I miss the air, and soil, and the stars. I miss the smell of wild mint growing out by the rabbitry, and that dirty-horse smell in the barn. I miss having ridiculous amounts of tomatoes because we planted too many in the garden. I miss the floors that shook the walls when you walked across the room, and the occasional snake paying a visit to the house and scaring the living shit out of you when you came up on it unexpectedly. I miss those beautiful, permanently-green pine trees with their flaky bark. I miss the howling coyotes in the forest behind the house. I miss baby goslings in the springtime, following their mother around the yard. I miss watching the Texas sunsets from the back porch. I miss the orange pineapple sherbet my dad used to make. I miss warming myself at the fireplace in the winter. I miss seeing the cattle grazing in pastures while I drive to town. I miss swinging on the swings we tied to the big tree in the front yard with my sister.

I miss the peace, and the quiet, and the simple.

I miss these things, but still I am happy. =]

I don't write for the fame or glory or money or success. I write because I was born to write; I felt the compulsion when I was young and the words came to me, and gave myself to it. I could no more hold in the ideas that come, than I could mindfully stop breathing.

I do not regard my writing as something to sit down and pound into place as the blacksmith shaped the sword. I regard the ideas as something outside of myself, something that came to me and compelled me to write it down, so I do. And the writing always needs proofing and tweaking, but the essence, the ideas and mainframe of the piece doesn't need major rewriting unless I didn't let it come naturally to begin with. If I force myself into the story, if I try to bend it to what I want it to be, then it fails. If I let the words take their own course and be what they want to be, something special always emerges that doesn't requite a lot of major idea shifting, because it chose it for itself. 

I have a weird outlook on literature. Maybe it comes from four years of book-worship in college, but I do identify the words - true literature - to be outside of human control. Authors are simply the prophets who wrote them down. Not to degrade the wonderful authors of old, of course; they were fantastic. But a big part of writing comes in being in the right place at the right time and having the right words come to you, not how much of a literary genius you are or how wonderful you can write. Try to force the words out, and you'll end up with something like Twilight. Sure, you'll be bloody, filthy rich, but your novel is nothing note-worthy. No one will be reading it in a hundred years, and no one will care who you were, because your novel was silly and meaningless; the words are yours and not independently their own. That is how literature is made - the words stand alone, they can be studied through infinite theories and you will find something miraculous with each. The fact that the author's name is printed on the front cover only has as much meaning as you give it. Yes, you can find insight into Othello by studying Shakespeare, but the work still has independent meaning regardless of who wrote it. 

People put too much emphasis on the author. Heck, even authors put too much emphasis on themselves. They reach for the glory, for having their name spelled out for all to see and know and love. Literature isn't about self-marketing. It isn't about writing the next great best-seller. Literature is about the words and the ideas, and as authors we should be striving to convey those words and ideas in their purest and most perfect form. Let the words choose their own path, and you'll end up with something that will fascinate people for years to come; something insightful and worth studying. And do it without picturing your name on the cover, because this was meant to be a selfless pursuit. Would you honestly be as excited to write if you were doing it anonymously? 

I know it's a weird way to look at books, but I have a love affair with literature and with studying literature. It's a passion that flamed up in college, and most people will never understand it, because they don't look at the world with wonder and amazement and find utmost joy in the lessons books reveal. It's a lot like the awe I felt when I first learned circle of fifths music progression - like suddenly I realized there was a greater design behind it all, and music does have meaning and isn't just randomly collected notes on a page. I was so happy in that knowledge, was so stunned at it's simplicity and yet it is so often ignored or just unknown, that I could have wept for pure joy. And that is how I feel about literature. Each new book brings that same weeping joy. They're diamonds in the rough that glitter right before us, but so many people ignore them in favor of the cubic zirconia. I get high on that knowledge-happiness. I want to roll around in a giant heap of literature much like a cat rolls around in catnip. Yeah, I'm a weird one. But hey, at least I'm not mundane. 

I'd probably make an interesting college literature professor, if I could ever get over my introversion enough to stand up in front of a class. But the joy I would find in studying literature full-time and sharing that treasure with others, as well as learning what insights they found in the words, would leave me positively giddy with happiness. 

