Sun King

These days I feel like a sun-scientist (a helionologist?) who is so focused on studying the sun that he forgets that it rises. The hooting owl knows that the sun has risen and that she must sleep. The bird knows that the sun has risen and that he must sing. Even the sunflower turns his head toward the growing beams of morning light that move so quickly over the rolling hills of Illinois.

But, like a sun-scientist, I busy myself with calculations. Tell me all about this thing called Sunrise, I say. When is it coming? What color number is the shade of gold upon the farthest hill?

My wedding is in eight months, and my soul may not fully grasp the depth of what is happening until after the ceremony, I fear. Most of the brain activity regarding the wedding is on such trivial things. Where will the reception be if it rains? Groomsmen clothes? Should I buy their shoes for them? Can any of my friends play the trumpet?

I risk losing the wonder of the changing shadows on the rows and rows of green corn that sit gloriously ordinary in front of me, yet made new by the fresh beams of sunrise light. I risk missing the teeming songs of songbirds that sing the sun from her resting place. For I am involved in something sacred--indeed something that will result in a sacramental exchange of vows and a commitment that will last a lifetime. These little plans and decisions will result in two people declaring their love and faithfulness to each other in front of all the people that have meant something great to them.

May the recurring sunrise wear away any sort of built up calculations in my head.

8 hours.

Today is July 30th. Hello July 30th.

Today Meghan gets back from her mammoth trip to England. I say mammoth because of the length of the trip: six weeks. I also say mammoth because the desire for her to return to Wheaton felt incredibly heavy on my soul. Even as the mighty woolly mammoth, resplendent in his long and luxurious fur, creates a large and burdensome weight upon the blades of grass under his elephant-like feet, so did the desire for Meghan to return from England push me into feelings of solitariness.

And now, a poem by Dylan Thomas. Because that's the perfect companion for the epic metaphor.

In The Beginning by Dylan Thomas

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face,
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun,
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You.

On The Balcony

In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow
And between us and it, the thunder;
And down below in the green wheat, the labourers
Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.

You are near to me, and you naked feet in their sandals,
And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber
I distinguish the scent of your hair: so now the limber
Lightning falls from heaven.

Adown the pale-green glacier river floats
A dark boat through the gloom—and whither?
The thunder roars. But still we have each other!
The naked lightnings in the heavens dither
And disappear—what have we but each other?
The boat has gone.

--D.H. Lawrence

Noah and the Whale

i found out about this band on La Blogotheque's youtube channel (which, by the way, has some amazing Bon Iver videos you should check out).

enjoy it.

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) ee cummings

Let us think of patients who are ill with tuberculosis.

"The physicians put them out in the sunlight and fresh air, both in summer and in winter. There they lie until a cure is gradually effected by the rays of the sun. The recovery of these patients is not dependents upon their thinking, in the sense of understanding the effect of the sun's rays or how these rays work. Neither does their recovery depend upon the feelings they experience during the rest cure.
"Nor does it depend upon their wills in the sense of exerting themselves to will to become well.
On the contrary, the treatment is most successful if the patients lie very quietly and are passive, exerting neither their intellects nor their wills. It is the sun which effects the cure. All the patients need to do is to be in the sun.
"Prayer is just as simple.
"We are all saturated with the pernicious virus of sin; every one of us is a tubercular patient doomed to die! But 'the sun of righteousness with healing in its wings has arisen.' All that is required of us, if we desire to be healed both for time and for eternity, is to let the Son of righteousness reach us, and then to abide in the sunlight of His righteousness."

"Prayer" by O. Hallesby

I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else but you

If you were a river in the mountains tall,
The rumble of your water would be my call.
If you were the winter, I know I'd be the snow
As long as you were with me, let the cold wind blow.

the roses of the day grow deep.

i think my feet left the ground today.
it could have been the coffee
and sugar, but i highly doubt it.

HB to me.

two days ago i celebrated my 24 1/3 birthday. i made a wish and it came true. O frabjous day! What wonderful blessings the Lord gives!

i came to understand more about the notion of how God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him. though i experience things that i would call evil, stepping emotionally into those hard times and maturely ask God what the deuce He was trying to do teach me or show me through that experience will allow God to change something that was evil into a positively good thing. and through those lessons i will now how to act if anything as hurtful ever shows its ugly head.
does that not make any sense? if i had more sleep i'd probably write in clearer syntax.

thank God for older brothers. thank God for lovely friends.

my weakness again.

There was a booming that night
Louder than water-covered footsteps,
Stronger than the white-knuckled grip of chains,
Higher than the thoughts of the soaring moon,
Cleaner than an overturned ceiling,
Faster than the blood racing through my body, yet
Weaker than the sighs coming from my heart,
Fainter than the lies i tell myself,
Rougher than the shape i trace across my frame,
Poorer than the ticking of the clock, as
I walk in self-doubting joy.

Bike Messengers Are on Crack

this.

this is the video that sent me out on my bike. this is the video that sent my bike to me from New York.

her name in japanese is Kyou, which means cooperation. her name meant other things like village and apricot, but i'm not sure why i would call a bike apricot. ginger i would understand, but apricot?

bon iver

...is good music and you should listen to it.

