when you awaken in the morning hush

For some reason, I really appreciate when abstract ideas and feelings are attributed to corporeal entities. Particularly things in nature or parts of the human anatomy. It makes the feeling more immediate, and it seems to connect what's going on in my head with something tangible. I know that material existence is fleeting, and ideas can go on forever without having a physical manifestation, but that often seems to make them less accessible to me. Saying that I feel something so strongly that it has left a visible impression appeals to me; as if the gravitas of the feeling could not really be articulated verbally.

The Portuguese call it 'saudade': a longing for something so indefinite as to be indefinable. Love affairs, miseries of life, the way things were, people already dead, those who left and the ocean that tossed them on the shores of a different land - all things born of the soul that can only be felt.

Anthony De Sa

I think that the natural world is the only place these things can be conceptualized. In the oceans, in the trees, in the ground, in gardens all wet with rain. In really powerful storms and desert heat. I try to acknowledge that my existence has been given to me by the earth, and that I am of it, and at some point I will go back. One of my favorite sentiments of the Bible is 'Remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.' I remember reading something about every part of your body being a loan from the earth that you will pay back in death. It sounds kind of morose, but I remember reading it and liking it, and how it put everything in perspective. It also makes it sound like people never really leave, they just become less of themself and more of everything around you. I can't remember exactly what it said or where I read it, but I tried to rewrite it as best as I could.

i have taken from the ground
my skin and my bones
but i wanted to say
as i slowly pay it back,
i thank you for the loan

I know there are many other sentiments written about that idea. My favorite is by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

A few nights ago some of my friends and I were talking about books we were required to read in grade school. The first substantial paperback we could remember reading was The Giver. We started talking about how the Giver put memories and feelings into the boy, so he could pass them on. I would like to be able to receive the memories of other people and nature. Then I would be less of myself and more of everything around me.

The other day I was trying to think of the most beautiful way to see things I was walking by. My favorite was the snowbanks, because I could think of them as inverted tidepools of frozen stars.

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman

glittering san francisco night

Someone sent this to me once, I think because of the reference to Carolyn Cassady. I remember reading it and getting the nostalgic, sad feeling that I have when something ends and I think about my life changing and people leaving. The feeling I sometimes get when it's about sunset and I watch the slanted light falling on all the buildings in Chicago. I love it so much I starting choking up when I read it.

I'll get my ticket and say goodbye on a flower day and leave all San Francisco behind and go back home across autumn America and it'll all be like it was in the beginning—simple golden eternity blessing all—nothing ever happened—not even this—St. Carolyn by the Sea will go on being golden one way or the other—the little boy will grow up and be a great man—there'll be farewells and smiles—my mother'll be waiting for me glad—the corner of the yard where Tyke is buried will be a new and fragrant shrine making my home more homelike somehow—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.

—Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

going subterranean

The other day the former assistant of Jacques Cousteau, Susan Schiefelbein, came to one of my journalism classes to speak about her part in writing The Human, The Orchid, and The Octupus: Exploring and Conserving our Natural World. She was an amazing speaker, and hearing her talk about her travels all over the world with Cousteau was extremely interesting. I have had an affinity for Cousteau since I was in 2nd grade, when there was a set of children's books about explorers in my homeroom. The book about Cousteau was always the most popular in my class, probably due to the fact that the cover had a picture of him swimming next to an octupus in a coral reef. Cousteau fascinated me, and I wanted to be a marine-bioligist for years afterward so I could have the kind of adventures that he did. I envisioned my career as swimming through acquatic wonderlands with schools of brightly-colored fish following me. Being able to listen to stories about him for an hour and a half from one of his closest friends made my week.

once I spoke the language of the flowers,

once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
and shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
and joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
once I spoke the language of the flowers
how did it go?
how did it go?

Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts.

Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts.

Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me...

Anything can happen, child.

Anything can be.

Shel Silverstein

they have a secret world

There are certain songs that remind me of feelings I've had throughout my life. Today, while listening to the song 'Kim and Jessie' by M83, I was reminded me of a feeling I had one night in late June the summer after my junior year of high school.

My best friend Alex's house was getting torn down and then rebuilt, so they were living in a small apartment about 10 minutes away. One night we decided to see how the construction was progressing.

