EXPECT NOTHING

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human giant

Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

-Alice Walker

two rectangles

I hardly know what to say. I usually don't say much about these kinds of things. It seems that this society breeds departures of this kind. A very well tended to American value is minding one's own buisness.

I... I vowed to myself to look as hard as I can at people to see who they are and who they could become. I would hope that humanity could seek harmony, without living an eye for an eye always, everyman for himself. With the people in my life, I want to extend anything I can to them. Care, you know? Why? Because I know that hardly anyone else will, all of us rarely meet anyone who is able to give a damn anymore. What kind of existence is that?

But because I know this reality, I know to expect nothing, from any one person. People are not suppliers to my needs so I don't need their civility or their kindness. If I do see it, i recieve it with an appreciation.

It's a sad reality.

But that vow. Not always easy especially in moments like this.

She told me to save my time and stop calling. I've never remembered her like that... That we had gone separate ways and I was just a junior high friend, that I had no reason to tell her how to live her life. I didn't expect to be so misunderstood by one that I respected and looked up to so much. I have no idea what kind of image she has of me that made her say the things that she said. I can see why she came to the conclusion she has, when I think on it, sort of.

I've come to the conclusion that I am not accountable for this. I have no need to prove anything more than I already have. And so I expect nothing. However it does add an odd stillness to my day. I can laugh about it sometimes.

i need to read the little prince again

history of us

i went all the way to paris to forget your face
captured in stained glass, young lives long since passed
statues of lovers every place
i went all across the continent to relieve this restless love
i walked through the ruins, icons of glory
smashed by the bombs from above

so we must love while these moments are still called today
take part in the pain of this passion play
stretching our youth as we must, until we are ashes to dust
until time makes history of us

jeu de paume's full of faces knowing peace, knowing strife
leisure and toil, still it's canvas and oil
there's just no medium for life
in the midst of the rubble i felt a sense of rebirth
in a dusty cathedral the living god called
and i prayed for my life here on earth

so we must love while these moments are still called today
take part in the pain of this passion play
stretching our youth as we must, until we are ashes to dust
until time makes history of us

there are mountains in switzerland, brilliant cold as they stand
from my hotel room, watching the half-moon
bleeding its light like a lamb
and the town is illumined, its tiny figures are fast asleep
and it dawns on me the time is upon me
to return to the flock i must keep

so we must love while these moments are still called today
take part in the pain of this passion play
stretching our youth as we must, until we are ashes to dust
until time makes history of us

-Indigo Girls

--------

*sigh*

Now that I turn into a tomato in front of my land lord...

Yeah.

I've been contacting people that I've neglected to keep in touch with the past few months. I hate losing touch. Touch is something that is too easy to lose.
Life just pulls us all out in different directions. No, I would hope that we don't "soon forget the things we cannot see."

A descision is at hand right now... I'm a little unsure. I don't want to kick anyone out. However it is so strange. I feel awkward sometimes around these two, they are practically married now and... That's just it I feel like an occupant in a married couple's place. Not to mention 2/3's of the people I know would pale at the thought of me living with a guy here. I can't describe why or how this gets to me. It does, and I don't like the way it feels. John will tell me to stay out of things before I even say anything. I try to be ignorant and impervious. I can be outwardly at least but. Really I can't be. I don't agree with all the fighting. I try to keep it their buisness but you know when you hear a man screaming out and a girl cussing back at him, it's hard to pretend nothing is going on. Or when he has to sleep on the couch. I want quiet sometimes. I loved how there seemed to be less anger here but that has changed since he has stayed here. Right at home again I guess.

I just...

on the scale of awesome

Today can only be expressed as adventurous.

This is so why I take the bus, to meet other eccentrics like myself.
I made a new nerd friend today. I saw a mac laptop, which this guy carried around. Funny that I saw him going inbound and outbound. The second time I got gumption and asked to finally desaturate my curiousity for these pretty little "mac tops".

How gratifing it is to talk about little nit picky mac functions and of course, "the big switch". Even better to hear that a previous tech support had some of the same issues that I currently have. Of course, this "switch" was well worth it as he was also going into graphic design, (cool!!) no better way to go then a mac in that rodeo. We both decided that Trekkies are quite fun and terribly misunderstood.

It was great to geek out with someone over the more retro game consoles. Holy shioot this guy had a Jaguar, and was also tracking an intellivision! Those are impossible!! It was easy for him though, from what I understood he was a kid when these consoles were released. I've never talked to someone that has bought a packaged atari or sega off the shelves.

Which reminds me!!! I did not buy that gamegear I found at work. *sobbing* I hope its not gone... Perhaps I can finally get that pac man game for the atari. We all love pac man just admit it. Little yellow chomper dude.

I just got my order for the awesomest tee shirt today. Makes me proud.

I caught the bus to work 20 minutes early but still arrived 20 minutes late because of traffic down in Sunset. One of these days you should all take a day off and observe the Whitney as she darts about in a mad flurry of a hurry. Better than pay per view.

There was more traffic in savers of course, being a monday sale. Sheesh. Too bad though. I heard an ever so familiar voice, and yelled out "Susan?" Responding to her name, my anthropology proffessor turned around and peered out of her designer glasses, "Whitney! How have you been?" Oh, I wished we would have had time to talk. She was picking up some home decor for her cabin. Now that was on the scale of awesome.

On top of all this today people were so kind. I found myself asking how many girls it took to shove a desk in a car after a customer had purchased furniture. One of em was pretty tough actually, just took the reigns and started haulin. That was so so so cool, it was more in her tough ass demeanor than anything. To the point, a stranger offered a hand to these girls, who was parked a little bit away from them, kinda watching us with nothing to do. That was... Nice.

The second, a mother and her son came to my register. I subtotalled and this kid started rummagging through his pockets, as his mom went through her purse. He was what like seven and here he was "dont worry I want to pay for ya" with his baby toothed grin. It was so incredibly cute.

Ashley my coworker said sometime she is going to just go out and relocate to England. Random. Just like that. I also talked quite seriously about leaving the country. We were talking about it and I thought to myself what's keeping me from doing this kind of thing? Why can't I? It's doable, easily doable as seen so well in my aunt's wanderlust. She could give me the low down.

So yes, a day of many an adventure.

deteriorations

We live in the age of the short attention span- where vacuousness is a virtue, where time to stop and think is rarely found and where everything goes in one ear and out the other.

-angloplugging.co.uk
*****

Sing

There is this thing that's like touching except you don't touch
Back in the day it just went without saying at all
All the world's history gradually dying of shock
There is thing that's like talking except you don't talk
You sing
You sing

Sing for the bartender sing for the janitor sing
Sing for the cameras sing for the animals sing
Sing for the children shooting the children sing
Sing for the teachers who told you that you couldn't sing
Just sing

There is thing keeping everyone's lungs and lips locked
It is called fear and it's seeing a great renaissance
After the show you can not sing wherever you want
But for now lets just pretend that we're gonna get bombed
So sing

Sing cause its obvious sing for the astronauts sing
Sing for the president sing for the terrorists sing
Sing for the soccer team sing for the janjaweed sing
Sing for the kid with the phone who refuses to sing
Just sing

Life is no cabaret
We don't care what you say
We're inviting you anyway
-Dresden Dolls
**

The loss can be a leak in history or a shrinking in the vitality of everyday life. --Adrienne

*****
A couple of years ago, a tabloid in one of India’s metros called in a consultant to help them make the newspaper more reader-friendly. “Keep stories short,” he advised. Shorter stories, snappy paragraphs, simple sentences; suck the reader in and spit him out before he gets bored. This is the age of the short-attention span, and we see it all around us.

It’s there in the journalism. Tabloids keep their stories brief. Agency copy often consists entirely of one-sentence paragraphs: news for dummies. Magazines have found that the pages that readers turn to most are the snippetty ones, that don’t make demands on the reader’s time – like the last page of India Today, or the second- and third-last of Outlook. One of the reasons that blogs are gaining in popularity along the world, in fact, is that they cater to the short-attention span: the most popular typically have brief, pithy posts that efficiently encapsulate the subject they’re on about.

We see this also in the way we consume music. Soon, all music will be sold in the form of digital downloads, which is convenient because most people prefer to buy songs rather than albums, preferring to listen to a familiar song they like over and over rather than explore an artist’s oeuvre. It’s all a-la-carte now, and concept albums might soon be the dinosaurs of music. Television channels have also recognised this: MTV India found years ago that their maximum-TRP shows were their so-called vignettes, the two-to-three minute snippets that viewers can consume easily, like MTV Bakra and Filmi Fundas. We are hungry for the easily digestible. Ten-course meals? Sorry, no time, could you summarise please?

Television, in fact, is often blamed as a cause and not a symptom of this. Camille Paglia recently wrote: “The jump and jitter of U.S. commercial television have demonstrably reduced attention span in the young. The Web too, with its addictive unfurling of hypertext, encourages restless acceleration.”

-India Uncut

**********
Fuel

they were digging a new foudation in Manhattan
and they discovered a slave cemetary there
may their souls rest easy
now that lynching is frowned upon
and we've moved on to the electric chair
and i wonder who's gonna be president, tweedle dum or tweedle dummer
and who's gonna have the big blockbuster box office this summer
howabout we put up a wall between houses and the highway
and you can go your way , and i can go my may

except all the radios agree with all the tvs
and all the magazines agree with all the radios
and i keep hearing that same damn song everywhere i go
maybe i should put a bucket over my head
and a marshmallow in each ear
and stumble around for
another dumb- dumb waiting for another hit song to appear

people used to make records
as in a record of an event
the event of people playing music in a room
now everything is cross-marketing
its about sunglasses and shoes
or guns and drugs
you choose
we got it rehashed
we got it half-assed
we're digging up all the graves
and we're spitting on the past
and you can choose between the colors
of the lipstick on the whores
cause we know the difference between
the font of 20% more
and the font of teriakiyi
you tell me
how does it...make you feel

you tell me
what's ...real
and they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
even when they're as dry as my lips for years
even when they're stranded on a small desert island
with no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer
and i wonder
is he different
is he different
has he changed what's he about...
or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about

Am i headed for the same brick wall
is there anything i can do about
anything at all
except go back to that corner in Manhattan
and dig deeper, dig deeper this time
down beneath the impossible pain of our history
beneath unknown bones
beneath the bedrock of the mystery
beneath the sewage systems and the path drain
beneath the cobblestones and the water mains
beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
beneath everything i can think of to think about
beneath it all, beneath all get out
beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
there's a fire just waiting for fuel
-Ani DiFranco
**
Songless

What is the point
of being artists
if we cannot save our life?
That is the cry
that wakes us
in our sleep.
being happy is not the only
happiness
And how many gadgets
can one person manage
at one time?

Over in the Other World
the women count
their wealth
in empty
calabashes.
How to transport
food
from watering hole
to watering
hole
has ceased to be
a problem
since the animals
died
and seed grain shrunk
to fit the pocket

Now
it is just another matter
of who can create
the finest
decorations
on the empty pots.

They say in Nicaragua
the whole
government
writes,
makes music
and paints,
saving their own
and helping the people save
their own lives.

(I ask you to notice
who, songless,
rules us
here.)

These are not containers
void of food,
These are not decorations
on empty pots.

-Alice Walker
******************

this is a translation of a Chinese poem, it is a little choppy, yes

No Time


I must get far away from this city
with it's soot streaked curbs
and people who pass each other
without a smile or a word
'No time! I have no time!' She answered me,
the girl dressed all in lavender

Still, she did answer me, and yet
I didn't dare ask her,
'What important things have you time for?'
But whispered to myself instead
- the homeless whispering to the homeless -
there are those who love but have no time
for loving.

If this is true, how can birds fly back to
their nests?
How can poetry be written?
If this is true, birds and poems will die.
Yes I must get away from the city
If there is no time, no time here
to speak one word,
to share one moment's laughter...

- Nguyen Sa


_________


What are we all becoming?

the lottery of triage

Everyone says they want to be a fly on the wall. I do. I just got an accidental call from my parents. I don't know how it worked really.

After a long series of my hellos is anyone picking up I about hung up. Until I heard my name mentioned a few times.

I don't know if they meant to call and have me over hear or not. Hard to say

Wasn't anything big either. well... Whatever. Don't always know what to say to these things.

On a lighter note, I woke up this morning with a perfect knowledge of where I am. Usually it takes me a moment to connect with my surroundings here though I know where I am if that makes sense. This time, no my room looked and felt perfectly natural again.
Well enough for me to slip back into sleep instead of forcing my self to take in my surroundings so I can better connect with it. It's hard to explain just how much my psyche attaches to my environment. I only know that it does. However I think I caught something in me from my parents families that skipped my parents, nomadic senses.

It's not always easy here out on my own but god, it is so worth it.

about these kinds of things

*sigh*

I don't know what to think.

How did it happen that I am now living along with my roommate's fiance? Until who knows when?

I wouldn't mind so much but the fighting gets to me. He has the right kind of anger that makes me stony eyed.

He became guardedly upset when he saw I moved some of his drawings from the walls. I had replaced them with decorations I had bought. That I had replaced his stuffed monkey on the ceiling with a hanging pot. That I moved the candles that used to be on the tables. "but we like to have candlelit dinners!" Those candles are just chunky christmas candles I don't see the whole... Of couse they can be put back at dinner time. I just wanted to put in a center piece. It's not like my things haven't been moved around and used without me. I'm not really used to guys holding grudges, honestly.

What the.. All I wanted to do was make the place look more homely to me. I am not used to bare walls. I had understood his pictures being a temporary arrangemnet. Then again I thought this whole thing was a temporary arrangement.


'kay Whit, get to the bottom of this. If ya dont say anything he will stay here until August. I don't find much comfort in living along with a guy. We've not made any arrangements to split rent or bills but even so he does contribute in other ways.

Ugh. Too bad my tact left me tonight eh? I get to be the evil roommate with pointed horns. . .

Transcontinental

I lift a wing, my head filled with the continent invents a floating body. It's not that I am fleeing because I accept what I am with the most complete submission, not to flee but to hover a bit above the stock. In fact, I don't really take off, a foot is always firmly secured in my sand-filled shoe. And I can't really lighten my ballast because I can't forget what I am. I am however able to see a bit further, a daily contact so that I don't rot in place, an instinct in the shape of a safety valve. Using a dream to harbour a different death, a different destination, infinite travel possibilities, It's a way of seeing things.

-Morthem Vlade Art

she drinks coffee at midnight, when the moment is not right

It just bit through me just now... Just a glimpse of the corner was all, the closet slightly agape, files from the cabinet, my chair at an angle. The moudling on the corner. My place for thinking has changed. How simple really so why should a small detail make so much fuss?

It used to be the ceiling, I'd be on my back looking up at my paper snowflakes, maybe upstairs curled on the couch stairing out the window. Where I would let my mind unravel, my thoughts saturate into a new feeling.

I am trying to put familiarity into this corner. I usually can keep a degree of familiarity along with me, wherever I am. Not when I drift off into my own world though. I really daydream alot, just get lost in my own world, spend hours just thinking... But with all that I need, the distance I drift needs an anchor, a thing of familiarity. Especially at that point where I go back to whatever I've needed to do and pull away my gaze from those particular spots. The bending of light through the shades, a faint twirl of my snowflake.

Oh goodness. I need more Chai.

Why is it that we feel we can't say what people truly mean to us, Kailu? Very aimiable goal you have, when you see something about someone that is good, tell them. Why does it need to be so secret? Maybe we can make more slams and lifts on life, on the warm pavement and stare stony eyed into the sky, swapping disarming and curious occurances.

I've been thinking about this ever since you said that... Why do we all take so much time composing ourselves to mask what we appreciate? We just don't see how urgent it is. I believed Vazzi when he said that the people here don't look at each other much, are so quick to get angry, almost arrogant because they kind of ignore... He said it wasn't like that where he was from, where he had been.

We do find everyone in minute particulars, Blake. So when will we all see that and notice how fleeting any small message is? I try to use a person's name at least once when I am with them. Few things are more closer to you than your name, your word. Just address that they are there. Subtle things like that...

You said you got to ask yourself if you feel content with it, happy... You just say things so free of bias and judgement now and then, it's good. The world needs more of that sometimes.

pilgrimage

Found an interesting quote earlier from a seemingly interesting stranger's blog.

“a woman is not a potted plant
her roots bound to the confines
of her house …
a woman is wilderness
unbounded” -alice walker

“the fundamental question about revolution
as lorraine hansberry was not afraid to know
is not simply whether I am willing to give up my life
but if I am prepared to give up my comfort:
clean sheets on my bed
the speed of my dishwasher
and my gas stove …
paintings I have revered stick against my walls
as unconcerned as saints …
yet not one lifeline thrown by the artist
beyond the frame
reaches the boy whose eyes were target
for a soldier’s careless aim. …” -alice walker

I love Walker by the way. Amongst one of my favorite poets.

* * *

I hope I am making the most of my time. I hoped that after school got out I could have a period of introspection, one of reading, cultivation, creation, evaluation, meditation. Sadly, today felt productive going down to Ross, actually living my one of two living spaces. I even bought two books today, one on drawing human anatomy and the other an origami enyclopedia. *laughs* Always with my paper worlds...

Drawing from what I mentioned earlier, an aspiration of mine is to learn the art of meditation. It's purpose intrigues me, stimultaneous removal and connection. You learn to concentrate on releasing independent attributions. What is it but the art of focus? The challenge focus presents is that of applied measurement.

Also I had planned to journey through a myriad of various readings. From the current book I have been eternally reading (I need to finish it) Field Notes on the Compassionate Life, selected writings of Virginia Woolf, Adrianne Rich, Emerson and Thoureau, Joseph Campbell, and Carl Jung... Much more on that list than is listed. I wanted to read up more on Rilke, Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, and Mark Strand... Brush up on life's imagery...

I had hoped that this would be a period dedicated to finding my own spirituality. I look at the head way I have not made and I feel my heart - sink. Truly the only journey is one within but from where does one embark?

It's not too late, not even close to over yet. Even so, that sets off no sirens, no dramatics in the background, the soundtrack has long since been cut. This is life in the raw, life itself simply uncut.

It's what we can make of the measure...

amongst a gypsy

There are a few words for me, that aren't quite me but are becoming me. Transient, vagabond one could say... It takes some time to articulate. I travel about with Gypsy feet, never completely in one place.

~I'll be the girl who sings for my supper... ~

Random shreds of songs of current / lasting intrigue continue to flood over my head. I am finding a common thread to the songs I love the most as of late. That of a free spirit. That free spiritedness that is within just calls and continues to call, then simply arrives invited or not. It was one that I had left overtime by accident.

~and so here I stand, with a sword in my hand, you can say it one more time, what you don't like, have a seat while I take to the sky~

I have journeyed through my calm, but as such almost forgotten my wonder..

Parts of myself I saw flicker have newly begun to reappear. Residing here on my own has changed so much. It's about sitting in a quiet place, and asking myself what I hear... What has been heard, and what has not yet been told.

Secure Yourself

In the ink of an eye I saw you bleed;
Through the thunder I could hear you scream,
Solid to the air I breath,
Open-eyed and fast asleep.
Falling softly as the rain;
No footsteps ringing in your ears.
Ragged down worn to the skin,
Warrior raging, have no fear.

Secure yourself to heaven.
Hold on tight, the night has come.
Fasten up your earthly burdens,
You have just begun.

Kneeling down with broken prayers,
Hearts and bones from days of youth.
Restless with an angel's wing,
I dig a grave to bury you.
No feet to fall,
You need no ground.
Allowed to glide right through the sun,
Released from circles guarded tight,
Now we all are chosen ones.

Secure yourself to heaven.
Hold on tight, the night has come.
Fasten up your earthly burdens,
You have just begun.


-Indigo Girls

fasten up your earthly burdens you have just begun

This renegade’s on the chase again, clinging to whatever scraps of light. It’s so different just being out in the open... I had thought religion must always be associated with bureaucracy, with function being above the soul.

Church... um. Haven’t been in a month or so. I get curious about the ward in my new area but... It just stays a curiosity.

My mother is beginning to crack down on me for not recieving my patriarchal blessing yet. She’s been telling me it will be a blueprint to my path in life... I hate to watch her religious flutter, it actually scares me how she can appear to be so spiritual and be so rash and set in her ways.... Why is it that I feel so dangerous saying these things? Why have I always been so pressed to not look anywhere else but in one small corner?

John wrestles with Christianity, but whenever he and Tammie have troubles, he wanders off to the Lutheran church near the apartment. Says it’s peaceful. It is actually. So are the different church houses I’ve been to in my life. At the Buddhist temple you can definitely feel an energy. As far as feeling the ‘spirit’ goes it’s surprising on how I feel it and where. I don’t think I’ve lost it, many would say before my telling them of my church activity that I do have it. I love the quote ‘ the less I seek one source for one definitive, the closer I am to fine’. But it’s not always easy...

My struggle of the soul is not just limited to Mormonism, but to Christianity as a whole. The ideals of Salvation complex me, just the whole urgency of it... The motions of Salvation as well, it is either good or evil right or wrong. Is finding the value and depth of one’s soul such a uniform process? Can it just be found by looking at the stamps on each action and making a collective desicision to see if you’ve flunked out or not? Is it really about earning love and redemption from the father???

An obstacle I have to understanding any black and white process is it is heavily based on direct associations. Whatever happened to due process? Too many factors exist for such uniform establishments, even there are too many factors within factors. It leaves too much room for discrimination and less room for thinking for one’s self. It assumes we all have same goals. Yet there is that ticker in my head again ‘beware of he who is learned’.

It’s like running your bubble test sheet into one of those machines. In less than five seconds you have your score. It does not take into account your putting down (b) when you actually meant (c). It is a machine, it can never read your mind. Divine forces should be able to understand you as you are, an atypical mold. We can’t assume that every member of humanity has the same purpose.

Draining filters. In church they are taught that there is much that our carnal minds cannot begin to comprehend. Once we are in an eternal sphere our comprehension is expanded, not simplified. I believe that after this life our comprehension will be broadened and not condensed. Eternal descisions should not be made by an earthly order. Yet we are taught that it will all fall into good or evil, white or black. Well I’m sorry we’re not dealing with a posterized black and white portrait here. We are not even dealing with a grayscale image. We are dealing with life – an endless colorwheel of beautiful complexities.

It does sound appealing. To completely eliminate the evaluation process and replace it with but one law. But that leaves too much chance to prejudice.

I am not saying it is wrong to have a focus. It is very important to have and embrace basic values, but the essentials should not choke the framework and the framework should not bury the essentials. This can’t be seen in a rigid system fueled by opposing extremes because there is no room for factors of who one is. I do not believe there is evil out there, just imbalances, just confusion as to what to do with the complexities of one’s self. There was an amazing allusion in my book. The soul is like a packaged fixture, all the parts are included but some assembly is required. Sometimes we can make bad combinations. Individuals’ purposes become a mosaic, and if all are in balance with themselves. I see little embrace of diversity of thinking for oneself. Doing that is marked as a danger. However I look around and all dangerous functions try to sever the thought of an individual. Individuals are mediums in themselves, their own songs and palates of color. We are not scaled by some universal toner that plots us out into black and right.

I’ve never been the ideal student. Most of my life teachers have talked about my delayed homework. She needs to focus more on completing assignments. Little did my teachers know how much I took from those classes. I would get so intense in art and music lessons as you can probably imagine. Back then was when the sciences still fascinated me. I would trace the rings of Saturn, and told the substitude teacher maybe the gaseous planets were created by the trails of gases other planets left behind. When we did a section on the black rights movement I imagined myself out there marching, fueled to be speaking out with the crowds. Sometimes I was considered dull because I wouldn’t respond, I wouldn’t turn in homework. Because learning is judged by paperwork, five letters and a range of percentages that I did not earn, they measured my education by what I completed, never by what I learned. The system would not allow it’s own flexibility because setting standards was far more important than communicating the essentials of education.

Sometimes the education system reminds me of my previous religion. I would keep a still, quiet place in my soul hoping to listen. I would see others who would partake in ‘unrighteous’ acts tear up in the lessons when I was waiting patiently for my understanding to unfold. It was like others could pick up on it so quickly when I’d have to strain myself to understand the nature of God and righteousness.

In seminary class, Brother Evenhuis told us a story about a mother trying to illegally cross her country’s borders through a river with her small children, and new born in her arms. The young child could not handle the trauma and began to cry. Worried that she would be exposed and her children shot, she frantically tried to calm the baby. She stroked his cheek and brought the child to her breast to try to feed him, but his crying did not stop. With tears in her eyes she knew she had no choice. She looked at her other children who were clinging to her in fear.

She covered the baby’s mouth, it wasn’t enough. Broken and reluctant, she held her infant in her hands for the last time and held him below the icy waters as he struggled feebly confused by this act in his mothers caring arms. Hysterical tears rolled down her cheeks as her child took his last breaths. She could not even whimper else give her family away. If she had not done this, her other children and herself would have been caught and tortured by the guards. She wanted freedom of religion as a Mormon convert. Even still it was considered a sin- murder. She was granted repentance by the prophet after following a long process of interviews and...

In these kinds of systems actions can only be seen as actions, but there was no room to take into account her love for her children. It was truly a sorrowful situation, how could God not see this woman’s sacrifice? How could that inflexible system take this into account. Murder is murder. What pain this woman must have felt to do the best that she knew and in one desperate situation still be reprimanded for her loving concern and pursuit for her family.

I don’t know if you had watched the Torino Winter Olympics last year. I watched the team skating sessions. Having two left feet I have an appreciation for those with grace and the beauty of delicate movement. They appear to glide over the ice as if friction and gravity do not exist to them. I believe it was one of the Chinese pairs that were out on the ice. There was so much spirit contained in this dance. It appeared that the two were in perfect animated balance. As the man spun her through the air, she positioned her knee in the wrong alliance with her ankle and the balance was broken for a moment. After she fell she curled up on the ice, she had strained a muscle. She would have been in the lead, but that spin was crucial. She was carried to the normal ground, She tried again while in excruciating pain. Upon that difficult spin she landed right with some difficulty but landed all the same. What made her do this? Just ambition or was there something behind this? It was her sheer spirit there that allowed her to dance on a damaged leg, aside from pain. This was not included in the rubric, there was no way to incorporate spirit and a focused determination within the Olympic evaluation process. If you saw this, do you remember how powerful this was? Where was the room for spirit or passion? Doesn’t spirit and passion remove it from being just an act, just a movement?

Such processes ban inward values because they do not appear to be absolute or easily measured. I believe however that these should be taken into account. I can never support a self serving system which functions on blunt and rigid framework. Something as profound as the salvation of a soul cannot be charted out by measurements. I have a hard time seeing the view of any duality, in this cause that of black and white because of it’s bureaucratic funtionings.

I realize that salvation is based on boundaries of the sacred and profane. It leads to many who will fume and preach all mighty speeches of brimstone and fire when they can’t solve problems with the black and white formula.

I do not understand the nature of sin or the nature of a sin’s consequence. I recongnize that there are acts that can be commited that can deform one’s spirit. I recognize that anything that transcends this life will call for one’s ethics. What I do not understand is Christianity’s response to sin. A sin still remains a sin and that’s where the Savior comes in. If we recognize it, then Christ will complete it for us. Sins must be suffered for. Wrong deeds deserve correction, yes. But I cannot agree with the definition of correction. If a man commits an act harmful to his soul’s growth, but later recognizes the measures of this act and does his best to understand the nature of the act and truly takes accountability why should he still be punished? What if it made him stronger?

