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Symphony_In_Yellow
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Name: amanda june
Country: United States
State: Georgia
Metro: Atlanta
Birthday: 3/30/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: Christ, people, music, language, travel, animals, planning, spontaneity, horticulture, late 19th century feminism, forensic anthropology/cultural resource management, the history channel
Expertise: harmonic analysis through roman numerals...? yay!!
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  roadlesstrvld8
Member Since:
12/21/2004
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| www.blavel.com/amanda_june
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| Lots to log here (I understand that no one reads this, on purpose, anyway, so this is mostly for my gratification [if not amusement] years from now, as past entries have always proven at least mildly entertaining).
Ahem.
So I finally met Samantha! She is just as wonderful, smart, funny, and beautiful as I'd imagined... only, blond! I suppose, having dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, I was expecting to have at least one biological parent with comparable features (though I have to note that Sam and I share the same eyes and hands, for sure).
And I have a lot in common with her father, my grandfather, Lynn.
 
A new doggie daughter as of last week - Lady:
 
Casi and I had a Blue Ridge adventure:
I have enough Cherokee blood to claim the Cherokee Nation, I recently discovered!
And Tuesday I found out that I have diabetes.
...which is actually the best thing in the world to find out before spending the rest of the year in a place where they serve several courses of pasta, bread, and wine at nearly every meal. I went in for some blood work (since I have a medical history now) and they just happened to catch my glucose at 330 (anything above 200 is diabetic, while 80-130 is 'normal'). This is my fourth day on Glucophage, and so far, so good. I hope it continues to work - I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but the idea having to give myself shots of insulin every meal makes me...well, sad, more than anything. I use Truvia (or Splenda, if need be) in stead of sugar, and have for years. I eat unbleached flour, sweet potatoes instead of white, chocolate chip cookies made with garbonzo beans, I exercise often, I mean, seriously. I suppose not everyone eats themselves into this disease, and some can never eat their way out of it, either.
Also, I'm going to Chicago Thursday to spend some quality people time (and some quality time under the gun).
I am so very, very thankful for all of the above.
It's officially the third of August, which means 25 days!!
Sianara,
june!
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Silent Noon
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| http://www.poopockets.com/free/bibs/bibs.htm
I've been making things for my 'one-day' children for a long time, and this site has some great (free!) patterns/ideas. While I don't plan to have the opportunity to use these on my own children anytime soon, my friends have given me the opportunity to practice. I still have my homemade Humpty Dumpty from a great-aunt of mine, and it seems like these types of gifts mean so much more.
August 27th approaches!
The only downside: I speak English and French... but Italian will come, hopefully.
"Home" - Montepulciano, where my apartment is:
 
