Am sitting here at this cold computer in this cold house, wrapped in an overlarge sweatshirt and grey cotton pants - need I remind you the season boasts summer? I am thinking of something a bit uncomfortable and yet necessary all the same.

I think I am too honest. And yet, never honest enough. I wear the bits of emotion on my sleeve, mostly because if I attempt to hide them, they're always found under the oriental rug in the living room anyway. A speck of dust, inconsequencial and unimportant, and somehow such an irritant that it must be done away with immediately. I am transparent and yet labeled mysterious all at the same time. Leaving dumbfounded people behind and meeting merciless leaders in the forefront. They all intimidate me and nothing I can do will keep them from not knowing the real me and yet questioning constantly whether I mean it or not. How can a paradox survive?

I want to be honest. I want to be truthful. I want to be transparent. I want to make applesauce from apples I've picked, from trees I've planted, from ground I tilled, from land I walk barefoot on. I want it to be known that I have dreams. That I think about things too and am not just an uncomfortable silence. It's not that I haven't anything to say, it's just that if I say it you may think me too honest.

The sleeve of my shirt hides more tricks then you or I even know, the tricks of transparency, so clear we don't even know they're there. So emotion filled that they fill a bottle to brimming and the only thing that overflows is water, clear invisible water. You cannot and will not see more than I let you, and yet you see everything that you want to see and nothing I showed you.

I have been going through the archives at my old journal and am finding the things I've said that have left some sort finality in my mind; if only I can do this, or that, then I will have reached some level of desiredness.

Date: 2002-06-03 11:13
Subject: satisfy
Security: Public

am sitting here in the backseat of the van typing this, feeling an emptiness, a hole, but more so feeling a completeness. Emptiness, knowing that a new page of my life is beginning and for the first real time I'm aware and conscious of it. Usually it just passes by me and I don't realize until I've turned to the end of the chapter. Completeness - perhaps mostly because I am listening to Rich Mullins A Litergy A Legacy and A ragamuffin Band and there are few things that make me feel more complete and aware of how big Christ is and how small I am. But more so complete because I see more and more as time goes by what things I really do want and less and elss what others want for me.
I want an herb garden.
I want to live in a place where I can be totally immersed in greenness and forest and yet go buy asiago chicken pasta in the city on the weekends
I want to wear a long skirt and linen shirt on Tuesdays and jeans on Sundays.
I want to listen to chopin, Ducan Sheik, They might be Giants, and Duke Ellington all in one day.
I want to drive a volvo.
I want to love and be loved, knowing that in this I am complete.
I want to have a white railing on my front porch and three high back rockers inviting always, intimidating never.
I want to use white ceramic pottery dishes every day and not save them or my tablecloth and flowers for special occasions - because every day will be.
I want to plant a blueberry bush in my front yard and watch it grow.
I want a life uncomplicated by cell phones, television, and daytimers.
I want to have boxes of scrap paper and grow my hair long.
I want to have six kids and love them individually and tell them that frequently.

This is completeness.

I am reminded of how selfish I am and how I deserve none of this. But something tells me that I have the oppurtunity to, and this makes me desire it more.

Date: 2002-06-07 14:00
Subject:
Security: Public

yesterday while I was driving in the car I saw a tract on the dashboard. This baffles me since evangelism isn't usually approached by this method in our family [nothing wrong with it, it's just less personable than we like]. I pick it up and there are five pages double sided with a thousand little circles on them. In each circle is a smiling face, some with other people, most alone. And underneath every face is an name and an age. At the top of the the cover page are the words "what do all of these people have in common?" My immediate thought is that they must have all gone to the same school, or perhaps were killed all in a plane crash, or perhaps they're just normal people like you and me who failed in the perfect human test and needed a savior, or something. but no. As you page through you eventually come to page four and find that all of these people have this in common - they've commited sucicide.

