What you share with the world is what it keeps of you

Well I know my death will not come
'Til I breathe all the air out my lungs
'Til my final tune is sung
That all is fleeting
Yeah, but all is good
And my love is my whole being
And I've shared what I could
But if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own
Don't break his heart

Well my heart is bigger than the earth
And though life is what gave it love first
Life is not all that it's worth
'Cause life is fleeting
Yeah, but I love you
And my love surrounds you like an ether
In everything that you do
But if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own
Don't break his heart
Yeah if you give a little love, you can get a little love of your own
Don't break his heart

Well if you are (what you love)
And you do (what you love)
I will always be the sun and moon to you
And if you share (with your heart)
Yeah, you give (with your heart)
What you share with the world is what it keeps of you

trees

doing the impossible

Some thugs just want to watch the world learn

Rock Star Scientists

Source:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/114994655/all-in-one-30x30-rock-star-scientists

What would you tell your 20-something self?

Dear Sugar,

I read your column religiously. I’m 22. From what I can tell by your writing, you’re in your early 40s. My question is short and sweet: what would you tell your 20-something self if you could talk to her now?

Love,
Seeking Wisdom

Dear Seeking Wisdom,

Stop worrying about whether you’re fat. You’re not fat. Or rather, you’re sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.

In the middle of the night in the middle of your twenties when your best woman friend crawls naked into your bed, straddles you, and says, You should run away from me before I devour you, believe her.

You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.

When that really sweet but fucked up gay couple invites you over to their cool apartment to do ecstasy with them, say no.

There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

One evening you will be rolling around on the wooden floor of your apartment with a man who will tell you he doesn’t have a condom. You will smile in this spunky way that you think is hot and tell him to fuck you anyway. This will be a mistake for which you alone will pay.

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.

When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t “mean anything” because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

Yours,
Sugar

LINK: http://therumpus.net/2011/02/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-64/

Stuck at home

Dear Cary,

I’m a college graduate in my late 20s.  I graduated a few years ago but I did not find a “good” job after college.  I’m still in the process of making a career change.  I went back to school a few years ago for a certification and I’m currently working as an intern.  I work another part-time job just so I can pay bills.  It may take me a few years to reach solid ground.  For now, I absolutely hate how broke I am and I hate living at home.

Last night, I got in a huge fight with my mother over something others may perceive as trivial.  Basically, she threw away some possessions of mine that I had no intention of throwing away.  It enraged me more than it would have enraged a logical, levelheaded person.  Today, I’ve been thinking about my life and I realize why I went crazy.  I hate that at my age, I still have to fight with my mom about respecting my things.  I hate that I am furious, but I feel I have no right to be since I still live at home.  

I forget sometimes how much I want to move out and right now when I have a strong urge to do so, I know that it is impossible.  On top of that, I hate my job but I can’t quit because I have bills to pay and that is all my paycheck covers.  My car is also having issues, which will end up costing me thousands.  I keep wondering why I’m so upset and I keep hearing the same thought:  ”I live at a house I can’t move out of (my parents’), and I hate my job but can’t quit.”  I feel so utterly powerless it overwhelms me.

I know that realistically I can’t afford to move out for a few more years.  I just don’t know how to hold it together until that time.  I don’t know how to be angry at my parents without forgetting to be grateful for letting me live at home (I am completely aware that they are doing me a huge favor by letting stay at their house rent-free).  I don’t know how to make the most of what I have now, since I will be stuck in this position for a very long time.  I look at my life now and I see no progression.  I thought going back to school would help things, but it still hasn’t.  Am I in the wrong because I have the ability to better my life?  Is being patient my only solution?  

Sincerely,

Waiting for Someday  

Dear Waiting for Someday,

Let me say something to you first that may be useful for the rest of your life: You have the right to your own feelings. You have the right to feel. I say this because you wrote the following sentence: “I hate that I am furious, but I feel I have no right to be since I still live at home.”

You think you are doing the sensible thing. But the truly sensible thing may actually be the thing that looks crazy. The sensible thing may be to be true to yourself. You may need to leave home even if you think you can’t afford it.

Right now, you are suffocating. You think for some reason that you have to do the sensible thing but the “sensible thing” is killing you. It’s killing you!

Would you remain living in your parents’ house day after day, working for little pay, waiting for someday, if you actually knew that you were dying? Because, let’s face it, you are dying. Not today, maybe, but sooner than you are used to thinking about it, and faster as time goes by. You don’t have all the time in the world. You just have a little bit of time.

Something went wrong economically but you didn’t do anything wrong except fail to exercise the keen skepticism that can only be learned by studying history or living through it.

Lacking that — and how many high schools and universities teach deep, abiding skepticism about capital markets? — where was the basis for skepticism in your material world? How were you to find the basis for that skepticism if you had not been provided the analytical tools?

You relied on statements made by people in positions of trust  that if you did certain things certain things would follow. They said if you went to college you would get a good job.

You did everything you thought you were supposed to do and now you are living at home working two jobs and hating your life. So it makes sense that you would be angry. But at whom should your anger be directed? You seem to think that you yourself have failed as an individual when actually you are picking your way through the debris of a fantastic collapse.

What you lack, I think, is not character, or skills, but a sufficiently withering assessment of the cruelty of the system.

Something went wrong. You got screwed. A bunch of wealthy people got away with fraud and no one was prosecuted.

If you wonder why you are living at home working an unpaid job you might try listening to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Try to understand how your fate is related to the fate of many others in this prodigiously wealthy country. And then realize that your life is yours, and you have the right to feel what you feel, and it is possible to live a different kind of life. Do not trust that if you do the conservative thing and keep being responsible you will be rewarded. The old social contract has been broken. You need to get on with your life in whatever way you can.

Someday means never. You’ve got to live your life now.

Cary Tennis

Big moon out tonight

Happiness