life is a hiiiighwaiiiii

Being stuck in a car for 12+ hours with the highway, and someone you can't get through to sometimes leads to breakthroughs.

For so many years, I've been getting mixed signals - parents telling me that I need to have my life figured out in negative 4 years (aka since the beginning of college), and everyone in my American life (non-Korean professors, advisor, other adults, friends, mentors) telling me that it's okay to be confused and indecisive. It dramatically brings to mind that medieval torture method where they would use four horses, each tied to a major limb of the persecutee, and commanded to run in four different directions. Ouch & AHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh (oh, it's called dismemberment.)

Obviously this is a huge dramatization because my parents are actually really gracious people, and obviously I want the latter party to be correct and for the former party to hop on the "this is okay" bandwagon. 

But I think I'm at that crucial intersection, point of no return, etc etc more more more road/traveling metaphors, of facing the fact: That these two parties will never be in agreement. My mom and dad will simply never be okay with the fact that I might not know what I want to do with my life even after graduation. They will not think it is okay with the slight(ly but surely increasing) chance that I might just end up working at a coffee shop for a little bit after May 17th, workin' that hourly wage and figuring out my career path or doing my grad school applications. They will be ashamed and worried, but more prevailingly, ashamed, because they know that I am not going to spend the rest of my life doing this coffee shop thing. They know that I know that I wouldn't let myself spend the rest of my life doing this because, of the many things I have yet to rule out as my life aspirations, being a full time, career-barista does not make the list. Not because it's not good enough or prestigious enough for me, no, but because it's just not what I was made to do on this earth, and even amidst all the uncertainty I know this. And they know me.

It's stressful enough feeling the pressure you put on yourself for these kinds of decisions, but I just realized that honestly, I am way less worried than my parents are about all this. And what I've been doing this semester is channeling their stress level and not realizing the dys-sync of this with my own level of worry and getting fat from it. Probably. Cortisone and all you know. 

Here's what I've been hearing from my parents and channeling, internalizing: "It is already WAY too late for you to be deciding what you want to do with your life. You should be on a track, no, should've been on a track we can ... track, and monitor, and watch and expect incremental and certain growth from. Points A to B to C. It was a mistake to let you grow up with so much freedom, we should have just insisted on a career path from the very beginning. You are so late, so slow. You are thoughtless. You are wasting your talents. You might turn out to be a source of shame and a waste of resources. Prove you won't be; please just pick something - now."

Here's what I truly believe about myself: "Things are going to be okay." 

So on that highway down homeward I resolved to stand up for mytrueself, cause who else will? It's useless to lament the state of things I cannot control right now and honestly, in my heart of hearts, am not truly worried about. I want to make my parents happy - but squelching out my own voice just because it says things not in agreement with theirs isn't the way to do this.

Things are going to be okay. Even if my parents don't think so. 

Wow I am such a people-pleaser.

whereami; whoami wah wah wahhh (a la kierkegaard)

Things I like about myself:

1. I have this little knack for languages. I love tasting their various flavors and feeling their different textures on my tongue and repeat things over and over and overandoveroenen in the shower, in the car, in my head because I get addicted to them and in this way, I learn.
2. I apologize for things like a spineless little puppy if I know that I am in the wrong. Okay sometimes it's more like an old, stubborn dog sighing an apology sorrrta reluctantly but in the end I do it. UGH.
3. I strike up conversations with strangers because I think it's beautiful and fun and fleeting in a nice way. I think this is courageous. I'll never run away from a stranger with a witty conversation opener, but will usually neevvverrr know if it's a pick-up line until WAY after the fact. Oops.
4. I like writing papers. mmmmm. Sometimes I get unexpectedly good grades on them, almost like magic. I'll typetypetypetytpe out a paper in the fi!nal! coundownnnn hours not really sure what I am typing, or, or, I'll write out allllllll these things not really sure where it's all going, but once the paper is finished and I turn it in, unable to read it over for wanting to hurl (from the speed, from the overdose of words), but then I'll get it back later and then even later I'll re-read it and think, "hey self...woah you ;) "
5. I have nice eyebrows, and am very good at curling my eyelashes. 
6. I can conceptualize most things easily, so I can have conversations about lots of different things I don't truly understand the details of and honestly follow along, convincingly nodding and mmhmm-ing. Re-explaining these things in my own words is another thing altogether, but still.
7. Sometimes I am expressive in a cute way that lots of people don't know. Weirdly, this girl named Sareum, who really doesn't know me that well, gets it. If she ever reads this, though, she might be confused.
8. I quit facebook like an alcoholic who just went cold-turkey and haven't ever really wanted to go back. Not that this is something to be paaaaaaarticularly proud of, but it makes me pursue deeper relationships through email and skype, and I like this.
9. I am a weak, weak, weaklingy small girl in a big big world, and for this I am grateful, for

"he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." 2 Cor 12:9

an incomplete and unedited list in no particular order except the one it came in, pop pop pop to my mind. 

time fo bed

how are you supposed to help someone who feels victimized by everyone and everything?

how do you keep telling someone that they are okay, okay, okay, doing just fine

how???? when everything you say means nothing; is never enough? cause they are up against the whooooooole world and he is just one person and you are just one person.



Just keep loving them,

is the only answer I've got.

and maybe tell'em to wash their face and tuck'em into bed
cause a good night of sleep does wonders for a melancholy body

love love love

morning

I wonder what it is about mornings that is so appealing. I know that poem down there lists a lot of good reasons, but there's something that feels so clean about the very beginning of the day. Maybe it's all the hope that the rest of the day holds - just the fact that you have no idea what's really gonna go down even if you know exactly everything there is on your to do list. What kind of people will you meet? What kinds of things will do [not] accomplish? What kinds of donuts will you eat at what kinds of coffee shops you'll discover? Does the last sentence actually make grammatical sense? Not sure, but chin chin clink clink, here's to the beauty of a personal blog.

t-giving chin chins

I just watched this tedtalk by Tony Robbins who is this self-help inspirational speaker extraordinaire ba-flaire bo-hair, and he said something about how there are only like six emotions - six categories that alll emotions can be boiled down to, essentially, among allll the subtle varieties that we feel - and lots of us tend to feel only one, given any circumstance. There are people who, no matter the circumstance, find a way to get angry. There are others, who, find joy or gratitude in all situations, bleak or beautiful.

I want to be someone who feels gratitude at the core of every circumstance. Someone who takes the inexplicable beauty of every single morning as a true, exaggeratedly sparklesome, and rare GIFT that it is, bed hair and morning breath all accounted for.

My beautiful, "breath of fresh air" friend told me about this zen thing she does whenever she finds herself getting annoyed at frustratingly small and petty things - she closes her eyes and goes from toes up to the her head, cataloging all the things she's thankful for.

"I am thankful for my toes, that help me balance."
"I am thankful for my feet, that allow me to walk."
"I am thankful for my calves, which have recently lost some size in girth. Hallelujah"

Those may or may not have been edited according to my personal takes on how I am thankful for my body parts, not quotes from the friend.

But edited or not, this is a beautiful thing to do! And to add a layer of giving credit where it's due (always a good thing), let me add these words of thanks to the creator of the toes, of the feet, of the calves, and of that loss in girth. Hallelujah indeed.

Dear God, thank you for this body you have made so wonderfully and fearfully. Thank you for my mind that accepts and formulates these thoughts, thank you for fingers to type it out here so I can keep these good records of grace.

Thank you for the teeny sense of accomplishment I will feel after pressing the Publish button, and thank you for the fact that my little sister is in love right now, and it is cute, and thank you that I can appreciate it as a cute and nice phenomenon. And not be jealous. Though honestly, this is certainly not always the case. (Aside: please let me always be able to step out of myself enough to ask "What?" when she flutters over and sighs in that contented in-love way, in that I wanna talk about my boyfriend to you right now way.) Thank you for your provisions for my family. Thank you for the fact that I grew up in the states. Thank you for this heart for your people. Thank you for tears.

Thank you for my toes, that help me to balance.
Thank you for my feet, each one with just the right number of phalanges and balls and heels.
Thank you for my calves that support everything else, and thank you for the everything else.

Ah. Thank you.

Morning

by Billy Collins

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,

the swale of the afternoon,

the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,

his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—

throwing off the light covers,

feet on the cold floor,

and buzzing around the house on espresso—

maybe a splash of water on the face,

a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,

the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,

a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows—

trees fifty, a hundred years old

out there,

heavy clouds on the way

and the lawn steaming like a horse

in the early morning.

the strength of weak ties

[the title is] quoting again, from here this time: http://www.amazon.com/The-Defining-Decade-Twenties-Matter-And/dp/0446561754

source: here

This is kinda related to the love section of the previous post - expanding on the need to put yourself physically and metaphorically outside the 3-foot radius of your [geographic/cultural/racial/social] comfort zone for there to be progress in life.

We make friend groups and form communities because they are comfortable and comforting to us. That is their purpose and point, and the fact that all of these words sound soothingly similar - a lullaby of repetitive c's and m's - is no fluke: comfort, community, commitment, communication, commonality. Despite all the fuss over whether life is more like "birds of a feather flock together" or "opposites attract," apparently and ultimately, it comes down to things we have in common with each other when we pick the people in our lives to spend the majority of our time with. It's easier. You don't have to argue or explain as much. They just get you and it feels good. 

But then there is "the strength of weak ties" - the fact that some high percentage figure of people (I am so bad at remembering numerical details) get their jobs through the uncle of a friend of a teacher. And other statistics that no longer remember except as an irresponsible mass of fuzzy, hazy feelings that tell me that all this was very convincing indeed while I was reading the book, I promise you. 

Sorry about all that blahhhhrg -- but the point is that progress and comfort do NOT often go hand in hand. They're just inherently opposite and non-compatible things. Think of growing pains, stretch marks, the first time you learned with your skin cells that fire is hot yes. 

Sometimes it's the odd, not-really-actually-close-to-you-but-weirdly-feel-this-connection kind of frienquaintance that helps you realize the profoundest truths about yourself, about them, about humanity. Mmmm globalizing, generalizing woooOooooOooOhoo!hoo!hoo!

