Christmastime song

Jesus, Jesus, baby Jesus,
your cries echo our own.
Precious savior come to comfort
those of us who mourn.


Lived to die and died for Life,
risen now above.
Help us see your spirit here,
to live and breathe in love.


Christmas lights and bright white snow,
but you're the reason we
gather now to sing your praise
around the Christmas tree.

Stick it to 'em

Like any good teacher, I've got stickers to put on my students' piano assignments. I use them as an indication that they've passed that particular song. The problem? The stickers are a little too affirming for what I'm trying to convey. While "Terrific!" "Fantastic!" and "Way 2 Go!" are definitely nice sentiments, I'm looking for something more honest. Something along the lines of, "Well, at least you hit most of the notes." Or how about, "I'm feeling generous today." Even better: "I have some unidentified feeling that could be generosity but could be laziness or even apathy. Here, kid, have a sticker." Maybe, "Wow, you must have practiced at least once this week!" Perhaps the most honest of them all could be, "I'm tired of this song, let's move on for my sake." I think my personal favorite (as it is my mother's outlook on housekeeping and I therefore apply it to life in general) would be, "Better is good enough!"
Where are the honest stickers? Oh well, this is the post modern world, right? Everyone's a Terrific, Fantastic, Number 1, Way-to-go Winner with a gold star on top!

ThanksTAKING

This has been one of those days that just takes all the gratitude right out of me. I don't mean it to be that way, and if I thought about it, I could count my blessings.

I've had a migraine since Saturday. After being in bed for two days straight I couldn't fall asleep last night until 3 am and proceeded to sleep through my alarms this morning. This made me extra late to work and I didn't get a shower. Because I was extra late, my coworker was extra grouchy. Also, my headache is not gone.
I had to leave early from work to go the doctor. I had directions, sort of. But there are two locations in close proximity and it was very confusing. I called the main line to try to find out if I was in the right place and they thought I was... but then I wasn't. So I was very late for my appointment, which I really couldn't afford to be. And I was trying hard not to cry because that would only make my headache worse. The doctor was very nice but I was totally overwhelmed by all "help" available to me. I managed to have time to go get a hot chocolate which tasted funny (it always does from that Starbucks) and was expensive (they charge extra for a peppermint hot chocolate this time of year because now it's a "holiday drink"). Also I got a tough, crusty bagel. Yum yum.
Anyway, after several more hours of engagements, I stopped at the grocery store. Mistake. We are two days away from Thanksgiving. Apparently that's when people do their shopping. I just wanted milk. Oh, and flour. Oh, and... so I was there for a while. I piled up stuff in my arms. They didn't have the oatmeal that was on sale. They didn't have swiffers. They didn't have small blocks of Velveeta (obviously the only reason you would buy Velveeta is if you were so poor you couldn't afford real cheese so you buy gargantuan blocks of yellow goo... but wait! the price of Velveeta is so high these days, that doesn't make sense either. I give up.) I finally got in line. No express lanes open, no. That would make too much sense. The nice couple in front of me let me put my stuff down on their cart. And then just as they finished checking out, I saw the cashier bag a carton of milk for them. MILK! Nooooo! I didn't pick up the milk! Whatever. I so don't need milk. Who drinks milk anyway? (whimper) I can totally do without milk till after Thanksgiving (lord knows I'm not going back there till then). (Aaaaaack, I need milk!) How did I manage to remember a freakin' red pepper and not milk? Man. Oh well. I paid my $15 and change, shoved my inherited cart into some other semi-returned carts and grouched my way back to my car which was carefully parked between three non-returned carts.
Here at home I've been gnawing on, no, nomming down in quick succession, lemon Starburst. Lemon are only third best, which really means they are second to last. I was eating them quickly to get them out of the way for the one pink one that turned up. How annoying.

