Jenna tagged me last week, so here is my "Eights" meme in lieu of a regular post:

8 things I'm looking forward to:
-Someday when I can enjoy cooking again.
-Someday when I live in my own place again.
-Finishing the Spurgeon project
-visiting friends this summer
-drinking french press with Sarah tomorrow morning
-summer: Mallard's Ice cream
-summer: Sunday Celtic night at Skylarks
-summer: Fairhaven outdoor theater

8 Things I Did Yesterday
-Took my favorite road home from work. I'm so happy my favorite road includes purple-tassled grasses and the sight of bald Eagles.
-read part of Stephen King's On Writing, courtesy of Sarah
-nearly cried in front of a friend for no apparent reason. It scared her.
-Watched a bit of Sense and Sensibility while cleaning my room
-Went imaginary-house shopping
-Went on a nice long walk at sunset
-Researched some more Spurgeon books at work...they turned out to be duplicates of duplicates.
-tried the new Pomegranate Green tea from The Spice Hut. Yum!

8 Things I Wish I Could Do
-Travel the world
-Write as much poetry when I'm happy as when I'm not
-Be free from my fears
-Design cool things on the computer...like this blog! I'm dyslexic when it comes to design sans pencil.
-Never have to sleep. It steals too much free time. Or else sleep all the time. (I love sleep).
-Create a design/paint/writing studio with friends.
-Hear what my dog is thinking. Actually, that would be pretty boring, most likely. Although he was just looking at me very intelligently...Oh, he just wanted me to throw his ball. Ok.
-Know "what might have been" in a couple of situations.

8 shows I watch:
-Pushing Daisies (Canceled! Boo!)
-Chuck
-American Idol or, family sing-along time.
-Black Books (BBC)
-The Office
-Extras (HBO)
-NCIS (Christy hooked me)
-I really want to be a LOST-y, but I've never seen an episode.

Success & Mess

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940)

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
T. S. Eliot

I have been recently thinking about success because I was asked what it meant. Generally it’s easy to pretend that you just know what a word means from context as you have a vague idea based on the other words that surround that one (the ability to discern meaning from context alone will earn you an A in most public high school English classes.) Context is everything to meaning in some senses; however, when asked a direct question: “What does it mean to be successful?” I drew a complete blank.

I like the Eliot quote above because it assumes that we have made a mess of things, and that is reassuring. I don’t know about everyone else, but when someone else admits that they’ve made messes of things, it makes me feel better about my own messes. Look at this (insert very successful person)! They’ve made messes and yet they have made something beautiful of life, too! It’s hopeful, you see. It’s encouraging to think that despite the mess, we can also make something of the mess we have made.

There are a few other people who have recently encouraged me in various ways that there is potential that can come out of mess:

Luz Bonita, my precious friend, who was laid off and then had the courage to discover it was only an opportunity for a beautiful, terrifying leap into creative independence.

StuffChristiansLike.net’s Jon Acuff, who assumes that the Christian life is messy, too. He's also discovered that Satire is a calling for him, which I think is pretty cool.

Julie Lee, a folk musician and junkyard artist.

One Friday Friday

One pair of shoes Thursday

There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.
George Eliot (1819 - 1880)

I’m going frivolous after yesterday’s artsy bit and talking about one of my favorite things at the moment--my birthday present-- Quebec boots in Espresso by Palladium… In fact, between the Palladium boots and the Palladium ballet flats, I hardly wear any other shoes anymore.

Because I love them. PS, look closely at the top and you’ll catch a glimpse of the pretty flowers printed on the suede inside. They make me happy on these cold rainy days!

One Work of Art Wednesday

If I could own only one work of art…hm, any work of art? I’m tempted to choose a huge installation (one that I could live in...Oh! I know…I would choose San Marco in Florence, the museum that houses the murals by Fra Angelico. ), but I’ll restrict it to a smaller object. This one is so tough, I’m even going to restrict it to more modern-day paintings.

I can narrow it down to two, at least, two of my favorite redemptive artists:

#1: Everlasting Fire by Erica Grimm-Vance and #2: Columbine Flowers by Makoto Fujimura

One Moment back Tuesday--Monday's post on Tuesday

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.
H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)

This one’s tough. I’m deliberately not making a regret-based decision (i.e., one-time-I-came-up-with-the-perfect-response-to-that-question/action/comment-2-days-later). There are plenty of those, but I’m going to pick a good moment. College graduation? Getting serenaded by an Italian waiter on my birthday with a concertina? Jumping on the stupid couch and singing Jingle Bells along with the Yule Log after thanksgiving dinner? Nachos on the terrace above Ghirardelli square? Satellite watching on the hill in the park? Walking into an apartment in Rio Maggiore after having been stranded in the freezing rain and lightning storm for over an hour? The Hot Chocolate and Cookies Moment? The Apple Day? The giant organic salad and conversation on religion in Berkeley? The “make your own fun” conversation? The Mat Kearney concert worship moment? Laughing myself breathless with a good friend and a couple of serendipitous hats? I’ve had a lot of good moments. But the one that keeps coming back to me now is one that happened a long, long time ago, the 2^nd time I met a girl named Corrie Anne Alyssa.

The thing I like about Corrie (well, there are lots of things, actually) is that rather than play Frisbee (although she loves it) or shop in the college bookstore (although she has a nose for finding the most singular items while shopping), one day at camp she wanted to just hang out with me. And we both agreed that the undeniably best place to just hang out was the civil-war-era cemetery. The cemetery is a walled-in hilltop spot in the middle of the campus. Filled with broken and sunken headstones, with barely readable inscriptions, Metal-work crosses and ancient lilac trees, it’s the perfect place for manufacturing chills while discussing L.M. Montgomery’s ghost stories, the perfect place for talking about light and shadows, death and sunshine, real and ghostly, books, poetry, and the soul. I do believe that moment is the one that sort of made us friends for life.

This time around, that’s the moment I would pick. Yup. It’s a good one.

Got a good moment you’d like back?

If I could only have one...Week

This was a journaling assignment I used to like to give to my students when I taught English. We are so used to variety in our culture, that I always thought it was good to think about limitation. I used it as a segue into talking about word choice in writing. One student wrote about if he could only have one song on his ipod (“Green Onions” by Booker T. and the MG’s—a masterful choice.). Some of the other topics I remember:

If I could only wear one pair of shoes (Chuck Taylor All-Stars)

If I could only see one person’s face (edited to protect identity—I wouldn’t want a high-school crush recorded on the internet, either)

If I could only eat one thing all the time (In’n’out Burger)

If I could only shop at one store (Wal-mart)

The Wal-mart one was obviously practical, but it was great fun to see what they could come up with. I think I’ll try it myself.