First page of the answer archive.

images. words. cause it IS a blog.

Posted by jessica on Mar 29, 2010 with 18 Comments
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Performance, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

These *images are from the piece I recently choreographed, Sariel.


Strong.
Together.
Held.
Surrounded.
Weak.
Broken.
Sustained.
Carried.


Lost.
Resilient.
Humbled.
Bereft.
Grasping.
No longer empty handed.
Found.

How can a person be all of those things? How can we burst at the seams with how we feel and still eat sandwiches because, by the time noon rolls around, lunch feels important again?

How can the mingling of the mundane and the surreal collide with me every day, creating a kind of thunder, so to speak, that can eventually feel as normal as the sound of a summer storm in July?

And how many Sundays in a row will I have to tell someone that, no, the reason I am no longer with Drew is not because I was away on tour? So far the answer is two, but hey, there’s always next Sunday, I guess.

So many questions, but I don’t think that peace is necessarily in the answers. Though I wouldn’t mind knowing them, so don’t be shy if you know and if the answer is what most would deem nice.

I think there is peace in living fully in the present; getting home and finding your finger nails good and dirty because you dug so deep into the stuff of life today. I think there is peace in realizing that, sure, five minutes fromt now might find you somewhere else–somewhere shocking, even–but right now, this is where God has put you and you might as well live like it’s good.

Because, you know, it just might be good after all.

*pictures taken by Dan Dunlap; dancers: Olivia Carlsen, Avery McGee

7×7

Posted by jessica on Jul 24, 2009 with No Comments
in Funny Stuff, Thoughts and Feelings
as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I woke up to the tune of no fever, la la la la dee da da da, which is an excellent way to start the day. Okay, in actuality it looked more like 98.6, but as a rule I like songs and words better than numbers and will never stop trying to replace the latter with the former.

But I wouldn’t recommend doing that on your math test. It doesn’t work. You know what else doesn’t work on your math test? Wracking your brain for the answer to the problem 7×7 and, after your teacher who is also your beloved mom notices that you haven’t scratched any answers onto the test paper for a good 30 seconds, tells you that your brain is like a computer and stores away all the information that you know; simply go through your files and the answer will appear, you try to do just that. But the safari that runs the math part of your brain quits on you unexpectedly and there is no tech support to whom you can send the error, or maybe there is but it’s just your brother and in all fairness that would probably be cheating, so you sit there and wait and wait and hope that in the same way people still knew math before computers in real life since they built bridges and made up geometry and one of them was named Albert Einstein, you still might have a clue as to what 7×7 is even though your brain has so obviously not computerized yet.
But the answer doesn’t appear. And the 4 and the 9, linked together like a little rescue team out of the sea of infinity, never does float into the forefront of your mind. So shamefully, you are forced to hand in the math test like this: 7×7=
Even though you know for a fact that 7×7 does not = NOTHING; it does not equal BIG EMPTY SPACE.
And that empty space speaks not only of your need to further study the multiplication table, but also to the fact that if your brain is truly a computer than it is decidedly missing some files. Or at least one file. The file that looks like this: 7x7=49
Forty-nine. Like that football team from California. Forty-nine. Is that so very hard? And though you’ll go on to get a degree at a school that gives you the option of either math or science, and of course you choose science, you will never ever forget that 7×7=49.

And since we’re on numbers here, I have some more numbers for you. We just recently weighed our large orange striped cat, Taliesin, and discovered that he weighs exactly 100 lbs less than me.

How much do you think he weighs?

my new fringe

Posted by jessica on Jun 19, 2009 with No Comments
in Funny Stuff, Performance
as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every once in a great while I stumble upon some wisdom. And when that happens, I try to record it here. You know, for posterity. So when you get the urge to cut your own bangs, first ask yourself these simple questions: Is it 2 am? If so, it might be for the best to [...]