doubting thomas, still among us

boone is in a cloud today.

i am in the library, attempting to get 3 major assignments done in 4 hours. through my headphones i hear sufjan stevens' "holland", and it's a nice balance to my horrible sense of urgency with these assignments. out the window, i see the parking deck structure, just barely, on a solid backdrop of gray-white. gosh, today is beautiful.

i was reading in my devotional when i woke up:
see the world always in a spirit of thankfulness and gratitude.

sure does make a difference.

before i begin chipping away at my crazed list of to-do's for this afternoon, i just want to make up a little list (in appropriate sam fashion) of all the things that have made today so enjoyable.

-waking up to boone all tucked-in with fog
-making my bed
-tom's music
-tazo earl gray tea
-impromptu, really solid conversation with my friend ben over said earl gray.
-really realizing how much patience the Lord has with me. He understands doubt. when thomas doubted, Jesus' immediate reaction was to not only openly show him the scars on his wrists and side, but invited thomas to feel them with his own hands.

if that is not such a perfect representation of the nature of my God.

-sending a special surprise for one of my closest girl friends, heather, who just got engaged last week (insert girly squeal here!!)
-a good outfit for this weather.
-the feeling of the fog on my exposed hand holding my tea as i walked around campus.
-finally hearing birds chirping again in this town.
-my 3:30 class being cancelled and forgetting about it, only to be really happy to have the unexpected extra time
(which i have spent wisely watching videos and blogging, heha!)

tin can

i am a writer in the sense that i love to do it.
i am not sure how much i own it, yet.
or how good i really am.

i call myself a writer, because i do it so much.
and i love it. it gives me joy to do it.
but i wonder how many real writers are out there,
not doing it much,
who are exponentially more talented than i am with words.

again, i wonder how long it takes for someone to become who they are trying to be.
my dear friend jenks had some good things to say about that.

i am storing up in a little tin can
bits and pieces of wonderful scenes of my life to write out,
to paint together and stitch up with words.
i just can't do it yet,
because the best parts of these scenes have yet to happen.

writing sample II

this is a little piece i recently had to write for my creative non-fiction class. the purpose was to write a short memoir which included some form of research to give stability and legitimacy to recollection. i'd love to have any kind of feedback!



“I have become a collector of last looks.” – Drew Baylor in Elizabethtown (2005)

I pulled out of my driveway, car packed with the last bits and pieces of my things with just enough room to see the reflections in the rearview. Out the driveway, to the left and towards the stop sign. I have done it countless times, with every exit from my house, with every kind of destination ahead of me. It is unspoken tradition to wave just there at that turn out of the driveway, just between the two dogwood trees my dad planted when they moved into the house the year I was born. Window down, gaze to the left, smile and wave towards the wrap-around porch of my childhood home. It is our way, as a family, of saying all sorts of things we don't say in person. I’m sorry. I love you. I forgive you.

I pressed the power button to my stereo, beginning the pilot track of the mix CD I had made for this trip. The familiar sounds of Nancy Wilson’s“60B” came easing through the speakers as I slowly turned left onto Beech Wood Court from my driveway and rolled my window down. I listened as I waved to my left and drove, creeping to the stop sign at the end of the road. Stopping there, my eyes flickered to the backwards image in the rearview mirror of the street I grew up on. This one was definitely a keeper for my growing collection of last looks.



“So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling.” – Claire Colburn in Elizabethtown (2005)

It was 7:30 in the morning, the sun still climbing up into the hot North Carolina sky. I was twenty, and after nine months of a sort of demolition of myself and a slow, humbling re-building, this late-July morning marked an official start to a new beginning. I am not positive why this trip in particular marked an “official” start to my pseudo-adult life and “official” end to living at home. I would be home again to visit for breaks, holidays, and long weekends. At this point in my life, I had left once for college already, breaching state borders to study music competitively at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee. As fate [my parents’ financial falling-out, my ever-changing interests, unrequited love and diminishing grades] would have it, I ended up back home three semesters later.

With thousands of highway miles driven and a back seat scattered with various mix CDs, I was back where I started, wanting nothing more than some sort of renewal for myself, having to befriend the aching feeling of my tail between my legs. I spent the next semester at home taking classes at a community college, working, sifting through my parents’ financial burdens, and letting myself accept that I had just failed with all of the grace of a child learning how to control a pencil to write his own name for the first time. I prayed. For the first time, I had no other option available than to pray for a miracle to get me into a school again and out of a house wearily bearing two decades of heavy burdens.


