MUSIC.

Lately... Lily Allen, Kate Nash, and the Gorillaz (so wish I was going).

ADORING my weekends lately. I am blessed.

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.

Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD)

Change and things.

"That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But at the same time we are also created. … What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? … Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, than we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous. … I think that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there." - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I'm grateful for a lot of things lately. Can't explain it... just really, really grateful.

A friend reminded me the other day that being rich has nothing to do with money. In that sense, I'm rich, folks. RICH, I tell you.

I've got days where I get to drink coffee in a quiet spot, afternoons where I talk to people I don't know about food, about Philly, and about just about anything. My nights are pocketed with visions of people conquering great heights, quelling small fears.

I can't ask for anything more.

Like everyone else I feel like I've just joined the world in breathing a collective sigh of relief to be feeling Fall. I'm on the cusp of being able to move out of a world of tile and weights and into a sweet hall where eels and plants used to be kept. I'm not really sure what this all amounts to, but every Fall I think of college, change, and seasons.

I couldn't live any where where seasons don't exist as I feel them in my bones and wait for them to shed layers of myself I think. So the question this September poses is... what layers am I waiting to shed?

Walking is good for thinking about layers. You start off cold and then wonder why you even bothered with the sweater in the first place.

We all need the process though. We all need cold, warm, cozy, and rainy. We need sometimes quiet, sometimes funny, sometimes goofy, sometimes serious, sometimes sad, sometimes curious... Each circumstance shapes us and I am busy putting things in my life lately to mold me. I've gone a long while without being intentional about the process of becoming, but I realize - the places you put yourself in, the ideas you rise with, you go to bed with... these change you, change your choices, change your moods, change you.

So I'm trying to choose wisely, I guess. And the more I put myself out there to be chipped up against, the more I learn about what I am willing to let go of, what I am never going to be rid of, and what I'd like to patch on.

I've been known to run away from what scares me and hey, sometimes this is important - like when my friend got held up at 40th and Market in broad daylight or when my other friend got held up in two relationships at once that were both completely abusive. Sure. Sure there are occasions to drop your purse and get the hell out of the way.

But when you are alone, and you are too busy thinking about what you hate, who hates you, and whether all of your life will be spent this way... it is better to pick up and just do something that will change you.

There are occasions when the thing you are scared of, the change you are freaking out about must be dealt with. You must calculate the risk... and take it. Sometimes, you have to just "try to be there". I figure this takes practice, just like Olympic Lifting and jumping on boxes. You rehearse bravery... you don't just become brave. It, like all things, takes practice. It takes letting go. But you must be there to bear witness to your own becoming.

Because summer is coming to a close and... I still had all of this on my camera.

Dear Rob Orlando,

Please make me as strong as you.

VERY sincerely,

Erin

ON YOUTUBE

ON VIMEO

Why I do what I do. :)

Moments like these and people like Stu.

“Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible and live long lives.”

Maya Angelou (American Poet, b.1928)

My favorite movement. And who we are not.

You are not your body composition.

You are not your Squat PR.

You are not your tupper-ware.

You are not your marriage, your relationship, your lust.

You are not the people you love.

You are not the people you idolize.

You are not the people who love you.

You are not your children.

You are not your nationality.

You are not your family.

You are not your religion.

You are not your brokenness.

You are not your habits.

You are not your past.

You are not your future.

You are not the food you eat.

You are not the clothes you wear.

You are not the way you talk.

You are not your mistakes.

You are not your degree, your job, or your calling.

You are not even the skin you're in because that will fade too.

You are not yours.

You are not even your loneliness.

You are not your discontent.

You are not your anger.

You are not your goodness.

You are something far deeper, far more intricate, far more flighty, far more present, far more hard to pin down.

But you always are.

Forgiveness.

This is coming from the below: "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert : "In the end, it seems to me that forgiveness may be the only realistic antidote we are offered in love, to combat the inescapable disappointments of intimacy."

but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

That is what I feel I have been in intimacy - disappointed. And disappointment rises out of expectation. Expect nothing. Appreciate everything. Try not to get walked over. Let Go. Forgive. Learn. Move on. And the beat goes on.

Maybe it's culture that sets us up. Maybe it's me.

Someone very close to me has (in the past) expressed to me before that I have massively disappointed them. That's a hard thing to accept - especially if the way you are is a way that you need to be for a time. It's not a good feeling.

Still I think in the end, it's life that guides us to expect big things. We love mountains, horizons, shores, and prospects. It's embedded in us to love treasure, to hope for it, to expect it.

We expect loyalty. We cast a line out for friendship. Every step we take is a risk, not a promise.

We do this again and again and again - no matter how many times we are run into ground, no matter how many times we feel emotional pain so intense it's visceral, no matter how many times we lose faith and feel wrecked.

I used to think starfish and regenerated limbs were cool - but how do you regenerate hope?

I've been waitressing again and this experience, in spite of the running around, is something that keeps me humble and mystified by just how brave everyone in the world is. Some of the people I meet every day are incredibly brave. They wake up in the morning and meet the day... regardless of how they feel, regardless of the fact that there are dreams the size of Jupiter in their hearts - things they want to do, things they wish they'd never done, memories they are trying to forget.

Still, you meet the day.

I wonder if anyone else ever gets this feeling? Some people are absolutely fascinating to me. They are worlds of events, potential, and scars. It's like some crazy action movie where the hero gets pummeled by bullet after bullet but somehow manages to speak, to act, to live to die another day. How does everyone walk around living with a knife in their back? How do they do it?

And they do. Anyone I have ever met and had the time to get to know knows pain, knows what it's like to be betrayed, to betray another, to betray yourself. How do we do it? How do we live with ourselves?

We are ridiculously resilient.

I think I am beginning to understand that so much of letting go is bound up in forgiveness - something I don't really talk about much anymore, though I'd formerly practiced it (and believe me, that ish takes practice). I don't think we're asked to overlook all of this - because the people that refuse to believe they are broken are the weirdest of all, the least happy - but I do think we are asked to acknowledge that nothing is so bad that hating it will make it better.

And in the end too - I think forgiving yourself may be the hardest part.

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” - August Wilson