make & believe: the turning point

"Could you open the Coke bottles for me?" I asked, and while the man walked back toward the kitchen, I dropped the Red Rose snuff in my bag and zipped it up.
I was speculating how one day, years from now, I would send the store a dollar in an envelope to cover it, spelling out how guilt had dominated every moment of my life, when I found myself looking at a picture of the black Mary. I do not mean a picture of just any black Mary. I mean the identical, very same, exact one as my mother's. She stared at me from the labels of a dozen jars of honey. Black Madonna Honey, they said.
I looked at the honey jars, at the amber lights swimming inside them, and made myself breathe slowly.
I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.
I thought about the bees that had come to my room at night, how they'd been part of it all. And the voice I'd heard the day before, saying, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open, speaking as plain and clear as the woman in navy speaking to her daughter.
"Here's your Coca-Cola," the bow-tied man was saying.
I pointed to the honey jars. "Where did you get those?"
-Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

This is the turning point in the book, and I would explain the context and summary behind it, but it would just take too long, almost as long as the Wikipedia summary. Although if you care, the Amazon review does quite a good job: http://amzn.to/buWtZ2.

In my senior year of high school, I got to do beekeeping with some of my friends for an elaborate science project. Literally covered in an unappealing white suit from head to toe with a screen in front of your face for sight, I wouldn't say it was the coolest of experiences. But we got to work with hundreds, thousands of honeybees kept in bee hives that looked much like filing cabinets.

And at the end of the day, the man in charge would take us to the parking lot, ask us to remove our astronaut spacesuits, and reveal a tray of pieces of honeycomb with pure, non-processed, bee-made honey on them. There lasted an initial, few seconds while I pondered whether or not it was safe to put a piece of honeycomb in my mouth as its cleanliness and disinfected-of-wild-animals-ness was questionable, but then I would pop one in anyway. It was waxy and so sweet it almost made me wince and although I (guiltily) couldn't tell the difference from this honey to the processed, manufactured kind in a bear bottle, I never gained a more glorious respect for honeybees that day. It was like I'd been so consumed in my industrial, GMO-lathered world that I had forgotten there were other species out there, not wanting to attack you or be cuddled, but actually working to produce staple food and take care of one another in peace. Miraculously, without having to plant factories and destroy the ozone layer as they do so.

I wonder how many turning points there are going to be before a heavy one actually throws itself onto your back and can't get seizured off until you do something for it. How many until you get sick of your routine, scheduled-to-the-minute, philosophical how-how-why-why ass and finally hear the world screaming at you, in the same tone it yells at Gulf Oil spills and McDonald's double cheeseburgers.

You probably won't figure it out if you try too hard to listen. The world is just weird that way. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

All I Need (a song)

This is a song I wrote recently, the first I've written in a while. It wasn't meant to be so emo. But the tune is coming along, measure by measure. Happiness.

You're still alive
Well what a surprise
Years of dreaming just came back in tides

This time it's harder
We'll start from the end
And walk in reverse until it begins

You had the world
I had a dime
You gave me strength
And as much as I tried
Every effort fell through at my feet
Goodbye, hello, goodbye

How long's it been
Where do we start
To collect our thoughts before we fall apart

But there's too much to say
Nothing comes out
When it's just you and me
I'm humbled easily

You had the world
I had a dime
You gave me strength
And as much as I tried
Every effort fell through at my feet
Goodbye, hello, goodbye

Well my oh my
This just won't do
Swallow your smile and tell me the truth

Show me what I couldn't see
Pick up my pride and have faith in me
That's all I ask for, that's all I need
But with you, I'm too scared to concede

You had the world
I had a dime
You gave me strength
And as much as I tried
Every effort fell through at my feet
Hello, goodbye, goodbye.

the blender (she grew up)

She grew up on a side of the road
Keeping a comfortable distance
Free as a weed
Said sometimes love slips away.
Don't you know we're all alone now?
I'm content with loneliness.
PARAMORE, CARRIE UNDERWOOD, LADY ANTEBELLUM

We grow where there is room for us
Inelegantly and without my consent
A terrible mistake.
But nothing really matters
Life is just this way, broken
And it's okay to be unsure.
MIRANDA JULY

make & believe: used books

I ordered my first used book on Amazon a few days ago. Just like having never ordered before from Subway, I see ordering used books the same way I see having to choose every ingredient on your sub: more complicated and messy than it (probably) actually is.

But I decided to go ahead and get a used book because if it were newly bought it would be around $130 and I had found one for less than $20 (excuse the grammar). Ah-mazing, right?

Then an issue came up. Yesterday I got a package in the mail from the seller and it was the wrong book. Instead of Comparative Politics Today, it was Let's Weigh the Evidence. A book about which version of the Bible was the best or something. WOW. Of all the wrong genres of books to send me. Not only did I get hindsight bias, I thought God was punishing me for being an anti-religious, unforgiving brat these past months, even though "which Bible is the most accurate?" had nothing to do with "are you going to end up in hell?" The seller had awesome ratings, so I couldn't believe my bad luck.

Now an ordinary religious person would perhaps at this point pray and pray and hope and pray, please please that they would not have to send the book back or demand a refund, or that their actual book is still coming. Of course an ordinary person like me did none of these things, so I just emailed the dude and went to sleep.

Today I got the right book in the mail, and it was in better condition than I hoped for. I guess the seller did deserve a decent rating after all for that. The ordinary religious person would now be running around shouting, "Hallelujah! My prayer was answered! PTL!" at this point. But because nothing encouraged me to pray to begin with, I feel that if anything, this event only further chucked my faith into oblivion and irrelevance. What a world, really.

Be careful buying used books.

make & believe: mornings

After some soul-searching, which involves staying up late and waking up early to write things and chug vitamin water I find in the fridge, I've only achieved one newfound discovery about myself and that is that I am turning into a morning person.

Not really, but I definitely wish I were. Lack of internal assessments and indie films to edit,screw up,repeat means that I can no longer function late at night too well. Well that's all right. Caffeine is for the mornings anyway (which is irrelevant, because I am staying away from caffeine indefinitely).

Never understood why people wake up at 6 in the morning.. just to jog. Why not save your energy for work? If unemployed, why not jog later? No one is really around at 8. No one is even really around at 6 in the evening (okay, more cars are but why does it matter?). I've asked myself to try this at least once this summer--to not wake up at 8 but rather at 6 to soul-search around my neighborhood instead of, heaven forbid, in my bedroom scribbling away in a notebook. I haven't succeeded yet, because I can't sleep until at least 1, and I need my hours.

So for the first half of today, I wake up, cook, and write while listening to my sister's blasting of Hannah Montana's newest single. Quite plain, but the rest of the day will be unusual. And it's not bad, really. The single.


(Maybe the lyrics are.)

One more week until the Bahamas. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