Colour Text

2012-01-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

There's just so many people. I read the statistics and I know that the song I'm listening to on the radio, probably at least one other million Americans are listening to as well. I get overwhelmed when I see them waving on the television and swamping into shopping malls like muddy water. Always more than faces, always little details lingering just beneath the skin, right out of reach.

I can't tell all of their stories but I want to.

2011-10-25T10:18:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, there is just nothing to say.

2011-08-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

When I remember my days spent at the old house, I remember the burnt orange reflection on everything the sun touched as it snuck away. That was when the trains still ran, one plodding right through one of our fields behind the house- it was a clinging hope for a thriving business in a world where the 18 wheeler and cargo aircraft were beginning to snuff out the very remembrance of the railroad.

My sister Sarah and I would climb on top of the hay bales, first brushing over the tops with our hands to check for dead mice, and then we would nestle into the prickly, dusty-smelling things and be shaken by the passing train. When my father was younger, he lived in a house right by railroad tracks too. He used to tell us that the train made the whole house sway back and forth, back and forth, when it hurtled past--screaming angrily in the night. There was something about them that bothered him, created a sense of dread within him. I shared his fear until we moved into the old house and I got to see a train go by. It wasn't a bad thing at all, I thought. It made the earth kind of rumble, made it purr. My sister and I would sit on that giant cat's back, all prickly with cold grass and let the train vibrate our insides. I always knew that there was a conductor, but somehow to me trains were like cars on the highway at night--the pavement amplified with headlights that only preceded empty metal shells.

When I went back, a grown up with a slimmer face and wiser eyes, the field was smaller than I remembered. Everything is smaller than you remember when you go back and look at childhood things. Things like playgrounds and murals and closets. But the field seemed extra smaller. It's been about twenty years, I told myself, and trees never stop popping out of the ground. The train was the same though, bigger even. Still a cold, robotic caterpillar, unmoving on the ground. I crept closer, feeling reverence, fear even. I had never felt close to the train. It was a childhood memory, but not a comforting one. Sarah and I always watched the train, soaking up the hay bale's warmth and the enjoying the feel of the crisp air stinging the curves of our ears--but never really loved the train. We loved the sounds, the quaking earth, the smell of the outside. But never the train itself. I was still scared of it in a way. Looking back, I understand my father's strange fear of the mindless beast, eating over the land.

Another Snippet.

2011-07-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

Last semester I turned in a short story for a final grade. It was an expansion of the twins bit from a few posts back. Here's a bit of it.

They made no move to help him, only peered out at him from behind their dirty glasses with faces as smooth and emotionless as the goose beside them. Ghost noticed that one of them had on a sock that didn’t match the other three. Dizzy from the hot sun, and panicked from the sight of blood, he threw his head back with a howl. The goose, startled, rose from its nest like a soft fluttering moth. It hovered, just at eye-level beside Ghost, the weighted sandbags of its wings kissing tips and then spreading wide once more, close enough to brush Ghost’s cheeks. A sign from the Almighty, he thought.

2011-06-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

First off, I got married.

After that part, we came back to the house that we live in. The great thing about living in houses is that they cover up your head in the 9,836,592,046,397 degree weather, and you can wash your clothes in them*, and there is usually furniture to sleep/sit on. The not so great thing about living in houses is you have to, you know, take care of them- and some even go to those great lengths of trying to make their homes look at least kind of presentable. Which leads me to the curtains.

The thing about curtains, is you have to have something to hang them on. The thing about curtain rods is they usually have to fit the precise measurements of your windows. The thing about windows, is that they are usually clear and let people see inside of your maybe-not-so-well-decorated home, which brings us back full circle to needing curtains for the said windows. Now, I'm no Martha Stewart. When it comes to cooking, I normally like to group foods whose colors accent one another and I'm not too concerned about them tasting well together. Needless to say, my decorating style is similar. So for things like curtains, I'm an easy girl to please, which makes it surprising that these curtains have become the bane of my existence. As it turns out, we didn't have a tape measurer to measure all of our windows with, so I went to the store and made lots of incredibly uneducated guesses about what miiiight fit our windows. I was wrong about it all.

In the end, I don't know why I'm complaining about any of this, because Daniel is the one who has done all of the work. Yesterday when we got back from the store where we exchanged all of the idiot-curtain hardware that I had purchased and got the things that would actually work, I was furious. These curtains and their persistent need to be rebellious got my goat in a big way. And so Daniel calmly gave up an hour of his Sunday afternoon hanging them all while I burnt holes in the floor from all of my fuming. I felt about how this guy looks.*

I realize now that our lesson to be learned from the anti-climactic story that I just wasted your time with is that we should have had a tape measurer all along. And honestly, what we really needed wasn't one more crystal deviled egg plate. It was this:

*Edit: Less than 24 hours after writing this our washing machine broke.

*A side note: when searching for pictures of congressman Anthony Weiner, the first results were almost all women.

2011-04-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

What was wrong with the twins? Really, the weirdest thing was that they weren't two separate people at all. Surely they couldn't be, not at age 35 and still dressing exactly the same.

Walking into the room with matched, heavy steps, and matched, heavy satchels, they sat at the same time, read from the same book, and never referred to themselves as I. It was always we.

When we were a child, we used to watch our grandmother fish snakes out from her flooded basement. She would loop them in and out of her fingers like knitting yarn, and watch them writhe and spit. They never bit her.

I spied them on campus once, following in exciting closeness. They had a beard then, perfectly groomed and combed like freshly mown grass. They didn't speak while they walked, and their duplicate height confused me more than usual- somehow there being two of them made it even easier to lose them in the crowd. In front of the chapel, they disappeared entirely. To me, it was as if they had never existed at all.

Now I see them twice a week, and I cannot look at only one of them specifically- as if they are Alice's magic moving storeshelves themselves in her looking glass. Their faces smudge into a single head, contorted by its double features, and their annoyingly hushed mumbles during conversation prick at my skin like a wool sweater rubbing your arms the wrong way. I don't believe in ghosts or the otherworldly, I say, but there is something wrong about all of this.

2011-03-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

She was nestled in the crooked arm of a cluster of irises when I finally saw her. I had been looking through the dirty dining room window, the one over the mammoth record player, trying to find anything to distract me from the fact that I was doing what I wasn’t supposed to be. There she was, just a little fuzzy lump under the flowers. I let her lay there for a while until I finished my eggs, then I wandered onto the back porch, and woke her up by cooing her name. Her glazed eyes took a moment to register, she got up, stretched her legs, and padded into the house, through the middle room, and jumped onto my bed.

As soon as we were settled and I felt special and loved, I noticed it outside of my bedroom window. It was her twin, the same in every respect, coming down the stairs and stretching its legs just as she had. I looked into my lap to see if she was still there, as if somehow I was imagining it. All of the sudden, I felt betrayed. It was an unexpected and irrational hurt that came from the arches of my feet. Who was this, snuggling up on my bed? Had I left the real one outside? Had some imposter been sleeping under my irises, knowing that in my ignorance I would let the wrong one in? I searched them both for marks of difference, and found none.

The twin sat on the steps and cried for a moment, then slid out of the yard. I couldn’t help but feeling alone for a second. The good feeling from before was gone.

2011-03-10T13:50:00.002-08:00

You would think the day we talked about his stories would be the day that I had a lot to say.

Mostly I stared out of the window behind the lecturer as he drawled. Mostly I thought about how one day I will be brave enough to sit down and write a letter to Lewis Nordan. I will be embarrassed for telling him that he is the reason that I write. I will probably forget to thank him for that in my excessive gratitude. Will It be short? Should I number the pages?

Typed?

Handwritten?

He's old now. I don't know how well he can see.

I thought about Sugar Mecklin and mermaids and finding a woman with perfect lips and eggshell skin in red slippers under the house. I thought about her over-the-sink kitchen window, abandoned somewhere.

I thought that it was all too sacred and magical to discuss anyway. I was a root, a vine, still and silent, attaching myself to the seat- weaving in as a part of the quiet. There were a thousand things buzzing in my mouth and I let not a one out from the roaring fear that I would gush my whole body onto the floor, vulnerable and ecstatic and afraid.

In the end, I didn't pay attention to any of it. My fierce, clawing attraction to the sticky words prevented me from listening at all.

Later in the crushing muteness of the library, I did not work on my paper. I worked on finding his address.

Ghost Takes a Holiday

2011-02-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

Ghost bowed to the wolves and turned to the ocean, ready for the creatures that awaited him beneath- all of those squiggling clouds of fish hiding in the shadows of the flotsam, and the rays, gathered for tea in the starless blue, settling like a squirming pile of leaves, savage and real. He was ready for this. Goodbye to the foxes and trees- bring the deep, he said. I want to know its mysteries.

2011-02-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world"

--Henry David Thoreau (from Walden)

The Nosebleed

2011-01-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

My nose started to bleed. I didn't have any tissue so I leaned my head back like Ms. Lacey told me to do when my nose started to bleed in the third grade. I knew that was a bad thing to do because obviously blood in your stomach makes you sick. It made me wonder why grownups are always telling kids to do it. I did it anyway though, because I learned once in the movie theater watching King Kong that blood is better in your stomach than on your face for everyone to see. It felt warm and silky slipping on the back of my throat. It tasted funny, like iron. Why does blood taste like iron, and how do I know what iron tastes like? I don't go around chomping on iron. If my blood is made of iron, and if my skin was opened up and the blood was rushing around in my veins like a highway-if my skin was open and it started to rain, would I rust? I felt the taste stick in the cracks between my teeth, so I took a drink from my coke that Sarah got me at the Sprintmart. It took me a little while to get the Sprintmart cup out of the cupholder because of all of the old coke that lived on the bottom of the holder. My mother and Sarah say the old coke is gross, but I say it has to live somewhere.

2011-01-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

I'm watching the crackling silhouettes of winter trees against the pink sky. They look like lace sliding by on a railway track. I see things every day that I should write down, that need so badly to be captured, but instead roll off my memory like drops of water. I've begun to compartmentalize in my head phrases, photos, memories, and single words that are important, that can be used again--things that made an impression. I make lists in my mind like this:

From the very beginning, they all knew I was a weird baby.

I did it 'caus you had to learn.

Another night on

Start with whistling.

Subject to change

The Kings of Water Valley

Stuttering Ken?

Anything that takes place in Possum Neck, Mississippi

Cocaine Charlie never shot the vegan, he just wished it.

a snippet.

2010-12-13T21:13:00.000-08:00

In the fuzzy hour between sleeping and waking is the hour that it visits. It's soft, wrapping old sweaters around its sharp feet to dull the sound of walking on your wooden floors. Breathing in and out of the frosted windows, it keeps its visits short, collecting what it needs before delicately sliding you back in between your sheets.

Collecting dreams is a a tricky business. The good ones are like warm butter, slipping through its spindly grey fingers. So the Lockelomb has developed a method. After the dreamer is on top of the covers- It cannot collect when sheets are in the way- it crouches by the edge of the bed and slides the good dreams out, catching them in its inside jacket pocket. The pocket is covered in patches, mostly cut from the sweaters the Lockelomb wears around its feet. It wants to be certain the good dreams don't escape.

Finding and apprehending the bad dreams is easier. It simply takes off it's red knit cap, faded and frayed, and the nasties spring to attention, leaping one by one into the hat. Occasionally, one might try to escape into the bathroom, attempting to slide quickly under the shower mat. But the Lockelomb always knows when one is missing. He doesn't even have to count.

