So fun!

Seriously, who am I?

"Evidently those gynecologist appointments go like hot cakes."

To my faithful and fearless fellow obsesser-over-gymnastics, radio station frolicker, floor runner-arounder, stationary bicycle racer, rehab champion, and PARTNER 4 LIFE:

GOOD LUCK! If there's any pain, just take an Advil. You'll be fine in the morning. It never happened. ;-)

I picked red grapes and wondered,

Are "safe" and "sane" synonymous?

Some girls

stake their territory by robbing their boyfriend's wardrobe. Large T-shirts, baseball sweatshirts, sweatpants, even boxers are looted for their own. I have a boyfriend, the battered T-shirt proclaims when it is worn on a female body. It turns her shapeless. Is that what she wants?

I, on the other hand, have my boyfriend's sock. Singular. Comfortable and clean. I do not need to brandish it as proof of my conquest.

It can't be thundering, I think as I sleep.

Then comes the sound I have not heard in a long while: rain bouncing off the roof.

For some reason I open my eyes and sit up with "Angels We Have Heard on High" in my head.

i Me gusta este poema !

"Verbo" ~ Pablo Neruda

Voy a arrugar esta palabra,
voy a tercerla,
si,
es demasiado lisa,
es como si un gran perro o un gran rio
le hubiera repasado lengua o agua
durante muchos anos.

Quiero que en la palabra
se vea la aspereza,
la sal ferruginosa,
la fuerza desdentada
de la tierra,
la sangre,
de los que hablaron y de los que no hablaron.

Quiero ver la sed
adentro de las silabas:
quiero tocar el fuego
en el sonido:
quiero sentir la oscuridad
del grito. Quiero
palabras asperas
como piedras virgenes.

The way they talk, they make you forget that you'd find stars out in the suburbs. But here you are on a clear night, with streetlights, driveway torches, and headlights boring in and out.

You look up when you're stepping over the curb or balancing on gravel. You raise your eyes as you wonder about crazed men running out from the bushes. You stare into the expanse and blink, opening your eyes from your narrow thoughts. You wanted a quick fix. You wanted home. You wanted sleep.

Your world is dark blue and green right now, the way you always remembered it. The temperature must be below thirty but you swear you can smell spring. The air is always salty, you imagine.

The stars arch over the evergreens. So many stars, you realize again. Your feet wobble and logic returns you to the terrestrial.

You move towards the tangible lights in the windows, slowly, still watching.

I can be someone.

Is it a question? A declaration?

A dream?

We "make and bake" ON PREMISES

Big fan of the new template. Big fan.

So I figured I'd celebrate with a picture.

I'm also a big fan of being back in Cortland, walking with "Das Boot," doing, moving, dreaming. I like what I'm writing, or at least the premises. I like walking through campus at night, shadows on the snow and music in my ears.

I also like that Liz photoshops her eye color in her Facebook pictures. Gotta keep them guessing, you know!

A pleasant lunchtime discussion about death with Rachel, Liz, and Steve:

Steve: "It's nothing...it's beyond our conception of dark, because we know what 'dark' is...it's really something that we don't know! Isn't that scary?"

Diana: "No, I find it comforting."

The definition of manliness = the secure knowledge that if a random attacker were to approach, your male companion would be the one protecting you, not vice versa.

Ah. I like these PWR people!

The 6th of July? 2002

"I think people think I'm nuts when I write them long notes or e-mails, or write in-depth entries for All Quiet on the Western Front, or write twenty pages instead of three. Don't you see, I'm not like you, I can't say it all."

7-31-02
"Well, in place of driver's ed, I cleaned the bathroom. Wahoo."

Some nights I want the world. Some nights I want to sleep. Some nights these desires flip flop, there and back again. In the end it’s me, just me, a laptop away from a bed.

What he said

"So he says, 'I was taught to never be an inconvenience,' so I said, 'Well, I was taught to do anything for anyone.' Seriously, if it weren't for that red light, he would have left me there."

I recognize that second person in myself. I'd rearrange my schedule in any way possible if it would relieve you for me to do so. (As long as, of course, it didn't conflict too nearly with gymnastics.)

But are we taught this? Do we watch it? Or do we just feel it to be right?

Excerpt

You consider yourself an expert on the injured area. It becomes yours, somehow, yet something very distinct from you. “How are you?” and “How’s the knee?” are not the same question. Oh, I’m doing just fine. The knee’s a bit under the weather, though. We may go out to lunch later.

Besides

kicking an impending cold and the fact that I cannot do gymnastics (besides, again, the kips), I'm feeling relaxed. Content. At ease. Enough to not worry about work and consider instead that perhaps I'll gain some sweet abs. ((Which will make up for the seven or so pounds that I've apparently lost -- yay for white hot chocolate?))

Atlas Shrugged

"She looked at him in the exact moment when he turned to look at her. They stood very close to each other. She saw, in his eyes, that he felt as she did. If joy is the aim and the core of existence, she thought, and if that which has the power to give one joy is always guarded as one's deepest secret, then they had seen each other naked in that moment."

"She felt no anger towards anyone on earth. The things she had endured had now receded into some outer fog, like pain that still exists, but has no power to hurt. Those things could not stand in the face of this moment's reality, the meaning of this day was as brilliantly, violently clear as the splashes of sun on the silver of the engine, all men had to perceive it now, no one could doubt it and she had no one to hate."

