hi my name is jessie, and i'm a choco-holic.

mm. apple slices and nutella. generic nutella, actually: sainsbury's belgian milk chocolate spread, to be exact. you know you've made it when you are in a place that has generic nutella. english boys are so frustrating. they never say hello when you pass them on the sidewalk, er, pavement. unless they're complete manwhores, but that's probably what allows them to become manwhores, isn't it? that little thing girls like to call acknowledgment.

i'm not hitting on you, for crying out loud. it's called being friendly. get over yourself already.

humph.

the british are so backwards that way sometimes; they have absolutely no concept of physical personal space, but an overdeveloped emotional one. i always get really grouchy after going to the grocery store because everyone and their mother bumps into you and then walks away like nothing happened. i don't understand. i want the south back.

i'm only joking about that last part. and now that my rant is over i feel much better.

my keys are sticky with apple juice. but that means that i have an apple in my stomach, which makes me happy. not to mention the nutella (again). obviously that's a great source of delight in my life . . .

i have 1 hour and 41 mintues until my next lecture, approximately, and i've not a thing to do until then. i could clean my room, i suppose, but i don't really feel like it right now. give me an hour and then i will.

i bought my christmas ball ticket today - i'm having very much fun putting my outfit together, seeing as how the whole thing is going to cost me about 25 pounds. dress, shoes, accessories included. that's very exciting, when you think about how much i could've spent on a formal dress. it just makes getting dressed up *that* much more fun because you don't feel so frivolous.

i'm going to london tomorrow! to see katie jane and company - it will be so good to see familiar faces, i think. and hear voices that i know well. and to go out with my friends! my real, honest to goodness know who i am and have seen me at my worst friends. oh, i can't wait. i might cry. i'm going to try not to, but i probably will.

that makes my time here sound so emotionally trying, doesn't it? it hasn't been - i'm emotionally connected here and i do not feel any troubling void when it comes to support. however. one is silver . . .

right. i'm going to go play. i'm not sure what that entails, exactly, but i'm going to go figure it out because i can't think of anything else to type on about.

catch y'all later.

even you, o princess . . .

yes, i really am listening to the bbc concert orchestra's version of nessun dorma on repeat in my dorm room.

it's beautiful, and i need it. so there.

not that today was particularly
bad . . . in fact, to say that today was bad at all would be to mis-speak. it was quite lovely - megan, hannah and i went to manchester for the day. and we went shopping and i bought a shirt (for a pound!) and a dress for the christmas ball (for five pounds!!!!!), and the coolest, most wonderful pair of boots in the world.

and then we rode the ferris wheel together and went to the cathedral afterwards.

let me tell you about the cathedral: we walked in as the choir was practicing, and they sounded so beautiful. their voices filled the room to the ceiling and worked their way into the crevices of the dark-wooded carvings on the walls and into the patterns in the stained glass windows, and it brought tears to my eyes. i just sat on the bench for awhile in the middle of this huge church with absolutely breathtaking music filling me. every time i looked up at the ceiling i felt it flow out, you know? i felt me flowing up and out.

so refreshing.

cleansing, too. you could say i had a moment : )

nessun dorma
nessun dorma
tu pure, o principessa
nella tua fredda stanza
guardi le stelle che tremano d'amore, e di speranza . . .

today has been a day of things that fit together, if you know what i mean. little things, sure, but things nonetheless.

'night, y'all.

it's all about the eyebrows

well, my door has been left open, but i'm in bed and i really don't feel like getting up to close it, so i'm just going to suck it up and blog with the door open.

yes, it makes a difference.

it's hard to process when people are watching. or could potentially watch. or could potentially think about watching. bah, i'm such an introvert.

i've eaten all of the pistachios out of the trail mix megan and i made, and i can't resign myself to eat the rest of it if it doesn't have pistachios in it. but if i buy more then i'll just eat the pistachios again and i'll be in the same place i am right now.

hm.

i like this song (radiohead, still; the weird fishes one).

last night was fun. however, you know you're starved for conversation when you get excited for having conversations with people who you know won't remember a word of them in the morning. but i suppose you make do with what you have. it was better than most of our nights go as far as interacting with people - usually we just dance with the freshers in our kitchen and then go home. so it was good to get out of the circle and talk to people a little closer to my age. though, if i'm being honest, "talk" is not an accurate word at all - more like screaming questions over the music and after a couple "whats?" getting an answer, to which you have to scream "what?" a few times before you understand it. damn british accents. ian asked me if i knew who "the beatles" were and i thought he said "the peels" so i said, "no i've never heard of them" and he just about had a heart attack. oops.

i want to have one of those conversations where you introduce yourself for the first time at the start and by the time you leave you're giving them a hug, do you know? a really good, friendship-building conversation. three hours, minimum.

i'm already getting restless here. i want to go places and do things. uni life? check, done, let's find the next adventure.

it's a blessing though, my restless heart is, right now. at fusion yesterday we had a really long quiet time at the beginning with candles and it was wonderful because people always cut quiet times off before i'm done, but this time it went long enough for me to actually get a thought out and process it with the big guy. i just asked for the right heart towards this place - i knew i was getting caught up in uni life, just in the shallow mindset way, but the thing about being caught up in things is that you don't really care that you're caught up in it, because when it's all said and done you're having a good time and who wants to end a good time? but i brought all of that with my candle and i realized (or, rather, was shown) that i was too attached to things. i made myself an idol? that's never happened before. anyway, i think because i'm here for so short a time i feel like i should be the best-liked that i can be while i'm here, so i felt this pressure to impress (and to be impressed, because often to impress you have to show that you have been impressed, if that makes sense). it was really dampening me and my ability to communicate myself when i interacted with people. express myself, rather. communication implies that the other party understands what i'm expressing, and that's definitely not always the case.

so he worked me through it and then i felt so free to be myself for the rest of the evening that i was able to really be with the people i was around, instead of just being around the people i was with. instead of just being around the people with whom i was? why does the grammatically correct version always sound so convoluted? elevated may be a better word. elevated and therefore unnecessary? any type of elevation is usually unnecessary, i feel, even if it is for the sake of expression. although i guess in this case the initial, and therefore most accurate, expression involved grammatical uncorrectness. so there.

*chuckle*

i'm doing well today - still riding on the prayer-thing. it's nice . . . conversation is.

imagine that.

meh.

i don't know what it is, but it's accurate right now . . . listening to music i really connect with just makes me feel. and when i feel it feels very quiet and kind of down. and not down like Eeyore down, down like my stomach settles in, if that makes any sense at all. maybe the down is because there are very few places where i'm truly and completely myself (that's true of anyone, i think), and so settling in exposes the space between me and my surroundings? which i don't like, but it's good to recognize anyway.


but i've decided i'm going to pull an emma and match-make. it was so wonderful to convince her to go talk to him tonight and then see the look on his face when she sat down next to him. when it all first developed, i played the token hopeless romantic and kept telling her and telling her. i was optimistic to the point of being annoying, really - almost like i was playing devil's advocate, with the devil representing hope and love in this case? i'm not going to deal with how wrong that is.

anyway, i hope i get to say i told you so. he reads newspapers in the bar with his friends and she dances like a crazy person, so naturally they're perfect for each other.

i want to buy new music, but the network here blocks the i-tunes store. so. i've resorted to pandora, which is working just fine, but still. i have a particular craving for owen and he only comes on every 3rd or 4th song. i'll manage, i suppose.

i wish i had more, but i'm afraid the mood i'm in is not very conducive to an edifying post - for y'all anyway. i always benefit from the release, it's just whether it makes any sense once it comes out.

i'm not really that concerned about it, to be honest. i have a pretty self-centered approach to blogging . . .

well, i'm going to go to sleep.

i'm ready for my hair to be long again.

meh.

some pages bent
the spines creased and worn
all signs of being adored
and those words somehow meant more to you
than who they were written for

[owen]

a very successful hair day, indeed

megan's hair is now curly, and kate's hair is now blonde(ish).

i'm exhausted. today was a long day. funny, seeing as how i skipped lecture. twice.

but i was combating being sick. i do feel better, so i think i may have succeeded. we'll see, yeah?

i need to go to bed - i was going to try to communicate a little, but i don't really feel like communicating at all right now. even though i think i'm very much hurting for it lately. i need familiar voices, i think. i've had enough of the computer screen. presences would be ideal, but that's just not practical, so i'll have to make do with voices for now.

and we will clean the cobwebs out of one another's minds . . .

