My sister has decided that she really wants something called a "wallflower" for the basement. It is an air freshener that works really well and she hopes that it will mask the rather potent smell of my brothers body spray. It smells great on him in person, but it should have a label warning against the choking fumes that fill the basement every morning. Thus I have begun keeping tabs on sales and specials at Bath and Body Works where they sell these wallflowers. Today an advertisement popped up with the fragrance Snow Apple Mint. Now, generally I find fragrance names somewhat melodramatic. Nothing like the difference between "Exotic Coconut" and "Creamy Coconut" to make you give up entirely. Or how about "Moonlight Path"? What is that supposed to smell like? Whatever the case, I can usually come up with the idea that that thing or situation would smell like something. But Snow? Snow doesn't smell... Sure, other things smell when you have snow. I associate the smell of snow with wood and sap because that was always on my snow gloves from having hauled firewood as a kid. But that is not typical. I also object to the fragrance name because snow, apple and mint sound like a very strange combination. What are these people thinking?
Universities gather people together in the same stage of life and experience (generally) and puts them all in the same bale. But afterward everyone is threshed and beaten. The grain of who each person is mixed in with people from other parts of the field. Some grew near the edge with the weeds. Others weren't fertilized the same. A few were near the path and barely escaped being eaten by the birds.
And while this metaphor breaks down at a certain point, I have come to realize that after some life is lived it is hard to find others at the same point in that growth. It is hard to build community when my life experience is so wildly different from most people I know. Getting to know people is hard and complicated.
I had a friend visit this week. One of my dearest friends, Katie lived with me for 2 years in the ME. She and I talked for hours and hours and hours. We never ran out of words before we ran out of energy for speaking. We didn't even just talk about our time in the ME. We know each other's hearts.
I have come to be so much more thankful for the friendships and community that God has given me over the last years. It wasn't always easy, no... but God provided kindred spirits and fellowship. He will do so again.
I don't feel inspired to write. But I was reading a blog today by a professional writer that said that she wrote everyday even when she didn't feel inspired. Lots of people go do their jobs when they don't feel like it. They have to... so also, she had to. I don't HAVE to, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't put in the effort to even try.
I'm working on learning how to do some things with my writing. I want to play with words, be poetic, make pictures and laugh. I want my words to somersault and back flip across people's minds.
He comes in every week to chat with me. He tells stories and laughs and laughs. He loves to play with word images and some of the ones that come out in our conversations are fascinating. He knows about Christians, occasionally quotes Bible verses, but doesn't really understand the heart of the gospel. But I think he's beginning to get curious.
The last couple of weeks we've been talking about light and sunsets and color. It all began with a discussion about my upcoming newsletter that I was writing.
Then today he told me that a group of Christians had a party in or near his front yard (not sure where exactly). And they glowed with light like we had been talking about. He enjoyed that light and basked in it in his living room rocking chair like someone who goes to California for vacation sun. But he can't live there, he said. He's too dark.
He does things like go to the Burning Man festival. They burn some huge statue or something. He admitted that that was a man-made fake, a counterfeit attempting to be real light. We discussed how its size is trying to make up for the lack of true light, that it is missing reality.
It made me think of the Israelites in the desert making a golden calf because although they had experienced God they wanted something earthly.
But he says he's too dark. God is showing him light.
Do you know how old these 5 and 1/4 inch floppy disks are? Do you know how many people keep these things? Do you know anyone who has the capabilities of reading them?
Those are my excuses for it having been three weeks since I last posted. The first is a lame excuse since I don't actually work as much as I should. It was the second that really devastated me. Unfortunately for Mr. Procrastination who was getting fat and happy, I found my camera yesterday. Now I only have to go get photos of all the things I thought of taking pictures of for the blog... yeah.
As a teenager people told me I was all about Jesus and flowers. I remember feeling a bit miffed that they thought I could be so easily defined and put in a box. But if I were going to be "all about" only two things... these would be a good two.
I've decided that I really like bright colors. Growing up, I was always a pastels and neutrals kind of girl. And while I LOVE the white and pale blue kitchen at my home in the ME, I also like the colors that I recently painted my mother's kitchen here in the U.S. They were inspired, in part, by this Turkish bowl: I really like the Turkish pottery you can find in Istanbul. It's all so bright and cheerful. And yellow is such a sunshiny color. As a child my color was yellow... yellow cup, yellow blanket, etc. But painting the kitchen yellow? Nope.
The walls and cupboards used to be off-white and the curtain a medium green color (before picture will come later). And now the walls are red... my mother calls it fire engine red. It really isn't the color we planned, it's brighter than the paint chip said it would be. But I'm okay with that! The curtain is gold yellow and we've just finished painting some little flower pots yellow to put some little herbs in on the window sill. White trim and some black accents also play a part in the room. My parents were also inspired to redo the flooring (which hasn't happened yet). It's going to be lovely when it is all finished. I'll post pictures of the project then.
It's amazing how an ordinary vase of flowers, a broken chair, or a simple meal can be transformed by a little bit of sunlight streaming through a window. Suddenly it looks gourmet even though it was thrown together by three girls in a tiny kitchen with whatever they could find. And it's beautiful.
How often would a little vision of the light of Christ transform our personal worlds from the ordinary to the extraordinary?
While visiting some friends Katie and I found another cockroach. She killed it with my shoe. Chacos could come up with a new advertising campaign... "Our shoes can kill cockroaches excellently!" Well, I'm sure that the people they pay to come up with slogans could do better than that, but the concept is there.
Back at the house other roommates put the cockroach spray to good use spraying one that showed up on Molly's bed. That's scary. In bathrooms is bad... but beds? This is too far. Maybe they get a point for that one?
Coming up with a good scoring system for the cockroach war is a bit difficult. As of right now, we have killed 2. That makes a pretty good score. But as we hardly expect any of them to kill us... Their score is made up of the number of them we have seen since last kill. I realize this probably isn't fair. Their score should be higher as there are probably more that we haven't seen lurking about under our cupboard and in the drain in our bathroom. But since that thought is a little unnerving we'll imagine that only 2 still survive in the toilet room.
Yesterday we decided we needed to increase our technological level as shoes were a bit hit and miss... maybe too much "miss". So Katie bought a large spray can of Roach Killer and it now lives on the back of our toilet, a monument to the genocide we plan to inflict. Living in the shadow of Saddam Hussein's era and the chemical warfare he choreographed has not prevented us from agreeing that there is a time and a place for such things. This should be much easier to employ than a shoe when sometime after midnight, one of us walks bleary eyed into the bathroom and switches on the light to find one of the unwanted guests scuttling across the floor. Look on this, ye roaches, and despair!
Previously our only method of attack was for about four of us girls to each grab a shoe and stand around the bathroom door on our tip-toes. Katie managed to stand on the toilet and cover the drain to cut off its way of escape. Then, we attacked. It ran, there was screaming, but by the end the cockroach was a small pile of brown slime. As I said however, that is not the preferred method.
I look forward to seeing the new chemicals in action. But the war has gone cold since the arrival of the new weapon. Have they gone into permanent hiding? Did they smell the scent of death? We are waiting to find out!
One of my students wrote a note thanking me for teaching him this year. He gave me one of the best compliments I've ever received. He said, "You taught me how to control my temper." Wow...
We finished the yearbook. Have you ever known 2 people to take on a project like that? It was ridiculous. I'll never do it again. Katie should never do it again. I saw the other side of midnight several times.
Now we laugh hysterically over nonsense. We're all sleep deprived. Kirsten is throwing popcorn at Molly. And we discuss European culture and breaking the awkward social barriers.
So I found out today that I really was on the news the other night. My roommate and I, having come to see the opening of Prince of Persia, hadn't counted on the camera crews. We enjoyed the movie... but we're not sure about whether or not we like being celebrities just for being foreigners.
Has anyone ever told you that you sound like your doing well? An e-mail or short phone call... and somehow they think you must be in excellent spirits. Why do people say stuff like that? If they are wrong are you supposed to say, "No actually... life is rough right now, I'm just smiling to keep from making everyone else's lives just as bad." Not that my life is bad right now... I'm just curious about the comment, especially when it is applied to an e-mail. I guess I am sounding good right now... hmm... what is it that spurs people on to make that comment at some times and not others. What specific words or phrases make that come to mind. It is only a question.
1. That I am not afraid of being stranded on the side of the road in Iraq. (Which is where I was on Saturday.) 2. That I found a bright yellow duplo in my purse that somehow got there from children's church. 3. That the house is quiet right now. 4. That while life is hard, and I'm sick all the time, there is no where else I'd rather be. 5. That our power switches over automatically and I don't have to flip any switches when it does. 6. That friends are coming into town this week and we need the outer society.
When I'm speaking another language I usually assume that if it doesn't make sense I must not be understanding correctly. So, when a taxi driver turned back and asked me how long my husband had been dead I got a bit confused.
