rummaging, I found this from Anna Quindlen.

The following is from Pulitzer Prize winning author Anna Quindlen's commencement address to Villanova University, Friday 23 June 2000:

...

I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."

You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your minds, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen, I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So here is what I wanted to tell you today:

Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous.

Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night.

And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Once in a while take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.

All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kid's eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. I learned to live many years ago.

Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.

Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office. I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months.

He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule; panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.

And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view."

And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.
________________________________________

day 7!! with out a cigarette :)

dricky, dricky.

from the crossed cow.

player 2. Lets call him Drick, because his real name is just as senseless & funny sounding.

Drick wants to be a writer. Currently his away message reads:

read and write. it makes you right.

self explanatory?

My problem with him isn’t that he wants to pursue the literary arts. My problem is that he wants to be famous. He doesn’t want to be that noble writer toiling over a well crafted novel. He doesn’t want to write every day, or read every day, or agonize over words and sentences and the dreaded comma. He wants to be a famous writer, world renowned for his mind numbing intellectualism, awed for his intelligence and revered for his talent. TALENT.

what qualifies me to make this judgment? I wanted the exact same thing when I was 16.

Evidence: his 1980’s duct taped head phones, the gigantic black framed glasses – which I really don’t think are w/prescription – adding a “verily” and “as well” and “that would be splendid/lovely.” The list goes on, but this is really not about Drick and his big aspirations. This is about Drick’s girlfriend.

Back in January I attended one of Drick’s get together’s . I think the e-vite was titled “board games and fun.” This was back in the days of trying to get to know my coworkers, trying to make office life work. So I went. I endured the tour of Drick’s one bedroom apartment, wowwwed at the many, MANY photographs of him jumping – literally, him jumping up and down – and said “you have a lot of books” to his collection of classics and beat authors. (I actually opened Ulysses and the spine cracked, first sign it has never been opened).

But then I met Drick’s girlfriend, Jennifer. To my surprise, she was very… real? She was tall, sort of lanky, with a toothy smile, and an endearing band of freckles spread across her nose. We talked about literature, and what she studied, and what I studied, and how much we love to read. She was gracious and kind and funny. She reminded me of my best friend, Amanda, which automatically gives her top marks in my book.

Did Jennifer alter my office relations? Drick’s antics still bug the hell out of me, but I find it really hard to dislike him with the full force of my moodiness when I like his significant other so much.

Jennifer and Drick give me hope. If a doofus like Drick can find a good one, I can too.

Monday. 49 minutes until I go home!
**

nothing makes me feel old except going to the doctor.

affirmation. 

To grow old is to lose everything. 
Aging, everybody knows it. 
Even when we are young, 
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads 
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer 
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters 
into debris on the shore, 
and a friend from school drops 
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us 
past middle age, our wife will die 
at her strongest and most beautiful. 
New women come and go. All go. 
The pretty lover who announces 
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. 
Another friend of decades estranges himself 
in words that pollute thirty years. 
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge 
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

by donald hall. 

sunday musings. thich nhat hanh. tea.

corona del mar, ca.

Lydia asked me to write some about dharma study. So...

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my favorite Buddhist writers. His work always carries a tone of boyish excitement and pure joy.

From Peace Is Every Step

We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. (chapter: Twenty-Four Brand-New Hours).

You can breathe anywhere, just sitting on your chair at the office or sitting in your automobile. Even if you are at a shopping center filled with people or waiting in line at a bank, if you begin to feel depleted and need to return to yourself, you can practice concious breathing and smiling just standing there.

Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane. I must confess it takes me a bit longer to do the dishes, but I live fully in every moment, and I am happy. Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end--that is, not only do we do the dishes in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them.

happy mother's day.

no comment.

from here

facebook

right before high school, on a train up to DC.
notice: my open fly.
haaa.

just finished a mix for my little sis (the littlest).

og

mixmixmixmix

four boiled down mixes in one, for my sister who has .... taste in music.

i just realized that i never share about music on this blog, and music is a huge part of my life.


so to start, I make a lot a lot of mixes.

i'm going to start posting them.

day 5 with out a cigarette.

day four: better.

day one: quitting smoking.

from some don't smoke and don't smoke now website:

Within 12 hours after you have your last cigarette, your body will begin to heal itself. The levels of carbon monoxide and nicotine in your system will decline rapidly, and your heart and lungs will begin to repair the damage caused by cigarette smoke. As your body begins to repair itself, instead of feeling better right away, you may feel worse for a while. It's important to understand that healing is a process­;it begins immediately, but it continues over time. These "withdrawal pangs" are really symptoms of the recovery process.

Immediately after quitting, many ex-smokers experience "symptoms of recovery" such as temporary weight gain caused by fluid retention, irregularity, and dry, sore gums or tongue. You may feel edgy, hungry, more tired, and more short-tempered than usual and have trouble sleeping and notice that you are coughing a lot. These symptoms are the result of your body clearing itself of nicotine, a powerful addictive chemical. Most nicotine is gone from the body in 2-3 days.

my sister visited this weekend!

we:
went to la
went to venice
went to hermosa beach
went thrift store shopping
went to dinner w/friends
took photos
went to dog park
went home.

my sweet summer.

corona del mar, ca.

may, june, july.

enjoy your weekend.

xoxo