(and also a few from a journal)
6/16/09, tues
Sometimes I can't believe the world I'm living in. Just driving, stopping, obeying red lights, thinking about how much I can't wait to obey green lights. Just life. Eating, crapping, not crapping. Sometimes I even get texts about crapping. And that's all normal. ...
7/10/09
Being in an airport makes me want to write. What else is there to do? Read. Later. You can only people watch so long. All we're doing is waiting. People watch people waiting. How do you spend your free time? It is actually an interesting question. ... I'm hungry but I don't really want to eat anything. Actually, maybe I don't feel like writing. Too little sleep. Stayed up finishing a silly book. Plot revolving around whether to stay with her husband or leave. She made the right choice in the end. It does seem like sometimes there's a right choice. Honesty is sometimes a good choice. Not always.
8/25/09
Why, at 26, have I only accomplished "not dying" while Roger Federer, at 28, has won 15 Grand Slams? Master of nothing. In fact, the last thing I was proud of was "cooking chicken soup from scratch." I told my mom. She was proud; I could tell.
8/26/09
"I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society." - Ted Kennedy
8/27/09
"We knew we had to just tell the damn truth. The truth may be plenty good or plenty bad, but believe me, it's always plenty." -William A. Emerson, Jr., former editor-in-chief of Sat. Evening Post, 2/28/23-8/27/09
8/31/09
Listen. I worry about more nonsense than it's worth. I worry about:
-bad weather
-serial killers
-bad tax policies
-other people worrying about things that they shouldn't worry about
-what to wear
-the Taliban
...
Listen. Can you blame someone for not knowing everything that is going on in the Middle East? in Africa? in Myanmar? In Israel and the Gaza Strip? In space?! How are you supposed to keep up?
9/14/09
"It never ceases to amaze me what people will address and things that they will allow to be put aside." -Rev. Kojo Nantambu, president of Charlotte NAACP
10/21/09
I hate how flight crews think it's really cool to be "the first to welcome you" to your destination city. Yeah, congrats.
11/10/09
"That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion." -Einstein
12/15/09
Why are groups so paradoxical? Somewhere we fit in, think alike. But then you all start to think alike. Humans - a grouping? Should we start sympathizing more w/monkeys? We should do more things that make us uncomfortable.
12/30/09
From the sky, under the snow, Detroit is a grid of white, a city that someone has laid a blanket over, ashamed to show what's beneath.
12/31/09
"If I had to live with my dark side all my life, I'd go insane." - Richard Avedon
2/10/10
People grasp onto what they believe are easy morals and cling to them, never seeing the wrong in it. "I love my country": Aren't I righteous? That should be enough. There are no exceptions. I am right. You are wrong.
2/16/10
Writing is one of the most personal, intimate things a human can do.
It is conversing with oneself. Letting things percolate, letting things, thoughts, theories, ideas, events, facts, opinions, ideas, events, facts, opinions, truths, lies flame up onto the page and quietly die down, smolder, and settle.
It is the transformation of light into ash. Of burning the earth, for what it is, whatever it is, and reducing it to something you can sweep up, hold in your hand, put in an urn. Its rawness, its ugly form is its beauty. You stand and live before fire. You lie down and meditate before ash.
2/18/10
apple cider is one of those things that I love to look forward to but never actually drink once it's in front of me. I am happy just knowing it is there.
3/11/10
I made a mushroom tart tonight. I tried to be one of those people who then takes a picture of it and posts it like in these food blogs that are everywhere now, but honestly my camera was dead, and joe's camera didn't have the card in it, and i didn't want to screw with that since my luck would be that mushroom juice would get into the card reader hole and corrode the camera with fungi ooze. so i took a camera phone picture and sent it to joe. but it did make me think of what life would be like if you couldn't ever take a picture of anything. would we miss it? would our lives go on? yes. but with a little less vibrancy? maybe so.
i just found two quotes, one from my mom: "Don't ever be afraid to apologize." -Mom, 5/31/05
and one from my dad: "Someday you will miss school. I didn't, but I hear a lot of people do." -Dad, 6/1/05
5/11/10
... There is no sense of immediacy. There is day by day. Which is fine for day by day. But we are humans. We are developed humans - of the two-thousand and tenth year of someone's lord. And we have time. This cursed thing called time, during which we agonize over what is the best way to use it, how to prolong it, how to slow it down, how to reverse it, how to fast forward it, how to even prove it as the 4th dimension.
Aug/Sept? 2010
"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." -H.L. Mencken
10/4/10
"That's the great tension: We are better at understanding morality than we are at living it." -Elliot Spitzer
Nov. 2010
"(for what is life except activity?)" -Marx
Officially retiring this Moleskine today. 12/29/2010. On to the next.
