Tag Archives: Reading

Which is Infinite

Posted on by under regular

I thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened) [cummings]

Sometimes I have this experience: I am present, and then all of a sudden, I become aware. Oddly, awareness often distracts one from immersion within a moment–awareness causes one to step back and see, to notice with intention until the senses are full and you pass back into just being. It’s like this: I’m sitting in the same old corner of the same old coffee shop, trying to fit more words into the minutes I have left before class than is wise, but then, the timeliness of the moment fades and I am just wondering how it happened that I get to spend my days hanging out with all of the words, because that is incredible. I wonder, once I’m back to reading, if telling my professor that I got “caught up in being aware” is as good as “the dog ate my homework.”

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Another day I’m walking across my beloved Quad, and the sky is so infinite that it makes me think of everything I love most. It’s been a rainy winter in these parts, but this day sings spring to us–it’s glimmering on the tops of everyone’s heads–and I stop. I touch the arm of my comrade: look, look, look. Maybe his face is asking if I’m going crazy, but I don’t know, because the sky is making me think about the way my mother looked when she gardened and how chocolate chip pound cake tastes and what it’s like to feel very pretty. We walk some more and bid one another adieu, and now I am free to let the grace take me to the last time someone gave me flowers and I am free to lose my immersion in the present and instead let the awareness of the infinite fly me and I am free.

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All week long, I am sick; sniffles and coughs and throat-gurgling that makes the people around me grimace (my apologies.) All week long the sleep is not quite long enough, it seems; all week long, I rise and shine and get brave early. (Except when I don’t, but see, that’s another story.) But despite the sickness–or maybe because of it, on account of, well, NyQuil–this keeps happening, these pullings-away where I have no choice but to extrapolate every bit of goodness out of any given moment, or I have no choice but to look in the face of something I like to leave forgotten, and either way, I am here and there all at the same time. “Can it be?” I asked our God, as sometimes I get a little too emotional for my own good, and honestly, was relishing pound cake while I walked down the sidewalk really a good idea? “Should it be?” I say it again, and I feel His smile in my bones. “Oh, but it should.”

 Every good gift and every perfect (free, large, full) gift is from above; it comes down from the Father of all [that gives] light, in [the shining of] Whom there can be no variation [rising or setting] or shadow cast by His turning [as in an eclipse]. –James 1:17

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I invite you, then, into the infinite. I do not ask that you would forget where you are, but rather that you would feel it fully, that your freedom would dance you around to all of the wonder and splendor that this fallen world does indeed hold. May you cross between the place where the angels fly, the place where our spirits long to be, and come back again, bent on running this race. Let us blearily stumble into the kitchen for a mug at 5:30 a.m., prayers for strength falling from our lips, because that is life–and let us notice the way light charges our souls, because that can be life, too; and let us be free.

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To Autumn

Posted on by under college by the semester, regular

Here are semesters one, two, three, four, five, and six; what follows is semester seven, complete with my favorite words and photos from the past five months.

I am always surprised when it comes around; all of a sudden, my world, like a spinning top losing momentum, begins to slow. It teeters back and forth on the edge called finals week, and then comes to a stop, resting. Resting. And having been holding on for awhile, adjusting to the wind in my hair, I let go and look around, surprised. “It’s over?” I wonder, stepping down and seeing how things have changed since the spinning began. That’s what I do in these end-of-semester posts: I look around and see how I’ve changed, how my world has changed, how the details that stack on top of one another to make our lives have shifted and spun and recreated themselves. And, as always, they have.

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OK, some things have stayed the same. But man, this semester felt different. I think part of it was the sheer amount of muchness that transpired; so much, in fact, that August feels like eons ago.

I think part of it was what I lost. There was so much to read and write–three literature classes + a seminar + a writing class–that sometimes I lost that feeling that is usually humming inside me, the one that lights when I pick up The Great Gatsby, the one that comes to life when I arrange all of the words just the right way. It became, at times, a rush to finish chapters, edit stories, read between the lines of poems. It became stressful, too much to possibly squeeze into the evening, the early morning, the smidgeon of between-classes break. It became consuming, this need to constantly get things done, and I’m sad to say that I lost that brightness at times. If I could have done things differently, I might have focused more on the bits of passages that fed those fires; but if I’d done things differently, I wouldn’t know what I know now, which is, “Feed your fires. And rest.” That’s not to say I didn’t adore all those words–oh, I did. I did.

“It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints upon mind indelibly.” –Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

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I think part of it was what I gained. The joy of the Lord was my strength; The joy of the Lord is my strength. How blessed I am to know how true that can be, to have seen that verse hold up under the weight of long days and tough conversations. Every day, God would wake me up with a reminder of His grace, and every day, I would walk one, two, three more steps with Him, listening to the still voice: “Walk this way. See this truth. Believe in this much grace. Taste that much love.” This made all the difference. This meant that even when my faith in my own self was uncertain, my peace was surpassing. My ground was steady. My spirit refreshed. And now, more than ever before in my whole life, I know who I am: I hear Him call me: Child. Daughter. Love.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
–T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

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It was more than all of that, though. It was this feeling that permeated the sticky air in August and blew through the chill of December wisps of wind. It was that same old sense of mingled contraries, the forward and backward, only louder. It was two different mindsets, oceans encased in glass that slammed up against one another, their waters rushing together until I could sort them no longer. It was, “Stay like this forever,” and “Give me a new adventure.” It was poems and pumpkin bread in a corner of the coffee shop, streams of sunshine making the pages glow. It was joy, fear, and love. It was infectious possibility and it was, occasionally, tears on my cheeks. It was beauty and rain, beauty in rain. It was truth; it was dancing; it was laughter. It was this and that and about 3500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And at the end of the day, it was so much that it overflowed. I simply had to get out the way and allow myself to be submerged within; I had to stop treading and learn to float. I was washed by the water, and, for that–for everything–I am grateful.

