Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Plugs

Wednesday 
December 2, 2015
9:22PM

Sometimes, I feel as though the plugs and wires and buttons of technology are like veins and tubes connecting to my heart.
They pop and push inside my arteries as if they belong there, as if it is their home and not mine.
Without them I will die.
My lungs dance up and down for them, but my heart doesn't seem to like them. Deep down it knows they are not my friends.
They don't keep me alive.
Not really.
They eat me.
Bite by bite, shovel by shovel their stomachs are never quite satisfied.

I could drown in the monstrous shadows of my bedtime room and they wouldn't blink one tear for my loss.

Not one.

Are you following?

-k.p.b


Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Darkness

Do you ever feel your heart expanding so vastly you almost can't breathe--
like the world around you is no longer a world but an exquisite cage, full of dreams and life and love, closing in on you breath by breath?
Slowly the cage gets smaller but with each retraction you are somehow bigger and more open than ever before.
The cage becomes you and somehow you aren't dull and empty but alive.

Claude Monet once whispered in the darkness of his lover's ear--or perhaps the sky's--"I paint like a bird sings, in every harmony."
What could he mean?
Who was he speaking to?
To whom or what did those words erupt from?
Was it in a thought or a piercing moment first?
In the lover's ear alone could we ever find the answer.

I am in love.
I am erratically and irresistibly pulled by the stroke of love, the compelling fluid movement of Monet's brush itself. It swims around me as if to drown me in its gorgeousness and momentary existence.
I am a happy, but hopeless victim.

Why is that?
I once thought I figured it out.

James Dean.
His name has been seemingly in the air this week. There he is with rebellion ablaze in his blue, blue eyes. And I can see him now rolling them like the tongue of waves rolling off the ocean's breath, with tumult and anger and passion wrapped up in each other.
It's aggravating what one pair of electric blue eyes can flood the chambers of your heart with.
Aggravating.

They stare at me as if I ignored them half my life and the other half I nurtured them tenderly and purposefully, as if they know me all too well. As if they see into the dark unabashed corners of myself not one human has or ever deserves to see in their lifetime. As if they know every piece of me.
Am I crazy to think such thoughts when I am just a small girl with hair far too big for her body and two wicked eyes that see too much in too little?
Are my words nothing more than poetic dreams on my pillow, whispered in the only way my voice can whisper--sadly?
Sometimes, when my thinking dances wildly in the flicker of my nightlight, I let it swim around me as I stand waist-deep in thought, wondering what the sweet and innocent sensation of holding your hand, loving you entirely, would feel like.

Could I rather be peaceful like the Setting Sun on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect, and barter my time for a slipping coin of glittering gold? Could I rather let my rosy cheeks dash into pearly white ridges, tranquil and robust like Ice Floes? Could I rather be the throbbing heartache of the Water Lilies enveloped in rippling pools of passion and poetry? For once could it be me that catches the thirsty, racing heart beat and not the other way around?

For once could someone or something break their heart over and over again because they glimpsed me? Because they realize destruction is a form of creation--and a heart breaking is also a heart being born?
Am I nothing more than a shadow killed by the daylight of expectations and false ideas? Does this stark world see my red lips as blood dripping from the martyrs of poetry and true art and love? Or does this pale world see me as the rose petal falling from the Autumn bloom, alluring for one moment but gone and stepped on when the season is over?
Am I destined for nothing more than moths clinging to a flame of enchantment in the light, but bored the moment the candle flickers out? Is there not beauty in the darkness also?

I guess I am alone--
waiting in the darkness,
not for a light to come and fix it,
but for the one who finds the darkness as beautiful and wild and perfect as I do.
Perhaps someday someone will find me, writing on the pages of the night sky about the heart that made mine first skip a beat.
Perhaps he'll clasp my hand in his cold ones and tip the ink of starlight into my heart and then,
oh then, we'll be in darkness, perfectly lonely together.
Perhaps one day I'll be braver than the sad whispers of my aching midnight poetry.

Someday James Dean's eyes won't provoke me so and someday I will miss the way they teased me into insanity of heartache.

Someday I will be equal with the passion and hurt and sorrow of the world--
and we shall both suffer together,
in the dark.

-k.p.b.
Tuesday
"Claude Monet"




Monday, November 16, 2015

Snow Song

Have you ever had the good pleasure of hearing Schubert's D 957, No. 4 Standchen,"Swan Song"? I couldn't think of one single thing, sound, or taste that could compare to it--especially as the snow falls heavily, but delicately beside me. There they are like falling angels, drifting in a world stark by comparison of its purity. And here I sit wrapped up in euphoric melodies of great winged beasts and swelling hearts of misfortune and somehow all the fortune in the world seems to follow me deeper into my own heart as the perfectly elegant melody plays on.
First it's sad.
The small umbrella like creature isn't fully awake yet, its wings are only forming it's idea of flight. They're like broken branches still clinging to the crisp air of winter, not ready for the blush of spring to warm them and rub them into consciousness. How its tiny heart beats rapidly with anticipation of the world it has yet to know.
A crunch and crack. Next the wings stretch. They bend in a misshapen fashion until the delicate bones almost snap, pushing themselves against their fragile cabin, at last freeing himself from his ivory prison and home in one flicker of pressure.
How the golden flower awakes his senses and drowns his broken wings in diurnal goodness.
For a while he merely sits there taking in the vastness of color and smell and concoction of chill and warmth around him.
His little feet can't take him far, but he seems to have felt the course of the whole earth with each footstep he takes.
Yet in an instant, an idea pulses through him.
His wings begin to itch with intoxicating yearning. The desire to forsake his feet and stretch toward a bright domain he's never tasted devours all other senses. He must taste the sky even if he can't ever explain why.
Slowly he lowers himself from his solitude and in a rush of pure insanity he leaps from his broken house and lets the wind taste his feathers, the clouds kiss his muscles, feet, eyes and lastly the sky itself--how it looks at him as if he were only the first creature to ever experience flight. He lets the world of colors and expanse and freedom delight his spirit. His wings beat with the wind in a beautifully chaotic dance until the scintillating sky of night welcomes the moon and drenches his greyish wings in night light.
He sleeps for a moment in the starlight he has never before seen.
For many days this is the life he knows.
But night is not always so constant.
One fresh night of Summer, as his purring heart slowly sinks and rises to the usual rhythm of darkness, another being of night has a heart that is pounding and swiftly drawing closer. It yearns for his in a manner far more powerful than of his yearning of flight many moons ago.
The beast cloaked in darkness draws close to him.
He doesn't wake just yet.
The beast stares for a moment. It has seen this slumberous creature many times before, but never had it been so close.
Another heart race and then it lessens.
Softly and with the sfumato of moonlight just barely peaking around her, the creature bends down and gently pushes her lips against his own dreaming lips, possibly tasting his very dreams as she does it. It's so gentle he almost doesn't wake, but then a spoonful of moonlight shimmers on her body and dances against his eyelids in a rapture of waking him.
His eyes flutter open to her rapid heartbeat, but he doesn't move.
How could he?
They merely look into each other's eyes for a long moment. The night grew unusually quiet.
Sorrow comes at first, for the awoken beast, for surely he has never seen a creature so beautiful, so pure and white as fresh fallen snow. But his heart breaks at the thought the sky might've heard his aching thoughts. Perhaps he has betrayed the sky. He doesn't know. But suddenly, somethings shifts. The white angel moves away and with a tear sledding down the pillow of her white cheek she's gone.
Autumn follows where she wanders and leaves the sleeping beast in elegiac chill and sorrow.
A few tides of thought wash upon him, as the world he once knew is spun in gold and musk once more, "Will she ever come back? Does she know that Winter is coming? And could it be the sky has forgiven me yet?"
And lastly, "Was it all nothing more than a sad dream of toil and pleasurable pain?"
A flake or two begin to fall as these thoughts race through him night after night. He can't sleep without those haunting eyes of Summer starlight keeping him company.
On the first day of real snow, everything changes. Through the flurry of ivory music a dancer falls through it, as if making a waltz of the Winter around her.
The starlit girl.
She's here, inside the sky and dancing alone with the Winter wind and the sky's falling angels.
For one moment, and just one only, he stops and watches the way the snowflakes tangle in her pure white wings--and then he joins the dance.
It is the waltz his heart had always been searching the skies for.
And last, happiness.
-k.p.b.
Monday 10:23AM
The first breathless fall of gentle snow.






