Happiness and gratitudes

• clumps of undissolved hot chocolate powder from the bottom of the mug. they taste like brownie batter. nyumm.

• my grocery store is open 5a-12pa, seven days a week. okay, so apparently some are open 24/7, but I didn't know that and I still think it's pretty cool and crazy that I could ride my bike there almost any hour of the day.

• slouchy woolly knee socks that make me feel like a dancer in legwarmers. (they're so slouchy that once when I wore them on a plane, the security guards patted down my ankles.)

• smelling wood smoke when I step outside in the evening.

• going to bed early and sleeping for TEN HOURS.

• the really cute girl beside me in anthro drawing this really cute map of her home in her notes. "there's my hammock...here's where my horses are..." (she's from Kansas.) it was so cute that people kept asking to see it.

• the amazing and beautiful things that happen on the blogosphere. such as, I happened to know both Heather and Gabi, the former who can build websites and the latter who needed a website donated to her nonprofit...and, well, see for yourself! so perfect. gosh. good people and love and things working out. (I'm going to tell you more about what Gabi's doing soon.)

• me and my friend Quinn remembering that there's an Enya song called "No Holly for Miss Quinn." hee.

• letters.

• riding the train. going into a profound space-out staring out the windows, maybe listening to a podcast or some space-out music.

• my free month-long "trial" on Netflix. the instant streaming's so nice. today I'm watching The Royal Tenenbaums.
_____

and how about some more good people? Debbie, Chris and Vixel have paid Jeanima's sponsorship payments this month. thank you, my friends.

A LETTER from Jeanima (7/26/10)

Our girl in Haiti! You can see them bigger by clicking through and going "actions/view all sizes." It came in the mail just a few days ago. (Letters take a while to go through processing, yeah.)

It's addressed to me, but of course y'all are the ones really sponsoring her. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to ask her or any other message from you, and I'll include it in my next letter to her.

Waffle children wandering

Hannah found a waffle maker for $3 from the consignment shop. she was pleased with it, to say the least.








angels!angels!angels! and Hannah wished very hard to become a kitschy religious sculpture, but alas, it didn't work.




in autumn, the air turns golden before the leaves do.




there is a boxer's face in the sun-blemish. we had to go over to say hi to him.


the sun made me some striped socks.


all you need in life?

Answers

(to questions submitted via The Box. if you find a question interesting, drop me a comment with your own answer. I'd enjoy reading it.)

how do you trust?
how? if you believe it's worth it but it doesn't come easily, I think you have to just muscle past your doubts and pretend to yourself that you do trust whoever it is...act as though you have the feeling of trust and security, until you actually do. this is something I am working on.

What song could you listen to over and over without getting annoyed?
"To the Lighthouse" and "Signs" are the two songs I can (and do) listen to on repeat literally for hours. my trance songs.

Hey, hope I'm not disturbing you but you left a quote in one of your comments before and it really rang true with me. I believe it was "women called beautiful because they threaten no one but themselves" I really wanted to write an opinion article about it for my women's studies class, but I need to know the source of the quote to do so. Could you please let me know where this quote came from? I'd really love to look deeper into the meaning of it. Hope I don't creep you out or anything! ;) Thanks so much!

That was a paraphrase from memory. The exact quote in context:

"I had been willing to accept self-sabotage, but now I refused to sacrifice myself to a society that profited from my pain. I finally understood that my eating disorder symbolized more than personal psychodynamic trauma. Gazing in the mirror at my emaciated body, I observed a woman held up to her culture as the physical ideal because she was starving, self-obsessed and powerless, a woman called beautiful because she threatened no one except herself."

It's from an essay called "The Body Politic," by Abra Fortune Chernik, which I read in an anthology called Listen Up. I would love to hear your thoughts...I think you should email me if you have time. :) [wie.ein.lied at gmail.com]

missing. missing. missing.

Ellie.

parting was: almost one year ago.

I still don't know how long missing lasts.