red shoes, red skillet

I love you, John Mayer. I friggin love you. Those last minutes (starting from 4:55) are pure musical gold, with the beats and the guitar and Justin Timberlake’s gentle vocals and the repetitive but soaring lyrics. I have the song set to begin at 4:55 because it’s just so beautiful I can never wait the first four minutes for this. I feel like the last minutes could have been a song unto itself, but hey.

    I miss being a kid. I know everyone says that at some point, but I do. Actually, it might just be the things I used to do as a kid. It all boils down to the mindless, timeless (here meaning devoid of a time limit) things you do. Like just before when I was setting the table, I walked into the kitchen afterwards listening to my mom talk about her new mortar and pestle. I half-listened while I held my hands over the steam issuing from the rice cooker, so when I withdrew them, they were all dewy and warm. I used to hover over the steam, too, so my face would become all dewy and my glasses would fog up. I thought it was equivalent to a facial, if you’ll believe me.

Now I’m seventeen and my eighteenth year is drawing to a close (May 18th!) and I live by the minute. When I wake up early enough on school days, I’ll have breakfast while watching the morning news and they also live by the minute. Headlines and the weather are run through at lightning speed and interviews conducted in a way to maximize efficiency. Time, time, time. I know exactly which trains will get me to school on time or make me late, and it’s a matter of two minutes (the 8:32 and 8:34). And on weekends, I have to be up and ready by 8 so my bosses can pick me up and we can get into Manhattan with enough time to go to temple, open shop, and have breakfast.

School is very much about time, also. I don’t remember having periods during elementary school, except for lunch period. At school, every lesson is 41 minutes long, with four minutes in between for passing. 45 minutes. It’s such an easy schedule to follow and so addictive–I’ll check my phone during math and suddenly I’ll be more awake knowing it’s 12:28 and the bell will ring soon.

At work, the hour between 4 and 5 is the longest because that’s usually when the lunch rush slows down and goes out. A lot of the time, my coworkers (the girls) will start sitting around instead of standing around because we know 4 o’clock is when it slows down by a lot and so at that time we relax a little and have conversations.

I wish I could go back to a time when time wasn’t such a big deal (I just finished my college apps, but now I have to tackle the FAFSA and CSS Profile–oh, does it ever end?!). But I keep journeying further and further into a place where the clock is god and I’m almost powerless to stop it.

I won’t have that year where I can traverse the world as I please and do as I please until I graduate college. And summer is only transitory, it is constantly transitory; it comes and goes. Right now, summer seems so very very precious to me, especially this next one.

I just finished watching The Notebook. Well, I finished at 8:30. And I actually started this blog entry at 7:30. I guess all the inspiration strikes just as it’s dinnertime. Anyway, it’s nearing on 9:30 now and I’m typing, trying to finish this entry and make it somewhat coherent.

I’d only seen bits and pieces of The Notebook up until today. Well, two weeks ago I’d asked my brother to download it so I could watch it in its entirety and bless him he did. So I watched today after school and finished after dinner. I could barely see the screen during the last ten minutes because my eyes were so watery, and my nose started running. The film kept going, and I kept tearing up and soon I was actually on my way to crying–really crying, the kind where it’s hard to breathe and you scream a little with each exhale.

It really was that good. It was a wonderful, wonderful story and I just…love it. I love Noah and his tireless devotion to Allie, I love their love. I won’t spoil it for you, I can’t do that.

So the credits started rolling and I shut the screen and went to the bathroom and cried my eyes out. It was like finishing the last Harry Potter book again, I sobbed and bawled for the immense love Noah and Allie shared, and Noah’s constant, absolute devotion to Allie.

Allie was seventeen (somehow, seventeen always looks better when written out) when she met and fell in love with Noah, and I’m seventeen now. This relates to how I miss being free of time constraints. The film really epitomized summer love and how carefree summer can be. I want that, I want a summer love or just an amazing, adventure-filled summer out in the countryside somewhere. The city is no place to be for summer.

The city’s no place to fall in love, too. In the film, Allie and Noah go to a swimming hole, and they have a date in a rowboat on a creek, and they go biking in the countryside. The countryside breathes Love, I think. It inhales it and exhales it and fills itself and nurtures itself with it, with Dedication and Spirit.

I don’t know where to go from here…but I hope this entry makes sense. It all makes sense to me, in my head, but I need to convey it to you. I have to, I feel this great obligation to share what I feel because sometimes these feelings are such huge waves of emotion I need to share it and revel in it with you.

I’m in love with Love. And if you consider my obsessive nature, I think I’ll be singing the praises of The Notebook for a while.

And I do hope my husband builds me a house. Building a house for your wife, or just working and crafting something for her, is so romantic right now.