Hol@

I´m sitting in Santiago, Chile. In a hostel on the fifth story of a building with celing decorations that look like hairy fingernails and sharpied names on the walls. But I like it. I love the hostel life. Sleeping next to someone who might live across the world from you. I tried all three computers here, one of which didn´t have a mouse. You would think I would know how to use the ¨at¨ symbol on a Spanish keyboard by now... Thank you Wikipedia for your History of At Symbols article to copy and paste from. I also don´t have spell check. And every time I try to do an apostrophe, I somehow type this symbol {. So here we go.

Santiago, Chile

Machu Picchu, Peru. We walked to the city square at five in the morning to find that the rest of the group had hired porters. I felt like quite the man hiking Dead Woman´s Pass with my life on my back. I only brought one other pair of clothes. Although it saved my back some weight, it also meant that I was in a continual state of dampness as I quickly found that my Scotchguarded windbreaker did not act as a raincoat. But there were llamas and waterfalls and ruins to discover. There was Spanish to say and fruit to try. And we made it. With strong legs and dirty hair. It was like opening a pop-up story book to see my history book come alive like that. That would be a nice job. Designing pop up books. I also think creating the names of paint colors would be nice. Who in the world decides what is olive green verses sage green?

Maccu Picchu, Peru

I spent Christmas in Cusco, Peru. What a sweet town. It reminded me of a mountain ski town. With the cold clouds and cobblestone streets. People had goats in their arms and trinkets to sell. I came across an all natural sandwich and smoothie shop that had smoothies that mixed papaya and plantains and beer and things. The blinking Christmas llamas placed on the sides of the roads added to the feel too. I got myself a dark ice blue North Face water proof jacket for the equivalent of thirty American dollars. My Christmas dinner was an omlette in the upstairs of a building with a dog looking at me from the opposite side of the glass door. Sara and Alex had falafel there after their feast of guinea pig and alpaca for lunch.

Cusco, Peru

We flew into Lima, Peru the next day. Our city tour was interesting. Our guide showed us where to get forged documents and where the best Piscos and police stations and cathedrals were. He let me take a picture on a metal llama in a public park and we hopped the fence as he yelled to sprint so as not to be hit while we jaywalked. More like jayran. Lima reminded me a lot of Spain. With beautiful arcitecture and metal statues of men on horses. He pointed out on one statue the ¨Llama of Liberty¨that was sitting on a woman´s head. We roomed with Aussies in our hostel and woke up at five to hop the border to Santiago, Chile. Before I fell asleep to party music and soft breathing I read this, and then wrote it down with my borrowed black ink pen in my water stained red mole skin notebook:

Lima, Peru

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, beause only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord{s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:12-18)

So here I am. Realizing that I could do all the travelling in the world but if I have a veil over my heart none of this will be revealed in completion. It´s like mining gold from the river with my fingers. I´d get the experiences, but so much would missed. People think freedom is being released from a grasp, but I believe freedom is choosing to be held by God. He can´t lift a veil if you´re running away. I´m far from perfect. I run away much to often for way too long. I make mistakes with a hole-y heart. But I´ve found that however far I think I´ve run, God is waiting one step behind me. I don´t deserve any of this. But it´s here. And I want that freedom.

Bolivia and Peppermint

I'm in Bolivia at 11,000 feet in La Paz, the highest city in South America. I'm pecking out this post with my thumbs on a phone with a thumping heart and pressured lungs. It's definitely evident I've lived at sea level my whole life. My roommate smells like peppermint because of her herbal remedies and I like it a lot. I really like peppermint. Especially peppermint gum or candy canes. And I like Christmas. 

I want to thank Sergio for all of this. For being able to stay with his family for the entire week. There is a poster of him on the wall watching over us while we sleep. He's a celebrity here in La Paz. Even our taxi driver knew him. He plays guitar like I would want to in my dreams. He played for us over Skype and his fingers seemed to connect with the neck like they had been born together. His friends took us to a market at night. We went in a random ally up two flights of stairs to an antique bar with carved little devils and old dusty typewriters and beautiful wooden ceiling to drink maté and sweet corn drinks called Api. They laughed at our Spanish and we laughed at their stories. We drove without seatbelts and rapped to M&M and listened to German rock music. His family speaks their Spanish slowly for us and they have green curtains and a golden dog with a timid little nose and short stubby legs and a happy tail. They give us food like plantains and chicken and quinoa soup and drive us places like Lake Titicaca. I learned about that lake in my history class this semester. It's like the Israel of South America, and Israel means a lot to me. All the food is organic. Their meat, milk, fruit... Everything here is what I would imagine South America to be like. The traditional dress... The elderly ladies wear skirts to their ankles and shawls and top hats like the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland. There are sweaters and gloves and socks made from alpaca hair. I purchased green socks with a yellow and red pattern and white llamas dancing around the ankles for the equivalent of three American dollars. The people's faces are beautiful too. You can tell this country is much less touched by European and United States influence. I'm one of the only blondes I've seen here and by the way they stare I feel the most out of place that I ever have in my life. But I like it. I like how they have remained their own. They even built their town hall clock to tick backwards to prove their own identity.

I tried to journal the other day. I have a little red moleskin journal that can bend in my hands. I'm bad at journaling. All I talk about are what color the walls are and the comparisons between people and cotton candy and saints. I tend to skip over the big pictures. I think in details. I think in the wrinkle lines on lips and how the sun can make the solid green curtains ten different shades of the same green. It overwhelms me sometimes. But it is good. It's good to pick up life and switch it around and make it tick backwards. It's good to remember the people in airports who let you borrow pens and the ones that tell you about journalism and silver mines. I think it's good to be who you are. 

I don't know how to end this post. So, here's un beso to you and another to the start of six weeks traveling South America.

Arial View of La Paz on a gondola-like transportation system called the Teleferico.

A lady selling fruit in Copacabana, a town by Lake Titicaca.

Lake Titicaca in the flesh.

Beige

I've blogged at least once a month since January. It makes me quiver like those Mickey Mouse styrofoam shapes on the ends of a car antennas to see those little electronic satisfactions. They're far from perfect, or even professional. They're actually quite odd a lot of the time. But when I see them I feel like I make the perfect snowball or I'm holding a full tube of toothpaste... or I've just opened one of those new jars of peanut butter... the Skippy smooth kind of peanut butter.

