For a moment there I wasn't sure how I was going to do this.

Then I figured out that really all you can do is It. Some things work well when applied to a formula, but other stuff just requires doing. Deciding and doing. I must decide, then do, a wonderfully sketched two step process for something resembling success or its fifth cousin three times removed.

Decide, then do.

I found an old journal from 2006, the summer of it, and I read the entire thing before I considered burning it, decided that I'd probably somehow end up burning down all of Lincoln University, and settled for throwing it in the kitchen trash can.

I was the sort of person in terms of my love life--which seemed to have consumed me but that's partially I think because I didn't really like my friends that summer--who I've spent the past couple of years making fun of, ya dig?

I couldn't find the girl who knew who she was and it freaked me out until I realized that it's okay, I just had no idea who I was then so I kept looking for me in others.

BLAG BLAG BLAG

xkcd.com

BLAG


In other delicious news: Brendan is just as badass as before. Bri and Sha are still together (knockonwoodthreetimes). Break starts tomorrow soon as Theatre's over at 4. 365 was goode. I'm attempting to work out this Swarthmore money business because I think I'd like to stay. Things are better with salamander the second time around, ridiculously so. Kanye is a sick beat maker and rapper but 808s & Heartbreaks let me down, even though I think it's the truest thing he's done since Through the Wire or his verse in This Way or on Def Poetry in Bittersweet.



I've been Rory Gilmoreing all my work and whatnot, but it's mostly been in a catching up kind of way in preperation for taking a deep breath, getting ahead over the break, and coming back to Rory Gilmore everything til the term is over.

I HAVE to film something when we're back from break because I'm gonna need to keep myself busy over winter break and I wanna get at least as familiar with Vegas as I am with Adobe dig?

MORE LATER. for now: paper writing (meaning procrastinating til 2:45 by youtubing slam poetry THEN finishing the paper)

I'm about to spend several consecutive hours on film and spanish homework SO

before I begin, I figured I'd update the blag as it is indeed SNOWING. Honest to god, winter wonderland, fat flurries, go to sleep to nothing and awaken to a blanketed world, blinding snow. This morning I woke up groggy after only about three hours of sleep and exclaimed (loudly) in excitement.

Maybe it's partially because I think snow looks best on trees and there's so many trees here.
Maybe it's because snow is a perfect metaphor for starting over and I've been doing alot of that in the past week

BUT I think that it's as simple as every season brings its memories. The first whispered hush of wind through newly grown leaves in the spring will forever remind me of spring term, peddie, all of them. snow falls will make me think of snowball fights and the blizzard of way back when and headmaster's holidays.

summer and fall don't do much for me. seasons are coolest in their birth and their death.

Show opens tonight.
Brendan tomorrow.
Homework now.
Things to work on in the meantime: Speaking up.

I don't like looking through Post Secret usually because it's depressing, but I love when the secrets are happy ones:

Dreaming.

Late last night, after I didn't do my Astro problem set, I relapsed into my "I don't know if I should be here I'm not even excited about classes" stage and had to redecide if I was really going to stay after the first year.

Of course it all came down to I'm going to stay, but something's gotta give. Give Give Give.

Then I tried falling asleep and maybe it was because the bed was crowded and maybe it was because I was still pretty sick and maybe it was because it was so late and it'd been a long day and the room was hallucinationinducing kind of hot but whatever the reason, the moment I fell asleep led to a fitful night with dream after dream of one on one interactions with people who I've met and haven't yet met and maybe who don't exist at all telling me that I've changed and I used to be this and I used to be that but all the things that I used to be were the good things. I used to care about classes, I used to care about my health, I used to care about school, I used to care about where I was.

So I woke up, groggily, to my alarm of Q-Tip's "Gettin Up" and decided that today had to be the day where I did what I've been saying I was going to do and I get my life back. In a completely nondramatic way. All that I can think of is that I used to be a fucking good student but I barely study here and usually do the homework. No matter what I would put in the most effort though, except for in Precalc, but whatevs, that was Junior year man. SENIOR YEAR I had a D at midterm, spring term, in Stat, yet turned it into a friggin A by the end. All A's at the end of that year. I had so much gotdamn drive. I loved my classes. I loved my teachers. I loved discussion.

