life's not a song

i have a dear friend who is on her last round of chemo. she's been preparing to die for the past year. she traveled the world, spent time with family, and lived to the fullest. she also suffered through round after round of chemo, losing major amounts of weight and hair (and eyelashes which we talked about the other day, never thought about losing those) and she is just an amazing person. this poem was inspired by a surprise party her friend lisa threw for her. it was a "celebrate karina's life" party. no crying allowed. only dancing. anyway, her face when she walked in and saw all of us there to love her and show support was something ill never forget.

take every memory, every single dream
suck the ideas from the whole wide world
lay them out on your coffee table.
can you piece together that puzzle without
the big picture?

there's a room, full of balloons and lemons yellow
a sea of faces to yell "surprise!"
everything you ever loved, gathered
to see you die.
who would be in your room?

go to the park and watch that couple
a thousand years old and counting
not a word passing, just a familiar smile
if love was something you could buy,
how much would you pay?

don't push your luck, don't buy more time.
life's not a song- no reason or rhyme.

we enter and exit through the same doors
skin teeth bone blood
ultimately all wanting the same thing.
the trick is not to lose after you find.
how long can you hold off?

the things precious

there are a few things in my life i consider precious, sacred even. i guess you could call them my priorities. at least i would hope the precious pieces of life take precedence over all else. among these are my faith, (taken as both noun and verb here) my family, and music.

i have been thinking a lot the past few weeks about what matters to me. what i would stand up for, even sacrifice for. am i living my life in a way that supports my belief system? how far will i go to protect my beliefs?

i have always tried so hard to be careful. don't offend anyone. don't hurt anyone's feelings. it's ok if they don't believe what you believe, just don't offend them. by all means, listen to them belittle your faith, but don't stand up for yourself in case you (heaven forbid!) hurt their feelings. am i neglecting my own priorities? am i taking the easy way out? am i a coward?

or am i trying to be respectful of others? i guess it's up to me to decide that.

my younger brother is 16. he has recently decided we are brainwashing him by wanting him to sit with us in church. every sunday our family holds its breath, bracing itself for an outburst, slamming doors, him tearing off on his longboard to blow steam. my mom's tears, the ones she tries to hide from us, being the strong mother she is.

so tonight he comes home, all flushed and pleased with himself for meeting some girls at the gateway. man i love that kid and his perfect teenagedness. well, as of late we have had conversations that start well and then slowly lead into arguments. and then fights. we are both a little pigheaded. i don't even have the excuse of being a pigheaded teenager anymore. anyway, we had an argument about church and both of us ended up in tears. kind of the opposite of what religion is supposed to make ya feel. not that the actual religion was doing anything. it was the contrasting ideas about it that did the damage.

and here's where the argument i can hear in my head starts in.

head: really? you think this helps him at all? fighting?
me:* well someone has to stand up for what you believe.
head: he isn't even hearing what you're saying. you're just making him more mad.
me: why can't he see that he's being closed minded too?
head: you were the same way at his age? remember how you promised never to forget how it feels?
me: if he can be blunt about what he thinks, so can i.
head: you better go say sorry before you make things worse.
me: sometimes i can see people's point about organized religion.
head: stop that right now. you can see both sides of the argument with your brother too. now go fix this.

and then i go fix this. but still feel sad when he says, "it's ok. im just tired of everyone in the whole world being mormon and not caring what i think."

instead of arguing, i leave his room thinking, i feel the same way sometimes, but really? what do i even believe? how can i help him to see that everyone is not judging him; he's being insecure. and if they are, what does it matter? am i being a coward by not standing up better for my beliefs? or should i keep choosing my battles?
i guess knowing your beliefs and priorities isn't just something you can decide once and keep forever. everything changes. it's up to us to decide who we are and who we want to be, and then work toward it. constantly pruning, trimming, and repotting our ever evolving precious and sacred priorities. makes sense, i guess.

