2 Dollar Shoes

emilyss — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:08:36 +0000

Right now I’d like:

.To watch Antiques Roadshow for three straight days

.A little dog to live with me

.Up ‘n move away plans for next summer

.All my fall clothes

.Just some cuddles

.An appropriate place to bake

.More occasions to dress up

.More time with friends

.Frennnnnch language capabilities please

.Time for music

.Moniez for me, moniez for you

.To feel ready. For anything, for everything.

.A bathroom break?

.To do well.

.To care more about doing well.

.More openness with others. More honesty, less caution.

.Heart friends close.

.A trip, and Chicago sounds about right.

Those are just some things I want.

DOPE LIKE COKE.

emilyss — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:49:23 +0000

I’ll always have so much to figure out, always have emotions to sort through. Sometimes they’re going to be huge, maybe even insurmountable. Sometimes they’ll seem conquerable from the start. I know I’ll never be lacking in something to mull through or set straight in my dizzy brain. At least this is what I hope. This brain, it’s gotta have something to figure out, or else it starts to try and figure things that can’t be. If nothing else, my girl Kimya put it right: “Broken hearts hurt but they make us strong.” Sometimes mine starts to crack a little, maybe even chip away or kinda break. But you know, your heart muscles are among the strongest in your body, and putting a little stress on them makes it less likely they’ll freak out someday and quit working early. And I think your emotional heart is the same way: you have to know that the rotten things that happen to you, or to the world in general, aren’t there to be ignored – in your life, or in the world in general. They’re there to be worked through so you don’t have a wussy heart. Skirting things and ignoring emotions, I tried that for like twenty-one years. It worked alright until I started having to do harder things. Then I realized that I needed to let this thing, my heart, feel it all. Like training or conditioning or whatever. So at the end of the day, I might not be able to glide along the surface, moving smoothly over the barbed wire that sometimes snags at you. But when it comes down to it, on the days that are nasty and filled with small bad things, or days that are agonizing when life hits, I’m going to have a heart that can stay the course. Like, you know, my boy Michael Phelps. My heart will win eight golds, I’ll give them all to my mom, and I’ll walk away knowing that it’s only because I made myself keep pumping when I was tempted to just float.

PS: RAD NEWs…I’m spending a week in London this December with some AWESOMEEEEEEEEEEEEE girls and MAYBE STACEY?! UM….in LONDON?!?!??!?!??!?!?!!??!!??!?!? WHAT THE H…YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LAKDSAF;KSDJF;AJDSF!!!

The Blessing

emilyss — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:18:00 +0000

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

-James Wright

To-Do.

emilyss — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:35:41 +0000

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” -Edmund Burke

In most ways, I am a light-hearted optimist who loves freely and believes that anyone can accomplish anything. However, I am also a stubborn, rational, and competetive perfectionist who feels that if I can’t be fully and absolutely successful, I should not and will not try. A few final qualities that round me out are a deep-seeded compassion for others and the [frequently overwhelming] desire to help others, if not save everyone in my path from whatever pitfalls, heartaches, brokenness, and suffering they may have endured, or may be headed towards.

This evening, I came across the Burke quote, and it sank it’s teeth into my tender, overwhelmed heart. One thing I began learning this summer is how entirely I am redeemed, wanted, pursued, adored, and desired by my Abba. He wants me, He loves me, and He always has. Tonight, in a swirl of thought and contemplation, it’s occurred to me that He’s wanted me always, before He even made me complete. Now that He’s given me everything I need for life in Him [it's in 1 Peter somewhere], He not only wants me – He wants me to do things. He wants me to grow up a little, and shift away from the selfish, self-preserving, perfectionistic idea that if I can’t win I won’t try. It’s not about that.

Sometimes, you just can’t believe that it took seeing the fireworks and feeling the explosion to understand an idea so simple that all it took was the touch of a match.

Chilly arms at August’s end.

emilyss — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:02:30 +0000

I don’t know if there will be a point to this one really. It’s certainly not going to be anywhere near as lovely, interesting, or poetic as my title suggests. You see, I’m actually quite sleepy, in the way that you get after spending a whole day out in the sun. [Which I did.] It’s the kind that makes your eyes feel kind of dry and your body feel heavy. It’s impossible to describe how satisfying it is to feel sleep, because it seems like I feel it so rarely – or at puzzling intervals, like three in the afternoon or seven PM. Times when you should not sleep. Otherwise, I don’t think I get sleepy too often. Just ready to go to bed, and that doesn’t happen much until around 3AM. I suppose its because I stopped forcing myself to bed at a reasonable hour once school was out.

I had an epic, EPIC first day of class, that will probably merit a blog of it’s own. For now, I’m going to take advantage of the loveliness of being tired by brushing my teeth and climbing into my loft. I’ll leave you with the obligatory “first day of class” photo that I took this morning.

C’est tout.

avance dans des étapes minuscules.

emilyss — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:01:39 +0000

Tomorrow, Saturday, I am moving back to school. I am moving back into the dormitories, on a co-ed floor populated almost exclusively by freshmen. I am moving back into a 10-by-14 foot room with no immediate means of cooking or, more to the point, baking.
And I am excited.
My brown-brick building is among the oldest of the standing dormitories on our campus, and has grandiose white columns flanking the giant set of steps leading up the front. In the back, the outdoor stairwell on the first floor has stairs going down either side of it, the only disappointing part of which is the campus-wide ban on smoking. The cement on those steps is old, rough, sandy and worn, having kept the company of decades upon decades of students. I think it would’ve been an entirely romantic place for a cigarette. However, all disappointment in the smoking ban (infringement on civil liberties aside) is far overshadowed by the fact that my bedroom sits directly above and behind two of the three front columns, faces out onto a lovely, miniature field of a courtyard, fringed with trees, where everyone gathers when it’s warm, and is rumored – but only rumored, mind you – to have a small balcony on the outside of it.
It is my firm belief that if such a balcony exists – and oh, rapture! if it does – it is not meant for my use. That does nothing to stop me from imagining the glory that could be taken in, sitting out on it in one of my vintage aluminum lawn chairs, sipping a lemonade and taking in the Eastern view of town. Or, in the fall, making some tea, bundling into one of my oversized, slouching, rumply grandfather-esque cardigans, and sitting out there, watching as the leaves, crumbly and starched, move on the breeze like they are floating down invisible, airborne streams.
Winter may be less of an option, but even so, perhaps just slipping out onto it once, on a rare, clear December night, with a moon, to stare across the courtyard of unblemished virgin snow, gulping cold air and complete stillness into my lungs and imagine that I am the only one who is there. Or, if not, to dream of the spring.

Whatever other seasons may bring with them, I do think it seems worthwhile to ferry one or both lawn chairs up to the tiny, third-floor room, on the chance that I can make it happen soon – lemonade and all.

Morning Has Broken.

emilyss — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:26:41 +0000

It’s 6:16AM local time, and I am sprawled on turquoise cotton sheets, wondering how it is that I’ve yet to sleep. I’ve tossed, I’ve turned. I’ve paced the floor. I’ve even yawned a time or two, but I cannot muster enough drowsiness to drift out of consciousness and give my body the rest it’s going to be begging me for in a few hours. I am frustrated. I am cranky. And I am very, very hungry. I don’t suppose I need to question why I’m not sleeping. Anyone who luxuriates in dreams until 12:15pm can’t expect them to come readily the next evening. But I certainly didn’t mean to sleep that late, and there’s something in me that pipes up about the unfairness of consequences for mistakes we don’t know we’re making.

Then again, it’s more often a case of consequences ignored than ignorance of consequences, so I suppose I’ll take these in stride and enjoy the flirting, purple-grey clouds compete for my attention against the soft, rising peach of the sun. Ah, Beauty.

Ocean, in English 227.

emilyss — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:10:51 +0000

Queequeg wanted a coffin built and it only saved Ishmael. Neither can save me from Survey of American literature right now. What else would compel me to write things for you to read?
Isn’t it supposed to be Only Children who don’t share well? I’m an older sister, but I don’t always do a nice job. You can take my things and eat my food, and even if you don’t ask, it won’t bother me. Things are only things, but when I translate them into identity, I become protective. Borrow my dress and I doubt I’ll notice, but when someone is too-like me on the external, I’m threatened. My sense of self is strong, but does this aversion to similarity mean that I tear as easily as fabric? Am I too woven into what I wear, what I do? I pride myself in keeping my heart off of my sleeve, but I’m realizing that some days, instead of ON my sleeve, it IS my sleeve.
These are things I don’t want. I play my cards close to the vest. I’ll give you the tip of the iceberg, but until I know what we are, you don’t get the rest of it. Why risk a meltdown of something that I can just leave submerged? A warm reception is fine, but what’s your intent? My heart isn’t ice. It’s flesh, moving blood, sometimes to my face when I realize how caught up I get in not just the external, but the SELF. Of course I matter, but in the breadth and depth of life, I’m not the ultimate.
So, should I share myself more easily? Should I lend or even give who I am for someone else to become? Maybe when I know Him best, I’ll be more willing. After all, He’s for all, for each. Love doesn’t just form to our unique properties – it created them in the first place, and it makes us comfortable in them, and with them, and maybe, someday, with sharing them. I can be because I am, and I am because He Is.

Oh, Sweetie.

emilyss — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:48:19 +0000

Granted, I wasn’t raised in the South, so my palette for Sweet Tea may not be quite as refined. But I’ve had the real deal, and I have to admit, this hits pretty close to the mark. And I mean…32 oz for a dollar?! I may be lovin it.

Little Engine

emilyss — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:20:36 +0000

I read this today:
“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”

I’m still deciding.