Pride

I was so productive today! Vacation is wonderful but it has a tendency to make me lethargic. Today I fought myself and instead of lounging around, I finally completed a lot of the things that up until now have had practically permanent spots on my "to-do" list. E-mails, resumes, job queries - all of it, done!

It's the little things.

Just Like a Giant Spotlight

Happy things:
 -Had lunch with Leanne and Katie
 -Ran into Ms. Hedberg and a few other friends at the high school this afternoon
 -Completed my collection of Andrew Belle's entire discography

The song of the day is "The Show" by Lenka. I love her voice and the simplicity and innocence she brings to her music.

"I'm just a little bit caught in the middle.
Life is a maze and love is a riddle.
I don't know where to go, can't do it alone:
I've tried, and I don't know why."

Surreality

"The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"

-Pablo Picasso

Six Things

In keeping with my New Year's Resolution, some things that made me happy today:

01. I had brunch today with Katie, Kate, Yona, and Ariel, and it was nice catching up for a few hours. They all have such interesting stories and so many fascinating plans for the next few years! I am so glad I was able to see them.
02. I am hopefully going to see Mr. Tarmey later this week! I miss the man immensely and have so much to tell him and so much to ask. Maybe we will even digress into a discussion about Mrs. Dalloway. I would love that! A few days ago, my friend Haley told me that he showed this year's AP Lit class the poster puzzle I made for Heart of Darkness last year. Surely it makes me seem very silly, but hearing that he held onto my project and also took the (brief) time to share it with others makes me so unbelievably happy. That man single-handedly changed my relationship with literature, and is by far the most influential teacher I had in high school. I hope anyone who has the opportunity to take his classes appreciates just how wonderful and insightful he is.
03. I watched "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" with Emily this afternoon. Clint Eastwood was so handsome! I often categorize him with Paul Newman: both were stunningly attractive in their younger years, and so talented too. Westerns aren't usually my thing but this movie is an exception. Also Ennio Morricone composed the score for the film, which I love because he also wrote the score for "The Mission," which has become one of my favorite scores ever.
04. I am definitely staying at Mount Holyoke College. The decision was not an easy one to make, but I think it will be the right decision in the long run, and I am excited to see what will happen.
05. The book Earth (courtesy of Jon Stewart and the rest of the team from "The Daily Show") is an excellent and humorous read with startlingly accurate portrayals of the way humans have lived in the past and now live today. I laughed so hard, and I highly recommend that anyone with some spare time should pick up a copy and enjoy it from cover to cover.
06. "Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." (Mark Twain)

Nice Sweaters

The song of the day is "You and I" by Ingrid Michaelson, because for some reason as of late it has been stuck in my head and I hum it all the time, so I figure I might as well express my apparent love for it through some other vessel.

"Well you might be a bit confused
and you might be a little bit bruised
but baby, how we spoon like no one else.
So I will help you read those books
if you will soothe my worried looks
and we will put the lonesome on the shelf."

Whoa 2011

No resolutions for me this year, except perhaps to be even more open to the little bits of happiness hiding everywhere, every day. Today is Emily's 21st birthday, which is crazy and weird and awesome and humbling. We're currently watching "Whip It" together on the couch, but have no definitive plans for the rest of the afternoon, and I like that. In other news, I have a 4.0 GPA in college, and I may not transfer after all.

Sledding!

This morning I woke up to my dad making waffles in his new Belgian waffle maker. They were delicious and promptly afterward my entire family settled down to watch "Toy Story 3." I had yet to see it (none of us had seen it yet, actually) and it was so delightful! I cried more than once - a result, I think, not only of the excellent writing and my soft heart, but also of the nostalgia and poignancy of having grown up with the films. I was about the same age as Andy when "Toy Story" first came to theaters, and now, years and years later, Andy went off to college at the same time as I did. This was a clever move on Pixar's part, but also a beautiful tribute to a generation of kids who grew in maturity while never losing imagination.

This afternoon a bunch of us went sledding at the Chocksett football fields in Sterling. It was freezing, but so much fun! The wind whipping at our faces, we later found out, was moving at a staggering 58 miles per hour. (Ouch.) But the snow was perfect for angels and for sliding down the steeps of the fields. So many people stayed inside today - and are sensible for doing so - but I am glad that we were able to gather together and appreciate this gift from Mother Nature for a few hours. 

I smiled and laughed a lot today.

Oh, also.

01. I'm excited for the snow. It keeps piling and piling up!

02. Transfer applications are going to kick my butt. Bring it.

03. I really, reeeeally want to intern at HarperCollins or Penguin or even Bloomsbury this summer.

04. My dad is watching "The Return of the King" and I can hear the beautiful score wafting up through the floorboards. It makes me sentimental, in both happy and sad ways.

05. I am sick once again, and I really don't know why this keeps recurring.

06. Tomorrow I want nothing more than to gather with my sisters and friends to go sledding!

 

My first winter in Holden, junior year. Sledding with Emily at Mayo Elementary School, going approximately 0.5 miles per hour.

07. I also really want to ice skate soon. I taught myself how when I was a sophomore, but far too much time has passed since I last laced up my blades.

 

My first time on skates, sophomore year! Determination: strong. Skill level: non-existent.

  Happy blizzard!

You Can't Beat It

Christmas was so wonderful. It was nice to celebrate with just the immediate family for once. Usually we spend the holiday with my grandparents, and a few times we've gathered with aunts and uncles too. But yesterday, it was just the five of us, and I loved that.

Christmas Eve

Things are starting to look up. I don't plan to hold my breath, but I also won't breathe too deeply.

