Saturday, 4 April 2015
Friday, 3 April 2015
day three: in/con/se/quence
it's quarter past midnight here, and i need to get some sleep, but first let me share my Day 3 poem with you all!
whe prompt for today was to write a fourteener, a poem of indiscriminate length but with fourteen syllables in each line. i kept drawing blanks when i tried to think of something with, you know, gravitas that i could write about, so at 23:52, i sat/lay on/in my bed with my exam pad paper and an old red pen and scribbled out this:
in/con/se/quence
A poem with fourteen syllables to each line I write
Eight minutes before midnight, here I sit and sigh and scrawl
With little to inspire my thoughts or set my mind alight
I tap my pen on paper and await the speechless call
Of inspiration, words of magic in my squinting sight
Or a bright bolt of lightning, knowledge that might someday fall
And yet I sit and scribble this inconsequential rhyme
I check the clock again and find that I am out of time.
Eight minutes before midnight, here I sit and sigh and scrawl
With little to inspire my thoughts or set my mind alight
I tap my pen on paper and await the speechless call
Of inspiration, words of magic in my squinting sight
Or a bright bolt of lightning, knowledge that might someday fall
And yet I sit and scribble this inconsequential rhyme
I check the clock again and find that I am out of time.
and now? now for something super consequential like SLEEP ;)
Thursday, 2 April 2015
day two: stars
the prompt for today's NaPoWriMo poem was "stars", and immediately i thought of the spoken-word poem 'A Finger, Two Dots Then Me' by Derrick Brown. if you haven't heard it before, DO IT... and if you have, listen again. it is always worth it!
now that you're all in awe of Derrick, i'll just leave the little and vastly less significant poem i wrote today down here. i was thinking of the prompt as i walked home from a friend's house tonight and tried looking up to catch some 'inspiration', but the stars just weren't visible. that in turn led to the rest of the poem :) it doesn't yet feel finished to me, but such as it is, it is:
tonight the sky wears its black-blue
like a deep bruise
and all hope of conventional star-views
is halted by streetlights.
walking home, instead i look down
and am met with the sight
of tiny glass galaxies blinking back at me,
a million shards of beer bottle stars;
the cars
parked on the street have had their bonnets brushed
with a fine dust of drizzle and
the drops catch onto all light, dazzling;
the brightness of your imagined smile
and the crinkles that gather in the corners of your eyes.
please, world, remind me that
i do not have to look up to see the stars.
i want to stitch all of these views
into new constellations, and share them with you.
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
hello, NaPoWriMo!
today began April, meaning a few things:
it is darling Lucy's birthday!
it is also April Fools Day (and i was fooled a couple times... meh.)
it is ALSO the start of National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo for short :)
the aim for the month is to write a poem a day - for fun, for inspiration, to get back into the habit of scribbling down poetic thoughts or feelings... whatever the case may be. this will be the third year i participate (my Mama and i try to egg one another on from afar!) and hopefully i'll manage to finish this year! every day, the awesome people over at NaPoWriMo.net put up a prompt for the day, as a way to kickstart ideas. you're, of course, not limited to the prompt, but i find it super fun to follow along with their suggestions or ideas and see what i can create!
today's prompt was to create a poem of negation. their example:
if you chose a whale as the topic of your poem, you might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”
i tip-tap-typed this out distractedly and reworked it a little in between working like a packhorse on a programme layout/design, but it's still kinda rough. i like it that way, though. it's called not at all.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
you are not at all what i expected.
you do not curl up the way a cat does in the middle of my bed;
you are nothing like the foamy lip of the sea, kissing at my toes, and
you taste entirely unlike the tang of citrus on my tongue.
you are not a memory; you do not linger on the fringes of my mind the way they do.
nor are you like a poem with discernible rhythm or rhyme
but i find that i'm
drawn to the way that you
are unlike a glacier
different from a shattered teacup or a weed
the negative of a photograph
the complete and utter opposite of
unnecessary to me.
you are not at all what i expected.
you are instead everything i need.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
so, there you have it - my first poem for the month :) now i'm headed bed-ward - but stay tuned for more poetry out of yours truly!
