more pictures.

of course we're still in belgium here, since there are waffles in the background. this is rose, who is paid by the city of liège to stand in front of waffle vendors and give a hearty thumbs-up. rose is one of the most breathtaking people i've met, and at the end of the summer she's going to marry a pretty boy named thomas kinsley. i think she's going to live her life quietly doing good everywhere she goes.


liège had schizophrenic weather. there was always a patch of blue sky and always a patch of grey, and they spent the day competing for space in the atmosphere. i liked the city best when the rain was falling.


taking one day to travel to ghent to serve the christians there was a highlight of the trip. the church is so young there that it had only met for two sundays when we arrived. the church leaders are young and energetic people who seem very aware of reality, and i felt honored to be a tiny part of what they were doing. i spent a lot of time walking around the city alone, which was what i wanted. in this picture, a few of us are in the train station. i think the prompt was to raise our hands if we loved sitting around and waiting for hours. obviously we all did.


my last sunset in belgium. i'm not going to forget this place.


we spent a day driving from liège to valence, france, where the camp took place. our drive actually took us through luxembourg, and i was excited to see the countryside for a bit. the retreat center where we spent the next few days was couched on the side of a mountain, up where all of the grass was true grass green and all of the sky was true sky blue. of course there were dandelions.


i would say that we were isolated from the world, but that doesn't seem to be true or possible. (i realize how every other post says something different.) we were just in a different part of the world, higher up and much closer. it was lovely, though i was a little lonely. it's stupid to be lonely when everything is something.


i'm not going to pretend that this is an attractive montage, but ellen and i put a lot of work into it and it would have been a real shame to bury our talents. i've read the bible. my affection for weeds is evolving.


before we left the camp, after everybody else was gone, we had to wait two hours for a good reason of which i'm still unaware. needless to say, we thoroughly documented those two hours in photographs. nick and i tried to make love to the camera, but it didn't end up being very sensual. or consensual. is that an awkward thing to say? i think so.


the six classes that i taught with julian and ellen were not unlike the weather in liège. the children were either excessively feral or excessively placid. i'm not sure whether they learned a single thing from us, but at least their parents had a few hours of liberty. i was certainly changed by them. heavily featured french phrases were "je vais te tuer" and "j'aime bien à manger les enfants." oh, also "dieu t'aime." this was my favorite child in the class. don't tell the others.


i'm surprised at how easy it is to overlook god.


in toulouse, ellen took me to an ice cream shop called cornet d'amour and fed me rose-flavored ice cream. now i require two scoops of rose-flavored ice cream every 15 minutes. don't start, kids. learn from my misfortune.


i wrestled julian until he cried. that's pretty much all that's happening here.


the movie theater in toulouse has inexplicable spotlights on inexplicable circles of color on their carpet. we look like a pathetic dance troupe in an underdog-story sports film. the light on my bum gives me an excellent faux-wedgie, but please pay special attention to the man between ellen and me. that man is bill spear, and he is amazing. just look at his moves.


this was on the wall at a train station.


i fly out in about 4 hours.

a lot of things exist only in the world of ideas (spoken apart from any platonic writings). home is one of these things. home is only an idea. i think it might be one of the best ideas a human being has ever had. (this makes me think of heart of darkness and how even the purest and best ideas are corrupted by action.) i'm sorry, mom and dad - i am dreading coming to hawaii. dreading it. i get the impression that you are not concerned because you have this sense of enlightenment that when i get to hawaii, everything will be great. in truth, it will not be great. no. it will all be further away. or, i will be.

speaking of ideas - absence. that might be more substantive than just an idea, actually. "absence makes the heart grow fonder." l'homme qui l'a dit était un monteur. absence just makes you feel so hopeless that after a while the weight of the hopelessness is so absurd that you are somehow forced to regard those feelings as invalid. they don't leave, though. they're just dormant. and all of your sensory perception works against you in sentimental excavation because, as i've said earlier, everything is everything. and everything will stare at you until you recognize it. (also, everything is nothing, but that's an entirely different subject.)

