tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23314773460278350162024-03-05T08:18:25.971-08:00FreedomLately I'm really into the pursuit of all things wonderful.brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.comBlogger231125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-50497781428096216312013-11-01T16:23:00.001-07:002013-11-01T16:23:17.941-07:00I need to tell you about the ocean.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Hi there.<br />
I don't want to waste time on how I haven't come here that often.<br />
I love my life, my Vienna, my Jared, my business, our little duplex in our charming neighborhood full of boutique stores and lantern lights on big porches.<br />
I'm still hungry, though.<br />
Hungry to know the future, to remember people of the past better. It's easy to let the days and nights slide by in work and Vienna, baby and photography, it's all the same but still really really good. But I want to reach out more, think more, write more. So I took this afternoon off because I can. I've been filling up on floral arranging 101, how to decorate your house eclectically. The blazing afternoon sun is fall through my blinds at 5:01 on November the first, and it's so delicious I turned on the air conditioning through our errands today.<br />
<br />
Yesterday was Halloween and I stayed home to pass out candy to kids for the first time in my life. And we didn't have one single trickortreater. It feels so wrong to be old enough to stay home and pass out candy. That's going to be somebody's job for every Halloween from here on out, I guess, unless we keep living in our charming old little duplex where people don't see the second door on the porch.<br />
<br />
Bon Iver speaks to me, loud. Any mood he comes along. Any day any feeling. I close my eyes and go to deep lake with clear blue water, summertime, rope swings, cabins and docks and towel dried hair. I go and stay there for the whole of summer, crying with delight as the water takes me under its wing.<br />
<br />
That reminds me--I gotta tell you about the ocean in October in California. It is the best place, and when you're in you can see for miles around and up and down nothing but blue, blue, sun blue! I jumped with the waves and let out a squealy scream every time it would suck me in only to push me back up. Something about the water energizes me, tickles the cells in my bones and lights me up. Sand in my toes and foaming bathing it all away. I caressed the mossy rocks with my fingertips and the mussels called back, telling how long they'd been there. So many stories in those rocks, kept fresh by the constant crashing waves.<br />
<br />
The water was only cold at first but it was just me and the other crazy kids out there, neck deep and screeching in delight with every wave. I have to shake that crazy kid awake else she gets lost running errands, getting gas and ignoring boring mail.<br />
<br />
I expected to still feel the tide in me lying in bed, but I didn't. It left, I guess, with those fleeting ins and outs. The ocean makes me feel alive like nothing else.<br />
Til you venture out on the rocks further than you dare, and you feel like the Little Mermaid, til you kiss the salty waves with your pulsing lips, til you know in your sand-covered toes that this is the biggest and best thing on God's green earth--you can't understand how it still somehow, wonderfully, keeps you alone. One with all the things you ever wanted absorbed into you.<br />
<br />
Then maybe a dolphin rears its head, maybe a cluster of birds flies over you, and you get swallowed in the wholeness and fullness of the ocean, peaceful and exhilarating all in one bite.<br />
<br />
I pushed the seaweed out of my way, floated and flew farther and I could still touch. More seaweed. I got eye level with the waves and welcomed them--how could I ever be scared? My whole life is in front of me in those waves, killing people every year but giving life to zillions of gorgeously useful creatures and thousands of other things we know nothing about, so I won't feel knotted and worried when the ocean is here, the world is here, and I believe in adventure always. Bon voyage.</div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-60589158161949052712013-06-07T12:14:00.002-07:002013-06-07T12:14:26.639-07:00get MOVED.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I walked with Vienna today and we saw things and were part of the real world, instead of just scrolling through it while I feed her.<br />
Sometimes my life seems like an endless cycle of nursing, burping, diaper changing, putting down for a nap. Going anywhere or doing anything outside the house messes up the schedule.<br />
<br />
But this morning V was crying, she didn't WANT to sleep. So we went on a walk in the stroller in the beautiful June morning full of sunshine and allergies and runners and porch sitters.<br />
We saw the jogger couples, the ladies with fancy workout clothes, the old ladies piddling in their yards. They all had ready smiles and hands anxious for waving and I forgot how friendly the world is, even when your face is red and you're generally a hot mess. Being a hot mess never felt so amazing.<br />
<br />
Two songs on Amos Lee radio moved me to tears, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4xY__FoDzY" target="_blank">this one</a>: while I was listenin, the spirit MOVED me. I felt tingles and chills through every inch of me. That's what it feels like to feel alive, completely and totally. In those really indescribable moments I know God is in me, floating around in my pores and veins and guts. He's so there I can't deny it. I had to start running, running and flying like a cheesy movie for the first time in over 9 months. It felt so good to have music filling up my ears and the sky filling up my body and the earth solid under my feet.<br />
<br />
I've been hurting about a few big things I've kept quiet. I've been silently sorting through abandonment and betrayal and all flavors of frowning and feelin stuck. Inside my walk today I felt inspired again. I felt like I could go back to our little house and begin the cycle again, with more consciousness and just healed and whole.<br />
<br />
I don't need all the things I thought I did. I can create so much just me myself, plus God. Plus music and all the wonderful things in the world that don't have anything to do with people.<br />
<br />
Now I'm here with my hair wet, finally showered at 1:00 in the afternoon. V, she was up and bathed and gorgeous by 9 am, but this mama--well, you know you're a mom when plucking your eyebrows seems an unspeakable luxury--and I'm acknowledgin that I skipped a whole lot of stuff in the chronology of this emaciated blog, like V's birth and deep reflections and metaphors about what being a mom is like. But today, I am full of the tingly happiness of summertime walkin to amazing music. Today I felt like singin again for the first time in a really, really long time.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
I'm coming back to life after a long winter of uncertainty.</h3>
I thought becoming a mom would completely change me--I heard from other moms you become a whole new person, you'd be surprised how everything changes.<br />
<br />
But not me. I'm the same person.<br />
<br />
I'm scared and relieved about that.<br />
Scared because I still have big dreams and desires to create wonderful stuff and put it out into the world and I'm still not sure how that fits long term with being Vienna's momma. We're doing it, though, and it is amazin.<br />
<br />
Knock your socks off amazin.<br />
Pop your eyeballs upside down amazin.<br />
Yeah. I'll tell you more about it later--right now that's what you gotta know. Ah.maz.in.<br />
Now go blast a song and get MOVED.</div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-47538357285491355772013-04-09T20:26:00.000-07:002013-04-09T20:26:59.933-07:00the eye of a needle.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
today i am inspired to write by brandi carlile.<br />
i can share the song with you, but it won't penetrate your heart quite like it's piercing mine right now. you can still <a href="http://grooveshark.com/s/Eye+Of+The+Needle/2GOacV?src=5">listen if you wanna.</a><br />
<br />
i feel like this whole birth and becoming a mother deal is exactly like passing through the eye of a needle. isn't as easy as it sounds.<br />
but people do this all the time. birth babies and become mothers for the first time.<br />
