An Excerpt

I have been reading 'The Last of the Mohicans' sporadically over the past few months. Unlike most books, I find I want to take my time. This book isn't so much about the story as it is about the eloquent choice in words and arrangements for me. Something has been lost in our modern day literature; a richness. It's a difference between Hershey's and old fashioned fudge.

Towards the beginning of the novel there is a part in which a few Indians guiding two rich women and a young gentleman. The Indians are interested in what the youths talents or trade is, and they respond with music.

" 'Tis a strange calling!" muttered Hawkeye, with an inward laugh, "to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats. Well, friend, I suppose it is your gift, and musn't be denied any more than if 'twas shooting, or some other better inclination. Let us hear what you can do in that way....

...The air was solemn and slow. At times it rose to the fullest compass of the rich voices of the females, who hung over their little book in holy excitement, and again it sank so low, that the rushing of the waters ran through their melody, like a hollow accompaniment. The natural taste and true ear of David governed and modified the sounds to suit the confined cavern, every crevice, and cranny of which was filled with the thrilling notes of their flexible voices. the Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone. But the scout, who had placed his chin in his hand, with an expression of cold indifference, gradually suffered his rigid features to relax, until, as verse succeeded verse, he felt his iron nature subdued, while his recollection was carried back to boyhood, when his ears had been accustomed to listen to similar sounds of praise, in settlements of the colony. His roving eyes began to moisten, and before the hymn was ended, scalding tears rolled out of fountains that had long seemed dry, and followed each other down those cheeks, that had oftener felt the storms of heaven than any testimonials of weakness. The singers were dwelling on one of those low, dying chords, which the ear devours with such greedy rapture, as if conscious that it is about to lose them...."

pg 54

What simple beauty! I felt this passage have the same effect on me as the music did on the young scout.

My eyes devour this literature in slow greedy raptures...

waking up early

Have you ever seen the sparrows fly from bush to bush?
Or the white cat basking in the sunlight amongst the spry?
Have you ever smelled the bread factory at 7:43?
Yes, it smells the best at 7:43, and it's morning.
Have you ever seen the beauty of a village in the rising sun?
It's so much that the tired flees from your eyes.
Have you ever seen the messy frock of hair on top of the corn stalk?
They laze out of their beds in slow patience.
Have you ever taken a bus to go down the mountain?
You can see fog from above, feeling closer to God.
Oh, but have you ever seen Bazna in morning?
Yes, then you'd know what I'm talking about.

just paper

"These incidents made the youth ponder. It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He had been a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he has overcome obstacles which he has admitted to be mountains. they had fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he called a hero. And he had not been aware of the process. He had slept and, awakening, found himself a knight." --The Red Badge of Courage

I find that I can relate to Henry Flemming (the youth) in this book. I feel, now more then ever, that my life is like a battle front. Barbaric, inhumane, struggling for survival, wearisome, wounded, and death in plain sight surrounding me.
I had my rifle at the ready at your funeral.
My head throbs and pulsates, reminding me of my wounds.
I move from front to front, and it all looks the same; death, dead, decay.
Yet, there is an origami sun in the sky,
eloquent clouds sewn into the soft blue mass,
water rippling in the same direction as always,
and the wind who faithfully combs my hair into tangles.

I do hope these Mountains before me will fall like paper peaks, I don't have will to fight those as well. So I'll throw little mustard seeds at them until they topple to the ground.
after all, they're just paper.

I miss
I want
I am needing
Oh, You are still good to me, Dad!!

I want to rest, and awake a victor!

resurrect me

I died with you that day
water poured from my face
as a car crashed into a hydrant
the pain exudes from my veins
my heart failed
I screamed
I threw up
I wailed
and then...
death subdued me

I was a walking corpse
a dead limb
a plumb picked
and spit out
I was trampled to vinegar
and then...
silence

I flew 5,000 miles away
I sit sipping my coffee
as I listen to John sing
'10,000 rivers run red like my veins'
suddenly before me
like a child's pop up book
beauty is unfolded
and then...
a beat of my heart, a breath in my lung

I feel the little child in me awake
I feel a piece of me shifted
as I listen to John sing
'I've overcome you world'
I feel as the woman in front of me
her hair the same shade of red as her jacket
and then...
I can see again

I see:
The little boy troubled
the young girl doubled
a man's shirt that says
'Truth is nobody'
The Jewish man; glasses and a cigarette
the old woman in love
and then...
beautiful sound like a symphony

I am slowly coming back to myself
the thing that surprises me so;
it is all so much more beautiful the second time
the clouds and all that I hated when I awoke this morning
are no longer trite after the waking 10 minutes ago
HE is resurrecting the dead in me

I am scared of letting you go, Chris
but I know that can never happen
until then...
I'm alive and breathing in the beauty

writing from the train

I am on a train to Cluj.
I dread writing, because I am worn of expression.
Even the thought of a mere pen and paper gives me staticity in my temples.
staticity isn't a real word.
I am frustrated right now.
When I cry I have this aching pressure in my chest.
I like to think of it as butterflies to the masochistic.
A few hours ago I was on the mountain top, where the Lord was romancing me.
Now I am fighting for my life, in a valley somewhere in the thick of war.
the seasons are changing too fast.
I am growing in love and longing too fast, it's like weeds shooting up amongst the spry.
The thing I am most frustrated about, and the thing that makes me fitful, not only in sleep but in life; you're still gone.
I have lost my will for many things:
I am easily upset
easily hurt
easily emotional
not every plate, guitar, or even cigar in this world could curb the way I feel right now.
I want to be over it
I want to be ok
I want Chris
I want to be patient
I want to love freely
I want to be alone
I want to be the crowd
I want to be understood
I want to be allowed to be angry
I want to be silent
I want to trust
I want to be done with the process
I want to configure time
I want to squish the world like a grape
I want to declare my love over and over like a childish child
I want to be old and almost done
I want to be young with wonder abounding
I want to want only YOU
I want to be honest
I want to be known
I want to know the Lord
I want to know how to be
I don't want to control
I hate everything that is happening
I love everything the Lord is doing in the happening
I don't want to be asked "what's wrong?"
I don't want everyone to walk on egg shells around me
I thought today would be different, but it isn't
everyday is the same since you left, and I don't know what to do
I am wanting

Steal, KILL, and Destroy

DEATH
he has come
to kill
murder
slaughter
mutilate
LIFE
HE has come
to overcome
to make a way
to trample the grave
to make us
ONE
in Him
free from sin
delivered again
until the
END

How I long to be free from this body of death!
I have become ever aware of satan's intentions to kill. I had a beloved friend pass away this last week. She jumped off an overpass unto the highway. She was a gentle and God-fearing woman with a husband and two immaculate kids. How it tortures me when I consider the grip of death and how it constricted all hope from her spirit. I can never know what she was thinking, or really why she did what she did, but I love her and I mourn for her and her family.

We can't give in to death
only to His love
which brings us life

I was dead in my transgressions
and now I am alive
I'm ALIVE
in the great hope of His coming
I'm ALIVE
I will forever glorify Him


He's worthy of my life

I Just Want to Write

I feel like writing...
Not writing for the sake of communicating really, and if it were for that purpose I would have to communicate that I only want to write to feel the keys under my fingertips or to hear the sound of clicking as I tap away at them.
I am in the mood to write...
I watched a film with Gregory Peck in it tonight called The Snows of Kilimanjaro, it is indeed oxygen to my imagination. In the story Gregory is a writer and he is traveling the world. There were many other story lines in the movie, but this one had my mind meddling to the end. I could barely focus on the picture, for I was too busy imagining my own life looking as his. I want to write books, they would be about the places I have gone and the people I have met.
I want to write, and yet I have all the things I want to write stored away in my head. I haven't quite mastered the technique or discipline rather, of actually writing it all down. When I do, however, get overwhelmed with my lack of expression and decide to spit it all out, it is so therapeutic that I wonder I don't do it daily or maybe always. I sometimes wonder why the Lord didn't make me a mute left only with my written word to communicate the musings of my heart. Yet I am left with a tongue that works and very much so to my dismay.
I am deciding now as I type, and as I listen to the hum of my fathers computer and the clicking of the keys, that I will become more disciplined. I do hope that this discipline won't take away from the passion, but enable it. If I find myself going there I will do away with the disciplines and settle with the fact that writing is not what I am meant to do as a title, but more as a subtitle. I shall then go on with the therapeutic every once and awhiles that always seem keep me coming back.
Until then....

Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."
-Billy Collins

Melody Galore

Here I am again, the airport. The effect has the same high on my heart every time I find myself here. I’m exhausted, because I haven’t slept properly in 3 days. We traveled two hours through the Romanian countryside to the Cluj Airport, leaving the house at 5 a.m. My eyes are swollen from the tears that seem to come so easily, and oh how I feel like a spoiled brat when I cry about leaving.

I sit in the small waiting room, looking out of the window as the sun peaks over the skyline. As I watch the deep orange bleed into the rest of the dark sky, the wrinkles in my forehead smooth. I am relaxed here, I am saying goodbye as I sit. The florescent light above an important looking businessman is flickering. There is another man pacing the floor in front of me, I can tell he just bought new shoes because of the fresh squeak that sounds as he carefully avoids the cracks in the floor. There are three old ladies to my left with obviously dyed dark cotton candy hair hovering above their heads. Their bright pink lipstick makes my eyes wander back to the skyline. I am thanking the Lord for the beauty that surrounds me, and just then I hear the song. The florescent light is keeping the tempo, the squeaking, the laughter of the ladies; the plasma screen tv with ridiculous adds is like a strobe light, the flapping wings of the birds flying across the skyline. It’s all being sung for me, oh the melody of goodbye.

The intercom calls us forward like cows or sheep to board the plane, and there is peace in my heart, as the anthem resounds all around me. What a clamorous parade bidding me a fond farewell, and as soon as I step unto the plane, the music fades behind me, and all that’s left is what’s in front.

Some 13 hours later, two flights down one more to go, I sit on the floor in Washington DC. I have a long layover here, so I treat myself to some Wendys, my first American food in 2 months (the dr. pepper was astounding). As I walk back to my gate, a new song begins to sing. There is a track team sitting together on gate D16 all of them laying with heads on each other’s stomachs listening to their ipod’s. I notice their feet swinging with the music.

There is a little 6 year-old blonde girl racing her dad to the end of the hall, she screams “Dad, I have to tell you something!” and he slows down and says “what?” and she races on faster and screams “NOTHING, gotchaaa!!!” she reaches the end of the hall, joy in her cheeks, and victory in her eyes. She is holding her pink croc shoes in each hand, and her dad is laughing remembering where she had learned that little trick.

I smile as the melody begins to build; the window to my left shows an airplane as it is taking off. The feet in front of me that are passing swiftly, and slowly, some meanderingly, others fast, and still others most contentedly. The blinking boarding light keeps the tempo, and the giddy laughter of the victorious 6 year-old is the pitch. The anthem is singing for my return, tears in my eyes and a smile on my face I give my gratitude to the Lord.

It was the perfect end to a perfect season in the perfectly anything but perfect Bazna, Romania. I am ever grateful for the memories I have acquired, the things I have learned, and the opportunity to be apart of it all.

I believe my guitar experience has expanded as I did my weekly sets, singing and playing. I believe my heart has received some of the purest forms of love then ever before in my life. I know for a fact I have learned many things in the presence of the Lord, the presence of the people, and even about myself as I was there.

I am sorry to see the end to such a perfect time, and yet ever excited for the things that are to come. All I know is I’m running, I’m going for it, I am going to live for the fullest that He has for me. All the while, I will sing to Him my gratitude, and He will orchestrate a symphony of goodbyes, welcome homes, farewells, and ‘have a nice flights’ all for me. My heart swells with every beat and every flow of this melody galore.

Into the Blue

You probably already know about my deep love and admiration for my only brother, Wesley. He is most assuredly my very best friend! Out of this bond, there has been a birthing of new interests and passions. The things I see in his heart begin to open up in mine, things I would have never thought twice about had I not seen it so alive in his life. For example: Football, when I was little I hated the game. Upon playing for the first time with my brother, I began to love it. It was a sort of awakening in my heart the first day I caught the ball. I feel it in spurts, once again, whenever my fingers feel the rough surface as I catch a beautiful spiral pass.
One of the passions awakened in my heart through the love and admiration of my brother, was indeed literature. I hated so much to read when I was younger that I don't think I finished my first chapter book until I was well into fourth grade. I was very slow at learning to read, because the whole idea seemed dreadful to me. Whereas my brother, after coming home from his first day of school, sat down and read aloud the newspaper to my mother. She was shocked when she realized he wasn't just making up the words, but was actually reading them. For my brother, reading was never something he learned, he just knew it.
I think I was in 6th grade when my brother read to me for the frst time, and ever since then, I devoured books as if they were chocolate or even saltwater toffee. As a gift, Wesley gave to me the first book he ever read to me, Eagle and Dove, is the name. It is a story of a dove who escapes from the claws of the eagle, and almost certain death, by wit and cunning. I don't know if it was the way Wesley read it, or if it was some secret life-form within the words themselves, but my heart was enamored. I remember the feeling in my chest as I listened to the flow of the words springing from his mouth like a waterfall. I will never forget it, this is one of my most treasured and beloved memories!

"You were trying to get away. But I shall surely have you," he said with hoarse laughter.
'The dove realized at once that the only way out would be through wit and cunning. To beg and lament would not help, she knew, for eagles have no feeling for doves. But the eagle might possibly be receptive to gratitude. So she said, "If you let me live, great eagle, then among all the doves who fear and hate you, there will be one who will be grateful!"
'The eagle, who had already lifted his claw to seize the dove in the crevice, stood back again on both legs and said, "It pleases me that you are not begging for your life but trying, instead, to bargain with me sensibly and quietly. That tends to influence me in your favor, since I enjoy talking with sensible birds. But do not think that it will save you. It will, at most, only delay your end. By the way, I must add that your gratitude does not mean a thing to me. The gratitude of doves does eagles little honor!"
'The dove, who had anxiously withdrawn deep into the rocky crevice, noticed while the eagle was talking that there was a slight breeze blowing on her tailfeathers. Feeling around, she found a small hole in the wall of the rock, and behind the hole, she reasoned, there must be an empty space. She also noticed that the back wall consisted of light gravel and that it was possibly to enlarge the hole with her strong tailfeathers. If she could widen the hole enough to slip through, then she could escape from the eagle. But for that she needed time.
'She thought quickly. With mere chatter she could not hold off the eagle long enough. She had to intrige him in a different way. And then she remembered Sheherazade, who saved her life by telling stories for 1,001 nights.
'I don't need that much time' thought the dove. 'Two hours are sufficient. By then the hole will be large enough to slip through. But can I divert the eagle for that long?'
This question went through her mind just as the eagle said, "The gratitude of doves does eagles little honor."
The clever dove connected her first story to this sentence. "Great eagle," she said, "you have changed the saying! It really goes: The gratitude of spiders does people little honor. You probably know the story....."

Oh how the words of this book brings me back to a time where I was careless and free. I will never forget those times. When my brother gave this to me as a gift, I found an inscription inside on the first page:
"...I give to you this book so you can remember, that you and I will always escape from the eagles of life and find ourselves flying again, free, and alive, into the blue."

olive

Claudius and I have a little bit of a disagreement about olives. He believe black olives are the best, and I think green ones are. So occasionally he will bring it up, and express his love and devotion to black olives, and I will stay stubbornly favorable to green.
Yesterday, we went grocery shopping, and as we ventured to the deli I saw his eyes lite up when he saw the selection of olives available. So he ordered 100mg of black olives and was about to leave when I ordered 100mg of green olives. He gave me this face like I was blaspheming the name of olives. I just laughed and we went our way shopping in Koufland!
Later that night after dinner, Noami and a few others including Claudius and I were all relaxing and telling stories. I told them all about Claus' reaction to my buying the green olives and they laughed. He then boldly asked me to go get the olives. When I returned with the containers, he took mine and picked out a decent looking gloriously green olive and stuck it in his mouth. His reaction was like a two year old who just had a taste of lemon or vinegar. I have never seen a 30 year old man make a face like this. I am laughing just remembering it! After he choked down the olive, he was out of breath and exclaimed "THAT COULD KILL A DOG, KIRSTEN!!!" We were all laughing. So I stuck one in my mouth, and I will admit it to you, it was pretty disgusting. Green olives taste much different here then in America. I don't know if it was my pride or something in me that loved the disagreement, but I acted as if I had just eaten a golden egg or a chunk of the finest chocolate :))! He freaked out and snatched the black olives from my hand. Before eating them he kissed the tips of his fingers and waved his hands in pure joy and excitement.
Who could have thought olives would bring out the child-likeness in a man? I don't know, but I love it!

cancer

When I saw where they had made the incision, a lump began to grow in my throat.

