today i....

danced like a ballerina,
wore my hood all day long,
found a field of yellow wild flowers
in the sun
and sat down in it
and read,
made pasta for the very FIRST time in my life,
watched a stage full of kindergarteners perform a Native American dance (sometimes i forget how amazing and beautiful children are. they can be excited for seemingly no reason. they make me smile so easily and i wish to be in their presence all the time. i hope that they retain their lives of whimsy and imagination for as long as possible),
squeezed 2 oranges and 1 lemon into juice (it was messy and delicious!).

The Fifth Mountain

"Even to understand angels. We so want to talk with them that we don't listen to what they're saying. It's not easy to listen: in our prayers we always try to say where we have erred, and what we should like to happen to us. But the Lord already knows all of this, and sometimes asks us only to hear what the Universe is telling us. And to be patient."

"Ask the children. They know everything."

"This does not matter. We have carried out our duty to the Lord because we accepted His challenge and the honor of His struggle. Before that night, He had urged us, saying Walk! But we heeded Him not. Why?
Because each of us had already decided his own future: I thought only of removing Jezebel from the throne, the woman who is now called Reencounter wanted her son to become a navigator, the man who today bears the name Wisdom wished merely to spend the rest of his days drinking wine in the square. We were accustomed to the sacred mystery of life and gave little importance to it.
Then the Lord thought to Himself: They would not walk? Then let them be idle for a long time!
And only then did we understand His message. The steel of Assyrian blades swept away our youth, and cowardice swept away our adults. Wherever they are at this moment, they are still idle; they have accepted God's curse.
We, however, struggle with the Lord, just as we struggle with the men and women we love in our lifetimes. For it is that struggle with the divine that blesses us and makes us grow. We grasp the opportunity in the tragedy and do our duty by Him, by proving we were able to obey the order to walk. Even in the worst of circumstances, we have forged ahead.
There are moments when God demands obedience. But there are moments in which He wishes to test our will and challenges us to understand His love. We understood that will when Akbar's walls tumbled to the ground: they opened our horizon and allowed each of us to see his capabilities. We stopped thinking about life and chose to live it."

ideas i felt this weekend

belief
trust
conversation
love
pray ceaselessly pray

today is january 22, 2008

just finished typing a letter

my apartment finally feels like home

first time in a long time: i'm really excited about the first day of classes

i'm exhausted and i'll fall asleep smiling

cms

today was the second time i've visited my grandpa's art studio since i've been home. each time i go, i find more and more things that i love there. just the environment is amazing. all the people are so welcoming. it seems like everyone there really enjoys being there. a place like that is refreshing. no grumpies! really though, i can honestly say that i always leave that big studio happier than when i entered. sometimes i feel lighter too!


































































during my last visit, i found out something incredible about mr. chris sorensen that i never knew. let me give a little background information first though. in the studio there is a complete kitchen and a full bathroom, as well as a small loft (which i haven't ventured up into in years). i've always thought that these rooms were convenient because there are a lot of people working down there during the day. being curious, as i tend to be, i asked grandpa chris what the loft was used for. and he said "oh bob stays there. he watches the place at night." upon arriving back at home that night i asked my mom to elaborate on what my grandpa had said earlier that afternoon. apparently bob used to be homeless a few years ago. my grandpa has since given him a place to live and taught him how to weld. i think at that moment i just sighed because every part of me was glad.

the outside of the studio:

Christian M Sorensen has such a big heart and such a great laugh; i can only hope to be as joyful as he is when i'm 82.

kind of like a movie

well we had to do something while we were waiting for the carpet installers to arrive!

i have to say, robert and benny were amazing costars.

photo by Crystalynne Hughes

"Think of peace."

We Bokonists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon.

"Man created the checkerboard; God created the karass." By that he means that a karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries.
It is as free-form as an amoeba.

"I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person."

"That's why she married him. She said his mind was tuned to the biggest music there was, the music of the stars."

That girl- and she was only eighteen- was rapturously serene. She seemed to understand all, and to be all there was to understand. In The Books of Boknon she is mentioned by name. One thing Bokonon says of her is this: "Mona has the simplicity of the all."

"You're not one of those people who trusts his memory, are you?"

What I had seen, of course, was the Bokononist ritual of boko-maru, or the mingling of awareness. We Bokononists believe that it is impossible to be sole-to-sole with another person without loving the person, provided the feet of both persons are clean and nicely tended.

"So life became a work of art," I marveled.

"Maturity," Bokonon tells us, "is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."

"I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it's unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing."

And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?"

It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.

This is it:

"Nothing."

"Think of peace.

"Think of brotherly love.

"Think of plenty.

"Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.

a good conversation.

one of my best friends told me this today:

seek the comfort of God,
for in Him lies the peace that you long for.

and she turns 25 years old!

i had to zoom in on my grandpa in the picture
above; he just makes me laugh all the time!


Happy Birthday Crystalynne!

today i noticed how much life is interwoven with death.
really, they are the same.
both are infinite.

home

sometimes i wish i could type in cursive.

Tonight i was sitting in the den and realized that my family was finally back together. TOGETHER, like it hasn't been in a long time. Yes, there have been multiple occasions when we were all in the same room, etc. But tonight was different. I was sitting in the big recliner with my dad (as I spent SO many days doing when i was little). There was a football game on tv (the hughes' are big football fans). My mom and sister were sitting in the two white chairs. My mom chatted on the phone with Denise (her favorite teacher friend) and my sister read a book or randomly said something about the cats that grace us with their presence. My brother was on the couch with his girlfriend. A smile came into my heart as I viewed this scene. I love these people; they make me crazy at times, but they are home to me. I always tell my friends before they meet my family that once they do, they'll understand why i am the way i am. When we are together, i know i am BLESSED.

life drives me nuts

i don't understand
i don't understand
i don't understand what we're supposed to do.
how easy it is to think things are a certain way!
when it's something entirely different.
how one person can be of so much importance.
persuasion.

i'm always just sitting around, pondering my own life.
that needs to stop.
who is it helping...not me...nor anyone i know for that matter.

sometimes i get tired of reading
but how will i ever know what is really necessary and beneficial
if i don't know what the "root" of the problem is.
learning, immersing myself in the world
i hope i never lose the motivation to do that more everyday.

(we watched Charlie Wilson's War tonight. needless to say, all the little men in mind will not quit running around. too much to think about. too much!)