Honestly, what this is coming down to is that my love for the institution of school (which I've always loved. Always. I was bred to love school.) suffers when I stupidly stupidly stupidly decide to not take a class with discussion and books and metaphors and similes and fiction! Dear gods I miss fiction like no other! Last week my fingers stumbled upon an old copy of Cane in the library and I got painfully nostalgic for discussing Cane in Onion's class.

Perhaps I've just been spoiled. Peddie spoiled me with English teachers.

Either way, I'm sick of not liking the school part of school. Sure, I had the ideal set up at the end of last school year (video production, creative writing, africanamerican literature and culture, statistics, theatre) but the ideal set up isn't always guaranteed, particularly when I've got these stupid requirements to get through before the end of Sophomore year.



I hereby reclaim my love for learning and schooling and kicking ass scholastically speaking (and also I reclaim that feeling you get after eating something healthy) as complacency isn't really doing it for me.


also: bro'conn, saturday

Things that are More Difficult when your nose is stuffed

1. Kissing
2. Eating sandwiches
3. Eating fruit
4. Hardcore snuggling
5. Sleeping
6. Hanging upside down

True Blood. Sickness. Home

Woke up (for some reason at 6:57 AM) sick on Saturday, went to rehearsal, got back at noon, collapsed on my bed, steeped in sickness. My mom picked me up and took me to Lincoln house though so I was able to spend the day in a NyQuil coma, waking only to have more ecchinacia and water and faintly tell my parents that I had to be back to school by Saturday night.

Luckily, however, my 'rents aren't in the habit of letting me always decide what's best and so I spent the night at home, in my bed, with many blankets, sleeping. It was glorious. I'm so glad my parents are my parents and just let me sleep it off all day.

AND I got pepperoni yesterday AND there's a can of cranberry sauce for me in the fridge AND my mom's currently making several loaves of banana bread. I love banana bread.

AND there's a grand possibility that I'm going to Namibia in June. More on that later.

"When i get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome again. True story."

The best thing about BrO'Conn is that I never have to preface my bitchy opinions and statements to him, and I don't feel judged in any way. Sometimes what you really need to snap out of it are some simply stated words from someone you trust to be brutally honest with you no matter what, such as all bffls should be, and the realization that you've got to be kidding me this is unbelievably not worth my time.

In other news, other news has made other other news no longer feel like a papercut that won't heal and more like when you crack your back after waking up in the morning and feel ridiculously refreshed. Like working kinks from your bones with a simple twist of your figure.

In wordly news: Obama's new chief of staff hates Palestine.
In Ohio news: Brendan: GET SOME knockonwoodtimesthree
In PA news that pertains to me: re-finding my motivation. holding audtions for short film (fifteen-twenty minutes of complete awesome) after 365 is over. Got cast as Juliet, Tybalt, and Balthasar in Romeo and Juliet next semester, excited because it means I kill myself over Romeo, am killed by Romeo, and am kind of the cause of Romeo's death.

In Weather news: Sure is cold out.
In wishthisexisted news: This school needs more skateboarders and skaters.
In thingstoworkon news: Expansion.

In thingstolookforwardto news: Thanksgiving break in two weeks and a day which means brrrrrendan in less than that and WINTER BREAK shortly after. Sigh. Yis. Spring term holds many goode things.

Of Rest for the Weary
Superhero conversations
that lead to books I've read and
movies you've watched and I've watched and
I've loved and you've hated and
snarky responses but really we
just want to love each other alot
beneath the sesame street
blanket
that
we got
from the box in my closet.
It's got the alphabet on it so to pass time
between kissing i mean
we have backwards saying contests.

It's difficult to fall asleep with her in the bed,
but not because he's nervous like usual,
there's just so much to say.
We'll sleep when we're dead.

