Month: September 2013

These Are A Few of My Beautiful Things.

I’m a sucker for beautiful things. And I don’t mean physical beauty, though I appreciate symmetry and intricacy and elegance and all those things that define physical appeal. And I hardly consider humans physically beautiful; pretty, good-looking, fine? Yes. But that’s a discussion for another day. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiXd_9DFCOQ] Beauty. I watched a TedTalk* once that tried to define beauty. According to the speaker, real beauty isn’t so much seen as it is felt. Beauty is something you feel in your gut. I have a list of beautiful moments. If I had any sort of talent with a camera or a painter’s brush, I would capture them, commit them to eternity on paper. But all I have are my words. So here goes. My cousin bravely swallowing tears back the evening of her wedding. She’d come home to change out of her dress, her husband was outside waiting and she was inside, fighting sobs while her mother smiled and soothed her. The 10-year-old in church with a fierce look on his face and his arms wrapped protectively …

How It Feels To Turn 25

I turned 25 on Sunday. It’s the silver age, I hear. Of quarter-life crises and self doubt/realization.  It’s the knowledge that I am older than my mother was when she had me. It’s the power that comes with approving of the choices I’ve made thus far. I have no regrets. I have been incredibly stupid, and shied away from looking myself in the mirror. I have been surprisingly clever and written well-worded letters of commendation to myself in my diary. I have been deliriously happy and in love with the world. I have plumbed previously unknown depths of grief and prayed to die. And yet, right now, I have no regrets. Through it all, I have written. In diaries, in notebooks scattered somewhere in my room, on this blog and on others’. And so it’s only fitting that I write on this occasion of turning 25. But what to say? I could reiterate everything I wrote when I turned 23, and it would all still be true. As would the words I wrote to 10 …