Gimme Your Stuff!

Okay, this website is über cool. Aka everybody should do it!

http://gimmeyourstuff.blogspot.com/

In Which I Share a Small Portion of my Brain With You

This has no order. Things are about to spill from my brain and let's hope that they're coherent.

I was in the city recently, and was sitting on the subway with my friend. Across from us were three black guys and a friend of theirs -a girl- sitting next to them, a woman in a headscarf listening to her iPod, a lady with an adorable little girl sitting next to her playing on her DS, a guy in his twenties in a bright pink suit, and next to me was an old Asian man. The three guys were wearing baggy pants and joking around with each other, and the girl who seemed to be their friend was trying unsuccessfully to ignore them. The woman in a headscarf had a vague expression of disinterest on her face, and she looked tired. I wonder what she was listening to? The little girl looked a bit priggish…Her expression was one of disdain, or at least of boredom. Her mother seemed to be tired of dealing with her. The guy in the pink suit didn't seem to care that he was wearing a pink suit, and this attitude along with the fact that he looked really snappy in the pink suit, made me want to get to know him. When I got off the subway, I looked back at the Asian man that had been sitting next to me, and he made eye contact with me. He smiled, and his joyful Winnie-the-Pooh face made me grin back. He had one of the nicest smiles I've ever seen, and I actually really regret that I didn't have the time to run back and tell him that. He seemed genuinely happy. I wish that everyone on the subway could have shared a smile with him; maybe they'd end up happier too.

There are so many people in this world, and being in the Exeter bubble means that I've almost completely lost my ability to interact with them. It's like going to Exeter means that I'm only really good at interacting with people like my classmates and teachers. When I venture out, especially into the city, I find that I have no idea where to begin. I wonder where they're going, how they're feeling, what their joys and sorrows are. And I realize that I've lost my mechanism for finding out, which worries me. However, a stranger's smile has convinced me that I'm going to be okay. There are so many people in this world… I can't even begin to know them. But I can try.

*****

At Exeter… We're all in the same boat. No matter which social group we're in, we need each other or we'll drown.

*****

Love is…

A moment of bliss that you can recreate at any time in your head.

Being content with doing nothing, just because it's with the other person.

When you're with them, the only place in the world that you want to be is right there.

When they give you butterflies just by saying your name.

When you can finish their sentences even before they utter the first word.

Trusting them.

The Great Gatsby

WARNING!!!!!! IF YOU EVER PLAN ON READING MY NEW FAVORITE BOOK, "THE GREAT GATSBY," THERE IS A SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

READ ON AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!

*******************************************************************************

So I haven't written in awhile, because school started up, but I just finished "The Great Gatsby" and have been inspired to post about it. Because it's not my favorite book. Which is saying a lot because I am a very avid reader!

Anyway, here are some of my favorite quotes (Mostly in chronological order) - for different reasons:

"If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away." p. 2

This quote means a lot to me because by the end of the book, it made me realize even more fully exactly how much personality is NOT a series of successful gestures. In class, we talked a lot about how the successful gestures that James Gatz made were the mask he wore as Gatsby; the gestures created a fake personality that fell apart when he couldn't fill the cracks with emotion. Emotion is successful to a personality. If you only go through the motions and make gestures just for the hell of it, you don't have a personality.

"I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the Park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." -p. 35

This quote is great because if describes Nick's position as both the observer and the participant eloquently and without being too obvious.

"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." -p. 48

I'd be so enchanted to come across one of these smiles like Gatsby's just once… For all our talk of making sure to not be self-centered or selfish, we all could use one of these smiles to let us know exactly how appreciated we are.

"For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing." -p. 99

I'm still not entirely sure what this passage meant, but I know that it put a darkness on Gatsby. He's more tentative than he seems to the outside world. And I know that when he's living this dream, he still isn't satisfied. "…a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing." …That's beautiful.

"Almost the last thing I remember was standing with Daisy and watching the moving-picture director and his Star. They were still under the white-plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale, thin ray of moonlight between. It occurred to me that he had been very slowly bending toward her all evening to attain this proximity, and even while I watched I saw him stoop one ultimate degree and kiss at her cheek." -p. 107

What struck me about this passage was that the director and his Star were more real to Daisy than the non-actors. Gatsby is almost like the director in that he plans for so long before making the final move.

"When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again." -p. 176

This quote means something to me because of my own personal connection with the winter. Everything about this last quote applies to how I feel about it.

"Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." -p. 180

Something about this quote makes me catch my breath and sit back for a moment, though I am not sure what it means. On the same page, it continues,

"And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he had first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed to close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity behind the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future, that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning ---

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

It speaks for itself. It's magic.

Absolute magic.

The Stories of Eva Luna

I have recently begun reading "The Stories of Eva Luna" by Isabel Allende, and found in the preface one of the most beautiful passages I've ever read:

"You untied your sash, kicked off your sandals, tossed your full skirt into the corner - it was cotton, if I remember - and loosened the clasp that held your hair in a ponytail. You were shivering, and laughing. We were too close to see one another, each absorbed in our urgent rite, enveloped in our shared warmth and scent. You opened to me, my hands on your twisting waist, your hands impatient. You pressed against me, you explored me, you scaled me, you fastened me with your invincible legs, you said a thousand times, come, your lips on mine. In the final instant we glimpsed absolute solitude, each lost in a blazing chasm, but soon we returned from the far side of that fire to find ourselves embraced amid a riot of pillows beneath white mosquito netting. I brushed your hair back to look into your eyes. Sometimes you sat beside me, your legs pulled up to your chin and your silk shawl over one shoulder in the silence of the night that had barely begun. That is how I remember you, in stillness.

You think in words; for you, language is an inexhaustible thread you weave as if life were created as you tell it. I think in the frozen images of a photograph. Not an image on a plate, but one traced by a fine pen, a small and perfect memory with the soft volumes and warm colors of a Renaissance painting, like an intention captured on grainy paper or cloth. It is a prophetic moment; it is our entire existence, all we have lived and have yet to live, all times in one time, without beginning or end. From an indefinite distance I am looking at that picture, which includes me. I am spectator and protagonist. I am in shadow, veiled by the fog of a translucent curtain. I know I am myself, but I am also this person observing from the outside. I know what the man on the rumpled bed is feeling, in a room with dark beams arching toward a cathedral ceiling, a scene that resembles a fragment from some ancient ceremony. I am there with you but also here, alone, in a different frame of consciousness. In the painting, the couple is resting after making love; their skin gleams moistly. The man's eyes are closed; one hand is on his chest and the other on her thigh, in intimate complicity. That vision is recurrent and immutable; nothing changes: always the same peaceful smile on the man's face, always the woman's languor, the same folds in the sheets, the same dark corners of the room, always the lamplight strikes her breasts and cheekbones at the same angle, and always the silk shawl and dark hair fall with the same delicacy.

Every time I think of you, that is how I see you, how I see us, frozen for all time on that canvas, immune to the fading of memory. I spend immeasurable moments imaging myself in that scene until I feel I am entering the space of the photograph and am no longer the man who observes but the man lying beside the woman. Then the quiet symmetry of the picture is broken and I hear voices very close to my ear.

'Tell me a story,' I say to you.

'What about?'

'Tell me a story you have never told anyone before. Make it up for me.' "

--Rolf Carlé

This passage represents absolute love in a memory that is preserved for all time as perfect… I thought it was beautiful and wanted to share it :)

Just Kidding... and My Imagination

Okay so maybe the quote thing isn't going to be consistent. Whatever. This blog is henceforth about whatever the hell I want it to be about.

A really weird thing I've realised recently is that my imagination has a setting. Certain things trigger its setting, and it's bizarre. For example, my imagination has a weird connection with fairy stories, (or faerie, depending)... I've never paid much attention to those stories, not the prissy ones for five-year-olds anyway, but the stories with some creativity and originality spark my imagination. Hm. Very strange. Especially since I don't believe in faeries. Or do I? No, not particularly.

