I visited the Biltmore estate last weekend and big and elegant and beautiful as it was, there was a sad, eery, lonely energy about it that I couldn't seem to shake.  Kind of like walking through the red light district or thinking about the Holocaust. You're sad because it is and even displaced, as  if paying attention to the details is prying on a life that isn't yours to know or understand. But also so fascinated.  You picture what it'd be like to be there and almost get lost absorbing, paralleling your imagination with what's in front of you.

So why am I feeling this way about a house, an estate? Hundred of lovely rooms upon acres of rolling forests and lush pastures and extravagant vineyards. There for me to enjoy for 60 bucks. No one suffers. 

It's the loss of integrity, the dignity not rightfully taken that is so tragic to me.  This place wasn't built to be a museum or a case display, or a tourist attraction, it was meant to be a home. A home to be loved and missed and felt like something special to someone. Sofas placed just so and tables so carefully set.  This room has these colors because.  The baby will love this cradle. Won't the pool be so much fun?  Let's sit here and have breakfast every morning.  And just look at our view. Think of the parties we'll throw!

Now the plants are watered just to make money.  The beds never get a night unmade.  Who even knows what the books are about? The kitchen, embarrassed by fake peppers and plastic bread, never gets to cook tortellini at midnight.  

Once a home. Trusted walls.  A mutual love . Now, a slave to it's owners. 

Of course the house is haunted. I'd be sad too. 

what it feels like to get out of your own head

my head's like:
"STRESS FREAK OUT STRESS WRINKLE UP YOUR FOREHEAD AND FROWN AND BE SERIOUS ABOUT EVERYTHING AND STRESS SOME MORE"

and I'm like:

Let's get out of this town baby we're on fire

I say to myself as I sharpen my pencils and charge up for yet another chapter in this nonsensical but somehow lovely life. Grad school. Masters. 25-year-old me. Wait what.  While it feels like I'm about to take on someone else's life, I know I'm ready for it to be my own.  Saying goodbye to the day-to-day that I know so well has never been easy, but I'm ready for it to be.  I'm ready to toss the miserable drag of melancholy like I'm ready to toss old throw pillows from beach-themed days.  Like last summer's bad Target finds. Like those free plastic cups that pile up in the cabinet and fall out when I open it, begging for attention.  Like the gifted shower gels that sit tiredly under the sink with crowns of dust, too dramatic for my ornery skin.  Tossing out the battered string lights in the bedroom that used to look so cool at night. The jeans that never fit right but stuck around because maybe one day. The pilly tanks. The stuff that's just stuff because that's all it will ever be. Ready to toss it all. Love the good with all I've got and take the bad for what it was. Then fill my suitcase with nothing but great jeans and Light Blue and things that make me better.  And Richmond can love me or hate me or give me a run for my money but at least I'll know where I stand and I'll smell good and the cups in my cabinet won't fall out when I open it. 

A summer of summer memories

The smell of banana sunscreen 

What day is it? We laugh 

Squinty eyes behind shades too cool for their job

Salty beaded upper lip caked with coconut balm

The blanketing heat of well-rested leather seats and the damp reminders of yesterday

Bleached-out strands tangled with adventure, a mermaid top

The crisp volume of the car radio cuts through the haze. 

I LOVE THIS ONE! We shout

A summer of summer memories

For the twenty-something working girl.

Things you learn on work trips

People aren't going to give you what you want.  They're probably not going to give you anything at all.  In fact, they're going to take.  They're going to take from you what they want. Which isn't going to be anything related to what you want, or anything you wanted them to take, much less anything you wanted to give.  You start giving without even knowing, expecting maybe eventually they will give you what you want.  You wait.  And you keep giving.  But soon you get tired of giving and you stop feeling kind or generous or extravagant.  You just feel used.  And so finally you take.  Just once, you take what you want.  Which isn't anything anyone else wanted, and probably not anything anyone wanted to give.  But you wanted it and now you have it. They were never going to give it to you.  You had to take it.

Now you know.

I love how you are when your favorite song comes on 

I love your baggy work jeans and steel toe boots that don't break or anything when you step on them 

When you hug me and your armpits smell like sweat but also man deodorant 

I love you when you put the back of your hand under my chin and trace my cheeks with the back of your fingers 

When you make a joke when I'm annoyed that you know will just make me more annoyed but it's always really funny and I actually hate that so I'm taking it off the list 

And I love you when you dance like you think you're the greatest rapper alive 

And then we ask each other who you would say is the greatest rapper alive and then it turns into top 3 and the answers are always the same 

For you at least 

I love you when you say something just because you know I want to hear it

Like when we were in the really cool boutique in soho and you said it looked like we were in my room 

I love you when you don't understand how I feel like everything is crashing because to you it's never everything that is crashing 

When you wrap your leg around my leg in your sleep

I love how when you say you have to do errands you mean you have to do laundry and vacuum 

When you're really thirsty when you get here and chug water for like 30 seconds straight

I love how you're actually literally always right, like about everything

And I always think I am and you let me be for a while but then every time you end up being right 

The way you always get hot fries at gas stations on road trips why do you even like hot fries 

How some days you're too busy for me and I wait and wait for your next text and think of stuff like this   

May

Nature and beauty play together in an effortless way.  Nature doesn't belong to beauty. There are things of nature that are not beautiful.  And beauty doesn't belong to nature.  There are beautiful things that are not of nature.  The two simply dance their own dances, day in and day out, never forcing one to become the other.  

It's when nature and beauty dance together that the mystery comes alive.  The relaxed sophistication of the two together become an aura you cannot explain or understand. It's the harmony, the purity of the pair, that draws you in.  Your mind retreats to its dreams and you're free to imagine, believe everything normally wouldn't.  And suddenly anything is possible, everything is possible.  All the good things are right there, in the moment and all the bad things, you start to trust them, openly and honestly. Welcome them, even, if it means you get this. 


Nature and beauty do not belong to each other. But when they are together. What a gift.