Today i sat at my usual summer haunt, but spring tapped me on the shoulder halfway through my second chapter as if to say See that shivering? you cannot be out here yet. go home and be healthy and warm.

i look forward to the changing of spring into summer, knowing that fall will be next followed by winter, which will result in spring and yet another summer. i find such habits extremely comforting. for example, today i went to get my illinois driver's license at some usual office where they do such things, and after being severely agitated and put on edge by the walls of politics and schmoozing that goes on in a place like that, i sat and thought about summer.

the intense feelings of agitation had gone and i was left with this wonderful, childlike feeling of expectance. summer! now is the time to start anew and to try things again!

this is why i love mornings. why i love every morning--no matter the weather or mood i am in. because mornings mean a chance to start fresh and with renewed purpose.

Lately I've been reading this book.

Never before have I felt such a connection to the world community and the need to include food consumption into my theology.

In our prayers at church on Sunday, we include a prayer asking God to give us all a reverence for the earth as his own creation, that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others and to his honor and glory. And such it should be, for we been given a great gift.

with honey's coffee in my hand.

today the wind blew my white curtain around the room
and the evening sun cast long shadows
through rippling curls of fabric.

the birds are singing and i'm ready for spring.

On giving up things.

Today is the twenty-eighth day of Lent. I know that not because i've been counting, but because i read it in a book somewhere. In this period of the church calendar, those living in developed countries give up Special Things that hold their heart. Things like chocolate or television. And by giving up their daily allotment of Special Things, they create room for Jesus. Three-hundred and forty-five days of the year they fill themselves up with all sorts of Special Things and, in doing so, forget that they are, in fact, terrible people.

People and books tell them that they need something bigger; that these Special Things will not satisfy them any longer than it takes to taste a piece of chocolate or watch a television program, but they do them anyway. They forget. The way they fill their lives with Special Things is like putting scotch tape over a wound.

I believe that i must feel needy. I believe that my crack-addicted neighbor should make me hurt inside, and that if i forget to do something that i should feel bad about it. In comparison to the beauty of Canada's Lake Louise, i should feel small and ugly, and when the shadows of night creep after the setting sun, i should fear for my life.

I believe that to feel able to drive in my working, insured, job-supported car to purchase a wide-screen television and Wii whenever i would want would be the same as living a lie. For in such a state, i do not feel needy. I would feel able to cover any need with a containter of Butter Brickle Ice Cream.

And so, i believe in Lent. Not the scotch tape kind of Lent, but the frightening kind of Lent that tells me i am not worth saving from any sort of harm.

But that He still will.

sing to your mother, little bird

The birds have returned and this makes us very glad. Megan in particular scowls at the geese, They just poop all over and are annoying, she says, and I agree with her that they poop all over. But I remember that they are beautiful creatures with beautiful songs and not at all worthy of having their heads cut off and microwaved like some kids in the local dorm. I heard someone say they were a Natural Heritage once, but I'm not sure what it means to be a Heritage.

Today I stopped at the window and looked at Spring. I heard Spring in the tree outside the neighbor's house. The neighbor who would always ask me for cigarettes and then say Danke schön when I gave her one. She had cuts on her wrists and I wondered if she ever tried reading Tolstoy or Dickens, but I didn't ask her. The tree outside her house sings of Spring. At least thirty birds climb into that tree and sing their hearts out, and I wonder if anyone can doubt that Spring has finally come, but Effie still mumbles about the weather, Oh it's a cold one today, Oh, she says with a shake of her head. I want to tell her that the birds outside my crack-taking neighbor's house know that it's spring and that the geese who poop on the sidewalk know it's spring, but instead I agree, Oh yeah it's crazy cold out there.

I think that the earth can hear the little birds and the pooping birds and is starting to wake up. I can smell the earth on warm days and I know that she is turning over in her sleep, ready to rise from the dead for another season. And so I sing as well, strumming Such Great Heights or Falling Slowly, which are both love songs but are sad and about losing something, on my guitar.

Maybe spring will come soon, and we will all gather at last to drink His wine, knowing that life has again come to this sad little, dead little planet of earth.

march is here, to bring out the earth.

Yesterday i took pictures for Mr. Luke. i grabbed my Polaroid camera, since i told myself that i wanted to send out the pictures with the morning post and hadn't time to develop them, and went to church.

Lunch with Mr. N-train followed church. We walked around campus trying to find geese for him to show disapproval of. This will give him a good idea of what life is like here, he said. So this was the plan. Get a good thumbs-down to the geese and send it along for Luke to see. Neither i nor Mr. N-train approve of the geese. Watch out for the goose poop i told him.

The geese did not cooperate, but ran off whenever we tried to approach. i thought we should try to corner them, but N-train showed his disapproval too hastily. It was not caught by the camera. On the other hand, we found two people, one of whom insisted that i tell Luke that she wanted a pony, and that he would understand, and the other who laughed very easily. They both said goodbye and we answered goodbye.

i dropped n-train off and went to coffee with two people i love dearly. i talked to them about life after cpo, and they talked about their surprise--something i'm not supposed to talk about, but i can talk to my family and c's family and my GF about. As we sat at the bar having coffee, we watched the cars go by. Since E&C had recently bought a car, and i had helped research, this was a very easy topic of conversation. E said that they were very happy with their car, but that the lady who had owned it before had smoked in it and put a lot of air fresheners in it and they've been trying to ignore the smell but sometimes it's just too overpowering. i think their car smells like gum.

So tomorrow i will send off my letter to Luke. i have one more picture to take, of an old friend that Luke spent a lot of time with. He referred to this thing that i'm going to take a picture of as a "she" but i don't know how he could tell the difference. Trees don't usually have genders. i think i heard once that they were in fact both genders. But to Luke it was a she.