July 6, 2012
Ahoy
We ate truly excellent sushi in a quiet restaurant with a cheap-sounding name. I was hot but happy and maybe cranky because my eyes were sinking into my face and my brain felt the tingle of a thing well beyond fatigue settling in.
We held hands strolling into the glen. I took off my shoes and walked quietly into the water. There was nothing shocking, nothing dangerous. Quiet. Down one step of a waterfall. A doe in the greens beside the path, peering at us- fearless with dark dancing eyes.
We were here a year ago, remember?
When you met me in front of 7-11 in your car I was disappointed. I had pictured you walking through this part of the city you deemed sketchy in your sharp shoes and button-up, that goofy smile on your face as you saw me. But then there you were, cutting me off in your car just as I had begun to flow. Of course you wanted me to get in, which I did. But did you know I was upset? I felt wild for a moment, and I liked it.
I folded fresh spinach into a slice of homemade pizza- sauce made in my food processor, basil plant now growing on my table- poured soy milk into my new tiny tall thin impractical free-at-a-garage-sale "mug", changed into as little clothing as I could rationalize, and floated onto the side walk, down the street, up that street, over this street. Through my city I walked, 94degrees and sunny. Happy as a hippo.. yes, a hippo!
She sent me a letter talking about the big trees, finding her hiking legs, reading born to run and wanting to move. to move. to move. she's a mover too, you see. Some of us just are. It's in there and it does this thing- this swirling dancing jiving raging prancing laughing fantastic thing.
My body became its own self and did something without my permission- it stopped. Stopped running, stopped moving, stopped minding. I know it will not last, but right now I rest with my babies beside me when typically my legs and mind would dash out the door in hopes of a few more strides, a few more gulps of outdoors before the day ended.
I see my vibrant painting on the wall above the sink and I am reminded of something that passed through my mind a week ago while running in the grass beside the river-
there is still nothing that can replace the presence of God in my life. None can argue that spiritually I am much different than I was just a couple years ago, but I'm realizing that there remains a place in me reserved for the presence of God. I find I thank him deeply and profusely, usually in my car at one particular traffic light on my way to work. Not by duty or by any conscious means, but by instinct. When I run into the ocean or the river I am enveloped in liquid and I morph into a being separate from the man-made world. I am a part of something so complex that my mind stops wondering and becomes.
One.
I love your eyes. I love when they dance- because the food is so good or the atmosphere is just right or the sun and the air are too perfect a pair to comment on. I love how you love me, how you've shown me what it is to give yourself so completely and honestly to just a few people whom you know are worth your time.
I added a splash of tonic, an ice cube, and a hint of Cabernet to the rose we were sipping when you left, and now I'm sleepy and well beyond tired.
And life is so, so great.
February 10, 2012
Wish you were here
It's not so hard to believe.
That I would sleep in Walmart parking lots wear the gray "A" every day for a year live successfully
out of my suburu was difficult to believe. This, this semi-normal life, is much easier on the mind
the numbers
that F word- (shh)
Future.
Pit cherries with my tongue while creating event codes in my cubical. Cover coffee stains with file folders and toss the dented scratched painted Sigg
in the trash. Pull a man whom I love very much into my neck, close my eyes,
breathe. Don't leave.
My first pair of minimalist running shoes lost their tread. I've turned the television on three times since October.
The coffee is very black. Parsley is in my lap.
There's a silence on this blog I am wanting to break. I've been afraid to share for fear of criticism.
But did you know-
My insides leap and still when I am with him. Not much else matters.
(so this is what it's like...)
[but then]
I sit in my window, drink raspberry vodka, watch the few late night wanderers on the sidewalk, and write wreckless e-mails to my traveling companion-
i cannot sleep. you're the only person in the world i would want to be with right now.
I rarely eat peanut butter and haven't made a batch of granola in months. It's still in me, and I'm still moving, but I've moved on.
In an attempt to play "catch up", allow me to say something as I said it in an email to a friend recently-
The thing you are seeking in 2012 is to find out who you are and really become that person.. fully alive. I've been on that journey for years now. I've been true to myself- not a set of rules, not a book, not an image of what the people around me would want me to be. I know what makes me come alive. I know when I'm doing something because it is something that is rising up from a place of raw truth within me and when I'm stepping into a motion simply because it's what I think I should do or what I think is expected of me and acceptable to those around me. I know that right now you don't approve of certain aspects of my life. But I can honestly tell you that right now I am being true.
We're all given different lives, different upbringings, different families, different gifts, different desires, wants.. how can we compare lives that are destined to be so different from the very beginning? And how can one life look at another and say "you're doing it wrong". My soul is different than yours. We've been exposed to different things. Maybe I've allowed my mind to wander too far, to question too much, to explore too fully.. or maybe I'm taking what I've been given, totaling every single conversation, voyage, experience of my short 24 years into something absolutely genuine and true to who I've become, not who I was. I can't be the girl I wanted to be when I was 13. Thirteen year old Kendra never expected to watch people shoot drugs openly on the streets of Camden day after day and to put those same needles in the trash when they were finished, to pioneer a movement of college kids to seek only the very heartbeat of Christ, to realize what fullness of LIFE really looked like in a third world nation of red dirt, bloated bellies, and rice. Thirteen year old Kendra didn't know she could live out of a backpack or in a trailer with 8 people, didn't know she loved mountains, didn't know she could sing. Thirteen year old Kendra didn't know what it was like to be in love.
Finding out who you are isn't a one time thing. I think that's the mistake some people make. They decide who they're going to be and then they become that person, only to realize once they're there that it's not at all what they want. If we're engaged with life, we're going to change. Life is going to change us. People are going to change us. At least they have me.