[missy higgins]

well, i'm going to stop whining - but life is always more lonely when you're sick, you know? so today was just a lonely day, that's all.

goodnight, then.

hatching plans and other such nuisances

i try very hard not to make plans for my future anymore, seeing as how i've gotten it wrong almost every time i've made them, but there's this one plan that sprouted when i got here and it's been growing since then in little spurts and pangs. today was a spurt day.

anyway, lancaster has a year-long masters program in psychology. and i thought i would never want to go straight into masters from undergrad, but it's england. and i could get a visa, and therefore a job (and thus make twice the money, with the exchange rate) and get my masters and live in england for a year. and take ballroom dancing lessons. and hike. and be around people with british accents who use words so much more dramatically than we do in the states. for example, at the poster sale in alexandra square:

ask sales assistant for a pristine copy of this poster

pristine.

no one says pristine. but it's so expressive, isn't it? so much better than just saying "new" or "wrapped."

back to my plan: when i got back to the states, not only would i have double the money, i would have a masters degree with which i could actually get a real job. not my ideal real job, but a real job nonetheless.

and i would already know my way around the university here and i would have an entire year to explore europe (hello, christmas holiday) and it would be amazing.

bothersome plan, isn't it? or hope, or dream, depending on how you look at it. i suppose it's more accurate to call it a dream.

we'll stick it to the felt board, anyway. i feel like these days my life is perpetually stuck in the brainstorming phase.

i think i like it that way.

i've got to pack for coniston . . .

y'alright?

which is equivalent to "how are you?," but it still catches me off-guard sometimes. of course i'm alright.

today's been a don't touch me day, so far. which is going to make for a very awkward dancing session tonight, but i'll push through it, i suppose (oh, the agony.) . . .

i wonder about being the friend who sticks around. because i think that by being the one who sticks around, you inevitably become the one who gets left. people don't like to take people with them when they move on, you know.

how awfully selfish, wasn't that? disgusting.

i'm going to be a dork and recite (select parts of) my buddhism lecture to you. it was on suffering, which is kind of my thing. not that i'm a masochist or a sadist, but i do want to be a therapist, and therefore have to be somewhat interested in the process of suffering. not to mention the part of my interest that stems purely from it's existence in my life and the lives of my family and friends.

there's a yellow jacket in my room. fantastic.

hooray, it flew out.

anyway, suffering. is called "dukkha" in pali, which is the latin of buddhism.

my notes:

what is dukkha?
- a problem/suffering/'unsatisfactoriness'
- life is full of it; life will never be perfect
- approach dukkha; FACE IT

6 kinds of suffering
1) dukkha dukkha
- something intrinsic about human experience (i.e. death, aging, etc.)
- "normal" pain
- pain means you are alive
2) viparinama dukkha
- dukkha x sukkha = unpleasant x pleasant
- sukkha/pleasure can be equivalent to dukkha/pain
- both are temporary
- caused by clinging too tightly to sukkha
3) sankhara dukkha
- dukkha caused by our attachment to our sense of ego
- we are not who we think we are
- open up your sense of self: examine why we cling to it
4) paticchanna dukkha
- concealed/covered up/subconscious pain (i.e. trauma that's been suppressed)
5) apaticchanna dukkha
- exposed/conscious pain
6) pariyaya dukkha
- the fact that one is reborn again and again, and that one is caught up in an endless orbit
- not just a life-long cycle, can be a daily cycle/the everyday-life cycle

fascinating stuff, isn't it? i'm sure this is some sort of travesty, but the (unintentional though they may be) parallels to my faith are so blatant at some points that i can't help but become a little more settled - like if we agree on this, then we didn't come up with it in a vacuum, you know? sometimes i worry about that and doctrine. if you come up with doctrine in a denominational bubble it never really fits, i don't think. so the fact that others recognize what we do, though they take it in a different direction, means we didn't come up with it on our own. i like people, but that doesn't mean i should blindly trust them with my spiritual doctrine. there's something about the idea that buddhists and christians have the same general idea about suffering that is so big it couldn't be the work of humans, you know. that's encouraging.

and sure, there are really big differences between the two faiths, i just wanted to point out the similarities for a moment, because they do exist, i think.

my grandpa would die if he knew his own flesh and blood was comparing buddhism to presbyterianism : )

i love my grandpa.

i'm tired. i think it's time for a nap. here's the picture of my internship that i promised to post a million years ago:



a yucky nuetral, with moments of (slightly crinkled) hallelujah!'s.

farewell, friends; hello, naptime.