Sunday, December 15, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Irish Whiskey Toast
"You're all heathens, despicable to the end, but that is why I call you my friend"
-Mossie Powers
Friday, December 6, 2013
Well, here it goes again.
This feels far too familiar. Can we just not have all of these emotions again? I swear every single thing I'm feeling I've felt before, nothing new. All recycled emotions and outcomes.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
85 Jack Kerouac Quotes For The Traveler Inside You
Taken from Thought Catalog
DEC. 4, 2013
By NAJWAH ESSOP
Jack Kerouac was a free thinker, visionary, philosopher, rebel, co-founder of the beat generation with an insatiable wanderlust and perpetual love for the unknown and adventure. He lived, and like many of us today, questioned life, questioned his existence. His life was a series of passion and ecstasy and searching. Even though it’s been almost 50 years since his passing, young adults can relate to his “madness” now more than ever.
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.
The only truth is music.
There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.
Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.
I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.
I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.
I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
Will you love me in December as you do in May?
It all ends in tears anyway.
I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?
My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.
I’m going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.
Life must be rich and full of loving–it’s no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.
It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate’s so easy compared.
I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.
Houses are full of things that gather dust.
And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
I’m writing this book because we’re all going to die.
I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.
On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars – Something good will come out of all things yet – And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There’s no need to say another word.
Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.
They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there – and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see.
‘Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ’till we get there.’
‘Where we going, man?’
‘I don’t know but we gotta go.
We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.
Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.
A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth.
Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.
One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.
As far as I’m concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk.
The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.
I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.
Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH…
So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my suffrances, my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being.
Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.
Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?
Pain or love or danger makes you real again…
‘What do you want out of life?’ I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Just wait on tables and try to get along.’ She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness.
If critics say your work stinks it’s because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered “dangerous” but set in place in their compartmental understandings.
I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.
The road is life.
The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.
It’ll take you eternities to get rid of me,’ she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I’ll never get rid of her – I want to be chased till eternity till I catch her.
There are worse things than being mad.
I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I’ll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone’s lapel and make them confess to me and to all.
All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.
Forgive everyone for your own sins and be sure to tell them you love them which you do.
Let nature do the freezing and frightening and isolating in this world. Let men work and love and fight it off.
He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end.
My eyes were glued on life and they were full of tears.
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I’m a wretch. But I love, love.
Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.
The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?
The details are the life of it, I insist, say everything on your mind, don’t hold back, don’t analyze or anything as you go along, say it out.
…we all must admit that everything is fine and there’s no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we’re not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.
You’d be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday.
Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing.
When you’ve understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can’t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.
Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.
Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
What difference does it make after all?–anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.
The empty blue sky of space says ‘All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don’t care, it still belongs to me.
Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.
The beauty of things must be that they end.
If you own a rug you own too much.
‘I just won’t sleep,’ I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.
DEC. 4, 2013
By NAJWAH ESSOP
Jack Kerouac was a free thinker, visionary, philosopher, rebel, co-founder of the beat generation with an insatiable wanderlust and perpetual love for the unknown and adventure. He lived, and like many of us today, questioned life, questioned his existence. His life was a series of passion and ecstasy and searching. Even though it’s been almost 50 years since his passing, young adults can relate to his “madness” now more than ever.
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.
The only truth is music.
There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.
Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.
I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.
I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.
I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
Will you love me in December as you do in May?
It all ends in tears anyway.
I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?
My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.
I’m going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.
Life must be rich and full of loving–it’s no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.
It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate’s so easy compared.
I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.
Houses are full of things that gather dust.
And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
I’m writing this book because we’re all going to die.
I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.
On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars – Something good will come out of all things yet – And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There’s no need to say another word.
Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.
They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there – and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see.
‘Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ’till we get there.’
‘Where we going, man?’
‘I don’t know but we gotta go.
We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.
Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.
A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth.
Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.
One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.
As far as I’m concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk.
The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.
I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.
Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH…
So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my suffrances, my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being.
Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.
Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?
Pain or love or danger makes you real again…
‘What do you want out of life?’ I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Just wait on tables and try to get along.’ She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness.
If critics say your work stinks it’s because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered “dangerous” but set in place in their compartmental understandings.
I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.
The road is life.
The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.
It’ll take you eternities to get rid of me,’ she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I’ll never get rid of her – I want to be chased till eternity till I catch her.
There are worse things than being mad.
I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I’ll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone’s lapel and make them confess to me and to all.
All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.
Forgive everyone for your own sins and be sure to tell them you love them which you do.
Let nature do the freezing and frightening and isolating in this world. Let men work and love and fight it off.
He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end.
My eyes were glued on life and they were full of tears.
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I’m a wretch. But I love, love.
Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.
The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?
The details are the life of it, I insist, say everything on your mind, don’t hold back, don’t analyze or anything as you go along, say it out.
…we all must admit that everything is fine and there’s no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we’re not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.
You’d be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday.
Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing.
When you’ve understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can’t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.
Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.
Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
What difference does it make after all?–anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.
The empty blue sky of space says ‘All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don’t care, it still belongs to me.
Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.
The beauty of things must be that they end.
If you own a rug you own too much.
‘I just won’t sleep,’ I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.
Can I Come Feel Terrible Next To You
December 4th, 2013 By Laura Jayne Martin
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to write about it. I just want to sit here and feel it. Then, I want to look over and see you.
The purity of your silent understanding soothes my invisible wounds. I just want to watch you read. I just want to listen to you talk on the phone while I nap. Do you mind if I lay on your couch and use your voice to ease myself into and out of a few dreams? I just want to take up slightly less psychic and gestural space than is usual for me. I just want to come feel terrible next to you.
I only need a few minutes because things are pretty okay with me for the most part. I know this couple—they’re married now—and one time when the girl felt sad, the boy said, “But you’ve got all your teeth, you lucky girl!” I have all my teeth. I have all my teeth and more.
So right now I just need a few minutes in a room, just a somber interstitial. I’ll sit here and let these feelings move by me like a truck across a freeway overpass. You are kind enough to let my spool unravel, knowing I promise to clean everything up when I’m done. You always know all the right words to say and how to keep them to yourself at a time like this—you are heroically still.
I won’t make this a habit. Everybody on earth has to pull their own weight; everyone on earth has to endure their own gravity. So if I can just come by for a little while—to feel terrible—I would really appreciate it. I don’t like feeling terrible, sometimes it’s just necessary. What I like is knowing that you’ll be there with me. What I like is knowing you’ll say, “Yes,” before I ask.
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to write about it. I just want to sit here and feel it. Then, I want to look over and see you.
The purity of your silent understanding soothes my invisible wounds. I just want to watch you read. I just want to listen to you talk on the phone while I nap. Do you mind if I lay on your couch and use your voice to ease myself into and out of a few dreams? I just want to take up slightly less psychic and gestural space than is usual for me. I just want to come feel terrible next to you.
I only need a few minutes because things are pretty okay with me for the most part. I know this couple—they’re married now—and one time when the girl felt sad, the boy said, “But you’ve got all your teeth, you lucky girl!” I have all my teeth. I have all my teeth and more.
So right now I just need a few minutes in a room, just a somber interstitial. I’ll sit here and let these feelings move by me like a truck across a freeway overpass. You are kind enough to let my spool unravel, knowing I promise to clean everything up when I’m done. You always know all the right words to say and how to keep them to yourself at a time like this—you are heroically still.
I won’t make this a habit. Everybody on earth has to pull their own weight; everyone on earth has to endure their own gravity. So if I can just come by for a little while—to feel terrible—I would really appreciate it. I don’t like feeling terrible, sometimes it’s just necessary. What I like is knowing that you’ll be there with me. What I like is knowing you’ll say, “Yes,” before I ask.
Absolutely Inspired (Highlighted my favorite parts)
Cal lecturer's email to students goes viral: "Why I am not canceling class tomorrow"
“I email my students all the time—that isn’t unusual,” Alexander Coward tells us. “What is very unusual is for one of those emails to go viral.”
The UC Berkeley’s math lecturer’s surprise is understandable. Among the torrent of listicles, kitty gifs, and Youtube clips depicting moderate-to-severe injury that seize the imagination of the Internet daily, an email from a professor to his 800 students about the scheduling details of his class is hardly the stuff that memes are made of.
And yet Coward’s email—in which he used the opportunity of a University of California workers’ strike action to speak at length of the virtues of a college education—seems to have tapped a particular nerve.
Since firing off the 2,000-plus word email on Tuesday night, the professor has been flooded with emails—from students in his math class, yes, but also from their friends and from their friends. He’s heard from students at other universities, in other states, and in other countries. He’s heard from their parents too. The overall tone, he says, has been gushingly grateful. Many have thanked him for reminding them of the value of their education. A few have vowed to quit part-time jobs or to otherwise redouble their focus toward their studies. Meanwhile, on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, the email is rippling outward.
Coward says he has mixed feelings about all the attention. He wrote the email in response to the sense of anxiety he says he was detecting among many of his students in response to the ongoing labor action, but he didn’t intend it as a missive against the striking workers themselves.
“I don’t want to get embroiled in the conflict about how workers are being treated,” he says. “I haven’t made myself an expert about that. But I do consider myself an expert in education.”
The full text of Alexander Coward’s email is below:
Dear All,As some of you may have heard, there is some strike activity taking place on campus tomorrow.I want to let you know that I will not be striking, which means that I will be, so-to-speak, crossing a picket line. Moreover, I know that two of your GSIs have decided to strike, but because I happen to be free in the afternoon when they teach, and because I enjoy teaching smaller classes from time to time and I haven’t had a chance to in a while, I’ll be covering those sections. If you were planning to see me at office hours tomorrow afternoon, then feel free to come to one of the sections I’ll be covering. I will be in Stephens 230c from 2:10 to 4pm, Cory Hall 285 from 4:10pm to 5pm, and Evans Hall 6 from 5:10pm-6pm.The reason for me taking this decision is extremely simple: We have 7 class days left until the end of the course. Despite the fact that we’ve made good time and are likely to finish the syllabus with a few lectures in hand for review, class hours are valuable and your education is too important to just cancel a class if we don’t have to. Whatever the alleged injustices are that are being protested about tomorrow, it is clear that you are not responsible for those things, whatever they are, and I do not think you should be denied an education because of someone else’s fight that you are not responsible for. I say this with no disrespect whatsoever to the two GSIs who have decided to strike. Societies where people stand up for what they believe in are generally better than societies where people do not, sometimes dramatically so. Further, I cannot discount the possibility that I may be in the wrong on this and they may be right. I have certainly been on the wrong side of political judgements before and I’m sure I will be again. However from a practical point of view I’ve made my decision and you should all turn up to class and discussion tomorrow as normal.Beyond practical matters, I think it’s also worth reflecting a little on the broader relationship between politics and your education, and I think I have some important things to share on this topic that may be helpful to you.I do this with some trepidation. Normally I try to avoid talking about politics with my students and also my professional colleagues because people have a wide variety of views, sometimes held with great conviction and feeling. If I was to get into a political disagreement with one of you or one of my colleagues, it might get in the way of or distract us from the central mission we have of working together to give you a great education.However sometimes political events reach into our lives without our invitation or control, and we have no choice but to engage with each other about politics. Many times in history it has done so with far more violence and disruption than a strike, and it is wise to be psychologically prepared for this fact.If I’ve learned one thing about politics since I was your age, it is this: Politics, like most things in life worth thinking about, including mathematics, is very big, very complicated, and very interconnected. I’ve lived and worked in four countries on four continents, all with societies set up differently both politically and socially. I’ve discovered that there is no unique or obviously best way of setting up society. For every decision and judgement you reach, there are people who benefit and people who lose out. It’s the same with the way I teach my classes. I know that for every decision I make about how to teach you there are some of you who benefit and there are others who would do better if I did things differently. There is no way of getting around that. Every judgement you make in life is a question of balancing different interests and ideals. Reasonable good people can disagree on political questions like whether to strike or not, and they can disagree about far more contentious topics also.All this may sound like speaking in platitudes. However it is a point worth making to all of you because you are so young. One of the nice things about being young is that your thinking can be very clear and your mind not so cluttered up with memories and experiences. This clarity can give you a lot of conviction, but it can also lead you astray because you might not yet appreciate just how complicated the world is. As you get older you tend to accumulate life experiences to learn from, and this is the source of wisdom, but the trouble is that the lessons we glean from life do not all point in the same direction. Sometimes it is hard to tease the correct learning from the experiences life throws at us.So what are we to do with the fact that when we are young we lack a lot of the perspective we need to make definitive judgements about what is right, but that as we get older our judgements tend to be informed by our experiences, and these experiences guide us in contradictory ways, both between different people and within the same person?I don’t know.However one thing I do know is that you are not going to be able to avoid making these kinds of judgements, just as I cannot avoid making a judgment about whether to strike or not. Like it or not, I have to make a political choice, and I have to talk to you about it. For me, the choice not to strike is quite easy, but for you the kinds of judgements and choices you are going to face in your lives are going to be far from easy; they are going to be of a complexity and importance that will rival that faced by any previous generation. To an extent that you may not yet appreciate, the world is changing incredibly quickly. In just a decade, since I was your age, the internet and telecommunications has truly transformed the way we live, not just in rich countries but around the world. When I was an undergraduate, if I wanted to check my email I went to a little room in the basement to use a computer, and if I wanted to learn something I went to a library. The kinds of breakthroughs we are seeing in biotechnology remind me of the way people were talking about electricity in 1900. Of course I don’t know - nobody knows - but my guess is that biotechnology in the 21st century could be similarly transformative to the way the full power of electricity only hit prime-time in the 20th century. The recent controversy about the NSA has shown that the role of information technology on society can be, or at least might become, double edged. There is climate change, another controversial and difficult topic, the exact impact of which we do not yet know. These are just a few of the challenges we can see, and we should remember that history has a habit of throwing curve balls at each generation that nobody saw coming. And among all this tumult, our search for common human peace and happiness on some level becomes more difficult, though no less important. A previous generation dodged the bullet of nuclear armageddon when things looked bleak, but for your generation the bullets are coming thicker and faster than ever before. The potential all of you in your generation are going to have for both good and harm is tremendous.I suspect many of you have heard sentiments along these lines before. However I also suspect that many of you will think something in response along the lines of `I know all that, but these things are for someone else to figure out, not me.’That is a mistake.One of the things you can lose track of when you attend a top tier university like Berkeley is just how exceptional and amazing you really are. I’m blown away every time I talk to you. The way you ask penetrating questions, the way you improved so much between midterm 1 and 2, the way you challenge me to be a better teacher, it just knocks my socks off. You really are amazing. I’ve taught students all over the world, and I’ve never seen a group of students so talented. I’m not just talking about some of you. I’m talking about all of you. It’s a privilege to be your professor. Sadly, however, I know many of you don’t feel that way. The difficulty you all face is that as you look around at all your fellow students, it’s easy to have your eye drawn by people doing better than you. Or rather, I should say people who look like they’re doing better than you. In reality the true extent of how much people are learning can be difficult to measure. Sometimes failures and adversity are better preparations for long term success than effortless progress.Why am I telling you all this?I’m telling you this because you all need to know that there is not some great pool of amazing people in some other place who are going to shape the way our species navigates the coming decades. The simple fact is that, like it or not, technology is going to change the way we live in the future, and you’re going to have to solve some very hard problems, as well as figure out how best to use new technology for good, while at the same time facing human dangers that have haunted humanity throughout history.Part of the work of your generation is going to be technological, using scientific ideas to serve the interests of society, and part of the work is going to be fundamentally human, tied inexorably with qualities of the human condition - human emotion - that dominate the whole of history. These things are not separate, but are inexorably linked, and you are in a better place to understand that connection than me.I can’t tell you what your particular role should be in the new realities of the 21st century. It’s up to you to decide if you want to make the focus of your life technological, focused on new innovations to drive society forward, or essentially human, focused on the age-old struggles of trying to get along, work together, and find happiness, or some combination of the two.However I can tell you this:Whatever you decide to do with your life, it’s going to be really, really complicated.Science and technology is complicated. History and politics is complicated. People are complicated. Figuring out how to be happy, and do simple things like take care of our kids and maintain friendships and relationships, is complicated.In order for you to navigate the increasing complexity of the 21st century you need a world-class education, and thankfully you have an opportunity to get one. I don’t just mean the education you get in class, but I mean the education you get in everything you do, every book you read, every conversation you have, every thought you think.You need to optimize your life for learning.You need to live and breath your education.You need to be *obsessed* with your education.Do not fall into the trap of thinking that because you are surrounded by so many dazzlingly smart fellow students that means you’re no good. Nothing could be further from the truth.And do not fall into the trap of thinking that you focusing on your education is a selfish thing. It’s not a selfish thing. It’s the most noble thing you could do.Society is investing in you so that you can help solve the many challenges we are going to face in the coming decades, from profound technological challenges to helping people with the age old search for human happiness and meaning.That is why I am not canceling class tomorrow. Your education is really really important, not just to you, but in a far broader and wider reaching way than I think any of you have yet to fully appreciate.See you tomorrow,Alexander
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
Stephen Fry
It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Let It Shine
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
-Marianne Williamson
Monday, October 28, 2013
These Are The Things I Truly Believe In
I believe in songs on the radio. In shuffle. In chance giving you all the signs you could possibly want. I believe in music, the one song you only ever needed to hear. The melody, the words, letting you know it isn’t just you. There are others out there, the ones who get you. Somewhere across miles, even oceans, someone else felt lost and confused. Someone else set a beat to the feeling seeping into your heart.
I believe in fortune cookies. In the handful set on your table. The end of the meal, how could fate step in when it gives you something you’ve had before? Ink typed on a page allowing all the meaning you will let it. A piece of trust inside something so small. Trust in the universe, in chance, in more than what you can see in your hands.
I believe in the sunrise. In even the worst days ending, the wind piercing your bones walking home through the dark. Coats doing nothing against the outside. The sun will come up tomorrow. The bad will end and blue with eventually come with it. Eyes will adjust as the rays escape through the clouds. The light on your face warming even the coldest of places. Insides that were hollow will fill up with the colors, each day newly painted as long as one remembers to trust.
I believe in taking risks. In living life as worst as you can. It’s a risk loving all you come in contact with, love is never guaranteed. There are people who will eat up all you give them, asking for more when you think you’ve almost run out. There will be ones who will love you back with all their atoms. Believing in the risk you take just by breathing in the air. The others thirsty for passion, finding what burns them and letting it consume. I believe in souls who light up gold when incased by the fire.
I believe in being nervous, being terrified. The butterflies in your stomach fluttering when you see how far you can go. When failure causes the conditioned response, but still holding your head up high. Putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward at all times. You have to build to a run, sprinting doesn’t last forever. I believe in the long inhale, in walking out the door on days it’s pouring and with no idea what to expect.
I believe in you. In us. In loving all the moments. In the times when you’re on the ground and can barely make out the stars. When it’s so dark and freezing and you don’t think you will ever be warm again. When you lose something important to you, the failure weighing on your shoulders. When you wonder how anyone is able to walk uphill after their hearts were snatched out of their chests. I believe in purpose, in letting it find you just by trying everything you can. Boundless opportunities if you are willing to look underneath. I believe in timing, in chance, in never giving up even if you fail. In starting over, in taking a step back, in pausing for the world to see you are trying to help. I believe in solutions, if we keep looking, keep experimenting, we will find them. In trying to create in your little moments, in the only moment we know we have.
I believe in the flow of life from one to another, in being kind.
I believe in fortune cookies. In the handful set on your table. The end of the meal, how could fate step in when it gives you something you’ve had before? Ink typed on a page allowing all the meaning you will let it. A piece of trust inside something so small. Trust in the universe, in chance, in more than what you can see in your hands.
I believe in the sunrise. In even the worst days ending, the wind piercing your bones walking home through the dark. Coats doing nothing against the outside. The sun will come up tomorrow. The bad will end and blue with eventually come with it. Eyes will adjust as the rays escape through the clouds. The light on your face warming even the coldest of places. Insides that were hollow will fill up with the colors, each day newly painted as long as one remembers to trust.
I believe in taking risks. In living life as worst as you can. It’s a risk loving all you come in contact with, love is never guaranteed. There are people who will eat up all you give them, asking for more when you think you’ve almost run out. There will be ones who will love you back with all their atoms. Believing in the risk you take just by breathing in the air. The others thirsty for passion, finding what burns them and letting it consume. I believe in souls who light up gold when incased by the fire.
I believe in being nervous, being terrified. The butterflies in your stomach fluttering when you see how far you can go. When failure causes the conditioned response, but still holding your head up high. Putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward at all times. You have to build to a run, sprinting doesn’t last forever. I believe in the long inhale, in walking out the door on days it’s pouring and with no idea what to expect.
I believe in you. In us. In loving all the moments. In the times when you’re on the ground and can barely make out the stars. When it’s so dark and freezing and you don’t think you will ever be warm again. When you lose something important to you, the failure weighing on your shoulders. When you wonder how anyone is able to walk uphill after their hearts were snatched out of their chests. I believe in purpose, in letting it find you just by trying everything you can. Boundless opportunities if you are willing to look underneath. I believe in timing, in chance, in never giving up even if you fail. In starting over, in taking a step back, in pausing for the world to see you are trying to help. I believe in solutions, if we keep looking, keep experimenting, we will find them. In trying to create in your little moments, in the only moment we know we have.
I believe in the flow of life from one to another, in being kind.
Your 20s Get Better In Time
This article is literally everything I needed to read right now
I never like telling people my age. It’s usually met with disbelief about not being older. (Although recently, I have encountered a few people who thought I was younger than I am.) I often feel like my age is not a reflection of my experience, and I don’t want to be dismissed because of it. Growing up, I was always younger than all my peers, and I mostly still am. Yet somehow, I have always felt that my life experiences allowed me to have greater depth than those same peers in many respects. Perhaps it was growing up fast due to having siblings significantly older than me, and one who I am significantly other than. Or perhaps it was having to be independent earlier than most. But I have always felt older than I am. Still, I can honestly say that my twenties have been a whirlwind thus far.
A lot of things have gone wrong – horribly, terribly wrong. I sometimes look around my less than perfect, (and these days) often messy apartment, and feel it is an exact representation of my life. My twenties have been chaotic and disorganized and unexpected – like a lot of people. I still remember how scared I was on the morning of my college graduation, almost two and a half years ago now. I had never felt so uncertain in my entire life even though I thought I had plans. Little did I know, that moment would mark the beginning of an uncertain period of my life. Sometimes I feel like all I’m doing is fighting through one uncertainty after another; one thing after another. I feel like I’m constantly running a race, or maybe swimming and trying to keep my head above water. I feel like I’m taking steps forward and having to take those same steps backwards. Every day, I feel like I’m fighting.
I’m good at fighting. Random too-much-information story about me: I came into the world fighting. My mother loves to tell the story of how I’m the baby that she almost lost. And my parents – strip away their education and titles and very put-together demeanor – and you’ll find some of the greatest hustlers you’ll ever come across. So fighting is in my DNA. I know how to pull the sleepless nights and to keep on truckin’ even when things look bleak. And I know what it is to fail even when you’ve given something everything you’ve got; and to have to pick yourself up with no time for respite. I know what it is to be at your wit’s end as to what tomorrow will bring. And I know what it is to hang on by a thread, by your last sliver of hope; to hang on when all you have left is a Hail Mary.
But I also know that even when I have failed, that Hail Mary never failed me. And if you have enough perspective, you might realize it never failed you either. Because no matter how many times we’ve hit rock bottom during these years, if we’ve awoken the next day, we’re already doing better than we can possible imagine. These years are hard and uncertain. And every day that you are able to get out of bed and go into the world and learn something, and create something, and be useful and kind to someone – no matter how small, no matter how insignificant – you’re doing really well. And on those days where you can’t muster the strength to get out of bed because everything just looks like it’s falling apart, stay in bed as long as you need to. Because on those days you’re just getting stronger to be able to continue the fight when you’re ready.
And fight you will, because in order to survive and thrive, you must. But things will get better, and if you look around you, maybe they already are. Maybe you’re smarter, maybe you’re more fearless, maybe you’re more confident and less worrisome. In some small way that you don’t even realize, I promise you’re doing better. And those small ways will one day turn into something big, and you’ll look back at how far you’ve come. You’ll realize that those weak moments were really some of your strongest moments. You’ll realize that all the fighting was preparing you for something much better; something that you might not be able to see right now.
But keep fighting because no matter where you are now, you’re not dead; and that means you’ve still got some fight in you. And as long as you keep fighting, even if it feels like that’s all you’re doing, even if this is hard to believe, believe you must, that these years will get better in time.
I never like telling people my age. It’s usually met with disbelief about not being older. (Although recently, I have encountered a few people who thought I was younger than I am.) I often feel like my age is not a reflection of my experience, and I don’t want to be dismissed because of it. Growing up, I was always younger than all my peers, and I mostly still am. Yet somehow, I have always felt that my life experiences allowed me to have greater depth than those same peers in many respects. Perhaps it was growing up fast due to having siblings significantly older than me, and one who I am significantly other than. Or perhaps it was having to be independent earlier than most. But I have always felt older than I am. Still, I can honestly say that my twenties have been a whirlwind thus far.
A lot of things have gone wrong – horribly, terribly wrong. I sometimes look around my less than perfect, (and these days) often messy apartment, and feel it is an exact representation of my life. My twenties have been chaotic and disorganized and unexpected – like a lot of people. I still remember how scared I was on the morning of my college graduation, almost two and a half years ago now. I had never felt so uncertain in my entire life even though I thought I had plans. Little did I know, that moment would mark the beginning of an uncertain period of my life. Sometimes I feel like all I’m doing is fighting through one uncertainty after another; one thing after another. I feel like I’m constantly running a race, or maybe swimming and trying to keep my head above water. I feel like I’m taking steps forward and having to take those same steps backwards. Every day, I feel like I’m fighting.
I’m good at fighting. Random too-much-information story about me: I came into the world fighting. My mother loves to tell the story of how I’m the baby that she almost lost. And my parents – strip away their education and titles and very put-together demeanor – and you’ll find some of the greatest hustlers you’ll ever come across. So fighting is in my DNA. I know how to pull the sleepless nights and to keep on truckin’ even when things look bleak. And I know what it is to fail even when you’ve given something everything you’ve got; and to have to pick yourself up with no time for respite. I know what it is to be at your wit’s end as to what tomorrow will bring. And I know what it is to hang on by a thread, by your last sliver of hope; to hang on when all you have left is a Hail Mary.
But I also know that even when I have failed, that Hail Mary never failed me. And if you have enough perspective, you might realize it never failed you either. Because no matter how many times we’ve hit rock bottom during these years, if we’ve awoken the next day, we’re already doing better than we can possible imagine. These years are hard and uncertain. And every day that you are able to get out of bed and go into the world and learn something, and create something, and be useful and kind to someone – no matter how small, no matter how insignificant – you’re doing really well. And on those days where you can’t muster the strength to get out of bed because everything just looks like it’s falling apart, stay in bed as long as you need to. Because on those days you’re just getting stronger to be able to continue the fight when you’re ready.
And fight you will, because in order to survive and thrive, you must. But things will get better, and if you look around you, maybe they already are. Maybe you’re smarter, maybe you’re more fearless, maybe you’re more confident and less worrisome. In some small way that you don’t even realize, I promise you’re doing better. And those small ways will one day turn into something big, and you’ll look back at how far you’ve come. You’ll realize that those weak moments were really some of your strongest moments. You’ll realize that all the fighting was preparing you for something much better; something that you might not be able to see right now.
But keep fighting because no matter where you are now, you’re not dead; and that means you’ve still got some fight in you. And as long as you keep fighting, even if it feels like that’s all you’re doing, even if this is hard to believe, believe you must, that these years will get better in time.
Alan Watts Lecture "The State of Nothing"
The State of Nothing Lecture by Alan Watts
If you are aware of a state called is, or reality, or life, this implies a state called isn’t. Or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness or death. You can’t know one without the other. And so as to make life poignant, it’s always going to come to an end, that is don’t you see what makes it lively. Liveliness is change it is motion, and motion is going to fall out and be gone. You see, you are always at the place you always are..[Laughs] Except it keeps appearing to change. And you think wowie we’ll get that thing. I hope we don’t go further down so that we don’t lose what we have. But that’s built into every creature’s situation or matter how high or how low. So is this sense, all places are the same place. And the only time you ever notice any difference is the moment of transition. When you go up a bit you gain, when you go down a bit you feel disappointed, gloom, lost. You can go all the way down to death. Somehow, there seems to be a difficultly getting up. Death sees so final. Nothing seems so very very very irrevocable and permanent.
Then if it is, what about the nothingness before you started. So don’t you see, what we’ve left out of out logic and this is part of the game rule to the game we are playing. The way we hoodwink ourselves is by attributing powerlessness with nothingness.
We don’t realize that is a complete logical fallacy. It takes nothing to have something. You wouldn’t know something without nothing. You wouldn’t know what the form is, without the background space. You would’t be able to see anything unless there was nothing behind your eyes. Now imagine yourself with an anestical eye, and you can see all round. Now whats in the middle? Even if I have all this behind me within view suddenly I will find there is something in the middle of it all and there is a hole of reality. Like now there seems to be wall, not so much a whole, but you see if I was an animal that had eyes in the back of its head. You could feel the sensation I’m describing.
Now you may say to me, now that’s all a bunch of wishful thinking, because when your dead your dead! Now wait a minute, what is that state of consciousness that talks that way? This is somebody saying something that wants to make a point, but what kind of point are they trying to make? When your dead your dead see. Well that’s one of the people that want to rule the world. That’s what frightening about death. Death is real. No indulge in wishful thinking, all you people who dream of an afterlife, and heavens and gods and mystical experiences, and eternity. You are just wishy washy people, you don’t face the facts!
What facts? How can I face the fact of nothing. Which is by definition not a fact. All this is toddle whatever way you look at it. So if you really go the how way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing forever. Of all your efforts, and all your achievements, and all your attainments turning into dust and nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you?
Is a curious thing, that in the world’s poetry, this is a very common theme. “The earthly hopes men set their hearts upon turns ashes, and or it prospers, a non like snow settles on the desert dusty face lighting an hour or two and is gone” All kinds of poetry emphasize the theme of transcendence. There is a kind of nostalgic beauty to it. "The Banquet Hall deserted, after the revelry, all the guests had left and gone on their ways. The table with overturned glasses, crumbled napkins, bread crumbs , and dirty knives and forks lies empty. And the laughter echoes only in one’s mind. And then the echo goes, the memory, the traces are all gone. That’s the end you see."
Do you see in a way, how that is saying the most real state is the state of nothing? That’s what it’s all going to come to. With these physicists who think of the energy of the universe as running down dissipating into radiation, and gradually and gradually, and gradually, gradually, until there is nothing left.
And for some reason, we are suppose to find that depressing. But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness. Where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how this looks behind your eyes. So cheer up you see, this is what is meant in Buddhist philosophy by saying ‘we are all basically nothing.’
