What is it about a person that makes them special? Is there one aspect that stands out, or is it individualism. Do you find that those with the most similarities to yourself, are the ones you tend to gravitate towards? There are many "qualities" we set for ourselves when looking at people around us like if we are compatible or will our styles as accountancies or friends mesh? How we view ourselves has a great deal to do with how we view others. If we think of ourselves better, or inferior to those around us....such things bring out different "styles" in our own personalities. Have you ever sat back and looked at how you act around different people? I know it can be an interesting thing to do. In my life, i know different friends bring out different aspects in me, some I love, and some not so much...its not that they are bad, but they are foreign and I'm not comfortable with these new characteristics yet. We judge others, and we judge ourselves by others. Just because one person is comfortable doing something that is new to me, doesn't make me inferior to them, it just makes it new, and well frankly uncomfortable. And just because I can be confident and outgoing in a facet of life, and someone isn't quite on scale, doesn't make them less of a success then me. We each are different, but which part of me is the real me? I have thought on this a lot today, and this is my thought: All of them are me. Some parts of me I didnt understand yet, some I know backwards and forwards. But its like self discovery, learning which parts are for keeps and which need to be gotten ride of.
I stumbled across a quote tonight, one that i was so into and was like "Oh this is going somewhere" until i found out John Mayer said it, but none the less it seems still like an interesting way to look at how we view ourselves and other people...here it is....

"Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing. It's ok though, because I've got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though in that I can only meet the 8-color boxes. Does anyone else have that problem? I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation.. so when I meet someone who's an 8-color type.. I'm like, "hey girl, magenta!" and she's like, "oh, you mean purple!" and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, "no - I want magenta!"”

Is it our right to demand magenta and not accept the purple, what makes magenta more spectacular then purple? So what if your a few short of 64 crayons, and the other person may just have the 8, those 8 might beat up your 64 in a way that you couldnt fathom. just because they are typical doesn't make them lesser. theres something to be said for a 64 being with an 8, because that way, what the 8 lacks, the 64 is there to make up, and what the 64 is too eccentric with, the 8 is there to bring a normal balance.

This post may not really have a point, i guess the point was just to write and to think about how we act around ourselves and others, and why we pick people over other people....interesting how that happens.

Sitting in the library, the vast mass of books, and students finding a multitude of things to distract them (like me writing this blog over studying for a midterm tomorrow ...anyway) I am fighting the urge to dance to Michael Buble "Kissing A Fool" making do with little sways back and forth in my chair. The semester is half over, and its been a great run so far, on the home stretch now...the end is near...and then there are all the endless possibilities awaiting me after May 5th...so many to hope and pick from. But am i running to fast? The noise of the world, the business of no time, the fast slick pace that is demanded on me, what moments have i stopped to savor? The simple moments, the pride the contentedness with a grade, a letter of reference, a simple walk in the rain with speckled rain boots? Or what about those little people that look up and call me Miss Katie five days a week? The ones who greeted me today with exclamations of joy and hugs and slobbery insistent kisses? Or the other day, watching little eyes light up when seeing a odd mixture of paint ooze out between toes and upon lifting the foot, a perfect implement of their new "art" creation? Those are the precious moments. Those are the moments to be proud of, to hold on to and let linger in the senses, those little moments that to most, and typically to me get covered up in headaches, lack of sleep and assignments that are due. Stop and smell the roses. Splash in the water. Take a risk. switch it up. Stand and watch a couple of crazy people. Savor.

