Landward

Where your treasure is my heart

is also; you have the map

and wind in your sails.

Ignore the sun and stars

whose lights last half a day

and trust the tug that tightens

time: the only whole distance uncharted.

Search the horizon future,

imagine the harbor love,

anchored ashore a life time,

oh sailor, at ease

at home. . .

we'll sway cradled in a bed of rope

salvaged from those years at sea

our arms and fingers tethered together

moored tightly to eternity.

Face west and I'll scratch your back,

due east and I'll kiss your bronzed brow.

Hear the whistling inlet whisper

as I lie behind you resting

my cheek on a soft blade of shoulder.

Our breathing will softly ebb and flow,

the waves of our heart sculpting land.

Wrap me in your weathered wings.

Bury me alive in your heart.

Early morning you will wake to watch

the makeup sunrise on my face;

always already ready

you will wait beside me,

ocean eyes navigating

the north and south

of my frame. . .

my love is whole, wide

world curls its star, so,

sailor still sailing

don't worry or wander

wonder or weary;

our courses will cross

on land.

(picture: sun rising on the mediterranean)

Sing, sing a song

Okay, finally uploading a video of the song I wrote. . . I could never get the quality to be much better than this, sorry about that. But, maybe not. Because then it's harder to hear how bad I sound. :) I like the words. Go prepositions! It was fun to write an original. I hope you enjoy it at least a little.

Take Me
Floating, flying
high as a bird in the breeze in the clouds in the sky.
Slowly, take me
carefully, carefully, carefully, carefully.

Softly, sing me
the words of the song of the heart in the tune of goodbye

I won't cry, I won't
I'll watch you go with clear eyes
I'll wait for the sunset to turn into sunrise
and bring you home
to me

Picture the moment
Soon as the sound of my voice in your ears fills your eyes.
Slowly, take me
All the way, all the way, all the way, all the way
Home

Sin-for-a-min Rolls

Once upon a time my beautiful friend Jena made a rather delicious puffy pastry with brie cheese, nuts, craisins and puff.

then one day yours truly made a pizza version

and not only was it glorious to behold, but the taste thereof was the greatest ever. then tonight, inspired and accompanied by my friend Nate, the cinnamon (sin-for-a-min) roll version was born: delicious babes made of dough, butter, brown sugar, brie, mozzarella, pecans and craisins

you know how they say something about buying shoes in every color if you love them? well I say

"if the recipe rocks, make it in every pan"

or something. but it's not polite to talk with my mouth full. . . nom nom . . sinfully goooood (except sin isn't good, so don't sin. but if you do, repent, and eat these, and your world will be perfect. the end)

riddance

if i had to get rid of everything in my life that reminded me of him i would
have to
discard about half of my wardrobe
move away from Provo
delete some pictures and throw away a bunch of trinkets
stop listening to certain songs and music
avoid restaurants and certain foods...lots of foods
become blind to tall muscular men
and never smell sunscreen again.

 or maybe i could get a specialized lobotomy.

i would rid my life of these things,
but the things is
they are things now
piled and rusting

one thing i will not have to do is remove my heart.
she doesn't remind me of him any more
she doesn't remind me about him
she doesn't bring him up.
she beat him out
not up
and now, even though my mind resembles
a junkyard without a fence,
my heart is across the street
that beautiful home up for rent/sale.

Sense of Sound

Walking up and down the stairs
I knew it was Dad
or if it was Mom
entering the front door
I could tell

Tires rolling in to park
driver door opening closing
the periwinkle van
was home

A cleared throat or a sneeze
is distinctly individual
as is each voice
one curt beat on the drum

But I can hear the difference
between his and hers
his feet and hers
his sniff and hers neeze

So wondrous is a sound
its clime in memory
heard once and remembered
before and for eternity

magical thoughts

What if yawns were actually little invisible fluttering beasts? once you inhale one, it would use your lungs to reproduce in an instant. upon exhalation, half a dozen or more yawnerflies skitter about, contagiously seeking new lungs to infest. even using your own again if you remain lethargic in your place. the deeper you breathe and stretch, the more they reproduce. pretty soon you're surrounded by hungry swarms of yawns and they smother you to sleep.

what if you could write on toilet paper and send fax messages as it swirled away, down, down the plumbing maze? the coordinates you gave the message would print out on a corresponding roll of toilet paper -- in your friend's house, at your place of work. like a mix between fax and pay phones. except on toilet paper.

