Dearest Gram,
It’s been an eternity since I wrote to you. It’s been an eternity since you left.
So much has happened. I’m a wife now. A small tragedy from which I will never recover is that you weren’t here to meet him. Continue reading
hope
I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
-Oscar Wilde
Ernest Hemingway said to write hard and clear about what hurts. A truth I am trying to champion is that there is an acuity to my words only when they are written extractions of my tragic vulnerabilities (proof: here); I want to be able to extract my happiness with the same amount of expressive precision. I have hesitated for quite some time to publish this part of my life for fear of brandishing my unpleasantries for the world wide web to witness. But, another truth I am trying to overcome is that I am not very brave. And so I am going to do as Ernest urged. He was, after all, a man so very handsome, and as “I’m just a girl who cain’t so no” to a handsome man… Continue reading
Gonna Get Back Somehow
“Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.”
-Chinese inscription cited by Thoreau in Walden
I haven’t stayed up late in quite some time. Keeping late hours used to be second nature to me. But life alters and thus you must alter with it. Continue reading
Night Rider
“I ask not for any crown,But that which all may win.
Nor try to conquer any world,
Except the one within.”
-Louisa May Alcott
I was terrified to ride her. But not terrified enough not to. We began at my favorite hour, when Night begins its quiet capture of Day. On the back of a painted horse, I breathed in the free night air and let the sounds of Outside accompany my heart’s nervous trepidations.
Anything That’s Part of You
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”
–Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
I define truth as anything you believe to your core. It doesn’t matter what evidence or lack thereof is there; if you feel it in your bones, that’s all that matters. Continue reading
By and By, Part II (For Uncle Brad)
“I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man;
like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.”
-Bob Dylan
-Bob Dylan
Three years ago on this exact day, I met with an emotion never before introduced to me. I still don’t have a name for it. It was a concrete intangibility of anguish to which, until that moment, I had always been a stranger. Continue reading
I Believe In the Man In the Sky
“…Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”
-1 Timothy 4:12
It is here that I am most honest, I think. Because I am writing to really no one in particular but myself, I can express and catalog and capture the things about this existence that inspire me, that change me, that cause me to wonder, and the things that are most precious to my heart.
Promised Land
“‘I’ve been through all this before,’ he said to his heart.
‘Yes, you have been through all this before,’ replies his heart.
‘But you have never been beyond it.'”
-Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light
I learned a word yesterday that I had yet to ever encounter: willowwacks. It means “a wooded, uninhabited area”. It’s an awfully silly sounding word, but I do love what it implies: portions of space yet to be “habitated”. Of course, I have no use for this word in the literal sense; I immediately thought of it metaphorically
All I Needed Was the Rain
“When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent…”
-John Milton, “Sonnet On His Blindness”
There’s an alluring summer storm brewing outside. The bellowing thunder is in good company with the “hard rain” that’s falling. There was a time not too long ago, when it rained with such insistence that the only explanation was that Utah’s lover was unfaithful and all Utah could do to alleviate the pain was cry and cry. Continue reading
Follow That Dream
“There is a danger in the word someday when what it means is ‘not this day.’…The thought ‘Someday I will’ can be a thief of the opportunities of time and the blessings of eternity.”
-Henry B. Eyring
Someday I will:
Birth a child
Go to Greece
Go to grad school
Visit Green Gables
Get a gym membership
Read the Bible
See The Rolling Stones with my dad
Not live in snow
Have a beach house
See my Uncle Brad again
Choose someone else’s happiness over my own
Bathe in a waterfall(not even kidding)
Have a son named Henry
Learn how to sew
Cut my hair regularly
Watch the real news instead of E’s Daily Ten
Meet Matt Dillon
Not need my inhaler
Buy a beach cruiser
Be one with nature
Be one with nature
Have a dog named Elvis
Be the best at something
See Van Gogh’s Memory of the Garden at Etten for real and somehow try to exit the premises with it on my “person”…
Know all there is to know about the mafia
Learn to make a souffle
Read all of Edith Wharton’s books
Read all of Edith Wharton’s books
Sleep outside
Skinny-dip… again
See Les Mis in London
Read The Age of Innocence under a tree with minted Ginger Ale and… macaroons
Try Raspberry Cordial for real
Catch a fish
Buy something from Anthro not on sale
Recycle, Reduce, ReUse
Initiate a national ban against mayonnaise
Publish a manuscript
Drink however much water a day I’m supposed to
Drink however much water a day I’m supposed to
Plant a garden
Smile though my heart is aching
Dance in my kitchen with Mr. Wonderful
Have an intoxicating kiss in the rain just like Holly and Paul
Have an intoxicating kiss in the rain just like Holly and Paul
Furnish a home in love, laughter, truth, and vintage
See India
Dedicate a whole day to Cary Grant movies
Perfect my glow
Personify “incandescently happy”
Play the piano again
Love a little girl named Fiona. Or Vivienne. Maybe I will love two little girls (!)
Perfectly epitomize Audrey H.
Master my “muchness”
Find the perfect pair of pencil pants
Visit Venice
Visit Venice
Make love not war
Protest against littering
Sing on stage
Stop believing in mermaids
Bow at my Savior’s feet
Learn how to prioritize
Save money
Have a trellis of hydrangeas
Be enchanted by NY again
See the orchestra- any orchestra
Put my personal touch on the world
Sing Moonriver as a lullaby
Sing Moonriver as a lullaby
Memorize all the parts of the brain and their functions
Learn to separate my imaginings from my realities
Learn to cope with my imaginings not being my realities
Try a Turkish Delight
Not go one day without praying
Hold a starfish
Hold a starfish
Will not want what I can never have
Reach my potential
Know every little thing about something utterly significant
Know every little thing about something utterly insignificant (I’m well on my way to that one already, actually)
Reach my potential
Know every little thing about something utterly significant
Know every little thing about something utterly insignificant (I’m well on my way to that one already, actually)
Go almost all the way completely Green
Have to stop going to Strung Out shows…
Not regret not smoking weed
See an opera- any opera (which will most likely spoil everyday life for me forever-after)
See an opera- any opera (which will most likely spoil everyday life for me forever-after)
Be the portrait of a lady- at least once
Be able to shop at a Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning
Know all about all the constellations
Care about politics
Dance to Moonriver in an ethereal white dress
Find meaning outside myself
Learn French
Care about politics
Dance to Moonriver in an ethereal white dress
Find meaning outside myself
Learn French
Put notes in my kids lunches
… Hopefully before my eternity runs out.
Peace and Love.
Artwork: “Memories of the Garden at Etten” by Vincent Van Gogh
becoming brittany 