Learning to Love This Harsh Winter

  A lot of things that I’ve been faced with lately are things that I don't particularly like, but I’ve been learning to love. The month of August isn’t my favorite month of all time. The hot sticky heat, the return to school and life after a long bittersweet summer, and headaches that come from the sun that dominates the high noon hour gets to me. It’s a month that’s too heavy, too thick with sweat. However, in this past year, I learned to love the clingy month. I peaked around its corners and crawled under it’s edged to see what it really was about. What I found were sweet innocents. 

  It’s the same thing that I’m doing now, with this harsh January (I guess it’s now February; the year is flying by, isn’t it?) and the dry, sucking cold is getting the best of me and I can’t seem to find anything I love about it. It’s made my throat and muscles tense, tight, and red. It keeps me bundled up in thick coats and too heavy boots. I have to walk for blocks out in the open, with the dry ice of air being sucked into my nose and into my lungs. I can’t wait until it warms up a little and I can drive with my windows rolled down. 
This is one of those things though, one of those things that I hate but that I’m learning to love.

  Learning to love takes some time and endurance. It doesn’t just happen overnight. When you get into a commitment to learning to love something, you’re in it for the whole nine yards. You’re stuck and you can’t get out until you see the beauty in what’s there. The words eh, kinda, maybe, and sometimes don’t count. You have to give it you're all.

  So, in light of learning to love a season — a dry cold season that has gotten the best of me and I can see it taking a long time to wait and see if I can actually coup with trying to figure this winter enjoyment thing out — here’s a list of things that I’ve learned that are perks, or aspects that I’ve paid attention to and can make little spots for in my spring longing heart:

Thick scarves, long scarfs, windy scarfs around your neck — the ones that you can bury your noise down in to keep it warm.

Red noises —- when one comes in from the icy air and the warmth relieves them, and their noise gets red from the temperature change.

Ice paintings on my car windows in the morning — they are so pretty I almost don’t want to scrap them off.

Warm cups of hot coffee & tea.

Good smelling hand lotion that you get to carry around in your bag to keep your hand from feeling chapped, but also makes you smell good. 

Good conversation — not that this can’t happen during other times of the year, but there is just something about being in a warm place with the cold hugging it’s windows, coats off hanging on the back of chairs and warms drinks caressed in hands, conversations that unfold in this manner seem to have more meaning and truth behind them.

And last but definitely not least, warm homemade meals — soup and bread and numerous other things can only be appreciated enough in the confinements of a draft house on a chilly winters night. 

(list to be continued) 

2 0 1 8

 

 It feels like -12° outside,  in actuality I think it's really 4°. It's one of the coldest New Years days in the books for my home state. 

  There is a fire going in my fireplace but I can't help but wrap myself up in a warm, thick sweater and a blanket. Even with the fire going my house is cold, the floors chilly to touch. With a thick blanket of cold outside on the ground, the day is going to be spent inside. Staying home isn't a bad way to start off the new year.

  I wanted to wake up to the sunrise this morning. That didn't happen, I slept in too late. However, I did get my kitchen all cleaned up and I baked some crêpes. That might become a new tradition of mine, wake up on new years, clean, and bake. 

  2017 was a wonderful year for me. There really isn't a way that I can express it in words. Although there were some ups and downs, like at the beginning of the year I suffered through multiple anxiety attacks, there were some really sweet moments. 

  One of the top things that happened last year (it's now in that stage where writing last year seems really odd), was the trip my mom, brother, and I went on out west. I still have yet to write about that trip much, but it was wonderful. Getting to breathe in the fresh Colorado mountain air, gaze across the planes of Wyoming, and camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota -- waking up the sound of moose in the hills -- will never leave my memory. 

  The year was filled with more than I could've ever dreamed of.

  Although 2017 was good, it left me in slight fear of what's to come. 2018 is filled with so many unknowns. I honestly have no idea, no hunch, inkling of suspicion of what is around the corner.

  I'm filled with hope, though. Hope that no matter what happens, that joy will be found in the mundane and thankfulness will be given in the exciting. That peace will be found in the hard times and rejoicing will be found in the good times. 

