somewhere over the rainbow

quick, find the cd. it's got to be in this pile. drop some. keep searching. open coldplay cases to check. blow off dust from that forgotten nina simone cd. spread cds out across the desk. quickly. it's coming. where is it? it has to be here!

found it.
open it.
hands shaking. cliches abound.
presh the button. insert the cd. hurry.

track seven. play.

repeat.



have you ever rushed to find that song? hoping to fend off a sudden wash of sadness?
only to find it bruising your ear drums, not soothing them? completely incompatible. completely ineffective. the mood stays like a beetroot stain on white pants. immovable. determined. glaring back at you, self-assured and confident of it's own staying power, and its ability to ruin everything.

i'm glad music isn't my god.

don't take it personally

once upon an hour there was a sad little teddy bear that couldn't speak. he could think though very fast and very smart. so he thought and thought hoping that if he thought hard enough his head would explode in a torrent of fast smart words and bits of fluff.
unfortunately the sad little teddy bear miscalculated the ratio of smart words to fluff, and the explosion was far less spectacular than he'd dreamed. the ragged giraffe sniggered at the tiny POOF noise the sad little teddy bear's head made when its smart and fast and fluffy contents escaped. no one even noticed the gems of thought hidden among the bits of sad little teddy bear brain--or, if they did, they mistook them for silvery sparkly flecks of glitter.

so can we just try a resurrection? and prop up this fallen down plan?

it's really hard when you want something heaps and heaps but god doesn't seem forthcoming and seems to be telling you to wait and to learn and to be patient but patience is the least thing you feel yourself capable of. and when you can't help but be massively selfish and concerned only with your own personal happiness. and when you can't control your head and make it blurt out answers to assessment tasks all the while sitting at home because said assessment tasks are overshadowing everything and seem more important than jumping around to songs about pirates and hanging out with cool people and getting fatter on krispy kremes. yet not important enough to make you stop thinking about what you want heaps and heaps and make you stop resenting the fact that god has something different planned for you and all you feel is anger towards those who have what you want and guilt about feeling anger towards those who have what you want and about resenting the god whose grace sets your place at the feast of eternity and whose glory deserves to be your only concern.

it's a sad day when you notice the advertisements for online personals sites that sit at the bottom of the msn messenger window. not that you want to click on them coz even to notice them is pathetic enough and just adds to everything.

rediscover

Poor little, sad little blue Bluesette

Dont you cry, don't you fret,

You can bet one lucky day you'll waken,

And your blues will be forsaken,

Some lucky day lovely love will come your way.

If there is love in your heart to share,

Dear Bluesette don't despair

Some blue boy is waiting just like you,

To find a someone to be true to,

Two loving arms you can nestle in to stay.

Get set, Bluesette,

True love is coming,

Your lonely heart soon will be humming.

Pretty little Bluesette,

Musn't be a mourner,

Have you heard the news yet,

Love's 'round the corner.

Love wrapped in rainbows and tied with pink ribbons

To make your your next springtime

Your gold wedding ring time.

chicken out

someone was pretty keen to get me into their car tonight!

really? who? did he have a nice car?

nice car? not really. you know him pretty well actually.



in breaking news, gomez's latest album split the difference is hot. like pancakes. it's shaped like a pancake too, come to think of it. like circular and stuff.
anyway, apart from the fact that apparently it reminds me of delicious food, i reckon it's up there with the best cds i own. i bought it on the weekend and it's making all my other cds jealous because i wont take it out of my cd player. my eardrums heart it.

smoke

our God is a consuming fire.
cutting off the oxygen
to my sin
suffocating me strangling me sunny swirls
engulfing me
like a child trembling and trapped in a burning building
i cower
clutching adam's inheritance
desperately seeking to deny His power
and assert my own.
learning
(i've repeated kindergarten many times)
to let Him extinguish the blackened soot inside my heart.
to close my mouth on solid food.

our God is a consuming fire.
burning my cross.
cauterising my nature.

our God is a consuming fire.
charring the ground before me
parting the seas
cooking up perfection in the pot of the universe
letting it bubble up
and
over
the sides
scalding my skin
leaving only scars of discipline.

our God is a consuming fire.
from up on a mountain
to up on a cross
lighting the way home.



therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for "our God is a consuming fire."
hebrews 12: 28-29

to the israelites the glory of God looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain.
exodus 24: 17

but be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire.
deuteronomy 9: 3

with a limp and a snow-shaker huh

today god reminded me that i have enough money reliably each month to sponsor a child, so i've started sponsoring basil from uganda. he's seven. i felt really bad choosing a child, so i got the world vision website to choose basil for me.

