takgoti

I’ve been feeling quite melancholy lately. I’ve been...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:29:00 -0400

I’ve been feeling quite melancholy lately.

I’ve been feeling, somehow, separate.

This is a recurring theme in my life. I find it relatively easy to relate to people and I consider myself fortunate to be surrounded by a lovely spread of interesting personalities, but I often find myself at odds with the lives of others. Running parallel but never intersecting might be another way to put it. Caught in between.

It’s rare to find someone that I feel I can truly connect with on a more resonant level, and unfortunately those people are not largely present in my life because of time or distance or both.

This is not all to say that I don’t have a wonderful life right now. I should never lose sight of that. I love what I am doing and where I am going. I know that it’s a lot to ask that I be able to get everything that I need to feel full in life from a single entity because I suppose that’s what a lot of life is about - you have the group that you talk to about your career over here, the group you reminisce with there, the group you talk about the article you just read over on the left, the group you go to for life advice on the right. The chance of your venn diagram of friends and colleagues overlapping in all areas is slim, but I guess that what I’ve been finding is that I feel off-kilter if I don’t have at least a handful of people standing near, if not in, the center.

I like to think that one of my strengths is that I’ve become fairly good at adapting. I can empathize somewhat freely and I often try my best to view things from different angles and understand where someone else is coming from.

I’m not perfect, but I do strive to keep in mind that everything is relative and just because something might not be important to me doesn’t mean that it isn’t incredibly important to someone else. There will always be someone better than you, there will always be something worse happening to someone else, there will always be something that is “more.” When something is truly upsetting someone, pointing this out to someone generally isn’t productive. It doesn’t solve anything and I don’t believe that it really ever makes someone feel better. Gaining perspective is a lesson I’ve always found most effective when I discover it on my own.

The world is large, the universe is larger, and there’s plenty of stuff that I don’t [and never will] completely understand. There’s always learning to be had, and I try to impart things that I’ve learned or experienced through my short span of time here when I can.

All of this makes it relatively easy to make friends, but sometimes the edges blur a little bit too much and I lose sight of what I am feeling or thinking in the pursuit of trying to understand where others are coming from.

And, this is going to sound incredibly pretentious and whiny, but I’ve also discovered that the interest I have in trying to understand others is not something that a lot of other people possess.

Part of it’s my fault. I’m not particularly vigilant about trying to share aspects of my life. I don’t often walk into a room and say things like, “Can I just TELL YOU about the day that I had?” Sharing the bad bits feels like complaining and sharing the good bits feels like bragging. So I often find myself simply not sharing. A lot of other people don’t seem to have this hang up, or have gotten over it, and thus I find myself doing a lot of listening. Which is fine. No, really. I don’t mind it; I even enjoy it. It’s just that…

Listening can be lonely.

And it’s not to say that when I start to feel like this I don’t try to press myself and open up, but let me step up onto my little soap box for a second.

I am getting tired of trying to talk to people while they’re looking at their cell phones. I don’t care whether you can understand what I am telling you while you text your friend - if I wanted to have a faceless conversation I’d be talking to you on Facebook and, let’s be honest, we probably wouldn’t be hanging out. BE PRESENT WITH ME. PLEASE.

I am tired of feeling like someone is simply waiting for their turn to say something when I’m trying to tell them about my day. I am tired of feeling like I’m caught in an idiotic competition to see whose day was “worse.”

I get it. I do these things too from time to time. I’m not proud of it. For example, sometimes I catch myself trying to share a story in return to show someone that I understand where they’re coming from, and halfway through it I realize that it’s sounding like I’m trying to tell them that, “I get it better.” I can be judgmental. I can be a right pain in the ass. I often give unsolicited advice when I feel like all people want is for me to listen to them.

I’ve been finding recently that don’t need to agree or disagree or weigh in at all. People just want to be acknowledged. Heard.

Which makes sense, because I think that a lot of the time that’s all I want as well. I don’t want to be argued with or taught anything or patronized or etc. I want someone to listen to me and feel like they’ve learned something about me or understand me a little better and be happy with that. I want people to appreciate me - which pains me to type, but that’s pretty much the heart of me.