I just looked at it and wanted to cry. And so instead of just purusing the faces I began looking at each and every one. They ranged in age from 11 to 85 faces from the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and now the thousands. All walks, some obviously happy, some bearing some secret pain, some in the army or navy, some fathers and mothers holding children in their arms, some with a chain of daisies on their head and some mug shots. And somewhere along the way their pains and life got the best of them and they felt so defeated that they could let nothing, NOTHING, inside that pain and begin restoration and so they succomed to a false, but permanent way out. Why? And I just had a renewed love for people. I just wanted to have a second chance with everyone whom I've ever talked to to just love them and not just shove a chance at knowing who Jesus is at them, but showing them who Jesus is.

Date: 2002-05-28 22:34
Subject: tiger spice chai
Security: Public

On another note. Often when I am driving somewhere I pass a cross on the side of the road. All my life these crosses have only represented another life, one I don't identify with. But for the past two years these crosses have represented something I know all too well. loss. So I drove by Drews cross tonight. It's beautiful cross really. Not a cheap plastic one or one make of two sticks tied at the center, but one of solid wood painted white and bearing his name across the middle. It's positioned a little more than twenty feet from where the accident happened. It always annoys me that the cross is there and not right at the place on the side of the road where it happened. Mostly because dad put the cross there, and he wasn't here for the accident and so it is a constant reminder of a lack in a time of need. But perhaps it is simply a just wanting things to be right.

So tonight as I drove by it, the dusk light forming and making it almost irredescent in the headlights, I remembered that once I had a brother and had he lived he would be 16 years old. He would be driving. He would be the next brother to graduate. He would be the next to plan and do soemthing with his life. He would be different than all of us. But I don't. Because see, he's gone. And instead we're only left with an irredescent, misplaced cross. And some memories that fade.

And I missed him.

Date: 2002-06-09 21:43
Subject: somewhere between the moon and the moon
Security: Public

Today was the grandest day, I mean the grandest day. I had a meeting today after church but after that Jax, Ry, Sean, Steven, and I went boating in the Thousand Islands. This was ofcourse grand fun, since nothing is more fun than anything doing with water. So I am deliciously sunburned, windswept and tired, but grinning a heart grin because there is few things, that I can think of, that are more wonderful that a day spent with people you love doing things you love.

Someone told me today "You have an ideal life." I'd like to think that this is true, and in my heart, I do have an ideal life. I am completely content and yet always knowing there is more than what I already know. But there is the small part of me that says, no, you don't have the perfect life. In fact, you have one of those lives you read about in a BabySitters Club paperback from when you were twelve; your parents split, you live 6 hours from where you lived your entire life, your brother was killed in a freak accident, you have a sin filled past and have made more mistakes that a human ought to be allotted in one life time, you stumble constantly and mess up more, you are, in fact, a poor model of ideal life - Yet [and this 'yet' is that cool part], somehow in you've been handchosen to be some sort of model of grace.

So no, my dear friend, I am not ideal, nor do I live an ideal life, but having known grace and the fullness thereof, I am learning to overcome.

THIS is what I am finding the Christian Life is be best described as. There are those who say Christians are hypocrites, and this is true. There are those who say Christians are the worst sinners, this is also true. There are those who say that Christians are closeminded, another truth - but my friends, all those are esspecially and only true because somewhere along the way we've experienced something that others haven't. Grace. We've experienced a constant knowledge of 'I've messed up, but it's okay, I know I've been forgiven already.' No, not an excuse to continue sinning, this isn't spirit living, but a reason to go on persevering knowing that the good work which was began in us will be completed until the day of Christ.

And so I'm thankful. I'm so thankful.

I'm not sure. But I think. Do you remember when you were 12 and had a crush on that person with the different chromosomes than you boast? You did your best to not even let anyone have a glimmer of your secret hearts desire, but somehow, somehow your mom just always knew? She could even still do it at 20, just by the mere mention of that ones name. She just always knows.