Merry Christmas Eve!

occucco ][ ssf.tsf.ffne

I just video chatted with Olivia for over an hour and a half. It was so nice to see a familiar face from Mount Holyoke, and to be able to talk about things that people here do not necessarily know about or understand. (For example: the ugly, weird designs that people came up with for our dorm 2010-2011 sweatshirt...a Hamster? Really?) We spoke about Christmas, we showed each other our cats, I said "hello again" to her mum and dad, we talked about spring break and transferring and how complicated it makes the housing application process. I vented about my frustrations with certain things here at home and she lent a willing ear. Olivia is my best friend at school by far, and having met her parents during Family & Friends' Weekend, I feel almost as if I know her the way I know many of my high school friends--because there is that element of knowing more than just your friend, because you are familiar with not just her but also the people in her life.

A few days ago, I told Katie that the one thing that made me sad about leaving Mount Holyoke for break was that I did not think I would miss any of my friends, at least not too tremendously. Skyping with Olivia tonight instilled within me the hope and positivity that of late has been dwindling. I miss her so much and cannot wait to see her again in a month. Having a reason to actually want to return to school makes the arrival of January 24th that much easier.

----------------------------
In other words, I just wish you would talk to me, and not while hiding behind your cell phone. I do not know if you are afraid or are angry or are indifferent. I hope so very much, though, that indifference is not the reason for your lack of enthusiasm, because nothing could hurt me more. If it is not too much to ask, perhaps my Christmas present could be old-fashioned communication. I would like that.

Blue Faire Isle

I am frustrated beyond belief that you refuse to make this easy for either of us.

It would be so nice to see your face at my door.

A bunch of us gathered last night to celebrate our "homecomings," so to speak, and to enjoy a little bit of catching up before the holiday. It was as much fun as it always is, and today I am exhausted but extremely content. Everything seems more magical this time of year and I am so happy to be home, enjoying the Christmas season with my family (including my mum, who decorates so tastefully and makes Christmas twenty times more exciting than it already is) and with my friends. Everyone fills me up with so much happiness and joy and love that I feel both blessed and spoiled for how lucky I am. There are a lot of friends and family members that I have not seen in a long time, and I miss them tremendously, but I have a good amount of faith that we'll all meet again in due time.

buffalolaffub

Greg sent me a link explaining how the sentence "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is completely legitimate. As an English major, I am slightly embarrassed to admit that the accuracy of its construction remains somewhat lost on me.

Philip Glass is playing as I write my paper.

This means business.

as he stood there with the roses, which said more than he ever could

"He had not said, 'I love you'; but he held her hand. Happiness is this, is this, he thought."

-Mrs. Dalloway

All At Sea

"She felt very young, at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything, at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."

-Mrs. Dalloway 

Mrs. Dalloway

On the brain. Not on the paper.

Oh quel jour est aujourd'hui.

I have been studying for almost six hours now and I know I have at least two more ahead of me. Stats was difficult but French is proving to be nearly impossible to grasp. I haven't even packed my things to go home tomorrow yet, either. One roommate is asleep, two are watching "Lost," but the girls above (or is it below?) me will not stop making noise. My bed is right near a vent and I can hear every word (or weird noise) they make, including those private ones I have zero interest in overhearing.

French is swirling in and out of my brain. As soon as I think I have remastered a concept, I come across an example that I cannot comprehend. I try to assuage my panic by convincing myself that surely I had these same struggles when I first learned how to speak and write English as a toddler, but somehow I don't believe it. Mastering foreign languages is not by any means easy, but at the same time, it frustrates me how quickly I lose the information after learning it originally. Nothing seems to stick anymore! Et maintenant, je suis très fatiguée.

On the bright side, I am trying to keep myself awake so I am eating Cheez-its (it's almost midnight, gross, I know), and I just ate a burnt one. Burnt Cheez-its are my absolute favorite. If they ever sold reject boxes that were filled to the brim only with burnt Cheez-its, I would buy the entire stock.

Look at me, I'm talking about square orange crackers. This is not the mind of a girl with the ability to take exams in nine hours. I am going to be dead before my pencil even touches the paper.

Madame

I love my French professor so much! She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met.

All done with classes!

And I took my Sociology exam today, as well. I've spent the afternoon watching "90210" with Rachael (guilty pleasure, I know). Tonight I get to watch Olivia dance, finish Mrs. Dalloway, and celebrate with my frands at our Secret Holiday Armadillo party. Life is great for the time being!

I feel sick sick sick sick sick.

i looked up into the grey sky

The right side of my back hurts tremendously. I think I slept on it wrong or something; probably, I slept on my side. I used to be a side sleeper but then I started getting really bad back pain. So I switched to lying on my back, and now I can't fall asleep any other way. I was at UMass last night, though, and sharing a twin bed is not conducive to healthful sleep.

I've been listening to a lot of upbeat music lately, the kind that makes me want to dance even when I'm standing in line or walking down the street. (A tiny part of me longs for my own "(500) Days of Summer" spontaneous dance routine.) The song of the day is "Black and Gold" by Sam Sparro.

I feel a way of something beyond them:
I don't see what I can feel.
If vision is the only validation,
then most of my life isn't real.

'Cause if you're not really here
then the stars don't even matter.
Now I'm filled to the top with fear
but it's all just a bunch of matter.
'Cause if you're not really here
then I don't want to be, either.
I want to be next to you.

< seven days

I have so much to do and time to do it but I'm convinced it won't be time enough.

ONE WEEK!

I am so happy!

I'm in!

Just got an e-mail from the director of The Vagina Monologues.
I'll be performing "Because He Liked to Look At It."
I am so excited!
This has made my week.

"I feel a little better."

Lately I have lost my sense of self within college. The stress, the relationships, the worries, the expectations and overwhelming commitments, all these things managed to swallow my tiny little body whole, and I sat somewhere inside this huge emptiness, waiting for illumination.

I had callbacks for The Vagina Monologues tonight. I found myself, rediscovered myself, within other selves unlike my own. I emerged from my audition breathing a newer version of my old life.

Once again, theatre makes me more me than does merely existing as me.

Mum surprised me with a visit today!

