words i have read

i have a goal to read 25 books in 2011. so far i have read 3 so i am certainly a bit behind. i've been asking almost everyone for book suggestions. so, dear reader, if you have a favourite book that you think i absolutely can't miss, please let me know! there's nothing quite like being carried away by words; not being able to put the pages down, gripped in another world that makes you think about the one you're in.

here are some passages from my most recent reads, both of which i loved and recommend highly. i wanted to write these words down somewhere because i forget so easily the good experiences i have had with books.

"all those afternoons were the same, but we never got used to them. as far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. the blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. the whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. that hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death -- heroes who died young and gloriously. it was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up for day. how many an afternoon antonia and i have trailed long the prairie under than magnificence! and always two long back shadows flitted before us or followed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass."

"we sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. the curly grass was on fire now. the bark of the oaks turned red as copper. there was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. out in the stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. the breeze sank to stillness. the girls sat listless, leaning against each other. the long fingers of the sun touched their foreheads."

"every inch of her was charged with an energy that made itself felt the moment she entered a room. she was quick to anger, quick to laughter, and jolly from the depths of her soul."

"deep down in each of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating."

"antonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the world; love and credulousness seemed to look out from them with open faces."

"she was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. all the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. it was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. she was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races."

"ain't it wonderful, jim, how much people can mean to each other?"

"this was a fine life, certainly, but it wasn't the kind of life he had wanted to live. i wondered whether the life that was right for one was ever right for two?"

"before i could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life."

"the feelings of that night were so near that i could reach out and touch them with my hand. i had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man's experience is...whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past."

"i hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love."

"humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. so in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are."

[at the airport] "i like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can i say, i like to see people run to each other, i like the kissing and the crying, i like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all the change, i like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone..."

"sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives i'm not living."

"she said, 'there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself,' she saw through the shell of me into the center of me."

"what if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed according to your mood? if you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shittake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue. everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you'd never want to tell a person whose sin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell them congratulations! another reason it would be a good inventions is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. am i frustrated? am i actually just panicky? and that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. but with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, i'm happy! that whole time i was actually happy! what a relief!"

"it's hard to say goodbye to a place you've lived. it can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person."

"you cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."

"i regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, oskar. because if i were to live my life again, i would do things differently. i would change my life. i would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me. i would jump with mary on the bed, even if i made a fool of myself. i would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them."

"i think about all of the things i've done, oskar. and all of the things i didn't do. the mistakes i've made are dead to me. but i can't take back the things i never did."

"the children of new york lay on their backs, body to body, filling every inch of the park, as if it had been designed for them and that moment. the fireworks sprinkled down, dissolving in the air just before they reached the ground, and the children were pulled, one millimeter and one second at a time, into manhattan and adulthood. by the time the park found its current resting place, every single one of the children had fallen asleep, and the park was a mosaic of their dreams. some hollered out, some smiled unconsciously, some were perfectly still."

"feeling pain is still better than not feeling, isn't it?"

"we got at the end of the line for the elevator. i looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for."

"'i love this building.' 'what is it about this building?' mr. black asked. she said, 'if i had an answer, it wouldn't really be love, would it?'"

"why didn't i learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my biggest regret is how much i believed in the future."

"i probably fell asleep, but i don't remember. i cried so much that everything blurred into everything else. at some point she was carrying me to my room. then i was in bed. she was looking over me. i don't believe in god, but i believe that things are extremely complicated, and her looking over me was as complicated as anything ever could be. but it was also incredibly simple. in my only life, she was a mom, and i was her son."

"i said, i want to tell you something. she said, you can tell me tomorrow. i had never told her how much i loved her. she was my sister. we slept in the same bed. there was never a right time to say it. it was always unnecessary. the books in my father's shed were sighing. the sheets were rising and falling around me with my sister's breathing. i thought about waking her. but it was unnecessary. there would be other nights. and how can you say i love you to someone you love? i rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. here is the point of everything i have been trying to tell you oskar. it's always necessary."

a bit of luck

i just discovered these emboldening thoughts from steve jobs's 2005 commencement speech at stanford:

again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. you can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. you have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. don't lose faith…your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. if you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. as with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. so keep looking. don't settle.
your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. they somehow already know what you truly want to become. everything else is secondary.

lots of stuff like this is keeping me going. i am determined to feel the full extent of this mortal experience and to kick it in the butt and press forward.

my mom serendipitously was in town for 8 hours on monday night (rerouted flight). i cried to her for a few of those hours. at the end, she said, “you’re going to be okay.” i said, “i’m going to be awesome.” all i need is to summon a little extra trust in my heart, trust in the lord, brilliantly replenished positivity, and maybe just a bit of luck.

