Beauty has a smell and texture and taste, and it tastes like the cool uprise of air from the melting earth, going down into the valley, the very-faint smell of humus and water. On one side of the slope, spring inhaled. On the other side, winter exhaled. The pond is slushy and starry with holes and bubbles and brief nebular stretches of shining clear water. The sun is like the summer sun.

love,
alex

Okay, so. The guy I walk to church every Sunday? Great kid, a little too attractive for my comfort but he's a UU so it's okay. However. Quite frequently, he has to stop & ask someone if he did anything stupid the night before. I seem to hang around two types of boys: celibates and alcoholics. This frustrates me.

On the way back from church I stopped in the new-agey book store and bought stamps! with celtic thingies! on them. They will make me happy. Things can't make you happy, unless they're art supplies. I am also two thirds of the way through my withdrawels for my spring break Educational Field Trip and it's looking like I won't end up totally broke, just kind of broke. I was hoping to keep a semester's worth of tuition in reserve and that hasn't happened, but right after spring break is summer vacation, and then I'll be working, so that's fine.

I made the greatest Budget Food yesterday. Canned peas, drained, fried up & mashed with a lot of olive oil (okay, olive oil ain't budget) and garlic and curry powder, on chapathi. Looks totally disgusting, but it is grade-A good food. I need to go make more chapathi, in fact, so I can have lunch.

good weather continues and I sort of am done with some stuff.

love,
alex

It is beautiful, Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL outside. Sitting in the sun reading until my back gets too warm, and then walking around in the remnants of the blizzard to cool off. Surreal. So very blue. Beautiful.

love
alex

The Plan encompasses one page, in 10-point font, and about 500 pages, in terms of actual work to do. I had a panic attack last night, in which I realized that there's no way to do it all besides adderal or amphetamines. Well, I guess that just means I won't be doing it all, doesn't it?

It's not my brain that hurts when I have too many thoughts, it's my lungs. Busyness cuts off my breath halfway down my throat, puts me in an eternal can't-breathe near-panic. It will all be okay. It will all be okay.

Kava-kava isn't a _drug_, it's an _herb_. And I'm off to have a dropperful so that I can breathe again, even if it will make my feet numb for the rest of the day.

frenetically yours,
alex

I went into the woods because. Because of the sunlight in a shadow-tunnel of rhododendron, the drip of meltwater onto the snow making a dappled impressionistic canvas. I went into the woods because of the rushing quiet over the pond, and because of the sunlight on the upraised fingers of the trees on the hill. The snow and the ground might say winter, but the sky says summer, says clear gold and green and hope in the air.

I have Too Much once more - after a glorious snow day of nothing but six-hour conversations and chili on the stove yesterday - but I am making a Plan, to keep track of what I need to do in what order. It will be several pages long and have at least seven subsections. Wish me luck!

off to eat spinach lasagna

love
alex

Snow. Snow. Snow. Fourteen inches by tonight.

We need better February holidays. We get all the lights, singing, and fattening food over with in December, when most of the snow-having world has seen scarcely a flurry. When February and March set in, with the kind of weather that leaves you stuck in your house (or someone else's if you didn't get home fast enough) for days, we've already expended most of our goodwill and jollyness and are now worrying about our waistlines and overextended credit cards. Listen up, people: December is barely the start of winter. We need holidays that convince us that we'll see the other side of February, and what do we get? Valentine's Day and Lent. LENT.

I suppose Spring is closer than we think. But looking out the window into a near-blizzard, I'm feeling the lack here. Who's with me?

love,
alex

My grandmother now officially has diabetes. It is apparently genetic and runs in our family. I'm pretty frightened, because I know I've abused my poor pancreas enough already. The only adequate response is to stop eating sugar, and I'm not sure if I can do that.

February and old people, stop making me unhappy!

love,
alex

"I mean, I do love her." he says. I ignore the feeling that I've been punched in the chest. I believe in this. I believe in this. I believe in this.

trying,
alex

So today, my Modernity professor went on a rampage. He's faced with thirty of the campus's barefoot best and brightest, and four of them have read for today, and he goes, do you realize who pays for your instate tuition? Do you realize what you'd be doing if you were part of the other 95% of the world's population? You are standing on their backs. You are lucky in a horrific way. You're not just privaledged, you don't care, you're squandering every chance that's yours because someone else was denied it. Some guy who will work at a 7-11 all his life is paying taxes that pay your tuition. The women in the cafeteria who serve the food that you all bitch about look at you and think about how they couldn't afford college and neither will their children. If you were in the rest of the world, you'd be walking two hours to work and two hours back and spending ten hours in a factory. You'd be a prostitute. You'd be spending five hours hauling water for your fields and watching your children starve because of the drought. That's what you'd be doing if you weren't privaledged, he said.

Fine, so it was a guilt-trip, so it was chastisement. I also desperately needed to hear it. The name of the class is Contexts in Modernity, well, we need to understand our contexts too. I'm grateful. I need to go study now.

love
alex

Admit it. Sometimes there just isn't a good reason.

love,
alex

I hitchhiked! Well, was offered a ride and accepted it, from total strangers, both male. Notice how I am unraped and unmurdered. People really aren't as bad as you've been told.

It was actually only a three-minute ride down the big mountain that looms over our valley. I'd decided to finally hike to the top, but I got distracted wandering around the ruin of an old farm that's now a cattle pasture, tucked between the two peaks of the ridge. For some reason the field is still three feet deep in snow - maybe because it's far from the warming influences of pavement and trees. The hike up was the most exercise I've gotten in months, at least forty minutes of straight up. I feel good. My legs will be punishing me for this for the rest of the weekend.

I think I'm going to 1) go to the library and check out a book that is fun to read 2) go to the cafeteria for a bean burger and fries, sit in the sun, and read my book while I eat. I know, I know, my weekends are non-stop thrill rides, aren't they? But it will make me happy.

love,
alex

One a.m. blogger entry, or close enough. Grabbag!

My presentation went well enough, the important one, at least. Afterwards I went for a walk in the wood trails, crunching on ice underfoot.

Thank God for San Francisco. They understand the way of things. Fck the law and marry the people. Thanks.

A boy in my dorm announced to me that our height differences mean we could never mate.

Tomorrow I think I'll go hiking. Fifty-eight degrees. I know February's always warmish in the middle but fifty-eight degrees!

The people I had lunch with are stonerific. They sound like something out of a cartoon. I think I love them.

I really really need to sleep.

love
alex

I cannot possibly describe how beautiful it is outside. Sunny clear blue sky no sweater kind of weather, everything potential. I want spring with an intensity I thought was reserved for s ex and sugar. Perhaps just things that start with S. Watching the sunlight on the mountains - sunlight! on non-snow! - makes all my old pagany songs come up, all the hopeful plain-voice circle dances. We want everything the most when it's just on the edge of being.

love
alex

I realized last night that I no longer live for the weekends. Weekends are just as scary; worse, in fact, because there's no class to break up the studying and paper-writing and organizing into manageable chunks. This afternoon I go from turning a paper - almost done - to presentation #1 to presentation #2, and neither of the presentations are for something as manageable and slack-worthy as class. After that, I will clean my room and go to sleep, and it will be good. I now live for the next chance I get to sleep. Going outside would be nice, too, but it hasn't happened so far this week.

Ah, dissembler. I'm so busy! I'm so stressed! I wouldn't still be doing this if it wasn't to some degree fun. I need to remember that.

love,
alex

I have way too much due, but that doesn't matter because I'm going to a *meeting*! This makes me so happy! I'm a middle-manager waiting to happen!

Beautiful day, very little of which will I see because I will be in windowless rooms talking to old people. I can't wait for spring. In spring, you can at least slack off at night outside, instead of being stuck in a dorm room playing Internet Pong.

Going to go make myself presentable. Don't wait up.

love,
alex

I am trying to cut down to twenty minutes computer time, once a day, and only one window open at a time while I do that. You know how it is. I've been on for forty-five minutes planning my summer travel (Rochester and Twin Oaks), and I have to check my email again this evening to get my appointments. But at least I'm trying.

No real news, snow thick on the ground, behind on several things. It's February.

love,
alex

Going back to my mountain. It's been a good weekend. I've not gotten anything done for school - I knew I wouldn't - but I have bags of dishwashing soap and fabric softener and flour, and I was glad to see my family for the first time in a long time, and I think I'm going to finally cave and admit that I'm having a particularly bizarre long distance friendship with benefits or something. I've been ignoring the fact that I spend most of my non-class time online talking with one person. I've been ignoring the way that we're making plans to see each other and all the implications we're attaching to it. Hell with it. I'm owning up. Thus are the dangers of talking to people from church camp. Y'all are warned.

Going back to my mountain. It's all going to work out, some way or other.

love,
alex

This is how I gave myself a panic attack in the middle of an otherwise fine evening. If you look closely I'm in a few frames. The bit that made me start to wheeze and curl up in fetal position is right by the fence and has a lot of people yelling 'hold the line' and some big booms. Those booms are still the loudest thing in my memory.

When will I get over this? I will. I know I will. I feel almost like I'm dragging it out too long. But I feel burned. It will cover over. It will not become a weak spot in me. I am determined.

love,
alex

You know that feeling, of being in love with someone you've never met or somewhere you've never been? I have that right now. Sleet is running off the roof in icy sheets, "Morning of the Magicians" is playing on Realjukebox, and I am lonely for the world. I am trying to buckle down and do my paper. We'll see how long this lasts.

alex

today my dad taught me how to use a rototiller and we built raised beds for my garden and we didn't fight once.

love
alex

Please, can't we just have the elections already? I don't care! I don't care! For the love of god, with the SOLE EXCEPTION of Clark (who might be our guy, if the muck Drudge is raking up on Kerry really surfaces) I will vote for any presidential canidate with (D) next to their name. Five primaries (or has it been six?) is as much as I can handle. Let's just vote before anything bad can happen.

Is there any way the US can hold early elections, incidentally? Other countries do it all the time, but I think they're parlimentary. Worth looking into.

By the way, there's a bill in both the House and Senate right now to provide genuinely adequate grants to get local produce into school cafeterias. I'll post the info later this weekend. You all are _going to call_, right? Right? We need this thing! I'm sick of California kids getting real food and the rest of us getting fried imitation cheese sticks.

As for me: home. And this is the first time I've come home and been able to appreciate being here. I'm grateful for that.

love
alex

Now with COMMENTS! I'm not sure I like having comments on these pages, like little lampreys clinging to the underside of each post. Feed my ego! Feed my ego! We'll see!

love,
alex

I am embracing the pr0n searches, dammit.

I went to see the Vagina Monologues. It (they) were was really good. I mean, it's not a big revelation. We will leave out my personal journey to anatomical wholeness, but it's never been a big deal. But still, it was solidly funny and tragic and everything. More men should see it.

love,
alex

The thing is, now I want to talk about it, but the only person around who also is talking about it is a guy and that would be wierd.

The world is pretty scary but I love it anyway.

alex

My grandmother's sick and in the hospital, my mother can barely walk right now and needs surgery, the friend of a very good friend just made a serious suicide attempt, everything's falling apart for everyone and I just don't have the time to feel anything, to do anything, to be a comfort. Keeping my own life cranking is so hard right now. I feel like I should pause to feel something and I just don't dare. I would have to think, dwell, draw up those emotions from under all this frenetic activity, and it feels like there's no reason, no way through but to push it all away. I am scared. I'm scared that my mother's getting old. I am terrified that my grandmother - one of the few extended family members that I really truly love - is going to die. I want to be able to do something for my friends whose lives are coming apart around their ears. And I can't.

Sometimes I think it'd be enough just to stop moving for a second.

pfft. Modernity.

alex

You know what I hate? Reading the news and knowing that in twenty, thirty, forty years, when the documents are declassified and the wars are hopefully over, I'll know what actually happened. I'm almost eager to know how this all ends, except that we'll be in the middle of a whole new bunch of messes then, probably.

It's so difficult to know where reality lies. I mean, I have friends right now that are ready to head for the hills. I try to keep my thinking pretty mainstream, to be honest. I try not to invent conspiracy theories, or decide the government is out to get ME, just me. That's not healthy. But simultaneously, I've seen a lot of things first-hand that the news and the average American will vigorously deny ever happened. Reality is, at least right now, a story we tell ourselves via television sets. Not good.

much love,
alex

Because a situation involving trying to be diplomatic, the manager of your dorm, a bad situation, and trying to betray neither your friends nor your ex-lover is just what we all need to tackle before noon! Better than coffee!

I hate my life.

love,
alex

p.s. whatever else happens, I got my paper done, dammit. That's all that matters.

p.p.s I need a hug.

It's Monday and I'm already worn out from doing a thousand different things. I don't have time to settle on anything. I am going to go do my kickboxing video and then write a co-op proposal, then I have a paper to do and my desk shift at the collective. I'm starting to realize that I'll just have to prioritize and not do all the reading for all the classes. There's no way to do it all.

I know that I waste a lot of time, but you know what? I'd cut out reading essays before I'd cut out walking in the forest or having 3 a.m. conversations about the meaning of life. I don't do a lot of recreating, these days, but I refuse to loose the meaning in the labor.

Incidentally, why for the love of god has my skin declared war on my self-esteem? My complexion thinks I'm fourteen again. I am achieving new heights of pimply. This at a time when I really could use some attention from the male half of the species.

alex

Incidentally, Edwards winning SC? Regionalist FLUKE. Trust me. I'm from the state he actually works in, and he SUCKS.

political love,
alex

The weekend came in a rainy afternoon, a morning downpour that pushed the snow off the roof in sheets and the shape of the clouds moving over the mountains. I have so much to do & I know that I can't stop moving, or it won't get done. I am not suited to a life of study, I think. But I will employ a little more, and a little more.

alex

I taped a petition to a door, and someone taped a pen on so that people could sign! I put sweaters that I'd loved but stopped wearing in the Free Bin, and people took them, and left tank tops and khakis and a t-shirt with lions on it! I set my alarm clock for an hour and sat down to do my reading, and it got done!

thou art beautiful, o my love

alex

Coming back, one thing at a time.

alex

re: school: the honeymoon is over. I do this, I really try hard for the first three months of any situation and then it just ... drops off. I'm overwhelmed, and I can't tell my parents, because they're so happy that their baby made honor roll for the first time in her life. So: loyal readers: any advice?

love,
alex

The primaries are today! The primaries are today!

If I didn't have Tuesday Night Class, I'd be watching. Have fun out there, y'all. No one ruin my fun talking about whether this matters. It's a horse race. I love elections.

Tuesday Night Class is meant to be an obscure counterculture reference. Here's another one: for my birthday, my mother sent me a pair of black Carharrts. There is perhaps one person who reads this blog who will understand why this is funny. Maybe.

elliptically yours,
alex

and some people go hiking in ice storms at one in the morning.
it's beautiful out.

alex

You know exactly what I'm talking about. The don't-wanna-do-it lassitude. The general feeling of internal gravity. In December, winter is outside and warm is inside. In February, winter is inside the buildings, inside the body. Everything is gray.

I have too much to do. Maybe it's just post-adventure letdown. Here's hoping.

love,
alex

Taken from L.A. I've been wanting to do this thing all week and never got around to it.

So, what do they call you, Baby?

FOREIGNER ALIAS = Favorite Spice + Last Foreign Vacation Spot:


Curry Miami


SOCIALITE ALIAS = Silliest Childhood Nickname + Town Where You First Partied:


Fuzzy Weaverville


"FLY GIRL" ALIAS = First Initial + First Two or Three Letters of Your Last Name:


real name has too many consonants
A LU is pretty cool


ROCK STAR ALIAS: = Any Liquid on the Bar + Last Name of Bad-Ass Celeb:

Aquafina Hendrix

DIVA ALIAS: = Something Sweet Within Sight + Any Liquid in Kitchen:


Anise Silk


GIRL DETECTIVE ALIAS: = Favorite Baby Animal + Where You Last Went To School:


Kitten Chapel


BARFLY ALIAS = Last Snack Food You Ate + Your Favorite Drink:


Goldfish Vanilla


SOAP OPERA ALIAS = Middle Name + Street Where You First Lived:


Lund Trent

I will write it like an allegory or a dream, because there's 27 minutes left of my birthday. I went out in the woods, distressed because the sky was so very blue, and met a man - or rather two - standing on the middle of a frozen pond. We walked in circles and talked about penguins and politics, waddling with our feet out on the ice. Over a dinner of beans and fruit, one of them asked me, who are you? and I went, that's tough. Who are you? and he said I am a warm wind. And so I told him the first part, with no excuses, a sentance or two.

And then I went to a house full of friends and strangers, to eat plum chili and talk about the weather. They sang happy birthday, and made me tell them I was young, and gave me the last peice of pie, and we played mandolins and pie tins into the night.

I have had a great day. I love without reservation.

blessed be,
alex

::sigh:: boys are assholes!

in other news

hm.

love
alex

::unwraps fat-free brownie::
::lights votive candle and sets on top::
::sings::
happy birthday to me

alex