My fortune

"You will continue to take chances and be glad you did."

Awwwwww

Madeline L'Engle writes in her autobiography that she didn't believe in God, but needed to act like she did in order to live a good life. So she went to church. I can't decide if this is necessary or not, if this makes any sense or not.

I do need church, but I don't need the Catholic Church. It hurts and disappoints me more than anything else. It's a lot like a friend you relied upon for a long time that you expected was one way, but then find out that it actually represents everything you hate. And I can't see past that.

I've got a fever and a childish wish for snow

But that wish came true! And actually, I don't have a fever, but it's a line from an Iron and Wine song.

Snow makes me feel giddy. It makes me think of playing outside for hours, until you couldn't feel your fingers and toes, and going back inside to the fire and laying your wet mittens out on the hearth. It makes me miss my family, and my old house. I don't really want to go play in the snow that badly is the thing. I want that energy and excitement back that makes me want to go play in the snow, but I think that feeling is unique to childhood.

Pancakes for breakfast, wooo hoo!

Also, today I learned that when my friends are down, I'm down. When my friends don't feel like talking, then I don't feel like talking. I just want us to all be happy. I think I'm a lot like my mom in that way. I worry and I worry and I worry.

I've also been thinking about the things I neglect. The texts, the emails, the phone calls that I intend to respond to, but never do. I'm sorry about that. The lunches and coffee dates I plan in my head, but somehow other things allow me to forget about them. The people I intend to get closer to, but never actually do. It's partially my tendency to crave time by myself, and the hatred of all these invasive things taking up my personal space and my time. Email, phone, facebook, I hope I'm not the only one who gets so tired of these things. But my nature won't let me let them go. Still, I never get as much time by myself as I'd like. I've learned to adapt.

I've been forgetting to notice and appreciate lately, too. Forgetting to look up at the world, and forgetting to mix things up. Forgetting to wear bright colors. Forgetting to get up a little bit early so I actually have time to wake up and go to class with a clear head. Forgetting to pay attention to what people are saying, what they're really saying.

I'm ready for some green in my life. I'm ready for some sun and, as always, for lots and lots of laughing.

Today in Biology of Addiction, I learned that happiness, or what we call "happiness" is the effect of a pulse of dopamine between the nerves, or in the brain, something like that. It's essentially a reward for doing something that keeps you alive. So, when you listen to that song that makes you feel so much that you could cry, or when you eat the best piece of cake you've ever eaten, or when you have a drink of cold water after running, or when you kiss someone who you really want to kiss, a pulse of dopamine is released (also, I could be mixing up these terms, I'm not great at the whole biology thing). Anyway, I can't decide whether this is depressing or not. It's not that my hopes were crushed that happiness, joy, was something completely transcendental, non-biological. It just makes happiness seem...somewhat less. Like, all these things; eating drinking, procreation, are just things that your body is driven to do, it's not happiness, it's just a fulfillment of a biological need. I'm probably not making any sense. And, I suppose the biological can also be transcendental, if this means anything to anyone. Like, maybe these two things are not as seperate as we'd imagine them.

Only the lull I like

This place, where I am, right now, makes me feel alive.

Mostly, you know?

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death."

-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" (I didn't know such a long poem could be so good.)

So don't forget to celebrate yourself. Don't forget to enjoy the lull, the lean and loafe. Thank your body for what it gives you.

My 100th Post

I've been quoting a whole lot, so I'm gonna keep doing that. I'm procrastinating, and I feel like flipping through my favorite books right now and looking at whats's underlined.

"For there is nothing heavier than compassion."

"The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become."

"He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural. We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

"She was amazed at the number of years she had spent persuing one lost moment."

"Music was the negation of sentences, music was the anti-word!"

-The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

"If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand...but until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated)

I posted the whole story a while ago

But I think it deserves a repeat.

"The air is like being wanted, we say, and they nod approvingly. The air is like being pushed and pulled and yanked, punched and slapped and misunderstood and loved, we say, and the fishes sigh and touch our forearm sympathetically."

-Dave Eggers, "How the Water Feels to the Fishes"

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim, or murmer, or, think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

-Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"The end of the world has come often, and continues to come."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated)

What I'm Doing Lately:

Loving everywhere I go, somehow. I love being home, I love being out, I love every place I go. I love outside and inside. I especially love laying in my hammock again.

Listening to the new Vampire Weekend CD on repeat. I see you shinin' your way, go on, go on, go on.

Hoping, hoping, hoping not to be overwhelmed.

Wearing flip-flops on my feet and hoping my hair gets long enough to braid soon.

Learning to be a little different, and a little more of myself. Surprising myself.

Stretching and running.

Planning and scheming.

I'm still really thankful to be back, and the winter isn't even really getting me down that much. I love being in a place where I know everyone, and everyone knows me, and we all say hello to each other. There's a lot of comfort in familiarity.

I'm also ready to do all these new things this semester. I'm ready to leave a mark on CBU in some way. I've been making to-do lists like crazy lately, and crossing off things one by one.

I'm ready to see what's next. I get butterflies just thinking about this semester.

But I need guidance. I need a Grandmother Willow right now. I need to understand myself better. You'd think I would by now, but there are really just so many things I haven't figured out yet. I've been surprising myself lately, and being surprised by life. I guess that's the way it's always been, though.

