A Reprise

That I won't disappear in the water. That I won't always be swimming against the tide." --Darren Hayes, Taken by the Sea There is no division between his words and my feelings. In this life I have met the same people over and over again. I confront the same forces again and again. When I was a child I had a parakeet who was beautiful and precious to me. She died in an accident that was my fault. Really since then I have never known such an intensity of grief and remorse. I truly, yearned to die when I had killed her. My feelings were so immense that there was almost no way that something couldn't be done about it. A few years later my stepfather brought home another bird, a cockatiel, a male, really, but when I held him and spent time in his presence, I knew he was the same bird that she had been. It was actually her. And I know it just as well now as I did then, years ago. And whenever I have wanted something, so dearly, it has come, and I know there is no w...

I'm not getting smarter or "above" blogging or anything. In one sense my standards are too high, and I avoid posting when I am in a perfectionist mood. I fought that mood this weekend and won. I am sloppy, messy, irresponsible Amanda with the chores not done and I'm even procrastinating getting home. If I am perfectionist I'm not open-minded, and I feel shielded from the sun, always a little cold in shadow. I know in order for me to live I have to let go of keeping it all together. I just try to keep it most together, but my focus is not on cleanliness or order. My focus is on my dreams and my passions. My dreams and my passions for Southeast Asia are so intense. Last night I lay awake picturing the sun-baked pagodas lying in ruin in Pagan, Burma, and I could feel warm wind on my face and this expanse where I was surrounded by ruins untended, and there was no one but me just lying there in the grass. I pictured the sky as warm and sunny, but with deep clouds t...

Tea Embassy, Austin, TX , a photo by ladyhildegarde on Flickr. One of my favorite places was featured in this month's Tea Time.

Last night I could not sleep. I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen. Jenny tried to follow me, but she was plainly confused. Eating something at 2 a.m. is not really part of our routine. I ate, and I drank a cup of tea, and I was really awake. I went and read Shirley  for two hours. I realized I am coming really close to the end now. I have enjoyed this novel so thoroughly, but to tell the truth, I am really anxious to start some other novels soon. I have such a long list. Lately I picked up my old American Romantics textbook and became fascinated with James Fenimore Cooper. And I also realized I need to re-read all of the Poe. Shirley  is captivating. Bronte's text thrums with passion. It is not for everyone. Sometimes I wish she would have left off the last couple of sentences explicating a point. Speaking of Bronte! I found my hardbound copy of Jane Eyre . There was only one of them, and it was over a week ago. I was going to buy it today, but I got out of...

I have changed my journal template into something so cold and professional that I really cannot even bear to look at it. I would like to return to making my own journal layout from scratch, but there are some new style technologies I need to catch up to, and this isn't the point in time for me to be scratching at web code, though I have been doing good about learning other things. Actually, I have had a vision about combining this journal with The Magic Circle . That journal is still in my old layout style and cannot take advantage of any  new web features, but I feel like these journals are sisters, and actually, there is a third sister, that is becoming so real and so essential to my self-expression I am thinking of bringing that journal into it too. They need to be three separate journals, but I would like to see them joined, affiliated, or even on the same page in two (or three) columns. Is that mad? But Blogger took away FTP posting, so combining these journals on a sepa...

My heart yearns, and it reaches. I find myself in a place where the only truth is silence. I feel like I have ascended upward into another room, and this room is empty because I have not yet populated it with thoughts and feelings. But I could not stay in the previous room any longer. Something made me move. It would be wrong to say it is ambition, or that this room is better than my previous room. It is more like the other room is just not mine any more. It is an old thing, a memory. I yearn and reach toward life, and in the old room there is not life. I feel like I spoke of this before, but I don't have time to go through this journal and find it. I have a feeling I said it a couple of years ago. Maybe more, maybe less. Time is frightening. It's grave. I will come across something perhaps I have not updated for a year, even though it will seem like mere weeks. Or two or three years will pass. Today is gray and lonely. Somehow I am not hurt by it though. Somehow I feel...

With infinite care Oriente leafed through the old diary, which had been lovingly hand-sewn with thread. Pearls or some sort of bead had adorned the cover, but they had long since been lost. She laid aside the journal with a strange feeling that transcended the clinical atmosphere of her work room. It seemed profane to touch the journal with white cotton gloves or view it beneath a dim fluorescent light. She had never believed in ghosts or considered their existence in a meaningful sense. But she felt that someone was speaking to her now. She was a stranger to love or friendship. Those sentiments, she felt, belonged to a gentler time, like the time when this girl had lived. This was a fast-paced era, not a time to write one's heart into a journal or literally fade away from love. And this was not a time of friendship. She considered herself a listener of friendship. She had overheard many friendships, and she had been invited into friendships with other women. When she looke...