The best

The best time to sit in traffic, is during an electrical storm at night. Being stuck on the tip top of a bridge over looking the Nashville skyline on one side, and what seems to me to be God's most excellent light display since Creation on the other, is pure bliss. Sensory details have popping up recently to form a symphony of delight for me. I've noticed things more deeply than ever before, it catches my breath now to see the lightning coming while still in a calm, bright area. It gives me chills. Drinking orange blossom iced tea, or mint iced tea, is a sensation like no other. Drinking something that tastes like it smells is like becoming a flower (only iced tea works for the flower effect, flowers should never be hot, they wilt). Last week at camp, far from any city's lights or stream of vehicles, I swam at night during a storm. (There were lots of moths swimming to, as it were, because of their reckless pursuit of {the pool} light, which is also amazing) I looked up into the falling rain to discover I was moving at light speed, or so it seemed. The wind was moving the water all about and there was a chill in the air; it was the closest I've ever been to (physically) feeling shipwrecked. These sensoric (I may have discovered a new word there) moments also happen during the most mundane of activities. Like getting into bed after a hot, humid day (the kind of day that makes my hair a perfect afro) and feeling the crisp, cool sheets and the approaching rest. And I reach to turn off the ligth, and I notice the shadows being cast on the wall and get caught up in them. I get into bed every night, but just sometimes it hits me just right and I breathe a deep sigh of contentment and thankfulness. He didn't have to make my life rich with these extra little feelings, but I think He knows me well enough to know when I need to experience His closeness in this sort of grasp-able way, even though it isn't tangible really to most. And sometimes He just indulges me.

Leonard and Mary Starner

These are my great, great, great grandparents. Mary was a Quaker! This picture was taken somewhere between 1886 and 1900.

The Exquisite Corpse (Except with Words)

The Exquisite Corpse is a game that the Dadaists played where they continue a drawing off of a small piece of the drawing of a previous friend, so it turns out to be a huge drawing that is crazy. Well, last year on the way to a rafting trip, those in the vehicle compiled a story at the rate of four words each, kind of in the vein of the Dadaists. Here it is:

I believe there was a beautiful young lady who had a strange body and long hair with a funny dress, the dress was with platypus fur and pink scale of rattle snake. Her shoes were even stranger. You can't imagine her in the happy time when she was at the pancake palace ball. She floated like the ice cream in a float, root beer. In the new north way of the ocean was the little frog prince she loved. He had not yet declared his love for his lovely great love. His heart was like a frog jumping on the trampoline of lu-uhve! A car ran over his evil step-mother, oh what an awesome thing. It was a truck running over his moldy froggish, freakish, fiend! But enough of that because the truth is out what a giant happened. He was invovled with the fancy happy dancing police of Switzerland and the horse flies. He was very unconventional. Now lets see what happens because his happy ever after was not there, it was in Morrocco. Betty-Lou was the lady's name, but he called her what-to-do ever after. I don't know what to do, but this is crazy, like Betty-Lou, she's a pet do-do bird. I don't remember exactly, but she cry after she watch sesame street. Her parents were Pre-Raphaelites who loved strawberry yogurt and bananas. The night before her wedding she ran. He wasn't frogly. This made her very sad anytime she pondered her past. She wished she was at a theme park. Can you imagine a time when lizards could fly? Sky diving was her biggest fear, but she remembered the brave lizards and jumped for joy. The lizards always made sucj a wonderful home. They always look around and hunt for grapefruit, the fuzzy green kind. But they also enjoy the sun, especially on the beach when they take trips to hippie farms. Betty-lou worshipped almighty god! And the deer frolicked in the dark forest, made even funkier by the smokiness. She became a missionary, to the country of Norweigia. The one who listened was the frog prince, whom she loved dearly, over every other one. Everybody knows the happy couple obeyed the Lord's leading to get married and continue to take the first love to people in Gatlinburg on their honeymoon. Kangaroos are not very friendly, but sure will come close to you, but they won't hurt unless you're wearing avacado green checkered pants and red high-heel shoes and also his lovely bejewelled disco outfit. If slugs flew, salt would no longer be necessary. But she will need to see what he will give her for sprinting off London Bridge into a bowl of pudding. His precious lovely disco suit was ruined by the German Nazis. Nazis don't like pudding, of course, "We won't make pudding ever!" they said. Losers! Kazakistani commandos trip pver their disco shoes which is their destruction.

The end.

I took a walk this morning about 6:30. It was too warm for moving about, so I cut it short. When I got back to my house, my niece and nephew were sleeping, so I layed down on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. My nephew, Ricky, laughed in his sleep. And I smiled.

I'm leavin' on a jet plane. . .

I'm on my way to Glasgow this morning, and will conclude my travels in London at a later date! AH! England! Land of my (sort of) birth!!! YAY! Have fun here with out me, keep watching LOST everyone.