extremely loud.

For the past two or three days, I've been reading this.

And it is good. A book has not touched me quite like this in a long time.

And since, I've kind of been researching furiously about trauma and memory and the-sometimes-long-forgotten Dresden bombings. I'm permanently astounded by the depth and breadth of these things. By what they mean both nationally and personally--by what gets forgotten in the rubble of these things and of these new atrocities that move and shake and overshadow. I'm grateful for both the absences of these words and the presence of feeling--for that new perspective.

I'm kind of on board the Foer bandwagon, now.

(image source).

an update.

I want to start writing again. I want to write the sort of things that I am inspired by, daily. I want it to soothe and restore and focus. So I've decided to start writing, and today, largely without any process of revision. 

Here's the thing: we made it through the winter. We made it through the hardest months of heartbreak and solitude and chill. And we made the same mistakes as last year, and we suffered the same toils as last year, and we look forward, now, with the same confusion and bewilderment as last year. Last year is this year but it won't be the next. We have learned. We have hope. We are trying.

A while ago, I stumbled across this. It seemed apt, that day, just as it does today. Almost everyone I know is going through some kind of crisis of confidence and crisis of hope. We've all entered a state of not knowing; of trying to create a space and navigate a future. And it is hard. Where we thought we were we no longer are. What we thought we wanted we no longer lust after. How we thought we'd get there no longer exists. So twenty-thirteen is a year of trying again. We will try and try again.

"So maybe my dreams are smaller than I think. Maybe they are more practical. Maybe this ferocious struggle I wake up inside of every day--the effort to figure out what I should be doing and the old, sour fear that I made the wrong decision--maybe that's just looking through the wrong end of the telescope. My life is bigger than that. There are mountains in the distance, and the ocean, and I am going to follow my stupid, incessant dream right up to it.

Sometimes life isn't about failure or success or one path or the other. It's not about doing the right thing or being remembered or the title you have or don't have or whether or not you got the degrees you were supposed to or if those degrees opened up the right doors. It's about what you are, fundamentally, underneath all of that. And I am a writer who needs to write a book about a girl who lives in a big, open world. I am a goddamn dreamer."

Kate Fridkis, the lady behind Eat The Damn Cake. She's quite a treasure.

currently reading...

"There is no safe investment...to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change... It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less destructive than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. We shall draw nearer to [what we seek], not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them...throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken and... this is the way in which they should break, so be it. What I know about love and believe about love and giving one's heart began in this." 

- C.S. Lewis.

This article proved a very interesting read.

thursday.

I finally took a little trip to the Hummingbird Bakery. (So maybe it was another one a little after that). And maybe I also stood in awe at the stationery in Liberty's and at the homewares in Anthropologie and came home with a pair of red vintage boots. My sister taught me how to knit on the train, too, and ever since I've been trying to pick up stitches and keep them there. 

 All in all, Thursday of last week was quite a lovely day. And a jolly good distraction.

the sea, the sea.

"Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it is sent away."


This seems kind of apt, lately, what with my unrelenting visits to the seaside. I like it, there. I like its space and its predictability; that tide will always kiss that same patch of sand, again and again.


I stumbled across this piece of performance poetry a long, long time ago. But I still love it so. It is as much about this lady's performance as it is her words. And I know it isn't really about the sea, but that line? Oh, it floors me. Every single time. There is so much hope, there.

on summer.

This summer is different to the one before. And, I hope, to the one that will follow. 


It is preceded by a heartbreak, a graduation and a few farewells to very dear friends. And it somehow leaves me floundering.

Twenty-twelve has been soundless, almost. I have lost the words in which to navigate it, to rationalise or to understand. I almost, at once, lost a love of words. But somehow I finished that degree I, for so long, struggled with through love. And somehow I managed to land a little work and a new college course and a few, unlikely friends.

But right now, I want to challenge it, this feeling of sorrow and sadness: turn it into something useful, and brave.

If somebody would like to take me to Paris for the winter, I would most happily oblige.


(Image via).