Home, Love, Christmas

Just some photos of Greenville...I think I'm going to go out and take some today. I miss this place a lot, and it's weird when I'm away from it and have to explain where I come from. Greenville is Southern in that it's warm and eats well and remembers where it came from. It's also new with a sweeping suspension bridge and art-driven and begs to be walked from one end to the other. I want everyone to visit this place.

I watched my Creative Writing seniors read here, along with the beautiful Lauren Groff who forever made me feel like I could write whatever I wanted. (I'm feeling a bit hyperbolic today, can you tell? I think Christmas Eve's make me more nostalgic than New Year's Eves.)

My wonderful and magnicificent friend Victoria Ford read the most beautiful graduation speech known to all of mankind on May twenty eighth of this year and sent one hundred frightened and excited students out into the world. Victoria: hello, dear. What took you so long?

I could see this bridge from my window senior year. I went to the most blessed school in all of creation.

All of these photos are by Andrew Stephen Cebulka from a beautiful magazine called Garden and Gun that my crazy and completely fantastic fiction teacher will be published in soon. 

Is it weird that miss you a place you are in?

A few Christmas memories and then I won't write here for another few months:

Jennifer's Mother's white chocolate peppermint bark. Watching Love Actually with all of the CWs and crying at the end, holding Victoria's hand. Singing All I Want for Christmas Is You with Dunbizzle in the cafeteria. Watching Ms. Higgins Geometry class go caroling around the classrooms. The ornaments hung above the computer stations in the library. Candy cane fudge at home. Waking up, curled into the sheets, and realizing it's Christmas morning. James and I waiting in my room until Daniel woke up to go see presents. Eating pralines by the handfuls at Dunbizzle's house with a toasted turkey and cheese sandwich. Showing off the stockings that my mother hand-stitched. Putting all of my parents anniversary ornaments in order around the tree. Listening to James Taylor. Sending out massive text messages. Remembering Matthew Dickman's words: Words are the antithesis of emotion. Poetry is the impossible: putting emotion into words. I feel that now, when I try and tell people from my Wheaton community that I miss them in a weird way, when I try and tell my GSAH community that I carry your heart (I carry it inside of my heart), when I try and tell my family that I couldn't live in Chicago without their love and encouragement, when I try and tell Scott, George, and Mamie that only after a while, I see the unbelievable value of the past two years and miss you more than I could have thought a year ago.

Merry Christmas All, and Good Winter,

Emilea