Wednesday, September 26, 2012

the advent of the seasons

This morning: some white tea with rosebuds. Even though it was hard to wake up this morning, I can't wait to start the day now. In return for single-handedly fixing my sleeping habits (it's a process) and making me love the idea of staying put and being home with groceries, I am excited to show you the seasons, how we change with each one and anticipate the next. In a way, something you've been missing out on for a long, long time.

The ways we prepare ourselves and take it in stride. It's industrial, in touch with reality, and full of life as we hold on and try to squeeze every last drop from our favorite times. I love that about the people here. And I love easy brunches, morning walks, a stop by the coffeeshop to get some work done, pumpkin gelato, and grocery shopping. Let's end our days with tea and a hot shower more often.

And then start again.

Friday, September 21, 2012

just because i adore this photo and the people in it...


...and it was taken on the perfect indian summer day. It was the first time we woke up and it felt like autumn was ready to take over, but in the end summer prevailed and the day became a little too warm for this flannel shirt that I wear like an over-spirited miscreant on camping trips and chilly mornings. The day involved morning college football (I'm not interested in college football, but in the beginning of the season, I'm interested in any football), pie from my favorite little pie shop that everybody now knows about but still won't get air conditioning despite blazing ovens, a street fair involving this age-undetermined kid named Marty who dissed all who played his game, and tacos. The evening was rainy and spent quietly with tea and homework. Perfect.

Monday, September 17, 2012

continuations

It sucks that we live in a world where not being rapey or hateful towards women makes you a good guy and not just a guy.
 via christopherlindstrom

two videos for a sunday night and monday morning

"And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems."

-Bill Nye

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

words from dad

dad: i told him that's white gown syndrome
me: what's that?
dad: when you are surrounded by doctors so you have high blood pressure
me: white coat syndrome?
dad: yeah
me: did you make that up?
dad: what, you've never heard of it? i should go patent it

The other day, I found this note I jotted. I think one of the best parts of our trip was probably the confirmation of my dad's funny ways all over the world. He has a friend whose wife and son are both doctors and I guess this friend is constantly stressed out by different diseases he hears about and trying to be healthy. My dad, on the other hand, was in awe of all the crazy mushrooms we saw by the mountainside.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

the importance of the view from above

Secretly, I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who walk around school with nothing. No backpack, notebook, pencils, highlighters. Instead, I am the person walking around with clothes and shoes for the gym, books, my laptop, a charger for everything I’m too irresponsible to remember to charge at home, and food. Half of the time, I don’t know who these people are who can either attend class and absorb everything a professor says or don’t care that they can’t. The other half of the time, I remember that I am dating one of those people. And he was the one who helped me pack for my 6-week journey abroad. I’ve always been a light packer, but the two of us together are a disaster waiting to happen. I know that the answer to “Do I need this?” will be met with a self-assured, “No. I can’t think of any situation that you would need that, except for a disaster.” Exactly the words I will think about throughout my imminent downward spiral of panic.
 
My mom and Jenn try to intervene with Alex’s and my indomitable packing confidence. We pack for the best possible scenario and decide that I don’t need back-up anythings because, should I drop my toothbrush on the ground, I will simply figure out a way to get a new one. Mom and Jenn, on the other hand, try to convince me to bring double the quantity of everything I think I’ll need. I am not worried. I know what I’m doing. I’ve done this before. Until they leave and I’m laying in bed , suddenly wide-eyed, with my tiny suitcase sitting at the door of my room like a neat package of Reminders of Things Left Behind.

I can’t sleep. Not because of the usual excitement the night before a trip, but because Mom and Jenn were obviously right! I do need to bring enough shampoo to last me nine months, just in case! You never know what will happen! But I do know that whatever happens, I don’t want to be caught with unwashed hair. Mom and Jenn are girls, and girly people would never find themselves in the predicament I’m putting myself in, with just enough toiletries to last the time for which I need them. “Alex I don’t want to grow up!” This is relevant. “I’m clearly not mature enough to be prepared for a trip of this magnitude. Also, hug me!” Eventually, post-hug, he rolls over and murmurs, “You’re going to be fine. You’re going to have the time of your life.” Easy words to say when you are asleep and not a very hygienic person to start out with. Of course, these were unfair thoughts, as Alex washes his hair daily.
As I get off the train at the airport, I am extremely early so I look around to see the people around me who have packed in various forms of preparedness, which I can’t help but view as, candidly, various forms of overpacking. I have regained my calm. I no longer need massive amounts of toiletries. I can still occasionally feel bouts of panic overcoming me as I start mentally checking off things that I forgot or didn’t absolutely need to pack, but may become problematic later: an extra memory card or camera cord; my Kindle, not quite forgotten but also not quite purposely left behind. Suddenly, as a storm looms outside near the airplanes and I imagine disaster scenarios of flight cancellations (I am not one to imagine disaster scenarios of plane crashes), the man who has arrived at the airport with only an umbrella seems levels more prepared than I am. 
This would continue throughout my nine-hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany. And then some more during my short layover. All the way through Warsaw, where I hoped to be delivered to someone who would take me in and show me where to buy extra shampoo.
[Pictures from the flight from Zurich, Switzerland to Warsaw, Poland. I sat on the right side of the plane. Also the correct side.]

Monday, September 10, 2012

mornings in between peace and sheets

I like waking up slowly, mornings spent in bed reading about far-away places and far-away times. In travel magazines I've been meaning to read and in the bedside table book containing letters I've been reading, a few at a time, for years, there's no pressure to respond to e-mails immediately or else face the guilt of my inefficiency.

I like it when there's a chill outside. It doesn't matter to me if it's sunny or cloudy, I want to wear a cozy sweater and be warm through the woven fibers and cold when the air touches my skin.

Mornings that start out with a "Don't worry" and murmurs under rumpled sheets. A half-asleep kiss, and then some more, with a "Thanks, my keys were on the counter, like you said. See you tonight." Red-mug-mornings. They're different from big yellow mug mornings, which require more tea than the red mug can hold. Gulping hot tea is simply strange and uncalled for on a red mug morning.

I like mornings with space to reminisce back to the spring, when planning this summer, we thought, This is going to be the best summer ever. And then in the summer, when we lived between the raindrops and the oppressive heat. We were at the mercy of whims of weather, the buffer zone of guaranteed air conditioning indoors nonexistent. It made me miss my own city most. It's a city that will leave you standing at the bus stop in tortuous heat and unbearable cold, but will grant you a careless breeze every now and then. And sweeping across sweat, that breeze is significant.

Now, this summer a distant memory, everybody looks at pictures of places they left their hearts. Personally, I question the distance between the mountains and the Holocaust. Could such unfathomable beauty and terror really have become intertwined in the same place? Not in the same place, of course, but to me, both felt ubiquitous and pervasive. But isn't that the way it always is? Beauty and terror. Next-door neighbors. Beauty and terror. Simultaneously parasitic to one another- in science, we describe a parasitic organism as one that cannot live without the resources of another. Beauty and terror. One in the same.

Looking forward, as though we have some semblance of organized thought. As though chronology has any sort of meaning when, really, we look back on moments, without context. We are unforgiving of ourselves when we forget the sequence of events that led us to where we are now, but at the time, we had our reasoning. And so we should never forget, but we do and will continue. Forgetting. People think it is specific moments that define them, and will even go so far as to pinpoint examples, as though each of those moments did not involve many others before them. As though years' worth of habits can be broken in a single moment. As though context doesn't matter. As though context isn't the only thing that matters.
 I like to think that in the cool, in the nonchalance, of the Messy-Hair Morning, it's okay to breathe despite the fact that terrible things happen. It's okay to believe that there are moments that can stand separate of all other time around it. In these mornings, refusing to reflect upon anything at all that is happening around me is still lazy; but for now, that's okay. I like to believe that the morning can handle these things, for this is the time of day that "I'll try" is still accompanied by "of course."

[I took these pictures at the Fotoplastikon Museum in Warsaw, Poland]