Bean Boots!

Thorin Oakenshield

"The future is scary, but you can't just run back to the past because it's familiar."
-HIMYM

"I think one of the things that's happened is that being cynical is somehow conflated with being sophisticated. I think that's problematic, to say the least. I don't think evil people or negative people are inherently interesting all the time. People who are good people getting better at being themselves -- to me, that's something that's really interesting to watch."
-Josh Radnor

Josh Radnor, let's get married.

12/12/12

My birthday is in three days.
I now possess both a B.A. and an M.A.
In 19 days it will be 2013.
This year has sort of kicked my ass.
In 34 days I leave for India.

Elena + Damon

"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven’t even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; There is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life they will control how you feel about everyone else."
-Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Excited!

"One of the deepest feminine pleasures is when a man stands full, present, and unreactive in the midst of his woman’s emotional storms. When he stays present with her, and loves her through the layers of wildness and closure, then she feels his trustability, and she can relax…" -Osho

From: flawsstitchedwithgoodintentions

i’ve reached a point in my life
that has made me doubt everyone.
i don’t believe that
i can be loved at all,
and when someone says
that they do love me,
i simply tell them
that there’s no need
for them to lie to me.

it’s easier to believe
that no one ever loved me
than it is
to come to terms with
the fact that one day
they will simply stop.

I have to admit, I have been pretty disappointed by people lately. Common courtesy goes a long way and it's surprising how many individuals are lacking. I've been home since the end of June, almost five months and I'm starting to get antsy. I love my home town but most of the people who are my age still living here are not people I have any desire to spend time with. It's not that they are bad people, I just have a hard time relating. We don't realize how much we change until we go away and come back.

All I wanted was to feel free after finishing my dissertation and in some sense I got what I wished for but in some ways I still feel trapped and stuck. I have no idea what I want to do next. I'm trying to figure out my future but nothing has caught my eye, I'm not excited...I'm just resigned to the fact that eventually I have to get a job and grow up. I think in an effort to avoid thinking about this I jumped into situations these past few months that weren't right for me. I've been making the wrong choices because I'm not ready for the right ones. My birthday is next month, a new year. Hopefully it will be better than the last. I want to find something to be passionate about.

The quickest way to feel like a fool, is to feel too deeply, too soon.

How To Love A Screwed Up Man

"...sometimes there is no big reason why someone is incapable of treating you decently."

Finally

Alias: Sydney to Vaughn

"We'll find each other. We always find each other."

Jane Mount

"10 Coolest Small Towns In America 2012"

#6 Port Townsend, WA: Pop. 9,113

A foodie find on the shores of the rugged Olympic Coast Back in the late 1800s, Port Townsend was poised to become America's largest West Coast harbor, nicknamed The City of Dreams. Unfortunately, when the economic Panic of 1893 cut the town off from the expanding rail network, these grand plans went bust. And yet the Victorian-era seaport is still plenty dreamy. Thanks to its rich geographical blessings (mountains ripe for foraging, teeming fishing grounds, fertile farmlands), the region has spawned its own culinary movement: Olympic Coast Cuisine.

Extremely fresh seafood-pulled from the labyrinthine bays that carve into the peninsula-shows up on most menus here. The terrace at Fins Coastal Cuisine offers a front-row seat to the harbor, a perfect perch from which to try their take on chowder-heaping bowls of local Manila clams in their shells with a white wine and thyme broth (1019 Water St., finscoastal.com, chowder $13.50).

In addition to French-style Camemberts and spreadable fromage blancs, Matt Day and Ryan Trail of Mt. Townsend Creamery create a slate of uniquely Northwestern cheeses, with additions like alderwood smoke and Seattle-brewed Scotch ale (338 Sherman St., mttownsendcreamery.com, fromage blanc $5 for 8 oz.). The cheeses make a perfect picnic companion to the French-inspired classics-such as thin ficelle baguettes and custard-filled canelés-being baked at Pane d'Amore (617 Tyler St., panedamore.com, canelés $1.50). Even something as simple as ice cream gets the farm-to-cone treatment. At Elevated Ice Cream Company, seasonal ingredients such as raspberries, strawberries, and lavender are sourced from farms 16 miles west in Sequim, Wash. (627 & 631 Water St., elevatedicecream.com, cone $2.50). But don't worry about packing on the calories: The Olympic Peninsula has plenty of opportunities for sea kayakers, hikers, and mountain bikers.