“Some music needs air. Roll down your window.” – Claire Colburn to Drew Baylor

Since their marriage in the mid-80’s, director Cameron Crowe has used the musical talents of his wife Nancy Wilson (of the 80’s all-female band Heart) to compose music for many of his films (including 90’s blockbusters like Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, and Vanilla Sky). Perhaps it’s her feminine approach to a male-dominated career (which I would love to do), the romantic notions of a wife writing music for the background of her husband’s film (again, I would love to see myself in that position), or just her signature blend of folk, acoustic, and pop/rock, but Wilson’s music strikes a chord in me that makes the feeling of a storyline last far beyond the end of a movie.

“60B” appears in Elizabethtown for the first time when the main character, Drew, decides to take a cross-country trip with his father's ashes, scattering them along the way to a series of road trip mixes made by Claire, his growing love interest. The music piece, in all, lasts a little less than a minute and is nothing more than a banjo, guitar, and piano combination, but there is some beautiful weightiness that it brings to the story and images in the film. It is so sad, but it is wonderfully hopeful with all of the ebbs and flows of the simple melodies and harmonies. Since seeing that movie, this song has found its way onto countless mix CDs I have made myself for road trips, most often as the first track, beckoning me to roll down my window and re-introducing me to the trust I have in an open road. I trust it to lead me to where I need to go, to listen with an open ear to a chaos of thoughts, concerns, and prayers, to offer consolation that things go on no matter where I stop and stay a while, and the promise that it will be there as a faithful friend whenever I need to move on, however trivially close by or however infinitely far.

Sometimes I sing along to the melody of 60B, mindlessly enjoying the familiarity of the short piece. Other times I don’t, though these times are fewer and further between. That early morning in July, I did not sing nor hum along to the banjo, guitar, or piano lines that I know so well. I just listened as I collected the image and lingering feeling of a sad and beautifully hopeful last look.

i do not know which to prefer, the beauty of inflections or the beauty of innuendoes...

the past few days have been good. just with my whole heart, the real kind of good.

i am not far enough away from the "good" to be able to step back and describe what it is that has made it so good.
lots of things.

it's going to take some time before i can pin it all down with words.


right now i'm in the library and am surprised at just how many people are here, sitting with me on the "quiet" third floor, studying to the sounds of tic-tic-tickings of keyboards and distant, hushed chattering. i need to be here tonight to cultivate some productivity in my schoolwork. i need to be here in response to that lingering feeling of just not wanting to go home yet, to my humble and distant corner of boone.

today reminded me of last summer, which i spent, for the better part, in boone working and taking a summer class. that little blue dress i wore so many times walking up the hill to the Living and Learning Center, rushing, (as i had just come from a morning opening up the store)
i wore it today and felt as if i should be back there, in summertime, walking up the pressed mud path to my class. i can't wait for another one of those summers. just a few more weeks, sam crowder...

so there i was today in my blue dress, surrounded by dear friends on the hill of sanford mall, in the gentle heat of the day, laughing and listening to stories, telling stories, and watching people toss frisbees. boone comes alive on these days.


hi, i'm samantha and i am a narcissistic planner.

even if i don't follow through, i get excited about planning next steps, of any kind.
where to eat for lunch. what to wear. what classes to take.
which steps to take to get me to a better place, steps for self-improvement, steps to help me feel fulfilled and joy-filled.

joy filled.

but sometimes i overstep my boundary between the planning on my part and letting the Lord order my steps.

sometimes things happen that you just do not expect.
sometimes those things are great and sometimes they are not,
but for the narcissistic planner, when things don't stick to the plan, all order seems lost!

it is a joy to have some things that i did not expect, great things, things i'm learning to just let be, enjoy them, and take them one day at a time.

the Lord is patient with me.
may i have ears to hear Him when He orders my steps, big and small.

today looks like seattle, feels like the waiting room

this is the BEST part of the movie 'Stepmom' when the little middle school girl tells off her little middle school boyfriend by kissing her make believe high school boyfriend provided by said stepmom.

i wish i could spend the majority of my days doing the following:

going to farmers markets
watching movies on abc family
sitting in coffee shops with my glasses on to achieve optimum "cool nerd but mostly nerd but no really i'm cool" status
having someone teach me how to cook & bake in the kitchen
being in a perpetual state of warm weather
likewise having someone teach me how to sew
riding a bike with a basket (i know, this is really boring and it's been way overdone in the hopes of twenty-something romantic young women but REALLY, i want this.)
writing stories in moleskines (ditto)
making up songs and recording them not on garageband by myself.
taking pictures with my pentax that i don't own right now. she's out there.
looking at videos of julian smith and mat kearney and daydreaming up a man worth marrying.





darn my once having lived in nashville, thereby upping the chances of marrying one of these two untiiiiil i decided to move to the remote and quirky little town of boone, the heart of the highland.
aaah haha. hmm. all for a reason.
(must. move. back. with ring finger vacant.)
unless i move to the UK, where, God willing, i will meet an accented version of one of these two.
halleluh, amen and let it be.

ALSO, i wish my life looked a little like happy-go-lucky. i learned a few things from her. life is too short to be scared.



this here blog is my way of procrastinating on a few things, including, but not limited to:

working out
being productive at all
writing prayer letters because my future is a big black vortex of uncertainty peppered with hopes that seem too vague to touch.
cleaning
being content with the state of my life as is
studying spanish
writing papers / getting organized in my life as a whole
washing my sheets on my bed

gooooosh this movie makes me cry. like, not a little.



today, i started working at a new job.

and i think i like it a lot.

but i don't want to jinx anything so i'm not going to go into it a lot.

but i will say, i am learning a lot about cigars? and really interesting magazines?

montecristogoodromeoandjulietasouthernweddingstheadvocatebooks50%offnewsweek

i take it back [most of it]

things change so quickly!

i always see a closed door as a good sign. you're getting somewhere, instead of going headlong into a place you're no longer supposed to be going.





crafty spring hopes:
make a spring wreath for my door
finish parkway painting
take more photographs
why? because it makes me happy.
there are too many unhappy people in the world doing stuff they don't love.




editor's note:
i think it's really healthy to make yourself unavailable sometimes. not in a sense of being completely shut off, just not all in and on go 100% of the time.
ie:
i was just looking through these pictures of friends and they are together a lot, every day. that's not a bad thing, but their personalities sort of begin to meld together and blur like watercolors. they move together in one heap, in one direction.
-
or people whose work lives cross and melt over into their personal lives much in the same way.
-
i'd be so unhappy.
-
maybe i'm wrong.

we all have a thing

i have to wake up oh so early tomorrow.

i think i like that idea. even though it's 1:30 am and i'm still eating a cookout milkshake

(banana pudding with m&ms... the most ingenious combination)

and that can't be good for me.

really? i like that you can celebrate mornings every day if you want.
tea, eggs, english muffins, coffee, reading, quiet.
i will fall in love with someone who will celebrate mornings with me.

i read somewhere that women who eat 600 calories during breakfast lose more weight than those who eat less or nothing for breakfast over a given period of time. (it's those discovery health articles)
seriously, i love breakfast. it's magic.

this is coming from the girl who has slept in to at least noon every day since sunday.
(i went to a 6pm church service at Vintage21)
that's totally allowed on spring break!

today i filled out crazy fafsa applications (biggest relief ever to have that done)
hugged my sisters
kissed the little nuggets
hung out with jess even if for a minute
wrote a nice little song i'm pretty excited about
walked around saks fifth avenue to absorb the atmosphere of luxury
(it's like when you're on a diet and you smell the food instead of eating it, or, if you're dolly parton, you CHEW the food and don't eat it??)
and i saw my friend from my belk days who had transferred to saks, and she absolutely gave me a TON of samples:

chanel - teint innosense foundation in cameo
creed- audrey hepburn had the "spring flower" scent made just for her and made a contract with creed to not release it to the public until after her death. got somma dat.
jo malone - all organic fragrances, so fresh and crisp, and beautifully packaged!

i know this sounds ridiculous. but i swear... it's therapeutic. i felt like i should go to a support group.
"i really like louis vuitton luggage and i want the set"
"i kind of want these miu miu's?"
"if i had a ton of money i might buy this stuff someday... but also give lots of it away??!?! is that okay?!?"

you know, support groups.
maybe i'll even stop at southpoint on the way back to boone tomorrow.
no yes no yes no yes no!

