The Idea of Opaque.

I will be the first to confess that I am not good at writing on this here darn tootin' blog. And I have begun to realize how infinitely important it is to get our words down. These fleeting thoughts that may mean a whole universe and a half soon.

So here I go, splitting my tongue and fingers with the rate these words might come out. (watch out)!

This story just came to me. In Sixth Grade, the grade where you felt so close to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe that you could laugh in the face of darkness and nothing and say "poop" and feel no fear. And yet, I had a healthy dose of respect and fear for this rad girl another who had moved in from California, who was not our very precious Libby. At this point in time I was beginning to get a bit better at making friends than I had been before and this California Chick was becoming a new friend, yea dog. Anywho, one day we were talking and she told me, "Oh, I hate reading. Don't you?" And for some stupid reason I leapt to say, "Yea, yea, of course I do. It just, is you know, like ridiculous."

Okay ask again, "Do you hate reading?"

I LOVE READING! IT IS THE MOST INNER PART OF MY BEING! BOOKS! GIVE ME BOOKS OR GIVE ME DEATH!

So there we go, I had to get off my chest, let her know through the force of the Universe that I, in fact, do no hate reading. No, I thrive off reading. Dream of reading when I am doing other things. A bathtub and a new book? Bliss, incandescent bliss!

Opaque. Probably the strangest word in existence in our vast vocabulary of baffling words. Yet everytime I hear it fills me with such a overwhelming euphoria that I have to look straight up and kind of giggle/choke.
                 Opaque.

OPAQUE.

opaque. 

OPAQUE!

And glory, I adore the word glory. Hmmm, words what a sweet form of confession.

Lastly, I just want to write a quick note to Taylor Ann Rose, my dear one.

dear taylor,

please note that i found a special font that resembles a type writer. just for you. i thought it might give a nice touch! any who, i just wanted to quickly confess how very much i admire you. your soul is much more brilliant than any of us can comprehend. it radiates wit and intellect, it effuses music and the beauty that comes with the gift of a creator. i am serious when I say your laugh, though you find it ridicules and embarrasses you, is one of the most heartfelt sincere laughs that i cannot control my own independent, stubborn laughter from jumping out to catch up with yours. keep that heart that is so tender and sensitive to the world around it and if you ever asked me, like elpheba once asked glinda, to come with you (not to just the Emerald City) but to come and simply defy gravity, to race away from the grasping hands that are trying to tie down your wings, i would not hesitate to come with! thank you for all the years, they have been mighty and good. never give up on that dream, take a leap of faith, i have such a feeling that it will be. anywho, i love you. stay safe. celebrate. embrace the you that is a lion wearing glasses and a beard, the nancy drew of pro-start, the mad banjo-rocking, heart singing, line treasuring, effulgent being you are. 

be infinite.

sincerely, the one and only abs   

    

Give Me A Nickel

I am positively vibrating with ideas and stories to share at this moment. Buzzing!

I have been sick the past two or three days, just an inconsequential runny nose and sore throat but it has taken it out of me! So after napping most of the day I have come to this computer or some activity other than snoozing and enjoying literary genius! Now I am on my second round of listening to the Valjean quartet singing Bring Him Home. "Let him rest, heaven blessed." Oh my heart responds to Colm Wilkinson as if he is my grandfather. I have gotten in many arguments about the true Valjean and I am sticking to my guns, it is Colm Wilkinson, he is Jean Valjean, he wears the plagued, humble role so handsomely. But there is a new Valjean that is entering the scene quite soon here, Hugh Jackman. And I will say I am satisfied with their choice! The film representation of the Musical Les Miserables is coming out Christmas Morning and you can bet your bottom dollar that Jenny and I will be there! I sincerely believe that there will not be a more irrevocably changing, and ethereally magnificent film made in my lifetime. I can stop going to see movies after this one!

Next thought, as I sit here, I am desiring a shorter hair cut again. There is that short haired flame flaring up again! It also might be the perfect missionary haircut.

