foghorns

things i have done lately:

• started wearing men's antiperspirant to activities because i am generally disgusting/undesirable/appalling/out of control. it's the motion-activated, bear grylls-endorsed stuff. i do sweat about 40% less and am generally less reckless smelling, but i also smell like a man/bro.
• skied a sixteen year old boy and got TOO hype 'bout it.
• jammed the fuck out to duran duran on my bike all the way down ashland from west loop to pilsen to bridgeport. gave my peoples a show, y'all! i was only missing the jorts!
• someone that i just started talking to texted me that we should do something. i obviously wanted to do something but i didn't want to appear thirsty, so i couldn't put "we should exclamation point!" but i felt like just saying "we should period." would be too nonchalant, like maybe i wasn't interested, which i clearly was (see the aforementioned "thirsty"). so i texted back "we should no punctuation mark". now i just appear void of emotions and noncommittal (half true *regina george voice*). of course he has not texted me back. *foghorn*
• cried/nervously laughed when i saw tonks naked on "game of thrones". what would teddy say? (/nerd)
• went to kneehab without underwear on. (forgot. i don't know why i didn't just turn around and put some drawers on, i rode my bike there. *foghorn*) leg lifts was awkward.
• a spring league teammate took off his cleat and it made a *pffffffffht* sound, like a fart. i snickered out loud and whispered "fart" and then looked around to see if anyone else was laughing. (one other dude was laughing, and he was also checking to see if anyone else was laughing. where have you been my entire life, soulmate?)
• laughed out loud TOO hard at the library at a picture my cousin sent me via e-mail. RECKLESS. (cute?) white girl sitting across the table from me smiled politely but was probably gchatting her friends about my public ratchetness.

*foghorn*
somd.

still haven't found what i'm looking for

"to have a hand is to make good things. to have a foot is to walk on the right path. to have eyes is for seeing good things. to have a mouth is to speak kindness and peace. to have a mind is for thinking good thoughts and using wisdom. to have a heart is for having love and compassion."

hair

"you ask whether your verses are any good. you ask me. you have asked others before this. you send them to magazines. you compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. now (since you have said you want my advice) i beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. you are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. no one can advise or help you -- no one. there is only one thing you should do. go into yourself. find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. this most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must i write? dig into yourself for a deep answer. and if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "i must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."
-rainer maria rilke

when there's a burning in your heart...

i've talked for months about how i'm "making moves" and "figuring out" the next step in my life. well i've finally made some concrete steps in that direction. instead of baseless speculation and hope, i know that something will change for me at this time next year. it's been a lot of work to get to this point, and i have some more hard work to go, but it's exciting. it's just that after a year and some change of being in a situation where i'm always unsure about what's happening next, it's pretty cool to be in a position where i KNOW change is coming -- i don't know all the exact details yet, but i have a pretty good idea of what comes at the end of all this.

i feel like i can't put into words all the things i've been feeling for the past few months. but at some point, when something is burning inside you, when there's something out there that you love with all your heart and that you feel passionately about, you can't let the fear continue to keep you out of the game. and i figured out that i love this so much more than i'm afraid of failing at it. that's the best i could do. these dudes did it better than me:

love wins.

6/50 states isn't pretty, but it's progress. new york made history last week by becoming the sixth (and most populous) state to legalize same-sex marriages. i realize that there are "bigger" issues in the world, like war, poverty, and heinous human rights violations, among many others, but this is something worth celebrating. it feels amazing to know that we can reach across the aisles of partisanship and stand together for something as powerful, important, and universal as love.

honestly, i'm shocked that prejudice still exists in this country, in this day and age. if there's anything i've learned from the stories my parents have told me about growing up in an era of racial prejudice and segregation in america, from the routine beatdowns i got just for playing at my neighborhood playground sporting the wrong skin color, from the hateful names and words i've had to hear people hurl at my friends and family -- it's that people are people are people. we may dress differently or speak different languages or enjoy different types of literature, but we all hurt, and we all love. there are things that make us unique and special -- and to be sure, those things are beautiful -- but at our cores, we were made to understand, to help, to love each other. no matter what you were born, you're not a freak. you're not unforgivably different, and you're certainly not alone. it's our job to make sure of that, right? to make sure no one feels alone or unloved?

