fonts I fancy

sometimes you like things and you don't even know why.

that's how it is with fonts & me - I just can't get enough, and Lord knows where that love came from. But for as long as I can remember, I have been instantly intrigued by designs/advertisements/websites/magazines/books/etc. with good-looking, uniquely engineered, creative fonts. I also tend to feel this strange internal repulsion when faced with ugly or unoriginal typography. It matters, you know?

So for all you font-nerds, here are some links I think you'll really dig:

1) some cool free fonts you can download

2) I am actually obsessed with this company called Veer. I get their catalog in the mail, although I've never purchased anything from them (but it does make PERFECT collaging/craft material). They've got loads of fun fonts.

3) this is really fun. It's a cute little diagram that will assist you in finding a typeface for all occasions.

p.s. speaking of fonts, something is wrong when I publish my posts and my selected fonts go all screwy....it's miserable & driving me insane.

rainbow Christmas

color accent = Merry Christmas to meeeeee :)

Happy Christmas!

hope it's a cozy-comfy-wonderful-miracle-filled day!
with love,
emily

(oh and this is just another adorable picture by the adorable Ellen Picker)

no, really.

"and the moonbeams will shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair..."

this is absolutely my favorite movie scene ever.
I don't even care that Kay Jewelers took it and made it all cliche in an "every kiss begins with Kay's" commercial, or that this is potentially a zillion other people's favorite movie scene.
mmm it's just wonderful : )

just one of the many reasons I adore Leigh Anne Piercy

is that she shares my love for playing songs over and over again for extended periods of time.

For example, she would never judge me for that fact that I have this mix CD in my car and I literally can't stop playing it. Well, can't stop playing the following four songs on the mix CD. If you've driven with me in the past few weeks, you have heard these tunes on constant replay. It's gotten to the point where I know every word, every drum beat, every crescendo, every subtle nuance. ugh. I just love them so much. so. so. so. much.






from Winter Garden (get your hands on it if at all possible)

I am a book of snow,
a spacious hand, an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth and its winter.

Pablo Neruda

how poetry is teaching me the importance of being honest

(this is new. as in 20-minutes-ago new. I don't have a title yet. It is also currently writing me, not the other way around, if you can understand at all what I mean by that. and there might be a lot of drafts. and there might be a lot of tearing apart (of me, not just of the poem, if you can understand what I mean by that, too) and this poem is why I love writing - because it makes me honest with myself, and that's not an easy place to go to most of the time, but it's probably a really important place to be)

There was a floating woman

on the median of highway 29.

A cardboard sign in her palms

proclaimed she was down

on her luck, cold, hungry,

have a happy holiday,

and she smiled like a banner,

or a flag from some abandoned

nation waving in black permanent

marker. and she levitated there,


wind beneath worn brown boots

while minivans passed her, a school

bus full of prying faces,

exhaust enthralled with the details

of her cheekbones,

covering the air around her

and carving deep into her lungs

in the center of the highway.


I passed the floating woman

with the heat on full blast,

some sweet singer-songwriter voice

spewing from my car speakers,

a latte resting in my left hand


and felt heavy, the way it feels

to be underwater when things

are never seen straight,

or where you’ll scream and

the sound is wrong, or weep

and it makes no difference,

already covered in water


and I was sick to my bones,

anger from pore to

muscle to spinal cord sifting

through me, relentlessly

coursing, relentlessly coursing

and rising and filling

until I could hardly stand

to live inside myself.


and she is sloshing around

behind my eyes,

that floating woman – a ghost.


When I drive on, I think of how

I love the clouds –

all shifts and shapes of them

through the sunroof,

and I could stare at them for hours

but then pick up the phone

with a clear voice.


and I love this world too much

to stop the car

and embrace her,

the waving flag of my humanity

that is floating on exhaust wind

in the center of the highway.


and I love my fears

too much to roll the window down,

to let my life seep from me to the median

where it wants to go,

or to scream to her

in the deepest guttural howl you can imagine

the thing she might never know:


that she is the poem that I'm writing.

things people think are debatable that are actually just obvious

There are few things people often debate between because they think both options are equally desirable. The people who debate these things are, in fact, stupid.

Below is a brief list of things people like to argue between that really just have a clear-cut winner. If I've offended you in this post, I apologize. But not really because I'm an expert on everything cool so I obviously know what is better.

1) window v. aisle seat: obviously window

2) Backstreet Boys v. N'Sync: obviously N'Sync

3) fiction v. poetry: obviously poetry (kidding Cole, KIDDING.....but not really)

4) table v. booth: obviously booth (cozier)

5) chocolate v. vanilla: obviously chocolate

6) cats v. dogs: obviously dogs (surprised? Don't worry...I still love cats, but no cat could be as cool as Chance)

7) beach v. mountains: obviously beach

8) staying up late v. waking up early: obviously staying up late

9) country music v. all other types of music (including yodeling): obviously all other types of music (including yodeling).

