Procrastination = lonely Kiersten.

…Why?  *sad face*

{I've been talking a lot more like Frank lately. He would be so proud.}

I noticed earlier this week that I have recently begun prefacing a lot of sentences with the word "frankly.". Frankly (like just there. Didn't even realize it was done until I typed it.) it's a word I have always disliked.  There's nothing pretty about it, and it's not really the kind of inaesthetic word that is okay because it's descrbing something nasty. It's just not a likable word. "Candidly" is much nicer.

Using "frankly" so often has led me to feel like something of a more vindictive person. As if I judge things more often (and always feel the need to somehow ameliorate my harshness by prefacing it with word that says "Hey, I'm telling the truth, so get over it, because it's straight-up fact." (Which, actually, is usually true, because my sentences usually, rather amusingly, start with "Frankly, I think…" So it could go either way.)

But my real question is, is Frank really the one I want to be paying homage to? I need truth but not snarlinginyourfaceblunt.  Even if I'm only talking to myself, because…frankly…it sort of freaks me out, just a little.  I like being non-confrontational, and most of the things i preface with "frankly" can be very unnecessarily confrontational, if I actually said them to someone's face.  Does that just mean I'm not really that bold of a person, either? 

new space efficiency and reversion to the dandelion background!

Bam.  Thanks to the assistance of the lovely Tori, I now have enabled the mobile version of my blog (I got really tired of trying to navigate the web version when I tried to update it on my iPod touch).  Misfortunately I can't enable my über background and fonts (hence, this post title), but it's still, eh, AWESOME.

I'm really uncharacteristically excited about this.

So, those of you with iPhones, you are now obligated to give me feedback!  Muaha. (Ha.)

Thank you, and goodnight.

Carried along

Sometimes music confuses me.  Not the way people make it, or what's inside it, but the way we listen to it.  Especially the way we listen to music we love.  The way we bend it to ourselves, and our self to it at the same time.

There are some songs where I just listen and marvel at the beauty or the creativity, or feel mildly depressed that I (however possible or impossible it may be) didn't come up with it first, or enjoy their capacity to make me smile every time. There are songs that move me to worship.

Then there are songs that, when I listen to them, I think "If one could drown in a song—physically drown—this would be a glorious way to go."  They're the songs that can make a daydream feel like it lasts a week, or insomnia feel like an inamorato; the songs that you turn up to eardrum-splintering volume or put on repeat all night.  (I do, at least.)  When I listen to these, it's like I am simultaneously trying to awaken part of myself and kill part of myself.  What are the chances that that's actually healthy?  Probably not all that high, at least in frequent doses.

I'm up too late with Jesus and chocolate milk.

A Playlist for Change (Summer 2011)

Just because everything's changing
Doesn't mean it's never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are as you head off to the war
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light
You'll come back when it's over
No need to say goodbye


             The people were overjoyed, they took to their boats
             I thought it less like a lake, and more like a moat
             The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood-lands to your door
             Has been silenced forevermore
             The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
             It seems farther than ever before
             Oh no—
             I need you so much closer

I woke up and wished that I was dead, with an aching in my head

I lay motionless in bed

I thought of you and where you'd gone

And let the world spin madly on

     "Allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Tumnus."

     "I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tumnus," said Lucy.

      "And may I ask, O Lucy Daughter of Eve," said the Faun, "how you have come into Narnia?"

      "Narnia? What's that?" said Lucy.

     "This is Narnia," said the Faun, "where we are now:  all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle Cair Paravel on the eastern sea.  And you – you have come from the wild woods of the west?"

      "I – I got in through the wardrobe in the spare room," said Lucy.

      "Ah!" said the Faun in a rather melancholy voice.  "If only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I would no doubt know all about those strange countries.  It is too late now."

      "But they're not countries at all," said Lucy, almost laughing.  "It's only just back there – at least – I'm not sure.  It is summer there."

      "Meanwhile," said Mr. Tumnus, "it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow.  Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"

Welcome to the fallout

Welcome to existence

The tension is here, the tension is here

Between who you are and who you could be

Between how it is and how it should be

Am I losing my mind?

Vacuumed every room for the second time today

You can't go through your life without killing something or someone at one time

Losing touch with everything that I like, keeping busy day and night

Am I farsighted or just blind

It was right there in front of me, but the whole time

I swear I saw nothing wrong; I swear I saw nothing wrong at all

       With the mention of Derbyshire, there were many ideas connected.  It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its owner.  "But surely," said she, "I may enter his country with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me."
       The period of expectation was now doubled.  Four weeks were to pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival.  But they did pass away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at Longbourn.
       …The Gardiners staid only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth.


                                   Dreams come clever, hearts now severed
                                   Difference of forever
                                   And I'm lost there
                                   I finally found that life goes on without you
                                   And the world still turns when you're not around
              

I would find a different way to go

There's no signs in life to guide you on that road

And if it's the most important thing you say, make sure they understand

Every way you wonder if you're wrong…

Inaccurate and imprecise, there is no gift without a price

 It's lonely out in space on such a timeless flight

 And I think it's gonna be a long, long time

 'Til touchdown brings me round again to find

 I'm not the man they think i am at home, oh no no no

 I'm a rocket man

 Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone

Yo, el otona

Yo,  el vespero

He sido un eco.

Sere ina ola

Sere la luna

He sido todo, soy yo.

Yo, el verano

Yo, al ebano

Soy la sonadora.

Past is past, you never really gave it a shot

To survive with your one last shot in the dark

And if your conscience weighs a little heavy tonight

Maybe you'll find that

Empty boxes on the stairs remind you that there's no one there

Is it everything you thought it would be?