*yes "me" and my "head" are two separate entities.

the walri

travis took me to my favorite place to eat, mi la cai, and then posed for at least 7 minutes with chopsticks in his mouth so we could take an only-slightly blurry picture. it might have taken so long because we couldn't stop laughing. :)

a little grumpy

im trying not to be a hypocrite. i hurt him first and it's only fair that everyone who disagreed with him leaving in the first place and blamed me would now be angry at me for hurting him. and totally disregard the way i am feeling. fair enough right?

seriously though can we grow up a little?

can i just be angry for a minute?

do you think that maybe just because i don't share how i feel with you that im not also feeling sad and hurt? do you ever think that maybe you should share with the people i used to be so close to how we have talked and made things better? or is it just easier to let them hate me for awhile?

am i really wasting my emotions over this?

and will i ever really know what i want?

i have a new respect for the unemployed. and the dieters. but i think ill be getting a job on monday. and i have lost twenty pounds since march. all those things you think you'll never let happen to you, tend to happen to you, huh? :)

Hem + Dan Messe

Half Acre


I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
And folded in this scrap of paper
Is the land I grew in

Think of every town you've lived in
Every room you lay your head
And what is it that you remember

Do you carry every sadness with you
Every hour your heart was broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you

A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
And light is only now just breaking

So we carry every sadness with us
Every hour our hearts were broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with us

But I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper

That can crack the darkest sky wide open
Every burden taken from me
Every night my heart unfolding
My home

his name is travis

and i really like him :)

i've had a tough time getting out of bed this week. no, i haven't been staying up that late watching scrubs. it's that i feel completely emotionally drained. last week i was doing the annual freak out of "i don't want to leave my family why do i always miss out on what they are doing and i don't want to move out for another nine months i can't leave my mom again." and then i was doing the "i can't believe the missionary i thought i would marry is finally home and we are driving each other crazy i feel bad for dumping him i'm a terrible person for hurting another human being this way." and then i did the "i think i'll go back to hawaii for one more semester so i'll run over the the U and ask them about transfering oh no i can't believe they only accept four classes from my major now what do i do." and then trying to make a decision based on what will be best for me, not about how i will miss my family, boyfriend-who-i-actually-like-for-once, and life in slc. not to mention the almost sacred feelings i have for hawaii and how much i wanted to be there right now.

i didn't know what to do until we had a family prayer and my brother reed asked that i would know what to choose. and five minutes later i chose to stay in utah, where the schooling would be better for my career and life. where it snows and turns grey for five months and the inversion makes the pollution worse that LA's. far from the beaches i love and the palm trees and choir and my job tutoring koreans and the smell of salt water. i had already made up my mind to go back to hawaii like 12 times. but that prayer, it always gets ya.

so even though i have been home for three months, it almost feels like i just got here. i feel a little awkward again, like it's not my house. my little brother zane thinks it's funny to point out the window in the car and say "look collette! the ocean!" he has been doing that all summer, but when he did it this week, it killed me a little.

i went to alex's homecoming, that missionary who i didn't wait for, and everyone had questions for me about hawaii. i kept talking in present tense, e.g. "yeah it's great i live in a little house on the beach and i tutor esl students and i am in choir. oh i love it so much." till i remembered that morning i canceled my flight and it's past tense now. good memories tense.

it's not all sad though. my brother reed played a show and instead of missing it, i was there with the family, cheering his metalness on. it's been great to hear "we are so happy you are here." from chad and zane every day. my dad and i don't have to cram in little fishing trips because i'll be gone. i had a girl's night with my mom and we watched the time traveler's wife. i'm buying a new coat for winter. there's a piano in my living room, instead of having to find one on campus. and i still have a ticket for hawaii whenever i choose to go. (this spring)

thank goodness for erika dick, who recognizes how sad i am even though i won't call her back because it breaks my heart to hear her voice, but she still found someone to take my spot in the house, and is figuring out a way to ship my stuff home. i can't express how much i love her. miss you hawaii.

you know it's a charles family vacation if...

we barely make it to the airport in time to leave
every other sentence exchanged has some form of scrubs referenced
"why so uptight?" is the only thing anyone asks me.
my dad wears his speedo and then needs some reassurance about it
we take so much stuff to the beach, it takes several trips to get it all out of the car
reed sneaks pictures of women who might actually be men
zane believes my mom when she tells him "i hope you wore clean underwear, because when we go through airport security, you have to strip down to your boxers."
chad plays pokemon blue the entire time
my mom and i take bike rides and almost kill an asian man.
every small detail must be videotaped for all posterity to see.

went to a funeral today. grieving is a funny thing, isn't it? how different people express pain in different ways, how stoically silent men carry the casket in, how the widow seems to have a spotlight over her face the entire time. and watching people say goodbye to a wooden box, leaving white carnations on top. and what do you say to a woman you just met, who just lost her life's love, when she tearfully embraces you and says, "thank you so much for coming"?

ee cummings much?