I have been fortunate enough to have never had a close encounter with cancer of any kind. I believe my grandma had a cancer, but she lives many hours away, and I never actually saw her suffering. Growing up, whenever I thought about cancer, I thought of some parasitical sickness that sucks the joy, health, life, and beauty out of you until you are left with a broken family, and a broken spirit unto slow and painful death. I always imagined, in a morbid kind of way, how it would be to wake up and your hair to be left unattached lying on your pillow. The horror of the first time you would see yourself truly naked and exposed. I can't imagine anyone going through cancer or having to stand next to a loved one as they are fighting this losing battle. I like how Ben Gibbard says it "love is watching someone die.."

Well it wasn't so with Lenuta (lay-new-st-ah). She is a mother of many, with five children that are flesh of her flesh, and 7 that she has taken in from homelessness. The first time I saw her, I was hit so strongly by a beauty even an eagle couldn't capture with just one glance. I sat and stared at her for minutes, my mouth open. Her bald head confidentely hatless, left for everyone's stares. I don't know if it was the confidence that made her beauty so renown, or if it was her stark bold eyes. I tried to decide wether it was the way her skin glowed even on a cloudy day, or the way her eyes smiled at the little esoteric realities. This is beauty inexplicable.

She is a victim of cancer, and yet she holds none of the traits I had ever imagined. Her spirit is everything but broken, wild and untameable, yet easily peacable and patient.

I was shocked when she lifted her shirt that day to show me the incision that left her only half a woman, and I was awed as I realized she was more of a woman then I had ever seen in my own gender. Mind you, it was no facade, I have seen her daily for the past month and a half, and not one meeting has left me less amazed.

I have beheld a beauty that can withstand even the most perverse sickness. I have come to the conclusion that it isn't the smile of her eyes, or the glowing of her skin, or the essence that surrounds her, or her confidence, nor all these put together that proclaims her undeniable beauty. I believe it is her spirit within that has withstood even to the face of death that is the declaration of her beauty. I have never beheld Christ's beauty through flesh with my own two eyes, and when I say that I mean TRULY Christ's perfect beauty, and I believe He is radiating through her very essence. I feel the intimate bond she has with Him, and I too know she doesn't fear death, not in the slightest!

So I will say, "SHINE ON!" That others might behold and give glory to the One, as I am glorifying Him now.

I will not desire beauty, but I desire HIS!

Instead

Instead

When I feel like taking a bath, and I want to stay in until the water gets cold, because it is the only place I can truly be alone. Instead I add bubbles and make up a song to sing.
When I feel like staying in bed for 30 minutes after I wake up, just to think about it all. Instead, I will get up and do Cinderella's morning routine (minus the mice).
When I feel like wasting my time to look at all the pictures on their facebook, the ones I am no longer apart of (or ever was for that matter). Instead, I go and look at photography on flickr. When I look at beautiful pictures, I can't help it but I always cry.
When I feel like closing the door and pushing my back into the heater mounted on the wall. Instead, I will fling the door wide open and dive into the day as if it were deep water.
When I am afraid, and I want to stay quite. Instead, I will tell stories of my childhood to remember who I am.
When I am hurt, and I want to hate. Instead, I will lay in the arms of my Beloved, and let Him whisper my heart back to life and into love!

Today is that day. I am diving in with a humbled heart, and a new tune in my head, with confidence in my beloved. I will not be afraid, I will choose love.
I will always choose love!

remembered or forgotten, this is love

I thought of my stomach as a furnace heating the rest of my body, yet easily forgetting my fingers and toes, as I drank the last of my hot tea. We sat across from each other with blankets draped across our shoulders, as most girls do. Our empty cups now abandoned to the floor, left to be forgotten.

