"Do you think God has a bachelors of science degree?"
-Billy

Dear Jordan,
I'm just wondering where you are, and if some girl made you fall in love with her yet. And if she did, was it because her hair was long?
That's all for tonight.

Love,
Ampa

"I'm going to beat the maximum hardness of aliens."
-Nick D. on Halo, age 22

Science of Sleep made me sad at the end, even though it ends so happily and they're smiling. You still really don't know...

Sundays are always usually a little bit sad, and a little hit happy. I wake up alone and decide whether or not I'm really trying to quit coffee. Undecided, I drink half a cup and pop in a movie, around noon. My family is still gone somewhere so I eat a bowl of cereal around 2, finish the movie, and go for a run.
Feel lightheaded, lay on the floor with my dog for a minute, and then decide to shower. Perhaps catch up with my friends later and still haven't had a conversation with my parents in over a week.
Repeat, more or less for the next 52 Sundays til this one rolls around next year.
The weekend is not a reflection, I believe, on the substance of my life.

here it is

I walked in the door and started thumbing through mail that finally got here after I waited such a long time and my mother incredulously asks me, "Were you smoking in your car?" And yes I was. "Well, could you please leave your clothes outside?"
"Could you please leave Saturday night at Saturday night?" Don't be rude, guys. "I can't believe you were smoking in your car." Tanya's dad is in the hospital. They think he is going to die.

Tanya bursts into the room when I am on lunch; she is waiting for her husband to take her to the hospital, and somehow she is still thinking about me. I am lying on the couch with a blanket pulled up to my chin. It feels weird, your boss seeing you trying to fall asleep. It feels like she is at my house.
"Will you eat my lunch, Rachel?"
"What? You should eat it later, if you come back, you will be hungry."
"No, if I'm hungry I'll get something else."
"Tanya..."
"Please, Rachel, eat it. It will go bad otherwise." My shoes are on the other side of the room. I feel strange.
"Thank you Tanya, I will pay you for it."
"No don't worry..." we are sitting in silence. "I want to kill her, Rachel. I want to kill the bitch that kept pouring his drinks. I can never forgive her."

No, this is not about love, because I am not in love.

I met you at the bus station when we were both late for something. You were the tie dye in my shirt, or the black out I had yesterday at 11:43 a.m.
You were, essentially, the best cup of coffee I ever had.

I try to capture you and put your face in my dreams, but often I wake with very little success. Mostly you have forgotten all the poems I memorized for you. My handwriting that you never saw. The letters you didn't get because you were out of town, or out of the country. You were in the air and I tried not to love you like I tried not to breathe.

No, this is not about love, because I am not in love.
Of course there is guesswork that I've given up on, because I've gotten too old and stopped wearing my glasses.

Noah is in the room next door making sound effects ON TOP of the sound effects the game is making.

concentrate from argentina

The bird can sing like a cardinal now, imitate the microwave timer, catcall, and he is just learning to say "Pretty bird". The last part is sort of funny because when I first got Goulet, Philip said, "No, don't say pretty bird, the last thing we'd want him to learn is something as cliche as 'pretty bird'." I would also like to teach him to say "Bite me" but I don't think my family would love that.

I'm having a mid-week weekend. I'm skipping church to watch movies and eat oatmeal creme pies. You would too. Better than a midweek meltdown...

"So that I remember to never go that far, could you leave me with a scar?"
(Missy Higgins)