at the end of the day, i guess i feel so strongly about the legalization of same-sex marriage because love and marriage aren't rights afforded only to those who are white, or straight, or religious, or what have you. the point we're trying to drive home isn't that marriage is "also a 'gay' right", but that love and marriage are human rights, belonging to all human beings. when values like equality, love, and fairness aren't applied to everyone, then don't they kind of lose their value? it's like winning because the person who beat you broke some obscure little rule -- who likes having that asterisk there? it just doesn't mean as much. denying people who are in love and committed to each other the right to marry -- for me, that is an endangerment to the institution of marriage. that is a real slap in the face.

i've said it before, that i believe our destiny in this world is to leave it a better place than we found it. we were put on this earth to effect change, to society and in each other, and our lives are ripe with amazing opportunities to do so. you have the choice to sit back and let those opportunities pass you by, but to do so would be to waste our amazing faculty for sympathy, compassion, humanity, and love. i find it astonishing that we as a species can erect metropolises and continually top one another at the "tallest building in the world" game, build machines that will take us into outer space, create weapons that can hit a target from hundreds of miles away, and invent devices that allow us to talk to each other in real time, face-to-face when we're oceans apart -- but we can't understand something as universal as love, and what's worse, we aren't willing to fight for it.

i refuse to believe that the world will be like this forever. that my friend, an army veteran, will continue to be refused service at a restaurant in the south because of the color of his skin. that my dear friend won't be able to marry the woman she's in love with because someone else says it's not okay for girls to be in love with other girls. that people will continue to look at my sister, someone who's never hated or hurt anyone in her whole entire life, like she's a monster. call me a cheeseball, but i believe in change, i believe in hope, and most of all, i believe that human beings are capable of so much goodness and so much love. we're better than this institutionalized hatred and inequality we've been blindly supporting for so long. and if our legacies are defined by the causes we fought for and the things we were passionate about, then i hope we leave the right kind of legacy, on the right side of history.







love always shines everytime. remember 2 smile.

epiphany

thank you, for this inspiration and this encouragement to keep going and keep fighting for what i love.

"i love writing but hate starting. the page is awfully white and it says, 'you may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. i'm not your agent and i'm not your mommy, i'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?' and i really, really don't."
-aaron sorkin

"nobody tells this to people who are beginners. i wish someone had told me. all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. but there is this gap. for the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. it's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. but your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. and your taste is why your work disappoints you. a lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. most people i know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. we know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. we all go through this. and if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. it's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. and i took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone i've ever met. it's gonna take a while. it's normal to take awhile. you just gotta fight your way through."
-ira glass

while the expanse is still vast, i'm feeling a little less small, even if it's only on the inside.

let the rain: the lowercase version

whoa, been a while. the only thing harder than the upkeep of one blog is the upkeep of two blogs. i don't know why i thought i could do it and stay interesting (*foghorn*)/motivated.

i'm coming up on close to a year post-graduation, and all i've really done with my life is rewatch entire television series (and then i proceed to identify outrageously hard with mad storylines, womp womp), work out occasionally, grow out my hair and then cut it, and spend more money than i have -- hardly what i imagined i'd be doing with my life back when i was a wide-eyed 21 year old, standing at the edge of the rest of my life. it's been rough, for sure. with all the terribleness that's going on in the world, i'm very thankful and happy with what i've got in life, and i know that i'm lucky for all the great people and great things going on in my life. but the past couple months have still been trying, unhappy, and very lonely. after a while you've got to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask what's wrong with you that you still can't find a job or some sort of direction in your life.

i don't know when it happened, but some time over the course of the last year, i lost myself. i lost the person i had grown into, the person i had grown to love; i lost the skin i felt comfortable in. i lost everything i felt good about and i lost all the devices i used to use to make me feel good again. i lost the sense of self-confidence, of self-assuredness. i felt like i lost my insides and guts (not the gut though, *foghorn*) and my heart, and i just felt really dang lost, period.

without going into the long-winded, "woe is me" details about how i went deeper into the crevasse to go through this wonderful journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance, i'll sum it up with this: i became consumed by my anger and cynicism without knowing exactly where it came from. it wasn't until we received the verdict of a criminal case against the man who killed my cousin in a car accident last winter that i realized what all those bad feelings were stemming from.

