family snap shots: meet Noah

i got into harcum.
i made $500 at the craft fair yesterday.
i walked to and from work mon, tues, thur and i will tomorrow as well.
some of my cds came today and i like them. i am waiting for three more. i have found many more beautiful musics as well.
i am hormonally imbalanced.
i am tired.
i believe i am on the path to doing things right, that i am climbing out of whatever valley i've wallowed in for so long. It's hard though. I'm not climbing a mountain, i'm climbing up to a plateau where things get easier and the view is beautiful. it's just right now that's hard but i can do it one step at a time. one note. one bite. i have to have faith in myself, in the strength of time. i just have to keep doing it.

thanksgiving with the babies!

giving thanks

11:44 am, thanksgiving morning. i'm feeling overwhelmed by the density of related alleles in one location and feeling very much out of college.

i have two brothers and one cousin in college, one a senior in high school, one a freshman in high school. i am feeling very old. i hear the boys talking about college and that sort of thing (aka: parties, late nights, missing class...) and it makes me feel a little sad.

my brothers are annoyed at me that i introduced mom to facebook. they don't want her to be able to see their profiles. i feel bad about that. it didn't occur to me it wouldbe a problem because the truth is, i have nothing to hide, especially from mom.

i am thinking about walking to work for the next few months. i have been trying to work out the details. Examples: getting food there: i think i'll drive food over on sunday and leave food for the week; Bad Weather: i think i'll have to drive to work; leave home: at 8:30 am (arrive 9:15 ish?) leave work 3:30 ish (arrive home 4:15). i need to get more exercise and that's just not the same. this would be a good goal and i think it would give me some important thinking time.

i went shopping with meg yesterday and i bought only a $3.50 plastic ring at claire's. there were a few things (necklace, lip gloss) that i almost bought but decided not too because i don't need it.

i've also though about clothes at work: if i run/walk to work i can't carry a purse and i can't wear blue jeans. so i think i could keep 2 pairs of pants, 3 shirts and 2-3 outerwear (sweater/sweatshirt) at work along with a body splash and deodorant. i think that's everything i really need. i think it would give me good time to think and that's an important item i need to work out.

i am listening to my famous uncle and my grandfather discuss things like whether women are equal, the role of 'intelligence genes' and that sort of thing. i realize that i'm listening to a conversation that most people would pay money for but the truth is, i don't enjoy listening to it. I'm still very touchy about male/female equality. i think it is shortsighted and wrong to say woman are the same as man. they're different. they're better at some things, worse at other. man and women are equal in terms of base humanity but they differ on averages. an individual woman may be better or worse at math than an individual man but on the whole, men are better at spatial things, women at 'emotional' things. i think it would nice if we could see the role of female intelligence as being equally worthwhile but because we live in a patriarchal society, the values that are prized are the ones that are more 'male.' I believe that traditionally 'male' professions are held in more esteem than traditionally female ones. but i don't really want to think about it anymore.

the truth is, i like myself. i like the fact i wear jeans and sweat shirts, that i love animals, that i go to bed early and get up early, that i seldom drink or party and that i'm kind of crunchy, at least in my soul.

i am changing and i feel it now when i'm around my family, feel it in the distance between the life experiences of my brothers and cousins and myself. i am lonely here, that is true, but i think i'm really 'finding myself' in this vacuum--finding what i enjoy, forced to listen to myself and no one else. and that means when i'm ready to return to society i hope i don't lose what i've learned--that i keep track of my self and continue to cherish the things which fill my heart with joy.

My First Craft Show!

in glorious brevity

well, i made $300 at my dad's office (ok, $298 but who's counting!) and i'm pretty stoked about that. i came home around 2:30 pm and had a moment when i was like "what am i going to do? I have nothing to do!" I thought about stopping at the chemical road shopping center on my way home but then i was like "no, you wouldn't be going shopping if you were in NY" so i decided to just go home. I was at home and was feeling restless because that's how i feel, always, especially at home and then i thought "what do i have to do? Nothing. I have nothing to go buy that is. what do I have? I have time." and then my thinking was "what good is time?" and then i realized: time is like things, only better. but perhaps, harder to understand. So around 3 pm i realized i had nothing to do but enjoy a beautiful day and hang out with my pets. i looked through the beads i sent home a couple of months ago and selected some chip beads to bead with. i then almost spent $125 at www.firemountaingems.com on chip beads but at the last minute i was like "no, i think i'll use what i have first." It is a big sale on chip beads but i realize, chip beads are always available and they even show up at good prices on a fairly regular basis. and i already have a ton of them. so i didn't buy anything. instead i went upstairs and let birdy, bunny and baby bird run around my room. kitten was scratching on the door so i let him in and he climbed up on my bed and went to sleep next to me. I don't have a tv in my room right now so i just sat there and beaded for the next two hours. i made 12 bracelets (13 but it broke when i was tying it and so i decided to stop beading for a while while my shoulders unkinked). The bracelets are really pretty and it was so much fun watching my babies. bunny just gets into everything. max was having a grand old time looking out the window and then he went and chewed a hole in his food bag and ate for a while and then he went more exploring. at one point he clambered onto a straw hat that i thought was out of his reach. he was sitting there on the brim with it all curled over and i just laughed out loud. then he did a crazy flopping fly and ended up swinging from a beaded toy on his branch. birdy kept flying down onto my shoulder (even landing on sleeping kitten once, a horrible experience for both of them). she pulled the studs out of my ear successfully twice (and tried about 4 other times). She also made off with a seed bead which i then confiscated. these adventures got her moved to her cage for time out.

so i spent the after noon relaxing and crafting with my babies. i didn't go buy anything but i did play with what i have. and i am going to work on changing the way i see the world. because time is like a thing, only better. because you can't buy it, it's a constant (special relativity aside) and it only goes one way (thank-you entropy). So i am going to learn to see time, see it as a thing more valuable than another bangle or pair of blue jeans. yeah, so you can't touch it, fold it, stroke it or organize it. time is just as real as any possession, just less tangible and perhaps, infinitely more valuable. so i spent mine this afternoon relaxing with my babies and crafting, getting a cramp in my neck and laughing at what the birds, the bun and the kitten did.

i think this might be what peace feels like. moments you fight for, fight yourself for, fight what you've learned and believed and lied to yourself for so long. it's hard and it's uphill, if you stop moving you start sliding backwards, but i think it might be worth it. because this is the first time i've ever come home and not hit up my favorite shopping areas (although i do want to bring a mirror to the craft show tomorrow--either go to dollar tree tonight or just find one around the house...). because you can't buy peace. but you don't find it either. you make it. like you make meaning and make happiness. people get confused because they are 'looking for meaning' or 'looking for happiness' like meaning is a misplaced set of keys under your purse. it's not. it's not something someone else put down and you're meant to go find. you make it. like you make your own happiness. and now, your own peace.

so make it.

worlds colliding

I have been worried a bit lately about the role of TV in my life--specifically, the fact that the characters on TV shows feel like my real friends because i spend more time with the TV than with people. I chose not to watch Law and Order: SVU on tuesday night because i knew it would upset me too much for me to sleep. Not for the 14 year old prostitutes murdered, but because I think Eliot (stabler) kissed his temporary partner Dani Beck while Olivia is out on FBI stuff (= mariska hargitay on maternity leave). What upset me was the missing Eliot/Olivia chemistry--not the fucked up subject matter!

But I digress. My concerns for my sanity are further extended after last nights episode of CSI. Grissom was reading a letter from Williams! Williams! My college, the place where my heart lives in the mountains and purple sunsets and fall so freaking beautiful it makes you weep. I have been having williams flashbacks recently--moments when the light hits the horizon just so and I can imagine I'm running down route 7 toward cozy corner and i get this feeling inside that i'm all filled up, that my heart has swelled to the very tips of my being and i['m so peaceful, so damn peaceful. but that's only for a minute. i flash back to where i am, usually my neighborhood in long island, also beautiful but not like williams. and it's fall but not break your heart beautiful fall. and i'm happy but i'm alone and i miss the mountains like a limb that i've lost.

but again, i digress. So: Grissom is apparently invited to teach a guest series of lectures at williams. Williams was mentioned on last night's episode (nov 16) and will be again on January 4th (apparently someone gives grissom a williams sweatshirt).

i feel that my sanity may be threatened because my real life (williams) is colliding with my tv life (CSI). CSI is a big part of my tv life. i feel like i'm friends with these characters. to have grissom and williams intersect almost made me throw up and then run outside to drive up to school so i could take grissom's class and buy whatever sweatshirt he's going to wear from the williams store on spring street and run out to the mountains and lay down when i'm tired and feel the wet earth and the dry leaves and the smell of tannins and the sky and the wind and the geese and the moment so stretched out above me like saran wrap pulled tight, keeping it all safe, keeping it preserved.

i do worry. but i will focus instead on the fact that williams lives in my heart and my four years there can never be taken away. but i'm growing up now. and i'm living in the real world. which means CSI is not really my support system. i'm strong enough to do it the hard way, the real way. i just have to remember that.

right now i'm off to my dad's office to set up and hopefully sell some jewelry that i've made. I have to let this grissom thing go like when i saw david boreanz in yang ming and thought my heart would explode. for a piece of muscle my heart expands and contracts a whole lot. actually, that's what muscles do. so it's not surprising.

xoxoxo

my display racks!

blue caravan

Blue blue caravan
Winding down to the valley of lights
My true love is a man
Who would hold me for ten thousand nights
In the wild wild wailing of wind
He's a house 'neath a soft yellow moon.
So blue blue caravan
Won't you carry me down to him soon

Blue blue caravan
Won't you drive away all of these tears
For my true love is a man
That I haven't seen in years

He said, "Go where you have to
For I belong to you until my dying day."
So like a fool, blue caravan
I believed him and I walked away.

Oh my blue blue caravan
The highway is my great wall
For my true love is a man
Who never existed at all

Oh he was a beautiful fiction
I invented to keep out the cold
But now, my blue blue caravan
I can feel my heart growing old

Oh my blue blue caravan I
can feel my heart growing old

-vienna teng

in pictures

lyrics

Wrapped inside you like a diamond
waiting for the dark to burn away
counting on your heartbeat's constant rhythm
to carry me back to myself

all of my thoughts,
like junkyard dogs,
guarding scraps of nothing
filling my head with senseless things that keep me from you

but I found the remedy
I found the cure for Everything
take me into your hands
help me love a world that I don't understand

lying in the grass I listened
underneath a black sky soaked in stars
til I heard the sound of my heart spinning
all my anger into love

out of the fire
of false desire
beat up but I'm breathing
fighting to stay wide awake
while all the world's asleep

but I found the remedy
I found the cure for Everything
take me into your hands
help me love a world that I don't understand

and you're taught to want
all of life's shiny trinkets
and you're hoping that they will save you
but when it's all over none of these things will matter
and you'll ask yourself
"did I love?"

"Remedy"
Bird York

happenings

the sneaky bun


the sleepy kit



bunny goes in for the steal


this is not what i had intended when i bought mr. mouse the run around ball.

the bun

kitten

birdies

Birdy Playing

lyrics

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go, I have to go
Your hair was long when we first met

"Samson" Regina Spektor

Thought you had
all the answers
to rest your heart upon.
But something happens,
don't see it coming, now
you can't stop yourself.
Now you're out there swimming...
In the deep.
In the deep.

Life keeps tumbling your heart in circles
till you... Let go.
Till you shed your pride, and you climb to heaven,
and you throw yourself off.
Now you're out there spinning...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.

"In the Deep" Bird York

The one who survives by making the lives
Of others worthwhile
She's coming apart
Right before my eyes
The one who depends on the services she renders
To those who come knocking
She's seeing too clearly what she can't be
What understanding defies

She says I need not to need
Or else a love with intution
Someone who reaches out to my weakness
And won't let go
I need not to need
I've always been the tower
But now I feel like the flower trying to bloom in the snow

She turns up the light
Anticipating night falling tenderly around her
Watches the dusk
The words won't come
She carries the act so convincingly
The fact is sometimes she believes it
She can be happy with the way things are
Be happy with the things she's done

And yet I need not to need
Or else a love with intution
Someone who reaches out to my weakness
And won't let goI need not to need
I've always been the tower
But now I feel like the flower trying to bloom in the snow

Reach out, hold back
Where is safety
Reach out and hold back
Where is the one who can change me
Where is the one
The one

"The Tower" Vienna Teng

extreme cuddles!