summer!

Is about here. I am so, so happy to be done with all my finals. I do still have to write a 6-8 page paper for my independent study but other than that, I'm free as a bird, to borrow a cliche.
Life feels good right now. I'll be starting summer research soon, and I've been told I can work at my on-campus job all summer, which means I'll have very flexible hours and also means I can put off buying a car for awhile longer which I was initially really excited about, although as it turns out, it looks like I'll be car-sitting for my friend Tyler while he's in Seattle over the summer, so I've got pretty much everything lined up. It's going to be a good summer, I'm sure of it. And I'm also really happy that Mel won't be moving until a little bit later in the summer. The longer I can be in denial about her moving, the better.
I think I'm happier lately than I have been in a long time. I mean, I clearly still have my moments of crazy insane mad sadness and frustration, but they've gotten to be pretty few and far between and I'm happy. I'm really almost totally content with my life right now.
My roommate and I started going to aerobics; we signed up through community ed. and it's so much fun! We feel pretty ridiculous most of the time and some of the middle-aged women who we are in the class with are better at aerobics than we are which is a little sad, but it's so enjoyable and it feels good to be taking care of ourselves.
Last night was an excellent entry to summer. Sean's welcome home party was last night, and it was exactly as crazy and fun and crowded and basement-party as it possibly could be. Everything I anticipated and more. It was so good to see him, and everyone else, and to just chill and relax without worrying about anything I had to do today. If that party was any indicator, here's to my first summer in St. Paul. I feel sure it's going to be filled with good friends and good times. At least it better be.

on and on.

I don't have much to say lately. I feel like I'm just keeping life as complacent as possible because if allow myself to think about everything that's really going on in my life I will go crazy. I feel like if I really let myself think about what I'm feeling about what's going on in my mind I would realize that I'm really one of the most irrevocably screwed up people.

The problem, I have realized, with making friends who are older than you is that they all graduate and go away before you do, and then you have to re-imagine your life without them in it and you cannot even begin the process. And it's funny, because you have a life, obviously, before you are friends with these people. But then you meet and talk and suddenly these people become the most important ones you have in your life and then they graduate and prepare to move on with their lives before you are able to do so with yours.

I love St. Paul. I love it SO MUCH. But there's so much more out there. So many places I want to see, people I want to meet, things I want to do, and I am stuck here in limbo waiting to see if I can make any of that happen. I want to go to grad school but I don't know why, and I want to live in New York for awhile, or maybe Boston, and eventually London because I feel so of myself there. And there are people I am so afraid of losing that I don't even let myself consider the possibility of what I would do without them in my life in some form or another because I don't know how to function without them. I don't know who to tell my secrets to anymore.

Spring always makes me a little crazy I think and this year more than ever except for last spring, which was just screwed up to the utmost. It becomes this time where everything seems possible because things are starting new and the world is fresh and beautiful and lovely and aching but nothing seems possible because I'm stuck here going to classes and the loveliness is somehow beyond me.

Sigh. It's going to be a long week.

dear hamline

Okay. I don't know if it's because I was abroad for a semester or what, but so many things frustrate me on a much deeper level than ever before, or maybe I've just learned to see them more clearly.

At risk of echoing Mel, people around here need to learn to not always blame other people for what they perceive as problems or issues on campus or in their lives or how they perceive certain statements made by others. If you have a problem with something someone says in class, SAY SO at the time!! Don't just complain about it later or talk to someone else about how it makes you feel bad or makes you uncomfortable, RAISE A CONSTRUCTIVE ARGUMENT against such statements/attitudes/whatever the hell is bothering you.

Working for the Oracle also frustrates me beyond all belief right now. Whatever coverage I give to "sensitive issues" on campus, someone is mad at me or thinks I have done a crappy job or feels I'm misrepresenting something. Well, that's because they are SENSITIVE ISSUES, and no matter WHAT I say or how objective I attempt to be about something or how much I try to listen to both sides of a story or argument and then do my best to represent that, I get lambasted. Which is why I do not want to be a journalist professionally. There is no way to discuss these issues in a manner by which SOMEONE isn't going to tell me that I've got it all wrong. No one, at the end of the day, is going to be happy, least of all me.

You see, the thing is, I do have very, very strong opinions regarding what's going on around campus. But I can't just write and publish whatever the hell I think and feel like writing about. That's called irresponsible, unobjective journalism. Yes, go ahead and scoff and smirk and make snide comments about an Oracle staffer referring to what she does as journalism. I am doing the best I can. By some people's standards, that is clearly not good enough, but when I hear two totally opposite accounts of an event and there is NO WAY to prove or disprove one of them, what good can possibly be achieved by writing anything about either account, when I (and no one else on campus except the people involved) cannot POSSIBLY judge what the truth is. He said/she said arguments do not work in newspapers. At least, they aren't supposed to.

As regards the recent City Pages article (in case you couldn't tell this is what I'm largely referring to), do I think that admin. at Hamline handled the situation perfectly? NO! Do I think the "compromise/resolution" that was reached is ideal, or even good? NO!!! But I can't just say, "Well, I think this sucks," and publish it. As far as I can tell, the administration followed the general guidelines for what went on. Should these vague guidelines be more specific and have more stipulations attached? Yeah, I think they should. I think students being able to go around and accuse professors of being racist or intolerant or whatever they choose to term it is disturbing and caustic and damaging to all involved parties. Can I research what exactly these rules are and interview people regarding how they might be improved to protect the interests of faculty and students and to keep even incidences in which students feel genuinely and maybe even occasionally rightfully upset ones that can be handled in a reasonable way that actually helps provide some good background and learning and construction toward deeper understanding of one another? Yes, I can. And that's what I'm trying to do. But although we are a professional staff, doing our best to put out a professional product, this office that we half-live in is still not our life.

I have other things happening. I have people dying in my family, I have friends with problems, I have classes and exams and independent studies and research projects and all kinds of shit to do besides this. People seem to have a hard time remembering that this paper, which we work on until 4 a.m. on Thursdays and skip class to interviewpeople for and get out of bed two hours early to work on that story we didn't have time to do earlier because we were studying for that midterm and working a double shift, is what we do ON TOP OF the five hundred million things we are all ALSO involved in. Does that sound like an excuse? probably, yeah. And to some extent it is.

We aren't perfect. We know we aren't perfect. But we also know we're trying our damndest and we are just as frustrated as everyone else when an issue or story doesn't come out the way we'd like it to. I would love to be able to sit down for hours to write a news piece, I would LOVE for that to be the only thing I have to do in my day. But it can't be, it just can't. Almost nothing I write comes out the way I want it to. I always want it to be better, stronger, more direct, more informative, sharper, etc. I feel that way about everything I write.

I seem to have lost track of where I was going with all of this. I seem to feel a little better having gotten this out of my system, however.

headaches and bad luck

another funeral. i don't know if i am going yet, as it's in florida. this routine is getting to be too much. too many tears, too much black clothing, too much feeling wrenched from the inside out from the emotional exhaustion of death and it's permanence and the searing finality of realizing i'm never going to see people again.
i didn't know my uncle all that well. haven't seen him in a couple of years now.
they got married when i was five. it was the only time i ever got to be a flower girl in a wedding. even though i was little, i think that's the day i remember him best from. they were so happy. the memories are incomplete, vague, without definition.
i had a bouquet of daisies. they were married on a ship, out on the ocean, and the weather was perfect. it was a day when the sky and the ocean were so blue and the sun so warm and bright that everything seems perfect. the dress i wore was white, with lace, and what i remember most is their smiling faces and how they fed each other cake and looked so happy. it is the first wedding i really remember, i think.
i find it strange to think that their entire marriage and its duration and now its end has all come within my lifespan. things happen so fast.
and this didn't, really. we have known that it would be coming. but it is still so hard to think of him being gone because they always seemed so happy. i don't know why those two things seem like they are connected but they do.
and i know these feelings i have are all related to the general frustration with life i've been experiencing lately, to that feeling of being just a short step away from the fall off the cliff to some kind of minor mental breakdown, to emotional overload, to the constant change and the upheaval and the chaos of things being the same.
i am overwhelmed by my inertia, my inability to bring change, my utter failure to make enough of a difference to those around me. like maybe i don't love enough, or tell people enough how much i appreciate what they do. instead i spend time being upset with people, getting irritated and impatient, when i should generally be thanking them for being in my life. so for those of you reading this, thank you for taking the time to see what's up with my life. thank you for putting up with me, my foul moods, my sarcasm, my frequent closed-off-ness. i am lucky to have the people i have in my life. i am so lucky to have you for friends and i promise to work to be a better friend to you. i love you all more than you can know.
i am planning right now to probably go to this funeral but if i do i feel it will be for selfish reasons. it won't help my aunt to feel better, it won't make a difference to al's daughters, at best it will bring me some feeling of false closure or the pretense of making things easier on my dad or somehow being able to help my aunt.
and no matter how i'm feeling at times, i know it can't be anything compared to how my aunt is feeling right now. in the span of five months she has lost both her parents and her husband.

