The Old Man And The Tree

There is a tree across the way at the summer home.  It’s a forlorn creature that looks as if all its hands have been cut off.  But the wounds dried up long ago—but not in a healthy way, the round patches parched and no longer struggling.  A few twigs dangle off the limbs, the sullen, brown leaves are tufts of mangy hair on the old man who rides his bicycle up and down the street all day.  They do resemble each other, the old man and the tree.  Perhaps it is the reason they pass each other, the man with his methodical pedaling and the tree with its slow, stooped hunch to arid death.  The man would like to see a being like himself, lurking through time with him, watching the molasses hours with him.  When the old man stops his visits I will be convinced the tree is dead.

Almost Nothing Could Be Better

This is coming to you live from the porch of 1317 Anthony St.  It's early morning and rainy, a cat cuddling kind of morning much apparent to Tigger who is snuggled like a puzzle piece next to my blanketed leg.  What life has sparked from this porch and this house in the elementary steps of summer!--a brilliant kind of poetry and meaning festering in the corners of my mind, the house, Columbia itself.  I can't help but think that everyone is feeling this.

Even though only a few of my goals have been attempted, I feel no shame or disgust at the lack of commitment I so often have and am now having to goals.  I think goals in general are a way for me to get my butt moving, in an all-around way, or maybe to attack something specific for a while and then feel accomplished, but they aren't really a means to get themselves accomplished.  Kind of like the 10 Commandments.

This time that I have now-a-week is beautiful.  Even the stresses living on my own presents--ants, cockroaches, preparing more than one food item at a time--these things are fun.  They fulfill "living on my own"; those are the things I was excited about because it would serve as "see?  I really AM independent!"  Of course I am not completely.  But in all forms, I will never be.  

Even these stresses...last night I had a dream that I was in the supermarket with Amanda and she pointed out some bagels--packs of three.  And I was so upset, "packs of three?!" I cried, I was so worried when in real life I had bought a pack of six bagels, the smallest I could find, worried they would go to waste and I would waste money on them.  And here there was a pack of three, three bagels, all along.  How infuriating!  This was all in my dream, but I believe dreams reveal things, affirm things.  More reassurance that I am worried about running out of money for food.  Money worries me in a masked kind of way, in a way that I spend it fervently but grow increasingly panicked in spurts during the week, very uneven.  

Candace is here for a week--a week which is almost up, sadly.  I have placed on her the crown of inspiration to me and she never ceases to polish it on top of her now lushly stubbled head.  I am proud of you Candace!

I have decided that, for me, crushing is like sneezing: it pops up all of a sudden, builds to an intense climax, and resolves leaving me feeling refreshed and accomplished.  Although I never

 say "excuse me" for crushing.

Floating on the breeze,

Kaitlin

Some More Summer

I'm sitting here at my kitchen table!  Isn't it amazing.  Having counters, tables, outsides and a new security.  I love home.

All I can think about is in about a week, when it will get hectic and wonderful.  Club Drage 2008 begins in T-minus 8 days!  I can't wait for just eating eggs, writing on the white board, playing the piano, and sitting at the table together.  I also can't wait to retreat to my room when things get too crazy.  Not that I am predicting a time, but I just want something to happen so I can quietly perform the simple action of just going into my room and BOOM being alone.  I half expect a tiny chorus of angels quietly humming Mozart's Requiem in the corner of Hoops's bookshelf while I celebrate staticky solitude.  

The white board will be a signature of our household--despite it being present in households and dorm halls worldwide.  Every morn, I shall scrawl--with the glorious ease of dry erase markers (don't you just love them)--the word of the day, today's weather, and something creative, like a quote or something.  We're also going to try to memorize a Bible verse as a house every week, so that will be up there for viewers as well.  So exciting.

I am making it a point to write a lot this summer.  Even with this potential...probable...change in major, I can't give up my writing.  All I'm thinking about lately is singing--rather, all I'm thinking about focusing on lately is singing--and then last night I watched "Becoming Jane" and fell in love with the image of writing once again.  The good thing about falling in love with this image is that there is actually substance underneath it that I can fall into, plush, luscious...pluscious....substance.  These flawed--or desirable--notions of pure, passionate love that Jane Austen has recently impregnated me with can be abated by the fact that it's gotten my pen moving again, in a creative fashion, something more than just journaling.  It feels wonderful.

Keep me accountable for my goals this summer, dudes:

-exercise daily or at least every other day

-read---an amazing amount

-write (both fiction and song)

-learn a piano masterpiece

-learn a voice "masterpiece"

-Project Vocab--sticky notes 

-eat healthily

-Season and Trilogy Summer! (Lost, Grey's, Office, Matrix, Indie, Anna, Jones, Star Wars, Godfather, Arrested Development, 30 Days)

-watch the rain on the porch with a silky cup of coffee 

-celebrate beauty, life, earth.

Looking up,

Kaitlin

The Wheel Continues

So here I sit, Memorial Union, encapsulating my title as Student with full vigor and gusto as I blog on my Macbook drinking Starbucks.  Even though it's finals week and I should be re-writing my 10 page paper, I feel the need to reflect on my semester in blog form.

The semester's been full of "issues."  Discovering God for real, re-attaching to my Catholic heritage, getting through a break up, finding a job, making plans for the summer, making an amazing friend Breezy, and struggling toward my real vocation.

The most monumental thing for me has been--and is continuing to be--deciding whether or not to major in music.  Even just typing about it now I tear up--something undefinable about how all my emotions are so tangled up in this one thing, this universal message, this movement of the larynx and vocal folds that enables my one true love: singing--that just makes me cry.  All this semester it's been a battle--The Practicalities Of Life vs. The Passions Of The Heart.  

It wasn't even like I "found" this overbearing love for music inside of me.  It's like...the beginning of this semester, it just casually was there in front of my face, an obvious thing that seemed was always present in my vision.  I mean, it wasn't even a surprise to me that it was there or recognizable all of a sudden--there was no sudden.  More of a milk in the fridge type presence.  Delicious milk of Soul Seekers.

What was the surprise for me was realizing that I could just do music.  As dangerous as it sounds to me, as nervous as it makes me---or should make me...really, all I feel when I think about doing music is the overwhelming urge to cry with relief, the relief that I will be doing something I for sure love that isn't a mediocre replacement that I have to work to love.  

I have set aside the summer to decide.

All I want is peace: peace with being Catholic, peace with Keith, peace with my job, and most of all, peace with my highest inner desires for ever-present music.  Peace with my own will.  

The Wheel

So I guess I haven't decided.

And so it turns.