what if you had a magic garbage can and kitchen cupboards? all you'd have to do is dump your dishes in the can and, presto changeo, your dishes would pile up in their appropriate spots around the kitchen. sparkly clean.

what if you flash froze AND shrunk every food you'd ever need and placed it in your magical pantry-freezer? then instead of selecting 'crushed ice' or 'cubed' you would choose 'spaghetti and meat balls with garlic bread and steamed broccoli' and all the necessary ingredients would line up front and center. you would still need to cook because you don't have a magic microwave oven or a robot who does all the cooking for you. plus, cooking is delightful, and magic pantry-freezers save you time so that you can cook.

what if every time you blew out a birthday candle's flame the rising smoke rose and rose to the stars? and the stars filled up with more and more wishful smoke until they sneezed and sparks go flying through the sky, granting every goodly wish for those pensive beings who pause to say 'bless you' to the heavens.

what if using your imagination daily made you younger? healthier, happier, calmer? live more in a day: imagine. it's like magic

Fine

i'm awake. this is only undesirable because i should be asleep... there's no reason i can't sleep. no worry, nothing exciting tomorrow, no impending doom, no trouble on my mind, no boy causing this damsel any distress, no pain or discomfort. so what the heck, you know? it's not even the fact that i can hear my roommate snoring though my ears are plugged with mysterious green expanding foam sound deadening devices. i'm just not tired. i will not fall asleep.

i've been pretty freakin hilarious lately. i don't know what it is. i'm just really funny. i think the most random things and i just kill myself every day with how clever i am. there truly are moments in life worthy to be recorded in sitcom or movie. but mostly life is a blend of common flavors with occasional bites of pure pepper biting brilliance. i like those moments.

i'm writing...i haven't written more than a witty facebook status update for the whole summer. i don't give myself time to be inspired. i miss poetry.

ooh i watched the last harry potter film. i cracked up to see the '19 years later' part. can it really be over? i mean, has it really been like seven or eight years since those books and movies started, ya know? dang. life goes by quick, huh. leave it to a fictional life passing by to remind you how fast your own goes right along with. just so you know, i'm not a freak fan of harry potter. but seriously, that whole story, start to finish, plot and world building: genius. absolutely just brilliant. i appreciate it. i have a little bit of story envy, yeah. but i appreciate its coolness. and j.k. rowling is a fab lady. i watched a video of her giving a speech at like harvard or something, and it was way cool. it was about how hardship will help us succeed. it was awesome. she really went to the bottom before making her way to the top. that's a good story that produced a good story. goooood!

ok so my roommate got up. went to the bathroom cuz that's really the only place to go. you know. my typing prolly woke her. now i have to leave and fake sleep. no doubt she'll be snoring in no time. lucky...

bye.

compassion

june 23 2011. today a mother and father lost their son. did you feel it?

bodies lose souls, souls depart bodies every day. i guess we won't know until we die ourselves what that can feel like, but i'm convinced we can still feel the loss, the departure...we have a sense. part of us was designed to bond. we connect to each other. we lose each other.

or perhaps more appropriately we misplace each other. living separated by tinted glass. only with the right lighting will we see beyond.

because the shift of life from one place to another is happening constantly, maybe we don't always recognize each loss each moment. until it happens closer. until our connection is directly tied.

i believe my favorite human capacity is compassion. when one human’s heart can ache in sync with another’s, when one can provide skeletal support for another whose skin is the only thing keeping their insides in. insides dissolving in grief, pressing into tears, quaking from a shattered core, echoed in hollow sobs.

the man i saw who held his collapsing wife was father. his courage…to be strong enough for mother to mourn; one strong so two wouldn’t crumble. the woman who held her face in trembling hands was mother. Her sobs…her soul was torn and life bled from her heart. her youngest son. his body still; hers curling around her wounds, seeking safety, as an embryo.

her youngest son.

had time off from work and went out on the river with some buddies. they went out after and had a few drinks. when they got home he laid down, slept. friends went to work. came home, tried waking him up. he was gone. there, but gone. he was twenty-eight years. son, brother, uncle.

i have no sons but i have a 30 year old brother and a 30 year old uncle. i have a close connection to the situation through my love for these two men who could represent an equivalent loss in my life. i love my mother and father and would feel pain to see them mourn as this couple for their son. same if it were my grandparents mourning for my uncle. compassion struck me through imagining their reality as my own. my heart dropped to the bottom of my lungs and for a moment both forgot what they were any good for.

