my sister katie got a job with the foreign service, which is awesome. she has to be in d.c. for training by june 27th, which is not awesome. most of my summer without any sisters. i don't think i was meant to be an only child.

at least i have a long summer reading list?

ladies and gentlemen, i give you...



the aaron rushton memorial post.

i will miss you, kingpin of grad.

imagine you held
so tight your best friend
left him to fly
and never could reach him
standing at a peak where two waves meet
are you just beyond the other side of music?
peering like a flower never taught to grow
someone fond of living always will remember

we are blessed, we endure.
i am blessed, i will endure.

tonight we rented how to deal. i hadn't wanted to rent it because i remembered that last time i watched it, it had made me angry.... i just couldn't remember why. so we watched it just now, and i remembered everything, which is alright. i got really angry again - the kind of angry where i laugh at myself for being so angry, though. i think that's an acceptable anger, if ever there was one.

the movie is about this girl who is afraid to fall in love and give her heart away because she's been traumatized by her parents' divorce, etc... that's not what made me angry. it was the whole wedding backdrop. i can't really explain it that well here. i was just mad. i threw books at my trash can until i made it tip over, and ramen was all over the floor.

but i picked it up. i picked up after myself.

so i called my sister katie because i think she could understand and it was pretty late to be calling anybody else anyway. we had a nice conversation. i stayed on the phone until the daily show with jon stewart came on television in hawaii, and listened to it over the phone. it was good. it was good times.

then i went to my bathroom and cleaned my ears (i got 4 new piercings a few weeks ago and they haven't healed completely so i have to clean them to make sure they don't get infected), and i got to really looking at them.

one is lower than the other.

i guess that's normal, but this early in the morning i was wondering how i walked anywhere without falling over. i should get a lot of extra piercings in the higher ear to weigh it down. or at least join the circus and make some money off of my freakishness. those were my thoughts. that was what i was thinking.

i miss just reading things i want to read instead of literature survey assignments. i want to do that all summer. i might not even get a job, because i want to read so much. maybe i could volunteer at the library on base.

tennis bright and early tomorrow. why won't it rain?

it's funny that memories make people angry.

this is my contribution. this is my offering.

have i mentioned that i Y my typewriter?

this is the first day of my life
i swear i was born right in the doorway

tennis is the boulder i must continually push up the hill... i think i am very resigned to this rock and i may even have affection for it before too long. i understand the rules now, and am improving my serve. take that, fates.

yours is the first face that i saw
i think i was blind before i met you

i've officially finished the bodies of my two papers, and i'm finished with the citations for one of them. all that's left is to fine-tune my bibliographies. i am euphoric. i hope things are always this way. when i signed up for 7 classes, i never thought about how i would have to take 7 finals. i have no idea what my tennis final will be, but i know that my poetry final is just reading poetry aloud. i'm excited about this opportunity, because i've been writing lately. i'm happy with it.

this is the first day of my life
i’m glad i didn’t die before i met you
but now i don’t care -
i could go anywhere with you
and i’d probably be happy =)

so now what shall i do with all this time?

[robin, my blog is set to honolulu time once in a while.]

well, well, well.

these days, this little world is a way for me to let my parents know that i'm not dead, and share some of my mind with them, as they are so very far geographically from me. i miss you guys. =) these days life is pretty good. these days i am feeling very much like a college student. these days i sit on corner stones and count the time in quarter tones to ten. and so on.

my heart feels good - it is sitting in a rowboat with my mind on a little lake and enjoying the sunlight and listening to cat stevens.

since i can't really post without mentioning robin, let me get that out of the way right now - he's pretty much between my heart and my mind in the rowboat. in fact, he's the one rowing. today he brought me a german chocolate cupcake after my american literature class, which i really needed because we watched a video clip during class that made me cry. it was about the vietnam war memorial. i don't have any real emotional connection to the vietnam war, but it was really moving. either that or i'm just way too sensitive. anyway, the point is, german chocolate. excellent.

i am in love with a typewriter, whom i've named franklin after fdr. i will use any possible excuse to type something on it, which is ridiculous because i have not yet mastered the concept of patience and it's as if i have sprinkled magical horrible-typographical-error seeds all over each paper my typewriter spits out, and they've sprouted, blossoming into something pretty unrecognizable. have i mentioned, however, the little clicking noise the keys make? ...so happy.

the semester is winding down... i'm nervous about packing up and heading a little further west than one would prefer, but i'm really going to try and make the most of my summer in hawaii. one thing i'm really elated about is going back to my sister and parents - i am ready to be surrounded by that kind of love again for a while. school has a different sort of love, and no matter where i am there is a missing element. also, although it's difficult to not have many friends in hawaii since my parents have only spent a year there and i've been away, that sense of anonymity has a curious appeal. and the ocean. i love living beside the ocean. man, sometimes i really passionately fiercely profoundly miss guam, and now is one of times. a duty station is only as good as the friends you've made there, but despite that my friends and i have gone our separate ways to our separate universities, i would still jump at the chance to just exist there next to the ocean for a while.

i have this immense sense of accomplishment right now, as i have finished a major paper for my american literature class, and very nearly finished a paper for my british literature class. both are due next monday, the 25th. at my sister's graduation ceremony, the valedictorian gave a speech about procrastination - she said it's up to us to decide whether time is on our side or working against us. it's partly because of her advice that i've tried to procrastinate less. i wonder if anybody thinks those speeches matter when they deliver them. i hope that they know that once in a while the world is listening.

i need to look over notes for a french test now.

oh i can't keep it in, i can't keep it in
i've gotta let it out. i've got to show the world,
the world's got to see, see all the love -
the love that's in me.

i said,
why walk alone,
why worry when it's warm over here?

ok, so i'm back to that whole thorns-of-life thing.

i fall upon the thorns of life! i bleed!

just kidding. i'm over that mood. let's analyze the situation mathematically, shall we?

1 karyn - 1 robin + 1 complicated situation = 1 unhappy blog

and now

1 karyn + 1 robin + 1 stupid fight + 1 reconciliation + 3.14 messages from my parents telling me that i never post anymore = 1 this

that sounds about right.

my black beast of late has been this annotated bibliography for my british literature. my love for siegfried sassoon was steadily declining as the project progressed, but it has been completely restored upon its near-completion. fantastic! stellar, even! my next endeavor is to catch up on all of my american literature reading, which i neglected in order to appease the glorious memory of sassoon. (incidentally, appeasement didn't work with the nazi's and it hasn't proven too extraordinary for this assignment either.)

it's also worth mentioning that i've developed a new nemesis, a nemesis more compelling than perhaps than darth vader or that mangle-faced man who lived in that opera house. it's tennis. yes, tennis. the horror contained in my second encounter with tennis is enough to justify a string of bloody tennis-related murders. but i press on. i have tennis class again tomorrow. where have you gone, racquetball? where have you hidden your flawless face? indoors, perhaps... well good, because that's where i intend to search.

i went to wal-mart right after class today. 100 bucks and 1.5 hours later, i have new front tires. it's amazing how boring wal-mart can be, despite that it contains everything a person could ever want within its imperial walls. imperial walls of oppression.

and now for our bi-annual segment, "what karyn has learned":

1) it's strange being responsible for one's own feelings, and twice as strange being responsible for another's.

2) time heals all wounds, except for the horrible disfiguring scab on the back of my neck, requiring me to wear my hair down. all the time. down in the rain, down in the sun. devilish hair as a mask for my horrifying ugliness.

3) even siegfried sassoon, when he writes to his friends, is sarcastic and hilarious. and that is awesome.

4) i need to take better care of my car.

5) "if you love something, let it go. if it comes back, it's yours. if it doesn't, it never was." the duck wasn't mine, the snail wasn't mine, is anything mine? oh yeah, robin. =)

and to end, a portion of a letter from siegfried sassoon to max beerbohm... in red, as if it were the words of Jesus himself:
"One's daily reading of the world's news is so consistently violent that one really does long for a day when nothing has happened. 'Nightingale Heard in Surrey'. What a headline that would be!"

i've looked at love from both sides now -

everything is alright with my grandmother, more or less. i really was not expecting that, and i'm glad she has a bit longer to enjoy the world. thank you to everybody who thought about her heart and mine when she was having her surgery.

from give and take, and still somehow

i just spent $60.00 of my allowance on research materials for a paper i'm going to write, because harding's library and research resources do not have enough information themselves. four books - the projected shipment date is april 5th, it will take 3-6 business days for the books to arrive, and the annotated bibliography is due on april 8th at 5:00 p.m. i think that pretty much sums up how i am feeling.

it's love's illusions i recall.

i'm taking a bible class this semester - life of christ - and i haven't read the bible a single time this semester. not even really for academic purposes. i haven't had any meaningful conversations with God. i've been so frustrated lately, and so angry. i feel so dark inside. i assume there have been times in my life when i've held a lot more negativity inside of me, but i can't really think of any at the moment.

i really don't know love at all.

i used to feel really cared about.

i've looked at life from both sides now -

sometimes people you love let you down so terrifically that you aren't just disappointed in them - you resent them. that is awful. sometimes people dislike you so convincingly that you start to wonder if maybe they know something you don't know, and every time they even walk by you, you feel worse and worse. i don't want to make people feel bad, but it seems unavoidable. i hate.

from up and down, and still somehow

it's really strange how the contents of life shifts so easily and so often.

it's life's illusions i recall.

i have thought a lot today, and i decided that if i lost my faith, i would still always want to be like Jesus Christ. i would still see that as an ideal. i guess it doesn't make much sense. it really doesn't make any sense.

i really don't know life at all.