every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

phew!

what a year!

a year of change,

a year of CRAZY.

i've moved 4 times,

made 52 new friends,

driven 14,851 miles,

and taken 4,178 pictures.

i've learned that all people really want is to feel loved, just as they are.

i've learned that if a room's too dark to take a picture, you can turn up your ISO and then shoot,

and i've learned that dancing really does solve a lot of problems.

and 2011 is going to be gooooooood.

i'm going to learn a language,

and leave the country,

and start a company maybe.

and probably become queen of the world.

and most of all just be really really happy.

(smile)

christmas adam

yesterday, the day before christmas eve, lovingly titled "christmas adam" by my little sister, is also my brother's birthday. he is serving a mission in paris right now. what better way to celebrate his birthday, his mission in france, and christmas adam than with a five-course french dinner! (there is no better way, that is the correct answer.)

and a little chocolate baby lava cake for good measure:

festivities

every year, a couple of my cousins and i go to decorate my grandma's house for christmas. she only has two outlets in her front room, which isn't enough for the 12+ porcelain houses she has for her fireplace mantle:

this makes our mathematician desi go:

but once we've daisychained a little:

she can:

a few other decorative delights from grandma's house:

christmas gnomes!

gnome/elf/dwarf with wiggly legs:

sweets, treats, and other delights

on the week before christmas break, i ate too many treats:

twelve blueberry muffins

half a shake from sonic

ten sweet potato fries

nine spicy nacho doritos

eight ounces starbucks caramel cocoa

seven cups of mango salsa

six ghiradhelli brownies

five chocolate truffles!

four mini milky ways

three handfuls of m&ms

two redeeming salads

and one very large rice krispie treat!

*other than one hamburger from sammy's, this is all i have eaten since sunday. yes, it's gross. i am aware. and ashamed. and nauseous.

a song at two in the morning for all those who are up writing papers with me

and it starts sometime around midnight. at least that's when you lose yourself for a minute or two. as you sit under your desk light, and itunes plays some song about forgetting yourself for a while. and the piano's this melancholy soundtrack to the miles of pages and pages you have to write before resting a while.

then there's a change in your emotions, and all these words come rushing like literary waves to your mind. but you feel hopeless and homeless and lost in the haze of the lines (on the paper). as you type and type quotes, your head's spinning, your stomach in ropes. and then your friends say, "what is it? you look like you've seen a ghost." (i have, thanks--MY ghost. the ghost of carolyn killed by writing a paper all night long.)

you walk home under the streetlights and you're too tired to notice that everyone is just as tired as you. you just don't care what you look like, your brain has split into two! you just have to be there, you just have to be there, you just have to be there, you just have to be there, you just have to be there to know that writing papers will suck your soul like voldemort.

monday morning letter, first day of finals

dear world,

please save me from having to use my brain.

i'm on the second floor of the library.

thank you,

carolyn

little bird little bird little bird

the english major as a heroic enterprise

(my scholastic heroine face. harder than you'd think to pull--just the right amount of hoity-toity and fearlessness.)

i am a heroine, on a heroic enterprise in this journey to become a professor of literature. or so my faculty advisor told me tonight. as being such requires the biannual ritual of term-paper writing, i believe it is high time for the following list:

things i love about writing term papers:

