it's snowing men...

Meet the two newest men in my life...

The first came as a Christmas gift from my mother... a foot-high wooden artist's figure. "It was the closest I could come to getting you a husband," she said. Apparently the place she bought it thought I would be offended by her thoughtfulness -- on the contrary, not only am I immune to her marriage comments, but I also figure that the day she stops making them is the day she really gives up on me...

I called him Michelangelo, in honor of the fascinating subject of the best book I've read since I've been home (The Agony and the Ecstasy), and as a reminder of my commitment to pursuing my creative destiny and unearthing my dormant figure drawing skills...

Then on Boxing Day (a Tuesday :) my new powerbook was born. His name is Pierre (I believe in naming inanimate objects that are important to me), to remind me that I'm going to keep learning French, and he is an investment in my future and my freedom. With Pierre by my side, I'll be able to work from anywhere, leaving geographical decisions to be determined by other more important criteria.

My dearly beloved ibook iSabel, who has been my faithful companion on all my journeys for the past five years, will soon be travelling to her new retirement home where she will be just as dearly loved but will hopefully get more rest.

One for each side of the brain... I'd say together they make a very balanced companion. Never fear -- there is still plenty of room in my life for a real man -- these two are just helping to keep me entertained (and employed) until he gets here. :)

PS: Belle, Angelica and mini-Gaston make up the rest of my digital family (iPod, camera and external hard drive, respectively)

:: "Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish." – Michelangelo Buonarrati

winter blue...

life in a northern town...

Over the atlantic and through north america, I'm finally home again.

Homer for the holidays... Home in the 49th state, as far west as you can drive on the continent, in my cozy little hometown at the moment all shrouded in snow. It could possibly be the best place in the world to spend Christmas. Too small to be too busy, too few stores to be overrun by consumerism, too cold to draw pesky tourists.

It's an odd place, a dear place and a one-of-a-kind place. A place where almost everybody knows your name (even after six years away) and they definitely all know someone you know. A place where you can wear whatever you want and no one cares about status. A place where you can't tell the mayor from the garbage man, and the postman is also the local theatre star. A town with enough talent to pull off a full-fledged production of the Nutcracker every year that the locals wouldn't miss... A little town with three museums, eight coffee shops, and more art galleries than organized churches.

It's a place that comfortingly never really changes, although every time I come back there's something new and controversial. Last year it was the first and only stoplight – this year a Starbucks has invaded. We'll see how long it takes for the independent coffee roasters to run it out of town. Homer has a history of successfully ejecting fast-food joints – Dairy Queen, Burger King and Pizza Hut all couldn't make it. Only McDonald's and Subway have survived. But Starbucks only snuck it's way in by embedding itself with a grocery store chain. I have mixed feelings – in foreign countries and big US cities Starbucks is something good and familiar, but here it just doesn't belong.

Isn't it cold there? People ask. Well, yes, I suppose. But all the better for staying home wrapped in a cozy bathrobe with hot cocoa by the fire. Isn't it snowy? Well yes, but that's why we have garages and snow machines and woolly mittens. Isn't it dark? Well yes, but all the more reason for everyone to put up Christmas lights. Plus it makes for better viewing of the stars and the aurora borealis...

I love winter, and snow, and Christmas. It's a season that feels like a big warm hug at the end of the year to me -- remembering the greatest gift. It makes me sad to know it's not that feeling for everyone. Someone asked me with a sigh not long ago, "Do you really think there's any Christmases left like the ones in the old movies?" Feeling both sad and incredibly fortunate, I said "yes".

There's no place, no family and no season in life that's perfect. But my December at the end of the road comes pretty close.

It's snowing again...

:: "From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends." – Hilaire Belloc

in between...

So I'm here... back on American shores again... Not quite home yet and not quite adjusted, but I'm getting there.

Sailing home was the best idea I've had all year. Maybe in five years. As described to my best friend, it was in every way the perfect escape from my reality and at the same time a beautiful echo of the best of my ocean past... The gentlest transition I could have hoped for.

Now I'm moving through cities on my homecoming tour, eyes wide open, bags in fist, absorbing the pace of change and the unchanged. The nothingness that seemed so overwhelming from a distance is surprisingly less frightening up close.

