the four winds

Today starts a torrent of travel for the women of the Sixth Street House.

Michelle is the first to go. She's leaves for Europe today and will be back on June 2nd. Christina is next. This weekend she's going to the Cochella music festival, but her real trip starts next Friday, when she'll be winging off to the south of France to attend the Cannes Film Festival. In a moment of airport serendipity she arrives back on the 18th to LAX terminal 5 at precisely the time I have to get there to head to Toronto early the morning of the 19th.

My trips this summer and shortest and most sporadic. Toronto is for work and play and for seeing family I haven't seen in about five years. I get back the 22nd, and wait until my next confirmed trip which is Denver in late June. There's still a chance that a trip to New Zealand is in the works sometime between those two prexisting trips.

Elizabeth is last and longest. She's leaving for a seven-week stint in Europe and Thailand and will be gone from late June to early August.

Last night was the last time the four of us will be in the same room together until that time. It's crazy! My dad thinks it's a sure sign of the end times, but hey if God's gonna end the world soon, I think seeing it all come unraveled from an airplane window would be a top way to go, don't you?

Big, isn't it?

Los Angeles by night.

empathy

Weight on and off shoulders. She lay in bed, computer on lap, typing away. She works the kinks out of her neck as pain radiates from her shoulder blades. Tension, deadlines. Emotional stress of feeling like she must tend to everyone else’s needs while neglecting her own. She feels guilty when she thinks of herself, like everything hangs in a precarious balance that will all come crashing down if she makes even one misstep. Friends in transition, trouble, scared or hurting -- deep and dark emotional scars and great physical pain. She picks all of these up in a day, a week, in a quiet phone call or over dinner and coffee. Legs tired, eyes tired. She feels like a wool sweater that’s been put in the dryer, like there’s too much of her to fit in her body, and it needs to be stretched out -- like on the rack, pulled to breaking, a taffy pull.


Maybe she’s just dehydrated, drink of water. Better...

She sits and remembers the time she was twelve, spying on a private moment, a sweet moment -- a couple’s kiss, quickly shared between a pane of glass, then departing. She wonders...did they ever see one another again? Did they really love one another? Was he a jealous type, was he faithful? Did she give herself to another, ripping her heart apart over a dozen nights of casual sex, desperately trying to find love where it did not exist -- a lamb led by wolves to the slaughter?


Wait, that started as a happy memory...

Pursed lips, deep breath. Where did that come from? She had to sit through the indignation of listening to three precious engagement stories over dinner. The hot tears of inadequacy sat behind her eyes, threatening to rupture and spill over if her smile and laughter didn’t hide them well enough. The jealousy, it’s stupid and it’s petty, she knows this. So she really is twelve again, pouting, a tantrum.


Okay, grow up.

Midnight, enough. Her heart pounds in her head, beating against the temples. She sets her alarm, turns off the phone. She feels the tug of an internalized optimism, that tomorrow is capable of being better than today, and dammit, it will be. Smiles and wiggles her toes. Grants her roommate goodnight, takes off her shirt and goes to sleep.

Recently I’ve been neglecting the fact that God is sovereign over all. That it’s he who provides all good and all sorrow, and that I’m supposed to rejoice when either comes, because God’s in control, even though I don’t always understand.

As my roommate Michelle reminded me the other day -- prayers to God and supplications are not meant merely to be a laundry list of things I want him to do for me, but rather a real way of communicating with him. He already knows all my wants and needs -- it’s not about that, it’s about HIM, and all the ways there are to know and understand the love and grace he bestows on all of us as a human race.

If I call on him, he will draw close, if I delight in him, he will give me the desires of my heart -- whoa, that just blows my mind. He wants to be involved -- in ever corner, ever nook and cranny of my life, he wants there to be no darkness, but all light.

Obedience to God isn’t necessarily easy, but it is rewarding. As someone who wandered around in the dark for long enough, I’ve seen in my own life how much better it is to walk in his grace than it ever was doing things my own way. And even pondering the miracle of being taken back, after willfully turning away just highlights the amazingness of who God is and how much he loves me and forgives me. How easily he renders miracles from sin. Tears truly well up in my eyes when I think of this.

Please Lord, help my faith be real. Help me to trust you with every single aspect of life, to inform every single breath. That I not keep any part of me from you, but realize how mightily you will work if I invite you to do it. Amen.



Matthew 10:26-31
“Therefore, do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of then will fall to the ground apart from you Father. But the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”

the new 'do

Short hair! It hasn't been this short since...senior year of college. Actually I did this back in March, but I haven't been uploading on Flickr lately. I'm scowling, by the way, because gas prices are hovering at about $3.00 USD -- sheesh!

"I can move"

Have you ever lived through one of those moments of unintended insensitivity?...

I sit in the newly-discovered Portfolio Coffee House, in Long Beach, drinking matcha green tea, soaking up the new environment, writing.

I get up for a cup of water and find the pitcher, being guarded by an elderly man in large glasses and an even larger cap, the kind I saw old wheat farmers wear while riding their John Deeres as a kid.

I pick up a cup and say “excuse me” to the man, and proceed to reach past him. Either due to his age, or perhaps his waking-dream state, he doesn’t hear me, and doesn’t move. No big deal, I can work around him.

As I grab the pitcher, he finally notices me and says “I can move.” I smile a response and say “oh, it’s okay.”

Too late. I see the insult written on his face.

“I can move” he says again. “I’m still capable of movement.”

I pour the water and feel my throat tighten. I taste the all-too-familiar bile of misunderstanding hit the roof of my mouth. “What the hell?” I think, “some days I can’t say anything right.”

He moves to the other end of the bar, indignant. I walk past him to return to my seat and I feel like crying.

Screaming even. Or to run away to safety -- my car or my bed, under the covers, free to avoid the world.

What to do? There’s no rewind button...

Speak words of reassurance to someone I don’t know from, well, Adam? Try to cure the offenses incurred by an old man who’s probably, and sadly, led a bitter existence?

Or maybe all I can do -- go back to my computer and write it out. Forgive myself and say a quick prayer for the man now outside, crossing the street.

Sriracha Sweetness

Cold rice, sweet and sticky.
Punctuated with the fiery hotness of the Sriracha sauce.
A slow burn with brief respites of a cool air, the tongue is wrestling with the pleasure in this pain.
Bright red on crisp white.
Blood washed by snow.
Sin or salvation?
Chopsticks can’t quite grasp...

Internet Transience

My eyes are wilting in the fluorescent glare of Kinko's right now.

It's been like this for a few weeks now, since I moved. Friends' houses, internet cafes, a scant ten minutes to do what I like to take an hour doing...

The DSL should be back up soon -- so they say.


In other news -- holy refund, Batman! I tried to do my taxes last week with the Smiths' Turbotax program. For whatever reason, it wouldn't let me option a standard deduction, and because of some glitch in the program, apparently I have a $234,000 deduction! Pretty funny, considering my income is about $100,000 less than that...

I'm taking the 1040EZ form and doing it the old-fashioned way, looks like.

“Lyrics spoken and not sung lose something in translation.”

She writes this down and looks at it. Scratches it out and writes it again, this time in cursive.

She writes her name, then in cursive, then in big bubble letters.

Then different last names -- of guy friends, famous men. Wrinkles her nose, scratches those out.

Her signature soon covers the entire page. A Rorschach test -- what do you see here?

Vanity.

She turns the page over and puts her pen down. Leans forward on her elbows and stares out the window, bites her bottom lip.

Lost in thought.

A jingle of keys.

“Sorry I’m late.”

She smells his cologne before she sees him.

“It’s alright.”

He leans over, a kiss on the cheek.

“What’s that?”

She shrugs, a piece of hair brushes down her face.

“Just doodles.”

She crumples the page.

He takes the paper and smooths it out.

“Who’s Cara Clooney?”

Pink face.

“No one.”

She snatches the paper from him and recrumples it. She tosses it at his head, bounces off.

“Hey, recycle at least.”

He winks and smiles -- the smile that furrows his brow and wrinkles his forehead, verging on laughter.

She loves this smile.


***


“I want to know you at 20.”

She turns on the burner and pours oil into the pan. Swirls it around.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I would have loved to know the 20-year-old you.”

He pauses mid-chop. Shakes his head.

“No you wouldn’t have.”

“Says who?”

A chortle.

He grabs another onion, drops the peels on the floor.

“Hell, I didn’t want to know me at 20.”

“You turned out decent.”

“Hmm...that’s still up for debate.”

She points a wooden spoon at her chest.

“Would I have liked you?”

“Did you like stupid jerks who thought they knew everything?”

“I do now.”

The truth in the joke stings.

“I guess we would have gotten along famously, then.”

She slides her arm around his back and gives him a squeeze, her hair brushing his neck.

He loves this squeeze.

A few nights ago I had a discussion with my roommate Elizabeth. It was one of those conversations that starts somewhere -- Victoria’s Secret underwear, actually -- and ends up somewhere else.

We ended up talking about culture and specifically American culture -- how its puritanical roots have really wrecked havoc on society. How the social taboos of sex and drinking and gambling have contributed to people having issues with them. Issues that I don’t think are so pervasive in other countries or cultures where these things are out in the open -- sensuality is such a part of Latin American and Scandanavian cultures, and there you see fewer instances of eating disorders and body image issues. Alcoholism is less prevelent in France and Ireland, countries that are reknowned for their drinking.

And this isn’t say each culture doesn’t have it’s share of issues. But it got me thinking about what an impact media and entertainment have on the culture. How, if the focus of the news reported or the movies made or books publish could be shifted by just a few degrees -- if the focus could be on the good things people are doing for each other, if the stories told could be of greater truths. Instead, all we have is sensationalism and sex and violence. Soon, that becomes normal, it becomes what people crave.

And that’s human nature, isn’t it -- the lowest common denominator. How do you raise the low brow? I guess you have to pluck a little -- which sounds like a good metaphor, if I knew what that meant.

But seriously, I guess that’s the “big” reason why I want to be involved in telling stories and make films -- to elevate the culture, or to try at least. To counter the negative and replace is with things that provide positive impact, things that edify and illuminate the good of the human condition.

bullet biting

I had a destiny sealing (or is it stealing?) moment the other day.

At the passport office the other day -- I had fogotten to fill in the "occupation" space on the form.

I looked at the woman in front of me and her expectant face -- blurted out the first thing that popped into my head...

"Writer."


Well, "personal care attendent" was too long to fit in the box, anyway.

On a letter from the Penninsula Hotel

“thanks for the assistance, best wishes”

Scott Hicks.

It’s not everyday that you get a thank you note hand-written by the man who launched Geoffrey Rush’s career (Scott Hicks is the director of SHINE, fyi).

But why, Sandra? What did you do for Mr. Hicks?

Well, one of my roommates was his assistant for four years. He’s closing up shop here in America, so last week I helped my roommate reorganize his storage unit. Actually, really I all did was build two shelving units, picked up lunch, and dumped a lot of trash.

(an aside) The note on the check was for “casual employment,” which I thought was funny.

Anyway, so Mr. Hicks saw his newly cleaned 5x10 today and was dually impressed.

His note made my day (in part). I don’t know what it is about a hand-written note or letter -- it’s something I’d like to get into doing more of, even simply as a way to get myself to be writing more than I am now (plus that whole communication business).

If you’d like to participate with me in a little pen-paling campaign, email me your address, and I promise (quick, maybe) response via real live U.S. Mail.

What say you, oh faithful audience of a few?

A Love Offensive

If you didn't know the Pope died on Saturday, you've been living under a rock. Despite the media saturation, it was refreshing to hear them go on about all the GOOD the Pope did, instead of the usual focus on death and destruction. The Pope had this idea, see. This idea about love. He understood it -- and that's what his life was centered around. Being a living reflection of God's love to all people. And boy-howdy, did it have an impact. It's such a powerful thing, this love. It's the kind of life to aspire to, truly.

I think Paul said it best with this passage...

I Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, if profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prohesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Daylight Savings

Don't forget to set your clocks forward tonight.

That's all I have to say.

Actually, no it's not...


To those of you who read this thing regularly -- whether I've known you for 10 years or barely at all -- you guys are awesome.

Okay, now that's all.

:)