Megan Hansen

transience

2009-10-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

Attempt at Entrepreneurship

2009-09-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

My friend Katy and I have been wanting to start a literary blog for a couple years now, and are finally both in Modesto, with the time and drive to get it going.

Introducing Inklings Journal.

I will still blog here at megankhansen, but Inklings will sometimes feature my writing, as well as Katy's and many others'.

You can click to "follow" to keep up with the latest weekly posts, starting next Tuesday.

Hope you like it!

Take Heart 2

2009-07-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

I'll leave you for a little while, just to let you know that I was here. Really real, just as you thought, but not as you thought. And by leaving, I'll be staying, and then staying forever, I'll be away for a little while, but only to come back again and stay, not to go, as there is truly no place to go, though it appears as being gone, having left, changed and so on. Your watch is watchful but will not tell you what time it is or will be or has been and in a little time unwatched, watch for me and I'll have been gone but never away and where you are, and were, and is, and am, and will be, will be watched and unwatched all at once and I'll be there.

Take heart

2009-07-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

She was always telling people to "take heart" and never thought to wonder what it meant until the day she slipped off into a willowy wood and found herself floating among purple flowers and saw a glistening lily pad drift by holding a dragonfly that was lying motionless with it's blue body bent up like a pile of pick-up sticks. Silently she gasped for air and went under and stayed.

I followed you until

2009-07-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

I followed you until my sandals turned to paper and my feet to flesh, and sleeping always at dark, as I do, I watched all day. But you sleep curiously all day long, never thinking about the solitude and the beauty of the net of fireflies in the comforting new moon.

Sitting / Standing

2009-07-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

Sitting above a giant's bucket overflowing with clouds thinking these will be the best, quietest years, tasting yellows and greens and spilling thoughts out loud.

Couldn't hold a hand, to see the sign. Standing up straight underneath that bright grey light--just standing there delicately balanced, calculating breaths. That would be the function of all things--being whole, blameless.

break

2009-07-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

I don't have time for the whining blog I have floating around in my head--and I'd rather not record it anyway. But here is a poem by e e cummings which may or may not make any sense but is nice nonetheless:

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you're young, whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love.

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think, may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

auto

2009-05-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

Reflecting on daylight indoors is not quite so much fun as simply staring at daylight indoors. There's nothing all that reflective about it anyway. It's just light... pleasant light, without the deadening heat. It saves electricity and makes everyone prettier, or at least more honest-looking. Meanwhile, I have been getting used to my face without eye make-up. Afternoon is my favorite time of day.

Except early mornings in Morro Bay when the fog sits there like an multi-colored (joseph) afghan made from clearance yarn at the bargain yarn store that was going out of business because the big chain yarn store had four-times as many colors and strange varieties like the yarn with tufts of some poor rabbit's fur making it difficult to knit with.

Crocheting is much easier anyway, especially in the car, or at grandma's house, or when someone has a long story that doesn't really need to be listened to closely. Not ever story really needs to be heard.

from "Darwin and Christ"

2009-03-03T17:49:00.000-08:00

"...the debate over Darwinism and Christian faith, properly understood, has less to do with the question of whether we should think of God as a designer who fine-tunes flagella, and more to do with how the theory of evolution fits into the deep and interesting tension that's always been at the heart of Christian accounts of creation...And from Paul to Thomas Aquinas to C.S. Lewis, Christian thinkers have labored over the balance between [order and fallenness], returning again and again to the question of just how fallen the world really is.

"If Darwinism poses a challenge to Christianity, then, it's on grounds that have less to do with God's existence than with His nature, and the nature of the world.

"But if you dwell on the sheer scope of physical evils involved in this process, as any serious consideration of evolution forces you to do, you can see the intuitive appeal of the alternative approach suggested in the passage above - in which evolution-by-natural-selection is treated as part of the essential fallen-ness of the world, and "Nature red in tooth and claw" becomes one of the powers and principalities that Christ came to overthrow."

Read the entire article

04/21/07 xanga

2009-02-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

If he gave his mirrors odd thoughts, names, and described them in the third person... if he sang them an unusual color and placed them in a foreign comforter... if he made them sour and prickly, or a different gender, or having different socks and different whiteboards, and maybe even a different type of Katelyn, and then changed every noun and verb like a madlib until the wedding was so skewed that no stove could even be made between the original and the created, then it would not be too soon to write it into a grass.

Always creeping around corners...

2009-01-27T22:46:00.000-08:00

Always creeping around corners, peering at me through your painted scarves. You were always wearing sandals and eating locusts, and I never recognized you, but your eyes make a circle. And lately I’ve followed you; trying to get a glance at the hem of your long straight skirt, and the necklace laid beneath those scarves. Even just the memory of you is enough to get me looking, around corners, for you. If I could just see that hem close up, I could dance in sandals and fly in silk

Fact, Fact, Fact!

2009-01-24T00:41:00.000-08:00

Louisa stood in the doorway with unwashed hair, holding a pink hand towel with black smudges on it. Over the back fence was a cemetery with 400-year-old stone tablets sticking out of the ground like commandments, prepare to meet thy God, etched at the base of a blank sheet. The gate relatched as it fell shut and the forecast snow melted at about eye level.

I go to prepare a place for you

2009-01-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

My room is a coffee cup with a red gloss and it is energizing and gets cold too quickly and I like to begin and end my day with it. I have a lamp, it matches the carpet and walls, that I stupidly almost gave away two years ago because maybe I'd be rich when I came back to America--rich with beautifully unique lamps, I apparently almost thought. Close call, because nothing would be worse than returning to this cafe room with nothing but a flashlight or some silver plastic thing from a swedish superstore.

Thursdays?

2009-01-15T14:55:00.000-08:00

I opened up my little T.S. Eliot reader for the first time in about half a year and found that at some point I dangerously vandalized The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which has always been a favorite of mine, with a thick black gel pen. The thing that hit me as I read my boldfaced notes is that in the few years that it's been since I wrote those notes, I managed to forget all my ideas and the dot-dot-dot's that I wrote assuming I'd remember where they led. My favorite is "other men with 'butt-ends'"...yeah.

Reading T.S. Eliot is a cold weather thing--but even though it's January, I am drinking iced tea at my favorite table at my old coffee shop (the table about which I wrote an essay on a standardized test which asked for a description of a "special place", for a which I received an inexplicable minimum passing score) because it is a million degrees here in the afternoon and the sun is fading the colors on my new coat, which spends the days in the backseat of my car and now only gets out at night.

Going to Farmer's Market tonight for yellow raspberries and middle-aged cover bands. I wonder if Prufrock will be there, leaning against the alley wall of a closed bank, smoking his pipe...

2009

2009-01-06T16:42:00.000-08:00

I don't have a resolution this year--not a real one, like last years' banana resolution which was a total success, by the way. I have a few goals, not the least of which is finding an actual job/job-path, which may require some major synapse rewiring. My current total brainwave activity has diminished from this time last year, and I fear I'm becoming...boring? Don't comment on that. Banana resolutions are exciting in their own way.

2008 went by like when you watch a plane flying over your house and it seems like it's going so slow and then it's gone, and you realize how much ground it has covered in just a few moments. Basically, the difference between my experience of 2008 and the actual space of 2008 is atmospherically and proportionally challenged more so than any of my years yet. It was a weird one, during which I turned 23, visited 5 different countries, volunteered full-time, painstakingly made more than a year's share of major life decisions, and learned the dutch word for chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag).

I am looking forward to a relatively quiet year, and I hope to be blogging (hopefully not too diary-esque) a bit more than I have been.

I hope you are having a nice start to your year :)

San Luis Obispo

2008-11-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

I'm moving to San Luis Obispo soon and plan to stay until next summer. I'm going to be doing a variety of things, including a small writing internship at a lifestyle magazine, and helping out at a newly planted church in Templeton.

I'm going back to my parents' house on del rio. We have a room or two to rent out starting dec/jan, and the living room is really a nice shade of green, so if you or some nice friend of yours needs a room, let me know.

