wild cub

5K

Thinking about running a 5K on September 8.  As someone who is in relatively good shape, but has never spent much time running outdoors, is this a feat I can accomplish? 

http://911heroesrun.com/runs/locations/Texas/Houston

hmmm

yuna

skeleton key

summer

ahhh

obviously on a small black kick right now.

too good

i love this track

southern shores - malabar

update

Post mid-year resolution update.

1) Read 50 books, 5 of which are in Spanish - I've read almost 20, so dragging a little on this one.
2) Develop a portfolio, begin doing something with my money - A little research completed, but nothing significant.
3) Improve my Spanish language skills - This will always be a work in progress, but I just did spend a week in Nicaragua speaking almost exclusively in Spanish. 
4) Learn how to shoot, purchase my first handgun - Done.
5) Challenge myself at the gym with a more varied routine - Yep.
6) Push harder at work and take on more projects - Trying, generally. 
7) Cook often and try new recipes - Yes! Have been cooking weekly and making a concerted effort to try new things. 
8) Go out frequently and give myself the opportunity to meet people - Yes, to some extent; hardly successful though, haha. 
9) Start writing again - Need to work on this one. 
10) Plan travel now and go places in 2012! - Definitely have followed through - Utah, Germany, Nicaragua, Colorado.


An addendum - 
I want to learn how to drive a stick. 
I want to find a flexible volunteer cause to get involved in.

new xx!

daniel johnston

"It was like a movie all the time.  Everybody around me was a great story that never stopped, and for the first time, I realized how much freedom you have to do what you want."

I just want to see you around.

truth, ugh.

throwback

why oh why

summer sound

the long haul

I must've been what you wanted at the time.

my head plays it over and over

one year at a time

battle games

long red socks and red shoes

small truth.

chromatics cover 'running up that hill'

portlandia lunch.

sxsw favorite.

italian horror night.

magical thinking.

"The death of a parent, he wrote, 'despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago.  We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth changes, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections.'" p. 27.

"Grief is different.  Grief has no distance.  Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.  Virtually everyone who had ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of 'waves'." p. 27.

"When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death.  We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day?  We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue.  We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion.  Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself." p. 189.

"'A singe person is missing for you, and the whole word is empty,' Philippe Aries wrote to the point of this aversion in Western Attitudes Toward Death. 'But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.'  We remind ourselves repeatedly that our own loss is nothing compared to the loss experienced (or, the even worse thought, not experienced) by he or she who died; this attempt at corrective thinking serves only to plunge us deeper into the self-regarding deep... The very language we use when we think about self-pity betrays the deep abhorrence in which we hold it: self pity is feeling sorry for yourself, self-pity is thumb-sucking,self-pity is boo hoo poor me, self-pity is the condition in which those feeling for themselves indulge, or even wallow." p. 192.

Excerpts from The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

coming home.

Sunday morning yet again.

unpayable debts.

the weight of the world.

rainy friday

quality.

i really wanted you there.

like.

drifting.

Sunday morning post-political show music musings.

mellow/relaxing.

lana/llama

apt.

perfection.

...

the truth will set you free.

WE ALL SPEND SO MUCH TIME NOT SAYING WHAT WE WANT, BECAUSE WE KNOW WE CAN’T HAVE IT. AND BECAUSE IT SOUNDS UNGRACIOUS, OR UNGRATEFUL, OR DISLOYAL, OR CHILDISH, OR BANAL. OR BECAUSE WE’RE SO DESPERATE TO PRETEND THAT THINGS ARE OK, REALLY, THAT CONFESSING TO OURSELVES THEY’RE NOT LOOKS LIKE A BAD MOVE. GO ON, SAY WHAT YOU WANT. … WHATEVER IT IS, SAY IT TO YOURSELF. THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. EITHER THAT OR IT’LL GET YOU A PUNCH IN THE NOSE. SURVIVING IN WHATEVER LIFE YOU’RE LIVING MEANS LYING, AND LYING CORRODES THE SOUL, SO TAKE A BREAK FROM THE LIES FOR JUST ONE MINUTE.

A LONG WAY DOWN BY NICK HORNBY

via FYE

too many resolutions.

I've decided to list ten things I'd like to work on in 2012.  It might be interesting to reflect back next December and see if I actually managed to implement most of them.  I've already started on 1, 4, 5, and 7!  Not a bad way to kick off the new year, if I do say so myself.

1) Read 50 books, 5 of which are in Spanish
2) Develop a portfolio, begin doing something with my money
3) Improve my Spanish language skills
4) Learn how to shoot, purchase my first handgun
5) Challenge myself at the gym with a more varied routine
6) Push harder at work and take on more projects
7) Cook often and try new recipes
8) Go out frequently and give myself the opportunity to meet people
9) Start writing again
10) Plan travel now and go places in 2012!

Cheers and best wishes to you & yours in the new year.

xoxo
c.

comment.

I was reading an article on recent changes to the Catholic mass, maybe it was over at NPR, and I pulled one of the comments to save.  It rang especially true for me as someone who was raised Catholic, but now puts little stake in the faith.  The "myth" itself is extraordinary and fascinating, but ultimately it is only that - a myth.

"As a non-believer brought up a pre-Vatican II Catholic one can attest to a very interesting fact. All over the world, no matter ones native language, any Catholic could walk into any Catholic church and follow along, in Latin with just as much or little understanding as the rest of the congregation. The idea was a shared (and hopefully uplifting) experience and this is how the word "catholic" in the broad sense is understood. There was a sense of belonging to a world-wide family where everybody was on the same page, politics aside. 

So far as understanding, believing in or not believing in god, Christ etc., of course it's all irrational. To try to make rational sense out of a myth is pointless. Just as watching or reading good science-fiction sometimes requires suspension of belief, space and time so does religion. It's all experiential not rational. That's the power of Myth and if one benefits from it, then all the better. The emphasis is on the "if". 

Language always carries cultural and emotional baggage. That's where the advantage of using a dead language came in handy, it had less "baggage" but everybody got the basic idea."