Its been one month and one day since Brian Reagan died. Everyday I go past the billboard on the freeway that says Beloved father, son and brother. But I didn't go past it yesterday because I stayed away from the freeway.
I always think that its interesting that he shares his name with the comedian, and until today, I was always thinking about when it would be a month since he died. It has probably been a hard month for his family.
I like to put months in front of months, because I think that whatever painful experience you've gone through, that more and more months equals healed over pieces of your heart. Pieces that the cuts and scrapes aren't so raw. So in Brian's one month of being somewhere else (Heaven or Hell, I guess God only knows a man's heart), I've been paid two times. The moon has gone away and come back. The days have gotten colder, but they've at least had more minutes of light extending them. It's even a new year.
I think in this last month, I realized that I needed to live a more drastic life because I've gotten comfortable, leaving (as Ben Dory would have said when we were six years old) butt marks on the benches at Amigo's. I think Ben might have gotten spanked for saying "butt" that time.
I realized this when I noticed I was saying the same thing to every customer, and that my job is so second nature that I feel like I've fallen asleep, and as I hand back the receipts to bank patrons that I can't even remember running the transaction.
I love my job. Lets get that straight. I love my job because my assistant manager is awesome. Anyways. I was saying a more drastic lifestyle.
This is 48 plus hours now of no secular music. Its hard and its easy. It gives me time to think and pray, but I just feel like some Regina Spektor or Damien Rice to shoot up my veins. It's good. It's been easier not to swear. It's been easier to just sit back and praise God.
Secondly besides my music fast, I've only spent $5 in the last three days which is hugely uncharacteristic of me. I'm on an actual budget because I do want to go to Spain.
And being poor and singing through the silence in my car has actually made me a happier person.

funny in a certain light how we all look the same.

I am going to Spain. I like to say it over and over again and feel the way it rolls out of my mouth and makes everything a little warmer and it makes things smell better.
I'm not going to Spain. Well, I don't even know yet.
But I'm planning on it, which is a little bit dangerous, and exciting, much like planning a love affair or playing the right line in the right part of a song.
Okay. Enough for now. I'll check back with you if I even get a passport.

I'm on a music fast right now. I'm not listening to music (in my car at the very least) so that I can be still and know that God is God, I guess. I need to talk to Him more. It's cool. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm 28 hours strong.

And I'm relearning Spanish. It's all coming back to me...

Here's some truth from the freeway. (far too early in the morning to be considered sensical)

I would like to step away from this whole "being a Christian thing". It sounds so easy to just do that, you know. I always have these five-minute-fantasies about moving away, and starting a new life to party and have fun and forget who I am.
But in the end, I know I can't. I know that Christ is sewn into my skin, and that no matter how much I don't like God all the time, I still love Him and that starting a new life would have my old problems tagging right along. You can't just forget about a relationship you have with someone who invisibly holds you every night. You can't just tell God to go away. It doesn't work.

For better, or for worse.

honey, there is love for you in my heart whether or not you want it. whether or not you can understand it.
I meet you in the distances, the frequent air pressure moments that make the fall apart so easy and delicate. and you are under my skin. holy and undeniable.
when the furnace turns on I can't feel it.
when the skin is broken my blood isn't about to leave this spot in my heart where it warms to the idea of you. the idea of what--
well, lets be honest. you will break me down into something you could tie up easily with shoe laces. Something you could ignore with a mute button.
But I am not afraid anymore.
I am just smoke floating in and out of window screens. Something that will stick to your clothes for a day or two, but you won't notice.
Will ya.

A couple weeks ago on This American Life, one of the stories was about this girl who received a heart transplant when she was 11, and later became friends with the family of the boy whose heart was beating in her chest after he was killed by a gang.
I've been thinking about it late at night sometimes, about what that would be like to have someone else's heart beating for you. She said she was so overwhelmed, like she had to lead a good enough life for the both of them, since he couldn't. It made me check my self to see if I was living a life worthy of this heart that beats in my chest. Made me grateful.
But also I thought, what if I could give my heart to someone who really needed it? Would I do that? What if some other girl needed my heart to keep living and she had three kids and a husband who loved her, and this fulfilling life... I wonder if I could give up my heart for something like that. Someone who was doing more with her life than I was..
Just a weird thought.

florence of calamity and joan of arc

We were drifting around Salt Lake City together, and it was something like falling in love. Or falling into a sudden friendship, even though we've been considering it for a while now. Her frequent and rushed phone calls that were always on the verge of tears.
"Its funny that I even met you at all," she said, while we were eating noodles and staring at one of those bored couples that don't have anything left to talk about.
"Yeah, I guess it is," I say, smiling to myself. She is so small and thin that she looks breakable. Like a delicate structure made out of sugar, or something equally blond and fragile.
Somehow, even in my shyness with her, and my fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of saying something that will freak her out, we are in the cab of my truck in sugarhouse, drinking coffee.
"When we were in there, I felt as if all those people were going to get me," she says simply and honestly. I know she's not making it up because she's spent the last three days in her bed, not leaving her apartment to eat or even get her mail. "I mean, I called my work and told them I had to have my tonsils out in an emergency. Who does that?" She grabs my arm suddenly. "Can I use your phone?" She asks me. And I let her.
"Yeah, I'm in sugarhouse," she says, "with my friend Rachel....no....no...she's a good influence. Shut up you asshole....no.." she starts searching through my purse all of the sudden.
"Do you need a pen?" I ask her, my head on the steering wheel, I'm not sure what is going on.
"No, sorry, just a twitch," she tells me, going back to the phone.
"Okay, we'll meet you at the library. You're a jerk." She hangs up. "That was the boy I am in love with."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. You'll come visit me won't you?"
"Of course I will. I'll bring you cookies, and CD's. Will you have a CD player there?"
"I might have an iPod."
"Oh."
"I don't want to go, it's stupid." We are in a window well on the fourth floor of the library, and I am staring at her profile. I'm scared that she will break my heart, a little, even though I barely know her. She always looks like she could start crying at any moment.
"Three months of rehab is better than six months of jail," I finally say.
"Can I give you a hug?"
"Please."
I hug her and wonder how I did even meet her. How she happened to me so quickly, and I start to think that maybe God knows what He is doing...

It was once so easy to just look at them and fall in love with them. Boys or girls. These days I feel a little ripped off by how long it takes me to trust someone even through their faults.
But I guess that's life.

I'm in much confusion about what is stable in my life. Everyone's always talking about how loosely you should hold onto everything. That God has to be in control. Which, I agree with, but what in the world am I going to hold onto so that I don't go careening in some other direction. I have no gravity. I have cold water and shaky thoughts and credit card debt and not enough coffee in the world to get me out of all of this.

I had horrible dreams last night.
When I finally woke up for the last time, I was back in my house, lying on my couch. I put my glasses on my face and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. I yelled at Bingley a few times to quit licking his leg and he finally just ran away.
I set my alarm pretty late on Sundays so I can feel sort of smug when I wake up before it goes off. I'm not really fooling anybody.

I'm having a thoughtful Sunday. After a week of not thinking at all, it feels good to have a small amount of emotion, and a small amount of transforming thought. I had an hour long quiet time while it snowed and I reheated my coffee three times.
We watched Rent last night which is (in my opinion, and quite a few of my friends disagree with me) a horrible movie. To me, the songs just weren't great, and I felt like everyone in the movie got what they had coming to them, so I didn't really feel any sympathy for them. No, I don't think that's self righteous of me, I'm just being honest. If you're sleeping around with people who shoot heroine up their arms, or if you are a man having sex with another man, I don't really feel bad for you when you get AIDS. You chose your lifestyle.
If any of them had repented, it really could have been a different story to me. I might have cried, even.
Okay. Saying these things out loud will probably come back to bite me.
Having more than one day off gives me too much time to think, I guess.

take this for a grain of salt
as Nick D'Amico would say

"I know sitting in this Barnes and Noble Cafe that my underwear is probably showing. I know I'm young. I know that true love has never shown up at my door or saved me from anything, but that my friendships have saved me from a hell. I know I've made some mistakes, but I don't think that I've made my one big mistake. I know that glamor is worth something, but my life will never be rock and roll. I am far from the end, but I hope for it's nearness. I'm happy even when I am unhappy."
-Me four months ago

I am learning things. I am growing. I think someone is done punishing me for listening too long to one song.

"How was your flight, Mom?"
"Did you know you can buy a beer for $5 to wash your Codeine down with?"
-Judy

should we sing some kind of chorus?

At two a.m. on my way home this morning, I realized that I am a feminist. I am. A feminist. Maybe a closet feminist (can I be that, does that exist?) but it's there all the same. And the reasons I would never yield to believing I was, was men that made me believe you had to be a lesbian to be a feminist. That you couldn't be a mom. That you couldn't be a cute Christian girl and still be a feminist.

