what do you say...

we're taking a gamble on taking chances
so don't stop that step you dream of making
leave off turning down the offered dances
even when solitude leaves you shaking
When shoulders are cold and stars are colder
guess this means I'm getting older
the gamble might draw some blood, it's true
but trust me, its a risk worth taking
and trust is what it all comes down to.

taking chances

When my heart races I can feel it all the way down to my toes. I can make the thudding slow but I can't make it softer.

I ran and lost today. Such a little phrase, such a little thing. Running for office...maybe not so little. To me.

Ran for the premed club pastor role, that is. Lost out to another junior. Whether or not I think I should have isn't relevent. But I got up front and gave my speech. Gave my best without making overblown promises. Spoke confidently (enough), sat down. D'you know how hard that is? For me? But I did it well. I'd already prepared myself before the fact, so's I wouldn't be discouraged if I didn't make it. But it went well enough that I had actually started to hope. Figured the hardest part was behind me.

I didn't realize until later how deeply disappointed I was. Guess I thought I'd have worried and prayed and then I'd get in and jump up and down like a little kid, "Look, God! Look what we did!" and then I'd feel his quiet, confident pride. Know he was proud of me for stepping outside myself for something I wanted badly, helping me win the first time. I still think I could have done worlds of good if I'd have had the excuse.

I guess I don't need the excuse, though. Those worlds are still right where they were when this little adventure started.

I got to the end of this and started trying to figure out how to wrap it up positively. And realized that that would be hypocritical and unfair, as well, because I don't feel positive. I guess the worlds are going to have to wait a few more hours.

"what do you say to taking chances? what do you say to jumping off the edge? never knowing if there's solid ground below, or hand to hold, or hell to pay..."

looks and sleeping bags and lack thereof...

Our fire smelled like cedar and oranges. I love the way a fire beats back the darkness with its glowing heart. Something about it just screams "home" and "safety". It was getting cold again, and Bec, Almo and I were all gathered around our cheerful blaze, eating arapas, chips, and campfire bread-with-black-beans, respectively. There was a couple camped through the woods, not far away, but they were the only light in sight.
From our peripherals we noticed a sudden influx of bodies in their campsite, and then this new group began to thrash around in the woods between our sites. One or two of us may have uttered disparging comments on the apparent ineptitude of such a group, but on the whole we ignored them.

You know that feeling on the back of your neck when somebody suddenly moves into your...field of security? So here come three collegish guys strolling up to our campsite, asking, "Can we come sit by your fire?" Utterly pathetic. We all shared a Look, then I shrugged and said, "Sure, why not? Come on over."
(For your reference, The Look is translated, "Dangerous? Maybe. Evaluate. Nothing we can't handle. Besides, it could be fun.")
Ended up being nine of them. One girl. Amazing odds, right? Climbers, up from the Carolinas. They couldn't build a fire because all the sites were full and they didn't have a fire ring, so we shared warmth and names and stories. They were pretty impressed with our "legit" ness, as they put it. We were pretty appalled at their lack of preparation (one guy didn't even have a sleeping bag), and Becca stated at one point, in a very serious voice, "You are going to die." I agreed silently, knowing that I hadn't slept the night before for sheer cold, even in my bag. This guy didn't stand a chance.
We ended up giving him an extra blanket and coat to make sure we didn't all wake up to a skinny frozen snowcone. We three of us, in our tiny two-person tent, were warm and snuggy.
The next morning resulted in a considerably tired, chilled looking guy giving us back our stuff, which evolved into an exchange of phone numbers and a mutual agreement for the groups to contact when we make climbing forays into each other's territory. And then we saw them later that night for a moment at Olive Garden, an hour from Foster. What's with this karma thing?
I love this aspect of camping. I know a lot of people don't understand what is so invigorating about it, but... if you get beyond "communing with nature" in the dirt and grime, and smokey smellyness and bruises and sore muscles and charcoal in my tea water and icy feet that make sleeping impossible and small creatures getting into my potatoes and sunburns and rope burns and into the breeze and challenge of a smooth expanse of rock and enjoyment of a warm sleeping back and toasted food and pushing yourself and innovating on the fly and spending your time with the most important people and wading rivers and, just maybe, sharing your fire with strangers, then...well, you just might get it.
'Course, you come back exhausted and unable to move, like me, but it's still worth it. Makes you appreciate a shower, at least. I looooooove me a good shower.

strange scents that I actually really kinda love...

My little brother's freshly baked bread.
Horse barns. Don't knock it--not for everyone.
Storms. And yes, you can smell them coming.
Freshly cut lumber from Grandpa's sawmill.
Sun-warmed herb beds, cilantro and basil (like what's growing on my porch).
Tilled black earth and seeds.
Spring hay meadows, walls of flowers and grass under a brilliant blue sky.
Honey bee wax, collected as we spin honey.
Orange tree blossoms on a warm breeze.
Sea spray and salt-embedded ocean cliffs.
Boiling maple syrup in Da's evaporator.
Sunshine flavored breezes.
Crunchy fall leaves. Sharp and musty.
Caramel apples. Actually, maybe I just like the taste. A lot.
Campfires, smoke and woods and heat (camping this weekend...Foster, here we come!).
Cedar trees, carved into heartwood creatures.
The random flowering bushes to the right of Wright hall.
Blueberry herbal tea in huge mugs.

unrandom clips from my life invoking spring

Excerpt from my journal, dated 3/19.

Spring is yawning and stretching, starting to shake off the long wintercold we've had. She's grown young again, sleeping curled up in the heart of the old curly maple, but the sap is beginning to flow and she can feel the branches reach for the sun; and so she stirs. She is still new and as fresh as a green shoot of the first grass. Finally she slips free of her winter abode and stands once again in the world. As she stretches up to greet the carefree blue sky, her joy at being alive will pull the flowers and grass springing free as the birds riot around her.

I hope she comes soon. Its so beautiful already. Winter is departing (albeit not dearly) and it is time to wake up. Shake off your rest! It's warm and the wind is coy and caressing instead of cruel and biting.

...

Of course, now it's just hot. And I love every second. It's impossible to be depressed, or worried or (I would assume) bipolar when the sun and wind work on you and turn your skin to burnished copper. That is, if you're lucky. If you're like me, you just kind of get a hazy tannish, no matter how much time you spend outside. And m'not bipolar, it was just a figure of speech.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm happy. Just straight up happy. Funny what spring can do.

good ol' Stanley Miller

So in our issues class a few weeks ago, Dr. Spencer had a nice little surprise waiting for us in the form of a quiz. Had any of us read the 60 pages assigned? I submit that we had not. So some of us wrote stories. Here's what I turned in (posted here in celebration of Dr. Spencer giving me back 40% on my exam paper and returning it to A status). He gave me a few points for it, too. :D

His question: describe Stanley Miller's experiment.

My answer:

Stanley Miller looked down at his test grade
And suddenly found himself afraid
Then he yelled, “What the junk!
“This whole scoring is bunk!”
And quickly found himself enraged

So Stanley an experiment devised
To make his exam score rise
He should know, Doc Spence should
That the paper was good
And to raise his test grade would be wise.

And so Stanley sits here, mad
For he’s NEVER had a test score this bad
In 15 years of school
Never felt like such a fool
And now he’s dreading his college grad.

46 days...

The sea is rising, the dark is falling,
A small crab scuttles by
This curving piece of rippling blue
Cerulean liquid sky

Hissing warmth, incoming waves
Surround me where I stand
A slice of carnelian dripping sunset
Cupped within my hand

get ready, get set...

Speed is freedom. There is an odd sort of peace when you're careening through the world at a much higher rate of velocity than normal. When you swim so fast that the water itself carries you along, or run though the woods dodging trees or jumping roots...or my favorite, flying along on a bike with the wind coming at you from every direction. Or flying down a mountain on a thin board, kicking up a spray of snow. Especially that.

When I was smaller, I watched the movie "Treasure Planet" until the DVD almost wore out. I wanted nothing more than to build my own solar surfer and use it to catch the wind and lift myself above the trees, the clouds, the earth. I was too practical to try jumping off of roofs, but I still wished. I don't know what it would be like to skim over the earth that fast, that effortlessly. I can just imagine.

Unfortunately, for those who seek their freedom with their own version of speed, there is a glut of Cop types around here, whose latest offenses include interrogating people in their dorm rooms and threatening to drag them to court because they glanced out their window at a speeder who just wasn't fast enough. Of course, there were four coppers with flashing lights for the one speeder, so you can't really blame the college kid. Silly coppers.

Somebody in the world now thinks I'm a few huskies short of an Iditarod. I borrowed Bec's bike and got going fairly quickly headed out of SV, and the curve into the church parking lot was fun, and the wind was blowing in my face and the day was so very very warm and fresh, that I couldn't help myself and did something between a giggle and a chortle. Of course, the poor person I nearly ran over as I slipped around their parked vehicle didn't seem to share the joy. I guess I could be more careful. Or not.

I missed work this morning. First time since I started working every morning. I'm so screwed. If I was currently running on enough sleep to care, I'd be freaking out. I'll have to bring Mr. Benge some kind of bribe. Oh, gosh. I've rambled long enough.

Snell's Window

It's a natural phenomena I came across in my Physics textbook (proving that it is, indeed, useful for something), and it's absolutely rad, or sweet, or whatever antiquated word you prefer. Apparently, when you dive deep enough, either under the sun or the moon, the entire word from horizon to horizon condenses into a circle above your head. Everything is focused and clear and quiet.


