the clouds are low, dark grey and burning on the edges from the setting sun -
they may be only a band, thinning and fading toward the center of the dome of
heaven, but from here I can't tell. in the fading light the tops of the olive
trees in the courtyard are waving in the breeze I know is chill and damp. the
western sky is achingly blue, but not the blue of a summer day, or winter
morning. it is blue in an almost foregetful fashion, in the way the old lady
down the road is beautiful. it is soft and faded, tired and knowing that it is
only going to fade still further. looking at her, you feel a pain of regret
that you could not have known her before all that was left of her beauty was a
ghost, at knowing that it will never return in this life, that one day you too
will resemble her. in the same way you ache at the sight of the faded and dying
light of day, slowly draining from the horizon. but she smiles and you still
think "how lovely!" and the sky is blue until the light is entirely gone.
the trees have become dark sillouets, leaves and branches against darkening
skies.

how dark it is! through the open gate I can see the light of a sidewalk lamp and
a single candle red and flickering down at the bottom of the hill. the
reflections on the window almost make me feel as though I were sitting on the
outside looking in - a Peter Pan whose imaginings are so real that they bring
the reflections into reality around him.
all around me are scattered papers, collected through the year in hopes of
remembering something of what has been "learned" when time has brought exams about again.

*spluttering*

So this week I have been out into the desert, slept under the stars, been to the doctor's twice, spent lots of money running errands, done just enough homework though not enough seminar or thesis, and discovered the joys of network gaming (which actually has little to do with the just prior activity or lack there of)... and the week is not over. I feel like I'm on a high right now (which might have something to do with the coffee on near empty stomach about an hour and a half ago). I think I am going to go and ride to nowhere and finish reading seminar... must stay away from my computer while it is in my room...

*taking a deep breath*

excerpt from letters written 21 Oct. edited for content.

"Hi ~
Just got off your blog...Sounds very intense...almost of the type of intensity that threatens to hold one's head under the water...for a bit longer than anticipated and then one comes up sputtering and spewing...

Did you select a thesis theme? And New Zealand????"

Hey ~
- I guess things have been rather intense - I've rather come to the conclusion that I need intensity in my life, or perhaps to help define my life... Without it I feel as though I were heading down a long road without any destination or end in sight, there is no reason to keep on going other than I was in motion already. That is simply not good enough for me. I might end up a bit breathless and scared sometimes but that seems better than the alternative of placidity. I am trying to fill my life with as much of what I love about school and being in SoCal as possible before I leave it behind. It's odd - on one hand I feel so very ready to simply be done and leave it ("it" being school and the life there) all behind. I want to move on. And yet, I know if I did leave now I would feel an incompleteness and would always want to go back and fix it. So I keep on, striving after something that I only see "in a mirror darkly" - to quote one of my proffessors.

My thesis on work - my official thesis question and statement is:

Is proper for the liberal man to manually labor? What is the work and leisure proper to the liberal man?
Manual labor is one of the works proper to man, for it is an integral part of the attainment of leisure, both of which are a foreshadowing of the rest man shall possess in the Beatific Vision.

I've done a bit of work on it (not enough for how late it feels). I am very pasionate about this topic though, so it shouldn't be too hard to make myself work on it. All it will take is a bit of dicipline and making myself work in all of the hours during the week that I have blocked out for it.

New Zealand is still the plan. G. and I keep telling each other that we need to e-mail them and request more information... Right now homework, thesis and everything else I keep runing off to do (such as running off to San Fran, or DC) keeps getting in the way.

hehe, this was supposed to be a short note, because he wanted to look at pictures from today's Ren faire. But he seems to be occupied with instaling anti-virus stuff on his new toy... (yes, I am out in DC at the moment... he helped to fly me out for a visit... *sigh* but I have to go back tomorrow...)

I am feeling down and I can't really say quite why... It probably has something to do with having to ask my parents for a loan that I won't be able to repay until sometime next summer... I think it might have been possible to make it through the year with out borrowing money- if I simply stopped doing everything else and simply holed up here on campus. I would become rather depressed and go nearly crazy, but at least I would not be further in debt.
*sigh*
Money is evil...

It's the first of October... I don't know where the time has gotten to. It is already to the point in the year when I can look down the road and count off the weeks until the year is ended and name off the activities that are filling almost all of those weeks. I feel like my life is slipping through my fingers and I am not being able to do anything about it. So I am trying to do the most with it. That is in part why I asked for money - there is so much I want to be doing while I am still here. And doing requires funds, which at the moment, are sorely lacking... So am I being selfish or imprudent? I don't know... I don't think so - but I am getting the feeling that my parents think I am. (Though I generally get the feeling that my parents disapprove of my decisions... well perhaps "withhold judgment" is more accurate...)
*sigh*
perhaps those who say money is the root of all evil are right...

