A little of all of those options. I like to lay around as much as possible, fluctuaing between an insane amount of blankets to none. I prefer to be alone except when I get hungry. I try to stay home, but I've missed midterms for the flu once.

we could eat less meat, especially from farms that don't operate utilizing nature as much as possible. More fresh fruits and vegetables, less processed food, less sugar and salt.

Lay in bed and only wear a bra and pajama pants, eat oranges and mashed potatoes and lots of water.

I haven't had anything published since I was 16. I haven't tried, either.
I think I'm afraid that I will get rejection after rejection and my dreams will be crushed once and for all. But this hanging feeling - this storing up for the "when I'm a better writer" shit - is a fragile stage that I'm afraid I'll just say fuckit and change to a business major. No...never...but I really need to submit things.
I just don't know where.

I haven't really been writing in here recently. Why does everything little take too much work, like eating and going to the bathroom and showering and doing my homework and other things I enjoy? Why do I want to sit and think all day long?

Well, technology is feeding me, clothing me, making my food and water safe, protecting me from diseases, making going to school and work possible, responsible for this language and computer I'm using, and is probably why humans are even alive at all. So you tell me.

“If you live in America the chances are that your next door neighbors believe the following: the inventor of the laws of physics and Programmer of the DNA code decided to enter the uterus of a Jewish virgin, got himself born, then deliberately had himself tortured and executed because he couldn't think of a better way to forgive the theft of an apple, committed at the instigation of a snake. As Creator of the majestically expanding universe, he not only understands relativistic gravity and quantum mechanics but actually designed them. Yet what he really cares about is “sin,” abortion, how often you go to church, and whether gay people should marry. Statistically, the chances are that your neighbors believe all that—and they vote.”

Richard Dawkins, -- In his letter to recommend the magazine Free Inquiry.


"tee-hee"

Dawn S. -- Just now responding to this Richard Dawkins quote.

I started a personal blog for my poetry, www.dsandahlpoetry.blogspot.com

Aaaaaand I'm starting a literary magazine at www.thecoffeehourreview.blogspot.com.

You can check them out!

One of my theist friends and fellow writers has been wanting to talk religion with me for a few months. This Thursday, after an end-of-semester party, we were walking home and the subject came up. We ended up circling around town until 5:30 in the morning talking about it. Very fun!

But one of the things he brought up was that atheists deify the universe. He was wording it in such a way that made be think that he believed atheists saw actual intent in the universe and I told him that wasn't so. I told him the universe it nothing more than like a rock or a molecule of helium or a drop of water. It is just there and whatever happens within it, there still is no "knowing" aspect to it. His response was the "uncaused cause" argument, but I told him I wasn't a physicist and even saying that we don't know where the universe came from or how it exists, doesn't support saying "magic man done it" or that "magic man X done it" or "you shouldn't do Y because magic man X done it."

I am also a determinist. He told me that determinists can't believe that morality exists because if someone does something harmful, there was nothing that person could have possibly done to prevent it, so it isn't that person's fault. I told him he was confusing determinism with fatalism and that determinism simply says that there are so many factors contributing to an event that we couldn't possibly know them all, hence the illusion of free will. His perception of what free will is was something that existed outside of himself, which is probably because of his Roman Catholic upbringing. I had to stress that free will is a product of brains and that it doesn't exist anywhere outside ourselves. Theology aside at this point, what could possibly bestow you with this thing called free will?? He kept wanting to equate atheism with theism and I had to remind him repeatedly that lack of belief and belief are very different. He asked me 3 or 4 times why I "chose" to be atheist and no matter how many times I told him that I didn't choose anything, that my parents are agnostic, that belief isn't the default setting, he just didn't get it. There is no leap that ever is required. He even said there is the same amount of faith because one is right, but that's within his moral/religious sphere. Since I was born, my brain has been sorting "this probably exists" and "this probably doesn't exist" and since I was never taught one way or the other, I didn't have any influences of a god fitting into the "probably exists" category. There just isn't any leap of faith there.

Which brings me to science. He stated that science attempts to prove what doesn't exist. "No!" I said, "You have that completely backwards!" I mean, wow! And science doesn't say a damn thing about God. He was trying to say that scientists are actively trying to prove that God doesn't exist.

The night concluded with him talking about his inquiry into spirituality starting at the age 15 and how if he wasn't Catholic, he'd be a Buddhist. I really don't think those two are similar at all. The gulf between Eastern and Western thought is so vast that I don't see how someone can go from one to the other with ease. Western philosophy is built around the idea of existence as being a presence to something ("Cogito, ergo sum"), while Eastern is built around true existence as being an absense (Nirvana, meditation). That alone is a huge divide. At least he recognized that in Catholicism, the Doctrine is mediated by authorities who control the ideology of the church.