We visited the lot and found it to be at the stage where the infrastructure of the house is essentially completed, with no walls or intricacies inside. Against our better judgment we climbed into the skeleton of the house to explore. The air was at the temperature where it was neither balmy nor cool; the kind where it feels like there is simply nothing surrounding you outside your own skin, and the sky was spectacularly clear. The wooden beams were drenched in pools of silvery moonlight that reflected off of them like bones.

We skipped through the thoracic cage of the living room and kitchen, murmuring about whether or not there was something technically wrong with what we were doing. I remember Alex wondering aloud about the kind of events that would unfold in the house in the next few years.

The stairs were unsupported ledges winding through a marrow of beams. We bounded up them faster than could possibly have been safe, and the second floor was even more precarious with wood panels set apart by gaps forming an incomplete floor. A single clavicle beam stretched over our heads forming the border of our ascent. At that moment, the panels beneath us were bathed in a shimmering glow that seemed to make the whole structure alive with promise and magic. I remember looking at Alex as the headlights of the cars pulsed by and wondering if the entire house had just shuddered beneath us.

the human mind creates order when there is none

Joel: Sorry. My life isn't that interesting. I go to work. I go home. I don't know what to say. You should read my journal. It's just, like, blank.

Clementine (considers this): Does that make you sad? Or anxious? I'm always anxious thinking I'm not living my life to the fullest, y'know? Taking advantage of every possibility? Just making sure that I'm not wasting one second of the little time I have.

Joel: I think about that.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

echoes to the remotest star

Recently I have been complimented on my outward confidence and assurance of identity and purpose. I am satisfied that I have been able to portray this image, but that is exactly what it is- an image. The more I discover about the world the more I am overwhelmed by confusion. My inability to accept things at face value has led me to an internal struggle that seems to deepen rather than recede. I often find brief peace of mind in moments of clarity and wisdom I attain from other people. It's not mine, though- what I have is confusion.

"For the few little outward successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self doubts."

Sylvia Plath

I would like my reality to be the reality of the universe, and not mine alone. What I would like to do is internalize the world around me; take it in through every pore of my skin and let race it through my veins. Maybe then the confusion would subside into an inherent possession of understanding. I could present it to you, too, if you've ever felt the confusion that I have. Maybe I could give it to you in a way that makes it more comprehensible.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

John Muir

Maybe that's the problem, then. Maybe I don't understand because I am trying to take it piece by piece, which is impossible when everything in the universe, all past, present, and future is inextricably bound and you can't just tear the fabric apart.

I wish I had more confidence in the fact that everything will work out the way it is meant to. I really wish that I did. I wish I knew what I was supposed to contribute, or how I could make my existence worthwhile. I really wish that I was more complacent with my ignorance over this painful awareness.

I can make you satisfied in everything you do.

Elliott Smith

Richard Feynman said is perfectly, but we're different. It doesn't frighten him, but it frightens me. It scares me to death to be honest.

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten me.

nixon now

The other day I was taking a quiz, and there was a quote by Richard Nixon in the text.

"Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."

Richard Nixon, White House farewell address

I don't know very much about Richard Nixon aside from his involvement in the Watergate Scandal. I really liked this quote though, and I thought it was relevant. Relevant in how hatred can eat you from the inside out, and give power to the object of it.

When I was little, I was looking through a closet in my grandma's house and found an old box from when my Dad and Aunt were kids. It was covered inside and out with bumper stickers from a state fair so you could barely see the psychedelic green and purple flower pattern on it. It had the mildewed smell of something that was old and hadn't been in the sun for a few years, and the stickers covering it were from the 1960 election and said 'President Nixon, Now More than Ever.'

inside of me and such a part of you

I've heard people say that you can attract occurrences and events with your mentality. Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but not just in a 'positive outlook' way; in a reality way. That there will be empirical evidence resulting from your attitude toward life. The world will present itself as you have thought it to be; certain instances will gravitate toward or away from you. I wrote this as what I want; as the mindset that I have. Hopefully this will lend itself to a higher probability of it happening. If I am very fortunate, I will find the person that I wrote it about. Not someone to be an ornament to my vanity or to pass the time, but the other part of myself. I hope you will enjoy this foray into my psyche as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I hope you don't need to hear that I love you. I really hope that you don't; that you already know. I hope you're aware that no sequence of events or amount of time could fade or alter it in any way. I hope you know it with the certainty that I feel it. If you ever question it, though, I will remind you. I'll tell you a thousand times, until it becomes ingrained in you like your image is ingrained in every fiber of my composition. Maybe by doing this I will start to mean as much to you as you do to me. You are as much a part of me as any part of my own being. This part of you will never leave me, and I will never leave you.