"No, no... I don't have a husband," I protested. Unfortunately that didn't really help explain things.
"Where did he die? Here? America?" the taxi driver persisted.
"No, nothing. No husband; dead or alive..." I struggled to try to say something like this but I made him only more confused. Then he pointed to a ring on the ring finger of my right hand.
Oh. I laughed. "No, this is just to be pretty." He then told me that that wasn't a pretty place for a ring. I guess here if you wear a gold colored ring on that finger then it means you were widowed. Oops.
I love rainy days. I love to curl up with a blanket and the wet cool smells and read a book. But reading books is hard when the lights go out. And if it is rainy with no electricity then it is also dark... which means it is very dark in the house which then tempts me to take a nap, which isn't the very best use of my time. Hmm....
One of my housemates has a bed that broke the other night. Her bed has broken a few times over the past years. Tonight she told us that the bed was old. Poor bed. Then it was revealed that the bed was a whole six years old. How is that an old bed?
Somehow, one of my kids got a hold of a Jesus action figure. If you press a button in his back he speaks random sentences from the Sermon on the Mount. He was the most muscly Jesus I have ever seen.
This is my inventor. This week he came up with a way to have 3 bottles of water all connected by straws. There was another straw that came up near his mouth so that he hardly had to move to take a drink. He's a genius. =)
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day , What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see The lost are like this, and their scourge to be As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
I'm having thoughts! It's so refreshing to have some time off and to be able to use some of that time to rediscover that I have a brain that does more than compute the problems right in front of me. Instead of fixing what's broken, there is something in me that wants to create what is beautiful. This has been an insane desire in me for as long as I can remember. It gets crowded out by the imminent and the urgent, but every now and then it is rebirthed and I am filled with the hope that I could write, draw, sculpt, sing, or create something beautiful. It doesn't have to be me by myself. The desire is somewhat fulfilled by planting hyacinth bulbs in pots by the window where God certainly does the work of it. Speaking of which, I need to go buy more dirt... Or wait, maybe I should pull out my paper and make cards... or what about my sewing? And it's been years since I wrote any poetry. Hmm... now for the choice.
I have difficulty distinguishing between fireworks and gunfire. The other night was definitely guns... I THINK tonight it's fireworks. But it is still slightly unnerving.
Finding the right jili kurdi fabric is a difficult adventure. There are so many to patterns to pick from, so many combinations, and so many styles and colors. Recently I took a couple of friends to pick out fabric for their own dresses. It was so much fun and both of them had a great "Aha" moment where the right fabric came into view. That's the one! Hooray! And then there was cutting and buying and smiling. Here's one with her teal blue over shiny blue and the bluish sequin near her is another part of it! Release your inner Barbie!
How do you conquer a spirit of negativity? Not up and clear statements, just a regular attitude towards certain people or certain things. Why does it permeate and spread so quickly and so deep? What if I can't do anything about the source? Like a muddy rain that keeps coming, trickling down the face of the everything, making them all tan and brown. I can't get at the sky to make it stop raining. I cannot clean the air to keep it from being full of dirt. All I can do is pray for God to blow the dust away and then wash the car... again.
All I can smell right now is dust. I taste dust. Fine, tan, everywhere dust. The world is sepia with ten feet of visibility. Our car was white and clean at two this afternoon. By five-thirty it was splotchy tan. Now, by nine o'clock, there is nothing white left. I'm considering starting a garden on the roof.
I'm from Idaho... I live halfway around the world from Idaho. So, you can imagine my surprise when one of my students has a sweatshirt that reads "Idaho State" on it. I stopped halfway through a sentence and asked him where he got the shirt. He got it here somewhere. How odd. Maybe the world is smaller than I thought!
People in the States get annoyed with campaigning and elections. I know I did. All those commercials, all the news media. Well, even here you can be thankful. Be thankful that half the city's populations doesn't spend all night driving slowly, honking, and waving flags in large groups. Be thankful that banners and posters don't plaster every wall, or that flags and fliers don't drape every light post.
So I've been telling my kids some stories lately of when I was a kid and their age. They've loved them. Most of it seems normal to me, of course... but they are fascinated. It makes me a real person to them and hopefully teaches them some of the things I've learned. But I can't spend all my class time telling them stories of my life. One of my students suggested that I write some of the stories down. So, I'm going to give it a try. I'll write and print them out here and staple them together and sell them to the kids. (Even basic photocopies are more expensive here than in the States.) They sounded interested and excited. Now I know what to do with all my "free time"! Funny.
