Free yourself

"Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. If you delight in existence, you will become a guide to those who need you, revealing the path to many."
-Sutta Nipata

The more I live, the more I see this to be true. The more I live the more habits I develop. And the more habits I develop the harder it becomes to overcome the things in life that I have not yet known.
The horizons that have not yet been explored, the states of mind that have not been questioned and the people that I keep at an arms length.
The harder it becomes to open windows to the unknown. And those closed windows quickly become dirty, clouded from years of closure.

Tonight, as I feel sorry for myself, I repeat these words in my head. Knowing that I can guide others with my sorrow once I choose to overcome the uncertainty that lies in the future of tomorrow. And sadly (I guess I am 20 and all my friends are sold) this uncertainty applies mostly to the lack of boys lined up outside my door...
Perhaps I continue down my path, alone, and certain that once I continue to guide I will find those who need me, or those who I need.

Grace

Molded Model

God dosen't make women like her anymore.
He can't.
He can't afford the impact they make on the world.
She was one in six billion- Blanche B. Evans.
With a name like that how one couldn't shatter others is beyond me.
"Head up."
"One foot in front of the other. Do not cross your ankles!"
She was a modeling instructor not just for the catwalk but for the sidewalk.
"When asked your name, reply with confidence and zest."

I learned more about myself from Blanche than my mother could ever teach me.
More about manners and the proper place to turn up your nose.
More about the shallow world we live in than she would ever know.
And more about the person I did not want to become,
the person who only wears the trends and wont meet the day until her face is made
than the both of them would ever know.

She made ninety look forty-seven.
Fiery red hair that matched her lip stick,
Tailored dress suits that belonged in New York City,
She made me loathe the day I would strut my "stuff."

As much as my blue eyes "that would make me famous" followed her step
And as much as my feet would respond to her every critique
There was something about Blanche
That made,

That made me
The modeling hating,
No-make-up-wearing,
Free soul that I am today.
And for that
I thank God,
For the one in only
Blanche B. Evans.

***
There was a time in my life when a model was all I ever thought I wanted to be. And Blanche was the woman who taught me everything she knew, while my mother was the one who paid for it, while also believing in my dream.
And for a few years, form where this poem came, I resented myself for this. I resented myself for wanting to be something based solely on my looks. However, now Im blessed with the opportunity I had to strut my stuff, blessed that these two women believed in my potential, not just my body's potential, that might someday take me down the runway, but my personality, and my voice that needed to be heard. These women gave me the confidence that I can now openly see in myself.
And for that, I say Grace.

Who is God

I found this quote in a blog I frequent often: The Last Debate

"A friend once explained it this way: have you ever seen needlepoint? When you look at it from the back our perspective it's a big mess of knots, loose threads, loops and jumbled colors. It's also backwards. But when you see it from the front God's perspective the
picture is perfectly clear. But you know, if you accept this premise, you can spend sometime staring at the jumbled, messy, backwards picture, and parts of it will begin to make sense."

I had never thought of his work like this before. But in this time of great doubt, hurt, poverty, anguish...we remember that he is there too. That he was there in the wake of the tsunami, and the storms, and the murders, and in this cold weather. He is here now, and although it makes little sense as to how it all fits together, we may just have to stare long enough, hard enough, or perhaps just accept that its a mess to us, but on the other side he sees the picture.

For that I say Grace

What I miss...

