the rain in spain.

Bea y Isa bailan en la lluvia. 

"I assume you have had moments like this 

when you were caught up in something so much bigger 

than yourself that you couldn't even put it into words."

schmancy!

behind the glass

My roommate gets out of class at 10:50 every morning, and then she walks by the big windows where I sit at the front desk of the radio station. 

Usually, I run out to her, yelling “STEPHANIIIIIEEE!!!!!” like I haven’t seen her for years, while jumping on her, wrapping my legs around her waist. 

But just now, as she walked by, I just sat here at my desk, watching her and getting a big smile on my face. 

She’s looking spiffy- gray slacks, black blazer jacket, carrying her portfolio, like she’s married to Steve Jobs.

But she’s not wearing any shoes. Which is common when she can't decide which shoes to wear. & that’s why I’m smiling so BIG.

pinpoint.

spell checked

On a bicycle made for 4!

My mom has an iPhone- totally loves it. Loves showing it to people and showing them all her apps, like they've never seen one before.
It's eons more superior than mine, which I've had for four years and all it does it call, text, and buzz anymore. Putting my shoe up to my ear is more effective some days. The iPhone in contrast can speak hundreds of languages, tell the weather and time in hundreds of countries and auto-corrects everything you type.
She texts me goodnight and iPhone goes "I live you!" auto-correcting what she really means- cause living for one another is what love is all about.

gettin' it done. done. done.

David: shreddin'.

Practice makes perfect. If you want to play a piece of music, you practice and eventually, it will be perfect. My mother practices her knitting, my roommate practices making art, my brother is a sponsored long board racer, and he didn’t get there without practicing (or without an agreeable amount of stupidity and nasty road rash).

And if you want to be a good writer, you have to sit down at the computer and practice. Anne Lamott got me all ready to write more after I read Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. But she’s always talking about how you have to actually sit down and do it! You have to be willing to write what she calls “shitty first drafts” and how she knows authors who create beautiful pieces of literary genius, but none of them write good first drafts.

She says her friend sits down every morning and tells himself, “It’s not like you don’t have a choice, because you do- you can either type or kill yourself.”

So that’s encouraging.

I went to the Atlas the other day so I could sit down and write. I’ve been ignoring my blog, telling myself that I’ll post something soon, even though I knew I wouldn’t with all that goes on with college and…stuff. I ended up reading other people’s blogs, skyping Janae Rose (we watched a little of the sunrise in Thailand, as the sun was setting on my side of the planet), playing with a little spider that kept crawling across my keyboard, and talking to Kevin House about mushroom hunting.

Writing didn’t happen.

But yesterday!- my Uncle Dave was at my house and I was telling him how I want to write, need to write, but I’m not pushing myself and he goes, “I challenge you to a writing competition! Right now!”

We agreed to do just one paragraph each. We sat down; I typed furiously and referenced Anne Lamott and he scribbled in a notebook.

Me: shreddin' literary-style

We read our paragraphs out loud- his about the weather, mine was ironically about not writing. But hey- practice makes perfect, right? Right.

the confines of fear

My dad has a painting of Smith Rock and this year it’s been sitting against the wall in my apartment where I see it every day. I’ve been staring at this painting since I was little, and my dad told me years and years ago “You know, you could climb that.” After all this time, I did climb there- it was mind blowing.

In rock climbing, leading a new route can be the most exciting thing to look forward to. There’s a huge element of risk because you’re responsible for your own fate. Most of it at least- we’ll say you’re responsible for 60% of it and then your belayer takes the other 40%. You climb free to the first bolt, slap a quickdraw on it and pull your rope through the carabiner. Do this with one hand, while hanging on for dear life with the other. And it has to be done right! So it’s sketchy! Which is why it’s so awesome and why it can suck so much simultaneously!

So I’m climbing up the face of this huge slab (5.9 rating- gah!) and I get 3 bolts from the top after 30 minutes of clipping into bolts, holding the rope in my teeth, stressing, but just loving it. My toes are barely stable at the end of my last bolt and the next one is still 2 feet above my head, and all that there is to hold onto is…well, nothing essentially. How do people climb this stuff?? I analyzed the chalk markings left by previous conquerors and knew exactly what I had to do, but I hesitated, and here’s why:

I’m terrified of hitting my face. I’m scared of almost nothing except hitting my face on stuff. Dental work isn’t cheap and I want to keep my real teeth in my mouth for the rest of my life. And it’s so frustrating! Because I’m not afraid of falling or breaking bones or bleeding out- but heaven forbid I should smack my head into a rock and have to have a Frankenstein amount of plastic and dental surgery done, along with 6 months of recovery.

I’m stuck between these bolts, with a 50/50 chance of falling before reaching my next clip-in point and I’m thinking, “How did I just become so not stoked about this?” I’ve never taken a lead fall before and did not want to- I climbed back down. But I’m sure that once I do take that fall, I’ll learn my lesson and will take bigger risks- but until then, I just love my teeth too much.