But I don't see it like that. And I don't see why I can't have a strong mind and not wear cute jeans. And I don't know if I will put up with any more nights of being degraded and laughed at, however indirectly it might be.

and I can sing the blues so well...

There are always those people you meet that are lonely.
When I first met her for the second time, I could tell that she was lonely, and I feel bad now for not trying to fix her better. You always think that someone else will do that part; the fixing.
You could look into her eyes and know she was falling apart, even though she wouldn't admit it. She wouldn't confess about cocaine or nitrous oxide...but she gave me clues.
"I sat in front of my old house the other day," she told me, when she was generous. "I smoked a pack of cigarettes and cried the whole time." I thought about that. I even tried it once. I tried smoking a pack of cigarettes, and crying. I got three cigarettes deep and realized I was a jackass. I don't have enough sadness in me to do that. I am, most of the time, a truly happy person.

She cut her hair, and disappeared.

I saw her several months later with a much older man, and I wonder if she will ever be happy. I wonder how much her father damaged her by just not loving her enough. How much any of our fathers damage us, and how blessed I am to have the father that I have and have had.
I went through a phase of being angry with my parents (I never thought I'd do that, but I'm just a teenage dirt bag baby...) and at the end of it, I realized that it wasn't my parents that screwed me up. I did that myself because I had nothing else to be angry about.

"Everybody's so inviting, they have it in for me I know.
It's not that I don't really love you, it's just that I don't really know."
Julian Casablancas

How do you take care of someone when you are nowhere near them. How do you help someone out when they are falling apart from the same thing you've fallen apart from in the past, and there was no way out of it when you went through it in the first place? That you just had to suffer through with Wes Anderson and Spoon and Zach Braff and that crying for a lot of nights eventually turned your heart into something impenetrable enough that you just kept going day after day with a cup of coffee in your hand?

I don't know how to say all those things them. Everybody chooses a different poison.

"The hateful things you think you want to say,
time will turn them into jokes. (Yup.)"

I'm standing in my room bending a credit card in half and my feet are starting to feel sweaty because I'm wearing slippers. Why does it have to be that way? I love slippers.

You know how there is caffeine to wake, and pills to sleep, and medicine to make you happy when you are not...why can't there be something over-the-counter to make your mind come alive and think new things? I am already tired of winter and how it traps us in. How the snow won't go away.
But at the same time, I am already so excited because I feel like I'm on the verge of something new. In 10 more days, the sun will start rising earlier and setting later, like the world was just a ping pong ball and it hit the other side and is bouncing back now. The world is bouncing back..

an unplanned nap

an unplanned nap
Originally uploaded by virginiaz

night

It took me all day to get where I am. To create this hair. To dress and to walk with my head above water. To get used to the cold, to wrap a scarf around my neck. To forget the night and the dreams, and the way my heart felt the last time it was dark outside.

And I have to do it all over again.
What a terrible dance we do.
This night and day thing.

Originally uploaded by EvilxElf

Often I forget that I belong to the Lord.
That Jesus bought me and I made a promise to Him.
I always try to keep my promises.

I also forget most days, that the people I'm standing next to are my brothers and sisters. Because I forget, I often don't treat them with the respect they deserve. Or the respect they don't deserve. Either way I should be kinder. We are entertaining the angels, after all.

Thank you, Jesus, for the music. I don't want to fool around anymore.

When I am near you, I see what you love so clearly. No one else knows that you are repeating yourself, in your own kitchen.
Somehow, I don't get tired of it. I just love you.
More.


My ride home tonight was strange. It was snowing, and I was crying, as I pulled of the freeway, and once I finally got to the stop light (traffic was merged to one lane, and even though it was midnight, these guys were out working on the road, and there was bad traffic) And this man, I saw him jump up into this backhoe in the middle of the intersection. He stood wiping the wet snow off the seat of the backhoe, and I felt sympathy for him, in the middle of my self pity, I stopped thinking of myself. When he sat down, his jeans were going to get wet. And how long did he have to be out there on state street anyway? Til six in the morning? What? I was obviously staring straight at him. I didn't have anything else to look at, and I was unashamed. He was staring at me, back. From underneath his hard hat, and over his sweatshirt he had pulled up over his nose, he stared back. I was friends with him. We were old pals.
And just like that, the light turned green, and we both forgot about each other. I zoomed through the intersection, and he waited for the next car to stop at the light and make friends with him all over again.

I don't have anything left.
ANYTHING. I am less of a personality at the end of this week than I was at the beginning. I am foolish, I am flawed.
And it's like, oh well.

To do before I'm twenty (an abridged version):

-ride a roller coaster (never done that)
-drive a motorcycle (see first item on list)
-stop cutting my hair
-grow some flowers
-spend a day with God
-fall in love for the first time (maybe)
-Go back to Colorado
-breathe underwater
-do something very "un"Rachel (call in sick and go see a movie? leave the country?)
-see the ocean
-drink coffee in Portland
-watch Magnolia
-break a bad habit
-do something nice for somebody else

My dog is hacking something up upstairs and I just spilled my entire cup of coffee on my desk.

I still don't know what I am doing, and what to do with my life. I dropped one of my harder Spring semester classes, and replaced it with Yoga and Bowling to fulfill the credits. I'm sort of excited.
Maybe after the Christmas break I will want to go back to school. Who knows.

I want to sit down and make a list of things I want to accomplish before I'm twenty. Will update on this later; I'm taking suggestions...

"Set your mind on the head pin, not on the side pins."
Pocket 5:19


(Tony)



It's Tuesday. I'm finding lately that I need to be redundant with myself about what day it is. Yesterday (which was, yes Rachel, Monday) I sent the tube back out to the drive through and said, "There ya go, have a great weekend!" And the poor old couple stared at me for a few seconds while I turned red and did not correct my mistake. I think what I meant was "Have a nice holiday." or "Happy Thanksgiving," but somehow these all run together in my head like coke does.

We left it feeling fresh in some other atmosphere and we forget to tell you what it feels like and we also forget to care. It was a phone flipping open and shut and different hours to think in different languages.

It was seventeen shivering seconds before we met in the car and buckled ourselves in.
It was the truth.

It was reclaiming broken soldiers who were hazed by the sounds of bombs. It was showing them what it meant to be warriors.
The good side, whether or not I can feel my fingers.

"No, not the Indians from India. The ones from South America or Mexico or Wyoming."
-Kels

I dreamed that Gabriel was four years old and Hannah went and got him tattooed. He had an entire sleeve. A little four year old boy with a sleeve. Even in my dream I had some questions. Was it legal? Was it going to stretch out as he grew up?

I dreamed that Tanya and I quit Chase and we were both working at Walmart with Bryan. We had to drive about three hours to get to work each day so we carpooled.

I love dreams. I always make a point to remember them when I get to sleep in. Last week when I got to sleep in I had a dream that Tony and Philip and I were going to rob a credit union. But I chickened out and we ended up just going to get a burrito at Chipotle.

I've started a new goal of each day to pick something that makes my entire day. That way, at least one amazing thing happened to me, and anything else is just bonus.
For instance, I ran into Eddie yesterday when I was studying at SLCC. (I don't go there anymore, it's just a convenient place to study that's not my noisy house) We both stared at each other and tried to remember who we were and then suddenly we were talking, even though in the 6 years I was in love with him, I never got the courage up to talk to him. We would always just stare at each other when we ran into one another at Jordan. So it was no big surprise that we just picked up where we left off. But anyway, I realized I was still in love with him, and it made my day.

Today I got some great Bowling Bible verses from Bryan and Tony and they made my day. I'll share them with you so you can be happy.

"For the LORD is Perfect, he cannot tolerate a spare. He looks down on gutters."
Strikealations 7:10 (Bryan)

"For those who don't strive to bowl, don't strive to be like the Lord, and therefore do not know the love our Lord offers."
Bowlariah 11:8 (Bryan)

"Doing your best will not get you to heaven, so be perfect and bowl a 300, for I am perfect said the Lord."
Bruinswick 4:9 (Tony)

but I'd rather not celebrate my defeat and humiliation here with you

salt fingers, cuts, yes cuts. Hold an amp in your arms. No, please feel this way when you sit on the couch, and then never feel that way again. Take a picture. Your eyes have never looked that way before, to me, and it shuts down my heart to never love. A tube of paint? Dirty in the morning, dirty at night. With only seven cups of coffee to keep her moving, honey? How's she gonna do that tomorrow and the next day, with sticky fingers and skinny jeans?
I don't have words, anymore. I don't think straight, anymore.
The only thing I know is Jesus.
The only thing that keeps me free is Jesus.
The only way my heart is clean enough to get out of bed in the morning and look you in the eyes is Jesus.

eventually my mouth will just turn to dust.

On Wednesday, Billy was doing something interesting with Brittni's pedal board. It was like he was recording and looping himself, or something. Maybe it was just reaaaaally long delay.
But the stuff he plays and makes up on the spot is some of the saddest stuff I've ever heard. When he plays it and it loops over and over, I want to live in that pedal board. In that amp. I want to sleep there and have that be the music of my life.

Sometimes I think music is the only productive part left of my life. I mean, I make money to pay my bills day after day, and I'm going to school...but for what and for who? Its going to burn.

I had a little nervous breakdown after creative writing class today. But instead of smoking or running away I just went bowling at the union. As Walter from the Big Lebowski would say, "Fuck it, let's roll." So I did that.
After two horrible games (lots of strikes, but not so many pins total...) I walked out of the Union and went straight past the building my next class was in, and started heading toward my car. But then about halfway there I started crying and turned around. I am not very good at skipping school anymore, no matter what kind of existential identity problems I am having mid-afternoon. Besides, I hadn't seen William in two weeks.
So I walked into class fifteen minutes late, because I am a weird girl who bowls between classes. But it was good I went, or I would have missed a quiz and a prompt for the paper we're supposed to write this week. Hmmm. William stuck his tongue out at me from across the room.
Our teacher had two Muslim girls come to class today and give the class an overview of why some Muslim women choose to wear the coverings, and tried to explain that they were not being oppressed by their husbands. They were very sweet.
At the very end, one of them said something that really hit me. She said, "At the very least there are now twenty more people in this country that will not look at us strangely when we are walking through the airport."
White people are assholes sometimes. I am an asshole sometimes.
I want to live my life with more compassion. I forget how privileged I am most days.

This is what I feel like when I feel like nothing matters.
Like when all I get excited about is warm coffee and 2:30 when Bob shows up.

I do like playing the bass guitar.
I do like paint...paint everywhere.

I'm trying to convince myself I'm alright and I'm doing a horrible job.

Tanya gave me a really strange look today that I've never gotten from her before. I came back to work during the lunch rush, and she was on the phone, and I pulled out a V8 and gave it to her just because we are friends. She gave me a friendship look. I took a picture in my mind.

I am scattered tonight. I am in boxes in the garage. I am in dresser drawers. I am locked in the vault running low on oxygen. I am speaking Spanish.

"You have the word s-e-x in your bathroom."
-Kelsea

My week in review:
...I read my Bible every day, which I'm pretty happy about. Its funny what an affect it has on you just to get up and read your Bible and eat oatmeal. It's a destresser for sure.
...I went bowling..of course.
...I went to bed at 9:30 on Halloween, just because.
...I saw my first zombie movie. (I think I'm hooked.)
...had a wonderful dream
...switched great music with Roy
...met Brittni and Hannah for breakfast
...and I fell apart at the finish line, which I've been hoping would happen for a while. When you just bottle things up, it has to come out somehow. Maybe not in the burger king parking lot, but oh well.

I hate waking up to no milk on a Sunday morning. What a bummer.

My life is in fast forward, right now, which I don't really mind. Where has the month of October gone? I've spent it at the drive through, working for the mafia, or something.

I slept in til 9 this morning, which is a novelty now that my hours have changed. I laid there, and even though I could hear the words "pancake! pancake Izzy? Would you like a pancake?" I didn't get up. I rolled over and played music on my phone and fell back asleep.

