“Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot talk, so I listen very well. I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like being a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met at a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story, you, hearing the words "soccer" and "neighbor" in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that, no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele, and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.” 
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

Everything's made to be broken

Chicago is bitter cold. That walk outside-inhale-burn. It hurts to breathe. Then you think about the absence of that biting cold burning your nasal passageway and you relax because you're breathing and acutely aware of how alive, functioning, feeling, and reasoning is your body. Perhaps that something only a girl raised in the South would think about.

I am up late again. I do not know how to go to bed early. Nor do I ever want to, minus my dire and unrelenting desire to be an early riser. Since childhood, I've dreamt of having these clockwork-like elaborate evening and morning rituals. With compulsive tendencies, small routines have always settled me greatly. I have always reasoned with myself if I would commit to the same thing every morning and every night, it would open up a world of possibly and spontaneity; as the beginning and end would be constants. Without constants, one incessantly attempts to turn what should be variables into constants. There's much beauty and joy in know what is to come and the longing for it.

I'm having a Matchbox20 night. Somewhere around 1997 a copy of "Yourself or Someone Like you" fell into my possession. My 8 year old self spent much time mulling over the lyrics trying to make sense of it and contrasting that sharply with the interruptions of today is amusing me greatly. It's still hard for me to think about packaging anything or wrapping any present without hearing, " I'd store it in boxes with little yellow tags on everyone" in my head. I loved that line and the image of rain stored in tiny boxes. Yellow is the color you're not supposed to like. It's for neither feminine nor masculine, nor striking on anyone. It's not the blue of the ocean, the red of fire, the orange of the sunset....yet I love it for how clean, light, and similar to gold without being gold it is.

 "It's 3AM and I must be lonely" always struck me as odd as "must" is typically used to express certainty, necessity, but here it was used as self recognition. I recall wondering why being alone at 3AM meant that one must be lonely.

Walk Ahead - 1/19/16

As of late, I haven't been able to push out of my mind the connotation of "walk away". There's much to be said for having the strength, wisdom, and insight to recognize a situation or state that needs to be terminated/discontinued.

but, I hate the idea of abandoning one's path because of an obstacle, a difficulty, or another person. To walk "away" implies to deviate, to digress from one's intended direction. Occasionally,  I am stubborn and unyielding  and this is behavior is unnerving to me. Anytime someone says, "walk away" it crawls under my skin and festers.

instead, there's "walk ahead;  you continue moving on your path but not necessarily in a new direction. You remain on your way but abandon attachment to circumstances that you encountered along the way. No longer fettered.

What I love most about left overs is breakfast in bed. No, seriously, I'm not the biggest fan of traditional breakfast food. I've been awake for over two hours and I'm still in bed and in the lime green with pink birds pajamas. I'm just making lists and thinking. Thinking a lot.

the happiness project

It's after 1am on a Saturday night and I've been itching it get home for hours to write this down. You know how sometimes when you're reading something and it's so good that you have to stop, look around the room, shake your head a few times, take a deep breath, and reread it? Almost as if you're in disbelief that someone hit the nail so on the head or verbalized some construct that you could only grasp the edges of? That feeling of "ah-ha" now that that has been put into words, it is concrete, tangible, and real? where before it was foggy and you couldn't truly experience it.

Haven't you all been propositioned with the question of if we cannot verbalize feelings or thoughts, do they really exist? Then the feeling of once you figure out how to say it, you feel it so much more clearly. Interesting? To think that we are perhaps limited to feel only what we can understand/vocalize/verbalize? It reminds me of the book, "The Giver", where feelings and experiences were previously existing but people went on without ever feeling certain ways because they lacked introduction to them. Once informed, the experiences could occur.

To be honest, I read only the Giver once, and that was my interpretation. I also might have been in 5th grade. I've never wanted to reread it I fear I'll loose that interpretation. I've also realized there a deep political agenda that I completely missed. Shot right over my head. Who knows how realistic my interpretations were.

Here is it:

"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing or that, but simply growth" - William Yeats

There. That was my "stop what I'm doing, run, pull out my laptop, and write it down lest I forget" moment.

