man of peace

One of the reasons why we crave love and seek it so desperately is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

waiting

all day, where the sunlight played on the sea-shore, Life sat.

all day, the soft wind played with her hair, and the young, young face looked out across the water. she was waiting - she was waiting; but she could not tell for what.

all day, the waves ran up and up on the sand, and ran back again, and the pink shells rolled. Life sat waiting; all day, with the sunlight in her eyes, she sat there, till, grown weary, she laid her head upon her knee and fell asleep, waiting still.

then a keel grated on the sand, and then a step was on the shore - Life awoke and heard it. a hand was laid upon her, and a great shudder passed through her. she looked up, and saw over her the strange, wide eyes of Love - and Life now knew for whom she had sat there waiting.

The poison pill

There should be a pill you can take to make love go away.

The last kiss

What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love. That's what matters. That's the only thing that counts.

on the playground

Spending a Sunday night with someone you secretly long for is worse than spending a Sunday night alone. Why? Because there's nothing I can say or do short of removing my sweater and asking him to partake that really seems worth the risk of humiliation. Sigh. Crushes - they're the worst.

The last time I felt this way, I was nine-years-old. Right before the bell for recess would ring, I'd instinctively pull out my strawberry-flavored Lip Smackers and lather up, somehow thinking fruit-scented lips would win him over. This is how I know I have a crush - I'm doing it again. Only now it's high-shine pink Nars lipgloss ironically titled "orgasm."

It's about time. I don't really remember the last time I got nervous around anyone. That's not to say I haven't been interested in the past few men I've dated, only that the way things developed never included me crushing of my own volition. And they certainly never included me giggling at non-jokes or saying things that make no sense because of an inexplicable onset of stuttering. Damn though - I like it.

Anyway, I'm not exactly at my figurative knees, hence the need to call it a crush. I'm not in love with the dude, nor have I developed any sort of adult relationshipy feelings. It's just a warm, silly, I-kinda-wanna-cuddle-with-you-when-I-look-at-your-face sort of feeling that I'm likely going to have to quit in about a week when I realize he's never going to do anything. Until then, I'm okay with the idea of him, randomly making me smile when I'm trying to grant my unfortunate clients asylum.

Omg. I almost touched his arm.

Who am I kidding? I’m kept.

the unbearable lightness of being

people have - with the help of conventions - oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in nature grows & defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. we know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

to love is good, too: love being difficult. for one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. for this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. with their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. but learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.

whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint of way yet been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule resting in agreement. but in the same measure in which we begin as individuals to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at closer range. the demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. but if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence - then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.

--rainer maria rilke

make me a mixtape

bom chicka wah wah, baby! it's about that time of year again. it's snowing, it's cold, and dammit, people got nothing better to do than drink and make out. ohhh yeah.

i am so freaking good at making mixes it's not even funny. enjoy - vday mix 2008:

officially missing you - tamia
fix you - coldplay
this years love - david gray
u center me - robin thicke
breathe me - sia
tell him - lauryn hill
the luckiest - ben folds
lifetime - maxwell
brandy alexander - feist
the very thought of you - billie holiday
starlight - muse
i don't know what it is - rufus wainwright
chasing cars - snow patrol
lovers rock - sade
transatlanticism - death cab for cutie
belief - gavin degraw
the nearness of you - norah jones
wink & a smile - harry connick jr.
you give me something - james morrison
fotografia - juanes
all these things that i've done - the killers
fade into you - mazzy star
the great escape - patrick watson

just before our love got lost you said
i am as constant as a northern star
and i said, constantly in the darkness
where's that at?
if you want me i'll be in the bar

on the back of a carton coaster
in the blue tv screen light
i drew a map of canada
oh canada
with your face sketched on it twice

oh you're in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter and so sweet
oh i could drink a case of you, darling
and i would still be on my feet
i would still be on my feet

oh i am a lonely painter
i live in a box of paints
i'm frightened by the devil
and i'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid
i remember that time you told me, you said love is touching souls
surely you touched mine
cause part of you pours out of me
in these lines from time to time...