My shortcomings have built me in ways I cannot begin to describe. The process of which I look at my mistakes and correct the thinking -/ feelings that led to them is so much more valuable. Why should sin still remain a cost after the fact, after one has evaluated a wrong doing, and resolved the issue? Are sins really permanent black marks that cannot be corrected without a call from the big guy? Aren’t sins the nature of the act or ‘crime’ a failing of the heart? Or is it still the fact that a ‘crime’ was put down on a track record? WHY SHOULD IT BE TALLY MARKS ON THE WALL??? This Universal Law that is functioned on does not take this into account, so how is this love if it is so ignorant to this? This system’s basicness is actually frightening to me. It can never be observed deeper than the face value, because that would be robbing justice? My question is why does justice rob so much from mercy?

How is this justice? I believe that all are born good, but along the ways in our lives we are confronted with conflicting parts of ourselves and all sorts of complex situations. Some are lucky enough to be given wise parents who encourage growth, but many are not. Many adults are still trying to grow themselves. In fact some religions try to encourage marriage as early as possible... Children raising children? I could accept a lot more of this system if churches were more established, Be it Mormonism or Christianity. That way all could have an equal chance. This would be great if everyone could be born into what they were able to handle or an environment that would not block their growing. Look around do you see this? Does everyone have an equal chance? No. I do not believe that every one is only given challenges that they are able to handle. This is not justice. This justice continues to rob mercy. (How in the world were these two virtues considered opposites in the first place?) What makes it like this? Does commiting a sin really pollute the universe’s atmosphere? Offset some cosmic balance by virtue of track records???

On a side note I can’t believe as one general authority has said that we are only given trials that we are able to face. Okay... So what about toddlers who are beaten bloody and senselessly by their crack head mom?

I do not directly understand a universe’s requirement for blood and torture. In this respect I do not understand the Crucifixion, or the Atonement. This system of religion seems to communicate someone must pay for this and sacrifice. Why do wrong doings need to be suffered so gruesomely for? As I said earlier why is resolve not enough? I think personal resolve is very spiritual, powerful. Why beat someone who has suffered profusely at knowing they have made a grave mistake and actually worked build themselves better ethics?

If this universal law is higher than God than God is not all powerful. I do not understand it. This says we cannot learn by experience but I believe that experience is the most profound teacher. If you make a mistake, and feel that mistake and assume responsibility, and make a respectable effort to change why does one still need to be slapped around? We should be judged by heart and intent. Not because we spiritually misspell words or use improper grammar. But by the content of the message in our souls.

Excuse me if this appears to be blashemy. I am finally speaking from my heart when it comes to religion now, not fear of a deity. I mean not to harm anyone’s beliefs and think that Christianity is beneficial to some. But I do not feel that it need be pressed as the only path to growth and personal betterment.

I want to learn how to improve, to be able to embrace values larger than I. To have firmness in all that I do. To look deeply into all that I see and try harder to seek what I may have missed. I have nothing but respect for the power of the earth and existence itself. It is a journey, and this renegade has once again packed for more nomadic trails.

nature of the beast...

Between falling off a scooter and banging my head on an unseen bar well it’s been a wondrous two days.

I realized that management has been too flooded with personal emergencies from at least four different employees to actually respond to any mishandling. I still feel twinges of guilt though whenever Jamie (not to be confused with the other chick fighting Jamie) comes in with a medical note, in the chokehold of a neck brace. I could barely even talk to her. She could barely look at me, be it a lack of neck movement or whatever...

When I had taken her shift she told me she could cover a shift if I wanted later in the week. My supervisor had thought Jamie would cover my shift the next day in return and called to make sure. That morning I had not been looking forward to work because I was getting nauseated and other fun things. Jamie had said if I took her shift she would take my Sunday shift if I wanted, but I never responded. I asked Liz if it would be okay if we swapped shifts cause I wasn’t feeling well. She said it wouldn’t be a problem.

Jamie had forgotten it because no set plans were made to take that shift and said she would be in soon enough. But I was recalled in again. Jamie called apologizing saying she had just been in a car crash, a bad one. The shift was mine again I asked to stay off the register afraid I would seriously mess up.

As if my concern for Jamie had not been enough Keelee, one of my coworkers, kept on asking me intruding questions the entire night with that undertone of blame in her voice. “Well if you feel alright then why’d you try to call in? ”she’d ask accusingly. Since when have I ever told anyone who has casually asked me how I was, how I really was?

I recognize that it wasn’t my fault, but even still, had I not had her swap that shift... I don’t think she’s holding anything against me. Still she will always remember that whose shift she would take. Ugh... Retail once again rears it’s ugly head in all it’s do or die complications.

smork work

My mac is being a real beast right now. So if anyone knows a good mac techie please let me know. Internet complications... For now we have the internet on John's computer. Even still it's nice to have ready access that I can use whenever I want or need to. I haven't had ready internet for about four years now. 'Tis rather nice.

It feels so refreshing to be out of school finally. No more hitting books over my head... No more history proffessor with an anarchist ciriculum. No more earliness.
It's all the more bearable when it's not early. Earliness is evilness. I can actually read now without feeling guitly for not reading my textbooks. lol. Freedom! There is so much that I am able to do now with time. If I didn't have bills then I'd have more time but living on my own is rather convenient.

All is going well right now. I'll cap off all the Polliannaish comments, but lets just say this past week has been, well, nice. :)

I finally applied to convergys today. Commies. The recruiter asked if I had been reffered by an employee. Yes. They can't do it by people's names though, you need to provide the employee's ID number. What the heck! Sorry, names are out now, forgot to get the number inscribed on the back of her neck. All apologies, I'm just a little critical of U.S. culture at the moment.

Even still, a desk job is going to be nice. At Savers I am all over the place, running racks, unloading trucks, cashiering... Bleh. Oldness.

damn facists

It literally amazed me. When did the course of needless procedure ever become more important than the worth or suffering of an individual? It's long since been this way I'm aware. I don't know... Every now and again I tire of living in a system where my being present is no proof of my participation. It upsets me that my social security number is worth more than I am, my ID can only prove who I am. Why should I approve of such a impersonal system? Americans seem so consumed by individuality that by the time the divisions are made no one has anything but statistical worth.

This concept made me boil once again on Saturday. What makes this okay? I had been running around mindlessly about work all day, unloading donations, training a new hire, being the only cashier for three hours. At the end of my shift I had had it. I was ready to just go home. While I was counting out, my coworker Jamie asked me if I was leaving, what time I had come in.

She seemed like she was somewhere else. Really shook up. Then she told me she felt horrible for having to ask me, but there was an emergency. She had called in work with a family emergency, at which they told her to find someone to cover else still come to work. Else she would lose her job! Lose her job??? WHAT? Why the hell does her having an emergency make her such a severe inconvenience??? The supervisors were more worried about Greg's staunch demands for clean store orderliness than they were sensitive to Jamie.

Jamie could barely even talk. She told me that her grandfather had just had a stroke. He was in the hospital, with a few hours to live. It would probably be the last time she could see him. She was going with her folks to go say family prayer with him. Some one was dying. DYING! I can hardly come up for a better reason NOT to come to work.

I took her shift. I told her was very upset at the management. That was an understatement. After Jamie left I could barely even talk for a different reason. I was pissed off that she was handled so coldly. I'm not even sure of the LEGALITY of their decision. I stopped caring about how I had worked all day, because all anyone could think about what work, work, work. What the hell!!!

As one of you can testify to, I was completely disturbed by such insensitive carelessness. lol. You were the only one that day that bothered listened to my bantering... thanks.

test tube project?

AHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAH! There is another Whitney Lomax out there, perhaps even two!
Creepiness!!

While surfing online i found all sorts of Whitneyness
Whitney Trails

I think the funniest I found was on a soap opera board called Passions. Whitney and Lomax are characters in a soap opera. A few people go off swoon over how perfect the two are for each other.

lol, anything to keep me alive between finals......

breaking a hold, holding a breaking

Classes are out now, all that is left are my finals. My work schedule is still centered around my old school schedule. I'm alone most of the day here, and it's taking some adjustment. Here, no one calls me Nae or steals my socks. Before I had decided to move out, I had just begun to repair relations with my dad and he wasn't always easy to reach. It wasn't easy to see him get so choked up about my leaving. I've never seen him that way before on my account.




Another thing that is hard to get down is being completely winded down. Living with a friend requires a social attitude. It's yet to come to the point where we can walk past one another and think nothing of it (is she sad, upset, not feeling good why did she not look at me) Always when I see my roommate. I don't mind being social, I love being social but all of the time? Hopefully as we both adjust to this place, it will settle to where we don't feel a need to remain in that entertaining mindset that is common when spending a bit of time with a friend... I still can't believe that a guy lives here. He's seen some hard times though, so he's here for a little while. I had always told myself I wouldn't live with a guy, though liberal I get a little Victorian when it comes to my relationship values. Not that I believe everyone should be this way, but I am only saying this is the way I feel.




My mom tends to put on more of a social face when I visit. I'd wondered what it would feel like, to get the warmth she sends to her customers, friends. Now that I'm away it makes it easier to get along with her, we don't clash as much. My dad seems confused when I visit. I've become a visitor... He seems so tired all the time. Now and then he'll say something that I never even knew about him, living in Oregon, school in Chicago, a girl he used to know. Ever since I've left he seems more and more choked, like he's living a life he doesn't understand. It makes me sad to see him pacify so much because those around him past and present don't value open communication.




