skybluesky

This message is being relayed to you by my fingertips. Please consider that much gets lost in translation from heart/mind to keyboard.

I actually have nothing to say. Nothing coherent, anyway. The past few days have been exhausting. Actually, no. I've just been exhausted. Lack of quality sleep leaves my eyes bloodshot and my joints aching. 

I bought groceries today. I like grocery shopping. It's exciting to have the opportunity to decide what I'm going to eat. 

Where'd our warm weather go? 

I would like to play music right now. Instead I'm going to play online word games in between sporadic homeworking.

Silverado Days

That title is for you, Ray. I hope it reminds you of would-be critically acclaimed songs, the redneckest Cook Out you ever did saw, and climbing up waterfalls. 

I'm sleepy, but I'm listening to music and liking it too much to go to bed just yet. It's filling me with nostalgia for something I can't quite remember. 

Nostalgia is a little like sleep to me. It folds itself over you, and you have no choice but to succumb. 

So, in essence, I am sleeping now. 

A few memories:

::After-school mud-sliding during a rainstorm.

::Emerging from the woods, covered in moss and bark and with a new song to sing with a new best friend

::Finding my little sister crouched under a fallen tree after she'd been lost for hours. 

::Convincing my parents to adopt a dog named Bingo my brothers and I found at the end of our driveway. He was an exact replica of our dog, Buddy - only bigger.

::Climbing onto the roof of my cabin/Climbing onto the roof of the chicken house

::Picking blueberries at my neighbors' house.

::Trying to fit all the cousins and me and my sisters into the bathtub when we were younger

::Countless girls nights - hot tub, diaper-wipe face masks, howling, speaking truth to one another, laughing fits, bad movies

::Night-time skinny dipping in the haw river.....day-time skinny dipping in the haw river(terrible, terrible idea. haha.).

::Having shirley temples and milanos

::Tea and bad news in the middle of the night

::Slow dancing in Central America/eating coffee beans from a bush.

::Hanging laundry

::Listening to guitar played on my porch.

::Having a box fan dropped on my foot.

::Playing freeze-tag.

::Skipping school to visit the museum.

::Visiting my grandpa's flea market. Getting lost.

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I've been left to float among the seaweed by a girl with hair like a waterfall. She promised me years of loyalty and memories that can only be explained in colors and smells - deep auburn, earthy brown, nutmeg, and toasted bread. She is like a wildfire, bright and beautiful, all-consuming and electrifying, but leaving everything charred in her wake. And the colors have drained to a faint, grainy, grey dust settling on book shelves and counter tops.

During the fading dusk of this summer last, she tied an anchor my ankles, whispering about child-hood games and hot tea. She promised letter and post-cards as she gently pulled me towards the water's edge. I could hear a train's mournful whistle announcing its approach when the water hit my chin.

I'm going north, she said, and ran her fingers through my dampening hair. Look for me in the stars.

Now my eyes are turned towards the sky, but only the inky black of the ocean waters fills my vision, like smoke from a dying fire. 

mark that map with where you think you'll find love.

My imagination has fizzled out for the moment. There is a toad in my brain, sucking the life out of my thoughts, sliming up the pictures that are usually on the backs of my eyelids.

And I am reminded that I in all my might am nothing.

Slime. Slime is men's precepts. (and vice versa.) Mucking up the Truth, making a mess of majesty. A mirror image spitting at its Reflector.

"What proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man." And how defiled are my ears that have heard so many words spoken out of far-away hearts? How muddled is my slimy brain? How do I fill it instead with Truth?

To knock is to seek is to be answered. Too many curtains portrayed as doors. These precepts are not doctrines. But still, I need my compass to be repaired, or reinforced, one. 

And I ponder on "the things that proceed our of the mouth come from the heart..." How to fully reconcile heart with GodisLove, and heart with mind?

Sometimes I feel like a pile of broken, disconnected body parts. 

(speaking of which, I'm going to return to my reading of "No Country for Old Men." haha)

It's Mardi Gras...

And I feel like I should be doing something much cooler than sitting in my bed doing homework and reading online news articles. It is also my little sister's birthday, which adds to that feeling. 

One of my two classes for today was cancelled, so I was finished at 10:45 am. That was nice. 

I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  last week, and now I feel a particular bad taste in my mouth when I use the word "nice."

Lately I have been inundated** by new music. Anyone who knows Alex Skidmore probably also knows that he has quite a passion for music, and loves to share his new favorites. (Actually, he loves to share anything new that he learns.) Anyway, being his girlfriend, I'm usually one of the first to hear about whatever he's dug up - which has recently come to me in bulk. And so my ears have been filled to the brim with new Nada Surf and Chris Walla, Georgie James, Menomena, and a few other "gems." I'm not sure what I think of any of them yet. I get overwhelmed by a lot of new music, unlike Mr. Skidmore, it seems. 

I'm feeling itchy to travel. Maybe Baltimore? The mountains? New Mexico? 

This post started hours ago. Since it's beginning, I've walked the streets of downtown Greensboro with Max and watched Across the Universe, as well as some of the primaries. 

I should sleep....or read, which is what I'd rather do right now.

**I just remembered that I learned the word inundate in Spanish before I learned it in English, haha. Same with culpable. 

Grandpa lollipop and Grocery store girl.

i ask you these things because i don't want to die between the sheets of a hospital bed. my arms were once made of bronze, my legs of oak, my heart of honey, but here i'm reduced to sawdust. i was young and strong, daring, a warrior. these fingers pulled taut the piano wire that strangled a nazi guard; these fingers arched gracefully over the keys of an organ, plucked the pin of a grenade, played "happy birthday" on an accordion to the delight of clapping grandchildren. now my fingers are shriveled - all veins and shrapnel, interloped with snaking plastic tubes. my lungs survived drowning in an anonymous european river, but now they betray me, their flimsy walls caving in under the weight of my own damp breath. the same blood that soaked proudly in german sod is now spat bitterly into a cold, porcelain container. the wrinkles around my eyes, i'd like to remind the nurse squinting at the whirring machinery next to me, are from laughter just as much as tragedy and old age. the sharp angles of my bed blend in with the sharp angles of the walls of my room that is all white and all light, all white and all light like the angel i met on a river bank. 

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she'd like to say there's more to her than rubber and coal, than dust and cobwebs, than candle wicks and ashes. she'd like to be velvet and lace, butter and lilacs, silver spoons and silk - just pure ice. she'd like to think thoughts like the girls made of china but someone once told her that brains made of glass don't last too long. instead, she thinks of the wispy clouds above, how they swirl around each other, curl around each other. she watches as a crow ascends into the sky and thinks even it is graceful. 

Let's Pretend We Don't Exist...

Let's pretend we're in Antarctica. 

I look down my "buddy list" and see that there is snow in Wisconsin (Logan Mathews says so). 

I am jealous.

That, however, is only one reason I wish to pretend I'm in Antarctica. The other reason is that Antarctica is very far away from my homework. Also, it is very hot in my dorm. 

I made tea earlier to soothe my sore throat. It served only to make me feel more hot. 

Right now I'm reading Julia Alvarez's "In the Time of the Butterflies," and a large part of the plot revolves around revolution. In some ways, I would like to experience something like what the Mirabal sisters encountered. But I'm not sure I'm very brave. 

Eli Burke made this week a good one. Haha, especially by introducing to me to Wii bowling, which seems to be my life's calling. We have gone on not one, but TWO epic walks this week, and each ended with hot chocolate. 

According to Google, my cultural anthropology professor has worked with Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Farmer. I'm thrilled. 

Now on to some other form of procrastination.

This Temporary Life

Beginning anew with blogspot. 

I suppose it really is time to move up in the world, since I'm a college girl and all. 

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Last night I went to bed a nine o'clock. I had dreams about a green light blinking from across a lake and living in a bakery. 

Where is my mind?

I woke up at midnight when my phone decided to serenade me. I slept again and had dreams about a coal mine where many exotic lizards had made their home. I didn't wake again 'til seven o'clock. Even then I stayed in bed until seven:thirty, when I had to start getting ready for my eight o'clock class. 

Now I sit in my warm bed and stare out the window while I'm not doing homework. I see trees with leaves that should have fallen a month ago. Instead they cling to the branches, stubborn like soldiers, elegant like a beauty queen's wave. Peeking through those leaves is a bright blue sky, which I know stretches out over nature trails and the golf course behind my dorm. 

College has been good. I havn't been challenged very much. I guess that'll come though. I have, however, had some really good opportunities to get involved in/serve the Greensboro community.  Some of the reading has been really cool. 

And now I'm back to homework.