it is darling Lucy's birthday!
it is also April Fools Day (and i was fooled a couple times... meh.)
it is ALSO the start of National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo for short :)
the aim for the month is to write a poem a day - for fun, for inspiration, to get back into the habit of scribbling down poetic thoughts or feelings... whatever the case may be. this will be the third year i participate (my Mama and i try to egg one another on from afar!) and hopefully i'll manage to finish this year! every day, the awesome people over at NaPoWriMo.net put up a prompt for the day, as a way to kickstart ideas. you're, of course, not limited to the prompt, but i find it super fun to follow along with their suggestions or ideas and see what i can create!
today's prompt was to create a poem of negation. their example:
if you chose a whale as the topic of your poem, you might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”
i tip-tap-typed this out distractedly and reworked it a little in between working like a packhorse on a programme layout/design, but it's still kinda rough. i like it that way, though. it's called not at all.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
you are not at all what i expected.
you do not curl up the way a cat does in the middle of my bed;
you are nothing like the foamy lip of the sea, kissing at my toes, and
you taste entirely unlike the tang of citrus on my tongue.
you are not a memory; you do not linger on the fringes of my mind the way they do.
nor are you like a poem with discernible rhythm or rhyme
but i find that i'm
drawn to the way that you
are unlike a glacier
different from a shattered teacup or a weed
the negative of a photograph
the complete and utter opposite of
unnecessary to me.
you are not at all what i expected.
you are instead everything i need.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
so, there you have it - my first poem for the month :) now i'm headed bed-ward - but stay tuned for more poetry out of yours truly!
Sunday, 22 March 2015
well, this is embarrassing.
oh, hi! hello! it's me again. i've decided to resume blogging after... um... over a month. *hides face in shame*
i was thinking a couple days ago about how long it's been since i've given this blog any proper thought, let alone since i've actually made the effort to whip up a blog post, and it got me a little bit embarrassed. that in turn led me to thinking about all the embarrassing things i've ever done in my life, and the eventual writing of this particular post.
now, before we get any further, let me just make this abundantly clear: i am the QUEEN of doing embarrassing things. i will recount in a little more detail some of the really cringe-worthy occurrences in my life a bit later, but rest assured that i am a super embarrassing person to hang around. (if you're good friends with me, you probably know this already, and i'm sorry for embarrassing you on *insert number of times here* occasions... buuuuut not really.)
the funny thing is, when i tried to remember said occasions, i actually struggled to call them to mind. i was re-reading Amy Poelher's book Yes Please a couple days ago (because duh, Amy Poelher is my lifelong hero) and she recounts going for an audition where they asked her to talk about her "most embarrassing moment". instead, she left the audition. it got me reminiscing and wondering about what my most embarrassing moment in life has been, and yet i couldn't come up with anything really solid off the top of my head. i wondered about this for a while and eventually came to the conclusion that - are you ready? - while i am seriously up there in terms of the number of embarrassing things i've gone through and put myself through in my twenty-two years, i just don't really get embarrassed about most stuff anymore.
this is the girl who, in Grade 6, got violently ill in the quad outside the library after her teacher tried to give her black coffee to kill the nausea. (it didn't work, in case you were wondering, and this may be one of the reasons i only started drinking coffee a good ten years after said incident.)
the girl who hit puberty before all of her friends and classmates and was the only pimply, really weird-looking kid going into high school. (bonus: i looked totally fresh when everyone else hit puberty a couple years later... juuuust jokes, i looked fantastically silly throughout high school.)
the girl who had the unfortunate luck of sitting right on the spot of the field where the rugby ball the boys were kicking around at breaktime was destined to land, clobbing her on the back of the head.
the girl who fell into a fairly large ditch in the ground (which, in my defense, was disguised by a whole lot of grass) in front of a good quarter of the school when the bell rang for class one day.
the girl who read more than she spoke, so that she mispronounced words ON THE REG (izland? aw-ree?), and the girl who often used words in the completely wrong context... oops!
