its a friday and im a happy

how happy am i to listen to one summer's day by joe hisashi.

so beautiful.

i am so happy!

to write,

to be quiet,

to rest.

to listen to music.

i find the ingredients for my happiness are often alike.

(and for unhappiness?)

perhaps being unknown,

or uncared for.

perhaps they are the same things.

or feeling insufficient,

inefficient.

its surprising im such a one for efficiency.

must be like my brother, except i just have the mind...not the body or temperament for it.

(:

just the thought:

im being inefficient!

aah!

hallo world. hallo.

i can accept you today. the music makes it sweeter, as well as my heart.

esther

when gmail is light

scho happy to wake up

into the morning light

:)

singing for the sunshine

put your voice up to the test

sing Lord, come soon

farther along,

we'll know all about it

farther along,

we'll understand why

so cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine.

amen.

Josh Garrels / Farther Along

love,

esther

sentimental

what is the moment of knowing? of courage?

"Yes," he added earnestly, "I read that, and I think to myself, she has a sorrow, she is lonely, she would find comfort in true love. I haf a heart full, full for her. Shall I not go and say, "If this is not too poor a thing to gif for what shall I hope to receive, take it in Gott's name?'"

"And so you came to find that it was not too poor, but the one precious thing I needed," whispered Jo.

"I had no courage to think that at first, heavenly kind as was your welcome to me. But soon I began to hope, and then I said, 'I will haf her if I die for it,' and so I will!" cried Mr. Bhaer.

- Little Women

"No, my dear Beast, you shall not die," said Beauty. "...Alas! I thought that I only felt friendship for you, but the torment I am feeling makes me realize that I cannot live without you."

- Beauty and the Beast

esther:

be amazed at the world

an explanation

a lapse!

due to sickness, and

marriage.

have been feeling so much, too much lately at work.

want to cut out the day, insert paste sitting on a bed and reading 'the tibetan book of living and dying', songs playing.

songs are quite dangerous. i associate them with particular times, days, and they make me long for things i shouldn't long for.

i guess they pick me up and displace me in the past, but sometimes it's hard to get back to now.

does life have to be the same?

a repeat.

job / family / life / inside / shuttered

i want something different. it is a novel idea occurring to me lately-

(why don't you go out)

(and make it different, then, esther?)

(why don't you)

(abandon the social conventions of your time)

(and just be?)

i wish my shoulder didn't hurt. believe life would be now x at least 2.

am neglecting real world tasks because am expecting a Perfect.

by a Perfect, i mean, a perfect time, a perfect place, where there is time to arrange, to organize, and execute tasks efficiently and on time.

in the absence of such a Perfect, i throw up my hands and absolve myself of all responsibility.

the sneaking suspicion comes, that there may be no such Perfect.

alas, it shall be the death of me.

at least i will die with a smile and hug it in my arms. like this. :)

esther

temptation

it's funny.

at least i've come to recognize in myself, the steps

when i become upset, and want something to fill it,

to soothe it.

recognition = the first step

doing something about it? the final and eternal one.

its true after all-

humans are predictable.

i am predictable. =) it is truly strange to realize what you are used to doing, what you do, normally, without even thinking about it, is actually a reaction to something else that happened.

and,

also,

but

i am very happy

that i am different

from other people.

=)

half finished emails bring to mind

thank you, for knowing me.

that is a gift, and it makes me feel less alone, friend.

i like that you laugh at my jokes,

or think im funny.

i like that you know me,

peculiar parts of me,

and delight in them.

i like that what we say is funny

just because it's you, it's me saying them.

and you and me, one becomes significant

because the other exists.

i like the feeling that my heart

might just rest its weary self in front of you, in order

to be refreshed.

i like the thought of long conversations with night

falling outside on the pretty blankets inside.

darkness wrapping around us like comforting arms

as though beckoning us in,

to the land where secrets are possible, permissible

and the words usually shut inside of us are

free to roam, linger, in this strange dark wonderful land.

(they want to hold hands)

i like such nighttimes. it is a time for cookies, a pause in time to enjoy the goodness of

being alive, being able to talk and

speak. - stolen time,

my favorite.

i like that i can come to you

and its a small reflection of myself in the world

a small pool of me that i can trust and hold on to,

enough to discover the rest that makes you different.

i like that i can understand more,

without being destroyed.

without being undone.

i am still whole

because of you.

sometimes i go into the world

and go

into blank walls

they are called strangers.

but they are more like walls.

they bump me around unceremoniously

and unkindly,

without feeling

and i miss you then friend.

i look for you.

i really miss you-

hi, light

resolved:

to write everyday.

or rather,

half-resolved.

=)

either here, or in my fictional magnum opus.

my fictional little magnum opus. pequena opus. better: opus pequena.

i had an important realization today. as i was getting out of my car, in the dark of the basement and readying myself for a day of work, i thought, "am i disappointed in myself?" it echoed and scurried into the shadows of the walls.

"and if so, why?"

i am slightly disappointed myself, because i don't believe i have been exerting the courage to be who i want to be. i have simply been, in my natural state, which is an unthinking and fearful one.

i do not want to be afraid to be.

to be contrary and demanding,

to be dependent and trusting.

to be myself in all gargantuan form.

millions of legs!

octopus legs, flailing ever which way.

and today i kept thinking:

"be who you want to be."

and i became, a little more.

a little more esther! a little more Esther.

a little more happy.

a little more courageous.

dat da da

( david once told me he thought sounds were more meaningful than words ) (or perhaps that sometimes he can't find the words )

i often can't find the words

and - i keep thinking about this shirt, these words

scho good

...my happy laughter

thoughts on literature. life.

