(Source: girlsack)
With grace in my heart
And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.
These lyrics from “After The Storm” by Mumford & Sons really stood out to me, and it’s funny because I used to listen to Mumford & Sons when I was depressed, and in my mind, these lines were sung to me, and that was kind of a consoling lullaby. Tonight however, my first thought was how I could sing them to so many people in my life. And then I caught myself because I’ve been so lonely lately in a way that I never have been. I want to celebrate balance by just being with someone. By just letting most things go unsaid and knowing. And there are so few that I know who are there.
I am in the right place, and it is also a good place. The timing of each event, relationship, and struggle in my life makes perfect sense. I’m thankful for everything I’ve gone through and done because I believe that having made certain mistakes of body, mind, and soul when I have made them will keep me from making them again, at other, more crucial times. I think that emotionally and spiritually, I have used my youth well.
Anyway, it is hard to watch others—even others I don’t particularly care about—go through the same things that I have, or go through them in such ways that they won’t learn. They’ll just repeat down the road.
I don’t necessarily mean that everyone is in pain and I can’t stand to watch. I mean that I’ve largely overcome all these emotional spikes that so many people around me are enduring—teaching, friendships, relationships, my body, my family—and my mastery of and attitude towards all of those things are more solid and even-keeled than ever.
So, it’s just more that I’m impatient with others. “Hurry up and get to where I am, it’s lonely up here. I love you, and I want you here with me.” That has really shown lately, and I need to get it in check.
Something I’m learning from running and, funnily enough, from some odd bits in Lamb where Josh and Biff are studying Confucius and the Tao and whatnot, is that you have to be in the moment. Duh. But when I am running, what that means is that I look no more than one sidewalk square ahead of me, and I—I don’t know how else to put it—exist, in the pain and the struggle of every little cramp and itch and short breath. There is nothing else! Because if there is anything else, I’ll want to be doing that. It’s like if I look so hard into myself I get sucked inside, and I’m just looking out from my lungs, while my legs do their thing. I’ve never, ever in my life consciously felt like that before. Like, for the first time, for even just a few short miles, I actually, finally see from within myself.
The moral becomes that I can’t leap outside of myself to drag others to where I’m at because it never works, which always makes me mad. (Ergo, impatience with others.) Rather, exist from directly within myself, and there will be neither any sympathy pains, nor real pain. I won’t feel alone and wish others to come to me then feel disappointed—or, like when I’m running, those feelings won’t matter, because I am inside of that pain, and I am that pain.
Objectively, I know I sound totally bat-shit, but this is all visually real to me right now. So we’ll go with it. I think what I’m trying to say is that the real part of these lyrics that stood out to me was the part that says this—
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.
With grace in my heart. I am over the hill, happy, with flowers in my hair, yes. But it’s only with patience and graciousness for others and their journeys that I’m a) going to stay “here” and b) going to have any hope of anyone even wanting to be with me, in some capacity “where I am.”
Which is really, just very peaceful and balanced. And happy.
I’m really fucking happy. Really. :)
Going Home to Roose: DIY Valentines Plate
Chinese New Year
(compiled by Pamela Haag at BigThink)
- Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan, an indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego): The wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to start.
Oh yes, this is an exquisite word, compressing a thrilling and scary relationship moment. It’s that delicious, cusp-y moment of imminent seduction. Neither of you has mustered the courage to make a move, yet. Hands haven’t been placed on knees; you’ve not kissed. But you’ve both conveyed enough to know that it will happen soon… very soon.- Yuanfen(Chinese): A relationship by fate or destiny. This is a complex concept. It draws on principles of predetermination in Chinese culture, which dictate relationships, encounters and affinities, mostly among lovers and friends.From what I glean, in common usage yuanfen means the “binding force” that links two people together in any relationship.
But interestingly, “fate” isn’t the same thing as “destiny.” Even if lovers are fated to find each other they may not end up together. The proverb, “have fate without destiny,” describes couples who meet, but who don’t stay together, for whatever reason. It’s interesting, to distinguish in love between the fated and the destined. Romantic comedies, of course, confound the two.- Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese): The act of tenderly running your fingers through someone’s hair.
- Retrouvailles (French): The happiness of meeting again after a long time. This is such a basic concept, and so familiar to the growing ranks of commuter relationships, or to a relationship of lovers, who see each other only periodically for intense bursts of pleasure. I’m surprised we don’t have any equivalent word for this subset of relationship bliss. It’s a handy one for modern life.
- Ilunga (Bantu): A person who is willing to forgive abuse the first time; tolerate it the second time, but never a third time.
Apparently, in 2004, this word won the award as the world’s most difficult to translate. Although at first, I thought it did have a clear phrase equivalent in English: It’s the “three strikes and you’re out” policy. But ilunga conveys a subtler concept, because the feelings are different with each “strike.” The word elegantly conveys the progression toward intolerance, and the different shades of emotion that we feel at each stop along the way.
Ilunga captures what I’ve described as the shade of gray complexity in marriages—Not abusive marriages, but marriages that involve infidelity, for example. We’ve got tolerance, within reason, and we’ve got gradations of tolerance, and for different reasons. And then, we have our limit. The English language to describe this state of limits and tolerance flattens out the complexity into black and white, or binary code. You put up with it, or you don’t. You “stick it out,” or not.
Ilunga restores the gray scale, where many of us at least occasionally find ourselves in relationships, trying to love imperfect people who’ve failed us and whom we ourselves have failed.- La Douleur Exquise (French): The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have.
When I came across this word I thought of “unrequited” love. It’s not quite the same, though. “Unrequited love” describes a relationship state, but not a state of mind. Unrequited love encompasses the lover who isn’t reciprocating, as well as the lover who desires. La douleur exquise gets at the emotional heartache, specifically, of being the one whose love is unreciprocated.- Koi No Yokan (Japanese): The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love.
This is different than “love at first sight,” since it implies that you might have a sense of imminent love, somewhere down the road, without yet feeling it. The term captures the intimation of inevitable love in the future, rather than the instant attraction implied by love at first sight.- Ya’aburnee(Arabic): “You bury me.” It’s a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person, because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
The online dictionary that lists this word calls it “morbid and beautiful.” It’s the “How Could I Live Without You?” slickly insincere cliché of dating, polished into a more earnest, poetic term.- Forelsket: (Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you’re first falling in love.
This is a wonderful term for that blissful state, when all your senses are acute for the beloved, the pins and needles thrill of the novelty. There’s a phrase in English for this, but it’s clunky. It’s “New Relationship Energy,” or NRE.- Saudade (Portuguese): The feeling of longing for someone that you love and is lost. Another linguist describes it as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
It’s interesting that saudade accommodates in one word the haunting desire for a lost love, or for an imaginary, impossible, never-to-be-experienced love. Whether the object has been lost or will never exist, it feels the same to the seeker, and leaves her in the same place: She has a desire with no future. Saudade doesn’t distinguish between a ghost, and a fantasy. Nor do our broken hearts, much of the time.Ooohhh interesting love-ish stuff!
(Source: cinderellainrubbershoes)
Love this idea
(Source: icanread)
String Gardens are made using a three-dimensional crochet filled with plaster, soil, moss, and grass, and are also filed under: my future DIY projects, though I’ll need to read up on how to care for these babies first.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, p. 37
Heart Links Tattly by Jennifer Daniel
Biked from Embarcadero to GG Bridge and across. Back across, to the mission, to Dolores. San Francisco seems a lot smaller after today. Like, conquered in a way. Like, time to move on, perhaps, and conquer something else.
(Source: swiss-miss.com)
