Journal Post 2.21.13

My last post was almost a full two years ago. That's understandable since I got into Tumblr. Well, I gave up Tumblr for Lent and so I have to find another blog to fill.

I read through some of my old poems, and I wish I could write something like those again. Lately my poems have felt rigid. They don't feel as flowing as they used to, like they don't come out of my heart like they used to.

There's also a significant difference in the amount of sleep I was getting when I wrote my older posts and now. I rarely get less than six hours of sleep these days. Back then I was lucky if I got five. I feel like there has to be some kind of significant correlation between lack of sleep and amount of writing that gets done. I have a friend who goes to school in Savannah, GA who gets little sleep and she writes like a maniac. Dedication equals lack of sleep or lack of sleep equals dedication? It's a hard question. I know my writing hour, but my body isn't willing to accept it.

I want to be able to write with the love that was in those old poems. The love is still there, in the sense that the inspiration where I got that tone is still present in my life. If anything there should be more love in my life since the boyfriend and I have been trying to explore our spiritual lives more and get closer to God.

I don't know. I just don't blog/journal enough I think. I certainly don't write enough. That's for sure. I used to write everyday. Now I'm a junior in college and that swiftly changed.

I would sacrifice sleep tonight, but I've had a cold and I really should just take some NyQuil and go to bed to make sure I'm better by the weekend. I need to go to a bridal shower on Sunday. Mom gave it to me, I think. Nate has it and she's been sick, so I'm pretty sure she's the source. Anyway, I feel tons better right now, but I felt like dying earlier today so I shouldn't risk it tonight. Man I want to, though.

It's almost like a drug addiction isn't it? Like Isaac Mendez when he was high. He could paint the future. My high is no sleep. Interesting. Often times my loopiness turns into silence, which then turns into poems. Write out the kinks. Write out the kinks. That's what I should do. I should sit here and blog until the kinks come loose and the poems flow like water. They're sore muscles, tight ones, like the one that spreads from the toes to the base of the heel. When it stretches too far or gets too tight it's a stabbing pain every few minutes. A reminder. Stretch it out. Write it out.

Maybe I can't even write like that anymore. People change and writing changes. Voices change. Maybe I'm in transition.

A huge, 2-year transition that won't leave me alone, but won't let me write.

It's not a block. I don't believe in block anymore.

In Eragon, Eragon talks about magic being like this lump in his brain that he could scratch at. That's what I feel like poetry can sometimes be. I have to pull into myself and scratch my poetry gene before it comes out sometimes. My "mellow indie" playlist on Songza helps too.

I have to take the NyQuil, or else I won't sleep right.

It really is like an addiction. I love the feeling of an amazing sleep, and I love the rush of getting none at all. Maybe I'll get some writing done tomorrow.

It's not a block. I don't believe in block anymore.

Here I am. The hotel business room at a Holiday Inn Express, waiting until sleep finds its way back, or I crash in half-sleep comatose for the night. Two hours to Gatlinburg tomorrow and then three more to home. So, let’s go through the trip so far:
1. Cape San Blas, FL—the usual family hang out with Gramps and Granny at the beach house. three days.
2. Cocoa Beach, FL—waiting on the boat/getting on the ship. two days.
3. International waters—Heading to Free Port. Twelve to fifteen hours.
4. Free Port, Bahamas—one day
5. Nassau, Bahamas—one day (Atlantis water park)
6. International waters—total loss in the casino: $28.67. one day.
7. Cocoa Beach, FL—prolonging the inevitable? One day.
8. 2004 Toyota 4-Runner—seven hours or so. Who knows.
9. Spartanburg, SC—here we are and here we keep breathing.
Do people say “we” to give themselves a sense of comfort? Well, I guess then I should say, do “we” say “we” to comfort “ourselves”? Makes you feel like you’re not the only one who hasn’t slept in three days, who hasn’t had a decent, full, complete night’s sleep. Tired is not the question. I’m tired enough to put Rip Van himself to shame. It’s a question of surrender. My boyfriend once told me that in order to have the most fulfilling night’s sleep; one should simply surrender to the pull of fatigue. It shouldn’t be a forced act. Maybe that’s where I sit. Seven to twelve hours in a car isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, so I try to sleep. And here I am. I’ve been to two hotels since leaving the ship and I still have not slept.
I miss my bed.
I miss routine. I miss Mark. Hell, I miss work. And it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed myself—I’ve had a blast—I just…don’t want to be coasting anymore. I’m sick of summer.
I never could quite understand why it was that I hated disliked summer so much. It’s too hot, or It’s too humid, or There’s no rain, just didn’t seem to cut it. It wasn’t the meteorological aspects of summer I hated so much, it was just the emptiness of it. I wasn’t working for a goal, wasn’t trying to reach a certain rite of passage. It was just…summer. During my regulated, ask-to-pee, days in the public school system, I understood that the purpose of every day was to work to the end of the year and go on to the next one. But what’s this middle? This time period where everyone seems to seem doubly alive and doubly…pathless.
Autumn is a time of preparation. It’s time to stock up and take inventory for what is to come. It is productive. In winter, everything is dormant. Waiting, stilling in the suspense for what comes next, still preparing for the next stage of life. The ashes of the phoenix, if you will. And spring is all about rebirth. It’s new life. It’s green; it’s a display of strength and endurance over the course of the cold months. But then you have summer. Summer. Relaxing, overbearing summer. Is there not a productive steam to the hot sixty? Is there not another sight but the flailing of springtime’s joy, shaking it and choking it out until it’s been bled dry? This is why I don’t sleep. I think too much. It is also why I’ll live somewhere where the seasons are blurred around the edges and you end up with two and a half instead of four.