It was so wonderful getting to spend some time with her! But it only reinforces how much I miss my family! Only eight days more.

apathy)(apathy

"But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people."

-Mrs. Dalloway

reference notes

1. We've all finally reached a level of agreement regarding the new room arrangement!
2. My eye is almost back to its normal color, but it still hurts every now and then. I'm scared to put my contacts in from now on, though. Hydrogen peroxide in the eye is not a cup of tea.
3. I cannot focus on my French homework. Je ne suis pas contente, parce que j'ai beaucoup de devoirs mais je n'ai pas le temps.
4. I have my fourth hour of Stats tonight at 8:00 but it is so cold out and the seven minute walk seems like eternity.
5. Not including today, there are only 10 more days until I can go home!
6. Où est la neige?!

Starry Eyes

This weekend in New York was wonderful! But now I am back at Mount Holyoke, and the world seems to have dimmed, dulled, and become altogether flat.

Only fourteen days until I can go home, which is not quite as bright as the city, but at least surrounds me with people I love.

C'est le premier décembre!

Everything about this month makes me joyful!

Happy December!

I'm annoyed with the people who run the NYC-Five College shuttle.

Do not tell me that you offer rides back from NYC on Saturday evenings if you are not actually going to provide them.

Homemade fudge is delicious but I feel sinful eating it and not in any way that makes me feel good.

I will never remedy the sadness that absorbs my entire body every time I see or hear from him. I feel blue in my toes and my ears and my lungs and my shoulders and my hands and all the places in between. Time refuses to move faster and in its slow-passing state, I seem unable to recover from the hurt he inevitably had to cause.

I already miss home. I miss my family more. We began decorating the house for Christmas last night and all I want now is to be there with them, humming along to overplayed holiday songs and stringing garland around the banister in the hallway.

Nineteen days and then I am free.

good things

Today I:

-passed in my English paper.

-got an A on my Stats exam.

-ate mashed potatoes for dinner.

-am one day away from going home!

I can't wait to return to something like this.

48 Hours

I cannot wait to go home home home home!

All I had for dinner was sticky white rice, a piece of toast, and some graham crackers.

How do I eat food made in the same kitchen as the food that didn't agree with me?
I hate being sick.

Registering for classes sucks.

I have nothing else to say, at least nothing intelligent.

I am writing a paper in the library and I'm freezing.

My feet seek refuge from the cold beneath my folded and crisscrossed legs. My sweater is fully buttoned as, too, is my peacoat, and yet I can still feel the goosebumps lurking beneath my sleeves.

The girls on the couches a few feet away are talking loudly. They have no homework to complete, only conversation.

Their own coats lie strewn across the floor.

I don't understand

how some people keep the company of genuinely mean persons.

My inspiration for peace.

All Hallow's Eve

French kiss.

Posh Spice and Rihanna.

  

With Raggedy Ann.

Happy Halloween!

MacGregor at Lunchtime

One of the chefs in our dining hall loves to sing along with the radio. Today he belted out "Bad Romance" with Lady Gaga and from my own post one hundred feet away, I could not help but smile when his voice lofted past my ears.

I don't normally like tattoos, but I love this.

  
I'm afraid of becoming an adult without dreams.

In Bloom

Today I wore one of my pairs of Betsey Johnson tights.
They were black and covered in flowers.
I felt perfectly girly, and somehow everything around me smelled better and shined brighter.

I miss you!

Outta Mind, Outta Sight

I am sick.
Being sick in college is not fun.

Every time I stand up, the room starts to spin and my head pounds. I feel tired all the time and my body won't stop shaking. When it's warm in the room, I'm cold. When it's cold, I'm hot. Somehow, despite all of this, I managed to make it to both of my classes today. I barely remember French at all, beyond smiling and repeating certain phrases. I think I voluntarily spoke twice, but anything I said likely sounded ridiculously mundane given my current state of mind. My Lit class wasn't much better. We're sailing through A Midsummer Night's Dream right now, which happens to be my favorite work of Shakespeare's, and I'm sitting in class, my head bobbing up and down only enough for me, and nobody else, to notice. Professor Yu asks what we've observed and I mention something about the fluctuating strengths of the female characters and also, for good measure, throw in how much I adore Bottom, because he makes my life complete.

I took a nap this afternoon but it was more so a restless hour spent in bed, eyes closed, face to the ceiling. The cracked patterns in the tiles played like whirligigs.

Now I'm awake, but only because at a certain point, I got tired of tossing and turning.

There is no need for you

There is no need for you to tell me that I am beautiful.

What am I supposed to say in return
that you haven't
already heard
from her?



[there is a reason I don't hug you anymore] 

4:30 PM - 10.22.10

Ducts

I cried today.
It felt good
but I stopped
before
I was
done.

(in)Destructible

All we needed were paper crowns to feel invincible.

Great Expectations

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."

-Alice Walker

I cannot focus.

Blame it on the ADHD. Blame it on the broken heater in my room. Blame it on the lack of light. Blame it on the view out my window, on the vibrancy that screams through the glass panes and ropes around my head, jerking me away from diligence and toward daydream. Blame it on the roommate who makes me wonder constantly where I stand. Blame it on sleep deprivation. Blame it on all of the other bullets on the piece of paper marked "TO DO" that taunt me because I have yet to catch up with them. Blame it on the stress. Blame it on transfer applications, on the need for a 3.5 or better to even bother sealing the envelope. Blame it on the ink in my pen running low. Blame it on this uncomfortable desk chair. Blame it on the act of blaming things.

Blech.

Rhythm

My heart beats a little faster these days.

Vespers: Parousia

Love of my life, you
are lost and I am
young again.

A few years pass.
The air fills
with girlish music;
in the front yard
the apple tree is
studded with blossoms.

