you take it on faith, you take it to the heart

A solid couple of hours of organizing and then I am off to the barn. Despite the sub-30 degree temperatures, "having" to go to the barn every day to feed Doughboy, Nan's adorable retired miniature showhorse, is a delight. My personal resolve is to ride Pepsi every day until I leave for France. There is something about being a part of the barn's literal everyday life that lets you see so much more than just your horse.

I'm in love with my latest mixtape and I've circled tomorrow night in highlighter on my metaphorical calendar.

I think I'm going to purge some of the old teenage-me things from my room -- clear the bulletin board of senior year's reminders (keeping those that mean something, like my first test invite in kendo and my bryn mawr acceptance letter), organize the standing bookshelf in a way that makes sense, leave some shelves empty.

Today when I made my bed I tucked the sheets underneath in the way that we do together, and folded the duvet back to half-length. Then I slatted the blinds, looked around, and realized maybe all I need is a more peaceful place to call home, rather than a larger space for useless things.

I'm wearing a new sweater, to top it all off. A splurge, but one I look very warm and collegiate and incredibly cozy in, and one I will probably wear on the plane to Lyon. Two weeks, by the way!

will you count me in?

I never know how to start these things. I can't sleep, which is the truth of why I'm here, lying on my back with my old glasses on, instead of the slightly different lying on my stomach with my eyes closed, sleeping peacefully.

The amount of work I am accomplishing is staggering, my commitment to showing up for things (classes, appointments, social promises) slightly less so. I can't believe it's already December, that month we loathe like no other. Even February, with its chilling rain and miserable shortness, doesn't approach this dreaded "holiday season."

I get halfway down the screen and realize honestly? I have nothing left to say.

Edit: I feel horribly sick and I know that it's my mind more than my body that is actually feeling this way, but that isn't making it better.

Here's hoping things get better soon.

maybe you were kidnapped, tied up, and held for ransom?

No matter how quickly I rush home from work, how fast I eat, how rapidly and semi-carelessly I fulfill the immediate academic requirements of the day, I am only left with fifteen minute breaks in the day.

With my whole heart, I just want this semester to be over and done. Even though I have so many things to do before January 5th, I would gladly take the stress of doing those, rather than the drawn out, burning out, endlessly aching feeling of these classes.

Among the increasingly impossible stack of everyday things that I am running after is now taking care of the sick. I am not particularly maternal by nature but I do know how to be humbly attentive, as long as my patience holds out. Every time you drift away from me in slight delirium, and I have to leave to attend to a thousand other things, I go slightly catatonic with hurt and silence.

I have never suffered from such a profound lack of discourse as I am experiencing right now. I lack any words strong enough to penetrate the protective shell of numbness, and its subset of warm affection, down to unspeakably blank sadness around which everything else rotates.

Reading old Charlottesville City School Board papers from the desegregation process yesterday at work, I contemplated why we are weak and amnesiac. I knew people mentioned in those bulletins, and I knew that they had been involved when I was attending the very high school that was to be the result of these battle lines. But how could I have brushed that aside so lightly? Why are we constantly apathetic about the very real struggles of our parents' generation?

And why am I not as strong or as self-sacrificing as my own actual parents? I still don't understand how they unrolled their private drama and still functioned as a unit, always overshadowed by our needs, constantly at odds with their own families.

Maybe I just had less to lose, or less desire to save what I had. Or more of a self-destructive pride in just being free.

a rebel without a clue

Last night was the first time I really talked, a full disclosure from beginning to end, and even while I was being held and cradled and apologized to, I still wondered if I felt anything yet.

Mostly I am just focused on getting through.
-through the hundreds of pages of reading I am behind
-through the raging cold/virus I am fighting
-through the mid-range steps of my meandering path to Lyon (update: plane tickets purchased!)
-through the massive piles of clean laundry, the lack of sleep pushing behind my eyes, the books I have to read that I can't even find
-through the clinging attachment that leads me to write French papers with you curled up in my bed, fast asleep with a stuffed pony under one arm
-through yielding, giving in, allowing myself just to be admired and stretched out and wholly decadent.

I'm skipping class to get homework done, which strongly suggests that I should go do that reading now.

the fountain of apollo at the garden of versailles

Six songs for the current moment, in a specific order:

Viva La Vida // Coldplay
Forever // Chris Brown
Butterfly // Mason Jennings
Starting Now // Ingrid Michaelson
Crazy Faith // Alison Krauss
Mary Jane's Last Dance // Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Isn't that just about everything?

i can't spell it out for you

I got the email telling me I don't find out about Lyon until Wednesday, which made me pathetically grateful because I have been pushing this decision back so hard already.

What else is there to say? I am still feeling the burnout from midterms (which went over fine, thankfully), and this constant exhaustion is nipping at my shoulders whenever I turn around. I am a class-skipper, a lazy lieabout, a girl who avoids conversations because they make my head pound, swimming with feelings and with apathy.

And how long has it been since I've felt normal, without the blood rushing to my head, without starry wind cutting against me, without the ache settling deep somewhere at the base of my spine? My fingers are going from brown to purple at the tips because the heat still isn't on here, despite the frost from the past two nights, and the familiar pulsating ache is building behind my eyes.

Coffee with Nora tonight, looking forward to that. Perhaps I will lie about, indulge, be decadent, read Emile Zola in translation (I swear that Late Victorian Fiction is ruining any moral judgment I had left, and any barriers to desire), and then head to Alderman.

Speaking of decadence, here are my current indulgences: Au Bonheur des Dames. Art chocolate. Long showers just to stay warm. Eye makeup. The Pussycat Dolls song entitled "I Don't Need a Man". Instructions.

it'll take more than just a breeze to make me fall overboard

It's already October? How did the summer get away from us and fall rush in so quickly?

My Lyon application is due a week from yesterday -- how terrifying and fascinating all at once. I've been truly reticient to discuss this, mostly because I am terrified that if one person manages to talk me out of it, I won't ever be brave enough to go.

At the same time, I can't help but see the lure of stepping out of this life and these life-things and doing something radically different.

For now, I am skimping on my DMP reading and looking forward very much to this afternoon, when I will not have to worry about classes until Tuesday. Yay, fall reading days! Unfortunately, I really will be reading for most of them, since the Late Victorian Fiction midterm is the Wednesday we get back.

I am so glad I took that class. It might be my favorite this semester.

For now, I am a little bit thinking of how to begin to pursue something that I've wanted to speak out on for a long time -- the distressingly negative and repressive attitudes of our culture toward menstruation. This discussion of course brings in issues about parenting, female puberty, sexuality and sexual development, birth control, fertility, pregnancy & childbirth, and menopause, to name a few. All of these are important parts of feminist discourse, but I want to focus on the straightforward physical phenomenon of monthly bleeding and the range of attitudes surrounding it.

Here are the things I want to change: shame, secrecy, and negativity about menstruation. Unfounded fears and stereotypes about menstruating women (including the infamous diagnosis of PMS). The disdain many (most?) women feel about their cycles, and the corresponding lack of interest in alternative menstruation options.

And most importantly, I want to see a radical shift in the way that we teach our daughters (the inheritors of third wave feminism and the succeeding generation to ourselves) about the incredibly creative power of their bodies.