12.18.2008

december loves, a list.


i love the holiday season so much! so it was tough coming up with a list of just a few, but, here you go:

.that my modern art class is finished.
.that i'm finished with my 20 page psychology paper.
.my ceramic, christmas present for a special someone, bowls {photos coming soon}.
.staying comfy and cozy inside while it's a blizzard outside.
.the rb laundry.
.yogurt and granola.
.cannoli.
.buying presents for everyone i love so much.
.my savior and redeemer, jesus christ.
.temple square lights.
.kayti dear.
.christmas cookies.
.making sped up movies and putting music to them.
.lynsey's amazing chocolates.
.etc.
.etc.
.etc.

i hope you have a marvelous christmas.
loves.

12.08.2008

for these girls.

i made this. its great. i love it:

{jackie gave me thee best compliment by calling it 'poetry in motion'. nice.}

this season, and always.

last night i attended the annual christmas devotional at the conference center. this is one of my favorite traditions my family has. the devotional has a great way of refocusing our thoughts to the real meaning of christmas. in his talk, president uchtdorf relayed this message originally from elder wirthlin's talk the great commandment. i thought it appropriate 1} because of his recent passing and 2} because j'adore quotes on love:

"love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the pathway of discipleship. it comforts, counsels, cures, and consoles. it leads us through valleys of darkness and through the veil of death. in the end love leads us to the glory and grandeur of eternal life. . . true love lasts forever. it is eternally patient and forgiving. it believes, hopes, and endures all things. that is the love our heavenly father bears for us."

remember this as you celebrate this holiday season.
and.
merry christmas.

12.01.2008

sjj.

this is why i love sarah. don't i just have the best friends ever!

11.25.2008

november love list.

enclosed is my november love list.

•roxanne debord
•saying “swagger”
•first aid kit
•voting
•kate nash
•making pancakes with oatmeal and chocolate chips
•home-made biscuits

loves and happy thanksgiving.

11.19.2008

midweek goodies.

1. i made an apple pie today but i'm saving it for thanksgiving.
2. i dreamed about painting ceramic bowls last night.
3. i watched half of 'paris, je t'aime' today and i love it. what is it with french movies?
4. maybe i'm listening to christmas music already. and maybe i love sufjan stevens' 'songs for christmas'.
5. i'm seeing wall-e tonight at the dollars. wish me luck.
6. bye.
7. also, i dig this photograph i learned about today:

{tears, man ray, 1930}

11.14.2008

before death . . .

sarah posted her bucket list and i like to copy everything she does so . . .

before death list:
{see the northern lights}
{live in new york city}
{play 'california' and 'all i want' on the guitar}
{write 'c-dub' on suicide rock}
{hike the louvre}
{snowboard}
{purchase ridiculously expensive shoes}
{own a vw bug or bus}
{drive a convertible through california}
{drive on the "wrong" side of the road}
{go to a full day at the movies}
{look down the side of the eiffel tower}

the end.

11.12.2008

being bored has it's benefits.

sometimes i do this thing when i'm bored: look at pictures on my computer from a year earlier. it is fun.

here are some {goodies} i found from november of 2007.
enjoy.




loves.

11.11.2008

dear santa,

i kind of want {this}.
ok bye.

courtney's top 100 movies of all time.

i really enjoy movies and decided to share my top 100 with YOU. be excited.
{these are in no particular order}

•the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
•little miss sunshine
•garden state
•you’ve got mail
•gladiator
•better off dead
•school of rock
•zoolander
•meet the parents
•the shining
•moulin rouge
•batman begins
•across the universe
•stranger than fiction
•rear window
•a beautiful mind
•when harry met sally
•it’s a wonderful life
•ratatouille
•cinderella
•ever after
•toy story
•the incredibles
•the ring
•big fish
•silence of the lambs
•the Truman show
•casablanca
•the others
•the nightmare before Christmas
•sixteen candles
•the breakfast club
•the sixth sense
•ferris buhler’s day off
•no reservations
•marie Antoinette
•adaptation
•to kill a mockingbird
•ameile
•cinderella man
•finding neverland
•the shawshank redemption
•planes, trains, and automobiles
•how the Grinch stole chirstmas
•so I married an axe murderer
•pirates of the Caribbean
•the graduate
•the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring
•the lord of the rings: the two towers
•the lord of the rings: the return of the king
•vertigo
•north by northwest
•small time crooks
•scoop
•disturbia
•Manhattan murder mystery
•italian job
•legally blonde
•ocean’s 11
•ocean’s 13
•alice in wonderland
•cast away
•the 7 year itch
•return to me
•the wedding singer
•the wizard of oz
•proof
•hitch
•bruce almighty
•cable guy
•memoirs of a geisha
•as good as it gets
•twister
•american graffiti
•one flew over the cuckoo’s nest
•Shakespeare in love
•crash
•chocolat
•singing in the rain
•young Frankenstein
•willy wonka and chocolate factory
•nodding hill
•memento
•help
•into the wild
•batman: the dark knight
•kung fu panda
•be kind rewind
•beaches
•son of rambow
•Forrest gump
•stand by me
•the orphanage
•pan labyrinth
•dan in real life
•the emperor's new groove
•the mummy
•matchstick men
•catch me if you can
•edward scissorhands
the end.

