O FIORENTINA! And a whole bunch of other words I don’t know….

I write this to you after literally two hours of trying to sleep, so if I sound grouchy, well, it’s because I am about to rip the heads off of everyone in the villa and then burn the place to the ground. It never gets quiet here. Every single sound is magnified by about a hundred and echoes off the walls until it sounds like a elephant trumpeting. And when you have eight girls living in a room together, they are pretty much all going to be coming in and out at every second, at least when I’m trying to sleep. Someone is actually playing bongos. Mother of pearl. Someone is going to die.

Of course, my mood is way less than 100% today anyways… it just seems like that’s always the day when the rest of the world has decided to do everything it can to ruin my nap, too. Thanks, world, thanks a lot.

This post is an update since I’ve been too lazy/too knocked out by the effort to keep happy and upbeat all day for the past few days to have energy enough to post.

On Sunday, we had class… I’m still not sure why we have class, it seems so unnecessary… and then we all WENT TO MY VERY FIRST EVER EUROPEAN FOOTBALL GAME! Yes, this is real football, meaning soccer, and oh my goodness, what a time, what a time. I had several new experiences in the process, some of which are:

1. Spooning. And no, this has nothing to do with eating and everything to do with exactly what you think it means. The last bus we caught to get to the stadium—lo stadio in Italian—actually contained a fourth of the entire Italian population, so we basically just had to shove in wherever we could. After all the squirming and wiggling to find a place where your feet actually fit on the ground and your body had room to exist, well… I was spooning with a stranger. Never been so close to anyone in my entire life and considering that I really don’t even want you to hug me unless we’ve been real friends for a while—strangers and random acquaintances just doesn’t cut it—this was one of the more unpleasant things that has happened to me since I arrived in Italy… okay, maybe more like my entire life. But I still feel like this is one of those things that adds flavor to the whole the-entire-world-even-the-creepers-who-move-closer-to-you-every-time-you-try-to-move-away-from-them-is-going-to-this-football-game aura.

2. Rooting for a team that has purple and gold as its colors. My entire life I’ve been taught to hate these colors and if anyone is wearing these colors, to do mean awful things to them, like stealing their kids’ lunches, or putting hot sauce in their boudet. (For those of you who aren’t American-football-inclined… I’m talking about LSU, which stands for Louisiana State University, or Lesser Species of hUmans.) However, as the Fiorentina, Florence’s soccer team, also use these colors, I realized a sudden, burgeoning new passion for these colors. When the entire gigantic stadium of screaming Italians is wearing these colors (minus the Milanese, who were actually in a huge plexiglass and barbed wire cage to keep fans from intermingling—a.k.a. murdering each other), it’s kind of hard not to.

3. Singing a fight song that was not “Dixieland” or “Hoddy Toddy.” Unfortunately, the only words to “O Fiorentina” that I actually know are those right there, so singing is really a matter of speaking, but I tried!

4. Buying sports paraphernalia that I absolutely do not need and feeling absolutely no guilt about it. I got a purple shirt with a giant red giglio (the symbol of Florence, similar to the fleur-de-lis) on the front and some quote about the Fiorentina on the back that doesn’t really translate well and a huge Fiorentina flag that, despite probably being the only non-Italian in the whole stadium to have one, I waved during every unintelligible cheer during the game. Best sixteen Euros I’ve ever wasted.

5. The smell of weed. I honestly wouldn’t have noticed anything different—everyone smokes here, it seems like—so to me it was just another person with a cigarette, but as soon as the huge billow of smoke descended on our group from the guy sitting two seats down from me, everybody collectively was like, “OMG POT!”

6. David Beckham! Ahhhhh! I actually have a ton of pictures of him pasted up in my room at home from my tenth grade obsession with him… and I actually got to see him play! Of course, he was playing for Milano… booooo… but still, it was cool. So many celebrities in the past few days that I can hardly stand myself.

I have to admit… I may be addicted. The adrenaline rush, the gladiator-like feel of the stadium pulsating with tens of thousands of voices all roaring destruction of the opposing team, the Fiorentina fans literally banging battering-ram-like into the door into the Milano section, howling for blood…. As Megan says, “Loves it.” Couldn’t get enough of it. All I need is to learn the chants… okay, learn Italian… and I’d be set.

Reason number four hundred and sixty-two to move to Italy.

Well, I’m off to go do… something or another, don’t know what, to try to de-grouchify myself, so I’m signing off. Postcard offer still stands. Caleb, John Mark, Justine, Celia—all of yours were mailed today. Arrivederci!

Resident Team Spaz, Here

So Abattoir had its first frisbee tournament with the new girls this weekend….. It was interesting, to say the least. Rather the way a movie might be interesting if certain parts involve highly graphic violence with body parts and viscera slung everywhere, a few triumphant moments, a helping of drama (the kind of helping your 400-pound Uncle Jedediah might have… yee-ah all-girls sports team!), and a good deal of light-hearted humor. While I certainly didn’t win the MVP award—okay, to get a little closer to the truth, I was more like LVP—I have at least garnered a great deal of attention for myself as Resident Team Spaz. We watched footage of the games tonight during practice, and after one pretty cute little move that I did, three of the older girls popped up in front of the camera, one at a time, to say, “NO, Kellum!” Real, real cute. I am pretty much precious, if I do say so myself.

(In case you were wondering what the Cute Little Move was that I performed so beautifully, I was preparing to make a cut—running to the person who has the disk—which you are supposed to do very quickly—which is already hard for me; in case you’ve ever seen me run, lolz lolz lolz, you know this body ain’t built for speed—and sneakily, and I actually raised my hand, yelled, “Cutting!” and tried to run in to the handler with the disk. Needless to say, I was pretty much unsuccessful. Like I said, real-real cute.)

My goal for the next tournament is to be faster, stronger, and to take a few people out. And make some sweet grabs, too, instead of just running around aimlessly. (Though I have to admit, my hair looked pretty awesome—I looked like freaking Simba!)

Also….. Most of the other teams were dressed up in varying states of costumage for some sort of spirit award, and, well…. The first team we played dressed up as naked. Like skin-tight, skin-colored jumper outfits with anatomically correct parts pinned, drawn, or otherwise indicated forthwith. One girl had fake boobs the size of two overlarge, grossly swollen, oddly bouncy watermelon. And their team name was “Eighteen and Huckable.” (A huck is just a really long throw.) If you don’t get that, well….. Anyway. Even with their giant fake breasts and strategically placed Batman symbols (cough), we still got slaughtered…. Somewhat ironic, considering that Abattoir means “slaughterhouse”…. The other games were a little more encouraging than that one, and we actually won one on Sunday. So 1 for 7…. But it could be worse. We still got fourteenth place out of twenty, so for all the new blood we have on the team…. Well. It could have been, much, much worse.

AND WE GOT TWO CALLAHANS IN ONE GAME! WHICH IS PRETTY MUCH SUPER AMAZING! WHICH PRETTY MUCH NEGATES THE FACT THAT WE LOST THAT GAME! WE GOT TWOOOO CALLLLLAHANS!!!!

As for the drama…. Well, we all loved each other at the end of the day, and that’s what counts, right? Most definitely. Though at some points I did rather want to beat a few people over the head with, I dunno, a medieval painting of Jesus.

Additionally…. I took some really awesomely amazing pictures this weekend. They are all uploaded to Facebook, so here are the links to the three albums. I would REALLY appreciate any kind of feedback, so please click and flip through them. I think it will be worth your time ^_^

Album One

Album Two

Album Three

And… I ran into a fence. Twice, actually. And for those of you who weren’t there…. Yes, I did this with a vehicle. The first time I was trying to do an awkward parking job (let’s just pretend there were tons of cars around me, making it extremely difficult, and that I wasn’t actually in a mostly empty parking lot….), and I kept going for too long, too fast… and… and… I hit the wooden fence. And knocked it over. Luckily, we just set it back up. And then later, when I was backing up, I hit another fence… a chain-link one. But this one didn’t knock over… thank goodness for that.

