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.

midnight caffeine

too many thoughts in my mind.

or perhaps, too much caffeine in the blood.

too bad i thought i was immune to caffeine.

yirushima, "river flows in you"

it kind of astounds me.

its like he found a melody to the soul. i wonder if God meant for him to discover it.

its a song, of hope. of a secret waiting to be found.

mm, some peace for this harried soul.

a lot of things happening, changing.

thinking about how to be strong, and how to be myself, and how to be Christ, at work, in everything i do.

it's difficult.

want to love.

love, care about these people.

i want to make you the song of my soul, Lord. to have stillness when the world is rushing about me.

Lord, what is it in this song that i'm trying to reach, trying to fathom?

i wish i could step inside of it, and step to a world that would delight me. it sounds like a world full of brooks, and meadows.

don't you know that the deepest is the best?

think : walks, nature, and books would be good to quiet my soul.

i had forgotten about nature but it is true. i will try it.

from eckp

man.

had forgotten, what it's like to love the Lord 

with

ferocity.

and it shouldn't even look like that.  should look sharper, and all slanting on edge.

just like ferocity should.