i met a woman
she had a mouth like yours
she knew your life
she knew your devils and your deeds
and she said
go to him, stay with him if you can
but be prepared to bleed

oh but you're in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter and you taste so sweet
oh i could drink a case of you, darling
and still be on my feet
i'd still be on my feet

i am so...

tired. figuratively.

off the meat market

last night i got a call from a guy i met when i was out this weekend - a nice, good-looking, smart, seemingly normal male. after about 10 minutes of conversation he asked if i wanted to get dinner, followed by a "and yeah. i'm asking you on a date." i laughed. apparently, he's funny too.

believe me, even i was suprised at my own response when i turned him down. "really?" he said. "shit. i thought i was doing ok." the thing is, he was. when he asked me why i wasn't interested, i didn't want to answer, so i diverted to my usual tactic of saying something funny: tigers game - men in tight pants throwing balls - can't miss it. apparently, he liked this and thought i was funny too. "crap," i thought. i turned him on.

in the end, we spent another 5 minutes on the phone with him telling me we should still hang out and me thinking "that's what you're saying now." still, i could understand his frustration with meeting women and then getting shot down for no good reason, so i caved & agreed to coffee sometime. but no, there will be no dating.

my formal announcment of my break from dating came yesterday to my roommate right before dinner. she looked at me the way you look at an abused animal: with incredible sadness, tainted with contempt for my abusers. "but i thought you wanted to meet somebody..." well, i do, thought i... somebody normal. but let's face it people - men are crazy, and i'm exhausted. i don't really know how to play the game, and i refuse to play games, so, i told her, i should just get out.

now, i realize i'm a pretty hot little piece of ass, and that just a few months ago i'd decided to accept the dating challenge from those i'd found worthy. and i'm sure to be changing my tune at some point in the future when some guy makes a big gesture (i love big gestures) and i'm falling all over myself. but for now, here's what i've learned: i can't seem to distinguish the normal ones from the screwed up. if i could have it my way, i'd inject 'the potential' with truth serum & ask him a few questions before the first hi hello: are you interested in taking advantage of me? are you emotionally schizophrenic? a momma's boy? do you have any self-destructive tendencies? do you really think you look good in that? you know, just a series of basic questions to know what i'm getting into. but i can't do that, and i'm sort of tired of being strung along only to find out later that the dude's got secret motives and issues.

so for now, i've taken to doing my own thing. not cause i "need time alone" or "to heal" or some bullshit like that. i'm just... tired. i recorded for the first time in a while last week. fun. i'm yoga-ing again. also, fun. i'm cooking for one - more for me. all-in-all, seems like a good deal. maybe it'll help to make my next relationship a "secured transaction."

oh god. lame law school joke.

i'm already starting to disagree with what i just wrote. go figure.

quarter-life crisis

i've been having these strange dreams lately where i go to visit my parents in my hometown and nothing is the same as it ever was. i can't remember how to get places, and my favorite park is replaced with an office building. i get home and i find myself pacing the floors of an abandoned house. my parents are gone and i'm really frustrated to learn that my hometown is no longer my home. that the small town where i grew up has grown up too, and in some way, has outgrown me. wants nothing to do with me.

the last time i had these dreams was this summer in d.c. before that, i had them first semester at chapel hill. evidently, leaving michigan, my family, everything i have ever known my whole life, had an effect on me. occasionally, i'd see michigan alumni plates on a car while driving in chapel hill, and at first, i wouldn't think much of it. and then it'd hit me: they're not from here. this is how people probably reacted to seeing my car's plates during my first few months there. she's not from here. she's from michigan. and it's true. i will always be from the midwest. a snow-loving, cherry-picking, suburban girl from michigan. i bake with soda & drink a pop. i know how to pronounce mackinac. even a thumb has geographical, rather than anatomical significance. and yeah, i picked corn in the summers with the farmer behind my house.

but i came back. my parents got sick, my sister met someone great, and i had an open invitation to come back. now, more than a year later, i'm still having these dreams despite my being here. still trying to figure out how to make michigan... how to make any place feel like home. and i realized this: i am looking for something that doesn't really exist anymore.

it's unnerving. i've feel as though i've become the antithesis of my usual idealistic self. i'm tired of the law. i'm tired of trying to help everyone else. i miss the stage. i wanna go back to endless dancing and singing, and i desperately need to start playing my guitar again. i just miss losing myself in something wonderful. it's making everything else lack purpose.

i suppose all people go through this at some point. life happens and it makes people wary of what's to come. you wonder if you lost your footing once you've lost your youth. but while i'm definitely at the quarter mark of my life, i don't want what i'm going through to be a crisis anymore.

