back to the lake

i wonder how much of me is you. maybe i didn't tell you enough; since i was constantly thinking about it i figured it must have been written all over my face. most of me is not from myself but from you and i wondered if that was bad, and i thought it probably was but i didn't know for sure. now i can't make it different through any way but undoing everything that happened from the second i met you, and that's too much to make blank; to make a question mark where a book has already been written. i wonder if i would've done things differently if i would have known you weren't going to be around forever, and i don't know and i try not to wonder too much, but i think about that.

veritas

I could give several reasons for my lack of writing in the past few days (weeks). Most days you would hear these reasons (excuses) such as: I am now working full-time, I have been going out every weekend, I am now contributing to another blog, I am working on applications for the summer. I am feeling very truthful right now so it's a very good (or very bad) time to write. Those reasons are all technically true, but they're actually bullshit. I had less free time when I was in school and still found the time to write much more frequently.

The real reason is that I have been too consumed with self-doubt and anxiety (and the idea of just getting from one day to the next) to put out the things I have been thinking about. I feel like they're weird and pointless to read. I don't know when I started being affected by this...I have been told that my writing is weird more than once. Typically my internal response to this was that I would rather be weird than boring (which is what the person generally started to seem like after that comment was made). My environment has completely changed and for some reason I have gotten out of the mindset of just saying what I'm thinking regardless of how it will be received. I don't know when I decided I needed affirmation from anyone.

The other day this kid I know explained the difference between 'panicking' and 'choking.' He said that when you panic you can only think about one thing and that debilitates you. When you choke you're thinking about a million things at once and that debilitates you. Currently the uncertainty about my future and the completely different work environment I have been in is affecting me adversely, and I'm choking.

"I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

Jonathan Safran Foer

I am trying to remember the times that I have had to try (and fail) to actually get somewhere. I had to try to speak Spanish and fuck it up hundreds of times to feel like I could actually say anything. I hated my job in sales for almost a whole summer before I started to feel like I could be legitimately good at it. I got lost in Italy over and over until I started finally getting it. Is this trial-and-error (and repeat, and learn the hard way) method inefficient? Yes. It takes a long time and I question it constantly. I've made so many mistakes and had to do things over.

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.
Henry Rollins

Maybe having these experiences, feeling the repercussions and then getting over it has become a large part of who I am. I don't know. I'm not complaining. Except maybe, sometimes, I am.

Maybe admitting to these things is showing weakness. I'm actually sure that is how it would be perceived. That's ok though, it's all true.

written my life on your skin

I'm sorry I haven't written regularly the past few weeks. Even if people don't read this, I really like writing it. In between work and going out I have lost track of time and all the days are running together. It has definitely been an adventure so far, so much so that I won't write about the shennanigans anywhere ha. I am feeling really restless to travel again, and the book I am reading, You Shall Know Our Velocity! is making me want to even more.

I was so tired today I didn't get out of bed until 3.30. It was nice seeing the sun slightly warming the vacant winter sky and the light falling in through my window. I hope you are all having a great weekend. Here is a quote I like that I saw in a stationary store on a card:

"Your journey has molded you for your greater good, and it was exactly what it needed to be. Don't think that you've lost time. There is no short-cutting to life. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time."

Asha Tyson

nietzsche's cosmos

Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality.

Henry Rollins

you're irresistible when you get mad

your voice is lilted and metallic and even hearing it as an echo or through a bad connection makes me feel dazzled. all my nerve endings are exposed and it is engulfing. compared to you everyone else sounds hollow like tin and it's like they're stationary and you are hot bright kinetic energy.

corpus christi

I really like when people say 'God bless you!' not after you sneeze or in an overtly religious way but when you do something that makes them happy and that is their way to express the happiness.

do you want to know a secret?

we made eye contact briefly as he stepped on the train, and i was imagining the perfect life i would have with him- a house in cape cod with a wrap-around front porch where we have late-morning tea, books stacked up to the ceiling, slanted sunlight falling on the wood floors and an old record player playing simon & garfunkel- and it's all in there; everything i could possibly want out of life compacted into a fleeting glance on a metro and then when i step out at l'enfante plaza it's over.

boys and girls in america

"your faith has got to be greater than your fear."
julian casablancas

give me silence, water, hope
give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
neruda









those were photos from my new apartment, sunbathing and tea-drinking next to the window, the columbia heights adventure, and going out in maryland. work has been pretty cool: making talking points for our representative for the world economic forum in switzerland, getting photographed by the south korean press, going to a protest outside the indonesian embassy and getting to answer a call from a guy from sri lanka: "you have no idea how much that the work your organization is doing is helping my family. it has changed our lives."

that gladys knight and the pips song

You looked at me and I forgot everything I was ever going to say; if you didn't scatter my thoughts I wouldn't have to go looking for them down corridors. I can see my thoughts sometimes and when they are preoccupied with you they are gilded, with things as impossible to replicate as the intonations in your voice and the teapot you made in pottery class in high school. They're beautiful but it's also treacherous to go wandering down corridors looking for them and I don't want to keep feeling blurry without you like I've taken Vicodin.

as they rattle and they rattle on

These are all pictures from my past week in DC. To say it has been crazy would be an understatement. Everything has been moving so fast it is hard to keep up. If I could use one word to describe it here it would be 'jittery.' I am so drained right now I won't bore you with details of my job or life currently but I probably will later. I am listening to 'Despicable Dogs' by Small Black and 'Sunday' by Bloc Party. Check them out and also come visit me please.


You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back. Dave Eggers