Writing is Art

I do not write because it is my first choice of expression. I write because it has taken the place of drawing. It is easier to hide writing and not let people see your struggles, failures, and attempts at creativity or expression until you are ready. Drawing and painting can be big and messy and public and difficult to keep prying eyes from peeking over your shoulder or peeking when you are away until the work is finished. Drawing with a pencil or charcoal or pastels or paint or pen and ink is beautiful and fulfilling and obsessively cruel in its ever changing strokes, lines, and shadows. O! the emotions that flow from your brain to your arm to your fingers to your implement of choice onto the paper and then seeing a wordless picture emerge and envelope! Draw without looking at your hand, your paper, your expectations, your assumptions. Let your brain see and express; allow yourself to become lost and then found. Can writing compare to the beauty that is drawing, shading, building layer upon layer until the picture is complete? I seek the answer to this question as I continue to write and discover. The answer is being revealed to me at a snail's pace, but I know it will come because I am just beginning to see its unique beauty and promise. Words, grammar, the English language, and reading are my passion, so writing must be my passion as well. It must be.

God, show me the beauty in writing that I have found in drawing. Guide my thoughts and fingers as I seek to honor and praise You. Help me to reveal You and myself, your faithful servant and child, through my word-filled art that is writing. Amen.

La Vita è Bella

I try to focus less on myself by focusing more on myself. Sounds like a contradiction . . . doesn't it? It is and it isn't--another contradiction. Contradiction is just one aspect of how we live our lives--or maybe I should say how I live my life, since I shouldn't speak for anyone else. I am a walking, talking, listening, living contradiction, but I'm not unhappy about that. This just means I am alive and kicking and three dimensional. I make mistakes, recognize those mistakes, and work hard to fix them. I do not live in a vacuum, and I am positively and/or negatively affected by everything and everyone I come in contact with. I still have selflish moments of course, but I'm working at recognizing that selfishness and flipping it to selflessness. I constantly pray for guidance!

How do I focus less on myself by focusing more on myself? By way of explaining, I will tell you one story with two side effects:

Seven years ago, I finally admitted I was a soda-holic. I had been drinking Coca-Cola to the extreme (and not the diet kind). I realized my dependence on the caffeine aspect of it all when I tried to quit cold turkey. I failed miserably, and I became so ill that day I had to leave work early. I was terrified of that failure and the control caffeine had on my body and mind. My typical day centered around soda . . . fountain soda . . . from specific places. I was enslaved, and I hated this addiction. I became irritable if I did not get enough ice to last until I finished the soda. I had to get my third 32-ounce soda of the day after 3 o'clock pm so that it would last the rest of the evening. This was a sickness, and I drove myself, and more importantly my husband, crazy! I needed to quit this addiction (focus more on myself) so I could keep my husband from running screaming into the night or eventually dealing with an unhealthy wife (focus less on myself).

When I did finally decide to really quit, I didn't quit cold turkey because my body refused to do it that way. I slowly switched to canned soda, and I eventually pared it down to one can in the morning. Ahhh! the burn of carbonation in the morning--this part was going to be missed. In addition to soda, I cut out iced tea (I did not drink coffee yet). One morning in October of 2001, I woke up without a can of Coke in the refrigerator to take with me to work. How convenient! This was my first day without any soda. I had done it slowly, so my body adjusted quietly, easily, and happily. I was free! I was alive! I have since reintroduced caffeine into my bloodstream, but I manage it successfully. I have become focused more on moderation, not just with caffeine, but all food/drink. I am aware of what I consume--both the good and the bad--and I am happy.

One side effect of the elimination of non-diet soda was weight loss. I had no idea that sugar had become such a giant source of calories for me. I was not overweight to begin with, so losing weight was not on the agenda. I went from around 110-112 pounds or so to 95 in less than six months. Not a lot to some, but for me it was a little startling. I bought a scale when I noticed my clothes hanging on me in an extremely unflattering way. To this day, I weigh myself every morning. I was worried I would keep losing, but I bottomed out at 95 and eventually bounced up to 97-98 about a year or so later. I will never forget the brief look on my stepdaughter's face when she saw me for the first time since my transformation at her high school graduation in May 2002. She walked through the hotel room door and her expression said it all. Horror! It was gone in a flash, but I saw it. It may have been an unconscious reaction, but it made me realize the extent of the change that had occurred. Later that summer, on a trip to England/France, my mom reacted the same way, except she verbalized her thoughts, "What's wrong with you? Are you sick?" No, I wasn't sick--just different, healthier, and aware.

Another, and more important, side effect of eliminating soda from my diet became apparent when I donated blood. I have always enjoyed donating blood because I am O negative and I test negative to a specific virus--this means my blood goes to premature babies! But with the increase of soda over the years, my blood eventually started flowing like molasses. I was drowning in my own glop that used to be a healthy life source harvested to help premature babies. The girls at the clinic would try hard to get my blood to flow. They brutalized my arm, but the little bag would sometimes remain unfilled. If they managed a full pint, it would take 30 minutes or more, and I would leave feeling ridiculous--clutching my bruised arm. They couldn't use a partial pint, so I sometimes left feeling like the very sludge that had begun flowing in my veins. "Drink more water!" was the advice from a young technician when my blood refused to leave my body. Hmmm. At that point, I was already on my way to being free of caffeine and I was drinking water, but I started drinking more and more and more--a healthy amount. When I went to donate blood months later, my blood flowed out like Niagra Falls. Eight minutes to a full bag! La Vita è Bella!

I focused less on myself by focusing more on myself. I improved my health and the quality of my blood (focused on myself) and helped premature babies (focused less on myself).

Aren't contradictions wonderful?

The Truth Hurts

So I was insulted not too long ago--by my own husband no less. So what else is new you ask? Of course Ken insults me all the time--in jest of course...I'm sure. They are those "I love you therefore I must make fun of you and say mean things to you" kinds of insults. I don't mind them at all, really. I give them back just as easily, and we have a fun time laughing and joking until our sides hurt. No, I'm not being sarcastic. It really is like that (well maybe not the laughing hysterically part). If Ken ever stopped making fun of me, I would start to worry.

Well, the insult I refer to, the one that kind of stung, was said a few months ago. I laughed it off at the time of course, but it set me to thinking. Maybe this one is true. What did Ken say? Well, let me start by saying I did really well in school. The last five years in college have been fun, exciting, and chock full of As in every class. After the first couple of semesters of straight As, we both looked at each other in amazement. Cool. The grades at the end of each semester became commonplace and predictable--to everyone but me. It seemed that no one knew how agonizing it was for me to wait for final grades to be posted. Everyone said, "of course you made all As. Duh." I just wanted to shout, "Stop it! Those As didn't just fall in my lap you know! I worked hard for them!" The pressure I was inflicting upon myself was suffocating and building to a fevered pitch. I couldn't do it! Why was it so important to me? I didn't start out with this goal. Who really cares anyway? I wasn't like that in high school.

As time went on, my own private thoughts were filled with the exciting possibility that I could actually pull off a perfect 4.0 gpa. Ken would be amazed and astonished and oh so very proud of me! I know getting all As isn't such a big deal to most people, but to me it could sort of make up for the failures and unfinished things peppering my past. Could I actually finish something AND do it well at the same time? After each semester, all signs pointed to yes! So I graduated with a 4.0. The euphoria didn't last too long, but I'm still proud of my overall accomplishment of doing so well and just graduating in general.

The insult came not long after graduation. I can't remember why we were even talking about me and my recent accomplishment. Ken said, "You made all As because you studied all the time, not because you're smart." Ouch.

A joke of course . . . or was it? My long-time companion, self-doubt, was giggling. I have become quite adept at banishing that ugly friend to the nether regions of my heart. Every once in a while it peeks through with hopeful eyes--then I box its ears and shout, "Out Vile Jelly!" Those threats aren't working too well lately. Go away and leave me alone.

So grad school in the spring. Here we go again.
*sigh*

Do Not Ask Me to Abandon or Forsake You

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
~ by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No;

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

************************************************
Apart or together, it is all the same really; that is how it has been for us and how it must always be. Time and Distance are meaningless because we can't be separated, we can't be forced to forget or forsake; like the compass our souls are forever connected. This wasn't a choice. We did not choose this path or even look for it. But I'm glad of it all the same. Are you glad too?
************************************************
[Ruth: 16-17]

Must all Inevitable Convergences End in Tragedy?

The Convergence of the Twain(Lines on the loss of the Titanic)~ by Thomas Hardy
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres,

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls - grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'...

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate
For her - so gaily great -
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said 'Now!' And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

***************************************************
Hmmm . . .
So whatever happened to the iceberg? Was there only one victim in the tragedy of this convergence? Of course not! Perhaps the iceberg died as well, but a death that was silent, stoic, and always faithful to God's plan. Which one am I? Am I the iceberg that makes its way cautiously, slowly, and quietly towards its fate, cradled in God's knowing hands? Or am I the ship that purposely glides into the night surrounded by laughter, music, and celebration, also cradled in God's knowing hands? One is never better than the other because both are doing what is natural and purposeful under His gaze. It's not the convergence that must be feared--that is the easy part believe it or not. It is how we both conduct ourselves after the convergence as we look to God and pray that we follow Him with dignity and grace and continually trust in His will until our last breath.

Who Am I Anyway?

Who is this person I have become? I don't even know you. Everything about you seems different somehow. Perhaps I am becoming someone new, someone better, someone worthy of the purpose I have been given. I am not at a crossroads mind you. I have just suddenly stopped in the middle of the road. On my right and on my left are tall sunflowers joyfully pointing the way. If only my feet would move. If only my face would turn towards the sun as the faithful sunflowers do.