watching: my mistakes play like a movie before me
listening to: garth brooks
mood: in suspension


Today I went for a bike ride with my mother early in the day. I've been a lot more active lately, I don't know why, I eat less and exercise more- sometimes I exercise instead of eating, I'm not sure if I'm developing good habits or bad ones. After "lunch" which was basically just one of the cookies my mother was making and a little bit of dough, I played a bit of DDR which thoroughly wore me out.
I played that song that goes, "Nice, sweet, fantastique". I used to have that song, those three words of that song, stuck in my head for days at a time, all because of Michael. He used to play that song, I think, sophomore year, when he wasn't playing Candy. Anyway, having that song stuck in my head made me think of him. I hope things aren't different next year now that Shit Has Gone Down. I definitely believe in the 'sistas before mistas' approach to relationship conflicts, but what if the 'mista' in question is much more like a friend to you than he ever was a 'boy'? How do you choose between feuding 'sistas'? I guess for now I'll just take the Harry Potter approach and while one friend is clearly in the wrong and the other clearly in the right I'll just hang in there, keep very quiet, and hope that eventually there can be a reconciliation.

Somethings have been happening lately that have made me really annoyed, but recently I realized that what this particular guy is doing to me at the moment is not unlike what I was doing to a different guy last summer, and I wonder if what is annoying me so thoroughly is what he is actually doing, or the way I can see this undesirable trait mirrored in myself. Just like I think that everyone needs to have their heart broken (just so they appreciate how it feels when they break the hearts of others), I think people can really benefit from seeing the bitchy crappy things they do visited upon them. That is, if you can admit that what's going on is some sort of cosmic learning experience, if not blatent cosmic payback, and you should take heed. I just wish I had these bad things happen to me before I had a chance to do them to other people, so I would be able to stop myself. They say good judgement always comes from experience, which very often comes from bad judgement. Cruelly true.

Anyway, after DDR I slept until 3:00 in the afternoon when my mother came back home. So much for partying up my last day of freedom before I start work tomorrow. Somehow knowing that I only have at best two or three weeks of work ahead of me makes it way easier to start than the way it is usually, when I have the whole summer of work to look forward to.

In other news, I was cleaning Poisson's fish bowl today (Poisson is the fish we're taking care of for our french pals while they are in France) and I came upon the realization that the technique I had been using all last month during my geology research trip for pouring off clays from the heavier minerals was the perfect technique for pouring fish dirt off the multi-colored rocks at the bottom of the fish tank! It was a problem I had been struggling with for all the time I've had my fish- how do you pour off the dirt without losing the rocks down the drain? It's so simple! just put the rocks in a ziploc bag, "agitate" them, and then tilt the bag to pour out everything that goes into suspension. The dirt will go into suspension, the rocks won't. Easy as pie. I felt like John Travolta in Phenomenon when he realizes finally that he has accidentally enclosed the offending garden-eating rabbit inside his rabbit-proof fence. I wish there were as easy answers to all of life's questions.

Wow, thunder is loud.

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Sometimes she would lie in the grass and gaze with an unfocused eye at the sky. She saw things floating there, between the grass the clouds. They were round and iridescent, a perfect circle within a larger circle. She only really saw them out of the corner of her eye, but they were everywhere. Maybe they were trompes d'oeil, created by some combination of the summer sunshine, her cornea, and her brain trying to make sense of it all. Most likely they were bits of pollen or dust catching the light just so, who knows, but at the time she was convinced they were molecules. She noticed, after a while, that other didn't seem to see them, but neither could they see molecules. It could be that she was the only girl in the world who could see molecules with her bare eyes. No one would believe her, of course, but they didn't have to. She was perfectly content keeping her amazing skill a secret, giving nothing to the disbelieving scientists, just enjoying nature that much more by looking at its drifting, interacting building blocks on a summers' day. Time has gone by since such carefree days, and she has learned much more about the nature of molecules. But don't tell anyone...

sometimes she can still see them.

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You Are 76% American

You're as American as red meat and shooting ranges. Tough and independent, you think big. You love everything about the US, wrong or right. And anyone who criticizes your home better not do it in front of you!

Your Kissing Purity Score: 54% Pure

For you, kissing isn't a casual thing Lip to lip action makes your heart sing

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Gorgeous Poet. Where You Lived: Cyprus. How You Died: Dysentery.

Part Shy Kisser

You *do* love to kiss, once your comfortable with it And that means knowing the person you're kissing pretty well You usually don't make the first move when it comes to making out But you've got plenty of intensity in return

Part Romantic Kisser

For you, kissing is all about feeling the romance You love to kiss under the stars or by the sea The perfect kiss involves the perfect mood It's pretty common for kisses to sweep you off your feet

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The deafening road around me was howling
Long, thin, in great mourning, majestic pain,
A woman passed, a luxurious hand
Raising up, balancing the embroidery and the hem;

Agile and noble, with her statue's leg
Me, I was drinking, tense like an eccentric,
In her eye, livid sky where lies the origin of the hurricane
The sweetness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills;

A flash of light... then the night!-- Fugitive beauty
The look of which made suddenly reborn
Will I never see you but in Eternity?

