I am in Seoul, South Korea at the moment. Tomorrow -- who knows?
QUOTES OF THE MOMENT
"Some days I'm like, 'This is the greatest life ever.' And some days I'm like, 'Where is my fucking cartographer?!'"
~ Lacey Root
"They [self-help books] play on our fears, make us feel as though we are incapable of dealing with our own problems, and promising that if we read the book (obey the commandments), then our problems will be solved (entry to heaven)... so is the Bible the original self help book and god is a flambouyant Dale Carnegie?????"
~ Mark Angelides
"It's the cat's bananas!"
~ Gareth Davies
"You must help the students experience euphoria in oral practice."
~ Course syllabus, my uni class in China (no, not the one I wrote)
"I called you stupid, you idiot!"
~ Eric, my 9 year old student
"Being a good person is a lot like peeing on yourself when you're wearing dark clothing - you get a warm feeling but not everyone notices."
~ Dad
"My mother sent me a purse that looks like a murdered Fraggle."
~ Red
~~~~~~~My friends/family are hysterical~~~~~~~~
I have a self-imposed and poorly (i.e. un-) paid second job of blogging about my travels. Support my addiction - visit http://thegrassyroad.livejournal.com.
I have a tendency to take myself a little too seriously. Which is really a shame because I cock up a lot and it's damn funny. Luckily I have lots of good friends who are more than willing to laugh at ... with... me.
I do a lot of things. None of them expertly. All of them with ridiculously high expectations and an inordinate amount of passion. My heart is monumentally idiotic sometimes, but somehow we get along.
I stay up really late not doing much of anything. It's not that I can't sleep, just that I'd rather do ... something else. But I never know quite what that something is. It's rather like when you get hungry and you open the fridge and stare at it but nothing really looks appetizing, so eventually you just give up and starve.
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts... but to love wisdom [enough] as to live according to its dictates: a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."
~ Thoreau ~
ANCORA IMPARO: I AM STILL LEARNING: http://sevenevenstar.livejournal.com
Song Lyric of the Day:
"This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath
No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again."
~ "On the Radio" Regina Spektor ~
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Poetry:
1. Beauty is truth, truth beauty; - that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know. (Keats)
2. Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned by those who are not entirely beautiful. (Yeats)
3. Ah, love, let us be true to one another! (Arnold)
4. Time held me, green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea. (Arnold)
5. Do not go gently to that good night. (Thomas)
6. To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought. (Tennyson)
7. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. (Ehrmann)
8. Love is not love which alters when its alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. (Shakespeare)
9. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep; and miles to go before I sleep. (Frost)
10. In the prison of his days, teach the free man how to praise. (Auden)
"Hey, man, this is a beautiful life."
A few essential things you should know about me:
1. I frolic:
Preferably in sundappled woods on spring days in long white dresses... but pretty much everywhere else, too, from hills to vales to streets of DC's Chinatown at 2 AM in the rain. While I'm a thinker and a dreamer, I'm also just a kid at heart. I like to laugh. And be silly. I am well practiced at public humiliation.
2. If you love me, never protect me from my mistakes. Though it may pain you to watch, let me suffer so that I might learn and become better. The moment I am content to justify, excuse, or merely laugh off the consequences of my actions is the moment I cease to be accountable, and the moment I cease to be me.
That's for remembrance.
3. I live a ridiculously overanalyzed life. There is nothing in my heart or mind that is not thoroughly and gravely examined, considered and constantly re-evaluated to ensure validity. Sometimes I act without thinking, but when I do I always try to figure it out in retrospect. Sometimes this way of life is ponderous and exhausting, but in the end it's worth it, because my every moment is incandescent with meaning and purpose.
4. I love individuals. (This term must be differentiated from "people" which refers to many individuals collectively.) "People" consistently disappoint me and I am always prepared for the worst. Individuals, on the other hand, overwhelmingly delight me, and I give them the benefit of the doubt at all times. If you've made a favorable impression on me, you can pretty much rest assured that I'll think you hung the moon until you give me no choice but to think otherwise. When I love you I do not hesitate to tell you... though you should keep in mind that "love" to me does not exclusively mean romantic love. If you've made an unfavorable impression on me, you can rest assured I'll withhold judgement until I know you well enough to judge rightly. At least... that's how I try to operate.
"When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't crawl... you find someone to carry you."
5. I like words. (I bet you could never guess...) Many times I find I don't have words equal to the moment, so I borrow someone else's; I have a quote for pretty much every occasion. I have my own vocabulary, and in most cases you have to know me fairly well to get my full meaning. Things like "the entitlement complex" crop up all the time in my quirky vernacular, and sometimes you have to be able to understand to what degree and in what context I use a word; it isn't always in the conventional sense. As William Gass once wrote, "Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things." You can tell a lot about a person by how he/she speaks and writes.
... that said I cannot spell to save my life.
