i am listening

5 stage E ticket ride

well kids, it looks like i really will be going back to chico next semester.  i had so much faith in the possibility of moving away for good that i threw away everything i didnt need/could buy again/wasnt that cool anyway and made every item i own fit into the back of my pickup (it still ended up dribbling into the cab, but what's a girl to do?)

i have officially attempted every possible escape from the Vanilla city and find myself still standing at the same amount of brick wall that i first began clawing at.  the pile of dust soiling my shoes may not seem like worthy fruit for such efforts, ah, but in it the resignation lies.  when one has done all that can be done, there is merely left the arranging of one's hair and the settling down of nerves to await what cannot be held back from arriving.  maybe it would even be called "rest."

in Him it surely is.  

thats why we have our coffee every morning, our wine at night: to herald in regal glory the coy faithfulness of a world spinning out of our control, carrying us on it's back, rising and falling heedless to our wishes.  rising and falling careful towards His.   

please pass the sugar,

my how nice the scenery is.

He must be taking us somewhere fine.

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance:

check.

now that the 5 stages are done, lets move on, shalst we.

. . .

"what will sustain us through the winter?

where did last year's lessons go?

walk me out into the rain and snow

i dream a highway back to you."

T-minus

this here is a horrible picture of my color theory final.  (it looks better in real life, i promise...click on it to make it bigger).  She was originally an opera singer...but i made her face a hymnal page :).  i dont know what that makes her now...

chico is going to last about 36 hours and then i'm free.  kinda free.  "kinda free" is better than NOT free, right?  

ooooo, lawd.

the twenty something most random things i want for christamas

*a black light booklight...right?  with strobe option.  clubbin'

*a lifetime supply of canned fish and lima beans

*the opposite of serious

*a concertina

*a bird in the hand

*a friend who plays the cello

*people skills

*the live near a HUGE asian market

*to find that pair of von dutch aviators that i lost awhile ago.  dang, those things were sic.

*a horsey

*a kitty

*to love my neighbor

*a fixed exhaust manifold

*kale

*an ocean breeze.  here.  in chico.

*health insurance

*to keep it real

*a time machine and/or a flight to britain

*to become a famous artist after i die

*for everything to taste like coffee and/or chocoloate and/ or curry and/or plum skin

*abject fearlessness

really real

i have been thinking about sincerity lately.

trying to hold them next to each other and see how similar now and ago really are.

what if i would have been honest with myself

sooner.

what if my love could be sincere, with that honesty a child gains by being born 

and forgets about 

each day following day 

that teaches him fear and greed and practicality.

like when i was small 

asleep in my parents bed

because of the spider or the dream in my room.

let love be without hypocrisy

like a Man weeping

calling Himself a hen

longing to gather His chicks

calling Himself a Dad

because of the spider or the dream in my room.

forlorn foundling rescued by compassion

thats what that little part says above the picture that i taped to the front of my bible this morning :)  its a picture of a lamb in a burlap bag attached to a saddled horse.

i've decided i will tape more things into my bible from now on.

i also taped a picture of the sea of galilee that i found in a 1950's national geographic to the back inside flap of this my Holy Book.  according to the caption, "Galilean fishermen still set their nets in circles around lights to enclose fish drawn to the glow,"  and it shows these boats with large bulb lights hanging off the bow of the boats over the sea.  

i found that "lights" part extremely profound.  

they fish at night.  

they fish with lights.

the fish seem to know the difference

and come easily to the glow.

.......

spent thanksgiving with my sweet tehachapi friends (if you dont know where tehachapi is, ask your neighbor).  i still dont want to live in chico...but what else is new.  after this i'm swearing off northern california forever and if you are my friend you will hold me to it.  if any of you want to move somewhere and take me along with you, i think you'll be surprised at how little i object.

maybe i'll get over it in time to graduate (graduate...ah, the word does knell its sweetness to my soul.)

......

there is a persimmon tree by the mansion down the street.  the persimmon is a fruit that hangs naked on the tree with no leaves around it so that everyone can see.  

it is no time for greenery, but it is still time for fruit.  

fruit is the business of a tree, leaves are its passing pleasures that flutter and fall with a mind all their own.

but the fruit is more faithful.

of more worth.

dear persimmon tree,

you are better off in your beauty 

of rest

despite the cold.

my favorite one yet

exist in theory

so this is a drawing i did today from a picture taken during the depression

...and

here's me with a red wig on.

the amazing thing is that the wig is the same color of chemical red that my jacket is.  i mean, when does THAT ever happen?

like Tiffany's

"if i could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's,

then i'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name."

-Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

USPS

have you ever noticed how the ladies who work at the post office are really into guessing what you might be sending, and they push and shake your poor unsuspecting parcel like a christmas present...

which would be cute, 

except its not addressed to them, 

and for a second you feel like they're that teacher in grade school that always wanted to catch you doing something wrong.  like sending a bomb or anthrax or a fire cracker in the mail.

and its even less cute while they're molesting your package that they peer at you through their caked on eyeliner and say "anything liquid, hazardous or fragile?"  

"well, if anything was fragile, your bony, probing, violating fingers would already have found me out by now," i want to say.

instead you play an old playground initiation game with them.  see who looks away first.

"its a painting," i say, as if its her business, with a little of that "what are you going to do about it" tone in my voice...but steady gaze.  you HAVE to keep a steady gaze or you lose.  you're instantly a terrorist or a miscreant or both.

and its all over when they put their little red stamp on it that probably says, "please bend and mutilate...i dont like the look of the one sending it...she's trouble."

nishiki bikes and coffee presses

so i was laying in bed last night trying to figure out if i would have enough gas money to go down to tehachapi (6 hours away) for thanksgiving week and hang out with my friend mo and her huge, lovely family.  as you probably know, laying in bed thinking about money does not promote sleep, nor peace.

so i prayed and asked God to provide for exactly what he wanted and that i wasnt going to worry about the rest.

so, like, 5 minutes later it occurred to me that i might be able to sell my half functioning 70's road bike that was sitting in the garage that i got for free a year ago from one of my buddies.  i got up and posted an ad on craigslist in the middle of the night and asked God to sell the bike for me.  i woke up this morning with 4 emails from people who wanted to buy it, the first email i got being from one of the guys that i know from the calvary chapel here.  he responded to the ad 5 minutes after i posted it and ended up buying the bike for 40 dollars.  i think it was a fair price for a half functioning bike, and plus i can add the 40 to the 25 i have saved for my gas fund...

God is so, so lovely and faithful.

i know 3 people in this town and happened to sell my bike to one of them in record time.

the bad news is that i broke my big 2 person coffee press this morning that i got for real cheap at ross a couple years ago and spilled coffee sludge everywhere.  so now i have a stained carpet and a 1 cup coffee press that i bought at target shortly after the incident.  sigh.  you just cant get ahead sometimes (i didnt use my bike money for the coffee press, i'll have you know :)

trees in the mist painting

another one for class:

(click on it to make it bigger)

the simpson angel

these are the four right angles of a grave marker angel named simpson.  the drawings are shown in the order i did them (my fav is the 3rd).

she is a life size marble statue at chico cemetery.  i was riding my bike through the cemetery last week and when i saw her i just stared at her for a few minutes in awe, and decided to come back later to sketch her.  these pics are from drawing her this morning and i plan to do more of her.

(her hand was broken off, thats why it looks funny.)

no second causes

i dont know what happened...maybe some one has been praying for me...but the cloud over my head is gently, slowly lifting.

its more than one thing that has positively altered my perspective on being here, but the climax realization came quietly from the pages of "The Horse and His Boy."

there's a part where the "Boy" of the title, Shasta, is walking along on a trail alone because he couldnt make his non-talking horse do what he wanted (he wasnt used to the whole "reigns" business because talking horses from narnia naturally dont need brute force).  he is separated in the thick fog from the group he is riding with and starts to think about the misfortunes and misplacements of his life...

"i do think," said Shasta, "that i must be the most unfortunate boy that ever lived in the whole world.  everything goes right for everyone except me."  ...and being very tired and having nothing inside him, he felt so sorry for himself that the tears rolled down his cheeks.

then Aslan appears in the mist and starts walking next to him and talking to him, but shasta only knows him as a Voice at first-

"I do not call you unfortunate," said the Large Voice.

"Don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?" said shasta

"there was only one lion," said the Voice..."I was the lion."