I told him that I respected his inquiries as far as he's taken them and while I don't agree with him on many points and I think he's misinformed, I'm at least glad that he has taken the time to investigate. He isn't the kind of person who would be persuaded to do something outside his moral sphere, ever, to be hateful or violent.

All in all, it was a productive night and I'm glad I talked to him about it.

Flower Children

 

What happened to you,

who refused to tiptoe

through the wax museum

and the rose bush fields

with thorns hanging by every bud,

abandoning juice can curlers

and skirts tiered below the knee?

 

You destroyed the status quo

with posies and rhythms,

with careening kisses

parted by the falling flames

like velvety folds of the closing curtain,

constantly shipped off to one place

or another to die or give birth.

 

Did you retreat for the next wave to hit?

Or are you sitting in a

three-bedroom house in Boise,

aging backwards

amongst cracked plaster

and hammered copper wall hangings,

rewording your own epitaphs

like you have nothing left

to say until posterity?

 

How can you retire your own revolution?

How can you ransom your own child

and leave us with nothing

to look forward to but ugly babies

and booming reports of thunder

ricocheting off our own crumbling walls,

while we watch

with failing eyes?

 

 

--Dawn S******

The American Dream! I Will Call It

We need a thirty-minute sitcom
where the dad on the show
stands up during dinner and
screams that he never
wanted kids and how the hell
did he end up here.
At least he wouldn’t be silent
and there would be
No More Tears
like that shampoo
and there wouldn’t be any more guessing.
The kids wouldn’t grow up to wonder
why their dad never looked them
in the eye
and why his answer was always “you’ll live”
and they cue the laugh track.

The next five minutes
the children pretend
they need a glass of water,
they are dying, sand in their throats,
or they pretend to believe
monsters are hiding in their closets
so they don’t have to be alone,
even for a moment.

Then the last fifteen minutes
are a black TV screen,
the parents slowly breathing
in the dark
with the mom whispering, “Do you still love me?”
knowing that she has no idea what that means,
while the dad controls his breath so he sounds asleep
and thinks about alternate ways the handgun might be used to protect his family.



-Dawn S******


Dairy Farms Don’t Make Good Neighbors

My nose itches,
aching
for the excrement and hay
assault to my nose,
tangy and sweet like that
first bite of the hard,
bittergreen apples growing on trees
more antique than the silver spoon
you found buried in the yard
or the rotted leather yoke made
of the same hide that pushed it.
The air is still here, suspended,
a Polaroid your dad took
before the camera broke in 1992,
a firefly in a jar
you caught with your brothers
one bruised July evening,
more still than the air
in corners of the basement
where the canned tomatoes are stored
glistening like preserved specimens,
except for the occasional whoosh
of a car returning from the bar
or the throaty distant bleat
of a cow in heat that makes
you think of rape victims
screaming for life
when your widow is open to the night.
Those dull meat-on-bone
sounds confuse you
but somehow have to do with
the great circle of life
and what mom plops on your dinner plate.
I entertain these quaint
fantasies, born backward by my brain.
I wish I could run in the rows of corn
ten feet from my bedroom window
when it soared for miles above my head
like it would never, never stop growing.
Like it would never, never be the hour of harvest.
But this time I promise not to hide while you call my name.
This time I won’t wrap my sides
in a blanket under my bed
to watch a dead lightning bug
and wait for my mother to come home.

-Dawn S******

Is is more sad for you when a baby dies or when an old person dies?

I'm torn on the issue because I can see both sides. For a baby, all that potential and hope and promise disappears and that baby never got to experience anything. And for an old person, all the memories, relationships, experiences and knowledge that person has accrued will die with them. For a baby's death, it's like the absence of a presence, and for an old person's death, it's the presence of an absence.
Does that make sense?

So what do you think?

This Catholic-funded group is selling a video "documentary" that claims that humans could go extinct and societies could collapse because we aren't having enough children. Riiiiiiight.

