Through My Eyes: A Journal

By Liz Root

Contact Liz by emailing her at liz@vagrantcafe.com

Click here for weekly archives

12/20/2001
i look in the mirror. i see an imperfect complection, imperfect teeth, and tired eyes. i then spend time with God. i thank him for who he is. i worship him. not because i feel like it, but because he is worthy. i look in the mirror. i see eyes that don't only see, but have vision. i see a face that glows with a beauty that can only be given from the Lord. i see a mouth that not only speaks, but speaks life.

***

plain face. straightened black hair. black eyes. mirror. beauty.
i cannot stare at myself too long in the mirror for fear i may discover something about myself i didn't want to know.
the mirror doesn't lie.
the mirror's job is to tell the truth.
it's our influenced eyes that lie.
it's our eyes which see things that aren't there.
which erase that which is.

you see, when you fall in love with me, you fall in love with these imperfections. with the awkward feet and hands, the scars, the bitten nails (i've tried to stop), the ankles that crack, the eyes that tend to stare at nothing for unusual amounts of time.
of course...that's *when* you fall in love with me.
when? i don't know.
you? whoever you are.
and when i fall in love with you, you will have your imperfections as well.
whatever they may be. but beyond all of them, there will be *you*.
there will be you and me and our pile of things which will be done away with on the other side, but which we will put up with for the time being.
there will be you and me.
you and me.
us.

"it's never quite what it seems."
-over the rhine
- liz r. - 12/20/2001

12/19/2001
there's a certain post i'd like to delete and can't and it's driving up the wall. i highly doubt the person it's about would read it, but the fact is that i hadn't given much thought to the written about person in awhile, and then because of one stupid thing, i let it get to me, and get to me waaaay too much. and i just don't want that publicized i guess. guh.
- liz r. - 12/19/2001

12/17/2001
(this could be long)

first thing. i need a job. i have enough to last me a few more weeks, but that's if i don't pay any bills. guh. something will work out i'm sure. i've got a few plans rolling around in my head.

i had some stuff i wanted to say here all typed up nice and on a disk, but i forgot it, so i'll just type it from memory, even though it probably won't come out how i want it to come out.

a friend emailed me the other day and brought up an interesting point. he was talking about how most conversation centers around three different categories, which also work as levels. First categorie/level - People. Second categorie/level - Things. Third categorie/level - Ideas. It was something he heard on npr radio from some psycologist or something. I began to see how this method of looking at conversation applies to my life, and also contemplated some of the other things he wrote about in the email. I thought about how I tend to operate at each different level.

people - this kind of conversing usually centers around what's going on with so-and-so, who's dating who, why someone is so great or horrible, etc. many times someone will be talking to me about a bunch of people, usually ones i don't know, and while i'll nod my head and say "uh-huh" a lot, i generally can't recall anything they said. unless of course, they expressed to me the importance of this person in their life one way or another. i would say i am attentive to people-oriented conversation about 50% of the time. the only time i really seem to actively participate in people-centered conversation is when the person being discussed is important in my life. otherwise, who really cares if someone i don't know is dating someone else i don't know.

things - this level i'd say is the most broad of categories, as "things" is incredibly general and covers an endless amount of topics. people will discuss anything. teeth, fish, keyboards, dishes, music, books, jewelry, jobs, vacations, cars, computers, food, clothes, and well, you get the point. just walk into a room where any two people are talking, and most likely, they'll be talking about things. what they ate for dinner friday night at the fancy restaurant, what book they're reading, what music they're listening to, etc. go into Pier 1 or something and it will be if the dishes are dishwasher safe or not. go to the juniors department at the mall, and it will be about whether or not some teenage girl's hiphugger jeans make her look fat. the level of things has the capability to keep conversation light and surfaced, but it can also lead people into talking about ideas. get people talking about books or music or movies, and a discussion of ideas is bound to happen.

ideas - where questions are asked and sometimes even answered. where opinion flourishes. where What You Think has the best place to express itself. these are the kinds of conversations you'll find at the back of a coffee house, four or five people huddled around a table, dissecting the latest Douglas Coupland book, or the newest Radiohead cd. Ideas are who we really are.

so as i began to figure out what these three levels of conversation were, i began to see why they were split into those levels. you see, ideas are who we are. things are the mode of expressing those ideas, and people are who we share the ideas and things with. if we get stuck at any one level, we isolate ourselves. we need all three. if we only talk about ideas all the time, we'll never express our ideas through art or books or music or whatever medium we choose to do so. if all we talk about are things, we'll end up completely shallow, and have nothing really important to say about anything. our lives will be those of simply collecting objects. if all we talk about are people, then we've taken away what people meant for. people were meant for sharing ourselves with, whether it's just one person or fifty. take away things and ideas and we've taken away all basis for talking to someone in the first place.

so that's the schpeil about that.

and now for the next one. (i told you this would be long.) (it's guy/relationship related)

i'm going to keep this somewhat vague because the people i'd want to talk about, some people who probably don't, but know this blog exists, could read this, so i'll try not to make it too obvious. basically, this past week i've been thinking a bit about that question a lot of single girls of relatioship-having age ask themselves often. "what do i really want/need in a guy?" i read this book "wild at heart" about a month ago maybe. it's by john eldrege, the same guy who wrote "the journey of desire" and the book kind of hit me hard as to the things that are truly important and what it means to really be a man. (of which so very few good examples exist) at the time i could only think of one person who might qualify as an example of that to me, and now, i'm finding not even him. i wouldn't say i have no examples now, i mean.. i have examples of true men, but they are either a. married, or b. live totally far away. but anyway...back to the guy who has lost his position of being a true man. you see, i thought that because he expressed those qualities to *me* that he was an example. i thought because he treated me well and had a lot of the qualities i might consider to be on my "list" of sorts, that he was my example.

so this week i began to pray and ask God what really matters. you know what? it's now how flashy the guy is, or how show-offy he appears to be, or how rescue-the-princess he is. it's about something much deeper than that. something that's incredibly difficult to verbalize although i'm sure most guys and girls reading this know what i'm talking about. it's something only the Lord can give. something that makes the man solid and steady. not easily swayed. dependent and trusting in the Lord. a real sense of who he is in God that produces a confidence so deep, it's impossible to shake. and i thought, as long as whoever i might end up with has that...all the other stuff will be taken care of.

but *then* i realized...i must be incredibly far away from being anything close to the kind of woman deserving of the kind of man i seek. which made me realize that i've got to go to God and beging to be who he is calling me to be...a woman of God, a woman secure in Him and who He's made me. a woman who is steady and determined. (i feel so weird calling myself a woman when i often still feel so completely fourteen years old.)

i guess i feel like men and women my age have lost a lot, that we've let go of some of the standards we may have once held. and if we've never had high standards before, maybe we should get some. as olympic as it might sound, i guess that if i want the best, i need to be the best, and not settle for less than the best. i refuse to live a mediocre life. and i guess if that means i'll be single until i'm forty, so be it.


- liz r. - 12/17/2001