too long

it's been a long time.

blogging has proved harder than i thought it would be. i think it's a discipline thing. there are days when i come into my computer room, scan new emails and then walk away. ok, that's most days. actually sitting down to write something somewhat meaningful has become intimidating. as if every blog should be earth-shattering. not true, i know.

i still write for myself, in a little notebook i carry around with me to jot things down when i am inspired. that, too, takes discipline, and that, too, has long empty stretches.

i traveled this summer. with friends to visit friends and make new ones. i learned that i can't stand trying to vacation in touristy cities. that most certainly comes from living in a touristy city. prague in the summer is a nightmare. those days when i am required to venture into the center, i find myself silently screaming at the mobs of italians, germans, americans, japanese to get the crap out of my way so i won't be so late getting to the astronomical clock to meet my friends who are themselves tourists because if they weren't we'd certainly be meeting somewhere less crowded. and, yeah, i still like to mess with people watching the slow-as-molasses movement of the apostles through the foot-high windows on the world as the skeleton rings his little bell and vanity checks himself in his mirror. i encourage whoever i am with to clap and cheer loudly when it's all over, just to make everyone around us think that they must have missed something, because clapping for what they saw is surely overkill.

oh yeah, traveling. there are wonderful people out there. people who will sit and talk with you as you while away the hours in their restaurant, enjoying the delicious food their mother started preparing at 5am and drinking the wine they keep bringing to you in little half-liter metal pitchers. and after you've come by a couple times to sit in the pedestrian walkway that serves as their main seating area, under eaves of grapevines with rattan chairs poking through attic windows of the building across the way, or edging your chair just underneath the awning they scrambled to let down so the mid-afternoon shower won't dampen your hair, they won't let you pay them for the delicious mom-made food anymore because you are no longer customers, you're family. who take you out to experience their culture in a way other visitors never even hear about, again not allowing you to pay, but singing in your ear a translation of the love songs being belted out not 20 feet away, all to hand over their bed to you at 6am and themselves sleep on a spongy air mattress so that you can have a few hours of rest before getting on an airplane, then preparing a lovely late breakfast on the balcony for you and filling you with food and coffee and then dragging you out for more coffee because they have a starbucks, and you are american.

or the folks who are so thrilled that you've come to stay with them in their vacation home that they won't let you pay for a thing, not even the dessert and coffee you ordered while you waited for them to come get you from the town square because it was too confusing to give you directions to their place.

or the hotel owner who takes pity on you for having 'problems' at midnight, when you should be arriving in the above-mentioned town but because you, the driver, didn't listen to your passenger, you made a huge circle on a single mountain on a very large peninsula and ended up back in the touristy beach town with only one hotel that seems to be open. and said owner has now walked in on the two of you, sitting sheepishly in the corner of his darkened restaurant, waiting for either him to show up or the opening bars of 'the shining' theme to begin playing. half-price for a bed for the night ain't bad.

or the friends who keep playing your favorite card game with you even though you can beat them with one eye covered by a sleeping mask (true story) just because they know you love it. the same friends who tried to tell you it was going to rain and maybe traipsing through ruins more than a mile from the car isn't such a good thing with such angry-looking clouds approaching, but who cheerfully splash with you through puddles as you trudge back to the car, hopelessly soaked. the same friends who listen to you share the deepest sadnesses of your heart and the darkest moments of your desert and who tell you they love you and give you warm hugs without trying to make you snap out of it.

these people give me hope against the others out there who desire to take, use, and destroy. those who see another as a distraction from the pressure they are feeling and who will use a warm body the way they use alcohol: to delete the voices and pain in their heads. those who will plant false hope and give empty promises in order to take what they want. those who see others only for what they can provide for them at that moment and who refuse to admit they might have been wrong. those who are so callous to the yearnings of their own souls that they don't desire to see into the soul of another.

i thank God for the good people out there. who show Jesus to me without even knowing it.