and people say, congratulations! how exciting!<br />
but i am swimming in it. overwhelmed and totally unsure of myself. and people say, you'll figure it out.<br />
but i have a hard time feeling good about that when a child, a precious little human soul, is affected by my every mistake. a sweet little girl i love enough to drown in, and it's inevitable: i'm going to hurt her. things i do and say are going to damage her little self. i'm going to be bad at being a mom sometimes. probably a lot of times.<br />
and yes. she'll get over it. she'll be bouncy and resilient and the love i'll shower on her will mean so much more and hopefully she'll remember the wonderful things i'm good at in motherworld and not the faults i have and fear.<br />
<br />
but i am really tired of people acting like it's not a big deal.<br />
the epitome of the "it is what it is" attitude. you do your best and blah blah. they probably say that because they figure i don't want to hear their advice. and, really, i don't--i just want someone to take my face in their hands and tell me that it's the hardest thing in the world and tell about the nights up crying and frustrated and the most beautiful moments of the multitude of shared love and knowledge between a mother and her baby.<br />
<br />
i am looking around with such sure knowing that my best is so painfully not enough. why is no one else bothered by that?<br />
i know God is looking out for us, and will help me care for her and love her and make my efforts so much more than they could be. and still, my efforts alone will not be as whole as i wish them to be. i will lose my patience and scream into a pillow and break down crying and accidentally wake her up and squeeze her hand too hard and act differently than i tell her to and want to tear out my hair.<br />
<br />
and all anyone can say is, you'll figure it out.<br />
yes.<br />
i will.<br />
i just wish there was a way to figure it out before her life is on the line. before her pristine self becomes my trial-and-error zone. i don't want to litter on her. i want to preserve her perfection.<br />
<br /></div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-31017196822553712612013-03-26T20:40:00.004-07:002013-03-26T20:42:35.575-07:00graduate.d.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Once, I graduated from college. I celebrated (cautiously) a few months early, and so when I really did it, when I really stepped off BYU campus for the last time as a student, it didn't feel big like that. I was just trying to get to Christmas.<br />
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After graduation I had nightmares for months that I'd forgotten some logistical detail and didn't really have a degree. There was something more I had to do, a hidden hoop I somehow didn't know I had to jump through. Like how I forgot to get a tassel and Jared handmade me one on the morning of the graduation ceremony. It was perfect--my husband bailing me out for a detail I've overlooked, again.<br />
<br />
I have no idea what the future holds for me, what exactly I'm meant to do in the world with my music and my voice and my words and my photographs. But I know, for sure, that I was meant to get the degree I got, with all the blood, sweat and tears. It stretched me wide open and God knew I'd need it.<br />
<br />
Now there's a baby girl kicking inside me and I want her to know what her momma did. That her momma loved this thing fierce but somehow the love got away, and even when it did she kept moving through. I want her to know that even if the love never comes back I'll still be proud and not regret. That even if I never sing much or direct much I'll know those hours I poured into that piece of paper were where my heart needed to get jostled around and molded into the one that can love <i>her</i> fierce.<br />
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I can't leave these people out. They listened to me cry and lament first about how I did't know what I was going to do with my life. Then they listened to me cry about how heartbreaking it was not to get in, and then, to more crying about how hard it was once I got in. Still more crying when I lost the love that kept me up at night scribbling down teaching techniques and instead was up late imagining photographs. They invested in me and believed in me and told me I could do it and they really believed I could. Mom especially was on the other end of a lot of tear-soaked phone lines and I am so thankful for her grace, for her perfect and tender handling of all my emotions through all of school. Words are really wimpy in trying to say all that my blessed parents did and gave and were so that I could live the dream and go to college. Whow. What can you even say about the people who give you everything and still hold you up and tell you all the wonderful things about yourself that you can't see. This love is big.</div>
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God does amazing things with my life when I let him in.</div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-41460185366576604252013-02-07T18:35:00.003-08:002013-02-07T18:35:48.887-08:00Kick and Quiet.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today the sun was out and I looked out the window all day, feeling inspired and readyready to photograph the whole earth.<br />
I went shopping for springy clothes only to come back with all the dark and black things that were on sale. It's okay. I needed maternity things.<br />
I'm ready to have this baby so I can shop in the regular section again. That seems like a dumb reason to want her here.<br />
<br />
She is a girl baby.<br />
She likes grapefruit in the morning and then applesauce, then other fruity things, then sometimes nothing else sounds good but she is still hungry.<br />
She goes KICKKICKKICKKICK really big and then gets quiet for a while. Kind of like her momma goes:a flurry of stuff and then nothing. It's quiet that fills up your whole world if you let it. Sometimes it's nice, and sometimes it is like drowning.<br />
<br />
I'm going to be a substitute teacher.<br />
Gulp.<br />
It makes my heart hurt and my head ache to think about it.<br />
But I do what God tells me and He always sends me what I need.<br />
He told me: I'm gonna send good things to you.<br />
I believe Him.<br />
I'm working on the part of me that's kicking hard against believing. There's a lot of room for doubt when your proof pool is a lot shallower than it once was. My faith is spread thin these days and I'm trying to nurture it, bulk it up and make the ends meet. I'm trying to remember that my faith doesn't need to be tied to specific results and is about trusting His will and giving mine up even when it seems so incredibly easy and perfect.<br />
It's really scary to keep jumping into the pitch black dark.<br />
It's good practice to keep jumping.</div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-19832991377585501052013-01-22T11:38:00.000-08:002013-01-22T11:38:22.931-08:00Expressin the Good News<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. day.<br />
This day always means a lot to me. You can <a href="http://lifeonthebeech.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-real-yo-dreams-and-all-that-stuff.html">read more about why.</a><br />
<br />
........<br />
Just being here tonight is bringing back all kinds of memories for me, and I'm feeling all kinds of things about soulful communication of God's love and joyful communication of the gospel. I'm feelin the joy of the time I spent coaxing and nurturing that joy and soul in regular people who weren't sure if they had it in them to be loud or even confident in expressing the good news with groove. They'd look around, like, <i>whoa. This feels gooooood. Is it okay for me to feel this good moving and shaking and shouting with love in music even though I'm white/inexperienced/not a singer/shy? </i>I loved smiling, reassuringly, and letting them know that we are all entitled to groove and joy, that our message transcends all kinds of boundaries. Just because we're white and don't have the history, the generations of water under the bridge--this doesn't mean we're not allowed to love music or culture or a new way to express how we feel about God and the human family. <br />
<br />
I'm here, in the Wilk Ballroom, feeling how big it is that musicians practice and have oodles of background and built-up love and history that they bring to the music. The audience has no idea, really. We're edified, we feel good--but we have no idea.This is what I miss about performing.<br />
