Disappear

Walking out on a beach
I feel the sand coat between my toes
The crash of the surf fills me, for I am an empty vessel
I’m disappearing
Lost in the darkness
Lost in the fragments.
I have been beaten against the shore,
Swept by the waves until I am no more.
The wind touches me but I am not touched.
I am not touched because I do not exist
I walk into the surf believing, maybe, that I will get swept away.
The water reaches my ankles,
Then my knees.
As the tide goes in and out,
In and out,
I feel my feet sinking deeper into the sand
And I wonder how long it will be until I disappear completely.
The sand is a grave;
The rest of me will follow.
And then in my darkness,
My brokenness,
I feel something.
No, not a touch. I hear something,
But I do not know what.
I look at the sun rise and the words from the song come to me:
Here comes the sun, little darling…
But that is not what I heard.
I listen harder, trying to prove I exist
Even as I sink lower into the sand and the waves.
Then I feel the voice again:
I will not let you disappear.
I feel a broken shell against my foot. It is a different touch from the voice.
I will not let you disappear.
The sun rises higher –
Here comes the sun…
And the crash of the tide roars louder—
I will not let you disappear.
It is cold in the water, in the waves,
But I feel it.
I am separate from the darkness.
I lift my feet from the grave,
the cradle,
And walk along the shore,
And perhaps a little higher.
I would not disappear.
I Am that I Am.
I am myself, not darkness,
Not emptiness.
I will not let you disappear.
It’s all right.
It’s all right.

Fourth Wall Breakage

I was watching an episode of Family Ties today while I was waiting for the load in the dryer to finish tumbling and I found myself thinking. I know. This can be very, very dangerous, but I persevered in spite of the "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dogs" signs.

The audience was having a personal moment with the Keatons in the middle of the night because Mallory was worried about one of her friends who had just discovered that she was pregnant. They were sitting around the table eating a chocolate cake. (Allow me to note here that this never happens at my house. On Golden Girls, the characters are constantly all getting up at the same time and inevitably end up digging into a cheesecake that just happens to be in the refrigerator. You just don't get up randomly in the middle of the night at my house without rousing one of our five dogs and causing no end of ruckus. There is also, regrettably, no cake involved. Instead there are drowsy questions and a desire to go to bed before you fall over. So I find the picture of Steven, Elise and Mallory sitting around the kitchen table eating cake together warm and touching, but highly unlikely. Same goes for Golden Girls. What group of women over fifty gets up at one in the morning to discuss a problem at work??? Most of the time, women over fifty get up and take another Advil and go back to bed which they never wanted to leave in the first place, let alone adding on another two pounds with midnight cheesecake which they're going to have trouble digesting anyway.)

But the cake wasn't the issue. It was the fact that all of the Keatons were in bathrobes. Seriously, what family actually wears bathrobes? I have one that I keep in case we have unexpected company or if I get treed in the bathroom without the necessary clothing. That's it. My family certainly doesn't walk around in terry cloth kimonos looking cute and Leave It to Beaver-ish. In my experience, people only wear bathrobes if they're cold or if they're having company.

The Keatons were wearing robes to indicate their familiarity with each other and their total unawareness of being observed, that being the whole point of the typical family sitcom. I, however, would have found the whole situation far more believable if Steven had showed up in old tennis shorts and a Bart Simpson t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder, rather than his pristine plaid bathrobe. So the whole point of television failed, because the fourth wall was broken and the audience became known. Otherwise, why else would Mallory and Elise have bothered with bathrobes? It wasn't like Steven hadn't seen them in their pajamas before, which I'm sure were of the cute and silken matching variety, that being what the typical mom and teenage girl wear to bed these days....

Beauty

I found this on my old livejournal. It was written February 23, 2005

Beauty

There is comfort in the dark
there is beauty in the rain
there is mystery in the fog
when nothing at all seems sane.

When everything seems hopeless
when there isn't any light
when there seems to be no joy
I can journey from the night.

Oh! When I come to the edgeof that dark, dank forest
I can remember lessons learned
and again find peace and rest.

If I can see love in the rain
and find joy in the darkest night
I know that with God for certain
everything will soon be right.

Sparks

What a summer.

Ups and downs, sideways and backwards. The wheel never stops turning, and all those other artistic-y phrases that say something about how we humans keep trudging on through the days and weeks and years before we look back and realize where we've come from and how far there is still to go.

I'm going to try and get back into the habit of writing on here again. I do want a record of my life and thoughts -- they can be pretty revealing! For example, I just stumbled across my old livejournal that I wrote in when I was sixteen and stopped when I was eighteen. My thoughts were so different then, and my mannerisms are utterly changed. Dang, I was cute! All bubblings about clothes and hair and how grown up I was becoming. How did you guys stand in the face of my bubbliness? But I can still see me in the bubblings, which is a comfort. I certainly laid a lot more of myself out there in the open than I do now.

This has been the longest summer of my life, I believe. It's been fun and memorable for many reasons. Now I'm looking forward to my new life at Union University, which begins in nine days. It's so funny to be having a beginning when I'm technically at the end, namely, the end of my undergraduate years. When you graduate high school, you believe that that's the end of life to a degree. I don't mean death of anything, but you can't really see yourself ever getting older. That's still true. I look at myself and marvel at the fact that I'm moving out, even if it is only for a brief time. This is the beginning of true adulthood, not the sham independence that I've been experiencing.

I guess I'm still bubbling about clothes and hair and how grown up I'm becoming.

One of the greatest lessons of this summer has been about -- surprise, surprise -- the phoenix. I guess I forgot that the phoenix doesn't experience victory over death just once. It has to do it over and over again. Every time of darkness is a chance to learn about how the sparks will never truly die. Not really. As long as there is a Savior, as long as we know that Light that can pierce any darkness, then anyone can rise out of the ashes of their despair or troubles. Nothing that traumatic has happened to me, mind you. It's just something I've learned. Even when a way of life is ending, like mine is at Crichton and even here at home is, there is always a new beginning.

During this summer, I got to see a tornado first hand. I've caught up on Supernatural. I've been on my first date. I've learned about packing tape and moving trucks. I've gotten closer to my friends. I've learned that being strong for others never stops and that small Baptist churches still exist.

Let the learning continue.

Do your pants hang low, do they draggle to and fro?

I am most certainly not a fan of the long standing fad in the guy fashion world of letting the pants be so big that the whole world gets a peekaboo at the male's highly interesting boxers. As a matter of fact, I find the whole custom sloppy and crude. However, it is something I had to get used to in the course of my tenure at Crichton; you just learned to not make eye contact and to keep your mouth shut. 

It seems that other people did not get this memo.

Shelby and I were in the bank on Monday when a hilarious incident occurred. We were waiting patiently in line with another lady, who was black. We all turned when a young man entered, also black, and whose pants were hanging so low that I was fighting the urge to run over and jerk them down all the way and run away giggling madly. However, I did the typical avert-your-eyes-and-see-nothing maneuver, because that's just what you did. 

The lady waiting in line with us did not feel this need. Loudly, she proclaimed, "I just hate it when people do that. What do they think they're doing, walking around with their pants around their ankles? It's just rude. Don't you just want to walk over and tighten their belts?" This was addressed to Shelby and I, who are on the verge of hysterics. 

We can't answer, of course, because that might get us shot, so the lady gets her answer in the shaking of our shoulders. She winks and then keeps going with her diatribe. I get the giggles, so I'm trying desperately to not look at her because I know I'll explode if I do.

Seeing my dilemma, the woman says, "I usually stay in the corner at parties."

I managed to choke out, "You shouldn't!"

The guy remained totally oblivious. Thank God for small favors, although he probably would have learned something had he opened his ears. And pulled up his pants. 

Meet the Enemy

The bane of all Memphians alike is found in a two pronged attack plan that was tailor made for the area. 

The first pestilence with which we are forced to deal is the cloud of allergens that hangs just as heavily over Germantown and Orange Mound as smog does Los Angeles and idiocy does Washington, D.C. Perfectly healthy people come here and then only a year later are hacking and sneezing and swell-eyed like the rest of us. You know how in Jaws, the wife keeps asking when she'll get to be an islander? You are not a Memphian unless you have laid on a couch in abject misery with only a box of kleenex for companionship and the soft serenade of a vaporizer. 

The Allergen Cloud is a plague, one that must soon be reckoned with or it will undoubtedly be the harbinger of Utter Doom. Maybe the terrorists developed this plan -- it certainly has the potential to be both destructive and long-lasting. The effects can easily be qualified as degenerative and cruel and unusual punishment. After all, allergies are very rarely fatal, but they produce suicidal longings in their victims.

Melodramatic, you say? I THINK NOT!

The second bringer of evil is smaller, faster, and a lot more stupid. It is the average mosquito. 

We in the south have many fond monikers for the little monsters: "skeeters" and "our state bird" to name a few. They have many different hunting tactics which, while being predictable to a degree, are also changeable and had to counteract. This can make them a formidable foe. One must agree that they do have the strength in numbers.

First, they can lurk in large groups, buzzing around in abandon and pricking any and all who get in their way. The most common hangout of the mosquito swarm is the Fourth of July barbecue, a patriotic yet dangerous occasion. I was once the unfortunate recipient of over a hundred mosquito bites in one night as a child, and I was never again the same. I had been scarred and branded as a target by the insect world, a fact which I could never forget.

The second is perhaps not as intimidating, but far more blood chilling (pardon the pun -- didn't even see it until I was proofreading). The rogue mosquito will separate itself from the pack, waiting, observing, learning its victim's habits and moral beliefs so that the moment to strike will be perfect and unsuspected. These are the mosquitoes who come while their quarry is sleeping and then proceed to bite them four times in the same general area. They have no mercy.

This was no doubt the plan of the mosquito that just tried to alight on my arm, but it was careless. I was not to be defeated. Not to mention the fact that it was dumb -- it buzzed in my face barely a minute before coming back and trying to get my wrist. No doubt it was dizzy with thirst, but I remained unsympathetic as I sent it on to its just reward at the Blood Bank in the Sky. They like to party there with the vampires.

However, I know that there are far more where this evening's intruder came from. I will remain vigilant. I will remain focused and never forget the pain they have brought me.

I shall have my revenge. 

P.S.

It really is ridiculous that I should be so addicted to my new cell phone....it's pretty much THE ULTIMATE. 

See? Isn't is pretty?

And I have "Into the Night" as my ringtone, which just makes me smile. "Like a gift from the heavens it was easy to tell / it was love from above that could save me from hell! / She had fire in her soul it was easy to see / how the devil himself could be pulled out of me." 

Gotta love it.