Little Letters Series: From My Future Self

One day you will lay claim to residence upon the edge of a continent. The paint on your front door will be chipped by the salt of the sea. The drapes of your windows will be worn by the wind. Your feet will be calloused by the unrefined grain of the boardwalk upon which you will walk. 

Walk. Never stop walking.

For one day you will have walked the miles you now have before you. Your hands will be stained with the ink that has formed your stories. Your sleeping patterns will be upset by late nights spent in your grand undertakings, for some most powerful some kind of good that is entirely your own. Your eyes may be strained in this search for good. Your fingers may weaken in their attempts to recompense for the deficiency.

Deficient.

Some days you may be. your heart may tire of the pulsations your foibles could cause. Your posture may have, at times, lapsed at the possibility of failure. Your ears may ring with their criticisms. But they cannot touch that part of you that hungers to prove them wrong, that part that whispers dim secrets of what you could be.

Be. Continue, ever, to be. 

Persist, sift, pursue.

For one day you will know it. Your muscles will ache under the long days. Your throat will be dry with interviews. Your hair will be unkempt from the days there are not enough hours. And one day, yes, one fine day you will have forgotten that it ever could have been for anything else.

One day, darling girl, you will lose all the right things.

Yours sincerely,

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo via: vi.sualize.us} (post inspired by meg)

What We Weren't: On Choosing a Graduate School

They said they saw in us some unequivocal something.
They thought we would fit in their gold-trimmed boxes.
They sought to keep us on their neatly-paved sidewalks.
They assumed we wouldn't wonder when we looked upon the sky.

But we have walked to the edge of their fortresses.
And we have stood at the crest of their constructs, where all the sidewalks end.
We have seen the place where the world is all quietness - 
have felt the pulse, the heartbeat of the earth when lying against her,
have felt the weightlessness of gravity when standing to our full height. 

And we have found the others who had been there. 
We have felt the silent jolt of envy when we found their creeds in droplets of ink,
their breath still heaving in and out with each turn of the page.
We felt as if we were there, heir to that last lingering vowel upon their parted lips,
so very raptured by their audacious inditements. 

That was the day we discovered what we weren't. 
We weren't able to turn our back on the sound of our own rhyme.
We couldn't ignore the blank space between the lines. 
We had not the aptitude to drop the pen, nor any remorse that may purge us of our mutiny. 

We weren't anybody's lock-pickers.
We weren't the suppressed, the compromised, the unfeeling;
We weren't to be boxed, nor held within a concrete barrier.
We weren't in want of privilege, born into it or not.
We weren't the unknown, and we could never be the unscripted. 
For we weren't, most inconveniently - nay, most delightfully, anything but writers.

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo}

A Secret Garden

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via and pinterest}  

Blustery: bləstərē adj. (of a wind) Blowing in strong gusts

Today is quite possibly verging on blustery. I love the wind. It's presence carries some sort of mystical quality to it. It makes me feel as if I'm part of some indefinable something I don't entirely understand, but catch a faint spark of. It defies the mechanics of gravity; it trumps the tediousness of unruffled hairdos and stationary pages; and it tugs at my memory of places that seemed themselves suffused with the enchantment of things we cannot prove, but can only know. It reminds me of my favorite essay on wind. So, so beautifully put:

His death had nothing to do with wind, as far as I know. But maybe there are two kinds of people. Those who like their stories tidy, with a once-upon- a-time and a happily-ever-after, and in between a series of nicely demarcated scenes that rise when they need rise, climax when a climax is called for, and neatly resolve. And then there are the others, who are willing to follow a current, to feel it move discretely through a tangle of branches, to sense a gust of meaning shudder in the brush, to feel the ghostly fingers of the air lift their hair off their necks and leave a shiver up their spines—those who have felt, in all its unlikelihood, the impact of a kiss that leveled your soul like a freight train busting the night open in a small town, on a night of winds, a night of thrilling, elegiac winds. — D. Steiner, Elements of the Wind

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved. {via: vis.ualize.us}

Irregular as Clockwork

Irregular as Clockwork

I have known

the clockwork of the heart.

I know it to be as constant as a moment,

as buoyant as concrete

as predictable as life.

I know it to be as volatile as appetite.

as certain as doubt’s shadow,

as capricious as the sun’s agenda.

It beats,

a rhythmic jolt within the detainment of my body.

It pulses,

venturing to verify existence.

It thumps,

echoing the deafening cry of silence.

It flutters,

in erratic ecstasy.

It throbs,

with raw apprehension.

It yearns

with unrestrained longing.

It aches,

as fractured as splintered wood.

It soars,

above skies of untouchable and weightless euphoria.

It grinds,

between the jagged edges of consciousness.

It burns,

like red pepper seers the inside of a vein.

It skips,

at the shift of relativity.

It presses,

like a boulder to the chest.

It sings,

In frivolously vital giddiness.

It sinks,

With the weight of fallen possibility.

It expands,

In divine wonder.

It hums

as a small bird with a million places to be, but nowhere to go.

It murmurs,

In the sweetness of recollection.

It can be stilled

- Oh yes, it can be stilled.

And what of the heart when it is cold, motionless?

The answer lies not in its function,

but in its continuation;

Living still in the off-beat of another,

rising and falling in erratic rhythm,

for it is, I have always known,

as irregular as clockwork.

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved. {photo via: coupdegrace}

Mirror Image

You know the morning routine.

