circling back

late at night is when i forget your feelings.

the edited version

you make me want to not coast and you see all these things in me that i kind of already hoped were true and truly in me. and you're so kind, gentle, thoughtful, and the people around you are so incredibly fond of you; i sort of wouldn't believe it if i hadn't seen it, how well you live. you're so gosh darn hopeful and i find it totally fascinating if a little bit scary because there's something overwhelmingly huge about all the positive energy - it won't fit in my head, not even close. but here you are and you're so very present, so impeccably sincere, and then at the same time just the tiniest bit delightfully insane.

New things

more and more all i know how to pray for is blessing. less and less i trust my own ability to intuit what the good is in this or that situation or moment, and so i just ask for blessing upon blessing - for the world, for you, and sometimes for me. bless this, father. let it be a blessing. i think this is a breakthrough in my prayers (humility and settledness and just being a creation).

most

i went to bed at six pm because i couldn't keep my eyes open and then i woke up at eleven pm and ate some nutella toast and around the same time i realised that there are more important things like kindness and thoughtfulness and compassion and energy and optimism and just this kind of lovely indefatigable earnestness.

In jeans

I am the incredible shrinking woman.

upon reflection

dinner dates please.

an easter miracle

you're starting to seem like a lifetime away! and jesus is just so close, so incredibly risen.

edit: also, i'm so much more me without you, and i can't for the life of me work out what i was thinking when i imagined it otherwise. also, i've realised that i fell in love with the wrong friend. and that's really quite a shame because now it's very done.

developing images at the local store.

you're both really fun! now for some straight talking please.

My midnight

liminal spaces are more real, more realistic,
than those road-crossings announcing heres or theres.
beginnings and endings are pretty myths of hindsight,
a retrospective patterning of mess.
i do like this about sunny autumn days.
i like how these months point down while
springtime points inexorably up and up
(you can't wipe her smile off her face!).
the beautiful things i see are almost always dark,
greyed out like the knit on my back;
so, i guess, the in-betweens are mine -
mostly in a gorgeous fraying decay.
my mind is a racing one, a soft dark cave full
of abstractly-rendered projections and premonitions.
some passages are built up and round;
some narratives are threadbare loose.
this is ok.

Welcome to the Window

It's all up to you, my friend.
It might be what you always wanted but
You might not recognise it
Straight away.
You see?

Close and lips and
Cheeks heavily brushed
Blushed, touched but
It's not quite real or it's in fuzzy focus
At least.

For my part? Nobody knows
Except the King and he's worrying about
Other things and that's
Good for the world,
Which likes generally to turn.

I have so many conversations.
I spill and speak. And
It's hard to make out the register
Of these date-stamped improvisations.
You know?

There are makeshift moments that my eyes
Distort behind the scenes.
I can't say where will and wont
come in in all of this.
It's probably nothing.

answer yes or no.

my lists have changed! this is an interesting new development. referable to my own anxieties or...? always a bit of that, though i try to ask God to make me want, and then walk, the most holy and selfless route. do half-prayers really count though? the not-quite ones that seem to barely rise as high as the ceiling. regardless it's fun to have something on the go and to feel what i imagine to be an average amount of joy when i open my eyes after another (sleepless! always too sleepless) night.

The years change with me

Some people look different from the side. They turn their heads and they're surprisingly unfamiliar; even abstract. The people I meet with and eat with are ciphers to me, sometimes: shape-shifters. Identity (mine, mostly) frays at the edges more often than can reasonably be considered desirable, and in fact so regularly that I can't really dismiss it (me) as contained or neatly codified. It's a lot about memory, I think, and all tied up with the way I forget names of novels and acquaintances so easily. Ironically it's a lot about being singular, in probably as many senses of that word you can conjure. I think of James on hopelessly sleepless nights like this - of the man who sways to and fro with the winds of flimsy doubts and doctrines. Is it winds or waves? Either way. Sometimes I feel too multifarious for the faith I profess; far too messy and dispersed. Do you, new friend?

coffee

never say never.

right?

needs to stop caring needs to stop caring needs to stop. ok? oh for someone to not blow it - would be nice, wouldn't it? and, well, i probably need to make something change so my insides are less raw, etc. there's a peculiar grief in leaving home and picturing yourself as less alone than you really end up being, or than you really are in that all-of-life ultimate sense. (don't i know it.) actually, it's probably me - the ruining everything, that is. or it's just the whole universe and the person holding it together, except he doesn't ruin things as a matter of course so yeah i guess not which means - i don't know. that fanciness and niceness and kind of profundity to the everyday that comes with things that work out or are in the process of working out is what i think i want. for kicks. i would also like to sleep for several days, so good night.

A parable for the two of us, lately speaking

"Now they were different people as they started back. Four times they had driven along the shore road today, each time a different pair. Curiosity, sadness, and desire were behind them now; this was a true returning - to themselves and all their past and future and the encroaching presence of tomorrow. He asked her to sit close in the car, and she did, but they did not seem close, because for that you have to seem to be growing closer. Nothing stands still."
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1941), The Last Tycoon (London: Penguin, 2011), p.114.

freaken hell.

why do i still care? what the hell is wrong with me? jesus, take this away from me forever. i truly, completely, absolutely wish that i'd never met him.

Friday Night

my days are full but my nights are empty.
i walked out to put the garbage in the bin and i wished you would drive up, playing out the romantic gesture that used to always seem just around the corner, just off the sidewalk, just outside my house. and not because i 'deserved' it, whatever on earth that means, but because you had to, you loved to; you couldn't not.

my spoken faith

to change the world / to shatter the spell / to settle me down / to illuminate tomorrow / to break into pieces / to reel everything in / to let everything out / to sit at His feet / to release the tension / to unravel order / to puncture the everyday / to step up and out / to drive away into the sunset / to elucidate, to explicate / to take away these frames / to drink up eternity / to be filled with breath / to answer with reality / to tell fairy tales / to orchestrate happy endings / to make him miss me / to fall to sleep.

sufjan stevens - i walked

i walked
because you walked
but i won't probably get very far

kate nash, the nicest thing

I wish I was your favourite girl.

I wish you couldn't figure me out, but you'd always want to know what I was about.

I was I was the last thing on your mind before you went to sleep.

Basically I wish that you loved me.

I wish we could see if we could be something.

Me too.

From my Sunday addiction.

i asked for you.

have you ever prayed a one-off prayer? one that you really feel and need to send out of your heart, but one that you won't repeat? because even though you really feel it you're scared to invest too much in it by making it a private liturgy.

it felt audacious but very right to tell God what i want. and now it feels right to leave it to him and to breathe. i have a beautiful freedom in Jesus - every freedom, in fact, except the freedom to deny righteousness. i feel more calm than i should about all the complicated tomorrows, and i have a funny feeling that this stillness might be the rest and repentance Jesus has been longing to give me. i hope he holds me to it.

a typical week.

my boyfriend and i broke up, one of my best friends isn't really able to be my friend anymore, and my mum is convinced that i have an eating disorder. plus phd stress, ongoing family dramas, and some weird anxiety problem. i'm doing ok but goodness am i ready for the texture of my life to smooth out a little bit. this really isn't sustainable.

The Weekend Fall-out (or, Psalm 13)

Sometimes it's not right to read all the way to the end of the Psalm.

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and everyday have sorrow in my heart?

Sometimes it takes a long time to be able to read to the end of the Psalm. Because sometimes the hope rings hollow.

Chemistry.

"Louisa sang as she came over the crest of the hill from the white folks' kitchen. Her skin was the colour of oak leaves on young trees in fall. Her breasts, firm and up-pointed like ripe acorns. And her singing had the low murmur of winds in fig tress. Bob Stone, younger son of the people she worked for, loved her. By the way the world reckons things, he had won her. By measure of that warm glow which came into her mind at thought of him, he had won her. [...] A strange stir was in her."

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923), New York: Perennial Classic, 1969, pp.51-52.

Note to self.

EVERYONE ALWAYS CHANGES.
EVEN A FEW MONTHS IS TOO LONG TO KEEP THE FEELING.
NOT ENOUGH.
DOING GOOD DOESN'T USUALLY PAY OFF.