[a young packrat], or, "WHAT YOU NEED TO REMEMBER"

I am the most delibrately packratty young person I know. The "young" part is there because when I think "packrat," I always think of an old cat lady type with lace doilies all over her house for some reason and a basement and attic and cellar and whatever storage rooms and other rooms that aren't supposed to be storage rooms but serve as storage rooms full of useless, meaningful knickknacks she can't throw away ever. That's pretty much me except for the old part and the house part because I don't own my own house and if I tried to fulfill my packratty inclinations to their fullest packratty extents right now, anywhere outside the boundary of my room, my mama would go crazy and throw me right out.

Whether it's ticket stubs or pictures or bottle caps or just little cute things that don't actually mean anything significant, I stash and keep and forget until I unearth it years later and reminisce. Maybe it's because I have such a bad memory -- I feel like I have to stash souvenirs to remind me of the special days and the not so special days. Or maybe it's because I've moved so much? It's made me more aware of everything-in-flux and how, if you don't hold onto the grounding grips of your rockclimbing life metaphor, the memories of even the most precious days and nights can slip away in the fast currents of everythingelse. So I stash. And I forget. And I wait for those Memory Lane Days [or Nights] when I will dig through the piles of meaningless, meaningful mementos and match each thing with a corresponding memory in the brain troves, hold the preciousness to my cheek and breathe in its scent of old with a splash of reminiscent.

-------------^unearthed from the Draft archives, from January 2011-------------

But all of this is strangely appropriate, three and a third years later, as I watch fourth years and first years alike move out of their apartments and their dorms, end-of-semester goodbyes and beginning-of-summer hellos abounding. For some it's the first, for others, the very last, Moving Out. Scraping and scrapping the last bits of this past year's life, full of memories and inescapable dust bunnies, along with unearthed memories and forgettables, too. And it's all goodbye goodbye goodbye, feeling like no one's ever gone this way down Forever Avenue before, no one's ever felt this way, so bittersweet, before, but deep down, knowing that we're all a part of this eternal cycle of beginnings and endings and all their convergences. Just as old blogpost drafts resurface into your life at the perfectly three-years-later moment, and wsj articles that have been sitting on your floor for the past three weeks catch your eye, all like "WHAT YOU NEED TO REMEMBER" and perfectly grabbing your three-weeks-later attention.

dear blue-eyed, full-lipped, dark-haired man,

Hello, you are quite blue-eyed, full-lipped, dark-haired. Quite.

As it so often happens, here I am blogging when I should be studying (&reading through some old posts about blogging instead of studying...a vicious cycle, it seems).

I'm not quite sure if you're worth the moments, but let me just take a few moments to note these moments of sitting across from your blue eyes, full lips, dark brown hair. I can't decide if they are attractive or not...they are almost too much, but still kind of pretty...but almost too muchhh ehhhh cannot decide. They teeter totter on some kind of beauty-ugly-scary verge. A three-way face precipice.

AHHH YOU JUST LOOKED AT ME and for a moment I thought you could:
1. read my mind reading these words
2. read these words backwards and all, through the back of my computer screen

3. but then realized that it was probably because I was crunching my extremely green, extremely sour, mediumly delicious apple, extremely loudly. Oops. Sorry.

But as I said, I'm not quite sure if you're worth these moments. I am also not sure of many, many other things about you. I wonder if you are kind. I wonder if you enjoyed that butter-only-no-cream-cheese-nuh-uh bagle as much as I'm enjoying my extremely green apple, which is only a medium amount, and I hope you enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying this but I dunno you seemed pretty matter of fact about it all. Knife, butter, Swipe-Swipe, Take Bite, chew-Chew. I wonder how long it has been a habit of yours to purse your extremely full lips in the way that you are doing. I wonder if it's a stress-induced thing, cause you look quite stressed, though you seem to be productive. But of course I cannot read your mind and the words it is reading (not) out-loud to you, or read through the backside of your computer screen, or indeed even read backwards that fast, so who knows. I wonder what kind of music is pulsing through your earphones into your earholes into your brainwaves. I wonder if it is stupid that I systematically call everything remotely related to brain activity "brainwaves." But most of all, I wonder if you are kind.

And then secondly, if you are worth these few moments that took to write up this blogpost, the answer to which, I spose, is related to the answer to my biggest wondering.

Goodbye and good luck! Dear God please bless everyone at this table, in this room, on this floor, in this library, in any library studying right now. I know it's silly and naive to think that this small prayer will suddenly make everyone's studyings better or brighter or even cause a little burst of energy or something, but I pray anyway that you touch each person in the way that they need to be touched by you right now, in small and significant ways that are only apparent to you and him and her. Most of all dear God, please help us all survive this exam season more or less unscathed. No. Triumphant. Please, God, use me in ways that make other people's days sparkle a little bit in these sparkle-lacking times. What a blessing it is to study for exams.


Woah you just stood up. You are also quite tall. Quite.

"libarry crazy"

(Strawberry alert)

My life is so full of cuteness right now. And I've been kind of itching to blog in the midst of finals (and name it "libarry crazy," but for other reasons than those listed below) - maybe to defy...stuff. Probably mostly myself. Hm I don't know; I'm tired. So here's my excuse: my life is so full of cuteness right now.

Cuteness 1.

JJ Heller - When I'm with You (discovered this thanks to Rebecca - youtube repeating like crazy ever since)

Cuteness 2. Boys. More specifically, studying (..."studying") with boys and sitting and listening to them talk all excitedly about sports mumbo jumbo that I don't understand. It really is like a language that I just don't get. Flows into one ear and jumps out the other. Really. (But I did learn about this guy - apparently he eats a lot of candy...obviously that would be the only part I understand.)

Cuteness 3. Boys. More specifically, being with them when their Bible study leaders bring them bags of candy for morale, which they proceed to immediately throw up into the air in celebration so it's like raining candy. Okay actually only one boy did that but it was still like cute overload (hope he never reads this cause he doesn't need to know I think he's cute).

Cuteness 4. Sitting in Clemons but not feeling hostile towards it haha. Actually, sitting in Clemons and actively feeling happy and stuff because I'm just people watching (and actively not studying...) - watching people be hopeful in the midst of exams, being solidarity-y with each other, sharing junky food, and smiling even though they're studying hard (or not so hard). Wutevers!

Cuteness 5. Feeling things for other people who are...not me. I've been so wrapped up in myself, my tiredness, my busy-ness lately that I forget to think of other people, feel for them. Making wishes for other people and praying for them when I see them run hurriedly and worriedly toward some unknown location - that they get there soon/on time, and safely. Hm sorry sorry sorry this makes no sense :(

Cuteness 6. Confessing to people that my shoulders are in pain and tentatively asking for back massages but receiving terrible, albeit very very well-meaning ones. Hahahaha oh well.

Cuteness 7. 

it's the same song but sounds a little different. cause i like circular progression of things.

EDIT: 5/10/11 12:51 am 

Just found this on my desktop! It's from the morning after this post was originally written, at Clemons. I ended up pulling an allnighter and being joined by another libarry crazy, sitting in the booth behind me. HAHA!

gotcha