i tried to channel some good fortune my way by celebrating the day of luck at san francisco’s st. patrick’s day festival and parade a few days back.

kels and i caught flying candy and scored some green beads, boogied with a tuba player in a marching band, decided to get in on the parade ourselves and walked a few blocks waving at happy onlookers, ate some corn beef and cabbage sandwiches, chilled on the sunny grass with a bunch of tipsy pot-smoking teens, danced our hearts out with the celtic band and then met up with josephine and of course a leprechaun:

i’m pretty sure we scored some luck of the irish.

another lucky thing that has happened recently is that my so-loved friend and old roommate jessica was in town for one night for a conference. love this girl.

i love that life feels hard!!! good things are ahead, and great things are right here.

postscript: yes, i realize that this blog seems extremely self-absorbed right now (or always?). that’s because i sometimes feel excruciatingly self-absorbed right now (not always, i promise). i get it, i hate it, i'm sorry, i'm working through it.

take a stroll inside my brain

warning: this is a long, introspective post that is intended mostly for a) personal therapeutic reasons and b) people who amazingly have an express interest in the drawn-out inner workings of my mind+heart (i.e. my parents). and also for the sake of keeping this blog, which has become a sort of life record, real and representative. so - proceed knowingly or disregard.

yesterday i came across this little anecdote in an awesome talk by elder wirthlin - "some feel as though the world is their oyster; others feel as though they are the oyster itself, plucked form the ocean, cracked open, and robbed of all that is precious to them." i'm overgeneralizing here, and being a little dramatic (oh, i just must), but yes! i relate. eight months ago i felt like i was exuberantly holding the world - my own enchanting, exciting little oyster - in my hot hands; now i feel like i actually am that oyster, but devoid of its charm and gleam, now dull and battered.

i think i am an exceptionally positive and genuinely happy person, but for the sake of being real, i've gotta say -- this stinks and lately, i have at times been quite miserable. even as i write this i cringe, because the core of me fights against that kind of rhetoric at all costs, but today i put my hands in the air and admit - i am having a hard time, and my heart is heavy and weepy.

the other day my roommate told me that in the wee hours of one morning this week, i was sobbing and whimpering in my sleep. in many ways (i'll spare the details here), somehow i've painted myself into a corner that feels excruciatingly grueling, confusing and aching. because (at least for me) meaningful work and being a part of something bigger than myself is such a huge source of self-esteem, this loooong bout of unemployment makes me feel very narrowly for myself, and it is hard to not let that lack of self-assuredness (which i swear used to be one of my strengths!) seep into all aspects of my life. i'm so tired - exhausted of trying to convince employers i am awesome and exhausted of trying to, in turn, convince myself that i am awesome. at times i just feel like i'm in such a dark place - there are a lot of elements (of my personality and the situation) that make this particular trial very true and very intense for me. all this causes me to feel like i am being the worst version of myself, when really - i promise! - i am resilient and passionate and faithful and everlastingly optimistic. and that is frustrating! i feel like i have nothing to offer the world, no skills or value, no direction or purpose... it is all very irrational but also so very real.

i know. major debbie downer.

there have been many times in the past couple of months when i poignantly and forcefully stop myself mid-downward-spiral and demand - NO! i am not seeing things clearly, and this is not who i am, and CUT THE CRAP, my life is awesome. i have moments of intense peace and reassurance, incredibly sweet and perfect tender mercies pop up, people's kindness warms my frozen heart (yes, dramatic, but also illustrative), i find little happy things all around me, i see things in perspective and re-realize how outrageously blessed i am. i get that, and i constantly feel like i shouldn't complain and that i have so much to be happy about and grateful for, and deep in my heart of hearts i am still that annoyingly cheerful and passionate girl, but right now i am consciously deciding to not clobber this significant trial with stubborn positivity, but to own it, and embrace it, and let it consume me in a way that allows me to really triumph over it.

i just love being alive, and i love the whole spectrum of experience and emotion that comes with mortality. i feel like this hardship is making me more completely human, and i love that. i want to have every single mortal experience that is possible and necessary in my life. i don't want to miss out on any. cliche, but said so often because it is actually true: the hardest things in our lives become the most beautiful and valuable. i like hard things. they make me better. my whole life my mom's voice has echoed these three words in my head: hard is good. i believe that with all my heart; that sums up so much of my life philosophy. hard is good. hard is also hard. it's just HARD! but i am authentically grateful for this trial of patience and faith, for these nights spent praying aloud and crying in my car, for this seemingly mammoth battle to keep my head up, for the things i am learning and the way i'm being hollowed out, and the sensations i'm experiencing and the bending of perspective and the roughness of the oyster.