These days my life outwardly looks very different than it did just a few months ago. My thoughts are different, my mindsets are different, my conversations take different routes but my soul, oh my soul is the same. I feel it. It wiggles and turns and moans and stirs and dances and laughs within me, always, and it is the same. hah! How does this work.. that one can change so much but feel so much the same. It is this that tells me that I'm doing something right. When I no longer recognize myself, that's when I'll be afraid.
xo
That I would sleep in Walmart parking lots wear the gray "A" every day for a year live successfully
out of my suburu was difficult to believe. This, this semi-normal life, is much easier on the mind
the numbers
that F word- (shh)
Future.
Pit cherries with my tongue while creating event codes in my cubical. Cover coffee stains with file folders and toss the dented scratched painted Sigg
in the trash. Pull a man whom I love very much into my neck, close my eyes,
breathe. Don't leave.
My first pair of minimalist running shoes lost their tread. I've turned the television on three times since October.
The coffee is very black. Parsley is in my lap.
There's a silence on this blog I am wanting to break. I've been afraid to share for fear of criticism.
But did you know-
My insides leap and still when I am with him. Not much else matters.
(so this is what it's like...)
[but then]
I sit in my window, drink raspberry vodka, watch the few late night wanderers on the sidewalk, and write wreckless e-mails to my traveling companion-
i cannot sleep. you're the only person in the world i would want to be with right now.
I rarely eat peanut butter and haven't made a batch of granola in months. It's still in me, and I'm still moving, but I've moved on.
In an attempt to play "catch up", allow me to say something as I said it in an email to a friend recently-
The thing you are seeking in 2012 is to find out who you are and really become that person.. fully alive. I've been on that journey for years now. I've been true to myself- not a set of rules, not a book, not an image of what the people around me would want me to be. I know what makes me come alive. I know when I'm doing something because it is something that is rising up from a place of raw truth within me and when I'm stepping into a motion simply because it's what I think I should do or what I think is expected of me and acceptable to those around me. I know that right now you don't approve of certain aspects of my life. But I can honestly tell you that right now I am being true.
We're all given different lives, different upbringings, different families, different gifts, different desires, wants.. how can we compare lives that are destined to be so different from the very beginning? And how can one life look at another and say "you're doing it wrong". My soul is different than yours. We've been exposed to different things. Maybe I've allowed my mind to wander too far, to question too much, to explore too fully.. or maybe I'm taking what I've been given, totaling every single conversation, voyage, experience of my short 24 years into something absolutely genuine and true to who I've become, not who I was. I can't be the girl I wanted to be when I was 13. Thirteen year old Kendra never expected to watch people shoot drugs openly on the streets of Camden day after day and to put those same needles in the trash when they were finished, to pioneer a movement of college kids to seek only the very heartbeat of Christ, to realize what fullness of LIFE really looked like in a third world nation of red dirt, bloated bellies, and rice. Thirteen year old Kendra didn't know she could live out of a backpack or in a trailer with 8 people, didn't know she loved mountains, didn't know she could sing. Thirteen year old Kendra didn't know what it was like to be in love.
Finding out who you are isn't a one time thing. I think that's the mistake some people make. They decide who they're going to be and then they become that person, only to realize once they're there that it's not at all what they want. If we're engaged with life, we're going to change. Life is going to change us. People are going to change us. At least they have me.
These days my life outwardly looks very different than it did just a few months ago. My thoughts are different, my mindsets are different, my conversations take different routes but my soul, oh my soul is the same. I feel it. It wiggles and turns and moans and stirs and dances and laughs within me, always, and it is the same. hah! How does this work.. that one can change so much but feel so much the same. It is this that tells me that I'm doing something right. When I no longer recognize myself, that's when I'll be afraid.
xo
September 6, 2011
Dear Jesus,
If I ask you to take me in, will you? If I ask you what it means to be taken in, will you tell me? If I ask you why I even care so much, what will be your response? With the help of a couple close friends I've decided it's time to communicate with you again. It will look like a discipline at first, I'm sure, but that's how many things begin. Just as it's time to stay in one place and allow myself the opportunity to realize that freedom might come just as fully in the form of solidity and assurance as it does in movement. That being said, last night as I ran into the darkness, past abundant fields and houses warm with light, the dampness of evening turning to night coating my skin, I was aware of how still my soul was. It was similar to the night I finished the sodus house. I walked into E's place and he held me and all was calm, which reminds me of the days I sprawl in the grass as far from people as I can get and stare at the sky or close my eyes and hear only the air as it brushes over my mind, cleanses my heart. There's a sense of calm that my insides notice as something unnecessarily rare, something powerful, something needed. I've found that stillness in different ways since I first met you. I've found it in the almost imperceptible pat of my feet along the ground as the miles tick behind me, I've found it in merging my days, nights, thoughts, ideas and desires with those of another individual, and I've found it in putting all thoughts of life aside and asking you to take me in.
People want proof. And you know God, I want to be able to give it to them. I want to be able to explain who you are, how I know you're the real deal, how it is that I'm certain that the power you hold can't be explained by something as obvious as the power that appears when any group of people join together to do anything at all. There is power in a group of people believing in something whether it's weight loss, environmental conservation, inner-city development, or God. People create movements. But I'm not looking for a movement. Not anymore. I'm looking for something real that I can carry with me into my real life filled with real people who do real things and laugh at real moments and struggle with real issues. I've tried yoga. I love it. But that point it brings me to is the same point I get to on a long solo-run, the same point I hit when I sense myself meshing seamlessly with another individual. I find myself muttering in another language, aware of every natural sound around me, unaware of traffic, unidentifiable people, tomorrows events or the structure I'm inside. The other things that set me free, they bring me back to you.
