I'm hoping to go to Ecuador for a month, in the summer, with my sister, to serve in an orphanage. We are going to keep journals, go on hikes, get better at Spanish, and serve people until we are the happiest girls in the world.

Life changing experience #23482378491237413.

Common Sense I Ignored.

Hang your hopes on a hopeless thing,
And the hopeless thing will fall.
For the hopeless thing wasn't made to hold,
Or even to stand at all.

Give your love to the wandering man,
And the wandering man will leave.
For the wandering man was made to walk,
Not to sit, not to wait, not to grieve.

Bare your soul to a polished stone,
And the stone cannot return.
For a stone wasn't made to love, or to feel;
When you go, know the stone won't yearn.

But hang your heart where your heart belongs,
In the chest of someone true,
And he'll cut his own from his ribcage bones,
And he'll give it back to you.

Everything you need to know is in this poem:

(If you can, read it aloud.)

Aprendiendo
de Jorge Luis Borges

Después de un tiempo, uno aprende la sutil diferencia entre sostener una mano y encadenar un alma, y uno aprende que el amor no significa acostarse y una compañía no significa seguridad, y uno empieza a aprender,
Que los besos no son contratos y los regalos no son promesas, y uno empieza a aceptar sus derrotas con la cabeza alta y los ojos abiertos, y uno aprende a construir todos sus caminos en el hoy, porque el terreno de mañana es demasiado inseguro para planes, y los futuros tienen una forma de caerse en la mitad.
Y después de un tiempo uno aprende que si es demasiado, hasta el calor del sol quema. Así que uno planta su propio jardín y decora su propia alma, en lugar de esperar a que alguien le traiga flores.
Y uno aprende que realmente puede aguantar, que uno realmente es fuerte, que uno realmente vale, y uno aprende y aprende, y con cada día uno aprende.
Con el tiempo aprendes que estar con alguien porque te ofrece un buen futuro significa que tarde o temprano querrás volver a tu pasado.
Con el tiempo comprendes que sólo quien es capaz de amarte con tus defectos, sin pretender cambiarte, puede brindarte toda la felicidad que deseas.
Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que si estás al lado de esa persona sólo por acompañar tu soledad, irremediablemente acabarás no deseando volver a verla.
Con el tiempo entiendes que los verdaderos amigos son contados, y que el que no lucha por ellos tarde o temprano se verá rodeado sólo de amistades falsas.
Con el tiempo aprendes que las palabras dichas en un momento de ira pueden seguir lastimando a quien heriste, durante toda la vida.
Con el tiempo aprendes que disculpar cualquiera lo hace, pero perdonar es sólo de almas grandes.
Con el tiempo comprendes que si has herido a un amigo duramente, muy probablemente la amistad jamás volverá a ser igual.
Con el tiempo te das cuenta que aunque seas feliz con tus amigos, algún día llorarás por aquellos que dejaste ir.
Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que cada experiencia vivida con cada persona es irrepetible.
Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que el que humilla o desprecia a un ser humano, tarde o temprano sufrirá las mismas humillaciones o desprecios multiplicados al cuadrado.
Con el tiempo aprendes a construir todos tus caminos en el hoy, porque el terreno del mañana es demasiado incierto para hacer planes.
Con el tiempo comprendes que apresurar las cosas o forzarlas a que pasen ocasionará que al final no sean como esperabas.
Con el tiempo te das cuenta de que en realidad lo mejor no era el futuro, sino el momento que estabas viviendo justo en ese instante.
Con el tiempo verás que aunque seas feliz con los que están a tu lado, añorarás terriblemente a los que ayer estaban contigo y ahora se han marchado.
Con el tiempo aprenderás que intentar perdonar o pedir perdón, decir que amas, decir que extrañas, decir que necesitas, decir que quieres ser amigo, ante una tumba, ya no tiene ningún sentido.
Pero desafortunadamente, solo con el tiempo.

(There are no good translations of this available online, it seems. Update: Actually, this one is okay. Update #2: It really isn't.)

The Umbrella Man

"What it means is, if you have any fact, which you think is really sinister, is really obviously a fact which can only point to some sinister underpinnings- hey, forget it, man. Because you can never, on your own, think up all the non-sinister, perfectly valid explanations for that fact."

Watch it here.