It's happening to me. Only it's me who just knows and I hate that uncomfortable feeling. Like the divorce is taking place only to free up a piece of paper, which was nullified in the minds of those who vowed it wouldn't ever be. I lay in my bed tonight, next the window above our front porch and listened to the voices that played up through the lattice. Voices that if I wanted to pretend I could have pretended they belonged to my parents, even though only one did. The other belongs to someone I love, someone I trust, just not someone I want the other parent talking with on my front porch, under a full moon, in a precarious position of vulnerability.

I hated that feeling.

This day has been a day of tears. I'm not sure whether to chalk it up to allergies which seem to be causing a constant runny nose and itchy eyes, but the tears are involuntary I believe. They came while on the phone with Carina telling her to remember to bring gas money, meal money and a sleeping bag. They came randomly when Danny called tonight to tell me he'd be home late. They came sporadically while making pasta and tomato sauce for supper. They came reading an email from Sandy, saying that seeing her this week wasn't going to work out after all. The visited once again while packing my suitcase tonight and now once more they are falling one by one every few minutes while typing. Am I an emotional mess? Why am I leaving again so soon? Is it because I'm leaving again? Because I haven't seen Danny for more than ten minutes at a time in over a month? I miss my best friend and little brother. I'm crying right now. I need to shut up. I'm not talking though - how can I shut up?

No, none of your suggestions are worthwhile or correct. It's not that time of the month. It's not that I'm overwhelmed. It's not that I've been doing too much or too little. It's not any of that. It's that sometimes I just cry.

It reminds me to be human. Not just to be counted among humanity, but to really remember that I, too, am human.

I think not seeing Sandy is the hardest. Have you ever just known someone? A person that you just know and not through any fault of your own? Just because you shared a moment once and it cemented something eternal. So eternal in fact that nothing will separate us until that one guy comes along. And he did. And it didn't last. But it was enough to separate us. He came. I introduced. They loved. They hoped. They planned. They crashed. He still is. She still is. But the barrier that once was never there now always will be. The knowing that he still remains a person I will always love, even though when I had to choose, I chose her, and she remains a person I will always love, even though when I had to live, he was the one that continued living alongside me. The hurt. The pain. The frustration of love and hopes and plans dashed. And nicely laid futures where everything moves in triangles, now is situated in a straight line beginning with her, centered on me, and ending with him. It makes for a mess, one which cannot be called beautiful and when analyzed and summed only adds up to u+u+me=y?

So we'll never be the same, no matter how many nights we spent sleeping under the stars that first summer we met. Her a kitchen helper and me a lifeguard at a wilderness camp. Her heart beating for marriage and a family. Mine only seeking independence and freedom from all things surrounding family. Our hearts beat to different drummers now, in fact opposite ones from those so many years ago. When did the change come? Why/How did I miss it? And when will they ever cross paths again? It's not that I count her less a friend, just a different one. I wonder if she misses the seventeen year old me as much as I miss the fifteen year old her. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with ages, just stages.


Danica just called and it appears that she also has a cold and wants to sleep on the way down to Albany, so my plans of asking her to drive tomorrow are shot. Perhaps I'll just ask Mark as he's the only other one that is also heading down tomorrow that drives standard. I just want to spend six hours sleeping, is that too much to ask? Perhaps it is, and he has plans of sleeping in the van - though that seems foolish as there will be 12 people under 18 sharing it with him. No, I think he might agree with taking the wheel of my honda.

Contrary to the many things I had to do today, most of which didn't take longer than an hour each, except the phone calls which took less than an hour collectively, I found time to begin a book. It is called The River Why and I cannot remember the author directly, but I believe by a James Duncan. I bought it at a thrift shop last week, mostly because the inscript
ion on the inside of the front cover [paradox] reads "June 13, 1995, To Murray, I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. I look forward to working with you. Signed James Bruce." This captivated me because obviously Murray didn't enjoy this book as much as James Bruce did, as it ended up in a Goodwill store sold for 25 cents to the girl in a blue t-shirt and grey pants, yours truly. I am enjoying it immensely though, which causes me to wonder if I would have liked this James Bruce. One of the first paragraphs describes the storyteller's [Gus] father. His name, or at least his initial are H.H-O, and so while Gus's mother calls his father Hen [short for his first name, Henning], Gus calls his father H2O. His father wears tweed while fly fishing and silk pajamas to sleep in. A rambling fellow, he calls him, son of a nobleman in England. Just a flyfisherman slash journalist in America. Yes, I think I will like this book.

There are two things I want to specifically do someday, both of which should be sandwhiched in between the beginning and end of a honeymoon I may never have. They are, in no specific order:
1. See Les Miserables on Broadway.
2. Fast and Pray for a week in a remote cabin in the woods.

Sometimes I wonder if you are as bored reading about my life, as I am bored by my life. The only thing that really makes life interesting for me is writing about it. Because of course retrospect is always more captivating than present vision. Writing on this keyboard isn't very interesting, but in five years I will have fond memories of keeping this journal and could probably write something rather interesting about it. The question is, would you read it? Or rather, are you even reading it now?

The internet fascinates me for that reason, the fact that I can write a million words that will never be read by a million people, only by four or five, which is more than ever would have read it otherwise.

This entry is far too long and I am far too tired and have far too much to finish up tonight to be writing far longer than I already am.

Far out.

My little brother is watching Little House On the Prairie in the living room right now. I heard the music come on from where I was washing the dishes in the kitchen and the wells began. The kind that just begin stinging lightly behind your eyeballs, enough so that blinking a few times is adequate, at least enough to make them stop and for you to look like less of a fool.

I can never figure out whether I cry around Little House because it reminds me of being small and curled on the sectional couch in the library of our old house, my mother reading The Long Winter and my eight year old heart breaking when the Ingalls had no food and than when finally the barrel came, in the immense relief I felt. Or whether I cry because every day for six or seven years after school I would turn on channel 69 and transfer myself somehow to the 1800's prairie, to a little too small, clapboard house and a horse all my own called Bunny. Every life lesson, every monument in my life, every hurdle - big or small - has somehow been equated to that lifestyle, that life I never could call my own. Or at least if it wasn't Little House, it was Anne of Green Gables.

Perhaps I cry because I remember a time when every night my mother would read to us. Every night. It was then, before I knew that I could read them on my own, that I learned to appreciate the written word, even if it was only spoken at that point. Her voice getting tired, and our voices begging for 'just one more chapter?' We'd offer to get her a drink of water and she'd concede whether we did or not. Did she enjoy it? I don't know, I'm not sure even now whether it was our joy that kept her going or her love of reading to us. Michael read Watership Down on tape and sent it to me when I had mono at age 14. I still have it. Why? Because I was hearing the voice of someone I loved, reading to me something I loved, and it was an act of sacrifice that I loved.

It was those nights and late afternoons that I first heard of C.S. Lewis' Narnia, and J.R.R. Tolkeins Lord of The Rings. It was than that I experienced Sayers mysteries and MacDonalds fairy tales, so that when I grew to be 14 and 17 I learned to appreciate Chestertons Man Who Was Thursday and O'Conners Everything that Rises Must Converge. It is the memory of stormy nights, the power out, wrapped in afghans my grandmother knitted, the oil lamp working to produce enough light to illuminate the words - my mother's voice working to produce enough light to illuminate the passion, that cements in my mind. It is the memory of homework sitting unfinished on the table, sums and formulas waiting until we found out what happened to Shasta and Bree. The memory of a sink full of dishes and a lawn to be mowed and a parent who complied to our need to conclude the Last and Final Battle. It was than that I first heard The Giver, the book which began my thirst to see a world full of peace and finality. Than that I understood that Anne's preteen hormonal imbalance wasn't hormonal at all, but a personality that one can only learn to love.