And though this rant has been sort of satisfactory, I know it does not measure up to some of the past. See? Even my ranting is below par today. Ugh. Did I mention that it is cold and my neck is tighter than... something really tight? But it's not as cold as at home, in WA. So I can't even complain properly about that.
Whatever. I think I'll go to bed. And maybe even wake up for my alarm in the morning. Time shall tell. (insert something witty about time shall tell and alarm clocks).

Goodnight.

Oh, and somewhere in there I might have eaten three doughnuts. Oops.

Coffee

I always hated coffee. I would avoid that aisle at the grocery store so that I wouldn't have to smell the beans. I remember one year at Thanksgiving, the only time of year we ever pulled out our coffee maker (green, 70s style) my sister poured herself a cup claiming that she liked to hold it and smell it. Huh? But now I understand. Since Starbucks and such places took over the western world and everyone "meets for coffee" (I meet for hot chocolate) I've grown accustomed to and even enjoy the smell of coffee. Sometimes it's too strong. Sometimes Peet's coffee grinds make me want to throw up. But sometimes, when my roommate has been making coffee in the mornings, my apartment reminds me of my grandmother and of Thanksgiving, and that is nice.

Much

Hello, writing.
There is much on my heart. Much.

Things like how much of a failure I am and in what ways, how much ache there is in the world and those I love whom it affects.
But also, though not as much, how much beauty there is in the world and how simple yet complicated it is. Yet how I don't see it and how it is somehow unattainable.

I so do not live up to my potential, and I don't know which ways to stretch myself. Should I learn guitar or drums or relearn piano or clarinet or voice? Or none of those things? Or ALL of those things? Should I write more or read more or sleep more... or exercise, drink water, eat better, feed the homeless, serve everyone, be an artist, take classes, organize, clean, or budget? ALL of these things or none of these things? In what order? To what extent? Should I get back in touch with people/ keep in touch with people? Should I take more photographs/ organize photographs/ edit photographs/ print photographs/ scrapbook photographs? Throw out clothes, buy new clothes, rework my current wardrobe, return those red shoes, buy new shoes, go back to buying nice undergarments, change out my jewelry... or just not care and hope someone marries me for my charmingly obsessive personality?

Ache ache ache. Affairs and death and cancer and suicide. Unrequited love. Fear, failure, physical pain. Loss of hope. And even beauty can be painful, for oh the recognition that my mind is feeble to understand it. And also, it connects so deeply inside of me, to some long-forgotten God-image-- why does that hurt? For the disconnect? For the pain of healing? For the minuscule recognition of what was meant to be? Oh, beauty you are a mystery. Life, you are a beautiful, painful, aching mystery.

Meditations on meditation

I'm told to meditate. The eastern idea, at least as I understand it, is to sit still and calmly, and see what comes to you. As something comes to you, deal with that and then you can set it aside and move on. As I'm slightly annoyed that the eastern religions have an apparent monopoly on meditation even though the word meditate comes up time and again in my very own bonded leather, binding-breaking, hi-lighted and written in, words-of-Christ-in-Red, stuffed with years-old church bulletins Bible, I shall endeavor to take it on myself.

Let's begin:

Deep Breath.
Ahhh.


This is nice.

What comes to me?
Hmmm.

A cookie!
Oh dear. A cookie? I don't think that's right. But there must not be a right and wrong. This is meditation. A cookie is what came to me and I must deal with the cookie. Well, there are a few ways to deal with a cookie. One is avoid it. But I'm fairly sure I'm not supposed to be avoiding things. No, the therapist would not be happy with that. The other is to eat the cookie. Well, there IS a cookie over there. One left from a few days ago and probably not that good anymore. But what can one do? In the name of expansion and clarity of mind and spirit....
Okay, yeah, that was good. Chocolate chip. Thanks, Safeway.

Indian position. I mean cross-legged. (Yipes, I'm not good at this. Do you have to be PC to meditate?)
I wonder if I should find a yoga mat. That seems appropriate. Hey my sister once had some comfy yoga pants she liked to wear on the airplane.
Okay, thinking.
Mmmm.
A Nap!
Well, there we go.
Okay, Go take a nap. I'll meet you back here in... wait, won't alarm clocks interrupt the nice calm setting we have going here?...


