sing it if you understand

I wanted to write. I wanted to write about about truth and beauty and life. I wanted to shake the core of someone and make them believe things that they might not have believed.

I still do, but instead I feel stretched. Stretched to the limit of what I understand and believe this world to be. I thought I was one person but it's amazing how things change. How the things we want, the life we want to live and how we might obtain that, changes. You think you want one thing and that drastically changes, even in the course of a year.

Stretched to find that balance between work, friends, school and myself. We had to attend a session on our personality types for work last week and though the woman that ran it was completely obnoxious, she did have some good things to say. One of them being that in order to be the person we want to be, we need to take time for ourselves. Sometimes, we forget to do that and then we wonder why we're so tired, or cranky or annoyed with life in general.

And on that note - you'll find me posting some of my writings for class here. Because it's nice to know that even if it sucks, someone will read it. And they may not understand it or even want to, but they'll read it. Because I need to find time and energy to get back to why I decided to go to school in the first place. Anyone have a good coffee shop that I could go to that will not be distracting?

And for those of you that requested to know what some of our writing assignments are - think about the things you take for granted and why you do that. Write about that as it pertains to your landscape and surroundings or as it pertains to people.

Quote o' the day:

"Life is a long lesson in humility." - James M. Barrie

and tell me, where is the faith?

I feel like it's not fair that tonight, after I've already written about the moon, there was a lunar eclipse. At any rate, it was extremely cool to watch and funny that they were playing songs on the radio about eclipsing. (NOT Total Eclipse of the Heart, the Current has better taste than that.)

I did end up going to the yoga class tonight and found that I need to go more often. Because I used to be able to do some of those things a lot more easily. And then, when I was running on the treadmill, I got distracted by trying to change the song on my iPod and fell off. Completely embarrassing, but now I understand why they are trying to get teen drivers to not use iPods in the car. You can get wrapped up in that and not even notice that you might be driving off the road (or falling off the treadmill, in my case).

Things that made my day today:
1. I made every light on Park Avenue on my way home from work today. That NEVER happens.
2. Apparently, the VP was extremely happy with the way our session went yesterday. That means I did something right.
3. My hair froze on the way out of the gym. I've never had that happen to me before. It was kind of entertaining.

On a random tangent, how fun would it be to work at MPR? I started looking at their job website today, even though I have no intention of leaving where I am until I'm a) vested and b) done with school. Which, as I discovered yesterday, if things go as planned - I won't be done until I am 30. This makes me want to vomit a little bit.

I think, since I am deliciously tired from my yoga and running, I am going to finish my lemon zinger tea and crawl into my bed. A writing assignment for you all: write about a tree or body of water that holds special significance to you. (And please SHARE!)

Quote o' the day:

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information." - Oscar Wilde

you move on because you’ve come here to do that

Moon is hazy with cold, icy crystals hang in the air like forgotten ghosts. Wind blows through layers of clothing and swirls of snow pattern pavement like webs. This same moon, hangs just under frame of an unlit streetlight, creating illusion that instead of dim orange light, whole world could be illuminated from this light. Haze of blowing snow creates softness in the coldness, to telephone wires and an old Exxon station on the corner.

Quote o' the day:

"Moonlight is sculpture." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

you know, it’s nothing new

And I forgot the quote. I hate it when I do that.

Quote o' the day (about trees, what did you expect?):

"It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit." - Robert Louis Stevenson

if I held my straight edge I’d be fine

When I was about 10 years old, one of my favorite things to do was to help my dad in his garden. I would dig up weeds, plant bean seeds, transplant seedlings that had grown in the dark of our basement with the help of fluorescent lights that I would run down stairs, turn off and then feel my way back through the cool darkness of our basement, and I would help collect the crops that we'd gotten at the end of each growing season. I loved listening to my dad tell me about the various plants and the way that he gardened. My favorite part of all of it was simply that I got to spend time with him. We'd chat with our neighbor who was a wise old retired plumber that loved his yard and garden more than anything. He'd give my dad advice and my dad would give him advice. It's such a simple thing, growing plants - simple, therapeutic and when you're done, you have something to show for it. A flower bed, vegetables, apples, a tree - a pretty landscape.

Where is this coming from - you might ask? In class tonight we talked a lot about ownership of nature and landscape and how we make patterns, we create things that nature might not have, and, is that a bad thing?

That year that I turned 10, I found a maple sapling in the black dirt in the back corner of our lot. I was ridiculously excited about it and made my dad let me plant it and take care of it. It was 'my' tree. Eventually, despite the fact that I truly think my dad thought it would die (probably the only reason he let me do it), we planted that tree in our front yard. It's weathered a few strong storms, it's trunk is split and it perpetually leans towards the street instead of standing tall and straight like the ash trees that line the street, but it's taller and bigger than ever before.

It now provides shade where I'm sure my dad would prefer there not be shade and at the same time, he always comments on the way it shades the front of the house, making leafy patterns of the fading afternoon sunlight. It filters that light that comes into the living room, dancing from the piano, to the couch, to the spot where he inevitably falls asleep doing the crossword puzzle. Now the tree is referred to as 'julia's tree' and sometimes, that's not necessarily a good thing. But, regardless of whether I took any ownership of it after finding it (amongst what I'm sure were millions of small trees), it is my tree. It stands there, a reminder of those hot summer afternoons when I would help my dad in the garden and then in the fall, though it's not straight and majestic, not perfectly uniform in color like the sugar maple in the backyard, it's stunning. And though I can't take credit for it growing, I do feel ownership in the sense that it belongs to me. And, I suppose, I to it.

everything has its plan

Sunday night and instead of relaxing and doing the crossword puzzle like I had hoped, I'm reading frantically before orchestra about "Landscape and Memory," hoping that I get out early so that I can get ready for this massively big week I've got. My only respite, hopefully, will be a yoga class on Wednesday night.

As I was driving home today, I nearly got rear-ended. And the funny thing is, I sat there and braced myself for this woman in a huge SUV with a zebra striped steering wheel to hit me from behind. I watched in my rearview mirror as she stopped, millimeters from my bumper. Why, I wondered, didn't I move away?

Sometimes, I think, we're all such masochists that we can't move away from things, even though we know we are too close for comfort and that we will get hurt. You wait for it. You brace yourself for the moment when it will hit and something new will happen. It's usually not a good idea, and you know it, going in, but you do it anyway. Because it's exciting and thrilling and maybe even a little bit scary.

And what about the moments when you get so close and then, voila, something good happens? But instead of savoring it, you run. You run like hell. You get scared and need to get out. You start hyperventilating, you become a person you never thought you'd be and you run.

Maybe, instead of running, we need to take those tiny steps. Tiny steps towards healing ourselves and move on with whatever we were running from. Use the memories that have soured us against life and make them work in our favor. I'd like to think that there are moments when we change and subsequently, things around us change - in our favor. All because of one small, encouraging step in the right direction.

Quote o' the day:

"To the dull mind nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light." Ralph Waldo Emerson

am I making all the right moves

For the men in my life who will appreciate this.

Eric Ringham's commentary in the Star Tribune this past Sunday was about how we've gone by the wayside of that "old" style. No more barbershops, or haberdasheries, no more fedora hats and silver cigar cases. Ok, so he doesn't mention all of those things specifically, but it's extremely well-written, which is why, I suspect, he writes for the Trib and I do not.

Short on Style - please read it - even if you are not male and can't appreciate great writing, because if nothing else, it's humorous.

Quote o' the day (do I detect a theme?):

“Things are never so bad they can't be made worse.” - Humphrey Bogart