meaningful distraction

He tells me that I am beautiful.

Sometimes I don't like it because who the hell cares if I am beautiful when the world is falling apart. But sometimes I close my eyes and let him touch my face, because he really likes that.

And sometimes I say to hell with it all. And I look at him with big eyes. But that isn't love, either.

He's my distraction.

It's the world's distraction...at least this is my theory. If we could love without needing to love, I bet then we could change the world.

At least, it's a nice thought when I am lonely.

nuclear sunrise (when i won't settle for answers)

My eyes adjust to the light breaking over the valley, but my heart burns without a shield. The world I know tries to tear itself apart at the seams, and all I can do is sigh.

I spent most of the night up here - restless, listless, bored, patient...listening. I brought my laptop onto the roof. What kind of freak takes a laptop to a rooftop. I do, my friends, I do.

It's barely pink now, but I can see it growing ruddier, until it will burst into flame.

A world of scheming and incompetence. A world where those who decieve best make it the farthest, and where no one really expects or fights for the truth. The sorry thing is I don't, either.

I feel like I'm in that scene from V for Vendetta where he orchestrates a fantastic array of explosions to bring down the tower of a corrupted government. Except there is no tower on my horizon. And I'm too tired right now to wake up the world. It's sleeping here right now, though far away, beyond the horizon my eyes can see, schemes unfold with busy hands. It's beyond what I can do right now.

As a girl who always thought that God moves actively in the world, I have a lot to question these days. The best family I've ever known struggles with a ugly, horrific disease and their beautiful example of marriage cannot save it from taking him away from her. What merits redemption Lord? Forgive me if I do not clearly understand why punishment and consequence and chance look so much alike.

For the Highest Authority, this world looks so dismal and bleak. Why did you create it only to let it destroy itself? Why when Moses pled with you did you redeem them? You turned your back on Sodom and Gommorrah, and that I can understand...but what is different today? It's a puzzle to me Lord, so if you are working today, I cannot have any idea what you will do next.

You remind me that I do know one way you work...through eagerly, loving hands that reach out to your people in need, through active minds that though they struggle, delve into your word and run with the messages of service and perseverance that you make very clear.

What's wrong, couldn't you stay awake for one hour? I hear you Lord, but my focus is poor. I am in a place now where I can do good things for the world, but I still feel incapable. What good am I? I fight the self-doubt, struggle to find direction. This struggle may be good for me but I am impatient and feel worthless until I am able to do something good for someone else.

When is it enough? Not enough to make me feel better, not enough to quit...but enough to please you, enough to fulfill the purpose you set for me? Ok, and enough to not be a failure in your eyes, the way I feel in mine.

finding reality in scattered bits

i think i'll write, and write, and write. Write until the jet-lag surrenders to the exhaustion. Write until it's nonsense, write until it can all escape like a sigh from smoke-filled lungs. It won't take long to reach nonsense, for most of it will always be nonsense to the one not holding my hand by the Volga, or the one who didn't watch the midnight sunset from the Tallinn port beside me. Even then, this trip has taught me a comforting loneliness of fully understanding that no one will ever completely understand.

Love is all. A simple line written by my teammate. It keeps coming back into my head as I think about this trip. The whole trip, not just Russia. Patience. Peace. Wisdom. Intelligence. Courage. Simplicity. Charm. Perspective. Horror. Guilt. Oppression. Laziness. So many themes I thought about in the last month. So many things I want to bring home besides the 2 kilos of chocolate and a few hundred digital photos. But nothing without love. Love is all.

It's even harder here in stagnacy. In a world that didn't change much since the day I left it last. The ever changing landscape of my trip is the most foreign thing to them, still plodding along with the best-laid plans or at least a sense of normalicy in chaos, or purposeless existence. I can't expect more out of them, as surely as I will be disappointed in myself some days.

"All thing are working for good." Said the Lebanese woman to me in the airport.
"Peace go with you." My answer was the tears behind my eyes.

They all scream for freedom and something better. I did, too. Isn't that what I set out to find? Instead I found misery, but strangely not my own, but one I wanted to feel - for misery was far better than loneliness, and feeling their pain gives me purpose. Love is never separated from pain. Bliss is never known without first the wish to die (Count of Monte Cristo).

Maybe it's too much to say that I feel their pain, because I cannot. I am, as always, an unfeeling mass of crumbled thoughts that occassionally slips out a tear for those who have touched me. But to reach out and touch, that is what I haven't learned. She touched me. The woman in the airport. The girl by the Volga. They touched me. Their 8-yr-olds waving flags and shouting "Peace for Lebanon!"

I swam in the river. I ran though the forest. I climbed the castle and waded in the sea. It was all beautiful, and it will always welcome me for rest. But my life is here, in the eyes of color, in the sweat and the dirt. In the city, in humanity, and in suffering. I want nothing else. I want what is unwanted, because I've seen everything else, and all it cannot offer, and beauty will not suffice.

If nothing else, I hope I learned to love with my mind, not just with feeble emotions.

There is a time for everything, and now is a time for sleep.

a fork ...

I graduated!

Wow. It's not sinking in yet.

SO much.

I left.

I found a plastic fork in my last few moments on west campus.

I kept it.

I have so many choices.

I'm not leaving because I'm done, but because I'm beginning.

warning: the space between "in" and "sanity" has been removed

11 days, but so much to do. But this is it, the end of this story. The end of four years. I don't know how to process all of this yet. I wonder if it will all flash before my eyes when I walk across the stage.

What do I hope I've learned? I hope I've learned to be faithful. I hope I've learned how to respect. I hope I've learned to pay attention, to examine everything. I hope I've learned to love, better and deeper. I hope I've learned the difference between discernment and judging, insight and insult.

It's an emotional roller coster inside my head right now. The headlines on the news ticker of my brain scream "Finish Well!", "What Does It Matter Anyway?" and "What Next?"

I've been working hard and playing hard. I hope I won't have any regrets. I just rolled with it. That's who I am. Am I satisfied?

To be honest, I don't know.

because everyone needs an emo-graph

it's bliss in tiny droplet-sized doses

heaven sent kisses. they hang in the cool night air waiting to caress the cheek of one who ventures out.

coming inside felt like leaving a lover. at least I got a goodnight kiss.