When It Rains In June

I love the smell after it rains.

I biked home under a light shower, a dark cloud followed me home; the mountains around me were still lit with the afternoon's sunshine.

I felt the rain drops splash against my face and arms. Heard the distant rolling thunder above my folk-ey mix streaming through my ears. Felt the warmth from the asphalt. Smelled the corn and wheat fields get wet. Watched the birds fly out to find shelter. Smiled.

It started pouring when I walked into my house.

Thank you Jesus.

Self Portrait

These are my thoughts after Day One of my summer job in an old people's home:

- The bike ride to my job is beautiful, cool and calm at this time of the morning (6:30)

- I can't believe I'm actually wearing this hideous outfit (see drawing above). Good thing I'm not trying to impress anyone, I feel ridiculous enough as it is

- old people can be really cute

- but I hope my Father takes me Home before I become too old and senile

- I don't understand the theory behind ironing boxer shorts/pyjamas? (had to iron today, oh dear...I hadn't ironed anything since I was 10, when I thought it was great fun ironing napkins and the like. I think I got back in touch with my ironing side)

- who designs old people's clothes? Although, in the heaps of clothes we washed, I actually saw one very cool sweatshirt. Almost stole it, but thought I'd wait for the last day to do that

- by the end of July, I'll know how to speak Portuguese and Spanish, it's all I hear all day

- my boss is hilarious

- it's weird, I feel like I've been working here forever already, it's been really easy to settle in

- I like this job, I have the time to think about everything and nothing all at once

- I have a weird obsession with clean clothes, and the smell of washing product (I think that on hot summer days, I could fall asleep in a bunch of freshly cleaned clothes...I'm a bit strange)

- it's painful having to stand up for over 7 hours (RSI looks inevitable)

- the last thing I want to do is bike home (but it wasn't so bad in the end)

- I need a shower and a nap

So off I go...

My ears are currently seduced by: My summer mix

<< Rewind <<

"Family photos depict smiling faces, births, weddings, holidays, children's birthday parties. People take pictures of the happy moments in their lives. Someone looking through our photo album would conclude that we had led a joyous, leisurly existence, free of tragedy. No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget."

"I'm sure my customers never think about it, but these snapshots are their little stands against the flow of time. The shutters click, the flash goes off, and they've stopped time for just the blink of an eye. And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: 'I was here. I existed. I was young. I was happy. And someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.'"

"Most people don't take snapshots of the little things; the used band aid, the guy at the petrol station, the wasp on the jello. But these are the things that make up the true pictures of our lives. People don't take pictures of these things."

Quotes from "One Hour Photo"

My ears are currently seduced by: Patti Griffin - random songs of hers

Gold In The Air Of Summer

Without giving anything away
I can say it's by the sea
It's a house that used to be
The home of a friend of mine

Without giving anything away
You'll find ships inside of bottles
The garden's overgrown
The house is white, but the paint is coming off

I didn't know if you wanted to
But I came to pick you up
You didn't even hesitate
And now you and me are on our way
I think I've brought everything we need
Don't look back,
Don't think of all the places
We should've been
It's a good thing that you came along with me

Gold in the air of summer
You'll shine like gold in the air of summer
You'll shine like gold in the air of summer
You'll shine like gold in the air of summer


I would say that one of the things that makes good artists excellent, is their ability to write music where the blending of the music with the lyrics creates a world for you to travel in and explore; where the theatre of your mind becomes alive with vivid pictures of places, scents, lighting and people.

Kings Of Convenience. The answer lies in their new cd, my friends.

Father's Day

The same old problem has come round once again. It's that time of the year, I fear. England isn't a good place to be in when facing this particular issue.

England, I have decided, is a country obsessed with greeting cards. And most of all, you need to leave them standing in your living room for at least three weeks before you can gently dust them, then remove them, read them one last time, get emotional, and brutally send them off to the recycling pile.

Whether your pet is having surgery, your nail broke or whether your bathtub is dirty, Clinton Cards will cater to your needs. Say it with a card. And to make life easier, they've already included a little message inside of it; all you need to do is sign; with love. No wonder the card market has won such praise and acclamation. You can make someone's day for the meagre price of £1.

The problem is, or my re-occurring problem is, that each country has its own Father's Day, Mother's Day, Leprechaun Day... and if I am not in the same country as the person concerned, how do I know when the day has come? How am I supposed to know when I should give a bone shaped card to my dog?

You see, this has bothered me all my life: I lived in Switzerland, went to school in France, my mother is American, and now I live in England. Which day is Mother's Day? Considering I'm utter crapola at maths, I wouldn't even be able to come up with my own date after calculating the median of the four dates on offer. I could have spoilt my mother and given her four cards on FOUR different occasions. But then that defies the point; you wouldn't want to make anyone feel too special too many times, it might just end up in a big headed-inflated ego issue. Let's not go there.

So, what am I to do?! Today is Father's Day, and once again, I am at a loss as to what to do.

Luckily, love isn't found in a greeting card. And luckily, my father knows I love him without ever having given him one. Phew. The only ones I have on my back now are the card industries, whom I continually cheat, by not contributing to their 1£ answer towards making someone's day.


By the way, I do believe in letting people know that they are special, even if they can't fit their heads out of the door anymore. It's a good way of kidnapping people who are leaving to greener pastures.

Good Day Sunshine

When a heat wave was forecast, I thought to myself, "right, if this is anything like wintertime's big hoo-ha that was caused when they announced snow (2 centimeters of it fell), it won't be THAT hot. This is England, after all, it probably just means the fog will lift and it'll remain dry for a few days."

I couldn't have been more wrong. Sometimes it's good to trust the weather forecast. This heat, whether it comes in waves or not, is hot. You sit still and end up swimming in a puddle of sweat 30 minutes down the line. Wet with sweat, you couldn't have it any other way.

Back home, when I tell people I study in England, they automatically frown in despair and say "oh...that place where it always rains!" (now you see where I get my weather forecast cynicism from). I believe my brother has chosen the right week to come visit me - in an effort to umask the truth about English weather, I have scheduled many 'tanning-sessions' while he's here. By this, I believe my point will be more tangibly communicated to the ignorant masses of the continent.

The sun does shine on this isle.

My ears are currently seduced by: Third Eye Blind - Out Of The Vein

A Torch To End All Torches

...

And in my darkest hour
The brightest light draws near to me
A torch to end all torches,
This is the light that sets me free
All shadows burn away now
But by his grace I am sustained
Though all was lost,
Now all is found and more is gained

Lift me up and make me whole
Instill in me a new hope
Breathe new life into my soul

- Thrice

My ears are currently seduced by: Coldplay - x & y

Up On The Mountain

'Take now thy son', said God to Abraham, 'thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I tell thee of.' Genesis 22:2

Isaac was his father's pride and delight. The apple of his eye. As his son grew up, as time went by, Abraham grew fonder and fonder of his son. As Tozer puts it in The Pursuit Of God, Isaac "represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream." Abraham deeply loved his son.

In the light of this deep love and affection, we can only start to imagine or understand how torn Abraham must have been when God asked him to give up his son, his only son. The one person he was most fond of. I suppose Abraham wrestled with God under a star lit sky, as his son was sleeping in the tent, unaware of what was to come. We aren't given an account of what Abraham felt, we aren't told much about Abraham's way of dealing with having to offer his son, his prized possesion, as a burnt offering. We can only try to imagine the anguish which preceded his walk up to the mountain with his son.

Giving up your son, the one you love dearly. I wonder what that feels like. I wonder what it's like to be asked to give up the one person who to you always embodied God's promises, God's providence, God's faithfulness. I wonder how Abraham made sense of God's command which at that point ran counter to God's promise "In Isaac shall thy seed be called". Or maybe it made no sense. Maybe Abraham abandoned himself to God's 'folly', knowing that His ways were higher than men's. He thought God might raise Isaac from the dead - at least he trusted God would come through. He obeyed, trusting that this demand on God's part ultimately had its purpose.

God wanted to highlight something in Abraham's heart. Abraham was not interrupted in his faithful obedience of sacrificing his son until the very last moment, until it would have been too late to reverse the situation. "It's all right, Abraham, I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me."

After reading this story, I sit and wonder what I hold on to, who I cling on to and what it is in my life that remains unoffered to God. What do I need to bring up to the mountain and offer up to God, so that He may reign unchallenged there?

At this point in time, when the season of goodbyes is in full bloom with university ending, people, I realise once again, is a good example of something I have trouble letting go of. You would have thought that growing up in Geneva, where people continually move on and out of your life, I would be used to goodbyes by now. Funnily enough, I'm still not. Goodbyes smell. As nicely as my feet do after a day's worth of walking around in "europe's largest shopping mall". My newest claim to fame, yes yes. Of course, you can still keep in touch with the people who have left, but it's not the same. They're not part of your everyday life anymore... that's life for you, I suppose.

I was reading The Pursuit Of God yesterday morning and stumbled upon something that captured exactly the essence of what it is that makes letting go of people hard, at least to me:
"We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety. This is especially true when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed."

God gives and takes away, and I know that He has done so before so that He may reign in the temple of my heart. He brings people in and out of our life; for a season, for a lifetime; to share stories and laughs, memories and paths. With letting go of my friends and loved ones and committing them into safe Hands, I offer them up with a prayer of thanks. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights, and I am more than blessed to have journeyed with these people. I know that God's ways are higher, and that He never leaves my side. That He is constant and consistent amidst the irregular pattern of my life. Psalm 121.


"Father, I want to know thee, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that thou make the place of thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for thou wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' name, amen." - A. W. Tozer

Father, I long for You to reign unchallenged in my heart.

My ears are currently seduced by: Rosie Thomas - Only With Laughter Can You Win

Back From The Dead

So this is what it feels like to be back on a computer.

Busking. This is what it all comes down to. Not that I've had much experience in the working field, the "real world", but busking might just be my at-the-moment favourite job; one of the finest, no doubt about it.

First of all, you get to play and sing - one of the very things I like doing most - and you get MONEY for it; how crazy is that?! It's the best way to earn money, I promise you that. I'm seriously considering becoming a professional minstrel.
Secondly, if you're as lucky as me, you get to do all of the above with the coolest guitarist and flautist in town.
Thirdly, you're out in the streets, breathing the fresh air - although, to be completely honest with you, from a less idealistic perspective, you're actually sitting about butt high of the people walking by, so you do need to have prayed intensively that the passerbys aren't on a bean or onion diet beforehand.
Fourthly, you get to befriend people you would never come to meet otherwise. They either stand right beside you and breathe down your neck in a freakish way, or they ask you to play "Lord We Lift Your Head Up High" - as opposed to "Lord I Lift Your Name On High" - and sing along in an operatic way. Or...they interupt your playing to ask you whether any policemen are in the surroudings, because they're walking around with a stolen trolley - it's good, you feel like you're part of a mass conspiracy as you direct them through the back streets of Canterbury, where policemen fear to tread. Or then again, yes, my friends, there are more character highlights to be heard of, you have the two teethed ol' fella who mumbles at you in a semi drunken dance and throws 30p your way, it probably being all he owns to his name, but you figure you'll be gone by the time he sobers up, so it's safe to keep his cash. Or, you have the artsy musicians who stop to listen - you do feel quite privileged at that point - and then ask you whether you play in various venues, notably the well known one for blocked up toilets and for producing "anti-folk" heroes. You also have the father and his little son who come with their picnic chairs, unfold them before you and have a little listen and cheer you on - we made sure we played them our best tunes - they have been our best audience yet. And then you have the kind listener who waits til you have a break and offers to buy you a drink in starbucks - who in their right mind would say no to a Caramel Frappucino...? Of course, there are also the friendly faces, either strangerly friendly, or friendly friendly who come spur you on and seal the moment with a smile.

There's just a whole plethora of people to be met out there!

Of course, no job is void of shortcomings or drawbacks. The most damaging thing that occurs is to have I'm-too-cool-for-you 10 year old pikeys throwing pennies at you with a disdainful snicker - it just makes you feel "worth a penny", as Claire rightfully put it. Ear muffs are always helpful to drown out the abasing comments - they're just jealous anyway.
Equally harmful, there is the case of pins and needles eating away at your feet and legs (well, it doesn't happen to me, but some weird flautists suffer from that, occasionally).
Also, it is important to note that you can't be wearing your Sunday best while busking. Pigeon poop and cigarette butts do a fine job of re-stylising your trousers for you.
Your fingers eventually go numb and your voice leaves on holiday, but those are only minor details, not worth much elaboration.

So this is what it feels like to be a rock star.

My ears are currently seduced by: Jason Morant - Abandon