Alright kids, it's that time again. I don't know who all my readers are and I don't know how many of you are in the philadelphia area. But for those of you who are and weren't already coming....

Come see Barely Legal Girls.....

sing.

Today, May 31st at 4pm, see the Drexel TrebleMakers live in concert and for FREE, no less!
Location: Stein Auditorium, Nesbitt Hall on the Northeast corner of 33rd and Market Streets, Drexel University, Philadelphia.

If you can come, but you don't, I'll be so mad. ha. as if I'll know. But I have lead vocals on a song, and you'd also get to see me jump up and down doing girly vocal percussion. Now that's an experience. Ah. Yes, thanks for reminding me. Maybe I shouldn't wear a tube top.

Occasionally, I can just sit with a blank page in front of me and something falls from my fingertips before I know what's happening. That's sort of what my last entry was like.

Today, I can only feel that while things aren't that great....they're really not that bad, either. After tomorrow, almost every stress that isn't purely academic will have vanished from my life, and I'll have the chance not only to focus on my work, but to actually relax for once. When the term is over, I'll honestly have a whole week to put my life in order.

I can't wait.

I live a life like quicksand
Every movement pulls me deeper.

Why don't you just throw me a line?

It isn't sink or swim so much as sink or be devoured
For hours I can watch
Myself spinning out, spinning down and in
A hungry vortex.

Won't you throw me a line?

A crash like thunder shuts the water
Over my head.

The agenda for the rest of the weekend includes: getting really drunk, singing a lot, having pizza, making cookies, avoiding the rooms that smell too much like pot, sunbathing? kissing girls (lol), hot tub, and....ah....taking pictures! That's it. Watch here for any possible updates!

So there's a really bizarre sqeaking noise coming from upstairs of my room. And not the kind of squeaking you compose scenes about, either.

Anyway, I'm really proud of myself. Today, at least, I've risen above petty girl in-fighting and found my zen state. My away message for most of the day was 'Ohmmmmmmmmm...'

I was cited (by someone whose level-headedness I respect greatly) as having made the only positive and constructive comment on our group forums. Not only did I accept a large amount of responsibility for something that is by no means entirely my fault, but I did so graciously and willingly. Not only did I refrain from making any "Some of us are doing things right and the rest of you are doing them wrong" comments, but I also displayed the self-control to keep from pointing out the people who were saying such things and the fact that in the next sentence they would talk about group unity. Finally, I did my best to make myself entirely available to anyone who would be interested in just having a chat and trying to work through our obviously muddled collective thoughts.

I did not, however, find myself a dress to wear for the concert.

With the exception of the big move of the Christmas of 2000, I've always been shocked at how small my belongings pack down. I mean, I only have two pieces of furniture that I can't move by myself, and one of them is just too big and awkward to be moved by one person, as opposed to being too heavy. There will only be a few boxes. Well maybe not a few, per se, but really not that many...

I think my only plan so far is to have everything packed up by the time I get a key to my new apartment. In the first couple of days (or maybe late nights) I'll move everything that I can carry by myself or maybe with the help of Kat and/or Peter. Later in the week, I call in my big strong masculine friends to move the couple of things that I can't do myself, and if there's anything left at the end of the week, my dad can come and help me. Not that I have any idea how my bed will get from one house to the other, but I'm sure I'll have it all figured out in a week and a half.

I undecorated my room today. At first, it was just with the intent of spray-fixing my charcoal and conte drawings that I had hung up on my walls. Then it became the idea of collecting up all my sticky tac. It was only a matter of time before I decided to take all the pushpins out of the walls, and once my design work was down it seemed pointless to leave all those pins in my bulletin board, so that got denuded. A couple of hours later, my walls are nearly bare and it hardly looks like my room any more.

Man, this room could still use a couple coats of paint.

Hemiola is "a rhythmic device in music whereby the meter changes briefly--usually found where 2 measures of 3 beats feel like 3 measures"

I've been told that I sneeze in hemiola. Almost always in sets of three but occasionally in other numbers.

Sometimes I just feel slightly syncopated.


On a side note, I just found a wav file and the lyrics to the Gummi Bears cartoon. Anyone who wants to cover this with me, I'm totally willing to learn the guitar chords and harmony or lead vocals. :)

"Occasionally, a large star reaching the end of its life collapses in on itself, then explodes very violently. So violently in fact that for a few weeks the star can out shine its parent galaxy. This type of explosion is called a Supernova."

I'm hoping this is what's happening to my life. Well...mostly.

There are always these things. Effort, enjoyment, and reward. I'm trying to come up with an exact scale, but I think it would work easiest like this: for any given activity, effort, enjoyment, and reward, each get a number rating. A low number means bad things (a lot of effort, little enjoyment, or little reward) while a high number means good things. Obligation to do said activity can sometimes factor into the equation, but it's not worth figuring out right now.

Say you rate on a scale from 0-5. I think all three numbers should add up to at least five in order for the thing to be worth doing. Like, if something is really hard, and no fun at all, but has a reward level of 5, well then it may still be worthwhile. Or if it's pretty easy and so gets a 3 for effort and there's even a little enjoyment and reward, well then it's also probably a good thing to do.

Anything less than a 5, though, and you really gotta think. Are you a five? yeah, that's what I thought.

Mom...Dad...would you mind if I just started referring to you as my 'benefactors?'

