circumstance

...fingers too froze to message on my phone while waiting for bus #11

...songs escape-ing through earplugs two seats over - lyrics dancing in the air while tired passengers look out the dark windows

.......................... earlier in the late afternoon, k.d. lang's Hallelujah video on youtube ... while at my desk... before i shut my laptop;

uploading pages on a server........ adding fingerprints...
............... conflict. caught in the middle. friendship threat - ened ..... circumstances overwhelming ... sadness smothering me

...I didn't bring my sunglasses with me today, can't hide the tears that escape.. while on the back seat of bus #11

... wipe my tears with my 8 ft scarf... while gathering glimpses of Christmas lighting - swirls, snowflakes - on the boulevard of main street............. as the bus races by ............ tires grinding. ........oh i miss my mom so very very much

... stepping off the bus onto the curb of the sidewalk ... my sore eyes stinging from the sudden wall of cold winter air ...

wrapping my scarf around and around and around ...

Bus #51

"it was late on a bitterly cold New Year's Eve. the snow was falling. a poor little girl was wandering in the dark cold streets; she was bareheaded and barefoot. she had of course had slippers on when she left home, but they were not that good, for they were huge. they had last been worn by her mother, and they fell off the poor little girl's feet when she was running across the street to avoid two carriages that were approaching rapidly. one of the shoes could not be found at all, and the other was picked up by a boy who ran off with it, saying it would do for a cradle when he had children of his own."
~The Little Match Girl - Andersen's Fairy Tales


when i was little, my mom and my aunty pearly read to me from Fairy Tale books. The Little Match Girl, and The Red Shoes were two of my favourite tales.


'this frightened her terribly and she wanted to throw off the red shoes, but they stuck fast. she tore off her stockings, but the shoes had grown fast to her feet. so off she danced, and off she had to dance, over fields and meadows, in rain and sunshine, by day and by night, but at night it was fearful."
~The Red Shoes - Andersen's Fairy Tales

i began taking boxes of books out of the small storage room in my apartment a few weeks ago. i bought a new white book cube shelf and placed it right beside another white book cube shelf in my computer room. the books are still in random stacks on the floor; and stuffed into cubes that were already full of other books and various things. it has been five days since my mom's funeral, and i wonder when i will find energy to arrange each of the books in the cubes of the book shelf.

i use public transit; standing outside at the bus stop, or sitting in the back of the bus, it's a favorite place to to be alone with myself. to scribble thoughts.

... a bottle with some added pepsi. and voices that grow louder... when i'm the only passenger at the back of the bus.

just waiting for the bus

I drove Bruce to the airport early yesterday morning - i think it was 5:45 AM; weather was clear and roads wet with the sudden onset of milder post midnight temperatures. By the time I arrived home a mere 45 minutes later, a blizzard had descended up on the city... looking out from my 16th storey balcony, the air was suddenly very cold, my sight of the city suddenly hampered by a wall of snow smothering the morning air. Sleep was calling to me, but I ignored it. Even though I had fallen asleep just four hours earlier, I knew that returning to sleep would mess with the mood patterns in my day. I picked Cheri up at 9:50 AM and we went to church for a few brief moments. I wanted to connect with my friends, my community - a church community of those who find connection and those who walk through the doors on a sunday to find that they're observing an organism completely foreign to them. it would fail to be a church community without both. self-absorbed christians are not a church community. instead a community in danger of morphing into their own static organism living within a sorry isolation. the danger is that in the end, the one's outlook can become horribly skewed - and that their resemblence to the other is not that much different. from this world - if we dare attempt to peer through the obscured lense to the next ; maybe we'll find that we're all just waiting for the bus.
I hope and pray that my heart continues to ache and care for those whose burdens near-blind them; that I won't shudder at their misgivings; that I will forever remember that I have been beside them in the very same place, and that it's only by the amazing selflessness of God's people who reached out to me, that I am where I am today. I hope and pray that I can continue to endure the subtle bullying of those who prefer to retain the status quo. I hope and pray that my heart will not become blinded to those of whom I once was. I hope that in the weeks and days and hours ahead, that I will find the strength to grieve that which I've lost... in all this.

Though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud. Though I am surrounded by troubles, you will preserve me... Your power will save me. The Lord will work out his plans for my life - for your faithful love, Oh Lord, endures forever. Don't abandon me, for you made me. Psalm 138: 6-8 (from the Bible).