Hey basket, meet all my eggs!

Although I've tried to keep my whining to a minimum here, for the past 2 weeks or so, I have been thinking little else besides where my love life is going. It's sick, really. Unlike my southern female counterparts, I have no desire to get married in the near future. Currently, the thought of children and puppies and suburbs equals intellectual death to me. No - that life, if it chooses to exist, will emerge no earlier than the age of 28. I've got at least half a decade before I spend the rest of my life breadwinning for my stay-at-home husband and breeding baby Avanis. And i've decided, to my parents' dissent, that if I choose to go it alone, I will be inseminating my little eggs, preferably with the sperm of an active, attractive, and intelligent gay male (hi Ryan). I mean, I owe it to our world to reproduce. Look at me. These genetics should not be wasted.

Evidently, I'm both horrified and -- yes, I'm embarrassed to admit -- that I am on a nonquest quest for the perfect man. Over the past week, while talking to friends, it occurred to me that I want to be in love in a forever-love kind of way. No more I'm-in-love-with-you guys but-I-have-the-same-emotional-and-developmental-capacity-as-I-did in-7th-grade. I tire of these boys and their inability to grow. It's silly. And selfish. And sad. And a waste of my time. To these boys, I say go have your silly ventures with women of equal silly calibur. I choose men.

Now, I don't want you to fear for me. I am not and never have been the kind of girl who goes looking for love because she's uncontent - "I want a boyfriend. I'm so empty and sad when I'm alone." Waa waa. Cry me a river. I'm not poking fun at these women, only hoping that they realize their own independent capacity to be happy. Yes, I too have had my heart stepped on - ripped out, stomped on, and put into a juicer is more like it. I've cried for love lost and the resulting agony. I still do. But I hope for a better man in the future. He must be intelligent, hilarious, and unbelievably compassionate. He will wrestle with life; he will defend me; he will disagree with his friends, family, and me. And none of it will come between us. Ah yes, i want somebody to love. (Enter unicorns, rainbows, and ewan mcgregor serenades)

"Ah ha!" you say. But love is not so simple, and it's reciprocal. Don't just go looking for love - get it in return. To this I give you a quote -- it's cheesy, but poignant: "I am someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love." I LOVE that. Love isn't always unicorns and rainbows, it's torture. It's Antony and Cleopatra; it's U2's with or without you; it's ram and sita. It's romantic and sometimes painful and compromising.

I want that. And while I fall into slumps sometimes, blaming myself for not having found it, I know there is nothing more I could have done to turn my boyfriends into introspective, intelligent, confident men. There is only so much handholding a woman can do, and i mean that both literally and figuratively.

So I'm putting all my eggs in the dating basket - destiny needs a little push sometimes. I'm eliminating no one at round one, giving him every opportunity to show me a good time. My current/last boyfriend, whatever he is, had the indecency to just stop calling me so I responded with the same courtesy: I went on a date. Not to find love, but to remind myself that I am capable of it again. And he was smart, charming, inquisitive. Nothing romantic will come of it, but much else did - including a personal feeling of satisfaction in myself, what I have to offer, and how another may be drawn to appreciate it. And that is something I both want and need.

in favor of thinking

the last two weeks have been exhausting in a weird, disconnected way. i've been up in my head, circling ideas about sex and death and vegetarianism. i thought a lot about troubling things - tibet and the president and intolerance. and relationships. always relationships.

it's been kind of a polar introspective look at life, my life, other's lives - i've been struck with bouts of happiness sparsed with depression and a general feeling that i seem to lack an understanding of how people really work.

