In between days

"I can't remember all the times I've tried to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass" _Counting Crows


Yesterday 

I hung a map of this state on my wall. So I can trace the roads  I've wandered down, and the origins of people that matter. Here are the twin cities where my parents met.
State Street and Madison, where I came into existence. This is the town where my best friend was born.
This is the stretch of Milwaukee Avenue where my immigrant grandparents owned a greenhouse.
88, the highway I've taken west five times this year, to get away from the concrete that constitutes my life. Maps are comforting. They stretch out, all the interconnecting streets,  a twisted yarn full of memories.

Today

I woke up early. It is becoming habitual, and seeing the sunrise never gets old. Falling in love with the way that the floorboards creak in the silence, and my otherwise noisy house is still asleep. 

Posey, my Mother's bird whom I have named after the Giants catcher, protests a lot. He sounds like Jibber Jabber, my childhood toy that would make those squeaky sounds and bob his head. 
When I was five, my parents were going to Jamaica, and they asked me if I had any toys I'd like to give to the children there. I sat Jibber down for a serious conversation in the playroom, consulting him to see whether or not he would care to be adopted by foreign children. I whispered that it would be an adventure, and gave him a hug as I relinquished the hold on my favorite toy.
The realization that loving some(one, thing) means letting them go to seek their own great perhaps came to me at an early age.
Anyways, over coffee I started on Zelda Fitzgerald's complete works. Zelda fascinates me, her struggle with being a side kick to F. Scott when she was born a heroine. Their whole relationship was just this big dramatic man vs. man, man vs. self struggle, and I can't help but sympathize. Rather positive I'll have more thoughts on this when I finish. (Katie and I are having daughters named Zelda and they're going to be best friends and write a book called "The Zeldas" we have this all planned out).



After finishing one of the short stories I left the house in my pajamas to take pictures of the sunrise.
There must be a metaphor hidden somewhere in the fact that photographs never capture the reality of a scene. They don't tell you what the moment felt like, or exactly how those colors plastered themselves across the sky, or how the frost nipped at my bare feet, casting fairy dust over the rooftops and grass, or how the birds sing as they set off on their yearly road trip down south. There is a certain magic in the fact that words, photographs or music will only capture most of the moments.

Lately

there has been this fight going on inside my head. The fight is between trying to conform to the standards of normalcy, or embracing the weirdness that is my life.

Normal people do not stand sheepishly before the librarian in a tee shirt and a beanie on a cold day, checking out Bukowski, skateboarding magazines, regular YA fiction, biographies, Vogue, and books about the government. Or come home to a house in which your father is playing Green Day in the study and your mom is playing hymns in the kitchen. Normal people do not get up in the middle of family breakfast to walk across the room in order to shut a cabinet someone left open. Normal people do not write stories in their heads, and test out the words in whispers (the best time is in the car, FYI, strangers think you're singing to some nonexistent radio song instead of talking to yourself). Pretty sure normal people do not pour hot water over coffee grounds to make "hobo coffee". Or knit scarves while watching Lord of The Rings.
Those little inconsistencies between who I am, and the people everyone else believe I should be, drive me crazy. It's not that I care, or at least I know enough that I shouldn't care. More that a life of being the weird one and come from a family of strange people sort of wears down on you after eighteen years, and given the chance to reinvent oneself, it becomes tempting at times to throw out all those idiosyncrasies.

I won't give up being strange though.
In the end I know that to attempt such a thing would be a form of spiritual suicide.

I want my best friend to be okay. More than anything. That is all.


Books in the mail

My textbooks are slowly trickling in. Getting passionate about these topics. The design book is one of those beautiful books that make you fall in love with flipping through the glossy pages.
The microeconomics book has this amazing narrative, too. It's neither patronizing nor heady.
Check out this line:
"On a summer afternoon, the drive home from University of Chicago to the north side of the city must be one of the most beautiful in the world. On the left on Lake Shore Drive, you pass Grant Park, some of the world's first skyscrapers and the Willis Tower. Traffic, however, is hell"
I blame my Dad and Emma for my fanatical interest in Economics ;)

How is everyone?

16 comments:

  1. Weightless. The word describes my life in just about every way. Where it fails to define each breath, it feels like it does.
    I am gradually learning to be spontaneously thankful, which is quite the accomplishment, considering whatever you want to consider. When i say I'm thankful for friends, I can actually mean it now. When i say I'm thankful for music, it's no longer because it is my life, but augments the continued survival of unending dissonance. When I say grace, it is not because i hold a holy book in my hands; it is because i have felt and seen it, albeit in the slightest ways. But if my brain decides to wake up, i can see just how blessed i am, even if when awoken it is only because there is more labor to be done and quotas to accomplish.
    I've come the closest to playing and singing in a coffee shop today... with a dear friend. It gives me hope that all the crap pays off sometime.
    Struggle and unbalanced. That is tomorrow's yesterday. That is what I live and talk and breathe. What i will look behind to find and ahead to forget. What, more than time, brings worth and weight.
    I do not know what freedom is. But i know it is offered me. I see some of how it lives. If only i would always believe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do it Jonah. Be weightless. Embrace it. Play in coffee shops. Find grace outside of a book that people toss around heavily. Find music where it swells up inside of you and you need it to explain life.

      You amaze me.

      Delete
  2. I like the odd people. And as cliché as it has become, I don't know anyone without weird idiosyncrasies. "Normal" people are just people we don't know well, or who have different idiosyncrasies.

    I am glad you wrote this.

    I am... becoming new. Gearing up for the transition that is coming.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I understand that there aren't any truly "normal" people, Sara. It's more this facade that people tend to put up around themselves, and an idea. An appearance of normalcy.

      Thank you.

      Hmmm, transition? I miss our emails.
      Becoming new is never a bad thing.

      Delete
  3. So why did you name the bird after him?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They brought him home the day before the Giants won the World Series. I've been a huge giants fan since I was young.
      No one would agree to Zito, Panda or Timmy but they found Posey appropriate for a parakeet.

      Delete
    2. I think Posey is an acceptable name for a parakeet.

      Delete
  4. I understand what you mean about being 'strange'. I am a strange girl myself, and have been told so many times! But I'm learning not to mind, and to embrace the weirdness! Some things I just love too much to ever give up, no matter what other people think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Right. It's just finding confidence in what you love. My cousin always quotes that "Be who you are, those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" line from Dr. Seuss to me, and I always forget it's simple truth.

      Delete
  5. Life is a routine. Full of finding joy in superfluous moments (i.e. brushing my hair as it gets longer by the week, stirring milk into my coffee and for that brief moment feel like the swirls, ever dissipating into the black void of smoky haze.) Though it's a routine, I find it to be incredibly enjoyable.

    Enjoyable: Not only does this word describe routines, it describes this blog. You are an incredible writer- managing to grasp humanity and genuine thoughts within a mere sentence and I can only offer applause and a praise written by keys pressed by my frigid fingertips.

    Well Done. You emote.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Also, while watching Lord of the Rings is the absolute PERFECT time to knit scarves. I've done it- for YEARS. *Nods* So I know. I feel you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AH! Isn't it though? I have such long ones that I barely remember working on because I was so absorbed.

      Enjoyable also describes reading your comment.
      Oh God, I try my best to grasp humanity, it's such an elusive thing.

      I love routine things too, but more, I love that moment when you get caught up in the realization of how beautiful those normal things are.

      Nice to meet you :)

      Delete
  7. everything you wrote about normal people not doing? um hi. I guess I'm not normal :) nice to meet you.

    I'm glad I found your blog just now. it's quite lovely :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice to meet someone who is "not normal" in a similar way :)
      Thank you, love. Do you have a blog? I cannot find it from clicking your profile.

      Delete
  8. Lovelove this post! And your wall, especially the mirror. I want to put a map up in my new bedroom. We share the same state! And oh goodness. I know exactly what you mean about standing sheepishly in front of the librarian. I'm always afraid they'll say something about my strange book choices. Sorry about this scatterbrained comment on an old-ish post. I love your blog, and I'm your newest follower! =) Keep being strange :D

    ReplyDelete
  9. your rant about being the odd or strange one made me smile. :) more than once i have been stopped mid sentence and been told "you know, you're weird...but in a good way". and i still am not quite sure how much to take this as a compliment. strangely enough though, most of the weirdness you described are things i do as well. i didn't know other people made up stories and whispered certain phrases under their breath to make sure they sounded right. :)
    but i understand feeling tired of it. because it sometimes makes it so hard to relate to "normal" people or for them to relate to you. although im not even sure what a "normal" person is...
    anywho, great post. :) you dont just write well but you are honest. which must be the most captivating thing. (loved your thoughts about pictures. never been able to put those small realizations into words. yet somehow it seems important that you did. :) )

    ReplyDelete

"Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole"
_Adam Duritz

I love hearing things that aren't my own pathetic echoes.