Just do it.

So I was thinkin I'd write another post

about my little developments

and my fat question marks about what they mean

but oh!

oh no.

i won't.

Let's talk about something else today.

Like how I'm in the Mac Lab makin my own websites.

Haha!

No really I am.

Yeah, this is me.

Lets just say what comes out.

Here it goes.

I am on the ground.

I am on the ground.

I am always wondering what I need here.

I am always feeling the crest of the wave

up on my tip toes

neck stretched out

heart comes forth

taller

taller

taller.

And then

we come down.

Teal and blue we fall.

We rumble.

We swirl and stretch horizontal.

We show the shore how much we can touch.

We stretch ourselves thin on the inland.

And then

we retract

Back to the center.

Here in the deep, we mix with what you have never seen.

We converse with what we cannot describe

In a language not collectively spoken

but felt.

It feels like this: upward.

It feels like this: around.

It feels like this: movement.

I am here on the ground.

But I am more than what you see.

In my skinny ponytail and bookbag.

I am further.

I am hoping

to be sonorous.

For now, energy, oscillating.

They say through space and time we are oscillating.

Sometimes my heart comes out in one word lines.

Over and over and over.

This is where I am today.

And apparently, that is what I have to say.

Oh world!

Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?
You have unsaved changes.

STORY OF MY LIFE.

I just want to love!
I just want to say that and not hear all the mocking inside me.
All the voices that say:

"Oh Lyndsi Shae, that's cute. You want to love, huh? You and your naive little double-name want to 'show the world who you are'... quaint, really."

"No one wants to listen to your hippie be-my-friend crap anymore. You are weird."

"They don't need your love. In fact, you need to love much more than any of them need to receive it. You will never be satisfied. You will be alone."

SHUT UP!

I'ma love everyone ANYWAYS.
That's why I'm here.
God wants me to stretch out my heart.
So there.

I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
Because everyone names their major and their boyfriend and their hometown.
As if that means they know what they're doing.
I can do that too.
English. Ben. Mooresville, North Carolina.
See?

I can even elaborate!

English.

[shpeal about how I have to be a writer for my soul.]

Ben.

[story of how we were friends for a long time 
and then complication 
and now, sometimes, even more complication]

Mooresville, North Carolina.

[list of good southern food 
and memories of lake jumpin and grass rollin and sometimes
i will even tell you
about the hard parts.]
I can go on about my categories, but I still don't know what I'm doing.

No one really knows what they're doing.
Ahhhhh! 


Here's the good news:
I have new categories too. Categories that feel unique to me, 
like they are happening specifically to my life. On purpose.

*I love Native American literature, and I even know things about it. I read the books. I feel their spirit.
*I'm learning sign language. That's right, I'm speakin to you with my hands right now from this computer, and you don't even know what I'm sayin. Because it's symbolic, it's physical. I can't quite write it for you. And some days, I'd rather show you my heart with my hands than use my voice or write it on paper. I would rather sign, signify, embody my words.

*I sing gospel. I don't know anything about this music, or really about music at all, but I'm doing it and it MAKES ME JOYFUL. This is no exaggeration, I'm talkin about feeling a straight-up zeal for life.
*I have a calling in my church that asks me to love even bigger and with more endurance than I have ever loved before, and it is changing my life. 
*I wake up early. I can be bold and smart about my time. I will not fall into sinking patterns of apathy or mediocrity. I will find the higher ground of my potential. Take that.



These are not fleeting whims of my 20's. Some of them will stop, and that's ok. But the point is, they are REAL. I am finding out who I am through these avenues, and I want to keep them always. They are that much a part of me already.

A false sum of the parts.

re⋅frain [ri-freyn] 

1.	a phrase or verse recurring at intervals in a song or poem, esp. at the end of each stanza;

2.	to abstain from an impulse to say or do something.

. . .

Facebook asked me what was on my mind today. I had 3 answers.

Lyndsi Shae...

* doesn't know why she's beginning every morning with a computer class. Gross. Gross. Gross.
* is cold and grey today.
* wants to choose something drastic and reckless.

. . .

WHY DRASTIC AND RECKLESS?

Because I want to get out of the grey.

Because I am feeling something that shakes up my world,

something which is not manifest through my groggy-walk-to-school.

or anything else I will do today.
But I feel its weight regardless,
and I want it to SHOW.

Today I told facebook this quote was on my mind,

It's from Henry Van Dyke, but Kaylie showed it to me.

"Time is too slow for those who WAIT, 

too swift for those who FEAR, 

too long for those who GRIEVE, 

too short for those who REJOICE, 

but for those who LOVE, 

time is eternity."

Remember the thing that is shaking up my world?

 It's loving.

It's a complicated loving.

And when this kind of love causes

the waiting, the fearing, the grieving, and the rejoicing...

time passes with conflict, contradiction, and confusion.

That's the problem.

I want to BE this love I'm feeling. 
I want to create from it, for it.

But I can't today.

It's a long story.

In the mean time, what can I do instead?

Because if I continue to do nothing,
if I keep all this loving without knowing how to move forward,
I may combust. 

Choices I've considered so far...

Painting something as tall as me. Driving to the ocean. Plane ticket to New Zealand. Taking a lap around the block with no pants and loud yelling. Getting Married. Going to live with Katie. Getting Married to Katie. All New Clothes. Just screaming about stuff. Running running running up the mountain. Pilgrimage to ______. Dying my hair something ugly. Ripping stacks and stacks of paper. Swimming across shallow, freezin Utah Lake. Meeting 50 new people.

Nothing is enough.
Because these choices stem from a restlessness,
from the side-effects of waiting, fearing, grieving, and rejoicing.
And I don't want to act on those.
I want to act on their origin, on the loving.

But I can't right now.
It's still a long story.

Instead I will go grocery shopping and to the bank. I will add/drop classes and write 3 letters and getmyharddrivebackedupandmycellphoneupdatedandpaymyrentandandbuymybooksandunpackmyluggageand

makesomedinnerandtellbrooklynwhathappenedandprintoutasyllabusandtakeanothershowerandexcerise and
PUSH BACK 

against what could otherwise keep me 

solitary and confined on this blanket 

for the rest of the day.

I will fight the sinking of stagnant water, the aching refrain of stillness and indecision.

In the mean time, I am ticking.
Ticking towards the day when this refrain from action,
this repetition of the unknown,
is resolved.
I hear it even now,
a ticking too slow
too swift
too long
and too short.
Can you feel it?
When time passes inside of loving,
it ticks with the weight of eternity.

Could I drop out of college to play with Brad?

Last night I took a bath.
I was on a mission to take the best bath in the history of time.
There was a playlist made specifically for this event.
There was a spiral notebook taken from the paper-drawer downstairs,
7 pages of which became full.
(Yes, I write in the bathtub. Are you really that surprised?)
I would love to post up the clarity I found, but there is too much backstory.
And sometimes I keep these things to myself.

I can tell you that today
I walked through the pet store with Brad.
It was his idea.
His winter boots were clunkin under his little legs
He ran from snakes to guinea pigs,
to sounding out the labels on the fish tanks:
"Guh-ol-duh-ehn Bobbies... Golden Bobbies! Those little guys are golden bobbies!"
His lips were blue from the lollipop he got at the drive-through bank today.
He hung out the window in the back seat and waved to the banklady two lanes away,
She was behind the window and he was discovering pneumatic tubes for the first time.
"Woahhhh!" he said. "Hey I can see you over there!"
"This is fun. Ya'll should come more often," she said.