When the Six Patriarch says “the essence of your mind is intrinsically pure”. The pure doesn’t mean a ‘non dirty story state of mind’ as is it apt to mean in the word Puritan. Pure means “clear “ void. So you know the story when the Six Patriarch was given his office to his successor. Because he was truly enlightened. There was a Poetry contest. And the losing one wrote the idea that the mind, the consciousness was like a mirror.
So I’m detached, calm, and pure headed. Buddha-ed. But the one who won the contest said there is no mirror, and the nature of mind is intrinsically void. So where is there anywhere for dust to collect? See so in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality. Then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of being scared, and it’s nothing it just a dream. Because your really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. All the Six Patriarch went on to contrast that emptiness of indifference. Which is sort of blind emptiness. See if you think of this idea of nothingness as blankness, and you hold onto this idea of blankness then kind of grizzly about it, you haven’t understood it. Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and mountains, and rivers, and goodmen and bad men, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and you it. What else could you be?
If you are aware of a state called is, or reality, or life, this implies a state called isn’t. Or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness or death. You can’t know one without the other. And so as to make life poignant, it’s always going to come to an end, that is don’t you see what makes it lively. Liveliness is change it is motion, and motion is going to fall out and be gone. You see, you are always at the place you always are..[Laughs] Except it keeps appearing to change. And you think wowie we’ll get that thing. I hope we don’t go further down so that we don’t lose what we have. But that’s built into every creature’s situation or matter how high or how low. So is this sense, all places are the same place. And the only time you ever notice any difference is the moment of transition. When you go up a bit you gain, when you go down a bit you feel disappointed, gloom, lost. You can go all the way down to death. Somehow, there seems to be a difficultly getting up. Death sees so final. Nothing seems so very very very irrevocable and permanent.
Then if it is, what about the nothingness before you started. So don’t you see, what we’ve left out of out logic and this is part of the game rule to the game we are playing. The way we hoodwink ourselves is by attributing powerlessness with nothingness.
We don’t realize that is a complete logical fallacy. It takes nothing to have something. You wouldn’t know something without nothing. You wouldn’t know what the form is, without the background space. You would’t be able to see anything unless there was nothing behind your eyes. Now imagine yourself with an anestical eye, and you can see all round. Now whats in the middle? Even if I have all this behind me within view suddenly I will find there is something in the middle of it all and there is a hole of reality. Like now there seems to be wall, not so much a whole, but you see if I was an animal that had eyes in the back of its head. You could feel the sensation I’m describing.
Now you may say to me, now that’s all a bunch of wishful thinking, because when your dead your dead! Now wait a minute, what is that state of consciousness that talks that way? This is somebody saying something that wants to make a point, but what kind of point are they trying to make? When your dead your dead see. Well that’s one of the people that want to rule the world. That’s what frightening about death. Death is real. No indulge in wishful thinking, all you people who dream of an afterlife, and heavens and gods and mystical experiences, and eternity. You are just wishy washy people, you don’t face the facts!
What facts? How can I face the fact of nothing. Which is by definition not a fact. All this is toddle whatever way you look at it. So if you really go the how way and see how you feel at the prospect of vanishing forever. Of all your efforts, and all your achievements, and all your attainments turning into dust and nothingness. What is the feeling? What happens to you?
Is a curious thing, that in the world’s poetry, this is a very common theme. “The earthly hopes men set their hearts upon turns ashes, and or it prospers, a non like snow settles on the desert dusty face lighting an hour or two and is gone” All kinds of poetry emphasize the theme of transcendence. There is a kind of nostalgic beauty to it. "The Banquet Hall deserted, after the revelry, all the guests had left and gone on their ways. The table with overturned glasses, crumbled napkins, bread crumbs , and dirty knives and forks lies empty. And the laughter echoes only in one’s mind. And then the echo goes, the memory, the traces are all gone. That’s the end you see."
Do you see in a way, how that is saying the most real state is the state of nothing? That’s what it’s all going to come to. With these physicists who think of the energy of the universe as running down dissipating into radiation, and gradually and gradually, and gradually, gradually, until there is nothing left.
And for some reason, we are suppose to find that depressing. But if somebody is going to argue that the basic reality is nothingness. Where does all this come from? Obviously from nothingness. Once again you get how this looks behind your eyes. So cheer up you see, this is what is meant in Buddhist philosophy by saying ‘we are all basically nothing.’
When the Six Patriarch says “the essence of your mind is intrinsically pure”. The pure doesn’t mean a ‘non dirty story state of mind’ as is it apt to mean in the word Puritan. Pure means “clear “ void. So you know the story when the Six Patriarch was given his office to his successor. Because he was truly enlightened. There was a Poetry contest. And the losing one wrote the idea that the mind, the consciousness was like a mirror.
So I’m detached, calm, and pure headed. Buddha-ed. But the one who won the contest said there is no mirror, and the nature of mind is intrinsically void. So where is there anywhere for dust to collect? See so in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality. Then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of being scared, and it’s nothing it just a dream. Because your really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. All the Six Patriarch went on to contrast that emptiness of indifference. Which is sort of blind emptiness. See if you think of this idea of nothingness as blankness, and you hold onto this idea of blankness then kind of grizzly about it, you haven’t understood it. Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space, which contains the whole universe. All the sun and the stars and mountains, and rivers, and goodmen and bad men, and the animals, and insects, and the whole bit. All are contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and you it. What else could you be?
Sunday, October 27, 2013
A Quick Evaluation of Your Life and Future
Part 1
Write down 10 things that you love to do.
- Do you like to do this: (A) all by yourself/ or with (P) people
- Is it something that is (M) mental or (P) physical
- Pick your top 3 favorites and mark the last time that you did it
- Mark the ones that you did for the first time in 3 years with a symbol
- Reading a book (A, M, #1- 2 days ago)
- Spending time laying outside in the dark looking at the stars (A, M, #3- 28 days ago)
- Roadtrips with loud music and windows down (P, P, )
- Spending time on the water (A, M)
- Talking with friends and family (P, M)
- Looking at photographs (A, M)
- Snuggling up on a couch when it's raining (A, P)
- Playing with a dog (A, P)
- Laughing (P, P, #2- 1 day ago)
- Watching a good film (A, M)
Part 2
Write down 10 things you want to do in the future. You can already have done these, but you really want to do them again.
- Do you like to do this: (A) all by yourself/ or with (P) people
- Is it something that is (M) mental or (P) physical
- Is this (L) likely, (P) probable, (I) improbable
- Travel (A, P, P)
- Spend time outside with nature (A, P, P)
- Drive recklessly fast on an abandoned road (A, P, I)
- Volunteer abroad (P, M, I)
- Have a family (P, M, L)
- Fall head over heels in love (P, P, P)
- Spend more time with my family (P, M, L)
- Feel more secure with who I am (A, M, I)
- Own a personal library (A, M, L)
- Make it all count (A, M, P)
Friday, October 25, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
A Father Photographs The World Of His Autistic Son
You can view the original article here: http://snapme.ca/a-father-photographs-the-world-of-his-autistic-son/
Timothy Archibald started photographing his autistic son Elijah when he was 5 years old. His aim was to document the often bizarre and incomprehensible world of his son but the project developed into much more.
Elijah has a need for repetition, loves mechanical objects and is socially withdrawn and Timothy set out to document these often annoying habits and rituals. However, over time Elijah became more involved in the process and helped setup and organise locations and poses.
“According to Timothy, his project Echolilia helped him understand the situation, his role as father, but most importantly, to accept his own son’s differences. Those habits that first drove him nuts completely changed through his photos. In Echolilia, father and son create their own visual language, thanks to which they can communicate with each other even when there are no words they both can understand. In fact, Elijah receives positive attention for his rituals, can share something with his dad, and has even started to take his own photos.” Via
Timothy Archibald started photographing his autistic son Elijah when he was 5 years old. His aim was to document the often bizarre and incomprehensible world of his son but the project developed into much more.
Elijah has a need for repetition, loves mechanical objects and is socially withdrawn and Timothy set out to document these often annoying habits and rituals. However, over time Elijah became more involved in the process and helped setup and organise locations and poses.
“According to Timothy, his project Echolilia helped him understand the situation, his role as father, but most importantly, to accept his own son’s differences. Those habits that first drove him nuts completely changed through his photos. In Echolilia, father and son create their own visual language, thanks to which they can communicate with each other even when there are no words they both can understand. In fact, Elijah receives positive attention for his rituals, can share something with his dad, and has even started to take his own photos.” Via
Date A Guy Who Reads Hemingway
By: Meredith McCullough
Go to a dingy cafe, the kind with Penguin Classics rotting in a corner, where the staff’s disdain makes the coffee perfectly bitter. Sit opposite a guy with floppy hair who looks like he doesn’t believe in the beach. You figure you’re bored and wouldn’t mind getting laid later, so you strike up a conversation. Obviously you will have to do this, shy and dull have converged equally beneath his ironic glasses, perfectly wrinkling his Heathcliff brow. Just make sure you act sufficiently awkward to avoid intimidating him. Then you’ll get to listen to him talk at you about books.
Only smile occasionally during this conversation, nod a lot to show you’re interested. Mentioning the occasional philosopher will probably get you a decent hand job later. Disagree with every third thing he says to give the illusion that you’re interacting on “his level”. Now he knows his friends will be suitably impressed. You even used the phrase “Marxist dialectic of the material self”, you’re in! For God’s sake, use big words and don’t make too many jokes. Sarcasm about the plebs, however, is a must. Drop in that you’re a feminist because your second favorite author is Woolf (second, of course, to Hemingway).
If you say “I think” enough he’ll end up believing it and take you to a quiet bar with inadequate lighting. He will be unable to order, yet insist on doing so, now believing that he is the one pursuing you (a fantasy you obviously are obliged to indulge). Over wine he will continue to listen to himself outline the plot of his unfinished novel. Believable criticism works best at this point, if you intersperse the conversation with “compliment – critique – compliment” you’re bound to at least get some decent wine out of him. For example “I love the way your idea captures the real struggle of fractured post-modernity, but don’t you think the characterization of John could be more three dimensional? I love the ending though, that imagery is truly beautiful”… he’ll be putty in your hands.
After he’s had enough wine he’ll start believing that this is somehow special, that because you have the capacity to articulate intelligent ideas you must be only slightly less of a genius than he is. You will be walking home, mid-sentence, outlining the virtues of the sonnet form (a rebuttal to his affinity for beat culture) and he will clumsily cut you off to lean in for a kiss. Thank god, you will think, there are only so many ways to say that Kerouac was a tosser. Afterwards he will call it “making love” and you will let him because that sounds nicer than the bumpy, awkward truth.