Or maybe I'm just still dreaming...

:: "In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors." – William Blake

angels at sea...

last boat to america...

For those of you wondering... I'm alive and very well on the sea again. Last stop on European shores... next stop, America.

:: "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving – we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor." – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

last rites...

bon voyage...

My last Tuesday in Switzerland...

Surrender seems to be working. All the last things are upon me now and the inevitable end is starting to look more sweet than bitter... I think the hardest part of this ending is behind me... and the hardest part of the beginning still seems far away...

Fall -- it's my season of change. There's something very fitting about leaving a place the same time of the year I arrived. A full circle, fulfilling familiarity... Last moments of warmth and love and all things familiar... and this suspicious feeling I haven't seen the last of this place or these people.

A week from today I'll be sailing again...

:: "Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it's everything in between that makes it all worth living." –Hope Floats

synonyms of letting go...

a·ban·don
1. To withdraw one's support or help from, especially in spite of duty, allegiance, or responsibility; desert: abandon a friend in trouble.
2. To give up by leaving or ceasing to operate or inhabit, especially as a result of danger or other impending threat: abandoned the ship.
3. To surrender one's claim to, right to, or interest in; give up entirely. See Synonyms at relinquish.
4. To cease trying to continue; desist from: abandoned the search for the missing hiker.
5. To yield (oneself) completely, as to emotion.

If one relinquishes something finally and completely, often because of weariness or discouragement, the correct word is abandon. (They were told to abandon all hope of being rescued.)

Sadly, this word I feel defines my life right now. Abandon ship. Abandon the effort. Abandon hope. It can't be true, that this is where I've arrived... but it feels that way.

There's another word...

sur·ren·der
1. To relinquish possession or control of to another because of demand or compulsion.
2. To give up in favor of another.
3. To give up or give back (something that has been granted): surrender a contractual right.
4. To give up or abandon: surrender all hope.
5. To give over or resign (oneself) to something, as to an emotion: surrendered himself to grief.

Eventually you get to the point where you're not fighting to hold on to things anymore. You surrender them because it's your only hope of receiving something better, and because it's the only thing you can do.

Things I believed in so much are disappearing into thin air...

Illusions. Maybe that's the word. Castles in the sand that I worked so hard to build, and were so beautiful... and now nothing I can say or do or build can keep them from washing away. Maybe instead of fighting the wave I just have to surrender to it and let it come... and when the water drains away and I can open my eyes again, seeing what's left...

Maybe there will be nothing.

:: “All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling”
– Blaise Pascal (mathematician, philosopher and physicist)

borrowed wisdom...

It's been a long week since last Tuesday. Cleaning out my inbox today I found this forgotten forward... I don't know who originally said it, but thanks Chris...

:: :: ::

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back.

:: :: ::

turning four...

One year bigger today...
:: :: :: ::
Happy Birthday
Adams!
:: :: :: ::

submergency...

Sometimes I wonder what percentage we really see of each other's lives, in our everyday friendships -- even in our closest relationships. There's so much we leave unspoken and unseen... and they are quite often the biggest things. A vision of icebergs comes to mind... all of us floating around in relative peace and passivity, rarely touching each other above water, but below... the 90% of our invisible selves constantly in jeopardy of exposure...

Every now and then we look deeper and we can see... just what lies beneath. Sometimes dark and disturbing... nearly always painful. The view of each other above the water is so much more pleasant. It consists of things we are comfortable seeing and know how to handle. But it isn't the whole picture. It isn't reality.

The closer we get the more we see... The more we see, the more we feel. And the more we feel, the less we know what to do. It would be easier to see less, but I ask you, how can we truly love someone when we know only 10% of who they are?

The more I glimpse the pain below the surfaces of the people I love (and we all have it), the more it hurts me. Maybe the real reason we don't look so hard and don't get too close is because we're afraid we'll see something we recognize too much -- something that reminds us of our own deepest hurts. Yet maybe our seeing, and our staying, is enough. Perhaps being willing to take on some of that confusion, uncomfortableness and painful familiarity somehow does help make it a little less to bear.. for both of us.

Bear one another's burdens...

hug the world...

This made me cry yesterday... Watch it and hug someone.

:: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” – Mother Teresa

coming home...

I had a fully swiss Saturday watching the cows come home...

We drove through the end of September fog to fresh green hillsides past the end of Lac Léman, and joined local villagers in their annual "Désalpe" celebration -- welcoming home their friends and neighbors who had been in the alps all summer with their animals...



Think all the storybook charm of "Heidi" and add a full dose of heartwarming tradition and you'll have the feeling of the day... Beaming farmers and tired families and cows magnificently crowned with flowers as queens of the day... The rhythmic clang of cowbells and creak of carts and children calling the goats... Alpine horns and all ages in costumes... Market stalls selling bread and sweet-smelling fruit concoctions... Wooden platters of cheese and meat savored at long tables... French and laughter and wine in plastic cups flowing freely...

A beautiful day in a beautiful world. We need reminders...

:: "All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken." – Thomas Wolfe

september morning...

:: "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." – E. B. White

A few photo credits...

mug :: thanks to chuck, chris and jenny for all coming to my aid to replace my tragic loss with what is now a set of FOUR intact memories...

waffles :: thanks to glen, for leaving me the Alaska brand waffle maker in Germany that took 1.5 years to make it across the border... and to steph for the recipe from our cabin 41 fridge...

figs :: thanks to nikki for introducing me to them at the market and for introducing me to so many beautiful parts of life in lausanne...

flowers :: thanks to the front porch of my beautiful home for being a plentious source of free hydrangea...

view :: thanks to God for creating green fields and blue mountains and for surrounding me with them...

company :: thanks to my kindred spirit sarah, who crossed six time zones so I wouldn't miss this moment...

bella italia...

I finally crossed the border... Five days and four nights in Florence and Venice with my best friend Sarah from my college world... I won't waste words trying to describe either city except to say this...

Florence is a city rich with amazing art, but Venice is art... even in the rain.

:: "Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life."
- Anna Akhmatova

precisely...

I'm down to one Pilot pen. So important is this particular instrument to my daily Iife that I'm actually carrying it back and forth with me from my office to my home. (Granted, they are in the same building, but still...) I've ransacked my room but can't find a stray one anywhere -- not in my junk drawer, not in the couch cushions, not under the bed...

Thankfully I'm having some imported from the US in three days (yes, that's how SOON the long-awaited visit of my college best friend is!) so as long as the ink holds out (and she doesn't pack them in her carryon) I should be okay. If they exist in Switzerland, I can't find them. I did see some in a store in Oxford the other weekend but I just couldn't bring myself to pay £2 for one (that's $3.79!)... but that was when I still had two. This week I might have reconsidered.

If you don't understand pen addiction I probably can't really explain it to you. I haven't used anything else since my sophomore year of college (exception: sharpie markers are acceptable for certain tasks) -- that's a long time. I literally lose my ability to think without this pen. It's impossible to write in my journal with anything else.

Even for my three years onboard a ship on the coast of Africa I had them specially imported for my whole communications crew as a vital creative tool and morale-builder. One year I actually made an impassioned case to our COO for them to be included in our office budget. I lost, unfortunately, but became a beneficent donor of Pilot pens instead.

Life is in the details. And details become even more important when the big picture of your life is spinning out of control...

Pilot Precise Rolling Ball V5... black ink. And journals with lines...

:: "Stay Up Late: Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world." — Bruce Mau, designer

les fleurs...

indian summer...

:: "In summer, the song sings itself." – William Carlos William

beauty...

:: "Beauty... is the shadow of God on the universe."
– Gabriela Mistral, Desolacíon

night...

(bonus journal entry from my extra travel time last week...)

On a plane to London I read a disturbing book... "Night", by Elie Wiesel... holocaust survivor. I've read holocaust stories before, but this one seemed more real somehow. More horrible.

I don't know how the human spirit can survive such evil. I don't know how faith can survive that. I don't know if mine would.

I want to read the rest of his story... how he came back from that night. Real people. Real stories. They are the worst and the best of all...

That and an email from a friend yesterday are still ringing in my mind. He'd just returned from a trip overseas with his organization that rescues trafficked children, and was trying to come to grips with what he'd seen.

"God is there in the suffering..."

This is the thing – when there is such suffering and injustice in the world, how can I simply go on and live my life? There must be a way I can still make a difference. There must be a way I can do more, not less, with my future. There must be something God wants me to do.

Anything. I suppose it could really be anything.

Just not nothing.

:: The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. – Elie Wiesel

serendipity...

The other day I randomly found an interesting online discussion, all started by a newspaper editorial:

The endangered joy of serendipity: the modern world makes it harder to discover what you didn't know you were looking for."

The writer echoes thoughts from my "almost missed" post, on less being more.... and abundance being distracting. He also iterates my feelings about online matchmaking (or any other form). (read it if you're curious...)

I think most of the editorial comes from the writer missing the "good old days", and he does make some points; however, the fact that I even stumbled across this article online is proof that there are still plenty of opportunities for serendipitous discoveries on the world wide web -- doesn't it really depend more on the nature of the observer?

Discovery is an attitude, I think. Whether you take the road less traveled or the one you already know like the back of your hand, you can be just as surprised by the serendipitous.

I'm thinking a lot about this as I anticipate moving back to America. Somewhere in my head it makes sense that there would be more possibilities for discovery in a place where I am surrounded by the unknown -- that Europe would hold so many more possibilities than my good old USA. But that's not necessarily true. My discoveries are limited more by my own inhibitions and mindset than by my location or setting.

I'm not by nature very adventurous. This entire life beyond North American shores has been a surprise to me. In my six years abroad I've grasped a small taste for wanderlust, but I don't think it's in my blood like my friends who have wracked up 80-plus countries. But that's why this life has been so good for me.

Every week and nearly every day, I am forced to do something I've never done before. And it usually does take me forcing myself. I don't know where the resistance still comes from, when time and time again I've been happily rewarded with positive experiences. Maybe it's just part of my personality -- my psyche -- to want to stick to the known and the familiar. Maybe it comes from growing up in a small town and a sheltered environment. Who knows -- but I do know that I grew up dreaming -- encouraged to dream. And that big, idealistic imagination has been enough to launch me past my own fears and logic thousands of times.

One response to the serendipity discussion echoes my thoughts nearly exactly:

We must allow ourselves to be surprised. We must relearn how to be human, to start again as we did as children - learning through awkward and bungling discovery.

:: "Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy." – Anne Frank

sundays...

:: "This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me." – Colleen Wainwright

saturdays...

:: "The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life." – Robert Louis Stevenson

almost missed...

Believe it or not, I do write, even if it's not here.

Last weekend I finished a journal and this week started a new one... dubbed my "Italian summer" journal (1. because it's handmade from Italy and 2. because I'm lucky enough to be planning two trips to Italy this summer when I've never been before...)

An excerpt from my Italian sumer beginning...

"Last night I looked up from my desk at 8:15 pm and saw a golden rose sky, so amazing it looked like a painting. I went to the window as if drawn, just to look, and then I saw the most incredible rainbow -- brilliant, bright, on the other side of the sunset sky, arching across the green field and treeline, arching over my house. I ran outside and stood in the rain and the glow and just stared... at a moment I almost missed.

That's what life is... the moment we almost miss, every day. I want to find that. More importantly, I want to recognize it when I see it. Because so much of the time it's right there and I'm just not looking. Not just out the window -- I had to get up and move before I saw the most amazing part."

Rainbows are such an intriguing phenomenon. No two people see exactly same one. Rainbows are interactions of light and water seen only in the eye of the beholder, from a certain angle, viewable for sheer moments. So... if there is no one to see a rainbow, does it exist at all?

If I'd been the only person in the world to see that beautiful moment, God still would have made it. But if I hadn't been there to see it at all -- if I hadn't gotten up and moved from my chair, would it still have been there to be seen?

I wonder how many rainbows I've missed that were meant for me...

:: “Beauty is not caused. It is.” – Emily Dickinson

rocks with a view...

I'm trying to spend less time looking at a computer screen and more time looking at this...

...the view from my favorite picnic/reading spot... Chateau de Chillon, Lac Léman

:: Perhaps the waves are saying: Remember your dreams. Remember your dreams. Remember your dreams... – ashes and snow

a day late...

I just realized that when the time changed this week I somehow set my computer a whole day ahead instead of just an hour... Which meant that I thought I was posting on Wednesday, which would be appropriate anyway, because I feel like I'm a day late for everything this week...

A day late for my nephew's 11th birthday... A day late figuring out how to handle the latest communications curveball thrown at Mercy Ships... A day late editing text for the next fundraising appeal that needs to go to 9 different nations...

Thankfully, Alaska is so many time zones behind that I can still call my nephew and I think he'll forgive me.

The work stuff is a bit trickier... Staring at my screen with a looming deadline on this appeal, I wonder yet again how I ended up with this editorial task. I love wordcraft, but I'm a designer, not an editor. And I hate corporate fundraising letters – wouldn't that make me the last person who should be writing them?

But then... somewhere in the middle of reading about a Liberian girl named Irene who survived a disease called noma and has lived with a disfigured face for 20 years, I forget what day it is. I forget I don't have any real editorial credentials and that the clock is ticking towards 10:00 pm. I forget the conference calls I haven't had time to prepare for and the organizational hoops I haven't jumped through. Politics fade away to petty and so does my perfectionism.

All that really matters is that there are 400,000 children a year being attacked by a disease most of the world doesn't even know exists -- a monstrous infection that is entirely preventable and treatable. What matters is that 8 out of 10 of those children die in agony, their parents watching helplessly. And the 1 or 2 that live, survive horribly disfigured and suffer emotional pain for the rest of their lives... Unless...

Somebody does something.

This imperfect and sometimes dysfunctional organization that I work for is doing something. The flesh and blood people that make up this organization are doing something – at the cost of much more than their blood, sweat and tears, they are trying to make a difference. And they are.

People suffer and die in our world for lots of reasons. A senseless, preventable disease like noma should not ever be a reason.

What matters is that people need to know this – they need to realize this tragedy is happening in their global neighborhood, and they CAN do something about it. Somewhere in between the predictable lines of yet another fundraising letter, is it conceivably possible that the words I choose could help them get that?

Maybe it's not too late.

:: Past the seeker as he prayed came the crippled and the beggar and the beaten. And seeing them... he cried, "Great God, how is it that a loving creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?" God said, "I did do something. I made you." – Author Unknown

two faces...

Last summer while working on the mercy show I was especially drawn to this image Scott took at the medical screening during the last Liberia outreach of a girl who suffered the results of a disease called noma...

Her face has stuck with me, and last week it somehow seemed right for her to go in the new Mercy Ships general brochure (which you'll see soon), but I wanted to know her name...

I emailed Scott on the Anastasis to see if he remembered her... and I found out she just happened to be onboard, in the ward. She'd come back a full year later to the next screening and made it to surgery.

This is her now... Mazay, 15 years old.

She wants to be a nurse.


:: more about noma
:: a documentary on noma
:: what mercy ships is doing

french...

...it's harder than I thought.

Reading and comprehending French is one thing... speaking it (properly) is quite another. My three-week course one year ago might have accomplished more if I hadn't immediately returned to America for three months afterwards. But what kind of language averages three letters per word that you don't pronounce? And what kind of country has not one, not two, but FOUR national languages??

I could make up a whole list of excuses for why I'm not conversational yet, but instead I'm trying to come up with reasons to convince myself why I need to be able to speak French at all...

Reasons to learn French:
1. So I can go to the post office by myself.
2. So I can read my letters from the government and the bank myself.
3. So I can say something besides "Bonjour, ça va?" to the cleaning lady and the postman.
4. So I can order at a restaurant without the waiter automatically switching to English.
5. So people won't be rude to me when I finally go to Paris.
6. So I can watch more than just 4 news channels.
7. So I can impress people when they come to visit me.
8. So when I leave I will have something to show for living in another country for two years.
9. So I can join the rest of the world outside America in which everybody knows (at least) a second language.
10. So I can prove to myself my own theory that there is nothing I can't learn.

You'd think I would love languages, because I so love words. But it might actually be that love of words and my profound relationship with them that makes it that much harder to learn a whole world of new ones.

The English language is like a dear friend I've grown up with -- familiar, intimate, like family. I've known it as long as I can remember, and I know it inside out. I know its nuances and idiosyncrasies and I know how to bring out its best. It's a relationship I treasure and even marvel at, on occasion.

And French -- French is that aloof stranger I'm intrigued by, but resist being forced to get to know. An imposter in familiar letters, taking on suspicious forms and sounds that I don't recognize. I begrudgingly admire the way French looks... even how it sounds... But it just hasn't endeared itself to me yet. I want to get to know it on my own terms, gradually, until it feels comfortable and fits naturally into my life. It seems so forced and manipulative to spend obsessive hours insisting on a relationship, abusing its pronunciation... My passive personality would much rather casually warm up to a language than stalk it.

At the same time, I realize that many of the best things in my life have come completely uninvited. Including people. Random strangers I never planned to or wanted to meet, thrown into my life with or without my consent. But then somehow, through the disarming subtlety of time and shared experience, we connected. And eventually I realized I couldn't remember life before them or imagine the future without them. They added pieces to my life that I never knew I needed.

So I'm making an effort with French. Extending the hand of friendship, and trying not to be too reluctant about it. It helps that I have the world's most interesting and excellent tutor -- Jean-Pierre.

Jean-Pierre is the definition of "debonaire" -- a perfect Suisse-Romande gentleman and an impressively well-read traveller who is on at least his 4th or 5th language. He fascinates me and frightens me at the same time -- a little like the French language. But he's also like my misplaced Swiss grandfather. What could possibly be intimidating about someone who makes me pumpkin soup and listens to classical music and stops our lessons to play with his dog?

Perhaps if for no other reason, I'll learn French for Jean-Pierre.

:: "It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning." – Claude Bernard, French Physiologist

distance...

I think maybe I will write a book someday about long-distance friendships. I wonder if by then I'll be an authority on keeping them or on losing them... Probably both.

I'm not sure if it just feels this way right now, or if it's deja vu of so many other seasons in my life that makes me think I've had more than my share of missing people. You could say it's been my choice, I suppose – moving around too much and never staying in the same place...

Ironically, it's that moving which has brought me most of my deepest relationships. And it's that same moving that constantly threatens to take them away...

dis·tance n.
1. The extent of space between two objects or places; an intervening space.
2. The fact or condition of being apart in space; remoteness.

How long can you stay connected when the things that connect you become fewer and fewer? Perhaps that's why I find myself more and more in conversations with old friends, reminiscing and talking about the past. It's easier than the present, because our histories connect us – our present is a constant reminder that our lives are being pulled farther apart.

Are friendships – or any relationship, for that matter – a product of circumstance? Do we choose our closest friends? Do they choose us? Or does someone or something else orchestrate our crossings?

I believe the latter statement. I believe that a divinely creative mind, which sees all and knows all through a continuum we cannot understand, designs our lives as we go along, ever working things for our ultimate good. Notice I say ultimate good... not necessarily immediate good, or present good, or continual good... Life is hard. It's we who made it that way. God is busy providing ways to restore it.

Finding bridges across the distance is one.

:: "Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great." – Rainer Maria Rilke

still life...

my desk... (sculpture by Shad, age 4)

pictures of my office from my boss' record label website...

quote for the day...

:: "Don't frown, because you never know when someone is falling in love with your smile."

1966...

Colombo Harbour, 1966... tugboat at work and the Italian liner Victoria...
:: photographed by Richard Francis – Ships

broken memories...

I dropped and broke my Sala Victoria mug yesterday.

If you just gasped in shock and horror, then you are one of the few people who knows just a little of how much that ceramic object meant to me.

It was just a mug. But one doesn't cry over just a mug. It meant so much more than that to me.

To begin with, I was its creator. I searched for hours on a slow internet connection through worldwide mug vendors to find just the right size (to comfortably fit a double-tall latte), just the right shape (graceful but unique), and just the right color (something that would go with a 50-year old classic ocean liner). I labored to come up with just the right words ("coffee on a mission" )... just the right typeface (upper or lowercase?)... and just the right placement of that logo (no to mention the hours spent on the logo itself). And before that, I spent weeks convincing the finance officer we would actually be able to sell them and make money... And that was all just for the mug...