Basically, I am completely ridiculous. Yee-ah Resident Team Spaz. 

Close only counts in horse grenades and hand shoes.

After a long, difficult quest, I have finally found someone who will explain what a Good Kiss consists of. Yay for a certain girl from our dear Cathcart Floor 2 Short Hall (I figure this is one of those things that people might not love being identified as in public domain). So in case you’ve been wondering how to perfect your kissing skills (or if, like me, you want to be ready just in case the Apocalypse comes—not the guys’ frisbee team, haha, jeez don’t be stupid—and you are ever actually in that situation) here are the tips.

How to Kiss Good

 

1. Put your hand behind the other person’s ear, with your thumb directly behind the ear lobe and the rest of the fingers curling around their skull. Once you actually begin kissing, massage with your fingers and slowly move your thumb up and down behind their ear. (Hahahahahaha this is hilarious.)
2. Do the opposite of what the other person does with their lips. If your partner tilts to their left, you tilt to their right, and the same with the right side. Also (this was a new one for me, bahahaha), orientation of the lips is important. Someone’s bottom lip will be on the bottom, then the other person’s bottom lip, then the first person’s top lip, then the second person’s top lip, like Lincoln logs (basic concept, people, everyone played with those in kindergarten, now let’s just make a more adult application).
3. Don’t shove your tongue down their throat. (Knew this already, but it can’t be emphasized enough. Srsly.)
4. Don’t dart in and out with your tongue in lizard-like fashion. (My own addition. RLY SRSLY nao.)
5. According to She-Whose-Anonymity-Is-Being-Protected (doesn’t that sound like Voldemort’s step-cousin-twice-removed or something?), don’t stroke the roof of their mouth with your tongue. This initiates the clamp-down response, apparently, which means your tongue is about to get bitten off. Not pleasant. You won’t get a chance to redeem yourself, then.

 

Anyways, I just thought I would share that since I’ve always wondered what constituted a good kiss… now it’s available for everyone, at the cost of READING MA BLOG!

So… I totally misjudged Mickaël, apparently. And somehow, he found out that someone in our class didn’t like him, and he was pretty upset about it…. And I feel like a total goat. I think someone told him it was me, and he said he was going to talk to me, but if he doesn’t, then I’m probably going to do it anyway. It turns out he didn’t mean to seem arrogant at all, and he’s a freshman too (I thought he was a sophomore), he’s really sweet, and he only decided this summer to go to Harding when he met a group of Harding students on a campaign in Belgium. So it’s basically like this: You completely leave everything you know from the language to the culture to the country to the continent and then you get to this new place and someone makes a snap judgment of you when you actually really want to help the people in your native language class.

That was actually an understatement, about me feeling like a total goat. I feel like a total goat to the tenth power. 

Just in case you were wondering, I almost never feel guilty about anything ever. (Je ne me sens guère coupable au sujet de rien jamais… yay French and the ability to have double and triple and quadruple negatives. French one, English zero).  So this is kind of a Big Deal For Me. Grrrr.

Lost the scrimmage to Hendrix today 14-15. Apparently that’s really good…. I don’t know. I felt really discouraged on the field because I really didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, and there was a lot of inter-team drama, which is one of the things I hated about soccer, and I had really hoped that now we’re in college rather than middle school, that might be different…. Wait. Never mind. Drama Is A Part Of Life. *insert expletive* But they’re going to ramp up practice, and hopefully the increased endorphins will also increase good-attitudivity, so…. one can only hope. Besides the actual game itself, I had an awesome time with Krista and Kara (Cara?) and Charlene and Caroline (haha and my name’s Kellum so it was all sort of K/C sounds!) who rode with me to Conway. Yay for new girls!

(I did sort of D a disc—D as in defense as in knock it out of the air when the other team was in possession. It was a crappy throw to begin with, and the girl I was marking was kinda a pansy that the gardener forgot to fertilize, but… still. Gotta be proud of something.)

Five Times August is an awesome artist, by the way. You should listen.