  Each day is just one piece of the giant puzzle. Being present, fully alive in each piece, each moment is what I'm going to focus on in the next 365 days. Going after change and action is something I've done in the past and I think, in certain cases, it's necessary for you to do. However, I think if we grasp at too much and try to change and make things go our own way in our own time, messes happen, brokenness happens. So instead, I'm just going to sit and wait, be an open instrument and wait for the Holy Spirit inside me to speak and tell me where to go and what to do. He will change me from the inside out, in a way that I will never have suspected. That's what happened during 2017, I was changed without even realizing it at the time. I was changed and events that I didn't even dream of happened. I know it will continue to happen during 2018. And I want to hone in on it, paying attention and being intent in each second. 

  Far too often I seem to be zoned out, either on what has happened, what is going to happen, or what I need to do in order for things to happen. Rarely am I focused on the present. Being thankful for the now, appreciating the frost on the windows, the full moon that is outside in the ivory night sky, or my brother sitting across the room. Days, weeks, and month blur by me and I wonder what happens with my time. 

  Someday, these things won't be here, someday the mundane will change. Appreciating and being present at this moment is something that I need to work on, and I think will make a good anthem, a good call for 2018. 

  No matter what happens during the next 12 months, I know that, even though they are filled with fear and unknown at the current moment, they will reveal themselves one by one, each with moments that will add up to memories. Each created by a God that only has the best planned out for me, you, and everyone else. Onward we go, into the great unknown. 

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

These twenty-six letters are my safe haven, my way of cultivating. 

I use them to reveal parts of me, a mountain range under a withdrawing sea. 

I want to show truthfully and intricately the stars that are in me. 

Writing has become my century.

A vanity of shorts, where the pages can be folded into to mirrors of reality, 

reflecting the world as I see it.

People can see me through the words I pour out onto the page, 

but when they see too much, I can suck them back into my

lungs and lock them there, safely. 

I live between the lines of A&Z.

a little something I had to write for english class

She -- a long curly haired, porcelain skinned, twenty-something -- is one of those people you might see in the corner of a small coffee shop. She’d gaze over the lid of her laptop, then type fast as though the words from within her can't make it out quick enough, then gaze again. A notebook beside her, open to a page covered in a slightly sloppy cursive that one could barely read, even if they tried. Her coffee, cold and forgotten, sits there in a melancholy state and her phone, buzzing like a busy bee waiting for replies. She still types away.

If you look up from your book and watch her long enough, you might see her crack a smile as she writes. She just got to a good part. Enjoy that and let her enjoy that. Enjoy it before the anxiety comes back and strips it away only to leave fear of the words not being good enough to satisfy the readers on the other side. If you knew her well enough, you’d know that she has a too high of a respect for the art of literature. That whatever she makes she scrutinizes harshly. Her words barely make it out into the light of the day. 

Lifting her hands away from the beaten keyboard, she combs back her hair between her fingers away from her face and rolls up her indigo sleeves a quarter below her elbow. She stares at what she has just produced on the page, neither pleased nor dissatisfied. Looking around, she comes out of the story and back to the room. The clamor of small talk and sent of roasted beans makes for a nice welcoming back into reality. 

She grabs her bag, closes her laptop and notebook, and stuffs them away. Realizing her coffee that was left for the cold, she takes a last sip and dumps the rest of it in the trash. The bells on the door cling as she opens it, and out she steps, into the cool October air. She walks away.

You almost go back to your book until you see a little slip of paper on the table where she was sitting. You get up and nonchalantly walk over to see what it says. You can tell it was from her because it held the same sloppy cursive that was between the pages of her notebook. It reads:

I saw you watching me. Don’t worry, I wrote you into my story.

You look out to see if she’s still in sight, but she's gone. Lost in the wind, an author by any other name.

Week One of College

Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyway.

Glennon Doyle Melton 

That, my friends, is how I felt about this week. My first-week of school of my last semester before I graduate with my associate's degree (that’s a crazy thing to write down, by the way). On Monday, knots were in my stomach, not because I didn’t particularly want to start school, but because the thought of starting school meant that I’m moving one step closer the next part of my life and I don’t quite know what that next part holds. I’ve been itching to get out of this season that I’m currently in, but now that I’m actually on the verge of doing so, I’m back peddling.

Why am I doing this?

Why and I swimming back upstream when all I wanted for the longest time was to move faster down it?

To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know why this fear grips me so tight. I think it could possibly be the unknown. The fact that, even though I plan and have an idea of where I’m going to go or do what I’m going to do, it’s never for certain, there is always the possibility of things falling through. There is also the fact that it could not be like I imagine it would be once I get there.
Never the less, all these feelings came up on the first day of the last few months before things change. This is the time before it changes. The calm waters before the hurricane. And Just thinking of it all made me afraid.
I showed up anyway, though. I showed up, even with my messiness, my complicatedness, my afraidness. All of it. And you know, moving toward a new area of life isn’t so bad ( and my French III professor is this nicest one professor you could ever have).
So all of this is to say, I made it through, the first week, at least. And I’ll keep making it through, through the normal and through the change and through the new. Through all of this life, I’ll make it.

You will, too. Despite the mess, the complex, and the fear show up anyway.

Evergreens

The ripples 

and folds --

hues of blue

gently flowing down

the stream

amongst the rocks and sticks and muddy seams.

Though they are quite and soft,

they hold secrets of the past 

of tumbling 

down, 

down,

off the edge of the cascade,

free falling.

No one would know just by a glance

that the ripples were once wilds,

roaring into the evergreens.

4.14.17

Life has gotten to me again, but today, I’m stopping it all and taking a moment to enjoy the weather, iced coffee, a book, and the greenness that has flooded my back yard. I haven’t been able to write these past few days so getting to take the time to sit and type a few words is a nice thing.

________

I went and bought a fern, a cactus, and a few succulents today. Lowe's was as busy as you would expect it to be on a sunny spring day. People clamoring like ants around the herbs, potted flowers, and hanging plants. Some trying out the outdoor cushions and couches. I went straight to the sea of green. All the plants and grasses and succulents make me feel at home and full of life. Green is my favorite color and that’s one of the reasons why. 

It took me about 10 minutes to pick out which fern I wanted. There were big ones and small ones and one that looked like they contained a small jungle under the leafy greens. I picked one that was sort of in the middle, small enough to hang on my hook at home but still had the jungle likeness to it. I picked out a flowering cactus and a few succulents, too. 

After I made it through the checkout, fought traffic, and make it back home, I realized I didn’t have any potting soil, so I had to go back out again. This time I went to Menards, which was a good choice because compared to Lowe’s, it was completely dead and the soil was cheaper.

The second time I pulled up into my driveway I was ready to tackle the task of putting the succulents in their pots with the potting soil. I forgot how much I love potting plants, making them a little home to grow and bloom. The soil got under my fingernails and made the palms of my hands black as cole. It was soft and moist and pure. It was reliving, sticking the roots of the plants down into the soil, giving them a chance at life and a new surrounding. Planting seeds are the same way, only you’re waiting and praying the little seedling break through the topsoil with little green leaves. Growing up towards the light, higher than high.

That reminds me of when I was little. I used to love plants but I was never able to have them. I always thought that if I was just about to get the seeds, then I could take some dirt from the garden out back and use the pot I painted for school. I remember once I tried to use the seeds from a fruit. I can’t remember what fruit it was, an apple, I think. I extracted them from the core and the rushed up to my room to get the pot. Inconspicuously I when outside and collected the dirt I needed, then slowly, I placed the seeds down into the soil and watered it with tap water. 

The seeds didn’t grow like I hoped they would. There were several things I did wrong. I planted the seeds too deep in the soil and I used our softened tap water. It was then I learned that soften water is never good for plants. Once my mom figured out what I did she and I went out to the store and bought a packet of flower seeds and then she helped me plant them the correct way. The flowers poked through the soil grew little sprouts and turned into colorful blooms. Now that I’m sitting here thinking about it, I’ve always had a love for plants like that, in all their greenness. 

________

Sitting outside listening to the birds' chirp is a nice way to end the evening. My dog is running around getting into mischief every now and then. She’s so curious and full of wonder. When you’re only four months old, the world is a whole expanse just waiting to be explored, even when the world is just your back yard. 

“I’m headed home with three plates of food and two bags you can’t look in, easter is coming you know.” - my mother to me while talking on the phone. 

Life As I Know It

I haven't written in awhile. The pull of insecurity and lack of words has left me stumped in front of the keyboard. What in the world would I write down, anyway? My life is crazier than you can imagine and hope for change in the near future is weak. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic. An optimistic point of view is something I've been in desperate need of. I think this wonderful Sunday afternoon might be helping it, however.
I should really be studying, or writing the paper that's due at 11:59 pm tonight. But you only get these days of fresh air and the ability to open the windows and breath it in while you sit inside on the couch writing, once. Once as in, like once a week if you're lucky. The weather can be bipolar. So I'm resisting the call of assignments due and instead, sitting in the sunlight, trying also, to resist the insecurity and lack of words that is my writing.

___________

The tree outside in our neighbor's yard is beautiful this time of year. The spring buds bloom into purple flowers. I wish the tree was in our yards so I could photograph it better. At least I'm able to look out at it when I drink my coffee in the morning.
The tulips are also in bloom, meaning it's officially spring. The fact that Easter is next Sunday is crazy to me. It's crazy how time flies by so fast. I have so many things to get done anymore, my to-do list is never ending, that I never have time to stop and smell the flowers. 

___________

About half of the photos on my camera nowadays are of my pup, in all her glory. She likes to walk around the house and sneak our slippers or socks when she can find them. Once she has them in her grasp she likes to run all around the house until we catch her, which may take up to 15 to 20 minutes. She's a fast runner and knows how to escape from sticky situations. Good for her, but it makes it harder on the person who is trying to get their shoe back.

note to self...

Write. Don’t write about your longing to write,  just write. Don’t think about it too much. Write about the dreams and the hopes in your soul. Write about the days that seems to never come. Write about the days that have come. Write about the things on your heart, the things pegging your mind. Write about the raindrops on your windshield and the swear words you mutter under your breath. Write about the way their eyes look when they're excited about something, or thinking about something deeply. Write about the four old ladies sitting in front of you in the theater. Write about the feeling of the keys on your fingertips. Or the pen in your fingers and your hand on the page. Write about breathing, about feeling, about loving. Write truth. Write the raw, harsh truth that comes with living life. You only get this time once.

Go write. 

My eyes are heavy,

              my mind is tired,

                          but I look up

                                                              and I think to myself

                                                                 Gosh

                                                                          what a time it is

                                                                                          to be alive.

smudgy ink

I have a mess of thoughts in my mind that I can’t collect into words quite yet. There is an exhaustion of pages and smudgy ink that I have toiled over, again and again. Trying to etch down my thoughts, but they haven’t come like I hoped. The words wont run smoothly on the page just yet. I think they need more time to soak in the vast light that is not the written page. I’ll give it a few days, then I’ll come back again and try again.  Maybe they just weren't meant to be smooth and elagent, maybe they are just supposed to be the truth.

Un Poème en Français

L’amour de Vous et Moi

La vie est dorée. 

Vous et moi

nous 

sommes sur le seuil

de ce commencement l’amour.

English Translation:

Life is golden. 

You and me

we 

are on the threshold

of this beginning love. 

Other Than Just Running

English 202 // 08

Twenty minutes of Melodies

  I woke up, 8:29. The sun illuminating my room, through the sheers. I gave the pages and the ink my morning; wrote poetry, drank coffee. I listened to french jazz music and made cinnamon rolls. I got ready and curled my hair. I was ready by dix heures et demie du matin (ten thirty in the morning). I left soon after that...

  I walked into a small bookshop, and bought a book. A poetry book. A book of poetry by Mary Oliver, to be exact. Then I took myself and my newly boughten book to the teahouse around the corner. It smelled of tea leaves, and the window seat was open and free. The window seat is my favorite seat in the whole cafe. I ordered black vanilla mint, it was $2.50, and then sat down in the golden stream of light, warm and inviting. I read poetry, occasionally looking up and out at the passerby's and the lone tree swaying in the wind. At 1:45 I got up and made my way to class. We talked about poetry and rhythm and rhyme. It was good. I rarely get days like these, and I’m trying to fix that. 