And is it weird that I feel more myself with this person than I have in a looooong, parched time, even more than I have in SO MUCH company of people with whom I have shared much more time and intense heart-stories and even hardships and faith things? 

Yes. 

But maybe no. Because the "weak tie" I share with this person is also a sort of safe space - thanks precisely to all the things we don't share. No friends in common to gossip about, no hobbies to get lost in, becoming Doing Friends (as opposed to Talking Friends), no history to reminisce endlessly, unproductively about, and thus, no expectations to fulfill or not fulfill. No disappointments, no judgments, just surprises and "oh! YOu think this way, cool!"s. It's a relationship brimming with the frontier feeling - all there is to do is the exploration of new lands. The contact and conversation that feels good cause it's a breath of fresh air by the very virtue of being unexplored and unfamiliar and un-common and un-comfortable. This person makes me feel so unencumberedly me. It's a good reminder of how life should feel more often: this feeling of being comfortable in your own skin with a person who you're totally, comfortably uncomfortable with. I wonder where this frienquaintence will go.

But not knowing the answer to this is the purpose and point of this post.

This is How: augustenburroughs

from here: http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-How-Surviving-Think/dp/1250032105

from: How to Feel Like Shit

"Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping. 

This means asking yourself questions like, are these negative feelings you're experiencing the result of something in your life right now? Or have they been simmering away in your cauldron of mental sickness for years and year? 

...

Sometimes, people avoid recognizing how they feel because they believe the feelings are a part of them, and admitting to harboring anger or jealousy feels like admitting to a physical flaw. So certain feelings are denied. Which is something like believing your house is clean as long as you don't peek under the beds.

But feelings, no matter how strong or "ugly," are not a part of who you are. They are the radio stations your mind listens to if you don't give it something better to do. Feelings are fluid and dynamic; they change frequently.

Feelings are something you have, not something you are. Like physical beauty, a cold sore, or an opinion."

from: How to Find Love

"Whether through movies or just a general, all-media fusion, many people believe in the concept of a soul mate. 

This isn't necessarily a dangerous thing but it can easily veer into that direction. If you're one of those people who is single and doesn't understand why, you might want to ruminate over this for a bit.

A belief in a soul mate is often accompanied by a belief that you will meet this soul mate "when I'm supposed to."

Here now, we're kind of heading into the trouble. "When I'm supposed to," "if it's meant to happen," and similar beliefs suggest there is a paid employee overseeing these details of your life.

...

Early in 2010, Science magazine published the results of  study that analyzed cell phone data and declared that "it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time" because most of the people studied "seemed to stick to the same small area, a radius of six miles or less."

...

Maybe you aren't even aware of how small a geographic circle you live in. But until you stretch your borders just a little, you can't say you've so much as lifted a finger when it comes to finding love. What you've done is wait for love to quit its job, apply for work as a FedEx driver, and put in a request to work on your particular route. 

...

If you're single and you don't want to be, meet more people. It is, in fact, that easy."

more to come as I read on.

Winter break je t'aime!

twothousandthirteen december twenty seventeen forty-nine shenanjoe cville va amurica world

This is the melancholy post. This is the taking-advantage-of-the-feelings-of-this-moment post, before the feelings diffuse away, end with the final chords of the emo song in the background, get forgotten. 

This is the melancholy post. The post fueled by a bitter mug of medium roast, drenched in this perfect pandora station mix that loops JohnMayerEricHutchinsonEdSheeran and has me swaying and singing along like I know what's up with pop culture, but pausing. all. the. time. Sit back.

Cause this is the melancholy post. Melancholy now, because I've been angry and I've been stressed and I've been so transparently childish - screaming in the car and throwing things around and wanting to starve myself in anger but never being able to because that's not actually how I deal with being mad or sad - and I'm tired now.

This is the melancholy post. This is the post yearning to make something productive of the melancholy -- not because I need to justify it or because I am a relentless busybee or because I want to get out of it, even (because admit it, doesn't it feel good to be endlessly steeped in your own melancholy? That's why they call it a pity party, right?), but because I just want to record these moments

in this melancholy post.

This is the melancholy post.

-------------------------------------------edit, 11:11pm--------------------------------------------

^ermmmmm. ugh,

s t r e s s

The verdict on stress-inducement of grey hair is inconclusive - apparently it does bring about premature greying, but only if you're genetically predisposed to that anyways, so it's technically not, but it technically is, kind of deal.

Stress-induced greyness or not, the truth in my life this semester is that I have been stressed and I have seen an alarming increase in the grey hair count on top of my head. As far as I'm concerned, I'm in need of a culprit to blame for the hairs, and stress will be it. And a culprit to blame that stress on... hmmm...

I've been so stupidly stressed this semester, it's hard to believe. Hard to remember the carefree, chill-is-my-default-mode girl [guurrll] I used to be; used to always sort of pride myself on being. All my brain remembers is the stress I've been steeped in - I feel like stewed apples, slobbery and mushy and distinctly, definitely no longer truly Apple in their essence. Their core. Har! There's something very sad and very wrong (but also very hopeful and cinnamony) about this metaphor, but I'm not gonna worry about it.

