Zizzivivizz

(i just write)

2012-01-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

We went roller skating on my thirtieth birthday, and since then I've been back to that night a dozen times in my mind.

I keep thinking about this man. He's an older black man wearing a creamy cable-knit sweater, slacks, and a pair of closely fitted black roller skates. He moves around the skating rink floor with his arms loosely crossed behind his back. He slowly picks up one foot at a time, swings from side to side, around other skaters. His pace never varies. It's not too fast, not too slow. There are no jerks or starts, only this unhurried, inexorable stride.

And he loops over the slick floor and is easy. And I want to loop and swirl and be easy. I can't help thinking that it's the calm he shows that's the thing. That if I can get the calm, the looping will come. But then I think it's his age and wisdom, and his practice in looping without a hitch, adjusting to changing circumstances with a smoothness that isn't no movement but is constant movement around, through, beyond, that gives him the calm. Maybe he wasn't always this way. Maybe he was once me, with my legs carefully bent and my slightly daring pushes and the hands that wobble when my skates take me farther or faster than expected. Maybe he used to wear rental skates, or forgot his socks and had to make do. Maybe sometimes he had to relearn things he thought he knew. Maybe sometimes his muscles forgot. Maybe, maybe not.

But now, tonight, he is like the shadow of a bird on the ground. He is like a guardian angel. In his motion are all the secrets of the world, at least the ones about roller skating. He is inevitable. I can't take my eyes off him.

* * *

I'm just writing with Heather of the EO today. Come play along?

how it went

2012-01-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

I don't often make new year's resolutions. The last couple of years I've made lists of goals for myself that I come back to, add to, revise over the year. Sometimes I meet these goals. Other times I forget the lists even exist, and that's ok too. I try to be generous with myself. How can I know what a year will hold? How I'll change? How what I want will change too?

I made a list this year, though it's short. It's a reflection of how unsettled I feel, how much I'm willing to be unsure of at this stage. My goals are much harder to pin down, except for things like sell at least two fur coats. (Because how many vintage fur coats does one need in southern California? I suspect the answer is a number that's very close to zero.) Outside of those very concrete things, I'm sort of floating when it comes to goals.

But something else happened to me this year around the turn of the year. I had the chance to visit dear Moxie Mandie in Albuquerque over the holiday weekend, a sweet day and night together sandwiched between about twelve hours of driving each way. Twenty-four hours across deserts and through mountains, under heavy gray clouds and sharp early morning skies and overwhelming numbers of stars.

Twelve hours through the night towards the new year, pressing up bright behind wide mountain ranges.

And then twelve hours home in the new year's infancy, full of thoughts as big as the tall trees and snowscapes that demanded to be noticed.

And that was it, really. Somewhere in those hours of driving it hit me, all those things demanding to be noticed. So I pulled over and made some resolutions right then and there, not for the year, but for the month, the day, the hour. Here they are.

Be it resolved:

I will drive with the windows down more.

I will taste the wind.

I will run up mountains.

I will dance more.

I will keep my head up, look at the stars, take more deep breaths.

I will sit up straight when I remember to, and not yell at myself when I don't.

I will eat more cheeseburgers.

I will eat less cheeseburgers.

I will fly.

I will float.

I will not be afraid to drive into the night.

one

2012-01-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

I sat across from her in the tidy but slightly worn living room. The sea-green carpet, the low blue couch with the flat, pleated pillows, the family photo-turned-oil-painting over the upright piano. It was a quiet, cool evening. Trees whispered to each other outside.

Why was I there? I don't remember now. Some business about our apartment. I don't remember how it came up either, only that in her soft, dry voice Barbara began to tell me about Steven, her handyman. He had been brought to the U.S. from Thailand as a child. He was told he would get a job in a fancy hotel but was kept as a prisoner instead, cleaning office buildings twelve hours a day and locked in a room with a dozen other kids the rest of the time.

He never talked much about those months, she said. All she knew was that one day he found a way to get away, and somehow he found her son Tim. Tim brought Steven home, and the family took him in as a fifth child. What else could they do? Her eyes looked steadily at me. Her small, time-creased hands rested in her lap. I shifted on the couch, re-crossed my legs. Wow, I said, inadequately.

Steven. The man who painted our back patio and snaked our drains. Someone who would never excite comment, who looks just like you and me and the thousands of others who drive down Tustin Avenue every day. Deceived. Enslaved. Rescued.

* * *

Steven is one person. One is such a small fraction of the estimated 14,500 to 17,500 people who are trafficked into the U.S. every year, of the 27 million people enslaved in the world today. In such a giant wave, one feels like a water molecule. And yet.

Steven found one person. Tim couldn't do much on his own, but he told one person. Barbara did what she could, and she told one person. And I'm telling you.

Yes, Steven is one person. One less person in slavery today. Yes, Tim and Barbara and me and you--we are each of us, one person. One more person to add a voice, a dollar, a helping hand.

I don't have to be more than one to do something. I just have to be willing to be one more, fighting in my own way so that every day or hour or moment there can be one less.

I'm running for their lives to raise money for Love146's child sex slavery aftercare, prevention, and research efforts around the world. You can join me in running and fundraising, donating, or spreading the word about the realities of modern day slavery. And if you're writing for Human Trafficking Awareness Day, come link up at Run for their Lives.

running for their lives

2012-01-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

I'm in a place. You know I am. And it's tempting to hunker down with myself and my blankets and my fresh episodes of Downton Abbey and pretend there's no outside world for a while--oh, so tempting. But at the same time I've felt a longing in my heart to push off the blankets and step outside my room with my double-paned windows and take a clearer look at things. My need feels great, but I have a stirring in my heart that says there are greater needs to be met. So often I feel like mine is the only plaintive little cry out there, that I'm all by myself in my pain, but I'm wrong.

So often I feel alone in this world, but I am not.

* * *

Sometimes the things in your heart and the things in someone else's align so perfectly that you know it's something special, something right. That's how I felt when Jo at Mylestones emailed me last month about an idea she'd been kicking around, the possibility of using a shared love of running to help us and others focus on an issue bigger than ourselves.

It's an issue that should unsettle us and keep us walking up and down at night but too often doesn't: child sex slavery and exploitation. Boys and girls bought and sold, their bodies and memories and hearts marked with the evil done to them--not just in movies or special news reports about southeast Asia, but in our cities, our neighborhoods, at Disneyland. The places we think are safest. We don't know. We walk around with our eyes closed. I walk around with my eyes closed. But we don't have to, and I don't want to any more.

That's where Jo comes in. This is her brainchild (and really, I can't take any credit for it). She's launched Run for their Lives in partnership with Love146.org, an organization that works for the abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation through prevention, aftercare, and research in Asia, North America, and Eastern Europe. And she's invited me to join her as the West Coast team leader.

Our goal is not only fundraising, although that's important, but also education, which is perhaps more important. We want to have our own eyes opened, and then to open the eyes of others, because we believe that these small steps we take together can lead to much bigger strides. So we will run--and you can too.

How you can help:

Run. Sign up for a race--any race, any place, any distance, any speed--in the next ten to twelve weeks. If you want, for example, you can join me and other West Coast team members at the Go Green St. Patrick's Day Run in Los Gatos, California, on March 17. (Jo has a good list of other racing resources here.) Then visit the Love146 Run for their Lives donation page to join a team (any team you like, regardless of which race you're running), create a personal donation page, and begin raising money.
Train. Join the Run for their Lives Daily Mile challenge to run 146 miles for Love146. As Jo puts it, this isn't a fundraising initiative but a way to help us train with the cause in mind and to encourage one another as we do.
Read. Spend some time learning about the child sex slavery and exploitation. Become uncomfortable. Find out what you can do. Love146.org is a great place to start. More resources and information here and here.
Donate. You can support an individual runner, a team, or the group effort. No matter which option you choose, every penny will go directly to Love146 and their work to abolish child sex slavery.
Share. Share the Run for their Lives Facebook group, Daily Mile challenge, and blog with your friends. Forward the information to people who might be interested. Write a blog post or two. President Obama just proclaimed January to be National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and January 11 (two little days from now!) is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the United States. We'll be offering a link-up on the Run for their Lives blog, and we'd love you to join us in sharing your thoughts, ideas, and stories.

I hope that you'll all do at least one of these things. If you do nothing else, take some time to learn about the realities of child sex slavery. Allow your heart to be broken. Whatever you do, don't turn away. Children's lives are at stake.

More info on Love146
The Run for their Lives website
The Run for their Lives donation page
Run for their Lives on Facebook
Daily Mile challenge

alis volat propriis

2012-01-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

Image via Pinterest

My word for 2011 was feeling, and boy did I ever go through it on that one. I think I chose it because I could sense that feeling would run through 2011 like a rushing wind whether I wanted it to or not.

That's kind of the sense I have about this year's word too. I've chosen the word release, not just because it's something that I want, but because it's something I can feel happening, a movement in my spirit that I don't think I can stop. Huge, monumental change is in store for me in the next eighteen months. Divorce, dissertation, graduation. Maybe relocation, career change. I don't know. I don't know any of it, but I know that these things will take time and energy, maybe all I have. So I don't want to waste any on unnecessary things.

I'm feeling the need to be unencumbered. That this will be a year of shedding, a year of letting go. Of my marriage, obviously. That may be the most visible thing. Of possessions, yes. I have too much stuff, and I need to carefully consider what it's for. But also of dreams, plans, expectations. I need to reevaluate, reconfigure. I need to open my hands so I can see whether the things I've been clutching are worth holding on to. Instead of agitating, I might need to stand very, very still in order to see what moves around me. It might be a year of slowing down, freeing myself of the deadlines I've imposed, taking time to exhale, so that when the right moment comes I can run fast.

But it will also be a year of stepping out, naked maybe. Of doing the things my heart says to do, even if I'm terrified. Running a half-marathon, as a tangible thing. Fighting for what I believe in. Learning where to say yes and where to say no. Having the courage to listen to and be very, very patient with myself. Letting go of fear, of the shoulds of other people and that I put on myself.

In all of this, there will be opportunities to let go of maybe the hardest things. Of disappointment, bitterness, anger, and offense. Guilt and shame, too. Of things that keep me moving in circles or craning my neck backwards or just pinned to the ground with their weight.

In 2012, I want to release all the things that keep me in any way from moving forward--because forward I am going.

I can feel it.

* * *

The OneWord movement is growing! Learn more about it, meet the founder, Alece, and other community members, or join in, on the website or in the comments here.

oh, feeling

2012-01-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

Did I know what I was in for when I chose feeling as my one word in January? Part of me thinks I did. Not knew in a seeing the future sense, but knew that it was going to be a difficult year, and that I needed to embrace it instead of fighting it or trying to wish it away. If I couldn't embrace it, I at least needed to be able to acknowledge it, live with it.

I've cried a king's ransom of tears. In public, in private. Outside a movie theater in San Jose. At my house, probably at yours. In front of people, which is big, but by myself too, which is almost bigger because it turns out this year has been about learning to face myself. In the past, I have been my own biggest rejecter, my own biggest denier. I have held myself to ridiculous standards and punished myself when I didn't meet them. I have refused to take myself for what I am, refused to acknowledge pain and sorrow, written myself and my feelings off. What this comes down to, this way I've treated myself, is that I have hated and despised who I am--and if this year has taught me anything, it's that I deserve better. And so do the people around me. If I can't accept my own messes and failures, how can I love others and meet them in their places of need? In order to be better to others, I must be better to myself first.

I look back at where I started, and where I was six months in, and I can marvel at the change in me, how much I've learned from giving myself the space and freedom to feel. I'm learning how to recognize my feelings and deal with them without dismissing them--that gratefulness is the key to heart-peace, that sometimes it takes a good long run or a long drive or a hot bath to sort things out. I'm learning that being open about what I'm feeling creates space for genuine relationships to grow, allows people to respond to me in love and teaches me to respond in kind. Maybe all of this sounds obvious to you, but these have been hard-taught lessons for me. And they're lessons I'll keep learning for a long time.

The year was more eventful than I would have liked. (Understatement champion: me.) I walked--am walking--a hard road. But I feel more at peace with myself than I ever thought I would, more at home with myself. At home with both joy and pain, sometimes at the same time. The struggles are loud, and want to be louder than the victories. But sometimes I think the quiet victories are the best ones.

* * *

This post is my OneWord 2011 wrap-up. Read more on my One Word. Meet Alece and learn about the OneWord2011 project. Catch up with the community.

wish list

2011-12-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

What I have wished for this holiday season, in no particular order:

a cat named Bill
dental insurance
a Star Trek transporter for birthday photos (does not have to work)
one million dollars to iTunes
a Star Trek transporter for personal use (must work)
the ability to Get Things Done and sleep at the same time
for Turkish Delight to taste as good as it sounds
someone to read me bedtime stories
a cat named Fitzpatrick (just now)
a bean and cheese burrito (earlier this week, but also just now. My taste buds are highly suggestible.)
a new wrist. maybe two new wrists. #unthumb
Harry Potter knitting needles
two more weeks in between my last day of work before Christmas and the day I had to go back
Sonja Henie-like skating ability
a less active imagination
a more active imagination
the time to write all the words in my heart
three cats named after my three favorite Jewish Neils (Diamond, Simon, Young)
a time machine
more books (rather insanely)
the library to be open on Christmas night
a cat

important announcement

2011-12-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

I keep meaning to tell you all something and now seems like a good time, since I've been asked about this a couple of times in the last few weeks.

Sometimes I forget that we've never met in person, and you've never heard my name spoken out loud. Internet friendships occupy a weird space between knowing and not knowing each other, don't they? So just in case you've been wondering but have been too shy to ask, my name is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, and it rhymes with trombone (as one person pointed out). Think My Sharona, but without that a sound at the end. It's Hebrew, but coincidentally it also rhymes with a lot of Spanish swear words, a fact which did not go unnoticed by my classmates in junior high and high school.

If you already knew how to pronounce my name, I give you permission to feel very smug and superior. If you didn't, I give you permission to pretend to all your friends that you did. You know, when they ask you which side you fell on. As they naturally will.

I knew instinctively. But that's just how I do.

Ok, as you were.

odyssey

2011-12-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I drove down the coast of California. I dropped my uncle at the train station and got a cappuccino and an audiobook and went through green forests and windy hills, along cliffs above rocky beaches. I looked at tall trees. I sang along to my music, loudly, happily. In Monterey, waiting for the library to open, I walked to the shore. I watched boats in the harbor, looked at the pink and green buildings lining the wharf and imagined I was a secret agent. I listened to people walk in groups. Can we hurry? It's already noon. ... Did you see that? ... I guess this is supposed to be pretty good ice cream. I walked back to the library, unrolled the microfilm, got lost in 1962. When I finally emerged, it was late-ish and the sun was sinking and I felt a little panicked.

I drove for a while with my audiobook, thinking and listening and wondering about people. About life. Where are we all, on this planet? What do we do when we aren't connected to each other, talking to each other? Sending each other messages? Those moments are beads on a string, or drops of water on a web, but there is space in between when we have to be ourselves. Alone. Just me, where I am. Just you, where you are. As much as I try to cluster them, or to put in music and words and memories in the gaps, there's still room for it to be just me, no matter who is around me or what.

I turned the audiobook off. Peered up into the dark through my windshield. Goggled a little at the blanket of stars. Thought of Shakespeare and Jerome K. Jerome and everyone who's ever written about the magnificent, impassive calm of the night sky. Cried, a little bit. Looked at the number of hours until home and bed and settled in. I have two hours, I said to myself. It is just me.

I am turning thirty in one week, and I am learning to know myself all over again.

* * *

I'm just writing with Heather of the EO today. Come play along?

break

2011-12-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

Last month, Marianne M. Chrisos wrote this terrific post about why we hang onto things, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head.

There are things we never even thought to get rid of.

My bed frame broke this weekend. My bed is ten years old and the frame has cracked and broken about four or five times. It has been glued and screwed and nailed back together and I’ve continued to use it. Just a few days ago, it broke again. There’s no warning. I don’t have to be jumping on it or thrashing around mid-nightmare; I can look at it in a way it doesn’t appreciate, sit down, set a laundry basket on it, and it will decide to give way. So it broke again last week and Keith and I went through the tedium of moving the mattress and box spring and disconnecting the headboard and footboard from the frame and putting everything on the floor, like it was time for a slumber party in the living room. When I asked Keith when he’d be able to fix it, I realized maybe I didn’t want him to. I never would have thought to take my bed off of the frame had it not broken, but it’s easier this way, and I like the simplicity of it.

