When it comes to religion* (or a lack thereof), there are two very important ideas that I simply can never accept. The first is that God - a god, any god - exists somewhere. The second idea is that a god does not exist. Both of these concepts are equally absurd to me, and being stuck in the middle - having neither belief nor non-belief - is just so darn awkward and unsettling.

Also, when I say the idea of God existing/not existing is absurd to me, I don't mean it in a scientific/theological way at all. That is a whole different matter. This one is entirely personal.

If I were to pray, would I honestly feel like someone was listening? That is what this is like. Years of Bible study never made me feel any less alone while praying.

*I apologize for another post about religion, especially since my thoughts on the matter are always poorly written and unpoetic.

Whenever I have biology homework, I do everything in the world to avoid it. This list is one of the ways I avoided reading about the respiratory system tonight. These are, in my opinion, the 50 loveliest songs of all time.

1. The Geese of Beverly Road - The National
   
2. Go Long - Joanna Newsom
3. Graceland - Paul Simon
4. Into the Stream - The Tallest Man on Earth
5. Dakota - Bradley Hathaway
6. The Sea and the Rhythm - Iron & Wine
7. Song For a Lover of Long Ago - Justin Vernon
8. Relief - Chris Garneau
9. Caravan - Van Morrison
10. You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go - Bob Dylan
11. Blindsided - Bon Iver
12. Winged Spirit - Tall Tales And The Silver Lining
13. Mary - Bradley Hathaway
14. Val Jester - The National
15. Sleeper 1972 - Manchester Orchestra
16. I Feel it All - Feist
17. Jersey - Mayday Parade
18. Woman at the Well - Sufjan Stevens
19. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Bob Dylan
20. Carry Me Ohio - Sun Kil Moon
21. Oh My Sweet Carolina - Ryan Adams
22. New Storms for Old Lovers - La Dispute
23. Safe Travels - Peter and the Wolf
24. Leaving Green Sleeves - Leonard Cohen
25. All I Need - Radiohead
26. Coffee - Entire Cities
27. Lord I Hope This Day is Good - Don Williams
28. By and By - Lay Low
29. We Looked Like Giants - Death Cab For Cutie
30. Comptine d'un autre été - Yann Tiersen
31. On the Beach - Neil Young
32. Re:stacks - Bon Iver
33. Inch of Dust - Future Islands
34. Silent Signs - DeYarmond Edison
35. These Old Shoes - Deer Tick
36. Fur Elise - Mozart
37. Oh Comely - Neutral Milk Hotel
38. America - Simon & Garfunkel
39. Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding
40. Only Skin - Joanna Newsom
41. The Weight of Lies - The Avett Brothers
42. Up on Cripple Creek - The Band
43. Give a Little Love - Noah and the Whale
44. Sore - Annuals
45. Tea for the Tillerman - Cat Stevens
46. Little Girl - Robert Francis
47. Walk Little Dolly - Dionne Warwick
48. Of Angels and Angles - the Decemberists
49. In These Arms - The Swell Season
50. Angelika - Devendra Banhart

:)

I know it's probably wrong to hold a grudge against a certain religion because of my experiences with it, but right now I can't seem to separate the two. I know good things happened when I was a Christian, and I met so many good people, too, but that doesn't seem to matter now. Now whenever I think about Christianity, all I can think about is oppression, intolerance, bribery, and fear. I know I'm being unfair, but I just can't help it.

"It was late, and we were tired.

We assumed there would be other nights.

Anna's breathing started to slow, but I still wanted to talk.

She rolled onto her side.

I said, I want to tell you something.

She said, You can tell me tomorrow.

I had never told her how much I loved her.

She was my sister.

We slept in the same bed.

There was never a right time to say it.

It was always unnecessary.

The books in my father's shed were sighing.

The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing.

I thought about waking her.

But it was unnecessary.

There would be other nights.

And how can you say I love you to someone you love?

I rolled over on my side and fell asleep next to her.

Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.

It's always necessary.

I love you,

Grandma"

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

raisons d'être:

An Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close inspired list!

• Books
  
• "la possibilité de créer"
• Beauty, though that covers nearly everything on this list
  
• Love, since I'm being obvious
  
• Mary, Paul, Arthur, Sassy, and Sary
  
• Music
  
• Teachers
  
• My creek
• Sharing Milkshakes
  
• God, whoever He is
• My best friend, Hallie
  
• My Micah
• People
• Empty notebooks
• Full notebooks
  
• Mrs. Tucker. my favorite Sunday school teacher
  
• The ocean
• Travel
• Victoria Dawn Tesh
  
• The plays of Tennessee Williams
  
• Trips to Goodwill with Hallie
  
• North Carolina
• My 8th grade English teacher
  
• Anything that's warm: sunshine, mittens, blankets, people
  
• Cream puffs
• Oxford commas
  
• Going for rides in Baby Blue
• Waiting at stoplights in Baby Blue :)
  
• Banjos
  
• Humanism
• Larry, my favorite bus driver
• His one tooth
• Woody Allen movies
  
• The Aristocats
• Smiley strangers
• Searching for books at thrift stores with Micah
  
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Shoals Elementary School
  
• Death
• Poetry
  
• All-nighters
• The National's "Alligator"
  
• Future combined book collections
  
• My mother

"I still see you inside of this god awful house. You move awfully quiet now. And I still feel you everywhere."

These Things Were Lost

A "found" poem

Water and earth,
the good sky over it.
These things were lost,
and Ma smiled sadly.
Secret gardening in the evenings,
water carried in a rusty can:
leave the weeds around the edge;
leave some big weeds.
Cars rolling over the highways,
rattlesnakes,
the feral hunger,
the gnawing, tearing hunger.
And Ma smiled sadly.

Days to Shape the Days Upon

"Trousers rolled to the knee but still they got wet. They tied the rope to a cleat at the rear of the boat and rowed back across the lake, jerking the stump slowly behind them. By then it was already evening. Just the slow periodic rack and shuffle of the oarlocks. The lake dark glass and windowlights coming on along the shore. A radio somewhere. Neither of them had spoken a word. This was the perfect day of childhood. This is the day to shape the days upon."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Road

I know nobody would ever read all of this, but here is a list of days I never want to forget about. My future self will be very thankful for this one day. :)