Just finished The Waves by Virginia Woolf. The way she writes makes me want to be a better writer, it's not methodical at all, it seems to come straight from the soul and onto the paper.

How To (Updated)

My accidental sociology experiment a few months ago revealed a great deal about human nature--specifically, what we as humans want to learn how to do.

Haha, I'm sorry, I'll stop writing like that.

Anyway, I decided to type "how to" into the Google search engine, and it tried to guess what I wanted to learn how to do. So here's what we, as a human race, want:

tie a tie

kiss

get pregnant (I guess that order makes sense)

lose weight fast

cook a turkey (That order makes no sense)

solve a rubix cube

make a website

write a resume

download YouTube videos

lose weight


Of the above, I as of right now do not know how to tie a tie, lose weight fast (that's impossible), and cook a turkey.

This is my third post of the day. Returning just makes me want to write and write (Did I mention that I was happy?)

A few of my favorite things about being here:

Blue Moon with a slice of orange at Pint Night

candles in my apartment

MY apartment

my plant

filtering through various apartments

weekend possibility

walking to class

the possibility of spring

scarves, mittens, hats

going to bed early


Generally, i LOVE the collegiate life. I don't want to live any other way. At the moment. Hopefully I'll feel different as soon as being a student doesn't make sense anymore.

"So, my little Amélie, your bones aren't made of glass. You can take life's knocks. If you let this chance go by, eventually, your heart will become as dry and brittle as my skeleton. So, go ahead, dammit!"

"I never realize how much I like being home until I've been someplace really different for a while."

-Catherine (who got it from Juno (: )

The packing and unpacking it worth it. I am HOME, and each time I leave and then come back, Memphis feels even more like home. I missed my cozy apartment, my cozy friends, my cozy life. I am very happy right now.

I feel good. I am returning to Memphis in better shape (all kinds of shape) than I was when I left.

The drive today was magnificient. Normally, driving down I-40 is not exactly riveting, but this time the fates aligned and things happened that made the drive really great. First, I was leaving Little Rock, had my Ipod on shuffle, and the song "Yellow" comes on. I look at the car in front of me, and it has a bumper sticker that says "Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you." Uhhh the stars are shining for ME? And then I was crossing the Arkansas River and this Snow Patrol song that I hadn't listened to in ages comes on, and it's just PERFECT, you know how when a song hits you at the right time, it's just completely wonderful? And the sky was pretty, it was just one of those infinite moments. And then, it started SNOWING. These little flurries were landing on my windshield, and the fields were white. And then, there was this huge flock of birds that landed on a field. I can't explain it. It was just one of those moments.

Home is comfortable. No challenges, no messes, generally no places to be. I love it and I hate it.

I don't like change. I don't like to pack up all my stuff and then unpack all my stuff.

But I need my friends in my life real bad.

I wanted to bitch about how much I hate winter some more, but I'll spare you that.

I'm glad things are getting back to normal in all corners of my world. I didn't realize how much I missed certain friends, and I don't know why we weren't friends for so long.

I'm tired of football.

What's the point of winter after Christmas?

Another Allison Quote

At Christmas Mass at St. Edwards:

Me: Hey, Allison, I have to go to the bathroom. Do you know where it is?

Allison: Can you hold it?

Me: ...I guess...

I've been thinking a lot about playing it safe, versus going out and doing what you want, what you really want. You know what I mean, the kinds of things you do just because you want to do them, the kinds of things that either make you feel like a better person, or the things that just make you smile, the things you do because you love it. The kinds of things that make you feel alive.

I think we all aim lower than we should. There's always the fear of failure, or rejection, in anything. The more you love something, the more it hurts to fail.

For me, there are these BIG things I want to do, and there's this person who I want to be, but I know fear stops me from being that person. There's the fear that you won't be able to deal with the pain that comes with failure. Honestly, when I think about what I want to do with my life, and the possible career paths, wondering how I would be happiest, I find myself pushing away certain options because they seem too good to be true, or too unrealistic. I would love, absolutely love, to be a music journalist, and actually I don't know if that's technically what the job is even called. I want to review records, and interview bands, and write about it. I could do this. But I'll tell myself that it's impractical, how many jobs like this exist out there? I'll doubt myself, saying that I don't know enough about music to do this. I don't know how to write about music.

Anyway, I say enough with the doubt and second-guessing and fear and the comfort of settling into something that I know I can do, something boring. I need to try more things that I don't know if I can do.

On another note, I need to get back in school, back in my life ASAP or I think I might forget how to write...Everything I've written lately has been this annoying stream-of-consciousness thing where I basically zone out and let my fingers type, or write. It's straight from my brain to the paper, or computer screen, maybe it would be better if it went through some filters before spilling out here like this.

It's been agreed, the whole world stinks so no one's taking showers anymore.

I'm sorry this blog is useless to you readers. I look at other people's blogs, and there's a point. I guess the only possible point here is trying to accomplish that thing about writing I quoted the other day. I'm yelling my feelings at you, hoping that you'll feel less alone, or I'll feel less alone, maybe we'll connect on some level.

I'm also sorry if my sentences are garbled. I'm not feeling on top of my game today.

I've been using the phrase "at loose ends" to describe my current state of mind and situation. There's something I'm looking for out there, but I don't know what it is. I don't know if all this trying I do is going to be worth it.