the testing has gone well. for the nature and history of language, i was finished in less than 10 minutes and i did that thing - that thing that people do. i waited until somebody else turned their test in to turn mine in. i hate doing that, but i do it anyway. that's true so often.

now i have a night without any homework.

i can remember the first time i ever heard achilles heel. i was overseas with katie. we were flying out to istanbul and i put "the poison" on repeat - i was completely hypnotized by that song. i still am. we got off the plane and boarded a tiny bus to the airport terminal, and i can remember wrapping my fingers around the support pole inside the bus, staring at my hand, and imagining what my hand meant to other people.

i want to stop throwing away the letters that i write.

i feel a bit like a bent pyramid.

i'm going to do some homework for thursday now.

i just read something. if i weren't an english major, i doubt i would be able to find these things on my own. i'm taking my medication now but i think i might be getting crazier, or understanding better. i wonder how old i'll be when i start really regretting things.

i'm not at church.

it's amazing how things change and change and change again. yes you. no not you.

the tests are coming for me. monday is israelite history, but a better title for the course would be "EVERY SET OF DATES EVEN REMOTELY LINKED TO BIBLICAL HISTORY." tuesday is the nature and history of language. wednesday is english studies. thursday is karyn dancing up every flight of stairs.

bad dreams make you wake up happy to have escaped, and good dreams make you wake up lonely to just be in your bed. then shouldn't we wish for bad dreams?

i have to figure out where i'm going for spring break. i have to figure out what i'm going to be doing the moment i turn twenty. does anybody remember how i didn't want to turn nineteen?

i spent march 14th last year picking katie up from where she was stranded when her car broke down. i absolutely would not change that - it's a good memory.

i spent the march 14th before that in new york.

i spent the march 14th before that seeing a movie with some friends at the micronesia mall, and riding the rollercoaster and the bumper cars. that meatloaf song played on the radio.

i spent the march 14th before that, with all of my best friends waking me up in bed and celebrating with me for the whole weekend. turning sixteen was great.

i'm going to stop talking about my birthdays now.

i'm afraid to post about how i'm having good days, but
i'm going to do it anyway--
i'm having good days.

my first class today was english studies at 1:00.

my professor, john williams, was discussing the inverted check mark - the pattern of action in most fiction. to acquaint us with the pattern, dr. williams interpreted cinderella to us through inverted-check-mark-colored glasses. and the climax is the discovery and acceptance of cinderella as the true love of the charming prince. the falling action is the wedding. the resolution is the happily ever after.

one of our readings was the story a & p by john updike. i would recommend it to anybody. in the story, 19-year-old sammy (a boy) is working at an a & p when three lovely, barefoot, bathing-suit-clad girls walk in. he refers to the most beautiful of the three girls as "queenie" - and queenie walks up to his register with a jar of herring snacks in sour cream.

nearing the climax of the story, the store manager emerges from the street outside and tells the three girls that the a & p "isn't a beach" and they should have dressed more appropriately.

and the climax. sammy says, "i quit." in his 19-year-old way, sammy was defending queenie and reaching out to her. after sammy quits his job (a job that he needed), he leaves the store to perhaps meet up with queenie. the resolution presents itself to the reader in the final paragraph:

i look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. there wasn't anybody but some young married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powder-blue falcon station wagon. looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, i could see lengel [the manager] in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through. his face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as i felt how hard life was going to be to me hereafter.

dr. williams asked the question that made my heart move: "was the ending fair?"

my classmates raised their hands and slowly gave their opinions. i didn't listen well because i was thinking and feeling too hard.

so i raised my hand. and i told dr. williams that john updike's ending was perfect. i told him that if it had resembled cinderella, it would have been poison just like cinderella is poison. he asked me to repeat myself, and i did.

"poison, sir."

dr. williams smiled, and i wasn't embarrassed about continuing.

"updike's ending is truth. if queenie had been waiting outside, it would not have been the truth. things like that don't happen in life."

a friend of mine teased me afterwards about calling cinderella "poison." i smiled at her, but i still meant what i said.

but when i left the classroom at 1:50, nobody was waiting for me outside.

my roommate is beautiful.
and i love my pants.
10 days.

