I'm Losing Things

They are little. 

A sock, a key, a hairpin.

I tear apart my room searching for the one little thing. I will be that woman from the Bible story, the one who cleaned her house looking for a little coin. But while trying to be that woman, that determined, detailed, clean freak- I've been ignoring the big things. 

Today, I finally stopped looking for my slippers. I walked into my closet, and suddenly they were there. Put away. In their place. Some little things find their own way home. 

Either that or I've been cleaning in my sleep, which wouldn't be surprising.

I feel like a grinch this year. So motivation for optimism is great, right?

Fears Fade

 I may be losing my arachnophobia. Today as I was lying on my front porch, soaking in sunshine so unsuitable for december, I watched a spider the size of a 50 pence piece climb onto my book and explore the page. My hands were less than six inches away, and yet they sat there unafraid. For the first time, when confronted with a spider, my body wasn't covered with goosebumps and I didn't shake.

How exactly do we lose our fear? Does a new sense of confidence push it out like a grown up pushing away childish habits? Or is my arachnophobia simply being replaced by a new and more ominous fear? Why do fears fade, and where do they go?

Recipe For Me, Running.

1 Cup Boredom

1/2 Cup Frustration

2 tsp. Anger

3 Cups Motivation

1 Catchy Song

2 Tbsp. I-Don't-Care-What-I-Look-Like-Running

1 tsp. Let's-Do-This

1 Glorious Liquid Gold Sunset

Slowly mix all ingredients throughout the day, adding in the sunset and catchy song by 6pm. Keep in temperature of not-quite-freezing but not-warm-enough-for-a-t-shirt. Serve immediately before a dinner of garlic pasta and a book in front of a fireplace.

Oh, Glorious Water!

Yes, i went swimming. 

Yes, it was marvelous. 

My inner fish is satisfied. 

Segue

 I have stopped stopping to smell roses, stopped noticing if they're red or painted impostors of red. The eerie dreams have returned, now taking their cues from Plato's The Cave and Grimm's Fairy Tales. Today I spent my time doing white rabbit things, but tonight will see some change. My room is cleared and ready. I'll tie up my hair like Violet Baudelaire and begin the first painting of winter break. The first of many, i hope.

Like so many things that have to change, I want to spend my break feeling more like a contented to wander Alice- never fettered to a pocket-watch. 

And it all begins when i move my white rabbit habit to the back of the closet.

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.

My parents brought flowers to the airport. 

Flowers make even the most exhausted version of me feel fresh.

Today I'm baking gingerbread and listening to Sufjan's Christmas album(s).

It's good to be home.

Setting My Toes Westward

The running conversation here goes something like this: 
-So, how are you doing?
-(sigh) I'm just so ready to go home. 
-Yeah, me too. I can't wait to see my family, it's been hard being away for so long.
People have been asking me if I'm ready to go home. And I've felt a bit conflicted about the subject. I feel like I have more than one home, every time I leave one I miss the other. My home is in the upstairs art classrooms at jbu, my home is in the pool, my home is the field outside of my bedroom window. 
For the first time this semester I have begun to really miss things that are not locations. I miss walks with my dad, running errands with my mom, listening to my brother explain cell biology , laughing with my little sister...
The list could go on but I think it's obvious. People are what matters most, home is wherever I'm with them. Ireland is home, and these people are home. 
But now I just want to see the people that loved me from day 
one. 

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent.

quote from "The Lovely Bones"

Best Christmas Song. Best Version. Enjoy.

Welcome to Finals Week

Snow on the ground outside.

Christmas music playing in my headphones.

Drinking some hot "spiced berry".

But

It is not yet over. 

Welcome to finals week.

No sleep. 

Welcome to frigid limbo.

"Gricks rise and Troysirs fall"

Oh, Nostalgia

Sixteen.

Mexico for a few weeks.

Living with a crazy huge family.

Ranch.

Mountains.

Tiny cabin full of scorpions. 

This was the night, the moment, that my brother Nathan and I created the "toothpaste monsters". It has been a reoccurring bedtime theme for years, and I will probably pass the great legacy on to my children. 

I wish I wish I was a fish.

Thanksgiving In London

  An ironic place to spend the holiday, but last time I was in this city I was celebrating the fourth of July. So I guess I just had to keep the trend going. I'm running out of holidays though.

  This was the first Thanksgiving I've spent away from family, and I truly felt it. I heard a lady in the tube performing an operatic aria (one that my mom used to always play when i was little) and I just started crying. Right there. Surrounded by a million people, underground, and swarming like ants. I love this city, and I love Belfast, but holidays were made for family. 

   Today, Susan and I are doing homework in the gargantuan British Library. Could this new scarf aid with my lack of concentration? I wish life could work like that. All I want to do is keep walking all over this city that feels like home. 

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters. But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

Tearing her open.

She waded in under

The sign of her cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Seamus Heaney, you make me want to be a poet too.

Old, New, Borrowed, Blue... and Far Away.

My beautiful cousin Amy was married this weekend. 

I have officially missed three cousin weddings now.

It isn't like hearing about the cousin who lives across the country getting married, Amy grew up a couple houses away from me. 

I think I am officially experiencing a bit of homesickness.

"They all say 'the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion.' 

I have rejected their advice. 

I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool." 

-Clive Staples Lewis

Soulmate In a Bottle

  Everyone has a secret, nerdy, interest. Or at least I think everyone does. Most are very adept at keeping it a true secret. For some people, it is an entire shelf of star wars paperbacks. For the more academically inclined, it's an obsession with prehistoric dinosaurs, the lives of civil war generals, or learning dead languages. 

  What is my nerdy interest? (among many) Well of course I couldn't bring up the subject without divulging this information. Let me preface it first. My childhood friend's mom always smelled wonderful, and it took me forever to finally realize that the wonderful smell was called "eau de rose" and it sat in a bottle on her bathroom counter. (note to Shakespeare, here is proof that a rose can smell as sweet by another name. Or at least without a name in my case)

  When I was eleven I visited a perfumery, and the whole wide world of perfume expanded around me. No longer was it limited to my grandmother's Coco Chanel, my mother's amber colored perfume that I never knew the name of (though it reminded me of white diamonds), and my father's musky cologne. 

When I couple these experiences with my already slightly heightened sense of smell, I know the nerdy interest blossomed here. I have been watering it since.

 I don't believe that there are human soulmates. But I do believe in a perfume soulmate. You can laugh. I'm sure it is funny. But, to quote my favorite elf, "I'm in love! I'm in love! And I don't care who knows it!"

Today, I stumbled upon what may indeed be my bottled soulmate. I confess I haven't actually smelled it yet (more nerdy confession: I read perfume reviews and in depth evaluations, much like a sports fanatic will watch play-by-plays and read up on an athlete's history)

To conclude: my soulmate may have been found. When I get home I'll order a sample, and then the rest is up to fate. Or just my nose, for in the end it always knows. 


That's enough melodrama for today. I have papers to write.

Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parum.

Irritation

  Is a person who makes no effort to understand an artwork, and yet believes their criticism to still be valid. If you don't know anything, try to not advertise your ignorance. 

We Listened to This in Class Today- Ignore the Corny Photos

Big Sterile White Box

  I gave a long visit to the Ulster Museum yesterday. It is not solely an art museum, but I kept mostly to the upper art floors.

Art museums are so much more enjoyable to me when I can just pop in the headphones and not be dragging a boyfriend around. 
{I saw many couples out on dates. They always looked so bored. Go to a movie and end both of your misery. Having a date in an art museum doesn't make you more cultured, wanting to be there is where the culture comes from.}

But this post is not about that. Excuse my cynicism. 
   I am always perplexed as I walk through the pure white rooms, wooden creaky floors, and silence. Always an eerie silence, unless it is crowded. My disconcertion arises because of this; when you take artwork away from its day, its setting, its brother and sister paintings, and put it in a white box...well it's like putting an exotic or extinct creature inside a white cube. 

   It is no wonder that people don't understand art. Without the proper habitat and knowledge of current events (an ornate Victorian manor, a Grecian temple, a Frank Lloyd Wright building, industrialization, world wars, civil rights movements, etc.) the paintings become obtuse. Art is just as much a historical artifact as it is brush strokes, composition, and canvas. A simple card with a few sentences does little to help the uneducated eye understand the importance of what they are perceiving. I know the big white box setting keeps things objective, but the objectivity does little to aid in understanding the rows of paintings behind glass and barriers. But, sadly, it looks like I'm simply complaining. I'm just tired of being excited and enthralled by a piece of artwork, but only because I'm educated about the artist and the method. I don't think I'm special in this; any person with a basic education and interest in what they are looking at would have a much similar response.  
   I just want everyone to love art, to feel art. I want people to look at a painting and feel a catch in their throat. I want them to stand in awe the way people once did in gothic cathedrals, feeling closer to God.
And how can we do this if we don't understand it?
This rational, sterile world isn't good for me. I want a renaissance. 

If I could live in a book, I would.

When someone says this to me, I always want to say

 "My life is already a book; it just hasn't been written yet."

I guess that was just my fluffy way of saying;

 Be happy with what you've got, you idiot.

The Idea Phase

  It is my most favorite part of the creative process. In class I sit making the appropriate lists and preliminary sketches until my notebook is filled with possible paintings, clothing designs, blueprints for buildings, and drawings of a bunny rabbit that I will one day call my own. I've been in idea phase for much of this semester, and it makes me so excited. 

  I am most excited for all of the possible directions. Can I please live until I am three-hundred? That should give me enough time to explore every avenue.

  What is my latest idea? Well I don't want to sound too hopeful, but this one could be good. I'll blog about it if it makes it past the drawing board.

1918

“Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousand fold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday’s crash.  The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.” 

-Richard Huelsenbeck,  First German Dada Manifesto

   A name will define you for your entire life. 

At the moment of birth, you are stamped with your parents idea of what you should become. 

Three stamps. First, middle, and last. 

And you will spend your life being defined by what that name is or isn't. 

My name is common; I don't ever have to spell it to a Starbucks barista. But I do have to share it with the psychotic mother of the reverse mullet and eight half-asian children. 

   Kate is it to you, but what is it?

Two sharp consonants, one syllable. A shorter, modern version of Katherine.

Several possible origins, one being a Greek goddess (Hecate), one the Greek word for Pure, and one the word for torture.. 

Pure Goddess Torture? 

oh my.

What would I be like if my name were Anne, Emma, or Rose?

I don't really want an answer. I don't think there is a good one. 

This is just me thinking.

I am not competitive. 

I am not disciplined.

But I love, I am obsessed, with swimming.

I miss it. 

More than York Mint Patties.

On Clive Staples' Demons and Mugs for Golden-Locked Girlies

We read and discussed The Screwtape Letters. I remember the first time I picked it up as a thirteen year old, it scared me. Seven years later, and a bit desensitized to the idea of a demon on my shoulder, I devoured the book. My favorite line, 

"The best descent into Hell is a gradual one". 

Definitely one of those ouch moments. 

It says Goldilocks. Cheers.

And Lauren, you may be disappointed to find out that I haven't kicked the mug habit. 

There was a lovely woman, and she had lovely handmade ceramics, and it was a lovely day at a market...

All I can say in my own defense is that at least I didn't...borrow...this one.
Best descent into hell, eh?


fyi, I have every intention of undoing those wrongs. Goodness knows I'm digging myself a lovely hole. Time to be quiet.


Best wishes from the Vibrant Northern Marshland.

The Bravery Checklist

1. Swim the English Channel.
2. Open up my own small business. (probably a flower shop/art gallery/perfume boutique)
3. Become a missionary to women paralyzed by the rigid traditions of their culture
4. Get a dual citizenship, and live in a different country for most of my life.
5. Get a masters in art history
6. Become a nurse
7. Cut off all my hair
8. Join the Peace Corps
9. Grit my teeth and be a real life starving artist

Song of the Sparrow

This song was going through my head. It's a rainy, cold day.

Porcelain

everything i love
was made of porcelain,
ready to break.
but the bright, staggering light,
it anxiously waits inside.
like nesting dolls, the secret hides.
and like every birth,
it was a necessary pain
i know, i know
it's all worth the wait, worth the weight.

Are you wasting away in your skin

Are you missing the love of your kin

Drifting and floating and fading away

You have it all, the poise and the strength that we can't fake

But don't you ever tire of walking that wire

To know that we'll move on as you break

Thought Trains and Food Chains

Do you ever catch yourself within a train of thought and wonder how you got there?

In art class today we watched a film about an artist called Harry Clarke [more on him later. maybe.]

Clarke suffered from tuberculosis and it eventually took him at the ripe age of 41. 

I found myself profoundly encouraged to see the great work that he made despite his chronic illness. 

Why? I asked myself.

Because a few months ago a guy I respected looked me in the eye and said 

"You know you really have a lot of health problems."

And I believed that. 

And not only did I believe it, but every time I came down with a cold or a slight headache I built upon this theory that I am an invalid and somehow less of a person.

So today, as I was riding full speed ahead on my "lowest of the foodchain" train I suddenly realized that I didn't want to take this line. 

And in that moment I heard God speak to me, clear as day; 

"I made you just the way you are. I love you just the way you are."

And just like that, the train crashed.

When I made this blog I promised myself that I wouldn't put too much personal life out on the internet for everyone to know. I tend to be a private person. 

But maybe vulnerability is what keeps us close. Shoot, a little honesty keeps this thing real.

And now

It is midnight in Belfast.

I have a library to make an appearance in tomorrow.

Goodnight.

✉

A Pair of Slippers

I am so thankful for a £4 pair of slippers. They have been my constant companion this semester, and especially this week as I developed a cough/cold. The Irish climate has been a bit harsh for this Texas girl. 

A Most Unanticipated Compliment

        "Your hair is the exact color of a pint of Guinness!"

This was said with the utmost excitement. 

I guess some people would value their beer enough to deem its comparison a highest praise. 

Gone to Galway

Be back soon.

      

Thoughts Clank like Pennies and Keys

Today

I took a walk.

At some point in that walk, I decided to climb a tree.

They say man is descended from monkeys. 

I think I missed out on the monkey gene and got a fish ancestor.

A ripped pair of tights and a bruised knee later, I gave up on the climbing a tree absurdity.

Susan is right. In the book of life, I would make a killer damsel in distress.

Nothing like a bruised knee to keep me humble.

So I sat at the base of that darn tree and watched the light fade. 

It is a rare and wonderful thing to find a peaceful place when you live in a manor with 22 other students.

But today my thoughts clanked like a box of pennies and keys- so loud the trees could probably hear.

I bet they are back there gossiping about me right now.

So much has happened since I came here.

Yesterday

It would have been the one year anniversary of me and a boy.

But instead, I spent the day wandering from bookshop to bookshop in search of distraction.

The dress for that very important date hangs sadly in my closet.

Tomorrow

I will watch the sun rise.

And after class, I will go looking for a pool.

I need to swim. 

A solid hour of laps, and my problems will have dissolved.

Good night all.

✉

My Family Lies Over the Ocean

Mom 

The View From My Window

Dad

Mammaw

Pappaw
Grandma

Sisters

Brother

Carla

Mike

Emma

Grayson

Swimmy[Fish]

I love and miss you all

Here are some photos 
of my little space in Ireland

✉

Velvet and Mandarin Guarding My Bed

Bedside Table {My Favorite}

Death by Mango Yogurt

My lovely roommate and I leave our window open most nights. We find that it helps filter out any un-ladylike smells that drift in from the restroom next door. This of course has meant that we often receive six and eight legged visitors on our walls or under our wardrobes. Naturally the unexpected guests are aware that the exploration of our room comes with a great degree of risk to their well being; but they seem to be no more aware of the finite nature of their lives than any human.

But I digress. 

(Sometimes I like to digress just so I can say the word. As Peter Pan would say, "Oh the cleverness of me!")

Today as I was cleaning the room I found a little dead moth. It had drowned in the leftovers of this morning’s yogurt. If it were a spider, well, I’m a bit judgmental when it comes to that race of creepy crawlys.

Being a moth and not a spider, I was sad that I didn’t get to rescue the furry thing. Why do people smash them?

I have always had a soft spot for moths. (among many other critters)

The way I see it, moths are just misunderstood butterflies.

Too bad I have trouble adopting this sort of compassion for the majority of human moths in my life.

✉

illustration credit where it's due: