It's a rainy day outside, and I'm sitting on an old couch in my living room--a treat to be at home, to smell familiar smells, hear familiar sounds, anticipate love and comfort without admitting to my sometimes overwhelming need of them--in pain because I've got two huge canker sores in my mouth. While it is fun to tell people I've the herpes complex virus (the horror!), each word becomes harder to say, each bite of food a little harder to take. Per my father's advice, then, I've soaked some cotton in a saturated salt-water/baking soda solution and stuck it in my mouth. And though the initial sting of sodium chloride against open wound is excruciating, I'm reconciled to some sort of "ends justify the means" mentality, aware that whatever ungodly pain I'm subjecting myself to is, indeed, for the best, Nicole, so suck it up. Any discomfort now will end in renewed health and vigor, and I'll be rewarded for withstanding the aching.

I don't know if I want to believe that, but I also don't know any other way. Is it better to just "suffer through," life feigning hope? or to make preemptive judgments and anticipate failure/pain and pull out before life starts to hurt? I wish I wasn't as afraid of taking risks. I wish I was more willing to let things progress naturally rather than take them into my oft incompetent and far-too-small hands...are the ends worth the byproducts?

Word of the summer: wait. Just...wait.


But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:25, NIV)

something different

This song, Houses in the Fields by John Gorka, has become a new favorite. It's simple enough, but I do fear its truth. And consequence.

"It's a sign I'm getting on in years when nothing new is welcome to these eyes and ears."

Song of the Barren Orange Tree

I was recently given Federico García Lorca's Collected Poems, and apart from the initial elation of returning to one of my favorite poets from the days when all that dearly I loved was Spanish-based, I discovered again that its oft-intractible medium speaks so often what I cannot.

In this world of shadow and settling, of consolation and complacency, of comfort and cage, we only see ourselves in mirrors and through the eyes of others. How, then, do we know what we are? how we are? how we are measured?

Followed incessantly and necessarily (or so it would seem) by shadow. Reflected always in mirrors. Always in terms of.

So Lorca would say here. Similarly a restless soul, I share his desperation. May we all. And may we all be fruitful, uncopied dreamers.



Song of the Barren Orange Tree

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?
Day turns round and round me.
And night copies me
in all her stars.

Let me live unmirrored.
And then let me dream
that ants and thistledown
are my leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.
Cut down my shadow.
Deliver me from the torment
of bearing no fruit.


[Federico García Lorca]

photo shoot!!

Some of my favorite photos from my floor's end-of-year shoot.

Thanks to the brilliant Scot Huber for his keen eye and patient spirit. Hire him!!

(Ask me about this one.)

the world is full of magic

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful,
inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. [Thomas Dekker]


Walking through the woods this morning I was reminded of a line from the Disney movie Brother Bear (be advised this a judgment-free zone!) in which an old bear narrates: the world is full of magic. Small things become big. Winter turns to spring. One thing always changes into another.