I try to win you back,
that is the point
of the writing.
But you are gone forever,
as in Russian novels, saying
a few words I don't remember--

How lush the world is,
how full of things that don't belong to me--

I watch the blossoms shatter,
no longer pink,
but old, old, a yellowish white--
the petals seem
to float on the bright grass,
fluttering slightly.

What a nothing you were,
to be changed so quickly
into an image, an odor--
you are everywhere, source
of wisdom and anguish.

-Louise Glück

Clockwatching

I miss everyone and seeing them for some reason only makes it worse.

A Little Story

Yesterday I arrived at my theatre rehearsal actually on time for the first time in practically a month. Beaming with pride, I greeted my director Thea "hello" and proceeded to take off my sneakers and socks in preparation for our daily twelve opening sun salutations. Thea looked confused. I became confused.

I was finally early to a rehearsal at which I was not needed.

So I went to the library (because it was closer than walking all the way across campus to go back to Ham) and plunked myself down at a computer. The girl to my left was freaking out and partly because I worried she was about to have a coronary, I asked if she was okay.

It turns out she was better than okay: the printer system in the library broke. So now we don't have to swipe our One Cards to print anything. Which means we can print as much as we want...for free.

So I showed up to a rehearsal I didn't have to be at.
But I also printed 300 pages' worth of sociology readings (double-sided, so I suppose only 150 pages, I do lurve trees after all) for free.

Things happen for reasons.
I am constantly reminded of this.

Mad Rush

College does weird things to you. As different as everyone claims it to be--and certainly, to many extents, this claim is not wholly incorrect--college is still an exercise in the major processes of life. I still wake up every day, I still get dressed, I still eat and shower and tie my shoes, I still go to class, much as I would like to say otherwise, I still have grotesque amounts of homework, I still exercise, I still pull the covers up to my chin when I turn out the lights at night, and I still dream, I still dream bizarre dreams.

With so much similarity comes the expectation that "going home" will be exactly the same. Or maybe only I held this expectation. I think the answer is somewhere in the middle: anyone who comes home for the very first time, whether they realized it at the time or not, whether or not they admit it now, held this same belief that I did.

Perception Versus Reality plunked me on the head this weekend.

01. I was doubtful, for the first three days that I was home, that my dog actually recognized me as a permanent member of the family.
02. Between the time I left in early September and this past Friday, when I came home, three new houses were built on my street. Now I walk outside and feel overwhelmed and somewhat intruded upon by these looming tan boxes.
03. My house is the same, but I feel different living in it. Case in point: my parents got a new trash can while I was at school. This freaked me out. Apparently my acceptance to change cannot withstand fluctuations in waste disposal methods.
04. For the first few minutes that I drove my car on Saturday, I felt apprehensive and feared that my muscle memory would not prevail.
05. My room is foreign to me. Suitcases cover the floor. My closest is practically empty. Every time I walk into the room, I feel ancy and ungrounded. There is no permanence anymore.
06. My bed at school is far comfier and it took me until last night to "rediscover" how to fall asleep in my real bed.
07. Seeing old friends creates this mad rush to catch up and restore order in the tiniest amount of time and then to pretend that everything is exactly as it used to be. It's not that things have completely changed. It's just that everyone is changing in the slightest of ways and now the edges of our puzzle pieces are nubbed and altered and slightly unsettled in their fit.
08. I feel like I am on vacation. I know I technically am on vacation, but I never expected to feel this way.

The only thing that I expected to feel that I do feel is the ugly admittance that I don't want to go back to school.

One thing I love about college

is my gym class. "Hiking in the Pioneer Valley" was the best choice I made when picking out my fall schedule. The places where we hike are so beautiful. The mountain ranges go on forever and every Thursday my muscles itch to leave campus and explore another few miles of them. Autumn, in its stereotypical physical appearance, has been late arriving this year. On campus, most trees sport still-green leaves, save a few large maples on the front lawn, which burned off their fiery clothing weeks ago. 

The mountains house their well-kept secret with intensity. Trailheads disguise themselves like every other inch of forest: monochromatic images of sage and olive, no different than any other street-lining trees. Yet sheltered within these beaten-out paths are small pockets of brilliance.

My camera, in all its consumer and digital goodness, cannot begin to capture the orange, yellow, red hues these steeps possess.

This is as it should be. 

Secrets like these should never be divulged.

For anyone who has ever read or seen "Gone With the Wind."

This is for you. Carol Burnett is a goddess.

Went With the Wind (Part 1)
Went With the Wind (Part 2)

"Pick one line from the script."

It was real to me, so it was real.

Epic Poetry

The Aeneid is eleven books too long.

it may not always be so;and i say

it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be--
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

-e.e. cummings

Upon Returning From A Midnight Theatre Rehearsal

I jam my key into the lock and turn it clockwise two full rotations, pushing down on the metal handle and quietly prodding the door open. A single fluorescent light sneers down from the ceiling, basking the girl farthest from where I stand in a glow that for anyone else would be described as "unflattering" but for her merely elicits an acknowledgment of how crappy the electricity is here. Everyone present sleeps, with the exception of my exhausted self, hovered in the doorway, silently removing this tiny metal concrete password from its rite of passage and clicking the door shut behind me. The girl closest to the door hides beneath mountains of covers; she does not want to be observed and I frankly am too tired to consider acting otherwise. My own bed, untouched and yet to be mussed, has much unfortunately fallen victim to the ranks of two rather noisy sleepers. From one end I hear the occasional passage from an airy, nasal sonata. The other end presents for me a steady, throaty performance muffled slightly by a strategically-placed textbook upon which the performer's head now rests, though likely unintentionally.

I am in between these two, and I jointly occupy the middle of all three.
They surround me in slumber
yet I feel strangely
unprotected and
alert.

The single thing I keep thinking to myself.

I miss home.

