schekinah

Mine definitely do, but that fear pushes me to work harder. 

Usually I’d find the silence of this house so peaceful, but tonight I want another sound beside that of the oscillating fan above me and the cricket’s melody that I hear every night. It doesn’t have to be that of another person’s, but just a sound that I am not accustomed to at these hours. An unfamiliar sound waiting for me to discover it. The quiet growl of my engine is the sound that would be most comforting, but I’ve been banned from my customary late night drives…………

Tonight after class, I’m going to put my gym membership to use. I haven’t been there in nearly a month now. I miss lifting, I usually lift when I’m stressed out but I want it to become habitual for me. If I plan on running a 5K in 3 weeks, I definitely need to get on it. All I need is 21 days, I’ve read if you can follow an activity for 21 days then eventually it becomes the norm for you. 

amyandronicus:

My fingers are covered in ink from holding this newspaper. It’s a sensation I remember from childhood, when I would spend Saturday mornings huddled in my kitchen chair with the paper unfolded around me. 

Hidden within the paper’s diaphanous wings as you might hide within the wings of an angel, I would read my way through the New York Times. Light flickered intermittent and dim, as if it came to me from another day. Sounds drifted in, vague and muffled. The sensation was something like shrinking yourself down to the size of a bud and burying yourself inside the petals of a white magnolia blossom. 

I was the kind of child for whom all sensations were fraught with a swirling mixture of excitement and fear, and enclosed spaces—my bed, a tent of sheets I built over it, swimming pools, the shadows beneath the canopies of trees—offered me an escape from sensing too much at the same time. In sheltered places, in books, in words, as underneath the ivy-covered magnolia, I could imagine instead—a world in which I was the prime mover, the sun making the shadows swirl across the ground.

Inside the newspaper, which was as large as I was, I found a clubhouse filled with my friends. New words with familiar meanings called out to become a part of my body. Enormous ideas strung themselves together like beads and hung themselves around my neck like a necklace I’d wear forever. I’d feel myself grow heavier with the feeling of knowing. 

Hours passed. The sun traced an arc from one side of the magnolia tree to the other. The lily of knowledge grew heavy and wilted.

It is late afternoon now, and I will retreat to the couch in the living room to cuddle with the newspaper, or rather, with a few of my favorite pages—the ones with full-color pictures of places I have never been. Now I’ll fall asleep, with my fingers all printed, black, and gritty. They are marked somehow, by reading and by learning. It is as if it were not right for a young girl to love this much, or to fall in love with the entire world instead of with any one.

And the diaphanous wings of the angel will settle to the floor, and become the newspaper again.

This describes exactly how I felt as a young child reading The New York Times every day and to this day.

jonathanpham:

Beauty can only take you so far. Find me a lady who’s valued her mind more than her curves. A lady of ambition, if you will, that can not only hold a conversation about dreams and aspirations, but also the line of work she performs to make those things happen. I dig a girl who can speak bravely, boldly, with conviction. She handles criticism without retaliation, walks without fear.. the type that’ll have you craving some food for thought, before the idea of adoring her physicality.

Just came back from a jazz bar in Newark, Skipper’s, it has me feeling all sorts of inspired. I think it ultimately brought me out of my writing funk. And on our way to Skipper’s while driving down Market Street, they were shooting a Wyclef Jean music video. It was an eventful Sunday afternoon spent in Newark that surpassed my others.

schekinah:

Sign Language is one of my favorite languages. I was introduced to this beautiful language by one of my closest friends, A, about 4 summers ago. She was born to deaf parents, so it’s her first language. Every time I see her sign, it captivates me. I love seeing the hand motion, body language, and exaggerated facial expressions, because you can grasp what the conversation is about based on these three things alone. I’ve been trying to learn, but I’ve been failing epically. I can’t follow up with the emotions that go with the signing.  It’s a truly universal language; it touches people from every race, culture, and creed. Deafness occurs everywhere. I love the deaf, mute, and sign sub-culture. Now, I’ve been following deaf dancers and rappers. I have so much respect for deaf dancers because they rely on counts and the vibration of the music, and you wouldn’t be able to guess that they were deaf. Another thing that amazes me about it is that unlike other spoken foreign languages, you can talk about people with them ever hearing you, that’s always a plus. But seriously, sometime in my life, I want to get around to learning this art form. 

Now I’m making this a reality, it makes me feel accomplished.

she-whispers:

Learn how to be happy for someone without envy, to love without doubt, to be alone without being lonely, to give without expectations, to live without hatred, to fly without looking back, and to suffer without blaming others, to fall and accept that you tripped, to be broken and not wait to be mended by someone else, to walk without company, and to sleep alone - comfortably. Learn that your attachments to people are not signed contracts with a lifetime warrantee. Find peace within yourself and find love in all the little mishaps. Love yourself without having to put others below you while loving others without lowering your own worth. We are all the same, at the very core of our existence, we are alive and we search in different directions that lead us away from and to one another. What you have today could be gone tomorrow and the crutches might cease to exist, along with those you’ve depended on since birth and those who brought light into your life could blow out the fire at any given moment. Those who gave you their hearts could change their mind. As you get comfortable, things are slowly being altered. Your life, as it was a few moments ago, has already changed and you don’t even know it.