don't worry, i'll be happily back to starbucks-less, mountain hardwear-wearing don't use plastic don't use MONEY boone girl tomorrow.

disaster room; small steps

!!!!!!!

sweatpants: on
tv: off
room: semi-tornado

it doesn't stay like this. i actually have discovered how nice a clean and tidy room is, and really do try to keep it that way. but it just accumulates and all of a sudden there are...

there are borrowed objects scattered all around my room. yellow high-top converse shoes. the sweatpants... that i'm currently wearing (woops). some ice-d out chains. there are papers all over my vanity telling me that i owe $5 to the dermatologist and reminding me that my little girl in the dominican needs $30 and telling me how many taxes have been taken out of my paycheck. my bathroom is an assortment of underwear, jeans, shoes, hair products and make-up. my nail polish is chipped. my bed no longer houses my body, but instead, much of my wardrobe and a half-full suitcase.

wow, my version of adulthood looks an awful lot like a little girl playing dress-up in her mom's closet.
i have no idea what i'm doing but i'm doing okay pretending and praying that the Lord fills the gaps between where my foot ends and the rest of the high-heeled shoe keeps going.

all is quiet on the boone-town front tonight. really really quiet.
i even got a parking space right in front of my apartment, which reminds me of living here in the summer.
the weather today, actually, was quite reminiscent of that time as well.
i would also like to point out that i spelled "reminiscent" correct the first time, no red squiggly line mocking me!

i've had some really nice conversations as of late.
the kind that you walk away feeling like you just did everything you needed to do for a while, in one conversation.

my dear friend amanda and i sat in the coffee shop and talked about ridiculous stuff, stuff girls just deal with and it's so silly and retarded and even so, it's nice to know you're not the only one going through it. the Lord just fashioned us girls in a certain way and even those silly retarded things He cares about and gives us friends to talk it out with. that is wonderful.

and my dear sweet heart of a tom eisenbraun and i were talking about just really hard stuff that we've had to go through in our lives... parents divorces and really broken hearts and scary scary financial situations and he put it like this:

"i kind of feel like those of us who've had our worlds thrown to the wind and had to pick everything back up so many times are the lucky ones. we're the ones who've had ourselves tested to the quick, and understand ourselves and love and the world around us in such a more spiritual way for it, if only because that's the only way to ever make sense of so much rending of reality"

i think he's right.

also, i danced a LOT thursday night, dressed like a gangsta. i danced so much. and the dj of all djs played mgmt and i laughed a lot, and i saw that handsome womanizer of a boy looking all out of place and thought
"ha ha womanizer! you did not have your way with me, and for a time i thought it was I who had lost something but you were the one that lost something buck-o!"

it was a very ya-ya sisterhood, fried green tomatoes type of moment, i assure you.


i am in need of a capo.
some fruit in my diet.
sleep.
a kiss.
OH MY GOSH! life update!
(i'm sorry, it has nothing to do with kissing. i still suffer from kiss anxiety.)

so, since january i've just had a rush of songs in my heart like a rush of blood to a limb that's been asleep and it feels all pins-and-needles-y. i love it. i love singing and writing and playing. it will never not be like that.
anyway, my boss kiki emailed me on monday asking if i wanted to be the featured artist for this month's Art Crawl. Art Crawl is a nice little thing boone does every first friday of some months and while the turchin center stays open with it's crazy exhibits, the stores along king street stay open late and some of them feature local artists. so for gladiola girls, i accepted to be the musical delight du jour.

*i have an immense fear of playing my own music by myself. playing an instrument and singing at the same time in front of people gives me pit-in-stomach noodle-fingers feelings*

but i just felt like i needed to just say yes. and not think about it too much. and not tell a soul that i was doing it. strangers are less intimidating.

so i did it! and i made $2 in tips, which i was going to frame but then decided it would be better if i bought and consumed a fancy cookout milkshake instead. and there were candles around me, and a polaroid picture floating around somewhere i need to get my hands on and that was fun.
one small step for sam, one GIANT STEP FOR SAM! yesss!

okay, home tomorrow. stuff in washing machine needs to dry. i need to burn cds i don't have. it's 3:40 and i work at 10?
but THEN HOOOOME!!!!
i severely want chick-fil-a.

and i can't wait to see my cat, teeeej!

temporary postingz

i took this picture for my mom:



semi-successful finger wave attempt one

update later. everything else in life and the world right now.