pink sky at night

It's 7:30 p.m., and I'm on my front porch with my laptop.
Tolkien had this word for how the stars looked through the tree-branches, and I'm waiting around for the first one to show. (He loved those words. He had words for everything.) I'm partial to the first star of night, as it has a special meaning (to me).
It's almost getting too dark to keep typing without adjusting the brightness of the screen, but I'll wait a little while before I head inside to non-blog write.
Inside ... I don't really know where, in the house, my TV is. I've wanted to experience the solitude of my house; to kind of "man-up" and take it. It feels a little more organic that way. The quiet gets so bad, the tension of it propels me out in search of real people and real conversation. Then, having been with real people, I'm more content to crawl back into the quiet of books and words.
It's still a little creepy, though, the quiet of books and words. I made myself write at home, tonight, instead of going to the library or Barnes and Noble, because I'm afraid my home is becoming a kind of "wild." (Hm. Re: Isaiah's wilderness.) Like I'm abandoning it. Abandonment. I've gotten to the point where the cat sits on my purse protesting me leaving (again) and I feel this huge pity, like ... Well, I've written on my front porch, tonight, with tea and some muscadine grapes. And it's been really nice.
Now, if the star would just show up, I could go inside to the quiet and be content.

Blood and havoc!

I'm going to write a book now, after years of just thinking about it. I will finish Oct. 1, 2008.

(I know only Jason, Cindy and Emily will ever read this -- a shout-out to my peeps! -- but a "public" announcement still feels enboldenig. :)

I'm going to stop trying to tame all the ravens of unresting thought, blacking the sky of my mind, and just get down to some other thought-business. I'm going to have to take my eyes off a raven pepper-small above me, because my eyes alone can't call him to my window, and I have nothing to tempt him but an empty hand.

My story's not going to be anything overtly practical. Nothing about South Carolina ghosts or saving the planet, but I'm in love with a monster that's come to mind (and it's habitat!) so it is my own personal quest to write it. Or die! Blood and havoc!

Patience

Patience with other Christians, when their bite seems the most dirty, infectious. "They'll know us," though, by our love of that: other Christians.
No details neccessary. Everyone knows what Christians do at their worst. (Every Depeche Mode song's a veiled reference.)

There's still the human capacity for evil, now amplified, I believe, by pride (I do GOOD, now!), repulsively contrasting with the purity of Christ and what He wants us to do. I think it's an agony to the world, which is physically hungry, suffering, lonely, spiritually hungry. They need bread, we tease them with a hope that there just actually might be "bread," and then give them a stone. Or a snake.

I need to love other Christians patiently, gently, truth-speakingly, "calling out" wrongs, etc., getting angry and/or shaking dust off my shoes and moving on but still lovingly. I have been the evil Christian.
To keep hate from settling in, killing the spiritual heart, or killing our own desire to live out Christ and to identify with Him. God, help me! I have been so discouraged.

It's the Thing.

I just finished three weekends, eight performances, of the Sound of Music. My tan is gone, as well as five pounds (probably of muscle, since I stopped going to the gym -- though I scarfed McDonald's at @ 11:30 every night), and am now enboldened, in polite company, to make weird faces.
I did/had more antics and revelations backstage than on-stage as Nun 25 in a nun chorus of 30, but ... it was great.
Something I'd wanted to try a long time, prompted now by a need to get out of the house (and out of my own head).
The day before the audition, I was frothing milk and doubting the theater itself (two counties away) and my own leaden, melancholy soul, when this puckish, curly-haired girl danced out from behind the espresso machine. (A coffee customer. Maybe one of the art school teens.)
"What's your story?" A saucy boldness.
Eh?
Puckish girl: "You look like the art-type. Are you in theater?"
Me: "Hm. Why do you think that?"
Puckish girl: "Your face, it's very subtle but ..."
... latent obnoxiousness! The cold mercilessness to inflict it on you, or anyone else nearby, hapless victims!
A cruelty un-honed by training or talent, but amplified by uncouth, stupid audacity. However, I've learned that it's forgiven, and even encouraged, backstage! ( ::villanous laughter!:: )

... then again, miracles do happen

... though I always seem to convince myself otherwise. Like ... I'm single and, since that's my state now, I believe, somehow, that's the only state I can be sure of. So, it's the "default." So, I try to steel myself for a lifetime of it.

It's magnitude, though, is huge. People choose lifelong celibacy after much, much prayer and consideration because its magnitude is fairly HUGE. And I just assume it. I "bravely" convince myself of it; disregard desire and hope; actually try to strangle desire and hope; and grieve and grieve and grieve ... It isn't something I give, it's something I feel like I've lost.

(Not to attack a beloved classic but -- did "Passion and Purity" do this to us?)

I'm training myself to think, "This guy won't want me." And "That guy isn't going to want me." Which seems like it would guard a heart against disappointment -- to not hope. (My kinsman redeemer woke up, smiled sadly, regretfully and did not want me.) But rehearsing something that isn't (necessarily) true seems like ... believing delusions (madness). It's not logical to think, because something is the way it is now, there's a 98% chance it'll stay like that for the rest of my life.

I don't want to disregard the Variable. We pray to God, who loves us and is good, and can work changes among the mysteries of free will and His plan. So ... hope "Godwardly?" Desire God first, and then the other good things in the way. So if something I desire drops out, I'm still wanting Godwardly, and satisfied. Easier said, though ... unfinished thoughts.