this world is only gonna break your heart

I gave blood today for the 4th time. I decided to listen to 'Blood Bank' by Bon Iver on repeat the whole time blood was coming out of my arm. I got a lot of satisfaction from watching the pint bag fill up. I didn't mind the feeling of it being removed, and I got satisfaction from the fact that a pint of my own blood might help someone at some point. I watched them put it in the cooler. I wonder where it is now, and where it will end up. I don't mean to over evaluate the contribution. It isn't much. I try to do what I can though, even if it is insignificant.

When an assistant offered me a plastic bottle of water afterward, I almost refused it on account of my personal stance against water bottles because of their immediate effect on the environment, water privatization, and waste. In that second I realized how self-righteous that would probably come off. Maybe support one cause at a time, or you'll faint on your way down the stairs, the assistant could say to me. I would probably say that to me. I kind of enjoy when my own thinking patterns are turned against me. I hate when people are self-righteous or pretentious. Those are probably the two qualities that I hate the most. When people have that attitude I really want to prove them wrong and throw it in their face. If I get labeled either of them I will do some serious reflection.

The sky looked extraordinarily gray and frozen today. Kind of like the washed-out look of buildings in San Francisco. I like the way San Francisco looks though, and the shades of gray outside now don't have the same effect. There's no stunning bay area or remnants of Haight Ashbury in central Illinois (No Alcatraz either though, which I'm happy for because that place always frightened me). It reminds me of the song 'November was White, December was Gray,' by Say Hi. For some reason this has gotten me looking forward to the essentially glossed over holiday Casimir Pulaski Day. It's the first Monday of March. It's probably my favorite song by Sufjan Stevens, too.

in the morning through the window shade
when the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
i could see what you were reading

'This world is only gonna break your heart' is taken from the song 'Wicked Game' by Chris Isaak. When I heard the song 'Lenders in the Temple' by Conor Oberst I remember thinking that the lyrics 'that circus tiger's gonna break my heart,' and 'this crystal city's gonna fall apart,' would've gone nicely in that song.

February 4, 2010 hitchcock?

look closer

tavi/prada

We all have to claim something, even if it is only our own confusion.

Sabrina Ward Harrison

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

Mark Twain

andy and edie

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Albert Camus

counting stars by candlelight
all are dim but one is bright
the spiral light of venus, rising first and shining best
on, from the northwest corner
of a brand new crescent moon
crickets and cicadas sing
a rare and different tune, terrapin station

Robert Hunter

past the north star and straight on til morning

music festival in chillicothe

Sometimes I get so restless that I can't stop imagining getting in a car and driving across the country, leaving everything behind me. I would tour America with my best friend; stopping in small towns and reveling in the beauty and variety in the landscape. The highway would set out before us as an invitation to experience the freedom of the open road. The United States would be zig zagged through with our adventures and the friends that we make along the way; waitresses at diners and locals we met at divey bars.

my friend Annie in hungary

"All I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go out and find out what everybody was doing all over the country." -Kerouac

this is at my friend's house in st. augustine

Sometimes before I fall asleep I let my mind slip out of my window, into the night and through time and wherever I want to go. Through the London fog and Macchu Picchu, the outdoor markets of Kingston. Through the bayou of New Orleans and the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. With Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, shooting across America and unwittingly blazing the trail into a new era. In the forest outside Palo Alto with the Merry Pranksters and Ken Kesey, watching Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead perform at an Acid Test. To New York City in 1965; the Factory with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick.

washington, dc

he calls me to the ocean
takes me wandering through the street
a restless imagination
but for now, I move my feet on the ground

yo la tengo
little bar in paris

Sometimes I want to take in everything at once, and leave the confines of my singular existence. To not be so contained within myself. I'd like to leave my isolated mind and body and dissolve into the air. To stop interacting and fighting energy and integrate myself into energy itself. My mind would spill over and the contents would disperse themselves into the atmosphere. It wouldn't be able to reel anymore; it would simply become enfolded in the life vibrating all over the universe. I want to be so fluid that I can experience the vitality and emotions of whoever I encounter, anywhere in the world at any point in time. I want to be a speck on a timeline running infinitely in both directions, skipping back and forth across it.

You realize beyond all trace of a doubt that the world is in you, and not you in the world. -Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
london

We inhale many hundreds of particles in each breath we take. Salt crystals from ocean whitecaps, dust scraped off distant mountains, micro bits of cooled magma blown from volcanoes and charred microfragments from tropical forest fires.
David Bodanis
grant park

let's leave the sound of the heat for the sound of the rain
it's easy to sleep when it wets my brain
it covers my rest with a saccharine sheen
kissing the wind through my window screen
the restlessness calls us, that I cannot hide
so much on my mind that it spills outside
animal collective

stockholm

I don't want to go to sleep.

outside my house

how can i tell you?

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to be more than all the words I have read in my life. -Walt Whitman

Sometimes I wish my thoughts could go spilling out of my head into the air, surrounding me like confetti, where they could be seen fluttering around. So many of the things occupying my head I never find the opportunity to say, things that would often be more appreciated than the things I do feel comfortable saying. Like how impressed I am when I watch people do bio-chemistry homework, and how much admiration I have for people aspiring to be doctors. Or how intriguing I find people who listen to interesting music, or speak to their parents on the phone in a different language, or go out of their way to practice environmental sustainability even just by taking recyclables to a bin. Or how I look forward to seeing someone all day for the hour I will be sitting next to them in class, even if we don't talk. Or how someone has an eye color so captivating it is hard not to stare when they are talking to me, or a voice so melodic I wish they wouldn't stop talking. Or knowing someone very shy is immeasurably talented and wanting to tell them how spectacular I think they are, and that they should be less shy so everyone can see it. I am thinking of specific people and instances, but qualities like this jump out to me from people like neon colors on a page. I wish people knew when I thought these things about them, because I do, all the time. I think that other people see these things too, and they are simply never said. You've probably never heard some of the nicest sentiments that people are thinking, because they don't know how to say it. People probably notice it about you every day.

Your light is seen, your heart is known, your soul is cherished by more people than you might imagine…If you knew how many others have been touched in wonderful ways by you, you would be astonished. If you knew how many people feel so much for you, you would be shocked…You are far more wonderful than you think you are… Rest with that. Rest easy with that. Breathe again. You are doing fine. More than fine. Better than fine. You’re doing great. So relax. And love yourself today.
-Neale Donald Walsch
I remember every word that you said; I'm much more flattered by the thoughts in your head.

david vandervelde

i tend to lose my concentration

He told me his tan came from playing tennis, and when we were sitting there side by side flying down the streets in the open sun he took my hand & squeezed it, and I felt happier than I had been since I was about nine & was running along the hot white beaches with my father the summer before he died.
-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

The extent to which I identified with this book kind of frightened me.

Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.

I couldn't fall asleep for a few hours last night, and the moving shadows the trees were casting on my wall looked like skeletons dancing with each other. At some point in my life, I would really like to go to Mexico for el Día de los Muertos. Venice for Carnevale was pretty impressive.

something for rockets

The body is made up of a mass of resonating particles and is in itself a universe. All information exists here and now within our own consciousness. There are places we can go within our consciousness that unite our being with the cosmos.

Jennifer Neal

beyond mountains there are mountains

This Tuesday I began classes again. Typically when I am in school my thoughts become noticeably more academic and I don't feel as creative as I do when my time is my own. This semester I am taking 17 hours at U of I- JOUR 250, JOUR 411, JOUR 420, JOUR 425, and PS 499. I am also taking Macroeconomics online through Parkland College. I don't know how this will work out at all.

