so, bracelets...

last week, on saturday, we had to wear red plastic wrist band type braceletes... the reason for that was because someone bought a bunch of them and wanted to sell them in the store becuase the jr. highers were here for the weekend... her thinking was that if the jr. highers saw us wearing them, they would think they were cool and want to buy one for themselves.

something about it didnt seem right in my head, but i put it on anyway, so as not to be an ass about it. but as i wore it i kept thinking about it and turning it over in my head... the reason we had to wear the bracelete didnt seem right to me...

i ended up taking it off about mid-day and decited to not put it back on... i dont remember if i even threw it away or not...

i didnt like the idea of selling those braceletes to the kids... i didnt like the idea of me being part of a marketing strategy where if kids saw me wearing a certain thing, they would think it was cool becuase i am on staff and i am "cool" and that would nmake them want to spend their money and buy one for thwemselves... i want kids to think for themselves... i didnt want to be a part of that marketing, so i took it off and i dont think i will wear it again.

it didnt feel right, and the more i roll it around in my head, the more it just seems wrong...

but, another part of me was wondering if i should think it was wrong... becuase i live here and i get my pay check from here, so wouldnt it be good to support this place by contributing to the marketing of the store goods? once again, questions abound...

i dont think i will wear it again. i dont think i agree with the reasons behind my wearing it. i am not "cool", i am just me and i want kids to just be themselves. if they feel like buying a bracelete for themselves, rock on. but if they want to buy a bracelete for themselves becuase they see someone else wearing it and they think its cool becuase someone else has one, then i would encourage them to re-think their reasons behind their purchase.

think for yourselves andf encourage others to do so as well.

this is one of the reasons i do not eat meat...

i dont care if you eat meat. i do want you to think about what it is that you are eating though... i belive that God gave us animals and one of the purposes of them is for food, but i also belive that God calls us to be good stewards of the things that He has given us, and the way that we abuse animals in the meat industry is horrifying... that is one of the reasons i dont eat meat.

i always feel so lame when i put on deoderant and then put on my black sweater and find the white deoderant smears under the arms. lamo.

yesterday morning, for some reason, i decited to drive down into town to get a cup of coffee. so i did and it was wonderful. it also started a whole chain of complex thoughts spinning around in my head that are stuck there still.

it was as if a storm blew through here the day before yesterday, but the sky remained blue and wonderful. the storm was in our hearts and effected the community as a wholeits over now, at least directly, but the results are still in my head and heart.

was the correct desicion made? could he have been given another chance? was i, personaly, too quick to judge? was i correct in my feelings towards him? how could more forgivness had been displayed?

the community is awesome. and i like the idea of communities (communes) at times with the right people. but who are the right people? and after i found out that he was leaving, as quickly as he arived, i saw us in my thoughts, sticking together as a community and talking things over, discussing what was happening and wondering what was to be done and i felt the eerie, creepiness of a commune... but is it a bad thing?

some people say that people who live up here in this community are not in the real world and that it may not be good for them. well, what is this "real world"? and who made it up? who made up the rules? cant people have different realities? cant this community up here on this mountain be "reality" for some people? maybe it doesnt work out for other people, maybe its not where they fit in, what they are looking for, so they have to leave... is that bad? i dont think i think so...

other thoughts continue to swim around as well... but to simplify this post, i will leave them out. peace...

so, i just bought a kick-ass digital camera for a kick-ass price.

im planning a trip up the coast, probably up highway 1 and 101, for the beginning for june... i'll probably hit up santa cruz, san fransisco, humbolt (hemp ale, yeah...), cresecent city, portland, seattle and puget sound... anyway, those are the destinations so far.

i came home for a couple of days. it was nice to stop by main street last night and sit on the corner of main and church with awesome people. i only stayed for about 10 minutes, but that was long enough to breath the familiarities in and say hello to a few people who i really like.

life is a mundane adventure... i love it.

who knew?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

today i watched a grey fox come out of the woods and into a clearing by the house. i watched, alone from the living room window as he began to treck across the snow, sort of bouncuing over it as he went along. every once and while he would stop and look around, like he sensed something. i wondered if he sensed me watching him from the window and was looking for me... making sure he was safe, he continued on his journey across the clearning, headed for a patch of trees on the other side of the house. he stoped maybe a total of six times during the shirt distance that he covered, looking around him, sniffing the air. i wondered why humans dont have a sense like that... like, the kind of sense that animals have... and i wondering if maybe we did have them, but we were numb to them and didnt realize it... maybe we dont have them because we dont need them... maybe...

