go forward.

Today...

When I began writing this post I was going to say something to the effect of, "Today I shall run right up to something most terrifying and I will look deep into its eyes and I will say, 'do your worst'. "

but then I realized that is not true.

what is true is that I am going to do something today that frightens me to my core and sends shivering nerves all up and down my spine and out through my fingertips. However I won't run up to that fear and challenge it with my feet firmly planted. The fact is that I will probably shuffle my feet and slink up to the base of that fear, instead of running towards it. and for a while I will try to avoid eye contact and pray that I make it through, rather than challenge it with an unwavering gaze. and maybe. hopefully. eventually I will be able to look right at it and say, "Do your worst."

But for today, it is ok to still hold onto a little bit of fear. because I am still facing it. I chose, of my own will, to look for something that scared me and do it. I can't do it with a brave face or with any bravado...but I am still willing to try. Perhaps that is the most we can ask of ourselves; the willingness to try.

home is where you keep your couch.

In 5 days it will be the 7 month anniversary of when I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast. Two days ago we finally got a couch for our apartment. And it is comfy. And I am sitting on it right now.

someone once said...

oh, do you know what I love more than almost anything? a really great quote.

I mean it. I seek out quotes on an almost daily basis. I will choose a topic or a person I admire and then start searching for whatever someone else said that can shed some brilliance and change the way I am thinking about life. I am hungry for all the perspective, and wisdom, and experience I can find...for the thoughts of minds greater than my own.

I could fill pages and pages with beloved quotes. I have hundreds of them written down in journals or random word documents or letters or post it notes on my desk. But for now I will just post this one. This is my favorite quote; it has been since I was 14. Unless you are an unexpected stranger who is reading this blog (and if you are WELCOME! I hope you like it here) you have already heard me say this quote. You might recognize it as one of the ones I scrawled across my closet mirror in blue window crayon...but I don't think I can ever read it too many times. and it has been too long.

" It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt

tunnel. trouble.

One might think that the Lincoln Tunnel would become easier to go through the more times one went through it.

One would be wrong.

I have found the opposite to be quite true. The more times I ride the bus through that tunnel, the more time I spend trapped in bus tunnel traffic (the very worst brand of traffic), the more difficult it becomes for me to look at the walls of that dubious cavern and not imagine the little tiles slowly popping off one by one and streams of water starting to break through the concrete.

One minute we have entered the tunnel. The next minute my mind has placed us in an end of the world action movie and I find myself looking around for Will Smith who will surely swoop in and save all of us buss passengers who will, without a doubt, be drowning in the very near future...

It is time for me to move away from new jersey.

musings.

I do believe there comes a point when the idea of never having your heart broken becomes far more terrifying than the idea of having it shattered into a million shimmering glass bits...

just a musing...

somebody tell those butterflies I am not twelve anymore.

Dear Current Celebrity of Choice,

I have such a silly crush on you....

and it is some of the most fun! Thank you ever so much.

Ashley

webster

Before I left I thought I knew what it meant to miss something.

I thought I knew what it meant to be homesick.

I thought I knew all sorts of things...

after I arrived I realized I didn't know anything.

And I learned so many knew things. I learned definitions of many words beyond the brief, removed dictionary. I learned in buses caught and missed. In conversations had and skipped. In teardrops shed in the shower. In time spent awake in very wee hours.

I learned new definitions. new words. the old words I thought I knew became obsolete.

and despite the inevitable harshness of the way life teaches lessons, I have found I am grateful.

Sometimes I think there is nothing more comforting than remembering I have so much left to feel. So much I haven't experienced. So many words I think I understand now that I will come to realize I have had all wrong.

There is so much left in life. so much life to be had.

and I want to feel it all.

I want to live the definitions. and perhaps make some of my own.

I will create new words.

suntan

I had nearly forgotten the sun.

