llewllynn

Groundskeeper Willie.

    Last night in the health center, I was trying to explain how my situation felt. I said it's like I'm a delicious jar of peaches; the best peaches, home grown and canned by your mother, and you know they'll be the best damn peaches you've ever tasted. Instead of eating those peaches and enjoying them, you leave them on a shelf, and save them for a special occasion; or when you're blue, or when you just feel the time is right for the perfect treat. I feel like I've been put on the shelf; like everyone has confirmed I would be great, but they want to save me for later rather than enjoying me now.

    Or maybe like a favourite book that you've read and loved. You close the book reluctantly after reading the last page, with a lump in your throat because you're sad to be done reading it. you open up to the middle, smell the pages, and close the book again and hold it to your chest. You say, "I'll read that again someday," and then put it on the shelf to forget about for a month, a year, many years. From time to time you're reminded of the plot, the characters, and smile like it's a memory of a warm summer day.  Eventually, you say, you'll read the book again when the time is right.

    Despite feeling like a well loved book, or a fine wine, or jar of peaches; I feel thankful that I have the best friend that I do, and thankful that I have many friends that I can depend on, and that I know that they love me. If I date Arnie or not, he will be my best friend and I will love him always. And if Matt and I ever happen, well, I know I can trust him to stay my friend too.  So I'll be content in sitting on that shelf, waiting, and knowing that when someone takes me down, dusts me off, and gives me a shot; that they'll smile.

I waited three years to hear him say that, and now he doesn't even want to try.
That's how I feel.


Back into the woods, I suppose.

I have ruined
the curve
that was in
your literature class

in which
you were probably
hoping
for the A

Forgive me
it was my nature
so easy
and so rewarding

I.       “This death pays no heed to what is done or undone; a killer of security; not to be trusted by those sick or well; a shattering thunderbolt from nowhere” p.17 v.34
II.     “Death comes like lightning” p.181
III.     “How can I escape it? Rescue me quickly, lest death come swifty, before my evil is destroyed” p.17 v.33
IV.     “I am afraid of my own death. I must not regret the end.” p.163
V.     “I have seen and heard people dying regardless of whether they are young or old.” p.16
VI.     “Those I loathe will die; those I love will die; I too will die; and all will die.” p.17 v.36
VII.     “For one seized by the messengers of death, what good is a relative, what good is a friend? At that time, merit alone is a defence and I have not acquired it.” p.17 v.42
VIII.     “Death is the great path for everyone, … Do you have encouragement for this path? If you do not, meditate again and again on impermanence.” – Orgyan Tenzin p.69
IX. “    When I think of the fallen state of the goat’s life,
and that all living beings die,
I am heartbroken” p.138
X.     “From the beginning, throughout every lifetime living beings suffer like this” he said. “For us the suffering of the mare should be an example, and we must concentrate diligently on the Dharma.” p.142
XI.     “This girl knows mercy. If she were to practice the Dharma she would preserve compassion in her mind.” p.137
XII.     “Meet the dharma, take refuge, study: then you will not suffer” p.139
XIII.     “If you preserve view and meditation with body, speech, and mind. When you die you will not falter. Those who die are many; those who die like this are rare”p.183
XIV.     “Better that I die right now than have a long life lived improperly, since, even if I remain here for a long time, the same pain of death awaits me” p.55 v.56
XV.     “The mare gives her body to the vultures.
I think the mare manifests the enlightened mind.” p.144
XVI.     “May I die with body, speech, and mind complete” p.183
XVII.     “After two days of this her mind faded into the Dharma realm. At age fifty-five Orgyan Chokyi ended her life” p.182


And I thought that maybe it was just my personal life depressing me; but come to think of it, maybe it's my homework too. I mean, who meditates on death for three hours, formulates an essay on it, and is the happiest person in the room?

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." - The Bell Jar

"And I'm just a little blasé and not caring, but I worry very much what's going to happen to me, really. But after a while you get to hate everyone and everybody and you get very bitter inside because you haven't money and clothes and wealthy boyfriends asking you out to smart places and even though you know that really all of it is false, it somehow manages to seep in and you find yourself resenting the fact that all you have is a good brain and you're smarter than they are but would like to wear false breasts because your own are flat but you feel it's such a horrid lie and yet they do it and get away with it and then in the end you're faced with the blunt truth they they will get married and you won't and that they are going to hate their marriages but then they will have tea parties and cocktails and bridge while their husbands are sleeping with other men. She was a girl gone away." - The Ginger Man

"So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state." - The Bell Jar

"But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death." - The Ginger Man

I'm growing more and more bitter, again.

Where do I want to study abroad this year, guys?
Literature in Paris? Shakespeare in London? Arthurian Legends all around England/Wales (this one is also longer than 10 days)?
or a super sweet 35 day tour in England, France, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Austria (lots of money, and homework)?

that's all.

lol. Dumbledore dies. and is gay.

just fyi.

yeah. vote in that, ok?
I'm going as something zombie related because I think it will make me laugh at it.
or, someone will be dressed as a zombie and I will freak the fuck out. whatev.