Today I'd like to...

Strike out west!  What do you think? A couple of months backpacking sounds incredible right now...

(Ansel Adams)

(This is my grandma, checking out an Indian Reservation as part of a 1930s Life Magazine photoshoot!)

(My own picture, Artists' Point in Yellowstone)

(William Henry Jackson)

A Girl Who Reads

 

 

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. 

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow. 

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. 

Buy her another cup of coffee. 

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. 

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. 

She has to give it a shot somehow. 

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. 

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. 

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. 

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. 

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. 

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. 

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads." 

 

Rosemary Urquico

Edward Hopper, "Rooms by the Sea"

Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes a part of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. Out goes naivete, in comes wisdom; out goes anger, in comes discernment; out goes despair, in comes kindness. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive and expansive... The pain leaves you healthier than it found you.
- Martha N. Beck

Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies

I am so in love with Adele's music right now.

And last night I went to see the Avett Brothers in concert. Is there anything better than watching people do what they love? The passion was just oozing out of these guys. Distraction #74 definitely ranks as one of my favorites...




I just found this song on an old Mumford and Sons (love love love) EP, and have been jamming all week.



Do you ever feel you couldn't make it through the day without music?

Plan for the weekend:

1) Think, think, thinking. 

 I've had 10,000 things vying for my attention this week and it has been exceptionally exhausting.  I need some time for my journal,

(I have this one exactly and I love it. But it has been shamefully neglected!)

a warm drink,

(out of one of these delightful teapots, please?)

and some nice, long walks.  I'll have to brave the cold-- it will be worth it for the peace of mind!

“Walking uplifts the spirit. Breathe out the poisons of tension, stress, and worry; breathe in the power of God. Send forth little silent prayers of goodwill toward those you meet. Walk with a sense of being a part of a vast universe. Consider the thousands of miles of earth beneath your feet; think of the limitless expanse of space above your head. Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime.”

Wilfred A. Peterson

2) Planning for the for the future is in order! Job applications lay waiting...

I've been thinking about this passage incessantly of late. Hmm, what are my figs and which will I chose?

3) Much thesis writing!  I'm embarrassingly behind.



And of course, some lovely dinners and coffee dates with friends are on the schedule.  Other than that, I think this weekend will prove an exercise in discipline.  Time to hunker down and get comfy!  See you when I crawl out from under all these ancient sweatshirts and wool socks!

Day after day he sits just so, With some words in a foreign tongue below Whether the wind blows warm or cold, His stone clothes alter never a fold.

These pictures of statues at the Met are spectacular.  I can't stop coming back to them.

(source)

I'm starting to feel that February really will be more... everything!  January really had more than its fair share of delightful moments, but it felt just a little too slow to me.  I woke up this morning and felt like jumping up and yelling:

Let's all have an amazing day, shall we? Starting...now!