Day after day of lacy snowflakes and murky ice puddles had nearly pushed the sun all the way out. The bitter wind had blown it about, round and round inside my head until the sun seemed like a dream from a child's fantasy.

but, that feeling of opening the front door and squinting through the bright light before you begin to feel a growing warmth slide across the surface of your skin like caramel sauce on vanilla ice cream. That feeling of pure delight and contentment. That feeling of boundless light going all the way through you to your bones until it is all you can do but close your eyes, spread your arms and smile up to the sky. That feeling of curling up in the sunny spot the window is creating on the floor, exactly like you have seen your cat do a million times. That feeling. The sun...I must have known it once, because I still have these suntan lines. I see them daily in the mirror as I undress and redress . I trace over them with my index finger. Around my shoulders and down my neck. I think about the time it took to acquire them and the countless hours pretending to be a mermaid in the swimming pool. The tan lines are fading, but they are still there; they are slow to fade. Upon further inspection I find more evidence the sun and I had been old friends once: permanent freckles and beauty marks on a complexion I was so certain I could protect. Those will never fade.

It has been months since I have seen the sun, but it is slow to fade with me. I remember it without even wanting to. Much the way I do with you. You are slow to fade with me. Have I loved you? Have you hurt me? Have you taught me something? have you loved me? have we laughed together? have we cried? have we mattered? I remember it all. It is there, written wordlessly onto my skin. Under my skin. I trace the suntan lines over and over in my mind noting the bits that are lighter than they were before and finding new ever fixed freckles I will never forget. I find I am glad for both the pieces that fade and the speckles to remember always.

I am thankful for the snow. I am grateful for slow fading.

and more than anything I am glad the sun found me today and reminded me there will be thousands more sunny days beyond the winter.

and new tan lines.

precisely.

wording is important.

at least, I believe it to be. Anyone who has received an excessively long email from me can attest to that fact. I explain and explain and explain until the message is long enough that I am certain the mere sight of it is daunting to the reader. I do this because I want to be precise, and more importantly, because I want to be understood. I want to convey exactly my thoughts as closely as possible so that people can best understand my heart. what i believe, why i believe it, where i am coming from. what all my theories are based upon.

even simple phrases we use each day imply a certain philosophy or worldview. Recently I have been pondering this one, "fall in love/fall out of love." I am certain I have used this phrase. But i don't believe in it.

I don't believe in the idea behind the wording. to say "i fell in love" implies that it was something i did not intend to do. almost that it was something that just happened to me. as if one day i was walking along and i tripped over one of those breaks in the concrete and love is where i landed. Of course, that is not the case. First of all, I believe that in order to "fall in love", you have to be willing to "fall in love." though i suppose i should say "be in love" rather than fall. Loving someone is not a passive feeling, but rather an action. It is something that takes a great deal of our time and energy and thought and emotion. It is vulnerable and frightening. Before we can be in love, we must be willing to love. and that is not an accidental, serendipitous happening of fate; that is a decision.

i do fully admit that there are some bits about being in love that are beyond our control. Particularly, that bit about who it is we are in love with. We don't seem to have full control over who that is...this is a mystery i will just never understand.

Even more than i disagree with the notion of "falling" in love, it is the notion of "falling" out that i despise. as if love was a place, like a floating island in the clouds, and by taking a wrong step you may just slip off and land right back on earth. We don't fall out of love, we stop loving. And those are very different concepts.

in fact, let us, for just a moment, imagine love to be a floating island in the sky (because really, that is kind of fun). If one is truly in love (on the island) then that is a place they have decided to go, and they don't fall off, they leave. In this scenario to really be in love means that you don't go anywhere that even presents a danger of "falling off" the island. you don't go near the edge, you don't test the boundaries. you don't explore dangerous territory alone. you choose to stay right in the center of the island. even when you tire of the company and even when other places seem to have much greener grass.

We don't fall out of love because love isn't something that happens to us, it is something we do. or don't do.

