twisted Sainthood…

The dreams of twisted and mutilated Saints have returned to my nightly adventures. It sounds freaky, philosophical and religious, but it’s really just my brain freaking out about my skeletal alignment. Somehow my spine and pelvis have twisted around again and my legs are different lengths and that makes my hips hurt and puts stones along my back and coaxes my scapula to reattach from the rest of me. I’m sixteen for goodness’ sake! I hate to think of how hunch-backed, achy and creaky I will be in 70 or 80 years…

I have officially filled up every shelf space for books in my room. I have three full bookcases, one bookcase with a shelf removed so I can stuff them all into the stacks, two other wall shelves filled, and a few piles overflowing onto other non-book areas of the room. HOW WILL I BE ABLE TO TAKE THEM ALL TO COLLEGE WITH ME?!

edna st. vincent millay

(I wish I had something to say! I love autumn so much…trying to enjoy it!) I love this poem:

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:

Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.

No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;

To give, to sell at auction, to destroy.

When you are blind to moonlight on the bed,

When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,

Shall quavering caution from this house instead

Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?

All that delightful youth forbears to spend

Molestful age inherits, and the ground

Will have us; therefore, while we’re young, my friend —

The Latin’s vulgar, but the advice is sound.

Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here

For age to invest in compromise and fear.

poetry day.

Thick, hot, spicy Indian soup that reminds me of a different place, far, far away. Somewhere over the rainbow where cameras talk and the hot crusted earth reminds you of the danger of romantics.  Where love seems real and cities still have magic and a favorite band blaring through the open windows of a beat-up old truck can remind you that the world is still beautiful. The things I’ve heard– I still don’t believe them. Because you still have magic, and you’re the only one left.

Siamese located left of pole on wall.  Take your anorexics and broken marriages far away from me. That is perfection.

[Insert obligatory change of seasons post here.]

I love seasons changing. Suddenly your wardrobe shifts and your days feel different and you have intense desires to eat nothing but soup. You suddenly want to drink way more tea and cocoa than should be allowed and write long thoughtful novels and shut yourself in your room with an imaginary fireplace.

I’m home alone right now, and the chilly late September air is blowing in through the window, turning me from a sock-hater to a sock-lover. I’m curled up under a sleeping bag, simultaneously working on a paper, a creative writing thing, and watching Gilmore Girls. (Do I even need to write that down anymore? I’m always watching Gilmore Girls. It’s pathetic, but it’s better than drugs, I guess.) The air is brisk enough to seep through my sweater but not potent enough to get to my toes under the layers of socks and sleeping bags. I can’t wait. CAN’T WAIT. Next week begins my absolute favorite month of the year. It always passes by too quickly, like a car driving by so fast you can’t catch what was written on it’s bright pink bumper sticker.

READ something by Francesca Lia Block, if you haven’t. I think she’s brilliant.

Number of pages of Russian literature read this year: 370

Episode of Gilmore Girls (on my re-watch of the whole series): 3. 12

love, Princess B.

That’s All She Wrote.

My life right now:

-School school school school

-Anthropology work that isn’t required just ’cause I like it.

-Gilmore Girls and Bones re-runs

- Balsamic Vinegar (some things never change…)

-DANCE (holyfreakingcow ouch. Spent half of last week on the couch with heat packs, ice packs and tubes of IcyHot.)

-My writing bones are itching but I have no time…can’t wait for NANOWRIMO!

-HatP’s concert this weekend with Haley and HPA people and Caroline!

P.S. A whole post on how Wrock concerts are the closest thing I’ve had to a religious experience in my life later this week.

P.P.S. New Bones tomorrow!

Atonement: Part I

There she lies, atoned

greedy snakes swallow whole

the fruit of her palm.

Wrap coils around her flesh

and wring her like a bloodied cloth.

Each time she unsticks

her twisted body,

hip from rib, breast from bone,

the tear down her side

reveals a juice like warm sickly sunshine.

Snakes slither, poison ivy

murdered by mud

the virgin mary bleeds no more.

