review #1: caged melodies

Battle Studies. Gripping title. The first two songs ("Heartbreak Warfare" and "All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye") anticipate the likewise gripping slew of songs, increasing in heartwrenching beauty and innovation in theme and musicality, that we've come to expect of John Mayer. But, while the album does bring the warm familiarity of John's vocal texture, it lacks the vitality, brilliance, and boyish exuberance, even curiosity, so playful in his earlier work. Battle Studies misses the melodic punch of "My Stupid Mouth," the personality of "Comfortable," the sexiness of "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." Ditch the subdued, bring back the colorful!

lady

i know somebody beautiful. today is her birthday. she changes the world every day with her way of making everything around her magical.

going, going, gray.

i found my first white hair today. three inches long, a little piece of skin still clinging to the root where i yanked it from my head.

i wanted YOU to be there, mr. knightley-aragorn-joebradleyblack, so I could scream, "HONEY!" and you'd come running in, thinking i needed saving from curling-iron-electrocution or a spider with seven legs. we'd stand there, side by side, in front of the mirror, staring at it mocking me from the tile countertop, in all its white resplendent self-importance. and after a moment of contemplating our aging bodies and growing up & growing old, you'd grab my arms, turn me to you, tell me i'm just as beautiful as ever.

then we'd go have dinner because i cooked it for you, so grateful that that was one rite of passage i didn't have to make alone.

confession:

sometimes i come on my blog and just look at it. i feel comfortable here. isn't writing the most beautiful form of narcissism?

LOVE connection

is it bad if i want my future husband to sing this song to me everyday? and possibly definitely have hair like train? but better dance moves. he must have better dance moves.

"what a joy for a boy to behold!"

i think we'd all agree there is something magic about the first snowfall of the year (besides the fact that karen carpenter sings about it). the reasons for the magic are different for all of us. for me it's a combination of the christmas lights at my grandma's house that i'd stare at out the bedroom window, upsidedown, until sleeping. it's the book "white snow bright snow"

and my mom reading it to nate and i when we'd run in from sledding, our noses red and drippdrippdripp, our hands and toes in pots of water she'd heated for us. maybe in the mix, there's also s p r i n k l i n g of memories of the anticipation of falling in love right before the holidays. for whatever reason your heart surges with laughter when you wake up to a white sky and a white world, here's wishing you and yours all the magic of the season.

why thank you!

best parts of thanksgiving:

beating rosie at her own best-gingerbread-house competition

cinnamon-roasted almonds

having a bedroom and a warm house, all decorated for the holidays

late night discussions with sibs about the effects of too much in-front-of-screen time

subsequent resolves to abolish screentime for the month of december (woot!)

doing laundry in machines that actually work

getting completely caught up on grading

christmas present shopping (i'm almost done! boys are the hardest to shop for. whyohwhy.)

sleepovers with cousins

raymon's interpretive dances ('dance of the tenderlilies' is a real show-stopper)

'the nutcracker' duets on the piano

lots of journal&thinking time

setting up the tree

deciding my life plan for the next two years (hats off to tiffany who is my personal shrink)

realizing all the pieces that still have to be put together for the next two years to pan out

two rolls of good ole black and white, shot through the telephoto (photos forthcoming)

one great find at d.i.

writing one new song...the ballad i've had locked up for many moons. still in the polishing stages

and speaking of polishing, i meant to do that to my car this weekend, as it's been a good six months since i had that done. but alas, no time.

cheers to all those i love.

(*and for those of you who love me and who are concerned about the previous post, it's just a quote. my heart is not really pink, nor is it bleeding. but man those words are. i like them. so do not worry.)

look at this!

(pink like my bleeding heart)

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Neil Gaiman

list #5

while not doing the usual run-of-the-windmill things this weekend, here is what i accomplished instead:

1) christmas-morning-worthy squeals of delight upon waking up to a sky full of snowflakes!

2) finding that two of my students plagiarized their scary story assignments. i'm talking ctrl+c, ctrl+v direct from the internet. revenge will be sweet.

3) bought my first shirt from banana republic. or from 'BANANA', for those of you in "the know." and the best part was, with the 30% off discount, i paid less for it than i would pay for a shirt pretty much anywhere else. yes.

-------->a) sidenote: the name banana republic. that is a reference to....?

-------->b) wait wait don't tell me: i'll look it up faster than you can: wikipedia:

Banana republic is a pejorative term for a country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture (e.g. bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt clique.^[1]

-------->c) wow. some veiled meanings in the name of the place. small, self-elected, and wealthy? and what does the gap mean? and old navy? what's with that? if you didn't know what was being sold there, you'd think it was some kind of army/tackle store.

4) speaking of which, i had a friend offer to buy a 6"x6" cardboard tackle box off me for $50. that's right. i think by the end of the conversation, if i remember right, he had also thrown in a fishing pole, another $25, and his SOUL. (i make that large and white because his soul is large and white. i believe.) i declined. but sent him a link to ebay where he can buy a brand-new one for $7.95.

5) watched part of america's next top model. semi-shameful. sorry world.

6) made a new 'friend' who apparently also thinks that max is the greatest thing to happen to the world since we found out exactly where the wild things are.

7) learned that the phrase "junk change" (blingbling!) that i've been using all my life is actually wrong. it's "chump change." lame. junk change makes so much more sense.

8) was crowned indian leg-wrestling champion, of both female and male divisions. hold on just a second, i think i may have a picture of me with my sparkly jacket and belt. ah yes:

9) hosted a truly lovely First Snowfall of the Year party with friends. we drank hot chocolate through grasshoppers and shared our favorite parts of books. (my favorite part is the spine.)

10) finished 'the curious incident of the dog in the night-time'. difficult for my brain to read, but brought light to a certain aspect of my career in the form of a tidal wave. bffffrewww! (that's the sound a tidal wave makes. especially if it's a tidal wave of knowledge. water tidal waves sound more like: bffffrowww!)

11) ate cafe rio which is an adventure in and of itself.

12) ingested a large wad of christmas music.

13) wedged myself in the couch for one of the coziest naps i ever did take. well-rested. well-fed. time for more hot-chocolate-filled-grasshoppers. (chirp chirp)

(a more accurate depiction can be found here, with one minor adjustment: replace timtams with keebler grasshoppers (or other mint cookie of your choice). this may or may not change your life, so prepare yourself.):

8:16 am, Saturday

this weekend i am saving the (inside)world.

in the form of not looking at one screen, only listening to eighties music, painting little things, and stuffing my head with words.

peace! til monday.

i like this.

girl who posted this, i do not know you, but my do you have wisdom:

http://inyourboat.blogspot.com/2009/09/be-man.html

car*diggin

to: Mr. Rogers. may you inspire many more to dig those cardigans.

***

i am the proud new owner of a cardigan.

not one like this:

or one like this:

but precisely like this:

it is black raspberry.

not black cherry (), not crimson lake (),

but black raspberry. which for those of you who chose to use your art money to buy a portfolio instead of the 132 set of prismacolor pencils, black raspberry looks something like this:

(deceptively similar to black cherry, no?)

when i wear my black raspberry cardigan, i feel like this:

and the more of the cardigan i see, the more i think that real men wear cardigans too:

and what cardigan-post would be complete without a shout out to bill cosby. rock that sweater, bill. personal fav: the one with combs on it.

procrastination-->creativity

(for the avid reader who wonders what life as a teacher is like: i measured today. i currently have exactly one foot, eleven inches of papers that need grading.)

let's talk for a minute about finding easier ways to do hard things.

for example, i could post on my blog some words with lots of weight and meaning, or lots of cleverness, or even lots of personality.

OR. i could just post a million pictures. (please see the previous 3 blog posts.....)

and so, for those of you who, like me, have decided there's more life to live than you have time for, this one is direct. from me to you. mwah.

filling up the gas tank completely full and never letting it get beneath the halfway mark VS. pulling into 7-11 at 6:45 on the way to work to get one gallon so you can at least make it there without running dry.

hanging all your shirts right side out VS. hanging them whichever way they come off your body in. (*sidenote: i once had a roommate ask me, very concerned, if there was some garb-savvy reason why half of my shirts i hung inside out. purely ease, michelle. purely ease.)

sparknotes. enough said?

gourmet lasagna VS. stouffers

doing laundry once a week VS. just buying a new set of underwear (*important sidenote: i am NOT guilty of this. however, i know someone who does this regularly. this person, not surprisingly, is also notorious for cutting down on chocolate-milk-making time by pouring chocolate syrup and milk in her mouth at the same time, then swishing and swallowing.)

a planner with all thoughts, ideas, goals, and deadlines neatly organized into a series of lists VS. sticky notes everywhere. (definition: 'every-where': on bedroom walls, on picture frames, around entire perimeter of computer monitor, on closet doors, on bathroom mirrors, on car dashboard. oh, and inside wishful-thinking planner.)

grocery lists, shopping, and preparing meals for the entire week VS. a carefully (albeit helter-skelter) planned week of club meetings, lunch dates, dinner groups, etc. to completely bypass having to supply your own food at all. conserve people. conserve.

orange juice in carton to orange juice in glass to orange juice dranken/ drinken/ drunken (who even knows anyways?) to glass with pulp encrusted on inside which must then be washed VS. orange juice in carton to orange juice in stomach. best trick i learned to date.

flossing your teeth every night VS. eating celery before bed (plus urban legend has it that celery takes more energy to burn than it actually gives you in calories, hence supplying another time-saving device: now i don't have to go to the gym. thank you celery.)

now, for those ecological, philanthropic, altruistic, health-conscious sort: i am fully aware that my choices are rotting my teeth, increasing the amount of empty stouffers pans in landfills, and killing trees and whatever other plant is used to make the sticky stuff on post-its. but with all that time you're spending using minty floss and from-scratch spaghetti sauces and energy star washing machines, i am also conserving. conserving my precious moments and my invaluable energy for someday when i may figure out just exactly what i am doing with my life.

oh maya! what a lovely song.

this song has captured my heart.

and this has captured my senses.

enjoi!

call for subjects, call for stories:

this week i am committed to doing something so uncharacteristically me that i might die. die, or find a new way of living. you should do the same. then post and tell your story.

here goes.

when i drive, the open road is freedom. anything between me and an open road is a cage. hence, i tailgate. i drive faster than anyone should. i do not enjoy driving because the road is somehow always closed to me, always someone or something getting in the way of me and openness. so. this week i am being different. i'm letting people pass me. i will not put lead in my shoes. i will not drive in the fast lane. i will not glare into the rearview mirror of cars in front of me.

me:

k, your turn.

holy cow.

michael just showed me this video. holy cow. ho. lee. cow.

serendipity and the library

to the bearded man with whom i shared an elevator this afternoon:

you asked if i was an artist. i smiled and shook my head no. you then asked, "what do you mean no? there's no such thing as an aspiring artist. no matter where you are in your progression, you are no less than the greatest of all. the only difference is how far you are willing to let your passion take you." then you got off and disappeared.

mythic.

thank you. i am now reconsidering my entire life.

DEFINITION:

artist [ahr-tist]: One, such as a painter, sculptor, or writer, who is able by virtue of imagination and talent or skill to create works of aesthetic value, especially in the fine arts.

What, then, is art?

[ahrt]: the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

sleepidelirium

do you ever wake up with specific lines to add to your scholarly article about derridean theory and shakespeare going through your head? here's what i woke up with after afternoonnap:

"you snake nmeses!"

nmeses, which of course means enemy, coming from "nemesis". and thus, with this evil, combined with her good, the whole is made complete. combining both, they are made one.

i dreamt i was on a precipice, in a hut balancing the line between two worlds. one after another, they walked the stone wall, one by one they conquered their fears. watching them reach the platform, one. by. one., my shaking shook more, my balance unbalanced itself, until i unraveled, there between drums, students, and unpainted canvases.

confession:

i get goosebumps every time i hear elton john sing "candle in the wind" and i don't know why. it kind of is bothering me.

do something drastic.

what an interesting concept. more on this forthcoming.

RETURNING! (from sabbatical.)

actually, i don't even know what the word sabbatical means. i just like using it.

recent thoughts:

1) ibuprofen. why do we pronounce it I-B- profen if there's a u in it? is it a silent u? there's no such thing as a silent u! only w's and k's and e's. so then is the u just masquerading as two e's? ibeeprofen? i don't get it. I-B-PROFEN I DON'T GET YOU! (or your u for that matter.)
2) being in love is the best thing in the world.
3) the second best thing in the world is cold mandarin oranges.
4) i think i shall get a large piece of butcher paper on which to splatter my life. ideas of culture club blogs and basement bands and guest speakers dressed as inmates. upon which i shall also splatter my future: grad school attempts, pictures of us, calls for papers and the ones i submit, faraway conferences, gre practice test dates, LOVE, ideas for paintings, poem scratchings, the works.
5) speaking of culture club, prepare yourself world. it's gonna be big.
6) i have been craving something lately and i can't locate it. it might be meat, it might be a really meaty vegetable, it might be nuts, perhaps it's milk. i HAVE been downing the cereal as of late. but maybe that's more of a honey-nut-cheerio addiction, rather than a milk deficiency.
7) you supposedly need 30 minutes of sunshine everyday for your body to fully absorb the vitamins from your food. wt! why am i just finding this out?! how many minutes do i spend in the sun everyday? i have no idea! and that thought really worries me.
8) my best friend in middle school's favorite number was 8 because you could cut it in half any which way and it would still be the same on both sides. interesting concept.
9) at which time i had planned to go to bed. but as it is already 29 minutes past, i suppose i have already failed and i may as well stay up a few minutes longer. perhaps i will go eat some honey nut cheerios. or go on a short sabbatical.