While you were napping I got a cat. I know. But a cat came next in my meditation, after I woke up from my nap. (Hm? Oh, it was lovely thanks, how was yours?) Perhaps it was "cat nap." Or maybe I just really like cats. She's a nice cat. Except sometimes I am sad and cats do not care.

Dinosaurs!
Uh oh. How shall I deal with dinosaurs? Perhaps there is a deeper psychological meaning behind the dinosaur. Something really big is bothering me? I feel old like a dinosaur? The Ray Bradbury story "A Sound of Thunder" has been haunting me since 8th grade? I felt abandoned when I sat at school watching "The Land Before Time" as a latch key kid? Oh look, a dinosaur transformer toy. Maybe that's why people often close their eyes while they're doing this stuff.

****

Shift. (Yes, that word has five letters, what have you been reading?!) Apparently, if you hold down the shift key for 8 seconds, you would like to turn on the filter function. In my little meditation world, however, holding down the shift key for 8 seconds means I am thinking. Thinking about writing down the things that came to me and how that was the only way to think about them at all. If I had been working with my actual stream-of-consciousness I would not be able to keep up and much more meaningful things would pop up, but I wouldn't be able to follow them at all. My mind is much to busy to even follow itself let alone with writing or speaking or even meditating-- calmly or otherwise. I suppose holding down that shift key was, in fact, turning on the filter function. I was filtering my stream of consciousness into something I could write about.
Well, that was fun or educational or something.

Now about that nap...

You are Too Much and Not Enough

Mmmm, I love my blog. I don't use it near enough. Here, lovely space, is where I can say what I truly feel. On my gmail status I have to write in code lest someone see how I really feel and run away. In real life I must catch them first, trick them into being my friend and then someday show them the real me and see if they stick around. Supposedly one of them will marry me that way. It's a good method. So my current status code is: "i t o t p. r i t m. a w w w h i i t t t t r o. y t w g w." I don't even remember how to break it. I think it says something like : "I'm too overwhelmed to purge. Room is too messy. Also wondering what would happen if I told them the truth right off. Yeah that would go well. " See but codes are dangerous too. Someone is bound to wonder about that and I can't be cryptic about it or they still know something is up. Or wrong. Or... goodness, the English language. How can "up" and "wrong" mean the same thing? On a barely-similar note, I think it is sad that I buy beautiful journals but write better when I can type so I can get my thoughts out at a decent speed. Alas.
ANYWAY.
1) I hate that I'm lying in bed instead of purging my clothes and listening to music on my new speakers, but what is to be done about it? Ugh.
2) See? What if I just put it out there, on my eHarmony profile or wherever, that I'm NOT a driven person, that I'm NOT cheerful all the time, that sometimes I'm pessimistic (mostly realistic, really, and the optimists have a slightly skewed view) and that I'm certainly NOT passionate about being physically fit! I'm just barely holding on to TRYING!!! Which, by the way, I'm trying to tell myself is an accomplishment so that I don't spend the rest of my life continuing to wallow.
3) You know why I don't just put it out there? Because I have to catch them. Trick 'em. Like a half dead worm wriggling around on a barbed hook... line and sinker.
4) In a book I'm reading I have learned that I believe I am too much and not enough. That is the phrase and I find that I believe it very firmly and deeply.
5)It is very frustrating to know that possibility and life are in you and not be able to gain access.

Communication Studies

Who invented mail? What a terrible idea! Mail turned into telegraphs, which turned into telephones, which turned into fax machines, which turned into emails, which turned into facebook and texting. At some point, one must have been content to stay in one's own community and communicate (see that? community/communicate? Oh fail, I can see already that the definition of community will come into play here...) with those right around them. Instead now we have to be friends with people clear across the world. And even if those friends were once right around you, you can't be satisfied to have crossed paths with them and move on. No, you must keep in touch! There ain't no excuse these days not to.

