All alone again. Each day of break i learn to appreciate and question myself a little bit more. Today I learned that lunch alone is as amusing if not more than lunch in groups. With an empty stomach and $10 in my pocket, a hip new restaurant in Beaverton called Noodlin' caught my eye. I pulled in and walked into an atmosphere where I was the only one who was alone. In such situations where it might be natural to feel uncomfortable or embarassed, I tend to revert to laughter. I simply look around and laugh at myself. I may appear to be a nut-case but it is a natural response for me. I proceeded to a counter and picked up a menu, reading the prices and items, casing the joint. After the help of a waiter, I ordered an excelent yaki soba tofu noodle dish and a glass of water. While filling up my water, i whirled around to go to my seat at which time my cell phone flew out of my purse and hit a passing womans leg. Apologizing, still lauighing, I stambered aimlessly in attempt to find a place to set my stuff down before i could pick up the phone. Realizing i could either sit in a booth (the most practical space) or a 4 seater table, i chose the booth hesitantly because it overlooked the waiter's quaters whom I already felt he thought I was flirting with him by gigling as he explained each menu item to me earlier. I sat my purse down, picked up my phone and while standing up I knocked over my cup and spilt water all over the counter, chair, and floor. Shaking my head, STILL laughing I went to a nearby cleaning station and stole a towel to clean up my mess. Looking around i noticed many a couples glancing at me while continuing their conversation. I had to laugh realising how dumb I must have looked; a lone, fumbling, laughing girl eating tofu chunks. I ate the food, it was good, and then talked once again to the nice waiter who came to check up on how I liked my selection. Then, I found myself in a bind; mid-exiting of my stool I realised I had to use the restroom, but not yet finished with my meal, I did not know what to do. Normally I would just ask someone to watch my meal and purse while i took a bathroom break but that person was non-existant! Out of sheer terror of my bowels exploding I shoved what tofu I could into my mouth, piled my belongings into my arms, and made way towards the restroom. What made the situation even more awkward was the goodbye I had already soluted to the nice waiter and my already half-made treck to the exit when i had to turn around and ask politely where the restroom was (mouth still full of food). With a huge grin on my face out of the sheer humor of the situation, I found my way to the toilet and then the front door. I love solo dining...everyone should try it now and then. I then went on to do a little bit of solo reading at Borders...don't even make me tell you about that one...
  ¶ 11:10 PM 2 Comments

  Aluminum Lanoleum Moment to remember number 67:

Returning home to slip into the only room in the house with a lock on the door. I turn on the water, turn off the lights, light a half dozen candles, and turn up some good old Bob Marley. Lighting some insence, adding some bath salts, I slowly slide into the tub. The water is soft and hot, the air is smooth and rich, and my skin is oily and moist. So there I laid, not moving but to feel my chest rise and lower out of the water with each inhale as my lungs filled with scented oxygen. And there I stayed, listening to the music, feeling my whole body, thinking....yeah it was good.....


  ¶ 1:34 AM 1 Comments

  fun facts....huh? While avoiding my homework and entertaining my lobe of knowledge, which if you ask me is doing what school should be doing for us (that is, learning about what we find interesting), I found out some facts that unless posted would just stir in my head and further convince me to cook some great tofu platters. I give you "Some of Kara's reasons for going veggie"

>750 million people go to bed hungry every night
>one-third of the world’s grain is fed to farmed animals
> A typical Western meat-based diet can only feed 2.5 billion people: a plant-based diet will feed every one in the world
>The global appetite for meat and the industrial techniques of the meat industry are destroying the Earth
>24 per cent of dairy cows are pregnant when slaughtered - many nearing full term.
>Calves are taken from their mothers a day or two after birth. Males are usually killed
>Boiled alive->up to one fifth of chickens may be fully conscious when they enter the scalding tank to loosen their feathers
>75 per cent of all piglets have their teeth crushed and tails cut off without anaesthetics
>80 per cent of all eggs come from battery hens - kept five to a cage no bigger than a microwave oven.
>a quarter of dairy cows are so exhausted by the dairy milking process they never see their third year, despite having a life expectancy of 21 years or more


it goes on and on and on and on......sick huh? I doubt this is the first time you have heard all of this before, but please, just think on it for a minute. Even if you just heard one new thing, think about it, and decide if it has moved you. Now act. NOW! hahahaha.....
  ¶ 11:36 PM 6 Comments

  Finter Fonderfand Fog. As if the world didn't seem expansive enough...not only have I lost complete sight of anything further than 10 feet in front of me, but it is almost as if the world beyond has simply disappeared. I think outside right now is as close as I will ever get to feeling what it would be like to live on a tiny moon circulating some far off planet. The horizon is monochromatic, the air is thick, no mountains no vallies, no anything. The world ends where my fingertips land. All that is visible are distant glowing orbs, more resembling stars than lights with actual tangible shapes, wattages, and colors. A dim cellophane layer lies between me and these lights that come in groupings, rows, and shapes. I recognize the shapes as houses but I could imagine them being like constalations that are only recognizable after your mind connects the dots. The most eerie thing about the world of fog, and what most closely resembles it to my moon however, is the sound. Maybe it is some metaphysical wavelength junk, or some relation to the density of the air, but fog has the inescapable ability to eat sound. In a city covered with fog i could swear I am the only thing alive. The surroundings become stagnant and still, no sound is clear and every movement of air is muffled. No engine roars, no cricket chirps, no soft wind cries, no dulled laughter, no honking of horns, no owl howls, no dog barks, no human's breathing. Everything is silent. Everyone outside is audibly alone. And when a warm breath exits your body, it remains unrelatable to the fog it enters. Unlike earth, you can clearly see you are breathing something, inhaling and exhaling something, different. It's like your on the moon....
  ¶ 9:47 PM 1 Comments

  my brain feels like burning Knowledge leads to happiness
Ignorance is bliss
Then why when ignorance is ruined
and knowledge enters in
does the mind blink and shrink
from the pain caused inside
sometimes i'd prefer darkness
because bliss is quite comfortable
where as knowledge doesn't always fit
into the tiny space i provide
knowledge gives fulfillment
to the space of inquiry
but often fits like a new pair of jeans
too tight and not in a good way
it makes you wanna run sometimes
and wish you hadn't seen
the things that ruined your time of bliss
and brought you to suffering
but its to late now
knowledge comes with no gift reciet
sender unknown and now you must decide
what
do
i
do
with
it

can i pretend to be back in ignorance?
or can i act selfishly?
or must I confront the facts in the face
and change my life
no matter how hard it may be
i wish i had the choice to choose
but knowledge took that away
i gagged twice today as an after-quake of the robbing of my ignorance
this may seem a little serious
and too sharp for the easy cut ham
but the truth is, i can't do it now
i can't ignore what they are....lives

p.s. meat is gross
  ¶ 11:47 PM 3 Comments

  The largest unknown To be chaste to be pure to be scandalous to be sexual to be hot to be not to be inquisitive to be quiet to be devout to be holy to be virtuous to be fulfilled to be hungry to be wanting to be satisfied...to be happy.

All encompass ones sexuality.

Brace yourself for the undiscussed. Be prepared to find here not what you will find out there. It is not custom to identify with your sexuality. It is hidden, it is poked, it is laughed at and joked, but hardly ever brought into serious discussion. It is no shame that I am a sexual creature. Born with desires, living with the need to fulfill them. Then why, if this is the case for everyone under the moon, can we not discuss them? The entire topic complexes me. I warn you, I follow the God who created me and the life for which He intends for fulfillment upon me and just the same contain curiousity. I am a Christian talking about sex.

I remember when I first learned about sex. Contrary to the regular upbrining, my knowledge came not from my own parents but the parents of a close friend. One day she decided it was time her children, my brother and I understood where babies came from and basically, gave me the basis for which we would think every 5 minutes for the rest of my life. She sat us down and read outloud a small book with published pictures, very detailed right down to the most private parts of both halves. I imagine I was confused, but none the less took the information and went. My curiousity comes in here; why was this action that moves and motivates out lives, relationships, culture, and religion as it is today explained solely physically? Why must we wait until some pimply teenage boy gets a boner in class for us to understand that there is more to the act than emotionless contact. As far as I knew, sex was like patty-cake. Certain slapping and touching motions that had a rhyme and reason and you had to have a partner who knew what they were doing or else the game didn't play out.

I wonder how sex would be viewed if children were taught differently. Think of the possibilities. What if upon inquisition, the parents gave no exact definition of the reasons for sex but rahter went into detail about the extreme pleasure that is the motive behind the patty-cake. They make lists, give example, and provide types for the ultimate sexual experience. Now, obviously this would not be okay! The child would go out and make a pimp of himself and destroy the innocence of all the young women in the world, and most of all his own. Or would he? Studies suggest reckless experimentation comes rather from ignorance than excess amounts or knowledge.

what if parents gave no explanation what so ever? What if no texts were published, no corny teen movies made, no graphic childrens books published that explained the miracle of sex? Would our society still drive the desire to have intercourse with as many women as possible if the outcomes were unknown and the act unpublicized? Would it be, then, such an emotional act discovered by the intimate few with no logical force driving it that people would eventually pair off into life long partners? Or would sex cease and people turn to self-pleasure when they discover that they were created with fun censors and sensitive gagets with no real purpose? For sure sex has gone beyond procreation even for the devout Christian. Now we have labs for that.

Sex is, was, and will be. To deny that anyone craves it is to point out a childhood trauma or chemical imbalance stabilized post 7 years of age, when sexuality is solidified.

Upon writing this I wish not to offend or be painted as a closet pervert. Rather I think it important to recognize sex and in a moral way if nothing else. It is okay to think about it, discuss it, and even want it. God created it for pleasure so be it. But please recognise, pleasure does not equal fulfillment. Gratification does not equal happiness. Happiness cannot be found in physical acts for they soak the very outter layer of a man. Unlike a sponge the outter layer of a man has no saturation point; often one will please to thier delight and never tire. But with the over-attention to the visible comes the neglect of the untouched. Only the soul, the inner being of every man, the heart of ones character, ones life, ones future and ones faith that permeate the very being of a man, is innocent of physical pleasures. This space if reserved for pure fulfillment found in the truth.
  ¶ 1:58 PM 4 Comments

  A Realm of Ones Own It is ignorance to admit that at times, I cannot even imagine that history occured. To think, what we read about in our limited text books and watch on OPB actually occured to people who suspected nothing out of life anymore than we do. Upon reading about Japanese leaders, I fell upon the transition from leader to leader. It happened that less than 50 years ago, this countries current leader suffered a stroke and so, out of respect, asked his good friend to run the country. Could you imagine that happening? Being in a country where in the blink of an eye, someone else is heading your country because they know someone who knows someone who thinks highly of this other guy. Its so far from anything we know as being accepted or functional that it just seems unreal. Also to think about war at the home front. I read it, I hear it, I know it, but i have never experienced it so it is hard to believe. It's is like i have made up another realm in which I put all of my history knowledge; a place between reality and realistic fiction. My brain knows it is not fiction, and it is explained and verified, but it cannot hit reality because I have never seen or been a part of it. It is kind of like when someone tries to describe New York to someone who has never been outside of Hillsboro. They know it exists, they know people live there, they even have some picture or vision in their brain due to movies or books or whatever, but is it real to them? Not a bit. Until they go there, it is just an idea. History I fear is an idea I will never fully believe.

Look at what this extended essay has done to me. But I have to admit, this is the first time i have written on a topic I am actually interested in. Good? not exactly because I get so caught up in reading and pondering that I never actually get to the essay writting.....goodnight.
  ¶ 10:39 PM 2 Comments

  any normal monday Some times life is in motion. I sit on the axis of my world and watch everything around me spin with speed and force. Those more distant move faster. Those closest to me experience little displacement but still, they are moving more than me. I am just a pivotal point observing the moving. Then there are days like these. Days where something has pushed me off the pivot point, at which time I fall into space and land somewhere around the equator. Disoriented, dizzy, rapidly changing, and confused, everything looks different even though i am on this same old world. With a new perspective and questions about who why what where and when flying at me so quickly, I'd rather put my head below my knees like you do when you get car-sick then even try and orient myself. I can't even explain it. Does today or do I seem different to anyone else or did i just imagine this microcosm of my mind?

Do not fear. I'm still here. Life is swell, can't you tell. Dancing rocks, I need new socks. My bible is broken, I need more gold tokens. Its cold outside, I have no pride. One jacket i own, my cat has grown. Fulfillment I seek, but my looking is meek. I'm lazy as hell. I love my grandma Bell. I cry alot less, now things are off my chest. My life is swell, can't you tell. I just wish my name were Gisabelle. by kara
  ¶ 10:20 PM 4 Comments

  Sweat and poop Today was a fabulous blend of eating and excercise. Woke up and ate, went to school and excercised my mind. Hour and a half of PE 2 (if you can call that excercise) and then eating at the TOK Party feast. Snack when I get home, off to 4 hour dance rehersal. Now I am here eating chocolate chips, grain crackers and humus. Life is good.

I have come to conclude that if anyone content, happy, fulfilled, sits long enough in a room and thinks hard enough for a good amount of time, anything can happen. Questions of 'what if' arrive as is Stanisklovski has infiltrated your version of reality. You begin to answer to your inquisitive nature and then, you begin to wonder, is it true? Could it be? Since there is no evidence in front of you to tell you otherwise, one can come to twisted conclusions: One could convince himself that the world outside is useless, void and hopeless. Stirred even more, certain verdicts about loved ones may arise including infidelities and abusive relationships. Somethings come out of nothings. The heart twists and turns when it is given enough time to reach the brain. Isn't it amazing how relative things are?
  ¶ 8:01 PM 0 Comments