as i was standing there watching the grey fox from the outside the window, my art supplies spread out across a small table sitting there, i also began to wonder if there will be a sense of me left in this house after i leave... i wonder if, when i move out in may, when someone else moves in here for the summer time, if there will be a sort of energy left of my presence living here in this house... if i smile in this house today, will it effect the atmosphere here tomorrow? maybe in some peoples minds... maybe to the people who might see me smile here, becuase i will be living on in their memories, memories set in this house. but what if no one sees me? will the energy remain?

today was my day off. i had lots of time to think... peace...

ive been keeping up with the news... this story touched me about jimmie wallet, who lost his wife and three of his daughters in the mud slide... i was watching a news clip that was dated back before the interview with wallet, about the searching for people, and one of the captions said "one women and three children found dead" and i thought of the interview i had watched just five minutes before, with jimmie wallet, and connected the three children and one women as his family. people, with names... melissa, raven, paloma and hannah. real people with real lives and real familes.

if you have a minute, even just 30 seconds, please say a little prayer of comfort and peace for jimmie wallet and his surviving daughter, jasmine.

peace...

damn... i have nothing to say...

this morning when i woke up, i realized for the first time that i can always see my nose through my periphrial vision...

death always gives way to new life... amazing...

there is something surreal about living in the snow... when its been dark and snowing for the past 6 days and you wake up one morning to the the sun shining in your window, you look outside and have to squint because the refelction of the sun against the snow is too much for your eyes to take in, you look up and the sky is a brilliant, bright blue... the snow on the ground glistenes like glitter... it really is magical...

one thing i learned while working at the coffee company is that people are more alike eachother than we think... we are the same... everyone loves coffee... there were so many different types of people who came in to get coffee... old, young, fat, thin, punk, emo, goth, hippies, democrates, republicans, business men & women, church ladies and church men, young mothers with their children and old men who sat and talked about football and news every afternoon. people, no matter how different, are also the same. working in food service and coffee the past few years has taught me that people really center around food. food brings people together. my mother speaks about how she views preparing meals as a spiritual thing. i think that looking back over the past few years, i have come to agree with her. i love spending time preparing a meal for several people and then seeing them all come together over it, a common link, something that draws them together... sitting over a meal is comfortable... i have shared food with several different people who i would not spend time with if it hadnt of been for the link we shared in our meal... preparing food is spiritual... you never know what will happen between people over a shared meal. im grateful that i am working in the kitchen again...

the phone is right next to my bed upstairs. i think it is the only working phone in this whole house, becuase yesterday i tried every phone but that one and none of them seemed to work any. so, it began to ring last night, probably close to 9:30... i had been in bed almost asleep, listening to my CD of "songs that put me to sleep" (one of the best compilations i have put together, ever...) and so i just sort of shoved it off of the window sill. it kept ringing, so i fumbled around in the dark and in my sleepyness, and managed to un-plug the phone from the wall. so, if your wondering why your call wasnt answered last night, its becuase i was mostly asleep.

the last few nights i have been using tylonol pm to lull me to sleep... just untill i get used to falling asleep in a totally quiet room, and they have left me with some strange dreams... dreams that cause me to once again question, do our dreams mean anything? do certain dreams mean something and if only certain dreams have meaning, how do we pick and choose wich ones they are? and maybe none of my current dreams have any meaning, becuase they are a result of tylonol PM... or maybe they do have a even deeper meaning than ususal becuase the drugs have awakened my unconciouse thoughts and maybe the uncanny ability to see into my future...

perhaps i should just let that alone and trust it all to Jesus... too complicated for my simplistic little mind.

yesterday i put the chains on my tires on the calvin crest road and parked head out in the little parking place, just in case i should ever happen to suddenly speed out of here, i will be all set...

living in the snow is really different... its beautiful when i take the time off from watching my shuffeling feet, concentrating on keeping my balance, too look up... snow flakes fall on my eye lashes and my nose gets cold... the trees are beautiful covered in snow... im grateful that i am having this experience...

things are turning out better than my limited, pessimistic mind had once thought they would... just more proof that Jesus is much bigger than i am and his majesty is displayed when i allow it.

peace be in your hearts...