Song is the passage for our soul to rear its head back and laugh in jubilation.

There is a miracle named tissues with lotion in the tissue itself!

And what a gift is it to live, love, laugh, cry, rejoice, grieve, and to let yourself truly experience every priceless moment as it comes, to not think about living just to merely live!

My Heart Sings Forth

Despite all my thoughts previously as to where my heart would carry me in this very wide world, they have been redirected. Transported and focused on something so entirely new and wonderful that I cannot entirely grasp it yet.
In less than a year, I will be serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a mission. A full fledged, my heart, might, mind and soul all directed into preaching the gospel. Miraculous.
Still processing it.
The Extraordinary part is that, all my friends will be joining me in it! As soon as President Monson announced that boys can leave on their missions at age 18 and that young women could leave at age 19, I received texts from Libby, from Easton, after conference I got a call from Rachel, and another text from Taylor. Libby ecstatically texted me telling me that she is in shock that I will be leaving for a mission next summer, this summer in essence. What she put was, THHHHHHISSSSS SUMMMMEERRRRRRRR! Hard to believe and yet my heart is so overfilled with joy at the mere mention of the fact that I can serve a mission. But one of the very most beautiful aspects is that Rachel McCloskey and Easton Madsen, my two sweet friends who I can count as some of my very closest will be leaving at the exact same time as me. We will be united in our common goal of serving a mission for our Savior, and can prepare, study, learn and work on becoming the missionaries our Father in Heaven would have us be, together. Rachel called me afterwards and we excitedly discussed this fact for about twenty minutes, her focus was shot at ACT prep after a girl announced that in the middle of the class. All she could think was, I could go on a mission.
And, that is all I can think about. A mission. And me. I feel so strangely ready, and it fits the puzzle of my future so well that I cannot help but think secretly Heavenly Father had even me in mind when He informed our prophet, Thomas Monson, about the age change.
So here is the new life outline, one that tickles my toes and my nose.
1. Graduate, a very important step
2. Go to Wales, hopefully, for that month and a half
3. Return
4. Leave on a mission
All of this will be done this upcoming summer, can you believe it? I almost cannot and yet the idea is nestling so firmly into my heart that I cannot believe that I did not know it all along.
I want to write a brief poem, just because that is all I can think of!

Learn what it means to hold 

to be bold

enough

to teach the secrets of truth

to reveal the ways to soothe

the soul

To be out there, smiling at the new langauge

engaging it in its way

and handing to others the key to 

happiness

A rough poem, but thats the best that it is going to be, I suppose! I have always known I wanted, no, that I would serve a  mission and knowing that it is so close causes me to want to strive for so many different things! Whatever way the wind blows now I think that I can know what it is I need to begin with, and that is a start, would'nt you say?
Just saying, it will be 285 days until I go on my mission.
 

MarcBeWinEd. Be Still My Heart.

The funny substance of daydreams winds around our brain stem, (funny thought), but I find my day dreams taking me to far off places, or to, funnily and sadly enough, hospital rooms, or to writing a long winded letter to the moors of Iceland. The magic of day dreams is that every now and then, if you are lucky enough, they come into the light of day as a truth, a fathomable event, that you can cup in your hands, as cool and refreshing as pooling water. As tangible too.
I love time. Its fickle essence. I love that I can lend to others my time, and how often they appreciate with a flash of their smile, sweet, nutritious words, and an invitation back again. But I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity soon to spend some time of mine with four beloved men. Even pondering that my daydream could fall from the linings of space and into my life gives me such silly giddiness that I shake as I type this. I, and my dearest Taylor Ann, conquered the unquestionable and will be going to the much coveted event in Salt Lake City at Saltair, we will be attending a Mumford and Sons concert.
True Story, bro.
In any other circumstance I would not even consider saying something like that, but, I am a little different in the face of this event.
Marcus Mumford just got married this summer, he is touring with a wife at home, what an artist.
Winston Country Marshall has a beard that is so awe inspiring that I have considered awarding him a medal of mere accomplishment of growing something so legendary.
Ted Dwayne is still wearing the rogueish smirk of a bad boy in a smashing outfit.
Ben Lovett, the most darling of them all with his kind eyes and extraordinary musical talent, though others would undermine it, and his heart throb ways.
Thank you for forming a band, for being musicians, for changing my life.
Thank you Taylor, for holding a lemonade bake sale for the anxiously engaged cause, for sacrificing your hand to the god of burning lamps, and your never ending persistence in accomplishing a dream.

