“At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That’s how we’re made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them."
-Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy
This year I made resolutions, many many many resolutions and so far I have done a really terrible job of keeping up with them. Maybe if I post them here, peer pressure will get to me and I will actually accomplish something.
1: Watch 50 movies
Progress:
a: Juno
b: I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
c: Cloverfield
d: King of Kongs: a Fistfull of Quarters
e: Be Kind, Rewind
f: North By Northwest
g: The Incredibles
h: Justice League: The New Frontier
i: Jesus Camp
j: You've Got Mail
k: The 7th Continent
l: The Lake of Fire
m: Made of Honor
n: Enchanted
o: Speed Racer
p: Iron man
q: High Fidelity
r: The Princess Bride
s: No Reservations
t: Across the Universe
u: Indiana Jones and the Island of the Crystal Skull
v: Lars and the Real Girl
x: Dan in Real Life
y: Raiders of the Lost Ark
z: Doom
aa: Godzilla
bb: Mission Impossible III
cc: Hollywood Homicide
dd: The Savages
ee: PS I Love You
ff: Six Days, Seven Nights
gg: The Other Boleyn Girl
hh: The Incredible Hulk
ii: 27 dresses
jj: Rocketeer
kk: Bringing Down the House
ll: Blazing Saddles
mm: My neighbor Totoro
nn: Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery
oo: Austin Power, the Spy who Shagged me
pp: Austin Powers in Goldmember
qq: Superman Doomsday
rr: Before the Fall
ss: The Life Aquatic
tt: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
uu: Z
vv: Invisible Children
ww: The Awful Truth
xx: Steamboy
yy: Hot Fuzz
zz: The Dark Knight48 / 50 movies. 96% done!
2: Read 50 books
Progress:
a: The Accidental Mother by Rowan Coleman
b: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
c: The Plague by Albert Camus
d: Sula by Toni Morrison
e: Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
f: Justice League: The New Frontier Vol. 1
g: Pride of Baghdad
h: The Art of Racing in the Rain
i: Dogs I Have Met and the People They've Found
j: Dog Years
k: Indiana Jones and the Secret of the Sphinx
l: Chosen by a Horse
m: Walking in Circles Before Lying Down
n: How I Live Now
o: Flight Vol. 2
p: Breaking Dawn
q: Love Walked In17 / 50 books. 34% done!
3: Learn to Drive
4: Lose 25 pounds
5: Start Planning my wedding
I think I am ready for the fresh start spring supplies.
Every time I tell someone I am an English major they ask me what grade I want to teach. My reply is always "Would you want me in charge of your kids , the future leaders of America?" and while it is a bit snarky, it is an honest question. I'm not sure I really want that responsibility. With the exception of a couple of weeks in ninth grade, I have never been able to see myself as a teacher. I have a short fuse. I love kids and have a certain amount of leniency with them, in comparison to adults, but I'm not sure I could handle twenty-five of them for six hours a day, five days a week. Truth be told, I am an English major because reading in my favorite thing to do and so I decided to combine work and play. There was very little foresight in it at all. I like to read and wanted an excuse to study literature more throughly. Now,as I wade through this semester, I realize than next year I will be a senior, facing the idea of a real job in a real world. I will be planning a wedding I'm not entirely sure I am ready for. I will pay all my own bills. There is no financial aid for life.
The follow up question is always "oh, well what do you want to do?" and my answer is always "I am thinking about doing something in publishing and looking into the possibility of grad school. " To be honest those are just two of things I could sort of see myself doing in the future. The future, is just that, the future. I have no concrete plans for life seems always to find a way to upset that which one feels is definite. For now, day by day is the way I'll do it.
Baby Running Barefoot
When the white feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in a wind,
They poise and run like puffs of wind that pass
Over water where the weeds are thinned.
And the sight of their white playing in the grass
Is winsome as a robin's song, so fluttering;
Or like two butterflies that settle on a glass
Cup for a moment, soft little wing-beats uttering.
And I wish that the baby would tack across here to me
Like a wind-shadow running on a pond, so she could stand
With two little bare white feet upon my knee
And I could feel her feet in either hand
Cool as syringa buds in morning hours,
Or firm and silken as young peony flowers.
My Grandmother still gets mail in my grandfather's name. He passed away nine years ago. On each one she writes deceased in the handwriting her husband knew and returns it to the sender. I can't figure out if it hurts her more that they don't care he's not here to check the mail or if it its worse that she knows that there have been hundreds of credit card offers and coupons and charities asking for money, hundreds of letters that he never had the chance to open. When I see his name on those letters laying on the kitchen table it reminds me that he lived in this house for a very long time and he held me in his lap just as he had my father, in this house and told me stories in this house and loved me in this house.
What compelled me to start this blog? To be honest, my motivations are unclear, even to me. As an English major my life revolves around literature and in it I find solace. This will be a place to explore literature as an extension and at times, a distortion of life. Beyond that, there are a lot of things I don't know. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up and I'm not sure I'm ready to get married. I don't know how to curl my hair or paint my toenails. I don't even know what I'll have for breakfast tomorrow.
One thing I do know it that I really hate the word blog and after this post I will avoid the word as if saying and/or typing it will infect my readers with Ebola. I need a place where I can say stupid things (reread the previous sentence for an example) and know that I have the right to express any irrational emotional outbursts without fault. In words I find comfort and in that search for comfort I write.
There will be book reviews. There will be poems. There will be rants. There will be pictures. There will be politics. There will be many things,life and literature, most of all.
