All of our days are made up of these segments of moments, it seems -- especially at school. Occasionally, one of these is remarkable, and gets stored away for future reflection, but most of them just are. We forget the ones that just are. But some, we remember.
There are beautiful moments. My beautiful moments all involve nature. Sitting at Willow Falls at midnight is one of them. Looking over the mountains at the stars and Colorado Springs below me is one of them. Waking up at 3 am to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, and then finding out it was a foggy day is one of them.
Then there are funny moments. The laugh 'til you cry and you don't remember exactly what you're laughing about moments. You can look back and smile at these, but never really recapture them the way you can the beautiful moments.
There are awkward moments. Moments that you look back on and think, man, I wish I'd done that differently. These moments make you think "what if?"
There are mournful moments. Mournful moments involve crying. I remember the night we moved out of my house, after everything was gone, I went back and took a shower. That was a mournful moment. Seeing my house empty and clean....crying in the shower. But I can still treasure the mournful moments.
There are angry moments. These are the ones that make you fume for days....the times you remember having to punch something, or scream into a pillow, or run until you fall down exhausted. These are moments when you think your life is unjust, when something happens that just isn't fair. The cause of these moments changes as you get older....when you're little, time-out causes angry moments....when you're in middle school, the "cool" kids can cause angry moments.....but eventually, you mature. Angry moments caused by true injustice -- those are worth remembering.
There are moments of conviction. Moments when you feel that "Yes! I've got it!" sensation. These never last long enough. They usually pour out in a giant crescendo and then leave you feeling like you've lost something because you can't recapture the sensation of conviction. We wish these moments could be remembered for their content, not just their emotion.
There are bad moments. But even these, under the hazy light of memory, become somehow tolerable. Our bad moments, when we feel broken, shattered, and crushed can become catalysts for all the other moments to occur. And they can help us realize the value of all of the beautiful, funny, awkward, mournful, angry, and convicted moments.
Then, there are all the other moments in our days.
Some of these, we don't remember for even one day; Some pass in a week or so; Some get pushed out of the way by greater moments, or other moments that they've caused. So are all those moments wasted? Do we need to spend our lives searching for the moments that we'll remember??
I don't think so.
Beautiful moments, funny moments, awkward moments, mournful moments, angry moments, convicted moments, forgotten moments.....every moment of every day of every life is, whether remembered or not, somehow important. Moments shape days, which shape weeks, which shape months, which shape years, which shape lifetimes, which shape societies. And so every moment that we live, we are somehow contributing to someone else's life, whether directly or indirectly.
So:
What will you do with this wild and wonderful....moment?
I want to trust you on the moonless sea. I want to believe in you because you believe in me. I want to treasure my memories, forget my regrets, I want to run after you, the best of the best.
You have the purpose I'm not sure I see, The lantern you've lit leave teh distance hazy. But I'll trust and obey let you lead the way, For you formed me and made me and mold me like clay.
"In the first place nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love, and it would be wrong to try and find anything. We must simply hold out and win through. that sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, since leaving the gap unfilled preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap: he does not fill it, but keeps it empty so that our communion with god may be kept alive, even at the cost of pain...We must not wallow in our memories and surrender to them, just as we don't gaze all the time at a valuable present, but get it out from time to time, and for the rest hide it away as a treasure we know is there all the time. Treated in this way, the past can give us lasting joy and inspiration."
"You can't see because you never bothered to step beyond the neat box, the crafted gates leading through your life... I instead jumped from the mountain in hopes I never land. I'm not asking anyone to jump with me... I don't expect their faith, their hope, or their helping hand... but I can hear the voices of something greater on the horizon... something I am meant to play a part in... a role far greater than my character roles in the present day."
Do yourself a favor. Go to the nearest bookstore and find [u]If on a winter's night a traveler[/u] by [b]Italo Calvino[/b]. If I could, I would retype the entire thing right here, because it is so amazing. I want to share every word....but that would be plagirism.
So go. Buy it. Used, new, hardcover, paperback, first edition, latest printing -- It doesn't matter in the least. It is by far the most phenomenal book I have ever read.
How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand! To be so tickled they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more blessed than living lips. Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
"After so many years of familiarity with death, after battling it for so long, after so much turning it inside out and upside down, it was as if he had dared to look death in the face for the first time, and it had looked back at him. It was not the fear of death. No: that fear had been inside him for many years, it had lived with him, it had been another shadow cast over his own shadow ever since the night he awoke, shaken by a bad dream, and realized that death was not only a permanent probablility, as he had always believed, but an immediate realizy. What he had seen that day, however, was the physical presence of something that until that moment had been only an imagined certainty."
--[b]Gabriel Garcia Marquez[/b], [u]Love in the Time of Cholera[/u]
"With no scientific basis except his own experience, Dr. Juvenal Urbino knew that most fatal diseases had their own specific odor, but that none was as specific as old age. He detected it in the cadavers slit open from head to toe on the dissecting table, he even recognized it in patients who hid their age with the greates success, he smelled it in the perspiration on his own clothing and in the unguarded breathing of his sleeping wife.
"If he had not been what he was -- in essence an old-style Christian -- perhaps he would have agreed with jeremiah de Saint Amour that old age was an indecent state that had to be ended before it was too late. The only consolation, even for someone like him who had been a good man in bed, was sexual peace: the slow, merciful extinction of his veneral appetite. At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change of position while he slept, and if he did al he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death."
--[b]Gabriel Garcia Marquez[/b], [u]Love in the Time of Cholera[/u]
"...a clandestine life shared with a man who was never completely hers, and in which they often knew the sudden explosion of happiness, did not seem to her a condition to be despised. On the contrary: life had shown her that perhaps it was exemplary."
--[b]Gabriel Garcia Marquez[/b], [u]Love in the Time of Cholera[/u]
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
"Every assignment is measured and controlled for my eternal good. As I accept the given portion other options are cancelled. Decisions become much easier, directions clearer, and hence my heart becomes inexpressibly quieter."
--[b]Elizabeth Elliot[/b], [u]Keep a Quiet Heart[/u]
"At the heart there is 'tu' -- the intimate voice -- the familiar room in a world full of rooms. 'Tu' is the condition, not so much of knowing, as of being known; of being recognized. 'Tu' belongs withing th family. 'Tu' is spoken to children and dogs, to priests; among lovers and drunken friends; to servants; to statues; to the high court of heaven; to God Himself.
"The shaded arcade yields once more to the plaza, to traffic and the light of day. 'Usted', the formal, the bloodless, the ornamental you, is spoken to the eyes of strangers. By servants to masters. 'Usted' shows defrence to propriety, to authority, to history. 'Usted' is open to interpretation; therfore it is subject to corruption, a province of politicians. 'Usted' is the language outside of Eden."
--[b]Richard Rodriguez[/b], [u]Days of Obligation[/u]
I want to capture peace in my description of the calmness of the st. croix as it reflects the image of all the frenzy happening above it.
I want my recollection of the exhilirating feeling of getting out on my bicycle to remind you of the greatest joy you ever felt.
I want to express myself in words that bring to mind the most beautiful feelings available on this lonely planet.
But I don't have the skill.
Until I can see in my writing what I see in the eyes of a person who is really listening to me, entranced by every thought I have, expressed or hidden, I will not be satisfied.
I will keep searching for the perfect words with which to share the fairy tales I see in life.
"Culture, popular or esoteric, was insufficient as compensation for what he'd lost, and it was part of his faithful love to the parents who saved him to find it so. And as a transcendence, a world elsewher for him to live in, culture was more ineffective than a weekend as Grossigner's; the repetition of the movie, the area, the poem, never translated his torso into poetry, his limbs into fire that fed on air. No, he remained abandoned in the third row on the aisle and still alone in his rooms near the train station, listening to Callas record, eating his sandwiches with dollops of consoling mayonnaise, growing forgetful of himself, not like one teased out of thought but like one made so infinitly small that he almost had to look at his wooden tag to discover his name."
"Arthur's childhood was often a matter of repeating sounds form the huge Encyclopedia of Adulthood -- like 'scumbag' or 'justice' or 'love' -- which he didn't understand and couldn't possibly put into his own words."
"In our hearts, Dr. Daruwalla thought, there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be seperate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer from a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they're foreigners -- even in their native lands...people who initiate their loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nore are they undeserving of our pity."
--[b]John Irving[/b], [u]A Son of the Circus[/u]
[i]quick update...i only have to work for two more weeks...after that, there's the run of My Fair Lady, and then i move to Kentucky, and then i should be back up and running as usual...but visits should become more frequent as that day nears...wishing you all the best!![/i]
The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Just to let you all know, I won't have an internet connection until August 10th, it seems....so when I get to the library, like now, I'll post, but the summer is getting pretty hectic....I'll be back in August for sure, I swear!
"Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's aquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die."
--[b]Albert Camus[/b], [u]The Plague[/u]
[i][for those that are interested...I did get a job...as a hotel houskeeper. *boo hiss* but it will help me pay for a semester in england, so I guess it's worth it. the job is, of course, the cause of the lack of postings...cleaning hotel rooms involves a lot less literature than studying for class or lounging around the house.][/i]
"I want to live life beyond the paltry expectations of humanity and run exuberantly down the narrow path, but I can't see the goal through this haze of normality."
since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world
my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry - the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other; then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph
"Hope" is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all – And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –
I've heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of Me.
"Sometimes, I feel that I'm only just ready to start my life. I know what I need to, to live it a hundred times better. As far as I can see, no one is out there waiting for me with a ticket that says 'Try it again.' I'll probably really figure our exactly how to be alive right when I'm gasping for my last breath."
