still hate cats.

but this photo stole my heart.

best!

I often hear my mother's voice. I hear her when I've been too loud at parties, if I treated someone with a lack of consideration, or when I notice that the toilet needs a scrubbing. She is my voice of good will and I often hear her imagined encouragement to do the right thing. I like it most of the time.

My mother is also my greatest earthly constant. She has treated me with more encouragement, forgiveness, and patience than anyone in the face of my simultaneous lack of kindness toward her. In the absence of friends, boys to date, money, and success, she always available for meaningful conversation and a meaningless movie.

I hope to understand this kind of love someday.

I need to marry someone who takes care of me only half as well as she does.

Thanks mom.

work is good, but dinner is better.

My internship:Oh wait, that's Nate's dog, Uintah.

My desk at Modern IDENTITY:
The view out the window:
It's been really busy. Modern IDENTITY has been working on rebranding this, which you can tell has been a lot of work. (don't worry, it looks much better now.) I've been working until about 7pm everyday and then have had a lot of freelance work to do when I get home to Suvi's apartment.
Last night, after freelancing, Suvi and I ate here. (everything has a website in nyc!-- except Modern IDENTITY [but don't worry, Mim. The point of my internship in large part IS to put some key things in place in order to launch their website.])Dinner was fabulous. Restaurants provide an atmosphere most conducive to conversation of any I've encountered in my life. And I think it's probably even better in New York than places with more space. The extra volume of a metropolitan setting adds privacy/anonymity and the limited space ensures greater intimacy as it enforces sitting in closer proximity to your dining companion. And when your dining companion is as pleasant and patient and wise as Suvi it becomes a memory; a profound moment when you gain a greater perspective on where your life is really at; and remember that feeling gratitude is the only real way to be happy in life.

brooklyn noises.

I have been famous for my ability to sleep. It used to be my cure for all bad moods, R-rated films, and boredom. I could sleep anytime and anywhere and in almost any position. I once fell asleep while Tom was hanging sheet rock with a nail-gun in the room next door. I once slept through an entire Mogwai concert by inserting a pair of earplugs and resting my head on the bar toward the back of the venue. The truth is, I grew up in a nosy home. When things are too quiet, it means I am alone. When I am alone, I am more likely to feel lonely.

When I finally got my own bedroom at age 17, I acted excited. The truth is, I was a bit scared of sleeping downstairs by myself. I couldn't hear my mom vacuuming or the clank of her dish-washing in the middle of the night; only the vague, creepy noises that sounded through the heating vents overhead and occasional branches scraping against the windows at the provocation of the wind.

I arrived in New York at 5:30am after a sleepless night on the plane. Dylan met me to lug my bags through the urine-scented subway stations that led me to my new apartment. Suvi let me sleep in her bed for a hours and then woke me for church at noon. My legs were noodles as I ran to catch the bus in my best high heels. (I honestly feared that the entire lower half of my body would give out on me.) And church was enoyable/ torturous because of my enthusiasm at my own arrival and my simultaneous want for sleep. After church there was no time to return to the apartment. There was a fireside and meal in only a few hours, so I opted to sleep in the Relief Society room in the little Park Slope, Brooklyn church building. I lined three padded chairs in a row in front of the window and found a quilt meant for humanitarian aid in the unlocked closet.

There was so much noise! People filled the sidewalks in their shorts and sundresses and cars blared hip-hop songs as they stalled at the intersections. It felt wonderful.

may day, may day.

For some reason every time I first see my final grades, I choke. It's not like they're that bad, just that I always want straight A's and I am pretty far from that.

I could cry over grades. Easily. And it makes me feel superficial, if not immature, like a kid throwing a tantrum.

It then forces me reflect on all of the things that cannot be numerically summed that I don't choke on: break-ups, moves, signing student loan documents, devastating current events. Why don't I cry over these things?

I had the opportunity yesterday to talk with an old friend that I haven't spoken with in almost two years. She is one of the freest spirits I know. She's been reading the Book of Mormon with a greater zeal than I'd seen in the past and expressed the new commitment she felt to the gospel in the most ethereal, open terms I've ever heard. It was refreshing to say the least; but also allowed me to pause and recognize the stark contrast that existed between the two of us.

Yes. I've been living a life governed by fear that I will be hurt again the way I was hurt in marriage. It's meant that I've become insensitive and selfish and established a solid ability to rationally justify why I think that's all okay.

There are some people I've hurt pretty badly and who's wounds I never even stopped to acknowledge. I then only took the time to justify why that was okay for me to do.

When I move to Brooklyn on May 1st I will:

Read the Book of Mormon in the sanctuary of Suvi's apartment.

Watch people when I am on the street and in the subway.

Figure out how to be soft again.

totally worth it.

Taking a moment to listen to this would seriously enrich your life. I couldn't help but cry.

I've been thinking lately of hopping on top of some blogging soapbox (again) to declare that in this world of summing oneself up into concise online profiles composed of brief lists of interests and blurbs about who we all are, that real compatibility seems lost under heaps of superficial compost. We will never be happy in a relationship with someone else simply because we are both "indie" or "hip" or "athletic" or "punk" or because we "get" one another. It is good to have things in common, but unless a relationship is genuinely founded on selflessness, faith, hope, charity, and patience, the happiness found in it will diminish to nothingness.

I am living proof. If there is anything I learned from surviving such an unbearable marriage for three years, it is this. Adam and I liked all of the same books and films and music, but none of that meant anything when it came to actually helping one another through life. The thread of contention that wove itself through the course of our courtship became the only reliable consistency that existed.

Amen.
Now I'll get back to my homework...

5 a day.

5 a day. from laura barlow on Vimeo.