Yesterday Amy took my hand and dragged me to the top of a set of stairs leading to a church somewhere in South Wedge. She told me to pray. I couldn't do it. Not because I don't know how, but because I know how far too well. I could pray all day without stumbling or stuttering or pausing once. I don't want to know how to do this anymore, I want to be this. I don't want to read the right books, listen to the right music, say amen at the right times. I want to see you in my life in all your TRUTH with all the reality of who you are and what that can look like in THIS world. Maybe I've made so many mistakes I can't be forgiven and won't ever find myself on the same road I once sought. Or maybe I'm about to arrive at something even less understood than what I knew before. Maybe I'm about to be more me, more you, more alive than I ever have been before. That's what I want. But Jesus, I also want to be clean. So whatever that means, you have my permission: wash me, and please, please take me in.
People want proof. And you know God, I want to be able to give it to them. I want to be able to explain who you are, how I know you're the real deal, how it is that I'm certain that the power you hold can't be explained by something as obvious as the power that appears when any group of people join together to do anything at all. There is power in a group of people believing in something whether it's weight loss, environmental conservation, inner-city development, or God. People create movements. But I'm not looking for a movement. Not anymore. I'm looking for something real that I can carry with me into my real life filled with real people who do real things and laugh at real moments and struggle with real issues. I've tried yoga. I love it. But that point it brings me to is the same point I get to on a long solo-run, the same point I hit when I sense myself meshing seamlessly with another individual. I find myself muttering in another language, aware of every natural sound around me, unaware of traffic, unidentifiable people, tomorrows events or the structure I'm inside. The other things that set me free, they bring me back to you.
Yesterday Amy took my hand and dragged me to the top of a set of stairs leading to a church somewhere in South Wedge. She told me to pray. I couldn't do it. Not because I don't know how, but because I know how far too well. I could pray all day without stumbling or stuttering or pausing once. I don't want to know how to do this anymore, I want to be this. I don't want to read the right books, listen to the right music, say amen at the right times. I want to see you in my life in all your TRUTH with all the reality of who you are and what that can look like in THIS world. Maybe I've made so many mistakes I can't be forgiven and won't ever find myself on the same road I once sought. Or maybe I'm about to arrive at something even less understood than what I knew before. Maybe I'm about to be more me, more you, more alive than I ever have been before. That's what I want. But Jesus, I also want to be clean. So whatever that means, you have my permission: wash me, and please, please take me in.
September 1, 2011
When the Mountains Close
I've been sculpting an idea which has slowly turned into a plan since November 2010.
Step 1: go to Rochester, live with Laura
Step 2: get a job
Step 3: live simply and with frugality in order to pay off your student loans asap
Step 4: make a little extra money
Step 5: September 1, 2011: embark on a one month odyssey in the Adirondack Mountains. Alone.
Today is Thursday, September 1, 2011. The air is thick and cool following a morning thunder shower. My foot aches from stepping on a nail yesterday afternoon while running from the noise in my head. I swear I can smell the grass, sweet and bitter, dirt mixed with dew, clorophyl covered in raindrops. If not for the lightness of the sky and the coffee by my side I would believe the crickets that dusk is falling and night is almost come.
I'm more than 250 miles from the Adirondack Park with no plans for departure.
People change, sometimes, without realizing it. One morning you wake up no longer wanting to be a teacher, a student, a mother. Maybe one day you crave spinach at every meal when the day before just the thought of anything green drove you to the candy isle.
A month ago I took a shower, forgetting to bring clean clothes in from my trunk before I got in. Dripping and dazed, I walked across the gravel to my car, feet bare, wrapped in a towel that wasn't mine. I popped the trunk and stared- a mass of colored fabrics lay in a heap, nothing to distinguih the worn from the unworn except memories in the form of snapshots of where I'd been, what I'd done. I took clean underwear from the cardboard box to the right and a new rubber hairband from the box to the left. I grabbed deoderant from the center console, flipflops from the passenger side floor, browning bananas from the back seat. Before getting dressed I lit incense, turned on Paul Cardall, and washed the dishes in the sink. I put away the jars I brought in from my car in a Gevalia box the night before- soynuts, muesli, honey, peanut butter, organic animal crackers, and started a loaf of bread in the bread machine.
I want a home. I want to retrieve my underwear from a drawer. I want to make you cake and hot cocoa, tea and cookies, potroast and venison stew. I want to be missed when I'm not at church on Sunday morning. I want to find six people to help me move a free piano into my own place.
Place. I want a sense of place, my own place, a sense of purpose, a meaning other than watching numbers grow and checking off adventures. The thoughts of signing a lease, taking a job, moving a bed into a building scare me. The fear is real, but it's smothered in excitement, anticipation of what might happen if I dare to create a place for roots to sink...
it's been years; it's been too long.
Step 1: go to Rochester, live with Laura
Step 2: get a job
Step 3: live simply and with frugality in order to pay off your student loans asap
Step 4: make a little extra money
Step 5: September 1, 2011: embark on a one month odyssey in the Adirondack Mountains. Alone.
Today is Thursday, September 1, 2011. The air is thick and cool following a morning thunder shower. My foot aches from stepping on a nail yesterday afternoon while running from the noise in my head. I swear I can smell the grass, sweet and bitter, dirt mixed with dew, clorophyl covered in raindrops. If not for the lightness of the sky and the coffee by my side I would believe the crickets that dusk is falling and night is almost come.
I'm more than 250 miles from the Adirondack Park with no plans for departure.
People change, sometimes, without realizing it. One morning you wake up no longer wanting to be a teacher, a student, a mother. Maybe one day you crave spinach at every meal when the day before just the thought of anything green drove you to the candy isle.
A month ago I took a shower, forgetting to bring clean clothes in from my trunk before I got in. Dripping and dazed, I walked across the gravel to my car, feet bare, wrapped in a towel that wasn't mine. I popped the trunk and stared- a mass of colored fabrics lay in a heap, nothing to distinguih the worn from the unworn except memories in the form of snapshots of where I'd been, what I'd done. I took clean underwear from the cardboard box to the right and a new rubber hairband from the box to the left. I grabbed deoderant from the center console, flipflops from the passenger side floor, browning bananas from the back seat. Before getting dressed I lit incense, turned on Paul Cardall, and washed the dishes in the sink. I put away the jars I brought in from my car in a Gevalia box the night before- soynuts, muesli, honey, peanut butter, organic animal crackers, and started a loaf of bread in the bread machine.
I want a home. I want to retrieve my underwear from a drawer. I want to make you cake and hot cocoa, tea and cookies, potroast and venison stew. I want to be missed when I'm not at church on Sunday morning. I want to find six people to help me move a free piano into my own place.
Place. I want a sense of place, my own place, a sense of purpose, a meaning other than watching numbers grow and checking off adventures. The thoughts of signing a lease, taking a job, moving a bed into a building scare me. The fear is real, but it's smothered in excitement, anticipation of what might happen if I dare to create a place for roots to sink...
it's been years; it's been too long.
August 25, 2011
What I know
The incense burning on the cookie tray in front of me is promising more refreshment than the melon I balanced between my moccasins and my new account of Truman Capote's life while unlocking the door to Laura's apartment an hour ago. Make a note of this: I have no desire to run, and after a night of staying awake listening to the thunder push its way through the rain and watching the lightening flash on the undersides of my eyelids, I don't have much energy for anything other than mixing coffee grounds with cardamom and water and watching froth form from my place on the counter by the stove. None of it is mine. I put the mug to my lips, taste the strength, taste the heat, and am grateful for the people who say they love me and the ones who don't say a thing. I believe in being swept away but haven't figured out how to let go. When I look at a tree I find I am still and stirred. What I see is amazing, overwhelmingly complex and strong yet beautiful, but what I don't see is that there would be no tree if not for its roots, as wide as the canopy.. and it's been said a billion times before, the analogy is old.. but true, and tough [for me]. Remember when we ate Panera bread donated to and rejected by the homeless shelter around the corner for dinner every night for a week? We heated tea in the microwave hoping the circuit wouldn't pop when we used the toaster at the same time, lest one of us would have to squeeze behind the banquet table and duck into the basement with the faint light of a cell phone. We watched the world from the roof and thought maybe, just maybe there was something we could do that would bring us fulfillment every day for the rest of our lives. We would rent the upstairs apartment just north of the Ben Franklin bridge and convince ourselves we were home. Maybe next year. I still want to know Jesus more than I want anything else. It's frustrating to you, right? It's frustrating to me too. More than anyone knows. I believe in love despite my inability to accept it when you tell me. The love I know heals your body, releases your broken spirit, fills your hidden cracks and corners with patience, understanding, reassurance. The love I know requires little to trust and much to escape from. There is no hesitancy. I'm tired, yes, but this is what I know: mangoes taste better when I eat the skin, and I'm ready to buy moccasin boots. Let the leaves fall. Take me to the mountains and let me move. Lead me to the river and let me flow.
And oh soul, arise.
And oh soul, arise.
July 27, 2011
bits (again)
pre-run: i poured three inches of coffee into my mug instead of one, added chocolate teddy grahams to my everyday banana, and tied on my merrill pacegloves knowing i'd be running farther than my feet were "ready" to run in them.
i left without asking them if i could take the week off. and i wondered what the world would be like if every person tuned into who they are, what they want and what they need daily, knowing that with each rising sun those things might shift completely.
i bought vermouth and made myself a martini in a mini wine glass.
what does it mean when a day of roasting eggplants in my mothers oven, dicing tomatoes on the cutting board my father made with the knife he sharpened, plucking parsley and basil out of the garden barefoot under the incessant gaze of a descending sun and mixing flour with baking powder with beer and rubbing raw egg into it with my bare hands makes me breathe deeply, realize my spirit is still very much alive, and wonder if life isn't something we have to find after all, but rather something that we only have to release ourselves into and allow ourselves to experience.
God and i have some talking to do. i want to know why i experience things in extremes- why those three months in college pushed me to a place where He was all i wanted, all i needed, all i pursued, all i really found. why my appreciation for life came at the expense of giving up almost everything that would appear normal from the perspective of another. why five mile runs aren't enough for me. why a month in the mountains seems the only thing that just might cure this, what has been insatiable, need to be free. i want to know why sometimes i want a garden, a pear tree, bees, naked babies to catch fireflies and butterflies and eat cookie dough with, and sometimes i want to put my life in a backpack, fly to mozambique and spend the rest of my life believing God to provide my food and keep me free from disease while i give orphans homes and prove, to both them and myself, that love is, after all, the only thing that can really change anything, the only thing that matters at all.
i believe life is about people. i remember when you told me that, you with your incredible gray bulgarian eyes. you said "for me life is about the people". i looked at you and i swear i really saw you, beyond the eyeliner and the perfect physique and the straight A's, but i wasn't sure i agreed. maria darling, i agree now. life is about the people.
and it's knowing who you are outside of what anyone else sees or would want you to be. i believe it's okay to disappoint. there are some addictions that are okay. the sun rises hoping we'll watch it and be pleased, but even when we don't it's just as faithful to bring forth another day.
there aren't answers for why her mom died mere weeks before her wedding, why his father died just days before his high school graduation, why you take pills to keep yourself happy. there aren't answers for why you and i work despite the naysayers and "good points".
i know this: by now i really think i know when it's real and when it's not. i know when i'm fulfilled, when i'm happy, and the difference between pain and discomfort. i'll wear my new red leather minnetonkas, but i'm still going to keep my paint covered, practically soleless pair in a prime location in my car- there will be times when i'll need them for the comfort of the memories. it's similar to why i let myself into her apartment monday morning, pulled my pink patchwork quilt out of the corner and layed on her couch all afternoon in the skirt the woman in ghana made me two years prior.
that being said, sometimes i convince myself i have no idea where the lines are between right and wrong. i can't tell the difference between black and gray and i'm not sure i want to be taught anymore.
i want the birds to perch on my piano, the one with the chipped ivory keys, while i play for the flowers and the ferns.
