A New Page with a number I do not know.

Being in your arms is little more than amazing, and a little less than miraculous.

I've always enjoyed the physical quirks of a relationship; the scarcest and most subtle of movements that belong to us and us alone. Like when in the middle of your sentence I feel the urgent need to run my fingers along your forearm just to make contact with you for a few brisk seconds. How our heights are perfectly matched. When we hug, your arms snuggle around my shoulders and my hands find the blades of your back and clutch them hard. I bury my face in your warm neck and make a point to smell that aroma that no bottle could capture. That area is so soft; it's my favorite part of you. It's there for comfort and solace when I want to hide but also for those playful moments when all I want is a place to land soft kisses that drive you crazy.

That's just the goodbye though. We've spent you've been here for about five hours and we haven't exchanged one kiss until now, just conversation. But the exhilaration from that alone has my voice dry and my cheeks a little pink. It's dark so you can't see it.

In the cover of night, I sneak you soft kisses before my dad catches us. Somehow I know he's spying from some window in the house. The goodbye is always the worst part. It always has me wondering why I hadn't snuggled under your arm sooner or called you "babe" just one more time. But it also keeps me looking forward to the next time when I might have the courage to do what I wish I had done before.

I'm afraid of mislabeling this feeling for something too deep, but just as afraid of terming it something not nearly vast enough. All I know is that when you're here, I smile. And for those few lingering moments after you've gone I sting with happiness and pain all over. And then the words I was too scared to say find a way to my thoughts in perfect construction I write them somewhere secret where I know you won't find them.

But in the back of my mind, I always hope that maybe perhaps you will. 

Human Nature

Living in small town South Carolina, I’ve been taught to walk around with guards up knowing that as a liberal black female, my views will always be in the minority here. For most of my life I've always tried to suck it up and deal with it, but lately It's been getting harder to sit and listen.

When someone is attacked, they are constantly made to feel like they must always be on the defensive. As high school starts to come to a close, lately I feel like my personal beliefs are attacked so much that I can’t even dare to respond because I’ll know I’ll lose my temper. I listen everyday as white kids in the back of my class room criticize welfare, affirmative action, and liberal policies thinking that they’re smart and know so much about the world when in reality they’re just as misinformed as the hypocrites they claim to hate. 

Today I listened to a youtube video of a man claiming that “minorities always think the world owes them something” and that liberals throw cash at blacks, hispanics, etc to try and please them in the form of welfare and affirmative action. 

In response to welfare…I can only say that if anyone cared to do research they would find that the majority of US citizens who receive welfare are not, in fact, minorities living in the drug-infested ghetto, but are actually caucasian farmers. The American right has manipulated welfare into looking like a program made for blacks, but in fact welfare was implemented during the time of Roosevelt during the Great Depression and blacks were denied rights to it. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Era that African Americans were allowed the right to welfare, around the same time they were allowed the rights to vote. Any caucasian that criticizes welfare must first remember that it was, enacted by your people FOR your people. 

As for affirmative action..I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Until a day might come where you’ve lived every single hour your life as a minority, you won’t be able to fathom the aim of affirmative action. Whites have, since the time of the Europeans, controlled the world. They’ve never been the minority. They’ve never had to see the atrocities of slavery, never had to see the humiliation of segregation, and to this very day do not have to walk into an Advanced Placement classroom with stereotypes on their shoulders the minute they take their seats. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans live everyday with that history flowing through their veins. After all the trials we have faced and the injustices we have seen, can you really deny us some preference? You have been the preferred race since the beginnings of history. Now a few of your students and workers have to live in our shadows and you immediately cry “reverse racism” and “injustice.” 

You may continue to assert that those times are gone. Slavery was long ago, and so was segregation. You shouldn’t have to pay for what your forefathers did to us. But every day we continue to pay for it. I’m not going to cry “woe is me” though. A lot of it is our fault. Many of us have succumbed the stereotypes you placed on us, and as a result have reinforced them. And it is essentially up to the individual to decide whether he or she wishes to try and go on despite them. 

But this rant is pointless…

Because some of the people who read this will never agree with me. And the person who wrote the post that spurred this rant will never agree with me either. After all the work I’ve put into this, the people who hate my ideas will exit out still hating them. 

That’s just the thing. We will never agree. And yet we still insist on fighting. 

Don’t you ever just get tired of fighting? Every day I wake up filled with hate and I drag it around over my shoulder ready to throw it at anyone who dares disagree with me, because I love my opinion. Everyone loves their opinion and they want everyone else to love their opinions. But the truth of the matter is that it’s never going to happen. Yet we keep fighting like this. Race to race, class to class, politician to politician, going at each other’s throats. And we never get anything achieved; we only create more negativity and chaos. 

We’re all so different, but really we’re just the same. We’re stubborn, annoying, crazy, and even nice sometimes. The only thing that separates us is the tone of our skin and a few political and religious beliefs. But instead of picking out the similarities, we love to emphasize the differences because we just want to feel better about ourselves. I wonder if the day will ever come when we’ll all just put our fists down long enough to realize that we need each other; our differences and our similarities. That’s essentially what we’ve been fighting for the whole time…we just had different ideas of how to get there. 

It's human nature to be different. But it's also always been human nature to change the way things have always been done and find a way to make them better. 

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
to say that for destruction,
ice is also great
and would suffice.

--Robert Frost

The Best Expression of Love Ever Written

"I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.
I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.
I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love unitil M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.
I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this. I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. 

I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation. I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father. I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious. I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M. I will love you as a starfish loves a coral reef and as a kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza. 

I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. i will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping. I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey. 

I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms. I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and as an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of people who talk too much. I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl. I will love you as the taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock. "

        --Lemony Snicket

Immitations of Immortality by William Wordsworth

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.	5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,	10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;	15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound	20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;	25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea	30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy	35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,	40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,	45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—	50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet	55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,	80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.	85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!	90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;	95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long	100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,	105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;	110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!	115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,	120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;	125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?	130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,	135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—	140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;	145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,	150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,	155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,	160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!	165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,	170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!	175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright	180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;	185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,	190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight	195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;	200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,	205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Beauty

The day was beautiful. 

And so I felt like taking pictures. 

And I did. 

Pre-SAT Jitters

Thinking...

And trying hard not to picture tomorrow as a crucial and detrimental step in life. Trying to disregard what every adult says about the essentiality of SAT scores and test-taking skills and college desirability and bla bla bla.

For a minute I'd like NOT to think about that, but at the same time I feel like I haven't thought about it nearly enough. For years, I've been mentally preparing myself for the time when the actuality of going to college smacks me upside the head, but now that it's here it's almost scary.

But not fearsome. Scary as if I'm some adrenaline junky about to dive off of a cliff or take the final, exhilarating plunge on a roller coaster. I'm ambivalent (<--There's an SAT word): simultaneously having opposing feelings; uncertain.

Out of all of them, the one that sticks out most and dominates the fear, the uncertainty, and the downright anxiety, is excitement. And readiness.

The End.