But yes. Stress is just another kind of pride and stubbornness. Not wanting to, or not being able to, let go of one's own plans and imaginings of how things should be and getting all messed up when the reality that plays out doesn't match up to the preconceived versions of things. Oh God, help me to let go. I am a sleep-deprived, eye-twitching mess, but I am letting go of the things, am holding onto you. Let me hold onto the right things and fling flang flung all the others. Like grey hairs. Or at least wondering about alllll the reasons how they might have gotten to the top of my head.

Woosh and woosh.

10000miles to california

Give people a chance before you decide in your head what you think they're gonna say - they just might surprise you.

I wonder how many people I have left to meet in my lifetime - surely hundreds, maybe tens of hundreds, although these are just words I'm throwing out there because I am really bad with conceptualizing big numbers. 10,000 miles? That's...like...to California, right? But yeah, I wonder how the spread of your meet-people statistics works out, over the course of a lifetime.

There must be a big crunch, an especially thick period of people connections and friendships and acquaintances, at the beginning of your life - starting with toddler/childhood when relationships are as easy as sharing a sandbox and a lollipop, and then through college, during which you're brought together by the forces of late night swirly-eyed library dates and other mysterious forces like music or course registration or alcohol. And then maybe it tapers off - you find your mate and you settle down into Mid-Life, and togetherly, have your Mid-Life couple friends and make relationships with kids you've made together. Oh, and then maybe you have another little peak, through all the connections through the connections of your offspring. Then, real middle age, then old age - during which you cultivate relationships that are already there. Not really looking for more, and other people around you around your age probably not really looking for more either, which is convenient. Except when it's not, which always seems to be the case.

So yeah. I wonder how many people I have left to meet in my lifetime. Have I already met the best friend of the next decade? Has my heart blindly friend-zoned the person I'm actually gonna marry? Has he noticed me?

I forget the train of thought that led me here.
It is 2 a.m. and I shall now start to read a book for fun, because it's winter break.

Winter break, je t'aime.

familiarity engineerity

There are things that make me drool in awe in familiar ways, such as this:

unfortunate frame, but this is Sarah Kay on TED!

By familiar, I mean reaching into well-worn corners of my heart down oft-trodden roads. Feelings I'm used to feeling, inspired by thing I'm used to being inspired by. Things in this category include: KMaus's Shakespeare lectures, learning human lessons through unexpected/old literature, my mom's compassion for the randomest (sometimes, in my selfish opinion, undeserving) things, Binky staring lovingly and meaningfully at the twinkling lights on our Christmas tree, and spoken poetry. See above. These are things that often and expectedly and familiarly tug at my heartstrings, by virtue of the fact that I am emotionally-inclined (rather than logical), that I am a big-picture person (rather than details), that I am an English major, etc. etc.

But then there are times when the odd engineer will truly, seriously inspire me. Not just through vicarious excitement through their excitement for a science-y, tech-y project of theirs, but through genuine (if shallow) sharing. Really taking the time to explain to me what, when, how, and why they do the work they do, what they are learning in which obscure- and scary-sounding course this semester, and how these things will change the world.

Then I realize (again and again and again) why we are meant to live in society; how we are such inevitably social creatures. Because one person can't handle all these fantastic and confusing things alone; one isn't enough to figure out the mysteries of the planets and intricacies of the human psyche and be a mad poet (usually) - we need each other, to access these unfamiliar corners of the wonder that is This World, given to us wrapped in a great big red bow of Christmasesque cheer, not corny, just true. 

cause sometimes, engineers will surprise you with the kind of poetry they Favorite on youtube.

a project:

To write here once everyday, starting with the short-term commitment of winter break (12/16/13-1/12/14),

cause I think it would be a healthy sort of rediscovering my writer's voice, and a good airing of some thoughts that fester, or dissipate, whoosh, smoke. Hopefully a lot of thought organization and flowering and entertaining blah-blah that makes thinking out loud easier.

Feels like it should be a New Year's Resolution, but Love of Arbitrarily Significant Dates isn't a good enough reason to put off healthy impulses for even half a month.

Winter Break, je t'aime.

"it is the rain that will strengthen"

I dunno what it was about the moment, but these different things came together just now and imploded (boOom...) into unselfish tears free-fallin' down my face.



1. http://lapeaudourse.blogspot.com/2013/11/mille-tristesses-decoulent-de-linstant.html

2. Cela fait "déjà" 7 ans que j'ai perdu mon grand-père, mon "second papa". Il me manque beaucoup, malgré le temps qui passe. Voir souffrir et s'affaiblir une personne que l'on aime, cela est une épreuve que le temps ne peut malheureusement pas effacer. Mais ce sont aussi ces épreuves qui font "grandir", qui nous permettent de nous ouvrir aux autres, de leur dire à quel point on tient à eux. Elles redonnent un sens au mot "vivre", nous ouvrent les yeux sur la vraie valeur des choses. La vie continue, mais différemment. Je suis de tout cœur avec toi.

---------^it's one of the comments to the post in 1. I'm gonna try to translate it. Not cause I think lots of people will be outraged by the lack. Not even to share the exact sentiment I felt cause of it, because translations are slippery with feelings, anyways. Not because I think it's astoundingly artistically wrenching in a literary, aesthetic way, but just cause it's what I was reading when the first tear plopped out. I'm gonna try to translate it so the few of you who read this don't think I'm a showoff uppity aloof French-speaking person. -----------

"It's "already" been 7 years since I lost my grandfather - my "second dad." I miss him a lot, despite the time that's passed. To watch someone you love suffer and wane, that's an ordeal that time, unfortunately, can't erase. But it is also through these hardships that we grow; that we learn how to open ourselves to others; tell them how precious they are to us. It is these hardships that remind us what it really means to live, that open our eyes to the true worth in things. Life goes on, though differently. My heart goes out to you."

3. http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=czFgKa7YcIQ

4. Writing a paper that feels like the culmination of a semester. Academically and emotionally. And feeling so out-of-the-blue humbled.

5. And in the sneaky way that end-of-term papers and final exams (and ends of terms in general...and emoish folksy songs on repeat...) tend to have, just reflecting from this tail end of the semester back on what's passed thus far and how I've grown and how there's such a long way to go, still. But for a moment, closing my eyes to future things and past things, too, and letting eyelids sqeegee out tears that are just there and enjoying all the intricate little fragments of this implosion.



Hm I think I've just figured out that this list is in reverse order of significance.

Sometimes,

all you need to do is reach out and tap on shoulders and put those listening skills to rest.

It's crazy how admitting that things are very not okay starts to make them feel much more...okay.

Dear self,

Ask for help. 

Be honest. 

Use shorter sentences.

And stop this "dear self" stuff, too. It's more than okay to be not okay.

11/12/13

It's November 12th, 2013 today. That's 11/12/13, which is a date that I really like because I like dates like 11/11/11 and 01/23/45 and like 3/8/38 etc. etc. because I am a selective sucker for certain superstitious things like making wishes at aesthetically pleasing time stamps (11111111111111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and the wearing of pajamas inside-out in hopes that it will somehow make the cold sky precipitate snow.

But today's specialness feels different and unfortunately uncelebrated, cause the only reason that made me really pause and take in its 111213-ness is the Christmas wreath I saw hanging, all smug and sparkly, on the sign at the entrance to the mall that I pass by on the drive home.

Christmas?! On... 11/12/13? That's way more than a month of Christmas season, Fashion Square. I'm no opponent of making the world go around via healthy economic transactions but at moments like these it's hard not to cringe judgily at the monetary greed that drives decisions like these - decisions that are distorting our conception of how long a holiday season should be, how much of what things we need to have, the immediacy of what Truly Important Things are.

This is depressing in more ways than just the one described in the paragraph above (get ready for the m e t a paragraphial of this post) - the even more pathetic thing, the compounded sadness of this whole realization is the fact that all this was my train of thought at the reflection upon a Christmas wreath + the reminder of a special date, this almost mid-November day of 2013. Yeah, I feel effectively...old.

This feeling certainly isn't an unfounded one, for I am older on this day, at this moment, than I ever have been before. heheh

But beyond the obviousness of the oldness, it's something I've been feeling a lot in daily life lately. That I feel old and worn-out sometimes these days, and just not as sparklyshiny as before. There could be many reasons for this. The fact that it's fourth year, and it's a regular fourth year thing to do to be generally confused/lost/worried cause I'm living the last year of my institutionally pre-planned life. The fact that there are some huge homelife adjustments this year that are revealing huge sinfulnesses in me that are all ugly and hard to look at and deal with and live in. The fact that school feels manageable and good and enriching right now but grades are pathetically not reflecting this inner truth. Maybe even the fact that I'm back in Charlottesville from a whirlwind year of being all over the place and I'm secretly going through reverse culture shock (though...I doubt this last one. Who knows, though. I did get lost on the buses again today. Hm).

The fact that I just went through this "There could be many reasons for this" thing as opposed to waxing poetic in a wordy, nerdy, adjectiveful paragraph about the state of the sparklyshiny, which, honestly, is what I feel like firstyear me would have done.

The fact that I feel like I can't write those kinds of first year blogposts anymore, full of feely swirls and late-night droopy eyeballs soaked in high-pitched Ingrid music because frankly, it's not even midnight yet and it's been a few hours already since sleepiness started setting in. And because frankly, even as I read my own old posts, I have little moments of shameshivering (just in tiny bits like after you pee and you suddenly feel cold cause of all that body-temperature liquid having left your body), at my own foolishness and self-consciousness that I can see firstyear me shivering with, as if she (I?) could feel me (she?!), fourthyear me, looking back and judging.

hehehe @_@ indeed.

I recently had an insightful conversation with a fellow same brainwave rider that was challenging and helpful. Challenging cause it messed up one of my stock Life-Defining Phrases; helpful because it messed up one of my stock Life-Defining Phrases. Which is was "full-circle experiences/stories/______", usually in the context of how wonderful they are and how much I love them and how grand and useful they are in narration.

But this friend kinda furrowed his brow at this and wondered at the validity of this whole thought. He asked if a truly full-circle story/experience/whatever is really worth anything, if you're coming back exactly to the same place as before, and I couldn't do more than defend the aesthetically pleasing shape of a perfect circle. Blah blah. So I offered up the solution of a spiral - a swirl? :) - eloquently put by another friend, Christy.