today

Today has been, without a doubt, one of the most RIDICULOUS days of my entire life.
Details to follow some other time.
Right now I am too consumed with the absurdity of this day to expound upon this subject any more.

tired.

I am exhausted. I am running on something beyond empty. I have reached the level at which it is actually easier to get only a few hours of sleep because my system has adapted to getting only a little sleep so a full night of sleep becomes more painful than not enough.
This has become my life. I read this column pretty religiously and it usually strikes a chord with me somewhere, but this one pretty much was about me.
How did I get here?
Collectively, the amount of stuff I do should not leave me feeling this way. I am busy, yes, but should I be this thinly stretched?

three weeks and counting.

I'm going to New York over spring break to see Krystle!! I am ridiculously excited to see her. We haven't properly spent any time together since August. Which is much, much too long ago. I miss her so much. She is my best friend in the world (except for Mel and Mal) but she understands me differently than they do because she has known me longer. Not that much longer, but enough longer to have seen me transition through a lot of crap.

Also, I'm not going to lie. I'm incredibly restless. Since being back from abroad I have a traveling bug like no other. It is really difficult to explain to people though, but I feel like if I stay in Minnesota much longer I'll go crazy, and I've only been back for two months. Someone asked me today what it is exactly that I miss about England and I couldn't come up with a good answer.

I think it's the whole experience. I loved York - that city and I were meant to come together, I swear. And I miss the experience of every day being an adventure. I'm incredibly busy here but my life has very quickly fallen back into a routine. Which is not a bad thing - it's just that I had more freedom and independence while I was abroad than I ever have before, and I miss that feeling - that I can do whatever I want. I can't just hop on a train to Scotland anymore, or take a weekend trip to visit Lena.

All this growing up to do. I've started planning for grad school already. I don't know when I want to go but I know I do want to, very much. I took a practice single-subject lit. test last week and it was SO HARD! I don't think I will ever get into any of the schools I dream of going to. But for the next year I will read like crazy and study and look for keys and practice and work hard at the classes I am in now in order to secure a good transcript and killer recommendations. And then I will take that GRE, and I will fear it not, and I will kick it's butt. I hope. So going to New York can also be construed as educationally helpful, since it will help me decide if I want to go to grad school there or not.

Three cheers for New York City! I can't wait until I am there and not here.

mood swings.

sometimes lately i feel like i am about fifteen again. i get so angry for no reason, and so sad (also for no reason) and i feel hurt even when no one has said anything to hurt me. it's a very strange feeling.

and then alternately, i have moments of total exuberance and happiness. i would like more of them though.

i think it will be a good weekend. tonight i'm staying in - i didn't get to bed until about 4 am and then i woke up at 8 am and was wiiiiide awake. so i'm going to be crashing, energy-wise, at any moment now. tomorrow night i think i'm supposed to be going out with a bunch of girls which should be a good time.

i'm feeling a general dissatisfaction with myself. ick.

so it is.

My grandma died this weekend. Saturday night, at about 10:15. A few hours after I left the nursing home. I wish I had stayed. My dad was there, by himself, when his mom died, and somehow that feels wrong to me. But the thing about living in the nursing home that my grandma was always afraid of was dying alone. That was the one thing that she really, really didn't want and so I am glad my dad was there. He spent Thursday night there on a sofa, and my uncle spent Friday night, and Dad was going to spend Saturday night.

I miss her already, in a way that I'll never miss my grandfather. I had very different relationships with them. My grandma's family was her whole world. Her kids meant everything to her, and in her eyes they were pretty much perfect. Approaching that, she adored her grandchildren, and that includes me. It sounds conceited to say that she used to light up when my brother and/or I would visit her, but it isn't. It's just that her family was so precious to her that visiting members made her whole day. I don't think anyone is ever going to love me as unconditionally and think of me so highly as my grandmother did. She waitressed until she was well into her seventies, and she used to keep all of the change from her tips and take turns giving it to me, my brother, and my cousin. I think the container full usually came to around $15, which seems like a small fortune when you're six.

She was the kind of grandmother that I wish everyone could have. We used to spend a lot of time in the summer out at the lake. She was a terrific gardener - she had one of the greenest thumbs of anyone I've known. I never used to eat fruit, hardly ever, but I liked her raspberries. I have an afghan that she crocheted for me years ago, and I loved it so much when I was little that I used the colors in it as the color scheme for my bedroom when we first built our house. She taught me to crochet, and I wasn't bad at it, but I haven't even tried it in so long that I know I've forgotten how now. She was a great cook, too, and she never failed to cook too much. She didn't care for leftovers though, so there was seldom any chance of leaving the table until she'd coaxed you into having a second, or even third, helping of just about anything.

Her cookie jar, at least in my memory, was never empty. Usually it was full of either molasses cookies or chocolate chip. I used to lie to my parents in the summer and tell them I was going up to the house to go to the bathroom when really I was going into the empty kitchen to sneak a few more cookies.

I really think she's in a better place now. She was tired, and she didn't like living in the nursing home, although she loved most of the people who worked there.

Church was hard on Sunday. It was therapeutic, but then everyone's condolences came after the service, and it was hard to hear them without bawling all over the place. I continue to cry in random spurts, but they seem to be getting a little shorter, which is good. I haven't done much sleeping either. But it will come eventually.

The funeral is Thursday evening. Any thoughts and prayers for my family, especially my dad and aunts and uncles, are so much appreciated. It has been hard enough losing two grandparents in three months; I cannot imagine losing both parents in that time frame.

quick update.

I am very glad to be finished with j-term. I'm not technically finished, as I still have a 3-page paper due, but I'm done going to class, anyway, which is something. I'm ready for spring term to start. I need to be busier. I need to not have enough time to even lay awake at night and think. I'm a workaholic at the age of 21. Sad. Although, in the name of saving my sanity, I am dropping my senior seminar, so I'll only have 14 credits instead of 18. I really like the idea of the topic that is going to be offered in Moorhead's class next fall so it should be interesting - hard-boiled detective fiction as senior sem. what fun!

I'm headed home for the weekend. The good news is, I'll get to see Ashley and I will get to see JOE!!! Who is now home. How I have missed that boy! The bad news is, by all accounts, my grandma is dying. I know I couldn't expect her to live forever; she is, after all, 93. But she is the only real grandparent I have left, and now it sounds as though I'm losing her 3 months after losing my grandfather. I think it's selfish of me to be so sad. She's had a long full good life and she is tired. But oh how I love her. So many happy little-girl memories of mine center around that woman and the lake and her cookies and raspberries and her gardens and her love. I cried for a long time last night. So. I am going home to say goodbye, presumably. We've been worried before and she has come back, but my parents don't seem to think that is going to happen this time around.

I am tired of going to funerals. I think I have had enough this year.

issues.

I have so many of them. I've been feeling...tense, to say the least, lately.
Firstly, it's just been rough being back at Hamline. Do I love Hamline, and do I love my friends here beyond everything else on this earth? yes. But that doesn't make it totally easy being back, either. As I said in my last post, there's plenty of things I miss. I know I'll go back to England someday, and probably someday in the not-very-distant future, but I wish I could just go back whenever I wanted.
Then there's the little pressure-builders: filling out my intent to graduate form, trying to figure out how I'm going to cram a religion minor into the next three semesters, changing advisors again, worrying about a summer job and an internship, struggling to understand the readings for my feminist philosophy class, etc. I know that none of these are life-and-death issues, especially not right now, but already the idea of being a senior and graduating is starting to frighten me. I make jokes all the time about being an impoverished English major and how I'll never find a job and always be poor, but it's honestly something I fear. I WANT to work in publishing, I really do, and I don't really have any idea how I am going to accomplish that. I guess it's one more thing to add to the list to talk to my advisor about.
And then there's another, much bigger, much more profound issue that I cannot get off of my mind lately. It's absolutely not something I can discuss in any amount of real detail, partly because it's just too personal and partly because I don't want to talk about it, because I want it to have never happened and because I hate even thinking about it. And talking about it seems like it would make it even more real and bring even more of it back and I just don't want that at all. It's something I really thought I had dealt with and that I thought I was finished with, and I haven't even thought about it that much recently, but owing to certain events of last Friday night and some of the topics we've been discussing in my J-term, it's returned to my mind in full force and it's eating away at me, slowly gnawing. It's put me in this bizarre mood where I keep just feeling hurt and alone and sad for no real reason that exists anymore. It's something I've only ever told two people about in my entire life, and it happened a long time ago, so long ago that it seems absolutely absurd that it should be taking such a predominant place in my mind recently. But I can't seem to get rid of it.
Wow. How's that for being a downer?
Sometimes I think I think far too much.

adjusting.

I am slowly starting to get used to being home again. Sort of, anyway.

J-term is in swing - my first paper is due this Monday and I have, as of now, no idea what I'm going to write about. I have to do a 3-page analysis of one of the articles we've read for class and I'm really not sure what to say. I never know what to say. This is one of my great problems in life. I can never think of what I truly want to say until it's too late. Also, although my Feminist Philosophy class is very interesting and I really am enjoying it so far, it is an oral-intensive class and I can't think of anything worthwhile or even remotely intelligent to say in class. I occasionally think of things later, but by then it is obviously too late. I hate that.

There are things about England I really miss. I miss the accents, I miss my morning coffee with the coolest barista ever, I miss the cobblestone streets and the row houses and the tea and the university library. I do not miss the stupid ducks and geese, or the rather plain dull buildings on campus. I kind of miss the schizophrenic weather, and I miss a few of the people, and I miss the radio stations and I miss walking by ponies on my way to class every day. And it isn't even so much these things I miss as the altogether feeling of being there - I miss more than the sum of these parts.

It is, however, good to be home though. Last night I was out with Mel at the Triple Rock, which was good times and good music and then we saw Malin for a bit, which was really needed, and she leaves for Sweden soon which makes me sad even though I know she'll have a wonderful time. I shall miss her much.

And Thursday night, Mal and Tommy and I went thrfiting and I came back with books. 3 from Goodwill, 3 from Half Price Books. When I am going to find time to read these, along with the 3 books I ordered from the public library and in addition to my J-term reading, is totally beyond me, but I'll find a way. I always do. There is nothing I love so much as being able to talk, really talk, about books and feel that another person understands just what I mean, which makes Tommy awesome. And if you are reading, Tommy, yes, I mean you. And then we went for ice cream at Grand Ole Creamery and I ordered the most disgustingly, deliciously sweet sticky sundae and relished every bite. Yum.

Also I had lunch with Ken on Thursday, which was fun except for the part where I was an idiot and forgot my wallet so that he wound up paying. Oh well. I'll fix that next time by paying myself.

People just keep paying for me. I had lunch with Ashley today, too, which was wonderful and so much fun and she insisted on paying, the ridiculous girl. It's amazing how sometimes I don't realize how incredibly much I miss people until I see them. It was the same last weekend when I saw Mary and Jake and Petey.

I still have so many people I want to see! There is never enough time. And I hate having class in the afternoon because it means I never accomplish ANYTHING in the mornings. I know I should get up and do stuff, but I just never actually do.

I'm settling into my new place (Mal's old room) pretty nicely. It's really a nice house, and the room is tiny but it's cozy and soon I'll be too busy to do anything in that room other than sleep (and even that's questionable at times) so it's just fine. The people I'm living with seem really really nice, although one of them is a bit reclusive perhaps, and rent and location are great.

I'm looking forward to spring semester. I take a kind of sick pleasure in being so busy that some days I really DON'T have time to eat or sleep much. Why is that? I am insane.

On that note, time for bed. I think I got to sleep sometime around 4 am yesterday, and now I am tired.

This has been said before by many and may seem insignificant, but it is so true. I love you all.

Good night.

an uncomfortable feeling of discontent

Oh wow. I'm headed home in a day. At this time tomorrow, I'll be at London's Gatwick airport, preparing to fly home. I am definitely, definitely excited about coming home and I will be thrilled beyond words to see everyone.

