THROW OUT ALL MAPS. RIP THEM FROM YOUR BOOKS. RIP THEM FROM YOUR HEARTS OR THEY WILL BREAK IT. - ROBIN JAY JEFF

"Old Testament Israel had very clear laws protecting foreigners living in the land. Solomon, in an inspired prayer, prayed that God would answer all the prayers of foreigners, "so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you" (I Kings 8:43). Aliens were not to be mistreated (Exodus 22:21) or deprived justice (Malachi 3:5); instead, they were to be given land (Ezekial 47:22) and loved (Deuteronomy 10:19). The book of Ruth is about an alien - a Moabitess - who was included in the royal line of David and Jesus.

All this was an imitation of God's love to Israel, who themselves had been aliens (Exodus 22:21, 23:9; Leviticus 19:34). In fact, they were always aliens. "The land is mine," said the Lord, "and you are but aliens and my tenants" (Leviticus 25:33). As aliens who were blessed by God, they treated other people the way God had treated them."

- Edward Welch

Venice is better

"If you read a lot, nothing is as great as you’ve imagined. Venice is - Venice is better." -Fran Lebowitz.

Snipets...

"Any real change implies the break up of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew: to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet it is only when man is able, without bitterness or self pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished, or a privilege he has long possessed, that his is set free--that he has set himself free--for higher dreams, for greater privileges." - James Baldwin

"Faith is the heroic effort of your life. You fling yourself in reckless confidence on God. God has ventured all in Jesus Christ to save us. Now he wants us to venture our all in a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering....Again and again, you will get up to what Jesus Christ wants, and every time, you turn back when it comes to that point until you abandon resolutely....Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold by common sense--and leap into what He says....Christ demands of the man who trust Him the same reckless spirit....that is daring enough to step out of the crowd and bank his faith on the character of God." -- Oswald Chambers

I would say we need to choose our God, choose our redeemer.

The crazy times were fun. But I made a choice. And I KNOW, which is different than saying that I feel, that Jesus offers a way of life that is more fulfilling and satisfying than any other.

Christianity isn't worth it if it's only a religion. It just isn't.
But as a relationship with a Father, a Creator, a best friend, a Lover...it's worth everything. It's worth my entire life.

"There are many problems with trying to market the gospel of Jesus, not the least of which is that, in itself, it is not a cool or fashionable idea. It isn't supposed to be. It is supposed to be revolutionary. It's for people who are tired of trying to be cool, tired of trying to get the world to redeem them......I would say we need to choose our God, choose our redeemer." - D Miller

There is something to be said for how a home and a family - or community of people - hold identity, embody identity. I don't know that I actually completely agree with these thoughts, but....I find myself thinking over and over that it will feel so good to be home and around my family and friends, and be reminded of who I am.

Being in this city is amazing. My life is never boring and I honestly barely know what crazy event will take place next. But, in all the craziness, I can feel myself fading a bit.

But I suppose it's natural, after all. To live and succeed in a place requires adaptation. But with adaptation comes some loss.

Who is this girl that goes clubbing until 5am and smokes the occasional cigarette and has indecent love escapades and a bottle of vodka in the pantry? I just don't quite recognize her.

Valley Center. Blue skies, dirt roads, orange groves. Cups of coffee outside with the sunset and the humming birds and old British mystery movies before bed. I want to belong to this life again.

And here is another thought- forgive the whininess, please:
Lately, I just want things to be simple - again? - and I want to feel happy. I guess happiness is something you move towards and build at, not something you just get. I constantly feel like I just want someone to give me happiness, to just hand it to me. But I guess I know that I need to start making better choices and having the right mindset. I don't want to want things and people that I can't or shouldn't have. I don't want to ache because I want something that I know I shouldn't. I want to erase all the relationships I've had that have made little holes in me... all the bad decisions and actions... because even though I've learned from them, it still hurts when they come up in the reel of my thoughts and those feelings flood back. Pandora's Box is hell, man.

"It is June. I am tired of being brave." -Anne Sexton

"and
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for
for me it is the dearest and the worst,
it is life nearest to life which is
life lost: it is my place where
I must stand and fail,
calling attention with tears
to the branches not lofting
boughs into space, to the barren
air that holds the world that was my world"

-A.R. Ammons

How unnerving that the things I thought were most tiresome have turned out to be closest to my heart, or whatever it is that's pumping life inside of me. (This may also be true of people.) I want to absolutely take prisoner the colors and smells and whole atmosphere of this place that is home. Here I am an eager kid, all packed a week early and I'm sitting on my bed distractedly while Spain just quietly lives all around me. And I will hate how I wanted so badly to just get the hell out of this country, I know it. I will miss the walking, talking, living that was this life in Barcelona. But I did hold it against my bones, if nothing else. And now I am letting it go. If you don't bend, you break, you know?

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

-Mary Oliver

......................................


of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness

-Mary Oliver


You just never know who/what is going to come through the front door of our flat. And by that I mean our dueños locos. Rifling through phone bills to see who called who on what day and for how long, Lo - como siempre - decided to make me laugh to the point of tears with her witty skype comments and thus receive menacing glares from Chinca, or whatever Mig calls her.

There will be no central theme to this. Just to say that MI VIDA is perhaps the most eclectic mix of nothing you would ever expect and all that sitcom writers are dying to think up. The frenchies never wake up before 2pm and love to ask where the hell I could have found that extraordinary head of lettuce and if I have heard that there is an ESPECTACULAR at the monjuic fountain. Holland gladly shows me the fruits of his shopping trip and crudely overcompensates for not wanting to seem gay, kind of a disappointment I have to admit. And Germany is just cute. Like the little sister I never had.

Today has been the most incredibly fulfilling unproductive day. Two hour naps are like cheesecake. I do not belong in Canada. This happiness is like a kind of holiness.

More to come on what Jesus is teaching me when I'm not drinking Rosa Parks.

I came here to study hard things .... and to temper my spirit on their edges. - Anne Dillard

Home. I used to write endlessly about home, thinking and dreaming about home, wanting more than anything to be home. And sometime between then and now, Carrer Bonaventura Pollés 11-13, Barcelona became home. Not a replacement, sino una adición.

Struggle, maybe more than anything else, consecrates a place. This flat is consecrated. This kitchen, this blue couch, this hallway, this bedroom - these places embody a year's worth of my struggles and the lessons I learned the hard way. Not to say that there hasn't been more than enough good times here - certainly there has. But struggle - to grapple with life and sometimes flounder about - is to be changed and pushed forward. It is not for nothing.

As said by Anne Dillard, "There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by." I can only hope for a life full of good days, but the struggles that I've had here in Barcelona - they hit me in the soul, and are what bring me closer to knowing what a good life could mean.

I realize, oh how ironically, that it will be hard to leave. Hard in that complicated and uncomfortable way. As elated as I'll be to touch down in my California, I anticipate - nervously - the ache that will be me missing Barcelona for all her details and all the secrets she knows about me.

I still can't understand how it is that one can feel so about two very different things. I want to be home so much some moments that it makes me dizzy because I forget to suck air into my lungs, and yet, when I wasn't paying attention somehow the walls came down and now my heart is dancing around this city with an abandon that is unimaginably fulfilling.

It's just that it took so much to get here. Can I really be leaving this all in a month or so? Oh shoot.

"Poetry should be a shock to the senses. It should also hurt." - Anne Sexton

An Afternoon In The Stacks
By: Mary Oliver

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here, the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
By: EE Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands




In Memoriam Mae Noblitt
By: AR Ammons

This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star's

atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and

slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight's

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but

is love a reality we
made here ourselves--
and grief--did we design

that--or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.





A Dream Of Trees
By: Mary Oliver

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company.
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees,
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world's artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?



We Real Cool
By: Gwendolyn Brooks

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.



AND OTHERS:
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
Adrienne Rich
Elizabeth Bishop
Walt Whitman

ee cummings.
two more that i love: 


Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you 
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps 

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you 
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are 
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

..................................................................................


you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear
   
it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love
   
whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time
   
that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.
   
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

just some beauty

Here are some beautiful moments that, time after time, me hace sonreír:

1. On Thursdays I wait for Anabel outside her school and there is almost nothing as adorable as watching the little Spanish kiddos tumble out the gates and romp around, getting in some last minutes with friends and finding their parents....children are so innocently beautiful.

2. Though this doesn't always happen, it is eternally sweet to see people on the metro get up and offer their seat to the elderly and/or pregnant. I love the unspoken language of - is it? - love that I sometimes get to see.

3. And simply, the sun out and the skies blue. Cummings, per usual, expresses it magically:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

ee cummings

One of my favorite things in the world is finding out that people are nicer than I thought they would be. In lieu of the in-class final, due to my failing the midterm, my History of 20th Century Social Movements professor offered the option of an oral, interview-like final exam based on a course-related subject of my choice. True to my nature, I put off studying until a few days before and basically went into his office ready for my downfall. And though I definitely lacked basic knowledge of the subject, my professor asked me a few light questions, then asked for my opinion on the subject, then asked if this was a hard subject for me, then asked me for my notes and that was that. No looks of scorn or disapproval when I muttered something about the British Labor Party that was entirely incorrect. All this is to say that, I probably deserved to be reprimanded, and instead he was entirely simpatico.

“Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things …. making those count for more than the bad stuff. Maybe we just get through it... and that's all we can ask for.” CHEESY, I know. But TRUE, for me, right now. Spain is hard. But now the heater is fixed and we aren’t freezing in our flat anymore, and a 7 transfers as an A-, and my French flatmates help me with my homework, and these days the sun has been more beautiful than ever and the sky unbelievably blue, and Lo just made the best salsa I have ever had, and my professor let me get off EASY. These are the things that I string together to make up for the fact that sometimes I want to go home so bad that it hurts.

Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye (1904-2004)


Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight.
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there — I do not die.

I don't usually like these types of poems, but this one was read at my grandma's funeral and sometimes I miss her a lot a lot a lot. And this says so much about her.