Yesterday, Charlene and Pearson and I were throwing frisbee on the front lawn around 11:00 or 12:00 at night (which, considering my total lack of spatial intelligence in the daytime, not to mention my complete lack of night vision, was pretty interesting), and I said something to Pearson about something being close to a good throw, and he said, “Close only counts in horse grenades and hand shoes.” Yay Pearson. On top of Elise saying “smoot froothies” for “fruit smoothies,” my life is now complete.

Except for this annoyingly ridiculous guilty feeling. Jeez. Where is good old emotional constipation when you need it?  Where is my usual sociopath self? Bring her back!

I’m back, with lots of randomness as usual.

Facebook fast is over. Whew. Not much of a desire to repeat that process unnecessarily. Despite undoubtedly beautiful intentions on the part of our dear teacher, I didn’t feel that a week without Facebook did much good. Everyone else was still sending SuperPoke hugs and lol-jk-omg wallposts, so the level and quality of Actual Human Interaction didn’t really increase.

Also (Celia dearest, this is for you), my unintentional blog fast has come to an end as well. I didn’t mean to not write—I’ve just been extremely busy, like you don’t even know (my new favorite phrase).

Saw a rendition of Les Mis last night. Without a doubt, this play is my absolute most favoritest musical—the music itself, the complicated plot, the involved characters…. All come together to create a truly incredible piece of theatrical literature. Honestly, I liked the version I saw in Birmingham back during February (at least I think it was February; second semester senior year still seems like a sort of ugly, hazy blur of please-powers-that-be-get-me-out-of-here-and-let-me-remember-as-little-of-this-as-possible… a wish that really didn’t work out so well); the acting was better, and the directing, but still—it’s hard to ruin something as amazingly well-written as Les Mis when you have at least a little talent. (Though I am still wondering what was going on with the gels… those are the plastic sheets that go in front of the lights to color them…. There were some pretty interesting designs—and not in a good way.)

Oh—and I almost forgot the best part of the entire Les Mis event. First, we were barely on time for the show because of a great deal of confusion involving hunger, getting stuck on the wrong side of the river in Little Rock and not being able to find a bridge to take us back over, and finally finding the restaurant we had spotted at the very beginning of the ordeal, ordering there, and not getting our food until five minutes until eight. (If you guessed that the show started at eight… you would be correct.) So we barely got there on time… or really didn’t, considering that Charlene and I rushed back to the car with all the (uneaten) food in to-go boxes while Larkin and Julia ran to get to their seats before the doors closed. Luckily, the two of us were able to get in thanks to the very nice lady who snuck us into our seats during the you-forgot-the-candlesticks-I-gave-you-too scene. THEN we barely made it back for curfew. But we had an adventure. (And we decided during the waiting-for-the-dinner-that-we-ended-up-eating-on-the-way-back-to-Searcy sequence that if we didn’t make it, we would go clubbing instead, so either way, it would have worked out.)

I almost got kicked out of Harding today. Something about not turning in a proof of immunization form. I’m rolling my eyes, right?

Confused about life… mostly about how to straighten out the knots in the rats nest of backlogged emotion that keeps surfacing, like a nasty rodent carcass (haha, you know you are loving that simile, don’t even deny it) in a stagnant swamp. Lololololololol. Lolz. Lawl. I crack myself up. (Seriously. I do.)

“Violet Hill” by Coldplay is an awesome song. Do listen to it.

Ultimate frisbee scrimmage at Hendrix on Sunday. Can you say O.O? Nervous to say the least. Panicking to say the most. Not so much about losing… I would be okay with that, although I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to win… but more about disappointing the older members of the team. That could make for a really awkward ride home if, say, I drop the disc and Hendrix scores the winning point….  (Yes. This is my nightmare. Argh.)

Speaking of dreams-ish, I had the strangest one last night. I dreamed I was pregnant, but not in the normal way. I’m not really sure how I got pregnant… yeah, yeah, I know how MOST people get pregnant, but it wasn’t important here. Anyway, there were several babies inside of me, at least seven or eight, and they didn’t look like infants—they looked like fist-sized crosses between sort-of-fetuses and clots of blood (awesome). When I went into labor (help!), one of the girls on the frisbee team started talking me through it, telling me to breathe and push….  Weirdest feeling in the world, having mutant babies (poor Bella). 

Well……. I’m going to go engage in some serious, real-live human interaction (okay, Michael Wright? I’m doing my assignment for realz now!), so adios, sianara, au revoir, etc.

Oh…. check out this blog. Hilarious. Here’s a preview:

And this connected one, though slightly blasphemous.  And also…. If you haven’t seen it, please watch “Step Up.” I’m going to marry the male lead. For serious.

Oh and also…. Here is the link to the blog of a friend. Much love to you all if you click and read—and even more love if you actually listen to what she has to say.

My Toenails Have the Ebola Virus. Crap.

I painted my toenails red and black this afternoon—red background with black spots, because for some reason, I’ve always thought spotted toenail jobs were cool. But the overall result looks kinda weird. I’m torn between several interpretations:

1. My toenails are strangely shaped and oddly asymmetrical ladybugs.

2. My toenails are red-bellied black snake eggs, “a venomous species of elapid snake native to eastern Australia.  Don’t worry, its venom only causes significant morbidity, usually not death.

3. My toenails have Ebola. I read a book once called Hot Zone about Ebola, and apparently right before you die, you vomit up blood specked with black particles. Like my toenails.

4. I have an especially colorful version of athlete’s foot that only grows on toenails. And smells like toenail polish, somehow.

………..

In Communications and Critical Thinking today (yes, I know I talk about that class way too much, but it’s because it’s a) metric tons of fun and b) it’s unusually relevant, to me, anyway), we were discussing the ways God communicates with us. (I think after this semester, I’m never going to want to hear the word “communication” or any of its derivatives every again.) And although I’m quite hesitant to present any sort of theory as I’m fairly unsure about the whole concept (therefore I’m not going to), I thought the following passage from I Kings 19 was worth sharing, both because of its heavy, beautiful symbolism and its potential application to practical life.

A little background: Jezebel, the super-bad demon queen of Israel, is having National Kill-A-Prophet Month, and Elijah, not wanting to become a celebratory object, tucks his tail and heads for the hills. In this passage, he’s sitting in a cave, waiting for some sort of direction from God….

The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” 
      Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Interesting. No matter what your faith statement may be, I think a lesson is to be learned here. But I’m not going to attempt to interpret that—feel free to have your own thoughts.

…………

ULTIMATE FRISBEE TOURNAMENT STARTING TOMORROW! (I definitely should be packing for that right now… somehow I am still sitting here writing this blog. Oh well.) Super-excited… big long road trip and an entire two and half days with my lovely frisbee girls and the not-so-lovely frisbee guys (just kidding, they’re quite sweet!). So I won’t be posting until Sunday night at the earliest and probably not until Monday. But….. if you still get on and read my posts, and especially if you make comments, I can tell you that your deepest wish will come true within the next week! (Hahaha…. right. I’m that amazing. Seriously.)

………..

Listen to Ben Lee’s CD “Awake Is The New Sleep.” It’s great. I’ve known this for a while, but I’m now recommending it to the world. Seriously. You’ll like it, and probably a lot. It has lyrics like, “The edge in your affection broke my skin,” and “I was one of those breathing tornadoes, but now I live at the eye of the storm.” Pretty clever, yes? I think so.

……….

Ordered The Four Quartets by Eliot.

……….

You know what’s sad? I now have to go get some Q-tips and nail polish remover to get the polish off of my toes, because I can never keep the polish just on my nails. It goes all over. Stupid me for having no hand-eye coordination, makes me wonder why I’m playing frisbee….

 

 

Random Irrelevance

My stats are down, down, down, down.  I’m trying to decide if I should post another Facebook note saying READ MY BLOG BY THE POWER OF ZEUS AND ALL THE OTHER GREEK GODS!, or if that would just be annoying. I got sixty-one hits the day I did that….  So my desires for better stats and my desire to, well, not be annoying are beginning to fight again.  Lovely.

