missing. missing. missing.

Ellie.

parting was: almost one year ago.

I still don't know how long missing lasts.

Exposed

I just got back from lunch with my theology professor, who is an awesome, chill person as well as a wonderful intellectual, and he was curious about my year away from Wheaton and asked some direct questions, and I am always honest to those, and we ended up talking about depression and therapy and antidepressants from our own experiences. He said, You should be proud of yourself. Or, I'm really proud of you? Which was so kind.

And this reminded me how exhausting it is to tell the truth, not that I lie the rest of the time, but things true enough that you aren't supposed to say them too often or too openly. It's the model of magic like in Tamora Pierce's books, where you use some and that uses up part of you and you don't get that energy back for a little while. And telling the truth is kind of a working of magic, isn't it. Spells to shed light in the heart and tie people together.

But it hurts and is hard, and I would like to say it again: having told the truth, now I feel the pavement pulling me to sit and cover my face, so exhausted and not wanting to be seen but accepting visibility as the prerequisite for all loves, but most of all wanting to be seen not in part or carelessly but all of me and with charity. Read with charity. All truths are partial if you tell them to people who will not try to see too, else you would have to take hours or days to tell it. All of it.

Hard truth used to make me shiver and my teeth chatter. Also, twice, or maybe three times, I have told substantial truths and not told them carefully enough, and I was subsequently judged and left alone by the people I told, respectively, and that hurt more than anything else in my life so far has. So it's still frightening; so I believe you need to be very careful.

That is one thing about blogging, isn't it? I can tell to the best of my ability, and I can tell as much of it as I think needs to be told for it to be understood, and keep telling it as long as I want. Almost as if I were retelling it to myself. I suppose that is why blogging does not make me feel that exposed-rabbit tired-magic way.

Now I am going to pull a blanket over my head and read some more about Antarctica.

Peace.

Happiness and gratitudes

• cold cheese pizza for a nighttime study snack. especially when it costs me nothing.

• browsing the Sarah Haskins/Target Women archives. her videos make me lol. she is so astute. (the Target Women vids are comedic takedowns of advertisements directed at women.)

• the feeling of a clean, just-washed face.

• the superfresh doughnut I bought at the farmer's market on Saturday. so much better than any other doughnut I've had that it's almost weird to call them by the same name.

• the French nun who sells baked things for her charity at the farmer's market. she's small and pretty and wears a habit and has an accent and is exactly how you'd imagine a French nun.

• sugar snap peas.

• dark-chocolate–covered graham crackers. the kind they sell by the cash register at coffee places.

• finding the perfect gifts for my October-born New Englanders.

• realizing that I actually distinguish between hyphens, en dashes and em dashes in my handwriting. I feel that I was marked for copy editing from my adolescence; yet it is also marking me...

• feeling free not to care about things that I just, well, don't care about.

• writing myself a renewed commitment to eating intuitively.

• making new friends.

• Sunday night baking.

• my anthro professor's stories about Andean drinking contests.

• windy nights warm enough to wander in.

• a Ferris wheel lady-date.

• the people I'm getting to know on MC. they are generous and endlessly wise. I really do feel privileged to be a part of a community with them.

Disappeared so often like you dissolved into coffee

I just went to Walgreens to get my negatives back from a black-and-white roll, and they told me that the negatives were damaged and blank. Another one of those inexplicable film malfunctions. I don't really care why right now; I'm just trying to remember what was on it so I can maybe retake some of them. It won't be the same, but I really wanted those twenty-four pictures...

So yeah, I'd hoped to have some black-and-whites to post tonight, but no. The last of my most recent color roll, then.

Linkage

Fat Dinosty. body positivity + dinosaurs. so sweet and cheering.

"Beauty School for Lazy Hippies." e.g. me!

I just learned what zorbing is and it may warrant a spot on my bucket list.

a sociological perspective on Farmville. ACE.

"If You Think Quitting Booze Freaks People Out, Wait ‘Til You Quit Twitter." loved his observations, and heartily second them.

"Like a Japanese tourist compulsively photographing everything he sees, it was almost as if something didn’t really happen unless it was captured in 140 characters and shared with the world."

"How to Avert Cabin Fever This Winter."

Svalbard in photos. (it's an island at the top of Norway.) incredibly beautiful in that barren deep-north way.

"A Fool's Attempt to Describe Burning Man." linked by a veteran burner, so I trust it as accurate. I don't know if I'll ever want to go badly enough to do it, but I am fascinated by what I hear of it.

"Why I've 'Let Myself Go,'" by a former figure competitor. (figure competition is similar to female bodybuilding.)

An introduction to scanning for analogue-lovers.

mnmlist's "Addition by Subtraction," which jumps off from some very apt observations:

"We want to lose weight, we buy weight loss books, workout equipment, diet pills, nutritional supplements, a fitness program. We sign up for the gym or a class or a trainer.

"We want to travel, we buy a suitcase, a travel pillow, the perfect carry-on luggage, maybe even special clothes or equipment for traveling..."

An oldie but such a goodie, from the ever-lovely Sui Solitaire: "This is me. The cellulite on my thighs, the stretchmarks on my hips."

An important reminder for anyone trying to make any kind of positive change in their life.

A liveblog all the way through the September edition of Vogue. O social commentary, o intelligent snark, how I love thee.

This is the part

"Fear is a natural reaction of moving closer to the truth."
– Pema Chodron

Meaning, this is the part where you keep pressing forward — this is the part where you refuse to believe that retreat would be a kindness to yourself —

Patristic ages