A few days together ago

This is what birthday presents look like at my house, kinda creepy but still color coordinated.

As a description of the day would be silly and tiring, a list of words that describe my birthday (and the day before which is the day that most things happened):
funny shirt, bells, work, book, instant oatmeal, rejection letter, job offer, words, classes, left over white chili, suspicion, friends, 'Americanism', coersion, tea, alumni, confusion, hunger, wandering, Chinese food, esperma deforme, FIRE, phallic place ware, more confusion, kick ass cake, candles, ocean, waves, stars, rocks, shooting stars, dark, trails, new boy-friend, couple, cold, shivering, lying, slow driving, box, chocolate, strainer, sleep, dreams, sleeping in, shower, words, phone calls, graduation business, green dogs, left over Chinese food, Headache, nap, missed appointment, serious disapointment, creepy happy present wrappings, cotton notebook, kittens, lateness, plays, Dexter, Jone's cream soda, daisies, plays again, phone call, sleep

By the way, green dogs like cake (!) and Kashi (!) and dandilions and... insence sticks (?)

Green Dog

The beauty of the rain is how it falls

Paint with the Gray Rain (04/28/06 - RRC)

Can you tell me?
How is it that this rain
Falling gray on gray
Gray on brown
The shocking cold stuff
On dead and frozen ground
This great wet stuff
That brings sleepy thoughts
Warm cups of tea and poetry
Also turns the world new
Brings spring in bright colors
Browns all to green
Grays all to blue
And speckles with flowers
And sunshine smiles
All there is to see?

-Jn


Why is it that I write the most when I am at work (or supposed to be doing something else). I always fancied myself as a hammock with beer type of girl, listlessly scrawling on journal pages while I am kissed by ocean breezes. ::Shrug::

Four days of classes left EVER!...until grad school. Crap!...and I need to take the GRE's sometime. CRAP!...Finals start next Friday, Graduation garbage the Friday after.
Between now and G-Day I have to attend 7 classes, complete 4 theatre lab hours, watch and write a review of an off campus play, attend an on campus play, write and 'perfect' a script, present said script in class, complete 3 late and 1 current homeworks and 1 late project, attend various review and study sessions, take 2 exams, plan something Wicked Crazy to do for this reading day (I already have enough holes and I am not really in to the whole tattoo thing but what else do you do on reading day...oh yeah!) and then actually go through with it, celebrate a birthday, attend the senior formal, work, sleep, eat, and maybe shower.

What you may or may not get out of this list is a play script if it has redeeming qualities about it and some pictures of reading day/the formal/graduation if they interest me enough. The day begins...

angst

Ok, I am not going to lie. I have not been in the greatest of moods for the past....yeah. Anyways. This isn't something that is going to change that drastically when I am manic again. (Thank you Eric for pointing out once more today how bipolar I really am)

Why the hell do we need so much stuff. Honest to god but it is like a requirement. I freaking need my car to get to school every day and to the grocery store etc. because everything is too far to walk/bike and there is no public transportation. Translation: I would be screwed without my car. Fine. I am not complaining about the car. I love my car and that is seriously the only yuppie tendency that I would cringe to leave behind. She is my baby and we have worked out most of our problems again. But why on earth do I NEED the stinking car? And most of my friends and family would freak out if the cell phone went away. Granted you can't really reach me unless I want to be reached but its still the best way to find me. And if I turned in my computer and didn't waste my time so much listening to my precious stolen music files. What on earth would this look like. I don't need these things or at least I don't want to need them.

I don't need a bed, I don't need a desk, I don't need a bajillion pens and pencils, I don't need the dresser I fixed all up. I don't need most of the clothes that fill it or the bits of jewelry and hair-ties and ribbons that clutter the top. I could survive perfectly well without any of these items. I have shelves full of books and notebooks. (I have a slight word addiction.) If you took all of the paper products I owned and burned them I would cry for ages...mostly because of my words lost forever. But I would not die and I would end up with new notebooks because sanity forces the words out of my head on to paper...or bark..or sand. I don't need paper.

