advent approacheth…

feeling: very awake
listening to: all of sufjan’s christmas stuff

… and thus, I give you this. I stumbled across this tonight whilst breaking from a massive drawing project. And I really admire the people who put this together. It’s creative and communal and DIY, three of my favourite things, three things that Christmas defines. So here you are, WATCH NOW. (The others in the playlist are wonderful too.)

cheer up, grayscale day

feeling: semi-down
listening to: ingrid michaelson – the chain

Here, have some whimsy. Plot: The yarn people have been kidnapped from their beloved homes, and it is up to one lover to rescue them and return to the arms of his sweetheart. This is a good band too.

semi stream of consciousness // LIFE IS…

listening to: olivia chrestomanci – o giovanni
feeling: reflective

writing songs about strangers, conversations with affable bus drivers, a string of chance (well, the term is relative) encounters with new and old friends. the smell of fresh laundry, the gum on the pavement at the bus stop. the red lipstick of the girl beside me on the train, the construction worker’s apology for swearing loudly whilst nailing on a stubborn plank of wood when he saw me. making the bed, opening the blinds, it is a new day, stretch those eyelids, stamp new stories into those soles. blueberry pancakes, giving my mom a piano lesson, the scratch of pencil on paper. texting the home number to get the automated voice to say the batman theme, speak in accents, and laugh manically. good conversation that moves up and down, sideways and through head, heart and veins. dusting off old picture frames, tuning the guitar. sing a song, gather those friends, sign something with love, (your name here) and mean it. stress over schoolwork, realizing it doesn’t really matter, not really, i mean it does, but not as much as i think. no time, no time at all. but is there? if we seek the kingdom and his righteousness like gold miners, hands and faces smudged with hunger, maybe he can give us some extra, maybe he can slow the sun like he did for joshua. or maybe he can show us what really matters. slow me down, lord. take me somewhere. we’ve got time.

bones that have been breathed in

listening to: journey – separate ways (yes, journey)
feeling: unsettled, happy

I love windy days. I hate windy days. Walking is a nightmare, and your hair gets in your face, and mouth, and scarves always attempt mutiny, and your eyes burn and your lips start to bleed. But then, these days – today – is the perfect day too. It goes hand in hand with a good dose of old school rock, it’s blatant and alive and aggressive and perfect. I am alive, being blown apart at the seams and scrabbling for purchase on the earth; and gravity is not as sovereign as I once thought.

Yesterday, the swing chair suicided off of the patio and crashed into one of our trees, (the wind’s doing) and today my mom and I went down to rescue it and put it somewhere safer. The sun sets so early these days, and it was getting cold, I could see winter in my peripheral vision, almost like its fingers were pulling back the fabric of the sky to scratch it and let in the ice. We came inside and slammed the deck door, the sharp and metallic smell of the air outside still heavy on our clothes (it’s like running your finger slowly over a knife’s edge, how it feels like outside right now, there’s no blood, but there will be soon), and put on the kettle.

I have had a difficult last few weeks – months, maybe? I don’t know. And the last few days I have been static and comatose, my own doing, and I hated it. Move me, God, I said. And he sent the wind.

skin and ink

listening to: belle & sebastian – i’m a cuckoo
feeling: happy

Shay got a tattoo. I designed it. Here it is:

Tattoo artist in neighbouring booth with a British accent (hereby referred to as tattoo artist #2): Whatcha working on? Let me see – ah, love. Loooove.
Tattoo artist #1 (Shay’s): Apparently, it’s all you need.
Tattoo artist #2: Dude, who said that? Some (effing) hippie in the 60’s?
Tattoo artist #1: Some (effing) hippie in the 60’s.
Tattoo artist #2: And look, now he’s dead. Killed.
Tattoo artist #1: Guess you need more than that.
chuckle, pause…
Shay:Well, that was hate. If it was love, it wouldn’t have happened.
.. beat.
Tattoo artist #1: Ah. (translated as: touché.)

Shay wins.

Go love.

well, this turned out differently than in my head

listening to: the silence
feeling: peaceful

electric sun keeps shining, wrapping daughters in the chrome
this world is where i breathe, but let it never be called home.

– jon foreman, lord, save me from myself

I am remembering yesterday. I had a conversation with a friend – over facebook, naturally, and after some nonsensical banter, we managed to find ourselves in a very steep and scary corner: we realized how much time we spend on facebook, and how little with God. I suppose this may sound rudimentary, like one of those junior high challenges in Bible class (what are YOUR idols, kids?), but honestly, I sat there and I sat there and we sat there and thought, well, (excuse my language) shit. It’s not just that I take for granted the most beautiful person to ever change my life, redeem me, and lavish undeserved grace and truth on me every breath and day. I mean, that was bad enough. But how much of my thoughts, my actions, my sidewalk steps – how much of that is about God? Jesus said to walk like him, if we claim to know him. I don’t know about you, but I have not been giving much away lately – I have been taking. I have not been looking for the beauty in people. Sometimes I just want them to stay away. I have not been loving like my Saviour. I have been getting frustrated because people don’t message me back, they don’t reciprocate.

I have been putting off living. How much of my time do I spend writing about living, doing nothing, planning, theorizing? Interspersed in all this stagnancy are these bright moments where God speaks and strikes my tear ducts with a staff and then, back I go to losing myself in the fabric of the ordinary. I don’t want that.

