The winter trees of Asheville. 🙂
Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.- from You’ve Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
Have you ever come across one of your previous pieces of writing and thought: Did I seriously write that? It’s SO good! That happened to me last night when I came across a blog post I wrote on October the 20th, titled The finding place of my words. As I read my own words, I was amazed. There were certain connections I made on that brisk fall day back in October that still apply to how I feel right now. I don’t know what it is with writers wanting to write about words or the creative process. However, in my case, it provides me with perspective, which is discussed in more detail in my blog post titled, The magic of first lines in literature.
Last Spring, as I was walking across the quad of my college campus to get to class, I had to stop and take in the scene that was unfolding before me. As I looked around, I saw tons of college students sitting on the quad reading. However, as is customary for Asheville, they were all different. Each student’s reading experience was unique. One guy was lying in a hammock he had strung up between two nearby trees, and his book rested lightly against his bent knees. I also saw a girl who was lying on her stomach on a flowery blanket with her bare feet casually in the air. She was holding a book out in front of her, careful to block the sun from her eyes. The third student I spotted was my personal favorite though. She was sitting in the grass with her back up against the trunk of a tree. Her long, dark hair covered the sides of her face, making it possible to only focus on her eyes, which were moving so fast across the pages of her book that I could tell she was a very focused reader. I think the image of the third student stuck with me the most because I could see so much of myself in her. As a reader, especially when it involves a book I am reading for pleasure, it takes a lot to break my focus. Often times, I get so absorbed in the words that I lose the ability to fully comprehend what is going on around me, outside of the world of words that I so often call home.
Though I don’t know whether the students that I observed were reading for their own pleasure or for a class assignment, I like to believe either they were reading something for pleasure or were at least reading something they were interested in. I enjoy sticking to this belief simply because it is very closely related to how I imagine myself when I am reading. In so many ways, words have always been my refuge, but they have also been the place I have returned to again and again if I need to re-evaluate something or find my sense of balance.
“All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.” – Ernest Hemingway
Not all words provide us with the strength to change or the reassurance that we are moving in the right direction in our lives. However, if a series of words can come together into a sentence that causes us to stop and read the sentence again and again, it’s almost like magic. Whether they fill us with a sense of happiness, loss, sadness, anger, loneliness, or hope…words matter. They have the ability to reach a place inside us that not many people can even describe. It’s almost as if the most precious of sentences we have ever read reside in a place so deep within us and so personal that it takes a certain kind of experience for the words to resurface.
“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.” – Truman Capote
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.” – Hart Crane
Words matter. They are precious stones that have been washed by the countless waves of the sea, and they lie in the sand, waiting for us to uncover them. But the most precious words, the ones that are the rare deep blue stones, they are not so easy to find. They reside in the crevices of rocks, thrown to those places by the most violent of waves. But they have triumphed. They have overcome the turbulent waves of the sea, taking refuge until we are able to bring them out into the light. So don’t wait. Start searching.
I’ve included two photos for today’s Photo Friday because I absolutely love fall (It really is the perfect season), and my best friend, Skidmore, is coming down from Virginia today to spend the weekend with me. We’re planning to go shopping (yay retail therapy), watch movies (which will be chick flicks galore, obviously), jam out to Taylor Swift’s new album (since she’s our favorite singer. Yes, guilty as charged) and just do our typical best friend things. I can’t wait, especially since I haven’t seen Skidmore since the beginning of August. This best friend reunion will be much needed after the stressful week that I’ve had. And having Skidmore here during my favorite season is as close to perfection as things could ever get. 🙂
I just love fall in the mountains!
The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward.-Ray Bradbury
Driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Sometimes it takes my breath away that I live in such an incredible place. However, more than that, it seems surprising that I’ve only lived here a year. When you consider how attached I’ve become to all the natural beauty that’s around me as well as the wonderfully accepting people who live in Asheville, you’d probably assume that I’ve been living here for years. Truthfully, that’s how it seems sometimes.
I’ve had very few times in my life that I could honestly say that I have completely loved the way my life seemed to be spanning out before me. However, I would definitely consider now to be one of those times. No, things aren’t perfect. Today just felt close to perfect. For instance, I got to campus 30 minutes earlier than I normally do on Thursdays just so that I could take pictures of the fall leaves that are finally fully bursting with reds and oranges, I went to my favorite used bookstore to buy Life of Pi (which I started on Tuesday while I was at work but wasn’t able to finish obviously), and then I just spent some “me time” driving around town looking at all the incredible natural beauty that I’m fortunate enough to see on a daily basis. So yes, today was pretty perfect.
I’ve always loved natural beauty. Since I grew up making frequent trips to the mountains and went camping and hiking with my family starting at a very young age, I guess you could say that it was pretty obvious that I’d become a mountain/nature girl. However, despite having all that exposure when I was young, I love it for all my own reasons (even though all the hiking and camping definitely helped). I love it because it shows that even through adversity, there can still be beauty. Yes, that’s clichĂ©, but it’s clichĂ© for a reason. I think nature in itself has always reminded me that there is something to smile about in every situation. Though it may be something small, like a red leaf that has landed on the asphalt in front of you, it’s reason enough to stop, take pause and breath in the beauty that surrounds such a fractured world. Even as I write this, it seems sad to think of our world as fractured. However, when you consider all of the bad things that happen in the world for unknown reasons, I think it’s an accurate description. Despite its fractured nature, there is something to love about the persistence of natural beauty. No matter what, autumn always comes. Even if things seem like they are falling apart around us, we can count on the seasons. We can count on looking out before us and being overcome with love for the mountains we call home.
Max Patch Summit
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Finally made a trip up to Max Patch, my favorite place on Earth!
“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” -Elizabeth Gilbert
Despite it being Monday, there are numerous things that have made me happy today:
I grew up around a father and a mother who read every chance they got, who took us to the library every Thursday night to load up on books for the coming week.-Anne Lamott
After a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway yesterday enjoying the beautiful weather, I’m welcoming the gradual change of colors I saw along the curvy mountain roads as well as the cooler weather in the mornings that begin to require long-sleeve shirts and hoodies. Autumn is just my favorite time of year! 🙂
