Nothing is what it seems…

You know when the things you see physically with your eyes just don’t make sense? The grid from which you view things is telling you one thing, and yet what you see/experience is telling you something very different?
Have you ever had words spoken out loud, a physical thing moving towards you, get consumed by your being and explode inside you like a grenade? Your paradigms and thoughts, feelings and understandings left in heaps and piles. Sometimes I wonder just how many times I will experience my paradigms collapsing….

Movement

This has been an interesting term – in all respects. Full of differences and nuances, challenges and strife, surprising joy and gratefulness seeming to well up out of nowhere. It is moving so fast though, like water falling through my fingers I see and feel these moments greet me and move on. Its like they are playfully teasing me with their speed, daring me to try and reach out to hold them. Most days I feel my chief task is to grab and hold, to find a way to stop that water from falling through my fingers.

an ache

blurry

out of focus

aching

unsatisfied

..

I turned and walked out the door and ran as hard as I could.

The Valley Song

It is striking how one situation of grief you learn about seems too ripple into the lives around you. Learning of so many people in my circle of acquaintances that are dealing with losses of loved ones and are situated in grief at the moment. I sat down for some background music to do my homework to and the following song came on – one that has always been a favorite and is now poignantly applicable…

Turn your volume up and have a listen…

You have led me to the sadness
I have carried this pain
On a back bruised, nearly broken
I’m crying out to you

Chorus
I will sing of Your mercy
That leads me through valleys of sorrow
To rivers of joy

When death like a Gypsy
Comes to steal what I love
I will still look to the heavens
I will still seek your face

But I fear you aren’t listening
Because there are no words
Just the stillness and the hunger
For a faith that assures

Alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia

While we wait for rescue
With our eyes tightly shut
Face to the ground using our hands
To cover the fatal cut

And though the pain is an ocean
Tossing us around, around, around
You have calmed greater waters
Higher mountains have come down

Alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia

Alleluia, alleluia alleluia, alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia alleluia, alleluia

Oh, Lord sing of Your mercy,
Mercy
Your mercy

roads

Sometimes not knowing which way is up, or where you are heading, is exactly the place you need to be in order to locate yourself.

tis the season

Walking today I was finally able to locate the emotion that’s been tugging at my corners for the last month and a half. True to the nature of things, it brought with it a whole new bag of things to feel. The leaves are turning and falling, the temperature is dropping, the rain is growing more consistent – this fall season is upon us.

This fall season is upon me and I find myself….aching….for my neighbourhood in Korea. The Kimbap restaurant on the corner with the terrors-for-children that I taught (and loved); the little ajuma in her garden and our shared smirks as I passed on my morning walks every morning; the little stores so packed full of everything random and useless that you can barely get around in them; the overwhelming joy on the face of the elderly when I spoke a little Korean with them; the towering city scape of Seoul and the little neighbourhoods tucked around the feet of the skyscrapers; the smiles and head nods with any expat you came across knowing (without knowing them at all) that you have much in common and can help grinning because of it; seeing almost everyday of the week and getting to know the monsters that I taught, watching them grow and change before my eyes….

It’s a lot of those day to day pieces, people, situations (like the security guard of my apartment building yelling [really loudly yelling] at me at least once every two days for something I was apparently doing very wrong, but to this day have no idea was it was); those daily things had wiggled and burrowed into my soul with such alarming speed and strength that it wasn’t until being back have i realize just how strongly they are in there.

I am aware that hindsight is usually much more “rosey” than the reality and I know that the reality of my time there held an incredible amount of crap and my job was one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through in my short little life, but under all of that difficulty, illness, stress, etc….was a deep seated “I’m at home” feeling. It was all very strange =)

It was at this time of the year when I moved and was plunged into my life over there. It almost feels like a part of me is just waiting for this vacation to be over and for my return “home” to happen, like it knows that its inevitable and so it isn’t raising too much of a stink about being here. Yet, as always, there is my other half that has accepted the fact that I am back, that I might never set foot in Korea again, that I have no idea what tomorrow brings and I am entirely ok with that. I am learning how to be content with making the most out the day I’m in and holding in balance with that all the things that get stirred in my life.

Here are some old shots of my ‘hood in Suwon.

Greek Escape

I’ll admit that I felt bad walking out of class during the break, leaving in my wake all Plato, Aristole, Hegel, the reformers, and postmodernists had to say about what to think about the arts and why think about them at all. But it boiled down to a question of sanity; do I retain it? or let it slip through my fingers a little bit more?
I – on a consistent and annoyingly regular basis – forget how much music is like air in my lungs, like feet holding me upright.

Meta-narrative

I love the connection of things. How you can visit different places, hear different conversations, talk to friends, peers and strangers from different circles and the connections are there. Themes and story lines move and weave between these moments, speaking the same thing, catching my attention the same way, tickling that corner in my soul with mystery and curiosity. As a result, my senses are heightened and lifted throughout my day. Its a great treasure hunt laid out before me and I search for the hints and clues subtly hiding amoung the ordinary…

What’s hiding in the midst of your ordinary?

Today’s 10 beautiful things

I came to write a post tonight. I found my words curled up and sleeping over in the corner. My attempts to poke and prod them, luring them to come over, all proved futile. So instead of writing the thing I came to write about I thought it was time to pull out “10 beautiful things”. I’d love to read your 10 beautiful things from your day today (or whatever day you happen to read this on).

My Ten

Laughter.
Chamomile tea.
Star Trek.
Prayer.
Scarfs.
Music that is more addictive the more you listen to it.
Dreaming.
A sore throat from a good long conversation with a friend.
Memories.
Bejeweled Blitz.