the skies i'm under.

it's only january 9th. it feels like it's march already. and the weather agrees.

one of the new-hires in my department served in russia. i'm a little too excited about this.
i'm currently in the process of trying to convince him to double major.

i severely underestimated how much reading this semester will entail. severely.

all russian classes. is good. but. i'm drowning in humanitiesheaviness.
how do people handle it?
one order of reason and something concrete and logical, please.

russian literature and russian exploration of the human experience is alittlebitexhausting.

i woke up at four-thirty a few days ago after going to bed after midnight.
i woke up at six this morning after going to bed after midnight.
i really wish i was kidding.

i'm obsessed with my russian phonetics class. i think partially because it's the most logical class i have.

i like to tell myself that it's just the first week. that it will calm down.
that's what i hoped for last semester.
last semester it never did.

jibull left for DC this week. the presence of an absence in my life.

i think god looks down on our lives and gets a little chuckle at his perspective vs. ours. yes, yes he does.

there are a trillion more people on campus than ever before. and most are rm's. it's strange.

i have what is probably an unhealthy obsession with one of my professors.

when it comes to lettersofrecommendation, stalking pays off. and using your resources.
hashtag. moststressfulprocessofmylife. slash. emily'shopefullygoingtogradschool.

someday i'll finally finish writing about emily'sgoingtogradschool.
never you mind that i intended to write it back the week of october 8--threemonthsago.
i know. i really know.

i have class with most of the same people in repeat variations. and. one with four/six from our apartment.
tolstoy is tolstoy, you see.

i'm currently obsessing over this song that solnichka sent me. it just so purty.
all the light that you possess.

i know too many people on campus. i see someone i know all the time.
in a weird way, i miss the anonymity from years past when i started college from knowing hardly anyone.
this means. it's time for me to go.
102 days. (not that we're counting.)

ring out the false, ring in the true.

concerning this year departing, this year coming in. if you and me were to sit down together--with chai (herbal, of course. probably a mint&chamomile mix.) beneath the twinkle lights--and you were to ask about 2014?

well there's quite a lot that i could say.

   i'd probably tell you about how russian literature saved me when i came home, how that was the origin of my true renewal and relearning what joy means. what people mean. and i'd tell you about specific authors and works, and what they mean. about the way they dig into the deepest corners of what it really means to be human.
   i'd tell you about my funny professors, funny classes, funny friends and classmates. and all the interesting conversations i've had with people about the world and the gospel and our place within all that.
   i'd tell you maybe about my family, but probably mostly just end up talking about how darling my nieces are--naomi's singing and how much she's grown this year or the way jessi looks like me as a baby. or maybe about how i had been home almost eight months before i saw stevie again. and the opportunities for my restless soul to lift from the ground to visit my brothers and sisters-in-law and babies. i'd probably stick with that and carry on, though heaven knows that's only the tip of the iceberg.
   maybe i'd tell you about summerswinging and the way no one else ever seems to be able to handle it as long as me before they get sick and have to stop. about how jibull and i find metaphors for life in everything around us, and she thinks it has to do with my connection with life and the earth--the way it flows with me and i with it. but to me, the breath of fresh air that comes from swinging and looking to the stars is like flying. how everything thereby becomes realigned and how the closest I ever feel to God, aside from in the temple, is in the mountains or in the wind.
   or maybe about how the spring and summer sun brought with it a release of tension. and i became so much more myself from how uptight i was when i first came home. it's the winter, you see. the winter had frozen my soul a little bit. but the summer thawed it back out again. with that, i guess we could talk about seasons. about my very serious addiction to the sun, or the way i'm trying to learn love for winter. to learn that winter doesn't have to be so bad. and. i really am learning.
   and if we're being realistic about this chat of ours, i'm sure we'd eventually somewhere also talk about dating. because that seems like the only thing people really talk about around here some days, so it's bound to come up. i'd tell you of good dates from the year, of the newfoundnovelty of going out with boys that you actually like. i could make you laugh with horror stories of first dates that remain only dates (or third dates that make you wonder how they ever got that far). and then you'd cry with stories of the unmet potential in dates that don't happen even when it seems mfeo and filled with signs, or dates that do happen, but never reach what they seemed they could or would. thatdarndatinggame, you know. and then we'd commiserate about how everyone hates dating and first dates are exhausting. and then we'd chuckle in wonder at why it's still so hard if we all can get together in the fact that it's the worst. and then sigh in knowing and realizing that it's not actually always the worst. because there are reallygreatsometimessurprisingdates that make up for the rest, and that's why we do it anyway. because it's all we know and they say someday it really does all go somewhere.

   really, though, i think we'd spend most of the time talking about God and He'd infiltrate every other part of the conversation. and when you talk of God, you must always talk about Jesus. (which also happens to be one of my favorite subjects.) and furthermore, you can't talk about them without also talking about people. 

   so i'd tell you about the people of this year. the fleeting ones that come with a lesson and leave soon after, as well as the ones that just don't seem to go away, in a seemingly-significant kind of way. because they save. because they bring with them answers. because they carry mercies.

   and then i'd sit up at the edge of my seat, my hands would get kind of animated, and i'd get a little glint in my eye as i went through telling you about specific people. and then i'd tell you about how the real thing i learned above all, is this: there are some people in this world that i just really really like to be around, regardless of what that time with them is filled with. because i really love just talking to people and hearing their stories and delight in the pleasure of their presence. because that's what you do with the people you love: you spend time with them, without purpose, plan, or destination. you choose time together to be, and then plan accordingly. or even without a plan, there's delight in the people you are thrown together with. because relationships with people don't only exist on a progressing line that must always be moving, though there is room for movement and redefined relationships too. sometimes, it can just be. sometimes. it just exists and doesn't have a name, because its name isn't necessary for delight.
   i was in such a very different place one year ago. i needed this 2014 to teach me all these things and bring me all these people. not only for them to be in my life, but to relearn what that even means. to relearn the role different relationships play, the role people ought to play. i'm still learning. but i've learned much.

there's something about 2015.
something in the air of it--it just screams significance, whatever that means.
probably because i'm graduating. and starting grad school.
and a million other things in between, both foreseeable and unknown.
i can always tell when it's in the air. i can always feel those winds a-blowing.
and. i'm always right, whatever that means.

   these are the things i'd tell you, as we reach the point of absentmindedly pressing our spoons into the teabags of our mint&chamomile mix and up against the side of the cup, releasing the remnants of a little more chai. watching those escaped herbs floating in this tiny puddle of soontobereabsorbed water.

   and i'd finish with a discussion of hope. because the thing about hope, is that it is a choice just as much as faith or love. hold onto hope, love. even when you think you can't. because it's always more possible than you think. and i think i'd tell you about how i realized this week. for me, when i feel light and goodness and love coursing through me, it feels like sunshine. like sunlight beaming through my veins. that's what love feels like. a fondness and affection that springs with it joy: it feels like sunshine.

and the conclusion is this: 

for 2015.

i choose sunshine.

which is to say,

i choose hope.

i choose love.

i choose joy.

(in all of their faces.)

i choose to choose.

to let anything be possible.

to give everything and everyone a chance.

to allow life to be felt and experienced and taken in with all its glory.

because.

the book of love and genuine goodness is penned by sunshine.
(and maybe a few words contributed by twinklelights.)

and really, isn't that how we ought to be living life all the time anyway?

these are the things i'd tell you as we sat beneath the gleam of twinklelights.

welcome, 2015.

be good to me?