When I first returned home from college in 99, I read to my brothers every night. We finished Narnia once again, read Bible stories that I had been familiar with, but to them were only new and fresh since they weren't in a church at the time. We curled on my bed, one dark haired on one side and one tow head on the other, wrapped in my down quilt and read. Sometimes they would fall asleep and I'd let them spend the night in my bed with me, sometimes they would stay awake and beg for 'Just one more chapter?' And sometimes I would close the book and look at them looking at me and we would wait patiently for the next night - our time to love one another in a make believe world.

I find that the more I experience quiet, the more I relish it and wait, with baited breath, for it.

This morning, even with only five people in the house, the walls seem to radiate with noise. Whether baby talk, or phone calls, or feet walking on the pine planking that floors our home. But, just a few minutes ago, the door shut and I am listening to quiet. Leaning against the wooden countertop in the kitchen, my bare toes scrunched tightly, my ears are listening to silence and I love it. I stand there quietly, the only noise is that of the car starting and pulling down the drive and the faint hum of the baby monitor, listening for Benjamins cries. I think about the things that I will do today, clean the house, do some laundry, finish my book, pack my suitcase for next week, maybe do some cooking, and I will do them in quiet. In quiet. There will be no voices echoing down the upstairs hall, or sneakers taking the steps four at a time, or little people asking for a peanut butter sandwiches. When the phone rings at intervals, no long conversations surrounding baseball, computers, the ladies luncheon, how cold it is and whether you like your new basketball. No one is visiting today, except Carina to pick up her newly hemmed pants, no one is dropping by. No one to interrupt my nicely planned day, planned with nothingness.

And I find that the more I experience quiet, the more I am happy with the sounds that surround my life and wait, with baited breath, for the first hand on the door knob and voice to say 'I'm home!'

Because this is the stuff life is made of and with it I am complete.

Ten things I have done that were once on my list of things to do before I died:

1. Get older.
2. Live by a river.
3. Learn to write without being inhibited.
4. Read through an encyclopedia.
5. Know someone close who is dying/has died.
6. Plant an herb garden.
7. See a double rainbow
8. Meet a person, any person, that says everything my heart echoes.
9. Make music.
10. Make someone laugh.

Ten things I want to find myself doing before I die:

1. Visit Prince Edward Island.
2. Go to Europe for a month, doing untouristy things.
3. Write something worthy.
4. Live near the ocean.
5. Be a mom.
6. Be a wife.
7. Be a friend, a truest friend.
8. Own a bookstore.
9. Plant a flower garden.
10. Win something

Ten things I hope to never do before I die:

1. Live in the city.
2. Eat lima beans.
3. Criticize.
4. Visit Disneyland.
5. Forget my anniversary.
6. Hurt a child.
7. Become obsessed or addicted to anything.
8. Own a poodle
9. Try green olives.
10. Learn to dance.

Ten Things I want to leave when I die:

1. A legacy
2. Children.
3. Organs.
4. A conch shell that you can hear the ocean in.
5. Memories.
6. A written book.
7. My possessions.
8. Many, many friends.
9. A constant thought.
10. The World.

So tonight, feeling melancholy and vague I spent an hour or so in the music room. I like this room in our house because it is painted a soft dijon mustard color, with Monet and dried roses - and a huge painting on the side wall I'm sure must have been bought cheap at a flea market or something. In any case, it is a perfectly calm painting and one which some old grandmother probably treasured above her 1930's wooden settle. I love it. But I love the room more. I love the room because in there I am surrounded by art, not just already created art, like the paintings or the skill of decorating, but by art which hasn't yet been created. Songs still unsung, even not yet composed. Words not yet said, much less thought. And in there I am surrounded by all that has made me love simplicity.

Gliding six bronze strings. Touching ivory keys. Bowing four steel threads. Roughly running my hand across the tight skin of a djembe.

Knowing that I am touching the future. The future art which will be.

And I played.

Like a child in the store of his youth, I played. Something made up, a story which no one else understands, but to me is the story of my heart.

