:: 2008 12 August :: 8.45 pm

I'm still alive, I promise. I'm having a hard time with internet access, and when I do have it, I'm typing a million miles a minute about kappa kappa psi things. Band camp next week=crazinezz.

p.s. - Rueben, I'm on chris's computer :).

3 think they know | Do you know?

:: 2008 7 August :: 9.17 pm

I just finished my last day at Meijer. I'm leaving Saturday morning, and starting at the Mt. Pleasant Meijer on Sunday or after.

Things are getting back to normal.

I can't find my hair brush and it's making me quite devastated.

Do you know?

:: 2008 31 July :: 8.20 am

Well, I went and saw the doctor yesterday after trying to go to work at nine and then working for three hours being extremely dizzy and holding myself up with the counter.

Rueben and Glor came and picked me up and Rueben drove me to my appointment. The doctor said it was either something with my heart (because during my recent physcial I was told for the first time that I have a heart murmur) or I'm hypoglycemic; so I got an EKG, some blood drawn, and they sent me home with at 24 hour EKG. So, I get to carry around a little bag with wires attached to me until two this afternoon, and then Rueben is going to take me to drop it off. The real EKG they did in the office was fine, and the doctor said he thinks the 24 hour one will be, too. But...but only thing he was worried about was that hypoglycimia doesn't explain why I couldn't walk for almost an hour and a half after I almost passed out.

I guess we'll see. I think my ulcer is healing. I was able to eat quite a bit yesterday (probably about 1300 calories), which isn't quite a bit, but it's a hell of a lot more than I have been able to eat the past few months...plus I didn't get nauseated!

So, as one thing gets better, another gets worse.

I have the day off today from work, doctor's orders. I have to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so we'll see how it goes. I like the little vacation, but I don't like it's cause.

1 think they know | Do you know?

:: 2008 29 July :: 8.54 am

I almost passed out at work yesterday. I was processing a return and all of the sudden I felt a wave of heat come over me. I looked at the computer screen and it split into three screens (just like in the movies, in fact), and then I couldn't hear anything like I was underwater. So, I told my coworker to finish the return and I collapsed on the floor.

I called my parents to come and get me since I couldn't drive home, and I was wheeled out in a wheel chair.

I have the day off today, so I'm just resting now. I feel a lot better; I couldn't walk for a few hours after it happened.

It was really warm behind the service desk again, almost seventy nine. My dad was yelling at me saying that I shouldn't be passing out when it's only seventy nine and there are lots of people that work in factories where it's warmer than that. It put me off. I can't help it, and there's nothing that a doctor will be able to do. When it gets really hot and humid, I can't sweat, which makes me overheat. I don't know, I feel like I'm thirteen again and I'm getting yelled at for something I have no control over.

I'm not looking forward to this weekend, however. It's suppose to get up into the nineties. What do I have to do? Buy myself twelve box fans to take to work with me?

I can tell you this, I don't ever want to be wheeled out of meijer in a wheel chair again until I'm ninety and don't know the difference.

2 think they know | Do you know?

:: 2008 25 July :: 9.45 pm

April 18

the slime of all my yesterdays
rots in the hollow of my skull

and if my stomach would contract
because of some explicable phenomenon
such as pregnancy or constipation

I would not remember you

or that because of sleep
infrequent as a moon of greencheese
that because of food
nourishing as violet leaves
that because of these

and in a few fatal yards of grass
in a few spaces of sky and treetops

a future was lost yesterday
as easily and irretrievably
as a tennis ball at twilight


-Sylvia Plath

Do you know?

:: 2008 19 July :: 8.22 pm

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.

Do you know?

:: 2008 5 July :: 1.29 pm

I'm about to leave for work; it's the last day in my forty hour work week. I have the next three days off.

I didn't get the big scholarship and I'm still waiting to hear on the two smaller ones; but it doesn't matter, anyhow. I'm still going to have to work this school year. Now I'm trying to amass hours so I can qualify for vacation. I have to work at least thirty six hours a week until the 26th. I only have thirty hours next week.

Rueben's been working most nights, I've been working mids. It's hard. I shaved my legs and my ankle is throbbing from the razor cut. Ugh. I have to wear a skirt to work again because it's so warm. I hate wearing a skirt. It makes people treat you different. I don't know how, don't ask for any examples or evidence...it just does.

Waiting for my phone to charge for a few minutes, then leaving. I'll be at work until 11 tonight. Feel free to stop by and get a price adjustment or a lottery ticket.

I'm impecunious and I can't do anything about it.

[curious now, aren't you.]

Do you know?

:: 2008 1 July :: 8.12 pm

No ten thousand dollar scholarship for me.

Now I just get to wait on those other two as I brace myself for another school year working at Meijer and wanting to go crazy.

Well, not wanting...actually going crazy.

I went shopping with my mom and my grandma today; went to valueland and bath and body works and all kinds of fun places.

I picked out a few cute tops and a new suit coat for ceremonies and performances because my old one doesn't fit anymore.

By the way, I've lost 50 pounds in the past year.

Do you know?

:: 2008 30 June :: 8.26 am

Today is the day they notify the recipients of the ten thousand dollar scholarship.

oh hell.

Do you know?

:: 2008 25 June :: 12.47 pm

It rained for a while earlier. It was wonderful to hear the droplets pound the cement and create little rivers in the growing grass.

I worked last night until 11, and I'm leaving for work in about an hour to do it again. I worked 38 hours last week and I have 37 and a half this week. I'm at work all the time, but I'm trying to increase my fringe hours (an average of how many hours you work per day for the entire year) so that I can actually get paid vacation and days off. My anniversary date is July 26, so I have to get my fringe up by then, thus I'm working my ass off, not taking lunches to get that extra half an hour on days where I'm not working a full eight, stuff like that.

But, it is leading some nice paychecks. Unfortunately, my first rent payment is due in a few days which all but depletes the savings I've stashed away the past few months. A day in the life...

I'm still waiting to hear on three scholarship opportunities. All should be announced within the next week or so. Although I'm financially set as far as financial aid, I would really like to refuse one or both of the loans that I was awarded if I got one or two of the scholarships. I would also like to not have to work next school year because of all the responsibilities I've taken on...but I doubt that'll happen.

The Inferno has gone by the wayside; now I'm purusing the Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Criticism while on breaks at work. It's quite informative, and since I'm taking a very prestigious class next semester with a very intelligent professor, I figure it will serve me well to know the difference between the meaning of classicism depending on the century, and all the different forms of Comedy, especially the Spanish ones.

Do you know?

:: 2008 23 June :: 2.19 pm

I made hummus today. It was yummy.

Do you know?

:: 2008 21 June :: 6.46 pm

Reading the text of Dante's Inferno with the original and translated text side by side makes me want to learn Italian.

And then I remember that I haven't even taken French 101 yet.

Why does language have to be so ambiguous and random!?!

2 think they know | Do you know?

:: 2008 20 June :: 5.51 pm

I just feel so tired. My day off, and I feel tired.

I guess that's what happens when...

whatever.

I'm analyzing the previous poem more in depth. It's quite depressing, and I feel like I'm missing something. I think Eliot's trying to say that he's an atheist, and if there is a god, we're really fucked.

Me too.

Do you know?

:: 2008 18 June :: 11.47 pm

Dear Student,

At this time the awarding of the Bulletin Scholarships has been completed. Unfortunately, you were not selected for a scholarship awarded by the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid (OSFA) for the 2008-2009 academic year. There were over 475 applicants this year and only 147 received a scholarship. We will keep your application on file and will consider you for additional scholarships that may become available. Please apply again in March 2009 if you are not graduating in May.

We wish you continued success as you pursue your educational goals.

Sincerely,

Judith Boyd
Assistant Director
Scholarships and Financial Aid



Okay, so if a 3.95 GPA can't get me any academic scholarships in this country, what am I suppose to do!?!

Do you know?

:: 2008 15 June :: 10.28 pm
:: Mood: complacent

It's late and I'm extremely exhausted; yet, I cannot, will not sleep. My body will not rest, so I am up, and writing. I am here.

I was reviewing some of my anthologies of literature as I often do upon trying to sleep. I flip through the pages and catch words, lines, sometimes whole stanzas or paragraphs of immortalized words and tonight I happened across one of the most depressing, yet insightful poems written in the modern period. It is T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."

It seems like this time in the world-this time in my life with which I can view the world-fits into this piece so well. It talks about the fall of man because of what mankind has become: weak cowards. Eliot likens men to scarecrows in the desert that have no eyes and can only whisper meaningless things; their only hope is death.


I.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
We shipser together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry glass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appera:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
IN the wind's singing
More distand and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III.
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, her they recive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

1925


Eliot says "This is the dead land" because we aren't living, and as much as we want to repent and "[tremble] with tenderness," we are only forming "prayers to broken stone," the same stone Eliot reveals that only exist because of the "supplication" of mankind's hands. We worship what we make, but prayers don't help any when you worship false ideals and material wealth made in hopes of becoming whole again that were made by corrupt hands. The act of the prayer can't even be completed because it can only be formed by the lips of the dead man who cannot speak; prayer that is nothing more than whispers that are "quiet and meaningless."

The whole effect? The futility of life, the cowardice of man, the corruption of man, inability to speak or see, the only possibly redeption and hope in man's death or nonexistence, the "shadow" of corruption in which we ruin everything that is good and pure in the world, man's inability to end his world "not with a band but a whimper."

Many times I feel this. Many times I see this.

1 think they know | Do you know?