"Those trailers depreciate so quickly though, like cars."
"Well you know what Tony, they would still appreciate you."
-Bryan

"Maybe when my hair grows long, I will buy a motorcycle."
"Maybe when your hair is longer you'll realize that we have a son together and stop denying him."
"If I ever stop denying him, I'll become an alcoholic."
"Well if you keep pursuing your dream of being on vh1's Divas Live then of course you'll end up an alcoholic. Stop kidding yourself and grow up already."

-a typical text message conversation with Celisse

I am still dreaming about that Saturday somewhere in the future that I get to sleep in. I am exhausted. I am guilty about stuff, but my hands are clean.

Cords and cables. Pumping cold blood back into my arm.

There are doors.


"Ma'am how was your day? Keep your eyes on my face. I want to help you, if you let me."
cold war kids

On the second thought.

Probably like, two months ago I told all my coworkers that I was going to marry a big fat man who didn't care if I was fat. And then I pursued eating every donut and cinnamon roll in our store that I could get my hands on. I filled cups full of signature hot chocolate and whip cream and let it go up my nose until I felt completely happy.

Two days later when it went straight to my love handles, I called upon Mia St. John and the Skinny Bitches. They helped me get straightened out, and I felt so much better.

And now I am in a place of confusion whether I want to eat an entire chocolate cake by myself, or if I want to run for 3 hours a day until I am high off the seratonin and ibuprofen.

These decisions end up making me take a nap.

Best day ever.

Well not really. But its a really wonderful day and I feel obnoxiously happy and thankful.
I missed the first train this morning, but then it was fine. I got on the next one and played Lego Star Wars for half an hour. I made it to my first class on time, miraculously. Somehow I got all the copies of my story (by the way I wrote a story, and it actually has a happy ending!) made in time to just sit and eat with Kristyn. I even got my school i.d. from the lost and found, so I don't have to pay $20 for a new one. I turned in everything on time, and my teacher ended class talking about Lost.
I got a cup of coffee at my store, and workshopped some papers.

I think you could beat me with a stick, and I would just laugh. I'm deliriously happy for no other reason than that Jesus is good.

what I want
Is to sleep in on a Saturday,
eat steaming hot waffles with so much butter that I could hear my arteries clog themselves up, drink Ethiopian Sun dried Sidamo black at the perfect temperature, read my Bible, and then go back to bed.

I believe in this vision. I just believe its a few more months away.

I was really ready to remember a better you that spoke French, even if I take the bus. Even when I fall asleep with my arm on the thermostat, even when I was crying about the older sentences we'd found so amusing, I mean not crying actually. laughing.

They'd take my arms off first and give them to a girl who wanted to hold her child.
They'd take my legs off next and make some girl walk more miles than before she'd been attacked by a shark.
And then I'd feel really sorry. I'd write them letters and say, I'm sorry you'll get bruises now; never figured that one out. One'd write back and say, "I found the burn on your right arm, where you dropped a pan of hot water. The other'd write back and say, "You have flat feet, but some good shape otherwise."
But that would be the end of it, a farewell to limbs.

And then I'd wake up in a Tim Burton movie, or else South Dakota and make a lot more spelling errors than I use to. Better sentences, more amusing.
I'd put Z's where S's go, like I was British.
I wouldn't eavesdrop or drink lattes.
You wouldn't either.
I'd put a note on my calendar when you're coming back, but forget because I'd drop my phone in a boiling river by accident.
It's okay, for a Wednesday though.

tracing the lines in my face for something more beautiful than is there

I like second-hand smoking best. I was standing behind this kid, in front of the door as he was smoking it down to the end, and it smelled rich. Not like the smoke left in your clothes or car. It was smoking and still smelling. Hopefully second-hand smoking won't give me blood clots...
Anyways.
It's Spring today, and I'm thinking about the farm. Dying for the farm. But I'm enjoying life. I'm enjoying sunshine.
Not upset about losing my Train pass, or about guys asking me out, or about my teacher going long, or about all the things that are coming apart at the seams.

Because things are lovely. (I think it's been the 10 hour nights I've been sleeping, and reading the Bible before the sun comes out.)

"Hail to whatever you found in the sunlight that surrounds you. Pretend all the good things are for you. Pretend all the good things are for me too. The weather changes not halfway between your house and mine."
-Rilo Kiley

things you can tell just by looking at her

That she'll easily break my heart.
That the hair in her face is hiding a child I've known all my life, but just met a few months ago.
That she could run my fingers over the scars on her arm until I didn't know who I was or she was.
That she is beautiful and needs to be held tightly til she's not crazy anymore.

And the part that hurts the most is that I can't express to her how Jesus wants her, and wants to make right with God for her. How the nights have hope when to live is Christ.
I'm scared about the explosion.

Ma'am how was your day? Keep your eyes on my face.

Sometimes, it ends up that the sugar in your bloodstream makes that guy look a little familiar.
You think you should explain, "I'm sorry, you look so much like someone I know."
And he is staring at you, thinking, "You are a crazy wacko: hand me my drinks and let me go."
And you think, "No, I brushed my hair today. And if I lean out the window, will you take me in your arms and love me better than he did? Since you look like him, can you just love me a little bit better?"
But you hand him his drinks and don't say anything.
You stop drinking so much coffee, and grow a little older.

"I mean if you smell your hands, they smell like 'hands'...at best."
-Matt Kilpatrick

it's a little like chasing Charles. Only now, a year and a half later, I'm hitting all the red lights--you don't call, you don't write-- and I can hear him singing next to me and I smile because, you are letting your guard down aren't you? Its my arm out the window.
We'd stare and stare, Charlie, and I'm going to come looking for you in Arizona or whatever. If you're going to be there, or Colorado. That's fine too. Grow up cynical on East side or West side, Charlie. Free burritos.
Erase all unread.
Erase meeting men too suddenly.
Erase first dates if he doesn't believe in God.
But keep your iPod close and look at me across parking lot libraries.

It could have been good, Charles.

Uh, I am suddenly in love with tennis. Its all I can think about. I'm finally back into working out outside. I am done with Mia St. John, and the Skinny Bitches (yes, they are really out there, and they are a great workout). And my fingers turn purple and I can visualize my lungs filling up with ice. But it's very spring for February.
God is so good.
So good.

The summer I graduated, Danny came back from the war. I remember driving around Peoria with him and Jackie, singing "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" and feeling the immediate shame.
We were driving to Home Depot.
We got there, and he was sitting on a glider, staring off. Jackie was saying something, there were birds flying around the ceiling, trapped in the warehouse. All I could do was look at him and wonder where he was.
We knew that he had changed. We could feel it. It was like walking on eggshells, and pretending that none of us had felt the terror of gunfire and roadside bombs.
But my grandfather and I sat next to each other at a bonfire one night, and he held my hand because I was weeping. He started to weep with me, even though we were broken in two different ways.
He wept for Dan and how you can't come back with the same innocence. I wept because I felt I was shell of a person, and that you weren't supposed to go into the beginning of real life feeling like you were hollow inside.

We've since been healed, the three of us in different ways, although my grandfather is blind now, and my heart doesn't beat the same way because of what the last three years have done to it. But I think what I mean is that I miss the Midwest.
The holiness of empty fields and eternal sunshine.
The roots you put down one time, and seeing that they still give you a foundation later on.
The only place you ever found unconditional love.

Yeah, the first time you met Jesus.

"It's always a good story if it has tamales. Its just true that everyone likes tamales."
-Matt Kilpatrick