I have yet to figure out why it is that a blank screen fills my soul with dred and an urgent desire to hide behind the nearest book... The very thought of having to confront such a screen in order to begin writing my thesis is enough to make me start thinking along the lines of "do I really have enough sources?" and "I ought not neglect my class work or seminar to spend extra time on my thesis..."
*sigh*
Somehow it will get started - don't worry.

In other news, we were evacuated from our idilic little campus the other night. There is a rather large fire that was threatening to come down upon us with all of it's blind wrath and fury. The information site for the fire is remarkably unhelpful (and has been for the entire duration of the fire) so I don't know quite where it is now, but they have lifted the evacuation notice for school so we're all coming back.

ack!!! the internet is slowly sucking me in... I can't escape the inexorable pull of it's (what it is exactly that makes time disapear so surely when faced with a glowing screen???) I am not even on my own computer (I would be here even longer if I were) and I've been here for close to an hour.. I keep looking around for some one in line so I'll have an excuse to get off and no one is coming in. I am sure that I have important things to do but nothing is rising to the surface of that pool I generally refer to as my mind...
ah, some one just did... good now I can go and be a productive member of society...

Let it be known to all the world (well in potency at least...) that I have the most wonderful boyfriend in the world!! He flew out to SoCal for the week-end to suprise me...

I am still on a high, floating somewhere off the ground. So if I seem a bit distant for the next few days - weeks...- the is probably why... (well, thesis proposals might figure in there somewhere, but the former reason is so much nicer...)

music rises on a hot summer night
stillness of air gives weight
to clothes, thoughts, sounds
notes seem to hang longer, steady, full
faerie lights wink and dance
here and there 'tween blade and leaf
breath of wind, lift of heart

boards, sun warn and grey
rough beneath bare feet and legs
dark shadows - strange and warm
in blacks and velvet deepness
voices low out drawing hearts
surety found in - what?
wonder at recognition of another's
pain, hope, desires, living thoughts

The Rains

lost beauty ever seen in memory
now gone beyond all hope of reclaiming
passing Time reclaims his own
draws along those bound by him
breath of beauty lingers on the air
drifting downward to up raised hands

my scribbling muse has once again wandered through my door and has taken up a seat in the easy chair... now if only I could manage to wander down to the library with the sheets of my writtings or when I had the time to put them up here...
ah well
I make no promises but I should soon have a few poem and a bit of a short story/flash fiction thing I scribbled out a week or so ago...

I don't understand. How can a bad mood settle so thoroughly? I have rarely been so very out of it... Say a prayer that my guardian angel will give me a swift kick in the pants...

so hey guess what- I'm in the Big Apple... yeah, I hopped on a bus last night and got dropped off on a street corner in the middle of Manhatten and now I'm here for three days. I don't quite know what I am going to be doing - but I have internet connection so you'll end up hearing about some of it (or perhaps lots of it...)
At the moment I am looking out onto the river (? I think...) at the George Washington Bridge listening to jazz and the rush of cars on the road below me, and sound of the fan (one of those ancient ones from the 40's or 50's) and feeling the heat gradually rise outside. Across the river the bluffs are green with trees and beneath the trees and very large buildings are red rocks looking very old. I feel vaguly silly that I don't really know where I am spacially or geographically but that only adds to the fun and adventure of it all. I suppose I'll figure it out eventually so I can tell people about my trip without sounding either too blond (no offence) or too hick...

The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.
~Sarah O. Jewett

I am curious my friends, is this the case? I am thinking it is, both with people and places. I arrived here in DC two months ago and am loathing the thought of having to leave so soon. I know I would eventually get tired of being in the city and long for the country again...

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."
~Evelyn Waugh

Perhaps this is the reason I find it so very difficult to be on time for anything...

hands held open now
receiving all God's goodness-
what of passing time?

The light is slowly fading from the sky, draining the faint colours from the haze that is spread across the patch of blue out the window. There is a bit of reflection shining off the office windows across the street, but it too is fading. I think I am falling in love...this city os so much more than I had anticipated. What is happening to the shy and scared country mouse that showed up less than a month ago?