Truth is, reality is, even when a child escapes the womb and grows for 28 years, the mother keeps an embryonic connection to the precious human, in her heart, a love always developing and moving inside her. It is a love she hopes to die with, never to survive its early disconnection…of course the love remains and is not lessened, but its earthly connection, manifestation, mind and body pair, physical interaction cease. it's loss of life. a mother's life is her children. she loses life when a child is lost. two lives lost though only one heart stops...

a healthy heart experiences new births daily, new persons arrive to be loved, new ideas to cradle, new feelings and thoughts to nurture, new sights and sounds to be gathered and held dear. a normal heart experiences frequent deaths. the familiar flow of life, of things, is interrupted. we bleed.

all the bumps and scratches and bruises and cuts get bandaged and kissed better. eventually. we have to allow the compassion of others to carry us when we cannot continue.

blood carries life. mother carries child. life carries problems. love carries solutions. love carries life.

when your love is bleeding, accept transfusions of compassion. love is a universal donor. the heart is a universal recipient. open it. sure, blood and life are designed to replenish themselves, but it can take a while after major loss.

carry love in your heart always. be a love donor.

love does not end in death. no, death isn't even really an end because of love.

what i felt in one moment, a frame of vision, proves to me there is enough love in this universe to fill every person.

compassion. compass. passion.

the possible range of all emotion: suffering, mourning, grief; of love, kindness, mercy, joy; the north and south of mortality, this was encompassed in the passion of Jesus Christ. His life, his blood, given in sacrifice for the healing of all mortal frailties, provides transfusion for compassion. for life when it is lost. no life is lost because of Him. because He carries life. because of love.

compassion is nobility in humanity.

Life in a Day

Enough amusing things happened in my day today that a chord within me has been strummed to a blog-inspiring tune. the morning started out really chill. I got to sleep in (until the morning sun started burning me through my window. i need to move my bed) and take a nice long shower (hey, my water bill is like 'everyone pays for everyone'...it's equalized somehow for the whole building or apt complex. it's the screwiest thing i've ever heard. but i may as well use my share of water if i'm going to pay for it. shoot.) but then i took too much sweet time and had to hurry flurry pack up and run downstairs for my ride to work. God bless everyone who gives rides to people. hey that includes me. sweet.

it was a warm morning. i rolled my back seat window down. stopped at a red light, my ride was right next to a bus stop. one fellow had the stage, telling his two seated friends a story.

"So i had four hundred dollars and my ex was all yelling at me cuz she thought i would blow it all in one day. here it is four days later and i still have eighty-two cents!"

"Hey, so you're doin pretty good"

green light go.

at work i got a hug from my favorite driver whom i call sweetheart. then i got another ride from there to the airport. okay all this is boring. skip to the part where there's a YogurtLand in the airport. yay! so i got coconut, devil's food cake, a lil mango and a lil strawberry flavors, topped it with almonds, strawberries and choc chips and savored it before going through security. a father and his two girls sat across from Ed and me as we spooned frozen goodness into ourselves. i couldn't help but overhear

"Dad, i think i have a stupid question, but why when a balloon has a string does it float, but when it doesn't have a string it doesn't float?"

"it's not the string, it's what's in the balloon. A floating balloon is filled with helium and one that doesn't float is filled with air."

"ahhh. but, why doesn't it float with air?"

"the balloon is heavier than the air."

younger girl: "unless you make a balloon out of air."
older one: "oh, and how would you do that"
younger: "you just gather up some air and quick squeeze some more air into it and wrap the air around it..."
older: "that wouldn't work"
younger: "it's called make believe"...

the passenger they were waiting for arrived and they left. i love me a good teaching/learning moment. pretty valid observation about the balloon string if ya ask me.

getting through security was the normal un/repack un/redress game, i passed, blah blah, we board, we sit. there we are, four coworkers and myself, all in aisle seats in five different rows. the plane was full, the air not circulating more than from every individual's lung power, getting stuffy and hot very quickly. the tour director, Jack, whom i will have for my tour starting here in fairbanks tomorrow, sat next to a minor flying solo. what a kick in the pants...he was probably seven or eight and freely chatting up Jack like he fully trusted anyone who was fortunate enough to sit next to him. he, Austin i think it was, explained to Jack all the super powers of Mario. finally the air started and electronic devices had to be put away for the safety demonstration by our flight attendants.



