HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

I am now 25 years old. I feel... happier than I did yesterday when I was 24! Perhaps there is something to this aging thing. :)

And Katie's right, I think this comic is fantastic.

Cultivation

I'm experiencing that feeling. That feeling of dread and doom and fear, where each new event of the day seems unbearably full of chances to fail.

It goes right down the middle of me, and then runs around to all the tips of my body like static. Pins and needles.

I'm looking for something to redirect my attention and my feelings, but not in the frantic or lethargic way of most procrastination. I've been into lists lately, so here then is a list of the beautiful things in my day thus far:

*Sunlight and brilliant blue sky
*I think my professor for Hinduism and the Epics is more genuinely and passionately in love with what she studies and teaches than anybody I have ever met, ever.
*She also has a beautiful wrap-thing... like a shawl, but with sleeves, very thin and see through and flowy, in a sort of deep pink.
*While I was sitting outside to eat my lunch, my TF came by just as I had gotten some bleu cheese dressing on my mouth and was realizing I had no napkins, and he was like, "Do you need napkins?" because he had grabbed extras.
*Meeting a really exciting person who LOVES William Finn and is coming to my birthday party.
*A hot shower.
*A moment in writing my response when it really clicked in and took off, all at once.
*Having the thought "fuck everyone; I don't have time," and then thinking about the implications of that statement and laughing to myself.
*Saying no.
*These ridiculous little things serving as zipper pulls on my purse, which are eggs and circus people and have two alternate faces all at the same time! Really!
*The knowledge that people (you, at this time) will come by and read my list.

Creating the Survey I Want to Take

Book Word Association Game:

Just what it sounds like. Put down the first book or work of literature that comes to mind with whatever word is given. Feel free, though not obligated, to explain. I have written my answers in cream, so you can reply without influence if you so desire, and then highlight to see what I said.

Green: O Beautiful by Jesse Green

Red: The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough

Spring: "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot (poem)

Death: On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony

Wings: Skellig by David Almond

Maze: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Crowbar: ...All I can think of is Clue. Which is not a book. How about "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (poem)
Hyacinth: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed by Walt Whitman (poem)

Astronomical: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Blessed: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

Birth: Still Life by A.S. Byatt

Fate: The Mahabharata, especially the Book of the Assembly Hall and the Battle Books

Mumble: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

Chimera: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner (play)

Terror: The Haunting at Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Bear: The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

Bunny: The Bunny Book by Richard Scarry

Lion: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Song: Cattail Moon by Jean Thesman

Robin: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Blue: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Pink: The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson

Sky: Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

Underneath: A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voight

Volcanic: Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

Remnant: Winter of Fire by Sheryl Jordan

Fury: When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase

Undulate: Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle

Dodo: The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Nose: Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery

Assent: Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice

Jumping: "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather (story)

Skate: Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott

Gold: The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Marjorie Flack and Dubose Hayward

Monster: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Elephant: The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin

Magic: Half Magic by Edward Eager

Statue: Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pierce

Dervish: House of Stairs by William Sleator

Singularity: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Food: Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery

Adoration: Sonnet 74: "Batter my heart, three personed God" by John Donne

Pleasant: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney

Pogo stick: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Popcorn: Cinema Nirvana by Dean Sluyter

Umbrella: Down Came the Rain by Brooke Shields

Wow, what a strange and random list! Including at least one book I know I've never read, and a number of others I haven't finished... Anyway, I hope you have fun with this! Sorry about "crowbar."

Calling in the Night

Since I last dropped in, my Rumiesque guest house self has entertained many garden variety fears and anxieties, nasty cramps, and recursive thought loops, but also a very beautiful moment of understanding.

The latter is due to a sort of coming together of insights offered by Krsna, Charlotte, Roz's mix cd, and Christ crucified.

Holy Week, here I am. In the midst of the teeth-grinding what comes next day to day terror.

I should sleep. Goodnight.

Twenty-Four Things I Have Experienced in the Past Twenty-Four Hours

I have...

1. talked theology until 3 AM
2. seen a visual representation of Krsna as ultimate transcendent divinity
3. skinned my knee
4. walked in stocking feet on the wet, cold ground chanting "walk walk walk" to keep myself going
5. had a moment of complete understanding and connection with what my professor was saying
6. heard a description of what it was like to be in Iraq with a rocket zooming overhead from a classmate sitting next to me, directed only to me
7. received an adorable stuffed chick dressed in bunny ears that chirps when you press its middle
8. been invited to two parties
9. eaten soup
10. been walked in on in the bathroom
11. thrown my books on the floor both to get them out of my hands and to hear them bang
12. not attended a rehearsal I was (somewhat surprisingly) looking forward to
13. counted out almost my last non-penny, non-foreign change for a bag of m&ms and a bottle of ginger ale
14. worn a new skirt for the first time
15. given a present
16. fallen asleep while reading the Gospel of John
17. made my bed
18. mentally compared the discourse of a divine being to the way I try to introduce bizarre statements to my friends, and then attempted to explain this out loud
19. forgotten (again) to take my sleeping bag up from the dryer
20. touched a very fuzzy sweater
21. seen Rachel for the first time in over a week
22. photocopied almost 100 pages
23. Learned that Thessalonians come from Thessalonica.
24. Been almost too tired to finish my list.