I want to feel my fingers move. I'm listening to Thrice right now. I always hope there is new music to find. But even if there isn't, I can't believe all the diversity, all the beauty, all the sugar in the raw I've heard and tasted. I mean, really, who could've known that I could have so many emotions? So many reactions, until this beautiful collage of tapestry is forming this beauty I feel wherever I go. And when I don't hear it, things just are. I just am. I wonder, is this my personal translation of when Paul said to think on whatever's lovely or worthy and God's peace would be with me? How basic. How beautiful. What an amazing human being he must have been. What an amazing person I get to be. God is the most deeply feeling, expressive artist to have made such creatures.

I think of me in one of my bandanas around my hair not washed yet, a cup of microwaved coffee, sitting in a downtown art studio...perhaps a mere extension in a studio apartment... I've decided to create something as messy as me. This art will hold its own life. It could try to draw itself. Some of the acrylics will run from and drip off the canvas onto the floor. But I knew it would do that. And all the running, thick and colored water had no idea that I loved realism but I was more abstract than its dying my hardwood floors.

Do you ever think of that? Does it hit you? You are artwork. Someone thought of you and every way he wanted you to look and he sculpted and painted you. Imagine. When he was done, there you are a lifeless beautiful woman, a lifeless strong man... with only your body to claim you as a creation. This artist looks at you, observes you, knows you, admires you, probably looks you over again, over and over, excited. He knows that he could leave you as that innocent; not knowing, beautiful, strong. He knows that you will drip on his floor and proceeds regardless to put his mouth to yours and give you his breath. Suddenly your mother and father are told by the doctor they are pregnant.

Such thoughts keep me up this late.

The other day I went into Ping's for Chinese takeout. No one was there and I wanted to take some food to Erin's since she had already eaten. I go in and their bar was open. I've gone there almost every Sunday and walked by that bar to use the bathroom, having never noticed it was there. A Phillipino businessman sat there alone and a German man approached me at the counter, leaning over, in my face. "You smile. Vy do you smile?" I didn't know I was smiling until he said something. I wanted to answer him but I couldn't verbalize a sincere answer so I just smiled more. He said "Life is good, uh?" I laughed some and said, "Actually, life is tough."

"But something good happened to you today uh?"

I thought for a minute and listened to myself say in all truth that "Actually,... something good happens to me every day."

"Ya, life is good," he said.

I am amazed at how God called to my attention how flooded I am with beauty in my life. I keep thinking of the movie American Beauty and how the boy that truly sees Thora Birch says, looking at his video of a dancing plastic grocery bag, that sometimes he thinks there's so much beauty... he can hardly stand it.