sad days and despair

and if the day won't let me,
take me to the bridge,
walking far above the waters.
if the day won't let me,
save some life for me.

and if coffee won't let me,
if trees at my door hiding,
leaves in the air and branches in the sun,
let me rest if only for a moment.

if the days are gone, and my words
lost of sense,
take my hands and hide my face.

tomorrow has worries of its own,
what will i call home?
can't fix what i know, too well.
take whats left, let me down.
all that i have left, in this.

listening to this

reading this

...and the cost was so much more

i've been meaning to sit down, and actually attempt to write something decent. something of flow, contemplation, and thoughtful conclusion. unfortunately, work and the social lives of others have kept me too busy. for the past week i have been vacuuming floors, washing windows, and mopping walls in a girls dorm. a job that allows hours of deep thinking, and solitude. and i've been watching movies with friends. some of which are full and rich, others, which will remain unnamed, only serve to confuse.

so, maybe tomorrow i'll pour myself a cup of chai, sit in the quiet of my living room with a blanket, trying to hear the rain on my roof. then, i'll try and pour out some thing i've had in my head for the past couple days, insights of artistic value i feel the world should share.

until then, i've had this song stuck in my head at work, for the past three days;

heaven bend to take my hand
nowhere left to turn
i'm lost to those i thought were friends
to everyone i know
oh they turned their heads embarrassed
pretend that they don't see
but it's one missed step
you'll slip before you know it
and there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed

we all begin with good intent
love was raw and young
we believed that we could change ourselves
the past could be undone
but we carry on our backs the burden
time always reveals
the lonely light of morning
the wound that would not heal
it's the bitter taste of losing everything
that I have held so dear.

- sarah mclachlan, fallen

oh, man. i love this song.

literature, love, and ethics

i found a stack of books while cleaning today. i was told they were going to be tossed, so i thought i was might as well take them.

so, now i'm wrestling with whether to keep them, or whether to track down the original owner and give them back. the principals from my ethical reasoning class are coming back to haunt me.

beside me, as i'm typing this, are commentaries, mere christrianty, the message, and a tale of three kings. one of these days i'll have to start reading some of the books i'm collecting.

speaking of books, "stranger than fiction" is my new favorite love movie. oh man. i love how the movie speaks to the heart of stories. and it makes me feel like my life is a story, that i can only walk through.

i think that where the story goes is not something the character should try and control, or worry about. also, i've been thinking a lot about love. well, thats pretty much all i ever think about, but that is something for another day (work has me busy all of a sudden. what a strange concept).

if i ever get this into my head, i might start "living" my life. or, i might just start playing guitar again.

-----------------------------------

update, i found the girl that the books belong to. so i gave them back.

ethics- 1 adam- 0

alas this love

today was my first day of work for the summer. the start of a new chapter. i pretty much mopped floors and stacked chairs all day long. i feel immensely blessed with this job, actually.

oh, get this- the BC Lions are going to live at my school, for a couple weeks!! ah! i wish that i was a fan of CFL so i could care. alas.

i went to this birthday party last night, full of beautiful, trendy, uppermiddle class vegan people, in a big artsy house. and as luck would have it, i was wearing a trucker hat.

which, as irony dictates, is what i always get stuck wearing everytime i find myself in the strange world of the well off. man, i swear, i am a walking irony.

so, i don't know how weird i'm supposed to feel when i end up at a trendy people gathering. i have never considered myself all that trendy, thus have never thought i could feel welcome in those places. i kept expecting them to realize what i really was, and send me on my way.

ha ha, no, i'm joking (i'm so down on myself today. what the heck?)

eventually i wandered outside and hung out with derek weiss, who was telling me stories about zen. that was pretty cool.

hm. and my life is still in suspension. i'm waiting to settle into some kind of balance, that is supposed to present itself. and i'm still wondering if what i'm looking for is right. i'm not sure if the things i seek are all that worth seeking sometimes. i might be wasting my time.

oh well. note to self- throw away trucker hats. and unfair assumptions of life and people.

home is

i was sitting on a camp chair, beside my school's cafeteria, facing the empty fountain, when i was asked to apply for a youth ministry job in september. one more thing to think about.

bible college is full of new experiences, things one would never experience anywhere else. well, something new has hit me today. that i'm not going home. i'm not leaving for nanaimo, like i have for the past three years. i'm staying here.

things will change. i'm still looking for "home".

the drive

the guy from mae has a big mouth when he sings, ethiopian food is rich, coffee is a poor choice, i feel big at all ages shows (filled with small people), matt thiessen can rock out a piano (i liked how an actual piano was brought on stage), arlen is amishly manly, cafe de' soleil is a modern day "upper room" (from the last supper... remember?... in the new testament. whatever), denis conroy needs to shave, the keyboardist from sherwood is a dancer, michelle is a dreads hottie, fair trade sugar is convicting, the street is fresher after hours in ethnic shops, kate lee likes pop, i need a cool libation to end this day...

...and we all float on (i love concerts, and the city).

bad time to be poor

tuesday morning. blinds closed. half sunny. organic granola. chai tea.

i finally finished my imagination project yesterday. i tried to make the point that the essence of journaling is both time and story. thus, the title "days drip slowly on the page" (which i borrowed from a bruce cockburn song). i'll have to send you a copy.

so, other than being a pretensious artist, my days are dragging slowly. they are long, and just not filled with much insight. i start work next week, which means i'll have a somewhat balanced life for once.

hm. until then, my life is a cup of tea. which means, i have to find some better tea. by better tea, i mean stuff thats not sold in a carboard box. unless that box is recycled.

i've come to a strange realization... that a class in college will only effect you deeply if you let it. and i have allowed "environmental issues" to effect me deeply. almost every aspect of my life has been brought into consideration.

now, everytime i buy something i look at where the product is from, imagining the traffic it took to get that product to me. i'm not bragging, i'm saying this is something i do without thinking, catch myself, and say ah! what am i doing?

this is the same reaction i had back when i took a class called "effective relationships", which changed how i view myself and how i view my relationships. and i'm still walking through issues raised in that class. so, as i said, if you let a class mess you up / cause you to re-think you're accepted perspective / shake you're foundations / effect you deeply, i think it will.

it will be nice to not have class during the summer. time for;

tea. literature. barbecue corn. organic food. rest. reflection. hopefully.

let down, and hanging around

i spent about 7 hours yesterday, trying to finish my writing project. i am now completely burned out, and feeling rather crappy.

i think i either a) put too much effort in b) tryed to hard or c) aimed to impress when i should have been focusing on art for the sake of creativity.

and i lost sleep over it. grrr. never again.

on a side note, i can now say that i have hugged tony funk. ha. how many people can say that? the story: me, heather, michelle, and dan (people i know but you don't) watched a choir of singers (lead my mr. funk) sing canadian folk songs... good times.

honesty and wrong assumptions

i spent some time reflecting on a personal/private journal i kept these past four months. when i started the journal i found myself writing in the same style as my online journaling habits- writing with the assumption that someone will read what i have to say.

so, of course, my journaling was very reserved. the journal was not supposed to be like my public journaling, throwing all my thoughts out an trying to come to a witty, or insightful conlusion. so, i starting getting real honest, expressing what was really going on deep down, rather that meandering with thoughts and speculating. i got past the "this is how i think i'm supposed to feel" to "this is where i am". so thats me.

in prayer, we shouldn't be reserved, afraid to offend God. i feel like, all i need to do is give up the truest and most honest and, oftentimes, offending parts of myself and know that God will accept all those things... that God wants me to express that honesty. its part of knowing who i am.

so i started to find the truest honesty about myself, who i am, and what things are going on deep down. and i realized how much i need to express them, rather than... i don't know. whatever the opposite of not expressing how i feel is. honesty is a difficult thing...its something we find when we're not trying to impress anybody.

and i'm glad to share that with my friends, who read this.

so thats why i've been on a bit of a journaling hiatus. i don't know what i'm supposed to think, at the moment. my life could use a little balance.

running to, and from

Take
Take till there's nothing
Nothing to turn to
Nothing when you get through
Won't you break
Scattered pieces of all I've been
Bowing to all I've been
Running to
Where are you?

Did you leave me unbreakable?
You leave me frozen?
I've never felt so cold
I thought you were silent
And I thought you left me
For the wreckage and the waste
On an empty beach of faith
Was it true?

cuz, I got a question
Where are you?

Scream
Deeper I wanna scream
I want you to hear me
I want you to find me
...Cuz I want to believe
But all I pray is wrong
And all I claim is gone

And I...i got a question
I got a question-
Where are you?

-silence, jars of clay

hope and the wounded healer

i spent some time today, processing some old thoughts over a cup of jasmine tea. it was a milieu of old thoughts of a old season, and the tea i bought last august. for some reason i never had the time to finish making pots of tea to use up the dry leaves, and i didn't have enough time to fully comprehend things- or work through questions i asked awhile ago.

advent. if i can liken advent to anything, it is like a flowerpot. to grow something in flowerpot, i have to first clear space in that pot, in expectation of dirt or seeds, or a plant. in the same way, we clear space in ourselves during the advent season, in expectation of a coming messiah, who promises to fill us. the very meaning of Christ being born is a welcoming of new soil, a new covenant to replace dry, lifeless dirt that we watched over faithfully, hoping for life.

and what will that new soil grow inside me? i don't know. this is, perhaps, a question i'll ask again everytime a season changes.

day by day. last semester i tried planning for the first time. at the start of the year i planned out what i would read every day, which days would be saved for writing and which for rest. though my days for reading would come, and a feeling of "i don't feel like it" came. and, looking back, what felt like laziness was a moderate depression. some things from my personal life were dragging me down, which made my plans difficult to follow through with.

in all my skilled planning i forgot to account for one thing- life. to have life, and to live it, is unpredictable. there are things that enter into our long term plans and undermine them- issues that even the best plans cannot control. i couldn't help it that i was depressed. its not something i thought was going to happen. as important as planning is, learning to live in the unpredictable day to day is key- its learning to live within those plans.

life, through my eyes, can't be lived a couple months in advance. we can't place joy, sorrow, heartbreak, or crying on a calender. we can't choose our stories, or how they will change us. we can't choose whats going to hurt, what will bring joy, or what will make us stop and wonder, in awe. having a set plan for some things is good, but when it comes to living life, feeling the rush of it stream down my arms, is one day at a time.

i think, all we can do is walk through the stuff of life, willing to learn whatever lesson God intends those things to bring.

tea. i think i drank a bit too much tea today. or, simply failed to balance the said tea with adequate nutrients... aka, food. i need to find some good new tea. having jasmine was all good and fine this year, but it feels lacking in the flavor category. and earl grey has it's moments, but drink the same tea everyday and it starts to feel like just that- the "same old tea". whatever.

...and so he did what countless punk-rock songs had told him to do so many times before: he lived his life.

-stranger than fiction