10:43. I’m still awake. Typical, I won’t say that’s not normal for me. Eleven, twelve, I’m usually up. We’ll see if the clock ticks past two for me again tonight, though. Mark said he would call at eleven. So a good seventeen minutes until he interrupts my brooding. Good. I need someone to. I need someone to shake me. To rock me to sleep. I feel like a jumble of angles and soft muscles and crease marks from the sheets. I don’t feel human like this.
We keep the temperature at home at about the 75 degree mark. I’d lower it ten if I could but my mom has hyperthyroid disease and she’s cold all the time. I have two fans in my bedroom, though and most nights in the summer I keep the window open and let in some good old Kentucky air. Well, it would be if I didn’t live in a lower middle-class suburban neighborhood on the very edge of I-75. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t hear the interstate from my backyard. Daddy works third shift at the Toyota plant so he needs to live in a place where he can leave as late as possible. That way, him and mom can have as much of the day as possible together. 4pm to 4am, he’s at work. So, you can imagine I don’t see him much either. It’s alright though. My dad and I are of the stand-offish type so neither of us need that much attention.
Maybe. I don’t feel like I need that much attention. Of course, I’m a writer, so what the hell do I know? My life is within the bindings of moleskin notebooks and simulated computer paper on hotel Aspire processers.
Nine minutes.
Jesus, I spend half my time checking my phone to see how long until he calls. If I don’t marry him, the next guy better be pretty impressive. I don’t imagine there will be, though. He says I make him feel worse by telling him I haven’t slept or that I have headaches late in the day. I showed him where they were, just above my ear, curving around the back of my head like those microphones they use in stage shows. Throbbing, like I could scratch out the skin, but most of the time I don’t notice they’re there. The day I pulled my knee out of the socket twice I still remember his face. Agony. Sheer agony. I knew that he loved me the moment he saw me on the ground. It was two o’clock in the morning and we were playing volleyball after prom. And I was on the floor. I dove for a ball and loosened the joint and then served, stepped down off the swing and out came my knee.
I remember he half carried me to the car. Lugged me into the backseat. I still think he’s crazy. Maybe he is for loving someone like me. Who knows. If he can love someone who’s such a calamity, he must have some sort of complex. I love him, I really do…but where do I fall in? I’m not that pretty. I’m not skinny. I’m polite, only because I’m freakishly shy. I have outbursts of spontaneous ingratitude and life-threatening, thrill-seeking behavior. I curse. I’m only lady-like when I want to sweet talk him into something. Where’s the appeal? And I’m a hypochondriac with psycho-symptomatic insomnia. Wow. I’m a keeper.
But, I guess, you know. I believe in God and Jesus and I believe in loving people and I am trying. I’m an artist. Sometimes I tell myself it’s my words he’s really in love with. It’s poetry, not the poet. If I stopped writing…would he stop loving me?
11:00 and I’m wondering if the phone will ring if I look at it. I should check if it has signal. But if I do, I’m really checking if he’s called. God, I’m obsessive. He texts to say he’ll call soon. He’s working on a survey for the University of Kentucky.

Release The Beast

“The best thing that could happen to poetry is to drive it out of the universities with burning pitch forks. Starve the lavish grants. Strangle them all in a barrel of water. Cast them out. The current culture, in which poetry is written for and supported by poets has created a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that resists innovation. When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader public, then we may begin to see some great poetry again—the greatness that is the collaboration between audience and artist.”


It seems to me that Andrew Sullivan, author of the recent essay, “Let Poetry Die”, in an online edition of “The Daily Dish” needs to update his home library. It is hard for me to believe that anyone, especially those in the writing field, could ignore the growth of poetry since the modernists. To say that poetry stopped at Ashbery is to say that the last real painters were Picasso and Pollock and that conceptual art has no place in society. It’s a pretentious statement to say the least, and in my opinion, a fairly ignorant one. Sullivan calls for poetry to be a phoenix, to die and be reborn from the ashes of its destruction, but what he doesn’t realize, I think, is that poetry is constantly renewing itself.

One can’t ignore the changes that have come through poetry that are real examples of poetry. The fact that Sullivan has the audacity to say that poetry was lost after Ashbery is a real slap in the face to amazing poets like Allen Ginsburg, Ezra Pound, Yusef Komunyakka and Rita Dove. The face of poetry and the face of the world have changed since Elliot and Frost (although their poetry is still a strong house). Just because Andrew Sullivan can’t accept change doesn’t mean he should chase poetry around like a maniac with a pitchfork. Look at Slam Poetry; look at all the performance poetry that is leaking out from big cities on down to little places like Lexington. Poetry is alive and is thriving; people just have to know where to find it. Look back at beat poetry, and post-modern poetry. They have changed the face of the way people read poetry and you look at poets like Billy Collins who have followed the footsteps of poets like Frank O’Hara and realize that poetry is adapting to become closer to the reader. It’s transforming itself for its audience. Billy Collins (certainly not a poet in Sullivan’s eyes) is one of the most popular poets of today and his roots can be seen in O’Hara’s poetry. It’s obvious his style is all his own, but his ideas are rooted in the modernists. Frank O’Hara said in “Personism, a Manifesto” that “The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages,” and that’s what has become a characteristic of contemporary poetry across the board. And it’s not surprising that poetry today is under a microscope, tied up for execution. Isn’t that what happened with Picasso? With Warhol? Just as post-modernist art has been beaten down, so have poets like Pound—following a Pollok-esque style of poetry. Art will forever be criticized and there will forever be people like Andrew Sullivan who don’t open themselves up to art.

It’s not poetry that’s pushing society away. Society doesn’t realize what poetry is. Society is becoming more accepting of the mediocre and the downright terrible. With the availability of blogs and web sites now, anyone can be a great poet, but that’s not really how it should be. I agree with Mr. Sullivan that poets shouldn’t write for other poets—they need to remember who their real audience is, but I believe poets today need a lesson in constructive criticism. Poets write for other poets, because other poets are the only ones who are willing to say, “Man, this is really terrible.” For a writer, your work is your baby. It’s your own creation, but, as Mitchell Douglas would say, “You have to be willing to let them kill the baby.” Otherwise, the mediocre seeps into our publications and the poetry that is wide-spread throughout society. Poets should be conscious of their audience, but their audience is responsible for keeping the poets in line.

It’s a fine line to walk, between accepting criticism and calling out for personal creativity, but the amount of poetry that is accepted today that shouldn’t be is vastly understated. Personally, I think that Sullivan’s statement that poetry should be “driven out of the universities with burning pitch forks.” (first of all, how can a metal pitch fork be burning?) is ludicrous. It’s the MFA “cookie-cutter” programs that are weeding out this mediocre that Sullivan is so passionate about demolishing. Sure, there are poets from those kinds of programs that stick with a copied style that no one likes to read, but writers like Nikkey Finney come with those programs, Kelly Norman Ellis and Crystal Wilkinson. MFA programs need to adapt their curriculum—update it to new forms. They might be breeding mediocrity, but they shouldn’t be done away with. They need to be revised. I was under the impression that it was important for a writer to learn the rules before breaking them—maybe I’m wrong, but these programs are dishing out poets that are the blood of poetry today.

They’re the blood of a beast that is more mighty and terrible and awesome than Mr. Andrew Sullivan realizes. Poetry is constantly renewing itself and whenever society can stop chaining it up and threatening it with these mysterious metal pitchforks that burn, it can thrive. Poetry is not a beast to be killed. Society needs to cut off its own choke collar, accept change and see the art growing around it. Don’t kill poetry—release it.

Random Rants

I'm not really sure if I ever got around to one central point....but that's what rants are for anyway. Just some thoughts on humanity:

The human race is incredibly fascinating. Fascinating and hilarious, I might say. Being a part of the race, I can’t say I’m not susceptible to its calamities, its chaos. However, if one steps back and looks at how easily we tattoo the history of our race on our skin they might find that the pigment is so distorted we can’t tell which way is backwards and which is our front. Humans remember in a way that is unlike the rest of earth’s inhabitants. We remember the mistakes of the past and take them on as our own burlap load over this rail-tie crossing journey we call life. My sins are the sins of my mother, of her mother, of hers and so on…


This isn’t to say that we should forget the past at all. That’s how things like the Holocaust repeat themselves. No, we shouldn’t forget what we’ve learned over the course of our existence, but have we paid so much attention to what our father’s father’s father’s father did that we spend each day making it our duty to make up for it. What the human race fails to see is that we cannot recall the entire history of our ancestors’ sins on our bones or they’ll break. We must own our own sins and right them before anything else.

What am I getting at? Let me find my point here.

If we continue to try and make up for things that are gone and done with, how will we move forward? We constantly live in the past and with our necks craned so far behind us, we’re liable to stumble over our next big problem. Honorable as it may be to try and make up for our blunders, we over exacerbate them by bringing them up day after day.

Here’s what I propose:

Make a mistake (for it’s good to make mistakes every now and again) and learn from it. Apologize, repent, whatever you have to do, and then move on. Move on. In Isaiah 43:18 God says, “’Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.’” He goes on to say that He is making new things and making, “’a way in the desert; and streams in the wasteland.’” God makes all things new again and forgives those who repent. We should remember our sin, learn from our sin, but should not dwell on it. The whole point of having a savior is having sins removed. Our transgressions are gone and forgotten by God, so why do we insist on remembering them.

I’m afraid, I haven’t quite reached what I intended to say initially. We as humans, as people have difficulties accepting the fact that we’re no longer guilty in God’s eyes. That’s not to say that we don’t sin, but that we’re forgiven for what we do. When God wipes the slate clean, it’s so hard to wipe it clean in our minds.

There are terrible things that our own nature can lead to when left unchecked, but they are also things that I think we inherently know are wrong. However, we can’t seem to forget the years of slavery that was put on the African Americans in the U.S. or that Blacks were discriminated against for years after was slavery was gone. I’m not saying these things should be forgotten, just put to rest. We can’t atone for something forever. I’m also not saying that God forgives all of America for that blotch of iniquity, because I don’t know the mind of God and can’t speak for him. All I’m trying to say is that we as a people need to put to rest all of our reservations. I can’t look at every person on the street with a different race than mine and think, Oh, well, I better be nice to them because of all that stuff that happened in the past.

That’s not getting rid of the problem. The only way to be rid of racism is to look at each individual person as a person with thoughts and ideals. We as Christians are taught to love all people. Jesus says to his disciples in Mathew 25:45 “’I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” We are called to not just be evangelicals or to “save” the masses, but to love all people and serve them through our service to God. Service comes from love and therefore if we love God, we serve him. If we love people, we serve them. How do we love people? Look at them as individuals and stop remembering the history of the world when we see the color of someone’s skin.

The way we remember also gives me another point—we hold grudges. We can’t let go of, not only our own transgressions, but the sins that others have committed against us. Forgiveness is a mouthful for humans—for Americans especially. We’re taught from an early age that this world is eye for an eye and that no wrong should go unpunished.

