sea change

and to 'scape stormy days, i choose an everlasting night.
john donne

one of my two of my favorite things to describe: the sky at different parts of the day and year. those were some photos from the inky frozen granite chicago night. i hope you are all having a fantastic first few days of the holiday season, and last few days of late fall before winter.

In keeping with the tone of the nightsky, my friend Mike took this in Colorado. I love it so much and I guess he took it by accident. This really makes me want to explore the West. Also I like that people are beginning to know the kind of stuff I like and sending it to me. Let's keep that going.

sun child

you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ray bradbury“It had the gravid air of a place where things might happen”

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. Slaughterhouse-Five
blood transfusion snowy white television whirlwind lithium formaldehyde vice
i had to walk down this really thick red velvet staircase and suddenly i'm in the middle of this secret party in paris. people are speaking french really quickly to me and there's champagne everywhere, and the music is coming from a gramophone in the corner. they'll find out i'm living a double life.

“Touching him was always so important to me. It was something I lived for. Little, nothing touches. My fingers against his shoulder. The outsides of our thighs touching as we squeezed together on the bus. I couldn’t explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?” Safran


Tell them everything is worth it and that the richness of life is only ever enhanced by its inevitable, brief flashes of sadness and loss. I Wrote this for You

all photos are from ppapertissue

new moon

Someone mentioned to me that the title of the last post was really dark. 'The order of skull and bones' was the former name of a secret society at Yale. I like the title, and secret societies.

I just finished The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway. It's about young expatriate writers in France and Spain. They all hung out and drank all day at little cafes. It kind of reminded me of The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson.

I am writing a story about insomnia for my magazine writing class. I asked two of my friends with insomnia to keep a journal the nights that they can't sleep to explain what was keeping them up. I was just reading them; and I couldn't get over how beautiful a lot of what they wrote was. It's kind of liberating to put the thoughts in your head on paper. I loved reading them, and the chance to be in someone else's mind. They are so full of conflicted energy and striking poignancy.

I'm at home again now for Thanksgiving. It's getting really cold out; it gets dark early and the sky looks like zinc. The cold silvery light of the moon falls on the tree in the front yard and it looks like bone. It will soon be time to start building character shoveling snow and turning on the car 10 minutes early so the engine will have time to warm up.

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.

The unabridged journal of Sylvia Plath

the order of skull & bones

I realized that the stuff I've posted lately has been boring. I'm sorry. That's so lame. Here's a picture of a research symposium, a little anecdote about my job search, blah blah blah. Here's some things that are actually interesting.


i used to write the coolest stories when i was a little kid. and i would be so obsessed with them that i would tell to anyone who was interested in hearing. almost all of them involved characters from candyland or little books i was reading coming alive and taking me to a magical land. the one i remember most was about a brontosaurus that found a magical flower with a ruby inside. when the brontosaurus found the flower, it opened up and gave him the ruby. he took it away with him into the jungle.

also, i'm pretty sure that i have an existential mystery to be solved. if anyone is feeling up to this i would really appreciate it.


my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder.

how we are hungry

I have been so so exhausted lately. Not the bad, drained kind of exhausted where you don't want to do anything; the kind where the days are so full and ridiculous that when you get back the last thing you can do is reflect on everything that happened. Here are some of my pictures from the past few weeks. The squiggly light ones are from the candles that were set up all over the Quad for Diwali. There are some from Halloween and a research symposium I worked at. There are also some pictures of me with one of my idols, Dave Eggers. Here are some things I've heard lately that I like. I am feeling so tired and inarticulate I don't have any good kind of explanation or context, so I'm just going to list them.

"Kathy defied most stereotypes, as do most human beings."

Dave Eggers

"I guess the whole problem is that journalists are constantly accused of fiction and fiction writers are accused of truth. Can't you just write?"

My anthropology/journalism professor

"Don't rush into what you are going to do the second you get out of college because you think you have to. You need to stop and address the other parts of the world and the other parts of yourself."

Dave Eggers

you forgot it in people

It's the first day of November. I love November. It is the perfect place between fall and winter. I only have a month and a half left of my undergraduate studies, and then I am moving to DC for the semester to intern for Amnesty International. Interning there, and developing a sense of the international issue that I feel most strongly about while continuing to write, is the next step in what I have outlined as my current life's ambition.

I went to see one of my professors today to ask him his advice about things I should do to work toward my goals while I'm in DC. He asked me a lot of questions about what I want to do, and I explained everything to him as succinctly as possible. It's hard because so many things appeal to me that I change my mind all the time. I like so many things that it is hard to know what I would be happiest doing. That could actually be a really good thing, couldn't it?

My professor basically said that what I wanted to do was admirable but lofty, and that I should keep my focus and try to make it work. He called my plans 'grandiose,' (perhaps a euphemism for naive) but said that grandiose plans are the best thing I could have at this age. Life seems to often jade people, so if you don't start off a little bit idealistic, where will you be in 20 years? Things might not work out exactly as you want in life, but you have to try. I try to remember that the things I attract into my life will be in conjunction with my dominant thoughts, so that I have to think positively. That sounded like a bunch of little quotes I just strung together, but it wasn't.

I thought that what my professor was saying was really refreshing to hear. He said talking to a student who hadn't resigned to the fact that their goals were unattainable made his day. Talking to an adult who still hasn't resigned to that made my day. I hope you have a good day too.

so glad to meet you, angeles

I've been feeling pretty morose lately, partly warranted and partly unwarranted. Once someone told me it made her happier to mentally list all the good things that happened that day before she went to sleep. Here are some things I've liked lately. I hope you like them too. ok? ok. :)

1. dave eggers, "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius"
2. listening to elliott smith walking around campus and noticing all the pretty leaves. this tree by my apartment looks like it's covered in red stars.
3. looking at the the sun and understanding the seasons/position of the sun in the sky because of things i learned in astronomy
4. not feeling much pressure school-wise
5. consequently, reading books i want to read instead of the ones i'm supposed to for school
6. these words: snow, lust (in spanish- lujuria), overture, constellation
7. when my journalism teacher talks about ernest hemmingway and hunter s. thompson
8. this kid in one of my classes who goes out of his way to be helpful for no reason
9. the idea of tying sheets together to make a rope ladder to escape out a window
10. the lost feeling dave eggers articulates in a.h.w.o.s.g. to describe losing his parents: "having suddenly found oneself in a world with neither floor nor ceiling."
11. these quotes:

This writer guy, he says it's easy. You just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. But what if you're running out of veins?

I can't find who said this, but I love it.

It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

Vonnegut

I am frightened by truth sometimes, but I need it like my own blood.

Sabrina Ward Harrison

Be deliriously happy, or at least leave yourself open to be.

Meet Joe Black

These are the days that must happen to you.

Walt Whitman

It must be those brief moments, tiny moments, like islands in the ocean beyond the grey continent of our ordinary days… there, sometimes, you meet your own heart, like someone you’ve never known.

Hans Borli

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Roald Dahl

12. you. totally.

transatlanticism

I can't think about the fact that there's an ocean between us. So much water, and probably a lot of sharks. I don't know why people get to see you everyday and not appreciate it. They don't know how much I would want to switch places with them.

Sometimes the sun setting on the water makes it look golden.

I think you see the same stars over there that I do here. If you looked up and drew out a map of the constellations, it would look the same as mine. That makes me feel a little better. Knowing that you are seeing the same thing makes me feel better.