Sadly, these phrases have become so commonplace. (We have all discussed falling in or out of love. Even as I was writing this it was hard for me to think of other descriptions.) And because These ideas are frequently used, our culture has embraced the implicit philosophy behind them. Particularly the falling out of love side...I have heard many people claim the reason for their separation from their boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife is that they just fell out of love. People are relying on the empty idea of live rather than the alive reality. And that is part of the reason people are so afraid of love. Isn't it terrifying to think that one day someone could wake up and say, "I don't love you anymore" or, for that matter, that you may wake up and look over to the person next to you and think, "I don't love him/her anymore."? of course it is. The idea that we have no control over when love comes or goes would leave anyone hesitant...but it isn't a reality. Even when we don't feel like loving, we can still love. and that is the idea we should be spreading about love.

that is why wording is important.

have you missed me?

oh blog....it has been so long since i have shared my thoughts with you. Have you missed me most terribly? i thought you might...

to make up for my absence, i will share with you a most peculiar and slightly embarrassing fact:

I am terrified of taking a shower in the dark.

i have no idea why.

just the idea of it makes me shudder....*shudder*....

the christmas-y spirit.

I read this every year. I think it is so perfectly written and beautiful. I am very glad to believe in Santa clause and all the unseen wonders in this world.

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

texts from my dad. Volume 6.

"Ashaleeeeeeto

i miss you toooooo.

hope you're over the cold and doing great things. won't be long before we'll be cooking together.

Love, Dad"

some truth.

"Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow."

-J.M. Barrie

"Dear Zachary"

I cry in movies.

that is just a fact. I can't help but become connected to characters and stories; to become invested in the journeys. Even when I try really hard not to cry (because, let's face it, it is a little embarrassing when you are caught weeping through "Lilo and Stitch") I am unsuccessful. Those darn tears just come and make a mess on my sweater...

I am in a documentary phase. I go on netflix and i search the instant play documentaries until i find one i think will be interesting. So one day I found this documentary called "Dear Zachary: A letter to a son about his father". I read the brief synopsis which basically said it was a movie this guy made because his friend was murdered and he wanted to create something so that the victims son could know who his father was. It sounded very tragic but it also seemed like it could be something really beautiful. I knew that I would cry because the very nature of the story is a sad one, not to mention this was a documentary and not a fictional story so that just made the whole thing more weep-worthy.

I started the movie and, as predicted, i started crying. Nearly immediately.

this movie was different however, because i literally cried the whole movie long. Usually I have some reprieve...

And then, somewhere near the end of the movie something so utterly heartbreaking happened and I suddenly felt like i wasn't sure my body could handle it. I don't think I have ever wept so deeply in my whole life. I felt like i couldn't breathe and my body was heaving and, if i hadn't been trying my very hardest to be quiet because my roommates were sleeping, I am certain i would have screamed. It was an emotion i have never felt before and it was so thorough and gutteral...and frightening.

the movie ended and i just kept on crying. and when i finally stopped all i could do was sit and be awed and be thankful.

the movie was tragic. tragic beyond what you think anyone could survive. but it was beautiful. It was about someone who was loved, in the truest sense of the word. I will always be haunted by it.

always.

here it comes

yesterday I got myself ready to

make the pilgrimage into the

city and I gathered all my

things and

walked down the stairs to the

exit of my apartment. I opened

the door and breathed in... and

there it was. Right when I

wasn't expecting it. That

perfect, clean scent that

absolutely nothing

else can replicate. That

intoxicating aroma that

invigorates you from your

head, all the way down

to the tips of your toesies.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it

smelled like snow.

Now it was much too warm to

actually snow, but its promise

is there. It is lingering in the

near future. All at once I am

equally thrilled and weary at

the prospect (because walking

to the bus

stop and waiting for the bus in

the snow, not to mention

riding it on icy streets...I mean,

come on

people. you would be worried

too). But no matter what,

I love the smell of snow.

cheers

has the mail arrived?

"The power of regular letter writing cannot be overstated. Even if all they consist of is the minutia of everyday life, letters maintain and even strengthen intimacy, no matter how many thousands of miles separate the sender and receiver."

I wish there was some sort of profession in which I could write people letters all day long...

I love letters. I love to write them. and i really love to receive them.

I think they are powerful and beautiful and significant.

is this adventure?

