a collection of moments.

In all honesty, 2008 was a pretty rough year for me. There are a lot of reasons, and a lot of bad memories, but negativity only slows people down. So here's to focusing on the positive: I give you my best moments of 2008, in chronological order.

Winter Retreat
My last retreat with a youth group I used to hate. Fortunately, it’s now one of my favorite groups of people and something I have lots of good feelings about. I spent this weekend mostly walking around in the woods talking to people who I wanted to talk to, enjoying being outside, playing keys, loving my friends, and just being happy.

Prom!
A surprise appearance by Benjamin Olson, Vegetarian dinner at the Sunflower Cafe, best chocolate cake ever that also happened to be vegan, classy limo ride, classy dancing at the Fox theater, being on prom court with one of my best friends, classy limo ride, classy after party, all descending into ridiculous regina spektor impressions. All with some of my favorite people in the world.

Vintage Beach Vacation (also referred to as SB08)
At some point in the fall of 2007, my dad bought a week at this really sweet beach house called the purple parrot on Dauphin Island. So for spring break, we headed down accompanied by my parent’s best friends and alina. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to dauphin island, but it is a common spring break destination not for oversexed college students but for what are possibly the least offensive people ever: bird watchers. Alina and I spent the week riding beach cruisers, flying kites, wandering around bird sanctuaries and hurricane katrina ruins, buying icees and ice cream sandwiches, taking dumb pictures on photobooth, talking in fake southern accents, waiting for the sun to rise, and exploring HISTORIC FORT GAINES. Also, watching America’s Next Top Model. best week ever.

Climbing a mountain at one in the morning
I was a leader on my church’s junior high retreat this summer to Awanita, and that week was a pretty great one as a whole. The last night, around one, though, some of us decided it would be a really fun idea to climb up the mountain that the Hummer usually drives up. So armed with a walkie-talkie and a giant water bottle, Ryan Beach, Lindsay Clark, Megan Lubben and I trekked up the surprisingly steep hummer trail. When we got to the top, we could see forever. It was a full moon, and everything was silver and blue. There were mountains and valleys as far as we could see, and the valleys were all filled with mist. Lindsay and I sat on a ledge with our feet hanging off and a had a fantastic conversation. Perfect night.

Crimpact goes to Roswell Mill!
For some reason, only nine people showed up on this particular wednesday, so Kendall packed us all into two cars and wouldn’t tell us where we were going. We ended up at Roswell Mill, which happens to me one of my favorite places to be. So favorite place, with favorite people. We all abandoned our shoes at some point and trekked up the creek by rock-hopping. We stayed until the sun went down.

Nighttime in Trinidad
I don’t remember what night this was. It had rained that day, but it was late in the night so all the clouds had gone away. I brought a chair out onto the basketball court behind the church, which is surrounded by a grazing field for water buffalo and cows, and put it right in the middle of a huge puddle that reflected all the stars above me. I sat in the chair and listened to Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan album and thought about how big the sky was and how small I was.

A sunny day.
Not everything is complicated. Shortly after I moved in at Georgia State, I was sitting on my floor cutting out paper birds, listening to Rogue Wave. My floor was a patch of sunshine.

late night music sessions
Mica and I discovered the best way to celebrate our friendship was to trek to the music building around 11:00 pm and play sweet music, discuss the mysteries of the universe, shout insults at each other, and also hug.

Athens
I went to Athens at the beginning of October to see Okkervil River at the 40 Watt. The entire show was fantastic in a way that I can’t even begin to describe. I stayed at Michael’s dorm that night and helped him write his french paper (read: we stayed up talking until 7 am). The next day, he, Alina, and I hung out some more. Then Alina and I semi-road tripped back home. Simple, but perfect.

the Michigan/Georgia music exchange.
as many of you know, in mid-october both my ipod and my laptop were stolen, which were the homes of my music collection that I have spent the past three years or so meticulously constructing. I teetered on the brink of madness when I was in my dorm, with no internet, no television, no camera, and no music. Not a good time. I wrote a note on facebook calling all my friends to help me out by sending me CDs and mixes. A couple weeks went by and it seemed no one was going to help me out. Then one day, I found a thick envelope in my mailbox from an unfamiliar town in Michigan. Inside, I found three CDs with hundreds of mp3s on each one from people like Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens, and a little note from Chelsea Graham, a friend of a friend, whom I have never met. Random acts of kindness ftw!

oh, hello

and this is what you have missed in the past two months of absent blogging:

1. I lost a computer, camera, and iPod ("lost" isn't really the best word in that situation, actually)
2. I lost a friend (it's not here, either)
   
3. I discovered Candler Park and how lovely it is
4. LeFlash! (bizarre art festival in Castleberry Hills district. I don't think I'm enough of a serious artist to understand it. I'm okay with this.)
   
5. I got dumped
6. I had a lovely Thanksgiving with my family
7. I saw Twilight (hilarious, if you're wondering.)
8. I had quite a few waffles
9. I made a new friend
10. I found a new church (Trinity Vineyard)
11. I found the beginnings of new friendships
12. I got a new computer
13. I have a semi-functioning iPod
14. I am going good places.
15. I fell madly in love with drawing letters.
    

Something good that has come out of my camera being stolen is that I have had time to devote to the areas of the arts that I have been neglecting: namely, art by hand. Tonight I took it upon myself to draw this turtle. Turtles are not easy to draw. They are incredibly frustrating. I hate turtles. But I forced myself to do it, even though it took me half an hour to get up the courage to put a mark on my paper. Typical Cara. I'm happy with how it turned out though. I'm going to revamp my apathetic tortoise design for Threadless and see what happens.

Tomorrow I'm getting up at eight am to make muffins. It's 4:19 AM. Why do I do this to myself?

...for people who don't take themselves too seriously.

list of things that have been rocking my life lately: 

walks in the rain, pumpkin flavored baked goods, keds, macaroni and cheese, high school homecoming, the fountains at Centennial Park, good books, raspberry ginger ale, autumn, ART TEAM!, the high, green t-shirts, okkervil river in concert, unnecessary glasses, convex mirrors, pretentious pumpkins, mini road trips, sweaters, knee socks, photo strolls with flickr folk, cocoa puffs, potatoes, photobooth, acing map quizzes, rocking midterms, sweater vests, seeing old friends, making new ones.

have a good sunday.

A talking tree! How uncanny!

As has been discussed before, my life is a big joke. On the bright side, whoever is writing the scripts had the good foresight to hire an excellent music director. Saturday, my friend and I went all over Atlanta: Broad Street to Piedmont Park to Atlantic Station to his apartment to home. We are both going through similar life situations right now (slightly downtrodden by a few things, desperate for some new friends, you know) and were discussing these things for a lot of the day. While at Atlantic Station, we decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream and rest our tired feet while sitting on a short wall. As soon as we sat down, a nearby store started playing Death Cab for Cutie's "Your Heart is an Empty Room." At this point I started laughing pretty hard because if I was at home, I'd probably be flooding my last.fm with that song, on repeat.

And then this morning, I was walking back from class and decided to stop into the Shell station across the street from my dorm to see if they had any cereal. It's a really nice morning, sort of cloudy with a chill in the air that promises me that these 95 degree afternoons will not be allowed to continue for much longer. So I was enjoying that, and the nice breeze, and the fact that I am making both friends and art, while I walked across the crosswalk to this Shell station. They were playing their normal brand of bad soft rock from the 80's or 90's or whenever, but! As soon as I walked in, the song faded out, and "1 2 3 4" by Feist piped in through the ceiling. I smiled like I invariably do when that song comes on and thanked my omniscient music director again. Someone knows what they're doing.

I found this the other day. Apparently they're some of the worst analogies and metaphors, but there are some of them which would make me very pleased with myself if I had written them. ("Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like 'Second Tall Man.'")

In other news, I had sushi on Sunday and it was not disgusting.  In addition, I am making some pretty neat art. I did my laundry last night. And lastly, tomorrow is the birthday of the one and only Brittany Morris. Hurrah! 

to the people I love:

this applies to you.

I have been walking around Atlanta for the past few days with an excellent album in my ears. (or part of one, at least. Agh. I will buy the rest of it when I can. I bought the Stars album before I realized I should buy this, and so I don't have enough money to buy the whole album.) 

Anyway.

It's called Hello, Dear Wind, and Page France made it. I love Page France.

A problem I have with a lot of Christian music is that a lot of times the writers just don't try that hard. Maybe they'll make good words and sometimes they'll make cool sounds, but a lot of the times the two don't match up, or the words are a little cliché, or they forgot to use chords besides I, IV, or V. And a lot of the times it all falls in the same generic blah-pop sound. Any time I find an exception to this generalization I get pretty excited. David Crowder's Sunsets and Sushi album got me pretty excited. Sufjan Stevens gets me excited. And Hello, Dear Wind makes me want to jump and shout and be really happy because I'm so excited. Beautifully written, carefully thought out, and so, so honest. 

here are some of my favorite songs

Chariot

("you're a wrecking ball

with a heart of gold

we will wait for it to swing

like a chariot

swing it low for us

come and carry us away

so we will become

a happy ending")

...I couldn't think of a better metaphor for God than a wrecking ball with a heart of gold. I mean, really, people.

Windy

("I believe in windy days when everything gets blown away oh

Please let me be blown I

Promise you you I'm not afraid

I will sing a circus song

About the birds and lion hearts

But please if I forget to stop

Remind me who I am and what you are.")

So, in closing, do yourself a favor. Buy this album. Put it on your itunes. Take a long walk outside and listen, and love.

personal.

I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, finally.

The problem I have with trying to forget about someone is that you can't just forget them--Joel had to bring everything that reminded him of her. His apartment was so plain after that. Maybe I could forget a person, but I couldn't forget poetry or polaroids or Jonathan Safran Foer or art or birds or books or macaroni and cheese or t-shirts or questionable content or five iron frenzy or dave or everything. Because when someone is important to you, they are in all of the good things.

My room would be bare.

GUYS COME ON ARE YOU SERIOUS

It's 5:36 AM. I am awake. 

Why?

My brilliant roommates and their friends went out, came back, and are now having a full volume conversation in the common room.

WHY

I will confess, there are no nice thoughts in my head right now. Not a single one.

walls

When I take pictures of places, I feel like I understand them better.


Cities are strange. Nothing seems private. If you live your life, people will see you. In Atlanta, there are no parks to walk through and get lost in. There are street corners to sit on briefly, before you're approached eight times and asked for money.
Everywhere you go, it feels like you are on someone else's property and maybe you shouldn't be here.
Stopping on the sidewalk to take a picture or look through your bag, you worry you might get in someone's way.
And closed gates are everywhere. There are so many buildings and so many places you could maybe go into or explore, but it seems that 95% of everything is locked away, and that you're always on the outsides looking in.
But this is the place I am supposed to call home. I need to either get used to it or find a crack to stick my fingers into and eventually pry open a space large enough and natural enough for me to live.

too tired to write.

my feet: they hurt.

I should probably register to vote.

So as of Saturday the ninth at 1:56 pm, I have legally entered the world of adulthood. Of course, aside from granting me voting rights (yes), concerts-in-athens rights (yes), smoking rights (no), and a few other mostly worthless rights, this means nothing. Adulthood is a sham! I don't think anyone ever really feels like a grown-up.

I had a small-ish party, which was fun. My gifts included, but are not limited to: 

• a five page vocab list in a folder decorated with creative magazine collaging--Johnny Depp's head on a lobster! (and some thoughtful, heartfelt CDs)
• a melted Frosty from Wendy's
• Nick Carpenter's hair
• A shirt that celebrates my annoying habit of correcting other people's grammar/mechanics mistakes

It was good seeing people, although it hasn't sunk in that I probably won't see some of those people again for a undetermined amount of time.

I used birthday money to buy a really awesome pair of vintage sunglasses. I am counting on them being worth it; if not, American Apparel has a 45 day return policy. I also bought a Sufjan shirt! Because you can never have too many t-shirts. 

I move in to my posh dorm/apartment/penthouse on Friday. I am extremely excited. I bought a trunk, so I feel like I am going to Hogwarts. I really need to start packing.