When I'm writing, sometimes images occur to me that make perfect sense but I realize don't seem all that logical. I am fond of saying, for instance, that in the last week of July I feel like a stretched out rubber band. I don't know why that comparison seems to illustrate everything I need to say. I really don't even know what its saying exactly, I just know that its true.

I like when I stumble upon images in songs that seem to resonate so truthfully with me. When I find them, I tend to wish I had written them. In Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut says that he wishes he had written Our Town. I haven't found the book I wish I had written yet, but I do wish I had written the words to this song.

Circle me,
and the needle moves gracefully,
back and forth.
If my heart was a compass you'd be north.
Risk it all,
cause I'll catch you if you fall.
Wherever you go,
if my heart was a house you'd be home.

Its at this point in almost every semester that I begin to take notice of all the work I have left to do. The tasks I need to tackle and the papers I still need to write. The mountain of work seems daunting and unconquerable, especially teetering on the edge of a vacation.

What makes this even more bizarre is that its the last time I will do any of this. It is the last time I will feel the end of semester panic.

And this time, I will take some advice that my mother so lovingly passes on to me:

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Its almost four, come on

I hate not being able to sleep.

More than that, I hate feeling tired, but not being able to sleep.

I also hate knowing that the world (read: this campus) is not going to recognize that I had trouble sleeping and its going to march on. Relentless, with lots and lots of noise.

Tomorrow morning, after I forget to keep trying to fall asleep and jerk awake before chapel and hurry there in what will inevitably be wet weather, I will think, "I should have slept more last night". As if thinking that will somehow improve the little sleep I did receive.

I suppose its okay though,
because the reason I can't sleep is I just can't seem to stop thinking about how happy I've been lately.

The Simple Truths,

After four years here, I am a glutton for laughter.
I expect the greater part of everyday to be spent in the company of excellent people.
Weekends like this one make me smile.
Yelling the loudest means you're right.

And the simplest and greatest truth-
I will never settle when it comes to friendship ever again.

On weather patterns and playgrounds,

Today, it is fifty degrees and misting. Our windows are unlocked, as Kurt Vonnegut predicted they would be, and you can smell something that reminds you of spring in the air. Its not quite spring yet, but it will be soon. We are anxious and the trees are anxious to clothe themselves in an appropriate fashion and smile at the sun.

However, on days like today when it could be snowing but isn't, I think about Brooklyn. I grew up there, in the back alley behind our apartment, and in the winter I would run from one end of the alley to the other, dodging cars and thinking my small world was gigantic. My grandmother and I used to crouch down together in the minuscule garden plot in the spring and she would tell me that Tiger Lily's were her favorite (because they were named after her). In the summertime I would sit on the porch and watch the Chinese children run by in their backpacks, swinging my legs and drinking ginger ale, thinking about nothing (a skill I have since lost).

It was in this time, this junction between winter and spring that I always liked best. For some reason the smells of wet earth and shimmering sidewalks always reminds me of afternoons at the playground. I would wear a rain jacket and my grandmother would hold my hand as we walked the streets to get there. At the park I could go on my own, safe within the peeling black bars.

Brooklyn playgrounds, when I was a child, were better than anything I have ever seen or imagined. I remember towering slides which would turn molten temperatures under the sun, so hot that you flew off as soon as you got to the bottom. I remember swings able to go so high and so free that you could close your eyes and lose your place in the universe. I remember spinning things that my father would turn, and turn, and turn until I couldn't walk straight.

But more than anything I remember something I called, theTowers. They were nothing more than columns of wood, painted red and faded to a warm pink, stacked next to each other with no space in between. The columns started high in the middle and slowly got shorter and shorter as they went out, with the result looking like a pyramid. I could climb all the way to the top and my grandmother would yell my name followed by something in Norwegian.

I would close my eyes, stare at the sky without questions, and become the queen of the world.

These features have disappeared from playgrounds now, even the Brooklyn ones. I think something great has been lost, but I am not a child anymore.

I never dream of flying, but I wish I did.

The bird girl saw the wings upon the jay
and thought that she would like to one day fly.
The colors of her wings would sure be grey
and never to the air were she to lie.
There is no other joy upon this earth
that she sought after with such a foolish heart
as when she thought of sky so near the hearth
and of the form she'd take, so sweet, such art.
So if you see this dreaming graceful girl
and if her eyes are lifted to the sky,
do see if wings out from her back uncurl
and flee from her to let her dreams abide.
Her feet were never meant to be kept down,
she finds no place in city, land, or town.

Another Pile of Wisdom,

"There is no way an unassisted human brain, which is nothing more than a dog's breakfast, three and half pounds of blood soaked sponge, could have written 'Stardust' let alone Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

"I feel and think as much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."
-Timequake (Kurt Vonnegut)

"I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease."
-Note From Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

"Life is so dear, dear heart. Live it with gallantry."

"So little time, dear, but what there is is sweet. I hope you are getting some sweetness in your busy life and that you feel at home in the world."

"Don't sink, boy. Fly. That's an old lady's advice. Fly."

"It takes a broken person to heal broken people."

"Life is a feast but we are only human, we're not tapeworms. The world is a paradise but there are mosquitoes."
-Pontoon (Garrison Keillor)

"They don't how, but they do know how to forget, and little by little they put aside the burning summer in their bodies and all they have is rage."

"I have shouted to God and the Virgin but they have not shouted back and I'm not interested in the still small voice. Surely a God can meet passion with passion?
She says he can.
Then he should."
-The Passion (Jeanette Winterson)

Once Upon a Time,

The books in my life have been numerous and varied.

Days like these when I have important things to do and I will do anything to avoid them, I think about the books. The books that have come to me and then we have parted in teary goodbyes. Most of these books are piled in various places in my basement on the island. Some of them are on shelves, most of them are not. Some of them prefer the windowsill where they can soak up the sun and become yellowed with age. Some are in dark corners where they ponder their own existence.

The characters in these books have left their pages and found spots in my head. They became friends and I loved them. Characters do not leave you, they just fill you up. They make you a bigger person.

Its days like these when I start to feel the weight of all the characters. When I try to let myself out but they all seem to stand in my way.

Is it possible
for the world
to look this way
forever?

A year, and some other undetermined length of time ago when I was living in a different part of the world, I woke up early. I woke up in the dark and got dressed in the dark and then I got on a train to another place I had never gone.

I drank hot coffee that left a singed spot on my tongue. I drifted in and out of sleep while some walls flashed by my windows. I ate yogurt out of a ceramic bowl and drank more coffee until my hands refused to sit still in my lap. Then, the sun rose.

The sun rose and I pulled out my camera and recorded France flashing by. I hunched my shoulders and tried to hide from the eyes of my fellow passengers, humbly self-conscious of stealing these images.

This morning I watched these videos again. France flashed my on my computer screen. Life is funny.