do we have mustard? cuz i've got ham

Yesterday, thanks to the giving nature of God, I had a monumental day at work. I got 1.5 times my record in sales. I happened to set the work record. On my own I made a quarter of the sales made total that day. To think, I was planning to call in sick. I expected a terrible day, but the Lord gave me confidence and opportunity and so I made improvements to my mood and wallet. I earned about $100 in an eight hour shift.

The reason I wanted to skip work was because I had only gotten three-ish hours of sleep the night before. After work I managed to force myself to avoid napping. By seven I was exhausted, but, wanting to avoid getting too much sleep, I kept myself up for nearly three more hours. I was asleep by ten.
I woke feeling magically wonderful this morning.
I went to class and turned in my homework!
I came home from the temple to find Julie watching Follow That Bird.
It's just one of those days.
Thank Goodness.

i'm not a gymnast, maury

The dumbest song ever written: Back in the Saddle Again by Gene Autry, but I have had that song stuck in my head. I feel that I am indeed back in the saddle again. I am going to get out of this slump. I am!

I am depressed. There. I said it. Isn't admitting you have a problem the first step toward getting help? I am depressed. I have a problem. I haven't passed a day where tears haven't come. I can't sleep but can't wake up either. I can't eat and then eat too much. But I am done with letting that stand in my way.

At work on Monday I went to the bathroom and let myself cry, wiped the tears from my cheeks and then went back to work, instead of going home. I went to the library with Ted that night and got some homework done. And although I missed a class today, I don't plan on doing so again. (I know I will but not regularly).

I plan to buy some St. John's Wart, take my vitamins, make Richard Simmons a regular thing, and go to bed early; in short everything my mom has always wanted me to do. But, Mom, I just don't think I can take counseling again. It may be unfair but I blame counseling for how badly I did last year overall. I wallowed in weakness instead of pushing myself. I know, the connection between grades and counseling was probably this: both resulted from the depression. I don't want a counselor in my life.

I want the Lord to tell me He loves me, to give me strength and hope. I want friends to get me up each morning and to the library in the evenings. I want help in motivating myself to exercise and sleep. I don't want to be told that I have fears of abandonment and failure. I know this. I want to beat these fears. I want to succeed. And that scares the crap out of me.

When writing below entry I was at the library with Ted. Actually we're still there. Ted just snapped his fingers at me and told me to get back to work. He said he'd laugh if I put that in, so I had to.

the pleasures of being mean

There are times when I think I am evil. And there are times when I know I am. Ripping into Toby could be construed as evil; it certainly wasn't a bout of passion. My cool crossfirings were well deserved. What idiot goes to an apartment of girls, by their invitation, partakes of their hospitality and food and then proceeds to insult their likes, their pasts and their gender? I didn't misbehave really. He did.
Conversation:
C: I've dated someone who was 29.
T: That's disgusting. Isn't that against the law?
A: No.
T: Yes it is. He's eleven years older than her. (by the way it should have been: he's eleven years older than she)
A: Statutory laws specify an age difference of four years and the one being under eighteen. Besides you have to have sex for it to be against the law. She may associate with anyone she chooses of any age.
T: Wow, I don't think that's appropriate on Sunday.
A: The word sex is not a sin.
T: Are you going to be a lawyer?
A: No. I just believe that a person ought to be informed of a country's laws if he is to live in it. Or to speak about them.
T: Find special interest in that one in particular?
A: Rather.
I had other conversations with him, not all so nice. I decided that I don't like him.

But I do like the boys in apartment 130. I like them a lot. That's what makes my other rant less forgivable. That's how I know I am evil. I basically told them that they are overly content to be content, that their relationships are shallow as a result and the only thing I have seen them passionate about in Epic Duels. I was lecturing myself, but how are they to know that.
I can be very ungrateful at times. Luckily I think my presumptuous behavior may have led to a more open relationship with them. Blunt honesty is what I like best

