musings

how about a nice narrative?

today was a lovely spring day spent rolling in the grass. I smell like sweat, grass, and mud. And I look horrid, clad in my 1997 children's choir shirt that has aqua-blue paint stains on the left sleeve from that day karah and I painted my bedroom.

Epiphany of the day= running in the woods is an activity that should be done more. It's a solitary activity in which you don't feel alone, paradoxically. I don't, at least. I'm away from the crowds, the deadlines, the blinking digitial clock on my wardrobe top...and all sense of time and place kind of floats away as I let my mind wander, loosening the fetters. And it hurts...my chest hurts and my shins ache, but I just keep running...half-talking to myself, half-talking to God.

Some of my most vivid memories from high school stem from long runs in the woods. They are timeless. They are free from anxiety about the past, present, or future. Just me and the weathered trail, maybe some running buddies, but inevitably I am alone with the trees and the ground and the crickets. It wasn't even a particularly beautiful park. But that's what I remember most vividly...the experience of running in the woods.

I feel like I'm wasting my energy, my youthful physique (ha!). Eating, Exercising, my body image and the like...gosh, it's been such a struggle since senior year. freshmen 15 and then some, that's for sure. I just want to run again...to not worry about how I look or how far I've run or how many calories I've expended. I just want to get that release again. But it's so darn hard working up to it...every day is like day 1. I never really get past that initial run.

So I doubt I will ever be able to reclaim that vigor I once had. I'm too jaded. I'm also too fat. I'm also more content with life, with inconsitency, with myself. Running used to be an escape from the unknown. I don't want it to be an escape. I just want it.

But I still doubt I'll ever be able to do it. And I guess I have to be okay with that.

On a different note, the semester is almost over. Pretty soon I will be in Florida with RUF, then at Yale with my big sister, then St. Louis for a couple of weeks, and then Chicago for the remainder of the summer with Jules. I don't really want to think about the summer. I don't want to have any preconceived, romantic notions about what it should be, since what it will be is always drastically different (and usually, hopefully better). I can still have goals/desires, though. I guess they are as follows:

• that I can finish the school year with some sense of peace. It all will end so darn quickly...and I want to savour the last two weeks with some of my best friends who will be leaving, venturing out into the Big World next fall. I want to run in the woods (we've already established this), and I want to just BE. Just be with friends, with my roomie, with my church.
• summer...wow, that I can slow down and enjoy each moment for what it is. That I can stop comparing every second of every day to this unrealistic, unattainable ideal that I carry heavily in my head.
  
• That I can approach God with regularity and spontaneity (ah, because I still maintain that the former is important). I want growth in God to be a goal...it's a nagging desire I've had brewing inside of me this past month, but I haven't gotten to really devote myself to prayer/fellowship/study of Scripture the way I'd like to (maybe this is another one of those unattainable ideals). Granted, I know it is God who grows me, not myself, but what can I do to speed up the process? I say that with a hint of sincerity. :)
• That I can put serious "photo" thinking aside...that ever-present anxiety about the future, about doing all that I can be doing to hone my skills and crap like that. there is more to life than my career, there is more to life than work...and I desperately want to grasp that. It's come in glimmers the past two years. And again, maybe since perfectionism is my devil, this is another unrealistic ideal...i can never be anxiety-free. But as far as my focus goes, I don't want to be stressing out about photo.
  
• as for smaller things...I'd like to sing more. Outside of my car, that is. I'd like to sketch landscapes. I'd also like to play the guitar. Maybe my sister will lend me hers, which was a Christmas present she never really used. I'd like to be more of a hippie. Maybe get my nose pierced and eat granola.

Oh, and of course, I'd like to write more. And take pretty pictures of nature and put them up on this blog. Because I haven't done that in (gasp) over six months.