we're doing the best with what we've got.

For me, at least, when it comes to my personal life, it is very difficult for me to separate myself from situations. I find it really hard to be objective. When it comes to things outside of my fuzzy edged bubble, I am a relatively rational being. When it comes to things that concern me, I am a highly emotional puddle of sticky feelings. I suffer from a condition where I can give perfectly good advice to others, but I can never give advice to myself. I guess it's always easy to see things straight from the outside.

Which is why I like to travel. By getting physically away from things, somehow, it helps me think, clear my head. I have sorted a lot of things out when I have traveled, and if I stay in one place for too long, I get a little crazy. It's almost become a necessity to have that vacation. It's not running away from my problems, per se--more of a quick step outside them to re-evaluate. Like a quick time out to get my scrambled brains into some sort of order. Life doesn't have a rewind button, but it can have a pause button.















I feel like something's missing. I'm missing something I had before. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's my sense of direction in life, maybe it's the fact that I haven't been taking pictures, maybe it's my sense that things are changing, but something is not sitting well with me right now.

I need a pause. I need a minute. The problem with life's pause button is that it comes and goes as it pleases. Life isn't slowing down for me, and it slows for no one. On occasion it is merciful, it gives you space to breathe for a minute, but it comes charging back at you all too soon. Life is like boxing, round after round. We deal with the beating because it teaches us something. We get knocked down, time and time again, but we get back up and come back out swinging. Perhaps we're all a little masochistic.

"Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop."

you won't hear me surrender, you won't hear me confess, cause you've left me with nothing, but I have worked with less.

Oy vey. In so many ways.

I'm in a really strange place right now. It's very uncertain. I feel like I'm in one of those video games where you have to cross the flow of lava underneath you on stones that rock and buckle, and you have to hop and flail your arms to keep yourself upright. I'm a little like Frogger, I guess. I have no idea where I'm going, and I have no idea how long this stupid log rolling life pattern is going to go on for.

But there are always rays of sunshine in the darkness, my friends. Not to be self-lauding, but one thing I like about myself is my ability to set time aside for me, for things that make me happy. I may not have very much time (or theoretically, given my schedule, I shouldn't) but I always make time to spend an hour a day just watching TV, doing nothing. Or cooking something that I've been craving. Dancing it out. Going for a walk.



When I think about life, these days, it is, as usual, about time. But it's sort of different. It's more about the investment of time.

We're all doing time. Whether for an education, for our crimes, for forgiveness, we're all putting in time for something. A lot of life seems to be about waiting. Tick, tock, tick, tock. It's all about the next good thing that's coming up, the next concert, the next party, the next stage of life, moving out, moving in, moving on, moving up. And by the end of it all, you're just waiting for the next journey you take, if you believe in that sort of thing.

But sometimes, you have to forget about where you're going for a minute, and just enjoy where you are.

autumn leaves under frozen souls

People are difficult. Things are difficult. We are all so complicated, and so different, in some ways, that sometimes I wonder how we get along at all. How can people be friends? How do we relate to each other, and communicate, and actually have connections with other people whose depths you can't even begin to plumb?

What we put out there of ourselves is so little, so insignificant, and so, so inadequate. We have all these big things inside us and all we have to represent them are piddly little words, silly nothings that we use to try and give out some sense of the bigness of the things we are feeling. It sucks. Language is beautiful and powerful, and better than nothing, but still so insufficient for expression.

Which is why we resort to other things. We have to find outlets for all of the pent up things that we just don't have the tools to convey. We're constantly trying to find a release, another way to say what we have to say, and it's a constant search and struggle to get it all out so we can be at some sort of peace. We're all bound and gagged. The people who don't find their outlet are in big trouble.

I'm sitting on the concrete outside Warren lecture hall and the leaves are turning red. I'm wearing a cashmere sweater. It's cloudy and chilly. Where am I again? For a second I'm fooled.

These days I understand sad smiles, and the frequent coincidence of things being sad and amusing, or amusing because they are so sad. I never thought I'd understand that twisted, tragic sort of humor, but I do. Lately I've asked "I don't know if that's really funny, or really sad" more than I ever have before.

Life is sort of tragically beautiful in all its sadness. The important thing is to have a comfort in this mess, a cup of hot cocoa in the winter, your outlet. I have mine, and I'm grateful. I'm glad I have a cashmere sweater I can wear when the leaves turn, when it gets cold.

live through this, and you won't look back

I'm sorry I haven't written in a while. My life is being sucked away by things I am not happy to let do the sucking. So apologies are in order.