This is my summer of learning. So tonight I ask myself the same question I ask myself at bedtime every night: What did I learn today? And here is just a highlighting of the things I stored away:

Well, firstly, I learned that PK stands for player killer, and that it's apparently a big deal that I didn't know this. =p I'll restate it a hundred times if I have to: Just because I try to play video games, that doesn't mean I have any clue what I or anyone else is talking about. 

You can be too abstract when it comes to boys. Best just to say what you're thinking and save the poor things the trouble of trying to guess it on their own. Plus, communication is good, it helps you grow, as individuals and as couples. 

I learned a heck of a lot today, but it's almost 2:30am, and I'm tired, so no long reflections tonight, just sweet dreams till sunbeams find you. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow and flesh this out.

You know what makes love feel so amazing? That's how our relationships with everyone should be. It feels special because we're depriving ourselves of our true desire to be close with others, so when we find that "special someone" whom we like and likes us back, all that deprivation gets squeezed into one relationship (and talk about putting high expectations on a relationship...). One of the great things that makes us human is that we have such a wide capacity to love - but we ignore our needs and convince ourselves that that kind of love can only happen romantically, with one person at a time. That's not true at all, and there is NOTHING wrong with having an intimate relationship with the people you love. Society is stupid; it tries to categorize love like it's something objective - platonic, romantic, blah blah blah. The only limits love has are the ones you put on it. If you take away those preconceived notions, I think you'll find that love is something so much wider and all-encompassing than you originally expected. 

Christians can have an especially large hurdle to leap when it comes to finding freedom in love (which is ironic, because they think they've already found it), because they've told themselves that a man should love only one woman, and that other opposite-sex relationships must be very strictly regulated because it is easy to fall into "sins of the flesh" when you're that close with someone. And that is true - when you open your heart freely to someone, you want to share everything with them, including your body, but it isn't some tainted and dirty thing - it's beautiful, and wonderful, and exhilarating. It's you giving yourself without restraint, telling someone else, "I am yours and you are mine, we are connected with one another in a bond that will never be broken, even after we part ways." It's the ultimate show of vulnerability, where you lay together naked and still know that the person you love thinks none the less of you for having a weird freckle or an ugly scar. When did Christians suddenly decide that that giving of yourself to someone was a bad thing, or that is could only happen with one person? We were put on this earth together, and for what purpose? To separate ourselves from one another? That doesn't make sense to me, not when we were given this great big capacity to bond with others. 

Because we've put such strong restraints on what love should be like, parting from monogamy suddenly becomes a ridiculously big deal. All those feelings that got packed into one relationship cause strain, and that strain snaps like a broken cord when we learn that the person we've put all our hopes and dreams on can love someone else as well as us. Good grief, people, don't be selfish. What have I been saying? Love is limitless! Do you really think you need all that limitless love your partner can give, all to yourself? Haven't you ever had the feeling that you love someone so much, it's impossible to fathom? We treat love like it's a concrete object, and if someone else has it, we can't possibly have it, too. So silly. Love is something so beautiful, it deserves to be shared - limiting it to one person only shuts others out and ruins that wonderful ability we have to connect with others as we should be connecting with them.

So go ahead, call me strange for daring to challenge what everyone has told me love is. But I am blissfully happy today. Are you?

Do you ever get the feeling that you're wasting your true potential? I've been letting my brain "take a break" for too long, and haven't really pushed it to really grow in even longer. I really enjoyed studying English, but I've always had the feeling that I'm not pushing myself like I should be, like it's too easy. I am ridiculously smart when I am motivated to learn. I could be designing cylons or engineering genetics research, but instead, here I am, doing...what exactly is it that I'm doing again? Playing housewife is a fun hiatus from the world, but I'm wasting my fantastic brain. I need to challenge myself again.

I hope I don't sound too cocky when it comes to my intelligence. It's just the one thing I've always had going for me. I might have been a fugly, clumsy, friendless teenager, but dang did I have a brain. If it hadn't been for all the family drama during high school I could have easily graduated at 14 or 15 instead of 16. When my brain is in practice, math is my bitch. I could have owned if I had pursued an engineering degree, and my dad would have been so proud of me that his head might have exploded, considering how thrilled he was when I got an English degree. So why I am here, with a degree I can't use, trying to survive in a world of Neanderthals who make fun of their own stupidity with game shows like Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? 

It's time to stop saying "could have" and start saying "will." It's time to run out and meet the challenge head-on. It's time to show the world my genius.