Tomorrow morning, my house is undergoing surgery. At least, that's how I've been thinking of it--our abode has a disease, and people much smarter than us (we? correct me) are going to literally cut it out and make it good again.

Well, really, there's apparently a lot of moldnastiness growing in the wall that joins my bedroom to the bathroom. Guys with tools will be here at a(n?) hour that I would normally like to be waking up.

Anyways. Therefore, somehow all this means that my bedroom gets a new paint job and carpet. Yay me. I've spent a good part of the day deconstructing my room, bit by bit, and I have learned something about myself. I am a pack rat. Of memories, mostly. Pinned to my bulletin board were:

• remnants of homecoming/prom corsages. I like dead flowers, apparently. 
• tickets from operas, plays, and even movies I deemed important at the time (Pirates 3, Bourne Ultimatum, Spiderman, and so forth.)
• a collection of junk with my name on it. Call it narcicissim narcissism, but my "Antonia" (in case you didn't know), is difficult to find on bicycle license plates and gift-shop coffee mugs. So, I keep most things that bear my name: keychains, bracelets,  even name tags from Student Leadership University (uh, 2005?) and Baylor orientation and Line Camp. You know too much, this is embarrassing.
• pictures: my sister when she was yet a tiny imp, New Mexico churches and sunsets, and high school dances and homecoming traditions. My favorite of the latter might be one of Joshua, Karon, and Taylor in full wacky-tacky apparel karate-chopping the air. 
• Various fortune cookie fortunes that have meant something to me at some point. My favorite might be: "you create your own stage. The audience is waiting." It sounds a lot like something my dear friend and teacher Angela told me--about taking the stage, stepping into the spotlight and so forth, and fully committing to the character that I am supposed to play in this story. [She was my theater teacher, so I rolled with it :) ]
• Posters and other memorabilia from The Visitors, the play that Alia, Joshua, and I wrote, directed, and produced. For some reason, I feel the need to keep everything--I still have a full box of flyers. Not just one or two, but the whole box of 'em.
• I should also note that if you have written me a note or a birthday card in the last five years or so, I probably still have it. They remind me of how freakin blessed I am to have the friends and family that I have.

There is something to be said about a friend that will leave you alone in her house, trusting you to feed the cat and lock the door when you leave. "Stay as long as you need to," she says.

I am in awe of friendship. I am sitting in a house of long-standing friendship, thinking, "how did I get here? and why haven't these people kicked me out yet?" Alia and I have, in a sense, shared our lives for several years now, so our friendship is like wearing a pair of broken-in jeans; they just fit well. I don't know if I am more "myself" with her than with most people, because I don't know what that means, but it comes pretty close. And then Angela. Little did I know that the woman who gushed about Donald Miller at a state speech meet competition would also live in this long-standingfriendshiphouse. From theater teacher to mentor to friend, from Montana and back again, I've discovered that this lady's my twin, so I need to pay attention. I have bared all before them, and have borne a lot with them. And they still love me a lot.

And these are only two of my friends. There are certainly more I could write about. How did I get so lucky?


 

From musical stars to Baylor professors, from getting arrested to owning a menagerie, for the past week, I've been having really nutso dreams, full of random characters and events.  And I don't know why. I've never really been able to remember my dreams, especially in the minute detail of late. So yes, this is blog-worthy. Really, this post started out as me just recording these rare occurrences. But why not share, especially since it's summer, and most of us are bored already? Maybe some Joseph with a technicolor dreamcoat reads my blog and will tell me about years of plenty to come.

1. Gettin' a haircut TODAY. SO excited.
2. Alia and Erica are going to be back today and tomorrow! I miss them. Maggie also needs to get back from Africa.
3. I finished the 5th season of Bones yesterday...I am up-to-date. Please do not do the math between how many episodes there are in the whole series and how many days I have been home. It's sad. But I'm coming back to the surface of real life again.
4. Camp starts REALLY soon. I am simultaneously freaked out of my mind that I will be in charge of children again, and psyched that I get to have fun with them all summer. Plus, $$ is always good. I'm runnin dry.
5. IT IS OFFICIALLY MY BIRTHDAY MONTH!! I am going to be 20. Two decades old. I can barely handle that information. But here's a pretty countdown:


Countdown Clocks, Birthday Countdowns at WishAFriend.com

Hey look! What is this I see? A blogpost! A real, live blogpost!
I know, it's been over a month....but it's been a really full month. Basically, everything after Spring Break was mostly a blur.
One change that is stands out from the blur is that I officially changed my major to Great Texts [...of the Western Tradition.] GTX, if you will. (I supplied the link for clarification...though descriptions of the program remain ambiguous.)
And I'm tentatively minoring in creative writing...we'll see how that goes. If nothing else, I always said I wanted to take a poetry class at some point in college--which is what I will be doing in the fall.

