I'm nearing 22...

and I reject religious lectures.

No more lectures. No more scolding me how to live my life.

Just let me be. In peace.

a mind of piano

I have a favorite piano chord. It's CEA. I think it's more of a melancholy chord, and for some reason, I feel completely emotional when I play it.

Separately, each note is beautiful on its own, and it conveys its own mood. C is the good ol' boy note. The note that everyone knows, the note/key that I usually sing in, the back-up plan for any song. If it's hard to play, transfer the chord to C. C is easy and simple, but pretty.
E goes with C. It's the harmony and melody, it's the happy days duo, the reliable notes.
A and C go together pretty well as far as harmony, too. But when you add E, the mood, the tone, the emotion, the intensity completely changes.

Because I am muddled with all those emotions, all those combinations, but I feel like I'm a mere constant of CEA, or more preferably EAC...I like that order better for some reason, though I guess it doesn't really matter.

I'm not even good with music lingo, not really. I mostly play by ear, but I like to play what I feel, which is probably pretty common for you to understand if you've read anything I've ever written.

Anyway, from here forward, if I make any reference to EAC, just know I mean melancholy. Maybe I'm in a melancholy mood, or maybe I'm just in a mood.

conditional love

seems i'm on a bit of a love kick this month.

so i was thinking about love. godly love, parental love, unconditional love; i'm wondering if i wasn't my parents' daughter... would they even like the person i am?

honestly, if i were just a random girl who they saw walking down the street or had a random conversation with in a restaurant or wal mart, they might like me okay.

but if i were my actual self in wal mart--if i were checking out weird cds or looking at crazy clothes, playing with kids' toys or being obnoxious in the tampon aisle, they might not like me very much.

and i'm not trying to run down my parents, either. i'm just using them as an example. (is it bad to say that? that i'm USING my parents for writing purposes? i feel a bit like a bad child.)

anyway, i'm just wondering how conditional love really is.
people fall in love and get married because of this love idea. they make vows about unconditional love that can only be separated by our mortal conditions. but sometimes communication gets a bit fuzzy, things start happening, and the love--if it ever really existed--is over. people are broken, people are relieved, people are depressed, people are happy.

and clearly, i understand that since i have no child, i can't possibly understand the love for one.

but i can question it.
i know that there is unconditional love from God, and sometimes, i love how it overwhelms me. and sometimes, my dad might kiss me on the forehead and tell me he loves me, and i know that it can't have the same effect like God's love.

but of all the Christians in America...heck, in the world...we're supposed to be consumed with God's unconditional love. so if i see an obnoxious person in the tampon aisle or if i see an old lady digging out perfect change at the ice cream place as i'm salivating on my combination of coffee ice cream, toffee, caramel and walnuts, or if i see a guy at a concert with tight girl jeans and a sweater with another guy on his arm, both wearing big smiles... OR if i see a girl in a pretty scarf wrapped around her head, hiding her pretty dark features and speaking in an interesting accent...

i want to love them, too. i want to ignore any judgments i've accumulated over my near-22 years of being. i want to roll up all stereotypes i've sadly laughed at in this Bible Belt...I want to crumble them up like the poorly-written newspaper in this Mayberry of a town, and I want to throw it in the depths of the smelly garbage.

i want to really understand unconditional love. i want to give it to others. i want to feel it more often.

i want to love love and not be cynical about it.

you make-uh no sens!

ohhhhhh, life.
i want life to take me in a million different directions...as long as i don't become a tiny square of butter on a large piece of bread.
i often want to do this to myself... do a lot of things, keep busy, keep from being too focused on one thing. because if i stayed completely focused on one thing for a long time, i get tired of it. like noodles and sauce or yogurt. (i've eaten that a lot this semester.) or even exercise, softball, piano lessons (which happened like 10 years ago...crazy.)

i want my life to be hectic and make no sense to people around me. i don't want the attention--i'm narcissistic, but not THAT bad. i just do not want to fall into a common pattern, i guess. it's not to spite anyone else, not to spite the towns i no longer hope to live in after graduation. i just want to be that person--that christian--who can reach out to a lot of people in a lot of different ways, whether it be through writing, teaching, mission work, etc. i want to be a well-rounded christian/person/woman (yikes, am i really a woman?), writer...

i don't want to be common.

easy to be a hermit

i always thought my passionate love for writing could possibly (even eventually) cajole me into a hermit lifestyle. it could easily happen once i eventually get completely fed up with the american lifestyle. i can see myself in some makeshift cabin somewhere in maine or vermont or some random place like iceland. maybe norway. i can see myself in my proud little cabin with hoards of writer's notebooks--no computer, mind you, and nature as my toilet. i would grow long, frizzy hair with disgusting split ends and, i imagine, i would eventually wallow in my own stench, although i would probably try to attempt decent hygene.
well, i'm still in bg, ky and i am alone in my apartment. even worse, i'm alone in the entire house, which means the other 4 apartments are vacant. i went to wal mart to buy presents just so i could wrap them. i put on When Harry met Sally, made experimental pancakes (which were okay, i guess,) cheap but strong coffee, wrapped my presents, and started reading harry potter.
i even started to mentally diagram jk rowling's sentences, wondering if a complex sentence would work better if she began with the introductory phrase rather than splicing it in the middle.
i know.

anyway, it probably took 10 minutes before i realized that the movie was stuck on the scene after marie and whats-his-face's wedding, after harry and sally sleep together and their relationship gets all weird, but before the awesome scene on new year's eve where harry tells her he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. so the movie is stuck right before the resolution, i finished wrapping my presents, and i sucked down the rest of my barely-sweetened coffee (bitter is the new chocolate.) i stopped the movie, considered throwing my dvd player out of our already-cracked and terribly rickety window of the living room, and curled up with harry potter on the couch. i'm on book #5 in less than 2 weeks. (finals week was very un-tedious.)
anyway (again), i think i'll go back to the order of the phoenix, because now i've made myself type. i'm admitting my hermit-esque flaw. my goal is to finish the book by tomorrow afternoon. i'm on page 388 and haven't even reached halfway yet. rowling got a bit winded, i think, in this beast of a book. actually, i kind of like it... the books aren't so kiddish and i like the characters. i'm trying to provoke my creativity to see if i can actually think of a good fiction story.
i dunno, though. i'm a bit narcissistic and enjoy writing about myself.

why am i not into christmas this year?

i had no more than one week of a christmas music mood, and after that, i haven't really gotten into the holidays.
i'm not buying as many presents this year...which is good.
i'm not asking for as much stuff...which is good, honestly. i don't want a lot of stuff anymore.
every year, christmas seems to get more sad. i'm tired of trying to outdo myself for getting others different things, and i'm tired of others trying to outdo eachother (or even themselves). i dunno, presents...gifts. eh, not my favorite thing (unless of course they are books, movies, anything my parents think are more worthless than things like steel-toe boots...hahaha)
anyway, i dunno...just thought it was interesting to mention.
the only thing i've really enjoyed is decorating our adorable apartment with our adorable christmas decorations. that's when we loved christmas music.

a minor dislike

i
hate
milk breath,
especially in
a kiss,
especially when
my own milk
breath
reminds me of
your
sorry ass.

Vagina: a poem

Okay peeps, so here it is. Vagina. I read aloud in Java City today, and didn't do it much justice because no matter how energetic my voice is or how much I use my hands, I become mental. You may be thinking I'm weird, entitling a poem Vagina. Well, I'll tell you that I am weird. And that most times, my feminist self comes out in my poetry. So if you don't want to read a poem not only entitled Vagina, but that talks about vaginas and other metaphors pertaining to vaginas, I say man up and read it anyway.

Vagina

is the mouth of the south,
the chest of drawers--
no--the heart of the chest
of drawers,
pump, retract,
pump, retract,
it thumps and rattles.
No, it is the gun
in the chest of drawers,
tucked beneath silk or cotton,
spinning with a fresh round,
waiting to be released,
waiting to explode
like a row of clenched teeth,
masked by lips,
sewn together with twisted veins
that loop through the flesh like vines,
pump, retract,
pumping, retracting
the blood to the source
filling around th clenched molars--
the swelling tongue,
the tongue--click,
click
click
rattle
until it bursts through the veins
with a bloody scream.

escalator days

i had an escalator day today.
one that starts at the top and trudges downward--one in which the escalator takes a disastrous detour, uprooting from its path and causing a devastating accident in which a dozen people are seriously injured. I read that in a poem once. Not exactly what I just said, but Denise Duhamel wrote in some poems about an escalator incident in which her mom was literally scalped and her dad was badly injured.

My days aren't so devastating, but I do feel as though I'm being scalped--that the pressure in my head will literally pull my head right out, taking chunks of skin with it.

I got cussed out a couple days ago, which has kept me in a bit of a bad mood. It was stupid. Needless to say, I didn't deserve it, but I took it like a champ.
I am getting tired of work again.
I don't want to live in America right now...for several reasons.
Someone told me I looked ugly with my glasses, and that I should never wear them again.
My confidence in my writing is wavering.
Sleeping is...interesting. I sleep, but it's weird. It's like I'm not all the way asleep, so when I wake up, I still feel exhausted.
I don't want to go to my 8am class tomorrow...it's pointless and it's my last class of the semester.
I want my student loans to disappear.
I want my mission trip to be miraculously paid for.
I don't want to live in Kentucky anymore.

Gosh, I am going through a complete bia-fest. I apologize. I promise you don't have to read any further. I'm kind of having an ungrateful day. No, not ungrateful, but I feel so sad. A bit helpless. A bit depressed. A bit stressed, a bit exhausted. Sleep-deprived, too. And thirsty, I'm always thirsty for some reason and my lips are always dry. It's odd.
And my head feels a bit implosive. And I have terrible purple bags beneath my eyes... which is why I mostly wear my glasses. PS, if you think I look better without my glasses, I don't freakin care so piss off.

I've had way too much sugar today, too. I was baking and forgot to eat lunch, then at my class's gathering I ate a lot of junk (although a nice amount of hummus,) then I ate a lot of chocolate and drank Diet Mt. Dew. Then I got home and ate more chocolate, drank sugar-infused juice, and my headache has worsened.

What do I want?
Do I really want chocolate that much?

I think I want to get away from here, become a great writer, get an MFA from an awesome school, get rid of all my loans, join the Peace Corps, have a nice life with a wonderful man. I want to feel unconscious of the ridiculous ways of society and America in general. I want to feel unconscious of people. I want to feel unconscious of logic and frames of mind that have been past down from generations. I want my headaches to go away. I want to stop biting my fingernails to bloody nubs. I want to feel better. Healthy. Confident. Refreshed.
I want to stop whining about my not-really-that-pathetic life.

Oh screw it.
BLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. blah.

spicing up a sunday

i rarely skip church. it's been engrained in every ounce of my body that when 9am hits sunday morning, i am out of bed, eating breakfast, and getting dressed for church. well, this morning started at about 8:30 for me. i woke up, and i knew i wouldn't go to church. this doesn't happen often--i enjoy church and i like feeling like one small inkling in the midst of a lot of people worshipping God. it's an amazing feeling, and i do look forward to it.
this morning was for personal worship time, because i rarely do it. i thought about missing worship service, preaching and Bible study, but the problem is that i enjoy all of those, but i never contribute to them, really. i don'r prepare for bible study, i don't prepare for preaching, and the most i do at worship service is sing some of the songs i know.
this morning was when God spanked me on the butt and said, "Read Your Bible, Jamie." (God speaks in capital letters, too.) So like always, I lottery-flipped my Bible to a random page--Habakkuk. i've never read Habakkuk before, and it's a short 3 chapters. Habakkuk was weary. very much so. he questioned God and questioned what was going on in the times. (relativity: check.)
then i started reading chapter 2. to you Bible-readers out there, this may not be new. again, i'm no Bible scholar and i certainly don't read it often enough to account for much, but verses 12-14 kind of rocked me a bit.

