On my way home from work I saw two houses being decked with lights, I can't stop listening to this cd, and tonight we made it official...my mom made fudge. It is Christmastime!
I am thankful that I can focus on people and not finals this season. I am thankful that I have a job I enjoy, people I like to spend my days with, and a safe place to land.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
practically holy...
For those of you who doubt the hygiene habits of my current household, I present the following note, which appeared taped to our bathroom mirror last week:
Question: Is someone eating the soap? We are currently using an average of three bars a week. Too many! Love, Mom
Question: Is someone eating the soap? We are currently using an average of three bars a week. Too many! Love, Mom
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
you are so wise, w.p...
"One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
The question is: Why is it that your entire lifetime you will never be able to size yourself up as you can size up somebody else - or size up Saturn - in a ten-second look?
Why is it that the look of another person looking at you is different from everything else in the Cosmos? That is to say, looking at lions or tigers or Saturn or the Ring Nebula or at an owl or at a person from the side is one thing, but finding yourself looking into the eyes of another person looking at you is something else. And why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?"
[walker percy, lost in the cosmos]
You must read.
When your brain hurts from thinking hard about numbers, it is an entirely different feeling than when your brain hurts from thinking about words.
The question is: Why is it that your entire lifetime you will never be able to size yourself up as you can size up somebody else - or size up Saturn - in a ten-second look?
Why is it that the look of another person looking at you is different from everything else in the Cosmos? That is to say, looking at lions or tigers or Saturn or the Ring Nebula or at an owl or at a person from the side is one thing, but finding yourself looking into the eyes of another person looking at you is something else. And why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?"
[walker percy, lost in the cosmos]
You must read.
When your brain hurts from thinking hard about numbers, it is an entirely different feeling than when your brain hurts from thinking about words.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
subterfuge...
Today as I was running down 21st in the rain, late for my hair appointment because of the ridiculous lack of parking in NW and my ridiculous lack of parallel parking skills, I met a large pile of leaves on the curb, which was actually a cleverly disguised puddle.
My nice black heels are bad luck, apparently. If it's not mud, it's muddy leaf water.
But my hair looks great and I'm going to see Ingrid tonight.
Can't catch me now, World.
My nice black heels are bad luck, apparently. If it's not mud, it's muddy leaf water.
But my hair looks great and I'm going to see Ingrid tonight.
Can't catch me now, World.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
how to like it...
I generally keep this blog free of excessive quotes, but I have to make an exception for this poem. I can't stop reading it. It is a lost version of something hilarious and poignant. I've been reading poetry like crazy this fall, jumping back and forth between mystery and music, enjoying the challenge of something difficult that no Professor is making me study. Overall, it doesn't matter what I do during my work day, because at the end of the day, I can read things like this.
Literature take me outside of myself. And so I read:
These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trashcans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filing a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dogs says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept -
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
[stephen dobyns]
Literature take me outside of myself. And so I read:
These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trashcans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filing a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dogs says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept -
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.
[stephen dobyns]
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