It is April, and I am so tired. I have been going and going and going for so long, and I haven't breathed in so long. I am moving to Toronto soon, so in my limited spare time, my brain has been exploding with possibilities of a new life.

Today I went to church to hear Whitworth women's choir. Their voices were beautiful, but all I could do in the stillness of listening was to cry. I am so tired. I need to sleep. I need to rest. I need to come back in touch with the core of my identity.

I also need to plan a fundraiser for iClub, to write a few more papers this week, to plan a bachelorette party, to run elections and do the rechartering stuff for iClub, to attend a meeting with Women's Auxiliary, to go to all my classes, to figure out budget stuff, to work 10-12 hours a week so I don't need to leave home this summer to work, to read GD papers, and of course, my normal reading and homework.

I can't survive by just doing that necessary stuff.

I need relationship and community,

so this week I also need to have coffee with friends whom I love, I need to eat chilean food at Global Hearth, I need to reconnect with people feeling abandoned and unloved by me, and I need to start doing my "last time to ________" activities all over spokane.

.

Today in the car, we were talking about Christianity. I made the preposterous claim that with God, I don't need to be perfect, that I can give other people grace, and receive grace from them when I fall short. And that I don't need other people to satisfy my needs, that I can somehow rest in a greater identity of Christ.

.

Its true.

but why do I need to do all these things then?

.

grace and truth.

love,

Christine

Emotions of starting something NEW

So, I have been offered and have accepted a paid internship in Toronto Canada for September 2010-August 2011. I'm moving to Canada. I, Christine, am moving, to live, in Canada. for a year.

This feeling reminds me of when I whizzed through customs in London. I feel like I'm tricking the world into thinking I'm an adult. And that there's no way it should be this easy. But it's real and its happening.

I'm looking at grad programs too. I want to look into Diaspora and Transnational Studies. SO COOL. SO CUTTING EDGE in such a nerdy political science way. Most of the programs are just starting, but are starting based on a perceived need. University of Toronto has a cool multidisciplinary master's program (and phD, too). and i found a cool PhD program in Berlin. UMass-Amherst is starting a program too. I could write my doctorate thesis in Political Science, with my own personal specialization being this stuff, anywhere tho. but MA program in this would be so cool first.

. . .

A friend from high school found me on facebook recently.

Classmate: I go to fcc. I'm working on my liberal studies degree..now. u? Yeah, i help out at my dad's restaurant :) u should stop by someday

April 1 at 9:57pm ·

Me:

yeah, i'm up in washington state right now, but i will for sure stop by this summer. i'm getting an international studies degree right now. its kinda political science, but focused on the whole world

April 1 at 10:11pm ·

Classmate:

that's great! how is the apple state? :} yeah, let me know a few weeks in advance, so i can reserve a spot for. Sounds good, sounds so miss Barker like :}

April 1 at 10:18pm ·

Classmate:

JK

let me know a few hours in advance :}

April 1 at 10:20pm ·

Me:) washington is cold and cloudy. most of the time. and the fruit doesn't taste nearly as good as fruit at home does. i miss fresno a lot. but school is school so i keep going. and i'll for sure let you know when miss barker wants to stop by.

April 1 at 10:43pm ·

Classmate:

i love that kind of weather. I don't like the summer much, i'm like get away from mr. sun and go hide behind that tree :P but i would not be able to survive without good produce. i'm a valley girl, don't you know :) miss fresno? afd joke? lol, but, yeah, i understand, ur family and loved ones r here. But miss barker needs to do her thang before she steps back into little old fresno ;)

I dunno how I feel about that. On one hand, hey, I'm making it in the real world. The non-Fresno, non-ghetto, non-valley world. Most of my class couldn't even graduate high school. I'm now looking at international PhD programs.

I feel really guilty. and i feel really blessed and really lucky.

so so lucky.

I've gotten such a good education here. I've learned a lot. I can get papers back with 100% grades. With the exception of this year, I've been mostly miserable here. I don't fit here.

but I don't fit at home with this classmate anymore. She called me miss barker. miss barker who makes reservations at the Italian restaurant her parents own. I mean. I was an RSA kid when I was at Roosevelt. but I had friends that were RHS. I talked to people in all my classes. I didn't sit by the other RSA kids mostly.

miss barker need to do her thang before she steps back into little old fresno

it kinda breaks my heart.

Five Poems of Home

Love is an orange
twisted off the highest
branch of the backyard tree
by a tall boy balanced
on the roof of the barren doghouse
on our last foggy morning

* * *

he left the low fruit hanging, so my mama
could reach them dangling and dancing in the fog.
Her bad back is alone right now, aching. She is sipping
weak coffee at the leaf-less table, playing sudoku

as she swallows a slice of the juiciest orange imaginable.


