Saturday, November 27, 2010

Twenty Four


Twenty four. Twenty four feels so unimaginably old...

When I was ten, I remember thinking sixteen would be the age of mature innocence (if this phrase could indicate to you the complete oxymoron that I predicted of teenage adolescence). When I was sixteen, I thought twenty was old. And when I was twenty I thought surely twenty four would be the year I would turn into a "grown up".

But now I'm twenty four. I'm older than so many people in the world and younger than so many more. I still can't think where I'm going to be in ten years or ten years after that.

It's dark and quiet. I watch the neighborhood Christmas lights flicker outside my window. They shimmer and glow in the still silence, faintly illuminating the street below. The branches of the wild cherry tree in the front yard sway gently and cast comforting shadows against the back wall of my room.

You never know where you're going to be. I know this idea has been run into the ground and then some, but the thing is, you never quite believe things until you realize them for yourself. That's when you listen to the cliches as if you were hearing them for the first time - as if you were the first to ever think them, the first to ever feel them. Then that cliche isn't a cliche. It's just yours. Your truth. The truth.

Twenty four. So many have been twenty four before me and still more after. But this twenty four, let this one be mine.


(Inspired by S from 2006 when she was only 22, photo from weheartit)

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Fitzgerald


I'm currently reading through The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald that I borrowed from the library. I'm making my way through them slowly and relishing every detail. Fitzgerald has such a seemingly effortless way of setting a scene with his carefully crafted words. For me, his lyrical language has been the epitome of great American writing ever since I first read The Great Gatsby in my 10th grade English class.


Anyway, my reading material appears to have found me at the perfect time. As I'm in a Fitzgerald state of mind, news is breaking out everywhere that Carey Mulligan has just been cast as Daisy Buchanan in the Baz Luhrmann-helmed version of Gatsby. She'll be playing opposite to Leonardo DiCaprio's Gatsby and Tobey Maguire's Nick. The casting, though, is really of minimal concern to me. I am generally wary of when my favorite books are made into movies (so, no, I won't be dressing up for the midnight showing of Harry Potter tonight), but sometimes I'm more than pleasantly surprised. So I'll keep an open mind about this as long as it is as gorgeous and heartbreaking as it has always been in my imagination and that it preserves my favorite line in the book (and perhaps one of my favorite lines in all of literature):

--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--


(all photos from the 1974 movie

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Sweet Juniper and Robocop

Oh my goodness, how I love Sweet Juniper. It has such thought-provoking and eloquent analysis on the city of Detroit and family life within the dichotomy of decay and renewal. It's hard for outsiders such as myself, even as a former student in, commuter to, and employee of the city to comment on what I've experienced and learned because all that I love and all that I despise about Detroit is and was never truly mine as I watched, fascinated, from my comfortable vantage point north of 8 Mile.

Meanwhile, this Halloween, Robocop patroled the Detroit streets. His suit was homemade. Can we all just please marvel?



(photos by Sweet Juniper)

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Quotability


"Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much a heart can hold."
Zelda Fitzgerald

Grateful for this recent stretch of days in which I got to see some close friends, play like it was 2008 in 2 major cities, and rock the vote. I'm also on the precipice of some big things... As Michael Scott says on the Office (Olympics episode) with tears in his eyes, "My heart is very full."


(quote via the Neotraditionalist, photo by Carrie Patterson via Oncewed)