And to my Modesto friends who I'm abandoning--we still have the holidays! Starbucks?

Tymps and Miss Pettigrew

2008-10-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

"Those boon times went bust,
my feet of clay, they dried to dust;
the red isn't the red we painted, it's just rust...
and the signature thing which used to bring a following
I have trouble now even remembering"

I constantly feel the need to quote Fiona Apple. This has nothing to do with Modesto. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a station which plays Fiona Apple in the Modesto area. You can, however, tune in to B93.1 if you'd like to hear Viva la Vida every hour or so.

Big news!!!
Vintage Faire mall is hosting a grand opening party for the new addition on Nov 14-16th. Santa will be there! Don't miss it! I'm hoping for an Anthropologie, but if it actually appears I will be shocked and awed to the core. It is my retail museum. Beautiful.

I watched "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" and loved it. Thought it was wonderful and thoughtful, moved quickly and demonstrated a balance of style and frivolity alongside the desperation of poverty and a looming war in England in the 30's. The costumes made me want to go get my hair cut, and then go buy shoes. Miss Pettigrew is instantly loveable. Each subsequent character established their role quickly, such that you might boo for the bad guys and cheer for the good guys before knowing anything solid about them. Predictable from the beginning (as all classic plays should be) but a definite hotfudgesundae of a movie.

The Queen Bean A/C and Scientific Obscenities

2008-10-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

Remember to bring a sweater if you ever want to sit inside at the Queen Bean in Modesto. They have the A/C blasting like it's still July-101 degrees outside, when actually, it's only Oct-75; in here it "feels like" Dec-65 with the wind factor. Bring extra socks.

My iced coffee is inconspicuously NOT gathering a ring of condensation even though I haven't touched it in 3 websites (re: grad school) because the temperature is so low, the ice isn't melting, hence no ring. Correct my science, if needed, please. Ever since my mother-teacher told little 10-year-old, homeschooled me than the ground was pushing back at me, I have shut out most, if not all, attempts to teach me about the physics of our lovely, hospitable planet.

Science needs to fix its obscene language. Inanimate objects don't verb, besides exist--and even that is debatable. The use of force doesn't bother me, and exert engery because energy doesn't imply life, but only having presence in the physical world--which is appropriate for an inanimate object, like a rock. The only inanimate object, in my opinion, that is so offensive as to deserve attribution of a verb is this A/C which is imposing upon me in such a horribly aggressive way that I will be leaving soon so I don't lose a toe.

Epilogue:
I motion for Science to remove inappropriate metaphors from its speech, as they caused me to subconsciously reject all further lessons which may have positively affected my character and discipline as a student, and possibly led me into more advantageous careers and given me an opportunity for grad school fellowships rather than compiling loans for yet another useless degree.

A Vision for a Blog

2008-09-01T03:40:00.000-07:00

Ok folks .If I find anything good in this great central valley, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you about it and then you can remind me about the crime rates and the summer heat and it'll all go back to neutral, but I will feel better about living here.

Starting....... NOW.

Warm evenings and the yogurt mill. It's pure good.

Lunch after Church

2008-09-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

Ate lunch today at a taqueria on Roseburg near MJC. It was new to me. The church has moved there from La Parilla, which is the old favorite. I loved La Parilla's chips, and this place's chips just didn't quite have that thin greasy quality I so love about La Parilla (on Oakdale Rd.). Also, new taqueria ran out of ice tea and never brewed more, even when the lady said she would.

I think it's a step down the restaurant ladder, but it's easier to get a table and you get to see First Baptist people there sometime, they are easy to spot, in their oh-so-FBC Sunday casuals--I can be prejudice because I'm one of them when I'm in SLO and I wear my Sunday casuals and therefore it's not prejudice, it's just judice, which isn't a word.

Yes, my blog is gonna be like this for a while. I'm not doing anything else right now. Also, cut me some slack since I'm melting in this weather.

Good news: I unpacked, washed, and put away ALL of my stuff.
Bad news: I have too much crap.
Good news: I'm gonna try to sell some of it on ebay.

Dear Reader

2007-10-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have come to discover that certain members of my extended family are in the habit of reading what I write here. That's fine, and even encouraged, as I don't see many of the members of my extended family nearly as often as would be nice. They are (this could be you), however, reading in secret. I hear from my grandmother and my mother that they have read, are reading, or are simply aware of my blog. I thought for a moment that perhaps aunts and uncles aren't generally a part of the blogging world and are therefore unfamiliar with the custom of commenting, but Aunt Frances threw that theory all out of proportion by commenting on my last blog, which, I feel, is of some interest--especially given that Ireland is, according to my Grandma, the "old sod."

Another thing Aunt Frances did was correctly point out that my entries have been a bit bleak lately. This is true. I loved college and I miss it (less and less every day, as my friends get closer to midterms), and I have been doing very little since I got back from Thailand--this is my reason. Nonetheless, I'll try to convey a bit more happiness.

Happiness is a warm puppy.

Happiness is a washer and dryer set that kills lice and doubles as an escape pod.Happiness is a tiny first cousin once removed (and my dad and a backyard pond).

Happiness is a loose front tooth (for six-year-olds, anyway).

Sorry, Mr. Thoreau

2007-10-12T19:34:00.001-07:00

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

Going to Ireland

2007-10-11T09:58:00.001-07:00

I'm officially going to N. Ireland! The Causeway Coast to be specific. Here's a bit from the interview

Ricky: Are you internally or externally energized?
Me: Internally.
Ricky: We've got beaches here! Do you like beaches? You can go to them. The students all like them.

I'll be going to Portstewart, Ireland. I'm leaving as soon as I get a Visa (2-3 weeks, probably), and coming back to hopefully start grad school (TBD) next August. The rules are this: Nobody gets married until I come back, and everyone sends me lots of mail. Thank you. Also, I'm going to make another blog. They're all geographically based, you see.

I'm going to be interning at a church called the Causeway Coast Vineyard. I'll be working with the Missions pastor to plan and implement events and activities locally and abroad. I'm going to be almost a missionary (in overall goal as well as being uncompensated).

I'll keep you posted as things go along, of course. But now I've got to go deal with the six-year-old, who currently has lice--which she has (we hope) not yet been so kind as to share with me.

On Being a Temporary, Volunteer, Stay-at-Home, Would-Be Writer Mom

2007-10-04T01:05:00.000-07:00

Every so often I make an unconscious decision to stop reading. Sometimes, I stop reading the Bible. Sometimes, I stop reading msnbc gossip columns. But lately, I've stopped reading everything except for certain comics strips. Even when I read to my friend, six-year-old Carllie, I ask her to finish reading each sentence because I just don't have it in me.

Carllie has been coming to my church in Modesto with her dad for most of her life. Things haven't been so great, so Carllie came to stay with us because she needs a family while her dad works out some law issues with the police. And because I am unemployed, I was able to spend the last three days playing with Carllie, painting pumpkins, making waffles, playing at the park, etc. Effects: 1) makes me glad I don't have kids, 2) makes me excited to have kids eventually, 3) makes me want to adopt.

My parents took her along with them tonight, and I took advantage of it and went to B&N to read some periodicals and it was entirely disappointing. The Writer's Digest was boring, depressing, and boring. It was filled with 24-year-old published novelists writing about how they became successful. Common thread? They did nothing but write unpublished "trash" for years until finally they wrote their ground-breaking novel about the horrors and sterilization of western society. Now, I don't mind the holed-up writing bit, but I won't do the my antidepressant-ridden dysfunctional-life-at-an-amusing-distance writing style so I can be in some pseudo-philosophical writers' cool club where they write in shapes or have three-page-long footnotes. I don't want to write in gimmicks, I want each little letter to come together with other letters and make words that match with other words to mean something to someone, the same as they mean to me.

When I got home, Carllie and I read "Geraldine's Blanket." It's a story about a little girl (actually, a pig who wears clothes) who loves her blanket even when it is tattered and patched and dirty. Geraldine's parents hope that a new doll will take her attention away from the detestable blanket; they even make Geraldine choose between the blanket and the doll. [Spoiler Warning] Geraldine's love for her blanket wins out when Geraldine gets clever and makes a dress for the doll out of the old blanket, leaving her parents flabbergasted.

I've always identified with Geraldine, and I still do. I am constantly falling in love with things that people call silly. Like a multi-colored fish pitcher where the the drink pours out of the fish's mouth (used to have a matching cookie jar). And I actually had a blanket that I clung to until it was barely a thread in my hands (a thread which my parents eventually stole and hid). As a side note, I could on for pages and pages on the joy of being a pack-rat, but I won't. You're welcome. OR, maybe later.

Carllie read the word patched perfectly on her first try tonight and it really made my night because earlier that day she didn't know what to do with the -ch sound, and I told her all about it. By the end of the book, her lovely reading made me want to do some reading of my own, anything pre-1950 will do.

Speaking of Modesto

2007-10-02T00:33:00.000-07:00

"leaving home is perhaps the central experience of the writer's life. The restless pursuit of a way back while remaining steadfastly at a distance--this is the enigma that informs the writer's perspective" lynn freed

Wtfwjd?

2007-09-28T03:51:00.000-07:00

The biggest problem with being awake at nearly 4A.M. is that you wanna write a blog, but fully understand that whatever you write will sound stupid, or worse, sappy emotional, thus catapulting the blog into the depths of triviality (if it has depths) and a scary baggagey, get-the-heck-over-it kind of world of blogging. Pretty soon people stop reading. You start to hate your own blog, and then you abandon it only to return three years later to delete it (unless you are Ben, in which case, you change the url and continue as you were because it never went bad actually, just got forgotten about).

What's even worse is the possibility that you start to write a second paragraph, knowing that if you start a second paragraph, you'll have to finish it. And everyone knows that a paragraph must have approximately 3-5 complete sentences to really be considered a decent paragraph, and everyone knows that an English major would not leave an indecent paragraph hanging out in public for everyone to see unless it was a stylistic decision. But everyone knows that stylistic decisions generally come in quantity, not quality, at 4A.M.

And beyond even subsequent paragraphs, comes the danger of staying awake for even longer. Sure, you may be able to justify catching up on Grey's Anatomy all in one night, even though its not a good show (at least Burke is gone and the Chief race is over), but you cannot really justify staying up even after those three episodes to write a silly little thing.

But you will look up at the clock and realize that even beginning a fourth paragraph, it is still only 4:04A.M. because you've written quickly and you've been rounding up to 4A.M. for the last 15 minutes. And then you will wonder how to shut down you brain and you will think about the desserts you will make tomorrow and the people you will call. You will make a note not to forget to call the new girl at church and to be sure to go get that temp job at the fruitstand even though you really would rather not. And you will think that you miss people who are where ever they are (hallelujah). You will wonder if leaving the country for ten months will answer the questions in your mind... and right when you get there, you will sense yourself slipping into diary mode and try to decide if you should delete everything or just go ahead and post it. You'll read it over, think about it until 4:12A.M. and then just go ahead and post the dumb (ha) thing. You'll try to remember to post something intellectual next time, and wish mac keyboards had the "delete" key that takes out the stuff to the right of the cursor.

Taking to the Couch

2007-09-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

What I do: drive grandma to the doctor, wash breakfast dishes, stare at my macbook, play my guitar.

What I don't do: read, socialize, exercise.

What I don't mind not doing: driving to/on campus, parking in structures or meters, paying utilities.

I think I'm somehow getting closer to being able to write a best seller so I don't have to teach the story of Zeus and Io to 15-year-olds for a living.

Last Thursday, guy at the Biola lecture series thing said that our only significance in life is to overcome evil with good. Where and how we do it is another thing entirely.

Response to...

2007-09-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

Paul and Eric's conversation, as transcribed on Paul's blog. Eric may name his child "Pooper" until it does something worth being named for. Good call, Eric. I feel like I've given my blog a crap name, too, just because it hasn't done anything to earn much of a name.

I got to feeling a little bad about this. I should care what my blog is called, let the title guide me a little. But in this particular instance, I can't bring myself to care. Therefore, in that not caring, I have validated the title of the blog. So it describes something of my character, my approach to posting, and my feelings about my audience (sorry, audience).

That sort of self-resolving logic makes me think of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure when they decide to tell the next Bill and Ted to leave the keys in the bushes and then the keys appear.

Now that's good story-tellin'.

Antidote for this week: making the meal off the cover of Sunset magazine.

p.s. I might go to Ireland in October, and then stay until June... or July. Just throwing that out there so you don't fall out of your chair if/when I go. I'll provide more details if it works out.

impressionable

2007-09-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went to the first of five lectures from some Biola people who are hanging out in Turlock. I could, potentially, in the future, get credit at Biola for attending these things. The lectures are like Veritas, only instead of going in between classes (really, skipping classes), my parents drive me there, and attend too.

Like I said, attending this series puts me on track towards some certificate, which will most likely get me a better seat in heaven. And even though I rather like my seat in the nosebleed section of heaven, due it's close proximity to the bathroom and water fountain, I really want that certificate. In fact, I want the whole stupid degree. Does anyone know of a blended M.A. program in Theology and Creative Writing?

I'm afraid, even with a degree like that, I could end up writing the advice column for Brio Magazine... and enjoying it.

Antidote for Modesto: the amazement of seeing jr. high friends, not remembering them at first, and then slowly remembering you used hang out on swing sets and gossip about the boys in code.

What Day Is It?

2007-09-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

So lately I have been doing contract work for my mom (technically, for the school she works for) and I have tentatively taken a part-time administative job at my dad's church. Basically, I'm doing the same jobs I've done since I was ten-years-old, only now I get paid slightly more and call myself a "freelance administrative and editorial assistant." The idea of working at the church gets the wheels in my head turning a little, but lately I've mostly been a "slug," or so says my mom.

I have spent an unknowable number of hours searching for writing or editing jobs and applying and revamping my resume, which I still think is a little crappy. And I am fairly certain I will never get a job, and I'll have to become a teacher--which, by the way, wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I just want to choose it, not have it thrust upon me like a giant red dictionary on a small child.

Bethany's wedding was last Saturday and while I take marriage very seriously, seeing my best friend get married made the whole thing look like it wasn't that big of a deal. They are still Bethany and Brennan, same as they were before, only now they always will be Bethany and Brennan. That's a good thing to realize about marriage, I think.

Grad school applications are still lurking in the background of my life, taunting me with their required 30-page portfolios.

Graduating is terrible. I don't recommend it. Today the receptionist at the eye doctor asked if I was still a student or if I was employed. I stared at her for a moment, let her repeat the question and then sighed and shared that I am nothing. I explained, she made reference to her bachelors in art and motioned at the office and wrote down that I'm a temp worker while giving me an understanding one-sided smile. At least living with my parents is fun.

And in case you were curious, I am looking for and applying to jobs all over--but especially the central valley and the central coast.

Antidote for this week: a homemade americano and tapioca, and peaches and strawberries from the fruit stand.

Are You Kidding Me?

2007-08-22T19:16:00.001-07:00

Probably the most upsetting part of leaving San Luis Obispo: I have to find a new church. Celebration is going to be hard to replace.

It's hot here and everyone's married or catching bouquets.

Homesickness comes in waves... I'll suddenly get a wave of missing Mill Street (just that one block between Johnson and...I don't know what it's called), and in my head I'll call it Milleria. Or I'll suddenly miss the sanctuary at fbc which looks like an upsidedown boat and that's called Sanctuarium. If I start to miss a friend, it's Katelyrium, Bekahmortia, or Konaritus and many other like diseases.

In the end it is not the landscape I will miss at all. I don't even really care that much about being away from the ocean. In fact, I actually like the central valley. But when I think of all the people I have left for the sake of growing up, it makes me a little sick.

Antidote for this week: Larry Norman, Death Cab for Cutie, Sandra McCracken, "Do not worry about tomorrow...", and any country music.