This completely made my day

Some people have talent that truly amazes me.

There is this 15 yr. old girl in Great Britain, I think...and she is just amazing!

I can't get over her cover of Mumford and Sons "Little Lion Man"...and then today I watched her video for her original song "Beautiful Flaws"...and I've been humming it ever since.

SOMEBODY GIVE HER A RECORD DEAL I WANT HER CD, PLEASE! :)

So watch..and listen to the words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZqjN2-iJ_A

"Personality flows through you head to toe and when you face it
I urge you to embrace it cause you know
You are beautiful
But you want what you dont have"

Watch the whole thing.. and then go to her page and watch her version of 'Little Lion Man'.

In this middle place

In this middle place

In this place absent from color other than the blue and white of notebook paper and the gray of pencil marks

In this build up of wishing and breathing faster to speed up growing up and out and over the rainbow

I still miss the ocean

And the salt that burned my nose and stung my eyes with waves roaring in my ears that made me forget that people had places at all

It's not jealousy that leaves me itchy to walk somewhere with more colors

It's the loneliness that comes with an imaginary world of living day dreams

When you wish upon a star

You fly a little higher

Look down even slower

Forget that you're still standing

In this middle place

Mature enough for mine things

I wonder if the person reading this has been in a weird time in his/her life.

Right now, I'm in a weird time in my life.

I like observing other people who have a lot of...

mine.

Like,

My house.

Person has house.

House has nice things in it.

Old wooden doors, per se.

Or slightly shimmery, rough but still charming hardwood floors.

Perhaps light blue shutters

Or silently elegant archways

Leading into a squeaky wedding-registry-kitchen-goodies-filled kitchen.

And they make this house their own.

Stamp it with their style.

I envy that.

Or,

My kids.

Person has kids.

Born after hours of planning,

Exciting potential naming,

Preparation for new life,

Complete with perfect little yellow booties

And a cutesy-cute nursery.

Sparkly purple "WELCOME HOME BABY" sign

For right before all those darn-it-not-super-fun sleepless nights

And they make this kid their own...possibly not meaning to.

Love it with finesse.

Have happy, Johnson + Johnson shampoo smelling baby times.

Lullabies.

Newborn butterfly kisses good-night.

I envy that.

My room opens into my brother's. He still follows me everywhere. For a time, he was mine, too. Mine to mold with all my extremely lovely ideas about who to hang with and where to eat and what to read on a rainy day. But he doesn't like reading. Or vegetarian food. He doesn't have so many friends...he has "groupies"...not my style, really.

So I'm shaking and shaking and shaking him off. He follows me everywhere. If I go on a bike ride, "OH LOOK! There he is...again." A weird point in my life where I don't have real privacy...or real things, really. Things I bought, for myself. I have real answers to college application questions, and real school projects, and a real driver's temps test that I can't seem to pass...which reminds of Pre-Calculus...

And I'm too immature for real mine things, apparently.

But I wonder...

Is anyone really mature enough?

Maybe they just tell themselves they are

Everyday really fast

"I'm-mature-I'm-mature-I'm-mature!"

And ZOOP!

Like a sprightly pixie covered in fairy dust...they're mature enough for mine things.

The way I'm not

Today.

Zenith of all possibility

Mumford and Sons wrote these lyrics:

Can you lie next to her and give her your heart, your heart?
As well as your body, and can you lie next to her and confess your love, your love?
As well as your folly and can you kneel before the king and say ‘I’m clean’, ‘I’m Clean’?
But tell me now where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart?

And every time I listen to them sung in harmony, I get a little heavy hearted, because I know so many people who couldn't really answer "yes"...which is fine, it's their lives.

But it's not.

I'm beginning to understand how one life

Spills into another

A son

Daughter

Grandkid

And how choices are the zenith of all possibility

I wish I knew mine.

If I close my eyes and fall asleep until summer

I like the thump my heart makes.

I used to hate it, because, like so many other people, it reminded me that it could stop.

Would it stop?

When?

But now I don't fret about that.

My life has taken a lot of twists lately.

Some of which are baby-green new

I kind of wish I could just spend my days thinking

Sleeping

Dreaming

Because I hate fear

I prefer wonder

and to be a person in this world

whose marvel > skittishness

I get annoyed with

GO GO GOERS!!!

Because too many goers

Aren't doing anything worthwhile anyway

I love REAL goers

If I close my eyes and fall asleep until summer

I'll be even further away from being a real goer

Than I am now

And yet I wonder

What would I dream about?

Everything is inspiration

Today, I learned about service

I volunteer at a hospital.

Every Wednesday, I get dressed up in a red/white striped pinafore and trudge into elevators heaving a giant plastic cart for IV pumps, begging those darn elevator doors to stay open and not cut off my foot...pumps that nurses like to hide behind pillows, nurses who like to yell at little, lowly volunteers who are stealing their HIDDEN TREASURE!!

anyways,

today I was also asked to re-stock pillows

Bah mahself.