Why do I have so much stuff?!??!!??! Better yet how did I get so much stuff?!?!?!?! And I am still so freaking attached to it. I am not gonna give you my dresser without good reason. I worked hard on it. But I mean I am not going to take it with me when I move to another part of the world. It's not that important. I would just leave it with a friend who could use it. I might reclaim it if I ever wandered back.

Can you see why I am so dead set on leaving this place. I want to start over again. I want to be able to look at what I have around me and say "what do I need." Fill my world with 'stuff' that is necessary in the true sense of the word. I am not opposed to cosas of beauty. I mean we need art. Otherwise we would be more like machines. But...

I know the truth though. I will find myself a little room or a little house and once I get settled and have all my needs squared away...the wants will start to fill in the empty space...cause for some unknown reason humans are afraid of empty space.

Silence is filled with music or the talking box or mindless chatter. A blank canvas is covered in color and this adorns an empty wall. Candles or incense fill a room with something different and mints break the monotony between meals if a snack isn't handy. (Common decency and several legal strictures dictate the covering of bare skin so we will just leave that sense alone for another time. We all I know I would rather be mostly nekkid all the time anyways) And well... if a room is empty... we fill it with stuff.

There is this room in the house that we call the empty room. When we first started in this house it had a lot of empty boxes in it that didn't really have a home yet. Then it got a few items of furniture and a mini-fridge. We still called it the empty room. Then it became the depository of both of my roommates stuff (I use a different room) where everything crashed when they finaly made it home after a long day and everything cleared from the table for a meal gets stuck in one corner or another. I am not judging this practice in this rant. I am just pointing out and asking why I guess. We still call it the empty room. It isn't even close to empty. It is the stuff room.

I am done now. I just...Can someone please explain to me... WHY STUFF?!?!?!?

(While you are at it 5l is also thinking in this genre.)

Free Leopold

For a moment let’s say that Leopold is a young and rather smallish prehistoric beast. Let’s further say that through a series of rather strange and ill-understood events (probably along the lines of not listening to his mothers instructions about the location of the ‘great valley’) Leopold was propelled forward in time and perhaps place. He was discovered sulking in a cave, renamed ‘dragon’ and promptly captured. His new master was rewarded the hand of a princess and Leopold was traded to the local wizard of ill repute for a sword that sung enemies to sleep. The wizard cloaked him in magic impenetrable armor for his much needed protection and began experimenting with various potions, spells, and elixirs to grant the ‘dragon’ fire and usable wings. One unfortunate stutter during a rather lengthy incantation snapped poor half-dragon Leopold out of space and time into a sort of purple-hazed limbo until a rather bedraggled black cat happened to sneeze and hiccup at the same time and call a well-armored beast out of oblivion on top of itself. The heretofore unmentioned farmer consoled his wife over the loss of poor ‘Mitzy-boo’ with the promise of a ‘Jacuzzi tub’, painted the rather cold and stiff and still well-armored Leopold a ghastly shade of orange ‘for the protection of the general public,’ sold him to the local machine shop under the guise of ‘used farm equipment’ and found a quarter in the gutter on the way to the bathroom fixtures store which brought the grand sum total of ‘funds recently earned’ to a high enough and round enough number to allow for ‘professional installation.’ Some months later Leopold was loaded onto a truck with machinery that resembled well-armored prehistoric beasts but lacked the certain spark that comes from multiple loops through time and space and sipping cocktails with aged wizards named Lou. He was unloaded with his ‘companions’ in a fenced in pasture and for a few glorious weeks he began to believe that he had in fact finally reached the ‘great valley’ of childhood dreams (albeit slightly downsized due the devaluation of tree-stars as international currency). Then, one day a rather robust gentleman leapt upon the unsuspecting dragon-machine and began to pull levers and flip switches causing Leopold’s armor to pull and spark and twitch. This gave Leopold such great discomfort (not to mention that the man was very large) that he groaned and cried and thrashed about. Apparently this was the effect that the man desired for he smiled and steered the poor beast in the direction of the ‘frog pond’ and with great skill ‘coerced’ Leopold to chew the bottom of the pool to bits and throw it about the once ‘pristine’, now more than a little sandy ‘great valley.’

Let’s say all of this is true. In that case I rest no blame on the orange pile of bolts and sinews and beast-bits in my backyard for the fact that I no longer have a back yard. I may even try to free him.

Sundae

One of my iguanas has taken up living in the heating vent. This is bad. I tried the old trick of leaving food so he will crawl out. Either he crawled out and crawled back in or the other one stole his food cause it disappeared. And the other one has just been sitting in the cage looking all innocent and sweet. Cheeky little... I have to move a book shelf to get to him and I am so not looking forward to that. I managed to avoid campus for a full 24 hours on Friday which is like the first time since Christmas break. I will probly do the same again today but more by necessity than choice this time. (I am more than a little sick) I will do the church thing though, or try at least. They want me to sign the book and 104 hinted that 104.5 just might be there.

22 (04/22/06)

I turn 22 in a day or two
Can you tell me about my life
They say I will survive
The likes of college and the stress
But I am a mess
Existing?—Yes
But the skies aren’t blue
And I don’t know what to do

If he’s making all things new
I guess he hasn’t started yet
Are we taking bets?
I’ll put money on he forgets
But I’ll get there in time

I just want to be alone
No computer, no cell phone
A couple of trees and me
Nothing paved as far as I can see
Nothing I really call mine
Just words and wild treasures I happen to find
There must be some way
I’m 22 in a few days.

-Jn

(I took out the sacreligious parts this morning, but then I put them back in cause that wasn't fair to yesterday.)

there is a solace in the silence
in the slow slip of sanity
into an abyss of nothingness
peace and safety here
in the quiet of the alone

right brain...left brain...brain left

There are a lot of things in my happy little world that translate into math. I don't do it often for the general populous but I really do go there all the time. I mean come on...I suck at it but I like it anyways. That statement could just as easily be about life or my linear algebra class. So right nowlife is like a step function. I am jumping from one state of emotion to the next and flatlining without the nice little transitiony pieces in between. (This is not the same as the sine wave bouncing up and down that I was doing earlier this year) Alternately I'm like a matrix with complex numbers that circles the origin its whole life in an elipse. Sometimes a little more positive than negative or the other way around. Never reaching zero and only exisiting in discrete incriments. These are really two completely different things and I don't know if adding them together would describe life better.

Ah well. In reality I am an awful lot like a complex number in general. You know, the imaginary number i, also known as the square root of negative one. Don't try to plug that one in to your standard calculator. It hurts them. They cry inside. Its like you trying to picture infinity in your brain. Poor little calculators can't handle it unless their programers gave them a cop out 'drain' for all the extra stuff in the form of i. In reality it's not imaginary. It's as real as every other number (in fact their reality is often questioned as well). The only problem with it is that it is a two dimensional number shoved in to a one dimensional space. Of course it gets a little ancy and uncomfortable and doesn't play nice with all the other numbers. Y'all stuck it in to a system of rules it was never designed to follow. No one likes that. When you make a jump up to two dimensional numbers i can relax and unfold a little bit and those silly numberline bound numbers aren't as afraid of the open space as they thought they would be. Everyone is a lot happier and there is peace in the number kingdom. But no one really wants to think in two dimensional numbers. When you are counting the points on a nice buck you don't really want any of the points to jump off the numberline and no one will believe you when you say it was a 10 point plus 3i.

I have also been spending a lot of time living in other people's heads. I am trying to write a play and another play and another play. One just needs polished and then I have to decide if it is any good. The next needs a lot of bits fitted in. The last needs everything from the bottom up except the framing ideas and is probably at least a year in the future if I dont abandon it completely. The one that is the hardest is the middle one. There is the problem with trying to understand what she is thinking and feeling and translate that into words on a page but she is more compartmentalized than I have been in a long time and it is hard to not think with my whole brain while I am in hers. Then I have to write poetry for her which is about the only activity that does use her whole brain only I have to lift it off of her shoulders and shift it up and sideways a little so that the words aren't too painful for her to put down into a notebook. It's more than a little complicated and she is really confused and somewhat depressed so me dabbling in her brain isn't doing me any emotional favors.

In other news there is a 104.5 now. Born last night. 4 called me at 1am to let me know which was sweet except I was sleeping. I have finished the Alice books again. And who knows I might just start them again again. My housemates all ran away this week leaving an empty house. And there are less than 3 weeks (is less than 3 weeks?) of school left until graduation. I know for a fact that some of these days are 2 (or more) dimensional because they are moving in directions that they couldn't otherwise and it makes me sort of giddy and uneasy. Like the Monday that didn't exist for instance. 9 days until my birthday...which I have decided that I don't care about at all. I am too tired to plan something so if yunz want an excuse to party- you do it. Also the iggies have worked themselves up to free reign in my room again and they seem to enjoy my company more though if they keep getting lost around bed time I might have to rethink the matter.

I am actually going to go study now...mrrrrr
-Jn

if I could

I would write about Holy Week and Easter but it went too deep. I would write about break but boredom doesn't make stories even if it is good boredom. I would write about today but I got lost and therefore today doesn't exist. I would write about 104.5 but he hasn't been born yet. I would leave you with a poem but I can't keep the emotions and thoughts long enough to make it count. Instead you get semi-orphan words. They need a something...I don't know if they will ever get it.


It’s a lie to say I’m not anxious but
I’m not quite counting down the days
Cause lord knows where I will be
When you aren’t so damn far away

It seems cheap to say I miss you
I never really saw you anyways
But I promise I’d try harder
You’re just too damn far away

I worry that you’ll disappear
This is all some wishful haze
Or that you’ll find her again
When you’re not damn far away

Go ask Alice

...about her views of the rest of the world...the environment, the sovereignty of nations, the consequences of actions, the egocentricity of...oh nevermind, I forgot this was just a faery story, a little light bed time reading to put me to sleep at night.

So the boat was left to drift down the stream as it would, till it glided gently in among the waving rushes. And then the little sleeves were carefully rolled up, and the little arms were plunged in elbow-deep, to get hold of the rushes a good long way down before breaking them off…while with bright eager eyes she caught at one bunch after another of the darling scented rushes.

“I only hope the boat won’t tipple over!” she said to herself. “Oh, what a lovely one! Only I couldn’t quite reach it.” And it certainly did seem a little provoking…that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn’t reach.

“The prettiest are always further!” she said at last, with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures.

What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while—and these, being dream rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet—but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about.

Through the Looking Glass- Lewis Carroll

Minor political rant

When I run MacDonalds I leave Peru alone. I don't know if free trade is ever a good idea. I was going to post an article here about how fair trade just might be sketchy too but I can't find it. I am just going to gather a bunch of hippies and move to honduras or the northwest coast or Alaska or Ipswich or... something.

Sigh...

Life and love in the RRC*

So we** at public safety like animals and tend to watch them via security camera...to make sure they are secure or something. Last year our friend the duck moved in to the bushes at the entrance gate. As far as housing choices go this was a BAD one. Between the main ingoing and outgoing campus roads, with a dispatch shack on one side and a fairly busy road on the other. Regardless she was there and she wasn't moving. Some mornings (we worked a lot of overnight shifts last year) she would wander across the road to a vernal pool to get breakfast and we would cross our fingers against her getting hit. As luck would have it we were working the morning the babies took their first walk and we hailed a former public safety employee turned grass mower to stop traffic and direct them across the road. There were a lot of babies. I have no clue how many made it because they didn't show up at RRC any more after that. We never really saw daddy much to begin with so we don't know what happened to him either.