And you know why we have to? Because of relationships. And you know why we have to have relationships? Because God made us that way. Why? He's relational and he wanted us to experience that too, so he made us in His image. Thanks a lot, God. Srsly. Okay, yeah, I know, it's not your fault we took that free will and threw perfection out the window. Sometimes I just wonder about the value of autonomy. I'm usually wondering when I'm in pain.

Look, it's not that I don't want to keep in touch. It's not that I don't love my friends and I am ridiculously aware that I'm made as a relational being. And yes, I believe my community can be defined in different ways, one of those ways including people I need to keep in touch with long distance. I just get so overwhelmed, practically obsessed with my email and facebook and cell phone... It may even affect my health and possibly the Most Important Relationship and our communion (there is it again!). I won't go to bed without checking every single facebook update since I was on the night before, looking at my email, and seeing if the love of my life has contacted me yet (I don't know who he is, but he could have-- you never know...). And when I can't get back to people, or I forget to, I get little pangs of guilt. Two nights ago, I didn't open my computer before bed. It was a bit of a breakthrough. Of course, I had twice as much to go through last night... and then went to bed late and didn't wake up this morning to go to a brunch where there was a discussion on... guilt. Hah! Life is so funny.

Mail, as it was, wasn't so bad. Who doesn't love getting personal mail? Something thoughtfully written? I would love to write letters again. But in this day and age, with such up-to-the minute communication going around, I hardly feel it's worth it. I could send a letter and the news is not news by the time it arrives. And when would I have time? I can't even check my email till late at night. On the other hand, as such an all or nothing person, it's nice to be able to drop just a little note to someone. They know you're thinking of them. If only snail mail were available to me, I'd never get around to writing a letter because I'd think it would have to be more than "Hey, I was just thinking of you today." Where facebook or even email is perfect for that.

Someone said the other day that at some point in American history the porch moved from the front to the back... how sad it is. People should sit on their front porch and drink lemonade and strum their guitars and say hello to the people passing by.

The days I do have time, I don't spend it writing real letters, or even catching up on email. I certainly don't spend it outside with some lemonade looking for neighbors to talk to. And I don't spend it communing with God. I spend it compulsively checking my facebook and email waiting for... something. I don't even know what.
Something must change.
But I leave you with no real conviction that anything will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail

On Wealth

Sometimes the need to write comes at inconvenient times. Like in the shower. When getting ready to attend your six-year-old niece's birthday party. Guess she'll have to wait.

Why is it that I can totally love my job and have no money? And a surgeon can love his or her job and have tons of money? And then she can go off on fabulous vacations and see wonderful amazing parts of the world and I cannot. The surgeon's job is obviously very important. But if the surgeon wants to read anything, my job is important too. And actually, I have no qualms about my job. I feel it is important and I love it. I love the new part I'm learning about ordering books and I love being on the floor with the customers. And I believe we are almost equally intelligent. Almost. I mean, I could have been a surgeon. I just would have had to work my butt off. Still. here I am a bookseller who has not read Little Women, Moby Dick, Fahrenheit 451, East of Eden, or for that matter any Stephen King, Agatha Christie, or Kurt Vonnegut. And I will not have the chance to on any long airplane rides to Italy or the Galapagos.

So how can I go about enjoying life in the same way? How can I enjoy the freezing cold Pacific ocean since I can't even put a little toe in it when other people are splashing blissfully in the spa-like Atlantic? How can I enjoy EPA with it's bars-on-the corner store while others OOoh and AAahh and the Louvre? For heaven's sake I've even only been to Disney Land for 1/2 a day when I was 9. I can't even afford to go to camp with my church up state this summer because Who the Heck can take vacation? A mountain lake?! Please! Choose me!
I just long to enjoy life with friends and I take all the opportunity I can, but I end up burned out and broke. And even that is just from enjoying life here in three local Nor Cal towns.