Hate to sound cliche (in relation to my writings ) but everything about my familiar is being challenged. My previous religion is becoming a strange mist. Yet because of this a new hope has arisen to me. My concept of home has been completely diminished and it feels like being tossed around by waves between places. Brendon seems to have evaporated. My functioning and devotion to school is getting shaky. With all that money on tuition why can't I get myself to care? These subjects light up my mind and I'm positive you have all heard me blabber about the concepts and discussions in class. It's just the that the bueacracy caught up to me a little more now that school isn't my central focus. Life is becoming nomadic for me, when all I ever wanted was a firm claim to my own roots. In between all of this is extensive soul searching. What is betterment, goodness? I can't describe how disconnected I feel with so much happening...




I think I've seen another bitter truth. Someone who you have an unresolved issue with will always remember you when you stay out of contact. Because it's unresolved. After you set time aside to resolve this with a person, that remembrance can fade. It's easier for that person to forget what is going well... I would hope that people aren't this disposable. After all I believe that 'I am a part of all I have met'. Or this could just be my inner hippie who longs for harmony and maybe a touch of balance. Balance in a world where the scales are rigged already.

nicotine in my ramen

As I go from class to class I keep this fat red backpack chugging along behind me in very desolate hallways. Absolutely empty hallways would be nice seeing as I pedal a mobile public disturbance behind me. People don't realize the Or not nice at all. It messes with our concepts of order and public formalities(really I could run off with this one, just had anthro today). You just don't carry around such a rickety thing.

You want to know the sick thing about it? I like it. I actually like watching people try to act caus when they have to listen to this piece of junk groan on wheels. I like it. Who can understand how much money I'm saving? It's like 60 bucks for a good one. *laughs* It's wonderful for an instant maniacial high in the right circumstances.

So okay. I've got this thing. With ramen. Beef Ramen actually. It's not very healthy but it's soo easy to make and tastes considerably good. I've started this craze thing about it. I walked over to my roomate and said, "yeah this is my third bowl today." It's never worn out and now since it's so unbelievably cheap I am in love all over again. But why the heck do I crave it?

It's not normal. I'll take it over anyone's cooking.

the evening sirens

If I make it through this last month it shall be proclaimed as a miracle. I am more than ready for a break and a change of pace. I'm getting weary of kissing the arses of one or two of my proffessors. I can't always meet the amorphus academic expectations. Jeez. It's killing me.

I shouldn't say things like that, come to think of it. One of my classmates has just fallen off the earth, and I worry. What reason do I have to not worry when someone just abruptly disappears after they mention losing focus in school, and discord in the family. I don't know the severity of the situation but I do know he's living on his own but... I returned the call too late. His cell phone is out of service, his land line is disconnected. I'm fishing for a possible email address. I don't know what to think. I don't...

It's the type of world we live in. Urgent. Everything is so urgent that we can never know the urgency before it happens. The weight of my words or the importances of quick response. How soon must I be? There is no policy on anyone's return.

I never know how to debrief the systems of human policy anyway. Take your average person, sit him down to find all thought and words are formatted. The encryption is the most difficult part. Here and there I find an unsewn edge, a wide open hole. The soul has infinite windows, open or shut, but we only look at the eyes. Assume the eyes are key, assume we have a stable pattern of body language. I see other's systems of decoding misfire. It assumes that we have stable patterns of anything. How do I know how accurate mine is or can ever be. No one can give the diagnosis. It it about knowing what not to know? Welcome to human relativity: the most beautiful and frightening concept.

"When two good people argue over ethics, they are both right." I didn't always understand that saying. How is it that two people can be stimultaneously right? Isn't that against all order? Right or wrong? Throw it all into the picture, there will be flaws in the message and truth. If we feel and have evaluated ourselves to be right then why do we assume the other is invalid? It's like a disagreement of focal points that is all, all the lines lead to one central point , and when other lines do not parallell these it offsets balance.

My anthropology folder reads : SAVE THE HUMANS. I bought it first out of the humor, kept it for the truth it holds. We as creatures of complex simplicites are the ones most capable of infinite creation, and destruction. Where is the line? Pray that it's not the tightrope we're walking. Sorry, we no longer wear uniforms.

Crud Bus coming and ....

thinly veiled intolerance

Ever so sadly that immigration rights march will be going on without me on Sunday. Ever so sadly. The whole situation has to put it simply pissed me off by the mixed messages this country tries to send... hey hey we're so enlightened here with our democracy this freedom of oppression and many opportunites for earning finacial and self growth. Because of this everyone should like us, it's the best way to be, everyone should want to COME here. We get paranoid sometimes that you're going to screw us up so I'm sorry, wait for something to kill half of us off and we'll begin taking applications. Sorry about that but still we're the best and you should want to live here.

Cracking down on immigrants is a bit of a double standard for the U.S.. This country was originally composed of immigrants who had come hard on their luck. All types came. Prostitudes, criminals, the poorer population, and the religious outcasts all came here to begin again. Even the controversial Irish who had the about the same level of reputation as modern hispanics came along.

Now we're all on a population hype. I don't understand or agree with the hype about immigration concerns. Why should we make it a felony to enter this country undocumented? AAAaah!!! Immigrants taking our resources. AAaaahh! What is this Bush guy doing helping them out??? We can't have this!!! They're taking our resources our jobs... Does anyone realize that the only jobs an non English speaking illegal alien can land is going to be the same job that a sixteen yearold qualifies for? They are not going to be barging in our offices and taking our cubicles. They are not going to run for office and "infiltrate" our government. They are not going to be cleaning out our walmarts of food and product. With 70% of the world's resources we have enough to spare.

Why does the government even give legal minorities college aid? Just because it's cool to come from somewhere else? You really want to see how many first generation illegals go on to college? Is everyone really that afraid that your bioengineering, interior design, or buisness marketing degree and career opportunities are going to be seriously threatened by these illegals? Just browse http://www.nces.ed.gov/ if you're interested in seeing the hispanic education statistics. It's a sad reality of how many actually land finacial security and rise above that poverty. Even the legal Hispanic majority sadly still gets by on entry level due to language difficulties and remain in the lower income tax brackets.

I'm very upset that I'll be missing that March in Salt Lake on Sunday.

Every now and again it is refreshing to see people actively using their minds, showing their will to change something. I hear so many people support the Bush administration and when asked they don't know why. I hear just as much saying they disagree with the current administration but when they are asked oh just because -- he's wrong- you know that right?

I have to say the protests going on in France right now are awesome. They shouldn't be okay with their government fondling employers and giving them the 'right' to fire employees just because. Too many people feel that the greater virtue in these situations is to trust and endure. It doesn't work that way. One of my favorite poems by Alice Walker, a African American activist wrote this poem.

“The QPP
The quietly pacifist peaceful
always die
to make room for men
who shout. Who tell lies to
children, and crush the corners
off of old men’s dreams.
And now I find your name,
scrawled large in someone’s
blood, on this survival
list.”


People don't care. Perhaps it's a safety mechanism - don't think it through too hard. don't wanna burst more of them braincells.

Nonetheless it is so refreshing seeing some awaken.

you're standing on my neck.

Long time no post I guess. I took a month's sebbatical.

I keep on slipping into my old windows habits such as right clicking, alt tab, and the automatic cureall control alt delete. I'm here on campus using one of the macs, go team!! I was just messing with microsoft word just now for mac and shoot, it's a whole new rodeo. The toolbars are funky. If you want to alter your text, you use the text pallate which is equally as over engineered but pretty. Macs are pretty, they go all in depth with the design.

And I thought I was a one OS woman, hah... I'm still tryin to potty train my mac, it gives me crap sometimes. My computer started chanting, yes, chanting at 5:00 am this morning. I woke up to this inhuman electronic voice "Computer has been scheduled to shut down at 5 am, click shut down or if you do nothing mac will shut down in 1 minute and 20 seconds." "Computer has been scheduled to shut down at 5 am, click shut down or if you do nothing mac will shut down in 1 minute and 19 seconds." and then as I'm being pulled back into the natural waking world "Computer has been scheduled to shut down at 5 am, click shut down or if you do nothing mac will shut down in 1 minute and 18 seconds." I couldn't figure out what was going on as I laid there in a sleep stupor staring off. It had 1 min and 10 seconds left when I'm like okay okay OKAY you go to sleep now like you freaking should be. Gah!

My apartment is looking as homely as ever minus a table and enough seating in the front room, but it's not that big of a problem. It kills me going grocery shopping, it's got to be one of the funniest things in the world. Pushing it around my little shopping cart looking around for markdowns and Albertsons Preffered products. Buying toilet paper and oven mitts is really is hilarious, with my little purse thrown over my shoulder and I pedal my widdle cart down the aisle. Lol. No really LOL.

No one knows how oddly domestic I get nowadays, I get happy washing dishes and doing landery cause it's mine and I get to do these kinds of things. I have my own name on my caller ID which will never happen again! It'll just be a city name if it's a dorum. Way later on it'll slap some punk husbands name on the caller id. this is the only time it will come up, LOMAX WHITNEY. I Like!



That's the biggest freaking flock of birds I've ever seen so low to the ground. WHOOAH. Whoah. What was that like eighty, two hundred just flying past that window? Dude they're going crazy out there in the storm. The same storm I'm going to go out into in a minute. Whoah birds. That's a lot of birds.

that lady with the noisy backpack!!

There was an invasion of elementary school kids today on campus. This swarm passes me, and then this small group of boys passed me. They all stopped to wait for the straggler of their small clan. The short un with the shaggy hair tries to get all suave and says "You see those hot girls we were just hitting on over there?" he swung his arms out the total center of attention when I'm there behind them trying to keep quiet.

What are you, like seven? Real hot shot there. I couldn't help it just burst up hysterical right on the spot. Needless to say they kind off ran off after that...

my own way there, my own way back home

Well it's been done. I should be moving out next week.

They know where I stand. She knows that I'm leaving. She's not too happy with my living with a "Non Member". It's sad that there is such a strong name for that. She's also upset that I won't claim her family's religion and embarrased I can't help to suit her expectation she feels from her family to her children's membership. My dad pleaded with me to keep my mouth shut, that it's best to avoid it and simply agree but... I can't do that. I haven't been able to do that for sometime, but now it's louder. This is the time for me to finally open it. I hate to break it to her but I do have a voice.

My dad is a little scared to see me go, but he's saying not to listen to her. He says he knows I will find my way and it's nice to feel that at least one of my parents have faith in me.

It's all necessary. I need to go my own way.

a little backward

Tammy’s eyes lit up when she said "Hey you never know, maybe someone might find love today..." At this I smirked and replied, "Perhaps. You sound silly when you say it that way."

I came out of history and passed a girl She put her hands down on her hips shook her head and said "Well you know, if HE’S going to say that then HE doesn’t deserve you." As she flipped the hair out of her face.
I walked faster down the hall when I felt myself starting to laugh at the valley attitude.

It was like every couple had fallen off of the face of the earth. Usually they all seem to come out of the woodwork especially on this holiday. No one was holding hands at all as I went about campus. Tammy wondered if they all died.

I admit I started the day out on a more dismal mindset. My mom and I were suppoesed to have girl's day out today, go out to eat and other such things. Our religious disagreement the night before had cancelled that.

After Anna’s and my plans for the day changed, I decided to use the money I would have used on movie rentals. I went on a mad hunt for watches that day. In the back of my mind I was seriously considering majoring graphic design again as I was getting finnicky over the watch bands and faces. That little voice in my head became big and said these? These? I suddenly wanted to make my own watch, custom design one as I was criticing them all. Screw designer watches, I will never wear something over $80 out in public. Screw it.

The mad watch hunting took me to Target where I passed a mini stampede of three toddlers exclaiming "Get this un this one for mommy!". They shoved it into their fathers hand who said, "Well that’s nice. But this year daddy isn’t getting mommy anything so I won’t get mommy this. Let’s go."

I wasn’t sure about the watches there so I took off over to the mall. If I can inject this in right now it was the first time I have ever seen an Asian mannequin before. Anyway. I passed two teenaged looking guys pushing around little strollers hovering in front of the clothing departments looking like they would rather just be shot on the spot then wait for the bill to come when their wives said " ‘kay there hon, I’m ready to go." It’s the day of the empty wallet.

It's turned into a day of diamonds and chocolate. Like in a Fiona Apple song - I don't understand /diamonds or why men / get them, the only impressive thing / about them is the mining. There are all these girls expecting these flamboyant gifts completely original and exotic as a manifestation of their worth or the worth of their relationship. People lose the meaning of it sometimes while going through the motions. I'm a symbol person. I like different ways to find meaning but when it's stretched out so vainly and nervously far and REQUIRED I think all these little gifts loose their meaning.

Still watch hunting I took the escalator upstairs as I watched this small assembly down the stairs. It was a beauty pageant , the announcer had a gameshow voice and plenty of three feet tall gold trophies to distribute. There was this little girl with a crown on her head that looking like a vertical beak. Her parents should have given little miss muffet her curds and whey. The announcer took the mic and said "Now our boys were harder to judge then the girls, but here are our winners, Joey and parents please step forward." This tiny little mother comes forward and bounces her little baby boy. Agoo goo goo. Look how pretty my kid is—awwh! What the? Should children have to evaluate their looks even younger now? It’s already damaging enough for preteenage girls to compare themselves to other girls. Sometimes I want to scream when Lindsey and her friends begin talking in this way complaining that they’re fat or not pretty enough. Can someone explain to me the reason for a children’s division in beauty pagents?? Someone please explain. Please. I hurried up the escalator as I had started to laugh hysterically at the sight.

If I’m ever bitter on valentines its not a conventional bitterness it’s an anger towards what the modern societal perception of love is coming to. It’s sad. Really sad. Even when you start to think of it how one human will regard another even when favored...

Usually you can sniff out the holiday in the air but there were no tell tale signs of Valentines today. I usually saw that Valentines was a day which dissolves all fears of PDA. Really. But this year it was almost in reverse. Tammy at least had a happy valentines story at least which I was glad for after seeing all this disregard where ever I went.

On a plus note I found a watch fairly priced. On a bigger plus note I found a really really nice potential apartment. *drool*

put my feet where the earth should be

I get this feeling of rushed motion sometimes when the world starts to sway both left and right at once. You’d think that the forces would cancel out, but not really. One receptor feels the right, the other brushes to the left. I center around this imbalance.

Keep your eye on the ball, but what if gravity doesn’t count? What if it doesn't descend in an arc? One must have a guess at the course it will take to keep up otherwise you are trailing. Pilots are taught not to see but to imagine in flight school since the visual field was meant to be perceived when grounded. In the air all sorts of perceptions fire about location, weight, balance. Air pressure and localities are attacked.unordinary images messing with the understanding the view. Not to say these instincts are bad, they are only given for ordinary survival. They all have differend systems and mediums to reason with. Not even the forest for the trees, maybe the focal emphasis should be the circular thicket and the forest life.

There is always a picture that forms of a dilapidated train yard that follows these sensations. I will know something before I should and become the informed resident. waiting to feel that inevitable drowning. That's just it though, drowning is sitting right here knowing that reasons can’t crunch in every hue in one color wheel, maps itself out in a fifth dimension. Complexity is beautiful, even when sad. Sadness makes things more beautiful, beauty can create such pain.

I almost cared enough to put that wandering nav bar in its place. Almost.

Once.

blah and blah

Eye contact. Try it sometime on a stranger, watch them fidget. One of the fast acting antidotes to boredom. Oh dear. lol. What did I just do?

There is a sense of removal when I walk around campus. A pencil behind my ear, untied shoes, and ragged jeans. I look like this bipedal turtle with myoverstuffed green backpack.

My eyes usually catch the tops of the trees and the lanterns scattered about. Sometimes I catch people's eyes as I walk around, trying to think of what these people are thinking. On a slower week I think I'll count the weirdos who can't walk straight cause they are holding hands or the ones with a cell phone jabbed up to one ear.

I think one of the funniest things I've seen up here was a poster advertising the gay straight alliance down here which was immediately flocked out by all the religious club promotions. It made me giggle. Take time to stop and smell the headbutting propoganda.

Side note: yeah! I made it into metaphor! end side note.

How available these clubs seem to be, postings everywhere for these other clubs except the one that I have interest in. The writing club I'm looking for I've had to stalk for week upon week. I'm told that it exists at least...

The Davis campus has been really nice and I've been able to meet all sorts of people there. Down here at the main, it's so huge you're lucky to see one person twice. Trying to find things to do down here to get to know people, but no luck this far. The one class I have here is a dead end for that road. Most everyone in my history class has a self image complex or an uncanny fixation with football. Complete lack of variety there.

My mistake was thinking that the battle with financial aid was resolved, but I've been trying for the last two hours to accept my award and its not letting me. internet traffic.

I'm debating on whether or not I should laspe back into my being a bum and cancel my drivers insurace. As much as I love paying $108 a month to operate a vehicle I get to use maybe once or twice every other week... As much as I love thinking about accident rates and thinking of the three accidents I've been in, and the many many I've seen in the surrounding area. I think I'll pass.

Might as well take UTA around like I'm about to do now.

Straylight run

To anyone who is idling over the internet with a much coveted highspeed connection, get curious and check out this link.

It's such an odd music video, one of the few worth watching. I like.
http://music.vidnet.com/player/22410/straylight_run_hands_in_the_sky_300.php

I Miss My Sky

I bury myself in the leaves to sleep
The sun so strong and rage so deep
I keep waking to find I've been dreaming again
And the sound of the ocean is not a plane
And far away they talk about me
In newspaper columns they write about me
round dinner tables and cocktail parties
I'm a heroine and a tragic figure
I'm a heroine as I'm lying here
Beneath my sky

And sometimes
Sometimes I cry
Sometimes
Sometimes I wonder
Why we're always coming down
And why we need to touch the ground
And why I didn't keep on heading
right on up to heaven
I miss my sky

Here from below the clouds are shadows
Not the golden mountains I used to fly through
Here from below the sky's a painting
In a child's room with the future waiting
But not for me

I look up at the birds flying overhead
My sentinel's true but the signals dead
It's been 500 days of hope and sorrow
500 nights with no tomorrow
And the poetry and the best of me
And the heart and the spirit and the sex of me
All fell into the azure sea
In the tailspin with the last of me
And my wings, and my song, all that I knew is dead and gone
I'm weak and tired but my will is strong
And my hope lives on, my hope lives on?