10) Step Up or Step Up 2: the Streets: obviously Step Up 2: the Streets

11) Blogger v. Wordpress: obviously Blogger!

12) G-chat v. Skype: obviously G-chat

13) English v. science: obviously English

14) pancakes v. waffles: obviously waffles

15) Lord of the Rings v. Star Wars: obviously Lord of the Rings

16) Scarlet Takes a Tumble v. The Nervous Kid: obviously the Nervous Kid

17) coffee v. tea: obviously coffee

18) homemade v. store-bought: obviously homemade

19) Alderman v. Clemons: obviously Alderman

20) blogging v. studying: obviously blogging.


obviously.

something I love from the Adrienne Rich poetry reading I just watched

"I think that there is probably some kind of movement, certainly there was for me, from writing poems when you’re young and starting out. [Those poems]come out of your life, your subjective experience and they are in certain ways pretty enclosed in that. The movement is then the opening up to a larger and larger and larger world- being able to hear more voices than your own voice, or your own voices, because we have many voices in us. It's about hearing voices that couldn't possibly be your voices. They are around you and they enter you. I’m talking about a trajectory of a career of a poet’s development toward maturity. I think of maturity for a poet as being able to see more people in the world, not just yourself and your loved one, yourself and your father, or mother, or brother…but seeing yourself as part of a stream of human life that is various, diverse."




it's a day for Extrovert Emily

Today I am: giving a speech in the style of the Israelite prophets, performing a group dance to Whip my Hair in front of my whole class, and participating in a fiction reading where I will share a satirical story I wrote that is based on the lives of two zombies.

Oh, life. Hello, crazy-finals-nothing-makes-sense-world.


p.s. something is wrong with the fonts on Blogger. ugh.

and p.s.

my dearest friend, Zoe, posted this blurb from Wendell Berry recently and it is stunning.

(also, check our her blog. she's in Italy for the year and her pictures/thoughts are beautiful)

book suggestions?

Dear fellow book nerds,

Being home for Thanksgiving break made me REALLY SUPER EXCITED for the extra time I'll have to do fun reading over Winter break...but I need suggestions.
Any great things I need to read that you would recommend? For serious. Get at me.

literature love,
emily

these bring me loads of J-O-Y

alright, I know I do this too often...post songs I adore.
but these really do make me want to dance around the kitchen or turn up my car stereo, and they certainly make me smile. and they'll make you smile.
promise promise.






creating

Some of us are born to be Makers. We love to dream up new things, love to imagine, love to glue things together, love to paint pictures, love to shape words into stories and poems, love to pull sounds into music, love to twirl around in dance, love to explore emotions on stage, love to take moments and force them into the stillness of a photo. There are different types and ways to do it, but it is a beautiful thing - when you have a heart that desires to Create.

I think this is the first year that I've ever really thought about my creativity as a spiritual thing. Even simply to a prayer I prayed once and then wrote down because it sounded strangely profound to me, like something I should keep praying over and over again without cease. Father, take my heart to make meaningful things from the written word and do something meaningful with that.

And I think He will. I think He is.

Every desire I've ever had to make something beautiful or new has been a gift, and a big one at that. God never had to give us His ability to create brand new things. He could have held the title as the sole Creative entity in the universe if He wanted. But He didn't. He gave away his spirit and joy for making things. When I see something beautiful or awful or silly or lovely and am inspired to write about it, I am touching the heart of God. And I hope (desperately at times) that in some bizarre way, the Lord draws me closer to Himself through my creativity, that He shapes the purpose of my life through it. I hope when I'm frustrated, I look to Him. I hope that when I'm excited, I thank Him for the joy.

I create because He did first. I create because He passed that trait down to me - from Father to daughter.

this is a poem I wrote. it's kind of weird. but I kind of like it, too.

I’ve been to the top of the world,

and I’ll tell you – it’s not what

you’d imagine it to be.

I climbed up piles of dirt and ash,

got the soot of that high place

all over my eyelids,

in the crevices of my elbows

and under the bend of my tongue,

up to the point of tasting it,

up to the point of sticking my finger

in my ear and discovering all sorts

of debris there, inside my skull.

You might not believe it,

but there was fog up there.

I thought I’d see everything

ever made, you know?

Like there would be lights

twinkling and other small romantic

details I’d want to write you about

on a postcard, and I’d describe them

like I was writing a poem, and you’d

stand in your driveway reading it and

think, “gosh, I wish I was there with you,

seeing these beautiful things.”

but when I was up there, there was this fog.