Away, quite far from here! Too late! Never maybe!
For I ignore to where you flee, you don't know where I am going,
O! You whom I could have loved, O! You who knows it.



ah, let's let the reader figure out what that one is about because I don't recall writing it nor do I have any idea what it is trying to say. Probably just me trying my hand at bullshitting! I like the way it sounds in places, though.
The wind is very strong, it is blowing my curtains and they are knocking all this stuff over.

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hm, I was looking on the internet for the legend of Tristan et Yseult to link to my blog and all of the ones I found were certainly not the one that I had read. I think the ones on the internet are based off the book that this particular guy wrote, I read that after he wrote it again the original medieval version was almost lost. But in the version I read, there was no trysting and adultery and what-have-you, Tristan faithfully delivered Yseult to his uncle the king to whom she was betrothed and then moved to France because he knew he could not trust himself if she was always so close by. Now that sounds a little more Arthurian than that the lovers were discovered by King Marc trysting and so they fled into the forest and eventually King Marc forgave them for their indiscretions, etc etc.... sigh... the only reason I liked the story of Tristan et Yseult was because honor won out over passion. Doesn't honor ever win out over passion anymore? Aren't there things that are more important than love?

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The day I got home from Minnesota, my boss and I were driving along when we came upon some children pushing a car down the side of the road. Their mother was in the driver's seat and a smaller child was in the passenger seat. We asked if we could help and she explained that her car had given out on the highway and she just needed to get it to somewhere where they wouldn't tow it. We got out and helped the children push the car up the street and into a parking lot, up a little incline. The children were exhausted and they fell away from the car after a little bit. We managed to maneuver it into a parking spot and my boss told her that she should go in to the warehouse it belonged to and just notify them that her car would be there so they wouldn't be puzzled. It was kind of funny because without my boss in the car, as big and strong as he is, I probably wouldn't have stopped. I am just a medium-sized girl, as it were, and although I have strength she probably would have told me that she had it under control, doubting that I could be of much help. That happens to me a lot.
Then again, had my boss been the only one in the car, she might not have been as willing to receive help then, either, as she might find him big and she would not really know what his intentions were (although being dressed as nicely as he was would help). But with me sitting in the car next to him she would know that he was perfectly safe. And with him sitting next to me she knew we would be a great help. We were the perfect combination for doing good.


Today I was driving along and I saw a lemonade stand with three children, an older girl and two young brothers by the side of the road. Immediately I stopped and I got out of the car and I bought some Kool-Aid because they confided that it was the coldest of all the drinks they had to offer. I didn't have 50 cents so I gave them a dollar and the little boys were very happy. The dad came out with an empty cooler and waved to me and I got back in my car and off I went, drinking up the icy cold kool-aid on this 105 degree day even though the sugar hurts my teeth.



That's kind of what I think life is all about.

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I wish I could yearn for you forever in a lost love kind of way, never knowing whether or not our love could have been perfect if only we could have been allowed to pursue it. Like Tristan et Yseult, only without the love potion. Just naturally. I would go off and marry the King of Ireland and you would move to France and we’d always wonder what things could have been like if our honor didn’t forbid us from following our love. Maybe that is the way it is. But I think we would find that you like to live near the sea and eat good food and I am tied to these mountains. You could take me to the sea. I love the sea. I could watch the sea for hours, I am fascinated by it. You might find me walking there if we ever became angry with one another and you couldn’t find me anywhere in the house. You would not be able to find me in the mountains. I could live by the sea if you took me to live there, but I would feel like the Secret of Roan Inish. I would be the perfect model of wife and mother. I would raise our children next to the sea. I would love our life and I would never speak to you of the mountains. But one day, given the means, I might disappear. One day gone I would be and the minute you noticed you would know where I had gone but you would know equally well that there was no way you could ever find me. The mountains are in my blood. I cannot go to the mountains for a ski holiday and be satisfied. They must be there when I wake up and they must sing me to sleep in my bed at night. They must always be in the west so I know which way is which even though I can usually tell just by the stars or my very bones. The mountains sing to me, like the sea sings to some other people. Maybe the sea sings to you.

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One time I was walking down the street in Ho Chi Minh City by myself, as I often did when I was there, on my way to here or there, stepping around the coconut vendors crouched on the sidewalk, avoiding the constant calls of the pedago-go drivers and the motortaximen, eyes always straight ahead, head up, briskly walking, clearly on my way to somewhere specific and possibly late for whatever was happening there. As I was passing the long cream wall of the Ben Thranh market someone suddenly emerged from one of the shallow alcoves in the wall. I think it was a woman, though I will never be sure. Her face was completely melted away. You could only see what remained of her hair and warped holes from which one eye like a infinite black void peered into the sunlight and the others from which she must breathe and eat. The other eye was gone, buried somewhere amid the scars, her nostrils were elongated like the skin had frozen in the middle of dripping over the contours of her skull. Her teeth hung as if they themselves had made the hole out of which they now showed.

Perhaps I should thank all of the Indiana Jones movies I had watched. Maybe the American "culture of violence" was good for something. Because I didn't start or jump or gasp or move away from her, I just took in in a moment all that she was: not begging or selling anything, not to be pitied, just living her life--- and then I kept walking.

I walked by there countless times after that and I was always looking for her, but I never saw her again.

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