dots

Every now and then when my eyes are tired from being open all day, I look down at my laptop and in between the keys, there are little black dots. I'm watching an optical illusion perform: every time I focus on a dot it disappears.

Every now and then, when I'm tired, I try to focus on my reasons for being thankful, the reasons why I should be happy. Sometimes it's like an optical illusion and I can't focus on anything in particular, the reasons escape me. But when I wake up in the morning, and the sun is rising, and I see the world outside my window, the reasons flood back. They're not solid things that I can touch or see with my hazel eyes, but they do exist. Quite a lot of them exist.



p.s. I went salsa dancing

5:54 A.M

Guess where I was at 5:54 this morning? hint: the fire alarm was going off.

Yup, not even the first real day of college yet and I'm out in my PJs with a bunch of other crusty eyed freshmen. We were all hoping really hard against a real fire, I mean, my stuff was moved in yesterday, a lot of it is new, and it's located on the thirteenth floor.
Good news: I met a few more girls on the way down those flights of stairs.

thunderstorm warnings

So quickly the gray faded in to replace the innocent blue of the sky today. Do you ever feel thankful for the rain? It's an excuse for staying inside and reading or thinking or daydreaming on the couch. During camp it confines us all, campers and counselors, to the interior of the JCC, and then there are rain day boundaries: less places to go and for campers to run off to.

Not to mention, rain makes the air smell chilled, like the slight cold that lingers on the top of your glass of water when the ice cubes have just finished melting.

tree 3

Like an angry apple tree, I throw my apples if you get to close to me.
If I look to my right, will I see the one I fight for? If I look to my right.
or If I turn to my left, will I see that I have kept my heart locked up, locked up so tight?

you grabbed my wrist
and pulled me into a hug

you made my day

spoken

In English class a little while ago, Mr. Tarmey asked us all why we procrastinate. Of course we all came back with the obvious reasons: too much extra-curriculars (which led to the putting after school activities as priority discussion), too much homework from all the teachers combined, and laziness and procrastination for the few who admitted to it. Well, today I called a friend and voiced a thought that had been bothering me every now and then since that class. Though some of those other reasons apply to me without a doubt, one of the biggest reasons that I personally wait and put off work, especially critiques and other large papers, is because it gives me an excuse. When I wait until the last minute, even though it is my fault, there is a solid reason why I got the grade that I did. I am afraid. Fearful that if I put significant amounts of time and effort into research that brings me into the murky, pithy depths of a topic, giving all of my time and effort into a product that I should be proud of, that the grade will not be satisfactory simply because my best wasn't good enough.

So there's my fear, and now that it's spoken, maybe I can overcome it- realizing that my best can get better with time.

snow, snow balls, snow blowers

So today started off pretty good. You know that feeling that you get when you're a kid and there was the possibility of no school the night before? That anticipation deep in the pit of my stomach was there this morning. I didn't even have to look out the window. My alarm went off at 6:00, I turned it off planning on sleeping for another five minutes. At 6:16 I heard no one stirring across the hall in Amy's room or my mom's room. I reluctantly pulled the covers back and padded on over to my parents' room where my mother jerked awake when I said her name and mumbled no school. I didn't need any more telling to go and hop right back into my cocoon of covers. Around 9 I finally got up for real and practiced piano while pancakes were being made for breakfast.

An hour later saw the females of the Collins family shoveling their way to the back of the house where we planned to clear the deck... why the deck and not the driveway? Two reasons: 1. we planned on having dad snow blow the driveway and more importantly 2. The cats need to be able to play outside. I shoveled the entire deck for the cats.

Before we finished there was a snowball fight of course; you can't shovel this kind of snow, the snow is perfect for it, without one.

I finally abandoned my shovel, sweating in my rain coat (the winter coat was too hot), and sat down at the piano again. From the garage I could here the struggling sounds of the snow blower not starting. When dad finally realized he simply didn't turn on the gas, we all let out a sigh of relief... Dad's not pretty when he's in a bad mood. Unfortunately, the good mood did not last long, because only ten minutes later I was called out to help him: the newspaper is halfway eaten in the snow blower as we speak with no signs of being thrown up. There are little shreds littering the driveway. I found the Sudoku and what I think is a piece of the Peanuts comic.

salty tears

salty tears
crept
down my cheeks
leaving the skin tight
parched.

I couldn't explain
or reason

those salty tears
had all of my focus
slipping slowly
daring me to wipe them away

I couldn't speak
nor did I want to

salty tears,
sometimes
they are enough

I could continue.

be

this is how it could be,
this is how it should be,
this is how I want it to be,
well, I'll just have to wait and see,
let it be,
let time continue serenely,
let it be,
truly,
sincerely,
me.

whose doorway

I was thinking, what would it be like to return home to someone else's house? I would know which steps creak on my way up the stairs, which switches belong to each light, the distance from wall to wall in the upstairs hallway, and the loudness of the shower late at night. Who would I be? How would I feel walking through the garage door or would there even be a garage door? There are so many enormous and minuscule discrepancies between my life and another's. I will never know someone the way they know themselves. Even if they don't know how well they know themselves, or at least the places where they walk, run, dance, jump, cry, angrily or joyfully live out every single day. There are specific people who come to my mind immediately. Whose faces fill with feeling and expression whenever I look at them, and yet, I will never look out of their eyes or find that their passions are exact copies of my own.

