spoke too soon

I've been making two lists for four months now: reasons to stay, and reasons to come home. You have always been on the former.

When you abandoned my heart, you abandoned your right to pity it.

Don't you dare.

I less than less than three you

I've come a really long way. Transcended all the way to Acceptance, even.

Problem with Acceptance is its relationship to forgiveness.

Problem with forgiveness is its relationship to mercy.

Rosebud Incarnation

This is amazing. Captures the age-old dilemma, "are adaptations helpful or harmful?" Considering mash-ups are all the rage, it's easy to wonder if talent is even talented anymore. Is all the new material gone? Are artists too lazy to find it? But I watch this and think, borrowed video or not, this is talent.

Rosebud Incarnation from Slim Jim Spur on Vimeo.

Fettered

I'm pretty sure I only like the idea of have nothing and no one to weigh me down for years and years because that's the fashionable thing to do. To look forward to the time when I can finally answer to no one, travel endlessly, and return when I'm ready.

What jazzes me is finding people to answer to. Finding people to travel with. Forgoing the need to return because every new place I find is home.

You said I must eat so many lemons/'cause I am so bittah

"my fingertips are holding onto
the cracks in our foundation
and I know that I should let go
but I can't."
- Kate Nash, "Foundation"

***
I eat carbs now.

Guess what other rule I broke?

If ever you doubted my will power, you were entirely justified.

Tug-of-Peace

Was talking to My BFF Molly last night, and we were discussing relationships of any sort and how the lasting ones are dependent on both members knowing it's worth it to be 100% of the relationship when all the other person can afford is 0%. How long each person can tolerate doing so is a different story entirely, which is why the lasting ones are also made up of two people who wouldn't wish to subject the other to it, but thinking about this got me thinking. [What else is new]

Am I supposed to be giving 100% right now? Am I supposed to have the same final say I'm learning to forgo and swear til I die that I had something that should have lasted?

Pretty sure the answer is no.

Pretty sure.

Go ahead and shoot the messenger. We never liked him anyway.

"Have you heard, my Mona Lisa,
have you heard what you are?
You're a new morning."

***

I was looking at the history of film in a museum today, and I could see my face in the showcase's glass. Like seeing my face amidst the history. I saw a little boy looking at the Star Wars action figures and wondered to myself... at which point in life does a person transition from aching to grow up to aching to stay young? I feel as though, in accordance with the way the rest of my life has happened, I'll reach that point sooner than others my age. Maybe it's that I've already made a decision that separated me from my family, or that I've been exposed to and made decisions that have aged me more than high school ever did, or that my heart's been broken and I pulled myself out of its muck, or that I've gone from knowing what I want to do to putting four other jobs back on the table, or that I've realized that no matter my expectations of people, the real battle is fighting to keep them rather than fighting to acknowledge that people have met them, but I'm channeling Peter Pan more now than I ever have.

Which is weird, because I also look forward to grown-up life every day, as I've written in previous posts. But the twilight zone I'm chillin in is bigger than college. It's the massive wave of "you can do whatever you want once you figure out what it is that you want." And a lot of the people around me live for nothing more than that freedom, but life is a lot like a research paper. The more freedom, the less security that the result will match the expectations held for it. As though there's an undisclosed rubric that we'll miraculously match if we can bring ourselves to be that prodigal.

And sometimes I wish I were prodigal, and when I do, I reflect on the question asked of me a couple years ago: "Why are you content with mediocrity?" I probably won't ever forget that question or how difficult it is to answer; I never know whether to defend mediocrity or to defend my...extraordinariness. Most days, I go to bed defending mediocrity.

Another question: is advocating chasing peace the same thing as advocating running away from conflict? I never saw myself as one to go AWOL, but that L is something I decide for myself...isn't it?

***

"At every occasion I'll be ready for the funeral."