a morning inventory

here are some of the many lovely things i'm experiencing right now! i try to stop whatever i'm doing and do this type of inventory at least once a day. it's a great way to stay present.

hearing:
this song by theophilus london. can't wait for his album to drop! i highly recommend watching some of his other videos as well.



seeing:
a mess of books and high heels scattered about my room.

smelling:
morning coffee. one thing that's even better in the winter!

tasting:
honeycrisp apples from the market across the street.

feeling:
a morning where i opt for yoga instead of running. it felt great!

knowing:
my brother and sis-in-law that are currently in ethiopia have safely arrived there and met their baby daughter! i'm so excited to hear about every detail of the trip and see more pictures of my newest niece!

i put the eyes on the way

first off, i thought i would post the video that eventually led me to the video i mentioned in the last post. i've been exploring a lot of similar videos, but i keep coming back to this one. and especially during this time of year, i think it's a good reminder to keep an open mind. to keep wondering with openness.




as anyone reading this knows, i try very specifically to be present and live life as it's happening now. but from time to time, longing still creeps in. and right now, i'm feeling quite a longing for my friends and family in sri lanka. i finally got to talk to my best friend there the other day, after a few weeks of dropped calls, and my little sister, who i haven't talked to in almost 2 months, was there! it was a bit painful to realize how much i've lost my ability to speak tamil, but it was so beautiful to hear her voice. and it led me to do some nostalgic photo-viewing. here's one of me with my best friend, sampath, and one with my little sister, nila.




i then got an email from sampath with a few pictures, and the following text:
i miss you so much.
when will you come sri lanka? I expecting and waiting for you presence.
I put the eyes on the way
Naan santhosam illai ((i am not happy))


i am very happy here, but i miss them. and i miss myself with them.

be here now: t.t.m.m.h.

--good people. last night, my wallet fell out of my purse at a bar (i wasn't drunk, it just fell off the chair...), but i didn't realize it until this morning. and sure enough, when i called this afternoon, someone had turned it in and they kept it for me until i got off work in the evening. and everything was there. and to top it off, the bartender that gave it back who had glanced at my i.d. to see if there was a phone number or anything, was from cedar rapids, ia! so, i even got to meet a fellow iowan out of the deal. the news is full of people doing horrible things to each other, so it's nice to appreciate something small like this.

--this video, combining two of my most current interests, mindfulness/being present and neuroscience:
building attention

(can someone teach me how to put the video itself on here, instead of just the link to it?)

--meeting new people who lead me to new things. there are few things more exciting, fun, life-giving, sexy, whatever, than someone that reminds me how much world there is to know. i love meeting and knowing people and learning about what they read, listen to, and think. it's a huge reason for writing this blog: the comments and recommendations i get from those who read it.

--a time of year when the same songs are playing everywhere you go, everyone knows them, and they're songs that would otherwise be hated by many people, but most are willing to let it slide for the season. there's something about getting 'oh holy night' stuck in your head for the 23rd year in a row that makes you a little happier, whether you like it or not.

--finally getting to try the tiramisu at the restaurant. totally lives up to the hype.

things that have been making me happy

BOOKS:

--i just finished 'the corrections' by jonathan franzen. i found it really interesting. it's a pretty intense critique of life in 'midwestern america.' and while i could definitely recognize something, having lived in such a setting for the majority of my life, i could also see some more fatalistic exaggerations, at least in relation to my life. but it definitely did bring up a theme i've been reading/thinking about a lot lately, which is the difference between loving someone because you should (of course you love family, because they're family, right?) and loving someone because you know them well, and love certain things about them. i think it comes out even more right now, during the holidays, when everyone is buying gifts. gift cards and checks are so common, and sometimes i feel like that's such a sign that we don't even know each other. i kind of feel like if someone wants to get me a gift, but doesn't know what i would want, i would much rather them take a few hours, buy me a cup of coffee, and talk to me. (not that i don't like checks, since i could use it to travel...)