good morning starshine

I have always been a morning person. Yes, laugh all you like, friends. I may not be an early riser, especially when I don't have to be up, but I have always been glad to wake up, to meet the day. My favorite way to do it, absolutely favorite way, is to lay in bed and here the soft sounds of others getting ready for the day. It started in elementary school when my older sisters would be getting ready for seminary and I would lay awake in bed listening to them laugh and talk, and hear the soft clinking of curling irons being set on the counter. Up until six weeks ago I woke up to April. First her blowdryer, then Rascal Flatts being played really low in the background. Today, I realized that I hate being woken up that way now. For the last month I have desired to throw anything sharp and heavy I have at my roommates when their music starts playing and they start talking loudly outside my door. I stumble out of my room bleary-eyed, as I have always done, and am accosted by jabs on my mood. Oh, don't talk to Audrey for a couple more hours... Good morning starshine, time to face the day...Sleep poorly again?...Just in a bad mood, I see. Yes, with April, with anyone before, I was still sleepy when I emerged from my room. Sometimes I came out so fast that I would collapse from dizziness. But the first thing I would do would be to say good morning, and usually I would make a joke. I would grin through my mane of morning hair and laugh despite the fact that I hadn't yet brushed my teeth, and then I would get really excited about the fact that I got to eat breakfast. I hate waking up now. I don't eat breakfast. I don't enjoy seeing their faces when I leave my room. I don't want to face the morning. Just tell me when it's over.

tough love, baby

Tough love, baby, says Lorelai Gilmore, as she cuts off her beloved daughter.

Tough love.

I have learned many lessons in my life. One of which was about the nature of God. I was walking up a long staircase to campus and ahead of me was a man in his late twenties or early thirties. Next to him was his daughter, of an age where she was just learning to walk. She was climbing each stair on her very own, struggling with intense effort, battling each step and then once having succeeded moving on to the next. Her patient father took each step as she did. When I passed them on the stairs they were perhaps fifty feet above their starting point. As I had traversed that distance the girl had made it up five. I was weighed down with books and fatigue, and I knew that the man could have easily outstripped me even bearing the child in his arms. Why did he sit by and watch her climb on her own, when he was much more capable than she at completing the task? Because someday she needed to be the one standing patiently as her child crept, fell and continued crawling. That is how I learned who God is.

Last night I learned a little more about His relationship with me. That overwhelming feeling of inaptitude and meaninglessness came to a climax. I realized that the time when I had been happiest the last few weeks was during the few seconds between when the phone started ringing and when it was answered. Those were the moments when I had hope. Other pleasant interactions were ways to narcotize myself from feelings of worthlessness.

Last night I prayed, begging to be rid of the feeling, begging for someone I love to love me back. I made myself hot chocolate -the ultimate comfort food- but took only a few unsatisfying sips. what I wanted, inexplicably, was to be found in a little leather cover engraved with a picture of Solomon's temple given to me by my best friend. I opened to the eighth chapter of second Nephi. Now I cannot say that the Lord chose for me to fall behind in my reading, that he planned for me to read only one chapter a night instead of two, but it certainly felt as though on that night I was meant to be reading that chapter.

Please let me be happy.
For the Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.
Please make this end.
Thus saith thy Lord, the Lord and thy God pleadeth the cause of his people; behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again.
Please let me feel like I am somebody of value.
But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; who have said to thy soul: bow down, that we may go over -and thou hast laid thy body as the ground and as the street to them that went over.
Help me face a new day.
Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city.
Please send someone to comfort me.
...
...
...
Nobody came. I waited. I wept. I sobbed my heart out, wringing from it every bad feeling I could conceive. I closed the Book and clutched it like a lifeline. I fell asleep holding it like a teddy bear. The phone never rang, nobody ever came, and I felt abandoned by my Lord, unloved by my Heavenly Father. Yet, even while I hurt I did not turn away hope, but still looked to the verses I had read. I wondered why but did not punish myself in any attempt to punish Him.

When I woke I felt desperate for some time, time to sort out my feelings, time to get work done, time to read the Book that suddenly I craved like air. It was as if I were reassured, though I had asked for the answer to be given me through another, that it was acceptable to take time off to take care of myself. I called in sick, and my boss was lovely about it. Get some sleep, Audrey, I'll see you Friday.

