these are my thoughts.

As I get older, as the going gets tougher, as I become less of an imaginative child and more of a realistic adult, I realize I don't want to know anymore. I want to be ignorant. I want to have three imaginary friends named Hannah, Haley, and Heather again. I want to see tall grass as an opportunity, not a chore. I want to play tag by the pool table in the basement and write poems about clouds in the wood fort and go to Dari Licious after church and not know what the ice cream costs. I want friends who love me just because I am me, ones that see past my flaws.

I don't want to vote for the next President. I don't want to get a degree. I don't want to become a 'member' of a 'church' that's 'right for me'. I don't want to count the miles on my car for the next oil change. I don't want to go to meijer for laundry detergent. I don't want to wake up to a department store. I want to wake up to a book, and one that I choose to read because I want to read it.

I want to go back to the 90's. I want to be a kid again. But how do I forget?

Cornerstone lifts ban on staff drinking alcohol -- chicagotribune.com


Any thoughts on this? I'd love to hear your feedback/opinions.

"If this is about my soul, take it. I don’t want it without you."
-Bella Swan to Edward Cullen

Enough said.

http://bit.ly/UIQwJ

The comments regarding this poll are worth checking out. Interesting perspectives, especially the one about everyone in America eating rice for a year to raise the money to pay off government debts. REALLY, people!? The ignorance of the American people is astounding. It will be oh-so-easy for Obama to fulfill his agendas with an audience that is ill-informed and doesn't give a crap what happens to this country as long as they have what they want.

World's Columbian Exposition: Ferris Wheel, Chicago, United States, 1893., originally uploaded by Brooklyn Museum.

I have yet to ride one. I saved the experience for my husband. A sort of virginity, perhaps you could say. You are looking at the original Ferris Wheel invented by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr for the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in an attempt to trump the exquisitly famous design of Gustave Eiffel's tower.

For more info, read Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. Interesting stuff.

Paris from the Eiffel Tower, originally uploaded by Ben Heine.

I love: discovery. What do you love?

I am sitting in a mass in a cathedral at notre dame in indiana. It smells of incense and of a quaint antique shop full of old wood furniture. I am sitting behind four nuns as young as i am. The architecture and the art on the ceiling is astounding. The sounds of the voices resound. The formality of mass is disconcerting yet somehow sacred at the same time. I wonder if the guy in front speaking is going to watch espn when he gets home. I wonder if the church in all its sacred macho is genuine or simply tradition. To me, it was moving but more in a historical sense than spiritual.

...sending you forget-me-nots..., originally uploaded by *Athar*.

Shakespearean Sonnet, Sasha Hettich

To forget the way of your love within
Would be the most egregious endeavor
Like forgetting a bug bite on the skin
Or the chime of Cornerstone’s bell tower
Should I soon, now, put you out of my mind?
My darkest night would become darker still.
And when sun rose through thunder-clouds, I would find
A giant weeping of lava spill.
Cataclysm, convulsion, crash, collapse,
The sun has power to heal, but destroys
And as its seeping wound pours out in ash,
Just so, your love appeals and decoys.
I will not forget, within, your love’s way,
And then keep your human presence at bay.

I have been extremely busy lately...neglecting everything truly important to me for things that will later be insignificant and forgotten. I thought I would share this sonnet I wrote for class...I didn't do it completely correctly as it isn't true pentameter, but it is what I have right now.

Have a good weekend :)

Music starts playin’ like the end of a sad movie,
It’s the kinda ending you don’t really wanna see.
Cause it’s tragedy and it’ll only bring you down,
Now I don’t know what to be without you around.

And we know it’s never simple,
Never easy.
Never a clean break, no one here to save me.
You’re the only thing I know like the back of my hand.
And I can’t,
Breathe,
Without you,
But I have to,
Breathe,
Without you,
But I have to.
Breathe.

Beautiful song, tragic tale. Losing someone, no matter how, is the hardest thing
that can happen. How do you move on? Because you have no other option.

I am:

-listening to Damien Rice, "Empty"
-drinking Caribou coffee my momma got for me :) It tastes delicious. Thank you.
-regretting how late it is and how little I have done.
-regretting that I couldn't attend Chris Hamilton's recital because Kohl's sucks up my life.
-attempting to write my Modern Political Philosophy midterm, which I am actually enjoying, though I wish I had more time.
-deciding whether I want to be an English Literature or Humanities major. (I have to decide before midnight tonight)
-posting this blog so I can move on with my to do list, which unfortunately never ends.

I thought the church is where broken people come together, all in an attempt to give what little we have to God. Church is not a system God set up to filter out the bad people and minister to the good. Christ said he came to heal the sick, not the healthy. So How in the world are we so blinded to this call?

I am perplexed. sad. fatigued. frustrated. a great many things. I don't know how exactly to describe it, except that the only things that console me are when Cody gently rubs my back, or journaling or sleeping or listening to music and singing out loud. Anything to distract me from overwhelming myself. Yet, these all do not last, so what I am left with is myself trapped in my own perceived devastation.

I escape stress by avoiding to fulfill the responsibilities that make me stressed. For example, I am blogging this entry right now to avoid summarizing the book of Matthew, and I haven't picked up Empire by Hardt and Negri or worked on my Herald page much this week because I am simply avoiding them as to avoid the stress. Yet this, in the end, only heightens and worsens it.

I feel alone. I don't understand why I feel this way because I am surrounded by people. I am sitting in a library right now, overlooking the campus where I attend college. But no matter how many are around me, no matter how many love me, I feel alone. Not alone as in a permanent, I am Legend, there-are-no-other-people-in-this-world-but-me sense. My aloneness is the fact that there are so many people in the world, but I am the only one who is in my brain. Alone as in dread. I dread going home. I dread going to work at the Herald office. I dread doing homework. I love coffee. I love sleep. I love spending time with Cody. I love writing. I love talking on the phone with friends and family. Those are the things that make me feel less alone. Those are the things I truly live for, and the rest of my life: classes, meetings, jobs, etc., are simply necessary but lonely interludes between the things that make me feel better.

When I was a child, I stressed over the prospect of losing someone I loved. Perhaps this is because my cousin died young, which was a traumatic experience for a thirteen year old girl. But now, I don't worry so much about it. Sure, I don't know how I would live without my husband, but I try not to think about not having him. The worse part about adulthood worry is that I don't worry about what may happen, but what has happened and what is happening now. These are real things, things I can't change even if I wanted to. Like the fact that I don't have a group of friends in college that I spend time with. The fact that I have hardly any friends, period. The fact that I am not a good philosophical thinker, or writer. my family at home has moved on with their lives without me. I am not a missing piece. I don't feel needed. Not simply wanted-but needed.

I wish I was a better oral communicator.
I wish I was a quicker, more creative thinker.
I wish I was more athletic.
I wish I was more laid-back.
I wish many things.
Why can't I simply be satisfied with being me?

I keep reminding myself of this which I wrote in my journal last night: "Stripped bare, with nothing but myself, God loves me just as much as if I had a full resume to give Him."

I stare in the mirror and say "I am beautiful, I am beautiful, I am beautiful." over and over.

When I am extremely overwhelmed, repeat many negative things to myself that Cody likes to call "negative self-talk." But I can't help it. Wait, yes I can. I can come to the realization that I am capable.