Unpunish it.

That’s another dare I have for you. The next time someone says something or does something to you, love them and let it go unpunished. We’re not the judges of the world. We as Christians are not God’s mouth and we cannot speak for him. It is not my job or anyone else’s to condemn those who do wrong. That’s God’s job. Our job is to love people. Our job is to stop hurting people with the way we remember their debts to us and the way we live around them. Our job is to be the servants of people regardless of what they do to us. That’s how Christ came into the world and that’s how He taught us to be throughout His teachings. We must come with a childlike eagerness to the Lord and we must stop looking inwardly to how we’ve been hurt. Look into the eyes of that one co-worker you can’t stand, look into the lines of the face of that kid that insists on insulting you and tell me that Jesus doesn’t love them too. Remember that they are one of God’s creations as much as you are and remember that God forgave you for the wrongs you did. Tell me that there’s one reason that we shouldn’t forgive and love them.

A New Year, A New Together

He dipped his middle finger into the holy water and touched it to his face as we left St. Paul's Cathedral on New Year's Eve. I smiled to Father Charles and passed the baptismal without a second glance. The water was still and shining in the marble bowl, but when his fingers breeched the surface it rippled and swirled like any other liquid.

Must you be so holy? Must you, to be able to touch the water and make it seem so ordinary again? I was sure he was holy enough, good enough, but not me.

We laced our hands together and blessed water wet the spaces between my fingers and his. We climbed down from God's great house and I admired the structure from the sidewalk. Our breath made ghosts around us but neither of us said anything. The wind whipped through the space between our bodies, sending shivers up my bare legs.

I let the silence sink in for a moment as I pondered deep in my heart. Mary's motherhood, Joseph's disconnection with his only love, his helplessness. While Mary shined in God's hands, Joseph passed by, admired her with reverence--and shame.

Was it shame? What was in Joseph's heart as he looked at Mary? Did he see how pure she was? Did he see how she smiled and moved and how blessed she was? Did his heart sink like a rock in his chest when he realized that she was good?

What did Mary see in Joseph when she looked back?

We walked the next three blocks to the car. My shoes made the only sound between us, counting my steps against the cobblestones. I counted with them and wondered at his warmth next to me, avoided his gaze.

But, Joseph loved Mary. Of that, I was sure.

He opened the passenger door for me, smiled and his eyes were thankful. For what, I can't be certain, but I knew he saw my shame, my questions, and he told me I was wonderful.

Wonderfully disconnected.

Doughnuts, Goetta and Chocolate Delight

“You’ve never had goetta?”

I didn’t realize how my denial would affect the rest of my Saturday night. Ali D., my roommate from the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts was sitting on my couch, her arm stopping mid-swing as she prepared to bowl her final frame on Wii Bowling. Jen, another GSA alumni came skidding in from the kitchen in her new pair of Christmas socks. They had smiling Christmas trees on them.

“She’s never had goetta?!” Jen was the definition of a fiery red head, always laughing, always smiling, and always making up some new joke about our residence life group from Governor’s School. She was not smiling now. Her brow had fallen into a concentrated curve and she gave Ali one of her serious business faces. Jen and Ali had a sort of secret language I had never figured out. They were both Visual Art students at GSA, while I was Creative Writing. I would often catch them staring at each other, laughs on the tips of their tongues while they made some private joke through their pupils. It was frustrating to be out of the loop, but more interesting to watch.

Ali and Jen deliberated, half in silent looks, half in actual words (most likely for my benefit) claiming I had no life without this mysterious food called goetta. From what I could draw it was some sort of sausage with oats—not too appealing to think about if you asked me. I like to avoid oats…and foods that were, as Jen put it, “kind of like hot dogs—you just don’t think about what’s in it.” Ali assured me it was much better than it sounded. It was a German thing, she said, a Northern Kentucky breakfast dish. Somehow it was extremely important.

“Like hash?” I asked.

They just laughed.

“No, not like hash. It’s waaay better than hash.” I was a little surprised Ali had experience in eating hash at all, but then again, with the sound of this goetta, I couldn’t really be that surprised.

To prove to me how popular this goetta was, Ali and Jen pulled out their cell phones, texting friends and family to tell them all that I had never had goetta. Had I missed out on some major part of growing up—like watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade or tasting PlayDough for the first time? Hopefully goetta was in no way similar. I had missed some rite of passage…and my family claimed German roots. Was I simply a shame to my own heritage? At least I wasn’t alone. Mark, my boyfriend had never heard of the dish, and he was German enough for the both of us.

“We have to get goetta.” Jen clutched her phone and glanced towards my keys lying on the floor.

Oh, right. I was the one with the vehicle.

Ten minutes and forty seconds later we were in my car, Jen riding shotgun, heading to the local Wal-Mart Supercenter. If they didn’t have it, no one would.

They didn’t have it.

We searched the meats, the tubed sausages, the eggs, the frozen meats, the weird cheese kiosks. Ali was stamping down the spice aisle (because that’s exactly where you would find German sausage with oats) calling out: “Goet-ta! Goet-ta! Why—don’t-you have Goet-ta!?” That got us all going. Ali danced around the paprika, legs crossed to keep from peeing and hand over her mouth to keep from howling. Jen’s make-up was running down her cheeks in rivers and I was doubled over on the floor. This was the way things usually turned out between us. Once we started, there was no stop. The odd combination of being together after spending almost six months apart and searching for this mystery food was just comical enough to get ourselves kicked out of Wal-Mart.

Well…kicked out is such a strong word…

Asked to resign from shopping was more like it.

Back in the car, Ali and Jen were more determined than ever to get some goetta. Ali rode in front this time while Jen sat in the back calling Dylan and Thomas to see if they’d ever had goetta. Dylan thought it was some form of inner-city culture he should know about. Thomas thought it was a person.

“Thomas, you’re such a Debbie Downer!” was all Jen had to say.

These girls were crazy. They sang songs about goetta and the moon. They bounced around in my car like a couple of sling-shot bouncy balls. Ali directed me to the nearest Kroger to check their stock while they discussed the ways of cooking and eating goetta.

“You put syrup on it.”

“No, Jen, that’s gross. Mustard. It’s mustard.”

“Sick! Freak-face, you eat mustard in the morning?!”

“Yes! I can’t believe you put syrup on your goetta, that’s so disgusting.”

“Mustard’s disgusting.”

All I had to do was sit back and watch—and drive of course—as they threw down their cases for each topping. I was almost certain if they had both been in the back seat there would’ve been a fight. Over goetta. Ali claimed goetta had to be baked, while Jen said fried. All the while, I doubled over the steering wheel, trying to focus on driving while I laughed.

When we reached Kroger, my partners in crime made a b-line for the meats. They stopped only once, distracted by icing cookie sandwiches made to look like frogs, and then they were back on their mission. We found the sausages easy enough, causing a scene next to the hot dogs. We were all calling it out now.

“Goetta! Goet-ta!”

Deli workers stared. Late night Kroger shoppers altered their paths around us so to not get too close. We were diseased. We were insane. We were too happy for a midnight Kroger run.

We scanned the sausages up and down. Mild, country style, hot, lean, fat-free…

“IT’S GOETTA!!!” Jen’s hand snatched up a small beige tube in the forgotten bottom corner of the sausages and raised it high over her head. Screaming and flailing her arms, Ali grabbed it from her to read the label.

“It is! We found it!”

What I had expected to be a more grand and sophisticated food turned out to be just another tube of sausage. It looked a lot like fruit cake…only with less color and less…cake…

Jen was our parade leader, holding the goetta high over her head as we made our way to the check-out lanes. All the while Ali walked half doubled over, again to avoid peeing herself, making as much noise as possible.

“Ali, Ali. Let’s not get kicked out before we can buy it.”

We made it out safely and were back home in a matter of minutes, huddled around the stove, frying up disks of meat and oats, documenting every second with Jen’s digital camera. These are my friends. I thought, then again…we are the company we keep, right?

The smell of goetta was interesting, more like old sausage…left-over hamburgers. I agreed to try both syrup and mustard to appease the girls (syrup was better) and they began calling everyone they knew to see if they’d ever had goetta. Unabashed by the number of no’s and the many voice-mail inboxes we reached, we left long explanations of goetta and sang Christmas carols to our sleepy friends. We soon raided the fridge. Chocolate delight, doughnuts, pizza, goetta. It was our greatest smorgasbord, all washed down with a couple bottles of Ale-8. It was a night of local favorites, a night of triumph. I had goetta for the first time. The Three Musketeers were back in action. Our appetites and adventures appeased, we soaked up each other’s company in the yellow light of my 1 a.m. kitchen, munching on goetta and cracking open walnuts just to see if we could get them out whole.

This Week's Begining is Just an End

This morning is a lazy kind of morning. Not so much tired as an apathetic lazy. I've checked out for this week. There's nothing I can really do to bring myself out of four days from now. I'm already there, waiting on the swing in the backyard under my paisley quilt. Mom and Dad are gone for their black Friday shopping and I am just waiting. It is sunny out and a chilled wind wraps itself around the yard. I draw up the quilt and lay down across the seat, swaying lightly. This year seems to be full of moments like this, sighing moments that just deserve to be observed. Human alterations of these moments would be sinful. They are like silk paintings in the wind, caught by a draft in a split second and then sent flying again as time finds itself and remembers who he is. I wait for the sound of a car, for my phone to vibrate in my pocket, but time seems to have stopped. The browning grass ripples in the wind and the trees make no sound but a low moan between their naked branches. I shush them, dropping my eyes to the back door, watching the house glow orange. Finally it is winter. Not many people can say that, but I have always loved the winter. I have always loved the snow and the shorter days, the whistling of bare oaks and bradford pears, hot tea in a snowman mug, pumpkin pie, Christmas candies, the wait for spring. That is what I love the most about winter--the wait between fall and spring. It is timeless. It is frozen. It is a moment to reflect upon the frivolities of summer that needed no analyzation before now. It is a moment to consider who we are, what we are doing and who it is we miss the most.

Still, I am waiting. I am swinging steadily now, resting my head on the bars, curling my toes under to keep them warm. The dog is laying under the swing, snoring. I envy him. I couldn't sleep now if I wanted to. My notebook lays open flat in my lap, a pen poised between my fingers, but I stare off into the distance and let my eyes slide out of focus. That is where I am. Waiting.

Paper Rabbits

This past weekend I was standing in my best friend's kitchen when her mother came through, smacking the Herald Leader down and complaining about one or two of the headlines. It took me a few moments to notice that what she had brought in was, in fact, the newspaper I had been selling months ago at my former job as a cashier at Walgreens.

Significantly smaller, the paper didn't make quite a satisfying smack on the kitchen counter, nor did it bulge with adds for local businesses. It was a simple, flat paper, less than half of its former glory. I noted this to my friend's mother who merely sighed, telling me that since they get the paper every day, she's been able to watch the slow deterioration of something Lexington once prided itself on.

It's become apparent that newspapers are in trouble. With Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL taking over the news circuit, many people believe that print newspapers are in for a heavy hit. With the massive lay-offs on the Herald, I can see they've already been socked a few good times.

Personally, I like the feel of a newspaper. I like to unfold the sections, search for continued articles, read the comics, the editorials, feel the paper between my fingers. Nothing can replace the feeling of a good, thick newspaper under your arm--as much as institutions like Blogger.com are threatening it. There's something concrete about having a newspaper, something I think the majority of the population is faithful to.

Blogs and online newspapers have a place in American society and news today, but I agree with John Carroll when he says in his article "The Future (we hope) of Journalism": Bloggers see themselves as heirs to the pamphleteers who were prominent in the American Revolution. I think they're right. If Thomas Paine were alive, no doubt he'd be blogging away.

There have always been people out their giving their opinions and their own version of the news, but the institution of most newspapers today is just too strong to be wavered by a force like wordpress and blogger. The new technology that has given us these new forms of journalism is really a great thing, but something I don't think will impact the print papers so drastically that I'll have to log onto my computer to read the news every day.

Quite frankly, I don't think the effort is worth it.
A blog, valuable as it is, is simply not an institution with enough heft to stand up to big government and big business. We need institutions of journalism, muscular institutions, not just individual voices. (John Carroll)

1 plus 3

Happy Friday 13th, all.

Today, I advise you to walk under a ladder into a pet shop to buy a black cat who has a deep hatred for mirrors.

Good luck.

Daddy's work shirt was my art smock...

Tomorrow I'll be seeing my dad for the first time this week. My parents aren't divorced or anything, he works the night shift at Toyota--Body Weld department--so I don't see him much at all. It's almost like living in a house all on my own these days with my mom at work or class until nine or ten in the evening and my dad leaving for work at 4. I get home and he's just left and my mom won't be home for a few more hours.

I make dinner for myself.
I wash dishes.
I do my laundry.
I kind of miss my dad a lot.

I remember when I was six, my teacher, Ms. Reedy told me I looked blue when we were getting ready for story time on the reading carpet. She called my dad and he was so upset that he had to get up so early in
the morning to come and get me. When he got to my school, though, he took one look at me and practically carried me home. I had caught the flu for the first time. I think it was the first time I really got to
stay home and bond with my dad. Nowadays whenever my dad and I go out it's usually on errands for my
mom. We think the same way, me and my dad, so, naturally we're completely incompetent in WalMart. I was hoping I would get a chance to go grocery shopping with him again this weekend, but between
Chicken Chow Mein night with Sara and Madi and a visit to Centre, I don't think it's gonna work out.

*sigh*

Sometimes I forget how much I really love my dad. He's the one I inherited my artist-brain from so a lot of times our personalities just meld and I forget how influential he actually was to my writing. Not that my mom wasn't, my dad was just a huge chunk of where I found a love for books, music and movies. I'll go tomorrow to Southland Bowling Lanes to see my dad bowling in a charity tournament with his work. It'll only be about twenty or thirty minutes, but at least I'll get to say I saw him this week at all.

11/12

Good morning all. I hope you've slept well. Today begins another day in the life of a high school senior. Woo.

This morning I discovered six things:
1. Toothpaste is not to be swallowed in large amounts.
2. If you sleep with your hand under the pillow, it might turn blue by morning.
3. If you're going to drive down Springhill Drive at 8 a.m., it's a good idea to have sunglasses.
4. Just because you've been dating someone for four months, doesn't mean they'll take the initiative and be the first one to say, "good morning".
5. Scarves make everything better.
6. Google is the worst place to look for news.

Big news in Grobania (even if I'm a few days late):
Josh Groban's new website is up and running!!!

Ah, another day.
Good morning world, I hope you survive the day.

Here we are, six billion years or so in the making. Some long way we've come from the cave status, huffing around with no indoor plumbing or written language. Some way we've come.

Today, as I was coasting down Main St., on my way to school, I stopped at a red light, peering at my fellow commuters, sipping coffee, enjoying their sacred defrost and morning radio talk shows. Then, as I swiveled my head to the left, I caught a glimpse of Phoenix Park where sleeping bags and shopping carts scattered themselves among the rot iron benches. Shabby men and women laid themselves over blue chess tables like they had lost the world championship of 1981.

Some way we've come.

Samson Went Back to Bed, Not Much Hair Left On His Head

I think it's funny that in the
summer time we write about winter
and in the winter, spring is only a dream.
Though sunlight surges around us
we long for the taste of snow,
the wind on our cheeks.

I've been thinking a lot about the story of Samson and Delilah. I don't know why it intrigues me in the way it does, but I just can't get it out of my mind. Samson made a promise to God that he would never cut his hair. In return, God made Samson strong and powerful. He sent Samson as a Judge to the Israelites to free them from slavery...and Samson didn't exactly follow God's call to a T. He did liberate the people, defeated their offenders, but married outside of his people. Delilah was her name. She cut off Samson's hair in the night, after finding out his secret. He was then captured, weak and without the gift God had given him. This is a man who split a lion in two with his bare hands. This was a man who killed hundreds of men with a "fresh" jaw of a donkey. Suddenly he was weak and vulnerable. He was made to work in a mill for several years, pushing the grinder like an animal.

But the part that facinates me....is that his hair grew back. His hair grew back and his covenent with God grew back and God saw him in favor once more.

A God can be so forgiving?

Unfathomable.

