verano

I'm so good at procrastinating that I should win an award.

I'm at Weaver Street right now, taking advantage of free wifi, raspberries, and iced coffee. I've decided that when I get my own house I will grow raspberry bushes so that I can eat them whenever I want for free. They really are the best fruit, even though they aren't technically berries. (A raspberry is an aggregate fruit with lots of little drupelet things around a center).



The Brenner family used to grow blueberries in their front yard. I remember waking up one summer morning and picking the berries right off the bush for breakfast. Whenever I drive by their house (which is rare, since I'm never in St. Louis anymore), I glimpse out the window to see if the bush is still thriving.

I have a serious problem when it comes to making decisions. I let my mind wander way too much when I hear of exciting opportunities and start imagining what it would be like to do that or be there. For example...yesterday Andrew told me that there may be one spot left in the Fall 2007 Honors Abroad program to Cape Town, and I decided then and there that I wanted to do that. So i went on a wild goose-chase trying to find the right study abroad advisors. But alas, there is no such spot, and I cannot go to Africa in the Fall. Phooey. I wonder what would happen if I substituted daydreaming/trying desperately to leave UNC with prayer. Would I be more focused? Would I be less prone to fantasize about traveling the world? Food for thought...

At any rate, I think I do want to study abroad for a semester. But I don't want to go alone on an exchange program. I like UNC students. (Isn't it weird how God has been changing my heart with regards to that??? Last semester all I wanted to do was drop out of school and go live with my Peruvian lovers). There's a cool UNC program in Havana, Cuba that happens every spring. I think I might try doing that next spring. Cuba would be AMAZING. I'd get really tan and maybe I'd meet a lovely Latin America boy. :)

We all know how fond I am of foreign boys...

Anyways, I really need to post some more fotos. This is my attitude about the end of the year:






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I have so many random, unconnected thoughts right now that I have been steadily aquiring the past week. I've been hanging out with Mormons for a photostory. I think i'll write about that experience later.

Here was a mini-epiphany of mine from last night: You know you feel at home in a place when you have friends/acquaintances willing to smoke cloves with you on the quad at night. Friends who, at one random phone call or run through the UL to see if they are there, will drop what they are doing and spent 15 minutes outside, talking under the night sky. Sometimes I still get lonely and wish Julie or Emily were here...they would always be willing to do something of the sorts. But that loneliness has waned the past semester. Lots of people would be willing to do such a thing...you just have to ask instead of waiting to be asked.

I really like painting with light.

That's all for now. I really do need to start editing these intro texts for the Special Olympics website. Adieu.

desultory

I've been generally bored all week. Which is weird, because I've got lots of work to do. I guess I'm treating things like a check-list...just pushing to get stuff done so that summer can come sooner. It's made me very unmotivated...so I just lay in the grass. I think I had this problem last April. April really is the month of that bright eye's song.

Why do you lay in the grass?
Why do you lay there?
Don't you want to be found?

I hate Carroll Hall. I always forget to bring my music so I'm usually bored to tears working in the lab. It would be so much better if I brought Coldplay or the Shins or something soothing to assauge the tedium of working in the stupid, windowless labs.

My kleenex smell like cloves because they're in the same bag. I really like blowing my nose now.

I've also been very moody this week. Becca asked me if I wanted to taste her falafel on Monday, and I started tearing up. I don't cry (as) much anymore. I think I bottle up my emotions and then work/stress eventually catch up with me and I start leaking. It's a gradual explosion. But then I felt better because I hung out with the jane murchison/liz ross crowd and they always make me smile. I do wish I had more consistency in my life, in general. balance or something. i wonder if that's an ideal i should stop aiming for, though.

I really want/need to go to an Art Museum. And a bar. But I'm not legal, so I have to wait. Bah. Maybe I'll go to Galen's party on Friday and hang out with the photogs. It won't be as fun as CPJW, though. That was the best.

Okay, I'm going to go eat lunch now. ciao.

product of boredom

In middle school I would fill out surveys on a monthly basis and send them out in mass emails. Did everyone do that at that age, or was that some wacked WCA thing? At any rate, I still enjoy filling out surveys. mwhahaha

1. What is your natural hair color? dark brown
2. What color is it now? dark brown
3. Do you bite your nails? when I'm bored, but usually, no.
4. Do you like to go shopping? i like thrift stores, produces, shoes, and music. shopping for any of those. Oh, and I like to go shopping when it involves a particular panamanian mall and particular panamanian boy. :)
5. What do you do on a typical Friday night? Eat Indian food or something tasty like that, watch a movie, take a walk, talk on the phone after midnight at the Old Well near my dorm, take off my socks, the like.
6. How long do you take in the shower? when I'm really depressed, 15-30 minutes. Otherwise I guess it's around 10 minutes. Showering has become a hobby of sorts.
7. What is the worst day of the week? Wednesday. That second 8 am is wretched, and that second DTH shift is even wretcheder. (like my grammar?)
8. Who is the last person you talked to on the phone? the mormon missionaries, for my photo story.
9. When was the last time you saw your dad? on easter sunday, at home.
10. When is the last time you went to the doctor's? uhh...in february when i was sick perpetually.
11. Have you ever stayed overnight at a hospital? yes.
12. How many siblings do you have? 1, and an imaginary one (Fred).
13. Do you know anyone named Bob? personally, no.
14. Did you used to read those "I spy" books when you were a kid? no. But I spied for a time.
15. Which magazines have you had subscriptions to? some photography thing, newsweek, uh..american girl?
16. Did you ever read any of the Babysitter Club books? YES. they are my life.
17. What is one weird thing about you that many people don't know? i stuck a bead up my nose when i was six and it hurt.
18. Are you a light sleeper or a heavy sleeper? really heavy sleeper. apparently i move a lot, too. just ask poor carolyn.
19. What color shirt are you wearing? puke yellow with blue stains. it's really ugly. It's from my lost childhood.
20. What is the worst feeling in the world? hicupping in the library (everyone stares). I'm experiencing this right now...and I didn't think it was the worst feeling until it happened.

musings

how about a nice narrative?

today was a lovely spring day spent rolling in the grass. I smell like sweat, grass, and mud. And I look horrid, clad in my 1997 children's choir shirt that has aqua-blue paint stains on the left sleeve from that day karah and I painted my bedroom.

Epiphany of the day= running in the woods is an activity that should be done more. It's a solitary activity in which you don't feel alone, paradoxically. I don't, at least. I'm away from the crowds, the deadlines, the blinking digitial clock on my wardrobe top...and all sense of time and place kind of floats away as I let my mind wander, loosening the fetters. And it hurts...my chest hurts and my shins ache, but I just keep running...half-talking to myself, half-talking to God.

Some of my most vivid memories from high school stem from long runs in the woods. They are timeless. They are free from anxiety about the past, present, or future. Just me and the weathered trail, maybe some running buddies, but inevitably I am alone with the trees and the ground and the crickets. It wasn't even a particularly beautiful park. But that's what I remember most vividly...the experience of running in the woods.

I feel like I'm wasting my energy, my youthful physique (ha!). Eating, Exercising, my body image and the like...gosh, it's been such a struggle since senior year. freshmen 15 and then some, that's for sure. I just want to run again...to not worry about how I look or how far I've run or how many calories I've expended. I just want to get that release again. But it's so darn hard working up to it...every day is like day 1. I never really get past that initial run.

So I doubt I will ever be able to reclaim that vigor I once had. I'm too jaded. I'm also too fat. I'm also more content with life, with inconsitency, with myself. Running used to be an escape from the unknown. I don't want it to be an escape. I just want it.

But I still doubt I'll ever be able to do it. And I guess I have to be okay with that.

On a different note, the semester is almost over. Pretty soon I will be in Florida with RUF, then at Yale with my big sister, then St. Louis for a couple of weeks, and then Chicago for the remainder of the summer with Jules. I don't really want to think about the summer. I don't want to have any preconceived, romantic notions about what it should be, since what it will be is always drastically different (and usually, hopefully better). I can still have goals/desires, though. I guess they are as follows:

• that I can finish the school year with some sense of peace. It all will end so darn quickly...and I want to savour the last two weeks with some of my best friends who will be leaving, venturing out into the Big World next fall. I want to run in the woods (we've already established this), and I want to just BE. Just be with friends, with my roomie, with my church.
• summer...wow, that I can slow down and enjoy each moment for what it is. That I can stop comparing every second of every day to this unrealistic, unattainable ideal that I carry heavily in my head.
  
• That I can approach God with regularity and spontaneity (ah, because I still maintain that the former is important). I want growth in God to be a goal...it's a nagging desire I've had brewing inside of me this past month, but I haven't gotten to really devote myself to prayer/fellowship/study of Scripture the way I'd like to (maybe this is another one of those unattainable ideals). Granted, I know it is God who grows me, not myself, but what can I do to speed up the process? I say that with a hint of sincerity. :)
• That I can put serious "photo" thinking aside...that ever-present anxiety about the future, about doing all that I can be doing to hone my skills and crap like that. there is more to life than my career, there is more to life than work...and I desperately want to grasp that. It's come in glimmers the past two years. And again, maybe since perfectionism is my devil, this is another unrealistic ideal...i can never be anxiety-free. But as far as my focus goes, I don't want to be stressing out about photo.
  
• as for smaller things...I'd like to sing more. Outside of my car, that is. I'd like to sketch landscapes. I'd also like to play the guitar. Maybe my sister will lend me hers, which was a Christmas present she never really used. I'd like to be more of a hippie. Maybe get my nose pierced and eat granola.

Oh, and of course, I'd like to write more. And take pretty pictures of nature and put them up on this blog. Because I haven't done that in (gasp) over six months.

april showers

I'm a wave-riding sort of girl. I think I am, by nature/socialization/some personality conditioned to be extreme and driven, but deep down I crave stability and happiness. love, friends, family, church, the body of Christ, enjoying the world that I'm living in and looking forward to the hope I have in heaven. But I get so distracted and easily tossed around, especially when dealing with authority figures telling me what I should do with my life, or what I should want to do with my life. And especially with regards to photo.

I was about to launch into a lengthy exposition on why this is the case, but I just now decided not to. I'm sick of being all stressed/fearful about my future. I've wasted the last hour worrying, where I could have been talking with someone or listening to music.

Okay, well, my creative juices have evaporated and now I'm going to go talk to Joey and listen to Over the Rhine. I don't know why I titled this "april showers."

I want to make a photoblog.