“I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I’m left on the filled end of things, in the soft quiet that reverberates after all that spinning and swimming. It’s a chilly wind, the same that will blow in 2013. It’s a deep breath, filling me up. It’s more and more understanding of who I am, how I’ve been loved; I hope I get that in every semester, every year of my life.

Here’s to one more semester. I’m ready. IMG_3649

“I know nothing, except what everyone knows–if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”

–W.H. Auden

A Love Story

Posted on by under regular

I did a lot of really, really spectacular things this weekend (if you’re assuming “really, really spectacular” things include going on runs, picking wildflowers, grocery shopping, eating enchiladas, hanging out with excellent human beings [both in person and via interwebs, two thumbs up technology, and also, good work creating air conditioner], drinking the best iced coffee of my life, giggling with my BFF in the event that I’d misdirected us [again (and again)], eating sweet potato fries, etc., you’d be a really good assumption-maker. Great work!) And I have to say that thing I’m going to spend the most time telling you about isn’t exactly the most important (see hanging out with excellent people.) It wasn’t exactly the most fun (see giggling with my BFF and know they don’t call me “Magellan” for nothing). But it was this thing that inspired me, especially when I started thinking about how to write it out (especially now that I’m writing it out.) I bought a copy of The Great Gatsby.

If you know me at all, or if you’ve read this blog, or if you’ve talked to me for 10 minutes at a mutual friend’s house, then you probably know it’s one of my most favorite books in the whole world, and maybe you’re wondering why I didn’t own a copy since you can buy them at Barnes & Noble for $4.95. That’s a good question, but as you might have guessed, I’ve got an answer.

See, I’ve always loved to read; it’s always been my home away from home, the land where I was understood. Some kids find that on baseball fields; some settle into their niche in an art studio; some kids ride horses. I, though, spent much of my childhood with half my mind  somewhere else, eating chocolate candy on Christmas Day with Laura Ingalls Wilder or wondering what was going to happen to Mary Anne in The Babysitters Club (and eventually trying to come to terms with racism thanks to John Grisham and Harper Lee or solving mysteries with Mary Higgins Clark.) At school, I won reading contests and aced AR tests like it was going out of style (which it kind of was by sixth grade.) This was my business, this reading books thing. I didn’t care one bit that I could hit 1/246 softballs pitched at me because I had something I loved. But back to the The Great Gatsby (I just had to let you picture my 7-year-old self lost in some book, and my 14-year-old self lost in some book, so you would know my 21-year-old self has been doing this a long time.)

I read lots of books for school, of course, and I loved many of them. I first remember falling head over heels for A Tale of Two Cities (and thus literature), which I’m sure is perplexing, since this is about The Great Gatsby. But here’s what happened when I read that book: I got it. I ate up the pages in one night, even though we were only supposed to read three chapters, because the story took hold of me, which wasn’t something that I hadn’t experienced before. But this time was different because this book wasn’t just a story; it was art, and it was beautiful art, and it was art that meant something to a lot of people. Those words ask questions we’re still asking—Who am I? Who do they think I am? Why does it matter? Why am I chasing this dream? What is this dream, anyway?—and just like that, I knew why it was such a big deal, and I wanted to read it again. It was the first time that really terrific written words—literature, if you will—and a gripping story had fused in my life, and thus, my adoration for The Great Gatsby was born. After that, there was no stopping it; I was smitten, and, as you know, I still am. Gatsby’s been joined by the likes of Jane Eyre and Holden Caulfield, but he’s still my main squeeze.

I’ve been looking for a copy ever since I’ve moved to college. In high school, I spent a lot of time in the library for yearbook, and I read the copies there several times. When I realized I didn’t own it, I decided I needed to own a copy that meant something more than the other books I bought clean and shiny off the Barnes & Noble shelves. I checked eBay, and I found a beauty signed by F. Scott Fitzgerald for $500,000, which was a tad out of my price range, and anyway, I decided, I shouldn’t be chasing it.

So it made sense that Janie suggested on Saturday night that I come along for an impromptu trip to Birmingham, and that we should see if 2nd & Charles was open, and that we could wander around. It made sense, of course, that when I opened the door my heart got all jumpy, and it made sense that I would stroll away and happen upon a table of “School Reading List” books. And then, just sitting there, for $7, looking rather inconspicuous, was a used copy, and my breath caught. I knew it was mine.

It may seem silly to you, imagining me standing over a table, caressing a book, a tear welling. It may seem silly to you that I’d write a whole blog post about this when I already said the most lovely thing was the minutes with my people. It may seem silly that I could go on and on about a book, since it isn’t even a true story. It may seem silly that I never just bought a copy from Barnes & Noble, that I waited all that time to find a book that may or may not have been loved, that may or may not have tossed in the donate pile after someone read the SparkNotes online. And you may find it silly that I wholeheartedly believe this isn’t true based solely on the dog-eared pages. But this is okay with me.

Maybe you don’t understand; but maybe you do. If, perhaps, you’ve held something like this close for a long time; if maybe you’ve had some special corner of your heart carved out for some sort of art that always seemed call your name; if you’ve ever read something, or seen something, or heard something that made you want to make something beautiful too, then maybe you’ll understand, and maybe you’ll think of your gem, and maybe you’ll want to go read it again. Then maybe you’ll sing, or write, or at the very least, smile.

And just like that, because of you and me, the world is a more beautiful place.

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”

—F. Scott Fitzgerald