When she dreams of love, she dreams of mashed potatoes.

"Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don’t rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you’re doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out?

You’re cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you’re stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It’s now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you, but now you’ll never know."

So for those of you who have followed my noting and blogging for awhile, know that last summer I started writing a prison inmate after reading an inspirational book called "A Saint on Death Row: The Dominique Green Story". I contact a lady who worked through a church organization to find people willing to correspond with an inmate who faced the death penalty. Why? Because they are the ones who usually have the least people left to talk to. I believe that all people should have some sort of human contact, even the worst of people, unless you've murdered or molested children, I do draw the line somewhere. Plus I like to receive good old fashioned letters. Anyways, what am I getting at? Well, I stopped writing him about a 9 months ago when he began asking me to send a picture of myself to a cellular phone that had been snuck into the cells. I just didn't feel like there was any reason for this person to know what I look like, I was not trying to start a steamy prison love affair. Well a couple of days ago I received another letter from him that went a little something like this:

It has been a very long time since I last heard anything from you. It seems like I should have gotten over it by now but for some reason I have not been able to. I still find myself worrying about you at some point each and everyday. And I still miss hearing from you. The few letters that you sent to me were and remain beaming rays of sunshine in my life. When I get to thinking about you, I usually end up reading those letters again as well...I miss you.

Now, the remainder of the letter was innocent enough, updating me about life in prison, and the appeal process, etc. etc. But something about that 1) creeps me out and 2) kinda makes me feel like I did what I intended, to bring a little bit of happiness to the lowest of us.

That being said, I still don't think I will write him back.

"She dreams a lot. She dreams of Ondines and falling maidens and houses burning in the night. But search her dreams all you like and you'll never find Prince Charming. No knight on a white horse gallops into her dreams to carry her away. When she dreams of love, she dreams of mashed potatoes. "

I'm not sure why, but I woke up at 5am this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep. I refuse to this again tomorrow.

Monday's suck...

And they suck even more when they are a continuation of a weekend that felt like Mondays.

It looks like I will be teaching two math classes again this quarter. Negatives: I'm not a huge fan of math, it is to concrete for my mind, there is not enough room for interpretation or creativity, which I thrive on. Positive: It is the same math class for two different periods during the day, thus, I just decreased my planning time dramatically.

"Of course we did other things too. We walked. We talked. We rode bikes. Though I had my driver's license, I bought a cheap secondhand bicycle so I could ride with her. Sometimes she led the way, sometimes I did. Whenever we could, we rode side by side.

She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life"

Heart and head are contrary historians.

And if your strife strikes at your sleep
Remember spring swaps snow for leaves
You'll be happy and wholesome again
When the city clears and sun ascends

I've been living in this cafe lately.

Push Pin Anxiety- A psychological state characterized by one's excessive push-in push-out of his or her retractable pen; due to stress or boredom.

“She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”

So I've been doing this thing lately. This 'thing' is that I buy CD grab bags from Zia, then I randomly grab a CD and play it, without looking of course. It's like a continual surprise, which I love...not always a good one, but it makes me smile none-the-less.

"I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl…. And… I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I’m not outside my world anymore, and I’m not really inside it either. The thing is, there’s no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain."