A Million Miles in a Thousand Years!

What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.


This was one of my favorite reads of the past couple years, and it just came out in paperback! So now you have no excuse. It's available here:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Powells

New Year, New Home.

It's been 4 months.  And a lot has changed.  I had a birthday, so I'm now 29.  Last year of my 20s.  I'm not too worried about that though.  And now it's 2011, and I'm looking forward to this being one of the better years of my life.

I quit my job about three and a half weeks ago, packed my things, sent them on their way to Oregon, and then spent a couple weeks visiting friends and family in San Diego and San Luis Obispo, which was both fantastic and exhausting.  And at the end of that, about a week and a half ago, I moved to Portland.  And I'm still sort of tired.  Those weeks already seem so long ago, and they have me in a bit of a daze.  The days, which are alternately cold and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and warmer and overcast, are just passing, and I'm just sort of watching them pass.  I'm getting settled and getting to know the city and seeing friends, but it's a blur.  Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily -- I just want things to slow down.  I want a little time to relax before really getting into a job search, but I want to remember the time.  I'm going to focus on slowing things down again, enjoying the sun or the clouds, the walks I'll take, the things I'll see, the people I'll spend time with.  I can't wait to love my life with everything I have.

love is the only every god

I don't talk about god much anymore, and I don't really talk to god much anymore either.  And sometimes it bothers me.  Sometimes I feel like maybe I should?  And maybe I should.  But I do think about love a lot, and I wonder if that counts.  God is love, right?  Does he care that I think more about how best to love rather than how best to please him or serve him or praise him?  Are they different?  Jesus said all the commandments were summed up in loving god and loving others and that whatever we do for the least of these we do for him, so is there even any difference between the two?  Is love, loving, active love, enough?  I don't really know, but I hope so, but if god really loves me as much as he says he does, then I think I'll be okay.

"Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for [...] cookies."

Not that my life since my last post has been full of fear, despair, hopelessness, and/or tragedy (though it has, in many ways, been pretty full of routine and constancy, and those others things do pop up now and again...), I'm still thankful for cookies.  I think I've been too caught up in trying to make the things I'm thankful for or appreciative of or happy about grand things or even just great things.  They don't have to be.  And in day to day life, it's not too common to find something huge and important to love.  So, today, I love cookies.

My friend Lauren drove up to San Jose last night to drop her sister at the airport, spent the night with our friends Nick and Ashley, and then came up this morning to visit me and to see the city where I live.  We walked around downtown, got coffee, shared a not-so-great cream cheese brownie, bought and ate fruit at the farmers market, watched the Other Guys (which was hilarious; the TLC references totally cracked me up), ate crepes, and then she drove home.  But she left me cookies!  And scones!  All the cookies are gone.  I just finished them off with a glass of almond milk, and they were a perfect ending to a relaxing weekend, and tomorrow, I get to share Lauren's delicious scones with my co-workers, which I'm looking forward to as well.

dying is fine)but Death

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death]

- e.e. cummings

Loving every minute of it.

So, yet again, it's been almost forever since I've written here.  But, let's not dwell on that.  Let's focus on what's here, okay?  Okay.  So, I wrote this several weeks ago, maybe over a month ago, and I was waiting to post it until I felt like it was finished.  It's probably not finished, but, then again, it might be.  But it's finished enough.  Anyway, part of my focus on finding things to love and admire and awe means having to find worthy things amongst seemingly little things, so, with that, I've been trying to focus on those little things.  When you're busy living and don't have what we might call great moments or noteworthy experiences, it's important to enjoy the present moment for whatever it is.  I know this is a sentiment that has been expressed numerous times, but here's one more:

This Moment

The sun slumps behind the wall by the road
but stands still in my clothes
with the warmth of my walk.
The sweet stink of tobacco blooms in the heat,
and I want to be home in the cool dark
of my open rooms.  And, there, in that
want, I miss this moment:
the meager gravity of a cigarette
pausing at my lips
so I can pass the bags from one hand another,
the strain in my hips from the lopsided weight,
the calming cover of incidental light.

And now, home, now
is the time to enjoy the dark and cool,
the shedding of my sweater and shoes,
the movement of the air and the open door,
the cold water as it runs over my hands
and spills onto the grapes,
the firmness of their flesh
and the burst of dry sweetness
as my teeth feel and flex
and then break the skin --
tiny rewards for tiny efforts.

For this alone on Death I wreak / The wrath that garners in my heart; / He put our lives so far apart / We cannot hear each other speak.

My dad would have turned 52 today, but he died instead.  He’ll have been gone 10 years this August.  I’m not very good at remembering dates.  I always forget when it’s a significant day, and then something or someone reminds me, and they hit me so hard.  So, now I’m missing him.  And feeling guilty about not remember his birthday, about not being with him when he died, about not thinking of him often enough, about every single time I ever said anything mean to him.  But these are not thoughts for here.  So I’ll share a happy memory with you!

It was my birthday.  I don’t remember which.  I’m going to guess it was my eighth or ninth, or maybe tenth, birthday, and all I wanted for my birthday was this mountain bike.  Right before we were going to have cake, my dad took me aside and told me that he wasn’t able to get me the bike I wanted, that he’d gone to buy it and they didn’t have any left, that he was sorry, that he’d tried.  And I understood that and told him so, that it was okay.  So they lit the candles and we cut the cake and we ate it, and then we all moved from the kitchen to the living room to open presents.  And there, in the middle of the room, on the big blue rug was the bike!  He’d tricked me, and I’d fallen for it.  He was so sincere and apologetic about it that it hadn’t even crossed my mind.  I was ecstatic and shocked, and I think there’s a picture somewhere of that moment, the bike in all it’s yellow and neon-green glory, my arms thrust so forcefully into the air in triumph that my shirt pulled up and you can see my little-kid belly, the hugest open-mouthed smile on my face.  And he made that moment for me.  And I loved him for it.  And I still do.

Miss.  You.