I am unpacking, packing, listening to Muse, and taking a break

Craziest weekend of my life. I moved out of my apartment today with a car completely sardined with accumulated nonsense of college girl stuff.I took out two bags of trash, washed my windows, vacuumed the disgusting hair-balled carpet, all while Season 5 of Lost played in the background (I watched Season 4 in two days...it's my favorite, I think...other than Season 1). In 3 1/2 hours, I made many trips up and down our scary wooden steps, sweating and panting more than making my decreasing steps sentimental. Well, then I read a card from Whitney, got a bit sentimental, threw away some food, felt terrible for wasting, and left my roomies a note.
My car was packed, everything in its crammed place. I took one last trip to the recycling bin in the front yard to rid my last bottle of wine and kept thinking "This is my last trip here, this is my last trip to the mailbox," lalala. I think we all play that game.
So tonight I'm unpacking in my parents house, where my room, though a good size, looks like a 5-year-old hoarder lives there, and things will remain in boxes because tomorrow, I leave to pick up my Cali friend and fellow intern, Laura, from Nashville's airport as we make our way to Louisville on Saturday night, then to Indianapolis, our final destination, on Sunday, where we will stay for 2-ish months, head to Belgium mid-July, get back August 9th, and proceed with our post-graduate lives.
Crazy, people. Crazy.

Elizabeth, my now former roomie (oh my God, that's sad), makes the best CD mixes EVER. We share nearly the same musical passion, only I like Bon Jovi, and she has patience for country music. So I'm pulling out of our concrete driveway, making sure to avoid the blonde guy moving in the apartment above us, and I put in Elizabeth's "Gone Three Months" CD.
The first song is the musical song from "The Painted Veil," which is arguably my favorite piano piece ever written, followed by a "Poker Face" rendition with Lea Michele and Idina Menzel from Glee.
Then I got the whole lip quiver, eye squinty thing where I thought tears might spill. They didn't. But that was possibly the saddest car ride I've ever been in.

This is a bit of a weird entry, I think. I don't really have a lessons learned thing, but this whole graduation thing is becoming very apparent. I don't feel thrown into the "real world" yet--I plan on avoiding it as long as I possibly can--but it really sucks to leave a way of life.

Beauty in Storms

My favorite sky is a murky one, one with layers of cool colors.
I love gray. Because grey looks simple and drab, but I see purples and blues in grays. Gray has layers of colors, combinations of emotion and aesthetic amazing-ness.
I love a stormy sky, especially when it reflects into a mirror-image body of water; one that looks beautifully disturbed and rolling with swelling emotion.
A gray sky heightens the colors of nature, too, in the spring and summer. Trees look Ireland-green, flowers look more bold, as if they're bringing out their best colors in stormy preparation.
I hate to sound didactic here, but I think I love storms--physically and metaphorically. I don't think I purposely put storms in my life, but I have this attraction to them, to conflict, in a nearly-masochistic, self-sacrificing sort of way. I think there is beauty in conflict because I discover more of myself, my reactions, my spitty defense. I learn more of what I do and do not like about myself, I learn how to emotionally train myself.
I try to bring out my raw colors in storms, but when a storm lasts a long time, I can't tell if the beauty of those colors has disappeared--maybe the blooms have long since been beaten to shrivel in the soil.
But (and again, I apologize for the didacticism) that's the beauty of nature, of the relationship between the sky and earth; things grow back, things always resurface.

Letter to the Concert Grinch

Dear Sir with the pubic-esque curly hair that smells like stale cigarettes,
I hope you know that you ruined 15 minutes of my hypnotic submersion into concert mode as the Swell Season flawlessly performed their amazing duets. I was preparing my camera, allowing it to sink into "standby" as Glen explained bits and pieces into their #1 hit, "Falling Slowly," until your musty face crept right onto my shoulder. I hope you know that your chin touched my shoulder, and I am NOT okay with that, you boundary-crossing prick.
You said, "Did you KNOW how distracting that is, to leave the screen on like that? Did you KNOW? That's distracting, did you know that?"
By the end of your stupid spiel, YES, asshole, I WAS aware of that.
Are YOU aware that we were at a concert? One in which people perform? One in which people play instruments and sing into microphones, one in which the singers encourage the crowd to get involved? And when the crowd gets involved, that includes singing melodies and harmonies, reacting with laughter and smiles, connecting with the amazing talent? Part of that connection is via cameras, whether it be pictures or videos. If you've not been to many concerts, maybe my bright camera screen was a bit distracting for you. Yes, I scanned through my camera to delete things in order to create more memory space to record one of my favorite songs of all time.
Lucky for you, it didn't matter--my memory was full anyway.
BUT I'll have you know that 4 rows ahead of me, a drunk woman stood up every 2-3 minutes in an alligator clap, alternating screams with throwing her head back to the Ryman ceiling.
THAT can be distracting, you prude, but you know what? It's NOT. That woman, though off her sobriety rocker, let herself go with the music. She became part of the scene, she could zone out everything else, even the hundreds of camera screens that shone throughout the 3+ hours of total performance.
So: a word to the un-savvy concert grinch,
You should be shot by the aesthetic police. Learn to love art, in all its forms.
And the next time you go to a concert, brush your damn teeth.