I waited to understand why the Lord had not sent anyone to my rescue, and the understanding came. Tough love, baby. I am he; yea, I am he that comforteth you. Although I trusted in the grace of my God, I did not trust in Him. I waited for help from someone else. I would have given my gratitude to that person. I would have used that person as a prop on which to support myself. Instead, when I awoke, I felt calm and comforted, and slightly rebuked. It was almost as if He had told me to pick myself up and get over it, the way Ted might have. It was almost as if He had pierced me with His gaze, telling me I needed to have more faith in Him, and less in the arm of man. It was completely as if He had taken care of me.

Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

pity-party

I feel like I am disappearing. Someday I might look in the mirror and not see my reflection. I am trying to avoid mirrors, just in case. I feel like my presence here doesn't matter. I am expendable, unimportant; I make no difference. My life has no differences.

My classes are on a weekly cycle, the same routine each week. My work is worse. Each phone call starts a new goal; at the cessation of each the past is wiped clean. I have no calling in church, no way to feel a part of a community I fear to join as it is. The people with whom I spend my time are as static as a John Wayne* character. I love them and they will always be the same, and we will always interact the exact same. Tonight I stayed home, just to not go to the same people.

I am plagued by the feeling that I have nothing to look forward to, no real reason to keep going through the routine. Sure, there is that vague future shiny goal of graduation, but that is no comfort. I am antsy, a feeling destructive in a situation where my future academically, socially and financially balances on the brink. My heart is not in my tasks. My heart is not in anything.

Often it comes back to my friends. I miss April, et all. I have no one to whom I can turn in good or in bad, someone with whom to share myself, and so whatever emotions, good or bad, that I feel are wasted upon unsympathetic space. Have I made my friends my horcruxes, places in which to lose my soul? Because they are gone, have I lost my outlet?

I use my writing. I have been diligent in my writing, losing track of time while I explore the emotions and interactions of the people who were born full-grown from my head. My Athenas possess me and make me take notice of them. Meanwhile I wallow in self-pity that I am going unnoticed.

I would rather lose than take a consolation prize. I will have no mocking medals to celebrate my failure to be the best. So why do I not make the effort to get friends? Why do I not ace my every class with amazing proficiency? Why do I not fly to the moon and be named Queen? Because I don't feel that I can. Because to me, these tasks, so easy for some, are difficult for me. And I fear failure, perhaps more than I hate mediocrity. Every time I fail I lose a piece of myself. I will take an unsatisfying routine, just as long as I don't lose anything else; no more friends, no more goals, no more me.

I will tick one more day off the calendar and do my life all over again tomorrow. I count 21 days since the semester started...is it really so few? I check voice mail every hour, I run to check the post every day, and I am constantly on-line to read my email. Maybe somewhere I will find proof that I exist.

*no insult meant to John Wayne, whose fan I am in the nth degree.

girls just wanna have fun

I have come to the important conclusion that my roommates rock my socks off. They are awesome girls, totally laid back, fun and free.

Emilie is the only one who is older than I in the apartment. She is beautiful in the classic sense, with curves and long, thick hair. Her voice is soft without being breathy. She is a music major, completing her charming femininity. Her sister Caitlin is a sweetheart, completely generous and uplifting. The two girls ought to have a competition to see who is the nicest; only, the game would be rigged because one would surely let the other win. Tarythe and I have known each other for a year and a half now. She is such a hug whore, one of the most openly engaging and affectionate people. Julie is totally random, sometimes to the point of being indecorous but usually it is amusing. She's certainly not bland, as I once thought her. Then there is Cassidy, the youngest in our home. She is quirky and energetic, with just enough sarcasm for me to bond with her. All my roommates love to dance, watch movies, eat, talk late into the night, and in short anything else we can do with each other.

Last night we went to FHE together, singing I Believe I Can Fly at the tops of our lungs. We spun in circles across the parking lot on the way. Afterward we embarrassed ourselves by doing Sweatin' to the Oldies, complete with obnoxious sound effects. We're now in love with Richard Simons. What a hunk!

When we picked up T from work we had loaded ourselves into Cassidy's POS so that the six of us could go out to the Pizza Factory. We went for a celebratory ice-cream party, courtesy of Emilie. Yes, she got kissed. Five of us dipped our spoons again and again into the communal Sundae while T sipped gingerly at her smoothie. We laughed and talked and annoyed our waitress. We tried to calm Em's nerves as she insisted she knew that Rob was going to break up with her that night. We spawned many quote-worthy phrases, and developed "the cassidy". Whenever someone spills in an obvious way, such as flinging food, that is pulling a cassidy.