If your culinary tastes lie more in the DIY camp, the not-at-all-rustic Chevy Chase Beach Cabins offer access to a private beach on Discovery Bay that's home to seven varieties of clams-they even provide plastic diggers and buckets (3710 S. Discovery Rd., chevychasebeachcabins.com, cabins from $110).

Getting there: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (71 miles)

Scotland

Northern Ireland

Ireland Part 1

Ireland Part 2

"We encounter books at different times in life, often appreciating them, apprehending them, in different ways. But their language is constant. The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail."
-Jhumpa Lahiri

Thrift Shop

Missing London

Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

"But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair."

Breathe

A week ago today I turned in my Master's dissertation. I can't believe it's over. The realization that everything is wide open is exciting...and scary. At the moment I'm taking some time to figure things out. I'm hoping to find out what it is that I want from my life. I've spent so much time focusing on what the next step is, I feel like I forgot about why I was spending so much time on those steps in the first place. I'm light, free of the responsibility that has been weighing me down all year. I can finally take a moment. Breathe.

givemeajobplease:

I went on a date last night and then you texted and asked, again, whether I would come there. Start our days with coffee, end with you making dinner. Forever. I feel myself tug towards yes and then I remember why it will always be no with you and I.

There are people in your life who are going to love you for all of the wrong reasons. They will love you for the best part of your face, the best part of you naked, the best mood on your best day, the best story you ever wrote, the best outfit you ever wore.

They are going to miss the scar on the underside of your nose from the time your older brothers dared you to run across a pile of logs. They won’t know that you fell on a hidden nail just as you completed the challenge. They’ll miss the scar on your finger, too from the time you were seven and closed a swiss army knife on it. They won’t understand that these are two of only a handful of things you can remember about your childhood. They’ll notice that you have great tits, but they’ll miss that your thumb tucks into their palm when you’re walking together and that your eyes have darker circles when a migraine is coming. They won’t know you get migraines. They won’t ask where the story you wrote came from, so they’ll never know that it was true. They’ll love it because it feels real to them. They’ll miss knowing the sweatshirt full of holes that they criticized you for wearing was your dads. You might tell them some of these things along the way, but they will remember the best things instead.

They will love your good moods, your energy, your sense of humor, but miss that you never turn to them, but rather to a shower or a pillow or the back of your throat to shed tears. They won’t ever consider you strong.

When the parts that aren’t your best come out, some people will shield their eyes as if you have just forced them to look directly into the sun for hours until their irises burn. They’ll silently make you promise to never show them that again. Those things are not to be shown. Be at your best so I can love you. I would love you more if only you never show me those things.

And you do not marry those people. You do not sit and sleepily drink coffee with those people. You leave those people and you remind yourself that they missed the better parts of you.

Me: Finally decided to see what all the fuss was about, was entertained but now its getting to be #50shadesofboring

Jojo: I am #50shadesofdisappointed in you

Danielle Campbell

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." - Ernest Hemingway

FIIMT

FEED Projects

"Hunger was not general, ever, for just something, anything, to eat. My hunger grew so specific I could name every corner and fold of it. Salty, warm, brothy, starchy, fatty, sweet, clean and crunchy, crisp and watery..." -Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones & Butter

"To be alive at all is to have scars." -John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Want.

