Licorice Tea

I'd like to be pensive. I'd like to be thoughtful. I'd like to be insightful, intelligent, awake, healthy, beautiful, put together, motivated etc.

I think I'll settle for being kind.

I have 3 exams in 24 hours and a few more in the days that follow. I'm sick. But I have a cover of "Come Together" playing in my headphones and a sense of purpose, weary as it is. Five days to prove that I've learned something, become someone, am going somewhere.

If I've learned anything I've learned that these five days are going to pass no matter what I do. I think that is grace. I think I'll keep smiling until it proves otherwise.

It's amazing how motivativating the sky is.

Sometimes, you can't quite find the right picture to go along with your thoughts. This is close. I think my friend Nicole took this one awhile back. I love the clouds in it. It feels similar to today in that I look at it and know, 'summer is coming'. That's half the battle sometimes.

The other half of the battle is the bloody part. Related to that, I am happy to report that I only have one more paper, one other assignment and 5 exams. In one week, it will all be over--not without some metaphoric blood spilt. Everything has its price you know. The groans of my muscle and bones testify with my budget. Que sera sera!

And then what? Then I am going to write about a girl named Jullanar who loves to fly and a man named Caelum who grew up under the stars.

Belated.

I had a very wonderful birthday. It wasn't my first choice of events. My birthday often gets overlooked because February always ends sooner than people expect and the first week of March comes in seemingly unannounced. Also, I have hitherto spent my life in the rat race that is education with the full knowledge that March is about one thing: surviving until spring break. This year was extra set against birthday festivities in that I couldn't receive calls because my phone was broken and I had an evening class that day. I really didn't have the time to celebrate my birthday.

All the same. I felt loved. It was the little things, the roommate breakfast and egg curry. The boyfriend flowers and necklace. Texts from my family and attempted phone calls from Dallas and other places. A few belated wishes because, hey, we all have days and weeks and, well, years where we forget. It'll be my turn next if I haven't done so already.

Anyway, this post is really about the cake I made and kind of pieced together between classes. Keep in mind that I'm gluten free so if I'm going to go to the trouble of making cake...it's going to be the best damn cake that's ever been made...or close to it. Photographing it was an interesting challenge and lighting sparklers as my candle on my piece turned out to be less tasty than I anticipated (though just as awesome). Unfortunately there are no photos of the sparkler going that I care to put up because it's my birthday and if I don't want to put up pictures of me in my sweats with my hair not brushed staring in excitement and just a little terror at my firework cake, well no one can make me. :) That said, here are my belated photos including a very bad one of my flowers(...but what can I say? I really love flowers. All of them.):

Waiting for the Exhale.

I cannot tell you with what great agony I begin yet another paper.

I have been diligent. I have been as focused as my body will allow. I have been committed. And yet, I still only have 3 days to read about and write a rather large paper on the book of Revelation. I finished a different large paper yesterday and turned it in. Today is a new day! And a new paper.

My mind is explosive.

I have exactly the minimum amount of time to do this. If I use my time well...if I keep trying...if I push hard, I can do this and all the other tasks which demand my attention.

But there are tasks which will never make such demands. Those are my favorites. They are not pushy because they are fragile and will quickly be trampled and drowned if they assert their own importance in the ocean of errands. They are kind, giving me more than they ever take away. They do not seek to be my master and they know only a little of discipline, of struggle, and of pain. They are polite...always respecting whatever decisions I make and never holding my lack of wisdom against me.

These tasks are labors of love and imagination. They are not concrete or physical and they cannot give me a leg up in the world. What they can give me is all that I want and it pains me to deny them space and time to be. I make empty promises which I hope to be able to fill knowing that merely wishing it were so changes nothing.

These empty promises grow hungry and gnaw upon me from the inside.

I become vacuous.

What was once going to explode begins to shift, turn inward, and give me new fears. The mass of my hopes, fears, and promises may be enough to draw me tightly to my core in one final inhale as I implode.

I'm just waiting for tomorrow, whenever tomorrow comes.

I got a taste of summer.

And it sent me reeling. Many of my best memories are of summer. Many of my favorite people only exist inside those memories anymore. Many of the times where I felt most like I was a better version of myself only exist there. It's a sort of sacred place, summer.

I got a taste of summer and every summer past came crashing back to mind along with every hope of who I will become.

But then it left.

And now, I have lot to think about

--but not very much time.