And When I Have Seen Him, I Shall Never Die

I shall rise from the dead... I shall see the Son of God, the Sun of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began... No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.

~John Donne, from Sermon CXVIII, Preached at St. Paul's Cathedral on Midsummer Day, 1622

The Unsent Letter Project

"Sir, When we thinke of a friend, we do not count that thought a lost thought, though that friend never knew of it.  If we write to a friend, we must not call it a lost Letter, though it never finde him to whom it was addressed: for we owe ourselves that office, to be mindefull of our friends."

~Poet and Preacher John Donne in a letter to a friend (written sometime between 1603 and 1616)

My favorite blogger is girl by the name of Meg Fee.  She writes beautifully and with disarming truth.  It's that truth that I admire so and it's the lack of it in my own blog posts that I dislike.  It's not that I'm incapable of writing the truth-- read my diary sometime-- but I'm loathe to write it here.  In the early days, before friends and my mother knew about this blog, I found writing truthfully to be much easier (and safer).  Nowadays, I stick to posting pretty pictures, mindless fluff, and the odd quote or bit of poetry that hints at what lies beneath.


In my collection are a bunch of letters that I have started to friends but never finished (or finished and never sent).  They're fun for me to look at because they capture for me how I was feeling at that time.  And they're honest.  Sometimes shockingly so.  It scares me a bit to post them here, but in an attempt to be more honest, that's what I intend to do.  This feels like a character-growing activity for me because it lets people in to see some of my sensitive spots (and the ugly blights upon my soul as well), but it feels safe-ish, too, because they paint pictures of a former elise, not the current elise.


With that, I humbly submit the Unsent Letter Project.  My first entry is rather innocuous; the heady ones will come later.  I always was the type to dip my toe in before jumping in completely.  This letter is to a girl named Golnar who I had forgotten ever existed until I found this letter.  It would have been written circa 1993 (I was a seventh grader), and was to a friend I had left behind after my family moved to Delaware.

The letter (transcribed below):

Dear Golnar,
    So how is science?  Real fun I bet, right?  Well here it is so boring.  Everyone seem to be so stupid (I don't mean to be mean.  I'm serious though)  It's just that well they don't really think.  I'm almost positive I'll either get all A's or all A's and 1 B.  You'd whiz by here.  So would Janet.  So how is it being a lab partner with Janet?  You get to do a lot more things when you do a lab without me (miss fair everyone gets the exact amount of turns) there.  Also I'm no longer blameable (is that a word) for breaking stuff.  Our science class here is... different... The other day we got to disect a earthworm.  How fun!  I just love earthworms don't you?  Well actully I got to disect a gummiworm (yumm) instead.  Some other people chose to too.  Well I gotta go take a shower now (We have to be at the bus stop at 6:55 [that's right 6:55 in the morning]) Please, please, please, please, PLEASE write back.
                                                                       your friend,
                                                                                         Elise

The Big 3-1

On Sunday my sister and I celebrated our 31st birthdays. It is hard to believe that I am firmly entrenched in my thirties; I don't feel that old, and yet, when I'm 80, I don't think I'll feel that old either.

To celebrate, my mom threw my sister and me a mini-party.  We ate delicious homemade vanilla ice cream with toppings like strawberries and mint.

I wore my shirt that I bought at the Delheim Winery in Stellenbosch, South Africa.  It was so nice to be able to spend the day with my family.  Last year, Erin and I were apart on our birthday.

As I grow older, I am encouraged by these lines of my favorite poet:

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face;
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape. 

~John Donne, Elegy IX

XOXO,


Scalloped edge tutorial and tape images courtesy of the lovely Katrina Tan.

The End

The above photo was taken of my grandma, Lillian Herbrandt Stiefel, in December 1966 (the 25th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor) at the airport in Hawaii. I love this photo. We found it in a photo album when we were cleaning out Grandma's house. I'd never seen it before. She looks so incredibly stylish and beautiful-- that's how she always struck me. I admired her and respected her so much.

Her death came as a shock to us. We had gone down to South Carolina in March to visit grandma and when we saw her, she was the same goofy grandma she always was. I dragged her all over Batesburg, Lexington, and Columbia taking her to thrift stores with me. Ironically, we visited the undertaker and what would become her grave (I'm a sucker for cemeteries, and he just happens to be an old family friend who knows where all our relatives are buried). She stayed up late with me every night (to midnight or so) and would drink beers with us and laugh over the silliest things. She was like a girlfriend to me. A girlfriend who was oh so proud of me (she adored her granddaughters: me and my twin sis, Erin), and loved that I was following my dream, but worried about me every time I headed to New York, or abroad. She was the best book club member you could ever want-- she let me pick all the books! I'd read them, then send them along to her, and a week or two later, we'd discuss.

I was in New York when I got the call that she had passed. We'd been trying to get a hold of her the week before, but hadn't had any luck. No one thought anything of it, since Grandma lived alone, and she was a bit hard of hearing so she wouldn't hear the phone ringing, or a lot of time, she would be out gallavanting around town. We don't know when she died-- her neighbor found her on May 1st, sitting on the guest room bed with the tv on-- she had just gone to sleep. She had been dead for a few days when he found her.

We spent last week cleaning out her house. Because of the odor associated with her decaying body, everything in the house that would hold a scent had to be removed. We spent five long days sorting through and divvying up her belongings. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. It makes one wonder what is a life if it can be dismantled so quickly?



One of the neat things about an overall shitty process was seeing the things that Grandma had cherished. She loved her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren. I was struck by all of the old letters and cards that I had sent her that she still had. She loved photos and had photo albums coming out of her ears (so to speak). She had the last set of photos that my grandfather had been in (he passed away in 1997). She had videos of me from when I had first started modeling-- back in the days when I appeared on MTV and my QVC appearances.

It's been a hard couple of weeks for me. That ever-looming depression seems to be geared up for a return (why, oh, why did I stop taking my anti-depressants at Christmas?). I'm missing the woman that I loved so incredibly much. I'm cursing my own faith that is so weak that I can't be happy that she's gone and in heaven with her Lord.

In short, I am diminished.

Thanks to my friend Lief for his comforting words via the poetry of my favorite metaphysical poet, John Donne:

...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Thank you everyone for your comforting words and prayers. I am so thankful for my friends and those people that support me. You are invaluable.

For those of you who still have grandparents, and moms and dads, take my advice and give them a call. Tell them that you love them. You won't regret that you did.

This is part of my grieving process. I will be back to my old self shortly, I promise. I know all too well that life goes on. I have other news, and shop updates, and new books that I am reading. I'll be back soon.

One of my favorite pictures of Grandma. I'm on the left, and Erin is on the right. Just look at the smiles on our faces to see how much we loved her.

Grandma, I am the luckiest... because I had you in my life.


XOXO,

Death Be Not Proud

Death Be Not Proud

by John Donne
(1572-1631)

---

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

"And the enemy, death, shall be destroyed last"

1st Corinthians 15:26

The Trouble With Men

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. I found this quote in an amazing book that I highly recommend-- The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D. In the book, she talks about what we learn by reading great literature, i.e., lovers learn to be better lovers through reading the sensual poetry of John Donne, believers read and are inspired to pray in the words of John Milton or T.S. Eliot, a widower finds comfort in William Shakespeare's words: "Men must endure their going hence..." and finally, women "manage (their) relationships with greater integrity because of (the works of) Jane Austen."

Hence, here is what she writes we can learn from looking at the relationships in Jane Austen's book:

"The same tendency not to take responsibility-- to keep their options open, not to get involved-- is what makes young men so dangerous. The villains in Jane Austen's novels are not rapists, wife-beaters, or even jealous husbands. They're men who don't stick around. It's not men's violent, "controlling" urges that make it necessary for parents to look out for their daughters; it's men's tendencies to avoid (or weasel out of) commitment that do. In each of the novels there's at least one man who pays a woman the kind of attention he knows (if he thinks it through) that he shouldn't pay her unless his intentions are serious-- and they're not. In Jane Austen's views, this behavior seems to be an occupational hazard of being male."