simple living, high thinking

It’s an "about me" section so I guess I could tell you about myself and how I have brown eyes and black hair and how I’m just another college student living in a big big world that, at times, feels so small. I guess I could tell you how I’m super Indian and how I love beautiful things, whether it’s the very first lyrics in a song or the way the corners of your mouth go up a little when you smile. I guess I could tell you my dreams, how I hope to be filthy rich one day and travel the world because there’s simply so much to see and so much I want to do. I guess I could tell you how I have an immense passion towards words and the way we use them and that is the main force that drives me when running this blog. I guess I could tell you about my personal life and about what makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and what allows me to cry in the shower where my tears can’t be seen. I guess I could tell you a lot of things, but then I wouldn’t know where to start. I live a simple life. It just requires a lot of thought. Join me as I attempt to figure it out.

an excerpt

“Then his father died and America entered the war and he had to come too and here he was. 

He lay and thought oh Joe Joe this is no place for you. This was no war for you. This thing wasn’t any of your business. What do you care about making the world safe for democracy? All you wanted to do Joe was to live. You were born and raised in the good healthy country of Colorado and you had no more to do with Germany or England or France or even with Washington D.C. than you had to do with the man on the moon. Yet here you are and it was none of your affair. Here you are Joe and you’re hurt worse than you think. You’re hurt bad. Maybe it would be better if you were dead and buried on the hill across the river from Shale City. Maybe there are more things wrong with you than you suspect Joe. Oh why the hell did you ever get into this mess anyhow? Because it wasn’t your fight. You never really knew what the fight was about.”

-Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn’t bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it’s sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.
Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello (via immortels)


an excerpt

“What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness. It’s as if we were working together on the same statue, cutting it out of each other’s misery. But I don’t even know the design.”

-The End of The Affair by Graham Greene

an excerpt

“And then ‘You?’ She had always called me ‘you’. ‘Is that you?’ on the telephone, ‘Can you? Will you? Do you?’ so that I imagined, like a fool, for a few minutes at a time, there was only one ‘you’ in the world and that was me.”

-The End of The Affair by Graham Greene

an excerpt

“I’ll tell you, that’s one thing I hate about my nickname, the way that number runs on forever. It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day.”

-Life of Pi by Yann Martel

an excerpt

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.”

-Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clark

truths

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

chapter 19

“I went to see him again.

‘What’s your religion about?’ I asked.

His eyes lit up. ‘It is about the Beloved,’ he replied. 

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

The mosque was truly an open construction, to God and to breeze. We sat cross legged listening to the imam until the time came to pray. Then the random pattern of sitters disappeared as we stood and arranged ourselves shoulder to shoulder in rows, every space ahead being filled by someone from behind until every line was solid and we were row after row of worshipers. It felt good to bring my forehead to the ground. Immediately it felt like deeply religious contact.”

-Life of Pi by Yann Martel

an excerpt

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It’s easy. 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 always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable 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.”

-Killing Yourself To Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman

an excerpt

“The reason death sticks to closely to life isn’t biological necessity—it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing of two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.”

-Life of Pi by Yann Martel