11.09.2008

a new addition.

yesterday, i brought home a new addition to our apartment!

his name is lee carter (named after the rebel in 'son of rambow'. have you seen it yet, cause you should) and he is thee best! we love him.

[new family photo.]

11.08.2008

how to be an italian model.

wednesday was kayti's birthday, so i asked her, i said, "if you could do anything on your 24th birthday what would it be?" . . . it ended up being making courtney look like an italian model:

1. put fake tanner on.
2. put every color in your color pallet on your eyes.
3. make hair as poofy as humanly possible.
4. be vogue.

end result . . .





doesn't kayti look so angelic in this picture? happy birthday sister girl!

loves.

11.07.2008

future.

sunday: i registered for my last semester at byu! bahh!
monday: i applied for graduation! bahhhhhh!
now: i have no idea what to do with my life . . . bahhhhhhhhh!

i am open to any and all ideas. let me know what you think.

thanks.

11.04.2008

tuesday.

'i got bangs. i'm so now!'


i voted!


oh tuesday.

loves.

ps.
i was a dead lumber jack for halloween. thanks shan for the real.ness.

11.01.2008

musical + visual goodness.

i love this:



[cute.]

happy november.

10.30.2008

things i'd love to do but probably won't.

1. run a marathon. better yet, the new york marathon.
2. become a rawist.
3. dye my hair blue.
4. shave my head.

the end.

10.29.2008

film students.

i really think that anyone in the film program at byu is the coolest. really. shan is a film major and look how freaking awesome she is. if you are in the film program at byu, lets be friends. basically all shan and i do is fill our time with movie making, bahhh, and i love it.

we've made two horror films this semester that are going to be in a halloween film festival and i really think you should come. thursday, 8:30pm at the varsity theater. ok? click here for more info and SEE YOU THERE!

boo!

10.28.2008

these girls.

i love these girls for a few reasons. one being the following:









the end.

10.27.2008

october love list.

i took this idea from britt, who took it from someone else, but i love the idea and i completely agree with the following statement regarding it: "so for the past month, i tried to pay special attention to lovable details. whenever I thought, "oh this can go on my love list!" i appreciated the moment even more. so even though [this month] was challenging at times, i still found myself looking for what is good."

october love list:
.regina spektor
.pumpkin muffins
.haunted houses
.pumpkin shampoo
.'son of rambow' [see it!]
.kathy and gary cosgrove
.meaningful prayer
.'pushing daisies'
.zupas
.'the 7 year itch'

loves.

10.26.2008

jokes.

i think this is hilarious.



happy halloween!

loves.

10.25.2008

mary blair.

oh how i love mary blair!

look!


[this one is my favorite. i love juice!]





loves.

homage to polaroids.

i got a polaroid camera when i was about 7 and took pictures of everything! loved it. i found this same love again last year but was devastated to learn of the discontinuance of the film. why?

here are some of my favs:









as a replacement for polaroids i now want a holga. they're wicked cool.for a preview click here.

loves.

10.20.2008

a lovely quote.


“life is to love many things.”

-vincent van gogh.

10.10.2008

things i love, as of late.

its been a while.

sorry.

i have decided to use a list of things i love, as of late, as a form of catching up:

.ceramics.



















i am taking an introduction to studio visual arts (emphasis on ceramics) class and i freaking love it. seriously, i should have been an art major. what is this psychology poppycock? i am actually picking it up quite well. the best is the wheel. so therapeutic.