I'm content with my life, right now. Which is a dangerous thing to say, because then you know something will come along. But I'm happy right now. I'm learning self control in some of the most difficult areas of my life, and my anxiety at school, and sometimes work has been going gradually away.
I'm okay with what's next, whatever it is. Bring it on.

I try to write things down that people say when they're funny to me.
Here are some Tony-isms from dinner at the D'Amico's last night.

"That's not called an Americano, that's called 'Can I have a little sick with my disgusting?'"

"I like to 2nd hand smoke better than first hand smoke."
"Well I just like to smoke in the house."

And my favorite

"Yeah, she's had a little bit to drink, but haven't we all?"-when no one was drinking but him

Tonight I went to a rapid fire poetry reading at the Art Barn. I met William there and Alex (also from Gender class) came too.
The Art Barn is a cute little gallery near the university where they have poetry readings frequently. A lot of the young "urban" professors read their stuff there. I think they're all pretty good friends. They had lots of inside jokes.
Even the bathroom was so cute I wanted to take pictures. I walked around and looked at the art with Alex. He thought I was really superficial because he was really looking at the pottery.

They had a few really good writers that I liked. One girl stood up and did a monologue about how she'd been hired to hold Dick Cheney's hand at night because he was scared of something under his bed. It was pretty funny. Others were really explicit like my professor told us they would be.
"Is this what you really wanted?" William asked me, both of us blushing.
"Not really," I told him, although a few hours before I'd told him that it was exactly what I was hoping for. "I told you it would be this way though.."
His professor went up after that and William rolled his eyes a lot at him, because he thinks he's a douche, but it was pretty funny.
We even had cake, and then Alex said, "I must be going." It was all very surreal and fancy and really delightful actually. I would definitely go again.

There are moments, here and there, that I know life exists outside of clips of money and angry drunk customers.
I know it in the rotting leaves and cold air, and seeing my breath. It all reminds me of my head buried deep in your laundry and the kind of tears that feel so good.
I want more than anything to be in Des Moines.

"So who said 'shitting kittens'? I WANNA KNOW."
-Charles

Sometimes
I
worry
about stuff.

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me."
(T. S. Eliot)

My mind is muggy like the humidity that suffocates you during an Iowa summer, so much so that I couldn't pull my pants down because they were sticking to my legs. But in those days, maybe I shouldn't have been wearing those shorts. Shouldn't have been looking out the window when I was going to the bathroom.
I was saying, my mind is cloudy. The thoughts go in winding roads and I want to complain a lot but I just turn it all off. I turn off the brain.
I'm supposed to be writing a paper. Of course, I'm writing a blog, and I still don't know what I'm saying.

Often when I am sitting in the drive-through, I live out an entire year of my life. I pick one man that I wonder what it would be like to have a relationship with. In my head, I play out the first few months. Then I go to the part where he stops paying for dinner, where he doesn't love Jesus. Where I've been staying out too late and there is nothing fruitful I have to show for the last six months of my life. In my head, we break up, and just like that the relationship is over. It has saved me much grief. Men I didn't really love. Men who were too boring. Men who smelled good but weren't very funny.

I am tired.
I want to quit school. I want to buy a motorcycle. I want backpack across Brazil with Alison.
But I don't have any guts.
I just have coffee and aspirin and my commute to look forward to. Day after day...

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

Even though Tony was mad last night, I realized we're going to be friends for our whole lives. Cuz his favorite number is 9, too.

It's just such a great thing.

A list, because I haven't thought straight all week.
-work
-fall break (yet not a vacation)
-tired
-coffee
-ASHLEY'S wedding
-champagne
-aspirin
-my camera is back in my possession. don't have to buy a new one. good!!
-postcard from California
-sugar
-keeping people together
-watching them fall apart
-Tony boiling mad
-tricky
-the smell of the rain sweet and untouchable
-someone to listen, someone to talk
-an email about Regina
-a nap during skateboarding season
-the hole in my heart that I build a fence around and cherish so well that it becomes a dear old friend, (war-torn and unhappy) but hopeful.
-and every breath we drew was hallelujah.