But the favorite dreams are the weird ones. The ones where your mother looks like you, but you know it's actually your mother. Where you are running, running, to get to your cello lesson on time, even though you don't play the cello, and even though you are standing on the bottom of the ocean with angler fish licking your glowing toes. What makes these dreams the best for the Lockelomb is the difficulty that arises when trying to categorize them. The miscellaneous dreams, the ones that are there just to fill up seconds of white space, those come to rest inside of the Lockelomb's sweaters. But some dreams, some dreams just aren't so easy to claim. Some dreams are weird, but just eerie enough to make you shuffle uneasily under your quilt while you're sleeping. Those are its favorites. When it finds those dreams, it sits down, right in the middle of your bedroom floor, and sorts them out by size, scariness, and weirdness. Then it carefully places each dream in the right storage compartment. A little lonely game.

2010-12-02T11:53:00.000-08:00

She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How had she got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, expect memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.

-Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway

A Partially True Remembrance, and a Complete and Total Lie

2010-11-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

When my father was young, seven maybe, he was almost killed. Or, at least that's how he told the story on the playground for days after. He was playing outside of his grandmother's garden that was bordered by the woods, filling his hands up with fresh dirt and letting it slip through his fingers when a grunting sound came from behind him. "Charged by a wild boar", he told me years later. If it hadn't been for his grandmother jumping the fence like a hurdle and grabbing him to safety on the other side- Bam. Boar breakfast.

My mother never liked the way lavender smelled. When she was in college, she stood in an empty room in an old house as a dare. They told her that just months ago, a woman her age- 19, maybe- had been killed in this room. The dare lasted three minutes. She stayed two and a half. All she could remember was that the room, empty and grey, reeked of lavender. She wasn't scared so much as unnerved, she said. It was the eerie peacefulness of the room that was so strange.

2010-11-16T11:18:00.001-08:00

Today, there could be nothing grander than a wood-burning fire.

White Star Bar

2010-11-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

Staring from the other end of the bar. Peer through stringy hair, close up your old band jacket with the high Michael Jackson collar and silver buttons you once used to break open your mother's back door.

I'm Joshua Darrow, you say. I'm a slacker, but when I am in school I'm a mortuary sciences major.

You listen to their screaming judgmental stares and roll your eyes when they ask you if you pay money to study dead people. Then you spread that signature slice of teeth across your face and juju them away with your leering eyes. You take the arm of the woman sitting next to you, sipping on her rum and coke (she's particular about the spice). You rub your forehead on her shoulder like a lonely cat and lap up her surprise with your ravenous mind. You're so grimly charming that they're repulsed and utterly obsessed so they shake your hand, laugh with you, touch your elbow in passing conversation. They don't mind, they'll never see you again. Or they hope so. You scare them with your little eyes, hiding behind the mammoth cheshire grin. They whisper through their gin-sticky fingers when you turn away.

Life Goal

2010-11-08T09:19:00.001-08:00

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

—Maurice Sendak

2010-10-19T11:50:00.001-07:00

As soon as he told us to pick up our things and follow him, I knew where he was taking us. We walked across campus, a silent procession with backpacks, at least half of a mile. Through streets, parking lots, buildings. And then there was nothing. A silent park surrounded by humanity-the sounds of horns, clashes, crashes-yet here, silent in its sacredness. As we entered the stone gate, he simply told us to "read the plaque". We crept forth, knowing before we were told that this place was sadness. Hundreds of unmarked graves, right beneath our very feet. Hundreds of men that never made it home, that died in Oxford, Mississippi and did not die a "good death"; a death surrounded by loved ones, with a confidence of one's future in heaven. They were rough, raw passings, without the dignity of markers or sisters dropping tears onto the fresh soil.

We were noiseless. Settling onto the stone wall that surrounds the plot, we listened to him explain about the numbers of the dead. Not historical numbers, not the estimates listed only for fact and memorization. He gave us the same numbers, with different perspective-the idea that war is hell, the fleeting question of wondering what could ever be so important that we would shed human blood. I stretched my hand over the rust carpet of pine needles, woven into one another dusting the cemetery. It was cold outside, and I'm sure that none of us could forget that there were bones beneath our feet.

Admittedly

2010-09-30T06:57:00.000-07:00

I have been hearing about the phenomenon that is LolCatz for forever, but I've never taken the time to check it out. An occasional peek at someone's facebook would show a picture of a cute cat sitting in a basket or in the dryer with a caption that read something along the lines of "Ai iz cyute. Ai can has cheezeburger now?" At first, that induced vomit (obviously). I decided to give the website a try however, and decided to give you guys a glimpse at a few of the gems. I still haven't decided how I feel about this.

2010-09-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

The words inside of his mouth are Grand Central Station. His words are Grand Central Station during the fuzzy grey morning rush-alive and beginning. Not like the 6:00, hungry and ready to go home. He only stuttered when he talked about books-he got so excited that the words crowded in line inside of his mouth-pushing and cursing and fighting to be free. I like him. Rolled up jeans over stompers on rainy days.

On Tuesdays

2010-09-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Gracious my bed is comfortable. Everyone thinks their bed is comfortable, but you people have no idea. And the great thing about my bed is if I go crawl into it early enough in the evening, it's easier to crawl out of it in the morning, just after shaking off those lingering sleep fuzzies and soft sheets curling around my face. When you sleep well, you wake well, and are offered the beautiful inbetween haze that does not come with weariness.

And even though as soon as I finish typing this, I'll gulp down the rest of my coffee, brush my teeth and maybe, maybe run a brush through my tangled and wavy hair, jump in the car, and begin a day that will whirl by in business-- right now I am enjoying a cup of coffee out of the mug that Daniel gave me. I'm listening to jazz and the morning light is creeping hand over hand towards my house across the kudzu, and the sheets were downy and cool on my face when I awoke.

Convinced I'm Dead? I May Be Too.

2010-09-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

Allow me to offer up this mental image for you: Me- laying on my couch, skirt hiked to mid-waist, feet propped unceremoniously on the coffee table that I laboriously moved closer for the convenience, pasty and weak, wondering if I'll ever see the light of day again. [Ignore the fact that there is so much natural light in my living room at present that I could get a sun tan while watching Gilmore Girls] I ask my roommate in a feeble, shaky voice why life can't be like TeVo, why can't I pause this rushing world, sleep for ten hours, and then catch up on class? I feel like I'm being deep. She wasn't listening. When asked to repeat this sentiment, I'm overcome with a feeling of retardation for ever thinking that comparing life to TeVo would be something that anyone would take seriously.

Being sick is no fun, but the beginning stages of illness where you're well enough to go to work and class are even worse. Worse, I say. Helplessly I totter from my car to my classes, and tediously I sit though a lecture on the teenage consumer market of the mid to late 1940s, holding my head, convinced that if I let go my cranium will literally explode in the middle of class. And no one would want to clean THAT mess up. I go to work and stand up for six hours, bemoaning my fate of having the WORST job of ALL time where I do EVERYTHING AROUND HERE. [Edit: I make coffee at a reasonably slow moving establishment where I work with people who are amiable and fun. I make minimum wage plus tips, and the hours work cooperatively around my school schedule. Make you're own judgement call here.] I run into walls and begin to think that my legs won't hold my weight anymore and convince myself that I probably have a brain tumor, because that's the most reasonable assumption at this point. I then, being the pious martyr that I am, work my full shift after convincing myself that I can be "brave" and with a Madonna-like facial expression, finally climb in my car to go home.

After it's all said and done, I don't have a fever, I go to all my classes, I go to work, and I'm still living and breathing. I'm disgusted with myself for being so theatrical, then repeat it all the next day. Solution? Go to the doctor, get a Z pack, stop watching The Holiday on repeat. Life might not look so bleak then.

Let's Talk

2010-08-09T14:32:00.001-07:00

Let's talk about: How I'm finally home in Oxford. Hello Oxford. Hello sticky streets and radiating waves of wordy heat. I missed Oxford words Oxford books my Oxford typewriter Oxford friends Oxford drinks Oxford inspiration.

Let's talk about: Starting my job back. Hello grind. I missed you, kind of. Hello steady paycheck. Hello bills in my name. I forgot about you. Hello adulthood. Hello grocery lists. Hello fresh produce. Hello soft new couch in the living room. Hello new chapter.

Let's think about: Lawless lands. Order in society. Thinking in list form. Punctuation and run on sentences that never seem to end and confuse you and can be misconstrued as art or as absolute ridiculosity but really are what they are which is just a run on sentence that could really be either no matter how you look at it.

Maybe it will storm today.

"In MY Neverland, there's a parachute"

2010-06-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the best week of my life (so far): NEVERLAND.

I would share pictures with you, but I can't get to them, because they're password protected on the camp website. Funny how being on leadership can't even get me that privilege. I guess I could just ask for the password. Whatever. Anyway. It's awesome. Seriously though, the week theme this week here at CRS is indeed Neverland. Let me be clear: it is NOT Peter Pan week. The reason for this is that I want each child here to create their very own Neverland. J.M. Barrie states in his book Peter and Wendy, that all Neverlands are different, each specially crafted for each child, but all more or less an island. Now, this camp happens to be landlocked, and even though I contacted a construction team, it seems that fixing that problem is out of my hands. But even though I can't make this place an island, I've been able to give these kids, and also these counselors, an empty canvas to work with. I gave them face paint, feathers, and a pep talk, and sent them out into their Neverlands. People keep walking up to me and saying, "Hannah, this is so great! You're doing such a great job!" And I'm so embarrassed, because this has nothing to do with me-this week theme would have flopped if the counselors hadn't gotten excited about it and decided it to make it the best week of all eternity. I think people forget that I just give them the environment to have fun in, but they're the ones doing the real work, which is having the fun.

I have to say though, seeing 150 people young and old get excited about using their imaginations has been like giving me a gift. It's like at Christmas, when you give someone a present that you really, really like, and you're nervous they won't think it's as absolutely fabulous as you do-but then they LOVE it. I've had counselors run up to me and say, "I LOVE Neverland! I see unicorns everywhere." Or, "My girls decided that their Neverland was winter and summer at the same time, so there are snowflakes covering half of their cabin, and butterflies covering the other half. Also we built a castle out of one of the bunks." My heart could explode when I hear things like that. No told them to make snowflakes, they did it to pretend. No one told them to make the boathouse into a princess tower, they did it as a pretend. No one asked them to come up with their Lost Boy names, they did it as an adventure. No one made them wear headdresses all week and come to breakfast with painted faces, they do it because they're pretending. Pretending to be princesses, pirates, indians, lost boys, fairies, unicorns, anything, everything. Seven year olds, and 33 year olds.

I can't brag on this staff enough this week. I really, really can't. They've made this week everything I envisioned it being. And no matter how many stars I hang from the ceiling, it all relies on them.

Bloggity McBloggin'

2010-05-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

Phew. I haven't updated in a month, because obviously: I'm committed to finishing things I start. I'm at home for about two days before I embark on the adventure of being program director for Camp of the Rising Son. It's going to be weird, for the first time having to wrangle staff into shape instead of kids....they're going to do fabulously though, I know it. While I'm at home, mostly I plan on becoming a comatose vegetable partaking of these two things with my mother:

But seriously though, Real Simple is wonderful. I shouldn't have to explain this to you. So it follows that their wedding magazine is the holy grail of wedding magazines. No, but really. Also this weekend I need to finish reading this:

It's a tasty treat for my brain. I had no idea how anti-interview Flannery O'Connor was, until I started reading this-she absolutely baffles interviewers who want her to elaborate on her own work. She is curt, to the point, and even a little rude sometimes. Somehow, it alll makes sense,I couldn't imagine her acting any other way in an interview. Thanks Daniel, you're good at giving presents.

