Now, now

On his deathbed, Voltaire responded to the priest asking him if he renounced Satan for his Last Rites, he responded,"Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."

Bake or sleep

Last night I baked brownies from scratch and Drew took some to work and I got mucho praise. Naturally I've been savoring this all day and will continue to feed off this gem for the next two months, as I am apt to do whenever I get any sort of positive feedback for producing something that's not ONLY edible but genuinely enjoyed. And so of course I was like, well tonight I'm going to bake more!!! Peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, mmm. SO AMPED.

Except it's 8.52 pm now and I, in my satiated state after finishing Chloe's leftover baby yogurt, and ready to go to bed. At the end of the day, sleeping is more my forte than baking ever will be.

Hypothetical situation between Drew & 18 year old Chloe

Stepping it up

I admit that my blog has been pretty barren as of late, and it's been gnawing at me. So a top priority action item is to update more!

How sweet

A paaaasha thought

Valentine's Day is like watching a really in-shape couple running together and talking about what fabric drapes they want to put in the guest room.

So keenly

I am homesick, all of the time.

Chinese New Year

Chloe in her New Year outfit

Before the party people arrived, it was just us. <3

Tut, tut, Pablo

Picasso once read a poem he had written aloud at a gathering at Gertrude Stein's house, saying that if he applied his energies to writing as he did to painting, he could become a great poet. After he had finished reading, he awaited Stein's response. After a pause, she said, "Pablo, go home and paint."

Extraordinary mind

Click picture to enlarge. Via

Day is Done

While sifting through a hundred poems, I came across this. It is my favorite so far. If I were still at NYU, attending poetry workshops, I would bring this to class. It's by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

The day is done, and the darkness

   Falls from the wings of Night,  

As a feather is wafted downward

   From an eagle in his flight.          

I see the lights of the village

   Gleam through the rain and the mist,  

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,

   That my soul cannot resist:     

  

A feeling of sadness and longing,

   That is not akin to pain,             

And resembles sorrow only

   As the mist resembles the rain.

  

Come, read to me some poem,

   Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

   And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

   Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

   Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,

   Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

   And to-night I long for rest.

  

Read from some humbler poet,

   Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

   Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,

   And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

   Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

   The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

   That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

   The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

   The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music

   And the cares that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

   And as silently steal away.

Abduction

Listening to California Gurls and E.T. at work right now.
So amped!!!

If I don't hurry

and clean our room, I'm pretty sure Drew will divorce me...

We just put our feet where they had to go

i've been thinking a lot and i realize that the reason why i always look back on J. with the most unique, wrenching gratitude and nostalgia and even a bit of yearning is because he was the only person who ever pursued me at my lowest point. the others started liking me before then--and they often stuck with me during the bad times--but J. was the only one who actually went after me in the thick of it. it's almost as if the melancholy drew him to me. the first time i ever watched Fight Club was with him at my bedside, and i didn't even mind that when he ate some of my salad, he chomped the lettuce so loudly.

once we walked through the night olives, the glow from the path lamps revealed our breaths. his nose was runny from the cold, and i saw the way it glistened--the transparent wateryness at his nostril and i wanted to reach over to dab at it gently with my gloved hand, the way i might have with little daniel: naturally, with a tenderness so absolute. a gesture that was genuine because it was automatic, without thought, only instinct.

i wondered if he was the one i could feel safe with. and then i realized that i had been vulnerable all along. openly so, and so easily--because he made it easy to be myself, to be honest about the hurt, that it was there and perhaps to stay.

Before/After

Celine: My grandmother, she was married to this man, and I always thought she had a very simple, uncomplicated love life. But she just confessed to me that she spent her whole life dreaming about another man she was always in love with. She just accepted her fate. It's so sad. 

Jessie: I guarantee you, it was better that way. If she'd ever got to know him, I'm sure he would have disappointed her eventually. 


Celine: How do you know? You don't know them. 


Jesse: Yeah, I know, I know. It's just, people have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality. 

Dork laugh of the day

A happy marriage

"A happy marriage is the union of
two good forgivers." 
--Ruth Bell Graham

New Year's Resolution #1

Stop ordering chicken with my lunch salad just for the sake of increasing protein intake. Despite my best and most heroic efforts to enjoy it, I have to stop myself from gagging with each chunk of bird consumed.

Yara

More here

Never knew

it was possible to hate anyone so much. Everything about you is infuriating.
I dream and dream and dream
that you'll cease to exist.

House tour

See more here.

If we only wanted

to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
--Charles de Montesquier

("My Life Should Look Better on Facebook," The Defining Decade)

Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.

Chloe's Birthday Party

I don't think I've ever loved

to sleep more.

I would give up pancakes for sleep.

And Tigger, too

Chloe's been in bed since 7:20pm and with Drew gone for the week, I've been spending the past few hours of Thanksgiving Eve watching Pocahontas and Winnie-the-Pooh. Right now it almost (almost) feels like a typical day from my pre-married, pre-mom life.

Cactus

It is with some pride and sheepishness

that I announce my amazing ability to finish an entire bag of Goldfish crackers in one, sometimes two sittings.

