Untitled.

Life changes so fast, and today I remembered AmeriCorps like it was some dream that had slipped from my mind. That whole year was just a vortex-- a black hole existing in some other universe, a blip in my existence. Strangely, that blip is a highlight in my life and a mysterious memory that I'm afraid will slip away. I want it back. I want to return to the bubble where service is everything, where $30 dollars a week is fine for food, where friendships happen without effort, and where I contently lose track of the outside world.

The sun rises late in the winter and cold stings my knuckles if I forget my mittens on my way up to campus. Class at 7:30 every morning has altered my sleeping schedule and I enjoy having so many great hours in my day.

1. Abuse and Neglect in the Family Context
   
2. Creative Arts
3. Human Nutrition
4. Spanish
5. Family and Community Health
6. Snowshoeing

17 credits later, and a life of studies left behind but picked up agian, and I am back in school. The pursuit of knowledge is expected by many, commended by few. I wonder how many students truly enjoy learning, and how many are simply here to get their degree that will somehow turn them into acceptable, upright, performing members of society. I pine for, and loathe, the day I will finally finish school. Disgust settles in if I find myself wishing to be done because, truthfully, I want to be a student forever and I don't want to be the kind of student that is here because of societal expectations (which, partially, I am). They made me declare a major.

I want to wander, pursue the fanciful fantasies I find myself engulfed in when I numbly stare down the cars as I walk home from school. Fleeting memories of the places and people I left behind tease and torture me, and the eager banter of graduating friends and their grandiose plans (or lack thereof) remind me that I am in Logan, (un)seriously committed to higher education. Ah, Logan. Years and years have been spent in the valley, if I include my childhood from the other side of the hills, and not much has changed. The inversion is worse, the big box stores line main street and the great momandpop shops all struggle to stay alive, but it still has that feel. You know, the feel that any persons hometown has, the one that is comforting, beautiful, and sad. The one that draws you back, tests you with bad habits, bites at your patience, snuffs your efforts to reinvent yourself and tells you that you can't be anything different as long as you're here because everyone will shove you right back into the mold you fit before and then you'll realize it's all mentality and that you're just crazy and you'll begin to hate everyone and wish to be alone in a city with long streets, noise, and lots of people or otherwise in a quiet and barren desert, buzzing with the light of the moon and not neon signs and laying on hot rocks and looking at dry plants and whispering to the wind to carry you away to a place where existing in whatever fashion you choose is the norm and expectations are lost and where people don't hassle you, don't make you cry, don't make you second guess that person you are trying to become because you can be whatever you want without criticism because nobody knows you and nobody feels power over you or you don't feel somebody elses power over you and you only know yourself and that's what counts. That's what you'll do. Or that's what you'll wish to do. And you'll wear boots, or sandals, and you can run naked through the trees with bare skin or beautiful curls sprouting from all parts of your body, or you can sew yourself a dress and knit yourself a shawl and you can razzle dazzle your eyes with makeup and walk into a bar, sit in the back and read while sipping a beer all without question and you can ride a bike or drive a car or lay in one place all day. You could have a baby and no person would know. You could be homeless and hungry without any damns given for you. You could become a legend or a mythical creature a woman of passion and frenzy and impulse. And you could feel more alone than ever and the free-est you've ever felt and all these things could happen at once.

Or you could continue the life you live and imagine everything else.

Who will I be? Will I be the free woman I yearn to be, or the woman my logic guides me to be? Could I run away in a love affair, Could I be a political activist, Could I tiptoe in the vast lands that surround me and simply be? Would I want to be a college graduate pursuing a professional career, Would I want to be a housewife and mother, Would I want to be a woman of craftsmanship and a passion pursuer?

I live love and I love love and I love living and I live my life for love and the ability to live.