That's right homies

Yo homegirl was asked to also haul a GIANT SCARY METAL HARMFUL NEARLY 7 ft. TALL PILLOW CART ALONG WITH THE IV PUMP CART.

The pillow cart is actually a cage

it has GIANT wheels

If one would slam into it

One might accidently die

So by pushing a slightly light IV pump cart in front of me

...& dragging the big scary cage full of pillows behind me

I learned a lesson about service

Having a servant's heart.

Barely anyone offered to help me

Someone actually had the nerve to tell me I was in the wrong elevator.

My arms hurt.

one would go one way

the other another

and I was very scared of hitting someone.

The pillow cart almost ran me over

I nearly became paralyzed.

At the beginning of the whole ordeal

I was humming "Superwoman" by Alecia Keys

By the end of it

I was sweating

Mostly out of fear

And I was on the verge of tears

Because I wasn't sure I could keep moving the heavy pillow cart

I felt like a wimp

An ant struggling with a crumb

The truth about service is

1. It isn't about the hours

2. It isn't about being noticed for the great work you're doing for other people

3. It isn't about being better than the less serving folks of America

It's about being able to somehow agree to do anything with courage...

It's about lugging a metal pillow cage on wheels, and a cart heavy under the weight of 15 IV pumps...and still being able to smile.

The people who smiled back

Some of them we're in wheelchairs

Very sick

And of all the things I'll never understand

I know this for very certain

I will never understand why out of all the wonderful people who die everyday

From cancer

From heart disease

Suffer to survive

I was chosen

To be given my health

So the frontal lobe of my brain is not yet fully attached

It's weird to me how I'm just like everybody else my age.

How I'm so ready to leave where I am for what's better out there.

Because here, people don't care to be here.

School but other things.

All with people my age. And I don't get why I like to judge people like that when I'm so like that myself. I want to get outta here. Say it everyday. But then, I also just want to love what's around me now. Whoever is around me now, today. But that's hard to do when we all can't wait for the bell to ring, the clock to chime, the year to end, the day to close to open to a better one.

And I don't know why...if it's like I'm impatient or I'm unsure of what will inevitably be a different life for myself. When I'm "grown up" or whatever. What ever will happen, I don't know. But simultaneously, I'm mad at people who don't give a damn about where they are and who sits around them, who's talking to them now, who was talking to them two seconds ago.

You know, teenagers apparently have a very loosely attached frontal lobe? Yeah. It prevents us from having "insight" apparently. We're supposed to love living in the here and now. But no one is really. Make out, come out, break up, make up. Experimenting with relationships of all sorts...it just makes the awful routine of school and work and trying to get into a somewhat good college more fun or something...I don't know. It's pretty rare for anyone to stay with who they're with when they're my age...for them to stay the way they are when they're my age. I can't wait to be grown! But at the same time, I'm sad that we're growing.

Ahhh..poetry. mon amore

So we did this activity in American Lit where we picked our favorite songs, and then picked our favorite line from each song. In the end, we were supposed to have a poem made up of all the lines..and I kind of love mine...so here our my songs.

But I'm gonna show the poem first :)

Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

Do you think I'm special? Do you think I'm nice? Am I bright enough to shine in your spaces?

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.

We hurt the same, the same black and blue.

They want you to pick up the phone and hum the dial tone.

Just say that we agree and then never change.

Lights will guide you home.

Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you

Let Your wings cover us with promise.

With the hardest of hearts I still feel full of pain.

As strong as you were, tender you go. I'm watching you breathing for the last time

1. Black and Blue

We hurt the same, the same black and blue

2. Fix You

Lights will guide you home

3. Sweet Caroline

Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you

4. Over My Head (Cable Car)

Just say that we agree and then never change

5. Cheer Me Up Thank You

They want you to pick up the phone and hum the dial tone

6. Carry You Home

As strong as you were, tender you go. I'm watching you breathing for the last time.

7. 7. 7. Enter This Temple

Let Your wings cover us with promise

8. 8.8. All The Right Moves

Do you think I’m special? Do you think I’m nice? Am I bright enough to shine in your spaces?

9. Revelry

With the hardest of hearts I still feel full of pain

10. Your Song

Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen

11. 11. The Luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you

Sick Day: On accomplishments

It's quite a humbling experience to be at home sick with the "runs".

Without typing all the details...it sucks.

So...I'm supposed to be filling out this application for the National Honor Society.

Say it out loud...it's fun...it sounds very official.

I've decided I like saying it in a British accent best...National Honor Society!

Anyways, there are all these blank boxes for "activities" and "accomplishments" to go in..

And I don't feel very accomplished.

Because I consider accomplishments to be.

1. Talking someone out of suicide

2. Hugging someone who is desperate for a friend at just the right moment

3. Knowing ALL the words to R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and singing them loudly...in the shower

4. Wearing something that you think is utterly fabulous, even though the people around you think it is utterly unfabulous

and since I have only done one of those things, I'm not exactly sure how "accomplished" I truly am.