This was long-winded and somber, I know. I enjoy being carefree and having fun as much as the next person, but I don’t feel complete or like an actual person without being serious about things sometimes. And that can be lonely, too, because I feel like a lot of the people I know aren’t particularly interested in being serious.

I don’t know.

I’ve had so many thoughts about this recently and I’ve only been able to make less sense of it the more that I think about it.

I don’t know why I keep coming back to it. Something has been feeling off lately, and I feel as if there’s a part of me that knows what I should do, but my brain hasn’t caught on quite yet. It probably involves pushing myself further outside of my comfort zone and making some changes that are going to require a fair amount of personal effort on my part.

If I force myself to get to the heart of the matter, and at this point in my self-indulgent rambling I think that I owe myself and you, for patiently reading this crap, some kind of valid insight, my life could be better if I could get over wanting to be liked by everyone. I know that I listen half because I really care and half because I just want people to like me. Oh, yes, I should have acknowledged far earlier that it’s not completely selfless: the listening. I’m just as selfish as everyone else, I think I’m just better about hiding it sometimes. Often, it starts out because I want people to like me [and just as often it works because we’re all at least just a little ego-centric] and eventually morphs into listening because I actually care. And now that I’m typing this out, I guess that the tipping point occurs when I realize that someone is going to like me with far fewer conditions than a typical person would.

I guess that what I need to work on [and there’s always going to be something I can work on] is trying to get to that point - caring without worrying about the payoff - earlier. And on the flipside, I think that I owe it to myself to be more upfront and open about how I’m feeling to others. It’s really only fair for me to get upset about it if I make it clear that I want someone to care and they continue not to, I suppose.

And if I care about someone and they don’t return the sentiment, what do I do about the self-righteous voice that creeps in and tells me they don’t deserve to be my friend? [It’s a constant presence, that damn voice.] People show that they have a genuine interest in you in different ways, I guess, but maybe what I’m saying is that I need for it to be in a certain way. Is that a lot to ask? I suspect that if I really care about them, I wouldn’t care about any of the stuff that bugs me. But in the interest of self-preservation I feel like it isn’t too much to expect to want people to ask me about how I’m doing and mean it from time to time. Right? Right?

Too many questions. At what point am I being unrealistic and at what point am I living without a backbone? Is it selfish that I feel that I should be able to decide who is “deserving” of being my friend or is that absolutely my decision to make? I am not a wise enough person to be able to render judgment on anyone, but at the same I feel like it’s my damn life so I should be able to do what I want with it.

Ugh. I am no Dalai Lama. I never will be. I am too self-righteous, I’m too materialistic, and my ego/pride are too large to wear that robe.

But the answer is here somewhere. It’s as simultaneously tangible and abstract as shafts of light, piercing through cloud cover on the Pacific. I can see it, but I can’t touch it, and if I get there the light isn’t going to be clearcut and easily defined anymore - it’s going to be immersive and unquantifiable and look completely different from how I saw it when I was miles away. But would I rather be bathed in light or looking at it from afar?

Stupid question.

Also.

Sat, 21 May 2011 01:25:12 -0400

Also.

I am so behind on the internet/pop culture/life, but I just saw...

Sat, 21 May 2011 01:20:25 -0400

I am so behind on the internet/pop culture/life, but I just saw this and YOU THINK A LOT OF MEN CAN’T HANDLE THE REGALNESS OF AN UP-DO?!

So, really, if you’re not watching Conan’s show you...

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 01:56:07 -0400

So, really, if you’re not watching Conan’s show you obviously should be.

EVERY TIME THAT YOU GET THE FEELING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK...

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:24:00 -0500

EVERY TIME THAT YOU GET THE FEELING ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK THAT SOMEONE IS SNEAKING UP ON YOU WITH A RAZOR BLADE, YOU GOTTA TURN AROUND AND PUNCH ‘EM IN THE FACE. OH YEAH. EVEN IF THEY GOT A GLOCK. EVEN IF THEY GOT A GLOCK, YOU GOTTA GET INSIDE AND MOVE THE ANGLE OUT THE WAY AND PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE JUST LIKE THEY DO IN ISRAEL.

I don’t know why it has taken this long for Reggie Watts to come into my life, but now that he’s here I don’t want him to leave.

