all about the girl who came to stay

Last weekend was magical for me, and I'll tell you why.

After living together in Hawaii, Jerusalem, and Utah,

Alyssa [aka Gracie] and I finally spent time together in the good ole' homeland: The Inland Northwest.

I'll admit it. I'm really lonely these days. Being home and earning money is good but, you know.. it's a little stagnant. And well...

...well, it was a wonderful relief to have a sleepover with a beautiful, darling friend and meet up with two other darling friends [Kali and Bryson] to go to an amazing concert [The Five Browns; website here ] at the Fox theatre:

beautiful stage. beautiful pianos [oh, those pianos!].

My favorite piece was probably "Claire de Lune." Six hands on one piano playing one of the most beautiful melodies of all time. Exquisite!

The five magical siblings themselves, complete with terrible red eye [yeah, it's kind of a creeper shot. What can I say?]. 

And then we frolicked through gardens of all kinds in Manito Park on the South Hill of Downtown Spokane. The lilac garden was in full bloom, and you could smell it before you could see it. We had a great time taking pictures (all the good ones are on her Nikon), had a gluten-free, dairy-free picnic lunch, went to Auntie's bookstore, got the lovely lady some new pointe shoes, and explored all day long.

It was such a beautifully sunny day [in so many ways].

the infamous MEOW! bench

please come back, Gracie. I had a lovely time.

love, flowers, and isn't it friday yet?

-Banana

Opus 37

I’m really feeling music today. It could possibly be my radically enhanced emotional state, not much altered even by the slight overdose on Midol I might have had this morning.

Or it could just be that music is what brings life to my veins and thus oxygen to my brain and clarity to my eyes and richness to my senses. It always has, after all. I’ve been ignoring music; skulking around, hiding behind corners when I see it coming. And I’m not sure why. 

I’ve just been so afraid lately. But it’s hard to say exactly what I’m afraid of. Maybe it’s nothing. That is, maybe I’m scared of dissolving into nothingness. Amounting to nothing. Being nothing. Or at least not being what I always dreamed I would be and what I’m now doing nothing to become. And returning to the piano with stiff, forgetful fingers and forcefully shaking my startled voice awake, which comes out creaky from neglect, is scary when I’m already so scared.

And yet, today I’m craving only one of those magical corners with a small open window and eighty-eight slightly dusty keys. They’ve always been such a refuge- such a sanctuary- waiting patiently to absorb every moment of disappointment or frustration or euphoria with life and its potential for being lived. It’s all there in those keys and my fingers that know them so well, even if they’re a little awkward at first reuniting. But like any true friends, they soon know they never really spent time apart, after all. They quickly remember one another’s idiosyncrasies; their shortcomings and their greatest abilities. Their mutual desire to produce something worth listening to. Worth getting lost in. Worth feeling.

So I sit here in this stark, florescent box of a facility, as far away from that corner as you could really get, listening to the genius of Dustin O’Halloran and Iris Litchfield with itching fingers. RLS bouncing my knees all over the place under my desk, my feet blindly bumbling around, searching for the pedals. But my insides feel warm and sparkly with the anticipation of greeting one of my oldest and dearest friends. Perhaps the most loyal friend of all, always waiting patiently, always knowing that someday I’ll come back to raise the blinds and crack open the rain streaked window, to stroke the old worn oak bench, lift the cover, inhale a deep, nervous breath, arrange my cold, frightened fingers into the key of G and…

Play.

-Banana 

 [These photos are from a  special day in Hawaii about a year and a half ago. Taken by Bremen McKinney and me and featuring Tessa Brady and my hands, feet, and occasional indiscernible reflection]

It's a unicorn!

Ever since my sister found out we were prego (I like to add the "we" in there. I'm already very important in this baby's life) we've been discussing what kind of baby it will be.

You know, most people figure it will be either "a boy" or "a girl," but Jena and I explored other possibilities like.. "It's a lizard!" "It's a cupcake!" Eventually, we accepted the grown-ups' insistence that there are only two kinds of babies, and we settled on cowboys and unicorns.

Today she had her "kind of baby" appointment and found out  

it's a unicorn!!

My other beautiful little unicorn filly of a neice, Lily Belle, is so excited it's a girl. Here's what she had to say about it:

I'm such a happy auntie banana!
I love you, jenabunny and baby!

love, babies, and plentiful new knitting projects now that I know what color yarn to get,

Anna

p.s. sister also blogged about our lovely trip to Colorado here

wind

it whisks all things away
just like Charlie Chaplin's hat-
Everything but my solid resolution
to go Nowhere and be Nothing.

even the heavy wooden Door
isn't immune-
it bangs in Warning;
distant drums of ancient warriors.

it violates Marilyn
just in time for the cameras;
it waltzes with the weathervane
and conducts a cataclysmic wind chime Chorus.

it howls in Agony-
or perhaps just to frighten
the small girl afraid of Ghosts;
the young woman afraid of open Doors.

The Barmaid at the Folies-Bergères

I've never been bored.
not ever.
At least, I've never been this bored.
I've not ever been this bored before.

What I mean to say, of course, is that I love my job.
As a child, I prided myself in the fact that I could play alone for, well, ever, with almost no stimuli but...myself. I had enough fuel (actually, fuel brings up something of a sore spot right now, as I ran out of gas on a dark rainy highway last night and the man at the gas station [that I had to walk to in the cold, rainy darkness] was so unaccommodating. bother.) in my over-active imagination to last me until bedtime. Or at least until my sister got home so I could terrorize her.
But now, between snotty comments of "I want your job!", "You get paid to surf the web all day!?" [excuse me, I am not surfing the web, thank you, I am reading the New York Times, you "I play arena football because I can't play real football" imbecile] and "working hard?" I literally have nothing to do for extended periods of time.

And... okay, I'll say it:
I'm afraid my imagination isn't what it used to be.
Eek! I said it! How can I be bored? I've made lists ["How to Improve this Desk," "10 ways to commit suicide using only office supplies," etc.]! I've played games (Granted, "guess what I'm thinking- extreme edition" isn't that fun alone). And yet I can read the symptoms. I'm classically, through-and-through, Jungle Book vultures, watch-Pete-and-Pete re-runs-all-day bored.
bored bored bored.
And so I have no choice but to eat all these blueberry, cinnamon, chocolate chip, pumpkin, and cranberry scones they keep not eating. OH, and the huckleberry cinnamon rolls.
And the cheese danishes.

whoopsies.

NOW I'M BORED AND FAT!

Anyway,

Number one on my "How to Improve This Desk" list is, of course, Manet. So, I sometimes get funny looks at the lone picture I have taped up under here at eye level:

If anyone asks about her, I tell them it's a private joke. Which is kind of thrilling, feeling like Manet and I developed some sort of running jest over coffee while we developed the impressionist movement together.

We didn't. But still.

Look at her! Her bored, lonely, stare- trapped, stifled! in alienation- while her dreamy, skewed reflection attends to the swarthy customer in the stove pipe hat. She's just like me.

So we made a deal, her and I. We're going to tough out the shady men over the counter and our lowly days in the dregs of the working class. But these days we spend at our respective "bars" will turn us into...

masterpieces.

That's the deal, anyway.

Unfortunately, it was something of a one-sided conversation. And she doesn't have texting, so...

Hurrah for the winding down of day four! Tomorrow I'm leaving on a jet plane with the girls (mama, grandmama, and aunt suzanemama) for ickle Mindy-cousin's wedding. Still trying to make something of myself. I suppose most things just work one day at a time, don't they?

meh.

Time for a scone.

Banana

"That's it Flavia, you sly fox!"

I'm sure I would make a terrible reviewer of books. You've seen what I put on here! It's all ravenous gushing or an inconclusive "meh" with a shrug, and there's nothing in-between for me and there never has been (nor ever will be). I'm a lass given to violent passions and violently passionate books. 

