on the news

I’m sitting watching Sunday morning news right now, something I never do. Sunday mornings for me usually mean Joan Baez with coffee and a baked good instead of Meet the Press with health care reform and John Boehner. But they’re voting this afternoon and I want to be a part (in my own small way) of whatever happens.

Regardless of your politics, we’re teetering on something big here, making a movement in an area that’s been roadblocked for decades. I like to think that someday my children will read about these days in their textbooks, and I’ll get to share with them my memory of the excitement, the confusion, and the hope that pushed everything forward.

on “spring”

Welcome, Spring!

Oh, hey, don’t mind the snow and below-freezing temps. They should be moving on any day now.

Right?

RIGHT?!

on tattoos and personal mottos

I don’t have any tattoos. No butterfly on the hip, no fairy on the ankle, no questionable Asian character on the lower back. I am completely undecided about tattoos. Some days I think one would be fun; a self-chosen birthmark of sorts (though, clearly, not from birth). But each time I drift towards even considering one, I’m struck by how decidedly permanent they are and how hopelessly indecisive I am. I know that, if I had a tattoo, I would want it to have lasting meaning for me, a word/sign/symbol that I felt spoke precisely to something that does and always will define me.

Which leads me to personal mottos. Because I believe I am ultimately defined more by words than by anything else. My own, of course, but also those of others that have helped shape me and my perspectives, those that have pushed me along my way, challenged my approaches, illuminated my path. Critics of the quote-lover will say that we  shouldn’t use others’ words to express ourselves, that to rely the words of some poet, artist, or saint is cheap and unoriginal. It’s a thought that haunts me when I read words I love, ones that speak to the truth resting inside me, because I can’t help but wonder how adopting such carefully crafted phrases can really be wrong. Finding that someone somewhere in time has been able to capture in words a sensation I’ve only felt seems to me like a valuable link to another person, another time, another place. I have a hard time believing that ties like that can be anything but good.

So what, then, is my personal motto?

I don’t think I’ve nailed them all down yet. Most of them are mash-ups of my own words and others, but they all run along the themes of self-awareness and development, hope, tolerance, creativity, beauty, and, of course, love. Here’s a few:

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
{Confucius}

Know thyself.
{Socrates}

You can’t ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.
{Tove Jansson}

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited in himself.
{Ralph Waldo Emerson}

You do what you love, and fuck the rest.
{Little Miss Sunshine}

on true sentences

I’m reading Ernest Hemingway’s  A Moveable Feast right now. I love Hemingway. Love his honest tone, his crisp prose, his candidness. In many ways, his writing stands in direct contrast to my own; I think that’s why it inspires me. His sentences are so direct and carefully crafted, whereas mine tend to be these long, tangled vines, curling upon themselves and blossoming here and there with flowery turns of phrase. I want to learn from Hemingway, want to learn to write in a way that he could appreciate. Not because I value his voice over my own, but because I think he possessed a skill that few writers can claim these days. A skill worth modeling now and then.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want the purpose of this blog to be. At times I want too much from it, so I’m trying to winnow down my expectations and draft an idea of what my place in this overcrowded arena could look like. It’s beginning to take shape, and I’m beginning to believe in my own ability to create something worthwhile, for both myself and anyone else who happens along. I think, above all, I really want this to be a space where I can cultivate my own expressions, to sort through the chaff of all my ramblings and emerge with something meaningful. That may take some time, but I’m finally beginning to realize that time, if well used, is my greatest tool.