Read the first chapter of The Writing Life by Annie Dillard today.  And really enjoyed it, just as I was told I would by Communications and Critical Thinking teacher Michael/Professor Wright/Mr. Wright.  (Side note/digression:  Having a teacher four years older than you definitely is going on my top ten list of Situations That Confuse Me, right up there with African politics and the logic of the American voting system.  I can understand why he wants us to address him as “mister”—because it COMMUNICATES authority—but a) I call some people even twice his age simply by their first name, and b) we would be calling him Mr. Wright.  Like Mr. Right.  No.  And Professor Wright is just awkward—maybe if we were at Hogwarts, but this is Harding.  Needless to say… no one ever addresses him by any sort of name during class.)

Saw Wall-E in the Benson Auditorium again tonight.  Didn’t cry this time.  The first time I watched it, the first ten minutes, with the camera sweeps across ruined Earth, found me with tears running down my cheeks. Kinda lame, huh? But I had never realized just how much it could shock and terrify and enrage and devastate to see our home so completely destroyed—by us.  I guess watching that probably has a lot to do with my newfound green interest—not to mention the increasing guilt I feel every time I throw away something non-biodegradable.

Played frisbee for almost three hours. No surprises there, I’m sure. Decided I no longer like the boy with the beautiful eyes. For one thing, my three-week limit is up. (I can generally only like a guy for about three weeks before I get bored… of course, nothing has ever actually happened, either; in that case I can imagine the period of time would be a bit longer.)  For another, I don’t think it’s just that I can’t talk to him.  His character simply does not facilitate conversation.  So on to bigger and better things.

Get to take pictures tomorrow!

Might go to the creative writing club meeting thingy on Tuesday night.  Just to see if it’s a bunch of nerds and freaks or it might actually be worth going to.  “But I say unto you, unless your coolness shall surpass that of the writer of this blog, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of hip-happening.”  Right….

Started every paragraph of this post without a subject in the first sentence, except the first one.  Yee.

And also…. PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS PMS. In case you don’t know, the overwhelming feeling that I should just give up and cry in my bed for the rest of my life is really, really annoying.  Ugh.

HOLY CRAP I THREW GOOD FLICKS

So, I have tons of homework to do and yet…. I’m posting a blog.  So today’s will be short.

1.  I love ultimate frisbee.

2.  Because I love ultimate frisbee, I am not going to pledge a social club this year.  Maybe I will do one next year…. and maybe I won’t do one at all.  But definitely not this year.

3.  OMG PROGRESS!  Yes, I have breached the HOLY-CRAP-I-CAN’T-EVEN-SPEAK-TO-YOU barrier.  Of course… it was nothing but a sweaty high-five and a “Good job” to scoring (ULTIMATE FRISBEE, morons) and a “Thanks” in return, but…. Progress nonetheless.  (I know, I’m the biggest freaking shy freak freak ever to walk to planet.  Lame.)

4.  I managed to throw about five really good flicks today on the front lawn with Cassidi and Conn.  Also known as, more progress.

5.  I have a million things due tomorrow.  Sigh.  Goodbye.

Politics, Photography, And Poetry (And, Apparently, Alliteration)

I really, really, really hate politics.  While this article has to do with the dirty, low-down tricks of Republicans, don’t worry–I know the Democrats have dirty, low-down tricks too.  This one just happens to focus on right wing dirtiness.

Anyway, here are a few of my favorite pictures that I took at the ultimate frisbee mixer last Friday.  I’m pretty proud of them….  Yay photography and frisbee!  If only I could mix writing in there with those two, I’d be completely content for the rest of my days, as long as you both shall live (what?).

 

Emalee yay!

Cassidi, haha.  Sideways too…. and no, I don’t know why, or how to fix it.  If someone could enlighten me….

And then this one because it just captures the having-tons-of-fun spirit of ultimate frisbee.

For some reason, it always sounds like it’s raining in our room.  I’m guessing that a main pipe runs directly over our ceiling and so whenever anyone on third floor is showering, water is running through.  Either that or there is a monster leak up there, and one day our ceiling is just going to collapse and everything is going to flood.  Remind me to keep valuables at least three feet off the floor.