BUT. I am also having feelings of trepidation about leaving England and not knowing when I'll be back. There are a lot of things I have learned to love about this country, and I think what's really problematic for me is the uncertainty of just not knowing when I'll be back again. I'm sure I will, but it all feels so up in the air right now.

I also don't know how I'm going to deal with school. This semester was basically kind of a vacation for me, and spring semester I'm throwing myself full force back into everything that keeps me busy and crazy, and then some. But I think it will all work out in the end and it should be a fun time. I'm looking forward to new people and new friends and a new house and all that jazz.

My family saw 'The Producers' over here. Not the new film, the musical, in the West End. It was incredibly funny; I think it's the only activity we all did as a family that we all have thoroughly enjoyed together. My family members and I all have such different tastes and interests. My parents, I have realized, are hopelessly, helplessly American. In a way it's part of what I love about them. In a way, it's also been driving me slightly mad.

Anyway. Whether I'm ready for it or not, it's time to go home.

I'll see you all soon, I hope.

oh my.

I think last night might have been the best night I've had in York.
Well, maybe not. But it's awfully close.
I don't know what I'm getting myself into, if anything.
But for once I took a chance, and put myself out there. And it has already paid off in the fun I had.
I don't want to go into details here.
In short, I went on a date. It surprises even me still. At least, maybe it wasn't exactly a date, but it turned into one by the end of the evening, I think, and it was good.
the end.
It's funny how one incident can change a person's outlook on so many things. I feel so lucky. And happy, and surprised.
I'm just going to enjoy it for now, and try not to over-analyze anything the way I tend to.

on sunday...

I experienced a moment of sublimity. It was nothing huge, and I have already babbled about it to far too many people, but for a brief span of time, I was completely happy without another thought in the world. I was rosy-cheeked and smiling and unaware of basically anything outside of a certain small space, and it was a perfect little time capsule.

So then the question becomes, do I go back and try to find another such moment? Or do I let it remain as it was, and just forget about it, and go on with everything else?

I have a 2500 word essay due Friday by 12.30 that I have not started even outlining yet. I have another 2500 word essay due Friday by 4 that needs serious revisions, revisions that I've marked all over the essay but haven't started implementing yet even though the library books I use for the essay are quite overdue and I'll have some hefty fines to pay. I had a philosophy essay yesterday that I probably did more poorly on than any other written exam that I have ever taken, and I'm uncharacteristically unshaken about it. I'm not sure if this is a good sign or an indicator of too much apathy.

I could not sleep again last night. I think I fell asleep somewhere around 4.30, so a solid three hours of sleep then.

I went ice skating last night! It was beautiful and worth the money and time it cost, as well as the blister my left heel now sports. It was magical - there's a tree in the middle of the rink (not a Christmas tree, but a TREE tree, growing out of the ground, that the rink is constructed around) and there were sparkling white little lights everywhere. It made me think of movies and would have made me extremely extremely bitter about being single (there were many couples hand-holding and falling and being all cute) if Irina and I hadn't been having so much fun almost-falling and if I hadn't still been in too good of a mood from the combination of Sunday and being finished with metaphysics forever.

I have a 9.15 class today. After it is over, I can revise and hand in my English essay. I could've handed it in yesterday, but then she might have read it by today, and she is the sort of professor that I really, really, really do not want to disappoint and for whom I fear disappointment is inevitable because my essay isn't too grand. But it's an essay, and I'll pass well enough, I hope.

I can't stop listening to Jeff Buckley. It's addictive. Everyone go buy the cd and see if you can stop listening to it once you really begin.

photos!

If you are at all interested in seeing more pictures from my trip to Germany, please go to my flickr page and enjoy. Also, all three of the lovely ladies featured are single; we are currently accepting boyfriend applications. We are pretty selective though.
My state of mind is much the same as it was on Monday - see the post below.

under the gun.

I had a good weekend filled with good company and good food and laughter and comfort. It was exactly what I needed.

And now so much frustration has come upon me. Much of the weekend's relaxed ease and contentment are quickly becoming memories. I am trying to write an essay and I can't come up with a thesis. Not even a working thesis. There is not a single original thought in my head. Although there seldom is, I suppose. Creativity has never truly been my forte and it's like the older I get, the more my brain slows and stops absorbing as much. School and learning used to be so exciting and fresh for me. I felt like I could never learn enough, and now I just feel so ineffectual and academically worthless.

