sorrowrejoicing's Xanga

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 05:24:46 GMT

sometimes, i need reminders like these. thanks.

" in the secret of His presence how my soul delights to hide
oh how precious are the lessons which i learned at Jesus's side.
earthly cares forever vex me, though my trials lay me low,
but when satan comes to tempt me, to that secret place i go.

when my soul is faint and thirsty, 'neath the shadow of His wing
there is cool and pleasant shelter and a fresh and crystal spring
and my savior rests beside me as we hold communion sweet
and if i ever tried i could not utter what He says when thus we meet.

only this i know i tell him, all my doubts and griefs and fears,
o how patiently He listens and my sorrowed soul He cheers
do you think He ne'er reproved me, what a false friend He would be
if He never never told me of the sin which He must see."

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 04:38:05 GMT

" People have oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult. that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it." R.M. Rilke

Last week,

I went to a show in williamsburg:no, no not the hip bedford avenue you've heard of or maybe have an opinion on where a great thriftstore or sangria spot is, no this was more wandering around dark streets where the streetlights had blown, past a couple of housing projects, with scary crouching cats, and teenage guys on corners saying, "mmmmmhhhhmm mommie, where you goin?" past a deserted school yard and one or two bodegas where the biggest sellers are lottery tickets. passing a whole lot of abandoned things, warehouses with their screen gates pulled down and doublelocked. triple locked. after being briefly followed by an unmarked car with only its parking lights on and passing a black van, with windows spraypainted black and the words, 'Upward Mobility Limosine Service" printed on the side, we met up with the person who had led us here. He directs us to a wooden door, marked only with the building number, 200, and we open up into a huge open dark warehouse space. red light fixtures shine down, and red light bulbs light up the "bar". the place is packed with ... (how cliche)...hipsters. but thats what they were. dozens of boys in tight jeans and hoodies, girls in thrift store get ups or sweaters and converse chuck taylors. the age range is wide, but only from about 19 to 29 i'd say. oh, and the music pumps. wa ump wa ump wa ump.... afterwards, god miraculously brought me chips and salsa. and as i went to sleep around 3:30 i thought " i am making an idol out of myself. out of the next fun thing. out of an image." and it felt sad and empty.

i watched a man die: on the 6 train, approx. 11:54 pm. I stared at him, as he lay there on the car floor, not moving, still. he moved his jaw slightly, like there were words he wanted to get out, but they were stuck inside his head, on the other side of unconscous. i yelled for a doctor. i didn't do cpr. his heart had stopped. i know cpr. i watched the chest compressions,done by someone else, and the breathing, done by someone else. he was not breathing. he did not respond. .. i walked home 4 avenues, 20 blocks, thinking, " where was he coming from? where was he going?" and i prayed to be a better daughter, to pray and believe it could do something.

I got a new job, at a restaurant called Tabla where i get, count 'em, TWO meals a day for FREEE... (this is like manna from heaven.)

i was followed home by a woman screaming, "EXCUSE ME?! EXCUSE ME?! EXCUSE ME?!' ...hmm

i was a student at New School for exactly 48 hours.

I met a man named "stanley". ole miss, class of '03? anybody know him??

I met someone who spent the first 13 years of his life living in a cult commune, in , (who knew?) brooklyn, mississippi.

i have a friend who became ill after a strenuous yoga session, and had to seek refuge in her brand new yoga teacher's apartment. it was either his couch or vomitting and death. before she left he gave her a cap to keep her head warm "Oh, I've got plenty of 'em. lets see here, this one's Prada. How bought that?" ...only in new york...

....
i don't like being away from friends. anyone want to go to chevron, eat some chicken on a stick and an eggroll ? wander around wal-mart? devour some smoothie skittles and cherry vanilla diet coke from sonic? develop some photos in the dark room? drink a cup of earl grey? find a field to twirl in with a sunset behind it? yeeeeeah.

to my friends who are hurting, who i haven't called because i am a bad friend: I am so sorry. i am sinfully distracted with nothing much. i am sorry the world is broken. i wish i was there to hold your hand. some of my heart is breaking with yours, even with all these miles between.i love you very very much. thank you. let's talk soon.

"Lord you're leading me, with a cloud by day. and then in the night, the glow of a burning flame. and everywhere i go i see you. everywhere i go i see you..."

Monday, December 05, 2005

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:39:18 GMT

If I go out in the morning snow
With my pajamas and my winter coat
And take from the house our darkest thoughts
And take away the memory of loss
And if I drop them into the snow
Will we never find them anymore?

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:05:06 GMT

Julianne Moore just came in the shop!! and she is going to come in with her two kids and do a whole sitting for these silk screens we have for sale. I am excited!!

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 21:07:52 GMT

Yesterday I took a trip out to Brooklyn to volunteer for the first time at 826 NYC, a creative writing/tutoring center thought up by Dave Eggers et. all. In front of the tutoring center, there is this utterly ridiculous store front, the Brooklyn Super Hero Supply Store. The sell everything your local superhero would need, such as unitard in a variety of colors, capes of all sorts, including red crushed velvet, rearview mirror glasses, secret identity kits, matter and antimatter, speech bubbles, black holes in a can, and lots of other crucial equipment. Its the sort of thing that Jimmy Cajoles, Jonathan Peoples, and Bob would heave over in laughter in. There is also a cape tester, where you can try on a cape and get up on this thing and winds and special lights come on so as you can see how it will look on you when you are soaring through the air. Also, upon buying anything in this store, you have to recite the Superhero Code of Honor, so that we can be sure that you will only use your new equipment for good and not for evil. It's truly absurd.

SO anyway, I had a long time to check out everything in ye olde Superhero Supply store because after my forty five minute commute out there I was told that there would be no tutoring today because it is election day (Go Bloomberg!). So, since I was out there, I spent a while acquiting myself with the store with the help of (Libby? I'm not really sure what her name was...?). BUt oh my goodness, she was such a wonderful wierdo. With her black tshirt and hair pulled back, this mid to late thirties woman with a wandering eye is just the sort of strange ecentricity that I have been needing in this New York full of high achievers. Right after shaking her hand she tells me that she is accompanied by her invisible friend, but it is best not to look directly at him because he doesn't like it. He'll only really tolerate sidelong glances, due to his incredibly low self esteem and volatile nature. All i could really do was look at her, giggle nervously, and give a little short look out the corner of my eye to the space presumably occupied by said invisibly friend.Libby (we'll call her that...) has been volunteering at 826 for about a year. When I asked her what she did for a living, she nervously responded "Um, oh I um, do some work from home, just mathmatic data entry sort of stuff. Terribly boring. And I'm there by myself all day, working at my computer and the only person I really have to talk to is my cat and when she starts to talk back I know it is time to get out and do something else with my day. So I started volunteering here, to take some time away from conversations with my cat." Wow.

After thoroughly checking out the store I decided to walk around the neighborhood. It's called Park Slope and I just read yesterday that Jonathan Safron Foer and his wife bought a 5 million dollar house there. It was remarkably refreshing to be able to be in a place where the sun could shine down on me, the sky was not blocked off by skyscrapers, and there were actually stop signs and tall trees pouring this yellowred leaves down on the sidewalk. I don't think about how much I need nature to feel whole and healthy. I usually don't realize that oh, yes, I can't see the sky unless I look straight up as I am crossing Second Avenue on my way to the Six train. During my walk I came upon Prospect Park. I knew it was out there, but I had never seen it and let me tell you, I felt like I had found the Garden of Eden. I was sitting down on the grass talking to Catherine Robinson on the phone and in the distance i see, (oh my god!) there are horses there. Beautiful horses, all white and all brown with shiny coats. It was so beautiful these horses in their riding area with the red and yellow and brown and green leaves cluttering the ground around. It was really really nice.

Before I got back on the train, I stopped into a little to go coffee shop. The scene is as follows. I walk in as a mother and her two kids are leaving. The woman working has long dull copper colored hair and bangs that jaggedly poke out from underneath her green headband. She has yellow crooked teeth and wrinkles around her eyes that I think probably got there from smoking a few too many menthol lights. SHe is laughing about whatever has just been the exchange with the mother.

I step up and order: "A small coffee please" then with a quick look at how small the small actually was I say "OH, actually can I get a medium"

"Medium? Yeah. Man, that's just how we are isn't it? That 's what I was just talking to her about. We can't make our mind up for anything can we? I mean, it's always " I don't know honey, what do you want to do? A movie? I don't know, whatever you think." (She starts making the coffee while talking) You want milk? and sugar? two? I mean, we are just like that. You get us to a restaurant and we tell him yes, ooh all we want is a hamburger delux and then as soon as we sit down its another story? HA! ya know? I mean we're like, what are your specials? Ha. I mean, it's like the b word. I mean I am a BITCH ya know? I'm not scared of it. I'm just like yeah?and...? you know ? that's the best you can do? Say it again. I'm a bitch I know it. We are all bitches.RIght? Right? We can't help it that's just who we are. I mean, its a female dog right? It's a female thing. They'll never understand it. Ya know? Come on? I'm a bitch. You think thats gonna bother me. Now, you start saying motherfucker, than HA those are fighting words there.Here's your coffee now. you take it easy." My only response this entire time has been sporatic laughter and I laugh some more as I turn and walk out the door.