i don't want to get into discussing the verdict or the specifics of it, really, because i think it's all bull. well, never mind, i'll get into it a little bit. i understand that i'm bitter, and i understand that i'm being vindictive. i understand that no punishment, no matter how severe or how harsh will bring my cousin back. i also know that it wasn't only our lives that were changed -- ed stapinski's life and his family's lives were also changed forever. i sympathize with that, and i feel for his family. i know guilt is a terribly powerful thing to live with, and i'm sure he feels sorry for what he did. i know all these things, and i also sometimes believe in forgiving and moving on, but i don't think i'm there yet. maybe that part of my maturity isn't fully formed yet. so a part of me is dying inside because he might not have to serve the full six years. the paltry six years he got for getting drunk to three times the legal limit and speeding over thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, resulting in the death of an innocent man. how do you get so drunk that you're three times the legal limit and escape being labeled as "reckless"? "aggravated driving under the influence"? cuss that, you killed a man. was it intentional? no. was it reckless? hell the cuss yeah!

so back to my original point -- that anger, that hostility, and that cynicism that came to dominate my spirit came from the knowledge that bad things happen to good people. and good things happen to bad people. you can do good your whole life and get nothing for it, while you can do bad and not suffer the consequences.

so why be good if it pays to be bad? why work hard if there are people who can skate by and still win? why do things the right way every time if it's so much easier to do what's, well, easy? why put yourself through that?

again, i'll spare you the sappy, self-congratulatory details of how i came to this point, but i realized that no matter what the world and what life has to throw at me, i've got to stay true to the core of me.

my life philosophy is to do good because it's the right thing to do, not because there's some sort of reward for doing good or some sort of punishment for doing bad. work hard because there is no other way to work. give everything you have because there's no other way to give. (unless it's food, in which case a big girl's gotta eat, you dig?) love with everything in you because there's no other way to love. most of all, be good to the world and the people around you. i think that sometimes that good and that positive karmic energy you put out into the world might return to you in some way. finding money on the ground. getting an e-mail about your class being canceled before you leave your apartment. having your favorite song come up on shuffle when you need a smile. y'know.

i learned a lot about me, and i learned a lot about my "friends", too. because -- and did y'all know? -- some people don't come around so often when it's raining. some people don't wanna talk to you as much when they know you've got nothing but bad news. some people don't want to talk so much anymore once you start asking for help. some people don't miss you when you're hurting. some people don't want to reach out if they think they have to reach into a hole. "i get by with a little help from my friends?" that whole song and dance? it's nice when it's there. but a lot of times you'll find yourself rolling one deep.

(side note: i would DIE if someone dedicated "roll up" to me. DIE. i'm just saying. i've thought about dedicating this to at least seven different people. mad thirsty, but i'm not sorry about it.)

while i felt grateful for the self-discoveries i made, i still felt angry that my friends couldn't have been there with me, that they couldn't have supported me or even given a hoot about what was going on. but that anger was so wrong; that emotion was entirely unnecessary, and the energy i spent being mad at all the trifling people who "weren't there" should have gone towards working on my relationship with the person who was there all along -- respect starts with you. love starts with you. you know what i mean? you can't expect others to love or respect you if you don't love and respect yourself.

i had to sit back and recognize that i wasn't lost in some deep, dark, desolate hole of sadness and cries and gloom. i didn't need someone to save me, i didn't need someone to tell me what i was missing. i wasn't lost and the person i've always been didn't die away, either. that person, although she's been kind of sad and lonely and down for a while, well... she's always been there. she's always kept fighting and standing up and brushing off her shoulders like she's the baddest thing walking. she's been there from the beginning, and she'll continue to be there through everything.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i've always known who i am (awkward phrasing, eep). i love my friends who've been there too (don't think i spend all my time fretting about the people who weren't there), but i'm glad i found me through all of this. i've always known that i'm not lacking in the strength, heart, determination (read: bullheadedness), guts, or courage to persevere, and it's nice to know that when things get hard again i'll *still* have all those qualities to carry me through it. it can get rough sometimes, but if you stay you through it all, you'll make it out okay. god, this post has been full of nonsensical mess, but i hope you know what i'm talking about. i've always known what lies in my heart and what drives me. sometimes i just need the rain to remind me.


i always felt it before
that the world was filled with much more
than the drowning soul i've learned to be
i just need the rain to remind me