So okay. So we grow up and grow around and grow spiraly-swirly and feel like we keep coming back to the same rut of things (sometimes even yearn for the sparklyshiny familiarity of those things, and of ourselves) but it is not such a tragic thing to grow up and around. Around and up.

Like going back to Skyline for the fourth time, to stargaze with a consistently chaotic and random group of people for the fourth time, watching the unfolding of midnight skies and forever friendships, as it unfailingly happens, every year. For the fourth time.

But realizing that this time it's our class kids driving up that mountain, younger ones in tow, that now we make gentlemanly gestures in search of keys on top of those mountains cause we are able and we are willing, that we don't pretend to be sparklyshiny when we don't feel it and we share woes about feeling blog-blocked because we're just too old and tired to keep pretending to be things we do not feel. Just honestly and unabashedly enjoying the fact that we loiter in lots after late-night movies "just like in high school!" and delight in God's creation of plant leaves that feel soft like lambs' ears, standing around and sharing these happinesses and woes all together.

And of course, acknowledging the continuation of things in ways that aren't necessarily bad - like the cliched sign-off to the old blogpost by meta-talking about its beginning at the end.

Thank you, God, for Gothic Literature

How do you navigate through life's struggles?
How do you pick your mate?
What is good? What is evil? What are we?
How do you deal with displacement and abandonment and that foreverlonely you feel in the pit of your stomach, no matter how much you try to squash it down with loud noises and bright lights and even seemingly-worthy Pursuits of Happiness?

"Literature answers philosophical questions with particulars. Novels throw a bunch of people together on a level playing field and have them work out these human problems."

And we watch and learn, laughing and crying and frowning in vicarious pain and joy and ah-hah moments.

That's why people believe in life-saving poetry and stuff. It's how terrible circumstances are redeemed as tools for recovery and encouragement; like how phoenixes rise from their own ashes and how beautiful flowers grow from poop.

Good words to think about on a melancholy Monday afternoon of a fourth-year fall semester.

Thank you, God, for literature.
Thank you, God, for this undergraduate path as an English major.
Thank you, God, for Mysteries of Udolpho and the weepy sensibilities of Emily St. Aubert and for saving us poor unfortunate souls from ourselves.

for a lucky few, life is not so struggley.
though maybe that's an unfair judgment from a haughty perspective.

in love: the story of a burrp

MY HEART
is full, overflowing, with 
this particular combination of gratefulness 
+ humility (how undeserving I am; my bones, they feel this)

and astonishment at all this affection, all-provision, all right.

I'm in love --
my heart breaks
my head aches
and vice versa all of it jumbles it

cause I can't ever re: love in any satisfactory format, or quantity,
and cause that's exactly okay; 
cause that's exactly why 
I'm in love 

(cause I can't help it),

For all the poems in the world about soap
and New York hot dogs and 
kittens and meta-poetry 
(aaaaand parentheses)
could ever express this 
this thousand, thousand times!-cliche of a thing, 
this love

love, 
love, 
LOVE.





Today is the day of Undeserved Love Realization. And Today is the day that the Lord has made - I shall rejoice and be glad in it. Let us be glad and rejoice in it!!

So poetry really is the spilling over of soul juices, huh. Cool. It's like this thing just burped itself up, gathered up from all the soul-corners, up from my soul-esophagus, onto the keyboard, onto this blogthing, onto your eyeballs. Boo! Burrp.

seemingly depressing things, franklys, and tattery endings

Is the best good you can do, ultimately, resignation to mediocrity?

^That seemingly depressing opening sentence was supposed to be the depressing opening to a thoroughly depressing post, and as it was being mentally laid out in the cloudy loops of my brain during the conversation that inspired it, had all the intention of being so. Exactly so.

I'm quietly proud of my parents - humbled, thankful, and awed, often, by my good relationship with them together and him and her as individuals. Though certainly not with everything, my dad is remarkably patient with us. It's admirable and impressive, how determinedly he holds onto his mind and cool as we play the appropriately immature parts of the stubborn little babies we are. Stubborn little babies who got progressively worse and worse at math as the classes changed from Algebra to Trig to Calculus, too, and math was really the least of his troubles with us. It's a terrible thing to abuse, this patience, but no matter how many times we turn our gaping mouths in that unsightly "...huh?" toward him, my dad can erase all the previously explained and start over. And over. And over.

My mom is a little less adept with the stuff regarding repetition - strict no-more-than-three-reps policy here, or you'll pay the price by listening to a(n ironically) repetitive lecture about how You Never Listen for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 weeks - but her virtues shine through her actions. She's the most compassionate, and untiringly-, uncomplainingly-hardworking person I know. Sometimes when she shares tidbits of her life philosophy with me, it's in the form of offhand slips of verbal gems she just casually and spontaneously tosses about, like dustbunnies that get unearthed in search of something else in the attic-resident trunk. Makes them seem a lot less monumental than they are truly worth, so I sort of have to rub my eyes and stay alert when she does this, and pick up those pieces and tuck them away for further study later, quietly in my room or something.