<br />
I saw BYU Singers on the program and I gotta admit I was disappointed. And a little infuriated at first. I was all attitude, like, ohhh please, Martin woulda hated this coiffed-to-perfection-choral-boringness with exaggerated diction and an impeccable blend. His legacy was about doing what you believed in the best way you knew how, with or without a fancy degree or special training. He would scoff at this singing that's so manicured and refined, and who in the world thought up this silly idea to have them here! They don't know a thing about this culture or this people or the way music is supposed to be.<br />
<br />
But then in the middle of my attitude I remembered what I just thought about being allowed to love things that you don't have any ownership in. And I remembered what Cathy the speaker challenged us to do when walking down the street: saying in our minds to each person, <i>you matter. </i>She challenged us to <b>see the likeness of God in all of His children.</b> I typed that in my phone because I forgot my journ.<br />
Then I felt sheepish for not wanting to let it go the other way. For wanting to reject the BYU Singers' offering because it was different than mine would have been. So maybe the people in BYU Singers didn't get it, like I was puttin on them. But maybe they did, and they made something to honor Dr. King that was equally as important as my gritty soulful somethin would have been.<br />
<br />
I think Martin Luther King Jr. would have been pleased that a group of white classically trained singing kids were honoring him, even if in a form he didn't love as much. Maybe some of those Singers people caught a glimpse of how inadequate their offering was and felt humbled by all they have to learn. But I caught that glimpse about my own offerings of song and love and worship, and felt humbled. And I still felt good and light walking out of there. <br />
<br />
And I still want to go to a meeting in our church where I can sing and shout and praise the Lord with all the volume and vigor I feel like. Right now I do that by myself, and I feel lifted.</div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-35684568072970422662012-12-11T20:41:00.002-08:002012-12-11T20:41:34.898-08:00It.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We find out what kind of baby Baby Schultz is tomorrow.<br />
It's better than Christmas.<br />
I have no preference because it already is what it is and I just want a baby I can stop calling 'It' and give this child a name. <br />
I'm freaking out inside.<br />
I'm freaking out inside.</div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-86128244446488754212012-11-04T06:08:00.002-08:002012-11-04T06:08:33.752-08:00little one.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is the baby that is growing inside of me. It will be here on April 28th, they say.<br />
I
have a lot to say about it. I've been writing about it a lot, snippets and snaps of thought before it
felt safe and right to tell the world. I want to let you in on those
letters to my Little One, even though they are up and down and all over the place. This whole deal is crazy, full of so many emotions and thoughts. I'm moving through all of them.<br />
..................<br />
<br />
Hi little baby.<br />
Pregnancy test says you're here, inside my belly, growing away. I love you, but I'm just having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that you're real. After I sat in this same spot and wrote how deflated I was that you weren't, yet. And now two pink lines are saying yes, you're pregnant. It's such a strange feeling--I expected to be elated, but it's so surreal I don't know what to think. I'm excited, though. I think I'll be more excited when the doctor says for sure, it's happening, you're due on may or june.<br />
<br />
I just want you to be here so I can meet you. but when you come, we'll live in a different house in a different city. I'm just antsy for you, and at the same time overwhelmed because i have no idea what to do with you. I'm afraid of small things like i won't feed you enough, whatever. but you are going to be my baby, the baby i made with the man i love the most, and then we will take care of you. we love you, little one.<br />
<br />
i'm here again, and today is a day after yesterday. i feel intense and sad and tears are comin outta my eyes. maybe for the love i have for little one, or maybe for the things i don't know how to feel yet because it's only been two days but it feels like a freakin eternity. and will i let little one say freakin?<br />
<br />
i have a lot of questions and no one to ask them to.<br />
i don't know what i'm afraid of.<br />
not knowing what i'm doing, needing so very much help?<br />
it's day 2 of officially knowing and i feel helpless. it's already hard to bend over and i already feel uncomfortable. maybe i'm making that up, huh, little one? but you're in there, in a teeny tiny form, right?<br />
<br />
it leaves me feeling pretty alone in the world, this whole pregnancy thing. needing people to help me out, wanting advice and the nitty gritty of their experiences, and feeling like i can't tell them because for some reason i'm not allowed.<br />
................<br />
<br />
I feel so tired, and it's 8:34. Pregnancy brain is setting in, I'm
making this up, and i'm trying to think of all the outlandish things i
could crave in the next 9 months.<br />
is this real?<br />
i want to get it, but i just don't, right now.<br />
i can't be pregnant--i'm just brooke.<br />
old
people get pregnant, mommy-ish people, mature people, bookish clairish
kaylieish people. not free spirits trying to find their place in the
world.<br />
.................<br />
<br />
I need to say things.<br />
Things about this unborn baby, so teeny
tiny, growing inside me every day. Every day I wonder if something will
go horribly wrong. I try to have faith that it won't--but in the same
breath, I don't <i>expect </i>that it will be all just fine.<br />
I
guess I could have the same fear about Jared dying or getting into an
accident or something, but I think about how vulnerable this little body
is, nested inside mine, hardly anyone even knowing about its existence
yet, and I want to give my whole heart and blood and brain to this baby
to have, to use, to live!<br />
Oh how I want my baby to live! To live
so full and long and happy and free, to enjoy so many rich experiences
and the feeling of sand and the taste of homemade meals, the heartache
of loss but only a little, and I want to protect this little one from
any danger or pain and keep it tucked safely inside me forever.<br />
<br />
It's
hard, every day, for me to think about Little One not being completely
safe. Being so vulnerable to any small thing that could go wrong. It's
hard for me to think of not being able to<i> make sure</i> Little One is
completely safe. So I guess I avoid, and nurture myself in the belief
that this can't be quite real yet. Because I have no way of knowing if
my little baby's heart has already stopped beating, or if it will stop
tomorrow, or if it will somehow have something horrible happen to it,
for no apparent reason or for something I could control.<br />
<br />
.................<br />
We walked together and imagined you wrapped up on my torso, little
one. We imagined pushing you in a stroller, in one of those backpack
things on dad's back.<br />
Your dad loves you so much, little one. He
rubs my belly twenty times a day and talks to you. You're only three
inches long and one ounce, but OH MY GOSH HOW WE LOVE YOU!<br />
Your
dad and I look at each other with love deeper than we ever thought
possible because you're coming into our lives. We don't know if you're a
boy or a girl baby yet, what your name will be, or for sure where we'll
be living when you'll be born. But we know we love you fierce, and we'd
do anything for you.<br />
Like throwing up a delicious breakfast this
morning. Thanks for letting me get through most of life normally,
though, sweetheart.<br />
<br />
Your dad is so anxious for you, and
so am I! April 28 seems like it will never come. But we're already a
family. We're already growing close, getting to know you in the smallest
ways. Sometimes I think I feel you, even though the internet says I'm
not supposed to yet. We insert you wherever we are: snuggling with us in
bed, lying on a blanket in your pajamas, getting ready for a bath.