Also, before I go do laundry (something that desperately needs doing; you should smell our dorm after two straight weeks of sweaty ultimate frisbee clothes; wet garbage, anyone?), I am going to post what all of you have been so desperately waiting for….  Well, okay, what I have been desperately waiting for, the final entry to my summer poems trilogy.  Which have nothing to do with summer, but that’s just when they (or the first two) were written.  So here it is.

 

This is the cataract,

the spew of sulfurous water

in the underground cavern.

This is the spray hitting my face,

the promise of pure water

somewhere,

deeper underground,

further into the earth.

 

Body sprawled on the desert floor,

my soul wanders beyond the empyrean.

The stars ask me,

are you there yet?

And I say, no.

No, I am not there yet.

The road to forgiveness, to peace,

is a long one

and a thirsty one, and the desert

is immense.

 

Deeper underground,

whisper the moles.

Further into the earth,

whisper the nightcrawlers.

 

This is the red sun in the red sky.

This is the red dust that paints the air,

that smears my face,

that coats my feet,

that smothers my breath.

This is my mouth, parched to sandpaper,

that drinks even this bitter water

to clear the clots of red dust in my throat.

This is the voice that says,

even this water is good.

 

And I have struck the rock with my staff,

I have called upon Elijah, upon Isaiah, upon Jeremiah,

upon Moses,

but Moses is buried somewhere beneath the soil,

forever outside the promised land.

 

Perhaps we are the same.

 

I find inscriptions in the desert,

in the subterranean caves where I search for moisture.

These ancient languages show

that the stem for “forget” and “forgive”

is the same:

to pass by, to let go.

So perhaps there is meaning here.

 

Perhaps we are the same.

 

Perhaps, one day, you will ask me

if it was easy,

and I will say no.

No, it was not easy,

like forest fires are not easy

and giving birth is not easy

and landslides are not easy

and resisting gravity is not easy.

It is not easy.

 

Perhaps Moses did not die

but learned to live happily in the wilderness.

Perhaps he learned to love the sands,

the dust, the heat,

the defeat of fear.

Perhaps the promised land

was the dream of the people,

but not of the man.

 

This is the road to forgiveness,

and the highway is long, but sometimes

I can smell the willow trees in the far distance,

can smell the aloe,

can smell the lavender

and the lotus blossoms

and the white tulips.

On Boys, and More Importantly, Vocation (Again)

Still no progress in increasing intestinal fortitude.  Nothing else to say on the topic except for holy Hindu cow, he gets cuter every time I see him.

Oh, and I of course get less and less attractive.  I bought new shorts at Walmart the other day because I would have to do laundry like every three days otherwise, but the new shorts I have show sweat like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  The general idea I get from the world is this: shirt sweat is fine, shorts sweat is not.  So I’m disgusting.  Haha.

He’s still really cute, though….  In two weeks, the guys have a tournament in Alabama and about ten or eleven girls (including me) are accompanying them, so hopefully at that point I will be able to come across as sizzling-hot, hilarious, witty, and intelligent.  (The chances of this happening are slightly increased from normal because at least Miguel will be several states away from me.  So the odds go from 0.0% to, like, 0.7%.)

On a totally different, less self-centered note, I was flipping through the poetry section of WordPress and stumbled upon this video of a spoken-word poem.  Even if you don’t read the rest of this post, watch this video.

Like the person who posted this video, I am hesitant to say anything for fear of sounding ethnocentric or condescending—both of which I hope are never characteristics attributed to me.  But whenever I see anything like this, or read books concerning the same topic, or watch television shows centered around the epidemic of both AIDS and poverty in Africa, I feel like I hear something.  We talk a lot about vocation in C&CT (which from now on will be my abbreviation for Communication and Critical Thinking), and on and off throughout my entire life I’ve felt a sort of calling towards that continent which is such a melange of cultural richness and physical poverty.  Is that where I am meant to go with my life?  Because, somehow, every other possible plan for my life eventually sounds hollow, but I keep coming back to the into-Africa idea.  A particularly deep set part of me wants more than anything else to do something where I can fully dedicate myself to other people, not as a sidenote to my professional career but as my professional career.  Even if I didn’t end up in Africa specifically, some other impoverished area of the world would be just as meaningful. I just want… to have make a difference.  Not one that will be recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize or a mention in a history book, but in the lives that are improved and continued because of me.  I don’t want to be remembered, but to have a legacy larger than myself live on after me.