When I went to the airport for my final departure from California I learned that the security guards are really nice to you if you look like you have been weeping and you don't really intend to stop anytime soon...

note: in the future when i have to make any kind of significant departure i will do it in the morning because it is a little bit brutal to have to say goodbye over and over all day long. My flight was leaving at midnight and from about 6:00 on I had been intermittently weeping. I wondered why on earth I had even bothered to put on any make up. that was just silly.

I told rachell we needed to stop at the grocery store so I could buy some tissues. I just wanted to buy one of those small packages. the kind you can fit in your purse. However, it seems you can only buy a case of like six of those small packages...and i was crying a lot, but not 6 packages worth. But there I was carrying 6 packages of tissues around in my purse. Just to add to how ridiculous i already felt.

So then rachell and mikael drove me to the airport and when we arrived we got my luggage out of the trunk and then I hugged rachell and then I hugged mikael. Mikael and I both just started crying and from then on i could not stop. (that is how i learned about the security guards...).

I trudged my way to the gate and sat down. They were playing the most melancholy music in the airport which was not helpful to my state of mind. Then I read the letter Mikael gave me. Commence even more weeping and significant amounts of embarrassment while i sat there with my packages of tissues and thought to myself, "This is ridiculous. who chooses to leave everyone they love on purpose? this was a horrible terrible idea"

And then I thought about how you rarely actually see anyone crying in the airport. It is a place where people say hello and goodbye, but usually the space in between the two isn't large or unbearable. I thought how strange it was to be nearly certain that I was the only one in that airport gate making permanent plans to leave the people who had become my family, my heart. what a strange, lonely feeling.

And then I thought about this part of the adventure. I had always considered my move to new york to be an adventure. Really, the first big uncertain adventure i had ever made. And up until the moment i was sitting in the airport I thought it was going to be really fun and full of intrepid outings and funny moments. I never considered the part that actually made it an adventure: The fact that it would be hard. That it would try to break me. That it would involve a fight. When we think of adventure we almost always just think about the triumph of it all and we forget about the parts that almost defeat us. But we usually think of adventure from the outside. when the adventuring is over, or before it has begun. When we are in the midst of the adventure we don't refer to it as adventure. We tend to refer to it as life, and we frequently don't like it.

For a long time after I got here I was really sad. I am still sad, in truth. But less sad than i was. Mostly, these days I am just thankful i have people i love so much that it hurts to be away from them. There are so much worse aches to be had, and I am grateful for this one. This is my adventure. My first adventure, i will not forget to appreciate it as such, because once I come out of it I will be able to see the epic worthy moments of triumph, such as apartment decorating last night and sleepovers in the city with my best friend. And I will move forward in hope and I will carry my homesick heart with gladness and I will protect it and remember how many people i have to help me protect it. even from far away.

how i love you all...

timing

Timing. Timing is of the utmost importance.

In my first few weeks here in the city I have learned that. You can no longer be running a couple minutes late while you are getting ready and think to yourself, "Its ok, i will just be five minutes late." Because if you are even one minute late you have missed the bus. Now you are waiting at least a half and hour for the next one. Yes, I have chased down a bus. i only had to to it once, and it wasn't really my fault as the bus was actually early on this day. Sue and I were going to an audition and so we were both dressed nicely and we were making our way to the bus stop and we got to corner and we saw the bus we needed start to drive right past us. We looked at each other a bit panicked and then we both took off! we ran right into the street and down two blocks and we abandoned all our modestly as our skirts flew much higher than a skirt ever should...but we made it to the bus. Also, I have missed the bus. Timing.

And then on the other hand, you can rush down to the lightrail station only to get there and see that the next train doesn't arrive for 17 minutes. And then you have to wait around till it gets there and you wish you would have checked the schedule so you could have arrived in a more timely fashion. and then it takes 45 minutes to get to the city instead of 20. Timing.

Too late. Too early. both aren't good.

but of course, I am not really talking about transit.

life and death and the spaces between.