A Concerned Concert Junkie,
Jamie effing Ogles

Grad-uu-way-shon

So. I'm graduating today. I don't have to be at Diddle until 2, so I figured, "Hey--awesome. Sleeping-in day."
Not so. 8:11 stared at me this morning until I willed it away and closed my eye curtains. An hour of rolling around forced me to say, "Oh, never mind," and I got up. It is now 9:27 and I have nothing to do. Oh, I mean I do have things I could do. Clean my room, clean the apartment, maybe go for a run. All would be good for me and would take up a considerable amount of time.
It might be appropriate to go for a run on graduation day. Awfully symbolic, I think, not because I'm "running away," but because I'll hit the ground running these next few months.
Honestly, I'm a bit lonely. It's a SATURDAY MORNING and I'm awake and one room is graduating at this moment, the other is getting ready to have lunch with her family, and I'm pouting, bathing in my own pathetic I-can't-sleep loneliness, creating a piss poor mood for such an awesome day.
What the hell?!
Wake up, Jamie! Clean your room! Clean the apartment! Run your little heart out!

Then, at 3, graduation is MMMMMMIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEE! [evil laugh begins... ba ha ha]

What I'm Becoming

I rarely watch TV other than on Tuesday nights when I flip between Lost and Glee, but it seems like these shows about Hoarding are always being previewed. I am polar from a hoarder; my parents used to yell at me for discarding birthday cards and throwing away little trinkets and things that meant nothing to me. During yard sale season, they always cast me a speculative, disappointed glance as I let them down by getting rid of my cat collection my grandma gave me over the period of my childhood. I don't like collecting things.
But now, I'm becoming an artistic hoarder. I don't think it's a bad thing, honestly, unless you count a fast-paced road to being a recluse as a bad thing. I've loved to write since the 3rd grade, I've played piano since the 5th, I've sang since...well, forever. In late February I received my ukulele as a birthday present from my mom, and more recently I've acquired the desire to paint.
Painting was always okay, but I hated coloring when I was little. Everyone had such evenly-shaded, in between the lines pictures, but my hands seem to spaz out in disorganization and I would have random swipes of color where the space outside the lines should've been white. Oh, the frustration.
But painting is fun for me now, and I have 3 painted canvases at the moment.
I think all this artistic hoarding is a psychological reaction for me to develop as many artistic skills as possible to keep me from getting tired of one. I'm like that, you know. I eat peanut butter for so long, then I can't touch it for 2 months. (That is my current and very sad condition.) And relationships, of course, are as interchangeable as underwear.
I think everyone is an artist, yet I hesitate to call myself one. But I am an artist, I suppose. I love art. It's one thing I could collect because it takes place in so many forms. Music, writing, paintings, coloring book sketches, floral arrangements, photographs. Art can be anything, and now I want my life to rotate among artistic improvement. Anything can't be art, but anything has the potential.

