Friday, January 22, 2016

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.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Walk Ahead



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.

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.

Monday, December 7, 2015

July 2014 happiness project

It's after 1am on a Saturday night and I've been itching to 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.

May 2014- (Living in Texas)



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, 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. 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.

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.

Sam & Suzy

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

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 ConroySouth
 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 Conrey