But then I realized that I haven't blogged for two months. I'll be clique and say that these past two months have felt like the craziest times of my life. It's like the first squeeze of toothpaste or a knife to that utopian peanut butter. A bit of my heart turned black at the sight of it. Or beige. I tend to be inspired to write when I hear good, new music. And I did. From an Irish lady with red hair and bangs sharply angled across her forehead. My host madré told me that the word for bangs in Spanish is el pelo golpea and I laughed because saying it made my tongue shiver. The Irish bang lady told me to look up Fat White Family and to not watch the music videos. So I did, and now I'm in love with the song Beige and I feel tastefully hipster because it's not even on Google or YouTube (Spotify is my haven). I was also trying to be hipster and not go to Starbucks, but, who are we kidding. Being able to say frappuccino in a Spanish accent has to count for something. I guess need to work on that because I usually just get my coffee black.

Here's a pic of me in Mendoza cause I thought I should put at least one.

I've been watching all of my friends' travel blogs develop, and I love them. With their stories and pictures. With the documentation that I know I'll regret if I don't upkeep too. So I started this blog post with the intention of catching up with myself, which I've realized, in all actuality, is an impossible task. But all I really want to talk about is the Hipodrome, and comparatively, it's not even a big event. I live near a horse track and I decided to take a walk in my aqua blue converse and my horizontally pinstriped shirt rolled up to the elbows. And then I started to pass those people you would imagine would have little circular eye glasses slid three feet down their nose and long spindly legs with chubby little stomachs and vertical pinstripes on their coats. They didn't really look like that, but I did overhear a conversation in a British accent, which was really strange for me in Argentina. So I decided to climb the fence, but I stopped half up, clinging to the metal bars and looking wistfully through them. It was like the back stage of a theater, except instead of costumes there was the closeness of horses' rippling muscles and the smell of the creaking saddles. Dust particles ensured themselves in my eyelashes and I watched the jockey's sweat move to the procession of hoofs thudding on the packed dirt like a far-off heartbeat.

Words. There's some great ones like avuncular in Jack White's song Black Bat Licorice. It has a Latin root and means pertaining to, or a characteristic of an uncle. I think this is my second time referencing him in my blog, but, it's Jack White. There are the words that I used to say over and over until they sounded like mush. Like Fransisco or refrigerator. But I feel so misunderstood when I use words. I think it's because we try to make our thoughts fit the accepted standard of language rather than letting the thoughts choose which words should represent them. A lot of times I feel like the way we use words lowers the standard of what constitutes a thought, conforming it to a mold instead of finding words capable of representing it. I think we are letting language shape our thoughts instead of shaping the language around our ideas. This unconsciously produces a habit, which is accepted as academic English. I think our modern goal is the problem, the mentality we have of just finishing the paper or doing the minimum. So, instead of making an effort to fight for words, I settle and am even encouraged to fall into the mold of things that just sound nice.

Here's an excerpt from old school Ecclesiastes from the Bible:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. 

And here's a version in "modern English" from Orwell:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

However, Orwell's text would be the one praised for its academic level. Yeesh. I like the quote by Paulo Freire, “words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.” It's rather ironic because later in the same paper he falls straight into the word trap that he had just condemned. I think it's because we need to use words to convey this idea of how not to use words. Like in Jefferson's words (on a a different topic, unless you see words as slavery, which I guess they kind of are), "a necessary evil."

I say all this to say two things:

First, the Bible is simply timeless. There aren't many, and arguably, there aren't ANY books with as much class as the Bible. Class like cigar eating lobster with a silk handkerchief and a patterned bow tie. Even if you don't agree with it, it's just such a beautiful piece of literature. Please read it. Or at least a book in its entirety (start with Isaiah or Luke... a lot of Numbers and Chronicles are exactly what they sound like). 

Second, I could, should, and probably will recount all of my travels in the past few months. But I need to write them when the words can describe what I want to say. My blog posts are random. And scattered. With sentence fragments and misplaced commas... and pretty cheesy at times. But I try my hardest to make my words say what I mean. Sometimes, as a person, I am random and cheesy and scattered with misplaced thoughts and fragments. But I want my words to leak with authenticity, and if those are the elements that comprise me at that time, I think those words can be valuable because I think that the words people omit in their most vulnerable form reflect a lot of their character. I want my words to be written in relevance to the Bible, the most authentic and real script that I know, even if they don't directly reference it. Because the closer I can write to the bare bone truth of life and emotion, the closer I am to becoming what I want my words say. Like Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord." I just want my words to convey things in their purity, even if they contain a run-on sentence or a misplaced comma.

Hurt

While skating home today I fell in front of the same two men I fell in front of yesterday. At least today I didn't face plant and my pens didn't scatter across the sidewalk. I don't know how my pens can roll over the cracks so easily and I cannot. I also met a dog wearing a sweater in the elevator in my apartment complex. I think the owner said his name was something like Salsa. I actually passed an entire shop dedicated to dog sweaters on my search for a yoga studio today.

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. Recommendations, findings... like the mastermind Jack White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b46yzioCxPI. But "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails covered by Johnny Cash has stood true to me for years now. It's my favorite cover because of its authenticity... the injured imperfections in his voice that connect one soul to another. He somehow takes pure, rough emotions and crafts them into his words. He sings without the self absorbed restraint of needing to be accepted. Johnny claims to have "tried every drug there was to try." Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia if you're as enthralled with him as I am:

Cash noted: "I was taking the pills for awhile, and then the pills started taking me." ...Cash curtailed his use of drugs for several years in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out on the floor. He reported being exhausted and feeling at the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth...

Now that's raw. That's real. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aF9AJm0RFc You can have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt. That's what I say to God. My scars turn into His. The nails I pound into my own skin are what nailed Him to the cross. But that's exactly what He wants. He wants it all. It's not a barter. He wants to demolish the facade of acceptance we've built around our selves. He wants to bring us back to vulnerability, because a hard heart can’t curl up and be held, it can't be protected. I think being in that place is the closest we can be to the heart of God. And when people see that rawness, they're seeing God. But we still refuse it. We spit in the face of God by holding on to the very thing that is destroying us.

Johnny died seven months after shooting the music video.

I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure. (Trent Reznor, lead singer of Nine Inch Nails)

Authenticity is timeless... universal... pure. Johnny left a mark on the world when his goal changed from acceptance of the world to vulnerability and surrender. I went to Adulam last weekend. From what I understand (I don't know if I understand completely because my Spanish isn't up-to-par yet) it is a center that provides for people like ex-criminals and single mothers and orphans. They know pain. That place leaked with authenticity. It was real. There was no filter, no performance. I thought I was going to volunteer, but I showed up to an asado for the pastor's birthday. They served me. And I thought I knew what service was.