Can you tell I'm not myself

I'm a slow-motion accident

Lost in coffee rings and fingerprints

I don't want to feel anything, but I do

                                                                                                      I want to change the world 

                                                                                                      Instead I sleep 

                                                                                                      I want to believe in more than you and me

                                                                                                      All that I know is I'm breathing

                                                                                                      All I can do is keep breathing

                                                                                                      All we can do is keep breathing—now

             

              And so it is, just like you said it would be

              Life goes easy on me

              Most of the time

              And so it is: the shorter story

              No love, no glory

              No hero in her skies

I said, "My pretty Creole girl, me money here's no good.

If it weren't for alligators, I sleep out in the wood."

"You're welcome here kind stranger;

our house, it's very plain.

But we never turn a stranger out from the lakes of Ponchartrain."

I need a heart that carries on through the pain

When the walls start collapsing again

Give a soul that never ceases to follow

Despite the infection within

I'm waking up now in this empty house 

Doing my best to keep my comments down to a minimum

But it's just so hard to bite my tongue

I'm waking up now and its just so loud

'Cause everyone here loves somebody else

And somehow I always seem to get left out

                                                                                                           Trees fall, and so do men

                                                                                                           Even the walls start caving in

                                                                                                           And you feel like there's no pretend for you

CREDITS:   (yes, these are all links)

"The Call" – Regina Spektor

"Transatlanticism" – Death Cab For Cutie

"World Spins Madly On" – The Weepies

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C. S. Lewis

"I Dare You To Move" – Switchfoot

"Keeping Up With Changes" – glowfriends

Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen

"Naïve Orleans" – Anberlin

"Everway" – Circa Survive

"Rocket Man" – Elton John

"La Sonadora" – Enya

"On Your Own" – Green River Ordinance

"Hear Me Out" – Frou Frou

"Keep Breathing" – Ingrid Michaelson

"The Blower's Daughter" – Damien Rice

"The Lakes of Ponchartrain" – Deanta

"Deteriorate" – Demon Hunter

"A Deluge of Separation" – The Sophomore Attempt

"Falling" – Ben Kweller

Lots of sentences that start with grumpy "I want"s. …Sorry.

So, it's only nine days into the semester and I already want it to be over.
I want to take classes that I like with professors that don't intimidate me out of my skin.  I want more sleep (right this minute).  I want to not be stressed out all the time.  I really want to not be such a procrastinator.  I want to be a better studier.  I want to be articulate in conversations with people I respect but don't know well.  I want to really buckle down this weekend and NFTBA.  I want to have healthy eating habits.  I want to not get sick to my stomach.  I want to be better at replying to people's messages in a timely fashion.  I want to learn to take experienced people's advice (e.g., implement it, not just say, "What a good idea!" and forget about it).  I want French to make as much sense when I'm doing the homework as it did in class.  I want to know how to use a graphing calculator.  I want my woefully limited time to not be running away from me faster than I can figure out how to keep up.  I want to not feel guilty for opting not to murder myself with a ridiculously packed workload like some other honors students I know.  I want to not have to rely on the Internet for a third of my GPA.  I want to sit down somewhere and have a good cry and a cup of tea and then go accomplish Things.  I want my friends all to live nearby and be tangibly huggable.  I want to not have overdue library books that I didn't even get to finish.  I want to be motivated to seek God, every day, above all else.  I want to be consistent about praying for the people I promised to.

(I want to find better ways to get my point across when I'm depressed than using the semi-dubious syntax of most of the above sentences.)

I want to have ONE GOOD DAY (at minimum.)  instead of days that are purely drab, or days that start well and go sour, or days that start sour and take until evening to cheer up, or days that are just awkward as heck. I'm still waiting for one.  I haven't had one in some time (meaning, months.  I'm pretty sure.  I think there's a Switchfoot song about this).

Je vais retourner à l'école…

So, yesterday was the first day of school and it was not a fun day.   I woke up with a nasty headache, couldn't load my email, almost missed my bus, had trouble with getting my financial aid to go through, and spent all day stressing out over whether I could take intermediate French (which needs to be taken, but for which I had no backup plan if it turned out to be too much for my slightly rusty français.  I think it'll be okay, though.  If a lo of work, but hey.  I didn't really expect anything less in any case).  I also somehow happened to lose my brother's $90 graphing calculator. …Brilliant.
I actually think the highlight of the day might have been sitting in math class, and maybe running into a student I knew from last winter who visited his in-laws in England over summer break.   And maybe this:
Older guy on the bus, after complimenting me on my fedora:  "I love fedoras.  It's so great that you can buy them 2/$20 at Wal-Mart, because they're great to have on hand.  Especially the pinstripe ones, because I like to match my hats with my clothes—it's classy, you know—and you never know when someone's gonna die and you'll have to wear a suit to their funeral."
Oh man.  Will the bus never get old?  I forgot how much "fun" it was riding it in the fall.  I got so spoiled in the summer when there were only fifteen or twenty people on it at a time, instead of thirty-five or forty.  And I haven't even ridden it in the morning yet.  That'll really be fun.

Today's outlook is much sunnier than yesterday's, so far.  I get to start my TA for English 110 today, and go to psych 270 (which actually sounds horrendously boring, and it's taught by Mr. Louisell, who directs the honors program and chairs the psych department and is rather…intimidating), but I get to see all my honors homies from last year, so i'm looking forward to that.  ("Homies"? Did I just say that?)  I also purchased all my textbooks yesterday, so hopefully I'm done having to stand in 40-minute lines (I had to stand in three of them yesterday.  Buying textbooks online was definitely one of those things I meant to do weeks ago that got lost in the shuffle).

So, it's off into the wild yonder of breakfast and a shower and triple-checking the stuff I packed…adieu.
(I really hope this semester doesn't culminate in my posting frequent and gloomy posts about stress. Oy vey.)