• the double-dipped chocolate peanuts. i'll be honest, that IS the first thing i think when term-paper time rolls around every year. no i am not ashamed okay maybe a little. they're in the bookstore at the fudge counter. they really help when it's 3 pm and you have fallen into the black hole of realizing that you don't a) have enough time to write the length of paper you need to, b) have enough time to write the quality of paper you need to, or c) even have an idea for what you are going to write the paper about. at that point, you begin losing any semblance of hope you had, and are nigh resigning yourself to utter despair! bad news. the good news: double-dipped chocolate peanuts will pull you out of the 3 pm black hole. you're welcome.
• the stillness of writing a paper at 5 am on the bedroom floor. the morning really is a time when there is enough quiet that the right words seem all around. fruit to be plucked off the tree. (by 3 pm the fruit has been thoroughly plucked and the tree is barren (hence the 3 pm black hole). and then you feel justified in quitting, which is also a good feeling. which leads me to....
• hitting the wall. i have become very attuned to my inner sense of focus. my brain hits walls. it used to take me 30 minutes to realize i'd hit a wall. now it only takes 2. when i see the wall, i keep running till i hit it, and then i pack up, and go home for a movie, or for some guitar time. you understand. i am good to my brain. i figure i've got to be if it's going to keep doing me good in this herculean task called term papers.
• the nap you get to take because you got up at 5 am to write a paper.
• finding cute boys in the library to sit by. sometimes this is the best way to keep me focused, because you think, "oh hey, that cute boy is here studying. that means i should study too." think of it as having your mom in the room with you when you're getting your wisdom teeth removed. in a weird sort of way, knowing friends (or cute boys) are around, sharing in my pain, helps me to be okay with being there, having the wisdom of my brain extracted. (get it, get it? it's an extended metaphor and also a pun.) (and sorry if i'm superficial or creepy for finding cute boys in the library. sue me. and sorry if the comparison of cute boys to your mom is weird. yeah it kind of is.)
• finding your one song, the one that is always there to untie the twists you've gotten in your scholastic knickers. this year, mine's "The Longer I Run" by Peter Bradley Adams. (ironic title considering my procrastination rant yesterday)
• having sentences just come to me, as i'm in the shower or walking to class or driving home or falling asleep. this results in me memorizing whole paragraphs to type as soon as i get out of the shower, veering off the sidewalk to sit amongst bushes and hammer out a paragraph or two on my way to class, scribbling snippets of sentences and phrases on the back of receipts in my car at every stoplight i stop at, texting myself outlines of my paper because i'm too lazy to get out of bed to find a pen and paper.
• the pages and pages of scribbled notes and webs and outlines and sketches and maps that prove that i'm actually thinking, and not just sitting mindlessly staring into space. someday when i am a genius i will publish all of these in a sort of compendium to the art of crazy-writing.
• that moment when you've been wrestling through empty ideas and tangled thoughts, and suddenly the enlightenment comes, and everything around you blurs and it's just you and the page and your words. those moments i could write forever, and never eat again and never sleep again, but just write until every truth in existence was unraveled in my pen. melodramatic, i know. but i live for those moments.
• that last half-hour when you're writing the conclusion, and the words are just coming to you, falling like manna straight to your fingertips. and you ride the river all the way to the ocean, when your fingers show you the "so what?", the meaning, the magnitude of what you have just unearthed. i don't know that i've ever experienced this moment without crying a little bit. in a good way. crying at how lovely our minds are and the Spirit is that from two literary loaves and a few fishes, we can somehow construct a feast. i see this power in so many people around me, in the words they say, the lessons they teach, the papers they write. at the end of every paper, i am left with a profound sense of gratitude, for the capacity of our minds, for moments of enlightenment, for others' words that have inspired me, helped me make connections, deepened my understanding. for the very simple yet unknowable miracle that is words!

and now, thing i don't love about writing term papers:

• the two weeks of acute anxiety i put myself through before allowing myself to experience the above joys. yes, this IS because of my habit of procrastination. don't mock.

"Overcoming Procrastination"

"Overcoming Procrastination." that's the title of the handout that somehow found its way to me as i walked through the wilk today. let's read it together:

FORMS OF PROCRASTINATION:

Ignore the Task: Do you ever think that if you jut ignore the task it will go away?

Why yes I do. I justify this practice by telling myself I'm practicing my powers of imagination, which are crucial to any artist's well-being.

Underestimate the Work and/or Overestimate your Abilities: Do you underestimate the work involved in the task, or overestimate your abilities and resources in relationship to the task?

Does saving a research paper, a 15-source Annotated Bibliography, a lesson plan, 257 pages of novel reading, 10 pages of Norton Anthology reading (those of you who are lit people know the equivalency ratio: I believe it's 1 pg Norton = 10,000 pgs regular), and a presentation for the morning that they're all due qualify as underestimating the work and/or overestimating my abilities?

Become Distracted by Repeated Delays: Do you find yourself wasting time on small unimportant tasks at the expense of larger more important ones?

Yeah this is pretty much my mantra...as I'm blog-writing instead of writing 2 10-page papers, reading Theory...well, you get the picture. Again, though, I justify this--I'm building my creative writing skills, right? And as for all the cooking I've accomplished this semester instead of studying, well, I'm sure it will be to a good end someday.

Dramatize Commitment to a Task: Do you dramatize commitment to a task rather than actually doing it?

I'm fond of talking about all the stuff I have to do (as demonstrated above), and yet rarely am I really as busy as I construct myself to be. It's unintentional, I mean, in my mind I'm really busy, or should be really busy, I'm sure. And yet I still had time to watch Christmas movies every night last week.

Waste Time Deciding Between Alternative Choices: Do you waste an unnecessary amount of time deciding between alternative choices?

Time AND paper. I make extensive lists of all the things I have to accomplish, followed by detailed schedules of when I will accomplish it all. The great thing is that everyday I feel the need to make a new list. I have stacks of lists of things I have to do. They all say the same things, but I think my brain gets some weird sense of gratification--or accomplishment--by writing what I have to do, as if the act of writing were as good as actually completing the task!

Okay. So clearly I have a problem. Now, I could wrap this whole thing up with some clever (albeit cliche) sentence about how 'I'm going to start overcoming my procrastination problem...tomorrow!' but I'll spare you the eye-roll and I'll spare me the commitment to something that we all know I'm not actually going to do. Because let's be honest: procrastination works for me. In fact, I think I produce my best stuff in the wee hours of the morn. Sick though it is, knowing I only have 5 hours to write a term paper gives me just the right amount of adrenaline to produce the good stuff. Some people like jumping off cliffs. I like writing term papers at 4 am. That's all there is to it.

Procrastinators of the world, I will see you in the library! I'll be the girl playing speed scrabble amidst stacks and stacks of books.

i made the pies

la la la la la

this morning, around 4 am, i woke up with perfect words and a perfect melody running through my head for a song my subconscious is trying to get me to write. this is a very frequent occurrence; in fact, it's been happening more and more frequently as of late. sometimes it's a symphony, sometimes it's a rap song (that one was interesting), sometimes it's a love song. and always i run it through my mind over and over and over again so when i wake up i'll be able to remember it and find some way to transcribe it, but come morning, it's always gone.

i've thought about keeping a tape recorder next to my bed so i can record the melodies at 4 am when my subconscious wakes me up with its songs, but i'm a little scared of listening to them once they're recorded, afraid they'll be about nothing more than cottage cheese and sidewalks. whatever that means.

packaging

today i made some already-cooked-bacon. (and by made i mean i warmed it up in the microwave.) for those of you who have never partaken of the wonder that is already-cooked-bacon, the packaging is amazing: they come in a little clear plastic tray/bag, which has a pull tab to open AND a zip-lock component, so those who do not eat the whole package in one sitting can preserve said product until a later consumption date.

it made me think about saving trees, and eating healthy, and how probably the less packaging a product requires, the better. like an apple for instance. or a steak. low packaging. better for your body.

here's my thing: people have packaging too. some people take thick plastic tray/bags and a pull tab to preserve and sell all their goods. and some people are peanut M&Ms (really, who can't resist that yellow bag, what with it's graphics and colors and clever catch-phrases). and some people are an apple. one sticker so you know what it is, and that's all. i like those kind of people--the people who are so good-for-you that they don't need fancy labels to tell you about it. the people who are simple enough and natural enough that they don't need preservatives or zip-lock components to stay fresh and delightful. the people you don't need to open a cardboard box, and a pull tab, and a zipper to get to the goodness inside. i like people like that. they make me want to simplify who i am, and stop caring so much about all the packaging the world says is important.

what i did tonight:

as virtuous men pass mildly away

lately i've been thinking on what if today's my last one. what would i feel if i were on my deathbed, and knew my "todays" were now "yesterdays", that my plans and what if's and dream-bigs were going to have to be saved for eternity, not my brief stint here on this little earth. i think a lot of things would evaporate--like the importance of being on time, like 40% off at Gap, like whether or not (fill in the blank) would ever come around and love me, like how much of me i pour into my studies and scholarly plans, like comparing and competing and running and running and running to try to measure up, to try to be good enough.

and all that would be left is who i have become

and the quiet hope that that would somehow be good enough.

i'd think about my family,

about if they know

that there is no other group of people i want to be with more,

anytime.

gathering experiences

sometimes life is so busy

and there isn't enough time to do the things i'd like to do

like write about my life.

and the poets talks about a place of serenity

as the "where" to write poems,

that it is emotion recollected in tranquility. (wimsatt & beardsley)

and that one word: recollected.

right now i'm gathering experiences,

in all these busy days,

gathering images

and conversations

and lessons learned

so one day far away,

when life is tranquil

and perhaps i have white hair

i will write my life.

it's in the air!