can you believe that we all survive on oxygen? i cannot. i cannot believe it and i cannot survive on it. i think what will be the most painful in the summertime process is the packing that's tapping its toes for me back in searcy. there's something about filling up rectangular prisms with essential belongings that throws me off. it's an act of finality. i didn't even like packing when i thought i would stay in searcy.

i'd like to burrow underground until my eyes atrophy.

i bought myself a poster yesterday. a plain off-white poster that says "je t'aime" in a black, honest font. the text is off-center. i don't know what i'll do with it, but i felt like i needed it. before i started learning other languages, i suppose i had the sense that my methods of communication were the sole methods. of course i knew intellectually that this was false, but i never put much thought into the matter. now, any word i know in any language is only one of thousands of ways to communicate the same thought. i am lucky to even have that one way. a professor told me last semester that, regardless what i want to do, language is my medium. i wonder how true that is.

i miss the song "nature and the wreck" by mates of state. i need somebody to put me in the trees.

pictures!

this is where they are making us sleep in belgium. it rains a lot, so it's pretty cold and wet out there, but at least it's free. well, free except for all of the manual labor we must do. =(



no, that's a lie. that was just a shed. here's the house:



for further proof of its being thoroughly european, here is a cute little window covered in ivy. please note the ducks and the quaint lamp. and the dvd player and pilates dvd. OH MODERN EUROPE, HOW FAR HAVE YOU FALLEN?:



lest we forget that i like dandelions:



as soon as i got there, ellen and i just went right on being ellen and karyn. i think we look vaguely related in this picture. by the way, that's not a sunburn. ellen got a light pink full-face tattoo. this is how she'll be from here on out. i tried to talk her out of it, but she was too drunk to listen. josh seems to be ok with it, though he was drunk, too. (no, it's a sunburn. i'm sorry.)



when we had to walk around town for a few hours, they gave us maps. i was incapable of reading the map, so i just made this face a lot while the boys (nick on the left and josh on the right) read the map for me. THIS IS WHY WOMEN CAN'T LEAD THE CHURCH:



ellen noticed how thirsty i was from walking in the sun all day, so she suggested i drink a perrier:



this turned out to be the mistake of my life. i cried for several hours. perrier is disgusting. cute little flower headband though, right?



when i was upset that adam didn't get his job, the other campaigners let me have the prize (this rubber gorilla bracelet) that came in our box of cereal. since it looks like a watch, people walk up to me and ask me for the time. and i reply, in french, "IT IS THE HOUR OF THE GORILLA" and dance. yes, there is dancing. gorilla dancing.



here is ellen creepily close to an 11-year-old boy. he happens to be the boy with whom i had my first extended conversation in french, so i will never forget him. i'm not going to try to spell his name for you, but it starts with an s. later i went to his house and we played crash bandicoot. in french. i had to say goodbye to him today, and i was more upset about it than i thought i would be.



an old lady in the church gave me a hideous pink jacket to wear to keep the rain off. she kept insisting that i take it, so i wore it under my sweatjacket. i walked around like this for several hours. i wonder how much longer it will be before i start to act like an adult.



this is my favorite picture from the trip.


i love you all and miss you dearly.

how am i going to teach people about god when i don't have any hope?

my apologies for all the angst.

i'm in belgium now. ellen and i were reunited and are reportedly terribly cute. it was great to see josh, and to meet up with my campaign group. the group practiced singing today, and we still sound decent after months apart with very little practice. we seem to be fairly cohesive, also, and i feel blessed to be around so many good people. i'm anxious to get out and do some work.

but right now i feel like getting into bed and listening to senselessly sad music.

so instead, i'll write for a while. the home i'm staying at (the home of my friend rose, actually) is positioned next to this impossible field cradling hundreds of pregnant dandelion puffs. they are massive and perfectly round, the sort of thing you'd see blown up poster-size in fancy photographs at an art gallery. i walked around the yard a bit today after dinner, just to make sure that i did not waste a day of my life sitting inside when the world outside was so magnificent. the neighborhood cats found me sitting alone, and i in turn found the exact spots on their backs that, when scratched, prompted them to playfully bite. i thought it a successful outing.

now i'm sitting and listening to the thunder outside. the lightning is flashing with startling brightness in the window of the loft where we're all sleeping.

i sat in the living room today and stared out in space for a while. there were many other people in the room with me, but i completely forgot about them and imagined that i was in your kitchen again, sitting across the table from you while you played guitar and i slowly lost to katie at our monopoly game. i don't know if you remember the way we were just staring at each other while you played, but i haven't forgotten it. i was not afraid to just look right at you while you were looking at me. that was such a feeling - that absence of fear.

i think that's everything. and everything.

going to graduation today put me in an inescapable mood. i don't want to walk ever. i don't want to walk at a harding university graduation ceremony. i don't want to sing a hymn and shake dr. burks' hand.

i'm scared about the summer. i don't even want to eat today because i'll have to spend my own money on food. i miss my family. i feel very young. i just don't want to fail.

growing up is painful, in case nobody's ever said that before. i'm nervous that every year just gets harder. i can't come home now.

i stepped off the curb today.

let me explain.

my brain is a little suburban neighborhood. i can play in the front yard, where everything is normal and i think painfully sane thoughts. i just live a life like any other life. when i get out on the sidewalk, i am crazy. good crazy. i can write and i can think things that make me want to stay up all night so that i will not forget how they feel. i am actually alive. the sidewalk is my favorite place to play. if i spill out onto the street, that is the bad crazy. when i think i am strong enough to play there, i just end up in bed all day, not even able to make the decision to stand up and walk outside for a meal. sure, i can create at an astounding rate, but i never write anything down or keep a thought. i'm like a weary decaying spinster who lets out all her cats as she understands she will never be able to take care of them.

as i am growing older, i can see from a distance where i am leaning. i know which thoughts will take me out into traffic. i followed a funk out into the street today, but i'm back now. i just need to keep myself aware. i just need to keep myself.

i was looking for a song all day that would cradle me and tell me that it loves how i am crazy. i listened to music for hours to find the song. i did not come up with anything, but i feel certain it's out there.

what can you say
to the sobbing girl
with the devilish hair,
except you rip the tears
out of your own eyes
with the way you
choose to live?

(mom and dad, i'm taking my medication. don't worry about me.)

fine. i'm doing it. i'm posting about jeremy.

so, i went to see him. a lot of people have been asking me how it went, and i didn't realize so many people knew or were interested. i guess i may have been a little too excited when i found out i would be able to go, but i didn't print it on a t-shirt or anything. baby steps. i'm not creepy. (i don't think he knows yet.)

the visit could have gone any number of ways. by the time we hit knoxville, tn, we had been driving for about 7.5 hours and i had spent roughly 7.25 hours freaking out about how i was going to see him. 7.25 hours is, of course, an invented number--really i had had the good fortune of having spent about 2 hours asleep.

little did i know, what had happened pre-knoxville was not actual terror and anxiety. oh no. actual terror and anxiety started about 30 minutes outside of his town. i am so glad that is over. i don't have to live that initial moment at his door ever again. no more ridiculous giggling. well, hopefully not. how mortifying. if i were him, and i heard that ridiculous giggling, i wouldn't have answered the door. i would have pretended that i was not home.

so... it was good. everything was good. we saw a bit of the town and the history. we all spent time together watching dvd's and protecting ourselves against the sexual advances of his dog. beth was particularly effective, especially given her lack of concern for whether or not she caused the animals massive emotional pain with her waves of rejection.

katie and beth were amazing. they barely made me do a single thing for myself, and it felt like a real vacation because i did not spend a single moment contemplating homework. i got to be very young. i got to spend the weekend with a dreamy boy, exactly how i had wanted. really it was just what i had imagined, maybe a little better.

now i have verifiable data that i haven't wasted the last four or five months of my life talking to him. and he hasn't wasted his time either. at this point, it does not matter what happens. nothing was a waste. i like that idea. i like that it's the truth. things so infrequently work out the way we want them to. it was the most fantastic weekend of my time in arkansas.

i'm not sure when i'll see him again, and i think i'm doing a fine job being alright with that. i can wait. i know what i'm waiting for now. if anybody would like to donate to our fund, feel free.

so, i like this guy. there you have it.