9 Beautiful Things

#1 Tavi, aka "Style Rookie."
So, yes, I found out about this girl through Yahoo news, the least creative place to find anything. This girl is getting a lot of notice from famous fashion people and from me. I love the way she writes, and that the first part of her About Me is "Tiny 13 year old dork that sits inside all day wearing awkward jackets and pretty hats."
Really, though. Look at her blog. She's so quirky and beautiful that it makes me remember that fashion is a type of artwork. It's so easy to get cynical about fashion and think that it's all about shallowness, which sometimes it is. But anyone can put together a really awesome outfit. This girl thrifts and wears shoes she finds in her basement, for Pete's sake.

#2 Games by Gregory Weir

Please play I Fell In Love With The Majesty of Colors. Or I Wish I Were The Moon. They're simple and beautiful and only take a few minutes. But hopefully you'll like them. He has others, but those two are my favorites.

#3 Death To The Tin Man

One of my professors played this in class and the whole day was wonderful as a result. Sometimes you just see things that make you think about everything differently, and you fall in love with everything. This is one of those things. It's a short film based on the story of the tin man from The Wizard of Oz. It was actually kind of funny, because I think the tin man's story is one of the more obscurish trivial things I know, and that made me like this even more. But you don't have to already know the story to love this film.

#4 pictures for sad children

This is probably my favorite webcomic (I linked to the first installment). Please just read the first 8. The comic is basically full of whimsy and optimistic pessimism. There's nothing else to say.

#5 Can You Tell, Ra Ra Riot

The words to this song are full of longing and adolescent angst, but the good kind.

Oh what am I supposed to do?
It's hard to stay cool.
Oh, when you smile at me
and I get nervous every time you speak.

My bed's too big for just me
and when you turn your eyes,
I promise I won't care.

#6 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Elliot.

I know less than nothing about this poem. I just read it and really like it a lot.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

[This is Taylor. I'm including this part of a stanza, too.]

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

#7 I Want You, Bob Dylan

Dylan is Dylan, and that's about all I need to say about that. This song is so full of great bounds of love.

The guilty undertaker sighs,
The lonesome organ grinder cries,
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you.
The cracked bells and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn,
But it's not that way,
I wasn't born to lose you.

#8 Harold and Maude

A lot of people think this movie is creepy and weird. That's true. It is. Aren't people's emotions creepy and weird, though? This movie has a lot to say about how humans are and why they act like they do. We're all looking for love, it seems.

#9 Jon Foreman

I wrote about this on Facebook, but so much of what this man says is so right on. He's all about loving people.

Some Items I Wish To Discuss And Will Therefore Do So

I used to write notes on Facebook. But then I realized that, although that gave me a potentially wide syndication, that meant that I was constantly thinking about what my friends on facebook would think about what I wrote. Which made me not write that stuff. Or made me write things I wouldn't necessarily write now. I don't think I gave into that pressure a lot, but here we are. I don't have that pressure anymore.

Plus, real writers have blogs.

So, my friend Melanie left all of her CDs at my house when she came over, and I downloaded her Ben Folds CD, Way To Normal, and I'm addicted to it. I keep listening to Cologne over and over and over again. Everything about the song is how I feel sometimes. Which is how it is with just about every Ben Folds song. Maybe he's me? Maybe I'm him? Maybe I just try to identify with really cool, really creative people? One of those.

There's a huge difference between talking to someone when you know what they're saying is true and when you know what they're saying isn't true, even when they're saying the same thing they said yesterday. This isn't based on anyone I've talked to recently. It's just something I think about.

Last semester I walked around campus with my head down all the time, afraid to say hello to people. Now I keep my head up and am an aggressive greeter. If people don't hear me, I keep saying their name until they notice. I'm happier now, even though I'm creepier. People like to be recognized. People like to hear other people say their name.

Definition of a poet: someone who speaks the truth in a way that no one has spoken it before.

So, poets are prophets.

I made those things up. But I think they're true. Does making things up make them untrue? Sometimes. But not always. I hope.

I love having a roommate. I love being around someone and not having to say something, but sometimes saying something if one of us wants to. Sleeping in the same room as someone else. Feeling safe. Sharing. I miss Amanda, but I love Sarah, obviously.

The other night I was at an APO meeting and wondered where Amanda was, because I forgot for a second that she wasn't on campus. I was looking forward to seeing her. It was like reaching to grab something that wasn't there anymore. Jarring and sad.

BUT! Today was a great day on so many levels. I had a lot of great feedback for my first ever script. And I love my classes. And I love a lot of human beings. And my secret sister gave me Swedish Fish in my mailbox, which was a double win because I not only have Swedish Fish, I also had mail.

Mail is great.

That's that.