The Thankful Tree

Today I was at Balboa Island exchanging my TOMS and discovered this tree:


Upon further investigation, the tree had a little baggie and a sharpie tied to it with a note: "Please leave a not with something you are thankful for."

There were probably at least 100 notes hanging on various places on the tree full of things people are thankful for. What a cool idea!


This one was mine:

There were even a few in different languages, but this one was my favourite:


I will be doing this at my house in the future. Love it!

Insert a Clever Title about "A Girl Every Guy Should Date" Here:

Okay, I may be a girl, but I still loved reading this!! I "Stumbled Upon" it this afternoon and had to share it! Enjoy!

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

– Rosemarie Urquico –

A Confession

Sometimes, when God tells me to do something, all I want to do is scream "NO!" or "I don't WANT to!" and stomp my foot like a little bratty three-year old.

Sometimes, I do what God wants me to do, but I have a bad attitude. And I may take a break from doing what He wants me to do just to kick and scream and thrash my body about.

Sometimes, when the way I have planned out my life does not go my way because God says "No. Here's something else for you", I cry. But not a pretty cry. More like a red-faced, snot-dripping, blubbery-mess kind of cry.

Looks kinda like this:

St. Thomas Didymus

Yesterday I posted on FaceBook about my English class. My amazing professor, Dr. Cheri Larsen Hoeckley was reading the poem by Denise Levertov entitled "St. Thomas Didymus".

As she was eloquently reading this moving poem, she became emotional (as would most people who read this poem); her voice quivered briefly, but she continued on, beautifully reading this poem; and two tears slid down her face. Not many people noticed until later when she was discussing Thomas putting his hand in Jesus' side and got emotional once more.

All of us were moved.

(Well, maybe not the jocks who are too cool for reading poetry, but I can safely say all the women were moved.)

I thought I'd share this poem with you:

St. Thomas Didymus

In the hot street at noon I saw him
a small man
gray but vivid, standing forth
beyond the crowd's buzzing
holding in desperate grip his shaking
teeth gnashing son,

and thought him my brother.

I heard him cry out, weeping and speak
those words,
Lord, I believe, help thou
mine unbelief,

and knew him
my twin:

a man whose entire being
had knotted itself
into the one tightdrawn question,
Why,
why has this child lost his childhood in suffering,
why is this child who will soon be a man
tormented, torn, twisted?
Why is he cruelly punished
who has done nothing except be born?

The twin of my birth
was not so close
as that man I heard
say what my heart
sighed with each beat, my breath silently
cried in and out,
in and out.

After the healing,
he, with his wondering
newly peaceful boy, receded;
no one
dwells on the gratitude, the astonished joy,
the swift
acceptance and forgetting.
I did not follow
to see their changed lives.
What I retained
was the flash of kinship.
Despite
all that I witnessed,
his question remained
my question, throbbed like a stealthy cancer,
known
only to doctor and patient. To others
I seemed well enough.

So it was
that after Golgotha
my spirit in secret
lurched in the same convulsed writhings
that tore that child
before he was healed.
And after the empty tomb
when they told me that He lived, had spoken to Magdalen,
told me
that though He had passed through the door like a ghost
He had breathed on them
the breath of a living man --
even then
when hope tried with a flutter of wings
to lift me --
still, alone with myself,
my heavy cry was the same: Lord
I believe,
help thou mine unbelief.

I needed
blood to tell me the truth,
the touch
of blood. Even
my sight of the dark crust of it
round the nailholes
didn't thrust its meaning all the way through
to that manifold knot in me
that willed to possess all knowledge,
refusing to loosen
unless that insistence won
the battle I fought with life

But when my hand
led by His hand's firm clasp
entered the unhealed wound,
my fingers encountering
rib-bone and pulsing heat,
what I felt was not
scalding pain, shame for my
obstinate need,
but light, light streaming
into me, over me, filling the room
as I had lived till then
in a cold cave, and now
coming forth for the first time,
the knot that bound me unravelling,
I witnessed
all things quicken to color, to form,
my question
not answered but given
its part
in a vast unfolding design lit
by a risen sun.

~Denise Levertov

Let's Never Do This Again

11:00 pm.

What are you generally doing at 11:00 pm? Sleeping? Studying? Writing? Reading? Watching tv? Eating?

I am generally doing homework or studying. Last night, I was doing just that; writing a paper, enjoying the wind from the open window bringing in cool air, and listening to Christmas music with my roommate and our friend across the hall, Chloe.

My other roommate had just spilled water all over my desk and I was mopping it up. Suddenly, Chloe said she smelled something burning. The three of us, being concerned that some spilled water had gotten into my outlet or my power-strip, quickly turned off all the electrical things and pulled out flashlights to investigate what was happening.

After a little bit, the smokey smell went away, we turned back on the power, and continued about our business. Shortly after doing that, the smell came back! Chloe and I redid the unplugging and turning off and Meg went to find our RA.

Meg returned very quickly and said she smelled it everywhere. As we had just been coming to the conclusion that the wind was bringing in the burning smell, the fire alarms went off and chaos was unleashed: girls screaming, crying and grabbing their phones and computers; our RD shouting that this was not a drill and to get down to the gym as fast as possible; RAs counting their residents; people regretting things that they did not grab; everybody's ears ringing from the fire alarm; and plenty of panic to go around. Everybody (especially the seniors, I am sure, since they were here for it) was thinking about the Tea Fires that had destroyed the hills behind Westmont, burnt down some of one of the dorms, charred many trees, and was very scary.

Soon after getting to the gym, completing roll call, and praying, a voice spoke over the loudspeaker "A home is fully burning about Page Hall (my dorm, you know). Given the high winds, Montecito Fire Department has asked all the students to go to the gym until the situation is assessed and stabilized. Further announcements will be made there. Students will remain in the gym for a minimum of two hours." Apparently, some moron was playing with firecrackers (we could hear them earlier) and the house caught on fire.

As a giant "Ugh!" echoed across the gym, even more freshman girls burst into tears.

My darling friend Elaine and I were chatting nervously about some kind of cat to stop thinking about the fire.

After about only forty five minutes, the loudspeaker voice spoke again: "The fire has been contained. Montecito Fire Department has suggested that all students return to their dorms but be ready to leave immediately if necessary." Instantly, cheers broke out throughout the gym as people rushed back to their dorms and other stood shakily up to slowly, cautiously creep back up the hill.

The alarms remained blaring extraordinarily loudly, so although we were allowed back into our dorms, most people remained huddled outside the dorm for about another hour until the alarm died down and was shut off. Every now and then, it would go off and people would freak out, but for the most part, many hearts began to slow and pills were popped to tend to the headaches from the noise.

At about 3:30, I finally was getting ready for my 8:00 class the next morning (or the same day, actually) and climbing into bed. My ears were still ringing from the alarm and I could hear alarms from the other non-dorm halls alerting everybody and yet nobody that there was a fire and to get out. They finally shut off at about 5:00 and I could sleep for about two hours before it was time to get up again.

So, that was my night/early morning. I am exhausted.

I experienced it. I remember it. I hated it.

Let's never do this again.