These days, teal tinged, are untouchable. Memory, curled and cracked, cannot bear the reality of things past, but instead echo it back in half understood yet intangible forms.

Each night I wonder as I fold threads upon threads over myself, as my mind spins through not only the foggy events of the day, but days and years meshed into a cohesion impossible to work out, but ever present, whether each day is actually a new life. If I will fall asleep this person, freckled, suspended between doubt and decision, and wake up another with all the back stories of this new life wedged in the unsolid mind's memory. This could happen infinitely over and over and I, ignorant and feeble, would never know.

We humans are in such a muck. There is too much to know and far too little time to care for every detail pertaining to continuing existence, let alone for ever political theory or philosophy of living. We are constantly harassed by leases and mail, insurance, loans, yards, friends, jobs and money, not to mention hygiene, dirty dishes and toothbrushes.

It is a grand notion to think that we might be able to rely on others for some things, let them sort through political candidates, the complexity of taxes or even the foods we should be eating for our health. Yet, through bitter experience we must either become consigned and lazy or cynical and frantic, or some strange mingling.

Unfortunately, for me, I can think of very few, if any, real suggestions for this state of being other than to merely stagger on, thinking though what I can and plunging gruelingly through the rest, but what kind of advice is that really?

J.R. in church today spoke of contentedness, looking always upwards, our malcontent only remedied through the cross, also, I assume, through the realization of our own limitations, humanity and incessant falleness and fallibility.

Thinking through this I become mystified as I so often do when trying to figure out how to balance grace and peace with duty. How can we possibly know peace as we unflinchingly gape towards our own weakness, and yet this seems to be the deliberate dance that God demands. We can not do it, but we must try and pray that God will take pity on our feeble efforts, thankfully, I realize, he already has.

Sometimes this seems reasonable, to know we must do, yet to know it is done. It seems reasonable on lazy Sundays staring blankly at the sun blanched sky, when we are briefly allowed to forget that we live among other humans that cross our paths for longer than a greeting wave, that our lives are governed by rules we are not even always aware exist, or that when we strive at something it can all be turned around to become a scoffed at nothingness. However, on such remembrances I am jolted. It seems all that we can do is to shrug, tense and muddle onwards, yet it appears as though we must placidly, happily, contentedly fight and remain ever aware that the fight has been won (and such remembrances are a feat among themselves.)

God grant us grace in this utter chaos.

confusion

"It is thus writ in heaven that any critic who has not given up will remain to some degree confused." -Wayne C. Booth

This pretty much sums up my thoughts, not just on criticism, but on life in general. There are so many avenues we could explore, but can only haltingly explain, especially when we try to take into account the full entirety of what we know or could know (not even to mention what we can't know.) If our words and thoughts do not become muddled it so often seems that it is because we have oversimplified and abandoned many legitimate ways of looking at something.

Of course I do feel a deep kinship with France (a novelist) as Booth explains Paul West to view him (though I have read nothing of either France or West.) France is explained as a man who has "nothing coherent to say," or someone who tries "to reconcile high intellectual ambitions with an impossibly cluttered mind." So it is possible that my mind is more cluttered than most. I can be a pack rat. Though, to be fair to myself, probably most of us can feel this way, at least occasionally. There is so many thoughts to sort through of so many people on so many issues that even people with well organized minds will have to check all kinds of drawers and folders to collect the necessary knowledge.

I am always astounded when people ask what the point of art is. Astounded and understanding. I struggle daily with this question. Why art?

As someone who desires to live creatively, I wonder. Even though I hesitate to call myself an artist, that is what I want to be and I do think that desire is a large part of what makes us who we are. It is also what I spend most of my time doing. (I am using the terms artist and art loosely - music, writing, visual etc...) I wonder why this desire is embedded in me, drags me from one medium to another and sometimes makes me want to pull out my hair in frustration when I go through a patch of creative dryness. I do also think that my own fear of proclaiming myself an artist is this lack of understanding in what that might even mean and why that would even be important. My insecurities are palpable and yet I am passionate in defending the arts even when the activity is shrouded in mystery and reasons that seem far from concrete. I mean, doctors save lives, farmers grow food, merchants sell things, or save the world from chaos, accountants do things with math which is above reproach, scientists discover things and so on and so forth. All seem touchable, understandable. And in a sense this is all art of a kind. I certainly fear at times that artists are just the lazy bums of the world who want to sit around reiterating the beautiful things that other people are doing.

And yet.

All these things can be seen as meaningless as well. These are all survival, and I'm not knocking survival, but we all die sooner or later. Many of these things push past survival to the realm of living more abundantly. And there you find art.

Not that art is above and beyond anything else. But art helps us to live, just as doctors and farmers, lawyers and police officers do. Maybe the reason we are so quick to judge art is that many of these things also have beauty, have art. Science and farming, I know, are often used as inspirations for poems and pictures. But art helps us to step back from the day to day survival that we become so entranced with. More importantly art points us to the mysteries of existence, questions our securities.

When I start to doubt the legitimacy of art I also must remember that God created and I am certainly thankful that he did. (of course he also healed, provided food, judges, counts...)

Really, I just need to read Walking On Water again by Madeline L'Engle, or so many other books that have already explained much more eloquently than I just how needed, how useful art is.

I feel a little better now, though. A little more secure in what I feel drawn to do and be.

Epic

Maybe it is too much LOST, too many stories swirling through my head, currently the million squawking birds outside my door making it sound like Hichcock's "The Birds" isn't helping, but I want an adventure so ridiculously bad. I am aware that most people going through epic like events in real life do not necessarily feel thrilled with their lot. And I am aware that, most likely, I too would want normalcy to descend if I was swept away into an adventure, but that does not stop me from feeling horribly restless and discontented with my comfort no matter how hard I try to rationalize or guilt away this wanderlust.

I blame the winter on most days. I blame my own lack of initiative on other days. Maybe if I just moved about some more, but where? And to what purpose? I also blame my impatience. I am going to Belgium in about a half a year.

I feel as though I should not complain, should not express this desire. I can hear so many rebuttals in my brain, some legitimate, some merely condescending. However, I do not think that this desire is such a bad thing. Not really. Just bothersome and grating in its unfocused form.

Walking

Warmth is good.

I was actually capable of pulling my winter-worn self out of the door today for a walk. I should not be so horribly wimpy about the cold, howsomever I am. Today, though, was gloriously temperate.

It is good to walk, to move, to clear the flow of my mind that quickly stagnates when my body is too sedentary. I have done little of late that requires much movement. I sit and work on writing, on music, on support raising and read and watch Lost (which I have become far too addicted to of late) and forget that I have more than fingers and a brain, but a whole body.

I am looking forward to spring, more than I can even communicate. It is starting to feel like spring. I am even reminded that I have neighbors. People seem to have been carefully unbolting their doors, peering out from the chained crack and tasting the air. Then, one by one we are each cautiously ending our hibernation, or at least our quarantine, cautiously at first as if we are flexing our thawing muscles, but even in the course of a couple warmer days people start to become more reckless and kids are sent out to spin cartwheels on the lawn.

Yet it is only the end of January. We are getting there, but I realize the warmth is really only, at best, a short break from the cold and at worst a cruel joke. I've decided to accept it as a reprieve and merely linger as long as possible in the warming air.

On self, randomness and a desire to blog.

Caution: Aimlessness ahead.

I often wonder what compels people to blog, to write their thoughts down onto a blank screen where there is a chance that others will see (a higher or lower chance depending on the person writing). I often wonder why I blog. What is this urge? Honestly, I have nothing very significant to say at this moment and the only reason I'm typing is from an impulse to type.

Maybe blogging is just a desire to be published without the hassle of actually writing something worth publishing. I mean, that crazy button down on the left side of the screen saying "PUBLISH POST" is a pretty compelling feature. All the sudden I feel much more important than I did 5 minutes ago with a simple click of a mouse (or whatever the thing on laptops is called.... a leech, maybe, since its attached)

Maybe its just a desire for connection. I don't know who all reads these posts. I know of two people. I would not be surprised if they were the only two. If we throw our thoughts out there, though, who knows who will stumble upon them and convey sympathy with our strange mind (now our has turned into I, the royal plural) and then maybe we will feel some kind of moments peace, a somehow realization that we are partially understood.

I don't know. Though, come to think of it, I understand some people's blogging tendencies: the ones that have an agenda, a thought they want to circulate, a product. I, however, have no such thing, unless the product is myself. I would expand but I'm not sure I want to enter that realm. Even if it is truth.

Somehow, for me at least, I think blogging is a way to work at being okay with myself, as silly as this sounds. I'm beginning to realize the intricacies of the differences of me from others, or of others from others. The second sentence relates to first, I swear. More than realization of differences, I am beginning to see the beauty. I want to refrain from sounding cheesy t.v. show on you, but I think there is some truth to the fact that we must learn to be happy with ourselves (not too happy, maybe, we are a fallen people, but I don't want to complicate this more than I must). At least happy in our uniqueness and okay with the way our mind works, okay enough to put one's insignificant rambling thoughts out there. I'm reminded of a lovely line from Phoebe in Wonderland that states

"At a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are. Especially for everything that made you so different from all the other 'awful' normals. And you will say to yourself, 'But I am this person.' And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love."

Though maybe that has gone too far away from my original intent of what I was trying to say, which is merely that I am finding the complexities of what sets people apart fascinating, even what sets me apart, for I feel as though I'm discovering new arenas of myself all the time. Maybe this is the intent of blogging after all, to show others how strange and unique you are. Maybe it is to show yourself and convince yourself that its okay to be this person.

Wow, I'm pretty sure none of this made a whole lot of sense, but I wanted to type, and I wanted to push that shiny orange button. So, I'm sorry, Dad and Abby, for the stream of conscious type typing that has occurred here. If you actually have read this far all I can say is, I am truly loved.

