a chapel in the woods.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as chapel, cute boys, Don, florescent lights, friend, God, place, right, strip malls, time, whispers of hope, Wilmington, yellow flowers
Today I went on a hike with a friend.
And it was startling, actually, where we ended up. Because we were in Wilmington, driving by strip malls and underneath electric lights, when suddenly we turned off a highway and found ourselves right by a river that was doing something right because the land all around it was verdant and seemed to be saying an awful lot about springtime and life and the color green in general.
We parked the car and started walking and I felt like I could look at my surroundings forever. And if not forever, than at least for an hour or two before I wondered if anyone had texted me and shoot! I left my phone back at my friend’s house, anyway.
Don’t worry, I did that on purpose.
Part of the whole proving a certain friend of mine that I am not obsessed with my iphone, after all.
But the grass, it wasn’t just your every day green. It was like when you take a photograph and put it into iphoto and, when editing it, click on enhance and suddenly you blink because everything just got so much brighter. And then this grass was dotted with little yellow flowers and my goodness, but you know me: they had me at yellow.
But that would have been enough, you know? All that vibrant color carpeting the ground, acting all modest, like it was just its job anyway. Except then my friend took me to a very special place. A place, that for her, is a sanctuary. A place where it’s possible to hear the whispers of hope and grace that seemed to have been drowned out by the world clamoring for our attention for a long time now–probably even before you started noticing how cute boys are, but man, that sure didn’t help with trying to hear that whisper, did it?
Because there, on top of this hill and hidden by trees that, as it turns out, are some of the oldest and best secret keepers around, stands this small and rustic chapel. It’s rugged and it’s lovely and nobody has ever thought about installing anything so offensive as florescent lights in it. There’s a large wooden door and the floor is made of red bricks and wide grey stones. Oh! And I love this part, because there are tall archways on either side of the chapel, but they are devoid of any glass at all. Rather, they let the air come in and out as it pleases, and today the most perfectly warm breeze kept moving around inside the chapel. It was moving my hair too, which I figured was its right since it has been coming in and out of the place for a long time, while I had only just arrived.
And at the back of the chapel was a little unassuming plaque, one that tells a nice little story every minute of every day. Something about how the chapel was built in gratitude to God for a beautiful life–one filled with family, unique friends, joy, and laughter.
And tonight when I was telling a friend about this magical place, I told him that I’d like to be that, too: A temple of gratitude. One who’s hair might change an awful lot, who gets lost if she’s going anywhere that doesn’t happen to be home or the gas station down the street from home, and who falls for a fishy phone call enough to get her heart beating harder than normal when a silly friend disguises his voice at 2 am in the morning, telling her to come down to the police station or be arrested, but it’s your choice, ma’am…
But I agree with that little plaque. The one about this life being beautiful and, for this, being grateful.
And I hope to be able to find that perfect chapel again. Maybe with my guitar in tow next time.
life is a lot of things, but boring isn’t one of them.
in Funny Stuff, Performance, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
as American, Dominic DiTanna, Don, doozy, executive decision, fact, Jessica Sarah Elisabeth, Latshaw, life, lot, Pocahontas, room, Shane, someone, tiny words, verbs and adjectives, Wilmington
Because there are always random men who come up to you at the gym and ask that standard question: Excuse me, but are you American? Because you sure don’t look it.
And then you wonder how exactly an American is supposed to look, anyway. I mean, a true American should look a lot more like Pocahontas and a lot less like Dakota Fanning, right? If we’re talking originals, that is. And oh my, but I won’t even tell you how many typos I’ve already found, just in the past…counting…uh, six sentences.
But that’s okay because I love editing. Almost as much as I love italics. Which is not to be confused with Italians. Though I love them, too. Considering I am one and all. But seriously, I’m so into editing. And I don’t always remember what everything is called in terms of verbs and adjectives (okay, so action words and then the words that end in ‘ly,’ right?), but I do have this strange and unyielding recall of articles and what they are: a, an, and the. I don’t know why, but I just can’t forget articles. Maybe because there’s just three of them. Maybe because they are tiny words and don’t take up that much room in my brain, anyway.
Not like my name: Jessica Sarah Elisabeth (with an ‘s,’ mind you; I find that terribly important!) Latshaw. That’s a doozy and takes up a ton of room, which is why I’ll forgive you if you forget it because you simply don’t wanna use up that much space in your brain for just one person’s name. It’s like making the executive decision to delete some of the musical theater albums from your itunes that you never listen to anyway. Sorry, Parade. It’s not personal; there just isn’t that much room on this skinny little macbook air of mine to begin with, so…yeah.
But I was talking about how life is never boring. And yes, grammar and the construction of sentences sure helps with that. For me, anyway. But so does the time when someone mentions a game in which everybody has to choose someone in the room to swap lives with, and your friend leans over and teasingly says: Pretty sure nobody would swap lives with you right now!
And wah-waaaaaah. Kinda sad, kinda true. And in the midst of our laughter, you know what I thought?
But I don’t want to swap lives with anybody else.
And it’s true, I don’t. Despite the sadder circumstances that keep me able to easily recognize the nice lady behind the desk at the Wilmington courthouse, and despite my heart that is proving to be more like a starfish in the way that it regenerates, mind you–not necessarily in the way that it can consume prey outside of its body–I still want to be me. I still want to live inside my head and think my thoughts and write my songs and live inside my body and keep bleaching out my hair and pointing my feet and relating with my family and texting my friends.
And it’s okay if nobody wants to swap with me, because I am a firm believer in living your life. Your own life. As a good friend of mine says, How bout I do me and you do you?
Oh, but here’s a tip: Don’t get that phrase mixed up at all. Because, just when you were kindly trying to give someone the kind of advice that affirms their individuality, you end up sounding like you’re a class A creeper, trying to proposition somebody. So maybe practice saying it once in your head before you say it for real.
You’re welcome.
And what else is so not boring?
Getting to sing songs for people at the World Cafe’s open mic.
And because someone I love dearly has told me that she sometimes scans my blog for *pictures, here are some for her.
And for those of you who mostly scan my blog for words, don’t worry, here are some for you. Ones that have nothing whatsoever to do with these pictures. Like the fact that I just realized tonight that Mad Libs is a play on words for Ad Libs. I thought it had something to do with the fact that it sounds like lips and we use our lips to speak…Yeah, I obviously never really thought it through.
Major duh.
And I think it’s funny that Shane has mentioned that he has blond hair–usually–but now that my hair is this color, he doesn’t know what color that makes his in comparison.
How bout we just stick with natural? As in, his is natural in comparison?
And what else?
While we were singing the chorus to one song–a chorus that happens to say the words, I love you–someone yelled back: I love you, too!
Aw, sweet.
Oh, and when we were doing the rap, people got up and actually started dancing. Ha. It was so fun. I happen to be a big fan of dancing, you know.
And I’m a fan of how life is never boring, which I’m pretty sure I’ve already mentioned.
*pictures by Dominic Ditanna