12.Woe to him who builds a town with bloodshed, who establishes a city by iniquity! 13.Behold, is it not the Lord of hosts that the peoples labor to feed the fire, and nations weary themselves in vain? 14.For the earth will be filled withthe knowledge of the glory o the Lord, as te waters cover the sea.

i'm not very politically involved, and altough i think this can be applied in different ways--especially to our current political situation--it really makes me think about my own motives as a Christian, as a person, as an american.
after i graduate, i'm taking a year off to try another summer/year of mission work. i'd like to travel, write, pick up random jobs,--something to pay bills and help me grow as a person.
sometime i'd like to join the Peace Corps. I'd like to continually be involved in mission work, but I never want my motivation to go beyond trying to help people. in my worst judgmental days, i became greedy for God, but in a very very bad way.
in a nutshell, i was not a good judge. i discouraged people rather than encouraged. then i talked about them, how they're headed on a road to hell, how they're in the wrong way, how God would do something bad to them to get their attention.

let me pause a minute. at this moment, you need to know that this is why i read those verses this morning. after i read them, i fell asleep for another hour or two. then i woke up, took a shower, and thought about those verses. then i started writing, and let me tell you, writing is beyond music in my way of worship. by writing, i am learning what God has supplied and i am trying to apply it to my life. i hope this doesn't sound egotistical...just don't think i'm full of myself.

so for all the bad things we Christians have done--throughout the history of Christian no-nos--of Christian violence through wars, through heated tongues and heavy hands, through pointed fingers... we cannot establish others. we cannot establish a group of people as a city because we are not God. that's what i feel like i need to be very careful of if i do the Peace Corps or if missions becomes very prominent in my life.

i want people to find Jesus. i want them to see Him in me. but i don't want to turn a small village or town into a mini-Bible belt. i don't want to americanize them. i want other cultures to embrace Jesus and worship Jesus...and still keep cultures if they can. basically, i don't want Christianity to be an "american" thing. it's supposed to be a world thing, and it won't work if WE always try to establish things as from us--honestly, Christianity isn't even a church thing. it's a personal relationship thing. it's a Jesus thing. it's a spirit thing. church is important, people are important, but sometimes we have to separate ourselves for a moment to analyze ourselves...to prepare ourselves when we forget. so that maybe we can be filled with knowledge and wisdom rather than following a pattern set forth every sunday.

i'm not discouraging church on sundays, either. clearly, i understand tht i could have had this epiphany thing during the week if i was more obedient, but that's just not how it happened. sometimes, God doesn't work in patterns.

thoughts on love (hold your breath, this is rare)

So I watched Australia at this time last night, and Elizabeth and I have just finished When Harry Met Sally.
Clearly I'm in a girl world mood. Watching girl world movies, having girl world discussions about girls in the world, the world of girls, and any other confusing syntactics pertaining to females and our surroundings. (Hehehe, figured I'd pull out an English major word to redeem myself from pathetic girliness. Did it work?)

At the end, Harry bravely says:
I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

Yes, people, I know. I know that screenwriters of romantic comedies wait for that moment in the movie--that moment when although you know the stubborn man and sad-but-in-love woman will inevitably kiss and be happy--the writers have to create tension in which the resolution is a string of beautifully honest (or seemingly honest) words that make women grin and sigh. In this moment, men are slightly put at east because, let's face it, Billy Crystal is hilarious, and the smart screenwriter inserts slight humor to appease the reality of man world and the near-reality of girl-world.
And I love that right after this quote, they kiss and then Billy/Harry starts asking about what Auld Lang Sine means. At least randomness is a tad realistic, right?

I guess that's what I expect of love--not sappy and sweet lovey lines, but honesty. I want love to be honest, and that's why I've given up on becoming a cool, crazy old cat lady. Because when I see relationships that have lasted and endured without major erosion, I see the honesty of feelings and decisions and battles and scars and I see the healing behind scars and the love behind battles and the balance behind decisions, and the honesty behind feelings.

And what's so honest about love is that not everyone grows to love the hour-long decision of ordering a sandwich or talking with someone before going to bed. And love isn't about deciding not to be lonely anymore. That's what I considered for a while-- that I'd eventually get to a point where, after extensive schooling and career stuff, I'd get tired of being alone and eventually marry.
I'm speaking honestly, here. I really thought that. That's how my relationships normally go: okay, here's an available, convenient guy, I'll give it a go. Shortly after....nah, I'm okay alone. I'd prefer it, actually.

