I’ll walk down to where I saw the beautiful things and lit up faces falling down in beautiful symmetry, pausing to reflect on exactly what brought this interaction here.
Writing is my escape to worlds no one can follow, except to trail behind in murmurings beyond my control.
Taking steps through places and around to parts of the pieces of my soul, beyond beyond and above.
I’ll take pictures to keep track of memories, pictures with my eyes to save in my mind, to save in my heart.
Detachment from one two three things, counting down as I check them off, and more come to the list but I welcome it.
Take me down, love, down to the places we used to play as children, wiping those tears and making dreams out of tree leaves and summer sun.
I’ll write on paper about all of the things I used to know and feel, and they’ll know the strength of my bravery in the face of what the world means.
Whisper to keep close the blessing of knowing what it is to live at this moment, to serve in this way, purity of thought and motive…we’re circling around one step after another after another.

I’ll see you at the end, and we’ll walk down to the paths we know well, at the edge of a new place, to face a new creation.

We’ll call it home.

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Perhaps you don’t see the smile when I hear a song
or my laughter when I realize nothing’s wrong.
Maybe I read just a little bit much
or write things that make me seem sad and such,
I hold close the parts that make me real
that show you how I truly feel.
It is easy to think I am caught in a place, turning in circles because I can’t get out of being down. It is easy to get into that mode where nothing is right and while you acknowledge the good things around you, you chew on the wrong things to work them through.

Sometimes you’re the only sound I hear
this is a whisper in my heart
drawing me ever near
and I’m waiting to wake up
from this beautiful space
where my dreams and yours
are conversations in place.

(From apple-picking!)

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“O maidservant of God! Thy letter dated 9 December 1918 was received. Its contents were noted. Never lose thy trust in God. Be thou ever hopeful, for the bounties of God never cease to flow upon man. If viewed from one perspective they seem to decrease, but from another they are full and complete. Man is under all conditions immersed in a sea of God’s blessings. Therefore, be thou not hopeless under any circumstances, but rather be firm in thy hope.”

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Chicago from Lake Shore Drive at night…

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I am eating pistachios and drinking doogh (yogurt soda).

yee-haw. (That was the southern part of me coming out.)

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Read this: Doctors challenge baby feeding myths

Some excerpts:

“There’s a bunch of mythology out there about this,” says Dr. David Bergman, a Stanford University pediatrics professor. “There’s not much evidence to support any particular way of doing things.”
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As research increasingly suggests a child’s first experiences with food shape later eating habits, doctors say battling obesity and improving the American diet may mean debunking the myths and broadening babies’ palates.
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Parents elsewhere in the world certainly take a more freewheeling approach, often starting babies on heartier, more flavorful fare — from meats in African countries to fish and radishes in Japan and artichokes and tomatoes in France.
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The difference is cultural, not scientific, says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ nutrition committee who says the American approach suffers from a Western bias that fails to reflect the nation’s ethnic diversity.

Interesting! I am not surprised by this, but it is good to find something like this on CNN.

THOUGHTS?

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but then I didn’t know what to say.

Starting with: No one really knows what I am thinking. Obvious, sure. But what I mean is that even if you think that you understand, I’m almost guaranteed to have left something out. I’m starting to confuse myself now, too.

Also, I want to leave (this may or may not be related to the above paragraph). I want to go somewhere no one knows me. This may mean the middle of a jungle in South America or a desert in Africa. At this point, I really don’t care.

I have a midterm in 4 1/2 hours, and I am afraid to fall asleep, because I worry that I’ll not hear my alarm and miss the test.

Wish I was more coherent. Yay cryptic 5 am entries!

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Things can get repetitive in business…you hear the same terms, snazzy fads, and tired lingo over and over. In order to keep myself from going crazy while reading my finance, strategic orgs, and operations management texts, I decided to find the humor in them. They’re actually really good textbooks…but they’re textbooks nonetheless.

$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$
“The name of the game is competition. The playing field is global. Those who understand how to play the game will succeed; those who don’t are doomed to failure.”
-Operations Management, Chapter 2

Sometimes, things are vocabulary words that would seem to be common sense:

failure- situation in which a product, part, or system does not perform as intended.

recycling- recovering materials for future use.
$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$
“…what do we mean by the long run? As a famous economist once remarked, in the long run, we’re all dead!”
- Essentials of Corporate Finance, Chapter 1

“When looking at an income statement, unusual expenses should be excluded, but it appears that you should examine unusual expenses with unusual skepticism.”
- Essentials of Corporate Finance, Chapter 3
$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$____$
Basically, I could go on and on…but you get the idea. I love being a business major.

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Am I true to myself
when I refuse to bare my soul to the world?
Maybe my way is more subtle
and leaves people guessing
at meanings and stories
behind the words I put on paper.
Sometimes I wish I could place
the burdens of my heart
out for the million’s vastness to see
to pick apart, analyze, judge, and
then leave behind.
It might make for some peace of mind.
You don’t know how serious I can be,
beyond the drama.
Oh yes, I used to be a dreamer,
these thoughts beyond quiet superstition
into realms of reality
far less keen.
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I wanted to take pictures today of all of the different kinds of people I saw passing me on the street. Part of the beauty of living in a large city in America…every person you pass looks drastically different. Beautiful!! I feel spoiled that this is my vantage point every day.

There is construction behind and in front of my house right now. This morning I went to unlock my bike from the back patio and found it completely covered in construction dust. Also, they had to move a truck to let me out into the alley. ahh the power when tiny me has the ability to make trucks move out of my way!

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http://denial.bahai.org

Read this. Whether you’re a Baha’i or not…if you’ve ever had access to higher education, even if you didn’t take advantage of it…you’re luckier than the Baha’i youth in Iran.

The government has used a very simple mechanism to exclude Bahá’ís from higher education: it has simply required that everyone who takes the national university entrance examination declare their religion. And applicants who indicate other than one of the four officially recognized religions in Iran — Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism — are excluded.
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Like young people everywhere, Bahá’í youth in Iran desperately desire the opportunities and insights that come with higher education. This is especially so because the teachings of their faith stress the importance of knowledge and learning — and because those same teachings also emphasizes the importance of contributing to society at large.

One can only hope that the world’s academic leaders will now follow suit in protesting the blatantly unjust oppression that continues to confront the young people of Iran’s Bahá’í community.

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