something about the colour blue

full of sushi, just placed an order on amazon, ready to dive into these papers.

i am one happy girl right now.

there’s just something about spoiling the ones you love that i can’t get enough of.. b, i know you know what i mean. you know they’re going to crack open the gift you bought for them and have the biggest smile on their face when they piece together how you thought of it and the trouble you took to get it for them. even if it didn’t take any trouble at all, you know they’ll enjoy it and cherish it. there’s no question about it. i live for that feeling. i don’t even care about receiving gifts; christmas for me is all about giving. it sounds cliche as fuck but it’s what i’m about.

16 days of dave-mas, here we come!!! GET YOUR TOWEL READY, BEARDED LOVER. you’re soon to be showered with gifts!!

but i am pretty happy, actually.

i mean, who else can show up for work hungover, turn on the electric fireplace, brew a pot of tea, crack open a bag of crispy mini’s (sea salt and lime, bitches), start playing a wicked playlist they made themselves and research teas? that’s my job. i might as well be at home, except for the fact that strangers don’t meander into my house and buy things. and i can’t wear sweatpants.

what i’m saying is that i’m pretty thankful that i have the job i do, even if my boss is nuts.

another thing i’m happy about and thankful for, etc. etc., is my bearded lover. the last place i’ve ever pictured myself was in a loving, functional, long-term relationship. it gets better every day, and it’s already so good. i just wasn’t the type to commit, really, and now that i’ve taken the plunge i don’t want to look back. i can’t picture my life without him. who have i become all of a sudden? it’s so strange to think about.

aaaanyway, back to work!

Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One’s Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.
She was a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. She learned impossibly difficult songs on her voilin, songs outside of what she thought she could know, and would each time come crying to Yankel, I have learned to play this one too! It’s so terrible! I must write something that not even I can play! She spent evenings with the art books Yankel had bought for her in Lutsk, and each morning sulked over breakfast, They were good and fine, but not beautiful. No, not if I’m being honest with myself. They are only the best of what exists. She spent an afternoon staring at their front door.
Waiting for someone? Yankel asked.
What color is this?
He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked, It certainly tastes like red.
Yes, it is red, isn’t it?
Seems so.
She buried her head in her hands. But couldn’t it be just a bit more red?
Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily…None of it moved her. She adressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don’t love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don’t love you. Poem too long: I don’t love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don’t love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don’t love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.
If we were to open to a random page in her journal - which she must have kept and kept with her at all times, not fearing that it would be lost, or discovered and read, but that she would one day stumble upon that thing which was finally worth writing about and remembering, only to find that she had no place to write it - we would find some rendering of the following sentiment: I am not in love.
So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love - loving the loving of things whose existence she didn’t care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.

from Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer