the rarest downdeep vulnerability is impossible except for the lionhearted and even then only at their best moments
the purest flatout love is impossible unless you can learn to admit your utmost selfish desire to be fully known and granted access to fully know
the halfway between times where we mostly exist gives the opportunity for practice letting yourself be known learning to create space for others to be brave enough to ask you to know them and in the process, becoming something more solid to the touch more knowable
we humans, we need so much and give up so easily have courage, friend the reward for the risk of hoping is the greatest thing this planet has to offer is life.
----------- if only there was the technology to combine my abby and my lisa and turn them into a boy...
posted by renee 5:10 PM
Thursday, June 19, 2008
i walk in the door after an hour long talk with abby and a great journaling session on a beautiful evening. an attempt at self-reassessment, of the cataloguing of flaws and strengths, and imagining a direction i might like to go from here, streamline a flurry of brainwaves. comparisons, the evaluation of the reasonableness of my expectations of life, honest considerations of what i want, whether i can get it, where it might be hiding.
and i interrupt a dinner party.
a girl is talking. pretty shiny dark hair, doe eyes, slim and shimmery. she says "my group of friends from high school, guys and girls, has started hanging out once a week or so, and we are having so much fun. one of the guys i went out with for like two weeks in high school, he was my first kiss and everything. and he just finished his MD and a MBA, and he bought this really great condo down on grand. marble countertops, you know, and it's huge! in high school he was the valedictorian of our class of 500, so he's really smart, i guess, but how could you finish both an MD AND an MBA?! plus, you know, he's a doctor..."
and i wanted, a little bit, to scream.
because there are girls like that out there, who want you for your money and your prestige and how they'll look all arranged perfectly on your leather couch in your fancy condo. and the thing is, it works out for girls like that. be pretty enough, get the charmed doctor's wife life, live happily ever after. he has his trophy, she has her enormous credit limit.
but despite the fact that i have fewer and fewer requirements, that i've learned to not demand things, to back off, to, maybe, play the game.
it is still not enough.
it disgusts me that there are men who want women that want them for their money or job title. natural selection among humans at perhaps its most perverse.
i just think there's more to it than that. i want character more than prestige. integrity more than cashflow. i want depth more than brilliance. honesty more than dignity. fearlessness more than flawlessness.
mostly, though, i just WANT. and get nothing.
posted by renee 11:19 PM
Saturday, June 14, 2008
a day of facade, of a thin veneer of quiet over racing thoughts i thought what i needed was time with my crazy book to sit still and let the crashing waves of uncertainty and contradiction rush over me to take the spiritual pounding in solitary martyrdom
instead i took an invitation to escape the smothering city allowed myself to be driven away from overstimulating human denseness to a place with a horizon where endless fields invite muscle pumping, mind cleansing runningasfastasyoucan where conversation is simple, obvious
and around a bonfire we sat in mostly silence and fully peace
posted by renee 4:49 PM
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
in summertime under the surface there is a mumblingrumbling the earth beneath her feet trembles
shifting in the deepest places is obscured by constant overwhelming bright flashing frenzy above ground
still she notices where the light does not reach and the noise has died to nothing there is something new a hint of electric crackling change
inevitably roots unrooted solids liquified will finally surge up, out silencing the bazaars, the packed arenas, the regular shouting celebration for a new sort of sound
fear of the uneternal panicking uncertainty
something closer to whatever is real
meltdown shifts of tectonic proportions
and she squints at the sinking sun imagines the quaking of the far off horizon is visible feels the breeze on her skin braces herself in the deceiving calm for maelstrom
posted by renee 1:26 PM
Thursday, June 05, 2008
i'm pretty sure that if ben gibbard weren't so silly looking, he would not have gotten away with keeping his indie rock audience while getting all mainstream popular.
kudos to the ugly glasses, man. it worked.
also: turns out there are a lot of foreclosures out there. and i'm becoming more and more an administrator of databases. i disapprove of the number of things happening out there in the world that no one is adequately tracking. policy should be informed by facts. facts can only be arrived upon by the proper use of statistics, which is nearly impossible. i might end up making my living by that belief.
and tonight i'm going to drive through the hailstorm to go to a fashion show. that is dedication.
posted by renee 4:10 PM
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
had another little cognitive seizure at the renewed realization of the nearness of responsible adulthood part II.
becoming less and less willing to argue about the most important things, and possibly as a result, more willing to argue about things that don't matter to me. also noticing that i'm shying away from things i'm uncertain about rather than approaching them with an open desire to weigh the facts and make a decision worth sticking to. is this what grad school is doing to me?
on saturday, went to the longest barbecue ever. effortless fun with people i seriously enjoy from sunshine to hailstorm to the wee hours of the morning. some moments of precious and unexpected vulnerability. if i foster one strength in myself over my life i hope it is to become a person who creates an environment around herself where more of those are possible.
generally disillusioned about the tendency of Christians not to show up for things.
and i wonder: did Jesus see the people around him all as projects or did he really just love them? i don't think i know what that looked like at all.