Later in the car, he is rollin down the window and screamin
"I LOVE AMERICUH!"
Because I told him that's what the crazy guy on the corner was sayin.
The southern man wavin his giant flag
in his star-spangled sweat pants and bandana.
He was probably screaming about politics that have
gone to the edge of the right wing and jumped ship.
But I just told Brad
"He thinks we're really lucky to live here. He wants to yell about it."
We drive by later that day and Brad wonders why he's not there anymore.
"Sometimes the police make those people go home," I say.
"Because they scare people away from the shops on the corner."
"I don't think he's scary," Brad says, blue lipped and dancin to the radio.
The light turns green and the man pops out of nowhere, still wavin his flag.
Brad rolls down the window.
"I LOVE AMERICUH TOO!" he yells as we turn left for home.

Being five years old is so dang cool.

I am thankful to get both.
To be the crazy college girl, tearing up in the bathtub with her journal and itunes.
And the big sister, running errands with the motor-mouth of curiosity.
In both roles, I spend most of my time trying to explain the world.

So Inclined.

1. I am home with my family.

I have been readin my old journals, I brought the last 4.

They start in late July.

I am trying to figure out how my life got this way.

2. I JUST WANT TO BE BRAVE.

3. I want to paint things.

I want my little brother to think he is smart.

4. I have a cat named Cutie. She is snoring on the bed. Corey named her when he was 6. Corey is on a mission now. He is 19 and almost to Nicaragua. This cat is old and ROGUE. She scratches at the door and we let her out, knowing she'll probably pick fights and come home with bald spots. I'm pretty sure she always wins. Sometimes we joke that she will never die. I always feel bad because I mostly ignore her, even though she's a survivor and I love those.

5. It is strange to come home, to think of all that I was doing last Christmas break and be shocked, again, over the changes. I will never predict my life.

6. Littering is a huge turn off for me.

7. I miss my friends. I've been too absent.

8. I have sat on my old bed for hours, writing out words that need to be recorded. Because I'm not so good at writing about actual events. I have pages and pages of how I felt about what was said, with no recollection of the original words spoken. Tonight I exhausted my memory until I could preserve it.

9. I believe in taking breaks from things that are hard. Breaks from homework and writing papers. Breaks from cleaning the house and breaks from thinking about money. But there are some things I will never walk away from. Some things I cannot justify breaking, not even for a day or two. Mainly if I love you. If I love you, I will figure it out. When it's hard, I will not step away.

10. I watch my little sister live. She wants her driver's license so bad she could tackle an army of crabby DMV employees. She wakes up early for seminary and can't watch the first thirty minutes of a movie without fallin asleep. She makes scrapbooks as Christmas presents and takes care of little Brad and cleans the counters and is tired from constantly standing up for who she is. She goes to parties and turns her music up loud. She is always sore from track or soccer. She won't date the boy she's liked since middle school because of the nasty things he wants to do with her now. This girl never stops. I know she is fighting so hard. Does she know?

11. I am so young in my learning. I am so bewildered with how big life is. Four journals ago there is a page filled with one fat question mark. I made it out of oil pastels and then explained that this mark of punctuation personifies my life.

I say "I am not ready to be adult and play multiple choice." 

I look at that page and read about all the paths I was considering. I read about cryin with my best friend Katie over what to do. I read but I know how it all turns out. I know that those questions resolve and then evolve to new questions... to the ones I'm writing about tonight. I know my life evolves in this way.

* * * * *

These are the first eleven things that came out of my mind.

I read over them and realize that even my random collection of thoughts remains centered on this idea that one must KEEP GOING.

I believe in forward motion.

"I chose and my world was shaken.

So what?

The choice may have been mistaken.

The choosing was not."

--Stephen Sondheim

It is in these periods of my life, these eras of choice and forward motion, where I feel most alive. Even if it creates a struggle, even if I am racked with complexity, I am creating my future. And so, I find myself more fulfilled than I would be in a period of indecision, of stagnant calendar weeks, of horizontal silence. Because surely if I am not reaching up, I am sinking down.