All I know is now

Today.

I wished I had said more in a three hour presentation . . .

or at least I wished I shared more of my true feelings.

I wished I followed my instincts more.

I wished I had a dog to take on walks.

I wished I was Indian.

I wished I had a child.

I wished I went swimming.

I wished I always walked places.

I wished I was back to work at this dark desk in Delhi.

I wished I was the couple making out in the grocery store parking lot.

I wished I had more days like these where I crossed most things off my list.

I wished all the things that seemed urgent and scary at the time were put into perspective.

I wished (for a moment) I was the girl on the bike pretending she was really on a motorcycle.

Then, I stopped.

I stopped wishing.

I wanted to be me.

Walking home on a hurt foot and with a backpack too heavy.

Always with too many feelings. Troubles. Ambitions.

But I’m all I know right now.

All I know is now.

And today taught me this.

A lost day

Today is one of those days where you run around in circles//make messes//try to make connections. . . I feel inspired by more than I can handle, but I don’t know what to do with it. Or how to make sense of anything.
. . But, inspiration is out there and it is near.

Immigrant’s Song

Let us not speak of those days
when coffee beans filled the morning
with hope, when our mothers’ headscarves
hung like white flags on washing lines.
Let us not speak of the long arms of sky
that used to cradle us at dusk.
And the baobabs—let us not trace
the shape of their leaves in our dreams,
or yearn for the noise of those nameless birds
that sang and died in the church’s eaves.
Let us not speak of men,
stolen from their beds at night.
Let us not say the word
  disappeared.
Let us not remember the first smell of rain.
Instead, let us speak of our lives now—
the gates and bridges and stores.
And when we break bread
in cafés and at kitchen tables
with our new brothers,
let us not burden them with stories
of war or abandonment.
Let us not name our old friends
who are unravelling like fairy tales
in the forests of the dead.
Naming them will not bring them back.
Let us stay here, and wait for the future
to arrive, for grandchildren to speak
in forked tongues about the country
we once came from.
Tell us about it, they might ask.
And you might consider telling them
of the sky and the coffee beans,
the small white houses and dusty streets.
You might set your memory afloat
like a paper boat down a river.
You might pray that the paper
whispers your story to the water,
that the water sings it to the trees,
that the trees howl and howl
it to the leaves. If you keep still
and do not speak, you might hear
your whole life fill the world
until the wind is the only word.

– Tishani Doshi

Have an inspiring, productive, and memorable Monday.

[Photo: Getting lost in the rain in Patan, Nepal//Grace Farson]

Winter morning

It feels like summer//70 degrees// Shorts to class.

I am entirely unprepared for a real winter.

Winters are long here.
The road a dark gray, the maples gray, silvered with lichen,
and the sun low on the horizon,
white on blue; at sunset, vivid orange-red.

When I shut my eyes, it vanishes.
When I open my eyes, it reappears.
Outside, spring rain, a pulse, a film on the window.

And suddenly it is summer, all puzzling fruit and light.

– Louise Glück, Winter Morning

For your Monday:

+ A pretty song about frost falling (?) for your week.

+ A pretty photo of St. Petersburg in snow

+ A pretty video of Iceland

[Photos: Comfortably cool September days in Virginia and North Carolina//Grace Farson]

i have a feeling. . .

today is going to be the longest of days. . .

“it’s a very american trait, this wanting people to think well of us. it’s a young want, and i am ashamed of it in myself. i am not always a good daughter, even though my lacks are in areas different from her complaints. haven’t i learned yet that the desire to be perfect is always disastrous and, at the least, loses me in the mire of false guilt?”

– madeleine l’engle

. . .

+ want to curl up and read this book over and over again. . . it was my favorite when i was just beginning to like books. . .

+ my wedding will resemble this

+ last weekend, abby & i fell in love with st. vincent together again. . . cruel

+ this past weekend was special – photos to come!

+ i have some truly great people in my life right now

+ here’s to a new week! . . .  i’m trying to go a whole week without complaining. . . i find that this campus just breeds complaining. i’m done with it. ultimately, we have so little to complain about. . . who’s going to join me in this?

+ p.s. marry me?

{image from one of my favorite spots in nepal – beautiful, quirky, quiet baghmara right outside of chitwan national park. i lived here for several weeks and rode my bike on these dusty roads several times a day}