my sweet golden hour

I had just graduated from college. I was living in an apartment for which I paid myself, I had just opened a credit card, gotten a cell phone, and started paying my school loans. In other words, I had bills. I also had a job which didn’t pay me much, but at the time it felt like a jackpot, and it was more than enough to cover my bills. I had roommates, and together we had laughs and taco salad night but also disagreements and quirks and petty annoyances. We weathered snowstorms and biting cold morning walks to the market before the sun even rose (we called those “adventures”) and other internal seasonal shifts that we were in no way ready for or expecting. Some came like an angry afternoon storm and broke the unbearable thick weight of life, and others were as subtle as a chilled fall breeze that whispered of something soon to die. There were break-ins and there were break-downs, of both the emotional and automobile sort, all accompanied by tears. I moved twice, started dating once, broke up once, and swore off all of these things for the rest of my life at least once, but probably more. I loved work and hated work and wondered how I could really work eight hours a day and if getting an average review after my first year meant I would be just average now that I wasn’t in school anymore. I was at times annoyingly hopeful and at others desperately needy and I learned that I needed to learn how to get back up after taking a few hits. (It would be more years until I actually learned how to do that.) I also learned that five year plans are so over-rated and interruptions - the holy kind - aren’t rude but rather incredibly merciful. 

This was my sweet golden hour of life, when the fresh early dew sparkled and danced in new sun. To look at a photo of it, all you’d see is the glimmering light.

running in the morning

This morning I woke slowly to the sound of nothing. It was still dark outside, the only light from the porch of a bungalow outside my one open window. I rolled over to check my clock, willing it to show me a time hours from when I needed to wake up. Instead, it read just one minute before my alarm would sound. I lied in bed a few minutes longer, scorning Mondays and suddenly remembering that I’d left my car on the street overnight and may have a parking ticket. Thank goodness for the capacity to remember the sun, to recall it’s steady rising, because on mornings like these that is the only thing that can pull me from my bed before it’s already there. From there it was contacts in, clothes on, shoes laced up, door locked behind me, an empty street before me. I ran across and down and away and I was off. Slowly the sky woke up as I ran, from black to grayish blue like the colors Picasso used. I ran down the hill, blindly ripping through spiders’ webs, all those hours of work gone with one sweeping move. I counted down my steps on the way back up, and as I rounded the corner home something told me to look up. Behind the mountains the sun stirred, splashing orange and yellow against the now bright blue sky. The colors, which we give names in order to distinguish one from the other, blended into each other like they knew a secret we never want to face: that bleeding doesn’t hurt as much as they say, that it’s actually what connects one thing to the other. I ran fast at the end because I could, and I knew that pain as the kind that feels good. After I stopped, I untied my shoes to retrieve my key from the lace and walked through the front door. The house was still, and no one knew the quiet world of things I held and let go of even before the sun roused them awake.

inwardness and reading

I stumbled upon the Underground New York Public Library last week or the week before, I can't remember. Since then I've been thinking about how to share it here, with you. At first I was like, "wow, look at all these people in New York reading!" And that still amazes me. The photographs, though, really invite you into the lives of these New Yorkers. You see a young beautiful woman in a sleek dress and heels standing on a platform surrounded by strangers while secretly indulging in the adventures of new kindreds (or maybe the characters are strangers to her, too). Or wonder how a young black gentleman decided to pick up Nietczche. Or what this woman is discovering that keeps her from putting her book down even to walk through the station. I also wonder what the people around them -- the ones who aren't reading -- what they're thinking about. (And I LOVE that there are so few people on cell phones in any of these photos!)

Here's part of a statement from the photographer:

What I’m showing isn’t about reading or books, actually. I’m photographing inwardness... This means that I’m not just finding people with books on the subway and photographing them. I’m finding a connection with their inner worlds (and with those of the people around them too) and I’m photographing the event of it.

I find that the juxtaposition of inwardness in such a public, shared space is part of what's so fascinating about these photos. It says something, I think, about being able to locate and connect with yourself where ever you are, whomever you're with.

she can laugh

"she can laugh at the days to come..." - Proverbs 31:26

Tonight I lie in bed with my window open, and my computer open, too. I came here intending to read but instead find myself distracted by things I think I need to do on the internet. Cool air floats into my dim room just above my head where a window is open. The house is silent, but somewhere in the apartments next door there is a man practicing opera in what I am assuming is Italian and with only a moderate amount of talent. And he is doing this very loudly. He stops for a few minutes and I think he's done. Then he starts in again, with more vigor, and every once in a while he hits that high note and tries for a vibrato.

This after a long day. There was a seminar at work that turned long and boring, discomfort from having to hold my pee too long (twice), stray looks from the 15 month old I live with that seemed to hold all of the misunderstanding and disinterest I sense from people around me and made me want to run into my room and cry (yes, I might be pms-ing and by the way, she's recovering from jet lag). There were also intentions to be productive that I didn't meet and a few decisions that I need to make but don't feel like I have enough information to settle on anything or the resources to have what I really want. And also the temptation to give up, even on the things I really want.

So this opera singer might literally be pushing on my last nerve.

Life is strange, and laughter is usually the best way to acknowledge that. And it's basically the only thing I've got tonight. Well, besides prayer, which also helps, but I'm not sure that will work with the opera singer.

now i can call it summer

My feet have felt hot sand and lapping water. My skin has been red and hot from just a little too much time in the sun. My hair has been blown to bits (that's what my mom would always say) from a car ride with the windows open.

Now I can call it summer.

a sound of rain

"...for there is a sound of rushing rain." -1 Kings 18:41

Southern California is a dessert, though walking through my neighborhood, you might not guess that right away. You’d walk past lush lawns and roses that teeter over fences greet you with their bright colors. You’d hear lawn mowers almost any morning of the week and breathe deeply of that fresh cut grass scent that reminds us things are growing.

But it actually doesn’t fool you for long. There are places that give it away. Like the LA River, which is less a river than a concrete ditch with a trickle of water that smells like the slums of Manila. And the hiking trails, which are like a celebrity without make up. At first you might feel embarrassed for her, but you quickly appreciate what’s true, even if unpolished.

Seasons are different here, and I had to adjust at first. When I moved, I arrived in June, and I didn’t feel a drop of rain until October (the 14th, to be exact, I remember). Every winter and early spring I wonder if this rain, or this one, will be our last for the next six months as we watch any green that grew on hillsides gradually crisp to gold.

Today is July 12, and last night I woke and swear I heard rain falling. I don’t know for sure if I was awake or just dreaming. When I went running early this morning, the only sign of water was the puddles from sprinklers that aim over the border of lawns. But the sky was dark with the kind of clouds that are weighed down by something, and they were slow to let any sun shine through. I guess I’m ok with the mystery, and in most ways it doesn’t matter. A light sprinkling won’t do much to help our browning lawns and hillsides.

Most of me just wants to believe in the probability of rain in a dessert, even when it’s just as simple to dismiss it as a dream.

since i'm not looking out this window

My housemates are all away, and so is half my office. It's time for summer vacation. And I'm feeling it. Some internal rhythm is set to pack my bags and jump on a plane with all the others, but that's not in the cards for this summer. I'm stuck in everyday life.

So since I'm not looking out the window of a car or plane traveling away from here, or at the sun dipping into the ocean or behind any strange and wonderful land, and since I'm not tasting new food in foreign places... I'll give you a peak into what I am escaping into.

This quote has me continuing to think about introversion and my need to make space for solitude.

So sad to hear this news, especially after reading (and loving) Love in the Time of Cholera earlier this year.

"The ideal body is the one a girl is born with." Word.

Thinking of trying to create some of my own book spine poetry. (Wouldn't that be fun to try with kids? I'm imagining some ridiculous compositions.)

I like their round-up, too. Especially the part about books changing lives.

And speaking of books changing lives, the one this letter is excerpted from changed mine.

I don't read much of this kind of nonfiction, but these books on innovation look interesting.


Where are you taking off to this summer?