Day Two

I haven't had time to process all of my thoughts about college yet. I just finished my second full day of classes and am already swimming in work. I feel like there is no time to think about anything. I cannot reflect because I have no availability to do so. My brain is constantly "ON," always processing where I am going, what I am doing, and who I need to see. Tomorrow I have only one class and afterward I plan on taking an hour to sit down, shake out my head until it is empty, and then fill it back up with new reflections.

What I can say, though, is how much I welcome each and every text message and phone call. Alex, Laura, Emily, Leanne, Katie, Mum and Dad and Katiedoo: you are the persons who inspire me to make it through each day, and just know that any time, and every time, my phone beeps or lights up with a message from you, a smile climbs up my cheeks and internally I feel safe in a way that only memories and reminders of home can provide.

I'm finally here!

And I'm loving it and hating it at the same time.
Mostly the love outweighs the hate, and that's good enough for now.

A Definition

"That's not courage. Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battle field when it's be brave or else be killed. I'm talking of something else. And my kind of cowardice is infinitely worse than if I had run the first time I heard a cannon fired."

-Margaret Mitchell
Gone With the Wind

KGD

Katie went off to her first day of seventh grade today with a smile on her face, and even though she somehow, despite her diligent morning routine, managed to miss the bus, I am told that her loopy grin refused to subside as she hopped into the car and sped off before the school bells rang.

She is nervous but she has no need to be.
She is beautiful and I will miss her.

Bedridden

I woke up with the top half of my head disconnected from its southern counterpart, which, too, was disjointed from the rest of my body. My head hurts and the bright, shiny orange capsules I've been swallowing since I woke up have done nothing in the way of destroying the millions of angry little germs swarming around inside of me.

On the bright side, I do feel that getting sick now is so much more preferable to coming down with a cold during my first few weeks at school. I want my roommates to like me, not avoid me like the plague.

The song of the day is "That Home" by Cinematic Orchestra.

Where the windows are breathing in the light,
Where the rooms are a collection of our lives,
This is a place where I don't feel alone.

Natural Selection

Today was my second-to-last day of work at the EcoTarium. It was bittersweet, I suppose, mostly only because of how used to its regularity I have become. Also I admit that I have grown quite attached to Penelope, our African Pygmy Hedgehog, and she has finally grown comfortable with and trusting of me. It is a relationship that I spent a long time building, and one I do not really want to give up. My boss, Tricia, is luckily allowing me to work vacations, which will probably equal out to visiting the museum about once or twice every few months. Still, it will be tough waking up on Saturday and Sunday mornings and not driving into Worcester for a few hours of sometimeschaos and sometimespeace.

I sound like an idiot for complaining. As a freshman at Mount Holyoke, I am required to work in the dining halls (no library jobs for me...yes, I looked, and yes, I found some, but no, apply for them I cannot). This is neither a coveted nor excitable job. But it helps pay tuition and at least my dorm has a dining hall conveniently located on the first floor, so there really isn't anything to gripe about. A job is a job and at least I have one. It is just going to be different. There will still be human interaction, but on a less educational and less exhilarating level. And the likelihood of someone busting out a cornsnake or a chinchilla or boa constrictor is slim to none.

I like animals. I always have, but this job has made that fact an extraordinarily acute one. I find myself spewing out facts about all sorts of creatures, whether inquired about them or not. I excitedly discovered last night that A.P. hedgehogs have a high tolerance for toxins, which allows them to eat things like scorpions and venomous snakes, and in a torrent of elation I whipped up an e-mail to my wildlife boss informing her of this discovery. Hours before that, I had painstakingly converted millimeters into a rough approximation of inches so that the children I talked with would have a better understanding of a hedgehog's body size. So, too, did I transpose kilometers per hour into miles per hour, proudly stating to my sister, who I am sure was slightly bored with so many hedgehog facts, that Penelope has the capability to run ten miles per hour.

And this from an animal with legs barely half of an inch long.

As part of my summer reading for orientation, I had to read a section of Temple Grandin's novel Animals in Translation. I devoured the book. I loved it. Temple Grandin is brilliant. She is autistic and although her brain does not function the same way that mine or yours does, it does have the ability to notice the tiniest, slightest of details, in the same way as many animals--their brains also, for the most part, less developed than our own--do, and in a way that normal human brains never will.

I do not possess Temple Grandin's astounding insight. I probably will never even come near to possessing it. But I would like to think, and a small part of me does think, that my eleven months spent working in such close contact with a variety of animals has expanded my opinion of the world in which I live. I am physically large but I am mentally tiny. I am tiny. The animals I have held and fed are tinier than me in size, but in so many ways they are larger than me, and greater than me as well.

They notice things that every day pass by my eyes without conjuring a blink or second glance. They are living in the world--they are living in their world, in this world--in the moment. Every second they experience to a staggering degree, because every second in their life is worth more than even a minute of my own.

Evolutionists may argue this is the product of intellectual superiority, or a higher order and a higher class and a higher species. We are smarter, so we live longer, and we notice the bigger things because we have the time, the lifespan with which to do so. The details matter but often inconsequentially so.

These are assertions I have heard and I have read.
But even Charles Darwin had a fascination with animals that verged on the religious.

We have much to learn and so little time in which to absorb it all.

Excerpt

Today
my strengths
lie only in my ability
to hide
weakness.

-from "Yellow Dirigo"
12:39 AM - 7.5.10

Proofreading clearly at its best.

Wachusett Mountain ski rental form. 2009.

Red Line

Why does every experience have to be a double-edged sword?

Yesterday I took the train down to Duxbury to visit some of my old friends. Anticipation mixed with apprehension as the minutes grew closer to each interaction, but of course the blood pumping frantically throughout my veins was merely overreaction for what ultimately were delightful exchanges. The problem, then, was not in the reconnection, as I had initially feared, but in leaving.

The problem is always in leaving.

