I feel a sneeze coming on.

delightful sneezes
how can bodily functions
feel so refreshing

I think one of the worst possible sensations is when a sneeze dies before coming to fruition. It's both disappointing and it makes you look kind of stupid.

The last couple weeks of school are overwhelming. It's just not a good situation. I'm going home in less than two weeks - I'll be off island for two and a half months. I want to take advantage of my last days here, having adventures and getting as much as I can out of living on an island. Instead of enjoying myself, I'm confined to my room, studying my ass off with my head buried in a textbook.

Not fair. Granted, life isn't fair. But still. Not fair.

An end of the day addition. I had some weird struggles today, resulting in this haiku.

I hate glitter glue.
Where the fuck did this come from?
Existential bane.

Well that was disappointing.

I went to Iceland the summer after eighth grade.

Since then, I've secretly wanted to move there when I'm "grown up" and have a real job and a life.

It recently came to my attention that Iceland participates in whaling.

My unfounded loyalty for whales outweighs my love of Iceland.

Fuuuuuuck.

This in no way reflects what is generally found in Wanderlust.

A Series of College-Related Haikus

Finals.
finals are a joke
information retention
yeah right, don't they wish

Printers.
ink is running low
and yet it keeps on printing
I don't like its lies

Energy Drinks.
nectar of students
slowly destroying kidneys
and yet we consume

Freshman 15.
we eat what we want
but just around the corner
imminent weight gain

Weekends.
most people party
but we are major losers
so we just hang out

Easy Mac.
perfect little lunch
the staple of college life
wondrous cheesiness

Maybe I'm scarier than I thought.

Yesterday Justin didn't show up for work. For the second or third day in a row. Generally, it's not a huge deal - we're perfectly capable of accomplishing things and being productive without his presence. However, we ran into a snag while going through some stuff he had been working on. Andrea and Debbie (our bosses) sent me to find Justin. Luckily, he lives in the next building over.

I was aggravated at this point - sick of him not coming to work when we actually need him. I got up to the seventh floor, marched down the hall. I knocked on the door - it wasn't quite a pound, but it was a very intense knock that definitely meant business. Justin's roommate Mike opened the door, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. "Where is he?" I demanded (I'm kind of peeved at Mike so I didn't feel bad about being harsh). Justin's head popped up from the couch; I could see him past Mike holding the door open. "WHY AREN'T YOU AT WORK?" Needless to say, Justin got his ass off the couch pretty fast. As I berated him for sleeping through work and not having his cell phone on, Mike commented, "Wow. Next time Justin won't go to French all I need to do is get an angry white chick up here." I flipped him off and left the apartment. It was actually a remarkably good day.

On an unrelated note, I heard back from Wanderlust. I had submitted a couple random little things and they accepted my "series of college related haikus." I posted the haikus a while back, they're somewhere on the blog. Before I submitted, I took out the one about skittles. I really liked the haiku, but it didn't really have anything to do with the rest of them. Also, here's the binary code poem. It's a work in progress.

I see words move past me
sentences and phrases
simply bounce against people
tumble to the ground
or fly past
grazing elbows
getting lodged in backpacks
some are otherwise forgotten

I feel like I’m speaking in binary code
zeroes and ones
Maybe it’s just that nobody listens

What ever happened to funk?

I have a feeling that this is going to be a series of tangents. An amalgamation of thoughts. Consider yourself warned.

I think I might bring back funk as a trend. Like I pseudo brought back yo-yos my senior year at Edina. Too bad I don't listen to funk music. It'll be a challenge.

I'm still quazi apprehensive about next year. The fact that Kelsey is going to be in Vancouver is grating on my like nothing I expected. I've realized that, of the people I've met thus far at school, Kelsey is the one I'm still going to be talking to fifteen, twenty years down the road. I'm lucky.

I'm not sure how I feel about the concept of age. I don't feel that a number of years of physical existence is a sufficient measurement. There are just so many more factors that should be taken into consideration. I'm young. In terms of years, I'm nearly the youngest of my friends. Always the baby. But I think about those other components. Family. Friends. Knowledge. Life.

I'm not here extol myself or emphasize my maturity or my self-concept. I'm just another human on Earth, a total dork, figuring things out a little at a time. Feeling older with each passing moment. Age is the weight you feel every day, the weight of memories and experience. I try to take an objective look at my life. It started out just like everybody else's. But things changed, things happened that forced me to grow up. For the last eight years of my life, I've been growing up faster than those around me. Maybe knowing things that I shouldn't have had to know. It added time.

I think I should get away from people for a while.

I'm in a funk. I need to keep writing. I finally wrote a poem based on that phrase "speaking in binary code." I'll put it up here sometime soon. Today at work Maddi said that something "disappeared in a cloud of unlikelihood." I liked it. I'll try that next.

I'm a bad person.

It's been a month. Yikes. I have to admit, I'm pretty disappointed in myself. Sure I have my excuses. School, work, sick, big island, blah blah blah. Point is, it's been a month. But I'm back. Here was an assignment for LIT 2520H - it's based on three poems: When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats, Sonatina by Ruben Dario, and Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda (one of my all-time favorite poems). My class hated the princess, they thought she was a bitch. The only person who actually liked the character was the only male in the class. Huh.

Escape Without End

The Princess waited in her ivory tower
Desired escape
And nothing but

The opportunity came in the form of a man
A shining knight
She resented this

The knight on his steed swept her away
Gallantly
Of course

Spoke to her of his kingdom beyond
His castle
She didn’t care

He loved her with every ounce
Every figment
Of his soul

She left him for another man
One more escape
A broken heart

He remained in his forlorn tragedy
Lost without her
Silent smile

The Princess continued her journey
Using the man
He didn’t know

He gave her everything she wanted
His whole life
Or so he thought

But she disappointed once again
Leaving silently
Alone

His face became one of many
Just a cloud
In the sky

The Princess found herself
Free.