what we need is just what we want

It wasn't that I didn't like Jeff. I just take a really long time to warm up to very outspoken people who try too hard to get me to like them the first hour I know them. So he automatically thought I hated him.
"Can you remember a day in your life that you were nice to me, Rachel," he says to me one day. I pause for a very long time because I am vacuuming coffee grinds. I close my eyes and grit my teeth. Finally I just go along with it.
"No, not a specific day, Jeff."
"Funny, neither can I."
"I don't hate you Jeff. You don't understand me or my humor."
He made me a nice mix tape for Christmas anyway. It had a Vampire Weekend song I'd never heard, a Ryan Adams song and a Pinback song that make me cry, a good Cat Powers jam, a Spoon favorite remixed...and so on. It took me a while to think that maybe I should be nice to him. The Stars song was what did it.
So one day I started a conversation with him about the music that was playing at Starby's. We were talking about the band's last album and how it'd been a while since they'd come out with something.
"It was the end of 2006," I told him.
"Yeah, you're right. It was like, October. Because that was when she told me she didn't love me anymore, and I was foolish to think she'd get excited about me telling her about that album." But the way he said it wasn't like how most sappy guys are trying to go for pity. It was matter of fact. I respected him for that, because I realized he was a deeply sad person, but never shows this. Its always about the dumb jokes. He doesn't open up. I like that.
"Yeah, I remember stuff like that by the relationships too," I admitted to him.

And we still piss each other off. But we kinda don't try to kill each other anymore.

some things I know.

I know its hard to find things in your truck when the overhead light doesn't work for several years. I know that somehow your skin adapts to 20 degree weather, and that the bus driver doesn't remember your face no matter how many times you thank him, with snow in your hair. I know that for some reason old scars do go away after a while, and that this is a blessing. I know that coffee ruins and saves lives. I know that the neater the piles, the more pieces of myself I can find laying around my house, and stuff in my bag to sort out later. I know how to work the washing machine. I know about the other girls the rock star is writing, in the other towns. I know to floss now. I know which things to keep secret in the freezing car, and which ones to admit to. I know I miss medicine, and the race, and purpose.

I don't answer the phone if I do not know who's calling, but I guess the whole point is that we never know really.

no taste for you left, even if my hair grows long.
if that carpet was vacuumed up and the cell phones were charged
We're clean
unhappy
carbonated
and can't find out all the secrets.

Little girl on the bus: "I'm gonna throw snow at my daddy. Like, roll it in a ball and say, "whoops!"
Her brother: "Can I throw snow at my daddy too?"
Their mom: "You can put some in the freezer and save it for when he comes back from California."

I spent a lot of time on Mass Transit today. And went to the mall with my backpack on, which is awkward, especially at a store like Urban, or Lolabella. "Hi, I'm just a crazy weirdo with a backpack on. No I'm not stuffing clothes in it. I'm just a student. Sorry."

Done with:
-5 weeks of school
-1/2 of my total papers due in critical theory
-cafe rio (never again)

eventually our mouths will just turn to dust

I know when I get to heaven, I will be stoked about a mansion and stuff like that, like not having headaches, and hanging out with my friends and peace.
But really what I want, is to just read through stacks and stacks
of
reports.

Rachel , welcome to Heaven. Yep. You died at age 63 of complications of cancer. The good news is you're in heaven now, and we just thought you should know that you:
listened to Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis 18234 times
over the course of your life you used 32424000 rolls of toilet paper
you ate 792 bowls of pho
you went through 46 bottles of shampoo (it would have been more but remember when you were working on dreadlocks?)
845 bowls of mac and cheese
you saved 1200 gallons of gas by taking the bus and riding your bike
You got 1750 bruises, but only 24 were bigger than a baseball
you ate 3 rocks and 2 starfish that were as hard as a rock, and swallowed 9 spiders because you slept in the basement.
Yours truly,
The counters


It would be something cool like that, but more color coordinated.

For some reason, I told Amalia my entire love-life this afternoon before leaving Celisse's house. She gave some very sound advice in her Spanish accent for 20 minutes, and then I laughed and went to the Dentist.
I worshipped God with Jason Mraz the whole way there, but Mraz doesn't know this. With an entirely numb face and a generally optimistic outlook towards mankind I set off into the world.
I'm feeling pretty good from diet and exercise. I haven't smoked in ages, and God walks with me where I go. Despite all of my friends getting pregnant or married and settling down all around me, I feel like the majority of us are on the verge of something life changing (as if those things aren't life changing). Like a balloon ride above the pollution here, only more hardcore. Like where we are going to go.
Perhaps because LOST is back on.

In the beginning of January I was smacking my head in my hands thinking how many steps backward I had taken since the January prior. I felt burnt out, tired of "church", and ready to join the army, or something equally brash. But as quickly as it's gone, the first month of this year has made me realize that despite losing a lot of the amazing things that were keeping me going a year ago, I am always growing, God is always teaching me new things, and that if your friends are any good in the first place, then they are easy to graft back into, whether you chopped off your branches, or they helped you out with it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, that after learning a lot about self-discipline from John McArthur, from quitting coffee, from working out and going to bed early, from sleepovers with Celisse, and after packing away Christmas and the other depths of winter, my heart is finally ready to heal over, and begin again. To be best friends with Jesus first, to have new plans of hope, to have new destinations.
And starting this adventure alone doesn't bother me, but leaves me young and gutsy and free.

Yes, I'm slaying dragons every morning without coffee.

Murder me Rachael, I've made a mistake

My Writing teacher has a tattoo sleeve that he keeps barely hidden, he casually mentioned that he eats pho (by accident), and he's a grad student who drinks water almost as nervously as I do.
I think I have a crush on him.

In other news, I really have been feeling blessed by a few things

-I don't even carry pills around with me when I leave my home for days because I haven't been having headaches
-sleeping at the Momberger's; always. Its wonderful not waking up to a house full of dogs, and Celisse is pretty great too. Ha ha.
-being free: I hardly ever worry anymore about doctor appointments, homework assignments, working 40 hours, money, men, anemia, going to church, band practice. It's like I hit the easy button.

It could be because I've been listening to rap from Jeff the Vegan.

I've been wrestling.

I don't know what I'm up against but I keep fighting and it feels amazing. I throw punches and someone is smiling.
I sat in the dark last night because there was a huge power out. Lit candles and tried to fall asleep without white noise, thinking about what my life is going to be like when its over, and it just looks white, like the end of a book. Like snowfall. When you end up turning the next page and there's nothing?

I run. I run for me, and someone else out there I don't know yet; I keep running. And I am flawed if I'm not free.


"I could follow you into the rubble, or stay right here and save myself some trouble."
-Aimee Mann

My eyes and lungs hurt from the very short time I've spent outside today, waiting for the bus in the pollution.
It wears me out.
And so do annoying English majors.


But God is pretty cool, and I have faith that it has to rain or snow sometime. If it doesn't I'll probably hop a flight to anywhere.

I thought Kayleigh died, but it turned out she just broke her phone, and she's been right here, the whole time, playing Halo with her boyfriend.
I woke up to a text from her, "Rachel rachel rachel rachel, hi hi hi hi hi hi how are you?"
So it turns out that she is even more than alive. She is shooting aliens or something, and she picked one of the six guys, and finally settled down. It made me smile in a fog of alarms as I was waking, to know that she is back from Dixie and that she didn't fall down a mountain, which has happened to at least one person I love very much.

I was trying to decide if it really was worth taking the bus over the train, and I just don't have any answers yet.
I was galloping out to my truck in the warm night air (Well, it's practically summer by now, here, of late) with a flash light, happy to collide with any massive objects made out of metal and collecting pieces of my day to play over again after chicken, polenta, and salad with basalmic vinaigrette, and I just thought,
"Why not?" smile and think of old text messages when you were happy a hundred years ago, or maybe 2008. "Why not be completely, utterly, and divinely happy, despite it being the season of despair?" You can still vacuum the carpet and hear happy accordion music whether or not Darrell hates it. You can even like Ed Hardy, whether or not Darrell hates it.

And I did buy 4 pens today, which is probably why I'm in such a good mood.

"When you're little you think that you'll never catch on fire, but it's really surprising that so many people actually do."
-Celisse, on the Stop, Drop, and Roll method

Dear Kayleigh,
where are you? I am really starting to worry. Every time I see snowboarders or girls with their hair braided down the side of their heads, I think, "where is my Kayleigh?" and you are nowhere to be found in this moment of now.

Please tell me that you are not in an avalanche.
Goodbye,

Rache

Its funny how when your classes are over, you really don't know if you'll see your classmates ever again, and so I said to Katie the other night, "Well, have a good life." Although this is a very small town in someways and it is quite possible that you will run into them again unless they move to Europe or California. But then, you could possibly run into them in Disneyland. It's happened before. I've at least seen Casey three times this semester on campus, and he'd been the one last year to tell me, "Okay, have a good life, and walked out of Building D on Murray Campus.
I was thinking about it during the last train ride with Luke, and how I probably wouldn't ever see him again, but I'd meet the same guy a few more times before I graduate. I'll have several more boyfriends to ride the trains with, or talk about Norma Jean concerts in Ogden, or be upset about Spanish with.
So....so long Luke, and Katie with the tattoos and there was Charles whom I had loved a year ago in ENGL 2500, or William that I went to the Art Barn with who was tall and had smart glasses, and I could never tell if he was all the way straight...
I will meet you again, or I will not meet you, and no hard feelings.

One day, as I was playing reruns of her in my head, rereading all the notes she'd written me in short and sporadic meter and thought, I wondered if maybe she knew she was crazy. That she'd realized long ago that it worked for her, whether or not a person could appreciate her the same way I could, because they would at least like her, if not love her the same way I do. Her hair kept changing color, and maybe I couldn't reach out for her, but she'd still be there with her eyes open wide and her laughter would wake me up after I'd been awake for hours.
Whether she knows still, that she is crazy, I don't really know and I'll quit caring. But I can't stop loving it from hours and hours away.

"Is this the way that my life was supposed to play out, Liz? The kid who paid his way through Princeton by working day shifts at the graveyard, and graveyard shifts at that Days Inn?"
-Jack on 30 Rock

For a minute yesterday, I forgot the word leg.
This is not as bad as 3 days of forgetting the word jar, but leg is a word you use a lot more frequently than jar.
I kept poking my leg, on TRAX, thinking "Pants? Pants. Pants." Getting frustrated cuz that couldn't be the right word. I started saying it out loud, hoping it would come to me. Pants. Pants? "When I wake up in the morning, I put my jeans on my....pants," I whispered. Nope. Wait, leg. The word is leg. I put my pants on my legs.

I'm doing a little better today now that I had so much sleep. But seriously.

"Well I think that we should all be a little suspicious of a person who does not have piles in their home."
-Judy

I live on fremont ave. that's the small duplex, you can even see it from the train. right there: with the green door and that's my blue honda civic parked out front. the man next door is gay. his name is harry and he teaches classes at the community college and high school but no one really knows he is gay.
He lives alone also, although I didn't always live alone. I lived with a man named James and he was handsome and we'd watch law and order together and make pancakes on the weekends but we don't do that anymore because one day he woke up and said that I wasn't what he always wanted out of life and he ended up going back to Pennsylvania in the spring and I looked into the mirror day after day reciting poetry I'd memorized a long time ago. I looked older but I still lived in the duplex.
I spent several evenings with a bottle of wine in my hands, consulting a good friend here or there over drunk conversations on a cellular telephone. The next morning I'd realize I was really going to be fine, and wrote down grocery lists in a little red notebook that would fit into the back pocket of paper denim jeans, sliding slightly off my hips now that I'd lost a little weight.
The sun would creep up later over the buildings and the shadows would make us colder than normal, but it was always alright on Fremont.
Staring at a baby: you don't have to stare back to them if you don't want. No one will know if you don't look that baby back into its eyes. It won't tell anyone, cuz it's a baby, I thought and then went weak in the knees, thinking of James and staring out that window instead of a baby.
And there's my duplex. Here's the stop, sorry, man, I've got to go, but call me later, okay Sara? OF COURSE, she replies, coughing into her coat and pretending.
She always pretends.
And I found out today that my gay neighbor Harry; his sister died. His mother was at his side of our house weeping, but I don't know Harry well enough to console either of them until she takes me into her arms. I make them dinner and she says,
"Lucy was a good girl, she was with a horrible slut of a man, but she was a good girl," and I've got to frown a little bit. I'm making them spaghetti and Harry is in the other room flipping channels, and I forgive him for not weeping over his sister, he is coping, I tell myself.
I pet his mother on the head, wipe her tears off a little bit and tell her something nice, something about love that I won't believe for a long time,
but that's how it is on
Fremont.

beautiful scandalous night

I was once a tired blonde waitress feeding three kids on my own. I was an old man driving a semi and knowing America. I was a secretary, a mistress sitting in an empty hotel room, being sent flowers and thinking sex was love. I was a 47-year-old surgeon cutting corners. I was once a lawyer looking out the window on the 13th floor and thinking I'd go back to Omaha one day.
And when I was done being all of these things you met me right where I was, and my heart was clean
like
bleach
white;
a young lady, cold but not unhappy.

You've been good to me.

wherever we are, we can't go back where we were

here's to calling it a night when you're waking up for the day, or not really being able to tell which is day and which is sleep.
here's to fake-falling-in-love, and falling out of real love.
here's to crash cymbals and other necessary evils.
here's to vitamins and head colds.
here's to cappuccinos in Orem and hearing Thrice at a Starbucks.
here's to waking up exhausted.

This is my ten minute break breakfast.

For about 3 or 4 days, I have forgotten the very word "Jar". I have forgotten what it is, or that there even was a name for it.
A "bottle" of paint thinner (turpenoid to be exact) broke or has been leaking in the cab of my truck, causing...fumes. Only I knew the shape of the "bottle" and it wasn't really a bottle. I was thinking it must be a glass, uh, can? I couldn't remember the word for it until tonight, as I was opening the door of my truck and smelling the turpenoid afresh that I realized it was in a JAR. What the heck.
Jars of jam.
Jars of clay.
Jars of peanut butter. Pears. Tomatoes in the root cellar in Illinois.
Why did I forget this word?
Maybe this is a statement on my condition of never sleeping.

I think one of Satan's big tricks is in making us forget that we know who we are.
I'm always walking around thinking, "I don't know who I am. Don't talk to me right now, I don't know who I am." I glance around the room, hoping for several smiles to put me back in my place and make me know that I'm really Rachel and that I have been for years and years.
Even standing on stage tonight (I don't get nervous. I'm just not nervous about playing very much) I suddenly forgot how to play Good to Me, even though we've played it 10000029i03 times, and then I'm like, "Well if I don't know how to play this song, then who the hell am I?"
But my identity is not all over the place. It is stationary in my relationship with Jesus, and in being a daughter of God.
Rock solid.

Audrey got baptized tonight which was pretty sweet, and we went over to her place (which is Sierra's house) and saw all of her cats.
And I think I've reached the end of a very long headache.

"I know that you would like-like to change me, make me softer:
tune your voice just like a baby. I'm using caution...
bet you wanted.
I wish you could wait to tell me in the morning."
coldwar kids

I don't really know what to do with myself when I am not at work, school, on campus, or in band practice.

Last night I got pho with Celisse and we went to Tony and Shannon's to watch Pride and Prejudice, and Audrey came over too. It just feels back to right. Back to normal.

And the snow, has been beautiful and doing brilliant things with the sky.

when I stopped running from Luke at the top of my lungs, I turned around and realized he wasn't chasing me. didn't have cigarettes in my bag, didn't have norma jean on my mp3 player.

and now I ride the train alone, I catch the 8:04 because I don't wait for someone who makes me smile.

status: 25 days left
weather: slightly warm
health: chest pains and droopy eyelids

apparently I write coherently but my theses are too vague. I get notes like, "Rachel, considering that this paper has such a terribly broad thesis and jumps around from film to film, you made it work quite successfully."
Maybe I need to make use of the writing center. I got style, I got pronunciation, but I can't figure out how to make a narrow thesis and use it for four pages...

"I've got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream."
-Fiona Apple

Handsome is somehow always a little friendly, and always a little rude. I think that's how I like most of the people in my life, but then it makes it harder to think of something to say to answer their questions.
He comments on how I am always there, every morning, making his coffee, and I think, at least I can be constant in one person's life, because I am not there for anybody really. I chase after someone who doesn't exist anymore.

I am going to California. I am going to do homework. I'm going to the gym.
There are little things to make us feel like we are not overwhelmed. Things that help me bite my tongue, and plant my feet. Things that keep my heart on defrost in the microwave, instead of letting it freeze at night out on the backporch.
It's gotta be the Bible, and it's gotta be So Sexy Shampoo that I can smell in her hair when I walk behind her that reminds me of the best days of my life.

"Tony! You came, I can't even believe it!"
"Well I told you that I would."
"I know, but a lot of people say that they will."
"Well this is at least my second favorite Starbucks." (Then he starts to count on his fingers) "Actually it's probably like, my 4th or 5th favorite..."

status: Thursday-26 days left.
weather: slightly less freezing than yesterday
drink: double tall signature hot chocolate (half SHC/half NF Milk), sub foam for whip, light caramel, sea salt)
sleep: four hours

Popping pills in the Marketplace (where Dr. Pepper is only 79 cents? What new mystery is this..) in my Starbucks uniform still, keeled over under my backpack. Five minutes till class.
Somehow my eyes are peeled wide awake; Kezar pops into the room in the middle of our quiz with a balloon, and starts sucking down helium.
"For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love," he says to a silent audience, like a chipmunk.
Class is over, "What did you say?" Nick asks me, and admits, "I'm sorry, I've been on mescaline all day." And then I pick a business man I can sit next to for 45 minutes, because they never want to talk unless its on a blue tooth. And it will be my pleasure to just not talk to you, you grumpy old man in a suit. I'll love you better for it.

of good medicine.

Tonight we went to see David Sedaris read, and it was fuzzy and warm and made my heart so glad. In general it was just such a good day, because I woke up and Lauren made me breakfast and we read our Bibles together for a little bit, before she dropped me off at school. I turned in my long paper on movies that are about underdevelopment in South America, and I met Alison's friend Saige for real and we sat by each other and watched a weird movie about a cow dying in Iran. Then I totally skipped Spanish class and met my parents, brother, and Jeremy and Aimee at RedRock and ate some very good hot wings.
(I'm leaving out the part where I left my phone in a bathroom, some girl picked it up and called my mom and I run back to the bathroom to see if it's still there--its not so I run to the Union and this dude says the chick will bring it back after her five o clock class--such an ordeal) But I had it, and then I left it in Jeremy's car for another two hours while we were at the reading. So at least 7 or 8 hours today I did not have my phone and it was like Heaven.

"To be lonely is a habit, like smoking or taking drugs,
and I've quit them both, but man was it rough.
And it just made me tired. Now I am tired."
-Jenny Lewis

Hannah and I got pizza last night and watched Bandits and a couple episodes of How I met your Mother. Today I'm gonna meet Alex at the gym, and eventually go to church.
I am very happy. Things have settled, and it's all downhill on a longboard from here.

where have you been all my life

I've been thinking about that a lot lately, at least, so much as I've been walking around this state with all my friends for years and years and never knew them. I wonder sometimes, what my close friends were doing a couple of years ago, before we met, and sometimes maybe we were walking along the same sidewalk, seconds apart, and never knew each other.
In the same movie theatre and had no idea that in later years we would share stories and laughter and take espresso shots together so much earlier in the morning than 95% of Utah could possibly be awake. True love, and where were you when I was hurting earlier on? How did I live so long before I knew you and you saved me from the horrifying melancholy tones of twilight, beyond, and the penetrating light of the stars that burn your souls from mountain tops.
(The answer is Jesus, but it's still an interesting question)

