The Great Hush

The end of a chapter has come. I am in the last page, walking slower and slower, afraid of the finality of the end, the blank space that will fill the end of this page.

This is the part of the story where…I don’t know. The part where self-reflection is a spot of blue sky and everything else has become a series of stratus clouds constricting the blue and stretching away. This is the part where I need to catch a breath. This is the part where my romantic self notices again the things that make life beautiful. Fragile and beautiful. The swallows that follow my car, the smell of thunderstorms,  The children next door (they are human sunshine), the simple white coffee cup in my hand, the excitement of a good book, nighttime sounds in my ears, stars above my eyes, cool grass under my feet. This is summer. This is the sigh, the exhale, the great hush to separate me for a moment from this moving, spinning, leaping, consuming life.

Phrases like Weeds

Sometimes I will read a phrase, and it just gets stuck in my head. I will often mouth it to myself unknowingly as I think about it, my sister catches me at it. Here is one that has stuck for months, I think it came from an Emily Dickinson poem.

"This weedish angel of boggy shade"

Not even a full sentence, but I often think on it. And now, maybe, it's stuck in your brain as well. Like a weed, you may never root it out completely again.

Junior Year Reflections

Breathe. Just two weeks left. Less than that really. I'm at the stage where I realize how all the things in my peripheral vision that I wanted to do this semester are now impossible. Ah well. 

Finals week reminds me of steaming milk. (Yes I know, I frequent coffee shops a bit more than what is healthy) You begin the semester with fun and games-with big bubbles. Then the milk really begins to froth, but everything is under control. And then gradually, but faster and faster, the thing gets hot. And right when it's too hot to touch and you can't hold on; it's over.

Done. Semester completed. Latte ready on the counter.

But in all of this, in all of the lattes, art projects, coffee dates, non-gender neutral dorm supplies (thanks a lot, Target), missed classes, school events that I usually avoid, nose piercings, semesters spent abroad...I've learned a few things.  

1. Don’t be selfish with your time.
2. Think twice before you steal a mug. You might want to make it a habit.
3. Double filter what you say. 
4. Go on great walks, with or without people. Find fields of flowers to think in.
5. Make friends with the librarians.
6. Eat salad.
7. Own sturdy slippers. (I've worn out three pairs already)
8. Keep your secrets. Leave some things to the imagination.
9. Take your vitamins.
10. Pray. A lot. Every day.

And there you have it. The wisdom of a 21 year old. Go.

Tea-Types

   

  Hot baths used to not appeal to me. You fill this porcelain hole that is too shallow for swimming with hot water and sit for about an hour in your own sweat and dirt. Baths only became appealing when I began to view them differently. I don’t remember when it started, but I began to think of a bathtub as a huge teacup. Of course, this would make me the tea bag (or tea leaves, depending on how dedicated a tea lover you are). The analogy could have stopped there, but of course it didn't. The tea-types began. I started by typing myself, and then it moved to randomly creating tea-flavors for people based upon their personalities. 

For instance, the Kate flavor would be something like this:

-Solid, blunt, black tea base. English or Irish breakfast perhaps.

-Romantic and sensitive, wild rose.

-Sweet and understated, vanilla.

-Spunky, stubborn, Ginger.

-And finish with something subtly odd, like a moss that can only grow underwater.

Not only do I myers-briggs everyone I know, I also tea-type them. 

I should probably think about getting a different hobby.

A Little Revaluation

  I’ve been thinking. This usually happens during my swims or long walks.

Valentines this year had a new flavor, the flavor of decision and of contentment. 2010’s Valentines was my first to spend with an actual, serious, boyfriend. In 2010 I thought I had everything.

But somehow, as a single girl spending her 2011 Valentines with other girls, I felt like I had even more. There were so many beautiful moments on that day, like waking up to the sunrise peeking through my teal curtains. Like carrying daisies around the grocery store, and feeling beautiful just holding them and being excited to give them to my beautiful friends. Things like that, days like that, though they ooze with clichés and cheese- those are the things that will define this semester.

That is the contentment flavor, the decision is simply this: I am twenty, I am single, and I love it. Really, I do. I am inebriated on independence.

   I’m sure one day I’ll get around to finding that guy with Jimmy Stuart charm and a Tom Hanks laugh. I’ll know I’ve found him when he’s the kind that can write to me about bouquets of newly sharpened pencils, bring me daisies instead of roses, and not be afraid to scrape all the garnish off that dish just because it gets under my skin. (I’m referencing You’ve Got Mail a bit today, I think it’s time for me to watch it again.)

But until that day gets here, I am decidedly content to be Kate. And that is it. 

Photo Via

 Today, in the land of university library 

I was given the task of erasing pencil marks from the pages of a recently returned book. I was sad to erase them, the student had obviously read every page and her thoughts wouldn’t be passed on to the next reader.

Yes, I am one of those people that likes a book to be underlined, favorite passages starred, and small notes scrawled in the margins. {unless the typeography is too perfect to ruin- then I want it spotless} I like my books marked up for the same reason that I like freckles and scars: stories. That sprinkle of freckles across your nose tells about the summer in Cape Cod where you read The Catcher in the Rye for the first time {and have read it many times since}

I have a scar on my knee that tells two stories in which I fall painfully and dramatically- once in Russia and once in Mexico. Tattoos, though they are often quite unfortunate looking, can be redeemable if they own a good story.

So I was thinking all of this while erasing another student’s story out of the library book. And when I finally finished erasing all 130 pages of underlining, starring, and scrawled notes…I decided to plant a tree for the one cut down. Hence, I’m marking the world wide web with my story and my thoughts.

Maybe that’s what blogging is about today- it’s not simply a sharing of information. It is taking something that’s everyone’s and making your own tiny marks in the margins.

I'm Losing Things

They are little. 

A sock, a key, a hairpin.

I tear apart my room searching for the one little thing. I will be that woman from the Bible story, the one who cleaned her house looking for a little coin. But while trying to be that woman, that determined, detailed, clean freak- I've been ignoring the big things. 

Today, I finally stopped looking for my slippers. I walked into my closet, and suddenly they were there. Put away. In their place. Some little things find their own way home. 

Either that or I've been cleaning in my sleep, which wouldn't be surprising.

If I could live in a book, I would.

When someone says this to me, I always want to say

 "My life is already a book; it just hasn't been written yet."

I guess that was just my fluffy way of saying;

 Be happy with what you've got, you idiot.

There is a spot in the hallway where the vacuum cord stretches tight and won’t go any further. After you move the cord to a plug farther down the hall, you might notice that there is a patch of carpet that is out of reach no matter where you plug the vacuum in. I often wonder what kinds of dust and dirt have gathered there over the years.

They Ask Me, What Is Reality?

    When I examine myself to answer this question; I find many answers. There is a reality that I believe is based upon the senses. The common phrase runs through my head “what you see is what you know”. I believe that what is real is what we can detect with our prime senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Every human being owes most if not all of their understanding of reality to their senses. They are our gateway to the world around us, they are the portals through which reality enters and takes its form in our comprehension. 

    However, I do not personally think that reality stops here.  There is a reality that resides largely outside of our five senses. It is a reality of an unseen world, I have most often heard it called The Spiritual Realm. Now this title can mean several different things, but for me it is a world where there exist angels, demons, a divine and omnipotent God, a fallen angel called Satan, and perhaps even spirits of humans who no longer live in their earthly bodies. 

    I believe the Spiritual Realm can be anywhere and everywhere on this earth, and I believe that it extends beyond earth into the heavens and farther away than we humans could or ever will comprehend. I also believe in the human soul as a separate entity from the human body. The body may age and fade away with every other organic material on this earth, but the soul is a mysterious and spiritual being that resides inside a body and only leaves the body when the body can no longer house it. A soul is what makes me, well, me. It is not something I can see, though many people believe it to be visible in the eyes. “The eyes are the window to the soul”. It is a common phrase that I believe to possibly be true. When a person is dead, their eyes look obviously different. Perhaps the eyes are the only hint we have at the depth of our own selves. Perhaps it is in the eyes that we may glimpse an almost completely hidden spiritual world. Ironic much?

    I believe that reality is in two parts, it is a world that I have around me that I can perceive through my human senses and it is a world beyond the ordinary senses that I cannot prove. I could further this thought by saying that reality is what a person believes to be real. But I don’t believe that. And now I’m thinking myself into confusion.

Salvador Dali Must Have Had Rather Large Tonsils

I am afflicted with a very sad condition. It is the condition of extraordinarily vivid dreams and nightmares. As a very small child I remember several reoccurring nightmares, one in particular where I stand helpless to watch a little girl about my own age who comes upon a demon and is dragged screaming and crying into hell. My parents were protective and loving, I only ever exposed to age-appropriate movies and books. Why did these kinds of dreams plague my innocent mind? I would never know.

In high school and college they persisted. Almost every night it seemed I was subjected to watching loved ones commit desperate suicides, pulling dead bodies of children from dark waters, being covered in thousands of spiders, running from tornados and dinosaurs, and finding dismembered body parts of dear friends on my doorstep.

Waking to scream and cry never helped, the only method I found to keep my demons at bay was to whisper the verse that begins “Love, is patient and kind…” as I willed myself to fall asleep again.

I also suffer another, less dreadful, condition. Or as of a month ago I did. I have always had very, very, large tonsils. This would lead naturally to persistent and antibiotic resistant bouts of strep throat. When I finally went to see an ENT specialist (Ear,Nose,Throat) I found a few answers that I hadn’t been looking for. The real condition I was suffering, other than the obvious strep, was sleep apnea. Sleep Apnea is a problem in which for a number of reasons, an individual will never complete a healthy sleep cycle because they continually stop breathing as they sleep and wake up many times during the night, sometimes without even remembering it. My reason for waking up was simple; my tonsils were so large that they made it nearly impossible to breathe steadily while sleeping. My nightmares were a product of my fickle sleeping pattern and a body that was rarely allowed to regenerate and rest during the night.

Now to get to the point of this story. As an artist one of my most revered influences is the work of surrealist Salvador Dali. When I first glimpsed his paintings as a child (on a calendar in Barnes & Noble) I remember being frightened. His stuff had the eerie flavor of nightmares. It frightened me because it took me back to the moments of waking in the dark, alone and afraid. As a highschooler I became intrigued with Dali’s mixture of beauty and horror. It was like he knew what I saw at night, and instead of locking it away in fear he presented it to the world as his own reality. And Dali poured into his unearthly paintings a sense of wonder. To be faced with his “The Temptation of St. Anthony” is strange and creepy yes, but breathtaking as well. This led me to the conclusion that to glimpse into another’s mind would be an experience akin to finding a new world. 

I have no more tonsils, and my sleep is beginning to return to what it should have always been. But Dali gave me a new dream; to paint my own dreams. If I can I will endeavor to face the silky shadows of my mind. I will recover and reveal the beauty and the twisted memories that lie there. And perhaps another dream inflicted artist will see what I have done and face their own fears to give others a taste of the ethereal images and alien worlds we paint in our sleep.