I want to be real. I want to be close to the heart of God. And I think every step, a song, an asado, being broken, being vulnerable, is a step to get to be more a part of the bigger picture He is creating.

P.S. Please excuse the five million fonts. I still don't really understand how Blogger works.

Adulam

A bit outside of Adulam

Some happy friends

Pencils and Suptes and the First Day of School

Today was my first day of school. It also marked the last day of the week of intensive Spanish classes. I don't really know what that means, because I feel like Spanish won't get much less intensive. I got all my books like a little school girl and had my pencils and papers ready, besides the pencil that Maddie lent to me that Cognac ate. Sorry Maddie. Yes, he comes into my room and picks an object of his choice to selfishly patter away with like a little fuzzy pack rat. My madre has told me to bribe him with food when that happens, so I went in the kitchen to find nothing but a rice puff. That's another interesting thing about Argentines, they seem to only buy the food they need for the next few days instead of stocking up for the week. I put the food on the ground, knowing the drill. Cognac drops the item. Cognac saunters over to eat the food and I have a few swift seconds to reclaim my possession. I always feel like one of those praying mantis bugs, frozen until the time of attack. But Cognac broke protocol. He managed to keep the pencil in his mouth as he picked up the puff and slid triumphantly back to his bunker under the table. I transformed from ninga mantis to a puddle of of defeat. I really hope I'm not unknowingly on some reality show about Americans who study abroad. Sorry America, but you haven't encountered this Schnauzer.

Meet Cognac, the Master of my Casa

Something I really appreciate about the Casa (that's what the students call the school) is it's secret nooks. It's like that creepy man on the street selling watches from his coat, but instead of someone creepy it's Santa, and instead of watches it's candy. It's elderly years show in the creaks of the boards and the worn copper of the doorhandles. It can be inconvenient. Like the kind of inconvenient when you realize you're in the wrong class and try to sneak out and when you reach the front of the class to discreetly slide through the door you accidentally break off the doorknob and stand there frozen with it in your hand and you stare at the class and the class stares at you and you flip through every situation in your head that could possibly reconcile yourself but your mind feels like a five-thousand blank page catalog. But beyond moments like that I feel like this building has places to recover. To recharge. An abandoned corner feels like my own personal hospital. I can almost feel the walls sprout arms to reach out and hug me. Those corners are under staircases, on top of roofs... But one of my favorites is a little wooden desk hidden above the front door entrance with a guitar leaning itself up against a wall nearby. I love those little discoveries.

Every morning I wake up happy that I'm here. I just feel so independent, like the world is mine. I walk everyday without a GPS in a big city. I'm needing to rely on memory and maps rather then just plugging my trust into an electronic. I need to rely on the Supte and busses and taxis. They continue on with or without me, and I have to choose to be a part of them. When I'm riding the Supte (the Argentine subway), I look around at the black jackets and the seams of pants and the reflections of people's fingertips clutched on the metal standing bar and I think about how I have a jacket on too and seams on my own pants and how my fingers leave prints on that same standing bar and I feel like my existing is actually functioning for something. It feels like my life is my own for the first time in my life. I feel free and more alone than I ever have. It's a hard alone. But a beautiful alone. Like the buildings that are built to be more than just a contribution to a consumer's society. Like the buildings that exist to crumble, to add to the life around them and to stand as an example of something that was worth existing. Not that they have a story. They might not have a beginning, a climax or a sudden end. It might not be exciting. But every bit of that life is still a part of them, like the fingerprints that stay on the standing bar in the subway and the little threads that fall forgotten into corners. And I'm a part of it all. Something about that seems to reach into my throat and squeeze the air out of my lungs. We're free to learn whatever we want. A language, the history of the Incas, a new song. We get to choose to be a part of that everyday. Here's to the first day of the rest of our lives and the adventures that we might fall head-over-heels-in-love into if we choose to get up and be a part of life.

We Will Remember

NO ONE skateboards here. I did see a punk girl cradling a longboard on the bus the other day. That bus was crammed. I felt like a marshmallow in the middle of one of those airtight new marshmallow bags. The ones that inflate with a breath of campfire smoke for smores. Smores. That's another thing Argentines don't have. Skateboards and smores. I had eggs mixed into my zucinni for dinner tongiht. Also in what my madre called a salad, which was carrots and hardboiled eggs. It's like finding a peanut in the middle of that air tight bag of marshmallows. You feel confused, like you don't know if you should be worried or delighted about it. Punk Girl was cradling her way-too-long stick like a date at a high school dance. I didn't see her ride it when she got off at her stop. Maybe she thought it was some kind of accessory, like an alligator purse or a pair of those John Lennon glasses.

I'm not much better though. The moment I start to feel relatively stable on these God forsaken sidewalks I eat another piece of humble pie. I seriously think that some of the cracks are going to  break open and a block or two will crumble into Middle Earth. People stare at me like they haven't seen a skateboard or a blonde before. Old men crinkle amused smiles into the wrinkles around their eyes, mothers hug their children closer, elderly ladies look at me like their eyes are shooting high beam lazers, children gape like I'm a Grecian godess and guys cat call... like how you would actually call your cat. Sometimes I sail by feeling like Tony Hawk and sometimes I feel like a bowl of spaghetti in the dishwasher.

But today was September 11th. In Argentina it's a holiday celebrating teachers so the schools get the day off. We had an asado, which is like a BBQ on steriods. But I had to stop, and remember, and cherish my life in the U.S. and the pain we still suffer through together today. I talked about it at dinner with my Madre tonight. She looked into her carrot egg hybred coleslaw and shook her head. "Que triste... que triste..." She told me that she visited the 9/11 memorial in New York and she told that she watched it on her television in her room with the floral curtains and the dark wooden headboard. Little did I know three years ago when my eyes froze on the flickering shadows under a cherry blossom tree and while I watched men collapsed in with clawed hands caught on a name on that memorial wall that I would be talking about it with my homestay madre and that she would feel it too. I'm a nine-teen-year-old from California and she's an eldery lady from Buenos Aires. We've only known each other a week but we can morn together. We can share life together. We can't always understand each other's words but we can give each other pieces of things we've felt deeply. It's all so beautiful in such a broken, humble way.

"Now, we have inscribed a new memory alongside those others. It’s a memory of tragedy and shock, of loss and mourning. But not only of loss and mourning. It’s also a memory of bravery and self-sacrifice, and the love that lays down its life for a friend–even a friend whose name it never knew."     - President George W. Bush

Hello Buenos Aires

Don't you hate those days when you've just met your home stay Madre after a thirteen hour flight and she walks out the door rolling something off her tongue in Spanish that you think means she's going to the market and when the door closes behind her you trip on a loose board in the floor gouging a hole in your foot so you make a little trail of red footprints to grapple down the first aid kit you had just put on the top shelf while trying to deter your madre's dog from licking up the little splatters of blood and fiddling around with some kind of gauze because you seem to be out of those simple little stick on band-aids when the dog grabs the gauze and runs under the table and you spend ten minutes prostrate on the ground trying to lure him out with a dried plantain chip from the cupboard?

And don't you hate it when you clean it up before she gets back but then decide to take a shower while she makes dinner and step over the toilet that is in the shower and there's only half a door so you accidentally flood the bathroom while trying to figure out how to make hot water come from random little tubes hanging like garden snakes on the wall and then have to emerge sopping wet limping on your foot to ask to hang up the clothes you used to wipe up the water and she pulls down the air drying rack from the ceiling that you have to duck under to get to your room?

I actually loved it. It was all so surreal. For those that don't know, I'm studying in Argentina for the school year. My Madre picked me up and took me to her apartment today on the fourth floor with an accordion door elevator. She showed me how to boil water and she took me to the balcony with little violet flowers and black netting around the fence so her dog can go out too. She asked if I liked tea and I said I did, so she made me a cup of something that smelled deliciously like peach with a mini spoon and tray and saucer and then sat down with a notepad on her lap and asked what I liked to eat. I told her eggs for breakfast, but apparently they don't eat eggs for breakfast here. Apparently they don't eat anything at all for breakfast. She asked if I liked milk, and I was about to tell her that I couldn't have cow's milk, but the words froze in my throat. I told her I couldn't have "leche de moo moo." She cooed over the chocolate and peanut butter and dog treats I brought her and I smiled. She makes the cutest little sound effects when she tries to communicate. I love that little bathroom, I love that Schnauzer dog, and I love my Madre. She brought me back three different crackers from the market to see which one I liked best. This year looks charmingly promising. So thankful for these little smiles.

 The view from my balcony

My bathroom

 My bedroom

A Chipped Rock

So I guess Spanish hostels don't like shower curtains anymore. That was liberating. Also, all the beds are pushed together. You get to know those snoring Italians pretty well pretty fast.

This is late, and I know it. I have so many aspiring blog posts, but when I've finished walking everyday I die a short death of about forty five minutes before I even begin to think about food or laundry, so blogging seems like a far off luxury. It's something I wish I had the energy for every day. There are notes scribbled in my journal and on napkin corners and in mini notepads that will probably never be read... But they are there, and every scribble and scratch is a part of me. I can imagine when I'm older, when I have a pink rose bush and a blooming plum tree and an overstuffed armchair with a hole in the seams from a history of good conversations; there will be kids with scraped knees and dirty fingers that will run into my house when the air starts to bite their noses when it gets cold in the evenings. They will wonder at all my books and trinkets from my travels and will sit on my lap and eat fresh cookies from my oven. And then they will ask for stories, and I will slowly stand, leaning on the worn armrests of my chair to pull down my journal and blow off the dust... and I will read them my mistakes and glories and they will feel the pains and joys with me. I will tell them what little children are willing to hear, but what adults are too busy to listen to. I think Jesus had it right when He said to have faith like children do... to let the children come to Him. 

But something I can't put away on a shelf is my rock. It started with the Meseta.

I started to notice the hilly vineyards turn to flat fields of grain, the villages grow more sparse and the air turn hotter. While researching I found that 40% of Spain's terrain is located on a high central plateau called the Meseta with mountains running through the middle and bordering the edges. I've been told by other pilgrims that the first third of the Camino is physically hard, the second third is mentally challenging and the last third is spiritually growing. When I entered the Meseta, I found this to be accurate in my Camino so far. The flat plains caused me to think deeply and they forced me to begin to overcome things I struggle with mentally, to capture my thoughts because I was left alone with them. It's said that thoughts are half the battle, and I think this geography has proven that. I think the geography has effected the history, culture and people of the Meseta much more intensely than any other region's geography has effected them because it forces people to expose things to themselves that can be easily covered. The culture was more unique than anything I had experienced. It made me feel like I was walking through a country foreign from everything I was familiar with. The houses were made from adobe and their ruins were left to crumble. I noticed oversized nests taking over the pinnacles of gothic buildings and the darting of hundreds of birds in the early morning that chirped in the same air I breathed as I cinched my pack tighter and started another day.

A few days out of the Meseta, we came to Cruz de Ferro. This is a historic place where people leave a rock from their home at the base of a cross. There are many interpretations as to what this symbolizes. My rock is from Gaviota Beach. I picked it after my last training hike, two days before I left. I had put off choosing a rock because I thought I needed to find something incredible, something that would perfectly represent who I was. But when I took a moment to step back from my own air ball of perfectionism I realized that God didn't choose perfect people to represented Himself. That He actually chose the most crippled of them all. So, I went to the most ordinary beach and chose the most ordinary rock I could find, because I want the thing that represents me to be ordinary, to be broken, so that if anything good comes from it people will know it's not from me.

As I was walking the five miles to this monument, I thought. I thought about what this rock was going to symbolize. I thought I needed some huge epiphany to make this pinnacle point of the Camino the pinnacle point of my Camino. But then I caught myself. I was trying to force meaning into a rock. I was freaking out about the very thing I was trying to give up. So then I gave myself permission to not have an epiphany and I simply told God that I wanted this to mean something, I just didn't know what.

I got to the monument and swung my pack from my back and dug out my rock. I cradled it in my chapped hands... I mulled it over, studied it, searching for some kind of meaning in its splits and rifts and fractures and chips. But it didn't speak to me. So I decided to set it down and open my Bible to where I last left off, in Matthew chapter 26. At the crucifixion of Jesus. But I noticed something I hadn't before, that the story of the woman who poured oil on Jesus was included in the same chapter as His death. The disciples thought her gift was a waste of money, that it was silly... but Jesus' words caught me:

"For she has done a beautiful thing to Me."