“Dead Souls and a really big globe.”

As my second week of “college” is finishing up, I have come to a verdict: I love it!

Beyond my brilliant classes, waking up at a normal hour (as in 8 am, not 5!) helps to keep my sleep schedule normal. Unlike high school, nobody is dozing off in college classes! Also, getting home relatively early is great, because I always have a good amount of my day left to work on school work, extra-curricular stuff, and etc.

Anthropology, Government and Politics, and Russian Lit are all fantastic, and certainly my favorite courses. I’m also taking a gym/health class for my High School requirments, and a Freshman Seminar thing which is pretty average. RUSSIAN LITERATURE makes my brain on fire. Everyday it is like some miraculous discussion where my mind gets sucked out and replaced with a hungry, hungry sponge. And my teacher has these perfect googly-eyed Professor glasses…you almost have to laugh at the perfection! I’m enjoying Dead Souls, and can’t wait to get started on my POSHLOST paper!

The work is perfect…it’s like all the best parts of learning, without the busy work and silly hand-in things, tweaked just to my level of intelligence. I can’t wait to go to college for real next year!

I should really stop putting Wellesley paraphenalia on my notebooks and walls. I keep imagining myself there next year. I keep saying  in my head, “Next year, when I’m at Wellesley…” What if I don’t get in? What if by some miracle I get into Harvard or something and have to choose? I don’t know what I would do. And no matter how qualified my family thinks I am, there is no guarantee of my admission there. SIGH.

P.S. Been watching too much Gilmore Girls as usual. I’m just starting the 3rd season in my complete series re-watch (for the 3rd time.) It’s one of those things that makes you want to do work though. Like a visual motivater.

Number of pages of Russian Literature read this year: 164

Death, Melancholy and Chichikov

Last Friday, “…we headed to Beacon to visit Eric and Cath and Owen, which is always fun, but again, bittersweet. I felt like I was saying goodbye to two people, when only one was actually leaving in the near future.”

I felt like I was saying goodbye to two people because I was.  The next day I was asked how Eric was and told people he looked fine, considering the circumstances. A few hours after that, my dad told me he had passed away the day before. I was shocked, and spent a few hours under my blankets in shock. I was so out of it, I didn’t even realize when Haley came to visit me. I was starting school the next day, and Kara had already left for college, and everything was all wrong.

I still can’t say I’m okay, because nothing feels concrete to me. After initially hearing the news and being upset, I knew I had to go back into normal Brenna mode to deal with the oncoming stress truck I was about to be hit with by school and dance starting up. There’s going to be a memorial service, but there was no public funeral, no wake, no burial. And since it wasn’t put before my very eyes in that concrete way, I still cannot fully believe it.

I plowed through the next week, working too much and drowning myself in my schoolwork. These distractions were accidental, but useful ways not to think about death. I hate death. Hate it. Not only because I don’t want to see someone go, but because I hate seeing all those sad, pathetic humans the dead leave behind. We are the only creature on the planet that forsees our mortality, and yet after millions of years, we still haven’t found a way to better handle the crushing sadness it brings. So when I found myself wiping away tears one early morning at work in reaction to a PBS special about children without access to education, I knew it wasn’t completely in response to an young Iranian girl’s desire to learn. (Although it was really depressing to watch after a mind-blowing first week of classes.)

Let’s stop being depressing though. I have far more urgent matters to deal with such as the atrocious state of my hair, my imminent first day of dance (during which I will inevitably get upset over my lack of flexibility,) and keeping up with Chichikov and Manilov and all the other crazy Russian names in Dead Souls.

P.S.  I got super excited when I learned we were reading Dead Souls in Russian Lit, because as any Gilmore Girls aficianado will know, it is the novel Rory was reading before she goes to watch the Brady Bunch Variety Show with Lorelai the morning she got her Harvard Application in the 3rd season.

Number of pages of Russian Literature read this year: 69

Back to Blogging

It’s been quite a 48 hours. Leaving, returning and more leaving. Things have been clearing up for me, with help from subtle symbolism which I take as the world hinting at me to think about things. I am returning to this blog because I’ve found too much to write about to NOT write about it.