I don't know. I'm just thinking. Inside my head, outside my head. Yeah.

chalk towns

1. There is a Quaker saying: ''Let your life speak.'' Describe the environment in which you were raised--your family, home, neighborhood or community--and how it influenced the person you are today.

The sun is barely up and on the dark gray asphalt a town slowly develops. First one road, then another one branching out from it, the color grows and lines connect on the two-dimensional buildings and windows. Looking out from her house, a small girl watches the shadows retreat off of the chalk creation. Children gradually join her until the miniature sidewalks fill with the flurry of scooters and bikes.

It seems like only yesterday that I spent my summer mornings creating abstract art with chalk on the driveway or imitating Pocahontas as I crept between the mountain laurel and trees of my backyard. I still venture up to the boulder that my younger sister christened “Thinking Rock” and look out into the forest, thinking. My childhood, living in the house that I did, never consisted of dolls and “house,” but tree houses, mud concoctions, and stick forts. This is where my imagination grew untamed and I developed a curiosity and creativity that define my natural love of learning.

a pair to fit

Saturday morning I went to the eye-doctors. I am due for a new pair of frames... While in the doctor's room, I wonder what the new frames will look like, I mean, whatever I get will be my choice of course, but I don't know what the options are or what I'll end up liking. When I finally emerged from the dark room, blinking away the spots that impair my vision temporarily (my eyes are intensely light sensitive), I approach the wall of spectacles. At leas a hundred, maybe two stare emptily down at me, no face wears them yet, they have no personality without a face.

Mom watches as I take down first one, and then six pairs, peering into the mirror to see what set of frames is going to perch on my face for a new two years.

I need glasses for distance, and whatever ones I get, they have to bring clarity to my vision so I don't stray off the road when I'm driving, so I can truly appreciate the foliage of fall and then the crystal waters of whatever lake I backpack to next summer. They have to bring my focus to the board when I'm in class listening and looking at the notes up at the front of the room.

I am going to be the one who is wearing these glasses, half-mooned or not. I tried on pairs that made me look like a librarian, like a journalist and like a geek. They varied from blue to orange to (not kidding) yellow. The ones I choose, well, they're rounded, kind of like my well-rounded self (hehe), and well, you'll see once they come in from being ordered. I can hardly wait.

seconds

I just burnt a second bagel in one morning...

Ok

OK. Remember how I said "I won't bore you?" Well, because I need this college essay to be satisfactory in my mind more than anything, I'm changing it. And by changing it I mean rewriting it. I want whoever reads it to say 'Wow, I really want to know this person.' Now I just have to figure out what to write about... from scratch... that sounds like I'm baking something. Ok.

Flour Explosion

So I was writing college application short answer responses, procrastinating studying for tomorrow's SAT 2s, and went to read one of the Tufts responses to my mother who proceeded to interrupt me in order to demand Amy's closing of facebook and her help in folding the underwear, which had been sitting in our dryer for three days. Amy protested, mom did the whole 'you want a sleep over, you want this, you want that, I want this' shpeal resulting in both of us folding the laundry.

Don't ask how it happened, but when I opened the cupboard to put away a clean dish sometime later, the flour bucket had a mini explosion. 'Kate... what was that?' 'Nothing mom!' Amy came to my rescue and distracted my mom with a conversation about quarters, I don't know how she did it, but I flew between the sink and the disaster site, managing to clean the floor and then close the powdered cupboard until mom headed upstairs to put away her own laundry.

Oh the excitement that goes on in the Collins Household!

99

For nine days, tomorrow is the last, I have been wearing pink in some form or another to improve my positive chi. Stef Cotton and Talia Bitter are doing it with me, and since pink is supposed to affect relationships (positively?), they are anticipating that side of the chi's influence. I am more interested in seeing whether or not it improves my energy- even if it's psychological. I do know that whether or not it works, I'm not wearing pink after tomorrow for at least another nine days. The color can be very overwhelming :P

Today I found out I am in Jazz Choir! Yay! I turned down a nomination for officer since it's my first year in this particular choir and the veterans deserve it much more than I (they'll also do a better job).

Time to go, I have 99 paragraphs to read for english, 99 crunches to do, 99 seconds to pull on pjs after my shower, and 99 breathes to intake before I then fall asleep.

scraps of a potential song

When the daylight shines its last glance on the earth,

when the sun retreats at the edge of the world,

I still wait and watch for you.

bored?

I was told I had to write a college essay. I wrote. I edited, I spoke using words I thought to be insightful and uniquely my own. I am told it is too broad. I am told to inject more of "me" into it as though I am a medicine to cure those who read thousands of essays and need to rid themselves of boredom as though it is a common cold.

Alright.
I won't bore you.

PBS National Parks Special

The immensities and humbling beauties of nature hold "sanctity that shames our religions." (Ralph Waldo Emmerson)

guidance

I've been thinking about a quote from Albus Dumbledore that goes something along the lines of (I'm too lazy to go up and flip through the pages to find the definite version): "What better way to spend my life than by passing on knowledge to others." It is an explanation for his decision to become a teacher... a thought that I have rolled over in my head many different times over the past couple years since I first read it. What better way indeed. At first I was going to be a music teacher. That didn't work out so well. Music is a passion, not a job for me- and I don't want it to become work. But I still want to impact people's lives (obviously for the better). Maybe a guidance counselor or another type of teacher... psychology or english. who knows.