 I made my way home on the country roads. The wide, blue sky stretched out, flaunting it’s vastness. The sun near the horizon, because it’s close to winter now and the sun sets early. I think I’m getting old, because time seems to pass to quickly. There was a slow driver in front of me. I passed him on the right, though I probably shouldn’t have, I need to learn how to go a little slower. 

 Once I got home, I called my mom and put some water in the kettle to make green tea. (I like tea, don’t you see?) I put peppermint in it, because peppermint makes everything good. It’s dark outside, 6:45. I’m just now realizing how fast, yet slow, life goes. Moving two speed, simultaneously. 

I rarely get days like these. I rarely stop to take a peak at what life offers other than just running...

some poetry

English 202 // 07

// Listen //

I often create poems

when I least expect it.

In the car,

on the swing,

under the lamp post,

while working.

So many times

I have no paper,

no pen

no pad

no touch of vapor.

They’re there in my head

to and fro

out in a whisper

there they go.

Those poems

so raw and so clean,

float off in the air

never to be seen

Again. 

______________

I'm learning. 

Learning to care less  

about the  

seemingly important. 

And learning to care more 

about the 

seemingly less. 

______________

The wind billows through the tree

ripping off the leave,

shaking it’s seams.

The leaves, they fall

leaving the tree,

making their way down to the ground

waiting to be seen.

Yet humans stomp them

beneath their feet 

only to find that their beauty 

is unseen.

They’re life

gone.

So quick and so sheen. 

If only they could live

to tell there story.

m e s s

English 202 // 06

Melody: Les Jeux Sont Faits

I'm such a mess.
Life is such a mess.
Everything is such a mess.

You'd think I'd be used to this by now...
but I'm not.
I mean, after all,
it's my name.
I can't get away from it.

I'm just learning to live it,
with grace,
uncertainty,
intention,
and love.
With a fullness beyond anything
I can think of.

Everything will be ok,
with time.
If thousands have made it before me.
I can make it,
too.

Even when everything seems
to be uncertain.

- Mess - 

Fragments, again...

English 202 // 05

Rainy skies.

Autumn leaves. 

Open books.

Cups of pumpkin tea.

It's definitely October. The floors are cold when I wake up in the morning and the sky is it's autumnal gray, the blue sky hiding away so the golden trees can have their moment, their beautiful death.

___________

Sometimes I struggle to rest. My mind is a body of its own, always on the go, "Do this, do that, don't have time to sit. Keep going". A never ending cycle of getting one thing done and then tacking on another.

I don't have time to slow, I must keep going. 

But I know, even though my to-do list is full, and I have hardly any time. There are just someday I need to take a step back and sit inside while it's raining and enjoy the hues of the leaves that are changing. Everything is changing, so quickly and swift. Thursday is here one moment and gone the next. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing myself to this process.

___________

I'm turning twenty this weekend, which is kind of crazy for me to think about. There is so much I want to say but I don't quite have the words for it yet. A lot to process. A lot to think about. A lot to sift through. I'm such an overthinker...

Part of me is reminiscing over the past ten years. The teenage years are the crazy ones, wild and free. I won't forget them. The other part of me is wondering what these next ten years will bring, what do I want to do before I'm thirty? 

Here's a small, unkept list. I'll be adding to it more down the road:

graduate. get my own apartment. Find a job that will support me, but I also love. break down these walls I've built. drink more tea. be honest with myself. find a best friend, a good friend, a loyal friend. Move to a different city for awhile. Get my passport. Visit Paris. Get half way decent at french. Go on a road trip, visiting places I've always wanted to see. Write, write lots. Find someone to love. 

___________

As I was driving home this evening, it was wet and drizzly. Old Maroon 5 playing through my radio. Rain covered my windshield. Headlights and stop signs were blurry and bloked. They kind of had their own bit of shine as they hit my eyes, glazed and cold. It's fall but the start of winter is going to unfold, soon.