Posing a Sup

Last night was the sort of night that has you pacing up and down the room for lack of anything better to do. Okay, I could have been doing homework. But truthfully, I didn't have the attention span for that. I was so bloody fidgety, constantly sitting down at my desk only to jump up and stare at my art easel before finally resorting to shoe sorting and then mindlessly opening and closing the fridge. Yeah. One of those nights.

It was getting on to about two, then, when I finally collapsed on my bed, letting my thoughts careen and collide as they would. This is not the brightest of ideas, and I'll tell you why---I start doing this:

"I'm forever using the word "suppose." It's a funny word, that. I like it. Suppose suppose suppose.
suh-pose
seh-pose
soo-pose
saw-pose
sup-ose
sup-pose
pose-sup
pose a sup! Is that what it is? Posing a sup? "I'd like to pose a sup that she truly does love him . . ." What then, is a sup? Sup sup sup. Whenever I think of the word, I imagine Oliver Twist. Then again, that's just me. And what would supping on soup have to do with assuming and speculation?"

I pose a sup that's where I left off, finally lulling myself to sleep.

* * * * *

In other news, as a 'huzzah' for love week, we're going pink and red. Shocking, I know. I figured my spring green wouldn't mind a reprieve; he's working overtime down here in Provo.

nyt: gem of the day

Okay, so it's more like gem of the month, seeing as I scribbled this down sometime in early January. But I'm in a dust-and-file mode at the moment, and can't afford to lose this bit of wisdom amidst the papers stacked on my desk. It's from some book review or other (New York Times), author unknown.

"Time passes, and what it passes through is people — though people believe that they are passing through time, and even, at certain euphoric moments, directing time. It’s a delusion, but it’s where memoirs come from, or at least the very best ones. They tell how destiny presses on desire and how desire pushes back, sometimes heroically, always poignantly, but never quite victoriously. Life is an upstream, not an uphill, battle, and it results in just one story: how, and alongside whom, one used his paddle."

wo ai ni

Xinyi's at work and I am here, alone, trying to get used to the change. We geared up for this, spent the entire weekend together eating noodles and watching Taiwanese teledrama from episode one to the grand finale. We screamed at Xiang Qin together, laughed at Ah Jin together, swooned over Zhi Shu together. . .and now there's only silence. Every night from six to eleven, silence.
I'm tempted to watch episode nineteen again, the one where Zhi Shu realises his True Love. I'm tempted, but I don't understand Chinese, written or spoken.
And my translator's at work.

spider solitaire

I am looking inward; that may be my problem.

I am content in myself, happy with who I am and who I am working to become. I am alone but never lonely, solitary but not yet isolated.

Most of a month ago we sat about the round table, the traditional Christmas Eve fondue at our center, swapping stories of the highs and lows of 2006. We shared the silly, the solemn, the momentous and the momentary. Dad had been silent a good while, listening to the banter of family. When time came for his turn he only stated, "This is the high. To have worried and watched over you all these long years, only to watch you become the beautiful people you are now, knowing you will all be okay, knowing you will make a difference."

I am waiting. Hoping that I am not disillusioned, that I truly am someone worth knowing. I am reminding myself that friendships, the very best of them, take time. I would not be so overparticular if not for the friendships I have amassed, each so intricate and eloquent in their own way. How cruel it is that, no matter how secure in our selves we may be, we need to be seen by others to be sure of our own existence.

I am looking inward; that is my strength.

shadowfeet

Walking, stumbling
On these shadowfeet
Toward home, a land that I've never seen

I am changing
Less and less asleep
Made of different stuff than when I began

And I have sensed it all along
Fast approaching is the day

[Chorus]
When the world has fallen out from under me
I'll be found in you, still standin'
When the sky rolls up and mountains fall on their knees
When time and space are through
I'll be found in you

There's distraction
Buzzing in my head
Saying in the shadows it's easier to stay

But I've heard rumours
Of true reality
Whispers of a well-lit way

When the world has fallen out from under me
I'll be found in you, still standin'
When the sky rolls up and mountains fall on their knees
When time and space are through
I'll be found in you

*****

Albertine arrived this past Sunday. Brooke's been on repeat ever since. I did not realise how much she means to me, how far-reaching her impact was in my life, until we held the small package, reverently, at her arrival. Olivia did the honors and we stood in silence as she pulled the bubble wrap from the slim jewel case, nodded in agreement when she motioned to the stereo.

The first hushed steps of "shadowfeet" brought me to tears. You know there is something bigger, something better here that we can ever fathom.

snafu

Situation Normal : All Fouled Up. That's what we called JoJo, the idiosyncratic tabby who wound his way through my early childhood, sniffing at candle flames and leaping at laser pointers. All early photographs have us coming as a package: JoJo and me with the nerf basketball, the pair of us under the kitchen table doodling, a picture of us both dolled up for a cold Halloween. Eventually he got bored with his adoptive family and left the way he'd came, slipping out the front door never to come back.

Driving westward on I-80 I used to think about him. In my child's mind I figured I-80, if you were looking for new beginnings, was the obvious choice for a starting line. I'd watch carefully every passing barrier, every stark green sign, hoping for some small note from my lost friend.

Eventually it became habit and now, whenever I turn on to the freeway just past The Red Lobster and ShopKo, I search the road.

lei e una persona romantica?

Faccia il seguente quiz per scoprire se lei e molto o poco romantica in amore:

1. Per San Valentina:
a. gli da un libro di poesie.
b. gli da una scatola di Baci
c. gli da una cartolina con Snoopy

2. Quando non siete insieme:
a. gli telefona cinque volte al giorno.
b. gli telefona una volta al giorno.
c. gli manda un messaggio elettronico.

3. Quando siete usciti per la prima volta:
a. gli ha parlato di arte e di viaggi
b. gli ha parlato di sport e della familiglia.
c. gli ha parlato di "Star Trek."

4. Quando lue le chiede "Tu mi ami veramente?" lei:
a. gli risponde, "Con tutto il cuore!"
b. gli risponde "Si, perche?"
c. gli responde, "Si, come un fratello!"

* * * * *

Leslie is not romantic in the least. I, on the other hand, am apparently pathetically quixotic, even when it comes to Italian quizzes on the matter.