The One Pool Where I Would Happily Drown

“She woke up torpid each morning, slowed by sadness, frightened by the endless stretch of day that lay ahead. Everything had thickened. She was swallowed, lost in a viscous haze, shrouded in a soup of nothingness. Between her and what she should feel, there was a gap. She cared about nothing. She wanted to care, but she no longer knew how; it had slipped from her memory, the ability to care. Sometimes she woke up flailing and helpless, and she saw, in front of her and behind her and all around her an utter hopelessness. She knew there was no point in being here, in being alive, but she had no energy to think concretely of how she could kill herself. She lay in bed and read books and thought of nothing. Sometimes she forgot to eat and other times she waited until midnight, her roommates in their rooms, before heating up her food, and she left the dirty plates under her bed, until greenish mold fluffed up around the oily remnants of rice and beans. Often, in the middle of eating or reading, she would feel a crushing urge to cry and the tears would come, the sobs hurting her thought. She had turned off the ringer of her phone. She no longer wet to class. Her days were stilled by silence and snow”. 

The point here is that I think this is one part of what the liberal arts mantra of “teaching me how to think” is really supposed to mean: to be just a little less arrogant, to have some “critical awareness” about myself and my certainties...because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded p 33

Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.

Instead of paying attention to what’s going inside me. 

It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head.

What you don’t yet know are the stakes of this struggle. 

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over hot and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. 

Worship your intellect, being as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. 

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you are doing. 

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

Now is the time to follow through, to read the signs Now the message is sent, let's bring it to it's final end One-day-I-know-there'll-be-a-place-for-us.

You are like an ocean in between the waves.

Cómo puede alguien pasar de hablar de algo académicamente elevado a citar una canción de The War On Drugs. You are like an ocean in between the waves, porque siempre estás ahí. Antes de dormir te imagino, en las mañanas eres la razón por la que me quedo unos minutos extra echada en la cama, en el viaje en el tren aprovecho para soñar despierta. Con voz sincera y distintas palabras para describir lo maravilloso que son las cosas o las situaciones, marvelous, fantastic, wonderful, superb. Siempre sonriente y atento. Pocas veces encuentro a una persona que cada vez se vuelve más encantador. Pero así eres tú, un oceáno entre las olas, ante cada texto, imagen o palabra. No me importa que seas tan alto que no puedo distinguir el color de tus ojos. O que hoy noté una mancha entre tus dientes y que el pantalón te queda corto. Me gusta que tus manos son muy expresivas y que con frecuencia las usas para cubir tu rostro, me encanta que el dibujar te cueste trabajo. Me derrite que dentro de la jungla de concreto y excentricidades de Nueva York, te detengas a ver a un pájaro y eso te recuerde que estás vivo. Me pregunto qué piensas antes de dormir, qué despierta tu curiosidad, qué es necesario para conquistarte. Si lo descubro, cuenta conmigo.