Sitting on a coffee table amid all the Christmas decor, my mom has a plaque that reads:

If the Wise Men had been Women

If the Wise Men had been Women,
they'd have asked directions,
showed up on time,
helped deliver the baby,
cleaned the stable,
made a casserole,
brought practical gifts,
and there would be
Peace on Earth.

That's Mom. Some things will never change.

Well, the semester is over. My stuff has all been moved to the new apartment with the exception of Harold (the rat), Harold Jr. & Harriet (the two mice living in my bed mattress), said bed and a handful or two of cockroaches.

Lovely.

Good riddance, Hole.

On to other matters. . .

Spent a lovely 12 hours in airports and on planes on Thursday, and somewhere in the middle - while sprinting across O'Hare - dropped my laptop. The only thing of value I still owned, destroyed. Thankfully I had copied all of my .doc files just three weeks ago, but I lost all of my final papers, all my digital photos from the past two years, and all my Outlook calendars and contacts including all the internship applications I've sent out in the past month and a half.

Fabulous. Simply super.

I must have done something to piss off the cosmos, 'cuz it sure feels like Fate has flushed the toilet.

Well, B-school boot camp is over.

How did it go, you ask? If it's any indication, during final exam #6 of 6 this morning, the cds I listened to were Rage Against the Machine, Offspring and Sum 41.

This semester kicked my ass. I put forth such a shitty effort that I am honestly ashamed. And it's not because of partying too much (I think I've only gone out four times since school started.) But I have, somehow, managed to fuck up all but one of my classes.

How have I gotten so lost, so unhappy and so far in debt? I kept telling myself that everything was okay and that I would get it together. But on top of destroying my own academic career, I've also managed to get myself into enormous credit card debt, the likes of which I have no idea how I'm going to pay off even if Santa does bring me a miracle for Christmas.

I think one of the worst possible feelings in the world is not being able to trust yourself, letting yourself down. I've made so many bullshit excuses to myself that it's an absolute joke. I am officially the laziest person I know.

With a complete feeling of exhaustion, all I can think of is getting on that plane tomorrow morning, clearing my head for a week at home and coming back to a new year, my new apartment and a fresh semester.

YEAAAAAAA!!!

Three thoughts:
1. Considering the oppressor's penchant for subjugating women, wouldn't it be super if one of the special ops soldiers pulling him out of that hole was a woman?
2. I'd love to hear the phone call between W. and his dad if there was one. "Hey Pop, finished the job you couldn't get done. Thanks for leaving me that disaster. Gotta go. Big day today. Oh by the way, when I was growing up, you left out the part about how to deal with being one of the most hated people on the planet."
3. Hillary's "Things to Do in 2008" list just got a hell of a lot easier.

In our life there is a single color – it is the color of love. – Marc Chagall

Christmas isn’t a season, it’s a feeling. – Edna Ferber

All paths lead to you where’er I roam. You are the lark song calling me home. – Blanche Wagstaff

Never shall I forget the time I spent with you. Please continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours. – Beethoven

For this is wisdom: to love, to live. – Lawrence Hope

Life is the flower for which love is the honey. – Victor Hugo

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own. – Goethe

I am yours. You are mine. Of this we are certain. You are lodged in my heart, the small key is lost. You must stay there forever. – Frau Ava

There’s nothing worth winning but laughter and the love of friends. – Hillaire Belloc

Light tomorrow with today! – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Thus shall you go to the stars. – Virgil

Happiness is in the taste, not the things. – Rouchefoucauld

How goodness heightens beauty. – Hannah More

Joy was a flame in me too steady to destroy. – Sara Teasdale

Parting is such sweet sorrow. . . – Shakespeare

Music has charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. – William Congreve

Friends share each other’s gladness and wipe each other’s tears. – Charles Jeffreys

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. – Thomas Browne

The truly generous is the truly wise, and he who loves not others, lives unblest. – Homer

Gladness can scarcely be a solitary thing. The very life of praise seems choral; it is more than one bounded heart can utter. – Dora Greenwell

I am no longer what I was. I will remain what I have become. – Coco Chanel

The world, after all our sciences, is still a miracle: wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whoever will think of it. – Thomas Carlyle

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into. – Gandhi

Things past belong to memory alone. Things future are the property of hope. – John Home

Dreams are the touchstones of our character. – Thoreau

Things of great wonder come to those who give their all to love. – Hadewijch of Brabant

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite. – George Bancroft

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? – JB Priestley

I do hope your Christmas has had a little touch of Eternity in among the rush and pitter patter and all. It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next – but that after all is the idea! – Evelyn Underhill

Exuberance is beautiful. – William Blake

“Schools will only succeed when they stop trying to be all things to all people” - Levin

“Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” – Grandma Moses

“This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more this give, the more they possess.” – Rilke

There are a million stories in her head
and she can’t make them stop.

The words are relentless,
gnawing, creeping, sliding,
exploding into her mind –
no way to keep out their ethereal presence.

She types to the rhythm
of every beat, back-beat, pause. . .
endlessly.

She escapes to places
where there is less pain.
Where she can’t feel
the things that are killing her now.

She knows full well
that when she was in those other places
she wasn’t truly free.

In fact,
she was just as handcuffed
to their brutal truth
as she is now.

There is no way to bleed them out,
to open a vein, clean and sharp,
and let them fall out of her.

They are her.

To lose those words
is to lose a piece of herself.

And the dark words never come,
aren’t known,
on the days when meds
place a barrier around her existence,
when things are on a smooth, normal path.

Those days she has no tears
like the ones she has today.

Just numbness.

Today the feelings are raw,
and pointed,
and demand she not turn her head.

She’s tucked words in corners,
in teacups and bottles,
placed them on shelves,
folded them into the towels -
shoved them deep into pockets
hanging at the back of the closet.

There are so many she’s lost track of them all now.

They go out with the trash,
float through the window,
slide down the drain.

And yet, her mind,
her fingertips,
are full.

Words she knows
words she doesn’t.

Stories of her own, stories of others -
feelings that fly around, in and through,
then slap her
with the sting of a calloused hand -
striking and resonating -
absorbed into the very core of her.

They come fast,
unbridled,
understandable,
incomprehensible.

More words than she could ever capture
on pages white or otherwise.

She’s scrolled them over newsprint
curled under her arm
on the subway train

inside the covers of books -
her own and those that belong
to others -

in order to release them,
beg them for mercy,
ask them to stop.

Pleading and exhausted
she lays her head down
and sees the white lights
over the canopy of trees
as she walks west
toward him.

And he smiles,
the tension melting off his shoulders,
and he reaches out for her. . .

Some things are stuck in Madison.
They send shivers done my spine.

Running down a frigid street screaming,
breath in white clouds like life
leaving my body

Sitting on the porch, feet up on the railing
the air humid and
saturated with forces greater than all of us
while vibrant voices fill the street

Spinning drunken circles on the field -
shoes off out of reverence -
in the empty stadium
as a crowd of ghosts roar for us

Gray’s Honey Ale, Spotted Cow,
Crop Circle Wheat,
and countless bottles of bad wine
and laughter
and wishing that these moments
would never end

So much emotion
it practically bowls me over -
I shiver in fear of its strength

Countless days
and a million savored scents
flood my mind

And the tears begin
I am hoping that these memories,
my captors,
will release me but stay

I can’t bear to sort through them one by one
much like I couldn’t
when the moments were so strong so long ago

A childhood we dreamed for ourselves –
things that happened and things that didn’t,
and me clinging to them all

I read someone’s poetry once
and smirked with a wicked half laugh
at how pathetically she mimicked me -
how short she fell of my power.

Realizing such egotism took me aback,
and I began to worry about
the very things
I tell myself I will never worry about.

I saw you with eyes closed playing
and her falling dreamy-eyed at your feet.

Her there and me here.

And for a moment
I am green with jealousy,
with envy,
with the vicious, catty, clawing rage
that I hate in all women.

And then I want to choke myself
for having felt that ugly reaction
and I shake my head in disbelief
at my own absurdity.

When I want to feel pain,
know I’m alive,
I find a photo of you.

I stare at it for hours,
until I nearly scream,
for the torture of it.

I try to picture where you are,
what you’re doing
who you’re with
whether you’re thinking of me.

And then I assume you
haven’t thought of me since
the last time I contacted you

and my jaw begins to ache.
I realize I have been clinching it
mercilessly under the tension.

A sliver of an icy moon
and a single diamond star
guided me home tonight.

I thought of that moon
watching over you.

Meanwhile, on the horizon,
the sun let go its last rays
ripping the earth from the sky
with a blade of magenta
and another of gold.

Safe at home,
I made a mug of hot chocolate
and curled into bed to read for a bit.

Again I thought of you
and prayed you were safe
and warm as well.

Though the setting was nearly ideal,
a discontent began to seep in and rise.
I wanted more than anything
to feel your arms around me and
the velvet touch of your lips on my neck.

That discontent I cannot control.
There are days it builds to indescribable pain
until I’m sure I cannot breathe.

Tonight, my mind drifted off
to a new preoccupation
and I wondered
whether you would make it stop,
make me stop, if you could.

Would you lift my love from your shoulders
and deposit it somewhere else?
And a worry crossed my mind
like many times before. . .

Does my love weigh on you?
Cause you anxiety
or pain?

Fearing it does
keeps me from reaching out to you
even though I’d like to hear your voice
every week if I could,
see your eyes
more than how seldom I do.

And those thoughts faded to another. . .

I think back to that night
when your candor caught me off guard.
I wonder what you’d really said, felt, thought.

I wish now I could ask what exactly it was that you told me.
I’ve coursed over the entire night a million times in my mind,
but it makes no more sense to me now than it did then
but for a tinge less bite.

Straight away you had mentioned marriage
which caught me so off guard my response
was comically less than eloquent.

I wish I could ask now where that comment came from
and whether you had been thinking about it for a while
as it seemed you had.

She was sipping vodka and tonic
like it was going out of style
and no matter how many times
she looked at that watch
the minutes went by no faster.

Looking out the window
she envied the twinkling lights below
and with an addicts craving
she hungered for a long drag
on a Marlboro red.

It wasn’t the first time she had left
and it wouldn’t be the last
but the days she spent alone
kept mounting in her head
knowing he was with another woman.

She couldn’t look at herself
in the mirror anymore
the disappointment was unbearable.
She’d given her youth to him
the best years of her life.
For what?

To end up sleeping alone
in an aging mid-suburban home?
To lament over the creases in her own skin?
Apologize for the color of her roots
because she couldn’t face the gossip
at the salon?

(Off the inside back cover of What’s the Story Morning Glory?)

Someone slipped on a cassette... it was cool because as the music filled the shadows, you heard a sound that was a million miles away from fakery and a step away from your heart.

Just like it always did, this sound puts the swagger back into your step, the rush into your blood but somehow, and I don’t know how, they had become deeper, wider, soulful, better at their craft, inspired by so many things like a world that is tilting who knows where and the applause they always knew was theirs but waited so impatiently to receive. Words cut you from all angles, backed up by a monumental sound that rises high, higher and higher to crash against your rocks then changes, majestically and magically to soothe the wounds inside.

As you are dragged inside on this trip...you hear the clink of loose change that is never enough to buy want you need, boredom and poverty, hours spent with a burnt out guitar, dirty pubs and cracked up pavements, violence and love, all rolled up in one, and now all this.

At the end you flip over and start again because now you are not isolated. High above the day turns pink and you feel your feet life above the ground as new roads open up in front of you. In this town the jury is always rigged but the people know. They always know the truth. Believe. Belief. Beyond. Their morning glory.

my apricots are
tasty said the man behind
the counter coyly

tranquility
the elixir of life
salve for the soul
source of joy

your love is like
snowflakes

bitter and cold

disappearing with the warmth of the sun

sharp crystalline lines
unlike any others

building

thick like a glaze

She didn’t dance.

She didn’t dance because no one asked her.

She didn’t dance because she was afraid.

She was afraid of why no one asked her.

A million reasons mounted in her mind
like an enormous tidal wave
waiting to crush her.

She was a kaleidoscope.
He never knew what to expect -
her colors changed with the setting sun
and the rising moon.