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown
-up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

people are funny things. i wonder what would change if instead of using language to communicate ideas, we could transport pictures, feelings, sounds, smells etc. to someone else's brain. language  is just so limited. i work with a woman from iran. like many second language english speakers, some of her idioms and expressions can be a little confusing or offensive. the other women who work with her don't even try to understand that when she says "that's the point" after every single thing she says; she's not meaning it in an "i'm better than you" way. she just thinks that's what you say instead of "you're right." they don't like her accent. they don't like that she calls her husband and he calls her every day just to say i love you in their native tongue. teri, the woman who works lancome, calls her husband to say i love you every day too. and no one has a problem. because she speaks english and we can all hear her saying it.

i started asking nahid, the persian, to teach me some phrases in persian. she seemed surprised, but i have been practicing. 

also. i turned 21. 

also. i keep learning things from the guy i'm dating. 

also. i miss everyone and can't wait to fly home in a month. 

bought a new guitar strap for my ax. it's multicolored and wovenish. found it in a little shop in georgia. i can't stop carrying it around the house pretending it's a new baby.

the south is humid and gorgeous. south carolina was especially nice. deep fried candy bars and fatz.

seeing morgan every day for ten days was heaven. no one makes me laugh like she does or spoons me to sleep in a hetero way.

i hate flying.

macy's is still paying the billz but slowly sucking my soul away. well until we had a dance party tonight and got some customers to join in the contest of worst dance moves evar.

im dating a nice guy who makes me laugh and outwits me. sometimes.

playing music on a stage in front of hundreds of people wasn't as scary as i thought. even though i peed a little when they called our names. time to start writing my own musack.

life is so so so good. love you

I work at macy's, selling clinique to the masses. Let me paint a picture for you, a scene as seen from the makeup counter.

A couple shops together. He carries the bags; she gushes over the new pink lipstick sample from estee lauder. She chooses a new eye shadow and uses his credit card. She talks to the salesgirls while he smiles in the background. When she needs his signature on the card, he steps up. After her purchase, she walks to him, grabs his face, and plants a wet one.

This could be any one of the many young, sometimes pregnant, sappy eyed teen couples who hang out at the mall on summer afternoons.

Instead, I'm goggling at two old, wrinkled, blue haired, balding, pruny lovebirds sucking face in the middle of cosmetics.

She notices me staring.

"Honey, when you've been married for 70 years, you're allowed to kiss in department stores." and then a big lusty wink.

they walk out hand in hand.

tonight on my way home i saw a man on the corner, holding a pair of giant garden shears. this wouldn't be unusual if not for the fact that it was 2 am, he wasn't standing by any bushes, and no one else was around. thoroughly creeped out.

also for the list of things i saw today:
-a battered woman with a black eye and broken shoulder who insisted she "fell down doing laundry."
-unwillingly aiding a woman in stealing 130 bucks from macy's.
-being mistaken for a woman old enough to be the mother of a fourteen year old boy at the gym.

miss you hawaii

next time i'm being ridiculous, i'm going to remember this day.

see i have this way of thinking the worst. i'm not a pessimist, the opposite really, but when it comes to whatif's and boys, i always think "i'm not good enough for him and that's why he isn't calling."

or like the time travis was staring at me and i was like "what are you thinking are you thinking i look gross that's what it is huh." he was like "you really are crazy."

we are all people. busy, insecure sometimes, thinking, wondering, crazy people. it's a miracle we ever understand each other.

One week since Hawaii

- hung out with my three little brothers

- went shopping with my mom

- spent all day in a tattoo parlor and apparently looked like a lesbian.