So this is for me as well as you: get off facebook. Go outside. Listen to the wind for awhile. Play some guitar. Take a walk around your neighbourhood, say hi to your neighbours, learn their names. Write a letter to someone. Make a gift. Take some pictures. Or maybe listen to the silence for awhile. It seems we often can’t stand silence and stillness. We text, log on, call, talk, pray. What about listening? What about being? Before I wrote this I was sitting on my bed with the sunlight cut into stripes by the blinds, absorbing the silence. It was quiet. I could feel my own heart thumping steady and sure, the creaking of the house around me, the hum of the cars on the road nearby. This is more fulfilling than I could ever explain.

I suppose the most standard route here would be to quote the oft used verse – to be still and know that He is God. Yes, we should. But more than being still – sometime we need to move. We pause and we listen. And then we get to our feet. Move. Feel. Get out there. Get life all over you. Get your lips chapped by the wind and your eyes sore from the sky. Get your throat scratchy from singing and talking and laughing and crying and your heart sore from loving. God is a tea bag, and you are the water. So go and let them see the scent and taste and texture of his goodness, his wildness, his warmth. Let them taste and see that the Lord is good. Let them follow the shape of the rising steam with their eyes.

turn the page

listening to: jon foreman – the cure for the pain
feeling: hungry, but not going to eat at 1.24 am

I suppose I should go to sleep since I have a midterm on monday. The tea is cold and the house is silent. I am writing a story instead of studying art history.

This morning, we were doing yardwork around the church, collecting leaves and raking and bundling up numerous black garbage bags. The sky was so bright and so blue. After, I was standing there just absorbing it. It was windy and I had one of those windheadaches, but God, it was beautiful. My lips were chapped and I had dried leaves in my shoes, but God, (thank you,) it was beautiful. And then all of us ate three boxes of timbits and a bag of leftover halloween candy.

Sometimes life, it just gets you. It gets you and it stops you and puts you on pause. Hello, it says, hello. Nice to meet you.

in memoriam: ebb & flow

listening to: still the weepies.
feeling: quiet.

NOVEMBER 01, 2008. He is in the hospice, and it’s the final stage. I know it is. Sometimes it hurts like all the curse words in the world, mangled together with brutal force; sometimes it hurts softly, and gently, like a bruise kissed over by a mother. I visit him today when it hurts like both, on this beautiful day full of warmth and blended colours, crunching leaves under my feet to the door.

It’s a lovely building, with homey decor and walls covered alternately with professional art and children’s drawings. There are Bible verses and glass vases and many, many windows opening up to sky at once both violently and peacefully blue. The nurse directs us to his room with a smile, and I wonder rhetorically how much strength she must have, how much strength the people here must have, to be so cheerful and pleasant in a place made quiet by death’s echoes. He is sleeping when I see him, and so I stand there simply looking at him and remembering, praying and feeling. Later, another family with two of his former piano students also come into the room. We all stand there in silence. The conversations in the hallway seem muted somehow, muffled the way sound can be just before falling asleep, or under water. Time and sound flow through us and we stand like the Stonehenge, watching his face and listening to his breathing.

There is someone outside his room playing the harp. The notes of Pachelbel’s Canon drop like liquid comfort into the silence. I glance outside to see the unlikely player, a greying man with a black shirt emblazoned with “ONE LOVE, ONE WORLD.” He smiles at me as if he understands. Maybe he does.

I leave with a hushed goodbye to the other students, feeling both isolated and united by grief. Outside, it smells like fall. It smells crisp and clean, like a rebirth, an end and a beginning. I know that both are imminent, and I hope I can face them with strength when they come, and he goes.

He is in the hospice, and it’s the final stage. I know it is. Sometimes it hurts like all the curse words in the world, mangled together with brutal force; sometimes it hurts softly, and gently, like a bruise kissed over by a mother. This is God here with me, a father and a mother, kissing the bruise life has made on me. He kisses me through the embrace of the sky and the wind and the fading sunlight. He affirms life, even in the face of death.

NOVEMBER 02, 2009. I still miss him. I still remember it all. The way he danced around the piano to my playing, the way I fed him apricots in the hospital, the night I got the phone call and how we had company over and their laughter was reverberating through the ceiling to the same rhythm as my tears. The way he looked intently into my eyes after he told me about the cancer, and said with pure and gentle grace, “I feel the love of God closer than my shadow.” And now, now, I think I have begun to understand.

hummingbird

listening to: the weepies (again) – world spins madly on
feeling: melancholy

You used to flicker behind my eyelids every time I closed my eyes like the passing of a nearby train, all warm light and deep echoes that I could feel in my bones. I could picture you, smudgy and soft as an impressionist painting with the paint still wet. Now I see you could never be mine the way I want; you are always moving, always touching new wings and learning new songs. I am partly glad you are gone as a distraction, but I wish we could be friends, and that I could catch more than a glimpse of who you are. You are a good book that I had a bookmark in, and it has fallen out, and now I have lost my place. I don’t think I will ever find it again. I wish I could.

prodigal

listening to: the weepies – can’t go back now
feeling: mellow

The day before yesterday, I had to look for some art supplies for my drawing class. I dug into the cupboard downstairs and found two shoeboxes stacked on the top shelf, buried beneath crusted paint trays and cheap bottles of acrylic. My dad’s old art supplies, dusty and decrepit but still usable. It was a heavy moment. It was like graverobbing a pyramid, except that this was right, I was meant to be there, the air was thick with old stories and unfinished drawings and a history that happened before I was born. I took them. I brought them to class. I like the moments like that, when the art prickles under my skin like an invisible tattoo traced by a divine hand. I am Belshazzer, watching in terror and awe this hand trace my doom across the walls of my soul, but no, this is not doom, this is just part of me, and maybe this is where I am supposed to be. Breathing in the old stories, reviving them with fear and trembling, blindly feeling the frame of the door that my dad walked out when he was not much older than I am now. This is part of me, this is part of me.