I was sitting on the couch in front of the television, making little clay angels for a few of my friends, when Obama was elected.  I was - and am - excited.  Our first African-American president.  More than that, a president who is bringing hope to America.  Our country is nearing darker shadows, but he feels like a light to guide us.  It's not only historical.  It's...just inspirational.  And yet, during his acceptance speech, while the camera scanned across all those crying, joyful faces, the excitement I felt could only dissolve into fear. 

Because clay angels can't fix problems.  Because anybody could smash them against a brick wall. 

Because hard working men and women, who have done nothing less than the very best they can, leave in the morning for work and come home without a job. 

Because a person like Ed McMichael, the Tuba Man, who was spirited and brimming over with love for others, could lose his life to stupid kids in a single act of unprovoked violence.

Because some people aren't ready for hope - they aren't ready for change.  Some people aren't willing to move forward.  And a gun can easily find its way into an emotionally charged crowd.

I'm terrified.  The world isn't like the college campus, and it's not like the movies.  The good guy doesn't always win, and when it rains, you're less likely to see a rainbow than you are to see more clouds.

I feel...so pessimistic, but I fear that pessimism is too close to realism, these days.  I'm worried and scared, because I've lost my trust in strangers.  It seems like the bad things always overcome the good ones. 

It doesn't matter how good you are, or what you spend your life doing.  It doesn't matter if you are a father who supports your family, working so hard to make the next pay check and donate to the church and have a decent Christmas.  It doesn't matter if you are an old man who refuses to lose his faith and love for the world, spreading smiles across the city with your music and friendly personality.  It doesn't matter if you are the president elect of the most powerful country in the world, full of this great potential to turn all these problems around.  It doesn't matter if you are twenty-two-year-old romantic, wishing little clay angels could help your friends when they most need it, and even when they don't. 
None of that matters to the people who can take it all away.

And what are we left to do then?  I suppose we need to make a difference, no matter how small, while we are here.  Hope, and pray.  There aren't any blue skies that I can see, and faith is the only umbrella.

If you take away the biggest pieces, the more powerful and abstract ideas of life, like friendship, family, faith, spirit, and love...there are only two parts left of me. 

Music and art.  Two things so simple and yet so complex, two things that live inside of me and still continue to struggle with one another, inside and out - still continue to struggle with me.  But both are too precious to live without.  Music and art, together, make up what I still cling to as my dream.  They let me explore those abstract things.  They help me to see what is outside of the practice room - what's beyond the studio walls.  They open my eyes and mind and heart to friendship.  To love.  To existance. 

But, while I cannot live without one or the other, while I'm only a faint echo of their very being, I'm fighting, too.  I'm fighting everything else I am, everything else music and art teach me...just to hold on.  I'm fighting myself, my personality, my beliefs.  I'm fighting the abstract. 

An artist is always striving to think outside the box, while a musician is challenged to play off the page.  But I'm having to break outside of who I am, only to become the person I'm meant to be. 

Does that make sense?  It doesn't to me.  I knew it would be hard.  Is it worth it?  I don't think that's a question I'll ever be able to answer.  I don't think I have a choice.   

There's something in the air.  The direction in which the wind is blowing, the way it playfully tousles aromas that can't have names.  I want to touch it, to capture it, to keep it in a bottle.  But there is no capturing the wind.  Just like the bubbles....

Just like friendship and love.

I've always wanted to hold the things that can't be held.  And yet...it's those things that are worth holding on to. 

Six o'clock came right on schedule this morning.  My alarm clock went off, its sound intertwining with my dreams, and when I finally managed to untangle one from the other, I realized grudgingly that it was just another Monday.  Today is, in fact, the third Monday so far this week.  That's how it works in college.  Every day is a Monday, until Friday kicks in.

