words on a page, pixels on a screen.

I write this entry every year, about my father. I do it on his birthday. He's never seen any of them, and I doubt he ever will. I could share them, but he's not sentimental like that, and I'm a little too shy about them to show him them. I shouldn't be, but then again, my father and I have an unusual relationship. It's how I come to write these blog posts about him- fill in the blanks in our relationship, if only just a little. Some would even argue we don't have a relationship at all.

And yet.

He's influenced a lot more of my life than I realise. Though I guess I do realise since I'm writing it all down. My love of the stars comes from him. My grammatical sense comes from him. My belief and commitment to self-expression comes from him. There are stories behind all of these, things from growing up that have stuck with me, nestled under my skin and stayed there.

He showed me the moon through a telescope, and planets, and stars. And once, when I was little, he drove all of us North so we could all see Aurora Borealis. When I was in Hilo, and Ipo and I drove up Mauna Kea and broke cloud cover and saw the stars- all of Orion and the Big/Little Dippers too low on the horizon to be seen, and Mars at its brightest, I cried on the way back down because I missed my father so terribly much. Astronomy translates to 'law of the stars' which is not only the title of a blog, it's also my screen name. It's not only a tribute to something I've fallen deeply in love with- even if I fail at the maths involved to do it properly- but also a tribute to the person who made that love possible. I fell in love with space because of him. I've even stolen his book Lost Moon, about Apollo 13, and that movie still makes me cry. I joke about man never landing on the moon (thank you, Mr. Spriggs and Earth Science class debates. Appreciate that one), but really I find it fascinating and beautiful. The flight, journey, and experiences of Apollo 8 make my heart sing. I wish I could have been alive for that. I wish we could go back and instill in the next generation a love of the stars. I wish I understood the mathematics behind astronomy, because I know he does, and I would love to have something more in the stars to share with my father than just the stars themselves.

One time, I was printing something off in his office, and he took it upon himself, before printing, to point out to me that the shortened form of "until" is 'til and not till. So I changed it, and I've used 'til to this day. And I judge you for poor grammar. Their/there, your/you're, its/it's, 'til/till, than/then etc. Sometimes I judge less harshly than other times. Sometimes I mess up myself. But I do judge. I judge myself too, if that helps. And anyone who knows me well enough, knows that I love the comma. I love it to death. I am comma happy and proud. I once had a beta who went through and corrected every little comma "error". I never had her beta for me again. Because, really, it's a damn comma. It's not like, I'm using it, badly, or, anything [ow, that hurt to type. I'm sorry for your eyes]. I just toss it in where I take a breath, or pause my train of thought. I don't get marked down on papers for it, that's all I'm saying. But I remember being so attached to my father, so desperately wanting him to like what I'd written, so shy about it, that when he corrected the grammar instead of commenting on anything else about it, an intense desire to never mess up grammatically like that again was born. And I do mess up. But at least now I hope if my father ever reads things that I write, he'll have more to say about what's actually written. Not all influences are happy influences, but at least this influence isn't terrible. I don't think it's terrible. I think it's more about how tiny moments shape us, most of the time when we're not even paying attention. And it's why I have a love of father/daughter relationships in my writing, when I actually write. Because little moments matter.

Sometimes those moments are tiny, and unrecorded, and it's only after a series of them that you realise they're there at all. My father is the quiet sort of man. He doesn't speak very much about things; he generally tends to let my mother be the voice about things. But I like to think that despite my hair changing colour, and the crazy protests I organise, my atheism, and all the massive ways in which I've managed to screw up, he's proud of the fact that he has a daughter who isn't afraid of herself (okay: secret time. I'm terrified of myself. Don't tell him I said that). Because I change my hair colour in some strange defiance of what I'm 'supposed' to be. Because I pick the things that matter and go after them with a ferocity that cannot be tamed. Because I believe what I believe and refuse to back down. Sure, he makes jokes about my hair, and tells me not to let it be so short; and he never really says anything about what I get involved with, except sometimes to ask clarifying questions; and true, we've never spoken about the fact that I decided to stop going to church and am very openly an atheist, but there's also that quietness about him, that way he speaks without uttering a word. Then again, it's the silence that gets to me, the words not spoken, the fact that I can't decipher his jumbled strand of 26 characters that somehow spell out 'I love you'. I don't know for certain, but I like to think he's proud. If only because entertaining the adverse makes my heart break up into tiny pieces that can't be properly glued back together.

We have an unusual relationship, based off interpretations of silences and blown up images of the moon. We're an interesting dichotomy- I'm an exceptionally open person with my emotions- especially love. I tend to give it all away the first chance I get. On the other end, my father holds those pieces close to himself, guards them, and will only break them free under the rarest of circumstances. I've seen my father cry twice, and one time made it into a (very) short piece of non-fiction, about the night my grandfather- his father- died. The other time was at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, when we were walking the footprint. I don't know if he was crying then, I wasn't brave enough to turn around, but his voice was thick with emotion. I have to sift carefully through his alphabet for the ways he says 'I love you'. Sometimes I find it easily. Sometimes I can't find it. But I know it's there.

I write this entry every year, about my father. I do it on his birthday. He's never seen any of them, and I doubt he ever will. But I'll write them, every year, as a testament and a tribute to him.

He is my father, and I know he loves me.

Not quite the fox (or, Kate II)

I don't know why I'm doing this but for some reason I feel I need to. Last year I attempted suicide and successfully failed. An oxymoron but it fits. Since then I have had to tear down who I was and rebuild from nothing. I've had to change feelings and thoughts that have been embedded in me since before kindergarten. Expression is what I fear of not being able to show. Art and writing is who I am ...

This was said by Kate, it is that quote I was looking for, back on the day I missed her terribly.

A month and a half ago I attempted suicide and I'm not ready to call it a successful failure. If you have questions, ask them. I find keeping this to myself only increases the constant tension in my chest. It's so hard to keep a lie straight when you don't know who knows which versions of the truth. [[You are neurotic and depressed does not mean that you are sad.]]

But I like this quote of Kate's. I like it because for her, it was true. For her she climbed out, and made it, and found her art, her life, love. I like it because when I read it, I miss her terribly, but I think, 'hey, if she did, so I can I'.

I like it because Kate said it, and maybe I'm not the fox, maybe there's things I'm not quite so brave on, but maybe, just maybe, for this I can brave enough.

is it school tiem soon? Why yes, it is.

And I'm really excited about some of my classes this semester. And then after ... I get to go change the world. How exciting! How do these two classes NOT sound like some of the most amazing classes, ever? And uh, I think we can say that I'm in the discipline of medical geography, as that's what my senior thesis will *crosses fingers* be about. Not to mention I'll be interning at Children's Hospital for the semester as well.

Geog 3371W Cities, Citizens, and Communities

This course is about how structures of class, race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality combine to produce varieties of urban experience in the United States. The course will also deal with why the city--why urbanization as a distinctive process--shapes those social structures in particular ways. The course centers especially on the city as a crucial locus for capitalism and on capitalism as irrevocably a socially made and contested process. It is a hallmark of capitalism that it leads not only to the making of different kinds of urban environments and histories. It also relies upon and fosters social differences. Through discussion, lecture, case study readings (including two books and a variety of articles), and group projects we will try to come to a more layered understanding of what makes the American city tick.

GEOG 3411W Geography of Health and Health Care

This course surveys medical geography, a subdiscipline which encompasses a broad range of geographical work on health and health care. What distinguishes medical geography from the discipline of geography as a whole is its thematic focus on health and health care. It shares with the discipline a remarkable breadth of theoretical approaches, methodologies and sub-themes. In other words, medical geography does not differ from the rest of geography in theory or method. It is distinctive only in subject matter. This courses uses medical geographic examples to explore three groups of theoretical approaches in geography: ecological approaches, which systematically analyze relationships between peoples and their environments; spatial approaches, which employ maps and spatial statistics to identity patterns of single and associated variables; and social approaches, including political economy and recent humanist approaches, which address issues related to both space and place. Students in the course are encouraged continually to consider the relationships among research questions, philosophical assumptions, and appropriate methods as well as to question the complementarity and inherent tensions among different theoretical approaches.

Yay! Only 24 more days!

[[There's other classes too- they're just not cool enough to mention]]

Not of the colour of wheatfields.

There was something Kate said once, a long time ago, back when we both had some innocence to spare, that I have been searching the internets for, and cannot find. I suppose that is how it goes, sometimes words disappear from the internet. Today has been a long enough, bad enough day, and not even friends could make it better. And the words from Kate that might have offered some comfort have gone and cannot be found. Today is a dark day, and a good day to be missing Kate.

I don't think some of you know the story of Kate, and it would take too much time to tell, but she was the first person I loved unconditionally. She broke my heart.

She still makes my heart ache and yearn and want. Want so badly. She is the colour of raven, the blackness, the void. She is found in the tinniest of corners, corners left black and dark, lonely and forgotten. She is everything that makes my heart race with desire, everything that it means to have the Earth crack and threaten to swallow you whole.

She was mine, a long time ago. And now she is off in the world, belonging to someone or something else. But she is always in the corners, always the colour raven, always the depths of my desire, always always always. Somewhere, deep inside, pieces of her still belong to me. Our adventures and that slow, painful, different sort of coming of age ... those, those are mine.

Say hello, and say goodbye. Tell her something for me, when you find her in that blackness, that void. Tell her I love her, ask her if she loves me, still. When you stumble upon the right sort of colour raven, tell her I am the not quite the fox, I cannot be so brave, but always always always shall I hope.