Addicted

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 12:45:44 -0500

Addicted:

Ally gave me a heads up on this album. It’s Girl Talk | All Day, and it is SO FUCKING GOOD, Y’ALL. You really need to give it a download, because, oh, what’s that? It’s FREE. [And in a completely legal sort of way.]

Do it. Enjoy. Thank Ally.

Top Gear USA Remix: Take 1

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:58:37 -0500

As the motherland continues to gank off the creativity of British television, I caught the beginning of an episode of Top Gear America today. Immediate reaction is as follows.

1. Very dry.

2. Trying a bit too hard.

3. Cheap imitation.

All in all, not impressive. The hosts all lack the natural charisma possessed by Clarkson, Mays, and Hammond and seem too afraid to take the mick out of one another and, indeed, themselves.

Maybe this is something that will come with time, but I suspect that this may suffer from the U.S. epidemic of wanting to seem “cool.” Top Gear BBC soars on a well formulated balance of solid information, wit, and an absolute lack of hesitation on the part of the hosts to look like fools. Steve Carell and Tina Fey have made careers based on similar trifectas.

To be fair, it’s very possible that what the show needs in order to settle into itself is simply time. For now, though, the obvious jokes and wincingly bad stabs at wacky humor made me quite certain I’ll be sticking with the BBC.

No clue why I felt compelled to post a small rant about Top Gear, but there we are. If you’re going to try and mimic something that good, you’d better know what you’re doing.

Favorite Photo of the Moment My friend Ally’s parents...

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:06:21 -0500

Favorite Photo of the Moment

My friend Ally’s parents somewhat recently bought a beach house out in Delaware. Not too long ago, she, Annie, Jon and I went out to spend a weekend there.

Most of that weekend was spent goofing around, watching movies, drinking wine, and playing the ridiculousness that is Catchphrase. During part of it, though, in an effort to take advantage of the nice fall weather, we went out to walk around The Community’s nature conservatory. [I call it The Community because it’s gated and seems like the kind of thing that should be capitalized.]

The “nature conservatory” consists of a branched linear path that goes maybe a quarter to half a mile in either direction from its entrance. It’s very pretty out there, and the path is dotted with lookouts and walkways. At the end of one of the forks, there is a run-down pier that you have to climb down part of a caved-in path to reach. A couple of the slats of wood have broken and fallen into the water, giving it an abandoned sort of feeling. At the end of the pier were three benches and a rather picturesque view, which we spent a good hour or so appreciating while they patiently waited for me to grow tired of snapping pictures.

Clouds were coating the sky, which provided a wonderfully soft, diffused light. Above are three of my favorite shots from the day; one each of Ally, Annie, and Jon, respectively.

As the Big Move grows closer and I find myself paying more attention to things I have grown accustomed to having around and therefore taken for granted to varying extents [things like seasons, snow, and knowing certain areas of this region like the back of my hand] I realize that among those are my friends. So, I’m very glad that I have little moments like these, when my friends are accommodating and I can silently savor their laughter, the cadences of their speech, their reactions, and all the little things from the habits I have grown accustomed to, to the things I never noticed or that I’ve never seem them do before.

It makes me even gladder that I could attempt to, as adequately as I am able, capture some of their brilliance so that I can reflect upon these little moments when we’re a country apart. Reflect, and remember that this day was a very good day indeed.

listening to "Alexi Murdoch - Wait"

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:51:00 -0500

listening to "Alexi Murdoch - Wait":

Perfect for: thunderstorms, sunshowers, light filtering through breeze ridden trees, transportation commutes, lonely beaches, contemplation, today.

Favorite Photo of the Moment “The best quality tea must...

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:46:00 -0500

Favorite Photo of the Moment

“The best quality tea must have
creases like the leathern boots of Tartar horsemen,
curl like the dewlap of a might bullock,
unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine,
gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr,
and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.”

-Lu Yu [D. 804] Chinese Sage, Hermit

Taken at the Tea Cellar in Washington D.C.

Why I Love Avatar: Reason No. 473

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:25:00 -0500

“What would Uncle say? …Sometimes, clouds have two sides - a dark and light. And a silver lining in between. It’s like a silver sandwich! So…when life seems hard…take a bite out of the silver sandwich!”