Guess what? There are more homo sapiens alive today than have ever been alive, ever. In 130,000 years of our species. The industrial revolution saw a huge population boom because agriculture could be faster and more productive and goods were cheaper and mass produced. But after 100 years of it, the planet's ecosystems are being destroyed. The population went from under 1 billion to 6.5 billion in less than 200 years. Now that ecosystem is threatening to loose equlibrium and take down our infrastructure and technologies that allow 2% to make enough food for the 98%. THAT's the problem. Not, "our economy wants to grow, so make some babies to make it happen."
If 500 years from now there aren't any French-born French people, who cares? If there isn't a majority of Anglos, who cares? If rich, wasteful societies aren't producing as many kids, that's actually a good thing. Watching the trailer made me upset because these "scientists" or whatever, were bending facts to support their agendas.

http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html

Dr. Mario!! Seriously, pills that disappear when you match up the colors. How cool is that shiz?
I also really liked California Games. Both on regular nintendo.

1. Picture in your room


2. A picture with someone i don't like

well, I don't DISlike him, really

3. Doing something i love

I like putting ears in my mouth

4. A picture on your birthday/ favorite holiday


5. The youngest pic of you in digital form

1 year old!

6. A picture in a favorite outfit


7. Making a silly face


8. With one or both parents



9. A picture from a night i regret

My brother's wedding. Worst wedding/night/event ever.

10. Me truly being myself


11. Most recent picture of me


12. Me being absolutely ridiculous


13. A picture when i was on top of the world


14. A time in your life that's over, but you wish wasn't

Peanut was alive, I'd met the most amazing guy ever, and I didn't hate my roomates yet

15. A time in your life that's over, and happy about it

high school. Bad boyfriends, no friends, horrible loneliness and parental control. Yays.

16. A favorite thing


Peanut! Okay, shes dead, but she's still a thing. What do you want me to put? A sunset? Crochet hook?

17. A time when i was anything but happy

I wasn't asked to be a bridesmaid in my brother's wedding. WTF?

18. A time when i was a different person than i am now

Could that really be the same brain in there?

19. With someone i love


20. How I'd like the world to see me


21. A picture that describes how i spend my day

learning

22. A time when everything was changing

Moving 350 miles away and dumping your 2-year boyfriend does that.

23. A picture that makes my heart hurt


24. A picture that makes my heart smile


25. A picture from the best days of my life

Today I cannot stop thinking about Peanut, my cat who died.
My pity party today started because I'm reading a book about a time traveler who brings a cat back from 1888 and threatens to destroy the space-time continuum. Good book. Anyway...
I keep thinking about the events surrounding her death and how they're basically a product of my own selfishness and negligence. But I'll talk about how she began first.
My dad's uncle owns a farm a few miles from where I grew up. The summer after 7th grade (I was almost 13) we had a family reunion there. I was in the barn because I heard there were some kittens. Well, there were kittens, but they were all kind of half-grown and not very kitteny at this point. Except this little black one hiding behind a piece of plywood leaning against the wall. I'll never forget the first time I saw her. A larger white and orange cat had attacked her and I got the bigger cat off of her. Peanut was the runt and she was starving to death. She was half the size of her siblings and none of the other cats would let her eat when they brought food out once a day. So I picked her up and put her in my sweatshirt pouch where she almost instantly fell asleep and went to the house to get some milk or cat food. I got some chicken in a can, which she ate like crazy. I think her stomach was so distended she had doubled in size. I knew that she was going to die without me. I asked my parents if I could keep her and they said no. I tried to plead and it was "maybe" by nightfall. When I tried to set her down to leave, she wouldn't go and just followed me, so my parents let me take her. I was so excited!!
I was so diligent in caring for her when she was new. We kept her in the bathroom and I put signs all over to watch out for her because I was afraid she would get stepped on and killed. Secretly, I would take her and have her sleep in my bed (she crept down to my feet). She was 8 weeks old and would fit in your palm, hence the name.

