Monday, March 31, 2014

Hot Hot Heat.

What it was like
to live alone
in an apartment with no air conditioning
in July:

Taking all of the fans in the whole house
and pointing them at my face while I sleep.

Never doing dishes
or cleaning up anything.

Living in a cave,
because turning the light on makes it hotter.

Eating my weight in otter pops every night.

Then, just before bed,
having s'mores ice cream from the carton
while I read Anne of Green Gables.

Going nuts.



Written Summer 2013.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

No Words: Pizza Hut

Once I wrote a blog post
about how I loved Ray Charles so much
that there were no words
to describe it.

But of course I had to try.

Lately, there have been a lot of things
that my love for
has defied the power of words to describe.

Like Pizza Hut.


There's a Pizza Hut Express
in the UVU food court.
It might be my favorite thing about UVU.

Even though the word express in the title
is misleading,
it's always worth the (long) wait
to get five glorious breadsticks,

each covered in so much parmesan
that you're in danger of choking
if you inhale too deeply.

You always feel a little sick afterward,
but that might be the best part.

For some reason,
I have vivid memories of

drinking water out of plastic tumblers
at birthday parties
at the sit-down, dine-in Pizza Hut
when I was little.

And that might be half the reason
that I love it so much.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Sundance the Kid.

This is Justin.


We could talk about how
it took us a few months to become friends
because I didn't like him at first.

We could also talk about
how devastatingly handsome he is.

But let's not talk about either of those things.

Instead,
let's talk about how
his Instagram is an artistic masterpiece.

Let's talk about how
you are one lucky human
if you ever get the privilege
of hearing him sing along to the radio
while he drives.

Let's talk about how
being around him
makes you remember 
how much you love
to look at the mountains
and how much you love America.

And that you want to be
an inherently kinder person,
like he is.

Not being his friend
sounds like a bad idea now,
doesn't it?

Thursday, March 20, 2014

The First Day of Spring in Pictures.

This last year,
I celebrated
and the summer solstice.

I'm so grateful
that the internet told me this morning
that it was the vernal equinox,
or I would have missed it.

 Wearing sandals
in 30 degree weather
because it's the first day of spring:
Priceless.

2 feet inside the front door
of Walmart.
To everyone obsessed with Frozen:
Let it go. 

 First time filling out a bracket.
I love things
where I get to make
lots of arbitrary choices.
Looks like
I was feeling good
about Villanova
at the time.

 Why, yes.
I'm glad you asked.
This is a cat
holding a genie's lamp
that is emitting flowers.
Looks like that cat
wished for the first day of spring.
(Happy birthday, Alyssa!)

Ran 10 miles straight
for the first time in my life.
Passed this beauty.

 This strawberry
exactly resembles the one
that Cindy Lou Who gets
in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
It would later become
an integral component
of my strawberries and cream.

To bid winter goodbye,
I ceremonially threw out
the dead flowers I've had
for two months.

Now, listen to this:


Congratulations!
It's really
and truly
and officially spring.
I'm so happy I could cry.

Poems.

I just want to clear up
some confusion.

These blog posts
are
definitely
not
poems.

I do not write poems.
I have prose
running through my veins.

I write posts this way
because I have an aversion
A strong aversion.

As in,
I-don't-care-
how-interesting-you-are-
I'm-not-gonna-read-anything-
unless-you-give-me-some-white-space.

But.

Once upon a time,
I used to write poems.
Sometimes.
High school, you know?

Here's one:

Pull the bow smoothly now,
Like a rake in a zen garden.
Curve your chin now,
With the arc of the sugar bowl handle.
Press the strings
Till your fingers bleed,
Like you press the keys of that old typewriter
Just to hear the click-clack of the past.

And play, now! Play!

Concert halls await you now,
With packed houses of bow ties
And fur coats,
Ready to sift you to nothing
With their classically-trained ears.

Oh give up, now! Give up!

Grab that violin by the neck
And make a fiddle of it.
Climb up onto the roof of your house
And play to the birds!
The birds, now!
Who are squawking and cheeping
As they hurry south
For the winter.

A little story about this.

On a whim,
I entered that poem
into a contest for the lit mag
in high school.

And one day,
they read my name
on the morning announcements,
saying that I had won
some prize.

The heads of everyone in homeroom
turned to look at me.

For four years,
I'd done everything I could
to not draw any attention to myself.
And suddenly 
all these people
who didn't necessarily really know
who I was
knew that I wrote poems.

I was mortified.

All day people congratulated me,
and I wanted to slip underneath
the linoleum floor tiles.

By the next day,
everyone had forgotten my fame.

And I never even got a copy
of the magazine
to see my work in print.

So yeah.
I don't write poems.

That year,
I was doing a picture of the day project.
This is the picture from that day.
I captioned it,
"Wednesday, March 25.
Oh, the shame."
Funnily enough,
I am wearing that sweatshirt
as I type this.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

First Kiss.

So,
my first kiss 
occurred in the recent past.


There, I said it.

(We can discuss
what took so long
at another time,
if you really want.)

But really.
There were literally
years of anticipation
leading up to this event.

And in the end,
it turned out just fine.
It was good.
It was nice.

But there's a reason I'm telling you this.

And it's this:
everything has been different since.

I'm a little surprised at myself,
since that sounds very overdramatic
and chick flickish.
And we all know
those are things I hate.

But it's true.

It's like I was let in on a secret
that I hadn't known I was being kept from.

Now I can look at
every song,
every movie,
every story that humans tell,
and say,
"Oh yeah.
Okay.
I see."

Everything makes more sense.

I left behind a type of naivety
that I had always carried with me.

And now I'm more of a person.
There's more to me.

A whole world of relatability
has opened up before me.

Even though
I might have liked to kiss a boy
a bit lot sooner,
I really value
that I was old enough
to appreciate how much
that one little moment
helped me to grow up.

Growing up is so sweet
and so satisfying,
because the way it happens to you
is yours
and yours alone.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

A Moment for the Pensieve.

You know those moments
that you want to bottle
so you can return to them
in your Pensieve?

On my birthday,
I sat on my front lawn
in short sleeves
with no shoes on,

eating my very first
Mountain West Burrito,

listening to
only my favorite music.

And the burrito tasted
like the ingredients were grown
in a lush green field
warmed by the sun
next to a stream of sweet, clear water.

via

And the sun
and the sky,
and the feeling of knowing
it was a special day.
I can't even describe it.

I just know I want to live it
again and again.

Some of the songs
that made the cut.

The Leftovers.

The other day,
I made this chicken & rice dish
for dinner,
something I'd made before
and remembered liking.

But it turned out mediocre this time.

So now I've got
two full tupperwares
of Leftovers
staring me in the face
when I open the fridge.

I want to gag
every time I think about
having to eat them.

What's worse,
they've taken on
human characteristics.

The Leftovers have become
that guy that wants to go out with you
who won't leave you alone.

I try not to look in that corner
when I open the fridge.

I know if the Leftovers see me,
they'll say,
"Rachel,
we want to have lunch with you this week.
When are you free?"

I keep making up excuses.

"Sorry, Leftovers,
my boss is taking me out for lunch today!
Maybe tomorrow."

I've stood up the Leftovers a few times,
leaving them confused in the break room fridge
while I snack on Reese's cups
all day at work.

"Sorry, Leftovers,
I wasn't hungry for lunch today!
Tomorrow for sure."

Worst of all,
I've avoided the Leftovers
to spend time with
Soft Pretzel,
someone I actually like.

"Whoops,
I'm running late.
I need a portable dinner.
Sorry, Leftovers,
it looks like a Soft Pretzel tonight."

This needs to end.
I think I'll ask the Leftovers
to meet me by the trashcan
so we can talk about our relationship.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The Most Beautiful Perfect Day.


we've been having
is too good to be true.

I keep saying to myself,
"This is the most beautiful day
there has ever been."

Today,
I lay in the grass
at Rock Canyon Park
and looked up at the sky
and thought,
"This is the most beautiful perfect day
in the history of beautiful perfect days."

And that made me a little sad.
The Kip in my head said,
"Napoleon, like anyone can even know that."

I can't know that.
I haven't experienced every beautiful perfect day
in the history of time.
I haven't set criteria
and rated them
and come up with a definitive list.

But I feel like today
is the most beautiful perfect day.
Am I wrong?

I thought about it,
and decided
that I'm not wrong.

Every new beautiful perfect day
is the most beautiful perfect day
there's ever been.

And even when the sun sets
on that kind of day,
you can sleep well,
knowing that beautiful perfect days
are never going to stop coming.


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Why to Be My Boyfriend.



I know pictures of food are obnoxious,
but this is
literally
the most exquisite thing
I've ever made.

And there's more where that came from,
ya dig?

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Making the Wrong Choice.

You know when you feel yourself
making the wrong choice?

When you're not doing something
that you really want to do,
just because you're scared.

And you're sitting there,
staring at the wall,
saying,
"I'm making the wrong choice."

And it's not even
too late to change your mind.
You can march back over there
and do what you want to do.

But with each minute that passes,
the window is narrowing.

You try to convince yourself
that it's okay,
that next time you'll make the right choice.

And with each minute that passes,
you become more comfortable
with how it feels
to let yourself down.


My goal
is to rid my life
of those moments.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Quality Human Beings.


Yesterday,
I particularly noticed
the quality of humans
around me.


Like your boss who wakes up at 5 a.m.
to make you all cookies.

Like friends who come bright and early
to pick you up.

Like coworkers who make you want to
give them your clementines
because they are so grateful
when you do.

Like shopping with a friend
who throws things that she tried on
over the fitting room wall to you
and then says,
"That looks better on you."

Like friends
that are still your friends
after years,
and take you on
not-really-dates-that-are-kind-of-dates
and buy you dinner.

Like people you see at a party
that you don't know very well
but who laugh at your jokes.
And you start to think about
wanting to get to know them better.

Like the party host
who walks around
passing out food,
and you can't help but look at her
in awe.

Like people who ask,
"How have you been?"
and you can hear in their voice
how much they want to know the answer.

Like friends who drive you home
every time
and sit in the car with you
outside of your house
because you want to keep talking.

Like roommates
who you love to live with
because they are always so kind
to each other.

It was almost too good.