Goodness Gracious

Dear life,

Could you stop sending me surprises that make my life harder when I'm busy with other stuff? It would be really great. I seriously don't know what to think right now. I need the term to be over, then you can all tell me all the things that just freak me out. Is everyone ok with that? Are we all agreed? I think it's a darn good idea at least.

Thanks!

Sydney

Curls

I put my hair into pin-curls earlier tonight, simply to try something new, I mean my hair is straight as a stick and hates curling irons, I might as well try and get it to do something else. I couldn't sleep and so decided to take out the pins a bit early, which was probably a good idea, now I can let the curls calm down a bit. Since my hair is pretty short they kind of went out of control, yet I have to say I'm enjoying having curly hair right now, even if it never happens again. Oh and I know that I look like an old lady in that picture, but trust me, I look better there than in any of the others since it was 2 in the morning and there were giant bags under my eyes.

Some Thoughts

I’ll keep my eyes open so long as you don’t mind. I’ll keep them open and searching. Looking for something new, something I haven’t seen before. But I think, for the most part, I’ve seen this before… I’ve seen this all before. I’m waiting for the cat to jump out from behind a wall, for some surprise to enter into the fragile existence of life. It won’t though. It all just stays the same. Each day passing like the ticking of a clock. Until one day, it stops. We’ll wind it up again when that day comes. Wind our selves with the little silver keys. The ones we each received when we were young, when we learned the truth. That in childhood you make all your discoveries, after that it is simply repeated. Digging the same holes in the same earth, yearning for the same answers, the same destination. This is why everything is so familiar, why we’ve seen this all before. But still we do it, winding ourselves up, starting it all over again. So if I never found the bones, will I never find them in this life? No, I think not. I hope that I might, that things may change, that this unending repetition may end. I’m hoping for the surprise, but we all know that hope is not enough. Nothing is enough to end the rotation of events, the endless spiral that is our lives.

Unedited and raw. This is how I have felt and thought lately

Envy

I feel like I spent a good portion of my childhood travelling by car through the Pacific Northwest, especially Oregon, but there were some trips into Washington and northern California thrown in there too. Because of this and the fact that I can't sleep in cars (anymore, as a baby, according to my parents, I could and did) I spent a lot of time gazing at the scenery that we passed and imagining that I lived in it or wishing I could stop and take photos of it, because it was all so breathtaking to me. It really still is quite breathtaking, but I've realized I'll feel that way no matter where I go (not that I've really done much travelling outside the Northwest). I recently discovered the photographer Anna Shelton who takes gorgeously dreamy photos of the Northwest, and I think (though I'm not entirely sure) that many of them come from road trips. This makes me quite envious of her, I think that if I had a car or was more motivated to travel long distances by bike, I might be more inclined to do something like this, however... neither of those is going to happen anytime soon, I'll just have to keep dreaming...

Anna's flickr.

Puzzles

This is the first Wednesday in a long time that I haven't picked up the Willamette Week for their crossword. I just plain old forgot about it today. Not that it matters, I can do it another day, it isn't going anywhere. I'm not even very good at them, it's just become a nice routine. I come home from classes and attempt to do the crossword, very unsuccessfully most of the time. It's a nice break from schoolwork that keeps me thinking about other things.

My brother took this picture of me starting a crossword a couple of years ago.

True

I want to be like the sea lions,

I want to spend my days in the ocean,

Watching the light turn the water into the most brilliant shades

Of green and blue.

I want it to be true.

I want it all to be true,

And I want to know,

I want to know everything there is to know,

At least about you.

I can't help myself

I am a nostalgic person, I dwell on the past far too much, and I often leave out the not-so-nice parts. It's part of why I'm studying archaeology, I get to look at other people's pasts. Maybe if I look at other people's pasts I won't look at mine quite so much. Maybe it will be like how I am with cleaning and organizing... always other people's things, never my own. I just want the next five terms of school to be over. Then I'll be done with school... hopefully. But I need to focus on right now, not the past and not the future, this is such a problem. I'm never present. Randomly I just remembered that when I was little, I dreamed of becoming the stereotypical absent-minded academic. I think I might be on my way there.

Tap

When I was young I wanted to dance... dance until the end of time. Not delicate ballet but the precise yet graceful tap. I wanted to be a tap dancer. But I decided to be academic instead, I quit dancing and now, especially lately for some reason, my soul seems to be longing for that rhythm, that expression, that one thing I was never god-awful at.

Can you tell I'm trying to avoid finishing my homework and apparently don't care about sleep tonight?

source

This Weekend

In addition to coffee on Friday my weekend included many things... a trip to the coast with my oldest and one of my best friends, a moment of realization that led to a temporary breakdown, a day of recovery in bed following said breakdown, spending time getting to know someone I'm going to spend five minutes speaking in German in front of a class with, making up an experience for my homework. Overall it was a good weekend, there was plenty of sunshine and I got out of my apartment for a good portion of it. I'm working on being better about that. I'll have more pictures from the coast when I get some film developed... so soonish.