"What is your favorite memory of him?" I pried
I spoke of her husband, they are in their first year of marriage, and yet it seems as if something is missing already. She smiled, and I knew she already had a memory picked out, yet she delayed and then spoke;

"In the beginning of our relationship, he would always help me with the work on the house. I liked this! Now, He is busy and doesn't have much time, you know?"
I saw the pain of her neglect, yet the desire to be understanding of him with the way her head tilted to the side.

"Well, once I was hanging the clothes on the..."
She motioned as if she were hanging clothes on a line. Sometimes we have to play charades, because of our own language barrier.

"Line?" I asked
"Da (yes), on the ...line. He came to help me with this, and as we were working he would move the clothes and make faces at me, and just playing around. It was fun, I don't know why, but this is my favorite memory."

Never in all of my life have I pictured something as perfect between two people in my head, as this. I adore the fact that she didn't say a memory of the time when they went here, or the time he took her there, it was just a time when they were simply together.

She would have her hair piled on top of her head, and wouldn't have any make-up on, because she was just doing chores. How the sun would be alight making everything bright, and all of the particles caught up in the spring wind visible. He would come from around the house, and at the very sight of him walking to her she would smile. He would move the damp towel hanging between them, and kiss her hello, and oh how it would be a kiss like James Stewart and Grace Kelly, for a moment they would forget about chores. She would blush and eventually take another shirt from the basket signaling him to go away or help, and of course he would help. He would do anything to be near her, and to make her laugh. He is addicted to being noticed by her. Every so often he would lift the clothes between them and make faces, completely enraptured by her reaction. Soon they would make a game out of who could hang the most clothes in the shortest amount of time. I can imagine the way they would laugh together.

This is love.

I picture my stomach as a furnace warming my heart, as I drink these day dreams down. Valentines day is approaching, and it has me thinking about "loovvee." Even though I don't have my own someone to kiss through a cloths line, I do hope I will, one day. I am sure it will become a favorite memory among many to me as well. I find myself hoping that he will remember this, and show her that he isn't too busy, and that he certainly hasn't forgotten.

Nuka

I am ruined with a simplistic lifestyle, I am absolutely ruined! I can never go back to the way it was, business as stubborn as a determined woodpecker pecking away at your skull into your brain.
After today I realized, I have been living my life with a constant heaviness, after awhile you forget you're carrying extra weight. Then a hard day will ome along and you mulfunction, but you live and continue to do so, added weight building all the while.
I felt the burden lift today, "how?" you ask.
I sat on a hard wooden floor next to a wood burning furnace, and cracked walnuts for hours.
As I was sitting there peeling back the sharp shell to reveal the sweet golden meat, I felt the weight evaporate with the heat of the furnace. I realized somthing, for once I wasn't rushing, for once I could take my time. I enjoyed cracking the nuts and hearing their stories, and what beautiful stories they were.
In this day I have tasted patience, and contentment, and simplicity, and nuka's (nuts) I declare I will never live under the weight of business again, I have been set free. The Lord has cracked my hardened shell, and He is refining me into pure gold!!
I am ruined
Oh but I am blessed

"Teach me some melodious sonnet"

The sound of a harmonica is a wondrous thing. It's soft purr as it's musician breaths life into it's skeletal frame, and the high pitches as it's master empties their heart through that small metal conduit. There is something about making breath music that is so epic to me. I am not talking about the overweight man that just climbed a small flight of stairs heavy breathing, but the man that has breath locked in his lungs waiting to escape, it's dying anthem melodious harmony. As I listen, my own lungs clap along as if it is a familiar tune that my ears have never heard before.
This morning I awoke in a quaint Romanian house to George (gah-or-gay) playing "Come thou fount" on his harmonica. I cannot describe the simplicity and beauty of that moment. A wave of pure delight overcame me as my lungs hummed along to the melody. I sat very still until the last note sounded, and he then told me of how his mother sang to him this song and her mother to her. He said "it brings a joy into my heart when I play the notes, it's like nostalgia..you know?" I was surprised he knew that English word, I just smiled and said "oh, I know."
All day long I have sang this song to myself, I don't think I will ever stop appreciating it, especially not after this morning.