Ode To This Autumn Day

Everything is on fire. It crunches and scatters and spreads over everything. I walk on it, and it is good. It smells of ending life, and it covers me until I am swallowed.

It leaves nothing but vein-prints on the sidewalk.

The smoke and ashes are above me today, breathing cool autumn breath down my back. I want it to be my home. It reminds me of England.

I am pressing a flame beneath my Art Through the Ages. I do not want it to fade, but all burning things turn black eventually. It fights me: it wants to curl up and die. I will not let it.

If I am on fire, does it mean that I am burning? Will I find ashes before my eyes, will my toes start to shrivel and whither, dark and curling? If I am on fire, am I dying?

No. I am being pressed beneath art through the ages. I am being pressed by the infant art inside of me. It wants to keep me forever, to look upon me and leave my vein-prints on the sidewalk. It wants to walk upon me and think, this is good. It wants to immortalize my scars and weaknesses because they are me as much as it is.

Still, I am fleeting. I will break and die, and ten thousand more will swarm to cover my place on the barren ground. I will be forgotten.

My only hope is that art will press me between vanilla pages and let me stain them, and that someone will pick up my book and open it and find me there, dead but alive. A history, a journal, a single flame between a single pair of pages opened by a single pair of hands and read by a single pair of eyes. That will be enough for me.

Ode To The Snail That I Saw Smashed On The Stairs

You are your own now.

Homesickness and Confessions

I'm not really sure where to begin this. I've not been the best blogger... or journal-er, for that matter.

I just need somewhere to let this out, and out in Virginia my options are limited. Especially right now. So I guess that means that I turn to you, my invisible audience. Invisible to me, anyway.

I think that for the first time, I'm homesick. Really, I would give anything to quit school right now and be at home. It's the first time I've had me a cry since I've gotten here, too. I guess that's a good thing, because maybe I haven't been addressing all of my issues properly until now.

All of my friends are out camping at the moment. I should be there. I should be there. But I'm not. They left without me.

Maybe I shouldn't be upset about this. It's not exactly the best thing to be doing on a Saturday night, and one that the school would definitely not be happy about, did they know. But, you know me. Such a rebel.

Why wasn't I important enough to remember? Not even that, why couldn't they turn around for me? Am I really that insignificant to them? Do I really have as much worth as a forgotten sleeping bag or blanket? "Oh well, we'll just have to remember her next time." I don't know if I should be angry or glad.

I could be angry that they forgot, that they didn't turn around. Or I could be glad that I didn't go, because I wouldn't have gone to Stake Conference if I had gone camping with them. Obviously, the Lord knows when it's time for me to stop making stupid decisions and how to help me make the right ones. He knows everything.

I just wish... I dunno. That I wasn't having such a hard time of it. It's not like my friends are bad people, not at all. They're just not as strong as they could be, which makes it hard for me to be strong. Sometimes it can feel like I've got nobody. Like right now.

Everyone is at the Homecoming dance right now, I'm folding laundry, blowing my nose, and eating dark chocolate. Again, I could be upset about this, that I got ditched by everybody, or I could see it as an opportunity to catch up on my journaling, read my scriptures, maybe watch the Phantom of the Opera and cry some more. I guess that's what life is all about: perspective. I need to stop having the wrong one.

Anyway, sorry that I've been screwing up, everybody. That's the first month of my college experience, in a nutshell. Enjoying my freedom in ways I probably shouldn't be, breaking rules and laws and hearts. I'm not done messing around, not by a long shot, but for once I feel good about a decision I've made. The decision to go to Stake Conference tomorrow. It's stupid that I even had to struggle over that decision. I feel stupid. But I think that Satan decided to make it extra hard for me this year, my first year away from home, because he knew how vulnerable I would be. It's not like I can just drive myself to Stake Conference. My parents aren't honking the horn at me in the driveway anymore. No, I actually have to work to make the right decisions, and so far I've been doing shoddy work in that department.

But, no time like the present, as they say. So, I'm going to go write in my journal, wipe away my tears, and hang out with the one friend I have who's still on campus. I'm not going to look back, and I'm going to try not to be angry.

Being an adult is hard work. I think it's about time that I realized that.