"It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but to know."

Tiny Dancer

Blue jean baby,
L.A. lady,
seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile,
you'll marry a music man

Ballerina, you must have seen her
dancing in the sand
And now she's in me,
always with me,
tiny dancer in my hand

Jesus freaks out in the street
Handing tickets out for God
Turning back, she just laughs
The boulevard is not that bad

Piano man, he makes his stand
In the auditorium
Looking on, she sings the songs
The words she knows, the tune she hums

But oh, how it feels so real
Lying here with no one near
Only you and you can hear me
When I say softly, slowly,

Hold me closer, tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
You had a busy day today

"Don't you have a $u*% button at the radio station?"

"No, but I wish I had one"

..

Wouldn't it be nice to type music the way it should be heard?

Is tomorrow really the last day before Spring Break? Does it actually feel like spring anywhere in New York? And do I really sound like Anne of Green Gables when on the phone?

All this and more questions to come!

Chatrooms and David the Gnome on YouTube

As the four of us converse in a chatroom, a la high school, I think of how we'd be driving aimlessly around Long Island, calling each other and eventually finding each other in a parking lot. If we were feeling particularly extravagant, a diner could be in the cards.

Salt on the night air. I'll never forget home.

As long as I find some opportunity to

go for a swim, then maybe I should relax a bit. Despite the crutches, the arctic temperatures, and the x-rays. I've accomplished three, four, five things that I've really wanted already this year.

But I want to improve them.

For now, I pace on my hands.

Hold me here until I sleep

And if these are my parting words
Then this, my last request
Hold me here until I sleep
If I burn, then I burn for you
-Anberlin, "Cadence"

11:00pm

As we've all realized at one point or another,

this is going to take longer than I'd thought.

Movies that Diana "Needs to See:" An Evolving List

-Stand By Me
-Lost in Translation
-The Life of Brian (in full)
-A Beautiful Mind
-Gladiator
-Amelie
-Lucky Number Slevin
-The Wicker Man
-Pride and Prejudice
-Blazing Saddles
-Motorcycle Diaries
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-Shakespeare in Love
-the latest version of Romeo and Juliet

5.20.2007: I have seen Borat, Moulin Rouge, Shrek the Third, V for Vendetta, and "Harsh Times," all of which I enjoyed. Especially, of course, the latter.

3.5.07

It's more than a little frightening that I'm still very fond of the song "Sexy Love."

Ahem.

We roam the house like tired old women at age twenty-one. "I'm so tired!" we moan at 9:30. Are we asleep by midnight? Of course not.

"Oh, wait," Tanya says, in monologue fashion, as she slowly picks herself up in the den. "Maybe I'm tired from using crutches all day."

"In the white out," I add, my Ace-bandaged foot in its usual perch on top of the desk, next to the computer.

"And would you understand? Yes, you would!" She shuffles out of the den. "You actually use them properly."

As I left the house in the aforementioned whiteout, I looked up the hill and realized that I could barely see the top. I am going to get run over. I fleetingly thought of missing class. I knew that plenty of others would.

Yet I proceed anyway, bravely forging my way through certain peril and potential disaster. First a guy driving in the opposite direction, and later a girl going the same way as me, offered a ride out of the window. Unfortunately, I've been trained too well to say yes to strangers.

What does it mean that I crutched from Pleasant to Old Main, freezing, tapping the crutches together occasionally in hopes of shaking off a bit of snow and not falling on my face, politely declining aid beyond a door being held open?

Probably the very simple fact that I'm stubborn.

In the training room, Tanya and Christine compete to see who can bend their leg more. As five of us on six tables ice or kick, we realize that we've all torn our ACL's. We love gymnastics. We do. As we take over the bars, kipping and conditioning and hopping and not stumbling in front of the trainers, we refuse to be broken.

3.4.07

Everywhere you look in this house, there are two couples behind closed doors, two pairs of crutches, and two girls with compression wraps.

I woke up at 12:30am

or so, as everyone returned to the house. Emeline was back from Buffalo, gymnastics trophy in hand. "Are you asleep?" she asked, peering through the cracked open door. I wouldn't go so far as to describe myself as conscious, but we carried on a conversation about notorious out-of-state individuals who will forever be fabled in these parts.

It seemed like a good opportunity for a bagel and fruit punch-flavored water (100% Vitamin C, you know). A couple of coconut-filled Hershey's kisses, conversations, and peer-editing(s) later, I now consider sleep, wondering:

Why haven't I thrown away all of these nearly empty water bottles?
How do three people tear their ACL's in one week?
I should sweep the floor.
I should probably go to the bathroom.
I should probably organize the books on the ground.
I probably won't.
What will I do at home when I can't do full gymnastics? (Answer: Be creative.)
I like how the intense-looking bruising is nowhere near the fracture.
I'd like to be near you.

Corey Union

"...It was a competition to see who was hotter," Brittany reflects.

"Clearly, you won," Tanya and I say in unison.

High five!

"If I were on American Idol,

I'd dedicate my song to GTB," I say.

"Me, too," agrees Tanya. "I'd sing 'Sexual Healing.'"

sing this song

If I turn into another

Britt and I struggle through another night of our middle-class existence.

the better part of me