Sometimes we get flak for believing the impossible can actually happen. People will always be there to shoot you down. You walk out in the morning, your hair is neatly pinned, your sweater washed, your boots dusted off. Everything is fine until you hit the streets, and the mud slinging continues all day. You really are at your tallest in the morning, because out there are people waiting to take inches off of you every step you take.

But I can tell you, my friends, that some truly amazing things have happened to me in my short lifetime. Things that give me so much faith in life, in other people...in some indescribable spiritual sense. And when, like this week, things have just gone to shit and I want to tear things into tiny tiny little pieces, I have to stop myself in my tracks, rinse off some of the caked-on mud, and remember to see the big picture. My life really does all come down to perspective.



I may have no plans for my life, I may be broke, I may not have a job, I may be on eggshells with my parents, stressing about finances, work, and school all at once...frankly, I may just have too many things to do, and more things to worry about than a lot of my peers. The system has fucked me. But when I think about all that, and all the pressures, and feel like whining, I just remember that I should concentrate on broadening your shoulders rather than lessening your load (deja vu, anyone? Just to see if you're paying attention.)

Rambling aside, I am stumbling through life blindfolded. I don't think I have ever been more lost than I am right now. But every time I fall, I stand up again. I break things, I look like a damn fool, and feel like the butt of God's lame dinner party joke, but I stand up. It gets harder every time, but you stand up.



I'm on my knees, people. But I'm trying. And I suppose that must be worth something.

don't look back

I never really fully explain my tattoo to people. It means a lot of different things to me, and so I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about it a little.

Lotuses grow out of the mud. They rise above the water and cup the sky. It's amazing that something so beautiful can grow out of the mucky muck. They grow into something better, something from nothing. It has eighteen petals, representing the eighteen years I'd lived when I got it. With me being at a pretty pivotal junction in my life, it represents my growth, too.

The ying yang represents balance, and I think that balance is at the heart of everything. It also represents duality, which is another prevalent force in my life. You'll never understand how good things are until they're bad, and that knowledge is necessary to understand the other half of things. Not to mention, there are always two sides to everything, and it's important to remember that.

Chakras are generally represented by lotuses. My lotus is between the throat chakra, Vishuddha, and the heart chakra, Anahata. The heart chakra governs unconditional love and compassion, both for yourself and for other people. The throat chakra governs expression and the ability to articulately communicate. I feel as though these two are my most open chakras, in a manner of speaking, and the lotus is between them to symbolize the continued growth and refinement of my passion, my independence, and my dialogue with the world.

The star above the lotus is quite close to it, because higher things are attainable if you look at them the right way. The star, or pentacle, is also a symbol of femininity and perfection. The lotus, in its lifetime, sees everything from silt to stars, and it sits somewhere between mud and sky, good and bad. It always, without fail, though, is reaching towards the heavens, and it never looks down.

don't it make you sad to know that life is more than who we are

I haven't been very talkative lately, and I apologize for that. I've been in one of those moods where I have thoughts, but they don't translate easily. I've also been thinking that they're a little redundant, but I suppose I have to remember that things that preoccupy you don't always just come out of the box all pretty and sparkly and solved for you.

Some assembly required.



Anyhow, I thought today I'd spend some time mulling over people. Every time I get close to someone I am again reminded of how truly complex we all are. People surprise me a lot. I guess you sort of get lulled into thinking of the people you pass by on the street every day, or the ones you rub elbows with at the supermarket, are somehow outside and accessory to you. But have you ever wondered what the guy who is contemplating the bagels in the bread aisle is doing with his life? Does he have someone to come home to? Where is he from, and where is he going? What are his skeletons, his demons? And what are the chances that that individual is in the same bread aisle as you, at that exact time?



"Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide."

I quoted it to a friend of mine last night. It's one of my favorites. Jealousy of another person is silly, because you have no idea what their life is like, and what challenges they have to face every day. If it's too good to be true, it probably is, and just because the outside is polished and shiny doesn't mean that the inside can't have fissures. Sometimes the polished ones have cracks that run pretty deep.

journey to a secret place

I breathe
finally I'm surfacing
I see
the sun is coming up on me