I have my own room now and I've been able to manifest my interests in the space around me. It's kind of fun. Beirut, Grateful Dead, Ra Ra Riot, the 2006 Lollapalooza lineup, Mark Rothko, the Stockholm landscape, Dylan, Do Make Say Think, Kerouac, and Steely Dan all have a place there now. So does the birthday card my best friend made me, with some of the most beautiful sentiments in it I've ever read. It's getting kind of beat up now because I've put it up and taken it down from several walls, starting in high school. I wrote down my favorite quotes here. I hope I never lose the paper, but I couldn't deal with losing what's on it. I think I'm a logomaniac.

this was for my 18th birthday

"Though they rushed back and forth across the country on the slightest pretext, gathering kicks along the way, their real journey was inward." -Holmes
biophilia- the innate tendency to focus upon life and lifelike forms and in some cases to affiliate with them emotionally
"If you drop a rose in the Hudson River at its mysterious source in the Adirondack, think of all the places it journeys by as it goes out to sea forever."
"Without mystery life shrinks. The completely known is a numbing void to all active minds." E.O. Wilson

"Like you I belong to yesterday- the the bays where day is anchored to wait for its hour. Like me, you belong to today, the progression of that hour when what is unborn begins to throb. We are cultivators of the unsayable, weavers of singulars, migrant workers in search of floating gardens as yet unknown, as yet unharvested." -Lucha Corpi
"All I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go out and find out what everybody was doing all over the country." -Kerouac
"How did such a strange quality of human nature come about? No one knows for sure, but evolutionary genetics tells us that if even just one person in a thousand survived because of a genetic predisposition to explore the unknown and perserve in daunting circumstances, then over many generations natural selection would have installed the predisposition in the whole human race to wonder and take the dare." -E. O. Wilson
I have made a few things for people that are written over like that with music quotes and things said by people like Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, and Jack Kerouac. It takes a long time to do, but once I start I become kind of obsessed with it and I work on it for about a week. If I still have those I might put them in here because I don't want to lose those, either. Definitely a logomaniac.

Anyway, the passage that I was reading that incited me to start writing down all these things is from Barnette v. West Virginia.

"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."

This reminded me of a speech I wrote about the importance of separation of church and state. I don't have time to write the whole argument out now, but I will later.
Also, I realized a mistake I wrote in the Bon Iver entry. 'Winter' in French is actually 'hiver,' not 'iver.' Like, bee-hiver. I don't know why he changed it. Maybe to avoid the bee-hiver comparison.

I am currently reading the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. I saw Tracy Kidder speak here last year because I was writing a paper on him, but I didn't get around to starting his novel until about a week ago. It's a stunning account of the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in improving healthcare and building a clinic in Haiti. I recommend looking it up online, because I can't write a summary that does it justice. It was really bizarre that I was actually reading the book when the earthquake in Haiti occurred. Haiti was already the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and now they have been confronted with devastation beyond comprehension.

Jim Kim, Ophelia Dahl, Dr. Paul Farmer

The organization that Dr. Paul Farmer started more than 20 years ago, Partners in Health, is now at the forefront of treating hundreds of thousands of patients. If you are looking for a charity to donate to Haiti through, it seems that they are more prepared and understanding of what needs to be done than anyone else. I am really glad I am reading this- I would recommend it to everyone. Something else that seemed kind of strange is the fact that one of the main people in the book, the co-founder and current finance manager of Partners in Health, is the daughter of one of my favorite authors. The thank you emails for donations are signed by Ophelia Dahl.

I wish I had time to keep writing, but I have a ton more to read for tomorrow. Rather, I wish that I could automatically transcribe my thoughts. This was on the birthday card too, it's my favorite.

"My mind is exploding to say something about every image and every memory...I have an irrational lust to set down everything I know." -Kerouac

dostoevsky

'I have a longing for life and go on living in spite of logic,’ he says to Alyosha. ‘I have asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that would overcome this frantic and perhaps unseemly thirst for life in me, and I have come to the conclusion that there is not.'

-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880

this light looks good on you

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
-Henry Miller

I job shadowed at a large corporation today. It was kind of funny seeing how big business works after I wrote a research article on independent businesses. The very things that the independent business owners were lamenting (the moving of music from vinyl and CD's to the internet, the advent of books being published digitally) were what the corporation was excited about. It was unseasonably warm today, and even though it was kind of rainy and gray I thought it was beautiful out. When you look at things a certain way they almost always seem pretty, even an overcast day of cold rain. I'm kind of moody sometimes though, and just as easily as everything can seem beautiful to me, things can deeply sadden me. That might sound vague, but it's true.

"I know people who i imagine to be able to look at the world without as much emotional upheaval as i tend to do."
-Jeff Tweedy

For a while I pretended I was in London. I wasn't upset that I was actually in Chicago though, I love it here.

I should probably invest in a nicer camera, because I'm always wanting to take pictures of things so I don't forget how stunning it seemed in the moment. Sometimes I want to take pictures of people when light hits them a certain way or they make an interesting expression. I don't usually do it though. I wish they knew when I was thinking those kind of things about them. People never know them about themselves.

On the inbound train I was listening to yankee.hotel.foxtrot. Once I burned that CD for a person from Europe and told them if Chicago had a soundtrack that might be it. When I was walking I listened to 'Gentle Hours' by Yo La Tengo. I love it; it was perfect.

I walked by Chicago Theater today. I think that might be my favorite building in the city. It was built in 1921, and whenever I look at it it seems to epitomize the hedonism and glamor of the the 20's. Once I worked outside of it, and on my break I went inside and laid down on one of the red velvet benches. I was alone, and I remember zoning out and pretending I was back in time. During the time of gangsters and speakeasies. Or in The Great Gatsby. I wondered how many hundreds of thousands of people had filtered in and out of the theater since it had been built. I wondered where they are now and how their lives are turning out.

Anyway, here our some pictures I've taken that I like. I hope you like them too.

This girl was running around in Piazza Bra in Verona playing with streamers.

This was a DJ at a club during Carnevale. I think I took a better picture of him, but I can't find it.

This is near the Adige River in Verona. It was on a bar of something that looked strangely like a prison cell, but I'm not really sure if that's what it was.

This was about a block away from my apartment in Italy. I used to go running in this park, and once I asked my roommate what this enclosure was. She said it was 'a zo.' I didn't understand what she meant at first, she said it with a short 'O,' 'zo.' I realized she meant 'zoo.' I thought that was a really cute way to pronounce it.

This is in Chillicothe during the music festival Summer Camp.

This is a picture of my best friend, Alex, when she visited U of I freshman year. I don't think she likes how she looks here, but I love it. She had just turned to look at me and I thought the sun looked beautiful on her hair. It was the first warm day of spring, a Sunday. There was evidence of the weekend's debauchery all over campus, but it was still so nice out. We walked around all day with a boombox playing Bob Dylan.

This was a street in Wrigleyville from an above ground Metro. I think it was New Year's Day.

This is in Washington, D.C. right outside of the Kennedy's old house. I love how yellow the light is in the darkening twilight. You can see the moon, too.

This is in Montreal.

This is at a party in Verona. The guy on the left is an American from my program, and the two girls on the right are Italian medical students. I love the expression of the girl in the middle.

This is the night after a big street market in Verona. I loved how the tents were still lit up even though they were closed.

My friend Chloe sent this to me the other day, and I think it's fitting.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. - Henry Miller

pour a little salt, we were never here

i took this in budapest, hungary

its just a snow fall of snow balls, evidence of the winter
and i can feel my hands again
we're almost home.

it's 2 pm and our snow is falling still as our good city lay still.
and our friends are packed around some no smoking bar
warming on alcohol
I didn't know 'Bon Iver' meant 'good winter' until my french-speaking friend told me on the way to french-speaking Montreal. I've been trying to think of that when I go outside and the cold is almost painful, my toes too numb to step. Bon iver. Bon iver. Good winter. White covering everything and freezing the life right out of it. In an email my friend described sitting at a table with Hawaiian coffee and a window full of cold sun. Winter reminds me of a desolate tundra that I'm walking over. Blank. I am building character. I am I am I am I am.

this is from Amber's birthday party. i love this photo and the colors. amber sometimes looks like a walking rainbow.

look me in the eyes under expanding winter skies, you'll find a feeling there that never knows the cold.

When I feel like this I listen to 'Mr. Tambourine Man' and start feeling better right away. If you're feeling down give it a listen.

then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind

hungary

down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

woods. songs of shame.

the haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

mia black

yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

mia black

with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
let me forget about today until tomorrow

via oleada

Can we go to these places? Will you come?
budapest, hungary
but i still dreamed of running careless through the snow.