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Monday, November 23, 2009

It's (almost) that time of year again...


Yes. Get excited. My annual e-mail Christmas countdown will start on December 1st. You get a fun little e-mail with the days left until Christmas, some seasonal trivia, and cool links. So if you would like to get these little gems in your inbox for 26 days, comment with your e-mail address!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Drizzle, Fall and Cousins


As I explained in my last post, I went to New Jersey to visit my fantastic cousin who goes to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was a refreshing trip filled with talking, sleeping, walking in the rain, enjoying the leaves, eating and thinking. I'll give you some pictures to explain.


And that is why I had a simply lovely time :)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

poetry

I'm sitting across the country from where I usually am, in fact I am in Small World Coffee in Princeton, NJ. Sigh. I love traveling.

My super fantastic cousin gave me a birthday card/present yesterday (he knows me well, even though it's months after my birthday I definitely appreciate a present). In the card he wrote part of the poem The Golden Journey to Smarkland.

Pause for a second - I have to tell you - I don't usually like poetry. I wish I loved poetry, but in all honesty, most of the time I just. don't. get. it. This is really frustrating for me. It's so beautiful and expressing such emotion and I just miss all of that because my brain is not wired to really understand the nuances of writing.

On that note I will now say, I love the poem he wrote in my card. It expresses a how I feel a lot of the time, particularly when I travel. So here it is:

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

-
James Elroy Flecker

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Seriously, November?

For real. October flew by. I don't even know where it went. Yesterday I was still living the life, starting clinical at 8, thinking Halloween was weeks off. Halloween flew by, without candy for trick-or-treaters and now, Thanksgiving is weeks off and I'm buying Christmas stuff at Target.

I've been working on being present. I have a hard time only focusing on the future, or the past. Most of my thoughts revolve around what I need to do, what I did yesterday, what I should be doing. It's okay and even good for me to think about those things, but I'm also trying to focus on the here and now. So this is my way of doing all of that at 10 p.m. on a Thursday night:

A few things to look back on for October: I passed a really hard test, I dressed up by wearing my snuggie on Halloween, I went to U2 in concert, I visited my parents, and had clinical in the ICU and Emergency Department.

Things to look forward to in November: A psych test, going to Princeton, NJ to visit my cousin and sister, Thanksgiving, and the official start of the Christmas season.

For now, I'm going to embrace the warm weather, freshly cleaned sheets, my pineapple cilantro candle and the fact that I have a roof over my head and food in my belly.

And because I love adding random pictures, one of my roommates and I on Halloween.