Driving in the rain

The highway dark and wet. My lights on high, then dim, as cars careen around corners toward me. Driving rain splacking my windshield a thousand times between each wiper swish, and the wipers on fast. My speed slows on a corner where I can’t see the stripes through the sitting water; the only indicator of the existence of my lane is a vague line where the rumble strip might be, and the reflectors floating a few feet above where the shoulder of the road should be. And the double dark streams in the ruts worn into the pavement. But the black water in those grooves suctions hard at the tires, threatens to tear the wheel out of my hands if I wander into or out of them. As I follow just alongside those dark, curving leeches of water, the wipers wick more droplets away, thin hands that brush off the constant onslaught and allow me to keep moving. I focus on the open air ahead of me. Dark gap, marked only by blackness below and above, by slow-moving roadside reflectors on the right, and fast-moving headlights on the left . Bright lights. Still more blinding reflections that beam towards me on the water sitting on the roadway -- like neon shadows stretching between me and the oncoming car, like wild watercolor paint spills, quivering under the fall of raindrops. The lights burn into my sight like pale blue, yellow-gold or bright white sets of eyes leaking their long reflections between us. They advance like double blares of vibrant music getting sharper and shorter and stronger. I wince to lessen the impact, and tense to the moment I will sail past into the freedom of the open road.

more music

Listening to Over the Rhine tonight. Some serious talent there. Happy To Be So is particularly sweet and beautiful.

Bryan John Appleby

Tonight my roommate talked me into going to a little concert a few miles from here. It was cheap, the timing was good, and she showed me one of the songs of one of the bands this afternoon and hooked me. I am so glad I went! While the first band was - interesting, let's say, and the second band was ok, Bryan John Appleby was really, really good. In spite of the beardiness of the whole band. Ha. I loved his voice, his guitar, his accompanists, and all their songs, at least as well as I understood them.

From Appleby's website: Seattle based songwriter Bryan John Appleby spent winter and spring of this year holed up with close friends in a Ballard warehouse banging pots, plucking strings, tapping mason jars, and plunking pianos. What emerged from these musical ramblings was the long awaited debut full-length Fire on the Vine. The album elaborates on his affinity for organic soundscapes and acoustic found sounds.

From Grooveshark: lots of good songs.

A Winter Night

There is something utterly beautiful about this poem by Tomas Transtrolmer (trans Robin Robertson), in both languages. And suddenly I want to learn the language that my surname came from.

A Winter Night

The storm puts its mouth to the house
and blows to get a tone.
I toss and turn, my closed eyes
reading the storm's text.

The child's eyes grow wide in the dark
and the storm howls for him.
Both love the swinging lamps;
both are halfway towards speech.

The storm has the hands and wings of a child.
Far away, travellers run for cover.
The house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.

The night is calm in our rooms,
where the echoes of all footsteps rest
like sunken leaves in a pond,
but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world.
It puts its mouth to our soul
and blows to get a tone. We are afraid
the storm will blow us empty.

--

En Vinternatt

Stormen sätter sin mun till huset
och blåser för att få ton.
Jag sover oroligt, vänder mig, läser
blundande stormens text.

Men barnets ögon är stora i mörkret
och stormen den gnyr för barnet.
Båda tycker om lampor som svänger.
Båda är halvvägs mot språket.

Stormen har barnsliga händer och vingar.
Karavanen skenar mot Lappland.
Och huset känner sin stjärnbild av spikar
som håIler väggarna samman.

Natten är stilla över vårt golv
(där alIa förklingade steg
vilar som sjunkna löv i en damm)
men därute är natten vild!

Över världen går en mer allvarlig storm.
Den sätter sin mun till vår själ
och blåser för att få ton. Vi räds
att stormen blåser oss tomma.

Leithart: enlightenment gratitude

Peter Leithart's most recent blog post: read it here.

In which he quotes various people including Descartes: Gratitude is “a sort of love, excited in us by some action of him to whom we offer it, and whereby we believe he has done us some good, or at least had an intention to do us some. So it includes all that goodwill does, and this besides, that it is grounded on an action we are very sensible of, and whereof we have a desire to make a requital.

sweet weekend

Becki, Maria and Laura at Gambino's Italian restaurant
Vicki and I at dinner
(pictures from Becki's camera)


Yesterday, partially in celebration of my sister Laura's birthday, she and Vicki drove to Moscow to spend some time with us here. The five of us sisters spent the day enjoying one another's company, good food, Moscow shopping, and hilarious movies together. What a treat. These girls are 4 of my best friends, and 4 of the people who have shaped me through the years and continue to influence who I am as an adult; they are also the people who have known me in my worst moments and who I can still enjoy and be at rest with. Is this what fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ should be like as well?

Today I was privileged to be able to worship at my church. I have missed it. I think it's been a month since I was there, and the renewal of this morning's worship did something to me that I noticed more than usual because of how long it's been. I walked in to choir practicing a setting of Colossians 3:12-16. Dr. Erb (our music leader) giving me the ok to sing with them even though I'd missed practice, made my heart happy, and the worship service continued to bless and challenge me from that moment on. (Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him).

Our sermon was from the end of 1 Samuel, where David (in contrast to Saul throughout the book) is full of mercy towards all he meets, and in v23 David shows that he is doing this because he has received goodness from God. God is a God of mercy, and we are to imitate Him in our spheres of influence. "God's relationship to mercy is greater than the sun's relationship to heat and light," Pastor Wilson closed with. Freely we have received; freely let us give. (Matt. 10:8)