Another end to another season.
Last Thursday, the NAFD family gathered for one last dinner of the semester. There was a fire for a little while. . . Games were played. Riddles were solved. Music was created. Confessions happened.
And I even got to dance a bit.
These people have shaped my college career more than anything//anyone else and NAFD is truly sacred. And will always be that way.
Big love to all of these ones right now in the midst of exam madness and end-of-the-year-stressing.
How I define good right now:
+ Time with the ones I love
+ Food from Venable
+ Climbing rock walls and up to the roof of buildings
+ Mediation
+ My boxy leather jacket
+ Finishing projects
+ Planning for the future (i.e. future classes)
+ Waking up with your entire house at 7 to pancakes and snuggles on a Tuesday
+ Cool, not cold weather
+ Sharp, red wine
+ Conversations over Chinese food, on foot, in the library, on the phone. . .
A brief recap from our time together in Pennsylvania ->
We learned that we did not know our animals very well, we listened to this and our world was made bigger, we went hiking in the Catskills in NY, we laughed, *some of us cried, and we read poems in the car.
It was everything it could have been.
I’m in D.C. as I write this. I’m in a state of panic and praying that I can actually make my flight tonight. . .
Something will happen, good or bad and I am confident there is some sort of resolution . . . this always happens with big travels and sometimes I question why I like all this so much.
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”– Matthew Arnold
[Photos: Union Dale, PA//Grace Farson]
I found this list today from a little over a year ago:
1.) CALM down
2.) find a new job
3.) write letters and mail them
4.) change voice mailbox message
5.) apply for grants to Indonesia
6.) run
7.) climb
8.) finish videos for TedX conference
9.) visit Abbey Court
10.) taxes?
I love finding pieces of what life looked like last year and the years before. And the thing I love the most is knowing that i accomplished all of those pieces in time. I went on to get not one, but two new jobs, I went to Indonesia on a grant, ran a few miles, climbed with friends, went to Abbey Court, did videos for TedX, etc. and at the time, this little list of ten things was a challenge.
My list these days is sadly quite similar. I’m still trying to find grants to travel, I’m trying to keep the job I do have when I get back in the fall, I’m running, I’m wishing I was spending more time climbing, taxes still stress me out, and there is always a stack of letters by my bed waiting to be mailed. . .
This semester is getting so close to the END and I’m both excited and sad. The past few weeks have been great overall. So good in fact, I never want it to end.
Take for example this weekend. . .
This weekend was epic. It all left my body feeling incredibly broken, sore, and used. My feet don’t really work, they’re cracked and still caked with mud.
That said, I also didn’t know it was possible to laugh as much as I did.
Sam came in town Friday with a basket of black lights and a massive speaker//sound system. The Tiger House hosted a fantastic Universe party! (Goal check) Glitter, good music, Ziggy Stardust-inspired face paint and even roller-blades! All I could ever ask for really.
On Saturday, I woke up at 5:45 and decided it was a good day to run the Chapel Hill ten-miler with Ora (*Almost exactly a year ago since the last big ten). Our last-minute decision was incredibly rewarding and actually quite fun (esp. the thrill of benefiting from a race without paying for it. Sorry world, I just wanted to see if it was possible). By that afternoon, I was volunteering in a tent painting little kiddo’s faces at Shakori grassroots festival and dancing around a fire to drums with Ora, Will, Jordan, Sarah and Cassie.
We danced, hula hooped, and then danced some more until the late hours. Everywhere we went we danced, we didn’t use our feet to walk, we just danced and floated through life.
It all left my whole being so incredibly happy.
A nice nap (*another goal) on Sunday was followed by a lovely dinner with Ma-Maw and Da-Dan and a lot of solo car time to think too. . .
I could have asked for nothing more this weekend.
It filled me.
[Photos: Shakori last time around. Fall festival days 2012. *Only brought my AE-1 this time around//Grace Farson]
Evidence.
There is always a reward in stopping the car and exploring new spaces.
Today, I am thankful for warmer days than these and for these three people.
[Photos: What is left behind. Outside of Washington, D.C.//Grace Farson]
It looked like this:
Bright. Happy. Full of smiles.
And sounded a good deal like this:
Magical. Sigur Ros in concert = unreal. There were tears. There was laughter. And there was a lot of existentialist thinking.
“Let us love the country of here below. It is real . . .” – Simone Weil
[Photos: D.C. + Annapolis with the people who make this life easy to love//Grace Farson]
GRACE FARSON 