But I don't really like that back-and-forth frame of mind. It plays with my emotions and makes me sound like an advantageous a-hole, to be quite honest.

The fact is...I don't want to try the love thing because I'm lonely or needing something. I need to be honest with myself, and I think a lot of people need to be honest with themselves, too.
Doing the love thing or the marriage thing shouldn't be the habitual equivalent of doing the school thing because you're supposed to.
Just like you shouldn't date someone just because they're in the same city or state...
or country, for that matter.
Sometimes it's okay to reach beyond the realm of convenience and even expectation.

:)

okay, you can breathe now. i promise to talk about something else next post...like toenails or the way peanut butter feels in my mouth.

I Sing You to Me

So I'm watching Australia like a sap, and at this moment, little half-Aborigine boy says to Nicole Kidman/aka Mrs. Boss, "I sing you to me, Missus Boss, like da first day you came." Then she turns around and Hugh Jackman's beautiful beefy body is standing on the pier and ohhhhhhhhh my goodness I'm such a girl.
So the focus here is "I sing you to me."
I think that is absolutely beautiful. Not really for the whole mating call thing, either, or like the pengiuns on Happy Feet who do a special song and dance to gain couple status. It's cute, but it's a bit unrealistic for me. (As if Australia isn't, but hey-- Baz Luhrmann's movies are awesome.)
I've been thinking some about music. Songs, instruments.
Sometimes, I can't pray. To be honest, I suck at praying. You know, praying is essential in Christian world, and I understand it. But to me, praying is a form of worshipping, and although I believe I should pray more--I should be more afraid of what can happen if I don't pray--I worship heartier in other ways, and music is a way.
Sometimes, I want to sing God to me. I used to be so skeptical of "Modern" Christians and their Contemporary excuse for godly music. My opinions have changed a bit.
I used to skepticize those Christians who would blindly wave their hands in the air, thinking it was a pathetic attempt at doing something. I didn't understand that raising hands was an expression, a worship experience.
I was a bit judgmental back then, and maybe I still am to an extent.
But when I can feel the freedom to do that--to raise my hands, for example--I feel like I am inviting not only God, but others to join in this release. It feels nice and liberating and spiritual. I like the fact that God is spiritual, because I don't have to break him down like a complicated math formula, I don't have to structure him like the sentences I struggle to diagram. I can let him have a free form, let him float and maneuver in whatever path he chooses. To me, God's spirit licks about my heart, like the glowing ember chunks in a fire, the ones that softly pulse with golden shades, ones that sit calmly among rising and falling flames. God is that spurting flame--the one that grows and fades.
I like that--it feels like our relationship to God is inconsistent, but that's just an excuse to back away.
But I like the fact that God seems inconsistent. I know we are the inconsistent ones, but God allows our humanness to journy ourselves through the craziness of life. God wants us to grow, doesn't he? He wants us to realize what he is, what forms he takes, what land he occupies, what people he blesses and wants to bless.
In my classes, God isn't highly spoken of. There are no God fan clubs in liberal arts world, but I take the experience as one of worth. Because these people are still people, and they are good. And if I breathe Jesus down their throat, they'll only cough it back up out of bitter regurgitation. These people have experienced Christians, and sometimes we as God's followers need to be silent.
Maybe sometimes we need to just sing. You never who know might come.

the weather

Have you noticed that people relate bad weather to women? Notice--Hurricanes Katrina and Rita...it's that whole "Mother Nature" metaphor thing. Women apparantly do damage to society, right? Our emotions are sometimes unpredictable, and we tend to spaz out sometimes, right?
Something else I've found interesting: "the dead of winter." Winter represents death, nonexistent life, seasonal depression, etc. But honestly, I've found the life in winter. I've become more aware in winter. I look forward to cold, rainy days. I love leafless trees and soggy clumped leaves.
I love the calmness of winter. Even the rain is soft, and it makes me feel calm. And warm.