Ambiguity and indecision

My thoughts spin and twirl. If they were not so annoying I might be able to appreciate their minimalist ballet.

I live in a world of grey, wishing for some obvious colors to hit my eyes, some vivid reds and distinctive greens. I pray for some blatant signs, the writing on the wall in neon lights, but instead get choices and decisions, not either, seemingly, right or wrong. I am a passive person. I can not say whether this is good or bad, it is both and neither. Yet in this passivity I am anxious, one of the many conundrums of my specific personality. I keep coming up against the problem of trust. Sometimes I mistake lack of preference for trust, but am quickly proven wrong. I am indecisive. I say this as someone who labors over the decision of whether or not to buy a four dollar shirt. It is hard to trust when we realize our fallibility. It is near impossible to believe that even when we blunder we are in more capable hands. But where, where on earth, is the line between responsibility and providence, action and faith?

I feel the weight of ambiguity, the vagueness of the lines around me. I wish to sharpen the image.

Malicious weather.

As I went outside for a run today I felt the chill of eeriness rise into my being. The very movement of leaves behind me sounded like the rustle of a follower. The sky looked dark and blank with the wind moving every unfastened object to make them scrape and whistle around me. I felt as though I had stepped directly into a short story by Poe. Nature seems malicious today.

It is amazing to me how much the weather can affect people's moods, or at least my mood. Its not even the simple sadness versus happiness of rainy and sunny, instead there seems to be all kinds of differing levels of weather related moods. Fall, in general, is nostalgic. The crisp colors of death remind me of the various deaths in my life. The deaths of various homes, various moments. Fall reminds me of apple cider Saturday and of the winding roads of Gosling Marsh, or Files Cross or even Winebrenner. And where rain can be sad, it can also be cozy and comforting, or dark and sinister. I have a theory that this must depend on the level of wind, the temperature and the time of day, or whether or not it is merely rain, or also storm.

As it stands, today is of the eerie variety. The ominousness of the hazy clouds feels like a portent of doom with the smugness of their streaked gray sides.

Because I am currently cold.

I had almost forgotten the sharpness of the cold or the way it seems to permeate more fully than even the hotness of middle summer. My house is intensely frigid. Colder than the outside where the sun can at least get in. I have found myself these past days fleeing to the outside to sit in the pockets of sunlight to let the rays take away the edge of approaching winter. I don't want to rant about the cold, but I am not exactly looking forward to winter.

I like the idea of winter, the snow, the holidays, the blankets and scarves and thick woolen bits of clothing. Yet I find the actualization of winter mainly cold. Cold and dark. I find myself at the beginning of Autumn exclaiming that it is my favorite season, but then I realize that Autumn leads to Winter and Winter feels a lot like death.

Trust and knowledge

My mind cannot wrap around the whole of life. This may sound obvious. It is, in fact, obvious, yet each time I tell myself this, swearing I'll give up trying to curl my brain around the intricacies of life, surrender certain knowledges to the abyss of untried thoughts, I hesitate. I selfishly want every ounce of understanding I can attain in this lifetime. I want every truth that rears its ugly head and even every idea posing as truth. I don't think this is a particularly healthy desire, at least if one is attempting to cope in the world, especially considering how impossible this is, both the knowing and the coping.

I'm impatient, on top of this, with my desire. I search the minds of those around me for the shards of understandings they have acquired. I poke them, trying to let them keep their thoughts for their own, but desperately wanting them to give them up to me. I unfold wrinkles in my knowing to discover I've bunched things into knots in the process. Yet, despite this, I'm still hopelessly ignorant. I don't want to wait for time to tell, to teach.

I grow angry with knowledge, useless as if so often is. I threaten to throw it out, but its an idle threat. I love the mind's churning as it rattles my brain into anxiety. I want it to grow thick like butter, to gain richness in the painful shaking. I'm not sure why. I wish I could live in peace with the unknown, with uncertainty. So much of life feels uncertain, unstable. Each piece of understanding feels like a three legged chair. There is always something missing from the equation and I don't think that in this lifetime we can know everything in the fullness of knowing, but this frustrates me to no end.

Trust is not an easy attribute.

Momentum pushes us forward.

I have often wondered how it is that people can handle life, somehow pushing forward against each ever tightening nerve. It seems we all have something to complain and weep over either silently in the dark of night, or blatantly, standing on toes for height, for volume, breathing through the belly.

Maybe we can't manage it after all. Manage being a slippery word when it comes to life. We all seem like clowns, falling over our feet, getting water squirted in our faces by flowers pinned to our other clown brother's vests. Maybe it is the sheer momentum of existence that keeps us living and not our ability to cope with what life throws at us.

We should just stand still if we desire any ease. Not try to "kick against the goads." Let life pull us along, it will anyways, and practice our balance. Things will still happen to us then, but it won't be our fault, not entirely. Then we might just be willing to let each breath in be a victory, each exhale an act of triumph.