Birthday.

Well, that was it. My first birthday away from home. It was good. I cried some. I think it was a catalyst for Zach and I fully mending our friendship, by which I mean, Zach made my birthday. None of my other friends really bothered themselves about it. If he hadn't, I don't think that anyone would have. I love my birthday. When I opened the package from home, it felt like I was examining the contents of a treasure chest.
Zach and Katie gave me a photography book of Venice that calls it the "City of Haunting Dreams." It was a perfect gift. Every photograph holds a certain awe and mystery to it, an entrancing, misty sort of half-light or gesture. They are all begging me to write their stories. I look at them and a feeling of calm washes over me.
I really enjoyed my birthday dinner. I only wish I could have shared my day with more of the people I love. Still, it was a beautiful birthday. I really do feel nineteen.
I love my birthday. I really do. I look forward to it every year. It's a new year of sorts, a perfect mix of ending and beginning.
Happy Birthday Carla Chantica Lita Lerner Lobato. Let's make this year a good one, hey.

A Night at the Opera

...is what I have just returned from, with the lovely Ms. Emily Cowles. In the course of the evening it became clear that Othello is considered Verdi's master work for a very good reason and that much of what is good and beautiful in this world is summed up by the "steam punk" genre. Who knew?
Also, raspberries are a wonderful impulse-food purchase.
It was my third time at the Lincoln center. Sitting in a top box gave me a very different perspective on the place. Something about being at the top like that heightened my awareness of the... well, magic there. There is something rich and satisfying in the curve and color of things, and my attention was drawn to the way light sits in the building. As the compelling orchaestral music rose over and through me, I noted the plays of light and shadow around the theater, and was struck with a funny little though.
"Emily?" I whispered, leaning forward, "do you think music affects the way light moves?"
She didn't answer me right away, so I felt that I had stumbled upon something worth thinking about.
I don't know. Something about the Met was especially beautiful tonight. The rising chandelier...

Well, now it is the morning after, and my computer have very little battery. I still have the image in my head of the maestro's hand silhouetted by the light of his podium.

February

Fucking February. What the hell. It doesn't even have a logical spelling. February is not a logical month. Everybody is unhappy in February. Especially this February. Everyone around me is falling apart. I haven't hardly been able to leave Hill House for fear of an asthma attack, and everyone (myself included, of course) is heartbroken. Well. Not everyone, but a lot of people. Even those I know who haven't really been through any major trauma look drawn and pale, eyelids heavy, lips nervously twitching up at the corner as I pass them.
At the very least, my birthday is coming. My birthday has often been a sort of reward for living through February, but this may have been the worst February yet(though I do recall feeling pretty fucking dreary around this time last year).
There's snow outside. It's really beautiful. I was disappointed that I was too sick to go out and play in it when it fell a few days ago, but I still sat at my window and enjoyed it. It calmed me down some, I think, at the time. It made things feel benevolently important. I know I should be getting to work on my paper, but I find that I've been itching to come back to this place and write. I don't know why. I have a journal, and this isn't something that people will see, but I still feel the need to spill words in type. I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that, even though I haven't given the URL of this place to anyone I know (except Kailyn, very recently), there is something satisfying about knowing that my words are out there, floating in the giant ocean of information we call the internet, and that on some level they could be found. Like a message in a bottle. Also, the voice I write in here feels a bit different from my journaling voice, so a different part of me is expressed here that I wasn't even aware of before. Maybe it's the fact that words come out faster when you type them. Quien save?
The fact is: I am enjoying this more and more.

Words

It's funny, I wrote an odd little phrase of poetry on the fly maybe a week and a half ago which didn't really make sense to me at the time. I get it now. That's funny. It goes:

*

I can feel salt water kisses humming under the skin you haven't met yet, you being the possibility, potential energy fogging up the future.

*

...and to most, I'd bet it still doesn't make sense, but that's okay because most don't matter.

Last night I wrote something of a bit more substance which has been caught in my head and heart (haha!) ever since. I didn't give it a title. For now, I'll call it

*

Words.
Words sometimes need to be carved in before the cœur can care. The greatest moments of my life will always strive for cinema scope, and as the curtain falls on you and me I swear I can hear carnival music drifting in. I follow it out the window, close my eyes and float through people's hearts, trying to memorize all the words tattooed there by time. At last I become one of these blades, making tiny ink-cuts in your memory. All these scars I've seen are so beautiful, I dream of kissing everyone I meet. My heart will be such a work of art, such a conglomeration of instances ingraved into self, it will make you want to laugh or cry. Which of the two, I leave to your discretion.

*

Rebbi said that heartbreak makes for wonderful art. How much richer then, will this have made me?
I can't think of a good way to end this.

Why did I make this thing? Seems a bit pointless, really. Maybe I can have fun with it though.
Later. Now, I should do homework.