when i first stumbled upon these electronic pages they were as entrancing as any of my favorite books. one theme ran through them more frequently than others: that of wanting to leave, to just go somewhere anywhere, not here. at times i sympathized, sharing the author's frustration and cabin fever. sometimes i remonstrated saying that there was always something beautiful to be found around you where ever you were - it was just a matter of knowing how to look. and there were times it was my page that was bleeding the desire to fly, to have done and be gone.

i've lost track of everyone for a while making the excuse that things were busy or that the net connection was too slow or that i was trying to "get out and live in the real world". but that gives the lie to why i started writing in the first place...
i've begun again to read these pages again and the same themes are threading in and out between the lines on the screen. the desire for change. and now i look and see and know that desire and i am helpless.



i am so very far away - i feel so very far away.

more

so after having camera for quite a while now...I am finally going to put up pics... comments welcome...

note: i hate shoe shopping.

old green hills heat off blacktop breath of wind coming off the river caught amoung old buildings
music
peoples

he has long curly brown hair tied up in brown shoestring - has the sloping shoulder of a thinker - head tilt of one who listens to hear - bright blue eyes - full almost scruffy beard. the shoelace is caught on his shoulder, right above the shoulder blade. for some reason it caught my eye... on his feet are the fisherman sandals I somehow knew he would be wearing...

the tide of people in the tent ebbs and flows. it fills and empties the old metal folding chairs sponsored by some senator who from the look of the chairs should have retired from public office long ago...

black dress with red patterned dots - a bit of red lace at the hem and neckline. she is keeping time with the drumbeat, tapping her feet on the warm blacktop.

nora jones cover

pink and cream porcelain cheeks sticky with ice cream shared out of an over large cone with mother and older sis- blond hair pulled up and still escaping in wisps and waves - blue eyes with dark lashes.

hills swallow sounds down in the valley ridge after ridge rises leading the eye away far and away

A man who is 'ill-adjusted' to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.
-Hermann Hesse, novelist, poet, Nobel laureate(1877-1962)

The day's have been cool for the middle of summer in DC - low humidity and filled with cool breezes. I have been lost in my reflections and reminiscences of last year. It's odd, I've been here a week and though it feels as though I've been back much longer I've seen no one but my fiance. I've been downtown once, to the memorials, and wandered around here in my corner of the neighbourhoodcity.

the air has been odd all week. it wants to rain - the trees and ground beg for the rain - and it does not come. the rains teased today, smattering and pattering the leaves and grass. but it would not rain. for long stretches of moments i feel as odd as the air, wanting to pour out something. but it will not come. so i sit and wait for it to come, to relieve...

20 May

The rearview mirrors gave perfect postcard presentations of the receeding senery. I peaked over and around Tasik's broad shoulders in effort to watch the road that was approaching, but that proved a more difficult task than watching the mirrors. As the familiar road flowed by I couldn't help but reflect on all of the times I had driven that road over the past four years. Watching the seasons change, the course of the stream and the road itself. It seemed fitting in a way that the road is finally open and unhindered by lights or extra stop signs, just in time for us to leave. But leave the way we found it - for the most part. As we passed other bikes most gave us the ubiquitous, knee-level, two fingered wave. I had to smile as we gave the correstoponding countersign. I'd passed countless bikers on that highway, always watched for the sign. Now on my last day as a resident of SoCal I am the one on the bike.

It's hot...much warmer than it should be in early May. The classical music playing behind me is being mixed with the sound of the fan that is trying to move the warm air around the small apt. The room is filled with late afternoon light, gradually becoming dimmer as the sun sets below the rooftops of the nearby buildings. I'm typing on a stolen computer and trying to argue the humor of Flannery O'Connor. This is proving rather more difficult than I would like - perhaps if I finish my glass of wine it will come more easily...

"I'll fight you on whether those stories are actually funny."
"They are actually funny."
"Are they actually funny or is it just the way you look at them?"

I was trying to say that she portrays the human condition - the humor of it along with its tragedy, patheticness, and pathos. I want to argue that she seems to say that humor is essentially part of life, whereas my friend says that the human condition has nothing funny about it, but the humor comes from the way you look at it.
Now granted there are somethings that are just not funny any way you look at them... but this is something different. I just can't quite put my finger on how...

right now I think I'd like some one else to take over my life; that way I could go off and do the things that I am really wanting to do. It feels like there is so much to be done, I don't even know where to start. I finally took care of getting the tires on my car looked at, but that was because Tasik took it in to someplace and came back and told me that if I didn't do something soon (ie before the next time I drove anywhere at all) I would end up with a blowout or two. So I got to cross that off my overstocked list. Perhaps at this point I just need the pressure of necessity to order things, that way I won't have to decide if it needs to be done sooner or later; it will just need to be done now.
*sigh*
I know, welcome to real life... I get it - but I don't have to like it.

I've been engaged in an ongoing battle with MSN messenger for the last hour and a half or so determined to stay online... It doesn't like me...

I find it ironic that I am drawn to chill, relaxed music to listen to when I want to complain about the seeming increase in the passage of days... Perhaps I am seeking a mean in the midst of it all.

It's friday at last - though the weeks never do seem to take up much time - and I am looking down a long week-end already becoming filled with "to-do's." I have a feeling of aliveness under my skin and it is quite nicely translating into thesis time (and productivity actually)... But I am still left with the feeling that I am losing something...what it is I can't quite say - and that is a good deal of the pain from the losing... It's almost like I am watching the people I love here slowly be drawn away from me, all of us being taken our separate ways...well, perhaps that is actually what it is. I am out of touch (more so than usual and that is saying something) and the distance will only grow with time...

I could say that it is part of growing up and leaving the proverbial nest, but I have given in too easily in the past and have lost too much as a consequence... now I just need to figure out what to do...

say a prayer for us when you have a spare moment

props to Sir Nicholai for the pics...

the random thoughts that class generates...

rain falling over fields - lines stretching out and away - line of earth in dull greens and blues - the falling rain coming down in lines of grey haze - imagining the feeling of openness all around while having clouds pressing down - the rain coming down...


why does beauty ache?

It rains!! I am happy - I've missed the fogs and the wet and the sent of cool damp air...

these fits of passion
possess and release my soul -
all at once feeling
too much to be expressed
then falling back exhausted, the embrace
gone
hollow and depleted, yearning to be content
creativity coming only in the evanescent
moments between rise and fall

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...