we won't even talk about the stories of my unreciprocated feelings for various boys when i was a little chicken, although they could fill a very amusing novel, honestly. i could keep going, but i'd like to get to some sort of point, so i'll move along ;)
the girl who hit puberty before all of her friends and classmates and was the only pimply, really weird-looking kid going into high school. (bonus: i looked totally fresh when everyone else hit puberty a couple years later... juuuust jokes, i looked fantastically silly throughout high school.)
the girl who had the unfortunate luck of sitting right on the spot of the field where the rugby ball the boys were kicking around at breaktime was destined to land, clobbing her on the back of the head.
the girl who fell into a fairly large ditch in the ground (which, in my defense, was disguised by a whole lot of grass) in front of a good quarter of the school when the bell rang for class one day.
the girl who read more than she spoke, so that she mispronounced words ON THE REG (izland? aw-ree?), and the girl who often used words in the completely wrong context... oops!
we won't even talk about the stories of my unreciprocated feelings for various boys when i was a little chicken, although they could fill a very amusing novel, honestly. i could keep going, but i'd like to get to some sort of point, so i'll move along ;)
please, let me not pretend that all of these events didn't embarrass me on a major level when they happened. looking back on them, though, more than anything, they make me laugh. i think, "gosh, i was a dumb little punk to get so worked up about things that are, in hindsight, SO completely insignificant."
now that i'm no longer a young grasshopper (i just did the maths and 11 is half of 22, meaning that Grade 6 incident was HALF OF MY LIFE AGO and i'm seriously ageing too quickly these days), i seem to go out of my way to do embarrassing things. i listen to the poppiest of pop music while designing (Carly Rae Jepsen, anyone?) and dance along like a complete noodle, waving my hands in the air at particularly pertinent moments of my jams (read: when the groovy beat kicks in) while sitting in front of my computer in the labs. i wave my arms around, too, while walking home from the Journ department and listening to Taylor Swift at maximum volume; a couple times i've flung my arms around so violently to emphasise a particular line that i've lost my grip on my phone and thrown it into the air. hmmm. i very rarely don't pull a stupid face when someone's taking a photo of me; when i'm feeling particularly tired, i like to take part in a particular activity i have named "sleep-designing". observe.
(this photo was taken today, by the way. i'm in a serious state of exhaustion and i'm going to bed as soon as this post is finished.)
primarily, i'd say i've learned that if i'm not embarrassed by the crazy things i do, then those things can't really define me; i've learned to invest less in what other people think of my silly behaviour and focus more on how doing said silly things makes me feel and whether or not those actions are edifying to ME. it's liberating and a lot of fun... so maybe you'll join Tom Hanks and me as we dance out our feelings? ;)
SEE - how great does that feel?! ahhh. i'd be pumped if i weren't so tired. but i am tired. so i'm gonna call it a night and just encourage you, here in the conclusion of this silly (embarrassing?) blog post, to stop caring so much about what others think and just do what makes YOU happy and builds you up. it makes life a lot more fun, i promise ;)
now that i'm no longer a young grasshopper (i just did the maths and 11 is half of 22, meaning that Grade 6 incident was HALF OF MY LIFE AGO and i'm seriously ageing too quickly these days), i seem to go out of my way to do embarrassing things. i listen to the poppiest of pop music while designing (Carly Rae Jepsen, anyone?) and dance along like a complete noodle, waving my hands in the air at particularly pertinent moments of my jams (read: when the groovy beat kicks in) while sitting in front of my computer in the labs. i wave my arms around, too, while walking home from the Journ department and listening to Taylor Swift at maximum volume; a couple times i've flung my arms around so violently to emphasise a particular line that i've lost my grip on my phone and thrown it into the air. hmmm. i very rarely don't pull a stupid face when someone's taking a photo of me; when i'm feeling particularly tired, i like to take part in a particular activity i have named "sleep-designing". observe.
(this photo was taken today, by the way. i'm in a serious state of exhaustion and i'm going to bed as soon as this post is finished.)
primarily, i'd say i've learned that if i'm not embarrassed by the crazy things i do, then those things can't really define me; i've learned to invest less in what other people think of my silly behaviour and focus more on how doing said silly things makes me feel and whether or not those actions are edifying to ME. it's liberating and a lot of fun... so maybe you'll join Tom Hanks and me as we dance out our feelings? ;)
SEE - how great does that feel?! ahhh. i'd be pumped if i weren't so tired. but i am tired. so i'm gonna call it a night and just encourage you, here in the conclusion of this silly (embarrassing?) blog post, to stop caring so much about what others think and just do what makes YOU happy and builds you up. it makes life a lot more fun, i promise ;)
Wednesday, 11 February 2015
currently: February edition
hi, friends!
sorry for my absence - life in Grahamstown has been surprisingly busy, which has seen me only posting my "currently" for February near the middle of the month. OH THE HORROR!
without further ado, then, let me introduce you to my monthly list of stuff i'm up to, for you to peruse and judge ;)
READING: mental health books
the Master's course which i've just begun is practice-based, which means that instead of it being completely theoretical, it involves a major component of production - in my case, design work - which intersects in some way with an area that i'd like to research and from which i write an exegesis on my findings. i'm set on working on projects which intersect with the issue of mental health, which has necessitated a TON of reading! (something i've only just started doing... eep.) it's something about which i'm really passionate and i feel quite strongly that it's a necessary piece of research, but it's SO HEAVY... so if you have some light reading that you can recommend, please do so!
LISTENING TO: Sara Bareilles (this)
also: Mat Kearney's new album Just Kids (this)
also: Angus & Julia Stone (this)
also: Lennon & Maisy Stella (this)
also: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (this)
WATCHING: Downton Abbey
i'm on season 5 now... and it is THE BEST SHOW. Dame Maggie Smith is the absolute bomb. also, everything is so scandalous! the most scandalous thing happening in my life right now is my stubborn refusal to clean my flat.
ANTICIPATING: Design Indaba
OHMYGOSH. okay, there is a LOT that i'm looking forward to right now. if you'd asked me a week ago, i'd have said the thing i was anticipating the most was my bursary money; thankfully that came through yesterday and i can eat again! now, top of the agenda is the Design Indaba, which starts in Cape Town two weeks from today (!!!!!) - i am so. excited. i get to go to Cape Town with some super awesome people, including two of the guuuurls who have made the past few weeks so great - Carissa and Amy :D plus, i'll get to see Hayley, and hopefully Lucy and Josh! also: CAPE TOWN. ahhh. so much awesomeness happening.
ENJOYING: Adobe and my office!
my reunion with the Adobe Creative Suite has been nothing short of magical. i'm also super thrilled with my new office and the amazing Mia, with whom i share office space. i decorated the wall the other day and it feels so Hannah-ish... brilliant!
something i forgot about when i made my currently list (in Adobe Illustrator... obviously) was how much i'm LOVING my new glasses! they have made me vain. see below.
MISSING: ALL the people
it's weird being in Grahamstown without Chris. it's weird being in the department without Bronwyn, Lucy, Kiera, Madien and Co. i don't like it. come back to me, people :(
CRAVING: fruuuuuit
it helps that the fruit section is right at the entrance to Pick n Pay, because that was my first port of call this afternoon when i finally did a proper grocery shop. (ask Carissa, she bore witness to my fruit craziness.) i'm currently munching on grapes, and i bought some plums and a mango, too! (i also wanted some bananas and watermelon... alas alack, while they had bananas aplenty and watermelon quarters for only R12.99 yesterday, neither such fruits were anywhere to be found today :( i am sad.)