I have a friend I met at pepperdine, her name is Greta. I haven't talked to her in a few years, but she was my small group leader at my church in malibu. She is, and will always be, one of the most beautiful, brilliant people I have ever encountered. The picture above is from an album she has on her facebook page entitled "Thank you notes". Each picture in the album has a caption underneath it which thanks God for some glorious bit of life as we experience it here on the earth. It is a truly lovely album and I look at it frequently as she adds photos every week or so. Yesterday I was looking at it and I came across this picture and the caption she wrote for it which states, "Thank you for a dying swan dahlia, and thank you that she will come back again someday."

And in one of those rare moments, my breath caught. And I had to stop and listen to my breath and give myself a moment to ponder.

This time in life is an interesting one. It stings frequently. In moments you don't expect. There is a lot of triumph and heartbreak to to found all mixed together, and sometimes it is hard to decipher the two as the thoughts and emotions intermingle. For the past 5 months or so I have listened to a lot of people share their various wounds and their fears and the things that break them. many have found themselves in dark places. I have found myself in a dark place. And it is that which makes me ever thankful for the small inextinguishable light that is hope and for the way I found it in this picture.

Perhaps people are more like flowers than I ever expected. We are fragile and we need care and sun and rain. sometimes we are surprisingly resilient and we refuse to give in and sometimes we find that we have done a face plant into the dirt and we try to hold onto our color and we try to stand tall again, but sometimes we cannot. Sometimes we die. And perhaps that is ok. Perhaps that is what is supposed to happen. We all accept that flowers die. The winter comes and it gets the best of them and they always die. But they do come back someday. As do we. sure enough the spring always follows the winter and we find our heads lighter and easier to lift. Death has not conquered us.

"Thank you. Thank you God, for people and for all their broken places and blocked paths and the bits that feel as though they can't be mended. Thank you for the people who seem to be dying, and thank you that you can bring them back someday"

Until Death do us part

These are my friends who got married on October 9, 2010. Rebekah and Ryan. Aren't they Beautiful?

I was a bridesmaid. This was my first time to be a bridesmaid. I was really quite elated about it, but I didn't think it would be a very big deal. Walk down the aisle, hold some flowers, smile, watch bride and groom kiss, follow them outside. I was not unfamiliar with weddings. I have been to a few and I have watched them on tv. It seemed a rather basic principle, but somehow it became so much more to me.

This wedding was by no means extravagant. the flowers had been arranged by the bridal party the night before from flowers bought at costco. The bridesmaids all wore dresses of their own choosing which the bride had not even seen until the day of the wedding. We all did our own hair and make up. We put up all the lights ourselves. It was a simple wedding, but to me it was stunning. It was everything a wedding should be, because it wasn't about the wedding at all. It was about the fact that people were getting married. And that made the whole thing feel extravagant and full. Every time I would ask Rebekah a question about some sort of mindless aesthetic thing she would say something to the effect of, "I don't really care, whatever you want. I just want to get married." I hope someday that I can keep this same mentality when I find myself engaged.

I always thought that I would make it through my own wedding without crying until I got to the father/daughter dance, but when i found myself weeping as rebekah walked down the aisle at the REHEARSAL I changed my mind. I now fully expect to cry all through my wedding...which is a little bit unfortunate...but what will be will be. The rehearsal was the day of the wedding in the morning and I must admit that until we got there I was still a bit stunned by the fact one of my best friends was getting married. I had a bit of a fear of marriage, largely because I regard it as so important and I never want it to be taken lightly. But I think being at this wedding calmed many of my wedding related anxieties. By the time we actually started the rehearsal it felt so natural and perfect and filled with an ever bubbling joy and I decided that I love love weddings. Every part of them. And as I stood there on the stage waiting for rebekah to walk down the aisle I was struck by the symbolism of the wedding party and i felt so very honored to be a part of it. The wedding party represents the fact that the couple entering into the marriage covenant acknowledge that they cannot make it through without people, friends and family, supporting them on both sides. That is the way it should be. and being a member of the wedding party is the same as making a decision to make sure you help to support the marriage and remain dedicated to keeping the two people together in the way you live and the advice you give and the prayers you offer. It was all so lovely and I was so glad to stand in support of people who were giving themselves to each other with the utmost love, repect, and reverance.

I saw weddings in a new glowing, golden light I had never understood before, and I will always remember it.

I love weddings.