While Emilie played grownup and arranged her insurance, we held a dance party in the living room. The girls were astounded that I would play along. It only lasted for a bit but I proved myself worthy by demonstrating my moves. Cass wants me to promise to go to a dance with her. We'll see. I don't do well in chaotic situations with loud and offensive music and people I dislike for the mere fact of not knowing them. But as for people I do like, Ted and Seth dropped by, so the six of us girls had someone to dote on. Our "Oopa's!" and flamboyant hugs found targets, filling the room with silly energetic affection.

As the night wound down, so did we, ending the evening with apartment scripture study and prayer. We all felt close to one another as we prayed for each other's welfare and happiness. I think Emilie is emerging as our mother figure. That is why we children all waited up for her as she had a talk with Rob out on the balcony at midnight. None of us five admitted to waiting on Em but none of us found our way to our beds, not even I, the sleep-glutton. When Emilie came back in at the end of the night and, crying, told us that Rob loves her, we loved her too. We found that our love was brimming over and spilling into each other's cups. Sitting on the two beds in mine and Cassidy's room we felt close and intimate. It was a scene straight out of Little Women, a perfect ending to a perfect day, one of many yet to come.

when my subconscious finds its voice

Sometimes I hate my dreams. I hate sleeping. I tend to hate all things that I am not very good at. Now, napping I am great at. During naps I don't have time to dream.

Last night I dreamed that Nora died. She died coming to my rescue when living with my parents was too much. I blamed myself. I woke from the dream and went straight to my email to send her my love, to let her know what she means to me.

My next dream was that I was stranded with my dad in the middle of hurricane Katrina. We had to fight our way out to safety, and on the way I tried to rescue some others. Some attempts succeeded, others failed. I worked really hard to save a pregnant woman, but only my dad and I crossed into sanctuary together. All the while I was on the phone with Joyce who was in the middle of a crisis, hating me because I couldn't help her.

Do I feel responsible for my family? Do I feel guilty for their pains? Do I want to rescue them, carry them on my back and save them from life? Yes. I just wish I could escape those feelings when it's time to sleep.

cat-scratch fever

I want a cat. I miss waking up in the middle of the night to annoying pawing and drooling. I miss that really obnoxious noise they make when you pick them up when they don't want to be held. I like how their ears go back and they flip their tails. I really love how they purr. I miss my cats. I am probably cursed to end up the crazy old cat lady sitting on her porch in a rocking chair. I can hardly wait.

anti-love poem

hands hold, fingers interlock,
locked and lingering, half-cocked,
fingering the palm of the other.
intimate and committed,
too much, to smother,
committing an inmate into a chain,
a relationship unrelating,
a change and deflating of hearts and minds,
minds that find relating too degrading,
hands grating,
dropped and missing.
kissing stopped.
egos popped and fizzing.
it's the end. let's just be friends.

sounds of silence part two

K emailed me back saying he wants to keep up communication. He said that it did actually take him the eleven days to make up his mind. I don't know what to do with that.

ruby slippers, anyone?

Is it totally insane to be homesick without having a home? Homesickness is just a feeling, a combination of loneliness, nostalgia, and directionlessness. Sometimes it is a complicated feeling resulting from failure, or loss, or from transience.

Maybe that is why I am homesick. I am experiencing all of that. I am afraid of failure. I live failure. I suck at my job, I am only attending school part-time, retaking classes that I inarguably failed.

I have lost my home. It was sold on Friday, emptied of all the little keepsakes that transformed it from a house into a place where memories were made, dreams dreamed and identities formed. My mom shipped out old books, paintings, couches and crayon drawings meant for the refrigerator.

I managed to keep from crying until I heard that not only do I not have a home anymore, but I have suffered a loss of limb, literally. My trees that I love so well, loved so well, have been cut down to make room for a pool. My home was not the walls, the carpet, the furniture, or the layout of the house. My home was the view from my bedroom window. The maple trees, the ivy, the niche of green that held promises of fertility and life. It was a shady spot, where the snow stayed the longest even as spring approached. This corner was home. The green-dappled light that flooded my room from the leaf-covered windows.

