I'd like to preface this with a disclaimer.

So this might be a grandiose collection of randomness. But in the sense that it is all little bits of my life at the moment, somewhere in thereis a common thread weaving it all together.  And I suppose that makes it your job to look beyond the barrage of broken pieces and see what it once was; what it has all come from.  I can never seem to get something whole out of myself, it always cracks in the moving process.

I finished Calvino's book this morning with a great deal of dark chocolate.  It ended quite fabulously and for the parts I skimmed over, the parts that i relished in really made the book amazing and powerful. He has a real grasp on why we read; what the point of spending hours digesting words on a page really is.  My two favorite quotes from the book (what i felt compelled to post-it note mark):
"They have known her since she was a girl, they know everything there is to know about her, some of them may have been involved with her, now water under the bridge, over and done with; in other words, there is a veil of other images that settles on her image and blurs it, a weight on memories that keep me from seeing her as a person seen for the first time, other people's memories suspended like the smoke under lamps."
I think that this is a beautiful, striking image.  The thought that people can never really see someone truly; the impact of one's experiences with others and the impressions of others constantly obscure the reality of who we are.
"The world is so complicated, tangled, and overloaded that to see into it with any clarity you must prune and prune."
And so I prune and prune.  This is really all any of us do when we seek to try and genuinely figure things out.  The harder we look the more we see that very little matters; out vision becomes clearer, less polluted by the garbage we have piled on in an attempt to give ourselves comfort and security.

I've found some new music by Ingrid Michaelson.  Recommended to me by a dear friend who has the same music tastes as me, i was fairly confident she was good before I even listened to her myspace songs.  But this girl is wonderful.  Some of her songs have been on Grey's, but despite how much i love it, im not feeling the need to buy any music right now. ill settle for the four song myspace sampling.  Also Brian Campbell, beautiful.  My friend matt sent his stuff to me.  he's got a true voice.  he'll be in roma in january, too bad ill be in the states.  too bad. 

I wrote some this morning and im loving working on something continuously. For the most part, I write a lot. but i am scattered and random and i write compulsively.  i write in a journal and an online journal and on napkins and in blogs and in letters and e-mails.  every so often i ponder compiling things into a wonderful repository of goodness. and then it strikes me that i would never do anything with that.  the collected works of me would gather dust.  a file on my computer with no meaning, no continuity, no purpose.  why do i write? i write for the moment, i write because i have to.  i write because i need to process and have the rhythm of my pen on the paper or my fingers on the keys.  some days i write just to pass the time, but once the words begin to pulse from my fingers and my body finds the movement, it is almost like dancing with myself.  i rarely read what i have written or even revise it.  is there any point if no one is to read it? which brings me to another point, i never want anyone to read what ive written.  until recently ive been shy about even letting people know that i write so much. 
about a week ago, i took a crazy step.  i sent one of my journals to my friend.  she is perhaps one of those people who know my soul better than i do.  she speaks truth into my life and brings me to honesty.  when i am around her i cannot help but to be brutally honest.  of course she is in the states right now and it is painful sometimes to ot be able to share coffee with her and cry openly and freely.  but i just needed to give her these writings of mine.  Id been reading them one day because i thought about how i hadnt written there in a while and wondered what the heck i had written, and i saw a brief glimpse of something pretty crazy.  i was taken aback by the person who had written these things.  i was surprised by what i read and drawn in.  i knew that i had written every word with the intention that no one would ever see them and yet i didn't know the person who had written this.  it was touching and powerful and intense.  and i knew that it was me.  it was a part of me that i dont show to people, but that i wanted to be able to give.  since ive shared it with her, i havent added anything to it. 

there is this blog ive been reading for a while.  i found it a bit randomly, but i read it all the time.  the guy that writes it is beautiful.  he bares his soul and is open.  i really respect everything he writes there, i envy the way he lives life, the way he is about to be so honest.  i think it is weird that i read these things about him and he doesn't know who i am.  im toying with the idea of e-mailing him just to thank him for feeding my soul in the way he does.  i think id want to know if someone was touched by what i wrote. 

im a little homesick.  i dont know what im homesick for exactly.  i know that God is in Italy.  i know this time is full of purpose, ready to give birth to the next path in my life.  i am still attached to the familiar.  i still seek out comfort.  ive not given up my security.  my life is still me own, but im trying to let go of it.  and it is a lot harder than it sounds.