Kelsea and I were sitting at her kitchen table after dark on Sunday, getting in a good three hour talk. I told her that it seems like my life moves in these repeating sessions.

Right now, I'm going through a workaholic session again. Working to take my mind off things I don't wanna talk about. Working because I don't have school. Working so I can buy another camera, and finish paying for my bass. It is my machine-self. Get up, coffee, work early til closing, usually. Having meaningless conversations with my coworkers. Tanya gets mad at me for something, then she settles down. Touch my hair and forget that it's still on my head. Cash in. Cash out.

Go to bed, with few exceptions, not having even seen my friends, and press the repeat button after 9 hours of sleep.
I'm looking forward to Ashley's wedding. Not looking forward to school starting again next week.

Maybe I'll buy a ticket to the Regina Spektor show. I owe it to myself. I just don't want to see all the stupid people there that don't love her like I love her. I don't want it to ruin her for me.
But you need something to look forward to, or else...
what?
What else is there left.

With my hands in my pockets, I told Sarah.
"Yeah. That's just me, and I can't change." But I knew I could change.
But she didn't need to know that. I realized I could say anything I wanted to her, cuz she doesn't really know me. Now that the other Sara is gone, I really have no reason not to be a very private person. Or a liar.
I just didn't give a damn, this morning. Staring out the drive through. No one comes to the bank on a holiday unless they don't remember its a holiday. Columbus day isn't a real holiday. I mean, come on.
"Well, that's really sad." And she went on to say something about herself, and I zoned out and made the appropriate noises in the appropriate places like I usually do.
"So is that how you were raised?" She finally asked me. She's a psychology major. I closed my eyes and wished I'd had at least nine cups of coffee at 7 a.m. I check my phone before I answer her.
I am an asshole.
"Um, actually I was raised to believe I should buck up. I was raised to believe that life is hard and you should get used to it. But I was raised to believe I was better than everyone else." I watched her eyes go very wide and her eyebrows lifted. She squinted.
"Hmmm." I could see her wheels turning. She's one of those people who stands up for poor people and black people and people who have open minds. It's not like I'm not. But sometimes she can almost come across as fake about it. I like to push her buttons. "In fact," I said, "I have a really hard time liking people who are different from me."
I said the word different like it was poisonous. Just to freak her out.
"Oh....really?" She breathed slowly.
"Yep. It's really hard." But just like that the fun was over when she started talking.
"Mhhhmmm," I quietly said to whatever she told me after that.
Making appropriate noises in the appropriate places.
I looked at the computer screen. Put my money in clips. My Russian boss at lunch. Grumpy with me. The words on the computer screen say my name in all caps lock. It unnerves me. Seeing the A in Rachel in caps. It creeps me.
You'd think this life would make me bolder, but I'm running scared is all.

"To the core of my being, I'm a plastic green army man. And I'm satisfied with that."
-Kelsea


I had a very strange day in Provo, American Fork, Salt Lake, and Sandy. Yes. I drove one hundred miles today, and saw quite a few circles of friends. And I got cultured.

"Wait, Vegans go to the bathroom?"
-Scott

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love..

Oh dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers
I have not art to reckon my groans but that
I love thee best, O my best, believe it. Adieu.
'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him,
-Hamlet

Sometimes, I go completely crazy by 3:30 p.m. on Thursdays, because they are chaotic messes of days. I won't bore you with work and school details, but in between classes I stood out side, at the very end of the sidewalk and ate a bag of chips, in the sunlight. (It was colder outside than in). I rocked back and forth on the age of the pavement. Every once in a while mumbling profane arguments with myself.
"Who the hell is that?" I found myself saying out loud, to no one and about no one in particular, as if I were supposed to know every one on campus, and that particular girl in the headband was unfamiliar to me. I burst out laughing and walked inside. My hair is long now.

Moving on.
My boss finally gave me more hours since she couldn't find anyone to fulfill a full time position. I plan on being out of debt by Christmas. I'm pretty stoked about it. Just worried that it will be hard to keep up with school. I don't really love school right now. I'm having the same ideas I have every semester about dropping out, but it usually goes away in the summer.
Hrrmmm.

Oh well.