To bring this post full-circle... creating these tiny baby things reminds me that there was a time when my goals in life were to become my mother, more or less: married and having children young, like her mother and her grandmother. But a few weeks ago I broke that cycle as the first female (in both my adopted and bioligical families) to earn a college degree. While my desires to start a family remain, my grandmother's pleading words have stuck with me: see the world while you can.
When I do have children, they will have a different mother than I had: not any better or worse for having pursued an education/career, but one that has seen and experienced the world into which I bring them, and one that made her own life out of what she had rather than continuing a generational pattern. One that can teach them out of her own scrapbooks, logs, and journals rather than textbooks or television. Parents who have separate and congruent existances, who are living examples that you can indeed see the world and be a mother and wife without settling for one or the other. So often it seems women my age drop their own goals to fill the shoes of the generation before. While some are happy, for many others this destiny will never fully satisfy them. A parent of one of my students once described herself as 'just a mother'. She left her husband and children last December. I don't know her whole story, but maybe she did feel like 'just a mother'. I will never be 'just a mother'. I am Amanda June who pursues her passions and gifts, who makes discoveries and sees amazing things, who is waiting until the time is right to add a few to the journey.
I am so glad I chose to step back and consider myself when there were times I could have easily settled. It's amazing to think of how close I may have been to a completely alternate, and not nearly as fulfilling, life. I realize that I will likely be Dr. before I am Mrs., and that is something that he and I are both ok with.
Ciao!
PS: Cappuccino heath bar blizzard time tomorrow - my reward for hiking 8 miles, of course!
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| For lack of creativity and sleep, here's a list of what's up lately, with handy little headings:
School:
Last week of my B.A.! It's crazy and amazing to know that the last five years are about to 'really' be worth something (on paper). And with the end of this chapter begins a new one; I'll be moving to Italy in August, in part to finish my anthropology degree. It makes economic sense to stay in school right now, and besides - studying in Europe? Would you turn it down?
Travel:
This subject overlaps the first. If you're free in November I'll be more or less backpacking through Europe so come an' see me! At the end of November, I'm flying into Denver to stay with some friends/skiing(!!) for Thanksgiving, then back to Atlanta. That's the plan, anyhow.
Music:
This subject also overlaps the first (and second!). Let's use an outline.
a. My capstone lecture/recital for graduation is Saturday, May 9 at 6:30 at KSU. My topic is Appalachian music, which has been a joy to prepare. Part of my recital is a presentation of the music in my family's history in Appalachia, so it's an unusually personal recital. Michael's senior recital is at 4:30 the same day and he'll be performing one of my compositions. A reception for both of us will follow my recital at my parents' house in Cartersville.
b. This great group of people I've played with since high school asked me last year, when they moved home from college in TN, to play with them again - long story short, we recorded an EP and it got reviewed in Southeastern Performer Magazine (pick it up near most Creative Loafing stands)! Here are some highlights:
"...the band demonstrates its musical ability by using tempo to create builds and peaks of sound. Using these elements the band further adds to the dramatic situations created by the lyrics...in the song 'The Liar Will Perspire', the song's bridge beautifully transitions to a waltz that's soft yet upbeat. The band is at best when the tempo is slower - as exemplified by the standout track 'Boy Named Gold.' Keyboardist Amanda Brawner shines on this track, which is a soft ballad that exemplifies the band's songwriting ability. Brawner's vocals provide a melancholy tone; however, they're sweet enough to carry the song...This is an impressive first release that will surely warrant attention...great things are sure to come."
Other:
Scott's grandmother passed away in February after a valiant fight with pancreatic and stomach cancer. While she wasn't my grandmother, she treated me like I was. I'm not sure I know anyone quite as selfless as that woman. In the hospital, nearing death, she would ask her visitors if she could get them anything and if we were comfortable. I hope to have half the strength, courage, and kindness that she possessed so beautifully and into her last hours.
Libby is turning three this month! Excuse for a party? I think so. A garden party, now that I have a garden again. I made her a stocking for Christmas and was told I should make more and sell them... if only there were a year-round demand for stockings!
My grandmother, after whom I am named, will be here with my grandfather for my recital. In light of Scott's grandmother passing, I really want to use my/her name more. I told her that I'm proud to be the next June Brawner, and she addressed my birthday card "June II". I told her that I'm proud but I didn't tell her that I don't feel worthy. This woman has been through worlds more than I could dream and still wears a smile.
Summer, as far as school is concerned, begins Sunday! I have 3 books on my nightstand to read soon, 5 or 6 sewing projects on which to catch up, lots of swimming to do, children to teach, music to play, and bags to pack.
Bliss.
- june
| LET us go then, you and I, | | | When the evening is spread out against the sky | | | Like a patient etherised upon a table; | | | Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, | | | The muttering retreats |
| | Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels | | | And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: | | | Streets that follow like a tedious argument | | | Of insidious intent | | | To lead you to an overwhelming question … |
| | Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” | | | Let us go and make our visit. |
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| I wrote briefly on finding my birth father a few weeks ago. For decades I imagined that day (meeting him) filled with the significance and pomp of a formal production, and it was quite a relief to have that day pass as something so much less dramatic. It’s only beginning to sink in, even after spending time with his family, that he is who he is (especially for the blonde hair and green eyes, the latter of which I have traces of). Sunday, Kevin and his wife will be driving up with me to Cartersville, and I will be introducing my parents to each other. I’ve located my birth mother, but something in me doesn’t necessarily want to call her immediately. I found out that she and my birth father were married after I was born and adopted, and divorced a few years later. They haven’t spoken in over a decade, and I get the sense that it’s a touchy subject. But I do have her phone number and, so I hear, her eyes. I hadn’t known anything about them before; they were in high school when I was born and details were legally unavailable to me. But her mother did ask the doctor to pass on a message: that I needed to play music. And really, that was all I needed to know to this point, and it has gotten me where I am. As I’ve prepare for my senior capstone recital/lecture, and try to sort my thoughts on a possible thesis, I’ve found it hard to narrow down a solid idea. Should I delve in to something that would encompass ethnomusicology or music therapy? Folk songs? Jazz? The evolution of techno, hip-hop, funk, metal? The field is wide open, and I’m up for suggestions if anyone has any ideas… J I really do love anthropology; I like to study it more than music, for certain. It fascinates me: the biology of culture, the archaeology that is responsible for everything we know of history, the forensics of solving a murder decades old, mapping subsistence patterns, and tracking the ever-changing definition of human. I see my own adoption as a sort of experiment, a nature vs. nurture situation at least, among others. I want to know why skin color has always been an issue when there is no such thing as biological race. I want to know why tying a piece of printed fabric around a man's neck qualifies him for “black tie” affairs. There's the man with female chromosomes, the use of tools by animals and their zero-like concepts, my friend's sister separated from her husband since, after she had their first child, he loves her but can't find her romantically attractive after bearing his child; if the definition of human involves things that can all be compromised, where do we draw the line? Not everyone has 5 fingers on each hand or opposable thumbs. Not even the same number of genes or DNA defines “human”. There are humans who cannot speak audibly, or who cannot walk upright. There is no common morality, no evil that all cultures at all times have ever seen as wrong. There are those who commit infanticide against their own children for the betterment and welfare, the survival of the community. Those who marry multiple partners, those who sacrifice animals, others, themselves, even the most uncomfortable taboos are or were standards at some point in time, somewhere. I’m looking at upgrading my Mac this year. My current one is from 2005, and I adore it, but it’s a little slow, among other things. Thinking of getting a new laptop makes me feel a little rough about my cell phone situation (I’ve had the same phone since high school). When I begin to try typing Walmart, the t9 defaults to Y2K, if that gives you an idea of how old it is. Classes tomorrow. One more year. Just one. And then all the rest… <3 amanda june
...or if you 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
e.e. cummings | | |
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