In fact, in a book I just read (The Thirteenth Tale. It's phenomenal. It's majestic. Do yourself a favor and read it on a stormy night), the heroine, Margaret, suffers from a similar book worm that infests her nervous system and takes her ill in a classic case of romanticism. That is, she loses her appetite for food and desire for sleep and is prone to roving the moors during rainstorms and fevers and dramatic fainting spells (so Cathy Earnshaw, huh?). Margaret's doctor prescribes her a heavy dose of Sherlock Holmes, and she gets all better.

Anyway, I'm kind of like Margaret. 

Meh.

Someone I'm not like is miss Flavia De Luce, though I wish I were. This book was so delicious (pun intended)! A solid mystery story peppered with as many British witticisms and catch phrases as you could hope for ("Oh scissors!," "jolly well," etc.), though the author is actually Canadian. But that's okay because I'm Canadian too (sort of). Anyway, Flavia is an eleven-year-old, pig tailed, aspiring mad chemist, and is totally my hero. Brilliant, resourceful, and a right force to be reckoned with on her trusty one-speed steed, Gladys (I really need to get myself a bicycle).

Books, books, books! 

I may be trapped in this old town at this old desk in this old building that reeks of old pastries and sports medicine, but I really can read as much as I want (as long as I stuff my book under my desk when I hear someone coming). And that is happy indeed.

Remember what dear old Flave said?  "I realized heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

No, eight days a week." 
 

So eight hours a day, five days a week isn't that far off.

[Yours Truly in a delicious, musty underground (literally) bookstore in West Jerusalem]               Love, clouds, and admitted nerdhood,            
Banana

Oh hey, it's me!

Okay.
So I think it would be really cool to have a study. You know, like fathers always have in British novels.
That way, when unwanted visitors come to call the kids can say,

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but mother is rather occupied in her study!"

Alright, I realize that was a poorly disguised way of sneaking around the fact that this little blog has been in something of a state of dilapidation. I get it. But I just don't want to get all whiney again about how I've been so bored and depressed and confused and lonely and, really, ungrateful this semester.

I've been such a baby!

But that's all behind me now. I realized one dreary February mid-morning (at the end of a long string of similarly dreary mid-mornings) as I lay on the floor next to a large plate of spaghetti, mourning my existence, that something really needed to change. 

And that something was (and is) me.

So, here I am, ready to start anew. I'm home in Spokane Valley, Washington at this familiar old faux granite desk with eight hours of not much to do and a lot of homesickness and heartsickness for people and places (at the moment a little place like Jerusalem comes to mind, followed closely behind by Hawaii. Dancing around them are dearly beloved [still living] who I just can't seem to keep my hands on long enough) swimming around my psyche.

But here's the good news: I'm going to make something of myself. I mean it. These last few months of wallowing in Utah have been quite enough, and I'm ready to be curious, engaging, passionate, adventurous Banana once more. It's nice to remember who you are.

I think it was our dear friend, Emily Dick, who gave the encouraging nudge a couple days ago:

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn-
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass-
That darkness is about to pass.

Thank you all for pardoning the Banana, but she is back! And ready for the sunshine. 

p.s. I may or may not have attempted to adapt that Emily Dickenson poem into lyrics for a song I'm trying to write on the guitar. Heh. Umm... oh yeah! Maybe I should learn to play the guitar? One more for the list! I can do it now though because I'm through with sendentarily wallowing and am once more going to cultivate my talents. Right?

yeah.

Oopsies!

Okay, so I've been naughty.

But I promise I'll be back soon! This long hiatus has been plagued with Provo, Utah, clouds, cold weather, and way too much sleeping in. And I just haven't felt up to trying to be witty or observing the world around me in my usual bloggedy way.

Basically I've been a whiney baby.

But the sun is peeking through! My snister and darlingest buddy, Jenabunny, is having a baby (who I already love an insane, auntie-anna, cheek-pinching much), my cutie-pants, poncho-wearing, arabic-speaking, beard-donning boyfriend, Shea, is back from Syria after five months of skype-dating.

I'm in a bad rad book club (I know, I know, I put "bad rad" and "book club" together).

I might just have picked a major.

I'm training for a half marathon (waaah! whhhyyy?).

I have a choir concert this Saturday. [DO come if you're in the vicinity. BYU De Jong Concert Hall, 7:30 pm, march 13th. Tickets through Womenschorus.com It's going to be so great!]

I decided to start performing again. I miss the theatre too much!

And life is good. After all,

"The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung."

-Walt Whitman

love, winter, and a good dose of poetry,

banana

So, here's the thing about long-distance relationships...

They suck.

They totally, completely, absolutely, positively, cross-my-heart, hope to die suck.
Now I'm not the whiney kind by nature, I don't think. But for the last, oh, very near a year now, it's been sucking big time.

And yet I can't give up on it because, well,

I really love him.

The last time I saw him was in Jordan. In October...

So I will keep on becoming whineyanna and I will miss him every day. every minute.

every time I hear classic rock.

every time I hear anything.

every time someone bumps into a wall and doesn't really notice.

every time my cuticles need pushing.

every time my feet are cold.

Well, you get the point. all the time.

I love so much about this painting.

Thanks to my heavy load of Humanities classes, I'm developing quite a thing for Mr. Rembrandt Van Jinn.

This is on display at the BYU Museum of Art. I adore it. I've gone back a couple of times to look at it.
What do you think?

[Head of Christ, Rembrandt]

love, Banana

Cut-up

So bestfriend Marybutton visited me this weekend and we did fun best friend things:
birthday party. IHOP. lots and lots of piano. books. hours of talking, deep and shallow. snuggling. sleeping in.

One of our favorite best friend things is to cut up things. And sometimes we write cut-up poems.

Here's how it happened: I took seven lines each from four random sources (Atonement, a New York Times article, my Jerusalem journal, and a collection of poems by Rilke) and attempted to compile them into a pleasant sounding, almost

coherent poem.

[Us at the Seattle Zoo, years ago]                                                                    The title was chosen at random by miss Mary.

Her Multitudes Await

She hovered on the peripheries.

The stitches were clumsy and irregular;

Gandhi, Monroe, Sinatra, Kennedy.

These indignant thoughts afflicted her.

Sitting on the summit, daylight creeping in

Endless ribbons, inventing new bows

How was she to know they meant nothing in fact?

They were the best of the best in their field.

I was so nervous, tracking every single second of the trip

But it’s something I can’t give up on.

I have been a stranger in a strange land,

And I never, never want to stop singing that.

I’m becoming something of a mosaic expert,

For beauty is nothing but the onset of terror we’re still just able to bear.

The man and the woman part

He speaks only the few words necessary.

Then both look fearfully at the piano,

Two ambulances were parked at the side of the road, their back doors open.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it,

So I’m not certain who’s crying out.

You could see the handwriting on the wall

After a protest in East Jerusalem.

And in the end you still had the spirit to celebrate.

Yes, the springtimes needed you.

In the middle of December,

There was no time to ask them where they were being sent

I can feel direct deliverance,

For staying put is nowhere.

creativity, blueberry pancakes, and lots of giggles,

Banana

[Us at the Washington coast, years ago]

I don't want to be a journalist.

[icky pooey journalism blog here]

Milk and Honey

In case you've been wondering where I've been the last four or so months...

It's been somewhere like bliss.

Jerusalem.Galilee.Egypt.Jordan. 

And now that my life is nice and dull again, I'm sure I'll once more be a full-time blogstress.

BUT

"Your name will stain my lips forever,

like a seraph's kiss, untold,

if I forget thee, golden city,

Jerusalem of Gold."

Salam and Shalom,

one forever-changed Banana

p.s. For a more detailed history, dearfriend Kali and I kept up something of a Holy Land blog. click-a-roo-roo!