The chapter goes on to tell about one of Jesus' best friends stabbing Him in the back, about the last time He shared a meal with the people He loved. About how He begged God to spare Him the pain He was about to go through. But those words stuck to my bones, they clung in my throat and pulsed through my wrists and brain. "For she has done a beautiful thing to Me." I realized my rock wasn't an epiphany or a huge enlightenment... it wasn't even slightly expensive. But I left it at the base of the cross, and I can only hope that God will someday say that about my life, despite my splits and rifts and fractures and chips. I want the reason of my life to be what Jesus said about that unnamed woman in Matthew chapter 26, "for she has done a beautiful thing to Me."

Peterrrrr

I saw a man bandaging his blisters as I walked to the patio of the alberge. I gave a sympathetic look and he smiled. He said they looked worse than they were. But I don't know how a blackened toenail and the blisters that had eaten three of his toes and heel with a growing appitite can look worse than it feels. "What is your name?" I asked. He answered with "Peter," first the English way, then rolling his "r"s. I tried to say it and he smiled with his eyes. I asked why he was doing the Camino, he sighed, seeming overwhelmed with the question. "For many reasons... one, two, three... many.." He said he was from Poland. That he was a priest. That he was doing the Camino for his 25th priesthood anniversary. "I am fifty" he said, "I am very old." He told me about how he had looked up to the men who had been priests for five or seven years and that he wanted wisdom like that, and now he was fifty years old. I told him how muched I loved the respect Catholisism has for God... that I can sense their love for God through the ornate cathedral walls and I can feel their reverance during mass. He smiled with hazel eyes that had a dark blue ring on the outside and he asked what I was studying. I told him about creative writing and art. About learning Spanish and how bad I was. About general ed and studying abroad. He lit up when I talked about art. I showed him the postcards of the watercolor artist I had just bought on the path today. Art Manton Lowe. I gave him the one of Molina Seca. The one with a building with mountains and rivers. I gave it to him because it was the one his fingers lingered on and the one that made his eyes dance. He liked the postcard of the praying hands too. As his eyes rested on it I thought about hands, about how they are beautiful things, that hands tell a story. They show pain and joy with those little wrinkles that act as smile lines, or as wrinkles that look like crevices.

But the thing that mesmorized me about Peter is that he is the director of men and boys' Gregorian chant choirs. That's when I sat down next to him and took out my notebook and asked him to write down suggestions of chants to look up. He wrote down the chant Dum Pater Familias. He said that he sings it when he walks, it's what helps get him through. So I shook his hand, I smiled back into his blue rimmed hazel eyes, and I thanked him. I continued to the patio and put in my earphones, blocking out Ruby Tuesday and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and listened to it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=33jeQutO58o and it was beautiful. The funny thing is that I almost passed it all by. He was almost just the man in the red shirt with the blue eyes that was bandaging his black toe nails. But now I know he is Peter, he is Peterrrrrrrrr, the priest from Poland who directs Gregorian chants and loves art and God and travel. We shared words. We shared a postcard. But we shared a bit of ourselves, and I think that is beautiful.

Counting Cats

There is something about a cat. There's something about a cat's fur when you brush over it, the way it can stand up or stiffly caress your calloused fingers, your white nails, your dirty nails, the kind of dirt from walking sticks and from zipping up weathered rain jackets and putting on faded, turquoise trucker caps. There's something about a cat that's missing an eye, that has a broken leg, all deformed and curled up, that flicks around when it tries to scratch it's ear. Ignacio knelt down beside me, his hand on its head, the cat leaning into his palm. "Where are you from?" I asked. He smiled as he looked up and told me about Madrid in perfect English. I told him about my week there. He told me about his American school and how many of his friends are from California and how he wanted to visit. We walked into a church, our words hushed by the ornate Catholic gold cascading in front of the eldery wooden pews. He told me what the old Spanish ladies were saying as they arranged the flowers and I told him how good his English was. I thought it was the last I would see him. It wasn't. I saw him again in San Juan de Ortega when we stayed the night at the same hostel. He smiled when the wind blew my hair into my eyelashes as I cradled my hammock while I sized up the trees rationalizing themselves as planter decorations. "El gato!" I half laughed, half sputtered through my hammock thoughts when I saw him. We started to talk about the Camino and spirituality and traveling and life pursuits. Of guitars and favorite animals and about learning in college that we actually don't know anything. He laughed when I over-pronounced his last name, trying to say it correctly. We left the last shards of sunset as we ran inside when we saw the nuns locking the doors for the night. Ignacio and I are the same age. He is the first pilgrim I've met who is in the same place in life as I am. Meeting him was a visual reminder that while I am living in my self-absorbed life at home, people just like me are living in Spain, in France, in God-knows-where in Iceland. They are living with the same aspirations that are staring at them just as straight in the face as me. My conversation with him was like looking in a mirror but seeing the background behind the tiny spek of a face I so often can't see past.

In my experiences in hostels I've only found one universal language: snoring. It can actually be beautiful... the different pitched choruses sighing together...  It's like being suffocated in a room of multi-cultured murmers with no breath of silence. The earplugs I stole from the library have helped a bit. The headphones from the plane have been nice too. Who knew public facilities and transportation systems could actually be useful? The other day I sat under the stairwell of a hostel run by nuns. Ha. Run by nuns. Nuns on the run. I hadn't seen a real live nun before this trip. I guess they don't like the idea of massages, or being asked if they want one. I never thought I would participate in a nun sing along, but I found myself facing them sitting indian style wearing a grey beanie I found. It was incredible. The room was chorused with the accented voices of Germans and Dutchmen and Spaniards and Californians. We sang songs in each of our languages, one of the nuns passionately strumming an old Classical guitar. It was Amazing Grace that got to me. Some people didn't even know English, but they sang anyway, reading the words off their crumpled song sheets marred by their sweaty, dirty hands. I love how God can see past our sweat and dirt and language barrier to give us that Amazing Grace. The nuns were leading strangers in songs they didn't know to put the focus back on the thing they've committed their entire life to... that Amazing Grace. Nuns are some of the most beautiful people I know.

A few days ago I was listening to Counting Song by Denae Templeton. I tried to look it up on YouTube to post the link, but I guess it's just too hipster. So, here's some lyrics.

I was busy counting 1, 2, 3. 

I forgot, forgot, forgot, forget to see. 

Remember, remember, remember, I forgot to remember...  

God above I know You love me,

God of love You're closer than above me.

We walk but we don't run one step then two steps three four not three nine ten and we

glory in each one two three four five six seven eight nine then

we forget to count, make me forget to count, to count, cause You're the fountain.

I was busy playing games for three and four and keeping score

oh when will my heart be silent?

Holding up my fingers once more, 

You ask why and said there's no game and there's no score, 

just You love me.

It's one thing to listen to music with the intention of escaping from the world, but it's another to listen to it with the intention of making the world seem more picturesque. I don't either are bad, but walking with the second mindset was like living in a movie or like getting to be an artist's brush stroke in a painting. Milage and hours have no relevance or power in my life anymore. I have been freed from society's conception of time... of keeping score. I forgot to remember that time and the trap of sizing myself up to my surroundings was actually only me creating barriers for myself. I tell myself I'm too busy to spend time with God or pursue Him further but I'm only limiting myself to human's conceptions of how life should be. Please don't misread this, I definitely think the conception of time and calculating it correctly is crucial to maintain an organized society, but when it becomes an excuse to not revolve our day around the things we deem important, I believe it has started to control our lives.

Truth

Mario. There are some people you know you will remember the moment you meet them. Listening to him talk was fun... like playing Mario Brothers on Nintendo 64. Not fun like a Saturday morning cartoon, but the blowing up marshmallow Peeps in the microwave kind of fun. We met in Saint Jean. His colorful rimmed glasses complimented his triangle gages as he gently pushed my hammock while joking with the other pilgrims, effortlessly chattering between Spanish, English, French and some other language. He told us about how he slept on the floor of a castle because an elderly lady gave him the key last night. He told me not to eat all of the cherry plums off the trees. He teased us for being Californian. He made me want to be like him. To connect with people in a way that digs deeper than forcing depth. I believe if we seek authenticity, the depth will come in time.

My mindset of the Camino is slowly changing from "getting up in the morning to walk" to the walking actually becoming a lifestyle. I used to think that "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6) was choosing to walk on the right path, but I am starting to understand that the "way" isn't just a path we take, but the lifestyle we adopt. The "truth" isn't just a moral to develop, but an all-encompassing life change. One of my favorite things about the Camino is the yellow arrows that mark the path. Sometimes they are etched into concrete or spray painted on the back of street signs. But they are always visible. They are easy to follow in the country, but as soon as the path approaches a town, there are countless other distractions of other colored arrows marking different paths and false yellow arrows advertising directions to a hostel or tourist shops. If I only followed someone else's description of the arrow, I would be lost, but I'm so familiar with the right arrow because I have been following it closely and relying on it to guide me that anything false just falls away. That's how I want to translate living IN "the way, the truth, and the life..." to have the truth so engrained in me that it leaks out into all my conscious and unconscious thoughts and decisions. I believe that's the true life Jesus was talking about, because "then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).

My friend encouraged me to pick a word to represent where I want to be by the end of the trip. My word was "solidity." I wanted to work on solidifying my faith in Christ, being solid in what I believe, in health and life and relationships. But this morning I was reading in Matthew about how Jesus walked more humbly than I ever have... and ever could. Every day on this trip I walk to a secure hostel with an assured meal and safety when there was no room for Jesus to even be born in a building. As much as I love and completely support the idea of meditating on a word for five weeks, I've realized that it is impossible for me to ever be solid. I cannot work hard enough to find solidity in Christ or what I believe. Christ gives it. It's not about me at all. It is not about a deep concept or an epiphany I could get while walking. It's not about some spiritual experience or a sudden realization. It's about His grace filling my frailness, and I will just continue to live incomplete and unforgiven if I continue to think I can do anything to gain my security. It's about dying to myself because Christ died in my place and it's about living life as best as I can to reciprocate a fraction of my thankfulness for second chances. It's the fact that I will continually be flawed without His grace. His amazing grace. His mind blowing astoundingly beautiful grace. It's like seeing the dirt in the bottom of the shower after hiking 18 miles and two bars of soap. So, if I could choose a word, it wouldn't be "solidity," but "I-only-live-in-the-grace-through-Jesus-that-I-need-more-than-oxygen," or it wouldn't even be a word at all. It would be falling face flat on the dirt road overwhelmed by how much my perfect, holy God suffered for someone as flawed as me.

Blisters

I stood in LAX, my backpack clingling to my shoulders, my hair grabbing my neck while I watched a man with a handlebar mustache graze a boy cuddling a lap dog. Millions of footsteps pattered into the air and walls, the clicks of heels and taps of sandles meshing with the sweat beading its way to the travellers´white knuckles grasping a bit too havy suite cases. The owner of the stroller beside me meekly walked from the bathroom with a Bambi eyed boy plotting along behind her. ¨Tank you.¨ Her broken English seemed to leap from her eyes. Eyes that know pain. Eyes I will remmeber. Eyes I will probably never see again. But eyes that connected with mine for a brief moment in time. I am now at my fourth hostle on the Camino de Santiago. Last night there was a thunderstorm. I lost at spoons with the other pilgrims... six times. A trilingual elderly lady at the last hostle dressed my eight blisters while juggling paperwork and stamps and while giving in french. I ate fish in the same diner as Hemmingway. My skin is darker. My knees are scraped. I ate white asparagas for the first time. I lost my walking stick. My heart is full. My God is good. 

My hat has a logo that says ¨live simply.¨ I think living simply can be one of the most complex concepts to grasp. I walked and talked with a middle aged pilgrim named Maurizio on the first day when we were crossing the Pyranees mountains. He smiled when I bought sheep cheese from a vendor. We explored an old shepherd´s hut. We talked about God and brothers. About ¨sheeps¨ and shoes and hard boiled eggs. I spoke the limited Spanish I knew. He spoke the limited English he knew. It was simple. But it was some of the most memorable communication I have ever had.

I asked Maurizio what life advice he would give. He laughed. ¨Take it easy¨ he breathed through fainted laughs and calculated breaths from climbing with a pack. ¨Follow Me.¨ Christ´s words are simple. We are the one´s who make it complicated. It´s taken me flying to Spain and carrying my life on my back to even start to grasp what it means. It´s taken eating apple cores and packaged almond butter instead of home cooked meals. It´s taken living with a nail clipper as a luxury. It´s taken washing the clothes on my back with the shampoo from my hair, the smiles and nods of a language barrier and the card games and the feeling of fat rain drops to see what matters in life. When everything is stripped away, the things your beaded, sweaty fingers are desperately clinging to, that´s when you know what your life is founded on. That´s why this trek is already life changing after only four days. My foundation is Christ, and when everything is brushed away, a dirt path and blistered feet can be the most powerful direction a person can take to realize it.