[I should stop here and apologize for all this scattered, stream-of-consciousness. It's late.]

Anyways--closedown of North Russell was an added part of the blur. What I thought would feel longer ended up passing by superfast--I didn't have a chance to say goodbyes to most of my residents, and I wasn't able to relax after the stress of finals, though I was behind on packing, etc.
The most surreal day might have been Thursday morning, when I realized that all of my girls had left. As I staggered into the oh-so-community bathroom, I realized that the last time these rooms were completely empty was at the very start of the year--back when I only had numbers before I had names, before the names turned into faces, and the faces into stories. The evolution from the first to the last has been incredible to see, and I'll never forget the relationships built over tie-dye, sharing meals, and making oreo balls.
I don't mean to romanticize about this year as a CL--I made a lot of mistakes (ask any 2D resident, or Lisa and Leslie, for that matter) and the CL life certainly comes with its woes. I still have so much to learn. And really, I've discovered that most of that learning is trial-and-error. It was truly by the grace of God that the atmosphere on my hall was what it was...which was pretty wonderful :)


Next order of business: I am newly obsessed with the TV show Bones. No, really, it's bad. I even looked up intro to anthropology courses on the Baylor course listings site. I'm addicted.


Last but not least: in order to be up-to-date with the material I'll be jumping into this fall, I'll be reading roughly 2,500 pages of context, as prescribed by my GTX friend, Preston. From saints to Dante to Dr. Murray, this booklist seems to cover it all. Mostly I mention it for accountability purposes--though no one in the blogosphere will probably hold me to it, knowing that the commitment is there on the screen will be enough for me =e. 2,500 pages, 11 books in 12-ish weeks. Here we go.

Funnily enough, I started writing this post in the hopes describing the nostalgia I felt today upon discovering a box full of high school stuff. Another day.

As I wait for my coffee to brew (yes, at 1am), a Billy Collins poem comes to mind (surprised?). So, before I go back to revamping this poorly-written essay on bureacracy bureaucracy and labor unions...I leave you with dear Billy's poem which so accurately describes the essence of the scene in which I inhabit, and expresses how I feel tonight.

except I think that I would come back as a Baylor squirrel.



Pavilion

I sit in the study,
simple walls, complicated design of carpet.
I read a book with a bright red cover.
I write something down

I look up a fact in an encyclopedia
and copy it onto a card,
the lamp burning,
a painting leaning against a chair.

I find a word in a dictionary
and copy it onto the back of an envelope,
the piano heavy in the corner,
the fan turning slowly overhead.

Such is life in this pavilion
of paper and ink
where a cup of tea is cooling,
where the windows darken then fill with light.

But I have had enough of it--
the slope of the paper on the desk,
books on the floor like water lilies,
the jasmine drying out in its pot.

In fact, I am ready to die,
ready to return as something else,
like a brown-and-white dog
with his head always out the car window.

Then maybe, if you were still around,
walking along a street in linen clothes,
a portfolio under your arm,
you would see me go by,

my eyes closed,
wet nose twitching,
my ears blown back,
a kind of smile on my long dark lips.

I have started and stopped writing this post about half a dozen times.

mostly because my thoughts are scattered and somehow inconclusive. [*disclaimer*] But yet, here I am.

This week was not a good one for me. From freakouts about the future to car conundrums to money mismanagement....to just a general sense of being at odds with everything around me. Not to mention a general hopelessness that results from attending Natural World (we did a breakout on world hunger this time). All of this spiraled into a big fat glum that happened on Thursday night, the kind that you don't want to remember, the kind that you don't typically blog about.

But this poem was on my mind all last week, and I've shared it before, not because of the form or diction, but because of this honesty and identification that strikes a chord in me: