North, west, east

This is my last week in Alabama for a few months! I'll be sifting through stuff, packing, and visiting with folks --- also one of my good friends from elementary school is getting married!  I haven't been to a wedding in a long time.

Last week I heard back from my NYC interview and I'm in!  I've decided to fully pursue this UK option, which means over the next month or so I'll be interviewing with different companies in London. Hopefully I'll find a good fit. Then it's all about visa and plane ticket getting!

Bonus feature: Shelley got accepted and to my delight has decided to move to London, too. Of course, Shelley or no Shelley, I'm overjoyed about London because Dave's there and I love England and I'm ready to work at a real job. If you'd asked me five years ago if I'd happily move back to the UK, I'd have said "YES!  But that's probably not going to happen." Surprise surprise.

But it'll be extra great with Shelley around. I feel incredibly blessed to have such good friends. And I feel extra incredibly blessed to have them in my daily life after high school and college are over. (Speaking of these people, Hannah's 23rd birthday is today!  Celebration!)

I finished Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Committed" this week and she writes about us building intimacy by sharing stories at nighttime. Mostly she's writing about romantic relationships and marriage, but her words remind me of friendship, too:

"This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark."

I spent awhile remembering the many times I've stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning just talking with my friends. In a tent on a rainy night. Wandering around, lost, in a big city. On the couch long after the movie ended. On overnight buses.

Real friendship.  It's good stuff.

The world is a weird place.

Here are three things I like.

[edited on Tuesday, May 3 to correct the MLK quote]

Quote by Martin Luther King Jr. 

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

"Prince Harry, in a suit, holding a puppy."

(For aesthetically-pleasing comic relief during these serious times.)

via my sister's Facebook, via Pinterest

Day 5: A book you love.

John Irving's "A Prayer For Owen Meany" 

If you haven't read it, do. I recommend it to everyone. It's both weird and conventional. The characters are real, it makes me laugh out loud, and it says meaningful stuff about growing up, family, faith, friendship, war, and the supernatural.

Walking

Classes are over!  Thunderstorms are brewing. I'm at work reading and trying to stay awake.  Quotes I dig on walking:

"Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it... and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill... Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right." (Soren Kierkegaard)

and

"It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks." (Anatole France)

I'm trying to keep the second quote in mind as I fight the urge to buy new clothes.

Fair words butter no parsnips

I like this little eighteenth century nugget of wisdom. Though I dislike parsnips.  Have you ever eaten parsnips?  Mashed, they look and feel like potatoes but they taste most certainly different.  It's like in Europe when you think you're about drink water but upon taking a sip you discover you're not drinking water at all, you're drinking something fizzy and bitter (also known as water with gas, or fizzy water).  That's what eating parsnips is like for me. I prefer potatoes.

This weekend I went home for a family funeral. It was a somber occasion but really good to see everyone. I returned to Auburn feeling much more purposeful and thankful.

Earlier this week a friend texted me at 2am telling me how grateful she was for her good friends and amazing life experiences. Another friend is writing down one thing he is grateful for every day this year. My thunderstorm post last week was an exercise in thankfulness, too. I know people heaps smarter and more important than me have already noticed this, but being appreciative --- thankful, grateful, whatever you want to call it --- seems to be one of the essential keys to daily happiness.  You might like to check out the blog thx thx thx.  The author writes a thank you note every day. Sometimes it's about serious things, sometimes it's about heart-patterned toilet paper in the office restroom. It might inspire you to enjoy little things on days when gratitude isn't flowing freely.

Another essential key to daily happiness:  sunshine.  I'm very freckled and shouldn't get too much, but boy do I love it. I have a long not-so-fun April to-do list and next to it, a "healthy living" list: being outside whenever it's warm and sunny is priority number one.  I've started eating lunch outside rather than in front of a computer.  Try it.

Didn't intend to write a self-helpish post --- was just happy about the butter and parsnips adage and wanted to share. Enjoy your week!

Fairly makes your heart ache

It's spring fever. When you've got it, you want --- oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

An overused but pertinent Mark Twain quote. What do I think I maybe want this spring?  Chocolate milkshakes all the time. And to be an organic farmer.  I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Mineral in which she writes about her family's year of being pretty strict "locavores": going totally local by growing and raising food on their small Virginian farm and purchasing food only from local vendors. An entertaining, delicious, and inspiring read. I forgot how overambitious I tend to be... last night I dreamt of canning my own tomatoes and raising my own rare-breed turkeys.

Back from New Orleans (where it rained and poured, see above umbrella photo) and Orange Beach and two weeks of good times with Dave Masom and other good people, I'm preparing for a final two month push in school and in forming my next major life plan. A few days before spring break, I was accepted into a UK graduate school.  Woo!  It's not my first choice, but it's still a good option and an encouragement.

In other news, I got my first speeding ticket on our way back from the beach.  Oops. If I could afford speeding tickets, I would continue to speed, but I can't, so I'm driving slower now. One victory for the law enforcement system.

Take your allergy meds and enjoy the sunshine!