El Camino: Pre-Trip

The International Program seminar was one of those moments... the redeeming ones. The lights dimmed. My heart started to flutter as images of France and Africa and Switzerland and Fiji flew across the screen. Then El Camino de Santiago slid discreetly through the room, its presence like a favorite ornament on the Christmas tree only noticed by those who deem it the favorite. It screamed in my ears, but it was beautiful because it sang to my heart.

I am choosing to trek El Camino de Santiago because I know I am supposed to. I don't expect everyone to understand, but I know that my life has been directed to this pinnacle point by a force bigger than I. The Camino de Santiago is a 500-mile trek averaging 20 miles per day. Applying was an act of faith and a belief in the hope God promises. It's different to read God's promises and actually believe they can happen than to stand back from yourself and watch them pilot your life.

I equate the name "The Way of Saint James" to my thoughts of the Camino. It gives me goosebumps every time I think about the name and the origin and history it seeps into whoever listens to its wizened story. El Camino de Santiago. The nine syllables rool off the tongue like hot honey.

A little over a year ago, I could barely get out of bed. I read through my diary from that time the other day. It's like the pages are lined with pain that can still knock the breath out of me when I read my own scratched writing. I didn't know if I would be able to finish high school, let alone start at a university. I finally went to a hormone specialist and was told that my adrenal glands had been burned out. Used up. They had crashed. There was no more adrenaline left in my body for me to function properly.

I started taking Hydrocortisone, a medication that gives support ot the adrenals and the natural adrenaline time to rebuild and to replenish itself. It's the reason I have been able to survive Pepperdine. It is a slow process. I have needed to eat healthy foods and listen to my body. I have had to be patient. It's been hard. This is why it was such an act of faith for me to apply for the Camino. My parents allowed me to apply, but with the understanding that they wouldn't let me go if I hadn't healed by June 11th. My circumstances told me no, but although it felt impossible, I felt a force beyond myself guiding my path For some reason, I knew I would go.

Why my adrenal glands failed, I could barely walk one mile around my neighborhood. I remember physically not being able to finish Gaviota Peak. Now I walk my neighborhood two or three times on my "off" days. I have hiked up Gaviota in 80 minutes with a weighted pack. I have done things physically that I could never have imagined doing even just a year ago. I am grateful for this in my life, because it has taught me how to rely on God's strength when things seem impossible.

I have lived Matthew 19:26, "But with God everything is possible." He has smiled at my "mustard seed faith" and cradled me in His arms. I am now only taking a quarter of a Hydrocortisone tablet every other day. I have my doctor's and parents' encouragement and blassing to trek the Camino. God has provided. THat's why I like to think of it as the Way of Saint James. I am following in the footsteps of the people that have loved God so dearly. I will be walking where people whose faith meant so much to them that they were willing to walk 500 miles to pursue it. I imagine each of their steps as a glimpse of what their hearts treasured so much. I want my steps to align with theirs. I want to give the love and grace I have been shown back to Him with every step of my life. That is why I am going. Although it is by faith alone that I am able to trek the Camino, I feel that my relationship with God is not as strong as I would like it to be. I need to put Him above everything else in my life.

This is the thing... I have absolutely no idea of what to expect. I don't know what it will be like. I don't know who I'll meet. I don't know what I'll experience. I don't know what I don't want to experience. I could say the standard things like that I don't want blisters, but honestly, I want to experience what God has for me on the trail whether it's good or bad by my standards because I know that His perspective is so much bigger than mine. I am nervous about all the unknowns. But I don't think there can be excitement without nervousness. I don't htink there can be growth without being uncomfortable. There can't be faith without unknowns. I am prepared that it might be one of the hardest things I have done, but I want it all. I want it to grow me closer to God, whatever it takes. I want to meet God in the midst of His creation.  I want to let go of myself. I will know I have accomplished this when Christ is clearly the priority of my life. This isn't something that is stopping at the end of the Camino. I plan for the Camino to be the start of the rest of my life. At the end of the road, I don't want to be thinking about how I am different I don't want to be thinking about myself at all. I want to be thinking about Christ in me. I don't want to "take away" anything from this experience, but I want to leave everything on the Camino. I want to leave my pride and leave my self-absorption. I want to leave everything I am and replace it with the plans God has for my life, because I know that His plans are good, whatever they might be.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares The Lord, "plans to prosper you and not ot harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. THen you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."
~ Jeremiah 29:11-13

Decaf Green Tea

My wanderlust led me to a little coffee shop. The vision I had for myself was a hybrid between a lumberjack sipping black coffee and a surf rat with my bare feet propped up on the mismatched material of the chair across the table. But I ordered a decaf green tea. I wonder if lumberjacks ever order decaf green tea.

This place breathes familiarity. The the man in a poser name-brand sweatshirt cussing in the manliest of forms about a lost kitty. The hipster concerts. The tentative touches my fingers made as they encircled the wind-chime magic of a chipped, twelve string guitar. In my stupor of nostalgia, the friendly smile behind the counter reminded me that my frequent flyer card only counts toward espressos, not decaf green teas. When have I ever ordered a decaf green tea? After carefully climbing the squeaking, narrow, old-man-groaning, rickety stairs, I sat catacombed in the loft like a nesting pigion, pinning my beady eyes at a tree outside the window encased by concrete and cigarette ash.

Wild. What does it mean? My dictionary.com tab is legioned with definitions. Not tamed or domesticated. Uncivilized. Of unrestrained intensity. It's the title of a book I'm reading about a meth addict who backpacked the Pacific Crest Trail with no training. It seems there are more definitions of what it is not than what it actually is. Is it's ferocity something to run from? Or is it's whispering something to draw close to?

All I know is I would rather have my life be free then domesticated. Fierce than tamed. I'd rather fill my lungs with the breath of adventure than be constrained by safety. God is wild. In the Narnia series, Aslan is a lion, the essence of wild. Fierceness in it's purest form can not be captivated by the restraints of a cultured mind. It's a risk to believe in the wilderness of God. Just as Mr. Beaver said about Aslan, Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you. 

By risk, I don't mean that believing in God is stupid. His freedom is balanced by love. What good is something that is not tamed or domesticated if it isn't doing something? God's love for us is what hung Jesus on the cross. ‘Course he isn’t safe. But His love is what makes it possible to draw close to the heart of God, and I believe the essence of God is the definition of wild. But he’s good. I am thankful that the heart of God is wild. His love for me is not tamed or domesticated. Uncivilized. Of unrestrained intensity. I think believing in something wild means that you won't ever be able to understand it, because it's very definition cannot be tamed. But I'd rather believe in that than something I can understand, but does not have that same all powerful strength that I can trust in. He’s the King, I tell you.

