Sleepless In McMinnville

I can't sleep and I feel the dawn approaching quickly. I lay here in the dark listening to the sound of my feet shuffling in and out of my blankets. The nights are the most lonliest time; theres no one awake to talk you down from this insomniac state and the only thing willing to keep you company are the whitewash walls starring back you shadowed by streetlamp light and tree branches. My computer rests on my carpet and I hang half my body over the edge of my bed typing away the seconds. My hands look old in this faint light and I watch them as they sluggishly move across the keyboard. I wonder how many more sleepless nights this summer will bring me fore many have already come in the passing months.
Today I sat outside in a small field behind my house on a stump in the middle of a bushel of wildflowers. The breeze was cool and the bee's were friendly. I took the time to write a letter, not that letter writting is any sort of a favorite past time of mine, but it gave me something to do. I wrote to a friend that I miss dearly, one I haven't seen in countless days and one I won't see for countless more. I told them about the weather, how warm the sun was on my bare feet, and about how absolutley cloudless the sky was. I told them about the grass...oh how sweet it smelled, as if the very essence of summer rested in it's ability to smell as sweet as it did. I could here tennis players passing the ball back and forth at the campus nearby and I told my friend about that too; about how the ball popped everytime it slammed into the opponents racket --- pop pop skid pop. The skidding of their tennis shoes across the cement seemed to echo more than the popping ball but I didn't mind. I told them about the relationship between the gusting breeze and my loose strands of hair as they were pushed across my cheek every few seconds despite my avid tucking of them behind my shoulders; I didn't mind that either. I told them about the thorns from a neighboring rose bush that made quick friends with my elbow. It's scrapings left little white marks on my arm and a few holes in my sleeve but I didn't seem to mind that much either. Nothing could take me away from that moment, alone in a field watching wildflowers dance in the summer sun, doing what I love doing the most...writting.
The rest of the day didn't prove too eventful and the time before that wasn't anything worth boasting either, but the hour I spent away from the world made the day all seem worth it; maybe even worth this sleepless night.
-Toby K.

Writers Write

As of late, I have been flushed with literature inspiration. Novel ideas, segmented sentences, fluid rhymes, have all flowed through my brainwaves crashing into my skull and then retreating with the tide. In a days time, with all my thought's, I find myself, in one moment, looking out from the tallest tower in a castle from a land far far away, then in the next, I'm smelling freshly cut grass from a field that stretches out past my 19th century home. Rather than pulling out a pencil and scratch-piece of paper to write down these rivers of fiction styles, I store them. They begin by resting in the back of my head, making home with other melancholy thoughts, and then begin to move slowly through my blood stream till they've made permanent residence among my bones and arteries. Someday they will be made into ink and be stamped on pages tied and bound with a funky black and white cliche cover of a tree resting over a riverbed or of a sunset in the August afternoon; but for now they will remain imbeded in my flesh, creating in me a charcter and personality that can only be described through words.
-Toby K.

Through The Fishermans Eyes A Destiny Revealed

Tonight I feel like jumping feet first into some film playing on the wide screen of darkblue plastered over us this evening. I'm watching through my window past the clouds as it turns from blue to grey to black within the inch-wide openings between my blinds. I reach for a piece of chocolate and lay it on my tongue, I let it melt against the roof of my mouth and nibble on the crunchy caramel it has hidden inside. I lay my head back and reminisce over a dream I had the night before.
It was about a man, a fisherman I think, raised in a time long before now. He was asked by God to perform an act but because of his fear and rebellion he denied God's request. The conviction fell over him, heavy like a brick and itchy like wool. God raised up a bible in the mans hands and led him in reading scriptures. The man began to weap as he followed the Lord's finger across the page. The passage he read said if he were to follow God's commands he would recieve great blessings, many in the form of his family's salvation. It was then that I remembered his family just as he did. They proclaimed Christianity but were not living for God; and the man wept harder as he remembered. The word that came jumping from the page in almost every line was the word radical. His family would be radical for God if he would only listen. I then opened my eyes, no longer looking through his, but rather at my gold colored pillow below me. The subject of my family being saved has been one on my heart for a while now and I think it's long over do.
Lord I will follow your commands, I will listen to your word, I will share your Gospel, I will be your humble and loyal servant.
I will follow the examples of men like Ebed-Melech and be guided by the light of the Lord.
Jeremiah 39:18
-Toby K.

Sophies Lullaby

Daft is what I say.
Daft plays silly in the rain.
Daft does not yell or strike,
But looks beyond hell and strife.
Daft makes music with the breeze.
Singing lullaby's with the bee's.
Daft makes gentle, tough and kind,
taking hands in childs mind.
Daft dances the jitterbugs jig,
eating sweetly the tree's fresh fig.
Daft rest's sleeply on a slumbered rock,
mixing earth with righteous talk.
Taking new a day in time,
there goes daft, oh child of mine.