(500)

Love is when you believe in something or someone so completely that you make them home.

my beliefs about belief

The stories we believe the most are the ones we've been able to imagine the best. Those are the ones that actually have power to change the way we live, individually and as a community. It is what one believes that instructs reality, not the other way around. Like when Henry Plantaganet saves England with a handful of words.

I believe this.

confessions.

oh the torture. i return to my words like a dog to its vomit. i read and reread and reread until they're burned into my skull like ants under a magnifying glass are burned to the sidewalk.

bottles and the color of emotion

i wish i could bottle all my emotions--those times i've experienced them the most strongly and purely--in jars and stick them on a shelf. that way i could see what color they were, and at any given moment, i could pull one down and compare it to the color inside me.

"what am i feeling right now?!?...am i happy? am i in love? am i jaded? let's look through my bottles...

"HAPPINESS: june 4, 2003: upon waking up to a breeze carrying the air off the honeysuckle plant outside my window into my room."

"DREAD: march 10, 2009: nightmare about my students, followed by having to go to school to teach all day lessons which i had not yet prepared."

"MISSING: august 5, 2007: sitting on the ferry after saying goodbye to vaiola and to jimmy. the hole in my soul."

"LOVE: february 14, 2005; july 28, 2008; may 6, 2009"

.....this one looks about the same hue as my insides. perhaps a little more vibrant, but that can happen when these things sit in bottles for a long time, memories fermenting like wine till their robustness nearly bursts the bottle. but look! it really is love/happiness/excitement! not just desire/selfishness/jealousy masquerading as shimmerypink-love or summeryellow-happiness or lightning-excitement. [because all those counterfeit feelings are double-hued. in the dark, jealousy's hue comes awfully close to the pink of love. but in the light, they all show a disgusting grayish.]

oskar schell understands. "what if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heart beat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood?...there are so many times hen you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? and that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. but with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!" (--extremely loud and incredibly close, jonathan safran foer, 163. brilliance in book form.)

home

wind from the sea.andrew wyeth*

*i saw this at the national gallery of art in dc and audibly gasped.  some art stabs you to the center, and some lifts away and you can see.

lalalalalala

i ate an entire bowl of cereal with my eyes closed this morning to prove to myself that if i ever go blind, it'll be okay.

this weekend i am most likely going to die in a flashflood. if that doesn't kill me, the threepointfive hour ride down to zions in a 15pass. van will for sure. good thing there are ho-made pies and smores or else i just might not make it.

something lost

my six year old sister slept over last night and suddenly i remembered what it was like to make decisions based on eenie-meenie-mynie-mo. i went to campus tonight to return some books and thought about my first few years there, when you just picked someone you liked and dated them for a while. when every day was an adventure in meeting new people and learning new things and thinking up unprecedented ridiculousnesses with which to stay up till 3am.

somewhere along the way i turned into an adult, with a furrowed brow and concerns about money and my future and time management and turning too much into my parents and still remaining true to myself.

i brought back a stack of my journals from home today, in the hopes that there are still sparkles left in the pages with which i can learn how to see the world new again.

no one should eat cold pizza.

period.

i am launching a worldwide campaign to stop people.

me.

beginnings and other tidbits & nippets

this is the story of a girl looking for home.

this is the story of a girl looking for him.

her gaze decapitated me--slice!

and that is how i sung my heart out.

thoughts after nine hours of paper-presentations by professors with wiry mustaches and wiry humours, anticipating an evening of mingling with such.

sometimes i get this sick feeling inside when i think about having to muster the motivation to make conversation with people i don't know.  the dread when it's 5 in the afternoon and you still have an evening full of strangers and strange conversation.  i long for familiarity.  i long for the ease, the satiating comfort of moving with those whose sentiments, habits, motions are familiar to me--the seamless conversation.  i would venture to say that when i try, i can be quite amiable, conversational, enjoyable even, such that no one would be the wiser.  but the problem i encounter, the grand secret, is that it is a near Herculean task to spark that fire, and the entire time i am longing for a quiet sidewalk with shady tree patches and roses and breeze, for a still room with silent chairs and welcoming books.  all inside revolts.  all inside digs in its heels like a donkey, and with as much reluctant dread is dragged to the altar of "pleasant minglings": perpetual "how interesting!"s and "it's a pleasure"s.  in those hellholes, i wriggle and writhe, all the while cased and caged in a smile, as if it were all i were made for, the end of my existence, the fullness of my essence.  

the story of the ill-fated vase(s)

i have a vase that thinks it owns my bamboo plant.  it cracked one day, and has since leaked water.  so i buy a new vase.  bring it home, wash it up, start putting the rocks in to ground the shoot, and one slips out of my hand, smacks the side of said vase, and shatters it to oblivion.  big sigh with head hanging down.  reinstall bamboo into old cracked vase.

today i bought another vase.  it's bigger and stronger and thicker than the old cracked vase.  same process: wash, insert rocks, and sure enough, one slips out of my hand, and cracks the top of the vase.  i turn to the old vase sitting on the counter, mocking me with its grimy, hardwater-encrusted sides, and i say, "look, idiot vase, you cannot have the bamboo."

alas, alas.

like letting go of the bicycle handles while careening down a hill

The subway shakes the ceiling above.

The urge to jump onto the tracks
and jump back out real fast,
the hunger for that adrenaline rush,
the zoomzoom of the oncoming train and your widewide eyes
and heart
beating to get you out
before being plastered to the front of the red line,
inbound to alewife.

concrete on top of concrete

TOUR GUIDE: "a few things about new york: don't look anyone in the eye. just keep staring straight forward like you know where you're going. and don't look up at the buildings and smile. people will know you're a tourist and mug you."

"give me big skies or give me death!" cries my Eaglecountry heart. stores upon stores, people upon people, smoke and hot dogs and more smoke and horns and big signs and more people.


despite getting locked in a cell...


...there were several redeeming graces:
1) we had to run home in the rain and got SOAKED, head to toe.

2) i saw tiffany's. i chose some earrings and asked the price. over $ahundredthou$. AWE-freakin-SOME.

3) larger-than-life-size LEGOS! gleam-in-my-eyes, this one's for you.

4) every candy imaginable! even Lego-shaped ones! (please notice my hands. ???)


5) nighttime on times square + dinner at an italian restaurant for my 23rd. they sang me happy birthday and brought out a mountain of strawberry shortcake.

for the one that does a body good.

ICE CREAM: rockin hard at hardrock.

pink sky and the coast guard.

banister reflexions.

& a five-story building of stories.  do you see the sheerbliss in my eyes?  do you see it?!

(a toast): to the miracle bicycle

sometimes you fall in love.  on a warm may night when there's nothing but a cloudy sunset sky and a breeze to keep you company.  when a ride through the neighborhood on a periwinkle bike, the color of grape-jelly jelly-beans, beneath big trees heavy already with the summer's leaves cuts loose your soul, and you drift up like the birds.  and the wind and the sound of cars and the clickclickclick of the bicycle beneath, faster faster faster, and the wind...

sometimes you just fall in love.  sometimes you just fall in love and a warm may night is all you need.

one of those rare days when every move carries the weight of eternal indelibility, of eternal engraving on the soul of "My History".

this post is to be read while listening to "More Time" by Needtobreathe.

while sitting in convocation, i realized something perspective-changing.  in order to accomplish the greater things i am hoping to, I must graduate.  this step is not an end, but rather a release, empowering me, enabling with, granting me the freedom and credential necessary to move on to the more weighty matters, like grad school, publishing, becoming a scholar, and saving the world (my plan is to do this through stories).

a picture says a thousand words and all that

and here i am, another blog post brought to you past one in the morning.  something about this all is so cathartic, so before-bed-necessary.

here are some pictures until i get some words.  (these pictures=a small afternoon reminiscence of my BYU experience)

FRESHMAN YEAR: "WOW these bookshelves MOVE!!  Like in Harry Potter!"

SOPHOMORE YEAR: hamburgers + french fries + fry sauce + everyday = magic.  I think most people have certain favorite food spots in their hometowns--places they go to again and again.  this is ours.  scoreboard grill.

JUNIOR YEAR, SENIOR YEAR, SUPER SENIOR YEAR: And thus I fell in love with Shakespeare.  And thus my favorite place to study became the fifth floor, because I knew he was nearby.

THIS WEEKEND (aka: GRADUATION): "We did it!"  (please click on this picture to view a larger version.  please notice our faces.  classic brooke and carolyn.  maybe not so much has changed since our days in heritage halls.)

with all the love in my heart, i graduate, in hopes of putting my heart to better use as i step out into this crazycrazy world.

ground beef, thumbs-up, and other delights

it all started with an old man doing yoga in the middle of the park.

then we tried 18 times to leave--you know those nightmares where you just can't quite get out the door?  that was monday afternoon--and finally on the nineteenth try we were successful.

then with pineapple in a round container with a square lid that did not fit and lots of halos and rubies to go around, we drove....and drove and drove and drove until five hours and seventeen skinwalker jokes later, we found a canyon, one million stars, zero hot dogs, and a midweek escape from real life.

DAY ONE:

highlights:

1. waking up to a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! banner.  BAM. 

2. melissa bear-slapping spencer.

3. grossing rosie out while hiking.

4. attempting to drive man off a cliff with a fourwheeler.

5. this face:

what's that, you say?  you'd like a close up of the cow?  alright...

6. certain people stealing my fries and getting rebuked by a fry-protective father.

7. falling asleep like 14-yr olds.

DAY TWO:

1.  stupid green lines and rubber hammers all morning long.

2. laughing while wrestling sprinklerlines with minds of their own.

3. camille schooling michael at spit.

4. sumo-wrestlings.

5. letting loose, to put it nicely.

6. Oreos=I marry Josh + I wear a D.I. shirt for a day.  Oh wait, I meant a week.

7. 7:15 oh what?

POST-DELIGHTS:

1.  Thursday already?  you mean it is the weekend again?  kaching.

theme + thoughts =

most of my work as a major of the English is to find themes in texts. if my life were a book, i am apparently living right now somewhere in the chapter titled, "TRUST." thought i'd look it up to get a more nuanced understanding.

trust   [truhst] Show IPA ,
–noun
1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2. confident expectation of something; hope.
3. confidence in the certainty of future payment for property or goods received; credit: to sell merchandise on trust.
4. a person on whom or thing on which one relies: God is my trust.
5. the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.
6. the obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed: a position of trust.
7. charge, custody, or care: to leave valuables in someone's trust.
8. something committed or entrusted to one's care for use or safekeeping, as an office, duty, or the like; responsibility; charge.
9. Law.
a. a fiduciary relationship in which one person (the trustee) holds the title to property (the trust estate or trust property) for the benefit of another (the beneficiary).
b. the property or funds so held.
10. Commerce.
a. an illegal combination of industrial or commercial companies in which the stock of the constituent companies is controlled by a central board of trustees, thus making it possible to manage the companies so as to minimize production costs, control prices, eliminate competition, etc.
b. any large industrial or commercial corporation or combination having a monopolistic or semimonopolistic control over the production of some commodity or service.
11. Archaic. reliability.
–adjective
12. Law. of or pertaining to trusts or a trust.
–verb (used without object)
13. to rely upon or place confidence in someone or something (usually fol. by in or to): to trust in another's honesty; trusting to luck.
14. to have confidence; hope: Things work out if one only trusts.
15. to sell merchandise on credit.
–verb (used with object)
16. to have trust or confidence in; rely or depend on.
17. to believe.
18. to expect confidently; hope (usually fol. by a clause or infinitive as object): trusting the job would soon be finished; trusting to find oil on the land.
19. to commit or consign with trust or confidence.
20. to permit to remain or go somewhere or to do something without fear of consequences: He does not trust his children out of his sight.
21. to invest with a trust; entrust with something.
22. to give credit to (a person) for goods, services, etc., supplied: Will you trust us till payday?
—Verb phrase
23. trust to, to rely on; trust: Never trust to luck!
—Idiom
24. in trust, in the position of being left in the care or guardianship of another: She left money to her uncle to keep in trust for her children.

Origin:
1175–1225; (n.) ME < ON traust trust (c. G Trost comfort); (v.) ME trusten < ON treysta, deriv. of traust

Related forms:
trust⋅a⋅ble, adjective
trust⋅a⋅bil⋅i⋅ty, noun
truster, noun

Synonyms:
1. certainty, belief, faith. Trust, assurance, confidence imply a feeling of security. Trust implies instinctive unquestioning belief in and reliance upon something: to have trust in one's parents. Confidence implies conscious trust because of good reasons, definite evidence, or past experience: to have confidence in the outcome of events. Assurance implies absolute confidence and certainty: to feel an assurance of victory. 8. commitment, commission. 17. credit. 19. entrust.

[tear] me away: girl crying home

i wish i could take BYU and put it in a bottle and take it with me wherever i go.  then, at any time, i could open it up and be in the MOA, early on a Friday afternoon, wandering in from a long week, beginning my weekend with a little art and the mysterious smell of hot paninis, cheese, soup.  i could be sitting at those solid maple tables on the fifth floor, or the Periodicals, caressing out the last few parts of a term paper about Shakespeare.  i would be eating a Subway sandwich, no, a Scoreboard hamburger and frenchfries with lots of fry sauce at a table in the Wilk, watching people, wrestling a crossword puzzle.  i'd be meeting with a study group while the sun is setting, fifth floor study room, by the photography section.  i'd be in the HFAC, painting long after class ended, tender tendrils of turpenoid saturating the warmness, hypnotized, pounding through the paint with Radiohead.  late night going to Hamlet or Young Ambassadors for the second time, always Smart Cookie after.  i'd sit in Rick Duerden's class on the morning of the final [studying near through the night], composing brilliance i little knew i had in me.  eating Subway on the lawn of Maeser with Brooke, faking like we're studying--cramming--for humanities finals.  ballroom with judd and acoustic explosion...  but back to the library i would always return, after dinner at the Wilk, with a few friends nearby to keep studycompany, Tiffany bringing me a bag of double-dipped peanuts to eat while constructing literarys on California and simulacra, 

these memories are sprinkled with gold, they echo of priceless.

and through all of them is a forward movement, a weight of future happinesses waiting and passing, a clean scent of excitement, a clean scent of home.

i don't want to say goodbye.

in review: a journey with pictures

this weekend has blissed on in one eternal stretch of joy.  like the road before jack kerouac.

weekend highlights:

--finishing on the road friday morning.  best line: "it was remarkable how Dean could go mad and then suddenly continue with his soul--which I think is wrapped up in a fast car, a coast to reach, and a woman at the end of the road."

--remembering that i really do like playing the guitar incessantly for hours on end, as a result of discovering this.

--pupusas at el salvadorian restaurante

--eating jelly beans and laughing for 45 minutes straight, while driving on the freeway with paigey.

--REdiscovering favorite flavors: lemon, blue speckled, grapegrapegrape, and coconuuutt

--katherine asking it exactly like it is.  honesty: appreciated.  

--realizing that ten years later, we're still doing the same things at sleepovers that we did when we were twelve: eating, giggling, and talking about boys.  and then, once we turned on twilight, realizing that chances are that for those of us who are teaching tenth-graders, we probably spent our weekend the same way our students did: sleepovers and twilight.

--making two new friends at said sleepover.

--freezing to death and trying to sleep at the same time, while tipping backwards off my recliner in the middle of the night.  "No!"

--french toast, strawberries, and powdered sugar creating saturday morning bliss

--fraternizing with Cornelius Carmichael (tennis racquet and all) and Winston Shemerington.  the three of us waltzing into Smith's like we owned the place, Penelope Wimbeldon being escorted by two gentlemen.

--hearing the prophetic ice cream truck, foreshadower of one adventurous day soon to come.

--finding the song they played on npr the other day that i liked so much:  Dan Auerbach, "When the Night Comes".  See here, you.  

--finally washing my car real good.  using the 14 quarters from justin to do so.

--watching eagle boys plant a strawberry patch

--having a dead goldfish thrown at me.  having the dead goldfish thrown at me stick to my shirt.  screaming and shaking the dead goldfish thrown at me off my shirt.  having a watermark on my shirt in the shape of a dead goldfish from the dead goldfish thrown at me.

--the annual festival of colors: hare hare hare hare krishna krishna krishna krishna

--pizza + suns game = comfortable

--making a garrett sandwich

--looking back at a perfect weekend.