Saturday, November 7, 2015

Euphoria

I am breathless by the eyes of the stars. They stare at me as hungrily as I stare at them; as if I am a fox with big brown eyes of curiosity and mysterious innocence, and they--they are little birds cooing at the toil and wreckage of the earth. With unorthodox voices that haunt you in your sleep, they sing to you a melody that only your deep and cachet soul can hear. It's a sound of spirit and pure submersion.
The stars are lingering poets in a graveyard of Romanticism and abandoned abbeys where the winter sun rises slowly, palely, personally. It always seems they are for your soul, and yours alone. I am exasperated with teasing provocation when they see me--like an almost lover lingering near my lips but never quite pushing them against my own. They tickle my insanity in a sweet and sadistic way. Yes, the stars--against common belief--can be cruel and devouring creatures.
They can cut you open with an double-edged fork and shovel portions of your heart into their stomachs.
They don't need a reason to stop, either.
But they are kind. Truly the stars are kind crackles of light illuminating our dark world. Like lanterns they path the way into our souls without a thought of obligation weighing in their arms--it's what they are made to do, I guess.
Tonight my breath was caught between their warm arms and spun into a "quintessence" of rapturous awe. I felt my chest heave and ho, fall and rise, jump and sleep, jump and sleep all over again until I felt with a real palpable yearning to kiss somebody. Did I wish to kiss the stars? A boy? The cold crisp night air slapping rose petals on my cheeks? Does it truly matter who or what my lips yearned for when the impulse of loving life and breathing overcame my senses? (Overcame myself even?)
You see sometimes I yearn to be alone. I yearn for it so fiercely I forget what great fear and loneliness most people find in it. So tonight, a boy drove steadily through a thin road drenched in nightlight, as I ached to reach for his hand and hold it tightly, as the small rattling car was filled with the sound of unfinished stories and people who couldn't compliment each other more perfectly. First a girl with thick curling rays of sunlight and ridged cheeks to match her merry spirit. Second a boy who lost his lion's mane and found true friends instead. Third a boy with exquisite blue eyes that sparkle like dripping water on a sunny day and strong hands as cold and meticulous as branching ice crystals. Last a girl with tangling hair and curious fox-like tendencies. She is the misfit. The first is the light source. The second the never-failing anchor. And the last a flame.
There we were late into the small abandoned world around us, traveling through soundtracks and cutting through the dead, silent autumn night to venture around the forsaken bones of a cement factory. The sky was partly-cloudy but speckled with bright stars and all I felt my pounding heart say to me was, "Chase those blasted stars"!
 I climbed and climbed, often getting lost from the group, but finding my own strength and bravery with each stolen step toward the pinholes of heaven. I wasn't afraid--I had no fear for the strange words and pictures left by humans miles and miles away probably sleeping or doing something I could only wonder about. I wasn't afraid of the shadows creeping around me, twisting my hair with the quiet wind and collapsing into piles of crumbled stone. I didn't even fear the lingering idea that followed me up the broken building and slept beside me as I stretched out on top of a narrow pillar curved perfectly for a human body--"Do you really love that boy you talk about in your sleep? Or do you tell yourself you must?"
I don't know stalking beast of quiet devouring.
But I know, as surely as I did when I asked each of my friends if it truly is possibly for someone to love you as much as you love them, that love exists. I know that pounding hearts, stolen breaths, and endless nights of tears and poets and exhaustion of emotion are what we live for--we live for love or we do not live a life at all.
I sat up at the top of the world (or perhaps only an abandoned cement factory littered with thoughts and words and four wandering people) for who knows how long before my friends followed me and broke the silence I had grown to love more than fear.
We talked of life.
We silently pretended we had a clue.
The sun-ray asked each of us, "What's one thing you want to do before you die?" We all stayed silent until one admitted it was love they wanted, and then we laughed for truly that was the answer we all wanted to say but somehow lacked the courage to. I responded, "I want to feel love as pure and raw as Victor Hugo." I want a love that I know will love me back.
So we stared at the stars and acted like we had a clue and that we, so small and frail, were running the show. But the more I look up at the stars, the more I sit alone and fall madly in love with the quiet, the more I realize I never was running the show--and I never will.
What an exquisite thought that is.
-k.p.b.
November 5, 2015
2:00AM (When poet's are alive and awake)






Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Potpourri

Nov. 3, 2015 11:15PM, [k.p.b.]:
Professor [c.d.],
As I was taking the exam 2 today, I was spending a lot of time on my concluding essays and I wanted to be very thorough, but as I was finished and heading for my class I realized I had completely forgot about the simple and easy bonus question--our favorite piece of artwork from this semester! It's so silly and I feel slightly stupid asking you this, but could I submit it to you now in this e-mail? I know it's only a bonus question, but one point may be that extra little umph needed to do my absolute best and as I worked hard on my exam I feel it would only feel complete if I told you that my favorite work we studied this time was: (First) Bernini, "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" -- for the raw passion and poetic perfection. It's as if Bernini has fingers of paint and hands of fluid creation. I absolutely fall weak in the knees at his masterpieces. I only wish I could see them for myself, I'm not sure my body could handle it, but I know my soul would soar at such an exquisite sight! St. Teresa's words pierce my soul, much like the "fiery dart of love" that pierces her own. It's incredible. 
(Second) David, "Death of Marat"-- for the uncensored outrage and seemingly gentle and soft exquisiteness, the pure elegiac sfumato just drives me insane, but in the best sense. I just want to understand the fury behind such a painting, the sorrow David must've felt with each stroke he created of the death of his friend (even if it was a vain and asked for death). I truly could never understand such an emotional potpourri of anger, sorrow and hope for the figure of his friendship.
 I truly love both of those pieces, so wildly. 
Anyway, I hope this is okay for me to ask and even if I don't get the bonus point I still want you to know I truly enjoy every second of class and I'm finding a new passion for history and art as I've never had before and I want to thank you for giving that gift to me. It is a beautiful gift. 
Thanks again Professor [c.d.]! I hope you have a wonderful night. 

Today 10:19AM, [P.c.d.]:
Hello [k.p.], 

First off, may I just say that your beautifully written email, and your explanation of your appreciation for Bernini's and David's work brought a tear to my eye!  I completely agree with you -- Bernini's sculpture is absolutely jaw-dropping, and as for David, he is in my personal pantheon of artists :)  

I would be delighted to give you the bonus point for your answer -- in fact, I just pulled your exam to the top of the stack to grade and wow, absolutely outstanding work!  Excellently written, articulated, and supported answers -- your final essay is one of the best comparisons of West and David I have read in a long time.  You should be very pleased with your work -- your newfound passion for art history definitely shined through (in a chiaroscuro kind of way) ;) 

And thank you, thank you so much for your kind words -- you have made my day!!  

Have a delightful morning -- see you in class in a few hours,
[C.d.] 


Post script: This, as I cannot explain in words alone, has made me happier than anything I've been blessed to experience this week. I contemplated e-mailing my Professor at all as it honestly seemed like such a trivial matter, but as my mother is almost always right I decided to listen to her advice and how I wish you could only see the smile that crackles across my face right now, ridging my cheeks and spreading elation throughout my body like hot cider from following her advice! I opened that e-mail with the hopes that it was positive (I meant it when I told her I could care less about the bonus point), I just wanted her to know that what I said was from my heart and not my head for some bonus point. I wanted her to genuinely know that what I talked about meant something, something monumental inside me that hardly I could understand. And there it was--she understood and honestly flattered me in the greatest way I've ever been flattered. I'm honored by her compliment and only hope I can be as happy as I am now someday along the road when I look back and remember this. It's strange. This unusual joy feels more like a beginning than anything else. I await this class every time I come to school, but there's an electric feeling coursing through my body, like something is beginning and even though the horizon is all I see right now, I await the day I finally understand what all this means. I do not fear ambiguity, nor do I think it bad. I know it to be my friend and only walk beside it with an open mind and flaming curiosity I simply delight myself at having. 
Thank you Professor, for what ever beginning you have ignited. I shall be thankful always for your spark--of intellect, curiosity and above all, beginning.  -k.p.b. (smiling to myself in a yellow coat and a happy disposition.)
And by the way, these are the pieces of perfection I referenced above, in case you're wondering. 
Bernini, "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" (1645-1652)

David, "Death of Marat" (1793)

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Tuesday

 "That the Powerful Play Goes on"
(w.w. 305)

She lost herself
in not just another book, 
but rather a piece of her soul that had 
gone
missing.
There is was like a gentle
bird with prostrate and bended 
wings--
its eyes singing with the same voice
as her own.

"You are not lost," 
it began 
and then she read on.
She read until it filled her with delight, 
until the crisp pages
bent in the corner beautifully
stuck to her heart
where it would stay
always. 

-k.p.b.

Friday, October 23, 2015

A Friday Lunch

I don't know what it is about today that just makes the prettiest song seem like a lullaby of happiness.
I see my toes peeking from behind my laptop as I quickly roll my fingers across the melodic keys, the pattern reminding me of my heartbeat as a soft autumn song caresses me.
Today I talked with a "kindred spirit"(as Anne Shirley would say) in a slot of time where time did not exist.
We talked and talked as though we had been talking for decades and this was our usual spot in a cafe and the salads we talked over were our usual orders and the customers around us were just paintings on the wall watching our every word but not caring one bit what we actually talked about.
I recall it began around noon when we met together at a cafe after running in to each other a few days previously and deciding we needed to get together.
But the funny thing about running in to someone is usually, as humans, the natural response is, "Oh it's been so long, we should really catch up!" but then funnily enough they usually never desire to see them again, let alone actually follow up with the notion they just gave.
Humans are weird.
Just a few days ago after saying those exact words to Caitlyn, but actually meaning them, she texted me. She asked to go to lunch.
What human does that? Then again, all good humans do, actually.
It made me so happy that some friend, some human actually followed their word and took action to see it through. I was elated (even if it wasn't a Tuesday, it felt like one then).
I awoke this Friday morning with the crisp Autumn mid-morning air waltzing about my exhausted figure and it's strange how few people actually don't stop and smell the roses--literally.
There I was in love with life and morning and breath itself, I stopped my thinking for a moment or two and smelled every single rose on the rose bush beside me.
They were decadent.
I remember one crumbling at the soft brush of my fingertips and my heart sank as I scurried to collect them and lay them somewhere special (a statue of two children reading a book together).
It's incredible how much humans miss in one day if they forget to live the life that was given to them; I guess every human being elects the life they think they deserve.
I guess.
But the moment came when the beloved luncheon arrived and our long and mid-conversation-like talking was awakened. We talked and talked, but we never once reached for our devices of distraction and false conversation. We only looked around us and between us. We were two friends of alike minds and intellect so closely related our conversations could've filled three books in just one sitting.
We talked of everything, too.
Books.
Love.
Life.
Humans.
Movies.
Poetry.
Books.
Love.
Music.
Sadness.
Ice cream.
Family.
Books.
Life.
It sounds like our conversation was a pumping heartbeat rising and falling but truly it was more like a constant, needed vein leading to the next topic and the next as if they were already connected and waiting to be used all leading up to the same place--a heart.
You don't know real conversation until you forget you're even having one. A truly valuable conversation doesn't feel like two people using their voices, but rather two spirits holding hands and understanding.
Caitlyn gets it.
We can talk about everything without reservations and yet we talk about anything that makes or doesn't make sense to us and we always understand each other.
I remember at one point she said to me, "You're really easy to talk to." Wow. I can't explain in words how happy that made me. I always try and try to listen intently, but often find myself wavering in flowing conversation unless I'm truly immersed.
But I've had an epiphany. I've discovered through the immersion of truly deep and valuable conversation today that the only people worth surrounding yourself with are the ones, the souls that don't make your spirit saunter, but the ones that make it soar. A friend, a sister, a brother, mother, dog, bird, book or plant--whoever or whatever it is that makes up the company you have make them worthwhile.
"We accept the love we think we deserve." And so it goes with company.
If you are surrounding yourself with insipid spirits--why even waste your one and only precious life on them?
I spent hours last night feeling miserably lonely in the company of many I thought were alike spirits to myself. There I sat curled up in a blanket next to them, a chilling night breeze rattling my bones, hot cider on my breath, and the stars watching in wonder probably whispering to themselves, "Why is she with them? Doesn't she know what she's worth? Doesn't she see that we find her just as fascinating as she finds us?" And that's the key--finding people who find you as exciting and brilliant and beautiful as you find them.
Words.
Words as Caitlyn put it, are the key to expressing exactly what we mean in the precise manner we mean to express it. Art, music, poetry--they are not echoes of thought, but are direct thought.
So hear my words, read them as they drip from my lips, and know that I am worth a thousand sunsets drenched in gold and becoming starlight.
I deserve every book that sings to my soul louder than any song of a lover ever could, for now.
My soul delights in beautiful things that find life and love and sadness equally as beautiful as the find me.
I am waiting to be hugged, held, caressed and ignited by someone whom I can hug, hold, caress and ignite as well.
I do not reject.
I deserve a friend with whom I can talk hours with and still never realize we're talking.
I am accepting the love, the life and the world I think I deserve--and by heaven and hell I deserve a beautiful one.
I always have.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

That's all. {Beta: a Prologue}

If I had a dog I'd name her Beta.
It isn't just an adorable name--its a matter of fact, beta means many things but of those there is the one that speaks her name: a systematic risk.
Or so it says.
The only risk I could think of having Beta is the risk of falling too deeply in love with her and never wanting to let her go.
I'm sure she's wonderful, where ever she is right now.
Perhaps she hasn't even been born yet.
Perhaps she's searching for me just as restlessly as I am searching for her.
I wonder, is she quiet and reserved like my favorite poet? (M.O.)
Could she be reckless and bold and undeniably zealous, much like the outlandish and fuming girl of green gables I look up to so much? (A.S.)
Is she like a tempest of thought, a wave of pensive thinking and throbs? (W.W.)
All I think of when I turn to her--or at least the idea of her for now--is what on earth this sweet, adorable and vital creature is going to be to me for the rest of my life.
Does she even know that someday we'll be so lovely and gentle to eachother, we'll wonder where we've been all the time of existence, if not together.
I love Beta.
I do not even know her physically, but I do know she is there.
She is the idea of the love I've never known--the love of dependency, on me as much as on her.
If I never find her I wouldn't want to stop looking, even if I knew the moon was closer than she was to me.
I don't care about the facts, I don't care if it's a risk loving her--all I need is the comfort her nestled black body and chilly nose next to me brings. A small curled perfection cuddling with me sounds the closest thing to heaven right now.
All I need is to know something can love me just as effortlessly and devotedly as I do them.
That's all.
-k.p.b.

A bent corner of a beautiful page

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the the walk of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking , suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you may be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries.

The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

-w.w.
"To You"
1819-1892

(slightly condensed)
If I could be so lucky as to hear these unadulterated words spoken softly and genuinely to me-- or if I could be so bold as to do so to another  myself. -k.p.b.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Hands are meant to be held.
Tightly.

-k.p.b.
Tuesday 
{October 5th 2015}

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Thank you always.

Today is Tuesday. 
I'm in love with this day of the week almost as much as I am in love with the effortlessness of breathing right now.
I climbed a hillish slump of earth today and as I reached the top some sleeping beast inside me awoke. 
It brushed the leaves off of its snout, trotted in a circle for a moment to awaken its bones and then--
then it stretched its wings as far as the eye could possibly see. 
One couldn't believe the life that those wings brushed into my soul as it beat and beat against the perfect autmnness of the air.
In that moment life existed. 
The air was perceived as perfection to my senses.
The wind jostled my long braid and entered my spirit similarly. 
The disposition of flying overcame me. 
(We were the same thought.)
The wings that were rooted in my pulsing beast suddenly became my own and sprouted to the sky in an earnestness I did not know this earth could witness from me!
"Oh Autumn!" I cried with my head tilting backward as to satisfy my senses further.
"Oh blessed Moon that calls my name and Wind that speaks the language of flight and longing and freedom to my wings!" 
I spoke these things because I did not care if anyone could or could not hear me.
I could hear me and that was all that mattered.
If ever there was a person who had ever felt such effusive happiness I knew them not! For now I could not only feel free, but I could soar far above heartache and worry! Now I knew I was free as too seldom humans are not.
It felt exquisite because something whispered,
"Come as you are, not as you wish you were."
And I believed that little voice, for it was my own.
Oh how I love the sound of loose gravel against my shoes and the thought of worry far below them. 
To my dear sister, 
You are perfection of spirit and compassion.
To my lovely friend, my companion and guide--I love you more than the hikes we share, the boots your carelessly tossed from your feet and gave to me. 
To the one who thinks of nothing that is not love-driven:
You are the one I wish to watch every cloudless sunset with. 
Always dear sister. 
Thank you for the freedom loving you brings. 

How I love Tuesdays. 

How perfection comes in many packages.
Just so.

-k.p.b.

September 29, 2015
Tuesday
9:29PM
{On a day with sprinkled rain, incandescent autumn wind
 and a trail filled with nothing far greater than everything.}

Thank you Heavenly Father. 
Thank you always.


Monday, September 28, 2015

Another delayed thought >> december

By the way, it snowed on Christmas this year.
I don't know if I ever mentioned that.
It's kind of important.
(k.b.)

Sunday, September 27, 2015

I'm only curious.

I'm only curious--

why wasn't I good enough for you?

Which part of me was it
you couldn't seem to stand?

Was it the way I chewed my food,
slowly and with subtle purpose?

Could it be the misshapen vision
of my heart
somehow
(for some odd reason I cannot name)
longing for your hand?

The socks I wore were strange.
The books I read were home to me.
My sense of correction a little too strong.

True, I could never love another thing more than I did the Autumn breeze,
but that was never suppose to mean we couldn't
at least try to prove that wrong.

You were never a Darcy,
believe me you could never even try.
Nor a Dean, a Hardy, a Wadsworth or even a Thomas.
But it didn't matter to me. 

All I saw, all I wanted was a spark.

A zang.
A burst of marble sunlight--
a song only I could hear, no matter
how sad the lyrics were.

But I guess some happiness is never meant to be.
Or perhaps it is happiness
that I am missing only because I wanted
you more
than I accepted myself.

Perhaps.

But what a lovely idea we would've been.
What a perfect array of
chaos and explosion we
could've given the sky,

like the stars.

-k.p.b.

9/20/15
11:58PM

Monday, September 21, 2015

letting go

There is something so very beautiful 
about letting go.

I know at first it feels like
fire
unfathomable and unadulterated 
flames; 

but I promise you
 with my fingers tracing swiftly over my 
swollen heart--
it gets better. 

It's worse than ripping off a bandage, 
but it feels infinitely 
different 
the feeling of weight that
 releases you.

And then all at once--
you can fly. 

It's incredible. 

(Just so.)

-k.p.b.

September 21. 2015
11:21PM
{Almost Tuesday}

Farewell: (Firecracker boy)
"Cold Moon" by: Zolas
"Better Man" by: Leon Bridges 
"Dirty Paws" by: Of Monsters and Men
"Sunburn" by: Ed Sheeran
"Paris" by: Magic Man
"I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by: Sleeping At Last (cover)


Thursday, September 17, 2015

To: the Autumn Wind

Have you ever stood at the precipice of unfathomable yearning
and the brisk ferocity of insanity?
If you ever know such a feeling, such a kick in the heart, 
my only advice is this:
Run until your demons can't catch you.

Allow me to explain:

I'm in love with something I can't have.
My heart hungers for a dark and sfumato creature 
that both stalks my happiness and chases my monsters away.
I'm in love with the Autumn coldness, 
the sweet and elegiac dance it plays with the bending trees and temperate music. 
I hear the wind whistle through my hair sadly;
It feels like the hands of a lover tracing the outline of my nose and 
suddenly I think, "The moonlight doesn't seem to be the only thing to touch my lips." 
But it's almost too much to bear.
Almost.

I'm in love with a person too. 
A boy much like Autumn.
I first saw him standing there with hair like
fire-crackers,
exploding with dark curls in such a fierce and extreme manner it excited me.
He was exciting himself.
He had a deep felicity about him. It lurked about his crimson-ridged lips 
and sparking blue eyes (much like the painting of the humanist by Raphael Sanzio da Urbino)that ensnared a helpless captive--me.
It never occurred to me I would one day regret 
that tumult of wavy nighttime. 
One never thinks they will regret one look in a strangers eyes or one unknowing desire to kiss their lips.
I guess.

It seems all I wanted was happiness I thought I was deserving of. 

Perhaps the only thing I deserve right now is loneliness.

This sounds like such a burden, 
such a heavy and dreadful thing to wish upon oneself,
but it's quite the opposite when you think about it. 
A poet once said, 
"I know what it is to be lonely, therefore I know what it is to be loved."

Just so.

I didn't think it would end this way--
wishing for a better epilogue or worse:
finding myself trapped in the first page of meeting him.
I have but one question for that blasted Autumn wind--
Is there ever a chapter of happiness for me? 
Does the white knight ever come for me or am I doomed 
to become the ivory hero myself?

How many times did I listen to the song of Autumn and pray it would sing 
just for me?
How many times did I have to mangle my own heart
with my own delicate hands?
Just so, 
It wasn't meant to be. 

As many things are. 

And still I hear that sweet and solemn music
rushing through me like an Autumn scream of wind. 
It jostles my skirt, tugging at my soul and 
softly whispers, "Why do you cry, girl?"
Why do I cry. 
Lips move but never quite understand--do they?

"Why do I cry?"
I could ask myself that question a thousand lucid times
and never find a perfect answer. 
I bet he could-- sweet sappy Autumn.
He always plays with a human's heart 
so recklessly
he must understand its function
entirely.

I wish I could blame misery on gravity. 
It seems much easier to say, 
"Cure you gravity. Curse you."
But it is not so.

I stay lonely, 
but never truly alone. 

At least someday I will understand what it truly means 
to be loved--
and to love so fiercely and unconditionally
the Autumn wind will curse my name just as I curse gravity
for not having me. 

Someday. 

k.p.b.

September 17, 2015 
12:29PM
Thursday

Post Script:
Songs for an elegiac heart: (CAUTION: this is not an antidote, rather just the opposite) 
"My Special Angel" Malcolm Vaughan 
"Dreamy Eyes" The Four Preps
"Unchained Melody" Perry Como
"Big Girls Don't Cry" Franki Valli and the Four Seasons
"You Send Me" Sam Cooke
"God Only Knows" The Beach Boys
"Dream a Little Dream of Me" Dean Martin (version)
"Georgia on My Mind" Ray Charles
"The Way You Look Tonight" Tony Bennett
"(Today I Met)The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" Darlene Love
"La Vie en Rose" Edith Piaf 
"Magic Moments" Perry Como
"What the World Needs Now is Love" Jackie DeShannon

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

"Rosie"

"My Girl with Night curls"

by: Kiersten P. Benson September 8, 2015 Wednesday 6:05PM



I saw her there --

with dark night curls

and a look of innocent 
mischief
about her.

She was wondrous to see,
a scarce star to be held
gently
inside 

your hands.

So tiny --

was she, 
yet so beautiful;

and so vast and perfectly 

alive.

Never did the Autumn ever
 wish
 to see such elegance,

nor tree bend 
to greet her smiling cheeks
with a brushing branch.

Jonquil her laughter
rang through
her ribs -- 
and through her small and
 fragile
figure like

a song --
the song of

little white flowers
 of Spring.

A breath of 
life.

She strikes like
red lips

in a pale 
world.

Rosie and pillowy
slapped by the petals 
of nothing -- 

her cheeks are
 infinitely
ridged as the mountains
above earth,

above every thing 

-- and one. 

- k.p.b.

/For "Rosie"/
 

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

If the stars were mine

There's a funny quality about me that rarely anyone understands that has ever known me. It's a simple thing, but stupid just the same: I am an extreme adventurer, and yet I hardly find a reason to prove that to anyone. I have yet to delight in the experience of flight. I do not speak any other world language apart from compassion and English. I don't even know how to drive. But, I've decided that adventure is all in the perspective of the host and I for one have had the biggest adventures of my life from where I'm sitting right now typing quickly.
Does it truly matter if I've never been on a plane? Are passports and train tickets essential when you're already on your own adventure now? Those things are just checklist items. The real adventure is the one you chose to experience right now. 
Don't get me wrong. 
I ache with more feeling than most people experience in a whole lifetime to feel the pressure of the atmosphere from inside the mechanical wings of an airplane. My feet yearn with sturdy conviction to feel the unsteady streets of cobblestone England and the soft country of France and to feel the warm waves of the Italian ocean breaking up the logic in my brain. I see cathedrals of forests, of saints and art and feelings I do not understand. I smell India like a slap of spices in my cupboard and sense the broken spirit of thousands I will never fully understand from places I will always feel I somehow don't belong. My eyes shed the tears of new people I'll fall in love with and ones I'll find peculiar as they find me. I see hearts broken, hands that dance to music I've never heard and ghosts of stories I'll never forget, even if I wish to. Hardly another person could compare to how desperately I believe that there are no accidents in this life and how that somehow means someday I will be destined to see the world and to understand it as my soul seemingly already does. 
So I woke up this morning thinking of all the wondrous things I felt, I did and I remembered about this summer and then like a leaf collapsing from a summer forsaken tree--it hit me. This summer is gone. But somehow, I am not sad. I thought to myself quite deeply, "Why is that?"
I am taken back to a moment not long ago with a dark backdrop of night and a center-stage filled with stars...somehow it relates to my travel-stricken dream and then I feel I am in that moment once more.
It began with an idea. 
Or a text, as it's called today.

It was from my sister Jessica inviting me to the upcoming meteor shower that very night! How incredible!
I admit, I was delighted and excitement began to penetrate from my little toes all the way into my heartbeat. It is something that is hard to explain to another, because I love the stars more deeply than most anything else. They are personal. So personal I hardly just sit outside with them, I listen to them. I beg them for questions and songs and tales of years ago. I see their outlines and wish that someday we could have our little talks every moment of the day and not just at night when the weather permits. Oh how the stars are more of friends than I've ever known. They glitter as if they are eyes lighting up when you walk into the room or telling them an exciting story. They sing as if it were the last and first song this earth has ever heard and oh, how they dance when the music is so softly sad. They are the most exquisite beings this earth has, apart from humans. 
But this idea, this message I received was so dearly exciting to me because it meant I was given an excuse to sit outside all night with my dear friends and watch them dance and sing and twirl all the night through--all. night. through. What could more incandescent?
Nothing, to be sure. 
So day slipped into evening and evening collapsed into night and then the real enchantment began. We walked outside with a bundle of blankets in outstretched arms and climbed upon the trampoline at one o'clock in the morning, our spirits more feverish for this natural phenomenon about to commence. With blankets puddled around our small bodies and nothing but expansive heavens as our station, we were ready for our adventure to begin. 
It's funny. Sometimes I feel perfectly capable, even preferable to silence when watching the exquisite stars above me. I don't know, I guess I feel they deserve some sort of reverence or respect to their unalterable beauty and so naturally I assumed everyone would feel the same way. And maybe I was just being a little daring in the hopes that we could watch quietly and speak of things that matter deeply as a sort of reverence to the elegant beings bravely falling and crashing through the heavens just for us. But it seems I was out of sorts to everyone else. They laughed and tickled and teased each other mercilessly and it was then I realized I had a choice--I could sit quietly and be unwanted by nearly everyone beside me (except perhaps my brother Adam, who quite frankly wanted nothing more than to go to sleep) or I could join in the innocent tumult and try to understand my fellow friends delightfully. 
I think you can figure out which one the fellow adventurer chose. 
Time began to pass and I remember amid giggling and talking and feeling wildly alive so late into the night that it was a strange thing watching the stars fall and flicker as if they had a choice. Sometimes I'd picture beautiful creatures, not quite like humans, dancing through a graveyard of glowing stones and when the music was seemingly quiet, no one moved very much. But then some angelic being would sing and suddenly the cemetery was alight with moving creatures in scintillating gowns and suit coats merely doing what they were destined to do in a moment moved by impulse and emotion. I thought, "If the stars could dance and sing so beautifully, it truly must be because they feel it is the only thing they must be doing. It is the action they know will bring them the greatest emotion, even if it makes them heartbroken at least they are feeling the emotion intended for them." 
Well.
I do think deeply even if everyone else is not doing just so.
But I've always marveled at the idea that cemeteries are scary. When every Halloween would come around it almost angered me that graveyards were made spooky and demonic and dark. They are such the opposite to me. I find cemeteries comforting in knowing that all these souls are at peace even if they never knew such a feeling on this earth. The sea of headstones and statues and flowers left by a soul that's journeyed on, it is an elegiac painting of what love truly is. I know that every soul is real. I know that they meet their marvelous and all-loving Maker when they die and so it does not scare me to see all of those souls at peace in that element. 
So the stars, they bring a sort of happy-sadness, something my sister Rachel and I talk about endlessly. I sometimes call it "necessary sadness" or "elegiac pleasure", but it is difficult to name because it's something that is complex in its own idea. How could one feel happiness and sorrow at once? Their very names defy each other. But to me, it's a type of emotion that doesn't look sad on the outside but is very personal and reaching on the inside. It's as if you lose a loved one and you hear their favorite song on the radio or you stumble into their favorite shop without realizing it and though they're both acts of "chance" you know it was something meant for you. You know it means something and so how could you be sad when you know it makes you happy the universe or God is thinking of you? I used to run from songs that made me sad because at first, it felt wrong to me to be violating old memories or feelings--they seemed to have no right in my life in that random moment. But, by bravely getting through that emotional barrier, I've learned that feeling sad isn't wrong. I learned that feeling happiness all the time isn't right either. There must always be a balance of letting go and feeling things as they really are. You must do the latter in order for the former to be at ease. It is a cycle that can be quite exquisitely beautiful if you let it. There is a certain power in owning your own feelings, but letting nature course their depth and time of place. We are often told to hide your feelings if they are not in the proper place or setting--but how on earth could that be normal if emotions themselves are not beings of time tables or hours or even time at all? If we look closer we realize that time is merely an invention for living beings, most especially humans, so how could it possibly apply to anything apart from that? Broken hearts do not heal from time they heal from allowing your emotions to become real and then by letting go of them. Happiness is not from an element of time but from people or your dog or a painting. It comes from finding a crumbled love note in the street or a red balloon floating carelessly through the sky. Just as happiness, broken hearts and sadness are not elements of time emotions are the same. We are never pained by time. We are pained by experiences. 
As I looked up at those glittering stars it was remarkable to feel that "happy-sadness" of them once being there, still and solid in the sky and then so suddenly gone in a matter of a heartbeat. How lovely it would be to be so beautiful, so sure of your small purpose in this life, even if it lasted only a moment. 
Sometimes--all the time--I see moments or people through my day that remind me of that small verity. The autumn wind full of spices will jostle through my hair and whisper a sonnet of sadness only I could understand. Or a book long forsaken by someone else will become a dear love of mine because we somehow found each other. I'll hear a thousand songs that speak my name in every word. A smell. A shoe. An old friend. I see God in everything, I hear His voice in that autumn wind and look into His lovely eyes when I find a new companion (a book) or gaze heavily into the glittering stars. 
I know that when I look into those stars I see Him because it is as if those stars are telling me exactly how wonderful my life is and is still going to be and so I dream. I dream of autumn breezes and forsaken books. I dream of cobblestone England and quiet misunderstood cathedrals yet to be discovered. 
I love the stars, my friends. They've always understood.
I can hardly tell you how incredible the sky looks just before dawn. They say that's when you can see stars the best, but to me every moment with them in view is perfect. But through the waves of exhaustion for everyone else, through their small napping with heavy breaths and quick dreams of the morning, I was there looking at the stars. Never once through that night did my eyes leave the stars, my friends. 
So night slipped into morning and morning collapsed into day and as I've learned throughout this interesting summer--Robert Frost said it best:

"Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank in grief.
So dawn goes down to day, 
Nothing gold can stay."

-k.p.b.

(Post Script: And what do you know--that poem was resting in my pocking this whole time, written by my own hand. How lovely. And...it's a Tuesday.)

Audible Pleasure: (It helps when you're writing)

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Crying in the Chapel


"Crying In The Chapel" by: Orioles

You saw me crying in the chapel
The tears I shed were tears of joy
I know the meaning of contentment
I am happy with the Lord

Just a plain and simple chapel
Where all good people go to pray
I prayed the Lord that I'll grow stronger
As I live from day to day

I searched and I searched but I couldn't find
No way on earth to find peace of mind

Now, I'm happy in the chapel
Where people are of one accord
Yes, we gather in the chapel
Just to sing and praise the Lord

You'll search and you'll search but you'll never find
No way on earth to find peace of mind

Take your troubles to the chapel
Get down on your knees and pray
Then your burdens will be lighter
And you'll surely find a way

Monday, June 29, 2015

Rain drops on Roses

Sunday afternoons are simply lovely. 


Put them and flowers together and the result is simply perfect.


And as Claude Monet has said, 


"I must have flowers, always and always."


                                                                         I quite agree. 



Tuesday, June 23, 2015

I Scrawl

There is something very intimate about a pen sliding gently or roughly over paper. It's as if the chain of thought coursing through my mind and my body is irreversibly connected; they are one together in the crime of writing the thoughts provoking my pulsing soul. It's unnerving but intimate just the same. It feels as though I am somehow unraveling a string from within my body that if tugged only a little will pull apart the stitches of my heart. It feels as though my paper is wind drifting beneath and through the wings of my daring instrument and it is both exhilarating and dangerous, the things it can teach me all at once. I scrawl across my paper as if it will take me all the places I only dream to go. And I scrawl across it to see behind the walls of my heart and to skate across the logic of my brain. I scrawl and I scrawl and I scrawl.
My pen does not merely trace across fiber--it dances with my demons in the fashion of a lover. 
How it curses all the angels of my mind and scintillates the night sky within my soul, like stars.
Little stars.
How I love it so.  
And so, 
I scrawl.
-k.p.b.

June 23, 2015
Tuesday
11:23
"Written against the ticking of the clock. 
(Or perhaps my heart?)."

Let me tell you a story

Life is full of surprises.
Does that sound vague? Cliche? Something you've heard before? Oh well if it does.
I am eighteen years old and I know what I am going to do with my life. This may sound like a plan--but I can assure you it is just the opposite.
I don't do well with plans. I like them far too much. I like knowing exactly what order I'll put the groceries in the bags before they make it to their vessels. I like times and dates and places merely for the purpose of subsiding silly nerves and anxieties that may arrive. But in truth, I much prefer to call upon nature right when she is least expecting me--I'm just a sucker for surprise visits, I guess. I kind of revel in unplanned escapades and new adventures everyday, despite "popular" belief. Spontaneity is truly a gift we can only chase after and never really wait for in the mail.
That being said, I am anything but immune to fear and uncertainty and scrutinizing things to a fault.
I've cried about my future. I've tossed pillows in my sleep over it many a times. My knees are bruised from kneeling in ardent prayer to Father and I confess I was never expecting to hear His Divine voice so clearly as I did in reply.
Let me be very clear when I say: I heard my Heavenly Father's voice only four days ago.
I asked Him a question.
He answered.
But first, let me back up.
Sixteen days ago I graduated from high school. I wore the tacky cap. I was drowned in a hand-me-down gown. The tassel successfully moved from left to right (or was it right to left?). All in all, with my two-piece dress--with pockets--and astonishingly perfect floral heels, my name was read and my diploma somehow made it home and has been dusting on my small bookshelf ever since. Now it may be beginning to sound like I don't like graduation ceremonies and if that is the cause then you my friend are entirely correct.

"We did it!"

My lovely, lovely twin.

Rach, Mad-dawg, Jench, Kierst

 Twins 

Sisters

 - Graduation 2015 -
Hm. What an interesting day.
I love traditions. I really, unequivocally love traditions. My friend, Katy and I were talking about this just this morning and I'm convinced by the end of me telling her all the wild ideas I have for traditions in my future family, she's thinks I'm a lunatic. But I find traditions binding and powerful in the influence of identity, not just within a child, but all of us. Traditions make. Traditions build. I love traditions.
I understand, therefore I endured.
But honestly.
A square cap? An unflattering gown? And a three hour ceremony without filmscore music?
That's just murder.
That is lunacy.
Strangely fun? Perhaps.
But the people? The accomplishment? The last hoorah? Lovely. Lovely. Lovely.
But I'm getting off track here.
The point is, I am moving on with my life.
Though I am still very young, I am not a kid anymore. Nor can I act like one. To me, when you are "grown up" and you still act the same you did as you were not, it's almost an insult to modern nature. It's cruel to be apart of a world and bring absolutely nothing to it. Don't you think? Modern nature deserves something from all of us because I believe every single creature has something to bring and that something matters. It's crucial. Vital. To have a something is like having a secret--you don't always understand why you are keeping it inside you, but the moment you release it great things begin to happen, whether that is good or bad.
But I wasn't feeling that. In fact, after graduation I began to feel...worried, and confused more than anything. I felt as though my entire life was at a crossroad. But the issue was I couldn't read the signs supposedly telling me where I should go. I was scared.
Then something happened.
I was presented a book.
A very, very good book.
Then again, most books are.
But this book was different. (Hint: it was most definitely a something.)
The greatest part about it? I didn't even ask for this book--it literally landed in my hands from my dear friend Katy without me asking for it or even voicing the struggle I was currently in.
This book changed my life.
Right in the moment of the trying, and failing, to decipher the ambiguous signs, my prayers began to be answered. There were three prayers, too.
First: The prayer of Question
Second: The prayer of Confusion
Last: The prayer of Peace
And I shall explain them to you, dear reader.
On the first prayer, I have little to say only an experience very quaint, but reverent to share. It goes like this: There is a girl with long auburn hair that once did not know what she was to do with her one "wild and precious life". However she never gave this much thought until a day, as she remembers it as a Tuesday, her uncertainty changed. With her hair slashing water down her back and her small knees kissing the bathroom floor, she bravely asked her dear Father, in a moment not to be tucked away into a drawer for another day, what He would have her do. And to her deep surprise, an immediate answer came. It was but one word: Oregon.
What?
She did not understand.
But she also did understand.
She thought of her book, how the girl within it also did not understand, but did all at once. Then it hit the girl with the auburn hair what exactly was happening. Her calling, as most refer to it, that was what was happening. My calling. The very thing we mustn't run from but too often we do.
"Oregon?"
And she said it again.
"Oregon."
And again to be sure.
"Oregon."
She wasn't sure.
"Oregon."
But somehow she was.
The second prayer did not come until a few days of contemplation. Of course I told my mother of the answer to my prayer and I explained to her that while I didn't understand much of why or when or what about my answer, there was one thing I was certain about: My Father listened to me and He answered. Of that I am certain.
But Satan also cares.
He cares only about destroying my answer, distracting me along the path I must now pave and creating doubt I do not want, nor need. But he cares deeply about those things and that means a lot.
He's so very tricky.
But not enough for me. Though I felt fear, though I prayed and contemplated and felt more confused than ever before in my young life, I always knew it was him. That old serpent trying to deceive me.
You see he delights in doing that. Whenever something good happens or you finally feel as though you know what you must do he loves to slide into your bedroom and while you are sleeping peacefully in the dreams you are yet to have come true, he slides beneath your pillows and knocks them to the floor! He wakes you in your slumberous planning and distracts you with fears and signs and fear all leading anyway but where you are destined to be.
Fear.
The only thing we create that destroys by default.
We can create anger and sadness, worry and disgust. But, if they are left unattended they will shrivel away and die.
We can make joy and laughter and love and with small, but good effort wondrous things will grow.
Fear is the only thing we create that destroys by default.
I admit I was afraid.
So much so, I didn't know what else to do and so I began to pray in my heart fervently as I painted a board of inspiration for my new calling.
Tears came.
Trembling fear never left my heart.
Words of comfort didn't seem enough.
Only thoughts of money and living and loneliness plagued my heart.
I listened to guiding Conference Talks and tried to distract myself. (Ironically, each talk I heard seemed to be tailored to helping my fears.)
I was confused.
But somewhere in my confusion there was a prayer. I remembered my book, but I also remembered a calm Comforter that was sent to help me in situations just like this. The Holy Ghost knew my turmoil and He wouldn't allow any more of it for a time. So He let me paint.
I painted my dreams, I painted my plans and my ideas!
I felt free.
I fell asleep peaceful that night.
The last prayer I gave came two days later, my prayer of Peace. It began when I was searching online for apartments in Corvallis Oregon, as I'm most likely moving there. Scroll after scroll, everything seemed too wrong for what I was searching for. Then I heard a small noise behind me. A trickle of sorts...it sounded like...like...rain.
Could it be?
Indeed it was.
Swiftly I ran to the backdoor and swung it open to the delectable element falling from the sky!
Oh it was so beautiful!
Yet it was so much more than that. It was an answer to a prayer I did not even know I was asking.
It was the very essence of Oregon--the rain, my backyard, the entire weather that week was just so. How could I ever deny such a sign from my Father? Truly I couldn't!
Some how I did...
But the moment I opened that door, I asked if this was right for the last time and sank to my knees in humility the second a rolling wave of thunder from my Father in Heaven came in reply.
Roll after roll, they vanquished every doubt.
I know it is what I a meant to do even if I do not understand all of it now.
I have trust because, after all, that is all faith is. Trust.
It's only trust from here on out--just so.

 - k.p.b.

June 23, 2015
Tuesday
10:39PM