Three years ago, I began transcribing memories. The memories had no real order, I would just sit in front of my laptop and type anything that came to my head. I ended up writing over 15 pages worth of memories, and I figured they will be something special to look back on someday.
Last night, I had a memory that was so pure and beautiful, that I felt obliged to share it with you all. I was driving home at night. The radio DJ may have given me some guidance on the subject matter, as I think he was talking about a childhood memory, but I can’t remember the subject matter of the story. Anyway…
I came to change New Zealand. After 3 years, New Zealand changed me. Cliche I know, but this ended up being the truth.
This post has been written over the past 18 months. My thoughts, my observations, and my feelings have obviously morphed along the way, but let’s just start at the beginning.
With 50lbs of luggage, a working knowledge of left hand driving, and one solid contact, I packed up what I owned and moved my life to New Zealand. I kissed my parents, hugged my niece, wished my siblings well, and flew. In my luggage was an optimistic, slightly naive, monstrously unrealistic idea that I was going to get a job, in my field, in the first few months. With…one…solid…contact. Yeah. Right. Continue reading “How Moving my Life to New Zealand for 3 years Changed Me”→
Josh Garrels needs to be known for not being known.
Humble, genuine, gifted. Josh Garrels has become known for these qualities through his attitude towards music, life, and God. Musical at the very young age of 3, Garrels started getting more serious about his music at 13. Starting a band, Garrels gradually honed his craft on the guitar and writing music. By the age of 22, Garrels was making lo-fi recordings in rooms and pumping out music on his schedule. Unimpressed by recording companies and the bureaucracy behind the music business, Garrels chose to self-record, mix, and produce his music without a record label or industry management. Keeping true to this style, every album he has released has been from the sweat of his brow. In Love & War & The Sea In Between, he and his wife hand labeled and sent out all copies of their music. His grassroots approach is radical. It’s not supposed to work, but it does. His fans love and appreciate his diversion from the traditional craft and they support it.
If you have been following my writing on this site, and you have good understanding about how and why I write, then you know that key life moments usually make the grade, among other inspiring things. Tomorrow is such a life event. Tomorrow I leave my mid 20’s. Tomorrow I turn 27.
Beauty is something we have forgotten to notice. Like the gradual passing of Autumn, we sometimes forget it was even there, trees go bare, do we even care?
Beauty used to be everything, in everything, made instruments sing. We used to care so much about the strokes of a brush, causing the hush, making viewers blush. Is it even there?
Beauty. Where did you go? Did you run and hide? Are you there below? Don’t you know? You are the seed that helps life grow. You are the glow, the early snow, you are the young lovers in throw.
Beauty has taken the back seat. Sitting alone, nobody remembers. Wasting away, nobody values her. There are the occasional fighters, and for them, I support. A beauty cohort.
Beauty, you’re worth it. And yet, an entire land with amnesia to one of the most important and worth while aspects of life…forgets. Beauty should be on the front page, in our words, how we treat the least of these. Beauty should take back the canvas, the soundboard, the page. Beauty should infuse how we love, how we create, how we care. Beauty should freely be.
Before, beauty arrived in true form, flowing lightly, like a leaf in a storm. Beauty surrounds, in sounds, beneath mounds, it abounds in Love. In the foregrounds of smiles, resounds in profiles. Beauty camps out with joy, with awesome wonder, emotion deploy, morning whisper.
What is beauty to you? Is it the rise of new day glow? Water bending beneath its flow? Din of cities turned down low? Heavy blankets in December snow? What is beautiful?, I want to know. Ask me, and I will echo. Hearing your voice say hello, the emotion in waiting till tomorrow, moving from much too fast to wonderfully slow.
Beauty, you’re the invisible phenomenon. You’re everywhere, but no one can see you anymore, feel you anymore, care about you anymore. I write to remember, I love so that you’re close, I read so that you remain alive. Beauty, come back.
Leaves in the Pages 