The two plump paragraphs above deserve [much more than] a whole post of their own, really, but for today, they're just gonna serve as disproportionately-lengthy prefaces to the sentence that shall follow:

I can't really and completely share with them about my vision for the future. 

"Vision" being that mystical, vague haze also known as Postgrad Life Plans, and future being that equally unclear patch of mystery time that begins After May. My soon-to-come first-ever institutional void, all of which, thanks to the combination of ~40% my own lack of direction and ~60% lack of desire to communicate with my parents about it, isn't really a subject we have much to discuss about anyways. And which, I know, is a validly-timed and validly-directed sort of discussion for us to be having right about now... But the trouble is that I feel so fundamentally different about what I think I want for my future than they think they do that it's just defeating and deflating to even begin the conversation. A former nurse and current engineer - practical and sensible and realistic as their jobs - talking to an English major - and general Poster Child-result of the blessings and woes of a liberal arts education - who says she doesn't want to teach or go into academia. Yeah cue those womps. Three of them.

Today's, in particular, was disheartening to the point of embarrassed tears. To the point of one whole sigh-filled afternoon, leaving behind its funk long after the actual conversation was over. To the point of that seemingly depressing opening sentence up^ there.

And today's, anyways, was different, too - advice against "all these documentaries I've been watching recently" and inappropriate allusions to the French Resistance movement during WWII all tossed in there like a bowl of discordant fruit salad. Like, with cabbage and mangoes trying to make it jive. All confusion about history and fruits aside, in essence, this is what they told me.

They told me to go with the flow. To just be a regularhumdrum person, with a regularhumdrum job. That things don't change. That I am such a small part of the equation, that power is so corrupting, that these social problems are inevitable. And pervasive. And so there. Just live your own life, resign yourself to mediocrity, and try not to get crushed by the forces out there, little one, cause going against the grain of society is a hard, hard thing. And please just get a stable job in a big corporation.

Yup, I am often bitter when I think of hypothetical Other Parents who support their children unconditionally, in anything and everything they are passionate about - especially when object of those passions seem so socially responsible and selflessly beneficial to the world and hopeful and good and objectively easy to root for. [Aside: Parenting, of all styles, must be so hard. It's terrifying. I think well-considered decisions to have children are some of the greatest acts of faith and hope we humans commit.]

But it must be a small sign of growing up that I didn't just shut down at that point in the conversation, cause I dunno - some short amount of time ago, I wouldn't have even stayed at the table for that to get finished. I mean what travesty, right? How could you be so unsupportive and doubtful of what I change I can effect in the world?! You two are the worst stomp stomp stomp etc. I am young and un-trodden upon by society, YOU JERKS, stop trying to nip my potential in the BUD stomp. Let me burn dat ephemeral flame of YOUTH, DANG IT. And why am I so afraid to mention the God aspect of all this to them? 

Thank goodness I didn't stomp on out of there like that. Cause the rest of this talk was indeed a healthy reminder of the fact that I am so undeniably a Romantic-Realist, and of my need for equal doses of both sides of that hyphen. That yeah - at least evidenced by the second half of that indecisive self-given identity-label, I am such a child of my parents.

They told me that it's important to be wary of the depressing, deflating effects of those social problems I feel so righteously angered and upset by. That anger - no matter how justified or righteous - is often counterproductive and always energy-inefficient. To remember the beautiful things. To be recharged by beauty and good, to maintain that balance within myself, cause frankly, the world is unbearable without that. It was a gentle, a revolutionary, reminder that I'm allowed to be personally happy in the midst of all this depressing stuff. That it actually helps, in a lot of subtle ways.

And though ultimately, we're still in clear disagreement about what we believe needs to be done - and possibly can be hoped to be done - about the sorry state of this world, and specifically, what I can do about it all (and more specifically...after that graduating business), they. are. right. Absolutely. My specific anger, at least at this particularly powerless point in my life and from this particularly influence-less place in society, burns furiously only against myself. If I don't keep this vague bitterness-against-all-the-ugly-stuff checked and specific and well-informed and most importantly, balanced with generous doses of Good and Beauty in the world, it will probably accomplish very little other than destroy my tiny life. Which, ultimately, is just accomplishing very little. I'm nothing to make a martyr out of. Not yet, anyways. I mean society's just getting finished educating me - and I still have a whole year to go. My time to give back is juuust peeping around the corner. Shy or something.

In more ways than this, so many, it is good to listen to my parents' [basically opposite-from-mine-] opinions and advice. If the fact that they've experienced me (in addition to their own lives, own societal problems, own political frustrations) through my terrible two's and awkward teenage years and all the jazz in between and really, to their fullest human knowledge and ability, want what they believe is the best for me isn't enough, then for the cool and reasoned answer that opposition is healthy in appropriate amounts. It critiques and challenges and sharpens and fosters a better-rounded growth.

Cause everything seemingly depressing, including mediocrity, is sort of a two-sided beast with its very own upside - just as anything seemingly good isn't ever completely, unconditionally Good. Simply put, the world is complicated, and the only control you have over its confusion is your reaction to it all. So I'm thinking, maybe I should alternate these documentary consumptions with Disney movies or something. Not that Disney movies necessarily deserve the label of capital-g Good, but frankly, neither do documentaries. And because, frankly, that's just the first thing that popped into my head and because, frankly, it's fine to not end on a warm, fuzzy note of enlightenment and conclusiveness. Sometimes it's just marking the progress of things, and that's that.

