Sauerkirsche/Chocolate Coin Dilemma

Two things:

1. Low blood-sugar dilemmas sometimes require creative thinking.

2. How come I've met so many Thai people with gifts for me when our meetings were totally random? Do they keep gifts in their back pockets just in case?

I'm leaving on Monday and am running low on my stock of food. Thai pharmacies don't sell glucose tablets--those powdery tablets that are so sweet they make me shudder and are not something to be craved for midnight binges. Instead of glucose tablets, they've got this white powder that is meant to be added with water. Loose sugar powder isn't a recommended food item in such an ant-infested place (Saying that after tonight's rodent and insect dinner conversation with our missionary friends who live in some slums in BKK, however, makes me realize how good I have it in the ant department.) and I've got some ant carcasses floating around that bag of sugar-powder that I bought back in July or so (before my new stock of glucose tablets came in the mail).

Anyway, I forgot about that powder and decided that with tonight's low blood sugar, I was going to just eat some of this Sauerkirche--sour cherry--jam that one of my German ex-hall-mates gave me before he left Thailand. Thankfully, while opening the fridge door I remembered the box of chocolate covered sandwich cookies that an ABAC secretary gave me today when I just ran into her. A chance meeting after, what, 3 months since the last time we met, and she just happened to have this unopened box of cookies for me as a going away present?

This happened another time right after Valentine's day, when I ran into this student with whom I spoke on the bus last semester. When she saw me, she handed me a box of chocolate coins, as if she had purchased them for me. How do they plan for these accidental meetings?

However it works, unless I encounter another accidentally-planned gifting moment, I've still got the cherry jam for next low-blood sugar incident. It tastes at least ten times better than the loose ant-carcass powder and it at least seems more effective.

Today's Engrish

"She was a self-fish woman."


Brought to you by 1. insomnia and 2. one of my student's funny exams.

modified from a recent writing exercise...

WHO ARE YOU?

The underbelly of a whale, I am down there waiting. And when your name comes up, I am scratching my head with the tips of a fork. Scraping the sore on the roof of my mouth--it would only heal if only... Beginning and end, I'm caring to see, seeing what matters. Watching storm clouds swirl like ice cream, I'm watching my cholesterol; keeping sneakers that started purple but have since bled gray. Awakened at five by a dense fog migraine, I’m popping pills in the bus, in the theater, in class—popping pills without water, collecting spit. I'm dreaming of the cure: grapefruit-sized, which must be swallowed whole. Thinking, this won’t go down—not even with milk. I’m a hundred-year old house, and its vibrating floorboards when a train rumbles through. I’m painting mountains at dawn on the inside of my walls, so I can peer in the mirror and see the sun on its way.

Not the cold dew under morning’s fog. Not swearing at the moon or reciting odes at your window. Not madly in love, nor even in hate. Not keeping close watch, but wanting a return of my own. Not struck into prayer at every fifth hour, nor even to daily breakfast rituals. Not practiced in the art of laughter out-loud, nor perhaps even in the art of laughter. Not eager to hear the mocking bird's cry, but enjoying it when it comes. Not a bottle of vinegar, grape juice and spirits; not a bent up spoon; nor a broken potter’s wheel. Not afraid to sing into waves; I'm not the stringy, shredded tassel on your bicycle handles; not the pasteurized cheese in last night's casserole; not the last on the team. Not the dripping faucet that just won’t stop, so it wastes and wastes—I am not. Even if I am, that is not what I am.

praise

ran 2.5 miles thursday, then 3.2 miles tonight: no knee pain, no knee brace. i don't know quite how this happened, but i'm thanking God for it.

in 44 exams, 2 days of proctoring and 5 extra days (+ or -), i will be in the gorgeous state of Virginia--with wheels!

packing already in progress.

who's excited?

Your thoughts: always welcome. :)

(TIME-MIRRORED MIRACLES) slightly revised

we knew not the difference) as
(ever) children of blue blues—
overalls, black-molasses and honey-
light hairs—each lock clasped with
a stem and a sun beam
chinny up, dimple-cheeks; leave lips
parted for this
(life, choice, and when)
(if sky reached for the sea)

your thoughts leak from the shingles
(rain upon rain as you open the skies)
our jaws fall ajar, so
we sling back the secrets:
sweet tasting shine
water-wine mirrors time
(miracles mirrored in time)

at midnight we sing of the daylight allowed
when we disallow your absence to brew—
and it goes or so can be gone (in time) in
One
—now (X1X1X1)

(till all waters were one)
moon (shine), (sky) light
as (between day and night

for I will yet praise him

Tonight I needed this Psalm, which I happened to have copied into my journal (Note the repetition of God in the first stanza--this crying out, the panting soul so clearly expressed; the nostalgia in the second stanza; the line of thought and shift in expression between the third to the fourth stanzas; etc.)...

(42)

As the deer pants for streams of water,
So my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"

These things I remember
as I pour out my soul;
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon--from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me--
a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my rock,
"Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?"
My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

~David.

Now more than write, more than wander in thought, more than forget or remember, I want to live—to be a living testimony of God’s goodness. I want to put my hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.