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?