“Maybe we haven’t failed after all!”

“That’s the spirit! I can’t believe that worked. I didn’t even know what I was saying.”

“No, what you said made no sense at all.”

[Season 3, The Boiling Rock]

Favorite Photo of the Moment I’ve been stressing out over...

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 08:05:00 -0500

Favorite Photo of the Moment

I’ve been stressing out over life a bit lately. The potential of a cross-country move and a handful of other things have left me a bit tightly wound, and it’s taken a toll on my overall mood. So, when I had a little four day jaunt in San Diego to check out the school that was possibly going to take me to the west coast, it didn’t seem surprising to me that the region’s supposedly perfect weather had turned gray and overcast.

On the second day, it rained.

On day three, my last full day in the city, I awoke determined to make the most out of my time there and see as much of things as I could. Once I’d looked around a bit and eaten lunch, I decided, on a whim, to drive up the coastal highway to check out Encinitas, a small-ish beach town just north of San Diego.

Just as I reached the city limits, with the latest Linkin Park album bumping through the speakers, this song [linked for your convenience one entry away] came on and the sky opened up. Truly, it was a magical moment.

Encinitas was gorgeous, but having so many symbolic gestures combine just when I needed a little moment of grace is going to forever propel it ahead a few notches in my mind.

listening to "Linkin Park - Iridescent"

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 07:59:00 -0500

listening to "Linkin Park - Iridescent"

Favorite Photo of the Moment Every year, I keep meaning to go...

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:17:00 -0400

Favorite Photo of the Moment

Every year, I keep meaning to go to one of the many apple orchards in the area and…you know. Pick some apples. Make a pie. I never get around to it, but since I don’t know when I’ll be back for my favorite season in Virginia, I had to do it this year or live in potential regret.

After doing some digging around online, I found an orchard in Purcellville, VA that looked like a potential winner. I forwarded the information along to some of my friends and a few weeks later we found ourselves making the long-ish drive out to the farm.

The weather was beyond beautiful - the quintessential autumn day; sun shining brightly but the temperature mildly chilly. Making our way through the rows and rows of apple trees, we began to realize that we had arrived rather late into the season. Many of the apples had already fallen to the ground and begun to wrinkle and blemish on the branches.

After walking past many past-mature swatches of trees, we began to scratch our heads. Upon our arrival, we had seen plenty of people coming back with buckets that were brimming with apples. Where had they gotten them? We soldiered on.

At some point on the path, we turned a corner and were met with a small empty clearing across from some beehives. Because it’s how I roll, I asked everyone to put our empty buckets on their heads and snapped this picture.

As luck would have it, we ran into a group returning with a large apple bounty and held them at gunpoint until they told us where they had gotten them from.

I’m kidding. We took their apples and ran.

I’m kidding.

The day ended in an apple-filled victory. If you would like to see the rest of our orchardventure, please click on through.

This picture stands out as one of my favorites of the lot. The bright green of the trees, the clarity of the sky, and my friends with some slightly smelly buckets on their heads. When we finally start that band, this is destined to be our album cover. For now, it simply chronicles the brilliant weather and a day I will cherish in my memory until the dementia finally gets me.

Favorite Photo of the Moment Georgetown is an area of Washington...

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:43:02 -0400

Favorite Photo of the Moment

Georgetown is an area of Washington D.C. that is often rife with the rich and the pretentious.

And yet.

To quote that show [Friends] that I seem to be able to quote in any given situation, “maybe a little pretension never hurt anybody.”

There is something undeniably exciting, for anyone who loves to shop, about walking down M Street and being greeted by storefront after storefront of exquisitely designed window dressings. This line of retail bliss, which credit card holders eagerly queue up to snort, is broken up only by a number of restaurants and specialty eateries which guarantees that you can easily spend hours in this relatively small pocket of the district. Georgetown is about the closest thing that we get to an outdoor mall on the northern edge of this coast; something that the Californians have mastered but we have little need for as the temperatures drop and otherwise harmless weather can turn nasty without much warning.

There is an aura about Georgetown that I have not seen duplicated anywhere else to date. It seamlessly mixes together romance and metropolitan sophistication with hints of the Old World and cutting edge modernity. Taking an afternoon stroll down to the Potomac with a Baked & Wired cupcake in hand, ducking into Birreria Paradiso to grab a beer or two in front of the fire while snow begins to coat the brick sidewalks, or meandering through the airy space of the Paper Source to pick up some fun projects for home; these are all things I have done in Georgetown.

In my early twenties, however, I discovered Cady’s Alley.

Cady’s Alley defines what I call the Interior Design Wing of the M Street drag. In its own little section, away from the bars and the underground mall, it typically remains unvisited by the majority of Georgetown walking traffic and therefore retains a sense of quiet tranquility. The prices range from expensive to astronomical, but if you want to see what designers are using to mold those impeccable images gracing the glossy pages of house and home magazines, this is the place to visit. Be warned though, familiarizing yourself with retail fronts like Ann Sacks, Bulthaup, or Waterworks may leave you with an incurable sense of longing.

This picture was taken during a trip I went on with my BFF Aki to gather ideas and inspiration for her being-built-now townhouse in Maryland. I have always appreciated a beautiful interior, and as I am about to go to school to throw myself into the profession I am beginning to look at interior fixtures and furniture with new eyes.

The lighting in this particular store, Boffi, is dramatic in the best kind of way. It shows you just how much the angle and intensity of a spotlight and its ambient counterparts can highlight, focus, and affect the mood of a space.

As a girl on a nearly nonexistent income, I can enjoy and understand the value behind repurposing, reusing, and making the most of a tight budget. However, I will never, ever underestimate the power of quality, and there is something about superbly designed cabinetry or a breathtakingly gorgeous bathtub that will always make me yearn.

listening to "Linkin Park - Waiting for The End w/ lyrics"

Sat, 09 Oct 2010 23:40:00 -0400

listening to "Linkin Park - Waiting for The End w/ lyrics":

Currently getting a lot of play in my car. This is my favorite song on the album thus far. Got a Jay-Z vibe with a side of 311. Hot shit.

Favorite Photo of the Moment I can remember when N64’s...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:14:00 -0400

Favorite Photo of the Moment

I can remember when N64’s used to be hot shit. We weren’t allowed to have game consoles [my brother and I], so whenever my friends had them I would always try and get as much face time in as possible when I was staying over. The day when one of my best friends in elementary school introduced me to the original Super Mario Bros. was the day when she realized we were never going to play with Barbies again.

In the case of my brother, he grew up never really caring about video games and continues to maintain minimal contact with technology, aside from watching the visualizer on iTunes whilst placing his music on shuffle. [I will cop to this being addicitively mesmerizing. I recommend both the iTunes Visualizer, and Jelly.] In the case of me, I currently own a Wii, an XBOX 360, and a PS3. Apparently, about 19 years of video game squelching could not squelch the gamer out of me.

Anyhow, the N64 is a system that was released right about when all of my contemporaries and I were hitting puberty. This means that “hanging out” at boys’ houses suddenly became something that had connotations requiring double quotes. If a girl was going over to a boy’s house, she wasn’t just going over there to shoot the shit and play Ninja Turtles. She was going there to do something far more nefarious. Something that none of us yet fully understood.

I only had a handful of female friends who were in the possession of an N64 system [or the soon to follow Dreamcast system] and that was because they had male siblings. The girl geek had yet to become a “thing” in general society, and believe me when I say that other girls did not think it “cool” when you came over to sit around and read Teen Bop and discuss boys and you ended up playing Mortal Kombat and Mario Kart with their brothers. It’s not that I didn’t find reading articles about Jonathan Taylor Thomas appealing. I mean, let’s be real, I was a teenage girl during the height of his popularity and to this day the initials JTT make me shriek internally just a little bit. He was our Bieber. Our Pattinson. Just better looking and far more justified as a teen-girl crush, in my opinion. But I digress…

What? Sorry, I was watching the iTunes visualizer.

Anyhow, all I really remember playing a lot of on the N64 were Mario Kart and Mortal Kombat, and even those I didn’t get to play that much. So, when we were over at Cyrus’ friend Charles’ house and he had this bounty of games strewn across the floor in his room, the adolescent geek girl inside me squee’d just a little bit. I don’t remember why Charles had all these N64 games. I think he’d gotten them off eBay or Craiglist or something? Regardless, I was a little excited to see what I’d been missing during my teenage non-gaming days.