Another thing that fits perfectly in my imagination is the band "Death Cab for Cutie". I have absolutely no idea why, but something about the music gets inside my head. It reminds me of the witching hour at two in the morning when you're the only soul awake and your imagination runs wild.
The band "Iron & Wine" also intertwines with my imagination, which is odd because it's not the kind of music I'd have thought I would like.
And finally, the last thing I have discovered to date that matches my imagination is the "The Girl with Glass Feet" that I talked about in the last post. St. Hauda's Land (the setting of the book) makes me think of Death Cab for Cutie, Iron&Wine, and faerie stories, which means it also is a huge part of my imagination.
Do any of your imaginations have settings or triggers? I'd be interested to know...

Happy Fourth! And the best book I've read in a long while...

I just finished the book, "The Girl With the Glass Feet," by Ali Shaw (a guy). It's weird how the book captured the setting of my imagination - just odd enough to be out of this world, while still technically a part of it. It's about a young woman named Ida whose feet are turning to glass, and the glass is taking over her body. She encounters a man named Midas by coincidence in the forest, and their friendship grows immediately, as they are drawn to each other. Midas is a young photographer whose family history is less than desirable, and he and Ida are connected by a weird set of circumstances (not related, just connected by family friends).

As Ida realises that her time is running out, she tries to kiss Midas, who wants to kiss her back but is too scared. He runs away and leaves her, and she is devastated. In the woods, he encounters a man, and they have this conversation:

"Do you know what it's like to lose someone, Midas?"

"Yes."

"Someone you were in love with?"

"No."

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Erm…"

Hector's eyes narrowed. He grinned wolfishly. "You are at this precise moment! It's written all over you."

Midas looked down at himself, as if expecting this to literally be the case.

"I think…," said Midas slowly, "I might be."

"Might be what?"

Midas cleared his throat. "In love."

Hector threw his arms wide open. "Then always make sure you act like it."

Ida needs to know where they stand, because she doesn't have that much time left.

Midas, after running away back home, is sitting in the kitchen with his friend's littler girl, Denver.

"You haven't shown me new pictures in ages. Show me some now."

He shook his head. She started to play with the digital's buttons. The two of them sat in silence as she flicked through its image bank.

"Not even one of Ida," she said.

Midas rubbed his forehead. "They were all too awful. I couldn't get them right."

"And you got rid of them because they didn't look nice enough?"

"Precisely."

"I think you were in love with her."

"Love… is not something you understand when you're a grown-up, Den. It's just as if it's… a memory of something that should have been. From stories… and… I don't know whether you really can be in love."

"You could be," she said. "You and a few other people. You're like me. You've got it."

"Got what?"

She shrugged. "A grip. On the bits in the back of your head. And here…" She touched her tummy. "Somewhere in here."

Midas goes to rescue Ida from the house she's stuck in looking for a cure that won't work, and he finds her.

"Sh-shit it's cold," she said.

"I know. I'm sorry."

She nodded drowsily. "Your coat. Thanks."

"It'll warm up in the car."

"Hug me."

"I… I'm sorry?"

She opened her eyes a crack. They couldn't focus. Her irises were ash between red eyelids. "Put your arms around me."

Carefully, he reached around her with both arms so his fingers locked across her back.

"You have to squeeze," she whispered, "or it's not a hug."

"You have to be bolder," she whispered. "Please." Then she pushed her face into his.

She begins living with him, and here's the third and final passage that I love:

She had felt a collision with him and known that she had wanted this her whole life: to crash for just one moment into another person at such a velocity as to fuse with him.

That moment had come not at the height of a night's passion, as she'd expected, but in the morning when their eyes opened at the same time and felt for focus in each other's. They were newborns, wide-eyed, sharing their first breath of the world. Then it was over as quickly as it had come. Midas had blushed and looked away from her. She had reached out to hold his face.

This book was magical to me, and I highly recommend it to you.

The change

So I've decided to change this blog a bit, and instead of writing things myself, I'd like to share things that other people have written that affect me. I keep a book of these - quotes, poems, lyrics, anything that speaks to me.
The first is a poem by a thirteen year old boy named Rene Ruiz, called
"He Shaved His Head"

He shaved his head to release his imagination
He did it to get a tattoo on his shining head.
He did it to lose his normality.
He did it to become a freak.
He did it because he was angry.
He did it to make people angry.
He did it for himself.