The meaning of summer.

Consumed full fat Starbucks and picked at Five Guys french fries in the car today. What a rebel I am.

The cigarette never ends.

My three favorite profiles from Stylelikeu. I adore them to no end.

Scout Willis

Sarah Sophie Flicker

Maria Elba

Italy 5/18

Engulfing one ball of mozzarella per day and a bottle of red wine. Fat and happy.

College, in retrospect.

My year ended Thursday. I can describe it as a flurry of crinkled memories, like some iridescent snowstorm that just gushed and blew me into May. Honestly, I look back on the year only to remember snippets of conversation and images like film stills, and the classrooms and where I sat. It was great, actually, that I spent time with friends, strangers and myself.

My education has reached great capacities, yet in the most unexpected way. I came to college wanting to absorb everything, to soak up some rich broth like a sea sponge yet left knowing that I absolutely knew nothing at all, that nothing of this world is absolute and everything is on the verge of achieving a balance between some two dramatic dichotomies.

I guess I left college with goals toward improving myself and my image of myself. These ballooned about during my final week, during finals week. I remember distinctively, after spending days and nights in the commotion of the library, amidst the highlighters, note cards, and subdued conversation, I came home one night to an absolute and alluring silence that seemingly fed my soul. My head was swimming with facts and figures and percentages as I crawled until the covers. Yet under the dim yellow light, I stared at the coolness and solitude and finally understood the importance of being alone, even for brief moments of time.

That time created this great synthesis which amounted to a general questioning of myself and my actions and the frailty of life. I discovered that academic success does not, in any way, guarantee happiness, that I could honestly die tomorrow, and then what would my life have been? Would I even consider it significant- would my name be etched in some little corner of some desk or even on a piece of gravel?

I was recently recommended Tolstoy's A Confession in which Tolstoy dissects the general basis of his life and living- the ultimate, universal questions. In the questioning of his purpose, he attempts to encompass the infinite, which is absurd in both the philosophical and general sense. He questions why man is not dead yet, why we continue living if answers of science were acceptable enough. If we all know we are going to die and that mankind holds mere seconds of the universe's attention, why not die already? Why are we resilient and so stubborn?

An answer can be for the existence of God. That we live with this inherent notion, perhaps subconsciously, that we are to dedicate our entire beings to mapping the stars of the unknown and of an all-powerful being or energy. If this were true, then we are all on specific journeys of worship. On my first day of religion class, my professor offered a definition of religion as an "ultimate concern"- a concern regarding the end of time. Yet perhaps this answer cannot be so neatly classified into a religion, but a faith. To be faithful, I've come to know, is one of the most difficult actions in the world because it follows no path and offers no conclusive evidence of its existence except our interpretations. Yet to have it sealed with wax in our hearts is a deeply treasured essence connecting us, human nature and the world.

Tolstoy's questions are addicting and intoxicating and I cannot escape them. But I must go on living and questioning and observing as I continue my college education.

After a rejection

you should just die, explode or wither in the sun or flick off with an automatic switch. Yet why can't we?

Convincing enough.

here.

Something Interesting.

There’s something interesting about the initial moments after someone has decided to like you. It seems as if that person cannot entertain any thought except how bathed in yellow light you are or how smooth your skin looks or how many teeth you have. 

It is in those instance when I want to shout from the mountains the endless lists of flaws I, like anyone else, have, or perhaps even more. That image has been photoshopped and stamped and seamlessly ironed, seas away from the ugly muck that is reality. For me, it holds a certain type of expectation, to be well-mannered, kind, to speak softly and curtsy. 

The eyes say it all, that look of enchantment and light that twists at my soul, and makes me want to wear a big coat, some protective layer between me and the rest of the world I’m supposed to be.

I often wonder what it feels like to like someone wholeheartedly (not that I haven’t experienced a fragment of that nerve). But to embrace the fullness of another person is so foreign and so frightening. There are always knots of doubt in my mind I can never loosen.

The same cannot be said about some things. Like experiences, like every single time I step out of my Art History class, when I see the whole world shift and the afternoon sun and wind invigorate me and I’m left with this immense awe of life and of seeing. If only I could cloak this feeling onto a person. Would I, then, be any wiser?

Room to dance again.

Spring Break meant going north for me this year. I spent a deliriously good time with my cousin who is nine years my elder, yet is still childishly innocent and artistic inside. Boston is a city with iron-wrought gates, burnished brick, cold, river air and cigar stubs on sidewalks. It breathes academia and yet contains a balance between urban culture and business suits holding tubes of business plans.

I purchased an expensive black chiffon skirt there. It was partially due to the lack of clothing sales tax, partially because its essence evoked a Carrie Bradshaw-esque spirit: sophisticated yet whimsical and partially because it seems the most appropriate article to bring to Europe that I felt empowered, but not obligated.

But the chiffon skirt has since lay curled in its crinkling parchment and glossy, magenta bag at the bottom of my bed, as if even in my dreams, it stays repressed and inescapable, like my mood these past few weeks.

Springtime always intoxicates me with its perfume, pink petals of overwhelming beauty and everlasting hope. Yet I find myself resorting to the first line of The Wasteland too often, and it's only March. But, in an effort to embrace the agreeable weather and suppress this dark lump of coal folded within me from events of my yesterdays,  I strolled downtown with enjoyable company and let the sun soak through my skin, letting its energy store within the gaps of my flesh for impending clashes and boulders ahead.

With some guiding words, a turn into a vein of main street, which stretches but one mile, past a tea/ bike shop, a rustling creek and a stunted bridge and car park, exists a capital nook, small yet mountainous collections of vintage comics, Majesty magazines, and an accumulation of long forgotten books and never-to-be-forgotten classics. Of course, we cooed over Emerson, Fitzgerald and Hugo; a $2.99 hardcover of Cold Mountain plopped onto my lap. The register proved its legitimacy due to its owner, a man with white tuffs of hair, which formed snowy peaks, seemingly dolloped onto a glistening forehead, a man who appeared to live a quiet life, hunched over the stacks of literature with a scrap of paper and pencil for sales calculations, but who has seen the world through a million eyes and imaginations, all transpired onto ink and grouped into words.

A daunting stack monitored his strategic, vocal arithmetic. I glided through the authors and titles and spontaneously decided to incorporate an Ian McEwan and Bridges of Madison County, to the dismay my plastic shopping bag.

And tonight, out of a frenzy of inexhaustible boredom and curiosity, I started reading the latter. It began articulately, with punctuated words and bold narrative, but eventually flowed like warm caramel with its rich, wise words by the end of the introduction. Defying my Tuesday biology exam, I decidedly sunk into a leather chair in Starbucks and let the current of an amorous, yet morose plot gush.

It was, of course, a tale of tears and burning joy, an ephemeral climax preceding an infinite fall. In essence, it revolved around a basic decision: to go or not to go, to spring into new territory or remain in the old, blue-denim heartland. Waller depicts new love, filling it with poetry and subtle actions, contrasting the retellings of their story, which leaves a fragment of familiarity and mundanity, its technique reminding readers of the true nature of her everyday tasks and marriage in a small town.

Was it a love for the ages to be recorded throughout history, its emotions discriminatory to specific generations? Can the fire be infinite inside a human heart? The novel is too novel, and I'm not certain where my analysis will take me, but it seems as if, upon the moment of completion, the air cleared, the dust dispersed for I had seen a momentary glimpse of blossoms. I swiped off the remnants of my black nail polish and doubt and will prepare for tomorrow. Perhaps, I will finally slide on my black chiffon skirt and embrace what little happiness that resonates from its sweeping twirls, and simply live for the moment.

Nothing better than...

learning about photosynthesis and attempting to memorizing the first 100 digits of Pi (for fun). Come at me.

Having faith is not about being religious.

And emptiness can be infinite and ubiquitous. Summary of world religion so far.
Incomprehensible and kind of addicting at the same time.