Fleeting / Ecclesiastes

"Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when
you will say,
'I find no pleasure in them' —
before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
when people are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.

Remember him — before the silver
cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God
who gave it."

I have never wanted to remember anything more than You.
You see more than my tired eyes ever will,
You comfort more than my weary arms will ever hold,
You are, You are, You are.

You are.
You are.
You are.

To You, Peru

To you, Peru.
To your darkened city,
your yucca root and
mango'd soul, to our
foreign feet tracing paths in your skin,
to being born again on rooftops --
to feeling
hope in a town that has lost all of it.
To the whir of motors and horns
that plague your streets and
the roar of the people chattering
in rolled r's and abandoned s's
To you, breathing life into
your Coca-Cola veins, to
the corners of pan and curry and
gasoline.

No one smokes here, do they?
I suppose you haven't fallen into Europe's
nicotine dream,
to cracked lungs and late nights with strangers,
as I have Peru.
I guess you know what it's like
to live a life unromanced by rain and tragedy —
your life just is,
and I am nearly not, I am
afflicted by words that hang in
my throat like the dead cedarwood
ceilings you showed me,
I am all insecurities, mistakes,
and mixed media,
While you just are,
a steady hum, a distant engine, a falling —
constantly falling sky.
Are you lonely, Peru?
Are you fluid, do you dance,
are you happy?
To you, Peru, is this.
To me, Peru, you are.

Coffee. I love coffee.

These past few weeks, instead of preparing for finals and thinking quality thoughts about the meaning of life, I've been cataloging all of my past and present self-destructive behaviors and dipping my toes in small, shallow pools of misery and regret. One of these behaviors is coffee drinking.

I haven't really thought about when it all started, but after reading an article on Thought Catalog about giving children caffeine, I realized that I probably had my first white mocha (yes, a white mocha, suckaz!) when I was about ten years old. My aunt was addicted to coffee — not just coffee, but Starbucks espresso drinks, which are pretty much corn syrup and milk disguised as coffee; and in sibling sameness, my mom was also addicted to the two-tailed mermaid's sugary poison. Immediately after my helpless mother saw my aunt purchase my drink, I remember her proclaiming that she would give up her addiction, realizing that her caffeinated habits could maybe probably (definitely) influence me in a bad way.

It's too late, someone should have said. Your daughter has now willingly began her journey into the downward spiral of coffee addiction. She will no longer function without it. But oh, will she try. Someone should have warned my mother.

In my apartment, where I live with four other coffee-drinking gals, we have three coffeemakers and one espresso machine. Excessive? Nah. (Absolutely). We each prefer our own type of coffee — French roast, fair-trade coffee from Haiti, Trader Joe's Breakfast Blend, Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and good ol' Folgers. We are all addicted, and we all enable each other.

What to do, what to do...

I've wondered for a while now: where's the Caffeine Addicts Anonymous group? Where do we go, those of us who can barely manage to stumble out of bed and wander to the kitchen, just functional enough to shuffle to the coffeemaker, dump water in the tank, and press the "on" button?

Don't get me wrong, I've tried to quit many times, to no avail. Something always comes up:
"I've got a big test today." "You made extra drip, can't waste it!" "Only 1 more star until my Gold card..."

It's all very legitimate. And one of few drug addictions our culture encourages. So what to do? What to do?

Back to studying, I guess... and back to my mug of steaming hot coffee. *Sip.*

Traveling Things

People do weird things in airports, like falling asleep fetal position next to a giant wall painted with David Copperfield's face. Or ordering a Stella Artois at the bar and staring at it for twenty minutes, only to take two sips and leave immediately after. They do things that make me sad and uncomfortable, like arguing and calling each other names — yes, you, old couple across from me, or drunkenly stumbling over to the flight attendant and demanding a seat upgrade. Sigh. There needs to be more love in the world.

I am sad. This couple is sad. I wonder if they are happy, and maybe just having an off night. She has a rose peeking out of her carry-on bag. Who gave you the rose, sad woman? Was it the man next to you? Was it someone else?

This is that one Hemingway quote.

I am a mess of lines strung together and knotted like the threads in that sweater you can't bear to give away.
You are the hopelessness I cling to, the wavering promise of "something" that eats away at me from time to time — sometimes you are also the reason I write.
So here's to the night,
To the mayhem and confusion of falling recklessly in love with life,
and the feeling of cigarette smoke wrapping around you like a blanket —
yes, sometimes we romanticize things that are bad for us.

This world is hope,
this world is brimming with uncertainty, failure,
and an undeniable good that makes all of us:
enjoy romantic comedies
laugh at our failures
save one another when we can't save ourselves —
I believe this comes from bigger things.

We are all so much smaller than we think,
and so much more than we will ever recognize.
Thankful for this Friday evening,
thankful for the night.

Here's to us.