Scrap Paper Poetry

"Shock"

The scent of rat office equals p.
We then eat 991 tacos.
Love, aggression,
by an evening port O and P plied the rocks.

The value of land and port.
The hours worked.
Stand nations of scent!
Ours is the coffee.

----

This is what I did in relief society today.
I am particularly fond of the last two lines. I like to see it as a call to revolution.
In fact, if you read it right--that's what the entire poem is about. Very appropriate considering current events in Egypt.
Down with the rat office! 

Running

I have been running. I never had the patience for it before. But right now there is something so satisfying about working my way up through longer and longer runs, listening to the steady rhythm of sneakers hitting concrete, learning to endure a little bit of pain and discomfort. I am learning that in life sometimes you have to just sit with your pain too. There is no way around it. It doesn't just disappear. You can't pretend it away as soon as it surfaces.  So it is good to learn to endure.


Some days are warmer, and some are still biting cold. February likes to surprise you. Yesterday I went running outside and it was warm enough that after about half a mile I had to scrunch up my sleeves. Not an hour later I walked to campus in a blustering sleet storm. I had no hat or hood with me so I had to tie my scarf around my head or else I was afraid that my ears would freeze and fall off.

I still have heavy boots but they are getting lighter. I like the new Decemberists album. I've had June Hymn on repeat the last couple of days. It makes me long for springtime. There is something so lovely and constant and comforting about the seasons--about flower bulbs leaping to life and shooting through the ground after a long and frozen sleep. Flower bulbs really know something about endurance.

Snow Picnic

What's Spinning

Thank you Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova

and Sarah Jaffe

Heavy boots.

The Christmas Story

This is, quite possibly, the cutest thing I have ever seen.
Merry Christmas everyone!

A Motion Picture

Tonight, I walked outside and the sky was the deepest most unfathomable shade of purple. A deep hazy purple with small pinpoints of starlight peeking through. and on my way home there was a cat lurking around beneath the benches and a family of deer lurking around in the foliage and sprinklers wildly spraying places that never needed to be watered. And the temperature was perfect, and I was in one of those moods where I felt positively compelled to press my hand against the bark of every tree I passed.

Another thing: as much as I love still photographs there is just something about a moving image. Something about shifting light and shadow and color and eyes blinking--a certain glancingness that can be captured in no other way. I can look at old photographs and the humans there feel flat and dead and distant somehow. But I look at even the earliest films--you know the 20 or 30 or 50 seconds of people walking out of factories or strolling through the town square--and I am suddenly caught up! These are people, real people. Where are they going? Who and what do they love? I can almost feel them breathing.

We watched this film today and I found it beautiful and astounding.
You should watch it.
We care too much these days about propulsive plotlines, conflict, drama and adventure. Sometimes a simple moving image, or just a series of them thoughtfully and interestingly juxtaposed is more than enough.  

Watch here or just follow the link: