the cat's sitting on my lap

Trapped like an animal. I'm flinging myself into the walls and hanging from the chandeliers. I'm loading up on ice cream and throwing it into the streets.

I don't want to sit here and paint. I don't want to write or read or be calm or post on this site.

I had this dream a while back where I was screaming at the edge of a cliff into the space about me. It was raining and my hair was plastered to my face.

Hmm. Why am I sharing this? BECAUSE I WANT TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN! I want these feelings to be real and this anxiousness to be satisfied.

I scream inside this mouth behind these teeth inside this skull. You don't hear it but my ears are ringing.

I want to be active. To run, to dance, to jump, to fly, to physically DO SOMETHING.

I will GO

This marathon comes first. That is where I can focus this wondering mind and these jittery feet. I am done and graduated and left with the responsibility of free-time.

I was wondering...what makes a job feel like a career? A retirement plan, insurance that covers health, dental, and optical, paid vacation and sick time, and the ability to pay a mortgage, car expenses, and family needs...so, like, can I do that without a job?

lalalala RE-CENTERING: the marathon is what I want to focus on right now because if I focus on myself, I might just lose it. Please come and support me in this. I need help and encouragement from you so that I know that I am not running these miles in vain but that I truly am making a difference in those kids' lives.

Please visit this link for a direct way to donate.

ALSO keep a look-out for my upcoming open house where I can talk more about what I am doing and why as well as share kabobs, baklava, and hear own stories.

Can we be friends? I like friends.

cookies are baking

All I can do is wait. But I have to keep my head in the Word if I am waiting on Him. I have to give it up, but I want to recognize what he is offering, so I fill my mind with His work.

Clouds are forming. Tornados are spreading. Hurricanes are rising. Storms are crashing. This world is changing. I believe disasters will become a part of out daily news, and even our own daily lives. How do we function in this newly forming world? Who am I? I am not content in keeping a job, or even in creating artwork for people to buy. I have something to give.

I am somewhat suddenly drawn to flowers and to the fact that I can arrange them in new ways, almost like a collaboration with another artist far greater than I.

What I love about flowers is that they are beautiful. They are alluring and delicate, yet strong. They are glorious, yet they are humble. They bloom and shine without shame, and then they wither and they die simply, humbly, gracefully. They serve the earth and then move on. They are a tangible connection between the sun’s energy, the earth’s nutrients, and water’s life.

I want my hand in work that is tangible, public, lasting, but evolving, kind of like a flower’s life.

Lord, where do you want me?

I see thousands of college students wondering the exact same thing: where do we go next? We have these degrees and we are told that that means something and that it is good, but what does it do?

I am: VisualSensualEmpatheticPatientActiveIntuitive

I am a: DancerWriterNaturalistArtistStylistIntrovertedextrovert

Somehow these things can work together for the greater good.

For now, I am noticing the trees, the flowers, the birds, the clouds, and the storms. I am noticing that I am extremely blessed with people who love and support me. Thank you

Night entering May 9

An underground world. Stalagmites and stalactites. I am reminded of the Discovery Zone. There is still a little sun. Two girls and a man. He marries the blond girl in a simple ceremony. No flowers but a bouquet. No guests. I can't even see the priest. The groom seems a little out of it, as if he were drugged, or blind and tipsy. Somewhere I am watching. I see this. Or maybe it's because it's my dream.

In the tent she is sleeping in a bed. Red walls and a toy chandelier made from rhinestones and sequins. I am on the tent floor, my face almost against the canvas wall. He comes in and lays beside me, his chest against my back. I don't fully register that he's there or that it's him. But he holds me and it feels good - warm and secure.

The light shines through the red canvas and my eyes open. Without speaking, without hardly moving, I communicate to him that I am confused. She is not called his wife, but there is that girl sleeping in that bed. I hear him think, 'Shit,' and he gets up, flustered, embarrassed angry. He leaves.

And then the scene jumps. I cannot stop laughing. We are laughing together, our faces nearly touching. I smell lemonade: it pours from the sun. Our smiles are so big that they hurt. My eyes tear. Everything is fixed, healed. Everything I thought of him as is real. It's all true. In this moment, love is an image, not a feeling. I do not say I love him, but this scene is one hundred percent love.

Beaches. Ocean. Sun. Sky. Mountains. A baby's perfect skin. Josh's joking manner. James feeling like a good brother. The family is happy. We are a family. This feeling is just so good.

And damn it it was just a dream.

Would I know what to do with dreams if they told me the future?

Night entering May 5

The house is tall and narrow, almost just big enough for the spiral staircase that twists through it. We are looking for something, almost urgently.

[I will use him as a distraction from the other figure who haunts my thoughts. He I can remember and feel no anxiety.]

A rat with a bunny's tail. A woman I can't fully see. My mom with a criminal mind. She is sick, I am afraid when she looks at me.

There is a station, a pay station, full of credit card terminals. The lighting here is reddish - like a dull bulb in a salmon colored room. On one side we are waiting; she forgot what was most important. The puppies bark. She is upset, hurt, she feels betrayed and unappreciated. Her sister is there, paying also. But this is a two second clip in a twenty (40, 60, 10?) minute dream.

[How can I show you that I love you?]

There is something I am not telling you. Forgive me, I am trying to remember. We are getting ready. That's it: this is an annual event. Our tree house soiree (I don't even know what that word means.)

There are six people in this room. We don't breathe too heavily. Something is wrong, off; I feel unsteady. My eyes dart back and forth. But this man, he is sure of himself, and so then of him I am weary. I hold his hand.

be my lover

Last night I had a dream about this woman who owned an inn. She had a hairless cat and a pool of tar – I don’t remember what the tar was for but at one point it was seeping out from under her inn and into the streets. The cars drove threw it, thinking nothing of it, and then got stuck later down the road once the tar on their wheels had stiffened. At one point I started to roll in it with my roller blades thinking that the drivers of the cars knew what they were doing and it would therefore be okay, but I got stuck too. My mother eventually told me that I shouldn’t even walk by the place because the tar was so toxic.

The innkeeper was older, maybe in her late fifties. We had met her at one point while we were still dating, but we never stayed at the inn, maybe we just passed it by. Once we broke up, I learned that you were staying with her. It started out as one night; you just needed a place to stay while you visited your Dad. But then you grew attached to her and you stayed for longer, for about a month – from the time we broke up to the time we met for dinner again. She loved you like a mother. She knew what you needed and how to comfort and care for you. You served as an object for her affection that, before you, she could give no one but her cat because there was no one else in her life. You were young and she felt needed, privileged, and once again beautiful as she did in her youth. You made her feel beautiful.

I don't feel safe sharing the whole of this dream...

It’s weird, alarming really, how love blinds us. I was so adamant, so sure, so determined that I should marry you and that everyone who told me to wait for this reason or that was wrong and didn’t understand what real love was and why it was a blessing to have found my husband so early. I wanted so badly to be married that young because young, Godly, happy married couples are so beautiful to me.

Now I am seeing that Jesus is insanely jealous of the objects of my affections. He wants me back, Jesus does. I replace Him with things that I can see and touch, who see and touch me back, but Jesus, you are everything! I don’t believe He will put any man in my life until I put Him first, which I’ve meant to do all along.

"Something's missing in me, I felt it deep within me as lovers left me to bleed alone..." Lacey of Flyleaf has been blessed with a gift of putting God's presence in her life into words that Christians and non-Believers alike drink up. I feel that something too and I am choosing to fill it with Christ's love, because He knows how to love me truly. I desire to love and be loved.

"Hello beautiful, my beloved." He melts my heart every time. Like a lover's shirt left behind, God's creation is all I have of His touch. But isn't that tragic? I'm constantly mourning to really hold Him.

I wanted a kiss and so I drank the rain.