CONSUMING: Darsha's food
at the end of last year, Darsha gave me close to the entire non-perishable contents of her kitchen, and i have been living off of this food (rice, and dhal, and chili bites) for the past few days while i waited for my money to come through. i even attempted to eat mung beans... but i don't know how vegetarians eat them on the reg, because they are basically disgusting. *shudders*
WEARING: whatever's clean
ah, the student life! i have min (read: VERY, VERY LITTLE) electricity, and i'm also a lazy donkey. naturally, that means i don't want to wash my clothing. luckily, i have stacks of t-shirts and shorts and dresses... unfortunately, my washing pile keeps growing and growing. if for any reason, then, you don't know where to find me, chances are i've fallen into my pile of dirty laundry and disappeared altogether.
so! that is my life at present. what are y'all up to? :)
sorry for my absence - life in Grahamstown has been surprisingly busy, which has seen me only posting my "currently" for February near the middle of the month. OH THE HORROR!
without further ado, then, let me introduce you to my monthly list of stuff i'm up to, for you to peruse and judge ;)
READING: mental health books
the Master's course which i've just begun is practice-based, which means that instead of it being completely theoretical, it involves a major component of production - in my case, design work - which intersects in some way with an area that i'd like to research and from which i write an exegesis on my findings. i'm set on working on projects which intersect with the issue of mental health, which has necessitated a TON of reading! (something i've only just started doing... eep.) it's something about which i'm really passionate and i feel quite strongly that it's a necessary piece of research, but it's SO HEAVY... so if you have some light reading that you can recommend, please do so!
LISTENING TO: Sara Bareilles (this)
also: Mat Kearney's new album Just Kids (this)
also: Angus & Julia Stone (this)
also: Lennon & Maisy Stella (this)
also: Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros (this)
WATCHING: Downton Abbey
i'm on season 5 now... and it is THE BEST SHOW. Dame Maggie Smith is the absolute bomb. also, everything is so scandalous! the most scandalous thing happening in my life right now is my stubborn refusal to clean my flat.
ANTICIPATING: Design Indaba
OHMYGOSH. okay, there is a LOT that i'm looking forward to right now. if you'd asked me a week ago, i'd have said the thing i was anticipating the most was my bursary money; thankfully that came through yesterday and i can eat again! now, top of the agenda is the Design Indaba, which starts in Cape Town two weeks from today (!!!!!) - i am so. excited. i get to go to Cape Town with some super awesome people, including two of the guuuurls who have made the past few weeks so great - Carissa and Amy :D plus, i'll get to see Hayley, and hopefully Lucy and Josh! also: CAPE TOWN. ahhh. so much awesomeness happening.
ENJOYING: Adobe and my office!
my reunion with the Adobe Creative Suite has been nothing short of magical. i'm also super thrilled with my new office and the amazing Mia, with whom i share office space. i decorated the wall the other day and it feels so Hannah-ish... brilliant!
something i forgot about when i made my currently list (in Adobe Illustrator... obviously) was how much i'm LOVING my new glasses! they have made me vain. see below.
MISSING: ALL the people
it's weird being in Grahamstown without Chris. it's weird being in the department without Bronwyn, Lucy, Kiera, Madien and Co. i don't like it. come back to me, people :(
CRAVING: fruuuuuit
it helps that the fruit section is right at the entrance to Pick n Pay, because that was my first port of call this afternoon when i finally did a proper grocery shop. (ask Carissa, she bore witness to my fruit craziness.) i'm currently munching on grapes, and i bought some plums and a mango, too! (i also wanted some bananas and watermelon... alas alack, while they had bananas aplenty and watermelon quarters for only R12.99 yesterday, neither such fruits were anywhere to be found today :( i am sad.)
CONSUMING: Darsha's food
at the end of last year, Darsha gave me close to the entire non-perishable contents of her kitchen, and i have been living off of this food (rice, and dhal, and chili bites) for the past few days while i waited for my money to come through. i even attempted to eat mung beans... but i don't know how vegetarians eat them on the reg, because they are basically disgusting. *shudders*
WEARING: whatever's clean
ah, the student life! i have min (read: VERY, VERY LITTLE) electricity, and i'm also a lazy donkey. naturally, that means i don't want to wash my clothing. luckily, i have stacks of t-shirts and shorts and dresses... unfortunately, my washing pile keeps growing and growing. if for any reason, then, you don't know where to find me, chances are i've fallen into my pile of dirty laundry and disappeared altogether.
so! that is my life at present. what are y'all up to? :)
Saturday, 31 January 2015
for Amy
just over 24 hours ago, i was viciously fighting back the throes of sleep, willing myself to stay awake just one hour longer, checking my phone constantly to check how much time had elapsed and to ensure that i hadn't missed midnight.
why, you ask?
well, today was this one's 21st birthday.
