popcorn skies

Today was beautiful. I thought the skidding clouds looked like popcorn flung upward, and that nothing could be nicer than this. He burnt his cheeks, I my arms, and the sun rolled round the azure sky. I liked the winter grass I twisted in my fingers, half old, half new, the fresh little blades the first sign of spring. Shadows rotated and rose to the fading sky, and the mountains burned pink then gold to grey. I can still feel the sun in my skin.

metaphorically speaking

Sorry, further thoughts on War & Peace. Today my brilliant teacher brought up an interesting concept about the main characters in this book, a little group consisting of Pierre, Andrei, Marya, and Natasha. He noted that they are constantly, often painfully and unexpectedly, undergoing a process of death and rebirth, death and rebirth. Metaphorically speaking. They revive with love and realizations of the good in life, they die with disappointment, heartache, and frustration at the vices of men. My teacher went through the characters, and labeled them according to the life they were living, being classified either as "dead" or "alive". Later I wondered whether I was dead, alive, or experiencing a rebirth. Something to think about.

blue bowl

Recently I have been taking a class devoted to Tolstoy's novels. Among hundreds of things, I have discovered that while War and Peace relatively dwarfs other ficticious novels (Harry Potter being an exception), it seems rather small when you realize that Tolstoy has more or less condensed human experience into a book the size of a cantelope.
Such a class is always exhilarating, or perhaps it is my own dweebiness that causes me to get so fully absorbed into this book. However, I can't disentangle a section of the book from my average train of thought. In the section a primary character, Prince Andrei, looks heavenward from a battlefield strewn with the ugliness of war. It's as if he is looking at the sky for the first time, and he notices nature's unperturbed blue canopy, altogether indifferent to his own agony and the war raging about him. Prince Andrei loses all sense of what had been previously important to him, and wishes only to be lost in the sky above him.
Walking out of class with this on my mind, I can't help but notice the lovely, indifferent reminder our own insignificance.

unpoetic

So, um, I am back to square one. I wonder if the said "square one" is derived from foursquare, the wonderfully simple yet entertaining activity most commonly seen on elementary grounds, but also sometimes discovered in college dorms. Anyways, to be most frank and unpoetic, I broke it off with the so-called eternal sunshine. I'm taking stock in the hope sung by Death Cab "you'll be given love, it's all around you. All is full of love." We'll see what happens.

i am writing from the heart

I'd like to tell everyone that I love Sufjan Stevens, and someday I would like to see the Palisades.

accumulation

At the request of a friend I've decided to breathe life into this blog again. It's utterly bizarre to look back into this accumulation of moments and realize how many changes have worked their way into my life in the past few months. Whether willingly accepted or (more likely) forced, I guess I can learn to appreciate a new collection of ideas, since everything we experience is designed to teach us. So, theoretical audience, the blog revives. Cheers-

erase

I recently watched the best movie of my life, also known as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In the movie a girl(Kate Winslet) gets her mind wiped clean of all recollections of her current boyfriend (Jim Carrey). He is devastated when he discovers the news, and in response rushes to the same place to have his memory edited of her.
During the process Carrey relives his memories of her in fragments that are crumbling as we watch. There are glass-like moments, clear and painful, that remind him that despite their petty arguments, life with her was bliss.
Perhaps it would have been better to let those violins remain unheard, and to remain in that eternal sunshine. Maybe it would have been easier to never have crossed paths, to never have heard those blending tunes that cry 'Here I am...*'Then again, those glass-like moments are something to be cherished, cuts and scars included. For they only remind me that life then was bliss. I think I'll keep the rain clouds.

*'Here I am' is taken from Garden State's 'Only Living Boy in New York'