The sun still comes up

And that title is the only commentary on the elections that you'll get here.

I am writing because I am an English major. No, this is not as obvious as it sounds. I should be studying for the Legal Spanish test tomorrow that is going to chew me up and spit me out in a crumpled mess in the front of the World Languages building. But after studying for an entire forty minutes (sarcasm), my concentration is shot. My psyche is scarred. And I turn to my blog in desperation.

I am an English major because I can.not.study. I can only write papers. Even if it's a boring paper. Even if it's an excrutiating paper that makes me think until my head hurts. At least you can get absorbed in a paper, because it occupies your mind and you are engaged and pouring your life-blood into it and it hurts but at least you're not staring at a study sheet.

So. Instead of studying, I am going to tell you, you darling blog-reading people, what I did yesterday. I went home.

Ostensibly to vote. In reality because I needed to get away, to escape to peace for a little while, and goodness but I didn't want to come back. I pulled around the curve and saw flaming trees riding the little curved field (by the house with the weird dog statues) and suddenly I just wanted to get out of the car and lie in the field and not go back to school ever, ever, ever. Not just school, either. Life. And I went home and my mother hugged me. And I made chocolate chip pumpkin bread and walked in the sunset with the Sweet Dog.
Then my daddy came home and hugged me and that is what I have been needing, oh, so much. And we sat with Mom and ate roasted vegetables and I talked to him for a long time and felt better.

In short: It is good to have somewhere to run to. It does not solve things. But it makes them bearable. And so I go home, where I feel so close to the sky and the trees are brilliant in the burnished fields and my mother is in the kitchen watching Rachel Ray make gourmet sloppy joes.

Love is from no distance calling, faithful as the rising sun
Warms the bitter heart and heartache till the east of eden's gone
Clouds of fear and misconception, wax and wane as if the moon
So is in a sense forsaken, till the will of God be known
As a songbird that has fallen, only to regain the sky,
from this frozen shadow valley they must be revived

-"As a Songbird That Has Fallen," Cold Mountain soundtrack