Lately...

... all I want to do is create things, make things.
I think it's the fact that I've come home from constantly being "on the move," and am suddenly back in the land where employment is a joke and where I no longer have a clue of my place in things.
So I'll sew, cut, paste, and paint my place I suppose.

Being

Not who they are, but who you are.
Who you are not isn't the focus.

As The Ruin Falls

Yesterday I left Carlisle in much the same way I came to it, climbing into a train with this gaping sadness of leaving much behind and some feelings of bewilderment, excitement, and sometimes horror of what could lie ahead. But this time, the horror ate away at the excitement like some sort of parasite or acid. What on earth have I become? What am I bringing home with me? Can God always be this real? Where have these six months led me to?
Then, after the journey on the train, I settled down, I prayed. I prayed some selfish prayer. I prayed, ironically enough, more selfishly than before I came to Carlisle in order to learn how to pray. “God, I want this, God, give me this, God, O GOD, why don’t I have that. -Oh, and since I know that this is the attitude I should have about a Saviour who gave all for me- by the way, I want to want you in my life most of all, help me with that too.” The latter request became some sort of a side note, a trite recitation of a few lines… like extra paperwork that people sign in order to get what they really want. I said I wanted God most, simply as a means to gain the first and more selfish demands.
I’ve prayed this kind of prayer before. I remember one night in Africa I had a similar conversation with God. It was a little less desperate, and a little more humble than the words I nearly spat at him yesterday. That night in February, He spoke then more clearly than I have ever heard his voice before. He said that what I ask for isn’t wrong, but that he simply wants me to desire him the most. Basically, my priorities were wrong.
I was calling this conversation to memory last night, and I wondered what he would say this time. Would he say once again to want him the most, to get my priorities right? I already knew that was what I needed, but I realized now that knowing is very different than understanding and meaning. How could I desire him the most, what would my motive be? I have tried giving myself so many reasons to place God in the first place, talking myself into loving Him. But it was his voice again last night that brought clarity and understanding. He didn’t condemn me, he didn’t yell at me for being blind or weak… he simply said “You are my desire.” As if to say, “It’s not your idea, Hannah, you didn’t think this up for yourself. I was the one to make the first step, I was the one who died to be with you, I was the one calling out to you first and not the other way around. I love you, can’t you accept it? I loved you first, don’t you remember that?”
Is it that easy? Have I frantically flown through six months of fabulous teaching and left the main point to be realized mere days before going home? Have I been jumping around reaching for a hand that has been in front of me all along? Have I accumulated 24 weeks of revelations and memories only to find that this was the main thread running through it all and holding it together? Have I rambled and ranted to God so much, and never given him the chance to tell me he loves me? I suppose that God’s voice last night was articulating what He has been teaching me over these weeks and months. Through the incredible joys and sorrows, he was leading me back to the simplicity of a relationship with Him. It was he that brought me on this six month journey. I wasn’t the only one trying to get closer. It’s not about my constant striving and working, it’s not about my whining and complaining. It’s about the fact that he loves me perfectly, beyond my understanding. So, there, Hannah, there’s your motive, that’s what you’re bringing home: love.

As the Ruin Falls by C. S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-
-But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Six Months Later

I haven't posted since September 17th, last year. Wow.
I've decided that the name of my blog is very inappropriate, first of all, I usually talk/write before I really think, and in general I don't repeat the process for a long time.
It should be called "Write/Whenever/Whatever.

Here Hear!

Reduced to the person that lives on the speck that lives on the clover: my tiny voice says, "I EXIST!"

How it feels not needing a distraction, but desperately looking for one.

I have decided that the words "ready," "prepared," and the like are simply not applicable to me.
I always imagine that I'm ready for something, I'm ready to be gone, I'm ready to be in love, I'm ready to make huge choices, I'm prepared for this.
Suddenly, my head and heart are spinning around like juggling balls in someone's hands, stable for two seconds as they land safely in the palm of his hand, then flying in the air again, afraid I'm going to hit the floor (or worse, never come down at all). Suddenly, I'm leaving in six weeks. Suddenly, silence.
And I am so not ready.
We always imagine ourselves to be sure of things until they occur. But nothing is ever the way you imagine it to be. Anything subject to human emotion immediately is out of control.
I am out of control.
Catch me.

Inspired?

I have come to see that being in a prayer meeting amongst people pouring out their hearts before God is one of the most beautifully intimate experiences.
Sometimes the faith of others is so humbling to me. The humility which I feel is not an intimidated or belittled humility, but an inspired humility in awe of the bold fearlessness, the open-heartedness that I see before me.

I guess that I have had this idea tumbling around in my head for a couple of weeks, but didn't put it down like this till now. I hope the thought makes sense?

Writer's Block?

I never write. Right. Rite. AAAAAAAALRIGHT. I think I've already used that play on words, another sad sign that I am starting to repeat myself regularly. Which is probably why I haven't written...
I imagine that if I were in some sort of encyclopedia, my entry would be something like this:
"Hannah Hempstead, born September 28, 1989. Nationality: USA. Current Residence: A long and narrow hallway. Interesting Facts: Hannah wanders from the north to the south end of her hallway constantly. Each time she reaches the north or south end, it's as though she has discovered it for the first time. Unfortunately, she doesn't realize that she's seen the same wall several times before. Also, she hasn't grasped the idea that a hallway is nothing in comparison to a house. Or a 100 story building. Or a town. Or a city. Or a world. Or a universe."
The idea that I am unoriginal is even getting unoriginal.
How... pathetic.

?

Is it the uncertainty that you love or is it the love that you're uncertain of?

Left right wrong right denied right

Today i feel like that stupid deer, caught between the east and west highways, headlights and racing cars going two different ways, trying to choose which car will and which car won't hit me.

Judgment.

I never thought I would battle bitterness.
For years I've always looked the other way, always been desperate enough to forgive those that I want in my life. But lately I'm finding myself to be constantly battling something I have always feared: hatred. Not the sort of hatred that comes from some distant dislike or difference, but the sort of hatred that comes from the constant hurt and selfishness people give out. Unfortunately, my own bitter indignance at people's nearsightedness has begun to make me nearsighted, and I constantly say, "They're only looking at how things affect them" while I am, in fact, myself progressively backing into my own little shell; taking off my own glasses.
Where can I find the balance? How can I be honest to myself about people's faults without committing the same faults myself?
This morning I read a good answer to that. Oswald Chambers writes:
"The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility-- yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge.... We have judged our fellow men as sinners; if God should judge us like that we would be in hell. God judges us through the marvellous Atonement of Jesus Christ."
There, indignation.
There, bitterness.
There, hatred.
Listen.

Big Picture

Now zooming out a bit... I've been far too introspective/cryptic of late in my posts, I appologize for the past few posts that really seem emo and pathetic.
Not much to write really.
A couple resolves: to not be resolved about much else but my resolves to make some creative/wearable/pretty/hannahesque skirts and start doing yoga.

Go. Stay.

Half of me wants to tell you how I wish I'd never met you.
The other half is begging you to stay.
I don't want to miss you.

Does this sound bitter? Or is it just fact?

It's not all that hard to maintain that which you care about.
So there.

Not a resolution, but a thought.

I need to change it, to untie all of the strings I use to make meaningful connections between a song, a picture, anything, and you.
I'll take those loosed strings and put them in a box somewhere, or tie them into pretty little bows that I can admire for what they are on their own:
a done creation, something which has existed before and still does, but something which no longer grows.

Anything.

NO WORDS. No words.
Just thoughts.
A whole pile of thoughts cut up and scattered on some old chipped tabletop.
I am wondering where the pattern is, but I have a sinking feeling it is cut up with the rest of those shredded thoughts.
So there I am.
Somewhere.

Iced Coffee is much safer.

To start off my day, I successfully did a typical clueless-hannah thing: reaching my arm over a steaming, boiling, hot pot of tea water.
"Hannah, steam is a higher temperature than boiling water..." My mother observes.
Something I'd much rather not learn first hand, but there it is. A burn the size of a golf ball inconveniently situated on my lower left arm (with which I write) is today's lesson which seemed to repeat itself in many different forms throughout the day: an old adage I have retained from my early reading years: "Look before you leap."

Kapow (again)!

12:27 AM, Tuesday, May 5th I think.
With an uncharacteristically decisive tone, I have announced to people that I'm not going to school in the fall.
I am going to either be collecting 5 cent cans out of garbage pails -or some other mode of employment suited to my current degree in nothing- OR, if all goes well, I'll be in Kenya, or thereabouts. Not only that, but I have a plan for the spring! I'm going to apply for the Art History program at BU.
...
Don't check your screen, it's really happening, I am making a decision.
FO REALZ FOLKS.

Painters

You know those things that make you wish you could paint/write/create something as beautiful as them?

Painters by Jewel (one of my all time favorite songs):

Eighty years, an old lady now, sitting on the front porch
Watching the clouds roll by
They remind her of her lover, how he left her, and of times long ago.
When she used to color carelessly painted his portrait
A thousand times-or maybe just his smile-
And she and her canvas would follow him wherever he would go

'Cause I'm a painter and i want to paint you a lovely world
A lovely world.

Oil streaked daisies covered the living room wall
He put water-colored roses in her hair
He said, "Love, I love you, I want to give you mountains, the sunshine, the sunset too
I just want to give you a world as beautiful as you are to me

'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves
A lovely world.

So they sat down and made a drawing of their love, they made it an art to live by
They painted every, passion every home, created every beautiful child
in the winter they were weavers of warmth, in summer they were carpenters of love
They thought blue prints were too sad so they made them yellow

'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves
A lovely world.

Until one day the rain fell as thick as black oil
And in her heart she knew something was wrong
She went running through the orchard screaming,
'No God, don't take him from me!,'
But buy the time she got there, she feared he already had gone
She got to where he lay, water-colored roses in his hands for her
She threw them down screaming, 'Damn you man, don't leave me
with nothing left behind but these cold paintings, these cold portraits to remind me!
He said, 'Love I leave, but only a little, try to understand
I put my soul in this life we created with these four hands
Love, I leave, but only a little this world holds me still
My body may die now, but these paintings are real.'
So many seasons came and many seasons went
and many times she saw her loves face watering the flowers,
talking to the trees and singing to his children
And when the wind blew, she knew he was listening,
and how he seamed to laugh along, and how he seemed to hold her
when she was crying

'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves
A lovely world.

Eighty years, an old lady now, sitting on the front porch
Watching the clouds roll by, they remind her of her lover
how he left her and of times long ago, when she used to color carelessly,
Painted his portrait a thousand times, or maybe just his smile,
and she and her canvas would follow him wherever he would go

Yes, she and her canvas still follow
Because they are painters and they are painting themselves
A lovely world

Browns

I think there is something immortal about Browns Pharmacy, at least it feels that way to me since I've only worked there for five years of its 150-year existence. I feel as though I am standing right at the pulse of the town, when someone strolls in and asks where they may buy a paper, or when someone calls and asks me to tell their sister to buy onions when she comes in. Sometimes I think I could stay there always, looking out the big arched window at the old folks walking by, with Glenn Miller happily playing around me. I never get tired of telling people it's the oldest store in New York (even though I'm not sure that's true.). I never get tired of telling the old stories about the various crazy people we've seen throughout the years. Somehow, the simple and sometimes even ugly of Deposit becomes so beautiful there. I love hearing the old ladies talking about how they play pinochle with their friends, or Mrs. K. telling me she saw my name in the paper for the president's list and how she said to her husband, "Lee, that's our Hannah!"... "we claimed you."
I think my family somehow does belong to the people of Deposit in a different way than most people belong. And they belong to us. We belong first out of necessity, but also out of love and a knowledge that a small town can only be understood by those with eyes open and humble enough to see the roots under our feet.