Dream

I've been having the strangest dreams lately-- the strangest thing about them, as far as I'm concerned, is that they actually make a little sense. By that I mean, they aren't completely random and nonsensical--and by that I mean, they're representational, if you know what I mean.
Do dreams ever really mean anything? Or are they simply the result of your subconcious imagination taking everyday thoughts and experiences and mixing them up?

I think this was Wednesday-- July 19th.
I don't remember how this one started out.
I was at a school, or a meeting house or something, and standing in front of a muddy yard in the rain, walking up to a chain-link fence. There was a strange little girl there. When everything was dark and wet and dripping, she was bright and cheery and colorful, with a happy face and red curly hair, and a big red bow on the top of her head.
Then I was in my house, just coming into the livingroom, and there was an enormous thunderstorm. You know how you can poke your finger through rubber, but it just bounces back without making any kind of permanent hole or dent? Well the lightning during this storm was just like that--huge bolts of lightning poking right into the living room, almost touching the floor, and kind of bouncing back again. My older brother was in the room. He was the smart one, apparently. Wherever this lighting struck, he would quickly go and sit in that spot, since he knew lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. The lightning just kept coming and coming. I was the stupid one-- I ran around, kind of freaking out, and a lightning bolt struck my outstretched hand. My hand turned bright red--or pink, maybe. It shook like crazy. It hurt like heck. When I looked at it, there were these shards hanging right out of my thumb, like ripped blood veins or nerves or something. I remember thinking how strange that was.
I went outside. It wasn't my family's backyard. It was something from the country, with a little dirt round going round in a circle past the back door, and woods behind. Apparently, the Nazis were occupying. This didn't strike me as so strange, but it made me nervous. The president of the U.S., Matthew Broderick, apparently, tricked the Nazis by pretending to send our troops south, when they actually went north, and ended up meeting them in a circle and taking them out. Whilst all this was happening, a rich wealthy, blond haired woman took my brothers and sisters and I in her limo--or maybe it was a plane, but then again it could just as well have been a boat or something. In any case, she gave us all this fancy chocolate. There was this box made of chocolate and wafery-stuff, with little chocolate envelopes. I remember the woman was very sad.
Then all of a sudden we were back at my family's house, except it wasn't our house, it was strange to me. I didn't like it. We (my sister and mother and I) had to babysit these two horrible little bratty girls. I couldn't stand them. My mom left somewhere, and the minute she was gone, I told the girls to get out of my house and walk home. After that, a friend of mine from highschool, a nice guy I went to the prom with, came over with his father (who didn't look a thing like his real father) and told me he had his liscence. Apparently that was good, because then he could take me to a dance on Tuesday. He was wearing a football jersey--or maybe that's what he really looked like. I don't know.
There was a girl, older than me, I guess. I had joined some kind of club or something, and she told me they were having an important meeting on Tuesday, the day I was supposed to go to this dance. I had a fit and told her there was no way I would go.
Everything that came after that was all muddled up. I don't think I could describe it very well.

Puddleglum

"Don't you lose heart, Pole," said Puddleglum. "I'm coming, sure and certain. I'm not going to lose an opportunity like this. It will do me good. They all say–I mean, the other wiggles all say–that I'm too flighty; don't take life seriously enough. If they've said it once, they've said it a thousand times. 'Puddleglum,' they've said, 'you're altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits. You've got to learn that life isn't all fricaseed frogs and eel pie. You want something to sober you down a bit. We're only saying it for your own good, Puddleglum.' That's what they say. Now a job like this–a journey up north just as winter's beginning, looking for a Prince that probably isn't there, by way of a ruined city that no one has ever seen–will be just the thing. If that doesn't steady a chap, I don't know what will." And he rubbed his big frog-like hands together as if he were talking of going to a party or a pantomime. "And now," he added, "let's see how those eels are getting on."
-The Silver Chair

Steve McCurry: Afghan girl, refugee camp, Pakistan. 1985
(National Geographic)

Blegh.

I hate summer sometimes.

It's freaking July already! Where is all my time going?

Sunlight through a summer filter

Radiant

CATCH.

Värme

Solamente amore

Se tu fossi nella mia anima un giorno

Sapresti cosa sono in me

Che m'innamorai
Da quell'istante insieme a te
E cio che provo e
Solamente amore

Backwards, Inside-Out and Upside-Down

Everyone's always so concerned with 'turning the world upside-down.'
That's the last thing the world needs. The world needs to be turned right side-up again.

Drive

Take a drive.
Just go.
Where? Anywhere. Just go.
C'mon, you know you want to.
The road is calling your name. Get away. Just go.
What road? Which turn? Follow the clouds, the blue sky, the horizon, the moon. Light and wind and everything you see. Follow the birds. Just go.
Change is inevitable; you can't escape it. Go with the flow; travel with time. Enjoy every moment. Dance. Sing. Dream. Drive. Just go.
Ignore directions. Live a little, be spontaneous. Don't worry so much about 'not supposed to.' Trip, fall, get up again and keep on. Just go.
Learn from your mistakes, don't dwell. Don't always look over your shoulder. Just keep moving, just go.
And when you're tired, turn around, all the way. Look back and remember the drive. You didn't stop, you left a new road in your wake.
This is life.
Just go.

Revelations with coffee. Oh yes.

So, I just had a revelation about myself. Yes. At eleven thirty on a Friday night after swigging a mug of really... weird ... coffee, I've come upon an inspiring realization. You know in cartoons when the lightbulb appears above the cartoon character's head (right now I'm thinking specifically of Goofy for some reason) and the light turns on, zing! They've had an enlightening idea! and then Goofy reaches up and pulls the little cord and turns off the lightbulb and does whatever the revelation has just told him to.
Wow. That was a tangent. What was I saying?
Yes.
I've had a revelation about myself. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with my life. You know I'm getting REALLY tired of people constantly contradicting what I say about myself. I say something like, "I get really stupid. I confuse myself altogether too much." and then the person will say something like, "You're not stupid. You're a very intelligent person. It just has something to do with your creativity level." As if this person knows ALL about me and can tell Me all about Myself. Okay. I guess you have been living in my brain for eighteen years and can suddenly tell me more about how my mind and body works than even I can. I guess you're right. NO. See, when I say things like that, it's because I am revealing something about myself that I've lived and grown with. It's part of my personality, take it or leave it. And if you can't take it, then screw you (and I mean that with the highest and utmost respect, of course.) Once, my mother and I were talking about a situation my sister once found herself in... I'm not sure what it was. My memory isn't so great. But I remember my reply was something like, "I would just never be comfortable with that." and my Mom's answer I will never forget. She simply said, "You know, Hannah, I think that shows that you really know yourself." She told me that I was clear-minded enough to just know. That reply in itself made me realize how incredibly intelligent and wonderfully admirable my mother is. I've always known she is intelligent and admirable, but what she said to me really hit it home, and I won't ever forget that. Who knows you better than... yourself?
Okay. That was an even LONGER tangent. You see, I'm explaining things to myself. Coffee is a good thing.
My point of all this is that I've come to an interteresting conclusion about a characteristic flaw about myself. It is that I don't drive myself hard enough. I don't go the extra mile. Okay, so I've always known that about myself. It's hard for me to reach out of my comfort zone. (Right now I'm picturing this big pink bubble, and pulling myself out of it, one arm at a time, then my head, now a leg, and I'm yankin myself out of that stupid pink bubble that I've been building around myself for most of my life.) It would be so easy for me to be creative, to inspire people with the talent God has given me. But I'm too afraid of going over board. I'm afraid that if I do go the extra mile, but it turns out to be the extra mile and a half... or even the extra two miles, people will basically think I'm stupid and pathetic.--She goes way overboard with everything. She can't be sensible and stop, she always has to go further. It's like she's trying to out do everyone.-- I've realized tonight, that THAT is what's wrong with me. I could do so much more with the "talent on loan from God" but I'm too afraid, too timid, too worried and obsessed with what people might think of me to be different. That's why I admire those people who (at least on the outside) never give a second thought to what other people think. --It doesn't matter. My life is my life, and only I can make something truly wonderful out of it. --It's like the particular duty God put before us when he gave us the gift of a certain talent. My problem is I need too much pushing. I have to be pushed or coaxed into everything. People eventually get tired of pushing and they stop, and then I'm in a rut, and I can't go forward and I can't go backward. I'm that bandwagon person people always talk about. The person who holds on to the wagon with a vice-like grip and refuses to fall off. Maybe... my grip is slacking a bit. I hope it is. The problem is which bandwagon I WANT to fall off, and which one I DON'T. Well, I kind of know which one I would like to fall off... but which one do I want to stay on? That's a dilemma. That's what my life is all about. Deciding which bandwagon I need to secure with a vice-like grip, and which one I should just tumble off of. If God has given me a special ability, perhaps he will also give me, or show me, what and where that ability goes in the whole scheme of... LIFE.
What a scary thought. Because really, for me it depend so much on the people in my surroundings. Maybe God is telling me I shouldn't be on a bandwagon at all. Maybe I'm supposed to make my own. Maybe not even a bandwagon for lots of people... maybe just a bicycle, built for only me... a bicycle that only I pedal. I don't know... I just keep guessing.
But maybe... the solution lies within a mug of really strong sugary coffee at eleven thirty on a Friday night. Maybe.

What are you ON?

These people are such bloody hypocrites.

Var är hon nu?

Where did that person go? That girl who was so confidently strong in her morals, in her beliefs and in her faith, unsuppressed and excited for the future. That girl I knew last summer... where did she go? I can't say. But if you see her, let me know.

The Blue

All I could see was the blue.
I don't know why I thought it was blue, because it could just as easily have been green or gold.
I just remember thinking what a beautiful color it was.
Shadows, too.
Shadows flying (floating, racing, dancing) over my eyes.
They must have been closed. My eyes, I mean. The shadows were dapples from somewhere above and they were surrounded by light, flying faster. I suppose they couldn't have been shadows without that purest light.
Maybe that's the point; maybe there are two kinds of sight: a sense, just like smelling or hearing or tasting or touching. But then there is the sight so much like touching, like being overwhelmed by an emotion, so much so that it brings color and pictures-- maybe memories-- to your eyes and to your mind. And this sight brings the softest, happiest warmth.
Does your soul feel?
Is that a stupid question? (My friend said once, that teachers say there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers... but they're only trying to make you feel better when you ask one.)
Here.
Within.
Without.
Everywhere...
I still see the blue.

Nothin' but blue skies from now on!

Big Blue Eyes.





Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

Never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on
(Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see)

Never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days, all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on
Nothin' but blue skies from now on!

... laundry?

“I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry, because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life?”

Tuesday laundry

So... waiting for my laundry, I decided to write some stuff.
I expected a thunderstorm all afternoon... nothing. This is so disappointing. I can literally smell the rain coming--when is it coming? A good thunderstorm would be the best thing! (Just... um, not during classes tomorrow.) K... going to check laundry.

April begins...

April 1st
April Fool's Day
National Atheists' Day