• The day Hallie and I went shopping together for the first time and bought Pocahontas and Snow White barbies from the Disney store. That was the day I wore a yellow and blue polka dotted "Idiot Box" shirt and we tried on silly hats. They were the Red Hat Club ones. An old lady took a picture of us wearing them.
• The day I spent all day on my sofa reading Into The Wild. It was my summer reading project. That was the day I fell in love with reading.
• The day I saw The Rocket Summer live for the first time. Hallie and I stood outside all day waiting. I had to push her over the barricade during the second band because the crowd was too rough. I think that was also the day we became good friends with Shacana and Liz. I met Bryce Avary and said goodbye to him way too many times.
• The day I spent all day at the Greensboro airport reading and writing down the conversations of people. It was rainy and I was sad, but I still felt happy in a heavy way. I drank so much mocha from one of those $1 coffee machines. I said goodbye to a person I had needed to say goodbye to for a long time.
• The day I was fishing with my grandparents and my dad and our boat flooded. We were on my grandpa's fishing boat, out in the ocean, not far from a little island, and a huge speedboat flew by us and filled our boat with water. It started to sink, so we had to take buckets and empty all the water out of the boat. It was so salty. We never even caught any fish.
• The day my mother drove Hallie and I to Virginia to see Bradley Hathaway. It was Autumn, and I accidentally hit the "avoid highways" button when I got our directions. So we drove for hours on back roads, probably blaring awful music and giggling. Some of the roads we went on weren't even paved. Our drive took forever, but it was so wonderful, and seeing Bradley is always the best.
• All the days I spent at Livin' Lattes with friends. The one on Main street and the one behind Wendys in Pilot Mountain. Hallie and I would always sit outside and giggle and wait for people to approach us. The only band we ever really watched was ACSUF, but it all seems so lovely in hindsight.
• The day I spent walking through Kernersville with Victoria. We went to a craft store and a dollar store. I found a book of all of Paul Simon's lyrics, and we bought Obama socks. Shane picked us up after that and we went to see a play at her school.
• The day my mother heard rumors about the Wal-Mart in Galax being better than the one in Mount Airy and decided we should go to that one instead. Our drive there lasted an hour, but it was Autumn and everything was beautiful, the mountains and the highway. Once we got there, the Wal-Mart wasn't any different; the prices were even the same, but neither of us regretted going at all.
• The day we got book orders back in second grade. Of course, I don't remember what day it was, but my mother somehow placed an order without me knowing, so every thing my teacher gave me was a surprise. Book orders were the light of my life in Elementary school. I remember there being Clifford-shaped erasers. I know know they're a strange thing to feel fondly about, but I think I've always loved erasers because they remind me of that day and my mother and book orders. I also remember my dad picking me up early that same day and us driving to West Virginia to see my grandmother. I kept falling asleep, and I hated when I fell asleep in his truck when we were going somewhere. He knew I hated it, too, so whenever I woke up, he'd laugh and say, "have a nice nap, Taterhead?"
• The day Micah drove from Ohio to my house to spend a week with me last summer. I met him at McDonalds because I didn't want him to get lost trying to find my house. There was a thunderstorm that evening, and our power was out. It stayed out for most of the night, and whenever it would flicker back on, Paul Simon's Graceland would play from the little tape player beside my bed. That night was the beginning of one of my favorite weeks of all time.
• The day I was riding home from school on Larry's bus, number 134, and started reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut. I fell in love with that book and Vonnegut and bus rides and compassion and people all over again.
• The week (sorry, parallelism) Victoria and I spent at the ocean with her dad. That was the week I experienced freedom for the first time. We spent all of our days walking on the pier, buying huge lollipops from gift shops, making sure my rubber rat and her rubber lizard had a proper wedding, harassing people in arcades, and watching Billy Graham on TV at night. We were convinced all of his messages were sent from God just for us. We would make up silly stories as we were falling asleep, and none of them would be funny until the next day. Her dad didn't care what we did, so we did what we wanted, even if we got in trouble for it from adults who were not fans of our antics. That will always be one of the best weeks of my life, and I will always think of the ocean as mine and Victoria's place.
• The Christmas Eve my Nanny and I decided to find a church Christmas program to go to. I don't remember how old I was, but I blew my first bubblegum bubble that night. My parents took a picture of it and I looked at it in the mirror. I felt so accomplished. We went to a little baptist church a few miles from my house for the program; it was one I had never been to before. I remember children singing, and we both got brown paper sacks filled with fruit and candy and walnuts afterwards. I got to open one gift when I got home that night. It was the Barbie I wanted, the Barbie that baked real strawberry cakes. It will always be my favorite Christmas eve.
• The day Liz and I drove for four hours to Murfreesboro to see Bradley Hathaway and Backseat Goodbye. It was the longest drive ever, but we talked and laughed and ate Slim Jims the whole time, and it flew by. The town had no cell phone service, and only two other people showed up. Bradley sat and talked with us on the sidewalk and played us the songs we liked most. We only had light from street lamps. We took pictures in the grass and our "friend" Zach gave me a tattoo with salt and ice. The rest of the evening we sat outside and laughed and talked with Chad and Lauren. They snuck us into the venue and I rapped the traffic for them. It was a beautiful night.
• The last sunday Micah and I woke up early to go to church. We drove to church together, listened to the sermon, came home, and sat on the kitchen floor together for a long time just because nobody else was home and we could. After that his mama had made chicken casserole, so we went to another lady's home and ate with two families of people. There was lemonade in pretty glasses and macaroni and cheese. We had cherry pie for desert. After that everyone sat on the sofas and watched football. It was normal for a sunday, but it was the most dreamy and surreal day in the world.

There will be more.