it also touches on themes of waiting for and expecting things to change, and complacency. it caused me to think about the fact that nothing at all is guaranteed. i tried to do a post on facebook where i asked people what they would do if they knew they might lose their sight in 24 hours. and people came up with some cool stuff. but, my actual point was to say, "so when you don't do those things, you're assuming that you will have your sight in 24 hours. and that's a dangerous assumption to make." shouldn't we all act as if we might lose our sight tomorrow? or our ability to hear? or our lives? we don't have to do drastic things, just enjoy every color, every crazy laugh or giggle, every smell of morning coffee, etc.

--i've also been on a weird kick of reading/learning about the brain. i read "sum" by david eagleman, which i TOTALLY recommend, and since then, i've been checking out some books and reading some stuff on neuroscience and neurobiology. man, brains are really really interesting.

--i'm currently reading 'a confederacy of dunces' by john kennedy toole, and loving it so far.

--also reading 'the power of now' by eckhart tolle. i heard him on an npr podcast this summer and loved it. it's pretty interesting stuff about being present. pretty similar to zen, with a western focus.

--and of course, still reading rilke. always rilke.

--recently bought, sitting on the nightstand/desk/bookshelf/etc: zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by robert pirsig, the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundara. please advise if you have thoughts about these or others!

MOVIES:

--i recently saw "white material", a pretty intense french film about civil war in west africa. it's pretty realistic (i imagine), and therefore pretty heavy. but good, with some beautiful cinematography. i'll admit, it was pretty difficult to see some parts after having spent my summer as i did. but it was probably for the best for me to be reminded, i think.

--i discovered netflix. i'm behind, i know. but it's kind of amazing. so far i've only watched documentaries, one about the human body (part of my brain kick) and one about WWII. i plan to watch more.

--i also watch "the lives of others" recently. it's a german film, one an oscar a few years ago for foreign film, about east berlin in the 80s. really interesting, especially since that's something i know very little about.

--i'm hoping to see black swan really soon. i loved the wrestler, and i LOVE natalie portman.

MUSIC:

--sufjan stevens, 'the age of adz'. i'm kind of obsessed (which isn't new for me and sufjan. my love for him grows. it's different, but it's a great album. his lyrics are much more personal and introspective than the past, and the music is a bit more experimental. and i like it.

--black keys, 'brothers'. it's been hailed as one of the best albums of 2010, and i loved their previous one, so after another random person mentioned how great it was to me, i buckled and bought it (not sure why i ever resisted, actually). it's really really great.

--kanye west, 'my beautiful dark twisted fantasy'. say what you will about kanye, but i still kind of love him. i passed on 808s and heartbreak, but i figured it was just a phase. he was grieving. people call him a douchebag, and he might be, but i think he knows exactly what he's doing. and i really, genuinely like the new album. and not just because nicki minaj is the first voice on it.

--erykah badu, 'new amerykah part 2'. i saw her live last week and she was INCREDIBLE. for some reason, i hadn't bought the newest album yet, but the show was definitely inspiration enough. i must say, though, that she sounds better live than recorded. and she has the most amazing ass i've ever seen. seriously, incredible. i want to be her.

OTHERS:

--i've put the bike up for a while, i think. it makes me sad (and feel a little weak, since i know a lot of people that are still going), but i've been enjoying riding the train again. other than having to pay for it, i love people watching. (okay, and sometimes reading...).

--i've also returned to the ymca in my 'hood, since i can't run outside anymore. and honestly, the y runs in my blood. no exaggeration, and no one's paying me for this, i love being in a y.