When we run from God, we run from the essence of wild. We run from freedom. Take a risk. His love can hold us and comfort us in a way that something we can understand and constrain could never do. Take it from a girl with sand between her toes drinking decaf green tea in an little coffee shop who has only gotten through life by clinging to the wings of the wilderness of God and the unrestrained love He bled for us.

He is the playfulness of creation, scandal and utter goodness, the generosity of the ocean and the ferocity of a thunderstorm; he is cunning as a snake and gentle as a whisper; the gladness of sunshine and the humility of a thirty-mile walk by foot on a dirt road.
~ John Eldredge

Poems & Pointe

So, I wrote a poem. It's only a sentence long... just a really long sentence.

Ballet

Because I have not been long asking your forgiveness, you 
swirl in a thin neon ballerina skirt, chafed toes grasping dust
disturbed by your turning's mesmerizing flickers
on pointed feet, because you choose to not understand my wrongs; you
tear open your heart, spilling it on the floor as your hair
cascades like a misted river dripping dew down
your back, making the bones above your eyes glisten with pearls
of sweat, because sweat is the only thing that can whisper comfort to
your blistered heart festering from your toes; my mistakes pour
from your outstretched fingers, because your fingers are
the only vessels with which you can still create beauty
from the gnawing, teething tiger ripping your organs into
pirouettes and tondues that point and pivot around
the problem, which at the same time address it directly
in ways that words mockingly dance around,
because verbalizing my sins only
wrangles your heart further.

I have no author's note, just a ballet final this Wednesday. I've also been thinking about pain lately. Probably because I stapled my finger a few days ago, but mainly because a girl in my class gave a speech thanking pain, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. Kathrine Kuhlmann, here's a shout out. It really affected me. I don't believe pain and beauty are things mixed together that we should try to separate, but rather that pain produces beautiful things. There's countless songs about it. Whether or not we realize it, I believe society recognizes the importance of pain, we just approach it with our selfish motives and find-strength-within-yourself mentality. It's fascinating really. Sit down with some hot tea sometime and try to read the lyrics without the catchy, four-chord progression playing menacingly in the back of your head:
Woke up late today and I still feel the sting of the pain, but I brushed my teeth anyway. 
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. 
Ba de ya, dancin' in September.

I typed that last one because it's what the dorm next to me is blasting. But seriously, what would the flowing form and breathtaking movements of ballet be without the blisters and torn muscles behind them? And where would we be if Christ didn't suffer through our pain? That's the one that gets me. Christ wants me to hand him the pain I am clinging to, the very thing that's hurting me, in order to make it into something beautiful. It's like I'm hanging onto a thread dangling over a lake of piranhas when He wants to embrace my quivering body, delicately hold my lone, feeble thread and fuse it into tapestry He is weaving. I just have to let it go.

This is why I feel so close to God every time I slip on my worn, canvas ballet shoes. Every tear in them represents a thread of pain I have given to Christ. My heart is mended through His gentle fingers weaving them into the plan that He is creating for me when I let go of my puny thoughts of what my life should be. And when I apply the grace I learn through dance to everyday life, every movement throughout the day becomes a piece of gratitude I can hand back to the one who created the capacity for the plans He has beyond what I can imagine.

But it’s been no bed of roses. No pleasure cruise – I consider it a challenge before the whole human race. And I ain’t gonna lose. - See more at: http://www.thebridgemaker.com/10-motivational-songs-to-keep-you-moving/#sthash.shj9IXID.dpuf

Sequoia National Park

Beyond the humming of the broken bathroom facilities on the opposite side of my dorm wall and the rising screeches of Don't Stop Believing from the boys next door, I'm left alone waiting for a large load of laundry to dry to bask in remembering my camping trip at Sequoia National Park last weekend. It's a wonderful combination, really.

I like the broken bathroom melodies because they remind me of learning to conserve water in Puerto Rico. I like listening to the boys profanely sing one of my favorite songs because it makes me smile and reminisce to high school. I like the brawling war for the lone washing machine because I have the opportunity to talk to people I would never normally see. I like that I have an over-sized pile of laundry to fold because I love the smell of dryer sheets. And I like that I am here at this exact place and time on a Friday night because I get to write about it.

I've found that when I choose to see through the lens of loving people, life becomes exciting. And the only way I can choose to love people is by letting God love me, because God is love (1 John 4:8). It's the concept of a Greek word for "love" called agápē. It refers to love that is unmotivated, that is not necessarily dependent on the loveliness of its object and that, in fact, confers goodness on that object: the beloved becomes lovely by virtue of being loved. I am only able to show love because I am loved by God.

I don't know how I got on a tangent about laundry and love when I was originally talking about Sequoia. But the thing is, I've found that excitement can be found in doing laundry just as much as on a mountain in Sequoia. We were talking about what makes good description in creative writing class the other day. I believe good description is composed of minute, abstract details, such as the several shades of grey (heh heh) in the threads composing a shirt. However, if the description of the threads does not point back to the grey shirt, it has not done its purpose. And further, if the shirt does not point back to the deeper message the description is trying to convey, no matter how beautiful the detail might be, it is useless. In the same way, both the smell of dryer sheets and the roughness of a Sequoia tree's red bark are details that point to the same God. You just have to read them in context of their deeper meaning to see the excitement they offer to the world.

On a different note, my roommate and I wrote a poem while falling asleep in the car while camping. There was snow outside, and we didn't feel like being encrusted in a hammock ice cocoon like the night before. This trip transformed my roommate from saying, "Whenever I write poems, I have to put on an alter ego of foo-foo" to this:

Fridged
by Julie Keck and Ashley E.

Numb. I feel nothing at all.
The sinister hum. Shallow, visible
Only on a moonless night.
They're on the outside
We trapped ourselves within
Bundled, calm.

Steam on the panes
Oh, how it pains to see the streaks
Of those lacking everything
Gaining nothing from the shadows 
They fail to see.

It was actually a spoof on a legit assignment I had due that Tuesday, but when we read it dramatically to a music gem such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGeXU2GBuxg
It's actually not bad.

All that to say, I want to be a detail like a George Winston instrumental...the smell of laundry...the glinting feather on a bird's wing soaring over the Sequoia forest. All I want is for people to see those details proclaiming the reflected love of Christ, because He is the only beautiful detail in me.

The view from Morro Rock in Sequoia National Park, CA