traipse along now, dear.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water.”

“This is water."

- David Foster Wallace, 2005

She drank from a bottle called DRINK ME

And up she grew so tall,

She ate from a plate called TASTE ME

And down she shrank so small. 

And so she changed, while other folks

Where the Sidewalk Ends is one of my favorite childhood poetry books, and I finally splurged to buy the Shel Silverstein book last weekend. Going through the poems now, though, I find little messages far more meaningful than the silly rhymes that I read 20 years ago. And so in honor of National Poetry Month, I figured I would make the half-effort to do a half-month of Shel poems, posting a poem per day, although that poem will be most relevant to my preoccupations of that day. Vale? 

INVENTION:

I’ve done it, I’ve done it!

Guess what I’ve done!

Invented a light that plugs into the sun.

The sun is brigh enough,

The bulb is strong enough,

But, oh, there’s only one thing wrong...

The cord ain’t long enough.

with so many new year's posts, i feel like i have to join the mobs too and put in my tuppence as well. 

2015 - hard to believe that it's already 2015. there's something about a year that ends in a multiple of 5 that makes it seem like a landmark, distinguished, asterisked. every new year that comes around we look back and say "how crazy time flies" and are filled with memories of the joys and regrets of the past year, even as we brace ourselves for the new. something about seeing that ball drop, eating those grapes, kissing that person, all of those things we do for luck and to usher in the new year makes it worth to stay up late past your bedtime, makes you reminisce on the past year, and to hope for the next. 

in 2014, i almost didn't turn 23. i gained a new cousin-in-law. i wrote a senior thesis and amazingly enough, graduated from college, and with honors, to boot. i spent 4 months in the panamanian jungles, going through some of the happiest and hardest times that i have physically and mentally endured. i spent a month and a half in a half-wreck of a limbo, trying to figure out what to do with my life. i began a yearlong journey that brought me to austin, texas, and will take me eventually to spain, at the conclusion of which i will again be at a crossroads to determine where life will take me towards. in 32 days i will be 24, and i don't really know what that means. i'm more unsure of myself as a 23-year-old than i was as a 13-year-old. 

call me boring, but i don't have any new year's resolutions. i think that they are unrealistic and more of a fad than a habit, and i have never made a resolution that i have been able to consciously keep. i'd much rather make new day's resolutions on a daily basis, since my short-term memory seems to function much better than long-term. it's funny how some people mark time by the date, and others mark time by events. i think i fall into the latter, which is why new year's day is little more than a day off work, korean traditions, and an resignation to write the date in pencil for the next few weeks until i stop writing 2014 and get used to writing 2015 instead. 

even so, i am grateful for the new year. for the hopes and the promises that it ushers. for the opportunity to be alive in this day and age. to have a whole 2015 ahead of me, with all its trends and scandals and achievements and disappointments. 

Big ideas are destroying international development.