He will write lovely things to you, txt you his thoughts and appreciate your ideas about his favorite movies. At this point you’re allowed to not like something, this means you’re opinionated (just don’t be opinionated about One Direction). It feels pretty comfy up on that pedestal now, doesn’t it? He’s made hierarchies into an art, and suddenly you’re at the top. Ignore that he’s placed your friends way down at the bottom, ignore that you’re the only two people up there. Soar on the wings of his promise of genius. Of course he loves you, he’s an artist. Get used to staying in.
Don’t go out dancing, it’s a cliché. Don’t listen to obnoxious music, unless of course you’re being ironic. Move in together and dance alone to old jazz records, but never in a crowded bar. Stay in and read together in bed and tell yourself that this is what you want. You like reading, right? Your degree, your achievements, your creations, he loves you for them because he tells his friends. They say “it’s good to have a smart girlfriend” while you bring them literary sandwiches.
Don’t get married, it’s a cliché. Don’t expect grand romantic gestures in restaurants. He will try to get his work published while you get some cash doing something he finds acceptable. You wonder why no one else seems to think he is the genius he assured you he was. Tell yourself this is how all great artists live, tell yourself that you don’t really need money. Tell yourself you never liked those friends anyway, you’re fine. His are clearly much better because they’ve read Hemingway.
You will live in a small apartment, reading small words that no one else will hear. You will have long debates about semantics and ignore the creeping smell of mould. You can help him with his work though you’ve got no time for your own. It’s insensitive of you to talk about your minor issues when he’s struggling with an existential crisis. You will try and ignore the cloud of sadness and loneliness that artistic isolation shrouds you with. You can read some more books to escape. But only good ones, and mainly Hemingway. You’ve never tried Mills and Boon, but he’s sure you’d hate them, so you probably would, right? He knows you so well.
You will stay in that little flat full of sad manuscripts that will never be published and make the best of things. You used some big words at one stage and liked the sweet sound of a lie he told you, one he wouldn’t tell anyone else. You’ll grow old and wonder at his lack of achievement, especially when you’ve done so much proof reading. In this little flat, childless, this is where you will die, a faded version of somebody else’s dream… a dream that just wasn’t quite as good as he thought it was going to be. Maybe it’s because he just loved you too much?
For goodness sake, stay away from those awful men with their terrible muscles in their loose-fitting singlets. You’re classy, you’re not going to go for someone who offers to buy you a beer in a crowded club (how crass!), who stands next to you on the bar, singing your favorite rock song louder than anyone else. You don’t even like obnoxious motor-bikes. And you’re definitely far, far too clever to be taken in by gorgeous dimples and a stare that makes you feel like a Victoria Secret model.
Don’t date a guy who hasn’t read Hemingway, he won’t be artistic at all. He will stand in awe of your achievements, but he won’t be able to correct you on them. He will only appreciate them because they are important to you, and he wouldn’t even know how to tell his friends how very, very clever you are. He won’t be able to engage with you intellectually, so he will end arguments with a joke, or by pulling a funny face. He will laugh with you for hours at childish cartoons and you will be genuinely impressed by his Cartman impersonation.
He will buy all your friends tequila shots and help hold back their hair. He will make bad puns with your Dad and play X Box with your little sister. He will probably do something terribly cliché like propose on top of the Eiffel tower (because he knows “you like that romantic stuff”, not realizing you meant 18th century English literature). You will probably do something like get a house and have kids, disgusting! He will have a BBQ and you will have a study, he will tell the kids to be quiet while you’re working.
Instead of wrestling with you intellectually, he will tackle you to the bed. Instead of correcting your recitation of Milton, he will marvel at how you understand all “that poetry stuff”. He will hold you when you’re crying, even though he might not understand how reading can make someone sad. You will write a poem about how your daughter has his cheeky dimples when she smiles. Even though he doesn’t understand that it’s Shakespearian in form, he will love it anyway and hang it in the living-room. His dumb jokes will make you smile when you’re in the nursing home together, and he will tell your grandchildren about when you were young and crazy. He will know, because he would have been just a crazy as you.
What has happened to your books and your poems, what is the point in getting a tertiary education if not to impress the boy in the coffee shop? You’re doing all this reading, surely it’s to attract the first guy? Look at him, with his paperback of ‘The Old Man and The Sea’, wouldn’t you like to listen to what he has to say about it? Wouldn’t you like your intelligence to go towards making his life better? Don’t you want to be a bauble, momentarily decorating his deliciously narcissistic view of his own genius? What else could you be doing all that reading and writing for?
Stay away from the second guy, maybe he is just a pretty face. A six-pack and sea-green eyes might not actually mean love, this whole future could well be a product of your hyperactive imagination. You’ll just have one great night, but the rest could all go horribly wrong. If you take that chance, he might get on his motorbike and leave forever, and then where would you be? Well, I guess you could write a pretty kick-ass story about it, and maybe read a book
Go to a dingy cafe, the kind with Penguin Classics rotting in a corner, where the staff’s disdain makes the coffee perfectly bitter. Sit opposite a guy with floppy hair who looks like he doesn’t believe in the beach. You figure you’re bored and wouldn’t mind getting laid later, so you strike up a conversation. Obviously you will have to do this, shy and dull have converged equally beneath his ironic glasses, perfectly wrinkling his Heathcliff brow. Just make sure you act sufficiently awkward to avoid intimidating him. Then you’ll get to listen to him talk at you about books.
Only smile occasionally during this conversation, nod a lot to show you’re interested. Mentioning the occasional philosopher will probably get you a decent hand job later. Disagree with every third thing he says to give the illusion that you’re interacting on “his level”. Now he knows his friends will be suitably impressed. You even used the phrase “Marxist dialectic of the material self”, you’re in! For God’s sake, use big words and don’t make too many jokes. Sarcasm about the plebs, however, is a must. Drop in that you’re a feminist because your second favorite author is Woolf (second, of course, to Hemingway).
If you say “I think” enough he’ll end up believing it and take you to a quiet bar with inadequate lighting. He will be unable to order, yet insist on doing so, now believing that he is the one pursuing you (a fantasy you obviously are obliged to indulge). Over wine he will continue to listen to himself outline the plot of his unfinished novel. Believable criticism works best at this point, if you intersperse the conversation with “compliment – critique – compliment” you’re bound to at least get some decent wine out of him. For example “I love the way your idea captures the real struggle of fractured post-modernity, but don’t you think the characterization of John could be more three dimensional? I love the ending though, that imagery is truly beautiful”… he’ll be putty in your hands.
After he’s had enough wine he’ll start believing that this is somehow special, that because you have the capacity to articulate intelligent ideas you must be only slightly less of a genius than he is. You will be walking home, mid-sentence, outlining the virtues of the sonnet form (a rebuttal to his affinity for beat culture) and he will clumsily cut you off to lean in for a kiss. Thank god, you will think, there are only so many ways to say that Kerouac was a tosser. Afterwards he will call it “making love” and you will let him because that sounds nicer than the bumpy, awkward truth.
He will write lovely things to you, txt you his thoughts and appreciate your ideas about his favorite movies. At this point you’re allowed to not like something, this means you’re opinionated (just don’t be opinionated about One Direction). It feels pretty comfy up on that pedestal now, doesn’t it? He’s made hierarchies into an art, and suddenly you’re at the top. Ignore that he’s placed your friends way down at the bottom, ignore that you’re the only two people up there. Soar on the wings of his promise of genius. Of course he loves you, he’s an artist. Get used to staying in.
Don’t go out dancing, it’s a cliché. Don’t listen to obnoxious music, unless of course you’re being ironic. Move in together and dance alone to old jazz records, but never in a crowded bar. Stay in and read together in bed and tell yourself that this is what you want. You like reading, right? Your degree, your achievements, your creations, he loves you for them because he tells his friends. They say “it’s good to have a smart girlfriend” while you bring them literary sandwiches.
Don’t get married, it’s a cliché. Don’t expect grand romantic gestures in restaurants. He will try to get his work published while you get some cash doing something he finds acceptable. You wonder why no one else seems to think he is the genius he assured you he was. Tell yourself this is how all great artists live, tell yourself that you don’t really need money. Tell yourself you never liked those friends anyway, you’re fine. His are clearly much better because they’ve read Hemingway.
You will live in a small apartment, reading small words that no one else will hear. You will have long debates about semantics and ignore the creeping smell of mould. You can help him with his work though you’ve got no time for your own. It’s insensitive of you to talk about your minor issues when he’s struggling with an existential crisis. You will try and ignore the cloud of sadness and loneliness that artistic isolation shrouds you with. You can read some more books to escape. But only good ones, and mainly Hemingway. You’ve never tried Mills and Boon, but he’s sure you’d hate them, so you probably would, right? He knows you so well.
You will stay in that little flat full of sad manuscripts that will never be published and make the best of things. You used some big words at one stage and liked the sweet sound of a lie he told you, one he wouldn’t tell anyone else. You’ll grow old and wonder at his lack of achievement, especially when you’ve done so much proof reading. In this little flat, childless, this is where you will die, a faded version of somebody else’s dream… a dream that just wasn’t quite as good as he thought it was going to be. Maybe it’s because he just loved you too much?
For goodness sake, stay away from those awful men with their terrible muscles in their loose-fitting singlets. You’re classy, you’re not going to go for someone who offers to buy you a beer in a crowded club (how crass!), who stands next to you on the bar, singing your favorite rock song louder than anyone else. You don’t even like obnoxious motor-bikes. And you’re definitely far, far too clever to be taken in by gorgeous dimples and a stare that makes you feel like a Victoria Secret model.
Don’t date a guy who hasn’t read Hemingway, he won’t be artistic at all. He will stand in awe of your achievements, but he won’t be able to correct you on them. He will only appreciate them because they are important to you, and he wouldn’t even know how to tell his friends how very, very clever you are. He won’t be able to engage with you intellectually, so he will end arguments with a joke, or by pulling a funny face. He will laugh with you for hours at childish cartoons and you will be genuinely impressed by his Cartman impersonation.
He will buy all your friends tequila shots and help hold back their hair. He will make bad puns with your Dad and play X Box with your little sister. He will probably do something terribly cliché like propose on top of the Eiffel tower (because he knows “you like that romantic stuff”, not realizing you meant 18th century English literature). You will probably do something like get a house and have kids, disgusting! He will have a BBQ and you will have a study, he will tell the kids to be quiet while you’re working.
