i have a job interview tomorrow morning for a position as an aide in a group home for the developmentally challenged. this is absolutely the only job i want in this town. if it doesn't work out (which is a real possibility), i've decided that i'm going to apply at the hampton inn. wish me luck!

there are a lot of fantastic things about staying in searcy, but not being able to find a job in which i have remote interest nearly outweighs them. i am aware that i cannot afford to be picky.

austin and i are working our way through kingdom hearts ii. oddworld is next. i feel like i'm in high school again, in a good way.

more than anything, i am waiting for my parents to be here. i only realized very recently that, though i'm emotionally programmed to return home after a semester, this will almost certainly not be happening after graduation. i am not happy about that, but it cannot be helped.

all in all, i'm having an awesome time. when i update more frequently, that means you get stuck with boring posts like this. enjoy!

something unabashedly positive.



i am constantly shocked by my situation with austin, named my being in love with him. how unlikely that we should have met again--i think i remember saying hello to him around campus maybe three times since that afternoon that we had pizza at berryhill park a few springs ago. last semester, katie and i were wondering aloud whether or not we had already met the boys we would marry. i distinctly remember saying "i sure hope not." and i meant it.

i am humbled by how little i understood of the ways in which my life would or could change. i am humbled by the love i feel for this boy.

(i'm not trying to transform my blog into an I'M IN LOVE one-woman message board... but this is a journal, and i want to be able to look back at my writing and remember how i felt.)

i love austin because he is dynamic. he's interested in things that i've never even heard of. this boy wants to refurbish an old arcade machine. he likes woody guthrie. he reads for pleasure. he is brilliant and surprising. he has dimples.

i guess that i'm so short of breath for all of this because i am 21 years old and this is the first time i have felt this way. we haven't even been dating for three months, and i want to have children with this guy. i hate saying goodbye to him. i want to be around him all the time. if i had to go live in a grass hut in africa to be with him, i would do it. if i had to stay in searcy, arkansas, to be with him, i would do it, and am.

in short, i have evolved. i suppose that makes me a hopeful monster. thanks, mental_floss.

many things happened on the way to posting this blog.

i've been reading mere christianity. i wanted to talk about how i was trying to draw closer to god, about how excited i was that i have been putting serious thought into my creator and having a legitimate personal relationship with him. as i've said before, a personal relationship with god is the only remedy to the ache of life.

then, i was horrified by the human condition in unprecedented ways. owen's mother died. several people were shot by an insane man in virginia. a brilliant girl i know was attacked in manhattan. truly, i have wanted to throw my bible in a dumpster. not a light disinterested toss--i wanted to propel is as hard as i could. if the contents could not be comforting, satisfaction could at least be found in the thud of a heavy book on metal.

but i've talked to a few people, including a poet named naomi shihab nye, who came to speak at my school. she is a palestinian-american, and thus has great reason to be troubled by the state of the world. her ideological parents are feuding.

she wrote a poem in called "Kindness":


Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

the world is a dark place a lot of the time. the reason to live is the knowledge that there are other times, times when the people around you shine so startlingly the image of a risen and benevolent savior that you have no other choice than to continue on your happy and unhappy journey.

i live in a town full of wonderful people. we say hello to each other. if i happen to forget to lock my door, i am not the least bit afraid of a burglary.* once, a complete stranger came to a complete stop on a major road to pick my purse up and then delivered it to the business office of my university.

again and again, i change.



* this does not mean that i am careless.

so much for friday the 13th being a hard luck day.



my senior seminar went very, very well. i feel a great sense of accomplishment. and now, to find a job! i'm legitimately excited about this.

any ideas?

hello, interwebs. it's easter today.

in my opinion, easter is the most significant christian holiday. our beliefs hinge on an empty tomb. so, i like easter.

this easter is strange, though. i stayed up last night talking to a friend of my on the telephone. his mother is dying of cancer right now. in fact, he told me that she probably will not survive the week.

he didn't go to church today, and i understand why. i would be angry with god, too. i wouldn't know what to do or say. i cannot even begin to understand what he is going through right now.

i'm not usually interested in participating in any debates about why a loving god allows horrific things to happen to people. but that's what i thought about today during the easter service at my church. i can't make any sense of it; i don't think anybody can.

i wish that we could see our lives the way that god sees them.

happy easter.

i turned in my senior paper today at 2:57 p.m. it feels good. i'm proud of it. i hope the presentation goes well. if it does not go well, i'm still graduating. so... there's that.

austin and i used the rest of the afternoon to go shopping. he stood around with me while i picked out fabric, which i know is no simple task. i used to dread going fabric shopping with my mother because i knew it would take so long. i remember arranging the merchandise on the Huge Wall of Buttons that every fabric store seems to have. i'm glad that i've grown out of that impatience with fabric shopping. i look forward to doing those things with mama now. i would actually like to visit hawaii again while my parents are still there. i wonder when they'll move.



in general, i'm happier right now than i can ever remember being in my entire life, but that doesn't mean that my brain is fixed. sometimes i feel pretty flat. there are some things i'm trying to write about, but whenever i take pen to paper, i'm overwhelmed. i've been waiting a long time to write this poem, and it's uncomfortable not to get these things out. like constipation (poetic image, i know). in my experience, however, the poems that are a relief to write are the best poems. they aren't generally premature.



austin cleaned my car today while i was still asleep. words can't be that strong; my heart is reeling. he is such an incredible blessing to me, and i think i've found the right door. i just have to wait to open it. thanks to everybody who responded to my questions about marriage, and please feel free to continue giving me advice. i don't want to be ignorant. knowledge is power, etc.

(here's a secret: most of why i hadn't been posting is that i hadn't thought i had anything of significance to say. i'm going to stop worrying about that. it's just a blog. also, these are more pictures from japan.)

does this look like the face of a girl ready to be out in the world?



i've been thinking about my senior paper nonstop. when i'm eating, i'm thinking about my paper. when i'm watching "arrested development," i'm thinking about my paper. when i'm sleeping, i'm dreaming about revising my paper.

it's been stressful. actually, it's been so stressful that i got a cold sore. i think it would be awesome if stress had some attractive physical side effects. instead of "you must be stressed out... i can tell by your RAGING FACE HERPES," i'd like to hear "wow, karyn, your hair is so shiny and healthy-looking! are you stressed?"

but the writing process is almost over! i gave my mentor my final draft, and all i have to do is make some minor revisions before friday. he tells me that they should only take a few hours. "After you complete that, the rest of the ride will be smooth indeed." i have such an incredibly fantastic mentor.

graduation is in a little over a month. my plan right now is to get a job in searcy until at least december 2008. one of my professors told me that i should consider pursuing a course that would lead me to teach on a college level. that job sounds ideal, but i do not want to get a phd. oh, i do not want to get a phd so hard. i guess it isn't ideal, then. i feel like i need to get a masters, though. not in the next two years, but sometime soon. i want to take a break from academia.

when i think of all the decisions i have to make and all of the responsibilities i have to accept in the next few months, my heart is frightened. i heard that there's a place in bermuda where you can just disappear.

some questions for everybody:
in what ways is marriage difficult? in what ways is marriage worth the difficulty?