Aiya. (Yes, I've turned Asian, also. What I meant to say was Uff-da.)
On that note. My headache and I are going to Amy's martial arts birthday party (I keep typing martian arts, which I think would be more interesting) for pizza and cake and the most beautiful thing the world has to offer-- happy children. (I'm actually not convinced that's true, but I'm trying to wrap this up on a happy note.)
I'll probably continue to "write" in the car, so maybe more later...

Have returned, and must say that now I want a martial arts birthday party too. Peter, the kids' teacher, always amazes me because he engages them so well. I've never seen anyone work with kids as well as he does. He also had my tough little girl sitting on his motorcycles revving the engine. It was a great party.
I'm home now to enjoy the feeling of a full tank of gas, a good book, and a voice mail from good friends (That's YOU, dear Choates! I know you read my blog!). That is how some of us feel rich, I suppose.

one hot Saturday evening...

I wonder what perfect weather is. 72 degrees? Slight breeze? Evening? Whatever it is right now, is not it. Of course, I haven't been outside all day, but whatever it has been for the last several days and whatever is making my house too hot inside... that's not it. I'm sitting here half dressed in front of my fan (not convenient when the very good looking young man comes rings the doorbell to talk to me about measure J) reading two chapters at a time of my book, sleeping, and compulsively checking my email because I'm convinced that it's too hot and humid to even go buy raspberry lemonade at the Safeway 1/2 a mile away. I could maybe risk it soon. According to the ever-reliable interwebz, it's currently 76, wind at 13 mph, and humidity dropped to 45%. Not sure raspberry lemonade is worth it though. Maybe if someone wanted to hang out. But all my roommates are out of town and everyone I've tried to get a hold of it MIA. I might be reduced to cleaning out my closet or filing paper. Or, more realistically, thinking about cleaning out my closet and filing papers and really reading two chapters of my book and then finding something worthless to watch on Hulu. Ah, Saturday. So many things I should do and so little motivation.
Does anyone else need people for motivation? I could always clean my room more easily if my mom came and kept me company. I need to make a dessert for tomorrow night, but I'd rather do it with some company. I need to get rid of a bunch of my stuff. But I'd rather have someone to run those decisions by. I should probably clean the whole freakin' house... but it's so freakin' hot!
So. Oh well. I certainly couldn't be accused of not taking a day of rest this week. The attitude might not be exactly right on, but it's a step.

Wow, I just lost this post and thankfully found it in drafts. Thank goodness for autosave. I mean, it's not like there's anything important or philosophically deep here, but I was sad when it was gone anyway.
Alright, I guess I'll post it now. I know everyone's dying to read it.
:)

On Rejection

Why does rejection have to be... rejection? Why couldn't it be, say, acceptance? Oh sure, I hear you. It sounds like I'm just dealing with names in some post-modern kind of definition. You can name rejection "acceptance" and it will still be the same thing only with a different name and then "acceptance" will cause you pain and suffering. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet and all that.
It just feels that I'm going through a season of rejection in my life. Friends and men and... I mean, in a way things just change and it's not necessarily rejection. Part of the change is even on my end. And some of the rejection is not complete, but compartmental. I don't even know how to define the length of the season. It feels acute right now, but I could say that the season has lasted a couple of years.
On the other hand, especially over these couple of years, I can see a lot of love and acceptance. I can see many ways and many relationships in which I'm not rejected but instead I am truly loved and blessed. In fact the one who has the most right to fully reject me most fully accepts and loves me.
And here I return to something I've been mulling over a lot: the theme of loving others. I have a hard time accepting that love of Christ. And perhaps that is why I feel so rejected by others, and perhaps that makes it easier for me to reject others rather than love them as Christ would. This is the reverse approach to the same thought process I've been looking at. If I can accept the love of Christ and see my own value, I can spread that love to others in my close community and that will continue on to the community at large.
Interesting how my thoughts on personal rejection led back to this again. A God thing, I suppose.

So much to say

I have a lot to say. A lot. Unfortunately, there is not time. Yeah, sorry about that.