I've been looking around at grad schools, searching for a master's program that fits what it is I think I want to do. I know it must be out there - everything else I've looked for has shown up hasn't it... ok hang on don't jump all over me... I found the right school (pretty much), I've basically figured out what I want to write about for my thesis, so grad school is the next step. Which means I'll have to take the GED some time in the next year or so and probably take some pre-recquisits and what-not to round out my already well rounded BA. The other bits and pieces that make up life (and I will leave those to you, reader, to fill in) will either come or not as God wills. I keep googling environmental programs, and conservation programs, and ecology programs and nothing particularly strikes me as being what I want to devote years of my life and enormous amouts of money to. I think I need to find someone who knows a bit of whats out there to help me figure out what it is I'm looking for...

It's become rather dark outside, the only lights from the office building are ones from cubicles and hallways left on for cleaning crews or security purposes. The headache that has been taunting me all day is beginning to return with the lessening of the gin and tonic buzz from supper. Time to go and watch some Mariokart...

~When I began this compendium of thoughts I often used excerpts from letters and e-mails to (and sometimes from) friends. In keeping with that...

(from note written 10 June)

DC is treating me well so far. It is very unlike LA, it is smaller and much more self-contained. The different areas and neighbourhoods have a feeling of knowing who they are and where they belong in the scheme of things (do I sound crazy?) Things are much older here, houses, monuments, roads, trees... It's really quite strange to wander up and down the streets and think that people have been doing the same thing on the same road for the last 200 years...
As for work, I am slowly figuring out what it exactly consists of... It's all well and good to say that I am an "intern interpretive ranger" - but what does that mean? So far it's meant answering questions that I know the answers to and finding someone else who does if I don't. In a week or two I'll become one of those nice know-everything people who give programs and hikes and tours around the park... I have to design my own presenations... this makes me rather nervous... it's like writing, producing, directing and staring in your own one act play every couple of days... At school I can simply vanish into a corner or wall or middle of a room and no one notices me and now I am working to figure out ways to make my work the center of attention. Very very different mode of thought...though it's probably good for me.

So apparently there is a bill before Congress now about internet neutrality. From what I've read it would give priority to large corporate users, while leaving whatever is left over for everyone else. If it were not the end of finals week I might do a bit more research on it and write down some of my own ideas on the whole mess... As it is I am going to put up a few links and ask you to poke about yourselves some and come to your own conclusions... So for general info go here, for petition to Congress go here, for more general political goings on...
I will confess that I have not checked out these sites completely, so I don't know where they stand in relation to the lables of "conservative" and "liberal," but the thought of big multi -national corporations getting to use more of what seems like it should be fair use for all is unappealing to me to put it mildly...

the evening air was chill as the sound of corsican and russian chant poured out of the darkness from the direction of the commons roof. it was the perfect way to signal the close of the year...

are we really supposed to have one "love of your life"? Somehow I can't bring
myself to believe it. That's not to say I don't believe in true or lasting
loves, but that almost fairytale like greatest love just does not seem like it
could actually happen. Perhaps I see it this way because I see love as being a
decision, an act of the will, lived and carried out in the day to day of life.
And that's not to say I don't believe in romance - I just have a rather
different view of it. For me, it's all about how you look at it, in a word,
it's all about perspective. The simplest actions, a touch of the hand, a look,
small things, the thoughtful things.
So many different paths and possibilities, who or what's to say that this one or
that one is the only one for you? We are as adaptable as any other animal, to
situations and people. Love happens all of the time, it's the day to day stuff
that makes everything hold together and stay somewhat sane. It's not knights in
shining armor, or dancing in the clouds happily ever after...

*sigh*
..so why is there a part of me that wishes it were everything I think it's
not?

There was sun today....clear skies, blue sky and sun! After weeks of rain and
coldness, it was so very good to feel the sunlight...

My mum went home this morning. The clear beautiful day that we had awoken to in the dawn hour had vanished in the hours spent battling trafic and drooping eyelids. For the first time all year, I went to class as a means of forgetting everything else I had to be doing- rather a waste of the time. But the taxes are nearly done, Goodwill has been called, I have someplace to take my car to at least find out what the *&@# is wrong with it, and I have something of a notion of what I am writing on my paper...

I want a stop button for life...

... or perhaps just lessons from the guys who seemed to think they could live in the manner of the last quote posted...

