More Titanic

Right now i feel like the ship officer at the end of the movie Titanic. This happens after the ship has sunk.
The officer stands at the prow of a lifeboat being paddled by two silent men. He shines the beam of a flashlight against the black Atlantic waves and shouts, "Is there anyone alive out there?" He yells it over and over until our ginger-haired protagonist finally gets her act together and blows the whistle to alert him of her presence.

Anyway, is there anyone alive out there?

Is There Anyone Alive Out There?

Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever reads this blog. I don't mean familiar anyones, but strangers. Late night anyones who landed on this blog and decided to take a second look for some strange reason. Anyones who are interested in the musings of a nineteen-year-old college student who sometimes thinks that she's F. Scott Fitzgerald, and sometimes thinks that she's an Oompa Loompa (destined to sing and work for a man in purple all her life).

You see, I'm not sure exactly why I write this blog, but I suspect that it has something to do with you anyones. You give me hope, I guess. You make me feel like what I'm writing does matter, and maybe not just to me. Because the stuff I write in this blog, this stuff is who I am. This is my voice. This is what I sound like when I'm talking in a large room by myself. This is what the inside of my brain looks like.

I know exactly what I want to do with my life. I want to write and write and write and then I want people to tell me that my writing is good enough that I can just continue to do it forever. I've told you that I love to write before, I know. Writing is the hardest thing in the world, but it's the most beautiful and powerful thing in the world also. Maybe you don't feel the same about writing, dear anyones, but everyone feels this way about something.

This rant must end. Truthfully, it probably should have ended at Oompa Loompas, but I've never been one to know where to end things.

(The End)

I Dream of Murder

I had a really strange dream last night, and I thought that I should write it down, because I’m almost certain that it has some kind of deeper meaning (though I suppose all dreams do).
First of all, it was really complicated and kept shifting, so I’ll just record the main parts in order to avoid too much confusion.
It began with my whole family rollerblading in the streets of a city (I think it was St. Paul). I think that Dad and Amy were there, but I mainly remember Mom and Grandma E. (though Grandma wasn’t skating).
The funny thing was that we were rollerblading in the middle of winter; the streets were covered in slush and big snow banks separated the sidewalk from the road.
Anyway, Grandma E. and I decided to go back to the house, so I skated back beside her while she walked. When we arrived, I saw that the house was huge and Victorian-looking. At that point, I knew for some reason that my Grandma G. was about to be murdered inside.
I had this idea in my dream that she had died because she had gone to some sort of meeting (not a cult, but a domestic meeting like a sewing circle or something), and they had poisoned her so that when she got home she had a heart attack. I’m not sure why I was certain of this in the dream, because in real life I know that she died of cancer. Also, this dream involved some sort of time travel, because I was the age I am now, and I was going back in time to stop the murder that I knew had happened.
Meanwhile, I left Grandma E. outside the house on the sidewalk because I didn’t want her to get hurt. I entered the house. Inside were two women, a twelve-year-old girl (who was clearly in league with the women), and my Grandma G. The women and the girl had cruel, sinister looks about them, and I knew in the dream that they were really going to hurt my Grandma G.
Grandma G. was sitting on a chair chatting (I don’t think she had any idea what was going on) with one woman and the girl, and I sat down across from the third woman, who glared at me suspiciously. I remember that I sneakily took a large, serrated knife from the table and slipped it in my pocket in case I needed a weapon.
The woman sitting at the table must have seen me take the knife, because immediately she and the other woman jumped up and brandished knives at Grandma G. and I. We were backed into a corner, and they started slashing at us. I stood in front of Grandma G. and slashed back. The interesting thing was that no one got seriously wounded; we all simply made shallow scars on each other’s arms and faces with the knives.
While the fight was happening, the girl kept trying to offer Grandma G. something to drink, and I kept pushing her back because I knew that the drink was poisoned.
Finally we managed to get out of there unscathed, and met Grandma E. on the front walk.
In the road in front of the house the three appeared again, but this time the girl was trying to get Grandma G. to eat chewable Tylenol (which was also poisoned). I kept her away, and we all escaped down the road.

My Favorite Poem

This poem appears in a book that I've been reading fairly regularly since I was in middle school. I never really considered it until recently, but now it is without doubt my favorite poem. I just thought I'd share:

God Speaks

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

A Bit of a Story

I began writing this about a week ago, and then got tired of it and decided it wasn't going anywhere. It's kind of a fun story, however, so I thought I'd post it. Here you go:

There came a time in my life when I had told so many lies that I didn’t know where my real life ended and my made-up life began. These two lives of mine were not interwoven; they overlapped like two thick pieces of paper. You could not see through one to the markings on the other.
Slowly, I felt myself separate. I spent a day cleaning out my fossilized closet, and that same day I had tea in the city with four beautiful friends. I wore pearls; I hated to show off, but my father had given them to me for my birthday a week before, and it was my first occasion to wear them.
As the pile inside of the closet shrunk and the pile outside of the closet grew, I remembered the pearls I had seen in the window of Macy’s. I had stared at them longingly, forgetting my rain-matted hair and puddle-splashed beagle for a few seconds. My cell phone rang. It was
It was my niece in London. Her husband Mick, who worked for a prominent recording studio there, had just met with Paul McCartney. Apparently they shared the same ambition to save the baby seals. Paul was having lunch with them in the garden next Thursday. Could I please take time out of my busy schedule to help host? And could I bring my Sgt. Pepper’s album? Of course I could, though I would have to unearth the album from a pile of
Moth-eaten teddy bears. I shook the dust off each one as I picked it up, clutching it gently by its furry paws. I could still name all of them, and I did, tapping them on the nose methodically as if they were steel drums and I was the Jamaican with dreadlocks. The dreads were a bit itchy, but they did provide a nice weight on my shoulders
Ache from sitting on the plane so long. First class just isn’t what it used to be. Luckily, the man next to me (who bore a striking resemblence to Jude Law) let me rest my head against his neck. It wasn’t comfortable as a pillow, but smelled a lot
Like the tuna cassorole I had unthinkingly left in the oven while I was cleaning.

Things I Want To Do

I will learn how to crochet.
Then, when I'm seventy years old or so, I will crochet afghans. I'll use whichever pattern and color I feel like using. But I won't make them for specific people. Only after each one is complete will I find a person to give it to. Anyone. The mail man, the teenager who bags my groceries, an old friend, my hairdresser. Anyone who I think needs an afghan at that time. Once I've given one away, I'll begin a new one.
Soon I'll know dozens of people, and a part of me will be a part of them, because they'll sleep and read and talk under the afghan I made.
Their lives will become mine.
Because when I'm seventy, I may still want to be a mail man, and a teenager who bags groceries, and an old friend, and a hairdresser.
But it will probably be enough to be an old lady who crochets.

I Need Some Sleep

So today is the big MOA trip that I've been planning forever with some college friends. I'm excited, yet I'm worried as well.
Hence the lack of sleep.
I woke up at about 7:00 this morning because I abruptly remembered that I forgot to get the keys to the car from my sister. I leapt out of bed just as she was getting into my neighbor's car to go to school. Despite my flinging opon of the front door and shouting, she didn't notice me.
I went back inside to find that Mom had left a spare pair of car keys at my place on the table, along with the GPS.
So that was taken care of.
I went back to bed, but have basically been tossing and turning for about an hour now.
Sometimes I wish I could just turn my brain off and not think for a few hours.
I also have a stuffed-up nose from lack of sleep.
I'm listening to the Eels (I Need Some Sleep). It's a good song, though it's one of those songs that you only listen to when you're doing the thing that the song is talking about (aka being up really late/early and can't get back to sleep).

I need some sleep
Time to put the old horse down
I'm in too deep
And the wheels keep spinning round

Everyone says I'm getting down too low
Everyone says: "You just gotta let it go"
"You just gotta let it go"
I just gotta let it go