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.

We're recording!

And I love it.

Fast/Slow

Friday:

Helped Trevor put together his stands for All My Friends are Monsters.
Set them up at the Provo Town Square parking structure.

Ate the most authentic Chinese in Provo at Rice King.

Photo via How To Provo

Saw Meaghan Smith and Mindy Gledhill at the Rooftop Concert Series.

Gave them both copies of my album.
Talked to friends.
Took stands down.
Watched part of The Royal Tenenbaums.
Slept.

Saturday:

Slept in. Read books.
Worked on a yearbook zine for Sam (about my new friends).
Worked on a new song.
Rode bike to boyfriend's house.
Watched the rest of The Royal Tenenbaums.
Went home.
Slept.

Today I Am:

Writing a poem.
Cleaning my room.
Mourning my sick boyfriend.
Working on a song.
Cooking a butternut squash.
Making a yearbook zine for Sam.
Finding more things to do.

Summer Bucket List Continued. (Additions from friends.)

6. Hike the Y one time.
7. Squaw Peak at night.
8. Lagoon.
9. Cupcakes.
10. Living room fort.
11. House show.
12. High and low tea.
13. Rooftop slumber.
14. Farmer's Market in SLC.
15. One weekend road trip.
16. Write a poem every day for a week.
17. Bike picnic.
18. Make a bonfire.
19. Watch a sunrise.
20. Go stargazing with a guitar and hot chocolate with Celeste.

Click here for the full list and give me a ring if you want to do one of these together!

This has to mean the world is a good place.

I love this video, and all of these people. It gives me chills.

He takes my picture a lot.

I am dating a photographer, and sometimes my life feels like this:

Photo credit: Justin Hackworth
http://justinhackworth.com

Even though I'm woefully camera shy, he still manages to make great pictures of me.

I'm going to try to blog for all of June. I'm also going to write a poem today. Did you know I have 48 subscribers? Thank you, Google. Thank you, subscribers. You are nice.

Landmarks

I turned twenty last Friday and consequently, I've been thinking about landmark ages lately. I've been growing up more and more officially over the past few years (pictures when they apply).

In 2007, I turned sixteen at a family reunion. (Teenage dream, right?)

Shortly thereafter, the Harry Potter series ended. To understand the gravity of this in relation to my adulthood, you have to know that I read the first three Harry Potter books no less than nine times each, and the next several around four times each. The last one I read only twice. If Harry Potter was grown up, I was grown up. That was it.
My brother went to college. I started worrying about college (which, apparently, I was supposed to have been doing since freshman year.)
I went to prom.

I turned 18, to very little fanfare. (I don't even have a picture.)
I graduated and pulled my first all-nighter at a Disneyland grad night. At 5, before we got back on the bus, my friends and I were passed out on the grass.

I moved to Provo, Utah and started attending college at Brigham Young University. (And met one of my closest friends, Greta Ballif)

I also met Sam, and Mike.

I joined a band.

I turned nineteen.
I got kissed and broken up with.

My tiniest sister, Maren, was born.

I released my first album.

I got kissed by someone nice.

Photo Credit: Justin Hackworth

I turned twenty.

Photo credit: Trevor Christensen

Aaaaaaand this is my first post in about two months. Sorry! I promise there will be more poems/pictures/ideas coming your way. I will be  a good little blogger.

Summer Bucket List, Second Edition.

1. Watch movies: Good-bye Lenin, Baraka, The Royal Tenenbaums.

2. Visit the petting zoo.

3. All My Friends Are Monsters.

4. Record more Love City Covers.

5. Turn 20.

Any suggestions?

Sarah took my picture.

My sweet friend Sarah Strobel took these pictures of me and my great-grandmother's shirt (one of the best things in my closet).

Girl knows what she's doing.

Also, you should listen to Cody's mix, because he's cool and has great taste in music.

My first and only prose poem.

We trampled the grass with eight-year-old feet, stalking that bleary-eyed dog of our neighbor’s, wielding bleeding Popsicle torches, traversing green hills (in search of war), tore the heads off blades of grass and suffocated smooth stones in our sticky palms. When we’d looted the sand for coins and ravaged the trees for grapefruit, our pagan sun-god had disappeared and we returned to our only conqueror, who alone had power to knife the dirt from under our fingernails and scald us with steaming water.

I'm in this band.

