scream and melancholy

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For a class project recently, we had to create five different artist personas unlike ourselves and create a work of art as if we were them. These photos are the result of one of my "artists" from this project. Meet Cecilia Swarr, a photographer who specializes in psychoanalytical self-portraits and is inspired by William Blake and Edvard Munch. [And thanks to Torunn for willing to get cold and wet for me.]

This is the TED talk that inspired my professor's idea for this project. It is worth a watch.

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smell the air in small town

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Song of today, because it is gray and cold and sad, and because I miss my brother, and because Belle & Sebastian always makes me think of him.

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all that i hope to say

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If I wanted a tattoo, I'd want something like this. Clean and simple lines and shapes.

Other things tonight:

This weekend was full of lovely things. A candlelight Taize service at Ascension Catholic Church in Oak Park. Saturday ginger tea and cranberry scones with Mrs. J. Toast with goat cheese and a French film in Torunn's apartment. Nursery duty and holding wee ones at church. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Our favorite coffee shop in Geneva. Time to read for pleasure for once. The first bitterly cold weekend. Borrowing a hand-knitted scarf from my roommate. A new project.

Prayer for these next few weeks before Thanksgiving break: that I might be hopeful and generous, Lord. It is always a struggle this time of year.

And this from E.B. White: "All that I hope to say in books, all that I hope to ever say, is that I love the world."

[pc]

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in the shadow of your wings

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Every autumn is different and somehow the same. This one has been about returning home, rain on the windshield, climbing apple trees, late mornings, pumpkin cinnamon rolls, denim dresses, moonlight, the loudest yellow trees, and the simplest prayers. This autumn has been like when you relax in someone's arms because you feel safe and at home. It has been about shadows and light and silent wings.

This past weekend a few friends and I journeyed back thirteen hours to my house. We went apple picking and slept in and ate butternut squash. We went to the Gryphon and Good Sam and St. Peter's and all my favorite places. Now we are back at school and I have been spending all weekend writing a paper. It is good to be back, and it is good to have gone home. You know, as if I had to remember, God is very kind.

[all photos from a disposable camera this weekend]
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wound with mercy round and round

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This week I want: to remember the essential things, to make goals, to fail most of those goals, to give myself grace, to give others grace, to laugh about less-than-perfect-things, to spend more time in prayer, to be still and alone everyday, to read more, to write a handwritten letter, to take my camera with me more often, to leave it behind sometimes, to bike to an unexplored place, to take more risks, to say no more often, to say yes more often, to remember my limitations as a finite human, to love well.

One more week in Chicago-land before journeying home for fall break . . .

[Also: this is the exhibition I had the honor of helping with this summer at the Berkeley Art Museum, and (completely unrelated) this photographer is incredible.]
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walking questions

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I.

The way you live
is a work of art —

and it does not require explanation or profundity,
just mystery and paradox, magicians and nonsensicality,
graceful question marks walking down the street,

our S-curved bodies as
marks of holy levitation.

[words from this summer, photo from the boulders at st. peters in early august]
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cloven and lucent

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Just this tonight, from Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm:

"Time is eternity's pale interlinear, as the islands are the sea's. We have less time than we knew and that time buoyant, and cloven, lucent, and missile, and wild."

[photo from a recent class photo project - more on that later]