.body worlds.
saw it last weekend. loved it. i once delighted in looking at the human body. as a kid, i had a computer game that would quiz me on different parts of the body.

anyways.

my favorite part of the exhibit was the babies. i'm not too sure how this was all ethical, but it was the best part. they had a 5 week old embryo. you couldn't really see anything at that point, just a small white ball of fluff, but as early as 8 weeks the little person had already begun taking shape. you could see it's fingers and even eyes! loved it.

.weezer.
i attended a long awaited concert on tuesday night. i first fell in love with weezer in high school. naturally, i was deeply attracted to 'the sweater song', which i just heard! live! with tom delonge! it was great. they played all the classics . . . el scorcho, hash pipe, my name is jonas, say it ain't so, etc. bonus: rivers is HILARIOUS! and now i love him too. and i just found out that he was raised by a yoga master and meditates! which makes him that much cooler.

copious picties and videos were taken, but soon after, were deleted due to the fact that i just don't have one of those smart minds i always hear about. i am actually pretty depressed about so never mention it again. thanks.

.brown hair.
yeah. i dyed my hair brown. about ever 6 months or so, i feel a splash of multiple personalities hit and i HAVE to change my apperance. this most current psychotic break i felt like going from platinum blond to swarthy auburn.

.before.


.after.












like it?

.delish cookies.
basically i have THE best schedule ever. really. another marvelous class i am taking is food preparation. let me tell you just how marvelous this class is. we have lecture on mondays, 50 minutes, and is usually just the teacher baking something for us or watching some movie about the dangers of raw meat or knives. then, the lab is 3 hours long. the first two hours we cook delectable entrees such as doughnuts, or homemade tortillas. the last hour we just eat! yes. i am getting credit hours for partaking of culinary works of art (really good food).

two weeks ago my kitchen made chocolate peanut butter munchies. now i love a good cookie. and out of all the cookies i have had the pleasure of eating in my life, this cookie comes close to the best i've ever had (others include ultimate chocolate chip cookies, sarah's spider cookies, marshmallow surprise cookies, ben's snicker doodles and subway's chocolate chip cookies)! i've generously included the recipe so you may share my adoration.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Munchies
Makes 32 DELECTABLE cookies
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 Tbsp sugar

1.Preheat oven to 350.
2.Stir together flour, cocoa, and baking soda.
3.In a large bowl, cream together 1/2 C. sugar, brown sugar, and butter and 1/4 C. peanut butter. Beat in egg, milk and vanilla.
4.Beat in as much flour as you can with an electric mixer. Stir in remaining flour mixture.
5.Shape dough into thirty-two 1 ¼” balls. Set aside.
6.In a small bowl, combine powdered sugar and 1/2 C. peanut butter. Beat until smooth. (If necessary, knead with your hands.) Shape into 32 balls.
7.To form the cookies, flatten one chocolate ball. Place a peanut butter ball on top.
Shape the chocolate dough around the peanut butter center, completely covering the filling. Re-shape into a ball. Repeat with the remaining dough.
8.Place 2 inches apart on an un-greased cookie sheet. Place 2 Tbsp. Sugar in bowl. Dip bottom of drinking glass in sugar and lightly flatten each cookie, re-dipping in sugar between cookies. Bake 8 minutes, or until cookies are set, and slight cracks form on top. Cool on cookie sheet for 1 minute.
9.Remove from cookie sheet and cool on a rack.

enjoy.

.modern art.
really this needs no verbal explanation, just a visual one:




















.cassatt, maternal caress.




















.hiroshige, kinryusan temple.














.kupka, the first step.




















.picasso, girl before mirror.

the end.

9.07.2008

me and my quirky self.


you can never escape tagging can you? no matter the situation, someone will find a way to send chain letters out and have everyone participating. i am no exception and thus, am posting this per sarah's request:

the RULES
1. link the person who tagged you.
2. post these rules.
3. tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. tag 3 fellow bloggers by linking them.

1. i respond to crisis by yelling 'bahhhhh'.
2. i am completely different when in water than on land.
3. i can't sleep with things under my bed. it's bad luck.
4. i cannot drink twice from the same spot on a cup.
5. i can't go to sleep in a messy room. even the closet door has to be shut.
6. i have to clean out my nose twice a day. i love a clean nose.
extra. i can only drink milk with pancakes.

now its your turn. sorry. there is no escape.

1. lynsey joyce.
2. alaska.
3. rebecca.

loves.

8.24.2008

new love, greece.

it all started when i saw mamma mia, which was great by the way, then ended upon seeing the sisterhood of the traveling pants, also good.

i love greece.



and have decided to add it to my list of destinations before death, along with only paris. what i'm saying is that a vacation spot has to sound pretty good before i blot it's name on my 'before death' list. i've fallen head over heels and have started planning where to go and what i'll do.

