let me see your beauty broken down (like you would do for one you loved)

I've been in Scotland since Saturday, and the jetlag is fairly finished. I was pretty useless Saturday, until about 9pm... Sunday was a little better, and I managed to get some singing in, though my voice was fairly tired from all the coughing/week off. I can't believe I went a week without singing. Some friends of Daddy and Amber's came by, and they seem to be delightful people. Living as a college kid, I tend to forget how marvelously civilized life with parents is. Of course I didn't always have my own bathroom and a full-sized bed or a room with a skylight, or copious amounts of wine... But of course coming "home" (or at least back to my family, wherever they happen to be living at the time) is about much more than that. Somehow we speak the same language.

This morning, I woke up at 7:10am, and it was still dark outside... the sun rises here around 8:30... it's getting light around 8. After some coffee, I decided to go for an early morning walk to see the sun rise, so I pulled on my "wellies" and bundled up and headed off down the dirt road not far from our place. Quiet, fresh air, and frost all over the ground. A few lights in houses, way in distance... and across the fields, I could see our greenhouse covered in frost. And wouldn't you know it... in all of this peace, my mind was racing. I succeeded for a few seconds, a few times in merging with the calm which surrounded me... but all these months of chaos seem to have created a constant need for chatter in my mind. Envisioned conversations, scenarios, putting everything I was seeing into words, recollections of dreams, wonderings about people, about the rest of the vacation, half-remembered sayings and songs... Come to think of it, it's not just the garbage of the past seven months I'm trying to shed... it's the garbage of my entire life. How does one do that? No wonder I'm having a hard time finding creativity and poetry... but maybe this is a period of time during which I can tap into that. I have all of these needs taken care of, and plenty of space.

A side note, pertaining to the past entry: I have mentioned the thoughts contained in it especially to two separate people, who I thought might be able to really provide some insight into my adorably naive twenty-something ramblings... As someone who generally cultivates more relationships with less religious people, I find it difficult to find someone with whom I can discuss spirituality without feeling like a hack. But the thing I discovered, in my correspondences with these two people is that even if someone is spiritually open, they do not necessarily speak the same language as you do. Or they are coming from different places, and exist on a different plane now. So although I still lack fellow travellers, I know that I'm not alone in the world.

Questions and answers

I feel like I ought to put something here tonight. It's been a while since I've exhibitionistly offered myself up to cyberspace (not counting my shameful facebook activities)... anyway, the beast is growling. I'm listening to Leonard Cohen, and thinking about how people need poetry in their lives... even if they don't realize it. The need was somewhat supplanted in centuries previous, with religions full of smells and bells and a life generally full of mystery. In our time, almost everything seems to be explainable; it's harder to find, that kind of poetry that flattens you with its beauty and the infinitesimal truths it reveals about the universe. I wonder about people who desparately cling to religion... and people who go every Sunday, not knowing why... Maybe it's not God they're looking for, but just poetry. The feeling that there is at least something in the universe which is beautiful and unexplainable and true. So I long ago realized that organized religion was not for me, and recently realized that the spiritual experience is perhaps something I do want in my life, something I already have in my life, if I pay attention to it. I love poetry.