Typing Sunday.

Today has not been a particularly enjoyable day, apart from a sneaked spoonful of Nutella and some funny messages from friends, but I am up and yes and full. Jittery. If I were into bad analogies, I would liken it to popcorn with its salty smell of promise. Actually let's be honest, I am into bad analogies.

I am writing an essay explaining how the development of the spa and then the beach-side resort in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected changing attitudes to the body and society. It is interesting but remote to me today.

I didn't enjoy church tonight.

together

relieved, surprised, excited, expectant, hopeful, thankful. warm, calm, peaceful. creativity, direction, willingness, readiness. disarming honesty, openness, sincerity, thoughtfulness. upright. earnest. kind. trustworthy.

i am exploding patiently.

new...

i think this is going to be intense.
hopefully in a good way.

beirut - nantes

gosh. this is one of my favourite songs at the moment and this clip is just gorgeous. i am a little bit in love with zach...the skinny trendy mop-haired twenty-year-old musical maverick appeal, with a healthy dash of relaxed eccentricity. gets me every time.

sleepy in the kitchen

feels like everything is tomorrow and the next day and the next and it's nice. days to look in the eye with a smile.

there is pasta cooking and it is making me excited.

despite being lame it is also true.

on the one level it's hard to answer. they're all amazing, godly, wise, mature, intelligent, kind, funny, leaders. easy banter and effortless discussion. in these things i can't split them with him.

but: this thing just happened. it wasn't sought after particularly; it came to be; it was natural and smooth, a development. it was easy, and it made a strange and disarming kind of sense. whereas with them there was friendship and they stepped up because they wanted something new and more. and i really wanted to want it, firstly because they're great and secondly because hurting people is horrible. so i tried to like them in my head, or played with the possibility. turned my persuasive skills (halfheartedly) upon myself.

but:
it was plain and simple and i didn't want it.

here in this space i didn't have to think or try or weigh up or persuade. everyone talks about it in bad pop songs that jade us as we sing along in the car. but, you know, i think cliche doesn't necessarily mean lie. there is a crazy level of attraction that you can't really pinpoint or explain, that refuses to succumb to even the most earnest rationalising.

and it's really quite nice when you don't have to think too much. not propelled by my wishful head - a relief. it's not so much a decision but something that has happened in unexpected movement.

two friends of mine

one who has loved so much that he never wants to love again, who is living holed up in his head so he doesn't have to occupy his heart. escaping the breathless and claustrophobic. and who is writing songs bloated with tired thoughts. i'm watching him pray for emotional fortitude in silence and hearing him make silly, loud jokes so he doesn't have to think about those heavy things in there. he is full of warnings.

another who loves so much that he is haunted with hope. someone who trips more quickly and heavily than the others, and yet with more integrity. who surprises with wisdom and a servant heart on a daily basis, surfs above the crowd with funny voices and one-liners; is a gift. doesn't know it yet but knows more than he should. he sends midnight messages that are simple and longing and kind and that make me want to explode things in the sky for him but i can't.

the first thing i think to do is to send them songs that suit them.

stop

i would like to keep this feeling please.

Five Rules

i have made them and i am going to follow them. the rules are written with an expensive inky pen on a bright green post-it note, watching me from above my laptop screen. as of last weekend i am making myself both pupil and teacher. this is really hard for me, but that is ok. they are good for me and good for you too.

rekindling a love affair

i am extremely tempted to break my self-imposed tetris fast.
this will not be for my own good...

coffee+cake

trusting vertically. calmed horizontally. caught in the slipstream of the two.

take this moment.

a kidnapping of minds from beyond our skies, a realm you refuse to recognise. you don’t know who you are or who you’re supposed to be. the light is out but you’re inside, shadow-dressed behind the curtains.

it’s a vast crowd of the missing and the blind take the lead. but i have inside a bright treasure and an invitation; i have a secret and a revolution. inside this fragile body, a jar of cracking clay. precious contents, an unfading light – the face of Christ.

i’ll take this moment and take your hand, lift the veil and show the truth. lift your eyes to the bright and unseen answers of eternity.

i’m full of exploding words, salty with the smell of promise. a plainly spoken truth for seated children and for adults tall with pride. i’ll hide myself, reveal Him, as conversation leaps to Always and Ever. this is the word of life you are desperate to hear, the secret you keep from yourself.

i'll write it down and affix a stamp, post grace to you in a white envelope. spell out the hope of life and the faith of mercy. and i’ll send some letters to busy strangers, glimpsed on trains and buses in a speedy now. a growing Kingdom through the postal system.

i’ll take this moment and take your hand, lift the veil and show the truth. lift your eyes to the bright and unseen answers of eternity.

glory dropped in a mailbox,
a forever destination.
2 corinthians 4.

ray lamontagne - be here now

one of my favourite songs. it is calm and collected and sombre and tense.

walking to the station

i'm constructing beautiful, careful sentences to convince you. but i'm realising that i don't have the persuasive skills, or more accurately, the necessary range of expression. i'm working within an inadequate medium, because merely horizontal. flat.

speaking across the suburbs

I made a phone call to speed sleep.

Last week in history I learnt about liminality: a doorway, a threshold, an in-between space of both liberty and risk. Travelers are said to absent themselves from normal life; to step outside society and to thrust themselves into this unregulated, uncertain space.

I know that we are still just friends, and I will continue to know this until you tell me otherwise.

Some hand-written speech in my notebook, from around me today. Politely interrupting myself, shelving some errant thoughts in rough alphabetical order. I may borrow them out later.

Time? As slow as we make it, right now. A messy clock, almost marking the dates.

an evening meal

not wanting clarity
because clarity reduces hope
or fills it up like a wayward balloon

heart work

yes great reasons but frustrating, disappointing. more disappointed than i expected to be. that may not be true actually; i expected, in the event, that i would be disappointed. so now i am, and now i need to work out some things inside. because i don't want to be playing a waiting game by myself, without any other players. standing alone in a field, or something.

but not now and maybe later - these are sharp, shaky words. words on the edge of a precipice, threatening to fall: blowing in the wind, sitting and passive and vulnerable, before a gust. maybe is a dangerous, open-ended thing to say, to hear, and to believe in. it is imminent and distant, which means it is indeterminate. too close and too far - that is - both tempting and trivial. and those words don't flatten my feelings just by the saying. his speech does not do the work that i need to do, which begins after, later. now - i need to sink, settle, i need to be ok with this and move away from this. both.

writing is better for thinking and dealing. it is a gift left for me.

p.s.

because others will. and have.

Archive lesson.

A message from a friend and I caught a glimpse of my own worth. If you're not chasing me, it's not enough.

it's just a little thing but

she put on that mascara for him. she forgot some things en-route, traveling, immersing herself impulsively in a temporary baptism. prayer before bed.

on desiring

gosh what was that?