Two weeks ago, on a Wednesday afternoon, I was running’ some run of the mill car maintenance errands. Two weeks prior I had gotten my oil changed down at the Walmart on HWY 157. However, my vehicle had been leaking oil and running a lil low on the stick reader too. So I went back to my guys at the Walmart and they did a look over on my Honda CRV 2010... Ya, she had a leak… and the guy had put it down in the notes section during my last visit. (I didn’t read the note section.. Ha! Who does?!?).
He recommended I take D.W. (my vehicle) over to the Oil Express and have their mechanic check out the problem. So I did. As I sat in the little 5’ by 5’ square of a waiting room I was sold on two new filters for my car: a cabin air filter & an engine air filter. I got a discount because it was “ladies day” plus an additional 10% off because I bargained with the kid… I’d leave the 5 star review he asked for in exchange for an additional 10% off. Score. About a half hour later the mechanic came in and sat in the chair next to me. He showed me some foreign photos of the underside of my car and explained that I had a leak in my oil pan gasket as well as a deteriorating lower engine mount. He asked if I wanted a quote for the job and I said yes. He left and came back within five minutes with some papers in hand. He sat back down beside me again and quoted me $1,600.00 in total for the job. I had a visceral reaction. “I don’t have $1,600.00!” I exclaimed in an animated and shocked fashion. He kinda laughed but then assured me that it wasn’t necessarily a time pressing matter and that I could take some time to save up and the car would be okay in the meantime. (Wow, I just used the word “time” three times in a single sentence! Haha.) Anyways, I thanked him for his work and got the heck outta there with my quote in hand.
*The mechanic man had very beautiful eyes. They looked like a clear water ocean with little orangey starfish and little silver fish sunbathing through the magnification of the of the water. Dreamy and kind eyes. He was a silver fox, as they say, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was married... WHO WAS I!?!? LOL.
When I got home I knew exactly what I wanted to do for my 28th birthday… I wanted to save on the $900.00 of labor costs and fix my car with my own two hands! (Which was only a possibility because my dad happens to be a mechanic man himself!) Usually my brother and dad would take care of all the mechanic duties that came up. But my brother is now married and moved away. So it was clear to me that my time had come to step up to the plate *aka lay down on the mechanic’s creeper!
So… I bought an extra quart of my synthetic oil to keep D.W. afloat for the week, hit the road for a long awaited long weekend, and started to dream up a future life in which I was a mechanic!
Fast forward to MY BIRTHDAY!!! (8 February 1997) If anyone was wondering. ;).
My dad and I had assessed the situation the day before and we were ready to go for a mechanic’s adventure that we really couldn’t have been prepared for… As I type this we are on DAY 3, of what was predicted to be a single day of work. (Youtube and Reddit have some catching up to do regarding the oil pan situation of the 2010 Honda CRV.)
4 MONTHS LATER GRAM for the concluding of my mechanic’s soap box/small talk.
We did successfully remove the oil pan, redo the oil pan gasket, and replace the lower engine mount. (It was a 4 day project overall.) The oil pan situation proved to be quite complicated and involved lifting the engine, dropping the entire subframe of my vehicle and using a crow bar to barely obtain the space needed finagle the oil pan out. However getting the oil pan back on WITH the uncured gasket lining the entire seal was like project insanity! I am NOT a surgeon, and precision like that would require one to be so! LOL. Therefore my dad was the one who placed the pan while was the conductor of the crowbar. HA. Trying not to let the wet gasket seal touch anything while being on your back with micro room for error as I am crowbarring the sub frame downward so that the bare minimum of space is available to masterfully slip this giant metal pan into its perfect puzzle pice placement was HILARIOUS as well as TERRIFYINGLY challenging. By some form of a miracle me and my dad got it done. As I am writing the end of this small talk 4 months later, I feel inclined to report that D.W. still has an oil pan leak even after all of that. It is a small and slow drip, unlike the one I had before this whole mechanic mission. So… better than before… but still not perfect. Mechanic mission 2.0 will most likely be taking place soon. I will be honest, I do not look forward to having to muster up all the effort and inspiration that I originally had for this project back in February. But I will do what I must and I trust it will be as good of time with my mechanic teammate as last time.
