Somewhere Strange and New

I believe an update is in order. I don’t normally like to write blogs that simply relay the events of my life. Usually I’d rather use clever photos and carefully crafted vague words to give life to the things I’m feeling or to hintingly illustrate events in such a way that necessitates imagination on the part of the reader. I like whispering pieces of my story and leaving you to fill in the parts you couldn’t quite hear.  I like to believe in the lie of my own mystery. Normally, that is. However, as I’ve been absent for so long, and there’s much too much to catch up on for obscurity, I’ll be direct.

The biggest recent change in life is that I now have a girlfriend. She’s beautiful and fun and lovely and strong and compassionate and I could make this run-on last for pages and her name is Sarah and this is a picture of us recently.

Two weeks ago we traveled together for the first time. We turned a three-day weekend into five and flew to Mexico. Sarah studied abroad in Guanajuato, and was elated to return a place of such significance in her life. We spent our days winding through vibrant alleyways, and over rough and ancient cobblestone. The brilliant patchwork of the brightly colored homes formed something like a Kandinsky canvas on the hillsides, and the smells of food freshly prepared on the streets sizzled in our noses. We heard the sounds of Finnish voices singing in Mexico about love in English, and watched from a windy hillside a grim and fantastical performance elevated on stilts telling the story of a fisherman lost at sea, and the crowd through and in which they performed was a sea of flesh. We spent playful afternoon hours with young girls whose greatest desire was to be spun above our heads and to ride on our shoulders and to giggle uncontrollably and to force us to sing the Titanic song. And we ate, oh how we ate. With grease streaming over fingers and satisfied smiles we ate. 

And then we returned, to school and to family and to responsibilities...

and to dreams of absconding once more.

Wake Up To The Sound Of Your Fleeting Heart

I've been wanting to write so badly for so long, but I haven't found the time, and unfortunately I don't see that coming any time very soon. But, for the time being, watch this video, listen to this song, and maybe you'll love it like I do.

Regarding the Charade of the Serious Me

            I’ve always prided myself on my time management skills.  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I pride myself on the way in which I prioritize how my time is spent. Somehow I’ve always found ways to include valuable space for leisure, reflection, and relationships. I’ve always put my friends before my work. I’ve always put my mental health before my grades. And yet, I’ve almost always done well academically as well as relationally. I felt as though I had some knack for finding the perfect balance, one in which I spend enough time working to be successful, but not too much to the point where I ostracize the people I love by lowering them on my priority list. I never understood the people who were unable to relax, the people who feel uncomfortable slowing down. I lived my life slowly, and I lived it well. I found time for surfing, long conversations on impractical subjects, reading for pleasure, silence, stillness, silliness, and much doing-nothing-ness. Finally, in my last year of college, I find myself tangled in the barbed web of endless motion. I have lost my silent time. I have lost my surfing time. I have lost my doing-nothing time. I have time for little more than the serious and the mundane and the seriously mundane. 

            I’m writing, not to complain, but rather to apologize to those whom I have previously judged for what I thought was a character flaw, but was, indeed, simply a necessity. I now understand your overwhelming feelings of being stuck in motion, never slowing. I now understand your discomfort with leisure. I understand your need to sometimes choose work over friends.  I now understand the feeling of being smaller than the list of this and that and this and that and this and that and this and that which must all be completed by yesterday, only to begin on the this and that which was due this morning. I’m sorry. I now understand.

            I’ve felt large. I’ve felt overwhelmed only rarely. I’ve felt my mind be expansive and far-reaching and free to imagine impractical things like rocket-ships and balloons. I’ve never felt smaller than the list before me, until now. My mind feels small. I haven’t believed-six-impossible-things-before-breakfast in weeks. My mind works so furiously on the reasonable and quantifiable that it has no time for the extraordinary.

            This Me is new and unfamiliar, and frankly, I don’t much like this Me. This new mentality has been born out of necessity, and it will die when necessity dies. For now I must keep up the charade. But I must be careful that it remains exactly that, a charade. May I only act so seriously if my inner self still possesses an awareness of the absurdity of such a serious Me. May the charade of all-things-adult once more give way to the childish philosophy of my true self. May I return to play; may I burn the suit I wear and the planner in my hand; may I bathe in the joy of the impractical and the imaginary once more.

Pumped Up Kicks

Rooftops & Invitations

There's something about rooftops, some mysterious quality that inspires imaginative thoughts. Maybe it's the connection to the open sky above, the view of the star-painted sky, the striking contrast to the flawless blue canopy. There's something brimming with romance and subtly hinting at mischief about them. 

I guess ... I just like rooftops.

"if you're partial to the night sky, if you're vaguely attracted to rooftops..."

Jamul

"I used to believe the skies were doorways home."

Bon Iver : Holocene