Poetry and Time

I've been finding myself wallowing outside of the periods set aside for such a thing so to help in the process I've taken to filling my time. Got cast as Juliet, Tybalt, and Balthasar in the play next semester, got a movie to make before the fall is done, books to read, classes to ace, poetry to write (see later), and I'm thinking that it's a good idea to go into Philly a bit more often. Spend some time with the brothers, roam a little in my city, etc. Meeting up with Mayte if she ever picks up her phone.

The arrival of Illiteracy last Friday made me finally hear what Tarit's been saying for a while now and ignited my want to do the Poetrizz group thing with him.

Rita's writing the script for my short right now

365 goes up next weekend

I want to reread the Time Traveler's Wife

I feel like I get now what Frost is saying in Stopping by Woods. The woods aren't a period of daydreaming and some place of a goode sort of comfort. They're more that place of comfortable misery that you can drift into if you let yourself. It's like a gigantic tempurpedic matress of sadness with a comforter of regret. Those are the woods. The promises he's got to keep aren't just to others but to himself. Promises to move on. You've got to keep moving or else you'll end up frozen to death in the middle of the woods.

It's interesting how long periods of happy Woods are just as bad as the misery Woods cause both remove you from the world. Stay in the world.



Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Break ups are like when you have a cut on your cuticle, and it's in the winter, so the cut takes longer to heal cause it's so dry out and so it hurts more than a regular cut)

ill

Big Fish is this story about a guy who knows what he wants to do and does it. All of it.

Things That Are Ill
-Hello Saferide
-Writing poetry and performing it
-Ill-Literacy
-Meeting Adriel Luis
-Recognizing when things aren't right
-Righting them
-Telling the truth to yourself
-Brendan as a bffl
-Meeting new people, expanding
-Differentiating
-Change

Things That Are Not Ill
-Not knowing where my Egypt necklace is (plus the mdw ntr on it and the ring liv got me in Bolivia)
-Recognizing when things aren't right and then righting them but wishing that you hadn't even though you know it's right
-Telling the truth to yourself
-Having miles to go before you sleep
-Lying to yourself
-Not having enough Ella Fitzgerald to listen to
-Falling into old habits and not realizing it until it's already happened
-Feeling like I'm a Realist was written just for you
-Emo blog posts

My mom sent us photos of she and my dad and their friends in college.
























moms on the left

pops with the cool lean


They met in 1979 and got married in 1980 and then had five kids and stayed married and are still in such a state of union.

My grandparents got married when they were 13 and fourteen, in 1952, had six kids, and were married for more than fifty years til' my grandpa passed away in 2004.

So it's because of my parents and my grandparents that I've no problem with people being in love young, it seems feasible to me and I've been incredibly lucky to live in today's society, where divorce is as common as the flu in December, to have these two examples of love and marriage existing together.

Whenever I get down and out and lose trust in relationships, I do remember these folks because, I mean gees, talk about growing old together, my grandparents grew up together and everything. They moved to the other side of the country had all these kids, Grandpa was a Reverend, their kids got married, had all these grandkids, we learned from them. I sometimes forget to be amazed at my family. As I get older I forget less, though.

I'm sensing a poem. Which is goode, because I'm signed up to do stuff this Friday. It's sortof a really odd feeling to think that I'm going to be doing slam poetry the same night as Dahlak Braithwaite and ill-Literacy, mostly cause the closest I've come to something like that is meeting Paul Graham sophomore year.

Along with moviemaking, joining the ranks of slam poets that those in the know know is my dream, sadly it's loads more difficult since Def Poetry Jam isn't back.

MISSION ONE: get word to Russell Simmons and Mos Def that Def Poetry Jam has to come back because it exposes people to poetry worldwide.

Anyways, the point of the whole post is to say that life can be maddening but if I were doing that thing where I let my mp3 being on shuffle decide for me what I should do, then my decisions would simply be reinforced.

And I think Molly just climbed through the window.

Yep, she did.




"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."--Trotsky