school...

so, this summer's been a little crazy. obviously no writings have been posted, but tomorrow begins the first day of classes. if a good assignment comes along in english, it might get posted here. hopefully i'll have some more stuff up soon. lots of changes in the air, so no guarantees though.

goodbye summer: it was nice knowing you. hello fall: time to get back in the swing of things.

the wind...(05/13/09)

the wind is a curious thing. i don't think about it very often, i just get mad at when there's too much of it or get mad at it when it's not there. but when it's present in a perfect quantity, do we take time to feel its breath on our skin? or as i tuck my hair back behind my ear, my hair that just a little breath of wind blew out of place into my face, do i wonder where it came from? do we set aside even minutes of our time to lay below trees full in the greening garb of may-springtime, to watch the leaves be moved by this mystery? how in the world does this...thing, this breath, this wind, there's nothing else to call it, it's not like anything else, how does it move leaves? how can it teach leaves to dance? and in teaching leaves this complex footwork, they teach the branches and the shadows. the clouds must be the first to learn. even when the air around you down here on the surface is stagnant, it feel like yours swimming in this mass of paralytic molecules, you have to force them out of your way, if we would just take time to look up above us at the things bigger than ourselves, these cloud bodies alive in the blue sky, we could see that they are moving. that ignites a small spark of hope somewhere deep inside. knowing that even though you don't have any tangible proof it's real and you can't even feel it's reality sometimes, you can see that it's still moving. it's still working and it'll come back down to you eventually. you can count on that. life's not all about you. there are other things that are more important than you right now. that's comforting, knowing that you aren't the most important thing going on in the world right now. but when you acknowledge its presence and the great gift of its being there with you, it's the best. if you take time to feel it breathe on your arm. to listen to its soft voice that calms your spirit. that voice, that breathing fans that small flame that was ignited. it doesn't extinguish it, it intensifies it. until the flame has grown into a huge bonfire of hope inside of you. the fire of humility and hope and passion and present being. when you take time to feel the wind, to hear the wind, just to close your eyes and listen to its truth, you don't want to be anywhere else. if only this could be all of life. if i could be this present, this aware of every hair on my body, of every exposed millimeter of skin. just to lay and ponder the mystery of wind. where does it come from? how does a breeze blow? there are somethings scientific equations can't do justice for me. somethings i'd rather have left a mystery. i don't want to know how the sun gives off heat or how the wind blows. i know that it does and i'd rather sit outside and feel the wind breathe on my skin and feel the rays of sunlight touch my leg and be thankful for them. for where would we be without the wind and the sun? how would the birds fly? how would the plants grow? see, life isn't just about us humans. it's so much bigger than us. if we would just take the time to realize that, we would live so much more alive.

pianos - (02/18/09)

i've known many pianos. there's my little upright at home, i've known and loved my whole life. it's taken me from hot cross buns to shostakovich's second piano concerto. from faber to bach. it's where my love for playing music started. it's seen me through many hard days. it was there for me when i couldn't even reach the pedals. it was there for me when the judges were horrible mean. its' a part of me. and that's just one piano. another one that sticks out in my memory is the piano in the peppers house in uganda. i only played it once. i should've played it more. it's nice to have that constant all around the world. music. lyrics change with language, but melody is constant. i played the same tune on a piano in south africa and uganda and israel and houston. it's constant. i imagine that's why everyone's attracted to music. everyone understands it. i remember all my friends pianos and the songs that have been played on them. some pianos don't like to be played boldly in large groups. but who does? they've heard some bad stuff. i'm sure they've also heard some amazing compositions though. some badly out of tune pianos. they play the classic sing along's quite well. songs that are sung out of tune anyways, so it doesn't matter that they keys aren't in tune. some hear crazy contemporary pieces that sound impressive. i don't know what they are, but they have one too many dissonant notes for me. the pianos that are learned on with blue tape peeling off on the central two octaves, the keys a little sticky. there's the many pianos from gold cup. they've been touched by countless kids anxiously shaking fingers. and there's all the pianos at the church, the slightly out of tune grand in the sanctuary, the sticky e in the kids choir room. the almost always locked nice-but-slowly-going-out-of-tune one in 212. the sticky eb in the choir room. the once-gross piano played for many a christmas recital in the great room. the out of tune upright on the 3rd floor. oh and i remember seeing billy joel's piano at forshey with mr. marsh. impressive. i've had so many good memories with these thousands of hammers and strings. i love pianos.