in a lot of ways i feel like i am waiting for my real life to begin. i can identify with this thought from an excellent book i just finished (more on that later): "sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives i'm not living." i am learning about making choices and pressing forward. i think i am so afraid of having to turn around in the future that i somehow stand still in the present in fear of making a committed and not perfectly, perfectly right decision. my fear of wasting time has caused me to waste it. because i am overwhelmed with the world being my oyster, i have become the oyster itself. i'm finally reaching a point just now where i think i am coming to understand that i just need to (as i have so many times before, but somehow in a different context) push aside all the pros and cons and the complexity of this pivotal time and just GO. just make some choices and go forward. i need to step out of my sad little corner and onto the wet paint.

this quote has always served as sort of my life mission statement, my mantra: "go confidently in the direction of your dreams. live the life you have imagined" (thoreau). i am a romantic heart that subscribes unabashedly to the lofty philosophy of living your dreams. i am quixotic. i am so determined, even stubborn, about living the adventurous, lush life i have imagined. i do think this is an admirable strength, and it is something i like about myself. and i feel really blessed that in so many ways i have lived this quote, and that has brought me a lot of joy. but lately i am coming to understand the extraordinary and strangely beautiful power of - gasp! - abandoning this ideal.

indeed, there is something great to be said of making some big, heart-wrenching sacrifices, surrendering to things less glimmering, and accepting aspects of life that were not imagined or never existed in a dream. in this sense, maybe there is sometimes great power in giving up. society is endlessly inspired by people who make their dreams come true, but what of people who traverse through big and hard changes and formulate new dreams that are less glamorous but more authentic and, in the end, more gratifying in an unseen and unsensational way? i think my background has led me to dream of a very outwardly exotic and adventurous life, but i'm discovering the astounding virtue of consciously succumbing to things that become strangely extraordinary in their seeming ordinariness.

now i feel like i am writing myself in circles, and i think it's well time to end this stroll inside my brain, but my point is: i will continue going confidently in the direction of my dreams, which includes a life in which my dreams can change and be tempered in a paradoxically beautiful way.

the place i'm in in time and space is truthfully significantly hard. but -- hard is good.

end.

funemployment

there are some definite perks to being technically unemployed.

my mission companion/dear friend brianna came to town and i was able to spend two days, mid-week, just playing with her. on wednesday i showed her my city and on thursday she showed me her homeland (she is from santa rosa, which is about an hour north of san francisco). it was so great.

it was brianna’s spring break and she drove out to ca with two of her friends from utah state. it was fun to show them the city.

the next day i was introduced to the wonders of the sonoma coast, and i absolutely fell in love – it was gorgeous. we ate clam chowder at bodega bay and then beach hopped up the shore. it was a perfect day – especially because we got spotty sunshine after a morning downpour.

yes, although my no-job situation genuinely seems to get harder everyday, i’m positive i will (one day soon) really miss funemployment.

look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?

tuesday night i danced down market street with a gold paper crown on my head, belting songs from “the little mermaid” with all my soul. and ever since i have had those catchy tunes perpetually stuck in my head!!

best $15 i have maybe ever spent was on “the little mermaid” singalong at the castro theater (rivaled only by the “sound of music” equivalent in november).

we all got a “goodie bag” as we filed into the gorgeous, intricate, rich old theater and the excitement and anticipation mounted. inside our bags were: a golden crown so we could all look like king tritan, a plastic dinglehopper with which to brush our hair, a pearl necklace to be fancy like ariel, a little bottle of bubbles to make the under-the-sea thing even more real, a glow stick to mimic ursela’s glowing shell containing ariel’s angel voice, and a party popper to celebrate with when prince eric finally gets the memo to “kiss the girl”!

we had quite a crowd cheering, sneering, screaming and belting it out. but i’m pretty sure we were the best singalongers there. we sat on the second row and it was so magical to look back and see hundreds of glowsticks swaying and bubbles floating as we all crooned and partied with sebastian and friends.

oh, and there was a costume contest, and kelsey entered. she totally deserved first prize, especially because she was the only natural red-head up there! the little old man at the organ played for quite a while before the show started and he was so adorable. i love that he is sporting tritan’s crown with the rest of us!

exhilarating. magical. thrilling. so so so fun! topped off by a blood orange float at bi-rite. love this city!

i really love this

"it is of less consequence to prevent him from dying than to teach him how to live. to live is not to breathe, but to act; it is to make use of our organs, of our senses, of our faculties, of every element of our nature which makes us sensible of our existence. the man who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most years, but he who has had the keenest sense of life. men have been buried at the age of a hundred who died at the moment of birth. they would have gained by going to their graves in their youth, if up to that time they had really lived."

