out of the box

Look at this picture, and tell me what you see. A whole world can be seen in such a box. It has lived in the bottom right corner of my closet for several years now, hiding its treasure and biding its time, until a fateful day last week when I released it from the prison-closet and let out all the dust.

I said in my last blog I was going through everything I owned. All of my worldly possessions, examined on the bedroom floor. So here's a start.

Within this box I hold several pieces of my childhood. Some of them cherished, some unwanted, some simply strange. I will make more posts like this later, with other of the 144 pictures I took during my spring break full of cleaning and scavenging.


Here is a doll, well-used and dirty. She has a hat to match her frock, and I found it later. This doll fascinated me as a little girl. I never named her. I don't actually remember playing with her, I only remember starting at her strangely perfect features.


A beloved book, which later led to a beloved movie and a beloved musician. They made a movie out of this, a cartoon called "Really Rosie." All the music was done by Carole King. During the time that we lived in West Seattle I would get the movie from the library every other week, which is probably as often as they would allow it, and I would watch it and sing along. To say I drove my family up the wall would be an understatement, as there was a long period where they forbade me to watch it at all.


Back when the Seattle Mariners still played in the Kingdome, my family would spend many weekends sitting on cold, cement benches watching the game from afar. My two brothers and I each got this shirt, and wore them faithfully. However, being 6 years old (or 7, I can't quite remember) the shirt went down past my knees. I faithfully wore it to bed for many years. Anyone know how much this thing would go for on eBay? (if it would go for anything at all...?)

This box was also home to a stuffed toy dog, an ancient comic puzzle, a flannel nightgown made by my aunt, some ludicrous paper dolls and many beloved childhood books. It would take a lifetime to explain them all.

But I will promise this: I will talk about books. I will show you books and talk about them and by golly if I had them with me I would record myself reading them aloud. And I will show you pictures and read you poems, and you will see me finding myself a million times over.

The Process (part 1)

So much of this blog is based on loss, a greater sense of emptiness than forgetfulness. But I've never really touched on the concept of losing something on purpose. You might not think it's possible.

But it is. I'm doing it right now. I've spent the last two days at home going through all my... stuff. All my crap. All my life. Some people's lives can be identified and remembered in diaries and photographs and shared songs. You listen to an old mixed CD and hear laughter within the music, you see a road trip. You relive memories in pictures and scribbled gossip.

My life is recognized in all of these, as expected, yet there is so much more that I find to be part of my life as well. As an artist, I have probably drawn and painted and sketched thousands of pictures. And yes, I have also made things out of clay and fabric and noodles. But I am most defined by what is on paper. Today I went through a portfolio box of drawings, some made by my brothers before I was even born. I drew a farm being attacked by a giant chicken, and an Iroquois Indian Chief standing with his daughter. I painted a mountain landscape in three different color schemes. I sketched a teapot. And then I filed through several notebooks, filled with old poems and prayers and "note to self"s.

I took pictures of a lot of things. And when that was over, I went through everything a second time, and more than half of it it now resides in the recycling bin in the garage.

I am choosing what I want to remember. I am disregarding the parts of myself that are too blatantly selfish or bitter or ignorant, the pieces of Katie that didn't listen to God and the thoughts I held onto which had no merit.

You might wonder why exactly I'm doing this. Why the sudden need to purge myself of drawings I made in 1997? Why am I ripping apart a notebook from 9th grade?

Because in 113 days I'm going to be married and I do not have the physical room for all these objects, nor do I have the mental space to hold all the memories attached to them.

And that was just today. I went through Barbies yesterday. (all but one of which will be sold at a garage sale this summer.) Tomorrow... books.

come on come on come on

I find airports are entirely too transitional. Something should be normal, like a trip home, and yet I feel like I'm standing at the precipice of some large and tiresome adventure. (maybe that's because of the invasive secruity check-in and the fact that I've already been here for 3.5 hours.)
It's just home. And only for 10 days. But perhaps I will surprise myself, and be intrepid. Or perhaps something intrepid is about to find me.

separate houses

moment of truth. so this is leaving a life of dependency. i find myself seeing the old me in new colors. we can be happy in separate houses of happiness. paint the walls whatever we want and still be neighbors. this is understanding. this is the purest thing i can think of. i don't know how i didn't see, don't know why i let it tie me down. i have found the answer, and i am freeing myself with it.

yet to come

There's something aggravating about change--aside from the fact that it often causes one to spin in circles and pull out hair. When a change comes, you can feel it pretty intensely. As Doris from The Owl and the Pussycat would say, "I find it enervating." Not always. Some change is good. And when it's good you want to share it with the world. When it's bad sometimes you also want to share it with the world, but with a different response.

Here's the problem: you can never own your change. It does not belong to you. You can express yourself a thousand ways and feel the change moving your world, you can let the experience influence everything around you. But it's not yours. And do you want to know why?

It's because it didn't happen to you first.

I'm getting married in 4 months and 1 week. This is exciting! Right? I mean, it's not every day that people get... oh. Right. People get married all the time. Not a big deal to most people--especially people who are jaded by bad past relationships.

Another example: I just got a credit card. In order for wedding planning to go easier, and to make it home for spring break, I applied for an Alaska Airlines card. My parents have had one for many years and after a few weeks of deliberation I filled out the form, and was approved less than 24-hours later. The desire to post it as my Facebook status was almost unbearable. "Hello entire-social-network! I have a credit card! I'm going to buy things with it and hate myself for it later!" This is not exciting. It is, because it's another step into adulthood. But I know plenty of people younger than me who have had credit cards for years, and for reasons not nearly as good as mine.

Change is also not exclusive. Yes, there is empathy. But empathy only goes so far. You know who is most excited about babies? Pregnant people, or people trying to get pregnant. The people who are most excited about new haircuts, are the people sitting in salon chairs. The people feeling most overwhelmed by doctorate programs, are the people who are about to get a "PhD" next to their name.

And people most thrilled to be planning a wedding, are the people who are about to get married, tie the knot, etc.

Yes, someday, I will stop mentioning the wedding in every blog post. I know that I'm not the first person to get married. But for now, I am excited, and while this change is not exclusive to me or exciting to everyone else I am going to take full advantage of these happy feelings.

Tuuuurn and face the change, ch-ch-changes...

How could you be so impartial

We had a blizzard last week. The entire world has probably not realized this, due to the many desserts the Earth employs and the oceans where other sorts of natural catastrophes occur, but Illinois actually has the capability of declaring a "state of disaster" after a blizzard. School was closed for 2.5 days and the campus as covered in several feet of crappy, non-packing, anti-snowman white stuff.

Now, I don't know about you, but this is a memorable thing. And I wish I could say it was memorable simply because I built a snowman that mistakenly had female body parts, and because the Saturday after I went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens and they were glorious, and because I watched a lot of movies and drank a lot of hot chocolate and took a lot of naps. However, this is not the case.

Things happen in a blizzard. Conversations, mostly, if you're trapped on-campus. And most of these conversations I will not relay to you, for privacy's sake.

But I can say that I thought a lot about marriage, and relationships, and love. Two days ago I was sitting at the computer watching the post-blizzard snow fall softly onto the already 10' high hills of plowed grossness. My heart was suddenly burdened by a whole nature of love-ly things. Friends who have perhaps chosen badly, or have chosen well but act badly. I thought about my relationship with Joseph and the impending date of our wedding.

I had an epiphany in the snow-sighted moment: 4 1/2 months is not a long time. That's how long I have left of my unmarried life. In the brought spectrum of my existence, whether it be just these 22.5 years or if I live to be 80, 4 1/2 months is a tiny speck in which to fulfill any so-called "last requests" and to get all my prideful independence (as opposed to the normal independence) out of my system.

I'm not married yet. So I don't have some universal wisdom for you. I haven't yet experienced any marital adventures. But I know what love is, and what it's supposed to look like, and what it's not supposed to look like.

So here is my plea:
If you love each other, make it unbending love. Don't let it swerve in the face of conflict or misunderstanding.
If you love other, speak to each other. Don't say just what you want to say, but what the other person needs to hear. Be unselfish with your words, don't hold back just because you don't want the other person to "feel bad."
If you love each other, hold each other up in a moment of weakness, even if it's emotional weakness or a lifelong struggle that won't cease just because of your love. Comfort the other even if it seems ineffective.
If you love each other, take care of each other. Not because you will be taken care of in return but because your own contentment relies on the other person's well-being.
If you love each other, be willing to sacrifice anything and everything.
I did not say "sacrifice anything and everything."
Be willing.
Not willful.
WILLING.

crystal white winters that melt into spring

I've been counting down the days with faithful devotion, watching November become December and each week pass me by with even more fleeting madness than the last. I have always been enraptured by time and how I can watch it go quickly or feel it trickle away like something slow and sticky that has been spilled unnoticed.

Six days, 21 hours and 52 minutes from now someone very special will be waiting in the baggage claim at the SeaTac airport. He will see me coming down the escalator and we won't be able to stop smiling once our eyes meet. I'll drop my giant backpack, and he'll pick me up and spin me around. We'll kiss. The year will progress, and finish, and turn into the new year, and I will be one month closer to marrying my best friend.

I cannot wait to go home.