I'm reading the "The Happiness Project", by Gretchen Rubin. It is a laugh out loud, "Don't look at meeee because I'm in public and giggling over book" read.  It is affecting, impactful, and thought-provoking. But do not worry- Not histrionic. You wouldn't catch me reading something like that.

up up and away

I’m sitting on the floor in the Houston airport enduring a lay over. Yes, since I last wrote, I moved to Texas. Texas, by the way, and specifically, Austin, is splendid.  It is perfect for right now and I imagine for another year or so. Off to where next? I do not know. But I do like thinking about it.   

I spent the flight from Austin to Houston thinking of how much I love airports. Thinking, I love the way they smell; the air is always cold, the faint whiff of sunscreen that hangs around regardless of season or city, the freshly baked glutens that I cannot have but yet I crave, the men in business suits whom I’ve always had desires to ask to see what’s in their briefcases (back to this in a second), the magazines and books that convince me they are more relevant and riveting than the book in my bag, and my favorite, the newspaper stands.

The men in suits. The individuals about whom I have remained most curious- conveying a sense of urgency and utmost importance but with such calm demeanor. As if, they could be called to action at any moment but possess such confidence in their competence, that such concern is none of theirs. The contents of their briefcases must reveal clues.

To have taken such a strong liking to an idea, a concept, a person, or place, there surely must be a more deeply rooted innate desire that has been satisfied to an extent.. After much mulling, I think I have finally placed my finger on it.

 It is the sense of purpose that airports portray. It is that one place where everyone is in motion, everyone knows the next step, the next few hours of their day. So much is already decided. But yet, we all still expect the unexpected. No one seems stuck, everyone is moving forward. Everyone is fulfilling something. Purpose and fulfillment are two are my “things”. Things I will always be bound to and drawn to understanding.

moonrise kingdom

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   
4. Sam: So, what do you want to be when you grow up?
5. Suzy: I don't know...I want go on adventures I think--not get stuck in one place. How about you?
6. Sam: Go on adventures too, not get stuck too.

conroy

“What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts” 
― Pat Conroy, South of Broad

“The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave 

anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the 

genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. 

Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a 

ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had 

nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in 

"Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my 

mother killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten 

thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers 

in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous 

English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and 

women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me 

when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English 

language. ” 

― Pat Conroy

stains

my sweet old lady, german shepherd, abby is almost 11 and plagued now with hip dysplasia. I describe watching her bolt out and run searching for me when she hears the car engine humming along towards home as one of the moments in life where the heart swells. That swelling fills with you awareness of its endless capacity to grow and for a few moments, enables you to forget how difficult it is to love. It feels like someone poured a pitcher of goopy, semifluid paint into a small bowl with a border of cut out holes around the top and the amorphous liquid rushes out and clings to the surrounding structures-- leaving them touched with a lightness and hope.

eventually, the fluid dissolves and what just transpired is forgotten but I'd like to think that some of that colorant stains.

to reach

"Always in the dream, it seemed as if there were a destination: a something--he could not grasp what-that lay beyond the place where the thickness of snow brought the sled to a stop. He was left, upon awakening, with the feeling that he wanted, even somehow needed, to reach the something that waited in the distance. The feeling that it was good. That it was welcoming. That it was significant. But he did not know how to get there."
- Lois Lowry, The Giver

construct

“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

fairy's wing

“But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For awhile these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.”
-Fitzgerald, TGG

to convey

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” 
F.S. Fitzgerald, TGG

autumnal face

"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace 

As I have seen in one autumnal face.” - John 

Donne 

the world

“The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.” 
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

glittering

“Her eyes were glittering like the eyes of a child when you give a nice surprise, and she laughed with a sudden throaty, tingling way. It is the way a woman laughs for happiness. They never laugh that way just when they are being polite or at a joke. A woman only laughs that way a few times in her life. A woman only laughs that way when something has touched her way down in the very quick of her being and the happiness just wells out as natural as breath and the first jonquils and mountain brooks. When a woman laughs that way it always does something to you. It does not matter what kind of a face she has got either. You hear that laugh and feel that you have grasped a clean and beautiful truth. You feel that way because that laugh is a revelation. It is a great impersonal sincerity. It is a spray of dewy blossom from the great central stalk of All Being, and the woman’s name and address hasn’t got a damn thing to do with it. Therefore, the laugh cannot be faked. If a woman could learn to fake it she would make Nell Gwyn and Pompadour look like a couple of Campfire Girls wearing bifocals and ground-gripper shoes with bands on their teeth. She could get all society by the ears. For all any man really wants is to hear a woman laugh like that.” 
― Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men

one point on the map

“There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain. I was in the car. And I was glad of it. Between one point on the map and another point on the map, there was the being alone in the car in the rain. They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are in the car in the rain at night alone, for then you aren't you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest. It is a vacation from being you. There is only the flow of the motor under you foot spinning that frail thread of sound out of its metal guy like a spider, that filament, that nexus, which isn't really there, between the you which you have just left in one place and the you which you will be where you get to the other place.” 

― Robert Penn Warren 

life is measured in moments

24 hour grocery stores

Living by yourself is interesting to say the least. There's always this slight fear of slipping into an actuality composed purely of my own thoughts. I sit down to do something or think about something and I just get swept away. An hour will pass and I'll realize that I've just been lost in my own head with nothing to interrupt, divert or distract.

I curled up in an euphoric pile of a fresh, hot whites straight out of the dryer and watched "Like Crazy" late this evening. I had been wanting to see it for quite some time but typically steer away from any love story that looks like it has the potential and capacity to be heart wrenching. I figured it'd be another low-budget indy film where the characters bond over their love for the same music, books, oddities, and quirks. That, I can handle quite well. It's hardly believable anyways, but endearing in the relatable way that I have experienced fleeting adoration for boys who share my peculiar way of seeing things or perhaps just happen to also have an affinity for burritos, archie comic books, science fiction, and comparative literature.

I hated every moment of the entire movie. It was gripping, compulsive, enthralling, and engrossing. The film itself was tedious and more like snap shots of their relationship but I don't think anyone can sit through it without it resonating with their own harsh, revolting, and sometimes jarring humanity. We, as people, just suck learning to love selflessly. Perhaps I hated "Like Crazy" so much because it just served as an hour and half long reminder of how I've failed to put others first.

I was in such a melancholic state that I didn't know what else to do aside from go to the 24-hour grocery store. I love grocery stores in the same way that I love libraries. They are so full of potential, and so undeveloped. They house the components of any great meal. Just, all spread out, raw, uncooked, packaged up, and stacked.

I just wandered around until I snapped out of it, checked out, and returned to my car to listen to Call Me, Maybe and return home. Grocery store trips are always hilarious in their own way. A guy told me that I must have gotten a lot of sun recently to have such dark freckles on my shoulders and back. How does one even go about responding to a statement like that? I said, yes, that I had forgotten to put on sunscreen over the weekend. Then I just awkwardly shuffled away. Engaging in midnight conversations with strangers complimenting your freckles sounds like a very bad plan to me. No more off the shoulders tops to be worn to kroger. Lesson learned.

darlin' I need you like ships need the sea

Sweet sweet summer is finally here. 

Exams are over. 

Indianapolis was wonderful. 

2nd day of work down. 

"I can see it in her Cherokee eyes 
Those baby browns and the golden thighs 
What you doing for the rest of your life? 
Cause you don't want, don't wanna go"

Eating peaches that I picked up in South Carolina for dinner.  

So much to blog about. So much to think about. I wish I could just stop time right now and bask in the glory of summer for months and months. With sunburnt lips, a freckled nose, and a pinkish brown glow from too much, or perhaps the perfect amount of sun. 

My roommates are all moved out. It feels empty, especially without Marie's laugh filling the house. She's the only person I've met that laughs as much and as loudly as I do. I wouldn't be the slightly bit surprised if our neighbors secretly despised us or at least were dumbfounded about how that many things could be THAT funny at all hours of the day. 

After a year of meowing through the wall to the cat next door, I'm officially giving up on ever hearing a response back. Perhaps, I overestimated my abilities and I actually sound nothing like a cat. I do have other talents. I'll be okay. (I hope everyone knows I'm completely kidding about this) 

I love empty rooms. I've been hanging out in Marie and Crystal's bare, furniture-less room. To me, empty rooms are magical in a childish, spontaneous, whimsical way. So full of potential. So capable of transitioning to anything. I remember moving into Pope St. and cooking my first meal and eating on the floor with plastic silverware from wendys while watching a movie on my tiny tv (also placed on the floor). 

Waiting to get picked up to go play frisbee golf. I thought it was ultimate, so I was excited but I'm quite horrible about frisbee golf. But it's on north campus so I'm thrilled about that. Hanging out on north carmpus at night time is my favorite. It'd be the perfect night to wade around in the fountain.