Stuff I Like
Doggo
Meet, Doggo A.K.A. Doggie, Dog Dog, Pookie, Pookles, Puntkin (Pumpkin), Porky Pie, B, Bebe, Beez, Beezle... or, as some of us call her, Beatrix.
She's my girl. My angel, my 8-year-old dumpling, my white cheddar quesadilla, my snickerdoodle, my perfectly browned marshmallow. (I like lists, okay?!)
She is the light of my life, and I love her so much my whole body could explode. Plus, I made her an Instagram (that I'm already regretting and will likely delete): @bestbeatrixever.
John Mayer's IG
If you know, you know.
Don't know? Well, to start, his IG bio used to be "Emotionally unverified." I don't feel like I need to say more, but I will.
He's insanely witty and intelligent and funny and original. And though he used to look like a ghost (Google him in his early-early career), now he's a hipster, urban-mountain man who songwrites his way into my—er, our—cold, detached hearts.
All time fav: "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room"
Current fav: "Guess I Just Feel Like"
Snail mail
I'm a hardcopy kinda gal, and I love me some snail mail.
I've never been a good digital reader (the irony of then starting a blog...), and I think there's an irreplaceable feeling to holding a card from a friend or family member in your hand.
Heck, if I could make a living buying cards for people cards to give to their loved ones, I would.
More good card shops: YeppiePaper on Etsy and Elum Designs.
Mac miller's Circles
It's an interesting experience listening to something posthumously. Words hit differently.
Even though his pain and confusion make me sad, for some reason they also makes me feel less alone. I see what he was able to do while feeling that pain and confusion, and it inspires me.
No matter my mood, I always enjoy this album. "Why I gotta build something beautiful just to go set it on fire?" He built some humanizing bridges in this album, and they connect us.
Current fav: "Everybody" and "Blue World"
I'm sorry
This show. I think it might be my favorite ever. Bold statement, I know, but it's true.
The show's main character, Andrea, is fucking hysterical. She navigates being a mother, wife, daughter, friend, and writer with relentless authenticity and hilarity. Sometimes it feels similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm, re: sticky situations, but without the cringe-worthy, blood-boiling frustration. (I hate CYE, by the way.)
Seasons one and two are on Netflix. Plus, it features actors like Jason Mantzoukas, Nick Kroll, and Judy Greer. Highly, highly recommend... you know, if you like laughter.
ben platt (!!)
OMG where do I start? Actor, singer, style icon.
You might recognize him from Pitch Perfect, but he also starred in the Broadway show, Dear Evan Hansen, and is the current star of the Netflix show, The Politician.
He's an insane vocalist, y'all. His covers of Billy Joel and Joni Mitchell in The Politician made me cry. (Actually.) And I haven't even mentioned the covers he posts to his Instagram... Think "Shallow" from A Star is Born.
Oh and I'm also low-key trying to get my husband to dress like him. TBD.
Quotes
1
Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.
- Hafiz
2
It seems clear, now, that I have been alone in my relationships. When people I have dated write about me, I see it that way. When I write about them, they must see, too, that I was not there with them, but with some other person, a kind of shallow twin of theirs. It is hard to love someone, if you are in the habit of taking every experience you have as material for your work. It has surely been doubly hard when both partners are in it for the same thing: a kind of mutual excavation, digging rather than caring.
- Nell Stevens, Bleaker House
3
He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
4
The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
- Roald Dahl, The Minpins
5
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
- J.D. Salinger, "A Girl I Knew"
6
Water is fluid, soft and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
- Lao-Tzu
7
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
- David Foster Wallace, “Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address — May 21, 2005” also known as This Is Water
8
The capital-T Truth is about life before death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.” “This is water.”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
- David Foster Wallace, “Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address — May 21, 2005” also known as This Is Water
9
You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
- Truman Capote, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
10
I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. ... The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That's genius.
- Sam Shepard
11
A tree I cannot touch
A place I cannot name
A fence I cannot mend
A love I cannot claim
A book I cannot read
A film I cannot see
A hill I cannot climb
A friend I cannot be
A hand I cannot hold
A city I cannot heal
A task I cannot do
A mouth I cannot feel
A dog I cannot pet
A mule I cannot ride
A butt I cannot clasp
A car I cannot drive
- Lord Birthday, "Things I See When I Close My Eyes to Sleep"
12
No one else, Love,
will sleep in my dreams.
You will go, we will go together,
over the waters of time.
No one else will travel
through the shadows with me
only you, evergreen,
ever sun, ever moon.
- Pablo Neruda, "Sonnet LXXI"
13
Child,
why did no one
ever teach you
that you cannot
turn people
into homes?
People are rivers,
ever changing,
ever flowing,
they will disappear with
everything you put
inside them.
Still,
your home does
have a heartbeat.
But it isn't one
locked in
anyone else's
chest.
Look inside
your own.
- Nikita Gill, "People Aren't Homes"
14
I wish I wrote the way I
thought;
Obsessively,
Incessantly,
With maddening hunger.
I'd write to the point of
suffocation.
I'd write myself into
nervous breakdowns,
Manuscripts spiralling out
like tentacles into abysmal
nothing.
And I'd write about you
a lote more
than I should.
- Benedict Smith, "I Wish I Wrote the Way I Thought"