in the wee small hours of the morning

I'm thinking about Sleepless in Seattle, and peeling an apple in one long, curly strip. Like magic.

You know my problem? I want to be in love in a movie. Houseboats and radios, tiramisu and teddy bears...bring it on. Let's catch that last elevator, shall we?

how do I get you alone

I love this. I love its whimsy, its soothing tones...but most of all, its message.

Thank you India, thank you frailty...

Honestly, the last few days have not been easy. I've alternated between poles of feeling fine and comforted, and then utterly depressed and despondent. I've gone between thinking myself beautiful and admiring my independence, to bemoaning my failings and looking at his profile...with a relationship status and wall postings that he's still (still!) neglected to tell me about. Thank you, social networking newsfeed, for messing with my mind.

But no matter. I've forced myself to start completing daily gratitude lists so that I don't forget that even though some big aspects of my life have strayed from the desired path, there are still plenty of daily joys. I am lucky, even though I may not acknowledge it sometimes.

I'm reading Our Town with the ninth-graders right now, and I can't help but see its applicability to my current circumstances. On the surface, my life may seem mundane, but it still has unique jewels that shine through; I have attempted to relive the past, but like Emily Webb, I've come to learn that there is beauty in the present: "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it-- every, every minute?"

I have to believe that things will get better, a faith in the future which may negate my attempts to live in the present. This mixtape illustrates those hopes, so I call it "Better."

1. "Better Things" by The Kinks

2. "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" from Sweet Charity

3. "Today Will Be Better, I Swear" by Stars

4. "Good Times Gonna Come" by Aqualung

5. "This Is Where It Gets Good" by Eels

6. "Better" by Regina Spektor

7. "Feeling Good" by My Brightest Diamond

8. "It's Gettin Better (Man!)" by Oasis

9. "The Good Stuff" by Schuyler Fisk

10. "I'm Gonna Make It Better" by She & Him

11. "Pretty Good Year" by Tori Amos

12. "Closer to Fine" by Indigo Girls

13. "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees

14. "Nobody Does It Better" by Radiohead

15. "Be Good to Yourself" by Journey

16. "Beautiful World" by Coldplay

17. "Good Heart" by the Mynabirds

18. "Better Days" by Goo Goo Dolls

19. "For Good" from Wicked

20. "At My Most Beautiful" by R.E.M.

21. "On Top of the World" by the Carpenters

22. "They Can't Take That Away From Me" by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

23. "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House

24. "Up on the Roof" by James Taylor and Carole King

25. "Darlin Do Not Fear" by Brett Dennen

26. "Don't Look Back" by O.M.D.

27. "Learnalilgivinanlovin" by Jens Lekman

28. "What Me Worry" by St. Vincent

What songs would be on your "Better" mix? Please share! I need as much magical music as I can get.

"you always said I was a dreamer

but now I know who's dreaming deep"

~stars~

We have no past, we won't reach back, keep with me forward all through the night...

My friend Louise hit it right on the nose today: I live in the past instead of in the present.

On one level, this is good for my career: after all, a literature teacher has to not only understand but appreciate the past, not only understand context but live in it by loving it. However...

I remember too well. I hold onto memories like they're sign-posts, like life-preservers. I stay still instead of moving with the current. Every story that I tell, every reference point, is to college, or England, or New York, (or ex-bf). I haven't formed any new stories in the last three years. Well, I'm not exactly sure how to go about it...but it's time to take care of myself in more than one realm. My entire life cannot be my career. And honestly, I think I've used exbf as an excuse to avoid moving forward, and now that he's moved forward-- for real this time-- it brings my pathetic reliance on him into too-harsh light. My anger's not at him for being happy: it's at myself for not doing enough to make me happy.

How do you let the sign-posts and life-preservers go, though, when you've gotten used to being stuck? I can't even picture myself doing something crazy, like dating, or like re-structuring my life so that a boy who got it wrong a lot of the time is not the locus of my romantic orbit. I really have fallen into a rut: my life resembles Our Town not just in its simple joys but in its supreme absence of risk and its reliance on routine. How do I start? How do I get back some of what I was in the past without dwelling in it, but while propelling myself forward to the future? I just don't want to be Blanche DuBois, fictionalizing and falsifying, dwelling in a beautiful dream of yesteryear at the expense of joy, sanity, and the foreseeable future...

"And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We're captive on a carousel of time

We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came

And go round and round and round in the circle game."

~joni mitchell~

"Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!"

~the great gatsby~

"I was blinded from the constant looking back: Lot's wife. I only ever saw the gathering clouds."

~the poisonwood bible~