralled and wrangled in at times. and desperately wanting to rid myself of it completely, but having that be virtually impossible, because those smoke and mirrors are so fancy. and those bright lights are so enthralling. and so the muse's song calls be back, caring for things that don't matter, storing in my heart things of this world and not of the one i really belong to. it's a tension i feel so strongly, a tug of war, but i'm not on either side, i'm in the middle, getting sloshed around in the mud, with no side ever fully claiming me. and no one can serve two masters, but that's often what it feels like i do. i'm free in christ but still voluntarily enslave myself in these ways. i cling to these ideals that aren't real life, real love, real sacrifice, real relationships, real community, real moments in time...that do nothing but create falsehoods upon falsehoods. and it's humorous, but really just sorta sad when we get to the heart of it.

especially when as i've been writing, i've been thinking about how i want to watch the michael jackson tribute they did. i'm a silly girl with a silly torn heart. with flesh and a soul. with only one that really matters.

had the wildest dream last night.

i went to this place, it was somewhere in the southwest. let me preface this by saying a few months ago i had a very aquatic-themed dream, where i was at this aquarium type place, except the building itself was more like a workout gym and there was this very large pool/tank with maybe walruses or some other large weird animal like that inside of it that i had to swim through to get to this walkway to cross over this body of water...okay it was just weird. i have a lot of water dreams. whatever. anyway. so. i was at that place again. it was near the painted deserts. except instead of being a combination gym/aquarium, it was an eatery. and a petrified wood storing company. because they were hauling countless chunks of petrified wood. the stuff was everywhere. so, i hung out, decided i wanted to leave. instead of driving though, i was walking back by my myself on this weird path with a cliff next to me. i went back and forth a couple of times - as in back to wherever our car was parked, because it had magically teleported to a far away parking lot instead of where we drove it up to right in front of the building. so don't ask me why i walked back and forth a few times, i just did. but finally, there was this long line of people walking back on the trail. and there was one part that was really narrow and crumbly, and i had no trouble getting through it the previous times, but this time, i was terrified to cross it. my dad was behind me, and another male who i can't recall at the moment, perhaps another young family member? one of my cousins? not sure. as well as a long line of people also waiting to cross. and, it was dark. pretty dark. so i couldn't see very well. so eventually, we realized there was another trail about five feet underneath the one we were walking on, and decided to use that one instead. cut to movie theatre. i was there with someone used to date, but we weren't dating in the dream, just seeing a movie together. and we were watching this film that i happened to be really into, may have been a foreign film? so i had my feet up on the seat in front of me, per usual in real life, but this time there were people in front of me and they got angry and started shooting me dirty looks for having my feet up. i think one of the girls turned around and told me to stop it. then, someone from their group came back with his mac laptop and said, "i'm pro-choice and this is why." and he showed me this short little blurb, i dont remember what it said, and some weird graphic design he made that looked a lot like that fetus sigur ros album cover. it was around this time that i realized he had approached me because i was wearing this black pro-life supporting hoodie. (what?! its so strange.) so i then gave him my real-life shpeal about why i was pro-life (i'm glad my values stay true in the sub-conscious) leading into a discussion about feminist history and the like. it was around this time that the guy i was with started getting really angry. he kept making really annoyed gestures and told me that if i wasn't there to watch the movie i should leave. (i love how things are so blunt in dreams.) i told him that maybe he should leave. i recall saying distinctly, "why don't you just leave? seriously, leave. no one wants you here. you should just leave." anyway, that went on for some time, and i must have ended up leaving. because the next thing i know, i'm finding my car in a parking garage. i caught some teenage kids (two boys and one girl) red handed breaking into my car. told them to give me all my stuff, they had tried putting my ipod into my iginition (seriously, what?) and were saying they didn't really take anything else. well, i ended up starting the car and driving off while they were still in it, one boy and the girl jumped out but the other kid was trapped driving with me. so then i was driving around a lot, in a place that looked very similar to the abandoned industrial parts of cleveland. i don't really know what the kid was doing during this time, i just remember driving down a bunch of roads and not really knowing where i was going. but eventually i started threatening to drop the kid off in really bad parts of town, specifically one place that was a brick road which led through a tunnel. he eventually started being really inappropriate and must have gotten out. i continued driving. that was the end.

i woke up trying to figure out if i'm crazy or what.

i say worlds like
adventure
exploration
experience
and what i'm really trying to get at with them can't be adequately described in words.
because my restlessness doesn't come from being in one single place for too long. it doesn't come from lack of things like adventure.
it comes from this desire to experience things i've never experienced before. to encounter people i've never encountered before, to learn from them, to grow with them, to see who they are. it's in moments like this that i feel alive.
it's in moments that just do not exist in words. i cannot tell you what it feels like. i don't know where to find it. but i'll know, i'll know it when i feel it. i'll know it when i find it.

prayerful sighs. lift these upward.