And, this time...I don't say that from a glorifying standpoint. I don't say it as a proclimation to make my reader feel that I have the faith I don't. I say it from the standpoint of a broken, lonely individual. This year has left us battered and bruised. I feel blind to the ways of God. But as sure as the sun rose that day, when Samson pulled the pillars of the pagan temple down with only the arms he was given, God was with him.

God, are you with me?

I sure hope so. I don't think I can do this alone.

At this moment...

After 8,506,644 minutes of life...if my calculations are correct, I have come to four conclustions:

1. God does not want me to know everything.

2. Sleep is not always a guarentee.

3. No one is what they seem.

4. If stick a fork in a microwave, the results will be less than pleasurable.
--
~jack

Reflections on Valentine's Day.

Let me begin by wishing all of those with their "heart in a headlock", a happy (and very late) single aware-...oh, sorry Valentine's Day. I haven't been very on the ball with these blogs, but I promised...

 

For those of you still searching for the perfect prom date, no worries. I hope you had a wonderful day of sitting on your couch eating ice cream. (I recommend Cold Stone Creamery's quart ice cream. It has self-pity written all over it.)

 

Today, reflection.

 

It's amazing how many people spend today going out of their way for the people they love. Yes, I think it's great to show affection. Tis a wonderful thing to do.

 

But is it worth it?

 

First of all, personally, I'm not going to make my boyfriends suffer with those kinds of expectations. Your hand that's all I'm asking for. Your hand and your heart. I don't need a heart-shaped box or something chocolate to tell me your affections. I just need the words and actions that suggest it to me.

 

Secondly, is there any reason we shouldn't be treating people with this kind of affection every day? And if not just the people we love but all people. I mean, no, I'm no saint. There are people that I've been unkind to. I have said that I hated people. I'm not proud of it.

 

So this is as much reflections on myself as it is to the readers.

 

We shouldn't succumb to Hallmark's holiday and just love people on a day set aside for it. Yeah, it's okay if you want to do something special just because it's Valentines Day or whatever, but just make sure you're smiling a little more every other day. Love is universal. Love is forever. Love is Christ. And love is every day everywhere.

 

Then again, what is love? Most people think of love and they get this romantic picture in their heads. There's the guy, a dozen roses, chocolates...and (if you're looking from the guy's point of view) the hot girl with skimpy clothes. Love is something given to one special person (or several special persons who don't know about one another) and is a romantic feeling. Well, maybe for individual relationships there is a tad more intimacy, but love is not just a romantic thing.

 

Well, let's start in John, chapter 13. It's the time of the passover and Jesus is dining with his disciples. (CSB Version)

 

"(1) Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end....(3) Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into His hands, that He had come from God, and that He was going back to God. (4) So He got up from supper, laid aside His robe, took a towel, and tied it around Himself. (5) Next, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples' feet and to dry them with the towel tied around Him."

 

Remember, at this time, you either wore sandals or no shoes at all, so your feet were pretty nasty. The job of washing feet for a dinner, because when you ate, you reclined, was left to the lowest of all slaves in the household.

 

Jesus, the savior of the world, and the one who everyone thought was going to come in as a great and mighty king, took a towel and some water, and washed his disciples' putrid feet. Just think about that.

 

Now, typical Peter, says to Jesus:

 

"(6) He came to Simon Peter, who asked Him, 'Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"

 

Peter, as thick as he had been, was aware of just how Holy Jesus is.

 

"(7)Jesus answered him, 'What I'm doing you don't understand now, but afterwards you will know.'

'You will never wash my feet--ever!' Peter said.

Jesus replied, 'If I don't wash you, you have no part with me.'"

 

Peter didn't realize how low Jesus would go for him. He didn't realize that in a matter of days, Jesus would carry a cross, beaten and broken, to Calvary and would die one of the most horrific deaths for Peter.

 

That is love. That is what love means. Love is not chocolates and talking for hours on the phone and it's not sex. It's not sexual at all. It is giving yourself to another and putting yourself third in life.

(John 13: 12-15;34-35)

Jesus said,

 

"'(12)...Do you know what I have done for you? (13) You call Me Teacher and Lord. This is well said, for I am. (14) So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. (15) For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you.'

....

(34)'I give you a new commandment: love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. (35)By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.'"

 

Love isn't just for one person and it isn't a sexual thing. Love is letting go of selfishness and becoming humble. Humility, self-sacrifice, and "washing feet". We, as Christians, are commanded to love all people with the self-sacrifice of Christ. Regrettably, I can not admit to portraying that amount of love very often. But, I am trying to find love for total strangers and those who aren't so strange through strengthening my relationship with Christ. His example should lead our lives, not sexual desires or little chocolate hearts.

 

Just keep that in mind.

 

 

 

 

Christmas, Snogging, Ostriches and Pecans

first of all:

Children sleeping, snow is softly falling
Dreams are calling like bells in the distance
We were dreamers not so long ago
But one by one we all had to grow up
When it seems the magic's slipped away
We find it all again on Christmas day

Believe in what your heart is saying
Hear the melody that's playing
There's no time to waste
There's so much to celebrate
Believe in what you feel inside
And give your dreams the wings to fly
You have everything you need
If you just believe.

~Josh Groban "Believe" from the major motion picture, "The Polar Express"

I find that in the Christmas "season" (and you'll find out about the quotations later) I do find a warmpth and a bright, cheeriness that I quite enjoy. There's something about the lights glimmering on a Christmas tree, or the way the house smells like those potpouri pine cones that just warms a person from the inside. But I also find that there's a certain flaw in our general Christmas celebrations.