- went to star trek. it's ridiculous. 

- was reintroduced to whiny pop emo :) 

- was surprised with 311 tickets. travis you are the best. 

- got to hug zack graff and play music with bryson breiv. 

- went to idaho falls to visit family

- enjoyed church with my family

- went pickup shopping with my dad and watched him belittle the salesman. where did i learn sarcasm? 

- missed the ocean every day. 

- made acai bowls and missed kava roots.

- read three books

- got really angry and then felt really silly

- longboarding with zane

- missed alex hansen only a little bit. 

life is weird and good. 

dear world

thanks for the sunshine and that the sand on the beach was packed hard enough to run on this morning without killing my calves.

thanks for clean rain.

thanks for cute japanese boys to tutor in grammar. the ones who actually want to learn about past progressive vs subjunctive.

thanks for music. and that the piano in the ballroom was unoccupied when i needed it.

thanks for cilantro.

thanks for stray dogs who lay dead but still alive on the curbs. it was hot and muggy today.

honestly, all you need is love

to be alive

choked up sobs for joy, japanese voices outside my window, a piano and violin's duet, paddling the ocean till my arms give out, a pink and blue and yellow sunset over palm trees, throwing the shaka, taking stiff laundry off the line smelling of ocean, hukilau cafe, stray cats with no tails, praying to God, narrow streets and brown children running, the couple smoking weed by laie elementary, morning runs to the ocean,"auntie! auntie!" subject verb agreement, having two desk hours in a row, holding your hand, being the only white woman in class, chili and rice for lunch, a circle of flags colors so bright, "no can" bambo under my bare feet, sadness you can touch, cane spiders as big as my face, tracing the moon's footsteps, salt water stinging my bloody knees, getting dressed dance parties, stolen kisses in the parking lot at tamuras, wishing, acai bowls and sweaty faces, whitemom blackdad brownchild, loving, letters and smiles, fresh pineapple so prickly, screaming to the wide open sky, following sirius, saying yes and no, shuffle, laughing the same in every language.

held in the arms

possibly the best thing in the world is when i go to scratch my ear, and sand falls out. or when i crawl into bed and my feet are greeted with the scratch of sand in my sheets. or when i put my hands into the pockets of my jeans and a clump of sand says "hello. you should do laundry more often."

maybe the best thing in the world is when keola and i go kayaking. we push the one-man kayak in to the water at hukilau, feeling so important and cool with our boat. then we try to fit the both of us on the little blue seat. two brown, built men are watching us.

"have you girls done this before?" they inquire carefully.

"oh of course. plenty of times." we reply, not looking at their smiles.

just as we say this, i jump aboard and knock the kayak over, banging keola's foot, making her bleed, and come up spitting salt water. the men wade over and hold the kayak for us. we only capsize five more times before finding our balance, amid much laughter and humiliation. the good kind, though.

actually, the best thing in the world is probably having an entire day to yourself, to think and remember and ponder. to cook dinner for yourself, and be happy to eat alone. it's like conor o. says, "when everything is lonely, i can be my own best friend. I get a coffee and the paper, have my own converstion. with the sidewalk and the pidgeons, and my window relflection."

ok, let's be honest. the best thing in the world is to re-read harry potter seven. :)

he told me

"kill that side of your mind cause im tired of it and i sure as hell know you are

use your heart for once and stop fearing what could be great

lose the armor"

first hit when i googled "beauty"

pretty sure i don't deserve such a great life.

-great workout
-cutest roommates ever
-productive voice lesson and belting :)
-talked to alyssa
-heart to hearts with erika
-epic failure of making dinner and then resorting to black beans and potstickers
-excellent work night. teaching grammar and things. oh transitive and intransitive
-cute boy
-talked to my mom
-fit into some jeans that haven't fit yet this year
-sunshine and fresh air

oh yes, life is beautiful

A night in Hauula

Three men sat beneath a bright moon,

their tongue a foreign sound

to my young ears.

Two guitars and an ukulele spoke

a language I could identify.

