Listening.

It's Raining here in Logan.

It's been a long while since we had some weather. And us Logan-ites are loving it.

All I want to do is listen to the rain. In fact, that's almost what I have done for the past little bit. One of my favorite sounds on this earth is rain. As much as I love the party life, I am an old bookie soul at heart. The last few evenings have been pretty quiet around here. 

My home boys have been Hemingway, Socrates, Uncle Walt (Whitman), York Patties, and we can't forget my tunes. Ingrid Michealson is mah girl. Mixed with some classical and the soundtrack of a certain Stephen Hawking movie. 

Ah it's fabulous! You know, there is an inner romantic in all of us, and mine lives next to a rain filled window with a glass of hot chocolate, my lancer blanket, and a book. That's her hiding place. She tries not to leave this place, for it is oh so comfy.

I've been reading, "The Sun Also Rises", by Earnest Hemingway. Beautiful book. I read 4 straight chapters last night, which if you know me, it takes a great deal to make such things happen. 

Last night, one of the characters posed something that I think we all contemplate in life, but that I absolutely love.

"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it."

To which his friend replies,

"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters." 

You know, life feels extremely fast, but at the same time, it's evenings like these that seem endless. It's only 9:25. The night is young. I have great things ahead of me. Tonight, and many nights in the future. 

So, for now, come, step into my office.

It's nothing huge, but it's cozy, and I love it.

These days I have time to keep it clean and tidy. Sir Macintosh is my buddy. He follows me around the apartment, and gives me the essential unlimited access I need as a college student. 

The window is cracked open, and outside, in the courtyard, the evening shenanigans are rampant as usual. We hear blood-curdling screams on a nightly basis here. We usually worry if we don't hear them. 

The lamp post outside points out the pretty water I have speckled over my window. We have the window cracked open. Which is pretty unusual for January. However, Dev was cooking. Usually she burns something. We were very proud of her for not burning anything, but she did steam up THE ENTIRE APARTMENT. So, we cracked open all of the windows, but it feels nice, and I am inclined to leave the window cracked as long as I can. Just listening.

Listening to the rain.

The Screams.

The laughs.

The flirting going on outside.

The cars from the nearby street.

The sirens we often hear.

The bustle of a college town, which never seams to cease. 

The amount of pedestrians may diminish as the sun falls, but the bustle of this town never ends. 

Evening walks are my favorite. I took one tonight. Walked past small houses and apartments full of college kids just like me. The street I was walking on was behind the frats. This week is "RUSH" week, where the frats recruit new members for their "secret" rowdy organizations. I could hear the shouts and historical laughter over the music I was listening to. I took an ear bud out and laughed. 

The frat scene is a very different one, which is a story for another day. Maybe not even another day. That is the stuff of legends. We don't go there. Aside from that extreme example, the buzz of college life is felt around the clock. As I walked the streets, I could feel the buzz. 

The buzz of in depth studying, and mad typing. This buzz which hangs over the entire city all day long. I love walking by the little shacks and dwellings in the dark of the night, and seeing the warm glow from the tiny rooms. The tiny rooms, much like my office, which people squeeze all of their belongings into for semesters at a time. 

I love seeing the christmas lights hanging in the rooms, and shelves and shelves of books and clothes that all look like they are about to shatter. Miraculously, they hold for yet another year, just as they have for many years past.

I can just feel the deep conversations between roommates, ironing out life's problems for the first time with each other. Or the grossly sarcastic conversations, also held between roommates. The endless sessions of Netflix, held between crazy study sessions, and of course the parties that happen in between all of that. I love it. 

Here, is a place where life moves extremely fast, but is only a series of incredibly deep, slow moments, connected in a very speedy fashion. This is the geniuses of college, and why I love it so much.

This is my sanctuary. One of them. I of course also have my designated "spot" in the library, but for nights like this, right here is the place to be. 

It's the my Jess place. I even have my record player up here.

It's to the point where I prefer this room. My room back home is a very large, spacious, basement room. Which is very nice, but it's almost too big. I love my little space. This little space I occupy. This is all I need. My cozy little corner, to study, and distract myself from studying in. Anything more, and I don't really know what to do with myself.

I love my quiet evenings. Now, tomorrow, and over the weekend, my inner demons will be itching to be let out. You can't quite coop jess inside for too long. She gets restless. But her other side, her anti-social book worm, music lover side loves this place. 

We read some Homer in my Great Books class. Homer gave a story of Odysseus finding an olive tree. Now this Olive tree was actually two olive trees. Both Olive trees grew from the same root. Odysseus came to the olive tree, and took a nap in the heart of the tree where both trees joined. 

My Professor took it as such. Both trees represent both sides of the human soul. First, the untamed, wild side, and second, the conservative, orderly side. The idea behind this story is that we find peace when both sides of us are balanced, and find common grounds with each other. Now of course, the human soul is much more complex than merely containing just two sides, but many of our other idiosyncrasies can be placed into one of these two categories. 

In my limited experience, I suppose I have found this to be very true. When we appease both sides, we are pretty happy campers. You can't be cooped up inside studying all day, but you also can't spend all day partying. That's when you run into problems. 

This happy balance between our "selves" brings peace. Maybe not outer peace, but inner peace. I don't think our outer lives will ever truly find peace, because life is crazy, and throws a lot into our face. But if we can reach a fair amount of inner peace, that's when the outer craziness becomes manageable. Certainly not easy, but very manageable, and we deal with our crazy lives one slow, or fast moment at a time, and take joy in the stringing together of these moments.

I'll leave you with some Uncle Walt.

"This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless, 

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best."
 -Walt Whitman.

Emerging from the Pit

New Year's Resolutions. I hate them.

I have probably had the same Resolutions every year since I was about 10. They go as follows.

-Be better at reading my scriptures

-Finish the Book of Mormon

-Brush my teeth better

-Get better grades, (a 4.0)

-Draw a big masterpiece

-Finish a giant cello piece

-Go to (insert cool place that my family already has vacation planned to.)

I mean, don't get me wrong, these are all very noble things. But I kind of just do them every year anyway. Because, well, they are side effects of being human, and this culture I live in. So they just happen. 

And yet every year I end the year disappointed about all of the things I didn't do, and the person I didn't become.

So, I'm done with these resolutions. They never happen, and they just add to lists which I never finish. If you can't tell, I'm not a list person. 

So, what do you do instead? I don't really know. I kind of live every day. And strive towards larger goals. Goals like being the best version of me that I can, and acing a certain class, and finding out more of who I am. I just kind of live my life, and wake up every day with a  resolve to do better, which is also just an effect of being human. So really what I'm saying is that I have no solution. 

But I do know one thing I'm going to do. I'm going to keep a jar, and just fill it with great things that happen to me every day. And at the end of the year, I will have this jar filled with little slips of glory that have slipped into my life. I think that will be super cool. 

But for now, 2014! What a year. Today, I was thinking back, and I realized that pretty much every year of my life since I can remember has been absolutely insane. So, I suppose I have accepted the fact that life is crazy. But I'm glad it's crazy, because when it isn't, I go crazy. We kind of need crazy. It adds a lot of savor to the blandness of life.

Well here we go.

2014. The year I turned 18, and became what society deems an "adult." 

The term is applied more or less loosely in my life, as I still can't even match my socks.

Everyone's senior year of High School is a giant pot of ridiculousness, but I actually managed to learn a lot through all of it. 

The Absolute greatest thing I learned from my Senior year: Well two of them that are sort of wrapped up in each other.

1. You absolutely cannot RELY on everyone around you to make you happy. You pretty much have to just take care of that by yourself. You also CANNOT let unhappy people around you drag you down to their pit of uncoolness. This is a must for anyone to successfully survive life in general.

2. You CANNOT Loose sight of YOU. You can't loose the true YOU. The moment you do that, you become a zombie that is just a zombie following the cesspool of mainstreamness, and that is just the worst thing ever. Live to your fullest, and best, and don't let the other zombies around you change the zombie, (or lack there of) that you were totally meant to be. Stick to yourself, and be yourself, and that will just automatically secure your own happiness. It's amazing how that happens, but it does.

Alright, so there are the lessons from a graduated Senior version of Jess. But that was a different life. Let us hop forward, because High School Jess is kind of lame.

OH MY GOSH! COLLEGE! WE'RE SO OLD AND ADULT AND OH MY GOODNESS NOT EVEN IMPULSIVE OR ANYTHING ANYMORE BECAUSE WE ARE ADULTS AND WE CAN HANDLE OURSELVES. 

Well, I am still a freshman, so don't get too excited.

Alright, here are some things that college taught me.

-The actual definition of true Family, and True Friends. I thought I knew people before college, but I left, and became closer with the people I left behind, and even more blessed with the ones who came into my life. I could not have made it without all of these people in my life.

This is the land of my people. I found my people! And I will probably continue to do so, but I just love the energy, the warmth, the friendship, and the joy that these people bring into my life. It is more than I could have ever asked for, and it is pure divine intervention that I have them all in my life.

I also discovered the true beauty of thriftshops and hipsterism in College. It's really a very beautiful thing.

I learned how to have true adventures. The kind that even Gandalf would be proud of. Oh don't worry, I also found the beauty of a lazy day here and there.

But most of all, I have come to know and experience the unprecedented nature of life. Music will always be a very important part of my life, but not as important as I thought it would be for nearly six years of my life. And do I think I waisted six years of my life in all of my musical activities? Absolutely not. Music was my gateway into this world. It was really what got me out there, and helped me move past the insecurities of a shy little girl, and gave me a "thing." Cello was my "thing." And it makes me extremely happy that for the rest of my life, I will always get random cello posts on Facebook. Because I will always be that cello girl. It exposed me to many things in life that I would have never been able to do or partake in, and most of all, it taught me to work, and that I CAN do hard things.

I will never be that concert cellist, or that "Yo-yo Ma in Female Form" As I have been called by many. Most people keep asking me, "Why?" Well, I can't really bring myself to sell my soul for a cello, and if I do that, it takes all of the fun out of celloing. All of the reasons I fell in love with the instrument are not the same reasons one would become a professional. I will never abandon my music, but I will also not give up everything for it. Because College has also taught me that there are more important things than music. Namely people. And I have a "people first" policy in my life. Which doesn't really work when you are a music major.

If you would have asked me a year ago how I felt about this choice, I would have burst into tears, but right now, I feel absolutely confident, and completely freed by this choice. I guess that's how you know that it's the right choice. I'm excited about this new life, and this new road I have before me. I'm not sure where it will take me, but that's the fun in it.

So, here's to 2015.

There are definitely cool trips, and cooler people on the radar, but off the radar are adventures and experiences I cannot even fathom. It is something I am completely excited for. So here is what I DO want from 2015.

Good People.

Good Times

And of course Good Food.

I'm probably still just a ridiculous stater of the obvious, but this is kind of all that really matters anyway. Making sure all of the other details happen kind of just happens. 

These people, places, and experiences are what I live for, and the real things that keep me going. So that is exactly what my year is all about. And I'm completely okay with that.