Instead of wrestling with you intellectually, he will tackle you to the bed. Instead of correcting your recitation of Milton, he will marvel at how you understand all “that poetry stuff”. He will hold you when you’re crying, even though he might not understand how reading can make someone sad. You will write a poem about how your daughter has his cheeky dimples when she smiles. Even though he doesn’t understand that it’s Shakespearian in form, he will love it anyway and hang it in the living-room. His dumb jokes will make you smile when you’re in the nursing home together, and he will tell your grandchildren about when you were young and crazy. He will know, because he would have been just a crazy as you.
What has happened to your books and your poems, what is the point in getting a tertiary education if not to impress the boy in the coffee shop? You’re doing all this reading, surely it’s to attract the first guy? Look at him, with his paperback of ‘The Old Man and The Sea’, wouldn’t you like to listen to what he has to say about it? Wouldn’t you like your intelligence to go towards making his life better? Don’t you want to be a bauble, momentarily decorating his deliciously narcissistic view of his own genius? What else could you be doing all that reading and writing for?
Stay away from the second guy, maybe he is just a pretty face. A six-pack and sea-green eyes might not actually mean love, this whole future could well be a product of your hyperactive imagination. You’ll just have one great night, but the rest could all go horribly wrong. If you take that chance, he might get on his motorbike and leave forever, and then where would you be? Well, I guess you could write a pretty kick-ass story about it, and maybe read a book
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Excerpt from Beautiful Creatures
"Every day was like a day out of some else's life. Nothing had ever happened to me, and now everything was happening to me- and by everything, I really meant Lena. An hour was both faster and slower. I felt like I had sucked the air out of a giant balloon, like my brain wasn't getting enough oxygen. Clouds were more interesting, the lunchroom less disgusting, music sounded better, the same old jokes were funnier, and Jackson went from being a clump of grayish- green industrial buildings to a map of times and places where I might run into her. I found myself smiling for no reason, keeping my earphones in and replaying our conversations in my head, just so I could listen to them again. I had seen this kind of thing before. I had just never felt it"
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Winter Dreams
"It was his sense that, for once, he was magnificently attune to life and that everything about him was radiating a brightness and a glow he might never know again"
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Excerpt from Looking for Alaska
"When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered 'I am going to take this bucket of water an pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God'".
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
How You Know It's Time To Leave Your City
Scrolling through Thought Catalog, like I do every morning, and I ran across this article. It's funny when you look at my last post about wanting to graduate and move to Alaska.
By Brianna Wiest
A little while back I wrote an article in which I *gently* poked fun at the whole “I’m just a small town girl in the big city!” thing that people are always really proud of for some reason. And the responses were… interesting. People wanted to see me write about what it means to want to leave your city, when you’re not proud of it like everybody thinks you should be. When the life that is ideal for other people just isn’t for you. And so I decided to do just that, because unbeknownst to them, that is exactly what I’m doing right now.
Everyone wants to know why the hell I’m leaving, and really only because the place I’m going to isn’t New York. Why would you ever leave the city?! They ask. And then get on my case for all the reasons why my life will be subpar now that I’m not in one of the biggest, loudest cities of the world. I just can’t help but think to myself that it’s very interesting, how people think they know what’s best for a person, and how ingrained societal ideals of what dreams and goals and success should look like is. It’s interesting that, when it’s time for someone to carve their own path that doesn’t revolve around what will make other people appeased and comfortable, it’s assumed that there’s either something wrong with them or there’s something they aren’t realizing about their decision. There’s nothing wrong with me. I realize my decision completely.
My plan was to spend time in New York pursuing my career (in editing, which is what I thought I wanted) and then to return to the place I’m moving to now. I decided to skip over the part where I spend my 20s miserable solely for the pursuit of monetary/social success [as in, a three figure annual salary and a fancy title]. In fact, I gave up doing anything in my day-to-day life, career included, that I didn’t enjoy or was passionate about. Of course, that’s a work in progress, as everything is in life, but the important part is that I decidedly lost the old ideas of what I thought success and happiness meant, and in the process, I found exactly those things. And I’m extraordinarily fortunate, because my job goes where I do, and I can go where I choose. I decided to take advantage of that.
Sometimes you just grow out of places. Sometimes you just aren’t made for what everybody else is. And sometimes you stay because the alternative is a little intimidating, especially when you don’t know anybody where you’re going, and everybody is telling you to stay, and that you’re silly for choosing what you’re choosing. But you feel like you want to go anyway, and so you become trapped in that limbo. The people who commented and wrote to me seemed to be at that place.
If there’s anything you have to walk away with from this little rant, it’s that wanting to go is enough. My beloved, beautiful role model Cheryl Strayed said that in a column she wrote. Wanting to go is enough. This applies to relationships and jobs and living spaces and roommates and career paths and majors and the sticky bar you find yourself at on a Friday night. You are cheating yourself out of bigger, better, happier things by staying in what’s known and comfortable. I’m not saying uprooting your life and probably finding a new job and making new friends all while being subject to people’s criticisms is easy. I’m saying it’s important. And I hope you do go. Because if some part of you won’t stop nagging to be somewhere else, you’ll follow it eventually. It’s just a matter of whether you do it now or later.
By Brianna Wiest
A little while back I wrote an article in which I *gently* poked fun at the whole “I’m just a small town girl in the big city!” thing that people are always really proud of for some reason. And the responses were… interesting. People wanted to see me write about what it means to want to leave your city, when you’re not proud of it like everybody thinks you should be. When the life that is ideal for other people just isn’t for you. And so I decided to do just that, because unbeknownst to them, that is exactly what I’m doing right now.
Everyone wants to know why the hell I’m leaving, and really only because the place I’m going to isn’t New York. Why would you ever leave the city?! They ask. And then get on my case for all the reasons why my life will be subpar now that I’m not in one of the biggest, loudest cities of the world. I just can’t help but think to myself that it’s very interesting, how people think they know what’s best for a person, and how ingrained societal ideals of what dreams and goals and success should look like is. It’s interesting that, when it’s time for someone to carve their own path that doesn’t revolve around what will make other people appeased and comfortable, it’s assumed that there’s either something wrong with them or there’s something they aren’t realizing about their decision. There’s nothing wrong with me. I realize my decision completely.
My plan was to spend time in New York pursuing my career (in editing, which is what I thought I wanted) and then to return to the place I’m moving to now. I decided to skip over the part where I spend my 20s miserable solely for the pursuit of monetary/social success [as in, a three figure annual salary and a fancy title]. In fact, I gave up doing anything in my day-to-day life, career included, that I didn’t enjoy or was passionate about. Of course, that’s a work in progress, as everything is in life, but the important part is that I decidedly lost the old ideas of what I thought success and happiness meant, and in the process, I found exactly those things. And I’m extraordinarily fortunate, because my job goes where I do, and I can go where I choose. I decided to take advantage of that.
Sometimes you just grow out of places. Sometimes you just aren’t made for what everybody else is. And sometimes you stay because the alternative is a little intimidating, especially when you don’t know anybody where you’re going, and everybody is telling you to stay, and that you’re silly for choosing what you’re choosing. But you feel like you want to go anyway, and so you become trapped in that limbo. The people who commented and wrote to me seemed to be at that place.
If there’s anything you have to walk away with from this little rant, it’s that wanting to go is enough. My beloved, beautiful role model Cheryl Strayed said that in a column she wrote. Wanting to go is enough. This applies to relationships and jobs and living spaces and roommates and career paths and majors and the sticky bar you find yourself at on a Friday night. You are cheating yourself out of bigger, better, happier things by staying in what’s known and comfortable. I’m not saying uprooting your life and probably finding a new job and making new friends all while being subject to people’s criticisms is easy. I’m saying it’s important. And I hope you do go. Because if some part of you won’t stop nagging to be somewhere else, you’ll follow it eventually. It’s just a matter of whether you do it now or later.
What I mean when I say Alaska...
Lately, anytime anyone asks me what I'm planning to do when I graduate I tell them I'm going to move to Alaska and get a job and a dog. It's my way of saying "I don't really know, but I'm sick of being asked and not having a good answer." So somehow, my brain translated that into "Oh, I'm moving to Alaska"
Now although I'm 100% serious about wanting to do this I acknowledge a few crucial things
Maybe I'll hate it. Maybe I'll move there and immediately regret it. Maybe I will be back home within the year. But I will never know if I don't try, and if I don't try I won't have a definite answer on what it's like to live in 24 hour sunlight or darkness. I won't know what it means to be truly on my own. I won't know what it's like to be in a place where your family isn't a 10 minute drive away. Oddly enough, I want all of that. I want to come home to a huge dog, an overstuffed leather chair, and a chance to relax with a glass of wine and some home cooked meal. Maybe I'll get a cat too. But I will get them both at the same time, so they grow up together. We can all start that adventure together. Is this extreme? Yes. Stupid? Possibly. But I am my father's daughter and he moved 6,000 miles away when he graduated college, I only wanna move 2,500.
Sign me up.
I'm down for my great adventure.
Whenever it happens, I mean.
Now although I'm 100% serious about wanting to do this I acknowledge a few crucial things
- Yes, it is cold there- even colder to the native Texan blood that runs through me
- I know, it sounds absurd, but that's what I wanna do
- And by "do" I mean, if I don't get out of the immediate area as fast as possible there is a very good chance I will go crazy. Not in some "medicate me until I see flying penguins" way, but in a "I will start to lose sight of my aspirations and settle" way, which I refuse to do
- I am in desperate need of a change, and if changing friends, geographic location, and lifestyles doesn't fulfill that change then maybe I'm already crazy.
- I don't care what job I get there, as long as I have enough money to pay my bills and save a little for trips back home.
- I
wantneed a Great Pyrenees dog in my life. - I know that I will miss my family. My family is the most important thing in the world to me. I am fiercely proud and protective of my siblings. I am always worried about my parents. The thought of not being physically there for them makes me a bundle of nerves.
- It isn't going to be as easy or exciting as it is in my head.
- Wanderlust is a real struggle. My desire to throw my schedule and planner out of the window is only strengthened by the fact that I have mandatory things I have to do.
- I don't care that it will be 24 hours of daylight or 24 hours of darkness. That sounds likes wandering into the Great Unknown, and the beauty of the Great Unknown is the fact that I have experienced none of it.
Maybe I'll hate it. Maybe I'll move there and immediately regret it. Maybe I will be back home within the year. But I will never know if I don't try, and if I don't try I won't have a definite answer on what it's like to live in 24 hour sunlight or darkness. I won't know what it means to be truly on my own. I won't know what it's like to be in a place where your family isn't a 10 minute drive away. Oddly enough, I want all of that. I want to come home to a huge dog, an overstuffed leather chair, and a chance to relax with a glass of wine and some home cooked meal. Maybe I'll get a cat too. But I will get them both at the same time, so they grow up together. We can all start that adventure together. Is this extreme? Yes. Stupid? Possibly. But I am my father's daughter and he moved 6,000 miles away when he graduated college, I only wanna move 2,500.
Sign me up.
I'm down for my great adventure.
Whenever it happens, I mean.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Friday, October 4, 2013
T-Minus 70 Days
70 days until I graduate college.
How did time fly by so quickly? I remember I started that countdown when it was 290+ days, and it seemed like a distant possibility.I spend my days at work or in class, with my evenings filled with greek related events and homework. I've realized some things this semester that I hadn't really connected before. I like to hang out with people in a one on one setting. When I get into groups I feel really awkward and overcompensate by being too talkative, or by getting really quiet. I've also realized that there is a discrepancy between what I would do if I could and what I'm doing. I want nothing more in the world than to move 1,000+ miles away and hole up with some mediocre job and a big dog and take some time to understand myself and live drastically different from what I've always known. That's why when people ask me what I'm doing on day 71 I have no real answer. I want to be in Romania working with youth, or going to Alaska and working with a local nonprofit organization, or going to grad school and wrapping myself up in school without student involvement on the side. The world is supposed to be my oyster right? Well there are too many damn oysters and I'm not even sure which ocean I'm in. But there's something truly thrilling about all of the oysters and water and beaches I've yet to explore. Sink or swim, right?
Harry Potter Wands- How To
Can we just take a moment to let our inner 8 year old child hyperventilate?
This is too cool.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/245657354647715222/
Constellation
By: Jessie Holder
October 4th, 2013
I think they must have molded you out of stardust, out of luminescent grains of heavenly sand. Then they must have made me out of space, of the velvet nothingness that binds the universe together.
This must be how it is that my tendrils of shadow slip between the sparkling gems of you, enfolding each precious granule in my gentle dark and filtering between, binding the immense beauty and rapturous joy of you in the many arms of my soul so your thousands of particles of potential and grace and hope and warm, warm light don’t fly apart. You are starlight beaming out, streaming between the vines of my soul into the heavens.
If you ever exploded you would be a supernova or whatever is larger and brighter still. Your passion would force the universe outward into an expansion it is not yet elastic enough to sustain. But my shadow is strong enough, darling. So I’ll hold each trembling shard of dragon-fired glass, each shimmering speck of your kindness, tenderness, anger, loss, wonder, and guilt.
I have always pulled things toward me. People, dreams, opportunity, danger. If I ever imploded I would be a black hole, my gravity beyond my own comprehension, sucking galaxies into my orbit. But you hold the veins of me, the dark rivers of my love and compassion, my aggression and empathy, my ferocity and my nurturing, my courage and my terror. I am held fast between the pilot lights of you, the iridescent agate stones of your inconceivably generous spirit. I am safe. And the skies are safe from me.
Matter and antimatter, air and flame, brilliant warm light and embracing cool dark, they made us so that we could intertwine. So that we would intertwine. The pull of moonbeams made me to flower for you, an onyx lily on your wings, and the flash of comets called you into being so that you could bloom for me, a crystal rose whose petals open safe in the chamber of my deepest heart.
They made us to know kisses that flow like river water and sing like forest fire. To consume one another again and again, to burst into being as a constellation of incandescent power, of transcendent love.
We were meant to speak into the nighttimes of lost souls with no words, cut from the celestial fabric of angels to sing to the silence: “Love is real. God is here.
October 4th, 2013
I think they must have molded you out of stardust, out of luminescent grains of heavenly sand. Then they must have made me out of space, of the velvet nothingness that binds the universe together.
This must be how it is that my tendrils of shadow slip between the sparkling gems of you, enfolding each precious granule in my gentle dark and filtering between, binding the immense beauty and rapturous joy of you in the many arms of my soul so your thousands of particles of potential and grace and hope and warm, warm light don’t fly apart. You are starlight beaming out, streaming between the vines of my soul into the heavens.
If you ever exploded you would be a supernova or whatever is larger and brighter still. Your passion would force the universe outward into an expansion it is not yet elastic enough to sustain. But my shadow is strong enough, darling. So I’ll hold each trembling shard of dragon-fired glass, each shimmering speck of your kindness, tenderness, anger, loss, wonder, and guilt.
I have always pulled things toward me. People, dreams, opportunity, danger. If I ever imploded I would be a black hole, my gravity beyond my own comprehension, sucking galaxies into my orbit. But you hold the veins of me, the dark rivers of my love and compassion, my aggression and empathy, my ferocity and my nurturing, my courage and my terror. I am held fast between the pilot lights of you, the iridescent agate stones of your inconceivably generous spirit. I am safe. And the skies are safe from me.
Matter and antimatter, air and flame, brilliant warm light and embracing cool dark, they made us so that we could intertwine. So that we would intertwine. The pull of moonbeams made me to flower for you, an onyx lily on your wings, and the flash of comets called you into being so that you could bloom for me, a crystal rose whose petals open safe in the chamber of my deepest heart.
They made us to know kisses that flow like river water and sing like forest fire. To consume one another again and again, to burst into being as a constellation of incandescent power, of transcendent love.
We were meant to speak into the nighttimes of lost souls with no words, cut from the celestial fabric of angels to sing to the silence: “Love is real. God is here.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Speeding through the semester
Life has been speeding by and I'm blown away by how fast this semester is going. Tomorrow is the first day of October. I have so much to do before I leave and so little time, but I feel like each day is inching by. I have to fight to have motivation to go to class, and I have to struggle to try and get my homework done, but at the end of the day I'm just trying to get done. I feel like I'm slowly reverting back to who I was before college. I'm going to concerts again, hanging out with long term friends, and doing what makes me happy. I didn't realize that I'd stunted myself in some of the most crucial ways by allowing myself to flourish in other ways. Let me be clear, college was some of the best years of my life. Filled with some of the greatest memories and learning experiences of my life. As my college experience wraps up I've realized that some of these friends that I've made might be different from what I initially realized. If I wasn't quite myself when I befriended them, does that mean I've built a foundation on sand instead of rocks? I'm not really sure. I'm sitting in my class wondering what on earth I'm going to do with my life next. My list includes: Peace Corp, moving to Alaska, Teach for America, staying local and getting a job, teaching overseas.
Can I just figure out my life already, because I'm damn ready to know what's next.
Can I just figure out my life already, because I'm damn ready to know what's next.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Girlfriends In God: Daily Reflection
So for the last month or so I've been subscribed to this email daily reflection called "Girlfriends In God" and most of the articles are pretty great, but this one really stuck out to me, so much so that I know I will need to call on it time and time again. I post it here for that frequent reflection and reminder that we all need a little quiet in our lives
September 20, 2013
The Power of QuietGwen Smith
The Power of QuietGwen Smith
Today's Truth
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul (Psalm 23:1-3, NIV).
Friend to FriendThere are times when laundry takes over my house. Piles build up, though I try to stay on top of them. Many of the clothes are clean and even folded, but not put away. That tricky put-away-part is always hard for me.
Then there are the socks. Oh, the socks! They burden me so! It causes me to wonder. Does an unseen sock nation exist? Are sock-soldiers are on a secret mission to destroy my testimony and drive me crazy? Divide and conquer. That's what they do! Why can't socks just behave? Why can't they ever stay in pairs, and where am I supposed to put the socks that remain unmatched? Sigh.
Unmatched socks and folded-but-not-put-away-laundry tie me up in knots. Sometimes days go by before I make the time to put them away. Shameful. I know.
Is it just me?
The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul (Psalm 23:1-3, NIV).
Friend to FriendThere are times when laundry takes over my house. Piles build up, though I try to stay on top of them. Many of the clothes are clean and even folded, but not put away. That tricky put-away-part is always hard for me.
Then there are the socks. Oh, the socks! They burden me so! It causes me to wonder. Does an unseen sock nation exist? Are sock-soldiers are on a secret mission to destroy my testimony and drive me crazy? Divide and conquer. That's what they do! Why can't socks just behave? Why can't they ever stay in pairs, and where am I supposed to put the socks that remain unmatched? Sigh.
Unmatched socks and folded-but-not-put-away-laundry tie me up in knots. Sometimes days go by before I make the time to put them away. Shameful. I know.
Is it just me?
I've come to realize that my days can be a lot like my laundry situation. At times they get piled up with busy. Sabbath gets squeezed out. Now, when I say Sabbath, I mean the priority of sitting before the Lord just to sit with Him… quietly… expectantly… to listen... to be restored. Though I do include God in my days and breathe prayers throughout, when I don't sit before the Lord and exercise the spiritual discipline of being quiet before God it seems that both old and new burdens can tie my heart into a big frazzled knot.
It had been one of those weeks. Knots. Knots. Knots. Then I finally remembered the power of quiet. I remembered My Restorer. As I sat in the cool still of the morning with a hot mug of coffee in my hand and the warming presence of God in my soul, the burdens of my heart began to drift away. Direction came. Joy resounded. Mercy rained. Peace… deep peace fell.
The Spirit of God transformed my soul, my thoughts, my goals, and my day. It was as if I had slumbered half the week away. This is where they go. This is where my burdens belong. The old ones that I've written about time and time again in my prayer journal and the new ones that are just beginning to unravel from my heart. This is where they go! I just needed to put my continuous stream of life-burdens away like the unending piles of laundry. Then: order, soulorder… peace, compelling peace… joy, divine joy and restoration… it all came.
I sat in wonder.
Still.
In His presence.
It had been one of those weeks. Knots. Knots. Knots. Then I finally remembered the power of quiet. I remembered My Restorer. As I sat in the cool still of the morning with a hot mug of coffee in my hand and the warming presence of God in my soul, the burdens of my heart began to drift away. Direction came. Joy resounded. Mercy rained. Peace… deep peace fell.
The Spirit of God transformed my soul, my thoughts, my goals, and my day. It was as if I had slumbered half the week away. This is where they go. This is where my burdens belong. The old ones that I've written about time and time again in my prayer journal and the new ones that are just beginning to unravel from my heart. This is where they go! I just needed to put my continuous stream of life-burdens away like the unending piles of laundry. Then: order, soulorder… peace, compelling peace… joy, divine joy and restoration… it all came.
I sat in wonder.
Still.
In His presence.
Convicted of my failure to remember the power of being quiet before the Lord. Of course this is where they go. I knew that. I knew that. Lord, forgive me. Oh, how I'm thankful for your daily mercy showers. I was met in my mess by the Lord my Restorer.
Each of us is invited to experience God as our Restorer. To know the renewal we long for each day. Jesus invited us personally when he said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
When our lives get too busy – when the laundry piles up in our homes and the burdens pile up in our hearts – we often forget the power of quiet. The power of being still before God. The power of listening, expecting, soul-pouring … receiving rest from our Restorer. His presence sorts souls and never leaves an unmatched burden.
His presence never leaves an un-lifted burden.
How great is our God?
Each of us is invited to experience God as our Restorer. To know the renewal we long for each day. Jesus invited us personally when he said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
When our lives get too busy – when the laundry piles up in our homes and the burdens pile up in our hearts – we often forget the power of quiet. The power of being still before God. The power of listening, expecting, soul-pouring … receiving rest from our Restorer. His presence sorts souls and never leaves an unmatched burden.
His presence never leaves an un-lifted burden.
How great is our God?
Take some time to power-down and be still before Him right now. Remember the power of quiet as you accept the renewal invitation of Jesus and exchange your burdens and knots for His peace and restoration.
Monday, September 16, 2013
We Need To Talk, But We Can't Talk About It Right Now
SEP. 16, 2013
By KRISTINA TEN
We need to talk, but I don’t want to talk about it. We have plenty of time. Neither of us is really in the mood right now anyway. I’ve thought a lot about how I’m going to bring it up, which approach would be softest, least confrontational, closest to just another lazy conversation about what we want for breakfast, or the difference between soda and tonic, or how it was back in college. I thought I had my angle all worked out, but I could be wrong. I worry that your heart is a skittish cat and this talk is the person who steps on its tail. I worry your cat-heart will run away licking its wounds and find another stray who will lick them, too, without loving you anywhere near as much as I do.
Seriously, let’s not even start. Let’s complain how late it is, how tired we are, how hard it is to find parking at 2:47 a.m. on a Thursday. Friday, actually. This is the underbelly of the night, that small window of time during which nothing seems quite real. It swallows entire conversations that will either be lost or off limits the next day. Thousands of promises forgotten and calories forgiven, a diet trick my roommate taught me, just so long as both are consumed before the sun comes up. Too many fingers of scotch and, later, the greasy pizza intended to soak it up.
Let’s talk about shitty airline food and the complimentary wine they offered disgruntled passengers when my flight was delayed, delayed, cancelled, rebooked, delayed again, and finally set free. Let’s talk about how you had set alarms for 2:05, 2:10, and 2:15, forcing yourself out of bed to pick me up. How awful for you. Let’s talk about how you never keep your phone on your nightstand—you read somewhere that it emits radioactive signals that will eventually give you brain cancer—but you made an exception tonight to ensure you’d wake up. So, basically, I brought you one step closer to brain cancer. Let’s talk about that.
Let’s have a half-hearted debate the entire length of Wilshire about whether the in-flight entertainment I watched a few hours earlier has any cinematic integrity, and what role, if any, cinematic integrity plays in a movie’s success. You’ll get riled up and call your industry “The Industry,” and I’ll scoff and remind you that there are places in this world where success is one well-fed child or 500 sold copies of a poetry chapbook, not a 10,000-square-foot beachfront loft; but one and 500 are such small numbers to you. Tell me I’m on my high horse again. I’ll say I have a whole stable. Then we can ease our way out of this with witty banter: Quick, what’s your high horse’s name? Fernando. Is he primed for next month’s race? Triple crown, baby. Let’s ride this high horse to steadier ground.
Let’s talk about how much my hair has grown since the last time we saw each other, and which vitamins I take to make that sort of thing happen, and how those sound kind of familiar because maybe your ex-girlfriend took them, too. Kept them in the bathroom cabinet you shared, between your toothpaste and your aftershave. Wait. No, let’s not talk about that.
Let’s try to make the first night feel like the fourth morning. Sunday morning, now that’s really something. It’s this way every time I visit, isn’t it? We spend the first night putting out feelers: You introduce me to your roommates as “your friend from school” and I wait until your bedroom door is closed before I step up on my tippy-toes, shyly kiss you on the nose, wait to see if you give it back. Your nose. My forehead. Your cheek. My chin. Each peck is a game of chicken, a dare to be the one to unfurl a tongue first. Because when we look back on this at the end of the weekend, arguing over the definition of “harmless” as you drive me to the airport, we’ll need someone to blame.
But Sunday morning, ah. We’ll have warmed up by then, fallen into our old patterns. You’ll wrap yourself around me in a tender, six-foot question mark even though it’s 90 degrees and we’re hungover and being close to another body, with its hot breath and sweaty folds, seems an unbearable answer. You’ll take me to Roscoe’s for breakfast because I’m not sold on the chicken-and-waffles concept. The meal doesn’t seem to know what time of day it wants to be eaten, and this bothers me more than you. We’ll hold hands under the table and then, fine, on top.
I keep a crumpled diagram of your red buttons in one corner of my mind. By now, I’ll have found it, flattened it out, and traced over the faded lines warning me not to push here: whether you’ll be able to save up enough to visit next month. And here: whether you’ve slept with the friend crashing on your couch. And here: whether you think you’re going to take that gig on my birthday. And here: What would make a guy think his sex, and that alone, is worth the price of a plane ticket?
We’re not going to talk about it. We’re not. Instead, let’s stay in bed and trade hickeys. I’ll lie on your third pillow and quietly wish I knew more languages; how many different ways could I say, “Fuck you”? How many different ways could you hear, “I want to”? Bite hard, somewhere noticeable, even if it hurts, even if it’ll take a heavy scarf on a hot, hot day to cover it up. Hiss in my ear that I’ve gotten kinkier since college. It’s not that, but we can say so. Honestly, I only wanted something to remember you by; a bruise that’s blue like me and yellow like you. Something we can talk about once I’ve gone home.
By KRISTINA TEN
We need to talk, but I don’t want to talk about it. We have plenty of time. Neither of us is really in the mood right now anyway. I’ve thought a lot about how I’m going to bring it up, which approach would be softest, least confrontational, closest to just another lazy conversation about what we want for breakfast, or the difference between soda and tonic, or how it was back in college. I thought I had my angle all worked out, but I could be wrong. I worry that your heart is a skittish cat and this talk is the person who steps on its tail. I worry your cat-heart will run away licking its wounds and find another stray who will lick them, too, without loving you anywhere near as much as I do.
Seriously, let’s not even start. Let’s complain how late it is, how tired we are, how hard it is to find parking at 2:47 a.m. on a Thursday. Friday, actually. This is the underbelly of the night, that small window of time during which nothing seems quite real. It swallows entire conversations that will either be lost or off limits the next day. Thousands of promises forgotten and calories forgiven, a diet trick my roommate taught me, just so long as both are consumed before the sun comes up. Too many fingers of scotch and, later, the greasy pizza intended to soak it up.
Let’s talk about shitty airline food and the complimentary wine they offered disgruntled passengers when my flight was delayed, delayed, cancelled, rebooked, delayed again, and finally set free. Let’s talk about how you had set alarms for 2:05, 2:10, and 2:15, forcing yourself out of bed to pick me up. How awful for you. Let’s talk about how you never keep your phone on your nightstand—you read somewhere that it emits radioactive signals that will eventually give you brain cancer—but you made an exception tonight to ensure you’d wake up. So, basically, I brought you one step closer to brain cancer. Let’s talk about that.
Let’s have a half-hearted debate the entire length of Wilshire about whether the in-flight entertainment I watched a few hours earlier has any cinematic integrity, and what role, if any, cinematic integrity plays in a movie’s success. You’ll get riled up and call your industry “The Industry,” and I’ll scoff and remind you that there are places in this world where success is one well-fed child or 500 sold copies of a poetry chapbook, not a 10,000-square-foot beachfront loft; but one and 500 are such small numbers to you. Tell me I’m on my high horse again. I’ll say I have a whole stable. Then we can ease our way out of this with witty banter: Quick, what’s your high horse’s name? Fernando. Is he primed for next month’s race? Triple crown, baby. Let’s ride this high horse to steadier ground.
Let’s talk about how much my hair has grown since the last time we saw each other, and which vitamins I take to make that sort of thing happen, and how those sound kind of familiar because maybe your ex-girlfriend took them, too. Kept them in the bathroom cabinet you shared, between your toothpaste and your aftershave. Wait. No, let’s not talk about that.
Let’s try to make the first night feel like the fourth morning. Sunday morning, now that’s really something. It’s this way every time I visit, isn’t it? We spend the first night putting out feelers: You introduce me to your roommates as “your friend from school” and I wait until your bedroom door is closed before I step up on my tippy-toes, shyly kiss you on the nose, wait to see if you give it back. Your nose. My forehead. Your cheek. My chin. Each peck is a game of chicken, a dare to be the one to unfurl a tongue first. Because when we look back on this at the end of the weekend, arguing over the definition of “harmless” as you drive me to the airport, we’ll need someone to blame.
But Sunday morning, ah. We’ll have warmed up by then, fallen into our old patterns. You’ll wrap yourself around me in a tender, six-foot question mark even though it’s 90 degrees and we’re hungover and being close to another body, with its hot breath and sweaty folds, seems an unbearable answer. You’ll take me to Roscoe’s for breakfast because I’m not sold on the chicken-and-waffles concept. The meal doesn’t seem to know what time of day it wants to be eaten, and this bothers me more than you. We’ll hold hands under the table and then, fine, on top.
I keep a crumpled diagram of your red buttons in one corner of my mind. By now, I’ll have found it, flattened it out, and traced over the faded lines warning me not to push here: whether you’ll be able to save up enough to visit next month. And here: whether you’ve slept with the friend crashing on your couch. And here: whether you think you’re going to take that gig on my birthday. And here: What would make a guy think his sex, and that alone, is worth the price of a plane ticket?
We’re not going to talk about it. We’re not. Instead, let’s stay in bed and trade hickeys. I’ll lie on your third pillow and quietly wish I knew more languages; how many different ways could I say, “Fuck you”? How many different ways could you hear, “I want to”? Bite hard, somewhere noticeable, even if it hurts, even if it’ll take a heavy scarf on a hot, hot day to cover it up. Hiss in my ear that I’ve gotten kinkier since college. It’s not that, but we can say so. Honestly, I only wanted something to remember you by; a bruise that’s blue like me and yellow like you. Something we can talk about once I’ve gone home.
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