My mother is going through clothes right now, which she should be given a gold medal for because she hates doing it so much. BUT we found this jewel that I immediately snatched for myself:

I remember attending this festival with my family when I was really little. All that really sticks in my mind was sitting in something that felt like a parking garage and listening to a group of people play their dulcimers. Then we sat in the sun for a little while before walking to the car. Funny, what our minds choose to remember. Anyhooooo, here is a little visual of how I'll be spending my summer:

Sweet mother of science, matrimony!

2010-04-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Sooooooooooooo Daniel proposed. I thought I'd do the nice thing and say yes. (With all of my heart). He then proceeded to take me home where EVERYONE was waiting to congratulate us. Want to see some pictures? Ok, since you begged.

"Heyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Ze ring

Aimee stayed in town the next day to keep me from going stir-crazy.

Yipes, Stripes!

2010-03-25T12:05:00.001-07:00

I just rediscovered this jewel in Wal-Mart, of all places. Immediately, I texted Sarah Emily.

"Remember that rainbow zebra gum we used to eat? I just found some!"

Thankfully, she was excited as I was hoping she would be. "Really? Wow! Buy me some!"

Disappointment. "Rats, I already left. But I got a pack for me. I'm so excited!"

"That is a very exciting purchase."

"I know. I hope it turns my teeth blue or something."

I love Sarah Emily Parish so much. All the little things remind me of that.

2010-02-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

When I hear the words "shaved turkey", I just get really, really confused (giggly?). I think it harkens back to a childhood conversation I had with my father when we were grocery shopping once. He said something along the lines of, "As opposed to a turkey with a full beard". Also kind of reminds me of Dilbert.

I went grocery shopping today. Obviously. Due to a recent, and somewhat hefty, check I received in the mail from MSU, I let myself go a little today at Kroger. I'm telling you guys, I could bleed myself dry in that produce section- all of those beautiful mushrooms, radishes and bananas, the works! Also that cheese kiosk kills me. KILLS ME. Brie is just not something you can buy every day. So today, I treated myself to a few things I never, ever let myself buy.

1. Brie

2. InStyle

3. Sweet Potato chips

4. Amy's Soups

5. Radishes

6. Mushrooms

7. Fresh raspberries

I know, I know. I should budget myself better. But what better thing to blow money on that real good food?

Lately it's all been work, sleep, class, work sleep class, worksleepclass. Pretty exhausting, which is why I'm excited to go home to Ethel for a full weekend to spend a few days after my birthday. It'll be good times with the family, the cats, and the disgusting abundance of cat hair. But really, I am looking forward to it. That good ole gas heater, the good ole brothers, my good ole parents, and good ole Ethel in general. Speaking of general, my sister got a greyhound!

His name is General, by the way.

Here is a picture of us studying hard.

In the end, I should clean my room, turn the heater back on, read Dickens, eat those raspberries, and work more on program for this summer. Oh, did I mention that I am program director at Camp of the Rising Son this summer? Well, I am. And it's going to be awesome. Here's a fun note to end this post on, and wishfully, to end this entire debate about the Ole Miss mascot. (pssst, chancellor: no one cares.)

http://www.thedmonline.com/content/introducing-admiral-ackbar

End edit: I updated the blog for Emily O'Dell. To save her from cookingblogboredom.

It's True, Honest!

2010-01-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

Despite my usual outward spite towards internet chains, secretly, I've always loved them. That is why I was thrilled to read that Emily had tagged me in this honest chain thing. So here goes.
Rules for the award:
1. Must thank the person who gave you the award and list their blog and link it.
2. Share "10 Honest things" about yourself.
3. Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.
4. Tell those 7 people they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

1. Like Emily, I assign personalities to numbers. However with me, I hate the odd numbers. In my mind they all have personalities, and seven is the worst. THE WORST. He's a jerk of universal proportions. Don't question this, I've always been this way. Also, I hate making change for anything like $0.39 or $0.79. Counting out four pennies just kills me. It's the little things.

2. I am ultra awkward and borderline creepy when I work the drive through at the coffee shop. I always hold eye contact for waaaay too long, and even when I know I'm doing it, I just can't stop. I rarely get tips from that section of the store. Or I get huge ones.

3. I love cheese so much that I very often eat it on its own for a snack. Or, I mix it up with something sweet-like dry Lucky Charms or something. I'll slice it up and eat it together. It sounds disgusting, but try it sometime, it's the poor man's French palate. Trust me.

4. I love good pop. Love it. There is a difference between good pop and bad pop, by the way. Good pop: Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Chris Brown, etc. Bad pop: Kelly Clarkson, The Fray, Chris Daughtry, etc.

5. I was really struggling getting all my Shakespeare plays read during my Winter Intersession class about a month ago, and so sheepishly and jokingly (but also seriously) asked Daniel if he would read parts with me to make it faster and more interesting. Verdict? It was way faster, way more interesting, and way, way fun. Daniel was so awesome for doing it with me.

6.I got in trouble at work once for writing Peter Pan quotes on people's blank to-go coffee cups before I took their order. The customers loved it. My boss didn't.

7. I want to die at sea trying to save my ship from going down. In my head, I will successfully evacuate everyone else to safety, and before I can bring the sail down, the mast will break and fall on me-eliminating drowning on my part (that would be a horrible way to go) and providing an instant and heroic death. Don't act shocked, you've thought about a romantic death for yourself too.

8. No matter how old I am or how nicely I am dressed, I feel like a seventh grader when I put on a backpack. End of story.

9. I may or may not be obsessed with This Guy's Youtube channel. It gets me. It gets me in my little scene-kid-leftover-from-highschool-heart, and it just tickles my funny bone.

10. I become suddenly paralyzed when trying to use mouth wash. It begins when I can't get the lid off, then choke every time, dribbling mouthwash down my chin and neck, and then after about 30 seconds of swishing, all but vomit the stuff back into the sink because I hold my breath the whole time. It's a traumatizing experience.

And there it is. 10 reasons why you probably shouldn't be my friend anymore. I tag SE, My mother, Daniel Meigs, and Will Nettleton (who won't do it).

Arise, I say, and eat thine own head.

2010-01-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

Man, I love that character from Oliver Twist. The grumpy old man constantly claiming, "If it be the case, I'll eat my head!" Dickens got it right with that guy.

It's been cold here, which isn't much of a shock to anyone, seeing that it's been cold enough all over America to make even Al Gore question his principles. We had snow for a day, then the scattered, unromantic remains for two-leaving a smattering of dirty snowmen and snow angles wiped into 1/4 inches of grassy powder. It was fairly anticlimactic to say the least, but a fun change anyway. I'm quite the Scrooge when it comes to winter though, and I can't say I enjoy the season even in the least. I think it's because my ears stick out so far; it makes going without a hat in the cold a most unpleasant experience.

I've been reading roughly one play per night for my Shakespeare on film class, which is brilliant in that I'm finally having a real scholar teaching me how to appreciate that which I so loathed before. His comedies, I'll admit, are solid stuff, but the tragedies took getting used to, paired with genius lectures that shed light on so many unanswered historical questions, etc. Right now (Actually, at this moment, I'm taking a much deserved break) I am reading Titus Andronicus, and have to admit that I am disgustingly enthralled by all of the dismemberment, human pies, and decapitations. Why Shakespeare wrote this play is beyond me. Why professors choose to teach it is beyond me. But what gets me the most is that I, and others, read it and want more; eagerly flip to the next scene to find out who will be cut down next. Consider it the violent video games of the Renaissance.

Favorite Shakespeare line to date?
"Would that I knew thy heart".
-Lady Anne, Richard III

Look Out Your Window.

2009-12-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

I was restless, not from fear of flying-but from the ache that racks my body when I sit in one station for too long. I needed to run-or sleep. The roar of the engine drowned out any of my lasting senses and I simply turned off the music I was trying to force between my ears. I closed my eyes, miserable. Miserable.

Then.

"Look out the window." The words were whispered by the man from Spain sitting in front of me. I knew he was speaking to his companion who was seated behind him, but while he was turned in his friend's direction speaking, his eyes were on mine. "Look out the window." I followed his command. First, white-a haze of nothingness, a dreamlike fuzz that transitions you from sleep to the real world and then there was the city. Piled high, stacked close, rustling itself and threatening to push itself outside of its own borders and into the nothingness below. The clouds were unmoving and structured meticulously, built into skyscrapers and valleys. The ground was more, more, more white, the sky above was a startling shade of peacock blue and smattered with tiny, whispery clouds. Clouds watching over clouds.

Then.

We burst from the ethereal city and into weightless blue beneath, down further and faster. I felt my stomach creep up my throat, and my body wanted to lift out of the seat, to stay above. Again, I closed my eyes-the roar of the engine came back to my senses and taunted me out of the happy escape. Forcing myself too let go of the city in the sky, I looked out the window again, expecting to be disappointed. At first, there was nothing, just dots and an unimpressive pallet of similar colours. I strained my eyes, peering through the diaphanous weave of ice crystals clinging to my window and forced my head to separate the images and colours below.

Then.

Mountains. Hurtling from the core of the earth and up to the welkin world above, like angry dogs on a chain pulled to the absolute limit of their cage, reaching, reaching for just what cannot be attained. The cold and inhuman formations were startlingly and unnervingly beautiful. There was no sign of human life, just the stretching rock veiled by snow and ice. I considered for a moment the earth-shattering sound that must have been made when they were created, rushing into themselves as flat ground and then shouldering up and crashing head on, creating an eternal embrace of rock on rock closer to the sky.

Then.

Ground. Cold. Pulling and stretching myself into a pullover and wrestling my baggage from the overhead compartment. A parting glance from the man who told me to just "Look out the window", and I was in the world of eerie rock and snow.

2009-11-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

I am unsettled. A strangely dispersed smattering of tears over a movie threw me into this mood, which is frustrating.

Yesterday walking on the square in an oversized plaid shirt, beat up leather boots, and someone's leftover shorts from 1998 I was so happy. It was a moment where I was so completely content being alone--surrounded by townspeople but being an island of sorts. I pretended they all looked at me when I walked by and said who is this wild, untamed woman? She is different.

I have turned into one giant book. I read A Streetcar Named Desire today for the first time. It was good, refreshingly traumatic. Books and plays cannot stand to only be depressing, it's boring. Williams did something great by interwinding the entire city of New Orleans in as a character in this play. It gives it more meaning, more hopelessness, more life. Also, I'm reading Bloodline by Ernest Gaines, and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Today I was supposed to start reading Kim by Kipling, but my brain can't can't can't take it right now. For some reason I never bought the book at the beginning of the semester and then realized yesterday I have readings due Thursday. Rats. I tried to get the eBook, but it felt so much like cheating that I ordered a cheap used copy off of Amazon and I'm getting it over-nighted. Or something. I would rather be behind and have a real, solid book in my hands.

Yesterday was my first impulse book by of the semester. [Don't get me wrong, I had about 78 impulse book buys right before the semester began] I bought Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. I'm excited to read it as soon as I'm done with Ishiguro's book. Agh, look at me. This post is turning into a book diary.

On a non-book related note, I have almost an entire week off for Thanksgiving. So, so happy.

2009-11-02T18:29:00.001-08:00

All I did was cry and read Kurt Vonnegut. Then I was ok. Funny how that goes. For a few hours, the world is ending, there is no more purpose in your work, and then poof, wham, the problem still remains but it isn't crushing you anymore.

When I was reading Kurt Vonnegut, I was supposed to be listening to my teacher lecture about Kurt Vonnegut. I just read ahead and blocked her out. Chapter 6: "Schlachthof-fünf. Schlachthof meant slaughterhouse. Fünf was good old five."

When I walked out of the classroom door I came face to face with a guy I didn't know. That's normal, I guess at a university with thousands of students. For some reason I associated the smell of beer and cigarettes that attacked my senses just then with him. But then the smell followed me down the hallway, up the stairs. Beer and cigarettes. I love that smell, but only when the two are mixed. Apart, they disgust me. The smell didn't fade until I walked out of the building. Maybe I'm the one that smelled like beer and cigarettes. I don't know why I would.