Were I to create a pie chart breaking down how often I cry by the various causes of said tears, leaving and being left behind would comprise at least half of the circle. This all, once again, goes back to my inability to accept change quietly and without fuss. My departure from Duxbury was tainted by the knowledge that, though physically I was the one walking away, my friends were metaphorically leaving me behind. Boarding the T in Braintree was a manifestation of this solemnity: my entire car remained empty for the majority of my ride into Boston.

Am I going to spend the first few months of college wandering around, be it literally or otherwise, on my own and without others whom I can call real friends? Will it take months of sitting alone on a cold, hard seat in a subway car until I am surrounded by fellow passengers all heading in the same direction as me? And when, during my journey toward South Station, on my way to better and greater things, will those who take a seat beside me turn and strike up conversation? Will I ever exit through the jerky metal doors and emerge at the station with companions? Or will my footsteps echo singularly throughout the cement and tiled walls of the underground?

I miss people already, even those who have yet to leave me behind.

Baggage

Packing absolutely sucks.

I belong to the hurricane.

The song of the day is "Hurricane Drunk" by Florence + The Machine, from the album Lungs. I absolutely love Florence Welch's voice, which reminds me of a punchier version of Feist's.

I hope that you see me
'cause I'm staring at you.
But when you look over,
you look right through.
Then you lean and kiss her on the head.
And I never felt so alive and so dead.

Prehistoric

Because even at eighteen, every now and then 

I like to pretend I'm something I'm not.

Dinosaur sweatshirt-- E. Doolittle original

Disenchanted Enchantment

The song of the day is "Shadow On the Wall" by Brandi Carlile. Meghan first introduced me to her music and the more I listen to it, the more I love it. Her vocals for this song are haunting in a quiet way that leaves me simultaneously pleased as a listener and saddened as an observer. 

"How I long to be
a shadow on the wall.
I will make no sound at all.
And when the sun goes down
the shadow on the wall
cannot be seen at all."

English Variations

It is a damp seventy-two degrees outside, with a grey, abstract hood encapsulating everything below it, surrounding the desperate trees and defeated earth and surrounding me existing somewhere between the two. Grey is a beautiful color but for some reason the hue only seems beautiful in an upbeat way when spelled with an "a" instead. This sky insists on an "e" and within it I reach for the same vowel.

Around me this grey bubble tinges my skin grey, and my thoughts, too, absorb the somber dye that leaks through.

Floating Fast

I wrote this back in July and just stumbled upon it again. I think I still feel the way I did when I wrote this, if not more so now that the days until I leave for college are dwindling in number.

So today's the day we pack up and leave our humble Cape abode for the real world again. Leaving is always my least favorite part of a vacation, but I guess most people would agree with me on that. There is something unsettling about having to pick up and ship off, especially following a vacation, which is so short. You've barely established normalcy in your "new" (or current) home, and just as things are starting to become comfortable, and feel "right," you have to uproot and move on once more. I feel like this is the same with my life right now. I moved here last year, withdrawing myself from a home that had taken me 5 years to mold and craft into something I loved and within which I fit. The past year and a half, I have come to live within a new life, one I love more deeply than my old lives, and one that, quite frankly, I'm not yet ready to leave. I hear all the time that the friends you meet in college are the friends that stay with you for the rest of your life. But what about my high school friends? Laura, Leanne, Katie--the three of them are my closest, best friends and I hate the idea that college is going to "replace" them with newer and better people. The same goes with so many other people here. I want my friends, both new and old, to peacefully coexist within my world. So few of my friends from Duxbury survived the physical distance that came between us, and the few friends that remain I'm even more scared of losing--because my connection to them, within just a few short months, will be doubly removed, if that makes any sense.

I guess what this all boils down to is the fact that I am not good with change. I say I like it, and I do, but I also hate the chaos it causes internally, the frantic searching that ensues to rediscover myself in the latest form of me, Sam. I am excited for the fall, excited to meet new girls from all over the world. I've been talking enthusiastically with girls from Sri Lanka, Japan, England, all of whom seem so anticipatory and so ready to get on with this next part of their lives. I want to be just as ready as them, but I feel like the next chapter of my life will be incomplete-- incomplete because I will have no guy friends within it, incomplete because not all of my friends will be with me every step of the way to share it, incomplete because every time I have to start from scratch, I feel like I always leave something out, and I'm never quite sure what it is, if I really did forget something.

There's a beautiful quote from the song "Hummingbird," by Wilco.

Remember to remember me,
standing still in your past,
floating fast like a hummingbird.

It is childish to admit, but I wish we could all be hummingbirds, suspending ourselves within each other's pasts so that we can always come back to this part of our lives, so that we never have to leave it all behind for good.

Does this make any sense? Sometimes I feel delusional.

I'm going to be living in a Ham.

I got roomies, yo.

I can't think.

The song of the day is "Intuition" by Feist.

A destination known 
only by the one
who's fate is overgrown.
Piecemeal could break your home in half.
A love is not complete with only heat.

And did I, did I
miss out on you?

Last Night

I slunk into my bed, a smile on my face.
A sad smile,
but still
a smile.

Planetarium

Dvorak smothers us both as the wiry bulbs catch fire, lighting up and into each other, whirring around the circular dome in an impassioned display. I am small within this bubble and you are no bigger than I. The constellations overhead taunt our meager forms in the dark, each illuminated speck throbbing, and I am humbled by the sheer enormity of this fake sky.

Humans are no match for what lingers above.

10:28 PM

I cannot tell if you are ignoring me, or if you simply just do not care enough to talk to me anymore. The worst part is that I almost wish it were the former, because then, at least, I can tell myself you are thinking of me.

College

I think my biggest fear is that, surrounded by 2,000 other students, I will feel unbelievably alone.

Today is Day 1.

I start again.

An Explanation for Today

The rain attacks the windshield in thick sheets that burst under pressure as soon as they hit glass. I have my wipers up to full speed, using the spare seconds between each haphazard cycle backandforthbackandforth to navigate this familiar road. My car is cold. The air conditioning blasts from every direction, each vent aimed perfectly at the driver's seat, this an accomplishment considering its misdirected currents every other day. My car is cold. My skin is cold. I consider turning off the air, following through with my thoughts and watching as a siege of ice fog overtakes the glass closest to the dashboard. I backtrack. Now my car is cold. My skin is cold. Detached from my physical body, I am cold. Backandforthbackandforth my eyes follow the wipers while my brain copies their movement. Backandforthbackandforth a direct representation of how I am with you. My street seems more bare than usual. Rain always makes the road appear deserted, the houses that line the right side rising like weeds amid this otherwise untouched, wild plot. My foot pushes the brake down down down. The wheel steers right and my car aligns itself with the pavement of the third weed on this street. I leave one cold interior to enter into another, unnecessarily cooled down for the heat wave that never arrived. My voice echoes off the walls that will always be taller than me, walls that share every secret and hear every whisper. My feet pad along the floor, searching for other people. A slow, steady shuffled breath meets me downstairs, the same breaths echoed once I climb up up up, no one is awake. I am cold. This house is cold. I am a cold pest living in a cold weed.

I walk outside. Rain changes targets and begins to bully my skin, ripping at the transparent hairs on my arms and snickering at my vulnerability. I am smaller than this rain. I am a pest living in a weed. A cold weed. I am a cold pest.

My skin dampens as the drops pelt, one by one, into the black hugging fabric of my shirt. This liquid is welcoming. I am merely visiting but I am a welcomed visitor. I am a welcomed pest.

My shorts are speckled with rain. My thoughts still swish backandforthbackandforth.

I am a pest living in a material weed. I am a cold pest living in a cold weed telling cold lies to warm people. I become colder with each lie and yet I keep gifting cold lies unto warm people.

You were warm today and I could feel the sizzle of my cold skin as it melted in the presence of your warmth. I was cold and I sizzled and I told cold lies.

The rain still falls. I am drenched in water, drowning in my own frigid lies. You are warm and dry and recognize my cold words as cold lies.

Each time I see you I promise myself not to hand you cold lies.
Each time I see you I freeze and my hot words become warm half-truths until I am feeding you
lies
cold lies
cold cold
I told you a cold lie today.
I told you more than one cold lie.
I am cold.
I am comprised of cold lies.
I fed you cold lies because I love you.

I love you but the words turned cold in my mouth.
I love you warmly
but without you I am
cold.

Repeat Offender

I have always loved Regina Spektor because she is a brilliant lyricist. But lately, I find myself taking extra comfort in the way her voice wraps around me, not always melodic but always, at the very least, persistent. Her album "Far" plays in my car at least a few days a week, and no matter what other CD I pop in, I always end up going back to her music.

Today's song, then, is "Man of A Thousand Faces" by Regina Spektor.

And I'm crying for things 
that I tell others to do 
without crying.

32

The way you smile at me is the only thing allowing me to believe in what would otherwise be wishful thinking.

Boy On Bicycle

I am bothered that you no longer want to talk with me, but the reason for your silence is one that I provided.

July 19th

My dad turns 49 today. He is almost a half-century old. Imagine how much wisdom we come to acquire with every additional year. It seems silly to me that as adults age, they begin more and more to dread birthdays, viewing them as just another sign of their impending mortality. I think there is so much to celebrate as we get older: another year as a player in this crazy world, another year with family and friends, another year to love and love fully, another year to cry and grow, another year to learn and develop and become an incredible human being.

If my father cannot see it this way, then let me be his eyes.

Saturday Morning

Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah I hate getting back to reality.

10:00 PM

I love it when you just want to say hello.

My Country Is My Heart

It is 3:05 in the afternoon and I am restless. My mother has collapsed on her bed and fallen asleep. My father sits in the front room with his legs crossed on the rigid ottoman, reading quietly as Katie does the same a few feet away. I have managed to position myself in a rickety armchair, the cushion tired, the wood starting to show signs of wear and corrosion from all the salt floating around here. Had I not pushed the chair as close to the card table as its arms would permit, I doubt I would have much restraint at all. I cannot seem to sit still. Surely I am sitting but I feel the need to move my fingers, to wiggle my toes in my rubber slip-ons, the black patterned flesh gnawing against the worn soles of summer feet. This house is hot and within it I am warmer. Thoughts ricochet about my head, tangling with my hair, unkempt and puffy in the weighted air. The breezes that pass through the patchworked screen door are disruptive, sending each crinkly strand of hair in a different direction. I am calm in the least calm of ways.

Two feet from the deck stairs there is a large bundle of orange flowers. They look sort of like those white weeds that grow in the woods, the ones that you can place in a glass filled with food coloring and then come back in a few days to rainbow flowers. My mum used to call them "Lace" something or other, but I cannot remember now. But the orange flowers here are almost burnt in their coloring. They are bright but also extremely dull. Every time I walk by them, half a dozen bees or so swarm from the underneaths of the flowers, up, up to meet my swinging arms and clumsy feet. The bees here have tangerine fur, tiny strips of orange hair banded by black on both ends. They are larger than most bees I have seen but for some reason do not intimidate me the way wasps and hornets do. They are almost like bumblebees, fuzzy and diligent in their tasks, but with a longer thorax and therefore not quite so fat. Regardless they seem always to hover around the orange plants, a little collage of orange  that seems to change only in composition, never in appearance.

It amazes me that any living creature could be so meticulous about one single thing. I think constant repetition would drive me mad. A bee's greatest job is to collect the pollen and nectar from plants, return its sticky bounty to the hive, then leave once more to repeat the process all over again. When I was younger I never understood that bees were doing anything but terrifying me with their presence. I would run away from one, whimpering, if it came within even a few feet of me. Every summer until I was 8, I managed to be on the receiving end of a bee stinger. Usually it was my own fault: the house I lived in when I was little had wooden benches that my dad had built into the deck, and hornets liked to build their nests underneath the seats. I would come along, sit down and begin swinging my legs, end up kicking the nest, irritating its inhabitants and leading to screams from me as I ran away, never quite able to escape their wrath completely.

