on that note

mmmmmmmmmm….

is for melodramatic. Shocking, right?

meh. the fever broke and now I’m over it.

How’s that for a life metaphor?

yours.Rachel

Last night, somewhere between dreams about following a treasure map and feeding turtles, I must have been hit by a train.

My obnoxious alarm, strategically placed all the way across the room from my bed, screamed at 9 this morning.  The plan was to have breakfast, ironing a newly patched may or may not have ever been torn friendship, then head to class, working out, and a day of dedicated work on those research papers…   But, as I rolled out of bed and hit the floor my legs collapsed under me; staggering to my alarm, head/ears/eyes/throat pounding, I coucluded that breakfast was a no go, and I grabbed my blanket and lay on the floor.  Eyes closed, shivering …hot as hell, arms and legs spread out like I was being crucified or making a snow angel.  Fever through the roof.

I can usually will myself out of being sick — like headaches and heartaches and hunger and sleepiness I can will myself out of just about anything – or at least I love to think I can.  But every so often I spike a fever,  and I have no choice but to crawl across the floor to the tylenol. swallow. admit defeat while fading in and out of consciousness.

an hour later I wake up, and it’s off to class.  Then food – have to eat something.  Lunch with my baby.  “Oh I’m so glad!…………My year?  haha…When they said there was a sophomore slump, they weren’t kidding.  But don’t worry…it’s just one of those years…those formative ones.”

Don’t you just love those?

“But here’s my advice.  The sooner you realize that everyone’s there with you, the better off you’ll be.  Misery loves company, and eventually company wins.”

I feel a bit better.  more functional. What to do now? I can’s sit still anymore…I’m not unhappy here, but all I want to do is leave and scrapbook and get to London. 28 days.   Begin my year.  Begin the year in which, I have discovered, I will spend more time out of this country than I will in this country.  and then NY?  1…2…3…go.

I hop in the car to move it – end up getting on the expressway and driving.  Favorites mix.  then to the quad – it’s going to storm I think.  10 crazy UB people riding on a golf cart yelling into a mega-phone.  “Are you coming to OAR tonight?  Do you like sexy men and guitars and free food?”  enough of that.  Where to now?

Work out.   because I’m crazy like that.  after an hour on the eliptical I go and get ice cream.  Strawberry and Mint Chocolate chip with sprinkles in a cone.   Because I don’t believe in being sick.  

now the fever’s back.  more tylenol, into bed.

believe.

I figured it out.

It’s been a long time since I have actually believed in anything. Believed in the deepest sense – believed like I could feel it running through every inch of my body as it lit me up like a firecracker. I have become so obsessed with the process, so consumed by cleverness and pragmatism, that I lost the light. The reason. Pragmatism is worthless without a dream. We dream to escape but we also believe in those dreams to live.

I can’t live without believing in something. Over the last year I’ve stopped believing. I lost my faith in God. I lost my faith in love. I lost my faith in people. I disconnected from the world because I couldn’t feel that “thing” that force that je ne sais quoi that used to run through me.

But that thing – that energy, that fire, that passion, that soul, that belief…that thing that I’ve named hundreds of things in an attempt to figure out what it was and where it went…that thing is faith. I realized it yesterday at the ritual review when Aleece was talking about AOT. I realized that how big AOT is. And I realized how big faith and love and trust and hope and joy are. And I realized that I believe in them. I believe that each of those ideas/ideals/feelings/actions is big enough to overcome misunderstandings, arguments, and imperfections. In believe that each of these is big enough to change everything; our sorority, our campus, our country, and the world. Our world. I believe in a better way.

“I’m a living sunset, lightning in my bones, push me to the edge but my will is stone.

Fools will be fools and wise will be wise, but I will look this world straight in the eyes.

What good is a man who won’t take a stand, what good is a cynic with no better plan?

Reality is sharp it cuts at me like a knife, everyone I know is in the fight of their life.

Take your face out of you hands and clear your eyes, you have a right to your dreams and don’t be denied…

Because I believe in a better way.”

thanks Ben Harper. and YelloBeat.

yours.Rachel

virginity

Friday night.  Celebrating second place in MockRock by eating cold PizzaHut and dried strawberries.  Nursing a killer headache —- “I never take anything for headaches.  I just make them go away” —- and a lovley welt on my chest in the shape of the rectangular fun-sized chocolate bar that ATO boy chucked at me during MockRock.  Was your “game face” really necessary for the candy distribution at the end of the performance, dear?

Wrapped up in green and white fleece on my bed we shot the shit and had one of those nights where you figure it all out.  And by that I mean you figure nothing out.  But it was one of those where you start talking and as the words spill out of your mouth you realize that what you are saying is what you’ve been wondering for months.

