haven't been journaling as i ought

haven't been doing as i ought, haven't been thinking as i ought. every day the weight of a new day hovers over my head and tells me, you have to do this right and then you have to write about it. my journal goes untouched, though. sloppy handwriting from more inspired months fills the pages, fueled with desire and longing and the willingness to hope and also the deep sorrow, the depression that leads to my best thoughts and ideas, the sadness that i find myself quivering in, secretly enjoying the little bursts of inspiration that come with not knowing and feeling down-trodden. the past two weeks are a whirlwind in my mind and all i can think is, why am i so dry and where am i coming from and why do i even exist in all this and where am i going.
i could start with the rejection from berkeley. i wasted a week of my life, prior to receiving said rejection, bemoaning the future, knowing what was in store. if i'm honest, i flounced my way through admissions letters, wrote a personal statement that said nothing about myself but the fact that i'm a bumbling daydreamer who we all know would never be able to handle the full coursework at a prestigious university, would not know how to manage being surrounded by ego and competition and emptiness. probably it was a blessing in disguise.
the week after, i swept myself up in daydreams of vermont, tiny liberal arts colleges with hip student bodies, students who have interests as diverse as mine, who wear cuffed jeans and flannels and thick-rimmed glasses and look so happy and fun and who seem to love the earth, at least, if the website photos are to be believed. my dream school was discovered too late and is too far out of reach and i am making peace with that. come autumn, i will be living in the redwoods, along the coast, two and a half hours from my new friend annabel in davis, one and a half hours from san francisco. i will be as on my own as i have ever been, but i will also be surrounded by people, surrounded by people just waiting to be met and adored and hopefully kissed.
my birthday was just yesterday and it feels like seven years ago or even as if it didn't happen. i stayed up 'til midnight, the day before, the day of, and now. twenty doesn't feel so different. i am a new woman but i have done so little. my birthday was crummy, as i expected, but crummier than expected, but okay, because tea and starbucks until closing, dreaming of visits up north, visits to portland, visits to canada. i am falling in love with the idea of leaving. my heartstrings tie themselves up and away from this little old town more and more each day. i am ready to leave, as scary as that is to say. i am twenty and i have done so little and i am ready to leave. if school is the only way to manage that, then so be it.
deciding to major in politics didn't come easily. literature, i always said, as if i knew the greatness of whitman in my heart, as if i'd ever touched the taming of the shrew. my fingers have grazed the spines of a million cherished tomes that i most likely will never, ever know. i am coming to terms with the fact that studying literature would not be true to myself, not really. my real self, whatever that is, longs to be informed about everything, longs to be responsible and make informed decisions, doesn't have the attention span for an hour-long film but would really like to be immersed in the arts, would really like to have the mind that isn't bored by analyzing character inflection and movement, the surrounding environment, the way that everything is new in fall. maybe everything is new in fall because it just is, maybe we should all just learn to read and enjoy it. no. literary analysis is for other people, people who have big imaginations and bigger dreams than mine. i am a realistic-idealist with a romantic edge, is all. i want to study politics, i want to represent a female where it seems very few females are represented. i want to be strong and independent and refrain from feeling intimidated despite the fact that i just might not understand.
more than anything, i want to feel the earth in my palms, spread myself wide under a hazy-blue-cloudy sky, look up and feel myself knowing and learning more, look up and feel myself being alone and alive and also hopefully loved at some point. everything is scary, but i am learning more each day. offer of admission, to be accepted soon. room, to be packed soon. my life will be in boxes, my life will be starting anew. everything will be new in the fall.

hi, hullo, it's been a while

here is a beautiful girl holding some beautiful cats, from my new favorite flickr pool, people holding cats.

all images c/o the marvelous ali bosworth

i got a haircut yesterday that i've been playing with all today between writing papers and walking. i woke up in a terrible, no good, very bad mood, which translated to tears in my eyes and then all over my father's shirt,  so my mother insisted i go on a walk with her and things began to feel better and right. it was a very long walk in the very hot sun and we both grew very thirsty. it feels like summer and i am ready for summer and i just want summer. i 'graduate' from community college on may 31st and it's a sort of odd feeling, but everything is odd-feeling lately, including my insides, including my outsides. i swim around in murky water that is crystal clear every four years. i say that i don't want to get old, but that just means i don't appreciate my youth. changes are on the horizon, as lenin said, as lenin said, change is on the horizon, whatever that means. do people ever reach the horizon? aren't things always changing? every day is the same, until it comes time to look back and everything is different. soon i will be different. i already am. 

