A Growth Chart

So far:

I came home to Provo and reunited with friends.

I moved into a fantastic ward.

I played piano at my friend's wedding.
I wrote letters and songs and poems.

I went to lunch in Maddison's studio.

I made clouds and rain and hung them around Velour.

I met a boy who liked my music.
He told me his name and then kissed me.

He said he loved me and met my family.

He doesn't see us getting married.

I listened to Pasty Cline for three weeks after.

I talked with Pearl and met her kittens.
I saw the Head and the Heart when they came to Provo.
I watched a beautiful sunset over Utah Valley from the hill at the edge of campus.
I don't see us getting married either.
Sam sent me a letter, and it was good.
I went to BKDG at Laura's house.

I went to Arizona for Thanksgiving and played with my sister.
I came back and kept taking pictures of a tree by the Maeser.
I went on a train ride in Colorado with some dear friends.
I took some tests and wrote some papers.
I learned some Christmas songs and played "Pie Jesu" at the Christmas special.
I came to the desert for Christmas.

White Christmas?

I need it to snow. It's almost mid-December and not a flake on the ground. It's Christmas, guys! Seventeen years of my life's Decembers come straight out of Mele Kalikimaka:

...from the land where palm trees sway.
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night.

Yep. Lovely though that may be, I think Provo owes me a little more Christmas card weather. Please?

P.S. I drew that last thing for work the other day. I'm making a New Year's card for the department.

A Very Silly Christmas Song

Hannah and I wrote this in about an hour on Sunday night, and we are quite pleased with it! In other Christmassy news, our apartment is decorated and today I cleaned a bunch while singing to a Christmas karaoke CD that my mom sent me home with after Thanksgiving. Also, we are all reading/listening to A Christmas Carol together, courtesy of the lovely Courtney Perry and her awesome reading voice. And last but not least, I am putting together a Christmas box for my dear friend, Elder Sam Sonntag. Even if you don't know him, you're welcome to add a letter. :) And on that note, until finals are over and I can actually write something neat on this blag...

Yes, Virginia.

You guys. It's December first. I've been excited for Christmas since Halloween, but since I can officially start celebrating, I want to start this month's bloggage by posting one of my favorite Christmassy pieces of literature. In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the New York Sun inquiring whether there really was a Santa Claus. An anonymous reply was published shortly thereafter.

Dear Editor:

I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon
115 West Ninety-fifth Street.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

(found via Newseum.)