blackberry

The last 3 days I have spent in Boston... walking from point A to point B... to C and D and E.... and just going on and on and on. It's so fabulous. I have found some pretty spectacular places to sit down, get a nice soy chai tea and do my homework. I ate at a middle eastern caffe yesterday, it was splendid... and now I'm at this place called "b.good". It's right across the street from Harvard and it SCREAMS, "PHIL!!" (in laymans terms, my boyfriend would have a taste-bud-gasm if he were here eating it with me). It has complete WiFi which is abundantly fabulous and INCREDIBLE chocolate shakes. : ) : ) Phil WILL be back here with me.

Having a GPS in Boston is one of the most wonderful things... even though it can get confused sometimes. I have been looking at various victoria's secrets in the Boston/Cambridge area, and there are... like, 10!! I just type in vsecret and it takes me to the nearest one (if that's the one I want). Call me an idiot, but I'm just now discovering how efficient and convenient these little wonderment's of technology can be and are.

Anyways - I'm currently writing a paper on Feudalism and it's meaning, the primary places it's used (Political, military, or social)... and the reasons for it's essential emergence.

I got my check back from my Itouch refund today... got a whopping 230 dollars!! Holy sweet Jesus I'm happy.

I'm going to finish this paper up! I will write a more meaningful post sometime.. soon I hope.

dry

I ran far, and I dove in deep...

I found myself a love that I thought could hold & keep.

I swam a distance and I jumped high;

I found myself some pearls,

but they deceived my eyes.

I've looked hard and I've sought for long;

I've looked for other loves that claim to be limitless and strong.

My head says to keep going, but my heart's craving is to stop.

Lord, keep me searching. Keep me yearning for you.

I don't want to throw all of this away for something that I laid at your feet years ago.

I am sitting in Western Heritage and I just cannot believe the way this professor wanders in his talking. I feel that I'm traveling West, then East, then West again in a land I've never even heard of. His topics are so cluttered and I have such a hard time following - it's one of those classes where the textbook becomes your best friend. The guy knows his stuff, but he doesn't convey it in the organized fashion in which I crave. Oh well, I will still do very well. I have turned in all my papers & essays, as well as every map that had to be completed. Yay, Jess!!

My fabulous boyfriend sent me this - check it. : )

What a great T-Shirt. : ) We have a little thing where we both like to sit alone, and that is one of the first things he noticed about me last fall, before knowing my name, age, or impeccable piano skills. ; )

Those were the days. ENC just isn't the same without him here.

Now it's off to Math... which isn't really math. It's more like physics and calculus combined. Ew. Once again, yay for getting all the required work in... done well.

This is really a pointless post - so I'm ending it now.

the siren

I've had my itunes on random today, letting Apple himself pick my music. One of the songs that another rolled into playing caused my chest a tight, thickening amount of pain. This song, "Nicest thing", was played daily; not just out of my computer speakers, but in my head for many months. My room-mate may even tell you she heard me humming it in my sleep, or belting it while throwing my loose-fitting jeans on in the morning.

It's incredible how music empowers us in these dynamic ways. It's incredible how moving music is to our minds and our hearts.

It's amazing how music can heal....

and how it haunts.

It's a double standard; a contradiction.

It's thought provoking how hearing this piece of art sung today haunted me the very same way it did in March.

You know that aroma?.....

The one that makes you smile... from your left ear to your right. The smell of a certain flower that your grandma had in an antique glass on her sink... in the heat of summer, still protruding abundantly through your aroma of heat's dirt and sweat? Or the smell of "Christmas" (whatever that may be to you)... cozy fires, apple cider... I believe the "first snow" even has it's own precious scent. Cranberry tea is one of my favorite.

Then there's those fragrances that become physically ailing because of the memories they re-deliver so tactfully, making you pause to reevaluate. Because of the memories... the fragrance paralyzes you with fear.

Music is aroma.

It's movement is poison.

Music is our ever-moving and our ever-saving grace,

Music begins; as well as walking us countless steps back.

Music provides for us it's very own silver screen display of flashbacks.

The Holy spirit moves itself through the driving drums with the full orchestra demonstrated on it's piano... the heightened, ornate vocals on top of the intricately strummed guitar.

This is spiritual, it's alive - it's moving.... it's breathing. It's personified.

It is music.

It is dangerous.

beaches and bums

The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
At one time, when she was younger,
she had hoped that it might be a cube,
but the years have worked to dispel
this illusion of space, so that now
she understands: it is a simple plane,
a shape with surface, but no volume—
a window without a building, an eye
without a mind.
Of course, this square
does not appear on x-rays, and often,
weeks may pass when she forgets
that it exists. When she does think
to consider its purpose in her life,
she can say only that it aches with
a single mystery, for whose answer
she has long ago given up the search—
since its question is a word whose name
can never quite be asked. This yearning,
she has concluded, is the only function
of the square, repeated again and again
in each of its four matching angles,
until, with time, she is persuaded
anew that what it frames has no
interest in ever making her happy.

I am mildly feverish today and have already been in all of my classes, Praise God! - I am really, truly loving this "start my day at seven in the lovely morning". It feels so right to be done at noon and then hit the books! (and one tree hill!) Uh oh, here I go.....

I can't believe myself most days... I complained about high school every day - skipping, being "sick", having dad come and get me, excuse after excuse after excuse - and now that I'm out, I just can't live without some sort of high school drama-infested, high energy teenage love soap opera. It makes me tick! In last nights episode, my mind was utterly warped - one of Lucas' old friends (whom he lost touch of due to his basketball career - and of course, the engaging women swooning after him) brought a gun to school and after a long drawn out day of "code reds", "lockdown", and the school swarmed on the outside with the swat team...... Jimmy ends up shooting himself. It was so intense and so emotion-provoking. I had so much to finish for school work by this morning, but I just could not bring myself to press pause. In any case, "One Tree Hill" is becoming a new favorite... It's right up there with Gray's Anatomy and Lost. : ) (but then again, these three shows are the only three I have actively involved myself in.

I used to blog like this, nearly, every day. And I am so sick of the way I have let my writing, music, reading, painting/collaborating items on a canvas, and sewing go. I am losing my creative side to school, and my heart is beckoning that I bring back some of these creative outlets.

Well, in the last month, I have really experienced some incredible things... enough things to make any young and vibrant thing, like myself, tossle and turn and emerge with enough excitement to last years. But before I go on and explain the month of August, let me tell you what I submitted myself into doing for the summer.

I traveled from June 20 to August 8th. I was on a worship team called "Redemption" and we played at family, teen and kids camps, worked at VBS's, played at churches, worked with youth, delivered sermons when needed or when necessary, came up with group activity games, camp counseled, and just played music and with kids all summer long. It was long, demanding, exhausting and slightly overwhelming at times... but at plenty of other times, it was refreshing, warm, necessary, fruitful and fulfilling. I got to visit with girls that were currently dealing with things that I have gone through. I was able to offer my testimony, my battle plans in fighting the sin that sickens me regularly, and my hope in their seeming hopeless situations. I asked and allowed the Lord to use me as "the pen of a ready writer" (as David would say in Psalms), and He most faithfully did. I can't even believe the perfect placement of these conversations; I was intricately placed into each scenario with a purpose, with my own embellishments, and with pain and doubt; but nonetheless, those are the type God tends to do business with. This summer was rough on me and some of the things I was facing emotionally and physically, but I truly learned what it is to abandon myself and my most earnest, dearest desires and dreams. The Lord took Berklee School of Music off of my heart this summer and put Missionary on it. I'm not sure the steps that I am going to have to begin taking to fulfill where God wants me, but He knows how I work and He knows that all the proper doors must be opened and my heart must remain willing, which I have every intent on maintaining.

Towards the end of the summer, I was just finished with Summer Min. I wanted to come back to school, desperately, and fix my room up for this school year... If you were to ask anyone on my team, they would tell you that I had a craving to do that more than anything. I just wanted to organize my sweaters and cardigans into my dressers, hang up my long and lovely dresses, put all my shoes in my door hanging shoe compartments, and put all my books up, from largest to smallest, on my book shelf. So, when I got back, (at 3 in the morning on August 8th), I jumped into my perfect boyfriend's jeep (he had been there for about an hour waiting on our arrival), and I merely attacked him. I threw my arms and my legs around him and just started kissing him. In his jeep. I was surprised that I didn't bump the horn on the steering wheel, but in any case, I was ecstatic. We went up to my room, dropped my bags off, and he went to sleep.... around 5 I had decided "I cannot sleep for the life of me!", so, I called up the security office and had them unlock storage... I completely loaded EVERYTHING into my room from the building I was in last year, and had everything moved into my room by 8 that morning. It was the most wonderful morning of my life. We then went to Chipotle and spent the day together... it was heaven. & little did I know the next several weeks I would have with him.....

That night, Saturday, we left to go to his home in New Jersey. We got in around 1:30 in the morning and I crashed in Caitlin's room (his sister, who I totally love and cracks me up), and we went to his church the next morning. I got to meet all the people that watched my little Phil grow up. It was idyllic. I have one heck of a Jesus-man, I tell you.

So anyways, we lazied around on Sunday and then left for his grandma's beach house on Long Beach Island (about 20 minutes from his house), and spent the afternoon on the beach (after i locked his keys in his jeep and called triple A) ;) - the whole week was this incredible. Every day we went to the beach and just enjoyed each other's presence. We jet-skied, shopped, champagned, and learned how bad at "apples to apples" he is... (and how good I am). I'm just joking. I learned the basic methods of surfing, I got to meet his entire family, get to know his mom and sister a little more, and be in the house that he grew up in. It was epic! Everything a girl could dream of.

One night while on the beach, we had found a lifeguard stand and decided to give it a sit.

We climbed up and chatted about sweet and simple nothings... and ten minutes in to our romantic beach talking, this comically crazy, curly red headed woman walked up to us - while having a conversation with herself in the meantime. She made striking eye contact and asked us, "are you guys lifeguards?"... we answered, "no". And she just begins to mutter about how "young" we were... walks away.

She then turns back around, comes back towards us and asks how old we are, I had a feeling that Phil wasn't going to say a whole lot, so I decided to take this one and said, "20". (which is just ridiculous given that I'm 19 and Phil is 22... I didn't get either of our ages right!)

She flung her hand up in the air and was mocking us for our age, walks away the way she did the previous time and, just like before, turns around again to approach us with another question...... "do you guys drive?", "Yes".

"Do you have cars?",

"Yes".

She then asks my boyfriend IF HE IS SIGNED UP FOR THE DRAFT!

Okay, at this point, I am laughing in my stomach and worried in my head. My thoughts are everywhere, from "that bag shoulder strapped around her body is awfully big... I really hope it's just necessary things in there.... necessary as in, NO GUNS!?"

(Ridiculous - I know. But this lady was creepy! You woulda thought that too... I just know it).

Phil answers, "Yes". She asks, "Do you know what the library of congress is?"

and Phil answers... "Yes", and she begins to mutter again about how impressed she is that we knew what the library of congress was. She was muttering and jabbering, stammering and shoeless. And her bag was just too close to her hand the whole time, leading Phil's mind, as well as mine, to wonder and race.

She then asks us if we drove here, and Phil and I both answer, "No... we walked" as she went on and on about the expense of cars in fluid conversation with herself. She babbled about car insurance again and added her two cents to how we must have well paying jobs to pay for our own car insurance and have our own cars.

As she walked away from us, she had some sort of anger blanket that covered her. I kept watching her as Phil was looking ahead, and she was livid. She was still muttering about money and our age and how we were in a lifeguard stand and how she graduated with my mom??? I don't even know... it was so obscure. This story just makes me laugh and makes me so very curious as to either what she was trippin' on, or if she accidentally busted loose from an insane asylum. It was so random and so odd, I have never had an encounter like that in my life... and I am very glad it happened with Phil. : )

Our week together was unforgettable... we had a fantastic time, and I am so grateful for that week.

It's off to finish my paper and hit the books!!

Don't be a stranger.