a soul

Really, when all's said and done, it's a flimsy concept.

But goddammit if I'm going to let go of mine.

Winter quarter last year was comparatively good.

I was looking through photographs from spring break last year, when I realized that while I really miss springtime in Texas, it's not the place that draws me to it but the memories it contains.

I don't feel attached to any place more than the other. I don't belong to the club of travelers. I don't itch to travel the world or discover new places or yearn to be somewhere my soul belongs-- I belong wherever there are people who I love.

That said, I'm going to go back on my word and say that I'm getting really stir crazy right now... but I think that's a combination of the winter, dreaming of something greater than this life I lead, and a growing pile of work that I don't want to do.


(I also feel like I've been repeating myself lately-- passion, oh passion, wo bist du?)

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." - Sophocles

Battleship Potemkin

It's important to be passionate.

YAYAYAY

Ok. Ok.

My brain isn't working really well today, but I've latched onto an idea. Allow me to incoherently illustrate:

So in the past few days I've totally rekindled my love for David Bowie.

Maybe my brain is too full of Kracauer and Adorno, but "I'm Afraid of Americans" is so freaking perfect it's ridiculous. Ok. So. First listen to the song. Let yourself be swept up into the lyrics. You discover its message is basically antiestablishment-anticonformist, but by a 50 year old European star from the rock and roll heyday. Disconnect! But the song is still great! And he totally throws you a curveball in the last part of the song. WHICH MAKES IT AWESOME.

And then you watch the music video, which is so hilariously transparent but really intense AND SO FREAKING AWESOME. DOWN WITH JOHNNY! BUT HOORAY FOR JOHNNY! JOHNNY'S THE BOMB!

And then you're like... THIS SONG IS SOAMAZING. ONSOMANYLEVELS.

And then you're like... OH MY GOD DAVID BOWIE IS BRILLIANT. YEAH ZIGGY STARDUST! Everything he sings turns to freanking GOLD, man!!!!

...And I am officially getting really excited and worked up over something that probably won't appear as wonderful to anyone else, much less to me in another 24 hours, because I right now am sleep-deprived and foggy in the brain.

ok back to work. I probably sound like an idiot right about now.

THIS FEELS GREAT

Taking the Next Step was pretty great. I know what I need to do, and what I don't want to do.

I'm really busy, but things are just bubbling again. I like it when they do. I've missed the feeling.

no.

A childhood vision: shelves of books, endless time, other people but mere specters.

I'm reminded, now, of a story I found many years ago, titled "The Book of Sand."

and when we find ourselves in the place just right...

Sigh. I'm realigning.

light up, light up

Today is MLK day, as well as the last day of the Bush presidency.

Thanks to literature, we're all trained as symbolists. It gives people something to hold onto.

life is good.

Sometimes I miss my childhood, but at the same time-- why be so scared?

I didn't realize until today how much I've actually changed in the space of one year. It's nothing particularly striking, but... I don't know. All the people in my life right now are exactly the right ones, and in that regard, I'm so, so lucky.

Windchill negative thirty degrees

The sky is brightest blue, made brighter by the illumination of a rare winter sun. My window is laced with feathers of ice.

I feel I must interject here

The Postal Service is the single greatest musical rediscovery I've ever made.

Anyways, I'm slowly making my way through Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Interpreter of Maladies." When I read stories about people's lives falling apart, I feel a very visceral disgust, and undeniable fear. Lahiri writes beautifully, but I've become weak. This is when I willingly exile myself world of fiction. I used to drink these stories like truth, and now they are just hollow words on the recyclable cadaver of a tree.

Pussyfooting

This is not the right way to live.

Moments like these

NO SHIT!

Everywhere I turn, I'm being exposed to the world's bullshit, and the rapidity at which people swallow it up. I'm not disenchanted, but beginning to understand what I can expect from others. From the outside looking in, everything becomes amusing.

So yeah! You'll be you and I can be me. There's never any conflict unless one of us begins encroaching on the other's right to exist.

Memory

It goes without saying that there are certain songs that I associate with a certain period of my life (because everyone experiences this phenomenon, if it can even be called that). But the thing that never fails to strike me about music is the fact that listening to a song that I loved last winter during the summer evokes an entirely different feeling than when I listen to the same song right now. Now, not only do I remember what the song meant to me when I first heard it, but I am that girl again.

potatoes and tumors

Like many beautiful objects, the tuberose has an unfortunate name.

la

I'm just that much closer to being done.

no more thinking

little girl
I'm gunna make some belated resolutions

A new year

To my mother, every day is equally important as the previous or next and New Year's Eve holds no greater significance than any other day, but I like the idea that the passing each year marks a new phase of one's life.