then i saw in a blue haze all the world poured flat and pale between the mountains...

driving back to fayetteville from norfork today, i saw the most serene, purely beautiful sunset i've ever seen. so beautiful that it made my heart hurt just to realize that it was such a transient moment. rays of white light stretching across an amber sky... yellow-gray-white-blue clouds flecked with dazzling light, lined with the darkest shades of red and purple... an orange-red sun sinking quickly behind greenly wooded hills. i actually had to stop my car and just watch it... i had no choice in the matter whatsoever... that moment - fleeting, though it was - is the reason i can see...

it's not all bad... just an alarming percentage of it.

this whole working-three-jobs-going-to-class thing is kicking my ass. no sugar coating here... it's almost midnight, i just got off of work, i have 200+ pages of reading to do, a paper to outline and i have to be up at 7am. this is summer?

... i did get to take a brief break this weekend... got to visit the parental units and see some old friends... got to hang out on the farm and meet a pro fly fisherman who has generously offered to take me under his wing and 'show me the ropes,' so to speak... there was apparently a meteor shower of sorts on saturday night and i decided that i would lay down in the grass to watch it... i woke up some time later [it was a while, as i had grass prints on my face... lovely], covered in chigger bites and itching like hell. all in all, it was really great sleep, though... and while it was brief, the meteor shower was quite beautiful.

oh [i apologize for skipping around a lot, i'm slightly sleep deprived and i ramble when i'm sleepy... why i'm typing right now is quite a mystery for me, but c'est la vie, i suppose] - the club that has been contributing to my lack of sleep vis a vis the room-vibrating bass at 2am burned down on saturday morning. i was out of town during this club-burning-down-business and it was very strange to see what used to be a club across the street suddenly transformed into a smoldering pile of rubble and random awning parts. it would seem that studio seven sixteen is no more... sad, really, because they had a really kickin' drag show on saturday nights. endless hours of entertainment. yes, i do love me a good drag show... there's something so gratifying about seeing men dress up as women, act like women and do it well...

there are the really bad drag queens - thought they don't even deserve to be called drag queens - who think that by putting on a dress of sorts and some really poorly applied make-up, they will be morphed into some sort of goddess. wrong, darling... so terribly wrong and sad. much like anything one does in life... to be good at something, even being a girl for a night, takes a little bit of effort.

... exercising my right to be bendy... it's in the constitution. except in texas...

i'm an addict. that's right, i said it. i am a book addict... call me a nerd. call me what you will... but i simply cannot walk into a bookstore without having a deer-in-the-headlights-type moment and/or without buying something. hey, at least i'm not spending my limited cash supply on crack or whatever those crazy kids are smoking these days... i realized that i had this problem a while ago, but i was broke and would much rather do things like buy food and such [i.e. things that keep one alive] and books just didn't seem to be an option. my friend, nine, decided that tonight would be a good night for a bookstore trip... bad for my health. bad for my anorexic wallet... good for my brain, i guess [one needs to look on the bright side of these things... particularly when one's cash flow is on the point of drought].

speaking of brain... my roommate, camille, receives the newspaper everyday... and i read it. oh yeah... there's some pretty messed up shit happenin' in this here bible belt... pretty twisted and pretty entertaining. what more could one possibly ask for in a paper product? not much, that's what. for instance, i found out that one of my co-workers was arrested for possession with intent to sell on the 8th of july in benton county arkansas by the sheriff's department. now where else could i learn such valuable information? nowhere... well, unless i had connections in the sheriff's department and i don't... so, thank you newspaper. thank you from the bottom of my little heart.

did you know that here in the baptist capital of the world, if one so much as breathes out of the wrong nostril, it gets printed in the newspaper? if one commits a social faux pas... it gets printed in the newspaper. if one were to - say - go to dickson street [the bar-hopping zone of fair fayetteville], trip on the sidewalk and fall on one's face, it would probably be printed in the newspaper, along with pictures of said event - just so that the humiliation can be all the more semi-permanent.

is it really front page news that jane doe runs a sewing club from her lakefront cottage in northwest arkansas? do i really need to read about that stuff when i am eating my cereal, drinking my coffee and trying to feed my brain with today's current world events in the morning... no? no. while it's grand and all... i don't need to know. why - you ask - don't i just turn on the tv and watch the bbc or some other comparable network? because i'm poor and can't afford cable. that's why... [thought that i'd drop the hint that i'm seeking funding and donations are welcome once more before i finish this post... hint hint wink wink nudge nudge...]

i'm spent... on the morrow, then, kiddies?

listen to the music. everything else is just... silence.

new chapter and whatnot... i've just finished moving into my new apartment in fayetteville... i have to admit that two years of living in a house has spoiled me just a bit - what with all the extra space, front yard and not having noisy neighbors and such. complete with my new apartment package, i also have the added privilege of living directly across the street from fayetteville's seemingly most happenin' club - studio 716 - with the bonus of thumping beats to keep me awake at night... sleep's overrated, right? yeah, that's what i thought...

having not posted in an exorbitant amount of time, i've been pressuring myself to write something brilliant - something i rarely do, much less under the added self-pressure. so this is basically it - i'm here... barely... working three jobs and attending a class at the university on 'russia since 1861', reading a lot and living out of cardboard boxes [hopefully i will remedy that situation shortly]... trying desperately to 'get my shit back in order' [to put it as ineloquently as possible].

i've spent a lot of time alone lately... and i find it strangely comforting to rely on myself for company. i guess i can deem it giving my self a 'social vacation' and all that nonsense... but being around constant gossip is just not fun.. particularly when said gossip is aimed directly at yours truly... no, no fun at all when you really think about it. i'd rather be locked in a room infested with spiders [and coming from an arachnophobic person, that's saying quite a bit]... i am not perfect, nor have i ever claimed to be. i make more mistakes than one could possibly imagine, but this is who i am and if i change, it won't be motivated by someone else's critique of me... i'm satisfied with knowing that i am a work in progress. basta. soapbox nonsense over.