Gratitude

Sometimes I just have to shake my head at myself when I realize how hard I make life on myself. It's so silly that it takes a label on one day of the year like "Thanksgiving" to get me to realize how incredibly blessed I am. How much of a happier person would I be and how much of a happier outlook on life would I have if instead of starting everyday with "what do I have to do" I got out of bed and asked myself "what do I get to do today"? What I realized today, as I was missing loved ones far away and growing closer to the ones I have here and eating delicious food and taking my turn listing all of the things I'm thankful for, is that life is more than our endless "to do" lists. My life is more than the tests I have to take and the papers I have to write and hoops I have to jump through to "get somewhere" in life. I already am somewhere in life. I'm happy and healthy with goals and dreams and the ability to laugh and cry and wonder at the little mystery and miracle that my life is. I feel as though if people didn't wait until Thanksgiving to appreciate their lives then we would have a lot more happy people in the world rather than haggard, busy and depressed people. So take this Thanksgiving Day and make it a habit in your life. All of those bright and wonderful things in your life are more than capable of out shining the darkness as long as you know they are there. So to be trite, carry an attitude of gratitude within your heart, it will amaze how light and happy it feels.

Purposes

Sometimes I feel as though I'm surrounded by thousands of people unaware of the bigger and beautiful thing around them going on called life. People are so consumed with their meaningless conversations and agendas that they let the chatter and noise fill up their souls and they become separated from what the purpose of their existence is. It's not about what your friends are doing this weekend, or the next test you have in class, or that date you so desperately want on Friday. Our purpose is to move with the rhythm of our every day tasks without forgetting our own beat, and the beauty of noticing another's unique beat. It's taking a moment to notice the peace and quiet that is present in the world, but we're just too busy listening to our i-pods or playing our games to notice it. We say we're busy but we always find time to do such purposeless things. I miss the days that when a song came on or someone picked up a guitar we stopped and listened to the transcending power of communication music possesses rather than using it as an excuse to talk louder and longer about the pointless details of our busy lives that we purposely make busy to feel complete. We don't have to be busy and consumed with tasks and to-do lists to find our purpose. We simply need quiet and peace and a mind to contemplate ourselves and our potential and than, our purpose just lines up in our hearts and minds, right alongside our inner peace. 

Underlying Emotions and Adulthood

As teenagers in Junior High and High School we live in a world where the vulnerable emotions of others must be assumed and where nothing is a "given". We all play the guessing game of "who likes who" and tip toe around each other's emotions because there is no way to tell where other's feelings lie. We function like this because we are not yet "adult" enough to present and calmly discuss our emotions no matter how vulnerable those emotions may make us. When we reach adulthood it is assumed that everyone's emotions are taken care of because we are mature enough to take care of them ourselves; leaving no excuse for drama or conflict because you are expected to "speak up" if you had a problem in the first place. So based on this adult-like assumption we must go through our adulthood thinking that no one has any emotion except for the ones they convey through their adult words because that is the adult thing to do. But I feel, in my life and the people in my life, that being "adult" has become an excuse to leave things unspoken and let the more "adult-like" people be vulnerable and grown up and just leave our emotions where they are; on our heart and on our mind where no one else is privy to them because adults shouldn't have to deal with such juvenile things. But for me, I'd rather have the people in my life come clean about their emotions and not judge me for assuming their emotions existed because it was true. Emotions exist at all points in our lives, adult or not. We must learn to acknowledge those emotions and realize people are going to assume and omit and lie and be hurt, even if we're not teenagers. It's called being human. We feel. So go tell someone how you feel.

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I chanced upon this poem tonight. I love the feeling while you are reading a piece of poetry and each word strums across your heart strings, bringing you into better harmony with yourself, making you grateful those words were written and expressing what you didn't know you were feeling. That's what I felt when I read this poem. Thank you Pablo Neruda, for writing poetry, and bringing people to acknowledge what is in their heart.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sweetness,

if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,

my love feeds on your love, beloved,

and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine 

Words

“Words, so innocent and powerless…when standing in a dictionary, how potent for good or evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American Novelist
Words hold incredible sway over the human soul and heart. Some say actions speak louder than words, but there are words that make the heart soar, or break it into a million unidentifiable pieces. They can help us convey the ideas and thoughts of our minds, or lead us to experience great humiliation from misuse. A few precious and simple words whispered at the right moment can be the foundation of some our most deep and defining relationships, while they can also push away and trap those who use to mean so much to us. The absence of words can also have an incredible impact. When you just know the world will be ok once again if you simply hear those few words, but if they are omitted or simply forgotten, you become filled with a disappointment that reaches your core and you begin to lose hope of ever hearing those words again. Sometimes it doesn't even matter what the words say, as long as they exist. You can spend weeks fretting and being anxious, but the moment you hold a piece of paper with his words scribbled all over it, your heart suddenly feels ok again. It's kind of silly when you think about it. They're just words. So much of our happiness shouldn't be contingent on whether they are present or absent. But realizing this, I hope I can say the words that need to be heard, and keep back the ones that should remain unspoken, and thank those precious few in my life that know the power of words and how to speak to my heart to keep it pumping and loving and producing angsty but meaningful (to me) blog posts.

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.