I am homesick for green light. There's no place like home.

sounds of silence

There are some communications that don't require words. Some answers come without saying anything. It is the pauses in life that are the most articulate.

Never wait around for a phone call. If he wanted to call, he would. Don't check your email every twenty minutes after the first day. When you ask if he wants to continue communicating and he doesn't respond for a week, then that means no. If he wanted to write, he would. Don't fly to him in Manhattan. If he wanted you, he would have made an effort.

I put the last one on the list to remind myself that I am not the only one in the world who holds out, who hopes for the insane, who stands in her own way in regards to happiness.

He's not coming, he's not writing. Go out, have fun, don't think about him. Don't call him. Yeah, I think I'll call him.

heaven is the spanish riviera

I have three rules regarding the behavior of people that I love.
1-they cannot move away, unless I move with them.
2-they cannot die, unless I die too, or first.
3-they cannot get married, unless I get married too, or first.

All in all the rules come down to the same thing. I don't like being left behind. Of course I don't mind leaving everyone else behind, so I suppose my rules aren't fair. But at least I have exceptions to the rules. I'm not going to just deny everyone's right to die. How unfair that would be!

I think I am a very reasonable person. I even came up with a solution to anyone's dilemma. Jocilyn, Julie and I were the only ones in the complex over Christmas break and we came up with...Spain. Bryan inspired it in a way. He had a job in Portland at the end of the summer and he wanted to work for a few years and then transfer internationally. I couldn't let him do it, not without me, so I decided to come too.

I made a list of friends who had to come along, who would marry whom, who would have what profession in the commune I designed, and even who of the six families would have the big screen TV's for watching BYU football via satellite. We'll go skiing in the alps in Germany for Tarythe and have trips to France for me. Our kids will grow up friends and be allowed to play in the street of our private cul-de-sac.

Since the original plotting of this story there have been some adaptations. Jon, no longer invited, for instance. Joe, now definitely invited. Marriages had to be shuffled around, but it all amounts to the same thing. I will live with everyone I love until the fateful day when I administer the special Kool-aid. Then, I will have them forever.

I think I have a preoccupation with my friends. Despite the fact that I dedicate this blog to the discovery of my own life, I recognize that I cling to my friends like to a life preserver. Although a shrink once said my biggest fear is being like my mother, I disagree. It is being unloved. Perhaps that is like her. Or worse, having no one to love. That is hell. Spain is my heaven.

dreams last for so long

My heart got broken today. I had a nap in which I dreamed I was reunited with many people I love. Ted was the principle character. Regretfully I woke up from such a happy dream and went straight to the computer to see if I had news from any of my friends. I hadn't checked my email in over thirty hours, and since I normally do it every half-hour or so I had high hopes. Hopes that were dashed to pieces when all I had was a horoscope entitled the Fog of Desire. I think I am lonely.

finding harbors

Today was a day to culminate the comings and goings in life. It peaks a week that was the same, of a prime month, etc. Today I took April to the airport to see her off. She went home to Ohio indefinitely. I wept the entire ride home as I listened over and over to a CD she gave me. I saw the looks that passing motorists gave me, watching me as I cried onto my dash and sobbed clinging to my steering wheel. Oh how I will miss her! And yet, I haven't a doubt in my mind that she will stay close to me, that we will keep one another posted on all of our "hands down" events in life. But for now I miss her like I missed the air I couldn't breathe for crying.

On the positive side of the temporary crossings in life, Ted is coming home. That is to say he is coming back to Provo. He's not sure where he'll live or for how long, but the important thing is that he will be back. One can't be without an April and a Ted in this life. That would just be cruel. I half-expected Ted to be at my door when I got back from the airport. Can I call it a fair trade? No, because I want them both! I'd never trade either. But no matter, Ted hasn't come yet. And when he does it will only signify a new medium for hiding myself from the world. As I am Ted's second favorite person in the whole world we will inevitably spend copious amounts of meaningful time together that will signify nothing and succeed only in damaging my potential standing as someone's first favorite person. Ah, how I the ostrich love my sand!