Like the jasmine that blooms at night,
she could be quiet and beautiful,
shying away from the brightest light
and sometimes she was bold,
a treasure, wild and untamed.

She knew all his secrets
before he knew them himself,
could see in his eyes
the roads he wished he had taken,
still longed to travel.

Where the dust never settles
and the wind feeds desire –
that’s where they had known love,
known comfort.

The distance of all the years
could never take that place
from their veins,
it was a part of their souls.

There’s a place where the azure water
meets glistening almond sand
and a cerulean sky.

I wait there for you
on the beach
with the water at my ankles
and the sun on my eyelids
and arms stretched wide to the sky.

I think of the taste of mango
on your lips
and wonder how long it’s been.

In the distance, the boats
shine like diamonds
on the horizon,
the edge of the world.

Time controls nothing here,
no frantic mornings
sprinting out the door
ungrateful for the beauty of the sunrise.

Here everything is delicious
and unspoiled
and ours.

It is with life as with a play – it matters now how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is. – Seneca the Younger

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. – Shakespeare

Who would live and not love? – Rachel Russell

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? – Jean Jacques Rousseau

Things are beautiful if you love them. – Jean Anouilh

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. – Joseph Addison

I need your calm all other things above, after the stress of life. – Charles Towne

A friend is a gift you give yourself. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Paving the cow path - Craig

As a matter of fact. . . - Mario

Learn how to live spherically – Tuscan Sun

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. – Buddha

An articulation of the soul in any form possible – ML

Scratching at a thin wall of categories – ML

There will come a time when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread or a drought of water, but a famine of truth. – Amos

The life of the dead rests in remembrance of the living. – Cicero

We are ambitious to secure the contradictory components of good health in great luxury, complete freedom with absolute security, and emotional peace from an undisciplined and uncommitted mind. – Joe Phillips

My friends had no idea I was smart, until like Junior Year. - random classmate

McSteel Mill - Matt R-K.

Hold fast your dreams
within your heart
keep one still, secret spot
where dreams may go
and sheltered so
may thrive and grow.
-Louise Driscoll

M. Forstater:
“Below my feet, underground trains speed through the bowels of the earth.”

“We are faced with a world that is suffering at our own hands.”

“Throughout history technological development has always moved itself forward, leaving the moral order trailing behind. In our time technological change and innovation have been so swift and transformative that the moral order has lagged well behind and is now struggling to catch up.”

“It stands for the growing awareness that we and the planet are part of a single system; that we can no longer think of ourselves as in some way separate from the natural world.”

“[T]he sole object of [Marcus’] government. . . was the happiness of its people.”

“[I]t remains an exceptional period in the recorded history of leadership and power.”

“he detested war as a disgrace and calamity of human nature”

“This is not a book to be read in a single sitting, but one to be dipped into, perhaps at night before going to bed, to find some new thoughts or consolations, or early in the morning before starting the day. Even opening the book at random can lead you to reflect of your existence, the course of your life, the events that are happening to you and how best to handle them.”

“philosophers, whose truths are undimmed by age”

“They saw philosophy as a therapy, as a method for healing souls. As Epicurus said, “Our only occupation should be the cure of ourselves.”

“Can Greek philosophy provide a remedy for our twenty-first-century malaise?”

“Philosophy, as a way of reclaiming our minds, is perhaps the first and most important step on the road to regaining some form of control over our lives.”

“He practiced his philosophy daily so that he could command the empire without losing his treasured ideals of justice and humanity. The philosophy he lived by is one of empowerment, independence, and self-reliance.” – on Marcus Aurelius

The words have been coming lately
like waves
that glide across my mind in silky volume

they connect,
building on one another
filling my mind with you

their nuances, subtle

The songs on the juke box are sad.
Sad like the faces of the people
who came here years ago
to drown their tears in bourbon
and seek the consolation of the bartender.

Somewhere along the dark and blurry road
they gave up living.

What’s left are the shells of human beings
that died a long time ago
and the fleeting memories
of what it was to laugh, to love.

They can’t even live vicariously anymore.

Postcards from people who got out
are tucked behind the edges of the mirror,
nothing but another half-hour episode
playing silently on the television above the bar.

