June 2013
16 posts
“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”
—Girl, Interrupted (Susanna Kaysen)
“Those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.”
—Charles Bukowski (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake.”
—Jeanne Ray (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke.”
—Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
Janiemoe: Next Month I'll Have Lived in NYC for a Year. →
janiemoe.com
And sometimes, I still can’t believe that I’m here.
I had been to New York twice before moving here— once for a day trip while visiting my friend in Connecticut (she had a broken toe, so we kind of sat around the Met) and the second time was to visit some friends less than a month before I decided over the course of the two scariest days of my life to give away 3/4 of my belongings and take over a sublet from a friend.
I am not well-travelled and there are times (less often now) when I can be cripplingly shy, so I think most people who know me thought I had gone nuts when they found out I had moved. There really wasn’t any other option in my mind. I had been saving money for years. It was going to move to a city, and if it couldn’t be Paris, it was going to be New York.
Six months before that, I had taken my first trip out of the country when I went on a January term trip to study in Paris. My roommate was extremely noisy, and I think I got less than three hours of sleep each night for two weeks. I also had trouble finding time to go to places other than bodegas, so with lots of food allergy concerns, I mostly subsisted on potato chips, macaroons, and sardines. Despite that, I had never been happier in my life. As embarrassingly corny as it is to say, I finally knew what it was like to be alive.
It is strange. A giant city— lost in a sea of people with buildings towering overhead is where I’m most comfortable. Constant change, a city cobbled together by varying architectural styles, cultural subsets, and histories…we are a patchwork people.
Sometimes I will see something that breaks my heart and haunts me for days, but I’ll turn a corner, and I will be faced with such beauty— sunlight breaking through the clouds over Central Park, a curious building, an unlikely couple in love… And every day, something to do. This past Friday, escaping the rain by walking into a museum, I got roped into watching a lecture on WWII.
There are people who ask, why New York? You could live more comfortably and safely, even in a smaller city. We’re not here to be comfortable and safe. We’re here to slug it out in the city that greeted our ancestors— mine escaping potato blight and a bleak future— hoping to find the better life that they knew had to be here. We need the constant hum. The heavy traffic, clogged sidewalks, and cramped subway cars. The struggle is where we find our fun.
I love New York.
May 2013
20 posts
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (via forthedream)
“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
—Josephine Hart (via quote-book)
“She was a compulsive pessimist, always looking for the soft brown spot in the fruit, pressing so hard she created it.”
—Amy Waldman | The Submission (via blogut)
“I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can’t ever be fixed, and that is something that no one ever tells you when you are young, and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older, and you see people in your life break one by one.”
—Douglas Coupland (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe.”
—Vera Nazarian (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“She had a nostalgia for a life she had never lived.”
—Nancy Lemann, The Fiery Pantheon (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“There are people who obtain their perfection through telling stories.”
—Roy Wagner (via janiemoe)
“Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep travelling honestly along life’s path.”
—(via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“So you plant your own garden and
decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
for someone to bring you flowers.” —Jorge Luis Borges (via Swanfeather Songs)
decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
for someone to bring you flowers.” —Jorge Luis Borges (via Swanfeather Songs)
i was making a lot of mistakes and then my archery instructor said:
“you make mistakes because you’re focusing on the target and not on your actions”
and i was like woah
thanks for giving me the best life advice i’ve ever gotten
……is this the 21st century version of “zen in the art of archery”?
“When faced with a decision, choose the path that feeds your soul.”
—Dorothy Mendoza Row (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
April 2013
7 posts
“Those who are heartless, once cared too much.”
—Frank Ocean (via fakeville)
Surprisingly, perfectionists are often procrastinators, as they can tend to think “I don’t have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won’t do it at all.”
“She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?” you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?” Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if the girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on a conversation with a stranger? Everybody carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.”
—Timothy Leary (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
March 2013
13 posts
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
—Franz Kafka (via songs-for-you-truths-for-me)
Sometimes a leap of faith is taking a gamble on your own capabilities.
