"This is the story of how we begin to remember

This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein

After the dream of falling and calling your name out

These are the roots of rhythm

And the roots of rhythm remain"

UNDER AFRICAN SKIES. PAUL SIMON

today, i sat on the floor of my hallway and talked to my dad

i like how he treats me as though i might possibly have something of importance to say

i like how patient and composed he is, as contrasted to my whimsical, capricious firing of questions and musings

self possesion vs. impulse; it makes for compelling conversation

i found out that he was sick during high school, and missed an entire year of school. but he lived in new york city, and since everyone else was in school he spent his days wandering the city, meandering into museums and art galleries, shows and cafes, and everything else a city has to offer. missing a year of school for illness seems less than desirable-- but a year of free time in new york? sounds golden

then we got up and carried outside his old sleek road-bicycle. it took about 10 Lysol cleansing towel-things to clean it. its a rich red color, once you wipe off the years, and its light and lithe and swift and i want to go for a bike ride

what makes certain people amazing? i feel like part of this must be the fact that there are average people to compare them too. but then i meet more "average" people, and i think they are amazing too. i want to meet every remarkable, fascinating person in the world. but i dont want to find out that our common, universal amazing-ness is what makes us all average.

this is my mental conundrum of the day :)

"Ramblin' where to begin,

I taste the summer on your peppery skin"

SUMMERSONG. THE DECEMBERISTS

Hurrah! it is finally the summer that i have not been looking forward to at all!

i dont mean this like im not going to enjoy my summer. i mainly mean this to mean that school represented 6 hours a day of effortless experience. like, it was inevitable that i would at least learn something new/some new side of someone/meet someone new. but summer requires me to actually try. like theres 8 weeks of possibility stretched out before me, and its neither reaching to me or running away. i have to take the initiative to do something with it

summer life has been an endless cycle of my moms old CDs

since my only computer with working speakers has broken. at

first i considered that a tragedy, until my love for paul simon,

david bowie, the clash, and billy bragg& wilco was completely

rekindled. i am sad to say that i listened to my old backstreet

boys CD as well, when i had exhausted the supply of my

moms. im sad to say that i still greatly enjoyed it!

im not going to list all the infinite details of the past couple

days that i have been unfaithful to this blog because that

would be boring to everyone but me, and possibly the people

involved. but in summery: (haha i just spelled summary

wrong, but i like the irony so im going to keep that)

-- take every chance you can to meet a new person.

meeting just one, single other person opens up another world to you, just as huge and all-encompassing and complicated and interesting and pained and beautiful as it feels like your own life is. if i could just meet at least one new person each day.. id be so worldly :) despite my lack of traveling

--take the risk to be the vulnerable one to someone. because everyone is human, and (this is just my belief, i could be completely wrong) everyone just wants to love and be loved in return. the more love you give out, gets returned to you with extra, and then you have more to give, and get, and give ... its a cycle. i am cringing at my corny-ness right now, but thats how i feel

my dad told me yesterday "you fall in love with something new everyday". i hope i never ever ever ever stop!

"tenuous at best
was all he had to say, when pressed about
the rest of it
(the world that is)"
TENUOUSNESS. ANDREW BIRD




finals today were an endless cycle of telling myself "your entire life rests on this grade" and "screw this!". neither extreme is a productive attitude, and resulted in my mind basically going blank, with the continual the resounding hiss of stresssssssssssssssssssssss in the back of my head, somewhere behind my eyes..

if i could advise you one thing, itd be to take a nap! today i wrapped myself up in twenty thousand billowing blue blankets and fell into one of the most gratifying rests i've ever had. words cannot express the new affection i have found for my bed. i awoke in a panicked state of delirium when my mom went running through the house, slamming doors and shouting "emily?! emily?!" believing me to be missing. her worry was touching, and i hadnt heard such a raw note of fear in her voice for a while. usually my mom has trouble admitting when she is scared of me (me growing up, or my opinion of her, etc) because that means vulnerability, but today she embraced it, as she ripped off my covers and flung her arms around me. "ive found you!"

its nice to be needed, but it was actually scary for me to be the need-ee, rather than the needer. i am now bigger than my mom. our new fit is unfamiliar to me still.

im currently contemplating whether or not i do better when i have a clear mind and give educated guesses to questions (also known as, getting a good nights sleep tonight) versus having studied really thoroughly, but having a pounding headache throughout the exam that dulls my clarity and results in long periods of time where i sit there, static, staring blindly at the questions. (which would describe last night and today quite explicitly)

ill probably end up staying up late again, because im too chicken to leave anything to chance, and id feel less guilty if i put in an honest effort and failed, than if i slept well and failed. both are the same result, but its hard for me to do something without trying.

"cigarettes and lies, I am a child

its too soon"

HOTEL SONG. REGINA SPEKTOR

i used the above lyrics on my art final today.

"as if you could kill time without injuring eternity"

ive been trying to live more deliberately. i believe all of us have somewhat injured eternity before... but i wonder if its resilient enough to heal.

resilient would be a nice thing to be

i just wanted to say this quickly;

it was spending yesterday in boston that made my feelings tangible, and so clearly obvious that love for one anothers' true selves transcends any human weakness, or fear of vulnerability.

in about an hour i am going to joeys house with my family. family friendships are wonderful, wholesome things, especially since his family amazes me. and then im going to walk from my house and meet Beck in the middle. as the sun is setting, we will wander the railroad tracks and hopefully dip our feet in the pond until its dark.

" and how, how i wish i, i had talked to them,

and i wish they fit into the plan

and we were tired of being mild

we were so tired of being mild

and we were tired..."

TABLES AND CHAIRS. ANDREW BIRD

Yasou! Now you know how to greet people in Greek! (thanks for that flickr... your language of the day makes me feel a tad bit more cultural)

just as a pre-cursor to this entry, id like to say that i am tirelessly in awe of the world. insatiably so. i could eat it up and never be full. ever!

its people, perhaps, that amaze me the most. the infinitivity (im using my artistic liscense and creating a word here) of them, and we all have so much to offer to this world. i wonder why i think so much about my life, when i learn so much more when i listen to others talk about their own lives. and being in boston surrounded by thousands other souls, each as complex and intricate as i believe myself to be.. i think im going to live in a city when im older, or ill go crazy. cities are where it becomes most clear to me; i realize my life as this line that ive been following, a straight one it seems since im looking straight down on it. but then sourounded by so many others, i realized they are each doing exactly the same thing, and there are billions of other lines of lives in this world, and in that city i was surrounded by a great diversity of them. it hit me that my line is not straight at all, its curved and twisted and has its peaks and hollows, that all run parallel, perpendicular, or touches lightly the crisscrossed lines of a thousand other lives, all brought together for this one random two-hour event one night. i need to look up more, i then thought, because im missing out on seeing the pattern of so many other lines than cross mine without even me noticing... and im sure these lines of our worlds come together into a stunning masterpiece of our entire universe, yet i wouldnt know for sure. i havent completely looked up yet. (but im beginning to peek, i hope thats a start.)

and then i thought that i owe it all to andrew bird for bringing these thousands lively, light and thriving lives into my consciousness, and how amazing he must feel to be able to bring together so many with the power of his unifying music. and he was up there talking about eating a brain, becoming an animal and described a transluscent pulsating jellyfish-- and when he sang he unharnessed this passion that his own lyrics awake in him, and he thrashed around on the stage, his personal form of dancing, to the striking notes of his lilting, distinctive whistle. ive never wanted to be able to whistle more in my life. and i worshipped him for a majority of the concert, before wondering if maybe he was a normal, faulted human just like everyone i was surrounded by.

but ive decided thats not possible, and hes an exception to the universal law of human-averageness.

wow i probably make no sense. ill blame it on the fact that its very very late. or very early depending on how you look at it. i might delete this post once i get some sleep, re-read it, and find out im slightly mentally insane.

maybe.

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom i knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.... Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"

-- WALDEN. THOREAU

"but restlessness is causeless and i cannot hide so much of my soul that spills outside"

SUMMERTIME CLOTHES. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

helloo :)
ive read somewhere this quote that said "happiness is only real when shared" and at first i hated it, because there are a lot of things that i enjoy that i keep to myself. i interpreted it to mean that there couldnt be any joy in solitude, which would mean there was no self-fufillment. and that meant that all the little things i delight in on my own was only a false sense of happiness, and if that was correct, id be a much different person than i had formerly held myself to be.

but now im thinking that maybe this quote is just about how happiness is something that shouldnt be kept to oneself, its something that grows exponentially the more you give out; something that needs to be communicated. and reason #1 for my starting of this blog is that i want to learn to communicate better.

what i think/write, what i do, and what i say seem to be three entirely different entities sometimes. i do not mean to say i am two-faced or fake, i mean that i have different mindsets when im with people or when im alone. when im thinking or when im talking. id like to connect these three pieces of me, and possibly this will bring me further to becoming one complete person. because im far from complete at the moment. as most people are
i dont believe practice makes perfect, but i have no other way i can think of (at the moment) of becoming better at communicating. im going to start with explaining something that makes me happy.

i have gone for a run every day for the past week and taken a right turn out of my driveway instead of a left. its so refreshing to change things often. by some beautiful coincidence, my run has been right as the sun is setting every night. as i conquer the first hill, random rays strike from behind the tangled tree limbs and blind me. i run by this very large lake everyday too, and it looks on fire when the sun sets, radiant and its reflections are scintillating and i have the deepest urging just to jump in. i swear i would have if i hadnt been alone. this experience would not be complete without listening to neighborhood #1 by arcade fire though, which i think is the most inspiring and amazing song there is, especially in the beginning even when there is no singing. i feel like im running straight through the neighborhood that the lyrics describe, and then the next song to come on is neighborhood #3 and immediately the power goes out (please listen to the song if you dont understand that reference) which goes along perfectly since usually the sun has set by now and it actually is dark. (dont have any dreams dont have any plans)

currently, i am drinking tahitian vanilla hazelnut tea which is urging me to finish my homework. tomorrow i am going to boston to see andrew bird. i promise my blogs will get more interesting as keep going (starting is always the thing that im worst at). i have the weirdest sensation of talking to myself, since im not sure anyone actually reads this. i might go to bed before midnight for the first time this week.

maybe.