Writing about nothing

During her time alive she wasn't as acclaimed as her husband, but after Sylvia Plath's suicide her works became ever popular, twisted and dark yet somehow beautiful, the grasp elements of life that other authors allude to, but never nail. She wrote once, "Everything in life is writable.... if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." This quote is very true, yet here I sit, wanting to write with nothing to write on. I could do the typical regurgitation of my day, the sad fact that this morning in my room, leggings and boots seamed to match, bout outside in natural light....the two shades clashed; maybe the fact that I decided that water that is filtered and pour into a glass glass is better then flittered water in the plastic cup; or how my new obsessive song is "half of my heart" by john mayer. but even with all the guts and strength and determination to squash self doubt of those things being unwritable...i still fall short with anything to really write about. But surely Plath, one of the most influential writers of my life, had some teaming wisdom behind this statement, or was it just a frivolous writer spouting off words that formed a very compelling sentence? but when reading her works, the reader cannot help but notice how perfectly her work reflected this statement. She could write about the most basic things, and somehow you, the reader, saw a whole new perspective on it, that or her works were so complex and twisted that the meaning spoke different to every person that glanced across the page. to me, the first thing of hers i read, was her "daddy" poem. Though this doesn't reflect my relationship with my father, I am very blessed to have the father that i have, but her words, those fantastic descriptive words, burned, and i had no clue why they burned, they just did. and looking back, it seems a strange thing to have felt such a connection with this poem, it was a simple yet powerful poem, and when one understands the full nature of the poem the tragicness of its entirety is felt. These two stanzas were the ones that i felt the most....

"Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now."

these mirrors her relationship with her father. it is to my understanding that he was never there, yet she always tried to gain his approval, till he died. She overdosed on pills on her first attempt at suicide, to get back to her father, that somehow "even the bones would do" that maybe in death she still could be in touch with him and he would in turn love her. the second stanza is showing her relationship with her husband, who she fell in love with because he was so much like her father, yet after seven years, he left her. there is such power behind the words, and they fall heavily and with the right leverage to make anyone feel a burn.

this poem does in fact show her writing about something, the subject matter is not just "anything" its pointed. Yet not everything in life is such. there are things that one can never write about, and there are things that you can write about way too much. last night, i was talking with a friend, and the subject of writing things that no one else would understand came up. some of the best writings of a writer are the ones they have tucked away, hidden from the world, not allowing them to be seen. the most writable things, are the most painful things. some of my own personal best will never be read by others, they are the journal entries where thoughts over take and spill out with out a filter. when writing for others, theres a certain veil between you and you audience. this veil holds back the emotions, and the painful things, but yet, true compelling writing has no veil, and for those who can write without inhibition, those are the writers who stir and move an audience with what they say. Plath had no veil, she wrote unfiltered and unaffraid. this is the cause for the burn.

This weekend brought back things that i thought i had forgotten. Little things. You know...the things that happened that you thought you had let go...or had hoped to have at last. But with things so close and so distant all at once, more things come back then might have been wished for. THere was that upstairs apartment, whose inside I never physically saw, but yet those black and white photographs slowly peeled off the walls in my glance up toward the buildings on main. As they peeled, they wafted down the invisible line to the floor below, here they settled, each covering the ones fallen before them. Here they lay, dust particles scattering over the photo's edges where desperate hands should be grasping, scooping them back up. Over by the river, the arching bridge stands as before, where black and white images of toes curled over iron bars, the press of a warm body against cool, smooth rock, the closeness of mint and chi and warm breath were wrapped into one swift breeze from the past. The wooden slats of a swing, the soulful squeak of a pendulum, swinging and marking the laps in time which has been spent...and the clock forgotten until cold and redness take over noses, such a cold nose that prompts a light tap of lips to nose, that assures that all feeling hasnt been lost, a feeling that warms more then the red nose. But no matter how it felt on those days, these chances in time have moved away from me...and what i hoped them to be has dissipated into a antique breath in time. Funny how expectations turn into possibilities that wane into things lost, things forgotten, until they return as things remembered. And as chances roll to the favor of recollection, the lucky memories make it all the way to the forefront, and consume the mind for a millisecond in time. a passing glance, a passing scent, a passing memory, of rainy days and water on a window, red Gerbers with shiny green leaves, small pink polka dot ribbons, torn jeans, faded hand prints on a car; lasting memories that will forever reoccur...each time with more longing for the ability to relive that brief moment in time...but a stronger sensation of know that I wasnt afraid to love and be loved, and that, that forever memory, is worth the lapses in recollection of crinkled noses, and princess toes, raspberries and waffles, barefoot dances and 30 min goodbyes. Chances are the memory is all that will be left of all it was hoped to be. But what a memory ....and if not, the memories are endlessly going to multiply....