You know this.

I have never been all that good at telling things exactly how they are. I try to leave things out and remain a mystery, but I usually say too much. I throw people under the bus or I share inappropriately personal nuggets that are really meant for much larger, deeper conversations then just a "Hey, how are you doing?" Yikes.

I am still working on my Genesis homework. Which is, you know, great because I just keep learning stuff. Like that God is faithful. Like really, really faithful. My creative writing professor would have a problem with that last sentence. She says that people today don't use strong enough adjectives. I agree with her, but I am also lazy. Anyway, God is faithful. Also, my sister's friend is really sick. In fact, she is in the hospital. This stresses me out because, as old as my sister and her friends think they are (and I felt the same way at their age), they are little girls and I don't want my little girls to be sick.

What is funny is that when I was in high school I felt like I was rather grown up, but when I step back and look at myself now, I feel unbelievably young. I look at how much of my life I have completed, nearly 20 years, but I feel like a little baby: I don't feel ready for the world. In fact, I would like to redo childhood, please. Heck, I would like to redo today, please. And go to grammar school, apparently.

Sometime in November

I want to be that which inspires.

See a face red with laughter and realize this could be the future-

Yours. Not every verse has to be romantic: you know this.

You know that not everyone knows what is right and

Sometimes the cowboy kills the bad guy out of spite

And finishes life drunk and alone, and that is the end of it.

But you know this, and you write it anyway.

You realize that life isn’t an illusion, or an allusion and cannot

Be summed up in a metaphor in a poem on a piece of paper.

You know that each blank page is territory un-crept, not defiled

Yet. You know this.

You are learning that conscious failure is sometimes hidden

Success and the only revealer is time: you know this!

What is more, you have seen the consequences of death;

You feel them and fight them and press to be beyond them.

But these consequences won’t send you to skip into the sunset.

Yes, you know this, so you turn to He who lives beyond

And you write and write and write

And thank him for a language geared mind and fingers to hold a pen.

Unrefined

I am most definitely not a swimmer. This I discovered today after work when Ms. Krieger and I slipped into our suits and did some laps in the pool. It is “a full body work-out,” as my mother would say.

Oh my lovely Mother. She is sitting across from me in our dimly lit family office/library, perusing old photos on one of the computers to the backdrop of my father’s music: The Beatles Anthology. Around the room paintings are propped against walls in her latest attempt to get them on the walls (Mama, please know that I mention this with love: your inability to actually hang the paintings is one of your most endearing characteristics). I have great parents, by the way. They even brought home leftover Chinese food for me to eat when I came home from work. So great.

I think my favorite part of this office is the wall with the bookshelf. Books are stuffed in mild order, the Poetry Section bleeding into the Northwest Section and the Biographies casually fraternizing with the Classics. Traitorous, those Biographies are. Among the books are placed photos: one of my little sister, Madeline, several years ago, straight faced with her feet cut out of the frame, another of the entire blended family posing at my second cousin’s wedding that summer.

Summer 2008. The summer of my car accident. A summer of change. Real change, not the type of change one would associate with Queso Cheese – you know: chemical and rubbery. More like change that grows from the ground: nice and organic. Wooden, if you will? I never permit rubbery change. Praise God for organic alternatives. More on this later.

When you place a leaf in the water...

It has been a long time since I last wrote. The longest it has ever been, in fact. I've gone so far from where I've been. And actually, it is as though I have been under the attack of a giant eraser for the past month. All that is left of what little I knew are a bunch of those little pieces of eraser and paper - the ones that smell like a mistake.

I move far away soon. I don't know if you knew.

Work at Persimmon is excruciatingly (easy) (slow) (boring) (wasteful). I don't use my mind at all. The upside is that I usually get to read a lot. Except today and yesterday when the sun came out. You remember Sun don't you? It is that big light in the sky that makes things warm. I know we haven't seen it for a while.

Someday (over the rainbow?), I am going to write an intelligent and thoughtful blog about something other then myself.

P.S. I finished The Sound and the Fury and yes, it did become more fun to actually read then just talk about reading. Also, I read Little Bee. You probably should too. It was amazing.

The pale yellow moon shone in his eyes.

Spring semester of my freshman year of college has come to a magnificently anticlimactic close. I don’t feel relieved: I feel worn. I have definitely been hiding in my studies for the past couple of months, and now that I can’t do that any longer I am being forced to face reality and the quickness of time. If Time and I were to race, Time would be running circles around me. Also, I spent today worrying about my Soviet final, feverishly writing about the various characteristics of Korenizatsiia, packing up my life and saying permanent goodbyes. Whatever happened to “goodbye for now”? This feels like a country song. You know, the one where someone says goodbye…

Summer is here. Maybe my mood has something to do with the dark and dreary rain that made driving on the freeway a bit more of an adventure. Perhaps I can blame it on my upcoming search for the perfect pair of khaki colored pants for my cool new Persimmon Pool and Tennis Center job. Who knows (Shouldn’t I)?

I am wearing one of my impulse buy shirts. So that is nice. I want my bess frann to come over now, please.

Okay. Summer Goals:

Finish The Sound and the Fury

Read Anna Karenina

Be a stress-free summer schooler

Run, (Forrest), Run.

Wear dresses. Lots of dresses

Buy a new pair of boots

Do yoga because it feels good

Study some Bible and drink it like water

Be with people and tell them I love them

Be on time to work

Get some sunshine; Get more freckles

Have painted fingernails

Make a trip to Yakima

Make a trip to Prineville

Talk to Papa Dean about life

Get sleep

Don’t sleep past 10 (11 MAX)

Bike to Portland

Go see live music

Leave the future in the future

Wear lipstick

Okay, Go!

The last train is nearly due.

Earlier today, in a sudden burst of spontaneity, I joined my friend Suzy in attending Jesse Hughey’s senior thesis presentation. Jesse is an English major and a minor celebrity here at Linfield as lead singer of the homegrown band Jack Ruby Presents. It was only fitting, then, that his thesis should be a collection (album?) of six songs that conflated his creative writing and musical skills. The songs were centered on the concept of a travelling musician, the question as to whether leaving home is necessary and a discussion of the transition from home to away. As Jesse began his first song, “The city’s smoking cigarettes/ against a concrete wall/ and I refuse to believe/ that you felt nothing/ at all/ London never felt so right/ without you,” I realized that I might never hear these songs again. The presentation/performance was held in a classroom and the small audience sat in desks. The setting was intimate and I began to sense a premature seed of nostalgia settling inside of me. For the next 50 minutes and five and a half songs I made it my intention to fully experience the present. I wanted to soak up the lyrics, the music, the sound of Jesse’s voice, and, beside me, the orange of my friend Jason’s shirt and the thorough, easy academia of Suzy’s note taking.

Soundtrack of the moment: "Poem on the Underground Wall" -Simon and Garfunkel

I finally started Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury.” I haven’t reached the point where reading it is more fun than talking about reading it. I am confident that moment will come. I am only on page twelve. I started it one night after a full day of studying—finals are becoming pretty intimidating. I have two more to go: full of in-class essays. Yikes. Tomorrow I will buckle down and structure my day. Let’s see:

8:30 Wake up. Run.

9:30 Breakfast with Kate

10:00 Study, Study, Study

12:ish Thai fooooooooood

1:ish Meet with Smith

2:ish Study, Study, Study

6:15 Leave for Monmouth, See Heidi, Listen to Ty, Love life

If I have any hope to accomplish this, I must sleep. And scene.

Me?

Today I realized.

No, I don't know what. Maybe one of me does (there are two). I was telling my friend Jason that I exist as a binary, except I didn't use such a pretty word. Often, the characteristics that are the dichotomy of Sarah are in conflict. Jason immediately offered an example, "Flesh and Spirit." This is true. Here are a few more:

Mother-er/ Child

She who longs for approval/She who doesn't give a rip

Academic/ Flake

Lover/ Failure

Rational/ Emotional

Emotional/ Caring

Liberal/ Conservative

Old-Fashioned/ Hand-shaker

Needy/ Needy

Sister/ Independent

Follower/ Leader

Hippie/ Sloth

Activist/ Exhausted

Learner/ Explorer

Traveler/ Homebody

Eh.

Midnight Meditations.

I know some wonderful people. I mean that literally: these people are absolutely full of wonder. Wonder the noun, of course. These are people who leave me at times speechless and in awe of the Lord’s handiwork. God has given these people passion and direction and has gifted them in honesty and discernment. Some are wise. Others have an intuition that I could never dream of having—they know how to care for others deeply and efficiently. Some are filled with emotion that permeates every aspect of their lives. I truly know some wonderful, wonderful people.

Tonight, despite the fact that I finished my reading an hour ago and was able to take a much-needed shower and clean up a smidge, I will only get a few hours of sleep. I had planned on writing a lot more—I have so much more to say, to express—but I am this very moment realizing that if I don’t sleep now the sermon Kate and I will listen to in the morning will be useless to me.

Goodnight (moon).