"I was the lion who forced you to join with aravis.  I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead.  i was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept..."

and he goes on.  

aslan's point was that all the instances that seemed like bad luck or misplacement or survival were just Him.  there is a point in the story when aslan (though shasta didnt know it was aslan) attacks his friend aravis but doesnt harm her too badly, only scratches up her back.  he brings this up to aslan and says,

"then it was you who wounded aravis"

"it was i."

"but what for?"

"child," said the Voice, "i am telling you your story, not hers.  i tell no one any story but his own."

i know all of this seems choppy, but you cant imagine how perfect it was for me to read that when i did.

because i WANT to believe that EVERYTHING that has and will happen to me is His doing, whether it feels good or not (and intellectually i ascribe to that) ...but sometimes its so hard to see things like that, especially when they sting the most.  

especially when they cost the most.  

especially when all around you is fog and you're separated from the group.

especially when the only pattern in your life that you can see is the one that feeds that displaced sense you get when you look around you.

i love that the lion gives shasta no sympathy: only truth.

and the truth is he's not so bad off as he thinks, and that he's not as alone as he thinks...in fact, its the times when he was most afraid that the lion himself was the one working and pushing him to where he needed to be.

may the Lord give us vagabonds mercy for our oft poor perspective.

else

i have known 

these days

just with different faces and 

that worn out look on mine

(which always was the dead give away)

that i didnt know what was happening.

and i couldnt tell if it was ok

not to know

or hope

or laugh

without thinking of something else

being somewhere else

faith must be the permission

not to know 

or hope

or laugh

without some type of 

(how do you call it)

sense of misplacement

displacement

i just hope 

these days 

grow feathers

i just hope 

these days 

learn to sing

(or dance...i cant tell which is more lithe)

i just hope

these days.

morning projects

had a nice morning doing these, sitting on the floor with the door open.

click on them to make them bigger i think.

sorry, the quality is kinda crappy.

the one at the top, the little boy has a hymn page for a face...it looks weird in the picture, thought i'd explain :)

class drawings

the pot is just a still life we did in class a while ago

we are mainly drawing live people now since this is an intro to figure drawing class.

i really like the one of the guy- very pensive...

and refreshingly pg-13

the splice

on the way back up to chico from slo i realized something 

i was talking to jonathan dow, answering one of his typical english major questions thus named for their "how" and "why" nature (its ok if he asks those questions though, because jonathan dow is a good listener).

i was talking about art...

telling him how sometimes the desire to DO art pounces on me like a tiger and i feel compelled so much to "create," but often dont really know what to do with my impulse. 

jacob wrestling with the angel...asking for a blessing and not really knowing why...continuing to fight and not really knowing why.

 its funny to have the desire to create while having absolutely no idea how one should go about creating.  "not being inspired," is what artsy people say often...

i then said something about how art for me (for you, it could be anything, no?) is how i experience God sometimes.  through the whole process i feel him near in such a special way, that once i get done with a project or idea, i almost dont care about the finished product because the quality time was what i really needed/enjoyed/wanted in the first place

but as i talked it out (jonathan dow patiently being a good listener all the while), those two aforesaid thoughts spliced themselves together.

"maybe," i said, "those times when i just want to create but i dont know why or how...

maybe i'm just missing God."

and i think that's really what happens..."art" is my code word for "God, can we hang out."  i knew that about myself and God, but i hadnt put it together about those times when i sit there on my couch, mysteriously drawn to my pencils and drawing board across the room- staring at them like an imbecile while God has strung red christmas lights and orange construction detour signs pointing towards them...i sit there wondering what has come over me, while the Lord and my heart are trying to contact each other through the noise proof glass of my slow mind between them...

the times when i DONT act on that impulse are times when i dont think i have anything to give- no idea for a finished product...but thats not what its ever been about.

i realized i live my life under that fear.  what if i spend all this time on something and i dont like what i end up with?  

"it never mattered to you before," 

He would say, 

"not if it was right."

my God isnt in there

this is my project for color theory class this week.

yep, its a box.

the point of the picture is that i painted it w/o the use of black out of the tube.

the picture is lame b/c all i have is photo booth on my computer, so thats where that blue spot comes from at the top.  it looks better in real life, but whatever.

i like this painting b/c i think it has potential...like i could write something on it to make it really funny, b/c after all, this is a painting of a cardboard box.