It’s like I sold my soul she said.    Think I can get a recipt for that?  Maybe staple it to the request form, put it in the inbox, and get a reimbersement check…

Then came the scrapbook — those always put me in good moods.  But as we flipped page by page we looked at eachother.  I can’t feel anything. I’m flipping my life/my semester before my eyes, and while I remember everything that happened, I can’t feel a thing.  neither could she.  At least I’m not alone.  Then we got to the New York pictures.  Funny to think about that 48 or 72 or whatever it was hours without feeling anything…haha. actually though that’s a bold faced lie.  It’s New York.  I can’t look at New York without feeling…that’s the way it’s been since I was little – thanks Daddy – it’s in my blood.  and snowballing.   In all of it, the intentionality was incredible.  I look at it and I’m not sure what the reasoning was at the time, but I know it was there and it was perfect.  I love that picture.  That one too.  Smile.Laugh.  for real.

And we were talking again.  I don’t think I’ve sold my soul.  If I did, I’d have sold it for a better price.  Something is just gone.  Without pomp and circumstance, without repaired houses or a school in Africa or even a whole lot of cookies.  Not with a bang, or a whimper.

Do you think I’ve lost my soul?

No, she said.  She thought.  I think your soul has just lost its virginity.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – E.Mm Forester

yours.Rachel

Yuppie Day

Today was a yuppie day.

6am: shower, dress, etc.

7am: Raisin Bran and peaches (not together) for breakfast at Baldwin. My management textbook as my date.

8am: Management Exam (intense, and may have raped me up the ass – not sure yet)

10am: Leave management exam energized (as I always do with that class – it makes me feel so old.) Perfect my resume. Buy “Premium” paper, $12.00, for said resume at the bookstore.

11am: Shower again, actually do my hair this time. Sit around room finalizing course selections wearing my pink fuzzy bathrobe, pink towel on my head, and funny lepoard slippers……..matching Victoria’s Secret underwear set, Ann Taylor wrap blouse, black dress pants, pointed toe stilettos. Watch, ring, Tiffany necklace. Make-up. Clinique “Happy”

12pm: register for classes for the fall — small group/org comm, HR management, astronomy, public speaking, body building. Email an attempt to sweet-talk my way into PR; bat my eyelashes. Jones green trench, black Kate Spade tote with green trim, big black umbrella with a wooden hook handle.

12:30pm: Lunch with my Gerstacker professional partner.

1:30pm: Interview with an alum, BMO Capital Markets, 3 Times Square 27th Floor NY NY. Marketing/event planning. HR. “Next summer? No, I think it’s great that you’re so on top of this. Make sure to follow up after you get back from London; I can’t guaruntee you a job, but I can get you in interview. I know a lot of people over in Marketing…” Business Card. The $12.00 paper was worth it.

2:00pm: waste my life away in Interpersonal Comm for 2hrs.

4:30pm: pick up paycheck – $6.93. Random. Cash check. Donate to Nwagni Project, eat african food at Nwagni dinner. discuss sorority drama with Keshia.

6:00pm: Internship Meeting for Study Abroad

7:00pm: work-out for 2hrs.

Like any good yuppy I got up early, was filled with professional ambitions, planned my future, networked, ate heatlthy and/or exotic chic cuisine, polished my image, coordinated everything I wore, clicked when I walked all day in stilettos, supported charity, and kept in shape.

and I liked it.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

yours.Rachel

Lovely

It’s sort of lovely knowing that you can never actually know what the future holds. A clever person can see shadows of possibilities and an ambitious person can cast a light to make their own shadows, but no amount of brilliance or boldness can make the shadows anything more than fleeting spots. It’s delightful to realize you can dream of where you will go, but you will not know where you are until you are standing there. You can imagine who you might meet, but you will not know them until you share a bottle of wine. You can speculate over who you will love, but you will not know until you lay with them…And every breath you draw is hallelujah….

You can philosophize about who you will be, but you will never truly understand until you are who you have become.

It’s kind of lovely to know that you can not know.

