Autumn

Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,
And all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone.
I already hear the dead thuds of logs below
Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.

All of winter will return to me:
derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice,
And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison,
My soul will harden into a block of red ice.

I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam:
The echoes are as dull as executioners' drums.
My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs
To the blows of a relentless battering ram.

It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone
Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere.
For whom? -- It was summer yesterday; now it's autumn.
Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.
-Charles Baudelaire.

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

At Work and Bored As Ever

It's actually exactly as the title says. I am at work and bored to death. Actually, not to death. I like being bored at my job because I'm not very...skilled. Besides the basics, of course! So, how has my day been so far? Unproductive. Very. I'm heading to the library after my shift so I can do some work! It'll be quite exciting...not. But besides that...ooh! Yesterday I got letters from my sisters and Justin's siblings! Haha. It's kind of random, but yeah. I love Irene and Andy! :D I told that to my best friend and she was like, eh? Why his siblings? (The answer? Because I love them!) I love snail mail. It's really fun. I hope the pile of letters I'm getting get bigger!

Lately I've been getting a little homesick. Not to the point where I'm bawling and missing everyone like mad. No, I actually don't miss people too much. I miss material things...which is not good? Well, I guess I miss my church, and there's people in that church. Oh, and I miss the babies too! Ah! But yeah, besides that, I just miss material things like my car, my bed, my city at home...

Funny, really. I didn't think I'd get homesick at all. I really, really like it here and all, but you know, home is where the heart is. It'd probably be a lot easier on me if I had my car here! I miss driving too. Goodness gracious! Oh well. Letters, letters! I love getting letters! I need to get new stationary too. To add the list, I also need a haircut, but I digress. :]

Winter is coming soon! It's windin' up a storm outside and I just want to stay in my room all day and listen to music and wind down, but I've got homework! Boo homework. :[ Oh well. That's what I get for living on campus at...well, college. I can't wait to go back! All this new-found freedom is delightful, but I really want to see my California again. I miss it. The Californians here are all from the north (wherever that is...pfft). Not REAL Californians! Hehe.

Yeah, so anyway. I met with my advisor and got all my classes for next term, so I'm set! Pretty much. I'll be really depressed during the winter too, I'm guessing, so I'm not sure if deciding to take math was the best idea...oh well. I have a poetry writing class to cheer me up! I've been getting into poetry and plays a lot recently. I've written a couple of poems since I've been here (more than I can say for the last year or so), and I've been really getting into Arthur Miller and his plays. I guess it helps that we're studying poetry in my lit class and that I'm doing a research paper on Miller. Yes! I feel good studying, and call me crazy because I think I am. Researching people and reading about them is just so interesting! And also, I love the library. That probably helps too.

Moving on may be the hardest thing to do.

We all lose friends.. we lose them in death, to distance and over time. But even though they may be lost, hope is not. The key is to keep them in your heart, and when the time is right, you can pick up the friendship right where you left off. Even the lost find their way home when you leave the light on. -Amy Marie Walz

I've been feeling kind of out of it lately with my friends, both here and back in California...or wherever they may be now. I've tried to keep in touch, but I feel like I'm putting a lot more effort into it than they are, like they don't feel the need to talk to me. It kind of saddens me, knowing that they're lives are moving on without me. I suppose it's bound to happen, and I'm being selfish, but I still want my friends, you know? It's hard moving on and leaving behind the people I had made such great memories with. Yes, as you can see, it's hard for me to accept change. But the world changes all the time, and it's time for me to move on too. I just hate how emotionally attached I get, and how needy I become. Even with my new friends here, I feel like I'm making a big effort to contact them while they almost never contact me first. See? Again, needy and selfish. I like being liked by everybody, which makes me a little bit like Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman. He wanted to be liked by everyone, but in trying to please them all, he ended up with no friends and, really, no life. In effect, he pushed away his real friends, the one that he had, in order to be liked by everyone else. I feel like that sometimes. I feel like I'm going to be alone all my life, pushing away people who do try to get close to me because I don't realize it until it's too late, or worse; I start becoming really judgemental and unfriendly to them. It's so terrible of me, but sometimes I feel like I can't help it.

I had the strangest dream today too, while I was taking my nap. I had a dream that I was getting married, and I was wearing the ugliest pink dress ever. It was really just a pink top and a pink skirt (makes me shiver now) and I was searching franticly with some random people for something to wear at my own wedding, and I had nothing. I found the shoes and all, but no dress. Strange, no? It gets weirder. So I went back and I saw who my groom was, and it was my dad. And I freaked out and I was desperately trying to think of ways to avoid this, and I thought of divorce, just running off, or just leaving him at the altar. And I was seriously panicking in my dream. And when I woke up and analyzed my dream, I realized that I'm terribly afraid of marrying somebody who is like my dad, someone who will trap me in my life and who will be overbearing. Honestly, dramatic much, right? It was such a weird dream. I guess that's one of my subconscious fears; to get married to someone who's too much like my own dad. If I even get married at all. What a scary thought! To be alone all my life!

So yes. I am an insecure child just wandering around, looking for people who will accept me as their friend. People whom I respect and like myself; otherwise, I'll just be one of those old maids who stay inside all day with their pets as companions. I think it'd be a lot easier to be a hermit once you're older. When I die, will you promise to come to my funeral? Please?

Moving on is simple. It's what you leave behind that makes it difficult.