Enfaixarei-me em os vulcãos.

Viene en ondas. Em ondas. O sentimento de vácuo. Sem o apoio de os outros.


Hoy era el día de renacimiento. Y - sí - era. Pero al fin del noche, despues de una pelicula muy extraño (Squid and the Whale), estoy pensando, otravez, en qué yo me quiero ser. Quien. Como.

la nieve (a neve), me entorpezó.


estoy solo. solamente tengo los granos de suciedad en mi cama.

Tudo que está em o passado está em o passado e tudo que está em o presente e futuro está em meus mãos.

Rapture

The slump of laziness and procrastination ends tomorrow. Or, tonight at 11:30 rather. I'm up and walking and I need to hang on to my studies for the next 2 weeks.
It's 20 degrees outside. I'm writing a story about my fantanstic (root: fantasy) future as a professional living in america and every summer resorting to my olive grove in portugal and having wild uninhibited love affairs away from the stress of the square life in america. It's a spanish essay, and the prompt was: write about your family and how you want your family to look in the future. I decided to twist the prompt a little. The story is aptly titled Oleaceae. Clever me.
Tomorrow the snow will melt, uncovering lost time, and motivation. Bridges will be mended. And my body will be healed. Yes, the snow has helped alot. When the clouds cleared today and the tempurature tested our patience, breathing felt like drinking from a cold water fountain after consuming mint of some sort (toothpaste, altoids, etc).
They say your best friends are met in college. Juggling my social life with spanish essays, fighting to stay average in organic chemistry, the unfortunate monotony of restoration ecology lectures, and the incredible rapture of choir. But I have people who I can communicate with, who I trust.
My mind is empty, and my stomach is full.

The next time you have incredible sex, make sure you define it as being a rapture ("the carrying of a person to another place or sphere of existence"). Wow!

My roomate talks in his sleep. Last night he meowed. Whenever I'm feeling negative, that thought always cheers me up.

Estoy más o menos seguro que "jodo comemierdas sociales" quiere decir "I fuck social shiteaters" me encanta esta frase.

Beth an I are going to new york this spring. Les Miserables run got extended.

I enjoy my small social outings / chit-chats with christine more than most things.


Tonight. I am happy. Rachael is near. Hurrah!

rap‧ture  /ˈræptʃər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rap-cher]
–noun

1.	ecstatic joy or delight; joyful ecstasy.

2.	Often, raptures. an utterance or expression of ecstatic delight.

3.	the carrying of a person to another place or sphere of existence.

4.	the Rapture, Theology. the experience, anticipated by some fundamentalist Christians, of meeting Christ midway in the air upon his return to earth.

5.	Archaic. the act of carrying off.

Fibers, Dental Hygiene, and... Canadian Studies? Are you joking?

It snowed today.

I'm taking another day off tomorrow. So that my foot will heal faster. This whole not doing anything is really taking it's toll. I spent most of the day hobbling around my room (I cleaned!) and watching west wing and reading organic chemistry (something about epoxides. i don't understand the mechanism). Oh, I went to choir. I was so incredibly bored today that I decided to reaffirm my choice in my major by looking through the degree catalog of the university of washington and picking out all the ones I think are silly. If any of you are majoring in any of these, I applaud you in your ability to apply them to anything in life.

Majors (and minors) offered at the University of Washington that I probably won't take part in:

Cinema Studies
Canadian Studies
Technical Japanese (through the college of engineering)
Fibers (art)
CHID (comparative history of ideas)
Communication
Comparative Literature (only because it's acronym is CLIT)
Accounting
Dental Hygiene
Paper Science

Things I learned about today:
- quinones
- epoxides
- how to draw heptagons (it's hard.)
- healing speeds of the ankle
- potato chips effects on the stomach

I feel a little clotted tonight. And stuck. On this bed. In my mind.

that's about it. I hope tomorrow is more productive.

Superb Birds & Fat Octopi

My ankle is doing better. I'm sick of telling people what slacklining is (look it up!). Lauren got the new Little Mermaid DVD, so we're watching that. My good friend Matt introduced me to this television programme made by the BBC called Planet Earth so I got my hands on an episode. It's basically like watching the best nature program ever on an high-def imax screen. Except on a television. It's quite amazing. The Superb Bird of Paradise found is my new favorite animal. Today I didn't accomplish very much. Sitting around on my bed watching The West Wing (I'm on the 7th season now) and listening to Tori Amos. Today I learned all about crutches. They're fun for about 2 hours. They lose their appeal when you get rug burns the size of texas on your underarms. And when it's wet outside and you come inside to a tiled floor and slip like a duck on ice.

Anyway, not much new today. I'm calling off spanish, restoration ecology, and chemistry tomorrow so that my foot can do nothing but be elevated and I can plow through my spanish essay about love affairs in the portuguese olive groves and so I can learn more about alcohols and the reactions with.

Ursula has such a low voice.

I'm going to Mexico in a little over 2 weeks.

Goodnight.

Hospital Day

The innocent sprained ankle from yesterday turned nasty overnight. Long story short; I couldn't walk on it today (still can't). Went to the hospital. Waited. Learned about alcohol and phenol sythesis. Waited. Watched the West Wing. Waited. Blood Pressure taken by the nurse ("how did you injure yourself"). Defining Slacklining to everyone. Hungry. Waiting.

I learned not to engage in conversation with cenial older women in the small waiting room. They can go on forever about their dog.

The hospital was fun once I got into the ER (after 5 hours in the waiting room). Got pushed around in a bed by an ex-geologist, ex-restoration ecologist, now medical assistant named Ty Powers. X Ray. I smell and taste like hospital right now. And I just torn off my medical bracelet with my teeth because scissors involved getting out of bed.

I think I'm turning into a monster. I'm going to go to bed before I start eating myself.

I know I already mentioned this, but I'm really excited about it:
Next quarter. I start taking one biology and one spanish course every quarter until I graduate.

I'm tired.

Vessels, Slacklines, and Pistachios.

I smell like dirt. And for reasons to be explained, I am completely unable to clean myself. Or really move for that matter. Yesterday I got on a ferry boat, a vessel. It took me to Bainbridge Island, which, if you havn't been there, is alot smaller than you might think. I hadn't been on a vessel of sorts since my childhood (if the term Mayne Island means anything to you, than you're probably my sister, or my great-grandmother) and I came into aquaintance with my fear of large bodies of water at night. But it was clear skies. And slowing edging away from the middle of Seattle is quite spectacular at night. There's something remarkable about the strong ferry wind. Anyway, I mingled with Evan and his fantastic parents at his house for the evening. Mostly listening on my part. There was that obligatory conversation about honey (involving confusion, and an always quick refresher (on my part) on the importance of bees). There was an exchange of guitar knowledge (which is one song on my part (Soco Amaretto Lime)), and some conversations about life. Watching of ER with Evan's wonderful mother. (ER was so dramatic.) The usual. We slept. We woke up. Breakfast. Tea. I saw the island a bit. It's small. and Woodsy. His family has this cute ex-fishing boat. Looks like somthing out of a cartoon. (We'll get to how I want to live on a boat later). And then the highlight of the day: slacklining. Always a fascination of mine. It's so much harder than it looks. There's nothing physical about it (minus a little inate sense of balance). It's all mental. Focus. Focus. Invert completely inside yourself. I know it sounds crazy, but I don't think I've ever been so into me before. Then you snap out of it, and fall.

That ensued for at least an hour or two. I sprained my ankle. We stopped. Evan had company coming over. And I didn't want to be the lame handicapped whining boy taking up their couch space that evening, so I made the mistake of leaving shortly after. This involved a ferry ride back to seattle, walking uphill 5.5 blocks to the bus stop. Bussing to the UDistrict Walking 2 blocks to Araya's. Walking all the way back to campus. Ok. Not walking. Limping. Saw Jeff (hi jeff). He made me chai.

I would like to live on a boat someday. You know, with a cat or something. I just envision alot of rice. and alot of overgrown facial hair. And just travel down the coast of the USA through the panama canal and over to puerto rico. up to new york. hit up broadway......... I don't know.


Just as a recap,
Today (and yesterday) I learned about:
1) Slacklining
2) my body; sprained ankles: don't walk on it. keep it raised.
3) bainbridge island
4) the relative cost of boats
5) the effect of pain on mental processes
6) listen to your mother. no matter what. (especially if she's a nurse, and you're injured)
7) how to ride ferries
8) Cell phone reception with respect to incoming calls from the Czech Republic

I played around with the song We Are The Rain today. I hate how grammatically akward the name of that song is. I am the rain. You are the rain. S/he is the rain. We are the rain? I don't know.

I've been watching The West Wing. Reading Seed to Seed. Studying O-Chem.

Pistachios and such.

desert ed streets of seattle on this twenty third while everyone is thank ful today; I am thankful every day even the homeless have gone home on this vessel I will ride I have no fear of water be careful, john, your gloves are unravelling 23 is a prime number the night is mine.

this is the beginning

This is the beginning of a project that may or may not develop. It was inspired by a couple of things. 1) My own desire for self exploration. 2) The conversation between me and Christine Sislak involving blogs, learning, and majoring in Biology.
I guess I need to remind myself (and whoever else chooses to read this) about why I'm here in college, why I'm here in Seattle. Existance.
This is my second year here at the University of Washington and, after a rocky first year revolving mostly around me wanting to be a doctor, I've decided to settle down on a Bachelor of Science with a Major in Plant Biology and a Minor in Spanish. This is, of course, tentative, because I have not yet taken Biology. Chemistry? yes. But not Biology. That starts next quarter. I'm excited to see where it may lead.

Plant Biology. I've never been so stereotyped as a stoner before in my entire life until I made this decision. I used to compare smoking marijuana to the witch burnings. Something about sacrificing valuable things for spiritutal revival. I don't know. I still believe it to be disrespectful, though I don't tell many people my opinion on the matter.
My choice in the matter I think evolves from the idea that, macroscopically speaking, plants may be one of the most, if not the most, important things on this earth. And yet there is so many things (so many) that I, and many others, do know understand about their functions, abilities, struggles, evolution, etc. I want to conquer that ground. They provide humans with a significant amount of energy in so many ways. I know that there's more to them than we give them credit for. Botany is the infinite abyss of knowledge. Much as most areas of study are. It's a shame we only have 4 years to study one or two of them. Choosing a major is frustrating. Of course I want to know everything about Quantum Physics, and Music, Astronomy, Psychology, Sociology, History, Zoology, Ecology, Organic Chemistry, Spanish, etc. And we can only major in one? I have to pick one? Well. Ok. fine.

My current goal for my undergraduate education can be summed up in 5 bullet points:
1) Learn Spanish
2) Learn Portuguese
3) Study Botany
4) Learn how to dance
5) Sing

Bullet point 4 is very vague and may be achieved mostly through the experimental college. Bullet point 1 is up and running. 2 is beginning hopefully over the summer with PORT 101 and 102. point 3 will show up next quarter when I start the Biology series (180, 200, 220). Point 5 is achieved through Choir, which, if lucky, I will take every quarter.

This blog will also facilitate documentation of various travel events as well as a raving center for music that is good.

I want to note things that I learn every day. Big or small. Academic or other.

I'm hoping this will provide me a daily (or weekly, or whatever) distraction from life stresses and allow me to reflect on my day.

We'll see what happens

- jkmps