Halcyon.

I had a bad dream. My heart ached. Again. And as is habit, I needed open space and fresh air, room to breathe.

The timing was perfect. I stepped outside and gazed upwards. A few minutes later, as my insides left the turbulent ocean and entered the calm pool, wispy strands of cirrocumulus crept across the sky. The tendrils became white matted cotton. Thicker and thicker, dark spots colored the bubbles, filling them with the promise of rain. Thicker and thicker, it ate up Orion and then his dog. The image of the moon shining through the clouds, situated uncomfortably on the horns of Taurus, looked like a screen shot from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Fountain, and I felt ever more peaceful.

Soon, the whole night sky was covered.

It had been initially transparent. Pure. Distinct. Unobstructed. Free.

I turned and walked back inside, carrying a piece of freedom with me.

Owl city.

Looks like an owl, yea?

Mom's new garden addition.

Mom went and bought Sweet Kate's at Lowe's. She planted them this weekend. Now there's a reminder in her front yard of how sweet her daughter is.

The front yard looks AWESOME, by the way. She finished the stone path, I spray painted the porch swing. Things are coming together in this cute little cottage.

Do we really need to pay attention to the alarm?

Ah, I'm tossing and turning. I'm pondering.

I miss writing. I miss reading. But I'm so damn busy and I manage my time so poorly. I collapse into naps and constantly forget things. Sometimes I know exactly what I'm doing, sometimes I wish I were doing something else. It's frustrating.

I'm grateful to be sleeping in a bed, safe and fed. And that I'm back in school. I'm grateful to be loved. I'm grateful to be broken. These things let me know I'm still alive. I'm succeeding in living, if nothing else.

What regrets will I have when I'm older? Will I wish that I had driven eight hours on a whimsical night to a blissful Eden? Did I say "Thank you" enough? Did I love enough? Did I positively impact your life?

Will I wish that I'd gone to a study abroad program in Ireland instead of moving to California? Will I consider those years, the years she claimed my heart, wasted? Should I have said something when I didn't? Held still and kept quiet instead of running?

Maybe it's a good thing to have regrets. If you get old and you don't have regrets, you did too much right! And where's the fun in that? You'd be bored with yourself. So maybe I should go nuts and buy a ticket to nowhere, Asia, with a pair of jeans and a dozen socks, and make a living as one of those people who push canoes full of cultivated something-or-other with a bamboo stick. Just me and my straw hat.

Stop. Rewind. Now imagine that I finish school, grab onto a fitting career, move into that perfect home, marry your other half, and raise a mischievous bunch of beautifuls? You come home - pull into the driveway, walk past the lavender and lace, through the wooden door and into the delicious smell of a healthy dinner, a smile and a kiss. Sip a little wine and unwind, tell me about your day and relax to my laugh. I'll hold you in our bed. Wake you in the morning with kisses.

Does everyone have a crazy side? Do you feel the constant battle between Id, ego, and superego? The Id says, "Let's go! Now!" The ego says, "Not now and maybe not ever, but we can daydream. Deal?" The superego slaps them silly, yelling, "You're both retarded. Stop this nonsense. We obviously need to invest more in a 401K and good dental plan before we even CONSIDER the unhealthy hazard of traveling and the dangers of investing our emotions into the unpredictable nature of people!"

For now, school. Number one priority. SCHOOL.

I'm kept warm.

"...You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief
and the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?"

-from T.S. Eliot's The Burial of the Dead

The last part is from Tristan and Isolde and it says,

"Fresh blows the wind
To the homeland
My Irish darling
Where do you linger?"

Construction.

A few pictures of the construction taking place on our street. They made it to our front yard today. The first picture is our neighbors yard, where they tore down his fence...which I don't think they were supposed to do. Mr. Neighbor has made a big fuss about this construction project. We're anxious to learn more about this development.

This is the front corner of our yard. There's a man in the hole. He bent over right when I took the picture. Sneaky Mexican.

Comparison.

The first picture is a recent shot of the creek at Barfield Park. It's loooooow. The second one was taken a few years ago when it's about midlevel. Tomorrow, I'm going to go up there to see if the heavy rains we've been getting have created a rushing river of doom!

About Kanye West.

My response to Kanye is not anger or even disappointment. People do crazy things for no reason all the time. The fact that he's an influential public figure blows his mistakes out of the water. I'm not making excuses for him but I'm not going to judge his mental stability or personal choices, either. The man's got passion and, unlike a majority of Americans, wasn't taught to sit down and shut up. His anger at whatever injustice is occurring around him causes him to fall victim to tourette's, a general diarrhea of the mouth.

It was a little sad watching Taylor Swift have her glory moment snuffed out but this incident will do her more good than harm since she didn't throw a tantrum and even continued with a performance of her award-winning song later on. I haven't found a decent video to attach here but I'm sure if you have at least one working eye, you've seen news coverage of Kanye's interruption.

My Grandpa Jones always tells me to use pity as a road to love whenever I come across someone who's...difficult. Difficult to love, difficult to understand, difficult to forgive. I pity Kanye. And Serena. Racists and hardcore republicans. (I can't say "republicans" in general because a lot of my family consider themselves right-wing and they're not bad people.)

The awesome dad.

A very well-timed reading of this news article (Recession Diary: From Mom's Home To Their Own) put me in an optimistic mood for the day. The thing that touched me the most:

"I feel that I have been a better father than I ever thought I would be," Dan said. "Because I just feel like everything in our lives - it's beyond my control, but what is in my control is relationship with him and his care. And that's the one thing I will not let anyone tell me I can't do."

This relates to a few conversations I had yesterday about good parenting and, more specifically, fathers. There aren't that many Good Fathers in the world today and even fewer in the narrow spectrum of my view. That little tidbit halted my downward, mopey spiral into the "Everything goes to shit" zone, which has been threatening me since Friday night.

"Oversensitivity and readiness to take offense."

From an NPR news article, Colleges Ramp Up Efforts to Hold On To Students by Larry Abramson:

"Anttonen, known as 'Doc,' is the chief evangelist for getting students to graduate from the public institution outside Lancaster, Pa. Anttonen says retention, or holding on to students, is simple in theory."

It bothers me greatly that Larry felt the need to define the meaning of retention. Have we really sunk low enough that journalists break down laymen terms into lamer terms? That was a bad joke. I'm really tired and cranky. My eye has been twitching all day. This first week of school feels like it took a month to get through. It feels like the exciting yet stressful joys of Thanksgiving + Christmas + New Year's Eve rolled into a ball. I am so thankful to be back in school but I'm also very aware that the kitchen floor looks like a bed made in heaven from my position here at the table.