We buried our box of memories.
But now I just refer to it as the treasure box.
Included in this treasure box were our learners permits, terribly embarrassing pictures, notes passed in our Algebra classes, movie ticket stubs, concert ticket stubs, even an oh-so-special chocolate rose which was celebrated with when each of us got our first kiss (a good or bad experience depending on the case)... but to get to the point, this is a treasure box of complete insignificant value to anyone but ourselves.
That's what makes it so special.

Only several years after burying this box, one of us is already married, another is engaged, two of us have spent several months living thousands of miles away from home, and none of us live together like we had probably once originally planned...despite the new schools, the new friends, and the new lives, we've remained friends at heart. But back to the time when we were all inseparable, we were the Class of '07. SF Dons. Oh baby.

(An excerpt from my 7up Girl Series - a work still in progress):

I had changed. The girl who once walked into those doors as a sophomore, had walked out someone new only several years later. Sometimes we pay more attention to whats going on in the world, that we lose track of the change going on inside our own selves.

During those years I had learned the Pythagorean Theorem and the Dewey Decimal System, I learned that the absolute value of anything will always be positive, and that an apostrophe has three uses, all of which I have forgotten; but out of all the learning that helped me make my way into the next chapter of my life entitled: college, my heart still learned so much more. I learned to love myself and to love others. I learned that the learning never stops – and that the mistakes we might make can teach us what we need to know the most. I learned that as I drifted from friendships and even when my best friend was taken away - no one could take away what I had had, because high school can be more than just four years of homework, prom queens, skipping class, or what to wear. It shapes us. It creates us… but most of all, as I walked out with diploma in hand and the best of friends by my side, I learned with every ounce of bittersweet realization that I somehow,
in some way,
and sometimes in ridiculous fashion…
grew up.

I wouldn’t ever go back, but I wouldn’t ever change a thing because thinking of that box has reminded me of something Emily Dickinson once said: “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."

I guess the same goes for high school.

Those who may not have gone out of their way to bury a box, luckily still have their own treasure box of memories (thanks to the temporal lobe in the brain - one of the few things I've retained from my magnificently hard psych class).

But anyway, here I am, sitting in my sweats with my 15 minute face mask on at one in the morning, realizing that although life has drastically changed and as different as I am (or hope to be) today, one thing has remained the same from the time of burying that treasure box.
Somehow,
in some way
(and occasionally in ridiculous fashion)

I am still trying to grow up.

Cupid & Cummings.

Elliot, Frost, Tennyson - even Whitman, the best of the best cannot come close or even compete with the adoration my heart holds for E.E. Cummings.
Granted, a part of his poetry is somewhat provocative, and would have pushed the envelope 100 years ago...but I believe that Cummings and I are both two helpless and hopeless romantics at heart. If we were to run into each other on the street today, we would become the dearest of friends and I imagine we would spend hours and days in bookstores and coffee shops, talking about love and being in love and hating love and so on and so forth.

The most beloved E.E. Cummings poem there is, (at least personally speaking), is "somewhere i have never traveled" - as I read this poem years ago, it was as if Cupid took out that dreaded arrow and shot right at my heart.

I am in love with E.E. Cummings.

(and if you want to be too, read on)

somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

The beauty of this poem is in its simplicity - which, I believe, some of the most beautiful things are: simple.

This poem can EVEN go without capitalization and punctuation ...
Honestly people, who can get away with that?

So go on ahead and read Thoreau's "Epitaph On The World", "Life in A Love" by Browning, or anything by Oscar Wilde (and I readily admit that I do love them all) but they just can't beat this.

(whether it's because of Cupid or Cummings, I don't know, I'm just clearly biased).

"I Wanted It To Be You"

I wish I could take credit for what I am about to write, but I can't; Hollywood can however, but I would like to assure you that had I been born with brilliance or eloquence, I would have said this all a long time ago.
I am writing this simply because every time I see this movie, I can't help but think: I am Kathleen Kelly. Her lines speak from my heart.

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, valuable, but small. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So goodnight, dear void."

"I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings..."

"No. No, but... but there's the dream of someone else. "

"People always say that change is a good thing, but what it really means is that something that you didn't want to happen, has happened."

"What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me...And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?...Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal."

"I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You've got mail. I hear nothing. Not even a sound on the streets of New York, just the beating of my own heart. I have mail. From you."

"When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does."

"I'm completely jealous. When I'm confronted by someone I get tongue tied and my mind goes blank. Then I spend the rest of the night tossing and turning over what I should have said."

"I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly."

Oh, how I love this movie.