"i'm going to the library to study."

TRANSLATION:

"i'm going to the library to write about the holidays and holiday things and everything i love about this time of year."

all around me there are signs of the season:

christmas trees are appearing everywhere on campus. the unaware student probably has not noticed yet. but i have been anxiously watching since september for these trees to appear: i think it's a crew of older ladies who are in charge of byu's christmas trees--i see them every now and then with boxes marked "ORNAMENTS". these ladies are very clever--they don't bomb-drop the christmas decor, oh no. they are much more surreptitious about the whole thing. a tree in the corner of the cougareat. a few garlands in the bookstore. then some lights here and there. and before you know it, you're sitting in the middle of the library and before you a delightful christmas scene has unfolded, as if by magic! ten foot trees and presents and christmas lights everywhere. i love this time of year on campus. there's a chair on the fourth floor by the wall that i'll pull out and turn so it's facing the christmas tree and then i'll read there for hours, and i feel like i'm home.

100.3 has started playing christmas music!

it's supposed to snow on wednesday...which means 7-11 hot chocolate runs at midnight!

i am probably only going to write about these beautiful holiday things until january. apologies in advance, but it's all i can think about when the air is sparkling with winter and everything is merry and bright! i've been waiting since august to be able to openly listen to christmas music without being hated. the first second that my roommates give me the okay, i'm going to set up the christmas tree. and i can hardly wait for this year's hors d'huevres party!

somedays are a bullet

somedays you forget to wear underwear to school

and you're late to ballet class because you can't find parking.

somedays you drop your powder compact and it rolls across the entire locker room floor.

and a fly lands on your mouth

and you realize your five applications for next semester are due at noon,

not five,

which means you now have no time to write the paper that's due at three.

and you forgot your pen.

and there's a $2500 purchase hanging over your head.

and you ate a bunch of grapes so you have that weird post-grape nastiness in your mouth

so you reach into your bag for a mint and you have none left.

and pew!pew!pew!

just another beebee in your back.

but you dreamt about him,

and now those beebees in your back don't hurt so much

because you just got bazookad in the face.

now you wake up

and you smell him

now you wake up

and you miss him.

and your legs were hairy

and your nose kept dripping

and he told you he brought you back your pens so that means you'll never see him again.

the point: somedays you just kind of want to cry

and you need someone who doesn't care if you have bad breath

or if you park illegally

or if your work isn't perfect

because at least they knew you were trying.

halloween friday

cool things i saw today on campus:

1) automated toilet paper dispensers. (seriously people?)

2) three boys prancing around campus dressed as monty python's king arthur and companions. one had a crown. one had coconut shells. one had a lute. thank you freshmen.

3) a girl walk up to a boy in the cougareat and ask him out. it went like this: "hi, i was wondering if you'd want to go on a date with me next weekend." he hesitated, then said, "sure..." she then informed him it was a psych study on boys' reactions to girls asking them out. ha ha hesitating boy, the jokes on you!

happy winter, i mean!

apparently posting fall pictures taunts poor old mr. jack frost: this morning i woke up to...

one thing i do love about winter in provo is that i study better. something about scarves and sweater vests and gray wet winter outside makes me perfectly okay with spending hours reading literary theorists in the library.

which is what i attempted to do tonight. kant. immanuel kant. i find his name fitting--his writing is anything but "can-do"able.

here's the problem with the man: i know what all of his words mean, but strung together they make no sense whatsoever to me. example:

Now there are but two kinds of concepts, and these yield a corresponding number of distinct principles of the possibility of their objects.

i read that sentence three times, then read the sparknotes version of it twice. i still have no idea what he's talking about.

as i'm re-re-reading kant, dude in the library walks up and says, "that looks hard. from across the room i thought you were reading a dictionary." i laugh. i show him a page. he says, "is it english?" at first i thought he meant, "is it for an english major class." no. he meant, "are those words in english." beats me, kid! the next time he passed by my table, he didn't stop--he merely waved and whisper-screamed "DON'T GIVE UP! WHATEVER YOU DO!" thanks library dude.

and that, you see, is when i made my breakthrough of the day. after forty minutes (= two paragraphs) of kant, i began wandering the library in search of something better--something i kan do. there's a poem i keep in my planner, one that i reread quite often (aka: every time i find myself bored somewhere). it is called "ithaca" by constantine cavafy. to this day, i have not delved farther into cavafy than the rereading of this one poem. so tonight i decide what better way to postpone the inevitable kant but by diverting my attention to a poet! surely my professors (and twain, for that matter) would be proud. and then it hit me--somewhere between PA 5610 .K2 and PA 5610 .K3: the TRUTH behind the master's program. all the classes, all the impenetrable texts--they're not the content the professors are trying to teach us! they're just the impetus! the impetus for so overburdening us with the density of theories and criticisms and analyses that we run to tolstoy and wordsworth and homer for sweet sweet solace! my education is teaching me not to love saussure and barrett browning and semenza (heaven help that man), but to find what i love as i seek refuge from the oppression of the incomprehensible!

cavafy, you are one that i love.

thoreau, you too. but please don't be offended that

i love emerson more.

willy, the way your stories find a way into every construct of truth fascinates me.

hemingway, bless your soul for your simple sentences.

milton, don't worry: paradise lost is on my bookshelf for a reason. i'm saving you because i think i might love you and i don't want a class to ruin that. so you i will keep secret until i can read you all to myself.

eliot, i will fight for your wasteland to the death. (despite derk's derisions.)

clive staples...clive staples. well what can be said of you, other than you are the first to be read when i go home every christmas.

let's play house

i love being domestic,

on evenings when it's raining and the house smells like sauteed onions and pecans,

and it's chilly and autumn outside.

i feel like wearing aprons all day

and baking every recipe i have that uses pumpkin, cloves, or nutmeg.

i feel like making blankets

and painting

and any other craft i can dream up.

and i feel like throwing parties,

ones with six different kinds of cake:

lemon

red velvet

chocolate

marble

spice

rainbow sprinkle

and four different soups

and we'd all wear cardigans and argyle and after dinner we'd sit around and drink hot chocolate and talk about books.

happy fall!

go find a tree and HUG IT.

or a person. both are good and shall bring you much happiness.

*p.s. the above pictures were taken with my new camera lens! i squealed quite a lot today: when i picked it up from ups, when i opened the box, when i opened the box inside the box, when i pulled the lens out of the sweet case they sent it in, when i attached it to my camera for the first time....ahhhhh. i was very close to writing a love letter to it tonight, but decided that might be weird.

two things i like

today i ate four bowls of honey nut cheerios. i am awesome. kinda like this video:

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

music video monday: i want to change my face

lately, i have been bored of my face. i want a new one. not permanently. just for a little while.

bruce springsteen feels this way sometimes too. he says he wants to change his clothes, his hair, his face.

and tegan and sara sing his song about it.

career exploration

i think i'll be a photographer, because i like pushing buttons.

i like writing in fancy letters, so maybe i'll be a calligrapher, and people can hire me to write all their fancy letters,

like in love letters and stuff.

i like buying used books and figuring out how to arrange them on my bookshelves so one day

i might own my own bookstore.

it would have a hot chocolate cafe inside, because i like drinking hot chocolate.

i like sorting and classifying halloween candy into piles, so maybe i'll work at a

candy factory!

i like wandering aimlessly places on saturday mornings,

so maybe someone will pay me someday for noticing things that you only notice if you wander aimlessly

places on saturday mornings.

i like making lists. and especially checking things off the lists i make.

maybe i can work for santa.

i like staying up late when i should be asleep already. maybe i can get a job

making people with insomnia not feel so lonely.

i like eating honey nut cheerios.

A LOT.

maybe someone should come take my picture and it could say, "Hey! I'm

the girl who eats the most honey nut cheerios in the world!"

and they would give me a trophy maybe.

i like folding paper birds.

i think that has no practical purpose.

oh!

maybe i could work for the army and if they run out of fake model airplanes to do their simulations with, i could make them

some paper airplanes and they could use those!

or if the zoo's birds ever get sick, i could fold up some big paper birds out of glittery paper

and they would be so pretty that the people wouldn't mind that

the real birds

were

too sick to come out.

i like laying in my bed late at night listening to coldplay.

i don't think i can turn that into a job

but maybe someday,

a long time from now,

the world will be like, "hey we need an expert on this old band called coldplay...anyone know anything about them?"

and then i will be the

world's first professor on coldplay.

i like eating ice cream. and peanut m&m's. i should look into getting

a job in professional taste-testing.

i like typing on my typewriter. but then again,

that is just another way of pushing buttons. so

maybe i really will be a photographer.

music video monday: leftovers

all i could think about today was brick oven's garlic chicken pizza. i thought about it as i was eating my peach. i thought about it as i was reading horace. i thought about it as i was walking to victorian lit. so i finally resolved that i would do it. i would buy an entire garlic chicken pizza, just because i felt like it. of course, i did use the rationale that it would leave me enough leftovers to have garlic chicken for lunch every day this week. i love this plan. so as i'm enjoying my garlic chicken pizza leftovers all week (yes, it does have bacon and tomatoes on it too...mmmmmmmmmmmm), you can enjoy some leftovers from johnny flynn:

the four right chords

this weekend i went to abravanel hall in salt lake to hear rachmaninoff's rhapsody on a theme of paganini. i love the symphony because it carries me to a place where i can have perfect stillness with my thoughts, and wrestle through them, to the point that when i leave, i feel relieved--exhausted, but relieved. the rhapsody was performed by conrad tao (he's only 16!). to give you a taste of the magic of the moment for we the audience, he got a quadruple encore. both for his ability (of course), and also for the beauty of rachmaninoff's rhapsody. this rhapsody for me is part of the fabric of my SOUL. dramatic, i know. what i mean is it's one of those songs that i've known for as far back as i have memories. i know every note, every pause, every breath. better than i know my own voice, i know this song. here it is the second half for you to enjoy:

there's one part in particular, it's at 1:35-2:22. this is one of the most beautiful chord progressions in my book, and here's why: the chords build on each other. they are increasingly beautiful, but only because they are understood in relation to the one before, and the one about to come next. they are beautiful because of where the notes have been, and where they are about to go. the build up is the sound of the unlocking, then the lift-away at 1:48, when they resolve. the four right chords can make me cry, as third eye blind sings. any one of those chords, if played in isolation, would mean little to our minds. but when strung together, as comments and variations on the ones before, they combine to something of great emotional texture. they make meaning. meaning is not in each individual chord, but in the movement across and through them together. and it is in this way that it makes me wonder, a still nebulously forming idea, if perhaps we are the same--meaningless until understood in context to those around us, our experiences without texture until we understand them in relation to the experiences we had before, and the ones to come, which we yet cannot see. but the meaning, the richness, the melody is in them all strung together--the experiences, the people, the lifes. the four right chords. if the stringing together is the motion of unlocking, as bon iver sings, then that end moment of liftaway is when&where we create a place where love is safe. and maybe that's something.

sitting in 'grad studies' class, these are my thoughts:

this summer, at eastern market, i ate the most amazing white peach. it was brownsugar-sweet and drippy like syrup or the sun right before it goes down.

so long, sweet summer

as today is the first day of fall, whilst the mountains turn orange, so here is my last ra-ra for a summer i stumbled upon, one that now gracefully falls away. a few of my favorite parts: (humor my nostalgia)

the very long drive...

the monuments at night

the metro station at pentagon city

the miles of spiderwebs on the rails across the bridge from the jefferson...which i discovered only after running my hand across them for quite some time.

camping out for fireworks on the fourth over the national mall

old town alexandria--in the evenings for dinner, for firework shows, for just about anything, one of the best places to be.

kim and chris, my twin shakespearean field-trip friends

dinner with the lovely brea and jackie-who-i-miss-more-than-life-itself in chinatown...i mean chinablock.

any sweet potato fries i could get my hands on (not to mention the burgers at 'the burger joint')

lunch with cori and kay...noticing a pattern here? food is clearly very important to me.

arlington. how the blocks are mini and the houses are patriotic and the trees are big and the fireflies abundant. arlington, i love everything about you.

wendy's plaid glasses, impeccable taste in music and constant ability to make every situation more fun

finding my twin

ball games

and most of all, the bicycle rides with all my beautiful/charming/quirky/intelligent/provocative/elusive/indefatigable/hopeful/hilarious friends, big groups and small

it's cold where we're going--i hope that our hearts are always warm.

(thanks to dashboard for such lovely lyrics.)