thich nhat hanh

"If there are things that are causing you to suffer, you have to know how to let go of them. Happiness can be attained by letting go, including letting go of your ideas about happiness. You imagine that certain conditions are necessary to your happiness, but deep looking will reveal to you that those notions are the very things standing in the way of happiness and are making you suffer." (73)

"The Buddha taught us that joy and pleasure are based on surrender, on letting go. Are you able to let go of things? If not, your suffering will continue." (74)

"Perhaps you too are the prisoner of your own notion of happiness. There are thousands of paths that lead to happiness, but you have accepted only one. You have not considered other paths because you think that yours is the only one that leads to happiness. You have followed this path with all your might, and so the other paths, the thousands of others, have remained closed to you.

We should be free to experience the happiness that just comes to us without our having to seek it." (75)

"In true love, there is no place for pride. I beg you to remember this. You share happiness and adversity with this person, so you must go to him or her and share the truth about your suffering." (95)

"Are you sure of your perceptions?

There is a river of perceptions in you. You should sit down on the bank of this river and contemplate your perceptions." (99)


I read You Are Here over the summer. I am going to read it again. I got the book from the library like a week or two ago because I knew I would need it during the year. I'm also going to finish reading True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, and then start a book based off his talk with prisoners Be Free Where You Are.

Oh yes, it's not a game.

this song came up on my iTunes shuffle & I'm so glad.

CRITICAL CONDITION -- Ed Roberson

The entire surface of my body is missing
in the sense the entire surface of my body is missing
touch with that body of someone elses in this world
at the moment, it feels that total a missing, that absence
by which you have no body, are disembodied through
the absence of touching a body. This isn't healthy.
For lack of that kiss.

If I lose it said to me that I am loved, lost
with all the lesser connective pertinences and news,
I lose a tongue to the world, and ears, if except
for locational and ambient noise,
am deaf and dumb. I am missing my senses.
If consciousness is connection, I am in a coma
for lack of the kiss of in touch.


--- from his book of poetry, The New Wing of the Labyrinth

you ever just

cry because you don't know what you're doing?
if i could cry... i'd be doing one of those.


but i'll be fine. really. truly.
when i open up the blinds.

all afta the fact

i feel very vulnerable & raw.


i keep doing that embarassment thing i do where i remember something i did and how ridiculous it was/how much i kinda wish i could take it back/done it better and then i close my eyes real tight, exclaim "aaaahhh" while shaking my head like i'm some type of etch-a-sketch and that'll make it all go away.


but it ain't gone go away.
and it shouldn't.


so, i went on an audition yesterday.
in New York City.
for a Writers in Performance Workshop.
i lost myself.
and not
in the good way...


ooh chile.
i wonder when i got so scared to be BIG. like everything shooting out of my fingertips, like speaking and moving with my whole body, how to perform, take it to the next level everything as me.
bc i can act. no one can take that from me. i am talented. but i just get so... regressive sometimes. no, that's unfair. there are many reasons why that audition was just "shake my head like an etch-a-sketchable"


1. i was trying to do too much at once in not enough time for the experience that i have.
a. tryin to memorize a 3min poem the day of an audition
b. still editing the poem the day of the audition.
c. figuring out how to perform this the day of the audition
d. doing all of this in no more than like 4 hrs probably.
2. tho i actually did memorize the work, bc of the subject matter & my level of comfort with performing something that was coming straight from me, my own story that was a LOT.
3. i can act. but that's becoming another person. it took some learning/getting used to/hard work for that. and it's a WHOLE NOTHER BEAST to learn how to perform your own work. i'm much more comfortable with becoming someone else to perform than just telling my story and having to look strangers in the eyes while I do it.
4. I wasn't even prepared mentally when I started it. Like, i was not where I need to be to say what I needed to say. Again, this is something I have to do when I act, or hell even when I sit down to write a paper so I need to learn how to get there before I perform my own work.
5. time. time. time. it takes a substantial amount of time to create a couple minutes worth of beauty and surrender. i was not surrendering and i was not allowing myself to be beautiful. and by beautiful i mean be myself and loving myself enough to let myself go the way i needed to.
6. mindfulness. is so important. how can you perform if you're not all the way there? who are you performing for if you're looking into empty seats or up into the sky? who? not the people watching you. i know that much. i fixed that after i realized i was doing it, but i did it nonetheless.
7. i gotta stop being afraid to be BIG. to be myself. if i can stare into the crowd as a character, as someone else, i can i have to do that as me as well. that's actually more important. what's the point of being half-hearted?
8. to be given a span of time, if even a couple minutes, to a make a moment all your own, to have the attention of everyone in the room (even if it's just 2 ppl at an audition) is an AMAZING thing. a brilliant opportunity to become, to be present, to grow and to feel and i want to remember that. to take advantage of that.
9. i'm so uncomfortable with holding other people's attention, as Jessica. i don't know if it feels selfish somehow, maybe i'm just scared, maybe i still have phantom worries about whether what i have to say really matters. i want to let them go. i want to be all the way here and out of my head. out of the escape. and prepared.
10. i want to be prepared for opportunity. i shall prepare for opportunity by seeking, by taking it to the next level.
11. there's a great giant leap between knowing what you need to do and doing what you need to do.
12. i am ready for the leap.
13. i think i need me some meditation. actually i know i do. i'm not quite sure how that works. hrmmm...  i'm sure it starts with me. and definitely with being kind to myself. and some reading. thich nhat hanh.
14. also, being in school and all that entails and trying to find a way to also be somewhere else, to achieve something else can be really hard. school life takes up SO MUCH HEADSPACE.
15. but that's no excuse. when i wants what i wants i gotta do it all the way.
16. yeah. that.

nope. no. it never gets old.

throwback, senior year of high school

Natasha Bedingfield actually, consistently, speaks truth. Listen to these lyrics.