Complete - Collision

It was all clarified today. I was hungry and went on a walk to pick up a sandwich ordered online. On my return to my office, a sense of peace and rightness hit me in just the way that a public bus disregarding a red light on the turn signal didn't.

Incomplete - S g u e

 I enter this space "all or nothing."

And lately, I might be dealing with withdrawal? Hard to confirm for sure. But I am trying to confront how much of my life is consumption and stimulus on a service basis. I get twitchy and want distraction to kickstart my mind and attention. And I am trying to break that impulse. So that might be some of it. But I am tensing in anticipation of something, and I haven't figured out whether I know when and what that release will be. So I am curious to see whether the next few days will bring that resolution. In the meantime, I am trying to fill that time with good things and rhythms. Today, I had focus on a goal, but had to set it aside to honor some other commitment. It is difficult to dislodge my mind from a task when I am finally in the stage of executing my vision. An interrupt command is jarring and discordant.

So when I was able to resume after that pause, I craved a familiar counterrhythm to reengage in that groove. Therefore, I sought out Capital Lights' album "This is an Outrage." If a band ever had my full mind and heart, it is this one. Ever since I heard their track "Out of Control" on a sampler, I knew it was my exact jam. All energy and unusual synth, lyrics weaving both clever and pointed. The band released two albums under the Tooth and Nail label to fulfill their contract, and peaced out to live their lives away from the scene. And yet, there is not a track that the band released that I don't enjoy. The shortened catalogue did not permit a dulling or dilution of their stay through repetition of theme. There was no fall out and it feels complete and perfect to me.

I remember how much I love this album and hold it dear. So today, I am grateful for that being a soundtrack to help me find my rhythm and focus. My week is not over, and neither is my task list. I am uncertain that the completion of that list will solve this feeling of waiting for something. In the meantime, I have conceptualized it as "Divine Discontent", a title of a Sixpence None the Richer album that has stuck in my mind more than the individual songs on it. I will pray and seek the guidance of my Savior, as this longing is currently beyond my reach to comprehend or resolve.

Love - Dream

 Love, that greatest of things, a dream within a dream.

I woke up from a dream in which I was telling a person about love. How people thought it was like ice cream, an almost universally agreed upon good experience except by the lactose intolerant. And even they might want it sometimes. But love can also be like cigarettes or alcohol, in that it leaves its mark on you through your continued exposure, it comes in intense small packages, and you have to choose it often as a habit. Love becomes a part of you, as Rex Harrison talk sings about in My Fair Lady's "I've grown accustomed to her face."

Love is famously encapsulated in 1 Corinthians 13. It is endlessly sung about and defined, including people yelling that they want to know what love is, more that they need to to be shown to them. In the musical Hairspray, the absence of it is described with great vigor, a song which is highly beloved of my sisters at karaoke.

And while many have attempted to get it down on paper, the world painted with new discoveries of what it means to people. You learn things about yourself and others and call it out as being through the lens of love. Love is paying attention to minor details, it is taking care of major details, it is responsibility for wrongs done. Love is showing up. Love is listening and knowing when and how to respond to what is said and what goes without saying. Love is enduring pain and hardship for the sake of a commitment or greater purpose found in it. Love is in doing foolish things that bring laughter and delight to the object of your affection. Love is supportive, which requires contact and sometimes a push in a direction of growth or opportunity. And sometimes love is resistance against a familiar pressure, a small seed of self dying to fertilize a greater future growth in a different area.