The answer? Apparently not much. You know how the original 8 bit Super Mario Bros. remains cool in a charming, retro sort of way? I guess that if I had ties to most of these games they would retain more of a nostalgia for me, but man. The N64 holds weird control schemes, some poorly thought out games, touchy camera controls that started to make me sick after a bit, and graphics that make the Wii look like blu-ray. I did get a laugh from having to blow out one of the cartridges to get it to work, and there was a rather heated debate about whether Slippy Toad is a boy or a girl. [That is one confused amphibian.]

I took a picture of the pile of games, partially for posterity’s sake, and partially because it was just cool looking. In a burst of trite inspiration, I decided to doctor it up in Photoshop a bit to give it that sepia’d, fuzzy, vignette’d look we equate with oldness.

So the N64 gaming night wasn’t met with as many fond memories for me as it was for all the boys who had grown up with the systems. It was fun, though, and at the very least I went home with a new appreciation for our current generation of gaming.

And also, a new appreciation for just how terrible a game Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was. We gave up on that one after approximately five minutes.

It Ain't Where I Been, But Where I'm 'Bout To Go

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:59:51 -0400

It Ain't Where I Been, But Where I'm 'Bout To Go:

Joey Roth continues to shine in the field of clean, concise brilliance.

If you don’t already know who Joey Roth is, I highly recommend that you google Sorapot or ceramic speakers.

Look, I love you so much, I already linked them for you.

Now, go check out that poster.

Whoa-HOA. Take a look at that pool. I mean. Dude. Want. You...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:44:00 -0400

Whoa-HOA. Take a look at that pool. I mean. Dude. Want. You know, and the house. I’d take the house, too. But the POOL. And that staircase. They’re KILLING ME.

(via designismymuse)

Favorite Photo of the Moment Where the hell has this month gone?...

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:23:00 -0400

Favorite Photo of the Moment

Where the hell has this month gone? I logged onto tumblr thinking it’s only been a few days, maybe a week, since I last posted and the internet was all, “Ha HA! More like two weeks!” July is flying by at the speed of a cheetah with its ass on fire and it’s all I can do to hang on.

So, given my delinquency I’m going to go ahead and post another picture up here. This was taken out on the deck during the week that Cyrus and Sasa stayed over at my house because their air conditioning was blown.

For those who have not suffered through a summer on the east coast before, you should know that things don’t just get hot out here. They get humid. The difference between a dry summer and a humid summer is the difference between sweating through your tank top and sweating through your tank top whilst sitting in tepid bath water. Air conditioning isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity.

Unlike the considerably more temperate west coast, things don’t cool off here at night. The dewpoint hovers somewhere around the 10,000,000 mark and so far as I’m concerned, that moisture heats up throughout the day and then emits the absorbed heat ALL NIGHT LONG. In the same way that wind chill can make a day go from cold to I’m-so-numb-right-now-you-could-punch-me-in-the-face-and-I-wouldn’t-feel-a-thing, humidity can give you this sticky, I’m-sweating-without-sweating feeling even though the thermometer says it’s only 85 degrees outside. And this is what it’s like just south of the Mason Dixon line. I cry tears of perspiration for our neighbors further south.

The point of all this weather-ranting is that when we get a nice evening in Virginia, we carpe noctem the shit out of it. Deck furniture gets dusted off, grill covers are removed, and even the most timid summer dwellers are sipping beverages of choice outdoors.

We were graced with such a night shortly into what would turn into a week of house-guesting whilst Cyrus and Sasa waited for the air conditioning guy to come around and make their house suitable for human life again. So, we lit some candles, poured some wine, brought my iPod dock outside, and set up their hookah on the deck.

I love these nights. Comfortably warm with a light breeze, glowing lights softly splashing across faces, and laughter drifting into the trees as friends kick back and appreciate each others’ company. It’s taken me a while to get accustomed to the humidity out here [twenty-six years, actually], but it’s still these nights that I will carry with me. When time suspends itself and the warmth gently caresses your skin. When everything is at peace and the blackness of the night offers a void of possibility instead of uncertainty.