Dad always tells me that trying to see your own problems clearly is like sticking your nose in the middle of a painting. You may have a general idea of size and subject. You might even get a little paint on your nose for your trouble. But unless you pull back and get a different perspective, focus on the bigger picture, you will never see clearly. Bless him for teaching me how, because I'm muck-deep in personal situations presently, and some perspective other than my close-up-and-personal, nose-in-the-picture, paint-on-my-eyeballs ones would be welcome. One that focuses my horizons into a vision floating on the surface would be even better. Oh, well.

I guess there's some deep insight tying these all together, but you're smart, you can figure it out yourself. I just wanted to share how cool this underwater window is, and that I want to see it myself someday. That's all.

Banishing the sting...

When you least expect it, Death reaches out and touches your soul. Tap tap tap. Are you there, Alyssa?

I've felt that light knock before, on a black icy lake, sprawled near a pressure ridge and a dead snowmobile. Just a light brush, but it was enough to made me scream in terror. I've been questioning my own mortality ever since that spring last year, and it's made me more thoughtful, more cautious, less prone to take risks just because I think I can. But yesterday, the pictures and the emotional backlash hit so very hard.

Are you afraid of death? I used to think I wasn't. I used to be firmly certain that I might be scared of dying painfully, or frighteningly, or--my worst nightmare--losing my life in a pathetically feeble attempt to save somebody I love; but that the concept of death itself didn't faze me.

I was wrong. Oh, was I wrong. I saw more death on that video clip yesterday than I ever have before, and it shook me. It's ugly, I never realized how ugly, but more than that it's just wrong. As if gravity suddenly reversed but everything still looks upright. We aren't supposed to die like that. Nobody is supposed to die like that.

I almost made it through, until the flashlight-lit picture of the twisted pieces of what used to be a blue-eyed girl. Her eyes were so very, very blue as they stared through the dark into the camera, at an impossible angle to her body. I could feel myself inwardly hyperventiliating and came closer to passing out than I ever have in my life (except for the time in surgery dad cut that lady's tendon and it sounded like celery crunching. That was pretty bad). I guess the only reason I didn't was because I felt it coming. You've got to be kidding, I thought in disbelief, there's no way I'm melting into a puddle in the middle of convocation. I don't mind blood--not even hunting--so I figure it was just my mind telling me that it'd had enough. And in a way I welcomed it because it let me know that I've not been dulled into insensitivity just yet.

Death is the antithesis of all my God created us to be, and the innate wrongness of it frightens the living daylights outta me. I wish I could say I had a long chat with God about all of this, and that now I could look death in the face and cackle, or something equally brave and perhaps a little more dignified. I can't. Yet even though my heart still hurts, my head thankfully knows that God takes away the sting. The victory is only temporary, and if I do have to answer the tap tap tap someday, well, that'll be ok. Can't say I'm not afraid, but that's ok too. Jesus did it first.

Remember how the evil dude in the Mummy scrawled "Death is only the beginning" on the inside of his sarcophagus? He might have been an ugly son, but he was right. This life is short but there's an eternity after this, and there's nothing ugly about it. Too hoo! say the Narnian owls.

It is so NOT my life...

Dr. Nyirady came to do pre-application interviews yesterday, and I showed up in my customarily dark dressy attire, hands cold and hair messily curled, because that's how I roll when I'm nervous.

But, while he was an interesting, genial gentleman and in no way intimidating, I still left the short meeting mentally drained and deeply disappointed in myself. And I'm tired of being disappointed.

Loma Linda's list of requirements is set rather...high. And while I mostly fall within the parameters, due to my two bad semesters of mostly B's I'm in Loma Linda's "grey area" of acceptance. What can save me is my continuing "upward trajectory;" aka nearly straight A's for the rest of my time here.

Oh, geesh. There goes my life.

But I hate how it seems like my whole college career has been a painful balancing act between falling just short of the elusive A and still being out and moving and alive, living, and yet being guilty; because if I studied all the time, I could indeed get A's. But if I'm not supposed to be out and getting to know people, making connections, then why are my parents paying skads of money for me to be here?

Is being a surgeon worth this? I have to believe so...

sleeping with nightlights

My heart is broken.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kills off Sherlock Holmes. How I managed to live 21 years in happily naive enjoyment of the Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Sign of the Four, all the while contemplating the wit and shrewd deductive skills that belonged to the man with the pipe and trenchcoat, without realizing the author killed him off, I do not know. I haven't even read the story yet--but I'll never forgive Sir Arthur. Not even if it's really, really good.

The world no longer seems a safe and welcoming place with Holmes dead. Chuck Norris needs to sleep with a nightlight now.