sensi

and in these times of unrest and disillusionment, i turn to things that i can see, smell, touch and feel. yes, i can't know anything for sure, but i can't deny what my senses are telling me.

i find comfort in the things that seem to endure. i find comfort in the tactile, the tangible -- the truth of my senses.

at the same time, i want to crawl out of my skin at the thought of the very things that bring me comfort. i don't want comfort any more than i want disillusionment, i realize. i want freedom. i want the fearlessness of my childhood, the intensity of my adolescence, and the wisdom of my impending adulthood.

twenty-one years i've been alive and god knows how many more i will live...wasted time is perhaps the bane of my existence.

see, smell, hear, taste, touch: here's to my five senses and the hope that a sixth one exists.

from Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

I don’t know if Barack Obama can lead that, but the notion that the idealism he has inspired in so many young people doesn’t matter is dead wrong. "Of course, hope alone is not enough,” says Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, “but it’s not trivial. It’s not trivial to inspire people to want to get up and do something with someone else.”

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

[S]he was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

—Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

"We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. "

—Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

warm and fuzzy thoughts to get me (and maybe others) through the night:

warm and fuzzy thoughts to get me (and maybe others) through the night:

1) everyone makes mistakes, true, but it's equally true that everyone has a heart. focus on the heart of it.

2) silence can be more damaging than speaking out, because it requires sacrificing our spirit.

3) my life seems split from my "values." how can i bridge this divide? tell myself i can.

"We can yell at the TV newscasters and complain about how bad things are, using our bitterness as a hedge against involvement. Or we can work, as well as we can, to shape a more generous common future" (Paul Rogat Loeb).

4) learn radical patience.

"optimism is the belief that things are going to turn out as you would like, as opposed to hope, which is when you are thoroughly convinced something is moral and right and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences" (Vaclav Havel).

5) don't fall into a cycle of cynicism. hold fast to your ideals.

"People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle our skin, but to give up our enthusiasm wrinkles the soul" (Samuel Ullman).

Sonnet XLIII
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.
From Collected Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, published by Harper & Brothers Publishers. Copyright © 1956 by Norma Millay Ellis.

un-remember

...And the more I remove myself from a situation, the further I get away from it, it's so easy to forget the little details and cloud my memory of it.

but there are certain situations, intense, dramatic, intensely subtle, dramatically instantaneous, that don't fade, no matter how hard i wish they would.

i forget the things i want to remember and remember the things i want to forget.

and it's in this paradox, this cliche, that i am trapped.

trapped willingly or unwillingly? that's the real question. am i willing myself to remember the rough, the bad, the painful, the sad, or is it really out of my control, this randomly selective memory of mine?

"Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.”

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery