This I've Learned:

It's not too hard to kid yourself at 2 in the morning.

And then you wake up.

amor, bailando en susurros dulces

Our hands brushed the faces of every possibility, but neither of us had an actual choice. We side-stepped and danced passionately around every tree and phone and furtive glance, and in the arms of what was never to be had, we held each other.

He smelled like pineapple and sun tan lotion and every time I glanced right, he lingered.

See, we had nothing.

"If you just.." His breath on my neck deemed sickeningly sweet.

Some deal.

We danced and danced and danced until we stopped, and by that point, we were already over.

There was the beach, that one night, but he stole my camera and snapped a thousand memories I never saw. It was just as well.

Where is he? I asked them.

Corkscrew, they replied. You can probably catch him.

Nah. I danced on blistered toes away from our jungle.

On a side note:

I've come to terms with everything. It's taken me a week, but I'm allowed to wear my fifty pieces of jewelry everyday as well as flip flops and my hair down in messy sun-dyed curls... so what I'm saying is, I'm free!

I've been working and playing around with a piece for this upcoming Chautauqua Workshop, trying somewhat to place my mind back into this all-too-familiar mode of academic thinking. We'll see if it works come next Thursday.

On a side note, I'm getting new glasses this Wednesday. They are going to be so great, so librarian, so RED.

Case Study 2: (for all you science-y people out there)

From the book I'm currently reading:

"In laboratory studies, scientists have learned that, when it comes to love, a very tiny portion of the brain is actually involved. For example, friendship lights up receptors all over the cerebral cortex, but this isn't true with love, which activates parts of the brain more commonly associated with emotional responses like fear and anger. The brain of a person in love will show activity in the amygdala, which is associated with gut feelings, and in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with rewarding stimuli that tends to be active in drug abusers. Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn't look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion.

It looks like the brain of a person who's been snorting coke."

Ha. Thought I'd share.

Blessed Time.

It's what I quit my job for, right? Time? Well, I've decided to be useful with it. While I'm still trying to be productive in my writing, the least I can do is come up with my (probably not super literary, but whatever) summer reading list.

Here goes (and in no particular order):

House Rules (current novel) - Jodi Picoult
Soul Revolution - John Burke
Far From Home - Anne DeGrace
A Year in the World - Francis Mayes
Girls in Trucks - Katie Crouch
Neither Here nor There - Bill Bryson
Naked - David Sedaris
Look Me in the Eye - John Elder Robison
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
I Know This Much is True - Wally Lamb

..and probably so much more. May the time not wither away or pass me by, but may I take full advantage of what I've so whimsically chosen.

Do Work, Son.

Some people can write when they are sad, depressed.

I am not one of those people, unfortunately. I blank out. I stare zombie-like into the nothingness that is my white screen and wonder what in the world people see in loneliness.

My best, most productive work comes from being happy, bubbly. And then I shoot for the stars.

I'm missing Cedar Point people with a ferocity that only comes from being connected thickly through physical pain and desperate heat. I miss them so much.

And this is not helping my productivity whatsoever. Crap.

here's to those nights we felt alive

So. I've done some things these past few weeks that I am not really proud of, and here I am, semi-regretting, sweetly paying for those mistakes.

Oops. From this moment forward, I will dedicate my summer to not making those mistakes again, to writing without further adieu, and to slowing down my pace... because breezing through every day wild and crazy is apparently not the best way to go about things.

Cheers to thinking before acting (spontaneously and without regard for the future)!