Grandma Schultz already bought you a toy--so many people are so thrilled
that you're coming into our lives! It's beautiful to see how this cycle works: parents have empty houses but get fresh new little souls to love, and we start the journey.<br />
..............<br />
This is today, November 4th, 2012.<br />
<br />
Little One! <br />
1. I'm obsessed with hooded towels for your bath time.<br />
2. I love going to stores and feeling all the fuzzy soft clothes and imagining you in them. We decided whatever you are for Halloween next year, when you are 6 months old, it has to be fuzzy.<br />
3. You're not a fan of dessert, like your Uncle Cameron.<br />
4. You love and have always loved: raspberries, eggs, bacon, cheese, and hamburgers. Mom's eating all kinds of things she never loved before cause your growing self wants them.<br />
5. You are growing very slowly. I am so anxious for you! Come faster!<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-67374228187233325112012-09-09T15:54:00.000-07:002012-09-09T15:54:20.427-07:00Creating Yourself.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My twenty-third birthday was this week.<br />
I spent the actual day, September the sixth, teaching high school kids, singing in a choir that's inspiring me more than ever, even though it's my third or fourth semester there. We're singin' Order My Steps, and it's bringing back all kinds of gospel choir memories. It's all I can do not to bust out in soulful line of run-filled praise every time--which urge I promptly satisfy on my drive home, don't you worry. I think of <a href="http://backfromcali.wordpress.com/">Lyndsi Shae </a>and <a href="http://bright-eyeddelicious.blogspot.com/">Claire</a> and Niecie, havin' my back at every rehearsal and going out on every 'express-yourself-and-sing-praise!' limb I directed. I remember Niecie telling me that Order My Steps was like her mantra on her mission, and she asked God for it often, that it was important to her. I remember what a difference I made to people directing that choir.<br />
<br />
But I don't direct gospel choir now. It's my birthday. I savor a simple sandwich from Zupa's and people-watch. I walk outside into the dropping rain and see the first full double rainbow I've ever seen in my life, and it's the kind you can see from edge to edge, the way you draw all rainbows as a kindergartener. I smile and say aloud, "Thank you! Happy birthday to me from God!"<br />
<br />
It was.<br />
For my birthday, I sang, I taught, I pondered--perfectly reminiscent of the woman I see myself becoming. I'm feeling pretty proud of her.<br />
<br />
Don't worry--there was plenty of partying and loving from a few fabulous people on different days. But the exact day I turned twenty-three, I felt more myself than I've ever felt. That's part of my life mission, and it feels good to know that even if I'm not sure how teaching or singing or photographing or writing totally fit in my whole world for my whole life, these things make me feel more like myself.<br />
<br />
There's a quote in the office of the room I teach in every day:<br />
life isn't about finding yourself. it's about creating yourself.<br />
I feel that.<br />
<br /></div>
brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-32656748499221491152012-08-07T15:39:00.001-07:002012-08-07T15:39:03.399-07:00Vineland, New Jersey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From a scrap of receipt paper, asked for at a wonderful Italian restaurant in Vineland, New Jersey on July 5th.<br />
<br />
I never want to forget the way it felt driving down the E40 today in New Jersey. The sun was getting golden and I drove, for once able to relax without falling asleep. I soaked in slow jazz, let it roll around in my bones as I passed the most amazing cornfields, whooshing past the big white farms with flags waving high. Road that stretched long and just wide enough; greens and golds and sunwashed blacks and handwritten signs for fresh fruit that all made me want to drive a snail's pace and never leave the road.<br />
<br />
I want to remember the colors I saw and the jazz I heard while they still ring in my limbs--they turn stale so fast, and I forget why I ever cared.<br />
<br />
It's the 5th of July, and for the first time in my life I missed the 4th. It got lost somewhere in Baltimore, or airborne next to a man whose dad is about to die here. That's why he flew in. To say his last goodbyes to a father he doesn't live close to--does he love him, I wondered? There was sadness in his eyes that said yes. Very much.<br />
...<br />
I guess this is what I'd do if I were single, now--go to restaurants by myself and write and eat delicious food while people were weirded out by me--I'd be the person the people watched, like this table of loud east-coasters with Jersey accents next to me. They all have 'usuals' here; pastas and salads and bread and wine; they call the waitress by name even though she isn't wearing a name tag. Vanessa. She's kind and doesn't patronize me because I'm here alone and writing on her receipt paper.<br />
<br />
I want to make time for this in my life: quality alone time with myself, mindfully eating and lolling the thoughts around. Sitting, with water pooling in my mouth; I move it slowly, let my tongue go swimming. Feel the life-imparting wetness over my teeth, seeping into my gums, finally swallowing.<br />
<br />
So far away from my usual desperate gulps, this way is abundant. It knows there will be enough water to fill my belly and my life, full of oceanic treasure and a fresh spring of great ideas and ample opportunity.<br />
<br /></div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-3073968768522045832012-07-26T13:53:00.003-07:002012-07-26T13:53:48.711-07:00Once, I knew you deep.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There are a lot of unpublished drafts on my side of <i>Freedom.</i> Yes, I just italicized the title of my blog like it is a legitimate publication.<br />
<br />
I've been coming here a lot in tiny fragments, and then angry confused tornadoes, and then slowly dripping controlled syllables. None of it fit to show.<br />
<br />
I've been trying do describe this summertime, drenched in sweat and water, perpetually sticky, subsisting on a diet of potato chips and watermelon and ice cream and netflix tv.<br />
I've been trying to tell about the way photography fills me up when I feel like it shouldn't; that's what music is supposed to be for.<br />
I've been trying to be excited about student teaching come fall semester, and it is working.<br />
I've been writing little ho-hum sentences that lack luster, and I get frustrated and go away.<br />
<br />
I've been rereading my old self--the one who wrote better and longer and loved pens and paper instead of shutters and film developed at Walgreen's. I've reread her fears about marrying the man I am so blissfully married to--and I'd forgotten how scared spitless she was. So scared to make the wrong decision after already making so many...<br />
I've been thinking a lot about lost things. Things and people I once spent a lot of time on and now have nothing to show for it. When we run into each other again there are zero words exchanged that would let anyone believe that once, we invested in each other. Once, we cared really a lot about how each other's day was, and we talked about politics and dream vacations and music that changed our lives. Once I knew you deep, and we spent hours we would have otherwise slept up talking, on the phone or in laundromats or in our tiny apartments.<br />
And now you're a hippie bum in China,<br />
you're a polished married man,<br />
you're a mother of two babies I don't know at all, <br />
and you're...<br />
gosh, I don't have a clue in the world where <i>you </i>are.<br />
<br />
