"unexpected intrusions of beauty. this is what life is." (saul bellow)

"Read books. Care about things. Get excited. Try not to be too down on yourself. Enjoy the ever present game of knowing." (Hank Green)

everything via

tumbling.

a few of my favorites from my tumblr as of late. 

I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do,

xo

a full minute.

When it's bright outside and you're walking some place you've walked 1,027 times before do you ever close your eyes? You know, as you take those steps that are as familiar as the smell of grass. Or a cold glass of milk. Or any other small comfort that maybe you never thought of before. Sometimes I do it. Close my eyes as I walk. To feel the warmth on my eyelids from that strong sun of ours. And what can sometimes feel like the unsuspecting best part is when I open my eyes again. Everything, the whole world even, is brighter than it was before. And when that happens, that extra brightness, I smile to myself and feel less silly for having closed my eyes in the first place. Because I realize, in that moment, that small bit of darkness is all I really needed. It is all I really needed to brighten my world a little more. If only for a slight second.

And if you were to add up all the slight seconds. Maybe someday, if I keep closing my eyes sometimes while I walk on those bright days, I'll have a full minute of extra brightness. Imagine what I can do with that. A full minute of extra brightness? Something amazing, I think.

bikes.

I've been staring at these pictures for quite a while.

I kind of can't get enough of them.

I also can't quite put my finger on why.

and that's all I really want to say right now.

oh, love.

Read this love letter by Richard Feynman. It is the sweetest thing. I can barely stand it. 

[source]

In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife the following love letter and sealed it in an envelope. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988.

(Source: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman)

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don't only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the "idea-woman" and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it, darling, nor can I — I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address.

....

What did you think? Part of me wanted to cry.
What a man. What a love. What a letter.

sunday spiritual snack.

When I wake up on Sunday mornings, I like to watch Music and the Spoken Word.

Today, the "spoken word" part of the whole thing talked about Renoir (an impressionist painter).
Renoir had such bad rheumatoid arthritis that laying in his sheets hurt him.
His hands had to be bandaged up and he could barely move.

Through it all, he still painted.
He would have them tie a paintbrush to his crippled hand so that he could create beautiful things.
He never complained, just did it.

Because he was sure of this one thing:

"The pain passes, but the beauty remains."  


A small line of truth. Bigger than anything else. 

praising the insignificant.

Last night we went to look at the stars because it said stuff online about atmospheres and meteors and things falling and seeing lovely things and the sky .
But the sky was half-way covered with clouds.
The thick gray kind.
The thick gray kind that warm the city up.
The thick gray kind that prevent you from any sort of star seeing.
(it was almost like the smell of snow. almost. the snow is coming soon...and the thick gray clouds is how I know).

This morning I woke up really early, before any color was in the sky.
My dreams still close from sleep.
I sat in my living room and from the corner of my eye, that color began to show up.
It started out cool and slowly lit on fire.
"Red skies in morning, sailors fair warning"
repeated in my thoughts
as I sat there. Studying.
Or trying to.

And while sitting there I read something about "praising the insignificant."
How, in being an honest person, you give praise to what is seemingly insignificant.

That lingered in my thoughts (the ones full with red skies).

By praising the significant,
don't you give it significance?
By writing something down, complimenting it, noticing it,
don't you give that
thing
(whatever it may be)
power?
love?
worth?
meaning?


The sky set the leaves on fire. And my window was a picture of all that is significant.

the beginning and the end of it.

Lately I've kind of had a thing for the Fitzgeralds.
You know, F. Scott and Zelda.
And I've said before how I obsess over little things then research them to death.
Well, ever since I saw Midnight in Paris, these two have been on my mind.
I literally think about them all the time (a little much? probably.)

But please, humor me.
And just enjoy some of the gems I found.

Like what Scott had to say about Zelda:
“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity and her flaming self-respect and it’s these things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all that she should be…I love her and that’s the beginning and the end of it.”

And what she wrote to him:

“Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered—and I was delivered to you—to be worn—I want you to wear me like a watch-chain or button-hole bouquet—to the world.”

A little interview where Scott decided to ask some questions of his own (and Zelda's brilliant response):
"What do you want your daughter to do, Mrs. Fitzgerald, when she grows up?" Scott Fitzgerald inquired in his best reportorial manner, "not that you'll try to make her, of course, but--"
"Not great and serious and melancholy and inhospitable, but rich and happy and artistic. I don't mean that money means happiness, necessarily. But having things, just things, objects makes a woman happy. The right kind of perfume, the smart pair of shoes. They are great comforts to the feminine soul."

I found that last one in Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (a book that has moved to the top of my: to purchase list.)

Can you see it?
Why I'm so in love with them?
I've been reading a lot of Fitzgerald in and out of school this year and I can't get enough of these guys. The royalty of the Jazz Age. Their tragic lives. All of it intrigues me.

I could go on and on about why I love these quotes so much. Why the words make me giddy, but I think they stand alone beautifully.

And here's one more to savor:
“Why should graves make people feel in vain? Somehow I can’t find anything hopeless in having lived.” (Zelda)

a question

"I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."

"When the windows were open, and the wind was blowing in the right direction, they could smell the sea."

"Her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

via

someday my prince will come.

I feel like I had a million other things to blog about.

(like how I moved to texas. or how I turned 21. or how my brother left on his mission. or how I passed physical science [hallelujah])

But all I can think about...

is how much I love this dress.

She is so classy.

And I thought she looked perfect. The veil is perfect. The lace is perfect. I love it all.

If only I could have been in London to see it. Bummer.

At least there is still hope for me in finding and marrying a prince though...Right??