Ladybugs have infested my home. Annoying, but cuter than the cockroach infestation of early October.

Stand By Your Man

2009-10-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

I hated my ending to this story. So I left it out. In other news, I wish I could dedicate all of my time to writing. It's really what I love most. I wish I could go to my professors and say, "Look. I know what I want. Let's cut everything else." If only. Right now I'm reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut--I'm now walking with an apathetic 'so it goes' phrase stuck in my head. It's weird.

I feel vague.

The steam rising from the lonely coffee cup on the kitchen table was the only apparent movement in Gideon White’s home Saturday morning, the fourteenth of October. If you had looked closely though, you would have seen a scrap of shadow here, a rustling drape there, a quiet reflection on the vase in the corner. If you had strained your ears, you would have heard the soft scrape of fabric on fabric, or felt a breeze on the back of your neck as if someone had rushed past you quickly from behind. There were secrets. But you weren’t paying attention. People don’t notice those things anymore.

I didn't like the middle of this story either.

It came to a head here: when King hit Sarah Coletharp in the ribcage.

I need a break.

2009-09-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

I woke up groggy this morning, turning off my snooze alarm and sitting up quickly in bed before I had the chance to go back to sleep. It's been one of those mornings where waking up is especially hard. But it has been peaceful. Finishing Willa Cather's novel, My Antonia in my great red reading chair, I sipped my coffee and relished the silence. A novel finished on time for class--a rare occasion, and accompanied by a warm feeling of accomplishment. Not to mention, it really is a fabulous book that I would recommend to anyone. Especially to Isaac and my mother. A true bildungs-roman.

Waking up to my sweet, cozy house is comforting. My room is tousled and cluttered, but not in the way that makes my mind a frenzy and so that I can't concentrate. It's just...lived in. Shuffling into my living room this morning to make to straighten things while my coffee was brewing was so peaceful. The window shades left open from the day before, the morning light was streaming in and I could hear morning doves. The gold of the walls was at my favorite shade [it changes with the sun--the best is the early morning and the glaze of late afternoon] and the overstuffed red furniture was left cluttered with pillows and deep yellow afghans and books.

I have three days off in a row. Doing my homework will be a luxury, and napping is a promise.

2009-08-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

Hello.

I could talk about how I've moved to a new city. Or how much I like it. Or that I obtained a job that I like and apparently everyone else wants. Or how much I'm weirded out by the social scene here. Or how little it turns out that I actually know about what 'cool' is. But that's pretty regular.

It's a little funny to me how I spend about 79% of my free time at work. I come here to study, I come here just to get coffee and talk to my co-workers. I suppose I love the consistency of this place. As many semi-established friends that I may have had coming into Oxford, or have made since moving here- they are of a different breed than the others. I think that's why I like coming here so much. Just like my class life and my friend life is completely separate [that's how I like it, going to class by myself and not knowing anyone, but making friends over the course of the semester], my friend life and work life have also stayed in their own circles. I know it can't stay like that forever, and the two have already overlapped pretty obviously, seeing that my co-workers are also my friends now. I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's nice coming to this little coffee shop and not having pre-existing relationships tying me to these people. It's just me and the crew: a few handpicked people from almost every circle that this town offers.

For a few brief days this week, everything was up in the air. Class, living situations, relationships. And then suddenly today things have been slipping into place. For example, I now have a very heavy class load because within the course of one hour, I got into two of the classes I was waitlisted for. And honestly, I don't want to give either one of them up. I want to keep them both, and I want all 18 hours. But that might be stupid, seeing that I have a job. I suppose by saying above that things have been coming into place, I mostly meant classes and who would live downstairs in my house. But there's still time. There will be conflict, there will be awkwardness, not everything can fall into place all at once. I think if it did, that would be called Heaven. I could talk about all of these things. I could talk about struggles, joys, annoyances, and perks of this new life.

But here's something I will talk about.

I'll talk about how great these people are, and how much I miss them. For the charm of Oxford-town, I miss the afternoons with girls like these out at the refuge, just laying in the grass. I miss dancing with them. I miss watching old movies with them. They are very dear to me, and I hope that if any of my sweet things from Starkville read this, they can be sure that they haven't been abandoned. I'll never quite get over the Breakfast Club and afternoon romps.

Liebe, my darlings.

2009-08-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've always had this strange vision of what it would be like to be a grown woman, finally done with the preliminary steps that are taken towards adulthood, out of college, into a steady job, and into a home. I've imagined it two ways: the single way, and the married way. Although one sounds more desirable than the other, I assure you, this picture in my mind [whether complete rubbish or not] of single, or dating, adulthood is not altogether a bad one.

Grocery shopping alone. I've had this love/hate relationship with the grocery store since my beginning college. I love it in that I am able to spend money on the thing I adore almost more than all other things: food. I hate the hassle it is to get out of the house, into my car, and down all the isles. But that sweet feeling of home after all of the things are unpacked and you know that the cupboard is full--that is a good thing.

Running errands. Today was full of them. Go to the bank, get the oil changed, return a movie at the absolute last minute, mail paperwork, grab quick cups of coffee in between--and all of this on my own time, with my own money, in my own car, out of my own house. It was frustrating and it was empowering. "Running errands". A phrase I always heard my mother use, a definitively grown up saying.

Time with friends. I'm beginning to realize that as I get older, my friends do as well. Bear with me on this one. Dinners with friends are no longer fast food get togethers, a quick lunch has now turned into brunch at a coffee shop. I like that. Maybe it's not like this for everyone, but dare I use the phrase "I've outgrown the fast food culture"? Granted, tonight I ate at Sonic, but the general idea of a 'quick meal' now has changed for me. I want good food. Quality food. I don't want to feel sick or dirty afterward. I suppose moving to a bigger city also has something to do with this change. More options. And I'm seeing that my friends want this as well as they change with me. Today I sat outside a coffee shop with a friend and just talked with him about things. All things. But mostly books. I look forward to getting older and older and older and having more and more and more to talk about. Just thinking six years back, my unstretched mind only grasped at boys and my immediate surroundings. If only I could compare my coffee today with coffee fifty years from now.

I imagine myself sometimes living in a big city alone, and not being lonely. I have a group of friends with similar lifestyles and we meet on a regular basis--talk about little things, joke, go to exhibits, go to movies, get ice cream. Granted, I know that I am spelling out an episode of Seinfeld, but this is the picture that has formed in my mind of how it could be. Tonight was a big step for me in the direction of independence without the fear of being alone. I went to a movie by myself. At first, I was ashamed, as if I thought that the man tearing ticket stubs knew that even though I acted casual and flippant, I was meeting no one in that dark theater. I felt pitiful. But as the lights dimmed and the picture began, I was lost in the story. In the end, I was glad I was alone. This was a film for me to relish, to smile and tear up at, and had someone been with me, my emotion would not have been so frank and real. To myself, I was the only person in the room, smiling openly for minutes on end, just because I loved the colours on the screen.

The film was Julie and Julia, and for all of my ramblings on a single lifestyle [or dating, for I am not single, but still caught in the phase of in between single and what lies beyond] it all comes around to this: I think for all of the quirky perks of staying in my own loft in a city with friends who understand me and the strong, good feeling of getting things done on your own--I think I'd like to not have that. I left the theater tonight with a smile on my face and my little dress blowing in the wind, and my thoughts on matrimony. Not rushed, not forced, but one day. One day. I think I'd like that a lot. And especially tonight, to be married and to cook.

On another note, my roommate Lee had a cocktail party last night. Lee broke out the old Polaroid and was able to capture myself and the elusive Daniel Hester on film.

It was a classy affair that I think we all enjoyed immensely. Not to mention our house is very clean now as a result.

2009-07-20T07:43:00.001-07:00

I sat in my home last night with three new friends, all of us a little timid, but none too shy. We went through the prescribed conversation of majors-who was doing what, where to get an MFA, how we would find jobs after we graduated. The kinds of things that even though you’d like to not talk about, you can’t help but discuss. We are students. Consider our classes children and us the mothers that know how to speak of nothing else. A fellow English student asked me if I wrote, their eyes all for a moment on my covered typewriter in the corner.

“I don’t claim to be a writer,” I answered their curious eyes with a quiet voice. What I wanted to say was, “This is what I want. This is what I’ve been striving for since I could first scratch my name onto paper, that raw lifestyle of one who sees things differently-one who must uncover the raw pieces of everyday life.” I write what I know. And I know very, very little.

“I do not see myself as naturally talented. Whatever talent I have has been developed through years of writing. I do not believe that anyone is born with a natural talent to write, I think it has to be developed.” –Larry Brown

2009-06-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

Our car snaked steadily through the cotton fields, its progress being watched only by a solitary red winged blackbird with sharp eyes and hunched shoulders. The spiteful old man of the sky, reigning from his telephone wire throne. The fat delta sun sunk heavily into the trees, too lazy to even glow bright enough to hurt your eyes when you looked straight into it. Naturally, I stared for too long.

“Where do you think B.B. King lives?” I ask, passing an oversized billboard of him in Indianola.
“Probably Paris.” My sister squints at the horizon.
We drive on.
I recall the earlier events of the day, the funeral, the casseroles, the blistering heat at the graveside. Men in black suits, sweat rolling down their necks and collecting on shoulder blades. Half the time I couldn’t tell if people were wiping tears or mopping sweat off of their flushed faces.

The hills.
Through the window I see an epic battle of nature. The kudzu, growing so fast that it’s all but visible to the naked eye. Entire trees, telephone wires, homes have been consumed. Skeletons of trees covered in the green are like monsters, faceless ghosts. One free branch becomes an arm above water, grasping for a savior but finding none. The psycho killer takes its prey---a fog falls suddenly over the fields.

I didn’t really know her, it turns out. I thought I did but I was wrong. And that makes me sadder than anything else.

The great oak shakes from fear and wind. Quiet. Soft. The tendrils gently encurl a twig, a leaf, an acorn. Hush, it whispers. The tree moans once, and then is no more. Even the wind stops in reverence and mourning. The sky sighs, the sun sets, and clouds take hands and blanket the empty canvas.

2009-06-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window

Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes

-S.S

2009-05-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

“Let’s grow old together and die at the same time.”

I heard a curious sound through my open window two nights ago. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I was working on my newest art project: some stereotypical loss of identity collage of humanity screaming for more individuality. I couldn’t explain it all now. Through the red drapes I could hear the warm air rustling the leaves outside. I’ve recently taken to leaving the shades and the windows open at night, even though I cannot see what is outside because of my light reflection in the window. Somehow knowing that those outside can see me in the night is comforting. I want to be a light in the frame, I want them to feel warmth from the existence of another human being by hearing music trickling through the window screens, and see coffee steaming on the counter. But I digress.

The sound was the soft splash of raindrops on the leaves of the magnolia tree outside of my apartment. I thought of my father. He loves magnolia trees, the smell, the look, and the simplicity of the flower. I wished that he had been there with me to just sit and hear the rain fall on the petals. In the past months, my father and I have made a connection unknown to me before-for the first time; we are in the same boat, the same stage in life. We are frightened of the future together, we are working shoulder to shoulder towards a similar goal. Throwing ideas around if only to hear our own voices in the air, we drive and think out loud. I will never, ever forget the past few months that we have had together. They’ve been absolutely precious to me.

Papa-Daddy, let's do this forever.

2009-04-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

Windows, out of which the view is not obstructed by buildings or trees. Just blue, a gateway of empty space.

And that is all I have to say.

The Ultimate 317E Prank.

2009-04-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

You've heard about the pirate gold prank.
You've heard about the Christmas in Bess's room prank.
You haven't heard about a lot of other pranks that have gone on here.

....But this...This.....THIS WAS THE ALL-TIME WINNER. I admit it, I was completely taken in. Time for a backstory, if you will. About a month ago, Nate, Taylor, Aimee, Bess, and myself got together and watched Twilight for kicks. It was a horrible, horrible movie. But what stood out the most was the fact that Edward Cullen [for those of you don't who that is, he is the broody, metrosexual vampire that all of the tween girls in the world are desperately in love with] watched a the main girl [What is her name?] while she slept all the time. In fact, there was one scene in which she woke up to see him standing at the foot of her bed, and Aimee and I absolutely freaked out. It scared me really badly. Later, we joked around about how Edward Cullen would get us in our sleep, kind of like theBoogeyman....but worse.

Last night was a late night for me, and finally around 2:00 am, I decided to get up and turn on the air conditioner before I went to sleep. I open my door, and standing about two yards in front me is a the dark shape of a man about six feet tall. I've now learned that faced with a break in situation, I'm not one to scream. I couldn't breathe. After I opened my door a little more, the light showed me that it was in fact a life-sized cardboard cutout of Edward Cullen staring at me from the other end of the hallway. Still couldn't breathe. I kicked in Aimee's door and yelled my complaints at her while she slept. I then slammed the door shut again [she never woke up.] and put Edward right in front of her door. Apparently, she got quite a jump from it. As I walked out of the bathroom from taking my shower, we laughed about it for a good while, and then I walked into my bedroom to find him lurking beside my closet door. Scare number two.

Naturally, after my heart had climbed back into my chest, we put Edward in Bess and Stacy's bathroom, kind of behind the door. He was placed in such a way that when she walked into the dark bathroom, she would first see his reflection staring at her from the mirror. We got THAT scare on tape. It was hilarious.

Needless to say, this prank was at first engineered by an outsider, one of the very first to venture into a 317E war. Taylor Davis, you'll probably regret getting your hands into this one. Oh, and as for the cutout, my lips are sealed about where he is now. Who knows? He could just be lurking in your room.

Edward in the daylight. Still a little scary.

The way I saw him last night. Super scary.

One Day.

2009-04-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

The Last Road in the Hills.

2009-04-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

That day that my father and I drove the cloudy road to Oxford, Mississippi is not one that I can soon forget. We set out early, coffee and books in hand, not too sure what to expect from the day’s plans. Forgetting to play music through my cracked speakers we broke the silence with our own thoughts. Dreams. Love. New starts, new endings. Most of all though, we talked Mississippi.

My father grew up in the sticky, mysterious heat of Natchez, Mississippi--one of the only antebellum towns to be left untouched by the Civil War, standing tall and proud in the south part of the state. I think it’s because they were such shrewd businessmen that they were left alone. Whatever the reason, the town that lives today, and that lived in my father’s day, is a lone reminder of the proud South before it was ravaged by war. I love it there. I love walking down the cracked sidewalks downtown and being overtaken by greenery in the summer. Count cats. There are about 1 million of them per residential road. My smallest brother and I explored downtown one summer evening at sundown. Escaping the stifling heat and emotion of my grandfather’s visitation, we slipped outside and gulped in the sweet, warm dusk. Somehow in Mississippi, even when the sun goes down you can still feel it beating down through the darkness. The heat never goes, and always with the heat comes the thick air. You could cut it with a knife. We skipped down the uneven street and turned onto a small road overhung with oak trees that I’m sure were thriving when brontosauruses were hanging out and eating their leaves. Creeping down the sidewalk, we snuck up on unsuspecting cats and tried to catch them. We never could, but we saw eight. I remember that each time another one ran across the street, we squealed with the discovery. Eight. I checked with him and he remembers. I held his hand as he climbed the fence at a plantation home that had been left standing in the center of town. We brushed our hands on the cast-iron gates as we walked by. The hum of the mosquitoes never stopped, and somehow, even though the river was at least a half-mile from where we were, I could still feel it under my feet. Smell it. Hear it. That was my father’s home.

My mother was raised in the Mississippi Delta, home of the blues, home of the floods, home of the heart of this state. I hated the delta when I grew up, there was nothing attractive to me about flatlands covered with thousands and thousands of cotton crops. We drove there often to visit my grandmother and I would sulk in the back of the car, watching the plowed rows in fields rush by, looking like pages turning in a book. I never saw myself loving the floodlands. I never once in my childhood could picture myself happy surrounded by soul and mosquitoes. The beautiful thing finding out about oneself though, is being able to recognize when you were an idiot. The delta has crept into my heart slowly, over the years. There was no sudden realization where I understood what I had been missing. It was through the steady learning of what I am made of, my heritage, my great-grandmemaw’s stories about the lakehouse and snakes in the basement when the river flooded it. It was through my introduction to blues, my ever-growing love of the land. The delta snuck in before I had a chance to stop it. Even as I write this, I am leaving the hill country and setting out onto the delta. Behind me is that last clinging attempt at uneven land and then flat, flat, flat for as far as I can see. The family is packed into the car, even the dog, and we sit in silence, soaking up what we know is rightfully ours.

Daddy and I talked about a great many things on that roadtrip. But the thing that I’ll remember most was his preaching to the choir about our rich heritage, about the beauty of the South. We drove through a small town shaded by trees. “These are your roots”, He told me proudly. And I was proud too.

As for Easter, it was very well spent. A day in the Delta painting eggs, making a large lunch, shooting the air rifle in the backyard [I can knock cans off of a shelf, thank you very much.] and most of all, fellowshipping with family. No church today because of the travel, but I don't think I could have felt the burn of the sick realization of what was done and then the overwhelming joy of what was accomplished anywhere better than the sundrenched fields of Mississippi this morning. My family loves Jesus, and that encourages me so, so much.

2009-04-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

Desires are ridiculous things on the whole. I wanted to get out of this town, so I go. I'm gone. Goodbye Starkville. Hello Oxford.

.....Wait. There are kids and a dog running after frisbee on the drill field on a cloudless breezy day. There is live music in the union, the weather is perfect for playing outside, so we do. I'm closer to new friends now more than ever. The smile has shaken off its weariness and is creeping back. Why would I want to leave?

I know that my mind is going to pull me in the opposite direction of whatever I decide to do. It's human nature, it's that two year old who could care less about the toy until someone else plays with it. That doesn't mean it doesn't feel funny. It feels really funny. I'm second guessing myself a little, but I know if I stayed, everything would slip back to normal and the deceptive illusions of the place that I love would fade back into what I'm trying to get away from. Until then, Starkville has never been so beautiful to me.

What I would give to be studying the beat poets right now. I want to read them all, soak myself in the controversy and rebellion, go for a run in the dusk, and then go to bed. Instead, I'm studying regency era feminism, surrounded by old dusty books from the farthest corner of the university library. I was talking to Daniel about academics in other countries the other day, and he told me that stress isn't put so much on the outside work but rather on the student to apply themselves to learning. What I would give for that right now. I hate writing papers simply for the purpose of having to prove that I've learned something new. I absolutely love my major. I love reading new things and sorting genres and feeling in my head. I don't want to prove it, I want to discuss it, I want to sit down and journal about it, I want to compare works and write similar stories and poems until I know the author so well that I know his thoughts. That's what I want.

America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.

America is this correct?

I'd better get right down to the job.

It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision

parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.

America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

-Allen Ginsberg, America

2009-04-05T17:23:00.001-07:00

Come on men, let's strike out to sea.

"That tattoo was very distinctive and VERY specific."

2009-03-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

Delaying homework again. Actually resolved tonight to do what I never, ever do and just not turn in one piece of homework because I don't have time. I usually make time. And I usually hate myself later for it from lack of sleep and social life. Tonight I crashed at a friend's apartment and made stupid bets and read Paste instead of writing a literary analysis. Man, it was good. I should feel guilty, but I don't.

Phone numbers, emails, research. The possibility of a new life chapter is terrifying. But my mother told me today that when I talk about it in twenty years it will just become half of a sentence. A phrase that no one even questions or raises an eyebrow at. I need to sit myself down sometimes and stop hyperventilating and tell myself that in the grand scheme of things, it's just not a big deal. I'm going to be ok.

My room is still dirty. I guess it reflects my state of mind. I can't say that I'm proud of that. Also, today I had three cups of tea and still had a massive headache. I then leaned over the counter at work to see exactly what was in the tea that I had been consuming and one of the ingredients was definitely not caffeine. I was upset. Somehow, my mind has twisted this situation into such a form that I can blame the tea. How dare it not blatantly scream about its decaffeination while I brought the third cup to my lips? All I got was a full bladder. Being betrayed by Tazo's Wild Sweet Orange tea hurts. I'll never trust again.

I love Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. It screams America. Speaking of America, I think I'll start painting again. It's been almost six months, I wonder what that says about my state of mind?

Classes are winding down. Papers are due, and all on the same day. Thank you Dr. Clagget. Dr. Crecsenzo. Dr. Johnson. You guys are saints. In reviewing my track record for this past semester on the whole class skipping thing, I'm doing quite well. I have to say that I'm very proud of myself....minus German. But I pretend like that one doesn't count.

Ah-oh, smokestack lightening. Shinin' just like gold,

Why don't ya hear me cryin'

Ooooh, oooh, oooh.

Ah tell me baby, what's the matter with you?

Why don't ya hear me cryin'

Ooooh, oooh, oooh.

Goodnight, Mississippi.

Artifacts.

2009-03-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

After standing up all day, sitting down is a relief. However, the true joy comes when finally stretching out on a bed-somehow it feels as if all of your internal organs that have been pumping and boiling throughout the day settle down and nestle into your back. It's surreal.

From the Vault: July 27, 2008

It was a Saturday- a rainy hot Saturday when I climbed up the side of the Indian mound. I had been driving the Natchez Trace all morning, and my knees were in ill-repair from my car’s sad lack of cruise control. As I passed the “Welcome to Alabama” sign, I looked to my left to see a historical site on the side of the road. Turning my car around, I drove back and stood quietly in front of the site for a long while.

“These Indians were nomadic” the worn, brown sign read, “with little agricultural skills. They mostly hunted, and when they came to rest here, built this mound and constructed a crude temple on top of it.” I don’t know how long I stood in front of the sign, reading it over and over again. It felt like days. Finally, I started towards the mound itself. It didn’t look like much, actually it kind of looked like someone had just cut a chunk out of a levy from the delta and plopped it into a grassy field surrounded by trees. If a pile of dirt could look lonely, then this mound was the loneliest of them all. Covered in sparse, green grass and yellow flowers, it stood alone on the side of the Natchez Trace, a subtle yet blatantly obvious reminder of the past.

Climbing up the side was difficult. It had rained only a few hours before, and keeping my balance on the muddy wet grass took an effort. When I reached the top, I saw that the mound wasn’t like a piece of levy at all, but instead was a square, just the right size for the “crude temple” the sign had told me about. I picked my way around, avoiding muddy holes and stood in the very middle, looking into the dark woods in front of me.

Standing there alone on the top of the muddy Indian mound, I scoured the dustiest corners of my imagination, wondering what the men who had built the mound were like. How long were their hands caked with mud until the finally had a perfect square raised above the rest of the land? What mysterious treasures were left in the aged soil, placed there by a mischievous child, or dropped by a distracted passer by? All of the sudden I was possessed by a strong desire to dig it all up.

What sorts of gods did they worship? Unfair, unjust, flighty gods? Surely they couldn’t have felt that their meaningless, empty worship did anything. But then, they really believed what they believed. Faith, if you will. I prayed on top of the mound and asked that I might be a better example. Then the moment was lost in the trees. I climbed down, got into my car, turned up Bjork’s Greatest Hits, and kept driving.

2009-03-20T16:09:00.000-07:00

"I've already made up a song" He reached for my glass of water that was sitting on the coffee table.

"Don't touch my water."

"I've already made up a song"

What?"

"I've already made up a song."

"Mad up a song for what?"

"Made up a song for my band. I'm going to make up another one in a minute." He skipped off, singing a song about protection and trust.

I had gone home for the weekend because that corporate giant Starbucks decided to give me a day off. I drove home surrounded by my ever constant fear that my tires might explode [because they usually do], with my music turned down low. It was good to get out of my apartment. I had spent the week in seclusion, working, coming home, reading, cleaning, and watching the telly. It was about time for me to go somewhere with people, where I could clean and be appreciated, where my family and I could laugh together at the television, and where there would always be the background noise of life. Home. It's always good to go back.

I went on a walk during my week, and found that I was saying my thoughts aloud. It wasn't in the least disconcerting for there was no one around, and it felt good to say things to the empty air and hear my own voice sounding out my own life. I talked about how things had changed, I wondered if it disappointed my peers. Blissfully, I wandered around campus at a slow pace, relishing the solitude. Whenever I came across a group walking past me, I clammed up instantly, horribly afraid that I might have been caught philosophizing aloud. I walked to my favorite spot, an enclave of small brown benches under a fruit tree that was in blossom. I sat for a moment, looking at the sun through the branches. Mosquitos started to bite me, so I started walking home. It was silent, with the occasional bird's song or car humming by. I walked past an old dorm and squinted up at the windows. I heard a whistle. I kept walking.

It had been a strange week.

Not ever chaste, except You ravish me.

2009-03-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you

As yet but knock, breath, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurped town, to another due,

Labour to admit You, but oh, to no end:

Reason Your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love You, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy:

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to You, imprison me, for I

Except You enthral me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.

From Holy Sonnets

Sonnet 14

-John Donne

And this, and so much more?

2009-03-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

I sat in class, doodling an elaborate geometric design on my mostly empty notebook paper. I could hear Crescenzo's voice droning in the background, that thick New Jersey accent echoing off of the sterile walls. She was wearing a sickly green shirt that matched a mysterious green substance she happened to be drinking. I took it for some sort of energy beverage. She was talking about Modernism. We had been in this class for over two months and it felt like all she ever spoke of was Modernism. I mechanically flipped through the pages of my book to reach the work which she intended to lecture on, dreading a lecture in which the students reigned supreme, and there would be no free-thinking, no analytical thought anywhere. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot. My interest was immediately captured, for to date that is one of my favorite pieces of poetry in the literary world.

I listened as the students around me gave firm opinions based on nothing in particular. We were getting nowhere. Finally, I raised my hand. As her green arm pointed my way, I flushed with the excitement of getting to share my passion for this piece. I immediately made a point about the theme of domesticity in the poem, quoting my favorite passage.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-

And this, and so much more?

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

I finished, breathless. I believe now that I didn't take one breath when reading it. Finally, finally something I truly cared about. I was no more intelligent than any of the others in the classroom, but for one small moment I was in a fit of passion, sharing my intimate thoughts on this intimate piece of poetry with the short woman in green. I could feel myself blushing, but I don't know why; I wasn't embarrassed. Then the moment passed, and I was left to scrawl frenzied notes into the margin.

That same day I saw a man who seemed barely alive. His head was shaved bald, his features were pointed, his figure slender. Everything about him seemed fragile, almost bird like. He walked as if his own weight might crush him at any moment, with quick and panicked steps. We exchanged a brief glance as we passed and then he was gone, walking out into one of the only places on campus not smattered with sidewalks. I wondered what his story was.

Tonight I helped a friend out. Pulling on our shoes, the army of room mates in Apt. 317E unceremoniously stomped out into the parking lot. We pushed his car to the top of a hill and then when the time was right, we pulled the E-brake, he jumped in, and we were off. Running with all of my might, pushing that beat up car shoulder to shoulder with some of my dearest friends, I hooted carelessly into the cool night air. This was life. Without an ounce of dignity, the little car shuddered to a start, and puttered off into the dark. We brushed our hands off, thankful for the exertion and trudged back up to the artificial glow of our living room.

Don't Think of Anyone but Me, I'll Have No Lovers On the Side.

2009-03-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

I love Janis Ian. I won't rehash my last post in its entirety, but I love, love, love the song Between the Lines. Enough to do a cover of it.

Yesterday I saw a waving sandwich on the corner of 8th Avenue. I waved bashfully at him, and surprisingly, I wasn't horrified at the fact that we made eye contact. Usually looking a dancing, waving sandwich in the eyes [or for that matter, any person dressed in company attire advertising on the street] terrifies me. He was calm, I was calm. It was a pleasant encounter.

Recently [and by recently I mean ever since my freshman year] I've been considering a change of location. A big change. So, research is being done, applications will be filled out, and time will tell where I will be this time next year. It's scary though, even imagining myself outside of this tiny city. Lame as it may be here, I've gotten used to it. I feel like I could do a little better than I'm doing now though.

Sarah Emily sent me home from Nashville yesterday with two cream sauce recipes. I'm thoroughly excited, and do believe I may try out the lemon sauce tomorrow night if my room mates are willing. I really should cook more than I do now. It's not like I don't have time, I just don't seem to have the motivation [similar to how I react to my American Lit class...].

The weather the past few days has been sending me mixed signals. Friday it rained so hard [but was a little balmy] that my drive to Nashville became an hour longer than originally intended. Saturday was the greyest, coldest day I had seen in a while. Sunday morning I woke up to brilliant sunlight and snow on the ground. Emotionally, I am confused. Usually I draw a three-day emotion based somewhat on the weather. Not completely, mind you, because if that was the case, I would want to kill myself in the winter due to all of the rain. But just from these past days, I've decided to settle into a "cuddle up with coffee and an old movie" mood. Which is unfortunate, because I have a lot to do. Things like finish Mansfield Park. And German Homework [which coincidentally I did a day early because I don't read German and misread the instructions.] and take many, many naps. I'll make time for Casa Blanca at some point though. I need to hear Humphrey Bogart saying, "Play it. If she can take it, so can I." What a MAN.

Concerning my lack of depth in the most recent posts, I feel as if any emotion I wanted to pull out and place on paper is simmering on the back burner. My thoughts are still there, but they need to stir around for a while longer before I can express them correctly. A lot of things have been happening, there's a lot I need to get used to. Life has handled me roughly in the recent past, and I don't resent it. I just need to think about it for a while.

[Insert Title Here]

2009-02-15T09:04:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure that yellow legal pads make the best purchases. Those or college ruled notebook paper. I love college ruled notebook paper. It begs, "write!"

I can't find the right music. It's a fairly common occurrence, sometimes I go months in a strange musically passionless limbo. Going through my vinyl, I have trouble finding that perfect one to fit my mood. Feist is all well and good but not today. [As a rule I don't prefer buying newer artists on vinyl, but really if you don't have The Reminder you should probably rush to your nearest record store and buy it.] It is on days such as these that I wonder if I should listen to music at all. The sound of it has become so familiar to me though that to not hear it in my free time, my writing time, and my studying time would be like not hearing my own breath. I should take a break. This morning as my room mates were getting ready for church, I stood in the middle of my sunlit bedroom with a cup of coffee and reveled over Janis Ian's record Between the Lines. I explained to my roommate Aimee with animated motions that put my coffee in great danger how ahead of her time Janis Ian was.

"I mean, listen to these strings! Just listen! Man, I can't get over how amazing this is."

She stood in the hallway looking incredulous.

"It's times like these that I could make fun of you, but decide not to."

"What?"

"Come on, Janis Ian?"

I rushed to the other side of the apartment to pursue Stacy's opinion and gain her agreement. She had no idea who Janis Ian was. Bess didn't really care. I hold to my belief that the woman was an absolute genius.

I'm reading Mansfield Park right now. Jane Austen is brilliant, but this book is possibly the biggest mistake she ever made. Instead of creating a likable, normal heroine for me to relate to as is her custom, I've had the witless, spineless, opinion-less, self-pitying Fanny Price thrown into my lap. Granted, authors who can create a somewhat uncomfortable main character who have some sort of motion in their lives are to be respected, but the main cast of Mansfield Park is so static, so unmoving in their morally lacking lives that nothing is ever resolved. Poor form Miss Austen, poor form. I'm dragging my heels with this novel.

I had quite the pleasant Valentines Day surprise yesterday on my return from Natchez. It spurred on an agreeable afternoon in which I had my first ever slack-lining experience [if you don't know what slack-lining is, go here] in which I think I fared pretty well for a first time. There was no walking on my part but I managed to get up and stay up for a couple of seconds, which apparently is good for a first try. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fresh.

2009-02-09T18:48:00.000-08:00

I've really no ideas coming into this post and promise absolutely no pith or elegance. Here goes.

I began this Monday determined to not let this coming week even slightly resemble my last two weeks. Because they were horrible. So far my plan is coming along quite nicely, and as I write this I am wrapping up a neatly planned out, tidy day. I woke up at a reasonable hour this morning to make the time to do my German homework, which I did promptly after rolling out of my bed [It's really convenient, my desk is about two feet away from my pillow], and began my day already feeling as if I accomplished something. It's a really lovely feeling, being awake when everyone else is stirring and eating breakfast. My roommates and I chatted contentedly for a while, then all went our separate ways. The whole day has been like that. I took my mother's advice and decided to just bite the bullet and do my work instead of putting it off, so right after class I sat down and did ALL of my homework at once. It wasn't that bad at all, actually. The weather has provided absolute felicity in all of our spirits, and so after opening the door and windows I sat down with some books, some apricot tea, and El Obo's Demo CD. Homework has never been that refreshing. I'll do it again tomorrow.

I made a horrible cake tonight. The cake itself didn't taste bad at all, but following in customary Hannah Parish tradition, looked terrible. My family will understand the humor in this when I tell you that it was a strawberry cake. Thankfully, this strawberry cake didn't meet quite the same dense fate as the first one, but still can be checked off of the list as another cake mishap. My culinary future is certainly not very promising at this point.

As a side note, I really enjoy walking through my apartment complex at night, especially in the warmer months. People sit out on their balcony's or in their living rooms with windows open, listening to music, grilling, and sharing small talk. As I walk through the courtyards it is very reminiscent to scenes from Rear Window, minus the whole bitter wife-killer part.

And that's all I have folks.

-HP

From the Vault

2009-02-01T23:43:00.000-08:00

December 12, 2008

By all accounts, I shouldn’t have taken the long road to Oxford that night. It was sleeting outside, a strange happening for Mississippi in November, but it fit my mood well. It was remarkable how dreadful my day had been going, and as I sat on the dirty, well-loved couch in my parent’s den, I couldn’t bring myself to move. I was a statue, silently staring at the bookcase across the room, thinking about nothing in particular, and sweating under my heavy overcoat and scarf. I hadn’t bothered to take them off when I came inside; I wasn’t planning on staying long anyway. I couldn’t get in touch with any of my friends in Oxford, I didn’t really have a place to stay that night, and no one in particular seemed to be excited in the least about me making an appearance in that old Southern city. One phone call from the fellow I was supposed to be visiting boosted my spirits a small bit, and so I gathered my things to leave. As I warmed my hands above the gas heater my mother and father approached me with good wishes for my trip, and palmed me some pocket money to get by on. I bashfully took it, knowing that I probably shouldn't.

I cranked up my ancient Toyota, and positioned the few road necessities in the passenger seat. My parents stood behind my car and waved mournfully as I pulled out of my icy driveway and into the Mississippi dusk. Ella Fitzgerald whispered through my car speakers as I turned up the heat and listened to the rattle of the old engine. “Blue skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies are all I see…” Ella Fitzgerald herself knew she lied those words as she sang them. But she sang for hope, she sang what she dreamed, what America dreamed. I drove with my back to a beautiful sunset, and the nose of my car pointed towards clouds heavy with snow and cold wind. It was a dark drive, full of revelations that were quickly lost in the thick forest that surrounded me. I considered life, I knew the answers, I beat my steering wheel from excitement that came from the sweet juice of the road, knowing what was in front of me, what was behind me. The pavement amplified the presence of other cars, and to me, their wet headlights only preceded empty metal shells. I was alone on the highway, those cars were just phantoms, weaving in and out of my elaborate daydreams. I pushed on through the night, driving through small towns, passing dark mansions surrounded by sticky oak trees and heavy tradition. What a place, what a place! It’s own world, so full of pride, so full of stories and great-great grand-daddies and family portraits.

I daydreamed that I was making a movie, that everyone was running slow motion to a great skyscraper in the city, that a faceless woman in a cotton flowered dress had a gun and a gas mask, and she jumped off the roof as they surrounded her. I played the dream in my head over and over and over, but it always cut short as she dove into the cool night air. I know she didn’t die. She had something to finish, a story to conclude.

Driving alone at night piques some sort of fascination with oneself. It’s not a haughty, narcissistic type of obsession. It is an innocent, child-like wonder in which you question everything about yourself. Suddenly I was a poet, I was like the wind on that southern road, passing silently through sleeping towns unseen, yet seeing all. Through my surroundings I absorbed their stories, and their way of life. I was a part of their community for mere minutes, and then I would return to the lifeless, endless road. I did not need to ask myself questions that everyone else asks. I knew who I was, I knew where I was going, I knew life’s answers. What I didn’t know were the little things, the people’s things. I wanted their stories, to be so engulfed in everyone else’s cultures that I would just fade into nothingness, just a part of everyone. Almost immediately after realizing this hope, I saw that I was thinking like a beatnik, that it seemed as if I was trying to force bad poetry down my own throat. But while the thoughts were flowing, man, they flew! And I loved them. I loved being vague and spiritualistic, I loved thinking the thoughts that I would later criticize others for having.

I pulled up to the streets of Oxford, Mississippi, stories heavy on my heart. There was no rest for me that night, as I nestled under a pile of blankets on an acquaintance’s dirty futon. I lay on my back, a little disgusted with myself. Maybe this was not who I was after all. After so many books, so many cups of tea, or as T.S. Eliot said, “After the skirts trailing along the floor”, I had been conditioned to consider myself a critic, a poet, the only lonely soul traveling the dark night. I was none of these things. Perhaps, I actually didn’t know who I was.

Morning came with breathy fog and warmth began to creep back into the Mississippi air. Everything I knew was changing. And that was ok.

Ramblings From the Weeks Past

2009-01-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

I had a dream that I saw everyone I knew in one place. There was Sam, from Wisconsin, walking down the steps of McCool. I saw my childhood friends, I saw my physicians, I saw employers, I saw people that I didn't like too much. I wondered why they were all there, coexisting but not recognizing each other. I was the only one who knew that there were connections to be made. Today I sat across from a man in the library who never once acknowledged my existence, even though I sat only two feet away from him. He stared out of the window, a book in his lap, with such a look of despair. He daydreamed, unmoving for about thirty minutes, then snapping out of his waking dream, gathered his things and walked away. I was taken aback. I was left alone in a remote corner of the library to wonder about his wonderings. The elevator door next to me mysteriously opened and shut about 7 times because of some malfunction. I was confused.

I drove to Nashville this past weekend to visit my sister. I took the trace, like always, but this time I wasn't in the least bit excited about the prospect of solitude. I missed the idea of Mississippi highways that lead past houses standing alone in the middle of fields, surrounded by crops clinging desperately to the cold ground. I wanted to pass road signs that told me the names of towns that were so small that maps didn't mark them. Tchula. Egypt. Ethel. Verona. Fenwick. The Natchez Trace, despite it's obvious beauty, unfortunately takes all originality out of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. The road is unchanging, always empty fields, pine trees, and a few indian mounds. My one comfort is the crossing of the Tennessee River, a vast body of water that is more frightening than it is beautiful. On both sides in the summer, the trees and brush hang over the edge, concealing what lives beyond the banks. It has a mysterious tropical feel, and I know there are secrets in those trees. I always make it a point to stop on the banks and pick up a few shells, or eat a snack (sharing with the ducks), or to hear the wind over the water.

The more I'm in Mississippi, the more I know that I'll always come back. This state and I have a tumultuous relationship, similar to that of lovers. I love it, I hate it. The warm comfort of knowing that I'll always have family here, the hot streets in the summer, the fact that nothing, nothing here comes without a story. These are things that I love. This state is so full of family and rumors that I could write a book just from hearing stories about "Your Uncle Jack's third cousin and her no-good husband who left her for work in the mines...". Things like this make me sure that I have a heritage, I have people who care for me and know [whether I want them to or not] what is going on in my life. There is no chance of being forgotten. This is possibly one of the reasons why I also find myself aching to leave. The ache never stays for long though. My heart has warmed to the idea of staying here for quite a while.

I recently bought some books [big surprise there] when I was supposed to be saving up for shoes. I don't regret my purchases though, because I got three classics: The Phantom Tollbooth, Huckleberry Finn, and A Good Man is Hard to Find. I couldn't tell you which one I am most excited about, because I just can't decide. I've been finishing up McCarthy's The Road this week, and I have trouble putting it down. For a book so oppressively dark, I still turn page after page with the hope that the father and his son will finally find the peace that they are seeking. I've grown to love them both.

Argentina. It's looming closer and closer. I know that it will be healthy, but I can't help but dread it a little. It's just so far away.

I've struggled lately with being able to articulate to others exactly what it is I believe. I want to be able to sit down with a cup of coffee, and say "This is exactly why I believe what I believe." I suppose the skeptic in me asks how people can pass up such an amazing gift, and I am so held back by this disbelief that I am unable to explain why God's grace and mercy should be snatched up by them immediately. I know why I am I Christian. I know that I have been given the most precious thing in the world, and that is God's grace and love when I, of all people, least deserve it. I mean, I mess up, and mess up, and mess up, and mess up, and at the end of the day, the Father is still lavishing His love on me. I guess in a way, I'm still so in awe of this life that I can't even find words to describe it. The fact that I am able to have a personal relationship with the God of the universe makes my head want to explode. He wants me to confide in Him, which is something I don't take advantage of enough. I just.....I can't even write it out, and I'm so frustrated at my lack of words.

In the words of Opie Taylor, "It's preying on my mind, Pa."

[Side Note: I found out today that I can raise both of my eyebrows separately in quick succession. Will keep you posted as things continue to unfold in that area.]

My Greatest Purchase of 2008

2009-01-11T14:13:00.000-08:00

Rickie Lee Jones' album Pirates.

It was exactly what I needed this afternoon, and as I sat on my couch wallowing in a weekly bout of self-pity, "We Belong Together" swept me off of my feet. And I wasn't even standing. It was as if I was slowly pulled [I have the image of warm taffy in my head] out of my bad mood by first having a dramatic, cinematic song play, and then as the A side continued, the songs gradually got more upbeat and by the last song, my ears were having a party.

Thank you Sarah Emily, for introducing me to this fabulous artist.

[Insert Title Here]

2009-01-06T16:00:00.000-08:00

I suppose I could have stayed at my friend Drew's apartment to get internet [We stopped paying for ours, so I suppose we should have expected the natural consequence of not having any], but these past two days haven't been incredibly social ones. True, I've spent just as much time with acquaintances as normal, but my heart hasn't quite been in it. I opted for the university internet at Barnes and Nobel, and the solitude of knowing no one here [with the exception of my friend Sam who just creeped up] has been very refreshing.

I've been people watching this evening. It's something I honestly wish I did more often. Behind the coffee bar is an employee whose boyfriend has come to visit her. He'll walk up, inventing something that he really needs just so he can talk to her. They chat, both smiling so much, and then he walks away and she stares after him, with such a sweet, content look on her face that I wish I was somehow involved so that I could share in that warmth. In the far corner of the reading area are four middle-age women who have gathered chairs together and are talking animatedly while knitting. They laugh, they look serious, they are basking in each other's friendship. There are loners who are reading copies of the New York Times, there are couples who come to study and have coffee with each other. Then there are people like me, with a book at their side, their headphones in, a laptop open on the table, and eager eyes glancing about them. People are a mystery to me.

I've been reading an unusual amount lately. I can't say that I haven't enjoyed it, for in the last month I have consumed several good books. This evening, I look forward to starting Cormac McCarthy's The Road. If ever you need to get books off your hands, mine are always open, hoping for another favorite to pass through them. Sitting in this store is like waiting expectantly under a Christmas tree. Every book here [well, almost every book] has a surprise waiting inside, all of these crisp, unturned pages waiting patiently on the shelves. I would come here more often, but the temptation to buy is just too great. If I could spend money on any books right now, I think I might buy Airships by Barry Hannah, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Brisinger by Palini, Oliver Twist, and maybe some T.S. Eliot. Last night I finished The Little Princess for the second time, and for a while just lay on my bed, relishing the feel of my warm quilt under my back. There was no music playing, no loud noise coming from the living room, no responsibilities to be fufilled. I was able to just be still and relish that magical feeling one gets when they finish a good book. Nothing could have made my night better. I texted my room mates and canceled our plans to go watch a movie. Anything else that night would have just brought me back to earth, and that was the last thing I wanted. I finished a letter I had been writing, washed my face, and went to bed by 10:00.

Speaking of people watching, a group of three just walked past me, and I've noticed that it is the same strangely grouped three friends I always saw together my freshman year. They fascinate me, because just by outward appearances, I never would have placed them together as friends. I wonder how they all met?

Writing anything else here would be a pointless attempt at pith now, so I believe I'll call it a night.

"He sat there cowled up in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
Yes. We're still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay."
-Cormac McCarthy's, The Road.

It's About That Time.

2008-12-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm in the library right now, caught in the awkward in-between of one final and another. Having finished my public speaking written test [Which I find incredibly ironic], now I settle in to wait for my German oral final at 3:00. The library buzzes with more life in this one week than it does all of the rest of the year put together. The real challenge during finals week is not the actual studying, but finding the absolutely perfect place to nestle in and prepare. Most choose this enormous, lovely library, and so finding a good seat is difficult. After scouring the top floor, where nearly every seat was taken and 70% of those "studying" were sprawled out sleeping, I crept down the stairs to the fourth floor. I've found myself a oddly placed leather chair that is almost in the middle of the hallway, but I can't complain, it is ridiculously comfortable. And it's a good thing too, I'm here for at least another two hours. Armed with German notes, my warm Macbook, and Jack Kerouac, I think I'll be just fine.

It's a good thing finals come when they do, because if I had to do school any longer, well....I just wouldn't. Walking all over campus, I hear students constantly complain of fatigue, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. We're all exhausted, and one more week here would just do us in. It's strange that the week I should probably be working the hardest is when I sleep the most. It probably doesn't help that I've got a killer sinus infection during finals, but I've been napping like a champion. In fact, I'm finding it difficult to stay awake even as I type this.

Only one more week and I'll be in my favorite city: Nashville. I look forward to spending a week with some of the sweetest people in the world. And now, I feel I simply cannot stay awake any longer. Tschuss, my dear readers, and happy studies.

But There's a Rumbly In My Tummy.....

2008-11-20T12:04:00.000-08:00

I think my hunger is mostly driven by laziness. Usually, I am able to say "I'm poor, snacking can be skipped," but in reality, the reason I have not yet peeled myself from this green armchair for sustenance is because I am just so incredibly comfortable. This armchair played such a large role in my life this semester, with all of it's foresty greeness, with it's cigarette burns and mysterious stains. This may step on your dainty toes, but this green armchair is the most comfortable chair in the world. Not your expensive Lazy Boy with the built in massage or heat therapy, but our $5 yardsale recliner. We fight over who gets to sit in it. Stacy takes daily naps in it. We stuff three people into it and cry over sad movies. We hide behind it. We do homework in it. We eat in it [That may account for some of these stains...]. Basically, our lives here at 317E revolve around this nasty chair.

My obsessive furniture based rant aside, it is good to finally sit down today. Granted, I've been sitting down all day anyway, but I was working on an Ethics paper the whole time. So, I wasn't really "sitting down" at all, but pacing mentally. There was no rest. Now though, now maybe I will finally force myself to get out of the chair, make myself a late lunch, pour myself back into the chair, and watch some Turner Classic Movies. Today, I deserve it. It's been a pretty long week.

Things are winding down academically, and gearing up towards Christmas, much to the disdain of my room mate Bess. Bess, like many of us in America, is a firm believer in the fact that Christmas should not be celebrated or advertised until after Thanksgiving. For weeks now, her constant complaints have been directed at commercials, decorations, and songs. Naturally, after one such outburst night before last, the rest of the room mates [Myself, Aimee, and Stacy] took it upon ourselves prove to Bess that her cries did not go unnoticed. Our plan? To completely deck out her bedroom with Christmas decorations. There was shredded paper for snow all over her floor, there were Christmas lights, there were snowflakes hanging from the ceiling. We wrote lyrics to holiday songs all over her mirror, and left Harry Connick Jr.'s "Home for the Holidays" CD playing on repeat on her computer to greet her when she walked in. The prank was a raging success and she took it like a champ. I'm pretty sure there will be "snow" tracked all over our apartment for the rest of the year though.

On Books, Record Stores, and Baseball Caps.

2008-11-04T10:31:00.000-08:00

I got an early start this morning when my alarm blared into my face at 7:00 am. "Why in the WORLD is it set this early?" I asked myself, and it was only after I had hit the snooze alarm one too many times that I remembered I was going to vote. I leapt out of bed, threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth, and jumped into the car with my room mate Stacy. The cool wind tugged my yellow scarf around on my neck, and it felt good to be awake. After picking up two more friends, our full car chugged towards the coliseum. We waited in line for a little while, watching the basketball team practice on the courts down below, and then it was time. I walked up to the booth, slid my voter card in, and read the simple instructions. After I was done, I was a bit disappointed at how anticlimactic it was, but my friends and I had done our duty to the nation. It was time for breakfast.

I got back to the apartment and rewarded my citizenship with a Reese's cup, and instead of being productive, flipped on the TV. I watched 27 Dresses with Stacy, and then decided continue my celebration and skip my only class for the day. [So far I have been over rewarded for voting, I think.] However, the guilt of laying around weighed upon me, and I decided to be productive. Reaching into my backpack, I pulled out my speech topic: The Importance of Local Record Stores vs. Online Music Shopping. Finally, a speech topic I am passionate about. Daniel had given me the idea a few days before, and now it was time to do some research. I rifled through the pile of Paste music magazines on our coffee table, and deciding that my choices were unsatisfactory, I slipped on some sandals, grabbed a baseball cap and threw it on backwards, and was out the door.

I always love going to Barnes and Nobel. Granted, the one we have here in Starkville isn't very big, but any semi-large collection of books excites me. I made a beeline towards the magazine section, and picked out three that I wanted to buy. SPIN: They were flashy, with a picture of MGMT glancing knowingly at me, it was hard to resist. PASTE: "The Next David Bowie". The man was wearing makeup-I had to know. FILTER: It just looked plain cool. I had never heard of it before, but just the setup of the magazine was incredibly hard to resist. Indie magazines rather have the same effect on me as I would imagine that cocaine would. I just can't stop buying them. However, it costs to be cool. Five to six dollars each, actually. I tried to convince myself that I needed a large selection to refer to for my speech, but then begrudgingly put back two and walked away with the Paste. What can I say? I'm loyal.

I was going to just pay for it and walk out, really, I was. The setup of this store is against me though. The magazine rack is all the way across the store from the cash registers, meaning that I have to walk past Southern Literature, Poetry, Classics, and Fiction before I get to pay for my lonely little Paste. I tried to resist the gravitational pull towards the classics table as I walked by, but had no strength left after the ordeal at the magazine rack. Charlotte Bronte. T.S. Elliot. Charles Dickens. Jane Austen. Rudyard Kipling. Mark Twain. Oscar Wilde. They called my name....I picked up at least five books and held them in my arms at once, caressing their new, crisp pages with my hands. I love new books. I love the white, uncrumpled pages that haven't yet been loved. It's a new start. Unfortunately, I only had enough money for one new start today though, so I put all the books down except for the one with the haunting pen and ink sketch of a little girl on the front. Lewis Carroll prevailed this time. I can't wait to read it.

Now I'm back at my apartment, and my motivation to be productive has mysteriously left without a trace. Now I just want to read my new Paste. Se La Vi.

Cheer Up, Gene Kelly.

2008-10-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

An American in Paris is playing on the telly right now. Gene Kelly is doing his charming pose: leaning up against a brick wall next to his love, and singing irresistibly to her. Oh, that I could be dancing in his arms next to the river in Paris with the skirt that swishes perfectly, and little kitten high heels that never hurt while I dance. Movies such as these create unrealistic ideals for me, I'm sure.

Judah's birthday was this weekend, the big 8! What made this so very, very exciting was that the entire Parish family was together for almost an entire day. Sarah Emily drove up on Saturday and together, we surprised our family. Such ruckus and dancing hasn't been seen in the Parish home for years. We ate, we laughed, we drained an entire gallon of milk just like the good old days. We all managed to squash ourselves onto our parents' bed, and listen to music. There were hugs, there were fistfights, there were pets leaping everywhere, and there was a Mommy Cake, and a pot of chicken and dumplings that will go down in history. It was a lovely, lovely weekend.

On the drive to Ethel from Starkville with SE, I had the chance to listen to some of her new music. I was so very proud of her. The cinematic [credit goes to someone else for the brilliant use of the word describing her sound] bars of music swelled up inside of me and gave me the chills as our car swept down the sun drenched highway. I'm lucky to have her as my sister.

This week seems as if it may turn out to be a quiet, relaxed one. That would be very nice.

"Your Heart Understood Mine" -Little Women

2008-10-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

It is strange, having an emotional soulmate floating around in this world. I know that my sister and I differ in so, so many ways [polar opposites in some areas of our lives] but at the same time, can understand each other so well. I think I am beginning to truely understand her bearing and importance in my life. She knows me better than anyone else. She knows how I feel things, how I react to things, what makes me sad, and what brings me joy. And I feel as if I know the same things about her. While we cannot measure our emotions and reactions on the same scale, I've never known someone to feel things in such a similar way as me. I am surprised by my sister. Very happily surprised. I know that this entry means nothing to anyone else reading it, but I felt like it needed to be known.

A Continuing on the Fridays of Doom.

2008-10-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

My Terrible Fridays, Pt. 3.

Apparently this turn that my life has taken is a habitual one, in which my Fridays are consistently terrible. Which, I suppose, comparatively speaking isn't so bad. One day out of the week, I can deal with, just as our childhood cartoon friend Garfield did with his Mondays. If only I had an entire pan of hot lasagna to stuff my head in as a reward for living through it as he did.

The lionized "Hump Day" is upon me, classes are done, and now I place my nose to the wheel [someone explain that phrase to me] in preparation for Friday, the 3rd. I must write a paper on Mr. Utterson's grave importance in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", because really, if the story was only told from Jekyll's point of view, our heads would explode. Also on my list is the memorization of everything from Virtue Ethics, Post hoc ergo propter hoc [no, I don't know what it means either], Fallacies in ethics, and all arguments involving euthanasia, to German stem-changing verbs, German vocabulary for everything you might ever need to place in your bedroom, and German possessive adjectives. Usually that wouldn't place me under too much stress [maybe that is a total lie], but starting at 9:30 that evening, I will be chaperoning my home church's youth group lock-in. I think that is what scares me most about this Friday. Jr. Highers.

In lou of my quickly disintegrating life, i want you to all know that I am NOT miserable as it may seem, but only very busy and a little sleep deprived. Oh married life with children, I do so look forward to you.

Entspannen Sie sich. [Just Relax.]

2008-09-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

I need to relax. Hopefully this coming weekend will be a restful one, because I'm in for another stressful Friday. This is becoming an uncomfortable pattern: Fridays of doom. Once I have this public speaking test [which holds the record for having the most ridiculous definitions in it], my German quiz on possessive adjectives in the nominative and accusative cases, and my quick scramble to get the first half of "A Christmas Carol" read for British Literature, out of the way, I get to travel home to make some much needed moolah by painting a friend's hallway. I'm pretty sure I just beat William Faulkner out on the longest run-on sentence in history. I'm also pretty sure that all I ever talk about is schoolwork. This is partly due to the fact that all I do is schoolwork, and partly due to the fact that my social life is dwindling away into nothing. Personally, I am OK with this-with the company of my three room mates and our ever-present couch guests from building L [Sam and Drew], I'm pretty content. However, the constant pressure to have an outstanding and sometimes unwise weekend existence weighs down on me sometimes. Especially when I do things like stand in my bathroom doing my hair and makeup, and my roomates ask, "Oh, are you going out?" and I inevitably answer, "No, I'm just taking a break from studying and needed something to do."

But alas, here I am on "Thirsty Thursday", "The Party Night", the season premier of The Office and Grey's Anatomy, and the night when everyone else and their Aunt Tori is out having fun, and here I am, still questioning the logic of getting drunk when you have an 8:00 class the next morning. Can you really not wait one more day? I'm surrounded by alcoholics and needless frivolty and yet I am still strangely upset by the fact that I cannot seem to force myself to want to go out tonight. Because anyway like always, I have too much studying to do. It pretty much boils down to the fact that I'm excited about one day using the excuse of motherhood to stay home on weekend nights. Playing with my family will be more fun anyway. I believe I may be growing roots. While not quite at the stage of a homebody, I am no longer discontent with just spending time at my apartment, with or without friends. I don't HAVE to go out to have a good time. I guess I'm just the only one in Starkville that has this gift though, making for a sometimes lonely existence.

So here's to you, my fellow Thursday night apartment dwellers. May we be productive with our studying, reserve our frolicking for the actual weekend, and in the end come out of college the better for it.

Rain, Rain.

2008-09-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

It is 12:35 p.m., and my roommate Aimee and myself are occupying a lonely couch at the far end of the library. It's been raining all day, and now my shoes make a suspicious slushing noise when I walk. I'm disgusting, I'm soaking wet, and the weekend is within my grasp.

Things I look forward to? Getting finished with my last class that starts in 25 minutes. Going back to the apartment, taking a shower, shaving my legs, putting on warm clothes, and watching Arrested Development. I'm also looking forward to a "sweet date" I have with the redhead later this evening, or more specifically, just having him in town. Also, more snowcone dates with another roommate, and lunch at Christy's [best hamburgers in the south]. It will be good for my soul to rest this weekend.

Tschuss!

An Elegant View

2008-09-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

I've begun writing again. Certain authors, certain series of events prodded that part of my mind back into action, and now I slowly have a small folder filling up with used yellow paper. Consider it therapeutic, an impersonal diary consisting of seemingly worthless information and fabricated tales about seemingly real people.

consider it a memoir of sorts.