And we four sat beneath

a bright moon

and communed without

words, for music goes far beyond

any human noise.

a security blanket obsolete

the nights are not so cold now,
winter's reign is almost through.
with shock and surprise, i find
i have no need for you.

there was a time, i will admit
i craved your slightest glance.
in every word and deed and thought
i watched you for my chance.

the night is not so long now
springtime rains have soaked me through
with no regret and less remorse
this is goodbye to you.

how fitting. and how cheesy

so three years ago on may 6 i woke up early, on my own, with no alarm. for the first time in ages. and the terrible depression i had been experiencing was gone. just like that. i woke up and thought oh i'll go outside and walk in the grass. i went outside and walked around and noticed how fresh the air smelled and how nice the dew on my bare feet felt. every may 6 since then i celebrate the anniversary of my depression being gone. and this may 6, (yes this is where it gets cheesy) scrubs finished off an amazing 8 seasons of pure delight with their finale. just check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP8A2Fbj9dY

yes, yes life is good.

to you

so as i was standing in the line at the grocery store today, i got scared. nadine, the smiley cashier at foodland, was ringing up my yogurt, raisinets, and spaghettios. (yeah, i'm in college.) she asked "do you have a maikai card?", the grocery points card used in foodlands in hawaii, and maybe other places, that's a good question... but anyway, i was punching in my phone number to get free groceries, and i got really scared. i thought, wow, there are so many little things you'll never know about. so many tiny pieces of life that don't seem to matter, but really make up the big picture. the little things like maikai cards, and the cute couple that reminds me of us except brown and aisan, the funny airbass guy at The Bus stop, the color of the carpet, the sticky low D key on the grand piano in the practice rooms, etc. etc. etc. it's terrifying to me that you'll never see all those things, that i'll forget them and you'll never know. and then i started thinking about life. and how maybe we will never really know anyone. and no one will ever really know me. i can't remember what it's like anymore, you know?

i hate people who post sad things :)

tuesdays with hawaii

how come every night at 1130 i am suddenly filled with endless energy? good grief! it's time for bed.

today was a great day though. one of those days where the ordinary things are more enjoyable than usual.

also. my best friend morgan got me all pumped for this bluegrass/country music festival in south carolina this summer. it's a competition i guess, and the winner gets 100,000 dollars and a record deal. annnd this has been our dream for years. so she is mailing our app tomorrow!

also- the weather was gorgeous, (besides the vog) voice lessons were amazing, tutoring was hilarious, and i got to talk to both of my parents today. oh and my rommate erika dick became rich.

great day. :) love you

The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople-- it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying--

you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now'and now is much to busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.

Life,for mostpeople,simply isn't. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by "living"? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain's a mammal. Mostpeople's wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.

-luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality,the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king,hasn't a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus,would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn't a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcedentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex,a naturally homogenous,citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture,his any birth of breathing,insults perfected inframortally milleniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything,he is democracy;he is alive:he is ourselves.

Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush "tie it to my hand"--

nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening,innocent spontaneaous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are amoung the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question

       E.E. CUMMINGS

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter

very little--somebody who is obsessed by Making. Like all obsessions,
the Making obsession has disadvantages; for instance, my only interest
in making money would be to make it. Fortunately, however, I should
prefer to make almost anything else, including locomotives and roses.

                                             E.E. CUMMINGS

a breakthrough?

tonight i was getting ready for bed. washing my face, brushing my teeth, that whole bit. that image in the mirror glared at me, wondering "why aren't you perfect yet?"

all day every day i look at women around me and compare myself. she's thinner, she's got nicer hair, her skin is flawless, look at her long legs- etc etc. i should use all those minutes focusing on school, or music, or serving my fellow men, or anything else.

in my woman's studies class this week we have been talking about body image. i actually taught the class about it. about how it's evolved over the centuries and become the monster it is today. how technology starting clear back with mass printing to now with computers and photoshop has impacted the way human beings think women should be. yes yes yes. we all know this. too bad knowing this doesn't make it easier to like our imperfect selves.

so as i was getting ready for bed, i was having one of those fake conversations we all have. (i hope) like where we are just talking to ourselves but we pretend that the other person is there. i was pretending to talk to my women's studies teacher, dr. christiansen. i was arguing with her about being able to like myself.

