elephants

When i was younger, i used to collect collections.

I have been a huge nerd for my entire life, and when i was younger i used to think that if i had some cool "thing", i would become cool by default.

Having only a very tenuous grasp of the concept of "coolness" and of what things could be labeled cool, i decided that a really awesome collection of some kind would really seal the deal for me. The trouble is, i could never decide which collection was the coolest one. (That wasn't really the trouble. But it was the thing that precipitated this story.)

I tried collecting stamps, keys, coins, rocks, pieces of wood, stuffed animals, old books, beads, erasers, safety pins, buttons, shells, sea glass, and marbles. (This is not a complete list.) Please take note of the lack of coolness for basically every item on the list. And lest you be tempted to argue, thinking that some of these things sound like they might make really impressive collections, allow me to disenchant you. I was young, and had no money, and my town had extremely limited access to everything but soybean fields. So my collection of, for example, stamps, was not some colorful album full of rare, expensive pieces of miniature postage art. It was more an envelope full of regular stamps that we had recently received. Our exchange students did afford me access to some international stamps, but by and large my collection lacked value, interest, and diversity.

"I meant what I said,
And I said what I meant.
An elephant's faithful
One hundred percent!"

The weird thing about collecting is that you'll find something you like, pick up maybe half a dozen really awesome representations of that one thing, and then suddenly everyone you've ever met starts inundating you with more of that thing, because they want to help you with your collection. While this is really nice and helpful, i tended to be pretty fickle with my collections and too nice to tell people that, so when someone came up to me in the church parking lot with a handful of used stamps, i didn't know how to tell them that i wasn't really collecting stamps anymore. And i tend not to throw things away, especially when they were gifts, so my room is often cluttered with things i never wanted belonging to collections i am no longer interested in. Every year or so, i purge, but things still seem to pile up somehow.

This brings us to the elephants.

I really do like elephants. I think they look majestic and solemn and beautiful, and the little ones are insanely cute. They're generally considered faithful, responsible, patient, and lucky. Maybe that's why Dr. Seuss's Horton, who took care of someone else's egg through terrible winter storms and who almost died protecting people too small to be seen, was an elephant.

Anyway, i started collecting elephants some time in middle school, i think. And after a while, though i still liked them and would occasionally buy elephant things, i wasn't really interested in my collection.

And yet, it grows.

When my roommate went on a trip, the present she brought back to me was a hand-carved elephant (with a baby elephant inside! Insane!) I hadn't said anything about my elephant collection to her; she had just seen it in my room and decided to contribute. My mom bought me elephant earrings one year for Christmas. My sister gave me a whole family of bright orange elephant figurines.

But my brother has been the biggest supporter of my collection over the years. A few years ago, just as my collection fever was starting to wane, he gave me an elephant figurine the size of a cat. Then he went on a trip to Luray Caverns in Virginia and brought me an elephant carved of glossy gray stone. When he went to Italy, he brought me a glass elephant. When he went to a toy store, he brought me a plastic elephant.

This past weekend, at my sister's graduation party, Adam brought me a jade elephant. He walked up to the table where i was picking crabs, placed it in front of me without a word, and sat down.
"Oh, wow!" i said, trying to figure out if he was giving it to me or just showing it to me. "This is pretty sweet!"
"Some Asian lady was selling these in the hospital, and it was cheap, so I picked one up," he said nonchalantly, and then started eating crabs. (It was, in fact, a gift for me. Adam is thoughtful and sweet, but doesn't like to actually say out loud anything that might indicate that fact.)

Dear Amtrak

On the evening of Sunday, June 10th, I went to the Wilmington, DE station to board my 11:36pm train back to Boston. Your website recommends arriving 30 minutes before you are scheduled to board; I was there 45 minutes early. I had already printed my ticket, and I checked the departure board before going to the platform. The board told me my gate, and had the correct time listed for my departure (11:36). By 11:45, I was beginning to wonder if there had been a delay. Although the platform had electronic message boards to alert passengers of any changes in the schedule, I had not seen anything at all about my train. By midnight, I was seriously concerned. I called my father, who went online and discovered that power outages down the line had delayed all trains by at least an hour; my train would probably not arrive until one AM.

The message boards on the platform still said nothing.

Eventually, trains began arriving. However, the message boards were not being updated properly, so they were giving last boarding call fifteen minutes before the trains had even arrived at the station. As you can imagine, this caused some confusion.

I was scheduled to be on the 66 train to Boston. Eventually, a 900-something train pulled into the station. The electronic message boards had no information about what train this was, the conductors announced nothing, and I didn't see anyone to ask. I assumed that my train would be the next one and settled down to wait. A security guard working at the station came to me after the train had pulled out to inform me that that was the last train of the night. I eventually had to pay an extra $69 for a train that left at 4:50 the next morning. I will miss a day of work, not to mention a night of sleep.

I understand that delays happen from time to time, and that they are no one's fault. I understand that there are mechanical difficulties, communications snafus, and any manner of other mistakes that cause confusion. However, it is your job to work as hard as you can to keep all of your passengers informed of any changes in their travel plans. All stations need to be made aware of delays, and need to update their passengers accordingly. When you know that there has been an issue, you need to work extra hard to ensure that everyone knows what is going on. Plans change, and it's not necessarily anyone's fault. That's okay. What is not okay is not telling anyone that plans have changed.

I have been deeply disappointed and greatly inconvenienced by your mistakes this weekend. In future, please endeavor to suck less.

Tired, hungry, frustrated, and broke,
Diana Lark

playlist ruminations

Some girls, they glow in darkness

But by our standards, that's not much

Some girls, they'd like to win

But instead they'll serve you lunch

I love to travel. I like the inbetweenness of it, the freedom of not really being anywhere. You're departing and arriving all at once. It's so ethereal and poetic. It's also romantic and magical, especially when you're on a train. I watched a lot of old movies/read a lot of British novels when i was a kid. And still do. And always will.

But i can't sleep when i travel. With all the flying i have done, including international flights across oceans late at night, i think i've slept on a plane twice. Once i slept in an airport in Spain, because i was on a layover and was better able to sleep in the tiny airport chair with the janitors walking by than in the airplane. I don't sleep in cars, i don't sleep in trains, i don't sleep on buses.

I don't think i've ever seen the train this full before. Conversely, i've never had so much legroom. I think i accidentally took a handicapped seat.

It's coming up on midnight now, and i'm sleepy and writing and listening to music and doing homework. And staying awake, munching dried mango and sunflower seeds. God, i'm such a hippie sometimes.

That's what takes up time in this life

Add up the sum of the slights

And sooner or later

Love comes inside you

Gets behind you 

Takes you under its wing

It's partly that i'm afraid of someone stealing my things while i sleep. It's partly that transportation seating is generally not as sleep-inducing as my memory foam mattress pad and my warm, cozy boyfriend. It's partly just that i'm enjoying the ride so much.

Of course, i also have massive amounts of homework to do. And i am happily ignoring it all to blog. I am so self-sabotaging sometimes.


We long for journeys and the roadside

We long for starlight and the low tide

Yeah, we long for fairy tales and firesides

But it's also really healthy for me, mentally, to be taking this time. I don't spend much time alone these days. I mean, sometimes John isn't around and i eat and/or sleep alone, and sometimes i'm driving alone or in the grocery store alone, etc. But i don't often take time to intentionally be by myself. When i'm alone, it's usually a fluke: waiting for someone, someone is waiting for me, staying up in the kitchen doing homework while John sleeps.

We long for sunlight on the hillsides
Yeah, we long for yesterdays and hindsight
Oh, we long for fairy tales and firesides

This trip is just me.

Yeah, we long for carnivals and fairground rides
Oh, we long for journeys and the roadsides
Oh, we long for fairy tales and firesides

Jeremiah 15-49

1. Jeremiah 23:23-24
"Am I a God near at hand," says the Lord,
"And not a God afar off?
Can anyone hide himself in secret places,
So I shall not see him?" says the Lord;
"Do I not fill heaven and earth?" says the Lord.

2. Jeremiah 29:7
And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.

3. Jeremiah 29: 11-13
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
NKJV; emphasis mine.

1. Sometimes i do feel almost overwhelmed by the fullness of God. It's rare, because i'm busy and cynical, but there have been moments when the beauty and grandeur and power and presence of God were so overwhelming that i have been brought to tears. There are moments when it seems that there is almost too much God to worship, and i understand why it is that to know God is to fear Him. I understand why we call Him awesome.

2. Jeremiah was written to a people in exile. They had been captured by the Babylonians, and were being held in captivity (again). Yet God tells His people to pray for peace in the city where they were slaves. It's an important message for two reasons: first, focusing your attention outward instead of inward is a good way to distract yourself from your own problems. Sometimes too much inward-looking produces nothing but further anxiety. Second, it's hard to find peace when your environment is chaotic. Praying for peaceful surroundings will make it easier for the Israelites to be at peace within themselves.

3. Those of us who have spent much time in churches (especially youth groups around graduation) have heard some version of Jeremiah 29:11 approximately 43,974,234,544 times. And it is a good one, but it gets trite after a while. I was struck, however, by reading it in context, mostly because the bolded line reminded me of a C. S. Lewis line in The Last Battle. It also reminds me of Matthew 7:7-8, which is also one of the two passages i have chosen to pretty much sum up my theology (not the ice cream one).

Here's what Jeremiah, Jesus, and C. S. Lewis all say to me: those who seek God (truth, goodness, peace, love, redemption, healing, etc.) will find Him. He doesn't play games. Neither does He force Himself upon us. All we have to do is ask, but He does wait to be asked. I often find myself asking several times a day, not because He has moved away, but because i have. I'm fickle and impulsive that way. But He is always there for the asking.

I was once annoyed by some boy who was flirting with me. While i liked him and wanted to flirt back, i wanted to do it on my terms, not his. I was telling a friend of mine about how this boy was trying to get me to meet him somewhere, and i said indignantly, "I am not his beck-and-call girl!"

God has much less pride than i do. He is my beck-and-call girl.

penultimate

Today is the next to last class i will have to take for my degree (i hope). I'm at work, frantically trying to finish an assessment portfolio for a unit on fairy tales. Yes, fairy tales. Don't you wish i was your teacher? (No, because i'm a tough grader and you don't want to participate in a Socratic seminar on the feminist critique of fairy tales or create a picture book detailing all the graphic violence and darkness in the original tales.)

Anyway, i have this class today and one on Monday, and then i'm done with classwork. I still have observations and student teaching, but i'm essentially done.

I don't have time or mental energy to write much more right now, because i'm still trying to finish this thing, but i just wanted to say that i'm almost done with my M.Ed. And i still don't know if that's the correct abbreviation for it.

Reasons to Live With my Boyfriend

I've been posting individual list items on this topic for a while now. Some of them were humorous, but all were serious, in that we both have really terrible roommates.

However, i am currently paying $400/month in rent, and my utilities are only about another hundred. You can't beat that deal in the Boston area, unless you want to live in a rat-infested shoebox in a bad neighborhood. His rent is a little higher than mine, but still pretty good. I recently saw a one-bedroom apartment advertised for $1100/month, not including utilities. Next spring, i will be starting my student teaching, which will involve one whole semester of full-time, unpaid teaching. I'm looking for federal grants and part-time work, but i'll mostly be living off of my savings. Unless i find an insanely cheap apartment (like, less than $500/month including utilities) by September, there's no way i can fork up first/last/security and pack up again. It just won't be worth it.

But the time has come. John and i have reached a place in our relationship where we need more time for one another, need more attention from one another, but we can't always give it. He gets home at 3:00 and spends a few hours doing laundry, or eating, or doing the chores his roommates haven't, or lesson planning. I get home at 5:00 and spend a few hours cooking, cleaning, and doing homework. Once rush hour traffic has settled down, he heads over to my town for a choir rehearsal. Then i head to a 4-hour class. By the time we are both done with our day, all we have the energy to do is fall asleep, so that he can get up at 5:30 and get to school in time.

We see each other almost every day, but we spend very little time together. One of us is always in the middle of something: i am doing homework, or he is paying bills, or i haven't eaten all day and am too hungry to think straight, or he is talking to his parents about his dad's health, or he is looking at apartments and i am doing laundry. Even the weekends are usually filled with all the errands we didn't have time to do during the week.

This is the point in the relationship when most people would get married, but we've only been together 13 months, and we've really only known each other for about 17. We still need to find a church that we can go to together. We still need to finish our masters' programs. Have you ever moved in with someone who was a close friend, and within two months you could barely stand the sight of them? We need to make sure that doesn't happen with us. We've seen many, many, many couples who jumped into marriage, and while they married the right person, their speed put unnecessary strain on the relationship and they are now struggling and doubting. We have the rest of our lives to be married. We can take our time with the steps in between.

In the meantime, we miss each other. We need a mutual place that we can come to. We need to do the hard work of orienting our lives around one another. We need to share the space in the refrigerator, in the closet, in the garage, in the bathroom. We need to spend Saturday morning in bed, snuggling and having tickle-fights, because no one needs to get up and go home to do laundry. The laundry is right here, and we can put a load in the washer and get right back in bed. We need to argue about whose turn it is to buy milk, about which direction to hang the toilet paper, about which dishes go in the dishwasher and which are hand-wash only.

You say that your heart is mine. This, then, is love: i have learned to be at home in you, and in so doing, i have found myself at home in me.

announcement

This isn't earth-shattering or anything, so no worries. I just want to let you know (although you'll probably figure it out on your own pretty quickly) that i'm going to change my posting schedule. I have been posting twiceish a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, with bonus posts when i felt like it. Moving forward, i will be posting thriceish a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with bonus posts when i feel like it.

The Friday posts will be religious/spiritual/faith-based/faith-seeking/Bible-studying/etc. in nature. I'm mostly doing this as motivation for my intentional pursuit of a deeper relationship with Jesus, but also (a little bit) to post more often, because that's a good thing (or so i've been told).

The first of these posts will likely go up next week. Probably. We'll see.