When I Bring my Glitterlimes to the Party People Freak Out!

So my summer at the Journal has been really amazing so far. I thoroughly enjoy the time I spend there doing all sorts of odds and ends, projects, etc. But my favorite thing so far has been the random things that we laugh about and share with each other.

Like this!

Mairead e-mailed this to me in response to a bag of dried Persimmons Rupal and I left for her on her desk. I had typed up a whole bunch of workshop pieces for her, and at the end of the e-mail to which they were attached, I told her to "watch out for those persimmons."

I found this website absolutely hilarious. The fact that anyone would pay $70 for a glitter keylime bracelet is beyond me, but if they have the money for that kind of thing...more power to them. Take a look at the glitter persimmons if you have no idea what they actually look like. They're actually kind of pretty. The picture of the guy modeling the glitter persimmons pin, however...kind of a creepster. I'm just sayin'...

I did, however, find the rings to be cute, as well as the bobby pins. But I don't think I am willing to fork over money for some dried up fruit with glitter on it.

...in fact, I may be able to make something like that myself. I will have to look into it. Possibly project?

J-O-T What?!

I started my internship with the Journal of Ordinary Thought near the University of Chicago campus! Even though I didn't do a whole lot today, I did, however, go through the entire website (twice) because it was just re-done and a bunch of apostrophes were missing, and I needed to check for other things that may be wrong with the site as well. It didn't take too much time, and then I was off to read through the manuscript of the next edition of the journal they're putting out sometime in the very near future! All very exciting (as I am a word nerd of sorts). And to top it off, the three women--Carrie, Rupal, and Mairead--are wonderful. I've never met a group of the most welcoming women in my life. It made me really happy to know they really do want to get to know me, and immerse me into this magazine.

I may have actually made the correct career decision people!

I've always been intrigued as to why certain people gravitate toward certain jobs, and bolt from others. What is it that, early in their lives, made them more prone to deviating one way or another? Is it really just a right brain/left brain thing? Familial influences? Societal? Cultural? A mixture of all of these? Who's to say we aren't destined for a certain career path from the day we are born?

But then there are those (maybe even the vast majority of society) who never truly find that career that fulfills the hopes and dreams they may have possessed sometime during their early lives. In fact, I'd argue that more often than not, our society is filled with individuals who are completely unfulfilled with their current job, but somehow never decide to take that jump and risk everything to find something different. Something better. Is it because of the security? Probably. But is that security really worth a lifetime of unhappiness with your job (which fills up most of your adult life)? Maybe, but this makes me uneasy.

Considering I am just getting my feet wet in the work realm, I don't have enough experience to say. I have a lifetime to figure out these answers, though no matter what, my answers will always differ from another. That's just how life is.

Seeee you later!

As my vacation auto-send e-mail message states:

Hey--

I hate to break it to you, but I am on a short hiatus with the study abroad program until June 7th. I will try to get back to you before then, but if I don't have computer access until then, I apologize.

And yes, I will tell the Irish hello for you.

And never fear, I will tell the Irish hello for all of you who actually tune in here for sure.

...it still hasn't really hit me, but I am tired and thus, it is time for sleep. And to enhance the excitement:

Welcome Home Spring 2009!

I am super excited! Drum roll please...the house I will be living in from Spring 2009(once I return from Spain)-May 2010!!! And there will be much rejoicing. :)

I'm slipping in between you and your big dreams...it's always you in my big dreams, and you tell me that its over...

I just cannot stop listening to this song. It's so beautiful, and it very much summarizes what I have been feeling for the past month and a half since things kind of went sour...sorry I disappeared for so long because of it.

More Poetry Fun

For my creative writing class, we have to thumb through our text book, Poets of the New Century, and select different poets whose work we are drawn to and really like, and write one page (single-spaced, size 12 Times New Roman font) responses that analyze the pieces and describe why you are drawn to them.

One of the poets who really struck me was Billy Collins. There are five of his pieces in the anthology, all of them so wonderful that, if it were practical, I would post them all for you. Instead, I will just post one, Genius, and then give you links to the rest to read at your leisure.

Genius

is standing by the stove in a bathrobe
stirring the soup with a long wooden spoon.

Earlier in the afternoon he was busy
in the margins of a heavy book

and tonight he will step inside a molecule
or wade into the deep pool of calculus.

But now there is only the pot of vegetable soup,
the circling of the spoon,

the easy rotation of the wrist
and the aroma of onion, bay, and rosemary -

just the kind of moment when a brainstorm
might roll in over the ridge of the valley.

Not when you are holding your head in your hands,
but when you are cutting carrots,

troweling soil into a clay pot,
or washing a glass in the sink,

You look up and see a cloud in the window,
and then there is only you,

the glass underwater, and the cloud -
now clearly in the shape of an astonishing idea.

The rest of the poems are as follows:
The Country, a lovely poem of a mouse and his interactions with a match.
Absence, an anthropomorphic look at chess pieces.
Velocity, the thoughts of a wannabe journalist
and Today, a perfect spring day with a twist.

My Latest Assignment for ENG 307

For my ENG 307 class (Creative Writing II with Kevin Stein, the IL Poet Laureate!!) we were assigned to follow Jim Simmerman's "Twenty Little Poetry Projects" to create our own poem, using Simmerman's poem "Moon Go Away, I Don't Love You No More" as an example. I really liked mine, so I posted it for all to read. Enjoy.

Remembrance With a Cup of Tea

Laughter is the music of wind chimes
wafting in the breeze of the solstice morning.

A laughter so rotund, so robust it cannot squeeze
out the French doors to your backyard patio and Gerber daisy garden.
Their magenta petals glisten in the morning dew, spewing
rosy pinches of light into the air of daybreak.

Air that feels soft like the cotton that
fills your mouth when you’re nervous,
similar to the unbearable terror that you felt
in Mrs. Vandernaald-Johnson’s speech class
when you still lived in Muscatine.

Mr. Macabobby not Mrs. Vandernaald-Johnson.

The books in the family library sat
gathering inches of dander-filled dust
overlooked by the “overpaid, worthless, bumbling” maid, Juanita
much to the dismay of my rich, unappreciative
proverbial, cackling evil step-mother.

The very same who refused to allow
any of us to let our freak flags fly,
her personality dry due
to repeated bleaching of her naturally mousy hair.

I would build my house out of chocolate
if I lived in Alaska and got out of this place
my younger sister would tell me each time “the witch”
would press the immense desert of our patience.

We were as happy as a freshly stubbed toe in that house,
so we drifted out into the night air,
quietly floating above the clouds,
amongst the stars that tasted sweet like sugar granules.

Missy Lou and her sister
starring as Peter Pan and Wendy Darling:

We know that growing up is something
only the foolish do in their spare time.

On nights it rained, the puncturing droplets
poked holes in our imaginations in the midst of our dreams
of a candy-coated wonderland. The sugary sweet aroma
sliding into our nostrils and straight down to our stomachs
filling us more than a Thanksgiving meal.

Our thoughts would have another day to wait so our souls could rest.

Tu ausencia me devora entero el corazón---
screams embraced us with bony arms
while the portraits on the walls covered their ears,
shifting their gaze the other way

The achromatic a cappella raining down on us,
flooding out the burgeoning gardens of our thoughts.