"he moves me in an epiphany of waterfalls"

I miss you and the peculiar combination of circumstances that allowed us to tolerate each other. I'm not entirely certain that you're academically happy here, but you always said that if you cared for it, your hair would be so lovely. I passed you on the street the other day, coincidentally, awkwardly, and as you turned back to wave hello I realized that your hair was perfect, longer than ever and silky curled at the dark tips.

Stunning. I envy your social ease, the way you find your niche and your activities and, apparently, your boys. I took the school side, anyway, reaching further than we ever thought I could go. I have things to do and places to be, and that's enough.

But are you happy?

reading: feministing
listening to: dashboard confessional

demi cote

I've been having musical adventures for the last few days. I also haven't been doing my French homework (but I found the book I'm presenting on next week, so that's mildly encouraging).

Spring break is getting more and more complicated. Hopefully having company on the ride down will defray the boredom, and a bit of the expense. Never mind you that, to leave at 11am, I have to be at the barn before 8 if I want to ride and be back by 10 to shower and finish packing and leave. At least it might be warm.

Having coffee with J. was so nice today. I hope we can make it a regular thing -- friends are not easy to come by right now, let alone ones that make me laugh.

Sleep and I aren't getting along in these current weeks. Reading books about cholera epidemics isn't helping my comfort levels, either.

Jump, again: this is one of the most cheerful tracks on Girlyman's "Joyful Sign" but I still think it's sad.

we are breathing
we are seething
we are hardly underway
we have high hopes
like the old popes
even saint peter's bones decay

raspberry vinagrette

[This hour I tell things in confidence,
I will not tell everyone but I will tell you.]
-Walt Whitman

Oh, thou, within whose mighty poet-heart
two fathomless abysses are intertwined:
the deepness of the pure, blue heavens and
the softly cradled deepness of the earth;
within whose heart arose the sun, the moon,
and where, in all their bright magnificence,
stars without number blazed, whole worlds of stars;
within whose heart the buds of May awoke,
and where the harsh voice of thunder sand
beside the twitter of the nightingale;
within whose overwhelming chant one feels
the pulse of nature, its omnipotence;

immortal bard, I honor thee: I kneel
upon thy dust, before thy dust, and sing.
-Morris Rosenfeld

Props to anyone who can tell me how those two are related.

Dark chocolate peanut m&m's - the best. Go try some.

I thought I had nothing else to say, but apparently I was wrong. I love this song beyond all reason, love it in a windows down music up country roads during the summer kind of way. I don't really drive around for the fun of it anymore but this is the kind of song that makes me want to do it again. [king of night vision, king of insight].

I am like this sometimes. I had a wildly disappointing morning, between only getting a few hours of sleep, deciding not to go to class and sleep in only to discover that I didn't feel well and couldn't get back to sleep. I ended up doing work and freaking out about my French paper (just finished that, finally) and then going to ride, at least. Which made me spinningly, almost violently, happy -- and then I swung back to agonizing. So then I spent four hours writing a four page paper.

The gym, laundry, and dinner all fit in there somewhere. Now I am sitting with my eyes pressed closed and my back against the wall, avoiding the stare of the bright spotlights I have on to keep me from falling asleep. I am pretending that I won't be woken up in the night or tailed during the morning by wave after wave of pain. I'm going to be disappointed if I have to spend the afternoon lying in bed, especially since I can go to kendo tomorrow if I feel up to it.

There's nothing I can do except wait, and stay still. I am a girl, and that's fine with me, except I'm never very far away from bleeding. Which in the past has variably involved pain, pain, sickness, periodic passing out and a little pain for good measure.

But hey. You take what you can get, right?

reading: my french paper
listening to : Galileo // The Indigo Girls

horse sports

Polo (or, poyo?) is insane.

Have you ever watched a rugby game? Well, polo is like rugby, except there is less mud and falling down. Compensated for by the presence of long wooden mallets (which are swung in massive arcs by the players) and hard white polo balls.

Did I mention there are six horses galloping at full speed, with six riders all trying to run/shove each other off -- while chasing the ball, trying to whack it with the mallet, neck-reining with two sets of reins and carrying four-foot dressage whips. And using them.

So basically it's awesome.

I'm considering fangirling the UVa men's polo team. Not seriously. But a little bit.

oh except for the summer wind

Lying in bed for half an hour between work and my next class, lazily watching my history paper print out and scanning readings before class, is such a luxury.

I love living in the middle of things, being able to come home for a few minutes and watch the sunlight pour into my little room. Being able to walk out the outer door whenever I feel lonely or bored and instantly being surrounded by people, people on their way to class or going running or emerging from the dining hall.

Plus I never have to leave to go anywhere twenty minutes beforehand. Winner.

i'm totally gonna electrocute you

Getting up early just so I can lie in bed for three hours is the best.

No, not pointless, absolutely the best. I was mildly irritated when there were people being loud in the bathroom at 8am on a Saturday morning. But, to be realistic, I'd be getting up early anyway. I just got to see the light when it was all new and clear and then got some reading done.

Now I'm rewarding myself with mindless DVD-watching and will soon be dropping by chez parents to pick up a present (and hopefully breakfast/lunch). Then I will go ride for the whole afternoon, and then the girlfriend will come visit me!