Today

is gorgeous in a way that makes me want to dress up, just for the pleasure of being outside in pretty clothes that match the pretty weather. And walk the cat. If only the cat would like that.

Break my own rules of "What Constitutes a Blogpost-Worthy Thing"; makes me want to write a whole, corny love warble of a blogpost dedicated to the complicated, perfect conditions that must have constructed this beauty of a day. And then erase it all cause it's not enough. Maybe even negative-enough.

Today! This apple of a day! This day worthy of a hundred thousand picnics!

un-hiatus!

When you're in need of a scream but not of attention or pity, a good place to get it is in your car - windows down, sunshiny summer morning, driving not-too-fast down a slight downhill curve of a not-too-busy road that you know really well. All the stuff after the hyphen is just additional and personal-choice kind of toppings, so take this advice with those toppingsy grains of salt. The windows down make you feel like you're in the midst of a greater nature than just the surroundings of your car interior, and the sunshiny summer morning will help to diffuse that scream into a smile conclusion. But I have to tell you; the sheepish-grin-because-you-feel-stupid-for-having-to-conduct-alone-screaming-time will feel better than the forced, teeth-baring, cheek-scrunching full-on kind you put on to try that reverse psychology (physiology?) thing on yourself. Probably because the first is more honest.

I have learned a lot of things - have grown a lot - through the time period of this blog's existence. It's been over a year, on three different continents (counting this North American one right now...four! if you count that silly Morocco stint), countless definitions of home, and even more precious, life-changing encounters with people and places than that countlessness.

I have learned - in the end, through practice - what this blog means to me; as opposed to my journal, as opposed to my [now-defunct; RIP] facebook photo albums, as opposed to other people's expectations and other people's travel blogs, too. Hello, place for the recording of daily strawberrys and unabashed unloadings of pictures and ah-hah moment compilations for the glad and the sad days. And the whooshing away of my own designs and careful plans.

I have lived a day-to-day intensity of huge joys and huge wonders and huge, bratty tragedies through a summerful of people from all over the world, in a place which my feeble descriptive skills only render flatly technicolor and uniformly unicorny. Corny. 

I have found, time and time again and actually, pretty much from the very beginning, that home is seriously freaking where the heart is. And I know that's seriously freaking cliched, but when you're trapped between a rock and a hard place looking for the right expression at the right moment, a lot of times, cliches will do just the trick to quench your language thirst; scratch that expression itch, whatever floats your boat. Like a cool bottle of Coca-Cola or Diet Mountain Dew or bananaooyoo, whatever your vice.

I have felt indignant and possessive in perhaps the most productive way I have ever been indignant and possessive - on my way to figuring out this whole hyphenated identity thing (bleh) but still raaather far from fixing the whole indignant-and-possessive character flaw thing going on here.

I have taken serious steps toward remedying things like this (and like this), cause I don't want to be a noob anymore. It's about a whole year late, this summer, finally learning to cook things from my momma, but the noob stage of my life is officially over. At least in the kitchen, anyways, and at least in my attitude about it. I won't take any of that damsel-in-distress crap ANY LONGER, SELF, and that's final. Cooking is not as big of an opponent as I used to make it seem with the size of my cowering and whimpering. Harrrrrrumph!

I have finally understood a bit of the love in my grandma's frugality, and held her hands - they tremble now, as in a continuous aftershock of her lifetime of labor, of love - in a way that felt differently warm from the expo hand-holding.

I have learned the beauty of the here and of the now, and the overriding importance of realizing that these here-and-now moments continue and expand. They consume the whole world and your whole life, if you'll just let them. I'm not insisting that I feel good all the time, in every great or cruddy place. Just that there is always beauty in your situation. No matter how bleak. Promise. (Escaping it! for example.)

I have thought a lot about spatial allocations of people in crowded places resulting in all kinds of awkward physical and emotional contact. Or lack thereof.

I have sewn things and grown things and moaned about Friday night things and thought it made me sound grown up. Pffffffffffffffff to the t. But then had other days, too, when I could feel a little better about the moan:grown-up-ness ratio.

I have celebrated a quarter-birthday, then a whole-birthday, then the birthday of this tiny baby of a thing compared to my twenty-two years. [Insert old-man laugh here.]

And I am learning to throw out the repetitive self-consciousness that masks deserving recognition (for...like, growing up, for example!) and have apparently grown up enough to be pretty embarrassed about some of these posts on this here blawg, too. Hurhurhur. And to recognize that the screaming-while-sitting-alone-in-my-car opening probably isn't the best introduction to a post all about how I Learned Life Stuff and am now Grown-up and Mature, Etc. over the course of a year abroad.

But is actually a pretty perfect one if the post is, rather, about the progress of growing up, with all its doubling backs and continued deficiencies and in-spite-of-all-that hopefulness.

Yeah. Closing the full-circle loop.

h i a t u s

go here, cause madison is moooooving for a while!