“Can I really throw this frame away? The footboard and everything?” I asked Keith.

“You can do whatever you want,” he told me.

You can do whatever you want.

If you've talked to me much lately, you may have noticed that this has been a theme of my conversation. Everyone I see asks me how I'm doing, and the answer is that life is a mixed bag. My psychiatrist told me yesterday that I have the most eventful life between appointments of all her clients. She begged me not to take up cliff-diving between now and January.

Life is very busy, but in spite of the thousands of words I have to write and students I have to tutor and stitches I have to knit in the next few weeks, there are spaces for loneliness and sorrow to creep in. There is a giant broken thing in the middle of my life. My automatic tendency is to figure out how to fix it so it feels like it did before, because that was normal. Comfortable. And yet this is the truth, which Marianne brings out so well:

Things don't have to be like they were or feel like they did before.

Sometimes we get caught up in fixing what's broken without stopping to figure out whether the pre-broken thing was the best thing possible.

Sometimes when something breaks, it's a chance to re-evaluate, to do something new, if that seems right. Sometimes it's a blessing in disguise.

I'm in a place of huge transition in my life, and it's tempting to see so many things as broken and sad. They feel that way sometimes. But. All these places of brokenness are also places of opportunity. Places to grow, if I can be brave enough to see them.

I can rethink everything. Priorities, plans, deadlines. Locations. Purpose. Habits. I can start fresh.

On the good days, I feel the courage rising in me like flood water. On the good days, I know it to be true: I can do whatever I want.

down, and then up

2011-11-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in my car and I turn the key in the ignition and nothing happens. I'm late already, and now it'll be another forty-five minutes before I can get where I wanted to go, to see a friend become a doctor and celebrate the huge, amazing wonderfulness of it all in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day. I call AAA, wait. I read, fold clothes, wait. Tap my foot, send impatient text messages, breathe. Wait.

When I finally get where I'm going, I witness the last moments and get to hear what seem like the best words in the world: "Congratulations, Dr. S." We stand around in a circle. We hug and laugh and share crazy big smiles. KB clutches her flowers. When I get to my car, it doesn't start again. The new doctor's husband leaves the party lunch to help me with my car. "If it dies again, call us and we'll help you put a new battery in," he says.

Walking out to my car after the afternoon shift, the car doesn't start again. My roommate and I make plans for how I will get to every stop in my busy schedule over the next couple of days if my car needs major work. It's a complex arrangement involving seemingly everyone I know driving me somewhere. After some more wringing of hands, I have the car towed to Sears and thankfully it's just a bad battery and they replace it, quickly. My roommate has been hovering, checking in with me, waiting outside to give me a ride if I need it. I send her to work and follow twenty minutes later.

Later, during the evening shift, I get a text from a dearest friend inviting me to share Thanksgiving with her family. In what I had feared would be the hardest, loneliest holiday yet, I have an embarrassment of Thanksgiving invitations, and I wish I could accept them all. When I look around me and see all the people who want to take tender care of me, I have this little throb where my heart should be.

At 11 o'clock, in my car once again, I turn the key and hear the car start with relief. My roommate watches, waits for me to back out, follows me home. I drive through the night, thinking about kindness, how people think it's rare but really it's everywhere. When I need to say "Wait for me just in case my car doesn't start," there always seems to be someone to say it to. They're there before I say it, even if I never say it.

I am so lucky. I am so grateful.

* * *

I'm just writing with Heather of the EO today. Come play along?

full stop.

2011-11-10T11:02:00.000-08:00

I don't know if when we go through hard times we turn to cliches because they touch on human truths, or if the cultural prevalence of the cliches makes them the places our minds automatically run. All I know is that right now I'd like to pull them out and line them up for you in all their brassy glory. I heroically resist.

My marriage is over. The reasons are complicated, but I won't pretend it was mutual. I couldn't make him want to stay. I don't know what else to say about it besides that.

My heart is wild, frantic, sluggish, broken. It feels reckless. I do not know what it will do, and I don't quite trust it. It just hurts and bounces around in my chest and sometimes feels like a stone.

Sometimes I can hardly move for crying. Sometimes my eyes burn and I feel fierce, like I can exhale knife-blades. Sometimes I feel miserably weak and soggy and small, a thing that invites pity. And sometimes I feel almost normal, except for this hard, cold little fire inside. I'm trying to take each part as it comes without fighting. To accept the care of friends and family. To remember that God sees and knows, and that He is able to work even this into something beautiful, in its time. To just be.

A couple of days ago, I woke up at 3:30. I lay in the dark for two hours before I gave up and got up and tried to face the day. Coming back from my run, I got caught in a storm, a downpour really. I put my face to the sky and felt the drops on my forehead, running down my scalp, making cold splotches on my sweatshirt.

I closed my eyes and let it rain and rain, because sometimes it rains. It's raining now.

On home

2011-11-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've been wandering far these past few weeks, across oceans and many borders and through seemingly endless security checks. I won't be in my own bed for another week, and I've been looking around with my eyes wide open, trying to fit the unfamiliar into my heart and grasping for something familiar to hold on to at the same time. ...

Today over at Moxie Mandie, I'm sharing something I wrote while on my trip about finding home away from home. It's part of a guest post series that's giving Mandie some time to get settled in her own new home. Join me?

* * *

If you don't know Mandie, you should. Besides being a sweet, genuinely lovely woman whom I'm proud to call friend, she also happens to make gorgeous pillow covers, baby clothes, and accessories--like this chevron clutch that I carried all over Europe.

Moxie Mandie - The Shop
Mandie on Twitter

Boring legal things:

I was in no way compensated for this post. I've been a Moxie Mandie customer for several months and purchased the clutch featured above. All love for Mandie and her products is completely my own, with no strings attached.

bless my buttons

2011-09-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

This soy chai latte from Starbucks is blowing my mindgrapes right now. It's all smoky and delicious. I can't tell if that's because it's just that good or if I'm tired enough to think everything is that good.

I am in that exuberantly happy place I get to when I've just finished a huge project--the feeling that comes with the end of the semester, the submission of final papers.

Last night, I worked with twelve students, one after the other every twenty minutes for four hours. Which sounds even more crazy when I remember that I've been tutoring at this pace four days a week for the whole month of September, working with some incredibly talented and motivated students applying for Fulbright fellowships. Without even a trace of irony, I can tell you that these kids are amazing worldchangers. Over the last few weeks I've helped them shape their ideas into proposals and personal statements, and it's been an exhilarating process. I feel personally invested in the students and their projects. I want them to succeed. Last night was the final push before the proposals were due today at 10 a.m., and today I woke up singing hallelujah. Pressure lifted. Heart taking wing. And no small part of that joy? No more 16-hour days.

But the end of Fulbright-mania isn't the only reason I have to celebrate. Remember that forty-mile to-do list, the one for beforeIgotoEurope? This week I checked off one of the biggest things on it: my dissertation proposal. I've been talking about it for a thousand years, and now it's done. Filed. When you talk about me to all your friends, you may now refer to me as a PhD candidate. Oh-la-la. And I may now stop referring to myself as that person who isn't getting her work done. Deadlines. Marvelous, right?

* * *

I have so much more I need to write, but I also have a zillion other things calling my name. Coming: a post about my time at Blog Sugar, which was fantastic and just what I needed.

But tonight, I'm heading to Monterey. I'm looking forward to a little dancing, a little laughing, and a beautiful celebration of the love of some of my dearest friends.

Aren't they darling?

What are you all up to this weekend? Tell, tell.

on the wing

2011-09-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have a longing to be outside,
to sit on a hillside with a pen and a blank book,
to look at the world and think poetry.

Image via weheartit

I feel my soul pushing for space. It's like I've swallowed a balloon that's being blown up huge, this feeling of stretching and needing to grow inside. It makes me antsy and dreamy at the same time. I get lost in my own head.

I need to wander and have heart full to bursting and take deep breaths.
I need to follow the currents in my mind until they taper into silvery trails in the sand.
I need to rest.

* * *

In what can only be some kind of miracle, I've been given an opportunity to take life on the wing, and I'm grabbing it with both hands. Next week I'll be up above clouds, on my way to hugs and maybe tears and definitely laughter with this dear sister in London.

A few years ago

Once you have a sister, to go too many years without her is a soul-wasting thing. A few weeks ago we said no to soul-wasting and yes to huddling around a laptop watching USC games streamed live in the middle of the night and long walks and the healing power of cheese. I need her, and she needs me, and these are good things.

Image via weheartit

I have a to-do list forty miles long. I am practicing tying scarves and peeking nervously at my passport and pinching myself when no one's looking, and I'm so grateful for the love and generosity that are making this trip possible. It feels like magic and a gift and the best kind of adventure all rolled into one.

* * *

Have you been to the UK? Always dreamed of going? What are your must-sees?

night session

2011-09-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

Every table and couch and flat surface in the writing center is occupied, so we push outside, out of the stuffy rooms loud with the breath and voices of seven people and into the night air. It's full of the smells of waning summer, sweet dried grasses and dust. I eye the succulents and promise myself not to trip.

We huddle on metal chairs near an orange light and I begin to read, words I've seen a dozen times. My throat scratches and sometimes I bellow on accident as we walk through the world his words create. He twists his hair between thumb and finger as his eyes follow my voice down the page. I draw smiley faces next to the good parts because there have been hours of work and tutoring and it's 10 p.m. and smiley faces are the best I have.

At the end, there are smiley faces all over the paper and our faces too because this thing is so close to being done. We have fought through beginning-word-sludge and talked about how to go personal, really personal, how to find that thing that makes people want to read and keep reading.

I always feel like my ideas and suggestions come from a place of barrenness, that what I have to give is dust that blows away as I offer it. It is always a surprise when a student comes back with dust-made-clay-made-sculpture. A good surprise. Smiley face.

I walk back into the warm rooms. I am warm.

* * *

Linking up with Heather of the EO, who asked us to just write freely, without expectations or overthinking or overclarifying. Come read writing straight from the heart-gut here.

just writing

2011-09-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

I like to think sometimes about what it would be like if my dad were still alive.

I think about bubbling pots of rice and picadillo on the stove, steam rolling up the kitchen windows. I imagine laughter around a table and shouting at the television when the football game is on. I hear him with his sharp, exasperated Tsssssssssssssssss and his grumbling about that idiot coach. I wish for the way the word sweetheart rolled off his Cuban tongue. I feel his calloused hand, fingers splayed wide, on my shoulder.

I can't think about his bravery at the end of his life, or the way he looks out of my graduation pictures, eyes bright with pain. I can't go back, or I don't want to. I only try to fill him into the holes that are in my heart today, the places he might have been.

So I imagine us loving and smiling, but I imagine us fighting, too. I imagine him glaring at me out of the side of his eyes. I imagine him asking God to give him patience to deal with his stubborn daughter.

I imagine talking to him about school, taking him to sit on the library porch so he can see the mountains and listen to the trees move. And I am always holding his hand.

Because you see, I can't imagine him whole and healthy. I can only imagine him as someone whose hand must be taken, someone who needs care. And every time I come back to that, I can't quite wish him here any more, back to the sharp-shining eyes and the hospitals and the shambling walk. I can only imagine him on the other side of time, waiting for me.

* * *

Linking up with Heather of the EO, who asked us to just write freely, without expectations or overthinking or overclarifying. Come read writing straight from the heart-gut here.

four things

2011-08-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday night, I don't think I swore once. Really.

Not when, sitting at the kitchen table in an otherwise empty house, I felt warm water dripping down the back of my neck.

Not when I watched the kitchen ceiling collapse beneath the weight of a waterfall that poured and kept on pouring.

Not when the angel-friends who came to help tore down the ceiling and we stared at the underside of a rotted floor with a black mold garnish.

Not when I had to tell my out-of-town in-laws about the difference between the house they left and the house they would come home to.

Not even then. Not one weensy swear word escaped my lips.

See? Miracles happen.

(Moral of the story: Don't worry about that bottle of nail polish you dropped in your in-laws' kitchen because an hour later you'll have a flood, and the way the glittery polish sparkles under all that water will be a high point of the evening.)

* * *

Oh, what to say about thumbs?

They're very important for opening Tootsie Rolls, and picking up things, and typing, and writing, and playing Wii Fit, and Twitter. And sometimes when you are so hyped up on adrenaline that you can't feel anything (see above re: kitchen waterfalls) and you sprain your thumb and lose the ability to do anything much with your right hand, things are very sad indeed.

(number of Tootsie Rolls left uneaten due to thumb: none. Come on, people, have a little faith.)

So things are forcibly slowed down here. I was already behind, and if I owe you an email or a letter or a dissertation proposal or a something, it's coming, slowly. Please chalk up the lack of spaces between words to my artistic temperament, and not to a disobedient space-thumb.

* * *

Speaking of owing people emails, I want to thank you all for your responses to my last post. It's you all who make my blog a happy and safe place to be, at least for me. That's another one of those things I forget that's going on my List: The voices of friends can speak louder than my fear, if I let them. Fear's stupid, anyway. Fear can kick rocks.

You guys, on the other hand, you can do whatever is the opposite of kicking rocks. Hugging rocks, and then finding out they're diamonds and marshmallows? Yeah, that.

I hug rocks all the time. NBD.

* * *

It's a little way off, but I can't stop thinking about making some blog changes. Design, format, platform (gulp). I'm thinking, but would you think about it, too?

What do you like or not like? What do you wish would be different? What do you wish would absolutely stay the same? Been through bloggy changes and have any advice or recommendations about designers, transitions, comment systems? I'd love to hear them.

I'll go first and say I hate not being able to reply to comments easily/clearly. That's my biggest dislike, because I want this to be a place of conversation for all of us. I'm trying to figure out the best way to fix it.

Ok, your turn. Feel free to comment or email.

unpretending

2011-07-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

There's something I want to tell you. The only way to tell you is just to tell you, I guess, so here goes.

My husband and I are separated. We have been for a few months. This last weekend, we finally moved out of the beloved house we'd lived in for four years because it was no longer financially supportable. We put most of our things into storage, for now, and I'm living with a roommate.

It turns out that like most hard situations, a marriage-in-trouble brings out both the best and worst in other people. There are wonderfully supportive people--family, friends, colleagues--who offer help in countless ways. Mostly with listening ears and warm, generous hearts. More recently, they've helped tirelessly (really) with moving, and I'm beyond grateful, weak with gratefulness in fact. There are also people who, as it turns out, are rooting for my marriage to fail. I hope you never know what that's like.

Life is full of monumental challenges, and understatement.

* * *

I hope you won't mind if I don't go into a lot of detail in terms of the whats and the whys. Those things are very personal, and they're not just personal to me. Let me just say that I hadn't really told many people before now because I was afraid. Afraid that people wouldn't understand, that I'd be judged and whispered about and marked out as a failure. Afraid people would ask too many questions. Afraid they'd draw their own conclusions without asking any questions at all. Afraid to disappoint people, to admit that I was disappointed in myself.

I imagined I would tell people after it was all over, when I could point to successful resolution of the problem and say Isn't it wonderful the way life works out? Pain, ugliness, heartache in the past. Crisis managed, smile shiny. But that's not right, is it? And not what living life together is for.

Not-saying hasn't been sitting well with me lately. I've started to feel like I'm wandering in that shadowy area between silence and dishonesty, and that feeling jabs at me constantly. I began this post and I've been brooding over it for weeks, trying to figure out timing and wording and do I really want to do this. While I've been brooding, Sarah Markley and Jo@Mylestones have been writing about this very topic, the pretending and the fighting to show a perfect now--as if they knew exactly what I've been facing down in my heart. Their words have given me strength and courage. I'm still scared, but I'm stopping my pretending in the hope that it will help someone else to stop pretending too. In the hope that I can become a person who doesn't live afraid. That we can become those people together.

* * *

My husband and I are still very close. We spend a lot of time together. But we live apart so that we don't forget there are Big Things to work on, so that we don't get too comfortable in unhappiness again. Because it turns out that while I may not know much about marriage, I do know that it's far too easy for all of us, in all kinds of circumstances, to trick ourselves into accepting unhappiness like it's just the way life is, when in fact God's promised us abundant, joyful, unshakably peace-filled lives. He wants to give us those things, but we have to prepare the ground. My metaphors are a little mixed, but maybe you know what I mean anyway.

I don't really know what I'm doing. This is my first time living this life, and all I know is to take it one step at a time. Mostly it's a question: do I trust God with the things that are most precious to me? my marriage? my heart? my future? With each tiny step forward, I say

yes.

- - -

Comments are closed on this post. If you need to, you know how to contact me.

Love, Sharone

wind and words and things: a loose collection of thoughts on my one word at the halfway point

2011-06-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

Image via weheartit

I'm training for a distant half-marathon, and the place where I run most often is a trail that runs straight along a riverbed to the ocean. It's usually breezy, often downright windy, the kind of wind that makes a roaring noise over the music from my headphones. And so I often find myself pushing against invisible resistance, running into the wind.

Some days I feel it as a challenge and I smile a little, grit my teeth, and push a little harder. Some days it's almost too much and the dread rises and I cry out, Oh, God, will I always be running into the wind? Some days it is too damn much and I just cry. I cry because the way I have to claw against this unrelenting force on the trail feels like a physical manifestation of the near-constant feeling that I'm struggling mightily just to inch forward, or even to hold ground, in so many other areas in my life. So many times I've sat hunched over on my couch without even the strength to ask, Oh, God, will I always be running into the wind?

* * *

My life is full of gaping wounds. I can see them now where I couldn't before. I go from pain to pain, some days. My heart is raw, and the pain far closer to the surface than it used to be. I feel haunted, by bad decisions and hurt I've caused and the hurts of the world and my own seemingly permanent ineptitude. I feel stalked by secrets, so that the thought of sharing them begins to seem less painful than the prospect of keeping them.

I knew this was going to happen when I chose feeling as my One Word for 2011. Back in January, I wrote,

I know that feeling is the key to all the things I want to do. Even the terrifying feelings with huge horned claws, they’re the first steps to the joyful ones with balloons and confetti and cream-cheese-frosted cupcakes. The first steps to the real, open life I want.

I'm dwelling with the huge horned claws, looking at them every day, because I want that real, open life. I'm letting myself be sad, angry, frustrated, grief-stricken, accepting that those are ok places to be, when before I would have glanced at them and then humped on with my pack. I am still afraid, but I'm walking through the dark valleys without closing my eyes, peering into the shadows, even, to bring their contents to light. And I'm learning to let go of secrets. Learning to find the balance between protecting the privateness that is my nature and dissolving the outer hardness I've let grow for too long. You've seen some of that here, and you'll see more in the weeks to come.

My progress is slow. It may take a long time, much longer than a year. Sometimes I have to learn things all over again. Sometimes I'm still paralyzed by fear. Sometimes I feel like I'm just stepping in place. Such is this life.

* * *

Earlier this year I started keeping a gratitude journal, inspired by Ann Voskamp and the many friends who are part of her 1000 Gifts community. I've kept the journal off and on, a too-little list of the things in my life, big and small, that I have to be grateful for.

Recently, I came back to it after a long time away because I read on a blog somewhere (which I can no longer find--maybe one of you saw it too?) that it is impossible to hold onto anger or fear and gratitude at the same time. That moments of true gratitude have a way of revealing those other things as mostly irrelevant, and that looking for things to be grateful for can ease the hardness of life. And so I began again in the journal, adding to my list a few things one day, a handful the next, as they came to me. The third day, I woke up with a song in my heart, all joy. It wasn't my circumstances that had changed; it was me. Life was delicious.

Yesterday when I went running, it was windy, but I didn't want to cry. I didn't worry about how it would affect my time, or how I'd never hit my target distances. Instead, I remembered: that sometimes the wind is at my back, and sometimes it works to diffuse the heat the sun would pour down on me, and sometimes the victory is in the keeping moving or even holding ground, no matter how the wind blows. So I put my head down, and I imagined the brim of my hat slicing into the wind, and I ran.

- - -

This post is my OneWord halfway mile marker. Read more on my One Word. Meet Alece and learn about the OneWord2011 project. Catch up with the community.

True confessions

2011-06-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

I contemplated sending out a memo to the editing team in my office reconsidering our policy on the use of written numbers vs. numerals in our company documents. Um, I did not do it. But I thought about it.

There are no words.

I baked a loaf of cinnamon-sugar pull-apart bread last week, and oh, you guys. This bread. Yum yum yum, wouldn't change a thing, unless there was a way to coat even more of it in cinnamon, sugar, and butter. I would tell you how long (short) the bread lasted in my house, but I'm afraid it would shock you. SHOCK you, I say. *Edited to add: a link to the bread recipe (totally thought I did this before! oops)

I've been working on advisor-requested revisions to my dissertation proposal this last age (oh yeah, me with the 1,000-year-old blog references. Topical, relevant content brought right to your Google reader.) Anyway, I made this little promise to myself that I wasn't going to blog about it until it was finalized, as a way of motivating myself to GET IT DONE ALREADY, but I've realized that was the wrong approach. ~~Shame~~ accountability is the best motivator for me, as we've already learned. (I really need to make a list of Things I Don't Want to Forget, because this is one of those things I'm constantly misremembering about myself. Not that there haven't been other life reasons why I haven't finished my proposal, but still.) So here I am, telling you. I need to finish this proposal, and I'm going to try to do it in the next week. Ask me about it, won't you?

