Thursday, July 31, 2008

latter days ~ over the rhine

(this song is beautiful and perfect)

What a beautiful piece of heartache
This has all turned out to be
Lord knows we've learned the hard way
All about healthy apathy

I use these words pretty loosely
There's so much more to life than words

There is a me you would not recognize, dear
Call it the shadow of myself
And if the music starts before I get there
Dance without me, you dance so gracefully
I really think I'll be okay
They've taken a toll, these latter days

Nothing like sleeping on a bed of nails
Nothing much here but our broken dream
Oh, but baby if all else fails
Nothing is ever quite what it seems

And I'm dying inside to leave you
With more than just cliches

There is a me you would not recognize, dear
Call it the shadow of myself
And if the music starts before I get there
Dance without me, you dance so gracefully
I really think I'll be okay
They've taken their toll, these latter days
They've taken their toll, these latter days

Tell them it's real
Tell them it's really real
I just don't have much left to say
They've taken their toll, these latter days
They've taken their toll, these latter days

Monday, July 28, 2008

My parents are watching a documentary about the Unabomber. I am in the next room trying not listen and get any more freaked out than I already am.

In other news, I am not used to being on a my feet for 8 hours a day. I don't know how I am ever going to hold a real job. My mom's response was helpful. She a) told me to consider how exhausting a teaching job is, talking all day every day (a post collegiate career I am considering) and b) "just think about what it will be like when you have kids" (just the thought of having children exhausts me, let alone having a job AND a family). Given, I will hopefully be a stay at home mom, at least until my kids are tweens, but still. I need to gear up for adulthood.

But today, I just came home and laid on my bed in a daze, still in my work clothes, trying to muster the strength to do my daily pilates routine. I am going to miss doing pilates with my mom. I feel like we're in a movie, probably a romantic comedy, except in the movie we would actually be in a class and the woman in the front would ring the gong and tell us to be quiet, a la 27 dresses or Sex in the City, which I watched for the first time during my solitary weekend. Anyway, I enjoy catching up on life, helping my mom plan how she is going to schedule the next day, and commiserating over our shared weaknesses as we "face the sun" and hold the "warrior pose" and move into "plank position." Actually it involves us bemoaning our stubborn streaks and hard-to-shrink thighs, as she apologizes for the fact that I inherited both from her. However, these aren't the worst things in the world. At the end of the day, I can always(sometimes halfway at best) swallow my pride when the other person is right and I have lost 10 pounds this summer so it's not all hopeless.

I will admit I am counting down the weeks and days until I leave for school. I am just as excited for the drive out as actually arriving. I really don't know what to expect about my senior year. I anticipate that there will be a lot of good, unexpected things. Unexpected, because I am trying not to expect much out of the things that are not in my control. Which is a lot. BUT I have some hopes for myself and my routine and my relationships, so we'll just go from there.

I began a journal on May 21 of this year, and I am pretty sure I will finish it before I get back to school, since I am about 2/3 through. I am a journaling fiend. I think writing out my thoughts and prayers "helps" but one day I just asked myself "what am I 'helping' exactly?" So I thought a little about my purpose in journaling. (I have had a lot of time on my hands this summer.) I'm grateful to have recorded my thoughts and emotions, especially when the latter surpasses my rational. But I just came away thinking that I really want to LIVE and not just write. Because I really don't think I verbalize 1/4 of what I journal about so how am I really communicating what is happening inside of me? Not just communicating, but really living and seeing the fruits of what I have written. Are they just momentary, passing thoughts, or thoughts that reflect the grinding internal movement that I feel and even know to be true sometimes?

Well, I have another 8 hour day ahead of me tomorrow. I am going to go bed, hopefully sleep well and...make eggs in the morning! Coffee, toast, and eggs...yum.

Monday, July 21, 2008

poor sister


I don't care how much simpler life is when you're young(er). I am so glad to be 21 and not 14.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this

could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.

~Rainer Maria Rilke