The most outrageous cup of coffee I think I've ever gotten.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 04:05:05 GMT

I like:cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, Marc by Marc Jacobs, and talking on a cool park bench with a friend thousands of miles away as though she is sitting right beside me, smiling, laughing, and blushing just a bit. I like walking on coblestone. I do not like unpredictable pigeons that burst thier feathers and thier beaks up and out of unsuspecting trashcans. I like smoking and walking in the rain just because there is no one to tell me that you ought not with their speech or with their eyes. I do like my virginity. I do not like girls in New York that think Sex in the City is a way of life. I don't like unhelpful salespeople, that act pissed off to be at work. I do not like the woman at Kmart that told me that it was MY problem that the credit card machine was not working properly, and that it was not her fault that I was just stupid. I like saying the phrase "whatever is mine is yours" and for friends that come over to stay when they need a place to go. I do like the smell of pine. I like the prospect of visitors coming. I love the color green and avocados. I don't like spending my morning cleaning up an explosion caused by my new coffee maker. (oops, oh yeah.. the filter is an important part huh...?) I don't like crossing Central Park at night in the most unsafe and idiotic fashion. I do not like tall buildings with rigid edges filled with people with dark suits and rigid edges. I like listening to country on my Ipod in the Subway, because it feels so wonderfully contradictory.

I also like porch swings, and talking to friends who actually are right beside me on benches, particularly my old favorite long green one, facing Square Books. I do like the Square Books Au lait, and sweet potato casserole, creamed spinach, and brocolli and rice casserole. I do like Thanksgiving with my family. I do not like knowing I will miss it. I like walking across campus and actually discussing books in class. I like the feeling of accomplishment I used to feel when I would actually get up the guts and opportunity to say something I knew was a really impressive point. I do like church at St. Peters and Ollie holding the cup up to my mouthsaying, "the cup of salvation." I like beers that don't cost $6.00. I like fields and trees and sunsets.Thats about it.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:00:31 GMT

Sometimes I just know that God is giving me the best, telling me, "Daughter, this is how much I love you. Why can't you just believe it?" And I just have to sit there and think, "What? Me, Lord?" That's how I have been feeling lately.

It got much colder in New York this weekend. It is a nice kind of cool, brisk and perfect for light sweater/scarf wearing. What I am nervous about is the actual winter here.

On Friday, I went over to the Upper West Side to this place called Symphony SPace because Sufjan Stevens was performing. I had already been over there earlier in the week, to ask them if they had any more tickets and they guy at the window sort of smirked at me and said "They have been sold out for months. But I went back over there on Friday just in case and I ended up getting in due to this incredibly nice girl that worked at the box office! It was incredible!!! I sat beside this short little indie kid patrick who had moved up here because of Katrina. I just started talking to him because I had to tell someone how much I was freakin out. I mean, I couldn't really breathe.

The venue was this tiny little place with chairs and stadium seating, but only about 50 people were in there. And Sufjfan wore a tie, that he he would later comment on by saying, "I look like a highschool teacher.":) and and and there were strings! A cello, and two violins. He rewrote the songs in order for there to be strings and he said that this was the first time he had ever played them. No one talked, everyone just listened and held their breathe. As best I can remember he played: Seven Swans, John Wayne Gacy, He Woke Me Up Again, The Transfiguration, Seven Swans, Abraham, Chicago, Casimir Polaski Day (Tuesday night at the bible study...), Peoria, the Trees of the Field will clap their hands, Vito's Ordination Song!, and this AMAZING new song that was instrumental that he said was inspired by fishing in Michigan with his Dad and his brother. I could actually hear the water, first soft and pitter pattering and then crashing. He got really intense of Seven Swans too. He was kind of yelling "Seven Swans! Seven Swans!" So yeah, it was pretty much the best thing I have ever seen. It'll be very hard to beat.
The only way it could have been better is if my dear much loved friends had been there.

(And I had made out with Sufjan backstage after the show) ... Of course.