we were on a disney plane! and i like the clouds and the luggage caterpillar truck tutting along like its own disney ride. luggage handling, wheee.

as we taxied out from the gate, we stopped. our captain informed us we'd be going back to the gate to get a blacked out monitor fixed. this did two things. it took about 15 minutes of my life, and apparently it reset the flight attendants. they did their safety demonstration again -- wait, they didn't even get to how to use a seat belt before there was a long pause in the mindless speech (can we get a ukulele up in here!?) and then the speaking attendant's voice came back on, literally smiling, her voice was smiling, informing us that we would need to wait ten more minutes to put fuel in the aircraft.

this is when i leaned across the aisle to Ed, stuck my thumb out, down at the emergency light strips on the floor directing me to the nearest exit (possibly behind me) in case of emergency, and said, "airplane pre-trip fail".

Austin kept saying something like "i see the look on yo face" for most of this time. none of us knew why.

the Man put a quarter in the safety demonstration machine again and it started up from the beginning again. i mean, did we change planes when we changed that screen? and then again when we refueled? we all ignored the speech for the third time. though i often get a kick out of mainly the clothing of persons depicted in the pictures, still I disobeyed and didn't touch the safety card in the pocket in the upright seat back under the tray table in the locked position in front of me...

you know how sometimes the pilot says 'attendants secure for take off' or at least anything before take off? well, after the third safety speech we were suddenly surging down the runway, no warning. in the air.

i always find it interesting that I can see 'up' the plane during the ascent. we're all obviously still in the same straight line of seats, but the people in row 7 are higher than the people like me in row 22. we're level...but we're not. i like mildly trippy things like that.

and i love mount McKinley aka Denali



at some point the man in front of me (who, while boarding, had given me a 'look' that belongs in a bar i would never patronize even if i did drink) raised his right arm to stretch. as if the air circulation wasn't already stagnant, precisely then it was sapped entirely from existence. i gagged and somehow breathed out more than i breathed in while i snuck my camera behind his back...



our magical flight caught some awesome yogurt-blending stomach-bending turbulence while we arced toward fairbanks. our safety performers hardly had a chance to deliver water, snack and napkin before we were ready to land again. in fbanks it was warm and windy so when our lurching Disney ride came in for a landing I was a wincy bit anxious for it to come to a complete stop. As it did, the brakes made a spectacular groaning sound, the one you don't want to hear when you have limited air strip before you and five hundred miles an hour behind you...

anyway, i'm alive and unscathed. later i took a taxi to a restaurant with two other drivers, Ed and Kevin. i was craving some chips n salsa so we went mexican. i ordered the regular burrito. kevin went for the challenge.

mine



mine compared to the challenger. i didn't even finish mine. shoot. what a wimp. oh, well i did have my chips n salsa to start.



then we walked to Fred Meyer grocer. as Kevin shopped Ed and i made our way toward the restrooms. as i approached the women's restroom a man exited. a young man in a reflective neon vest. my narrowed eyes followed him through an employees only door. got it. walking into the restroom a loaded cleaning cart blocked the way. there was another guy in there. i asked if i should wait a minute. he said no go ahead. he stood behind his cart near the door. i chuckled as i realized he wouldn't be exiting the restroom. not gonna lie my bladder was shy at first. his buddy had rejoined him moments after my entry so i got to listen over the sound of my own pee how they mumbled in their nervous adolescent mutters just two stalls and a wall away. yeesh. i could see them behind me, reflected in the mirror as i washed my hands. wow. as i exited i remarked, 'this is your favorite job, huh.' the one made a noise as he awkwardly shifted, the other said, 'it puts gas in the tank.' yah. later boys.

well that's about it. silly insignificant moments to make a muser's day amusingly memorable.

M.I.AK

I haven't had internet very often since I've been in AK, but now I do. But I've been doing so many other webby things that now I don't really have time to say anything. But here are some pics, proof that I'm not truly missing, just having a blast!

(went on a quick free flight with coworkers. beautiful day!)

(9:20pm sun still way up)

(Denali/Mt. McKinley

(Halibut!)

(moose!)