I am going to the Mumford and Sons concert. Bah!

June 28: Old Man and the knobbly knees

The fact that I personally feel that I have never seen a man so beautiful or heart touching may be concerning to a few, but, alas, it is true. I am enamored by him, in the sense that I find him to be a perfect specimen of living.
a. He has a sweater on, a subtly fantastic sweater.
b. Waves crash with shuddering power behind him and he stands impervious yet invigorated by the raw magnitude of this storm.
c. He reminds faintly of Ghandi.
d. Where is his gaze wandering? It is captured by something greater than this storm that is threatening to engulf him, and his expression is that of awe. Perhaps he has spot a far off winged angel, addressing the storm with her own cries, and he smiles at her jubilation in the face of a terrifying exploit of mother nature.
e. A survivor of life. And one day we will relate all his glories of living, when I get to know him in Iceland.

Swedish Sweaters for the Sojourning Sage

I love alliteration, the steady repetition of friendly letters greeting each other in a satisfying manner, all saying yoo-hoo, hello lovely, my are you not marvelous? Hence I made the title of this an alliteration, another awe-filled word. But I am also discovering a budding love for the far off country of Iceland, its majestic beauty, makes my heart rear back its head and sing, and also the year round need to be wearing sweaters, another concept that my whole frame yearns for, do not ask me why, for I truly find it unexplainable, my fetish for sweaters. So I will sojourn out of here and travel to that remote world, raise 3 to 4 dogs, have a cat, a few birds, fish, and a ball python, all in a small, perfectly situated cabinesque or cape cod styled house, then I could leave home. Perhaps. Even still I feel that I may just hang around for a little longer before venturing out. For that would be a very big adventure. Marching forth from the place you have grown your heart, and taking those steps that have the pretense of boundless courage but are shivering with fear. Oh dear, still trying to accept it. But I am going to stay here with my friends, those sweet hearts, ah I love them.Yes I will stay for them.

Life in a bottle. Can you imagine? It would be very tight in there, and orbular? I fear I might have made that word up so lets switch it to circular, and if any greater, or atleast larger than your bottle, being had the urge they could plunder and disturb your opaque life. Instead I say we live in a hot air balloon, a sea shell, a piano bench. Life appears in perfect packages ready to take hold of. Every breath deserves a standing ovation for you did it, you took one more gulp of life giving oxygen, you are surviving. In the suburbs and urban villages of Utah, Alaska, Tokyo, anywhere, you live. In a cushioned bed, with a fluffy coach, and art splattered across the walls. We redecorate  moderately and sometimes go for a spree if we would like to live on the edge for a minute. A few of us in a moment of chicanery even jump out of a moving plane for kicks, attempting to fight and make peace with gravity all at once. I do not mind this life of living, I have always thoroughly enjoyed it but every now and then I get a sniff of what it means to survive, and I crave it. For example, the greatest adventurers of our day consciously, and tentatively put their lives on the line and we revere them, we acknowledge their success in surviving to find life. Now how does that work? Well let me tell you a secret. They must be doing the things that scare them the most. As the ever wise Dumbledore once said, "Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself."And it must for we fanatically fear the most outrageous things and that fear envelops us. But it is learning to cope and address fear, to make it your friend that is the act of valor. Not always fighting it, but accepting it. Make friends with the world about you and she will open her heart you, and who can know what you will find!

 Laugh in the face of danger. Survive. Fight with a will to live. Love. Help someone else to fly.