I don't regret that I don't have any reason at all to talk to you or her or them--but just wonder where all those minutes and all that energy we spent on each other went in the universe. Did it dissipate into shards of glitter, float up and clump with some corner of the sky, or could it really have only vanished? All that would be left is the minimal brain space we allocate to each other now, once in a blue moon when we pop up on each other's facebook feeds, or are at the same mutual friend's baby shower or wedding or other celebration of love we no longer share, friendly or romantic or any other kind.<br />
<br />
Maybe I'd like some placards announcing my accomplishments in relationships: with neatly printed names and timelines, interaction birth and death dates to neatly seal things up. Then, when I wondered, I could wander over to these official things and look and remember over an icy glass of tap water how crazy deep I loved these people, right or wrong or convenient or no.<br />
<br />
I've been holding back.<br />
I've been pushing myself.<br />
I have trouble letting old things and people go, and in the same moment<br />
I am the one who snips the string. </div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-58141668222500843612012-05-31T09:27:00.000-07:002012-05-31T09:27:22.338-07:00the early morning light.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
there's something about the early morning hours in the summertime. when the sun wakes up with you and you feel pleasant to meet the day. oh hello, your heart smiles. i feel glad that you're here.<br />
<br />
there's something magical about walking outside to a pleasant temperature, being comfortable in shorts and a tee shirt instead of having to layer a silly number of thick fabrics that make you feel itchy, however adorable they look on pinterest. there's something beautiful about knowing your lover for life is sleeping gently in the other room, while your monkey mind had to wake you up earlier to say things about precisely that.<br />
<br />
there is something about running in the early morning light, with cars whizzing past, going to work or the gym or i don't even know where else. i feel part of the world, and simultaneously i am my own.<br />
<br />
i spend a lot of time alone these days, working alone, being the sole owner and in-charger of my business. i don't have to roll my eyes at stupid comments people make, because i don't hear them.<br />
<br />
but what i do hear is my own voice and thoughts, which can be just as stupid, petty, annoying.<br />
<br />
it seems like the most successful people have never gone a different direction. they had their vision right from the start and then just worked hard, bam. but i think that is a lie.<br />
<br />
it's also strange to be by yourself all the time when you think of how much other people rely on other people to tell them how they're doing. it's strange to try to get that information only from your insides. you wonder at first if they're wrong, and assume they have to be.<br />
<br />
and then you start to realize how much you have inside of you. it's not just organs and a soul and guts, but a lot of strength you didn't know was there. because being a full-time creative is the hardest and most exhilarating thing. I've always wanted 'hard', because that meant i was gettin something killer in return. in return for the hard work. here's the thing, is that some people work hard forever and they never get the killer thing. they realize they need to go in a different direction, and even though that vision is still murky they know they ache for it.<br />
<br />
i know i ache for it, is the thing.<br />
<br /></div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-53924324795231377022012-04-28T07:26:00.001-07:002012-04-28T07:26:32.293-07:00Death Star<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I love doing photography because I can control everything. But at the same
moment, I control pretty much nothing. I don't control what locations or
website templates are available or how long my stomach stays full from
the food I feed it. I don't control how big my hands are or really how
fast they can type. I don't decide the weather or the moon or tides or
the sun and stars and most of the time I'm just fine with that--just
fine to enjoy the sun and stars and tides the way they are. As is. Like
the section of the store DI. Large As Is. A star could go there, maybe.
And even if it was dead I would care for it. Even if it was on its last
dying star breath I would want it to know how valuable it was, even if
there are millions of kajillions of other ones that appear exactly like
it. I would want to give that star a voice, let it say the final words
of what it is like to be a star, a dying star on its last star breath,
in the Large As Is section of DI. I would hold it up from the cement
floors, turn off all the fluorescent lights and unplug the array of
dingy lamps, and I would cradle the dying star in my small human arms. I
would sing it things if it wanted, but mostly I would listen.<br />
Mostly I
would pay attention, and give that star the decency of someone being
there when she died.<br />
<br />
And maybe that's what we're all
afraid of--dying alone, gasping our last gulp of oxygen without fanfare
and just peacing out, unnoticed and unrevived. I don't think we're
afraid that no one would care as much as we're afraid that no one would
be there. We want holding in those last gulps maybe more than anytime.</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-27347312646948494652012-04-24T20:31:00.002-07:002012-04-24T20:31:14.362-07:00Coffee With Milk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I love this poem by Natalie Goldberg. I want you to know it too. <br />
<br />
Coffee With Milk<br />
<br />
It is very deep to have a cup of tea<br />
Also coffee in a white cup<br />
with milk<br />
and a hand to go around the cup<br />
and a mouth to open and take it in<br />
It is very deep and very good to have a heart<br />
Do not take the heart for granted<br />
it fills with blood and lets blood out<br />
<br />
Good to have this chair to sit in<br />
with these feet on the floor<br />
while I drink this coffee<br />
in a white cup<br />
To have the air around us to be in<br />
To fill our lungs and empty them like weeping<br />
this roof to house us<br />
the sky to house the roof in endless blue<br />
To be in the midwest<br />
with the Atlantic over there<br />
and the Pacific on the other side<br />
<br />
It is good this cup of coffee<br />
the milk in it<br />
the cows who gave us this milk<br />
this<br />
simple as a long piece of grass<br />
<br />
.............<br />
I want to live life this way. Aware, present, seeing the magic all around in the simplest of things.</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-1196643633650296432012-04-06T15:00:00.000-07:002012-04-06T15:00:07.340-07:00A thousand percent crazy.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The walk is imperceptible. The walk to beauty. The walk to real, brave artistry.<br />
And it is a walk because you never arrive and that's part of the obsession. The obsession with making things. Beautiful and meaningful things. Words and sentences and songs that are my own and not regurgitated from schooling.<br />
<br />
I am crazy. Not even a little crazy, but totally and completely one thousand percent crazy. I wish I could let my life reflect that instead of kindly and calmly putting on normal clothes, attending classes and doing my homework like a normal person, and calmly moving on with my life, day after day.<br />
I want to be wild.<br />
</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-76967153432821338162012-03-13T11:24:00.000-07:002012-03-13T11:24:52.002-07:00Honest Artistry.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">At times I wonder if the scariest things are the most important to do just because they are scary.<br />
<br />
Arnold Shoenberg started writing atonal music because he felt morally obligated. He felt it was the most honest, truthful thing for him, felt it would be absolutely one million percent wrong to go back to tonality. And he wished a little bit that he could keep writing late 19th century Romantic music, beautiful edgy melodies. But he couldn't.<br />
<br />
I heard those things in class today and I got the shivers, because I feel the exact same obligation to honesty with all my arts.<br />
<br />
All my writing, all my photographs, all my songs and my creative juices feel obligated to flow in the direction of the purest honesty. And sometimes people hate it. And sometimes people are indifferent to it. And sometimes I care, and mostly I don't--because it's not about anything except being true to those particles in me that call for a certain kind of art at a certain time of the day or week or century. And even though those German composer saps always talked about taking dictation from God, spontaneous inspiration oozing out of them, I feel a shred of that, too. I feel <i>me, </i>though, directing my camera and my pen and my hands as I keep creating--and I'm voracious for it.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it weirds me out, this whole being-an-artist thing. Sometimes I feel crazy and lonely and completely wild, sometimes out of control and ridiculous and brash. And then I think: Silly, it's just photos. It's just words. It's just little things. But I made them and they are out there in the world for me to never take back and that part feeds me, and my insatiable urge to make things, pictures or sentences or songs, keeps carrying me forward into a chasm that's so scary and thrilling I can't get enough.</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-81399635761816253182012-02-26T15:47:00.000-08:002012-02-26T15:47:40.236-08:00celebration<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">we give each other books for every birthday.<br />
a tradition i love; a celebration of our deep lives, the inner ones--<br />
how well we know each other, celebrating that<br />
with titles like, the art of eating in<br />
gift from the sea<br />
favorites, sometimes picked up last-minute<br />
wrapped in nothing but an ann taylor bag<br />
last year on your birthday kaylie was wearing that shirt<br />
pregnant as you are.<br />
pregnant with a baby.<br />
when i feel like i'm just pregnant with possibility--<br />
ready to explode in a creative tornado<br />
if i didn't have any homework to attend to.<br />
still my pregnancy grows,<br />
fed by light of film, metering and clicking<br />
writing ridiculous poetry<br />
reading more natalie goldberg <br />
and this pregnancy i'm not off-limits from one single thing<br />
no do-not-eat list perches on my fridge<br />
just wedding announcement photos<br />
I've taken<br />
and feel proud of,<br />
not unlike a baby child<br />
i'd grown myself.<br />
<br />
..................................<br />
today is my dad's birthday celebration,<br />
tomorrow the actual day.<br />
sometimes i feel strange that it's alright to move things around when they don't fit your schedule, like valentine's day and birthdays.<br />
he's perpetually 35 to me, the dad in my home videos running the camera while i screw up the courage to run through the sprinkler in my too-pink bathing suit.<br />
he's perpetually a seminary teacher with lots of seminary teacher friends,<br />
and i spy on the grown-up parties they have, with lots of laughing and finger food and it was like an aquarium of fun because i could press my nose to the window and look through without anyone noticing, observe and have a private smile with myself when my dad laughed so hard he coughed and wheezed.<br />
he's perpetually that dad. i haven't wrapped my head around a dad who has two sets of married children, kids-in-laws, and is 49.<br />
<br />
as i celebrate the changes--the new pregnancies, jobs, transitions to vegetarianism--i still ache for that too-pink bathing suit, hand in hand with my brother trying to convince me to run through the sprinkler on the simplest of summer days. i still wince at my list of responsibilities and wonder if i'll ever wake up accepting them with wide open hands. i still live in nostalgia and simultaneously run away as fast as i can so i can be the one moving on.<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-16921800885856578162012-02-24T16:42:00.001-08:002012-02-24T16:44:42.538-08:00thoughts on abundance.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Does gratitude ever lead you to guilt? That sounds off.<br />
<br />
But by the time I've exhausted the list-making approach of gratitude, in the middle of my gratefulness for my lack of gonorrhea and a cardboard house I start to think:<br />
What did I do to deserve my big life full of stuff and opportunity? And the answer is always nothing. So I try to make sense of it, and give myself guilt, telling myself all the things I should do because I'm lucky enough to have all the opposites of the things I'm grateful I don't have.<br />
<br />
It's hard to accept abundance.<br />
<br />
It's hard to believe there is enough, and that even though I don't deserve it I can embrace it, live in it, and even increase it. It's hard to get away from my picture-perfect me to not only accept what I currently am, but accept, simultaneously, the vastness of what I could be. It's easier to make a list of things I should do that will give me a blue ribbon.<br />
Easier to make gratitude lists long, long, long, so as to appear so thankful. So as to convince myself what I am. I am grateful, I am going to do big things, you know. It seems better than acknowledging the more frequent blah days where I don't do anything spectacular.<br />
<br />
But I'm learning that even if all I do is feed myself physically and emotionally and soulfully on those days, I am those few steps closer to living more fully inside the mondo-ness of my potential.<br />
Even when I'm not checking off items on a shiny list, I am still doing important work. It's just kind that can't be checked off that good.</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-39118349222136830322012-02-13T06:00:00.000-08:002012-02-13T06:00:13.518-08:00Ten Thousand Hours<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I want to kiss this piece of paper, because I worked really hard to gather up this pen and this notebook from the dregs of my bag in the middle of this crowded car on the way home.<br />
A scary q was burning at the edges of my mind:<br />
What do I want to invest 10,000 hours in, to become an expert? What would I be excited about spending that kind of time on?<br />
<br />
And the answer was not necessarily photography, not necessarily music education, not necessarily writing or teaching or being a zen-ish person, but just: all forms and flavors of creativity.<br />
<br />
I felt excited when I thought it; I'm going to accept things as they come to me as a somewhat transient excited loony artist.<br />
<br />
And right now I feel excited about my life being cracked right open like an egg and the yolk is just running out all over the wide earth. The snow dusts the mountains, powder-sugaring its cold magic on the little things that live in the fields. I get to see it with my eyes that don't see well without glasses but a lot of times when I see these things I just look and then other times I SEE, and not that my eyeballs bulge or do anything different at all but my heart accepts all kinds of possibilities and I get excited thinking of all the gifts I have in my world, and just thinking of these amazing things that have to be handmade by God and I feel happy and blessed and open and totally undeserving of all the awesome in my life, but still I know God wants me to have it.<br />
<br />
I feel my life flowing more toward Him, naturally, and I feel the more I write the more He shows up on my paper and I include Him better, more decisively and consciously. The light is fading outside the car window, but I have to keep going. I have to keep telling about my lifelong paths and quests that other people conduct with ranging levels of seriousness. But I'm dramatic and I take everything in my life seriously because I live this life this way one time and each moment is so new and transitory and sometimes that's so weightful I don't know quite what to do? And how could I? Because I'm appalled by the wastes of time, even how long it took to turn the page to keep on writing.<br />
<br />
I've started worrying a little less about the perfect allocation of blame and I've just started working to accept accept accept my life in the world and give away the need to know everything in its proper compartment. I am learning to balance scheduling with being wild. Because I am a wild child control freak spread out and and formed back again, like a cheeseball. A cheeseball that compliments all kinds of crackers and could do any big thing with her life she wanted. She doesn't have to write big but she can.<br />
<br />
I feel God slowly and steadily directing the flow of traffic toward those sweet sweet little babies. They are so needy, so full of big ideas and brain waves and I am excited to meet them in a place where they can thrive in my care, in my love that will be big and wide as rivers and oceans and just as full of salt water. I will be able to take care of them with my heart open and my head brimming with ideas about how to teach them, read them fantastic literature and sing them beautiful songs and be their caretaker,<br />
and I wish there was a more beautiful, full word to say what it really is.<br />
<br />
It's almost pitch black and it's just the moon lighting up the corner of the blue sky on my right, a perfectly pink gradient of a sunset behind me to the west, on my left. The plants grow still, evergreen in the snow and there is dirt underneath the ice to support. The dirt doesn't die and it still compiles and hardens to make the mountains. Passing the curves of the rolling in the hills and the peaks that people climb, sometimes they even run up them. Listen to your body, the mountains it asks to climb and the world calling out what it needs you to contribute, be it dirt or a seed or a full grown tree.<br />
<br />
It is too dark to write now.</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-60782161098584387092012-02-12T16:34:00.000-08:002012-02-12T16:34:21.368-08:00Three Line Poems<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I started with the title and went for three lines, and sometimes I had more to say. <br />
My favorite is Lace.<br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<u>Salt Shaker</u><br />
contained beads of sweat<br />
drip into the ocean<br />
flitting home like a wave of grief.<br />
<br />
<u>Lace</u><br />
A shivering fabric<br />
Chokes up her neck<br />
So fancy and free<br />
<br />
<u>Milkweed</u><br />
Fireflies giggle obnoxiously<br />
in a symphony<br />
You blinked at me with open eyes.<br />
<br />
<u>Rice</u><br />
All of the things in this room stood still<br />
While the rice shattered on the floor<br />
Like opaque diamonds.<br />
<br />
<u>Flour</u><br />
The recipe called for you<br />
And I said I'm improvising<br />
We borrowed an egg from a neighbor<br />
down the street three houses away<br />
Your dad was on a diet<br />
And we licked frosting off<br />
cake for breakfast.<br />
<br />
<u>Killing Stones</u><br />
Strange and expensive<br />
not rare; blood kind<br />
like the deep red flesh of an orange<br />
by the same name.<br />
<br />
<u>Hurt</u><br />
My email was hacked<br />
And I felt hurt--attacked<br />
By spammers in India.<br />
<br />
</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-75672678083735017072012-01-31T21:01:00.000-08:002012-01-31T21:01:50.387-08:00shopko mj<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I have French stuck in my head. What's that about?<br />
My house smells like bacon.<br />
I ate dinner at 9:00.<br />
I wear a Michael Jackson shirt to bed every night.<br />
Except it is from someplace like Shopko, and his face is white and his lips are red. I wish he wouldn't do that. <br />
I ache to shoot film.<br />
I have a Japanese umbrella atop my bookcase. It is from LA.<br />
I have a jar with money in it for a someday trip to Japan with the boy I love.<br />
I had a dream last night my mom was pregnant.<br />
I am not bothered the least bit by people's baby comments.<br />
Jared's new favorite thing is to see how long I can tickle him before he gives in and laughs. It makes no sense to me because I am female, but is hilarious.<br />
I have a hot husband and secretly almost kind of want a dog.<br />
I eat a lot of fruit snacks.<br />
<br />
</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-91448700625668419292012-01-27T18:58:00.000-08:002012-01-27T18:58:00.101-08:00Underrated.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Jared had his first taste of gelato tonight; hazelnut flavor, and the working man made us say the names in Italian before he'd let us sample them. <br />
I sampled about every flavor, because I chose wrong lots of times.<br />
Hate when that happens, you know?<br />
We used our coupons, laughed about politics (does Rick Santorum look like a perfect mix of Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld to anyone else? Only really, really, un-funny?), and rolled our eyes at ridiculous garbage bags given out by mall stores, and talked about how easy it would be to build a table and how hard it would be to own a restaurant. <br />
<br />
Being happily married is way, way underrated. Even when we're not vacationing lavishly, romancing glamorously, or being generally movie-worthy, it's those quiet moments when I look at him and the world is huge, swallows me, and I feel it all in the palm of my hand, in the very same instant. It's seeing backwards to that time he cut his hair in a mullet to be silly and forwards to our babies that will have personalities and being totally awake in the moment at hand, breathing in the whole earth full of bursting love for another human.<br />
And yet, those gigantic inside things happen in regular clothes, coats, and ponytails. <br />
<br />
Seventy times a day I talk to his ears about how I can't describe what I feel. It frustrates me, expressor that I am. (See? I just expressed mahself, makin up the word <i>expressor. </i>That's how it should be spelled, no questions asked.<i>) </i><br />
<br />
Only having a wimpy four letter word to account for all that hugeness feels pretty lame.<br />
<br />
It's part of what I'll do in this life; turning words and thoughts inside and outside to find every one of the sixteen million ways I can explain how I feel about this boy. He is my dream. </div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-80261638051284670372012-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:002012-01-15T13:45:06.296-08:00Steps toward bravery.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I'm finally ready to post this--just for your reading, though, just to share, and not for a response. I believe in taking steps toward bravery and vulnerability, even if it's in a medium as small as one's little corner of the internet.<br />
.................................... <br />
<br />
<b>November 10, 2011</b><br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Today my grandpa died.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">He was supposed to die yesterday, three weeks ago, ten years ago. They’ve thought he was leaving a lot of times; he’s just a fighter. Man of steel, mom said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">My mom has cared for this man all her adult life, when no one was really around to take care of her. You have your husband but he doesn’t care for you the same way your parents do. She cleaned out their fridge and had the cameras installed in their house to watch them, keep them safe.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">The ultimate safety is death.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">But that truth doesn’t often transfer well to us still here.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">For mom it’s probably about goodbye; for me it’s all the things we didn’t get to do. Not in a I’m-so-gypped way, but a sad reality that’s-the-way-it-was way. That makes no sense.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I want to know him.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I want to know the whole story.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I want to know the battles my mom fought with him as her father.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I want to know the full extent of his genius, about what the patent from 1963 on my bookshelf really means. People ask me and I don’t know.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I watched him watch TV for those months we cared for them. He told us stories, but I still don’t know. I just watched him watch TV, filled up the hot water bottles the way he liked, got impatient when he wasn’t all the way ready to go to bed when we arrived, sweats-clad after long school days and just ready to sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">When I was driving home from a meeting in which a girl thoughtlessly joked about my grandpa’s death, I wanted to go to the house where all of that happened. Where I played with handed-down toys with dying batteries, enough to confuse the duck’s sound with the cow’s. Grandma had bright brown hair then--I never saw the gray roots.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I want to sleep, or throw up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I thought I knew how to process death. Checkmark shebang bam alakazam I’ve got it. A lie to keep myself functioning. Plus I would be heartless—worse than selfish—if I did. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Sad. I feel sad.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I feel sad about the memories I don’t have for writing in this moment. Just the blaring TV is coming back to me. Running into him at cougar creations in the Wilkinson center—being a little embarrassed that running into my grandpa could happen to me. Didn’t I know this man well enough not to run into him? I mean, see him often enough that our paths would naturally cross?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">They did, every Thursday. Why can’t I remember more about grandpa on Thursdays? He took ages in the bathroom.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">None of this is right. I need sleep and time.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">I need to let my heart ache even if I feel I don’t have permission to let it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Ache, heart. Do your thing. I set you free.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">The ultimate freedom is in death.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">Writing like this seems lame but I still think it’s important while it’s fresh. No judgment, just feelings and thoughts that float by in this moment—today, the day of his death. My grandpa is dead. He is gone. He is happy. I want to know him.</div></div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-71682641582953894762012-01-12T16:46:00.000-08:002012-01-12T16:46:43.967-08:00I am still here.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Here I am.<br />
No grand plans for this post.<br />
No big life events to announce, nothing out of the ordinary. No pregnancies, divorces, deaths or diamonds. <br />
But I'm here.<br />
And I'm finding more and more how important that is to me, for my life--I've tried to make writing my practice for a while now, and though I make excuses I keep coming back, even with nothing pressing to say. I am learning to own up to my soul needs: nurturing reading material, time to write, paper, pens. It's unglamorous and ugly and thrilling, mundane, exquisite.<br />
<br />
Here's to this: doing things even when the genius is out to lunch, even when the glitter has settled and all you have to discover is the trudge through the dregs of those parts of yourself you'd rather not face.<br />
My life is full, and I am buoyant and cheery despite a cold and a mile-long to-do list. I've learned to take pleasure in that mental checklist, in some twisted form.<br />
<br />
I am still here.</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2331477346027835016.post-37869151608481133502011-12-14T14:39:00.000-08:002011-12-14T14:42:41.522-08:00Saint + Loving Prankster=Friend.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Suddenly I'm voracious for writing, for filling the world with my words. making sense out of things.<br />
I wrote a lot here in 2009.<br />
I had a lot of stuff to write about. Not events, but big soul-searching stuff that was essential for me to move forward.<br />
<br />
A lot of thinking and processing with fabulous friends about futures. Sometimes we may have included boys.<br />
Now I'm married to one.<br />
But last night as I was walking to my car from the Christmas concert with all the old ladies wearing Christmas red sweaters with appliques from 1982 I thought about one boy.<br />
I never loved this boy in a romantic way.<br />
But I loved him.<br />
We had a relationship that I'll never have with another boy again--and that's not in a dramatic way, just a manifestation of what it meant to have something so unique and precious.<br />
<br />
I've never been one of those girls that's always like, "oh-em-gee, I've always had more guy friends than girl friends. Girls are too much drama." Those girls are the girls I would like to shake and kick their teeth in, because what the heck? You <i>are</i> a girl. Anyway.<br />
<br />
It started with pranks, like throwing water on us or turning off the power to our apartment. And I thought I was a good prankster, with my can of tuna fish under the couch. Child's play.<br />
<br />
Somehow the pranks transitioned seamlessly into him being the big brother of our apartment, baking special cookies for us, taking us small 19-year-olds for rides in his car or inviting us to his fancy apartment for smoothie night, hot chocolate night, a special Valentine's Day dinner just for us friends. He was not usually in charge, but always the light bulb that all the people gathered around. He had quiet brilliance about him.<br />
Intellectual brilliance, and emotional brilliance. He wrote neuroscience all over our whiteboard one night.<br />
<br />
We asked his advice on everything. He joked with us and told us about the girls he was liking and we gave him wimpy know-it-all love advice back for good measure.<br />
<br />
He was so wise, and I don't know what made that relationship flower in the first place because we were still a clump of teenage girls doing big soul searching while he'd been on the planet for ten years longer, loving and learning and sitting there with lots of things figured out for eons. I mean, we were <i>just so freakin cool</i>, I guess that must have been it.<br />
<br />
I spent a lot of journal entries trying to convince myself to love him romantic-kind.<br />
See? Clueless. <br />
I especially have no idea why I did that since it wasn't like he loved me romantic-kind. Gosh I'm funny.<br />
<br />
He cared for us that year, made sure we didn't do anything totally horrifying that would haunt us forever. We loved his playful sarcasm and his hilarious laugh and the way he would come over and talk for hours, as if we were his favorite people in the world.<br />
<br />
I loved Ian Morris.<br />
He is a saint and a real friend.<br />
<br />
</div>brookehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08891074658531550730noreply@blogger.com0