Ready, Ready to run

So there's this little bumblebee in my chests that is trying to convince me to run. or fly, I suppose. 

It's not that I don't think I should be here. And It's not like I don't like my classes--I do; all except for photography right now. 

I just... I don't know. I want something different. Oh-- I'm sounding like Stef last semester. 

ruh-roh. 

This blog's name is such a misnomer. Again, I apologize for my down lifting messages. 

Sylva was looking through my photos on facebook and she said, "It seems like you were happier in high school. Is that true?" And that made me pause. I really don't know. Some of highschool honestly was not fun. Actually, most of it wasn't. I felt like I was trying to get through-- all the time. And when I look back at college, so far, I feel the general attitude is "learning" I really have learned a ton about myself and art. But I guess I feel like I'm still looking for those "friends who I'll know the rest of my life." I know I've met some, but there's another part of me that feels like I haven't. 

I think I better stop writing, before this turns into a complaining fest. 

love you all, more than the number of goldfish in the Nixon goldfish pond. 

the miracle of the day

I needed bright sun for my midterm project and I needed it today so I could take photos (I need them before my crit on Tuesday). But when I woke up this morning, it was completely cloudy. So I was praying, praying, praying, that the sun would come out. I needed it to be strong around 1-2:30. So I said to Mary, "I can still ask you for favors!" (because after, and if, that is, I choose to be totally consecrated to Mary, I can't ask her for favors) and I prayed three Hail Marys that the sun would come. Then I had an argument with God about whether He would bring out the sun or not. Either I asked that it be only for the time I needed it, or God said that there would be sun around the time I needed it, but I was still doubting. So I checked the internet and it said around 5 pm it was supposed to clear up a little, but tomorrow is supposed to be completely clear. So I thought, "Ok, I might be able to do it tomorrow."

Then right around 1:30 after I had gone to Mass, the sun came out! It was gorgeous and I was able to take my photos. God and Mary are so good. They are constantly reminding me that they exist, even though I keep doubting.

What I'm feeling

Listen to: Sigur Ros-- Von on www.songza.com/



I feel a mixture of blue and purple, with bits of grey--pretty little dots that are placed by chance rather than patience, and so are perfect.

I feel cirrus clouds. Like little bits of rabbit hair or a sable paint brush massaging my face.

I feel a cat sitting in the sun, having to shift every five minutes to get the light and warmth.

I feel a glass of cold water that sits of the table, undrunken by no one, and then becomes room temperature.

I...I miss you, I suppose. And by that, I miss the company of someone I know. I miss the company of someone who I can connect with, who I don't need to explain things all the time, who just "gets" me, and who I can ask serious questions to. Not just art questions, which are all well and good, but I can ask about if angels have wings and we wouldn't think that is a strange question.

I hope you are reading this. And if you are, you are making me happy.

I just wanted to let you know that you have touched me--I mean, honestly touched me. Do you sometimes feel that you don't connect with people? And then sometimes you feel it. Maybe you didn't feel that with me. But I have with you, and that's why I told you about this blog in the first place.

So, where ever you "yous" are-- in a ship, in Nebraska, at Wash U, in Rapid City, I know you are living out your beautiful brilliant lives. You are all saints in the making. Really. I'm not just saying this. What if in a hundred years future Catholics were saying, "All those saints really all knew each other? That's awesome!" (or whatever expression they will be using in one hundred years.

And so, my lovely friends, I think I shall go, because it is 11:52, and I have some sleep and then work ahead of me.

listening
oh
very
exuberantly,

Leah

"funny little creature"

Sylva called me a "funny little creature" today, and it wasn't a compliment, even though she had a smile on her face as she said it.

Am I a funny creature? or was she just in a bad mood?

I was so excited about theme sequence today, because Jana is "a fan" of my project and she said it would be enough to print out five large photos for my mid term crit.

I was so happy. So often I make things much too difficult.

anyway....

i feel like i haven't had time to update this blog.

anyway, hmmmmmmmmmmm.... i feel like complaining, but I don't have enough time.

and I can't complain tomorrow, because I'm giving up complaining for lent. As well as other things... little habits (or addictions, i tend to call them) that I have that i've been trying to get rid of for some time now.

what are you giving up?

It's not depressing, It's beautiful

Listen to:
Soul meets body; Death Cab for Cutie
Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickerel Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?); Sufjan Stevens

///


“I suppose it doesn’t matter much anymore” she said, as she held the envelope in her hands. “I don’t know how the postal system works in Heaven.”

She decided maybe it was like writing mail to Santa Claus, and so she wrote his name and HEAVEN and c/o St. Peter just for kicks, put on a 43 cent stamp, and put it in the mail.

…

When you die, I will hold on to your shirt, or coat, or deodorant and cry. I will know that I can never get back the you who once put your arms through the sleeves, never smell this deodorant on you. I will keep these as third class relics, and I will know that you are somewhere where you don’t need your old shirt or coat or deodorant. And I will realize that I don’t really need your shirt or coat or deodorant either, but I will hold on to these things because I know that once I stop crying, I will smile when I see them.

Someday the tears will come, someday the tears will stop.

Like they did for your mother, as they did for her mother, and for her mother, and for her mother, and for her mother, her mother, her mother, her mother, her mother, and her mother.

It’s really quite beautiful, no?


Nobody died. Well, they have, but no one close to me for a while now. I’m just thinking about this because of relics and how we hold on to things, and how once a person dies, suddenly everything becomes significant that they touched or used. We can’t hold on to people. They die and become translucent, impossible to hold. So why don’t we freeze time and behold each other for a while?

whoever has ears ought to hear.

album leaf, that is.
(the music group)


Psalm 40:6
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced , ; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.

Psalm 115:6
they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but they cannot smell;

Isaiah 50:5
The Sovereign LORD has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back.

Jeremiah 9:20
Now, O women, hear the word of the LORD; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament.

Matthew 13:15
For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'

Mark 8:18
Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember?

Luke 1:44
As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

Acts 17:20
You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean."

2 Timothy 4:3
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

2 Timothy 4:4
They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

///

I've been thinking about ears and I've had the phrase "whoever has ears ought to hear" stuck in my head for a while.

I feel, especially today, like I was bombarded by thoughts and noise and visual input. It gets so tiring, and I can't help but want sleep. If I could just make everything melt away..

I guess It reminds me of being at a party. It's loud, people are chatting and laughing, and I am on the couch sitting and watching. not listening, because that is the part of my brain that shuts down first when I'm over stimulated.

I like to feel, see, taste, touch, but if there is too much input, I become impermeable.

well, although this music is gorgeous, I my brain needs rest.
Good night.

i often put my wants before my needs.

That's what I said after I used the bathroom in our studio rather than going over to "San Gallo Campus" to work on photography. I have a twenty minute presentation/slide show due tomorrow, and for some reason I still haven't worked on it. I have picked a photographer, which is a good thing. Wendy Ewald. She's is pretty cool. Like Zana Briski, the Born into Brothels director/producer, but there's actually information about her.

Anyway I have so much to tell you, but for some reason I don’t like this keyboard. So typing isn’t nice.

Or maybe I don’t have a lot to say, and that’s the real problem. I guess my mind has been mostly consumed with Theme Sequence recently. I realized today that Kiki Smith and I have much more in common than I bargained for.

Oh, why aren’t you just online right now?

It’s funny. I forget what I have told you, and can’t remember what I haven’t told you. I just hmmm
Let’s see… what do you want to know? I’ve been busy, I suppose. And that makes it difficult to write to you, or post on my blog.

I saw St. Catherine of Siena’s head and thumb yesterday. The church they are in is definitely the poorest church I’ve seen here. It was huge, but just built out of plain bricks. There are shrines in the walls, and they all seem rather tacky. The stained glass in the front is definitely modern (ok, made within the past 60 years) which is interesting.
The whole experience was strange. And I was with my friends, and it was embarrassing. I say embarrassing, because it’s weird to have a head that is mummy-like, more than half a century old and sitting in a glass case. And it’s strange to light candles in front of this head, and a statue of Mary who’s halo is made from twinkle lights. And I willingly associate with these “weird” practices.
But I split from my friends for a few minutes, and knelt in front of the tabernacle, and I experienced, strangely, a sense of authenticity and calling like I haven’t experienced in Italy so far.

And I wish wish wish that you could be here, but maybe it’s better that I’m alone right now.

I’m afraid that that’s because I’m becoming something different, and I don’t know quite yet what that is. I feel like a pool of melted wax, and I don’t really have control of what form it hardens into. Maybe I don’t need to harden. Maybe I can be melted wax my whole life. Able repair broken things. Able to fill in cracks. To mould into any shape. Able to transform and adapt and warm. Able to unclog ears, able to seal letters, to put pretty designs on eggs. To batik fabric, to heal chapped lips.

I think the problem is that I want too much. I’ve been discovering this in my artwork as well. Often I get stuck on an idea, and then it kind of “hurts” to have to change it. If only there was a way to not care. But then I don’t think that would be right either. Maybe my role in life is to care and care, but not care about getting hurt. Maybe I should be malleable wax that can mould onto a surface, and harden, and then crack, and then melt again. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I’m always cracking. Maybe I should suck it up. I want to be happy, but… hm.

I feel like Jo in Little Women right now.

Sorry that all my blog entries are such downers. I really am not sad in Italy. It’s just when I pause to think about things (which happens when I write in this blog) I always end up thinking about, well…you, really. And that turns into homesickness.

I’m sorry.

This day called "Valentines"

I don't think it's just because of Valentines. It's not. But I am thinking about love, and even though I believe that God has a great plan for my life, it's difficult to be patient. It's difficult to keep on searching out, and pouring time and energy into people. Not that I don't enjoy that. I do. But then I get frustrated when things don't work out, or when I put more "heart" into loving a person than they do.

I want to be big.
I want to do big things.
I want to do good things.
I want to love.
I want to be happy.
I want grr.

okay--here's what happened:
I burst into tears when Jana was staring at me. Maybe the pressure, maybe the fact that I felt undervalued.
I was just sitting there, and she was looking at me, expecting me to say something. I couldn't think of anything--at all!--in that moment. All I could think of is: I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here. How can I get out of this situation? and so I just burst into tears.

I actually think it was at the point where I was saying, "I'm afraid that I'll do this work and I'll have no "actual" work for next week." and then I burst into tears.

so...
positive (having a successful presentation of my breakfast for everyone) and negative (feeling bashed up in my meeting with Jana after class) kind of canceled each other out.

yup. that was my day.

1:55

five minutes in the future, it will be 2:00 AM.

I have to wake up for class at... let's see... 7:10? I think that should do the trick.

for some reason I have my host Mamma's voice in my head, "Come si dice in Inglese?" and "wooow."

:)

I love Maria. I also love my brother, Andre, who happens to be leaving on Saturday, and that makes me very sad.

well then, my little penguin, I should get to bed now.

I love all of you. I'm not sure if all of you means only one person though. Because I only know that one person is reading this.

Anyway,
Buona notte.

Leah

crow's feet

I'm drawing all my mothers. And sometimes the drawing doesn't really look like the woman it portrays. But the real purpose is to meditate on the woman I am drawing at the time. And as I draw every laugh line and every crow's feet, I am in awe of how many beautiful, nurturing women I can call a mother figure.

God loves abundantly.

sleep talking

So before I forget, I wanted to tell you this:

This morning (probably around 6 AM) when both Anna and I were sleeping I had a dream in which I was talking to my Mum with some other person. The other person (i don't remember who it was) was telling my Mum something in English, but she didn't understand, so I had to translate it into Italian for her. So I was translating for her, and actually saying it outloud--sleep talking in Italian. Anna heard me and said, "what?" and I woke up and said "Scusa--I was sleep talking."

Suddenly my heart expanded to include my rib cage. It expanded to include the bed and the two people sitting with me. It expanded to roughly the size of this room and smelled like applesauce.

My finger tips are cool and I do not understand why. (I wish it was because I was warming up your hands, but it's not, and cannot be.)

And now my very large heart begins to flutter rapidly.
It cannot be, but it is.

A heart cannot smell like apple sauce, but mine does.

anyway, do you see what I'm saying?

I'm saying that I am a frozen fish.
I'm a peach on the ground.
I am a word scrawled on a wall, without a sentence to be a part of.
I'm a button that needs to be sewn back on a cardigan.
a snowball saved in the freezer.
a miss-matched sock.
a bird raised by squirrels.

It cannot be, but it is.


////

and to go along with this strange, and yet again cryptic post (sorry--it's just that i feel like I can't write out the situation in clearer words partly because this is the internet and partly because in a way these strange metaphors get across the emotion better) is a strange and cryptic (but wonderful) music video.

let's go happy world, for real

so... happy things about today:

In art history I was getting so many answers right (I kind of seemed like a know-it-all, but the other kids should have just spoken up!) that my professoressa said "How do you know all this?" and she was seriously asking me. I said, "I went to Catholic school..." and then she said "also your family?" and I said, "Si." Anyway, I SUPER enjoy art history right now. Learning art history in Florence is the best. Really. Learning from the art pieces and not slides is AMAZING.

We saw a sculpture today made by Michelangelo. It was the sculpture that he wanted to be on top of his grave stone, but it was never finished (or i guess, according to wikipedia he actually destroyed his own sculpture). After Michelangelo died, Vasari persuaded Michelangelo's nephew to give the sculpture to the duke of Florence (because Vasari-- i think this is right--liked the Duke and wanted to impress him. ) So the sculpture was never finished or put on Michelangelo's tomb.

Anyway, the scupture really moved me today. It is one of his three pietas, (piete?) and it is gorgeous. The movement of it, the way it's unfinished and the marks of Michelangelo's chisel are visible, the unfinished expressions on the faces--it makes the sculpture feel even more imortal than if it were completed. It's suspended in time because it will never be "finished" but at the same time is fisnished--it's completely how it is and will be forever. In this way it remeinds me that works in progress are just as valid as "finished works." As a writer and an artist, I often have trouble knowing when something is finished. Teachers will say "there is a certain point where you go beyond finished and it turns into crap, and that's when you know you were finished a while ago" but it's so hard to know when not to go farther.

And as a human being, this is a powerful thing to remember: that we are works in progress, but are just as valid and loveable as if we were "perfected."

and so, today was a happy day.

another happy thing: I developed my first photo! soooooo cool! I'm totally in love with the process of developing, as I knew I would be. Pictures soon to come!

what if.

NOTE: sorry for the unhappy post. i'll try harder tomorrow.


What if there is a thread that runs from my chin to my chest, and every time I think of you that thread turns red like a filament and starts to burn? What if there is a stone wall on my right, and brambles all around me? What if the only option is crawling through the brambles or staying here until I die? What if the sky won't rain? What if the brambles go on for miles and miles? What if there is no deus ex macchina? What if I get too fat eating all that chocolate that I can't even crawl through the brambles? What if the thread (that extends between my chin and my chest) gets tangled or torn when I'm crawling? What if you aren't waiting beyond the brambles? What if instead of crawling through, I just learned to make my home between the wall and the brambles? What if I made my life small just because I didn't want to live larger without you? What if I'm afraid? What if tears don't fix anything? What if I think it will change but it never does?

What if it wasn't supposed to be this way?


There is a thread that runs from my chin to my chest, and every time I think of you that thread turns red like a filament and starts to burn.There is a stone wall on my right, and brambles all around me. The only option is crawling through the brambles or staying here until I die. The sky won't rain. The brambles go on for miles and miles. There is no deus ex macchina. I get too fat eating all that chocolate that I can't even crawl through the brambles. The thread (that extends between my chin and my chest) gets tangled or torn when I'm crawling. You aren't waiting beyond the brambles. Instead of crawling through, I just learned to make my home between the wall and the brambles. I made my life small just because I didn't want to live larger without you. I'm afraid. Tears don't fix anything. I think it will change but it never does.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

I realized that I'm not really writing a whole lot about what my experience has been like so far. I suppose life is not radically different transplanted from America to a different country in the same world. Somehow before this semester I had thought that life would be radically different. But it's really not. I suppose the number one thing that makes me continually feel like I don't belong is the language barrier. When I get back to America it will be strange to be able to pick up little bits of conversations of people talking on the bus. I'll probably be obsessed with eavesdropping.

The other thing that is majorly different is that you cannot, cannot, get a cup of coffee that is more than a few ounces. I think the largest size is a cappuccino, which is about half the size of a "short" (maybe a "tall"? I can't remember the sizes) at Starbucks. I thought Italian coffee would be better than American coffee, maybe it's better, but I prefer American coffee. At least I know this now. If I learn nothing else except that I prefer American coffee, it will have been worth it coming to Italy. I'm serious! I wouldn't have known otherwise! :)

What else... I'm obsessed with Regina Spektor right now, as I think I already mentioned this week. particularly this song.

And in terms of homesickness, I think I'm missing something I never really had even at home. It's a strange feeling.

Do you ever experience moments of clarity where you see yourself for who you really are? It just happened to me. I'm sitting on my bed, and there is a full length mirror directly in front of me. when ever I glance up I see myself. Not that seeing oneself in the mirror means that one really "sees" oneself. But I guess I just mean I see myself as this little dot, living in the world, interacting with others, I am who I am. And seeing one's self from an outsider's perspective is more clear in many ways that always knowing the turmoils that brood inside of one's self. I think in our Western way of thinking we get soooo stuck on the individual often--when really, it should be about the living human organism.

I want to write a poem about my homesickness. but not this moment. maybe after I do some drawing.