The Unwritten South: Parts 3 and 4

3. Intermission
I always appreciated the orchestraic Intermission in Gone with the Wind. Generally, I skip over the intermission and flip over the disc, but when I’m feeling relaxed and unrushed, I love listening to the soothing-turned dramatic melancholy of the music.
I also love study intermission when my contacts stick to my drooping eyes, my legs are stiff from folding, and my bladder sloshes in my slumped stomach. I meander through the maze of rows, past a big number 5 by the elevator, and grope for the bathroom door. As I wash my hands, I think how strange and unrecognizable this floor looks; then again, I’m one of those students who uses the library once a semester, maybe once a year.
I’m careful not to scrub away the newly-inked writings on my palm,
A Diary from Dixie, Fields of Fury, Experiment in Rebellion, We Need Men.
As I walk back through, I glance at the different artworks between rows. Most are abstract, but the golden hues remind me of the framed picture of Paris that hangs in my grandmother’s garage; my grandfather sent it to her from France.
I retain my warm seat and glance one last time at the shelf.
Dixie’s Daughters. Yes, I could use that, too.
4.Experiment in Rebellion
and
(Dixie’s) Daddy’s Daughters
My mom was an uh-oh: Mema was nearly forty and Papa was 45 when little Kathy made her debut into the world. Mom was one of the last of the Baby Boomers, and since her brothers were into college and married by the time she started school, she became a regular Ellie Mae Clampett around the farm, befriending kittens and dogs and cows and any other stray critter that crawled into the realm of the lonely farm.
Despite the monotonous domestic chores, Mom felt entrapped inside and needed to be active and outside among nature, her furry friends, and her silent father. She forked hay bales, hitched wagons, steered tractors, mowed the yard, set and pulled tobacco, fed the cows, and ignored her mother’s protests that girls shouldn’t have to do such work. But Papa needed a hand and the boys were in Lexington with families and schools and jobs.
Until high school, Mom never recognized that Papa’s silence and bitterness masked post-traumatic stress and stifled psychological issues. His lack of communication hid an anxiety that rooted beneath his soil-tending hands and field-lingering feet.
Mom had a heart attack the summer before I started high school. We were in Florida at a softball tournament, and the ride back was miserable. She refused to go to the hospital, and her pain kept her vomiting on the side of the road as we moaned about her mental inability to handle extensive driving.
Soon, we would be in the hospital under the news that this minor heart attack was sparked by an intense anxiety attack.
When she began her anti-anxiety/anti-depression/other medication that kept her from repeating such an episode, my dad, sister, brother and I responded with positive encouragement. My dad told me once, “You know, I can tell a world of difference in your mom. She seems so much calmer now. She’s always had such a worry about endin’ up like your Papa, you know.”
I didn’t know. Until that moment, I didn’t know that Papa went years contemplating the detriments of psychological disorders as his only daughter grew up in disconnect, quitting the dance team and making her own clothes to ease the load from her parents. Mema always said that Mom kept them younger.
“You know, Daddy was quiet, but he loved doing things outside. And he loved baseball. That’s how I got my first busted nose,” Mom said through the phone. I could hear a hesitant smile spreading as she described playing catch with her brother and father by the old barn. “And Papa—he was a switch-hitter, too.”
I immediately saw a surfacing connection. Mom—my binary opposition in all things life—constantly sought paternal approval and had an ambidextrous father. Simple. Silly, perhaps. But it’s a connection that doesn’t include our shared ability to become slap happy after 10 pm or dance around the kitchen, singing into spatulas and swaying our hips.
Mom was never an athlete like me, and that is perhaps what separates us: I trained for years to become a collegiate pitcher, and maybe I never received a busted nose, but I remember the first time I completed a successful catch in the front yard between our two oak trees. I remember the feel of the ball in the pocket and the bright pleasure on my dad’s animated, mustached smile. Catching and playing and pitching and crying all went to my father, and he took it well. We connected, we were battery mates.
All similarities end, I suppose. At my age, my mother was married and working, not finishing school, and my father had been married two years, not scheming plans to hop continents. At my age, my grandmother was raising a child, not birthing a story, and my grandfather had just begun farming, unaware that he would soon meet his future wife—unaware that in six years, he would be soldiering from Africa to Europe, from boats to shores and barns to fields.
My parents call my Peace Corps-ing, mission-immersing plans adventurous and impractical; I call them self-fulfilling and story-worthy.

I Love Beauty and the Beast

I love BELLE. I love the music, I love the characters, I love the conflict, I love the animals, even. The music/lyrics are b-e-a-utiful, I'm still envious of the library, and I love love LOVE how Belle is so independent and smart.
Maybe fairy tales ruin the way girls perceive life and relationships, but I love the dynamics of the music. I cannot help but sing along to all the songs, and I can't help but laugh when Chip makes his cute little lines or when the Beast gets a snowball in the face or when Gaston delivers a simply ridiculous line.
Even the opening chords (when they show nature and the castle,) give me chill bumps!
Sigh.

A Good May

After mentally cursing my family for making me attend a wedding this past weekend, May has, as always, pulled through for me.
-I have successfully completed my college career without pulling an all-nighter
-I have completed all assignments for this week. Wait, no I haven't. I still need to workshop my group members' papers. Shit.
-One class has been canceled.
-Today is my last day of class. (calls for applause)
-I placed 2nd in the Women's Studies Writing Contest and received a plaque yesterday for the Most Outstanding Literature Major. (yay!)
-My collaboration with two class members has helped start the Hope Harbor Creative Writing group that will start on May 26.
-I graduate in 8 days!
-My coffee consumption has tripled...possibly quadrupiled in the last week...that may not be a good thing.
-The sun is out.
-Glee is awesome.
-Lost is sad.
-I leave for Indianapolis in 2-3 weeks (wooohoo!)
-I leave for Belgium in 2-ish months (double woohoo!)
-And, hopefully, I will leave for the Peace Corps in November!
Oh, the wait until then.

Naps: huh?

I am embarking on my last week of class as an undergraduate. Today I turned in a 5-pg paper for review, tomorrow will be a 10 pg paper, Wednesday will be an entire portfolio (10 min oral presentation, 2 nonfiction pieces, some letter, etc etc), and Thursday will be a presentation and another 5-pg paper.
This past weekend was a working fiasco--a yard sale on Friday, a wedding on Saturday, a flood and choir on Sunday, and I am completely exhausted from a lack of sleep.
In the past 2 days, I've taken 2 naps. In the past few days, I've taken 3. I never take naps. EVER. My brain won't shut up long enough TO take naps...it just races as I try to will myself to sleep.
But now, not so. The past 3 1/2 years of my college life, I can count on one hand how many naps I've taken. Sleep is important to me, but I don't live to sleep. I honestly wish I was all Twilight-vampire ish (please forgive me for that terrible allusion) and could stay awake all the time.
Now, I appreciate sleep very much. It's a nice little break between writing papers and researching. Why have I never before discovered this sedative phenomenon?