do you ever feel

like there are a hundred thousand people in the world already doing what you are trying to do (whatever that is), and doing it better?

i do.

i don't really care about doing something no one else is doing, or even doing something the very very best. i just want my something to be meaningful, an act of love.

"i try to be honest, i try to be kind, and honestly leave when i know that it's time."



one of my most important lessons from college (a life lesson that college gave me words for) is that love is not a zero sum game. despite understanding that, it's still hard for my brain to fathom infinite love that never saturates.

even on this crowded earth, i'm sure there's a place for me, perhaps the kitchen with the big wooden table i see in my mind's eye that is just another instance of every kitchen table i've found myself welcome at before.

there's room for all kinds.

christmas time is here

i love this movie and this song and charlie brown. i relate to the guy. and we have similar taste in christmas trees. here's ours this year:

nice and skimpy, just the way i like it. when the fam went south to hunt christmas trees this year, laine kept picking these fat old trees, the kind where you can't even see the trunk, and i told her we had to choose a tree that looked homeless. she responded, "they're all homeless catherine." she is a very smart six-year old.
i've been a little obsessed with the tree this year--enchanted, rather. jane put the lights on (the hard part) while i whined to her, but i did the ornaments all by my lonesome, late at night.


the ornaments must go on one at a time, and slowly, so that each story has a moment of life in my memory. there's the starfish santa from friends in california, the hot pepper santa from friends in houston, the sourdough santa from friends thirty years ago. there are the blown glass balls from our trip to venice, the angel from our neighbor angels, and the star the star the star.

time under the christmas tree is sacred. it means everything to me that is beautiful about the holiday: family. history. light. sacrifice. tradition. gifts. belief.

you may be thinking this post is a little late, but in my house, in my heart, christmas can't sneak away so easily.

oh my darling oh my darling

the clementine.

a bright orb to pull from your pocket.

the sun of winter.

the passing of peace between friends and almost friends and not yet friends. by the slice.

i have eaten so many of these lately i expect my skin to turn orange, starting in my fingertips, where under my nails it has already begun--the price of peeling. the smell is not very different from christmas and it lingers in a room the way i wish christmas would linger.

are you noticing a theme? i do not like rushed goodbyes unless i'm leaving.

thank you clementine for lighting my days.

deadlines are descending, so i come to the blog to hide and breathe.

isn't life mysterious?

i'm thinking about relationships and the crazy way we can build fragile unseeable connections between souls, between hearts, and those connections stretch and bend and prove (sometimes) to not be that fragile at all.

"often we live side by side and do not communicate heart to heart."
--president thomas s. monson

i believe that. sometimes i feel like i am shouting in a hundred different ways: hear me! understand me! love me! love me! and everyone around me is shouting too, out of desperation to be heard, sure, but also because the gap between bodies is big, and expression could go anywhere once it leaves me, even all the way to outer space. even when it arrives at the desired destination, i can't always be sure it's arrived.

this is why i keep being amazed by love. it is one of many things that works without me understanding it.

dreams

i spend a lot time picturing my future.
i want a simple life.
i want a modest, well-lit (naturally lit) home with a really big kitchen table.
i want more space outside than inside. i think it'd be neat-o if what some people have in living rooms/family rooms i had in fields and forests.
i want the future to be full of people i love.
that's pretty much it.

but if i don't get any of those things, that will be okay (except for the one about the people. that would make for one lonely future.)

today i've been thinking about that one summer that i was a bike guide in jackson, the summer i lived in a tent and spent about one hour a day indoors. that was my idea of bliss.

you can't see the bliss in this picture because i wanted to be going back home with sisters who were dropping me off.


here's to hoping i get another summer like this one.

fleeting

i would be okay if it started snowing november 1 and did not stop until march 1. maybe even later. i would be happy if my door was snowed in every once in a while and i had to climb out a window and slide down a drift to the sidewalk. i would give up every pair of shoes i love to wear clunky boots all the time, if it meant deep deep snow.

i am not a "just snow in the mountains" type of girl, though that is clearly better than nothing. i am a five-miles-per-hour on the highway and no-school and flash-of-snow-plow-lights-down-the-street type of girl.

i believe in weather that inconveniences. i believe in gray skies. i think i have reverse SADS because when it stops snowing, my heart drops. in fact, my heart drops the minute it starts snowing because i know that the thing i love must end. so, would it be better for my heart if it never snowed? you may be thinking, "duh, totally better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." what if, though, losing wasn't just a possibility or risk but a guarantee? if every time you loved, you lost? every time?

where did i get the expectation that i should have everything at once, forever? marie? jane? fess up.

in other news, we took the annual christmas tree hunting trip to fremont.







i might have an address on this street someday, if i get lucky. come visit.




















here is kingfish doing his thing at fish lake.

failure

another day where everything falls short.

i've been trying to tell myself that i like failing and that failing is a good thing to do. i don't try very hard (to tell myself, not to fail. failing takes no trying).

today's failures:

woke up late.
no shower.
bad socks.
no lesson plan.
late assignments.
an essay that doesn't amount to anything.
things that need to get done that absolutely wont't get done.
no snow. (i somehow feel responsible for this. i'm trying to be good.)

and then...
i remembered i had a big reese's peanut butter cup in my drawer. SUCCESS.