Rock & Roll. -APRIL
15 August 2024
Today I drove through the old one-stoplight town that I grew up in… On the two lane 65mph roads back toward where I am living now I found myself keeping pace with a cargo train on the tracks to left of me. I felt as if I knew the future while I was keeping pace with this train because I knew the tracks would eventually cross in front of a turn I had to make in order to get home (20 or so miles down the line)... I knew it would delay my arrival a few more minutes than what my navigation app predicted. Perfect. I was already delaying my arrival home by taking this route. I didn’t wanna get home because there was too much heaviness and unknown awaiting my return.
You see, in this past year alone, I’ve lost 2 people whom I love to the reality of death; untimely death at that. When I lost my friend Michael, it literally brought me to my knees. Lucky for me though, my life was already in a state of such demanding chaos that I had the perfect excuse to compartmentalize and cope through the grief… a grief that I had to come face to face with a few months after the fact of my friend’s death. Later in the year, I lost THE friend who walked with me through the grief of Michael’s death, Derek. His death brought me to the terrifying realization that I have so much to lose. Losing Derek to death was a wake up call that I didn’t know I needed… and one that I didn’t want. I woke up to the fact that we truly only have today. I learned the necessity for constant and kind vulnerability. I learned that the Truth IS something that sets us free and IS something that is to be given freely and without fear. I learned that I was deeply afraid to lose the people I loved and the time that I had with them.
Now, I face the same fear in a new manner… Last week my dad went to the doctor for a some-what routine check-up and left the appointment with a doctor’s concerned and urgent order for a quadruple bypass open-heart surgery. It’s a miracle that he hasn’t had permanent heart damage or a heart attack from the blood not being able to make it to the bottom half of his heart the past couple years... I praise the Lord for us being able to find this out before it was too late, but FUCK. He’s a healthy man, we have no bad heart heath history in the family. But he’s been under extreme circumstantial stress for the past 8 years… A stress that has now manifested in his physical heart.
Now, me and my family are waiting for a job contract to go through for my dad for the sake of having good health insurance during this time. Now, me and my family are waiting for a serious surgery that is necessary to preserve the life of my dad, yet it is also threatening to the life of my dad. All the while the stress causing circumstances still remain unrelenting in our reality...
TO LIVE WITH THE LOOMING FEAR OF DEATH SUCKS! I can only say that:
1. I am struggling greatly with the deepness of what it is to be optimistic in the face of fear.
2. I am entirely and fully overwhelmed with a desperate gratefulness to know God… to have someone (Jesus) to hand my fears off to.
Now… I will not lie. It is contrary to my nature to hand off these intense burdens of fear and anger to Jesus. I wanna sit with them. I wanna let them eat me alive. It feels more like a movie when I give up and give into the feelings of helplessness and fear of loss. But the Lord is faithful, and He is true to His word that He provides a peace that passes all understanding.
Psalm 55:22 Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Righteous is a strange word. It means to be right in the eyes of God, and to be right in the eyes of God is to recognize Him for who is and to try our best to Know Him! (And He is so cool because when we do those two things, He is SO easily and sweetly knowable, especially with time.) It is our purpose as beings created by God to know our Creator. And what an amazingly simple purpose it is. Just to take a step of faith and say, I believe, and/or I wanna believe more, that You are who You say You are.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
By communicating in vulnerability to the Lord, He will meet us. And He will provide. And He will take our burdens and give us a peace that passes all understanding. I praise Jesus for being with me when I feel like I am alone, when I feel like I cannot make it through another minute of caring about anything and everything so much. I have always been and still am under the impression that it is SO MUCH BETTER and MORE to BE ALIVE than it ever could be to play out “a movie” and Jesus has given me even more of reason to continue believing in such a fashion.
All my love, April
P/s If you pray: pray for my dad and for my family and for me.
Also, I wanna pray for YOU in whatever it is that you want/or need support in.
We weren’t meant to live our lives carrying our burdens alone. I love you.
24 July 2024
Years ago someone once pointed out that I used the word love ALOT. They also pointed out that I used the word favorite & best to describe ALOT of people and experiences and things in my life. They explained to me that they didn’t use those words as frequently, in fact, they only used those words rarely because they believed that if they or anyone else “over used” the words love, favorite and best it diminished the value of the words, the sentiments & the reality of which those words were used to describe.
I became self conscious, almost philosophical, of my use of those words for a short season. I found myself consciously & with much effort withholding the words love, favorite and best. I began to hoard my word love for a more deserving time, person, or place. I would bite my tongue and say that I had a good day instead of the BEST DAY EVER. I would say that I liked something instead of declaring that it was MY FAVORITE. I began to analyze more… Was that person REALLY my favorite? Was my day REALLY the best? Did I REALLY love that tree or did I just appreciate that tree?
