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.

oh - year's end.

love me love me.

A good night

"You'll be gorgeous, as usual."

the brim.

i have a bad feeling that all i love yous are wishful thinking.

to the weekend

sometimes i feel uncertain and sometimes i feel uninteresting but then other times talking to you is the funnest thing ever and i think, yes, ok, settle now.
xx

2010

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Kazuo Ishiguro, Nocturnes
Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Jayne Anne Phillips, Machine Dreams
William Faulkner, The Unvanquished
James Agee & Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
Joan Didion, The White Album

Pale

Real Life isn't really as good as it should be, you know?

waiting waiting room

Shed the superman/woman urge. No one is perfect, so don't expect perfection from yourself or others.
Learn to relax with walking, a sport, meditation, yoga, tai chi, laughing, singing, etc, and practise regularly.
Visualise how you can manage a stressful situation more successfully.
Find a hobby that will give you a break from your worries.
Live a healthy lifestyle with good nutrition, adequate rest, regular exercise, limited caffeine and alcohol, and balanced work and play.
Share your feelings with family and friends. Don't try to cope alone.

If you think you have too much stress in your life, it may be helpful to talk with a doctor, clergy member, or other caring professional. Reactions to stress can be a factor in depression and anxiety.

National Mental Health Association fact sheet, 'Managing Stress'

Blindfold eyes and cottonbud ears

Keep quiet, keep still,
little movements ruin everything.
Choke back, reel in,
fancy toppled and troubling.

My lips are far too loud
for this rented room we're in.

Again and again

Gosh, girl, you can be such a fool.

I promise I'm trying.

Do you ever think about the fact that we, each, have just one tiny little life here on this spinning sphere, and that it makes no sense not to simply swallow our pride or pain or so-called mind-spun 'issues' and just be with the people we want to be with? I saw a photograph today and I couldn't shake the nonsense of it all, the inexplicable waste of this train wreck year.