--work is still going well. it's getting pretty crazy right now, but i'm still loving it. and i'm going in to have dinner at the restaurant soon, which i'm pretty excited about!


what books, movies, music, life things are you loving right now?

reflections.

a little over 3 years ago, i started this blog. at the time, i was a wide-eyed 20-year-old, about to leave the only country and culture i'd ever known. since then, i have lived in 3 other countries, traveled through many others, seen incredible things, and experienced the luminous souls of innumerable people. and now, as a wide-eyed 23-year-old about to turn 24, i'm reading and listening to some interesting things that are leading me to reflect a bit on how/how much i've lived in these past few years. (i originally wrote 'changed' instead of 'lived' in the previous sentence, but isn't that life? changing?)


currently, i'm listening intensely to sufjan stevens' new album, the age of adz. specifically, i'm re-playing the final song, a 22-minute masterpiece (in my opinion) called 'impossible soul.' some of my favorite lyrics from the song:

It's a long life, only one last chance
Couldn't get much better, do you wanna dance?
It's a good life, better pinch yourself
Is it impossible? Is it impossible?
Boy, we can do much more together.


also, i've been reading some more rilke again, and this poem really overwhelmed me:


fire’s reflection

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.

And if in his later life, one day
wounds him like so many others,
it's because he mistook some risk
or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,
that soon had hauled him
toward absence complicated
by an overflowing heart....





if i could try to sum up SOME of the last 3 years in a pretty, well-packaged lesson, it might be to not mistake some risk or other for a promise. we do it so often, don't we? all the while, forgetting the music. and our overflowing hearts.



also, this is an excerpt from a short piece of rilke's called 'fear of the inexplicable':

"But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode."


in this, my 25th year, i will choose to exclude nothing, and be ready for everything. i will not learn only my corner, or my strip of the floor, but will seek everything, even the most enigmatical. and by doing this, i will try to live all relations to others as something ALIVE, and draw exhaustively from my own existence.




and finally, this last poem also spoke to me deeply (and i don't think it's only because of my love of little red dresses.)


child in red

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances
a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.




may we all live in a way that lets all we carry in ourselves frolic and ferment.

and everyday, let's dance a few steps, that we invent and forget.





we can do so much more together.

do you want to dance?

even when they got us pinned, we're laughing.

i have recently been loving this song by nathaniel rateliff: laughing

i'm also loving my friends' bands louis and the hunt and scattered trees. both come highly recommended.

other things i've been loving lately:

- cooler weather for bike rides.

- living in a mexican neighborhood during halloween. the dia de los muertes murals on every shop window are enough, but the spirit in general is pretty great. i wish i was going to be around during trick-or-treating tomorrow.

- riding my bike around the city during halloween. i'm not a huge halloween person myself, but there's something about these couple days/nights that i love about the city. it's a few days when nothing is unexpected or unexplained. people can look/do almost anything and it can be explained away. it's a little bit like living in a surrealist painting/movie.

- finally really getting into 'atlas shrugged' by ayn rand. it took me almost to page 700 to really get in the groove, but it's been worth it. the most recent underlined quote:
"she felt an odd calm, almost a confident repose; she knew that it was tension, but the tension of a great clarity. she caught herself thinking: she's functioning well in an emergency, i'll be all right with her--and she realized that she was thinking of herself."

and another, since it relates so well to many of my posts in the last month or two:
" 'no one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy'...she did not answer, she felt as if a word would overfill the fullness of this moment, she merely turned to him with a look of acquiescence that was disarmed, childishly humble and would have been an apology but for its shining joy."

- knowing that if and when i finish atlas shrugged, i get to move on to 'the corrections' by jonathan franzen, and i have some great friends and family members to discuss it with!

this week - t.t.m.m.h.

- dancing to live flamenco music played by an adorable frenchman named david (dah-veed). it was almost not frustrating that i could barely do the steps.

- pumpkin chai

- remember how to say "prendenal valtekal" in tamil--happy birthday--when i called my best friend in SL on his birthday on wednesday

- listening to nathaniel rateliff and louis and the hunt while riding my bike to and from work this week.

- working with great people and getting to laugh a lot at work. even when craaaaazy chileans come in.

- indian food on devon avenue

- a dream in which i was song-writing with lil wayne...