"It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You will be stupid. You will worry your parents. You will question your own choices, your relationships, your jobs, your friends, where you live, what you studied in college, that you went to college at all… If that happens, you’re doing it right." -Ira Glass

Beautiful contrast pouches from Of a Kind

After two years I am finally reading this

Summertime

Beautiful book carvings

Sometimes when I think about my younger self, my heart aches. I know I'm not old but those years, when you are stumbling your way through middle school and high school, make such an impact on the person you become. And when I look at my friends and remember who they were I want to reach out and tell all of our younger selves that everything is going to be ok. Even if you're not friends with those people anymore, it's possible to look back and the love the person they were. And it's possible to not really know someone and wish you could comfort their younger self anyway. This probably isn't making any sense but it's nice to remember and it's nice to think about those younger, innocent selves and mentally give them a hug and reassure them that life will make way for them because happiness is right around the corner.

"…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." -Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

"You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on." - Tupac Shakur

Summer 2012

Marie Colvin

"But he always had to go one step further, it was his nature, he seemed almost to have no choice. And so he destroyed me as he destroyed himself, in an attempt to be greater, in attempt to be more and more..." -James Bernard, Taming The Blank

"I don't even know if that particular brand of loneliness exists anymore, though I suspect that new kinds have sprung up to take its place." -Ann Patchett

Bold Bookcases.

"Don’t settle. Know what you want and reach for it. And if you don’t know what you want, be patient. The answers will come to you in time, and you may find that your heart’s desire has been right under your nose all the while."- Julia Quinn, To Sir Phillip, With Love

Guilty Pleasure

"I know you want to stop it. Protect her from it. But you’re young. You don’t see what I see. It’s not just that she makes him a better person. She does, but, he changes her too. Damon challenges her, surprises her. He makes her question her life, beliefs. Stefan is different. His love is pure and he’ll always be good for her. Damon is either the best thing for her or the worst.” -TVD

"Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another." -Ernest Hemingway

My Neighborhood

London Calling

I was talking to my mom last night and telling her how London has really started to grow on me. Everyone always told me what a wonderful city it is but I had some trouble settling into its rhythm during the fall/winter. However, as the weather has started to warm and my busy routine has become comfortable, I've grown to appreciate the city in which I have spent the past 8 months. For a while I was looking forward to heading home for summer, I couldn't wait to return to something familiar. Now, when I think about it, I feel sad at the thought of leaving. My mom told me if I wanted to I could stay, which is amazing and wonderful that she would give me that option. But I want to be home. I want to have the space to focus on my dissertation. I want to spend time with my old man of a dog. I want to see my friends. But I think that one day, in the not too distant future, London will call me back and I will be happy to return.

Truman Capote & Harper Lee

Meryl Streep & Stanley Tucci

Happy May!

I turned in my final essays on Monday. Now, all that's left is dissertation. How did that happen? The past few weeks my essays have been constantly on my mind and the fact that I no longer have to worry about them is such a weight off my shoulders. Today, as a reward to myself, I went to the Alternative Fashion Show at Spitalfield's market. The AFS is for up and coming designers from, not just England, but other parts of Europe as well. It's free and open to the public and it was just so much fun to watch. The designs were very interesting. I took some pictures but they didn't turn out so great. Below is the only one that was sort of ok. After I got back from Spitalfield's I ate lunch in my room and relaxed until it was time for my evening event.

The Southbank Centre, last week and this week, has been playing host to the Alchemy Festival. There are lectures and performances everyday and during the weekend, instead of the regular Southbank market, there is stall after stall of delicious South Asian food. Tonight I went to hear Shazia Mirza, Ziauddin Sardar and Kamila Shamsie (!!!) discuss the floods that ravaged Pakistan in 2010 and where Pakistan is now. I mainly went to see Kamila Shamsie because her novel, Kartography, is one of my favorite books of all time but overall it was also a really interesting panel. All the speakers were extremely eloquent and engaging so luckily I wasn't bored for a minute. Afterwards I went up to Kamila to say hi and I told her how much I love her work. So happy I have met another one of my favorite authors!!!



In case you're wondering, the mass of color coming out of the center model's chest are hands, and the mass of color below that is made up of feet.