An uber update...

I quite literally haven't posted to ANY of these sites in... oh a month or so. I've been busy, and journalling in real life, and posting on my secret blog. intrigued? don't bother, i'm copying everything to here...

Saturday, January 31, 2009

they sit across the room from me, her legs draped over his, her foot occasionally bouncing. His arm behind her, ever so gently touching her lower back where the red tank top has ridden up to expose her skin, a common occurence of her shirts. They communicate not so much with words but by staring into each other's eyes. Expressing and exposing the truth that lies between them in an honest moment. She wipes away the tear that escapes from her eye. There is a long moment of stillness. And she touches the side of his face with the back of her hand. The tension rises between them to an intensity so strong that it can not be handled any more. He pushes her legs off of his, and they rearrange themselves in a minute. The now sit facing each other. Both with their legs curled up onto the couch, hers folded neatly beneath her, her arms crossed across her stomach. He with his arms pulling his legs up to his chest. They are defensive, holding in and together what they don't want to expose between them. But now the unexposed can be expressed, they talk in muted whispers that my music drowns out, which I am glad for. It is not my place. Not as friend, not as another presence in the living room, and not as someone who so desperately wants to fulfil that role in one of their lives. This is happening right now. For the record.

Monday, January 26, 2009

we live in a beautiful world. I am trying to accept all things that are i stumbled across a blog, and she was writing about the beauty of the world, and cold play's Don't Panic was playing. "we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do, we live in a beautiful world" and the last line of her blog was "i am trying to accept all things that are. i feel inspired. I feel the need / desire / intense urge to accept all things that are. I am. and I accept that. I accept that I am depressed. that I am me. that i look what what i do. I am accepting things that are. i'm sick of wasting time waiting around for me to get better. i am. i am better. i am depressed. i am what i am. and i accept that. because the world is beautiful. and i am beautiful. and there is so much beauty in everything around me. i am trying to accept all things that are. i am trying to accept all things that are. i am trying to accept all things that are. thank you random blogger. <3

Friday, January 23, 2009

2 by 2 two hours of sleep two cups of coffee and a little bit crazy = this. me. i stayed up until 6am, writing program code for my comp sci class and writing for me. I keep saying that I'll turn one of those nights into a play. Maybe I actually will. Maybe. There is so much that i'm learning and uncovering and expanding my mind with and revelations and epiphanies and everything; and yet, i'm getting no where fast. I'm running on a hamster wheel at full speed. I'm on this wheel and I know that all around me there is something better, that there is a cage, but beyond that cage there is a room, and a house, and a block, and a neighborhood, and a city, and a state, and a country, and a continent, and a world, and a planet, and a solar system, and a universe. and yet i'm here. stuck in this hamster wheel running as fast as I can in circles. WHY AREN'T I GETTING ANYWHERE!?!? I can't stand not having solutions anymore, i can't stand this endless cycle of thoughts that gets me nowhere, that solves nothing. There are many thoughts that I have that are repetative and redundant. SO MUCH REDUNDANCY. SO MUCH. and yet... for some reason it all must be told. No matter how much you replicate there's something original, every single moment is original. There is this human condition, called life, there is life going on all around me. There is living. There is trouble, and problems, and love, and LIFE in this place. This world is living, breathing. People DO make awkward hand gestures to hide something they were going to do. They DO lean against railings with their back arched and their foot up while their hands rest on the top of the handle of the tool they're using. These moments, these glimpses into life are precious and real and wonderful. Real life happens everyday. And it's SO varied. The words I write are REAL words, i thought of them. I'm transcribing my thoughts to you, not pretending to be another character or anything, just thoughts and words. (are powerful). And my brand of punctuation isn't going to make sense to anyone else out there. And i don't put quotes in quotes, and you keep citing things and i wonder; how much does it matter where it all leads to? Am i doomed to be genius-like and this crazy all the time. I wonder.  It's nap time. Goodnight. I love.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

From my Christian Feminisms journal writting tonight... we have to write in a journal for Christian Fems, responding to the readings etc, mine led me to an epiphany tonight, and I am here sharing it. The part of the readings for today from Feminism & Christianity struck me especially. I have struggled with the idea of literal interpretation of the Bible vs. chucking the whole thing out the window for a long time. There are so many things that people quote directly and condemn different actions, or lifestyles, or people groups, or anything really. Given the amount of text in the bible, I'm pretty sure that you could take it and pick and choose things to support ANY position on an issue. Before I had read the chapter in Feminism & Christianity, as I was reading the passages about treatment of women, my mind was already being critical of how to interpret the text. Paul basically says at one point "God didn't actually tell me this, but he made me wise, and my wisdom has brought me to the conclusion that…" I wondered what to think of that, Paul himself saying, "Well, this isn't really God's word, but I bet he'd agree with me!" just seems ridiculous to me. The simple way to put this is that I agree almost entirely with the chapter in Feminism & Christianity. I found myself highlighting like crazy throughout the chapter and thinking, "This is a great, concise way to state how I really feel about it!". I was excited, especially in a climate like Hope's where the Bible is typically taken almost at face value, to hear from someone else that it gets affected SO much by the cultural climate and the nature of creating a canon. We learned last semester in Western World Lit about the canon of western literature and how it evolved and formed, what the process is of literature getting reproduced and saved for generations. Part of that dealt with biblical texts, especially the Gnostic gospels. Those present quite a problem with the validity of the biblical canon. What about these gospels that were made around the same time, perhaps even closer to Jesus' lifetime? Someone, a roman government official, has decided that they aren't an accurate representation and so one person decides to throw out part of what would be considered God's word. Those decisions hardly seem fair or accurate to me. As a relatively liberal person and yet a believer in God, though not necessarily of— I was writing that, but I had a religious epiphany mid-sentence, so I'm going to change lanes, kind of. This comes from several places and experiences from an extended time frame and so it might take some explaining, and if you want to skip ahead and get to the point, I really wouldn't blame you. I stopped classifying / defining myself as a Christian last April when I realized that I didn't believe in the exclusivity of Christ. I believe that there are many other ways to reach God and they are just as right and valid as my way of reaching God through Christ had been. But then I kind of hit this spiritual dry spell because in accepting all other forms of reaching God I had rejected the way I knew how to get there. I didn't like that being saved by Jesus was the only way, and so I pushed it away. I thought that my way was right and logical and so I left it at that, and was content with the replacement of true spiritual fulfillment with logic and acceptance. At times I felt the presence of God strongly in my life, and at other times I felt like I had, by broadening my view of God put it in such a huge idea that it was no longer attainable. In a way, I thought that because I was aware of the vastness of God and man's attempt to understand God by compartmentalizing Divinity into religions, I was beyond that need to compartmentalize, and my knowledge of this vast God was enough. It wasn't. I needed something close, something intimate. I no longer had a relationship with my all-religion-encompassing-God. Sometimes this bothered me more than others. Two conversations with friends, and now my newly realized understanding of the bible have come to culminate in a new understanding of what Jesus means to me. Last fall I had a minor faith crisis in which I doubted my broad acceptance view point. What if I was wrong? I thought. What if I do need Jesus, and my lack of commitment to him is causing this discontented spirituality? I began talking to my friend Matt, who is by all accounts the most biblically devoted person I know. He is also very intelligent, and deliberate about his choice of words, which makes conversations with him frustrating sometimes. After a very long conversation (they always are), Matt and I settled on the fact that even if Jesus isn't necessarily the only way to God, his stories and parables are still very valuable lessons to live by. His example, and in my opinion, purpose in the stories, is to provide an example of how to be one with God, of how to live your life in harmony with God. I accepted this. But it still didn't make me a Christian. I still didn't believe that Jesus' death and resurrection saved me from all of my sins and that was my ticket to heaven. Just a few days ago I had a conversation with one of my housemates who has struggled with Christianity and biblical interpretations as well, especially being a gay Christian. She had decided that because she grew up in the context of Christianity it was perfectly reasonable for her to, while still accepting the validity of other religions, experience God through the constructs of Christianity. She had reconciled the exclusivity of Christ and the broader spectrum of her convictions. I hadn't reconciled it, because it still seemed as though to follow Christ I had to believe that he died for my sins and to save me, and that meant that only he had, and that I had to in some way reject other religions validity. It didn't add up in my head, it couldn't be reconciled, and I was jealous of my friend for her ability to figure it out and accept Christianity as her way of reaching God. After reading more about the literal interpretation of the bible, and the way that so many factors must be taken into consideration when interpreting the text, it has finally been reconciled in my mind. I had already accepted that some parts of the bible were open to interpretation and had to be considered in a cultural context, but the fundamental Christian belief that Jesus died as our savior seemed too direct to be up for interpretation, and for most Christians it is. I however, think that just like the story of Jesus' death may be considered as a myth or a general representation of what happened, rather than a literal record of the events. Part of my conversation with Matt resulted in the idea that we are all Jesus. That in living like him we become like him, and that in the terminology of the bible we, like Christ, are all children of God. The parallels made sense, and I now think that Jesus was sent or was part of this intricate plan because he is the shining example of what we are to be like. Or at least for some of us he is. Others think that Mohommad figured it out, or that they can learn from the example of other animals, or that they can be one with God by experiencing nature. I can be one with God by living like the Jesus that the bible represents, Jesus was an important part of the plan because of the way he affected so many people. The Jews still believe that their example is coming, and there probably will be another example. God gives us many chances and different ways to interact with him. If I can do that by following the example of Jesus from the bible then that's how I will. Because of the interpretation and complexity of the bible I can't possibly expect the account of Jesus being the way to God to be 100% factual, correct, or perfect. I can choose to reinterpret that aspect of the bible for myself and not necessarily come to the conclusion that Jesus is the only way, but rather that love is (which is what I am likely to conclude). The point is: I can call myself a Christian, because I can be a follower of Christ without negating the validity of other religions. The story of Jesus isn't 100% factual or represented wholly by the bible, and I recognize that. Thanks for bearing with all that, and thank for playing an important part in this new discovery. At some point I will probably rewrite this is a way that makes more sense / explains more fully.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

hmm. when you google search images of depression it's mostly pictures of people sitting with their knees pulled up to their faces, and their head in their hands and they're all kind of the same. I wonder if that's the universal body language for 'depressed'. And if it is, have I been doing it a lot more recently? I feel like the head in hands thing might be true; or at least scrunching up my hair on either side of my head in frustration. I've been doing that.     it's a process. it takes time. put your feelings on a shelf sometimes when you have to get things done. it takes too long. i can't ignore them when i need to; and i can't figure them out when i do have time. this is hard. this takes effort. it's funny how frequently he uses the same phrases that have some sort of significance in my life; like ruminate and spiral. I explained dots and lines to him. He asked me when i came up with it; whether it was a single moment or a culmination of things, I couldn't remember. I don't remember where it came from. I slept from 6pm to 12am tonight. And now I'm up... and not sleeping. And that's not any good at all I think. Because I have classes and things to do tomorrow.    To do list: { } read christian fem stuff { } deposit money in the bank { } sleep { } get laundry done (because then i'll at least look cute tomorrow) { } read i bet ten bucks i don't do my reading for Christian fem, i mean... i should really. but a) the prof won't be there tomorrow, and b) we're spending an hour watching the video of the play that i wrote / directed / was in. Sooo. I think i'll have plenty to discuss. I have playwriting tomorrow which I'm excited about. I <3 playwriting.

Friday, January 09, 2009

straight boys where you at? i'm a boyfriend kleptomaniac. .not really. my friend Amanda spent the night wednesday night and she is amazing. She's a first year costume design grad student at U of I and it's sad that we didn't go to my college for long together; because we would totally be best friends. As would my friend Elizabeth. But alas, we are friends now from far away, and I get to see her when she is in town because LUCKILY her home isn't too far from here.   i <3 jeffree star. amanda introduced him to me and i think he's wonderful. i also love this new genre that is now on my computer (amanda is my ultimate source for music btw) that is indietronica. like... 3OH!3 's punkb*tch. good music.   in other news: it's super snowy and wonderful here. The roads are bad; i'd hate to be driving, but the ground is all covered in white. The jeep just plowed the sidewalk. The UPS truck drove by. The street is covered in snow and I enjoy the snow that clings to the pine trees and the not pine trees outside. It makes everything so pretty. It's a blanket that covers all the flaws of the world. I love it. I've been feeling super cute lately. I've seriously gotten innumberable compliments on my hair since being back; it's not even that spectacular but everyone is in love with it. The color and the cut and the curl. Because I'm good at C-hair. Also i've been wearing lots of dangly like earings and those are good. and my nails are bright yellow and having the right color nails honestly makes my whole week. I sound super girly girl right now; but that's ok. sometimes i am. i've got an appointment with Rick (counselor man) next wednesday. I'm looking forward to it as of now. Things are good; i'm horribly optimistic these days. Yesterday I was with four friends, three of them were incredibly bitter about boys and i wasn't being bitter at all, and I seriously felt like the world has been turned up side down or something. I'm in a good place with... almost everything. I'm eating healthier (although the last few days have been rocky [i made these delicious cream cheese burrito things] and my roomie has some delic chocolate).   i read that instead of sleeping last night. the ones about fathers dying made me want to cry. but i didn't. i asked my friend; why is something that's so essentially part of life so hard? It doesn't add up. But... i don't want an answer. It's not supposed to make sense. And maybe it never will. things make sense currently. that's what i strive for. things making sense; that's when i'm content; when things add up. when life is ok. things make sense when i'm optimistic. when i'm able to tell everyone who asks that i'm fantastic and not be lying. i'm excited that it's true right now. i had a coffee date with my mum this morning. that was nice. i also slept a lot. and drew and wrote a thing. i'll probably post it when my notebook isn't all the way upstairs. other then that... i'm sad that it's about to be the weekend and thus everyone will seem to disappear while there aren't classes and it's too cold to go out and do things randomly. everything is precise when it's this cold. no one goes anywhere unplanned. it's too cold for that. i wish it wasn't. i could use some spontaneity.   i want socialization; yet i'm making decisions that avoid it. i'm incongruent.

That pretty much explains January. <3

Peace Love and Happiness,
Rachel Gabrielle

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