There is an unspoken rule here
that certain songs won’t be played on that juke box
because they open wounds altogether too painful to mention.

have you ever known
the scent of a thunderstorm
in the distance

felt the tension
as it blows across the hay fields

have you ever known
the heat off the pavement
riding a motorcycle
down a dark highway

felt the fingertips of fog
hanging in the low spots

have you ever known the creak
of a screen door closing
and ice clinking a lemonade glass

felt the condensation drip
and slide across the back of your hand

have you ever known the lowing
of cows in a nearby pasture
and the faint bark of dogs keeping watch
after all the children have gone to bed

then you know the crackle
of the final innings of a baseball game
coming over a scratchy am/fm radio
that's sitting in the kitchen window

and what it was like to spin around in
a tire swing until
you thought you would puke
if you laughed any harder

you probably also know
the feeling of sharp stones
beneath your river shoes
as the mossy sludge slogs inside

you know the feeling of
the perfect pair of cut off shorts
denim worn soft
and the fringes just right

you know the scent of your baseball glove
after it's been oiled and warmed in the sun
and the satisfaction of a sunset
that fades into starlight

and the quiet predictability
of what tomorrow will bring

the teenagers cling to each other
because it's all they have
the skin, and the sweat,
and the empty words

small towns -
where rust and dispair
spread like water

and things that were once beautiful
are now rotting away

the dust and the mud
are inescapable

the mediocrity,
the monotony,
is inescapable

empty beer cans and blue light specials -
broken clearance items from Sears
and mismatched treasures from the Ben Franklin

under the bridge,
life is reflected upside down
like a Monet painting
with all the colors wrong

Tonight, I've been looking back through random leaves of paper that have been piling up since the start of school, reflecting on. . . Well, everything really.

There was a point shortly after I started this semester when I recall being terrified that I would walk away from this semester a very different person. I think my exact words were, "I will not leave this place the same as when I started."

It's interesting, to me, to think about that now.

Being here has been a lot like spending time backstage at Disney World. You see all the mechanical stuff that makes the "magic" happen. The characters without their costumes, Snow White sleep deprived pressured and bitching at the Dwarfs, Prince Charming playing around on Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel paying small children in a third world country to spin the straw into gold.

I came across this quote and found it rather fitting:

“The hopes and dreams of the common man are as noble as any king.” – Barton Fink

I think we’re all a little Barton Fink now and then. We can see the things that are real, or we can let ourselves be dazzled and intimidated.

The moon lingers
on the horizon
a glassy white
against a murky
indigo
smeared with
silver fog.

In the distance
a bell tower
chimes
to remind us
of the brevity
of life.

The waxy leaves
of plantain trees
gather pools of dew
as the air grows thick
and presses its heavy body
against the warm earth.

Every chord that
Nick Drake ever played
hangs here,
a ghost that can’t let go.

She understood
what the closing frame had said –
how fate intervenes,
and continues intervening,
in things that are meant to be.

She did as she had seen
and drew the circle, emotionless.
Perfectly round with a diagonal split.

In one section: “The End”
In the other, “The Beginning”
and said out loud in all honesty,
What it says, I will do -
and threw herself to Destiny.

She laid the pen vertically across the page
and peered at it a moment.
Then, leaning forward, she spun the pen
and waited for it to stop.

It circled several times,
then slowed. . .
and stopped.

On the answer she knew it would give.

She wished at that moment,
that wherever he was – which pub,
he would ask the barkeep for a pen
and draw that circle on the bar.

Turning around,
he would kiss the waitress as she walked by
and return to take a swig,
and position himself for the spin.

With a quick spike of adrenaline
he would huff, point his beer
at the bartender who would nod
ever so slightly understanding
that life was now in the hands of Fate.

Reaching in, he committed to his decision
and gave the pen a spin.

I am moving.

I. Survived. Thanksgiving.

That's all I have to say about that.

Now if I can make it through Thursday at 5:00pm, I will be home free. No more classes and no more "study group"! (That's all I have to say about that too.)

A few final exams over the next couple weeks and I will have survived The Core! (aka. Boot Camp for B-school students.)

*

Personal Note: The one good thing about winter is guys in turtleneck sweaters. Yummy.