walls, windows, and fires

This is what the wall above my desk (top of my six-inch hutch included) looked like in Portland. I would post a photograph of what the window above my desk looks like now, except that it might accidentally serve as proof that the only window in my new room might not be up to code.

I had a dream last night in which a fire was spreading through the house and no one paid attention to me frantically urging them outside, and in the end, I suffocated as parents stared at me voicelessly screaming at them to get out. I haven't had a fire nightmare in about forever, and I woke up remembering why I hate them so much. The second-to-last Monday of the semester started with a kink in my neck and chest congestion from the cold I caught over the weekend.

It finished with me catching up on the last of my research for a term paper, followed by a long-overdue rewatch of Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic. I can't imagine a better way to make a full recovery, unless I could've thrown a clear nasal passage into the mix. All in good time, I suppose. I'm glad you got into your classes at Eastern. I love you, and goodnight.

thanksgiving

 

After the most delicious (and largest) dinner of the year, and after spending the entire day surrounded by family and love and laughter, I left the main house and walked out to my room for bed, and the sky--black and vibrant, with hardly a cloud in sight--stopped me in my tracks. 

Jupiter has edged west (do you remember August like I do, and seeing the planet and its moons through the telescope for the first time as soon as it showed up in the east?), and now Orion is prominent where Jupiter used to be, the Three Sisters instantly recognizable and the rest of constellation easily picked out afterwards. 

I feel so small, and so large, and so, well, whole. 

Thanks for everything. Amen.

image credit 

mid-november blues

Today was bleak, a cold and numb precursor to the Thanksgiving holiday, and the wet sun and melting snow seeped straight into my head.

I left classes feeling worse than I had come, a recent, uncomfortable development. I've been feeling so off track in the grand scheme of things, that the details no longer seem to matter.

I drove to Zach's place after school and talked with him for an hour, then came home and took Amy to the library and sat there thinking while she found books to read, then came home and studied my life, and after thinking long enough, I realized I will be okay.

But good lord, Ann. Let's get out of here.

image credit

l-o-v-e.

I envy those who love what's possible, because I'm in love with what is not.
And yet. I'm not sure I'm ready to uncapture it and free her from my mind.
It feels like:

 

 

 

 

It feels like it means everything, and like it means nothing at all.
And that means: I must write myself out of this before I suffocate from holding my breath.

image credits: nightgowns / sheet music / curtains / imagination / grounded