The Orchid Journal

Thanksgiving is a day in which we eat copious amounts of food with friends and family while giving our (sometimes meager) thanks to the air or God or each other, whichever one prefers. We learn in school growing up that Thanksgiving was initiated by the Pilgrims and we see drawings of people in black cloth hats sitting next to Native Americans in an idyllic circumstance. Because of my parents, who often read the following proclamation at the dinner table before our Thanksgiving meal, I learned that the holiday was set as a national observance because of President Abraham Lincoln. Most people seem unaware that Thanksgiving was initiated as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln following the Civil War in which the North fought the South over the issue of slavery. Thanksgiving had been celebrated on different days throughout the States for years, but it wasn't celebrated uniformly. After the Civil War, the country was in need of a unifying and healing observance. Batter...

Grocery shopping and I have a history filled with enmity. A combination of subpar cooking skills and limited repertoire, little money, an inability to make quick decisions when faced with too many options, an intense dislike of enormous spaces lit by florescent lights, crowds, and disorganized layouts, made grocery shopping the last thing I would ever want to do on a Saturday. Or any day. There were many times in my twenties that I wished humans did not have to eat, or at least, if only I could eat like a snake and the food would tide me over for a week or two. Eating multiple times throughout the day was wearisome. Grocery stores did not inspire me to eat unless I was smelling the hot food in the deli section of generic grocery stores or I was standing in the beautiful bread and produce sections of Whole Foods. Soulard Market is a different sort of place. It is a historic part of St. Louis, existing since 1779, and pleasing playground for the senses. With an eclectic ambiance...

2Cellos- This video humorously demonstrates the appeal of the cello over time. 2Cellos play traditional cellos, electric cellos, and a new carbon fiber cello. At first I wanted to play the harp. One day,during Elementary school,I visited a friend's house. We roller skated and perused her books. My friend's older sister sat me down with her cello to play "teacher" and proceeded give me a pretend cello lesson. She enthusiastically told me that I seemed to have a knack for playing it. I remember that my heart felt happy and I loved the resonance of the cello. I didn't know to describe it with the word "resonance" then, nonetheless, I was permanently hooked. The harp was too big to carry around anyway, not that the cello was much easier. The Piano Guys- Cellos have been described as being closest to the human vocal range, which probably contributes to its ability to "tug at the heartstrings" and blend with almost any style of music in a way ...

As a teenager, I used to love buying CDs and I enjoyed researching new artists' work. Classical music has been my longtime favorite genre, and even as an elementary schooler I listened to it frequently, but I have hardly listened to much of any classical music in the past year. For some reason, in my late 20s, I lost interest in listening to gobs of music. I play and sing more music than I ever did as a teenager, so maybe I'm more interested in making music than exploring other people's music. Who knows. One thing I have noticed is that I get hooked on ONE song for longer than normal and play it over and over and over and...like I'm trying to memorize every instrumental riff and fluctuation in the voices. I'm not always sure why certain songs "strike a chord" with me in this way, but before I analyze it to death, this song by Regina Spektor is my current song on repeat.

"...I feel my heart's been broken, I feel like it's become bigger too, as though the brokenness has allowed for a deeper joy and sadness to come in." -S It hit me the other day when a coworker, upon seeing my tears on behalf of loved ones' suffering, said to me, "It'll be okay. You have to be strong for them." Jesus never told me to "be strong" when I'm sad. He said there would be suffering. He said His strength is made perfect in our weakness. The Bible says that "Jesus wept" when his friend died. The Bible says to "weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice" and "comfort one another with the comfort that God has given you." The more I think of scriptures, the more I realize God doesn't teach us NOT to feel. In fact, I'm beginning to think He wants me to feel more RICHLY. Nowhere does God tell us to suck it up when we're sad in the face of suffering. We can hold onto ...

"What'chya doin'?" -a goat in New Jersey, 2011 (photo y Laelia Watt) Standing at a bus stop recently, I absentmindedly checked my Facebook page for the fifth time that day, when it hit me. It has been a while since I could remember what it is like to not be aware of what 30 friends were thinking at any given time. I like Facebook. It is a great tool which has helped me categorize all my photos, keep in touch with family members scattered all over the world, and has sparked many fun conversations with my friends over the years, but I suddenly missed having my brain filled with only my own thoughts during the day. As a person who has moved frequently throughout my life, the oddest thing about social media is that the thoughts, activities, photos, and political leanings of the friends I would normally leave behind and slowly drift from, are suddenly displayed daily for me to peruse. Don't get me wrong, I like keeping in touch with old friends, and as I said, I...

A family throwing rocks into the Mississippi, St. Louis, MO. (photo by Laelia Watt) Writers often wax poetic about the brevity of life. For me, there are moments in the stillness of my day where the concept of time and my space in it seem as vastly incongruent as a flea trying to hitch a ride on a blue whale. I worry about significance, worth, and the gum that gets stuck to my shoe while walking to the library. Fireworks on the 4th of July are brief, but send millions of people into raptures. Butterflies , from beginning to end, span the vast time of a month or a year, and yet they're the subject of countless photos, poems, and metaphors. We build structures a thousand times bigger than ourselves and throw rocks into a river a thousand times older than ourselves. We exist in a time frame ineffably longer than ourselves. "I learned a long time ago... that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing....

(Forest Park. St. Louis, MO -photo taken by Laelia Watt, June 2011) The storm rages, but outside, it is calm- The birds communing like old friends in the stream They appear unconcerned by my troubles, or theirs Watching them does nothing to solve my grief, or rumple their feathers. They nibble on; and I look on; the water burbling under our feet How odd are they, of different types standing together. One parading calmly as if guarding the mother and her ducklings. All periodically glancing At the featherless creature sitting mournfully on a rock nearby Watching them does nothing to solve my grief. Nevertheless, the Wait is suddenly more bearable

(Photo by Laelia Watt- phone camera, December 2013; Memorial Presbyterian Church Subtitled: A Question, 6 Ruminations, a Summary, and a Quote, on the Quiet Life Have you ever considered the miracle that is a "quiet life"? 1) I often think about how precious it is to have a decently healthy body to dance or sing with, or hug my friends, to take a walk in the park, or feel the water running down my skin. Death, disease, and disorders abound. It is a miracle if we are able to make it to 45 or 90 largely unscathed. Spending my health and precious years in worry about how big of a mark I'm making on the world is a waste of time and distracting me from enjoying the moment in front of me. 2) Having a job that is enjoyable and pays the bills is a blessing, even if it isn't particularly heroic or interesting by anyone else's standards. There are people without jobs (well, I am one of them right now), and people with jobs that suck the life out of them. A quie...

PSALM 51 Ekphrasis of Miserere (ie: description/reaction to this piece of music) Lent. Normally in the season before Easter which, in the church calendar, is a time of repentance, contemplation, and fasting, I implement some meaningful action or forgo a habit to replace it with more prayer or something equally pious. This year, because of a stressful job ending in chaos, Lent arrived before I had a chance to even think of anything to do to observe the season. I realized after a few days of frantically trying to come up with an idea, that I was not going to "do" anything this year. I'm spent. I'm beat. I'm tired of looking for jobs, talking about jobs, telling people about my interviews or lack thereof, fielding endless questions about what my plans are, tolerating even more suggestions as to what I should do next. I'm tired of dredging up the courage to face people, to put on a brave face, to keep hoping, and I'm scared of facing my disappointment...

(photo taken by me March 2012- Butterfly House. St. Louis, MO) Year of the Butterfly is the name I have given 2014. Normally I write this "naming" post earlier in the first month of the year, but I had to write my review of 2013 as my Nesting Year first, then I was having trouble describing what this Year of the Butterfly means to me without sounding hokey or cliche. I still may not succeed and this post may sound vague, but I will return to this topic often in the next few months as the meaning unfolds. During my first year of college in the Spring semester of 2003, I was sitting in my dorm window looking out at a group of orange butterflies flitting over the William Jewell Campus' historic graveyard. At the same time, I had been thinking about the ways I had grown in my first year of college. God used the butterflies as a metaphor for the change that had occurred in my life to that point. When a caterpillar wriggles along though it's daily activities of e...

art table for painting, collages, ceramic work etc. My sewing table is on the opposite side of the room {As a review and reference point for this post, I have been "naming" my year since 2012 . I named 2013 my "Nesting Year" .} Views of my living room: Bathroom wall and one corner of the kitchen: When I remember 2013, it will be filled with light, color, fun, relaxation, and lots of time with friends. Not only was it a delight to settle into my apartment with all of my belongings out of storage and decorate the space as much as I was able, but I enjoyed settling into the rhythm of my neighborhood and the new diversions and challenges of each season centered around life in my apartment. Because I moved closer to work and no longer had to endure three hours a day on public transportation, I had more time and energy to do things like meet up with friends for a picnic on Art Hill for their Friday movie nights. We went on hikes and visited the new wing of...

{A photo I took of Forest Park trees near the art museum, January 2014} Light changes everything. Color appears muted in low light, bleached in bright light, or nonexistent in the dark. Light brings out the blue or yellow or red undertones in a color and shadows form around the base of an object depending on the direction light is facing. Imagine Tucson where the sun sears a stark white light that changes depth perception and sends desert creatures (including humans) scrambling for the nearest shade. The light heats pavements to a molten mess and entertains those who experiment with cooking eggs or cookies on their sun baked cars. At night, there are white Christmas lights hanging in garden trees, regardless of the season, and light of fires in friendly backyard fire-pits glancing off smiling faces. The stars blink in every direction. Soft glows the sun in Missouri touching tips of grasses growing in the prairies or igniting the humid air with a golden haze. Summer nights spark...