* * *


Unpalatable oranges are sold in Spokane. they must be bought
by people who have never tasted truth.
our Oranges spray sacred oil, dress our palms
as their unshriveled sweet flesh is broken
for you to imbibe with joy and thanks.

These shrunken oranges are not to blame.

I would be sour, too, after bouncing a thousand miles in a crowded box,
to emerge into florescent lights of safeway, no fog to call my own.

* * *

(dreaming of home, salivating over fresh fruit
What are endless rows of orange trees in a foggy orchard
when a sunny false spring has arrived in Spokane?)

* * *

we filled brown paper bags with love, to sustain us on our journey,
or bequeath on future hosts. Speeding through orchards on 99,
the perfume of his quiet peeling saturated the air. The orange exhaled
oils with each peel, anointing his hands with travelling mercies.
I was driving north, away from home; eating one segment
of sweetness after another. and I don't remember when the fog cleared.

can you tell the sun was shining today?

I have found my Whitworth rhythm. Meetings start at 8am, and flamingo flocking ends at 11pm.

I write agendas, call people to remind them, go to class and do most of my readings.

and I am happy.

The last two days have been filled with thoughts on identity (individual and collective)

This is my time. I am here right now to ask all the questions that I need to ask, and respectfully listen for answers from people with life-wisdom. It is liberating.

I am so thankful for: Amowi, Esther, Doug, and Vic

because they take me seriously.

also: this boy who wrote me a 9 page letter

because he makes more sense than most of the world combined.

also: Laurie's classes

because she offers legitimacy to our experiences and perceptions. which is beautiful and also freeing.

also: WU trippers

because they are great, and because of ninja team names

and because of the dedication that the planning team has put into this crazy project.

. . .

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

. . .

RealLife > Whitworth

I feel more balanced and more concrete when I spend time off-campus in the RealWorld. I like to sit in a church that has families of all ages, and old people with hearing aides. I like to see the mall filled with people with RealLives. I love summer when I get to be home. I spend my days working at FIRM, where I am surrounded by a full community of all-ages and we all have symbiotic roles to play. I spend evenings with friends or family. My life is full, and I have meaning.
At Whitworth, my life is full, but I drown myself in depression and cynicism. There is a magic balance where I can still get everything done well and also not have a moment to stop to think. That is the only way I have learned to do Whitworth well. When I am off balance, I have to go somewhere new. It can be a meadow by the river behind my house. It can be a museum. It can be the mall. It can be a new coffeeshop, or a conversation on the bus. When I get back in contact with RealLife, I remember how RealLife works, and my tiny but important role in it all.
. . .
I was told last night that its presumptuous to say that OutThere is RealLife, and here is only pseudo-reality. I am presupposing that the nice people swarming this campus don't have some essential quality of life. Who am I to judge?
I contend that we pay good money to be isolated from the harshness of RealLife. We are a group of 2,500 people in the prime of our lives. We rarely die. We eat 2-3 (and more) meals a day without having to think about where our food comes from. Of course there are those who choose to skip meals to lose weight or spend their time elsewhere. I've been there, too. Our main concerns (outside of social interests which transcend any monetary barrier) are homework and "earning" letter grades, or at best, learning material written and taught by our elders.
It doesn't matter to me what the inner life of my fellow students is like. It isn't necessary because they have the luxury to be able to meditate on vocation and worldview and life purposes. If they choose not to take themselves seriously, its their loss. (I do take time to have coffee and get to know people who take their position seriously. I love people like this; they just aren't my passion)
Our isolation is also our loss. We lose out on the love of older people in our community. Kids lose our continual presence in their lives. Although many Whitworth students volunteer with various organizations, its just another time-block in a busy student schedule. We lose out on grocery store conversations. We miss out on demonstrations on corners, and seeing into the eyes of our city's homeless. We don't see kids walking home from the bus stop. Our lives consist of us. and our friends. and our computers. This isn't Real to me.
. . .
Connecting theory to practice is a major tenet of service-learning. What good does our education do us, if we can't connect to a complete community (not just one made up of our like-minded peers)? Furthermore, does this separation through education make a permanent break between us and our communities?
I feel like it does for me. I feel like the more and more educated I become, the less and less I have in common with most people from my home. I have more in common with educated people. I have less to talk about with former friends. I know too much, that even our grand conversations about big dreams for Fresno are filled with my obscure(in Fresno) references to dead Europeans who have already thought about these things for many years.
What is knowledge if I can't use it in community?
Although Whitworth has a very tight community on campus, the tightness is not as easily accessed from the outside. The culture has strong expectations for behavior, morality and vocabulary (and accent and skin-tone, although religious fervor can triumph both). I don't see our connection to Spokane. I don't see my connection to this community here, and I am seeing how thinly stretched my connection to my home community has become as well.
. . .
When I leave here, I will enter the RealWorld again. I will keep figuring out how to do my finances better. I will have a job, and will relax after work doing whatever. I know that my lovely depression and trust issues will persist, but I feel so much better about them when I am in the presence of a varied society that spends its time on mundane RealLife things.
I really am idealistic after all.

