today is a really rather quite sad sort of day

This morning I walked to school in the rain (this is not the sad part), thinking about the influence of the printing press on the modern world until I reached the classroom and found the room abuzz. Transfers are in—and we’re losing Anziano Welch to Rome.

Which shouldn’t be so completely world-changing, seeing as these things happen all the time on missions (note to self: work on your fear of sudden change). But as our Branch President, we truly believed he’d be in Siena for his last five months, and most certainly for our last two weeks here (selfish, much?). The news is only hours old and I’m still caught up in memories as if he’s already gone.

Then Peter has to go around philosophizing about dead baby bird paintings, as if we weren’t beat up enough. And at the end of his lecture he took stabs at our own art attempts, offering his “advice” for our final projects. Mostly this means one of three things: try again, push it further, or start over completely. With two weeks left, that’s a little depressing, too.

In the meantime, I was already feeling un po’ triste because Elder Garfield wrote me yesterday, wondering if I were still well/alive. Turns out not a single one of my four letters has reached him, which is also the case over in Brazil, where Elder M hasn’t received any word from me since Portsmouth. How my letters can reach the deep jungles of Africa and not north Atlanta is beyond me.

At this point, it’s so entirely sad that I’m almost devoid of any emotional reaction.

So now Lauren sits in the grey light of an open window, strumming the blues while Sharlie so obediently scribbles out the improv lyrics at her side, lyrics that probably do a better job of capturing today’s spirit than these paragraphs ever could:

Woke up today and life didn’t seem too bad but
Birds are dead
Aliens look like balls of string
Bad grades
I’m so confused and hurt
I know the ABCs
PETER!!He’s a tyrant
I’m sad because I’m flying
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

You see? It’s enough to make anyone cry.