I don't know all the stories yet (well I know a couple of them, and it is constantly a puzzle I feel inclined to put together in my day-dreaming moments on the train, or when my English teachers are going off on the finer points of Yeats) but for instance, the other night I discovered Luke, (my TRAX "friend") and I had been at the same show at Boom Va in Ogden a few years ago. Fear Before the March of Flames had opened for Norma Jean I think, (I have since referred faithfully to this particular date as "The Very Worst Night of My Life") and I'd been in the car trying to convince Ashley that it was okay to go in, (she was nervous to see and be around Billy, they've since married and have their happily-ever-after) and she breathing fire, "DO NOT tell me to settle down, I hate that." (we were such different girls back then; drinking iced tan mochas and smoking prime times in sugarhouse...and I don't drink tan mochas at all these days) And she met up with Billy and I'd lost track of her, I was sitting on an effing chair in front of the merch table hoping some Merch dude wouldn't come and make me go away. I hadn't slept in over 48 hours because I was working graveyards and I'd played with Normandy on campus during the day, taking a short nap at Joey's house and just kept going and going. I saw Matt Nanes drifting in and out and in and out. I was crying because I had a cold, and I was genuinely thinking whether it was worth it to off myself in the bathroom at Boom Va or call a cab back to Salt Lake. In the parking lot later (it was so so so cold, I think it was late November maybe) at 1 a.m. and Matt Nanes volunteered to take me home "early". He was my hero that night. I thought maybe we should get married when we stopped at a gas station in Clearfield.
Anyways, Luke was there at that concert the whole time, and we probably ran into each other and didn't know it.
But thinking through this story I miss being 18 years old and everything being such a big deal for no reason at all except that it was so new.

And now I've been to the hardcore shows and gotten over the fact that none of my hair is bleached and that I'm a typically joyful person. I leave early and go to dollar movies and don't feel much regret over it, and all my friends are getting married so I don't have to even go to the Scream-o shows much. I have my own ideals from growing up across America and listening to Bob Dylan and Jenny Lewis. I have my own knight in shining armor who doesn't play guitar but maybe grew up in Ohio or somewhere midwestern but who still happens to wear designer jeans and drinks coffee much too much.

And I guess I'm going back to California for a little bit, which makes my heart feel slightly weightless. My face is permanently smiling today.

One thing that I love about these early Starbucks mornings is how I feel like I am making the most of my days. Seeing the sunrise, enjoying the world before everyone else wakes up.
Today we ran out of practically everything - like usual - and so Hannah let me go to another store to beg, borrow, and steal supplies. Also I had to go to Walmart with the company card to buy milk. I walked up to the register, all dressed in black, with 14 gallons of milk in my cart, and the company card was expired, but they somehow let me take the milk anyways. I was walking out the door when one of those creepy Walmart greeter guys chuckled at me and said, "Thirsty?" And I was confused because I'd forgotten about the 14 gallons of milk, and he had a cup of McDonald's coffee in his hand. I thought he was offering me some of his gross coffee, so I said, "Oh, no thank you." And then I walked out the door with 14 gallons of milk and realized what he was talking about and laughed.



It was a beautiful day of rain and mist, and the mountains are turning colors, but are now capped off with snow. The trees at the top are frozen into sugar and some one can go up there and make snow angels while we are still driving with our windows down, here in the valley.
So Kelsea and Caleb let me come with them up Little Cottonwood and we hiked for a bit, and then I ate dinner with them at Caleb's parents' house.

Its funny to spend time with your friend's parents and realize why they are exactly who they are.
But no matter how great Caleb is, I wouldn't love baseball for him.

Matt- I will look forward to our luncheon for the remainder of this morning and during my afternoon classes. It will sustain me.
Sincerely, Rachel

Rachel. The pho will sustain me just as much as the pleasure of your company will.
Regards,
Matthew

Matt, with the accordance to the Utah Clean Air act, I suspect neither of us will be smoking during our company. Thank you, Rachel

Rachel, the surgeon general reports that smoking is bad for our health. Please don't smoke if you are pregnant. With all due respect,
Matthew

Matthew: I already knew that. I am pregnant with the surgeon general's baby. I was more concerned about second hand smoke.
Yours truly, Rachel

Dear Rachel, I was hoping to be a surgeon general one day and make someone pregnant. Thanks, Matthew.

Matthew, I hope you fine some new goals in life.
Appalled,
Rachel