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken."

"I would like to have your sureness. I am waiting for love, the core of a woman's life."
Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me."

"The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares you to live, but at the same time, it exposes you to disappointments because it gives a heightened concept of living, it leaves out the dull or stagnant moments. You, in your books, also have a heightened rhythm, and a sequence of events so packed with excitement that I expected all your life to be delirious, intoxicated."
Literature is an exaggeration, a dramatization, and those who are nourished on it (as I was) are in great danger of trying to approximate an impossible rhythm. Trying to live up to Dostoevskian scenes every day. And between writers there is a straining after extravagance. We incite each other to jazz-up our rhythm."

— Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1)

you

There's always something
In the way
There's always something
Getting through
But it's not me
it's You

Sometimes ignorance
Rings true
But hope is not in
What I know
Not in me
It's in You

It's all I know

And I find peace
When I'm confused
I find hope when
I'm let down
Not in me
But in You

I hope to lose myself
For good
I hope to find it in the end
Not in me
It's You
It's all I know

fly away

listening to 'worlds apart'

and jars of clay

'i'll fly away',

i grasped something-

i think people who believe in God believe because its the closest thing to flying in this world.

asdf

:)

its called

행복

why music / why art / is special

someone just said the best music, is the music that makes you remember.
i agree.

things to focus on

i like:
intellectual stimulation:

i desire,
friends for the journey-
to inspire and challenge me.

i longed for the other yesterday during worship.
i felt,
i needed to see and understand and be pushed around by something different.

i am relishing the challenge.
i hope my faint heart doesn't take over.

iron sharpening iron.

a potpourri
i wish i could recite
the poetry that moves
inside my heart
only fragments and bits
that i know in my head
but are unutterable once i try
to enunciate and bring them,
birth them into reality.

william carlos williams and
sonoma
and ginsberg and jack,
to look you in the eyes.
spring,
in paris.
know that you love who you are
down the road
there was one less travelled
and it has made all the difference
that you love who you are
the bright orange flame
the gift in her hand
she left me with a gift
and a red wheelbarrow,
plums that were cold too
delicious to eat alone.
monsieur
living voices and we drown.
the raving of eliot and
the dog with a collar
an epitaph-
pope.
alexander, dumas.
now we enter the realm of story
telling and myth making,
reality which we hoped to live
and live through the words written down.
ach!
if only i were strong enough for a lobotomy,
no, or the howling
howl
of the road. l'engle's mysterious and word
meshing combining that is almost not a poem,
just a sentence a thought fragmented
splintered like a jewel
with the robbins singing.
For I could not stop for Death.
so Death stopped for me.

i'm looking for life you know.

becoming

i have forgotten how to write.
and yet my brother reminded me.

the way i write,

when i play on the keys
it's my piano.

i woke up this morning, and realized the limits of my mind.
i asked the Lord for humility,
to reduce my mind, that i might be able to see more.

it's funny, i think its responsible for a recent phenomenon ive noticed in myself.
when i reach a wall, i reach a wall. my brain literally blanks out, and the only thing i can think is,
i can't think. or i've hit the ceiling. the sides of my cube in which my brain is constrained.
i feel near panicked because i realize i can't take the information and knowledge i have, to come out with the perfect answer.

last night, this morning, i found it's because-
i've forgotten how to just be. how to rest, and let myself absorb what is around me.
to be patient and humble enough to learn. to accept i don't have an answer, or need to create an answer.
to be a child, and to just enjoy the purity of taking in the world.
to not have to hand out an opinion, but to just let the information sit in me. until its ready to bloom.
thats the only way ive learned so much so far.

i understand mastery.
it's being able to manipulate the things you understand, are familiar with.
to rearrange, to organize, to play with joy your building blocks.
for some people,
maybe it's math. formulas, concepts. numbers.
or dance. the way they move their bodies, they way they feel the beat,
or english. for these folks, its words. language, ah, the beauty.

im not quite sure what it is for me.
words. emotions. human desires and needs.
stories.

this keyboard is my piano and yet, it's funny. i feel rusty.

a good reminder.
nothing is forever
nothing is innate
unless you play with it, practice it.

it's true, ive been living a one-dimensional life.
the things which usually make it rich have been missing.
literature. friends. alone time.

studying is important to me. learning is important to me.
interaction with other people is important to me.

oh, Lord, learning about you and understanding a bit more about you is so important to me.

building something is important to me.
erin reminded me yesterday, the play and the creativity of coming up with ideas. to help one another.
it's been a long time since ive dreamed of doing that. or done that, simply because its in my heart.

i think i have to be very careful.
i did not realize until now that i've reached a juncture in the road.
the ways in which im being shaped. who ive been, and am going to be.
my identity in the past is not something i can always rely on.
with time, i see now, it will fade until only the hollow impression remains.

let's make it sweet.

peace

“We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God”

– Thomas Merton

truth

shipwreck

i built a fortress

with a hundred thousand faces

i'll keep it safe

with a hundred thousand more

but these masks are wearing thin

as you draw me in

i spend my time on the empty and the fleeting

i spend my life on much less

than what i dreamed

but im reaching out to you

to make me new.