The higher I hiked the more it touched

my skin, like went into it touched,

like suffocated my pores,

like I couldn’t see even my own hand waving

in front of my eyes, and it was all dark

up there. These little droplets of water

that came from God-knows-where settled

on my eyelashes, and my blue raincoat

pressed against my arm, kind of sticky feeling.

when I was up there, I thought for awhile

that maybe all the black molten waste

was something more just a tragic death

everyone calls lovely like Juliet,

but it was just black molten waste.

I couldn’t love it, that high place

because it was lonely up there.

It was steep up there,

when my foot touched the sides of the rocks

and small bits fell over the edge, I thought

of falling and I think that if I fell from up there,

I’d fall in slow-motion like movies,

and the background would fade into these

strange colors or clouds or something.

I thought about writing you

that postcard, thought about

throwing it down from the

height to see if it’d glide

straight into your mailbox,

and you’d put it on the fridge

where you’d notice it only as you

were getting out a slice of cheese

or storing away the left-over pesto pasta

you like so much.

it’d sit there underneath a magnet

they gave you for free at the grocery store,

and you’d pretend I was having the time of my life,

pretend with a little smile and picture me

dancing in a luau up on the heights of creation

when really the words I wrote you

on the postcard said

“the view isn’t so great from up here.”

hallelujahs and Harry Potter

God totally just had my Friday morning class canceled so that I would have zero reason to regret seeing the new HP movie at 3:05 am....score.

ahhh so pumped!! :)

also, has anyone ever had this thought - Everyone says the wizarding world of Harry Potter is fake, just a figment of Rowling's imagination - BUT WHAT IF WE ARE ALL MUGGLES??? We wouldn't know if it was real anyway. Maybe Rowling wrote this and is like a Squib and so she's kind of a part of the wizarding world and the muggle world, so she had could act like a normal person and publish it. and then everyone was all pissed in the wizarding world when she wrote it because she gave away all the secrets and stuff.

I mean, that's probably the real story.

ANYWAY. To all muggles and wizard/witches - happy almost-friday! Hope you don't run across any trolls or Crucio curses! and to all fellow HP dorks - see you at the theaters at the absurdly early hour of 3am.

crafts

I love craft time. There is something so soothing about it - pursuing ridiculous little projects, making colorful gifts or cards, collaging, knitting, gluing random things together, putting your heart behind a home-made present, etc. I wish I did it more often.

If I was extra-super crafty, I'd definitely make the following things:

these tissue-paper wall/ceiling pom-poms:


this incredibly adorable flower-scarf:


a purse made from a book (actually, I already have one started, just haven't gotten around to finishing it):


rings out of Legos:


envelopes made out of maps to send letters in:



these teeny-tiny books:


lovely notes to snail-mail to people I like:


a precious way to keep apples from bruising:

they just make my heart sing

here are three of my favorites, acoustic-style





Kevin Loeffler is awesome

for lots of reasons, but mostly for introducing me to the cutest video I've seen all week.

If you've ever heard this song, your reaction was probably "whhhaaaaat the whaaaaaat?", but if you watch seven-year-old MattyB's remix of it, your reaction will probably be something along the lines of "aww I want this kid to be my child."

It's that good. I'm now planning on forcing my future son into the rap business just because it would be adorable.

Two things I love best

are 1) blogging and 2) Nicaragua.

therefore, it is with extreme jumping-up-and-down excitement and joy that I introduce to you our brand-new UVA Nicaraguan Orphan Fund Blog! Such fun.
Check it out. It has info about the NOF and will be updated as frequently as possible with stories/testimonials from trip participants, updates about the country, news about how the NOF is staying engaged with Nica, etc. It's still in the young stages of infancy, but I think it'll be a sweet site as it grows up :)

so click right here and go check it out!

how vast beyond all measure

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down...
(Isaiah 64:1)

In Ulysses, James Joyce writes "Love loves to love Love." And it's true - there is something cyclical about love, isn't there? It always wants more, it loves even the thought of itself, desires more of that feeling of not getting enough, or of needing to deeply know what it loves in every possible way.

When you love someone, you want to spend time with them and discover everything about them. It's like there is no end to it, either - everything is fascinating. It's been striking me lately, how absurdly wonderful love for the Lord is...because it can never be fully satisfied. There is always more to know. He is endless and incredible, and to love Him is to never get enough and to get more than enough all at once. He satisfies me fully, and yet I can never fill up on everything there is to know about Him or how He loves me, because there is just too much of all of that.