Oh dear

This blog is starving for attention!


Things are crazy right now, but I thought I would say a quick hello :)

Crazy things:


I'm now 23-years-old.  I like that 23 is a prime number and that I'm not in my mid-twenties quite yet.  There was a small gathering at the lakehouse in Georgia where: we enjoyed yummy pork chops, coconut rice, and Gigi's cupcakes, I saved our dog Lyra from drowning, and my parents gave me two things I really wanted:  a 1960s-style one-piece bathing suit and measuring utensils for metric-system baking recipes.  (I could be a mid-twentieth century housewife, apparently.)


After work last week, my friend introduced me to "the taco truck," which parks in a mechanic shop parking lot on Opelika Road.  A Mexican guy operates the truck, serving Latinos at various job sites during the day and whoever stops by the truck at night.  Amazing and legit tacos (for a buck fifty each).  I'm excited to go back next week when Dave's here visiting.


Speaking of which, Dave arrives on Thursday.  We're driving to Mobile, picking up my friend Erika from the airport, then spending the weekend in New Orleans.  Spring break is a week later, and we'll be down in Orange Beach. (I'll be baking and wearing my 1960s one-piece.)


Work and school aside, I'm finishing various applications for graduate schools, internships, and jobs, all centered around my epic and daunting goal of legally residing in the UK this fall.  I haven't talked much about Operation UK.  But it's fully underway.  If you care at all about my sanity, please say a prayer that something perfect works out.  Don't worry, I'm flexible when it comes to details.

In terms of summer plans, it looks like I'm headed back to Wyoming.  And I'm super excited.  I don't think I'll ever live in a more beautiful spot than at the foot of the Tetons.


That's all for now!  I'm sad I'm not updating more often, but I promise, I'm determined to keep this blog alive and, soon, to give it lots of love and care.

Good advice (from Rainer Marie Rilke) for a prime numbered wannabe 1960s baker who loves people, mountains, and London and who makes lots of too-big plans day after day:

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you…as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers , which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Wednesday morning

1.  A boy offered me his seat on the transit, and it made my morning.  Especially because it was cold and rainy outside.

1a.  When will I start referring to male peers as men?  

2.  Auburn keeps sending me emails about study abroad programs.  Costa Rica, Shanghai, England, Tanzania, etc.  Study abroad opportunities have definitely increased since 2006.  And, this year the university introduced an alternative student break program.  These are both good things.

3.  Something nice I read by D.H. Lawrence:

Behind all the dancing was a vision, and even a science of life, a conception of the universe and man's place in the universe which made men live to the depth of their capacity.

4.  Regular blenders cannot crush chickpeas.  This weekend I'm buying a food processor.  

To be of use

by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.


I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.


I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.


The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cried for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Quotes I dig: not in a hurry

Beachcomber: 'I'm not bothered,' he said. 'You can go anywhere, you can do just about anything, if you're not in a hurry.' That is one of the sanest statements I have ever heard in my life.

- Paul Theroux

and

Me: The kitchen has a microwave and an oven and a toaster ov---

Hannah: OH MY GOD. WE CAN COOK SO MANY NEW THINGS.

We've arrived in Antigua, and it is grand. Check out my earlier post for sea turtle photos!

Quotes I dig: travel is a state of mind

Is there any point in going across the world to eat something or buy something or to watch poor people squatting among their ruins? Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with distance or the exotic. It is almost entirely an inner experience.

-Paul Thoreaux

I'm reading a collection of Paul Thoreaux's shorter writings. I think I'll find a lot of quotes I dig before I'm through. One thing I like about his approach to travel writing is that he treats every experience, even a half day boat trip on a river near his house in Massachussets, as a journey and as a story.

Sand fleas are biting me this week. Tonight's my night to cook for the other thirteen volunteers, but the national director of ARCAS might be taking us out to dinner. So I'm killing time until then. Earlier today I made peanut butter honey granola balls for dessert... Thank you, internet, for no bake dessert recipes with less than five ingredients.

Quotes I dig: the opposite of cynicism

the opposite of cynicism isn´t optimism but action.

- jim wallis

Prickly heat

The word "adventure" is overused. To me, an adventure only starts when everything goes wrong.
- Yvon Chouinard

I've just self-diagnosed myself with heat rash. It's red, itchy, and on both knees, the top of one foot, and the small of my back. Wikipedia helpfully suggests I move into an air conditioned building and avoid hot and humid climates.

There's some sort of meeting going on in el comedor this morning, and while I was making pancakes, a male leader from the community came into the kitchen and told Sara to bring out some water. She stopped what she was doing and quickly produced a tray with pitchers of water while the man stood in the doorway watching. As she filled the glasses, he said something to her, she nodded, poured out the water, and proceeded to wash the already clean glasses while he continued to do nothing. I felt the need to share that scene as an amendment to yesterday's la comunidad de mujeres post.

The fanaticism of her twenties

But the fanaticism of my twenties shocks me now. As I feared it would.
- Annie Dillard