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” – John Lennon

yours.Rachel

Jesus, liberalism, Myers-Briggs typing, cheesy potatoes

I adore Easter, but sometimes I forget that for many people (even practicing or children of practicing Christians) Easter is not as big a deal as it is in my family. For us, Easter is a long weekend affair filled with Christian traditions as well as our own. It begins Thursday evening with the Maundy Thursday communion service. Friday many of us have off from work and school, so it becomes the errand running day – oil change, deal with incomptent people at the bank, new Franklin-Covey pages (its somewhat bizarre what a thrill I get from organizing my life), grocery shopping for Sunday, directing Dad so he doesn’t buy Mom something hanous for her birthday… that was this year’s list. That evening is the service of the Tenebrae at my mom’s church. Then Saturday is cleaning day. My mom becomes frazzled, realizing for the first and last time of the year that our house is, in fact, a disaster, and that she is no June Cleaver. My dad removes his make-shift office from the dining room table and I go to work assmebling linens, candles, flowers, and place settings to prepare a spread for Sunday. Midway through the make-over, my whole wholesome family piles in the car and heads to Greektown for lunch and to bring home Greek Easter bread.

Upon our return my mom turns on the TV, my dad takes a nap with the dog, and my sister heads upstairs to hole herself up away from the rest of the family. (ahh to be a teenager) while I begin make desserts – this year it was brownie sundaes and lemon cake with lemon curd filling and a lovely (but somewhat labor intensive) lemon butter-cream frosting. Decorated with yellow and purple flowers of course. That and laundry keep me up late, and a few hours later I awake to dress in something pastel (this year – a lovely little tiffany blue getup I found at a street fair in NYC with Francis) and we head to the Easter service at my mom’ church. That service ends majestically with the “Hallelujah Chorus”, and we head home to get lunch ready. As one might expect, I spend the next 2 hours in the kitchen preparing appetizer trays, a salad buffet, and finally the main buffet.  And pouring lots of wine.  To get Biblical (with the number of ordained clergy in my family it’s hardly avoidable), I play Martha while the rest of my family plays Mary.

But in the end, everyone is fed and happy to discuss our Myers-Briggs types, how everyone at the table hates George Bush (It’s like we re-discover this every year!), and assorted profound theological questions. The cast of characters features my 104 year old practically blind and deaf but completley hilarious great grandma; my grandma who went to seminary at the age of 62 and who, if she wasn’t a teacher and housewife in the 1950’s, would have taken over the world by now; my big cuddly whiney grandpa; my aunt Sally the middle child; my mom – the brilliant space-cadet with 3 masters degrees; my dad – the Chrysler guy with big dreams and a level head; my sister (the one with the cat-ears); myself (the one who will proably get married and concieve children first, and then continue to entertain the rest of the family for Easter), and Bill, a witty and outspoken gay minister friend of our family (with a ponytail – which confuses my great-grandma).

This year after conversation and gluttony we headed to the family room where my grandma proceeded to kick everyone’s ass at bowling on the Wii, and Bill said the sort of outrageous things only he could say (he’s a flaming liberal and even with my gradparents that will get him off the hook for just about anything), while my father shared with my sister his brilliant idea about a drinking game based on the movie “The Ten Commandments.” And I served dessert on plates with decorative zig-zags of rasberry sauce. and all was right with the world.

Let the people say Amen.

“The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing toothpaste and diseases, coveting one anothers desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking eachother out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing it to heal in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bonds us all together.” – Erma Bombeck

yours.Rachel

a night like old times at the Civic

Friday evening I’m on my way to a Tenebrae service and I get a text message from an old friend…

Rachel are you home – what are you doing tonight?
Loving Jesus. After that, not much. Civic night?

Marcellus and I spent the night babysitting the Civic, just like old times. Almost. We were lacking the 3rd leg of our trifecta (a recurring theme in my life as you may have noticed) and there were no pictures taken of my cleavage or Marc’s (probably a result of the lacking of said 3rd leg), but Marc got paid to shoot the shit with me and eat popcorn while ensuring no hoodlum moviegoers decided to set the place ablaze. There are VERY few things I miss about High School, but this is one of them.

It’s changed somewhat since High School though. Now we spend the first hour playing catch up, which is directly connected to gossiping, which gives way to “the question game.” Which, by the way, I am miserable at. It’s been proven time and again on dates and Civic dates etc: I’m great at answering questions but terrible at asking them. But I’m learning. now that we’re out of High School the moments we spend sitting sprawled across several seats in an empty theater are filled with inevitable reflection. We chat about life and lovers, perceptions and decepetions, the 9 black people at Hillsdale and being a trophy who bakes cookies in the nude (oh boys). Sometimes he plays middle-man or the inquisitor and I play the philospher or the ass-kicker.

I love having people from the past who help you mark where you are and from where you have come.

Thanks to those of you who’ve grown up with me over popcorn, chinese food and fortune cookies, or across states and over everything (because what else would you expect from us?). I couldn’t be nearly as introspective as I am without you – and clearly that would be a travesty.

“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” -Abraham Lincoln

yours.Rachel

afternoon on the quad.

It’s a tuesday that doesn’t feel like a Tuesday. I’m not sure what it feels like because it doesn’t feel real.

I told myself I would take the work I had to do outside…so far I’ve accomplish a lot but little of that has been school work. I made appointments, discoverd that people who work at the bank are incompetent, and wrote out several lists in purple pen of things to do. Most people have abandoned the quad; the tanning sun has come and gone while the wind sweeps my firey red hair into and out of my eyes. I swear my hair is getting more red every day. people walk by on their way to dinner, practice, class. A boy with jeans tighter than any pair I own, an old friend of mine whose step is as heavy as his heart, my old accounting professor. smile. wave politley. The ground begins to rumble and the Amtrack roars and rumbles through, whistling as it goes. I love the trains, and I love that you can tell what line is coming through by the sound of the whistle. Black squirrels aboud, or course, and a family of prospective students marvel at them. Sometimes I forget how well I know this place. The squirrels run from dead bush to dead bush, wondering I would suppose, where the spring buds are hiding. While the pines and grass keep this quintisential college place green, only one other tree gives any sign of life. Enormous white flowers cover it, cherry blossoms, and every person who walks by it stops to smell.

I like that it’s pretty empty out; the introvert in me has been taking over these last coulple days, and I’d be happy not speaking to anyone, simply because I have nothing to say. I don’t need to vent because there is no anger inside of me, I don’t need to talk through anything because I have nothing to say, I don’t need anyone to make me laugh because I don’t need to be cheered up. All I want to do is breathe and be. I’m satisfied with that because I’m satisfied with me.

An enormous gust of winds rustles these flowers and I throw my head back, letting it whip flashes of fire around my eyes. A storm is coming. Cotton clouds cover the sky blurring the light of the setting sun, and soon it’s hidden completely behind thick grey coluds.

my ipod is on repeat. maybe that’s long enough. and there’s this awkward fire-hydrant straight in front of me. I always sit near the fire-hydrant when I come out to the quad. Why? just in case I catch on fire? really now…

Chime. Chime. Chime. Chime. Chime. Chime.

Dinner? Tom Petty – free falling. One squirrel chases another across my green blanket, and another tremendous gust of wind blows my hair in my eyes and flips the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” pages of my Franklin Covey.

Daily Thought for 3/22. “The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.” – Whitney Young

no joke. this is one of those taco bell sauce packet moments, and all I can do is laugh…

yours.Rachel

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything’s ok and everything’s gone right, and life has a funny way of helping you out when you think everything’s gone wrong and everything blows up in your face… Thanks Alanis.

Its 1am and I have reading for my 8am class tomorrow not to mention miles of other homework due later this week, but all I’m in the mood to do at this moment is sit in sweatpants and a KD shirt that appeared in my mailbox one day. (it must have been willed to be by some secret donor). It’s freezing in here, or a least I feel like it should be, so I’m wrapped in my favorite fleece blanket with the fringies and the heat from my laptop warms my legs while YellowBEAT March sets soundtrack to my mind. It’s incredible the way these mixes seem to appear, and within 48 hours, my life seems to have settled itself into a place that mysteriously alligns with the music supplied to it. Very wierd. This year friends, Sirius radio, and airports have conviced me that whoever is directing the movie that is my life has resorted to piping the soundtract directly into the script. Same with those little messages…fortune cookies, cups from Starbucks cinnamon dolce lattes, taco bell taco sauce packets…let’s just be for real (Keshia is my hero)! Sometimes my life is just blatantly ridiculous; either this director needs to work on mastering subtlety, or I’m so thick headed that I need life advice in the form of mild sauce packets. I think either is equally likely.

I’m stuck on sauce packets beacuse I’m not quite sure how to process all of this.

and it’s been 15 minutes since I wrote that last sentance. maybe I should infer that to mean that processing is a process. And just like the rest of my council ladies, I’m not sure how to go about thinking or feeling about just about everything anymore. All I know is that we’ll be fine. Because what else would we be?

In the mean time, I’m going to love thing things that make me happy.

AOT. that’s love, what it means to be sisters, and what’s keeping all of us together at the end of the day.

My council. Who else understands this bizarre dichotomy?

Taco Bell. and DRIVING to Taco Bell. And the people who drive me to to Taco Bell. and to the people who drive there with me. and coins in my crotch.

Lunching with the ladies who are getting through this just like me.

Tulle. (that’s how you spell the word that’s pronounced like “tool” btw

When Katy askes trees to fall down and hit the lodge and they do.

The fact that I leave for London in less than 7 weeks.

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

yours.Rachel