singer/songwriter - (02/02/09)

lately i've been on this girl singer/songwriter kick. i think as i've developed as a musician, i've grown to like stuff i relate to more. i can't really relate to the chick bands cause i don't really play with anyone. it's usually just me and my guitar or my piano. so i've grown to like band that are like that. gregory and the hawk, holly brook. and i like bands like that cause they're honest. and i know what they mean. when the girl in gregory and the hawk sings "i guess it doesn't matter what i am or pretend to be, cause it's her you'll always love and her i'll always envy...i swear i'm gonna cry, i'm sick of trying to be tough," i know what she means. she describes my feelings perfectly sometimes. "just leave me your stardust to remember you by." i like artists whose shoes i can walk in while they sing. yes, guy singers are amazing. i love to listen when they sing and play, but there's a different kind of connection when you really mean the words you sing. you don't have to interpret them for you. they're already translated into girl. broken-hearted girl. "cause no one listens when you wanna be heard." that's me. i mean, i love bands like dashboard confessional. buy they can only get so close to your heart when you can't directly sing them. you just have to imagine this invisible guy you don't know singing it to you. it's so different when you can sing the songs yourself and mean them. it's as close as i'm getting to writing my own songs for now.

Silence - (11/10/08)

ironically, i'm writing this with music in my ears. but i love silence. real silence. it's not just having headphones off. because most of the time with headphones off i'll hear the tv in the other room or a timer going off or the ice cream truck wining across the neighborhood or lines of poetry being muttered to perfection across the room or the phone ringing or the voices in my head screaming that i have too much else to be doing and that i can't just do one thing right now. silencing these voices and distractions can actually be accomplished with music. for me at least. nothing can distract me from exactly what i'm doing when i'm listening to music. but real silence. is there such thing as real silence? one of the most silent times i remember actually wasn't silent, it just wasn't noisy. on the top of the mountain in colorado at camp this summer. just sitting there alone. early in the morning. watching the sunrise. there's still the noise of the river flowing and the first chirping and the wind blowing through the trees, but it's not noisy. the beach is another silent place. you still hear the obnoxious call of the gulls., the crash of the waves on the sand, the trash blowing across the beach, but it's not noisy. early in the morning is another silent time. driving alone. you hear the roar of the engine, the honk of the distant horns of hurried people, the wind blowing against your car, but it's not noisy. or sitting in the back of someone elses car with the music turned up really loud. if you lay your head back and let the thundering bass sink you into the car, it zones out the rest of the sounds. and although it may be loud, it's not noisy. it's one of the most relaxing experiences. or playing the guitar when no one's around. or listening to some simple live acoustic guitar. so i arrive at the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, silence is not the absence of sound, it's the absence of noise.

Ike - (09/29/08) & Bolivar - (01/09/09)

driving back from floresville. sunday after the storm hit early saturday morning. i'm not sure what to expect. exit from i-45. the first thing i notice is the lights are flashing. my brain freezes for a second. what do i do? i follow the car next to me and as i turn left i realize it's like a stop sign now. they're all like stop signs. it looks deserted. power lines down. these are just open fields so they don't look to bad. cross highway 3 and there's whole trees uprooted now. this isn't clear lake. not as i know it. there's no pristine lawns. they're now covered with limbs of every shape and size and type. trees down. there's no fake front put on anywhere. the businesses are all boarded up. i take a right turn. fences are down. trees. there's trees everywhere. i turn into my neighborhood. you can't go more than 15 miles per hour because of shock. the trees. the limbs. the yards. it looks like a giant came around and tore everything up. like a giant toddler didn't get his way and threw a temper tantrum. i know these houses now. i pass the houses of my friends. i see them at home, so i pulled over to talk to them. one of them pulls out their iphone and asked me if i'd seen pictures of the seabrook waterfront. there's a picture of a boat on the road. another of a mast sticking out of the water. there's the tip of a boat. dead fish on top of a boat shed. it's getting dark fast now and the 9:00 curfew is quickly approaching, so i head home. we have power. how in the world? i'm so grateful. so a few of my friends who didn't have power came to stay for a while. to sleep in the air conditioning. houston in september usually isn't fun weather to not have air conditioning in. but a cold front blows through, making for perfect working weather. and boy did we work. now here i am, more than 2 weeks later. as i look around my backyard i don't see the effects anymore. except for the limb still hanging in the tree like a gymnast on a balance beam. as i drive around the only thing showing there was even a hurricane here at all are the piles of limbs slowly turning brown covering the front of the lawns. waiting fro the city to come. it was so apparent, but now you forget about it. the homeless, powerless, lifeless people. we're back in the bubble where you don't see the real world outside. we're back to clear lake.