Not that it really matters. Oh, discontent! I have such moments of wonder and glory and beauty and then I fall into the aching sadness for people who are, I suspect, much like myself and find each struggle out of the continual onslaught of valleys harder and harder until we wonder how much bending we can do before we snap. So much sadness, so much anger, so much fury and rage and tempestuousness and sorrow with nowhere to go so that it continues to stockpile and build and amass until it greedily starts feeding on itself and flourishing in spite of all the hopes that might try to spring up.

I feel a disordered dull, throbbing pain for all the words I wish I had to tell people how much I care about them and how desperately I wish that anything I could ever say would matter and make anything any better. But that's the thing. It won't make any difference. No matter how many ways I agonize and try to console or comfort, the gaping hole is still there for others. I'm not using my words, as Malin would say - I'm not getting out what I really want to be saying. The more I write the less I'm able to make the words do what I want them to, it seems. There's so much empty sadness.

There are people that I love dearly and I have been lamenting that I can't be there for them because I'm over here in England. Really, though, that's a quite selfish thought of me to have because why do I suppose it would make any difference? I can't fix anything. I can't go back in time, I can't change any of what they are feeling because what's happened has happened and whether or not I'm physically there is hardly going to make much of a difference. The problems, the voids, the unrelenting, vast heartache would be there regardless.

The funny thing is, this is one of the most down posts I've written in awhile, and I do manage to be a downer quite a lot of the time. But I'm not feeling hopeless or awash with grief - I'm awash with the infinite and unavoidable triviality of the comfort I might try to offer others. It has to be sought elsewhere. I can't give that which I so desperately wish I could.

Do the holes ever get filled, or do we walk around forever, partly empty because of what others have taken with them?

in other, totally unrelated and unimportant news, i am thinking of dying my hair either a much lighter brown or a deep auburn and getting it cut more. this may be a shallow outgrowth of my discontent. thoughts and/or suggestions are welcome.

a quick succession of busy nothings

I'm off to Germnay is less than 24 hours! It will be so wonderful to see Lena again, and I am so excited that Mari will be coming from Norway to join us for the weekend. I expect it to be nothing less than fantastic.
I have a lot to get done in the next two weeks though. Well, not really. Two 2500-word papers, so about two 8-page papers, which is really not that bad. It's just that I haven't started doing the research for one of them and I don't know what to write about for the other one. I have done quite a bit of reading and research for the paper I'm planning to do on Maria Edgeworth and her novel, "Belinda," it's just that I don't have a direction to take the paper in. Which sucks because I now have to return two books to the library next week instead of their original due date. Which, I would like to add, is something I really truly HATE about the library here. If I've checked out a book for a project and someone else requests the book, they bump up the due date, which totally sucks. It's not MY bloody fault if I got to the book first; why shouldn't I be allowed to keep it?? Plus, I know that no one else's paper is due until well after Christmas, so I don't feel much pity. I may keep the books a few extra days and just pay the overdue fines if I need them. So I guess I'll probably try to write my English paper first, so I should focus on that - but I currently have no direction for it whatsoever. It's very frustrating. I have so much information and I don't know what to do with it.
In other news, I'm registered for 18 credits for the spring semester at Hamline...biodiversity/conservation bio, concepts of nature, senior seminar, crossing borders II, and british lit. from 1789. Is it madness to take this many credits? Will I die with 18 credits, two jobs, and being a news editor at the Oracle or is this a workload I can handle? I had originally planned to drop British Lit. once I got signed up for senior seminar, but now I'm thinking about taking it anyway, 'for fun'. Is this crazy? Thoughts?
I have more to say but sadly I have no time. So more when I return from Hamburg, I guess.

haha.

Oh, sometimes I think I would weep at my own idiocy if I wasn't too busy laughing so hard at myself.
I am so good at mistaken impressions! And so good at being both too conceited and having no faith in myself, AT THE SAME TIME. That takes some doing!
I actually did my philosophy homework ahead of time last night, just for something new and exciting.
And I learned to be very grateful for what I have waiting for me when I go back home. An acquaintance/friend of mine stopped by my room last night to chat. He's been studying in England for 2 years now and he sounds incredibly miserable. People here are, as I've said, difficult to get to know but I figured it was just because I haven't been here that long and I don't really care that much about making super-close friends because I'm going home in a month. But to have been here two years and still be treated with the same general polite faux-friendliness - I don't know what I would be doing if I didn't have the people to go back to that I do. Yeah, that's a bad sentence. Oh well. I'm too lazy to go back and fix it.
I have therefore resolved to be cheerful and industrious and really make the most of the last month of my time here. There is still much to see and do, and I am so reminded of all that I have to be grateful for that I am really, really trying to make more of an effort at happiness.
Even if I am going to be single for the rest of my life. Hehe. That's my joke of the day with myself. And yes, there's a story there, but I'm not telling.

good things.

I've decided I complain far too much. Therefore, I'm going to make an effort to do less whining in my blogging and more paying attention to things that are good and exciting and enjoyable.
To that end, I helped a little old lady across the street yesterday. Honestly, I find it funny how the tiniest little things can make me feel so happy sometimes. I was walking to town and I was going past the little convenience store down the road, when this tiny (honestly, she couldn't have been much more than five feet tall) little old lady stops me and says, "Excuse me, dear, but would you mind helping me just cross the street here?" I said, "Not at all!" And she tucked her gloved hand over the top of my considerably larger mittened hand and we slowly crossed the street together, after which she thanked me and we parted ways.
Anyway, the birthday celebrations then consisted of a dinner out and seeing the new Harry Potter movie (yeah yeah, I'm a big dork. Shut up) which was generally uneventful but enjoyable. My dinner at the faux-Italian restaurant "ASK" was very tasty, really, and the first genuine meal I think I've had since returning to the UK, and the chocolate cake I had for dessert was genuinely delicious.
Honestly, I also really really liked the newest Harry Potter film. It's the story they've had to change the most to fit into a 2 1/2 hour film, and the reason none of the changes upset me much, I think, is because I understood immediately why certain things just had to be left out and altered. I felt like the acting on the part of the kids was improved, the special effects felt more a part of the story than previously, and overall it was just darker and better. Ralph Fiennes was a good casting choice - I don't think many actors working in film do depraved and twisted and evil much better. All right. My nerd talk for the day is done. I'll move on to other things now.
I am getting really quite excited to see my family in December. I'm going to have so much fun showing my mom this city - I just know she's going to love it. It would be cool if my dad could visit it, too, but I have the feeling Mom will like it better than Dad would anyway. I'm trying not to plan TOO much because she is really only here for a day and a half. But we are definitely going to have to have tea at Betty's - that place is amazing, and their pastries and food are yummy. And then I'm not sure what all else we will do - there are loads of shops, obviously. More shops than any reasonable person knows what to do with, but that's such an attraction. York is one of the few bigger cities in England, I think, which has never been an industrial city. Maybe that's part of why some of the historical aspects have been so well preserved here...I really do not know.
I have yet to do my city wall walk, but I definitely do plan to do that before leaving the city. You can actually walk all the way around the city centre on the city walls. One has to climb up and down stairs at the various gates, of course, but I think it would be an interesting way to see the city.
I have finally learned my way around the city centre pretty well. I can get everywhere I need/want to go on the first try now! It's been harder than I had anticipated; the streets here are truly astonishing in their direction.
In other exciting news, I am going to visit Lena in a couple of weeks! I'm so very excited about this. I did not think I was going to be able to afford to do much more traveling while I was here, given my current circumstances, but I found a quite good deal and staying with her family will obviously save plenty of money. I'm really, really looking forward to that. I quite liked hte Hamburg/Ahrensburg area when I was there a year and a half ago, and it is always wonderful to see friends, especially those one doesn't get to see often.
Also, I'm 21 now. I'm not so excited about the drinking aspect as I am startled by the fact that I'm now an adult in every legal sense of the word and that I'm too far removed from being a teenager to keep from considering myself an adult anymore. A young adult, yes. But there it is. Not that I really feel any older or different, of course. In a relative sense, I'm only 2 days older than 20 so it makes sense. But in another sense it feels like a lot of the parts of my being younger are falling away. I don't really keep much in touch with many people from my hometown anymore and I'll probably never live there again, which is both a relief and strange to know. More responsibilty! More maturity! Yeesh.