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.