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| "Every room is about memory. Every room gives us layers of information about our past and present and who we are, our shrines and quirks and hopes and sorrows, our attempts to prove that we exist and are more or less Okay. You can see, in our rooms, how much light we need-how many light bulbs, candles, skylights we have-and in how we keep things lit you can see how we try to comfort ourselves. The mix in our rooms is so touching: the clutter and the cracks in the wall belie a bleakness or brokenness in our lives, while photos and a few rare objects show our pride, our rare shining moments."
-Anne Lamott
"bird by bird"
Christopher and I decorated our apartment for Christmas. String of white lights in hand, Christopher roamed our small apartment racking his brain for a creative use for all the lights we owned. My phone rang. My mom was on the other end prepared to skewer someone for the time she spent on the phone with the loan company. Christopher had found a place for the last string of lights by the time I got off the phone.
I looked at him and shook my head at his poor choice to wrap them around the base of our papazon. He gave me that smile that told me he was done being Creative Christopher and became Ridiculous Christopher in the short time I was on the phone.
We flopped down on the couch and viewed our cozy little apartment and commented that it was starting to feel more and more like "our" apartment, except for the storage space we awaited that left boxes of keepsakes stacked to the high heavens in our closet and the clogged bathroom sink that houses our own personal Soap Scum Pond. But I guess that makes it like our apartment all the more.
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| Today, Christopher and I paid our security deposit for our first apartment together. Moving, in itself, is exciting to me, but knowing that this is our first apartment together is scary and incredibly awesome at the same time.
We are moving Christopher in next weekend and I will join him in February after the wedding and honeymoon. I have felt so displaced and in transit for so long that I can barely express how excited I am to just be in one place.
Other updates...Applying and looking for Grad Schools, Christopher has a new job, planning an awesome wedding and working.....well three jobs now...so working a lot.
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| I sat in the computer lab thousands of miles away from all friends and family last time I wrote on my blog. It was easy to write all of my thoughts, which were overwhelming at the time, on my blog for the people that I cared about to read. It was also incredibly inspiring to me to read friends' blogs and hear about their lives and keep up with their endeavors. I never felt guilty about this, this meaning the place the internet takes in personal communication, because I felt that the amount of people to keep in touch with everyday would be overwhelming had I chosen a type of communication like the phone. I have a friend that consistently is able to keep up the level of personal communication through phone calls and face to face interaction easily, which is admirable, but exhausting at the same time. She, being an intricately designed person for giving and receiving gratification, thrives on this lifestyle of communication. I, who many times turns monster under the given social pressure, would not do well at all juggling this sort of social web. The blog is a place where I consistently am able to come and read about friends far away and also record my thoughts for my friends that are farther away. I don't feel like this takes away from my relationship from my friends. In fact, I feel like these personal accounts of each person's life is able to draw a community closer seeing as how most of our everyday interactions consist of basic small talk with little time for personal interaction. I have another friend that consistently has inspiring things to say and to add to my life. He can often add wisdom and good advice to parts of my life that I am clueless about, however because of both of our schedules this type of interaction to share our experiences are rare. This week, while filming two short films with interesting people all living in one house, I realized that the ultimate solution to lack of inspiration in daily life and lack of growing community in everyday life is a communal setting where like minded people are able to both build a gratifying community while also nourishing their creativity and intellect. While everybody seems to enjoy tossing this idea around, I feel that the possibility of this happening is more realistic than some may dream of. It seems that the idea of living in such a way would indeed be challenging seeing as how our social perception of living is created from a standard of "what goes on in the home stays in the home" type of thinking. However, this and other roadblocks, I believe, can be broken down with consistent work. What if living in this community actual solved the main problems of the household....financial situations, lack of social contact, guilt from lack of social contact, lack of creativity and time for creativity, lack of spiritual growth....etc. etc. etc. Could this living style actually help us in the ways that we live? Help us set a ideal for the possibilities of living socially, economically and spiritually healthy lives? My problem with the idea of things like "MySpace" and "Facebook" is that both have become simply a means to an end. I went to a conference in New York City where I ended up meeting some really interesting people. When we were all getting ready to leave, everyone's agenda became making contacts quickly and very obviously for the reasons of A. Building their "friends" list and B. Just in case that person you met somehow got into a job market you were interested in before you and you needed them to help you get a job. I have met plenty of people who build their contact list like this and honestly it doesn't feel good to be on either side of that interaction, because the truth is both people are merely a means to an end. No matter how friendly you act. I might as well walk up to someone and say "Hey, you are successful in the field I would like to be in, can I use you to get where you are?" Its the new thing, "building your network" And I personally hate social connotations it has. | | |
| Three years ago when I was a freshman in college, I stood in my dorm after packing up everything at the end of the year and playing a game of kickball in the quad with the people I came to be good friends with that year. There was a certain feeling that came with that moment. As I stood in the dark, with only the streetlamp outside my window illuminating my room as it usually did, tears filled my eyes. I felt as though I was standing in my own history book, realizing at that moment, that the year that just passed would be a year I would always look back on with nostalgia.
I know that each year I change a little bit more, grow and stretch in some way or another, but some years it hurts a little less and feels really good to stretch, like stretching after a afternoon nap.
I stood in our kitchen today and looked out the window to red-tiled roof-tops, chipped green shutters and the church steeple that hovers over the buildings and felt that over-whelming feeling once again.
I walked down the street today finding surprising details that I have never noticed before on my usual route to school, like discovering something new and surprising about an old friend. I thought I knew her well, but now that I am leaving her, she is revealing to me everything I will miss about her. I didn't trust her in the beginning. In fact, I was afraid of her, but I know her now. I know how to handle her quirks, her family, her likes and dislikes, I know what is fun about her and what she does to put me in a bad mood. I know her well and I have to leave her for someone else to be best friends with and I...I am admittedly slightly jealous.
I will soon be home and all of this will seem like a dream to me and I will wonder where I have been for the past four months. | | |
| Lord we need a New Redemption Song Lord we tried, It just seems to come out wrong Won't you help us please, Help us just to sing along A new Redemption Song, A new Redemption Song Lord we need a new Redemption Day All our worries keep getting in the way Won't you help please help us find the words to pray To bring Redemption Day to bring Redemption Day Lord we need a new Redemption Song Lord we tried it just seems to come out wrong Won't you help us please help us just to sing along A New Redemption song, A New Redemption song | | |
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