Through that short and thoughtful season I quickly realized THE COOLEST THING EVER! I realized that my loves, and my bests, and my favorites were coming from an inexhaustible source. I realized my love for people, experiences and things wasn’t going to run out. I realized that my best days, my best friends, and my best efforts were not numbered or scored. I realized that many people, experiences, and things are my favorite!
I observed that the more I said I loved someone, the more I loved them. The more I said my day was the best, the better it became. The more I declared something to be my favorite, the more special it became to me. I didn’t care if someone interpreted my use of the words love, best & favorite to be excessive, or silly; I meant it and that was that. I wanted to tell people I loved them, who doesn’t want to be loved? I’d rather acknowledge my day as the best, than nod it off as monotony. I’d rather say that green is my favorite color, even though I love them all.
It is a precious gift to love and be loved, to see the best & to declare a favorite. It is in our nature to be able to give love endlessly, to uplift and to declare worth upon the people and things in our life. You see, we as humans are made in the very image of God and God is Love. Love is the one thing that I have yet to run out of. I can’t run out of love because I am made in the image of Love! It is part of me, and it will always be there. It’s like pruning a tree... I cut off my love and give it others, and in the pruning, sacrificing, and giving of that love, more life comes, and more love grows.
And now to end this little ponder on learning about love, I must address the greatest example of love I have ever come to know. And that is Jesus’ love for you (whoever you are), for me, and for every single person who has ever been and will ever be. Jesus is fully God and fully man, He came to uphold and fulfill an eternal, un-breakable covenant between God and humanity. He came so that we as individual humans could experience the fullness and goodness of knowing God, without any stipulations. Jesus’s life, death & resurrection was for every single human being, so that we could call of the name of Lord and be brought into the reality of what it is to be fully ALIVE (through the Holy Spirit!). Our Creator has declared the ultimate worth upon us. God has already bought each and every one of us through the blood of Jesus. He has already said that you, me and every human being is worth His life! Now whether we come to realizes this value of ourselves, doesn’t change the fact that we are all already covered in blood of Jesus. He has already paid the price for your freedom & for my freedom. Freedom from a life where we carry the weight of trying to define ourselves. He’s already defined us as the MOST VALUABLE! He has already acted upon the reality that YOU are worth ALL of His LOVE! He has already said YOU ARE MY FAVORITE! And he has already done EVERYTHING so that you can come to Him and receive all of THE BEST! It is just so cool to know that someone (the most important someone) has already said and acted upon the reality that, “You are the BEST! You are my FAVORITE! You are worth it all! I LOVE YOU!” Each and every single person, right now, right where they are, whatever they are doing, however they define themselves, ALREAY AND ALWAYS has this worth spoken over them by God Himself!
1 John 4: 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who do not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:19 We love becasue He first loved us.
25 June 2024
I went to the grocery store yesterday. (Athens, GA)
I tried on 6 or 7 nail polish colors while squatted down in the aisle of Kroger. A little stripe of red, another red, a stroke of purple, then a sparkly pink. The pink, yes it topped the orange and though pink is not my “go to” color, it was the color for me in that moment. I kept the sparkly pink and picked up a clear glitter polish to add to the party. Was I going to paint my nails when I got back to the barn, or was I going to pack up my tent and things and leave? I would find out when I got back to the barn, I suppose... I had been in Athens for 9 days.. 7 extra days than I was planning on staying when I arrived in town last Saturday and set up my family sized tent in the backyard of the house where I once lived. (the barn) When I got home (back to the barn & my tent) the silence between myself and the people I was around had settled into my feet and knew the next few days or weeks would begin to lean towards solitude. So… I took a nap and then packed up all my things: my bed, my tent, my tables and clothes. I was going home... Leaving home, and going home simultaneously. Home is a term that has always been flexible for me. Wherever I will lay my head at night automatically become home in my mind, heart, and vocabulary. These places that have been “home” for me vary. I’ve had homes that are and are not comfortable. I’ve had homes that have friends, that have family, that have no one. Yet, the definition of home attaches itself to even the least likely of places that have become my home during the past 8 or so years. I love the way my human automatically identifies a place as home… I think it is a gift. However, it makes all my moves, visits and transitions double sided in terms of experience. I’m always leaving and returning all at once. This lends itself to intensities. Intense love, loss, longing, being. Sometimes it is all too much and sometimes to drown myself in substances seems like the best route; instead of sinking into the sincerities and sorrows of coming and going: always having a home, and never having a home all at once. Without a doubt my coping habits are my least attractive, most unhealthy attributes and therefore the bain of my existence at this point. I know that my current challenge and hill that I must run up is one that is inside of myself. It isn’t my lack of home, or of my having a home, it is this laziness when it comes to the sheer amount of intensities that define my day to day life. I don’t like the pop cultural term “rotting.” Yet, I find myself rotting today, on the back porch with a pack of filterless Camel cigarettes and 6 beers in a little cooler in the basement. I’ve communicated with some people today, yes. I’ve mailed out film to be developed, yes. I’ve helped move the cars around with my mum, yes. I’ve painted my nails with the sparkly pink polish that I picked out yesterday and I’m half way through the French movie, Amelie. Yet, I am rotting and I know it. In my own way, yes, but rotting nonetheless.
2 May 2024
I’m typing this on the back deck of my parents’ rental house in Alabama. My home...
On the last day of this past month, April, I sat down to write a letter that I’d been anticipating writing for 10 months. I wrote to my professor from University, Josh Smith. I’ve always looked up to him in a way. In the kind of way where when he mentioned in class (all those years ago) that one of his favorite books in the art criticism genre was Air Guitar by Dave Hickey, I immediately acquired the book, enjoyed it thoroughly, and since then I’ve read everything published by Dave Hickey. It is now one of my favorite books, truly. Since I’ve graduated, he's been a reference for various job pursuits I’ve gone on, has always been quick to respond and when I reached out last July ’23 in the interest of a friend of mine’s he asked if things were working out for me and if I was sharing about them. I said I was sharing and would be excited to send an update! Now… 10 months later, I’ve done it. Wrote my 6 pages, folded ‘em, stamped ‘em and sent ‘em. Despite the fact that I was eager and excited to communicate my life to Josh Smith, the deed kept on moving from Ta-Da list to Ta-Da list. Week after week. Month after Month. Notebook after notebook. But I never forgot… in fact it was always at the top of my brain! How was I going to choose to communicate my recent past!? So many seasons had come and gone. I’d lived in Athens, GA, partied, painted, experienced demonic presences, left Jesus Christ for good & forever. I’d been the luckiest girl in the world to have found the best roommates in the best barn on the best street in the best part of Athens, and all on a Facebook Marketplace whim! I had shown paintings, sold paintings, worked on an array of projects with all kinds of people and made the best friends EVER! I had fallen in love, supported, celebrated, cried. I had moved to New York with my partner, I worked the hardest most fulfilling job ever, I lost my first real friend to death, I thought about the God of the Bible again. I partied, I cooked, I cleaned, I raised children. I did a 4 part interview for a sick ass job and got it, and then turned it down. I had thought about killing myself at the worst of it all. I had to leave New York. I had to leave New York. I broke up with my partner and I made it out alive… and now my professor has asked me if “things are working out for me”.
In the 10 months it took for me to decide how I was going to communicate my recent past, more things kept happening! Life is so sweet like that.. It keeps moving and growing. I called on the name of Jesus, God of the Bible, Holy Spirit and asked him to be real to me. I started reading the Bible and I started to pray again for the first time in years. I worked music festivals with my friend Adia & started to appreciate Metal music. I spent time in North Carolina with my friend Abby, I spent time in my Earthskills communities, I experienced grief, I thought I was in love with an old friend, I made a new friend, Hawkeye, we were lovers. Hawkeye asked me about Jesus, but I didn’t really know Jesus, I dodged the question and put it off for “next time”, there wasn’t a next time though because Hawkeye killed himself a month later. I drove back to North Carolina for my dead friend. Jesus was there for me at Hawkeye’s life celebration, afterward, Abby and Jon Delia were there for me too. I stayed up all night, I broke up with the old friend whom I thought I was in love with, I painted, I heard from God, I felt him, he was being real to me. I listened to a testimony as I was up painting all night and the power of Jesus’ name just flooded and filled my person!
