The past little while in brief:

• Weevils are gross.
• Why do lightbulbs burn out at the same time all across the apartment?
• I would cook more if the dishes were less gross.
• Husbands totally trump fish.
• The English royal family and politics during the middle ages is officially my favorite thing to study.
• It's hard to stay focused when trying to count.
• Yes, years later, Evanescence still rocks.
• Silence is one of the most precious things in the world.
• I REALLY don't know how to talk to nine-year-olds.
• I spend way more money on food and treats than I should :)
• Nothing gets easier just cuz you're older.
• Happiness is a choice.
• Neighbors suck. Apartments should literally be APART.
• That chicken enchilada has been sitting in the fridge for two weeks.
• When's the last time I touched actual cash?
• Richard the Lion Heart really was ransomed and returned to England.
• Chinese art is fantastically precise. Chinese poetry is fantastically open-ended.
• Volleyball still has some mysterious power over me.
• Phones are evil.
• Gravity should be optional.
• I still have American Idol fantasies occasionally.
• I feel disconnected, but I don't really care.
• Everybody needs a mommy.
• My honey is 23!!!!
  
• Mountain Dew needs an anonymous rehab group.
• I still have homework to do.
  

Free Fall

Press your face
into that rush of wind,
blasting spiraling thoughts,
wing-like,
behind you

Into wild hills
scraped clean by wild wind,
softly traced
along your silhouette--
Sun-kissed cheeks
ache for lush green sky
and trembling silence
breaks your heart

And remakes it
out of glass,
refracting against eternity,
tumbling out of thought
and into perfection.

All meaning
passes
into a single memory
of steel-gray waves
on a thin white beach
and the knowledge
of loss.

Changing

It's funny. I've always had an obsessive personality, but getting married changed everything. I used to check my online banking a lot, but now I have a three page excel document that follows monthly budget lines, every expense on our checking and savings, and a year-long estimate. Suddenly health insurance and car insurance aren't nicely wrapped up in my dependent status, but costs--and ones you have to work to get! Getting ahold of those people and getting them to give you what you want is a headache. And Mike's done most of it :P

I'm nervous about school starting though. It's taken me these two months to start to work out a rhythm here. His parents make more sense to me and I've figured out how to be somewhat helpful. I've figured out what Mike and I like to do by ourselves and what kind of things he loves to do. But he's going to work and I'm going to school in August. Everything will change...again. Between school and homework, not to mention the fact that Mike will be on a swing schedule, I could go from spending every hour with him to barely seeing him. And when I do see him, I'll be tired and frustrated and ignoring homework...

You're right. Change does suck, especially when you're happy with your current situation. But this is the time of our probation. We have to deal with the realities of life, but if we do so bravely and with honor, then eternity will open its possibilities to us.

And who knows? A little discipline, work, and distance might strengthen our relationship and give us opportunities that we can't even imagine right now. There are things I'm really excited about, like settling into our own ward, having our own apartment (and all our wedding goodies which are currently in storage!), moving out of 100 degree weather infested with nasty bugs that bite (I currently have six bug bites, 3 of which are huge and awful), having some semblance of a schedule/routine again, and I'll have Mike as a motivation to do my homework.

Conclusion to this ramble: I'm nervous about moving and changing, but it's not only necessary, it will be good for us. We have been so blessed with everything this summer, despite our shortcomings. But there's always time to improve and grow, right?

Dear Brittney,

I just found your diary blog and read it. I hope that's okay--it actually made me really happy, since we haven't been able to talk in a long time. I feel a little more caught up ;)

I haven't heard you sound so happy and so calm at the same time in a while. It sounds like you found the ground and the sky at the same time. Isn't it amazing that you can have both? Isn't it amazing that you can have everything? You really can. I know you think I'm biased, but I've lived through a lot of friends, acquaintances, and family members, and you're one of the best people I've ever known.

About everything you were saying about love and relationships: the most important one thing I could ever say is that love IS a CHOICE. There is attraction and compatibility and everything, but you choose to change and adapt. You choose what makes you happy, including what people make you happy. Lol I actually had a dream last night that I got engaged to one of those OBNOXIOUS boys from high school. I remember sighing and thinking, "At least it's better than being alone." Then I woke up, and there were Mike's broad shoulders. I can't even tell you how relieved I felt. It really isn't worth settling. You need type one and a half, and you have to wait for it. Because it exists :) And I think I have a decent idea of what types one and two are for you, and I can't see you with either. One and a half!

And don't worry about boys chasing you. Multiple boys chasing you just means you get to go on lots of fun dates. There's no need to commit until you want to commit. If one of them keeps pressuring you, feel free to haul him over. There are replacements behind him :)

You've always talked a lot about change. It kind of reminds me of a quote by an author I like: "The simple absence of pain is the ultimate blessing; too bad only the affected appreciate it." We only notice what is currently bothering us. I would have given ANYTHING just for a calm stomach when I had the flu, but I haven't thought about how my stomach feels once since then. I can't remember the philosopher's name, but there's a pyramid, a hierarchy of needs: once a need is satisfied, you ignore it and reach for the next level. We always need and want more. It's hard to look and beneath you and realize how high you really are. I've been noticing the same thing recently too. Mike's family does a lot of things differently, and it's been kind of hard for me to try and adjust to everything. But I have Mike, and a free place to live, and a savings account, and food, family, love, school, a scholarship, so many blessings. You're so right, there's so much More than there Isn't. I love talking to you, you always remind me of that :)

Anyways, this was a lot of babble, there was a lot I wanted to respond to. The short and long of it: you are amazing, lovely, kind, and wonderful. I love you to death, and I want you to always love yourself as much as I love you :) except no death. Death is bad.

Love you!

Me

Factually speaking...

FACT: The FAFSA for the 2010-2011 school year is due by June 30.

FACT: Because FAFSA uses your social security number and information to check your data, I can't apply as Sorina Cornia until I change my social security card.

FACT: I can't change my social security card and data until I get my marriage license.

FACT: I do not have my marriage license.

FACT: I was supposed to mail the signed license information to the Salt Lake County offices.

FACT: I didn't, because the temple never gave it back to me.

FACT: I don't know if it's a fact that the temple sends those records in for you or not.

FACT: By the time I find out and am able to get my name changed, the FAFSA deadline may be past, and I graduate in May, so I would have no further opportunity to exploit the FAFSA.

FACT: Legality can suck.

Joyce

So, I should have been useful today, but I wasn't. I went home and watched Finding Forrester. FANTASTIC movie, by the way. It's about a 16 year old boy from the Bronx who secretly likes writing, who accidentally meets an old, crotchety writer (Sean Connery) who helps him to improve his writing and his life.

So it's an wonderful, inspiring, and often funny movie. But in one shot, they were showing a huge stack of books in this sixteen year old's room. There were a lot of classic authors, hard books--but one of the books they showed was Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce.

My British Literature class read an excerpt, a brief excerpt from that book. Everyone struggled with it, and the teacher even confessed that he's never really delved into Joyce. Joyce is obstinately difficult, but Finnegans Wake is by far his craziest and most dense writing.

I don't care how smart the kid was, I don't even believe one in a million sixteen year olds could get through that book.

I know it's just a movie, but it's frustrating when teenagers that young are portrayed as smarter than all the college students I know. Then again, perhaps I'm just below average :P I know I'm a bit of a sham of an english major. I wish there were such a thing as a fantasy major! I'd be in my element then!

If you want to hear just how crazy Finnegans Wake is, click here.

Ich, ich, ich, ich

This poem is really freaky. The first time I read it was my senior year of high school. There's actually a youtube video of Sylvia Plath reading this herself. It's so terrible, but I love the way she uses words, how she repeats herself...


Daddy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

~By Sylvia Plath

This poem is terrible and dark, but it turns up in my mind sometimes, like a farmer plowing his field raking up the skull of a cow. I don't know. My favorite part is this: "Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak." There's just something about it, about the way it sticks in your throat.

You know, it's funny how we exist in millions of little clones. You live in everyone's minds, little bits of you, little thought bits of you. And isn't it amazing how almost no one actually has all the bits? A dark age of yourself. How many 'I's' are there? This one saw you trip once, you're clumsy. You ran into another and they think you're a brat. You swallow your pride and do something nice, and that's all another one sees. Fragments of you, fragments that aren't you, colored by imagination and experience, colored by the inability to see inside your head. When the pieces come together, how many? How many can?

I am me.