undercurrents

what if when you were born you were given a long checklist of everything that would happen to you over your lifetime? every heartbreak, scraped knee, hangover, unexpected loss, but also every love, great cup of coffee, bright pink sunset. could you still do it? what would your list look like?

i was thinking about this the other night as i thought of how tough the past couple of months have been. i'm always amazed at a human being's resilence. "keep your gloves up." that's what i'm getting good at. the duck and cut. but i don't want to have my gloves up anymore. i want to take life as it comes, as it ebbs and flows. i've been told this is something that i'm not good at but i am doing the best that i can.

the other night in yoga i began to try and empty myself of thought, emotion, the ticking clock. i thought of my body as a sort of cavern - something that i would decorate on the inside and make the rooms spacious and soothing to reside in. that's all we really want, isn't it? to sit in ourselves and breathe?

"there is no story. it's just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. in short, the greatest story ever told."

waking life

saturday

my brother made this (starring me) while we were running around the city on saturday.

apartment daydreaming

my future home?

layout of studio (like a little treehouse)

from domino

bicycles.

my brother and i spent the day on our bikes riding from my house near u street to the clarendon neighborhood in virginia. four hours in total. we ate chicken fingers and fries at whitlow's and wandered through the apple store and free people (john took the picture below at the store).


"i think i am always collecting in a way—walking down a street with my eyes open, looking through a magazine, viewing a movie, visiting a museum or grocery store. some of the things i collect are tangible and mount into piles of many layers, and when the time comes to use these saved images, i dig like an archeologist and sometimes find what i want and sometimes don't."

corita kent

complicated hybrid emotions

...emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. i don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. i'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, germanic train-car constructions like, "the happiness that attends disaster" or "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." i'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." i'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." i've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that i've entered my story, i need them more than ever. i can't just sit back and watch from a distance anymore. from here on in, everything i'll tell you is colored by the subjective experience of being part of events. here's why my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. already the world feels heavier, now that i'm part of it. i'm talking about bandages and sopped cotton, the smell of mildew in movie theatres and all the lousy cats and their stinking litter boxes, of rain on city streets when dust comes up and the old italian men take their folding chairs inside. up until now it hasn't been my world. not my america but here we are, at last...

from middlesex, by jeffrey eugenides

friday.

i have been daydreaming about the three-day stretch ahead of me all week for one simple reason - i have nothing to do. just a couple of runs, some freelancing, cooking, and sleeping in. oh yes, and looking for an apartment to move into this spring. ooh, i like the idea of living alone - coming home to the house however i left it, playing my favorite neko case song on repeat without annoying anyone, piling my kitchen table high with fresh lemons and flowers.


a new obsession of mine: google book search. you can browse books in pdf form on your computer screen. it certainly doesn't beat holing up in a bookstore with a stack of books and magazines and a chai tea, but it will do for now considering i'm glued to my desk.

books i've been reading via my mac:
happy yoga, stern men, tapas

moments

what the living do, by marie howe

"i've been thinking: this is what the living do. and yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, i thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: this is it. parking. slamming the car door shut in the cold. what you called that yearning. what you finally gave up. we want the spring to come and the winter to pass. we want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss - we want more and more and then more of it.

but there are moments, walking, when i catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say the window of the corner video store, and i'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that i'm speechless.

i am living. i remember you."

nuevo.

i've spent so much time reading the blogs of other beautiful, inspiring women that i've decided to start my own. this is a new stage of my life, where so many things i've held so dearly (or clung to?) have vanished, and i'm forced to start from the ground up. build, build, build.

what will be next?

things that are making me happy:
amel larrieux's album, morning
the color red
the memory keeper's daughter, by kim edwards
the idea that i'm going to take up cooking this year (so far, just an idea)
hatha yoga on wednesday nights

woke to bright blue skies and dean and deluca espresso two hours before work. brian and i made a big breakfast - tomato, mushroom and gouda quiche with a side of toast - and then he walked me to work so that he could spend the day exploring the city himself. brian, my boyfriend of four months, got here five days ago and after a few minor collisions, we have settled back into the natural rhythm of our relationship. unfortunately in three more days, he'll be back in iowa city finishing the house renovation and figuring out what the next step will be. it's so strange, and in some ways so wonderful, to be grounded and have a home. yes, i'd love to go roadtripping through the south for three weeks, but i can't, i have a job. yes, moving to portland sounds great, but i can't right now. i need to stay and write here. if i only i could drag all of the people i love to this city and buy a big rowhouse for us to live in. (are any rowhouses big enough??) that would be wonderful. but instead i have to just try to love the feeling of having both roots and being aware of my core all at once.

my life right now is my herb garden, yoga classes, bike rides down connecticut avenue, writing, national geographic, the eastern market, letter writing, long-distance love.

and i think that life is pretty damn wonderful.