dc: you know that perfection is unattainable. stop beating yourself up about it.
me: i'm just so tired of never being happy with myself. i feel like i'll never be enough.

and then dc said something that really shocked me.

dc: guess what? you won't. you'll never be enough to satisfy what the world thinks you should look like. no one will. and that's ok.

and even though i was alone in that bathroom and i knew that, sorta, it shocked me. shocked me to think that she would say ill never be enough. and that it's ok to never be enough for the world.

then i realized that i had said that, not my teacher. possibly the most shocking part of all.

ode to dickles

there's this girl i live with. her name is erika dick. i like to call her dickles, secretly. now she knows. but honestly, although sometimes we drive each other crazy, we love each other dearly. erika is smart, funny, gorgeous, real, and unbelievably kind. today we were hanging out in the living room, enjoying the afternoon sun coming in though the big bay windows (not sure if we actually have bay windows, but i like that image) and erika said something really funny. i was fake swearing, because this semester i have tried really hard to keep my mouth clean, and so i was fake swearing and then erika said, "ahww sheeeiiiaaa!" and we have been saying this all day long. even when i was in the shower and i dropped something and quietly, or so i thought, said "awh sheeeiia!" erika heard (it's not creepy; the house is really small and has thin walls) and responded with her own hearty, "ahhww sheeeiia!" she keeps me laughing and smiling and sane. no really, tonight i was going crazy and she talked me though it. love you erika.

a heterosexual love poem

a hidden garden
a secret path
to flirt with danger
and nature's wrath
can i follow you
just one time more
to that eternal staircase
where thoughts of forever pour?

so william blake,

The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain

---

you remind me of home

i'll take the small feminist, with a side of bitter, maybe a dash of lesbian?

how do you turn your dishwasher into a snowplow?

smack her on the butt and hand her a shovel.






i never understood why she had to be smacked on the butt. male domination, i guess. i enjoy sexist jokes just as much as the next mysoganist or maybe as much as the next reasonably humorous human being. no really, that's not sarcasm.

i may have made a mistake by taking a women in literature and culture class this semester. the whole two hours of the first day of class were basically a definition of feminism. what is it? how is it different from femininity? what does it mean to be a feminist? so everyone is calling out answers like "empowerment" and "equality" and "women's rights!". i raised my hand and said "how about bitter, angry, possibly lesbian?" hoping someone would back me up. nope. hahaha.
i'm just really over the whole abortion speech, the talks about women's rights, the "let us out of the kitchen" plea. yes, plea.

my teacher made comments throughout the class about how some people think that feminists are angry, cynical lesbians because the media portrays them that way. she hoped that some people's opinions could be changed after taking this class.

so i started the reading assignment for tomorrow's class and was pleasantly surprised. the women and in some cases, men, were making a good case for women's rights without sounding bitter and angry. then the prompt for the response, "what are the complexities of being a woman in society today?" really made me think about it. i'm a lucky one. yeah, i was born the wrong gender, but hey i'm middle class, white, american christian. i don't have to wear robes over my entire body. education is available in full. i'll never deal with castration or genital mutilation like my sistas in the motherland. but i started thinking, really thinking, about what it means to be a woman in society today.

it seems like the theme for my spring experience is learning to love and respect myself. i have some really good examples who are helping me change my preconceived notions (erika and alyssa) and this class might just be another blessing in disguise. who knows?

the only day it will be april 16 2009

the past few days i feel like i have been awakened from a really deep sleep. maybe it's the combination of  no school + going somewhere new every day + springtime + new goals that i'm actually keeping?  who knows. all i know is i like it. 

this morning alyssa called me. "i was thinking maybe we should catch a bus and go try some greek food?" she asked/said, a really cute quirk of hers where she tacks "maybe" into most suggestions she makes. it sounded like a great idea to erika and me, so we did it. getting out of laie for a day is always a nice vacation from real life. (haha like my beautiful life in hawaii could ever be called that) we hopped on the southbound 55 circle island tour and made our way to honolulu. you should have seen us- sitting next to each other on the bus, each with our noses buried in a book. yeah we're cute like that. 

after scoping out the selection- italian, chinese, japanese, something we weren't sure was even food, and thai, we elected to stay the course with our original plan of greek. the hole in the wall restaurant came equipped with blue and white decor and a giant white table where we ate. 

we wandered, but not quite aimlessly, through downtown honolulu searching for gelato but ending up with the best frozen yogurt i have ever had, yes, better than the red mango. (cheaper, too) and then pretended we were rich enough to buy a 7 carrot, four hundred something thousand yellow canary diamond that we saw in HM. the sunset was literally breathtaking, like it actually made me stop breathing, and then the craziest old man and his mp3 player (i don't want to say entertained, because as stu says, you shouldn't have to endure entertainment and you kind of have to endure this guy, oh what the h) entertained us as we waited for the bus home. 

also- five separate times we were almost killed by a biker, a bus, a car, another biker, and a skateboarder. sometimes i'm amazed we make it home alive. 

thank You

thank You for the humor in all things- from tumordog to a crazy man on the bus practically shoving his earbud into my right ear (which might now have rabies) to make me guess who phil collins is to asking the jeweler at HW if they have ever been robbed.

thank You for an ugly purple beach cruiser and strong calf muscles. twentysomething miles up north shore would a take a lot longer without them.

thank You for colors- blue sky and even bluer ocean, orange and purple birds of paradise, pink and palm tree sunsets, the iced yellow pineapple at a roadside stand.

thank You for music. a green ipod shuffle to take me running, a guitar to break the ice, and a piano to drown IT all out. for friends to harmonize life's melodies.

thank You for the redhead man and his beak of a nose, who i see everywhere i wouldn't expect. i'm honestly not sure if he is real.

thank You for a mother who remembers most of the same things i see everyday and that we are close enough to laugh about them. a mother who feels more like a sister, which i would imagine is the best of both worlds.

thank You for the hard times and the scary thoughts, that provide opportunity for others to love.

thank You for the narrow streets and corner drugstore, for the beautiful brown children and the spongy grass that isn't quite the same here.

thank You for the endless supply of love, free food, and blessings i find every day of my wonderful life.

what it takes to start an all girls, acoustic beatles cover band

during cleaning check today erika came up with a brilliant plan: "let's start a beatles cover band!" she said, with those big blue eyes. she was holding a thousand soapy dishes and i was scrubbing the window sill.

besides being a genius idea, it's an undercover plan to keep alyssa in laie for spring term. 

picture this: alyssa is on the organ/piano

                       erika will tamber

                       i'll shred acoustic 

no one's doin that :) 

the end of an era

music is worthless 

unless it can 

make a complete stranger 

break down 

and cry. 

                                                     -frou frou 

one year

an english teacher from last year

curly wild-on-purpose hair

his tshirt that said "it's in the syllabus" 

there is such a thing as too much academia.

trudging through three feet of snow

having two sets of car keys with buttons to unlock my door. 

and scraping off an ice circle to see 

though the windshield.

having my own room, my own sink. 

all that space with so much room to think. 

racing to the mailbox every thursday

literally cursing the mailman when it was empty. 

a big white apartment building crammed 

parking spaces and morgan sjoblom two doors down.

pale white skin to blind my eyes if 

the sun ever came out again. 

jars and boxes and cartons

walking in the store today

feeling blue and bluer

staring at jars and boxes and cartons

unable to decide 

what i want. 

pretending it was you pushing the cart. 

it wasn't. 

is it easier to hang on to old memories

than to actually create new ones? 

a short list comprised of reasons i love april 6, 2009

a. no quiz in english (i haven't finished, nor do i plan to finish death of a salesman)

b. 40 mins of piano practice time at lunch and transposed passenger seat to singability 

c. singing mass in choir from memory and only forgetting 1/3 of the words instead of all

d. sunshine in laie

e. north shore with mike berries- acai bowls, watching the sun go down, and collecting shells

f. the local boy with his guitar next to our towels who played and sang, beautifully, for two hours. 

g. explaining the five sentence types to mike berries. 

h. leftovers for dinner

i. "north shore"     check it

j. taking a bath

k. texting bryson brev

l. playing music 

what a lovely day i just had. and now, to sleep. goodnight moon! 

open your eyes

it's time for spring cleaning. we all feel it around this season- weight loss diets for around the corner summer, mowing lawns, raking the old, dead leaves out from the rosebeds, washing the car in the front lawn, throwing out old sweaters. i feel like it's time to clean out my head, too. fix all those bad habits that seem to creep in every winter. funny how it felt like winter, even here in laie.

i'm stoked on life. starting new, getting back into shape, reading the new testament again this spring. music! i feel like i've been missing out on so many things to do in this life and i'm so lucky! i am young, single, free, and awesome. time to get to it. 

my april fool's

riding my bike to school

through the wind

pushing and pedaling too hard

i saw a boy 

his skateboard, so cool so hip

jealous for a moment until

he fell

and looked around 

who saw

got back on, and fell again.

laughed at himself

april fools.

walmart trips and the face of death

 

bonnie got off work at dominoes around 830. "let me just run home and change my pants." she said when i called her.  "i'll swing by and pick you guys up."

by us guys she meant, erika, alyssa, and myself. we were all sorts of revved to get out of laie for a night. bonnie came by and we piled into her old taurus, frankie. side note: her ipod converter for the car doesn't actually work unless you twist the cord until the knots are  j u s t  right. we elected to sing at the top of our lungs most of the night, sans ipod. 

there is something universal about walking into a walmart. there's the little old man filing the job of "greeter" who never actually greets you. the yellow walmart smiley face beams down at you, assuring you- yes, our prices actually are rolled back. there's the family with the screaming baby and squirly teenagers out doing their late-night shopping. look around and you'll see that woman, who might actually be a man, with that mustache and short miniskirt. who knows? yes, late-night walmart trips are the same, no matter where you are.  immediately you have to touch everything in sight and shop to your consumerist heart's  content, for all the things you don't actually need. 

We wandered through almost every aisle, packing our baskets with all the little luxuries the foodland in laie doesn't provide: hair care, makeup, lip gloss, $8.50 orange and white striped bikini tops. It's amazing how obnoxious and loud four little  college girls can get at night. Oh to be young and in college. These are the memories i'll save, tuck away, and tell my children about in twenty years. 

The drive home was ridiculous. mililani (walmart) is about an hour from laie (home), so we stopped for libations at the nearest 7-11. the usual dodgy characters were browsing the late night caffeine selection under cheap florescent lighting.  alyssa made a major find- pickled peaches. shrink wrapped. brown. we elected not to try them. 

a twentysomethingyearold giant of a man in a what-used-to-be-white cutoff tshirt was ahead of me in line. he had that tough i'll kill you look about him. his only purchase clutched in filthy, brown hands: 2% milk. as he handed the cashier a five, i said, "getting crazy with some late night milk eh?" and had one of those moments where i wish i didn't talk. ever. "gotta get my two percent." he grunted and without looking at me, trudged to the door and out to his (of course) giant, lifted, dirty, manly, pickuptruck. the moment us girls walked out of the gas station, the giant backed out of his parking space, but by backed out i mean peeled out, tires screeching, and as he turns to burn through the parking lot, he kills his engine and has to restart his compensation for something truck. 

shame. 

so then, as we are pulling out to leave, a man is walking toward us and as he gets closer bonnie screams. think davy jones meets mad eye moody. crazy eyes, with some kind of silver liquid leaking out all over his weathered face, tangles of silver hair, cutoff jeans, shirtless, shoesless, and soul sucking glare. we looked into the face of death that night. 

good grief i love my life. :) 

good morning america

the rain has stopped
for now

one question? why do google docs and other such programs have autosave, but not word perfect? i only ask because today as i was finishing up a rather long and arduous (does this thing have spell check) paper about the receiving of ee cummings into the mid 1900s, the computer at the library froze on me and i had to redo a nice chuck of the work.

also, ee cummings wrote this ____ in a note to his sister. think about it.

NOTHING IS SO DIFFICULT AS TO BE ALIVE!!!!!! which is the ONLY THING WHICH YOU CANNOT LEARN ever,from anyone,anywhere: it must come out of you.