You've been in the desert underneath the charging sky

These are my most loved poems by e.e cummings. I love the first one because it holds all the precious things in patterns but to noone and anyone it doesn't matter how many times it's happened before, they are always Adam and Eve and the only story that matters is theirs.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Here is the second poem. Naomi gave it to me before I left for Romania and it cleanly fit the spirit of everything jumping around in my heart. It's energy and joy and it is the sun's birthday!

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

This is ourselves under pressure

Any way you try to twist the story I still feel trapped, trapped, trapped. Like I am de-railing everything I hoped for. But maybe that train was never on its way. The alternative is black nothingness or toolboxes or the Land of the Misfit toys. I promised to commit with mi corazon entero and plead with heaven to shine some light on my conondrum. For so long I balked and resisted and pouted and wept and then suddenly I just slipped into his pocket. I've been fighting to get out ever since but what if that's where I belong?

Where you gonna go with a heart that gone?

This week I experienced 48 hours of WIN! Perfect days are rare, I need to chronicle this glory before it fades.

*I thought the drive down here would get tedious (especially because I was alone) but it was actually such a lovely, introspective time for me to take a dive through my thoughts. There have been times in my life when I've felt steeped in regret, aching so much for my mistakes that I felt paralyzed. Right now I feel like running everywhere, there's a delicious freedom swirling through my life that makes me feel like all my dreams are on their way. I don't hate myself for being so impossibly old, for the gradual descent into the life I never meant. I did mean it. I do.

*I made it to Phoenix on time to attend a panel my professor was having in another class of hers--on human trafficking and survivors of prostitution. It was heartbreaking and fascinating--I learned so much. One of the speakers was a vice officer whose perspective has changed from seeing prostitutes as criminals--now he understands that they are victims. One of the women who is a survivor explained that after awhile the drugs don't work anymore, you can't get high enough to help you forget or feel good, and that the "little box" you have in your head where you store all the horrible things that happen to you starts to overflow. She had sold or lost everything. All the hideous things that you can imagine happened to a human being happened to her over and over again...and when the only way out was up she was not strong enough to take charge of her own healing process--she had to be carried. Now she works with the DIGNITY House that helps women involved in prostitution and carries other women through. She said that now she is addicted to service. When I left that night I couldn't stop thinking about them...I see the world so differently and there is so much ugliness out there that has never touched me. It's so important to remember that so many people walk through hell every day...and that even people who have been so badly burned can change. It was horrible and hopeful at the same time.

*It's such an unusual blessing to feel at home with someone else's family! My aunt and uncle and cousins have been so amazingly good to me. From the moment I got here they were like ants of kindness swarming all over me, chattering, carrying in my stuff, showing me around. I love having scripture study with them every night (they have an unbroken record of study every night for 10 years!), exploring the pond with my little cousin Jared and talking to Mikey, Matt-Matt and Grant. My aunt Carol loves to tell stories just like I do and my uncle Lee is loving and strong like all the Pace men. I'm so lucky to be here and they tell me all the time how happy they are to have me. It's a good situation.

*I have a Batman blanket. I think that was a goal I had at one time and I have suddenly achieved it.

*In my room I have a skinny mirror like the one in the Fairbanks apartment on my mission = great for the self esteem :)

*Coming out of the back apartment in the morning with the pool and the sunshine makes me feel like Ryan Atwood on the O.C :)

*My soul loves all the sun! There is a different brightness here than in Utah.

*I'm usually easily lost anywhere I go, but I've had an unusual ability to go directly wherever I need to go...even by accident! Yesterday I was driving to school from Mesa to Phoenix and I had decided just to follow the mapquest directions backwards...I thought I needed to get on the East 10 but at the last minute I wrenched the car out of the exit lane for no reason. It was completely unconscious, then I thought: why did I do that? Now I have to find another exit and I'll be late for school! Then, to my shock and delight I saw that the next exit was for the very street I needed to go straight to the downtown Phoenix campus. I'd had no idea! I think Jesus took the wheel so I could make it to class on time. CHAS GRACIAS!

*When I got to class my professor handed back a log I'd written the week before and told me that I was an excellent writer and that I should consider doing research. !!!! :) :) Then she lowered her voice and said, "I haven't told anyone else that this semester." I'd been anxious about my first paper at ASU and hadn't thought it was my strongest, but that's always so nice to hear. It gave me animo.

*I can't explain what a flood of joy it is to be back in school. It's like my mind is jumping back into activity after months of laziness, this glorious stretch! I love learning about social work and don't even mind the 8-hour classes (much). The class is challenging and my professor is engaging. I've started thinking that if I never have a family I'd like to get a PH.D in a few years.

*I love having friends from my class now to go to lunch and walk out with. The first day I thought I would feel so isolated and lonely, but there is warmth and camaraderie. I just feel good here. I made friends with the people who work at the Subway near the house of my tios and talked to them for a long time. They told me to come back and see them often.

*I'm so glad to live near the fabulous Emily Brems again and spend time with her and Rob! 6 years later it's still a party!

*Exactly one month after I left my job at NuSkin I was offered a part time position at My Sister's Place. It's not a ton of hours unfortunately, but I'll love working at a DV shelter again and they are offering me $14.80 an hour because I speak Spanish!!! Que milagro! It's in Chandler, 15 minutes from where my tios live and depending on how it goes I could potentially keep the job when school starts full time in the fall.

*Oh and also! Apart from all the good school stuff I get to read, I started East of Eden, I'm in the middle of En El Tiempo de Las Mariposas, and my estimado grandfather sent me a book by the wonderful Barbara Kingsolver called Bean Trees about a (barren?) girl who goes to Arizona. How terribly blessed I am!

Light up, light up, as if you have a choice

Kahlil Gibran, THE PROPHET, from The Coming of the Ships

"But as he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart:

How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness, and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst."

The city I left as a tiny child has a name that means hope for me. A phoenix lives a thousand years before it ignites itself and then is reborn from its own ashes. It is an allegory of resurrection, of perpetual existence and joy. For this the ashes don't mean mourning, they mean watch out! I am spinning back to life again. I have whirled into fire, crumbled into dust, and found myself whole and triumphant again. So many times I have broken for sorrow with that flame, but why? Nothing is lost, another thousand years of life are beginning.
The Phoenix is rising.

Think sad, your troubles double, think glad, they burst like bubbles

Tonight I had a tragedy exploding in my mind so I found these messages on resiliency and positivity (the first and last videos). Charlotte's Web reminded me of being little (listen to the words of the song, it's cheesy but kind of powerful) and then I got distracted looking up the theme songs to my favorite shows when I was a kid and successfully eradicated the tragedy...if you were born in the 80's these are pretty much guaranteed to brighten your day.





























This one is my favorite. :)

Acompáñame a estar solo

La primera vez que escuche esta cancion estaba en el salón de mi amigo Isai Rojas; estuvimos laborando en un regalo navidadeño para mi cuñada. En aquel momento yo sentía un poco dolida por algo que pasaba en mí trabajo con Juconi. Al estar con Isai me hizo sentir mucha mas tranquila. Isai me enseñó un disco de "las mejores voces" y cuando escuche esta cancion sentí una calma muy grande. Tal vez la letra no sea la mas profunda que existe, pero en el momento fue un recuerdo que el amor nos sana, no importa lo que sean las heridas que traemos. Ahora extraño mí 'vida poblana,' los niños que me iluminaron con su luz, extraño los días cuando todos mís hechos fueron para servirle a Dios y a mis hermanos. Es difícil seguir adelante por varias razones, y a veces me desespero, pero creo con todo corazón que pueda yo hacer cualquier cosa que Dios me manda cumplir, yo puedo sobrevivir todo y estar feliz con tal de que confíe en mi Salvador y que sea humilde. Me da consuelo imaginar que El me diría estas palabras.

Voy a curarte el alma en duelo
Voy a dejarte como nuevo
Y todo va a pasar
Pronto verás el sol brillar

Tú más que nadie mereces ser feliz

Ya vas a ver como van sanando
Poco a poco tus heridas
Ya vas a ver como va
La misma vida a decantar la sal que sobra en el mar

Y aunque hayas sido un extranjero
hasta en tu propio país
Si yo te digo ¿cómo dices?
Tú aún dices ¿qué decís?
Y lloras de emoción oyendo un bandoneón

Y aunque parezcas despistado con ese caminar pausado
Conozco la razón que hace doler tu corazón
Por eso quise hacerte esta canción

Ya vas a ver como van sanando
Poco a poco tus heridas
Ya vas a ver como va
La misma vida a decantar la sal que sobra en el mar...

  

I do believe it's true that there are roads left in both of our shoes

So I was [most unnecessarily] freaking out about ASU's confirmation deadline this Friday. I had the uncomfortable feeling of being squelched in one of those 'Choose your own Adventure' books, although I could never choose, and tried to keep fingers in all of the pages so I could follow all the different endings down to the grisly conclusion. Sometimes in real life situations I do the same thing, I can't stick with one storyline and see it through. There are very few decisions I have made with clear confidence (my mission, deciding to go to BYU when I was 18). I always "wonder til it drives [me] mad, what would have followed if i had" [chosen another storyline].

Ergo, I'm struggling a little with knowing where I should go to grad school. I've had "crushes" on all the schools I've applied at one time, but who knows how I'd feel once I actually got to know them? They might turn out to be shallow, or hostile, or distressingly incompatible with me. I do know that I felt all squirmy and reluctant when I realized I had to make a decision about ASU so soon. At the moment I didn't have any other options, though, until today I got through to the beloved Cynthia at the OLLU Admissions office, who has so patiently and lovingly dealt with my neurosis and incessant questions during the application process.

I apologized for pestering her yet again, and she was full of awesomness and tenderness as she checked on my application and told me I had been...ADMITTED! And O what wondrous light and joy filled my soul! I became all pageant girl on the phone and Cynthia told me to call her when I got out to Texas so she could give me a tour of campus. I think I will bring her flowers. Seriously, this could maybe be a diaster but it sounds ideal to me right now. After all I've been through with the Virgencita, what could be more fitting than this? :) Also: going back to Texas. Something about that just rings with amazing.