all boxed up

Ever been on hold for a long time? 

Let me tell you a bit about my life. 

Without the tin can cheesy music to delay your hanging up.
I live in a box. This is not intended to be metaphorical. I mean, I live in a travel trailer which is by design, box-shaped. Albeit it's rather fancy and utilitarian. Parts of it get pushed out. You press switches and it makes spaces to sit and eat and a bunk bed to do Lego's on. And there's three rooms. It's pretty swanky.
We do family here. In a space many would consider too small, we live happily. We eat toast, fruit, and beans with rice and cheese. Sip tea, coffee, and goat milk. We draw and make collages. Write letters to put in envelopes and on postcards. We wash dishes. Fold clothes. Use the baby toilet and shower. Go to work and school. Return to each other. And sleep comfortably on our trailer beds.

We see each other a lot, my family. Everyone is ever and always in view or earshot. Which is good, because I was wondering if after all this time I really knew them.

After years and years without, we now have a TV, but just for viewing DVDs. It's really loud and keeps everyone awake so it's not very considerate for evening movies. There are outside speakers and inside options. One could play a Suzuki CD, close a sliding wood-like door, and play violin for an hour with the melodies muffled somewhat.
Somewhat unsuccessfully.

Right to the left of my side door, which is really our front door, it says, "Chemicals contained within this vehicle are known by state of California to cause cancer..." I guess there's a bit of glue holding our home together.
I buy and eat more kale these days.
We can get wifi if we sit on the little couch (it can also be a bed!) and rest the iPhone on the ledge of the foggy side-window. Until your neck gets a crick. You can learn a lot about condensation from a single-pane window in a home. I didn't know this because I have only experienced it in a car.
Outside of the window ledge approach, there's some sort of metal sheeting preventing us from getting internet. I used to check google news. Write emails. Browse blogs. Search images. Watch videos. Research things. 

Now I read. Write. Think. And stare at a tiny flame on a purple candle atop a ivory porcelain elephant wearing gilded neck ornaments while gentle lavender scent fills the purportedly toxic air. 

Turns out I don't need that other shit.

I'm glad I don't have my past thinking on failure. I'm glad I didn't see the future. At my mid-thirties I would move out of a sound home and into a tornado magnet. I used to think we weren't going anywhere. Like our careers being ritual and static was abhorrent. 

But now I live in a vehicle. The ultimate hold on progress. And I feel like for the first time in a long time, I'm really getting to the marrow. Not the Professor Keating sucking-the-marrow-out-of-life level yet, but closer. I mean, there's a National Park practically in my backyard. My family loves me. My Savior is with me. I have some friends. 

This place He's leading through is a wide open space with much freedom. It's a frame of mind. And a state of soul.
This place I'm in, is a shelter hewn out of rock. I'm hemmed in. While the world changes with more and more information into that which it has always been; while each struts and frets his hour upon a social media stage; while debt consumes contentment in the name of future's investments... I'll sit. I'll chill besides these still waters. Eyes up. His right hand heavy upon me.
So yeah. I live in a box. But it wasn't supposed to be metaphorical.

theme for august

stardate 08062014
Siren wails weave their way through town.
The cringe of anticipation as they approach.
Someone's having a much worse day than me.
Hoot-hoot of the train behind the ladies sharing their struggles and victories at the metal table next to me. With aviators and precise pedicures. One looks like Owen Wilson.
Clanks of mugs on saucers from the collared shirt man chatting with the bearded one with a rainbowed sleeve.
Will there be tattoos in heaven?
Engines noises behind me sliding by and orchestrated intervals.

this ivy is confused. i blame the drought.

I realize. I have not given this day to God. A sobering, even harrowing thing.
It's been a few days since I started with Your will be done in my head.
Blech. What a terrible waste.
Redeemer of souls. 
And Redeemer of time.

dyhyst? part 2

This minimalist thing has taken a turn for the serious.
Like a slow ventricular bleed.
My sister started posting things and the phone calls started and the comments rolled in and the cash started flowing and my load lightened. Ever so slightly.
We made pretty good money at the yard sale. It was kinda fun.
Stifling heat with a small white oscillating fan mocking us. Bitter people demonstrating rather poor citizenship to their children. Aggressive enough to verbally attack at a price disagreement. Angry enough to drop or throw things in disgust. Depraved enough to take bags of items without paying.
Yes we did rather well. Our morality still intact. No one was hurt. We laughed a lot. And in retrospect, I know now why my dad never left us out there alone.
It was quite a success.
And for me, deeply therapeutic.

It's something I think about on a daily basis. Getting rid of stuff. 
For several years I mean. Like, it haunts me.
My sister, however, is the one with the gumption to execute. It had to be en una pareja.

Three years of things filling up one car space in a two-car garage. Reduced by one half.

But it's not enough. Like making ice cream low-fat. Tastes gross. And if you eat too much, it still makes you fat.
So yeah, we sold tons of stuff. Yet somehow... it's still not enough. Not enough gone. Not enough space made. Not enough emptiness.
And I crave the emptiness. To somehow make the material a fair representation of the intangible.
I don't need this stuff. No one does. But we never have enough. Of at least something.
Nowhere in America will anyone ever have enough.
"Dad, what would your friends in Indonesia think of all this crap?"

And as the men loaded an 8-foot bed back up with things to try at one last sale when it's cooler, I thought to myself. I thought through a heat and exhaustion that left me depressed. I thought, "How much would it really matter if he backed that up to the city dump's bay and heaved it into the backhoe's playground?"
My goal is to fit all our possessions in that size truck bed. And it just got filled with leftovers. Gleaned but not purged.
Why can't I do it?
Because we are married to our mammon, friends. We think this world is our own. And we are of little faith.

"When Jesus said, 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also' 

he was making a direct correlation between the things we value 

and the things we put our faith in." -David Tackle

So as I slowly bleed out I pray it will be a dying to self. A dying to the order of this world. A blow to deception. And a gasp of air from the One who gives breath.

I don't have the sort of camera that can do our summer sky justice. Even with one I couldn't capture it. It's not just the hue of the sky and the artificial clouds. It's the glaze cast over sidewalks and lightly-tinted stucco walls.
It's coral. And it glows.
The very thing causing the eery illumination is reflected in the color. We are nearly hemmed in now by wildfire.

Yep. Doesn't translate.
And heavens declare the glory of God. In a different way.

Goodbye Norma Jeep

There were tears when it was upon its deathbed. Hoisted in such irreverent fashion. The auto-wrecker driver sensitively nodding as we asked to watch. 
"You have no idea. This car..." and I shook my head. Not to be dramatic. But because I didn't have words to sum up God's faithfulness via the Jeep. 
The trips we've taken. The city streets we've mobbed through. The mountains we've driven over. The snow we've plowed. The forest roads we've gotten lost on. The logging trails we've beaten down. 

Sure I've been sad about leaving a place. Like Vancouver. That was rough. 
But leaving the thing... nay, rejecting and sending away that which got us places... that's different somehow. It almost feels cruel. Off to be junked. So unfitting and end. I wish I could leave it on Mt Adams in commemoration. 
Alas. I need the cash.

I wonder what it was like for Caleb and Joshua to pack away their tents. Did they brush off the dust and fold it tenderly? Did their wives repurpose them? Curtains? Floor cushions?

If I had just a smidgen of their courage I think I'd be good to go. 
Albeit, on a bike.