all the animals at the zoo have ponds

i got it out.

tonight pinkerton got stuck in the cd player in my dad’s car.

tonight my dad and i watched noah empty a carton of milk into an overflowing glass of milk. he spilled on his hand and all over the kitchen table. i don’t think he noticed until the milk stopped coming. after my dad and i were done laughing at him, he claimed he’d been distracted by the stream of milk running down the side of the carton–he was busy trying to figure out why that was happening and failed to notice his glass overflowing.
i love my family.

in an entry dated april 19, 2003, i quoted a bit of to the lighthouse. tonight i went back to page 62 to write my essay for ms. cussler, but i just can’t do it. instead, i’ve reprinted the entire chapter. i don’t believe i can explain the value of this passage in my own words…so here it is:
“No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out–a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress–children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of–to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. there were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. there was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood, always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she lloked at–that light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that–“Children don’t forget, children don’t forget”–which she would repeat and begin adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.
But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had said it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did not mean. She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; one felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one’s being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.
What brought her to say that: “We are in the hands of the Lord?” she wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused her, annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for the world to commit; she knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that. She knitted with firm composure, slightly pursing her lips and, without being aware of it, so stiffened and composed the lines of her face in a habit of sternness that when her husband passed, though he was chuckling at the thought that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat, had stuck in a bog, he could not help noting, as he passed, the sternness at the heart of her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her. He was irritable–he was touchy. He had lost his temper over the Lighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its darkness.
Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight. She listened, but it was all very still; cricket was over; the children were in their baths; there was only the sound of the sea. She stopped knitting; she held the long reddish-brown stocking dangling in her hands a moment. She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one’s relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovlier now than ever he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt her. He wanted urgently to speak to her now that James was gone and she was alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt her. she was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He would let her be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt him that she should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he could do nothing to help her. And again he would have passed her without a word had she not, at that very moment, given him of her own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him. for he wishe, she knew, to protect her.”
but i don’t think i can write about that. so i’ll probably write about a passage to india. off to work i go. i dislike anything that reminds me that i have been sitting thinking.

when i got home from work tonight i was feeling very sick. i decided i needed some quiet time before i went in the house so i cleaned the car. i found several cds i’ve been looking for:
tori amos–to venus and back
boards of canada–geogaddi
marumari–story of the heavens
seldom–romance
denison witmer–of joy and sorrow
and others! i had no idea the car was capable of hiding that many cds at one time. anyway. when i got inside i had one of the cookies i made this afternoon (which are probably all germy, since i was undoubtedly sick when i made them as well). i recently got my first cavity filled* and i realized when i was eating this cookie that i could probably try chewing on the right side of my mouth…i haven’t done this for a long time while eating anything sweet in order to avoid pain…but i gave it a try today. and it worked out. yay.
next stop. kitchen counter. my reading buddy dropped a book off at my house tonight…i hope he doesn’t consider it LIGHT summer reading. 800 pages?? don’t get me wrong–i can appreciate a challenge. but this is quite a lot to take on if i’m going to have three jobs…but i’ll try my best. i should be able to get a head start during the next couple of weeks. we’re not doing anything at school, after all, are we non may termers??
lots of music. tons of reading material. gobs of work. i think i can keep myself busy the next couple of months. but i will always appreciate a coffee break 🙂
goodnight. sneeze.
*it’s those tootsie rolls, mrs. lundquist.

“it’s very sunny”

July 11, 2002
[variations on a] confession
i cry…it happens. often. when it does, i’m hurting. sometimes i’m ashamed of my tears and sometimes i’m ashamed of my lack of courage, faith, or sympathy, ashamed of my selfishness, or ashamed of not being the person i know i’m capable of being. the tears are usually brought on by questions i ask myself. questions like:
how did things get so messed up?
why won’t i let anyone in?
will i let it be about me?
i cry because i’m sad. my concerns are real. my heart needs to be touched. i’ve surrendered to my fears; i’ve tucked myself in and i don’t have the strength to get out into the cold on my own.
i’ve never wanted to believe that anyone was capable of helping me. it’s mostly a pride thing. it’s also a self esteem issue. i’m careful with who i am to other people. i’ve been hurricane ana. harmless. whirling around in the middle of the ocean. not bothering anyone. falling apart. losing strength. fighting yourself is exhausting.
these are my thoughts tonight. they are the truth. this is what is in my head. i feel so heavy. so full. tomorrow is a new day. tomorrow the sun may shine and i may forget all this. i hope that happens. i hope these last 10 days or so end tonight. if not tonight, maybe another day soon.
everything’s going to be okay.

my one on one philosophy is flawed.
grapefruit juice
simon

simply–
it sounds like rain. the way your lips sort of pop when you get halfway through the word…and then the rest of it just floats. it reminds me of the raindrops that fall right before it starts to pour. they fall and hit the pavement and then jump back up, hovering for a moment before they disappear and become part of a puddle, just like a single word gets lost in a poem or a sentence or chapter.
it reminds me of music. a giant orchestra. all the musicians have their eyes on the conductor, waiting…sssssss…waiting for him to bring down his arms for that first beat, waiting to let that breath go before the notes take over, running, running, running off the page.
i see magic. a man in a top hat at a 5 year old’s birthday party. his eyes are closed. he stands with his fists clenched near his face. he looks like he’s concentrating so hard he’ll explode. then boom! his eyes pop open, his hands pop open, and out flies silver glitter into the cheering audience.
and now the excitement, the anticipation, the urgency is gone. it sounds like rain. the way your lips sort of pop when you get halfway through the word…and then the rest of it just floats. it reminds me of the rain as it finally begins to slow down. it’s like someone is whispering some secret…some secret the whole world would hear if they’d stop to listen to the beauty of a single word.
–simply

whirling around “out there”
not close enough to do any damage
harmless
becoming less organized
weak
losing…strength…
forgotten