-rousseau's parenting advice.

my overarching goal of mortality: have the keenest sense of life.

the place where i live

i have discovered some of my new favourite spots in the bay the past couple of weeks.

i did not take these pictures (except for an obvious few). i have been trying to see things completely through my own eyeballs rather than through a camera lens. also, i am kind of amazed at how i can’t find really good pictures on google. so imagine these places about 5x cooler than what you see.

here’s what i have to share - some very neat places in space and some wonderful places in time…

-i had a decision to make last week and i needed a good place to think, so i decided to go check out the wave organ at the marina just as the sun had set. there is a spit of land that extends out from the yacht clubs and at the end there is a fascinating structure – someone has engineered pipes in a way that the waves of the bay make music. apparently the best time for listening is at high tide, so when i went i couldn’t hear much, but it was worth going just for the ambiance and the views – the city glimmering on one side, the bay sweeping from pier 39 to alcatraz to the golden gate bridge on the other. it was so cold that night as i sat on a rock and soaked up the glorious sights. i felt alive, human, real, somehow aware of all my cells.

-i have happened upon lafayette park in pacific heights a time or two, and i love the views it offers down san francisco’s long, hilly avenues and over victorian homes to the bay. {no sufficient google images. trust me. it’s fantastic.}

-a sunny, chilly, sparkling afternoon stroll around lake merritt with jospehine last saturday made me have a little crush on oakland. i love the gothic-looking lampposts with copper-colored glass and the strings of big bulb twinkle lights along the path that lines the water. downtown oakland reflects all squiggly in the lake, and everything’s a bit quiet but also a bit electric.

-on sunday mornings i like to take a walk to mt. davidson park. it is a very uphill walk. but the view when i’ve arrived makes some sort of triumph and thrill run through my veins. i think the vista is just as spectacular, if not more, than the one from twin peaks, but at mt. davidson there are no tourists and it’s as if the whole city and bay sprawled out in front of me is actually just mine.

-i spent a saturday afternoon exploring a super neat special exhibit at the legion of honor museum with ellen and josephine. there is something so perfect about how that building is perched on a hill overlooking both the city and the bridge and about how it feels like you’re in france while you stroll through the courtyard and the galleries. the exhibit was ridiculously beautiful dresses reminiscent of fashion through the centuries (among other things) made entirely out of paper. quite flabbergasting, actually. other places i simply must mention from this delightful saturday are: 1. little skillet, which is a soul food joint in a tiny, random alley in soma where we ate fried chicken and waffles with kiwi lemonade on a cement landing across the street from the hole-in-a-wall restaurant, and 2. the pier at crissy field where sat in the salty air gazing across the bay and toward the ggb and saw wild sea lions right under our dangling feet!

-after tiring a bit of my running route along the beach, i’ve been trying to pick a different neighborhood nearly every day to run through. the other evening it was nob/russian hill. i loved hearing the sound of the mechanics of cable cars buzzing under the tracks, peeking in at different combinations of people having dinner in restaurant windows, seeing bellmen sitting at their desks in outrageously pretty lobbies, catching wafting smells from bakeries, coffee shops, and ethnic restaurants, gasping at stunning views down hills flashing into sight at intersections, passing people walking home from work talking on their cell phones, pounding into the ground of san francisco at every step. the sky turned indigo and it got dark. i got a little lost. and i loved that.

-last friday i felt like having a date with myself. i took myself out to dinner and people watched and read my book, and then i explored the palace of fine arts. i’ve been by many a times, but i’ve never really walked all the way around and through, and i’d never been there at nighttime. the structure is magnificent and majestic all lit up, and no one is around. it’s like a sacred little spot of light on the face of the earth. i made my voice echo under the dome, was startled by the swans gliding in the moonlight, and i climbed up onto the side of a facade and let the cold air tickle.

-yesterday i was fabric shopping in the mission with kelsey and krystle, and we happened upon clarion alley, which is a little side street between mission and valencia plastered, every inch, in fantastic street art. i had seen a corner of the valencia side before, but never walked all the way through. it is outrageously awesome. i love the super bright hues (especially the teal on brown shingles), the geometric designs, the weirdly inspiring quotes, the feeling of wild expression and color. and also i just love the mission in general – walking around friday night and yesterday morning filled me up with loud and strangely beautiful culture. the mission is so alive.

so – did you notice that most of these places seem really romantical? i did. from time to time i muse over the thought that i would make a really good boy. seriously. i would be awesome at sweeping girls off their feet. i wouldn’t mind turning the wonder of these spots into a bit more romantic woo…

all these golden places and golden slices of time are keeping me going. i have a lot to be happy about, and so, amidst a time in life that sometimes seems so hard and a gleaming heart that sometimes seems so heavy, i am happy. because after all, "knowing what [i] know and living as [i] am supposed to live, [i] really have no place, no excuse, for pessimism and despair" (president howard w. hunter). indeed, life is beautiful.