So I think I'm going to tell you a story:

Once upon a time, in the land of mysterious jumping frogs, there lived a disgruntled lizard...

whose only desire in the world was to be part of the traveling frog circus! But alas, God had made him a lovable lizard, not a fabulous frog. So he devised...

a scandalous plan! Luke the lizard would infiltrate the frog circus by seducing the lead jumper Flamboyant Phil, who had a weakness for lizard lips.

One night, when Phil was changing in his dressing room after a splendid showcase of leaping talent, he found a typewritten note that read: My Dearest Phil,

You have captured my heart with your beautiful froggy legs. I want nothing more than to travel the circus circuit with you till the end of my days. I will...

bake you 5 milllion chocolate chip/fly wing cookies in exchange for your undying love, affection, and loyalty. Yours truly, Luke the lizard. Phil was so...

flabbergasted that he let out the loudest ribbet that anyone had ever heard! He immediately had a telegram sent to Luke that consisted only of one word,

Deal. They done got hitched the very next day! It was quite the spectacle you see, a frog marrying and lizard and such. Then the happy couple adopted an orphaned

chameleon from the neighboring town of Rainbowsville. Their new daughter Claire's changeability was so impressive to the circus managers that they offered her

a starring role in the jumping frog act. She was to continuously "disappear". Meanwhile, Luke was honing his talent of imitating a lion by being angry and and puffy.

The managers appreciated Luke's work ethic, but informed him that he was not exciting enough to join the cast. Luke was infuriated! He decided that enough was enough...

During the performance that night, Luke stormed on stage in the midst of the Racing Ranidae. He channeled all of his frustrations to this one, ultimate moment and

puffed himself up so large that he burst into thousands of tiny sparks that flew through the atmosphere and landed in the Milky Way!

The sparks form the constellation Lacerta (translated lizard). Now Luke is a shining star for all to see and he is honored in the land of the mysterious jumping frogs!

The End

life in the rice paddies

Yesterday I got to ride around fresno with my dad in his truck after he picked me up from the train station. He was craving a mid-afternoon snack, therefore I scored a small ice-cream cone out of the deal. I started asking him what life on the farm was like for him growing up. Apparently it was very hot with air infused by mosquitos from the soppy, drenched fields! Haha, my favorite quote: "My dad used me to block a levee once while he threw mud on it to try and fix it." I realize that life on a farm on the outskirts of Merced was much less romantic and funny than it sounds in stories told by my father and his sisters, but occasionally I still wish I had grown up like that. He also elaborated on how his dad built him a butterfly kite out of bamboo wood taken from the river! One day, I too will build a kite!

ever made a decision

that you immediately regretted?

haha, i should've never gotten my bag out of the car!
thank goodness i have robert to get me out of sticky situations.
i'm SO grateful!!

now we're sitting here
watching the ROYAL TENENBAUMS
(it's OK that Margo and Richie are in love)
eating cranberry sauce from a can

i thoroughly enjoy being in college
ha! it's just so random

and OH MY GOODNESS----> Wicked!

sometimes it just feels better to lay down.

Addie

So I took Anse. And when I knew that I had Cash, I knew that living was terrible and that this was the answer to it. That was when I learned that words are not good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride. I knew that it had been, not that they had dirty noses, but that we had had to use one another by words like spiders dangling by their mouths from a beam, swinging and twisting and never touching, and that only through the blows of the switch could my blood and their blood flow as one stream. I knew that it had been , not that my aloneness had to be violated over and over each day, but that it had never been violated until Cash came. Not even by Anse in the nights.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter.

I would think that even while I lay with him in the dark and Cash asleep in the cradle within the swing of my hand. I would think that if he were to wake and cry, I would suckle him, too. Anse or love: it didn't matter. My aloneness had been violated and then made whole again by the violation: time, Anse, love, what you will, outside the circle.

Then I found that I had Darl. At first I would not believe it. Then I believed that I would kill Anse. It was as though he had tricked me, hidden within a word like within a paper screen and struck me in the back through it. But then I realised that I had been tricked by words older than Anse or love, and that the same word had tricked Anse too, and that my revenge would be that he would never know I was taking revenge. And when Darl was born I asked Anse to promise to take me back to Jefferson when I died, because I knew that father had been right, even when he couldn't have known he was right anymore than I could have known I was wrong.

"Nonsense," Anse said; "you and me aint nigh done chapping yet, with just two."

He did not know that he was dead, then. Sometimes I would lie by him in the dark, hearing the land that was now of my blood and flesh, and I would think: Anse. Why Anse. Why are you Anse. I would think about his name until after a while I could see the word as a shape, a vessel, and I would watch him liquify and flow into it like cold molasses flowing out of the darkness into the vessel, until the jar stood full and motionless: a significant shape profoundly without life like an empty door frame; and then I would find that I had forgotten the name of the jar. I would think: The shape of my body where I used to be a virgin is in the shape of a _________ and I couldn't think Anse, couldn't remember Anse. It was not that I could think of myself as no longer unvirgin, because I was three now. And I would think Cash and Darl that way until their names would die and solidify into a shape and then fade away, I would say, All right. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what they call them.

And so when Cora Tull would tell me I was not a true mother, I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

-As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

ecstasy

yesterday i realized that i just might be in love with everyone i know

the feeling of living life to the extreme
but not life in general's extreme
specifically MY life's extreme

giving my personality the opportunity to reach its full potential
unapologetically being everything i am

exploring the parts of myself that i love while in the company of those who extract my best self
not questioning my motivations

it's like those rare bursts of sudden inhibition
that allow you to finally reveal your heart to the one you love
or leap into your dance partner's arms knowing they will catch you

but, hours of my day were lived in that state.

yesterday i experienced, for lack of a better term, ecstasy!
pure JOY and freedom and excitement and LOVE
all through living entirely as my full self
the one God intended me to be

I Shall Not Walk Alone

Battered and torn
still I can see the light
Tattered and worn
but I must kneel to fight

Friend of mine
what can't you spare
I know some times
it gets cold in there

When my legs no longer carry
and the warm wind chills my bones
I reach for Mother Mary
and I shall not walk alone

Hope is alive
while we're apart
only tears
speak from my heart
break the chains
that hold us down
and we shall be
forever bound

When I'm tired and weary
and a long way from home
I reach for Mother Mary
and I shall not walk alone

Beauty that
we left behind
how shall we
tomorrow find

Set aside
our weight in sin
so that we
can live again

When my legs no longer carry
and the warm wind chills my bones
I reach for Mother Mary
and I shall not walk alone

-Ben Harper

"I feel like really thick custard"

-Benny, impersonating me.


therapy for the body.
dance class.
movement.
stillness.
interpersonal contact.

therapy for the mind.
philosophical conversation.
laughter.

therapy for the soul.
newman:
my family
my prayers
healing
remembering
embracing
humbling

stations:
cleansing
revitalizing

I'm exhausted.
Been having bouts of insomnia lately for no apparent reason.
I'm not at the retreat anymore, but I wish I was.
Life is just different there.

Every so often I go into these hazy states.
Days blur together.
Events occur, yet have no effect on me.
The only reason I make it through the day is because it has been routinized.
I know where to turn and what to eat.
I know what I think is funny and I laugh.
I know what is breaking my heart and I feel sad.

I've forgotten what it's like to be alive,
what it's like to be in love,
what it's like to be free.