although I'm not entirely sure why, I think I needed a hiatus from writing, so I decided to take an internship on an organic farm in the woods. ftr, I study lit and stuff. I'm no agroecologist and have a pathetic lack of green thumb, but for some reason whenever I try to fall asleep at night after long day on the farm, I toss and turn because I know a part of my soul stays there when I leave. there are tree orchards everywhere, soil to saturate with carbon and secrets (I've been informed it's nutritious for the plants), and no limit to free vegitables. today I sat for a fucking hour watching bees pollinate mustard seed flowers. the gal that showed me the ropes told me her name was "river" and I accidentally rolled my eyes and I sad, "like phoenix?" and then she rolled her eyes, and said "I'm just messin, it's actually kelly." Kelly is like the real life version of one of the girls from harvest moon: plaid shirts, braided crowns, chai tea in mason jars,  smells perpetually like orange blossoms, which drives me crazy, because they aren't even in season. I mean she's more than a trope, I'm sorry. everyone is more than a trope. I happen to know that she has thing goin with one of my good friends and that she gives rides to drunk strangers. as she works she sings to the kale crops and the brocoli and the cabbage. the other day, I brought out a stereo and a bunch of cds. I'm going to do this science experiment, grade school style, in which I play different genres of music for different pots of the same plant and measure their growth. currently, I've got some reggae going, some alt rock, some beethoven, some drake, and an old dashboard confessional album which I'm counting as "emo." I've got this scientist thing down pat. there's this other intern named gary, and when I met him, I knew right away what he grew. he asked me if I wanted to buy and I hesitated, because I'm trying to sober up. 

when I got home today, my housemate was pretty stoned and entranced by a live stream of the vancouver aquarium jellyfish cam. will have to try that at some point, maybe in my british canon poetry class where I sit in the back row for two hours and try to not let my thoughts race eachother to tangles.

sometimes. I don't know. sometimes I am baffled when girls at parties ask who I like to read, then proceed to interrupt with "wait, do you like bukowski?" what about me do they associate with a dirty old man? I mean I like bukowski a bit, but he also got a lot wrong with life. god, don't get me started on kerouac. I frankly don't understand how a girl can read kerouac and sincerely like him. 

last week I went to a poetry slam and this guy got up and spat about the lumbersexual aesthetic. I mean hypermasculinity is not a revolutionary topic to write a slam poem about, but what this guy was saying felt like a bear trap clamped around my heart. 

on the way home we somehow witnessed a huge car accident and had to be interviewed by the cops. in my area the police are utterly asinine and I was scared because a lot of people died, but didn't feel like I could admit this to Lexie who was kneeling on the ground, shivering. when they finally let us off, it was 2 am and I was warm with anger and my retinas were blurring. I carried Lexie home and when she curled into me like a leaf, yeah, I felt pretty manly. I tried not to have bad dreams that night., like the one about the boy I saw on the cover of Newsweek when I was in 5th grade. it was from the Bosnian war and his face had been hit by artillery fire, and it was mangled and his eyes were obliterated and his nose was gone, and his mouth was a slant. when I wake up from those dreams, my nose is always burning with that smoke that signals that you're going to cry. how many times I've extracted myself from a girl sleeping beside me and sat on the toilet in the bathroom, breathing hard.

I don't know if I even feel like posting this anymore. I was okay when I started writing and now I'm in a shit mood. like, woe is fucking me. here is your Tinder date, sipping craft beer at an underground bar with sad eyes, a hyperpermasculinety complex and an unrealised dream of living in an isolated woodland shack. congratulations. you're dating the reincarnate of henry david thoroeu.

I'm catching up with some of the journals here and I'm reading about a lot of sadness and feeling sort of weird and guilty for the unreasonable giddiness I've had as of late. I know. it's completely uncharacteristic of me.

coming back to the ocean was like a mouthful of saltwater taffy. I think that love must be saltwater taffy. pretty much everybody has had some. somebody offers it on a day when you have nothing to do, and most likely you'll take it and put it in your mouth.

I found my way back to my aparment for winter term pretty late, around 2am on a tuesday. my housemate was asleep on the couch by our makeshift christmas tree. her face was bisected by the green and red neon and I felt an enormous surge of affection for her. a housemate that likes to sleep near the christmas tree in the first breathes of january. I'm going to try to make her life as easy as possible this term. I know what seasonal depression feels like, and january has the fiercest of bites.

lexie is in one of my classes. I think I saw her first, and I was floored, again, by how unphased she is, by everything and everyone. some would call it a mask, but I suspect she's just very unhurried. she greets everyone in peace. I wonder who else knows what happened to her a few years back. when I finally caught her eye, they were blue and clear and she smiled very very slowly. I swear she is the coolest person in the room. every room.

I thought about the way she looks when she eats spaghetti. I thought of the way she looked when she slid off her pants and she was wearing batgirl undies.

this afternoon, I took a shortcut through the woods and saw james and june sitting on the roof of the science & engineering building. I didn't actually see them, but heard their voices laughing, and their silhouettes gilded by the sunlight. I'm floored by how happy I am to see my friends again and how much I missed trees.

I've been thinking a lot about that mary oliver quote: tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?