but they're all addressed to me...

Somebody once told me to never underestimate the power of a well written letter. Or maybe I read that in a book some time ago... or perhaps those were just some lines spoken in a film I saw once; I can't remember. But someone, fictional or not, once said to never underestimate the power of a well written letter. And they were right. I find myself tonight, like I have on so many similar evenings, looking through a box full of letters. These are letters that someone, in a seemingly past life, once wrote to me. They are, in fact, love letters. I have a box full of love letters. And every evening like this begins and ends the same. I fall, or rather dive, head first into this 'other world,' a universe seemingly all its own, shaped by memory, colored in a past, and punctuated with unwavering, all consuming, unconditionally beautiful love. For those few hours I am reminded of what appears to have been, as I said before, another life... another time, but not so totally another me. I am reminded that this hopeless romantic should be rather hopeful, as once upon a time true love existed, and will undoubtedly exist again. (please forgive the sap...I'm having a moment)

I've been leafing through these old pages, somewhat crinkled and worn, with an all too familiar handwriting, thinking that the love letters of great men I always admired and felt drawn to, actually hold no candle to the ones in my possession. These letters embrace the kind of romanticism I've bought into my entire life. I always imagined that Austen and Bronte, even Cummings wrote of love in more brilliant ways than anyone I knew ever could but yet, here it is... the proof. Proof that the love I thought I had only conjured up in some dreamlike whimsical alternate reality actually exists... or existed. Someone I knew years ago had the incredible capacity not only for love, but for putting pen to paper and shaping the English language so masterfully and tenderly that even now, years later, I am brought to tears by the notions of romance, admiration, appreciation, and love. It is as if these letters are not even addressed to me, but I am glimpsing into the precious correspondence of a man to his beloved- neither of whom I ever knew. As if these letters could have in fact lived in the time of Austen or Bronte... what a thought.

And I got to thinking about the power of words- which I have firmly put to question especially over the past year. Have words lost their power? Or have we lost our ability to coherently express all that we think and feel? I read these words and am reminded of a love so pure and innocent and unconditional... despite frustration and mess and complication. I read words like this, and find they're far better than anything Beethoven or Lord Byron wrote to their beloveds... because someone, somewhere, years ago, wrote them to me:

My life would be a far cry from what it is now if you were not with me now, if you'd not been there for me then, if you'd not been around for all this time. I thank you, from the bottom of all that is good within me, from the bottom of my cold heart, from the very center of everything I've ever had, for everything you've given me, for all the opportunities and chances and graces and forgiveness and love and hands to hold and shoulders to lay my head on and cheeks to touch and lips to kiss and eyes to see you seeing me, too. I can't imagine ever saying this to anyone else, ever feeling this about anyone else, ever giving this much to anything else. You are the reason I can do what I do, and all before this was fallacy.

..........So here's to hoping that even more years from now I'll be leafing through yet another box full of letters, once again reminding myself that Mr. Darcy does in fact exist in this reality, that he has the capacity for love, and that I am, in fact, lovable. Here's to becoming a more hopeful romantic. Here's to unconditional love, ridiculous romance, and the power of a well written letter.

Valentine

There really was a Valentine.
A priest.
3rd Century Rome.
He was Valentine.

Emperor Claudius II believed that men without wives and families made better soldiers. Thus, he outlawed marriage in attempts of improving his soldier crop. But cue Valentine. He continued marrying couples in secret, risking his life for love.

And so begins the historic stories and legends of Valentine's Day.

3rd Century Rome...now that was romance. Somewhere along the way this story got so distorted and diluted. We've actually come to believe that Valentine's Day, this celebration of one beautiful martyr from nearly a past existence, should be manifested in no other way than via Hallmark Cards and heart shaped chocolates. Somewhere along the way we came to believe that there should be this one day, filled with certain hopes and expectations, specific words and acts of romances. And we keep buying into the idea... year after year. We continue celebrating a day that has become saturated in ridiculousness...in commercial plots ultimately set on turning a profit.

And maybe we've just gotten all together consumed by it all. We've gotten lost in a world that teaches us to value material possessions and grand gestures. Maybe we keep buying cards and bouquets of flowers because we've forgotten how to actually say what we mean...what we feel. Because love- it's the most powerful, surprising, messy expression of emotion there is. It lacks all rationale and practicality. It's purely emotional. If only we could say what we really feel... if we could return to the classic romanticism of real love letters and pure acts of affection. If we could return to the authenticity of Valentine...acting based upon emotion, rather than what a large corporation or mass society dictates.

The truth is, I love Valentine's Day. Or rather, I love the idea of Valentine's Day. And I just hate how it's come to be presented and celebrated.

But what can you do...

......
my thoughts go out to you, my immortal beloved.
I can live only wholly with you or not at all.
Be calm my life, my all.
Only by calm consideration of our existence...
can we achieve our purpose to live together.
Oh,continue to love me.
Never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

Ever thine.
Ever mine.
Ever ours.

-Beethoven

breakfast for dinner

Angela Chase used to say that walking into someone else's house for the first time is like entering another country. And I think she's right. Someone else's house has its own language, customs, rituals, smells... And if you think about it, a house is also, in this case, a home. And a home perhaps is in fact someones sanctuary. How strange in a way to enter into another's sanctuary whether by invitation or mere happenstance. Do we then become tourists? Travelers? Walking into someone else's house is like stepping into an open portal into an entire universe...the intimate, private, vulnerable world that's unique of them and only them.

I suppose I should clarify that Angela Chase is in fact a fictional character from My So-Called Life... which is probably one of the best, yet underrated, and too soon to be canceled 90's television shows of all time. Angela Chase had never been to another country but her sense of entering into someone else's house was spot on.

And this idea transforms particularly when finding yourself alone in someone else's house... it's as if the house takes on a life and a personality of its own. The house now feels different, regardless of how many times you've sat on that very couch or danced in that living room or eaten pancakes at the kitchen table... void of its owner the house becomes something new, yet undoubtedly devoted to the keeper of the sanctuary. And you are no longer a tourist or a traveler or a mere visitor... you become a sort of surrogate. Just as you're asked to take care of the house, the house takes care of you. And, man, I don't mean for that to sound so cheesy, but I think it's like the ideas of space in Laban Movement Analysis. Now, forgive me as I nerd out for a moment...

Motion is essentially connected to the environment; we consider spatial pathways and patterns. Whether consciously or not, we take the spaces in which we exist and live and move through on a daily basis into account as we move and function in, through, around (etc) them... Architecture is, among other factors, based around the consideration of bodies moving through that space performing whatever practice or function intended. And thus, the space either facilitates or inhibits certain activities, motions, and senses of moving/being. I wonder how this house puts its impression on the bodies which enter and exist here? I wonder in turn, how those bodies impress upon the space?

Walking into someone's house for the first time is like entering a foreign country. Staying in someone's house for an extended period of time is like attempting to make that foreign place feel like home... yet no home you've ever really known. And I wonder if it's completely impossible? Or will your own private universe begin to invade that of this new space over time? Thus creating something new?

Or maybe I'm just a bit loopy from an outside filled with snow covered trees and over caffeinated, head phone wearing tunnel visioned east coasters... and this house that should feel like a quiet peace, feels empty and lonely and strange.

But then again, I haven't eaten breakfast alone in this house. Breakfast can be incredibly telling. Breakfast in a house holds power. Until then...

a first dream called ocean

42

here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap
and to your (in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain

and here's to silent certainly mountains, and to
a disappearing poet of always, snow
and to morning; and to morning's beautiful friend
twilight (and a first dream called ocean) and

let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid
down with ought with because with every brain
which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel (but up
with joy; and up with laughing and drunkenness)

here's to one undiscoverable guess
of whose mad skills each world of blood is made
(whose fatal songs are moving in the moon

- e.e. cummings
...........................

Well kids, I'm officially moving to Hawaii! May 26th I'll be taking that 17 hour flight over to the Pacific side of things to spend a glorious seven months (if not longer) living on Oahu. Kind of amazing actually... thrilling and terrifying and utterly fantastic. It's 2010 after all, right? More to come...

horizon

I'm not sure I believe that everything happens for a reason. It implies that there's some grand, master plan we have no control over- that perhaps notions like fate and destiny exist outside of the fictional realms of film and literature. I'm not sure I can believe in such notions that allude to the fact of us actually having less control over our lives than we think. And yet, there are these incredibly illuminated moments when it feels like the universe is revealing itself to me in some unmistakable way. And in said moments I can't help but feel like everything happens for a reason...that the universe presents us with signs to interpret and so unfolds the course of our very existence.

But then again... is it possible that some divine mysticism in the universe has some Oracle like knowledge of our mind's intent, our soul's passion, our will's need or desire? Or rather, do we seek out 'signs' as means of rationalizing the decisions we believe to be the best or right ones for us. Because our hearts are so intent in feeling truth, yet our minds seek to play a sort of devil's advocate, do we look for support and comfort in the world around us? Do we create the signs ourselves? Do we become the revealers of our own universes?

And rather than signs being laid in front of us, it is our hearts being that much more in tune with what they really want- that we're simply more aware, senses heightened to all of the stimuli around us. And so we notice the calendar in Office Depot or the TV movie set in a certain location, or the countless newspaper articles and song lyrics and profound encounters with strangers that all point so clearly straight ahead to this choice we've been struggling to make... because you think in some way, because the people you love most don't support it, that it could be the wrong one. When really, maybe this is the moment you have to choose selfishness, and realize that the only voice that truly matters is your own. And when you have trust and faith in your own intuition and sound moral compass, how could any decision you feel so passionate about be wrong?

In a way, everything does happen for a reason. I suppose it has to. Otherwise, all this is simply chaos personified. Which, I suppose is also a possibility. But being creatures of comfort we cling to the belief that all these events and circumstances, the people who fade in and out, are all of some value or purpose. Because if they're not, and if we're not, then why are we here? And what's all this for?

I may be making some terrific mistake. But even if I am, at least it's of my own making. And in reality, years from now when I'm actually grown up and feel like I've settled into this so-called "adulthood" I like to think I'll look back on this moment in my life and feel little regret. Because at the very least, I was making my own decisions... with passion and purity of heart. And beyond that, I'm not sure what else really matters.

the perfect space

I am in love with oak trees. Maybe it's something to do with this stability of roots finding counterpart in a seemingly infinite expanse. They say an oak can live 200 years or more. Maybe it's the feeling that something of beauty in the natural world can, in a way, withstand the test of time.

The ancient Romans saw the oak tree as a symbol of strength and power. They believed oaks attracted lightening and thus were connected to Juno, god of the sky. In turn his wife, Jupiter, goddess of marriage, made the oak to be a symbol of commitment and fidelity. The Druids believed the oak had the power to renew and heal, while Socrates saw the oak tree as an oracle.

I think maybe Socrates had it right.

There is something so inherently divine and all knowing about this immense tree. Maybe it's the immensity... its ability to simultaneously inject one with excitement, hope, and fear. It's as if the grand oak holds onto the impressions of life... the children who've attempted to climb its thick branches, the seasons of autumn and winter which transformed color and stripped leaves, the lovers nestling under its shade on warm summer days.

It's something out of a Robert Frost poem.

Though I suppose Frost spoke of Birch trees, a symbol of new beginnings and vision quests. Perhaps the sister tree to the likes of an oak, more so the great grandfather, observer, quietly absorbing moments and memories and seasons of human kind worshiping beneath its hearty limbs and fallen acorns.

I am in love with oak trees. It's something about this vast expanse. This endurance. As if such a structure is meant to be honored. The oak is powerful. The oak affirms life in a way. And maybe it's my need to find stability and strength in my own life that compels me toward oaks. Maybe the universe is sending me in that direction very purposefully.

In John's Island, South Carolina there is an Angel Oak Tree... nearly 1500 years old. It's said to be one of the oldest living things east of the Mississippi. I officially want to see this tree before I die. Or rather, before it does. It's survived hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and perhaps worst of all- humanity. What an incredible testament to the capacity of nature and living things. I don't know, I'm just so taken with these things...


.......
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a
green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and
deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the
man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.
- William Blake, 1799, The Letters


.......
(
current soundtrack: Avett Brothers, The Perfect Space
currently reading: A Prayer for Owen Meany
currently...lost
)

maybe all before this was fallacy

I think it happened somewhere amidst standing over the kitchen counter in the dark, eating cold spaghetti from a glad-ware container at 1 o'clock in the morning. Maybe that was the moment. The moment being the precise collection of seconds in which I realized the all together precarious and ridiculous state of my life. Somewhere in between the rapture of tomato and basil came this flash of images- pictures of me and my life and the people so colorfully populating it. And we were swimming, or rather floating. These tiny caricatures in my head attempting simply to stay afloat and failing to grasp at anything concrete.
Void of all stability.
Tempting fate and a drowning demise.

Here I stood, in my parent's kitchen, in a house that no longer felt like my own, eating cold spaghetti in the dark. It was all I could do to take this sharply close look at my life... at the very real and bizarre circumstance in which I now found myself. All I could see was a young woman, seemingly accomplished and of various interest and skill, yet completely and utterly lost in the immensity. The immensity of life and the universe and all its divine, cosmic and fate driven notions was holding me hostage. And for the first recognizable time in my life I couldn't uncover the strength to fight the immensity back. All I could see was this reflection of someone I didn't even know.

And I feel like I should have cried. As a highly emotional individual- one who sobs at Hallmark commercials and hot dog advertisements- all signs point to my inevitable tear shed. And yet, nothing. I felt as though I should have cried like a young girl learning the fictional reality of her beloved Santa Claus, or a 15 year old experiencing heartbreak for the first time. Nothing. I would have even settled for an outburst of obscenity or a rush of inappropriate laughter. I was in fact, so remarkably unprepared for what occurred next. I simply stood staring at a tiny crack in the hardwood floor. Perhaps a tomato and basil induced coma had set in leaving little to no room for an intensely emotional reaction. So I simply stood there for another good 30 seconds before putting the blue plastic lid back on my mother's spaghetti and went to my room.

...A man once told me that you can bloom where you're planted. We stood in front of a wall of cheese I was so expertly mongering at Trader Joe's when he said to me, "You can bloom where you're planted." I suppose this is a fact perhaps one comes to terms with later in life, once you've moved away from a place or seen the edge of something new. And upon returning to that place where you began you find that you could have stayed there all along. You could have grown into something or someone of just as much substance and interest. You can bloom where you're planted.

But then I think that I could just spend a lifetime floating... through space and time, between oceans and continents and cups of coffee, hiking paths and perfectly delicious kisses, old pairs of sweatpants and borrowed boyfriend t-shirts, dance studios, yoga studios, black and white photographs, endless Sunday mornings and farmer's markets, fresh peaches, hand holding, long distant phone calls and laughter, art, cardboard boxes, audrey hepburn films, and moments that pull you back into your body while simultaneously tossing you out into other dimensions and worlds and colors... I want to believe that I can bloom where I've been planted. But not yet. I am far too close to the drowning demise of an over watered houseplant or the perfect sunflower caught in an April monsoon. Perhaps this man forgot to also mention that one too can bloom where you're uprooted and re-planted. Or maybe said plant may live in a beautifully crafted pot allowing it to move and live in all kinds of homes and landscapes before being settled back into solid earth. Perhaps we can master this simultaneous planting and floating to offer room for adventure and discovery while still being at home in the world?

They don't teach you that in college. They don't teach you that anywhere really... how to be at home in the world. It's like one day you wake up and realize that you're living a life you never thought you would ever possibly be living. Leaving all judgement out of the equation, it's just that you never imagined your life would look as it does. And no one ever told you how to make the transition from perpetual student and academic artist to real life person. And not to say that anyone was supposed to. But, how can you make this transition into figuring out who you really are and what you really want when essentially, nothing in your life up until this point has actually prepared you for making such decisions. Maybe all before this was fallacy. Maybe we were all just playing at pretend hoping that when reality set in we just wouldn't notice?

At least I may take tiny comfort in knowing that for as long as I've been alive, my mother's spaghetti has always been delicious. This is a fact in which I hold complete faith and know will forever be truth. Especially cold... at 1 o'clock in the morning.

Currently seeking out other small comforts to make it through another week.
I promise it won't be so long between posts next time.

-L