I'm standing in a meadow where I have spent many nights sleeping amongst its long grass gazing at the millions of pin pricks only to wake every morning to my sleeping bag covered in frost. It is here where I have spent many days chasing grass hoppers from petal to petal and chasing children in games of tag. It is from this meadow where I feel God’s presence and from where I have taught others of His grace. Its color is a lime green, sprinkled this week, with red and purple spots, next week it will be all white when the Elephant daises begin to bloom. I have gotten to the point where I know the time of summer based on the kind of color that can be found within that canvas.
In the distance two Sandhill Cranes graze for their lunch. They are part of the last family of cranes this side of the Mississippi and make their home on the hills around this meadow. Nearby a stream trickles through a rocky riverbed, almost dried up as the summer stretches on. Earlier this spring it was flooded past capacity when I had to bring campers through its water. Soaking their shoes and socks I had to deal with their complaining through the day hike. As a camper we use to build damns out of rocks and branches as a competition to see whose would hold the longest. Today that is no longer aloud, as it messes up the hydrosphere.
***
I miss camp today. I miss the hot summer days and cold nights mixed with Kool Aid, sunscreen, Lodge pole pines swaying in the breeze, kids' smiling faces, hugs around my legs, camp songs at the top of my lungs, laughing so hard it hurts, feeling God's love, a meadow full of color, a lake colder than snow, freshly washed feet with a dusting of dirt on the way back to the cabin, dirty jeans two weeks strong, Tevas with socks, smiles around a table full of "camp" food, a campfire on nights when its just still too warm, sleeping under thousands of stars, snowcapped peaks late into August.
It is days like this, when the outdoor temperature is 12 and the wind gusts are 15 mph, and all that lies in the distance is the unknown semester when I think of camp. It is on days like this when my mind and heart wonder to a place where people are warm, where the weather is warm, and the only cold is that mad dash into the lake.

I did beleive in Santa Claus

Much like this memory. The man in the red suit use to be Santa in my eyes, he had drove his snowmobile on to the lake behind the house and come up the flight of stairs to make sure he knew where my brother and I were staying for Christmas. Today all I see in my uncle Mark. I want that naive, innocent outlook back. To be the child that believed anything that she was told, now it is only what I see, and even then I have to analyze and project the possibilities.

What I knew

I want to write about what I knew, not what I know, but what I knew before reality became real. Before self expectation, before duty and obligation, before things became grey and fuzzy, and before my future didn't matter.
These are the memories in which I find comfort. These are the thoughts and events where I wish my heart still beat, where I wish my brain could still reflect.
These are the memories that transform with each day, and with each new experience. The time I broke my toe under a vending machine no longer hurts as much I thought it did at the time. And the names I was called by my brother no longer sting like they did. The scientist I wanted to become in second grade, has now faded under next semester's text books, covering non-fiction writing and PR case studies. The memories of playing legos and barbies after school with my brother, are now overlapped with discussions of politics and games of Gin rummy.
I want to remember what it was like to care only of what happened at that moment. I want to know what I knew then. How to relish the daylight and think nothing of the darkness. To play and to never question the imaginative world I lived in.

Resolve

My only resolutions for 2005 are:

* to write everyday!- meaning to sit and truly write, to spend time not perfecting things that have already been said, but to create new ideas.

* to be assertive!- no longer will I pretend that this passive/assertive thing works. I want to speak my mind clearly and honestly with little hesitation.

Both will be easier said than done.

Just leave!

It's over, has been for a month at least, but you just wont fade. I'm done talking about it, done thinking about what went wrong, or what we could have done differently, but for me the end has come. It was fun while it lasted buddy, but for now it's OVER. I don't need to keep in touch, I don't need to talk with you about forgiving or moving on, I've done that, in fact I had done it while we were still dating. So for heaven's sake let us just move on, but not move together to our separate places, but away from each other, forever.

Why must we remain friends? I know that we had a strong friendship for at least 2 years before we started dating, but perhaps that's all we were meant to have. Perhaps we have gotten all the fruit we were suppose to get. The juice is gone. And I'm ok with that, these past 3 years have been wonderful, I considered you a best friend, but maybe we have exhausted the possibilities, maybe it's time to part, but to be so thankful it happened

2005?!?

At the breakfast table this morning, my father informed me that, “Whatever you wanted to get done in 2004, can no longer be done.”
He has such a refreshing way to look at the passing of time.

Around 10’oclock, on New Year’s eve a friend of mine, Liz received a call from a friend of hers on the east coast, wishing her a Happy New Year, Liz told her to call back in two hours as we were still in 2004.
As if her New Year salutation was meaningless.

As we watched the ball drop a family-friend, Gary asked how those people in Time Square were celebrating midnight at the same time as us west coasters??
Not only did 2004 slip out the back door but 2005 came in at the same time all over the world?
I told him I’d been trying to figure that out for years, as I took another drink of my MUCH too strong Korbel.

As I get older the New Year has less and less meaning. I use to get so
excited cause it meant I was getting closer to my birthday and closer to being grown-up, now it’s just uneventful and meaningless. Maybe once I turn 21 the magic will be back??

Happy New Year!
I'm still working on my resolutions.