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...