And then we have Vagina Monologues. Winnar.

your brown skin shining in the sun

http://www.twloha.com

When I hear about things like this I scrutinize the mission statement. I look for gentility, intensity, humane methodology, courage / an absence of fear, and a true desire to reach out to people. More than anything, I want to see patience, an understanding that forced treatment / rehabilitation will terrorize someone who's already vulnerable, sometimes beyond belief.

I respect this project. I'm much more romanced by grassroots organizing, as opposed to institutionalized branching-out. For one, I don't trust the medicinal systems in this country (usually for other reasons but also for things like mandatory therapy). For another, I happen to believe that people who start grassroots movements do so for reasons that are personal as well as social/political. They're on the ground and they often have firsthand experience with their issues. This usually prevents them from acting like total fuckups.

I respect it, but I find it a little self-serving and more than a little divisive. I'm also not comfortable with ... I can't put my finger on it. I won't be writing "love" on my arms tomorrow. I will take note of people who do, and people who can't. And that's all.

reading: The Jews of The United States // Hasa Diner
listening to : Teenage Dirtbag // The Hullabahoos

each gate will open another

I've got to start going to sleep early again. My reticence to go to bed at a normal hour is twofold: I *hate* lying awake, staring blindly into the dark waiting to fall asleep, and the internet is just so damn easy. All of a sudden, checking the news at one am seems like an essential part of my day.

I feel like I should be getting something done. And I'm going to be so tired in my 8am tomorrow.

Greg's memorial service was nice. Very Protestant, endless hymn verses and we sat down the whole time. There was an enormous flower arrangement right in the middle of the choir. Bradley said it best -- I'm uncomfortable with institutionalized religion. But it was okay, since I went for Faeryn, and Maya, and to watch Master Campbell be quietly awkward.

Someone asked me if my family was Quaker today. I just looked at him, and then I thought about what it might have been like, not to have been Catholic. Would I have been as intense, and would I still have extracted myself? And if I had, would I have been able to go back? I'm [finally] trying to square with Christianity, because holding it against the world is exhausting. I've been seeing it abused so often, though (and I don't just mean historically) -- too often for me to feel better than mildly-uneasy about organized religion.

reading: my email
listening to: tout doucement // feist

meditations on the economic recession.

Stimulus package passed the Senate today.

Now, while I am a self-respecting liberal lady who believes that the economic recession is the fault of stupid anti-progressive tax cuts and similarly shortsighted measures that fail to account for the poor, especially women and children of color, and emphasize benefits for the wealthy capitalists and white businessmen who already have money, this is bitchin' good news.

Here's why: I am edging close to damn broke. I owe my girlfriend three hundred dollars. I want to buy tack that will probably cost three times that. My car will very soon need repairs, gas prices aren't exactly on the decline, and I need to get outfitted with practice and steel weapons of all sorts in preparing for upcoming kendo advancements. I like to travel. I like Rhode Island, and Ausin, and Williamsburg, and *especially* I like Europe. Well, the idea of Europe, anyway.

Here's why else: purported advancements of tax refunds to come for the next few years, to arrive in May, on the order of a few hundred dollars. Granted, that may not mean much to someone who only makes a few thousand a year but anything is something.

Couple that with my respectable (read: three figure) refund from this fiscal year, the money my mother is refunding me for housing deposits, and the paychecks from work that should start rolling in within the next couple of weeks. Win.

So, don't hate me too much when I say that I hope this anti-recession stimulus package actually materializes. Likes me the ability to afford my lifestyle.

spelled out on a double word and triple letter score

I am slipping out of focus. Unfortunately, I don't have a f-stop or a shutter speed delay; I can't open a textedit file and reset my integer value and reshoot my evening. I'm not a rare manuscript, I'm just someone who has packet after packet of American Jewish History primary source readings.

Shakespeare and Amazing Grace took it out of me tonight. I recommend that you see the latter if you have any interest in the Atlantic slave trade and the British Empire. Or in laudanum.

I need to:
read Jessica's emails
pick up my umbrella, bank card, and Pepsi's papers*
finally catch up on Jewish History reading
go to the gym / running
brush up on my pagan current events; followed by ->
get over myself and have a real conversation with Keitly (sp?)
find out why Lenore isn't getting my messages (damn phones)

In that order.

Now I'm going to do a crossword puzzle, read international news, and prod my buddy list occasionally to see if anyone of interest surfaces. I love the internet.

listening to : my moon my man / feist
reading : lemonde.fr

this is the way that we love

I'm wandering away from my paper yet again, despite the fact that it's only two pages long and I have about three sentences to go.

School is so exhausting. Everyone in my history seminar spent the ten minutes before class started counting how many times they'd seen each other at some frat party last Saturday. Gag me with a rusty spoon. Since when is "sleeping until 4pm" a bragging point? If I'm going to be in bed all day, it had damn well better be for more than just passing out.

This is my way of saying that it's 11:30pm and I'm ready to fall over from tired. I didn't realize how mentally *taxing* it would be to talk about slavery as a global phenomenon for two and a half hours on Monday nights. It's especially taxing when you have to explain to the frat boy across from you what "the patriarchy" is ... and he STILL doesn't get it. Tabula rasa, baby. And not in a good way.

Paper finished, self put in bed. Seven hours of sleep and then we start over.