(my hair was straight so i floated down the river
on my back)
i left without asking them if i could take the week off. and i wondered what the world would be like if every person tuned into who they are, what they want and what they need daily, knowing that with each rising sun those things might shift completely.
i bought vermouth and made myself a martini in a mini wine glass.
what does it mean when a day of roasting eggplants in my mothers oven, dicing tomatoes on the cutting board my father made with the knife he sharpened, plucking parsley and basil out of the garden barefoot under the incessant gaze of a descending sun and mixing flour with baking powder with beer and rubbing raw egg into it with my bare hands makes me breathe deeply, realize my spirit is still very much alive, and wonder if life isn't something we have to find after all, but rather something that we only have to release ourselves into and allow ourselves to experience.
God and i have some talking to do. i want to know why i experience things in extremes- why those three months in college pushed me to a place where He was all i wanted, all i needed, all i pursued, all i really found. why my appreciation for life came at the expense of giving up almost everything that would appear normal from the perspective of another. why five mile runs aren't enough for me. why a month in the mountains seems the only thing that just might cure this, what has been insatiable, need to be free. i want to know why sometimes i want a garden, a pear tree, bees, naked babies to catch fireflies and butterflies and eat cookie dough with, and sometimes i want to put my life in a backpack, fly to mozambique and spend the rest of my life believing God to provide my food and keep me free from disease while i give orphans homes and prove, to both them and myself, that love is, after all, the only thing that can really change anything, the only thing that matters at all.
i believe life is about people. i remember when you told me that, you with your incredible gray bulgarian eyes. you said "for me life is about the people". i looked at you and i swear i really saw you, beyond the eyeliner and the perfect physique and the straight A's, but i wasn't sure i agreed. maria darling, i agree now. life is about the people.
and it's knowing who you are outside of what anyone else sees or would want you to be. i believe it's okay to disappoint. there are some addictions that are okay. the sun rises hoping we'll watch it and be pleased, but even when we don't it's just as faithful to bring forth another day.
there aren't answers for why her mom died mere weeks before her wedding, why his father died just days before his high school graduation, why you take pills to keep yourself happy. there aren't answers for why you and i work despite the naysayers and "good points".
i know this: by now i really think i know when it's real and when it's not. i know when i'm fulfilled, when i'm happy, and the difference between pain and discomfort. i'll wear my new red leather minnetonkas, but i'm still going to keep my paint covered, practically soleless pair in a prime location in my car- there will be times when i'll need them for the comfort of the memories. it's similar to why i let myself into her apartment monday morning, pulled my pink patchwork quilt out of the corner and layed on her couch all afternoon in the skirt the woman in ghana made me two years prior.
that being said, sometimes i convince myself i have no idea where the lines are between right and wrong. i can't tell the difference between black and gray and i'm not sure i want to be taught anymore.
i want the birds to perch on my piano, the one with the chipped ivory keys, while i play for the flowers and the ferns.
(my hair was straight so i floated down the river
on my back)
June 12, 2011
The wind in the trees
My head is fuzzy beneath my green and yellow wrap, but when I breathe in slowly, deeply, the air pushing off the river fills my lungs, my chest, my fragmented mind, and I believe that it is time to force myseld to find some words. I haven't written anything in days, not even a few sentences in my red moleskin book (thank you, sarah) for my own selfish soul. It's because I've been sick for over a week, right? Because my days have been so full of sunny skies and lengthy runs and paint fumes.
Thursday night I dragged out some old journals- from 2008/2009. I was cooly surprised by what I found. I expected to find a girl who could speak of nothing but her all-consuming love for a God she discovered years before, a girl who knew what her dreams were, knew what she wanted, and thought she knew where she was going. A girl restless but satisfied. Without revealing myself word for word, I found instead someone struggling with the collision point between the expected and the desired. She knew God had something profound for her life; she was driven by some unexplainable force to go.. to set aside the common life and attempt to find a sense of being, belonging, total loss and completion in something less-defined, less known, more her own.
Three weeks ago I sat around a fire with a girl who knows my soul as well as I do, a boy who three months prior told the girl to tell me to stop running (in life), and another boy whose quiet, substantial eyes led me to scribble my number on a post-it note at a temp assignment. What is now fondly referred to as "the happiness circle" was developed that night. "I'm happy when..".. "---- makes me happy"..
A week later two giggly, excitable girls approached myself and the boy with the eyes while walking on the canal.
"Can we ask you a question on video for our AP Psychology final project?!"
of course.
"What makes you happy??"
What makes you happy. What makes me happy..?
A thousand things. A million things! I've never loved my life as much as I do right now. The people filling my days and weeks, whether in body, in extensive phone conversations, or through thoughtful emails, are some of the very best I've ever had in my life. I have at least three places I can easily call home and half a dozen more that feel like my own. I have no boss, no one to report to or check in with. Hundreds of mountains await me a short trip from my current locations. My student loans are so close to being paid, without a required payment until 2014. My body is allowing me to do things it never could before. There is a place within me that is happier, more calm and at peace than it ever has been.