expectations for the next 103 days.

I'm having difficulties getting reacclimated to normal school sleeping/waking hours. I've been staying up too late, and sleeping in too late, and its hard to change those quickly.
This semester I am taking 3 English classes, 1 film class, 1 campus-based research class, and 2 polisci classes (international political economy and research methods).
I am going to Louisiana for Spring Break. I will pay for it somehow with Bonner. I need to be working 12+ hours a week for Bonner, and every day that I procrastinate on getting something set up means more hours later that I will need.
This semester I imagine that I will learn a lot about Voice and personal experience. Between Native American Literature and Women Writer's, I think that I will gain very different counter-hegemonic knowledge sets.
. . .
Quotes from my first days of classes
"I tell everyone this. Before you marry someone, first go on a roadtrip with them. Learn whether or not you can live with them before you make a final decision to get married" -Esther Louie who went motorcycling across Europe for 3 months with the man who became her husband.
"I learned how to live with intention. You have to wake up in the morning and decide what you are going to BE for" -Esther Louie
"What is it like to be the product of a culture that a more powerful and numerous people has attempted to extinguish?" -Vic Bobb
"I ask for your hometown, because I freak out if I don't know where you're from. how can I know anything about you ever if not where you come from?"
"I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet
and looked, and did the wordless thought.
my mind was getting its oxygen
direct, the rich mix by mouth.
I hated no one. I gazed and gazed,
and everything was interesting. I was
free, not yet in love. I did not
belong to anyone. I had drunk
no milk, yet - no one had
my heart. I was not very human. I did not
know there was anyone else. I lay
like a god, for an hour, then they came for me
and took me to my mother."
-Sharon Olds in 180 more extraordinary poems for every day by Billy Collins
...
observations:
Women Writers: overflowing with white women and a few men VS Native American Literature: empty seats scattered between multi-racial Americans of both genders
I talk too much in class
inter-sectionality in dominant/non-dominant identity groups

christmas break

I drove so many miles over the past four weeks.
I felt a lot of things.
talked about everything under the sun
.
I didn't take my own pictures, and don't know which stories to share.
.
it was completely wonderful. and now I'm back at Whitworth. which is different. and maybe less wonderful. but so goes life.
.
highlights (in the order that I think of them):
1. Christmas with so many people whom I love (and I only cried once! thats a new Christmas record for me!) i felt so loved.
2. swimming in our swimming pool. it was so freaking cold, Iveth and I started screaming the second we hit the water, and immediately rushed to get out of the pool. Jouni, on the other hand, swims back and forth a bit before he gets out. oh, and the most hillarious part of that whole escapade was my brothers speedo from 2-3 years ago.... let's just say it didn't cover all that it used to...
3. endless fresh oranges off the tree.
4. Nate's newest way of eating corn flakes
5. moments of complete peace near the ocean
6. jumproping with seaweed at Carmel Beach
7. basking in the light of the full moon and listening to music while sipping red wine
8. New Years Eve. ha. cuddling and sharing stories, poppers at midnight, and then a stumbling laughing journey to look at the sea and the moon.
9. watching my friends find their own things to love about the Central Coast
10. the drive from sacramento to fresno, after staying awake to drive through the night, and not really talking a whole bunch for a while, all the sudden, lots just spilled out. it was so comforting to know that there were still so many more things to say and discuss.
11. disneyland with the boy. nuff said.
12. really good Himalayan cuisine restaurant
13. the whole time we spent in San Diego. Balboa Park then sunset at Coronado. best pizza ever from BJs.
14. mornings when we got back to Fresno
15. Golden Gate Park. and our hostel was pretty cool too.
16. The Beat Museum. the world is a beautiful place to be born into by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
17. perfecting our parallel parking teamwork and our ability to not pay for parking
18. our general ability to never be completely lost, and always have one of us remember the important things the other forgot
19. homemade bread and other delicious food at the Bergmans
20. Finnish sauna and Finnish church