You run around your bedroom, bouncing back and forth between your closet drawers and your self-made study station. I'm usually hopping on one leg, throwing on my boots and scarf, while grabbing my book bag, bulging with schoolbooks. I turn to go, but catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Oh, there I am. And I wonder as I stare back at that frazzled, hazel-eyed girl,

Who are you? Perhaps, just maybe one day I will have the answer.

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo source unknown}

.

When I send my words out into the void, I sometimes wonder who {if anyone} is on the other side of the screen. A knotted web of pandemonium, the internet is admittedly limited. It cannot be the source of all answers, the solace from all fears, nor the outlet for all happiness. 

It can never replace reality. 

However, within it lies a piece of someone’s reality, a snapshot of a million people’s consciousness. And through it, the world may very well be at our fingertips.

Within this endless string of code is access to Mr. President's morning speech in the click of a button, a dissertation on the mechanics of the Quantum Theory by Mr. Einstein himself, detailed step-by-step instructions on how to clean the stove, and live connection to your friend who lives in Prague. And through the blog, we can bounce off of one another, triggering the evolution of new ideas and initiating grand, or even small epiphanies. What an age we live in.

To those of you who have bravely {yes, bravely} endeavored to spill your thoughts onto the page of your blog for all the world to see, I thank you. You enlighten me. Constantly. And to those of you who take a moment from the mayhem of life to read what I have to say, I thank you as well.

Window to the Soul

Who am I?

To attempt to define “me” in one lifetime, much less one sitting is nearly {and even comically} impossible. For even I hardly know yet. Who I am is a very volatile, ever-changing term. I’m unpredictable, even to myself. And aren't we all, in our own way?

Perhaps a portion of our self-definition lies in our relationship with others. Whether or not they realize it, every individual helps make up, and influences the sum of, the incalculable mass – the convoluted whole. We lead lives that are solely our own, yet constantly cross paths with one another - and are interconnected in intimate and distant ways. But I wonder if the common, chance happenings may have more significance than we realize - or, perhaps, could have more significance if we did realize.

Isn't it funny how

(And I daresay I am the least of those immune to such an oversight) we are so prone to make hasty judgments based upon the first few words we hear spill out of the mouth of a stranger? This person has a lifetime behind them – an entire life thick with the layers of experience. Perhaps they have known cruel pain, unimaginable joy, possess enviable talent, have undergone disheartening trials, and have ventured to dream of things not yet known possible. Perhaps this person is passionate about something that you love, or knows exactly what you are going through when you thought nobody did. Within the eyes of this stranger lie the shades of maybe’s and what if’s, yet when you overheard him express his distaste for your favorite band, you instantly assumed him to be far from your "type" of friend. I wonder what one would see in me.

To one I may be:

The girl next door. the ward pianist. the small-town dreamer.

the 1100th BYU student. the oldest of four.

another statistic.

But beneath the surface there is so much more. If one paid really close attention, perhaps they would see a girl who can’t walk past a bookstore without going in. Perhaps they would see a girl who has bookmarked the site for airline prices from Salt Lake City to London on her work computer, when her gas tank is usually running on empty. Perhaps they would notice that from time to time she accidentally slips into French phrases. Perhaps they might see a girl who prefers walking everywhere she goes, and can't stand the constraint of conformity, for she will never fit in a box. Perhaps they would notice her slight obsession with photography blogs and how cooking is her remedy for a long day at work and school.

Perhaps they would be surprised to see a girl who can have really bad hair days and can get lost on her way to a destination she's been to a million times. They might be astounded at how she can get teary-eyed over the smallest things.

Perhaps they would see a girl who dances and sings when she thinks she is alone, who smiles the most when she's with her sisters and can't stay away from home for too long. Perhaps they would see a girl whose mind is always teeming with new ideas and brilliantly insane schemes. They would see a girl who fanatically pens her musings and dreams in her favorite little notebook, venturing to wonder if one day they will come alive on the page.

I would hope that they might see a girl who gives to others when she thinks nobody is watching, who loves the Lord with every ounce of her being.

But then there are layers deeper than that – far deeper than the eye can see.

They are the layers that each person holds close - the layers that truly define a person. They are rarely exposed to the world, yet within them lies the source of our humanity. They are what brought Mother Teresa to the streets of India, what sent Martin Luther King to face mad men with bold articulation. They are what guided the strokes of Michelangelo's paintbrush, and the genius behind Aristotle's mind.

We all have a story to tell and it is what defines us. Maybe one day we will look into the eye of that stranger and truly see what an incredible life they have lived and look to them in amazement for what they have become and what they are.

little letters series: dear reader

page one is always the most exciting and terrifying to mar with the ink of my impetuous hand. within these first crisp, white blank spaces before me, at the head of so many blank pages, so much unmarked terrain,

i pause.

what, dear reader, do you wish to hear tell? what portion of knowledge, what mode of perception can i ascribe to you in the telling of a tale - my tale?

my filled notebooks have, at times, satisfied their purpose as a mirror of my thoughts at many specific moments. they carried my secrets, those unfrequented ruminations that belonged only to me. absent from all exteriors were the confidantes to whom i mouthed the secrets that would have a cynic dropping his pretenses in a need to know more, an intrigue that cannot be stifled. i carefully spun my string of austerity behind the closed doors of my worlds.

i hold that secrets should be kept. yet, i also hold that they should be probed, examined and, as these soon-to-be-filled web pages will denote, articulated.

and so. this, this portion of my words is going above ground, to be exposed to the light and oil of third-party fingerprints, as i relate to none but my readers, all my secrets.

here i confess with a lowered voice and quivering lips all i dare not whisper aloud.

lean your ear closer, reader, and i will tell you all.

© 2008 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved.