Some Highlights of the Shortest Month (Partial List, In No Order)

80 for Brady with Lo, extra popcorn, Saturday matinee

Hiking the Observatory with friends I knew in college who knew me in high school

Pastries with my dad

Rewatching My So-Called Life on the projector in the bedroom

Mexican restaurant booth, free chips and salsa

Invite to the pinkest, cutest, Galentines party in town

Email from a very important woman: "Looking forward to our paths crossing again soon!"

Fuge with two of my favorite performers

What a week: closing a deal, celebrating with a karaoke truck, pitching anew in the morning, filming a music improv TV episode the next morning, hiking a mountain with a bachelorette party the next morning

Three other gals and I lighting prayer candles at the vegan restaurant for delusions

Walking the river and discussing union power with someone who's lost someone

Tried my hand at writing a difficult essay, positive reviews from my first reader

Double date with friends who feel like friends

An incredible play in Atwater

Changing Mur's life, he says

Tried to huddle in a corner of the Pasadena cafe, but someone had staked her claim. Ended up with a much better seat against the fireplace. I hunkered there for hours. An old man told me he was celebrating his birthday. He warned that God gave me a brain to follow my own path, not be part of someone else's.

Nobody tells you when you're young / how some friends will become strangers / and there is no greater danger than to live in fear. / Nobody tells you when you're young / cause a rebel heart won't listen / but to grow you must go missing, just don't disappear. / The wisdom's in the living, not the years.

February, You Can Eat A Rock

Good riddance to a despicable month. March is traditionally my least favorite part of the year, but I have faith it can be better than the trash pile that was February 1-28 in 2015. I hate you, February 2015. I hate all the stressful emails, I hate the whipping winds, I hate the uncomfortable notes, I have hated being sick for four weeks straight. I hate the greasy white board hands, the freshmen who never stop snapchatting, the sharp word, losing the will to keep my phone close, the interrupted dinner stories, and my hair wiley uggo hair.

Of course, there was a lot of good this month. Let's not forget that. Let's just commemorate those times.

Benny the Bull blimpin'.

Karaoke night with cohort. This was "It's All Coming Back to Me."

Galentines Party Apps.

My Valentine.

My music improv team in a finale pose.

Blizzard Flu

Fat lymph nodes call for tea,
sucking on Werthers slowly.
Brown washcloth across foreheard,
wake up in sweat-soaked bed.
Pale face, no makeup on.
Will to move completely gone.
Eyes droop, curl in ball.
Make yourself tiny, make it all small.
Baked potato on snowy night.
Soak in the bath. It will be alright.

Richard Dawkins

Found my notes from the Richard Dawkins talk I saw this February with Pookie. Ideas from the legend:

-Trying to figure out God from our perspective is like looking for keys you dropped under a lamppost since that's where the light is.

-People say that our existence is proof of a higher power because us being here is so improbable, but, actually, the big surprise would be if nothing happened in am empty space.

-It's sad all politicians have to lie about being religious. They can't all possibly care. We need to be who we are and own it.

-Fear is a biological mechanism. It's not so bad.

Interesting ideas, Dawks. I enjoyed hearing him speak--despite not always entirely agreeing. Because I had a good, thought-provoking evening, when the dude was walking offstage to thunderous applause of four-thousand hands, I yelled up at him (I was in the front row) "Thanks!" and he smiled so so genuinely, and he pointed at me, like, "Hey, YOU thanks."

And then my sis and I went out with Blue Eyes to an Irish pub and sucked down cranberry juices.

Ashes

Last night Chelle came over to do sketch revisions.
"Should I bring dessert? Fat Tuesday," she texted.
I responded, "Or as Alice would call it--
Regular Tuesday."
It's a big ol' bunch of sun here.
I'm totally distanced from what the day is usually.
The huge majority of my elementary school classmates
talking about giving up potato chips.
The ball of grey clay in the February sky.
The paczkis. The Pollacks of Chicago.
I get those cheese and strawberry-filled confections confused
with the best holiday for Mr. Pulaski and confused
with the road, stretching across the suburbs.
Last year this day I was in the hospital
with family. Coming together to love a loved one.
We hovered over my late aunt.
The nurses hovered as well, all of them with dark skin
and ashed faces.
Smudges that reflected in the huge windows of that room.


Ornament on Christmas tree in IL.

Blue Bow

The counselor staff gift in 2010 was a stationary set. We--Cocoa, KWall, and I--made them with care using rubber stamps and thick white paper. We stacked the little piles and wrapped them with blue bows.

The staff wore the bows all summer. I liked the robin's egg hue. I liked the length around my braids. I tied it around my pony tail last Monday morning. I was nostalgic for camp. The July dawns on the lake are mimetic of these February desert mornings. Sometimes at night when I close my eyes I imagine the view from Council Fire, the lighthouse in the distance, the smell of pine.

I saw bell hooks speak last Monday. (More on that in the future.) I felt rejuvenated after the talk. Ready to move. I hopped on my bicycle and scooted home. It was windy, but I was defiant. I arrived home to a stack of mail. I scurried up to my room, turned on the lamp, pulled up the covers. I reached back to run the bow between the valley of my thumb and pointer.

It was gone. It had flown away in the wind.

Maybe it is in a bird nest, or a river, or stranger's shoelace.