brain dump.
My entries haven't been too regular as of late...it's really
impossible to predict when and how good blogging inspiration will
strike. Sometimes I get a fabulous idea that I can't quite put into
words, and sometimes I take a completely useless idea and write about
it for an age and a half. There's really no predicting how a MegBlog
comes about.
Today, rather than trying to differentiate between useful ideas and
weaker ones, I thought I'd just tell you everything that was in my
head. I did do this a couple weeks ago, but that particular dump was
concerned with everything that I thought about in the space of a minute. I'm going to see if I can now cover the biggest things I've thought about in the last twenty-four hours.
I suppose I will be doing a bit more sorting and editing than I did in
that entry (I don't think Andrew Ridgeley will come up again), but
well...without further ado...
writing
Working at a job where I'm writing all the time seems to have left
me fewer moments in the day to navel-gaze about whether or not I'm a
decent writer. Funny that....do something often enough, and you stop
wondering if you suck at it or not. I assume that works for things
other than writing, like perhaps parenting, making soufflees, or doing
macrame. Actually, no matter how often you do it, macrame always sucks.
i know what the oregano does at night, but I swore not to tell...
hint: it does the same thing as my toenails. and my hair. but I've already said too much...
dancing
I used to wonder if I was a good dancer. In fact, I used to think I
was. Now I just don't care, because I doubt anyone else does. Dancing,
unless you're following decent choreography or performing in a
particular style, is usually a hair's breadth from cheesy anyhow, so
why not just give in to it? If you feel like bouncing like a pogo
stick, do it. If you feel like shaking your ass as though there were a
bee primed to sting you there, then go for it.
I know for a fact that I will one day embarass whomever I marry by
heading (as though magnetized) toward bar jukeboxes while the poor guy
attempts to play some pool. He'll have to ignore the fact that his wife
puts on
Monkees songs, and then try not to notice me doing 'the running man'
out of the corner of his eye.
I know that other men will stare at him in bold disdain at such
moments, but also that he will say to them
(with conviction borne of adoration, resignation and delusion -- and as he executes perfect corner pocket shots...):
"You're just jealous."
friends
I love my friends. I love that they put up with me. I love that they
are full of talent, wisdom, humour and joy. I love that they share
themselves with me, and fill my life with a thousand good memories and
a million good laughs. I'm not always good at making them feel as loved
as they should be, but that's something I could work on, for sure.
They are the people who tell me I'm an ass when I need to hear it.
They remember my best hair days, and my worst clothing choices, and
help me avoid rash styling decisions and wearing pants with unfortunate
holes. They send me new songs they know I'll love, and sing along with
the old, as we drive places we don't need to go. They greet me with
squeals and say goodbye with tears, and send me one-line emails all day
at work. They know my excuses, they call me on my crap, and they know
what I'm capable of, even when I doubt I can do a thing. They tell me
they love me when I don't deserve it, and they tell me they're mad at
me when I need to make amends. Sometimes they tell me they love me when
they're mad at me, and that's when I know it has to be the truth, or they just wouldn't bother.
air drumming
I'm so embarassed I do this. Maybe if I tell people, they will shame
me out of it. Or they will point and laugh. Then, knowing my reaction
to laughter, I will just do it more. Gah.
church
I go to church. I think a great many of you know this, but probably
a great many of you don't. Consider yourself informed right as of this
moment! I don't consider church to be the lynchpin of my spiritual
existence, but community is a good thing. So I go, sometimes joyfully, sometimes reluctantly, but quite regularly..
My father (and my mother's father) is a minister (Baptist), but I
don't attend his church anymore. He's a pretty wise man, and a kickass
preacher, but I think it's good for all us PK's to carve out our own
pews after a while, and hear some other voices. I've tried out a few
different congregations since I left home, and actually quite like the
one I'm going to right now. I've had a hard time settling
on a location, or investing in a particular group, mostly because I've
been dealing with a lot of questions and thinking and wondering as of
late. I think this is good, but it's not a simple process. Then again,
it shouldn't be.
I don't really think of my faith as something mired in a building or
a particular community anyway, but rather as just the natural flow of
my own relationship with God. I hate churchy culture and churchy
language, because I find them both limiting and artificial most of the
time. I don't have the 'car fish', or a 'God's Gym' sweatshirt, and
while I did buy a roll of 'Testamints' once, it was just so my dad and
I could eat them in the car, and giggle all the way home. Who thinks up these products?
I'm big on
real evidence of faith and love, which mostly involves grace towards
others, doing practical and helpful things when they are needed, and
doing my best to live out my spiritual life (and my life in general)
passionately, kindly, and honestly. It's not easy, and I'm not a
remotely amazing Christian, but I'll keep trying. Hypocrisy and hatefulness make my skin crawl and are absolutely
antithetical to what I know of Jesus, but this is undoubtedly the
reputation my faith has garnered itself in some places, thanks to the
hideous efforts of people like Fred Phelps and Jerry Falwell, and the
greater portion of the US radical right. I am not a mega-church girl,
nor am I a 'Left Behind' devotee, nor do I support anyone who believes
that harming another human being makes God happy. I simply don't
understand those people, and I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't
understand me. In fact, Fred Phelps and I had a pretty vicious email
correspondence, but that's a whole other story (I was even trying to be
patient and loving there, but hello, temper, meet Fred...).
I believe that everyone deserves love, and that I'm here to get as
much of that out there as possible, in between bouts of trying not to be a
complete jerk. That's it.
Today I went to an Anglican church in Vancouver, which is a bit of a change from the rather contemporary service I'm used to.
It was bliss. Absolute bliss. I am a lover of classical music and
old poetry and rich language, and I found a lot of inspiration in the
words and postures and sounds of the mass.
It seems like the murky portions of church history cause
such a significant amount of shame in the lives of believers nowadays
that we try to make our services look and feel like either a Green Day concert, a
matinee at the Moon River Theatre (in Branson, Missouri), or a morning
at Starbucks. I get trying to be approachable. I get trying not to be
distant from reality. I just don't get why we have to make things so
damn cheesy.
I looked at the giant, cross-filled arch at the front of the
sanctuary today, and thought of the reverence than went into that design. I
heard complicated, gorgeous notes flow from the organ pipes, and
thought of the grasping hearts and minds behind those
compositions. I listened to the juxtaposition of simplicity and
complexity in the prayers, and imagined hosts of other people around
the world bowed to those same phrases, each one walking a different
road with their God.
Some would be dying inside, while some would be feeling peace. Some
would be totally distracted, and some would be entirely in the moment.
Some would be mocking each word with every pore of their being, and
some would be simply accepting what was offered.
And some of us would be feeling it all at once, and then glance up
to see the red in the stained glass light up like the horizon at the
end of a sunset.
I have a hard time blogging about my faith, because it is both too
simple and too complex to address in the terms available to me here.
But I can tell you the glass was beautiful, and that I smiled at it
just as the old, old man next to me murmured in response to the
leader's, "The Lord be with you..."
"And with thy spirit."
And He was.
music
When I listen to music on my laptop, I generally wear headphones,
since I don't have any speakers besides the crappy ones
that reside within the weary construct of my poor, blighted Dell.
This also saves the people around me from my choice of tunes, which can
often include the same song played over and over again. I tend to let
tracks replay when I get into a writing groove, and this is probably
fairly annoying if you're outside of my mental space. So...yay
headphones!
Now I just have to stop singing along. Loudly. In harmony.
cheese
I don't like brie. I don't care if you bake it with walnuts, cover
it in sundried tomatoes, or slap it on a baguette. Most of my friends
become feverish in the presence of a wheel of the damn stuff, and will
go at it like Hungry Hungry Hippos. But I don't get the appeal. It
tastes slightly off, is slightly squishy, and smells slightly bad, like
an overweight Shriner running the popcorn booth at a Temple fundraiser.
eBay
What the hell?
quiet men
After years of adoring jocks and jerks in all their
testosterone-drenched appeal, I'm pretty into quiet dudes as of late.
They tend to have the best thoughts when they do manage to speak up,
and there are few better companions for a spastic girl than a man who
ponders his words before he speaks. One of us has to...
the ocean
I find the ocean is the best headache cure known to man. A good
seabreeze gets rid of my cobwebs in short order. Failing proximity to
the ocean, I suggest Advil. Still -- Advil is of little use if you want
to scuba dive.
smart people
The smartest people I know a) listen the most; b) have never seen Fear Factor; and c) tell the stupidest jokes.
reading about food
Is almost as good as eating.
bedtime
is here.
11:58:25 PM 
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