John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
And then everything changed. All of the sudden I was the same, but different. It’s like there was a new dimension that was now visible, experienceable, comprehendible to me. I never believed I could or would believe in Jesus again, and now, I am in love with him. I am a Jesus Freak. I feel so alive that I could never deny Jesus again. The God of the Bible does impossible things! Nothing is impossible for him! I am a testimony to that & I will praise the Lord forever because of how he loves me and how he loves you. The purpose of our little awesome human lives is to know our creator, to know God. And Jesus is our bridge between humanity and God because he is both, and he’s already paid every cost, he jumped through every loop, so that we can have that powerful, purposeful, direct relationship with the Creator of all things! When Jesus was raised from the dead, the Holy Spirit came to be our comforter, to be God with us and in us. God is communal, he is three in one. He wants to be with us always, not to judge us, but to strengthen us, to give us true, joyful, purposeful, abundant, life! A life that doesn’t hinge on circumstance or on your own capabilities, but a life that is based on love! A love that surpasses all understanding, a love that has always been for you, and a love that will always pursue you.
2 Chronicles 16:9 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong on the behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him.
God’s desire for us is to restore us, through Jesus’ life and sacrifice, back to a right & real relationship with himself. In the beginning, God created everything and it was good. Every day man and woman would walk in the cool of the evening with God through the garden of the world, and it was good! Man and woman were created in the image of God, in the likeness of God and were to act as so over everything except for this one rule. God said don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You see, Satan is a liar and he’s been spinnin’ his same webs since his first lie to Eve, the woman. Satan told her that God was trying to hold her back from her true God like potential, and that if she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil then she would be like God. Satan deceived Eve, and she didn’t know if she really trusted God anymore, I mean what if Satan was right! She and Adam, the man, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and death entered into the world. Previously, they had only known of goodness and life and relation with God, but now they had this awareness of evil, of death, of shame, of suffering. They had gained the knowledge of good and evil for the price of breaking the trust in their relationship with God… and she and Adam were ashamed that they did that. They hid from God that evening in the garden, but he already knew. Adam and Eve’s new awareness brought a self-consciousness to their nakedness and they tried to cover themselves with leaves. The first of any living thing that was killed, were the animals whose skins were used by God to make clothes for Adam and Eve. He helped ease their uncomfort and self-consciousness, but at the price of death. The relationship was broken. There was too much death and darkness in between God and humanity now, humans could hardly see past their own nakedness how could they see God for who he is! And that’s why Jesus, fully God and fully man, came to be the ultimate bridge for us so that we can bypass all the death and darkness that came into the world though the deception of Satan and go right into the FULLNESS AND JOY of LIFE in real relationship with our Creator, the God of Everything!
Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him (satan) by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus), and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
And so, I finally wrote my letter. And it held more than I could have imagined 10 month ago when Josh Smith asked me “Are things working out for you?”
-April
17 March 2024
This will be my first small talks entry... I have stolen the idea for hosting a “small talks” page from Jens Lekman.
He was the first musical artist I felt I’d truly “discovered” for myself (that was in 2017) and he remains to this day a favorite of mine.
Jens has inspired me in so many facets throught the years of having his voice in my earphones. Pictured below is a stained glass moseic that depicted a drop of blood in a glass of milk spilling off the corner of a table & also a video to his song Pocketfull of Money.
song: Shirin
xccv
al
album: the cherry trees are still in blossoms
song: pocketfull of money
al
album: the cherry trees are still in blossoms
song: pocketfull of money
He’s been a soundtrack to my life, and for that I am grateful.
The first time I heard Jens Lekman was when I watched WHipp IT - I remeber immediately looking up the movies soundtrack and BAM I became a fan.
Becoming a fan is a rare occasion for me. I tend to be quite a fan of all of my friends; just not so often a fan of a famous strangers.. haha. I was so excited when I found out Jens was going to playing a set in Bloomington, IN the night before his birthday! I immediately bought tickets for me and my friend RON to go. The show was sold out at the Bishop 05/02/18. His set went past midnight and i felt so excited to share a space with him on his birhtday. I had made a birthday card in prepartation for the night and in it pointed out that he and I both had single digit, even numbered birthdays in the month of February. So cool. I got a hug, gave him his card, and stole the poster taped to the front window of the venue as RON and I stepped out into the still streets of the night. Unknown to us, it had started to snow while we were packed into the small, sweaty, dark venue... It was as if we had stepped outside into a cold glittering magic world. I felt so full of life, I could have flown! *RON wasn’t 21 yet, so the only place we could go to get food was this dodgey pizza place. (We walked to it.) We drove back to our University in Kentucky and called it a great night.
“maybe Baby” by Bark Bark Disco was playing on the F.M. radio.
So... my first small talk is about Jens Lekman... I suppose. Seems appropriate to me. This website is technically “public” right now even as I type these words. However, I haven’t told anyone about it yet, so this small talk is just for me for now. And it will be for you, as soon I let you know that such a place as this exisists on the world of the web.