Other passings: Ashley, Elise, Laurie, Jackie, Julie, Jocilyn, Aubri, Joe, Brian, Dane, Troy, Troy, Matt, etc, etc, etc.
Other comings: New Roommates, Tarythe, potential friends? and Kevin.

What? Kevin did I say? Like I would pass over him so easily.
I took the opportunity of his starting work yesterday to email him a note wishing him good luck. It was answered. The determined silence is ended. Shall I let it now slip into accidental silence resulting from lack of maintenance to the relationship? After all, the hurt is gone, so why push it, right? Wrong. I have never been able to just let things go with Kevin. I certainly won't do so at this point, not after he called me a quality girl.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another. Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence."

I have seen proof enough to believe him, but still I don't. Some day these ships, all these vessels that dot the seas, they will find a harbor in which to moor themselves. Ships are not content with fickle signals cast out across the water. I would abandon whatever course I had set to reach a friendly flicker, even if it meant breaking myself on rocks as I inadvertently chased the glow of a light house. I am not alone in this. You want it too. Someday I will have anchor next to you.

it's alive!

At approximately 12:51 a.m. on August the 18th in the year 2005 I, Audrey Michal Hunter, finished my novel. Right now...Right now it is printing. As yet it is titleless, but shall be given as is to my trusted friend April and to Heather Jenkins who started me on this project. I'll trust their scrutiny of my first draft. Maybe April will even manage to give it a title. I feel like Dr. Frankenstein, and I love it!

thinking versus dying

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."

I used to think too much. Ask anyone who has known me longer than a year. They all told me so. I was christened Thinky, the eighth dwarf, by my sister Joyce. Apparently there was something wrong with this. Too many people gave me the advice to stop thinking about it and just go with the flow. I tried it. I tried listening to myself, feeling my way through life and experiencing the ups and downs. I failed classes by not planning ahead. I wasted credits by not forming my graduation plan. I hurt people's feelings by not evaluating our relationship. I led people on by just going with the flow. I never thought. I experienced a whole lot. I wish I could take it all back, but there I go being cognitive again.

I just want to know, what is wrong with thinking? What? Mankind have some of the most highly developed minds on the planet, third only to mice and dolphins. Why don't we use them? We have made cities, maps, clothes, fire, wheels, airplanes, but now we have decided that thinking is wrong? Most people would cry outrage at that statement, but it is true. We settle for sub par everything, mediocrity is our biggest friend. Ingenuity is punished. Not everywhere, of course, but in general. What is wrong with our culture that we hate anyone more advanced than we? We teach our children to do the same by our example. The smart kids are tormented by their peers whose respect they ought to have secured. To this day, I hate being called smart, even while reveling in the fact that I know I am.

I know I am smart. At least, I know I was smart. Smart people don't get into stupid personal scrapes. They don't fail classes. They don't go through life trying to ride out the current. Smart people don't act as I have been doing this last year. I stopped reading too. It seemed as my mind liquefied I became more and more satisfied with idleness and interactions with humans whom I couldn't stand on a mental level.

It is time to change. For all that my roommates complain that I don't participate as much as I have, that I read more and write all day, I will continue to do so. I will be anal about where I am going with my college career. Hell, I will make a plan, with the aid of a counselor. I will analyze things until my mind is reeling, until I come to conclusions. It is high time that I think too much.

"I think, therefore I am."

the quill is mightier than the stereo

Today is going to be a day spent in front of my laptop writing the next great American novel. My time will be punctuated with Ace of Base songs, to which I am currently listening and which I have no intention of giving up. Ah the wonders found in my brother's CD case!

I wish I could say that I am proud of my book. I am, but I am so afraid of censure that I rarely talk about it. I am writing three books currently with many others dancing in my head. I love the quote from Little Women: "At night my mind would come alive with voices and stories. I gave myself up to it, longing for transformation."

I have twenty-nine chapters written of the story that needs the least background research. One hundred and seventy pages! I want to finish this summer in order that I may say I have finished something for once in my life. So here goes. I leave to write, to listen to the muse that sits behind me and whispers passages in my ear, when she's not getting The Sign stuck in my head.