I guess time will tell.

I Wanted to Give this Post a Cool Title But I Couldn’t Think of One

I’m officially a poet now.

Why?  Well, let us consider a particular list of poets, including Dante, Yeats, Petrarch, and certainly innumerable other less well-known names.  What do all of these diverse writers have in common?  

They loved from afar.

Haha, dramatic, right?  And obviously I’m being over-dramatic, something I consider to be a personal skill—that’s why you should never believe my Facebook statuses if they say anything more incredible than “I love ultimate frisbee” or “I am sore all over from ultimate frisbee” or “I just played three hours of ultimate frisbee in the pouring rain.”  And “love” is such a dramatic word, too, and even I don’t want to be that dramatic….  What I am trying to get at, though, is that I think the boy at ultimate frisbee has beautiful eyes, is very cute, and… and… like I’ve said before, I can’t discover in me the ovarian fortitude to speak to him.

So, I am officially a poet, because I’m hiding behind a veneer of words typed up on a screen rather than actually doing anything.  Yes!

Oh, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the question what is poetry the last few days, somewhat in conjunction with my Communications and Critical Thinking class—thanks to Michael Wright (Professor Wright?  Mr. Wright?  Wait…. hey!), now I’m thinking critically all the freaking time.  *brain dies*  Ah-hem… anyway, I didn’t come up with much on my own, but I did find this quote on the Internet that I thought was quite pointful.  (And no, “pointful” is not a word, but I’ve been using it for several years now because I don’t know what word should actually go there.)

Most people ignore most poetry

because

most poetry ignores most people.

-Adrian Mitchell

Although I’m still trying to get to the bottom of the meaning of this quote—and don’t most quotes have oceans of meaning behind them, anyway?—I think the basic bare-bones interpretation of this could lie in the fact that poetry makes sense to so few people, and that so few people really have time to dig their fingernails and teeth and burrow down into poems, therefore the poems never really speak to them.  I myself can’t say that I do this very much—but what would the result be if every morning, everyone had to read a poem?  Really read it, I mean.  Interesting thought, anyway.

Funnily enough, the post I made several weeks ago about not being able to write a poem to finish my trilogy of summer poems has gotten the most search engine hits.  Apparently everyone wants to read poems about the end of the summer.  Ironically, I didn’t post the poem because I haven’t written it—I was just talking about how I wanted to—and even if I had, it wouldn’t have had anything to do with summer, because the other two don’t either.  Anyway, I at least have a vague idea of what I want to do for it.  So that’s exciting… to me, anyway.

Last night, I went to the Josh Gracin and Lady Antebellum concert in the Benson.  Right, a COUNTRY MUSIC CONCERT.  Oh, the horror!  Yeah… my thoughts, too.  But it actually wasn’t that bad.  The first band that played—what do they call those, openers?—were pretty awful, but I really liked Lady Antebellum and Josh Gracin was at least decent.  I went to expand my horizons, and I think I succeeded, at least partly.  I’ll never be a country music fa-reak, but maybe I don’t have to hate it.

Also, I wanted to post THIS LINK because I thought it was pretty random and creative—hopefully you guys will like it too.

As a last note, Charlene found a funny, slightly offensive quote that I wanted to share with the world:

Girls are like parking spaces.  All the good ones are taken, and the rest are handicapped.

Well, I’m not sure what I think about being considered handicapped, but considering some of the dumb things I do (all of which, I am pretty sure, Miguel knows about and was probably hiding in the bushes to see), it’s probably true.

And now I’m off… to throw frisbee.  Imagine that.