...aaaand she is the most special chicken, whom i love ardently and cannot do without. naturally, then, i had to wish her a happy birthday as the day dawned!
it's as though my body was against me on this one - usually i'm up far later than midnight, but for some reason, last night i just couldn't keep my eyes open, resolving to compromise and doze off into a fitful bout of sleep with the lights on. thankfully, by sticking to this method, i managed to wake up just before midnight and got the message off in time. YES!
by this stage, you're probably thinking i'm a little psycho and stalkerish, which is probably fair, but i think if you have met and gotten to know Amy-Jane, you'll understand my friendly obsession ;)
for one thing, Amy and i have conversations that mainly consist of emojis. observe exhibits A-D below:
EXHIBIT A:
EXHIBIT B:
EXHIBIT C:
EXHIBIT D:
this is clearly the best way to build a solid friendship. we can communicate, nay, express deep and heartfelt emotion, in IMAGES.
there are other, more serious reasons why Amy is home and away one of the best people i know, however. for one thing, she talks AND she listens. these kinds of people are hard to find. Amy's and my friendship was forged in the fire that is the AMM's design computer lab, where we found ourselves seated alongside one another for maaaany hours. (more on that in a minute.) to survive in that soul-devouring place, you really need one another. i can't begin to describe the horror of spending hour upon hour alone in there (an experience which i lived several times and don't really wish on anyone at all). it's so necessary just to have a fat chat with whoever is around, spread some ridiculousness, talk about the most obscure and personal stuff and occasionally try to learn the dance moves in Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" music video or watch heartbreakingly cute animal clips. Amy is the best for this. if i were a worse friend, i'd hire her out by the hour as an advice-giver, or just a reassure-r. (i don't think that's a word. aaaanyway.) i shan't do this! i am a pretty good friend, but i can't hold a candle to Ames.
another thing i love about this girl is her passion and her discipline. she works. and by 'works', i mean she WORKS. i have not seen anything done by Amy that she hasn't poured her whole being into. that's a tough ask in design class, where you're bound to come across a project or two that just don't resonate with you. that's also difficult to do when working for a student newspaper, where the layout is often repetitive and difficult to adjust, and it's a lot simpler to stick with the most basic format, even if it doesn't look as great as it could. Amy won't stand for that, and i love her for it. she is meticulous and passionate and sticks to her guns. she's a fiery redhead and it's the greatest thing.
this leads on to another of Amy's many many virtues. as passionate as she is about her work, she is that much more passionate about the people that she loves. i have witnessed Amy fight for friendships, and it is something beautiful and rare in this world. she cares a lot more than many people i know our age, who have reached a point of ambivalence or indifference in relationships that is quite discouraging. instead of taking this approach, Ames will explore every angle of a situation and fight ferociously for what she feels is right, without demeaning or attacking whoever or whatever's in the other corner with hatred or disregard. when something has happened that has upset her, she refuses to attack the person who has caused the upset; she approaches them to talk it all over. she sends comprehensive messages of THIS length to resolve problematic situations. 2 and a half screens worth of willingness to meet halfway.
can you imagine this? she is an absolutely magical unicorn of a person.
there are so many other things i love about Amy. she has the most beautiful smile. she and her boyfriend Quentin have been dating for 5 years now and they are precious - not in a demeaning sense, but in the sense that what they have is something rare and incredibly valuable. she shares her chocolate with me. (this is clearly the best thing.) she keeps me sane and reassures me that everything is going to be alright, and even if it isn't, that she will be there. when you have someone like that fighting in your corner, don't they deserve a message at midnight? don't they deserve a blog post? they deserve a lot more, in fact. cake's on me when you get back here, Amesaroonie ;)
so: there you have it. my attempt to sum up the awesomeness that is the beautiful Amy-Jane, and to make you all jealous if she is not your friend. for the final time tonight, my sweet and ever-steady friend, i will take the opportunity to announce:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
i love you more than songs or blog posts or words (or even emojis) could say.
why, you ask?
well, today was this one's 21st birthday.
...aaaand she is the most special chicken, whom i love ardently and cannot do without. naturally, then, i had to wish her a happy birthday as the day dawned!
it's as though my body was against me on this one - usually i'm up far later than midnight, but for some reason, last night i just couldn't keep my eyes open, resolving to compromise and doze off into a fitful bout of sleep with the lights on. thankfully, by sticking to this method, i managed to wake up just before midnight and got the message off in time. YES!
by this stage, you're probably thinking i'm a little psycho and stalkerish, which is probably fair, but i think if you have met and gotten to know Amy-Jane, you'll understand my friendly obsession ;)
for one thing, Amy and i have conversations that mainly consist of emojis. observe exhibits A-D below:
EXHIBIT A:
EXHIBIT B:
EXHIBIT C:
EXHIBIT D:
this is clearly the best way to build a solid friendship. we can communicate, nay, express deep and heartfelt emotion, in IMAGES.
there are other, more serious reasons why Amy is home and away one of the best people i know, however. for one thing, she talks AND she listens. these kinds of people are hard to find. Amy's and my friendship was forged in the fire that is the AMM's design computer lab, where we found ourselves seated alongside one another for maaaany hours. (more on that in a minute.) to survive in that soul-devouring place, you really need one another. i can't begin to describe the horror of spending hour upon hour alone in there (an experience which i lived several times and don't really wish on anyone at all). it's so necessary just to have a fat chat with whoever is around, spread some ridiculousness, talk about the most obscure and personal stuff and occasionally try to learn the dance moves in Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" music video or watch heartbreakingly cute animal clips. Amy is the best for this. if i were a worse friend, i'd hire her out by the hour as an advice-giver, or just a reassure-r. (i don't think that's a word. aaaanyway.) i shan't do this! i am a pretty good friend, but i can't hold a candle to Ames.
another thing i love about this girl is her passion and her discipline. she works. and by 'works', i mean she WORKS. i have not seen anything done by Amy that she hasn't poured her whole being into. that's a tough ask in design class, where you're bound to come across a project or two that just don't resonate with you. that's also difficult to do when working for a student newspaper, where the layout is often repetitive and difficult to adjust, and it's a lot simpler to stick with the most basic format, even if it doesn't look as great as it could. Amy won't stand for that, and i love her for it. she is meticulous and passionate and sticks to her guns. she's a fiery redhead and it's the greatest thing.
this leads on to another of Amy's many many virtues. as passionate as she is about her work, she is that much more passionate about the people that she loves. i have witnessed Amy fight for friendships, and it is something beautiful and rare in this world. she cares a lot more than many people i know our age, who have reached a point of ambivalence or indifference in relationships that is quite discouraging. instead of taking this approach, Ames will explore every angle of a situation and fight ferociously for what she feels is right, without demeaning or attacking whoever or whatever's in the other corner with hatred or disregard. when something has happened that has upset her, she refuses to attack the person who has caused the upset; she approaches them to talk it all over. she sends comprehensive messages of THIS length to resolve problematic situations. 2 and a half screens worth of willingness to meet halfway.
can you imagine this? she is an absolutely magical unicorn of a person.
there are so many other things i love about Amy. she has the most beautiful smile. she and her boyfriend Quentin have been dating for 5 years now and they are precious - not in a demeaning sense, but in the sense that what they have is something rare and incredibly valuable. she shares her chocolate with me. (this is clearly the best thing.) she keeps me sane and reassures me that everything is going to be alright, and even if it isn't, that she will be there. when you have someone like that fighting in your corner, don't they deserve a message at midnight? don't they deserve a blog post? they deserve a lot more, in fact. cake's on me when you get back here, Amesaroonie ;)
so: there you have it. my attempt to sum up the awesomeness that is the beautiful Amy-Jane, and to make you all jealous if she is not your friend. for the final time tonight, my sweet and ever-steady friend, i will take the opportunity to announce:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
i love you more than songs or blog posts or words (or even emojis) could say.
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