Speaking of cinnamon, as I was just a few thousand words ago, I have been working on perfecting my cinnamon-nutmeg waffle reciple, and it's coming right along. (categorized: other worthy pursuits besides dissertations.)

Against all my desires, I am a morning person, or at least I am right now. Over the last several months I have woken up at 5 or 5:30 almost every day. For a long time I tried to fight it and go back to sleep, but that has been pretty much useless, so I've decided to embrace it as my power hour. Basically. Sometimes I try to sleep in a little later, but my maximum (barring sleep deprivation) is generally about 7:30. I've never wanted to be this way, because being a night person sounds so much cooler, doesn't it? But being a morning person has its perks. I think. I'll get back to you on those. In the meantime, if you get an email from me at 5:30 a.m., you know why.

I love Pinterest and may or may not spend an embarrassing number of hours there. Come play! If you need an invite, let me know. I have a few left.

Pinterest makes me feel alive.

What about you? Do you have any confessions you'd like to make? Tell, tell.

when seasons change

2011-05-19T23:43:00.000-07:00

I'm linking up today with Five-Minute Friday over at The Gypsy Mama. This is Lisa-Jo's brilliant brainchild: set a timer for five minutes and write, without obsessing or doing even a smidge of editing. I've found it's better when I write by hand. Far harder to cheat when your scribbles stare back at you in bright blue ink.

* * *

It feels like summer is upon us, and I feel like I can't catch my breath.

New seasons always mean deadlines, at least when you're in school. Always something due, something coming up. Now that I don't have the structure of classes, it's not quite the same, but I can't escape the feeling of something undone that I'm missing.

Summer is an especially strange season.

It feels sometimes like one long day that goes by too fast--an expansion and contraction. As more seasons pass, as they pile up behind me, I feel myself expanding too. Growing to fill the time I've lived. Seeing farther, sometimes.

And yet the changing of the seasons always manages to sneak up on me.

- - -

It's always a surprise what I end up writing. I mean, usually I go in with some thoughts, but it rarely looks exactly like I've thought it will. Which is why I write, really. Because I am, you are, we all are, more than we think we are, and sometimes we have to trick ourselves into seeing it.

Want to share your own thoughts on new seasons? Link up, or comment below.

so it seems to me

2011-05-17T20:18:00.000-07:00

Photo via weheartit

There are a lot of broken things in my world. In the world. Relationships, families, hearts.

Sometimes the breaking is so quiet it escapes notice. Sometimes it's silent, in words that aren't said, in faces that are turned away, or in doors that never seem to open.

Sometimes it's hard and sharp and loud, with unrelenting voices and eyes, pyrotechnics that leave behind flakes of ash.

Sometimes it's a slow burn which ends with a wail in the air that lingers and can't be comforted away.

Sometimes it's a realization, through tears upon tears and numerous conversations, that the breaking is old and deep, so much so that there are ways it can never be unbroken.

Sometimes it's a chipping away, little nicks and scratches that come from going too fast and too far and forgetting that we aren't trapped in this too-much-life.

Sometimes it hides behind a smile and light patter and eyes that beg you not to ask questions.

We are all of us breaking in different ways, breaking and healing at the same time. I hear myself asking more and more for balm--for myself and for others--and for eyes to see.

* * *

In the midst of it all, I find myself longing to write letters in swift, loopy cursive. To knead dough and squeeze flour between my fingers. I want to make things with my hands, things that mean something. Warm food, heart-words, love from fingertips. I want to make a little bit of art in this world, my own self.

It is so easy to break something, and so, so hard to repair it. But in the meantime, there is healing in even the smallest acts of creating.

- - -

In a roundabout way, this post was inspired by Emily's series on art at Chatting at the Sky. Stop by and read some, if you're so inclined.

fancy embroidery

2011-05-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

Image via Katrin LeBlond

I spent the weekend in Seattle for the wedding of a precious friend,

and the one thing I couldn't stop thinking about the whole time was the sense of place.

I am a creature of habit.

I like routine and the same things, and though I love to travel I

am always trying to make sense of the new place

and how it's like or not like the old one.

The Pacific Northwest, familiar and not familiar,

the site of so many childhood memories, but still outside of me.

I'm a child of California, and it has always seemed to me the most perfect place, with its wide beaches and sunshine and goldenness and chains of greeny-brown mountains,

but I saw in a new way this weekend

with my friends in their homecoming, and the tall tall trees and the rain and the silvery light,

how the places we are from stitch themselves onto our souls in patterns that do not fade,

and how hearts used to such sumptuous greenness and cool rippling water might be
always thirsty in other lands.

And my mountains are me, and your deserts or glaciers or misty woods are you,

and maybe I love to travel so much

because what I want most of all

is to see new things and then,

with fresh eyes,

to come home.

in which I do my best southern accent (which is still not very good)

2011-04-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Y'all.

I've spent the last week in a black hole.

I've been prepping materials and meeting with bosses (sounds way more street than it really is) and frantically power-pointing and typing and outlining and compiling.

47 slides
15 pages of notes
9 combined hours of sleep since Wednesday
5 sample documents
5 hours of presentation time
3 mistakes caught mid-presentation
1 hell of a good writing workshop (if I do say so myself)
0 words left to enchant you with.

Presentation face. Do I look credible? Wahahaha...

Y'all.

I am taaaahhhhhhhhhrd.