I've decided that it's that whole Joyce-thing, the Love loving Love, that creates something beautiful out of poverty. In those places of emptiness is an urgency for redemption, an urgency to know the Lord more, to love Him more, and to be loved by Him more. Love becomes a necessity, because it's the only hope when everything else is gone. When you reach the end of yourself and say "I have nothing else to give", there is every opportunity to say "Lord, give me everything you are. I want it and I need it, desperately".

The glory of that possibility really is beautiful to me: living solely on a thirsty love for God.

I spent a weekend leading some remarkable high school girls at a Young Life camp and was convinced even further that being in love is necessity, not luxury. We crave it, innately - crave being taken care of, crave someone knowing every little detail about us, crave a hiding place, crave a sheltering embrace, crave someone to pick up our pieces and show us how to be who we are. We were not meant to survive without it. It's a joyful thing, watching someone taste love like that, watch them take sips of something that is constantly falling for itself. It can't get enough.

That's the gorgeous thing about it, when you are in love, and your prayer again and again is Lord, tear open the heavens and come down, be close to me....it's gorgeous because you won't ever have to stop praying it, because He always has something more to give.

He loves to love.

homes

There are ones made from sticks,
stuck precariously
on tree-tops with circular foyers,
open roofs, no furniture
and only enough room to squeeze
in close together, which is
quietly stunning.

I’ve seen them in places that smell
like fire and piss, little shanties
covered in soda-advertisements, torn
consumerism broken-bottles dust
rugs, absence of windows, holes wire gates
needles dirty cups and everything.

There are those that sit along the East Battery
where they sip sugar and mint juleps, watch
the tourists in Charleston and
someone else is always looking
inside, envious strolls along the water.

I’ve seen borrowed ones on the corner bit of
walkway where the train-tracks run overhead
and fourteenth street starts,
with foundations of stray quarters, a dog companion
and a slab of cardboard bearing a mailing address
no one ever writes to.

Some are built in hospital rooms where
pictures from a mantel
somewhere else are brought in
and flowers spew their smell all over the place,
the background noise is television sounds, cozy
with the door always open, strangers walking by,
so close.

But often I find them in unexpected places
when I walk alone and think
of something you said once,
or of the way you laugh silently,
shrugging your shoulders
and then I find inside my resulting smile
that walls build up,
and in the slight movement of my mouth
there is some sort of
residence being constructed
right there on the sidewalk.

I'm a bad parent

no, not just because I "murdered" my hermit crabs (I mean, technically, they starved to death....because I forgot to feed them), but because I FORGOT MY BLOG'S BIRTHDAY!
geez. sorry, blog.
you're just growing up so quickly...

so YAY - this site is officially a year and two weeks old. crazy-town. way to survive this long, blog. I got you two picture of balloons and one picture of a pretty tight cake. Hope you enjoy it.

an indie-take on Christian music

Ok, I'll be real. I don't love Christian music...at least the stereotype of what Christian music is. But I've recently been introduced to a few new Jesus-loving musical groups that are fabulous and I can't help but share :) a few favorites are posted below!
lovelovelove









creepy critters

Halloween is quickly approaching and I LOVE it. Seriously. I have this strange, unexplainable obsession with all things supernatural. Give me a good ghost story, a horror film, anything magical/bizarre, zombies, or Sabrina the Teenage Witch and I am a happy girl.

As much as I adore scary things, there is something that truly terrifies me.

Squirrels.

yeah. really.

Last year around this time, a squirrel stepped on my boot. Not I stepped on a squirrel - a SQUIRREL stepped ON ME. It was one of the top five most terrifying things to ever happen to me. I was just walking along, minding my business, and that thing came out of nowhere at me. Ever since then, I've had an all-consuming fear of those little critters.

Just to list a few, here are some things that scare me most about squirrels:

1) you just never know where they are going to run. Are they about to dart in front of your car? Are they going to climb that tree when you pass them on the sidewalk, or are they going to rocket with full force at your face?

2) They are plotting against me. I'm convinced of it. Sometimes when I'm sitting in the living room, I can hear them out in the driveway snickering to themselves and making strange squirrel-noises. They are probably whittling weapons out of sticks and acorns and making strategic plans to break into my room and murder me in my sleep.

3) They've got that sketchy-squirrel look. Their eyes are all buggy and dart all over the place, and I hate when they stand up on their back legs and they almost look human or possessed. SUPER creepy.

4) Squirrels spread the Black Death in Europe back in the day. (That is just a stone-cold fact)

5) Squirrels are the cause of nuclear warfare, global warming, and economic turmoil around the world. (Those might not be stone-cold facts, but they are probably true)


So on that note, happy halloween!
hope the squirrels don't get you.