Today

...was glorious.
...the weather was perfect.
...I did not censor myself.
...I did not think.
...I did not rethink.
...I laughed.
...the sun shone with me.
...the water lapped and echoed my contentedness.
...made me happy.
...I was happy.
...made me excited for tomorrow.

Not Again

Why is it that we always want exactly what we cannot have?

Somewhere within me, there is this terribly painful feeling. I do not even know where specifically it is. The closest description I have is that it feels like someone scooped his hand underneath and behind my stomach, or maybe my gut, and then pulled out whatever was there at the time, scraping his dirty fingernails against my skin's insides and leaving not only hollowness where there should be fullness, but also tiny scars that only make known their presence when I need it least.

I would like to think that what I just explained makes sense, but it barely even does to me. It's the best I can do. I really just think it's either understandable or it's not.

A part of me wonders what would happen if I suddenly rejected the obedient belief that "everything happens for a reason" and instead fought nail, tooth, and bone (and organ, flesh, and spirit) to effect the changes and outcomes I want to see. Maybe that sounds selfish. It probably does. But sometimes I feel like the way I want things to turn out makes far more sense than the way they ultimately do. Do things not turn out the way you hope because, somewhere on the other end of the situation (be it another person, the cosmos, what have you--I don't even know), the perception does not align with your own? Do desires and hopes only come to fruition when everyone involved concurs?

I'm waiting desperately for some sort of sign that somewhere, at the other end of this dream, the thing I want more than anything will nod in agreement, the thin string between us reverberating the welcomed response.

Until then, this string is frail and still.

Half-Dead

So I'm currently reading a collection of essays by a new humor writer, Sloane Crosley, titled "How Did You Get This Number." In one of the chapters, she discusses a trip she took to Alaska to attend her friend's wedding. While touring the landscape, they passed by something known as a "Ghost Forest." In 1964, Alaska experienced a 9.2 earthquake, and the land along the quake's fault lines actually fell between the plates toward the earth's core. And the trees along this area were terribly uprooted as the ground split apart, but were somehow preserved by all the salt water nearby. So some forty-six years later, these forests are still there. I think it's both incredible and incredibly eery.

Comet Pond

I get to go kayaking tonight as an early birthday present!
This has made my day.

Sleepless Long Nights

There's something about the summer that makes certain music more enjoyable. I feel like everyone has that one artist that they break out once the sun settles in semi-permanently, and as the days pass certain songs sung by that specific voice creep their way up the "Most Played" list on your iPod until people get into your car, hear the music start to play, and turn to you and say, "Again?" Or maybe it's just me. But I feel like it's not. For some reason, Feist has come to define my summers. There's something about her voice that just resonates with the weather and what I'm doing and how I'm feeling. I listen to her music all year long, but I only ever really hear her music when the weather is warmer.

I don't know. I think I'm going crazy. I certainly feel that way.

The song of the day today is "1234" by Feist. It's relatively well-known, but it's the ultimate summer driving song for me, and makes me infinitely happy and also deplorably sad at the same time.

Old teenage hopes
are alive at your door
left you with nothing 
but they want some more.

Sentimental Moment Or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

--Robert Hershon
This was my favorite poem when I was 16.
It still makes me smile.

I'm in the hospital with Emily.

Every two seconds, a beeping noise pierces my eardrums from somewhere down the hall. I hear murmured female voices coming from behind the green-and-purple plaid curtain a few feet away. Emily's roommate has woken up for the day. We have just come back from X-rays. I got to push her in the wheelchair. I only hit something once: the corner of one of the foot rests on a doorway on the third floor.

I wish the sadness in her eyes would not betray her cheerful facade.

Four Hours Later

I never thought that registering for five classes would take me 240 minutes.

Two Sams Are Better than One!

It has been nearly a year since I last talked face-to-face with my friend Sam, and tonight we actually (somehow, due most probably to a miracle and therefore having far less to do with any ability of ours to get organized) reconnected. And while Skyping cannot replace the intimate, earthly feeling of speaking in the flesh with someone else, we live hours away from each other, and for now this is an acceptable substitute. I am sitting here in bed, with the light from the computer screen bouncing off my tortoise-shell frames, and I am beaming. In 58 minutes, we managed to seal a gap that has been growing for months. (Cliche alert!) It's reassuring to know that some things really don't change.

Twelve

01. Two days ago I wrote a 13-page letter to a good friend. In three weeks she'll have moved across the country. It still hasn't sunk in yet.
02. I've lost something and I'm terrified to admit it.
03. After months of adamantly believing that things might change, I've finally come to terms with the fact that wait lists aren't worth stressing over. Now I'm getting excited about the one school that's been excited about me all along.
04. Katie Collins and I are planning a beach trip!
05. The days grow more and more lovely and I want to don my sundresses and run around fields with my windswept hair dancing behind me.
06. I respect Mr. Tarmey more than I've ever respected any other teacher. Every class with him blew my mind and I only hope that others appreciate him and are able to see just how incredible he really is.
07. I wish Mount Holyoke had an orientation program during the summer.
08. There are certain people who want to see me and I can't understand why.
09. The new SunChips bag is compostable, which is amazing and something I fully support. But every time I reach my hand inside, it sounds like a grenade exploding within my eardrum.
10. Yesterday I was weeding in my yard when a lady bug fell off of its blade of grass and landed on the pavement by my dirtied thumb. Its cleaved shell was the most beautiful apple-red color, and it climbed onto my hand and sat there for a moment before lifting off and flying away with the breeze.
11. I wish I owned my own kayak.
12. The other day my friends and I were talking about our great-grandparents. I proudly announced that mine were both 98 years old, until reality slapped me in the face and I muttered, "Never mind....they both just passed away." Is it horrible that I seem to have forgotten? Or is that just how the truth finally sinks in?

