Morning Time

There are some mornings when I wake up and all I want to do is snuggle. Kinda like this:

Sometimes I just can't wait to be married to someone who loves books, and lazy mornings, and birds, and messy hair, and me :)

Thursday Thoughts (Blues Dancing)

I went blues dancing for the first time tonight, and can I just say...best dance I've ever tried. It's got all the sensuality of Latin dancing and all the style and freedom of swing, which basically makes it the best mix ever! I went with 3 of my really good friends and we pretty much tore it up. Highlight of my night: there was a kind of bigger guy dressed in a three piece suit, pocket square and everything, who was THE best dancer I have EVER danced with. He was an incredible lead and could dip like nobody's business. I'm kind of in love with that suit guy :) 

I'm sort of having a crisis about what other people think of me today, and I'm not really sure what it's about, but I'm hoping it goes away soon. I don't remember if I blogged about this before, but I have this problem where if I get ahold of something good, I can never manage to hold onto it. I'll feel like things are going really well and it's all good, then suddenly I'm blindsided when I find out I'm not the right one or it's not the right time. I don't know if there's anything different I should do/should have done, but so far nothing sticks. It's incredibly disheartening, but I'm hoping 100th time's the charm...

Feels Like Home

I was reminded today how much I love this song. It never fails to make me cry, no matter how many times I listen to it--it strikes a chord somewhere deep inside me that I rarely get to access, and it is beautiful and changes me. My goal is to learn to play it on my G-fiddle :) Enjoy.

Birds...and Longing...

I've kind of always associated birds with longing. A longing for things that are far away, places I may soon migrate to. A longing for solidarity, loyalty, freedom. A longing for the ability to fly away from my life when it's a mess, to see things from a broader perspective. 

I've been single for two years now, and I've been longing for quite some time to find some kind of relationship. But I realized today that my life is full of so many rich relationships, with boys and girls alike. I have been so blessed to have friends (particularly guy friends) who see me for who I really am, accept and love me deeply and sincerely. There is one boy in particular that I'm hoping to see things develop with, but even if nothing happens, I'm so thankful to have learned to see all the different ways I am filled with support and love. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the "something happening" scenario :)

A Little Audrey Wisdom

‎"I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles."
-Audrey Hepburn

(Since I cut my hair, I've been told I look a little bit like her. Quite a lovely compliment! )

The Age of Silence

There's this book called The History of Love.  I read it for the first time last fall and it changed my life. I'm now reading it for the second time, and when I got to my favorite part I had to share it here. The original passage is much longer, but you should still get the gist of why I am always moved when I read this:


"The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely....Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me....

"If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms--if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body--it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. It's not that we've forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up: all artifacts of ancient gestures. Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it's too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other's bodies to make ourselves understood."

Let Me Introduce....

...the new me!!

It's Official

Fall is here! I had my first cup of peppermint hot chocolate this morning and am feeling pretty good about it.

I have to run do a geology project before school, but I'll be back later :) I've got some exciting beauty to share!

Sometimes

Sometimes I miss my long hair.

I miss the way it felt blowing around me as I walked around campus in the wind. I miss being able to pull it into a ponytail on the days I don't have time shower (like today). I miss all the pretty braids and twists I could do with it. I miss being able to splay it all across my pillow and pretend someone was taking a glamorous picture of me. Now. All that being said, I can't wait to cut my hair again!! haha I'm kind of a spaz.

Sometimes I miss Taylor.

I miss watching his hands caress the keys of his slightly-out-of-tune piano while sunlight filtered through the big windows of his music room. I miss the way he told me I was beautiful. No one could say it like him. I miss his calls at 2 in the morning that would last so long we could watch the sun come up together. I miss being able to talk to someone so easily. Now. All that being said, it's nice to still be friends, even after all this time and distance and struggle. 

Sometimes I miss Matt. 

I miss being held so tightly I thought all the life was going to be squeezed out of me. I miss his strong hands; how they felt in mine, how they led me so easily across the dance floor, how he was constantly using them to serve other people. I miss having a best friend who didn't expect me to be anything I wasn't. Now. All that being said, I couldn't be happier for him that he is in college in Wyoming and discovering this new phase of his life. But I wish more than anything that he were right here with me. 

My New Favorite Class

This semester I'm taking a Creative Writing class, which I think I mentioned in my last post. It's every Tuesday night from 5-7:30 and most of the class is spent work-shopping manuscripts from the students that were sent around the Friday before. So, I was one of the volunteers to submit work for the first week! We could write 3-4 poems, a short story, or a personal essay. Since poetry's kind of my thing, I wrote a new poem, and submitted 2 other semi-recent ones, which he said was ok since we only 3 days' notice. I wanted to share my new poem here, so enjoy :)

Opus

His fingers touch

The ivory keys.

Caressing,

Familiar, yet

Somehow new.

His head bows as he

Breathes,

An aching moment

Before the first hammer

Strikes

The strings.

Like water, like light,

A tumbling melody

Streams

Through his fingertips.

The ivories

Dance,

Laugh,

Cry—

Vibrations hanging in the

Listening air.

His eyes closed tight,

Harrowed soul laid

Bare,

He rises, turns

And takes his bow

To the applause heard

In his head.

Romance

I watched The Notebook with my roommate Sam last night, and it made me think a lot about romance. I'm in this place right now where I can't really imagine a guy being totally flipped for me. I mean, I can imagine it in a very future-ish way, but not in a here-and-now kind of way. I feel like I'm always putting more into relationships than I'm getting back, and I hate that feeling. I want to be totally swept off my feet by someone who thinks I'm just fabulous. Because, let's face it, I am!

I want a guy to look at me with googly eyes and a silly grin. I want someone who will keep the little promises, the ones made late at night when you're not really sure if you're serious about it, but you take it seriously anyway. I want to be able to play; to shove ice cream in each others faces or lay in the street and watch the lights change late at night, or dance to no music. I want surprise candle-light dinners, and flowers on the pillow next to me when I wake up in the morning. I want notes on the bathroom mirror, and blanket forts that last all weekend. I want to look at each other when we're old and gray and still think we each got the better end of the deal. I want romance, people. Romance.