Currently Listening Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs By Andrew Bird see related

assignment for henri:

Self Portrait of Writing for Solace

The necessity for together again covers ochre pages:

Taborets of antique volumes, smelling heavy and musty;

faded hieroglyphics, seething with prayer: Our handiwork shouts,

Paradise! groaning, and shivering, and hoping. 

We live so comforted with writing, as if under its shelter

we cannot be cold.  Still, why can’t I give over

the manuscript to print?  Since I am capable of suffering?

To gain admittance to ourselves, we come to writing,

as to the chapel, to find an answer to all the purposes of living.

With words he had splashed icy water down her neck, and she,

trembling with the uproar, like fire in cracked tones thought, “Better to be quiet

than to answer sharply, by unceremoniously calling out for tomorrow.” 

May the Lord deliver us from wax and clay limits.

“Look here, I’ll show you art to make clear of it:” 

Currently Listening Continuum By John Mayer see related

my poetry assignment for henri cole:

write a sonnet including this words: "xanax, monument, tongued, bellybutton" and call it "the yellow bathingsuit"
so here's what i came up with...

"The Yellow Bathingsuit"

Old age is your favorite yellow
bathingsuit, faded --like some old photo
of you with family in front of some house
you barely remember--

The certainty of time is not needing
xanax.  It's endless sultry waves tonguing
always the walls of your bellybutton
and backs of your ears, so gluttonously.

Love is the monument you constructed
to time, but can never allow yourself
to gaze upon without fear and trembling.
Love is the highest, dusty, untouched shelf:

where you store dried flowers, an old photo,
and a dryrotted yellow bathingsuit.

books read in 2006 (off the top of my head)

NOVELS

Everything is Illuminated -Jonathan Safran Foer (American)
Jane Eyre -Charlotte Bronte (British)
July's People -Nadine Gordimer (South Aftrican)
One Hundred Years of Solitude -Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombian)
Things Fall Apart -Chinua Achebe (Nigerian)
White Teeth -Zadie Smith (British)
Absalom, Absalom! -William Faulkner (American)
Wide Sargasso Sea -Jean Rhys (West Indies)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler -Italo Calvino (Italian)
Northanger Abbey -Jane Austen (British)
Passing -Nella Larsen (American)

ANTHOLOGIES

Poems New and Collected -Wislawa Szymborska (Polish)
Labyrinths -Jorges Luis Borges (Argentinian)
The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry
Seven Japanese Tales -Tanizaki (Japanese)
Winter's Tales -Isak Dinesen (Danish)

PLAYS

Henry V -William Shakespeare (British)
The Way of the World -William Congreve (British)
Doctor Faustus -Christopher Marlowe (British)

ETC.

Paradise Lost - John Milton (British)

Currently Reading The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1 A: The Middle Ages By M.H. Abrams see related

oh love that will not let me go

i rest my weary soul in thee

i give thee back the life i owe

that in thine ocean depths its flow

may richer, fuller be...

Currently Listening Forbidden Love By Death Cab for Cutie Company Calls Epilogue see related

so i'm feeling pretty peaceful. and this is new. last night ben and mark and matt came over and we cooked dinner at my house, and ate together.  for some reason, it just made me really happy to be with them all in such a normal-feeling setting.  living in a house really does make a huge difference in the way i feel about being at school.  i think it'll be really good for me.  it's kinda practice for life after college.  in addition, i think i'll probably study more and more effectively here.  it's good for me to have to make an effort to see people, and not just to expect them to drop by.  it's joyful for me to be able to serve them in ways like hosting them, and washing their dishes. 

on sort of another note: i feel pretty peaceful with God too.  sure, i'm still bothered by some stuff, and feeling distanced from him in a lot of ways, but i'm ok.  for a while there i wasnt ok, but i am now.  i'm ok with the ways i screwed up in the past year and a half, i'm ok with the resentment i felt.  it's not gone, but it's different.  i feel mature in a different way.  i don't expect god to be a certain way to me all the time. i dont expect the way i see him to be static.  i dont feel the need to earn salvation. i dont feel the need to evangelize. maybe some day i will.  i do, however, feel the need to be honest and real in the right ways.  being honest, as gray pointed out to me one night before i left richmond, does not necessarily mean revealing every detail; sometimes god works in you, and tells you to hide it in your heart. 

plus, like i learned yesterday in a really much-needed-to-hear sermon, the details are not what god focuses on. we humans are given freedom and wisdom to make our own decisions about the details. we dont have to ask god what kind of shampoo to use. it doesnt matter. the details are yours, in a way.  not that god doesnt care about them, but they're almost irrelevant.  he sees the whole life at once.  we forget that.  it's not chronological and step-by-step for him like it is for us.  god can have a vision for the details, sure, but what he really wants is to see you loving him and loving others. it's that simple.  that is the essence of christianity.

god wants it. jesus enables it. we do it. there you go.

it probably didnt even matter what college i went to. as big of a decision as that seems like it was. it was. in some ways. but god would have taught me and grown me in different ways, no matter where i was.  it was not about that detail of a specific school. i do think i'm supposed to be here and learn specific things here and touch and be touched by specific people..but, i had the freedom to decide where to be. god would work with whatever decision i had made, and he'd have known exactly how ahead of time i bet.

it's both terrifying and relieving to know that god leaves decisions about the details up to us.  terrifying because you make a decision and you live with it; it's not necessarily divinely inspired, it's just you. you, being a human that god was instilled his wisdom in. i'd like to think that god has specific decisions to lead me to sometimes, because in some ways that's easier, and allows the possibility of a more glorified ideal of life.  but the truth is, no matter what i choose, god will work in it. it's relieving in that it means we can't mess up god's plan.  you're not gunna choose the wrong school, or the wrong person to marry, or the wrong job.  sure, maybe a different option could have been better in some ways. but only in some ways. you will learn and be grown where you are. you're not gunna mess up god's plan. you're not going to miss the signs. it's not about decoding anything. it's just about making decisions that seem to be in line with god's ideals. it's about loving him, and loving his people. that's all i got.