refrigerators stacked like domino's. cars piled like trash with their hoods pulled back like the lids on those cambell's soup cans. debris everywhere. i saw galveston a few weeks after, but bolivar...and it's nearly 4 months after. the whole land is flat. a house here, some stilts there. the few houses left are few and far between. no dunes. there's actually lakes where the dunes were before. "we'll be back!" the spray painted signs scream. defying nature. how do you even start over here? driving along, looking at the flattened land, you see nothing for a while. but after driving for a while you'll see random objects. a couch nothing around it. just a couch. the sheer power of the water amazes me. i try to imagine what it would be like to see the storm surge come in. it's just hard to picture. i giant wall of water taking out cars, tree, houses entire towns. it just reminds you we're seriously not in control. and i can't imagine how you can be complacent about this. i can't believe we've just gone on with life and we hardly even think about it anymore. i mean, personally i haven't thought about ike in a long while. but these people are still living through the affects of it. it's crazy. insane. crazy.

shoes - (11/11/08)

i've always heard that your shoes say a lot about you. well, my shoes died a couple of days ago. i was quite attached to them. it's gonna be painful to throw them away. but there are holes at the edge of the fabric where my toes bend and at the very back of the heels. and where the elastic opens up to swallow your foot is tearing off. so i decided i needed to get new shoes. if nothing else, just to say to the people who look at my shoes that i'm not falling apart. but i don't know, maybe your shoes speak your subconscious. so anyways, i decided to kind of copy my friends idea of decoration your own shoes. so i went and bought some $14.99 white slip-on vans style shoes at payless. plain white canvas. i was kind of scared of them at first. it's like free reign. you can draw whatever you want. and so, reflecting my personality, i started on that tiny strap on the back of the shoe that no one ever sees. one horizontal line, two, three. color, color, color, until a keyboard appears. tah dah! and the other shoe. c, d, e, f, g, a, b. now i'm a little more confident. i can do this. they won't look stupid. so i work on the insole of the shoe where not too many people will see. beatles lyrics. some diamonds. throw in some red and silver to make it a little more exciting. a sun rises out of the calling of a blank canvas on the other side. rays shine out. now i copy a papercut banner and make some stained glass. a few dots here, a few lines there, a little plaid and some swirlyness and a shoe's done! i have the parts i like and the parts i don't like so much, but it's my shoe. no one else will ever have another like it. go for the other one. stars. large, smaller, medium, fading, fading, fading to little dots. the other side. i decide to be bold and start at the toe. some more stained glass. i like the way it turned out. make another sun whose rays fade into the glass. a few more lines, coloring and i've got a pair of shoes. my shoes. now i can't be ashamed to wear them. i have to be proud of them. they are me. i have to not be afraid to get them dirty either. a little rain, mud, sand, dirt, coffee...it'll only make them more a part of me. these shoes will go to san antonio, dallas, floresville, downtown houston, abilene. many many many coffee shops. and many trips to freebirds. they'll press piano pedals and prolong the sound of hammers hitting strings. they'll see the dirty floors of small concert venues. many houses. many streets. many cars. they'll accelerate and they'll brake. and they'll break. someday. they'll probably end up with holes in them just where my others were. but they'll be more than a piece of clothing to me when i finally have to retire them.

why do i write? - (11/06/08)

i write to understand. to make sense of happenings. writing looks a little less crazy than talking to yourself, but produces the same effects. i have these thoughts bouncing around in my brain and writing (or talking to myself alone in the car on a long dark road at night with only the deer watching) helps to keep them from going out of control. sometimes it feels like there are molecule thoughts and they speed up and collide and my brain starts to boil and i freak out. writing keeps them from boiling. keeps them at room temperature.

i write to be heard. for whatever reason, people don't listen to me. i don't know if i talk too quiet or if it's because i'm a girl or i'm short or what. but it's a fact of life. most people don't listen to me. but people do read what i write.

i write because i respect writers. especially songwriters and poets. i admire them. i'd love to write poetry, lyrics like jack johnson, jon foreman, derek webb, andy whats-his-face, kimya dawson. i think they are great writers. they lyrics connect to me and i want to connect to others with stuff i write.

i write because it's not permanent. spoken words are. you can't rewind and change your words. you can write pages and then erase them or scratch them out or tear them out and crumple them up and play dunderball with them. they're not stuck in eternity, forever. but...

i write because words are permanent. if you choose them to be. they can evoke feelings and memories and tastes and smells. writing can bring back memories you haven't thought about in years. or things you've never thought about. or things you think about all the time.

i write because it's necessary for me. writing keeps me sane. writing keeps me humble. keeps me open, keeps me thoughtful, keeps me observant, keeps me meaningful, keeps me wild, keeps me human. writing unifies. writing is beauty. writing makes sense even if the words or sentences don't.

that's why i write.