In Which I Am Happy

Sometimes I sit in class and take notes on basic threats to internal validity in psychological testing and their solutions and only think about beauty because how am I supposed to think of anything else when the sun is just on the other side of this cinderblock?

(Sunlight always births run-on sentences.)

Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them. 

- A. A. Milne

Extremes almost always, in terms of probability, regress to the mean.  Weeds are flowers, flowers are weeds, and both are beautiful.  People think beauty is an outlier, but I think it's the mean.

I'm humming some song by Vampire Weekend and the girl in zipped-up boots with decorative laces sitting next to me is trying to ignore me and I should be stressing about inferential statistics but it's Winds-day and I'm going to go home and drink honey in my tea.

Up

Maybe

My mind has

Fallen in love

With the crazy and

Beautiful idea of

A perfect infinity

Where

Losing

Direction

Doesn’t matter

Because every way

My feet fall my eyes are

Cast up and finding the stars.

If

The sky

And the stars

Are infinite

In scope and number

Then wouldn’t the heavens

Be ablaze with burning gas?

Why

Doesn’t

Darkness spell

“Ex nihilo”

When light is always

Sparked with verdant effort

And tracked down by moths and souls?

But

Although

My mind flies

Up and on and

Out my body aches

And sinks and falls down stairs.

I’m stuck with lurpy foal feet.

“How

Can my

Finite self

Be infinite?”

Is a problem for

Epistemology.

I’m distracted by dark skies.

And

Maybe

All I mean

To say is that

I’m wishing I could

Giraffe my neck closer

To the star-fire blazing sky.

& every breath we drew was Hallelujah

The sunset was so beautiful today that it was transparent.

Colors don't speak to me, they grey in comparison to the wonder that black lines on white paper can sing.  At 4:30, though, colors faded just as words and papers do, and the medium was lost to the meaning.

I couldn't smile big enough, so I opened my mouth and I laughed.

Joy is above letters and behind the sky--when my mind searches it is often afar off, but it is imminent in my soul.

lavenderpeach

It's raining outside and I can't see anything for all the water in the sky.
I'm bundled in an ugly mush of funny layers, a Peruvian hat, and one leg-warmer (I've lost the other for the time being) with darkening peach tea in a mini jam jar to my right.
My one class is cancelled.
I'm listening to my INHUT playlist and admiring my dance-chipped toenails and working on my essay about time.
I'm trying not to cry because life is slanting beautiful, just like lavender rain.
I could hardly be happier.

This was one:

"Little duck cabin place.
In an old boat on dry land with his guitar and the sort-of-company she provides
while writing postcards.
Strong sun plays Spanish chords and
Utah breezes carry the sweet scent
of dry baked pollen and manure.
(Each particularly strong gust ruffles the feather in my hair--I
was/am
pretending to be an Indian.)
I wish I had a disposable camera, because those capture this empty-happy
feeling.  Cow feeling.
I love it.
There are very few moments when I realize that I am happy."

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

"In thee my soul shall own combined the sister and the friend." - Catherine Killigrew

Sleepy little beach girl, sun slapped and color kissed, sprawls atop the humidity of the back seat.  The sunset is gone, but the dark lavender-pink clouds of Boston's summer nights pool across the sky like the tide.  Our contented dreams fill the silence of the car.  Sometimes when I ask her something she does not respond, and I think it is because she is lost in all the pretty thoughts all tangled up with the salt in her hair.

John Wesley Powell, Aug. 3, 1869

Cinnamon-honey

roasted salt chocolate

streaked cheesecake

layers melt hundreds of feet high

creating a shallow

frame—whether for

minted water or

lemon-blue sky

I can’t decide.

Perhaps,

it is this shallowness that is disconcerting.

This gilded frame

is only

half

of what it once was.

Cavernous mint waters

pool;

their natural beauty

belies artificiality

as man-made as

the mouthwash

they remind me of.

Sweated faith

Concrete trust

Red dust

Canyons fill for

forty-nine years.

Histories drown in

five-hundred-eighty-nine months.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

A seventeen-thousand-seven-hundred-ninety-eight day

flood has gained permanency

notoriety

quintessentiality.

Is this worth the cost of

never

landing in the center of this

“curious ensemble of

wonderful features”?

Bugs

Tell me your thoughts and I'll keep them safe and sound in a glass jar with holes poked in the lid so they can breath.

(That's where I keep my most important thoughts, too.)

I'll give them leaves to munch and sticks to climb and fresh flowers every every day.

I'll take care of them because I love you.

But really, I'll keep them because maybe someday our thoughts will get so mixed up and comfortable that we'll forget whose is whose.

Doesn't that sound nice?

Sparking

This post is dedicated to the dear pirate in my life.

You know how wintergreen lifesavers spark in your mouth when you chew on them?

It's pretty fun.

You know how it's usually light in the daytime?

Quilts are only so thick.

You know how hard it is to catch those sparks on film?

It's hard.

You know how gross it is to pull the quilt-made-tent off and realize that you're open-mouthed crunching works rather like a chunky sprinkler?

Yuck.

You know how many wintergreens were consumed in the making of this film?

Too many.

You know how you can get cankers?

Those hurt.