Skip ahead six years, sleeps on my bed every night, etc. I call her "my baby." We know each other so well that I can predict what she'll do in situations and she could predict what I'd do. We were really friends who would feed off each other and understand each other's moods.
I bring her to CMU because of all things - yup - I'm afraid that she might die while I am away at college. That's right. My parents let her out and I was worried she'd get hit by a car. So I pay $600 in pet rent to have her.
Then I meet this guy. Russ. I like him a lot, whatever, that's not much a part of the story. The second weekend he visits, I'm making salmon and it's a nice night. I open the windows to let in a quick breeze to vent the fish smell to appease my bitchy roomate. And after hounding the landlords about 6-7 times so far (this is mid October) about screens, they still hadn't given us any. But I just had the windows open for five minutes (one in kitchen, one in living room) and I was standing right in the kitchen. Earlier peanut had come down when she heard voices, but I chased her back upstairs, being mean. That was the last time I saw her. Apparently she had snuck right back down and jumped out the window without my knowing.
But I was having a guy over, holy shit! I wasn't even thinking about her and when it was bedtime, I didn't look for her because I thought she was hiding under the bed, scared of the new person around. By morning the next day, I was really worried but kind of afraid to show it because I had this new guy I liked with me and I was self-conscious. I called for her a little outside and couldn't find her. I looked all through the apartment and she wasn't there.
But then I took a shower and was going to go outside looking. I come downstairs and Russ (new guy) is wearing his jacket and I say, "Oh, did you want to go for a walk to look for her?"
He says, "I feel like a jackass." The most confusing thing to say, ever.
"Did you find her?" I ask. He nods, but that's it.
"So is she okay?"
He shakes his head and says he's sorry.
At this point, I'm waiting for it to be a joke, but I know it's not. I know she's dead. I just said "No, no, no" a lot and started instantly bawling.
Someone had hit her in the parking lot. I didn't go outside, but Russ did. While I sat crying, he put her body in a box and set it aside, then got a big kettle of water and washed away her blood with it so I wouldn't have to see it. He doesn't know this, but I went upstairs and watched him do that from my bedroom window with an eerie calm. It was kind of like watching someone mistake your car for theirs and try to open the door. I had so much love and hate and sadness and joy that weekend. I was gaining a boyfriend and losing my cat I loved. It was a weird mix of feelings and I keep feeling like I traded my cat for him. That she wouldn't have died if he wasn't around.
What bothers me the most is how terribly mean I was to her before she died. I had just gotten a new comforter and she would sharpen her claws on it ALL the time and I would hit her because she was ruining my things. She would also sharpen her claws on my roomate's couch and it was pissing her off, so I was stressing about that too. The first night, she would not stop meowing and I was insanely tired and just like super-abusive mom to her. I tried getting her to sleep with me, but she would only meow by the door. I told her "no" a lot and spanked her and shook her and held her mouth shut and put stuff in front of the door and finally put her in her carrying pet cage. That's so freaking mean. I feel like an animal for doing that to her, but I had just moved 350 miles away, broken up with my boyfriend and moved in with strangers I had to not piss off because i would be stuck with them for 9 months. That's the worst part about all of this is how she must have felt so abused and scared and I just responded by being a maniac. Those was some pretty shitty last days of her life.
So that's my story and that's why I've been sitting here crying for the past three hours.
I also have dreams all the time where she is still alive and I just find her nearly dead somewhere and it's because I haven't fed her or given her water forever, or something similar. I always try to help her and it's always too late.
I think I'm especially sad today because a year and a half later, I'm finally realizing that she's dead and gone forever. I have this irrational thought that she's lost and will come back because of my dreams, that she's not really dead and buried. I also keep picturing the pool of blood that came out of her mouth because her fractured ribs pierced her lungs, or the splatter marks left in the parking lot I had to cross every day from when she was ran over. What was her last thought as she lie there bleeding to death in the early Saturday morning?
( peanut pictures )

Sorry, couldn't but my last name on these. Wouldn't want any creepers!


“Brain Waves”

Behind a sea
as glass-green as cats’ eyes

The familiarity
behind the surprise

The actuality
of those sinuous hills

The depth
in that empty cavern

And the vein
of fondling trees
with buds and leaves

that retrieve                   criss-           the
and perceive and          cross           landscape

But I was a traveler,
  Evolved of the same nature,
    Rendered and ruined by its mystery.


In place of a howl
By Dawn S.


fantastic plastic
toddler bottle
two-track swizzlestick
bric-a-brack
stained fabric cat,
protective translucent cap
capricious snack

wounded mourning door
whispering rotten leaves
murmuring river road
leveled and leavened
by the warming ground
Sighing


Domestic
By Dawn S.

If you wanted me
                               to lie
and spare you pain,
                               I wouldn’t.

I don’t
pussy
foot
or beat
around the bush.

I’m nobody’s
picket fence.
I’m not
a warm fireplace.

I discovered something fun. If you want to waste a few seconds and laugj...
( click me )

Cleanest dreads this side of the Mississippi, which is the East side. Good ol' Michigan.
I deep cleaned those buggers and there wasn't even shit in the water. I wash twice a week on average.
( dreads in a bowl )

I also drank some homebrewed mead tonight and ate some sweet&sour chicken I made, while wearing a sweater I crocheted! Homemade stuff FTW!! That mead was pretty potent.
( I maded things )