deja vu, all over again...

last weekend, i went on a driving expedition with my mom and grammy, somewhere between lake mcqueeny and new braunfels, i saw a two and a half story house painted a color like oxidized copper, with a double wrap around porch. the house was surrounded by fields, and had a tree break on one side of it. the only other place i have ever seen a house that like was in a dream i had a year and a half ago, almost to the exact date. i have been sort of haunted, in a good way, since last saturday.

here's the journal entry i wrote about it when i woke up:

February 26, 2006 - Sunday

i had the most amazing dream either sometime last night or this morning. it was so vivid. like if i had stayed asleep long enough, it could have become totally real.
i dreamed i bought a house-- a green one with two and a half stories, painted some random green color--like the way copper looks when it's oxidized. i had a little writing room at the top of the house, and i could see the fields all around my house (because it's a farm house...duh), because there were walls of windows on all four sides, and i had all my book deadlines dry erased on the windows, so i could see when my editor needed things. and there was a windmill in the backyard that had brand new silver blades on it, and the wind was blowing to beat the band.
i dreamed i caught a bus to go into town, and i ended up in a bar, and all my favorite people were there, and i was suddenly playing some card game that was a cross between texas hold-em and five card stud, in a smokey room where a nice waitress kept bringing us unlimited sweet tea with lemon slices and fried catfish. we played cards and laughed and talked about life, and i felt alive and beautiful and free. and then i realized i was secretly in love with this idiot man who is so far out of my league that i should even be allowed to talk to him, much less have a crush on him, but i told him that anyway, and he didn't freak out, and then all my friends and idiot hot guy and i all loaded up on the bus and went back to my house for a house warming party.
i woke up knowing that everything is going to be ok. and that my house is waiting for me. my life is now.
--rmg



very strange, don't you think? i have no idea what this means. but it's kind of exciting.

mil besos...

two weeks in review...

i've somehow found myself spending the last couple of weeks feeling rather like this:

but two weeks ago, two of my little cherubs from atex bought me tickets to acl. i saw some great music, hung out with old friends, got a horrific sunburn, and saw bob dylan for the second time in my life. he played my most favorite song, ever. i laughed til my stomach was sore. my nose is still peeling...

i had some trouble going to sleep friday night, after my little b-day dinner party, featuring birthday flan. it's been hard to get my head around the idea of turning 29. i remember my mom's 29th birthday-- my dad and God-mother threw her a wake. it's odd to be an age that i remember my mother being. very, very surreal. i've been kind of pouty about starting the last year of my twenties, to tell the truth. it feels so...i don't know, settled? i mean, i own a house, a car, i have life insurance, i have a pet, i own a vaccum cleaner, and i go through a can of starch every other week. i bought a toilet and opened and ira account. i go on business trips. it's all very surreal, and seems to all have happened very, very fast. and i guess i got sidetracked into feeling like i was starting this static point in my life, instead of choosing to feel like i am beginning some of the best of times, precisely because i am settling down. granted, there are days when i'm not what i imagined i would be at this point in my life. but, my reality is kind of growing on me. and in those small hours saturday morning, i found myself thanking God for what is, and not asking God for what isn't. that's kind of a nice place to be...

mil besos--rmg

between a rock and a hard place

i've been thinking a lot about elijah, lately. elijah the prophet, not elijah the kid who played the hobbit, in case you were confused...

i very much like idioms--they are so helpful in conveying things that you want to say, but might say badly, or clumsily. between a rock and a hard place is one of my favorite sayings. but i've gained a new respect for that phrase over the summer, which lead me right back into the story, and the arms (as it were) of elijah, the prophet.

elijah was a difficult man to be friends with, i imagine. that much intensity and purpose could wear out the most patient of souls. he was a fire-brand, a lightening rod, someone who did not hold with equivocations, or namby-pamby lackluster worship or thought. he did not put up with chicanery, not under any terms. i imagine he had a hard time having fun. fun probably was not easily had in elijah's time and place, anyway. but, even if he'd been born in disney world, i imagine elijah would have had little time to have his picture taken with mickey mouse, or gone spinning in the tea cups til he barfed his mouse-shaped icecream onto his shoes. elijah was a man of principle. a man of discipline. a man with a plan, and a will to follow God, even if it meant that he was a rambler, a wanted man, hunted, and hated.

elijah found himself in a cave, in a wilderness, with death waiting on him if he went home, and his own disappointment if he didn't go home. elijah was stuck between a rock and a hard place. he had no choice but to be silent, to be uncomfortable, to be challenged, and to find a way to stand true and be who God was calling him to be. and in that posture of discomfort, between the physical rock and the spiritual hard place, elijah heard the voice of God. elijah felt the power of the strong wind, the magnitude of the earthquake, felt the heat and the power of the great fire, and was smart enough to know that the most powerful of all the things he witness that night was the whisper that came next. and elijah heard what he already must have known--to go back, and keep doing his job, and to be comforted in that purpose.

i don't like to be uncomfortable. i am uncomfortable a lot of the time, emotionally speaking, in my job. but to not do my job would be to deny who i am as a person, to say that God made a mistake, to call into question every place i have been, everything i have done, and every word that has come out of my mouth.

we live between physical rock and spiritually hard places, but how often do we be still enough, brave enough, quiet enough, and awestruck enough to listen to the whisper and respond with our whole hearts. sometimes you have to have your back against a wall to ever realize that moving forward is the only option. between the rock and the hard place is a holy place. God is there.

mil besos--rmg

summer begins to relent, sort of...

things are ok. really, they are. the ramp up to fall always comes to an apex, and we pick up the pieces left over from the blitz until christmas, and start all over again. funny how my life still mimics an academic one with the wax and wane of fall, winter, spring, and summer.

i'm trying to spend more quality time with myself. i know that probably sounds stupid, but it's very easy for me to forget to do my own thinking, my own praying, my own writing, my own art, my own life some days. there are days when the only thing i do that's self-motivated is try and remember to eat something green at every meal. i'm going back to the gym, and i'm suprised at how good that's been, just from a mental stand point, and the fact that i've decided to suck up the gas money and drive to the nice gym seems worth the trouble. it's nice to slip back into a routine of some sort.

i keep remembering these random phrases from the bible--like mental sound bites. the biggest one i keep hearing is " on this rock, i build my church." i keep thinking about peter, and what that meant. we think (or at least i do) about rocks for buildings being dressed, at least smoothed down, squared off, clean and tidy. i don't think that's what peter was like, at all. i think he was rough, broken, not terribly well-suited to have such trust vested in him. but God saw more, and knew better. and so i have a vocation today. and when my weaknesses are revealed in stark and stunning ways, i remember that i am just like peter--willfull, reluctant, stubborn, etc. and if God saw fit to build a church on such a one as peter, maybe God can do something with me, as well.

i think it's time to go back and re-read "the alchemist". i try to do that every couple of years. it's kind of like taking a vacation for me. i just re-read "til we have faces", over the last couuple of nights, and remembered why i loved that book so much. so often we see things the way we want to see them , forgettingor discounting the back stories, the alternate perceptions, the global/universal ramifications of our passions. it's good to remember that we are not only accountable for the rotten things we do, but also for the joys we forego. life is a spiral. it all comes back around, again, and again, and again. and the joys are sweeter, the pain a little easier to bear. and the closer we get to the middle of things, the more and more frequently things come back around.

things are good. the backyard is coming along. i officially hate brick as a medium of landscaping. i'll try and get some pictures up as things get closer to being finished back there. i'm already plotting my next project...furniture refinishing!!

mil besos--rmg