When I wrote my Bucket List for a class in Fall 2009, 14 was "Be in a band." I did not expect that this would happen anytime soon. Friends had asked me to join bands in high school and I'd never been particularly interested.

Also during Fall 2009, I met Scott Shepard at Open Mic night. Having enjoyed each other's music, we talked for a minute or two, left, and didn't speak for months.

In January Corey Fox asked me to play at an acoustic showcase. I agreed to, and a little later, he sent me an interesting email, saying that Scott wanted me to play piano with his band at the Velour Valentine's Masquerade. Again, I agreed. When Scott and I practiced for the first time, we worked on music for about an hour, and talked about books for two.

Clearly, it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Velour Valentine's Masquerade, 2/13/2010

Credit: Kaneischa Johnson

We played the Valentine's show together along with my friend Dan on the cello and our friend Claire on the harp. It was a magical night. About a month later, we saw Ciera Black playing with some of her friends at Open Mic and asked her if she wanted to play with us. By March of 2010, Book on Tape Worm as it is today was formed, and 14 was crossed off my bucket list.

Slumber Party 1/12/2011

Credit: Jeff Cornwall

Book on Tape Worm, 3/12/2011

Credit: Trevor Christensen

Most recently, we're raising money for a full-length album on Kickstarter. Within the space of 4 days and 14 hours (7:28 on Saturday to 9:58 today), we've raised $5,005 dollars of our $6,000 goal. The influx of support has been so humbling, and we are so grateful to everyone who's helped so far.



If you'd like to support us, check out our video and visit bookontapeworm.com, or write a blog post and get your friends informed! If you do blog, leave me a link in the comments and I'll post it to our Kickstarter page.

28

Having opened the door we sat down at the table
The light dim in the evening and my eyes dying out as later came sooner
And soon became late at night
Studying face after face I realized carefully
And then quickly-
That every pupil was dark and frightening enough to fall into.

The next day, meeting with a mirror, I rubbed my eyes
And almost tipped into my own.

On Bernini's David (27)

Lips licked slick and the sun glaring down I squint up,
(First, gripping a smooth and heavy stone in one hand)
And everything happens in instants
I am breathing hard as I run toward a dark mass, shadowy, backlit by brilliance,
Shedding cumbersome armor, dropping a back, losing my sandals,
My body tenses as I skid to a stop before the giant,
I crease my brow, load the sling,
And aim

26 (Or, This Is How I Felt Today)

For a week I yawned
And the next I opened my eyes, millimeter after next into one full blink
Almost completely still, I rubbed one eye over the course of a day
My index finger sliding to my tear duct like a snail drying up
(Voiceless and dusty, headache fermenting in my stagnant skull)
After a year my toes touched the floor
Another month and my feet
And I stood, an ancient tree, weathered, still rising from the ground.

25

Here is a stupid poem I wrote in English on Friday. We had to pick a concept and then the person next to us gave an object. I couldn't think of anything, so I wrote "Love" in droopy cursive letters. Then I got the word paperclip. What? Anyway. Here's what I came up with.

We keep turning curbs together
And we talk and we sit around and we don't talk
And I find you at my front door some of the time
But love is just a paperclip
Short, small, shallow
Malleable,
Nothing new, or unique
Then again, bright, again, then purposeful.
And nonetheless keeping us together.

I'm going to write three more poems right now, and then something in honor of National Blog About Book on Tape Worm Month (NoBloBoTWMo?).

Okay, I never update my blog.

I got a bit burnt out, and I owe you people four poems for the end of February. Hold me to it. 

24

And here you may notice, at the end of the day
That three cups of very hot chocolate,
A good and true friend,
And the end of a project
Will solve everything.

23

Then there was that time in the spring
When I was riding my bike down 5th
(At that point I still didn't recognize anything)
I was riding as fast as I could pedal
Feeling foreign, feeling new
And realizing what seemed at the time
The most important realization I would ever make:
(Being human, being incomplete,
Being young and lost, by virtue of being young.
Being confused, being in love,
Being eighteen and riding a bicycle)

That I am not yet what I am meant to be.

These were the most joyous words I knew.
(I whispered them to the stranger streets)
That I will never be in life what I am meant to be
That all I can do is add miles and years.

22

There are things I shouldn't have told to people
Things I didn't know were inarticulate
And best left that way
Until I put them crudely into words
And lost their meaning completely