Fast forward one year. We again work a lot of overnight shifts with a random morning shift thrown in for kicks. We continue to watch animals via camera and guess what the birds finally found the bird feeder. (We have a woodpecker this year in addition to the upsidedown hanging bird and your standard eat at the feeder birds- this is exciting if you hadn't gathered already) Joy of all joys, Roger and the receptionist (who's name currently escapes me) are back. Um...Roger and the receptionist are as married as ducks actually can be...and they are looking for a nest. They have decided against the previous location but are scouting out roadside venues up in the hinterland parking lot and under the trees on some rock piles. Apparently these are the rugged, push the limits of livable habitat ducks not your pansy waterfront-only yuppie ducks. They haven't committed to a place yet, but I will be sure to keep you posted.

-Batman (Jn)



**The views expressed in this 'blog' in no way represent the feelings of Gordon College, the Department of Public Safety or its employees, students, or subsidiaries, save one rather questionable, recalcitrant and perhaps derelict member of the community. Heretofore and hereafter all uses of the plural including but not limited to 'we' and 'our' should refer only to the proprietress of the aforementioned 'blog'


*I don't know that I ever defined RRC though I use it with some frequency because I spend a lot of time here...and write here a lot too. RRC is the dispatch shack/shed/hut more properly known as the Roger Reception Center.

Scientist in the Kitchen

Recipe of goodness...Try #1

Ingredients
approach. 6 apples that would need to be composted tomorrow otherwise
Soft Butter
Brown Sugar
Nutmeg
Salt
Vanilla
Oatmeal
An Egg
A wee bit o' milk

Serves: My house.

Choppy up the apples and stick um in a casserole dish that fits them rather well. Don't bother with pealing them because there has to be some value to the skin and you are lazy. Mix some quantity of the next 4 ingredients together in a dish then swirly them in with the apples. (I put this in the preheating oven at this point just to speed things along...I don't know how much that helped) Reusing the same dish crack your egg and swirly it around with some nutmeg vanilla milk and salt (like your making french toast really). Then add what feels like too much oatmeal and throw more brown sugar in with all of that. It should be kinda yellower than you're especially comfortable with and the consistency of really thick peanut butter. Spread this goodness out on top of the apples et. al., sprinkle the top with some more oatmeal for kicks, and bake it at 350 until the house smells like amazing and there are goo bubbles where the crust didn't cover.

Notes: The apples part really just tastes like your generic baked apple whatsit. If you live in a not cinnamon-free house I would throw some of that in. I was really rather impressed with my attempt at a crust and will most likely use that again for something. I don't know if trying to use it as a bottom crust will work because I am afraid it will not get crunchy and golden brown good if it has apple sweat all over it from the baking process. I will probably still try this at some point, when I have more apples that should probly be composted tomorrow.

mmmm...-Jn

Sometimes...

...something seems more autobiographical that it is...

...sometimes it doesn't.

Last Night, Last Laugh (04/06/06 RRC and Ispinach)

So I said no last night.
I think I just might mean it
More than those times before for sure
And maybe forever
Maybe never again
And I drove to the ocean with them
Just like old times, you and me
Nights spent at the beach
…together
And I walked it alone while they huddled in mass
God, that water is cold
And yeah it’s still salty
Does that mean you still love me?

:: Laugh::

Like it never really hurt
Like I saw through the lies
Like I don’t dream about you
…sometimes
I don’t want it
Take it back

:: Laugh::

And the stars were all shining
To outshine the moon
I caught a shooting star
Do you remember that night?
Life was turning out right
Promises made to be wishes broken
Fast forward a year
In a lower hemisphere
I kissed you goodbye
When I kissed him hello
Under brighter stars falling
But hey at least I thought of you

::Laugh::

Like I think it mattered
Like there’s no more tears to cry
Like I have the answer
…sometimes
I don’t want it
Take it back

:: Laugh::

Cause life’s a hard joke
I just let them smoke and I spun
Spun to be alone
I spun myself silly
Since I was already sick
I had a reason then
Puked in the salty sea
Gave it my fears since I couldn’t give tears
And I couldn’t swim out to give me
Then we just drove home
They leave me alone
If I promise I’m okay

::Laugh::

Like someone is watching
Like I know the reason why
Like this is a new life
…this time
I want it
You can’t have it back

-Jn

If you lived here, it would be snowing now

Good friends make you do things (or not do things) even though you don't want to for your own good. Better friends know when NOT making you do things for your own good even though you don't want to is a better course of action. The best ones can sort through the mess and set you in the right direction even when you dont know what you should or want to do.

Last night turned out to be a drive and smoke night. Meaning I drove a lot and they smoked a little when we got there. I don't have the need to smoke ever at all and am not so sure how I feel about it, but well its only once in a while and if it is what they need then it is what they get. I will frown half heartedly and look for my keys. I, on the other hand, practice ritualistic life reduction for increased quality of life in other ways like trying to get hypothermia by chasing waves in a cold cold ocean and then trying to spin myself silly in to it. Oh and accelerating through the sharp turns- that is one of my favorites. Whatever brings catharsis. Whatever gets you back to recet. Chase the peace...or something like that.

Steph posted most of the pictures I was going to so you can wander there instead.

There are lots of thoughts but no words. Whenever I get my words back I will poem here again.

In the tracks

Pilgrim (04/02/06 Christ Church)

The angel
The voice of my God
The rain she calls
She calls
I come
My heart in ardent worship
Quest
A pilgrim
A pilgrim
A wandering soul
Returning to the place of my birth

Jn-

Yeah its a little more new agey than I wanted it to sound...
.:Shrug:.

Dancing with Salamanders

So I spent most of yesterday in a sewer pipe. Not a real sewer pip mind you- the theatrical type. I was working the trap door for the show (Both shows). This meant a lot of time spent in a small dark space being quiet and jumping every time a light went on. It also meant babies falling from the sky sword fights and eye explosions and near-rapes going on over my head for extra effect. And then the sullied and dishonored prince of spain, Ben, wearing a loin cloth and growling a lot. (8 hours is a long time)

Yesterday was a big night. Let me say that again. Yesterday WAS Big Night. One night a year the salamanders go a courting and the wood frogs start their singing and you all know peepers just cant shut up anyways. After the show I booted up and found my trusty side kick (apparently all other happy hippies were indisposed but one can pull a sullen Steph! into a car with only a little effort and a few scrapes and scratches) and we headed off to the great unknown.

OH MY GOSH- The wilson pool was covered over in woodfrogs and the pool by the presidents house and the road marshy pool had some too. We couldnt get close enough to see anything there but the nyland pool!!! These salamanders are like 8 plus inches long and they live for years and years like as long as your dog even. They are all yellow spotted and stick out like reflectors when they come swimming at your light. And there was a decent sized toad hanging out there too. I think he was just a voyer because he as no business breeding in a pool that small but I photographed* him anyways. Promised him a picture for his mother. Caught a wee frog that I thought was a wood frog- think im all backwards and those are the peepers and the wood frog was in the church parking lot. I always get those 2 confused. And we took the drive down Chebbaco road...So many frogs tempting fate by crossing the road. The one amphibian crossing trench on the stretch is apparently ill used because I found a VERY squished bullfrog a foot away. We save a salamander from sure and certain road peril tambien. I have pictures* of him chilling in tire tracks. I wanted to ask him a few questions for an expose but the car was barreling down on top of us at that point so I wisked him to the other side and wished him and his childrens childrens children well. Then I danced and I giggled. And all is right with the world.

And now for church...-Jn


*When I get my computer back from the dead I will post some pictures of my new friends...