I think I'd like

to develop a green thumb.

Neighbors

My body feels empty but my head feels full.

This I know is one right thing.

I am happy!
I know I am because this morning the sun's rays abstained from suffocation.
Instead of coddling me amid weighted layers, they brightened each next step, gifting to me a guided path for my feet as they consummated their marriage to the ground.

The air smells the way it did when I was younger.

Gertrude ain't a ho, she just likes to please.

I feel like I could invent the musical genre of Old Bard rock.
Currently it seems like a welcomed alternative to real life.

This book lies propped open to page 51

of The Origins and Evolution of Our Own Particular Universe. It is now 4:41 and I have spent the last five hours sifting through book after book after heavy book, reading about the big bang model and the alternative inflationary theory and the cyclic model of the universe. I know more about magnetic monopoles than I ever anticipated I would, although frankly just knowing such things exist is more than I anticipated. I sit here and read from the text, on this fifty-first page, that "all galaxies are spreading apart" and that "the farthest ones are flying away the fastest." My eyes keep moving, across the print and down to the next line like an instinctive typewriter line feed. But my thoughts stay behind.

All galaxies are spreading apart.

In our very own particular universe, I watch as you step away from me. I watch you distance yourself, although I cannot physically see you do so. But I know you keep walking. In my mind I watch as you step away from me. Is it all in my head? But I can see you leaving me.

The farthest ones are flying away the fastest.

I can see you leaving me, and the more the space between us grows, so too does my inability to urge you back—one step, two, maybe three if you feel generous. This space between us widens and it seems to me that the farther you are from me, the faster my helplessness mounds. Even before now I knew of your desire to step in the opposite direction, but then at the time I suppose I felt comforted in the power of a simple extension of my arm and clasp of my hand around your wrist. Now this distance spans far beyond the length of my body. This distance, too, drowns out all sounds of salvation emanating from my closing throat, and it seems that the louder I shout, the quicker your footsteps successively hit the ground.


In my mind I can see you leaving me.
Is it all in my head?
But I know you keep walking.

Second Aisle, Third Seat

You bounce a little when you talk to us.
I'm racking my mind
trying to surface
some minute flaw
that assuages my fears
of your superiority,
and the slight motion
of your heels
seems to be the only
justification I can muster.

Your words burst forth
like a flood or
pan of boiled water
that sat two minutes too long
and now casts its rupturous contents
onto the cold tiled floor
with a crackle that
startles and frankly
pisses me off.

The sounds that depart your lips
coo—condescendingly
or maybe I just want them
to insult me.

Your ideas,
I must acknowledge,
are unfortunately
valid
and with every statement
the tension between us grows:
you are challenging me,
my thoughts—
ones you know I have
and
ones that might be better than yours
but until you meet my gaze
neither of us can
admit or
accept this.

It has crossed my mind
more than once
that
perhaps we are
equal
but
with your eyes closed
your words fly in one ear
out the other
and leave a void
I rush to fill.

10:04 AM -- 4/6/10

The Minute I Heard My First Love Story

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

-Rumi

College application season is finally over.

What a horrible ride it has been.

The Hermit Crab

As I watch you
move beyond the door
I remember that some oceans
have been known to come again
to their mother country
and wash ashore
more brilliant treasures
than they took away.

It is small comfort
to a man who lately
greets each season
as the hermit crab
hides in the rocks
and scurries from intruders
be they from the land or sea.

-Rod McKuen

Thread Count

Saturday I changed my bedsheets. That's really not unusual because I change them every two weeks or so anyway. But two days ago I switched out my flannel sheets and replaced them with my favorite soft cotton ones. There's something about stripping my bed clear of those warm, white sheets scattered with red and yellow flowers and in their place securing bright yellow bolts of fabric. I do it every year, and of all the sheets we own I always choose the yellow set to follow my trusted winter veterans. The yellow sheets are bright, suggestive of a spring nipping on Mother Nature's heels.

Every year it's a different time. I suppose mostly it depends on what day feels right, as vague as that word is. Saturday was just the "right" time. The air smelled like it does every year, but in a new way (were this iTunes it would be version 3.4.8, with only slight discrepancies from last year's 3.4.7).

Brief wafts flitted in my window and pressed play on the movie screen behind my eyes; I watched last summer advertise itself to me like a trailer. It was a nice preview but for a few moments I do not wish to repeat. Another breeze rushed through my room and teased my hair, shifting it with transparent hands, ushering in reminders of a different time. I was five, or four, or eight, even ten. Spring had an entirely separate meaning when I was younger. It presented itself as a huge flashing sign that with every blink promised summer's impending arrival. I'd proudly appear at school with skorts and busy sundresses, sharing my enthusiasm for the months to come with every other anticipatory classmate. These memories came with the air: abstract, not really memories, I suppose, in their obscurity, but then no other word seems to fit.

On Saturday evening, I scooted myself into bed. The sunflower satin that surrounded me felt cool against my heated skin and I allowed these temperatures to meld, mix, coalesce until I lost my sense of self within this protective barrier.

Today was cold, and I awoke feeling less than attended to by my icy sheets. Still I cannot deny the simple pleasure I get from pulling back my comforter each night and falling once more into this welcoming berth.