I'm all for getting decked out for Christmas. I love lights and decorations and trees and ornaments and all those inflatable figurines that you put in you lawn...

ok...maybe not those...but, the reality is that retail has gotten the best of all of us. How many times have I stopped, staring at some Christmas spectical and actually thought, Praise be to God...here, I fall prostrate to the Lamb who was born to be slain...???
Only like...once, honestly.
All this Christmas malarky has completly taken a 180 to a holiday I don't even recognize anymore. I don't even care if you celebrate the Santa Christmas or not, look around! Do you see this holiday? I see people stooped in tradition, so focused on shopping and meals and lights and decorations and what they have to do to get ready, that they miss the entire (excuse the cliche) reason for the "season".
This "season" should be a year-round celebration. Sure, it's wonderful to set aside a day or two to really celebrate the birth of our savior...but shouldn't we be celebrating--no rejoicing that fact every waking second of every day?
I look at myself and I'm pretty much ashamed. My spiritual dry-spell has gone on for far too long. I don't get the same chills when I hear music at church anymore. I find myself fighting fits of drousiness and boredom...I'm not paying attention to what's right in front of me. I'm such a stupid, lukewarm hotdog...

But that doesn't mean I don't still keep these wheels turning.

This Christmas, take a minute...just one or two to really ponder this fact:
Christ came in this form--not a cute, innocent baby wrapped in beautiful white cloths and smiling, but one of a cold, shivering infant, huddling to his virgin mother...a lamb. He came as a lamb to be slain. He was the ultimate sacrifice that washed every blimish from our lives before we even existed. He came, willingly as a baby...not to grow and live and teach, but to die. He came to die.
When I look in the lights of the tree this Christmas...I think of the stars that night...and what might have been going through the mind of God. His son, himelf, was being born and would be slain just a few short years later...for me.



Well, the transition from God to snogging is probably not going to be easy, so let's do it the hard way, with all caps and exlimation points!!!!

SNOGGING!!

If you don't already know, snogging is usually a British word used for kissing or making out. Recently, a lot of my friends have been writing blogs about sex and relationships. I thought I'd give the subject a whirl. (Just expressing my feelings on the matter)

Most of you know that I have horrible luck with relationships. No, I think it's better phrased that I SUCK at relationships. (make a pun out of that in your comments and I'll hunt you down) I agree with most people when they say high school is no place to find your soulmate. Like that's seriously gonna happen in the halls of Lafayette High School. Sure. No. It's most likely not.

But those of you out there that are in a relationship and are getting into more and more serious stuff...just know that this will effect your life later. I kid you not, my friends, although they're mostly insignificant, relationships taken to a serious to maybe a physical level will change you. I'm not willing to waste the heartache, or the precious time right now. I'm not interested in this deep, serious stuff.

I know you're sitting there going, "Well you're such a hypocrite, Jack, you're always talking about guys and wanting a date for prom and all that."
This is a true statement.
I do desire to have a boyfriend. But the kind of boyfriend I'm looking for doesn't exist for me right now. I'm only interested in the slowed-up, gentle, casual relationships that call for the occasional need for a hand to hold, a shoulder to sigh into and a dance partner.

Girls, don't degrade yourself and give into all this flirty, "Let's hook up" crap. You're better than that. You're worth more than that. God made you for someone and I'm sure that someone would treat you better.

Guys, don't think you have to be something amazing. You don't need to exert the energy or the valuable time. Work on making yourself better for that one girl. So what if you've hooked up with fifteen girls in the past two weeks? That has no value in the eyes of a girl. She's not thinking about now. When you and her are being intimate, you're both screwing everything up. She's thinking about your futures, while you're thinking about the moment.

(And that doesn't mean all guys think like that, I understand that there are actual exceptions)

So, I guess my point is...I'd rather wait and honor the promise ring on my finger, honor who I am, honor my God than to have "experience".

Speaking of experience. I know you'll all enjoy the story of how my dad can say he's experienced strangling an ostrich.

(that transition was nice, wasn't it?)

Okay.
Step back a few years with me.
It's winter time; Southern Lights is open at the horse park. The Rhorer family is taking their annual trip to see the lights, vendors, museam, model trains and petting zoo. This particular year, the zoo features ostriches and leemurs. The leemurs have no point to this story. I just added them in to see if anyone would tell me whether or not I spelled leemur correctly.
My dad is wearing a Kentucky jacket with pull strings on the sides of the hood. These strings have small shiny clips that keep them at the perfect postition for a person's hood to fit.

Now, it's a commonly known fact that ostriches have a liking for shiny things. They're kleptomaniacs, in other words. So, a particularly friendly ostrich decides to have a bite of my dad's cone full of animal feed....and eventually,
a bite out of my dad's jacket.
My father, being the brilliant man of strategy that he is, decides to strangle the ostrich in order to get back a clip that it had just swallowed.
Yes, this is my family.
So there is my father, in the middle of a petting zoo, face scrunched in anger, strangling an ostrich for some coat clips.
Needless to say...the ostrich wasn't there the next year.

So, that was my random story for the day. Please excuse the excessive rantings and random jumps from one point to another. It's 1:40 am and I'm tired. I hope you enjoyed hearing about my father's fights with beast. We're definatly not members of PETA


....


Goodnight, and good luck.

yes, I do realize that I forgot to mention Pecans...


ah, but now I have.

Protective Bubble

I'm fairly certain, as I waste valuable "get ready" time this morning,
that Fayette County public schools have a protective weather bubble
over them. Every county in the state could be out for bad weather and
who's still in school?
Us.
I mean I really shouldn't be complaining since we were out yesterday
and it is the last week before break....

But...

I make it my life's goal to destroy that bubble...