I haven't looked at this thing in forever. I've been busy with having a life, though I feel like there's not a lot to say about it. October and early November I was in a depressed lull, but I made myself get it together. I kissed a lot of boys. I went home for winter break and this year began my geology major, a big switch from photography. It is difficult but immensely more enjoyable. With a push from a friend, my boyfriend and I got together in February. He is the best, and I am grateful and scared to have him around. It's weird to have strong feelings like this towards a person, and to talk about the future, but he wants to travel everywhere like I do and live all over the world and know everything and he brings me rocks from his summer work in SE Arizona so it's good. We learn a lot from each other. I am in Flagstaff for the summer, it's pretty boring but hopefully I'll get a job soon. I want the wind to stop and the heat to settle in, heavy and full. I want the monsoons to come. I have a lot of plants, because I need to occupy myself with taking care of something. I miss home, the days lasting for ever and ever, the beach, my friends. I hate that the sun sets at 7:30, it's all wrong. But here at least when the sun sets the bats are swooping around the crickets are chirping away and there's swallows diving through the air, which I love during my evening runs. It's beautiful, and you can't have everything. I have my first apartment and a checkbook and I pay bills every month, so I guess I'm kind of an adult now. It doesn't feel like it though.

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

May

Here is what I wrote to Jens Lekman tonight for his October smalltalk, the theme of the month being "self portrait"

I took this on the edges of California and Arizona, back in February or March. I was homesick for Seattle but had also finally fallen in love with Flagstaff, where I go to school. It is beautiful, blanketed in snow from December to March (which no one thinks of when they think of Arizona), nestled at the bottom of a stratovolcano that blew the top 3000 or 4000 feet of itself to bits some thousands of years ago. Just like Mt. St. Helens did in 1980. It's comforting to have that element of home in place here so far away.

I want to live a lot of places -- I'm moving to Alaska for six months this summer, I want to move to somewhere inside the Arctic Circle at some point, I want to live on a coast, perhaps Washington again, maybe Oregon or central California. I want to go to grad school in Chile and learn to be a volcanologist amongst the tallest volcanoes in the world. I want to do research in the Rift Valley in Africa. Mountains are my constant, I don't want to be away from them ever. But, being from Seattle, water is also important to me. I basically grew up at the beach, I lived three blocks away from it. The ghost of water is everywhere here in the high desert -- the washes, the canyons eroded away over time inconceivable, the rocks and tops of mesas with little shallow pools etched into them, a puddle kept in a fold of earth that's always shaded. It took me a long time but I have grown to love these things, and like the old volcanoes that surround my town I connect the reminders of water to home.

I suppose to tie all of this into a self portrait I'll tell you that I'm a geology major now, and for good reason, which I'm sure you can glean from the above paragraph. In my songs I constantly reference the topography of where I'm living, the weather, the histories of how things came to be formed. I think those are some of the things that shape me the most. I take strength from landscapes.

That said, the most important and beautiful mountains to me will always be the Cascades, and gazing across the Puget Sound at the Olympic Mountains will never ever ever fail to take my breath away. I will always long for the months and months of grey and drizzle back home.

When we met at Easy Street Records a few years back, I don't know if you remember me or that meeting, but I didn't have much to say. I'm sorry about that. I was 16 and very heart broken. In that time I learned to never settle for someone who is second best, and I haven't, and I will wait however long it takes to find an equal. Preferably a boy who likes music and math and books and can chop wood and will hold hands while gazing up at the aurora borealis, but who knows.

Love,

Sarah

JK, OVER, I DON'T MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS

The great irony of my life is that I don't meet a worthwhile boy in AZ until I'm back in Seattle for summer. But it will be alright.

Two months, two months until my boy.

Of course Blogspot uploaded the pictures out of order...

Today, Redwood National/State Park

An original Salvador Dali in some fancy-ass gallery in San Francisco two nights ago

Driving on Highway 1 at sunset from Santa Barbara to San Francisco four days ago

California wine country

Joshua Tree National Park, a week ago, the day after I left school

I will be home tomorrow and I am anxious to finally get there. And to fucking get a good, long sleep.

Yesterday was my last Saturday in AZ until the fall, and we made it perfect. We went to the reservation to get Nick's phone and I hung out with Adorable Navajo Child #1 (picture one, chillin' by my knees) who shook my hand, started speaking Navajo really quietly at me, and then gave me that puppy to hold. Then we went elsewhere on the res (which took like two wonderful hours 'cause we got lost) where we ACTUALLY got Nick's phone and I got to chill with Adorable Navajo Child #2. Then we drove for awhile more and the clouds were so so so mesmerizing, and then we were at Canyon de Chelley where it was cold and windy and beautiful and I thanked God so much for everything He has given me and for creating this land.

Tomorrow my mom and aunt get here and we are leaving on Wednesday and I am going to see Joshua Tree National Park and meet family I didn't know existed and then it's up the Pacific Coast Highway and then to the Redwoods and then home.

I am so sad to leave here, but the summer will be wonderful and I love Seattle.

I will be gone from the desert in a month, and I don't know how I will stand to be away. I want to be here for the summer monsoons, and for the heat, and I could spend my whole life driving these roads.