Omnipresent phrase in my mind
Spoken words I've said one million times
Who are you to tell me
It'll always be this way
I close my eyes
And I turn around
And leave it all behind

So free for the moment
Lost somewhere between the earth and the sky
So free for the moment
Lost because I wanna be lost
Don't try to find me

Always try breeze through my life
Repititious things I've done one million times
Who are you to tell me
That I'll always be this way
I close my eyes
And I turn around
And leave it all behind

What could I do
It's not such a terrible thing
What would you do
It's not such a terrible thing

So free for the moment
Lost somewhere between the earth and the sky
So free for the moment
Lost because I wanna be lost

So free for the moment
Lost somewhere between the earth and the sky
So free for the moment
Lost because i wanna be lost
Don't try to find me

The Martinis, Free

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writer (1922- )

How possible is it to live like this for long? Is one able to live in this manner for all of life? what of security and stability? it almost seems as though the "edge" were characterized by the 'not knowing what is going to happen'... there is an allure about this, but time makes everything familier, even the most spectacular and beautiful or awful and terrible of things. that edge would have to keep being pushed and expanded, a sense of place would never be developed... can you really live like that?

Pretend you're happy when you're blue
It isn't very hard to do
And you'll find happiness without an end
Whenever you pretend

Remember anyone can dream
And nothing's bad as it may seem
The little things you haven't got
Could be a lot if you pretend

You'll find a love you can share
One you can call all your own
Just close your eyes, she'll be there
You'll never be alone

And if you sing this melody
You'll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why don't you pretend?

And if you sing this melody
You'll be pretending just like me
The world is mine, it can be yours, my friend
So why don't you pretend?

~Pretend, Nat King Cole

... and not I am not going to give an explanation for this...

I think I am beginning to think I am getting stressed, if stress levels have any relation to an inclination to depression (or at least mild bluseiness- and if that wasn't a word already I just made it one...). There never seems to be enought time to do even the minimal amount of everything that needs to get done, and I am always exhausted... Each week-end I think "ok now I will be able to get caught up on things" and then somehow I don't, not homework, or paper, or sleep... sigh. Perhaps it's just the weather getting to me. It has turned cold and damp without actually raining yet, with a fitful wind that wanders below skirt hems and down necklines. Watching the massing grey clouds out beyond the hills from the lab class window an hour ago I could think of little to drive away the feeling of pressure and tension (although I was in lab class and that generally has that effect on me, cloudy day or no). I started scribbling and between the notes and objections to the ramblings of the instructor these came out...

play me the falling rain
the gradual sweeping up and covering over
of all things seen and not
by soft sheets of
colors muted, angles grown soft
coming down of cares and sighs
whether washed away or
sunken slowly deeper...


song of falling rain
set'ling cares and sighs deeper
in growing chillness

I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free.
-Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957)

What sort of freedom is this? I don't understand. How can you be free if you hope for nothing? It makes no sence, unless you think of freedom as a sort of nirvana or state of nothingness. Even fearing nothing does not seem to acuratly represent freedom, just express an aspect of it.

~ ~ ~

The sky is grey and clouded over today, but it fails to bring the pleasure that such a sight would ordinarily bring. Instead it seems lowering and forboding. The ache of beauty is still present (when is it ever not?), but it does not satisfy, does not fill. I have too many things on my mind, and not enough substance (or focus) in any of it to hold my attention. Thoughts of the near and far future keep distracting me form the present, and I keep returning time and again with a thump and bump of semi-painful awarenesss that I am neglecting life for chimeras and might-be-perhapses. And then I begin to wander off again telling myself that unless I work and plan for the future now, then I won't have much to work with when I get there and it begins all over again.
*sigh* balance will come, with practice and a few more bruises.

three haikus written during seminar this evening... I've been wanting to write and finally gave in...

green tips edging limbs
black wings looming close sit silent
hearalding chill rains

~ ~ ~

falling drops chill hands
'plashing amoung small heart cracks
bringing beauty nigh

~ ~ ~

memory recalls
sardonic smile causitc tone
known - missed- air and walk

I am going to get prefected in a moment I'm sure, and justice requires me to be gone anyway...

