Make It Count

In lieu of having any inspiration come smashing into me lately, I'm going to talk about myself. Sorry, readers (both of you).  

From a young age I've had a zealous interest in… well, in everything. My soul was prepared with--no, it was soaked, battered, and deep-fried in curiosity. Yet instead of my enthusiastic interest in the world, or my eagerness to try all things, the quality apparent to many people has been that I start and stop many activities. My habits have often been referred to as "quitting."

Admittedly I used to have a hard time sticking with things due to a lack of patience and a tendency to become easily discouraged. I was young and I had much to learn. Yet there's some irony in this. The more things I experienced, the more I became familiar with what I was good and bad at, and  what I liked and disliked. The more I try the more I learn (I'm gettin' pretty smart, Ma).

I have no shame in being a serial try-er. I wear my spastic tendencies with pride. Simply put: I love the world, I love life, I'm excited and anxious to try anything and everything I'm allowed the opportunity to, and I'm never going to change my ways. This video explains it all:

Thanks, Rachel Stroud, for tipping me off to this cool video!

I Smell My Mail

Inspired by an e-mail from my grandmother, I posted this note to my Facebook today. World's longest status update? Perhaps. 

Dear friends and family,

You should know that I smell my mail. Yes, that's right, whenever I receive post--weather I'm living in Africa, Europe, or at home in California--I deeply inhale the materials that have been sent from a person I love, and I'm overwhelmed with a sense of warmth and nostalgia. Being my most consistant correspondent over the last 20 years, my grandmother sends mail with unmatchable smelly-powers.

Every time I receive a letter from my grandmother I'm moved to tears. When I talk to her on the phone I usually laugh a lot during our conversation and then depart with a big smile. But for some reason, whenever I see the unmistakeable cursive writing that is my grandma's, I can hear her voice in my head, smell the hazelnut coffee on her breath, and recall in an instant the exact texture of her skin. Her letters are living things that stir me in a way a phone call just doesn't, inexplicably so.

There's a certain rhythm to her writing, an order of events that habitually occurs in each letter. There's a greeting and a witty opening line, followed by a detailed description of the particular season hanging over Colorado (and subsequently her garden); then a summary of her life's current events, only briefly touching on the subject of her health which is always shadowed by a cheery update on my little cousins. Everything is finely laced with humor and compassion, and the letters always end with a kind of, "Must go--sending my love, Grandma." Sometimes she includes articles clipped from newspapers, comic strips, or bizarre trinkets such as buttons in the envelope with her letter.

Today I received my very first e-mail from Grandma. I'm living in France now, and while any communication from this woman feels like a winning lotto ticket to me, an e-mail simply wasn't the same. The words meant just as much to me yet the standardized font in place of her elegant script didn't galvanize my senses in the same way. I wanted to smell hazelnut coffee from the threads of stationary, and feel the smoothness of her hands through the waves of her words, each character gracefully dancing into the next; but my computer didn't offer me that kind of nostalgic invigoration.

I was still grateful to receive word from Grandma, even if digitally. I was still moved to a warm, teary-eyed state, especially at the conclusion of her message: "Sweet One, I will try to write [as in pen and paper] soon. I think of you often and send you my love."

In not-so-short, please remember this: The relatively cold interfaces of technology are extraordinary, efficient, convenient, affordable, and without a doubt enabling the world to do great things. Still, our human senses remain the vessels to our hearts. Nothing is so personal as material you've handled, embedded your scent into, and spent time preparing.

So go on, then--send me some mail to smell.

Grandma and I shopping for new glasses.

Where To Begin

We always want a place to begin and end, don't we? The thing is, life is cyclical, and the only certain beginning and ending we can claim as our own is birth and death. Everything in between just kind of flows into each other with the current of life. This mysterious current seems to propel the motion of all things in life, connecting us to everything and everyone. 

Nothing ever really stops, even when people die; life goes on, and even pieces of ourselves go on through transfered energy and DNA and whatnot. So in this sense, our motion is shared and our own personal beginnings and endings mean nothing for the world, a world in constant movement. 

These markings of time--a start, a finish--are overrated. So instead of thinking of some grandiose introduction to my newest attempt at blogging (you may understand this phrase later when you see gaps of times between my posts), I'm just going to start. 

Hardly ready, I set my thoughts aside and go.