But sometimes,
Sometimes I cry
Sometimes
Sometimes I wonder
Why we're always coming down
Why we need to touch the ground
Why I didn't keep on heading
Right on up to heaven
I miss my sky
I miss my sky

Heather Nova

along the way

Whitney, what are you doing. Really what are you doing. That little spasm in your stomach just now, thats called HUNGER. What are you doing here wiggling out of your impossible hoodie that's gotten too warm, mooching internet?

You're crazy just remember that. Almost as crazy as the people who willingly choose to read these ravings of a mad woman.

Hopefully I will have an easier time making my way out of Ogden today. Last Tuesday
I took a bit of a detour. I caught the inbound instead of out bound 603, jumped quickly out of it to throw myself into the outbound route. 25th something boulevard was announced and I pull the string and get out. After I shut my backpack I turned around in a full circle to find I was not on Washington blvd but Harrision blvd. I shrugged and thought whatever. This is familiar. I'm close I'll walk.

25th avenue is what some would consider ghetto. I can feel more at home in a rundown place like that then I can up on the hills in Bountiful or East Layton. The people may be corrupt according to some but there is usually a humility in them that isn't found anywhere else. It was a smoky part of town. I saw a man with tired eyes stagger past me with a Santa Claus sized beard carrying a drink in one hand. A beady eyed man passed me who was bundled up from head to toe, pushing around rickety cart of all sorts things you can think of. A girl around my height came out of her old house with a homemade pie in her hands to get it to a neighbor.

Town houses usually just look ordinary to me, white brown or gray boxes. These were the exception. I saw a house that looked like it was smack in the middle of ST. Petersburg with a domed roof. It was ornamented with green and yellow patterns and it had at least two spires. Another was a turquoise house on a corner that was a little larger than my house. The house had separated arched roofs and victorian niches and columns and a tentish --uhhh I don't know the real term --a tentish something that was built above the door which extended outward to about five feet. They don't build things like that anymore. I seriously wanted to sketch these houses if I had the time to. My mom wouldn't approve, she could not believe that I walked 25th alone(such a gross place). Likewise she renewed my love for the song 'Just a Girl' by no doubt.

The street that I thought was Washington was actually Monroe so I naively pressed on assuming it had to be close. I went on for three more blocks and let the 603 pass me because Washington had to be close. I stopped a guy walking around to ask if I was close at all to Washington, I was taken aback by how blue his eyes were. Don't take this from a perspective of a girl, but an observer. They weren't bright like most really blue eyes are but just straight navy blue. It was like - whoah. He told me it was about eight blocks down hill. My backpack started getting heavy.


When I found Washington my bus passed me, then stopped in traffic in front of a stoplight. I was about three fourths of the way to it when it picked up and left me again. I was getting really tired and cold and hungry and collasped on a bench in front of what I think was a church but I could be wrong. Then I saw this taco stand on the curb. 2 tacos 1 dollar. All I wanted was a drink but I noticed how happy the man at the stand seemed when he cooked, so I got tacos too. Most people I see behind a counter when they cook look like they are thinking about tall bridges or high cliffs.

I collasped again at the bench at the bus stop. Once i finished my food a clean looking girl came and sat by me holding a sprite like I was. We started talking when she said she was broke. I admit I looked at her teeth when she said that but I didn't see any yellow stains from alcohol or smoking, or brown from the harder stuff. She didn't say it in self pity, she said it like she would the time. I asked her if she had anything to eat today. She said a little bit. I made her take two dollars to get something later.

I talked to her on the ride home and foundher name was Kim and she was on her way to Bountiful to earn some money from relatives until she got her first paycheck from quest. I have to say we both talked like it was a normal conversation because I've been exposed to a lot of situations like this before and she wasn't seeking attention. It's only because I was asking.

Kim said it felt good to be out on her own even if it was expensive. Said it was good to pay bills even if they were hard to pay. I thought about that. She used to live with and help assist her mom who has cancer but she says shes 23 now and she needs to take her own space. it was hard for her to always be around someone so controlling. She helps out as much as she can but her mom gripes at her that she has been abandoned when there are two others there at home.
It's weird with her mom cause she abadoned her when she was little cause she was getting into more and more meth.

I told her I was coming from school and she got a look in her eyes. She said she wished she would have finished. College i asked and she shook her head and said highschool. She said she had dropped out because it was hard since her mom needed her so much and couldn't quite take it. I shrugged and said you do what you have to do, i think you're going to get there.

She said she likes where she lives in Ogden and it's better than bountiful where she grew up. They may be poorer but they don't have the same elevated attitude you find in the rich. They know how to have what they have cause it might not last.

I hear so many storys like this that are so unfortunate and they ask will I make it out there. I want to say yes but i don't always know. I think she has a good shot though. She talks about it like she's not going to give up.

When I got off of the bus and walked down through my neighborhood it didn't feel real at all. I got in my house and Lindsey was doing her nails. Tvs were left on and I thought why do we get all this? Why do people like Kim get passed on their parents consequences and have to work three times as hard just to get where her parents originated? Why do I get this?

Ramblings upon ramblings to shoot off from here but I need to get back. I could go on, mark my words there is so much unsaid.

shift key demons...

BLASTED FILTER KEYS!!!!!!!!!

in the blue of my oblivion

You should probably worry when someone hits on you who has your same unconventional last name. jk It wasn't that bad actually. I talk to strangers like old women do. You got a mind and two ears to funnel information into it, I talk.

My tendency to overexaggerate began in junior high. I couldn't always pluck out the right words to will the listening into hearing. In response to that I'd make a detail larger, then level it off to be 'smaller' again.

I know few people who try to listen in the truer sense. What I don't like about most modern day conversations is that the listener expects to be entertained right away. That's what televisions are for, to watch something that's interesting with them. You can always change the channel. I used to feel like I had to be a television set when I was younger to get attention. It's not a test, if someone doesn't feel like they've got their listening's worth go watch tv. People don't need to be funny or charming to earn your listening. Hearing is one of our primary functions let's use it for a change eh?

I like listening to people. I don't believe that small talk is small. Even if they are only talking about the weather, the last class, the traffic. I want to see what they choose to point out about the topic. What kind of expression comes from them in their own personal culture. That is what i aim to understand and can only find through this so called small talk.

This man Bob Lomax, yes L-O-M-A-X, talked to me at the transfer point this morning. No ordinary introduction at all. I liked that he forgot it's 'impolite' to try to talk to those who don't know you. Everyone else at the stop did what he could to exit the conversation. I believe the man was mentally challenged. It was the saddest thing to me to hear him say oh I'm sorry if I'm talking too much, I do that sometimes. Since when has it been so expensive to listen??? No one should have to feel like that ever if they talk this honestly and unspitefully. He told me he thinks he made three new friends today but he really won't know til later.

He was the only person I saw with an honest smile this morning. All anyone else could do is push him around like some social leper. I think a society will lose a lot when it forgets the simplest of things like common decency and listening... It's so sad.

overkill

I don't know quite what he did but Kenny, my supervisor, got written up for something that upset a coworker. All I know that the girl was about to quit over it. Other than that I don't know much about what went on. I know the kid gets cocky at times, and I'm usually telling him that he is such a guy with all the showing off he does. From what I've seen of his character though, he's usually empathetic and responsible unless he ods on coffee (tis dangerous for the kid).

It got taken care of today. He takes a lot of pride in his position at work, so expectedly he came out of the office completely stone faced went about robotically for two or three hours after. Later on in the shift he lightened up, fast. Dramatically fast. He was laughing and joking as usual but he had a sort of resolve in his eyes. I've only seen that kind of control before, and it rarely at that rate with the same confidence. Even then you can sense that the person has temporarily removed from it , to evaluate later on when time is better suited. Definitely something you'd have to witness to understand and respect.

In between rag offs Alex called me over to tell me that she had the weirdest dream about me getting seasick out in the parking lot. Savers turned into a big twisted carnival and well yeah, that's about as explainable as it gets.

As if it weren't bad enough that corporate decided to start selling new stock for Christmas we're selling valentines junk now. I do mean junk. Little tacky address books with sugar high looking cartoon girls on the front. The little book became the running joke the other night, a really bad one at that. Everything from TWO YEAR OLD'S fun printed socks to neon post it notes. Post it notes? Post it notes! Cookie making sets? Cheap dress up necklaces and a whole load of completely useless holiday unrelated product. Makes us feel really proud to indivually price the things between checking and put them on display.

Not quite as bad as the little advertisements for the book about the company's history titled: Pass it On. It says something like 'if you enjoyed the thrill of the Da Vinci Code, and were taken away by the magic of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, then you'll love Pass it On. A book about... A book about BLAH BLAH BLAH. I've thumbed through it on slow days and most of it is just historical documentation. Tall statement there. During training I learned aboutthe company's beginning and I will call it ordinary. Nothing too special. The founder was too strong headed if you ask me.

What a bunch of BS.

the less I seek one source for a definitive the closer I am to fine

Again another year. It's boundaries aren't even visible but I feel for it's edges before the start and after the end. The last and the first pinch together oddly but there's the right amount of contrast for them to evenly match.

It reminds me of something that Billy Collins wrote. The relationship of the end to the beginning and the bridge between them both. the middle takes the most chapters but is the least recognized. It gets dronwed out by the spur of the start and the abrupt stop of the end. Things are usually expected in clearly formated formulas but they rarely ever hold that much predictability. Middles should have more of a focus set on it especially when it is present but it doesn't stand out as much because it's all between the lines.


I am trying to learn a way to better focus and treat whatever I come across or am involved in, whether it's a hobby or situation. I want to make the most of the ability to be concious but in everyone there is an inherent laziness. So the resolution for this year sounds simple but remains far from being so. Learn to measure. I want to learn how to portion myself and my time out better, not by inches but with the abstracts everything that exists is drawn by. No kidding when they say when it rains it pours, this doesn't have to be seen in a pessimistic way. You got to take it and spread it all out evenly, save some for when it won't come so easy.

Things to be done, places to go, starting to get more of what people call a schedule, and I forget what it's like to have a constant one. I've been opening most of the time at work since I'm one of the three that has enough of an anti - schedule now to open. Hours are getting sparse again which I don't mind at all after having too many, and I earn enough as it is. But I'll be another closer again once I start school (next week holy crap crap crap!) Millions of things to get done and REsend but my best is all I can do, and I hope that's enough to make the cut.

I'm fading in and out, staying up late is getting difficult for me past midnight. I usually sanction myself to an early bedtime but this is like a vacation this week with only working two days. I just want to know why I only yawn when I 'm only a tad bit tired.

scarecrow crying

I heard it over the television one day.

I t adds to why the bottom low ‘class’ parallels the top high ‘class’ in behavior. They dive to the same extremes, spend insane amounts. Take on the same reckless behaviors, one has everything in surplus, the other splurges the same way because there doesn’t seem to be a way out. Like the ignorant rookie up against the guru and in ways they’re the same by the standard of eased approach.

The obvious is studied just in case something was misconceived. The researcher takes the pulpit, summarizing those common responses we’d have slid easily past. Ashes to ashes. Scrutinizing over the simple. However I think that simplicity can actually be very dynamic. ‘And’ is simple but look it up, the definition takes have a page.

I watched a report on Good Morning America where Dr. Drew (despite his slight controversial reputation for what he offers in the field of televised professionals) had a few cryptic words to share.

"After any kind of a relationship ends the body will produce the same biological reactions as it would to a death."

Whoah. A small duh in my head but whoah.

The hardest graves to visit are the ones of living, the ones who died away from you by petty circumstance.
People know they and the flow of things are the one with the shovels plastered in grit. Human habits take care of it. Your arms ache from digging down. The witnessing of decay is exhausting. The old stakes become stumps, the matters disintegrate into scraps.

Particularly grim I know. But I don’t see the losses as hopeless, though I do try to walk my life on that silver lining.

I got seashells once as a gift from a friend who has long since moved away. One was a starfish with rounded horns on the top, the other was a tightly wound brown shell.

Being verbally awkward I couldn’t quite explain it to you all at first. Not everything lasts, but not everything loses. What happens will happen, but there is something that remains. It came to mean something to me, those shells. More than an old fascination with them. The time span of relations we can’t go back always or fit back inside them into the old shells because of a growing... Grown from the knowing of it all.

I read the time as 12 dollars and 32 cents. i’ve worked too long.

a reversed monday

I found it and I couldn't resist. Not kidding here. LMAO. It's a book about a 'sultry wench' about the burning des...Romance novels usually make me grind my teeth and begin stabbing motions at how false they are just adding to our pop culture fairy tales. but whoooi. I bought it cause it made me laugh so freaking hard. Not bad for 50 cents, keep my bookshelf warm.

It's actually called 'Whitney, My Love'. Anna and I almost exploded after all the gigglings.

lol.

Yep. I'm agonna get my sega up and running. Also I just added a dreamcast (which I made a killing on) to the pile of the old nintendo gadgets I'm collecting. System, hookups, controller, memory card for an insanely low price. What put the cherry on my unnatural natural high on monday was the coincidence of good songs coming one after the next on the radio while I was driving about.

Got me in the most giggly mood, was it really a monday?

Trying to figure out new year plans but I've drawn a second blank. Change of plans. Anna and I will figure it out though, hopefully before new years. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Hmm

Nothing like the smell of fresh capitolism in the morning eh?

New retirement laws. And a pretty little notice had to be given on thursday to the Utah Government to stick with the old plans.

Oh I loved the new SLC restrictions passed on how we are permitted to use and build on our own land, how we can build our own homes that we live in. I can understand the width standards so that we can better love our neighbors for not battling over space. You think you own that land bud? No you own the subtle right to report a trespasser, that and only that.

Did any one else find the beauty in fining high school students $150 a cussing? For cussing? Do you realize the inflation here when the old $10 words like eminence and phantasmagoria are outrageously less expensivethan the most primal of words?

anyone else giggling?

The red isn't the red we painted, it's just rust

Ever wonder why the throat is targeted? Has little to do with the jugular and more to do with the passage. An eye for an eye, cut them with words and theywill return the favor. It's the jagged messages you split them with that makes them thirst. The memory of the wound and the will to share it with the giver...Just a dainty dose of irony here. I'm beginning to realize how cliche irony actually is...At each other's throats... It'sall figurative all this. I have not this kind of combat.

B e t t e r V e r i s i o n o f M e

The nickel dropped
When I was on
My way beyond
The rubicon
What did I do
And of the games
That I can handle
None are ones
Worth the candle
What should I do
I'm a frightened, fickle person;
Fighting, crying, kicking, cursing
What can I do
Oh, after all
the folderol
And hauling over coals
Stops
What will I do

Can't take a good day
Without a bad one
Don't feel just to smile
Until I've had one
Where did I learn
I make a fuss
About a little thing
The rhyme is losing
To the riddling
Where's the turn
I don't want a home, I'd ruin that
Home is where my habits have a habitat
Why give it a turn

Oh, after all
The folderol
And hauling over coals
Stops
What did I learn
I am likely to miss the main event
If I stop to cry or complain again
So I will keep a deliberate pace
Let the damned breeze dry my face

Oh mister
Wait until you see
What I'm
Gonna be
I got a plan; ademand, and it just began
And you're right, you'll agree
Here's coming a better version of me
Here it comes a better version of me
Here it comes
A better version
Of me.

-Fiona Apple
(extraordinary machine album)

simplicity on the surface, but the darkest pit in me is pagan poetry

Thoughts and words flow past me like moving water, shapes to my body remaining swift and coolled.

What continues is not mine to cease right here at least,act now and it spirals into a self destruct. I remember what it's like to take it by the shreads and fragment... By the stains which still bleed. There's a wonder in the way things go, the flow of it all despite the way it grinds against me... My tapping fingers plead with my mind. Responding back : give it time, just give it time and how could I know to answer? scrape down towards that sanctumn within, while others tunnel toward their own. Speaking to myself like a stranger.

But you never really know now do you?

I go through life not knowing. The things I do know can be counted on my hands. Everyday tells me to erase the last, and the case history dissolves over night. All that remains is the skelton of this brittle record. Tally marks driven down the walls... We guess well enough but we cannot be the things we believe. Not that the effort is waste. The effort is the fuel, it shapes. People function on theory alone, what has truly been proved over to a human mind is all I have to ask. Even fact must be taken with a faith. It's not the reason that makes the connection, it's the receptivity colliding with the inner skeptic. I'm grateful at times that I'm not convincing, I don't slow my own way with the surity of the ego. This world remains an illusion to the purpose we all must find. In our human skins we skirt around what we are, what is. "habits take habitat." We pretend not to be.

In this human skin there is nothing I can know to the core, the final layer. We are all bandaged to the point of disguise even to ourselves... What can be known?

Sometimes I ask myself if there is something left... I can't force my sight to span the miles. I can't pretend to hear these thin speeches. I cradle this shy variable. I ask myself if I only speak in whispers but I need to listen a little closer for my own response.

wash away...

Communication has it's limits. Truly.

What sets those limits? Expectations. Perspective. Perception. Bias. Behavior. I talk to each person a little differently as I begin to know them.

What is it? The exchange of ideas, but rarely the linking of them?

Or is it that the ability to listen is slowly becoming lost?

Tangents again...

Half empty or half full. The glass is still a glass with or without content. Maybe the speaker only wants to link the emptiness to the half instead of the other way around to make a lighter observation. Either way it is the same amount, is capable of holding the same measurements.

I hardly know what I'm talking about here. Cashier lunches are so lonesome... Just some of the things I think about when I'm in that dull hospital white breakroom. Just to occupy myself with scraps of matter. Little scribbles in my lil green notebook which someone drew circles and squares on. (hey you...) jk

It's hard to have a life when you're employed.

One of you is going to have to suffer RS alone again as I'll be working.

To anyone who cares I got my first smiley face tonight. I balanced my firstest time ever.

An electrical mishap took a huge bite out of my outlet today and almost killed a neighbor. Fireworks in my bedroom, who else can say that?

wow.

We were hoping that the electrical damage was the smell. A hair appointment told my mom about a bad room smell caused by faulty wiring in the wall which caused the insulation to burn. The guy thought that a rat may have come in the wall and electrocuted himself by chewing through the wire. Yummie. No rat. But I have a really cool hole in my wall and a screen. Hehe.

I feel like a ronchie husband. I've been sleeping on the couch everynight.

Have you ever been despite the odds unexplainably with peace? I don't know how to put it. Purpose faith and contentment maybe? Who knows.