I have not posted on this blog in so long! Blog, have you missed me? The period's almost over, but I'll come back and write more during lunch.

Although I conquer all the earth,
yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
and in that house, one room only;
and in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
the shining jewel and joy of all my kingdom.
~anonymous

went to the tool concert last tueaday in new haven....it was awesome. i noticed when i was a kid in music class how when someone was playing the snare drum i could sort of feel it in my chest; i thought i was imagining it, but later i learned all abotu the interesting properties of sound waves. the really powerful ones, like those of tool all amped up, resonate across your skin and through your body and make you feel like there's something inside you. i'm wondering, actually, if sound waves interact differently with your vocal cords, which resonate themselves already; it felt like there was something in my throat that i couldnt get out. it was awesome.
the music was great too.

it's hard, accepting the fact that you may never get something you want so badly that it makes you want to cry. now i feel sick, and i'm not sure what's causing it, my emotions or something i ate. just go away, world....i want to be alone

welcome home, meghan! i missed you!!

I couldn't blog the whole HILL trip experience if i tried, so i'm not going to sit here clacking away for hours....i will say it was incredible, and so much fun, and somethign i will remember for a very long time. i love the people in my class, and it's great to think that we're only going to get closer from here. in the future, i'll have my notebook and hastily scrawled notations to remind me of what transpired and the way it made me feel. now that notebook has the record of my hill camping experience, and all the stuff i wrote when i was at the breadloaf conference, two very important times in my high school life. i hope i'll have it for a long time.

Who ever thought that a woman's heart's desire could come down to macaroni, glitter and popsicle sticks?

You'll never guess what michelle found in the giftshop of the wadsworth atheneum today :-) .....none other than a painting of The Lady of Shallott!! i can't believe that i failed to notice it any other time i've visited. i know the last time, with creative writing, she made us focus on some stupid tells-a-story painting. i also remember seeing the "hercules wrestling death for the body of alcestis" and "the disenchantment of bottom", which is apparently a scene from a midsummer night's dream. it's very lsd-hallucinogenic, lots of demons and swirling colors. but back to my miraculous discovery--- there, between two other paintings which i cannot recall, was the most beautiful creation i have seen in so very long. trumping, even, my favorite ecstasy of st. francis and the dark horse, the gallery of cardinal something or other. The Lady of Shallott, an interpretive painting from the early nineteenth century by one William Hunt, who was involved with Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the Pre-Raphaelite Society. (Since pre-Raphaelite was an era of painting, i would assume this to be a group of painters, although i had only known that rossetti was a poet). anyway, it's utterly gorgeous. the array of colors is really unusual for the period, since you expect most things of the 17 and 1800s to be dull and drab and gray/brown. i loved it and i want it. heather told me that if she had the money she'd buy it for me, but alas, high schoolers can rarely buy museum-held masterpieces. this one is going on The List, which documents those paintings/works of art which, when i have the proper resources, i will buy/steal/swindle from their rightful owners. i actually found a poster of it in the gift shop, nice and glossy, but it was twenty bucks and i decided to let it go for a few months until i can trick someone else into buying it for my birthday. but i bought the postcard, which is a shabby replica to say the least, to add to my wall of other shabby replica postcards.
i think i will be going to the wadsworth again next thursday. they have one of those little couches right in front of it for lovestruck patrons to collapse onto. heehee. *does pretty painting dance*

i hate cigarettes. and i hate restaraunts that allow people to smoke their little cancer sticks even more. why should my life expectancy get lowered because some wrinkled, croaking old cronies sit there puffing noxious fumes in my direction for an hour? they can cough up a lung and die on their own; I'd rather take the consequences for something stupid that i actually do, like chasing a ball into the path of a bus, or petting a really hungry zoo animal. or something.

i think i'll visit the wadsworth tomorrow. i've never been to a museum by myself before; always with family or friends or school. it'll be a new experience...plus i just can't wait any longer to see that st. francis in ecstasy painting again. you wouldn't think that you could miss a painting, but... liquid darkness, that's what it makes me think of. then there are the paintings that you could just eat up with your eyes, the ones mario told us about that you just want to take in until they're a part of you. especially the big ones, where you can sit down on that terrible industrial carpet and gaze at until it surrounds you and maybe if you look long enough the people inside that frozen world will come alive, and turn and look at you, and welcome you inside to join them. florinda, in the met in new york city...i only had a few minutes to admire it but already i knew i wanted in.

if i get into harvard or bc or bu or northeastern, i will LIVE at the boston metropolitan museum. it'd would of course be more fun if it were the NY met, like in "the mixed up files of mrs basil e frankweiler". then i'd set up a tent in that egyptian temple downstairs. the boston museum unfortunately lacks a temple, but i think i could manage.

The Lady of Shalott


On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?

Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott."

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, burning bright,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And around the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.

Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."

~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I memorized this poem once, like in Anne of Green Gables, so that I could go around and recite it to myself. I thought it was one of the most lyrical poems I had ever read. However, I was never inspired to dress myself up as Elaine and send myself floating downriver on a funereal barge--which would inevitably sink and leave me clinging to the side of a bridge, thus necesitating my rescue by the handsome Gilbert Blythe. Um....not like I reread those books all the time, or anything.

just said goodbye to meghan on the phone...she leaves tomorrow for New Mexico for a couple weeks. what is it with people i love ditching me to go camping in NM? well, a week and a half until the HILL trip. minus meghan, it's me and my friends and four days of sweaty bonding. plus those four random guys who for some reason are in the class. i really think the reason connor and chris are there is because mr. tressler didn't want it to be just poor luke and steve against fourteen girls. they wouldn't stand a chance.
i guess i'm going to be sharing a tent with heather and rae for sure; heather figures sara will want to tent with annie, who will want to tent with taryn and maybe jennie. rae and heather want our fourth tent person to be a certain grumpy young man whom has been long fancied by the female half of the Northwest population. never me, of course *cough cough* it cracks me up to just think of him waking up next to heather. heeheehee.

Someday

everything will be ok someday they say
but i'm sick and tired of waiting around for someday
i want someday to be now
i want to know what it's like to never worry to never lie
i want to know what it's like to be happy to never die
when's the day that everything will be ok
when's that day because i know it's not today
and i'm so fucked up
and everything is so in vain
but everything is going to be ok
someday
~greg paul

i love living in a house with no men. i enjoy the freedom to run around scantily clad at all hours, probably to the great horror of my neighbors. i would be quite amused by the possibility of answering the door with only a strategically placed towel, but i don't think old mrs. long would take the shock well. she might fall over and die.
i suppose i should begin those dreadful assignments for school. ugh. i haven't read three of the four books yet. i'm almost done with LOTR, thankfully, although i took time out this afternoon to read The Princess Diaries Volume III. short book, but so good *sniffle*
you know what we watched last night? well if you're rae or heather, you do, actually, but anyway....Robin Hood!! the Disney version with the foxes and other animals!! :-) It has to be my favorite Disney movie of all time. when i was a kid that was the first movie i'd always try to get from the library, but my mom got so tired of seeing it she tried to not let me take it out anymore. but i hadn't seen it in years, so when we watched it everything was so hysterical again! and sad. there are many parts that make you go "aw...." like the little poor rabbits and the old owl couple in prison...*wipes away a tear* i think i need to buy myself that movie. heather had it taped off the disney channel, but it was still surprisingly good quality. but i want the shiny plastic box, too. i just hope they haven't stopped selling it now...such a great film. and Sir Hiss heehee god i loved that snake! heather and i both love the romantic waterfall scene, naturally, but we both remembered it being a little different from the way it really went. rae had never seen it, egads! so she needed to be shown the glory of that foxy Sherwoo Forest bandit.
continuing in this theme, perhaps i should watch Robin Hood Men In Tights again. I love all the Robin Hood movies, even that bad one with Kevin Costner. Legends of Robin Hood were my favorite when i was but a small child reading this one volume of my dad's encyclopedia that had all the fables, myths and legends my little heart could desire. only thing i never read were aesop's fables because they bored me. it's sad though, i never liked the end of the robin hood tales. maid marian dies, robin hood's old and dying in some convent, and he has little john give him his bow one last time so he can shoot it out the window; where it falls, he is to be buried. there's some poem he recites too, but i forgot it.

my hair's almost dry. i think i need to find myself some clothes now.

nothing works for an upset mind better than driving around with your stereo so loud you might just crack the windows. my mom sent me to the grocery store for baking powder--to make delicious banana bread--and i cranked it up as loud as i could physically stand without wincing. it really makes you feel like you're inside the music....but it leaves an unfortunate ringing in the ears once you shut it off.
even my sister's being nice to me. i'm frightened. she bought me a book of !!! crossword puzzles. i didn't even know she knew i liked doing them. but they're not the hard ones that i like.

had a fun time at sara's today with heather. i love girl talks; i usually just get them one on one; me and heather, meghan, sara or rae, but rarely a combination of people. it's nice. heather and her flapping-in-the wind sexually suggestive motions, which she was performing in front of sara's wide open front door for the pleasure of the populace, made me laugh. heehee. i love heather. tonight, her show mame is on, which i have to go get dressed for. i don't feel like getting dressed. i feel like going as i am now, with the too-short ducky boxers and pink tshirt and totally messed up hair that i haven't brushed. i went into koko's like this. well, i had my hair in a ponytail then cause we'd come over from the gym. but the proprietress said that compared to the getups some young people wear, mine was "mild". that's good to know. however, there will be many people at this show with whom i must attend school that i haven't seen all summer, and i don't really need their first memory of me to be quite this frightening. us in our little uniforms is scary enough. god just thinking about those skirts and the damned knee highs makes me ill . i hate having to cross my ankles all the time. one more month and then they're back again. two months from today is a.) my seventeenth birthday and b.)the day we start having to wear our awful sweaters until fucking may. by which time i'll be a-graduation anyway. wow, by then i will have been rejected from harvard. or, with some divine intervention, accepted. then one more summer and i'm off and free, free of windsor and my family and everything about high school that i hated, except for the people i'll always love. you guys i'll keep. it seems so far away, us all having to say goodbye. but i know all too well how time flies...it's been two and a half years now since he died. he left me a freshman, and now i'm getting ready to go off to college. what would he have thought, to see me now...
that's a recurring chain of thought for me. once i get started thinking about him i can go on for hours and never reach any sort of a conclusion. better not to try, and just go get dressed.

Dad, I miss you

A couple of my dad's friends are over my house right now, talking to my sister. They've given her a scholarship every year since she's been at school--which she used once to purchase an expensive laptop computer which she ended up detesting and giving to me *eyes laptop lovingly*
Anyway I used to love these guys when I was younger, especially Bruce Chamberlain, who is roughly the size of a small elephant and the most amazing chef I have ever met. But now I'm wondering why the heck they're still here, because I really need to go shower and go buy some things for the project that I need to finish by tomorrow, but if I go upstairs I fear I'll be sucked in with the questions about school and life etc etc. Ack.

greg came home tonight....what can i say? you'd have needed one hell of a giant-sized eraser to wipe the smile off my face. it's still there now when i think of him.

when he got off the plane...he was in his little boy scout uniform, and hadn't showered, so of course he smelled pretty bad, and still i thought he was more beautiful then than i had ever seen him. i'd thought i had his face memorized, but seeing him reminded me that no memory can ever take the place of the real thing. it was like the two weeks without him were some weird dream, and suddenly there he was again. Poe wrote "Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream..."
Never have I been so happy to have that gossamer web torn to pieces. It's terrible: i made it through two weeks without him, but now after seeing him for so short a time tonight i don't know how i'll make it until tomorrow night...

Sweet dreams to all.

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold


of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)
~e.e. cummings

Wowie that was a big font. Well, it deserves big, because I'm so happy he's coming home!

Greg comes home tomorrow!