I love y'all and miss you. Book your plane tickets now. I need to see your faces.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:12:10 GMT

I live in New York now. NYC. I am currently sitting on my new harder than one would expect bed that I purchased from Sleepy's which was delivered by two men who only arrived about 3 hours past when they promised they would arrive. I am eating a sandwich, the same kind of sandwich I have eaten every day this week. I am looking at bare freshly painted beige walls on which I need to hang up some pictures. I have no other furniture in here except the chair that I stole from the street which was one person's trash. However, upon arriving back at my apartment, after walking four blocks with said chair and having a homeless woman harass me about having it, the thrill of the steal had worn off and in the light it appears much more grimey and trash-worthy than I had thought. So I don't sit on it, I just put stuff on it.
Poverty and homelessness and extravagance and shallowness are everywhere here. I pass all of these black and hispanic women in my neighborhood, the Upper East Side, pushing baby carraiges with white, high fashion dressed babies and holding tiny hands of white children in school uniforms while their moms are... where? It's strange, just tons of them are around here. I would say yesterday I probably passed 20 pairs like that.

There is a black man in a wheel chair that sits right in front of the doorway of the Starbucks on 79th and Lex that exposes his left leg that is badly scarred and red with jagged white hard pressed marks that slash around it. He sits there everyday talking about how he is a veteran and saying "God Bless You" to people that don't give him money. It is his job, so to say, to just sit there, in the doorway of Starbucks as businessmen and women with high heels and designer jeans order their four dollar venti lattes. I watched him for a long time the other day through the glass window.

Also, that same day, a man came into the Starbucks, wearing dress slacks and a sweater with a very clean appearance. He silently walked around the seating area holding up a little sign that read, "I am a husband and father of two. I have recently lost my job and I can't pay my rent. If you could help me out in anyway it would be greatly appreciated." And so, I gave him a dollar. No one else gave him any money. Afterwards, I felt like the dumb newcomer, out of her element who, naively, gave the beggar money. Normally I wouldn't have. I don't give any money to anyone on the street, or the people that come onto the subway car. I don't. I don't I don't. But, I just wanted to give it to this man.

Last night I went to dinner with one of my old friends who just moved up here and her three friends. Two out of three of these girls don't have jobs and have been here over a month and a half. They each paid about $28 dollars for dinner. Their daddies paid about $28 for dinner.

Also, Rosh Hashana has just passed. Celebrated Monday through Wed, it is the Jewish New Year. The anniversary of God's creation of all of mankind. It is a happy holiday, because it is joyously looking into what lies ahead. Yet it is a serious holiday as well, because it is for thinking about all of the sin which has been committed by you in the past year and all the sin that is to come.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 14:28:19 GMT

There's a little dog beside me named Mac warming himself up in the fresh patch of sunshine that he has found here on the porch with me. It's been raining for what seems like weeks and he's remembering how nice it is to be warm and dry. He's hiding from the kids that run all over his backyard. He looks very stately, wiggling his ears back and forth, gaurding over this place, thinking about what makes the grass keep growing and why the mountain rodedendrum bloom.

I'm learning alot here. About how all of us are always going to be broken, and be made broken over and over. I'm learning that sanctification is true, and that God doesn't make us better people, He just makes us need Him more. I'm remembering that cheesy christian phrases became cliches because they are true, and that Jesus really does love you and that prayer is really the most that any one of us can do. The Bible is a love letter and that Jesus really is in love with me, despite how difficult and unwieldy that is for me to understand. God gives us what we need for today, and tommorow He will give us what we need for tommorow.

I miss you all.

What a friend we have in Jesus. I'll fly away oh glory. all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all. What o'er my God ordains is right. Un worthy thou I am, Oh Bread of life, oh bread of life, I will be healed. Hold me in your arms, oh bridegroom of my soul. Christ, Christ is my hope.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 00:53:24 GMT

--- some thoughts on my mind, some words of clarity and solace---

"GOd speaks to us through our lives, we often too easily say. 'Something' speaks anyway, spells out some sort of godly or godforsaken meaning to us through the alphabet of our years, but often it takes many years and many further spellings out before we start to glimpse, or tihnk we do, a little of what that meaning is. Even then we glimpse it only dimly, like the first trace of dawn on the rim of night, and even then it is a meaning that we cannot fix and be sure of once and for all because it is always incarnate meaning and thus as alive and changing as we are ourselves alive and changing..."
"... But one way or another the journey through time startes for us all, and for all of us, too, that journey is in at least one sense the same journey because what is is primarily, I think, is a journey 'in search.' Each must say for himself what he searches of, and there will be as many answers as there are searchers, but perhaps there are certain general answers that will do for us all. We search for a self to be. We search for other selves to love. We search for work to do. And since even when to one degree or another we find these things, we find also that there is still something crucial missing which we have not found, we searech for that unfound thing too, even though we do not know its name or where it is to be found or even if it is to be found at all."
-Frederick Buechner, "The Sacred Journey"