some other stuff happened today, but it pales in comparison. into a gross egg-planty kind of colour.
i thought about summer. it was a bad idea. to think about it, not summer itself. god's whole seasons idea works pretty well.
i ate left-over penne with chilli in it. plus, it tasted nice.
i wore my asian jumper that says 'heroic rendezvous' on it and has a couple holding hands and the girl is holding a furry green bag with her other hand. maybe if i get a furry green bag the boy will come with it. like, buy a green bag get the boy free. or even just half-price or something.

if you know how to run, sweet virginia, you should run

so i've cut out some stuff from my average week (because i have average weeks so often) and my head is a little less heavy. i showed bel how my head tilts dramatically to the side because it's so full and she laughed. not with tears though, so i guess it wasn't that funny after all.

yesterday i got all pretty and went to uni and went to one lecture and chilled in da club with people until the sun gave up and walked away. it was cold but because i'm stupid and superficial and take everything on appearances i looked out the window and went wow it's sunny as, it's a beautiful day, forgetting the significant effect of winds that had packed up their belongings and buckled the kids in the back and travelled from antarctica to the sky just over sydney university for a vacation. possibly meeting their family friends the alaska winds en route and joining forces for holiday fun.

so there i was in my hell eighties jumper that has holes cut in it so it leaves my shoulders bare. too bad there wasn't more purple in my outfit because it would have matched the colour of my lips whenever i ventured into the windy vacation. can anyone else see my prediction of impending typhoon coming true imminently? this could break the tradition of my theories never ever in 46 bijillion years actually working out on the true side.

another downside of hell eighties jumper is that paul has easy access to my shoulders with a ball point pen and a girly giggle. soon i was the proud owner of two inky tattoos. apparently i love my mum and paul woz here.

kerensa was there too and so was esther because i am magnetic and they couldn't stay away. it was funny when people asked them what they study and ker had to say she doesn't even go to this campus and esther had to say she doesn't even go to this university.

when kerensa and i get new bodies in heaven, we're going to be extremely well endowed.
*dances like a giraffe*

the music's much too loud

just when my head seems set to fall off my neck it's so heavy and full and when i've never been so confused about everything in my life and when i feel like crying every two minutes, my parents are all we think this week you need to step back and reassess the way you spend your time alix you can't do everything alix you have to spend more time at home alix you're going to regret this later alix it's detrimental to your health alix you're not dedicating enough time to your uni work alix let alone your family alix.

what they mean to say is don't spend so much time doing church stuff.

i was really proud of myself, because even though my head was bubbling with anger and my heart was consumed with pain at their lack of understanding about the importance of spending time with god and his people, i just said mhm nice and calm when they asked if i understood what they were saying.

but a little bit of doubt crept in, the door creaking at the back of my head. because i'm really feeling like i just can't deal at the moment. i'm so confused that i don't even know what i'm confused about. when people ask me how i am i am genuinely lost for words. maybe i am doing too much? uni is seeming so big. last semester i got by without doing any readings, but i just can't afford that this term. the way all my assessments are set out seems so simple printed neatly in black ink on slightly crumpled white paper, but in reality--when juxtaposed with all my other commitments--it seems insurmountable. even though i know that whenever i feel like i can't do something, god carries me, i know almost as completely that i'm going to be hanging on by my fingernails to the cliff of the d average. my fingernails have always been thin and brittle. what if i fall? what satisfaction it was to bring home hds last semester. but what if my parents are proved right? what if i can't cope?

at the very moment i'm teetering on the edge of everything, my parents give me a little nudge.

usually the reassess the way you spend your time lecture leaves me annoyed but unmoved.
but at the moment...
at church i lead youth group on fridays, i help organise young adults social ministry on every second saturday, i lead singing every two weeks on sundays, and every sunday i'm not singing i help out with a youth group bible study before the service. i go to bible study on tuesday nights. i'm reading luke with a couple of the youth group girls during the week.
at uni i go to equip training on mondays, i poster for eu on tuesdays, i go to bible study on wednesdays, i go to eu public meeting on thursdays, and i go to studentlife on thursday nights. and i've just put my name down to get involved with walk-up ministry.
and i'm trying to keep up with and pray for five of my non-christian friends at uni, and keep up connections with heaps of friends who are at various stages in their christian walk.
and, of course, maintain my own relationship with god.

not that it's about time, or that i begrudge doing it at all (it gives me more joy than anything else), but not including hanging out with christian mates or my own bible reading and praying, that equates to almost twenty hours of christian stuff in an average week--more if i have to write a bible study for youth group or something like that. i have twelve contact hours at uni a week. i work about six to eight hours a week. i've basically given away any kind of exercise but i'm hoping to add four hours of swimming training a week to my schedule this semester.

what do you think?

who i am hates who i've been

i wish someone would just sit me down and explain it to me.
why i have a fair amount of clarity regarding other people's problems, but my own make my head explode. why it's so easy for me to see when others need to trust god more, but so very difficult for me to see past me driving my own destiny along this bumpy road, without my Ls, in a car that seems to only have one wheel, in the pouring rain, going in the wrong direction, on the wrong side of the road.

sometimes i convince myself that i'm growing, i'm changing, i'm learning, i'm maturing. into something more than i have been. but then i tip over the half-full cup and it empties out all over my carefully constructed facade, smudging the lines, blurring the pretty picture. and i'm still a sixteen year old punk, no idea and no class.
sorry, what? i'm twenty?
no, i'm pretty sure i'm still sixteen. no idea. no class. wide-eyed and air-headed.

"it'll sort itself out. even though it doesn't seem like it will."
how can i have the gall to suggest this to someone else?
sorry, what? i'm a hypocrite?

damn straight.

oops i did it again

oh, by the way: i turned twenty last sunday.

i forgot to mention it. :)

but don't worry...i'm still not a girl, but not yet a woman (britney is so, like, profound).
and there's plenty of teenage angst in me yet.

permanent stain

show me the moshpit! says:
bel ive TOTALLY got issues
bel that's all it took, just one look says:
we fully need a boy chat
show me the moshpit! says:
fully
show me the moshpit! says:
come tomorrow and we will fix ourselves
show me the moshpit! says:
and the world
show me the moshpit! says:
and stuff
bel that's all it took, just one look says:
yeah

i'm nothing on my own

i think god is laughing at me playing with my mind tripping my feet messing up my hair smudging my glasses refilling my nail polish bottles letting my purple uni bag eat my phone delaying the trains stopping time speeding time up answering my prayers lavishing his goodness asking me to dance in the rain dance in my room dance on the way home compelling me to laugh as hard as bel when she cries requesting i sing to him or just to the birds making my cd skip a beat or two spilling the ink in my pens directing my hand across the page telling me to sleep more drink more water exercise my body opening my eyes de-cluttering my heart saying alix stop and
smell
the
roses

all the cool kids at the back of the bus

i blog when nothing is happening.
when things are happening, i am too busy to blog.

three weeks of holidays passed like the arts football team at eu annual conference. we won, by the way. with a few killer sprints by jacob, and some impressive work by the second and third years in the middle. (it was even impressive to me, and the only thing i know about football is that it involves a football.) sitting in media today, i wrote sparse notes partly in muted disbelief at the fact that i was sitting on a hard, wooden seat in the physics building. physics? yeah, that's my specialty. along with sarcasm. why was i back at uni after only being away for about two days? (the hard wooden bit wasn't that hard to believe.) that's what it felt like. a whirlwind weekend of holidays, and then back at it.

don't get me wrong. i like, even heart, uni. the sitting-in-the-nerd-room-giggling-at-spally's-insane-scatting, laying-in-the-sun-thinking-about-stuff, etc etc etc, part. but when the english lecturer started talking about assessments and showed us the brick that will be masquerading as my english text this semester, my disbelief melted into a serious desire to be cashing in on the beautiful weather...outside a lecture hall. in fact, outside of sydney uni.

ancon was wow personified. or maybe ancon-onified. it didn't disappoint.
~ jesus christ is the church
~ saved by grace, church by grace
~ the best study group i've ever been in
~ rad chats about pentecostal churches
~ some more thought about women teaching in the church
~ made some madcool friends
~ slept less than 14 hours total

the highlight for me was the last night, which spal has affectionately dubbed the night of the living dead. the teaching was amazing, don't get me wrong, and that was definitely the most rewarding part, but the last night was probably one of the best nights of my life. you know when you're so tired it's almost like being drunk? slightly delirious, devoid of inhibitions (in an innocent way)...just insanely happy and crazy and fun, not caring that you are being an idiotic child. it's great. i may have turned twenty two days ago but i'm not going to stop cherishing those awesome times any time soon. so much fun!

i'm a poet:

N ever went to bed
I ntermittedly quoted teen girl squad and blackbooks
G ot some tips on how to tell if a boy likes you, from a real life boy
H angman without the hangman, gibberish hangman, wingdings hangman
T ower of jenga blocks turned into a bridge of jenga blocks

O pps! conditioned a boy's hair with milk...while he was running away from me
F ound a lost drummer out in the cold and pulled up some carpet for him to sleep on

T ried to play spotlight but then...forgot to play spotlight
H ardcore five: esther, mat, sebastian, spal, me
E njoyed some lovely dancing with spally

L istened to coldplay and ben folds five and some bad 80s piano musuk
I watched other people play 500
V ery sneakily stole the science faculty's milk while singing the mission impossible theme
I t was very messy in that room by the morning
N ow and again fell over and sustained bruises
G reat renditions of crying out loud songs and vegietales songs, we did

D evoured a bowl of milo
E ep there aren't enough things that start with e
A lmost fell asleep at about 5.3oam
D saw a stunning sunrise...d


ok, so maybe i'm not a poet.

brat pack

what is more dull than a discreet diary? one might just as well have a discreet soul.
henry channon