i was talking to a friend about this when we went to get sushi. on the most basic level, we know that if we're kind to people, they'll be kind back. act like a bitch and you can't expect anything in return. we know this. we learn this as children. i give you my jello at lunchtime, you'll play with me at recess (or at least think of me next time you have pudding). it would seem then that if you beat the shit out of me, i would not be inviting you to my birthday party, or anything else for that matter. actually, i'd stay the hell away from you if i knew what was good for me.

as we get older, this basic structure of how to treat others becomes the footing of society, delegating how much respect everyone from our lovers to the waiter at the restaurant deserves. and whether you believe it or not, our respect karma does bite us in the ass: "no you idiot - i said well done" + no tip will land your next steak on the floor of the restaurant kitchen. if not then, then another time, and the resulting food poisoning will be undocumented in the inspector's recordings.

i know all this and have throughout my life found it to ring true. society stands on this very simple notion alone - to treat others as you wish to be treated. and yes, the cliches are right: do no harm, be respectful, better yourself by bettering others, love deeply, question others, listen to your conscience. when we fail to do this or fail to honestly strive to do these things, we fail at much that is great about life. perhaps we fail at it all together. the simple life is always just that - a simple, unexamined, easy life. no challenges. no struggles. just coasting... it's attractive, but never fulfilling.

i've always felt this way about life, trying to make sure that i lived in a way that was meaningful to me - understanding it through my own senses, my own perception of what is good and bad filtered through a lens of reason and logic. i reject one thing, agree with the other. i question my parents' teachings. i listen to my enemies. yup, ignorance is bliss alright. knowledge often hurts at first. the world is full of painful truths and ideas that we think we'd be better off not having to honestly examine... and the struggle... the struggle was and is always the hardship that comes with truth. but damn it feels good to have information and knowledge and disagreements - to feel like you stand behind something for good reason. such "conflict" has become the touchstone of a meaningful existence: "i don't care if my life is messy and complicated. at least i know i'm living it."

but while i've generally found truth and happiness in complications and struggles, i am this time feeling a little lost and lonely, unable to convince myself that this too shall pass. knowing that the best things in life are worth fighting for, i persevered. i believed that others did the same. "people are inherently good, and good people never make the same mistakes twice." perhaps they do.

i keep wondering if i've done something wrong (i haven't) or could've done more (i couldn't), but my reliance on that basic be-nice-and-i'll-be-nice-back concept never ceases to bite me in the ass. i guess that's what you get when you try and make friends with the bully - you get the shit kicked out of you.

i think flowers are nice. i think chocolate is stupid, but i think flowers are nice. and not just your traditional red roses - i'm not talking about those (though red roses are still nice). yellow roses - now those are nice. they're cheerful. they say, "i love you, but you know, i also like you too. we're friends and that's neat." now isn't that... nice?

and daisies. can we just talk about daisies for a second. why are they so underrated? now i know i don't speak for all women, but personally, i think daisies from any man is just a happy, friendly gesture. they're so bright and smiley. your lady-friend is sick. you bring her daisies. poof! smiles all around. and i think if you get a girlfriend some daisies and she doesn't like them, and she's like, "what are these? daisies?" then she's really just kind of... well, she's just... not so nice. and you're obviously nice because you got her daisies. so, nice guy + not nice girl gives you what? - zero. it's like an equation. you knock each other out. i'm just sayin, men be careful of chicks that don't like your daisies.

literally, not figuratively. gosh.

ever wanted to be in someone's head?

or wish you could transfer what you were thinking into theirs? stood across from someone and known exactly what they should be saying?

if you want to improve

if you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

remember that you must behave in life as at a dinner party. is anything brought around to you? put out your hand and take your share with moderation. does it pass by you? don't stop it. is it not yet come? don't stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. such are thoughts to live by in life and love.

-epictetus

love is

love is anterior to life
posterior to death
initial of creation
the exponent of breath

the act of seeing

is discontinuous. we see only things we are interested in seeing, although we may suddenly develop an interest that makes us discover something we have been familiar with for years.