This is how I feel about a lot of abstruse poetry lately:

Descalzo

3/19/2009

Because the road has ended

I will stand barefoot on the burning black asphalt
Watching the heat distort the sky and distant mountains
Feeling the sun on my skin
Turning coral with the beams
I will stand with shoeless feet in the stagnant air
And think about fossilizing
Turning to a silent stone
Losing all feeling
But, as I begin to set
As my poured cement body moves less and less
I will begin to feel myself burn
And, by feeling,
Remember my mortality
And the transience of life
Knowing that I cannot petrify
But only rot in the sweltering heat
My feet will lift themselves from the oily asphalt
And,
Digging their toes into the hot white sand
Make new tracks

René Maltête

Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?

William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Addison's Walk

I went for a walk at Oxford.

It was misty and bright, silver edged black trees needling the pale sky.

The ground was wet and dark, mud ringing under my feet.

I was alone and tired, limping forward on my swollen ankle,

humming under my breath in the exhaling mist.

I waited at the crossroads and then

crossed a bridge, walked into the trees, and laid out under the sky.

From the bench my back was spread on

I saw the dark branches of trees,

stuck to the grey clouds.

I closed my eyes, patient,

closed them, spread out, back flat, stretched on the high bench,

Cold grey wood against my spine, my legs and ankles--

I closed my eyes and felt the pins and needles

of mist that was almost rain, prickling my nose and eyelids-

I closed my eyes, paling under the whiteness of the sky,

The watercolor made of the cold world,

I closed my eyes and remembered you, fair unfair,

And opened them again.

Eighth

When I was fourteen I ran away from home,

because my mom and I had an argument in the living room,

in front of the rest of my family.

When I ran out the front door and slammed it behind me,

Hurrying from the porch I used to sweep in first grade,

Running down the driveway where I learned to ride a bike,

Traipsing on the street I wandered day and night,

Taking distorted pictures of street lamps on school nights,

I turned the corners I sometimes rode my bike around on the way to the library,

Stopping to stand in the grass on the corner, next to the stop sign,

Crying, shouting, barefoot and mad,

Dragging my heels through the leaves and grass,

My fingers grazing the ivy of the wall.

I turned the corner again onto the highway,

and coming down the road on the sidewalk,

a police car pulled over, red lights blaring,

and I pretended not to notice,

but the policeman talked to me,

asked me where I was going and where I lived,

and I answered, terrified, until he stopped.

I continued on the sidewalk, cut grass, deciduous trees, 

bougainvillea running along the high wall

of the oldest country club in the Coachella Valley.

When it happens I am surrounded by trees, and the ground is dark.

I see the sidewalk in my memory, pockmarked and pale,

and lying there is the four of diamonds,

one scale from some lost deck of cards.

I look down at the card,

its sharp parallelograms and mirrored 4s dark in the night,

and having recently come home from China,

remember that the number means death there.

It's silly, but at fourteen, that was why I turned around.

At home, Dad had said, "Should we go after her?"

And my only little brother, a lump in his throat, wailed,

"Well, do you want her?"

By the time I turned around,

they were cruising slowly through our neighborhood,

our huge white Suburban moving like a mythical whale in the dark.

After some college boys harassed me about the police harassing me,

After I was walking back, playing card in hand,

My dad rolled the window down and said something funny,

something about coming home.

Six years later, I went for a walk here in London,

maybe just to feel the comfort of being warm when it's cold,

of wearing a coat and breathing out clouds.

I intended to walk down just one street, and at the end of it, to turn around.

I intended to stop when the line of trees stopped, and then to follow them home again.

But I continued into Kensington, and past Hyde Park, and through Hyde Park, and on,

And you're not going to believe me,

But after I passed a bus stop I looked down at the pavement,

Lit by yellow street lamps and crowded by trees and high buildings,

and I saw one card, an eight of clubs, lying alone on the sidewalk,

and again, I don't care what that card means to technical numerology or to the occult, 

but eight is my favorite number, 

and 8 is an infinity symbol turned on its side,

and eight is the number of steps to Nirvana,

and eight is a perfect cube,

and eight is a perfect octave.

I didn't stop and gape at the card on the ground; I picked it up and kept walking,

Carrying the omen with me,

Realizing that my life was, and had been, metaphors and foreshadowing,

building off of each other,

And that I need to start believing the whispers I hear in my mind,

things like "This will be finite, so end it,"

and "you'll be friends with this person,"

and the worst, after days of a strange fever:

"if you get close to him,

he has the power to remove you from what you love."