This Monday, however, greeted the Treasure Valley with a storm.  The clouds that had been looming above the city yesterday, growing heavier and heavier with their own depression, finally broke open, tears falling angrily on my freshly washed car.  That was okay, though, because I loved the way my car glowed in the wet.  And from inside my glowing, tear-stained car, I could enjoy the raindrops rhythmically splattering against the moon roof, changing glass to a silvery pool of water.  I could witness the game of tag that Lightening and Thunder were playing high above.  I could see the endless expanse of gray, and could round corners to discover and rediscover the rising sun, red and blotched, as though it was slowly bleeding through the dense fabrics of the sky.  I rolled down the window, stretching out my arm and catching a puddle in my palm, and wondered whether or not I was at the end of a rainbow.  Just as the rain came to its ending cadence, I reached campus.  It was drenched in quiet.  It seemed as though the world slept in, and I had somehow missed the memo.  Upon entering the classroom, my worries were all but confirmed.  I had never been the first person there, and so I switched on the light, which seemed brighter than normal, leaving the outside darker than normal, sat down, and started writing.  It was possible that…no, it was more likely than possible, that my classmates were off on their daily quest for caffeine, a venture I challenged myself not to take.  Not this morning.  Not this third Monday of the week.  They probably hadn't taken that challenge, and, more probably, had taken the gloomy weather as an invitation to visit coffee shops and vending machines with even more enthusiasm than on other, sunnier Mondays. 

And then there they were, filtering in slowly, sleepy like me and everyone else, each with something different clutched tightly in their hands.  Energy drinks, cans of coca-cola, bottles of fuze, fancy cardboard cups of triple-shot no fat extra hot caramel macchiatos – hold the cream.  Yes, all of them, with their choices of sunshine in liquid form.

My sunshine was outside, beginning to appear in pockets, sparkling through the leaves of the tree just out the window.  I watched the people passing by, my last resort to staying awake.  First, glassy premonitions reflecting in the windows of the building across the way.  Then, the causes of the reflections, some strolling, listening to iPods, others whistling by on bicycles, still others sipping their coffee clumsily as they quickly walked, as though their lives lay on the face of a clock.  Then, the pockets of sunshine faded away, leaving my simple entertainment to walk again through the rain.  No – not rain.  Sprinklers.

I want to help the homeless man on the corner. 

I want to ride my bike, flying and free, through the middle of the desert road.

I want to paint a picture, for Sarah.

I want to say hello to strangers on the streets.

I want to make something beautiful.

I want for good things to come to good people.

I want my friends and family to understand how much I love them.

I want to watch the stars sparkle above the ocean.

I want to listen to music, and play music, and live through music.

I want to want and be wanted, need and be needed, love and be loved.

I want to be there for you.

I want to make a difference. 

So maybe I'll stop wanting, and start doing.

Sometimes it feels like it's not enough.  You're not enough.  I'm not enough.

Sometimes it feels like no matter what it is, what you do, what I do...it's not enough. 

There's not enough of it.  Not enough of you or me to spread around.  Everybody wants to be satisfied, and it's always your fault and my fault when they are not.  You cannot satisfy everybody.  I cannot satisfy everybody.  Not all the time.  To do that, we lose satisfaction in it.  We lose satisfation in you and in me.  In ourselves.   

To be a good friend, to be a good daughter and sister and Brother, to be a good student, musician, artist, and lover...

How can we fulfill every expectation, every want and need?

You can't.

I can't.

Sometimes it feels like the beauty of the world, of God, of others, is not enough. 

Sometimes we just need to feel the beauty of ourselves, our person, our heart and soul.  Feel the beauty of our purpose, our worth, our love.  Feel the beauty of it.  Of you.  Of me.

And that would be enough.   

I am on the eleventh problem of the next-to-last math assignment.  I've been there for thirty-two minutes.  And I can't do it.  It's not that I don't understand how to do it - I just can't make myself do it. 

It's been like that a lot lately, and by "it" I mean everything.  Not just math.  Art, music, relationships, life... everything melted into a stagnant puddle.  I just need to step out of it. 

Little distractions help.  Bike rides and service projects, open windows and instant messenger.  Sometimes I can turn the distractions into something productive.  Sometimes I can't. 

This school year has taught me a lot of things, not so much in the classroom as out.  Some things I would rather have not learned.  Some things I would rather have not felt.  But I did and I did, and I hope I can hold on to them, even if it hurts. 

It might be nice when summer begins and the puddle dries up.  Then again, it might be a wet season.  Either way, I like umbrellas. 

It's the seventh day of a new beginning.  It has been difficult to realize it as something clean and fresh, just as it is sometimes hard to think of an early, dark, and tired morning as a beginning to the day that lies ahead.  But it is.  It's another year of life, and perhaps, death.  It's another year of hopes, and possibly, disappointments.  It's another clean canvas, just as the untouched snow that blanketed the grounds this morning, this very new beginning. 

I don't know what's coming this year, but I know that I can make of it what I wish.  I know what I want to do and who I want to be.  And maybe all my dreams of becoming somebody else aren't enough to change who I really am, but I know I have to have hope.  I know I have to recognize that every day - not just January 1st - is a new beginning.  I have, and we all have, a second chance on Tuesday.  A third chance on Wednesday.  No matter where we are, or how many chances we've taken, we can make the best of something - of ourselves. 

Happy New Year.  Happy New Day.  Happy New You. 

I'm at a dead-end.  It's a beautiful dead-end.  The desert is stretched out before me, miles and miles of blank canvas.  The sun is sinking slowly behind the horizon and the stars are shining brilliantly above.  The music is everywhere - in the wind, in the mountains...it's coming from inside of me, it's coming from my heart, and I feel like exploding from the magic and the love and the unbelievable warmth.  I want to dance.  I want to create. 

But I can't. 

I'm trapped - completely trapped.  The road has ended for the moment.  It's not that I only look to the future or reminisce in the past.  I live in the present, but I'm stuck in my present.  I want to touch the stars and dance through the desert.  I want to drive away, far far away, on a road with no destination. 

Maybe.  Someday. 

There is something wrong in a world where thirty-three degrees fahrenheit equals zero degrees celsius, and yet thirty degrees fahrenheit still equals zero degrees celsius.  Isn't life hard enough without that 9/5's nonsense going on?  What is that?  Isn't life hard enough without grapes being berries and strawberries not being berries?  And what about oranges?  Why aren't bananas called yellows?  The world is one giant web of lies.  VeggieTales can't help us out - it's just another mad conspiracy to brainwash us while we're still young.  Singing tomatoes aren't vegetables, just as strawberries are neither made of straw or even berries.  Here they are, singing happily about Yoda, when really shouldn't they be singing about the screams of the vegetables, watching as their skin is being peeled?  No, nothing is all right.  It is utter chaos.  The only good left in this world is Kermit and his little fella, cute, yellow, and chubby. 

It's the end of the world as we know it.

And I feel fine.    

It's becoming more and more difficult to hear the alarm clock each morning.  It goes off somewhere between three and six, depending on the amount of homework I still have to do, or should have done the night before.  On the weekends I get to sleep in until about seven, and that's nice. 

But I'm tired.  Of almost everything.  Mostly of math, which will undoubtedly be my downfall.  I'm tired of disappointing people, and tired of feeling lonely, and tired of being busy constantly.  I'm tired of people hurting people - tired of people not respecting other people and not respecting themselves.  I'm tired of my own complaining, so I'm sure you are too. 

On the up side, I have cute pajamas.

I also love music. 

It's dark outside.  Inside, too.  There's a crazy nick at'nite show on the television.  In the silence that is enveloping the rest of the house, it seems incredibly loud, even though I know it's not.  I would turn down the volume, but I can't find the remote control. 

Dad's home from Germany.  I'm glad he's back, but it doesn't feel much different somehow.  He put a beautiful clock together - one he bought in Black Forest - hung it on the wall, and went to bed without saying goodnight. 

So here I am.  I should be doing homework.  I know I'm tired, but I don't feel especially tired right this minute.  I suppose I will go to bed though, since it will most likely be the last time I get the opportunity this weekend.  Besides, my battery is almost dead, and the new and exquisite cuckoo clock is destined to sing again soon.