Movie

I seem to have a knack for picking movies that make me lonely. The most recent is Brideshead Revisited, although I have heard the book is much better (and the book is also on my long list of things to read), I still enjoy this movie.

Coffee

Went to coffee with an old friend at Stumptown in the Ace Hotel. Have a good weekend!

Spring

First off, some nerdy camera stuff, if you don't want to hear about it I suggest you go to the next paragraph... Anyone notice how much less noise these have than other pictures I've taken recently? I do... mostly because I know why that is. I realized tonight that my camera was set on the highest iso possible... oops! This just shows that I should really pay attention to ALL the settings when I take a photo. Anyway, that's that.

Ok, not nerdy camera stuff: I know that this year is El Nino, I can even explain what causes it (thanks to a not-so-great class presentation earlier this week), but I just can't stand that spring is here. I feel like winter never happened. I think it's mostly because I wanted tons and tons of snow this year for winter and I never really got it. It's too bad I haven't been on the east coast lately, I would have been ecstatic with all that snow. Nonetheless, I still like flowers and if I get to see flowers more this year than usual, I guess that's ok. I picked these ones tonight on the way back from the pool.

London

One thing I've always dreamed of is to go to London. I'm not really sure where this desire came from but it's always been there. Looking Brian Ferry's photos makes me want to go even more. Eventually I'll make it there... I started looking at a grad school in London... not that I would get in anytime soon, but I can dream, can't I?

Check out Brian's blog and flickr.

A night with no sleep

Oh the joys of being in college... last night I didn't sleep because I had a horrible headache all day which prevented me from getting the paper I had saved to occupy me on Valentine's Day started until 10pm. First, no the headache had nothing to do with alcohol. Second, when I say I started a paper at 10pm, I mean that I started finishing the reading the paper was on at 10pm. Needless to say, there is always a grand adventure to be had when you're up the entire night (I literally finished my paper just in time to take a shower and go to class). I drank tea to stay up, made some banana oatmeal, realized halfway through my bowl of oatmeal that I was tasting the banana and I don't like bananas all that much. I also made my brother a handkerchief? I don't know how that got done...

Dreams

This is how I feel. I want a magical place or time or something to escape to. I'm not sure there's anything here for me anymore, but there must be. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. Sorry for the unhappy mood of this. I just want my dreams to come true, to find fairies, boys that never grow up, sailboats, meadows, blue skies, snow, oceans, forests that are alive and never-ending, animals that can talk to me, rivers that are always the right temperature for swimming (and have perfect swimming holes), tree houses, old beautiful things, and all sorts of other things that live in my head. I want everyone to be able to see all the places that are hidden away in my head, to hear all the stories that have been told from there. I just haven't found out how to do that yet, and it frustrates me. I feel like when I try to talk with people they won't ever really know what I'm talking about because it isn't really real, it's all just in my head. I need to get out of my head though, there's an entire world that is full of equally, if not more, beautiful, fantastic, gorgeous places, things, and people. I want to see all of those things, I feel like my life is missing that. Maybe I'm just too much of a dreamer.

Happy Friday

I want to be out enjoying warm sunny days or sitting at home enjoying a good book. Unfortunately, I'm bored in the library (I'm supposed to be reading some texts that clearly needed an editor to make them less confusing).

I hope everyone else is a little less bored looking than I am right now. It is finally the weekend, afterall.

sources: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Favorites

These are some of my favorite things: Peter Pan, cameras, colored pencils, books in general really, and beautiful light.

I posted some more honestly photos.

Honestly Part 2

Oops! I forgot to say a few things in my original post, so I thought I would mention them now. Some of the things are more just things I regret not saying at some specific point in my life, things that I can't say now, but others are just random general things. Also, you can find a few more photos from the series on my flickr.

Honestly

I started a project recently called honestly. I'm not sure it's the most original idea, but here are some of the first pictures to come out of it. Basically it's just things that I don't normally tell people. Eventually I hope to involve other people and have them share something about themselves. Let me know what you think.

I miss the summer, scanners really don't do film justice, I hate asking for anything, and thank you to everyone that replied to my question about editing earlier this week (whether it was here or on facebook, not that anyone that is on facebook is necessarily reading this). Just a few things I was thinking about.

Bright Star

After seeing this post over on frolic, I decided I had to watch Bright Star. I am so glad that I did. It is the kind of movie that embodies my daydreams. There are so many little details throughout the whole thing, just the location itself was amazing. In addition, the light, cinematography, and everything else was beautiful. I however, may be biased toward liking romantic films full of letters and poetry. As deep down I'm an endless romantic as well as still hiding a desire to become a poet (which will probably never happen). My favorite scene byfar though was the room full of butterflies. It made me want summer to be here, to go out and collect butterflies in jars and let them fly around my room.

I also think that in a former life I may have been a man in the early 1800's, I'm so in love with the way they dress, I wish I could look as smart and put together as they do.

Coffeecake

Coffeecake, sunshine, the weekend... what else could I want?

Next time I'll have to make a different crumb topping, this one just doesn't taste quite as good as it should.