FIFTY THINGS I WANT TO DO THIS SUMMER, or IN WHICH ALI REALIZES THAT SHE IS MUCH TOO EXCITED:

1 - go sailing

2 - build a treehouse

3 - cuddle in a hammock

4 - jump on the trampoline in the rain in a tutu

5 - do absolutely nothing with my hair for a long, long time

6 - freckles, freckles, freckles

7 - have a watermelon eating contest

8 - slip 'n' slide

9 - press flowers

10 - verb: to antique

11 - take pointe shoes to the beach

12 - picnic

13 - dance, all the time

14 - ladybirds

15 - make something, even if it's really ugly

16 - puppy kisses

17 - little kid kisses

18 - kisses in general

19 - laugh too much

20 - get lost and go exploring

21 - build forts

22 - eat lobster

23 - write letters

24 - go through disposable cameras like chocolate

25 - learn to wake up early

26 - jumping pictures

27 - wear hats

28 - stretch all the time

29 - write essays

30 - read my comfort books again

31 - learn to tie a bow tie

32 - wear lipstick

33 - grow tomatoes

34 - aprons

35 - bubble baths

36 - read poetry

37 - board games by fireplaces

38 - s'mores

39 - play the piano

40 - perfect Puff the Magic Dragon on Dad's guitar

41 - make play-doh

42 - kayak/canoe

43 - homemade fresh peach ice cream

44 - watch spanish movies

45 - braid Eliza's hair

46 - steamroller on the tramp

47 - visit Wayland

48 - keep a regular journal

49 - listen better

50 - say "I love you" more than necessary

"Better to wear out than to rust out." - Bishop Cumberland

blocked eyes     blurred ears
melting    muscles
straining
through
the
sieve    of    entangled sinews

mind    folds softly
nudging    some    small
nothing
in    the    inner ear

balance skews    and
wobbles
as    coordination    and    clarity
begin    to rock

Pathetic.

My roommate's new favorite word is "pathetic".

pathetic |pəˈTHetik|adjective1 arousing pity, esp. through vulnerability or sadness: she looked so pathetic that I bent down to comfort her.• informal miserably inadequate: his test scores in Chemistry were pathetic.

"It just describes my life."

She's funny.

When Emma Came to Visit Emma

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this post should be around 9,000 words long. Over double an EE. Over 5.5 times the length of ToK essays. Quite an accomplishment.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Ha.

Ha. Ha.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Ha.

Sometimes, laughter is the best medicine.

Other times, laughter is the involuntary sound your brain makes as it misfires and misconnects while trying not to explode.

Hahaha.

Problems come when these don't overlap.

Ha. Ha.

You end up delicately balancing between insanity and vegetability.

Stuck.

Ha.

Hahahaha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Ha. Ha.

I can't wait for finals to come.

I can't wait for finals to go.

Ha.

Deep Roots

Oft-seen peaks loom, their unfamiliar silhouettes framed by a low-hanging sky. They seem to shrink, diminishing in scope but not magnitude until their time-jagged ridges fall into focus: puzzle pieces fit to alcoves of my heart that my mind never bothered to explore.

In my childhood, I often felt somewhat left out; I never loved these mountains. I couldn't ever be a true Campbell—full-fledged and five-foot-one and flowered cheeks and flying dark eyes and hair—if these mountains were not mine. I would fly with my cousins in the space where the sky and the snow try to kiss, but I rarely felt the sparkle of that long-awaited touch reflected in my own eyes.

I began to grow. Five-one; five-two; five-three; five-four. My hair is orange and strawberry and grapefruit and pomegranate, and my eyes hold the cold love of the Atlantic. I accepted that I was the "East Coast Branch", distinct and different and distant.

But maybe I'm not that far after all. These mountains are wondrous; their sky as captivatingly dangerous as my sea. Ridges and silhouettes remain alien, yet sometimes the shadows in their pockets spell out the notes of our old family stories.

Can landscapes be passed down through our blood?

I am a true Campbell—you only have to look at the shape of my eyes, or watch the furrow grow in my brow as I concentrate, or listen to the peculiar banter and story telling that's bound to happen when we all get together. However, I am a Campbell most of all when I see the almost identical faces of my uncles fill with an identical mischievous love when they turn at the top of our history and smile: "Take this run with me, Ali."

Next summer I want my Clan to all come out to Maine. I want to share with them all the laughter I've found in the reflection of icy spray in the sun and in freckled faces in antique mirrors. Maybe, the refracted light will fall into focus: puzzle pieces fitting into alcoves of their hearts they have yet to explore.

Traje de luces

We fall so in love

with life that we feel as if we

must dance just shy of

death's dove.

We turn, mocking our beacon

of life; veiling scars and aches

behind stockings and sequins.

Two heartbeats are our rhythm.

As we strut we misplace

this knowledge that we are vanity

holding death in her hands—hardly hidden,

like our humanity,

behind red capes.

Our movement wed with mistrust.

Can a life be abated?

Held, tense and taut and tight and terse,

only waiting to be tainted?

Dust and skin and sweat and spit

smear

dark eyes, helping us forget

the blood caked across our hips.

Lillepigen

The Atlantic in the rain is like an evening gown, beveled luxury folded and distorted, its smooth-rough velvet layered over raw silk, a two-faced love: uncertainty. Pearled drops spatter, winking over navy-olive secrets. The sky is void—lacking depth, color, and reflection, its only life shown in its responses to the kisses of unseen waves framing the horizon. Closer to shore, tanned shoulders dull and blend into the colorless sky, negating their affair, their lover. Turning with anticipation, she dives—the sun-stroked and sky-kissed spine of a bloodied seal becoming one with the secrets of the sea: head to heels.