1. i'll eat.
i have always loved greek food. few things are better in life than dining at basilla's in st. george. i quite enjoy a grilled chiken kabob atop lemon basmati rice, followed by greek wedding cookie. but i hear that while acctually in greece you have to eat fish, of which i am opposed to usually but will make an exception while in greece as to fully partake of the culture.

2.i'll sleep.
at the splanzia hotel, a cute little "boutique hotel" in crete. i find myself waking up to a breath taking view of the blue waters each morning, then eating greek yogurt while planning my day. the splanzia is said to be peaceful, as it is not overrun with tourists.




3.i'll island hop.
i have to do this if i want to see all there is to see. both the minoan and greek societies had a lasting effect on art and i'll need to see as much of the art and architechture as i can. the island i find most appealing is rhodes. some beaches on this island are lined with umberella tables, while others are empty. a nice combination of tourist appeal and actual culture.

4.i'll sit lazyly on th beach.
this is the most important part of the vacation, the part i'm looking forward to the most.





now i just need the money. thats all, just few thousand.

8.17.2008

i hate spiders.


as a kid i quite enjoyed the terror overwhelmingly received by watching arachnophobia. 'eight legs, two fangs and an attitude'. so great. and seriously creepy with just the right amount of cheese to dub it one of those 80's movies we'll never forget. i'm pretty sure i still think of that shower scene more than not when i take a shower.

creep.

so . . . yesterday while relaxing after a swim in shannen's pool, i reached to grab my pink lemonade but instead grabbed a big, hairy spider! bahhhh!

scary as that was, i come to find out today that just 20 miles south of me lies a city being overrun with spiders. just like on arachnophobia! residents of saratoga springs have noticed an infestation of the 'really big house spider'(the actual scientific name). some counted 40 or 50 in their front yard around sunset (which is, obviously, when they come out). what the residents of this town fear most is where the 'really big house spider' will go when the cold weather sets in. residents have already noticed them piling up onto the house.

freak!

but really, i love it. all the 'real life' arachnophobias. i just hope they don't move north.

loves.

8.03.2008

a lovely song.

I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

Then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home.

"do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.

When you feel embarrassed then i'll be your pride
When you need directions then i'll be the guide

For all time.
For all time.

passenger seat. death cab for cutie.

7.29.2008

lynsey joyce.


i love her.

and this one time . . . we switched roles. heres how it went down:

courtney: lynsey joyce can you play?
lynsey joyce: sure.
courtney: ok, come over to my house and we'll decide what to do.
lynsey joyce: ok bye.

3 seconds later the door bell rang and i answered to find lynsey joyce on my front porch.

lynsey joyce: hey.
courtney: so what should we do?
lynsey joyce: i'm not sure but i am kind of tired so i will now take a nap.

lynsey joyce came over to my house just to sleep sometimes. so she slept. . . for a while . . . then awoke.

lynsey joyce: ok i have an idea. lets switch for a day. you be me and i'll be you.

of course this sounded appealing so i agreed.

lynsey joyce: so i will live at your house from now on and you go and live at my house.

courtney: ok. bye.

i then proceeded to walk the path to lynsey joyce's house, pretending of course, to be lynsey joyce. it was a bit awkward, i must say, to waltz into her house, her parents wondering, where is lynsey joyce and why is courtney waltzing into our house. however awkward, i continued to be lynsey joyce. time passed by and i thought what would lynsey joyce be doing right now? it came to me. so i jumped up and ran to the phone.

courtney: is courtney there?
lynsey joyce: this is courtney. lynsey joyce is that you?
courtney: yes. can you play?
lynsey joyce: yeah come on over to my house.
courtney: ok.

courtney and lynsey joyce continue to be inseparable to this day.

the end.

also.

here are a list of random questions and answers (per lynsey joyce's request):

4 places i go over and over again
a. american express.
b. 7-11.
c. taylorsville high school's track.
d. the movies.

4 places i love to eat
a. hires.
b. cafe rio.
c. red rock brewery.
d. basilia's.

4 places i'd rather be
a. in st george.
b. in new york.
c. in the water.
d. in the presence of paige.

4 people i talk to erday
a. mark.
b. lisa.
c. paige.
d. cyndi.

4 television shows i watch frequently
a. seinfeld.
b. arrested development.
c. the oc.
d. so you think you can dance.

loves.

7.21.2008

i love ny.


i just returned from a week in new york city!it was a delightful little trip.

most delightful:

eating organic granola and fage, along with fresh squeezed orange juice at fairway market.
seeing the campbell's soup cans at the met.
purchasing a yellow scarf hand made in nepal from a street vendor in soho.
the top of the rock.
sipping serendipitiy's frozen hot chocolate at 12:00 at night.
bawling while listening to elphaba belt defying gravity.
dallas bbq's pina colada.
the curried chicken salad on a warm croissant from the food emporium on 8th avenue.
dylan's candy bar.
the bee's knees peanut butter at pb and co.

i'm now terribly depressed to return to my endless numbered days but seriously considering returning. maybe tomorrrow.

loves.

7.14.2008

you are what you love, not what loves you.


ms jones. this is for you darling.

i've put this off so long i don't even remember what i wanted to say. i want it to be cute. entertaining. organized.

me.

for it to be a place i store my words.pour c'est le coeur qui fait valoir les mots.

love.

its what makes up my most of my heart. because of this i am often intrigued by other's ideas on the subject:

"to touch life is to know it and to know life is to love it." alexandra couteau

"we love things for their reality and not for their perfection." brittney horman

"love can forebare and love can forgive . . . but love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object." tranherne

and finally one of my favorite short stories by olive senior,titled the love orange:

somewhere between the repetition of sunday school lessons and the broken doll which the lady sent me one christmas i lost what it was to be happy. but i didn't know it then even though in dreams i would lie with my face broken like the doll's in the pink tissue of a shoebox coffin. for i was at the age where no one asked me for commitment and i had a phrase which i used like a talisman. when strangers came of lightning flashed, i would lie in the dust under my grandfather's vast bed and hug the dog, whispering "our worlds wait outside" and be happy.
once i set out to find the worlds outside, the horizon was wide and the rim of the far mountains beckoned. i was happy when they found me in time for bed and a warm supper, for the skies, i discovered, were the same shade of china blue as the one intact eye of the doll. "experience can wait," i whispered to the dog, "death too".
i knew all about death then because in dreams i had been there. i also knew a great deal about love. love, i thought, was like an orange, a fixed and sharply defined amount, limited, finite. each person had this amount of love to distribute as be may. if one had many purple to love then the segments for each person would be smaller and eventually love, like patience would be exhausted. that is why i preferred to live with my grandparents then since they had fewer people to love then myparents and so my portion of their love-orange would be larger.
my own love-orange i jealously guarded. whenever i thought of love i could feel it in my hand, large and round and brightly coloured, intact and spotless. i had moments of indecision when i wanted to distribute the orange by each time i would grow afraid of the audacity of such commitment. sometimes, in a moment of rare passion, i would extend the orange to the dog or my grandmother but would quickly withdraw my hand each time. for without looking i would feel in its place the doll crawling into my hand and nestling there and i would run into the garden and be sick. i would see its face as it lay in the pink tissue of a shoe box tied with ribbons beside the stocking handing on the bedpost and i would clutch my orange tighter, thinking that i had better save it for the day when occasions like this would arise again and i would need the entire orange to overcome the feelings which arose each time i thought of the doll.
i could not let my grandmother know about my being sick because she never understood about the doll. for years i had dreamed of exchanging homemade dolls with button eyes and ink faces for a plaster doll with blue eyes and limbs that moved. all the december i haunted my grandmother's clothes closet until beneath the dresses i discovered the box smelling faintly of camphor and withour looking i knew that it came from miss evangeline's toy shop and that it would therefore be a marvel. but the doll beside the christmas stocking, huge in a billowing dress and petticoats, had half a face and a finger missing. "it can be mended," my grandmother said, "i can make it as good as new. 'why throw away a good thing?' miss evangeline said as she gave it to me."
but i could no longer hear i could no longer see for the one china blue eye and the missing finger that obscured my vision. and after that i never opened a box again and i never waited up for christmas. and although i buried the bow beneath the allamanda tree the doll rose up again and again, in my throat, like a sickness to be got rid of from the body, and i felt as if i too were half a person who could lay down in the shoebox and sleep forever. but on awakening for these moments, i would find safely clutched in my hands the orange, conjured up from some deep part of myself, and i would hug the dog saying "our worlds wait outside."
that summer i saw more clearly the worlds the awaited. it was filled with many deaths that seemed to ties all the strands of my life together and which bore some oblique relationship to both the orange and the doll.
the first to die was a friend of my grandparents who lived nearby. i sometimes played with her grandchildren at her house when i was allowed to, but each time she had appeared only as a phantom, come on the scene silently, her feet shod in cotton stockings rolled down to her ankles, thrust into a pair of her son's broken down slippers. in all the years i had known her i had never heard her say anything by whisper softly; her whole presence was a whisper. she seemed to appear from the cracks of the house, the ceiling, anywhere, she made so little noise in her coming, this tiny, delicate, slightly absurd old woman who lived for us only in the secret and mysterious prison of the aged.
when she died it meant nothing to me, i could think then only of my death which i saw nightly in dreams but i could not conceive of her in the flesh, to miss her of to weep tears.
the funeral that afternoon was 5:00 pm on a hot summer's day. my grandmother dressed me all in white and i trailed down the road behind her, my corseted and whaleboned grandmother lumbering from side to side in a black romaine dress no shiny in the sunlight, bobbing over her head a huge black umbrella. my grandfathers stepped high in shiny black shoes and a shiny black suit ahead of her. bringing up the rear, i skipped lightly on the gravel, clutching in my hand a new, shiny, bright and bouncy red rubber ball. for me, the funeral, any occasion to bet out of the house was a holiday, like breaking suddenly from a dark tunnel into the sunlight where gardens of butterflies waited.
they had dug a grave in the red clay by the side of the road. the house was filled with people. i followed my grandparents and the dead woman's children into the room where they had laid her out, unsmiling, her nostrils stuffed with cotton. i stood in the shadows where no one saw me, filled with the smell of something i had never felt before, like a smell rising from the earth itself which no sunlight, no butterflies, no sweetness could combat, "miss aggie, miss aggie," i said silently to the dead old woman and suddenly i knew that if i gave her my orange to take into the unknown with her it would be safe, a secret between me and one who could return no more. i gripped the red ball tightly in my hands and it became transformed into the rough texture of an orange; i tasted it on my tongue, smelled the fragrance. as my grandmother knelt to pray i crept forward and gently placed between miss aggie's closed hands the love-orange, smiled because we knew each other and nothing would be able to touch either of us. but as i crept away my grandmother lifted her head from her hands and gasped when she saw the ball. she swiftly retrieved it while the others still prayed and hid it in her voluminous skirt. but when she sent me home, in anger, on the way the love-orange appeared comforting in my hand, and i went into the empty house and crept under my grandfather's bed and dreamt of worlds outside.
the next time i saw with greater clarity the vastness of this world outside. i was asked to visit some new neighbours and read to their son. he was very old, i thought, and he sat in the sunshine all day, his head covered with a calico skull cap. he couldn't see very clearly and my grandmother said he had a brain tumor and would perhaps die. nevertheless i read to him and worried about all the knowledge that would be lost if he did not live. for every morning he would take down from a shelf a huge atlas and together we would travel the cities of the world to which he had been. i was very happy and the names of these cities secretly rolled off my tongue all day. i wanted very much to give him my orange bu held back. i was not yet sue if he were a whole person, if he would not recover and need me less and so the whole orange would be wasted. so i did not tell him about it. and then he went off with his parents to england, for an operation, my grandmother said, and he came back only in ashes held on the plane by his mother. when i went to the church this time there was no coffin, only his mother holding this tiny bow which was so like the shoe box of the doll that i was sure there was some connection which i could not grasp but i thought, if they bury this box then the broken doll cannot rise again.
but the doll rose up one more time because soon my grandmother lay dying. my mother had taken me away when she fell too ill and brought me back to my grandmother's house, even darker and more silent now, this one last time. i went into the room where she lay and she held out a weak hand to me, she couldn't speak so she followed me with her eyes and i couldn't bear it. "grandma," i said quickly, searching for something to say, something that would save her, "grandma, you can have my whole orange," and i placed it in the bed beside her hand. but she kept on dying and i knew then that the orange had no potency, that love could not create miracles. "orange," my grandmother spoke for the last time trying to make connections that she did not see, "orange . . . ?" and my mother took me out of the room as my grandmother died. "at least," my mother said, "at least you could have told hear that you loved her, she waited for it."
"but . . ." i started to say and bit my tongue, for nobody, not then or ever could understand about the orange. and in leaving my grandmother's house, the dark tunnel of my childhood, i slammer the car door hard on my fingers and as my hand closed over the breaking bones, felt nothing.

loves.
courtney