What if...

What if I don't make it? What if I sound stupid? What if he's lying? What if he marries me? What if I can't pay for school? What if she doesn't like me? What if what if what if? That phrase gets me all the time. It feeds my fears and insecurities and my tendency to be slightly irrational. It makes me falsely hopeful and unnecessarily heartbroken. It ruins my present because I am too worried about making sure I'm spending  time worrying about the future. I make sure I hash out all the "what ifs" before I even let myself become comfortable in any situation. That phrase seems to control my life and cloud my judgement when it comes to using my agency. I need to stop. So I decided to take the advice of an old friend of mine, Albus Dumbledore. He said "It does not due to dwell on dreams and forget to live". It's not that I'm going to stop planning for my future, but I'm also going to remember to live my life as it is happening. Life is right now. Stop missing out. What if I miss out on life? Go live, and you'll have nothing to fret about.

Having A Coke With You by Frank O'hara

I read this poem years ago as a freshman in high school, but it has recently come into my life again and I find myself enjoying it with a new passion that I never posessed before. Maybe it's because I have a year under my belt as an English major and therefore a greater understanding of what good poetry is. Or maybe before I was too young and inexperienced to understand the love O'hara so aptly describes with nickle words and concise similes. Or what the true explanation of why I appreciate this poem now more than I did before, is because now I understand and know all of the allusions and references within the poem and it's meaning is clear and more beautiful than I ever fathomed. Therefore, in order to share my passion and the understanding of this poem, I am going to post the poem and then pictures of the places and information on the people he uses to establish the meaning of the poem. I hope someday you experience the feeling of reading a poem so perfectly in tune with your life that it is as if your own soul penned the words on the page in front of you.

Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it








San Sebastian: 

Irun:

Hendaye:

Biarritz:

Bayonne:
















Travesera de Garcia:
               A famous, curvy road in Italy.      

St. Sebastian:
              He was a Christian saint and martyr, and was one of the 14 Holy Helpers. There is a church built in his honor in Italy.


Polish Rider:

Nude Descending a Staircase:

Leonardo and Michelangelo: Referring to the art work of the two famous artists Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni.

Impressionists: Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes; open compostion; emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time); common, ordinary subject matter; the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience; and unusual visual angles.
                
Marino Marini: 
              An Italian sculptor who sculpted many horse statues, like the one below.