nothing but my rambling words

Taking the time to pause and document more of spring break in short clipped sentences because I know not what else to do with myself.
Today was another day with kids. I was much calmer today than I usually am while baby-sitting; I could feel myself brimming with some sordid mixture of compassion, patience, authority, the strength and energy go down the slide seventy-two times with a child in my lap, a mixture which does not often make itself apparent on any usual shift. I spend a lot of time putting off that which needs to be attended to, including, unfortunately, my duties as a baby-sitter or whatever it is that I am to them. They seem to love me, and I love them, deeply, but it is easy to fall into the routine of simply watching them play and breaking up their fights when necessary, to forget how to be a kid and have some fun while still maintaining the balance and structure that children need from people who are looking after them. I tend to feel like a huge push-over, because it does not take much more than saucer eyes to persuade me. But I also grow so exhausted constantly interacting at school that my interactions elsewhere become shallow and fragmentary. I think the time on break has allowed me the time alone to refuel and collect my thoughts so that I have so much more of myself to pour into the time I spend with those beautiful little creatures.
I dressed the baby in pink florals and cuffed denim today, and she looked like a dream, her big blue eyes peering up from her porcelain face, her short, wispy curls sitting atop her head. She's the sort of baby who does not beg for attention in any way--quiet, observant, but beginning to grow more energetic--and yet upon seeing her there is some sort of intense magnetism that comes forth and all I can do is pick her up and smile at her and kiss her and do whatever else her heart desires. The second-youngest held the baby's hand as we walked home, two sisters walking along grasping palms and smiling in their tiny jeans and patterned tops, and it was one of the sweetest moments I've witnessed in recent memory. But yes, we went to the park and played. Someone asked if I was a stay-at-home mom, to which I replied, "Oh, no, I'm just the baby-sitter!" She invited me to join her anyway, her and a group of other moms who were gathered at the park for their "mom club" while their toddlers toddled around the playground. I said thank you, but opted to go down the slide with the baby. We did crafts and had pb&j at home afterward. Mundanities, but mundanities I've grown accustomed to, even approached cheerfully today.
The afternoon was spent at the library with my father and brother and sister. Manny had a mustache painted on his face, Nikki a giraffe. The community room was all a flutter with vibrant banners advertising the different stations where kids could go to play horseshoes, make bookmarks and paper flowers and various other paper crafts. I sat at story time and watched the eyes of the little girl sitting next to me light up. Those library volunteers are magical, so wonderfully enthusiastic, and I think that all the kids who were there appreciated the effort, even if that's not necessarily something that kids ever think about or communicate. I appreciated the effort. My dad took us to dinner at In-N-Out (well, I drove) and we four ate our fries and burgers (veggie, for me) and made conversation. When I have days like these, I realize how much of my family I am missing while I am at school, and it makes me sort of sad. I only have such a limited time left with them, and even then, my time is not going to be spent with them. When I go away to school, I will miss even more of their lives, not to mention how much I will miss them.
I finished The Bell Jar today. I am anxious to begin drafting for my papers but already feeling overwhelmed and wondering if it's something that can even be accomplished, 36 pages (12 pages each) over the course of one month, plus normal schoolwork, including short papers. I haven't researched enough, I can tell you that. So, it's beginning to look like a hopeless task, but I suppose if I spent less time talking about it and more time actually doing it, it would be halfway done by now. Oh well. I don't really have much else to say. I'm glad I got this out. I'm glad to be alive today, which is much more than I could have said four months ago. Awash with all sorts of emotions, but a feeling of contentment is definitely at the top of the list. I keep reminding myself, when I am driving, when I am walking, when I am talking to other people, It is a miracle to exist. Because it is. And it's something I want to take to heart and keep remembering to acknowledge. It makes things rosier. It makes challenges seem surmountable. It is sappy, but it's true. When I begin questioning why I am here, doubting myself, wondering whether I am able, whether I'll ever have made anything of myself, I try to remember, It is a miracle to exist. Then everything else is extra. Everything else is acknowledging the miracle and allowing it to emanate, permeate, making it even more miraculous. Surviving the things I've survived, doing the things I've done. I've accomplished a lot more in the past year than I care to give myself credit for, and it's so easy to push it all aside and say, look, I've done nothing and feel completely worthless. But existing is a miracle. Being alive is a big deal. I survived a car accident. I could be dead right now. Why would I want to waste something so precious, that I came so close to losing, my life, on doubt and misery and insecurity?
That's not to say I'll never have depressive phases again, but I think for now, on a day like today, and hopefully moving forward, I can get through more than I think if I focus on the miracle that is simply waking up in the morning, getting out of bed, having a nice cup of coffee, and breathing while the sun shines through the sliding glass window and my family sits around having breakfast. I think that is a miracle in and of itself.

past and present and bits of reflection

I spent the day in a misty mood, cheerfully reading The Bell Jar and a bit about the history of Marxist views on homosexuality, both for research papers. Anna played the ukulele and we sang "After Hours" by The Velvet Underground while we were both in our pajamas this morning. We went to the library after dressing, and I bought a book of Kerouac poems and eagerly exclaimed upon finding Brian Andreas' Mostly True, so I bought that, too, and I ate good food, my mum's special pasta sauce (my great-grandmother's recipe) and vegetarian meatballs for dinner. I feel as though something is shifting deep down inside me, and I'm not sure what it is or why, but I think it's maybe for the best.

Shiny, happy people sun-bathing, c/o indigo_mint

This video is strangely, somewhat horrifically enchanting, and also much more erotically charged than anything I would usually choose to feature anywhere, but somehow it's become a video I come back to over and over again; maybe because it's so strange, but maybe mostly because I would like to lounge around in a peach-colored leotard and pale pink knee socks all day. The tones are like ice cream. The rest is a bit cultish and overtly sexual. The unusual juxtaposition of the two may explain the semi-addictive nature, along with the music, a mix of "honeyed harmonies, hypnotic rhythms and bright beats," which I suppose is the actual point of the entire operation to begin with.