Wouldn't it be loverly?

I heard another piano of unknown origin. It was just a few minutes ago. It made me smile.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

How many blue cars to get to the center of Dale Mabry?

Tripping hard, falling down onto the ground
Because I can't stand up
and I can't fall down,
Because I'm somewhere in the middle of this...

The afternoon was hot and stuck to my skin like a dirty Band-Aid. I always loved summer, but I hated the humidity and burning metal on the sides of sunglasses. I had been itching to come home and enjoy the everythingness of those precious months away from demanding syllabi and playing catch-up when I "forgot" to keep up-to-date with assignments, and here it was, the sweltering glitter that blanketed May, June, July, and August, and here I was, stunned by just how... hot it was.

I was on my way to work - you know, the old three-to-nine shift - when I decided the radio wasn't doing it for me. I popped in a CD without looking to see what it was, hoping I could surprise myself again. The first track started slow and soft and immediately I was brought back to my freshman year of high school, perhaps four years ago to the date.

I thought of that concert we went to and the incredible shirt-shaped sunburn with which I left, those pictures we took and the T-shirts we had every group sign. I thought of how loud it got when the night crept in and the headline band began its awesome performance. I thought of the ride back home and your dad and Kathy and how much you hated her, and presently I began to wonder if you still hated her. That got me to thinking about how we don't talk these days, and then, naturally, my mind wandered to that sentence that has lately been Sharpied upon most of my thoughts:

Look at how much I've changed since then.

It's incredible, really, to look back a mere four years into the past and discover you are someone you truly were not. I always imagine it like this: if my then self were to meet my present self, would my then self really believe me? Would I know I was actually the same me?

Since I burned that CD, I have done a lot of growing up, diagonally, and horizontally (but never down). I have experienced a lot, done a lot, and had a lot happen to me that my then self would have deemed out of the realm of possibilities, such as that most unfortunate accident last January, going commando to a job interview, giving a speech in front of several thousand strangers, presenting a report in a foreign language on someone very near and dear to my heart without ever choking on my words, and boys. My sister has graduated college and I am forced to accept the fact that she is a real, live adult, my parents are actually my friends, I understand how credit cards work, and I have decided exactly where the line is drawn between "I should laugh" and "I shouldn't laugh, but I can't help it." I have learned that taking action (or not taking action) that you are politically, morally, socially, relgiously, or otherwise not supposed to take (or not not take) can be justified if you learn even the tiniest thing from said action (or non-action) by my own experience (or lack of experience). Most specifically, I have suffered through a severely broken heart, several inhibiting obsessions, and inumerable bottomless pits of despair which, despite all preconceived notions regarding bottomless pits of despair, in fact turned out to have a most tightly stretched trampoline at the bottom, waiting in sheer anticipation to emotionally bounce me right back to the place I had been before.

I guess my point is this: I know I've been writing a lot of similar things lately (at least that's how it seems to me), but life has really picked up somewhere between those blooming days of high school and the following four summers.

I am proud of who I am. I am making my own way.

If I was a rich girl...

Looks like I just may be one by the end of the summer. I've got the whole two-job thing going, and I'm making the hourly rate I was hoping for.

Now if the sun would just come out...

Finger things

It's funny, this thing we do. It's like I we never ended - we've been going ever since we met.

And you know what? It makes me love you all the more.

Your Song

It's a little bit funny this feeling inside.
I'm not one of those who can easily hide.
I don't have much money, but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live.

If I was a sculptor, but then again - no -
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show...
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do:
My gift is my song and this one's for you.

And you can tell everybody this is your song.
It may be quite simple but now that it's done,
I hope you don't mind,
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world.

I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss.
Well a few of the verses... well, they've got me quite cross.
But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song;
It's for people like you that keep it turned on.

So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do -
You see, I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue.
Anyway, the thing is - what I really mean:
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen...

What a silly, gloomy little day.

I forgot how much I loved this poem.

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower,

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day,

Nothing gold can stay.

A reflection

I heaved myself out of bed this morning at the ungodly hour of 5:00 to get in some last-minute studying before a 7:30 exam. I towed my notes to the Union to review them and bask in the yellow light of the deserted environment that is somehow representative of this city. I sat down, coffee steaming under the black lid of my cliche paper cup, and pulled out the papers that had become my best friends in the past few days. My eyes glazed, knees began their characteristic shake, and my mind wandered without restraint to the thought that this was indeed it.

Yes; this is it.

I have successfully made it through my first year of college, less one remaining exam. I am thriving in this atmosphere and admittedly somewhat reluctant to leave it for four months for the home which has always been home. I am not a freshman, but a girl who doesn't need to ask for directions. I am not an inexperienced neophyte, scared and confused about what to do and with whom to do it, but someone who has drawn conclusions where previously they were unfeasible. I am not a beginner here because I have been here.

I thought about football games and rainy afternoons dedicated to nothing but bonding with someone who has slowly come to be my best friend. I thought about nights spent in the stadium and the few shooting stars that brightened my admittedly weary soul. I thought about the things I did that I was scared to do and how they brought be closer to myself, a person with whom I was previously unacquainted. I thought about Moe's and high heels and pouring rain, flat tires and parties and pictures. I thought about Halloween decorations and Christmas lights, Valentine's Day giggles and the greenest seventeenth of March; letters and crosswords and long-distance phone calls; basketball and fountains and coffees and our ever-hopeful flag football team; flip-flops and buybacks and collages and posters; the boys that made my head spin and the girls that warned me when I was flighty; public transportation and marathon study sessions; the flash-light guard dog that fascinated more than I figured and the afternoons of stadium sun-soaking that always ended in tour groups.

Snapshots of the past eight months reeled in my mind, making a blur of everything until it was so beautiful I couldn't even feel it.

I have learned so much that I can never put into words, things that everyone must learn on their own. Most importantly, I have concluded, I learned how to be happy. I believe that is the most valuable skill any person can have. You are the only constant guaranteed, so you may as well learn to enjoy life itself and all the oddities you encounter along the way.

I finished my coffee, grabbed my bag, and strolled in the freshest morning air to lay waste to AFH4450, Section 5664.

"You're casting a shadow on me..."

I've been reading over some old stuff I wrote at the beginning of fall semester. It really is funny just how much you forget that at the time seems to be the most important factor in pretty much everyone's life.

I have come to the conclusion that a person will change exactly as much as they think is completely impossible. If you had asked me at that time what my problem was, I'd make sure you actually meant problems when you said problem and proceed to rattle off a list of boys and other generally strange - yet incapacitating - concerns that truly plagued me. I would try not to cry, feel like an idiot, silently curse myself for telling you everything, and then lose it after you left. If you were to pose the same question to me now, I would reply that I am a bit tired at the moment but that otherwise I'm alright.

I don't really have a point. I'm typing to tell you something and I don't even know what I'm getting at. I guess it's just weird for me to read over these things and suddenly remember the little things that were soooooo important at the time.

...Shows how big of a deal they really were in retrospect.