And because this needs a denouement, my dad is coming to England,

to carry me home, on a silver plane, like a bright fish in the sky,

And home isn't an escape, but a destination.

Home is a refuge and a celebration,

home is a place to hug three sisters and two brothers,

parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins.

Home is a place to make fresh orange juice on Christmas,

a place to play ping-pong with my sister

in the backyard in rolled jeans and sunglasses.

Home isn't a living room or a dark street.

Home isn't someone's sternum and clavicle,

or the touch of his hair on my forehead.

Home is my mom trying to say "I love you," more,

Home is my dad driving me back from the airport in our white suburban,

through the thousand windmills at the base of the San Jacinto mountains.

Home is arriving to the fourteen arms

of the seven people who love me most,

and it is knowing that my brother will always want me back

to be the fifteenth and the sixteenth, 

and the eighth.

How My Life Works:

If it makes me feel like I'm going to throw up, I don't do it.
If I start crying, I keep walking.
If I don't understand something, I go through it again.
If I'm not making sense, I stop talking.
If I walk for too long, I start limping.
If my family can't talk, I'll leave the house for anything.
If I'm waiting for a letter, I send another letter.
If I can't finish one poem, I work on a different poem.
If my fingernails are short, I cut them shorter and they bleed.
If that foot does the thing it's doing and I am therefore limping, I keep walking.
If I cut my hair, I want to cut my hair more.
If I feel sad, I try to sleep.
If I wake up afraid, I lie on my back and breathe.
If I can't breathe, I go outside where the air is thinner.
If I trip over Spanish words, I pay attention to what I'm saying.
If I'm smiling, I try not to remember why I shouldn't be.
If someone makes me a cup of tea, I drink it.
If I hold still, I can like people.
If people are too friendly, I remember that they want to be loved.
If I read a poem out loud, I try not to cry.
If other people are crying, I do not cry.
If there is singing in the hall, I sit on the landing and harmonize.
If the first snow happens, I cloud up the glass on the bus.
If I am in the city, I am like a city, humming, glittering, alive.
If I am leaving the city, I am not you.
If I am not you, then I know who I am.

Another old poem.

Si una vez no es suficiente, yo te diré otra vez
Porque lo que diré es la verdad
Y la verdad tiene que estar dicho todo el tiempo
Te diré una y otra y otra vez:
Que no tengo el tiempo para esperar, esperando
Esperando para ti y tus conclusiones
Y cuando yo saldré de tus pensamientos
Mis palabras se repiten, repiten, repiten
Como un eco en tu cabeza, detras de las cavas de tus ojos.

Translation:

If once isn't sufficient, I'll tell you another time
Because what I will tell you is the truth
And the truth has to be spoken all the time
I will tell you once and another and another time:
That I don't have the time to wait, waiting
Waiting for you and your conclusions
And when I leave your thoughts
My words will repeat, repeat, repeat
Like an echo in your head, behind the caves of your eyes.

Old Poem

I found a poem today that I wrote at the end of August last year. I think it's poignant given what's happened since.

8/26/10 2:56 AM

It’s times like these when I wish I had a friend in a foreign country
A friend I could call when he was eating breakfast,
When I can’t sleep and it’s nearing three in the morning.
Over his toast and milk he would tell me not to worry,
That everything was fine on his side of the ocean and mine
That no one was going to break into my house,
That no one was going to break into my heart.
It’s times like these I wish I had a friend who would be awake,
When the world around me is sleeping.
Who would be thinking and moving
When my neighbors are snoring and clutching their pillows
When I am sighing and feeling so alone
So completely alone
It’s times like these-- these middle-of-the-nights--
When it is easy to feel friendless.
When it is easy to recognize that no one,
Not your best friend,
Not your lover,
Not your relatives in town,
Would answer their phone to you at such an ungodly hour.
And that you couldn’t dispute that they hadn’t picked up at 2:56 in the morning.
No one in this town loves you enough to wake up.
No one in this town would talk to you so late over toast.

Decemberlist

1. Bump n' Grind hike with Mom.
2. Living room fort with Maren.
3. Homemade orange juice.
4. Boat parade in Newport Beach.
5. Volunteer at CVRM.
6. Take Dad to Borough Market.
7. Give twenty things to charity.  (25 down)
8. Visit Frank Sinatra's grave. (Seriously? I don't think I'm ever going to do this.)(UPDATE: DONE)
9. Hug my grandparents.
10. Give good gifts.

Coat

Jonathan is four years old 

and his sister Colette whispers in my ear,

"I think he loves you as much as our mom."

He wants me to carry him on my shoulders.

He wants me to read him a story and run with him around the house.

He wants to pile pillows on top of me

and listen to their uncle play the guitar for all of us.

When their grandparents wanted to take them to the grocery store,

Colette invited me along and I agreed and ran downstairs to get my coat,

long and tan with buttons. I pulled it over my arms and shoulders

and walked into the front hall, where Jonathan was waiting for me.

"Where is the girl with the long hair?" he said.

"That's me." I replied. "I'm Emily. I just put my coat on."

"You put your coat on?"

"Yeah."

"But why is that you?"

You throw on a coat and become a different person.

I thought I knew you so well, understood you so fully.

I thought I'd found a feel for your potential,

that I could predict what you would do in certain situations.

But this situation I saw long before it ever happened,

before you even knew it was going to happen,

and I was all wrong, and I put it away,

completely unprepared when it was realized.

Instead of being ready, I ran, hyperventilating, up the stairs, crying,

Screaming, gasping, like there had been a death, a rape,

I terrified my mother and my friends, I wandered around the city,

stopping and sitting down, 

numbed on each park bench.

I slept for days straight, and when I woke up,

I looked frantically for things that wouldn't remind me I was human.

My life was avoidance and distraction,

calling my mother,

waiting until it was dark enough to sleep again,

wanting to be alone but wanting people

to talk about anything besides the present or home.

Identity is often defined by action,

And in my reaction I changed completely,

realizing who I was and where I was headed,

and that where I was headed might not be where I actually wanted to end up.

Really.

Maybe in your action you transformed into other something

Than the person I knew,

The person whose actions I maybe could have predicted,

And by the slight alteration of one dimension, became a different

shape-

Throw on a coat and you look like a different person,

Throw down an action and you are a different person, 

A person I don't know and maybe a person I don't hope to know,

And a person I'm afraid to see and a person I might not come home for fear of seeing,

And a person who acted on my reactions, and a person who acted sometimes

like the person I wanted to be in love with.

And the person who I fell in love with,

who you have sometimes been.

Sometimes I talk as if I do not know you,

as if I don't know a thing about your past

and as if I don't remember the version of you I knew so well, so recently.

I talk as if you were the same person as any other person who leaves me behind,

someone I could toss insults at,

someone I'd have the gall to hate.

Part of you is still me,

And part of me sometimes wants to ask,

should you ever reappear in some hall,

"But why is that you?"

Maren, Holding On

I watched my sister take one step over Skype the other day.

I've been talking to my mother obsessively,

and she sits in front of the screen,

glowing in the bright Californian sun and holding the baby.

I'm somewhere in London, where it's dark at four and cloudy all day,

And I'm in my pajamas until something pulls me out of the house.

So I call her and sit alone in the hall, wearing boxers and a T-shirt,

and she asks me whether I've eaten yet that day.

My sister is ten months old, a smiling miracle.

No, really.

She sits in my mom's lap, mostly wriggling around,

and if I say her name in a high pitch and smile,

She remembers me, (maybe only as the girl in the computer)

And she hits the keys with that one arm she's always waving around,

And she smiles as big as I'm smiling,

Our Scandinavian eyes winking with joy.

She can't smile big enough, so she opens her mouth and laughs.

My mom sometimes walks around the room as she talks to me.

She's warming oatmeal and mixing in applesauce,

coaxing my sister into every biteful of solid food.

She was sitting in a chair a few meters away when my sister took a step.

I think my dad was talking with me at the time,

and he cranked the camera toward my sister.

"She took a step!" said my mom, and I looked at her again.

She was holding my sister under her tiny arms,

where she had just fallen into my mothers' hands and knees.

Maren is afraid of falling.

When my mom walks her around,

(her fists wrapped around my mother's index fingers)

she's started carrying herself on her own,

but when my mom lets go of her, she stops, afraid of falling.

She doesn't know she can do it alone.

She doesn't realize that walking is an act of continuous falling,

That each step is a forward fall being caught by the next foot, and the next,

alternating fall after fall, catch after catch.

What she doesn't realize is that life is a great fall,

a great fall, and a catch,

And every moment after she learns to walk will be about falling and hitting the ground,

hopefully always on her feet.

And this poem wasn't actually going to be about me specifically,

but I fell on my face the other day,

After this boy I was in love with proved he wasn't what I thought he was,

and broke me,

Me who was finally, really in love, for the first time,

Finally there, my face pressed to the concrete, dry heaving on the ground,

Finally realizing why it is that some people are so wary of falling in love,

because falling in love,

is, 

most certainly,

falling.

And having hit, 

like Maren topples on the kitchen tile sometimes,

I'm terrified and shocked.

I don't want to get up again.

Wouldn't I rather reach, wailing and tearful,

For my mother's arms, safe from everything and anyone?

Wouldn't I rather stay here in bed, down, asleep,

Rocked slowly by the temporal turning of the world?

But what Maren doesn't realize is that life is a fall and a catch,

and what I hadn't realized is that much of what I catch, I eventually get over.

And what my mother knew is that the trick is to let us fall first,

until we learn to stop before head-over-heels hitting ground,

until we learn to catch ourselves with our feet.

CHRIS AND I ARE ON OUR COMPUTERS AND WE ARE ABOUT TO GO TO PARIS REALLY SOON.

Ohhhh hey.

I'm in London. Blogging about it at http://thisgoeswithus.com.

UGH.

Well guys, it's the worst day I've had in a long time.

Didn't sleep all last night due to combination of heat/head cold/stress
Woke up at six.
Encountered a gross and bloody human tooth while sanitizing saliva covered hygiene tools at my dad's dental office.
Thought of a new song and forgot most of it.
Went to a department store as per the generous offer of my dad to get me London clothes. Encountered self esteem issues in the dressing room. Bought nothing.
Took a nap, woke up to spider on wrist. Gasped and shook it off in a frenzy.
Depressed. Probably PMSing.
Recorded to covers only to hear they were ruined by static and then to have my family come home and make noise. Also the baby is sleeping. Recording is over.
TASCAM recorder won't hook up to my computer.
I can't upload my cover.
Stressed about London. Stressed about being sick. Stressed about losing my voice. Stressed about covering a bunch of songs I didn't know until a couple days ago.

(This is what a blog is for, right?)

Today I've been going through folders of stuff I wrote in high school. It appears that one day in my freshman computers class I typed some big goals out (answering the prompt "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?) :

"In ten years I will be 24 years old and almost 25. I will be a world famous rock star with solo albums and albums with my best friend Sarah C# Sullivan.   I will have a house in Wick, Great Britain, and I will have an awesome English accent. If I don’t make it in the record world, I will own a music store that will have a giant jar of peppermint sticks that everyone will take all the time. I will be finished with college at Brigham Young University and I will have majored in music. I will have a really shiny black piano in the middle of my living room and I will direct the church choir with my really hot piano-playing husband, who will write songs with me."

There's still time, you guys.

Still time.

17. Bike picnic.

Yesterday Trevor and I fulfilled our role as "Provo's Favorite Couple," (as named from the stage by #100block denizen and brilliant musician, Cody Rigby) and we went on a cute date.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT WE DID ON OUR CUTE DATE?

I'll tell you.

First, we picked up photos at Allen's, and then we went grocery shopping at Harmon's. Some of the items we bought included: tomatoes, ciabatta rolls, 2 Stewart's sodas, peaches, bagels.

Trevor took me home, dropped his car off at his house, and rode back to my place. I made rosemary chicken sandwiches with tomato and lettuce, and we put them, the sodas, some cookies, and our peaches into Trevor's backpack. I ran upstairs, changed into my swimsuit and a T-shirt, and then we walked out.

We rode our bikes down the river trail until we came to a spot that Trevor refers to (in an appropriately hick-ish voice) as "The Swimmin' Hole." After tweeting something cute about how cute we are, we ate our picnic on the edge of the river, and eventually we climbed in.

The river is freezing. FREEZING. Trevor went in first and then I climbed down and put my toes in, and then my calves, and maybe I got my thighs in a little, too. To be honest, we just shivered in the water for a good 20 minutes, gave up, and got out.

We started riding our bikes back to my house when we stopped at a park and took a nap for a little while. When we got up, Trevor noticed that I had a flat tire (which explains why I'd been going so slow/ breathing so hard for the past several hundred feet). We couldn't fix it, so we started walking our bikes. On the way home, we stopped at La Ranchera, a Mexican market, and we got popsicles and two terribly picturesque Mexican cokes, which we put (you guessed it) in my bike basket.

Cute cute cute. We walked and talked about very deep things all the way home.

The end.