poor little neglected blog.

Five months it’s been. Sometimes (even though it is SUCH a cliche,) it is extraordinary to see how much things have changed. Absolutely extraordinary. I’m a college sophomore. I’m living in a completely new home. (Same city, at least, and I am remarkably finding more things to love about it each day.) I have crossed at least two important teenage milestones off my list (probably far more). I have lost nearly all of my best friends in a variety of ways and am spending a dangerous amount of time with myself. I’m working four part-time jobs and taking six courses and tutoring people in politics (whaaat?). It’s even remarkable how the curtain of humidity has finally yielded, leaving New York with this threateningly crisp fall air that makes me wonder how anyone could go out without a sweater on their backs!

This has been a catch-up blog. I’ve got to get back to learning about cogent and fallacious reasoning, Cro-Magnon man, Philip K. Dick’s trippy novels, supply and demand curves, and exponential functions. Yes. Fun.

APRIL FOOLS!

Happy Birthday Fred & George Weasley!

Oh yeah, I basically didn’t get into college. I applied to 9 schools and I was waitlisted at 3, rejected at 5, and got accepted to my backup. So I am probably going to Oregon. That’s kind of scary. I’m getting really scared of everything. But for now I really just need to focus on making the end of my semester great.

Here’s a fun and random Facebook conversation.

Brenna:

You’re very wise sometimes.

Rob:

maybe I’m just good at seeming wise.

I haven’t decided yet.

but what’s the difference?

Maybe wisdom is just like most country songs.

You throw in enough cliches hillbilly imagery and good old fashioned heartbreak experienced by a good natured but ultimately uninteresting guy and it just seems to work.

people eat it up.

here watch

tractor, beer, fence, barn, love, field, the term daddy, and a beat up old car.

there

a country song distilled.

the same can be done with most music I should think.

or lyrics at any rate

music is really just auditory math.

I wish I had the capability to distill it into numbers for you.

clothingpoetrycollege FAIL

I feel like I should write… but I haven’t got much to write about. I feel like I am hanging in this scary limbo, waiting another month and a half for the letters that are going to, in part, determine my future. A lot of my friends already know where they’re going to college, and I just really want to have that security. RAWR.

I also have the strange predicament of an overflowing closet, yet boredom with a lot of my clothes. I like all my clothes, but I feel like I only wear 1/3 of them on a regular basis. A lot of stuff I keep because I know I’m going to need it at some point, like for job interviews or something, but I just don’t wear it all the time. Other stuff I just get self-conscious about, and end up wearing the same old stuff that I feel good is. ‘Tis tres annoying.

Books, books, books. So many to read. Currently: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Good so far but tough to keep up with. Here’s something that sucks: I spent a lot of time last week editing pieces for my school literary journal, and then with my incessant working, forgot to submit them by deadline. Spiffy. FAIL.

run and write!

Busy busy busy busy. It’s almost like I have an OFF and ON setting and no in between. I am happy about this busy but I just need to get used to juggling things again, and for instance, planning ahead so I don’t have to skip dance.  Therefore I have instated a few rules for the semester in progress.

First, the two R’s. Run and wRite. I must run and write at least three days out of the week.

Once I’ve worked on and perfected the rhythm of running and writing more frequently, I will add new rules. For now, I have Statistics and Spanish work to do!

of constant cliché dodging

I try so hard not to write—or speak—in clichés, but trying to hard to do anything means it is inevitable that something will go wrong. I can’t get away from clichés. I am probably using one right now, in this bit of prose. I cannot write without thinking about them: either thinking about how dumb they sound or thinking about how not to use them. This is, perhaps, the biggest flaw in my writing. I wish I could write effortlessly again. It’s been so hard as of late. Nothing is flowing and everything sounds boring, jaded, and done before. The only thing I can do is cling to the one work of fiction that I wrote and love and just keep working to make it better—but it is so clichéd as well and my characters are starting to frustrate me.

Not only is my writing cliché nowadays– my life is starting to sound like an episode of Degrassi, a Taylor Swift song and a John Green book all wrapped in one.  How do you get away from clichés? How do you make your writing flow again? I need HELP.

holiday freedom!

Ahh, break.  Absolutely nothing to do and everything to do. Eating chocolate squares and drinking tea and wearing my new rose perfume and riding trains and listening to music and shopping and eating thai food and walkingwalkingwalking and picture taking, chess playing, hot cocoa sipping, ice skating. I love it.

I feel as if I cannot properly write down all that needs to be said here. Christmas was amazing and I got loads of gorgeous clothes, books, and lovely things. (Hopper prints for my wall, for instance!) I still have weeks of break, so this is going to be completely amazing. I am looking forward to it all.

I’m going to be working on ze novel because it needs to be worked on. There is no longer an excuse, with all my excess time, so that is what I will go do right now. TA!

union square

With the man I love who loves me not,
I walked in the street-lamps’ flare;
We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square.

I leaned to catch the words he said
That were light as a snowflake falling;
Ah well that he never leaned to hear
The words my heart was calling.

And on we walked and on we walked
Past the fiery lights of the picture shows —
Where the girls with thirsty eyes go by
On the errand each man knows.

And on we walked and on we walked,
At the door at last we said good-bye;
I knew by his smile he had not heard
My heart’s unuttered cry.

With the man I love who loves me not
I walked in the street-lamps’ flare —
But oh, the girls who can ask for love
In the lights of Union Square.

-Sara Teasdale

quick update and back to the Anna Karenina!

This is how people lose their minds.

They delude themselves into thinking that everything’s under control; I’m getting food and exercise and doing all of my reading and some pleasure reading on top of that and seeing my friends. Yup, life is just fine.

Then, BOOM! Your life turns into a rejected Lifetime movie script (“Too dramatic to be real,” the producer says,) and run around like a zombie crying and hugging your time turner/Gryffindor scarf/wand for comfort as you dash from class to class and library to dance to home. You eat nothing but tea and poptarts because getting real food takes too long. Your back and neck ache from lugging around your computer and your school bag everyday and hunching over the computer all night.

I guess I really need this Breaking out of the Muggle Mindset thing.

’tis a gift to be simple

I’ve found that just a bit of order can make mundane things like waking up on Thanksgiving and making tea and watching the parade with children and doughnuts a whole lot more enjoyable. I’m finding it hilarious that I am returning to the things I originally shunned when I became a teenager. When I turned thirteen I think I suddenly thought things were going to change. Now I think I care even less about appearances and what people think. I always felt like I should always be growing more aware of my appearance and of what people think of me, but I don’t. I just put up on old pink, flowered canopy for my bed. It’s fabulous. My room is clean and flowered and colorful and there is tons of tea in our cabinets and if my Dad wasn’t such a Scrooge, I think I would be perfectly content this holiday.

I got tons of new books I don’t know where to begin. Here’s a list of what I am reading or about to read:

• Candor by Pam Bachorz
• The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls by Morton Thomas
• Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
• The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly
• The Price of Honor by Jan Goodwin
• The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart
• Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi
• Men and Women by Margaret Mead
• God Among the Shakers by Suzanne Skees

Alas, the list is even longer than I thought. That’s not even counting the books on my shelves that I haven’t yet read. I guess I will have to read a lot this holiday season!

 

It’s officially Christmas time! I have just loaded my ipod with tons of appropriate music. I’m excited! 🙂

romanticisms

You complete me. You saw me when I was invisible. You had me at hello. I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her. I love you, most ardently. We’ll always have Paris. You jump, I jump Jack. Kiss me.  Kiss me as if it were the last time. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

Aaaaas yooooou wiiiiiish.

I don’t have time to blog but I am anyway. Next week is my birthday and I want to eat India food and paint my hands with henna and watch old movies. Pride and Prejudice is a definite must, probably Casablanca as well. AND I also really want to see An Education, a movie with Peter Saarsgard and Carey Mulligan, but it isn’t out anywhere. Hrmmmmph.

I’ve always picked up from subtle insinuation that most people think Woody Allen is obnoxious. I don’t know if this is true, but I think he’s fabulous.

My life is exploding right now in a not so good way. I think I may possibly have it under control but I don’t know. Check back at a future date for a consensus on that.