On James Baldwin and how he gets it (and me).

I wrote my first short story this week.

JINKIES!

 Was it good, you ask? No. Not really.

And of course that's okay.

So it's not a very big deal, really. I wrote most of it the night before/ morning it was due.

Just like I do everything, you know?

 So why does it matter so much to me? And why do I do that anyway (write everything the morning of)?

I'll tell you why. 

And James Baldwin will tell you why.

It's because I'm scared scared scared SCARED SCARED.

And this is why:

Of all the things I want and hope and yearn to be (which is a considerable list of things, you have perhaps noticed), a writer, in its most hazy and glamorous depiction, is perhaps what I want most.

 So write, you might say.

Write every day! Write everything. Write poems. Write dumb things. Write brilliant things. Write about people you don't know and people you wish you knew and yourself and weak people and brave people. And I DO. Kind of.

Actually I write all the time.

But I'm so afraid of writing something good (or trying to) because that's what I want more than anything, and if I fail... well then, I fail everything.

So purposefully procrastinated mediocrity is safe. Huh? I've been planning that story for WEEKS.

But I wouldn't let myself write it. SCARED SCARED SCARED. Waiting waiting waiting.

As the brilliant James says,

"I thus gave the world and altogether murderous power over me, but also that in such a self-destroying limbo I could never hope to write.

One writes out of one thing only-- one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give".

Here it Comes...

A better version of me.

Happy Belated New Year, I guess.

The sun has been incessantly flirting with me. It's toying with my affections, giving me a beautifully bright false hope that perhaps this winter might just be a little less miserable than the last.

Well, maybe it will be.
I will be, anyhow.

And you know why? Because "The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung" [via Walt Whitman]

And I should at least be humming along.

...Don't you think?

Resolutions, renovations, and hesitant hopings,
Banana

P.S. I'm moving to Paris with Gracie in the Spring. Have you ever heard such a lovely sentence?

human hosepipe.

I will not say much beyond 

the fact that heartache

is inescapable, probably necessary to ultimate happiness,

and positively rampant in my little household. 

So let us turn to our ever-wise friend and posthumous mentor, Clive Staples,  for a bright and beautiful thought my dear dear friend, Jacob, blessed me with the beauty of:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

-C.S. Lewis

Ah, wisdom. It's delicious, is it not?

My roommate showed me this gorgeous video made by a BYU Professor that captures so perfectly the essence of relationships. And the wonderful Weepies' lyrics can never hurt:

So here's to vulnerability, still missing him every every minute, and this beautiful world that still spins madly on,

Banana

Oopsies!

Okay, so I've been naughty.

But I promise I'll be back soon! This long hiatus has been plagued with Provo, Utah, clouds, cold weather, and way too much sleeping in. And I just haven't felt up to trying to be witty or observing the world around me in my usual bloggedy way.

Basically I've been a whiney baby.

But the sun is peeking through! My snister and darlingest buddy, Jenabunny, is having a baby (who I already love an insane, auntie-anna, cheek-pinching much), my cutie-pants, poncho-wearing, arabic-speaking, beard-donning boyfriend, Shea, is back from Syria after five months of skype-dating.

I'm in a bad rad book club (I know, I know, I put "bad rad" and "book club" together).

I might just have picked a major.

I'm training for a half marathon (waaah! whhhyyy?).

I have a choir concert this Saturday. [DO come if you're in the vicinity. BYU De Jong Concert Hall, 7:30 pm, march 13th. Tickets through Womenschorus.com It's going to be so great!]

I decided to start performing again. I miss the theatre too much!

And life is good. After all,

"The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung."

-Walt Whitman

love, winter, and a good dose of poetry,

banana

Oh, Victor...

"Be like the bird that,
passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight,
feels them give way beneath her,
and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings."

-Victor Hugo I still have time this summer. Time to break out Les Miserables? unabridged?

I think so.

p.s. can I be like the bird? what sort of bird are you?

-Anna Banana

thanks for the photo

Oh, Herman...

"We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men;
And they come back to us as effects."-Herman Melville

• Song for the day: "The Promise" by Tracy Chapman
• Poem for the day: "In October..." by Michael Hamburger
• Plan for the day: Live in Indianapolis this summer

love and things,
Anna

A quote in my day planner inspired me

"Be faithful in small things
because it is in them
that your strength lies."
-Mother Teresa
...I am.

♥ Anna