Before the mug, there was the Sala Victoria Café. There's really only one other person (Genevieve, where are you?) who has any idea what went into birthing that little coffee shop on our ship. It was so much more than a café. At first, the Sala Victoria was just a dream in our heads and a donated espresso machine in the abandoned Mediterranean Lounge bar... Then it was a saga of politics and plumbers and perseverance... And finally, it was a name and a West African carved sign and a reality. The Sala Victoria became a meeting place for people who desperately needed to meet each other... a breathing space of conversation and laughter for people who desperately needed to relax... a venue for events big and small that became the stuff of Anastasis legend (who can forget Abba Karaoke, or the Pirate Auction, or the 50th Birthday party at sea?). The Sala Victoria became a very special place, for some very special people, within walls that had seen so much...

Long before the Sala Victoria, there was her namesake. The M/V Victoria was a Italian-built luxury cruise liner launched in 1953 – the past life of the beautiful vessel we renamed the Anastasis and called a hospital and home. The Victoria was an aristocratic debutant, reborn to be a gracious merciful angel, pointing her bow toward the world's forgotten places, brightening dull African ports with her beauty and softening harsh worlds with her hope... She was so much more than just a ship.

That mug was the only tangible thing I have from the ship, really. One of the only things I have to remember her by. And in six months, there will be no ship. She will sail off into some sunset to be sacrificed into scrap metal, and for months I have been trying to find words to express how I feel about that...

It was more than just a mug, you see. And glued together in eleven pieces, it will still be special to me.

Maybe even moreso.

:: "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

life without keys...

I received the loveliest engraved silver keyring for Christmas. It's now attached to my purse, after I realized I didn't have any keys to put on it.

Come to think of it, I haven't owned a set of keys for quite some time. The big house I live in has an electronic locking system that doesn't require keys. Since I work in the same building, there's no keys needed there either. Before, I lived with a gangway instead of a front door, and could never manage to find the keys to cabin 41 anyway (not to mention I had nothing worth locking up). My car keys I gave up four years ago when I left behind my self-sufficient life, and although I now share a "community" vehicle, I rarely use it and don't hold those keys. I barely remember having post office box keys in a past life. And even luggage keys I don't bother with any longer, since it's pointless to lock your bags when every security point between here and the new world can open them anyway.

The plus side to my keyless life is that I have no keys to lose. (Not that I ever lost them before...) They never fall to the bottom of my purse, I rarely worry about locking myself out, and I spend less time fumbling with doors in the dark.

Keys symbolize many things – independence, ownership, security, privacy... In a way I suppose my current life holds less of all of those things. But I'm also well aware that keys represent the trappings of responsibility – commutes, mortgages, car payments – normal life for most.

In my next life I'm sure I'll have keys. And I'm looking forward to them. But meanwhile, there's something rather refreshing about a life without keys.

Maybe fewer keys is the key to simple living. Maybe we'd be happier if we all walked more instead of driving, left our doors unlocked more, and our luggage too. Maybe we should use a safe only for protection from fire, not from theft. But the reality is that very few people live in a world simple enough to have the luxury of not worrying about all of those things.

The empty keychain on my purse reminds me how blessed I am...

:: "I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex." – Oscar Wilde

above the clouds...

I think I rang in this new year reading Blue Like Jazz somewhere over Greenland... but I couldn't be exactly sure when the year turned. I do know that I'll remember watching the first sunrise of 2006 from above the clouds, thinking -- maybe resolving -- it would be a metaphor for my life this year.

When days are dark and dismal below, I want to remember that view from above the clouds -- all golden pink and amazing morning. I hope I can remember, when the sun is not in sight, that light is just on the verge of breaking through. And when I am slogging through mud and wishing for dry land, I hope my spirit can rise above to where everything looks different... To where the truth is.

Feet on the ground, head above the clouds... Bonne année.

:: "There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing. They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz." – Donald Miller