A bee has not stung me in years and I admit that I still walk a little faster when I see one swooping near me. But as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the space they occupy. Every bee, whether it be a hornet, a wasp, a bumblebee, surely even the orange bees, instinctively protects its hive. A bee will risk its life protecting its home and its fellow residents. In a way, the structure of a bee hive is a microcosm for the way humans function. We go about our daily business with generally no other intentions but to complete our tasks thoroughly and efficiently. But if something we hold in high regard is threatened, we fight: some of us with words, some of us physically, but all of us instinctively.

My old neighbors, the Scotts, were bee farmers, and when we moved away they gave us a book that Mr. Scott had written, entitled Bee Lessons. Somewhere in the middle of the book lies a beautiful truth.

Dulcet et decorum est pro patria Mori.

"Sweet and beautiful it is to die for one's country."

123 Miles to Boston

Provincetown clears my worries and makes me happy in the simplest and best of ways.

I Hate Packing

I'm terrible at it. It takes me hours and hours and still I always worry that I'll forget something. I'm long past the age where I should be needing help, but my mum continues to write packing lists for me, because otherwise I have no idea where to start (and, with lists, I have no reasonable excuse for procrastination). I just tell myself that my inability to efficiently pack a suitcase has no bearing on my ability to be an adult.
Generally speaking, I believe myself.

Leaving Port

"A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for."
--William Shedd

"What's it about?"

I laughed, shrugged, and said I didn't know.
But the subject was sitting directly across from me, asking the question.
How could I admit I wrote my first poem in months because of you?

Reciprocity

I would be more excited if you were, too.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I spent this entire year excitedly planning for the ultimate summer venture: I would finally read all of the books I have ever wanted to read, because there would be no required reading for college, no summer assignments to keep me so occupied that no more than a few self-picked novels would pass through my hands. I would curl up in a chair with a new book every few days, and by the end of August would be, in a sense, "caught up" with my own personal required reading list.

This list includes, but is not limited to: classics, including Gone With the Wind, The Origin of Species, On the Road, Slaughterhouse-Five, Of Mice and Men, Jane Eyre, 1984, As I Lay Dying, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, Of Human Bondage, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Fountainhead, The Scarlet Letter, The Bell Jar, The Invisible Man, Lolita (because I loved Nabokov's The Defense), The Time Machine, Watership Down (which I bought when I was 8 following my aunt's suggestion: little did I realize at the time that Richard Adams did not write about bunnies the way I imagined in my head), anything by Toni Morrison that I'd be able to get my hands on, and Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and To the Lighthouse; more contemporary novels, like Blankets by Craig Thompson, The Last Summer of You and Me by Ann Brashares, and I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak; and a handful of plays and volumes of poetry, including All My Sons by Arthur Miller, The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, many of Kamila Shamsie's novels (she is a South Asian poet and novelist), Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and the full extent of my Rod McKuen collection (for some reason, he's out of print and not even the full CW-MARS library network has any of his work).

I knew going into this summer that the task would not be an easy one. I am not a quick reader. I'm not bad at reading, not at all, but because of my ADHD, I tend to read slower than most other voracious readers (such as my sister Emily) so that I can completely absorb the material. No matter, I thought. I have an entire summer in front of me.

Today is July 3rd and as of now, my proud list of books that I have successfully read so far includes: 45 pages of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own."

I'm embarrassed. This isn't like me, especially not when I have an actual written list to follow step by step until I've completed it. I started reading "Room" about three weeks ago, and I've only managed to cover forty-five pages? Perhaps I should have chosen a slightly-less verbose author as a starting-off point, but Mr. Tarmey gave me "Room" and To the Lighthouse as a gift, and so I felt, above and beyond all else, obliged to start with these two classics.

Now I feel only obligated. I cannot deny that Woolf is brilliant, because I have enjoyed part of what I've read so far, and even the parts I cannot fully comprehend still amaze me due to her grasp on the English language and her use of the sub-conscious as a form of expression. But I can't seem to get myself to finish the essay. I'm trying not to place the blame on my ADHD, but maybe that really is part of the problem.

More likely, any medical inhibitors are nothing more than wishful thinking. Part of me is afraid to admit that I'm not smart enough to appreciate Virginia Woolf. I don't think it's true, but what other explanation can there be? So then I tell myself that I'm just not old enough to understand her writing. This is much more probable.

But is it something to be ashamed of? I want to be an English major and yet my goal of reading so many fantastic novels has stemmed because I cannot finish a classic British essay. I cannot complete a task that any aspiring poet or novelist should easily be able to tackle.

So I have reached the point where instead of trying to force myself through the remaining fifty pages, I'm placing the Woolf compilation back onto my bookshelf until later. Maybe months later, maybe (admittedly) years later. But I will read both before I die. Mr. Tarmey wrote me a long note inside the front cover: how could I not?

For now, however, I am content to move on to another book on my list: Gone With the Wind. I'm leaving for a week's vacation on the Cape soon. What a better way to undertake one of the largest (and, in parts, or so I've been told by Emily, one of the most vapid) books in American literature than on vacation, with no library resource nearby?

We'll see how I do. I have my fingers crossed I'll make it past page forty-five.
I think I will.

Giving Up on Greener Grasses

Today I started writing a poem for the first time in months. I'm ecstatic to finally be producing some material again. The cause for picking up my pen, however, has me on the verge of tears every time I think about it.

I hate myself for how I feel.

The song of the day is "Giving Up" by Ingrid Michaelson.

What if I fall further than you?
What if you dream of somebody new?
What if I never let you win
and chase you with a rolling pin?
Well, what if I do?