#2. Protein Envy

 My mind chimes with the rhythms and melodies imprinted upon me by previous experiences. For months now, a dissonant chord has been growing. Its sound was entirely alien, making me feel like a stranger in my own skin. Maybe I’ve managed to eradicate it by now, but knowing that I let it settle in to begin with makes me uncomfortable. Something so ugly stemmed from something that I should understand as a part of life and that shouldn’t surprise me any longer, which is this—

That some people will spend millions of dollars to build their homes on the hills of Sausalito, on hills that are prey to earthquakes and landslides, just for the sake of a beautiful view. The hills are alive, and they quake and shake and come crashing down, and yet somehow we understand the dollars spent as being worthwhile.

#1. The rosehip that follows the rose

“Blessed and blessing, this music is in some sort the equivalent of the night, of the deep and living darkness, into which, now in a single jet, now in a fine interweaving of melodies, now in pulsing and almost solid clots of harmonious sound, it pours itself, stanchlessly pours itself, like time, like the rising and falling, falling trajectories of life.”

–Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

An Introduction: Pain, growth, and the importance of surrender

It’s currently 3:24 AM on the third day of the new year, and slowly I’m beginning to wrestle with the mixed feelings of dread, anxiety and excitement that have been churning in my stomach for the past several weeks. So many things are budding into fruition, and it feels as though the fully awakened thoughts that have so carefully eluded me for years are finally skating closer towards my fingertips, within my reach. They’re all fragile at this stage, easily trampled and pushed down into the earth where their promise will decompose into compost. But the fact that I am sitting here, awake, despite the congestion weighing down my chest and filling my nostrils is evidence that this year will be different.

Right before New Year’s Eve Neil Gaiman prompted his readers to make more mistakes in 2012. In many ways it seems like mistakes have been following me throughout 2011. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, as is unavoidable. They make me think back to one of my architecture professor’s statements, one of her many that struck me during lecture so hard that it ricocheted around my mind for months afterward—a mistake is a sign of discovery. I have made so many mistakes over the past two semesters—and plenty more beyond that, of course—but what really brings me pain is the realization that I’ve only made them in the attempt to avoid them. I’ve been riddled by a fear, and whether it’s a fear of failure or a fear of mediocrity or fear of hurt I’m not sure; perhaps they’re all the same.  

A project to define beauty and explore its effect on our existence.