The idea suddenly is seeming more and more appealing to just fall in love. Not with a specific person, contrary to that thought which you may have just had, but simply to just decide to be loved.

Make a decision that whatever comes, I will be loved, whether by you or by someone else, I will simply be loved.

Or perhaps I won't.

As long as I fight that which I desperately want, I am nothing better than a rebellious child who longs for discipline and refuses to come for the spanking. Love is not just the freesia scented bath oils and candle wax dripped on the linen tablecloth in a moment where the last thing on minds was the afore mentioned candle, it is learning to love the pain and painstakingly learning to love. It is taking the down side of life and making it the side that is real, the side that we all know and somehow ignore - real living. Real living is not summed up in some cheap novel that we of modern age have somehow derived the meaning of love from, it is, excuse this cliché, what I Corinthians 13 describes. Patient and kind, true and honest, giving and eternal - these are things that can only be experienced through some kind of learning experience. How, I ask, can we learn to be patient in love, unless we have something wait for? How can we be honest unless there is something that wants to remain hidden in self defense?

Love, true love, is learning to overcome the obstacles that life presents us with daily and learning that learning is the truest form of love we can find.

I find myself less and less able to be so easily hurt as I get older - whether it is because I have found that the hurting is the thing which causes both the healing and the growing, or if it because I have become so negatively affected by the world around me that I close myself off to being hurt. There are those who will say one or the other when speaking of me, I say both simultaneously.

Today I have found myself hurt. Deeply. The kind of hurt that doesn't heal though. It only causes growth by default, because to ignore it and hope it goes away is to refuse any type of growth. I never want this, but the hurt is so hard right now, the pain so fresh and so wounded that I don't want to be confronted with it right now. It is unwise of me to just react to the situation and in the heat of the moment rashly make a decision I will inevitably regret, and yet to not react to this predicament is to ignore it. I'm not the strong one in this situation and I will be the one who just sits and ignores it, I always am, but this time I feel a bit even more hurt by doing nothing, as if I am adding to the pain. To apologize is to initiate and to initiate is to threaten and to threaten is to cause more fences, and I don't think these fences will be the white picket ones you talk to your neighbor over; I am tending to think they will be the kind that hold rolls of barbed wire at the top.

Why are there even such things as ulterior motives? If there weren't, I could apologize and there would be no thought from anyone my purposes. You apologize simply because it is the right and good thing to do, the thing that will make sure of holding nothing against any man. I hold nothing against him, nothing at all, but somewhere along the way we've miscommunicated and that nothingness has become something very big that I don't understand. And in no way can make restitution without him understanding my motives.

I wrote this to him in a letter I undoubtedly will not send.

"You think that what you say shouldn't, or perhaps couldn't matter much. Its weight is only weighed by those whom you choose it to be weighed by, but I think you're wrong.

What each of us says, whether through words or actions; since we know they speak even louder and more blatantly than words anyway, carries an amount of authority that nothing else does. And how could they not? Neither is exclusive, and without either we live in a world void of any type of communication.

It's no secret, at least not to those who know us both well, regardless of how well or little we know one another, that my hesitancy towards you was not born out of dislike, but rather an uncanny resemblance to the very thing I fight hardest against: Myself. Being around you was like being in some sort of funny house at the carnival where the mirrors are some sort of representation of the person you know so well, but strangely distorted in such a way that you didn't want them to be the same.

I'm sorry that our relationship has come to this. I ask your forgiveness for not realizing the depth of you and taking it so lightly. I'm sorry that in my search for transparency I've found someone who would rather remain so opaque that he is virtually invisible. And I'm sorry that I found you when you would rather be hidden.

I'm not a man hater. And I do like you. I never wanted to be your best friend, and never pretended to be so. I never intended to know you, just the knowing that comes from finding someone who says the same thing you've always thought and silently agree with - not because you want to be like them, but because you are like them. And even that wasn't purposeful - it was default. I haven't got you 'all figured out.' For goodness sake, I haven't got me all figured out, let alone my family and close friends, and after them the people I barely know. But most of all, I never wanted to cause pain. So for that I am most sorry. Pain is inevitable. It is present in every friendship, relationship, or casual knowing we experience. We never mean for it to be, i
t just is. It teaches us what we have lost. It teaches us what we have gained. It teaches us what could be and what could never be. Yet most of all it teaches us that life is one series of good things and bad and together they make up the stuff of life that we most hate and most need. I hate to be the cause of it though. I am sorry."

So that was it. I am sorry. I am. I'm not sure what exactly I did, but for the pain I am sorry.

But that doesn't fix things does it?

I find that writing about the book I am reading is getting old, but it seems that there is always something new. I will spare you the details.

I am wearing an old white tshirt and a pair of army green pants that are decidedly too big for me, but a pleasant accompany to the tshirt which is threadbare and which I'm sure will be an addition to the rag box after this wear. I just walked back from a glorious hour at the river. The water is so shallow, as it is august, that you can sit on the sandy bottom and not have the water even graze your chin.

Or, let me edit that, I can sit on the sandy bottom and not have the water graze my chin, it would probably rest at an easy forearm heigth for all of you out there whose inseams are longer than 26 inches.

It is calmness and serenity all together and making one thing clear to me, that this world revolves less are me and more and more around those things surrounding me, and yet all at the same time not forgetting me.

It is quite a selfish feeling, but one I am experiencing just the same.

One thing to note: My father moved back in last week. He moved back out today. Whether it is because I am a creature of the moment, or because I am brutally honest, I am feeling a little left behind once again. I hate that feeling. Feeling unnecessary is the worst feeling I can imagine I think.

I am sitting here, cozy still in my swimsuit and what those of my family who still remain somehow in the eighties call a 'wife beater', comfortably cool and yet sticky to the touch and thinking as usual about a million and three things, but not a million and four as that would cause an overload.

Have not been able to put A Circle Of Quiet down for longer than a while. By longer than a while I mean, in good Pennsylvania English Dutch, a short time. It holds such good concepts in it that I cannot even hope to grasp a bit more than a little here and a little there. I will plan to read and reread it over and over until I've grasped it all and even then read it more as there will always be something more to learn.

Latin roots alongside writers block.
Death dealings sidling up to life bringers and somehow matching harmoniously two things that cannot be more opposite and yet are so inexplicitly intertwined that we cannot separate the two without canceling them both out.
White church steeples and New York City skyscrapers.
The stuff of life which makes a beautiful mess somehow interlocked and coming out more beautiful a mess than you or I could have ever imagined.

Am thinking about nothing really in particular - though many things to count.

Reading Madeleine L'engles Circle Of Quiet. It is the first in her series of memoirs called the Crosswick Journals. I own them all except this one, and I am finding that this is the one I think I'd rather own than any of the rest. Not because the others are somehow less than or not comparable, but because this one is so personal, so realistic, so familiar. There is no logical flow, she jumps thoughts, she skips things and uses run on sentences - but holding and reading this book is like talking with a friend you've known forever and are just now catching up with. I have known her writing since I was 12, the library offered to buy me my own copy of Troubling A Star as it was primarily checked out on my card anyway. And in a way she has been not only the inspiration and major influence in my writing, but she has also been the writer that I most identified with in spirit. Confused and yet always willing to always find the truth; always, in every situation. I love this. Teachability is the most honest quality I have found in anyone and admire the most in everyone. I wish for more teachability in my own life more than anything and am crushed when I see it less and less.

So I am reading this book. And not just reading it, I'm barely past the Part One, I'm reveling in it, soaking in it. Grasping every bit that I can and hopefully retaining it with some sense of newness. I like that thought.

Perhaps it is simply the point I am at presently, perhaps it is that I am just finding someone to identify with, perhaps I am just being silly, but at least I am finding, or refinding a soul I can say emphatically "She knows too." about.

She knows too.

And that thought is comforting.