This will not sound nearly as fluid a thought when written, as it has been running in me over the course of a few weeks, yet I have to continue here to say the following:
I believe I've found that happiness and fulfillment are not the same thing. If you search your soul, not forgetting to engage your spirit as fully as you are able, and can truly say that you have both simultaneously, I believe you've arrived at something monumental. As for me, I have not. That's not intended to be depressing, at least it's not for me, it's just something I've realized.. something I long to grasp for myself, to attain in this life.
And now my fuzzy head is overpowering this incredible 6pm northcountry air..
and still, I really just want to climb some stuff. :D
Thursday night I dragged out some old journals- from 2008/2009. I was cooly surprised by what I found. I expected to find a girl who could speak of nothing but her all-consuming love for a God she discovered years before, a girl who knew what her dreams were, knew what she wanted, and thought she knew where she was going. A girl restless but satisfied. Without revealing myself word for word, I found instead someone struggling with the collision point between the expected and the desired. She knew God had something profound for her life; she was driven by some unexplainable force to go.. to set aside the common life and attempt to find a sense of being, belonging, total loss and completion in something less-defined, less known, more her own.
Three weeks ago I sat around a fire with a girl who knows my soul as well as I do, a boy who three months prior told the girl to tell me to stop running (in life), and another boy whose quiet, substantial eyes led me to scribble my number on a post-it note at a temp assignment. What is now fondly referred to as "the happiness circle" was developed that night. "I'm happy when..".. "---- makes me happy"..
A week later two giggly, excitable girls approached myself and the boy with the eyes while walking on the canal.
"Can we ask you a question on video for our AP Psychology final project?!"
of course.
"What makes you happy??"
What makes you happy. What makes me happy..?
A thousand things. A million things! I've never loved my life as much as I do right now. The people filling my days and weeks, whether in body, in extensive phone conversations, or through thoughtful emails, are some of the very best I've ever had in my life. I have at least three places I can easily call home and half a dozen more that feel like my own. I have no boss, no one to report to or check in with. Hundreds of mountains await me a short trip from my current locations. My student loans are so close to being paid, without a required payment until 2014. My body is allowing me to do things it never could before. There is a place within me that is happier, more calm and at peace than it ever has been.
This will not sound nearly as fluid a thought when written, as it has been running in me over the course of a few weeks, yet I have to continue here to say the following:
I believe I've found that happiness and fulfillment are not the same thing. If you search your soul, not forgetting to engage your spirit as fully as you are able, and can truly say that you have both simultaneously, I believe you've arrived at something monumental. As for me, I have not. That's not intended to be depressing, at least it's not for me, it's just something I've realized.. something I long to grasp for myself, to attain in this life.
And now my fuzzy head is overpowering this incredible 6pm northcountry air..
and still, I really just want to climb some stuff. :D
May 26, 2011
I climbed a mountain
yesterday. when i got home i tied on my running shoes, and ran. trails, railroad tracks, a small loop past a small farm in a small town.
i'm dangerously close to being debt-free. and by 'dangerously' i mean there's no reason i can't call it good and move on to something newer, free-er, less here and more there any one of these lengthening days.
my soul is stirring and it wants so very much to be released, but the piano seems insurmountable and the pavement has lost its appeal.
when i ran out of the river and into your arms, i was happy. and warm. but what is happy. and even when i know what happy is, is it enough?
i wonder just how far back all of this really goes.. does it go back to that summer i fell in love with a house of strangers and found out that judgement can kill and guitars can bring freedom and grand pianos sound better when you're barefoot.
or maybe it goes back to the red dirt. oh, that's something.. i know that's something. i can't get over that and i can't go back to that.. not in my mind, not in photographs, not in the natural. but i'm going back to that.
or maybe this is really about saying i would go anywhere, do anything, and being driven in the dark to a place i didn't recognize, in a vehicle i'd never been in, to a place i couldn't locate on a map, and having no idea how to find my way out..
when i'm on a beach in the woods caged in by metal canoes and people who redefine beauty, i am happy.. but my soul begins to stir, my thoughts get ragged, and i'm driven to the mountains-
where all i need is my backpack. and a few weeks, maybe months.. alone.
but what i really want is to know:
would that really fix it. would that change anything. if i don't know how i got here, how am i to know what it will take to get out.
i'm dangerously close to being debt-free. and by 'dangerously' i mean there's no reason i can't call it good and move on to something newer, free-er, less here and more there any one of these lengthening days.
my soul is stirring and it wants so very much to be released, but the piano seems insurmountable and the pavement has lost its appeal.
when i ran out of the river and into your arms, i was happy. and warm. but what is happy. and even when i know what happy is, is it enough?
i wonder just how far back all of this really goes.. does it go back to that summer i fell in love with a house of strangers and found out that judgement can kill and guitars can bring freedom and grand pianos sound better when you're barefoot.
or maybe it goes back to the red dirt. oh, that's something.. i know that's something. i can't get over that and i can't go back to that.. not in my mind, not in photographs, not in the natural. but i'm going back to that.
or maybe this is really about saying i would go anywhere, do anything, and being driven in the dark to a place i didn't recognize, in a vehicle i'd never been in, to a place i couldn't locate on a map, and having no idea how to find my way out..
when i'm on a beach in the woods caged in by metal canoes and people who redefine beauty, i am happy.. but my soul begins to stir, my thoughts get ragged, and i'm driven to the mountains-
where all i need is my backpack. and a few weeks, maybe months.. alone.
but what i really want is to know:
would that really fix it. would that change anything. if i don't know how i got here, how am i to know what it will take to get out.
May 15, 2011
Love, Kendra.
I walked in my parents house at 1130 last night to find a self-addressed envelope containing the following:
November 16, 2010
Well Kendra- YOU'RE ALIVE! And hopefully you're mere breaths away from being debt-free! And hopefully your Suburu is singing like a champ! And hopefully you're excruciatingly happy on the inside. You and Laura should be closer than ever, your spirit should be more certain of what it wants, needs, feels, is called to.. and you should be on your way toward that, intentionally.
But as of right now-
As of right now I'm about to graduate from ten months of service that I really wasn't convinced I would make it through. Three days and I no longer have health insurance, no longer have to wear a uniform, no longer make $176 a week- no, every two weeks! No longer drive a government vehicle, wear steel-toe boots, and call an old psych ward "home". In fact in three days I'll be off for the next adventure- a four day roadtrip/excursion with this kid called Man Cub who somehow got ahold of me this last round. I've not understood a lot of it, but there are times, also, when it makes so very much sense and sits so perfectly with my soul. He's good for me and bad for me at the same time. But evenso, I feel it's been good, it's been right.. and somehow it's been beautiful. Is this going to last forever? No. It's not. Do I hope I always know him? Yes. I do. Because he's helped me in so many ways. My confidence has returned, but with it has come a meekness that sometimes makes me feel beautiful. He's shown me, subtly, how I'm special, different, wonderful. He's let me be free.. to really be me. Perhaps I'm learning how to feel, how to let myself feel for me.. how to let someone else make me feel. I've felt the weightiness of the world around me but rarely have I been comfortable letting the world around me feel for me. I have a hard time believing it's love, but I absolutely believe it's positive, worthwhile, meaningful, and good.
So by the time I get this letter it will be May. My 285 days of national service will be long past. How will I remember this? Will I remember the painstaking days at Mason Neck? The over-crowded days in the trailer? The heartwretching weeks in Camden? Will I remember what it felt like to be alive and dead at the same time- sitting on our row-house roof, pounding through the trails in Virginia, laying in the grass en route to Lake Charles, LA. Will I remember 4th round as a person or an experience? It was both.
I hope I explored the realm of music and the piano and the way they play with my spirit.. alot. Alot.
I hope I'm still running. Alot. I hope 18 miles is still an adventure I want, need, and have. I hope my family is still an integral part of my life and that I know and love them even more than I do right now. I hope I'm learning life, love, spirit, body. I hope I'm confident as I am. Kendra, you're more than a body. You're more than a list of what you've done. You're more than a ball of potential. You're someone trying to understand who you are and what that means in the world you've found yourself in. You're broken. I hope you always are. But that's part of what makes you really beautiful.
Perhaps you've found where you belong. If not, keep finding yourself.. keep finding your God.. and trust that one day you'll be home.
These last ten months have developed me more than changed me. I'm still me, moreso than ever, maybe. I'm not trying to be anything, I just am. And that sure feels good.
I hope you're still drinking wine out of coconuts. Promise me you'll always drink wine from coconuts. Promise me you'll always read books that stretch you. Promise me you'll always sleep outside when you can and that no matter the weather, you'll jump in the sea.
Remember the Atlantic, and how it loved you. Remember Allen's guitar. Remember the dolphins, the sea-turtles, the dumpster-diving, the way the ocean rose to kiss you goodbye that last morning in Virginia Beach.. before you waved goodbye to the rising sun, and ran away.
Life is beautiful. Even when it hurts. Even when it sucks. Remember that. Remember Kate, Liz, Puck, Mary, Rob, Heather, Michelle, Kenny, Josh, Nick, Zais, Buck. Remember this crazy place, these absurd people.
And carry on.
November 16, 2010
Well Kendra- YOU'RE ALIVE! And hopefully you're mere breaths away from being debt-free! And hopefully your Suburu is singing like a champ! And hopefully you're excruciatingly happy on the inside. You and Laura should be closer than ever, your spirit should be more certain of what it wants, needs, feels, is called to.. and you should be on your way toward that, intentionally.
But as of right now-
As of right now I'm about to graduate from ten months of service that I really wasn't convinced I would make it through. Three days and I no longer have health insurance, no longer have to wear a uniform, no longer make $176 a week- no, every two weeks! No longer drive a government vehicle, wear steel-toe boots, and call an old psych ward "home". In fact in three days I'll be off for the next adventure- a four day roadtrip/excursion with this kid called Man Cub who somehow got ahold of me this last round. I've not understood a lot of it, but there are times, also, when it makes so very much sense and sits so perfectly with my soul. He's good for me and bad for me at the same time. But evenso, I feel it's been good, it's been right.. and somehow it's been beautiful. Is this going to last forever? No. It's not. Do I hope I always know him? Yes. I do. Because he's helped me in so many ways. My confidence has returned, but with it has come a meekness that sometimes makes me feel beautiful. He's shown me, subtly, how I'm special, different, wonderful. He's let me be free.. to really be me. Perhaps I'm learning how to feel, how to let myself feel for me.. how to let someone else make me feel. I've felt the weightiness of the world around me but rarely have I been comfortable letting the world around me feel for me. I have a hard time believing it's love, but I absolutely believe it's positive, worthwhile, meaningful, and good.
So by the time I get this letter it will be May. My 285 days of national service will be long past. How will I remember this? Will I remember the painstaking days at Mason Neck? The over-crowded days in the trailer? The heartwretching weeks in Camden? Will I remember what it felt like to be alive and dead at the same time- sitting on our row-house roof, pounding through the trails in Virginia, laying in the grass en route to Lake Charles, LA. Will I remember 4th round as a person or an experience? It was both.
I hope I explored the realm of music and the piano and the way they play with my spirit.. alot. Alot.
I hope I'm still running. Alot. I hope 18 miles is still an adventure I want, need, and have. I hope my family is still an integral part of my life and that I know and love them even more than I do right now. I hope I'm learning life, love, spirit, body. I hope I'm confident as I am. Kendra, you're more than a body. You're more than a list of what you've done. You're more than a ball of potential. You're someone trying to understand who you are and what that means in the world you've found yourself in. You're broken. I hope you always are. But that's part of what makes you really beautiful.
Perhaps you've found where you belong. If not, keep finding yourself.. keep finding your God.. and trust that one day you'll be home.
These last ten months have developed me more than changed me. I'm still me, moreso than ever, maybe. I'm not trying to be anything, I just am. And that sure feels good.
I hope you're still drinking wine out of coconuts. Promise me you'll always drink wine from coconuts. Promise me you'll always read books that stretch you. Promise me you'll always sleep outside when you can and that no matter the weather, you'll jump in the sea.
Remember the Atlantic, and how it loved you. Remember Allen's guitar. Remember the dolphins, the sea-turtles, the dumpster-diving, the way the ocean rose to kiss you goodbye that last morning in Virginia Beach.. before you waved goodbye to the rising sun, and ran away.
Life is beautiful. Even when it hurts. Even when it sucks. Remember that. Remember Kate, Liz, Puck, Mary, Rob, Heather, Michelle, Kenny, Josh, Nick, Zais, Buck. Remember this crazy place, these absurd people.
And carry on.
May 8, 2011
Ahem:
there should be more searching for the perfect word because
the perfect word doesn't exist; a word rises and falls and its not enough because the moment is exquisite and exquisite is a color a weight a sensation, not a word.
if i buy an orchid without smelling it did i miss the tropical room the squeaking shopping carts the echo off the stained cement floor or the eyes that lit and burned like a cheap match for 6 seconds at the register. did i miss the moment. for "the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks... your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. conformity explains nothing." at least that's what emerson said and who's to say he's not a god. but God knows what it means to be alive because he's never been dead.
think about that.
if i let my face turn brown in the summer the circles forming under my eyes won't be quite as obvious. and if i don't tell you you won't have any way of knowing that the reason my right eye is often smaller than my left is because there are days and weeks and [sometimes] months when i'd rather do anything but sleep. this is how i know life is good:
it's okay to run without a watch because the numbers don't matter as much as the way my eyes press the bits of gravel glass dirt and dust together when i forget about the miles in the midst of a new discovery somewhere in the center of my chest. i decide love is not acceptance and acceptance is not love, and yet they co-exist, just as i co-exist- a vessel filled only with spirit and a container with no lid saved solely for the collection of people places and ideas. and if i need to be isolated to pursue one thing then is it really the thing which i should be pursuing. and if there are people who make me feel calm then should i separate them from the people who make me rage. must one's every step be conscious or would an unexpected sleep-walk do us all a bit of good every now and again. but if i wake in the middle of the walk will i panic or die or will i see colors i've never seen before. if there's a chance of color i'll take the risk and i'm believing right now that for color there is always a chance.
if you walk into the room and show me a painting and say "see my new poem" i'll look intently but not closely for to analyze is to disect is to rip apart meaning. it wasn't always so for me but i'm quite wise now and so it is so.
dear dostoyevsky, you've shown me there is no such thing as writers block; one can always ramble. and if my rambling is fluid enough it becomes a painting and when i paint there are colors never black and white and as long as there is color i know i am alive, and as long as i'm alive, i will live.
but someday i'll make an account for all of this, right? one day i'll have to explain why i did what i did and my greatest fear is that i will hang my head as my heart fills will lead and drops past my feet and i'll cover my face with my uncalloused hands and picture in my clear and open mind the glorious life i could have run for.
or did.
the perfect word doesn't exist; a word rises and falls and its not enough because the moment is exquisite and exquisite is a color a weight a sensation, not a word.
if i buy an orchid without smelling it did i miss the tropical room the squeaking shopping carts the echo off the stained cement floor or the eyes that lit and burned like a cheap match for 6 seconds at the register. did i miss the moment. for "the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks... your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. conformity explains nothing." at least that's what emerson said and who's to say he's not a god. but God knows what it means to be alive because he's never been dead.
think about that.
if i let my face turn brown in the summer the circles forming under my eyes won't be quite as obvious. and if i don't tell you you won't have any way of knowing that the reason my right eye is often smaller than my left is because there are days and weeks and [sometimes] months when i'd rather do anything but sleep. this is how i know life is good:
it's okay to run without a watch because the numbers don't matter as much as the way my eyes press the bits of gravel glass dirt and dust together when i forget about the miles in the midst of a new discovery somewhere in the center of my chest. i decide love is not acceptance and acceptance is not love, and yet they co-exist, just as i co-exist- a vessel filled only with spirit and a container with no lid saved solely for the collection of people places and ideas. and if i need to be isolated to pursue one thing then is it really the thing which i should be pursuing. and if there are people who make me feel calm then should i separate them from the people who make me rage. must one's every step be conscious or would an unexpected sleep-walk do us all a bit of good every now and again. but if i wake in the middle of the walk will i panic or die or will i see colors i've never seen before. if there's a chance of color i'll take the risk and i'm believing right now that for color there is always a chance.
if you walk into the room and show me a painting and say "see my new poem" i'll look intently but not closely for to analyze is to disect is to rip apart meaning. it wasn't always so for me but i'm quite wise now and so it is so.
dear dostoyevsky, you've shown me there is no such thing as writers block; one can always ramble. and if my rambling is fluid enough it becomes a painting and when i paint there are colors never black and white and as long as there is color i know i am alive, and as long as i'm alive, i will live.
but someday i'll make an account for all of this, right? one day i'll have to explain why i did what i did and my greatest fear is that i will hang my head as my heart fills will lead and drops past my feet and i'll cover my face with my uncalloused hands and picture in my clear and open mind the glorious life i could have run for.
or did.
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