For starters, I flew home from Oregon on Thursday night. The return from me first real travel trip, which I took alone. I did so much in Oregon, and came back with many memories and a longing for my dear Uncle to live closer than 2,000 miles away, but most of all, I came back with quite a wanderlust! I want to travel more, and I’m already searching for tickets to Europe fr next summer. Which brings me to my next point of business:

It’s college leaving time. Even though I’m kind of going to college, I’m still technically a dependent minor, a senior in high school. But being so close to the college transition age, I know many people who are heading off to college in the next week. Today was my last day with my Kara before she leaves, tomorrow morning, for college. It’s not even that far away, but the idea of her leaving, the whole day was bittersweet. We wanted Indian food but found that the world was working against us in every possible way to get it, so we ended up at Panera, eating bread with bread and a side of soup.  Some delicious green apple Jones soda was also involved. The whole day was unusually giggly. My friends, especially Kara and Haley and I, are like stand up comics when we’re together. And while all of our giggles were natural, I couldn’t help but feel like we were trying to enjoy in all the laughter we had together while we were still together. The dissolve of our summer posse was approaching, with Nava and Jamie already left for school, we were the lone straglers.

After Panera and a brief collection of stuff at Kara’s house, we headed to Beacon to visit Eric and Cath and Owen, which is always fun, but again, bittersweet. I felt like I was saying goodbye to two people, when only one was actually leaving in the near future. The universe sent us a pick-me-up; a giggle fest trip to the grocery store. The trip was specifically to buy Italian bread, but we got everything but. We got the milk we were supposed to, and then spent far too long in the ice cream aisle. We decided on three flavors; green tea, chocolate and PANDA PAWS. You can imagine how delicious these all were. We finally found the Italian bread after walking past it three times, and returned back for more eating and socializing.

Back at Kara’s, we were supposed to have a last shabang, but I knew it would be everything but. Everyone was panicked with last minute packing (everyone, that is, except Adam, who happily played video games and muttered one-syllable responses to all our questions,) and we had a mild crisis involving Ducky, Kara’s beloved duck. She sort of freaked out when we couldn’t find him, and couldn’t bear the thought of facing college without Ducky! We found him, of course, but not before the crisis had emotionally strained the poor little college-goer. She said, “All my fears about college have now been put into this duck.” And we searched among the teenager-ish remains of this 18 year olds room for the beloved childhood duck. It was somehow the last thing from childhood that she tried to hold on to.

And now I am home, watching Gilmore Girls. What else is knew? I may have a problem.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The beginning was just amazing; a perfect transition into a new movie while reminding you of the fact that the incident at the Ministry had JUST happened.  And the caring way that Dumbledore puts his arm around Harry…perfect.

I still love the fact that there is a “MAGIC” perfume ad that Dumbledore is looking at.

The Burrow seemed REAL. I loved it, and I want to live in it. The first scene where Harry arrives at the Burrow is just perfect. SPEARMINT TOOTHPASTE. And the scene in Ron’s room….really really seems like a bunch of sixteen year olds. Perfect.

The best thing about this movie is how REAL everything feels. The actors were completely in their roles, and the characterization was not static; you could see the humility and vulnerability of Hermione, and HARRY was just so perfect. All of the acting has improved enourmously, especially Dan and Emma, who I’ve always liked but often would overact in earlier films. And as always, Rupert was RONALD WEASLEY.

Tom Felton as Draco was fantastic as well, you could really feel his struggles and empathize with him.

ALL of the Ron and Hermione scenes were perfect. As Andrew Slack said, they took all subtlety out of the HBP romance in the book for the movie.

The Tom Riddles were really really creepy. But even though this film was super dark, it was perfectly balanced with the everyday teenaged stuff. It was great, and it felt so real to me because the Trio is 16 in this one, mirroring my age, and it made me feel like I was part of the movie.

AHHH I need to see it again it was all so perfect.