“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

two summers ago, the son of a staff writer at the newspaper where I worked died in a car accident. I wrote this poem then; I still like it. that doesn’t happen often for me, so I decided to post it.

—

how quickly life can end,
how suddenly;
with a faulty turn of the wheel
or a failing heart,
it is gone.
loss is fair
only in that it does not discriminate–
good or bad doesn’t matter,
you could still be dead tomorrow,
and it is the very virtue of death’s fairness
that makes it so unfair.
a far-reaching list could be made
of those who should not have died so young,
so suddenly,
with such pain,
without finishing what they started.
they did not deserve it, we say ;
but do we mean that
we do not deserve to mourn their loss,
to feel the emptiness they leave behind?
death is unfair not because it robs us,
sometimes so suddenly, of beautiful lives,
but because it leaves us
to go on without them.

I’m ditching them. finally.

I leave my grampa’s house at 5:30 tomorrow morning so I can get to the Portland airport by 7 and fly out at 8. my stuff isn’t packed. it’ll take me approximately 10 minutes to get everything together, but at this point I’m just procrastinating.

I wanna go home.

I need hugs from my family. I need to see my dog.

I need to sleep in my own bed.

I need to see some real mountains.

I need ellen’s ice cream.

and I need to have real, actual conversations with my friends. I have a lot of explaining to do. and I want to do it.

it all starts tomorrow.

so far:

• Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
• some compilation of Rilke (librarying it)
• Walking on Water by Madeline L’Engle
• some compilation of Wendell Berry
• Blue Iris by Mary Oliver
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• something by T.S. Eliot (not sure what yet)

suggestions?

I’m basically horrible at updating this thing. basically.

right now I should either be sleepin or working on my french presentation, but in typical fashion, I’m doing… neither. writing comes so much faster when it’s not academic.

I have a lot to do in the next two weeks. it’s rather frightening.

the weather has been getting warmer here, slowly. it’ll be gorgeous for a day or two and then cool down again or be rainy, but the temperatures of both the gorgeous days and the cool ones are getting steadily higher. I like this development. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see the arrival of spring. I need it desperately.

I feel like I had more to say when I clicked the “new post” button, but I guess I was wrong. so tonight, you’re just getting a boring update.

so, a couple of weeks ago I came down with strep throat. three weeks ago tomorrow, to be precise. I went to health services, got some penicillin, and felt better within a matter of 24 hours. I missed a few doses of my penicillin, but I still finished it all in a timely fashion and thought I was fine.

and then when this past monday rolled around I got a sore throat. I kinda freaked out, drank tons and tons of water, and felt better on tuesday and wednesday. come thursday, the sore throat was back, and I couldn’t make it go away. it was annoying, but not unbearable, and I figured it couldn’t be strep throat — I’d be feverish and unable to eat anything, right? well. yesterday my ear started hurting. I took some tylenol in the evening (which I had a little trouble swallowing) and turned in early. I woke up at 2 a.m. with incredible pain in my ear and a fever. after moving to the couch (it hurt less sitting up and I tried to distract myself with television) and spending the rest of the night mostly without sleep, I woke up my aunt at 6:30 and told her I needed to go to the doctor.

my first trip to the emergency room was in the middle of a blizzard. thankfully, and probably partially due to the weather, there wasn’t anyone else there when we got there. as it turns out, I had a reocurrence of strep. it had spread to my lymph nodes, which was why my throat didn’t hurt too badly but I was still having difficulty swallowing. the pain in my ear was pressure from the swelling in my neck. so they gave me a steroid to bring the swelling down and a large dose of ibuprofen to help with the pain. and then they took a bunch of my blood to test for mono cause the doctor was paranoid and thought it might be possible even though my strep test was positive. but I’ve got antibiotics now, ibuprofen is still helping me out, and aunt Gail made me jello. so I really can’t ask for much more. one slight bummer is that I was supposed to go to Jared’s tomorrow, but now I’m waiting  until Wednesday instead so I can rest more and be completely non-contagious when I get around my irrestistably adorable niece. but otherwise, I’m just glad this didn’t happen while I was at school. I have barely any work to do over break so I’m not stressing about that, plus it’s nice to be around my family, and in a house instead of my dorm. I’ll have to pace myself a little more when I get back to school… no more gym for a while, and no more going to bed at two and waking up at seven. but that should also be easier now that midterms are done.

as soon as I can eat real food again I want to go to dunkin donuts.

[first in a potentially infinite series.]

a) showers with water pressure.

b) mattresses with back support.

c) family members with hugs.

so I started this scarf, like, two years ago. no joke. and the other day I decided that I wanted to wear it, so… I finished it.

I’m pretty happy with the end result.

break is almost done; I have two full days left (leave Sunday afternoon). I’m not quite ready to go back.

my present from Charis this year came a couple of days after Christmas because she wasn’t quite done with the gift on Christmas day. on Friday or Saturday, she presented me with a pair of awesome socks. and I do mean awesome:

she knitted them, and they’re amazing. I’ll wear them like slippers in my dorm when I go back to school. having thoughtful family members who knit definitely has its perks.

today was ridiculously, and I mean ridiculously, warm. 70 degrees? what continent am I on?

but hey, I’ll take it. I sat outside for a while today just for head-clearing purposes. it was good.

it’s supposed to cool down gradually and be in the 30s again by next week. we’ll see.