I was the worst

"I was the worst to the one I loved best."
--Laxdaela Saga

Sally Singer, editor

"I'm not a writer, I'm an editor. I have always been an editor. I love pushing it just enough to take readers someplace they didn't know they were going. And I see patterns--in pictures, in text, in fashion, in everything. I see narratives everywhere."

David Sedaris on Dorothy Parker and humor

"Dorothy Parker is someone who I'd been led to believe was funny. But I find her really sad; her stories are just really sad. 'Big Blonde' is heartbreaking.
And I think people find her funny because humor needs to cling to something.
I used to go to these shows at Second City, and I would laugh and laugh and laugh, but then afterward I could never remember a single thing I had laughed about. I felt as if I'd had a really nice time, but I think humor needs some aspect of tragedy in order to be memorable. The funny things I remember all have a twinge of sorrow to them."

In a past life

It's morning and while I watched the guys across the street watch me get dressed I realized how long it's been since I knew what color the Empire State Building was at night and how it used to smell at 9am in Times Square all quiet and empty snow underfoot and all those people I met at work eating pizza for lunch and us just strangers wandering around Barnes and Nobles reading astrology and laughing because we didn't know each other, never got to, but we shared a time in this city that was now years ago and no matter how many times the neighbors see me naked they won't ever know about that.

The best people

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice.
Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."

--Ernest Hemmingway

Couples

"Sex is like money; only too much is enough."

--John Updike

Happy Friday

Look at that Dubbo Chin

Central Park with litto bear after work

Difference

Home

sick.

Lol

The things you take

for granted
are what someone else is praying for.

This moment

Winona

1991. via

Ready, Set!

Chloe the Adventurer

You'll never be ready

"It's a terrible thing in life to wait until you're ready. There's no such thing as ready. There is only now and you may as well do it now." 

- Hugh Laurie

"Nothing can compare

to when you roll the dice and swear your love's for me."

A list:
-pink fire escape
-orange desk on wheels
-musky smelling Olivetti typewriter
-three heavy ice cubes in a mug of coke
-beady pearls around a middle finger, 3 timid sprouting hairs
-questions like, "should I wax?" "why is 'Whatever' the worst reply?" "should i trust in Michael Jackson?" "what if the bear pillow gets soggy on the windowsill?" "will it rain?" "doesn't it always, one way or another?"

What then? And what of it. 

How it feels | On Heritage

It’s like a child drawing five point stars on blue

construction paper and looking up at the sky knowing
it didn’t pinpoint its edges so meticulously but rather
bloomed into motion, pulling the universe taught against its edges.
That’s the foot, unbound in hot reality.

Five toes sprawl out toward every pitch of the earth
my heel presses like cheese up against the ball
skin peeling all over.

I would not endure the pain of it;
not the pain of the foot, of the toes broken and fighting against
its own flesh. I could not bear the mother
whose feet are hidden in the silk of their erotic dream,
yet watches her daughter leave the earth as a woman
as a tree branching out, transcending, inhaling ice and feathers.

16th C. Korean Love Letter

from a pregnant widow to her dead husband.

Read it here. 

It'd be nice

to go on a retreat by myself.

Or to, I dunno, just be a normal 23 year old who has no commitments to anyone else. EVERYTHING IS ANNOYING.

I have

the best husband in the world.

Don't

panic.

Jennifer Egan

"If you love someone with dark skin, white skin looks drained of something vital. "

Zach Galifianakis

“I have a lot of growing up to do.  I realized that the other day in my fort.”

Glass 2.0

And youth

Ready for hot tea and fall weather.

Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
above shining trees, --
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing, softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades, --

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

More than okay

Denim

Success vs. Significance

"Success is when you add value to yourself. Significance is when you add value to others."

- John Maxwell

Bombdiggity

Simply put

via

Comes down to this

"When I am lonely for boys it’s their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip. Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual: that is the part of them I would like to possess. Don’t move, I think. Stay like that, let me have that."

– Margaret Atwood, Cats Eye 

Nostalgia

Miss our Game of Thrones marathon + snackz

Rulez r Rulez

“And so you go out with girl, and you’re driving. ‘So what are you reading right now?’ And all too often, ‘Well, I’m not much of a reader.’ WELL I’M NOT MUCH OF A DINNER BUYER. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.” 


– Henry Rollins

Most at peace

I am the most at peace when I'm with gramps. And although I know it may be a form of escape from everything else, from what my life must be like, from my responsibilities to go out there in the world,

deep down I really wish to just spend every day with him. 365 out of 365. Sitting in the back cabin together, taking walks, reading my books as he works on his Chinese calligraphy, doing figure-8 exercises as we watch TV, eating noodles and leftovers, singing Chinese folk songs, unbothered by anything, untethered.

Love, from Us

Jeff left for San Diego, but not before introducing me to tuna dan bing and snails on his last day. Ever since I can remember, he's always made me a more adventurous person, willing to try new things. One of what I was most looking forward to on this trip was hanging out with him. I know I am lucky because he's my big brother and he will always be a core part of my happiness, no matter what. 

Love you, love you lots.