And did i mention that being busy is amazing? I mean, it's tiring, and I always feel like I'm forgetting something, but I get such a sense of satisfaction from accomplishment. But I still don't have anyplace to live. :)

I was driving south on Route 1 in New Jersey, on my way to Philadelphia, at about 11pm last night. A cool damp had descended on the evening like a flock of birds, and every orange streetlight had a halo. Across the concrete divider and two or three lanes of opposing traffic is a long stretch of corporate complexes, though it was impossible to read the unlit signs. But I knew they were there, sitting well back from the highway behind acres of lawn and twisting driveway.

And lights. I passed one huge open expanse that was lit with dozens of high lamps. The light from each electric bulb streamed down through the watery air in a visible cone, and when it reached about two feet from the ground, it refracted through the dense mist that had gathered there, and the entire ground glowed. Peachy orange, it was like a shower of luminous liquid poured from each light source and had begun to flood.

It was then that I realized that I am glad that I have the soul of an artist, not only to notice these things, but also to appreciate them and to be able to share them with others.

It was also then that I realized that I did not have my camera.

I also love being busy, though when I'm not busy I have an over-appreciation for all my spare time. Being busy is great. It lets you forget about all the things that you're not doing.

I love mornings when I am awake. A cool fogginess outside, being easily added to the creative writing class I want to be in, and saying 'bless you' to random people on campus who sneeze. All these things make me smile.

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned the silly term paper I wrote for my Literature of James Joyce class last term...but my professor loved it, submitted it to the english department 'upper level literature class essay contest' and I apparently won. That makes me smile, too.

I think I may have decided on my personal 'meaning of life.' And no, it can't be reduced to a two-digit number. It's just not that simple

While I agree with the basic idea that the purpose of existence in this world is to be the best person you can be, what that includes for me is probably different than it is for anyone else. I definitely feel that happiness is a major goal. I feel that people should do whatever it is that makes them happy, whether or not they happen to excel at it in comparison to others. If, for instance, I wanted to throw pottery on the wheel for the rest of my life because that is what would make me a complete person, well then that's great. Despite the fact that sometimes I really suck at it.

But I think bigger than finding what you love and doing it is the idea that people should have enough consideration for the future to care about leaving the world a better place than they found it. By this I don't mean that we need to stop global warming and poverty, though those are great causes and good examples. What I mean is that every person should figure out what it is that they have to offer and then give it. If you can improve just one life, then you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And of course a concern for the future is my innate optimism talking and my respect for humanity in general, whatever its shortfalls. Cause I know people who would say, screw the future, I'm more important than that.

But I think that just loving someone makes you a better person. I know that really honestly caring for another person has made me a better person in my own eyes. To consider another life to be as genuinely valuable as my own makes me who I am. No, it won't get me a penthouse apartment and it won't 'show them.' But I don't need praise or status or money to tell me what I'm worth.

The connections between people and an exchange of kindess make this all worthwhile to me. To earn the love and trust and generosity of others by giving my own is what I think of as the point. Not that any person's individual aspirations are not important, because they are. But the kind of community I'm talking about can only help to further the goals of those involved. A community, to me, isn't just a bunch of people who live near each other, they're people who can care for each other, support each other, and offer help to each other in times of crisis, even if all they can do is listen. And of course you love some people more than others, and sometimes people find that they don't have the capacity to give of themselves. But they don't have to fit into my idea of what's right. They will find their own ways, and it is only my responsibility to think of them with generosity and to try to help them in their search.

Ok.

While I didn't cry the first time I got screwed out of the apartment I wanted, I think the second time it's totally allowed. Especially because this time it was actually an organizational/clerical error on the part of the realtor's office and because this time when I found out about it, I was in the comfort of my own room. This time, I could just hang up the phone and lose it.

The universe hates me.

I was walking towards my new apartment after leaving the realtor's office and putting a deposit down on it. I figured as it is a relatively lovely day out and I was in no hurry to do anything else, I might as well time how long it would take to walk from my new place to campus. I walked the blocks taking in the freshly sprinkled flowers on the trees and from the ground. One block smelled like store-bought vanilla cookies but with a slight odor of urine...which would either be the scent of flowers and acid rain or just the elementary school I was passing.

I walked, and when I got to the soon-to-be-mine address, I looked around. It's almost like the suburbs, I thought. But then I corrected myself. No, it's exactly like the city when a city is good. The entire neighborhood is big old stone houses, some of which have been split into apartments. They're close together and close to the street, as you would expect, but very different from where I am now in a few marked ways. The buildings are well cared-for. There are tons of plants and trees. And it is serene.

Around campus, some of the houses are well-maintained, but about half the buildings I see every day are in a sorry state of disrepair. Here, there is very little landscaping at all, because what would the point be when the guests at your next kegger will just trample everything. There are no small trees but what hardy weeds have made their way, because rowdy, careless, and drunk people like to pull up or fall onto such things. And there is no substitute for quiet.

It's not the eerie quiet of abandonment that fills my new neighborhood, but a bright, dewy, morning-like quiet like the tinkling of tiny bells. Which might just be caused by the fact that there are birds living in the trees. Or it might be that there are at least three churches within a two block radius, one of them next door to my house.

Inside, high ceilings and tall windows make it huge and bright, and the little squares of stained glass in blues and greens just take my breath away. And there are so many windows. The kitchen is small, but has more counterspace than the apartment I had wanted before, and all of it is so much bigger.

And all of this, as well as the peace of mind that will come with living alone is costing me only about an extra five minutes walking to campus.