Laura Lee. May 3, 1988. Vegan and tree hugger. Long curly hair and tattooed. Environmental studies and political science major. Left-handed. German, Lebanese, and Scottish descent. In love with Joshua (since 07/16/07) and Lexi the puppy. Obsessive compulsive. Timid yet somewhat cynical. Loves nature, animals, music, manatees, webdesign, figure skating, rain, photography, crafting, bagpipes, poetry, Thoreau, Greenpeace, Wall-E, and Adrian Monk.


Mail: laura@julytree.org
AIM: screamingmanatee
MSN: lulaagrl@hotmail.com
Facebook: link


Torrie @ stacy.julytree.org
Jelly @ jelly.julytree.org

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Peace Child
08.16.08

music: Adele - "Chasing Pavements"
mood: Wistful

Photographs of forgotten memories, of faded empty nights
an abandoned medley played
so softly
through the lonely fight
She shuffles through those tattered papers in the attic drawers,
connect-the-dots, alphabets, colored umbrellas,
dinosaurs
A day of reminiscing with a melancholy smile
kindergarten's playgrounds,
now a forlorn freedom, a world of battered dreams

Clustered summer nights, she trembles in her room
clinging to the teddy bear she used to know so well
Now in his deep black eyes are fireworks and cannonballs
and reflections of deep enmity
between nations and rulers,
so large and so far away
A hurricane of soldiers parade through her streets
dancing flames of burning hearts and beating broken wings

Tomorrow's solemnity will settle on sidewalks
a sheet to cover the tiny footprints
of every child, every heart
in the midst of this war
An end will come, the day undone
she'll swing in the park
among the yellow daffodils


06:46 PM EST
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Going Crazy!
08.05.08

music: Rent - "Take Me or Leave Me"
mood: See above.

So, I finally got around to validating my site with the World Wide Web Consortium. It makes the OCD half of me feel a lot better.

Speaking of OCD, I'm probably going out of my mind. In this house, I feel... wrong. Like I'm not supposed to be here. And the testosterone levels are killing me slowly. I spend a great deal of my time cleaning up after everyone, but I can never be satisfied. It's not like they are that messy... well, sometimes they are... but I think I am just that obsessive compulsive that it will always get to me. This is why I cannot stop dreaming of my own place, where I will know where everything is, and there will never be a mess to clean up! I also just want one location to call home. Right now, most of my stuff is at my house with my parents, some is here with me at Josh's house, and soon, a good deal of it will be at my dorm at school. But just one more year of all this till I can settle down somewhere - I just need to convince myself to survive! I refuse to try to take medicine to calm myself anymore.

Josh and I had our one year anniversary in the middle of last month, and it was great. I can't believe it's been so long already. I really think we will make it. I had a four year relationship once - all of high school - but it was with someone so wrong for me. Josh is different - he's just like me. However, all his awesomeness is still not enough to make me want to stay in this house anymore, haha. I feel sorry for him that he has to continue to live here... but at least they are his friends; they aren't mine and probably never will be.

Anyway, my internship is wrapping up! It's been a great experience, and after swimming and canoeing in the river and really doing research for the organization, I do feel like I really am helping somehow. I'd love to live by the Rappahannock River - maybe I can find a job there. It's not even too far away from my parents and from the places I'm familiar with. So after the internship, I'm heading home on Friday, and I get to spend a week with my parents before they head off to the Hawaii house, and I stay and take care of the "zoo." I'm so excited to reunite with my puppy again!! Then after 2 weeks, it's back to school again...

So to wrap this blog up, here's a poem I wrote exactly 5 years and 1 month ago:

Cherished Nothings

Faded memories in photographs
of little girls laying in the leaves
and pink party dresses in front of a slumping evergreen
Distant adventures on mountains covered in snow
Riding on elephants in front of castles
And blowing out 10 wax candles at once.
All preserved so freshly in ink and paper
The satin still shines
The wind still blows
and the smoke still wafts through the kitchen
But where are the voices
and the sparkling eyes?
They say memories live on
But in these old pictures
moments in time captured by flickers of light
the hearts that filled them
have long since died
leaving cherished nothings behind.


01:16 PM EST
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Conformity
07.03.08

music: Wall-E Trailer!
mood: Disdainful

In general I feel pretty good. Josh and I saw Wall-E the other day, and I really think it's the most amazing movie ever. It's adorable, it's for all ages, and yet it's so deep... It's about not becoming complacent, it's a call for action to protect our earth, and most of all - it's a love story!

Things with Josh are great. Lately we've seen each other so much since we live in the same house that we were becoming emotionally distant somehow, without realizing it. But we had a long talk the other day which helped things a lot. I'm so happy with him!

Tomorrow's my doggy Lexi's fourth birthday!! And the Fourth of July of course. I'm going to visit my grandma with Josh and then the following day I'm going to go home for the weekend.

There's obviously a new layout here. Also I have a new tattoo (pictures in the gallery). What do you think?

Finally, I was searching through archives from my old site again and I found something I wrote in 2005 that I wanted to share...

American Society: Conformity in the New Age

Today's world is falling apart. When you look at the big cities, people scurry around from point to point crashing headlong into each other, flipping the bird, and yelling obscenities. When you call your favorite music store to find out if that new CD is in yet, you're suddenly flung into reality with the word-a-millisecond memorized lines the sales clerks reel off their brains... "Hello-thank-you-for-calling-this-is-Bob-how-may-I-help-you-today?!" all in one breath.

Everyone's in a rush and no one stops to ponder things anymore. Knowledge and beauty are being left behind in the dust in an industrial age where money, flashy cars, and bling-bling take center stage.

But I'm not saying the picture perfect world of Leave It to Beaver in the mid-twentieth century with the polite, tightly knit family was or ever could be a reality. Technology and progress are beautiful but powerful things. I don't think the problems are in our high speed Internet connections; with technology we've achieved tremendous things. The problem, however, is in human nature. We never learned to deal with our capabilities; we weren't ready for this transformation to crash mercilessly into our lives.

Children today learn to dread the automated world of school, where learning is like a robot production factory. They fear education, for the school systems which preach memorization instead of understanding of concepts tarnish the power of knowledge. Kids today want to live between each exciting moment... collecting their energy from pop concerts and Abercrombie and Fitch outfits. Education is for losers, and their goals are to have fun today, fit in with the group, and live a rich life later. How they get there doesn't really matter.

No one wants to have an intellectual conversation anymore. No one wants to challenge the system, save a small minority staggered through the ruins of the country.

Parents follow the bestseller parenting books and raise their children with all the morals and efficient systems cooked up and supported by the experts. Life in America has turned into a business, and it all smells like the scent of a manufacturing plant. Every new idea is all about making things run faster and better and competition. In the words of Nick Tosches, we live in a society of "mediocrity."

Children learn to accept the morals, political views, and religions of their parents. They follow what they've been raised to believe and pass that on again. There are also psychologists, officials, writers... planning programs and reciting lines of how to cure your children, how to erase the danger and create a morally perfect world. But in the end, no matter which route we follow, all of our cars will all end up at the same destination.

There is a face of this world, and then there's what's underneath. The face operates like an identical copy of The Stepford Wives, except in fast forward mode. Underneath there's turmoil, and it can't be contained forever.

Walt Whitman once said, "Reevaluate everything you have been told… dismiss that which insults your soul." Yet today less and less of that is occurring. People never stop to think about what's right for them. If your parents are Christian or Democrats, then so be it, you've got your destiny laid out. But what if that's not right for you?

We never stop to learn what we can. And thus we continue in this trend of "mediocrity" because no one dares to change it... for when and if someone does, he hides amidst the shadows, afraid to step out and take a challenge.

Everyone follows their labels. A girl says she's a Christian but on weekends she goes to parties where she "sins." And at school she wears a button expressing her disdain for homosexuality. Because the label is what matters, not the doctrine, not the reason, not the true meaning. But following these beliefs, if there is a God, did he not tell us to be humble? Would he not be ashamed of this behavior, in which people claiming to be Christians passed judgment over others as if their own words were law? ("They must not discriminate in judgment, but hear the little and great alike." -Deuteronomy 1:17).

The world is a bubble of conformity. Doing what those before you have done. It only feels right... People never stop to think or to understand. If they did, perchance the world in which we live would not be such a cluster of commotion and frustration. Perhaps the lovely, happy faces of a family would never hide deep, dark secrets under their tongues.

"Faith is but a birthmark with which we are born, an impalpable umbilicus to time and place, which we rarely ponder to cut." -Nick Tosches (In the Hand of Dante)


06:03 PM EST
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Internship
06.24.08

music: None
mood: Nonchalant

Hello! Sorry for the lack of updates. The summer is going by swimmingly. I'm doing my internship with the river nonprofit group, and it's going pretty well. It's so strange to have a real-world job and have independence to make my own decisions. I'm required to keep a journal on a day by day basis for my college credit, but I probably won't share that here. Most of it is pretty boring... just ramblings about my concern over the direction I'm working in or the conflicts I had in helping with a fishing camp while retaining my vegan belief system. Overall I'm doing several things - creating a media kit for the organization, working on the website, helping with canoe trips and summer camps, finding venues for a public service announcement, filming a video for a YouTube contest, and applying for a Google Grant. I'm just trying to keep organized due to my OCD tendencies and that prevents me from feeling stressed.

Life in general is somewhat interesting. I'm staying with Josh because it's closest to my internship, but I do greatly miss home and my puppies. Living with four other guys that are complete slobs is also not fun. I spend most of my time there just cleaning up after them. But at least I have Josh... and our hamster Mango... and my fishy. Our one year anniversary is coming up soon so I'm pretty excited about that!

I really would like to keep this site more updated. Right now I don't have much traffic coming here or anything. Tomorrow I have a day off from work so hopefully I'll get some stuff done with the content. I've been trying to plan out a new layout as well.


11:35 AM EST
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Another birthday!
05.14.08

music: None... in class
mood: Tired

This Sunday my family celebrated Mother's Day, my birthday, and my cousin's birthday. My mom made an amazing vegan lasagna and chocolate cake!! It was so exciting to have such good vegan food for a change after eating in my school's horrible dining hall. I love veganism so much. My mom also gave me a bag of black bean tortilla chips with pineapple salsa, which is amazing. Also... I GOT MY NEW CAMERA! A Panasonic Lumix TZ4 with a 10x optical zoom!!

After this week, classes are over and I just have to take 3 exams. I'm so ready to get out of this place, but I'm nervous for my internship!

I'm scared of getting older. I want to just stay 20something forever. Once you get older you have to act more and more professional. You don't see 50 year old men running around playgrounds like kids. I wish I could do that still as I get older. But society thinks that's creepy. You have to "act your age." What is age, anyway?

My rose tattoo still needs a third touchup... I never realized it was so hard to cover up a tattoo. This has definitely taught me to do a lot of research on my artist before I randomly get a tattoo like I did with my rainbow. I just hope it can be completely covered. I'm also debating whether I want to get the quote about slaughterhouses or simply "vegan" as my next one.


08:50 AM EST
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