"I like to see people reunited,

I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Hell yes.

"Write in recollection and amazement for yourself." -Jack Kerouac

I was thinking today

about how none of us will ever understand each other as much as we would like to be understood. Does that make sense? You can fool yourself into thinking that another person gets you, really really knows you. But nobody fully understands anybody. We don't understand ourselves. The best we can hope for is to be understood halfway. The best we can hope for is for our needs to be met halfway. The perfect relationship would be if each person met the other's needs entirely and equally. That requires understanding what the other person needs, and that isn't always easy. Mostly, people don't say what they need because they don't know what they need.

I want to freeze some of my relationships in time. I get scared that one of us will change until we're unrecognizable to the other, and fall out of friendship/love. I know I'm being melodramatic. I need the space between me and others to lessen so I can be reassured that we really are as good a fit as we think.

I feel so lucky to be in the place I am with the people I'm with. I love everywhere I go. I love Hendrix, Little Rock, I can't wait to be back in Memphis. CAN'T WAIT. Really, I'm even getting impatient. I really am blessed to have beautiful people in my life. Sometimes I forget that not everyone has this, and I haven't always had this in my life. I am lucky. Life has thrown good luck at me lately.

Sometimes, being content and happy is a choice, something for which I have to struggle. It's still like that, but I'm getting better making that choice.

It's beautiful to be at this place where learning goes on. There's this feeling in the air, still. There's a lot of hope and expectancy associated with learning, uncovering, trying to find the truth in others and yourself. You probably won't find it, you won't get it all figured out, but that's the uniqueness of it. It's about the road, the experience of self-discovery. AGS is where I discovered myself--how exciting, the good aspects of myself, it helped me pull myself out of the place I was in, helped me to look people in the eye, helped me to be curious and unafraid to ask questions. It made me excited to get up in the morning.

Of course, I had my turn and can't be at the center of the learning. I have to settle for watching it go on, helping it along (as an RA).

I'm still missing, lately. Sometimes homesick, not for home, but for a feeling I've been missing for a bit. I'm ridiculously content. But still missing.

“ May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Neil Gaiman

One of Kurt Vonnegut's rules of fiction writing:

"Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia."

"To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do. "
— Hermann Hesse

Another goal:

To get EXCITED about something every day. Remember when you were a kid, when you got so damn excited about everything? If I got to do the things I do these days when I was a kid, I would be out of my mind excited. I'm probably desensitized these days...like, I remember when I was a freshman in college and everything was so new, every weekend was something I looked forward to, hell, every day was something I looked forward to.

I think this also speaks to how important a change of scenery is sometimes. Simply being in a new place with new people--it can be exhausting (for me), but ultimately is...exciting.

I don't know if I know how to pray anymore, of if I ever did know how to pray, but I'd really like to try. Or, rather, I'd like to listen and try to feel something out there. I don't think I'm going to get anywhere by talking. I do that all the time. I don't always listen to whatever's out there, though.

I think life would be more meaningful and more fulfilling if I felt God around me all the time. I think life would be less scary and I'd feel less alone. I think that the reason I've never really tried to pray before (despite going to mass for the overwhelming majority of my Sundays) is because I always thought that it should be easy, hearing and feeling God. I thought that by saying a prayer I'd memorized in kindergarten, I was praying. But I wasn't. Maybe I was "praying" in my own child way in kindergarten, but now that I'm older, I'm beginning to realize that the universe might require my more active participation. It gets harder as you get older, I've learned. I don't have any of this figured out, but I think I might be onto something--I don't think it's going to be easy to pray. I don't think I'm going to be able to feel God immediately the second I start praying. I think I'm going to have to be listening really intently, and I think I'm going to have to let go of some of my hangups.

"Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore the health of the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen."

-St. Augustine

What I'm afraid of

Never doing anything interesting.

You know how EVERYONE thinks they have something exceptional to offer up to the world? Not everyone can be exceptional. What if I grow up to be completely and utterly unexceptional? What if I never DO anything? What if I get lost in the crowd, where people are more intelligent, more driven, more articulate, luckier, than me? What if I'm average, even below average?

I'm sorry...it's getting late (for me, at least). And I was just kind of researching grad schools online, but the thing is that I really have no idea where to start or what the hell I even want a master's degree in (maybe learning not to end a sentence in a preposition!) Or where I want to go after I graduate, whether I want to stay or go. My parents are all like "We think you'd be an excellent lawyer! You wouldn't have to litigate or anything...just do research...you're great at that!" And what? I don't know what I want to do, or if I do, I shy away from it because it's too impossible or too great.

I'm afraid of graduating without any kind of job prospects, and ending up back here in Little Rock living with my parents. It's a very real possibility, if you think about it. It happens, often.

And I feel like I've never BEEN anywhere, never SEEN anything. What the hell am I going to write about? But I've been wondering this about myself lately...a lot of people have this LOVE of traveling. I don't know if I have that. I have curiosity...I wonder how I would be in a new place, but I think that when it comes down to it, I'm a homebody. I don't really WANT to go anywhere. How boring.

But when I think back on my life, when I think about when I've been really happy...I didn't have to go far to get that happiness, you know? It didn't come from being adventurous; it came from...well, lots of things. But mainly love, and sometimes even safety (I told you, I'm boring) and comfort and even routine. Am I 80 years old? I'm not supposed to CARE about comfort! I'm supposed to be backpacking in Turkey or some other equally exotic place, staying in hostels and drinking cheap wine.

Ok. Done.