(see my egyptian rug, mama?)

if i were one of those plastic body puzzles on biology teacher's desk - with the removable body parts in the chest cavity - and you took out all of my organs and put the little cover back over the organless shell, i would still be full. i think i would still feel full.

hello.



i'll do them now.

blue blue.

wow. it's strange to me that boys never care as much as girls. i'm reluctant to accept things like that. it's only yes yes no and yes.

just knowing that one beautiful thing exists on earth is enough to remind me that the world cannot be completely bad. i'm given this completely undeserved sense of energy and peace and happiness. i saw myself in the mirror a few minutes ago, and i couldn't believe i was alive.

i read this on a postcard today: sometimes we put up walls not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to knock them down. i see this in myself all of the time. i don't want to do it anymore, because it never works. nobody will knock down that wall. people never pass the silent tests one tries to administer. i might really believe that they will only let me down somehow.

today somebody grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. and i realize now that most of what i say is not meant literally. nobody is ever in the right place.

i guess i have to stop writing. i wish i had more to say, or knew how to say what i had.

I wrote this for my English Studies class, in response to the question, "Why are you an English major?"

In 2004, I studied abroad in Porto Rafti, Greece. Our group traveled into Athens on the first Sunday after our arrival, and, on a guided tour in that ancient city, I had the first great epiphany of my life.

I have climbed many literal and figurative mountains in my 19 short years, and I have learned that being at a higher elevation gives one the sense that one is somehow physically closer to God, as if one is about to receive a revised set of commandments directly from His hands. And in a way, atop Mars Hill in Athens that Sunday, I received those commandments.

I stood amid the dandelions with no real direction in my life. I did not have a major. I did not have any great ambitions. I was simply the yellow blossom of a beautiful weed. But in the center of the Areopagus, I listened to my guide read aloud the words of Paul, in Acts 17:24-28:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'

I was struck with an overwhelming sense of understanding that each individual human life has a unique and equally valid experience on earth. We each hold within us a singular, divine spark that no other person on earth holds, and before each of us is even born, God weaves our lives into the radiant tapestry of the human experience. Literature and language are humanity's methods of reaching out to God and perhaps finding him, as we reach out to each other in communicating our unique experiences on this planet.

I can't remember much else about that day in Athens, but I do remember the day I returned to Harding, made my way to the Registrar's Office, and declared English as my major. I am still the yellow blossom of a beautiful flower, and now the study of English is the hill on which God has planted me.

i felt really beautiful for most of today.

happy mlkjr day. i'll be in class today.

he was such an amazing person - even though he undoubtedly had many personal flaws, i would say he's one of the greatest people to ever live. this is because he has grown into a symbol, and become more than just a normal person. men like that are the closest things to superheroes that we can have in reality. i don't know. it feels very stupid to even try and describe this thought.

lately i've been feeling like nothing is real. well, feeling like some things aren't real.

for instance, everything that has ever happened to me, and the things that will happen to me in the future. basically nothing but lying in bed and sometimes talking to people.

my roommates had mentioned the people they'd been seeing around for the past few days, and it occurred to me that i haven't seen much of anybody for a while. so last night i left my room, went to the student center, and sat in there with my computer and my mind. and katie and julian.

read a little madame bovary, read a little fake madame bovary, talked, felt a little more alive. interaction isn't half bad. but i'm still staring at my hands and wondering what in the world is happening. and turning up my ben folds.

from the back of your big brown eyes
i knew you'd be gone as soon as you could
and i hoped you would
we could see that you weren't yourself
and the lines on your face did tell
it's just as well
you'd never be yourself again
saw you last night
dance by the light of the moon
stars in your eyes
free from the life that you knew

i'm not even sure what i can and cannot write.

i actually really enjoyed chapel today. i think it's going to be an ok semester, probably. it could always be worse - i could still be taking systems of english grammar. also, the trees could come alive and start eating people.

i'm glad that the pink ribbons around all of the trees do not mean they will all be cut down. but why is the front lawn being surveyed? are they going to build something there? no thank you. the grass is too beautiful. i would even miss the mud. where else could i periodically walk barefoot? she asks questions that nobody could possibly answer.

with the arguable exception of israelite history, i'm not taking a single class that doesn't matter to me. i did very well the past two semesters, and i'm happy with that, but this semester's classes are what really matter. we'll see how things go. i'm definitely not expecting to keep a cumulative 3.66 with such difficult classes, but i cannot wait to study these subjects. my gpa is not as important to me as actual knowledge (read: "i'm alright with getting a b").

let's talk a little bit about what's going down in my dorm room. since katie brought home snl's the best of chris kattan, we've taken to saying "what the frick!" like mango. i don't think mango is really at all that funny, but "what the frick" reaches levels of comedy previously unexplored by this college student. also, there's been talk of wearing lamp-cages on our heads. of course we've already taken pictures. oh and so much sufjan stevens. (though i listen to looping combinations of "gold digger" by kanye west, "for you" by bruce springsteen, and "two points for honesty" by guster... with my headphones.)

so, roommates, i'm glad we have each other. nobody almost understands me like you two. i wouldn't want to spend this semester with any other ladies, unless they were famous or somehow cooler. and i really do like sufjan stevens. and i really do love you guys.

hemingway said "do not worry. you have always written before and you will write now. all you have to do is write one true sentence. write the truest sentence that you know." i've been trying to take his advice very seriously.

here's the truest sentence that i know right now:

perhaps amelia earhart
simply could not find
a spot of earth upon which
she wished to land.

i don't know what i'll ever be able to do with that, but i'll do something. and i think it could be amazing. life could really be amazing. until then, i spy something red.

and i'm off to read an article entitled "fiction as hunger for life," followed by "the year of the exploding preconception." that year is probably 2006.

i had another muscle spasm in my neck. this time it's in the left side.

dad says it's from stress.

so why hasn't my head exploded?

i feel like i'm going to vomit. i've been on the verge of tears all day. i don't want to leave tomorrow. i need to hurry up and turn 20 and leave all this teenage crap behind.

i'll get odd with you and never write my wrongs. i've been listening obsessively to guster.

i feel as if i just arrived in hawaii, and i only have 2.5 more days to spend with my parents. i must have wasted 2 of every 3 minutes simply sleeping. i wonder what will happen when i eventually (?) get a real job and my sleeping schedule has to change. i do hate early mornings. and work, in the traditional sense.

i don't want to go back to school, but i hate the limbo period. i wonder what would happen if i dropped out. i don't think i would end up doing anything with my life. i guess i have the next 2 or 3 semesters to arrive at a place where i feel like i am equipped to really do something with my life.

i've been writing lately, more than usual. it's not remarkably high-quality, but it pours out onto the pages of my important-looking leather journal. i haven't been reading very much lately, but when i do it is poetry. jane kenyon is a talented woman. i am feeling my life added to hers.

i'm sick of junkmail.
why can't i sleep at night?

a new color scheme and a few new pictures. it was time.

december shook me violently.
and, january,
though i never
wanted you, i cannot bear
to watch you from
an upstairs window
as you
recede into the soil.

i can only sit in tragic
lamplight, facing
a shelf of books, and whisper
to an absent cat,
while beneath the purrs--
february rises.

right now i'm only genuinely happy when my cat abigail is sitting in my lap or lying beside me. all in all, this has been a very bad year and i'm not excited about 2006. there--i said it.

i can't remember the exact moment that everything became so heavy, but i know everything is much heavier when the sun goes down. maybe most of what i say at night isn't true in the morning.

but if i have really given up hope, i would not have signed up for such difficult classes. and i haven't listened to bright eyes in a long time.

i guess my resolution is to be less crazy; my goal for the year is to figure out what to do with all of the bizarre things that God combined to create me.

and i scream for the sunlight
or a car to take me anywhere
just get me past this dead and eternal snow
because i swear that i am dying
(slowly but it's happening)
and if the perfect spring is
waiting somewhere
just take me
there

[abigail, just lay down beside me.]