smoke and peppermint chapstick

22. as of last thursday, yours truly is 22... i don't feel any older, nor has anything significantly, dramatically, or blissfully changed in my life overnight, much to my dismay. 'chronologically, you're... but physically, you're still...' as un-magical as birthdays can be for me [they're not normally very good days, as luck/fate/what-have-you would have it], this one was rather lovely... unlike my big 2-1, people actually remembered my birthday this year... my friends called, people bought me a few beverages, and - even though i had to wait tables that day - it was one of those fall-asleep-with-a-smile-on-your-face kind of days... i got a 12:01 am 'happy birthday,' my roommate and her boyfriend made me breakfast, complete with a candle-covered crumb cake [as birthday cake would have tasted kind of strange alongside eggs and such], my friends took me out to lunch [can you tell that my life seems to organize itself around food?], and i got to walk around for most of the positively gorgeous day with a balloon tied to my belt loop... silly really, but nonetheless wonderful.

maybe it's the late night or the fresh air [writing on the front porch], but i have an urge to write something... humor me, if you will: the kindness of people can be a bit overwhelming sometimes... people who understand when you just need a hug and give you one... no special requests or circumstances needed, simply an understanding of someone else's desire to feel physically tied to someone, if only for a brief moment. i'm blessed enough to be surrounded by people like that... call it luck, call it what you will, but i have some pretty damn wonderful friends. it never fails that when i'm feeling a little detached - a little alone - i get a phone call, a knock on the door, or something of the like... i'm rescued by the kindness of my true friends on a regular basis... someone once told me that i should strive to surround myself with people who make me smile, people who enrich my life... i think i've succeeded. though i may not make enough of a contribution to them, my friends are the greatest gift i have and i am forever grateful.

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.

who needs a knight in shining armor when you have a dude with a rolling couch?

i finally did it. i finally fell down the stairs in vol walker hall on friday. i suppose that i was probably aided in my feat by the fact that i am one of the least graceful people i know... then again, it might have also been helped along by the rather large puddle on the landing of said [marble] stairs. i am most thankful for the fact that no one was around to see my marvelous fall, my crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs, or my limp back into the studio... as i embarrass easily and i don't enjoy being pointed and laughed at for my idiocy... at least not to my face...

mind you, my body still hates me quite profoundly for letting it fall down a flight of stairs but it probably hates me even more for going to david's house on saturday night. too much beer. too much fun [well, not really... there's no such thing as too much fun, but go with me on this one... willing suspension of disbelief and all that jazz]. so midway through the evening i finally find a chair to sit in that doesn't hurt me [i think i gave my tail bone quite the thrashing on the stairs] and low and behold, my friend david decides that it would be a great idea to make my chair flip over... with him squarely on top of me... yeah, body not so happy about that one...

so i spent most of yesterday being as lazy as possible... we'll deem it recuperating for the time being. i watched the third harry potter movie twice, took a bath, read a book... did as little moving as possible... and it would seem that my body hates me just a little less today than it did yesterday. all in all, i'd call that progress.

i'm not making kissee faces...

i'm not really one for going to weddings, watching wedding videos, or anything of the like... maybe it's just that the thought of marriage freaks the living crap out of me [well, at least for now], maybe it's something totally unrelated, but i don't really enjoy most weddings - receptions, yes. weddings, no. a lot of times, i find myself getting angry with some of the phrases in the ceremony - 'the wife's duty is to serve her husband'... where's the part about it being an equal partnership? it seems to me that if two people - whoever they are - get married, they should 'serve' each other... maybe i'm idealistic, but that would seem like the key ingredient to any successful marriage - well, that and actually loving each other, making each other stupidly happy and being loyal [i.e. not diddling the maid and whatnot].

having written all of this, i did have the chance to watch my friend's brother's wedding video this weekend, and it was really quite wonderful. none of this 'who serves who' business and the like. the whole thing was so full of love and joy that it kind of made me want to cry - in a really good kind of way [i thought i'd add this little tid-bit for those of you who don't know me very well: i'm not a wedding crier... nor do i really cry during movies, ceremonies, etc. ... maybe i'm just a heartless freak, but i've just never been that moved to weep during a ceremony...]. it was wonderfully romantic - on a beach in costa rica at sunset during the spring... all that stuff you read about but no one actually does.

i guess it was kind of reassuring to know that people are still romantic... that people can love each other enough to not be afraid to be goofy in their pursuit of romance...

a collection of silly nothings...

now that i've succeeded in alienating everyone who has ever read my blog, i thought that i'd go ahead and update this thing... i just got back from a ridiculous trip to new mexico... ridiculous in a really good way - in the i-didn't-want-to-come-home-kind-of-way. i'm a desert person and for some reason, i feel more at peace there than anywhere else. maybe it's the 'big sky' or maybe it's that at night [practically everywhere], it looks like someone's taken a satchel full of diamonds and thrown it into the sky so it looks 'like a backlit canopy with holes punched in it.'

being on this trip reminded me of how much i used to enjoy being outside as much as possible... being active as much as possible... it seems as though i'd forgotten that since i moved to fayetteville - surprisingly. i love coming home after a full day of traipsing around some unfamiliar place, feeling as though if i move just once more i will involuntarily collapse [not from lack of sleep... which has unfortunately been my trend as of the last four years]. i also love solitude [in doses] - being able to disappear for a while; to sit in complete solitude with the world swirling past you in easy waves whilst you sit in awe of what surrounds you. that is a great moment.

i just met jesus and he gave me a part-time job

there are few things that i can think of that are worse than being covered with sawdust... it's not necessarily the sawdust part that's so awful - it's the damn itching. that crap embeds itself into every goddamn fiber of every shred of anything in contact with your skin and it doesn't let go, accept bribes or give a shit whether or not you want to crawl out of your skin because of the discomfort.

i spent the majority of my day today in the woodshop in the basement of vol walker... why is it that everything you think will take 20 minutes takes you all goddamn day? argh. that's what i have to say about that: argh. i've learned - among other things - 2 very important things these past few months: 1] respect those who have the patience, talent and upper body strength to work with concrete - if you don't, they have the power to possibly beat you down with an 80 lb. bag of concrete or two... 2] don't wear fleece, sweatshirts or anything black in a woodshop because, a] sawdust never really comes out of your clothes, no matter how many times or how thoroughly you wash them, and b] you end up with sawdust in very peculiar and potentially embarrassing places which fuzzy or dark clothing tend to accentuate... don't ask.

i had a dream that you grew a garden on a trampoline and i was so happy that i'd invented peanut butter...

i have been so very neglecting of my dear blog. i am sorry to keep those of you who actually read my pathetic babble waiting, and i do appreciate that you've been waiting. these last couple of weeks have been somewhat rough [to put it lightly]. i've been quite a lot of different things of late... i was the terrible girlfriend who had a final the day after my boyfriend's birthday and was unable to do something wonderful for him on his day; i've been the nervous wreck that people dread having to interact with; i've been a zombie from lack of sleep; i've been... well, lets just say that it's the end of the semester and i've been dealing with that in my own retarded way.

i did get to go to the movie theater on friday [courtesy of a lovely woman i am privileged to call my best friend - absa] for the first time this semester. we went to see kingdom of heaven... damn. amazing. movie. i wasn't expecting anything quite that good, and needless to say, i was more than pleasantly surprised. having taken military history and being a history geek/nerd/what have you, i really appreciated the movie for not being one of those overly-biased-i-haven't-ever-picked-up-a-history-book-in-my-whole-god-
forsaken-life-but-i-felt-like-making-an-historical-movie kind of movies... i also appreciated the lack of preacheri-ness in the movie. as someone who grew up in the middle east and as someone who detests the current trend of condemning islamic people because of their faith [or anyone for that matter], i was most touched by the respectful portrayal of both christians and muslims... of people in the movie.

this was, however, brutally interrupted by the disgusting woman behind me [who, mind you, should be slapped for being such a bigot], got up after that wonderful film and stated, [imagine the most ignorant accent you can muster] 'i just can't believe that they'd actually make those muslims look good in that movie.' i wanted to get up and say, in the most serious tone i could possibly conjure, 'you. damn. fool. i pity you for being so ignorant and hateful.' i will go to my grave still wondering how people who claim to be 'godly' can be so full of warrantless hate. surely, 'god's people' should be good people, tolerant people, people who respect others and 'do unto others as they would have done unto them.' but, such is life, i suppose. i personally think that it's some sort of cruel twist of fate that would have people spending their lives filling their stony hearts full of more blackness...

this is one of those times that i have to remind myself of one of those things everyone should just trust is true: that all people are inherently good, no matter the apparent darkness of their actions, no person is entirely evil... and then i turn on the news and see pure, unadulterated evil staring right back at me with his stupid camel face and it makes me want to believe it all the more... people are inherently good. people are inherently good. good. good. good.