shadesofeleven

shadesofeleven

Rediscover

As the school year moves along, my close friendships from California have begun to fade away. Maintaining any kind of relationship across states is difficult; especially when both parties are busy with life. Today, in Starbucks, I took one look at this cup and practically lost it. I realized that I have slowly been forgetting why my best friends are my best friends. This holiday season, I am going to work toward rediscovering the amazing qualities in each of my friends back home.

An "Ideal"

A letter written to Vogue Magazine by a seventeen year old Zooey Deschanel.

Embrace

Passing through the myriad of curious eyes,

They chose to abide in a fantasy, apart.

Songs of joy, sung with hearts of despair

Distraught leadership hiding behind a mask of sanctity

The mask crumbles, leaving the flock to cope with the debris

Each molding a mask of their own as they seek perspective

Only the comfort of an embrace could further fasten the pair

Somehow understanding the fundamental essence of silence

One attempting to heal years of wounds,

While unwittingly kindling fresh damage

The other allowing her mask to crumble,

While clutching to hopeless longing

Platonic - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I knew it the first of the summer,

I knew it the same at the end,

That you and your love were plighted,

But couldn’t you be my friend?

Couldn’t we sit in the twilight,

Couldn’t we walk on the shore

With only a pleasant friendship

To bind us, and nothing more?

There was not a word of folly

Spoken between us two,


Though we lingered oft in the garden


Till the roses were wet with dew.


We touched on a thousand subjects—


The moon and the worlds above,—


And our talk was tinctured with science,


And everything else, save love.

A wholly Platonic friendship


You said I had proven to you


Could bind a man and a woman


The whole long season through,


With never a thought of flirting,


Though both were in their youth


What would you have said, my lady,


If you had known the truth!

What would you have done, I wonder,


Had I gone on my knees to you


And told you my passionate story,


There in the dusk and the dew?


My burning, burdensome story,


Hidden and hushed so long—


My story of hopeless loving—


Say, would you have thought it wrong?

But I fought with my heart and conquered,


I hid my wound from sight;


You were going away in the morning,


And I said a calm good-night.


But now when I sit in the twilight,


Or when I walk by the sea


That friendship, quite Platonic,


Comes surging over me.

And a passionate longing fills me


For the roses, the dusk, the dew;


For the beautiful summer vanished,


For the moonlight walks—and you.

This poem speaks directly to my soul.  It's ridiculous that a friendship could progress for three years and end so suddenly because of a third party.  I wish I weren't so bitter about the situation; but it is difficult to be happy for someone who has unintentionally broken my heart.  What's worse is that three years of memories are flooding back to me faster than I can handle.

Fall in Ashland

The beauty of Fall astounds me.  In my hometown, the trees barely change color before the leaves fall.  In Ashland, every tree is a different color.  God's creation is amazingly evident here.