photos

new photos. yes. after three? months

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Hey Remember that time?

We skateboarded on Bailey road almost every night because it was newly paved?

Matt gave me a high five and there was a worm in his hand?

Matt brought over "fresh baked goods" and it really was a bowl full of live worms?

All those times we sat in the tree in Genesee Valley Park?

We found a secret path by an abandoned school that led to the banks of the Genesee?

Kirsten and I skateboarded all afternoon around campus carrying a boom box blasting the beatles?

Derek came to visit?

When we all went to Ithaca?

I came home to emily cooking, wearing a cow-print apron, and listening to the gray album?

When santa visited the darkrooms freshman year?

When I took the girls to Watkin's Glen and we got lost multiple times?


It all comes back everytime I come to Roc. That's why it grows on me every day. I'm planting memories into a beautiful rose garden.

music

I've been meaning to write about music for a long time. I think between color and music, color is more important to me (I'd rather be deaf than blind), yet music still is a group of threads in the tapestry of my existence, and it would be a rather threadbare existance without music.

my house has always supported a disjointed caccophany of music- the mostly mellow music of mine in the room right up the stairs, the contemporary christian music in the room on the left, the classical music in the room on the right, the elevator music downstairs, whoever's music in the kitchen, michael card in the back room, the punk/ pop music in the bedroom in the back, and the mostly flawed tunes coming from the out-of-tune piano in the dining room. No one in my family can play an instrument especially well, but we all can sing surprisingly well- and that adds to the music filling our house.

It wasn't until I was around thirteen or fourteen when I realized that I associate color with music- each song has a color, or colors, that I associate with. Not synethstesia per se, but something close. The Bruch Concerto is a velvet red, Iron and Wine's Upward Over the Mountain is a pale blue, Eliott Smith's Angel in the Snow a Paleish Green. And I'm not the only one to do this kind of seeing/ listening. James McNeil Whistler (the one who painted Whistler's mother), painted a series of portraits and landscapes with the titles merging musical terms and colors. Genius. I'm going to the Frick in NYC on the 9th to see some of his work.

Words more could be written about music, as any other subject. Yet I am off to Rochester now. I'll be back on Sunday. goodbye.

christmas

not "holiday".
fourth of july is a holiday.
so is valentines day
or mothers day.

christmas sparkles with its own colors. no. not red and green. not entirely.

christmas is the blue of the snowstorm mixed with twilight that i ski in as I cut the silence with the steady swish swish of my skis as I head home, the orange of the solitary streetlight on our country road making the strangest shadows.

it is the yellow-white of the lights of our christmas tree, as seen from the outside of my house.

it is the black and white, red and green and blue of the city mixed with everpresent snow as I drive home from a dinner with friends, listening to music written hundreds of years ago.

it is the purple of the sprinkles poured on the gingerbread man to make the most awesome purple suitcoat and pants on a gingerbread man that i have ever seen.

it is the white light that floods my eyes, before they have time to adjust, when I wake up to an eleven-o-clock snowday

it is the orange of the city lights as i stand on top of the scaffolding of manhattan square park, looking over a quiet city, with many, but alone with my thoughts, and with my God.

music: Iron and Wine's Faded from the Winter
Sufjan Steven's Holland

topics

snow: There is a very wide-spread wives tale that because Rochester is North of Erie, is receives roughly double the amount that Erie gets. Contrary to this belief, it is the opposite. Erie has had four blizzards since november- two, while I was at home (three feet total), while Rochester has received four inches of snow in all. This, of course, makes snow a precious commodity up here. Because of this fact, on Thursday, when Jason, Brendan, Kirsten, Moses and Myself saw the snow falling from inside downtown Java's, we walked straight to Manhattan square park and began to play- sliding on the ice skating pond, making snow angels in the middle of the street, climbing to the top of the scaffolding in the park and watching the snow fall quietly over a dormant city. We moved then, to a parking garage, and watched the snow more, sliding on the ice at the top of the garage. It was simple, quiet, and magical.
Friday night, we took advantage of the snow again, this time, derin, kirsten, joi, michael, tyler, and myself all staying over at tyler's house in Marion, and tobagganing on this extremely large hill that we discovered. It was terrifying, hurdling down a hill, along with three others, shouting instructions, trying not to slide over the cliff, the snow from the front of the sled kicking back and covering our faces. But in the same moment it was thrilling. We tried another, steeper hill, covered in bushes, and that was even more terrifying, the logs, prickers and bushes that peppered the hill threatening to break limbs or scratch or faces.

The best thing about snow is how everything is silent when it falls- a beautiful, silvery sound. I think it's some kind of phenomena actually.

the black market: is a very real thing. but i'm too lazy to write about that. will write later, i suppose.

christmas in rochester: also a good future topic.

I've fallen in love

with the sound of snow in the evening
truth and honesty
the way light changes a person's face
the snow falling from my window in the evening
my roomates all being at my apartment all the time
the way God holds me in the palm of his hand
sliding on the ice skating rink at Manhattan Square Park
Laura Gibson, the singer/songwriter
christmas
Sujifan Stevens, singer/songwriter
Kirsten's and my midnight adventures
Wednesday girl's club with val after class.

God is so good. He is always here. I never have to feel alone.

november poem

i forgot that i liked writing poetry.

we sing no longer
ice over my favorite tree
too dangerous to climb
and I'm left here
with faded coat and boots
looking up
to where i cannot climb alone
to where
you sit
like we used to in summer song,
but there are leaves no longer
i've taken them all.
your flaws cannot be hidden any longer
for i
am fall

11-21

everytime i come back from break (or go home, for that matter), i feel like i have become a completely different person.

or is it the people around me that have changed?

i'm terrified for what will happen next summer.
i'm terrified for what will happen tomorrow.

only God can help me here.
but im still trying to figure out how.