Author: approximately

STOP:

Press play.

Read:

I don’t expect anyone to listen to all 7:24 of this track. In fact, I know that everyone’s got busy days and places to go and sidewalks to shovel and beaches to lay on. I understand that you may have to call your mom or your significant other, you have to go to work or to the gym or walk your chinchilla. I have to do these things, too. I understand.

Sometimes it’s hard to find 7:24 to do things. There are days when I can hardly find a moment to find a moment, let alone take a moment to find a moment to find a moment. The many stoplights that we must halt at, the bathroom breaks, the continuous pandemonium that is the chocolate syrup drizzled on our lives, these things take time. There are only 24 hours in each day, and we’ve all got a lot of scrapbooking to do. Such is life.

But if you do, fair people, perchance find 7:24 of your day to be unscathed and you are looking for something inspiring, or calming, or just something new…please, listen to this song.

I know that not everyone out there is the greatest fan of Bono, or maybe you’re not down with U2. I know that Kelly Clarkson and Rihanna steal a lot of space on a lot of iPods. I understand. I just purchased U2’s new album yesterday and have had it on repeat ever since — and this song is so beautiful to me. I want to share it with you!

We set ourselves on fire
A girl could not deny her
It’s not if I believe in love
If love believes in me
Oh, believe in me.

It’s long, but it really only takes a minute to take your mind off of things.

This is my best friend.
This, today, is the last time I will see her until I return in May.
This…this is sad.

My new camera came in the mail today. It’s a nice, chilly yet sunny day in Minnesota. I’ve been out and about all afternoon, so sitting here in absolute quietude with the sun coming through my window is the tranquil I need. After this, my life is going to be go, go, go.

Am I ready? Am I ready?

I take a deep breath. I can’t think about time anymore, or money, or undertakings. I don’t want to imagine all of the miles and steps and exhaustion that will endure in the future. I just want to know that everything is going to work out, my mind will diversify, and all will be happy and good.

I can do this. I can do it all, I look forward to doing it all.
I am really, very fortunate.

My poem “The Collector” was selected for inclusion in MSUM’s Red Weather Journal!

I am a happy lady.

I’m going home this coming Sunday, and have been trying to prolong my food supply for the time being. The goal is to never have to buy groceries again until I get back in May, and maybe not even then (permitting I reside at home this summer).

It’s kind of hilarious/scary right now. I’ve got a combined 3/4 box of cereal, three slices of bread, five pitas, a tomato, one heart of romaine lettuce, and numerous cans of varied beans (black, great northern, pinto, refried, etc.). There is a box of oatmeal that I am avoiding, and numerous shapes of pastas that I don’t have the patience to cook (though they’d taste delightful with the cup of Velveeta I’ve got left). I’m almost out of milk. After that — it’s water on the cereal. Yikes.

I made a pineapple smoothie last night, with natural yogurt and the one can of pineapple that I’d saved for the winter. It didn’t taste like pineapple at all, in fact, more like sour yogurt. Delicious nonetheless, and I poured it into the margarita glass that my roommate gave me for my 21st birthday. This was probably the most eventful thing to happen yesterday, during an entire day indoors.

Classes were canceled, and I, unfortunately, could not comprehend others’ bliss because I have no classes. It was more of a ‘HOORAY I can sit around all day…AGAIN!’ type of feeling, except with the underlying doom that I was stranded in my apartment. I don’t know what I would have done yesterday without my bed, my meager food supply, and court TV.

And I’m off in eight (8) days! Can you believe it? I can’t sleep in the mornings, I’m so excited. Last night I fell asleep thinking about carry-on luggage. Curious.

I am awaiting big news within the next few days. I can share it, hopefully, in the next week. I am crossing my fingers that it is good…

Ahh. Life’s a’changin’…

“Remember to keep your feet on the ground, your hopes up high, pray for rain, keep the humor dry, and eat those powder milk biscuits.”
—Garrison Keillor

This is a photo I took from my window when I woke up at two o’ clock this afternoon.

And I didn’t do a darn thing…all day.

for the next couple of days.

I am going to try my hardest — !

Suddenly I feel ready to write about this day.

I don’t recall a single care
Just greenery and humid air

I paused on the side of the dirt road. The sun was going down over green crops and the air was in passage from the waves of a hot July day to the coolness of a summer night.

Home was still several hours away, but I had a camera and the moment in my midst. I felt liberated, freedom and revival from the summer I’d endured, and was ready to put past my mind.

The wind was perfect and the boisterous air caught the fabric of my red dress. I wore no makeup and pulled back my stringy curls into a haphazard bunch, a dozen strands falling into the breeze. The day was so glorious to me, so impeccable that even in the midst of my slatternly being, I felt beautiful.

I set the camera on the hood of my car, pressed down the shutter and ran. Take two, and take three, take twenty-seven, the dust picked up as my sandals pummeled the gravel. I moved into tall fields where grains brushed against my bare legs. The sun continued its ebb to the horizon line as it saturated the sweeping grass in a gradient of light.

The moment was detained a half hour later, as I turned the vehicle off the grit to rejoin a thoroughfare spanning toward home. The sun was going down over green crops boundless in existence, forward-looking stems swaying restful in a July sundown. Everything was going to be just fine.

Body, earth, mind; all was calm.

I couldn’t sleep last night, and I never can. I despise the wicked cycle I’ve succumbed to. My sleep bank is years in debt, and I owe my body hours and hours. It will never be paid off.

It was four a.m. when I crashed. Sometimes I feel as though I am shackled to my sheets, because they are not always where I want to be. I’ll twist for hours, the cloth grabbing at my legs and tangling between my calves. That’s how I felt last night, and the night before last, and nearly every night that I’d rather be awake. I stared at the clock until five-thirty, I looked to the wall, I looked to the ceiling. But all I could think of was England, and Italy, and cereal.

There was only one of the three that I could satisfy at the moment, so I got up and poured myself a bowl of Golden Grahams, then proceeded to stuff my face with anything I could get a hand on: bread, peanut butter, toast and milk. At six I quietly set my dishes in the sink and drug my weary, restless body back to my sheets once again.

Each night I wonder, why sleep has forsaken me. Why I am this creature of the night.

Why.