on the road to Jericho

One: I wake in the new year on a boat. I sit and I drink coffee and nothing feels different, but everything feels possible. This has nothing to do with the new year of course, or a new me. This is life. Even when nothing is different anything is possible. Especially when nothing is different actually. This boat has the potential to sail anywhere in the world, but for now it is anchored and still. Everything is possible.

Letters from Lee Crutchley #012, ‘Seventeen Days in 2017’

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I signed up to his mailing list months ago and I’ve had his old letters archive on reading-list. You can find it in his website too (leecrutchley.co.uk/email). When I started my tumblr around 2009/2010, he’s the guy behind Quoteskine and I often saw his works on dashboard. I admire him silently and quietly since then. Lee Crutchley, how do I say this without being overtly exalted, I just love the way he expresses things from his perspective; it’s honest and vulnerable and all. It’s sad it’s melancholy but it’s just… genuine, sincere- it hits you home hard in some of the punches but it also give you some invisible power to be tough. Like, you have your space to be soft and having courage side by side. Not sure if this makes sense but I just- when I read this particular paragraph from his email-letter, I knew I love it since. Maybe because I feel that way too, something I need to hear in light of every things that goes on for now.

It’s just… I love to add people-who-gave-me-feelies names on my admiration book. The list keeps on expanding confidentially. It’s like a secret box of luminous people and you might be in it. As Van Gogh said, ‘Admire as much as you can, people do not admire enough’

PS: It’s June already oh my god.

_ Love, eugeniaclara

If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was not made for here If the flesh that I fight is at best only light and momentary, then of course I’ll feel nude when to where I’m destined I’m compared [CHORUS:] Speak to me in the light of the dawn Mercy comes with the morning I will sigh and with all creation groan as I wait for hope to come for me Am I lost or just less found? On the straight or on the roundabout of the wrong way? is this a soul that stirs in me, is it breaking free, wanting to come alive? Cos my comfort would prefer for me to be numb And avoid the impending birth of who I was born to become [CHORUS] [BRIDGE:] For we, we are not long here Our time is but a breath, so we better breathe it And I, I was made to live, I was made to love, I was made to know you Hope is coming for me Hope, He’s coming

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Grief is exhausting. Grief is painful and unrelenting. Grief echoes in the caverns of a broken heart. Grief is deep, and it leaves a mark forever. Grief comes in waves, and at the same time it is always there. Grief is a byproduct of love, to feel no love we would experience no sorrow. To love and care for something, that is when grief is born.

There is no hope in the midst of sorrow, we are lost within the pain and tragedy of it all. Yet, in the pit of our despair, we find Jesus.

So, I shall weep till my eyes burn and my body gives out. But I will not be alone, for Christ walks in the storm. He is in the valley of the shadow of death.

“It was immediately clear to me that teens are already urban planners if they grow up in a city. They know what works and what doesn’t.” Gabrielle Lyon, the vice president of education and experience at the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) noticed, for instance, that the students were quick to assess neighborhood features such as walkability, or critique unequal distribution of public transport.  

Wacker’s Manual, a 1911 textbook fashioned from Daniel Burnham’s 1909 plan of Chicago, was taught in Chicago’s eighth-grade civics classes until the late 1930s. CAF’s teen fellows wondered why there wasn’t a manual like it today—as did Lyon. She decided to bring some structure to young urbanites’ planning instincts through a new book project: a graphic novel.

“Dubbed No Small Plans, the book chronicles young people’s adventures in Chicago neighborhoods of the past, present, and future. Like Wacker’s Manual, it will also be taught in the city’s public schools. It is a beautifully drawn, three-part volume that recounts stories of Chicago teenagers in the years 1928, 2017, and 2211.

In the first section, set in the past, three friends of different races and classes encounter discrimination from passersby when they attempt to spend an afternoon together downtown. 

“The second section, based in the present, addresses issues of gentrification, affordable housing, and zoning through the story of a girl who is being evicted from her home. 

Five teenagers work on Chicago’s City Planning Council in the third section, set in the future, and are tasked with reviewing developer proposals for a neighborhood. To make good decisions, they realize they must personally engage with the community to find out what it needs. Each chapter ends with a map of the area featured, as well as a brief narrative about Burnham and the challenges of urban planning.”