A Winding Path Leading Towards A Mighty Sea

I'm facing the winds. Starring straight towards them. I will never give up, not after the dust slaps my face and not after the debree begins to bruise my body. I will not stand down, turn aside, or crouch away in fear. I am stronger than any winds you could throw at me. Stonger than any storm you could put me in. Looking up into the eye of the storm, the winds a cyclone around me, I do not fear what comes next, a fight I will endure to stay grounded, because nothing is stronger than what I have. I have the King of all Kings, mighter than Zeus, more powerful than Posideon, more cunning than Hermes. My God is the only God. My God is the only Lord, the only Savior, the only Redeemer.

I realized today that it is not until you are in the eye of the storm, when facing you is the worst to come, that there is a peace knowing that you are halfway done. Halfway between life and death. Halfway between sanity and insanity. Halfway to knowing what lies outside this spinning vortex that has you blocked in every direction. I'm in this spot. Where the world seems to be the quietest, but if I move in any direction I can hear the screams and pains of my soul. Like crippled bodies reaching from the depths of a rolling sea is the hell that incompasses the mere mortal who dare defy God's will. The choice is ours. To listen and be heard, or to deny and be condemned. Which path do you choose? Both are rocky, long, and treturous, but niether lead towards the same dirrection, both take you far off in opposite ways. But even on the path to no where are there detours leading back to the path to somewhere. No matter how many mistakes. No matter how many flaws. No matter how many setbacks, there is one answer and one answer only. That is to listen and be heard, to call and be set free, to ask and be forgiven.

I am far down the path leading to no where, but I've come to a cross roads and I know which path I'm taking.

Pit-Stain Professor.

The day had gone by slow. Long and drawn out my attention had since evaported with the morning dew. After my morning classes I walked into English, pulled out my chair from the desk and sat 2nd row, right of the professor. The class had already shuffled in and every desk surrounding me was empty. I was like an island. I watched my teacher as he delved into his theories and analysis of the current novel in discussion. His perception fell short of my eager anticipation of conversation and again my attention was lost. Watching as my Professor stretched his arm out over the class as he continued to explain through chapters, I couldn't help but notice the giant pit-stain under his arm. As hard as I tried my eyes would not veer from the stain that seemed to grow as seconds passed. I scrounged my eyes through papers and other belongings that fell onto my desk out of my black leather bag but still they found their way back to his underarm. It seemed to mock us with each outstretch of his arm. He wore a pink plaid button down, cuffed mid fore-arm and unbuttoned showing the tips of his clavicals. His pants proved more of a contrast, dark and khaki, ending at shoes dark brown and rounded. Still as I watched his foot tap against the floor with each new theory my eyes continued to heed the giant stain. I watched other eyes through the class and wondered if they as well noticed the smuged eyesore but they proved too captivated by the dialogue. The entirety of the class consisted of me trying to advert my eyes from menacing mark under my professors bicep. It was a long and vigorous day in English class to say the least.

Victoria's Garden

It feels as if I have not blogged in ages. That is probably because I haven't. I haven't had the slightest inclination that I should blog, and with my constantly expanding schedule I have not had the time to sit infront of my computer and annotate my life as of late. I am excited to finally have time and inspiration for this blog, more so the time because I have no concrete focus for this blog. I will but let the keyboard take me along with it's square-shaped wind's desire.
Let's start from where I left off, before that let me pull out the history book because it seems so long ago that I last wrote anything. It is so long ago that I don't eve recall what my last blog was about. Let us see, did I tell you about my internship at the Birthing Center at Willamette? Well I was honored to see a C-section in the early morning and a live birth in the latter part of my day. Yesturday I began my second rotation at the hospital in the ER and saw was seemed to be a million IV's done and lounged around for most of the six hours I was there with the slow inflow of patients and the inactive atmosphere of the ER. The clocked went by slower that it has ever before. I felt as if I was done after two hours and once we hit four I knew they had lost me and my focus. I'm hoping Monday, when I return to finish the last of my twelve hours that I will be able to see more exciting things, and actually leave the ER intrigued and with the feeling of accomplishment, because as of right now both those things are void.
I have recently discovered that my braces do not like hard sprinkles. None of them have broken but the sprinkles get stuck inbetween each and every one of my braces, so after finishing off a bowl of vanilla ice-cream with a topping of sprinkles I am forced to wash my mouth out, swishing until every last sprinkle is unharnessed from the prision guards residing in my mouth, better known as braces.
As of late my confidence has been completley diminished and I've found it hard to cope with that. On Wednesday night one of my good friends Nikki approached me and told me that she has been thinking about my lack of self confidence and things in accordance with that, and she told me that it was a demonic assualt. She gave me much needed advice that proved to be most successful. All of what she said really struck a cord in me but one line (or stanza) in peticular stood out to. She told me that because we are children of God we are like royalty in God's eyes. That we are his bride, that "you are like a princess" she said. That one phrase made me feel like a four year old indulging in one big fairytale. But it was true and I think that's why it made me feel so giddy. When we are little we dress up like fairy's and dance at the ball around our room, arms wound around the giant teddy bear or tiger always with a Mister in front of his name, and we pretend that we are royalty, that some day we would have a dress like Diana's or a garden like Victoria's. And after Nikki left, while praying about this demon and casting it off, I thought about how we are royalty, and someday we will dance in Heaven, twirl in elegant dresses, and pick flowers from the most beautiful garden you have ever seen. That is just one tiny part of Heaven and I can hardly wait.
-Toby K.