But to reiterate me annual complaint: I hate taxes and everything related to them!

they're married now. It seems like such a long time since this morning, and even
longer since yesterday and last week is well nigh unimaginable. But the passed
time is not lost in a fog of incomprehension or insinsibility, it's gone... now
where has it gone? I'm not sure. Lost in love perhaps. And believe me not the
silly insubstantial all blown to the head sort of love. no, the sort of love
that carves out a life, one life, together out of what was two. the sort of
love that leaves no doubt that the bride will not only be at the church when
things are beautiful and centered around them, but will also be there when
times get rough and every little things seems to ge going cross-wise to them.
the sort of love that leaves no doubt taht the groom will devote himself to
her, mind, body and soul, not only when she is the most lovely radiant creature
to walk the face of the earth, but when she is tired, worried and stressed. the
sort of love i see in their parents, so different from each other in so many
many ways, but similar in all of the important ones.
i was witness today to the beginning of a life so beautiful that even now, hours
after i was to draw out words to toast the event, i am still without any i feel
could be sufficient. i am left to say again, it is only the beginning.

A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.
-Nikos Kazantzakis, writer (1883-1957)

someone remind me of this over the course of this next week...


I promise to write soon (-ish...)

perhaps its the time of year but I have a few poems that I mangaged to sketch out over the last week or so...

incomplete

head sinking below the waves
wash after wash of time and event
takes a toll on heart and mind.
waiting for such ineveiabilites
that are not to be counted upon
wandering always amoung
unrecalled dreams and lost hopes
waking recollection of ideals
in attempt to find...


~ ~ ~

All fall down beneath
the reaching gloom of
a deepening darkness-

after seeing the light of
wandering joys that
stumble through doorways
to stay for a moment
while brushing off
hope dusted knees...

after hearing the rush of
speaking winds bringing
tales of a life known
in dreams and desires
all the while rifling
through hair and trees...

after feeling the small song of
a little bird in the bush tree
outside the window sill
beyond nodding rose heads
sweet in life held
though unknowingly fleet...

~ ~ ~
and yet...

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
ills have no weight, and tears not bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

I spent a goodly portion of the week-end at the "Last Homely House" helping to set up for our dinner there Sat evening and then Sunday brunch... No time at this House is complete without singing which we did a fair amount of. I discovered that the tenor parts of many of the songs we sing are wonderful, particularly the tenor line of Abide with me (the fourth verse of which is just above for those of you who are not familiar with the hymn). I will be looking back on this week-end, full of rest and beauty, often over the next two weeks...

I began and finished Graham Greene's The End of the Affair earlier this week (actually in all of about two and a little bit days) and have been waiting to write on it... But now find that I am at a loss for words to say anything about it. I have not been moved so much by a book since I read Brideshead Revisited over a year ago. Perhaps the words will come with time (or frustration after the seminar next week...)

This is something of a response to topic of the week... it came to me while in
philosophy class yesterday (I know, I know one ought not to be day dreaming in
class but when the Muse wanders by...)

~ ~ ~
The coffeeshop was one I'd been in and out of all summer it was the perfect
place- the only place- for our symposium on friendship. The late summer night
was mild and the place was expectedly empty. The atmosphere itself was
friendly, open with large couches and not-florescent lights. And yet I sat on
the outter edge of our group, on one of the chairs we'd pulled over in the
process of reconfiguring nearly all of the comfy funiture in the place. I'd so
many questions and thoughts and ponderings, collected, gathered and stored from
over the years - and it was all overwhelmed by a searing unintelligible ache.
"What is friendship?" Ah, the ambition of youthful passion in quest of the
good.
Round and round the question was passed, touching on this and the other, and all
seeming so far away. I watched the discussion form and shape itself into a
reflection of so many internal conversations with myself, only drawn out and
voiced by many characters. Gradually, almost inevitably, the ground shifted to
love and the scene to the coffeeshop steps, the sidewalk, and streetlight. Far
into the night we talked, so serious and earnest in our persuit of the beauty
of company and shared knowledge and ideas. Then, I stood apart and laughed
ironically to myself, perhaps more at myself and all of the others by
extenstion, for trying to grasp and understand the greatest mystery of life.
Now though, I smile at the remembrance and echo of the pain and still hold the
wonder that had brought me to that night inspite of that ache.

I stumbled across this passage as I was stealing a few moments between studies to read this morning. (I think I "stumble across" things far more often than any other way of discovering or noticing them. I will be pondering some problem or other and out of the apparent blue something hits and seems to exactly apply to whatever it was I was pensivating about. My guardian angel has a hand in it I'm sure...)

It runs: "We make our own lives wherever we are, after all... college can only help us do it more easily. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here... everywhere... if we can only
learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness."

I've been worrying about finding a summer job and future plans about possibly continuing on to grad school, and what I need to do to make that a real possibility. But I kept forgetting that what it important in life is to live deeply. What or where or how you do that is almost accidental and is important only in regards to whether it is helping or hindering you in achieving that end.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

-William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)

So my good friend and former roommate is (hmmm, what do you know, are works too... but that implies t that she isn't my good friend which is simply not the case...) getting married in a month... I would have thought that it would take me a while to get used to this idea, but so far it hasn't, which I guess is a good thing. I am down at their little house (this place needs a name, the nest? love shack? (too corny) something will come no doubt) having secumbed to the general feeling of bleh-ness I've been resisting all week. ('nuther mental note: only come to hang out at the home of a happy couple when in the best of moods...) I forgot homework so I've been wandering back and forth between watching over the shoulder of Gigi while she was playing at the computer and reading random books pulled off the shelves in the living room... And now the eveing has passed, pleasantly for the most part, and it is time to go. (hmmm no homework done again. this is becoming a vaguly disturbing trend perhaps I should do something about it...)

The other day I re-discovered one of my favorite songs from back home...

E Pili Mai

'Auhea vale ana 'oe
Ku'u lei o ka po
Po anu ho'okahi no au
Sweetheart mine
E pili mai

Ina 'o 'oe a 'o au
'Ika i ka ahi o Makana
He makana ia na ke aloha
No na kau a kau
'O 'oe a 'o au
Sweetheart mine
E pili mai

~
Where are you
My sweetheart of the night
The night is cold and I am alone
Sweetheart mine
Come to me

If you and I are together
We'll know the fires of Makana
It would be a gift given of love
For all time
You and I
Sweetheart mine
Come to me

semi-response...

moonrings and icy fingers
star scatterd sky
deep breaths of holy wonder
strange peace drawn
from halls of old haunts
gradually gathering bits
of my world from yours.

the white petals of a lone rose
scattered and frail
on the black mesh of the table
remind me of the beautiful things
of my life
and I find myself both
wishing they could find a whole-ness
and simply grateful for their
individual beauty.

see this

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
-Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

I have been wondering recently about self-knowledge and how one is affected by surroundings - where one lives, who one is with... It is so easy to become a different person everywhere one goes. Now granted those differences may be subtle, but for all their subtlely, how deeply do they go? How much of the real self remains constant and unchanged? And how much in the end does it matter? If one finds happiness and goodness somewhere, is there some falsehood in desiring to be there when one know that in other places one would act differently... It almost seems that there is, but perhaps that is a reaction to wanting there not to be...

I have once again joined the campus workforce. It is a rather odd feeling to pick up three week's worth of assorted mail and discover a work schedule among the mix. I suppose it says something the opinion your employer has of you when they are willing to give you a job without notice. So I'll be spending about 14 hours of quality time with the kitchen staff... I am actually looking forward to it. For all of the extra stress it cause last year, I did enjoy working in the kitchen. And the money is undeniably welcome.

*sigh* However, at the moment I feel very ungreatful for the opportunity...

~ ~ ~

I was reading over some of my posts from a year ago. It seems almost strange to think that I wrote what I did. The thoughts and emotions now seem almost foreign and strange, and yet they are still deeply expressive of myself. I have not written anything like that in what seems like a very long time. I would like to again but it is as if something turned off, or went away...

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

Yes I am still alive and Happy New Year to you all! It was brought in round a dancing bon fire and with many a firework and no little amount of the fruit of the vine or nectar of the Norse gods (as the Sprit says. She also says to say hello in lieu of actually posting on her own).
I am also bid to wish you all a happy Twelfth Night and near happy Feast of Epiphany. Here in the country of the Cajuns Epiphany is the opening of Carnival season which will last until Mardi Gras (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday for anyone who may not know). I am told that Carnival is marked with balls and parades (and beads...) Unfortunatly we are leaving before thing really get under way, which is a shame...

We finished watching Lawrence of Arabia this evening and I am left with my head and thoughts in a whirl. I hope I well be diciplined enough to at least scrible down some more of what I think of it in the next few days, but if not here is a little bit. It is a sad story, sad and haunting. The Sprit aptly remarked that he was not a god, nor a saint, nor really in my own opinion a great hero. He was a man, very, very much a man. He did not know himself, not who he was or what he most wanted and this was in the end his undoing. The friend who introdudced us to the movie said he related very much to Lawrence and I find that vaguely frightening in some way. He said that it seems very true to life that all things, great and small, come to an end, and the more one devotes himself to something great, the further from it he will end up. Perhaps this troubles me because for all of my deep facade of cynisism, I am in the end a romantic and I need that ideal to be pasionate about and love almost blindly. Perhaps more on this later...