on a happier note!
one of the things i love to do is to handwrite notes to people. and of course to receive them, i won't pretend to be selfless!

i got over having to find perfect greeting cards and usually use computer paper. this weekend i had the pleasure of writing on orange typing paper to two people! i like hiding them for people when they get home, or when they get back to their cars. i used to stick post-it notes on friend's driver-side windows so they could find something nice when they got back to their car.

and I love this kickstarter project,
Valentines for Lunch!

"People have asked how I'm keeping up with making all the postcards. I make cards every night and I also carry a ziplock bag with blank postcards so I can make a few whenever I have a free moment."

I had a dream last night about the conversation we found in our kisses.
It was always furious,

furious with both restraint and abandon.
at times furious with guilt,
cautious,
burning,
careless. hopeful and hopeless
too many contradictions

my dreams about you are like that, a mess of confusion.
I was always furious that it wasn't my lips that you kissed first. I felt like that meant you didn't kiss me because you wanted to kiss me, you kissed me because you wanted my body.

anyway. speaking of contradictions:

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
- Sigmund Freud

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
- Ernest Hemingway

“I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.”
- Michelle Williams in an interview with Elle, in which she confesses her obsession with water. I suppose this is part of why I am obsessed with water, too- the malleability, the stability, the way it allows you to pass through, but also the resistance it creates... Before I injured my knees, I had started swimming again. Just a little bit. I hadn't swum laps in, well, maybe decades. It winded me, for sure, but after I practiced for a while I loved it. I admitted to a friend the other day that it was the best thing I took up again, because unlike running, the more you do it, the calmer you feel, and the more you feel like continuing, even if you are tired. With running, I just feel like collapsing after a while. Water holds me up. Anchors me, yet gives me freedom.

I. 

“Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.” - Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities

I do think that when I am most afraid of losing something, or someone, I stop speaking about it, to him/her, to anyone else. I'm afraid of losing them all at once, so I stay as quiet as possible, to preserve it. That way, if I close my eyes, it almost feels like nothing changed at all.

--

I was left to my own devices
Many days fell away with nothing to show

And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
Grey clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above

But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?

And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You've been here before?

How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

We were caught up and lost in all of our vices
In your pose as the dust settles around us

Oh where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?
If you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?

[lyrics from Bastille's Pompeii, which, has been a great companion through all this]

---

II. 

lately, of course, i feel a little too emotionally drained to do pretty much anything at all. But I have been tucking away pieces of inspiration for, you know, later.

If you have not watched or read a transcript of Joss Whedon's (the writer, director, producer) commencement speech at Weslayan, this is what you should spend the next few minutes doing. 

You have, which is a rare thing, the ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself. To at least give it the floor. Because it is the key, not only to consciousness, but to real growth. 

To accept duality is to earn identity, and identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just “who you are,” it is a process that you must be active in.

Spoiler alert, this is the end of the speech, and it is really really good, so if you plan on reading the entire thing, you should do that first.

And that’s why I’ve been talking only about you and the tension within you. Because you are, not in a cliched sense but in a weirdly literal sense, the future. And after you [the graduating class] walk up here and walk back down you are going to be the present. You will be the broken world and the act of changing it in a way that you haven’t been before. 

You will be so many things and the one thing that I wish I’d known, and want to say, is: don’t just be yourself, be all of your selves. Don’t just live, be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life. Understand it, see it, appreciate it, and have fun.

also, jeopardy contestants robbed for answering "Zelda"!

hobbled outside today for about 2 minutes. 

i've been wearing the same shirt for a couple of days now. 

i haven't looked in the mirror for a while now, so i haven't really tended to my face, or hair, or anything for that matter. 

which means that i didn't realize until today that the bruise on my chin has now shaped itself into somewhat of a smiley face

which, as anyone knows,

is always a good sign. 

***

also- today, in my inbox, haiku from Borges:

Haiku

1

Algo me han dicho

la tarde y la montaña.

Ya lo he perdido.

2

La vasta noche

no es ahora otra cosa

que una fragancia.

3

¿Es o no es

el sueño que olvidé

antes del alba?

4

Callan las cuerdas.

La música sabía

lo que yo siento.

5

Hoy no me alegran

los almendros del huerto.

Son tu recuerdo.

6

Oscuramente

libros, láminas, llaves

siguen mi suerte.

7

Desde aquel día

no he movido las piezas

en el tablero.

8

En el desierto

acontece la aurora.

Alguien lo sabe.

9

La ociosa espada

sueña con sus batallas.

Otro es mi sueño.

10

El hombre ha muerto.

La barba no lo sabe.

Crecen las uñas.

11

Ésta es la mano

que alguna vez tocaba

tu cabellera.

12

Bajo el alero

el espejo no copia

más que la luna.

13

Bajo la luna

la sombra que se alarga

es una sola.

14

¿Es un imperio

esa luz que se apaga

o una luciérnaga?

17

La vieja mano

sigue trazando versos

para el olvido

both tiny and grand reminders. both quiet ones and booming ones.

also, sometimes the tiniest are the most grand. and the quietest seem to resonate loudest.  

reminders, that "it's all a luxury, this being alive" (Donald Revell)

(What are your ghosts like?)
(They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.)
(This is also where my ghosts reside.)
(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(But you are a child.)
(I am not a child.)
(But you have not known love.)
(These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.)

-from everything is illuminated by  jonathan safran foer

"For Women Who Are Difficult to Love" 

 written and performed by Warsan Shire

(read interview with her "To be Vulnerable and Fearless" here and see the video of her performance here)

You are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?

closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Also, this morning:

hearing about lovely surprises, like learning that you live across the symphony in the new city you're living in.
 the creation (acceptance?) of new beginnings (if only i had opened my eyes sooner!)
the gutting of a camera,
 belgian fries and chimicurri aioli for dinner,
 and, finally.... 

Last night I was ridiculously sick. I crawled out of bed and made myself tea and lay in bed for hours staring into space. Suddenly, I noticed the tiny text on the end of my tea bag.

"Be happy as long breath is within you." 

I closed my eyes.