Create your own Sunshine (or allow others to create it for you)

Sometimes people conspire to show you that the world is actually a really, really amazing place, as long as you give it a chance to be amazing.

After worrying and stressing about it for weeks, I swallowed my pride last night and asked people on facebook if they had any kitchen appliances available that I could buy cheaply. I'm moving in January and don't have a lot of money, but need to improvise a complete kitchen.

Sixteen hours later, I've had enough offers to compile not one but two kitchens, most of it either free or very nearly so. Some of the people who offered, I barely even know (and one of them I don't know at all). I'm a bit overwhelmed and so, so grateful.

Surprise stories

Sometimes I sit down and write. I don't think about it, I don't even really make stuff up, I just write. It's like there's this story or poem in my head and all I have to do is write it down. Like there's this narrator and all I have to do is put the narrative on paper. Once that's done, more often than not, I give the file some redundant name and close it, because I'll usually be late for whatever I should've been doing in the time that I just spend typing out this story or poem. Then I forget about it.

You read that correctly: I forget about it. Once in a while, I have this thing where I click random files in my writing or poetry folder and just read and let myself be surprised. I'll often have only the vaguest recollection of writing it. It's undoubtedly mine. My style of writing, my signature, my particular brand of spelling errors. More often than not, it's even pretty good. But it's like it was in my head, needed out and once it was out it was done and okay to forget about. All these forgotten stories and poems have three hallmarks:

1. They are all first person and, stemming from that, usually flow of consciousness writing. When I consciously write, I always write third person.
2. They all have a certain flow in the writing that is nearly lyrical, even the prose.
3. They don't cover my usual subject matter

So does anyone else recognize this? Is this what people talk about when they talk about muses or 'divine inspiration'? Or am I just bonkers and dramatizing something that's really normal? Just curious.

Gonna kick some butt. Now just to make sure it's the butt of the project plan I need to write and not, by some incredible gymnastic feat, my own.

(Though the gymnastic feat seems increasingly more likely the longer I try and stare this plan down...)

Read a book before you go to bed, they said. Just a quarter of an hour, they said. It's a good way to unwind before sleeping, they said. Five hours, half a book, lots of adrenaline and several life altering experiences later I come up for air and realize they are idiots. Idiots who have, apparently, never read a good book. Also, that I'll have to get up in four hours.

Perfection

We dromen enkel nog de grootste dromen,
Verslaan ieder monster op ons pad,
Beklimmen alle bergen die we tegenkomen,
Tot we ze allemaal hebben gehad.

En dan, zonder ooit te rusten,
Zoeken we nog hogere hoogten op.
Bevaren we nog verdere verten en exotischer kusten,
Nimmer stap op of draf, altijd in gallop.

Pas wanneer we alle geheimen weten,
En iedere uitdaging overwonnen is,
Laten we onszelf stoppen ons te meten
Aan de utopie die perfectie is.

~*~

We only dream the largest dreams,
Beat every monster to cross our path,
Climb every mountain until it seems,
We've had all there is to be had.

And then, without ever resting,
We go out and take on some higher height,
Find deeper waters that need testing,
Never slowing down, always speed of light.

Only when there is no more secret left to be discovered,
When we've conquered every challenge, beaten our own reflection,
We allow ourselves to stop measuring up,
To the utopia that is perfection.

Create your own sunshine,
So the dark won't catch up too soon,
But also don't forget:
In the dark awaits the moon.

And then, when you look up from your book and slowly realize that it is done and there is no more, you mourn. You mourn for the book and its people and the person you were, because in the course of the book you have changed and can never be that person that picked up that book ever again. You wonder how you'll ever deal. And so you go, find the next book and loose yourself all over again.

This might not be the most fulfilling job, nor the most meaningful, but sometimes you get to really help someone and bring a smile back to their faces. Those are the moment that make all the bloody idiots worth it.

Too hot to sleep and too tired to stay awake. And then you start wondering: Can't I become a contortionist when I grow up? That way I can stick myself in the freezer.

I have a love-hate relationship with books. The love part is because I love them. The hate part because I will, eventually, have to put them down.

4 o'clock. You settle down with a book and a cup of tea. You start reading.

You look up. Gather it might be a tad later than you estimated since it has since become dark. You find yourself a clock. It is 11 o'clock. You have not had dinner. You need to get up in eight hours.

You go back to your book.

Some days, the most important realization you will have is that the world went on turning for 5 billion years without your being there, and that it will continue to do so even if you aren't there; that we are tiny specks of life in the grand scheme of things and that it really doesn't even matter.

These are the days I feel completely justified in boiling myself a pot of tea, curling up on the couch, and reading a book. After all, this world might go on without me, but there's whole universes out there that need saving and that won't happen until I get to the end of the book!

The Fostercarer

The fostercarer

Let me take the seeds uprooted,
By the floods that pay no mind,
To the lives they have polluted,
And forevermore defined.

Let me bring them to a garden,
Where the soil is deep and rich,
Let me plant once more and be their warden,
Let me bring the sun and rain, no matter which.

Let me protect and let me care,
Let me nurse them back from gloom,
And then, when time is finally there,
Please, just let me watch them bloom.

Those little things that make my day: Cycling past a man in an expensive suit, holding an important looking business suitcase and singing 'Can't stop me now' on the top of his lungs.